mentalblog.com comments:
This might explain a similar problem in Paris.
At the end of four posts we have learnt that the justice in the Torah is personal responsibility to the poor &the freedom to keep the fruits of one’s endeavors. The use of the state is both not Jewish and destroys the culture of personal responsibility in both the Orthodox and Reform Community.
There are some loose ends in the CHUMASH, which I assume has some claim to centrality even if tanach and choshen mishpat are in left field. There is shemita and yovel, there are the terumos umaaseros (various tithes and taxes for the Levites, the priests and the poor), there are rules to keep the land in the clan such as yiibum, there is the centralization of the cult and the requirements of visiting and keeping up the Temple (shekalim), there are required sacrifices part of which belong to the priests, and the forced conscription in the King’s armies for purposes of voluntary wars and the aggrandizement of the monarchy. All of these requirements are enforced by the State, and all involved significant redistributions of income.
The sense of the chumash is that it is trying to use the State, the judiciary branch in particular to limit the burden on the peasantry. There are restrictions on Hebrew slaves who became slaves because of poverty; there are rules of how to pay day laborers who have been forced to leave their land and become day workers. I didn’t see anything about cleaning up of dog poo. It gives new meaning however to the rule of lifnei iver, of not placing an obstacle in the path of a blind man.
In Paris, there is (or was?) a public service for picking up dog droppings. A public employee rode around on a scooter with a special vacuum cleaner to pick up after the Citizens' Best Friends. Israelis liked the idea, which they called a Kakno'a :-), but I am not aware of the Tel-Aviv-Yafo municipality every trying it out.
Jake in Jerusalem,
Your comment is extremely instructive.
I hate to criticize any aspect of life ba-Aretz, but what you describe is palpable evidence of the heartbreaking damage that socialism wreaks on the human spirit.
You know, whenever it was pointed out to the socialists, that their utopian schemes and social arrangements would never work, they always replied by explaining that socialism would create a "new man" and that their top-heavy bureaucracy would work when it was operated by the "new man" whose socialist humanitarianism would make it work.
In practice, we can see that the opposite is the case.
To be sure, socialism does create a "new man" -- but what a man! A monster!
For 3,000 years, the social culture of the Jewish people has been, as evanstonjew demonstrates, a culture designed to inculcate empathy, sympathy, compassion, kindness, and rachmones. The ethos of the Jewish "mensch" was fellow-feeling with the downtrodden, and solidarity with the oppressed. V'ahavta l'reacha kamocha.
And incidentally, evanstonjew, the mitzvo of pe'ah is directed at individual farmers and landowners, it is not a governmental institution. It is up to the landowner to decide how much to leave (this being of course one of the mitzvos without set limits that we mention every morning.) The mitzvo directs an individual course of conduct, it does not substitute a governmental bureaucracy for that conduct.
But in just a couple of generations under a Leninist regime of nanny-state support for every aspect of social life, rather than personal involvement in standing with and helping your brothers, the people become hard, selfish, and cruel.
The same thing is true, by the way, in Western Europe, where the socialism is less drastic, but the effects are the same. There is practically nothing in Western Europe to compare with the rich panoply of private charitable institutions and volunteerism that exist in free countries such as the USA. Nobody gets involved in any of that, since of course the government takes care of it.
The effect of such State substitution for individual responsibility is not the "withering away of the State" but rather the withering away of individual conscience and of the voluntary institutions that comprise civil society.
I have to think about this.
My initial premise for this conversation was that the dereliction of personal responsibility has been in the Jewish community long before they heard about communism. And even today in the post modern, post soviet and post social justice society the neglect of personal responsibilities persist. In fact in my last several posts I was trying to point out that jews were intoxicated with Communism precisely because it promised personal responsibility. They saw revolution as a moral call because of the total neglect and total lack of brotherly care in the squalor of the cutthroat shtettle.
In other words, Ben Gurion was not born hating religion. Ah, he could not foresee social ramification of his experiment, that's a different story.
if picking up dogsh** and other acts of "personal responsibility" directly correlate to the level of socialism in a country, then Deutschland is the bastion of capitalism.
Tzemach,
Your view of life in the shtetlach is different from the view presented, for example, by Yaffa Eliach in her book on Eishyshok. She presents the shtetl as a wonderful place. She has a website here:
http://www.shtetlfoundation.org/
In any event, socialism seems to me to be the opposite of personal responsibility. All personal responsibility is erased by the State, and the State takes care of everything, so there is no need of personal responsibility any more. I think that is one reason why people find socialism attractive -- they won't be forced anymore to deal with beggars on the street as if they were individual human beings, since the State will eliminate beggars from the street. The legitimate needs of all people will be taken care of by the State, and any beggars who remain will not be unfortunates, they will be parasites, to be treated as criminals. Thus the socialist takes care of his personal discomfort at seeing a beggar on the street, and gains permission to take out his anger and frustration on the beggar, in the guise of protecting the glorious State of the righteous Workers.
faruq, there is definitely an admixture of culture. Russian are no Japanese, Polish and not English, etc.
But yet the tragedy of the Besht revoltuion was that it enslaved the populace without care for the simple poor man. And in a cynical way they claimed precisely that.
Gandalin, read some of the books I have been writing about on this site. Don't take my word for it.
Communism was seductive power because young Jews have been disillusioned by the inability of an individual to do justice other human beings. All they saw around them was the abuse of poor by the rich and the Rabbis.
Tzemach,
I will order a copy of Der Nister's novel, in the translation that is offered already, and also if I can, a Yiddish edition, perhaps from CYCO.
I have no doubt at all that many young Jews were dissatisfied with the social life they saw around them, and were easily seduced by the lies of socialism -- just as many young people from the not-Jewish communities around them were seduced.
The remedy in this case however was worse than the disease. I have no doubt about that, either.
The socialist gulag was much more sadistic, more more severe, much more cruel, than anything dreamed of during the era of the Tsars. Capital punishment under the Tsars was practically unknown, for example, while the socialists murdered millions and tens of millions.
And specifically for the Jews, there is no doubt that Jewish religious and cultural life was much less restricted by the Tsars than by the commissars -- many of the latter being of course Jews themselves.
Gandalin, obviously I am in complete agreement with the above. But I am sort of past that and on to the question as to how this tragedy of communism was brought upon us.
And not just that but thew recognition that nothing changed after the communism and after the Holocaust. The Jewish communal structure that was the catalysis for the tragedy of communism persist today. Even the blow of Holocaust didn't not alter the pattern of injustice and abuse prevalent in the Jewish community.
faruq,
You'd have to take the pre-existing underlying cultural milieu into account before judging a society by the amount of dog waste on its streets. There is much less tolerance for dirt and disorder in Germany than in France, in general. There may also be a difference in how the streets are looked on. To the Frenchman, the street is a wilderness sort of space, it is not his personal space. And so cleaning up after his dog would be making himself dirty, whereas leaving it on the sidewalk would be keeping himself clean. There is little sense of communal responsibility for the cleanliness of the sidewalks. In Germany, at least when I was in Baden in the 1970's, the streets were in general much cleaner, there was always running water in the gutter, and the streets and sidewalks were managed as if they were indoor spaces. That has probably been the case for a long time. The contrast is perhaps with many cities in the United States, where it was once customary to leave dog waste in the gutter, but where, in the 1960s and 1970s, as more people kept bigger dogs, I think, the problem became worse, and after long and difficult public campaigns, municipal laws were established requiring individuals to take care of their own dogs' messes. The solution here was not, as in the example of the motorcycle sidewalk scrubbers that then-Mayor Jacques Chirac deployed, using public funds and public resources to take care of a private problem, but relying on individuals to manage their own problems.
Tzemach,
I have just received an interesting book relating to what you say about the failure of even the Shoah to alter certain aspects of Jewish communal life.
The book is "Eyes to See" by Rabbi Yom Tov Schwartz, on "recovering ethical principles lost in the holocaust," written with "the goal of restoring integrity, compassion, unity, and kiddush HaShem to their central role..."
Certainly Jews experienced problems and contradictions in their communal life, and many thought that a solution to these problems could be found in socialism.
My question is: were these problems in the shtetlach and ghettoes different from similar problems in the wider world, problems which drove non-Jews into the leftist movements of the day? Or is the intellectual history of socialism among Jews more or less the same as the history of socialism among non-Jews? Sometimes critics of communism see it as particularly attractive to Jews, or even as particularly directed by Jews. Many leading Bolsheviks were in fact from Jewish backgrounds, although I think that many of them were from assimilated or Russian-cultural backgrounds rather than from shtetl backgrounds.
Gandalin, I can only point you to this comment by Reb Schneur:
http://theantitzemach.blogspot.c...ely-
jewish.html
"Tzig,
Bemechilas kevodchem the phenomenon of Jews being in the vanguard of the Communist party is not unique to Mother Russia.
Google Bela Kun, who led a short lived Communist regime in your fatherland Hungary after WW1.
Google Anna Pauker from Rumania
Google Slansky and see who ran the CP in Slovakia,
Google Miklos Rakosi in Hungary and check him out. The list is endless.
Why they opposed religion. Just look around you today and use your imagination about how much worse things were in east Europe 100 years ago. Poverty, discrimination, White Slavery (check that out too) Urban blight in places like Lodz and Warsaw. Cantonistin in an earlier period.
And note the rabbis and rebbes were always aligned with the gevirim. They pose and posed with them in the Yated centerfold. They give the rich kavod. What exactly did the rabbonim do for the poor Jews in Czarist Russia ? Basically tell them to say Tillim, while the rabbis bowed to the gevirim and bought and sold shtelles. They also looked for shidduchim with gevirim.
Exceptions were to be found - the Lubavitcher rebbes took notice of this plight some others did too, but the clergy was full of all sorts of leidig geyers mashgichim, zogers, magidim , more horee few of whom were productive in any sense of the word, except for mounting shnorr campaigns. Little has changed except that today with all sorts of economic difficulties, there is still a tremendous amount of money.
Economics led to Jews joining the Socialists, Bundists, Communists and Poali Zion (the largest Zionist fraction by far). The poverty was like death and the rabbinic establishment was impotent to do anything to help Reb Yid. By the way see the recent post by Marc Shapiro on Seforim blog about rabbis and Communism."
http://seforim.blogspot.com/2008...-by-marc-
b.html
Gandalin,
"Bolsheviks were in fact from Jewish backgrounds, although I think that many of them were from assimilated or Russian-cultural backgrounds rather than from shtetl backgrounds"
this is definitely not accurate. Some of the assimilated jews had the polish and the education to climb the political ladder but there were many from the Shtettel, hundreds of thousands perhaps. They poured into the government hierarchy to fill the vacuum of the displaced aristocracy.
Tzemach,
Fair enough. I was thinking, however, of the "old Bolshevik" leaders, such as Yakov Sverdlov, Lev Kamenev, Lazar Kaganovich, the Karaite Adolph Joffe, Ilya Ehrenburg, Zinoviev, and Trotsky.
One damning characteristic of secular Israel is it's revulsion of all things Jewish. The mere suggestion of 'a more Jewish approach' to any problem or issue would be shouted down by most everyone, maybe even Shas. Without Jewish tradition, secularlists are trying to invent new traditions - and endangering the entire Zionist experiment.
Israel is struggling to keep the bankrupt and rusting mechanisms of Communism moving, even as the parts creak, grind, scrape and eventually break off completely. Hopefully, there is more hope for the wider Jewish world.
People wonder if Israel will last to celebrate a 100th birthday in 2048. I don't think that many worry about Jews celebrating their own existence at that time...
It is good of you guys to chazir over the evils of socialism. The videos I posted were examples of pathos and comedy. These few old Jews are what are left of the Bund and the idealism of so many Jews all over the world. Relax, the danger they will be singing the International in a neighborhood near you are not imminent.
You conflate state intervention with socialism. All systems have taxation enforced by law. In the case of Bush he passed tax cuts that favored the rich and inequality has grown by leaps and bounds during his regime. A man who spent two trillion dollars of our money settling scores with Saddam Hussein is not exactly a libertarian. Even if you believe that Hashem is a chusid of Ayn Rand, she never envisioned the use of the tax system to benefit the rich. $135 oil, which is effectively a tax on all of us, redistributes the wealth mainly to dictators and totalitarians around the world. All this talk of personal responsibility, though correct up to a point does not justify the blow back from the most un-conservative, fisically irresponsible administration in American history, dog droppings notwithstanding.
The issues we face today are global warming and the ecological future of the planet, depletion of resources and the need to lower energy consumption, stepping down from the neo-Conservative foreign policy into something less idealistic and so on. All these issues have nothing to do with personal responsibility, but have a lot to do with practical politics, like who you vote for and what you do to influence the oligarchies of the world to adopt more rational policies. If personal responsibility does not extend to voting and pressuring the oligarchies, no change from our present trajectory will ever take place. Of course since you love markets you guys will be ecstatic with $300 oil and a euro of $2.50. If not, say what you would do to prevent these outcomes that does not involve governments.
Jake in Jerusalem,
Very good point.
The Jewish tradition is more than 3,000 years old.
The communist "tradition" is 200 years old -- going back to Babeuf!
No question which is a richer resource.
(Of course, as Shafarevich (http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/
essay_frame.php?essayroot=shafarevich/&
essayfile=001SocialistPhenomenon.html) demonstrates, the socialist idea is as old as the Jewish tradition, and has antecedents going back to Plato and Qin Shi Huangdi. But "communism" as such, i.e. the Western socialist tradition, goes back most directly only to Babeuf, as described by Joshua Muravchik (http://www.aei.org/books/filter.all,bookID.115/
book_detail.asp).
evanstonjew,
Yes, it is easy to wax nostalgic about the good old Bundists.
But to the victims of the gulag, and of communist tyranny all over the world, your kvelling is no different than would be old national-socialists reminiscing and singing the Horst Wessel Lied.
There is of course no such thing as non-state socialism. All socialist projects are based on coercion instead of freedom.
Calling the price of oil a "tax" is just verbal legerdemain and demonstrates the extent to which the leftist paradigm removes all meaning from words, language, and discourse.
The current price of oil looks like the result of a bubble to me. What we've seen is the movement of speculators' money out of the stock market and into commodities. Should the price of oil ever reach $300/bbl, demand would be destroyed and the price would drop. And alternate technologies would be brought on line. The market will take care of our energy future far more wisely than a gang of socialist intellectuals.
The warming of the global climate which is used as a bogeyman by those who want to seize total control of the worlds' economies, ceased 10 years ago, despite increasing amounts of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. Climate changes are a natural phenomenon. Anthropogenic global warming is a complete fraud, brought to you by the same kind of people who brought you Auschwitz, the Kolyma, the killing fields of Cambodia, the 2 million "boat people," starving Zimbabweans, and the "great leap forward" -- socialists.
evanstonjew, how would government control the price of oil?
Perhaps we can keep India and China in perpetual poverty thus preventing the growth of middle class and hence the growth of commodities consumption?
Perhaps we can drill in Alaska and off shore to balance the grip of the petro countries?
Perhaps we can stop wasting corn on ethanol thus casing starvation around the globe. Another prime example of the government intervention.
Are you cool with any of these proposals?
Yes we need the alternative energy but there is a dramatic increase in venture capital devoted to the green research and this is path to resolving this issues not the government intervention. The only positive function of the government in this regard would be tax breaks for the green initiatives.
Gandalin… As everyone knows the Bundists were Mensheviks and lost back in 1905(?) to the Bolsheviks. Many were liquidated if not by Lenin then by Stalin. Social democrats were at the forefront of the fight against Hitler both in Nazi Germany and in Spain. You might not like them but to compare them to Nazis and my posting a You Tube video to singing the Nazi anthem is beyond debating, and is just plain insulting. You owe me an apology.
As to Tzemach’s questions my answers are no, yes and yes. Ethanol is a joke, and was made possible by a government subsidy. The subsidy plus $300 billion more in the FEDERAL farm bill are going into the pockets of large agribusiness all in the name of the poor dust bowl farmer circa 1930, talk about ideological distortions and personal responsibility. I was and am in favor of a two dollar oil tax. Had Bush imposed one at fifty dollar oil, the gas price might be the same but it would not be going into Saudi and Putin’s pockets. Bush has been opposed not just to Kyoto but has tampered with the govt. scientific agencies and continues to play the skeptic on global warming. I believe $300 billion has gone into the oil market by speculators and hedge fund people, and to avoid CFTC regs it is being done through the banks. These hedge funds are out of control. Most importantly peace in Iraq would bring 2-3 million barrels on stream. Each little piece requires enlightened government policy.
Gas drilling is way profitable at $8, we are at $12. Shale is profitable at $70. Solar as you say is finally attracting big money needs a long term floor, which Bush opposes, not $135 oil. How can I put it to you gently…I understand your hatred of Communism and Lenin. But you are walking around with a rear view mirror. Bush and Cheney’s government policies raised the price of oil. If someone asked you how do I get oil over $100 you might say invade Iraq and then both help and fight the Shia and Sunni without any clear idea who the players are or where you are headed. Then trash the dollar by running a huge deficit causing the world to switch to the Euro. I could go on but you catch my drift.
evanstonjew, for starters could you document Bush's opposition to the solar energy?
evanstonjew,
I apologize. You have a point, the Mensheviks were not Bolsheviks. And you are certainly right that the Social Democrats were the enemies of both the National Socialists and the Communists. But the socialism they espoused is still a failed, false idol.
As to the price of oil, you are mistaken. Yes, it would be profitable to drill for oil off the coast of Florida, but the Democrat-controilled Congress won't allow it. Only the coast of Lousisiana is exploitable, the rest of the offshore waters of the US are a "no zone." The Chinese (in combination with Cuba) are drilling for oil 50 miles from the US shoreline. The Democrats are trying to declare Canadian shale oil a source of pollution that can not be imported, and President B.J. Clinton, at the end of his ignominious 2nd term, signed a law making shale oil production in potentially the most exploitable area in the US off limits.
Not to mention the ANWR resource in Alaska, which Clinton rejected over 10 years ago because it wouldn't be on line for 10 years.
For starters.
http://renewableenergylaw.blogsp...-
renewable.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/
nati...rack=crosspromo
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/...ed-bush-budget/
http://www.npr.org/templates/
sto...toryId=17416001 (Tom Carnahan interview on wind, same foe for solar)
Can I now ask you to or Gandalin to justify one of the many claims you made without the slightest proof. Just kidding.
evanstonjew,
Which claim would you like me to justify?
The links you provided don't seem to be relevant to anything I've said here.
the links seems to prove that indeed Bush admin didn't allocate budget funds for the alternative energy sources. For whatever reason.
I want to say something about a general pattern which applies not just to this exchange but also to the exchange on Belz and other areas where we have disagreed. I approach many of these issues with a certain optimism and hope, a belief that solutions are possible with a little good will and decency. I have faith in people, Belzer chasidim, charedim, Reform and even those I oppose the neo-conservatives, the gush, the zealots everywhere. This sort of optimism I feel raises anxiety in others. People make fun of it. Someone comes down with cancer and good Jews say we should say tehilim or go with a kvitel to a rebbe, change the mezuzas. Prayer in these circumstances is optimistic and maintains hope, and makes outsiders suspicious, in the same way that spiritualist hokums on Oprah or walking for breast cancer or AIDS makes people nervous. One wants to say "Its terminal! Stop stuffing pieces of paper into a wall."
I feel the fierce rationality that is so tough that it destroys fantasy and enchantment, which hates idealism and romanticism in politics and religion, makes for a bitterness and anger so deep that no one comes out whole. It is in the end a formula neither for religious renewal or political action, and is in the end implicitly allied with the status quo which is simultaneously described as horrible and impossible.
You haven’t found a good word for Lubavitch, Belz, current Orthodoxy, Reform, Israeli society, Ukrainian rebbes and all the little guys, plain and simple Jews who find solace in contemporary Jewish life, and yet you are willing to speak on behalf of the Bush-Cheney energy policy. It is an odd sort of idealism at least by my values, and one that I would like to discuss, as I mentioned in my comment to your post on 5/21.
evanstonjew, you obviously have not been reading this blog long enough. My views have evolved even in the space of this and other forums. I see not point even arguing since it is abundantly documented, even here. You need to be more nuanced.
I have to say that it is you who injected Bush into this conversation, by the way of most crude and tired talking pints I might say. We are not talking about the elections, can you change the channel? You might be surprised what you hear.
Fair enough, it takes two to have a conversation. Sorry you see my remarks as crude and tired.I think your blog is great.
Crude is a bad word, I am sorry. But leftist/typical yes. I am sorry this just not where I want to go with my conversations. I might say that even Gandalin is too political for me. I am interested in responsibility as a metaphor for human interaction and relationships. This is all I have ever written about. I explore this point in the context of Jewish history.
This used to be a blog, now its just some notes I write because I can't help myself. I don't even care if people read it.
I don't know why oil goes up or down, I am not an expert on taxes. I don't know how solar energy will remedy the situation in my pocket book. I have no idea.
But there are things I long for. I write about longing for meaning, longing for friendship and longing for love.
Tzemach,
I agree that my posts here are too political. And my political posts on your site have generally been limited to my attempts to wean Yidden from their naive and overly optimistic belief in the lies of the socialists. The lies of the socialists are worse than the kvitlach given to the wunder-rebbes, because the socialists themselves admit that there is no Higher Power to which they might aspire or confide their hopes, and because it is all too evident that the socialist dream is a nightmare if not a mirage. Putting power in the hands of socialists has meant nothing but poverty, tyranny, and war for hundreds of millions of people, and it is not funny. That is I admit a very small contribution, and I don't claim for it anything more than that. When the subject comes up, I offer that perspective. I am all for romanticism and fantasy, but in literature, not in life.
Look I used to be a chosid that evanstonjew will never be and never was. So who the f. is he to lecture me about Beltz? This is all the same multicultural crap. Be open to everything but be nothing at any given moment. He objects to me bashing Beltz for the same reason leftists want to turn the world into a rosy mush.
At least with Gandalin you talk to a former commie, so you cut him some slack to work through his demons. Even when he says somehting so outrageous as there is no romanticism and fantasy in life...
evanstonjew:
"I approach many of these issues with a certain optimism and hope, a belief that solutions are possible with a little good will and decency. I have faith in people, Belzer chasidim, charedim, Reform and even those I oppose the neo-conservatives, the gush, the zealots everywhere. This sort of optimism I feel raises anxiety in others."
There is no anxiety, there is suspicion that all is nothing, there is no yearning for a serious spiritual discipline. Do not confuse this with optimism. This approach underpinned by the assumption that no one has truth or all have part of the truth. This is not optimism that is capitulation.
Tzemach,
Thank you for your kind words. I am sorry that I did not make myself clear.
Of course there is romanticism and fantasy in life.
But the basis of political life should not be fantasy or romanticism.
Gandalin,
In Simon S. Montefiore's biography of Stalin, he asserts that Lazar Kaganovich was raised in a frum home. That he came from the shtetl remains unclear.
rubber band, read the wiki of Kaganovich of course he is from the Shtetel.
when all the morons craweld back here?
Just merely pointing out that L. Kaganovich was not from an assimilated background as Gandalin asserted. No need to get so testy.
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