Another day, another environmentalist rabbi

I'm not going to say much about this Torah commentary from the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative Judaism's rabbinical academy), because it's really a self-parody. The commentary was written by Rabbi Abigail Treu, described as the director of Donor Relations and Planned Giving for the Sem. That is, she's a fundraiser, but a rabbi at the same time.

To give you the flavor of the commentary, in case you don't want to click on the link, here's the opening paragraph:

Golda Meir famously quipped: “Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!” Well, the folks living atop the Marcellus Shale have the opposite gripe. Underneath this formation, which stretches from the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York through Pennsylvania and Ohio to Virginia, there is oil. And with the price of oil being what it is, the oil companies have new incentive to drill there and have come calling. Which presents the farmers and landowners in this four-state stretch with a dilemma: what is more important, the beauty and health of their land or their economic security?

I know! Call on me! The farmers should preserve the beauty of their land, despite their relative poverty, so that rich liberals can enjoy the natural beauty.

Oy, vey! Rabbi Treu's commentary goes on to discuss what she sees as environmentalism in this week's Torah portion, culminating in her tribute to the idealism of Jewish law (about which see my discussion of the prosbul).

Most of us curmudgeons are strong believers in conservation, but that's not what we're talking about here. In case you were still doubting that the great project of environmentalism is to destroy the economy and reduce our standard of living, consider the way Rabbi Treu closes her commentary. We should learn, she says, from the mistakes of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, adding:

We too are poised on a threshold, contemplating how to react to our own scary reports of an uncertain future. We would do well to take the mantle of tikkun ‘olam onto our own shoulders, so that our children may be blessed to recite one hundred blessings a day, and live in a world in which the lack of oil is a source of celebration, not regret.

What's really scary is that the head of fundraising for the Sem is so clueless about why donors have money in the first place: They have money because they engage in commerce. Of course, if she had her way, there would far less commerce. I wonder whether she would then declare that the ensuing drop in donations to the Sem was a source of celebration, not regret.

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Descendants of Amalek

I'm on the mailing list for the Jewish Theological Seminary, the principal rabbinical school of Conservative Judaism, and nearly every week I receive at least one e-mail on the Torah portion.

This week is shabbat zachor, the Sabbath of remembrance, in which we add an extra reading about the attack of Amalek on the Israelites as they left Egypt. We are instructed to blot out the memory of Amalek and not to forget, a directive that subsumes not only the historical Amalek but evil generally and genocidal butchers specifically. Haman, the villain of the Purim holiday, which falls on Sunday, is considered to be a descendant of Amalek. Some consider Hitler to be as well, at least metaphorically.

The e-mail I received from JTS today is written by Rabbi Marc Wolf, who addresses Amalek and Haman. He quotes Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, who in 1976 said this: "It is evident that we live in an age of violence and terror. There is not a continent on the globe that is not despoiled by terror and violence, by barbarism and by a growing callousness to human suffering."

Amalek, Haman, terrorism. You see where this is all leading, right? Palestinian terrorism? Ahmadinejad's threats to wipe Israel off the face of the map, right?

Wrong!

It's all leading to Darfur.

As Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum warns, the "violence and terror" that Amalek and Haman bred persisted through his day. The disconcerting truth is that it still persists; presently in the atrocities in Darfur. According to recent estimates, almost 400,000 people have been killed since the genocide began. Millions more are displaced and threatened by starvation and violence. Armies and militias are acting contrary to the global ethic that Haman and Amalek also abused. They trample on human dignity and are categorically different from the nations of the world. They must be stopped — they must be taught to recognize that human dignity must be afforded to everyone. To be sure, the preferred solution is diplomatic, but whatever the result, we cannot stand by as this scar on the face of humanity grows.

What's happening in Darfur is evil, but if Rabbi Wolf is discussing Amalek, it's bizarre that he would ignore the existential threat to us as Jews from Iran and the Palestinians in order to focus on Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Darfur. (I won't even get into the absurdity of believing that diplomacy can prevent genocide in Darfur. A military solution is needed, but neither the U.N. nor what I call the "worthless countries" of the world will do anything.)

Is Rabbi Wolf so totally averse to anything that smacks of particularism that he won't recognize who the modern-day descendants of Amalek really are?

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JTS polls gay ordination

When I predicted that the decision of Conservative Judaism to ordain gay rabbis would be divisive, I could have been wrong -- and I was, at least if you believe the polling that the Jewish Theological Seminary has now done.

According to the press release I just linked, between 58% and 86% of different groups polled favored the decision. The 58% represents pro-decision rabbincal and cantorial students at JTS, and the 86% represents pro-decision women. The press release doesn't give the total percentages pro and con, but you'd have to peg support somewhere in the 60's, with opposition somewhere in the low 20's. What the poll doesn't say is what 20-plus percent opposition means. Do these people stay or leave? Now or later? If I were a supporter of the decision at JTS, I might be relieved that the support is so high but still worried about that level of minority opposition. But that's just a question of keeping the movement together.

Here's what drives me nuts about Conservative Judaism: At the same time Chancellor-elect Eisen is trumpeting the "remarkable unity of Conservative Jews nationwide in their support of the centrality of halakhah as a key principle of Conservative Judaism," he's announcing this poll, which was designed to find out how Conservative Jews feel about the issue of gay ordination.

Should the poll results matter? If there were more widespread opposition, would this change the halachic reasoning behind the decision? Does the support in the poll somehow validate the halachic reasoning?

When people like me move away from Conservative Judaism, it's because we think it's out there trying to validate the facts on the ground, rather than trying to act as a restraining influence to keep Conservative Jews closer to our tradition. We don't want the movement to come to us saying, "What you're already doing is right." That's why we're moving away from it -- because we want something to try to live up to, even if we don't, instead of a religion that wants to live down to us.

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