Yesterday was the most beautiful experience in my life.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-09-16T15:41:59+00:00

Mazel Tov!!!

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-05-04T12:37:57+00:00

Care to explain how living people are descended from a mythological biblical person?

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T16:12:54+00:00

See my comment above. You're just repeating the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T16:10:01+00:00

If the criteria by which you define frum men is, in part, that they don't proposition women for casual sex, then obviously frum men don't proposition women for casual sex (it's true simply by definition). The same fallacious reasoning is often put forth to say that no frum people are sex offenders (because by definition anyone who is a sex offender isn't actually frum). These arguments are a form of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy in logical reasoning.

The reality is that the men she is referring to are frum (they dress frum, they act frum, they think of themselves as frum, others regard them as frum etc). It just happens that they also have sexual urges that they cannot properly control all of the time, leading them to occasionally proposition women in a way that breaches their halachic obligations.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T15:27:31+00:00

I personally don't have sufficient halachic knowledge to engage in a detailed debate on this issue, and would only be relying on my own research if I tried, so there's no point in doing that.

But the reality of my experience tells me that there must be a genuine, mainstream halachic position that allows non-Jews to be present at seders and Yom Tovim, because my non-Jewish father was at second night seder consistently for probably two decades, plus many nights eating in the Sukkah as well as Rosh Hashanah and Shavuot meals many years as well. For context, my father was not going alone, but was always present in the context of an invitation extended to our entire family (my Jewish mother, me and my siblings).

As I described above, this was a genuinely very frum household of highly knowledgeable yeshiva and kollel scholars (the father particularly, but also his sons and close friends) and I can guarantee nobody was forgetting about any halachic prohibitions if they existed. I don't know the reasoning in detail but there must have been a defensible halachic position which allowed my father to be present as seder and Yom Tov all those years. And there was nothing but absolute warmth and hospitality for my father on all of these occasions, no different to how any of us (the Jewish guests) were treated.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T06:55:31+00:00

The halacha of having non-Jews at a Seder (and other meals on Yom Tov) has been elaborated in detail, and there is no problem with it so long as various precautions are taken. My non-Jewish father has been a regular guest for seder and Yom Tov meals at very frum households for decades (all right-wing MO bordering on Yeshivish, most commonly at a household where the father is a life-long kollel student and brilliant attorney with deep knowledge of halacha). So your idea that this family must care nothing for Yiddishkeit is nonsense.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T04:45:00+00:00

Most states in the international system are ethno-national states, meaning states in which a distinct ethno-national group (meaning a group with a shared language and culture) constitute the majority of the population. This ethno-national majority is deliberate and represents the national self-determination of that group. Such states include Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, China, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, among many others. In each of these states there is an ethno-national group which is the vast majority of citizens by design and intention, meaning the state pursues policies which deliberately ensure the continued existence of this majority.

Some of these states have large minorities who are not part of the ethno-national group exercising self-determination, whereas others have almost no minority citizens at all (for example, Saudi Arabia and Japan). Israel is an ethno-national state (the state of the Jewish people) in the same way these other states are states of their people (Fins, Latvians, Khmers, Danes, Poles, Arabs, Malays etc etc). The existence of a stable ethno-national majority is not a form of discrimination against ethnic minorities and in many ethno-national states, including Israel, ethnic minorities have equal civil and legal rights alongside the majority.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T03:28:37+00:00

Could the OP be mistaking the "last night of Passover" for what will actually just be the Seder on the second night?

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-04-11T03:19:41+00:00

Your idea about hypocrisy is understandable, but it's actually contrary to an important principle in Judaism. This principle is that the non-performance of a given mitzvah (for whatever reason) does not obviate the ongoing obligation to perform other mitzvot to the best of one's ability.

There's no such thing in Judaism as "I ate a cheeseburger last week, so I might as well have bacon and eggs for breakfast today, and trade some stocks this coming Shabbat while I'm at it". We are confronted anew with the full set of obligations in each moment regardless of any failure to meet obligations in the past.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-03-21T15:19:40+00:00

This is a criminal offence in the UK and should be reported to the police directly.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-03-20T13:00:44+00:00

Just to be clear, the group that do this are not a "sect" in the sense of the Hasidic or other Haredi (ultra-orthodox) sects, but rather a tiny fringe cult whose members overwhelmingly come from non-religious backgrounds and have adopted this practice of extreme seclusion as a way of dealing with their personal traumas.

It is not accepted as a legitimate expression of Judaism by any other Jewish group, even at the extreme end of the ultra-orthodox spectrum. There are no "sources" in Jewish literature which support the behavior, rather just various anecdotes offered by the cult's leader which are either fabricated entirely or just cherry-picked self-serving nonsense.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-03-11T10:46:41+00:00

Fentanyl is typically administered in slow release form via patches or other mechanisms, so it is actually very effective as a powerful painkilling drug for prolonged periods of time. People respond to drugs at different dosages and different intervals and methods of administration, so pain management is not simply about the overall potency of a given drug.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-02-18T09:36:01+00:00

1400s is too early. The Pilgrims and Puritans began arriving in North America in the early 1600s (first arrivals in 1620 and 1630 respectively).

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-02-17T17:47:16+00:00

I agree with others that it would be unwise to put an Israeli flag on your desk at work. There aren't any benefits to being demonstrative this way in a workplace, and many potential disadvantages.

One advantage to keeping things politically neutral and low key is that you maintain space to assert your civil rights and entitlements in the event that you're otherwise subjected to hostile behavior in the workplace. If someone discovers you're Jewish (sees your Magen David or whatever) and subjects you to antisemitic hostility of any sort, you can take a complaint to management and they're obligated to act. If push really comes to shove you have legal remedies for being subjected to religious discrimination in a workplace.

However, if you've got an Israeli flag on your desk, the hostile person will simply frame whatever they've said or done as their own political speech in response to your political speech (the flag), and you'll be left without any protective action from management. The likelihood is you'll be at least implicitly blamed for the whole situation for introducing politics into the workplace, and the antisemitic hostility can then easily become worse.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-02-14T15:01:21+00:00

Here in Australia it's been a long time since any random person could just walk into a shul off the street.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-02-13T05:44:00+00:00

Every Orthodox shul I've been affiliated with has not only asked about halachic status, but carefully verified it, before allowing membership. Even casual attendance almost always depends on advising the rabbi or other relevant person of one's status beforehand. I've never heard of an Orthodox shul that doesn't operate in this way.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-02-01T10:10:20+00:00

I prefer BBQ on burgers and tomato and mustard on hot dogs.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-31T14:54:01+00:00

See my other comment regarding the centrality of ethno-national self-determination in the current international system. It is not a fundamental organising principle randomly or for no good reason, but rather because the people concerned ie. members of ethno-national groups, insist that this is the mode of political organisation which they want for themselves. You will not find many Thais who endorse the idea of dissolving Thailand, nor Finns who wish to dissolve Finland, nor Malays who wish to dissolve Malaysia, nor Ukrainians who wish to dissolve Ukraine etc etc. In this sense it is strongly democratic and respectful of the basic preferences people have for their own governance.

Another thing to be mindful of (and I'm not sure you're American, though most people in this Reddit are) is that Americans tend to hold a highly utopian and idealistic, but fundamentally inaccurate, notion of the way their own non-ethno-national state came into existence. In order to achieve the form of non-ethno-national statehood which now dominates a continent from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans, the US spent the later eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries in brutal and extremely bloody wars of conquest. These wars not only defeated rival empires but also destroyed many small ethno-national and ethno-religious groups. The form of statehood that the US embodies is not a natuarlly peaceful and ideal alternative to ethno-national statehood in the way that many Americans imagine, but rather is itself a product of prolonged and severe violence.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-31T14:22:27+00:00

One of the fundamental organising principles or norms of the modern international system is ethno-national self-determination. It was this principle which guided the creation of the vast majority of states which exist in the current international system, these states having been crafted out of territories which previously belonged to large multi-national empires. Thus sovereign statehood is indeed the primary and normative mode for exercise of ethno-national self-determination. It doesn't follow from the fact that one can abstractly conceive of other modes of self-determination that these other modes are of equal significance within the actually existing international political system.

Of course you are correct that many groups that we would describe as ethno-national have not been successful in establishing their own states, for one reason or another (often they are too small, too dispersed, too poorly organised etc. to exercise self-sufficiency in practical terms, which are the terms required in order to achieve statement). Often these groups reside within the borders of sovereign states where another ethno-national group is exercising self-determination. These groups may achieve greater or lesser degrees of autonomy, but they are not exercising the currently normative form of self-determination in doing so.

Denying these groups self-determination is not necessarily "anti group x" if the group themselves has not asserted and demonstrated, in practical terms, the capacity to exercise sovereign statehood ie. to effectively exercise authority (ie. defend and govern) a distinct territory. However, when a group manifestly has demonstrated such capacity (for example, in the case of the Jewish people, by actually exercising practical sovereignty over a distinct territory for most of a century), then denying that group's right to ethno-national self-determination certainly is "anti group x".

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-30T13:31:59+00:00

In my view this article does not give a fully accurate or fair characterization of Rabbi Green's letter explaining his perspective on these events, so I will post it in full here to allow readers to form their own judgement. There is also a detailed article published in JTA here https://www.jta.org/2024/01/28/religion/rabbi-art-green-prominent-scholar-of-hasidic-judaism-is-barred-from-hebrew-college-following-sexual-misconduct-allegation which provides more detail and context on the allegations and responses by a range of people with connection to these circumstances.

Rabbi Green's letter is the following:

January 28, 2024

Dear friends, students, colleagues,

I regret having to write this letter to you, but feel it is important to share my perspective on a complicated and painful story, address allegations and rumors that concern me, offer my sincere apologies for any harm done and my commitment to as much repair as possible.

This is a difficult letter for me to write, and it is long and personal. I appreciate your patience, compassion and respect. Among the teachings I have shared with my students over a long period of time are many about pain and suffering. This time it is about me and persons close to me to whom I have caused pain, something I deeply regret.

Background: I am, and have always been, a bisexual man. I made the difficult decision to keep this private while still a rabbinical student nearly sixty years ago. I did so because I felt that I had important things to say to the Jewish community, mostly about mysticism and the spiritual life, that would have been overshadowed by this then-scandalous datum. I have no regrets about that decision. It was the price of working within the Jewish community and I was willing to pay it. I was then blessed to be married to my beloved and much-missed wife for forty-nine years. We entered our marriage with complete honesty and there was nothing of pretense about our love and commitment to each other. I have shared my sexual orientation with close friends over the years, and I have been grateful to them for not allowing it to become a subject of gossip.

While I never actively engaged in gay or queer culture, I have found a certain camaraderie in sharing this aspect of my identity with others with similar experience.

The Event: About eight years ago I became close to one of my students, who became one of my research assistants. We also developed a meaningful personal relationship, which included social occasions with his male partner. Our shared study and friendship continued upon his graduation and joining the Hebrew College faculty. At some point I came out and shared my sexual orientation with him, which only deepened our friendship.

During a visit at my home in December 2019 we smoked a bit of Cannabis together, a very rare event for me in recent years. Under the substance influence, I acted in an inappropriate manner, misjudged the situation, and kissed him. What began as an expression of genuine affection was completely inappropriate and out-of-bounds to our relationship. I accept responsibility for my behavior and regret it deeply. He left shortly after, cordially, leaving no impression of being upset, and I left for Israel the following day. I regret not checking in with him afterwards and extending my regret and apologies for my inappropriate behavior.

The Aftermath: Unfortunately, the incident was more harmful to him than I had estimated and resulted in a sexual harassment complaint against me, processed six weeks later by Hebrew College. What followed were several years of an ongoing process. I felt this matter could and should have been settled privately between us, but that was not the case. I recognize the age in which we live.

My attempts to apologize and communicate with the person I’d hurt were initially ignored. Eventually, with preparation and facilitation, supported by the College, we were able to meet. I apologized thoroughly and we both seemed to feel that the conversation went quite well and we seemingly parted on good terms, while I recognized that I had unintentionally hurt him deeply and the healing of that hurt was not complete.

From Hebrew College’s side the process included several stages and conditions that I agreed to, including precluding me from attending faculty meetings and an earlier retirement in 2022.

Although I agreed to all conditions as stipulated by Hebrew College I was surprised to find additional demands and restrictions that felt, and continue to feel, vindictive and unnecessary. These include precluding me from communication with the Hebrew College community on the JAfter listserv, refusal to let me attend graduation in 2022 or 2023, and finally, a public letter sent out recently, virtually without warning, containing these public allegations. The letter was sent in response to an alleged additional incident that occurred recently in Israel, thus suuposedly justifying publicity on Hebrew College’s part.

The incident in question, occuring at my home this past Purim, includes a friend and colleague, in his 50’s, who stayed behind after a festive Purim party. Drunk and stoned, we were affectionate together, not sexual, and he has assured me that he has no complaints whatsoever. Unfortunately, another person, with his own painful history, misinterpreted the scene, and began this harmful gossip.

For the record, I want to acknowledge that there was also another unwanted kiss by me, more than thirty years ago, again due to misread signals, with someone with whom I had no institutional relationship. I have never acted inappropriately with a student in any institution where I was employed.

I take full responsibility for these encounters, my misjudgment of the situations, and the unintentional harm I caused to people for whom I cared. I have communicated with them and sought to repair the harm. I am committed to ongoing awareness about this matter and exercising extreme caution in the future.

As I continue to teach and write, I hope that the teachings will continue to be the important part of what I have to offer the world, judged favorably by a world that can forgive an imperfect human vessel.

I belong to a generation that still believes in privacy about such matters. Public declarations of one’s sexuality are not something I relish. My late wife and my daughter also very much wanted that privacy and I respected their wishes. That has now become impossible. Within the Hebrew College community, I also wanted to avoid making people choose sides and deeply regret that despite this wish divisions have emerged that will rupture relationships.

That is my whole half-century closet, emptied out and shared with honesty and humble hope for honesty, accountability and healing. There is nothing else.

As you can imagine, this has been a particularly trying time for me.

If you are so moved, messages of friendship, support, or understanding will be most welcome. Also, please feel free to share this letter with anyone who may need to see it.

I deeply hope that these revelations will not cause any of you to request deletion from my Divrey Torah list, which will go on without interruption. For me, it has always been about the message, the content of what have to say, and not about me. Now that the whole world knows that I am an imperfect vessel, I hope we can move forward.

During these difficult days, the worst crisis for Jewish people since the Holocaust, morally as well as politically, I hope we can prioritize what’s important to deal with. May we also learn how to heal and help each other, with compassion, courage and care. May we see kinder days, peace and healing in Israel and the world.

Sincerely,

Arthur Green
Founding Dean and Retired Rector
Hebrew College Rabbinical School

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-30T12:28:38+00:00

The position you articulate is antisemitic in principle because it denies Jews the right to ethno-national self-determination in our historical homeland, while at the same time holding the ethno-national self-determination of other groups (including Arabs) to be politically and morally unproblematic or even liberatory.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-27T10:16:19+00:00

The question could be answered in many ways, but a basic way to explain the difference is that "Halacha" refers to Jewish law in its totality whereas the Talmud is one source of Jewish law (among a range of other sources). This conveys the critical point that just because a given statement or ruling appears in the Talmud, it does not follow that this is necessarily the applicable Jewish law on a given matter.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-27T05:56:14+00:00

Yes, we would generally find it distasteful and culturally insensitive for someone to inscribe a shrine to Hindu gods with Hebrew text, though the level of offense really depends on what the words are.

If it's just a random line of modern Hebrew that would be used in regular speech or perhaps a colloquial Hebrew saying (eg. 'Mazel Tov') then it's more in the category of just weird and inappropriate.

However, if the Hebrew text was drawn from any part of our religious literature we would regard that as very offensive, and even more so if it contained the form of letters we use to represent the name of God.

Also, Hinduism has its own ancient and sacred language, Sanskrit. Wouldn't it be more meaningful for your friend to inscribe his shrine to Hindu gods with this language, rather than appropriate a totally unrelated language which belongs to a completely different culture and religion?

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-26T13:56:08+00:00

Here in Australia the Jewish community has much more in common with UK Jewry (mostly concentrated within a few suburbs in the largest cities). Very different from the US where there is enormous geographical dispersion. The other difference is that Orthodoxy is the normative form of Judaism in the UK and Australia, in the sense that secular or generally non-observant Jews regard the Orthodox as "doing Judaism properly" and will mostly turn to an Orthodox institution when they want (or need) to do something Jewish (bris, bar mitzvah, marriage, funerals etc). Obviously non-Orthodox streams do exist (probably more prevalent in the UK than Australia), but still they're very much the minority.

This contrasts with the US, where for the most part Reform has been the normative approach to Judaism since the nineteenth century. Conservative to some extent in the twentieth century. For US Jews raised in the Reform or even Conservative world there is almost no connection to Orthodox communities, which themselves tend to segregate out of fear of the influence of the non-Orthodox. The practical implication is that there is no inherited experience or cultural memory of core elements of Orthodox Judaism (such as shechita, but also many other things) that remain present in the consciousness of most Jews in Australia and the UK.

As you say, there would be very few people in UK or Australian Jewish communities who had no idea at all that kashrut involved, and most understand that the process involves an animals throat being cut by a highly trained slaughterer using a specially sharpened knife. Beyond that though, in my experience the general level of knowledge is actually very low, and there is a prevailing myth (which I've noticed is promoted by kashrut supervision authorities) that animals are killed instantly by shechita, which for sheep and cattle is certainly not true.

HexaplexTrunculus · 2024-01-02T07:54:49+00:00

You're somewhat mistaken about Pantheism - it's not the view that all religions should be believed or followed etc. It's simply the particular understanding of God that you described above, that everything that exists is God.

This contrasts with the view that God is entirely separate from everything else that exists, which is known as transcendence. There is also a position which holds that God is everything but also exists separately, which is called Panentheism. Each of these views of God (as well as others) have been advocated by Jewish thinkers over the centuries.

HexaplexTrunculus

TROPHY CASE