Kosher Food Fight in the New Jewish Food Movement

Not every progressive movement is truly grass roots. New Voices reports on the, "Culture Clash in the New Jewish Food Movement." The machlokes here seems to me to be entirely leshem shamayim - the disputants all appear to be on the same correct side of the issue... A special hat tip to Jack for bringing this to our attention.

When Ethan Genauer discovered that he couldn’t afford to attend the food activism conference hosted by the Jewish environmental group Hazon last December, he decided to make a fuss. Activist movements, Genauer reasoned, should be accessible. This one, with its expensive conference at a resort in Monterey, CA, was not. So, he published an open letter calling the New Jewish Food Movement elitist, arguing that it caters to a wealthy subset of the Jewish community while failing to confront broader social justice issues. “During a holiday season of massive economic implosion when millions of Americans are struggling just to put food on their tables,” he wrote, “what message does the comparative luxury of the Hazon Food Conference send?”

The New Jewish Food Movement has emerged as a Jewish wing of a broader movement emphasizing locally grown produce, sustainable agricultural practices, and a return to the pleasures of preparing one’s own food...more...

Jonathan Mark in the Jewish Week Pens a Disrespectful Jewish Blog Post

It's one thing when you disagree with an issue, express that and advance an argument in favor of your POV.

It an entirely other thing when you purely and persistently mock young idealistic and sincere religious leaders.

To read pure disrespect without a point to be found in it, see the blog posted at the Jewish Week under the rubric "Route 17: Associate Editor Jonathan Mark on Just About Everything" with the mocking title, "A Rabbi Named Sue."

For another strong view on this issue see the essay by Leora Tanenbaum, (author of "Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality") -- 'A Rabbi Is Not a "Rabbi" in the Jewish Orthodox Twilight Zone', Huff Post. She concludes with this flourish:

Hurwitz is already a role model and many people will come to regard her, if they don't already, as a Judaic authority. If now is not the right time to call female rabbis "rabbis," then when?

Well Leora how about, Never!

Orthodoxy defines itself as a boys' club. It's not some peripheral value. We've argued for naught over women's issues in Orthodoxy. Forget about it.

Want to be a woman rabbi? Join up with the Reform, Reconstructionist or Conservative movements where you will be welcomed. End of story.

A Naive Nicholas Kristoff Announces the Reformation of Islam

Funny, the Taliban in Pakistan don't look like moderate Muslims.

Based on a single conference held at Notre Dame, a Catholic Christian university in Indiana, Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff has concluded that Islam has moved towards the mode of reformation that is "analogous" to the reformation of Christianity and the modernization of its thought and theology more than a century ago.

To this we say, Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps.

And read your own paper, we say to Kristoff, as the Taliban march ever closer to the capital of Pakistan ("Alarm Grows Over Pakistan’s Failure to Halt Militant Gains"), for there is immense danger in misrepresenting what is the current state of Islam. In the Times, opinion need not coincide with fact:

"Islam, Virgins and Grapes"  If the Islamic world is going to enjoy a revival, if fundamentalists are to be tamed, if women are to be treated equally, then moderate interpretations of the Koran will have to gain ascendancy....

Times' Frank Rich Eulogizes Gay Bashing in America

In our opinion it's still a little premature to declare that same-sex marriage is a nationwide done deal. But Frank Rich thinks so - quite eloquently in his Times op-ed today. It's his judgment that a recent anti same-sex marriage TV ad marks the tipping point in the shift of public sentiment and legal momentum on the issue.

The u-turns by right wing religious leaders play a key role in his assessment:

More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

While Rich may be too optimistic, I cannot recall any other issue on which prominent conservatives have flip flopped quite so dramatically.

LA Times: Reform Seminary to Close Campuses in a Serious Retrenchment (or is this a fund-raising ploy?)

President Rabbi David Ellenson of the Hebrew Union College is one of our favorite people. He is a straight shooter and a practical man. That's why we take this news seriously. He's not a person who'd engage in doomsday fundraising. Anyway, it is clear that once you rumor the closing a campus, you can't expect it to flourish.

The LA Times has this catastrophic story about potential closure of the HUC campus there. It's a major setback for Jewish studies on the coast ("The Los Angeles campus, which opened in 1954, is adjacent to USC and, in a cooperative arrangement, offers credit classes for USC students in Judaic studies. Its library holds more than 125,000 volumes of Judaica as well as large holdings of microfilm and recordings.")

This is also a signal to the other Jewish seminaries to follow suit and begin closing facilities.

Jewish seminary considers closing two U.S. campuses
Facing a $3-million deficit this year, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion may keep one of three locations in Los Angeles, New York and Cincinnati.
By Larry Gordon

The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a seminary and graduate school for Judaism's Reform movement, is facing such deep financial troubles that it is considering closing two of its three U.S. campuses, which include a location near downtown Los Angeles.

In a letter sent this week to members of the college community, its president, Rabbi David Ellenson, said pension funding problems, flat donations and declines in its endowment had placed the institution "in the most challenging financial position it has faced in its history -- even more so than during the Depression."

As a result, Ellenson wrote, Hebrew Union's board of governors will meet next month to discuss such scenarios as whether to keep just one of its three U.S. campuses in Los Angeles, New York and Cincinnati, where the college was founded. Other alternatives include merging some academic programs but keeping more than one of its U.S. campuses open, he wrote in the letter, which was released by his office. A decision is expected in June. ..more...

False Priests Pretend to Protect Notre Dame from Contamination by Barack Obama

Last week we read about the Obama Notre Dame controversy in "Degrees of Acceptance at Notre Dame," an op-ed by RICHARD V. ALLEN in the Times:

THERE is turmoil in South Bend, Ind. — and around the country. The Rev. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, has invited President Obama to deliver the commencement address at the university on May 17 and to receive an honorary degree.

As a result, many alumni are up in arms denouncing the decision. Priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals have criticized the university and its president. South Bend’s own bishop, John D’Arcy, has announced that he will not attend. At the same time, other members of the Notre Dame community have responded, with similar force, that Mr. Obama should be allowed to speak...

This debate has provoked us to think on the issue of what we are calling, protecting a university from contamination by an unclean speaker.

Apparently functionaries have appointed themselves the guardians of the precincts of religious universities. They make a fuss now and then about how one particular party or another needs to be kept away from the sacred space of the holy school.

We saw this on a small scale not long ago in a debate about whether a certain bible scholar should have been allowed to speak at the Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva University. But that was small potatoes.

We are seeing this played out on a larger scale now with the outcry over whether President Barack Obama ought to be given an honorary degree and be permitted to speak at the graduation this spring at the Catholic Notre Dame University.

Sure it's easy enough to reduce all this hollering to brute politics and dismiss it out-of-hand. Some ardent religious conservative wants to ascend a bully pulpit and this type of occasion gives him just the ladder he needs to climb up and demand attention.

We've never been a big fan of pure reductionism as a means of religious analysis. We are eager to believe that there is more going on than just that superficial process of finding a place to yell loud about your pet social or political peeves.

Accordingly, we think its important to examine the dynamics of these "guarding" activists and try to abstract some deeper cultural meaning or understanding from the hue and cry that they are raising.

We note well that keeping a holy precinct free from contamination of uncleanness is a classical role that priests play in the major religious traditions of the world. Perhaps the specific examples from Yeshiva and Notre Dame permit us to explore how this process plays out in our modern society.

The contemporary religious university does present us with an essential quandary. It's an institution that has to function as an open society of inquiry because it is a university. Yet the religious university is also a symbolic presence of the religion that it stands for – a quasi-sacred space – an eruption of the holy into the profane world around it.

Of course there are all kinds of gradations of the holy precincts in all religions. Universities can never be classified on the level of holiness as pure places of worship (though they surely will have within the campus walls some actual places of prayer).

Still, we recall with a smile the classic Peanuts cartoon wherein one of the cartoon's characters declares to another, an anxious student who is fretting aloud in a religious way before an exam, that "Hoping and praying should never be confused with studying."

Students of classical Judaism will recognize the concentric circles of spatial holiness that the ancient sources documented, namely, in increasing levels of sanctity, all other countries on earth, the Land of Israel, the city of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, the Temple structure itself, and within that, the Holy of Holies.

In modern times we find more complex and often overlapping notions of sacred space. But our premise says that people have decided Notre Dame and Yeshiva are sacred spaces, regardless of what kind of real inquiry or behavior goes on inside the brick and mortar structures of those American religious campuses.

The premise thus established, the struggle can commence over who ought to be allowed to enter and be honored in such precincts.

If that is the case, we think this struggle sorely lacks subtlety. Opponents of the potentially defiling commencement speech by Obama at Notre Dame say nothing about whether he can enter and speak at a classroom at the Law School on the campus. Apparently that would be just fine. They say nothing about whether the library ought to purchase and lend out Barack's books. If the guy is not kosher, should we even let him into the house? Well you get my point.

This lack of refinement over the presence of the defiling agent in the spaces of holiness makes us abandon analyzing the whole debate as if it was a bona fide religious struggle to maintain purity in some pristine priestly precincts.

We've replayed now the tape of what we think is going on here in the Obama versus Notre Dame affair. And yes, as the referee at the football game would say, upon closer examination, we've got to say that it's not a legitimate touchdown, that a foul has been committed.

Our replay indicates that purely political actors have wrapped themselves up in the garb of priests to act as if they were holy men guarding the holy sanctuary. These spokesmen pretend to be holy and thereby attempt to prohibit their opponents from defiling speech.

In fact, they are in no way holy, they guard nothing, they just want to make pure political points, to stand on the back of religion to help broadcast their messages and aggrandize their own images.

Our bottom line conclusion then, by their cheapening actions, these would-be priests in fact debase their own religious traditions.

(Published in the Jewish Standard, April 17, 2009.)

The Talmudic Sutra and Dead Sea Scrolls Secrets for Gevaldig Sex

I like Shmuley Boteach and I always wish him well and hope his books are big smashing successes. Shmuley is a friend of mine (on facebook). I think I saw him once in person in the lobby at the JCC on the Palisades.

Shmuley has a new book out about how to have better sex. One thing you gotta admit about the rabbi is that he has chutzpah -- and that really inspires us. I just don't know where he got his sex therapy training.

I took out my rabbinic school transcript -- to double check. Nope. Not a single course about sex on my transcript. Now, I'm not 100% sure - they may have tried to teach me about eroticism in the Friday homiletics courses. I however was tight asleep in every one of those classes so I wouldn't know what they taught.

There was one seminar on the menstrual laws given to us rabbinic trainees -- by a rabbi who was also a biology professor. But if I recall, that was more about the different colors of menstrual emissions, not something that ever could be mistaken for helping a couple achieve marital bliss in the bedroom.

I'm sure then that Shmuley picked up a lot of stuff about better sex either before or after rabbinical school.

Stimulated by Rabbi Shmuley, we actually have been doing some research into ancient texts and some of our own thinking about the subject. There are plenty of sex stories in the Talmud. Again, none of that was ever taught to us in class. At the yeshiva I went to, all of the sex stuff was in the aggadic textual sections that we skipped over -- so we could get to the good parts of the Talmud -- the laws. (Curiously, that is not at all parallel to the way that we read our Ian Fleming books as a teenager.)

So far, we have read only the free pages on Amazon of Shmuley's newly published book, "The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life."

Mostly, Shmuley's work now does not seem to be a very Jewish guide. The editors probably had him rewrite the eight sacred "secrets" for a more "general" audience.

We think that Shmuley originally must have written eight other more Jewish "secrets" for re-ignition and restoration of erotic life, based on the actual content of his intensive rabbinic training and on Judaism.

Amazingly, we've been able to uncover the original more Jewish title of his book, and we've been able to recover -- from a gardener who found it hidden in a cave in the cliffs of the Palisades -- a fragmentary manuscript of the table of contents of what could be the actual first draft of the more Jewish book by Shmuley. This mysterious text comes with an introductory instruction and an ensuing text. It reads as follows:

"The Talmudic Sutra and Dead Sea Scrolls Secrets for Gevaldig Sex." ((Instruction: "After reading each chapter title, the reader must wink and say, 'If you know what we mean...'"))

1. The First Secret: The King and Vashti - Have a Purim Party of your own...
2. The Second Secret: Play Hide the Afikomen, even when it's not Passover...
3. The Third Secret: Stay up All Night to Mount Sinai and Reveal Your Two Tablets of the Law...
4. The Fourth Secret: Blow this Shofar...
5. The Fifth Secret: Put Your Lulav into that Esrog and Shake it...
6. The Sixth Secret: Light my Hannukah Candle and Come Get Your Present...
7. The Seventh Secret: Kiss My Mezzuza and I'll Make Kiddush for You...
8. The Eighth Secret: Let Me Kiss Your Tzitzis...

Okay, enough narishkeit for today.

Times: Merkin (not Ezra) sells stock in Maddow (not Madoff)

Who would imagine that it would be pleasant and relaxing to come across an article containing the name Merkin in the New York Times?

Daphne Merkin, sister of the Ezra Merkin, used to be the controversial one of the Merkin kids, some would say the black sheep of the family, because she wrote embarrassing articles about her personal obsessions.

Well, after the turbulent revelations of the past two months regarding her little brother Ezra's involvement in the biggest financial scandal of all time -- as a primary funnel of funds for the the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme -- it turns out that Daphne now is in fact the white sheep of the Merkin family.

Her benign imaginary references to Hitler, vaginas and spanking, now seem much less toxic to the family, and her community, than her sibling's more insidious imaginary references to his split-strike conversion investment strategy, calls, puts and collars.

But seriously folks, we do like MSNBC's news professional Rachel Maddow, the subject of Daphne's essay in the Style section of this week's Times.

We remember watching her the evening that she filled in for the first time as TV anchor for Keith Olbermann, another of our favorites. Boy, was she ever visibly nervous that night.

Together with Keith, these two liberal news stars have contributed significantly to my viewing pleasure and erudition, and more significantly, may have helped the election efforts of Barack Obama and the return to liberal democratic leadership in our country.

Back to the article. Now that Daphne may actually have to worry about her income, her showing an interest in "lesbian chic" is not a bad idea. Look at how far lesbian chic got Howard Stern! He built his whole multi-million dollar career on silly parodies like the, "Lesbian Dating Game."

Here's Daphne's article kick-off:

Butch Fatale. LESBIAN GLAMOUR STEPS OUT OF THE CLOSET. DAPHNE MERKIN APPLAUDS.

In the ongoing dance of the sexes, women who remain partnerless are referred to as ‘‘wallflowers’’ while unpartnered men are simply that — not yet taken. The former become invisible; the latter become ever more conspicuously valuable. In the sense that lesbianism might be said to mirror the condition of straight women raised to an exponential power of God knows what, their minor status in gay culture reflects the secondary status of straight women in the culture at large. For in truth, until fairly recently, lesbians have been the wallflowers at the homosexual dance, waiting to get their share of recognition. Outside the elaborate and empowering confines of ‘‘queer theory,’’ some much-publicized celebrity comings-out (Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell) and the birth of the acronym LUG (lesbian until graduation), they have been largely overlooked, unsung Girls in the Band. ‘‘I don’t think that much about lesbianism,’’ says a young gay male friend of mine, unwittingly stating the problem in a nutshell. ‘‘No one thinks that much about lesbianism. Who cares?’’ ...yada, yada...

Times' Editors Demand Faith Without Tribes

The Times' editors today demand that, "Discrimination by faith-based grantees should be barred."

Boy are they mixed up. Religions are nearly always tribal and preferential. They are clubs with members.

How come the editors of the Times don't get that?

Can you really give money to a religious group and tell them not to "discriminate"?

We have been there and we did that exercise back in the 60's. Yeshiva University and many other parochial schools had to decide back then if it could take the "Federal Money" that demanded non-discrimination.

The resulting Talmudic/Byzantine/convoluted/labyrinthine organizational framework that came out of that era has been a moral disaster.

It made this happen. YU leaders said to their donors we are a religious school for Jews. Give us your money. And to Washington they said we don't discriminate. Give us your money.

What does the Times want from religious organizations? Does the Times want to perpetuate more of the two-faced corruption of ethics and morals of the past?

Yes we know. The question goes back really to Obama who is keeping the Faith Based Initiatives alive and back to Bush who first set up shop in that swamp.

The title of the editorial says it all: "Faith-Based Fudging."

Our view is that the boundary between democracy and religion should never have been fudged in the first place.

There is no way for a religion to maintain its mission and integrity and for it to fulfill Obama's directive, to wit,

Speaking last July in Ohio, Mr. Obama set forth his “basic principles” for assuring constitutional balance. “First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use the grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of religion,” he said. “Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

Enforcement of these goals is impossible by definition. We all know that. The current wink and nod approach to making believe that it is not impossible is now just given a new name. It is called a "process of case-by-case review."

Constitutional lawyers may say this makes the funding program kosher.

The editorial concludes with a warning, "The case-by-case review seems destined to confuse as much as enlighten. And it is hardly the clear commitment to proper employment practices Mr. Obama voiced as a candidate, and the Constitution requires."

This warning is not enough.

The Times ought to have said clearly that the program is flawed at its essence and destructive to our nation's social fabric.

To keep these initiatives going means that we surely are instructing our purported moral leaders in their respective faith communities to misrepresent the essence of their being so they can qualify for Federal Funding. Or should we say, Federal Fudging?

Velveteen Rabbi on the Joys of Davening in Jerusalem

Just a lovely diary entry = blog post from the Velveteen Rabbi capturing the essence of the Jewish spirit that abides in only one city in the world.

...Then the davenen reconvened. The Torah was brought into the women's section, where we kissed it and touched it reverently (though rather sedately); then it went into the men's section, where they hoisted it and danced with it with abandon. The whole Torah portion was read aloud (I can't remember the last time I attended a service where that was the custom), and meanwhile little kids ran around like crazy, babies cried, people talked -- it was a real balagan, a kind of comfortable chaos that didn't in any way detract from the intentionality or heart of the service. That's a thing I love about traditional davenen: the joyful lack of decorum....

So: that was my first Shabbat morning in Jerusalem. Four hours of really fantastic davenen (with a nice schmoozing break midway through) at the Leader Minyan. I'm trying to think of what I can compare it to. There are things about it that remind me of Renewal: the participation, the singing, the ruach (energy/spirit.) There are things about it that remind of the Brookline Havurah Minyan where I used to go for Yom Kippur with my sister: that it's lay-led, that participation is so universal, that everyone there clearly takes davenen seriously and knows the service inside and out.

The liturgy was quite traditional, similar to a million other services in a million other shuls (at least five thousand of which are here in Jerusalem. Seriously -- I learned yesterday that there are 5,000 shuls here, plus an uncounted number of independent minyanim. Of those five thousand shuls, apparently 8 are Conservative and 5 are Reform.) But this particular kind of deep-rooted traditional davenen, done with joy and with a certain kind of egalitarian spirit, wasn't quite like anything else I've ever experienced.

Thanks, Leader Minyan, for a really sweet first Jerusalem Shabbat morning.

Meanwhile - abrupt interruption to a journey of the spirit - we were trapped again for Shabbat in the galut in a synagogue where the main greeting amongst the members is, "What are you doing here?" and the main concern in shul is making sure nobody takes your seat and one topic of the Noon conversation at lunch was whether it could be remotely true that our Rabbi so-and-so earns $400,000 a year. [We remarked: Who cares?]

Kinda shows you a contrast. Not that, G-d F-rbid, there is anything wrong with Judaism in the diaspora.

TLS: Reich Reviews Greenspan's Memoir

"The Greenspan years - The autobiography of America's central banker - logical positivism and political extortion" - an incisive review in the Times Literary Supplement by Robert B. Reich (Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, a former US Secretary of Labor, and the author of Supercapitalism, 2008) of an excellent book by Alan Greenspan, THE AGE OF TURBULENCE, Adventures in a new world. Reich concludes on a negative note:

Although the second half of his memoir dips into several important areas of public policy, Greenspan barely mentions the crisis in America’s health care system or the desperate state of the nation’s infrastructure, and he gives cursory attention to education. He urges that educators put greater reliance on “market forces” such as vouchers (“I suspect Rose and Milton Friedman . . . were right on track”), and briefly acknowledges that “the cost of education egalitarianism is doubtless high and may be difficult to justify in terms of economy efficiency and short-term productivity”. Greenspan writes that he is concerned about widening inequality, lamenting that the first decade of the twenty-first century has been “marred by a disturbing shift in the concentration of income” and that “two-tier economies are common in developing countries, but not since the 1920s have Americans experienced such inequality of income”. But given his support for Bush’s lopsided tax cuts for the wealthy and his deep aversion to Clinton’s original agenda for poorer Americans, his words seem strangely disembodied, if not hypocritical. Alan Greenspan the empiricist contributed a great deal to America, instigating the longest economic expansion in recent history and rewriting the rules of monetary policy. But Alan Greenspan the Ayn Rand libertarian has caused the nation grave injury.

Egalitarianism v. Orthodox Judaism

Two years ago AJHistory by Menachem Butler called our attention to a book: The Orthodox Forum #13: Formulating Responses in an Egalitarian Age, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, edited by Marc D. Stern.

Addressing the topic in an article in the book, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a prominent Orthodox theologian, provides some preliminary and quite cautionary guidance.

Both the heading proper and some of the accompanying material convey the impression that we are confronted by a phenomenon, ideology and movement both, which somehow casts a pall over our world and its values; which is inimical to the traditional order and constitutes a potential threat to its stability and viability; which has a subversive and a corrosive impact upon the ideational content and institutional fabric of Orthodox Jewish life...

[Our] Response... may of course vary markedly, and may include condescendingly benign stonewalling, vehemently combative opposition, or empathetic openness on the road to reorientation and reappraisal.

I am not sure how to respond here. You need of course to see the entire discussion to judge nuances of the speakers and their ideas.

At this entry point I do see two possible avenues of discourse.

Assumption 1. RAL is sincere in his characterization of the challenge of egalitarianism to Orthodoxy. This really is how he sees the threat of "egalitarianism."

• It is a catastrophic threat that, "Casts a pall over our world and its values."
• It is "inimical to the traditional order" which I assume is a coded way to say that it negates the Halakhah. He must be speaking of "it" -- an orderly system of law or thought or society -- since he continues ruminating that egalitarianism poses a, "Potential threat to its stability and viability." I must admit that I shake my head wondering if anyone else really read these words before committing them to print.
• Either repeating the previous or introducing new angles: Egalitarianism has a "subversive and a corrosive impact upon the ideational content and institutional fabric of Orthodox Jewish life."

The equation then is E = TI². Egalitarianism will equal the end of three constants via the stated mechanisms as we summarize:

1. Traditional order <-> stability + viability
2. Ideational content of OJL <-> subversive + corrosive impact
3. Institutional fabric of OJL <-> subversive + corrosive impact

Okay enough of this. Let's move on to...

Assumption 2. RAL is being sarcastic. This is how he cleverly overstates what his peers (e.g. Rabbi Hershel Schachter) say are the threats of egalitarianism to the essences of Orthodox Judaism.

Let's recall that RAL has a pronounced and distinctive monotonic delivery (which I became acutely attuned to during my two years as his student). It would be "well-nigh impossible" to detect his inflection from the tone of his speech, let alone from his printed words.

Of course, I could argue that the whole debate is fraudulent. Nobody credible or even delusional has ever proposed that Judaism should equal Egalitarianism. By the way nobody credible or even delusional has ever proposed that Religion should equal Democracy. More on this later this month.

Why then are these fine folk all getting their knickers in a twist over this?

I'm just a down-home-country-blogger who has always understood that when you use the E-word you mean that you believe qualified and sincere women ought to be allowed to study Talmud in the Yeshiva next to men students, to sit in the synagogue with the menfolk, to lead the prayers and be honored to be called to the Torah during the services. [See my previous post regarding my discussion of the last issue with Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rav Lichtenstein's father-in-law.]

I cannot imagine, no matter how many calories I expend trying, how any of that would result in a catastrophe for Orthodox Judaism.

[reprint from 12/18/05]

NY Times says the Kibbutz is baaaack!

Our favorite Jewish newspaper reports that the kibbutz has returned to fashion in yet another gilgul (reincarnation) as a post-socialist Israeli suburb:

Kibbutz Yasur Journal
The Kibbutz Sheds Socialism and Gains Popularity
By ISABEL KERSHNER

KIBBUTZ YASUR, Israel — For much of Israel’s existence, the kibbutz embodied its highest ideals: collective labor, love of the land and a no-frills egalitarianism.

But starting in the 1980s, when socialism was on a global downward spiral and the country was mired in hyperinflation, Israel’s 250 or so kibbutzim seemed doomed. Their debt mounted and their group dining halls grew empty as the young moved away.

Now, in a surprising third act, the kibbutzim are again thriving. Only in 2007 they are less about pure socialism than a kind of suburbanized version of it.

On most kibbutzim, food and laundry services are now privatized; on many, houses may be transferred to individual members, and newcomers can buy in. While the major assets of the kibbutzim are still collectively owned, the communities are now largely run by professional managers rather than by popular vote. And, most important, not everyone is paid the same.

Once again, people are lining up to get in.

“What we love here is the simplicity,” said Boaz Varol, 38, who rides his bike along wooded pathways to work at the swimming pool, once for communal use, that he rents and runs as a private business at Kibbutz Yasur, in the rolling hills of the Western Galilee, northeast of Haifa. “Everyone does what they want, we have our independence, but without the kind of competition you find outside.”

Two years ago he bought a two-bedroom home here for his young family for $71,000. More than 60 other young adults have joined in the past four years, increasing the number of residents by half and bringing new life to an aging population.

The Varols are part of a growing trend. In April, Kibbutz Negba, in the south, accepted 80 new members in one day. Many kibbutzim have waiting lists — mostly former residents who want to return, but also urbanites looking to escape the rat race.

The kibbutzim were once austere communes of pioneers who drained the swamps, shared clothes (and sometimes spouses) and lived according to the Marxist axiom, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Today, most are undergoing a process of privatization, though kibbutz officials prefer a more euphemistic term: renewal.

The new kibbutz seeks a subtler balance between collective responsibility and individual freedom, with an emphasis on community and values. Its drawing points include a safe environment, usually in the heart of nature, away from the cities scarred by suicide bombings; excellent day care and education; and an improved quality of life at out-of-town prices.

This is quite a change from recent years. By 2000, more than half of Israel’s 257 collective farms were bankrupt.

The economic crisis exposed a festering ideological one. The second generation of kibbutz offspring — who slept in communal children’s houses with assigned caregivers — began to rebel. With the lifetime security that the kibbutz was supposed to offer in jeopardy, young people began to leave.

“By the end of the 1990s,” said Gavri Bargil, executive director of the Kibbutz Movement, an umbrella organization, “you could find kibbutzim with no young generation at all.”

Worse, after decades of hard work, the kibbutz founders, now in their 80s and 90s, were left with not even an apartment or a pension to call their own.

Part of the recovery involved selling the Israeli dairy giant Tnuva, a cooperative half-owned by the kibbutzim. The sale provided them $500 million to establish pension funds.

In the past, kibbutz members were rewarded equally, whether they milked cows or managed a large industry. On the new kibbutz, members earn salaries or receive end-of-month allowances reflecting the income they bring in.

“It is not total equality, but basic equality,” Mr. Bargil said. “You earn more, you pay more internal kibbutz taxes, and you get a bit more at the end of the month.”

The taxation provides a safety net for the financially weak. “From that point of view, we’ve maintained something of the old values,” said Yaakov Lazar, secretary of Kibbutz Nachshon, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which went over to the new system last year.

Yasur, established in 1949, had failed. Its textile and toy factories were unprofitable and closed. “Those of us left in our 50s wondered who would look after us in another 20 years,” said Ami Kilon, who was born here in 1951.

Then Yasur began its renewal and began to recruit new members in 2003. The empty kibbutz houses are now nearly filled, and Yasur plans to sell plots for new housing on former farmland.

About half the kibbutzim have moved into real estate, selling plots for luxury neighborhoods in place of the fields and orchards outside their gates. House buyers generally do not join the kibbutz, but pay for services like child care.

Next year the Varols must decide if they want to become full members of Yasur, buying a stake in communal assets like the dairy and chicken farm. If not, they can remain as private residents.

“The new kibbutz is not perfect, but economically things are improving,” said Mr. Kilon, who manages Yasur and another kibbutz nearby. “The incentive to work has gone up, and after changes in the management, we are standing on our feet.”

Not all kibbutzim followed this kind of strategy. About 30 percent stuck to their socialist principles. But many of them are flourishing, too.

“I get calls every day from people who want to join,” said Yaniv Sagee, the secretary of Kibbutz Ein Hashofet. “I don’t have room for them.”

Ein Hashofet, a pastoral haven of well-tended manicured lawns, art and culture south of Haifa, has not introduced varying wages. The communal dining room still functions — though diners must pay for their food these days.

Ein Hashofet can afford to remain a classic kibbutz because its spotless factories are highly profitable. One of its founders, Yehudit Kotzer, 92, still works four hours a day in one of them. “It’s very sad what’s happening on the other kibbutzim,” she said. “But we’re O.K.”

Mr. Varol was born on a kibbutz in the far north, but he left at 18. He is at peace in his new home, but bitter about the past. “My parents worked all their lives, carrying at least 10 parasites on their backs,” he said. “If they’d worked that hard in the city for as many years, I’d have had quite an inheritance coming to me by now.”