Culture, Israel, Mishegas, Politics

Violence and More Violence

I was struck by the story Mobius posted yesterday regarding a well known Rabbi resorting to violence in order to make a point about how he felt Jews should act. It made me think about the relationship between our current political situation and our everyday behavior. In that light, this strange chat transcript seemed particularly eerie.
Let me give you some background. Many years ago, when I was a teenager living in Calgary, I was very involved in NCSY, and I used to participate in these weekly chats moderated by NCSY staff. Through the magic of the Wayback Machine I came across a chat transcript that NCSY had proudly displayed on their site in December of 1998. The topic of the week was, “The Connection Between the Jewish People and Israel,” and mixed in with advisers giving Kahanist rants is a surreal account of high school rebbe pushing a student through a glass window. Yes, according to how it is presented here, the kid probably deserved a little punishment, and maybe even a nice kick in the tush, but what is frightening is how almost everyone in this chat is nonplussed by a high school teacher physically assaulting a student.
Cast of characters:

  • Nachum1 – A Kahanist NCSY adviser
  • Alw – a NCSYer from Texas. I made her acquaintance through this chat, and today she is a good friend of mine
  • Roger – A national NCSY administrator, and the coordinator of the chat room
  • Advisor_aaron – Another NCSY adviser
  • Erwos – A slightly younger NCSYer from Silver Spring
  • Valerie – A National NCSY officer from LA

Everyone else, I either don’t know or don’t remember. And me, where am I? Well, I had to miss the weekly chat. I was taking my Spring Break in Vancouver and Seattle, and that night in particular, April 1, 1997, I was sitting in a café in Vancouver getting ready for an Allen Ginsberg poetry reading. After a half hour of sitting around, we got the word that the master had canceled. It turns out Mr. Ginsberg, z”l, was sick – he passed away a few days later.
Here’s the text

13 thoughts on “Violence and More Violence

  1. I read the chat and your post is frankly nothing but a childish exercise in motzi shem ra (public slander). The student in question made fun of a mentally disabled child. The teacher “shoved the kid up against a glass wall” that “shouldn’t have broken, but something bizarre must have happened”.
    OK so a window was weak and broke when the teacher pushed the student against it to make him understand how gross and unacceptable it is to mock the mentally disabled. And you are “frightened” by this? Oh please.
    What do you want people in a chat room to do? Call the Department of Labor and file a complaint? Call up the Dept. of Education and “report” that a teacher at private school gets really upset when a student mocks mentally retarded people? Should they kvell and cry “Oh dear! Give me this poor mocking student’s address so we can bring chicken soup over!”? Should they have started a long fawning textual drama over how “awful” (“oh just awful!“) it is for a teacher to push a student, when in fact they (and you) know nothing about the history of this teacher or this student other than a line in an IM session from 9 years ago?
    Give me a break.

  2. it is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever acceptable for a teacher to mete out physical punishment to students. children say and do stupid things. if you honestly believe that beating them is the proper way to teach them how to act, i feel sorry for any woman who bears your children and your children themselves.
    btw–why do you read jewschool if you disagree with every post? wouldn’t you be happier reading cross currents and little green footballs?

  3. Yo, Mob, lay off Eric. Yeah, he’s wrong, but he’s welcome to be wrong. I think his objections to my post help demonstrate this pattern that I’m noticing – acceptance of violence in day to day life seems to go along with nationalist politics.
    As to what you have to say Eric, Hotza’at Shem Ra, my article isn’t. That means making things up. Now, on the Loshon Hara, gossip side of things, there is room to argue. I thought about this for a while before I posted the article. Certainly, to share what another person puts online is not wrong, since they’re the ones that published it. If they didn’t wantpeople to know what they said, they wouldn’t have said it. But, what about pulling up a ten year old page off an internet archive? Is that different? I wasn’t sure, so I tried to walk a balanced line. Yes, I put the article up here because I think it demonstrates one very important point clearly, and also shows the strange attitudes that were being taught to NCSYers. But, on the other hand, I didn’t identify the people in the chat, even though those same people in other, unpublicized portions of these chats would have freely identified themselves.
    If you disagree with me, and think that this is hurtful gossip, let me know. Perhaps I have violated some privacy rights. Let’s talk about that.

  4. woah, I know Erwos– he married a friend of mine. from B-more actually, not SS 🙂 weird, but I’m glad he was one of the saner voices in there.

  5. Mobius–
    I’m frankly a bit disturbed by the anger/frustration you displayed in this comments section towards “Eric,” or whoever he really is.
    I am often on the fence about certain topics posted here, but sometimes find myself cheering you on. As an orthodox Jew, sometimes I find some of the items a bit harder to stomach (the jubilant celebrations of the recent Conservative Teshuva, for instance). However, I find that reading your blog provides me exposure outside of my cloistered Orthodox universe. It allows me to glimpse the (albeit online) lives of Jews of a similar age who think in radically different ways about issues which shape my life and culture.
    Your small comment to Eric, questioning: “btw–why do you read jewschool if you disagree with every post?” truly saddens and disappoints me.
    I thought one of the tenents of pluralism was accepting and exchanging differing cultural viewpoints in a respectful (though sometimes extremely passionate, heated) way. Do you reject the pluralistic approach as regards the readership of Jewschool? Would you truly rather Eric just read LGFootballs? Would you rather I stopped contributing my voice to the chorus of voices which make themselves heard every day on Jewschool and other similar forums?
    Is this the real Mobius? Is this a crack in the pluralistic facade? Or is your openness to difference genuine (even though at times annoying?)?
    The irony is, I was actually just looking at the posting about the “Havurah”, and found myself quite interested in alot of the topics, and was thinking “well, its not orthodox, and I may have to separate at times from the prayers, but I really think I might like it”. Should I expect veiled resentment for attending such a gathering?
    Should I stop reading Jewschool?
    Dan B.

  6. dan–
    my frustration with eric stems from the fact that i cannot recall a single comment he has left on jewschool in the months now that he’s been posting here that hasn’t in some way been snide and callous.
    if you find that you derive benefit from reading jewschool — even when you disagree with some content — yofi, i’m glad that you’re reading. however, i suspect that eric doesn’t enjoy reading jewschool at all — rather, i suspect he enjoys only picking fights with jewschool’s contributors — not for the sake of productive discourse, but for the sake of taking out his frustrations in a way for which he can’t be held accountable. to him, we are only a symbolic representation to rage against. that being the case, i’d rather he make better use of his time.
    i welcome pluralistic discourse. what eric does isn’t discourse, it’s unceasing belligerence.

  7. “are we all pretending that we don’t check LGF in here? stop fronting.”
    Lol!
    “i cannot recall a single comment he has left on jewschool in the months now that he’s been posting here that hasn’t in some way been snide and callous.”
    Mobius you have to be joking. I’d like you to bring out some “snide and callous” comments that I’ve supposedly posted here. On the contrary, one of the first things that surprised me about this site was that a lot of the commenters here seemed to have no problem using curse words in their arguments against others. That was kind of a turnoff for awhile. My comments are unerringly substantive and on point.
    If you’re talking about disagreeing–yes, I often disagree with posters or commenters. But so what–isn’t that the point of a blog? This place is called “Jewschool” as in “Jews” (I am one) and “school”, place where we go to meet other people, discuss and learn.
    If you prefer a comfortable echo chamber then I guess I’ll just leave. But if you want to have an argument about what’s true vs. untrue in the world, particulrly regarding Jews, then I think there’s a lot of good discussion that should go on here. Please don’t mistake disagreement or objection for “snide and callous”.
    “i suspect he enjoys only picking fights with jewschool’s contributors — not for the sake of productive discourse, but for the sake of taking out his frustrations in a way for which he can’t be held accountable. to him, we are only a symbolic representation to rage against.”
    Simply ridiculous and flatly untrue. I like talking about issues with other people here and that’s all. I assure you there is no other semiotic or Freudian dynamic taking place. I guess we could get into a discussion from the opposite angle: Do authors here use the blog as a forum to take out their “rage” on people they view only as “symbolic representations”? Perhaps they aren’t interested in “productive discourse” and just want to “pick fights” without being “held accountable”? I don’t know, but I’m sure you would respond the same way I did to that suggestion.
    “what eric does isn’t discourse, it’s unceasing belligerence.”
    Examples please.
    OK. Enough about me.

  8. – Eric and Mobius
    I appreciate your position, and look forward to your continued posting. On the other hand, I do appreciate Mobius’s frustration as he perceives a cnstant attack on anything that is said here. He does not want this blog to become a fighting ring. That being said, I hope that this little thread ends very quickly. As much as i like the idea of arguments’s merits being batted about, I do not want to see Eric’s posts’ merits disected and examined. This is not the place for personal attacks, nor for trials and inquisitions.

  9. “ever, ever, ever, ever acceptable for a teacher to mete out physical punishment to students…. if you honestly believe that beating them is the proper way to teach them how to act…”
    Well I think this is where we disagree on two fronts. First of all I’m not willing to say “never, ever, ever” on the issue of physical punishment. Sorry but IMO the world and humans are a lot more complex than that and there can be a situation where some form of physical punishment is appropriate for a given infraction for a given child in a given situation. It’s a gray zone.
    Even Josh said that “the kid probably deserved a little punishment, and maybe even a nice kick in the tush,” so I think you diverge here from him too. Yes children say and do stupid things, and that’s why a great deal of sensitivity and intelligence is needed in figuring how to respond.
    Second you’re conflating “physical punishment” with “beating”. A slap on the arm or backside is just not at all similar to a “beating”. Obviously a true beating is utterly unacceptable. But there is quite a middle ground to traverse before you arrive at Beatdown City. Would “a nice kick in the tush” count as a “beating”? Not in my dictionary. In this case the teacher gave the student a nice push instead of a nice kick. OK and…we’re supposed to believe this is horrible because a window broke?
    And in the case in the chat the student had mocked a mentally disabled classmate. The teacher’s mission then is how to show this student how grossly unacceptable that is. If this was a Jewish school then I could guess that the teachers had probably been trying to teach values like Tzelem Elohim from day 1. This student hadn’t gotten it. OK so what do you do now? That’s the question and you and I may just have a different range of possible answers.

  10. Josh sent me over here – hi, everyone! Just to shed some more light on what happened:
    Basically, this kid was a genuine ass. He was the son of some rebbe at the local yeshiva, so they couldn’t toss him out as he deserved – he was really a negative influence on the entire middle school. So, one day, he taunts some kid with serious learning disabilites, and the rebbe/teacher of the kid in question shoves him up against a window in the breezeway. Methinks that he was going for one of the supports in between the windows, but missed, and accidentally put him right through. I got to know this rabbi who did it pretty well later on – suffice it to say, I don’t believe he ever would have done it on purpose.
    The kid was cut up pretty bad, but he was fine in the long run. The rebbe did indeed leave at the end of the year. Looking back, maybe they should have fired him. But what’s done is done, and no one’s dead, so I guess it doesn’t matter any more.
    And, wow, I look like a peacenik in that conversation. Not that I’m a real hawk now, mind you, but I never really thought about how very much at odds I must have been with some folks in some of those ad-hoc classroom discussions in yeshiva. Gives you pause for thought. (Some of those names really bring back memories – good ones, too!)
    Finally, to clear it all up: I’m from Baltimore, married a girl from Rockville, and now live in Silver Spring. (And I’m still Orthodox.)

  11. btw, just reread my comment, and thought I’d been unclear.
    “weird” refers to the conversation, not to people.

  12. DanB writes:
    The irony is, I was actually just looking at the posting about the “Havurah”, and found myself quite interested in alot of the topics, and was thinking “well, its not orthodox, and I may have to separate at times from the prayers, but I really think I might like it”. Should I expect veiled resentment for attending such a gathering?
    No. Come!

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