Dancing on Yom Kippur

Gershom Gorenberg has a wonderful article at South Jerusalem on Yom Kippur: Hiya Judge: On Dancing Yom Kippur. He writes about the difference in the melancholy melodies sung at an Ashkenazi Yom Kippur service versus the joyous melodies at a Sephardi service that he experienced in Bangkok years ago. He hazards a guess as to why this ethnic difference exists:

Anyway, I mentioned this story a week or so ago to a friend learned in Jewish history. “That’s the difference between people whose neighbors opposed their existence and people who were accepted as – even if second class – members of society.”

I wouldn’t want to attribute all the differences in Ashkenazi and Sephardi culture to the gap between how Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East related to Jews. But I’d guess that it is one key reason. As I noted last year in an article on anti-gentile prayers that worked their way into Jewish liturgy and that should be removed:

Hebrew University historian Israel Yuval says that traditional liturgical attacks “are always against Christianity,” and are found in Ashkenazi prayers, not Sephardi ones. The rage reflects theological battles with Christianity, which claimed the Bible as its own and argued that Jews suffered in exile because God had ended the covenant with them. The Jewish response was a stress on “vengeful redemption”—looking forward to a conclusion of history in which the power relations were reversed, the Christians destroyed.

While there were ups and downs in Jewish-gentile relations in both the Christian and the Islamic worlds, Jewish liturgy itself bears testimony that Jews felt that their lives were far more precarious among the Christians. Recently, in the midst of contemporary nonsense about the “Clash of Civilizations,” some rightwing Jews have made a habit of arguing that things were as bad or worse for Jews among the Muslims. The psychological record of the prayerbook says otherwise.

May you have a joyous Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur

To my Jewish readers - have an easy fast and g'mar hatimah tovah (may you be sealed for a good life).

This Associated Press story on Yom Kippur in Israel is a good account of the meaning of the day for Israeli Jews, religious and non-religious: Israel shuts down for Day of Atonement amid fears.

A group of about 15 Jews went up to the Temple Mount today, under police guard, during the time that non-Muslims are permitted to go there. Their group was met with stone-throwing and a riot ensued in which the police threw stun grenades at the Palestinian rioters. Twelve policemen and fifteen rioters were injured.

I hope that this is not a harbinger of worse trouble. It's hard to forget that one of the proximate causes of the second intifada was Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000. (See this account from the Jewish Virtual Library on the second intifada - see that Sharon's visit was certainly not the only cause).

Farouk Hosny - the Jews are to blame

Farouk Hosny, the Egyptian culture minister who was not chosen to be the head of UNESCO, blames Jews for UNESCO loss. He said that "European countries and the world's Jews" wanted him to lose. Another statement from him: "There are a group of the world's Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position,"

Nothing like being convicted out of your own mouth of anti-semitism.

Hitchens on Jimmy Carter

The latest absurdities to emerge from Jimmy Carter's big, smug mouth - Christopher Hitchens (article of May 21, 2007).

It's always pleasant to read a literate takedown of Jimmy Carter, who is one of my least favorite former living presidents. I learned something new and startling from this article - apparently Eugene McCarthy voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 rather than for the sitting president of his own party. McCarthy said: "Mr. Carter quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."

Hitchens' case against Carter: "It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence." I hadn't realized that Carter had supported Saddam Hussein also. He joins the illustrious company of Donald Rumsfield in misestimating Saddam.

I also did not vote for Carter. I was living in Seattle in the fall of 1980, and had temporarily turned into a Republican in order to vote for John Anderson in the Republican caucuses. When election day came, I didn't vote for Reagan, or Carter, or Anderson (who I think was running as a third party candidate), but for another third party candidate, Barry Commoner. Carter demonstrated how little concern he had for his own party when he conceded before the polls had closed on the west coast, thus reducing the incentive of Democratic voters to go to the polls and vote for Democrats in other races.