Growing up in my predominantly secular post-Holocaust era Jewish family in the 60s, the Jewish values always shone through. My parents truly shaped my values, and only now, as an adult and engaged Jew do I realize how centered in Judaism those values were.

Many parents sing pretty lullabies to their children. My mother, a self-proclaimed "listener's listener," whose tone-deaf and always out of tune singing (and nevertheless yielded to musically talented children) didn't matter to me - she was my mother, and she was singing songs to me - would sing us songs like "We Shall Overcome" and "Dona, Dona." But there's one song whose message she always stressed. It's from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific." Lieutenant Cable has fallen in love with Liat, a half-breed Tonkinese beauty. His response to the concern of others about "what will the neighbors think" is this song, with some of Oscar Hammerstein's best lyrics:

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to be carefully taught!

Well, these words came strongly to mind when I read this article come across the JTA Feed:

Jewish, Arab students share negative views
An Israeli survey found that large numbers of Jewish high school students
view Arabs as uneducated,uncivilized or unclean and vice versa. The Haifa University poll from October 2004, which was presented at a conference at the university this week, interviewed 1,600 students across the country, with 75 percent of the Jewish students harboring negative impressions of Arabs. It also found that one-third of them were afraid of Arabs. "We have found a serious expression of stereotypical thinking on the Jewish students' part regarding the Arab youth,"said Haggai Kupermintz, one of the researchers who conducted the survey. "These students come in with firm stereotypical baggage regarding the other, and in this case, this is the Arabs." Arab high school students also had negative impressions of their Jewish peers: The survey found 27 percent believed Jews were uneducated, 40 percent said they were uncivilized and 47 percent found them unintelligent. But while 75 percent of Arab students showed willingness to meet with Jewish students, less than 50 percent of Jewish students were willing to reciprocate.

That's really sad. What are we teaching our children?

A few years ago, I overheard one my my religious school teachers (I'm a religious school principal) suggest to a class of teens that perhaps the incessantly negative portrayal of Egyptians in the Passover Hagaddah might influence the views of young Israeli and Jewish children. At the time, I thought it was a somewhat inaccurate and gross exaggeration of reality - surely today's children could distinguish between the Egyptians of old and today's Arabs and Muslims. Yet, over the years, I have heard young children, teens, and even adults, make ignorant comments that clearly betray making such distant connections. We connect Amalek, Haman and Hitler. It's not inconceivable that a child could connect the Persian people (and thus modern Iraqis and Iranians) with Haman and the German people with Hitler, and make gross assumptions and generalizations about all of them.

I'm not suggesting we change the Hagaddah. Nor am I suggesting that we Jews don't have both the right and the obligation to bring to mind all the wrongs done to us over the millenia. We do and should. "Never again" is more than a slogan. It is our inheritance. (Thank G"d we're standing up against the genocide in Darfur, although it even took a while the for Jewish community to mobilize on that.) It is not wrong to teach our children that terrorists and oppressors are people who have transgressed permitted moral boundaries of human behavior. It is wrong of us to allow them to generalize about an entire group of people on the basis of the actions of some. And we must not forget how easy it is for anyone to get caught up in mob mentality. It does give one pause when even Arab Israeli MKs speak out in support of the terrorist struggle, and we read of the thousands of Palestinians at rallies insisting that they will not stop until Israel no longer exists. Yet if G"d would spare S'dom and Gomorrah for just 10 righteous persons, should not we? Can we be certain there are no righteous, peace-loving Palestinians or Muslims or IRA members or Iraqis or Republicans or Democrats or Christians or Jews, or Janjaweed, etc.? Our children must be carefully taught to hate and fear. Let us resolve to teach all of them otherwise.

Migdalor Guy (aka Adrian)

In their editorial reviewing the secular year 2006, the Jewish Daily Forward included this disappointing fact:

"It was a year when Israelis rallied themselves to elect, for the first time, a
coalition of parties committed to ending the occupation of the West Bank and
seeking good neighborly relations with an independent Palestine — and when
Palestinians elected a government committed to rejecting coexistence and
destroying the State of Israel."

These are the kinds of facts that prevent me from being the kind of dove with relation to the Israeli/Palestinian situation as I was regarding, for example, 'Nam. When it comes to Israel, I am a hawkish dove, at best. Things so often seem so unilateral, and so rarely reciprocated. From both sides.

I cannot side fully with either the right-wing or left-wing of American Jewish Israel advocacy. Surely I am not alone in this dilemma?

Migdalor Guy (aka Adrian)W

This post was also posted as a comment to this article on JewSchool by Mobius. It describes the "Next Big Jewish Idea: Jew It Yourself" (JIY.) It sounds like a concept I could really get behind.

 

Here's what I wrote:

 

It's taken me a while to post a response so I hope these thoughts remain timely.
Though raised in NYC, and now living in the DC area, I spent ten years in Fargo, North Dakota, 8 years in Elkhart, Indiana, and a few years in other places like New Orleans, Clearwater, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee.

Though I am now enjoying and utilizing the more expansive Jewish resources of the DC area, my experience has taught me that Judaism can and does flourish in places like Fargo. In many ways, it takes more committment to be part of a small-town Jewish community.  It takes a little more effort to live Jewishly in places like Fargo as opposed to places like NYC.
It is, however, also true, that in a small community, you either afffiliate with whatever Jewish community there is, or you simply have no Jewish life. So the myth of Judaism requiring large communuties to thrive is largely myth--yet at the same time, there does need to be some kind of community - not necessarily synagogue-based, although this is the model used is most small communities.

While living in the Dakotas, I worked with others to use the then finally being discovered Internet (which I had been using since the time it was ARPANet, but that's a story for another time) as a tool to connect even smaller and more far-flung Jewish communities like Missoula, Montana, and Rapid City, South Dakota. We had ourselves a little Jewish network of the Plains and were able to share information and resources this way.

Having come so much further than it was in the 80s and 90s, I imagine that were I still in Fargo, the Internet would be providing rich content and support to help keep the Jewish community thrive. I am sure it is doing so for those I left behind in the Northern Plains.

As a Jewish educator, though now in the over 50 crowd, and employed in the synagogue world, I nevertheless remain convinced that this model is a dinosaur, and I am continually exploring alternative settings for supplemental Jewish  education that can serve the type of Jewish community that I have observed developing over the past decades.

I've been an active CAJE member, and have even chaired a CAJE conference. I do think that the organization was doing the best it could to be true to its origin as grassroots and outside the establishment. However, it has become the establishment, and, as a result, I believe it is veering in directions that, while they may satisfy the vision of an aging membership that is seeking more in depth learning and higher standards, is not at all the direction that it needs to go to serve the next few generations of Jews. It is too invested in the status-quo. There are a few others in the CAJE community who are willing to say such things openly (and by that I include both what is happening to CAJE, and my belief that we are entering a post-synagogue age) and I believe a goodly number who believe so but are scared of telling the Emperor he is naked.

Not just the leadership, but the rank and file in the Jewish world is a bit out of touch. They don't realize how married they are to the status-quo of synagogue-centered Judaism, and the current institutional system. 

And for those that are in touch, they often make the mistakes cited in your post, of trying to make Judaism like pop culture. Now, I am a firm believer in the co-option of popular culture in service to Judaism. I used SpongeBob as a prop and a hook for years-but I used it as a way in to young minds - not as the end product - and sought to use it to teach my understanding of Jewish "core values." Sure, there's a little shtick involved, but the product wasn't entertainment-it was Jewish learning. Crabby Patties weren't just a funny kosher joke-they were a path to serious learning about kashrut. And it worked. (I'm moving on to a new mascot, but have yet to find a cultural icon that crossed as many age barriers as SpongeBob. I am open to suggestions!)

I remember the session at CAJE last August when the "Throw the Jews Down the Well" clip from Da Ali G show was shown and all but two small segments of the audience of Jewish educators were in total shock. (The small segment not shocked were the groups of college-age kids that were there, plus the two or three in the over 50 crowd like myself who, as students of popular culture, keep up with such things. Sadly, even after it was revealed to them that it was an outrageous piece of cultural satire by a cutting edge comedian and social critic, most still considered it unusable in their school-ever. Now I, too, have a few mixed feelings about the Borat phenomenon, but I remain generally approving--I'll have to save this for a future post.)

Yes, we need some bricks and mortar - places to assemble, to socialize, etc. but there are other ways of making this happen. The "anarchistic" web can and will likely prove to be a component of this, despite reservations that even I have about it. Yes, being at a real Pesah Seder with real people is different (and better) than participating in a virtual one, even when the technology has advanced far beyond where it is now. But I participated in a virtual online Seder in the years when the entire process was text-based and run in a  DOS window. And it wasn't entirely empty and meaningless. You could feel the others as if some aspect of their souls was being transmitted through the ether along with the text. (As I once said to a critic of email communication "if e-mail is so impersonal, how come it is so capable of upsetting another person based just on words that I type?")

JIY is indeed part of the future-and I, too, hope to see it make a big splash, and thrive. It will take lots of nurturing, and have to fight lots of entrenched interests - and it will still requires some form of "common core Judaism" for the post-synagogue age to truly happen. G"d-willing, it will come to pass. Keep up the good fight.

Migdalor Guy
 

As I was reading and preparing to write my weekly Random Musing Before Shabbat I found myself drawn into a fascinating world. I decided this week to write about the haftarah for this weekly parasha (portion) of Vayigash. [A haftarah is a reading from the prophets that is read along with the weekly Torah reading in the Jewish tradition. It is said that their origin is from an early time when Jews were not permitted to read Torah publicly, thus readings from the Prophets which had some connection to a theme of the weekly reading were chosen to be read to remind us of that which we couldn't hear being read. The Torah, that is, the Five Books of Moses, is divided into 54 weekly portions which are read in a yearly cycle following the calendar of the Jewish year. Why 54? Well, that's a whole other story because a Jewish leap year has 54 weeks....]

Anyway, the haftarah is from chapter 37 of the book of Ezekiel. It contains the famous prophesy that foretells the eventual reunification of all the Israelites, meaning that the so-called lost ten tribes would be part of the reunification.

From these few short verses (Ezekiel 37:15-28) has been born legions of legends, myths, hopes, prayers, and yes, of course, some anti-Semitism. First, there are many peoples that claim to be descendants of the lost tribes from places in Africa, and Asia. There are theories about the British, the Japanese and the Kurds being remnants of the ten lost tribes. Even the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) have a big stake in this.

Just Google for yourself "ten lost tribes" or "lost tribes of Israel" and you'll see just how extensive the lore is and the theories are. I know that I am going to spend some time exploring all this mythology (and fact?) over the next few years at least.

I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that so much has been made of one short passage. After all, think of all the other things that have come about on the basis of only a few words.

If nothing else, it should certainly teach us to be cautious about what we say, and more so our leaders. (Of course, if we follow the "Motel of the Mysteries" theory, who knows what mundane and quotidian piece of text future archaeologists and anthropologists might stumble upon and choose to try and use to understand our times and culture. So we should all be wary of what we write)

A Happy, Healthy, and relatively Dubya-free secular New Year to one and all.

Migdalor Guy (aka Adrian)

19:14 You shall not move away the boundary (marker) of your neighbor which the first ones boundaried, in your taking possession of it, in the land which Ad"nai Your G"d gave to you to inherit.

It's a simple enough commandment. You can't encroach on your neighbors property by moving the boundary markers around. There's plenty enough material in other parts of this parasha (and in particular the verses that follow soon after, regarding the requirements for witnesses in a legal proceeding.)

From this fairly straightforward verse in Torah, the rabbis constructed an entire class of laws referring to hassagat g'vul, encroaching upon the boundaries of others. As an agrarian society, the land one possessed had a direct impact on their ability to live, to, as we say, "make a living." As we moved from being a largely agrarian society into becoming merchants and engaging in other trades, it became necessary to define what "borders" needed to be protected in order to insure a person's livelihood.

The Talmud has a great example of how this concept was extrapolated into halacha when it speaks of the rights of a fisherman to not have his fishing-grounds encroached upon by other fishermen with their nets, the Talmud requiring that the other keep away at least the distance of a fish's swim (which they defined as one parasang, equivalent to about 2.5 miles!)

The concept of hassagat g'vul, moving boundaries, was eventually extended to the concept of unfair competition. And from there, it was a short hop to become one of the underlying concepts behind what Jewish law has to say about the protection of intellectual property, and more specifically, what we now call copyright.

The Chatam Sofer, Rabbi Moshe Schreiber (1762-1839, chief Rabbi of Bratislava) used the concept of hassagat g'vul to underlie his opinion on a matter concerning the editor of a series of siddurim (prayerbooks) and machzorim (holiday prayerbooks) who was seeking to prevent others from republishing his editions. For the Chatam Sofer, it was ultimately a matter of comparing the work that the editor had put into his siddurim and machzorim - the layout, typestyles, etc. (though obviously not the basic text itself) to that of the fisherman who labors to lay his traps, set up his nets, and catch fish. The editor's work entitled him to derive income from his efforts, and it would be unfair of others to reprint his editions without compensation.

Much of what the rabbis wrote regarding intellectual property rights found its way into copyright laws in the U.S. and around the world. Unfair profiteering and racketeering by record companies, and other egregious abuses notwithstanding, the system has worked fairly well to insure the creator of an intellectual property the means to earn a living from those creations, and to be protected for unfair competition or use of those creations by others without permission or compensation.

And now, here we are, in the 21st century, with digital music, iPods, Napster, et al. Decades of copyright laws, and centuries of tradition seem to have outlived their usefulness.

Well, I certainly hope not. Judaism has managed its way around a host of major changes in society, and we'll find a way to manage this change as well. Yet the stage is already set for the almost complete tearing down of boundaries, by the alarming state of copyright abuse that goes on daily in our many Jewish institutions - synagogues, JCCs, schools, etc. I can't tell you how many times I have seen photocopies of complete textbooks being used, DVDs and Videos intended for personal home use being shown to large audiences. Photocopied music being used by choirs. Not to mention the times when I've overheard someone standing at the sales table of some musical artists at a concert or conference say "I'll buy these two CDs, and you buy those two, and we'll make copies for all the rest of the faculty.)

Modern technology and the digital age have become a double-edged sword (which, by the way, is another original Jewish reference!) While the technology has seen a flourishing of new works of Jewish music of all kinds, it is also enabling people to easily make and distribute copies without any recompense to the artists who created the work. The present flourishing may be reduced to a trickle if the artists can't make a living.

Yes, I'm an educator who runs a religious school, so yes, I know what a limited budget we all have to work within. I also direct choirs and know what choir music costs. And I understand with a deep passion how important the work we all do is to the future of Judaism. I'm also musician and arranger, and my work appears on a few recordings. So I am sensitive to both "sides" of this issue.

The rabbis knew this tension as well. As usual, not being of one mind, they differed on whether "copyright protection" would be a stimulus or deterrent. Some argued that without the incentive of some income from their efforts, scholars would be reluctant to write more commentaries. Others argued "the more Torah, the better." It's hard to argue with that. Just as it is hard to argue with the constant cry of "Lashem Shamayim" (for the sake of Heaven) that is used to justify the scandalous amount of copyright infringement that occurs each and every day in our Jewish institutions.

Yet, if what we are doing is truly "LaShem Shamayim" is it not all the more incumbent upon us to not infringe upon the boundaries of others in such a way as to possibly impact their parnassa, their livelihood?

We need not engage in a "glatt kosher" process here. Common sense must prevail. For example, these days many of the publishers of choral music will grant permission to use photocopies with the purchase of some reasonable number of print copies of the music. Using technology, many artists and publishers will sell you licenses to print out your, on your own paper and equipment, your own copies of music, books, etc. from PDF files. Digital rights management systems can be configured many different ways to allow the original purchaser to make a reasonable number of copies of the file, or burn the file to a CD more than once, but not unlimited quantities. And what artist, what merchant, for that matter, would not be at least somewhat receptive to offering a reduced price for quantity purchases? Film distributors do charge synagogues and other non-profit or religious institutions a lower license fee to show a film than they would charge for a commercial setting.

I don't know about you, but I feel better having paid the $250 fee to show "Paperclips" to my congregation than simply renting it from the local Blockbuster and showing it. By doing so, I just might help insure that the creative minds behind "Paperclips" continue to create films like that.

Maybe it's not fair, but under existing U.S. Copyright law, supplementary religious schools do not qualify for inclusion in the class of educational institutions that benefit from the "Educational Fair Use" provisions covering books, music, films and other media. (Most days schools would qualify, however.) Maybe that's something we ought to lobby Congress to change. I believe it should be "fair use" to show a portion of a film in a religious school class, or create a "class pack" of assembled chapters from a few different books, or audio clips from a few songs in a class. On the other hand, I do agree that we probably shouldn't be showing full-length commercial DVDs intended for private home use to an entire class, or a group of congregants without some kind of license fee. And we shouldn't be using photocopies of entire textbooks, or illegally copied CDs, mp3s, DVDs, etc.

Yes, common sense is required. Noted Jewish educator, author and lecturer Joel Grishaver, in his "meseket photocopy" (maseket is the word for a tractate of Talmud) recognizes that there are emergencies, last-minute needs, texts from extremely expensive original sources, etc. in which exceptions ought to be permissible and acceptable. Yet he states the other case quite succinctly: " The use of photocopied textbooks, workbooks, instant lessons, etc. to "save money" no matter how poor the school, is an act of theft and undermines the Torah that is being taught."

Elul is here. Time to do some inner soul searching. Maybe some organizational inner soul searching. Between now and the end of the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe, the High Holy Days) might be a good time to go through your shelves, files, Hard drives, CDs, DVDs, videos and weed out the obviously illegal (both under U.S. law and Jewish law) items we have and are using, for ourselves, and our institutions. Time to go to our boards and officers and executives and clergy and insist that we practice the Torah that we teach. Insist that we are not engaging in hassagat g'vul, moving boundaries.

I hoped I've stretched your boundaries a little with these thoughts. If you'd like to know more about copyright and Judaism, please visit http://www.havanashira.org/copyright.htm  

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian (Migdalor Guy)

©2006 by Adrian A. Durlester