Search Judaism – A Critique: Chapter One, section two

The Soul of the Matter (Chapter One, section two)

To frame the discussion of whether there is a difference between people and animals the author cites the fact that humans and chimpanzees share 99.4% of their DNA. He then asks, “If the singular difference between animals and humans is based on the mere fact that we genetically surpass monkeys by 0.6%, then we are only different in degrees and not kind. How dare we discriminate between animals and human beings?”

Here he makes the same mistake he did before when he cited Nazi Germany as an example of the evils of evolution. Evolution is not a ladder, and we do not “surpass” chimpanzees by 0.6%. We are merely genetically 0.6% different from chimpanzees. The author also mistakenly refers to chimpanzees as monkeys, when they are not monkeys but rather are great apes. Among other things, monkeys have tails, apes do not. This is a fairly common misconception, but again this speaks to the quality of the book’s scholarship.

He then is guilty of the equivocation fallacy with his use of the word “discriminate.” Discriminate can mean either: “to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences” or “to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Chimpanzees and humans have clear differences, and to discriminate between them (first definition) is natural. However, the use of the word calls up the second, pejorative, definition and suggests that acknowledging the distinctions is a bad thing.

Lastly, he generalizes from chimpanzees to all animals. Perhaps, given their similarity to us, chimpanzees should be accorded special treatment. But that does not translate into equating people and all other organisms. This unwarranted generalization may stem from the human tendency to perceive the world in distinct categories. The author is using two categories here, “people,” and, “animals.” He is treating these categories as discrete and homogenous blocks. If these categories are an accurate description of the world, then they can be compared to one another. But the truth is that humans and animals are not separate categories. Humans, animals, even plants are all organisms, and each organism can be evaluated on a number continuums which might be relevant here, including complexity, intelligence, and sentience.
{incorrect scientific fact, equivocation fallacy, false distinction}

He then lists some animals that are in fact superior to humans in specific ways, including the, “blind bat, [which] through its sonar ability, can maneuver its way through the most complex obstacle course.” The bat is in fact not blind, and some can see about as well as humans. Bats use echolocation to navigate because they hunt at night, and, like humans, cannot see in the dark. This mistake doesn’t actually affect his argument, as bats do still have an ability (echolocation) that humans don’t, but once again this speaks to the book’s quality of scholarship.
{incorrect scientific fact}

The author quotes a Professor Singer who argues that people saw themselves as superior to animals in the Western world because the Bible states that God endowed people with a soul. Given that it is the soul that makes us superior, the author states that if he can prove the existence of the soul, even Professor Singer would acknowledge human superiority.

The author is conflating the professor’s conjecture as to why people do (in general) in fact consider themselves superior to animals with a claim that a soul is a valid justification for considering ourselves superior. (Note that I am endorsing neither Professor Singer's claim nor his controversial ethical theory.) Be that as it may, I am willing to concede that if there actually is a God, and He endowed humans with a metaphysical soul which other species do not have, then in the soul-bearing category we would be superior to animals. Further, depending on exactly what properties said soul endows upon its possessor, possession of a soul may be a valid justification for classifying people as a separate category from and superior to the rest of the animal kingdom.

I should note that there is no need to look to a metaphysical soul to find ways in which humans are superior to other organisms. Humans are far and away the masters of adapting the environment to suit our needs. While other species change the environment, build dwellings, create tools, even domesticate other species, none of them approach the scale on which humans use and create things for our own benefit. We are also the most intelligent species on the planet (as measured by problem-solving ability), and the only one capable of transmitting truly novel information and abstract concepts.

Search Judaism – A Critique: Introduction & Chapter One, section one

The following is a point-by-point critique of “Search Judaism: Judaism’s Answers to a Changing World” by Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer. I’ve summarized each point and then explained what I think is wrong with it. Below the discussion of each point I’ve listed the errors and/or fallacies contained in the point.

The errors in the book fall into three broad categories: instances where the author presented one side of a debated issue without the other, and implied that the interpretation presented was the only one; instances where the author’s facts were simply wrong; and logical fallacies.


Search Judaism: Judaism’s Answers to a Changing World
Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer

Introduction
The book starts off, in its first sentence, by claiming that Avraham had no tradition about God and that he was a monotheist. I suppose this is true, in a sense, about the biblical God, but ignores the influence of Canaanite gods on the image of God in the chumash, which extends to using the names Baal and El as names of God. It also ignores the evidence in the chumash itself that the early Jews were hhenotheistic (devoted to the worship of a single god while acknowledging the existence of other gods) rather than truly monotheistic.

The introduction says that the book is meant to provide an alternative to “rote, habit, and uninspired Judaism” so that one can come to “actual knowledge of God.” Let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

Chapter One
The chapter begins with the question: Are humans just like other animals, or are they something more? While current evolutionary science sees humans as just one of many genetically similar species on this planet, this does not, as the author claims, mean “there is nothing wrong with behaving like an animal, because we are, after all, animals.” This is a straw-man argument meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader; meant to make the reader recoil in moral disgust from the proposition that humans are just like other animals. There would be something wrong with a dog behaving like a cat, something wrong with a goat behaving like a lion, and there is something wrong with a human behaving like a member of another species. It does not follow from the fact that we are a species of animal like any other that we are therefore going to behave immorally. It does mean that we humans aren’t “special,” but hey, that’s just the way it is. That we may want to be special doesn’t mean that we are.

It also ignores studies of behavior in great ape species that show many behaviors, particularly social behaviors, similar to those found in people.
{emotional appeal, straw-man}

Humans and Animals (Chapter One, section one)

There follows a story illustrating the ridiculous extremes people go to caring for their pets, including expensive health care, homes, clothes, etc. Here I must note that such extremes are not the norm and do not represent a trend.

The author then asks if it is moral for people to spend money on expensive medical treatments for their pets when there are children in need of operations; if it is moral to buy expensive clothes for pets when there are people who need to be clothed. This question assumes an either-or situation: that if the pet owners didn’t spend their money on their pets they would donate it to those in need rather than spend it on, say, a cruise, or a fancy car. Such a situation is not the case here. These pet owners are not deciding between their dog’s health and that of a child, but between their dog’s health and a vacation. If people want to spend their money on something the rest of us find foolish, that it their prerogative.
{emotional appeal, false dilemma}

The author states that he has noted historically an inverse relationship between how much people care about animals and how much they care about other people. Even if this is true, confluence is not causality.

He then states that Ancient Egyptians venerated animals to the point where they did not eat animal products – according to Ibn Ezra. Leaving aside that “Ancient Egypt” spans several thousand years of changing social rules, this just isn’t so. There are wall scenes in Egyptian tombs that depict dairy activities (milking cows, preparing cheese), and there is similar evidence that Egyptians’ diets included a wide range of meats, poultry, and fish.

As a counterpoint to the Egyptians’ supposed extreme veneration of animals, the author claims that the great monuments of Ancient Egypt, including the pyramids, were built by slaves. While it’s true that some monuments were built by slaves, and slaves were involved in building the pyramids, most of the labor was done by peasant farmers in the off-season, their labor serving as a form of tax to the monarchy. (I suppose I should just be glad he didn’t claim the pyramids were built by the Bnei Yisroel.)

He goes on to claim that the Egyptians worshiped a host of animals as gods, and lists them by name. It is true that Egyptian gods were associated with animals, but it wasn’t such a simple relationship. The gods were not animals, but were usually depicted as men or women with the head of the animal they were associated with. Thus Anubis, for example, was depicted as a man with the head of a jackal.

The preceding two points don’t actually affect the validity of his argument, but they seem indicative of the overall level of the book’s scholarship.
As a final condemnation of the Egyptians’ supposed veneration of animals and degradation of people, he says that the Torah commands we bring animal sacrifices to drive home the point that there is a difference between humans and animals. In world where (supposedly) humans were considered inferior to animals, Hashem wanted us to know that in fact we are far superior to animals.

Firstly, I don’t really understand the logic here. How does sacrificing animals show that people are superior? It could just as easily be interpreted to mean that animals are superior to people, and therefore a more worthy sacrifice for God. Secondly, this ignores the influence of surrounding cultures, all of which (including the Egyptians who are supposed to have held animals in such high regard) sacrificed animals to their gods. From an anthropological viewpoint, it is likely that the ancient Jews were influenced by the religious practices of those around them. There is even support for this view from within the bounds of Torah. The Rambam says that Hashem commanded the Bnei Yisroel to bring karbanos because all peoples in the ancient world brought sacrifices, and it would have been too difficult for the Jewish people to be too different.
{incorrect historical facts, confluence/causality, spin}

As a second example of historical kindness to animals and cruelty to people, the author cites Nazi Germany and Hitler’s vegetarianism. Again, confluence is not causality. That Hitler was a vegetarian has nothing to do with him being a genocidal monster. To illustrate the silliness of this line of argument, I would like to note that the Nazis also all wore pants. Are we now to infer some kind of causal link between pants and mass murder?

I should also note that his choice of examples, Ancient Egypt and Nazi Germany, both evoke strong negative emotions in Jewish readers, and just barely stop short of being condemnations of a practice in and of themselves (e.g., the Nazis did X, so X must be bad). I doubt these examples were chosen arbitrarily, and find it much more likely that they were chosen specifically because of the emotional reaction they cause in order to create the illusion that the author’s argument is stronger than it actually is.
{confluence/causality, emotional appeal}

The author now segues into an attack on evolution, implicitly claiming that biological evolutionary theory justifies Social Darwinism. It does no such thing, as the theory of evolution is merely an explanation for biodiversity, not a moral framework. Again the Nazis are cited, even though the corrupted evolutionary theory the Nazis used to justify their horrors had almost nothing to do with biological science and everything to do with justifying their claim of being the master race. It was based on the mistaken notion that evolution is a ladder, with some species (or in the Nazi’s useage, races) “more evolved” – and therefore superior – to others. Evolution does not work that way. The theory of evolution simply states that those animals which are best adapted to their environment will be the ones who survive to breed, and that therefore changing environments shape a specie’s development. Thus animals will gain, and more importantly for this discussion, LOSE abilities in the process of adapting to their environment. The Nazi’s claim that they were ubermenchen, more evolved than other races, was evolutionary nonsense.

Now the author makes a statement that is shocking in both its display of ignorance and blatant emotional manipulation. He says, “In theory, what could be wrong with a Darwinist, who didn’t like the color or style of your hair, weeding out your genes from the human gene pool? Scary, isn’t it?”

Yes, it is scary. It’s scary how ridiculous and malicious this statement is. Let’s break it down.

1) Hair style? Really? Because hair style is genetically determined, right?
2) What would be wrong with it is that murder and/or denying someone the right to have children is morally repugnant, regardless of how biodiversity came about.
3) Breeding existed long before Darwin, and was in fact part of what led him to come up with the theory of evolution. Breeding people for hair color could have been thought up, carried out, and possibly even justified in the interest of creating better people without Darwin.
4) That certain traits are selected for naturally because organisms with those traits out-survive similar organisms without those traits in no way justifies a person selecting and/or suppressing physical traits in other people, especially when doing so violates the other people’s human rights.
5) This is like claiming that the germ theory of disease justifies rape and murder. After all, if viruses use people to create more of themselves, even to the point of killing their host, then it must be okay for me to commit rape to procreate and to kill anyone who tries to stop me. Of course, people aren’t viruses – nor is anyone entitled to decide the course evolution should take for his fellow human beings.
6) It is a straw-man argument attempting to claim that evolution justifies murder, which as demonstrated above just isn’t so.
7) It is an emotional appeal designed to link Darwinism with murder and thereby make evolution reprehensible.
8) Even if all of the above was not true, and Darwinian evolution really did justify eugenics, that in no way affects whether or not evolution is in fact the correct explanation for biodiversity, making this an appeal to consequences.
{Incorrect scientific fact, spin, emotional appeal, straw-man, appeal to consequences}

The first section of Chapter One seems to be an attempt to show that:
1. Animals being considered more important than people is a sign of a degenerate society.
2. Evolution claims that humans are just another species of animal and (logical leap here) therefore animals are as important or are more important than people.
3. This is horrifying and justifies murder. (Not true, as demonstrated above.

A Gift of Apologetics

For Chanukah my mother-in-law got my daughter a doll, my wife something for the house, and me a book that claims to be able to bring the reader to, “actual knowledge of God.” The book is “Search Judaism: Judaism’s Answer to a Changing world” by Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer. I Googled the author’s name and found that he works for Aish HaTorah; that his shiurim are posted on a site that boasts of having lectures from over 250 speakers, yet mysteriously has pictures only of the male lecturers (either none of the female lecturers were available to pose for a picture or a grainy head shot of a woman is an unpardonable breach of tznius); and (courtesy of Only Simchas) that he was married the same year I was.

I’ve picked up books like this before in good-faith attempts to see if there is some proof I might have missed, and invariably I put them down in disgust after coming across an awful argument or blatant untruth. The most recent was a couple of months ago when I picked up “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” by Rabbi Shmuel Waldman. I didn’t get very far when I ran across a Judaicized version of Pascal’s Wager. Struck by the absurdity of using a proof created by a Catholic theologian in defense of his own religion as an argument for Judaism, I stopped reading. I’ve come to have very low expectations for these kinds of books.

Still this was a gift, and I know my mother-in-law meant well. My wife told me that her mother had done some research before buying the book to try and find one that would appeal to me. (I’m touched by her effort, though in all honesty I wish she would just let it be.) The least I could do was read it. I decided to write down my thoughts as I went along.

So far I’ve gone through the first chapter, and I have over eleven typed pages of critique. It’s not just some fuzzy logic, it’s not appeals to the possibility that God might exist, it’s not even that its wrong on the main points that the author is trying to make. It’s wrong on Every. Single. Point.

I’d estimate about 85% of the statements in the book are either factually wrong or logical fallacies. Its full of examples and anecdotes clearly meant to push emotional buttons, and the chapter ends with what I’m pretty sure is an exercise in quote-mining. (Though I do have to admit I’m not certain, not having read the quotes in their original contexts.)

I’m thinking about turning this into a project. I usually post two or three times a month. Using this book as source material, I could put up a post every day for weeks. Is anyone interested in reading it?

The Agudah Convention (A Parody)

This post is something different than my usual reminiscing and attempts at philosophy.

A while back XGH had a post about “The Atheist Convention”, a song by Abie Rottenberg. As I wrote there in the comments, as a kid I had really liked this song. It’s got a catchy tune, its upbeat, and it tells an inspiring little story. As my attitude towards religion has changed over the years, so has my opinion of the song. I still think it has a catchy tune and is upbeat, but I now find the story kind of insulting. The message is that inside every atheist is “buried faith,” and all it takes is a single incident for an atheist to abandon his convictions and run to the faith endorsed by his culture.



The original song from Journeys



(I've written before, here, about the idea that people think that everyone, deep down, really have the same beliefs that they do.)

The following is a parody I wrote which turns the premise of the song on its head. It’s not perfect, as the abandoning-faith-due-to-tragedy trope is recognized in the religious world and is considered less legitimate than someone with intellectual questions, but it keeps the premise that all it takes is a single incident to make someone abandon their convictions.



“The Agudah Convention”

The plane took off on schedule from La Guardia
On a bright clear sunny summer's day
What a cheerful trio they appeared to be
They were off the ground westward bound
To the Agudah Convention in LA

Yankel was a Rabbi from Manhattan
Dovid shteiged all day in Sheepshead Bay
Yossi was a teacher out in Woodmere
With the clouds below they were on the go
to the Agudah Convention in LA

Chorus:
Aren't you glad that we'll be staying at the Hilton
I can't wait to hear the gedolim’s latest bans
Did you hear this year they're letting in YU guys?
The convention should be absolutely grand

There'll be speeches that will ponder our difference
The secular world will come under fierce attack
That "science is all evil" is our motto
And evolution is a theory not a fact!

Yankel made a bracha over dinner
Yossi and Dovid answered amen
There was a maskil in the next row shaking his head
Could he be so deluded...to not want to be included
In those with someone up there watching over them?

Suddenly there was a big explosion
Everyone began to scream and wail
The plane was in a spin and losing altitude
Yankel cried "Hashem save us"
Dovid "Next time I’ll take the bus"
And in Hebrew Yossi said, "Shema Yisroel"

Chorus

Just after that final awful impact
When nearly everyone on board had died
Somehow some way the engines spun and caused a spark
As Yossi watched from the trees
With what seemed to be great ease
The remains of his friends the fire fried

Yossi lost his faith in G-d in heaven
"If God existed He’d have saved us on this day"
The maskil turned and asked reb Yossi with a tear,
"with your friends now passed away...will you still be going to pray
At the Agudah Convention in LA"

Yankel's now buried in Yerushalayim
Dovid’s tomb is near his yeshiva
and Yossi's still a teacher out in Woodmere
But now they call him Doctor, and on superstition he gives lecture
His stifled mind ignited
While flying on United
To the Agudah Convention in LA

Growing Up Different

Growing up in the Yeshivish world, it seemed that Europe, the alte heim remembered warmly in stories, the land where the pious Judaism of our forefathers once flourished, was an area that extended from Russia in the East to Lithuania in the North, Hungary in the South, and Poland to the West. (Not that I had a great grasp of geography as kid. Far from it.) The stories that were told, from those about the great tzadikim we were to emulate to those about the simple folk we were to identify with, all took place in small patch of Central and Eastern Europe. The names of the towns, the Yiddish the characters spoke, the social structure, all had their roots in the shtetl.

I identified with none of it. I heard no stories at home about Poland or Russia. No family tales of the poretz, the czar, the bitter winters and rapacious peasants. Nor was there any reason I should. My family was from farther west, from a place that, when it came up at all, was the source of the smart-aleky Maskil in older stories and of unspeakable horror in those from the mid-20th century.

All four of my grandparents grew up in Germany, in places like Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Main. I have photographs of my great-grandfathers in their uniforms, circa 1914. I know very little about their service, and it’s likely they were drafted rather than volunteers, but they fought for Germany. More than one of my great-great-uncles died in France in the Kaiser’s service, fighting for a country he thought of as his own. One, a doctor living in California, voluntarily returned to Germany to serve his country.

When WWI ended and Germany was forced to cede its eastern lands to the newly reconstituted Poland, one of my great grandfathers, who had been living just across the new Polish border, moved west to Berlin rather than trade his German citizenship for a Polish one. Unlike the oppressed Jews of Eastern Europe (and Poland, Hungary, etc. which I’ll throw in with Eastern countries for simplicities sake), German Jews saw themselves as full members of the German nation.

The Jews of Eastern Europe were, for the most part, poor, oppressed, and not very patriotic – often because they weren’t allowed the privileges of citizens. Western Europe was a very different place.

These differences expressed themselves in ways other than just patriotism. Jews in the West tended to be wealthier and better-educated than their Eastern brethren, a difference which accounts for the popularity of cholent in Eastern Europe and its absence from the West. This dish, which many frum people today consider their Shabbos incomplete without, was unknown in Germany. While cholent today may be expensive, it was originally a relatively cheap stew made with potatoes, beans, and a bit of meat and bones for flavor. Tasty and filling, it was the perfect Shabbos dish for people without a lot to spend. The richer Jews of the West had chickens and meat for Shabbos. My father first tasted cholent when he went away to yeshiva for bais medrash.

There are also differences in hashkafa and minhagim. In general, most of the kaballah-inspired minhagim prevalent among Eastern European Jews are not part of the German experience. My family doesn’t make upsherins, we don’t wave a chicken over our heads before Yom Kippur, and we don’t wear a kittel at the seder. At my wedding (and my parents’ and my siblings’) I didn’t wear a kittel, I didn’t wear a torn coat, and I didn’t untie my shoes or take off my gold cufflinks. My wife and I stood under the chuppah wearing a tallis over our heads and facing away from the audience.

Most of my classmates were descendants of the Eastern Europeans who have come to dominate American Orthodoxy. (So much so, that one is either a chassid or a litvak. In common usage in the yeshivish and chassidsh worlds, there are no other categories.) I was different from them. Not very different – we were all from middle-to-right-wing Orthodox homes. But I was different in that I didn’t personally identify with stories of Eastern European figures. To my classmates, these characters were their alter zaides. I didn’t even have a zaidy. I called my grandfather “Opa,” German for Grandpa. Underscoring the difference even more, my family did things differently than my friends did, differently than I was taught in school.

Like all yeshivish kids, I learned the Yiddish sing-song about the Seder. “Tatty comes home from shul and puts on his kittel…” Mine didn’t.

I learned to say the Ma Nishtana in Yiddish. My mother’s parents, at whose home we spent Pesach when I was little, spoke fluent German and could understand Yiddish, but no one in my family spoke Yiddish.

Before Yom Kippur I learned in school how we shlug kaporos. At home, I heard how we didn’t shlug kaporos, and could you imagine actually taking a chicken and swinging it over your head?!

Then there’s the best one of all. You must wait six hours between milchig and fleishig (always said that way, even though no one waits between milk and meat, only between meat and milk). This minhag is taught as part of hilchos kashrus. Except my family only waits three.

For me, the illusion of a monolithic mesorah promulgated by the Yeshivish world never had a chance to take hold. Sure, everyone knows that there are people out there who only wait three hours, or who wear taleisim before they’re married. But for most it’s not something they notice. It’s one thing if one or two of your friends do things a little differently than you do. It’s another when nearly everyone does things differently than you do.

I think this may be another small ingredient in my path to religious skepticism. Seeing what I was taught as normative in school disregarded by my family in practice – disregarded because no one in the family had ever done these things - taught me that not everything I learned was a tradition stretching back to God at Har Sinai.

V’shinantam L’vanecha…

My wife’s fourteen-year-old sister called yesterday.

“Are you coming over today?” She asked

“I’ll be over later this afternoon,” I said. “Why?”

“I’m having a history test tomorrow,” she said. “I need your help studying. I haven’t really been paying attention in class.” She laughed.

“All right. Sure. I’ll see you soon.”

“Thanks. See you. Bye.”



I arrived at my in-laws house later that afternoon. My daughter ran off to be spoiled by her other teenaged aunt, and I sat down at the dining room table with my sister-in-law, her notes, and her textbook. She opened the book to chapter three, “Ancient China.” She read from her notes, and I looked through the book and explained the material to her as best as I could. For a while we discussed ancient China’s geography, political system, and social makeup. Then we came to the section on religious beliefs. Specifically, ancestor worship.

“What does it mean, they ven-er-ated their ancestors?” She asked.

“In ancient China – and some people in China today – believed that their parents, grandparents, and other family members that passed away went to a different realm of existence where they continued to have an interest in and influence over their children’s and grandchildren’s lives.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“They davened to their dead ancestors for things.” I explained.

She grinned.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“They ‘davened.’” She said, making air quotes with her fingers.

“Yes, they davened, without the quotes.” I said. “They believed that their ancestors had influence in the world. The same way we daven that we should be healthy, our kids should be well, we should make money, they davened to their ancestors that they should be healthy, their kids should be well, their crops should grow and be plentiful, their animals should be healthy…”

She laughed. “Yeah, but when we daven its for real. Hashem answers us when we daven, and when He doesn’t, its because He says no because it wouldn’t be good for us.”



I wanted to point out to her that the Chinese were just as sincere in their prayers as she was in hers. I wanted to point out that in their belief system, their prayers were the ones that “real” and it was praying to an incorporeal monotheistic God in the sky that was silly. I wanted to point out the non-falsifiability of the claim that God answers all prayers – except for those He doesn’t. I wanted to point out that the same claim could be reasonably made about a rock, or a chair, or absolutely anything: if what you prayed for happens, attribute it to your prayer to the chair; if it doesn’t happen, its because the chair, in its infinite wisdom, knew that it wouldn’t be good for you, and so said no.

I didn’t point out anything. Instead, I let it go and moved on to the next section in the textbook.

As nice as my in-laws are, as kind, warm, and caring as they are, they would be very upset if I caused their fourteen-year-old daughter to have doubts. As it is, they’re not that happy about how much I’ve changed the way the daughter I married thinks. Nor are they happy about what I might teach their grandchildren.

Which brings me to the real problem, one that many in my position share. Educating my sister-in-law in comparative theology is not really my place. Nor do I think that it would be right at her age for me to deliberately and overtly change her worldview from the one her parents are trying to teach her. But educating my children and shaping their worldview is my place. More accurately, I want to make sure my children have the breadth of knowledge and the intellectual tools to decide for themselves what their worldviews will be. How do I this without making them pariahs in a community with a narrow definition of acceptable worldviews?

The first step is probably getting out of New York and away from the segmented sectarian communities that exist here. Moving to a more Modern community - one in which most ‘secular’ knowledge and an ostensibly rationalist epistemology falls within the bounds of community sanction – is another. As for where to go from there, well, we’ll see.

People Like Me in Entertainment Media

There aren’t any.

All of the characters on TV, in movies, in the books I read, are all different than me. There were never any characters that I could truly identify with, someone that looked and sounded like I did. I suppose that is what it means to be part of a minority.

Except that there are Jewish characters all over the place. It seems like every third TV character is Jewish. Whether this is a result of the American tendency to erroneously hold up Judaism as one of the great (demographically) world religions, or Jewish writers creating characters that are coreligionists, I don’t know. But even these characters weren’t people I could identify with. They are mostly “informed Jews” – they look and act just like everyone else, and only reveal that they’re Jewish in December each year so that Chanukah can be shoehorned into the Christmas episode. If they have any Jewish characteristics, they’ll be highly stereotypical ones, like eating bagels. If they are at all religious, they’ll be on the extreme left wing of the Reform movement – a rabbi will officiate at their wedding, but that’s about it. The few depictions of Orthodox Jews are always of Chassidim. After all, a character in a long black coat, a fur hat, and long curly payos is much more interesting than a guy in a business suit with a fedora or a yarmulke on his head. (The only exception I can remember ever seeing was in “It Could Happen To You” in which a yeshivish-looking guy in a white shirt and yarmulke is seen mailing a letter.)

I identified with none of these characters. As much as TV and movies are a fantasy, for me there was an added layer of distance from reality. None of the people depicted were even close to “real” because none of them resembled anyone I knew.

I think this underlines the cultural isolation of the Orthodox world. While some liberal Chareidim and the Modern Orthodox partake of what the general culture has to offer, we aren’t really a part of it. There is nothing in it with which we can identify. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view.