Rabbi Joshua Waxman: February 2007 Archives

Rabbi Stern compares Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Haman, and there’s certainly reason for comparison--but there’s also at least one important difference. In the Purim story, it is striking that Haman displays a level of hatred and arrogance that is unique in Jewish history--which is really saying something.

After being snubbed by Mordecai, Haman immediately hatches and promotes a plan to destroy all the Jews. This is in contrast with other Biblical archenemies like Pharaoh and historical figures like Hitler, and, I would argue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. None of these other figures jump immediately to the place of genocide, or at least that’s not the seeming intention. At first Pharaoh ‘merely’ enslaved the Jews and Hitler ‘just’ persecuted the Jews and took away their rights; the road that led to a plan to annihilate the Jews was gradual. Ahmadinejad, too, does not openly state an intention to wipe out all Jews--he ‘only’ wants to wipe the State of Israel off the map, after which, officially at least, Jews will be allowed to remain as Palestinian citizens (so, too, is the stated position of Hamas, at least regarding those Jews who lived in the area before 1948).

Of course, all of these positions eventually morph into a desire to annihilate the Jews--and it would come as no surprise if Ahmadinejad were to follow his predecessors in that direction. But there is a subtlety to the incremental approach, and Ahmadinejad has learned it well.

Haman, and his forerunners, Amalek, are unique in going immediately to the place of annihilation. Perhaps this is why the Purim story is farce: It’s hard to imagine this tactic working in the real world. Haman is ultimately a clown and buffoon at whom we can laugh. The greater danger comes from the subtler, incremental approach of Pharaoh, Hitler, and Ahmadinejad.

Rabbi Stern’s reference to the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance is right on the mark in our discussion of the place of women in today’s Jewish power structure. This week’s Jewish Week contains a front-page story on how that organization has been thwarted in its efforts to bring together mainstream (male) rabbis to even consider discussing the issue of agunot--women whose husbands refuse to grant them ritual divorces and so, by traditional Jewish law, are unable to remarry. According to the article, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar, was going to convene a series of meetings to discuss this rank injustice--until threats from right-wing Orthodox leaders knocked out even the possibility of discussing the issue, let alone working toward a resolution.

Sounds a lot like the words of Ahasuerus’ advisors in squashing Queen Vashti’s attempts at self-assertion: “For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands, since they will say, ‘King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come’” (Est. 1:17). How do you fight the existing power structure when its guardians--be they the buffoonish advisors of Ahasuerus or the equally buffoonish Haredi rabbis who support the status quo--see even talking about the problem as an admission of weakness?

Perhaps that’s why Purim is our holiday of farce, where Vashti is divorced against her will, standing up to the existing patriarchal power structure and being squashed by it. And Esther, who plays along with a system of marriage that only celebrates beauty and objectifies women, ultimately uses it to her advantage and the advantage of the Jewish people. For women who wish to take the system on, there isn’t a lot to dance about this Purim.

I appreciate Rabbi Grossman’s defense of the practice of taking multiple and potentially contradictory positions. Jewish tradition is based on the principle of eilu v’eilu--that conflicting positions each have standing and integrity in their own right, provided that the argument at hand is made for the sake of heaven. In fact, this is the core principle behind our endeavor here at Virtual Talmud.

So why does the Law Committee’s action leave me cold? Perhaps because I feel it was less a matter of principled disagreement than it was the refusal to take a stance on an important issue--one that has implications for an entire class of people and their legitimacy in a segment of the Jewish community. JTS Chancellor Eisen’s survey to find out the views of rabbis and laypeople across the Conservative movement on the subject of inclusivity simply reinforces the perception--rightly or wrongly--that this decision is about expediency, not principle. And when expediency is the basis of intolerance and exclusion, we all lose.

On December 6, the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards--known in short as the Law Committee--passed a number of contradictory teshuvot (legal opinions) that variously allow and disallow same-sex commitment ceremonies, participation of gays and lesbians in synagogue life, and the ordination of homosexuals as Conservative rabbis. In practice, the Law Committee punted--allowing Conservative institutions (synagogues, schools, camps) to pick and choose which opinions to follow and, by extension, taking no real position at all.

Oh, I know some people will argue that the decisions are a step forward for gay and lesbian Jews--and they are, since the movement’s more liberal American seminary, the University of the Judaism, has indicated its intent to ordain openly gay and lesbian rabbis. But there’s something that sits badly with me about a decision that essentially institutionalizes the right to discriminate, that says that individual Conservative congregations can explicitly refuse to hire gay rabbis if they prefer, or that a Conservative day school may refuse to hire a teacher because she is a lesbian. A document put out by the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly argues that this split decision is actually a triumph of pluralism, but enshrining the right to discriminate isn’t pluralism--it’s as though the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Ed had said that they’d prefer that schools not be segregated but, in order to be pluralistic, if you really wanted to keep the black kids out then it was OK.

So yes, there’s progress. But personally, I find it disheartening that the Conservative Movement was unwilling to take a strong position on either side--either to say that Conservative values demand full inclusion of gays and lesbians in all facets of Jewish life as a matter of moral principle or, on the contrary, to say that Conservative Judaism’s commitment to halachah (Jewish law) and Jewish tradition forbids extending equal status to homosexuals in ritual matters. With their conflicting decisions, the Law Committee said neither. In essence then, it actually said that individual institutions are free to do whatever they want--meaning that it is actually providing no moral guidance at all and is effectively acknowledging its irrelevance to how any individual Conservative Jew or institution would come to make a decision on this important issue.

In response to Rabbi Stern's post on whether liberal Jews fuel anti-Semitism by criticizing Israel, Rabbi Grossman writes:

When Jewish intellectuals confuse their right to criticize specific policies of current or past Israeli governments with questioning the legitimacy of having a Jewish State, that is when they cross the line of legitimate debate and cross over into anti-Semitism, and thereby serve the purposes of the enemies of the Jewish people.

This position strikes me as over the top, perhaps even dangerous to the ‘legitimate debate’ Rabbi Grossman wants to encourage. Anti-Semitism is too often used as a cudgel (and, in its overuse, becomes an increasingly ineffective one) to silence anyone whose ideas and positions we don’t like. Rabbi Grossman’s guideline seems like a loyalty test for what sorts of positions Jews may take--to say nothing of what might be legitimate criticism by non-Jews.

Criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic in and of itself. Neither, for that matter, is questioning the legitimacy of Israel to exist as a Jewish state--although, personally, I strenuously disagree with this position and believe such views can justly be termed anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli. Anti-Semitism comes into play when people criticize Israel for sins that they cheerfully overlook or for which they offer apologetics when committed by other countries in analogous situations--when they use their criticisms of Israel as a shield for their hatred of Jews. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite, and a dangerous one at that. So are those who disparage Judaism or Jews’ ability to practice their religion freely. Let’s save the label for those who truly deserve it.