Should I Be Excommunicated?
Isi Liebler offers a modest proposal in the Jerusalem Post:
The exploitation of Judge Goldstone’s Jewish background by our enemies intensifies our obligation to confront the enemy within – renegade Jews – including Israelis who stand at the vanguard of global efforts to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. Such odious Jews can be traced back to apostates during the Middle Ages who fabricated blood libels and vile distortions of Jewish religious practice for Christian anti-Semites to incite hatred which culminated in massacres. It was in response to these renegades that the herem (excommunication) was introduced.
Who are these modern-day blood libelers?
The rot has extended to the Diaspora, especially Europe and has also affected the United States. Highly vocal Jewish groups like the recently created J Street describe themselves as ‘Zionist’ but their prime objective is to pressure the US government to use “tough love” against Israel – a euphemism for demanding that the Jewish state make further unilateral concessions to neighbors pledged to its annihilation.
This kind of thing is, shall we say, disappointing to read.
84 Responses to “Should I Be Excommunicated?”
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October 7th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Can you please in the future, make up something a little bit more believable than the blood libel? That is just so ridiculous on its face.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
matt, don’t you realize it’s bloodthirstiness that makes us jews? j street are obviously in reality mooslims caue they don’t like to kill people. or something
October 7th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I’m sure people have been informally kicking each other out of the Jews forever (and I watch this happen daily in Israeli forums), but that’s not where Cherem came from.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
If you were excommunicated, Matt, you’d be in excellent company.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Israel’s “friends” (and current government) are going to succeed in what its enemies never came close to accomplishing- making it a pariah state. Sad.
October 7th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
renegade Jews
Does Ackerman have a band that needs a name?!?!
October 7th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Wow, I didn’t know excommunication was even possible for Jews. My understanding is that it’s hard to become a Jew–you either have to have the right parents or go through a really arduous conversion process, but once you’re in, you’re in for good. Excommunication makes sense for Christianity and Islam; any idiot can wander into a church or mosque and say a few words, and just like that they’re on the rolls, so you have to have some way so remove the bad apples. Sort of like joining a frat vs. living in the dorms; anyone can live in the dorms but they kick you out if they catch you drinking or having sex, whereas you have to be rich enough/cool enough (on the Abercrombie and Fitch scale) in order to get into a frat but once you’re in you can pretty much do anything.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
G-d damn you Some Call Me Tim — you beat me to the Renegade Jews punch — and I too was going to invoke Ackerman as the most worthy claimant.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
If it’s disappointing to read, why post it so others can read it?
Excommunication can become a problem in religious states. It’s another lever on citizens.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
MNPundit–umm Matt’s not the one who used the phrase.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Does Yglesias’s description of this column as a “modest proposal” mean it was an ironic satire? Or is it some form of reverse irony? Irony squared? What is the slope of the irony curve? My head hurts.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Actually, I just looked up the wikipedia article on cherem and it looks like you can be excommunicated for a lot of things. Wanking, owning a dog that bites, various meat violations, etc. But, it’s only a temporary thing. Anyways, you should probably be excommunicated since I’m guessing you’ve probably done something or other on the list, but I bet Isi Liebler has wanked once or twice too.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Disappointing? The man just concocted the plot of the next Dan Brown novel.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
This sounds better in the original German. Pretty sad that Liebler’s screed is indistinguishable, in its paranoid rhetoric about Jews, from the advertising campaign that sold a nation on the holocaust.
Not surprising. Just sad.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“Such odious Jews can be traced back to apostates during the Middle Ages who fabricated blood libels and vile distortions of Jewish religious practice for Christian anti-Semites”
Is there any historical basis for this?
‘Tracing back’ presumably means ‘who I think are like these other (possibly imaginary) bad jews’
October 7th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Spokeytown that’s a very interesting wiki. An aspect of Judaism that I didn’t know existed. Some of the 24 reasons are really interesting.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
As Nimad points out, the use in the paragraph is so ridiculous I was merely mocking it and requested something a bit more believable if Matt is going to be joining the ranks of “Jewish-renegades-who-make-up-ridiculous-sounding-stuff.”
October 7th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
American Jews appear across the political spectrum from the far right to the far left. Yet with Israel, its unconditional support for their policies or heresy. It is possible to criticize Israel and be mad as hell about their policies regarding the Palestinians and still be a ‘fan’ of Israel. Why is that such a difficult concept to grasp among its supporters?
October 7th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
You might as well hang up your juice box right now, Matt.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Having abused the word anti-Semitism so much that it has become an almost meaningless word, the likes of Isi Liebler have been reduced to another baseless slander – blood libel.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
1) Does Conrad Black still own the Jerusalem Post?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Conrad_Black
2) Does he still have Richard Perle as Editor of the Jerusalem Post?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Perle#Business_interests_and_controversies
3) I mean, if the Neocons want to start throwing stones, I have a few hand grenades Matthew can have.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
The Blood Libel can be traced back to Jewish people?? What a load of shit. Disgraceful and shameful. Just like that Podhoretz whine about how most Jews don’t support his fascist leanings. Whomever this author is, they should be dismissed.
There are certainly self hating Jews who rage against Israel for primal reasons they themselves can’t understand. But that ain’t J Street. Not even close.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
@N
American Jews appear across the political spectrum from the far right to the far left. Yet with Israel, its unconditional support for their policies or heresy. It is possible to criticize Israel and be mad as hell about their policies regarding the Palestinians and still be a ‘fan’ of Israel. Why is that such a difficult concept to grasp among its supporters?
Don’t lump all of Israel’s supporters as those who write fringe nutbag articles like this one. That’s like saying all those who support the United States agree with Lou Dobbs.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Odd, considering that Isi Liebler has previously warned against religious extremism, that he now plays into the hands of the sort who consider rebuilding the Temple a major policy goal.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
What does it even mean, all this medieval crap? Tribalistic savages.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Re: If you were excommunicated, Matt, you’d be in excellent company.
Oh, Chr*st, not Spinoza again. The man was a Santa Monica hipster before his time. If you’re going to believe in a do-nothing Deist God like Spinoza, you might as well just call yourself an agnostic and be done with it.
Re: Wanking, owning a dog that bites, various meat violations, etc
Wow, they’re not kidding. I believe wh*cking off is a sin, of course, but it’s a minor sin and I don’t think worthy of excommunications.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Led @11: Yglesias’s description of this column as a “modest proposal”
I assumed he was referencing Jonathan Swift. If so, it doesn’t really work – Swift was doing satire. This thing reads more like… You know, this is a strange situation. It reads like a lot of stuff we’ve all heard of, but I feel really weird referencing Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in this context.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Can we get abb1 banned for being an actual anti-Semite please? Complaining about Israel is one thing but he’s been crossing the line lately.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
The man was a Santa Monica hipster before his time.
Did a hipster beat you up as a small child?
Seriously, it’s your all-purpose otherizing word. Dead seventeenth century Jewish philosopher? Hipster!
It’s both other-izing and very annoying.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
The medieval Jewish community was, however, always rife with great dissension over political matters both practical and theoretical (Maimonides’ letters indicate how widespread this was). Fabricating blood libels is something entirely different from dissenting over politics. Remember that Maimonides thinks that the best state is a monarchy, while Abravanel argues against Maimonides in this and argues the best state is a republic.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I have this 12″ single. Sorry, Ackerman&em;it’s been done.
The Renegade Jew, he’s comin’ after you.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
It may be disappointing to read, but unhinged appeals to ethnic solidarity in support of apartheid colonialism in Palestine are almost impossible to avoid in the Israeli and American media.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824152.html
October 7th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
As I have pointed, the Jewish antisemites who founded and run Jstreet are bought and paid for by the Arab enemies who wish to impose an Eichmann solution on the Jews of Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418604334&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418678387&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Jstreet is nothing but a front for the conspirators who are working overtime to delegitimize the State of Israel.
Re Don Williams
1. Mr. Williams is a little behind the curve. Conrad Black sold the Jerusalem Post (and the Chicago Sun Times) 2 or three years ago just before his sojourn in the slammer started.
2. Mr. Pearl AFAIK has never been in any way, shape, form, or regard associated with the Jerusalem Post. I have been a reader of their web site for years and have yet to see a column or op-ed by Mr. Pearl. Now if Mr. Williams wants to cite a real militant, I suggest Carolyn Glick who makes Mr. Pearl look like an Arab lover.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Having read the article, you could easily say the same thing about the JPost.
That sort of crazy talk won’t get you invited to many parties. It’s only a few steps away from saying that these enemies should be dealt with by any means necessary.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
This panic and harassment of American Jews by American Jews is as old as the State of Israel recognized by Harry Truman to the chagrin of the American right. It is sad for me to observe, as a Democrat though not a Jew, because it is painful to some Jewish Americans and Republicans I know and love on both sides of this divide.
Israeli and, before that, Turkish and Palestinian Jews have always had a wide range of views on the scope, scale, and character of the Jewish state: The old left-wing Zionists have dominated the military-patriotic institutions of Israel, while religious anti-Zionists and some newer, right-wing Zionists have had a long record of crime and violence against the actual Jewish state.
So, I think most Israeli Jews and Arabs will eventually prevent some Russian and South African Jews in Israel from using alliances with right-wing Christianists to recreate the apartheid and peonage in Palestine that they recently “left behind” elsewhere.
Israel seems to be a robust democracy — more robust than the American one in several respects that I admire.
But, its economy is severely distorted by a few “merchant bankers” who corruptly re-distribute US military assistance and Madoff-type financial operators who are trying to turn the West Bank into the San Fernando Valley.
My concern is the American Likudniki who seek to sabotage President Obama and very broad American interests in all of the Middle East and Central Europe by intimidating us into “excluding the middle” and “choosing” a pre-emptive military attack on Iran or Israeli annexation of Eretz Israel or … both — the Netanyahu platform, not the best or even the most of Zionism.
The American Likudniki are “burrowed” and “embedded” throughout the US military-financial establishment.
These are bootless Trotskyites or just arms-peddlers, drug-peddlers, pirates, or slavers who reduce everything to a “dialectic” and will kill anybody who stands in the way of their “synthesis” of extremes.
For my part, a plain-old liberal, I would just as soon we kept these “worst people in the world” — Jewish and not — in federal prisons or out of the US, Israel, Canada, Mexico, Honduras, … anywhere near.
As a Roman Catholic, all I have to say about politically-motivated ex-communication, … it did not work out so well for Spain or Austria. But, it worked well for Texas, in the end. We got and still have the Ladino-Sephardim — treasures, not pariahs.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Re daveNYC
There is no right to yell fire in a crowded theater and Jstreet is yelling fire in a crowed theater.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Cherem was introduced in the Middle Ages? Who knew? But seriously, folks, something really had to be done about that guy Spinoza, what with his blood libels & massacres.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Re SLC at 34: “2. Mr. Pearl AFAIK has never been in any way, shape, form, or regard associated with the Jerusalem Post. I have been a reader of their web site for years and have yet to see a column or op-ed by Mr. Pearl. Now if Mr. Williams wants to cite a real militant, I suggest Carolyn Glick who makes Mr. Pearl look like an Arab lover.”
————-
Er.. your comments re Richard PERLE would come across better if you spelled his name correctly, SLC.
I wouldn’t ordinarily quibble but I wouldn’t want the Prince of Darkness confused with Daniel Pearl.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Oh, Chr*st, not Spinoza again. The man was a Santa Monica hipster before his time. If you’re going to believe in a do-nothing Deist God like Spinoza, you might as well just call yourself an agnostic and be done with it.
Shorter Hector:
Analogous to Groucho Marx, I would not worship any God who might have actually created me.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
SLC@34 – According to the Jerusalem Post’s (undated) online edition;
“Richard Perle is chairman of the Defense Policy Board of the
US Department of Defense and a director of The Jerusalem Post”.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I don’t see how J Street’s criticism if Israel’s policies and the USA’s support of those policies can be considering to be endangering lives. That’s the same type of crap that was thrown out at the anti-war protesters back in 2003. You might as well say that all criticism of Israel is forbidden.
Not to mention that there’s probably an exemption if the building actually is on fire.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
[...] October 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment Matthew Yglesias » Should I Be Excommunicated? . [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
SLC, do really really believe that Jews are so super-human that they are above any criticism? And that those of us who aren’t Jews are sub-human? That’s pretty much what all of your writings imply, and there’s only one word for it: racism. And as a non-Jew, I really don’t buy your “Chosen People” crap. Every culture in the world should be subject to criticism. Especially those that claim that they are exempt from it. Once you take the attitude that a certain people can do whatever they want and kill whomever they want, you create a monster. And Israel already is a monster because we have taken that attitude. A monster with more nuclear weapons than Iran would ever dream of having. And if there’s one country in the world that would actually use those weapons, it’s Israel. What do they have to lose? The US will always support them no matter what they do. If Israel nuked New York for being insufficiently pro-Israel, the US would veto the Security Council’s condemnation of it. I’m sick of kissing Israel’s ass. The time to cut them off was about 30 years ago.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
SLC –
No, J Street is shouting “Fire!” in a burning building.
October 7th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
SLC has an interesting attitude. For example:
”
Re voice of reason
“Die painfully, you genocidal monster.”
It’s only genocide when one kills human beings.
Posted by SLC | July 24, 2008 12:28 PM “
October 7th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Hector wrote:
Oh, Chr*st, not Spinoza again. The man was a Santa Monica hipster before his time. If you’re going to believe in a do-nothing Deist God like Spinoza, you might as well just call yourself an agnostic and be done with it.
A potentially revealing comment–Hector, are you basically saying that you think anyone who doesn’t believe in your particular version of God cannot possibly have sincere reasons for believing in their own version (like all the philosophical arguments Spinoza used to justify his God), so they “might as well” just admit they don’t have any strong beliefs about whether God exists or what God is like?
Oh, and if Spinoza was just a “hipster” would you say the same thing about Einstein? He had an idea of God heavily influenced by Spinoza, but strongly denied that he was an atheist. See some of the quotes here, like these on Spinoza:
1) “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
2) “We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul as it reveals itself in man and animal.”
3) “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly.”
But to see that he definitely denied that there is no God at all, see these comments:
4) “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”
5) “On your question of whether I have a clear idea of God as I have of a triangle, I would answer in the affirmative; but on your question whether I have a clear image of God as I have of a triangle, I would answer in the negative. For of God no image can be made.”
6) “I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who–in their grudge against the traditional “opium for the people”–cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.”
7) “every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
October 7th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I have no doubt that Hector would indeed view Einstein as an atheist or an agnostic, and almost certainly he would call him a hipster.
October 7th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Well, in Hector’s view, we’re all hipsters. I’m really not sure what a hipster is or who the hip people that I should be hanging out with are. But I live in Boulder, so surely that’s enough. If you live long enough, every label known to man will be hung on you.
October 7th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Boychick, Isi Liebler can’t kick us out of Judaism, we never inhabited the same one he does.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Jesse M.,
Dear God, I was uncharitable, wasn’t I? Well, OK. Let me retract that somewhat.
Though I have some heterodox views on some theological matters, the God I believe in is basically the Trinitarian God. I believe that the second Person of that Trinity became incarnate of a sinless perpetual virgin, that He was tempted by the devil, that he made the blind see and the lame walk, raised Lazarus from the death, was crucified for us and for our salvation, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven….you get the picture. So clearly, I think that Einstein (and presumably Spinoza) were _wrong_ about the nature of God. I think that their concept of God is intellectually implausible, because the concept of God that seems most plausible to me is Anselm’s Perfect Being, and perfection implies moral perfection, which implies that He cares about His creatures. When I first became convinced that atheism was false (I was raised a hard core atheist) the first faith I decided to reject was Deism, because it seemed to me like watered-down atheism. So yes, I think Spinoza was _wrong_. But I don’t actually think he and Einstein were insincere. I’ll concede that Einstein, at least (and presumibly Spinoza too) _believed_ what they were saying.
I guess I just don’t see why the argument for a deistic god is plausible. To me the two strongest reasons to believe in God are 1) Anselm’s ontological argument and 2) the argument from miracles and from personal experience. Neither of them gets you to a deistic god. What grounds are there to believe in a deistic god but stop there? If you’re going to throw out ontology, miracles, revelation, and mystical experience, then why _not_ go the whole hog and throw out God too?
October 7th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
re: Should I Be Excommunicated?
My most fervent wish is to be threatened with Excommunication. By somebody. By anybody. How thrilling it would be! Alas, no one takes me seriously enough. I am -don’t you see!- just another anonymous hipster.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Anselm’s ontological argument is a joke and nothing but circular reasoning. But if Hector thinks it’s valid, then surely he’d agree with this. I can conceive of a world where Hector does not it exist. Because I can conceive of such a world, that world must exist. Therefore, Hector does not exist. Kind of silly, isn’t it? But it’s no more silly than Anselm’s argument.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Hey, Hector, something for you to smirk at:
Scientists have discovered that use of the Pill shifts women’s choice in mates away from manly men and toward favoring girly boys.
But then I bet you already knew that.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218808/Contraceptive-pill-women-attracted-masculine-men–interested-boyish-looks.html
October 8th, 2009 at 12:42 am
How about an ineffable God? Can’t wrap your mind around there always having being something, or there having been nothing, so why pretend you’ve cracked the nut and have God all figured out. Maybe there is humility in awe and respect, without all the rule making and objectification of a deity to serve ones own neurotic need for control and to quell the dread of non-being.
Why do so many people feel the need to leap to souls, and eternal souls, and damnation, and heaven, just because they’ve assumed there is a God? And identifying with the God is just cheeky. What universe has anyone created, lately? Presuming to know the will of God is about the most blasphemous thing I can think of.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:00 am
What – only one accusation of antisemitism in a thread full of Jstreet-loving Zionists? Damn, this is disappointing. Why do I even waste my time on you idiots.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Your previous comment wasn’t about zionists. It was about Judaism. I don’t care what you have to say about Israel, you can criticize their policies or even their existence all you want. But “Tribalistic savages” is over the line. Imagine if you had said that about any other group of people, and then tell me that it isn’t racist.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:36 am
This doesn’t have anything to do with Judaism; are you implying that you and Yglesias are followers of Judaism? Of course not, this all about tribalism, secular tribalism.
I can’t imagine any other similar imaginary group of people discussing this sort of crap in a mainstream blog (not to mention a pseudo-mainstream newspaper like Jerusalem Post); certainly not “white people”, or “black people” or “Hispanics”. They would’ve been (quite deservingly) shunned and called insane. Only you, nutters, consider this savagery acceptable and even cute.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:08 am
A little OT but I’m sure that the blogs resident Bolshevik, Mr. Don Williams will love this.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1119671.html
October 8th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Re: Scientists have discovered that use of the Pill shifts women’s choice in mates away from manly men and toward favoring girly boys.
Yes, I heard about the study when it came out, which was some time ago.
I don’t know why I would smirk at it. I don’t object to the Pill, per se, though like other things it can be used for bad purposes as well as good ones. As for masculine vs. boyish males, you know as well as I do that when I condemn hipsters, I am condemning a group of people defined by ideology, not by looks or by temperament.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Re: I can conceive of a world where Hector does not it exist. Because I can conceive of such a world, that world must exist.
Fostert,
The problems with your argument, again, are that “A world without Hector” is not a pre-existing concept in your mind, and that there is not anything inherently ‘perfect’ in a world without Hector.
October 8th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Aqua Regia,
If you think you can make any headway with Mr. Abb1, you have another think coming.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Yeah, another think wouldn’t hurt any of you.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Existence is not a predicate, Hector! You’re smart enough to know this.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Re SLC at 59: “A little OT but I’m sure that the blogs resident Bolshevik, Mr. Don Williams will love this.”
———–
I thought that the subdued way in which Haaretz reported this was hilarious. They know that THEY are probably next on Haim’s list.
After which Haaretz’s staff will have to dress up in garishly colored, skin tight cat suits and shout out “Zionist Power” while Haim’s film crew rolls the cameras.
hee hee Be afraid. Be very afraid.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Matthias,
Thus said Kant, but he was wrong.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Hector actually buys Anselm’s ontological argument? In 2009?
October 8th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Josh E.,
I’ll tell you what I _don’t_ buy, which is the arguments of the late and unlamented Arian slave-rapist Thomas Jefferson.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Why not? The Trinitarian God seems ok with both slavery and rape.
October 8th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Isa Liebler is a typical alta cocka with no clue. There are far worse rodefs (Alan Dershowitz, anyone?), essentially a Jew who corrupts and endangers his or her fellow Jews and for whom the rabbinate gives special permission to eliminate for the good of the tribe.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Re Hector
I’ll tell you what I _don’t_ buy, which is the arguments of the late and unlamented Arian slave-rapist Thomas Jefferson.
Now Mr. Hector, let’s be fair about this. The evidence is that the relationship between Mr. Jefferson and Ms. Heming was far more complicated then you have described. The fact is that the two of them were in France in the early 1780s and slavery had been abolished there several years previously. Ms. Heming could, at any time have bade hasta la vista to Mr. Jefferson and gone off on her own. Mr. Jefferson had no legal authority to take her back with him when he returned to America. He, in fact, had to persuade her to return with him voluntarily, probably helped along by the fact that she was already pregnant with their first child.
The evidence, such as can be determined, is that they, in fact, had what we would no refer to as a common law marriage (he could not have legally married her even if he so desired).
October 8th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Re T
I really like the attacks on Prof. Dershowitz, a man who favors a 2 state solution and has opposed the settlement activity since day 1. Apparently, to Israel bashers like Mr. T, anyone who has the temerity to say anything positive about the State of Israel is no good.
October 8th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Re SLC:
Dershowitz has pooh-poohed Palestinian suffering in a manner that would make Goebbels wince and has penned plagaristic texts recapitulating every canard ever told about the good intentions of Israel. He’s also been front and center in the smear campaign against President Carter and characterized the Goldstone report as a “blood libel.” Martin Bormann favored shipping the Jews to Madagascar and Himmler once praised the Jewish knack for currency speculation. Shouldn’t they be given some slack?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Re Trevor
Hey, Mr. Trevor is back with the old canard that Prof. Dershowitz is a plagiarizer. That accusation, made by Jewish anti-semite Norman Finkelstein, has been totally discredited. By the way, has Mr. Trevors’ relationship with his pere, the Federal Judge, improved since his last rants on this blog?
October 8th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Yeah, Dershowitz discredited the plagarism charge himself. No one else did, but by SLC’s logic – if O.J. said he didn’t do it, then he must not have.
and, a feuilliton is not a “rant”.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
(Gideon Levy report, Haaretz)
About an hour’s drive from us, the unbelievably cruel reality continues. Everything is done there in the name of us all, supposedly, and in the name of security, supposedly. And here among us there is either distorted discourse or non-discourse.
Nothing will change as long as this state of affairs continues. A recent report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs draws a shocking picture of what is happening in Gaza. For example, 75 percent of its inhabitants, more than 1 million people, are suffering from nutritional deficiencies, 90 percent must live through power blackouts for four to eight hours every day, 40 percent of those who apply to leave for medical treatment are refused by Israel and 140,000 inhabitants are unemployed.
All these figures reflect a situation that has degenerated badly over the past year, and all of them stem from the siege in its third year. How many of us know this? How many of us does this touch at all, between the bar and the gym? And above all, where did we get the gall to decide the fate of another people?
October 8th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Hector you cavil at “pre-existing” ideas but accept Anselm’s argument. (Do you understand the contradiction?) Furthermore, you justify it with a string of abstractions. No two minds have the same version of an abstraction. (For example, you’ve dismissed the idea that Elle Macpherson was perfect.) So which “perfection” is God? (People have been killed over the issue. Lots of them.) You seem to see humans as angels-in-a-body so that thought has some tremendous reality outside the cranium. Thought is a biological process — a dog pissing on a tree is a good correlative for speaking.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Re: a dog pissing on a tree is a good correlative for speaking.
In which case, as Haldane pointed out, it’s unclear why I should pay attention to your words and thoughts. I don’t pay attention to dogs pissing, after all, and certainly don’t think dogs pissing helps us understand the world. Of course I don’t believe that (thought has certain biological manifestations, but it isn’t a biological process- the holy angels think, as does God, and they don’t have bodies) which is why I do treat your ideas as having intellectual content (false though they be).
Angels in a body isn’t a bad analogy for humans, as long as we concede that a person consists of _both_, and that neither a disembodied spirit or a dead body is the full measure of what we are as human beings (now, and after the corporeal resurrection).
I don’t cavil at pre-existing ideas- I deny that certain ideas, like Elle McPherson or a pink elephant, are naturally pre-existent in our thoughts.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
It isn’t clear to me what it means to “pay attention” to words and thoughts or if it matters when we do. Run hunger, fear and sex through enough synaptic gates and you can come up with lots of personalities and habits.
You say angels “think” but that’s comic. You’ve never seen one. And other minds are shut off metaphysically from us. We don’t know if the guy across the street thinks though I suspect he does and that some animals do — several species of them pass the mirror test. Like elephants, bonobos, chimps, and (I’ve heard) mynah birds and octopus.
I deny that some classes of thoughts are naturally pre-existent. Abstractions like God or perfection are definitely not pre-existent. I have no idea what you mean by perfection and you have no idea what I mean by it. We cant point to perfection the way we can to a damp tree. Perfection sounds to me like a peculiarly Greek idea. I don’t believe it shows up in the Old Testament so it’d be tough to posit that it’s pre-existent in all humans. Perfection, btw, horrified the Greek mind. Their gods certainly weren’t perfect.
I balk at the idea of a God who hides and yet menaces his creatures with eternal punishment as a result of not guessing perfectly at his nature and whims. Yours is a weird notion of perfection.
October 8th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Re: You say angels “think” but that’s comic. You’ve never seen one.
I doubt you know just what I’ve seen, or that I know what you may have seen. Be that as it may, I have never experienced an angelic presence in a wakeful state, though I have in dreams.
Re: We cant point to perfection the way we can to a damp tree. Perfection sounds to me like a peculiarly Greek idea
It is a Greek idea, in large part. Though the Persians believed in a perfect God as well. I think we both have some idea of perfection, as both Anselm and his Fool did. A perfect being is the _best_ being that our mind can conceive- and it;s fair to say that our mind’s conception is not the true God, but simply an image or approximation. If we sit down and hash out our images of perfection, we may be able to agree that, say, your vision of God is better, more perfect, than mine. In which case I would agree that your picture of God is a better approximation to the truth, or vice versa.
Re: yet menaces his creatures with eternal punishment as a result of not guessing perfectly at his nature and whims
People are condemned not by God but by their own choices. And no one is held responsible for denying God, or doing other things, out of honest error. In order to reject the good you must first know the good. Invincible ignorance covers a multitude of sins (nearly all of them, potentially).
In other words, if you’re waiting for God to show himself to you before you can believe, don’t worry. You’ll get the chance some day.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Re Trevor
As usual, Mr. Trevor is a fucking liar. An investigation of Dr. Finkelsteins’ charges was conducted by Harvard and it was found that they were without substance. That, of course, hasn’t stopped fuckface Finkelstein and his pals at counterpunch or goat fuckers like Mr. Trevor from repeating the lies.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hector, the idea of living forever dismays me. Three score and ten is plenty.
I have no idea what “best” could mean. Like a true, Medievalist you define one abstraction with another. And like John Calvin you squirm under the implications about what Hell could mean for a Perfect God. A Perfect God wouldn’t need a PR guy spinning his responsibilities, and the Yahweh of the prophets wouldn’t appreciate you dimming his savagery either.
October 9th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Re: Like a true, Medievalist
That’s the nicest compliment I’ve heard today.
I abhor Calvin, but not as much as I abhor Zwingli.
October 10th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
US of israel B52 cheney Nobel peace 911 false flag NAFTA nation Treasury theft 7 nation army Persia nat gas Of mice & men Red dawn 2010 Mil spec anthrax Pres carter smile Chickenhawk roost American holocaust Mossad megaphone USS liberty & trident James blunt no bravery Jericho III north america Nile is not just a river in egypt