The Meaningfulness of Jewish Identity

Is being Jewish meaningful without a belief in Judaism? A conversation I had with a friend over Shabbos got me thinking about this. He said that he's unsure of the validity of many of Judaism's claims,  up to and including the existence of God, but that it's important to him that his kids have strong Jewish feelings and  an attachment to Judaism and being Jewish.

I've often seen frum people claim that without the religious component, being Jewish is meaningless. I can see where they're coming from. What it means to be Jewish has, for most of the history of the Jewish people, been shaped by Judaism. Religious rules shaped our culture, influenced our values,  is a large part of what kept us distinct from the larger non-Jewish populations in which we lived, and even defined who was and wasn't Jewish. But being Jewish is about more than that. It is an identity that is separate from and transcends the religious rules that shaped it.

I'm an American, and I have deep feelings for my country. There's something stirring about seeing Old Glory snapping in the wind, something moving about quintessentially American songs like God Bless America, My Country 'Tis of Thee, and The Battle Hymn of the Republic, or even those that have become children's songs, like Yankee Doodle and When Johnny Comes Marching Home. I believe in the Enlightenment principles on which this country was founded and am proud that we were the first nation to form a government on those principles, however poorly we have adhered to them at times.

Despite my being radically different from many Americans in some ways, in others we have much in common. We share many aspects of American culture and many of the same assumptions about the way things should be. Even the most bitter of disagreements about values and policies are framed by those shared assumptions. We share, among other things, a degree of attachment to and pride in our country matched by few other nations around the world.

I'm also a skeptic and a history buff, and I'm well aware that America's founding myths are just that. Myths, often exaggerated and ahistorical stories about our origins that tell of larger-than-life figures doing great deeds. The Pilgrims did not land at Plymouth rock and came here not so much in the pursuit of religious freedom as in the pursuit of the freedom to persecute those who disagreed with their religion. George Washington was a great leader of men who turned down a crown in accordance with his beliefs in the principles of democracy, but he was also ambitious, self-promoting, and a lousy tactician. The colonies went to war with Britain over taxes, but it was triggered as much by the British reducing tariffs, thereby causing the bottom to drop out of the lucrative smuggling business  of some prominent and influential American shipping magnates as it was about the Crown taxing colonists who had no voice in Parliament.

Yet despite my recognition that America's founding myths are not true, despite even recognizing that the United States has many, many flaws, my identity as an American is of great value to me. It informs who I am and connects me to a group of people, past, present, and future, with whom I share values, ideals, and a group identity. It allows me to feel pride in the accomplishments of my countrymen, and motivates me to address my country's flaws. My identity as an American is separate from and transcends the mythos that shaped the American consciousness.

So too my identity as a member of the Jewish people. There's something moving about the Jewish traditions that bind us together as a people. Despite being different from many Jews is some ways, there are cultural constants that we can all relate to. The Jewish people have had a pride in their Jewish identity and a tenacity matched by few others. My identity as a Jew informs who I am, allows me to feel pride in the accomplishments of my fellow Jews, motivates me to address our flaws, connects me to the sorrow of our national tragedies, and  makes me a part of our long, long history.

This all despite my rejection of the truth of the mythology that shaped much of that history.

Being Jewish is meaningful, with or without a belief in Judaism. It is meaningful as an identity. It is meaningful as a shared heritage, as a connection to the past which brought us to where we are today. It is as meaningful as a connection to all the other people who have identified as members of the Jewish people, past, present, and future. Without religion, being Jewish is not meaningful in a metaphysical sense, but so what? Meaning is what we make it, and to me, identifying with other people who share my unique heritage, and with the three-thousand-plus years of Jewish history,  is even more meaningful than being one of God's Chosen People.

Teaching Kids How to Think, Not What to Think

"Is Hashem real?"

It was a few months ago, during supper. My oldest, who's eight, put another forkful of food in her mouth and looked at me expectantly. My mind raced, trying to come up with a good way to answer the unexpected question.

"What do you think? I asked, both curious about her answer and stalling for time to think.

"I don't think so." She answered. "I think Hashem is like, someone from a story."

Recovering from the surprise of a fundamental theological question from my third grader, asked apropos of nothing between bites of mashed potatoes, I realized that I should handle it like I'd been handling the lesser religious questions my kids occasionally asked. Tell her about the different answers different people might give, along with age-appropriate explanations, and let her think about it.

"Some people think that." I said. "Other people think that He's real. You're teachers probably think that He's real."

She gave me a look that said, "No way!"

"Grandma and Grandpa think He's real, and so do Oma and Opa."

She laughed.

"They do." My wife chimed in.

"Some people think Hashem isn't real." I continued. "And some people aren't sure."

"What do you think?" My daughter asked.

I avoided the question. "Some people believe Hashem is real because that's what they were taught, or because that's what their family's believed for a long time, or because they think  He does stuff for them, or because they think they can prove it. Other people think there isn't any reason to think He's real. What do you think?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I still think Hashem is a story."

"Why'd you ask?" I asked.

She shrugged again, and went back to her supper.

Teaching my kids about religion gets complicated, most of all because my wife is a believer and I'm not, but also because I don't want to teach my kids what to think. I want to teach them how to think. About everything, not just religion. When one kid comes crying to me that another won't share a toy, or pushed her off the couch, or won't play what she wants to play, or hit her ("It was an ACCIDENT!") I don't just yell at the one who's in the wrong. Well, to be honest, sometimes I do, when I'm really busy or haven't had enough sleep or the kids just won't. Stop. Whining! But most of the time, I try to get each to think about what the situation felt like from the other's point of view, to understand why what she did was wrong, and to come up with a solution together. I want them to understand why they should or shouldn't do things, and to be able to think through a problem and come up with a solution. Not to just see A as good and B as bad because Mommy and Daddy said so.

I hit upon the present-the-range-of-views way of handling religious questions a little over a year ago, when we got new neighbors. A Lubavitch family with girls the same ages as my daughters moved in on our block. There aren't many kids on our street,  and my girls were delighted to have new playmates. About a month after they moved in, we were sitting around the fire pit in the backyard roasting marshmallows when my daughter asked, "What's tznius?"

I explained to her that tznius was how certain people thought people were supposed to dress and act in public, and that there are widely varying ideas of what was acceptable. She thought it was hilarious that nudists walk around naked, and so weird that someone would cover themselves completely in a burka before going outside.

Broad and fundamental religious questions don't come up too often. While religion is one of my favorite topics, and I often discuss it with friends or bore my wife talking about it, my kids don't pay much attention. They're more interested in their toys than the boring conversations the adults are having. Nor do my wife and I talk about it much to the kids. Religion in our house tends to be ritualistic rather than inspirational. We wash our hands and say hamotzie to thank Hashem, but we don't thank Him for finding a parking space. We don't say things like, "Baruch Hashem," or, "Bli ayin hara." To my kids, religion is about going to shul on Shabbos to eat candy and play with their friends, decorating the Succah, and the, "Hashem is here, Hashem is there…" version of God they picked up in school.

I encourage my kids to think about what they learn in school, usually by asking them questions to get them to think about it instead of just parroting it back. If Hashem is, "truly everywhere," does that mean He's in the food you're eating? Does He watch you  in the bathroom? Eww!

What to teach your kids when you're a skeptic raising children in a frum community is an often-discussed topic (or was, back when the blogosphere had more discussions). My solution has been to teach my kids how to think, not what, and to provide them with the tools and perspective to evaluate what they learn, whether in school or at home. They're still too young to really think independently, but I hope as they get older, as they learn more and as I'm able to teach them logic and critical thinking, they'll grow into people able to evaluate claims and to think for themselves. At that point, they'll make their own decisions about religion (and everything else), and I'll be proud of them for making up their own minds, whatever those decisions may be.

Warm People, Obnoxious Groups

I heard an interview today with Megan Phelps, the granddaughter of the infamous Fred Phelps, reverend of the Westboro Baptist Church. She and her sister left the church a few years ago, and in the interview she describes what it was like to grow up in and be a part of the fundamentalist, hate-mongering group.

One of the most interesting things she described was how her family (which makes up most of the church's seventy or so members) were as individuals. She describes them as loving, as teaching her the importance of being kind and polite and of getting good grades in school and contributing to society. They see the hateful signs they hold while picketing as messages of love. When they hold up a sign that says, "God hates fags," they don't see themselves as expressing something hateful, but as informing people of the error of their ways so that their fellow countrymen may repent and save their country from God's wrath in this world and themselves from an eternity of torture in Hell in the next. They do this out of love of their fellow man in an attempt to save them, not out of hatred.

I can't help but draw parallels with the Chareidi world. Not with the picketing and hateful signs. Most Chareidim are not so crass. But with the people who are warm as individuals and obnoxious as a group. With the people who say awful things about others, and sincerely believe they are just giving mussar. With the people who justify distasteful attitudes and behaviors with passages from holy texts and a conviction that they are doing the will of God.

It never ceases to fascinate me how different religions all follow the same patterns. The details differ, but the outlines are the same.

Book Review: Cut Me Loose

I was in the library on Friday picking out books and was about to go to check out when I noticed "Cut Me Loose" sitting by itself at the end of a half-empty shelf. I took it out and read it over Shabbos. It was not what I expected.

I had some idea of what it was about, having read some reviews around the blogosphere when it came out a year ago. I knew that the book chronicled Leah Vincent's journey away from the religion of her Yeshivish upbringing, and that part of that journey had included clashes with her family and ill-advised sexual encounters. I was expecting a story about how she had become disenchanted with Orthodox Judaism, had made some mistakes learning to integrate with general society, and had ultimately been successful in doing so. I was expecting to root for her against the forces of frum society that had wronged and alienated so many of us who frequent the skeptic blogs (or these days, facebook posts). Instead, I found myself saddened by what Leah had experienced, but also sympathetic to the people around her who were dealing with a clearly unstable person.

The book is well-written and engaging. I didn't want to put it down. The book is published by Doubleday and seems intended for a general audience, but there were many nuances that I think would be lost on someone who had never been a part of the yeshivish community. Not because  one had to be a part of the community to understand, but because these things weren't explained. Nor would it have been difficult or cumbersome to include explanations. Here and there, the author does explain. For instance, when she writes that her father was often invited to speak at the Agudah conventions, she adds that it is a powerful Orthodox lobbying group. It's an addition of half a sentence that gives the reader context. Yet in many other places that addition is missing. For instance, she describes her brothers running up and down the stairs shouting Hebrew words (which she transliterates), but neglects to mention that they were singing a song (easily recognizable to anyone familiar with Jewish music of the era), instead leaving the impression that the little boys in her crazy religious family shouted Hebrew incantations while playing. In another place she describes having day-dreamed about having Rabbi Matisyahu Solomon officiate at her wedding, but neglects to explain his stature (easily done: "dean of the largest yeshiva in the United States"), leaving a typical reader without any understanding of the  daydream's significance. In yet another she describes a conversation with her sister where she is asked to "promise without a promise," a literal translation of "bli neder" that sounds ridiculous, as do many idioms when taken literally.

For much of the first half of the book, I felt angry as her family over reacted to her transgressions. She's banned from the seminary of her choice when it's discovered she's been corresponding with a boy. Her parents cut off her allowance when she spends a month's worth of money on a borderline-untznius sweater. Her sister, who she is staying with, hides letters Leah's friend sends to her, and only pretends to mail the letters Leah writes. When she moves to New York, she can barely afford necessities on her minimum-wage income, and often goes without meals. When she calls her mother, desperate for help, her mother tells her to stop being so dramatic, and sends her only twenty dollars.

As the book progresses, and she describes more and more of her dysfunctional behavior, I began to suspect that rather than the victim of circumstance and religious extremism her narrative implies, she was instead someone with a serious clinical disorder. I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis, and even if I were, you can't diagnose someone without having evaluated them in person, but what she describes seems like a textbook case of Borderline Personality Disorder. People who go OTD are too often dismissed in the frum world as unbalanced, and I'm loathe to perpetuate the stereotype, but in this case I think it may be accurate.

The diagnostic criteria for BPD include, " A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of context." Leah's relationships with men, to which she devotes a lot of space, are highly unstable and frequently end abruptly. She often makes impulsive decisions with negative consequences, like blowing a month's worth of money on a sweater, going to a club and allowing a man to have sex with her on the dance floor, or suddenly deciding to stop eating. 

"Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment." Leah's narrative is one of constant abandonment, first by her family, then by her community, and then by the string of men she throws herself at in a desperate attempt to find self-worth in her sexuality. 

"A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation," an accurate description of Leah's relationships with her family and especially with her "boyfriends," each of whom is described as wonderful, life changing, and the love of her life while she is dating him, but is reduced to his basest traits as soon as they break up.

"Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, Substance Abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)." She engages in impulsive, damaging sex on almost every page. Several times she describes impulsively spending money she needed for food or other necessities on things like the sweater mentioned above or high-priced cocktails at a bar. And sprinkled though the book are accounts of binge-eating in an attempt to control her emotions or fill an emotional emptiness.

"Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior." Through much of the second half of the book Leah regularly cuts herself to relieve her psychological distress, and several times describes imagining killing herself, including an incident where she actually swallows a bottle of painkillers and another where she almost slashes her wrists, stopping only after she had already made a small cut deep enough to leave a scar.

"Chronic feelings of emptiness," which she describes after her estrangement from her family, which led her to constantly look for another man as each of her relationships failed, and, as mentioned above, she sometimes attempted to fill with food.

Leah recounts a childhood conversation with her mother in which her mother dismissed mental disorders as a scam dreamt up by pharmaceutical companies to sell drugs. Yet her father in a published letter claimed that Leah had been under the care of a psychiatrist since she was thirteen. I don't know which is the more accurate version of events, but if it is true that Leah has BPD, and that she has been treated since she was a young teenager, it casts her story in a different light than the one she is trying to tell. Her parents deciding not to give her attention when she acts out are not the actions of cruel and distant parents, but the reasonable (if perhaps mistaken) reaction of people who have for years been dealing with their daughter's destructive outbursts. Her mother dismissing her plea for help when she can't make ends meet isn't the actions of a callous and uncaring woman, but that of someone used to dramatic pronouncements and irresponsible behavior. Her description of her final encounter with her father, and his refusal to engage when she tearfully asks him why he cut her off and no longer expresses love is not the actions of a man who has tossed his daughter aside for small infractions of religious law, but of a father who has long ago reached the end of his rope, and is refusing to be dragged yet again into the toxic quagmire that experience has taught him engaging with his daughter inevitably leads to.

I don't doubt that Leah's description of events is how she perceived them, and that she experienced them that way makes me sad for her. I want to go back in time and comfort the lonely, miserable girl she was. And yet, I can't help but think that if I could, it would just be the beginning of another toxic relationship for her, where she would try to seduce me and build an ultimately destructive relationship if she was successful, or berate herself as disgusting undesirable garbage if she failed.

At the end of the book, where in a few pages she describes how she finally turned her life around, got into Harvard, got married, and had a child, she mentions that her family still regards her as crazy and toxic. It's heavily implied that this is because she's no longer observant.  Maybe. Or maybe they regard her that way because, for most of her life, that's what she was.

Practical Beliefs, part 2

Part 1

I think that we can answer the first question, " How do we determine what, if any, of what we experience is real?" with another question, "What difference does it make?" This may seem unsatisfying at first, but bear with me.

Suppose that I'm hungry. Does it matter if the world I experience isn't real? If, say, I'm a conscious computer program, and  there is no such thing as a human stomach, or food, or a mouth? If I respond to my hunger by eating, the unpleasant sensation of hunger will go away, and I'll have the pleasurable experiences of eating food, the smell, taste, and feel of something tasty and satisfying. If I ignore my hunger, I'll experience increasingly painful hunger pangs. Therefore whether or not there is such a thing as a stomach or food in an objective sense, I am forced to behave as if they are real.

Whatever there may be "out there," I am forced by my subjective experiences of pleasure and pain to treat what I perceive as real. Once I am treating my perceptions as real, I can form beliefs about them, such as, "If I eat food, I won't be hungry for a while." These beliefs may or may not mirror an objective reality, but that doesn't matter. They're practical beliefs about my consistent perceptions that allow me to navigate the world I experience. I can empirically explore that world, learning how it functions and adding or altering my practical beliefs about it based on what I learn.

Whether or not what I experience is objectively real truly makes no difference, so long as my experience is consistent. My subjective experience forces me to treat my perceptions as if they are real, and I can build a consistent system of beliefs on that experience. Whether or not what I experience is real is an interesting question in the abstract, what difference does it make?

Which brings us to the second question, "Are we justified in making any and all claims about reality, given that all claims are equally unprovable?" We can make any and all claims about some objective reality "out there," but again, what difference does it make? Unless there is something I experience, I can't form practical beliefs about it. I can guess at what things are like outside the Matrix, but those are just guesses.

Practical Beliefs, part 1

The question of how we know what we know is a complicated one, with an entire branch of philosophy, epistemology, devoted to it. The biggest problem is that there's almost nothing that we can know for certain. All of our information about the world comes to us through our senses, and we have no way of knowing if what are senses tell us reflects anything  "out there," whether there is an objectively real world that is reflected in our sense data or if everything we experience is an illusion.

Descartes illustrated the problem by positing a deceptive demon who fed him sights, sounds, smells etc. to simulate a reality that doesn't really exist.  Since 1999 The Matrix has been the go-to analogy. The world experienced by those in the Matrix is a perfect illusion. How can any of us know if we are in the Matrix? And, since we may be in the Matrix, how can we know what is real? Or even if there is anything at all?

Descartes found one thing we can be certain of: we each can be certain of our own existence. If we experience things and think about things, there must be something doing the experiencing and thinking.  It may be something completely unlike what we think ourselves to be, something not remotely human, but there has to be something that is doing the thinking. Descartes famously summed up this single ontological certainty as, "Cogito, ergo sum," "I think, therefore I am."

But what now? If all we can be certain of is our individual existence, how do we determine what, if any, of what we experience is real? And are we justified in making any and all claims about reality, given that all claims are equally unprovable?

Maximizing Mitzvos

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday, and he raised an interesting question: Is the increasingly-fast chumrah creep good or bad for Orthodoxy's numbers? And by extension, for those who care about such things, for the amount of Torah being learned and mitzvos being kept?

Of course, no one is cynically controlling the creation and maintenance of chumros, but if you could, how would adding chumrahs - or taking them away - affect the amount of people who identify as Orthodox? On the one hand, I think that the increasingly restrictive chumros raise the bar for entry to Orthodoxy, so that fewer people are willing to accept Orthodoxy than might have been if there were fewer restrictions and therefore fewer people are keeping (Orthodoxy's version of) halacha. On the other hand, chumros supposedly enhance the mitzvos that are being done, and practically, often act to create a barrier to leaving for those already in.

So if we could deliberately set the level of chumros/debatable halacha at a point to maximize the mitzvah-points being earned, the perfect blend of quantity and quality, where would that point be?

History Stories

I think that history is often taught the wrong way. Kids learn history as unconnected chunks of stuff they have to memorize, as boring lists of names and dates, as stuff that happened once upon a time a long time ago.

I recently read "The Last of the Doughboys" by Richard Rubins. The book is a history of the American involvement in WWI told through interviews with American veterans of the war. Interviews the author conducted in the early 2000s. One interview I found particularly interesting was done in 2003, with a man who was 110 years old. He talked a bit about his experiences as a combat engineer in 1918, repairing railroads for the Allies and blowing up German bridges. He also talked about his parents, who had been born slaves in the antebellum south and had been married, as free people, just after the Civil War ended.

My personal connection to history only goes back as far as the 1920s, to the depression in Germany after WWI and my grandfather's story of how he got a million marks for his bar mitzvah and that was just enough money to buy a candy bar in the store around the corner. Yet in 2003, while I was in college, there was a man in this country who could remember his parents stories, the experiences of people who were adults when Lincoln was elected. I've been to a few Civil War battlefields, read the markers and looked at the memorials and cannon and tried to imagine what it was like to have been on those fields when those guns were firing. As recently as 2003, there was someone who could remember his parents telling him what it was like to wait for news of those battles.

That's what history is, and how it should be taught. History is memories, stories from our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. And from other people, and their parents and grandparents. Anyone who could have talked to this man about his life would have listened to his stories. When people get together, that's what we do. We trade stories about our lives, about our personal histories. The older the stories and the more different than our own, the more interesting they are. People who found it boring to memorize who Lincoln and Davis were, to remember names and dates like Fort Sumter, 1861 and Appomattox Court House, 1865 would have found it easy and interesting to listen to this man talk about his parents.

As a rule, the best histories are the ones that, like novels, focus on the experiences of a handful of main characters and tell the story of the events through their experiences. When history is, "This happened at this place to these people on this date, and then this happened to these people on this date, and then…" it's artificial and boring. When history is used as a tool for moralizing,  whether it's the apocryphal story about Washington and the cherry tree or the myth of the pious shtetle, it becomes a fairy tale, something that happened once upon a time a long time ago to story characters who aren't like us or anyone we know. When history is the stories people tell about themselves, their family and their friends it's real things that happened to real people, anecdotes that we would happily spend an afternoon trading with friends. 

Purim Mythconceptions

There is a general sense in the frum world that the way things are done now is the way they've always been. Some take this to ridiculous extremes, claiming that they share even their social norms and communal idiosyncrasies with religious Jews down through the ages, but even those with a more realistic view of how practices develop tend to assume that certain things, like holiday customs, are more or less kept now as they have always been. The truth is that customs evolve over time. New customs are invented and replace old customs, customs are carried on with their original intent lost, and things that started as something cute come to be taken seriously.

The purpose of this post is not  to try to ruin Purim. Whatever the holiday's origins or the origin of particular customs may be, the day itself is a lot of fun. Debunking misconceptions doesn't take away from that. Things can be enjoyable and meaningful even if they don't go back quite as far as we thought they did or commemorate what we thought they commemorated. But I think it's important to live in the real world, and part of that is understanding how these things really got started.

The following is a list of the origins of some of Purim's practices.

Hamantaschen

The popular myth

The triangular cookies are eaten on Purim in remembrance of what Haman tried to do to us because Haman wore a triangular hat (or had triangular pockets).

The probable true origin

There has been a tradition to eat sweets made with poppy seeds and honey on Purim at least as far back as Ibn Ezra (1089–1164), who writes about it. In Yiddish poppy seeds are "man" and "tasch" means "pocket." In Central Europe mantaschen - poppy pockets - were a popular Purim treat, in keeping with the long tradition of sweet poppy treats on Purim. At some point, either as a pun or mistakenly, people  started calling the cookies "hamantaschen." The true etymology of the name was forgotten by most people, and the myth developed that the cookies symbolized Haman's triangular hat. Today, most depictions of Haman show him in a triangular hat, based on nothing more than the similarity between his name and that of a popular Purim treat.

Taanis Esther

The popular myth

We fast on the day before Purim in remembrance of the fast that Esther asked the Jews in Shsushan to hold for three days before she went to speak to Achashverosh on their behalf. Taanis Esther is part of the Purim holiday, a day of introspection before the day of celebration.

The probable true origin

The day before Purim used to be a different holiday, Yom Nicanor. As detailed in Megillas Taanis (which discusses many no-longer extant Jewish holidays), this holiday commemorated the victory of the Chashmonaim over the Seleucid general Nicanor. Nicanor had been sent to Judea as governor by the Seleucid king Demetrius only a generation after the events of Chanukah. He was told by the king to reinstate the ousted kohen gadol Alcimus. When the Jews refused, Nicanor declared war. He was eventually defeated on the thirteenth of Adar. The Chashmonaim, who had removed Alcimus for being too Hellinized, then did a very Hellinistic thing and declared the day a holiday for all time in commemoration of their victory. As time went on the Chashmonaim became more and more Hellenized. After they lost power the Rabbonim went out their way to erase the effects the (in their view) tainted dynasty had on Judaism. As part of that effort, they replaced Yom Nicanor with Taanis Esther. For generations, Jews had two back-to-back holidays in Adar, Yom Nicanor and Purim. Taanis Esther is not so much part of the Purim package as it is a political move meant to erase the Hellenized influence of the Chashmonaim from Judaism.

Noise During "Haman"

The popular myth

We make noise when Haman's name is read to drown it out, to show our disapproval and to erase his name. This is despite the obligation to hear every word of the megillah, which obligates the baal koreh to repeat the word after everyone has calmed down, defeating the purpose of drowning out Haman's name. It is also despite the fact that this custom, far from obliterating Haman's name, causes people (especially kids) to pay special attention to his name in order to make noise at the right moment, and that the effect is that it seems we're cheering for the story's villain.

The probable true origin

The custom of erasing Haman's name used to be taken more literally. People would write Haman's name on the bottom of their shoes (which some still do) or on rocks. When Haman's name was read, they would stomp their feet or bang the rocks together, literally erasing his name. In time, the practice of writing out his name in order to erase it faded away, but the noise from foot-stomping and rock-banging remained. The current custom, then, is essentially a mistake,  continuing to reproduce a side-effect of the original custom without any of its substance.

Costumes/Drinking/Vinahapachu

The popular myth

We wear costumes on Purim because Hashem's actions in the Purim story were hidden. Just as He disguised  Himself, so too we disguise ourselves. The usual way things would be expected to work out, that the citizens of the powerful Persian Empire would destroy the weak Jews when ordered to do so, was turned on its head, and instead the Jews destroyed their enemies. So we turn things upside down on Purim and be silly to commemorate the unexpected turn of events. We drink on Purim in celebration of our survival, and have a mitzvah to get so drunk that we don't know the difference between Mordechai hatzadik and Haman harasha.

The probable true origin

Purim falls out roughly the same time of year as Carnival, the Feast of Fools, and other similar holidays. All of these holidays have as part of their celebration masquerading, drinking, and a reversal of the usual order of things. In ancient Rome and medieval Europe, it was common for the social order in particular to be upended during the holiday, with a commoner being appointed "lord" for the duration of the holiday and the aristocracy serving him. These holiday customs can be traced back to older winter holidays such as Saturnalia. It is likely that Purim either borrowed traditions from these holidays or that both Purim and these holidays share traditions from an older source.

The Purim Story

The popular myth

The megillah recounts a historical event in which the righteous Mordechai and Esther thwarted the plot of the evil Haman and saved the Jews of the Persian Empire from annihilation.

The probable true origin

Although extensive records have survived from the Persian Empire, there is no mention of anything resembling the Pruim story. "Mordechai" is a Babylonian name which means, "servant of Marduk," (the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon) and "Esther" is a variant spelling of "Ishtar," a popular goddess in the Ancient Near East, also known as Isis in Egypt, Asarte in Greek, and Asherah in Canaan. At best, these Jewish heroes who, according to the commentaries, protested other Jews assimilating into Persian society and attending the king's feast, were named the ancient Persian equivalent of John and Christina. At worst, the Purim story is a Judaicized version of a Babylonian folk tale about the gods.

Also of interest is that Marduk was a warrior god and the patron god of soldiers. Soldiers were often referred to as the servants of Marduk, which may be the ultimate source of the medrash that Mordechai had been a soldier in the Persian army.

Niddah and other Menstruation Taboos

I'm currently reading  The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond. It's about traditional hunter-gatherer societies, the way in which humanity lived for most of its history. The book discusses the handful of still-extant hunter-gatherer peoples as a way of looking back in time to the way our ancestors would have lived. In a section discussing childbirth, Diamond mentions that among the Kaulong people of New Britain (an island off of New Guinea) the men are afraid of contamination from a woman during menstruation and childbirth.  That's awfully familiar sounding. Intrigued, I did a little poking around online.

 

The idea that menstruating women are impure and contact with them is harmful is widespread, both in the ancient world and in modern-day primitive cultures.  Pliny the Elder wrote in 77 AD, “Contact with menstrual blood turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die…" Traditional societies have various taboos surround menstruation. "Among the Beng of Ivory Coast, a menstruating woman may not touch a corpse, cook for old men or set foot in the forest. She may not touch the logs or coals on the fire of a non-menstruating woman." " According to the Eskimo, if a man comes into physical contact with a menstruating woman, an invisible vapor will attach itself to the man and make him less successful at hunting." " In Malekula, an island of the New Hebrides, a menstruating woman may not enter a garden in which young plants are growing."

Menstruation taboos have also held on in some of the world's major religions. A Muslim woman who is menstruating is forbidden from performing certain religious activities or having sex, and Hindu women are similarly prohibited from certain activities and must be purified (just as Judaism requires women to tovel in a mikvah) before resuming those activities. Judaism, of course, has niddah.

One of the most common features of the menstruation taboos is a requirement for the woman to remove herself from society for the duration of her period. In many of these societies, there are special communal huts for women who are menstruating. Ancient Judaism, too , required a niddah to go chutz lamachaneh.

One theory as to why menstruation has been seen as dangerous and polluting is that it is something outside of the way things normally are. Things that are unusual - not rare, necessarily, but not the usual way things are - are often seen as dangerous and polluting. Dead bodies, for instance, are not rare, but are different from the usual live people we interact with, and so have been seen as dangerous and polluting (e.g, tammei). Blood usually comes from a cut. Blood without an obvious source is therefore unusual, and is dangerous and polluting. In a patriarchal society, as traditional societies usually are, the holy man who declares which things are impure is, well, a man, for whom bleeding without an obvious source is doubly unusual. Add to that the fact that, unlike now, in the ancient world women rarely got their periods (because of inadequate nutrition, frequent pregnancies, and the suppression of menstruation by frequent nursing) and that no one understood why women bled. Even for women, the bleeding was an unusual, suspect event.

Niddah, despite modern whitewashing, is  NOT about improving marriages or making sex more special. It's about fear of contamination from the miasma of impurity around a menstruating woman, a fear that is not particular to Judaism, ordained from on high by an all-knowing God, but that is common to primitive cultures around the world. It is a relic of the primitive period of the culture that would go on to evolve into the magnificent culture of the Jewish people, preserved as a religious dictate that could not be abandoned.

While in the distant past niddah and the accompanying separation between husband and wife would have been a rare occurrence, something that happened once every few years, today it has become an onerous burden, imposing itself on couples for half of every month. Frum couples today have to endure niddah as many times in a year as couples in the past would experience in their lifetime.

The one thing I wonder is if the particular practices associated with the menstruation taboo was originated by men or women. Was it men who, fearful of their wives' impurity and the general ickiness of a week of constant bleeding decided to banish women to menstruation huts and forbid sex with them, or was it women who, feeling lousy during their periods, invented menstruation huts as a way to get away from domestic chores and banned sex so that their husbands wouldn't bother them while they weren't feeling well?

Electricity on Shabbos

I have a theory about why electricity is assur on Shabbos, despite its use not violating any melachos. I'm not a halchic expert by any stretch, not am I a lighting historian, so take my speculation for what it's worth, but I think the evidence speaks for itself.

The transition from gas lighting to electric lighting wasn't sharp or sudden. Electric lighting was adopted slowly, there was a period when both gas and electric lights were in use, and the first electric fixtures were nearly identical to gas fixtures.  

One of these is a gas fixture, the other is electric. Can you tell which is which?*

The controls, as well, were very similar. After all, people were more likely to buy things that looked familiar. The knobs at right were early electric switches, reminiscent of the knobs one would use to adjust the amount of gas flow to gas light fixtures.

These removable keys were also used to adjust the gas flow to gas light fixtures. If you look closely at the vintage electric lamp on the right, you can see that the switch is shaped just like the control key for a gas fixture.

I think that electricity is assur on Shabbos simply because lighting was the first home use of electricity, the electric fixtures replaced nearly-identical gas fixtures that actually were assur to use on Shabbos, and people mistakenly thought that they were the same thing. Decades later, when electicity was common and people realized it's not fire, there was a scrambling to justify the extant practice, and so we got the specious idea that closing a switch is maka b'patish (which would also make opening a faucet or closing a gate assur) and then later RSZA's more honest assessment that there's no halchic reason for electricity to be assur on Shabbos, but it is becuase everyone accepts that it is.

*The top one is an early electric fixture, the bottom one is a gas fixture.

Where Have All the Skeptics Gone?

I realized yesterday that only four Jewish blogs on my list post regularly anymore, and they all belong to frum people: DovBear, Rationalist Judaism, Fink or Swim, and one I started following only recently, EmesV'Emunah. The rest post infrequently, if at all, and most have been defunct for years. Even Frum Satire, the site through which I discovered the blogosphere way back when, is a shadow of its former self. There was a time when  almost every time I looked, there was a new post from someone. Now it seems the blogosphere is dying.

When Unpious started up it subsumed a lot of the Chassidshe skeptic blogs, like "A Hasid and A Heretic,"  and "Penned In," (both which are gone now) and of course "Hasidic Rebel." It published essays by those and other bloggers, but Unpious hasn't posted anything in almost a year.

A year ago also there was a short-lived blog, "Diaryof a Jewish Skeptic," which looked promising, but there were only four posts, and nothing for the last year. Two years ago " Divrei Ben Zoma," stopped posting.  It was a blog by a frum guy with a skeptical tendency that explored theological questions. Around the same time a blog I particularly enjoyed, " coin laundry," also stopped posting. Its author was a firmly atheistic Jewish woman from Toronto who was interested in Orthodox practices. There were a lot of interesting conversations over its two-year run.

Three years ago "Orthoprax" stopped posting. He was one of the original skeptic blogs, and ran for five years. He posted once a year ago, but I think it's safe to say his blog is finished. Another of bloggers who was around when I discovered the blogosphere, "FrumHeretic," also stopped posting then. As did two blogs with an academic-ish flavor, " Baruch's Thoughts" and " Textuality." "ThePraxy Project," a collaborative blog belonging to two college-age guys exploring Jewish theology and the mechanisms of belief also ended three years ago.

Four years ago saw the end of the great XGH's blogging career with the deletion of his latest blog, "OrthoModerndox." It was also the end of another of the greats, the " Da'as Hedyot" blog which ran for six years and included many interesting posts, not least of which were his interview series with a diverse group of people who had left the frum world. He posted once two years ago, but that blog is likely also finished. At that time " onionsoupmix," an orthoprax women - and one of the few female Jewish skeptic  bloggers - who had also been blogging for six years decided she didn't care enough about the foibles of the frum world to post anymore. Two of the smaller blogs, " TheSkeptitcher Rebbe" and "Sitting on the Fence" also stopped posting then. And there was a short-lived blog which lasted for less than a year but caused a lot of interest and controversy, "The Orthoprax Rabbi'sBlog."

Five years ago "Frustrated Ortho Jew," "DivreiAcher," and "Notes on Nothing" stopped posting. So did a blog I really enjoyed, "Lunacy Log," which lasted a little less than two years and picked apart the rantings of the Jewish blogosphere's resident troll.

Six years ago "Baal Habos," another of the blogs that was around when I first found the skeptic blogs, ended his run.

And there are others over the years, some interesting, some not, which lasted for a few months or years, then were abandoned, made private, or deleted.

There are a few that still post occasionally, like "UndercoverKofer," "Wolfish Musings," and "Atheodox Jew," but there's nothing like the volume there used to be. Nor do the blogs that stop posting get replaced by new ones like they used to.

So, where is everyone?

Practice vs. Pedantry

This past week I was at my in-laws for Shabbos. At lunch, they read from a Shabbos halacha book. It is divided into sections to be read at Shabbos meals, and is meant to be finished over the course of one year. Apparently this is something they started doing lately. Anyway, this particular section was about lighting candles Friday night, specifically about what to do if someone is staying at a hotel where everyone lights in the dining room. Since the purpose of lighting candles is to give light, can only  the first person to get to the dining room light with a bracha, or can each person light their own candles and make a bracha?

In the abstract, I suppose this is a valid legalistic question, but it completely misses the point of why people do things like light candles Friday night. People light candles because that's what you do to start Shabbos, because it makes them feel good to perform the ritual and continue the tradition, because without lighting candles Friday night it doesn't feel like Shabbos. In the absence of the book's legalistic discussion, I don't think the question would occur to most people. Lighting candles Friday night is just what you do. From the point of view of how and why people actually perform rituals like candle-lighting, a discussion about whether the light is really necessary is nonsensical. (The fact is that electric lights make lighting candles for light pointless, and yet no one has suggested abolishing the custom, making the whole discussion nonsensical even from a legalistic standpoint, but that's beside the point.)

It reminded me of the famous essay, "Rupture and Reconstruction," about the change in Orthodox transmission of rites and ritual from a memetic one learned naturally in the home and community to a textual one learned through study and consulting authoritative books. In a society with a memetic tradition, the question of whether or not everyone lights with a bracha wouldn't come up, because of course everyone does. Lighting candles Friday night and making a bracha is what one does as Shabbos begins. In a society with a textually-transmitted tradition (or more accurately, where the tradition is learned both memetically and from texts, but where the text is the authority) people must be always consulting the texts so they can be sure they are performing rituals properly, and things that would once have been academic questions of interest only to scholars now intrude into practice.

On the one hand, I'm in favor of people doing things primarily for rational rather than emotional reasons or because that's just how it's done. On the other hand, this legalistic hair splitting ruins some of the useful things that religion does, like grounding people in traditions and rituals that give a sense of significance to the daily rhythm of their lives. It takes something that comes easily and imbues the mundane with a touch of the  transcendent and turns it into a circumscribed chore. It ruins the religious experience and completely misunderstands how and why people perform rituals.