Opinion: Will your great-grandchildren be Jewish?
The just-released Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011 clearly shows that the Jewish population decline in New York has been stemmed by large numbers of babies born to Orthodox families in America.
The heroic fertility and educational efforts of Orthodox Jews — sometimes to the point of actual impoverishment — is legendary. Ironically, it is historically the Conservative and Reform Jewish movements that have unintentionally benefited from this Orthodox Jewish investment.
In 1990, 44 percent of American Jewish adults had shifted from their childhood denomination. Just 10 years later, in 2000, denominational switching increased to 59 percent of American adults. According to the recent study, now only a minority has stayed in the Jewish denomination in which they were raised. The greatest shifts are away from Conservative and Orthodox Judaism.
While this has greatly worried the Conservative movement’s rabbis, the denominational shift has always affected Orthodox Judaism proportionally to a far greater extent. In Los Angeles in 1996, four out of five Jewish adults who reported being raised in Orthodox families chose other denominational affiliations. This may be a phenomenon of the “unchurched West,” of Jews fleeing the traditions of the East Coast.
Historically, Conservative and Reform Judaism owe their very existence and phenomenal growth to the vast Orthodox Jewish migration to America prior to 1924 and the massive shift away from Orthodox Judaism, primarily to Conservative Judaism. Ironically, Conservative Judaism is suffering from the same leftward historical trend. In the past three decades, as many as half the children raised as Conservative Jews become Reform Jews as adults.
Orthodox Judaism has traditionally served as the feeder denomination for Conservative as well as Reform Judaism. Conservative Judaism gets the majority of adult denominational shifters from Orthodox Judaism, but Reform Judaism currently has in its pews about one in 10 adults who were raised by Orthodox parents.
It is in the self-interest of the Conservative and Reform movements to encourage the flowering of the Orthodox American Jewish community, for they are the ultimate beneficiaries of the adult choices of Orthodox-raised children. In spite of the best efforts of the Orthodox community, data shows that many of them will choose to live adult lives as something other than Orthodox Jews. In the same manner, it is in the best interests of Reform Jews to support the flowering of Conservative Judaism.
So, American Jews of all stripes, be nice to the Orthodox Jews, who comprise about one-tenth of the community. When Orthodox polemicists ask: Will your grandchildren be Jewish? The answer is: Probably. The more pressing question to the Orthodox is: Will your children be Orthodox? The answer is: Probably not.
Pini Herman has been on the faculty of USC and is a past research director at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. He is currently a principal of Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. Visit his blog, Demographic Duo.
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Is All of Jewish Leadership Work Holy? The Notion of Meta-Holiness!
We often think of clergy, scrolls, and the synagogue as the realm of the holy. But is the work of all Jewish communal leadership holy? What does it even mean to do holy work?
In searching for a compelling Jewish notion for the holy, we can review many different approaches.
1. Coming Close to the Other —For Chassidim and Kabbalists, many Rabbis were known as HaKadosh (the holy one), since they achieved a spiritual and cognitive level closest to the Divine (as compared to other approaches of holiness dealing with the behavioral realm). For some, holiness means anything having to do with G-d; holiness is about embracing the Other. Levinas took this vertical theology and made it horizontal (embracing the Other includes in its deepest sense embracing the other). Levinas writes: “Holiness represents the moment at which, in the human…the concern for the other breaches concern for the self.”
2. Separatism and Asceticism—For Ramban and Rashi, holiness is more individualistic, concerned with separatism and asceticism. For the Ramban, attaining holiness is about going beyond the letter of the law (naval birshut haTorah) and avoiding excess (she-ni’hi’yeh perushim min ha-mutarot). For many this is about purity, and for others it is about ethics. The rabbis of the Talmud teach that to be holy is to be “poresh mei’arayot”, one who abstains from prohibited sexual acts. Holiness as asceticism goes further. The Vilna Gaon was the exemplar of the concept of “pat bemelach tochal,” that one should subsist on bread and salt. The ultimate asceticism is to separate from the nations of the world (Leviticus 20:26: “You shall be holy to Me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be Mine”). The Jewish people are considered holy since they have a unique mission.
3. Communal Ethics—Holiness is about community. Jewish law requires a minyan to say kaddish and kedushah and other prayers concerned with holiness. It is not only about giving to others, but also to seeing value and utility in all others (all in the community have a purpose and a way to contribute to building holy community of shared values through partnership). Moshe tells the people: “vli’hi’otkhah am kadosh l’Hashem Elokekhah,” that we be a holy nation to the Lord (Deuteronomy 26:19). There is an individual ethic as well, of course, of “Kedoshim ti’hiyu” (you shall be holy, Leviticus 19:2) is a mandate that each individual should collectively be a holy nation through the emulation of the ways of G-d.
4. The Good for its own sake—Many have claimed that the land of Israel is holy, and thus the Jews must fully own and possess it. Professor Moshe Halbertal has made the opposite claim, arguing that because the land is holy, it is G-d’s and no person or group of people can ever fully take ownership of it. Halbertal has argued that the holy is that which cannot be instrumentalized (i.e., used for political gain) rather the holy is good for its own sake, not to achieve some other benefit. For example, Jewish law says that one cannot pass through a synagogue because it is a faster route, a short cut. The holy is an end in itself, not an instrument for gain. Holiness does not simply exist in the world, rather an act that brings holiness into the world is a creative act. One makes a chillul (desecration) when emptying the value from the valuable and one makes a kiddush (sanctification) when filling a void with that which is true and good.
Of course, none of these models are mutually exclusive. We may or may not buy into them and we could favor portions of these approaches. But as Jewish leaders, we play a role in “meta-holiness” (by providing the space for the synthesis of different approaches of holiness). Whether one is a rabbi, educator, director, philanthropist, academic, social worker, or volunteer etc., when one holds and nurtures the system that enables other individuals and the community to actualize its holiness potential, the leader actualizes a role of meta-holiness. Of course, there must be transparency and accountability when dealing with possible abuses of the holy, especially for those who influence and control our eco-system of meta-holiness. While we should strive to live as individuals along the holy path, and should join and contribute to holy communities, we can also play a role of actualizing meta-holiness, providing sacred space for others to think, grow, and have impact. This is perhaps the pinnacle of holiness when we embrace the humility to create a space for creative holy expressions.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder & President of ” title=”http://shamayimvaretz.org/” target=”_blank”>The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute, the Director of Jewish Life & the Senior Jewish Educator at the UCLA Hillel and a 6th year doctoral candidate at Columbia University in Moral Psychology & Epistemology. Rav Shmuly’s book “” title=”http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/04/02/america-s-top-50-rabbis-for-2012.html#slide40″ target=”_blank”>most influential rabbis in America.
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Opinion: Islam navigates the shoals of extremism
Which is the more serious problem today: Islamic extremism or anti-Islamic bigotry?
The latest contribution to this debate comes from The Nation, the leading magazine of America’s left, in its current special edition on “Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic.” Its articles address a real and serious issue — but they also illustrate the pitfalls of ignoring its other side.
There’s no doubt that virulent rhetoric depicting all Islam as inherently evil and violent, and virtually all Muslims as potential jihadists, has gained alarming currency on the right. Such Muslim-bashing is not simply demeaning but also can lead to violence, harassment and infringements on the fundamental liberties of American Muslims. The New York Police Department has been criticized for overly broad surveillance of ordinary Muslims. Recent years have seen a wave of attempts to block construction of mosques and Islamic centers across the country. Bills seeking to outlaw the use of Sharia law in American courts — already illegal if it infringes on citizens’ constitutional rights — could interfere with private contracts rooted in religious law.
Yet nowhere in The Nation will one find recognition that extremism in Islam is a particularly serious problem. One author dismisses the issue by stating that “every group has its loonies.” Another writes that while misogyny and religious repression in some Muslim countries should be denounced, it can be done without generalizing about Islam.
Of course all religions have fringe groups and ideas. But for complex historical and cultural reasons, radicalism in Islam is far closer to the mainstream than in other major religions right now. There is no country today where a Christian government executes people for blasphemy, apostasy or illicit sex; several Muslim states do, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Some supposedly moderate Muslim clerics, such as Qatar-born Sheik Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, defend executions of gays, sanction “light” wife beating and peddle hatred of Jews.
Most American Muslims do not share such repugnant views; the Muslim community here is far more integrated into the mainstream than it is in Europe. Yet the problem of radicalization is real. Freedom House, an esteemed human rights organization, reports that many U.S. mosques carry extremist literature. Supposedly moderate Muslim groups such as the Islamic Circle of North America have hosted speakers with extreme ideas. A 2007 Pew poll found that 27 percent of American Muslim men younger than 30 believe suicide terrorism in defense of Islam is at least sometimes justified.
Many American Muslims stress the importance of combating not only anti-Muslim bigotry but also extremism in Muslim ranks. The modernization of Islam is an essential priority for the world. Right-wing Islamophobes such as bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are hostile to this effort, insisting that Islam is beyond reform and any talk of moderation is a deceptive smoke screen.
But where do left-wing defenders of Muslims’ civil rights stand? One of The Nation’s articles attacks philanthropist Nina Rosenwald for bankrolling supposedly Islamophobic causes. Some groups Rosenwald has funded deserve the criticism, but the article also singles out her support for the work of “dissident” Muslims such as Irshad Manji, an openly gay Canadian journalist who argues that Islam must overcome the still-powerful legacy of sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. When a progressive leftist magazine goes after a gay Muslim feminist because she is too outspoken against religious reactionaries, something’s wrong.
Concerns about bigotry are justified. But they should not deter legitimate debate about problems in modern Islam.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine and a columnist at The Boston Globe. She is the author of “Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood.”
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Nissan Leaf Fast Charger Comes to Los Angeles
Los Angeles finally has its first fast charger for electric vehicles.
The 480-volt charger is located in the parking lot across from the Toy Factory Lofts downtown, along with a bank of ten 220-volt chargers.
For Nissan Leaf drivers like me—and Tesla drivers like Arnold Schwarzenegger—this means you can plug in and go from 0 to 100 percent charge in 30 minutes. The more common 220 volt chargers take about 8 hours for a full charge, and regular household current takes 14-16 hours.
This is the first fast-charger in Los Angeles, and the ninth in California.
Len Hill and Yuval Bar-Zemer, partners in Linear City development company, installed the chargers at the Toy Factory, a former warehouse built in 1924 by the land development arm of the Atchison and Topeka Railroad. Later it served as a toy factory. In 2004, Linear City, which also developed the Biscuit Company Lofts, converted the space in 121 condos.
The charging stations are one more amenity to a development that includes, “a market, restaurant, gym, art gallery, chocolatier, clothing stores, yoga studio, roof-top pool with infinity viewing deck, cabanas and fireplace, lower roof garden with innovative planting arrangements and a stainless steel barbeque, oversized hallways, a chic lobby enclosing a unique shipping container mail room, and three levels of interior parking.”
I called Bar-Zemer, who told me that he drives a Nissan Leaf, and has been looking for ways to add “green” and convenience to the company’s projects. He enabled residents to install raised bed gardens, as well.
(Foodaism plus: Linear City also owns Church & State restaurant and Little Bear.)
More details: Ecotality installed the chargers, and users must sign up for a Blink card in order to operate them. Right now you can juice up for free, but soon Bar-Zemer told me he expects the cost will be one dollar per hour for the 220v and a flat fee for the 480v.
The Jewish Journal will be doing a longer story on Hill and Bar-Zemer, who ALSO produced the indie comedy “Dorfman,” winner of Best Comedy at the 2012 Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.
I’ve had a year of headaches and range anxiety over charging my Leaf, but at least now I know I can get a full, fast charge downtown.
The Toy Loft is at 1855 Industrial Street, Los Angeles 90021
Here’s a list of 480v Nissan Leaf Chargers in California:
1. May 2010, Vacaville, Eaton brand – PGE (public utility) open to public March 2011 only, free then, now private
2. Spring 2011, Cypress, Eaton brand – Mitsubishi (auto manufacturer) open to public, free
3. Fall 2010, Sacramento, AeroVironment brand – Nissan (auto manufacturer), private
4. March 2012, San Bernadino, Eaton brand – 7-11 store (retail public, private capital funds), public, free
5. April 2012, San Diego, JFE brand – SDG&E (public utility) private
6. April 2012, Palo Alto, unknown brand – 350green (retail public, public/private funds) public, fee
7. May 2012, Belmont, Blink brand – Volkswagon Tech Center (private / public funding) free
8. May 2012, San Ramon, Blink brand – (public / private funding) free
9.. June 2012, Los Angeles, Blink brand. Toy Lofts, downtown
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John and Paul, still alive
Last week, I started writing a column about John Sullivan, a former drug and alcohol addict who restarted his life, thanks to Beit T’Shuvah. But then I got interrupted by another great story, in a documentary called “Paul Williams: Still Alive,” directed by my friend Steve Kessler. I wasn’t planning to write about the film — until I saw a packed house at the Nuart on Saturday night give it a standing ovation.
What were those filmgoers so crazy about?
My simple theory is that they fell in love with the story of a singer-songwriter, a star of the 1970s and early 1980s whose life unraveled through drugs and alcohol and who is now sober and taking gigs wherever he can, at local Holiday Inns or even music halls in the Philippines.
I found both men’s stories irresistible, so I decided to combine them. What caught my attention in particular is that both Williams and Sullivan hate looking backward.
In the film, Kessler is constantly nudging Williams to look back. As they wander through hotel lobbies and small-town gigs, Kessler tries to get Williams to talk about his glory days, when he was one of the most revered entertainers in the country — picking up Oscars and Grammys and being a regular fixture on “The Tonight Show.”
This is the emotional core of the film: Williams wants to look forward, while Kessler wants to look back. Williams grudgingly humors Kessler, until a breaking point happens at the end (I won’t spoil it by telling you).
Sullivan also humored me and talked about his past (I didn’t give him much choice). He spoke about dropping out of high school at age 16 and spending the next 17 years of his life caught in a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol and petty crimes that often landed him in jail.
There was one episode especially that stood out. It happened about four years ago, while he was in a holding cell at a local courthouse. He had agreed to a deal from the prosecutor to do 16 months for a theft charge. But unbeknownst to him, his brother had appealed to the judge to send Sullivan to a rehabilitation center. The judge gave the brother 10 minutes to find a place that would take Sullivan.
The brother immediately called a friend, who put him in touch with Beit T’Shuvah, a faith-based residential treatment center and full-service congregation that has grown quickly over the past few years.
Beit T’Shuvah took him in, helped him get sober and, eventually, helped him enroll in a graphic design program. Today, Sullivan runs a marketing and design firm, under the auspices of Beit T’Shuvah, called BTS Communications.
Maybe that’s why his eyes light up when he talks about the future. “I have something to look forward to now when I get up,” he told me.
But what on earth could Williams have to look forward to, considering he fell so far from the top of the Hollywood food chain?
This is where Kessler’s film touches a nerve. Williams hates looking back, not because he loves and misses the old Paul Williams who was on top of the world, but because he’s repulsed by that person.
“Look at that guy, so smug and arrogant,” he tells Kessler in the film.
And also, as we learn, so phony. The old Williams, short, chubby and insecure, was obsessed with being “special” and with pleasing others, especially that elite club of Hollywood players, where he was never sure he belonged.
But body language doesn’t lie. The extraordinary thing about Williams today is that he looks genuinely happy. Not just sober and at peace, but happy.
He doesn’t miss the old days. He’s quite happy signing autographs in hotel lobbies and eating his favorite food, squid, with an order of Diet Coke instead of gin. His voice is raspy, but he still gives his all playing to tiny crowds, who adore him. He loves his wife and kids, and he still writes pretty songs (he wrote the song that plays at the end of the film, titled, appropriately, “Still Alive”).
Needless to say, Sullivan doesn’t miss the old days, either. All he wants to talk about now are the new design campaigns he and his team are working on. He’s especially excited about the possibility of creating a branding campaign for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to promote its education-based incarceration programs.
“We’re perfect for this assignment,” Sullivan told me. “Everyone who works at BTS has had a troubled past. We know the value of rehab. We understand the mentality of the convict.”
Williams and Sullivan both abandoned their pasts, although those pasts were sharply different. Sullivan left behind the lost, unproductive life of a small-time criminal addicted to booze and drugs; Williams abandoned the hyper-productive but empty life of a high-flying Hollywood star who filled his emptiness by seeking the approval of others.
In the end, though, they followed a similar journey back to personal redemption: Instead of looking backward or forward, they looked inward.
Sullivan looked inward and discovered he had a talent for art.
Williams looked inward and discovered he had a talent for being human.
David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.
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‘The Exorcist’ at the Geffen: No green vomit, but plenty of evil
William Peter Blatty was a Georgetown University student in August 1949 when he came across a front-page story in the Washington Post titled “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” Blatty, a devout Catholic, was fascinated by the accounts of the 14-year-old’s bed violently shaking and torrents of curses in Latin whenever the exorcist commanded the demon to leave the boy.
Two decades later, Blatty recalled this case and others to create his 1971 iconic supernatural suspense novel, “The Exorcist,” in which a 12-year-old girl named Regan is possessed by a malevolent spirit. The novel became a best-seller and was turned into an Oscar-winning film, an international sensation that had patrons fainting in the theater as the Regan character spewed thick green vomit, turned her head around 360 degrees and masturbated with a crucifix.
Blatty has insisted that he never intended to terrify viewers: “What I thought I was writing was a novel of faith in the popular dress of a thrilling and suspenseful detective story — in other words a sermon that no one could possibly sleep through,” Blatty wrote in a piece for Fox News last year.
John Pielmeier
Even so, his screenplay for William Friedkin’s 1973 movie adaptation proved so startlingly horrific that it spawned sequels and prequels as well as a genre of films spotlighting the demonic — from “The Omen” franchise to the upcoming “The Possession,” which draws on the Jewish legend of the dybbuk, a spirit that possesses a person.
Now Blatty’s novel has been adapted into a play, “The Exorcist,” by John Pielmeier (“Agnes of God”), which will have its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse on July 11. Starring Brooke Shields and Richard Chamberlain, and directed by John Doyle (“Sweeney Todd”), it revisits the story of Regan; her mother, Chris (Shields), a movie star and self-described atheist; Father Damien Karras (David Wilson Barnes), the Jesuit psychiatrist suffering a crisis of faith; and chief exorcist Father Merrin (Chamberlain), who is called on to cast out the demon in the climactic sequences at the end of the play.
But if you expect the new drama to have the movie’s grisly effects, think again. “From the start I said I have no interest in trying to reproduce the movie on stage — this should be a piece that is very much of the theater,” Pielmeier, 63, said in an interview at the Geffen on a recent morning. “We didn’t want green vomit or spinning heads, otherwise we risked getting into the arena of camp.”
The set is simple — just a table and chairs — and the dialogue spare in order to spotlight the story and to allow viewers to use their imagination. Unlike the casting in the film, Regan will be played by an adult actress, avoiding the controversy that erupted when 13-year-old Linda Blair portrayed Regan in the movie. “You don’t want a child cursing and grotesquely arching her body, because then there are people who are going to say, ‘How come her parents let her do that?’ ” Pielmeier explained. “You don’t want it to break the fourth wall, or rather, the fifth wall, because we’re already breaking the fourth wall in the play.”
Story continues after the jump
Video by Naomi Pfefferman; Edited by Jeffrey Hensiek
Early in the production, Merrin addresses the audience, describing the history of the concept of Satan, which in Hebrew “means adversary, one who opposes,” he says. And while the play is set in the world of Catholicism, its themes should also resonate for Jews and other non-Catholics: “It raises the question of the existence of evil, and certainly Father Merrin comes down very strongly on the side of yes, it does exist,” Pielmeier said. “The opening line of the play is when Merrin says, ‘For anyone who doubts the existence of the devil, as I once did, I have three words: Auschwitz. Cambodia. Somalia.’ Even nonbelievers can accept the devil as a metaphor, for all the bad, dark, horrible s—- that happens in the world,” Pielmeier said. “What interests me is how, in our moments of despair, the demonic — or whatever you want to call it, the dark side — can come to us.”
One nonbeliever involved in the show is Teller, of the magic team Penn & Teller, whose father was a Russian Jew but who is such a staunch atheist that, among other endeavors, he has attempted to debunk religion as well as the supernatural on the duo’s “Penn & Teller: Bulls—-” TV series. As the creative consultant for “The Exorcist,” he may be responsible for illusions such as Regan levitating; although he has to keep mum about his work, he will say that supernatural events will be represented through elements of church ritual, often with a disturbing twist. As for why the atheist was drawn to such a religious story, Teller said, simply, “I’m a nut for a good horror yarn. This story is essentially the supernaturalization of the idea of the play ‘The Bad Seed’ — it really is about how frightening children can be to their parents. The demon child has always been a very powerful image, and you’ve also got the devil here, which is very powerful as well.”
Pielmeier — a compact man dressed casually in jeans, a pink-and-white striped shirt and magenta socks with his sneakers — spoke thoughtfully of his interest in religious themes. He says he was a devout Catholic from childhood until his senior year at a parochial high school in Altoona, Pa., when, while reading Thomas Hardy’s “Return of the Native,” he was shattered by a section of the story in which a woman is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies. “It was a fictional character, but [her death] bothered me deeply and threw me into a place where I started asking why God would allow such things to happen — ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ ” said Pielmeier, who nevertheless went on to Catholic University in Washington, D.C. “I became very worried and depressed for a time.”
Pielmeier stopped attending church while in college and never went back, although, he added, “I’ve remained fascinated with Catholicism and the richness of that tradition, just as the tradition of Judaism is incredibly rich.”
Richard Chamberlain and Brooke Shields
He wrote his play “Agnes of God,” as well as the screenplay for the 1985 film version, in order to explore what might happen if someone who might have been considered a saint in medieval times was transported to the 20th century — would they have been deemed godly or insane? When producers approached Pielmeier to adapt Blatty’s novel “The Exorcist,” he saw another opportunity to examine the argument of faith versus Freud.
Pielmeier traveled to Blatty’s home in Maryland to pitch his idea: “It was basically to have no extraordinary special effects, a small cast who are on stage all the time, very Brechtian in presentation, with the demon present on stage,” he said. “I didn’t just want a voice coming out of a little girl; I wanted the demon to be present, as this is in many ways a debate between the demon and
Father Karras, like ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster,’ ” he said. “And I didn’t want [Karras] debating with some growling voice coming out of an actor who was trying to lip-synch with a pre-recorded voice.”
It was Doyle — who is known for his minimalist productions — who suggested that the demon be portrayed not just by one actor, but by four members of the ensemble, who also play other roles. To embody the fiend, they don priests’ cassocks as their voices boom like a Greek chorus, “which enhances the notion that the demon is faceless, and that he can be anywhere,” Doyle said.
Shields, who is known predominantly for her comic roles, said she was looking for a dramatic piece when “The Exorcist” came her way, even though, she said, “Part of me was hoping I wouldn’t like it, because it’s hardly a light topic to do eight times a week.” She was drawn, however, to the poetry of the text and to the themes of good and evil, faith and doubt, courage and despair, as well as motherhood on the edge.
But rehearsals have proved grueling — “harder than I had imagined,” she said. The atmosphere is meant to be stifling for the audience, with no intermission for respite, and Shields feels the claustrophobia as well.
The exorcism scenes, in particular, have been uncomfortable: “It’s so creepy; just being in that rehearsal room is eerie,” she said. “The language is rough and things are said that are vile. But there is also such a lyricism in the way that John Doyle directs; you feel the power of the characters of faith that allows them to face this horror.”
“Deep down we realize how fragile everything in our lives is, including our culture and our religions — everything in civilization is just skin deep,” Chamberlain said. “It just takes a bit of pressure — not enough food, for example — to turn us into beasts.” And herein lies our enduring obsession with the demonic: “We enjoy seeing the mayhem personified,” Chamberlain said, “because it’s cathartic.”
Tickets to “The Exorcist,” which plays at the Geffen July 11- Aug. 12, are available in-person at the Geffen Playhouse box office, via phone at 310-208-5454 or online at www.geffenplayhouse.com.
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Dybbuks, demons and exorcism in Judaism
“Civilized people lose their religion easily, but rarely their superstitions.”
— Karl Goldmark
Rabbi Isaac Luria, one of the greatest of Jewish mystics, would walk in the hills of 16th century Safed and point out to his students the souls of the dead, often standing on their graves. In the same city at the same time, the great legal scholar Joseph Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch, the great code of Jewish Law, was composing another book dictated to him by an angel.
These visions were not as exceptional as modern Jews like to believe. Dybbuks and demons, possession and magic are woven throughout Jewish history. Amulets to ward off the evil eye, spitting, touching a mezuzah for good luck and a thousand other practices attest to the deep current of folk belief in Judaism. The next time someone persuades you that everything about Judaism is rational, logical and clear, you do not even need to tell them the story in rabbinic literature about the town that beat the river until the blood of the unwelcome water demon appeared. Just ask them to stand in a congregation while everyone is waving a lulav and spinning the etrog; the explanation may be logical, but the atmosphere is redolent of magic.
And yes, we Jews performed exorcisms, too. Anyone who spends time with rabbinic literature (or, for that matter, with the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer) is familiar with demons. Jewish demons, like their counterparts in other traditions, like to inhabit people or simply upend them from time to time. Not only are there many discussions of demons in rabbinic literature, but also, as a result of demonic activity, there are many spells directed against them, as where there are demons, there must be defenses and antidotes. Some demons are granted names. (Ashmedai, from the book of Tobit, is among the most notable. He is the king of demons, and in the Talmud, King Solomon tricked him into helping with the construction of the Temple.) And there are endless discussions of their activities and depredations.
Exorcism reached a peak in the mystical community of 16th century Safed. The scholar J.H. Chajes has translated several accounts of spirit possession in Safed. One, in which a man named Samuel Zafrati entered a woman, involved Hayyim Vital, the principle disciple of the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria. He asked the spirit, “How can we be sure your name is Samuel Zafrati?” and the spirit, through the woman, accurately recounted all the details of the man’s life. “Then we recognized, all those present, that the spirit was the speaker.”
As the questioning and exorcism continued, the spirit was asked where he had been since his death three years before:
“I have gone from mountain to mountain, and from hill to hill. I did not find rest in any place, except that for a period I was in Shekhem, where I entered into one woman, and they removed me through the aforementioned and placed amulets upon her so that I was unable to return to her further.” The narrator then says that he knows all of this to be true from independent inquiries. The spirit continues: “After that I was roving through the city to enter synagogues [thinking that] perhaps I would find rest and comfort there for my soul, but they did not allow me to enter any synagogue.” The spirit then explained that the sages of the past did not permit him to enter, and so he wandered until he found this “kosher” woman to enter. And when asked if he thought it was legitimate to couple with a married woman, the spirit, with wonderful ethereal insouciance, answers, “What of it? Her husband is not here, but in Salonika!”
With demons about, the consequences of a business trip could be dire.
The most eminent scholars of the time, Isaac Luria, Shlomo Alkabetz, Joseph Karo, Hayyim Vital and others were involved in exorcisms. Some were possessed themselves, like Karo, whose Maggid Mishna took hold of him and dictated, but such possession could on occasion be benevolent. The point is that this was not restricted to a fringe or the untutored; the world was rife with spirits.
Are such stories merely a quaint remnant of an earlier age? In 1999 in Dimona (a name whose origin is from Joshua 21, not from the seeming cognate “demon”), a widowed mother of eight claimed that her deceased husband had entered her body. Although several rabbis refused her an exorcism, one, Rabbi David Basri, head of the Shalom Yeshiva in Jerusalem, was equal to the task. Over the objections of many notable rabbis — and on Israeli national television — he performed the exorcism, apparently successfully.
For a while after this incident, there was a spate of claims of possession in Israel, but the wave abated.
Some examples practically beg the listener to sneer. In his famous work Or Zarua, the 13th century rabbi Isaac ben Moses writes (recorded by Joshua Trachtenberg in his still valuable “Jewish Magic and Superstition”) of the married woman who had relations with a demon — who appeared once in the shape of her husband and once in the uniform of a local petty count. The question was — is she permitted to her husband after this demonic coupling? Was it adultery — was it voluntary? In the end, she was permitted to her husband by the rabbinic court. There is no report on the fate of the real petty count.
Jewish sources do at times distinguish mental illness from possession, although today we might be inclined to include all such stories in the category of mental disturbances. Recently I was teaching what might be reckoned the very first case of possession — the case of Saul:
“The spirit of God departed from Saul and an evil spirit of God tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, ‘Behold now, an evil spirit of God is tormenting you. Let our Lord command your servants, who are before you, to seek out a man, who knows how to play the lyre, and when the evil spirit of God is upon you, he will play with his hand and all will be well.” (I Samuel 16:14-16)
When David, who was then summoned, played music for Saul, it did indeed cure him, at least temporarily. So if this was an exorcism — a matter debated in the sources — then King David was the first recorded exorcist. It gives the profession a noble pedigree, at least.
What was notable in teaching this incident to my Torah class was that not a single member of the class was tempted to interpret this as anything but an internal event in Saul — that is, not an external spirit that afflicted him but a mental disturbance. Although exorcisms are a radical example, we have turned religious experience into a neurological datum: visions are hysteria, trances mania, and prophesies seizures. A desacralized world is more devastating to demons than any exorcist. Vampires make good television and zombies are a mainstay of horror lit, but in life a taste for blood or a lack of affect wrapped in masking tape lead us to grab the DSM and scissors, not a cross and silver bullet.
The meaning of exorcism is tied up for many in issues of gender (some believe this was a bursting forth of frustration from constraint for women or even of obtaining some public power, although plenty of men reported possessions as well) or of Christian influence (although scholars debate whether Jewish exorcisms were a result of the upsurge in the Christian world). Most of all, it reflects the belief, deeply held and derived from the Talmud, that we were constantly surrounded by invisible forces. In a world of suffering, who could believe that such forces would never be malevolent?
It seems so reminiscent of an outgrown age. And yet … we retain some suspicion, evident in traces of our language, of an earlier world view: “I am not myself today.” “I don’t know what got into me.” Even splitting off selves from essence — “I don’t know who I am” — is a sign of the duality of nature we feel and the way in which boundaries of the self sometimes feel porous. We, too, seek shamans and rabbis and healers, though they often go by different names. And madness, true madness, seems still as though it was a grip from outside more than an internal malady.
Far as we have come, our knowledge is still a small homestead on the vast landscape of our ignorance.
David Wolpe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple. You can follow his teachings at facebook.com/RabbiWolpe.
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Syrian minister: Thought downed Turkish plane was Israeli
Syria shot down a Turkish plane believing it was an Israeli plane, a Syrian government minister said.
Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi told a Turkish news channel Wednesday that the confusion stemmed from the fact that both Israeli and Syrian fighter planes largely are American-made.
The plane was downed last week; a second Turkish plane was downed several days later on June 22.
“As you know there is a country called Israel there and as you know this Zionism country’s planes are very similar and because they both are from the same factory, from the U.S., maybe Syria thought it was an Israeli plane,” Zoebi told the Turkish A Haber channel on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. He said his government did not want to spark a crisis with Syria.
Turkey said its entrance into Syrian air space was an error and apologized, CNN reported.
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Opinion: Crafting a Holocaust insurance solution that works
must stop interfering with Holocaust survivors’ rights]
There is a solution to get us beyond the seemingly endless stalemates and complications that continue to characterize the ongoing debate over Holocaust-era insurance claims. And I do not believe it can be found in the well-intentioned bill before the U.S. Congress.
This different approach will put money more quickly into the community of the survivors and their families, minimize huge financial rewards for certain lawyers, and help bring closure to this extremely painful process.
I propose that the relevant insurance companies agree to the appointment—at their expense—of an independent monitor who could determine whether all potentially valid but as yet unresolved Holocaust-era claims are being honestly processed under the relaxed standards of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC.
Some history of how we arrived at this point is in order.
For more than 50 years after the end of World War II, many German and other European insurance companies refused to honor life insurance policies that they or their predecessors had sold to Jews who eventually perished in the Holocaust. In 1998, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners joined with a number of such insurance companies and representatives of Jewish and survivors organizations to create ICHEIC. Its mandate was “to identify, settle, and pay individual Holocaust era insurance claims at no cost to claimants.”
ICHEIC applied relaxed standards that allowed individuals to file claims without documentation such as a policy number or even the name of the company they believed to have issued a policy. The insurance companies were given assurances backed by both the Clinton and Bush administrations that their participation in ICHEIC would insulate them from civil suits in U.S. courts.
According to its website, ICHEIC distributed $306 million “to more than 48,000 Holocaust survivors, their heirs, and the families of those who did not survive.”
The process was not without problems. There are survivors who argue, with some justification, that their claims were not properly considered, although the number of such remaining open claims is in sharp dispute. As a result, Congress is now considering a bill that would enable these survivors to resolve their grievances in U.S. federal court.
But the proposed legislation is unlikely to accomplish its intended laudable purpose. The aggrieved survivors generally do not know which insurance company may have issued a policy to a family member and/or do not have other specific information regarding such a policy. If lawyers are telling them they can prevail without any proof of their claims in a litigation that must satisfy the exacting standards of the Federal Rules of Evidence, such advice, to put it mildly, is unduly optimistic.
Also, the principal beneficiaries of past Holocaust-era litigations have indisputably been the plaintiffs’ lawyers. For example, in 2001 lawyers pocketed more than $59 million in legal fees from the multibillion-dollar slave and forced labor settlement with German corporations. The surviving slave laborers themselves – mostly Jews and Sinti-Roma – received about $7,500 each; forced laborers – primarily Eastern Europeans forced to work in Nazi war factories – received approximately $2,500 apiece. One especially egregious lawyer profiteered from the slave labor and Swiss banks settlements to the tune of more than $7.4 million.
In 2005, a federal judge in Florida awarded three law firms an aggregate $3.85 million in fees and expenses out of the $25.5 million “Gold Train” settlement of a litigation for the looting by U.S. Army personnel of property belonging to Hungarian Jews. Thirty-four named plaintiffs received “incentive” payments of $2,000 or $5,000 apiece, with the bulk of the settlement going for social services for needy Hungarian Holocaust survivors.
You see the pattern. While survivors receive, at most, a few thousand dollars each, their lawyers walk away with millions.
Lawyers promoting the new Holocaust insurance bill in Congress most probably have already collected names of potential plaintiffs and plan to bring suit on their collective behalf in the hope of being awarded hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in yet another settlement.
The proposed bill also risks raising unrealistic expectations. After ICHEIC was formally dissolved in March 2007, the German insurance companies agreed to continue processing Holocaust-era claims under ICHEIC’s relaxed standards. Yet the German Insurance Association reports only 219 inquiries regarding such claims in the past five years. That’s led to the identification of only 102 policies, 60 of which had previously been disposed of.
It seems doubtful that thousands or even hundreds of additional policies will now be suddenly discovered. Hence my suggestion that the relevant insurance companies be asked to agree to an independent monitor, a person who would determine whether all potentially valid but as yet unresolved Holocaust-era claims are being honestly processed under the relaxed ICHEIC standards.
The monitor, who should have the confidence of Congress and the survivor community, should be authorized to examine claims that ICHEIC supposedly disposed of in violation of its own rules. The monitor should report to Congress periodically on the status of all open or disputed claims. If the insurance companies reject such a compromise, or if the monitor were to find one or more of these companies to be recalcitrant, congressional action could then loom as a final remedy.
There is precedent for such oversight. Ambassador J.D. Bindenagel, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for Holocaust issues in the Clinton and Bush administrations, recently pointed out to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the New York Holocaust Claims Processing Office is mandated to report on the insurance companies’ processing of survivor claims and has done so. To date, it appears that all such claims have been handled appropriately.
We need a new path. Our collective challenge must be to at least try to provide, in the words of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), an actual and viable “approximation of justice” for Holocaust survivors and their families. This proposal may be able to accomplish just that.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft, general counsel of the World Jewish Congress and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities.
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