Izgad is Aramaic for messenger or runner. We live in world caught between secularism and religious fundamentalism. I am taking up my post, alongside many wiser souls, as a low ranking messenger boy in the fight to establish a third path. Along the way I will be recommending a steady flow of good science fiction and fantasy in order to keep things entertaining.
Welcome Aboard and Enjoy the Ride!
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In an earlier post I spoke about the necessity of submission to Law as a form of salvation from “every man doing what is right in their eyes.” I was recently reading an Isaac Asimov novel, The Stars, Like Dust, that, in its own way made a similar point. Before I continue, I might as well say something about the novel as a whole. Read More »
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Rabbi Yakov Horowitz is in the process of writing about keeping Jewish children “on the Derech” (in the fold). So far he has written a top ten list of things parents can do to have a decent chance of being able to pass on their values to their children. 1. Read More »
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Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish and Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It’s hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. Read More »
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Several months ago I posted about Rabbi Marc Angel (one of our last best hopes for sanity in Orthodox Judaism) and his denunciation of the Haredi charity organization Kupat Ha’ir. This week, in his newsletter on the Torah portion, (hat tip to Ms. S.) he is back on the topic, arguing that Kupat Ha’ir is an example of religious charlatanism. Read More »
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Last week I took a vacation from my summer dissertation writing vacation to go with my girlfriend and some friends to Vermont. We did lots of healthy nature things like hiking and visiting Ben & Jerry’s. Jews have a practice called “toveling,” dipping new dishware in a body of water. Read More »
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(Start at 7: 58) Neuroscientist James Fallon suggests that libertarians might have highly developed dorsolateral prefrontal cortexes. This part of the brain is connected to rationality and it may possibly help compensate for the poor development in parts of the brain dealing with empathy. Check out how he describes the top of the brain. Read More »
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Quite a number of bloggers have already discussed the audio clip of Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky of the Haredi outreach yeshiva Ohr Somayach attacking Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the Orthodox Union. I would like to add my thoughts to the matter, particularly on the matter of asking for sources. Read More »
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Da’as Torah is the notion that Jewish religious authorities have special even supernatural knowledge, giving them insight not only into the practice of Judaism, but also everyday life as well. For example, what job to pursue or what policies the government should follow. This concept is usually associated with Haredi Orthodox Judaism. Dr. Read More »
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James Pate ran with my post on Asperger sociability, contrasting it with a valedictorian speech by Erica Goldson. Goldson expresses her own frustrations about being declared valedictorian by her school: … in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. Read More »
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Ultimately, I can accept the neurotypical status quo, despite its inconveniences, because even when it “discriminates” against me, in its “discrimination” there is a larger equality. Those in the majority are not truly discriminating against me as their actions are in keeping with universal law. Read More »
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Growing up as an Asperger was not easy; long before the concept of Asperger syndrome crossed my path I knew that I was different and that I lived in a society clearly not designed with me in mind. The fact that I stood out made me a target for bullying. More frustrating was the official bias inherent in the educational system. Read More »
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I recently decided to spend part of the morning reading through Rabbi Aharon Feldman’s The Eye of the Storm: A Calm View of Raging Issues, so brilliantly skewered by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. Part of the book deals with messianism so I had a good excuse. (It is sort of relevant to my dissertation so it counts as work. Read More »
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As I am sure most of you know by now, last week Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned California’s Proposition 8 ban on legalizing gay marriage. In terms of gay marriage itself I have no objection. Read More »
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Rabbi Natan Slifkin has an essay “They Can Say It, We Cannot,” which responds to an argument of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv that certain beliefs, such as the Sages of the Talmud could be wrong about matter of science, could be heretical despite the fact that legitimate Jewish figures held them. Read More »
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The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are known for their often crude but spot on parodies of public figures and the news of the day. Yesterday, with the input of a friend, I started to hash out an idea for what I think could make for an excellent episode, the Sholom Rubashkin case. Read More »
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Raymond Lull was a thirteenth century mystic and missionary, who ended his life attempting to preach Christianity to Muslims in Muslim controlled North Africa. Not surprisingly, he served as inspiration for Christian missionaries going into the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Read More »
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I am sitting here doing work at my local Starbucks (my way of taking a break from doing work in the library) and what do I find in my research, but a discussion about coffee. Apparently Rabbi David b. Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz), living in sixteenth century Egypt has one of the first references to coffee in halachic literature. Read More »
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Yesterday my roommate showed me a clip from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show about an anti-homosexual pastor, arguing that homosexuals are exceptionally brutal since they lack any self control. The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10c Gay Reichs www.thedailyshow. Read More »
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(Part I, II, III, IV) The Community Model leads to a number of interesting possibilities as to how heresy functions on a day-to-day basis. Read More »
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(Part I, II, III) The Historical Model would have us ignore the question of what the author did or did not intend and instead have us look at how a text has historically been interpreted. Read More »
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(Part I, II) At the same time that I am marching into Jewish homes confiscating all Uncle Moishy tapes for their Pantheist heresies, I could also be going around putting a Hechser (kosher symbol) on all sorts of “dangerous” texts. Read More »
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(Part I) What does it mean when we say that a statement or even an entire work is heretical (kefira)? Examples of statements that have been, at one time or another, been declared heretical by Jews would be: “For God so loved the world that he gave Read More »
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My friend Shana Carp has a laudatory post about me (which I, in no way deserve), discussing my recent back and forth with Dr. David Friedman. What particularly impressed Shana was the fact that the internet could afford the opportunity for me, a not very sociable lay person, to talk to a leading economist. Read More »
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A cardinal principle of liberal society is that there is no such thing as heresy or heretics; that the notion of a thought crime is a contradiction in terms. That being said the issue of heresy remains a potent one even in the West, though its implications may be somewhat different then in earlier epochs. Read More »
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In my conversation with Dr. David Friedman, the main point I have been stressing is that part of what allows government to function is that it is perceived as having inherent authority. I can choose on a casual whim to be a consumer of Nike or Reebok sneakers. Read More »
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Whatever one might say about there being a First Amendment defending freedom of religion, to be able to enjoy any such rights in practice one is going to have to convince other people to go along with these principles and include you within them. As such one needs to be capable of articulating a case to others. Read More »
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Vox Populi, a regular commentator on this blog, has just started a blog of his own where I have been going back and forth with him on the issue of tolerating Muslims. Read More »
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In a recent article, David Brooks outlines two types of business people, princes and grinds. Princes, who can be male or female, are senior executives at major corporations. They are almost always charming, smart and impressive. They’ve read interesting books. They’ve got well-rehearsed takes on the global situation. Read More »
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The late Prof. Yosef Yerushalmi, in his classic book Zakhor, challenged the notion that history was something intrinsic to Judaism. Read More »
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Previously I wrote about Milton Friedman of blessed memory and his documentaries “Free to Choose,” done during the 1980s. John Stossel recently devoted an episode of his talk show to pay homage to “Free to Choose.” Milton Friedman’s son, David Friedman, is also a libertarian economist. Read More »
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The Columbus Dispatch has an article today Asperger syndrome in the work place, “Young Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome Struggle to Find Jobs.” The article features my friend Dr. Tom Fish of Aspirations. Read More »
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I was just reading Friedrich A. Hayek’s essay “Why I am not a Conservative.” It is an exemplary statement of the travails of someone who, having rejected modern liberalism, finds he is unable to stand with conservatives. There are a number of passages I thought worth sharing with readers. Read More »
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I was really looking forward to reading Jeremy Stolow’s Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution, about the Haredi ArtScroll publishing company and its influence on Judaism today. Read More »
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I previously discussed the difference between the military and missionary models of conversion as they relate to the Islamic and Christian traditions. Read More »
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In a recent essay in the Orthodox Journal Conversations, Esther Lapian attacks the Modern Orthodox Memlakhti-dati school system in Israel for caving in to Haredi standards in terms of girl’s education. Read More »
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Solomon Schindler (1842-1915), a German Reform Rabbi who immigrated to the United States, ended his book on Messianism, Messianic Expectations and Modern Judaism, with the following declaration: At the very moment when the old bellman’s grandson Read More »
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I did a guest post for Dr. Alan Brill over on his blog; it is a review of the book God is Back by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. The book deals with the continued role of religion in modern day politics. The first part, a general review of the book, is already up. Read More »
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One of the foundational premises of my worldview is a certain Burkean conservatism. By this I mean a belief in the value of tradition as playing a necessary role in the maintenance of society. Read More »
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With all of my opposition to modern feminism it is easy to lose track of the fact that I am a feminist if of a nineteenth century John Stuart Mill School. I believe that human beings can better themselves through reason, as they pursue their own good in their own way. Read More »
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As previously noted, I view government as a devil’s bargain. I accept the existence of an institution with the power to engage in violence and whose main purpose is violence. This applies to fighting wars and even the punishing of criminals. Read More »
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Jerod Smalley of the Columbus NBC affiliate station interviewed some people from Aspirations, including my friends Melanie Yergeau, Patrick Meehan (who served with me on the Autism conference panel on Wednesday) and Justin Rooney, for his Autism Puzzle news segment. Read More »
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I spent the day at an Autism conference sponsored by Ohio State’s Nisonger Center, titled “Transition: The Challenges, Strategies and Models in School, Work and Health.” It is great being back in Columbus for a few days and meeting up with friends. I, along another person from the Aspirations group, took part in a panel organized by Dr. Tom Fish. Read More »
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During the Korean War, Rev. James Lawson, a future Civil Rights leader, went to prison as a “conscientious objector” rather than serve. As someone involved in the clergy, he could have protected himself, but instead chose not to, in of itself an act of protest. Read More »
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One of the major underlying forces behind modern political thought is pacifism; that the use of violence in of itself immoral. This is not to say that most modern people, even modern liberals, are active pacifists, but there is an admiration of pacifists (Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Read More »
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(Hat tip to Religion in America.) Recently retired Justice David Souter recently spoke at Harvard and attacked the originalist (or fair reading as he calls it) interpretation of the Constitution, which assumes that the Constitution has hard and fast meaning and it is simply the job of judges to apply these “simple” truths. Read More »
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The two defining characteristic of a State is that it is an instrument of law and an instrument of violence, used to coerce people into following its laws. This makes the State different from a simple agreement between friends or a hired night watchman. If I know for a fact that you murdered someone and I kill you then I am a murderer. Read More »
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Here is a spoof ad for a television show, Asperger High, where everyone has Asperger syndrome. I admit that the video is a bit over the top and patronizing, but I laughed my head off. I could only wish for a mainstream television show that explored Asperger syndrome seriously. Read More »
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I would like to continue discussing the role of theism in morality. Earlier I argued that theism is necessary for morality not because people cannot be moral without God, but because the very act of making statements about morality require distinctively theistic assumptions about the nature of the universe. Read More »
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There is a vast literature of denigration and denunciation of the Jews published in Arabic, ranging over the whole of Jewish history from remote antiquity to the present day and including all kinds of accusations culled, in the main, from European anti-Semitic literature. Read More »
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Is religion or some sort of belief in a higher power necessary for morality? Atheists are fond of arguing that one can be moral without God and there is a lot of truth to this. The theoretical belief that there is someone looking down at us waiting to punish us with hellfire is not going to keep us moral. Read More »
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On the Contrary has a post up about “Ironic Orthodoxy,” outlining a form of Orthopraxy, which, while skirting the boundaries of traditional belief is deeply committed to Jewish practice and is fairly knowledgeable in terms of Jewish texts. The Ironic Orthodox generation is the generation that comes after the Great Post-1967 Orthodox Awakening. Read More »
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I ended my previous post with a word in about the importance of emotions and a sense of humor even in seemingly strictly rational endeavors and I thought that topic deserved some further discussion. As with most Aspergers, I struggle against a public perception that we are simply rational automatons, robots without emotions. Read More »
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I spend more time than it is likely healthy for me contemplating the nature of other people and what motivates them. Read More »
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Dr. Stanley Fish has an interesting post on one particular element of the new Arizona anti illegal immigration efforts, Arizona the Gift that Keeps on Giving. Arizona now wishes to ban ethnic studies classes in public schools, which are designed to promote “race consciousness. Read More »
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In the medieval corporate state, groups negotiated for political and economic advantage. In the liberal state, individuals negotiated for the right to live as they chose so long as they did no harm to others. In the postmodern state, groups negotiate for something never before held to be the business of politics; recognition, regard, self-esteem. Read More »
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Andrew Newberg, a professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has been putting nuns and Buddhist meditators into a scanning machine (separately, of course) to measure how their brains function during spiritual experiences. Read More »
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By now I assume that all of my readers have heard the news about the Israeli raid on the flotilla of aid ships in which numerous civilians were killed. This has sparked the usual internet back and forth between Israel’s supporters and opponents. Several students of mine got into the thick of one such conflict on facebook. Read More »
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Those attempting to understand what is coming out of Iran today need to appreciate the extent of which the region of Persia has served to foster militaristic messianic movements. It is actually not just Islamic movements. In terms of Jewish history, this region gave us Abu Isa in the eighth century and David Alroy in the twelfth century. Read More »
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I must admit that I did not particularly care for this last season of 24. Looking back, I wish the show had ended with season five (seasons one, three and four are the truly brilliant ones). Seasons six and seven, to say nothing of the truly horrendous made for TV movie, lacked the energy and the writing to keep them interesting. Read More »
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In his eulogistic review of Salo Baron, “The Last Jewish Generalist,” Ismar Schorsch criticizes Baron and the last ten volumes of his eighteen volume Social and Religious History of the Jewish People for adopting an external view of Jewish Read More »
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