Can't sleep? The New York Times says not to worry

Do We Really Need to Sleep 7 Hours a Night? asks the Times' Anahad O'Connor.

I believe sleep is way overrated.

You get what you can and, unless you operate heavy machinery or pilot a plane, you make it through the day with as much or as little as you can get, without any real danger.

We have been hearing lately that Americans get too little sleep.

Among sleep researchers it is widely believed that people sleep differently today than they did 150 years ago. Many argue that the invention of the electric light bulb in the late 1800s — and all the artificially lit environments that followed — dramatically changed our sleep patterns. Exposure to artificial light at night, whether from light bulbs or computer screens, throws off the body’s biological clock, delaying and reducing sleep, experts say.

This Times article says it is not so.

...a new study is challenging that notion. It found that Americans on average sleep as much as people in three different hunter-gatherer societies where there is no electricity and the lifestyles have remained largely the same for thousands of years. If anything, the hunter-gatherer communities included in the new study — the Hadza and San tribes in Africa, and the Tsimané people in South America — tend to sleep even less than many Americans....

In fact the evidence is accumulating to support the notion that I hold.

“There is this concern in the Western world that we need more sleep and that if you get less than seven hours you’re liable to suffer from obesity and diabetes and heart disease,” he said. “But the average amount of sleep in these people was well under what is recommended to us as adequate sleep, and these were very healthy people who are not suffering chronic disease and insomnia.” 

So sleep if you can and if not do some crossword puzzles or read a book. Stop stressing out about getting too little sleep.

Mindful Meditation Makes You Three Times More Compassionate

Ever since I studied and practiced meditation in the early nineties, I knew the connection between meditation and compassion was the basic premise of the practice. Yet I did not expect that science would "prove" a causal link.

I wrote about mindfulness and the practice of reciting Jewish blessings and about the expressions of compassion in the Jewish grace after meals in my 2011 book, "God's Favorite Prayers."

I've also written about how the search for compassion defines the Yom Kippur services in the synagogue.

A truly remarkable article in 2013 in the Times explained that science demonstrated that mindful meditation makes a person more compassionate.

The essay described one breathtaking study - where the incredible conclusion was that mindful meditators are three times more compassionate than non-meditators.

Here is the article.

The Morality of Meditation
By DAVID DeSTENO
MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.

Mindful Exercise brings Satisfaction - NYTimes.com

Frankly, I do not know how to work out without being mindful.

In an article, The Times concludes, "To Jump-Start Your Exercise Routine, Be Mindful"

A study in the Netherlands has concluded that, "mindfulness... played a pronounced role in making exercise feel satisfying, the data showed. People who reported being mindful during exercise also generally reported satisfaction with exercise."

The same goes for every waking activity of life. As long as you are alive, I believe that it pays to be mindful.

Sunday Times: About Orthodox Sex and Google Sex Searches

The Times has a long profile of Orthodox sex counselor Bat Sheva Marcus describing how she helps Haredi Jewish women have better sex.

It's inspiring and comical and embarrassing, all at the same time.

And for some hilarious general sex statistics from Google data, check out the article by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, "Searching for Sex". Starts off. "ARE you confused by sex? I certainly am." Well doh! And charts!



Grist for the mills of every late night comic.

Is Yoga Jewish?

No, yoga is not Jewish, it is Hindu in origin.

I did yoga regularly in the early 1990s at the Northwest Tennis Club in Minneapolis Minnesota. My teacher was Bonnie West, an American woman from St. Paul with a wicked sense of humor and with no Hindu agenda at all. Her yoga classes provided wonderful exercise and discipline for the body and mind.

But the plot thickens. The Times chronicled in 2010 a controversy over the "ownership" of the practices of yoga in America..

Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul
By PAUL VITELLO

Yoga is practiced by about 15 million people in the United States, for reasons almost as numerous — from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it.

Happy Lappy New Year 2015

To all my friends,

A happy lappy new year. May the currents be with you!

Hope you have a swimmingly great year.

Tzvee

My Dear Rabbi Talmudic Advice Column for November 2014: Is Singing Sexual?

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic advice column

Dear Rabbi,

Many of my Orthodox male friends will not listen to a woman sing. What is that about?

Humming in Hackensack


Dear Humming,

Bans or prohibitions against certain actions deemed dangerous or socially unacceptable are common in all societies and religions. Every town has a speeding limit. And we know that Jews are not supposed to eat pork.

Your simple direct question penetrates into one troubling taboo directed at women but not at men. In parts of the Orthodox Jewish world, men may sing for women, but women may not sing for men.

Any observer can identify such an injunction as uneven and one-sided.

Not surprising. Within synagogues in nearly all Orthodox Jewish communities, women are segregated from men. They are instructed to sit behind a curtain or divider. In many arenas of Orthodox society women also are told to dress modestly and cover up their arms and legs.

To me it seems that a modesty dress code is another form of the segregation of women from the presence of men.

And you do not have to be a feminist to reckon that the ban on women singing is yet an added extension of segregation, an act of discrimination, one more denial of rights directed solely at women.

Now we know in general that the explanation or rationalization of taboos can be extensive and interesting to hear and even compelling in its substance. In this case, the rabbis propose that the ban on women singing to men is to regulate the degree of sexuality that may be expressed and exposed in public. All good and well. I have no argument about whatever basis people of faith choose to justify their actions or proscriptions.

The trouble with the taboo you ask about is that it applies in one direction and not the other, that women may not sing for men.

If this ban is based on sexuality, then the stricture says to us that figuratively a woman’s singing voice is an extension of her vagina, which of course she cannot display in public. Is it not fair then to ask, Is a man’s singing voice a manifestation of his penis? Is it okay for a man to parade around his sexuality but the same is not allowed for a woman? Or is singing not at all a sexual display? Which one is it?

If you think that such questions about Jewish men and women are ludicrous, try these. Are we ever going to say that the men are allowed to eat pork, but the women are not? That the men are permitted to steal, but the women are forbidden?

You asked what the singing taboo is all about? It’s reasonable to say that it is about segregation based on gender, the denial of equal rights to women, and discrimination against women. You may ask then, Aren’t all of those practices unacceptable in our modern Western societies?

Yes sir. Yes ma’am. They are unacceptable.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy was ordained at Yeshiva University and earned his Ph.D. in religious studies at Brown University. He has published several new Kindle Editions at Amazon.com, including “The Book of Jewish Prayers in English,” “Rashi: The Greatest Exegete,” “God’s Favorite Prayers” and “Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice” which includes his past columns from the Jewish Standard and other essays.

Is Ronald A. Klain Jewish?

Yes, the new Ebola Czar Ronald A. (Ron) Klain is a Jew. He previously served as Vice President Joseph Biden's Chief of Staff.

President Obama will appoint Klain according to CNN citing White House press secretary Josh Earnest, "to make sure that all the government agencies who are responsible for aspects of this response, that their efforts are carefully integrated. He will also be playing a role in making sure the decisions get made."

Klain previously served as Chief of Staff and Counselor to Vice President Al Gore. Klain also knew Biden as a result of his service as counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary when Biden chaired that committee.

Klain lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his wife Monica Medina, who is not a Jew, and their children Hannah, Michael and Daniel.

The Times reported in 2007:

... when they married, Ron Klain and his wife, Monica Medina, struck a deal: their daughter and two sons would be raised Jewish (for him), but they would celebrate Christmas (for her).

Despite their satisfaction with the arrangement, the couple, who live in Chevy Chase, Md., have never put up the tree while Mr. Klain’s mother is visiting from Indianapolis. Instead, they wait until after her annual December visit.

“I grew up in Indiana, with a decent-size Jewish community, but we were a distinct minority,” Mr. Klain said. “Not having a Christmas tree was very much part of our Jewish identity in a place where everyone else did.”

In the HBO movie "Recount" Kevin Spacey played Ron Klain.

Spacey, who was born in South Orange, New Jersey to Kathleen A. Spacey (1931-2003), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler (1924-1992), a technical writer, is not a Jew.

My Dear Rabbi Talmudic Advice Column for September: Troubled by Demons

Dear Rabbi,

I’ve been studying the Talmud and have come across some passages that take seriously things like demons, demon possession, and exorcisms. This got me thinking and asking: If the Talmud promotes primitive superstitions that I reject, why should I take seriously anything else that it teaches?

Possessed in Paterson

Dear Possessed,

You are correct to be concerned about this content. The Talmud’s Jews lived in Babylonia 1500 years ago, in a world that was filled with shedim, mazikim, and ruhot — demons and spirits, some evil, some not. The Talmud’s Jews believed that demons lived all around them, in trees, in bodies of water, on housetops, and in latrines. The Talmud cautions its readers that it’s a good thing that demons were invisible since, “If your eye could see them, you could not endure with them around. They surround a person. They are more numerous than people. Each person has a thousand demons on his left side and ten thousand on his right side.” So yes, demons appeared persistently throughout the Talmud and in the midrashim.

That cultural fact reminds us vividly of something that most observant Jews would prefer to forget — that the wisdom of our ancient books comes along with the naive baggage of a less scientific, less philosophical era.

So what are your options? Sure, you can insist on a take-it or leave-it approach to the Talmud. Since part of it is superstition and you reject that, then you may say let’s toss away the whole work.

As a rabbi I am obligated to remind you that we believe the religious and theological wisdom of the Talmud provides a profound and meaningful basis for our spiritual lives. It’s part of the extended Oral Torah that derives its authority from what God gave to Moses at Sinai.

And so does that mean that we rabbis today believe that the demons spoken of in the Talmud were, and are, real entities?

Some fundamentalist rabbis, even today, will say that yes, demons are real, exactly as described in the sacred texts.

More modern rabbis will suggest to you that there are sophisticated ways to handle this issue.

The traditional nuanced believer’s response will be to remind you that for centuries great scholars and sages have distinguished between the halachah (the legal and ritual content) and the aggadah (the folklore and legend) in the Talmud. Serious sages have agreed that we need not accept the aggadah at literal face value. And teachings about demons are part of the aggadah that can be glossed over or taken symbolically.

A common modern and somewhat trite and obvious explanation based in this free approach to the aggadah is the idea that demons are merely metaphors. We can say that we all have our own personal “demons” of one sort or another, demons with which we struggle. In this frame of interpretation we affirm to take hold and keep the aggadah, including what it says about demons, but with a grain of salt and a heap of free associations.

What’s my advice to you then? Talmudically, I see three possible paths. First, if you have already decided to reject your faith and community, you will conclude that you must be utterly consistent and throw the baby out with the bathwater. A second path open to you, if you have decided to continue in your community, is that you accept the traditional answers that distinguish between that which we consider to be authoritative and that which we no longer need to heed.

And a third path for you is that you continue to explore and struggle with the metaphoric use of talmudic ideas like demons. I know one person who spends several hours every month with a professional therapist trying to deal with the personal issues of his life in a modern behavioral way. Yet on occasion he finds it most helpful to concretize an issue that he faces, and to imagine it takes the form of a demon, and then to actively banish it from his life.

Whatever path you choose, I hope this question does not haunt you much longer and that the paths of your life not be beset by demons.

Tzvee Zahavy has published several new Kindle Editions at Amazon.com, including “The Book of Jewish Prayers in English,” “Rashi: The Greatest Exegete,” “God’s Favorite Prayers” and “Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice” which includes his past columns from the Jewish Standard and other essays.

The Book of Jewish New Year Prayers
The Book of Jewish Prayers

Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice
Kindle Talmud in English

God's Favorite Prayers

My New Book is Free Now on Amazon for Five Days, "Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice"

My New Book is Free Now on Amazon for Five Days: 

"Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice"

 Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice
Kindle Talmud in English @ $0.99
Whence and Wherefore @ $0.99
God's Favorite Prayers @ $2.99

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.”

Kindle Talmud in English @ $0.99
Whence and Wherefore @ $0.99
God's Favorite Prayers @ $2.99

Woody Allen was Right in his film Sleeper in 1973 - Red Meats and Fats are Healthy

Woody Allen was right in "Sleeper" in 1973. Hat tip to MZW.

A new book backs him up and asserts that the dangers of saturated fat is now under debate viz. 'The Big Fat Surprise' - see the story at CNN.com:

For the past four decades, we've been told to stay away from red meat, dairy and cheese -- foods high in saturated fats -- because saturated fat is bad for the heart.

But investigative reporter Nina Teicholz says that isn't the case...

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Talmudic Advice Column for June (I): Heaven Film and Book is Really Manipulative, Patronizing and Protestant

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi,

I'm puzzled by a new film based on a 2010 book called, "Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back" by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent. First, I don't understand how a fictional story has been classified and ranked as a bestselling "non-fiction" book? More disturbing, I find it offensive that the book portrays heaven of Christians, by Christians and for Christians. Please help me understand what to believe about all of this?

Heavenly Jew in Hackensack

Dear Heavenly,

I'm critical of the book you mention because its story is so obviously manipulative and because the premise of its narrative is so patronizingly Protestant.

For those unfamiliar, the book recounts, "the true story of a four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who experienced heaven during emergency surgery. He talks about looking down to see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear …"

This book builds on a familiar narrative about the soul and death that is common in the belief systems of Western religions. That story proposes that every living person is made up of a body and a soul which is the life-force that animates the body. When a person dies, that life-force no longer inhabits the body. It does not cease to exist. It goes to another domain. Since death by definition is irreversible, that domain is a mystery to us.

No matter that it is unknowable. Many have speculated about whether a heaven or a hell exists and if so, what it/they look(s) like. This book that you refer to purports to settle the speculations only about heaven, with nothing to say about hell. It presents us with an account of an innocent young boy whose soul departs his body, goes to heaven, and comes back to inhabit his body and to report to us what he found in the next world.

So yes, this book's framework account is legitimately non-fiction in parts because it tells us about a "true" story about a little boy who did undergo emergency surgery and had a near death experience. And because the book, and now film, both allege to report what the boy said to his parents after his operation, that can be classified as a non-fiction chronicle of a boy's conversations with adults.

Then, by a manipulative literary sleight of hand, the tale weaves into the framework of bare facts a wildly imaginative fundamentalist Christian account of heavenly ascent by an ostensibly guileless little boy. It mingles wholly imaginary details of what the boy says he saw in heaven into the factual background of his hospital procedures.

You need to know that this type of tale is nothing new. Jewish, Christian and Islamic mystics and religious visionaries have provided us in the past with reports of heavenly ascents, mainly achieved in ecstatic states of meditation or other events. The Jewish Hekhalot literature, for instance, describes mystical rises into heaven accompanied by divine visions, including in them ways to summon and control angels and to find in heaven some new knowledge of the Torah.

Our religious traditions have a variety of idealized stories of heaven. But you seem not to care much for the conclusion that a Christian heaven is "for Real" and that the Burpo boy was there and back.

Neither do I, partly because I had a near death experience which does not confirm the boy's story.

In 2006 my heart stopped at the beginning of a routine angioplasty procedure in a hospital catheterization lab. I fell unconscious while the cardiology practitioners were inserting a catheter into an artery near my leg. By the doctors' criteria, I was clinically dead for two minutes.

Did I go to heaven? Do I have a report about what wonders I saw there? Did I have any out-of-body experience? No, I had none of the above. My experience contradicts Colin Burpo's. With the help of his father who is a minister, he recollected a whole lot of "facts" about the spiritual experiences of his soul as it travelled outside his body and made a visit to a Christian heaven.

Unlike Colton, my soul did not see bright lights suggesting the divine presence of a God. My soul did not soar to heaven or float around outside of my body. My soul did not meet my dead relatives or greet any great religious personages of any faiths or persuasions.

In spite of my own non-ascent, if you do insist, I can weave for you a narrative of a Jewish heavenly experience. There are multiple possibilities based on the strands of Jewish religious traditions.

The great medieval rabbi Maimonides presents us with a visualization of Gan Eden, a heavenly depiction based on the Talmud that has always seemed attractive to me.

"In the world to come, there is nothing corporeal, no material substance. There are only souls of the righteous without bodies -- like the ministering angels... The righteous attain to a knowledge and realization of truth concerning God to which they had not attained while they were in the murky and lowly body (Mishneh Torah, Repentance 8)."

In some Talmudic views, the Garden of Eden is the eternal destination for the righteous. In that realm of joy and peace the Talmud in some instances describes golden banquet tables (Talmud, Taanit 25a), stools of gold (Talmud, Ketubot 77b), lavish feasts (Talmud, Baba Batra 75a), celebrations of the Sabbath, basking in sunshine and engaging in sex (Talmud, Berakhot 57b).

In other views (which Maimonides seems to prefer) Talmudic rabbis declare that in Gan Eden there will be no eating, drinking, procreation or commerce, no envy, hatred or rivalry. The righteous will sit in Gan Eden with crowns on their heads, and bask in the light of the Shekhinah (Talmud, Berakhot 17a).

Every religion has its own meaningful storylines that are used to educate its adherents and promulgate its beliefs. The (unarticulated) deal in our pluralistic American culture has been that each religion agrees to tell its stories to its own members and to stop there.

The Burpo book cleverly sidesteps an understood status quo that encourages plural religions to coexist calmly in our complex society. Your unease was caused by the loud unsolicited declarations of faith that come forth in this book and movie. Those proclamations are tantamount to acts of proselytization – to active attempts to convert others to one's faith. They ought to make you uncomfortable or even angry.

Using a cute boy's medical emergency to preach fundamentalist Christianity to the populace at large is a tacky activity that you appear to recognize for what it is, to question its validity and to properly reject it.

The Dear Rabbi column offers timely advice based on timeless Talmudic wisdom. It aspires to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the month. Send your questions to DearRabbi@jewishmediagroup.com

Kindle Talmud in English @ $0.99
Whence and Wherefore @ $0.99
God's Favorite Prayers @ $2.99

Are Coronary Stents Kosher?

Yes, coronary stents are kosher. In fact they are a miraculous invention.

What are they? Wikipedia says: "A coronary stent is a tube placed in the coronary arteries that supply the heart, to keep the arteries open in the treatment of coronary heart disease. It is used in a procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Stents reduce chest pain and have been shown to improve survivability in the event of an acute myocardial infarction."

The coronary stent was invented by Julio Palmaz. The stainless steel, insertable mesh stent is expanded once inside the body to hold an artery open and allow blood to flow more freely. Palmaz secured funding for the development of the stent from restaurant owner Phil Romano (Fuddruckers and The Macaroni Grill). Palmaz co-developed the stent with Dr. Richard Schatz, a cardiologist at the time at the Brooke Army Medical Center. We would guess that Schatz is Jewish. They patented their invention in 1985.

The coronary stent is one of the greatest inventions of our time. The stent can be inserted through a small puncture in the groin or wrist and via balloon angioplasty it can open up quickly and with little to no pain a 99% occluded major coronary artery. The procedure takes about an hour and the patient is ambulatory after four hours and can resume many of his favorite activities :-) within one day.

To a person (like me) with CAD this rapid and amazing restoration of a person's quality of life is a true medical miracle of our times.

ADS: Kindle Talmud in English -|- Experience God's Favorite Prayers

This BBC post about anger and heart attacks may save your life

I cannot properly evaluate the science behind this. All I can say is that this rings true to me.

Serious anger in the range of rage changes your body in bad ways. The BBC article says, keep your stress low and try yoga. All good advice and try to follow it. It may save your life.

Angry people 'risking heart attacks'
By Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News online

Having a hot temper may increase your risk of having a heart attack or stroke, according to researchers.

Rage often precedes an attack and may be the trigger, say the US researchers who trawled medical literature.

They identified a dangerous period of about two hours following an outburst when people were at heightened risk.

But they say more work is needed to understand the link and find out if stress-busting strategies could avoid such complications.

People who have existing risk factors, such as a history of heart disease, are particularly susceptible, they told the European Heart Journal.

Is Mindful Meditation Finally Going to Become Jewish?

Around 1992 I took up both yoga and also mindful meditation a la Jon Kabat-Zinn. I wrote the post below 8/28/09 ending with the question/suggestion that we bring mindfulness into our shuls and schools.

Five years later, Jews finally are noticing mindful meditation -- because it saves money, according to the Forward, "Why Jews Should Tune In to the Mindfulness Revolution. It's Not Just 'Hippie Stuff' — Meditation Can Save Billions."

Here's what I said about my practices in 1992 in Minnesota, and a link to a 2007 Times article.

Our club, Northwest Racket and Swim in St. Louis Park had a wonderful yoga program. Our favorite instructor was Bonnie West, who led a totally Americanized yoga class. She'd crack jokes and talk about current events and get all of us to go to our limits.

At our HMO they decided to offer a free course in mindful meditation as an experiment. We were right there to take up the offer. We did yoga and meditation for several years and let it taper off when we moved back East.

Why did we stop? We actually didn't. We integrated mindfulness into our everyday life to a large degree. But that is a whole other story.

Anyway we were quite pleased to read in the NY Times, in 2007, about the acceptance of the practice in mainstream schools.

Wouldn't it be a great thing to offer instruction in mindfulness in our shuls and synagogues too?

In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

Is Obscenity Jewish?

As much as I'd like to say no, anti-Semites and academics agree on this, that yes, a large number of Jews are prominently associated with obscenity in several ways.

Openly anti-Semitic web sites (such as this one "Sex Plague: The Normalization of Deviance and Depravity" and this one: "Secret Sex Life of the Jews") delight in chronicling the associations of Jews with obscenity, pornography, prostitution and the like. I don't recommend that you visit or read those vile sites, even the ones that represent some modicum of fact and journalism. These sites are run by people who hate Jews for people who hate Jews. Most of us agree that anti-Semitism in and of itself is a terribly obscene activity in any society.

And contrary to the constant stream of conspiratorial accusations of the anti-Semites, it's not a secret that Jews have been and are prominent in sex businesses. They are businesses whose barriers to entry were not high. The sex sector historically attracted Jewish businessmen when Jews were barred by anti-Semites from other industries.

There is significant open and credible academic discussion of this subject in new scholarly publications.

Religion Dispatches writes about one book that deals systematically with the issue of Jews and obscenity, "Jews and Obscenity: Is it a Thing?" in their Sexuality/Gender category.

Rachel Gordon reviews there Josh Lambert’s "Unclean Lips: Jews, Obscenity, and American Culture (Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History)."

She says it, "... is part of a growing body of scholarship on American Jews that’s willing to look where others have politely averted the scholarly gaze." Further she writes,

Is sex expert Esther Perel Jewish?

Yes sex expert Esther Perel is a Jew. The Times reports in an article about the: "Sexual Healer":

...The daughter of two Polish-born Holocaust survivors, Ms. Perel was raised in Antwerp, in a community of survivors; she went to college at Hebrew University and started creating workshops with Jewish immigrants about their cultural identity. Her work with interfaith couples grew out of that expertise. “Since I was 19, I’ve been creating conversations,” she said. “I create thought-provoking, challenging conversations about the unspoken.”

In her mid-40s, Ms. Perel, who has a master’s degree in expressive art therapy, started thinking about taking on a new intellectual challenge. She began reading and writing more explicitly about sexuality, an aspect of couples therapy in which she had not yet specialized. She feels certain that the decision to take on the subject of sex, like her interest in cultural identity before it, can be traced to her upbringing. “I remember saying as a kid, ‘No door will ever be closed to me,’ ” she said.

Growing up in a community of survivors left her permanently thinking about how people find their way to vibrant lives. “In my community there were two groups of people,” she said. “There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.” Her parents, a social couple who talked openly about what they endured in the camps, who were storytellers and who had humor, fell into the second category. In helping others explore their sexuality, as Ms. Perel sees it, she is helping foster a totally different, difficult conversation, and yet also helping individuals “be more alive — to have a more complex and meaningful lived life.”...

WNYC Reporter Robert Lewis Maybe Isn't Incompetent and Unprofessional After All

WNYC News ran a report, "The Orthodox Nonprofit That Maybe Isn't Corrupt After All" on Thursday, January 23, 2014 by Robert Lewis, reporter. The report had little new information about an organization that was criticized anonymously in the Moreland Commission investigation into public corruption.

Relief Resources, a Borough Park mental health service was accused of taking public money and providing no services. It turns out that they do provide services. The services may not be efficient - but I have a hard time seeing the service as a corrupt entity.

"Corrupt" is a weasely word to begin with. A more specific term like illegal would be better - if indeed there was any illegal activity connected with Relief Resources. And there is not.

And so here we go. Robert Lewis titles his story in the most weaselly way I have seen in a long time: "The Orthodox Nonprofit That Maybe Isn't Corrupt After All." Throw in gratuitously that they are Orthodox - but omit that it is a mental health service. That's not impressive. Then add the word "Maybe" - aren't there rules in journalism preventing the use of weasel words in title? "Maybe Isn't Corrupt" - shouldn't that be "appears to be honest."

I'd say the title of the article ought to be, "Brooklyn Mental Health Service Unfairly Accused of Corruption Turns Out to be Legitimate."

(UPDATE 10 PM: WNYC HAS CHANGED THE HEADLINE. IT NOW READS, "Do-Nothing Nonprofit" Actually Does Stuff. MY PROPOSED HEADLINE IS BETTER. "DOES STUFF" IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTIC DESCRIPTION. BUT HEY AT LEAST THEY SORTA LISTENED.)

Maybe the Moreland Commission and Governor Cuomo aren't corrupt either. They surely aren't doing a good job going after real corruption. So hmm, I wonder if we should look into the Moreland Commission and find out who told them where to look for corruption - and who told them where NOT to look for corruption. (Were the exact words, "Go get me an Orthodox rabbi. That lately makes good headlines.")

I'm going with the conclusion that journalist Robert Lewis writes weasely poorly researched stories and I am still not sure that maybe he isn't incompetent and unprofessional.



(Hat tip to my special source.)

Talmudic Books
Kindle Talmud in English
Whence and Wherefore
God's Favorite Prayers

Are Statins Kosher?

The NY Times Op-Ed, "Don’t Give More Patients Statins" by JOHN D. ABRAMSON and RITA F. REDBERG argues that no, it is not kosher to start giving more classes of people statins in order to prevent heart attacks.

I have a high risk profile but in June 2008 I stopped taking statins (and several other drugs). The "side effect" for me was liver disease - quite an "effect". My liver readings were so high that the doctor called me to tell me to stop the Lipitor statins immediately. I also stopped monitoring my cholesterol - no point doing that if you are not trying to magically reduce the numbers with drugs.

This past year I increased my aerobic workouts by more that 50%. I swim 1.5 miles a day. I finally had my cholesterol tested and not surprisingly the numbers were good - especially for the HDL good cholesterol, and the good ratio was high. I don't smoke, I reduced my bad activities, the stress in my life, by orders of magnitude. And I increased my good activities significantly - e.g. golf, etc. ;-) I lost weight - a lot of weight - by watching everything that I eat. And I do not plan on ever taking a statin again.

Now the drug industry wants to detach the statin prescriptions from the cholesterol numbers - and guess what? This is not going to mean that fewer people should take statins. It will mean that more people should take them. Get it? I sure as heck admire the chutzpah of those drug companies.

But in answer to our title question, no statins are not kosher. Even those "studies" that show some correlation between statin use and fewer cardiac incidents are suspect to me. The math makes no sense. Reduction of risk by 50% is actually reduction of incidents by 1%. And my guess is that some time soon real scientists will conclude that it is the reduction of smoking, not of cholesterol levels, that has lead to the decline in cardiac disease in recent years.

Here is what Abramson and Redberg argue in the Times.

ON Tuesday, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology issued new cholesterol guidelines that essentially declared, in one fell swoop, that millions of healthy Americans should immediately start taking pills — namely statins — for undefined health “benefits.”

This announcement is not a result of a sudden epidemic of heart disease, nor is it based on new data showing the benefits of lower cholesterol. Instead, it is a consequence of simply expanding the definition of who should take the drugs — a decision that will benefit the pharmaceutical industry more than anyone else.