On The Wisdom Of Old

A number of years ago, I spent three days in California interviewing with an organization which did religious outreach across various college campuses in Southern California. By the end of the three days my wife and I were offered the opportunity to move to Santa Barbara (which we turned down), then spent a number of months discussing options in Los Angeles before eventually we decided to go our separate ways.

As part of the process, I was asked to talk to various college students of all types and stripes. In particular, I remember a fascinating conversation I had with a religious theology major at UCLA about approaches to life, God, religion, etc. One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation was when I argued that it seems odd to automatically assume that a given approach should be given no credibility no matter how long-standing it is. If anything, the more long-standing a point is, the more thought one should give that approach before moving onto others - yes, it can and should be questioned, but to assume that nobody prior to one's self has asked any of these questions shows a certain sense of ego and complete lack of humility, which would seemingly preclude the ability to make proper judgments down the line. Instead, one should first make sure to fully understand where a line of thought started, how it developed throughout time, and how it reached the point it has before passing any judgment on it. What was most amazing about our conversation was that this approach had never once occurred to nor had it been presented to this obviously intelligent, educated student whom I couldn't have been more than a year or two older than, and he was really taken aback by this. 

This has been coming back to me recently as I watch various debates occur on a variety of topics, from politics to Judaism to life in general. Three good specific examples from the past couple weeks are particularly striking: Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox book; the battle waged over forcing religious institutions to pay for birth control; and a pathetic article written which suggested forgetting the Holocaust.

In the latter, the attention-seeking contrariness-driven Beacon, which was dismissed as a YU paper after its last stunt, somehow was still able to get some attention to itself by penning an absolutely horrible piece whining that Jews still use the Holocaust as a reasoning behind being for or against various policies. When I first saw the piece via email, I questioned if anyone was actually reading such drivel, and didn't think it was worth replying to, not even bothering to read a reply someone sent me later at first. But later that night, I decided to read the reply - and it was absolutely fantastic. In particular, this portion struck me as exactly the point: 

[...] Remembering the Holocaust is not only important for its own sake. It is important because memory is education, education is action, and action is necessary: for any people anywhere. The ultimate goal of Holocaust education, of course, is genocide prevention: a promise encapsulated in the rallying mantra of “Never Again,” that which we have at once chanted and yet betrayed repeatedly.
In a world without memory, we will simply lose our imagination to conceptualize peril. [...]

The same point was struck in the responses to the Obama administration's push regarding birth control without an exemption for religious organizations. Judaism is not against birth control, but the First Amendment is crucial to members of all religions regardless of the specifics of a given law. The Orthodox Union (among others) clearly noted this issue in their condemnation of the move - and yet supporters of the Obama administration on this issue believe this issue is something which should be forced upon religious organizations regardless. The Constitution, where freedom of religion was laid out originally in this country, is viewed as an old document written by people hundreds of years ago who didn't have the same social values as our enlightened, tech-driven generation. It is therefore not surprising that people would believe that it is trumped by certain important social values of today - except that however noble the intention, it ignores that the Constitution is not revered by many nor held as the basis of our laws because of its age. It is held in high esteem because of its wisdom - wisdom in how it approached, and most importantly, approaches, the future of this country. The reason there is a strict line between government and religions is so that there can never be a justification given for intruding on the religious freedoms of the people of this country. Once that line is crossed, there is no longer a concept of a religious freedom; there are only activities which the government accepts, and activities which it does not. Religion matters not at all; freedom matters not at all.

Finally, when reading reviews and descriptions of Deborah Feldman's book, in seems that in every aspect of life in one sect of Chassidim [at least among a large group], the approach to questions was simply "we don't ask". In fact, there was a review which I believe quoted one Chassidish woman as musing after a few such comments that "we don't do well with questions". But if we do not ask, we can never understand - and it is clear that Deborah Feldman did not understand much about how and why Judaism approaches life, a too common failing in the Jewish community. We cannot merely speak to traditions as the wisdom of old being passed down; we need to understand it so we can continue to pass it down as wisdom, and not some random archaic set of rules. 

It is too often forgotten today that older approaches to life, law, and even remembering the Holocaust are not simply lists of rules or mantras to be followed blindly. Instead, they are incredibly structured, developed, thought out concepts which are meant to last for centuries, if not all eternity. Our job is to delve into them in order to understand them, and only then begin to determine the appropriate approaches to the issues of our times, utilizing those concepts and the lessons from our histories.

On Shifting Views - Media Bias and Gay Marriage

(via CC) A study by a UCLA professor finds that journalists and the media are so biased that we perceive centrists as conservatives, and liberals as centrists:

Fox News is clearly more conservative than ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and National Public Radio. Some will conclude that 'therefore, this means that Fox News has a conservative bias. Instead, maybe it is centrist, and possibly even left-leaning, while all the others are far left. It's like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players.

The simple reason:

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter.

Helen Thomas is the perfect example of this. While a White House reporter, she was considered a great journalist... but now is exposed as not just having liberal opinions, but as being a far-left nutcase. How is it possible that someone with such extreme opinions was able to co-exist - and be heralded as great - in a supposedly neutral environment as the journalistic field, when people who express commentary that even agrees with mild right-leaning initiatives are blasted as being biased? It is when the journalistic center is skewed so far to the left, that extreme liberalism is viewed as mildly liberal while mild conservatism is viewed as extreme.

This is true beyond media, however. Whenever we shift conversations in a specific way, it redefines the center viewpoint, making one side or the other seem extreme. For example, even proponents of gay marriage who are liberal but not gay claimed that it would never impact or be forced upon religious people in any way; that it was the religious who were unfairly imposing their morality on homosexual couples. And yet, as gay marriage has become fait accompli, proprietors are being sued for being unwilling to cater to homosexual couples' wishes, such as hosting or catering or photographing their wedding. Proponents of the separation of church and state (not in the Constitution) felt that religious values should have no weight in determining what people can and cannot do. But one of the protections afforded by the Constitution was freedom of religion, which was supposed to mean that people would not be forced to perform acts that are against their beliefs. By suing proprietors for standing up for their beliefs, gay couples, through the Courts, are essentially reversing the Constitution by forcing people to perform services that they feel go against their religious beliefs. Moreover, in discussions on the subject, people who formerly claimed it does not have anything to do with religious people and that "gay marriage doesn't hurt anyone", now have shifted their views even further, noting that to not service gays should be discrimination like any other, such as racism or sexism.

That all said, not all bias is extreme, nor does it shift completely to one end of the spectrum. In the rather extensive Wiki on media bias, it notes that Groseclose and his colleagues found that despite the heavy bias in media in the USA, all major news sources remained within the overall center - from the New York Times at the left edge of it to Fox News in the very middle, all were within the range of moderate Democrats and Republicans in Congress. If news organizations were people, Fox would be somewhere between Joe Lieberman and John McCain, while the NY Times would be somewhere around Bill Clinton - which, upon a little thought, would likely make sense to most people.

Impostors

R' Eliyahu Fink has an article up about Ami Magazine's recent piece, "The Impostors Among Us". (As I was writing this, Chana penned a piece as well which is quite good.)

In essence, the Ami piece is about Orthoprax individuals within the Orthodox Jewish community - people who don't believe in various integral aspects of Orthodox belief, but essentially go through the motions to stay within the community for various reasons. Orthopraxy (which seems important to differentiate from people merely struggling with aspects of frumkeit) is according to the article a growing phenomenon, boosted to a large extent by information, questions, and discussion which are available on the internet.

The most troubling aspect of Orthopraxy which is touched on in the article is the dishonesty involved. Regardless of one's own feelings about Judaism, is it fair to subject one's family and friends to one's own lying life? One Orthoprax individual in the article, "Eli", wishes to marry an Orthodox girl despite his beliefs, because that's all he can relate to; another serves as a posek despite not believing in his own judgments. This dishonest approach to life seems incredibly wrong, and unfair to all those whom it impacts.

But on the other side, the article is absolutely horrendous. It falsely portrays issues people have as idiotic and "so-called scientific questions"; proclaims itself as intellectual while presuming that those who fall off are not intellectual and instead are justifying "chasing after taavos"; describes those who have these struggles as having a "sickness" or emotional problems; and is otherwise absurd in its approach and how people could/used to avoid the issue, which is essentially never come across any questions via lack of access to them, especially via the internet. On top of everything else, the smug interviewer caps the article with a note that "steps have been taken to protect the public" from the posek mentioned above. This is a real sticky move, depending a lot on what actions were taken; obviously it's important to remove someone from a position where they are obviously not fit, but it's a real lack of journalistic integrity to act on a source like that.

If people truly wish to combat Orthopraxy in Judaism, then it will come not from sticking our head in the sand but by truly confronting the questions which we face and understanding both the questions and reasonable, logical approaches to them. If we believe in what we say, then we should have no issue saying what we believe and why. To dismiss those who question and struggle with a wave of the hand or by denouncing them as heretical, declaring them ill, or claiming they are simply out for taava is foolish at best, and most likely incredibly destructive. In fact, it would be reasonable to say that it is 'journalism' such as this which contributes heavily to people turning away from the fold through its disdain for those who dare think about their beliefs.

Horrible.

EZ Reads & Commentary 4/8/11

There's something in here for everyone - enjoy! (HT: Diana for a few of these)

On the more serious side:

• Mother in Israel, who sadly lost her father, writes about what was helpful (and what was not) during her shiva. A good series of advice for people on how to help... and how not to. (MiI)
• Russian billionaire to fund Jewish "Al-Jazeera", except with less propaganda. (JPost)
• A CNN sports legend is leaving birthday messages for his little daughter as he fights a losing battle with cancer. (CNN)
• Eli Clark on "Who is Modern Orthodox?" (Hirhurim)
• Josh Waxman asks if believing a pomegranate has 613 seeds is a fundamental belief (no) and explains why some truly think so.(Parshablog)
• On a What Would You Do show (Israeli version, not ABC's), it's impressive that just about every Israeli not just didn't support an (acting) anti-Arab store owner, but criticized, offered to pay for the (acting) Arab lady trying to buy coffee, and many got extremely emotional (angry or sad) about it. (Cross Currents)

Elsewhere, some fun/cool stuff:

• New sport that looks cool/fun, if a bit confusing (Why do they have 4 goals if it's two teams? Do they have to defend two each?) - Kronum.
• Unorthodox Orthodox guitarist. I just like that he was playing at an IFL game. (RafiG)
• Israel winery wins international award - I always liked Golan. (EoZ)
• Israeli tots win international ice hockey tournament... despite never having played on ice before. (EoZ)
• Fun video from the Governor press conference when the famous YouTube kid who cried he couldn't be Governor is made Governor for a day in New Jersey. If Christie does run for President, this video will do him well; also, he comes off well on TV.
• Cool time lapse video of a flight from San Francisco to Paris. Best part: Aurora Borealis in middle.
• Via A Soldier's Mother, Dov Hoschander (a genuinely nice guy who I've met a few times through a friend) has made a really nice music video of a song dedicated to the IDF, based on the Mi Shebeirach for soldiers in the army.
  

EZ Reads 3/12/11

I don't want to focus too much on the tragic and horrifying murders of the Fogel family; others can do so far better than I. Just a few related links, though: Honest Reporting rips the BBC and CNN for their coverage; Arutz-7 shows a video clip of the Fogels discussing how they are enjoying Itamar after being expelled from Gush Katif; and Elder of Ziyon rips Reuters' "coverage".

Elsewhere:

• March Madness starts this week!! If you're interested in joining my NCAA Pool (now in its 12th year!), please email me and I'll send you an invite. If you're looking for places to watch the NCAA Tournament live online, Lifehacker has a nice guide. Note that CBS no longer has the exclusive rights.
• SD has a really moving post about "the friendship that almost never was". It's a good post on perspective.
• Kim Strassel asks if you're ready for unionized airport security - and shows how unions start and end up causing major mistaken priorities down the road. On a related note, here's a hilarious (and often very inappropriate) Twitter feed for "TSAGov". Read the past few months' worth, it's hilarious if sadly on the mark.

Family Slaughtered by Palestinians

Sick. Sick sick sick.

Five members of an Israeli family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death. The 12-year-old daughter who returned home from a friend’s house discovered the bodies. According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and a three-month-old baby. Two infants, aged 2 and 4, survived the attack while escaping to their neighbors.

One of the paramedics who arrived at the scene described the horrific sights “We could not help the first four stab victims. Following an inspection of the scene I spotted an infant of about three who still had a pulse. We engaged in lengthy resuscitation efforts but had to pronounce him dead,” he said. “The murder scene was shocking. Kids’ toys right next to pools of blood.”

The Israeli blogs are covering this far better. A Soldier's Mother rips CNN for putting quotes around terror attack. IsraellyCool shows the difference in humanity between Jews and Palestinians, as they hand out candies and goodies to celebrate killings. Jameel is covering it all.

How the Internet is Saving the Speech... and Creating Honesty

Peggy Noonan has a really interesting article a few days ago which discusses an interesting twist in modern history. I will admit that after reading the article I started thinking about my own internet usage and realized that what she was saying seemed to be correct. For a number of reasons, the internet has suddenly become a place to share serious ideas* - to write long, explanatory essays, to post a reasonably lengthy speech, to actually share ideas in full rather than in soundbytes.

I would posit that there are many reasons for this, but a few primary ones that come to mind are the speed of the internet; the freedom of the internet versus broadcast media; the desire of people for more substance thanks to their access to more information; the overwhelming nature of available information forcing people to pull back a bit from the overload; and the advent of social media. For decades, broadcast media and advancements in technology allowed the news to add more and more information to their broadcasts... but the time slots didn't really change. Each piece of news was compressed more and more, and despite larger and larger chunks being moved to other places (running news and stock tickers, specialized channels, etc.), the media simply compressed everything down to short soundbites and videos. In turn, politicians and others began doing the same: Rather than risk a longer speech being taken out of context, they simply turned their speeches and rhetoric to similarly short and easy to digest soundbites to get their messages across.

I don't know that the early days of the internet were too different, either. The essay began a slight resurgence, but with the majority of people still used to receiving soundbites, information was still often relayed in soundbite form. Even today, news sites still often follow that very same template: Short bursts of news all over, linking to news stories that are not particularly long. Without even scrolling, each one of those sites has about 15-20 articles for me to click through to, along with dozens of sections and subsections that I can get to with a click or two.

But outside of news media, it seems, times have begun to change. Perhaps it was TED posting 18-minute videos... and people finding out that people actually watch this stuff... and not only that, they really like it. Perhaps it was the sudden burst in upload and download speeds, allowing people to actually post a 15-20 minute speech in just a minute instead of an hour. Perhaps it was Hulu and the networks allowing people to get used to sitting down and watching something for a while on their computer. Perhaps it was the overload from thousands of blogs and news sites and links that caused people to start trying to focus their attention on only things that truly interest them. But whatever "it" was, people suddenly are far more willing to sit down and pay attention to something that's worth watching, to sit and read through an article or blog post or essay that makes some salient points. On top of that, the more people would see links posted by friends on their GChat statii or on their Facebook walls or even linked by the anti-substance Twitter, and then even more so when people would start showing their "Like" of something, the more willing they were to check it out themselves. Instead of being a random link, it was now something which was recommended by any number of friends, and therefore something you would be more willing to stick out to the end.

Most likely, this renaissance was a combination of most of the above factors, but it has led to a beautiful change in how we live and think. Ideas of substance are now able to get past the noise, past the soundbites, and demonstrate themselves in full. Yes, there are still some catches: Much like in entrepreneurship, there's still the need for an "elevator pitch" - a short summary that shows something will be worth watching or reading. In entrepreneurship, the elevator pitch merely gets a person to listen to the substantive idea which will allow them to determine whether they wish to support an endeavor. Online, the same is now becoming true: Rather than the news model where people are given soundbites and then asked to make a choice, people are being invited to listen to full, fleshed out ideas and make decisions from there. Suddenly, people are interested in more than soundbites.

Noonan gives a great example of this from a recent election:

Look what happened a year ago to a Wisconsin businessman named Ron Johnson. He was thinking of running for the Senate against an incumbent, Democratic heavy-hitter Russ Feingold. He started making speeches talking about his conception of freedom. They were serious, sober and not sound-bitey at all. A conservative radio host named Charlie Sykes got hold of a speech Mr. Johnson gave at a Lincoln Day dinner in Oshkosh. He liked it and read it aloud on his show for 20 minutes. A speech! The audience listened and loved it. A man called in and said, "Yes, yes, yes!" Another said, "I have to agree with everything that guy said." Mr. Johnson decided to run because of that reaction, and in November he won. This week he said, "The reason I'm a U.S. senator is because Charlie Sykes did that." But the reason Mr. Sykes did it is that Mr. Johnson made a serious speech.

I've noticed as I've had more time to read blogs and the like that I've grown even more tired than ever of the "news" sites and their short links to matters with so little substance. I'm far more interested in the great essayists (the Treppenwitz and A Soldier's Mother types) and the people who discuss interesting subjects or their own lives. I love the discussions on these blogs, the back and forth between (mostly) good, reasonable people with great points on every side of an issue (even you, JA ;) ). I also enjoy people like RafiG and JoshWaxman who not only have their own substantial posts, but also link to good pieces on other blogs (similar to this blog's EZ Reads). And of course, I enjoy reading the writings of my friends and relatives. And the Muqata.

It's a beautiful change, and hopefully it will lead to more substantive action in the real world as well. Political discussions can no longer hide behind ten-second quotable quotes, but must now expand to include facts and reasoned opinions based on those facts. Government, companies, and people can no longer hide behind vague statements, delays, or excuses, but must reply with honesty and forthrightness. One of the best traits of the internet is its ability to bring information to the light of day, and one of the worst traits of those who care for themselves above all others is that they thrive on the suppression of information or the promotion of falsehoods. As people are more and more willing to focus on substance over all else, it becomes increasingly difficult for people who do wrong to hide behind soundbites and pointed fingers, lies and character assassination - they must now answer with facts, reason, and transparency.

We are all better off for it.

* Don't worry, G, the humor isn't dead by any means. It just has to be longer. :)

Investigative Jewish Journalism?

(Hat tip: Da'as Torah blog)

Upon first seeing the title and subtitle of this Jewish Week article, the thought that sprung to my head was "Wow - investigating Ohel. That's some serious journalism." To take on Ohel, which is the darling of Jewish organizations and which accomplishes an incredible amount, particularly with its social services, takes some serious guts and, one would think, a serious story.

But then I read the story. Suffice it to say, it was heavy on innuendo and implications, but light on substance. After detailing a single instance in which questionable (but not entirely unreasonable) decisions were made regarding the status of a child who was perhaps (and then confirmed to be) being abused through proper protocol, it sums up the story by noting "that he was not removed from the home or put into foster care by ACS."

From there, the story goes on to discuss completely unrelated issues, including

the handling of sex abuse that, while technically legal, many advocates and observers believe has put the community’s children at serious risk: treating known sexual abusers who have not been reported to law enforcement and whose proclivities are protected from being made public by confidentiality laws, should they drop out of treatment.

Essentially, Ohel is being criticized for being "technically" legal, but a later paragraph explains why they don't do more:

In 2009, The Jewish Week reported on the case of Stefan Colmer, who had been “sent” by rabbis to treatment at Ohel after he was discovered to have been sexually abusing boys in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Because neither the victims nor anyone else with knowledge of the situation reported Colmer to law enforcement at that time, his treatment at Ohel was not court mandated and thus considered voluntary. Further, because of confidentiality rules, the therapist treating Colmer was prohibited by law from notifying anyone in the community about the danger he posed to children unless Colmer signed a release or disclosed to the therapist that he was currently abusing or had serious thoughts of abusing a specific child (such information allows for the breach of confidentiality rules).

Throughout the piece, the writer seems to fault Ohel for not handling this issue differently, but based on the other information included in the story it seems clear that Ohel is bound by confidentiality laws to act exactly as they do. The closest reasonable critique is that Ohel should be guiding referring Rabbis to report people to authorities and not send them to Ohel, but there seems to be no data to suggest whether or not Ohel has done exactly that nor how many of these cases come from self-reporting individuals. Nor does it explain how ideally Ohel should handle such a patient, particularly considering the specific confidentiality laws that apply to such cases.

The story then segues back to the original example, even realizing itself that the two are not related, noting "None of this, of course, directly applies to the case of the mother, who did not come into treatment as a known molester..." The article then cites the Brooklyn DA's office which says simply that if they had a reason to investigate a failure to report they would, before discussing the Brooklyn DA's relationship with Ohel which includes a hotline for reporting abuse directly to law enforcement.

Finally, the article concludes with an odd paragraph which says "Regardless of the law, the fact that Ohel did not report the case of the mother comes as little surprise to some" followed by a statement from YU's Rabbi Yosef Blau which calls Ohel

"...the problem, in a nutshell. They [have shown that they are] not able to deal with the situation that they are legally required and morally required [to deal with]. [...] Solutions [to the current problem] would involve changing [Ohel’s] leadership. [And] you will know there’s change when they start reporting.”

There seems to be little evidence, at least in this article, to back up the statement that Ohel is not able to deal with the situation properly, nor does it make clear how changing the leadership will effect that change. One friend remarked upon reading that he wonders if this is merely the first shot across the bow in a series of articles about Ohel; I replied that perhaps that is the case, and this was written in the hope that others will come forward with more information. These seem like plausible, if not particularly comforting, explanations for the piece.

Ultimately, though, for a respected Jewish weekly to attack a well-regarded organization on such paltry evidence comes off as horribly weak, sensationalist journalism. There are almost no facts in the entire story, and most of the facts that do exist are spun to present Ohel negatively, despite them acting exactly as they seem to be mandated to in all but one questionable and unclear case. This is extremely disappointing and unfairly besmirches Ohel's reputation, and if there should be more evidence then it is only appropriate that it have been included here.

Agenda Driven Data

About a year and a half ago, I was interviewed by a large Jewish organization regarding the Jewish Economics Survey I was conducting (and am looking to release a second version of shortly). Very quickly, the interview headed downward: The interviewer's questions were extremely leading, and he was clearly looking for me to answer in specific ways, primarily along the lines of "if someone would pump money into this, we'd be able to solve this problem" - or in other words, exactly the opposite of what I actually felt. When I would start to answer "well, not really...", I'd quickly get cut off and another question would be asked in its place. Unsurprisingly, the footage which included me was cut just before the video was aired at a large event the organization ran a few weeks later, which apparently championed the need for people to donate more money to help solve the Jewish world's economic problems.

Agenda driven data is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome - whether in the Orthodox world or the world as a whole. For all the obfuscation regarding the Iraq War, the most legitimate potential criticism is not whether the Bush administration had the data to justify invasion, but whether the gathering and weighing of that data was agenda driven in such a way that they were more prone to give it credence than they otherwise would or should have been. More recently, it was impressive to see three liberal publications discuss how liberal or other agenda driven bias is causing major issues in extremely important scientific fields by placing ideology over science.

In The New York Times about two weeks ago, an article about social psychologists' bias tells an eye-opening story:

[Dr. Jonathan Haidt] polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

Prior to that, The Atlantic noted that the structure of academia caused research to emphasize the sensational over fact, stating in Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science that

To get funding and tenured positions, and often merely to stay afloat, researchers have to get their work published in well-regarded journals, where rejection rates can climb above 90 percent. Not surprisingly, the studies that tend to make the grade are those with eye-catching findings. [...] Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news?

And The New Yorker had a fascinating piece entitled The decline effect and the scientific method about the same time discussing how studies which were (and are) used to explain and create numerous theories and ideas are increasingly difficult to replicate, from the effectiveness of anti-depressants to memory to numerous other fields, causing huge questions to be raised about the efficacy and accuracy not only of the studies but of all that has been based on the findings of them. No matter the study, the more it is replicated, the less true it seems to be.

If we as a Jewish community wish to begin fixing our problems, examples such as these show we can't use agenda driven studies to come to conclusions. If we do, ultimately we'll rush in one direction that looks good, only to find over and over that it's just not working the way it's supposed to - and then it will be too late. When the JES began two years ago, the primary purpose was to put together a simple guide for young singles and couples to help them when they began living independently or started their marriage. As the data came in, however, its findings taught so much about what problems existed and how people viewed those problems and the community's economics as a whole - and pointed to, but didn't prove, what might be able to help.

It is high time we put in the effort to collect and truly understand as much data as possible about the Jewish community and its various underlying problems and their causes - and its strengths and what allows those to thrive. Perhaps (!) a data-driven approach will allow us to ultimately help the Jewish community, rather than simply push off what seems to be an increasingly close, inevitable collapse of the structure currently in place.

Rewarding Honesty

“For us, this is about balancing the budget. We've got a $3.6 billion budget deficit. We are broke. Just like nearly every other state across the country, we're broke. It's about time somebody stood up and told the truth.” - Governor Scott Walker (Wisconsin)

In case you haven't been following the news, Wisconsin is the first of many states facing a major battle with unions of government workers over budgetary concern, including Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. Commentary has a solid piece criticizing The New York Times' coverage, particularly as it compares to their coverage of Tea Party demonstrations the past year or so, but it is important to note a different quality lacking in almost every bit of coverage that seems to be out there about these demonstrations.

First, a few points about unions, and in particular, government unions. As noted yesterday, even FDR was against the idea of collective bargaining with if not actual government unions. By definition, working for government means you are supposed to be working on behalf of the people whom you representing, not against them. This virtue extends to every government employee, and is not limited to the directly elected representatives; if anything, one could argue that non-elected employees have an even greater responsibility in this regard. One of the most troubling aspects of the Wisconsin debate is not the legitimate protests by union members and those who oppose them, but the actual fleeing by every Democrat in the State Legislature from the State of Wisconsin to stop there from being a vote, as they would lose the vote. (The state requires 20 members present to vote, and Republicans have 19 seats to the Democrats' 14.)

Aside from being completely unethical and an assault on democracy and on the voters of Wisconsin, it is worth noting that these lawmakers, like the unions protesting, are paid members of society who are being paid salaries from the people's taxes to not work. The union members have doctors handing out doctors' notes attesting to their being sick, allowing them to falsely call in sick for the day. These doctors have justified this practice by calling the predicament alternatively "stressful" on the members or that "sick and tired" of Gov. Walker is as good as being physically ill. These doctors seem to have faded a bit as media and blog coverage questioned whether this could cost someone their license and the Univ. of Wisconsin Medical School began investigating.

Beyond that, however, is the content being shared with the people. It took a deep search to find a mainstream article that even mentioned the issues that are being protested with any level of explanation or context - and even then, it was very short and non-detailed. The two primary issues at stake are what percentage of government workers' pay should be contributed toward pensions and health insurance. Currently, for every dollar being chipped in by a government worker, the taxpayers chip in another $53+. Imagine if your company ponied up that amount: You'd be living it up. Governor Walker has proposed raising the percentage of pay being chipped in from about 1-2% to 5.8%, much more similar to what people do in private companies. In addition, he wants to raise the percentage of premiums being kicked in toward health insurance policies from 6% to 12.6%, which is still just half as compared to people in most private companies. (Most private companies have employees kick in anywhere from 20-50% of their premiums.) It is for these reasons that the Wisconsin voters elected Gov. Walker to do exactly as he's doing, and why he has major support within Wisconsin.

Yet we're not hearing these details, and nobody is putting them into context: We hear soundbites as always, detailing on the one side how the governor is trying to "destroy" the middle class or unions, versus a weak defense on the other of using this tactic to help trim deficit shortfalls. There have been statements about Wisconsin having a "below average" unemployment rate or how its budget shortfall "is not as bad" as other places, implying that perhaps they don't need to address this in quite this way at this time. But this is shortsighted and harmful. Governor Christie (a Democrat) in New Jersey put this best recently, as told over in a great piece entitled Where the Leaders Are:

He introduced pension and benefit reforms on a Tuesday in September, and that Friday he went to the state firefighters convention in Wildwood. It was 2 p.m., and "I think you know what they had for lunch." As Mr. Chrisie recounted it: "You can imagine how that was received by 7,500 firefighters. As I walked into the room and was introduced. I was booed lustily. I made my way up to the stage, they booed some more. . . . So I said, 'Come on, you can do better than that,' and they did!"

He crumpled up his prepared remarks and threw them on the floor. He told them, "Here's the deal: I understand you're angry, and I understand you're frustrated, and I understand you feel deceived and betrayed." And, he said, they were right: "For 20 years, governors have come into this room and lied to you, promised you benefits that they had no way of paying for, making promises they knew they couldn't keep, and just hoping that they wouldn't be the man or women left holding the bag. I understand why you feel angry and betrayed and deceived by those people. Here's what I don't understand. Why are you booing the first guy who came in here and told you the truth?"

He told them there was no political advantage in being truthful: "The way we used to think about politics and, unfortunately, the way I fear they're thinking about politics still in Washington" involves "the old playbook [which] says, "lie, deceive, obfuscate and make it to the next election." He'd seen a study that said New Jersey's pensions may go bankrupt by 2020. A friend told him not to worry, he won't be governor then. "That's the way politics has been practiced in our country for too long. . . . "

It is time for this to change, and it would help us all if the media were to finally begin reporting responsibly: Explaining the issues and their impact, not just on the next media cycle and the upcoming election, but on the financial futures of this country and the states which are a part of it. Reward those who make decisions made to last the next 50 years and not the next 6 months, not those with the more outrageous soundbite. The best aspect of the various campaigns by Governors such as Walker, Christie, Kasich (Ohio), and Daniels (Indiana) is that they're completely open and honest about what the issues are and what needs to get done - and yet that's not what people get to read or watch on the news. It's time media began to reward honesty.

Against Ban Harassment & Threats

(This is being posted simultaneously on many Orthodox Jewish blogs)

A little over a month ago, a number of rabbis signed onto a ban that forbade advertising on or otherwise working with the website VosIzNeias. This ban singled out one website without addressing other websites or public forums like newspapers or magazines. The singling out of a solitary website raises many questions, particularly when newspapers in the same community regularly publish arguably libelous stories and online discussion forums for the community are essentially unbounded by civility. Additionally, VosIzNeias has publicly stated that it has already raised its standards and is willing to do even more with rabbinic guidance, provided the same guidelines are applied to its competitors.

Bans of this nature are generally brought into fruition by activists and this one is attributed to a specific activist who seems to have business and political interests in this ban. He ignored VosIzNeias’ request to meet with the rabbis in order to explore ways to satisfy their concerns. With this ban, the activist is threatening the commercial viability of the VosIzNeias business.

We have now received reports of continued harassment by this activist, who is threatening to publicly denounce people, companies and charitable organizations who continue to cooperate with the website. He has also reportedly threatened to remove the kosher certification of companies that fail to adhere to the ban. However, on being contacted, the activist behind the ban denied all knowledge of this harassment and attributed it to someone acting without authorization. We are, therefore, making no formal accusation as to who is conducting this campaign of harassment.

To the best of our understanding, this activity is illegal. One individual told us he reported that harassment to the police.

Harassing good people with threats is illegal and inexcusable. We call on rabbis and people of good faith to denounce this behavior, and we encourage victims to respond to this activist as follows:

If he calls or e-mails you or your organization, thank him for bringing the ban to your attention and say that you will decide how to proceed after consulting with your rabbi or other advisor. And because of rumors that there is harassment involved in this matter, you regret having to tell him that if he contacts you or anyone else in your organization again, you will have to report him to the police.

We have a copy of an e-mail forwarded to us by people involved, which includes a pseudonym and phone number, and we have been told of intimidating phone calls. Note that at this time we are withholding this activist's identity. If he continues harassing people, we will have to be less discrete.

Signed,

Ezzie Goldish of SerandEz and other bloggers

(please sign your own name and post this to your blog if you agree)

R' N. W. Dessler, zt"l Kevura and Shiva Info, Obituary

Via my parents:

R' N.W. Dessler (Plain Dealer via Dessler family)

The body will be at Newark Airport Cargo Area D at about 5:15pm today (Monday), but you should confirm with Newark Airport; the levaya in Cleveland was this morning at Yavne's building. The kevurah will be Tuesday at (can't remember if it's 6:15 or 6:30) at Shamgar.  They didn't say anything about shiva in Israel, but in Cleveland it's at Reuven and Naomi Dessler's house on Shannon Road.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer published an obituary of Rabbi Dessler.

Golden Radio Voice Signs With Cavs

This is a really cool story: A homeless man with an amazing voice for radio was, shortly after a video of him went viral, offered a job by the Cleveland Cavaliers - and a house. Check out his interview and original video (by the Columbus Dispatch) below. (via Deadspin) The humanity of people who tried to help him out is also really something (see the YouTube video comments).

The IFL on NYT

This is in honor of Da Kirsch, who plays for the Pioneers in the Israel Football League. My mom sent me this video from the New York Times about the league's growing popularity. Enjoy!

How Language Affects Thought

(Hat tip: Mom and the "most e-mailed" feature on the WSJ.com site)

There is an absolutely fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal about how language affects our lives - from cultures to how we act to how we think about things. Some choice excerpts that were really cool:

So if Pormpuraawans think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?

To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).

Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.

Meanwhile, the way events are re-told in various cultures affects how people remember them:

In studies conducted by Caitlin Fausey at Stanford, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two people popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later everyone got a surprise memory test: For each event, can you remember who did it? She discovered a striking cross-linguistic difference in eyewitness memory. Spanish and Japanese speakers did not remember the agents of accidental events as well as did English speakers. Mind you, they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their language would mention the agent) just fine. But for accidental events, when one wouldn't normally mention the agent in Spanish or Japanese, they didn't encode or remember the agent as well. 

 Meanwhile, I couldn't help but somewhat cringe at a note that I've often discussed with friends, co-workers, and the like about how the way they put things affects the way people think about those things/people. I recall one co-worker consistently making jokes about others - completely joking, but I noted to him that by doing so, he is slowly creating perceptions about people, much as media does when and how they discuss various subjects or people as well. People shrug off media bias by suggesting the word differences are innocuous, but what and how we say things does matter:

In another study, English speakers watched the video of Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" (a wonderful nonagentive coinage introduced into the English language by Justin Timberlake), accompanied by one of two written reports. The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase "ripped the costume" while the other said "the costume ripped." Even though everyone watched the same video and witnessed the ripping with their own eyes, language mattered. Not only did people who read "ripped the costume" blame Justin Timberlake more, they also levied a whopping 53% more in fines.

Read the whole piece, it's really just fascinating.

Side note: In Judaism, a basic concept is that what sets us apart from animals is language; in addition, particular note and honor is given to the use of lashon HaKodesh, which is Biblical Hebrew, over other languages, establishing that there is something special about language and that language in particular.

JES makes BusinessWeek!

In a Business Week article that discussed a number of online financial websites, one of the sites discussed is my personal favorite, Mint.com. I was called up a few weeks ago by David Bogoslaw, who wrote the Business Week piece, and we spoke for about 10 minutes about Mint and what's great about it (and what its drawbacks can be). I think he took the most important point well, in addition to a small shout-out for the Jewish Economics Survey!: 

Ezzie Goldish, a young New York accountant, began using Mint just before the birth of his first child in June 2008. A month later, he lost his job while his wife was still working part-time so she could care for their baby. With Mint's help over the next year, the couple organized their finances and managed to pay off 40 percent of credit-card debt despite a 40 percent cut in income.

"As much as we thought we knew what we were doing, until you see [how you're spending] in front of you, it's a lot harder," he says. Goldish, who had already been getting calls for financial advice because of his profession, posted an economics survey on his blog for people in his Orthodox Jewish community. He has received hundreds of comments expressing interest in Mint from around the world.

 Awareness is absolutely the key to managing finances, and this is possibly more true for those who think they have a good handle on their finances. There's simply a huge difference between keeping track normally and actually seeing it all in front of you in a big chart that shows where all your money has been going.

What's great about Mint is how it just shows it all in front of you so clearly. A few friends have said since starting on Mint that it just makes tracking everything so much easier (and as someone noted, it also stops fights over spending like "you spend $XX on A" vs. "no I don't, it's not even close!", for those interested in the shalom bayis aspect - hard to argue with the numbers right in front of you), and that makes it a lot easier to cut back.

I commented to him that the biggest 'drawback' was that Mint only helped you for the past and present, but wasn't great for the future - though to be fair, neither were most any other sites. It's hard to adjust your spending to save for the future well. What was especially cool at the Intuit meeting I went to was that they're actually unveiling a tool to do exactly this soon: It will not only let you set goals and suggest goals, but will factor in as many details as it can to help you save, including acknowledging that you will need to save different amounts at different times to meet your goals, and that helps make goals feel reachable. Saying "you need to put away $85,000" is a lot harder to do than "put away $40 this month toward your son's college fund". It will even factor in things like presumed inflation and various changes in your spending habits, including changes that happen over time. It's a brilliant tool that will really round it out well.

Now, if only they had a Blackberry app...! :)

How To Report The News

Hat tip: Benny. Charlie Booker is hilarious.

Tefillin in the Airport

One has to appreciate that this 17-year old who wore tefillin on a plane, resulting in its emergency landing in Philadelphia, and his sister were so polite and responsive and cooperative with the authorities. Hopefully this will be a big enough story that there won't be issues for others in the same situation. The comments on the mislabeled Times piece are interesting - certainly the news reports specifically note how polite he was; he was not "disruptive" as the Times put it. In the past friends have debated whether or not to put on tefillin while flying because of how it can be misunderstood (most people have never seen the little black boxes and straps, and it's easy to understand the concern), but usually we would avoid the issue. Sometimes it wasn't as avoidable, but on the rare occasion where someone asked, it was a simple and easy thing to explain. The issue we would have was with the rare guy who wouldn't respond to a flight attendant or passenger questioning the "strange" practice - use your common sense and explain briefly what's going on before they think you're a security threat. In today's story, it appears that he was never asked before the plane landed, and answered immediately when it did land. It's surprising that the flight attendant didn't even ask, and one would think that the lack of concern on the part of other passengers should have tipped her off that some may have seen this before, especially if she would have simply asked. Ah well.

Anti-Zionists Not Fooled

A clever piece in the Telegraph. What's hilarious/sad is how many people still didn't get it (see the comments after the piece). Excerpt:

Clever people the Jews… oops, I mean the Israelis. Look at the lengths to which they have gone to distract the world from their daily ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The latest trick is an Israeli field hospital, rushed into Haiti last Friday and erected in a soccer field.

The US, with all its resources, hasn’t yet managed to set up a field hospital in Haiti (undoubtedly the State Department is still drafting the crucial legal papers needed) but the Israelis, operating with their usual disregard to the niceties of law, slapped one up and have already delivered a baby there. The father, obviously paid off by the Mossad, rapturously declared that the baby would be named “Israel”.

According to Israeli government sources the hospital includes 10 tons of medical equipment, 40 doctors, 24 nurses, medics, paramedics, x-ray equipment and personnel, a pharmacy, an emergency room, two surgery rooms, an incubation ward, a children’s ward and a maternity ward.

Information from Israeli government sources should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, but footage of this tent-city/hospital has now been seen on SKY, Fox and CNN, ABC and CBS and the video seems to confirm (Mossad video fabricators are tricky) at least that the facility is large, clean, and full of modern equipment. CBS’s piece called the hospital the “Rolls Royce of medicine in Haiti”.

Hat tip: SIL

A True Kiddush Hashem

Hat tip: Moshe

Israel sets up a sophisticated hospital in Haiti post-earthquake for medical relief.