Doctor Bean,

Have you been hanging out around the U.J.?
 

Not recently. I have taken many classes there in the past, and am honored to be the physician of a few of the teachers there. Why do you ask? (If you find out who I am from UJers, please keep it to yourself. Many of my patients would be appalled if they knew how conservative I am. I take the best care I can of all of my patients and try to maintain a very neutral professional image at work. This blog is not for that.)
 

Hi Doc,

I am not trying to out you. I value my anonymity as you do yours. But between your blog title (UCLA reference) and comments about knowing Danny Gordis it was a safe bet that you would be familiar with it.

Not a big deal, more of an observation. BTW, I don't know about you, but I am so sick of the rain. It is nice to have a brief respite.

Fortunately my home and job are in the Valley and the freeways are not always necessary.
 

"I am so sick of the rain."

It took me five minutes to get up off of the floor after reading that. You live in Southern California, right? Ease on up the coast to Santa Cruz for a winter, and meet Rain. What y'all get down there is showers. :-)
 

Nomad,

I know rain and believe me, there have been many occasions recently where it has been coming down with enough volume to make it impossible to see while driving.

Anyway, why would I want to play with Banana Slugs. ;)
 

"Anyway, why would I want to play with Banana Slugs. ;)"

They make a great substitution for a ball if you're playing ball tag, and are a delicacy once you're done. They go great with pickled okra.
 

AOL: In Rabbi Gordis's defense, he's not talking about random Jews spouting nonsense in bars (that's what blogs are for!) he's talking about people in authoritative positions making comments about highly complex and difficult issues as if the opposition didn't exist or had no validity. Rabbis didn't use to talk like that. It's one think for me to yell "Democrats are all nincompoops!" But when a leading Rabbi (and remember, Rabbis are civil servants in Israel, gov’t employees) says that soldiers should disobey orders, that is debasing Rabbinic authority and demeans the whole dialogue over what is a painful subject for both sides. If you haven’t read the article, do.
 

Straight from the story

Rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of Israel's Chief Rabbis, shared with us, the fortunate members of his flock (though as he's the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, I guess we're not technically full members of that flock) his profound insights about the horrific events. Why did this happen? Very simple, you'll be relieved to know. God is angry. The non-Jews of the world are obligated to fulfill the seven Noahide commandments (which include prohibitions on things like idolatry, blasphemy, theft, a variety of sexual indiscretions, eating the flesh of a live animal, and a few others). Well, seems they haven't lived up to that, so they had to be punished.and

But I didn't get very far, before one of the members of the faculty interrupted me, very politely, and suggested, "Well, since having power inevitably means that Israel is going to abuse it, maybe the Jews would simply be better off without a State. Maybe Judaism would be a better tradition, a more moral tradition, without Israel."As the good doctor said these are not average people making these comments. It is very troublesome.
 

Perhaps I've lost my mind. Or perhaps I've lost my sense of moral outrage. Nothing in the Gordis article is all that sensational to me.

A rabbi sees God's hand in the tsunami disaster. Are the rabbi's remarks consistent or inconsistent with the Torah? I'm no rabbi, but they just might be consistent, however offensive that may be to many people.

A European academic suggested that the Jews would be better off without a state? Shocking. European academics are usually so level-headed, but I'll take his side just for argument's sake. What if a God-fearing Jew loves his religion but thinks the Israeli government is causing trouble and making Jews look bad? That Jew is going to argue for a separation of temple and state.

Some American Jews wonder out loud if they should lobby Congress to limit foreign aid to Israel as a form of political protest. That's not outrageous - that's boring.

Gordis saves his best anecdotes for last. It IS wacky for a Jew to mourn Arafat, and it IS self-defeating for a Jew to resurrect orange stars and the Nazis at every available opportunity. Alas, the article kind of loses steam from there and it never really lives up to its promise to show how the Jews have become "completely unglued."

The best part of the article is its title: Jews Have Lost Their Minds. That is damn funny.
 

Speaking of others saying things like this... there are of course Muslim clerics saying this is an act of God to remind Muslims to follow their religion more closely (at least he blamed it on his own!). And of course some of the most fundamentalist religious followers, environmentalists, are saying it is The Earth, um, turning the tides on mankind.