by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
I am very happy to announce that my book Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism is out and available at Academic Studies Press and Amazon.com.
You can now download and read the introduction of the book here (just click on the cover image).
I hope that this will whet your appetite or stimulate your curiosity or at least disturb in a productive way, and hopefully you will buy the book and incorporate it in your discussions about how to make our part of the world a more just place.
Shaul Magid responds to Dov Linzer’s op-ed on modesty and the chareidi community. Always interesting, always controversial, always important.
Dear Rabbi Linzer,
I read with great interest your op-ed “Lechery, Modesty, and the Talmud” in the New York Times last week. I commend you for taking such a strong stand on this important issue, especially in the wake of continued violence against women in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. However, I think there is a structural flaw at the core of your argument that I would like you to address. (continues here)
There was once a healthy and interesting conversation in this country about the relationship between religion and democracy. Not the specious bombast of the Rick Perryesque “America is a Christian country so we should be able to hate anybody we want and celebrate Christmas” kind of conversation. Rather a conversation about the roots of democracy and the relationship of democracy to the authoritarian reigns—political or religious, monarchic or ecclesiastic, and usually an admixture of the two—which preceded democracy. The move to democratic politics, according to many thinkers, retained the theological structures, if not the faith of their predecessors. In a way, democracy is a kind of secular mysticism. It is grounded in the belief that, according to the ancient maxim, vox populi vox dei, “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” That is, authority is grounded in the decisions of the people as a whole, which carries an authority beyond that of any individual, and does not rest in any token, singular, individual whether king or cleric. More »
On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning the City of Los Angeles deployed 1400 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in a military style operation in order to evict 200-300 nonviolent protesters who had been camping out on the lawn around City Hall as part of Occupy LA. Beginning at around 3AM when the mayor when down to survey all that he had done (it was the first time he had come to the encampment) the official narrative took over. The Mayor and the Police Chief have declared themselves proud of the operation and satisfied at its execution. Nobody was hurt and the LAPD was given all the credit. The truth is, of course far more complicated. Nobody was taken to the hospital, but that does not mean that the LAPD was not violent. The operation was a “shock and awe” mission intended to terrorize the folks on the lawn and convince them that leaving was better than the alternative. And yet, the real story is that the Occupiers remain steadfastly nonviolent. They are the real heroes of the long night.
Discordant voices of truth tellers are emerging. Here are some of them.
Dear LA Times,
Speaking as a person who was arrested Wednesday morning at City Hall for the crime of peacefully, respectfully protesting the wholesale fraud perpetrated by our nation’s financial sector, I just want to
say:
I’m not mad that an LAPD officer slammed me face-first into the pavement.
I’m not mad that my personal property was forcibly stolen, destroyed and disposed of by the LAPD.
I’m not mad that my arms were painfully zipcuffed behind my back for 7 consecutive hours.
I’m not mad that the LAPD zipcuffs cut off circulation at my wrists, causing evident nerve damage to my right hand.
I’m not mad that the LAPD spent the entire day refusing to accept all bail postings for nonviolent Occupy LA protesters like myself, while at the same time dutifully bonding and releasing countless violent
arrestees back onto L.A.’s streets.
I’m not mad that the LAPD denied me access to a lawyer for the entire duration of my jail stay.
What I’m mad about is that none of the above has been done to even one of the Wall Street criminals who committed the most egregious act of larceny in American history, trashing the lives and futures of millions of Angelenos and hundreds of millions of American citizens.
Patrick Meighan
4174 Higuera St.
Culver City, CA 90232
cross posted to Justice in the City
A few weeks ago, I was in a meeting discussing an upcoming ballot initiative which would eliminate the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Everybody in the room was opposed to the death penalty. The discussion was about the strategy that should be employed to convince voters to make the proposition law. The campaign’s tactic was to argue that the death penalty was more expensive than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP). This is, of course, true. As the LA Times reported:
[An] examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.
However, sitting in that room, engaging in that conversation, I suddenly got very depressed. I realized how we had all been impacted by the culture of greed that has overwhelmed our country.
I want to make clear that I think that we urgently need to stop our country’s machinery of death and to begin the hard work of justice—reforming our prisons, making victims and/or their families whole, allowing for transgressors to repent and atone (as I argue here). I think that replacing the death penalty with LWOP is a good and important step on the way to accomplishing this. I was reacting to the fact that the parameters of the debate (cheaper is better) are not ones that I agree with and are destructive to the moral fabric of our country and society. Let me explain. More »
One young man in Zuccoti Park in New York, part of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, holds up a sign which boldly declares: “We’re here, we’re unclear, get used to it.” This tongue in cheek message gets to the heart of what is uncomfortable for many in the media and the chattering class about the Occupy movement (OWS and its many many offshoots in all major American cities and many cities around the world). There is an expected, almost ritual nature to American political discourse. There are critiques, followed by demands, supported by emotional anecdotes and statistics, followed by the suggestion of legislative remedies. The chattering class then gets to work vetting these remedies on two levels. First, and most important, is the “horse race” analysis. The political climate will not allow this or the votes are there but only if the opposing party will compromise on this. And so on and so forth. Somewhere farther down, or on the inside pages, the wonks get to work dissecting the numbers. Within a week at most (usually a news cycle), its all old news. Nothing has changed. Perhaps a catch phrase has been added to the stump speech of this or that candidate.
It is very frustrating when a large group of Americans peacefully assemble to air their grievances without participating in these tried and true rituals. When they do not attempt to position themselves behind a candidate or leverage a powerful constituency, but, rather display their disaffection without feeling the need to issue bullet points which any politician or pundit could easily digest and regurgitate. And then they stick around. For a long time. And they do not feel the pressure of the news cycle to make decisions or appoint telegenic spokespeople. They just put up tents, hold long meetings which need to reach a consensus for a decision, put themselves in danger by reclaiming public space and using non-violence as a trigger and a weapon to reveal the repressive reflexes of the financial and political elites. It is maddening. More »
(cross posted to Justice in the City) After a few persistent weeks of peaceful non-violent protests, the “Occupy Wall Street” folks or the “99 percenters” as they are beginning to call themselves, are appearing on the radar of the mainstream media. After a few days of lazy journalistic descriptions of the protests and protesters as disorganized and unfocussed some reporters and columnists are beginning to ask what these protesters want. One of the more interesting answers to the question was given in an interview conducted by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post with David Graeber who was one of the initial organizers of the protests. His answer was that the protesters, rather than making specific demands of the existing institutions (which created the income inequalities and precipitated the financial meltdown and yet were still in their offices controlling vast amounts of wealth) were attempting to “create a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature.” This raises the question: What is the society that we want? What would a just society look like? At this moment, it seems to me, there is no more important question to ask. As it happens, this is precisely the question I seek to answer in my book “Justice in the City” — and since that book is not yet out, I will attempt the short form answer here. More »
So I up and got myself my very own blog “Justice in the City: Thinking about Judaism and Social Justice.” I will be posting there about the intersection and intertwining of Judaism and Social Justice. My latest piece is on Poverty and Obligation. You can read there and comment here.
Zak Braiterman has penned a strong indictment of the Tikvah Fund. In a long essay he connects the dots and fisks the public organ of Tikvah—The Jewish Review of Books. Zak’s essay articulates the fear that many of us had articulated in private conversations but had not done the leg work. Here is the punch line:
No one of us is free from ideological bias and no one contests the right of anyone inside or outside the academy to pursue this or any other ideological agenda. The argument is that the Tikvah Fund enters the university without proper respect for the rules of open transparency that a university ideally embodies. The Tikvah Fund acts as an interloper by setting up closed shops inside the university under the guise of misleading mission statements. Surely, any set of principles and practices should be subject to the free exchange of ideas and open argument. The intertwining of money, ideological content, and university life is one that needs to be examined much more forthrightly by all of us who seek to negotiate the creative lines between public political life and the critical and self-critical exploration of ideas inside and outside the university.
According to press reports, Dick Cheney’s memoir, set to be released this week, is one long exercise is not regretting any decision he made while serving as Vice-President of the United States. This is a shame. The first step in teshuvah, repentance, is recognizing the wrongs that one has committed. Cheney, rather, articulates his continued support for interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, extremes of heat and cold, sleep deprivation, long-term isolation, sensory deprivation and stress positions. It’s clear he will continue to defend his authorization of such torture and has no remorse for the criminal acts of torture he authorized. Cheney could have helped in the effort to repair the harms caused by torturing prisoners by expressing some regret for his actions. He has not.
The rest of the piece is here. After you read it, come back and comment.
Eli Ungar-Sargon of Cut fame, whose blogging here at Jewschool has generated some interesting conversations, is off and running on his next project—a documentary film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of that project he surveyed both Israelis and Palestinians about their attitudes towards the other (i.e. Israelis about Arabs and Palestinians about Jews). The interviews with Palestinians have not been completely translated yet, and so the data is not ready, however, the data about Israelis is ready. Its not surprising, though its not pretty. At the same time, the data and interviews do not seem to support the screaming headline that the piece was given in Electronic Intifada where it was published. Here is the video:
A few weeks ago, my good friend Mordechai Levovitz mentioned on Facebook that he would like to see a debate between myself and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the subject of circumcision. I was aware of the fact that following a brief back and forth on CNN, Rabbi Boteach had challenged Lloyd Schofield, the man behind the ballot initiative in San Francisco, to a longer form debate. I was also aware that Schofield had declined the challenge. I wrote to Rabbi Boteach suggesting that he debate me instead. Much to my surprise, I received an email a few days later saying that Rabbi Boteach was interested. The terms we agreed upon were that there would be 10 minute opening statements followed by 5 minute rebuttals, and an hour and a half of Q&A. We also agreed that I would be provided with an unedited copy of their video in addition to which I would be able to shoot my own video of the event. The debate was scheduled to take place at the Manhattan Jewish Experience on July 18th. I prepared for the debate and flew out to NY with my camera and tripod in tow.
A few hours before the event, I was having lunch with my mother and sister on 72nd street when I got an email from Boteach’s people requesting that I call them urgently. They informed me that I would not be allowed to shoot video of the debate and that no cameras other than the MJE’s official camera would be allowed in the room. No explanation for this change was forthcoming and I had to take it or leave it. Despite advice from close family and friends to pull out on account of this blatant breach of terms, I went ahead with the debate and at the last minute, set up an audio recorder. The debate itself was spirited and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience despite the glaring absence of a moderator. But my absolute favorite moment of the evening came just after the debate was over. Rabbi Boteach came up to me and by way of apology for all of the drama said “You have to understand. No offense, but I just didn’t know who you were.”
Upon returning home, I asked Boteach’s people for an unedited copy of the video as per our original agreement. They refused. Luckily, I had my audio recording which I posted on the Cut website and on YouTube. It was not long before Boteach’s people posted their video, which turned out to be the first 40 minutes of the debate shot from a bizarre dutch angle at knee height and compressed to within an inch of its life. Here are the two versions of the debate:
This report, the result of direct conversations with Hyatt workers across the U.S., details a broader practice by Hyatt that we find contrary to the religious traditions we uphold.
There is no real shocker here. However, the broader problem, the war on the working class, is wonderfully and bitterly laid out here by J.J. Goldberg at the Forward.
If you don’t think that its a war, you’re not paying attention.
More than anyone in recent memory, Matthew Hess is testing the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. After Nancy Appel of the Anti-Defamation League released a statement condemning his comic Foreskin Man for its “grotesque anti-Semitic imagery,” many prominent intactivists felt the need to distance themselves from him and his organization MGMBill.org. Moreover, the furor over Foreskin Man undoubtedly contributed to the pressure that ultimately shut down the ballot initiative in Santa Monica. Over the past month, many people have been asking me whether Matthew Hess is an anti-Semite. I don’t know the man, so I decided to contact him and ask him some questions. Below are his unedited responses: More »
On June 16 the California legislature passed SB 104—the Fair Treatment for Farmworkers Act. The United Farm Workers have been organizing a series of actions to urge Governor Brown to sign the bill. On
Martin Sheen and the Mayor at the start of the march at City Hall
Friday there was a march from City Hall to the Ronald Reagan State Office Building where the governor’s offices are, followed by a press conference at which Mayor Antonio Villaraigrossa, Martin Sheen, two farmworkers, Angelica Salas, the Executive Director of CHIRLA and I and two other members of the clergy spoke. This is what I said:
Two summers ago many of us were gathered not far from here at a memorial gathering for 15 farm workers who had died in the fields because of a lack of shade or water or breaks, but mainly because of a failure to recognize that every single person is created in the image of God. It is two years later and we are finally on the verge of taking a large step forward towards rectifying all the wrongs that result from not recognizing that the workers who toil in the fields and pick our food are created in the image of God.
When the greatest of all Jewish philosophers, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, called Maimonides, needed to answer the question: What is the greatest perfection of all? He said it is knowing God. What, he continued, does it mean to know God? Does it mean to know that God is one? Does it mean to know that God is of a completely different nature from people? No, he said. Knowing God means understanding that God’s purpose is to create justice on this earth. The one who truly knows God, therefore, is the one who works to create a just society. Justice comes from recognizing that every other human being is created in the image of God and therefore I have an obligation to hear their cries when they are vulnerable, and to work to allow them the means to live in dignity; to support themselves from hard work; to organize to better themselves; to treat them as people created in the image of God—because that is what they are.
This is not charity. This is not a gift. This is my obligation, our obligation as people who want to do justice, who want to live in a just society, who want to hear the word of God.
The Bible tells us:
20 You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
21 You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan.
22 If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me,
23 and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans.
In the thirteenth century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman commented on this:
[God] says “you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him” and think that he has no one to save him from your hands, for you know that you were strangers in the land of Egypt and I saw the manner in which the Egyptians oppressed you and I wreaked vengeance upon them, for I see “the tears of the oppressed with none to comfort them; and the power of their oppressors—with none to comfort them.” (Ecclesiastes 4:1) I, however, save all people from those stronger than them (cf. Psalms 35:10). So, too, “you shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan,” (Exodus 22:21) for I will hear their cries, for all these people do not have faith in themselves, but they can have faith in Me.
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen speaking at the end of the march.
The Pharaohs always think that their strength and power, their profits and political contributions will win in the end. We are here today to say that, in the end, righteousness will win, justice will win. If we don’t fulfill our obligations towards these workers and towards all workers, salvation might come from another quarter but we run the risk of ending up as the detritus strewn on the side of the road towards redemption.
Governor Brown, sign the FAIR TREATMENT FOR FARM WORKERS ACT.
To sign the petition asking Gov. Brown to sign the act go here.
So this time of the year we are all asking ourselves the great question: how can I get my car cleaned and not support the exploitative practices of most carwashes? Well, if you are in the Los Angeles area there is an answer. Temple Beth Am (with support from CLUE LA and cheering from Shtibl) is sponsoring a Car Wash for Justice. This is a chance to clean your car before Pesach and, at the same time, support carwashers who were locked out and fired from the Marina Car Wash (for organizing activities).
When: April 10, 9am-noon
Where: Temple Beth Am parking lot
1039 S. La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles Ca 90035
Car Wash includes: * Waterless Hand Wash * Interior Vacuum * Windows * Tires/Rims
Suggested Donation: Wash: $15 Wax (wash included): $35
Interior Detail (this is L.A.): $100 Compact Car $130 SUV/Truck
After you watch the video you should read the whole issue—which is about metaphor in all its religious and linguistic complexity. (Okay, some of its complexity.) For JSers keeping count, Danya Ruttenberg has a piece in the issue, as do I.
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