From the agitation and anger of the crowds, the din of the car horns and the shouts of “Civil rights now!” and “Bigots!” one would have been forgiven for thinking that the protesters were denouncing some horrific assault on human freedom.

But no, the demonstrations – and church vandalisms and business boycotts – were in protest of California voters’ passage of the November ballot measure known as Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Any two Californians can, as before, register as “domestic partners” and have the very same rights and responsibilities as married couples under state law. All Proposition 8 sought to do was preserve in law what the word “marriage” has meant for millennia.

Those, though, who were unhappy with the electorate’s decision wasted no time in taking to the streets of dozens of American cities and towns to rail against the audacity – the bigotry, as they proclaimed it – of considering gender germane to marriage.

In some cities, tens of thousands turned out for raucous rallies; in many instances, epithets were hurled at counterdemonstrators and even uninvolved bystanders. Although protesters claimed the mantle of the American civil rights movement, several black observers of the Los Angeles demonstration had what has been called the “N-bomb” dropped on them by infuriated demonstrators – a presumed tribute to the fact that blacks voted 2-1 in favor of the proposition. A San Diego family with a “Yes on 8” sign on their front lawn had their car’s tires slashed. A San Francisco area group launched a campaign to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Mormon Church because of its support of the marriage initiative. Graffiti was spray-painted on a Mormon church near Sacramento. A group of about 30 activists from a group called “Bash Back!” stormed into a Lansing, Michigan church, unfurled a rainbow flag at the pulpit and proceeded to disrupt services by banging on cans and shouting.

Speaking of prescience, I must admit that when I wrote my recent post on media bias, I had no idea that the father accused of abusing and killing his infant son was sentenced on the 18th. So, understandably, Moshe, Rabbi Natan Slifkin and others want to know how a sentence of 6 years plus 2 years suspended fits with what I’ve said.

Indeed, where is the media bias if we see the father was found guilty, and is going to jail for six years? Doesn’t this mean that everything the media reported was correct all along, and now the father is getting the punishment befitting a parent who abused and murdered his child?

Well, no. Not at all. The more I look into it, the less I understand how the sentence could possibly be adequate for what the media told us was the crime.

Let’s not forget — according to the most charitable version of the father’s actions, he dropped his child and this resulted in the child’s death. The father never claimed he tripped — he says he fell asleep. Well, if a person falls asleep driving and kills someone, that’s manslaughter. When a father is holding his baby, it’s the same thing. Even if, despite the judge’s statement, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing… we cannot say he was entirely innocent. But the point is that this sentence is much more in accordance with the conclusion that the father did something irresponsible, rather than brutal.

Rav Shalom Yosef Elyashiv recently told Rabbi Noach Weinberg of Aish HaTorah that world Jewry faces a threat as great as that it confronted in the midst of the Holocaust. (That widespread report was confirmed to me by senior officials at Aish HaTorah.) Rav Elyashiv was referring preeminently to the threat of a nuclear Iran, though no doubt the simultaneous threat to the citadels of Torah learning in Eretz Yisrael and abroad as a consequence of the world financial crisis only magnifies the concerns about Iran.

I doubt Rav Elyashiv read an AP story this week about a study being prepared for President-elect Barack Obama by a group of former State Department diplomats and academic “experts” on Iran. Had he done so, however, his fears for the future would likely have been ratcheted up a notch or two. Among the conclusions of the report: (1) any military attack on Iran would almost certainly fail in its goal of significantly setting back Iran’s nuclear weapons program; (2) economic sanctions have very little chance of success; (3) American threats to date are “not cowing Iran and the current regime is not in imminent peril.” Taken together those three points basically amount to a declaration that the United States can do nothing to keep Iran from going nuclear.

In addition, the report states that it is wrong to focus on Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, as he is not the one calling the shots on Iran’s nuclear policy. That would be Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, who the report describes as a “cautious decision maker who acts after consulting advisors holding a wide range of views, including those highly critical of Ahmadinejad,” despite his admitted proclivity for “frequent and hostile rhetoric directed at the West.” In other words, the authors of the report first counsel passivity towards the threat of nuclear Iran, and then wish to tell President Obama that it won’t be so bad, as Khamanei does not appear to be a complete nutcase, and therefore will not expose his country to nuclear destruction.

That counsel of passivity is hardly surprising given its source – the State Department and denizens of the Middle East Studies departments pilloried by Professor Martin Kramer in Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, for their complete failure to provide American policymakers with any remotely useful information on the Middle East, including prior warning of the threat of Al Qaeda, in particular, and Islamic jihadism, in general. (Far from emphasizing the danger posed by Islamic jihad, American Middle East scholars were busy developing elaborate theories about why Islam constitutes a modernizing force in the Arab world.)

Few aspects of parenting are more intractable than teaching our children to deal with disparities in lifestyle. Yet we must deal with this challenge, for such gaps, like the poor, will always be with us.

A society without wide disparities in income and lifestyle would be in many ways a more pleasant place to live. But that does not necessarily make it the ideal. Those societies with the widest income gaps also tend to be the greatest wealth producing societies for all. They unleash the power of human ambition, and not just towards wealth.

A rav in a good-sized community, without very many rich Jews, once expressed to me his doubts as to whether his community would ever produce any great talmidei chachamim. Members of the community lacked ambition, he said.

Ideally, differences in lifestyles between members of a community should be no problem. If we were successful in exemplifying the qualities of being sameach b’chelko (content with one’s portion) and conveying this precious middah to our children, income differences would be a matter of little concern.

If the reputation of the “Mainstream” Media as an impartial provider of information has taken a severe beating in recent years, its behavior during this election put that idea to death and nailed closed the coffin. On “HowObamaGotElected.com“, you can learn the impact of the media in making sure the average Obama voter knew the issues, the candidates, and the change for which they were voting.

Even the most jaded among us will be stunned by the results. Reporters decide what to report, and we fail to realize the incredible impact of their choices. We often rail about the biased coverage of Orthodox Jews in the press, but don’t recognize the potency of the poison being fed to our uninformed brethren. John McCain certainly had far greater resources to combat the media image than we do… so just take a look at what Obama viewers knew, and what they didn’t.

For example, nine out of ten Obama voters knew that Sarah Palin was the candidate for whom her party spent $150,000 on her wardrobe, and nearly 94% correctly identified her as the one with the pregnant teenage daughter. Over 80% knew it was John McCain who didn’t know how many houses he owns — and an even higher percentage “knew” that Palin said she could see Russia from her house, although she never said it.

By Rabbi Reuven Tradburks

[R. Tradburks is the rav of Kehillat Shaarei Torah in Toronto, the President of the Toronto Vaad Harabonim and former Director of its Beis Din, and a former Board member of AJOP]

Gary Rosenblatt addressed an issue in his column in the Jewish Week, which we don’t like to admit. In both the lead up to the election and the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama, orthodox Jews expressed opposition to Obama that had little to do with his policies or his political ability. He is a muslim, he will be terrible for Israel, he doesn’t like Jews, I am suspicious, who knows what he will do.

There is a tendency, I believe, in our world to paint the world in the paradigms of Yaakov and Esav – good versus evil. But we often paint the wrong people with the Esav label.

I believe that getting America to the point of electing a black President was one of America’s finest hours. — Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein, November 12.

He beat me to it, as I was going to make a similar comment. As a strong McCain supporter, I did not expect to have such positive feelings about the statement made by Americans about America today, through this election. Less than 50 years after whites had to be forced to share classrooms and bathrooms with black Americans, they elected one to be President of the United States. If I read the electoral college numbers correctly, then although it is true that over 90% of African-Americans voted for him, Obama would have won without the black vote.

Despite his selection of the very partisan Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, Obama has begun with a number of overtures across the aisle. If he governs the way he campaigned — namely, in the center — then the next four years may be a pleasant surprise, and we should give him the chance to prove himself.

This does not change the fact that thoughtful Americans, especially Jewish voters and those concerned for Israel, had legitimate and extremely serious reasons to oppose him that had nothing to do with bigotry and racism. It would behoove Obama’s supporters to recognize that a slanderous and unsubstantiated accusation of bigotry is, itself, bigoted. Both during and after the election, we’ve heard that Jewish opposition to Obama, especially Orthodox Jewish opposition, was based upon his race — without a scintilla of valid evidence. I include, among these, Gary Rosenblatt’s recent editorial in the Jewish Week (”Racial Comments ‘Shock’ Principals“), so approvingly cited by “Reb Yid” in the comments to Rabbi Adlerstein’s recent post.

It was the very beginning of 1942 and the group of ten young men and their yeshiva dean, exiles in frigid Siberia, couldn’t believe their eyes. Betzalel Orlanski had somehow gained release from the Siberian labor-camp where he had been sent, somehow found out where they – and his wife – were located, somehow secured a sled and driver, and somehow crossed the large frozen lake – the only way to reach Nizhna Machavaya, the exiles’ home, in the winter.

The exiles – my dear father among them – had been part of the Novardhok Yeshiva in Vilna, Lithuania. When the Soviets occupied the country, they offered the yeshiva boys and faculty – most of whom were Polish nationals who had fled to Lithuania – a stark choice: accept Soviet citizenship (and be conscripted into the Red army) or be banished to the wasteland of Siberia as foreign nationals deemed a threat to the Soviet Union. They opted for Siberia, a choice that would test them sorely but likely saved their lives.

When the cattle cars had been loaded with their human cargo in Lithuania for the long trip east, sent along with the Novardhok group were several families, and Betzalel Orlanski’s wife – but not her husband; he was sent to a different destination, far from where his wife and “the Novardhokers” were taken.

The Orlanskis had been married for about a decade, but were childless. Mrs. Orlanski, however, confided to the others a recent discovery: she was expecting.

Jewish marriage has always been a familial and communal affair, not just an individual decision. When Avraham decided it was time for Yitzchak to marry, he summoned his trusted servant Eliezer and gave him detailed instructions about where and from what family to seek a bride.

Standing at the well, Eliezer devised a test to ensure that the maiden chosen would possess the character necessary for the foremother of the Jewish people. She must be a ba’alat chesed — Rivka runs to Eliezer to offer him water from her jug; she must also be clever — Rivka does not drink from the same jug as the complete stranger, but immediately pours the remaining contents of the jug into a trough; and she must be sensitive to the feelings of others — Rivka explains to Eliezer that she is pouring the water into the trough in order to water his camels.

The match is not without romance. When Rivka sees Yitzchak for the first time, she lowers herself and covers her face. But only after Yitzchak takes Rivka to the tent of his deceased mother Sarah as his wife, is he described as loving her. Love is the outgrowth of their commitment to one another, not its precondition.

Shmuely Boteach (”How to fix Orthodox dating“) finds traditional Jewish matchmaking lacking compared to secular dating where “the relationship unfolds gradually and organically as [boy and girl] get to know each other better over time.” The involvement of parents in the investigation of potential spouses for their children “disempowers [Orthodox] men and women from meeting directly,” he laments.

The World-to-Come is an upside down world (Bava Basra 10b): Those who were on top in this world on account of their wealth (Rashi ad loc.) are on the bottom, and those who were on the bottom in this world are elevated there.

Sometimes we can catch a glimpse of that upside down world in the here and now. Those of us who have made aliyah have witnessed something of the sort. Many who were in high prestige professions, like law, in America cannot work at anything near their previous level because of language barriers. On the other hand, many who were not in the sort of professions that were the traditional dream of every Jewish mother – e.g., plumbers, electricians, those who have worked in construction – find themselves with of plenty of well-paying work. I know at least one PhD. nuclear physicist who found he could do much better in Israel repairing washing machines and dryers.

And we are witnessing something of the same thing today. Many people who were pulling down large salaries in the financial industry now find themselves without a job, and possessing very specialized skills for which there is no current market. In the meantime, the plumbers and electricians still have plenty of work.

In short, we have no way of guaranteeing for ourselves, and certainly not for our children, any particular level of lifestyle. If we have learned one thing in recent months, it is that Hashem can take away all a person’s wealth in a flash.

One week is hardly enough time to digest the significance of the election. We cannot know which prognostications will turn out to be accurate. We can, however, discard some of the early commentary. Some of it was markedly wrong.

I spent very little time listening to results on election night, mostly while in the car at various points in the evening. Even before commentators would call the election a done deal – largely because polls were still open in many states – they thinly veiled their excitement by speaking, as Obama himself had, about change. This was, more than one claimed, the most momentous change in the mindset of the American electorate in decades. It was not just the return to a firm Democratic hold on the presidency and both houses of Congress, but a fundamental makeover of the American political mind. Americans had been for quite a while center-right; a new America had emerged which was center-left. Old ways had been discarded, swept out by new values.

Elections excite passions, and this election excited them in extra measure. People spoke with certainty about the outcome and its meaning. As those passions cool, we might all recognize that perhaps things are not as clear as some thought they were. Certitude, remarked Oliver Wendel Holmes, is not the test of certainty.

A sweeping rejection of the old did not happen, at least in California, one of the most liberal states in the country. In the second most watched race in the country, more money was spent than in any race besides the presidency. At stake was Proposition Eight, which restricted the legal definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. When the dust settled, California’s voters most definitely did not spurn tradition and the old ways, but went the non-PC route, in a stunning disappointment for gay activists.

In its purest form, the human spirit of inquiry is a holy thing. According to the renowned 12th century Jewish thinker Maimonides, nothing less than the Biblical commandment to love G-d is fulfilled when a person investigates nature and, struck by its intricacy and beauty, is filled with awe and gratitude to the Divine.

And so it is exciting to ponder the new aspects of physical reality that might be revealed by the Large Hadron Collider – the 17-mile-circumference particle accelerator that, over 15 years and at a cost of some $8 billion, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) underneath the French-Swiss border.

Subatomic physics is already a wonderland of strange beauty (not to be confused with “strange” and “beauty” – fanciful names physicists have, at one time or another, given to types of quarks), having revealed that the seemingly mechanistic, clockwork universe we experience in daily life hides astonishing oddities, uncertainties and incomprehensibilities.

Those microcosmic bafflements complement the more readily accessible wonder of the world we experience when we simply look up at the stars, or down into the grass, or at a sunrise, or a newborn baby. The Standard Model – the current theory of how subatomic particles interact – reminds us that not only do the “heavens relate the glory of G-d” (Psalms 19:2) but that “to His wisdom there can be no comprehension” (Isaiah, 40:28).

The global meltdown of financial markets guarantees that money – and our attitudes to it – will dominate public and private discussions for some time to come. Some of the consequences of the loss of trillions of dollars in the value of shares around the world are already being felt by the Torah community in Israel, and those are almost sure to intensify.

Private philanthropy from abroad provides a measure of a social safety net for thousands of poor religious families in Israel, and the same philanthropy supports the kollelim, in which tens of thousands of avreichim learn. Shell-shocked donors have already begun to cut back dramatically in the face of total uncertainty about where the global economy is headed.

Already the poverty rates in Israel are more than double the average of thirty developed nations in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). The average poverty rate in the OECD countries is 10.6% of the population; in Israel it is 24.5%. And the situation is even worse when it comes to children. According to the National Insurance Institute, 34% of Israel’s children live beneath the poverty level. The comparable figure in the OECD countries is 12%.

Poverty in Israel is overwhelmingly a chareidi and Arab phenomenom, a fact which only highlights the vulnerability of the chareidi population and how much suffering lies in store. For the poorest segments of the chareidi population it would be hard to find any form of silver lining in the current world economic downturn.

I confess to occasionally experiencing the temptation to add a few additional berachos beginning “she lo asani . . . ” to the list of those given by our Sages. Chief among those would be “she lo asani manhig b’Yisrael – that You did not make me a leader of the Jewish people.”

Our gedolim are constantly confronted with issues involving the unwritten fifth section of Shulchan Aruch. The issues found there by definition have no perfect solution; they involve a delicate weighing of many factors and speculative predictions about the future. Many of those issues require balancing a particular Torah ideal against the state of Torah society b’asher hu sham (in light of current realities).

A shmuess given in Lakewood Yeshiva, for instance, about the proper uses of bein hazemanim will find a receptive audience. The same shmuess given outside the walls of a yeshiva, and particularly if enunciated in the form of ban, might be widely ignored. Rather than influencing behavior in the proper direction, the most immediate impact would be to lower the stature of gedolei Yisrael and their edicts in the eyes of all those who ignored the ban. Knowing when and in what form to promote a particular ideal is but one aspect of the delicate balancing process between the Torah ideal and the actual level of a particular community.

The ideal of long-term Torah learning for all males promoted by the Chazon Ish in Eretz Yisrael and Rav Aharon Kotler in America has completely transformed the Torah world over the past half century. The strength of that ideal ensures that the ambitions of males in the community are directed towards gadlus b’Torah and the ambitions of young women to marrying a budding Torah scholar.

There are some exports that a country would rather do without. As far as Israel goes, the Israel Mafia would be one. The concept of a media fully mobilized on behalf of one side of the political spectrum would be another.

Senator Barack Obama owes the mainstream media (MSM) credit for a big assist in his election victory. And the U.S. media will, in turn, owe a round of applause to the Israeli media for its pioneering efforts to determine the outcome of national political debate and elections.

In the 1996 election pitting Binyamim Netanyahu against Shimon Peres, Ha’aretz’s political reporter Orit Galili described the press as “completely mobilized for Peres.” On the eve of the elections, Peres responded to Israeli Arab criticism to Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon, “Those stupid Arabs.” Given that Peres’ chances of being elected depended on a large Arab vote in his favor, the spontaneous outburst was tantamount to political suicide. Realizing that, the large cohort of journalists present decided among themselves to kill the story and it went largely unreported. Suppressing damaging utterances of its favorites was by then already reflexive on the part of the Israeli media. When then Court President Aharon Barak told a group of reporters that the Supreme Court could not add more Sephardi justices without diluting it professional quality, the slur went virtually unreported by the mainstream media.

After Binyamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996, Maariv’s Ron Meiberg confessed “as journalists and as opinionated people, we were never so mobilized to bring down the Prime Minister and to hold up him up for ridicule.” Those efforts included the Israeli Broadcasting National News editing almost a minute out of tape of Netanyahu speaking to Betar Jerusalem fans to make it appear that he was smiling and waving in response to chants of “Death to the Arabs,” even though those chanting were out of his hearing range.

Several weeks ago, Project Genesis was sent a paid advertisement from the Republican Jewish Coalition — which it then distributed. Although it was a paid ad, and we’d have accepted one from the National Jewish Democratic Council as well, it elicited a predictable level of protest.

One of our correspondents is an old friend and staunch Democrat, and he sent a sharp protest directly to me. He wrote that sending the ad endangers Torah.org’s tax-exempt status, and besides, he can argue with most of the points made in the ad. I wish he’d have pursued that second line of reasoning a little further, given that he is entirely mistaken on the first: an organization may not endorse one candidate, but can, of course, accept paid advertising on a non-discriminatory basis.

Perhaps he did not undertake the task of arguing with the RJC because — despite his protestations to the contrary — he can’t. Honestly, the RJC ad says nothing that we shouldn’t already know. Did Obama oppose labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization? Yes, he did — as I already noted, his web site carefully avoids applying this label to Hamas, as well. And yes, he did say that he would meet Iranian President Ahmadinejad without any preconditions. The RJC also asserts that “Sen. Obama told a Jewish group he supports an undivided Jerusalem, only to flip-flop the very next day.” Judge for yourself:

I looked in the mirror this morning and realised that the bump on my head hasn’t quite gone away. It’s only a couple of weeks since Sukkos, so I thought I’d share the story and what I learned from it.

On the first day of Chol HaMoed (Thursday) I had planned to join my family for a trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew (see here for another article in which I mention Kew Gardens), However, I was exhausted and decided to stay at home, especially as we were hosting a Sukkos party for my community that evening. My wife and children left the house and I decided to rest, so I donned my pyjamas (remember this for later) and dragged my mattress into the Sukkah.

After an hour and a half, I was refreshed and ready to continue with my day. However, my attempts to return to the house were thwarted by the discovery that the back door was mysteriously locked from the inside. I could see the keys in the lock and, frustratingly, my cell phone on a table within, but I couldn’t access either.

As we leave our front door secured only by a number-lock during the day, I was certain that if I could get into the front garden, I could re-enter the house through the main door. I squelched my way in my socks to the side gate and tried, unsuccessfully, to climb over it, cracking my head in the process. A bit dazed, but not badly hurt, I remembered the ladder at the back of the garden. I intended to climb over the gate and take the ladder with me, but this failed too: while I was sitting on the lintel, the ladder fell back into the garden. I managed to scramble down into the front garden, where, inexplicably, I found the front door locked. I was now standing in the front garden in my socks and pyjamas (remember them?) unable to get into either the house or back into the garden. Contemplating the possibility of a further couple of hours of this situation, I hid behind a car, hoping for some kind of solution.

One of the perks (such as it is) of working for a Jewish organization is receiving unsolicited books and manuscripts in the mail. Most – like “new age” Jewish ritual guides, Middle-East manifestoes and novels channeling their authors’ neuroses through Biblical narratives – don’t interest me. Occasionally, though, a freebie escapes the circular file. Like the copy (there were actually two, a few weeks apart, one hardcover, the other soft) I received of “Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance” by Edgar M. Bronfman and Beth Zasloff.

Mr. Bronfman is the former CEO of the Seagram Company, past president of the World Jewish Congress and a major contributor to Jewish causes.

His book, the accompanying folder contents informed me, is “a passionate plea to the Jewish community, urging members to celebrate the joy in their culture and religion… [and] to recognize their responsibility to help heal a broken world.”

Mr. Bronfman proposes that young Jews be brought to “meaningfully encounter Judaism: its texts, traditions and community”; that they be brought “into conversation with the faith’s traditions and with each other”; and that Jewish institutions find ways to reach out to Jewish youth. Sounded promising.

Guest column by Chava Willig Levy

Full disclosure: I believe that God guides history. The improbable, meteoric rise of Barack Obama offers a case in point.

The facts are common knowledge: In 2000, Obama was a virtual unknown. He had to scrape together the airfare to attend that year’s Democratic National Convention, to which he had not been invited. Three months later, he was trounced in his run for an Illinois congressional seat. But in 2004, not yet a United States senator, he was the Democratic National Convention’s keynote speaker, an honor usually reserved for political icons; he became an overnight sensation. Just two years after he became Illinois’s junior senator, he announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

But here are some less well-known facts:

For those inclined to see the workings of Divine Providence in human history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world, it would surely have picked the world’s (still) most powerful nation. Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the weapons needed to defend itself.

American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews, and styled themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All the early presidents of Yale College were Hebraists, and the College’s insignia was patterned on the Urim ve’Tumim worn by the Kohen Gadol.

To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the Western world. Seventy million American evangelicals constitute Israel’s most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their sovereignty and willing to defend against any threat to their liberty. The state motto of New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die,” captures that spirit. As such, they admire Israel’s doughty self-defense against far more numerous enemies.

In Western terms, America is a Center-Right country. A major aspect of the American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of victims and oppressors, 59% view the Palestinians more or equally sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives, whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them, 59% view Israel more favorably.

YES, POGO, THE JEWS ARE THE STUPIDEST PEOPLE

Arab-Americans overwhelmingly support Senator Barack Obama for president. So do Jewish-Americans. One of these two groups either does not care much about the Arab-Israeli conflict and/or is stupid. My money is on the Jews.

American Jews care less and less about Israel. Over 50% of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 say they would not view the destruction of the State of Israel as a personal tragedy. Israel is not a popular cause on college campuses. Many Jewish students struggle against being identified with Israel, lest it complicate their social lives. In the under 35 cohort, only 54% profess to be comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state.

Other Jews who still find it uncomfortable to disavow concern with Israel have convinced nevertheless themselves that it is in Israel’s best interests to be forced back to the 1949 armistice lines. A talkback to a recent Jerusalem Post piece of mine nicely captures the mindset.

His message isn’t pleasant to listen to, but the Gerer Rebbe shlit”a may have gotten the best line yet around the global economic meltdown.

Others are treating the crisis with a giant Post-It Note, with “Blame” angrily scrawled on it. They attach it to what they believe is the best (or most convenient) place to make it stick, until the next pundit moves it elsewhere.

The Rebbe, however, reached for a different pad, and offered the first prescription for the future. While no one yet can gauge whether we are being overly pessimistic or whether we do not have a clue on how bad things are going to turn out, the Rebbe’s advice will remain valid in all outcomes.

He is calling for frum Jews to reevaluate their lifestyles and spending habits. He asks us to ponder whether we really need every electronic gadget we have become addicted to, and whether our tastes in clothing are what HKBH expects of a people dedicated in principle to kedushah. He decries our wastefulness, pointing to yeshivos that leave their lights on all Shabbos. He is concerned not only with the bottom line, but with the terrible example it imparts to our children about conserving what HKBH has given us. (Regarding to living within one’s means, see Rashi, Beitzah 16A s.v. kol mezonosav.)

Talk of reclaiming the Jewish bookshelf – the canonical texts that are the heritage of every Jew – is in the air. I cannot imagine a better guide on that path than Rabbi David Fohrman.

Rabbi Fohrman has been teaching mixed groups of secular and religious Jews for years. And he has now produced a rare work that will equally delight those who have been studying Chumash with the classical commentaries all their lives and those lacking even knowledge of Hebrew.

The Beast that Crouches at the Door is close reading of two of the best known Biblical stories: Adam and Chava’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and Kayin’s murder of his brother Hevel. The book is philosophically deep, psychologically acute, hypersensitive to the nuances of the Biblical text, and reads like a mystery. Each short chapter ends with the reader hanging on the edge of the cliff eager to proceed.

By focusing on stories whose basic outlines are familiar, Fohrman demonstrates how we are all prone – learned and unlearned alike – to the “Lullaby Effect” when confronting well-known texts. No one ever thought to ask why a baby would be comforted by a song about a cradle crashing down from a tree top. And similarly, we fail to note obvious questions in the Biblical texts.

Recently, Harvard University agreed to establish certain hours for sexually segregated use of the gym and swimming pool. Most of us upon hearing that news would be cheered at an apparently reasonable accommodation to those women who for religious or other reasons do not feel comfortable exercising or swimming in the presence of men.

I do not mean to suggest that that immediate response is not the correct one. But let me add just one wrinkle to the puzzle. Harvard’s decision came not in response to student petition or a request from Orthodox Jewish students on campus, but from the Harvard Islamic Society, whose request was subsequently joined by Harvard College’s Women’s Club.

Orthodox Jews likely outnumber devout Muslims at Harvard. Yet I doubt it ever occurred to Orthodox Jewish students to request separate hours for use of the swimming pool or gym.

And had they made such a request, I not at all sure Harvard would have been so quick to grant it. Recall Yale University’s unwillingness to accommodate the request of Orthodox Jewish students not to be forced to live in sexually mixed dorms (or at least to pay dearly for a room in such dorms) And even before the case of the Yale Five, Wendy Shalit described Williams College’s insistence that all bathrooms on campus be unisex. It is safe to assume that there are no Jewish billionaires with an interest in separate swimming hours likely to contribute $20,000,000 to Harvard, as one Arab sheikh recently did.

Last week, we detailed the extent to which Israel’s declining geopolitical situation and deterrent capacity has been largely self-inflicted – the result of unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and, most significantly, the failure to defeat Hizbullah in the Second Lebanon War. This week we will focus on another self-inflicted threat – perhaps the greatest of all: Israel’s declining human capital.

Evidence of that declining human capital is all around us. One indice is the rampant corruption at the top of the governmental pyramid. Ehud Olmert has finally resigned as prime minister amidst six separate criminal investigations, several of which are almost sure to result in indictments.

Israel’s last two presidents – a job that requires above all doing nothing to embarrass the state – both resigned in humiliation. One former justice minister is under indictment, and another has already been convicted of various improprieties on the day the Second Lebanon War broke out (though his conviction did not prevent him from returning as deputy prime minister). And finally, the previous Minister of Finance is already on trial for massive embezzlement from the workers organization he headed. Tellingly, the primary qualification that Tzippi Livni, the most likely replacement for Olmert, can cite is that she is honest, as if that were an extremely rare quality.

In the current issue of Azure, editor Assaf Sagiv makes the interesting point that lawlessness has always been part of the Zionist ethos, which he attributes, in part, to the fact that so many early Zionists were self-consciously in rebellion against the Law. The insouciant rule breaker once glorified by Israeli culture has now morphed into the venial politician busy padding his own pockets.