My Dear Rabbi Column for August: Can I make her forget my bad behavior?

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi,

I am generally a polite, well-mannered person. Yet I feel like my significant other keeps track of any lapse in my behavior when we are together, especially if something that I did embarrassed her in public. I was recently rude toward some noisy people when we were out in a restaurant. Now she reminds me about this occurrence whenever we go out. This makes me sad. What can I do to make her forget about this?

Memories in Mahwah

Dear Memories,

In the personal question that you pose you do raise one of the most complex issues of human culture. Does a person have the right to have acts that he or she commits to be forgotten? If you did something that you do not want remembered, can you get it erased from the record?

The answer to your direct query is there is nothing you can do to make your significant other forget your actions. Our biological memory banks are hardwired to preserve certain data in a special way. We have a prominent place in our psyches where we store information about people or events that we judge harmful to us or dangerous to our well being or survival.

That includes a wide spectrum of events and facts ranging from personal acts between people to more global events and intelligence data about dangerous threats, past and present.

The question you pose operates on an individual memory level. You want your significant other to suppress a particular act of yours from her memory-bank.

My Dear Rabbi Column for August: Must I give back my day school scholarship?

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi,

I was unemployed recently and during that period I negotiated a discount for my family’s synagogue membership and a scholarship for my children’s day school tuition. Now I have been hired to a new position with good pay, and I also made some prudent investments that have paid off nicely.

Now that I got a job and a windfall do I need to inform my synagogue or yeshiva of the change in my circumstances?

Lucky in Lodi

Dear Lucky,

Legally you may be obligated to tell your institutions if that was a term specified by them when they gave you reductions in fees. But the explicit stipulation of that contingency is rare. So you probably do not have a legal obligation to inform your organizations until next year.

Morally, though, you do have to step up and inform the school and shul that you can pay more of your fair share. Others will benefit from the funds that your good fortune provides. Our communities depend on you to act with generosity and compassion on every level and in every such circumstance.

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Shhh, Don't Tell Anyone. Deena Yellin Reviewed a New Book, "A Shark in the Mikvah"

I've taught classes at major state research universities where I described the practices of Jewish women's ritual immersions. As I recall my expositions always were met with amazed and confused stares and looks of "they-really-do-that?" disbelief on the faces of the students.

Deena Yellin wrote a nice review of an appropriately zany treatment in a new book of this idiosyncratic Jewish women's ritual of immersing in a mikvah bath each month prior to engaging in sexual relations. See her review and buy the book, There's a Shark in the Mikvah!: A light-hearted look at Jewish women's dunking experiences (Kindle).

But I really can't talk any more about this. Deena quoted me as I explained why we generally don't discuss this ritual.

...most women are hesitant to talk about any strange scenarios floating around at the mikveh because in their kallah classes before marriage they were taught to keep it all on the down low.

The tradition of silence about this subject is for good reason, said Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy of Teaneck, an author of several books about rabbinic Judaism and Talmud. “Sex is one of the most personal, sensitive and private domains of our lives, therefore we strongly agree by matter of social conventions to put some aspects of our lives off-limits to chit chat, gossip and public scrutiny.”

Nevertheless, the authors are gaining kudos for sharing the stories – some inspiring, some humorous and others downright embarrassing – to let veteran mikveh-goers know they are not alone and to encourage newbies to give it a shot.

Accordingly shh, please don't tell anyone about this review or book.

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American God-Talk for the Fourth of July

For Independence Day, noted author Ira Stoll collated for Time some of the God statements of our presidents. 

These proclamations are not actually theology. At best they are god talk, chatter in political settings about the divine, perhaps meant to inspire, perhaps to garner votes or support. In any case, it's nice to recall that our leaders spoke about god.

The Theology of the Fourth of July
Ira Stoll
Amid all the fireworks and barbecue smoke this July 4, consider pausing for a moment to reflect on the one our founding fathers called the Creator.

July 4 is a religious holiday. For this insight, thank John F. Kennedy.

On July 4, 1946, Kennedy — then 29 years old, the Democratic nominee for a Massachusetts Congressional seat, and still a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve — was the featured speaker at the City of Boston’s Independence Day celebration. He spoke at Faneuil Hall, the red-brick building where long ago the colonists had gathered to protest taxes imposed by King George III and his Parliament.

Kennedy began by talking not about taxes, or about the British, or about the consent of the governed, but about religion. “The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense. Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American though and action,” he said.

For anyone wondering what this had to do with Independence Day, Kennedy made the connection explicit. “Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’”

It was a theme that Kennedy would return to during the 1960 presidential campaign, when, in a speech at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, he described the Cold War as “a struggle for supremacy between two conflicting ideologies; freedom under God versus ruthless, Godless tyranny.” And again in his inaugural address, on January 20, 1961, in Washington, D.C., when he said, “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

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My July Dear Rabbi Column: Desperately Seeking Deals in Demarest

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi,

Often when I go shopping or order merchandise online I feel compelled to search and search to get the very best deal. After I buy something, if I find out later that I could have gotten the item cheaper, I feel so disappointed with myself. I’m afraid I may have a bargain-hunting disorder. What can I do about this?

Desperately Seeking Deals in Demarest

Dear Deals,

There is nothing wrong with looking for a good deal or trying to save money when you shop. Effective negotiation in transactions is valued as a desirable skill. Frugality is considered by many to be a virtue. Some religions raised the frugality trait to an overt ethical ideal. Quakers and Puritans in America for instance have encouraged a lifestyle of modest spending in combination with helping others through charity.

On the other hand, sadly we Jews are sometimes stereotyped unfairly and negatively for our frugality.

Our consumer culture in America pushes us through its commercial interests towards conspicuous consumption and lavish spending as the goals of a good life. That’s obviously contradictory to any aims at prudent thrift.

I don’t know if you are in the end lavish or frugal. Your problem appears to be that you feel driven to a near compulsion to get the absolute best deal on whatever you buy, be it a big ticket item or a small purchase.

So let me assure you outright: It is okay to pay retail. I give you permission to do that. You do not have to always get the best price or deal on everything that you buy. That may not be a profound insight. But sometimes it helps if a neutral third party just tells you that.

And if you do manage to go retail, and yet your “disorder” persists and you feel that paying retail is a personal shortcoming, something like a sin, then I have an additional suggestion to help you deal with what you perceive to be a failure in your behavior.

On Yom Kippur in the alphabetical confession of our sins that we recite in the synagogue, the “Ashamnu,” you can quietly add one more lapse to your catalog: “Retail-nu.”

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How do Islamic Jihadists try to merge religion and terror?

After US forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 I came back to look again at the larger issues of how Islamic Jihadists merge religion and terror. Again in 2014 we confront this issue in the aftermath of terrible violence. I probed the topic back in 2006. Here are some of my questions and answers on the subject.

Why have religious conviction, hatred of secular society, and the demonstration of power through acts of violence frequently coalesced in Islamic activist movements?

Mark Jeurgensmeyer describes in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, how one of the men convicted of the bombing of the World Trade Center Mahmud Abouhalima expressed his understanding of some terrorist acts that have little impact on political reality:

"But it's as I said," Abouhalima responded, "at least the government got the message." Moreover, he told me, the only thing that humans can do in response to great injustice is to send a message. Stressing the point that all human efforts are futile and that those who bomb buildings should not expect any immediate, tangible change in the government's policies as a result, Abouhalima said that real change - effective change - "is not in our hands, only in God's hands."

"THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM" in the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States provides additional insight and background.