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Announcing The Jewish Bloggers Campaign For Responsible Speech Online

CK, Laya and I met up last night in an attempt to work out the differences between us, and to find some sort of way that we can remain pleasant towards one another in our discussions, even if we deeply disagree with one another politically and religiously.
See, my general beef with some of the folks at Jewlicious — as well as several other folks in the Jewish blogging world, let alone the countless visitors to our sites — has squarely focused on the fact that while individuals are more than entitled to disagree with one another, it is unproductive and harmful to resort to insults and ad hominem attacks when presenting their positions.
This is an issue that permeates throughout the Jewish world and perhaps one of the most destructive tendencies of the Jewish community which need serious attention and direct action. A long-range perspective is offered by Jonathan Sarna in American Judaism:

American Jews, living in a society that privileges individualism and gives no official recognition to religious group identity, face the challenge of preserving Jewish unity. With so many bitter divisions in Jewish life—between the different religious movements and among them; between Jews of different backgrounds and ideologies; between in-married Jews and intermarried Jews; between matrilineal Jews and patrilineal Jews; between straight Jews and gay Jews; between born Jews and converted Jews; between American Jews and Israeli Jews; between committed Jews and indifferent Jews—some have questioned whether Jews can remain a united people at all in the twenty-first century. Knowledgable observers have forseen “an unbridgeable schism” in Jewish life, “a cataclysmic split,” “the bifurcation of Jewry.” Well-regarded volumes on contemporary Judaism carry titles like A People Divided and Jew vs. Jew.
[…] A recent book entitled One People, Two Worlds: A Reform Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbi Explore the Issues That Divide Them (2002) captures this dilemma. Its two authors, rabbis who stand on opposite ends of the Jewish spectrum, prove by the very act of communicating with each other that “discourse among Jews can be civil even when disagreements exist.” Yet the controversy generated by the book also demonstrates the fragility of these efforts, for the Orthodox coauthor, at the behest of his fervently Orthodox colleagues, withdrew from a seventeen-city speaking tour where he and his Reform counterpart were set to appear jointly on stage. This mixed message of communication and cleavage reflects, perhaps even more than the authors intended, the parlous tension between “compromise” and “principle,” “one people” and “two worlds.” The fate of American Judaism—whether its adherents will step back from the edge of schism or fall into it—hangs perilously in the balance.

What is the value, we are compelled to ask, of civil discourse? Ian Angus writes in Emergent Publics:

The interaction between the public spheres and meeting places internal to social movements and the process of democratic debate in society as a whole is the locus of contemporary democracy. Its dynamism stems not from the peace of the complacent, but from the bringing of conflict into the realm of discussion and debate. Conflict is thus tamed, or civilized, into an adversarial relationship and ceases to be a potentially violent conflict with an enemy. Too much emphasis on peace, agreement and consensus leads only to stagnation. Contemporary society often blocks change in the name of consensus with those who have not felt or attempted to appreciate the claims of social movements against institutionalized injustice. One cannot avoid conflict, even though it should avoid being violent and involve a respect for the adversary. It is the blockage of democracy that leads to violence, not its extension.

Thus my concern is not that we all get along or think the same… Rather we should respect the plurality of views within the Jewish community, taking each as another perspective from which to learn. Reb Simcha Bunim of Przysucha taught, “There is a person who has reached the quality that he learns from everyone. Even from ordinary people speaking about worldly matters, he finds some allusion to wisdom, how to serve God.” Thus, as David Graeber writes in Fragements of an Anarchist Anthropology (PDF):

Most anarchist groups operate by a consensus process which has been developed, in many ways, to be the exact opposite of the high-handed, divisive, sectarian style so popular amongst other radical groups. Applied to theory, this would mean accepting the need for a diversity of high theoretical perspectives, united only by a certain shared commitments and understandings. In consensus process, everyone agrees from the start on certain broad principles of unity and purposes for being for the group; but beyond that they also accept as a matter of course that no one is ever going to convert another person completely to their point of view, and probably shouldn’t try; and that therefore discussion should focus on concrete questions of action, and coming up with a plan that everyone can live with and no one feels is in fundamental violation of their principles. One should see a parallel here: a series of diverse perspectives, joined together by their shared desire to understand the human condition, and move it in the direction of greater freedom. Rather than be based on the need to prove others’ fundamental assumptions wrong, it seeks to find particular projects on which they reinforce each other. Just because theories are incommensurable in certain respects does not mean they cannot exist or even reinforce each other, any more than the fact that individuals have unique and incommensurable views of the world means they cannot become friends, or lovers, or work on common projects.

Point being, we can retain our cohesion and even actively collaborate as a Jewish community, even if as individuals we have extremely divergent views, so long as we “agree to disagree” and do so with civility and decency.
I can’t tell you the number of times I, and other contributors to Jewschool, have been deeply hurt by some of the remarks people have made here and elsewhere on the web, when responding to political or religious ideas we’ve expressed that dissatisfy them. Many have ceased posting to Jewschool all together in response. Now, of course, I don’t claim perfection. I’ve certainly allowed myself to be baited on numerous occasions and have opened up an unholy mouth, at times also with minimal provocation. And also, perhaps, as Aryeh Dworkin suggests (as did CK again last night), my harsh remarks towards 50 Shekel were the chilul Hashem which broke the camel’s back and drove Aviad Cohen into the deceptively welcoming arms of Jews for Jesus. Lord knows what other damage I may have done with my words, and for that I plead forgiveness. I have made public apologies in the past for allowing my yatzer harah (evil inclination) to get the best of me. As I often say, I am a mere benoni (one who walks the middle path) and certainly not a tzaddik (righteous man). However, as I learn and grow, I am becoming all the more sensitive towards issues of lashon harah (improper speech, lit. “the evil tounge”) and have recently had the epiphany, were we only to try our best to observe the guidelines of shmirat halashon (“guarding the tongue”) as proscribed by The Chofetz Chaim, that we could engage in serious and even tense discussions without resorting to name calling and other destructive behavior. This would enable us to disagree peaceably while still maintaining our love and respect for our fellow Jew, as we are obligated by Torah:

Midrash Rabba 24:6-7: “Ben Azzai said: ‘This is the book of the descendants of Adam’ is a great principle of the Torah. R. Akiva said: But ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ is even a greater principle. Hence you must not say, ‘Since I have been put to shame, let my neighbour be put to shame.’ R. Tanhuma said: If you do so, know whom you put to shame, [for] ‘In the likeness of God made He him.’

Therefore today I am announcing a new initiative: The Jewish Bloggers Campaign For Responsible Speech Online.
Interested parties should link either Pirchei Shoshanim’s illustrated presentation of Shmiras Halashon or Torah.org’s Ethics of Speech to the following image, which should be featured prominently in your blog’s sidebar. (I’d have recommended The Shema Yisrael Network’s Shmiras Halashon Center or The Chofetz Chaim Heritage Center, but both sites are barren of content. If anyone knows of a better link, please do suggest it.)

The recommendation for bloggers carrying this banner is that they be mindful before pressing the “Publish” button and that they ask this consideration from their site’s contributors — both other bloggers on their site and visitors. Ask yourself before posting, “Is what I’ve written a kiddush Hashem (a santification of God’s name) or a chilul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name)?” If it’s the latter, consider revising your remarks to preserve your point, while minimizing whatever harm you may do to your fellow. In other words, attack the idea, not the person, and do so tactfully and respectfully.
This campaign may not save the Jewish world from autocannibalism, but it may make the Jewish blogosphere a more welcoming, informative and enjoyable forum, and perhaps encourage some greater degree of Jewish unity despite the differences between us. B’ezrat Hashem (with the help of God), it shall be so.
***
On a side note, Jew Watch appears to have returned to the top of Google’s results for the word “Jew.” If you haven’t already, please include a link in your blog’s sidebar to the Wikipedia entry for “Jew” like so: Jew.

31 thoughts on “Announcing The Jewish Bloggers Campaign For Responsible Speech Online

  1. great post. one small comment- why is the image for responsible speech a male one? not that it should be female, but that does perpetuate the stereotypical image of jews and the jewish community as being male. thank you.

  2. the man in the image is the chofetz chaim, who authored the most influential work on the laws of shmirat halashon. his face has become synonymous with guarding one’s tongue.

  3. (insert applause here)
    I’ll admit, I dunno if the icon is going change the way I love to criticize jews …
    BTW – i have heared everal times a jewish urban legend that although that particular image has become the face of the chofetz chaim, the story goes that someone asked his daughter if that wasi ndeed a photograph of him to whic she replied “dos is a shayne mentch, uber do iz nisht man tatte” the more popular opinion is that the specific photograph is indeed Rabbi Kagan taken from his passport photo.

  4. “See, my general beef with some of the folks at Jewlicious — as well as several other folks in the Jewish blogging world, let alone the countless visitors to our sites — has squarely focused on the fact that while individuals are more than entitled to disagree with one another, it is unproductive and harmful to resort to insults and ad hominem attacks when presenting their positions. ”
    Our faults…lie not in the stars.

  5. I love the logo and the sentiments behind it.
    However, please note that it is missing a “yud”.
    ùîéøú

  6. Hell yeah Dave! I’m waiting for Mob to fix the little spelling booboo and then I have to contemplate the depiction of the chofetz chaim as I blog about hot Israeli babes, but whatever. In other news, mazal tov on the birth and briss of Zachariah Chaim! He’s a real cutie!

  7. We’ve long ago reached the point at which many American Jews hold opinons which they experience/interpret as springing from Judaism, but which openly contradict and even actively oppose what Judaism has said about itself for all of its (well recorded) history.
    (And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but… those opinions just *happen* to be current in certain intellectual circles of the prevailing gentile culture. Just a coincidence, I’m sure… but there it is.)
    This kind of gap cannot be bridged by appeals to unity or pluralism or other nice names. Such blind/bland appeals to “unity” beg the question – exactly what are we uniting around? Belief in G-d? The Divinely decreed Torah? The State of Israel? Normalization of extramarital sex and homosexuality? You will find fiercely “committed” Jews who strongly disagree with each of these “core beliefs” – and others who strongly hold these as specifically Jewish “core beliefs”.
    No more fat. American Jewry’s divisions long ago cut into muscle and bone. The assimilated branches of the family no longer just disagree on matters of style, on whether Western society’s values jibe with Judaism’s. They are so ignorant of Judaism and so immersed in another society’s life (that is, so assimilated) that values clearly contradictory to Judaism are adopted – and then, after a century of hand-on-hip harangues urging the more traditional to get with the progressive program, they invoke a bitterly ironic appeal to “unity” to try and get their new ideas in through Judaism’s back door.
    Judaism and the scope of “pluralism” allowed within it are clearly defined. Jewish unity flows naturally from adherence to the core meanings, beliefs and practices of Judaism. Only assimilation brings forth demands for some artificial “Jewish unity” in which heterodox practices are baptised and declared Jewish.
    It IS possible for nice, well-meaning people who “feel very Jewish” to be simultaneously so far from what Judaism already has defined itself to be that they are beyond the scope of any meaningful “Jewish unity” or “Jewish community”.

  8. … and the appeal to “unity-n-pluralism” is a win-win situation for you, Moby – you don’t have to provide any details, and anyone who points out the intractable realities is dismissed as a “hate-filled person” who is “intolerant”.
    Nice application of victimology politics! I’m glad y’all feel so puffed-up and good about yourselves… I’m now going back to the real world…

  9. ben-david, have you ever been on friendster? when you look at a friend-of-a-friend’s profile, it draws a little map showing how you’re related. ie., “mobius is friends with sarah who is friends with rachel who is friends with aharon.”
    a community’s values operate much in the same way. while i could agree with you about the divinity of the torah and the importance of torah mitzvahs, i could disagree with you about the status of homosexuals, and agree with someone else who sees the torah as “divinely inspired” but written by man. that person in turn could be friends with a person who doesn’t believe in torah at all but sees israel as the most important thing in the jewish world. that person may in turn be friends with someone who is a radical anti-zionist because they grew up together.
    in other words, your idea of centralized values, for me, seems less like “the real world” and more like a black and white reality that doesn’t take into consideration the fact that it’s relationships between people which create community, and not adherence to any specific ideology.

  10. As a gentile who is having a really hard time exploring her (possible?) relationship to Judaism, I read jewschool pretty much every day. It gives me a sense of community, as my physical community doesn’t provide local, meaningful opportunities for religious exploration. I’ve read Ben-David’s comments with great interest for a couple of months now. They seem to me to be coming from an individual who is very, very lucky to be both secure and content in his faith. All that I ask, Ben-David, is that you realize that not everyone is as blessed as you are and that sometimes, as much as it may bother you, spirituality does involve compromise and modification. The various versions of Judaism that one can encounter are borne of that struggle for comfort and compromise. And one way we can achieve those things is to at least try to be civil to one another. We can really only learn from one another if we are civil, empathetic, and allow people their individual struggles with G-d.

  11. “I have made public apologies in the past for allowing my yatzer harah (evil inclination) to get the best of me. ”
    All the kissy face aside, what happens when Mobius slips up? Because we’ve heard it all before, really. Specific attacks made on this site or its comments section by official site posters against specific individuals and initiatives have been so common they seem part of the iconoclast charachter of this site.
    So we’ll hold you to it, Mo’, and in the meantime, the rest of us are waiting for our individualized apologies… Blanket apologies and promises are nice, but a bit inadequate if you’re serious.

  12. B”H
    Wow. I’m surprised by responses like shmavis’. I thought Mobius’ initiative and apology (esp. to 50Shekel) was really impressive and admirable. Even if it’s too “idealistic,” even if it’s too generalized, I think we should give Mobius and others the benefit of the doubt, instead of criticizing them for what they didn’t do. This blog has some of the toughest, most outrageous, and least sympathetic commentators I’ve seen. I completely agree that our comments need to be based on ahavat Yisrael and kiddush Hashem, because if you say you love G-d but don’t love people, you don’t really love G-d. Ben-David, do you believe you’re putting out a positive image of traditional/Orthodox/” normative” Jews? Are you representing G-d’s love or promoting the stereotype of a narrow-minded community with black-and-white values? In my experience, G-d didn’t make this world black-and-white, and our conception of truth isn’t the Truth.

  13. anyone who points out the intractable realities is dismissed as a “hate-filled person”
    Yeah, speaking of “victimology politics” 😛 …You want the right to be unsympathetic, unforgiving, and constantly critical of other Jews, and then excuse yourself by saying, “I’m just pointing out the intractable realities” or “I’m just being ‘politically incorrect.'” In the days before political correctness, people weren’t called ‘politically incorrect.’ They were called shmucks.
    I’m not in favor of bringing back that sentiment. I’m saying: everyone plays the victim sometimes. Everyone can be hypocritical. Everyone thinks their reality is THE “intractable reality.” Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.

  14. You want the right to be unsympathetic, unforgiving, and constantly critical of other Jews, and then excuse yourself by saying, “I’m just pointing out the intractable realities”
    I would avoid personalizing that. Very many people feel exactly the same about “the left”, and feel they hear exactly the same responses from “the left”. What do you suggest?

  15. it might be just me, but it looks to me like “the left” has been much more willing to criticize itself in public. i have no problem with criticism, even harsh criticism, if it is accompanied by self-criticism. and there’s always something to criticize. also, it is important to stick to substance. for example, i always disagree with posts by that guy J, but i have to say i’ve usually found them substantive. he makes an attempt to actually debate whatever the issue is on the table, rather than say “you think this because you are part of group X, which means you have thought type X, which is bad,” as ben-david does.
    and yes, i’m aware that my responses are often snarky one-liners. who has the time? snark snark.

  16. Flurry- Why’s it surprising? It’s the third effort Mo ‘s made in this regard. I don’t doubt the sincerity of his Teshuva, nor belittle his continued effort to improve himself, his blog and the tone of dialogue. But regardless of if you’ve been on the receiving end when restraint fails or even if you’ve seen it repeatedly, its a legitimate question.
    The site’s legitimate critical views are praiseworthy- questions must be asked. But blatant flaming, name calling and mean-spritiedness have also been a regrettable hallmark of this site. A Loshon Hara and Sinat Hinam free zone in the name of the Chofetz Chaim has been declared, but previous attempts still saw continued ridicule and pointed attacks soon thereafter. Aviad Cohen and Jewlicious are just two recent subjects.
    I wish Mo luck in this. The what if’s will play out as they will. Everyone’s human, fresh start, its a few weeks late in the calendar, who’s counting. It isn’t out of order to ask the question out loud. If there’s been a sea change, Yasher Koach. I hope it sticks. As we know, it takes more than words to make change.

  17. thank you for the information, but when it comes to the lashon-hara laws I would like too tell you that the ones that really are protected by those laws are rapest, abusers, thives and other so called jews, what is happening in judeskait is an abomination, what is happening too many people in israel is just something horrible, the racism the abuse of power, the robbery, assults the lies, the manipulation, the haridim world really knows how to kill the jew and the zionist in you, and that will have to change, even if the law of lashon-hara and the people that abuse thier power dont like it.

  18. shmavis, your immediate reaction to all this talk about lashon harah was to resort to a personal attack against me. kol hakavod. shall we look through your comments about me on other blogs in recent months? jewlicious in particular? i apologize if i ever made a personal remark about you. don’t you dare claim moral high ground though. you are one of the worst perpetrators of this behavior.

  19. Amazing:
    Much like a fish with a bicycle or a cheetah asking for closer cheetah-antelope co-operation, your latest call for an end to “lashon hara” in the Jewish Blogsphere is a joke, Mobius. Of any “Jewish” blog on the planet, Jewschool is the largest contributor to attacks on religious and Orthodox Jews. Your unbridled dislike of genuinely Torah-observant Jewry combined with your relentless ultra-left liberalism leaves you with little credibility when fighting Lashon Hara. I think you just sensed that you were losing the fight and raised your white flag.
    Want to make the Chafetz Chaim happy, Mob? Shut down your site.

  20. Muffti has a few points to make.
    a) The atheist jews are being discriminated against clearly:
    “Is what I’ve written a kiddush Hashem (a santification of God’s name) or a chilul Hashem (a desecration of God’s name)?”
    As an atheist, Muffti of course considers nothing to be literally a sanctification or desecration of God’s name (unless name here is being read hyper literally but then Muffti doesn’t see why you would want to avoid desecrating his name if you think the name has no bearer). Of course, you can just leave atheists out of the discussion if you want to draw boundaries but Muffti isn’t sure why that isn’t just arbitrary on your behalf and against the spirit of the anarchism you are offering.
    B) Muffti doesn’t really understand the following quote:
    Applied to theory, this would mean accepting the need for a diversity of high theoretical perspectives, united only by a certain shared commitments and understandings. In consensus process, everyone agrees from the start on certain broad principles of unity and purposes for being for the group; but beyond that they also accept as a matter of course that no one is ever going to convert another person completely to their point of view, and probably shouldn’t try
    The natural problem with this line of thought is that it says so little and so much is consistent with it. It all depends of course on what you take as your ‘certain broad principles of unity’. For example, if Muffti were to take the following commitments as literally true: intermarriage is destructive to Jews, kashrut is non-negotiable and the moshiach’s arrival depends on other jews keeping the sabbath (or something like that), surely taht will exclude an awful lot of the jews you mention early on but will ensure greater unity and purpose amongst co-members of the group he attracts. Water down those principles and you have a group that is not guaranteed any common goals at all. Basically then it seems the advice comes down to: find a set of principles you can live with and then try to get people who have values that are at least not in conflict with those principles.
    That’s nice practical/political advice, but it’s not very helpful in the present context. As a poster and avid reader of jewlicious, Muffti can’t help but notice just how much disagreement occurs on the most fundamental level of values, political outlook and basic religious commitment. If that’s right, is it any wonder that not all our disagreements can be solved kindly by bringing everyone under an acceptable framework?
    The point is that to get suitably wide coverage of groups to participate, you have to waterdown the basic tenents, but the more you water down the basic tenents, the less of a real character the group has. Muffti thinks (though this may well be an empirical rather than a real philosophical question).
    c) Standards of etiquette and respect are shifty. As we all know, what counts as jovial and friendly in one context is rude and offensive in another. As a philosophical matter, if we are compromising anarchists, shouldn’t we be meeting half way on this? Why should the offended party always have their way?

  21. Who needs anti-Semites when we can kill each other off like this? Lighten up people. I know we are a quarrelsome bunch but this is getting ugly. No more who is a better Jew arguments–puhleeze!

  22. it might be just me, but it looks to me like “the left” has been much more willing to criticize itself in public.
    With respect, yes — I think those on the left do tend to see things that way, and what I was suggesting was to avoid personalizing it as “the left” or “the right”, because each of those camps tends to see the other in exactly those terms … less willing to self-criticize, harsh, strident, all the rest. The point here, as I understand it, is to try and get past that. Sniping about the right and the left is unlikely to be helpful in that respect.

  23. Mo- My reaction was NOT an attack, just questioning what would really change. I don’t doubt your sincerity. Don’t look for malice where there is none. In a forum for ideas and discussion where LH has been rampant, you’re now advocating speech police, and given that dichotomy. Admirable, but its within reason to ask tough questions.
    You’ve acknowledged that this site has seen some real nastiness behavior, by owners, commenters, contributors. You say that’s over, OHM and pass the blunt. We ALL wish it were that easy. You now see that your words have real power and are trying to manage change. A for effort. Lollipops all around. But expect those attacked on this site to respond with honest skepticism.
    I do apologize for my http://www.jewlicious.com/inde…>single gloating comment on Jewlicious after you erased a critical comment following being attacked, while you were experiencing a meltdown. It was hardly the worst. http://www.jewlicious.com/inde…>Go on, reread it. And I accept your apology, but without even recognizing the pain your words and those you’ve allowed to be published have caused, please understand my reticence. OHM. Lollipops. Blunts.

  24. I’m sorry that it’s taken me two yrs. to see this post. Now more than ever what you write is important to Jewish blogging. Personally, I feel dispirited that things can change for the better on this score. There are too many who refuse to consider yr message.
    I know that at least once I have felt hurt by things you’ve written about me. To yr credit, you’ve apologized for that. Personally, I find it laughable that CK participtated in this effort since he is one of the worst offenders against the principles you enunciate (at least as far as his attacks on me are concerned). And I freely admit that there are certain Jewish bloggers who I cannot abide. So no doubt I’ve violated the principles as well.
    All you can do is try to do yr best to keep to the middle path as you mention above.
    But I would hope that at the very least we can agree that behavior like Steve Plaut’s or Masada2000’s defaming so many of us liberal Jews is beyond the pale & should be denounced by all of us, including those who disagree with us.

  25. It would be great if you or someone else created an application for FaceBook that would contain a pledge not to speak Lashon Hara.
    I enjoy your blog.
    Thanks!

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