It surely wasn’t Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson’s intention to lead with his chin or to guide Joe Biden to choose a running mate sure to help him in his bid for the presidency. But he did both.
To read what I mean, please visit: https://www.amimagazine.org/2020/07/22/talking-head-leads-with-chin/
My first column for Ami Magazine (this time around; you’ll see what I mean) can be read at: https://www.amimagazine.org/2020/07/15/hi-again-you-look-familiar/
Like most everything these polarized-perspectives days, talking about the police seems to demand the taking of sides — either with ‘em or agin ‘em.
But, of course, that’s nonsense. One can, and should, fully acknowledge the importance of law enforcement, the debt of gratitude we owe officers who put their lives on the line and the fact that the majority of them are public servants in the very best sense of the phrase — while simultaneously acknowledging that a systemic problem, at least in some areas, seems to exist in policing today.
The list of police shootings and unnecessarily violent restraints of unarmed people needn’t be reviewed here. In many cases there may have been reason to fear an attack by a suspect, but in many there was not. And the infamous cases of misconduct we’ve witnessed with our eyes over recent years are the product of bystanders’ phone cameras. There were likely many similar unrecorded ones.
And so “police reform,” even for those of us who deeply respect police, should not be an offensive phrase. There are reasonable measures to be considered.
Currently, for instance, military veterans are given preference in police hiring. An assortment of state and federal laws — some dating back to the late 19th century — require law enforcement agencies to choose veterans over candidates with no military backgrounds. One in five police officers is, quite literally, a warrior, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or some other assignment.
While the intent of front-listing veterans is a laudable one, the mindset of a soldier is not the one that will necessarily produce the best results in an officer of the peace. A reassessment of law enforcement recruiters’ favoring of ex-soldiers, people who are used to dealing with enemies, not citizens, may be in order.
Then there is training. In most countries, joining a police force is no simple affair. In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer. Basic training in the U.S. can take as little as 21 weeks and rarely runs longer than the six months required in New York City.
And the first emphasis in police training in the U.S., understandably, is on procedures and self-defense. Expanded training time would allow for more focus on things like crisis intervention and de-escalation.
An even greater potential reform would be transparency in negotiations between police unions and municipalities. More than 85% of union-bargained police contracts in major cities around the country include language limiting oversight or discipline of officers.
As a result, officers have been rehired even after being fired for fatal shootings. In 2011, an Oakland, California officer won his job back in union-negotiated arbitration after being fired for fatally shooting two unarmed men — one, in the back — in two different incidents mere months apart. In 2014, a similar union-demanded arbitration reinstated a Miami detective who killed an unarmed man in a shooting that a review board called “unjustified.”
And those are the known cases. Disciplinary records of officers are often kept secret. To its credit, New York City recently announced that its log of cases of officers who have been disciplined would be made public. That should be standard practice in all police departments.
Another good idea would be the hiring of more women officers. Just about 13% of officers nationally are women; in New York City, the figure is just shy of 15%. Women (apologies to anyone who imagines that women are no different from men) are less likely to use force or escalate a tense situation.
And, finally, a good amount of police reform would happen on its own if police were simply paid better than they currently are. Some states compensate their police fairly well and offer many benefits. But others don’t, and few occupations entail the degree of danger that policing does. Treating police as the true professionals we expect them to be would make a police career more enticing to more people, and increase the pool of those wanting “to protect and to serve,” who wish to demonstrate, in the words of the New York City Police Department motto, “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect.”
© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran
A piece I wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about how several example of recent Israeli television shows, including a new “reality series,” are serving to “normalize” charedim for non-observant Israelis can be read here.
An article I wrote for Forward on the targeting of statues of Confederate leaders and slave owners can be read here.
[photo credit: Rathkopf Photography]
If there were a contest for the most tasteless use of a slogan this summer, it would be hard to pick one out of several recent candidates reacting to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s disallowal of overnight camps in the state this year.
Two of the slogans are featured on signs being held by chassidic children in a photo that appeared online and in at least one respectable Jewish print publication. One sign reads “Kids’ Live Matter” [sic] and the other, “No camps, no justice.”
The third was part of a caricature in a Jewish magazine intended for young people. It portrayed Mr. Cuomo dressed as a police officer with his knee holding down a child wearing a summer camp t-shirt and crying out “I can’t breathe.”
What were the creative minds who thought those lines clever thinking? Did they not realize that equating the cruel snuffing out of lives with depriving children of a summer camp experience is obscene?
Please don’t misunderstand. Overnight camps are a very important part of many Jewish children’s lives and educations. Such camps provide some 41,000 young Jews with opportunities to grow physically, emotionally and religiously. Camps are particularly needed this summer, after months of children attending classes remotely and being denied the camaraderie and human interaction so vital for human development.
I fully realize that. And also that Mr. Cuomo’s edict was woefully wrongheaded.
He ignored a 17-page safety plan provided to him by a consortium of Orthodox Jewish overnight camps, signed by no less than nine nationally-recognized infectious disease doctors and medical professionals. It explained how precautions could be taken at overnight camps to minimize, if not eliminate, the risk of Covid-19 infections. The experts contended that children in camp environments would actually be safer in the protective bubble of isolated camps than they will now be if the edict stands.
But the cogent case for overnight camps doesn’t deserve to be sullied by outrageous, offensive comparisons.
Did the sloganeers consider for a moment how a black citizen, anguished by the seemingly endless parade of killings of unarmed black men and women by police, would perceive the “borrowing” of chants used to protest such carnage in the cause of demanding that… summer camps be opened?
Leave aside how a black American would feel. How should any thoughtful person feel?
And if it’s really necessary to bring the issue closer to home, how would any of us Jews feel if “Never Again!” was co-opted to describe some summer vacation resort’s pledge to not ever repeat the same entertainment experience? No need to even imagine. Just recall the howls of Jewish outrage last summer when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred (not even inaccurately) to detention facilities on the southern border as “concentration camps.”
More disturbing than the tone deafness of the offensive borrowings is the lack of empathy it reveals.
The Torah teaches us to treat our fellow Jews in special ways. We are family, after all, and family comes first.
But is the concept of tzelem Elokim limited to Jews? Does the word brios in mechabed es habrios (Avos, 4:1) not, on its face, mean all people? Did Dovid HaMelech not mean to include all human beings when he sang (Tehillim, 65:3) “You, Who hears prayer, to You all flesh will come”? Were korbanos not accepted from non-Jews in the Beis HaMikdash?
Is “darkei shalom,” for some reason, a lesser halachic ideal than others? Is not the goal of history, as our nevi’im prophesied, to bring all the earth’s inhabitants to recognize Hashem? Do we not then have to be concerned about them?
Back in 1964, Dr. Marvin Schick, a”h, writing in The Jewish Observer, asserted:
“It is our historical and religious heritage that compels us to sympathize with the plight of the Negro. It is unthinkable that a people so oppressed throughout history would not today rally to support the cause of the American Negro, now afflicted by the irrational forces of hatred and bigotry. Anything short of this by American Orthodox Jewry is to reject the principles that we have stood by through the millennia of persecution and to which we must remain equally faithful in a free society.”
Yes, there has been hatred for Jews among some blacks. I can testify to that from personal experience. Many experiences, in fact.
But I have also had enough interactions with black citizens of good will to know that the haters aren’t the norm. And all of us have witnessed more than enough in current events to know that being black in America remains a difficult, even dangerous, thing.
“Black Lives Matter” is a name that has been adopted by scores of organizations, some larger, most smaller. But Black Lives Matter is also an idea — essentially a reiteration of what was once known as the “civil rights movement.” That movement qua movement, as Dr. Schick wrote more than 50 years ago, is one that should resonate with us.
The concept of darkei shalom, if nothing else, should compel us to show black Americans, and all people, that Jews committed to living Torah-faithful lives are fully committed to the safety and equal treatment by society of all human beings, no matter the color of their skins.
© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran
A piece I wrote about my father, a”h, and one of many life lessons he taught me was published by Fox News today. It can be accessed here.
James Bennet, who served as the editorial page editor of the New York Times for the past five years, was recently walked to the journalistic guillotine by the powers-that-be at that once-venerable institution. His sin? A controversial idea appeared on the paper’s opinion page on his watch.
Mr. Bennet’s figurative head rolled out of the Times’ glass doors onto 8th Avenue because of two sets of riots — those on the streets of many American cities and a more genteel but no less disconcerting one in the paper’s newsroom.
The latter unrest followed the Times’ publication of the op-ed at issue, by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who made a case for the deployment of military forces and even, if necessary, the invocation of the Insurrection Act, to control attacks on police and looting of businesses that attended some of the recent public protests.
Mr. Cotton was, of course, echoing President Trump in that proposal. In his remarks at the White House before embarking on his trek across the street to pose with a Bible in front of a church, Mr. Trump called the street violence “domestic acts of terror” and pledged that “If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
One can find that threat, for its incendiary nature, entirely objectionable. One can find the very idea of using the military domestically entirely objectionable. One can find even the president himself entirely objectionable.
But no less objectionable should be the barring of a citizen, much less a sitting Senator, from expressing his feelings otherwise. And just as objectionable is wailing a post facto mea culpa for not having prevented the expression of that opinion.
But with a considerable number of the Times’ black staff expressing their feeling that publishing Mr. Cotton’s piece had endangered their lives — who knew that Times employees rampage and loot in their spare time? — and other staffers concurring that the op-ed was an odious and perilous thing, the swooning Gray Lady had to pop a pill, and her gentlemen-in-waiting dutifully beat their breasts in remorse.
Although Mr. Bennet and the paper’s publisher Arthur Sulzberger had initially, and sanely, defended the op-ed’s publication on the grounds that it was the paper’s duty to present views at odds with its own opinions, the swell of anger in the newsroom (and, reportedly, a number of cancelled subscriptions) quickly convinced them that Mr. Cotton’s words constituted a veritable call to fascism. Mr. Bennet admitted, or at least claimed, that he hadn’t read the piece before its publication, which an assistant had green-lighted, and thus he became the plumpest sheep to offer the angry snowflake gods. He quickly offered his resignation.
Leave aside whether the idea of calling on the military to quell domestic crimes is a good one. It is not. And leave aside whether threatening to do so was a good idea. It was not. Focus only on the right of someone to feel otherwise.
It’s always been an essential part of liberal philosophy to allow people to profess, and others to consider, their opinions. To be sure, an op-ed advocating armed insurrection or the shooting of protesters on sight would arguably be worthy of rejection by a responsible medium. A business is entitled to its standards, indeed obligated to have some.
But is the very idea of invoking an established federal law, in this case the Insurrection Act, which dates to 1807 but was amended as recently as 2007, that empowers a president to deploy military and National Guard troops domestically in limited circumstances, so beyond the pale?
Even conceding — though it deserves no concession — that such deployment here to stop violence on the streets would somehow endanger innocents, would an op-ed advocating, say, the deployment of the military in a hostile foreign country to protect Americans — an act that could much more easily result in casualties — be equally unworthy of publication and discussion?
Someone should introduce the Times’ editorial board to the Talmud, where the concept of presenting a misguided view of a law’s implications for a situation is essential to the ferreting out of the true approach. Putting forth something illogical or unreasonable isn’t merely a stylistic diversion, it is a vital part of the process of getting to truth.
And so, the paper could have best served the public by simply soliciting an op-ed countering Mr. Cotton’s point of view. (Hey, I was available.)
The irony here, for those, presumably including members of the Times’ editorial board, who consider the president himself a danger to American society, is that the paper’s action handed Mr. Trump a golden opportunity on a silver platter to reiterate his contempt for the “lamestream” media. Look, he could say (and did), the “fake media” are afraid to countenance any point of view that differs from their own.
And, at least this time, at least one medium could have no reasonable rejoinder.
© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran
A piece I wrote for Forward about what the Talmud has to say about the nature of men and the need for governmental authority, and the movement to “defund” police, can be read here.
In a few days, astute students of Daf Yomi will encounter a hint to a hidden life lesson of indescribable worth.
If, that is, they look closely at the mishna on 103a in massechta Shabbos that concerns the melacha, or Shabbos-forbidden creative act, of “writing.”
Actions forbidden on Shabbos are determined by which operations were necessary for the building and use of the mishkan, or desert-tabernacle.
Where was writing used? The mishna goes on to explain that the gilded wooden beams used for the structure – which was dismantled and rebuilt repeatedly – were inscribed with letters to indicate the placement of the beams. A similar system is used by many of us in building our sukkos.
What a keen mind will recall when reading about the definition of the melacha of writing is that, earlier in the tractate (73a), it was paired with its opposite number, “erasing,”
And why is erasing a melacha? Rashi on 73a explains that its forbidden-on-Shabbos status derives from the need the builders of the mishkan had to correct errors when the wrong letters were mistakenly inscribed on beams.
Now, stop and think about that. The mishkan-builders likely took drinks of water during their labors. They may have washed their hands and occasionally stretched. Yet drinking, washing hands and stretching aren’t thereby made into forbidden actions on the Sabbath. Why not?
Obviously, because they are not intrinsic to the construction project. Only actions absolutely necessary for the construction of the mishkan are designated as prohibited on the Sabbath.
And so, if removing mistakenly inscribed letters is the reason for the Sabbath-prohibition of “erasing,” then errors… must be… indispensable parts of the mishkan-building project.
That is the important truth hidden here: Erring is vital.
Mistakes are indispensable parts of every endeavor. No child walks until he first takes an uneasy step and falls; or learns to ride a bike without a minor mishap or two. The successes don’t come despite the first unsuccessful attempts; they come as a result of them.
Errors are in fact essential parts of every successful project. Duke University civil engineering professor Henry Petroski wrote a book whose subtitle says it all: “To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.” He makes the case that a successful feat of invention will always depend on a series of failures. Only the commission and analysis of errors, he elaborates, can propel any invention to perfection. “Failure,” Professor Petroski explains about engineering, “is what drives the field forward.”
That is no less true in the sciences. “An expert,” the famous Jewish physicist Neils Bohr once remarked, “is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”
And, most importantly, it’s true, too, in spiritual endeavors. When it comes to Torah-study thoughts, the Talmud (Gittin, 43a) teaches: “One does not stand on [i.e. understand] them unless one [first] stumbles over them.” Every talmid of Talmud knows that well; there is no comprehension like that which brightly dawns after one has made and recognized a wrong assumption.
Errors, moreover, are part of the project of life itself, a fact intrinsic to the concept of teshuva.
Among the published collected letters of the late Rav Yitzchok Hutner, the revered Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin from 1940 into the 1970s, is one he wrote to a student who had shared his despondence and depression over personal spiritual failures.
What makes life meaningful, the Rosh Yeshiva explained in response to his student, is not basking in the sunshine of one’s “good inclination” but rather engaging, repeatedly and no matter the setbacks, in the battle against our inclination to sin.
Rabbi Hutner notes that Shlomo HaMelech, King Solomon, (Mishlei, 24:16) teaches us that “Seven times does the righteous one fall and get up.” That, wrote the Rosh Yeshiva, does not mean that “even after falling seven times, the righteous one manages to get up again.” What it really means, he explains, is that it is precisely through repeated falls that a person truly achieves righteousness. The struggles — including the failures — are inherent to the achievement of eventual, ultimate success. If we find ourselves flat on our backs, we must pick ourselves up and resume the fight. And, if need be, again. And again.
And so, if we ever find ourselves succumbing to despondency or depression born of mistakes we’ve made, what we need to do is stop and remind ourselves why erasing writing on Shabbos is forbidden.
© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran