|
|
|
|
|
Jewish World Review Sept. 20, 2000 / 19 Elul, 5760
D. C. Diarist
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
QUESTION: What is a conclave of Mormons, Catholics and Protestants; an Orthodox synagogue; a mix of professors, editors and broadcast journalists; a cross section of public policy wonks and high school students; one chasidic rabbi and the Majority Whip of the US Congress -- combined? Answer: a national conference of Toward Tradition. Rarely does political single-mindedness and social diversity meet in such comfortable embrace. Toward Tradition, founded by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is an activist conservative group. It favors "traditional, faith-based American principles, free markets and a moral public culture." It maintains that the American Jewish community is misunderstood as monolithic, that "the leading Jewish political organizations are dominated by secular liberals," who "do not speak for all Jews." The thing is, politically conservative Christians feel at home in Toward Tradition just as much as Jews, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox. You never know who you'll meet at Toward Tradition. A fellow eyes me, reminds me that we lived near each other in Jerusalem over 25 years ago, then says something I hear from a lot of people. Both liberal and conservative. Both Christian and Jewish. Something I need to discount.
So here's a Toward Tradition conference: a person who writes Jewish bills of divorce by day and spy novels by night. Another person, the brilliant Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist, is 53 and has enrolled at Yale University to follow his first love -- quantum physics. He decided to cut his psychiatry practice to a day and a half a week in order to go back to school. Here comes Rabbi Mayer Shiller, a chasid from Monsey, New York, just returned from northern Ireland, where, he says, the Protestants are much more serious about their religion than the Catholics. Religion -- other people's religion -- means a lot to him. As it does to a doctor from Los Angeles. His quest for Jewish commitment locates him in both a Reform temple and an Orthodox outreach program. In his case, the other people's religion is his children's. He reawakened to Judaism too late to be able to guide his teenage children to a Jewish day school. What can he do for them now? Don't ask Gaylord Swim. He is a Mormon. Quite an eloquent defender of capitalism, too. "The free market is not moral or immoral. But it allows moral choices. Tyranny doesn't. Profit is a moral good because it requires discipline and self-restraint, on the one hand, and the delivery of something of value, on the other." As I say, quite a human mix. And sense of humor. Here is Rabbi Lapin, introducing his friend (and his former shul president) Michael Medved. When Rabbi Lapin became the rabbi of the shul in Venice, California, he was single. First rule: The rabbi may not date the congregants. "Otherwise," Rabbi Lapin drawls, "the female half of the congregation would soon be divided into those who had gone out with the rabbi and those who had not yet gone out with the rabbi." One Friday evening, in walks a beautiful young lady. The president, Mr. Medved, invites both the rabbi and the lady to dinner, to which the rabbi duly objects. It's against the rules! Well, this isn't the first time a rabbi is overruled by his president -- as Rabbi Lapin introduces the man to whom he is indebted for his wife. Here is Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, telling the story of the Unitarian who moved into the neighborhood, only to have the KKK burn on his lawn a . . . question mark. Sense of humor -- and horror. Don Feder, of the Boston Herald, is saddened over the unease with which one must proclaim patriotism today. The problem, as he sees it, is the Balkanization of the country, the ever greater allegiance of people to their racial, ethnic or linguistic subgroup. "It was not interest groups that plowed the frontier," he declares. "It was Americans." By contrast, he cites contemporary California, where one may take a driver's test in one of 30 languages. Prof. George quotes Milton Himmelfarb's one-sentence summary of Judaism: "Judaism is against paganism." He elaborates with reference to Deuteronomy ("choose life") and the prophets of Israel, to rail against abortion. After his speech, he relates the view of another Princeton professor, who has moved the goalpost on abortion to post-birth abortion, 28 days, to be exact, to give a parent a choice to kill a handicapped child. "False gods demand innocent blood," he says. "The L-rd of life is the enemy of the culture of death." The conference attempts to reclaim the spiritual. Medved sums up: In the prevailing ethos, when there is violence, the solution is to ban a material object, a gun. When there is promiscuity, the solution is another material object, a condom. When there is poverty, the solution is to build houses. Material solutions: kill the babies, hand out condoms. "No one talks about the soul," he maintains. He too is of the view that the country has gone over to labeling -- to the detriment of its humanity. I paraphrase him: Chances are, you have heard of James Bird. He's the African American who was dragged to death in Texas. Chances are, you have heard of Mathew Shepard. He's the homosexual who was beaten to death in Wyoming. Chances are, you have not heard of Eric Taves. He was beaten to death in Tacoma, Washington. "He." A person. Not African American. Not homosexual. Taves was white. Kids, 19 down to 11 years old, killed him in a fashion as brutal as the means used against Bird and Shepard, yet virtually no one outside Tacoma has heard of Taves. His horrible death merited no special media coverage. But isn't each death equally horrible? Must a victim be "African American" or "homosexual" to count in the prevailing culture? Members of subgroups, rather than individuals, are identified. We risk our humanity in ignoring equally horrible deeds. Taves, white, was no less a child of G-d than the others. Medved takes no prisoners. He clinches his point by citing Martin Luther King, Jr. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I agree. Group identity is taken too far. American identity is in retreat. Balkanization is the mood of the day. Subgroups in the country at are each other's throats. The common humanity of all people and the common interests of all people of faith are unwisely derogated. And oh so paradoxically, abortion is the law of the land under the legal principle of a woman's right to privacy, but homosexuality is legitimated under everyone's supposed obligation to know that which should be totally private. Political correctness is wildly inconsistent. But I also think that both spiritual and material solutions are needed to solve many problems. Indeed, the Torah is the interpenetration of the two. Gun control may evade the spiritual transformation needed to eliminate violence, but meanwhile fewer guns mean less violence. Giving away houses may ultimately perpetuate poverty in the absence of a work ethic, but meanwhile the homeless suffer without houses. "Compassionate conservatism" may be mere sleight-of-hand, masking one's true convictions and thus deserving of rebuke -- a theme sounded by one speaker at the convention. But meanwhile, compassion, rachmonus, is a genuine and indeed basic Jewish value. A noble
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is executive editor of the Internmountain Jewish News. Comments by clicking here.
People of faith, unite!
By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg
These are serious people, horrified over partial birth abortion, over the 2000 census form that asks whether, if you're black, how black you are -- one, one-half, one-quarter, or one-eighth. "That is one great-grandparent," thunders Michael Medved. "This is Nazi stuff. Why do we need to know if a person is one-eighth black?"
