Health care reform now!

Parshat Mattot-Masei

This week we read a double Torah portion to conclude the book of Numbers. The concluding story in this very narratively busy book is a reprise and conclusion of the story of the daughters of Zelofhad.

A couple of weeks ago, in Parshat Pinhas, the five unmarried daughters of Zelofhad came to Moses to request that, in the absence of male heirs, their father’s inheritance be allowed to pass to them. In Biblical times, you see, only sons could inherit. Moses confers with God and agrees to the request; this is considered an advance in women’s rights, of course, as was the decision of R. Moses Isserles in the 16th century that daughters could receive half of their son’s share in the estate, and the 1943 takanah (decision) by the chief rabbinate of Palestine that daughters should inherit on equal terms with sons (Etz Chaim).

In this week’s parshah, members of the daughters’ tribe (Menashe) come to Moses and appeal this decision. Because it was the practice for women to join the tribes of their husbands and take their property with them, the elders argue that if these young women are allowed to marry anyone they want to, the property that belonged to their father will be lost to their father’s tribe. After conferring with God once again, Moses agrees with the justice of this position, and rules that the daughters of Zelofhad must marry within their father’s tribe, so that the property they inherited would remain with the tribe.

Some of this rings pretty sourly to modern ears. Restrict the girls’ ability to dispose of their property as they wish? Restrict their ability to marry whomever they want? I’m not that bothered by the associate of marriage and property, which was for many years the historical reality, but then again, I don’t read that many romances.

The positive way to look at this, and one of the lessons it might have for us, is that Moses is balancing the right to personal freedom, including the right to inherit their father’s property, with the importance of the daughters living up to their responsibility to the community. We here in America hear a lot about rights, but much less about responsibilities. But as members of Jewish community, we know that if the community is going to survive and thrive, we are going to have to place some limits on our own freedom to do whatever the heck we want. Of course, living in community has its own rewards – rewards of knowing who we are in a confusing and multiplicitous world, rewards of knowing that there are people around who care about us and whom we care about.

The daughters accept the condition, which shows that they understand this balance well – they understand that the needs of the individual, and the individual’s responsibility to the community, must both be tended to.

Shabbat shalom.

This week's links

Earlier this week President Obama met with 16 Jewish leaders from 14 national Jewish groups at the White House. The leaders expressed concerns at the perception that Obama is one-sidedly pressuring Israel for concessions in order to get the peace process back on track, while Obama said that he was aware that this perception exists and he would work harder to address it. It’s notable that the meeting did not specifically push back on Obama’s demands for a settlement freeze.

Responses to the meeting have been coming hot and heavy – JTA has a page of them, from both left and right, here.

Notable too was the invitation of left-leaning groups like JStreet, and the non-invitation of right-leaning groups like the Zionist Organization of America. This “reversal of fortune” from the Bush years is the subject of an editorial in the Forward (takeaway message: “Get used to it.”)

Also in the Forward is this op-ed by JStreet staff member Isaac Luria, who says that Jewish communal leaders like Malcolm Hoenlein, Abe Foxman and David Harris should be careful criticizing Obama about what Luria calls the president's "sensible pro-Israel policies," because young Jews support him a lot more than they support them.

These men... might be feeling unease about President Obama’s push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But many American Jews, and especially younger ones, are feeling a sense of relief.

[snip]

But given the combination of my generation’s attraction to President Obama and our inherent distrust of old-style top-down institutions, Jewish communal leaders should consider that the more aggressively they criticize this president’s sensible pro-Israel policies, the more they will alienate us from their aging institutions.

Executive Director's Report

I wrote this for our Federation newsletter this month. I had it checked out with the local ADL rep in Omaha. I kind of thought the second to last bullet point would be controversial, but it hasn't been so far. It's definitely written with my Federation Director's hat on, which means the politics might be (I hope) on the left of mainstream, but definitely mainstream.

One thing Federations and Community Relations Bureaus have to deal with far too often is proposals for divesting from companies that do business with Israel. These are usually a result of (naïve or worse) activism on the part of a small group within universities or main-line churches. Fortunately, these efforts are rarely successful.

The following are talking points on the divestment issue that I developed as part of our ongoing meetings with the local United Methodist leadership on this issue. These talking points may be valuable to anyone who finds themselves in a discussion about Israel with people who are not, shall we say, entirely supportive.

1. Israel does what it does in the Territories in large part due to legitimate security concerns. Incidents in recent years include the bus bombing campaign of 2001-2002, Hamas rocket fire from Gaza, Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel or abide by signed agreements, Israeli fear of West Bank being turned into a second Hamastan with major Israeli population centers, ports and the airport vulnerable to rocket fire, etc. Criticism of Israel when its actions go beyond direct security concerns may be appropriate, but this is a complex calculation, difficult to make from overseas; at the very least, the security considerations must be acknowledged and made part of the conversation.


2. The same applies to the question of the moral implications of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian population in the Territories: there’s a lot of blame to go around. Proposing solutions are based on the idea that the Israelis are the sole source of the conflict or that the Palestinians are innocent victims is counterproductive, as well as patronizing to the moral agency of the Palestinians.


3. Applying theological categories to political issues – particularly comparing the Palestinians to the crucified Jesus – will be considered anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent.


4. Comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa are inaccurate and hurtful. Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens with full political rights, and Israel did propose pulling nearly completely out of the West Bank in 2000, and has pulled completely out of Gaza. Ethnic and religious (not racial) animus, if it exists, should be considered an outgrowth of the political conflict and not its cause.


5. Israel is far from the worst human rights actor in the world. In fact, the opposite is true – Israel’s human rights record compares favorably to that of almost any nation on earth. Its free press and right of free association have helped to keep the Palestinian issue in the public eye for many years – appropriately so. But the imbalance between the attention paid to Israel and that paid to other, much worse human-rights abusers – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Somalia, etc. - especially by churches and by the UN, is remarkable.


6. Socially responsible investment policies are the prerogative of the investing organization as long as these policies are objectively designed and fairly applied – which is to say, not specifically designed for or targeted at Israel. If such policies, applied universally, happen to affect companies doing business with Israel, the Jewish community would not find this objectionable.


7. In general, positive is better than negative, and investment is better than disinvestment. There are plenty of opportunities for investment in coexistence projects or economic opportunities for the Palestinian population. Rather than being a salve for the misguided conscience, these approaches are likely to be actually effective and helpful for the population they purport to support.

News in the 4th

Kansas 4th congressional district, that is. From Kos:

KS-04: Democrats Draw Top Competitor To Open Seat Race

As Todd Tiahrt prepares to exit the House in order to run for the Senate, arguably the top Democrat on the depth chart is likely to make a bid for the open House seat. Raj Goyle, who defeated an incumbent to claim his state House district in 2006 and then won it in a walk in 2008, announced that he will run for Congress. Given the deep bench for the GOP in the Wichita-based 4th district, one has to expect that Goyle will find a top-tier opponent in front of him next November, assuming that he is the Democratic nominee.

Raj is a very smart guy, and a good progressive - and I don't even have to say, "for Kansas." He at one point was employed by the Center for American Progress, the progressive thinktank in DC. He also happens to be my neighbor. I wish him all the luck in the world, and believe very strongly that he would make an excellent congressman. His website is here.

Given the dearth of Democratic candidates for next year's gubernatorial and senatorial races, this is likely to be the most exciting (only exciting) race for progressives and Democrats in Kansas in 2010. Given that there is a new energy amongst the small-but-proud cadre progressives here in the aftermath of Obama's victory last year, Raj will likely be the beneficiary of a lot of good, strong, progressive activism over the coming year. This is the race to watch in Kansas.

Parshat Pinchas

Last week’s parshah ended with the incident in which an Israelite man and a Moabite woman publicly sinned in the site of the whole community; Pinchas, a grandson of Aaron and of the priestly family, seeing this, takes a spear in hand and kills them both. This week’s parshah, called Pinchas, picks up where that one left off, with God rewarding Pinchas for his actions:

God spoke to Moses saying, Pinchas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for me… Say, therefore, “I grant him my pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.” (Num. 25:10-13)

I don’t mind telling you I find this disturbing – not only the action that Pinchas took, but the fact that God is portrayed by Torah as showering it with such approval – the priesthood for all time! You couldn’t get any farther, I would think, than the idea that Aaron was rewarded with the priesthood because of his reputation as a peacemaker.

The rabbis were also uncomfortable with this seeming approval, speculating that rather than being a reward, the priesthood may have been a way to channel Pinchas’ aggressive tendencies into a constricted, public role. But that strikes me a little like making Bernie Madoff chair of the SEC and claiming that’s the way to keep him on the straight and narrow. I’m also concerned about the model Pinchas provides because one can imagine that Dr. Tiller’s (alleged) murderer saw himself as being in the Pinchas mold, righteous distributor of God’s justice and all that.

The Etz Chayim chumash points out that in the Torah scroll, the letter yud in Pinchas’ name in v. 11 is written smaller than the other letters, indicating that when we use violence to solve problems, the godly aspect within us (represented by the yud) is diminished. In addition, that the vav in the word shalom in v.12 has a break in the stem: “This is interpreted homiletically to suggest that the sort of peace one achieves by destroying one’s opponent will inevitably be a flawed, incomplete peace.”

Another possibility is that, like the person struck down for picking up sticks on Shabbat, the way that these infractions are treated in the Bible, when the laws are new and the People is just being formed, is altogether more harsh than they would be treated later, by the rabbis or by us, when the circumstances are different and the identity of the People is not so fragile.

In any case, the paradox is resolved by the rabbis with the judgment, “The law may permit it, but we don’t follow that law” (or in another version: “it may be permissible, but we don’t teach it that way”). They are quarantining that act, or as the Supreme Court sometimes says, We rule this way in this particular case, but it’s not to be used as a precedent. This may be a place where we have to acknowledge, as Rabbi Wernick puts it, that Judaism is not a biblical religion, but a rabbinic one.

All of which is to say, despite how the Torah might portray this incident, this kind of vigilante justice is not acceptable or admirable, to Jewish tradition or to us.

Shabbat shalom.

This week's links

There’s a lot of he-said-she-said coming from Washington and Jerusalem lately, with the main topics being “Did Joe Biden give Israel the green light to attack Iran’s nuclear installations?”
and “Is there some sort of tacit agreement between the two governments that ‘natural growth’ of settlements is okay as long as the illegal outposts are taken down”? In both cases, Israel wants the answer to be yes, but the US says the answer is no.

In the meantime, French President Sarkozy said an Israeli attack on Iran would be a “catastrophe", while President Obama said that the world will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

In domestic news, several faith-based groups, including Jewish organizations like JCPA have weighed in on the health care debate. Their message: all religions emphasize the need to heal the sick and care for the most vulnerable. The UJC is getting involved in the issue as well, which makes it a broad-based priority for the Jewish community. The Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center has a number of entries on this issue, here’s a representative one you may find informative.

From the Forward, an appreciation of “out of the box” Jewish-community researcher Gary Tobin, who died this week.

It's too bad, the cookies were good

This week's episode of "Nefarious Anti-Worker Adventures in Business" comes from the Bronx where, as JSchool reports, a bargaining conflict between the Stella D'oro company (or rather, its parent, Brynwood Partners) has led to the shutting of the factory. The cookies produced at the plant are popular with the Jewish community because they are pareve, meaning they do not contain milk products and therefore can be eaten with meat meals.

Last week the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Brynwood had not been bargaining fairly with the 134 workers at the plant during the 10-month strike. This judgment was considered a victory for the workers, but in response, the company (in best Wal-Mart mode) has decided to shut the plant and move production elsewhere. Their intransigence, as Ruby K points out, seems to have had a purpose in mind:

They had plenty of time to figure out how to shutter this factory and move it elsewhere, by refusing to bargain with the union for 10 months and then, easily plan their escape. This looks like a pretty standard union-busting move here: demand massive pay concessions that you know are not fair, and either you get them and break the union, or you get enough cover to plan a move elsewhere and break the union.

And also, of course, there is no recourse for the workers at the Bronx plant, because bargaining fairly may be a violation, but shutting the plant is not.

I've heard some suggestion that EFCA would address this issue, but I'm not sure how this would work, except by making the other factories more likely to be organized. A ruthless company that would leave its workers in the lurch isn't going to be put off by card check as long as there's another factory with unorganized workers that they can move to.

But suffice it to say that my family will not be purchasing Stella D'oro cookies any longer. I would even go so far as to say that, due to the ethical considerations raised by this company's actions, these cookies should no longer be considered kosher.

The logic is hard to avoid

DarkSyde on Kos:

The logic is hard to avoid. If we invest in energy efficiency, alternative technologies, and green jobs, and for whatever reason global warming turns out to be much adieu about nothing, we as a nation are left with greater energy independence and whole new industries right here at home. Not a bad outcome. But if climate change deniers are wrong, and we do nothing, we’re left depending on foreign oil, stuck with a growing, potentially catastrophic environmental disaster, and little or no immediate solutions to any of it. The better scenarios should be readily apparent.

And an update on ACES: Although Tiarht has made anti-climate change a core element of his anti-Obama platform, some (Cizik, mostly) had been holding out hope that Brownback would be open-minded on the issue, even if just as a sop to moderation in preparation for his coronation as governor next year. But with no opposition, why should he moderate? He came out against the bill yesterday.