Asael XV

This is part of my ongoing novel. Think of it as Killer Angels taking place in a musket and magic fantasy world with characters that combine the religious sensibilities of American revivalism with Beowulf-like blood feuds. All this while engaging in Talmudic style dialectics. "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" is about to take on a whole new meaning.


Introduction, A Note from the Author, Prologue, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV


Asael found himself, midmorning the next day, lying on his back reading one of his favorite books in his favorite reading place. The book was Reginald Scott's Hammer of Witch Hunters: Tales of Fanaticism and Greed and Asael was lying on top of a book shelf with a drop of more than thirty feet to his side:

In the Jaws of Captain Eryn Vorn and His Iron Mistress

 Of all the witch hunters who have preyed upon the superstitious and the helpless over the course of this supposedly enlightened century, the Saebethian Captain Eryn Vorn will surely be remembered for his singular fanaticism and his sadistic brutality. Not much is known about Vorn, but it is safe to say that he was not a military officer or a minister of God as he liked to claim. One images that Vorn was at one time a boy, who laughed and smiled, but no reliable descriptions of the man have come down to us until the time of his blood soaked reign on the New Continent of Navon. The earliest descriptions of the man paint him as tall, bone-thin, with a long crooked nose, cracked yellow teeth and wispy grey hair. Wherever he went, the sight of his ragged army field coat and his iron-studded copy of The Peaceful Tidings was sure to strike terror in the hearts of anyone ever suspected by their neighbors of being a so-called knack. …

Vorn first gained renown in Saebethia as a wondering preacher, who offered sweets to children in return for memorizing passages from scripture and repeat back to him his sermons on the evils of knacks and how to spot them. Bringing children to him with the offer of sweets also served a hidden purpose as he poisoned children whom he suspected of being knacks. It is not known by which means he poisoned them. Vorn was too clever to resort to common poisons. Instead he made recourse to heathen recipes unknown to civilized men.

It is told that one "fortunate" lad managed to survive a full helping of Vorn's sweets due to some natural bodily defenses. Upon seeing him the next day unharmed, Vorn offered him more sweets if he would only come in the back of his cart. The naïve lad readily agreed upon which Vorn grabbed him and tied him down to a bed that he had prepared. Here Vorn proceeded to experiment upon him. These experiments were conducted dear reader not in the way of a true natural philosopher, seeking to banish superstition with the light of truth, but of a savage fiend seeking only to inflict suffering. What was done to the poor boy should not be told over in words. If I write them it is only as a stenographer of the public good and not as a purveyor of copper dreadfuls. First Vorn cut out his tongue and vocal cords to stop him from screaming. Next the boy's innards were cut open and while Vorn kept him alive, through some arcane knowledge, he proceeded to insert his poisons directly on to specific bodily organs, cutting away slices of bodily matter afterwards for closer examination and consumption. Bit by bit this boy's liver and kidneys were sliced away, fried and eaten.

By the time he was caught it is said that he had personally murdered over one hundred children. One would have expected a fiend like Vorn to be hung or, better yet, to suffer just a few of the deaths that he had inflicted upon others. Instead all men of sense stood aghast as the jury of the common rabble failed to turn in a unanimous verdict. This was due to at least one of its members being moved by a feminine misplaced sense of pity at the rumor that Vorn was an ordained minister and the pious display he made of reading from scripture. Vorn, pretending to be contrite offered to place himself into exile on the New Continent to do manual labor in the silver mines of Almurcia for the rest of his days.

If only Vorn had known then what awaited him he might have designed it so that he would be caught and sentenced to this fate. Within months of arriving in Almurica, Vorn was free of his chains and at liberty to pursue his pleasure in ways that had eluded him in more civilized realms. The settlers of Navon were largely criminals or other lowly individuals seeking to escape their wretched pasts. Even without the charges of knackery and witchcraft that were Vorn's specialty the setters of Navon had little difficulty in looking out into the darkness of the barren landscape and filling it with creatures that populated the demon-filled landscape of their superstitious imaginations. Lewfrick dogs, an odd breed of feral creatures, which, in a rational world, would have been of interest to educated society simply for the debate they sparked over whether they were dogs, wolves, a species onto themselves, or even mammals at all were turned into Hellhounds, the long lost children and servants of a dark lord from the age of myth. It was to this world that Vorn arrived and spread his tales of knacks. Free to act now without any threat of law, for he now was what little remained of law in the land, Vorn found that the only his imagination could limit his sadism. Nothing could stand between him and a confession. In his hands friend turned against friend, and brother turned against brother. Mothers even handed over their own children in order to save themselves.

Looking askance at the devices of death soaking the pages of history, Vorn fashioned his Iron Mistress. This was done at the behest of a magistrate who feebly noted that many of Vorn's victims were being brought to trial even without the prosecution being able to find any law to accuse them of breaking; let alone one that carried the death penalty. Unlike less civilized countries, Saebethia never passed such an absurd law as a ban on witchcraft on pain of death and would be no more likely to do so than to make it a crime to jump to the moon or to another world. Vorn's response was to create this Iron Mistress in which the victim would be hoisted onto a cross-beam directly in front of a blade, only inches from their face. The logic of Vorn's devilish device was simple; the blade was kept from springing forth and skewering its victims by a pair of weights in reach of the victim's hands. These same weights also kept the victim's chains in place on the cross-beam. In order to get free all the victim needed to do was let his arms and the weights they hold drop below the level of the horizontal bar. The victim, his tongue having previously been ripped out, Vorn's favorite calling card, was told that he could continue to deny the charges by holding up his hands and thus continue the torment or confess by dropping his hands and go free. Eventually the victim's hands would tire and drop upon which the clamps would unlock, dropping him to the ground, as the blade drove into the back of his throat. Thus the victim would die at his own hands, leaving the hands of the law and Vorn's cowardly magistrates spotlessly clean.

…

Vorn made a living executing people on the charge of being able to cause sickness with the evil eye, break bones with a thought, call down lightening by whistling and, once he arrived in Navon, to command Hellhounds through mere laughter. One may wonder why Vorn did not meet the violent end he so surely deserved at the hands of his victims. Vorn liked to claim that he was protected by Saint Krenger and the indivisible three knots of the Melcothian God. In such a way Vorn brought scorn to reason and faith.

Correction in Regards to Dr. Steven Fine and His Views Concerning Morton Smith

In the previous post I mentioned that Dr. Steven Fine believed that the late Dr. Morton Smith forged the Clement letter concerning the alternative version of Mark. He has since clarified his position, both to me and to the Biblical Archeology Review. As I often state when quoting people, "any mistakes are mine." In this case it is certainly my mistake and I take full responsibility for it; my apologies to Dr. Fine.



To the Editor

Thank you for your comprehensive and even-handed presentation of the questions surrounding Morton Smith and Pseudo-Clement.  I, for one, do not believe that that Smith forged this fascinating document.  



I understand why some suspect him, however.  Smith was uniquely brilliant, but at the same time biting, sardonic, and had very complex relationships with the religions that he studied.  The disdain of this former priest toward traditional religions was palpable, sometimes to the detriment of his scholarly writings. As one of his most loyal students wrote in a volume dedicated to Smith's memory, "Smith never tired of discomforting the faithful."  



Within my own field, the study of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period, Smith's influence has been immense.  Scholarship is only now coming out from under his spell.  



None of this makes Morton Smith a forger.  It does, however, contextualize our continuing fascination with him, as well as the lingering controversies that have followed Morton Smith to the grave.

Steven Fine
Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University

Director, YU Center for Israel Studies

      

Articles of Interest

Melanie talks about the recent protest against Autism Speaks at Ohio State. I was involved in the early stages of this event. I really miss the people over at our ASAN chapter.


Also on the Asperger front, Claudia Wallis writes in the New York Times about the strong possibility of Asperger syndrome being removed from the new edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual to be merged with P.D.D.-N.O.S as autism spectrum disorder. The article goes on to quote Ari Ne'eman as supporting the view that autism is one large community. He views his identity as being "attached to being on the autism spectrum not some superior Asperger's identity." I have personally debated this issue with Ne'eman. My position regarding disabilities in general is to make a division between those who are at a baseline of physical and mental capacity and those who are not. As I see it these two groups have different interests, require different things from society and must therefore operate within different models. For those who are functional the necessary model is that of the minority group. What is needed is not charity (otherwise known as aid) from society, but an understanding that such people have a different though equally valid mode of living. This would apply to someone like me or my friend in a wheelchair, who is completely self sufficient. Now this type of disability model would not apply to those who are disabled in the more traditional sense. Such people would require charity from society. Hopefully this charity would be used with the long term goal of helping as many people as possible to move out of the non-functional disabled category to the functional category. I made the argument once that to call a group the Autistic Self Advocacy Network means that you are dealing with only those who are actually capable of engaging in self advocacy. Self advocacy on behalf of other people is a contradiction in terms. It is amazing how this type of basic tautology apparently could prove to be offensive to some people.


Also in the New York Times, Kenneth Chang has on article on the rise of modern day creationism in the Islamic world. The article points out that because Islam does not share the Genesis creation story with Jews and Christians there has been far less at stake for Muslims to stick with a young earth model. I come to the issue from a medieval perspective. In the Middle-Ages the controversial creation issue was not evolution, but the Aristotelian claim that the world existed from eternity. Muslims were far more likely to be willing to go along with the Aristotelian position because they did not have to defend Genesis. (For more on this topic see Taner Edis writing for the History of Science Society.)


Charles W. Hedrick writes in Biblical Archaeology Review about the continued controversy over Morton Smith's claim to have discovered a different and potentially far more provocative version of the story of the resurrection of Lazarus in the Gospel of Mark. Smith was probably the most colorful figure in the field of twentieth century Jewish studies. He was a former Episcopalian minister who turned Talmud scholar.

Finally Raina Kelley, in Newsweek, takes a swing at the film Precious and the growing genre of underprivileged children redeeming themselves and finding a future through the medium of writing. Kelley writes from a non-humanities perspective, arguing that mathematics is a field far more likely to allow a person to enter the middle class, but there is an inherent bias among writers to push their own profession. This is not to say that Kelley is against the humanities; there is just an acknowledgment that to write requires actual training and, contrary to myth, does not spring spontaneously from the unlettered heart. I take an Aristotelian attitude toward the humanities. The humanities have no utilitarian value and are therefore for those who do not need to make a living or for those, like me, willing to live in poverty. They do serve a purpose, though, and are necessary for anyone wishing to play an active role in society.

Haredi Open Mindedness (Not Exactly)

The late Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky, the Slonimer Rebbe, writes about spiritual inoculation for children in his book Nesiveh Chinuch: Essential Perspectives on Education:


Preventative inoculation is needed to prevent spiritual maladies no less than it is needed to prevent physical disease. Just as in the physiological realm much care is given to inoculate against childhood diseases that can, Heaven forbid, be fatal, so educators must, in an orderly fashion, deliver talks to their students that are intended to serve as "spiritual vaccinations" to protect the child's spirit and soul from contracting any debilitating or fatal spiritual diseases. The mentor must administer preventative medicine that focuses on spiritual maladies to which the child may unwittingly be exposed.

Although there are many areas of moral and spiritual disease that seem far removed from young students, it is nevertheless necessary to address them before they find their way into the young charges' souls and wreak terrible spiritual havoc.

The mentor should systematically deliver an elaborate series of talks on the full array of potential spiritual diseases. It is far easier to inoculate against contracting diseases than to cure a child once he has been struck by them. (pg. 110)



So far so good here. The Slonimer Rebbe departs from the usual spiritual disease model of poison. Under the poison model, all contact with the spiritual disease (movies, television, and evolution) is by definition damaging and all those who have been in contact are by definition sick. The more a person has been in contact with the spiritual disease the sicker they are. The solution to this problem is to make sure that people are not exposed to the spiritual disease; this is doubly true for children who are presumed to be particularly vulnerable. One may wish to take this model so far as to say that not only is the spiritual disease a contaminating agent, but those who have been exposed are themselves contaminating agents. As such, one should not just avoid the spiritual disease, but people who have been exposed as well. This offers the opportunity for all sorts of insanity. I consider television to be a bad influence so I will not have it in my house. Ah, but people who watch television are also a bad influence so I am going to specifically send my child to a school where all the children come from non-television families. This creates for Haredim a "hierarchy" with those with the least exposure on top. The corollary of this is that the more ignorant you are about the world and the more bombastic you are in your statements about the world the higher you are on the Haredi pecking order.


Instead of taking about spiritual diseases as poison the Slonimer Rebbe talks about the need for inoculation. Besides for moving Haredim all the way into the eighteenth century, the inoculation model offers very different assumptions as to how to protect against the threat. Instead of trying to avoid all contact with the disease or anyone exposed to it, one actually needs to be exposed at least to some extent. Failure to be exposed, in the long run, puts the person at an even greater risk. As such the Slonimer Rebbe acknowledges that a child should be exposed to "a strain of a spiritual disease in order to save him from succumbing to the disease itself. The administration of the 'poison' must be done in a very cautious and exact manner in order to be certain that it is given in the proper amount, time and manner." (pg. 111)


I would have hoped that this would mean serious and honest discussions about the nature of the world as opposed to feeding students non-stop Haredi propaganda. I would have even been impressed if the Slonimer Rebbe had suggested that his followers make a point of befriending people who are Modern Orthodox or who were not Orthodox from birth to take advantage of their worldly experiences. Instead the Slonimer Rebbe merely takes the opportunity to allow children to be given allowance money and to go on trips. "Children must be provided with other forms of kosher relaxation and entertainment that will grant them emotional satisfaction and give them a legitimate and helpful outlet for their pent-up emotional needs." (pg. 112) In the Haredi world this is not common sense, but actually being "liberal." Recently there have been attempts by activists to ban trips and summer camps. I am, of course, still waiting for the ban on Hershey Park.

What Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav has in common with Screwtape

Religious fundamentalism has a lot more in common with extreme secularism and even atheism than both sides would usually like to admit. They both rely on a radical skepticism to reach their conclusions. A good example of this can be seen in the thought of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810).


For this reason our master [Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav] forbade us to study even the works of acceptable philosophers; they raise difficult and lengthy questions as to the ways of God, but when it comes to answering the questions, their answers are weak and can easily be refuted. Therefore he who looks into them and seeks to answer their questions by means of his intellect can fall into great heresy, when he sees that his answer is nothing and that the question remains. It is thus forbidden to look into (such books) at all, and one must rely on faith alone. (Art Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav pg. 298)


In any other field the acknowledgment that your side cannot successfully answer the questions put forth by the opposition is an acknowledgment of defeat and acceptance of the other side. Ironically enough this position of Rabbi Nahman is almost identical to the one that C. S. Lewis has the demon Screwtape take in the Screwtape Letters. Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter out in the field, that he should make sure that his patient does not read any works of science even if it on the surface takes an atheist position, because science will put his mind onto questions of whether something is real as opposed to what feels brave and enlightened and may lead him to the "enemy." Considering this, it would seem that the position of Rabbi Nahman, despite its surface orthodoxy, should be seen as just another form of atheism or even Satanism since his assumptions are the same. Therefore any person who advocates such a position, no matter how long their beard is or how black their hat is, should be as welcome in a religious community as an atheist like Richard Dawkins or, dare I say it, an undersecretary of temptation like Screwtape.

Articles of Interest

Mike Adams wishes to recruit animal rights groups for his new proposal to protest women's study centers that support abortion. Hint, it involves kitty stew.


The article I mentioned last week about Orthodox Jews leaving observance behind while in college has generated a number of responses. Divrei Chaim gives a Haredi cry of triumph. Josh Waxman offers a sober look at the actual study. Garnel Ironheart offers a needed dose of reality, as someone who has actually been on a college campus, as to what campus life is really like. My personal experience matches Garnel's. I went to Ohio State for three years and for some strange reason not a single half-naked non-Jewish girl tried to sit on my lap. I guess I was just not looking in the right places.



Cory Driver discusses Menachem Kellner, responds to my principles of faith post and ends off discussing Galatians. There are some things better left for Christians to say.


Orson Scott Card is in middle of a series of articles discussing Rodney Stark and his sociology of religion. Stark uses the Mormons as his main focus and Card offers a Mormon response.


Julia Baird, in Newsweek, refers to C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters as she discusses the value of silence and of getting rid of cell phones.

Howard Sachar – Current Israeli Myths and Realities: the Way to Peace

I was privileged to attend the closing of the DCJCC's Jewish literary festival to hear Dr. Howard Sachar speak. Here are my notes of the event and my comments. As usual, all mistakes are mine.

Before I was a historian I was prevailed upon not to be an academician, but to go to law school like a good Jewish boy. This lasted for about six weeks. I took several exams, but ended up the subject of a parody by a professor as to how not to take an exam.
Real Zionism is not just about funding lectures but in a willingness to allow one's children to go live there. Part of the challenge of living in Israel is the willingness to accept is that it is not perfect. The Orthodox are a heavy millstone around the neck of Israel. That being said, it should be noted that the first people to return to Israel were not the Zionists but Ultra-Orthodox messianists. We have the example of the followers of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Hasid. (It should be noted that he was a Sabbatian so not exactly what you or I would consider Orthodox. Far better examples would be that of the Hasidim and followers of the Vilna Gaon who traveled to Palestine in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.) They traveled by mules and wagons to a desert land. They were not productive. They suffered and lost hundreds of people every year to cholera. They were the "sleeping settlement." My grandmother was one of three out of eleven children in a family to grow up to adulthood. That was the culture in which she grew up in.
Haskalah, Jewish humanism, under the influence of European nationalism, would lead to further migration to Palestine, for better or for worse. These points were made at a center of a recent conference to argue for the legitimacy of Jews living in Palestine. This is not the whole truth. By World War I there were only 80,000 Jews in Palestine and over fifty thousand of them were these Orthodox messianists. As late as 1917, the majority of Jews in Russia were members of the Bund. Why did they not come to Palestine? Most Jews who left Russia went to America. More Jews went to racist South Africa than Palestine. What changed was something eccentric and tragic. The eccentric was the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which proved to provide a compelling increase. This was brought about by British self interest. That year was the worst for the Allies. The French army mutinied. The Italians nearly collapsed. Russia was tottering. It was important that America be brought in. Lloyd George believed that Jewish opinion could be rallied in the United States and Russia. No need to go into the tragic part. The new countries, fashioned in the wake of World War I, saw their Jewish minority as a threat to their new found freedom. This prefigured the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany. Those Jews who survived the Holocaust were left homeless. No western country wanted to take them in so an alternative had to be given. Russia and France wanted to expel Britain from the Middle East. Truman did not want too many Jews in New York. This took the Zionists by surprise. They were content asking for 100,000 DPs.
Israel once again has to face how it will protect itself. They are in the dilemma of being a small state. Seven years ago Colin Powel said it was no interested in forcing a peace. More recently Secretary Clinton said she wished to encourage both sides to reach an agreement. If this is the case than we are at an impasse. No small state has managed to negotiate boundaries by itself without the interference of a great power. This goes for the Treaty of Westphalia and the Treaty of Paris. Do great powers have the celestial right to enforce their vision on to others? At the Paris conference many of the new countries protested and the borders they were being given. Lloyd George commented that had it not been for the battlefield casualties suffered by the major allied powers this whole issue would be mute. He also noted that their hatred threatened to suck Europe into another war.
I have given testimony on the matter before the Senate and have seen Israel activists, many in black kippot, and I knew that they would not be happy with what I am saying. It was the victorious allies that set forth the Arab mandates and created the State of Israel. Each Arab Israeli war threatens to expand into a larger conflict. Now there is the threat of weapons of mass destruction. There is a need for great powers today to not just serve as mediators but to actively enforce a solution, one that is supported by the silent majority of both sides. This conclusion was reached by Sharon when he pulled out. Ben-Gurion also understood this. After the sixty-seven war he said celebrate, take a few things needed for security, but from everything else we must pull out. We cannot put ourselves as an occupation. He was not listened to and we have seen the results. Fortunately Israel has pushed through and survived even with their bloated defense and settlement budgets. What is now needed is for the great powers to tell the Israelis and the Palestinians what is going to be the final decision about boundaries. This would allow the leaders on both sides to stand up to their own fanatics. Everyone will see that their hands are tied and that the leaders have no choice but to give in.


Despite the Orthodox bashing, I actually liked the speech and think that Dr. Sachar made some valuable points. I found it interesting that Dr. Sachar did not go into detail as to how a "great power," assumingly the United States, would force through some sort of decision. During the question and answer section I asked him how he would avoid turning his own argument into an apology for imperialism and how he would put such a policy into action without putting soldiers on the ground. He proceeded to give the examples of Northern Ireland, how they needed the threat of Great Britain to make peace, and the Czech Republic, how they allowed Slovakia to secede. While both of these things strengthen his original argument, he still completely ignored my question. I am willing to accept his argument, but the obvious implications are unsettling even for someone like me. Do we have no choice but to throw ourselves into another, Iraq, Afghanistan or a Lebanon? I suspect that the implications may be so unsettling for people of a more liberal disposition that they would simply block out the whole issue.

A Game of Chess with Satan

The story of modernity, including the rise of science, is one of deeply religious people attempting to find solid ground for their beliefs and facing some unforeseen consequences. An example of this can be seen in the work of Thomas Browne (1605-82), an English Baconian philosopher.

“More of these no man hath known than myself, which I confess I conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my knees.” Amongst these are such questions as, how did the creatures from the Ark, starting as they did from Mount Ararat, get disseminated over all the countries of the world, in spite of the estranging seas? Gold does not turn to powder under high temperatures, so how can Moses have calcined the Golden Calf? Manna is an actual plant, flourishing in Calabria and formerly gathered in Arabia; where then was the miracle in the days of Moses?” Similarly, there is such a thing as “Secret Sympathy”, and may not the Brazen Serpent of Moses have healed the people thus, without a miracle? And might not Elijah have kindled the fire on God’s altar by means of naphtha – “for that inflammable substance yields not easily unto Water, but flames in the Arms of its Antagonist”? In this manner Satan “takes a hint of infidelity from our studies, and by demonstrating a naturality in one way, makes us mistrust a miracle in another”.

“Thus the Devil played at Chess with me, and yielding a Pawn, thought to gain a Queen of me, taking advantage of my honest endeavours; whilst I labored to raise the structure of my Reason, he strived to undermine the edifice of my Faith.” (Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background pg. 65-66)

Asael XIV

This is part of my ongoing novel. Think of it as Killer Angels taking place in a musket and magic fantasy world with characters that combine the religious sensibilities of American revivalism with Beowulf-like blood feuds. All this while engaging in Talmudic style dialectics. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” is about to take on a whole new meaning.


Asael opened his eyes to find that he was still in the dream. The scene had changed from the shootout through the undercity and the flight over the rooftops to some ruins outside the city. Caxton was walking among some marble columns of a temple. Hundreds of years old and abandoned by its believers to wind and moss, the thirty or so feet that remained from even the smallest of these columns still evocated a sense of majesty. Gin sat at the edge appearing bewildered. Caxton shouted at one of the columns in agitation. “So what is your game now Vorn? Whatever it is, I am not laughing.” There was silence. Caxton kicked a column.

A mocking voice came out from the column behind Caxton. “And to what may I owe the honor of this vexation?” Caxton and Gin turned to see a glowing human form appear in the darkness at the top of the column, slithering down toward the base of the column hands and head first like a reptile.

“I just got word on the wire that the Senate raided the undercity with an above par scorn for human life even for them. Word is out that they have Marcellus and most of his crew.” The statement made Gin wince. Caxton glanced at her as if just noticing her. “One thousand sists says that Helvetius Tyranaco managed to slip the net and will resurface in a few months, pardon in hand and at least fifty-thousand richer for selling us all out.”

“Helvetius is not the traitor,” Gin called out as she made her way toward them. Caxton turned on this new object of his frustration. “And on whose female intuition do you base that on?”

“Mine,” said Vorn, leaping to another column. “I warned you this was a trap and that for the sake of the anonymity of this organization, you should skip the appointment. I was under the assumption that my orders were to be obeyed.”

Caxton appeared to have put on more weight since the previous vision and his hairline seemed to have receded over so slightly more as if the previous vision was brushed up version of Caxton, more Caxton than even Caxton. “I was not there,” he shouted defiantly. “You said the sale was off so what possible motive could I have had to go against you.”

Vorn took out a device from his pocket which showed a series of moving pictures upon which could clearly be seen the form of Caxton as he jumped down with Gin onto the back of a moving train as their pursuer leaped toward them. Caxton opened his mouth to speak but only managed a gasping sound. Vorn smiled and tossed the device toward Caxton.

“And so you were not. I trust you implicitly; if you say you were not there recklessly pursuing your theory that Helvetius was our rat and the vids say you were than the vids lie.”

“Thank you most graciously my lord,” said Caxton.

“Notwithstanding the good men now sitting in prison waiting to see if some human rights organization will actually object to the Senate’s reintroduction of hanging to the realm, this has been a productive night.”

“We still do not have our rat,” mumbled Caxton.

“Keep your eye on the bigger picture and count your blessings. You performed marvelously for someone who was not there. You bugged Helvetius so we can now be certain that he was not our rat.”

Vorn eyed Gin. “You rescued a beautiful damsel in distress, at great personal risk, and you even decided to field test those deaccelerator clamps, Virido wanted us to try out. I hate to think what might have happened to the fem if they had not worked. Personally I would not have minded too much if you had ended up as train-kill.”

“You are forgetting about the Shifter. How does he figure into this?”

Vorn let out a howling laugh. “Oh yes, so you saw the pale faced hunter. I admit that he was an unexpected twist, but the greatest bonus of all. It tells us so much.”

“You care to run with that one?”

“My dear Mr. Bragg; we have been left off wondering as to the nature of our opposition. We took it as a given that the Senate was after Marcellus. We suspected that someone from the Council may have given them the go ahead or even encouraged them to take such extraordinary measures to deal with our noble friend. We theorized that perhaps the Council wished to get to you.”

“And Pale Face?”

“Ah. If Pale Face came into this than there could have been only one purpose.”

“And that purpose being?”

“Me! He certainly would not waste his time chasing after you unless he suspected that you are with me.”

Caxton groaned. “That was what I was afraid of. This ties me to you a bit more strongly than I would have liked. I guess there can be no more of me just happening to do a job for you on occasion.”

“Forty percent pay raise plus benefits in keeping with the longer hours of service and increased risks.”

“Risks that just happen to include being most holy barbecued by a fanatical Shifter, who does not believe in a god, but believes in using humans as burnt offerings just in case.”

“And this is supposed to be a bad thing?”

Vorn’s excitement at this proposition failed to wash over to Caxton. “I know all about you and him being pals from when you worked with the Council and all, but when are you going to just simply remove him from the equation.”

The small lights carried by Caxton and Gin and pointed upward seemed to vanish into the light that emanated from Vorn like a halo. “The time is not yet ripe.”

“And when will that be?”

Vorn lit up a smile. “The world is going to burn and there is nothing that you or I can do about it. When it does those who have been loyal may rest assured in the knowledge that there will be a new world order that they may live to see. In the meantime they will have the privilege of sitting back to watch this burning world’s final gladiatorial combat.”

Vorn ran a finger along his fangs. “It will be these jaws of mine against Pale Face’s hands. And in the despairing embers of this burning world, his hands shall falter and we will see him fall.”

“You are like him, like the pale faced one,” stammered Gin.

Vorn, suddenly turning, launched himself at her, his eyes turning demonic red. His fangs continued to sprout from his open jaws as his chin split open. He landed right in front of Gin as she clicked her shotgun inches from his face. “I have nothing in common with any mere Shifter assassin,” said Vorn before bursting out into laughter. It was a high pitched animal-like laugh. “I like this one Caxton. Who is she?”

Gin responded for herself. “Lady Ginna Ciurbs.”

“You are Marcellus’ sister?”

“Actually his older sister and it is my job to keep him safe while he plays revolutionary.”

Vorn giddily shook his head from side to side as the two parts of his lower jaw swung lazily in the air before clamping back together. “I am in the hiring mood. Seeing how you got Caxton out of trouble, how about I bring you on board as Caxton’s security with a fee to match his.”

“I still fight for Marcellus’ revolution.”

“My dear fem. Your brother and his revolution are in prison awaiting execution, along with what remains of your family name and protection.”

Gin considered this for a moment, before finally lowering her gun. “You get my brother and his people out and you have a deal.” Vorn smiled and stretched out his hands. His left forefinger slowly extended itself. With a whip-like motion, Vorn slashed open his right palm; grey blood oozed from it, turning a human red in the air. Then, with a second motion, Vorn slashed open Gin’s palm and shook it. “It is signed upon oaths and blood,” said Vorn in a language that neither Gin nor Caxton could understand. Vorn, his benediction finished, returned to Lingruscan. “The name is Eryn Vorn. Welcome aboard.”

“So you are going to help?”

“Ah. Now here is the difficulty. As far as we know, Pale Face and the Council have no concrete evidence that I am involved in these affairs. At the moment they likely just suspect it. If I were to personally launch a breakout attempt they would know
for certain.”

Gin frowned. “So there goes nothing.”

Vorn did a back-flip, catching a column with his legs. “I did not say that I would not help. Caxton, since you and Gin, seem to work so well, I was wondering if you wanted to expand your horizons into prison breakouts. Tell Virido to give you the full compliments.”

And with that, Vorn disappeared into the darkness and Asael awoke.

Articles of Interest

Micheline Maynard has an article in the New York Times about Americans choosing to go car free. As a green libertarian, I look forward to the day that the government cuts off all funding for housing, roads and gas subsidies, eliminating American suburbia and the American car.

Also in the New York Times, Ralph Blumenthal discusses a new documentary dealing with the controversial figure of Rudolf Kastner. Kastner negotiated with the Nazis on behalf of the Zionist government and saved the lives of over 1600 Jews, ironically enough including the Satmar rebbe. Kastner was latter murdered by another Jew on the charge that he collaborated with the Nazis in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry.

As the deadline for college applications draws nearer for my students I offer Rabbi Reuven Spolter, who makes the argument against going to a secular college. I disagree with Rabbi Spolter but I think he does an effective job in making his case and is therefore useful food for thought.

More on the topic of college as Ofri Ilani of Haaretz writes about the growth of Haredi colleges in Israel with the daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef playing a leading role. I tend to be very skeptical about the very concept of a Haredi college. For me an education means a math, a science or something in the humanities. All of these fields require the mastery of specific methods of thinking. Haredi institutions do not focus on any of these fields. Instead they teach utilitarian occupations such as physical therapy and psychology. I see this as an attempt to allow people access to jobs while avoiding giving them an actual education and risking allowing people to engage in actual serious thinking. In essence such institutions offer fake educations.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein offers a Hirschian critique of Haredi society for its willingness to ignore larger society issues. For a critique of this article see Not Brisker Yeshivish. I found this Haredi response telling in that it completely ignores the issue.

Lunchtime Book Recommendations: An Idea as to How to Create Must Read Books

I often eat lunch in the Hebrew Academy lunchroom during the same time as some of the elementary school grades. The other day, I was in the lunchroom when I saw one of the teachers do something very interesting. Towards the end of the half hour period, when students were beginning to finish, she took the microphone and asked if any students would be interested in coming up to tell everyone about a book they recently read and would recommend. The teacher then asked for a show of hands as to who has read the book. A young friend of mine recommended Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It seems that the vast majority of the kids have read the series. I am not familiar with these books but they clearly seem to be very popular. Another kid came to the floor carrying a copy of Garth Nix’s Lirael and suggested the first book in the series, Sabriel. When asked what he liked about the books the kid did not say anything so I shouted out “Mogget.” Mogget is a cat shaped spirit, who likes sleep and fish and will kill you if you take his collar of. His main role in the series is to be the sardonic voice of reason, saying “this is stupid and we are all going to die.” I raised my hand, but was not called upon. I wanted to recommend Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. This is a teenage book about a reality show in which twenty-four kids are thrown in a giant arena; the last one alive wins a life of fortune and fame. Think of it as Theseus meets Lord of the Flies with a totally awesome heroine armed with a bow and arrow.
This whole idea of allowing kids to come up and make book recommendations is an excellent exercise in controlled chaos. We are handing a microphone over to kids without any prescreening and they get pitch any book they so wish. I also think it is a brilliant way to sell reading to kids. One of the advantages that movies and television have over books is that they start with a wider audience and there are fewer of them to compete for an audience. This allows for the creation of a “must see” factor; people will watch films and television shows, regardless of their actual merit, simply because they know that other people are watching these things and they do not want to be left out when these things are being discussed say around the office water-cooler. The model here is for committed individuals to take an interest in something. Once a critical mass is reached, these individuals become a group and the object of their interest becomes a lightning-rod for others to bring them into the group. A larger and larger group of people will “tune in” to find out what the whole fuss is about.

It is certainly possible for books to do this. Harry Potter and Twilight are proof. In both cases, Goblet of Fire for Potter and Breaking Dawn for Twilight, these series had a moment where they went from just being very successfully books to being “cultural phenomenon.” The key to this was that these books became big enough to catch the attention of the media. The media, true to its fashion, made these books front page news as they “examined” the phenomena. Of course being front page news sold more copies of these books, bringing more “examinations” and continuing the cycle. Potter and Twilight succeed through a bit of luck and because they possessed certain qualities to give them mass appeal. The question becomes, how do you create a dozen Potters and Twilights? Take Nix’s Abhorsen series mentioned earlier, these are the sort of books that have the right mixture of in theory being for children while having more adult content to appeal to a mass audience. All that is needed is that bit of luck to create the needed critical mass in order to attract media attention and make them “must read” books.

Having kids come up and recommend books to their peers in a public forum allows for the creation of small groups around a book. I get up and recommend a book. Someone else raises their hand to show that they read it. Now I have something to go over to that person with in order to talk to them. A third person in the audience in the crowd sees that two people have read this book and are excited about it. This person then goes and reads the book. Now you have three people interested in something. Interest gathers interest and before you know it you have chain reaction of people reading the book to find out what everyone else is talking about. And you have it, Must Read Books!

A Sabbatian Credo

In a recent post I discussed the issue of principles of faith within Judaism. I offered my own formulation of them. Since then Bray of the Fundie has kindly offered his own list of principles. I just came across a list principles of faith for the Sabbatian sect of the Donmeh. The Donmeh were Jews who converted to Islam in the seventeenth century, following in the footsteps of the apostate messiah Sabbatai Sevi. As with many Sabbatian groups, the Donmeh practiced a radical form of antinomianism, the ritual violation of religious taboos. For example they believed in ritualized wife swapping. (And people think that religion is prudish and boring.)

I believe with perfect faith in the faith of the God of truth, the God of Israel who dwells in [the sefirah] tiferet, the “glory of Israel,” the three knots of faith which are one.

(This is a common theme within Gnostic thought. There is the lower creator God and the true God revealed to the initiates of the group.)

I believe with perfect faith that Sabbatai Zevi is the true King Messiah.

I believe with perfect faith that the Torah, which was given through our teacher Moses placed before Israel, as ordered by God through Moses. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it and its supporters will be happy … [here follow several biblical verses extolling the Torah].

I believe with perfect faith that this Torah cannot be exchanged and that there will be no other Torah; only the commandments have been abolished, but the Torah remains binding forever and to all eternities.

I believe with perfect faith that Sabbatai Zevi, may his majesty be exalted, is the true Messiah and that he will gather together the dispersed of Israel from the four corners of the earth.

I believe with perfect faith in the resurrection of the dead, that the dead shall live and shall arise from the dust of the earth.

I believe with perfect faith that the God of truth, the God of Israel, will send the rebuilt sanctuary from above down to us [on earth] beneath, as it is said: Unless God buld the house, those that build it labor in vain. May our eyes see and our heart rejoice and our soul sing for joy, speedily in our days. Amen.

I believe with perfect faith that the God of truth, the God of Israel will reveal Himself in this [earthly] world [called] tevel, as it is said: And the glory of God will be revealed and all flesh shall see it, for the mouth of the Lord has promised it.

May it be pleasing before Thee, God of truth, God of Israel who dwells in the “glory of Israel,” in the three knots of faith which are one, to send us the just Messiah, our Redeemer Sabbatai Zevi, speedily and in our days. Amen. (Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism pg. 157)

For all you people in the market for a Jewish savior without the messiness of getting nailed to a piece of wood, may I suggest a nice Jewish boy from Turkey. You can acknowledge before him that you are a sinner and pray:

Sabetay Zevi, Sabetay Zevi,
No ai a utro como a ti
Sabetay Zevi, Sabetay Zevi
Esperamos a ti

(Sabbatai Sevi, Sabbatai Sevi
There is no other like you
Sabbatai Sevi, Sabbatai Sevi
We hope to you)

Patience with Frank Schaeffer

In discussing Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God, James Pate suggested that I would be interested in Schaeffer’s upcoming book Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion {or Atheism}, saying: “…it addresses people who aren't satisfied with fundamentalism or atheism. That kind of reminds me of what the top of your blog says: seeking a third path, other than secularism and religious fundamentalism.” I just got the book and read it over last night and this morning. I sincerely wished to like this book, since I see Schaeffer as being one of the people on “my” side. That being said, I found myself disappointed with the book as a whole, though there were parts that I found worthwhile. The fatal weakness of the book is that it lacks much in the way of a sustained argument. Rather it is a running meditation, one that fails to say anything that has not been said and better said in other places. This would not be considered a fault at all if this was a series of blog posts. If this was a blog I could just take it as is, the rambling chaff of an intelligent person written on the fly, which contains numerous valuable nuggets. I would like to pay my respects to those specific parts of the book worthy of consideration while acknowledging the larger failings.

The book opens with a beautiful prologue about Schaeffer feeling the need to pray upon holding his grandchild and a sober summation of the danger of our ghettoized media culture where everyone has created their own news and reality filters. The book itself is divided into two sections. The first part, containing the central thesis of the book, confronts both the New Atheists and Christian Fundamentalists, who Schaeffer sees as having a lot more in common with each other than they themselves would wish to admit. In particular Schaeffer goes after Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, on the atheist front, and Rick Warren and the authors of the Left Behind series, Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, on the fundamentalist front. The chapters on atheism are the weaker ones. They certainly fail to match up to Terry Eagleton’s Ditchkins attack. Even here, Schaeffer has his moments. I particularly liked his comparison of Dawkins selling Scarlet A Letter pins to his mother’s Gospel Walnuts, which, much to Frank’s embarrassment, she used to start witnessing conversations with random strangers. “So Dawkins, it turns out, is my mother, circa 1959! Hi Mom!” (pg. 30) This illustrates an important thing about Schaeffer; he is strongest when talking about his personal life and experiences. There is also something to be said for Schaeffer’s discussion of Dennett, mainly because Schaeffer is actually quite positive about certain elements of Dennett’s thought even if he comes to different conclusions.

Patience takes an upward swing when Schaeffer turns to fundamentalism. Again, I think this is because Schaeffer is one of those writers who is best when there is something personal at stake. One may find it interesting that Schaeffer would target someone like Warren, who has risen to fame largely on his reputation for being a more “liberal,” social-action evangelical preacher. Schaeffer main objection to Warren is that he sees Warren as an example of one of the principle weaknesses of the entire Protestant legacy, its lack of a tradition and the need, in the absence of such a tradition, to create larger than life cult-figures to stand in its place. This argument is one of Schaeffer’s valuable intellectual points and it is a pity that he, in both Patience and Crazy for God, does not delve more deeply into this issue. I would love to see Schaeffer do a book just on this point. It would make it even better if he did more to place this attack on Protestantism in the context of an explicitly Eastern Orthodox position. I suspect that Schaeffer fears, and probably rightfully so, that such a book would fail to reach a general audience. My thinking is that, in this religious climate, the most important thing for American Christians to see is a serious and vigorous Christianity, any Christianity, that is not Evangelicalism. Similarly, on my particular front of the religion wars, one of the key things to defeating Haredism is merely to show that such a thing as a serious non-Haredi Judaism even exists.

I loved the fact that Schaeffer discusses C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and the fact that the same Christian colleges that adore them would never put up with their drinking and their theology. I must object, though, to Schaeffer’s categorization of Lewis as someone who “ruined what could have been a decent literary career by slavishly working Christian propaganda into his ‘novels,’ especially once he began to cater to the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture after he became a star.” (pg. 102-103) Lewis, to the end of his life was a professor of literature, who incidentally wrote books on Christian apologetics and one of the best-selling series children’s books of all time. Lewis never tried to make a living from being a “star” on the Christian circuit. Even Lewis’ most propagandistic novels, the Chronicles of Narnia, are filled with elements from pagan mythology. Lewis, long after he became a "Christian star," wrote Till We Have Faces, a reworking of the Cupid and Psyche myth that remained explicitly pagan, and a Grief Observed, in which he muses over whether God is a cosmic sadist, torturing us for his own amusement. One of Lewis’ strengths was that he did not sell out; he was willing to put people out of their comfort zone. As a Tolkien fan, I will treasure Schaeffer’s description of one of his school teachers, Bubble:

Having Bubble for a master was something like having Gollum for a teacher. Only Bubble didn’t disgust us by gnawing raw fish. Rather, he revolted and riveted us by snorting huge quantities of filthy, face-staining snuff, he never bathed, and he smelled oddly of pepper and was clearly drunk at times, although he did know a lot about music and made science interesting. (pg. 132)

Schaeffer’s attack on LeHaye and Jenkins also deserves mention. Schaeffer remarks:

If I had to choose companions to take my chances with in a lifeboat, and the choice boiled down to picking Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, or Christopher Hitchens, I’d pick Hitchens in a heartbeat. At least he wouldn’t try to sink our boat so that Jesus would come back sooner. He might even bring along a case of wine. (pg. 109)

Schaeffer’s primary concern with LaHaye and Jenkins, though he knows them both and personally finds them to be decent people, is that they feed a radical element that could easily turn to violence in order to bring their particular version of the end about. Schaeffer again makes an important point about the religious right and its failings.

The words left behind are ironically what the books are about, but not in the way their authors intended. The evangelical/fundamentalists, from their crudest egocentric celebrities to their “intellectuals” touring college campuses trying to make evangelicalism respectable, have been left behind by modernity. They won’t change their literalistic anti-science, anti-education, anti-everything superstitions, so now they nurse a deep grievance against “the world.” (pg. 113-114)

The second half of Patience is largely a rehash of material from Crazy for God, with some more theology thrown in. At this point it is still interesting to hear Schaeffer talk about his life, even if it is beginning to wear a little thin. This takes time away from talking about belief. All the pity, because it is precisely this element that could have used more elaboration. It is fair enough to say that belief is something that goes beyond reason, but if one is going to go this route one needs to make all the greater effort for clarity and, dare I say it, “rationality” in one’s writing in order to avoid the obvious counter argument that one has lost the argument and is now trying to cover up that fact by hiding behind mystery. Every chapter of Patience is headed by a quotation from Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian thinker who best exemplifies this notion of faith as a leap into the absurd. It is unfortunate that Schaeffer did not make the effort to integrate Kierkegaard more into the book itself.

For those looking to understand how Kierkegaard can be made relevant to modern religious issues, Abraham Heschel wrote a book comparing Kierkegaard and Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk called a Passion for Truth. I would particularly recommend this book to readers of this blog. It is about analyzing a type of religious “fundamentalism” that instead of walking lock stock and barrel behind the establishment, attacks and ultimately rejects the religious establishment precisely because the establishment fails to live up to the true standards of the faith. This is the sort of thinking that tells you that anyone sporting clothing that costs thousands of dollars in a world in which children are starving is not a real Christian regardless of how “orthodox” the gospel he preaches sounds. On the topic of Jewish thinkers influenced by Kierkegaard, another person who comes to mind is Rabbi Josef Soloveitchik. I first learned about Kierkegaard from reading Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Lonely Man of Faith which discusses Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

Probably the greatest flaw in the book is the fact that it lacks any footnotes or even an index. For example I would be interested in finding out Schaeffer’s source for Baruch Spinoza (yes Schaeffer refers to him as Baruch and not Benedict) being offered one thousand florins to remain within the Jewish community. Such a story smacks of legend to me. This indicates a book that was rushed to print without much thought or effort. In the end, in judging this book, I feel like I am in the position of a teacher being handed a B paper by a talented student, whom the teacher knows could have done an A paper if only he had put in the effort. My inclination would be to hand the paper back and say: “Please go back and write the paper that I know you can.” Mr. Schaeffer, you have written a mediocre book. From most people I would accept this, but I know you can do better. You have the talent to write the sort of defense of non-fundamentalist religious beliefs that needs to be written. Could you please go back and write that book!

Articles of Interest

Linda Baker, in Scientific American, has an article about getting Americans to bike more as is common in most European cities. Her suggestion is to get more women involved.

Peter Stothard reviews, for the Times Literary Supplement, Robert Harris’ new novel, Lustrum, about the life of Cicero and exams how Harris uses ancient Rome to comment on modern British politics. I have read the first book in the series, Imperium, and cannot wait for with the sequel to come out here in the States. Lustrum continues the story of the Catiline conspiracy. This was a much beloved topic in the classics courses of Dr. Louis Feldman. Dr. Feldman felt that Catiline was unfairly maligned by Cicero, upon whom we are completely reliant for our information about these events. Harris follows Cicero and turns Catiline into one really scary villain. So far I love every minute of it.

John Elder Robinson asks why the Autism community cannot just get along.

Jessica Bennett writes in Newsweek about how the city of Oakland is leading the way for the legalization of marijuana.

Clayton Neuman interviews Eoin Colfer about continuing Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Colfer is best known for the Artemis Fowl series. Certainly not in Adam’s league, but he is talented enough that he should be able to produce a book that Hitchhiker fans can be proud of.

Asael XIII

This is part of my ongoing novel. Think of it as Killer Angels taking place in a musket and magic fantasy world with characters that combine the religious sensibilities of American revivalism with Beowulf-like blood feuds. All this while engaging in Talmudic style dialectics. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” is about to take on a whole new meaning.

Introduction, A Note from the Author, Prologue, I, II, III,IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII

Marcellus clapped his hands. “A fine performance; you would do well debating theology in the Agora coffee house.”

Caxton bowed. “I have done so on occasion, but, in my newly converted sophistry, my employer has opened my eyes to scorn such idle behavior. Now that you are purchasing my employer’s sophistry, I would add that such places have been empirically proven to be detrimental to one’s health.”

“And yet you and your employer, in your pride, seem to believe that you can betray us to the Senate,” came a voice from the far corner of the basement.

Caxton greeted this new charge with a smile. “Helvetius Tyranaco. I would expect no one, but a snake like you, to sling his mouth from the shadows. No disrespect to you Marcellus for the company you keep.”

“All your sophistry cannot hide the facts that for the past few months, ever since our band of freedom fighters has started doing business with you, the Senate’s military has gained the uncanny ability to predict our movements.” Helvetius turned to Marcellus. “I warned you about this man. Without a doubt this very meeting is a trap. He has probably already alerted Senate troops to our location. They will be on the move this very moment.”

The thought struck Asael. “Helvetius was right; this meeting was a trap, but not one set by Caxton or his employer.” This was the first time Asael had been in this dream so he was not certain how he knew this. Then the thought hit him: “Caxton knows this is a trap for him yet he has walked right into it.”

Marcellus reached into his pocket to pull out a device that had begun to give a buzzing sound. “You are remarkably prescient as usual Helvetius. According to our little friend at headquarters, they just sent out orders. We have company coming to this neighborhood. By the looks of it, this is not urban police; we have full federal military forces of the Senate with armor and zeppelins.”
Helvetius smiled. “Well that settles it, shoot the man.”

A trio of guns were raised in Caxton’s direction, but were waved down by Marcellus, who tossed the device to Helvetius. “Apparently there are people who are equally as fond of Mr. Bragg as you are.”

Caxton craned his neck in Helvetius’ direction. “So are we back to people making death threats with guns to me again?”

Helvetius grimaced as he turned the device in Caxton’s direction revealing to everyone else in the room a picture of Caxton with the caption “priority target, shoot upon any sign of resistance.”

Marcellus clapped his hands and his men sprang into action. Caxton brushed past Helvetius before dropping in behind Gin. They had barely exited the building when Caxton heard the sound of zeppelin airships overhead. There was something else he sensed. Whatever it was Asael was certain that, whatever trap Caxton had planned on walking into, this new thing was unexpected as Caxton just stood there for several seconds gawking. Gin pushed him aside as someone shouted “zeppelin attack platforms.” A missile tore apart a building down the block. The blast had knocked everyone in the party still standing off of their feet. Several of Marcellus’ men were wounded, quite badly Caxton was certain. He helped Gin to her feet. “Apparently the Senate is no longer allowing you people to hide behind civilians.” Caxton grabbed her hand and led her in a trot down a side alley. Nearby they could hear the sound of returning fire. “It is at times like this that I am glad I lack any moral qualms about selling shoulder fired anti-aircraft guns to civilians, the lead to take out a zeppelin.”

Gin rolled her eyes at the attempt at humor, but followed after him. “When we get out of this you are going to owe Marcellus an explanation and if Marcellus does not get out you are going to owe me one.”

“What do you mean fem?”

“I am not brainless enough to be your fem or to think that there is nothing more to this than you are telling us. You are not being targeted because you sold guns to us. We are being targeted because we bought guns from you.”

“Does not seem rational, but then again neither does torching a neighborhood in order to catch freedom fighters like you. This is simply too chaotic.”

“Whatever you say, but I am sticking to you until I get a rational explanation from you.”
Caxton smiled. “Then you better stick close. I may not be the safest ticket out.” He unlocked the briefcase from his handcuff and took out the rifle. “You back me up with that door-jammer of yours.” The pair was soon greeted by the gunfire of a squad of black masked Senate troops backed by an armored vehicle. The men were flaming anyone foolish enough to try escape into the streets. Caxton whispered to Gin: “I’ll draw their fire. You plumb guy in the halftrack than head to the roof. I will meet you on top. Head in the direction of the station; I have reservations for the nine o’clock, hopefully it will be at its usual two minutes late.”

With a gleeful laugh, Caxton slid across the opening of the alley, taking two men down with head shots. He scampered up a pile of garbage and leaped onto a fire-escape. The halftrack stopped at the bottom, leaving the backside open for Gin’s blast, which punched a fist sized hole through the left side of the gunner’s torso, splattering the remaining three soldiers in the street. The men returned fire as Gin dived through a window.

Caxton was heading to the roof of his building when he looked down to see the one he had sensed earlier in the street. He took the form of a tall man, though Caxton knew that this was no man, with a pair of tattoos pulling the skin underneath his eyes. Caxton cursed himself for being so focused on getting Gin and himself away from Marcellus’ party that he had not paid closer attention to this other threat. “Damn you Paleface; what brings you to this place?” Paleface, wearing an officer’s uniform, waved the surviving men off before heading into the building after Gin. Caxton began muttering underneath his breath. Asael was not certain what language Caxton was speaking in, but Asael was certain that it was something involving the violation of numerous incest taboos.

Caxton reached the top of the building. The site of looking down more than ten stories to the pavement gave Asael the shivers or was that Caxton who was shivering. Instead of heading in the direction of the station, Caxton headed toward the other side of the building. He saw Gin immerge several buildings away. Biting her lip, she leaped the narrow gaps to get the building next to Caxton. Gin looked at Caxton and then glanced nervously at the gap to be jumped and the drop below. Caxton motioned her to jump. Gin trotted several steps backward before going into a running jump. Paleface emerged from the building which Gin had come out of a minute earlier. Caxton fired a sniper shot at their assailant before slinging the rifle over his back and dropping to his knees. Gin’s feet kicked off the side wall at the top of the building; the brick wall briefly caught her as her hands flailed up into the air. Caxton leaned outward, grabbed Gin and flipped her onto the rooftop.

“Hollow shell, alenium explosives, what a waste!” were the thoughts that rang in Asael’s mind.

“Ready to run Gin” and the two of them ran. Below them, Asael saw an alien city ablaze in the nighttime’s destruction. On this night there were more things to be feared than heights or the soldier’s below. Gin snuck a glance backward as Paleface easily jumped the gap behind them.
More thoughts flashed through Asael’s mind. They were not his own and they arrayed themselves as incoherent bits as if they were the left over gleanings of faded thoughts. Worse his own thoughts seemed to be out of his reach as if bound by the mind he dwelt in. Even his own name seemed to now be beyond him. Whatever pursued him carried no weapons, ancient or modern.

“He does not defile his hands with mortal weapons. In the Oraitha it says: ‘An alter shall you make for me of stone and earth. No blade of iron shall hew it.’ To which the Sages asked: ‘Why no iron?’ Their answer: ‘So says Rachmana: my alter, which brings peace to the world, shall be fashioned using iron, which is used to make swords?’” If the Sages of old could only see the creature that followed they would have raised their hands in approval. Even the Oraitha had allowed iron implements to be used for sacrifice. “The ways of the Lord are pleasant.”

“This creature offers sacrifice with no iron; a pure sacrifice, untainted by any concessions to mortal needs.”

Asael was not certain whose thoughts they were, his or Caxton’s? Why would Caxton know to quote the Oraitha?

“As they ran Caxton felt Paleface gain on them with purposeful strides, but never a run. “The enemy that could not be killed, but would one day kill him.” This was the object of his hatred, his fear, but also his love. Who was this thing that came for him? It seemed right off the corner of his tongue. In other dreams it came to him. Other dreams, in other bodies, in other times and places.

Caxton stopped at the edge of a building; both he and Gin turned to face their hunter. Paleface smiled at them, swinging his long arms back and forth in a purposeful motion, and spoke to Gin. “You have no idea what you have with you.” In the distance a train whistle could be heard. Caxton flicked the open cuff onto Gin’s wrist. “No she does not.” And with that he jumped into the darkness, pulling Gin down with him.

Christian von Dohm and Giving Equal Rights to Muslims

Today, in class, I was planning on talking about Christian von Dohm and his work “Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews.” Dohm worked for the Prussian government and, as a member of the German Enlightenment, believed in granting Jews equal rights though with certain caveats. Dohm is certainly an interesting example of Enlightenment tolerance and its limitations. Considering, as my father pointed out, that my students were coming back from a break and therefore unlikely to be receptive to serious lecturing and that I, anyway, have been trying to stick more discussion into my classes, I decided to spend the day setting up the issue by posing to them the very modern question of giving Muslims equal rights and what such equal rights might mean. The issue is a difficult one that goes beyond the simplistic one-liners about the importance of having a tolerant free society.

Should the State allow Muslim women to wear headscarves? It is in the interest of the State and of society that everyone come together as one nation. For a group of people to decide to make themselves distinctive by wearing different clothing is to move away from that idea. Particularly in this case where the distinctive garment is meant as an active rejection of the mode of dress of the rest of society. By wearing her headscarf, a Muslim girl is saying to everyone else: “you are all dressed improperly and I reject your values.” This is not the sort of thing in keeping with a desire to be an equal member of society. Can an Imam tell his followers that they have the duty to kill Jews and Christians, including their Jewish and Christian neighbors? Can an Imam quote the passage from the Koran that compares Jews and Christians to monkeys? You cannot, in good faith, say that you want to be an equal citizen just like everyone else and then turn around and spit at people and call them monkeys. Perhaps it should be forbidden for Muslims to talk about this material unless they specifically point out that this does not apply to their modern day Jewish and Christian neighbors. Government officials should be assigned to major mosques to ensure that this is being carried out. (If you think this is funny you should know that the Prussian government, in the eighteenth century, sent Christian Hebraists to synagogues to make sure that Jews left out the line “for they bow to vanity and nothingness” which was deemed as a slight to Christianity.) If we assume that the Koran is teaching that Jews and Christians are monkeys who should be killed then does that make the Koran “hate literature?” Should we then ban its publication and distribution like many countries do with Mein Kampf? What about the Imam who tells his followers that they are not allowed to get a secular education? The men should learn in madrashas all day, supported by their wives, working at low paying jobs, and government welfare. Part of being an equal citizen means working for the benefit of society at large. It would seem that the government has some sort of legitimate interest in making sure that children grow up to be productive citizens. Can the government force Muslims to get a secular education up to a certain age and even to study potentially problematic fields such as literature and science? This might even apply to a libertarian government that is willing to allow non-productive members of society to starve to death on the streets. A libertarian government would have still have a legitimate interest in having children grow up so that they would know everything needed in order to serve as a drafted soldier. I was impressed with how many of my students picked up on how easily anything they suggested could be used to come after Jews.

On a similar line of discussion, Orson Scott Card makes the argument that Muslims, in order to maintain full constitutional protections, must accept that people have the right to convert out of Islam without any threats to their physical safety. Card, who is a Mormon, uses the example of what happened to Mormons in the United States to make his case. The American government forced the Mormon Church to give up polygamy by withholding certain Constitutional protections as long as Mormons continued to uphold polygamy.

Obama Winning the Noble Peace Prize: it is No Joke

Earlier this morning, a friend of mine sent me an email:

Did you hear about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? So far, I approve of Obama in general, but really, it's like awarding the prize in biology to SETI because, "Well, sure, there haven't been any results yet, but they might at some point."

I assumed that this was some sort of joke that I had missed the punch-line for. Just to be certain I did a search and lo and behold it was real and not even something out of the Onion. Now Obama can join Yasser Arafat, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter in making this an absolutely worthless prize. One can only imagine what was going through the minds of the committee: “We are sorry you did not get the Olympics. Would a Noble Prize make you feel better?” This actually hurts Obama because it plays into the right wing stereotype of liberal elites of the world just waiting to kiss his feet, making Obama look even more ridiculous. I have nothing against Obama. I did not vote for him and oppose his politics but I find him to be likeable personally. He could make for a fine regular president if everyone agreed to stop making something historic out of him. Even his supporters have to agree that Obama has done nothing yet. He has not even pulled us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has not even made a serious attempt yet at bringing an end to the Palestinian conflict. I believe that Obama is smart enough and charismatic enough to do great things in this world and it would not shock me if, after serving two terms, he managed to do something that did deserve a peace prize. Now he will never get the chance.

As someone who long since lost faith in the value of the Noble Prize for many of its decisions in years past, I wish I would be able to cheer and say “see I told you so.” The problem is that I know that there are people in religious fundamentalist circles who are doing the same thing. One of the key elements of the Rabbi Avigdor Miller style polemic is to delegitimize secular authority, from politics, to literature, to science. Rabbi Miller was very open about this: “If you wish to know the value of the Nobel Prize awarded to a scientist for ‘discovering’ how the Universe began, then consider the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to the writer of smutty Yiddish novels [Isaac Bashevis Singer]” (Awake my Glory pg. 108).

I am someone who is actively fighting the war against religious fundamentalism. This means not just writing polemics from afar to make me feel better about myself, but actually engaging those under the fundamentalist sway on a personal level in an effort to win hearts and minds. I am not sure to what extent this applies to other groups, but the religious fundamentalism of Haredim relies on a “great-men” model of authority. It builds up its leadership, gedolim, to an almost cult-like status. To reach out to Haredim it becomes important to build a counter edifice of great men. For me this means not just non-Haredi rabbis, but secular politicians, writers, thinkers, and scientists. The moment that one’s list of heroes includes those “outside the faith,” one will have to formulate a theology under which this can be accomplished. This means the end for any religious fundamentalist system that operates on the model of saying that “we, by definition, have the truth, we are right and everyone else is walking in darkness." Whether I like them or not, I need for there to be secular institutions like the Noble Prize award to serve as models of excellence. Now that the Noble Prize has sold itself out for partisan politics, I all the poorer for it.

Why We Need to Ban Hershey Park on Chol Hamoed

Yesterday I went with some of my cousins to Hershey Park. Every year, during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Hershey Park is rented out for a day for the Jewish community. You have thousands of Jews from along the Eastern coast in attendance. This is primarily a Haredi event, but you get people from across the spectrum coming. For me it is worth it to go just to see who I might run into. I did run into a number of my students. (Now I know what they have been doing with their vacation time instead of studying.) Considering how successful and popular this event is I am shocked that, at least to the best of my knowledge, there has been no attempt to ban this event. At a loss to explain this lapse in judgement by radical Haredi vigilante activists, I have decided to help them out with some banning points of my own.



- It is not proper for men and women to share the same amusement park as this encourages mingling between the sexes. Instead specific designated hours should be set up for men and women like in the supermarkets of all upstanding communities today.

- There is a danger that if a man and woman sit next to each other on a ride and the ride malfunctions, they might accidentally bump into each other.



- It is forbidden for women to ride on roller-coasters and bumper cars. These rides constitute a form of male behavior which women are forbidden to imitate. Waving your hands as you speed down a drop of multiple stories with the wind in your face and your stomach dropping from you is not something that the meek girls raised in our community should have any interest in. There is also a danger that a woman's skirt will fly up during the ride, posing a powerful temptation to any men on the ground with high powered cameras with telescopes. Bumper cars are a form of driving no different than a regular car. Since woman are forbidden to drive a male vehicle such as a car it behooves them not to even play at such a sin by driving toy cars. Women are allowed to ride the carousel and other rides for children if their children need them.

- Attendance at this park encourages women to dress in an immodest manner. (I discovered this with the help of the new Oz Vehadar Levusha application on my cell phone. It takes pictures of women and analyzes their clothing, giving out the relevant paragraphs of the book being violated.) These women serve as a stumbling block to the men who might look at them as well as the religious women who might think to sit down next to them on one of the park's benches.

- It is an absolute chilul Hashem (desecration of God's name) when Jewish children (obviously not from our community) are rude to the gentile workers in the park.

- It is an absolute chilul Hashem to see Jews being kind and in all ways too friendly with the gentile workers in the park.

- This is a park devoted to selling non chalov-yisroel (milk products not under rabbinic supervision) sweets, setting up a stumbling block for our children.

- This event causes men to engage bittul Torah (wasting time not engaged in religious studies).

- Going to this event causes proper Jews to be exposed to other Jews, even Jews who go to co-educational schools, and be influenced in their ways.

- Once we start allowing Jews to go to amusement parks they might be tempted to go these parks during the summer when it is not being rented out by Jews.

- Non-Jewish music like Avraham Fried was being played on the loudspeakers.

-There was a movie theater in operation and DVDs were being sold in front.

- And last but not least. This event is actually fun. The concept of fun does not exist in the Torah and therefore is absolutely forbidden.


Considering the Poe law, I suspect that before too long someone will come out with something along these lines and mean it with deadly seriousness.

(With help from the Nadoff family)

Frank Schaeffer and the Humanities Question

I would like to thank James Pate for recommending Frank Schaeffer’s memoir Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. Frank Schaeffer is the son of the late Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer. Frank grew up in the shadow of his parents in a villa called L’Abri in Switzerland. One of the major themes of the book is the struggle between his parent’s deeply held evangelical beliefs and their love of art and literature. While Frank Schaeffer grew up in a very strict home, without movies, television and other “corruptions” of modern life, he was raised to love classical literature, music and art. Francis Schaeffer did not approve of rock music until the 1960s but he played classical music in his room every waking hour. The highlight of the year was vacationing in Italy where Frank was tutored in painting by a gay artist. On the one hand Francis was far more sheltered than his Evangelical peers in America yet he was also far worldlier. Frank explains the dilemma as follows:

We wanted nothing so much as the respect of the people who found our ideas backward and foolish. In a fantasy world of perfect outcomes, you would write a “Christian book” but have the New York Times declare it great literature, so great that the reviewer would say he was converting. And in the Style section, they would say that Edith Schaeffer [Frank’s mother] was the best-dressed woman in the world, so well dressed that this proved that no all fundamentalists were dowdy and that “we have all been wrong about you Christians.” And if those reporters visited L’Abri, they would say they had never been served so lovely a high tea, and that they had never heard such clever answers to their questions, and that because of the sandwiches, the real silver teaspoons, the beautifully cut skirt and jacket Mom was wearing, the kindness of the Schaeffer children, the fact Dad knew who Jackson Pollock was, meant that the Very Wealthy and Very Important people all over the world would not only come to Christ, but would, at last, admit that at least some real Christians (in other words, us) were even smarter and better-dressed than worldly people, and that you can believe Jesus rose from the dead, not drink or smoke or dance, and yet be even happier, even more cultured, better in every way!

What I never heard Mom or Dad explain was that if the world was so bad and lost, why did they spend so much time trying to imitate it and impress the lost? (pg. 52-53)

Frank Schaeffer has hit on one of the main challenges facing anyone attempting to build a religious movement that can stand its ground intellectually against the best of secular modernity. It is all too easy to make the pretense of being modern as a cover thus making the entire enterprise a scam. It is very easy to say the line that your religion works well with modernity. This goes for both the humanities and the sciences. Even Haredim have for decades now been in on the act, espousing what, in theory, is supposed to be Modern Orthodox rhetoric. Ask a Haredi person about the relationship between science and religion and they will be quick to give you the thirty second talking point about how science does not contradict religion and in fact supports it. It is only when you start to dig in that you will find that the person does not believe in evolution. The science they are talking about is creationism, likely even young earth creationism. It is this sort of thinking that allows a group like Chabad, which engages in soft-core denial of heliocentrism to publish its own “science” journal, B’or Ha’Torah, and claim that they support science. Following the same logic, fundamentalist Christians can create institutions like the Creation Museum in Kentucky to give a scientific veneer to their Christian missionizing. Haredim and fundamentalist Christians are similarly able to create their own micro artistic cultures, with books, music and movies. These are ultimately pale imitations of the secular culture and thus fail in their stated purpose to offer a counter to secular culture.

If you are only engaging in the sciences and the humanities as an act, without believing in what lies behind them, the act is going to wear thin very quickly. I would see this as the cause of the failure to building a serious religious intellectual culture beyond eccentric individuals. By all counts Frank Schaeffer’s parents were true believers in their humanities based Christianity. Yet they failed to bring that humanities element to the wider evangelical culture, which simply wished to use them as intellectual cover. This is best captured in the book when the Schaeffers are told by a Christian film producer that they needed to cut out a shot of Michelangelo’s David from a documentary about western art because it was male nudity.

This is a challenge that I face in my life. If I were debating me, the issue that I would go after is that I may be a smart religious guy, who values science and the humanities, but that I am just an individual who does not represent anyone. All I am doing is providing cover for those who do not really believe in science and the humanities and are just making the pretense of supporting these things to better advance their cause. The fact that I am a true believer in the sciences and the humanities makes the damage to these things all the greater. I would not be nearly as affective if I were simply pulling off an act like everyone else. I have a lot of sympathy for the Schaeffers. Like them I see my religious beliefs as a necessary underpinning for science and for the humanities, where I actually work. My faith serves as a tool which I interact with the culture around me, helping me to further the cause of what is best in that culture. I matured into this belief through the influence and example of people like Rabbi Shalom Carmy, Rabbi Moshe Tendler, Dr. Alan Brill and Dr. Louis Feldman during my years at Yeshiva University. In order to continue to operate within Orthodox Judaism I need to believe that such people are more than just eccentrics off to the side, but the elite representatives of a wider movement, a movement in which I but a lowly foot soldier. I also need to believe that this movement has the potential to dominate Orthodox Judaism as a whole. As of now I do not believe that we even control Modern Orthodox Judaism let alone the Haredi world.

Thirteen Principles of Faith for When I Take Over Judaism

Chris Smith of Mild-Mannered Musings tagged me to list ten random things that I believe. I have decided to take advantage of the opportunity to turn this into something slightly different that I had been intending to write about. Maimonides famously lists his thirteen principles of the Jewish faith. If I were to take over Judaism and construct my own list of doctrines here is what would be on it. These are actually fairly similar to Maimonides’ own list of doctrines with some of the more radical implications of Maimonides’ thought made more explicit.

I believe with perfect faith in one God, who is the ultimate cause of the universe and everything in it. He acts through the laws of nature that he put in place such as Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolution

I believe with perfect faith that that God is not a physical being nor should he be described in physical terms. This includes not only a physical body (hands, feet etc.), but also terms such as “true,” “just” or “kind” unless they are meant in the negative sense to deny that God possesses any of the human deprivations included in their opposites.

I believe with perfect faith that God, as the ultimate intelligence who is outside the physical universe, is omniscient and omnipotent. This does not mean that he is actively aware of individual human beings and their actions or that he is likely to involve himself in specific human affairs, only that all life is within the scope of his knowledge and his will.

I believe with perfect faith in the value of prayer and that God is the only being to be prayed to. It is permitted to pray in the general direction of a physical object like a Torah scroll and meditate upon it as long as one acknowledges that such objects have no actual power. Similarly one can consult with knowledgeable people such as rebbes and ask for spiritual advice. To go to a rebbe for anything beyond this is prayer and hence idolatry. Prayer to God serves not as magic or as a mechanism to affect God’s will, but as a means for human beings to reach a greater understanding of God and align their will with his.

I believe with perfect faith that God is the source of the moral law written in our hearts and that he has done so in order that we become moral beings in his image. God would never command us to do something immoral like massacre innocent unbelieving women and children simply to demonstrate our faith in him.

I believe with perfect faith in human reason as God’s law written into our heads as a means for us to come to know of him. This includes logic, the scientific method and the historical method. God wishes us to value all conclusions that come from the use of these methods and would never ask us to go contrary to them on a leap of faith.

I believe with perfect faith in human prophecy. As God does not speak, prophecy does not involve God actively communicating with man but man coming to an understanding of God and his law.

I believe with perfect faith in the Torah (Old Testament), the Oral Law (Talmud) and those elements of Jewish tradition that do not explicitly go against monotheistic belief as the word of God in that they are valid expressions of God’s will put into human terms. By following these things I come to a greater understanding of God’s law than I would if I were to pursue the matter merely through my own intelligence.

I believe with perfect faith in the value of ritual practice as a means of teaching about God’s law, creating a community of believers and transferring spiritual experiences from one generation to the next.

I believe with perfect faith that God is an unchanging being and that his will does not change. Our understanding of him and his will is part of an ongoing process in which every generation brings its own experiences to a conversation that spans the ages. Since we are including past generations as part of our faith community, the past maintains a powerful veto over all decisions.
I believe with perfect faith in the value of other cultures and systems of belief even those that go against our own. I therefore strive to respect all beliefs and the people who hold them as beings created in the image of God even as I strive to advance my own beliefs as doing more to advance man in its knowledge of God.

I believe with perfect faith that human beings are responsible for each other’s welfare. This includes social justice for those living today as well as caring for the environment for the sake of those generations yet to be born.

I believe with perfect faith in the continuing progress of mankind in its knowledge of God and that one day all mankind will openly acknowledge God.

The practical implications of an Orthodox Judaism run along these principles would be Modern Orthodox Judaism opening up its doors to traditionally observant Conservative Jews while kicking out Haredim. Essentially it would become ok to take a liberal stance on the divine authorship of the Bible, but the moment you imply anything physical about God or that you can go to rebbes for blessings or gain specific benefits from kissing a Torah scroll you are out. For example I know a Haredi rabbi with a long beard who, in a story-tape for children, told a story about the Baal Shem Tov trying to get to Israel where the Baal Shem Tov attempts to sacrifice his daughter to the angel of the sea in exchange for safe passage. This rabbi was implicitly endorsing the notion that human sacrifice to angels is permitted. In a Judaism run by me this rabbi would suffer a worse fate than even if he had snuck into his story “hey kids the Baal Shem Tov, having nowhere else to turn, went and accepted Jesus as his personal savior.” In order to ever be allowed into a synagogue again this rabbi would have to publically recant his words and do penance. No matter what this rabbi would never be allowed into a position of authority again. I would not trust him not to spread his heresy among children. There is a prominent Haredi charity called Kupat Hair, which claims that rabbis such Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky will bless donors with all manner of physical benefits. This would count as heresy and the donors and the rabbis who have endorsed this would be out of Judaism. Rabbi Kanievsky is also likely a supporter of at least soft core geocentrism. Since support of the use of reason, including the scientific method, is an article of faith, this would also now be not just bad science, but heresy.

If you took over and were made pope of your religion what doctrines would you put in place that those who went against them would be expelled from the religion?

I tag Miss S., Bray of the Fundie, E-Kvetcher and Cory Driver.