Thursday, December 23, 2004
This guy is weird in a good way. He's posted parody children's letters to Christopher Walken. My favorite (though it needs more cowbell):
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Thursday, December 23, 2004
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Some questions for Jennifer (and one piece of advice)
Jennifer Mitts, she of the blog Ger--ish, posted a request for some advice. Instead of heeding her request, I rashly posted some questions in her comments section. She responded to my questions with more politesse than they deserved, what with them not being what she had asked for. As I was brazenly typing more questions raised by her response, it occured to me that it had gotten too long for a comment. So here is my reply to Jennifer.
_______________
First things first.
#1) I'm glad you realized that my questions were not rhetorical. I have no stake in your decisions. I'm just curious what leads you to the things you write about.
#2) Any comments I make can be misconstrued as negative. In a sense they are, since I often disagree with you. However, they are not personal. I don't mean to be insulting, but these sorts of probing questions can seem confrontational. If it makes you uncomfortable, you can always ignore me. On the other hand, perhaps you shouldn't be ignoring questions that make you uncomfortable.
#3) No matter what you do, you're not responsible to me.
Ok, to the questions.
"Wow, Mis-nagid. You have raised some very interesting questions. (This is why I like Jewish people SO MUCH.)"
Do you think only Jewish people ask interesting questions? What a horrible thing to say. Even worse for your case, frum people hate my site and my questions.
"I will do my best to come up with plausible answers."
How is that you've come so far as to consider conversion, but haven't yet even come up with plausible answers to these questions? Shouldn't you have delved into these issues before? Also, are merely plausible answers good enough for such important questions?
"And what about you? Are you so brainwashed that you can't say "Hashem is not God" or "The Torah was written by men?"
"I am sure that if my studies bring me to that conclusion, I would not hesitate to proclaim it thus."
I don't doubt that you study. But do you know how to determine the truth or falsehood of a claim? The fact that you have been so gullible with regards to so many diverse superstitions leads me to believe that you do not, in fact, know how we know what isn't so. Many people spend a lot of time studying alien abduction stories and crop circles and come to devoutly believe in them. There's little point in studying these sorts of things without first having mastered critical thinking skills.
"I am always searching for the answers. So far I have gone from Christianity to Messianic Judaism to Judaism/B'nei Noach. That's over the course of my lifetime. I will always be reading, studying, and asking plenty of questions."
How did you discern between the supernatural claims of the different religions? They all require faith, which is belief that does not rest on evidence or reason. On what grounds did you reject your previous religions, and how does your current one hold up to that standard? By what standard of evidence and reason is frumkeit correct, to the exclusion of all other religions? And how do you know that you're not just as wrong as you were before?
"And why are you so eager to add a bunch of arbitrarily restrictive cultic rules to your life?"
"I believe that those are the laws G-d set forth for Israel to follow."
Based on what evidence do you believe that? And given the same standards of evidence that you apply to that answer, how can you reject other religions' claims to divinely given rules? Like say, Islam?
How do you reconcile the grossly immoral orders in the Torah with your claim of divine origins? For example, orders to kill an entire city of people over religious differences? Or orders to cut off a woman's hand for defending her husband against an attacker?
"And I believe He intended for Israel to be a fish bowl for the world to see and emulate."
So your god is prejudiced towards the vast majority of humankind? He's tribalistic and clannish? Or is that just a reflection of human needs and desires projected onto an imagined deity? Why can't your non-egalitarian god have one set of rules for all humankind?
"I further believe that if more and more people adhered to these laws, or at least to the Noachide laws, that our world would be a better place."
Which laws? All of them? How is the world better if people don't eat shellfish? Or don't mix linen and cotton? Or kill anyone who picks up sticks on the wrong day?
As for the noahide laws, the world is a far better place with religious liberty, not required adherence to one form of monotheism. The very first noahide law is an abridgement of human liberty. Would the world really be a better place if we required everyone to believe in Yahveh instead of Imhotep, Allah, or Zeus?
"I'd hate to take away his time from a real Jew, though. That would be a sin."
"Why do you want to keep company with such religious bigots? Would you be so forgiving if it had been taking his time away from a real white person? Why is religious discrimination so trivial to you?"
"I believe rabbis are first obligated to Jews, that is all. Am I not correct in thinking this?"
Even if you are correct in thinking that, why is that acceptable? Would you be ok with saying that the KKK Grand Wizard is first obligated to whites? You never answered my question: why is religious discrimination so trivial to you?
"They'll never accept you; you'll always be a "tzigekimminer." One of the most common complaints BTs and Gerim have is that they're never really accepted. For example, they have the hardest time getting married or marrying their children."
"I have heard that the children of ger do not marry easily and well. However, I won't have that to worry about as I have no and do not plan to have children."
Even if your only concern is you, why do you want to associate with wanton bigots? Where is your rush to jump into such a xenophobic culture?
"What I am concerned with is me, a B'nei Noach, making friends in a very small Jewish community with frum women. I have online frum friends that are gracious and kind. I have two modern orthodox people (online friends) coming in from out of town to my home in a couple of weeks to sit down to dinner with me. This gives me hope."
Hope that what? That this time you got access to the correct exclusive we're-right club? That these unsupported supernatural claims are the right one, by god? Not like those last ones?
It sounds more like you're interested in the social aspects of fundamentalist religions. You want to think that you've got all the answers in a book, and the secret handshake known only to God's chosen people. You just can't seem to make up your mind about which cult to pick.
If I can make one suggestion to you, it would be this: Hold off on any major religious decisions until you've studied critical thinking. After you've been armed with such mental power tools, you'll be better prepared to discern truth from falsehood.
Some recommended books on critical thinking (not religion):
The Baloney Detection Kit ($5 from skeptic.com)
Why People Believe Weird Things by Dr. Michael Shermer
How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas Gilovich
The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
How to Think About Weird Things by Theodore Schick
Inevitable Illusions : How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
Respectfully,
Mis-nagid
posted by Mis-nagid @ Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Monday, December 20, 2004
Sometimes being funny is the best way to expose how dumb someone is.
The idiot. The funny (comment #24 by RPM).
______________
A new discovery rocks the world of particle physics: the Jebon!
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AP: 44% in poll OK limits on rights of Muslims. Sadly, not a joke.
______________
New SAT Questions Replace Evolution with Creation. Don't miss the PDF.
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Monday, December 20, 2004
[Before being rudely interrupted, I had planned a collection of Chanukah blog posts. This one was already finished, but the rest will have to wait until next Chanukah]
Continuing on the theme of frum ignorance of history, and in particular Chanukah, let's address the dreidel.
This seemingly benign toy is yet another example of frum ignorance of history, gullibility and lack of skepticism. As before, take a poll of frum Jews. Ask where the custom of playing dreidel on Chanukah comes from. Ask what Nun, Gimmel, Hey and Shin stand for. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you'll hear a verbatim playback of the traditional myths.
According to the pablum fed frum children, the dreidel was used by the Jewish children in the times of the Yevonim as an excuse. They would gather to learn Torah, and if they were caught, they would pretend they were only playing a children's game. The obviously retarded Seleucid soldier was totally fooled by this childish ruse, and wandered off like the goofus he was. It makes one wonder how such stupid soldiers managed to conquer a land where even the children could outsmart them.
The next lie taught in frum yeshivas concerns the letters on the four-sided top. We are told that NGHSh stands for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham -- a great miracle happened there. In Israel, the letters on the sevivon are NGHP, swapping "there" for "here."
Ask yourself what letters were on the dreidel spun by the mythically pious children of history and what they might have stood for. Were they prophets to predict the miracle? And did their's say Sham or Po? Ok, so the dreidel is just a remembrance of the top-like game they played. Then when did the letters get added? When did it take the form we have now?
Even this momentary reflection makes it obvious that at least some of the dreidel's backstory must be anachronistic, but frum people are trained not to pay attention to such things. If they notice them, they put it out of mind and don't investigate further. Sure, this "point" one can be dismissed with ease, but frum people can't even be bothered to think about it, let alone dismiss it. They simply lack any sense of history, and see the Chanukah story as an out-of-focus tale, never to be examined closely.
So where did the dreidel come from? Contrary to the popular song, the dreidel is not made out of clay, but of whole cloth. The legend of the alibi was made up in the 19th century, with no precursor. Its letters do not stand for Nebuchadnetzar, Gog, Haman, and Seir. That its letters equal Mashiach in gematria is mere numerology. The dreidel, in fact, had nothing to do with Chanukah, having been played by many cultures over the centuries.
The English and Irish have a Christmastime top-based game called totum or teetotum, Latin for "all." The game was first called totum in the early 1500s. By the 1700s, it was called T-totum or teetotum, and by the 1800s the four letters became four words in English: N for Nothing, T for Take, H for Half, P for Put. The dreidel is an Eastern European variant of the German equivalent of the totum game. Its letters come from German: Nichts for nothing, Ganz for all, Halb for half, and Shtell for put.
Thus, the irony. Chanukah is supposed to represent the rejection of foreign culture, yet many of its customs are of foreign origin. The rabbis, by fabricating an origin myth for the dreidel, were truly spinning a little piece of assimilation.
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Monday, December 20, 2004
Sunday, December 19, 2004
From the Jerusalem Post:
Nine Lubavitcher Hassidim were arrested Wednesday morning in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, when they attacked police officers who had been called to Lubavitch world headquarters to guard the installation of a plaque that referred to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as the Rebbe "of blessed memory."
[...]
Until recently, a 10-year-old plaque marking the occasion of the expansion of the building and referring to the Rebbe with the words "of blessed memory" remained undisturbed, community members said.
But a couple of months ago, the plaque was torn down under cover of darkness and replaced with one that said: "Long live our master, our teacher and our rabbi, the king the Messiah, forever and ever," according to a Lubavitch official.
Since then, workers trying to restore the original plaque have been blocked by fervently messianic Chabadniks, and Lubavitch officials had to get a court order to block them.
From the New York Post:
One of the Hasidic men arrested in a brawl outside the headquarters of an Orthodox Jewish sect offered a simple explanation of the fight for outsiders who can't tell the warring factions without a scorecard.
"The Rebbe is Superman and [Rabbi] Yehuda Krinsky is Lex Luthor, you understand?" Meyer Romano, 23, told The Post yesterday as he left Brooklyn criminal court after a night in jail.
[...]
Another arrested man was Chesad Halberstam, whose son, Ari, was killed by an Islamic fundamentalist in a 1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting.
A lawyer for one of the men explained that the group was protecting the cornerstone, which is considered sacred because Schneerson once touched it. "His choice is: does he go against the rule of God or does he go against the rule of man," said Michael Kusevitsky.
A Lubavitch spokesman, Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, said that the arrested men "lack respect for any religious or legal authority. Pray for them."
From another NY Post article:
Among the radical Lubavitchers arrested was Chesad Halberstam, whose son Ari was killed by an Arab terrorist who shot up a van carrying Hassidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994.
This pretty much speaks for itself. One question, though. Shouldn't Mr. Halberstam have learned about the danger of religious fanaticism? Of course, the very nature of it is irrational, so reasoning may be too much to expect. Also, his son was murdered, which is the sort of shock to the mental immune system that leaves one vulnerable to cults.
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Sunday, December 19, 2004
Friday, December 17, 2004
Two Bender quotes come to mind. To my friends: "I'm back, baby!" And to the hijacker: "Bite my shiny metal ass."
The current content of the site is not to be trusted, until I verify it against my archives.
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Friday, December 17, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Check out this ad from this morning's paper:
The first thing I noticed is the cheesy language. A mistake can be hurtful? Give you a right recommendation? Four exclamation points? Yuck.
Once I got past my overly-delicate English sensibilities, something else occurred to me. What the heck makes a referral service Jewish? Well, other than the Yiddishe Bobbah language. And what is a Jewish referral service anyway? Apparently, it's a woman with some phone books. But wait, let's break out the zoom tool:
It's a kosher phone book. Perhaps that's what makes the service Jewish. And if that isn't Jewish enough, they tell you that it's "absolutely free" twice and in all caps.
Here's how I picture the one side of the conversation:
JRS, are you Jewish? Don't lie, we Jews can tell.
[...]
Ok, ok, I don't need your whole life story. What's the matter with you?
[...]
Just that? You kvetch too much. You think you have problems? My angina been acting up la... no, ANgina. Yeesh, don't have a heart attack, I'll check.
My aunt Bertha, Uleha Hashalom, said this doctor was very nice to her. Let me call and set up an appointment for you.
Doctor Hochenplotz? Oy doctor, have I got a daughter for you.
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posted by Mis-nagid @ Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Frum Fantasy or How a Legend Spawned an Industry
The frum world is thoroughly suffused with fantasy and ignorance. Frum people know pathetically little about their own history and practices, and what they do know is usually wrong. In general, frum institutions never teach any history at all, or at least nothing that deserves the name. Most yeshiva bochurim have no idea what was going on in the world at the same time as any Jewish event. All "history" is seen through the gauze of fantasy. The frum view of the history of world revolves around Jews and includes lots of myths, which makes for a witch's brew that has little to do with real history.
The root cause of this lack of rigor in understanding the past is the need for ignorance. After all, if you ask "What was going on in the rest of the world during Noach's Great Flood?" you may be surprised to find out that great (undisturbed) civilizations in Egypt and China were already writing stuff down, and never mentioned any flood. As the frum dogmas are not grounded in reality, so too the history must be kept floating above the ground, never attached to anything of substance, lest it come tumbling down to earth.
Chanukah, one of the few Jewish holidays based on a true historical event, is, ironically, no exception to this. Grab a frum person and quiz him or her: In what year was Chanukah? Who was Antiochus? Who were the Yevonim? Who were the Chasmonoyim? How long did the war last? You'll get the most pathetic answers (if you get any), because frum people have no sense of history. Shoot, most frum people don't know what the word "frum" means, or where it comes from! [*]
There is one aspect of frum Chanukah that truly brings this sense of ahistory into sharp relief. Case in point: the Bais Yosef's Kasha. To those of you lucky enough to be uninitiated in the frum cult, this peculiar obsession of frum Chanukah takes the form of a question. The Bais Yosef asked, "If the oil could have lasted for one day, but lasted for eight, only seven of them can be termed miracles. So why celebrate eight (rather than seven) days?"
This "difficulty" occupies a special place in the frum universe; it's a "true" classic. Gallons of ink were poured to answer this stupid question. Virtually every frum commentator since his time has had a crack at it. There's even a very large sefer consisting of nothing but answers to this one question. However, every single one of those answers is wrong -- completely, utterly, and totally wrong.
Before I get to the correct answer, let's understand why they're wrong. Don't worry, I don't have to refute them all, one at a time. The reason they're off-base is simple: it's a legend. The story of the miraculous oil was made up approximately six hundred years after the events of Chanukah. Of course the rabbinical legend has inconsistencies -- it's fiction. There's no point in trying to "fix" them. It's like reading Curious George and trying to explain how so few balloons could lift a monkey of George's heft.
Now, to the real answer to the Bais Yosef's Kasha.
Due to their aforementioned lack of history sense, most frum people have no idea that there are books written from the era of the Maccabees. Nor do they know that these books make no mention of any miracles. Ask a frum person what is says in the two[**] Books of Maccabees, and they'll say "Books of Maccabees?" I'll not get into why those books are invisible from the frum world, but I'll note one piece of irony. Virtually every frum child knows the Chanukah story of Channah and her seven sons. Where's the story from? The Book of Maccabees 2.
Were you to read the actual history of Chanukah, when you get to the part about the rededication [chanukah] of the Temple, you'd find the following:
10:5 Now upon the same day that the strangers profaned the temple, on the very same day it was cleansed again, even the five and twentieth day of the same month, which is Casleu [Kislev].
10:6 And they kept the eight days with gladness, as in the feast of the tabernacles [Sukkot], remembering that not long afore they had held the feast of the tabernacles [Sukkot], when as they wandered in the mountains and dens like beasts.
10:7 Therefore they bare branches, and fair boughs, and palms also [lulavim, hadassos, aravos], and sang psalms [Hallel] unto him that had given them good success in cleansing his place.
10:8 They ordained also by a common statute and decree, That every year those days should be kept of the whole nation of the Jews.
That's right, the very first Chanukah was a delayed Sukkot. Sukkot traditionally required going to the Temple, but on the correct date for Sukkot, the Temple was still under Seleucid control, so it was not celebrated properly. The Maccabees cleverly scheduled the Temple's grand reopening on the anniversary of its sacking, and celebrated Sukkot like it's supposed to be. It was especially poignant due to the fact that the transient and ephemeral living embodied in the story of Sukkot was so resonant with them, having just spent so long hiding in mountains and caves.
Furthermore, the book opens with a letter to the Jews in Alexandria, telling them to celebrate this new holiday:
1:9 And now see that ye keep the feast of tabernacles [Sukkot] in the month Casleu [Kislev].
That is the correct answer to the Bais Yosef's Kasha. The reason Chanukah is eight days (instead of seven) is because it was a delayed Sukkot, which has eight days. It was always eight days, and the rabbis made their legend match the extant practice, leading to the slight inconsistency noted by the Bais Yosef.
Before I close this post, I'd like to add a piece of speculation. The Mishna nevers discusses [Ed. note was "mentions"] Chanukah, even going so far as to give a grave warning against reading the Books of Maccabees (Sanhedrin 10:1). In the only Gemara to discuss Chanukah, history gets three lines, while ritual minutaie get more than three pages. However, there is one interesting link in this rabbinified version of Chanukah that may hint at their knowledge of its true origins.
In the discourse on how to light the Chanukah candles, two opinions are proffered. One says to start with one candle on the first night and add one each night, until you are lighting eight on the final night. The other says to start with eight and remove one each night. Where it gets interesting is the reason offered for the latter position. The justification given is that the candles represent "parei hechag," the bulls of the holiday. By this he means the bulls offered on Sukkot. As recounted in the Torah, those bulls were offered in decreasing number each successive day.
The commentators struggle to explain why that Sukkot practice is relevant to Chanukah lights. Some of them are almost amusing in their tortured logic. I'd like to offer a possibility; that this could be a partial remnant of the earlier explanations for the custom of the Chanukah lights.
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[*] It's a Yiddishization of the German "fromm," meaning pious. Admit it, you didn't know that.
[**] The other Books of Maccabee aren't about Chanukah, and are somewhat misnamed
posted by Mis-nagid @ Sunday, December 12, 2004
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Sneaky Scientists Slip Sermons into Schoolbooks
[mis-nagid_AT_hush_DOT_com]
posted by Mis-nagid @ Thursday, December 02, 2004
This blog post by Brian Flemming sounds like something I might write.
[mis-nagid_AT_hush_DOT_com]
posted by Mis-nagid @ Thursday, December 02, 2004
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
How did I miss this? The pic:
The discussions:
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Can someone please post a translation of these newspaper pics?
[mis-nagid_AT_hush_DOT_com]
posted by Mis-nagid @ Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Lately, I've been learning a lot of Chumash, about which I'll write more later. In the course of my study, I came across a large number of interesting scribal errors in the Masoretic Text, the version of the Torah that frum people think is identical with the "one" "given" over 2000 years ago. This was not a surprise to me, as I've been familiar with modern Biblical scholarship for quite some time. However, I had never made a real effort to study the field, and my current pursuit is an effort to redress that shortcoming.
My current favorite scribal error comes from Birkat Yaakov. In Beraishis:
49:19 Gad gdud yegudenu v'hu yagud akev
49:20 Mey'Asher shemaina lachmo v'hu yiten me'adnei melech
There are two things weird about those pesukim. The first oddity is that Gad's counterattack is singular, but his attackers are plural. Yegudenu is plural, but akev is singular. Also strange is that Asher's verse starts with "From Asher." None of the other verses have this "from" form, so it's very incongruous.
The answer lies in a simple scribal error. The MEM from Gad's posuk got accidentally moved to Asher's posuk. Gad's posuk originally ended with akvum (their heels), and Asher's with Asher. In fact, in the other surviving versions of the Torah, the original version is still intact, confirming the scribal error in the Masoretic text.
This is exactly the kind of scribal error which survives: one that leaves the source still making some sense. Gross errors get weeded out quickly, so they're not often in surviving documents. Similarly, the confusion of DALED with REISH usually got caught, but in the case of the cows in Pharoh's dream it didn't because Dakos and Rakos have similar enough meaning to leave the story sensible.
I think the reason I favor this relatively trivial scribal error over other more important ones is that it's Birkat Yaakov. Frum children, especially girls, are often coerced into memorizing the whole thing in song. The irony of revering it so much, yet unwittingly enshrining it in an erronious form, really tickles my funny bone.
[mis-nagid_AT_hush_DOT_com]
[Ed. note: fixed "gdud" in 49:19 quote]
posted by Mis-nagid @ Wednesday, December 01, 2004
