Dr. Otto Gross – The One Truly Committed Psychoanalyst
A bit about Otto Gross:
OTTO GROSS : Nietzschean Psychoanalyst, Love Guru, Pagan Anarchist
http://tinyurl.com/2lozna
Wikipedia article
http://tinyurl.com/2pnslv
Who was Otto Gross?
http://tinyurl.com/38sc78
What made Dr. Otto Gross so dangerous a threat to the establishment?
The BBC documentary series "The Century of the Self", to be found on You Tube, proposes convincingly that Sigmund Freud, and more so his daughter Anna, intended psychoanalysis to be a most power and indispensable tool of population control and manipulation.
Society was held up as the unquestionable standard of normalcy and any aberrant, rebellious or non-normative behavior demonstrated by any individual was considered pathological on the part of the individual. That pathology was to be corrected with psychoanalysis.
In contradistinction, Otto Gross wrote the following, which is excerpted from the small amount of his work that has been translated. Evidently, the psychiatric community would rather keep him in obscurity. You will see why presently.
"…I must assume that knowledge of the Freudian method and its important results is already widespread. Since Freud we understand all that is inappropriate and inadequate in our mental life to be the results of inner experiences whose emotional content excited intense conflict in us. At the time of those experiences – especially in early childhood – the conflict seemed insoluble, and they were excluded from the continuity of the inner life as it is known to the conscious ego. Since then they have continued to motivate us from the unconscious in an uncontrollably destructive and oppositional way. I believe that what is really decisive for the occurrence of repression is to be found in the inner conflict…rather than in relation to the sexual impulse. Sexuality is the universal motive for the infinite number if internal conflicts, though not in itself but as the object of a sexual morality which stands in insoluble conflict with everything that is of value and belongs to willing and reality.
It appears that at the deepest level the real nature of these conflicts may always be traced back to one comprehensive principle, to the conflict between that which belongs to oneself and that which belongs to the other, between that which is innately individual and that which has been suggested to us, i.e., that which is educated or otherwise forced into us.
This conflict of individuality with an authority that has penetrated into our own innermost self belongs more to the period of childhood than to any other time.
The tragedy is correspondingly greater as a person's individuality is more richly endowed, is stronger in its own particular nature. The earlier and the more intensely that the capacity to withstand suggestion and interference begins its protective function, the earlier and the more intensely will the self-divisive conflict be deepened and exacerbated. The only natures to be spared are those in whom the predisposition towards individuality is so weakly developed and is so little capable of resistance that under the pressure of suggestion from social surroundings, and the influence of education, it succumbs, in a manner of speaking, to atrophy and disappears altogether - natures whose guiding motives are at last composed entirely of alien, handed-down standards of evaluation and habits of reaction,. In such second-rate characters a certain apparent health can sustain itself, i.e., a peaceful and harmonious functioning of the whole of the soul or, more accurately, of what remains of the soul. On the other hand, each individual who stands in any way higher than this normal contemporary state of things is not, in existing, conditions, in a position to escape pathogenic conflict and to attain his individual health i.e., the full harmonious development of the highest possibilities of his innate individual character.
It is understood from all this that such characters hitherto, no matter in what outward form they manifest themselves – whether they are opposed to laws and morality, or lead us positively beyond the average, or collapse internally and become ill – have been perceived with either disgust, veneration or pity as disturbing exceptions whom people try to eliminate. It will come to be understood that, already today, there exists the demand to approve these people as the healthy, the warriors, the progressives, and to learn from and through them.
Not one of the revolutions in recorded history has succeeded in establishing freedom for individuality…Only now can it be recognized that the root of all authority lies in the family, that the combination of sexuality and authority, as it shows itself in the patriarchal family still prevailing today, claps every individuality in chains…" – "Overcoming Cultural Crisis", originally published in Die Aktion in April 1913, translated by Dr. John Turner of the University of Wales, Swansea, courtesy of Gottfried Heueer and the International Otto Gross Society, reprinted in ANARCHISM – A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE to 1939), pp. 282-3, Robert Graham, editor, copyright 2005 Black Rose Books.
We can see from the passage above, in which he eerily presaged his own "elimination", why Dr. Otto Gross was considered so very dangerous by the psychoanalytic establishment.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Zeno, Zeno and Big Bill
It comes as no surprise that the Paradox of Motion, known as Achilles and the Tortoise posited by Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 BC – ca. 430 BC: [ See: http://tinyurl.com/yp2g5r http://tinyurl.com/8xtcy and http://tinyurl.com/2ztsuy ]) should have entertained the mind of Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872– February 2, 1970), as it did so many intellects of eminence since the time of its pronunciation. Russell wrote: "Having invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and profound, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be one and all sophisms. After two thousand years of continual refutation, these sophisms were reinstated, and made the foundation of a mathematical renaissance…" PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA I, 1903
The date of the publication of the PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA is significant. Einstein was working on his theory of Special Relativity and it was a mere three years after Max Planck had discovered that E=hf. The world was ready for another way of thinking. The work of Zeno of Elea, which had come to be considered mere philosophical amusement, was rehabilitated and given serious consideration once again, this time in light of new thinking about the nature of space, time and movement.
The following is a physicist's attempt to tackle the problems that Zeno of Elea raised: http://tinyurl.com/ky5p5 . The author ends his considerations thus: "Have we now finally resolved Zeno's "youthful effort"? Given the history of "final resolutions", from Aristotle onwards, it's probably foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of "Rorschach image" onto which people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)."
We should, then, have expected that the Paradox of Motion articulated by Zeno of Elea in the 5th C. BCE would be solved, if at all, by a physicist or an analytic philosopher. Indeed, they tried. While their efforts were admirable, they did not produce a satisfying outcome as they readily admit.
It may be a surprise to some that the Paradox of Motion was most unambiguously articulated, elucidated and finally resolved in December of 1911 by William Dudley (Big Bill) Haywood (http://tinyurl.com/2og22u , http://tinyurl.com/2jpfkr ) who, despite having been referred to as "the Lincoln of Labor" by Eugene V. Debs (see: http://tinyurl.com/bq2h2 ) for his passionate and compassionate desire to emancipate laborers, from whose class he hailed, was also the subject of a biography entitled ROUGHNECK1.
It is highly unlikely that Haywood thought of himself as a philosopher, although his grasp of the conditions that create an underclass of workers was singularly insightful, analytical and sensitive. It is very unlikely that Haywood had considered the Paradox of Motion of Zeno of Elea from a purely philosophical view, if he ever did at all. Haywood was a man of action, not sophistry. He most certainly was not versed in higher mathematics. His education was cut short in early childhood. At the age of nine he began to work in a coal mine. Having been born into the working class in the United States in 1869 there was precious little time for him to learn philosophy or mathematics. It was as an honest man of action that he would solve the Paradox of Motion.
Had Haywood learned philosophy at all, we should have expected him to be more interested in the Anarchistic statement of Zeno of Citium than the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. He likely would have been in agreement with the stance of Aristippus vis-à-vis society, if not with the spirit of his philosophy.
Zeno of Citium (ca. 336-ca. 224 BC) was so named after the Greek colony in Cypress that he lived in. Zeno of Citium was a student of Crates of Thebes, the Cynic (see: http://tinyurl.com/3aubby ). He was a merchant, the son of a merchant. Interestingly, like the vast majority of Anarchists of over two millennia later; he was not a common laborer, but was deeply concerned about a system of social organization that the common people would most benefit from if it were implemented. He worked at his profession until he reached the age of forty-two, when he founded the philosophical school that we know as Stoicism. The school of philosophy he founded was named for his teaching platform, the stoa, (Greek for 'platform' or 'porch'). None of Zeno of Citium's works are extant, to the best of our knowledge, but one of the quotes of Zeno of Citium that we are in possession of is this: "Men are rational, they do not need control; rational beings have no need of a state, or of money, or of law-courts, or of any organised, institutional life. In the perfect society men and women shall wear identical clothes and feed in a common pasture."
Aristippus (either the elder or the younger, see: http://tinyurl.com/2a9omp) was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, the salient tenets of which were extreme, even crude, hedonism and egoism. Though so very different in his views from the Stoics; Aristippus articulated a similar sentiment concerning government as that of Zeno of Citium. He wrote: "The wise should not give up their liberty to the state".
Mayhap, had Big Bill had the leisure, he would have concerned himself with the Anarchistic ruminations of Zeno of Citium and Aristippus. It is highly unlikely that he did, or would, concern himself with the Paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. So, it is all the more remarkable that he is the final elucidator and resolver of the Paradox of Motion.
In December of 1911, Haywood, who had once been a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America but was leaning more toward Anarchism by that time, told a Lower East Side audience at New York's Cooper Union that parliamentary Socialists were "step-at-a-time people whose every step is just a little shorter than the preceding step."
In making that statement, Big Bill Haywood, the child of working-class parents whose formal education ended when he went to work as a nine-year-old boy, made manifest the solution to the Paradox of Motion that Zeno of Elea had posed in the 5th C. BCE, the self-same Paradox that had proven to be so inscrutable a conundrum that the greatest minds who attempted to tackle it since its pronunciation could not solve it definitively.
Haywood, the man of action, dedicated to the cause of Human advancement, understood the nature of action as no analytic philosopher, mathematician or physicist had. Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion is not a phenomenological problem at all and any attempt to resolve it as such leads nowhere. No advancement in solving the problem such can be made. Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion is a moral question. Haywood understood that those who take action on the pretense of advancing others, while interested only in their own advancement would make no progress either for themselves or for others. To such people attempts at advancement are ever less efficacious. Such people would, ineluctably, become jaded and come to the conclusion that progress for Humankind is impossible.
We see, then, that attempting to solve Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion either as a purely phenomenological problem while in a purely intellectual state of mind, and thus not passionately concerned for Human welfare, or attempting to understand it while under the influence of desire for personal advancement will lead one nowhere. That is the moral lesson of the Paradox and, this author believes, is the salient lesson that Zeno of Elea intended when he posited the paradox.
Haywood knew that being untrue to oneself and sacrificing one's values on the alter of realpolitik caused myriad phantasmagoria to arise in the mind because those conclusions are based on convoluted thinking. The convolutions in thinking that people resort to in order to make dishonest decisions is that which causes every path to become crooked and advancement impossible. The illusion that one is advancing is one of the phantasmagoria of the disingenuous, while it is very real in the worlds of those who set themselves to action for Humanity's sake.
Simply stated, opportunistic phonies go nowhere fast.
ROUGHNECK, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 199.
Article on CRIMSON BIRD: http://www.crimsonbird.com/history/zeno.htm
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan of Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
It comes as no surprise that the Paradox of Motion, known as Achilles and the Tortoise posited by Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 BC – ca. 430 BC: [ See: http://tinyurl.com/yp2g5r http://tinyurl.com/8xtcy and http://tinyurl.com/2ztsuy ]) should have entertained the mind of Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872– February 2, 1970), as it did so many intellects of eminence since the time of its pronunciation. Russell wrote: "Having invented four arguments all immeasurably subtle and profound, the grossness of subsequent philosophers pronounced him to be a mere ingenious juggler, and his arguments to be one and all sophisms. After two thousand years of continual refutation, these sophisms were reinstated, and made the foundation of a mathematical renaissance…" PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA I, 1903
The date of the publication of the PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA is significant. Einstein was working on his theory of Special Relativity and it was a mere three years after Max Planck had discovered that E=hf. The world was ready for another way of thinking. The work of Zeno of Elea, which had come to be considered mere philosophical amusement, was rehabilitated and given serious consideration once again, this time in light of new thinking about the nature of space, time and movement.
The following is a physicist's attempt to tackle the problems that Zeno of Elea raised: http://tinyurl.com/ky5p5 . The author ends his considerations thus: "Have we now finally resolved Zeno's "youthful effort"? Given the history of "final resolutions", from Aristotle onwards, it's probably foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of "Rorschach image" onto which people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)."
We should, then, have expected that the Paradox of Motion articulated by Zeno of Elea in the 5th C. BCE would be solved, if at all, by a physicist or an analytic philosopher. Indeed, they tried. While their efforts were admirable, they did not produce a satisfying outcome as they readily admit.
It may be a surprise to some that the Paradox of Motion was most unambiguously articulated, elucidated and finally resolved in December of 1911 by William Dudley (Big Bill) Haywood (http://tinyurl.com/2og22u , http://tinyurl.com/2jpfkr ) who, despite having been referred to as "the Lincoln of Labor" by Eugene V. Debs (see: http://tinyurl.com/bq2h2 ) for his passionate and compassionate desire to emancipate laborers, from whose class he hailed, was also the subject of a biography entitled ROUGHNECK1.
It is highly unlikely that Haywood thought of himself as a philosopher, although his grasp of the conditions that create an underclass of workers was singularly insightful, analytical and sensitive. It is very unlikely that Haywood had considered the Paradox of Motion of Zeno of Elea from a purely philosophical view, if he ever did at all. Haywood was a man of action, not sophistry. He most certainly was not versed in higher mathematics. His education was cut short in early childhood. At the age of nine he began to work in a coal mine. Having been born into the working class in the United States in 1869 there was precious little time for him to learn philosophy or mathematics. It was as an honest man of action that he would solve the Paradox of Motion.
Had Haywood learned philosophy at all, we should have expected him to be more interested in the Anarchistic statement of Zeno of Citium than the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. He likely would have been in agreement with the stance of Aristippus vis-à-vis society, if not with the spirit of his philosophy.
Zeno of Citium (ca. 336-ca. 224 BC) was so named after the Greek colony in Cypress that he lived in. Zeno of Citium was a student of Crates of Thebes, the Cynic (see: http://tinyurl.com/3aubby ). He was a merchant, the son of a merchant. Interestingly, like the vast majority of Anarchists of over two millennia later; he was not a common laborer, but was deeply concerned about a system of social organization that the common people would most benefit from if it were implemented. He worked at his profession until he reached the age of forty-two, when he founded the philosophical school that we know as Stoicism. The school of philosophy he founded was named for his teaching platform, the stoa, (Greek for 'platform' or 'porch'). None of Zeno of Citium's works are extant, to the best of our knowledge, but one of the quotes of Zeno of Citium that we are in possession of is this: "Men are rational, they do not need control; rational beings have no need of a state, or of money, or of law-courts, or of any organised, institutional life. In the perfect society men and women shall wear identical clothes and feed in a common pasture."
Aristippus (either the elder or the younger, see: http://tinyurl.com/2a9omp) was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, the salient tenets of which were extreme, even crude, hedonism and egoism. Though so very different in his views from the Stoics; Aristippus articulated a similar sentiment concerning government as that of Zeno of Citium. He wrote: "The wise should not give up their liberty to the state".
Mayhap, had Big Bill had the leisure, he would have concerned himself with the Anarchistic ruminations of Zeno of Citium and Aristippus. It is highly unlikely that he did, or would, concern himself with the Paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. So, it is all the more remarkable that he is the final elucidator and resolver of the Paradox of Motion.
In December of 1911, Haywood, who had once been a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America but was leaning more toward Anarchism by that time, told a Lower East Side audience at New York's Cooper Union that parliamentary Socialists were "step-at-a-time people whose every step is just a little shorter than the preceding step."
In making that statement, Big Bill Haywood, the child of working-class parents whose formal education ended when he went to work as a nine-year-old boy, made manifest the solution to the Paradox of Motion that Zeno of Elea had posed in the 5th C. BCE, the self-same Paradox that had proven to be so inscrutable a conundrum that the greatest minds who attempted to tackle it since its pronunciation could not solve it definitively.
Haywood, the man of action, dedicated to the cause of Human advancement, understood the nature of action as no analytic philosopher, mathematician or physicist had. Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion is not a phenomenological problem at all and any attempt to resolve it as such leads nowhere. No advancement in solving the problem such can be made. Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion is a moral question. Haywood understood that those who take action on the pretense of advancing others, while interested only in their own advancement would make no progress either for themselves or for others. To such people attempts at advancement are ever less efficacious. Such people would, ineluctably, become jaded and come to the conclusion that progress for Humankind is impossible.
We see, then, that attempting to solve Zeno of Elea's Paradox of Motion either as a purely phenomenological problem while in a purely intellectual state of mind, and thus not passionately concerned for Human welfare, or attempting to understand it while under the influence of desire for personal advancement will lead one nowhere. That is the moral lesson of the Paradox and, this author believes, is the salient lesson that Zeno of Elea intended when he posited the paradox.
Haywood knew that being untrue to oneself and sacrificing one's values on the alter of realpolitik caused myriad phantasmagoria to arise in the mind because those conclusions are based on convoluted thinking. The convolutions in thinking that people resort to in order to make dishonest decisions is that which causes every path to become crooked and advancement impossible. The illusion that one is advancing is one of the phantasmagoria of the disingenuous, while it is very real in the worlds of those who set themselves to action for Humanity's sake.
Simply stated, opportunistic phonies go nowhere fast.
ROUGHNECK, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 199.
Article on CRIMSON BIRD: http://www.crimsonbird.com/history/zeno.htm
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan of Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Pity the Poor Stem Cell
Surely you have seen the highly-magnified photos in magazines of bedraggled, malnourished stems cells peeping out piteously from squalid hovels.
Don't turn away. Don't pretend you don't know. Don't pretend that you don't see.
Think of their totipotential! Imagine what they can grow up to be with your help!
Show them you care.
Adopt a stem cell. Do it now. Tomorrow may be too late for these, our smallest and most vulnerable, victims.
Just a $1 a day can make so much difference in their little lives.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan of Tzfat (Safed), Israel, GRANDMOTHER
a.k.a. D2 and Doreen, Queen of Éire East and West,
The Laputans Manqué and Jewish Israeli Princess (JIP); also
Founder, Adept Extraordinaire and Sole Devotee of
Anarcho-Anachro-Nacro-Necro-Narcissism
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Surely you have seen the highly-magnified photos in magazines of bedraggled, malnourished stems cells peeping out piteously from squalid hovels.
Don't turn away. Don't pretend you don't know. Don't pretend that you don't see.
Think of their totipotential! Imagine what they can grow up to be with your help!
Show them you care.
Adopt a stem cell. Do it now. Tomorrow may be too late for these, our smallest and most vulnerable, victims.
Just a $1 a day can make so much difference in their little lives.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan of Tzfat (Safed), Israel, GRANDMOTHER
a.k.a. D2 and Doreen, Queen of Éire East and West,
The Laputans Manqué and Jewish Israeli Princess (JIP); also
Founder, Adept Extraordinaire and Sole Devotee of
Anarcho-Anachro-Nacro-Necro-Narcissism
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Becoming Ever More Israeli
In July I will be here 25 years.
I married here and became a parent here. So, most of my life as a responsible adult and the whole setting up of home and family experience happened to me here. My husband is a Sabra and an expert in the Hebrew language. So, my interactions with my family are mostly in Hebrew. In fact, my daughter's English is very poor. I have no choice but to speak in Hebrew with her. My son's English is considerably better.
I can pronounce the gutteral reish and ayin, even the kuf, which is so deep a gutteral that it issues from somewhere around one's knees.
Still, the process of becoming more Israeli goes ever on.
I remember being aghast that people would pick nuts or other finger foods out of the large, open sacks and boxes in the shuq. It looked so unsanitary to me. Just the thought of any number of people whose hands had been I know not where touching food and eating it one after the other me made me sick.
One day; I pinched a cookie in the shuq, tossing regard for sanitation to the wind. I enjoyed the septic morsel thoroughly and was delighted with my progress toward real Israeliship (Israeliness?).
When I got home I said to my son: "Today I became a real Israeli! I ate a cookie from an open box in the shuq!"
He looked at me levelly and said: "If you were a real Israeli you would do it without thinking about it and would never mention it."
I advanced nicely and today I even make my tuna and egg salad with humous instead of mayo.
Today, I took yet another giant step toward become a real local. Though I have a plastic squeeze bottle of real Heinz ketchup in the fridge; I put techina (tahini) on my hamburger today, like a lot of Israelis do. The first time I heard of putting techina on hamburger I thought I'd barf.
My next project: Learning how to smooth humous and labane on my plate with the back of a spoon and fashion a perfect indented pool in the middle for olive oil and za'atar.
When a Jew becomes more Israeli is that acculturation or enculturation?
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
In July I will be here 25 years.
I married here and became a parent here. So, most of my life as a responsible adult and the whole setting up of home and family experience happened to me here. My husband is a Sabra and an expert in the Hebrew language. So, my interactions with my family are mostly in Hebrew. In fact, my daughter's English is very poor. I have no choice but to speak in Hebrew with her. My son's English is considerably better.
I can pronounce the gutteral reish and ayin, even the kuf, which is so deep a gutteral that it issues from somewhere around one's knees.
Still, the process of becoming more Israeli goes ever on.
I remember being aghast that people would pick nuts or other finger foods out of the large, open sacks and boxes in the shuq. It looked so unsanitary to me. Just the thought of any number of people whose hands had been I know not where touching food and eating it one after the other me made me sick.
One day; I pinched a cookie in the shuq, tossing regard for sanitation to the wind. I enjoyed the septic morsel thoroughly and was delighted with my progress toward real Israeliship (Israeliness?).
When I got home I said to my son: "Today I became a real Israeli! I ate a cookie from an open box in the shuq!"
He looked at me levelly and said: "If you were a real Israeli you would do it without thinking about it and would never mention it."
I advanced nicely and today I even make my tuna and egg salad with humous instead of mayo.
Today, I took yet another giant step toward become a real local. Though I have a plastic squeeze bottle of real Heinz ketchup in the fridge; I put techina (tahini) on my hamburger today, like a lot of Israelis do. The first time I heard of putting techina on hamburger I thought I'd barf.
My next project: Learning how to smooth humous and labane on my plate with the back of a spoon and fashion a perfect indented pool in the middle for olive oil and za'atar.
When a Jew becomes more Israeli is that acculturation or enculturation?
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Cho Seung-Hui Morality and Debauchery
OK. Let's discuss morality and debauchery.
Let it be said unequivocally that I would have preferred if Cho Seung-Hui had used the abilities that he honed as an English major constructively and had gone on to contribute to the efforts of the people you'll find mentioned on this URL:
http://tinyurl.com/3bk5hk (Yes, this is a pitch.)
However, I understand that this man did not have the emotional resources to be able to channel his outrage constructively. Not all do.
Rather than elaborating in detail on what I think about Cho Seung-Hui, whom I consider a Attentäter par excellence; I will allow those whom I consider to have expressed the issues most eloquently to speak for me.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."- Krishnamurthi
"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all…
And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder…
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked." THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran
"The Psychology of Political Violence" by Emma Goldman: http://tinyurl.com/36mshx
Finally I should like to draw your attention to the article entitled: "Class War in the School and Office" by Michael Nenonen. See: http://tinyurl.com/3afv9w
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
OK. Let's discuss morality and debauchery.
Let it be said unequivocally that I would have preferred if Cho Seung-Hui had used the abilities that he honed as an English major constructively and had gone on to contribute to the efforts of the people you'll find mentioned on this URL:
http://tinyurl.com/3bk5hk (Yes, this is a pitch.)
However, I understand that this man did not have the emotional resources to be able to channel his outrage constructively. Not all do.
Rather than elaborating in detail on what I think about Cho Seung-Hui, whom I consider a Attentäter par excellence; I will allow those whom I consider to have expressed the issues most eloquently to speak for me.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."- Krishnamurthi
"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all…
And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder…
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked." THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran
"The Psychology of Political Violence" by Emma Goldman: http://tinyurl.com/36mshx
Finally I should like to draw your attention to the article entitled: "Class War in the School and Office" by Michael Nenonen. See: http://tinyurl.com/3afv9w
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Monday, April 16, 2007
HaTikva
A dear friend who belongs to a Jewish genealogical group sent this to me. Listen to the three versions carefully. I will post them in chronological order: Rare recording of Al Jolson singing Hatikva:
http://www.mtzioncongregation.com/jolson.html
The following link goes to a recording introduced by NPR's Scott Simon from 61 years ago. It features a reporter who was with the British army when they liberated Bergen Belsen in May 1945. In the midst of chaos, with dead bodies lying around them, the surviving Jews, some barely able to stand, joined voices to sing Hatikva, "The Hope," which would become the Israeli National Anthem. It will bring tears to your eyes.
http://genealogy.org.il/BergenBelsenHatikva.mp3
And if you'd like to follow along with the lyrics, you can find themin both Hebrew, a transliteration of the Hebrew and English at thisIsraeli site. You'll also find a number of other versions including aknock your socks off performance by Barbra Streisand:
http://www.science.co.il/Israel-Anthem.asp
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
A dear friend who belongs to a Jewish genealogical group sent this to me. Listen to the three versions carefully. I will post them in chronological order: Rare recording of Al Jolson singing Hatikva:
http://www.mtzioncongregation.com/jolson.html
The following link goes to a recording introduced by NPR's Scott Simon from 61 years ago. It features a reporter who was with the British army when they liberated Bergen Belsen in May 1945. In the midst of chaos, with dead bodies lying around them, the surviving Jews, some barely able to stand, joined voices to sing Hatikva, "The Hope," which would become the Israeli National Anthem. It will bring tears to your eyes.
http://genealogy.org.il/BergenBelsenHatikva.mp3
And if you'd like to follow along with the lyrics, you can find themin both Hebrew, a transliteration of the Hebrew and English at thisIsraeli site. You'll also find a number of other versions including aknock your socks off performance by Barbra Streisand:
http://www.science.co.il/Israel-Anthem.asp
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Sunday, April 08, 2007
The Clausenburger Rebbe
Someone posted this on a board a couple of years ago. I lost it in my files. Just recently I found it again.
It's as charming as ever
http://tinyurl.com/2a27n8
Someone posted this on a board a couple of years ago. I lost it in my files. Just recently I found it again.
It's as charming as ever
http://tinyurl.com/2a27n8
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Abbrahms Meshpucha
Of Yud-Gimmel Street in the Old City of Tzfat, Originally
FromWilliamsburg, Brooklyn
The following can be adapted to become a Purim spiel. Expanded, it can be a TV series.
I want to do a take-off on the Addams family - The Abbrahms Meshpucha.
Some of the Kroivim are:
Morticia will be Toityana
Gomez will be Goilem
Wednesday will be Mitvuch
Pugsly will be Pitschetch
The baby will be Choleryeh
Uncle Fester will be Fete Finster, who enjoys resting on a bed of schpilkes
Toityana has an adopted brother, a foundling, by the name of Imglick. When Toityana was a child she enjoyed nothing better than to play in the dump behind the genetic engineering lab near her house in Brooklyn. She loved the aroma of the noxious emissions and the feel of the slimy effluvium squishing though her toes.
Little did the innocent Toityana know that one day a miracle would come to the Abbrahms family from that laboratory.
One of the first attempts at cloning a human being was deemed to be an utter failure. The scientists agreed that the DNA of the blastocyst was so hopelessly corrupted that it had no chance of survival. They mindlessly tossed the Petri dish containing the blastocyst from their window.
Just then Toityana came by to play. Out of the corner of her eye she saw what looked like a small flying saucer coming straight at her.
It fell at her feet in the slimy effluvium, making quite a splash.
Toityana picked up the Petri dish and saw a tiny, tiny speck the middle of some clear, gooey stuff. She decided to bring it home and ask her parents what it might be.
She showed to it her mother, Glitshik, and her father, Klog.
They examined the Petri dish under their microscope and were astounded to see that it was a humanoid blastocyst.
"Mama, Tati! Can we keep it?", Toityana entreated.
Glitshik and Klog looked at one another and then at Toityana. Exhibiting typical Abbrahms ruchmunis and ahavas chinam they said: "Of course we'll keep it. We'll culture it and raise it as though it were our very own experiment."
They called the blastocyst Imglick and showered great love upon it.
Imglick grew to be movie-star handsome. Some said he looked like Boris Karloff. Others said he resembled Bela Lugosi. Others said he resembled Danny DeVito. The Abbrahms thought he was a dead ringer for Marty Feldman.
There was just one strange thing about Imglick. When a hat was placed on his head spontaneous combustion occurred. The hat burst into flames and smoldered until it was consumed. No harm was done to Imglick, but everyone wondered about the phenomenon.
We'll find out why this phenomenon occurred in Episode I of The Abbrahms Family.
Of Yud-Gimmel Street in the Old City of Tzfat, Originally
FromWilliamsburg, Brooklyn
The following can be adapted to become a Purim spiel. Expanded, it can be a TV series.
I want to do a take-off on the Addams family - The Abbrahms Meshpucha.
Some of the Kroivim are:
Morticia will be Toityana
Gomez will be Goilem
Wednesday will be Mitvuch
Pugsly will be Pitschetch
The baby will be Choleryeh
Uncle Fester will be Fete Finster, who enjoys resting on a bed of schpilkes
Toityana has an adopted brother, a foundling, by the name of Imglick. When Toityana was a child she enjoyed nothing better than to play in the dump behind the genetic engineering lab near her house in Brooklyn. She loved the aroma of the noxious emissions and the feel of the slimy effluvium squishing though her toes.
Little did the innocent Toityana know that one day a miracle would come to the Abbrahms family from that laboratory.
One of the first attempts at cloning a human being was deemed to be an utter failure. The scientists agreed that the DNA of the blastocyst was so hopelessly corrupted that it had no chance of survival. They mindlessly tossed the Petri dish containing the blastocyst from their window.
Just then Toityana came by to play. Out of the corner of her eye she saw what looked like a small flying saucer coming straight at her.
It fell at her feet in the slimy effluvium, making quite a splash.
Toityana picked up the Petri dish and saw a tiny, tiny speck the middle of some clear, gooey stuff. She decided to bring it home and ask her parents what it might be.
She showed to it her mother, Glitshik, and her father, Klog.
They examined the Petri dish under their microscope and were astounded to see that it was a humanoid blastocyst.
"Mama, Tati! Can we keep it?", Toityana entreated.
Glitshik and Klog looked at one another and then at Toityana. Exhibiting typical Abbrahms ruchmunis and ahavas chinam they said: "Of course we'll keep it. We'll culture it and raise it as though it were our very own experiment."
They called the blastocyst Imglick and showered great love upon it.
Imglick grew to be movie-star handsome. Some said he looked like Boris Karloff. Others said he resembled Bela Lugosi. Others said he resembled Danny DeVito. The Abbrahms thought he was a dead ringer for Marty Feldman.
There was just one strange thing about Imglick. When a hat was placed on his head spontaneous combustion occurred. The hat burst into flames and smoldered until it was consumed. No harm was done to Imglick, but everyone wondered about the phenomenon.
We'll find out why this phenomenon occurred in Episode I of The Abbrahms Family.
Another experiment from that laboratory that would find its way into the Abbrahms' Family hearts and homes was the first attempt at creating a human-Tasmanian Devil hybrid. She would come to be named Vilde Chimera.
Grandmama, Morticia's mother, now Toityana Abbrahm's mother, will be Bubbie Glitshik
Toityana's father will be Zayde Klog
Toityana's grandfather, Zayde Klog's father, is Siamese twins Gornisht and Oisvarf
Goilem's father will be Zayde Moisheh Kapoyer
Zayde Moishe Kapoyer's father will be Alter Zayde Sheigitz
Toityana's sister the witch will be Tante Kuchleffel
Goilem's mother will be Bubbie Hartsveitik
Hartsveitik's brother is Fete Kopveitik
The Cousin with the long hair will be Ich Vais Nit
There'll be a cousin by the name of Greener Cousiner
More cousins will be the identical quadruplets Cousins Meeskeit, Kronkeit, Narishkeit and Nishtkeit.
Lurch, the Butler, will be Schlepp.
Shlepp, the Butler, has recently married. The Abbrahms Meshpucha has graciously agreed to hire Shlepp's lovely bride in the capacity of household Maid. Unfortunately, since she was hired Shlepp has been shlepping less and less and his new wife more and more. Introducing a new addition to the Abbrahms Meshpucha household: Oysgemitshet, the Maid. What the Abbrahms family and Shlepp don't know is that Oysgemitshet is one of identical triplets and she and her sisters Oysgematert and Oysgehorevet have secretly been sharing the housework - and Shlepp.
Thing will be Lapeh.
The Abbrahms Family has two pets. Their mongoose, Shmei Drei, and their dragon, Gilo Monster.
The Abbrahms family has a long and illustrious history. For instance, you may think that the guillotine was invented by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Gullotin. But he only came up with the idea of putting a basket in place to catch the head. The guillotine was actually invented by Hockmesser Abbrahms, who also invented g'hakte leber. The Abbrahms family has been petitioning the French government to change the name of the famed invention from the guillotine to the hockmesser.
Episode I
Every Wednesday night the Abbrahms family make a picnic by some of the Kivrois HaTzaddikim. It's Mitvuch's favorite night and event of the week. It makes her feel like the family is making a special yahrtzeit celebration just for her.
It's also always a great opportunity to do the mitzvah of bikkur metim.
They make a kumsitz and roast marshmallows and locusts. Then they tell horror stories about lawyers and bankers and other dreadful creatures that suck blood by day and then hide in houses with perfectly manicured lawns and white picket fences at night. The children shudder in terror.
One Thursday morning, just at dawn, the Abbrahms family returned from a particularly fun and lovely night in the cemetery.
They are surprised to see policemen waiting for them at their door.
They approach the policemen and one of them asks if the family knows where Imglick Abbrahms might be.
Shocked, Toityana asks the policemen why they want Fete Imglick.
They are about to find out why Imglick's hats always burn…
Thing will be Lapeh.
The Abbrahms Family has two pets. Their mongoose, Shmei Drei, and their dragon, Gilo Monster.
The Abbrahms family has a long and illustrious history. For instance, you may think that the guillotine was invented by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Gullotin. But he only came up with the idea of putting a basket in place to catch the head. The guillotine was actually invented by Hockmesser Abbrahms, who also invented g'hakte leber. The Abbrahms family has been petitioning the French government to change the name of the famed invention from the guillotine to the hockmesser.
Episode I
Every Wednesday night the Abbrahms family make a picnic by some of the Kivrois HaTzaddikim. It's Mitvuch's favorite night and event of the week. It makes her feel like the family is making a special yahrtzeit celebration just for her.
It's also always a great opportunity to do the mitzvah of bikkur metim.
They make a kumsitz and roast marshmallows and locusts. Then they tell horror stories about lawyers and bankers and other dreadful creatures that suck blood by day and then hide in houses with perfectly manicured lawns and white picket fences at night. The children shudder in terror.
One Thursday morning, just at dawn, the Abbrahms family returned from a particularly fun and lovely night in the cemetery.
They are surprised to see policemen waiting for them at their door.
They approach the policemen and one of them asks if the family knows where Imglick Abbrahms might be.
Shocked, Toityana asks the policemen why they want Fete Imglick.
They are about to find out why Imglick's hats always burn…
***All rights reserved. No portion may be downloaded, recopied, edited, or used in any form except with express written permission of the author. ***
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Book Recommendation:
PARADISE EMPORIUM by Charmaine (C.L.) Frost
The recommendation is on the following link:
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/ParadiseEmporium.htm
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
PARADISE EMPORIUM by Charmaine (C.L.) Frost
The recommendation is on the following link:
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/ParadiseEmporium.htm
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Ya see how people are?
When an Israeli ambassador is found bound, gagged and nekkedik, except for BDSm accoutrement, does anyone accuse him of hatching a dastardly plot? Is any ulterior motive attributed to him? Noooo.
It's understood that the guy has a hard job and needs some harmless, amusing diversion.
But just let a Muslim get on a plane with a magnet up his arse and a couple of wires sticking out of it and everyone is up in arms accusing him of being a terrorist concealing a detonation device in his hidey-hole.
Does anyone give the guy the benefit of the doubt? Nooooo. Maybe he was just taking some vocational stress and strain off by engaging in a little kink. Maybe he just likes the buzzzzzz when he goes through the detectors. Did anyone ever think of that? Nooooo.
The Israeli ambassador is lionized and the Muslim is demonized. It's a crying shame that people are so prejudiced, so narrow-mindedly niggardly of spirit.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
When an Israeli ambassador is found bound, gagged and nekkedik, except for BDSm accoutrement, does anyone accuse him of hatching a dastardly plot? Is any ulterior motive attributed to him? Noooo.
It's understood that the guy has a hard job and needs some harmless, amusing diversion.
But just let a Muslim get on a plane with a magnet up his arse and a couple of wires sticking out of it and everyone is up in arms accusing him of being a terrorist concealing a detonation device in his hidey-hole.
Does anyone give the guy the benefit of the doubt? Nooooo. Maybe he was just taking some vocational stress and strain off by engaging in a little kink. Maybe he just likes the buzzzzzz when he goes through the detectors. Did anyone ever think of that? Nooooo.
The Israeli ambassador is lionized and the Muslim is demonized. It's a crying shame that people are so prejudiced, so narrow-mindedly niggardly of spirit.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Monday, March 12, 2007
Was Sir Winston Churchill Jewish?
According to " JEW WATCH", Sir Winston Churchill's mother was Jenny Jerome, the daughter of a Jewish father who changed his name from Jacobson to Jerome.
Unimpeachable Source: http://tinyurl.com/2ztuer
Much discussion has been devoted to trying to vet this claim.
Here's the real low-down:
"Winston Churchill", born Zalman Zelig, was the illegitimate son of the Pitchifkisser Rebbe, Reb Mendelbrot Schulhill , and Yenta Glitshik neé Hartsvaitik.
He behaved like the little mamzer that he was and was kicked out of yeshivah before obtaining smikhah.
He was banished in disgrace from Kareninatevkah, the shtetl in the Ukraine wherein he was born.
He arrived in London with one peckle to his name, his gonsa fameigins, and a pitetchy attitude.
He began his career selling schmatas and chachkes from a pushcart. Alte zakhen! Alte schiach! Eventually, he created an empire of department stores that came to be known as Marx & Finster.
He changed his name from Zalman Zelig Schulhill to Winston Churchill and, when asked what his religious affiliation was, he began to answer "goi".
After his groise success in geschaeft, the road to becoming Prime Minister and All Around Grober Mensch was short.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
According to " JEW WATCH", Sir Winston Churchill's mother was Jenny Jerome, the daughter of a Jewish father who changed his name from Jacobson to Jerome.
Unimpeachable Source: http://tinyurl.com/2ztuer
Much discussion has been devoted to trying to vet this claim.
Here's the real low-down:
"Winston Churchill", born Zalman Zelig, was the illegitimate son of the Pitchifkisser Rebbe, Reb Mendelbrot Schulhill , and Yenta Glitshik neé Hartsvaitik.
He behaved like the little mamzer that he was and was kicked out of yeshivah before obtaining smikhah.
He was banished in disgrace from Kareninatevkah, the shtetl in the Ukraine wherein he was born.
He arrived in London with one peckle to his name, his gonsa fameigins, and a pitetchy attitude.
He began his career selling schmatas and chachkes from a pushcart. Alte zakhen! Alte schiach! Eventually, he created an empire of department stores that came to be known as Marx & Finster.
He changed his name from Zalman Zelig Schulhill to Winston Churchill and, when asked what his religious affiliation was, he began to answer "goi".
After his groise success in geschaeft, the road to becoming Prime Minister and All Around Grober Mensch was short.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Sunday, January 07, 2007
PATIENCE
I found what was, for me, a very instructional and inspirational site:
http://tinyurl.com/y8krhb
So, now I feel prepared to make my New Year's resolution for 2007.
I resolve to endeavor to cultivate the traits and abilities that patient people possess – at my pace and to the best of my ability at any given time.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
I found what was, for me, a very instructional and inspirational site:
http://tinyurl.com/y8krhb
So, now I feel prepared to make my New Year's resolution for 2007.
I resolve to endeavor to cultivate the traits and abilities that patient people possess – at my pace and to the best of my ability at any given time.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Thursday, December 14, 2006
"If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour." - Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah
An antagonist asked: Doesn't our Torah have enough commandments concerning helping the poor and the poor's welfare?
I answered: You sound as though there are so many that they are a burden to you. You should cherish those mitzvot above all others and those are the mitzvot that you should perform most assiduously.
Why do I say this? Because they are the mitzvot that are the conditions upon which all of the other mitzvot can be carried out.
"If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour." - Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah
I'll quote that again: "If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour." - Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah
That statement does not mean that there is no Torah only for those who have no flour. It means that there is no Torah for the ones hardening their hearts, or making of themselves luftmenschen, and not seeing to it that everyone has flour (and water, clothes, shoes, housing, inoculation, education and the conditions under which every individual can grow to her or his maximum Spiritual-Moral, mental, emotional and physical potential).
It is because I see the poor in this country becoming increasing beggared and more and more people falling into poverty, that I feel absolutely confident in saying there is no Torah in Israel. If there was one-third of the children in Israel would not be under the poverty line and they would not be going to school hiding the roll the have from others so that no one will see it has nothing on it, the elderly and infirmed would not be eating out of garbage cans and widows would not have their electricity turned off in the winter.
You stated: It seems to me, there are scores of commandments requiring compassion to the poor; forbidding oppressing the poor.
I responded: And are they being fulfilled? Are people as careful to do those mitzvot as they are when choosing their "glatt" chickens? No! They (maybe) give their 10% tzeddakah and a few hours of their time to help others, which only perpetuates the misery. They do not fulfill the commanment: Unloose the shackles of injustice. They do not go up against the system that creates and perpetuates poverty.
He went on to inquire: Why do we need a philosphy that is not rooted in Torah?
I responded: Do you not see that what I am saying is pure Torah? Shame on your teachers!
From the day that Avraham smashed his father's idols Judaism has been nothing but radical social transformation. Anyone who isn't smashing the idols that keep us in thrall, poor and subject to corrupt regimes is not of the covenant of Avraham, has not begun to understand what that covenant is.
Anarchy is not a philosophy from outside Torah. Anarchy is the mitzvot "concerning helping the poor and the poor's welfare" with the utmost punctiliousness and assiduousness.
Why do you think the old Jew blessed Rudolph Rocker after he helped the Jewish workers win their demands in a strike in 1912?
I once took a course with a rabbi on tzadakah. At one point he stated that there must always be poor people so that we can do the mitzvah of giving tzaddakah. I left his course and have not read a word that he has to say since. He went down to credibility zero with me when he said that. The cruelty that passes itself off as Torah in this generation is absolutely astounding.
We may be sure that even in a society of Anarcho-Communalism, in which all of our physical needs are provided for; there will be endless opportunities for us to give emotional tzaddakah; to help those who need us in numerable ways and to be helped by others in innumerable ways.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
An antagonist asked: Doesn't our Torah have enough commandments concerning helping the poor and the poor's welfare?
I answered: You sound as though there are so many that they are a burden to you. You should cherish those mitzvot above all others and those are the mitzvot that you should perform most assiduously.
Why do I say this? Because they are the mitzvot that are the conditions upon which all of the other mitzvot can be carried out.
"If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour." - Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah
I'll quote that again: "If there is no flour there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour." - Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah
That statement does not mean that there is no Torah only for those who have no flour. It means that there is no Torah for the ones hardening their hearts, or making of themselves luftmenschen, and not seeing to it that everyone has flour (and water, clothes, shoes, housing, inoculation, education and the conditions under which every individual can grow to her or his maximum Spiritual-Moral, mental, emotional and physical potential).
It is because I see the poor in this country becoming increasing beggared and more and more people falling into poverty, that I feel absolutely confident in saying there is no Torah in Israel. If there was one-third of the children in Israel would not be under the poverty line and they would not be going to school hiding the roll the have from others so that no one will see it has nothing on it, the elderly and infirmed would not be eating out of garbage cans and widows would not have their electricity turned off in the winter.
You stated: It seems to me, there are scores of commandments requiring compassion to the poor; forbidding oppressing the poor.
I responded: And are they being fulfilled? Are people as careful to do those mitzvot as they are when choosing their "glatt" chickens? No! They (maybe) give their 10% tzeddakah and a few hours of their time to help others, which only perpetuates the misery. They do not fulfill the commanment: Unloose the shackles of injustice. They do not go up against the system that creates and perpetuates poverty.
He went on to inquire: Why do we need a philosphy that is not rooted in Torah?
I responded: Do you not see that what I am saying is pure Torah? Shame on your teachers!
From the day that Avraham smashed his father's idols Judaism has been nothing but radical social transformation. Anyone who isn't smashing the idols that keep us in thrall, poor and subject to corrupt regimes is not of the covenant of Avraham, has not begun to understand what that covenant is.
Anarchy is not a philosophy from outside Torah. Anarchy is the mitzvot "concerning helping the poor and the poor's welfare" with the utmost punctiliousness and assiduousness.
Why do you think the old Jew blessed Rudolph Rocker after he helped the Jewish workers win their demands in a strike in 1912?
I once took a course with a rabbi on tzadakah. At one point he stated that there must always be poor people so that we can do the mitzvah of giving tzaddakah. I left his course and have not read a word that he has to say since. He went down to credibility zero with me when he said that. The cruelty that passes itself off as Torah in this generation is absolutely astounding.
We may be sure that even in a society of Anarcho-Communalism, in which all of our physical needs are provided for; there will be endless opportunities for us to give emotional tzaddakah; to help those who need us in numerable ways and to be helped by others in innumerable ways.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
A Jew Who Knew
Rudolph Rocker was a German non-Jew who devoted his life to ameliorating the conditions of the working poor Jews in London at the start of the 20th C.
He learned Yiddish so well that he became the editor of the Yiddish Anarchist papers Dos Fraye Vort (The Free Word), Der Arbeiter Freint (The Workers Friend) and Germinal.
For his efforts he was detained by the British for years as an "alien enemy of the state".
Shortly after leading Jewish sweatshop workers to victory in a 1912 strike he recalled:
"As I was walking along a narrow Whitechapel street, an old Jew with a long white beard stopped me outside his house, and said: “May God bless you! You helped my children in their need. You are not a Jew, but you are a man!” This old man lived in a world completely different from mine. But the memory of the gratitude that shone in those eyes has remained with me all these years." THE LONDON YEARS, the last page of Chapter 23 – Workers' Circle. The Great Strike.
In 1912, you may be sure, that an old Jew with a long white beard knew the halakhah.
How many Jews today can honestly say they would do for the Jews what the gentile German Rocker did?
Today, far too many Jews who fancy themselves Orthodox and knowledgeable in Torah would dismiss Rocker as a "sheigitz" or perhaps try to shame him publicly for being an "abominable" Anarchist, or proffer a description of his "touched" personality based on an astrological chart, or throw in his face that his father celebrated Christmas or speculate on his mental state or call him a "freak". (See the Yahoo! group "Tzfat" in order to understand to what I am referring.)
But we all know deep in our heart of hearts that the Jew with the long white beard who was already old in 1912 was the real thing. May God bless him as he blessed those who helped the (secular, Anarchistic) Jews, who he called his children, in their need.
And thank God for a gentile who bothered to learn Yiddish so he could help the Jews, who recorded the words of that old Jew, immortalizing him, so that the voice of true Judaism can still be heard today by Jews like me who yearn to hear it but so very rarely do.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Rudolph Rocker was a German non-Jew who devoted his life to ameliorating the conditions of the working poor Jews in London at the start of the 20th C.
He learned Yiddish so well that he became the editor of the Yiddish Anarchist papers Dos Fraye Vort (The Free Word), Der Arbeiter Freint (The Workers Friend) and Germinal.
For his efforts he was detained by the British for years as an "alien enemy of the state".
Shortly after leading Jewish sweatshop workers to victory in a 1912 strike he recalled:
"As I was walking along a narrow Whitechapel street, an old Jew with a long white beard stopped me outside his house, and said: “May God bless you! You helped my children in their need. You are not a Jew, but you are a man!” This old man lived in a world completely different from mine. But the memory of the gratitude that shone in those eyes has remained with me all these years." THE LONDON YEARS, the last page of Chapter 23 – Workers' Circle. The Great Strike.
In 1912, you may be sure, that an old Jew with a long white beard knew the halakhah.
How many Jews today can honestly say they would do for the Jews what the gentile German Rocker did?
Today, far too many Jews who fancy themselves Orthodox and knowledgeable in Torah would dismiss Rocker as a "sheigitz" or perhaps try to shame him publicly for being an "abominable" Anarchist, or proffer a description of his "touched" personality based on an astrological chart, or throw in his face that his father celebrated Christmas or speculate on his mental state or call him a "freak". (See the Yahoo! group "Tzfat" in order to understand to what I am referring.)
But we all know deep in our heart of hearts that the Jew with the long white beard who was already old in 1912 was the real thing. May God bless him as he blessed those who helped the (secular, Anarchistic) Jews, who he called his children, in their need.
And thank God for a gentile who bothered to learn Yiddish so he could help the Jews, who recorded the words of that old Jew, immortalizing him, so that the voice of true Judaism can still be heard today by Jews like me who yearn to hear it but so very rarely do.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Corruption in Israel
Five hundred people were surveyed by the Israeli branch of Transparency International.
Corruption, for the purpose of the study, is defined as "the use of political or other power for the advancement of personal interests".
The results, according to a report that appeared on Dec. 12, 2006 of "Kol HaIr", one of the local papers of Tzfat, edition 640, are the following:
66% said that the current gov't does not do enough to fight corruption.
55% said that corruption negatively affects their personal quality of life.
81% said that corruption negatively affects the business enviornment.
86% said that corruption negatively affects quality of gov't.
16% said they believe that the gov't actively encourages corruption.
4% admitted to giving bribes during the past year. (We can assume that this is a very small percentage of those who actually did give bribes. Admitting to doing so is admitting to committing a crime and most people will, understandably, be reluctant to do so, even on a supposedly anonymous survey.)
Add to these results, the recent finding that 92% of Israeli businesses do not conduct themselves in accordance with labor laws.
How, I ask you HOW, can Torah flourish in such an enviornment?
Take the most well-meaning, religious man. He gets up in the morning, does netilat yadayim...has his brakhot as he dresses...goes to shul, dons t'fellin...Learns a blat Gemorrah...
Then, he goes to work. Because he has, b'li ayin hara, a family he, if he's a salaried employee, will keep his mouth shut if he sees his boss cheating. He will do what he is told, even if it is not on the "up and up". He will let himself be abused by his boss who, 92 chances out of 100 on the average, is cheating him of what is coming to him.
If he's an independent, he has to compete with others in the field. He may have loans with the banks in astronomical figures and tens of thousands of shekels is held in escrow by his suppliers.
What does that do to him?
How can he have a crooked heart and tongue all day and then be pure when he sits down to learn Torah, or when he does a mitzvah?
That is what is called: "Ablution in a mikveh while holding a serpent."
First, and I'm going to keep pestering and nudging until this is understood, first we build a just society - then we can go about the business of learning and doing Torah as we should.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Five hundred people were surveyed by the Israeli branch of Transparency International.
Corruption, for the purpose of the study, is defined as "the use of political or other power for the advancement of personal interests".
The results, according to a report that appeared on Dec. 12, 2006 of "Kol HaIr", one of the local papers of Tzfat, edition 640, are the following:
66% said that the current gov't does not do enough to fight corruption.
55% said that corruption negatively affects their personal quality of life.
81% said that corruption negatively affects the business enviornment.
86% said that corruption negatively affects quality of gov't.
16% said they believe that the gov't actively encourages corruption.
4% admitted to giving bribes during the past year. (We can assume that this is a very small percentage of those who actually did give bribes. Admitting to doing so is admitting to committing a crime and most people will, understandably, be reluctant to do so, even on a supposedly anonymous survey.)
Add to these results, the recent finding that 92% of Israeli businesses do not conduct themselves in accordance with labor laws.
How, I ask you HOW, can Torah flourish in such an enviornment?
Take the most well-meaning, religious man. He gets up in the morning, does netilat yadayim...has his brakhot as he dresses...goes to shul, dons t'fellin...Learns a blat Gemorrah...
Then, he goes to work. Because he has, b'li ayin hara, a family he, if he's a salaried employee, will keep his mouth shut if he sees his boss cheating. He will do what he is told, even if it is not on the "up and up". He will let himself be abused by his boss who, 92 chances out of 100 on the average, is cheating him of what is coming to him.
If he's an independent, he has to compete with others in the field. He may have loans with the banks in astronomical figures and tens of thousands of shekels is held in escrow by his suppliers.
What does that do to him?
How can he have a crooked heart and tongue all day and then be pure when he sits down to learn Torah, or when he does a mitzvah?
That is what is called: "Ablution in a mikveh while holding a serpent."
First, and I'm going to keep pestering and nudging until this is understood, first we build a just society - then we can go about the business of learning and doing Torah as we should.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Some Facts to Ponder Before Channukah
I do not celebrate Channukah. I know that is very odd. Channukah is one of the most cherished holiday seasons in Judaism. It is considered a festival of light and a time of great joy celebrating the purification of the Second Temple and the reinstatement of the Temple Service.
I do not celebrate Channukah for the following reasons. The Maccabees were Priests, but they were not B'nie Tzadok. Only those Cohenim who are B'nei Tzaddok were entitled to be High Priests. The Maccabbim, who were Cohenim but not B'nei Tzaddok, expropriated the office of High Priest. This was only the first of their sins. They would eventually arrive at a level of depravity and degradation that the mind and heart can hardly fathom. It was because of their internecine power struggles within the family, which included murder and castrations of close family members, all of whom were Cohenim; their orgies with Gentiles in the Temple; their crowning themselves kings, which is forbidden for Cohenim to do that led to the destruction of the Temple and our galut. The period of their reign was the darkest period in Jewish history. There were more atrocities committed by them, but the heart is too rent to consider all of it. I am humiliated that an episode such as that is part of our history.
The Isi'im (the Dead Sea Sect) who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls were B'nei Tzaddok who left Yerushalayim in disgust as a result of these events.
The settled in Qumran, formed a communitarian society of common property and devoted themselves to the study and performance of Torah with the utmost assiduousness.
The Isi'im were lost to history at the end of the Second Temple period.
Thinking they were "out of the way" and not knowing that they had hid their writings in caves in Qumran, the redactors of the Talmud engaged is unbridled mendacity in their representations of who the B'nei Tzaddok were. They said that they rejected Oral Law, in addition to other besmirching.
For 2000 years all that was known about HaIsi'im was written about them in the Talmud.
And then, on the self-same day that the partition of Palestine was voted by the UN, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was found by a Bedouin shepherd boy was sold to Yigal Yadin's father, Professor Eliezer Sukenik.
For the first time in 2000 years; HaIsi'im were able to speak for themselves. They wrote that they were a sect founded by B'nei Tzaddok who left Yerushalayim after it became so defiled by the Maccabbim that they could not longer conscience living there. They wrote about their community. But for the sake of this discussion, most importantly, they wrote about the Oral Law.
The redactors of the Talmud wrote that the B'nei Tzaddok did not believe in any Oral Law, that they followed the written Torah only.
But at Qumran T'fillin were found, and the contained the very same passages that are found in Rashi and Rebbenu Tam T'fellin, only in a different order. Carbon dating showed that they were well over 2000 years old.
One of the fragments of a scroll discusses how much water is needed for a proper mikveh.
Another passage discusses how far one may walk on Shabbat.
Another discusses how one may rescue someone who has fallen into a pit on Shabbat.
All of these matters are Oral Torah.
If you wish to read my writings on the Dead Sea Sect, HaYachad, as they called themselves, you can find them on the following web sites:
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/essenes_my_writings.html
The redactors of the Talmud misrepresented the B'nei Tzaddok. They did so intentionally in order to become the sole representatives of Torah. They lied in order to establish their absolute authority.
That being the case we are not only free to, but absolutely must, call everything in the Talmud into question. We cannot believe that their intentions were pure about anything they wrote. Certainly, we would be foolish to reject all of the Talmud out-of-hand. But we are equally foolish to accept it uncritically and unquestioningly.
I think it is pertinent here to discuss a group of people who did try to live according to the written Law without an Oral Law – the Karaites.
They were excommunicated, in toto, from Judaism.
Do you know that Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher and his descendants, the House of Asher, those who fixed the version of HaMasorah HaT'veriani were Karaites? (See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/benAsher.html). Everything we learn in Torah is thanks to the impeccable knowledge and the work of a long line of Karaites.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
I do not celebrate Channukah. I know that is very odd. Channukah is one of the most cherished holiday seasons in Judaism. It is considered a festival of light and a time of great joy celebrating the purification of the Second Temple and the reinstatement of the Temple Service.
I do not celebrate Channukah for the following reasons. The Maccabees were Priests, but they were not B'nie Tzadok. Only those Cohenim who are B'nei Tzaddok were entitled to be High Priests. The Maccabbim, who were Cohenim but not B'nei Tzaddok, expropriated the office of High Priest. This was only the first of their sins. They would eventually arrive at a level of depravity and degradation that the mind and heart can hardly fathom. It was because of their internecine power struggles within the family, which included murder and castrations of close family members, all of whom were Cohenim; their orgies with Gentiles in the Temple; their crowning themselves kings, which is forbidden for Cohenim to do that led to the destruction of the Temple and our galut. The period of their reign was the darkest period in Jewish history. There were more atrocities committed by them, but the heart is too rent to consider all of it. I am humiliated that an episode such as that is part of our history.
The Isi'im (the Dead Sea Sect) who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls were B'nei Tzaddok who left Yerushalayim in disgust as a result of these events.
The settled in Qumran, formed a communitarian society of common property and devoted themselves to the study and performance of Torah with the utmost assiduousness.
The Isi'im were lost to history at the end of the Second Temple period.
Thinking they were "out of the way" and not knowing that they had hid their writings in caves in Qumran, the redactors of the Talmud engaged is unbridled mendacity in their representations of who the B'nei Tzaddok were. They said that they rejected Oral Law, in addition to other besmirching.
For 2000 years all that was known about HaIsi'im was written about them in the Talmud.
And then, on the self-same day that the partition of Palestine was voted by the UN, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was found by a Bedouin shepherd boy was sold to Yigal Yadin's father, Professor Eliezer Sukenik.
For the first time in 2000 years; HaIsi'im were able to speak for themselves. They wrote that they were a sect founded by B'nei Tzaddok who left Yerushalayim after it became so defiled by the Maccabbim that they could not longer conscience living there. They wrote about their community. But for the sake of this discussion, most importantly, they wrote about the Oral Law.
The redactors of the Talmud wrote that the B'nei Tzaddok did not believe in any Oral Law, that they followed the written Torah only.
But at Qumran T'fillin were found, and the contained the very same passages that are found in Rashi and Rebbenu Tam T'fellin, only in a different order. Carbon dating showed that they were well over 2000 years old.
One of the fragments of a scroll discusses how much water is needed for a proper mikveh.
Another passage discusses how far one may walk on Shabbat.
Another discusses how one may rescue someone who has fallen into a pit on Shabbat.
All of these matters are Oral Torah.
If you wish to read my writings on the Dead Sea Sect, HaYachad, as they called themselves, you can find them on the following web sites:
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/essenes_my_writings.html
The redactors of the Talmud misrepresented the B'nei Tzaddok. They did so intentionally in order to become the sole representatives of Torah. They lied in order to establish their absolute authority.
That being the case we are not only free to, but absolutely must, call everything in the Talmud into question. We cannot believe that their intentions were pure about anything they wrote. Certainly, we would be foolish to reject all of the Talmud out-of-hand. But we are equally foolish to accept it uncritically and unquestioningly.
I think it is pertinent here to discuss a group of people who did try to live according to the written Law without an Oral Law – the Karaites.
They were excommunicated, in toto, from Judaism.
Do you know that Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher and his descendants, the House of Asher, those who fixed the version of HaMasorah HaT'veriani were Karaites? (See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/benAsher.html). Everything we learn in Torah is thanks to the impeccable knowledge and the work of a long line of Karaites.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
DOING
Someone on a message board wrote the following to me:
"Let me know if you ever get off your duff in the periphery, and come down to the center of the country to actually DO something constructive regarding the things you write about. "
I answered:
There is a mystical Jewish teaching which holds that this world is called the World of Doing (or Action) - עולם העשיה in Hebrew.
It is the lowest of four worlds, each more rarified, sublime and vast than the one beneath it in the order of creation.
There is nothing in this world that is not doing. It cannot be otherwise.
To say to someone in this world that she or he is not doing something, is to misunderstand what doing is and the nature of the level of reality that we inhabit fundamentally.
Is not writing doing?
Is making people think not doing?
In this world even thinking is doing. It is an action in and of itself, even if it does not lead to further action.
My mother taught me when I was a child that the pen is mightier than the sword. I believe that to be true.
Writing is what I do and it is as much doing as another other activity in the World of Doing (or Action), which we inhabit.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Someone on a message board wrote the following to me:
"Let me know if you ever get off your duff in the periphery, and come down to the center of the country to actually DO something constructive regarding the things you write about. "
I answered:
There is a mystical Jewish teaching which holds that this world is called the World of Doing (or Action) - עולם העשיה in Hebrew.
It is the lowest of four worlds, each more rarified, sublime and vast than the one beneath it in the order of creation.
There is nothing in this world that is not doing. It cannot be otherwise.
To say to someone in this world that she or he is not doing something, is to misunderstand what doing is and the nature of the level of reality that we inhabit fundamentally.
Is not writing doing?
Is making people think not doing?
In this world even thinking is doing. It is an action in and of itself, even if it does not lead to further action.
My mother taught me when I was a child that the pen is mightier than the sword. I believe that to be true.
Writing is what I do and it is as much doing as another other activity in the World of Doing (or Action), which we inhabit.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
THE LEAVING FOR THE SAKE OF THE RETURN
One can keep kashrut out of a need to belong, keep Shabbat out of fear of what their family and neighbors will say and keep Taharat HaMisphachah out of desire for a place in the world to come... - all without loving HaShem with one's entire being.
But no one devotes their entire life to humanity, consistently over the period of a lifetime, unless they love HaShem completely and are devoted to HaShem in a way that the Orthodox can only feign being. That devotion need not be conscious, but it is there.
Am I conflated? Am I making a shatnez of Torah and secular ethics? In fact, there is nothing that I have written that is not pure Torah.
Ideally a Jew should keep the mitzvot and serve humanity. They do not only not contradict; they are supplementary one to the other.However, Judaism as it is currently taught and practiced, with all of the chumrot and minhagim that have been added to Torah (in contravention of the injunction not to add to Torah!) does not allow for the performance of both those mitzvot that bring down holiness into the physical plane and the social service aspects of Torah - both of which are essential and should be performed in such a way that they enable and advance one the other.
We have been taught in Chassidut about the principle of the descent for the purpose of the ascent.
In our times, time of darkness and blindness we are in need of a more radical cure for our moral-spiritual ills. We are in need of the leaving for the sake of the return.The only solution to the problem is to leave this farce that we are told is Torah and build a just society that is not based on greed and violence and power-hungriness. In such a society there will be no incentives for Rabbis who serve the power structure to distort Torah and make it into shackles and manacles that bind the mind, the heart and Soul. In such a society Torah can be rediscovered in its pristine purity because there won't be a power structure that will have interests in making the populace spiritual slaves and moral cripples.Torah has been so horribly misrepresented, so grossly misunderstood and so abused as an instrument of mind and behavior control that the only way to return to it is by leaving what we think is Torah, but is not.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
One can keep kashrut out of a need to belong, keep Shabbat out of fear of what their family and neighbors will say and keep Taharat HaMisphachah out of desire for a place in the world to come... - all without loving HaShem with one's entire being.
But no one devotes their entire life to humanity, consistently over the period of a lifetime, unless they love HaShem completely and are devoted to HaShem in a way that the Orthodox can only feign being. That devotion need not be conscious, but it is there.
Am I conflated? Am I making a shatnez of Torah and secular ethics? In fact, there is nothing that I have written that is not pure Torah.
Ideally a Jew should keep the mitzvot and serve humanity. They do not only not contradict; they are supplementary one to the other.However, Judaism as it is currently taught and practiced, with all of the chumrot and minhagim that have been added to Torah (in contravention of the injunction not to add to Torah!) does not allow for the performance of both those mitzvot that bring down holiness into the physical plane and the social service aspects of Torah - both of which are essential and should be performed in such a way that they enable and advance one the other.
We have been taught in Chassidut about the principle of the descent for the purpose of the ascent.
In our times, time of darkness and blindness we are in need of a more radical cure for our moral-spiritual ills. We are in need of the leaving for the sake of the return.The only solution to the problem is to leave this farce that we are told is Torah and build a just society that is not based on greed and violence and power-hungriness. In such a society there will be no incentives for Rabbis who serve the power structure to distort Torah and make it into shackles and manacles that bind the mind, the heart and Soul. In such a society Torah can be rediscovered in its pristine purity because there won't be a power structure that will have interests in making the populace spiritual slaves and moral cripples.Torah has been so horribly misrepresented, so grossly misunderstood and so abused as an instrument of mind and behavior control that the only way to return to it is by leaving what we think is Torah, but is not.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Genuine Religious Jews
Jews inspired by genuine Divine afflatus do not engage overmuch in ceremonies, nor do they speak in clichés, quoting others verbatim by rote.
They are not overly punctilious and scrupulous about ritual purity and they do not carry out formulaic actions obsessively-compulsively.
They do not care a whit about their own salvation and nothing they do is for the sake of ensuring an eternal place of rest and joy for themselves.
They act in, rather than speak of, love.
They do not wax pontifical or esoteric. They concern themselves with the needs of human beings qua human beings.
They do not sacrifice the material levels of our beings for the sake of the "spiritual" levels.
They do not profit from the encouraging and teaching of others to observe ritual.
They do not claim immaculate morality on the part of their teachers; neither do they claim that they their tradition or their teachers are infallible.
They do not set themselves up and judge and jury over humankind.
The only abomination they recognize is injustice and the misuse of power.
They need no social acceptance or group to be part to know what they should do or give them a sense of identity. They are strong enough to stand alone, all alone, if need be.
Their every action, the very purpose of their lives and their entire being is given over to the alleviation of the suffering of humankind.
Injustice is intolerable to them and they fight for justice for all no matter what the personal price they must pay for it.
Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Saul Alinsky, Martin Buber and Murray Bookchin were religious Jews. They carried within them the whole of Torah. The received and passed on the torch of the Prophets of Israel. This was true despite the protestations of some of them that they were atheists. It is recorded of Emma Goldman, the self-professed atheist Anarchist, that: "A rabbi who heard her lecture a large conference of clergymen on atheism probably came closer than the public to understanding her antireligious stand. "In spite of al Miss Goldman has said against religion", he announced, "she is the most religious person I know." (RED EMMA SPEAKS, An Emma Goldman Reader, Compiled and Edited by Alex Kates Shulman, Preface to Part Two; Published 1998 by Humanity Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books)
It is certainly be true that some Jews who adhere to the minutiae of Jewish Law may be true Orthodox Jews, but this is true if and only if they do so in addition to devoting their entire lives to the amelioration of the human condition and the alleviation of human suffering. Their performance of the minutiae of Jewish Law is not that which defines them at genuine Orthodox Jews. That is a mere appurtenance. Their devotion to justice is that which defines them as genuine Orthodox Jews.
Those who teach Jewish Law in such a way that it comes in lieu of acting in the world for the betterment of human kind; if it obviates doing so; if it becomes so all-demanding, time-consuming and burdensome that there is no strength or time for fighting injustice; if the observance of Jewish Law imparts the illusion of being absolutely right and just; if it attenuates the desire to right wrongs or puts off the doing so for the Mashiach to take care of; if it brings one to believe that each of us has only to tend to our own imperfections – then we may be entirely sure that what we have is not Judaism at all, but an ersatz, painstakingly deliberately fabricated and purposefully promulgated in order to confound us, to keep our energies invested in that which will avail nothing and deflect us from our duties by nefarious interests.
A great deal of money, ink and blood is being poured in order to keep Jews distracted from our true purpose and our true values. This is as true of the religious segments of our society as it is of the secular segments. The only difference is the methods being employed in order to dissipate our energies.
History has proven that Jews who are devoted to justice en masse are invincible. It is then that HaShem performs miracles for us.
Every effort is being made, in the religious and secular worlds alike, to prevent us from knowing who we truly are, what our purpose in creation is, from mobilizing in unison, reaching a critical mass of power and changing the course of the world. We can do it. We have done so before. If we were not capable of changing the world, so much investment would not be being invested in atomizing us and reducing our strength.
Do not be fooled. Do not be misled. Do not be bought. Do not be enthralled. Do not be enticed. Do not be led astray.
We Jews were put here for the sake of participating in the creation of a just world with every other and for every other sentient being.
Let nothing, but nothing, be it pseudo-religious principles or iPods and other things that go beep in the night steer you away from what you are and what your designated tasks are.
The Hebrew version of this essay is to be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yfnud6
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Jews inspired by genuine Divine afflatus do not engage overmuch in ceremonies, nor do they speak in clichés, quoting others verbatim by rote.
They are not overly punctilious and scrupulous about ritual purity and they do not carry out formulaic actions obsessively-compulsively.
They do not care a whit about their own salvation and nothing they do is for the sake of ensuring an eternal place of rest and joy for themselves.
They act in, rather than speak of, love.
They do not wax pontifical or esoteric. They concern themselves with the needs of human beings qua human beings.
They do not sacrifice the material levels of our beings for the sake of the "spiritual" levels.
They do not profit from the encouraging and teaching of others to observe ritual.
They do not claim immaculate morality on the part of their teachers; neither do they claim that they their tradition or their teachers are infallible.
They do not set themselves up and judge and jury over humankind.
The only abomination they recognize is injustice and the misuse of power.
They need no social acceptance or group to be part to know what they should do or give them a sense of identity. They are strong enough to stand alone, all alone, if need be.
Their every action, the very purpose of their lives and their entire being is given over to the alleviation of the suffering of humankind.
Injustice is intolerable to them and they fight for justice for all no matter what the personal price they must pay for it.
Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Saul Alinsky, Martin Buber and Murray Bookchin were religious Jews. They carried within them the whole of Torah. The received and passed on the torch of the Prophets of Israel. This was true despite the protestations of some of them that they were atheists. It is recorded of Emma Goldman, the self-professed atheist Anarchist, that: "A rabbi who heard her lecture a large conference of clergymen on atheism probably came closer than the public to understanding her antireligious stand. "In spite of al Miss Goldman has said against religion", he announced, "she is the most religious person I know." (RED EMMA SPEAKS, An Emma Goldman Reader, Compiled and Edited by Alex Kates Shulman, Preface to Part Two; Published 1998 by Humanity Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books)
It is certainly be true that some Jews who adhere to the minutiae of Jewish Law may be true Orthodox Jews, but this is true if and only if they do so in addition to devoting their entire lives to the amelioration of the human condition and the alleviation of human suffering. Their performance of the minutiae of Jewish Law is not that which defines them at genuine Orthodox Jews. That is a mere appurtenance. Their devotion to justice is that which defines them as genuine Orthodox Jews.
Those who teach Jewish Law in such a way that it comes in lieu of acting in the world for the betterment of human kind; if it obviates doing so; if it becomes so all-demanding, time-consuming and burdensome that there is no strength or time for fighting injustice; if the observance of Jewish Law imparts the illusion of being absolutely right and just; if it attenuates the desire to right wrongs or puts off the doing so for the Mashiach to take care of; if it brings one to believe that each of us has only to tend to our own imperfections – then we may be entirely sure that what we have is not Judaism at all, but an ersatz, painstakingly deliberately fabricated and purposefully promulgated in order to confound us, to keep our energies invested in that which will avail nothing and deflect us from our duties by nefarious interests.
A great deal of money, ink and blood is being poured in order to keep Jews distracted from our true purpose and our true values. This is as true of the religious segments of our society as it is of the secular segments. The only difference is the methods being employed in order to dissipate our energies.
History has proven that Jews who are devoted to justice en masse are invincible. It is then that HaShem performs miracles for us.
Every effort is being made, in the religious and secular worlds alike, to prevent us from knowing who we truly are, what our purpose in creation is, from mobilizing in unison, reaching a critical mass of power and changing the course of the world. We can do it. We have done so before. If we were not capable of changing the world, so much investment would not be being invested in atomizing us and reducing our strength.
Do not be fooled. Do not be misled. Do not be bought. Do not be enthralled. Do not be enticed. Do not be led astray.
We Jews were put here for the sake of participating in the creation of a just world with every other and for every other sentient being.
Let nothing, but nothing, be it pseudo-religious principles or iPods and other things that go beep in the night steer you away from what you are and what your designated tasks are.
The Hebrew version of this essay is to be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yfnud6
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Friday, December 01, 2006
I BELIEVE
Clearly, we cannot know the whys and wherefores of that which transpires and, if we notice, as we advance on our path the experiences we have become more and more complex and confusing. As I grow older I understand less and less. It seems to me that this common experience is a process of aging that involves the surrendering of the will to conquer the world with our minds to HaShem. Eventually we will surrender everything to HaShem. First we must surrender our desire to know - which is really a desire to conquer.
I believe we are not intended to understand HaShem, not because HaShem could not make us understand if It willed that we would, but because we are being tested to see how we react to that which occurs which defies human understanding.
I believe that it is observed on high if we gaze upon the death and destruction of others and condemn those who suffered for some sin either of their own or, worse, others. I believe we are being observed to see if we are smug in believing that we are chosen. Do we interpret this as superiority or do we understand it as an imperative to serve humankind?
I believe that the Torah, as it presents itself to our every day, constricted consciousness, is a test. It is impossible to observe every mitzvah and to believe every tenet. I believe we are being observed to see what we adopt and what we reject, what we do and what we don't, what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about all of humanity.
HaShem, I believe, wants us to struggle and grapple with what is written in Torah, knowing that none of us accept and do it all. What do we cherish? What do we overlook? What do we stress? What do we minimize? All this, I believe, is telling about who we are and is being observed.
I believe that HaShem rejoices when we refuse to carry out the condemnations in Torah, which I believe are planted therein to see if we find that fruit sweet or bitter. I believe when we encounter the tests in Torah and we cry out to God: If that is what You expect of me, then send me to hell! I'll have no part of any World to Come if those are the conditions! - that God says בני נצחוני! –" My children have conquered me!" - in the sense that my children have seen past the words into My heart, they have passed the tests I set before them.
I believe that those who stress the strictures of Torah are not kind and good people, despite their having learned the clichés and giving lip service to love and devotion. I believe our attitudes and actions are being observed.
Shabbat Shalom,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Clearly, we cannot know the whys and wherefores of that which transpires and, if we notice, as we advance on our path the experiences we have become more and more complex and confusing. As I grow older I understand less and less. It seems to me that this common experience is a process of aging that involves the surrendering of the will to conquer the world with our minds to HaShem. Eventually we will surrender everything to HaShem. First we must surrender our desire to know - which is really a desire to conquer.
I believe we are not intended to understand HaShem, not because HaShem could not make us understand if It willed that we would, but because we are being tested to see how we react to that which occurs which defies human understanding.
I believe that it is observed on high if we gaze upon the death and destruction of others and condemn those who suffered for some sin either of their own or, worse, others. I believe we are being observed to see if we are smug in believing that we are chosen. Do we interpret this as superiority or do we understand it as an imperative to serve humankind?
I believe that the Torah, as it presents itself to our every day, constricted consciousness, is a test. It is impossible to observe every mitzvah and to believe every tenet. I believe we are being observed to see what we adopt and what we reject, what we do and what we don't, what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about all of humanity.
HaShem, I believe, wants us to struggle and grapple with what is written in Torah, knowing that none of us accept and do it all. What do we cherish? What do we overlook? What do we stress? What do we minimize? All this, I believe, is telling about who we are and is being observed.
I believe that HaShem rejoices when we refuse to carry out the condemnations in Torah, which I believe are planted therein to see if we find that fruit sweet or bitter. I believe when we encounter the tests in Torah and we cry out to God: If that is what You expect of me, then send me to hell! I'll have no part of any World to Come if those are the conditions! - that God says בני נצחוני! –" My children have conquered me!" - in the sense that my children have seen past the words into My heart, they have passed the tests I set before them.
I believe that those who stress the strictures of Torah are not kind and good people, despite their having learned the clichés and giving lip service to love and devotion. I believe our attitudes and actions are being observed.
Shabbat Shalom,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
By: Daniel McGrory and Tony Halpin
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2473385_1,00.html
Poisoned Spy Visited Israel with Oil Dossier
"A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin’s takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy’s secret dealings with some of Russia’s richest men.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.
He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion (£21 billion) company…"
By Doreen Ellen Bell Dotan:
Traces of Radioactive Matzah Ball in Berezovsky's Stomach
Traces of a radioactive matzah ball, which was prepared with the blood of Christian children, was found in the Russian Berezovsky's stomach.
It is known that the jet-setting Russian spy, who hob-nobbed with multi-billionaires, flew frequently to Israel to visit his favorite restaurant, which serves Borscht, Gefilte Fish and Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls in Tel Aviv and it is known that he supped at the elegant restaurant just days before he died.
Scotland Yard has discovered strychnine in the boiled chicken, mercury in the Gefilte Fish and cyanide in the Borscht at the restaurant.
Scotland Yard's sleuths are not sure, but they think there may be a link between the odd findings at the restaurant and Berezovsky's untimely and suspicious death just days before he was supposed to hand over top, top, top secret and sensitive documents that would have the utmost impact on revealing the truth about the Elders of Zion and international oil dealing.
The journalists who provided the breaking story above, and no doubt the BBC, will let you in on the rest of the sordid details.
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2473385_1,00.html
Poisoned Spy Visited Israel with Oil Dossier
"A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin’s takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy’s secret dealings with some of Russia’s richest men.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.
He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion (£21 billion) company…"
By Doreen Ellen Bell Dotan:
Traces of Radioactive Matzah Ball in Berezovsky's Stomach
Traces of a radioactive matzah ball, which was prepared with the blood of Christian children, was found in the Russian Berezovsky's stomach.
It is known that the jet-setting Russian spy, who hob-nobbed with multi-billionaires, flew frequently to Israel to visit his favorite restaurant, which serves Borscht, Gefilte Fish and Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls in Tel Aviv and it is known that he supped at the elegant restaurant just days before he died.
Scotland Yard has discovered strychnine in the boiled chicken, mercury in the Gefilte Fish and cyanide in the Borscht at the restaurant.
Scotland Yard's sleuths are not sure, but they think there may be a link between the odd findings at the restaurant and Berezovsky's untimely and suspicious death just days before he was supposed to hand over top, top, top secret and sensitive documents that would have the utmost impact on revealing the truth about the Elders of Zion and international oil dealing.
The journalists who provided the breaking story above, and no doubt the BBC, will let you in on the rest of the sordid details.
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Friday, November 24, 2006
I've begun another web site. Yes, yes, yet another.
I had no choice. This topic must be aired.
The site is called Critique of Judaism and is to be found on the following URL:
http://tinyurl.com/yed5pe
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
I had no choice. This topic must be aired.
The site is called Critique of Judaism and is to be found on the following URL:
http://tinyurl.com/yed5pe
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Traces of Child Sacrifice in Orthodox Judaism
Traces of Child Sacrifice in Orthodox Judaism The original article, entitled הכוח להתמודד, להמשיך ולהתחזק, which appeared in גיליון מס' 1037 of שיחת השבוע on November 17, 2006 can be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yh3mtw.
The Hebrew version of this essay, entitled: אבק זבח ילדים ביהדות חרדית can be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/ssy5a.
Yet more articles and a video can be found on the following site: http://tinyurl.com/yffen4 .
As reported in the article, eight-year-old Chiah-Muska Attiyah of blessed memory, daughter of Rabbi Victor Attiyah and his wife Devorah, was playing with matches in the back yard of their home. Some dried schach (the covering of the succah, which is usually highly flammable dried, thin branches, leaves and the like) in the yard caught fire, as did the girl's dress. Her younger brother told her to take the dress off. She refused to take the burning dress off even as she was engulfed in flames because "it's not modest". "It's not modest" is a formula that is drilled into the heads of Orthodox girls from the time they are three years old. From that age they begin to wear dresses that cover their knees by a few inches, with high necklines, long sleeves and opaque stockings. They are taught to dress and undress under a blanket. If their dress goes over their knee while sitting, running, playing - anything they are reprimanded: "It's not modest!" Modesty for an Orthodox girl is everything.
Chiah Mushka died.
She died because the lesson of being modest was drilled into her more than the overriding principle that saving a life, including her own, precludes all else. Her younger brother did know that either because as a boy he was better schooled than she or because, still being so young, he was reacting with natural common sense. God only knows the effect the experience had on her brother. The worst of it is that neither her father, the head of the Chaba"d house in Kiryat Arba-Chevron, nor his community and large circle of friends seem to have learned anything from the terrible incident. As we see from the site above, Rabbi Attiyah addressed an audience of 600 girls wherein he praised the virtue of modesty. He said nothing about his daughter not understanding the virtue of modesty properly or that saving one's life takes precedence over being modest.
Rather than asking himself if his understanding of Jewish Law and the way he was promulgating it is incorrect; the Rabbi is digging in his heels and building a large school in his daughter's honor wherein they will disseminate the self-same teachings. There isn't the merest hint that the teachings of female modesty in the school being built in her memory will be revised from the way in which she was taught. There is no intimation in the incident, as reported, that either the family of the child, Chiah-Mushka Attiyah, of blessed memory, or any of the thousands of people who attended the funeral and contacted the family during the mourning period thereafter see this as anything other than a story of the ultimate "self-sacrifice" for the sake of the grand principle of female modesty. She is being hailed as a precocious paragon of female Orthodox Jewish virtue. It is a perversion of our religion to think that it is in any ways right that a child should die for the sake of modesty. There are only three mitzvot that a Jew who is ben or bat mitzvah must die rather than commit: They are: incest, idol worship and the shedding of innocent blood – known by the acronym גע"ש.
If there be among you anyone who might think that an eight-year-old engulfed in flames taking off her dress in front of her younger brother constitutes the sin of incest, consider that in the time that she said: "It's not modest!", she could have said: "Turn away!"
There is an element of child sacrifice in this incident that is blood chilling and wholly inimical to Judaism as I learned it. There was always a strain of this type of approach in Judaism, but it was a strain and nothing more. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews were rational and common sensical. That was even true among those who learned the Kabbalah. I remember Jews as being very rational from my childhood, speaking of "luftmenschkeit" with utter disdain. This fanaticism is now the norm in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world.
This fanaticism is growing and becoming more dangerous, even fatal. We see the execrable violence in Orthodox/non-Orthodox relations. We see it in factional violence even within the same group of Orthodox Jews. We now see it in the death of children who have not even attained the age of being b'nei and b'not mitzvah.
I recall two stories of extreme modesty in women, two women who are held up as models of the modesty. The first is that of a woman by the name of Kimchit, the story of whom is related here: http://tinyurl.com/y4w23u . Note that the site says of Kimchit: "She was rewarded with seven sons who served as High Priests. We see from this story that a woman’s covering her hair in private is highly praiseworthy." Let's examine these comments. Is having seven sons who were High Priests a reward? The High Priesthood was an office for life from the time it was assumed. In order for a High Priest to be replaced by another he had to die or be otherwise incapacitated or found incapable or unworthy to continue the function. It is not a natural state that in the space of the lifetime of seven brothers they all serve as High Priests. Clearly, something is very wrong in this story. Indeed, the Talmud relates an explanation of this story that appears contrived and unconvincing, as we see here: http://tinyurl.com/yaoulz . Moreover, it is said that other women likewise did not let the beams of their house "see" their hair. Surely there was another reason why all seven of Kimchit's sons become High Priests. The text would have us understand that she did something meritorious in addition to being very careful about covering her hair. Perhaps the fact that those seven men grew up in a home in which the wrong aspects of Torah were overly stressed contributed to the fact that they did not serve as High Priests in a normal, natural way. Perhaps a woman being so punctilious about covering her hair in private that the "walls of her house do not "see" her hair is not so "praiseworthy" after all. Perhaps it is unhealthy fanaticism, which always comes at the expense of doing mitzvoth correctly and putting the emphasis on serving humanity.
The second story of a model of female modesty is that of a woman who pinned her dress to her legs so that when she was dragged through the streets to her death by horses no one would see her legs. The story, entitled "שלש מתנות", part 3, by י"ל פרץ can be found in Hebrew on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yn27u9 . This is a story that recounts a grown woman, a woman who is bat mitzvah. She was designated for death in the brutal way described immediately above by Gentile authorities. Rather than give them the satisfaction of seeing her utterly humiliated, she pinned her dress to the flesh of her legs so that they would not be seen. Obviously, that must have been very painful. It was a brave and noble act of defiance and retaining her dignity to the last.
Eight-year-old Chiah-Mushka Attiyah, of blessed memory, was in no way in the same position. She could have and should have taken off her dress. She would have in no way been compromising her self. She made the ultimate compromise of herself for nothing, for absolutely nothing – because she was incorrectly educated in Jewish Law. God protect us if this is what "Ufaratztah" (the spreading of Jewish teaching and practice) means. May God prevent the spreading of such "teaching" of such "Chassidus" (piety; devotion; virtue; Hassidism). Please do not misunderstand me.
It is of no especial import that the family is Chaba"d. It could have happened in any ultra-Orthodox family. In fact, most of the Orthodox who have heard this story seem to think that as regrettable and tragic as it is, it was unavoidable and that the girl did the right thing.I am convinced that Rabbi and Rebbetzen Attiyah are lovely and loving people. I am sure that there intentions are only good. The problem is that they are terribly misled. Herein lies the problem with Judaism today - the confusion, the ignorance, the reversal of priorities and the superstition that passes for halakhah.
This story haunts me for many reasons.
Looking at the pictures of the lovely children Chiah Mushke, of blessed memory, and her siblings on the site (http://www.chabad-hebron.com/345.html) we see healthy, happy children. They are immaculately clean. They are well dressed. There isn't a spot on their clothes, not so much as a wrinkle. Not one hair is out of place. They are obviously the recipients of great love and devotion. They also obviously love one another profoundly. There isn't the merest hint of neglect.
There is no doubt in my mind that the girls were educated to overweening צניעות (modesty) out of the sincere desire to protect them. The problem is, צניעות (modesty) seems to have been used as a kind of fetish and the *only* fence of protection. They were obviously not taught the whole battery of survival skills that we all need.
Chiah Mushke was playing with matches, which there is every reason to assume that she knew was forbidden. From this we learn that she had the spunk to be a bit naughty.
So, why was she not a bit "naughty" enough to go against Torah to save her life, assuming she did not know that פקוח נפש (saving a life) is a מצוה (mitzvah, commandment, good deed), and not an עברה (sin, transgression)?
Why was the will to survive so attenuated in this child? Was it a function of her education as an ultra-Orthodox female child, education geared toward creating women who will be utterly devoted to others, never thinking of their own welfare. I am apt to think that this occurred as a result of a wholly distorted concept of בטול (self-effacement, negation of the ego) and that is the reason why this story haunts me so.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Traces of Child Sacrifice in Orthodox Judaism The original article, entitled הכוח להתמודד, להמשיך ולהתחזק, which appeared in גיליון מס' 1037 of שיחת השבוע on November 17, 2006 can be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yh3mtw.
The Hebrew version of this essay, entitled: אבק זבח ילדים ביהדות חרדית can be found on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/ssy5a.
Yet more articles and a video can be found on the following site: http://tinyurl.com/yffen4 .
As reported in the article, eight-year-old Chiah-Muska Attiyah of blessed memory, daughter of Rabbi Victor Attiyah and his wife Devorah, was playing with matches in the back yard of their home. Some dried schach (the covering of the succah, which is usually highly flammable dried, thin branches, leaves and the like) in the yard caught fire, as did the girl's dress. Her younger brother told her to take the dress off. She refused to take the burning dress off even as she was engulfed in flames because "it's not modest". "It's not modest" is a formula that is drilled into the heads of Orthodox girls from the time they are three years old. From that age they begin to wear dresses that cover their knees by a few inches, with high necklines, long sleeves and opaque stockings. They are taught to dress and undress under a blanket. If their dress goes over their knee while sitting, running, playing - anything they are reprimanded: "It's not modest!" Modesty for an Orthodox girl is everything.
Chiah Mushka died.
She died because the lesson of being modest was drilled into her more than the overriding principle that saving a life, including her own, precludes all else. Her younger brother did know that either because as a boy he was better schooled than she or because, still being so young, he was reacting with natural common sense. God only knows the effect the experience had on her brother. The worst of it is that neither her father, the head of the Chaba"d house in Kiryat Arba-Chevron, nor his community and large circle of friends seem to have learned anything from the terrible incident. As we see from the site above, Rabbi Attiyah addressed an audience of 600 girls wherein he praised the virtue of modesty. He said nothing about his daughter not understanding the virtue of modesty properly or that saving one's life takes precedence over being modest.
Rather than asking himself if his understanding of Jewish Law and the way he was promulgating it is incorrect; the Rabbi is digging in his heels and building a large school in his daughter's honor wherein they will disseminate the self-same teachings. There isn't the merest hint that the teachings of female modesty in the school being built in her memory will be revised from the way in which she was taught. There is no intimation in the incident, as reported, that either the family of the child, Chiah-Mushka Attiyah, of blessed memory, or any of the thousands of people who attended the funeral and contacted the family during the mourning period thereafter see this as anything other than a story of the ultimate "self-sacrifice" for the sake of the grand principle of female modesty. She is being hailed as a precocious paragon of female Orthodox Jewish virtue. It is a perversion of our religion to think that it is in any ways right that a child should die for the sake of modesty. There are only three mitzvot that a Jew who is ben or bat mitzvah must die rather than commit: They are: incest, idol worship and the shedding of innocent blood – known by the acronym גע"ש.
If there be among you anyone who might think that an eight-year-old engulfed in flames taking off her dress in front of her younger brother constitutes the sin of incest, consider that in the time that she said: "It's not modest!", she could have said: "Turn away!"
There is an element of child sacrifice in this incident that is blood chilling and wholly inimical to Judaism as I learned it. There was always a strain of this type of approach in Judaism, but it was a strain and nothing more. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews were rational and common sensical. That was even true among those who learned the Kabbalah. I remember Jews as being very rational from my childhood, speaking of "luftmenschkeit" with utter disdain. This fanaticism is now the norm in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world.
This fanaticism is growing and becoming more dangerous, even fatal. We see the execrable violence in Orthodox/non-Orthodox relations. We see it in factional violence even within the same group of Orthodox Jews. We now see it in the death of children who have not even attained the age of being b'nei and b'not mitzvah.
I recall two stories of extreme modesty in women, two women who are held up as models of the modesty. The first is that of a woman by the name of Kimchit, the story of whom is related here: http://tinyurl.com/y4w23u . Note that the site says of Kimchit: "She was rewarded with seven sons who served as High Priests. We see from this story that a woman’s covering her hair in private is highly praiseworthy." Let's examine these comments. Is having seven sons who were High Priests a reward? The High Priesthood was an office for life from the time it was assumed. In order for a High Priest to be replaced by another he had to die or be otherwise incapacitated or found incapable or unworthy to continue the function. It is not a natural state that in the space of the lifetime of seven brothers they all serve as High Priests. Clearly, something is very wrong in this story. Indeed, the Talmud relates an explanation of this story that appears contrived and unconvincing, as we see here: http://tinyurl.com/yaoulz . Moreover, it is said that other women likewise did not let the beams of their house "see" their hair. Surely there was another reason why all seven of Kimchit's sons become High Priests. The text would have us understand that she did something meritorious in addition to being very careful about covering her hair. Perhaps the fact that those seven men grew up in a home in which the wrong aspects of Torah were overly stressed contributed to the fact that they did not serve as High Priests in a normal, natural way. Perhaps a woman being so punctilious about covering her hair in private that the "walls of her house do not "see" her hair is not so "praiseworthy" after all. Perhaps it is unhealthy fanaticism, which always comes at the expense of doing mitzvoth correctly and putting the emphasis on serving humanity.
The second story of a model of female modesty is that of a woman who pinned her dress to her legs so that when she was dragged through the streets to her death by horses no one would see her legs. The story, entitled "שלש מתנות", part 3, by י"ל פרץ can be found in Hebrew on the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/yn27u9 . This is a story that recounts a grown woman, a woman who is bat mitzvah. She was designated for death in the brutal way described immediately above by Gentile authorities. Rather than give them the satisfaction of seeing her utterly humiliated, she pinned her dress to the flesh of her legs so that they would not be seen. Obviously, that must have been very painful. It was a brave and noble act of defiance and retaining her dignity to the last.
Eight-year-old Chiah-Mushka Attiyah, of blessed memory, was in no way in the same position. She could have and should have taken off her dress. She would have in no way been compromising her self. She made the ultimate compromise of herself for nothing, for absolutely nothing – because she was incorrectly educated in Jewish Law. God protect us if this is what "Ufaratztah" (the spreading of Jewish teaching and practice) means. May God prevent the spreading of such "teaching" of such "Chassidus" (piety; devotion; virtue; Hassidism). Please do not misunderstand me.
It is of no especial import that the family is Chaba"d. It could have happened in any ultra-Orthodox family. In fact, most of the Orthodox who have heard this story seem to think that as regrettable and tragic as it is, it was unavoidable and that the girl did the right thing.I am convinced that Rabbi and Rebbetzen Attiyah are lovely and loving people. I am sure that there intentions are only good. The problem is that they are terribly misled. Herein lies the problem with Judaism today - the confusion, the ignorance, the reversal of priorities and the superstition that passes for halakhah.
This story haunts me for many reasons.
Looking at the pictures of the lovely children Chiah Mushke, of blessed memory, and her siblings on the site (http://www.chabad-hebron.com/345.html) we see healthy, happy children. They are immaculately clean. They are well dressed. There isn't a spot on their clothes, not so much as a wrinkle. Not one hair is out of place. They are obviously the recipients of great love and devotion. They also obviously love one another profoundly. There isn't the merest hint of neglect.
There is no doubt in my mind that the girls were educated to overweening צניעות (modesty) out of the sincere desire to protect them. The problem is, צניעות (modesty) seems to have been used as a kind of fetish and the *only* fence of protection. They were obviously not taught the whole battery of survival skills that we all need.
Chiah Mushke was playing with matches, which there is every reason to assume that she knew was forbidden. From this we learn that she had the spunk to be a bit naughty.
So, why was she not a bit "naughty" enough to go against Torah to save her life, assuming she did not know that פקוח נפש (saving a life) is a מצוה (mitzvah, commandment, good deed), and not an עברה (sin, transgression)?
Why was the will to survive so attenuated in this child? Was it a function of her education as an ultra-Orthodox female child, education geared toward creating women who will be utterly devoted to others, never thinking of their own welfare. I am apt to think that this occurred as a result of a wholly distorted concept of בטול (self-effacement, negation of the ego) and that is the reason why this story haunts me so.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IS A LIE?
"What if everything you believe is a lie?" - I found that question posed to the public on a site. I think it was meant to freak people out or get them to think as the person who asked the question would like them to, assuming the way s/he thinks is The Truth.
A long time ago I stated that I take no unilateral, absolute positions on any issue. I have no social or emotional need to adopt a position and cling to it at all cost in order to fit into a social group.
That, I believe, is why most people cling tenaciously to their opinions - fear of isolation. Most people hinge the satisfaction of their innate gregarious natures upon the adoption of a value system. They are willing to sacrifice their independence of thought and position-taking for the sake of acceptance. I will not make this sacrifice. I never did.
I have been accused of being "schizo" by people who hold desperately to one given way of thinking or another due to the fact that my way of thinking is eclectic, syncretistic and, above all, tentative at any given time, always subject to change when confronted by reasoning that seems more comprehensive or otherwise superior.
Some understand that that it is positive, the mark of a truly open mind, rather than a sign of pathology.
I (tentatively :0) think the following quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald is brilliant: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. "
As my mother used to quote Shakespeare saying: "This above all,--to thine own self be true;", the remainder of the quote being: "and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark)
Loyalty, whether it be to ideas, ideals or to persons is a very great value and virtue, but, IMO, allowing oneself to grow and evolve toward more comprehensive understanding, which allows us to love on a higher level, is greater and often that involves the moving on and away from that which and whom we cherished.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
"What if everything you believe is a lie?" - I found that question posed to the public on a site. I think it was meant to freak people out or get them to think as the person who asked the question would like them to, assuming the way s/he thinks is The Truth.
A long time ago I stated that I take no unilateral, absolute positions on any issue. I have no social or emotional need to adopt a position and cling to it at all cost in order to fit into a social group.
That, I believe, is why most people cling tenaciously to their opinions - fear of isolation. Most people hinge the satisfaction of their innate gregarious natures upon the adoption of a value system. They are willing to sacrifice their independence of thought and position-taking for the sake of acceptance. I will not make this sacrifice. I never did.
I have been accused of being "schizo" by people who hold desperately to one given way of thinking or another due to the fact that my way of thinking is eclectic, syncretistic and, above all, tentative at any given time, always subject to change when confronted by reasoning that seems more comprehensive or otherwise superior.
Some understand that that it is positive, the mark of a truly open mind, rather than a sign of pathology.
I (tentatively :0) think the following quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald is brilliant: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. "
As my mother used to quote Shakespeare saying: "This above all,--to thine own self be true;", the remainder of the quote being: "and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark)
Loyalty, whether it be to ideas, ideals or to persons is a very great value and virtue, but, IMO, allowing oneself to grow and evolve toward more comprehensive understanding, which allows us to love on a higher level, is greater and often that involves the moving on and away from that which and whom we cherished.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Pederasty in Ancient Greece
For a discussion of the topic please see: http://tinyurl.com/yhjvbp
The subject of Pederasty in ancient Greece came to my attention recently and caused me to reevaluate my thinking about bisexuality among men, while affirming my thinking on bisexuality as experienced and practiced by women.
Before reading about Pederasty in ancient Greece and based only on my observations of society in our times and in the recent past; I came to the conclusion that bisexuality is not only more prevalent among women than among men, but also perhaps more natural to their nature.
In the light of what I have learned about Pederasty, as practiced in ancient Greece by men and analogous behavior among women; it now seems to me that bisexuality is the norm for both sexes and will be the commonly practiced form of sexuality in the absence of societal pressures to be otherwise.
Note: Pederasty is not Pedophilia, even though it would not accord with ages of consent in conservative countries like the US. Herein we are discussing relationships between mature men and young men or adolescent boys, not between pubescent adults and pre-pubescent children, which I consider a gross form of abuse, wholly unnatural and thus a serious crime against nature.
Ancient Greece was a society in which Pederasty was not only considered normal or desirable, it was considered essential for the full development of the citizen. The Wikipedia article describes the phenomenon thusly: "The erastes-eromenos (the older lover-young object of his love, my parentheses) relationship was fundamental to the Classical Greek social and educational system, had its own complex social-sexual etiquette and was an important social institution among the upper class."
We note a number of elements of ancient Greek Pederasty.
First, it was not an abusive relationship, but one of love. I mention this because today the definition of Pederasty includes any type of mature-youthful homosexual relationship, including violent and otherwise abusive ones.
It was tremendously widespread in ancient Greece, truly a societal norm, which assumed various forms in accordance with the various cultures of the various City-States.
Ancient Greek art depicts the eromenoi (the term used for the "beloved" youth, the objects of love of the mature men) as physically well-developed. They are clearly fully sexually mature, quite muscularly developed and, admittedly in some but not all cases, in their full height.
The statues and art of ancient Greece teach us that neither the erastes nor the eromenos look "queer". They practiced homosexual relationships freely, but were very male in appearance, behavior, emotional make-up and thought patterns.
The Pederasty was in addition to, not instead of, relationships with women in which men were married and had children. As the Wikipedia article states: "The Greeks considered it normal for any man to be drawn to the beauty of a boy - just as much if not more than to that of a woman."
It is important to consider the implications of the fact that the practice was extremely widespread. It is impossible that an entire culture was based on an unnatural sexuality. That is to say, that in a culture in which homosexual expression of love is not forbidden, it will arise spontaneously, be widespread and exist side-by-side with heterosexual expression of love. The article also states: "Analogous relations between Greek women and adolescent girls have been reported by Plutarch, Xenophon and others." Bisexuality seems to be the norm for humans if not suppressed, that being, as I have (tentatively) concluded, as true for men as for women.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
For a discussion of the topic please see: http://tinyurl.com/yhjvbp
The subject of Pederasty in ancient Greece came to my attention recently and caused me to reevaluate my thinking about bisexuality among men, while affirming my thinking on bisexuality as experienced and practiced by women.
Before reading about Pederasty in ancient Greece and based only on my observations of society in our times and in the recent past; I came to the conclusion that bisexuality is not only more prevalent among women than among men, but also perhaps more natural to their nature.
In the light of what I have learned about Pederasty, as practiced in ancient Greece by men and analogous behavior among women; it now seems to me that bisexuality is the norm for both sexes and will be the commonly practiced form of sexuality in the absence of societal pressures to be otherwise.
Note: Pederasty is not Pedophilia, even though it would not accord with ages of consent in conservative countries like the US. Herein we are discussing relationships between mature men and young men or adolescent boys, not between pubescent adults and pre-pubescent children, which I consider a gross form of abuse, wholly unnatural and thus a serious crime against nature.
Ancient Greece was a society in which Pederasty was not only considered normal or desirable, it was considered essential for the full development of the citizen. The Wikipedia article describes the phenomenon thusly: "The erastes-eromenos (the older lover-young object of his love, my parentheses) relationship was fundamental to the Classical Greek social and educational system, had its own complex social-sexual etiquette and was an important social institution among the upper class."
We note a number of elements of ancient Greek Pederasty.
First, it was not an abusive relationship, but one of love. I mention this because today the definition of Pederasty includes any type of mature-youthful homosexual relationship, including violent and otherwise abusive ones.
It was tremendously widespread in ancient Greece, truly a societal norm, which assumed various forms in accordance with the various cultures of the various City-States.
Ancient Greek art depicts the eromenoi (the term used for the "beloved" youth, the objects of love of the mature men) as physically well-developed. They are clearly fully sexually mature, quite muscularly developed and, admittedly in some but not all cases, in their full height.
The statues and art of ancient Greece teach us that neither the erastes nor the eromenos look "queer". They practiced homosexual relationships freely, but were very male in appearance, behavior, emotional make-up and thought patterns.
The Pederasty was in addition to, not instead of, relationships with women in which men were married and had children. As the Wikipedia article states: "The Greeks considered it normal for any man to be drawn to the beauty of a boy - just as much if not more than to that of a woman."
It is important to consider the implications of the fact that the practice was extremely widespread. It is impossible that an entire culture was based on an unnatural sexuality. That is to say, that in a culture in which homosexual expression of love is not forbidden, it will arise spontaneously, be widespread and exist side-by-side with heterosexual expression of love. The article also states: "Analogous relations between Greek women and adolescent girls have been reported by Plutarch, Xenophon and others." Bisexuality seems to be the norm for humans if not suppressed, that being, as I have (tentatively) concluded, as true for men as for women.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Thursday, November 02, 2006
A political short story for Hallowe'en.
Hillary is taking part in a seance trying to contact Eleanor Roosevelt, another one of the political greats with whom she is certain she shares an eternal spiritual bond. "Come to me Eleanor! Speak to me, Eleanor! Speak! I summon thee from the grave! I command thee to speak to me!"
The candles begin to flicker wildly. The chandeliers rattle. The carpet on the wall begins to wave. A crystal vase on a table shakes violently making its way of the edge of table and shatters on the marble floor. But nary is a voice heard.
So, they get out the oija board and the letters spell out: "Bugger off, Hillary. I don't speak with the likes of you."
Doreen Ellen-Bell Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Hillary is taking part in a seance trying to contact Eleanor Roosevelt, another one of the political greats with whom she is certain she shares an eternal spiritual bond. "Come to me Eleanor! Speak to me, Eleanor! Speak! I summon thee from the grave! I command thee to speak to me!"
The candles begin to flicker wildly. The chandeliers rattle. The carpet on the wall begins to wave. A crystal vase on a table shakes violently making its way of the edge of table and shatters on the marble floor. But nary is a voice heard.
So, they get out the oija board and the letters spell out: "Bugger off, Hillary. I don't speak with the likes of you."
Doreen Ellen-Bell Dotan, Tzfat (Safed), Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Reasons Not to Live in Tzfat (Safed), Or Anywhere Else in Israel for that Matter
--- In Tzfat@yahoogroups.com, "flakfire" wrote:>> Sabras are only at their best when their backs are really against the > wall.
I wrote:
You might add the inability to rethink our mythology about ourselves or be confused by the facts to your list.
You just lived through a war in which the Israelis were most certainly not at their best, but you persist in repeating the old cliches that give you an illusory sense of security.
That is one of the most obiquitous and serious problems in Israeli society.
flakfire wrote:
Otherwise, they are generally quite paltry and mediocre: blase, over-> confident, arrogant, ungrateful, easily sidetracked and none too smart!
I wrote:
Speak in the second person plural. Why do you exempt yourself?
flakfire wrote:
And that includes ALL Sabras: Jews, Arabs, left wing, right wing, charedi, frum (religious), professors, professionals, chilloni (secular)....! If it wasn't for the constant threat from the outside plus the constant stream of > new immigrant Jews, Israel would quickly degenerate into a farrago!
I wrote:
The way you use the term 'ferrago' is a malapropism. Your other IDs use malapropisms in the very same way. Ditto for the run on descriptions and overly emotional exclamation marks.
Can we get real? Perhaps that's a funny question to pose in a response to someone who posts with an alias (or two, or three...)
Can we admit that we have failed miserably?
We have not created a society that is in any wise superior to that of the Gentiles.
We do not exceed the Gentiles in average IQ in Israel, as we do in the Diaspora. (The average IQ of American Jews is 117. For Ethiopian Israeli Jews it is 105-110. For Ashkenazi Israeli Jews it is 100. For Mizrahi Israeli Jews it is 88). Our political system is not superior to the Gentiles'. Our judicial system is not superior to theirs. Our quality of living is not superior to theirs. We have not created a society that is more peaceful than theirs, more cultured, more interesting - in short, more anything. Let's not even talk about statistics of road accidents. We have a better system of medicine than does the US, but it is inferior to that of Gentile countries that likewise have socialized systems of medicine.
We are mediocre in every way, in every sphere.
Scientists who have talent are working for foreign research and many of them beat a permanent path out of here.
In all spheres there is a brain drain out of the country.
Certainly we are not proving either to ourselves or to the world that we are chosen.
We, in becoming a nation with a state, lost everything we once were. We also lost the respect and the awe of the nations.
We are sending our boys to die for the myths we want to believe about ourselves.
It doesn't matter that we have a nuclear arsenal. We can't use it without making mushroom soup of ourselves too. We are smack dab in the Middle East. So, if someone thinks that is a reason to have a state, they are dead wrong.
More than terrorist bombs, our illusions and delusions are blowing up all around us.
The only thing we do well is be second fiddle in others' countries.
When we are not in the driver's seat we make great driving instructors. Those who can't do teach.
I heard of a man who arrived here from Morocco as a child. He had a fistukia (a stand for nuts and snacks) that he barely made a living from. One day he decided to try his luck in Morocco. He became a successful businessman there. The same man who could hardly run a fistukia here ran a corporation in Morocco. The only difference was the location.
The only sane way to go is to realize that we are entertaining very dangerous illusions and delusions about ourselves. The foremost among them is that we are fit to run a state of our own.
I say we face the reality that we are making a total mess of our ersatz state and that we are at the point of losing control totally. I say the smartest way to go is to cut our losses, pack up and go back to wherever we came from and salvage whatever we can of what Jewry once was.
This country will go out , either with a bang or a wimper, if we persist in the belief that we are the holy People in the holy Land and that everything we do is blessed.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
--- In Tzfat@yahoogroups.com, "flakfire" wrote:>> Sabras are only at their best when their backs are really against the > wall.
I wrote:
You might add the inability to rethink our mythology about ourselves or be confused by the facts to your list.
You just lived through a war in which the Israelis were most certainly not at their best, but you persist in repeating the old cliches that give you an illusory sense of security.
That is one of the most obiquitous and serious problems in Israeli society.
flakfire wrote:
Otherwise, they are generally quite paltry and mediocre: blase, over-> confident, arrogant, ungrateful, easily sidetracked and none too smart!
I wrote:
Speak in the second person plural. Why do you exempt yourself?
flakfire wrote:
And that includes ALL Sabras: Jews, Arabs, left wing, right wing, charedi, frum (religious), professors, professionals, chilloni (secular)....! If it wasn't for the constant threat from the outside plus the constant stream of > new immigrant Jews, Israel would quickly degenerate into a farrago!
I wrote:
The way you use the term 'ferrago' is a malapropism. Your other IDs use malapropisms in the very same way. Ditto for the run on descriptions and overly emotional exclamation marks.
Can we get real? Perhaps that's a funny question to pose in a response to someone who posts with an alias (or two, or three...)
Can we admit that we have failed miserably?
We have not created a society that is in any wise superior to that of the Gentiles.
We do not exceed the Gentiles in average IQ in Israel, as we do in the Diaspora. (The average IQ of American Jews is 117. For Ethiopian Israeli Jews it is 105-110. For Ashkenazi Israeli Jews it is 100. For Mizrahi Israeli Jews it is 88). Our political system is not superior to the Gentiles'. Our judicial system is not superior to theirs. Our quality of living is not superior to theirs. We have not created a society that is more peaceful than theirs, more cultured, more interesting - in short, more anything. Let's not even talk about statistics of road accidents. We have a better system of medicine than does the US, but it is inferior to that of Gentile countries that likewise have socialized systems of medicine.
We are mediocre in every way, in every sphere.
Scientists who have talent are working for foreign research and many of them beat a permanent path out of here.
In all spheres there is a brain drain out of the country.
Certainly we are not proving either to ourselves or to the world that we are chosen.
We, in becoming a nation with a state, lost everything we once were. We also lost the respect and the awe of the nations.
We are sending our boys to die for the myths we want to believe about ourselves.
It doesn't matter that we have a nuclear arsenal. We can't use it without making mushroom soup of ourselves too. We are smack dab in the Middle East. So, if someone thinks that is a reason to have a state, they are dead wrong.
More than terrorist bombs, our illusions and delusions are blowing up all around us.
The only thing we do well is be second fiddle in others' countries.
When we are not in the driver's seat we make great driving instructors. Those who can't do teach.
I heard of a man who arrived here from Morocco as a child. He had a fistukia (a stand for nuts and snacks) that he barely made a living from. One day he decided to try his luck in Morocco. He became a successful businessman there. The same man who could hardly run a fistukia here ran a corporation in Morocco. The only difference was the location.
The only sane way to go is to realize that we are entertaining very dangerous illusions and delusions about ourselves. The foremost among them is that we are fit to run a state of our own.
I say we face the reality that we are making a total mess of our ersatz state and that we are at the point of losing control totally. I say the smartest way to go is to cut our losses, pack up and go back to wherever we came from and salvage whatever we can of what Jewry once was.
This country will go out , either with a bang or a wimper, if we persist in the belief that we are the holy People in the holy Land and that everything we do is blessed.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
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