Category Archives: News

Thoughtless Jewish Jeers

I’m trying to understand the sort of mindlessness that expressed itself in the jeering of Treasury Secretary Jacob (“Jack”) Lew by some Jews at a recent gathering.

The third Jerusalem Post Annual Conference which took place in Manhattan on June 7 and featured Israeli and American officials and journalists, was convened with the hope of garnering international attention. It succeeded, if only in the widespread reportage of the way some in attendance reacted to Mr. Lew’s measured and accurate words.

Applause ensued when he told the crowd that the U.S. continues to consider Israel’s security a top priority as it negotiates a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities and that “we must never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

The Treasury Secretary then explained how the U.S.-led sanctions against Iran were intended to pressure that country to agree to negotiations about limiting and monitoring its nuclear program, and that they succeeded. The first murmurs from the crowd were heard then.

And then, when he asserted that Iran’s movement toward a nuclear weapon had been arrested for now, and that an agreement, if one is signed, would thwart the outlaw nation’s suspected designs, the booing began in ugly earnest.

Mr. Lew is an Orthodox Jew with impeccable pro-Israeli security credentials who worked in the 1980s with Natan Sharansky to secure freedom for Soviet Jews and served for a year as Mr. Obama’s Chief of Staff. With the knowledge of a true insider he went on to assert that “We are not operating on an assumption that Iran will act in good faith” and that “No administration has done more for Israel’s security than this one.”

Members of the audience openly jeered. One called out “Nonsense!” Another shouted “Chamberlain,” a reference to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease the Nazis.

According to one Israeli journalist present, it was “one of the surliest receptions ever accorded to such a high-ranking administration official by a Jewish audience in the United States.”

Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde tried to quiet the audience. Mr. Lew, looking sad, pleaded, “I only ask that you listen to me as we’ve listened to you,” to no avail.

Clearly taken aback by what transpired at its conference, the Jerusalem Post subsequently published an editorial calling Mr. Lew “a true friend” of Israel.

I do get that some American Jews regard any deal with Iran, even one that will include monitoring of all Iranian nuclear facilities and strict limits on Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon, as a bad idea. Even though the only alternatives are to do nothing or to attack Iran, which knowledgeable Israeli and American military and intelligence experts say would only somewhat set back Iran’s nuclear program and would further incentivize the rogue nation’s determination to attack Israel and the West.

But don’t those who feel that war is preferable to a deal realize that it is not only uncouth but counterproductive to express their view by booing an Administration official (much less an accomplished, informed and pro-Israel one like Mr. Lew)?

Apparently not. The mentality of such jeerers is that Jews are no longer in galus, that Israel doesn’t need the U.S., that her existence constitutes the geulah shleimah and that Benjamin Netanyahu is, if not Moshiach himself, his harbinger.

The catcallers were likely among those who decried the U.S. Supreme Court decision the very next day that ruled in favor of the White House and undermined an act of Congress that aimed to allow U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to request passports listing Israel as their birthplace.

As nice as it would be for the U.S. to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Yerushalayim, all American presidents since 1948, when the U.S. recognized Israel, consistently held the position that no state has sovereignty over Jerusalem. George W. Bush, no less than President Obama, refused to enforce the Congressional action.

And the ruling, in any event, was not about Israel per se, but rather about who gets to chart foreign policy, the President or Congress. Should Congress’s and the White House’s positions be reversed at some point in the future, the decision will prove to Israel’s benefit.

It was though, a timely reminder that the world, including even Israel’s closest friends, is not yet ready to recognize the unbreakable Jewish bond between Yerushalayim – the object of Jewish yearning for millennia – and Klal Yisrael.

A reminder, in other words, that we’re still in golus, jeerers and all.

Our Children are Children Too

Predictably, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to grant some relief to parents of nonpublic school children as they struggle to shoulder the costs of tuition has come under attack from public school union leaders – like American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten in this venue recently.

Ms. Weingarten portrays the situation as a zero-sum game, and proponents of the governor’s plan as unconcerned with the nation’s public schools.

No redder herrings have ever graced a trail.

All Americans, including those of us who choose private schools for our children, have a stake in a healthy public school system. We know that the vast majority of the nation’s children will be educated within the walls of public schools, and that, thus, the tenor of American society will depend on the quality of education in public schools.

No one wishes to deprive the public school system of any of the funding it deserves. And if the New York Education Department’s current annual $20.6 billion Operating Budget (plus its $12.8 billion five-year Capital Plan Budget to cover costs associated with building new schools, renovating existing buildings and investing in other new assets within school buildings,) is insufficient for providing a quality education to New York’s public school children, it should be increased

That, however, has nothing to do with the issue of helping parents who, for religious or other reasons, choose private schools for their children. The approximately 400,000 students in New York nonpublic schools are 400,000 children who are not costing the state the more than $20,000 per student that goes toward each public school child. There are modest entitlements that the state provides nonpublic school children, in the form of transportation, textbooks and special education programs. But the heavy burden of tuition for such kids falls on their parents.

Many of whom are lower- or middle-class. And so the governor’s plan will set aside $70 million to give low-income parents a – ta da! – $500 per child tax credit. It will also establish a $50 million 75% tax credit for contributions to scholarship funds to benefit low and middle income parents. Note the “m” in “millions,” and the “b” in the “billions” that comprise the Department of Education’s Operating Budget noted above. There are 1000 millions in a billion.

There are, as it happens, also substantial funds in the governor’s plan earmarked for public schools, notably a $20 million tax credit to improve public education and a $10 million one to reimburse public school teachers for supplies expenditures.

The governor’s plan, therefore, “yank[s] the ladder of opportunity out from under” no one. It simply provides some degree of aid to parents of children in nonpublic schools – without in any way affecting the tens of billions of dollars (note that “b” again) earmarked for New York’s public schools.

Ms. Weingarten suggests that commitment to public education “must be embedded in the precepts and values of our religion.” To be sure, concern about the wellbeing of others, especially children, is a high Jewish ideal. If Jewish values, though, are important to perpetuate, it would seem that a reasonable path to that goal would be helping needy Jewish parents afford Jewish educations for their children. UJA-Federation, which has spoken out in favor of the governor’s plan, certainly sees it that way.

Moreover, another fundamental Jewish ideal is “mishpat,” which might best be translated as “fairness.” Applied to children – all children – in New York schools that ideal would seem to lead toward rectifying, to whatever degree possible, a disturbing fact. Namely that the approximately 15% of New York parents who educate their children in nonpublic schools, which must comply with a host of state curriculum, testing and attendance rules and expenses, are taxed like all citizens, save the public school system millions each year, and yet receive a pittance in government assistance for their children’s education relative to what all public school students’ parents effectively receive.

Why Ms. Weingarten seems to see helping some American children – including those in Jewish elementary and high schools – in a constitutionally permitted matter as somehow less worthy than helping other American children is a mystery. But she would do well to ponder the truism that nonpublic school children are children too.

Or, as Ms. Weingarten herself writes, most poignantly, “The American dream belongs to us all.”

Who’s In Charge?

Some of us can remember when taking a plane was a pleasant experience, even exhilarating. Those days, of course, are long gone.

It used to be – if “good old days” syndrome hasn’t played with my memory – that only well-dressed and genteel folks flew, and that airport and airline personnel were uniformly polite and helpful. These days, air travel is a largely unpleasant affair. Airports are crowded; cabins, even more so. Seats are too close together, and fellow passengers, as a result, occasionally surly. Professional staffs can be less than congenial. Flight delays are frequent. And then there are the “security measures.”

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the TSA, or Transportation Security Administration, was established, and eventually made part of the DHS, or Department of Homeland Security, also created at that time.

Among the TSA’s 60,000 employees are the people who make passengers take off their shoes (good thing the “shoe bomber” hadn’t swallowed the explosives instead), pass through metal detectors and, in some cases, “pat down” shoeless passengers. They’re the folks who confiscate your water bottles.

And who, it turns out, according to a secret DHS “Red Team” report, managed to miss a good number of weapons and mock bombs smuggled past them, in 67 out of 70 tests. That’s a 95% failure rate.

DHS head Jeh Johnson initially played down that impressive percentage. “The numbers in these reports,” he said, “never look good out of context.” He declined, though, to add any context.

The TSA weapons scandal overshadowed a less-noticed earlier one, the revelation that the agency reported a large number of lost, stolen or missing security badges, along with uniforms and other devices used to control entry to restricted airport areas. Over two years, more than 1,400 badges reportedly went missing at one airport alone, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International. And 270 at San Diego International Airport. O’Hare International reported 336 lost uniform items over a similar period of time, and Philadelphia International, 253. Washington Dulles International lost 343 uniform items last year alone.

Yet, as incompetent as the TSA seems to have been, there have been no successful acts of air terrorism over the years since it was created. Now, what explains that?

Those of us who recognize a Higher Authority than the TSA know the answer. We realize that we are not to rely on miracles, and must employ hishtadlus, human efforts, to effect our protection. But we comprehend, too, that it isn’t our efforts in the end that yield our wish but, rather, the will of that Higher Authority.

The best laid plans, after all, employing the most capable people, can result in disaster.

In 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter ordered a Delta Force operation to rescue 52 diplomats held captive at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Of the five helicopters that arrived at the staging area, one encountered mechanical problems, another got caught in a cloud of very fine sand, and a third suffered a cracked rotor blade. The mission was aborted. And as the copters prepared to leave, one crashed into a transport aircraft, destroying both aircraft and killing eight servicemen.

By the same token, challenges that, by all logic, would seem hopeless sometimes turn out unexpectedly well.

In 1943, after more than three years of German control of France, the Great Synagogue of Lyon continued to function. That Erev Shabbos Parashas Vayishlach, the Lyon Milice, the Vichy government’s shock troops, decided it was time to end the Jewish worship.

As noted in “Butcher of Lyon” (Empire/Harper & Row, 1983), the shul’s rabbi survived the war and recounted how a member of the Milice quietly entered the rear of the shul that night during Kabbalas Shabbos. Armed with three hand grenades, he planned to lob them into the crowd from behind, and to flee before the explosions. After quietly opening the door, he entered the room unnoticed by anyone but the rabbi, who was standing facing the tzibbur, and pulled the pins.

What the intruder saw at that moment, though, so shocked him that he froze wide-eyed in his tracks, barely managing to drop the grenades and flee. Several worshippers were injured by shrapnel but none were killed.

What had so flabbergasted the Nazi was the unexpected sight of his intended victims’ faces. The mispallelim had suddenly, as if on cue, turned around as one to face him.

The would-be mass-murderer had entered the shul precisely at “Bo’i visholom,” as the tzibbur turned to welcome Shabbos.

So, on your next flight, as you pass through that metal detector, remember that your safety isn’t really in the hands of the bored-looking TSA people monitoring it, but in an immeasurably higher place.

Bias Ne’eman

By now, with a couple of decades of monitoring media on behalf of Agudath Israel behind me, I really shouldn’t be surprised by examples of journalistic bias. But there are times when I can still be impressed.

As I was by a recent news item from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the service used by Jewish media across the country and around the world. Its opening paragraphs read as follows:

This is how you launch a Hasidic shtetl in 21st-century America.

Step 1. Find a place within reasonable distance of Brooklyn where the land is cheap and underdeveloped.

Step 2. Buy as much property as you can in your target area – if possible, without tipping off locals that you plan to turn it into a Hasidic enclave.

Ensuing “steps,” according to the article, include building “densely clustered homes” and a religious “infrastructure.” And, finally: “Market to the Hasidic community and turn on the lights.”

The writer was referring to a Jewish developer’s purchase of land and construction of homes in the Sullivan County town of Bloomingburg. The article goes on to itemize some of the purchases – a “house with blue shutters,” a “hardware store,” a “pizza shop,” apartments “originally built as a senior housing development,” as examples of real estate purchases – and notes that “meanwhile, in Brooklyn… Yiddish-language newspapers began to run advertisements touting” the new development.

The piece goes on to describe some local residents’ dismay at the notion of an influx of chassidic Jews; as well as accusations, lawsuits and counter-lawsuits.

There is a legitimate story here, and there are two sides to it. People who have lived for years in a rural, bucolic setting are understandably concerned about possible changes to their neighborhood. Then again, neighborhoods change (as we “wandering Jews” have all too often experienced). And upstate New York is a prime area for both business and residential development – which will yield the region economic benefits.

The JTA piece gives prominent voice to local residents who feel they had been “hoodwinked” by the Jewish developer, and seems to endorse that assertion (see “Step 2” above). I have no idea whether the developer acted ethically. The article, however, ignores his denial of any wrongdoing.

And is marketing a development to a particular community somehow offensive? Would it be if the community at issue were blacks or Asians or Swedes?

What’s more, as if to ensure that readers not dare to think of harboring any good will toward the chassidim seeking a better life upstate, the writer takes pains to note the “cautionary tale” of the Ramapo school board in Rockland County, which “had been taken over by a Hasidic majority that was stripping local public school budgets and selling off public school buildings to yeshivas at cut-rate prices.”

The implication, of course, that the Ramapo school board cynically plundered public schools is the gnarled (and somewhat anti-Semitism-tinged) narrative of some local residents.

The truth of the matter is rather less exciting: The state funding formula, and laws mandating the provision of textbooks, school transportation and special education services to all school children, simply left insufficient funds to maintain some extracurricular programming and teachers in the district’s public schools. As to “selling off public school buildings to yeshivas at cut-rate prices,” one (non-chareidi) real estate appraiser pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge involving the sale of a public school.

Were the JTA offering an opinion piece, its snark and disregard of objectivity would be, although distasteful, acceptable. Op-eds, after all, are expected to be partisan. But the piece is a news item. And Journalism 101 requires fairness and the presentation of both sides of an issue.

JTA is generally a responsible news organization and the writer of the Bloomsburg piece is someone I think highly of; I don’t believe he was motivated by conscious ill will. But, as a non-chareidi Jew, he may share some of the subliminal negative feelings all too many harbor toward those they regard as backward or extreme in their mode of living.

When I contacted him to express my chagrin at his piece, he responded that he simply described things as he saw them. Asked about his article’s cynical tone and lack of objectivity, he declined to defend it, writing only that “I know I’m right.”

Such things confirm my conviction that general Jewish media – and non-Jewish media – would be best served were their reporters on things Jewish to bear surnames like Johnson or O’Brian. Distance is what best serves objectivity.

As the writer William Saletan once wisely observed: “There’s a word for bias you can’t see: yours.”

Ramapo School Board Bashing Spills Onto NYT Op-Ed Page

The latest in a long-running series of attacks on the largely Orthodox East Ramapo school board came in the form of an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times.

The opinion piece was written by New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch and David G. Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center, a public school advocacy group. And, like its predecessors, it presented a host of highly charged and equally highly misleading assertions.

The writers claim that the school board has “denied” public school children “their state constitutional right to a sound basic education”; that it “persistently failed to act in the best interests of its public school students”; and that it “slash[ed] resources in its public schools [while] vastly increas[ing] public spending on private schools.”

The first two claims are demonstrably false, and the third one is misleading to the point of slander.

The facts:

State funding to all New York school districts, including East Ramapo, is based on a statutory formula involving property values, income levels and public school student numbers. Education funds are provided accordingly; wealthier districts, fairly, receive less government funding than poorer ones.

East Ramapo’s demographics – approximately 24,000 students in nonpublic schools, only about one-third that number in public schools – and relatively high property values, result in a skewed picture of the public school population’s wealth, resulting in state funding that treats East Ramapo as if it were one of the wealthiest school districts in the state, when it is in fact one of the poorest.

The school board is required by law to provide students in all the district’s schools, public and private alike, with textbooks and bus transportation; and to provide special education services to all schoolchildren in an educationally appropriate setting.

And providing those legally mandated services is precisely what the board has done, in accordance with its statutory obligations.

Unfortunately, after those expenditures were responsibly made, insufficient funds remained to maintain some extracurricular programming in public schools – thinks like music or sports teams. Those are valuable activities, to be sure, but they are not part of students’ “constitutional right to a sound basic education.” And with no money to continue the supplementary programming, the board had no fiscally responsible choice but to end them – until the state provides increased funding to the district.

As East Ramapo Superintendent Joel M. Klein (who is not an Orthodox Jew) noted, “You can blame it on Jews, you can blame it on yeshivas, but the flawed state aid formula and funding cutbacks are the real culprit.”

Thus, the school board’s following the law is what has earned it the opprobrium of Ms. Tisch, Mr. Sciarra and others. They seem unaware, or choose to ignore, the salient fact that all schoolchildren, even Orthodox ones in yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs, need and are legally entitled to textbooks and a way to get to school.

The insinuation that imagined sinister charedi villains (some do indeed wear black hats) on East Ramapo’s school board have systematically plundered the pot of local education funds to favor yeshivos over public schools is, bluntly put, an invention. And a deeply irresponsible one, to boot, as it has fostered blatant resentment of Jews in the local community. There have been outright anti-Semitic comments made in public places, including school board meetings. One parent suggested that “Well, we want to send the Jews back to Israel.” Another compared the board to “the soldier who has committed war crimes who claims he was only following orders.”

Indeed, with increasing national attention being focused on the East Ramapo school district, local anti-Semitism is going viral and metastasizing into something far more dismaying, far more dangerous.

When a newspaper like The New York Times features an op-ed provocatively entitled “A School Board that Victimizes Kids,” the text of which surrounds a prominently displayed “kiddush levana osyos” pull-quote announcing “In a mostly Orthodox Jewish community, minority students suffer,” the harsh glare of incitement envelops us all.

It is refreshing to discover that not all East Ramapo’ans are being hoodwinked by the rabble-rousers. Consider the words of Brendel Charles, a black councilwoman for the town of Ramapo, who admitted to Tablet Magazine that, while “she originally believed the problem was that the ultra-Orthodox members of the board were making decisions without regard to others in the community,” she came to realize, after her husband joined the school board, “that… the school board members weren’t trying to hurt the public school kids,” but rather that “we don’t have the money” to provide the services needed.

Would that Ms. Tisch and Mr. Sciarra reach such enlightenment.

Ism Schism

Liberal-minded American Jews rightly regard Pamela Geller, who organized the Garland, Texas cartoon-of Islam’s-founder contest earlier this month, as an irresponsible provocateur. What’s odd is that many of those very same liberal-minded American Jews enthusiastically champion (and generously support) another irresponsible provocateur.

That would be the “Women of the Wall” – the attention-addicted feminist group bent on holding vocal women’s services at the Kosel Maaravi that offend the sensibilities of the traditional Orthodox women and men who most frequent the site and have regularly prayed there in traditional fashion for decades.

It might seem at first thought that Ms. Geller’s stunts are in a category of their own. After all, by snubbing her nose at the Muslim world, she courts violence of the sort that extremists within that world so readily and joyfully embrace. In fact, her Texas event attracted not only a small crowd but two angry and armed Islamists who sought to spill blood but who were, baruch Hashem, killed before they could wreak the havoc of their dreams.

But Ms. Geller isn’t misguided only because of the violent reactions she invites. She is misguided because, put simply and starkly, it’s wrong to provoke people. There is nothing wrong with condemning Islamist terrorism or holding the banner of free speech as high as one chooses. But to try to make one’s points by insulting the sensibilities of all Muslims is boorish.

Which brings us to the “Women of the Wall.” They are free to make the case that their feminist vision should trump Jewish tradition. But seeking to flaunt their conviction in the faces of others for whom it is anathema is crass.

In its mission statement, the group declares its desire “to change the status-quo” at the Kosel, and that it stands “proudly and strongly in the forefront of the movement for religious pluralism in Israel.” Were it well-mannered, it would limit itself to lobbying Knesset members and making its case to the public in as reasoned a manner as it can. Instead, though, it chooses to push its program squarely and harshly into the faces of Jews who cherish the “status quo,” i.e. the Jewish mesorah, and oppose the “religious pluralism” that seeks to undermine it. That’s not advocacy; it’s indecent.

Celebrated writer and translator Hillel Halkin, no traditional Jew, doesn’t generally cover his head. Yet he has written that, “in certain places – on a rare visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, for example – I’ll put on a kippah even though I resent having to do it.” And, referencing the Women of the Wall, he shared his imagined reaction were a fellow non-kippah-wearer to invite him to “a demonstration of bare-headed Jewish men at the Wall [where] we’re going to pray and sing and keep coming back every month until our rights are recognized.” He would, he writes, “politely tell him to get lost.”

First, though, he writes, he would challenge the inviter: “Why insist on [forcing your issue] in the one place where it’s going to offend the sensibilities of hundreds or thousands of people?… If you need to go to the Wall, just cover your head and don’t indulge in childish provocations.”

Women of the Wall’s quest, Mr. Halkin asserts, has “to do only with the narcissism of thinking that one’s rights matter more than anyone else’s feelings or the public interest.”

That narcissism is even more pronounced these days, as – for better or worse – a temporary platform for “non-Orthodox egalitarian prayer” has been prepared at Robinson’s Arch, adjacent to the Kosel plaza, facing the Kosel and no less holy than where traditional prayer has been the norm. Women of the Wall’s leader, Anat Hoffman, though, has dismissed that accommodation as a “sunbathing deck” and “second-rate.” Her group has apparently opted to shun the alternate site, preferring instead to continue to try to upset fellow Jews in the place where they have prayed in the traditional manner since 1967.

Shavuos approaches. The anniversary of the moment when true Jewish unity was forged, when our ancestors – including those of Mrs. Hoffman and her American Jewish supporters – stood “like a single person with a single heart” at the foot of Har Sinai.

What unified Klal Yisrael then, of course, was their declaration of naaseh v’nishma, their embrace of the Torah whether or not they could “hear” everything it requires of them. It was a commitment, in effect, to place the Torah above all else, above all the isms of the time.

And of the future, something contemporary provocateurs and their supporters might do well to ponder.

Musing: Science Catches Up to the Torah

Interesting news reported this morning about a team of Yale paleontologists who applied a set of algorithms to genetic and morphological data and concluded that the ancestor of living snakes had hind legs, complete with toes and ankles.

it’s reminiscent of the late Carl Sagan’s observation that pain in childbirth seems to exist only in human beings, the result of a relatively sudden, “explosive” evolutionary growth in the size of the human cranium to accommodate the large human brain. The brain, that is, that is able to engage in rational thought and make choices not born of mere instinct. Daas, in other words, yields bi’etzev teildi banim.

A World of Wastage

The recent rioting in my home town Baltimore brought two memories to mind. One was the 1968 riots, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I was fourteen, and while we lived several miles from where that violence transpired, it affected Jewish-owned stores in the inner-city, and it taught those of us who were born after the Second World War that malevolence and mayhem remained, unfortunately, alive and well.

Ostensibly, the recent rioting was a reaction to the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, whose spinal cord was nearly severed when in custody. Peaceful marches to protest that death were understandable, and in fact took place. (The death was eventually ruled a homicide by Baltimore State’s Attorney.) But then legions of young black men, many of them apparently high schoolers, began taunting and attacking police, setting fires and looting stores. Most telling were the delighted smiles on many looters’ faces, indelibly captured on film. If Mr. Gray was at all in the minds behind the faces, he had been grossly obscured by something else, an ugly anarchistic glee.

The rioters’ small minds weren’t likely capable of appreciating the irony of their actions. Not only the self-evident irony that they were destroying their own neighborhood (including a senior citizens residence under construction). But also the irony of the fact that the image they projected to the world is precisely what feeds negative preconceptions about black men, of whom Mr. Gray was only the most recent to die as a seeming result of police actions.

That’s what Elizabeth M. Nix, assistant professor at the University of Baltimore and co-editor of the book “Baltimore ‘68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City,” told an interviewer, she is “nervous about”: “more violent images, more reasons for people to stereotype us.”

Baltimore’s mayor and Mr. Gray’s mother strongly decried the rioting. A lawyer speaking for the dead man’s family said baldly that the rioters “dishonored Freddie’s legacy.” And President Obama succinctly characterized the rioters “who tore up” Baltimore as “criminals and thugs.”

Only the ethically unbalanced could (and did) try to justify the Baltimore violence. Could there, though, be something for those of us who would never think of committing burglary or arson to glean from the visceral disgust we felt at the rioters’ actions?

That question brings me to the second thing I was reminded of by the wanton destruction in Baltimore: the Sefer Hachinuch’s words on bal tashchis, offered in connection to the prohibition against cutting down a fruit tree during a siege (mitzvah 529). The Baal HaChinuch (in loose translation) writes:

“Included in the prohibition is the destruction of anything for no reason… The way of meticulously religious Jews is to love peace and to rejoice in the welfare of others… they will not destroy even a grain of mustard… and any destruction that they see causes them pain … Not so evil people, cohorts of demons, who rejoice in the destruction of the world…”

“Rejoice in destruction” well characterizes the Baltimore rioters. But we might ponder the positive example the Baal HaChinuch provides. For the Torah bar here is a high one.

Ours is a world of wastage. Not only grains of mustard but unimaginable amounts of perfectly serviceable food are daily relegated to the garbage dump. And it’s not only storekeepers and caterers (both of which are often required by law to dump past-prime produce) but all too many of us who see the value of things only in dollars, cents and convenience. Why bother “recycling” that leftover challah into a kugel for next week when kugels will be on sale at the store? Why freeze those leftover broken hamburgers when they don’t look appetizing and, anyway, the Nine Days are coming? Why make the effort to ascertain whether those items are really chametz when it’s so much easier to just toss them as part of our “spring cleaning”?

And who among us thinks – as my mother, a”h, who was more keenly attuned to the import of bal tashchis than most of us, did – of using a plastic or foam cup more than once? And when do we toss items of clothing – when they are in fact worn out, or when we simply fancy a change.

Admittedly, it’s odd to be stirred to such thoughts by the Baltimore rioting. Intentional, wanton destruction, after all, is a far cry from simple thoughtless wastage. But lessons for our own lives can lie in unexpected places, and we do well to try to find them

Inform or Incite?

Many who recognize the evil that permeates radical Islam likely felt a reflexive satisfaction at the recent ruling of U.S. District Judge John Koeltl that New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority cannot reject an anti-Islamist advertisement.

The ad, created by the “American Freedom Defense Initiative” (AFDI), presents a keffiyeh-wrapped head of a man, only his eyes showing, next to the words: “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” a quote attributed to Hamas television. Below that is the legend: “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”

That final phrase is a pointed parody of a Muslim advocacy group’s ad campaign several years ago to try to detach the word “jihad” from its “holy war” connotation.

Telling quote, clever ad. And, according to Judge Koeltl, within AFDI’s rights to run.

The MTA had notified AFDI that it would not accept the ad (one of four that the group purchased space for on the sides of New York buses) because it could incite violence. A simpleminded Muslim, the MTA claimed, might misunderstand the ad’s true message and be inspired by its quote to kill Jews. Rejecting that argument, Judge Koeltl noted that the ad had had no such effect when it ran in San Francisco and Chicago in 2013; and he ruled that “Under the First Amendment, the fear of such spontaneous attacks… cannot override individuals’ rights to freedom of expression.” (The MTA has a month to appeal his decision and has said that it will reject all political ads.)

Judge Koeltl, apparently referencing a disclaimer to accompany the ad, also said he believes the MTA underestimates “the power of counter-advertisements to explain that the MTA does not endorse the ad…”

The person behind AFDI is activist Pamela Geller. She is, laudably, committed to exposing Islamist extremism. But she has also given ample cause to doubt her judgment. She has written, for example, that “Hussein” – her way of referring to President Obama – “is a muhammadan [sic]. He’s not insane … he wants jihad to win.”

And she responded to criticism leveled at her by several prominent Jewish organizations by labeling them “Dhimmi Jewcidals” and contending that they are worse than “the Judenrat [which] didn’t protect and defend the Nazis’ war on the Jews [but only] went along… They didn’t advance and promote it.”

She also is planning a contest for the best cartoon of the founder of Islam. The “Draw the Prophet” event is scheduled for May 3, in the same Garland, Texas location where a Muslim group held a solidarity conference in January. If she imagines that non-radicalized Muslims will not be insulted by her contest, she has a formidable imagination.

And the AFDI ads, although their points are valid ones, present several problems. First, they are read by many as implicating not only those who use their religion to spew hatred and wreak mayhem but all Muslims. Ms. Geller denies that accusation, but it’s not an unarguable one.

Secondly, while the ads aren’t likely to be misunderstood as encouraging violence against Jews, they are entirely likely to foster ill will among Arabs and Muslims – against Ms. Geller and, perforce, all defenders of Israel in general, who will be seen, fairly or not, as her enablers.

Thirdly, the same First Amendment right that permits the AFDI ads permits potential ads portraying Israel as a murderous, fascist state, or Jews as nefarious would-be world-domineering devils. Those contentions may be lies but such false speech is arguably free speech too. Does Ms. Geller really want to risk igniting an ad war?

To be sure, there is a need to call attention to the evils of Islamism and to try to undermine anti-Israel sentiment, but attempting to do so with inflammatory ads on the sides of buses may not be the most effective way to advance those goals. Or the right way.

Informing is one thing; incitement, another.

A spokesman for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t mince words. “These anti-Islamic ads,” she said, “are outrageous, inflammatory and wrong… While those behind these ads only display their irresponsible intolerance, the rest of us who may be forced to view them can take comfort in the knowledge that we share a better, loftier and nobler view of humanity.”

That loftier and nobler view of humanity may or may not be justified. But that’s not the issue. The issue is whether ads like AFDI’s help or hinder the goal of winning hearts and minds.

The answer seems obvious.

Shooting From the Heart

Although blacks constitute approximately 13% of the American population, the FBI reported in 2013 that 38.5% of people arrested for violent crimes were African-Americans.

Statistics like that one, coupled with a largely unsavory urban black culture (not to mention what passes in some circles for black leadership), predisposes many of us to assume the worst about all blacks – or, at very least, to be sympathetic to law enforcement officers in their dealings with black suspects.

And, as a result, many white Americans tend to be wary of claims that black Americans are unfairly singled out by police for arrest, mistreated and even killed without justification.

So when, in 2013, George Zimmerman, a volunteer with a local “Neighborhood Watch” in Sanford, Florida, was acquitted by a jury of shooting to death Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth whom Mr. Zimmerman was following (against orders from a dispatcher to not do so) and with whom he got into an altercation, many of us felt that the volunteer’s claim that he killed the youth in self-defense was plausible, if not probable. The subsequent protests over the killing were regarded by many as an indefensible rush to judgment.

And last year, when Eric Garner, who was illegally selling individual cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner, died after being put in a chokehold by police, it seemed self-evident that the overweight and asthmatic black man’s death was unfortunate but didn’t negatively reflect on the officer who applied the chokehold and who ignored Mr. Garner’s 11 wheezy pleas that “I can’t breathe.” When a grand jury declined to indict the officer, that judgment seemed vindicated.

It was also last year that a grand jury elected to not indict Ferguson, Missouri policeman Darren Wilson, for killing Michael Brown, a black youth, in the line of duty; and the U.S. Justice Department declined to prosecute the officer for a civil rights violation. There were widespread protests over that killing, but also a widespread sense that the reaction then, too, had been misguided, and the protesters’ claims of police racism unjustified.

Then, though, came the blatantly racist e-mails exchanged by various Ferguson court and police employees, which led the Justice Department to assert “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department that violates the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and federal statutory law.” Mr. Wilson was not personally implicated in that ugliness, but the culture of bias clearly existed.

And now we are confronted with the case of Walter Scott, the 50-year-old unarmed black man stopped by a North Charleston, South Carolina police officer for driving with a broken taillight. Mr. Scott was shot in the back and killed when he fled (presumably, according to reports, because he feared being taken into custody over missed child support payments).

Of all the recent cases, this is the only one where we needn’t – indeed, cannot – rely for judgment on either our preconceptions or anyone’s word. A bystander’s cellphone video of the incident shows the policeman, Michael Slager, aiming and shooting at Mr. Scott’s back multiple times.

And there’s audio, too, of Mr. Slager telling someone, presumably his wife, that he had killed somebody who had “grabbed my Taser” – the stun gun used to subdue people engaged in violence or resisting arrest. In the video, the policeman is seen calmly taking something from his patrol car, walking over to the man he had just shot to death and dropping the object near his body.

Mr. Slager is charged with murder.

There are, I think, two takeaways from the most recent story. One is something the alleged murderer discovered in a this-worldly way but that believing Jews know well in a more profound one: “There is an eye that sees and an ear that hears” – and, of course, “all your deeds are recorded…” (Avos 2:1).

The other is that, while it’s only human to harbor preconceptions, it’s important to realize that presumptions can be wrong, and to recognize that racial prejudice, like religious prejudice, exists, and can lead to terrible things. Yes, most police are upstanding public servants who would never mistreat any citizen. But by the same token, most blacks are law-abiding citizens. There are black criminals, to be sure; but there are also trigger-happy racist cops.

And if any group should be rightly disturbed by the specter of innocent people being killed by armed authorities, it should be one that has been victimized by hatred and violence over most of recorded history.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reflections on Jews, Judaism, Media and Life