Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfel
December 8-9, 2023 • 26 Kislev 5784 • VaYeishev (Gen 37-40).
The purpose of this blog is to foster colorful conversation at the Friday night dinner table ... please forward/print/share.
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Do you remember last week when I quoted the controverisal Mr. Hitchens — because "a wise person learns from everyone" (Talmud).
On that theme, here's an opening question for your table:
What can we learn from the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn?
Hat-tip to Rep. Elise Sefanik holding three Ivy League college presidents' feet to the fire.
(Yes, I know that MIT isn't an Ivy, but it might as well be.)
But here's the follow-up questions I wish she had asked:
If a group of students dressed up like the KKK and marched through campus chanting for black women to be lynched, would that be allowed, prohibited, or would it depend on context?
What if they chanted for women to be raped, would that be allowed, prohibited, or would it depend on context?
What if they called for the destruction of Asians, or Arabs or any other group in the world besides Jews?
(It's also too bad they didn't call in many other college presidents who should be held accountable for blatant antisemitism on campus from Yale to UNC and everywhere i.
Maybe we should learn from Harvard President Claudine Gay and take a peek at some context.
In my first job after college I was surrounded by all kinds of Christians — Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists and even a few Witnesses. I remember being struck by the seriousness and sincerity of these folks' faith - they studied their religious texts, believed deeply, and carried their faith openly wherever they went. Their religiosity was a far cry from the Judaism I had grown up with, which was joyful ritual, but very much limited to those rituals. I certainly can't recall my parents or any adults every discussing how the Torah might inform business ethics etc., let alone attending regular Torah study.
It seems to me that the great mistake of Hamas's non-Moslems supporters is the very common human fallacy known as projecting: "I assume that you must be more-or-less similar to me. All humans are basically good, and if we give you freedom and dignity, you'll stop fighting."
A liberal who projects liberal values onto others despite evidence to the contrary simply cannot believe that there are actually people in this world who are that evil; Hamas must be a legitimate political struggle, not a religious-ideological one. It cannot be that these Hamas guys - mimicing their patron, Iran - really mean it when they say that they intend to make the Land of Israel Judenrein and from there lead a worldwide Islamic movement to convert or kill every non-Moslem human being on the planet.
Their statements and actions are 100 percent consistent with the proposition that they actually believe this, and any peaceful offers they make are actually a strategem of deception or taqiya toward their stated goal.
For the Harvard president, the possibilty that Hamas really wants to destroy Harvard and its faculty and students (unless they convert to Islam of course) is so crazy an idea and so remote a possibility that it's easy to dismiss and just regard this as hyperbole in a poitical struggle.
Easy to say when the rockets can't reach you... yet...
(In case you didn't hear, they appear to be receiving weapons from their buddies in North Korea. Can you imagine what could be unleashed on the world were the Palestinians to have their own sovereign state?)
There were an estimated 30,000 Hamas fighters at the start of this war. That's a about 1.5 percent of the Gaza population. If that rate of conversion to terrorism were applied to worldwide Islam, we'd be looking at nearly 30 million committed terrorists worldwide. That's a lot of people who could do a lot of damage. Even 1/10 of that is frightening. Was Hitchens right, that "the worst is yet to come?"
So then, now what? Wither Harvard?
Final question for your table: Are these elite college presidents morally vacant? Antisemitic? Brain-washed? All of the above?
On that theme, here's an opening question for your table:
What can we learn from the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn?
Hat-tip to Rep. Elise Sefanik holding three Ivy League college presidents' feet to the fire.
(Yes, I know that MIT isn't an Ivy, but it might as well be.)
But here's the follow-up questions I wish she had asked:
If a group of students dressed up like the KKK and marched through campus chanting for black women to be lynched, would that be allowed, prohibited, or would it depend on context?
What if they chanted for women to be raped, would that be allowed, prohibited, or would it depend on context?
What if they called for the destruction of Asians, or Arabs or any other group in the world besides Jews?
(It's also too bad they didn't call in many other college presidents who should be held accountable for blatant antisemitism on campus from Yale to UNC and everywhere i.
Maybe we should learn from Harvard President Claudine Gay and take a peek at some context.
In my first job after college I was surrounded by all kinds of Christians — Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Presbyterians, Seventh Day Adventists and even a few Witnesses. I remember being struck by the seriousness and sincerity of these folks' faith - they studied their religious texts, believed deeply, and carried their faith openly wherever they went. Their religiosity was a far cry from the Judaism I had grown up with, which was joyful ritual, but very much limited to those rituals. I certainly can't recall my parents or any adults every discussing how the Torah might inform business ethics etc., let alone attending regular Torah study.
It seems to me that the great mistake of Hamas's non-Moslems supporters is the very common human fallacy known as projecting: "I assume that you must be more-or-less similar to me. All humans are basically good, and if we give you freedom and dignity, you'll stop fighting."
A liberal who projects liberal values onto others despite evidence to the contrary simply cannot believe that there are actually people in this world who are that evil; Hamas must be a legitimate political struggle, not a religious-ideological one. It cannot be that these Hamas guys - mimicing their patron, Iran - really mean it when they say that they intend to make the Land of Israel Judenrein and from there lead a worldwide Islamic movement to convert or kill every non-Moslem human being on the planet.
Their statements and actions are 100 percent consistent with the proposition that they actually believe this, and any peaceful offers they make are actually a strategem of deception or taqiya toward their stated goal.
For the Harvard president, the possibilty that Hamas really wants to destroy Harvard and its faculty and students (unless they convert to Islam of course) is so crazy an idea and so remote a possibility that it's easy to dismiss and just regard this as hyperbole in a poitical struggle.
Easy to say when the rockets can't reach you... yet...
(In case you didn't hear, they appear to be receiving weapons from their buddies in North Korea. Can you imagine what could be unleashed on the world were the Palestinians to have their own sovereign state?)
There were an estimated 30,000 Hamas fighters at the start of this war. That's a about 1.5 percent of the Gaza population. If that rate of conversion to terrorism were applied to worldwide Islam, we'd be looking at nearly 30 million committed terrorists worldwide. That's a lot of people who could do a lot of damage. Even 1/10 of that is frightening. Was Hitchens right, that "the worst is yet to come?"
So then, now what? Wither Harvard?
Final question for your table: Are these elite college presidents morally vacant? Antisemitic? Brain-washed? All of the above?
Happy Chanukah and
Shabbat Shalom,
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