How frum are you, really? Quiz

Fuuny quiz. Written by Yossi Ginzberg seen on www.haemtza.blogspot.com
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Answer the following questions as best you can. I know that none of the answers will be exactly right for you, because you are so very complicated that no one really understands you, but select the one that is closest to your beliefs.

1) Imagine this scenario: In the course of your work, you find that another “frum” employee is taking large sums from the company, in the process depleting a pension fund so that dozens of lower-level laborers at another site (probably all non-Jews) will be cheated of their retirement funds. What do you do?

A) Ask him for a percentage, implying that if he doesn’t cut you in you’ll tell.
B) Nothing, because taking money would be abetting the theft and telling on him would be mesirah.
C) Tell him to stop stealing and to return what he took.
D) Call the police and/ or the company security force.

2) Your boss, seeing that all 8 days of Chanuka are marked in red on the calendar, asks you if you need all the days off, or just the first two and last two. What do you reply?

A) You tell him you also need a day before and a day after, to set up the Menorah and take it down.
B) Yes, you need all 8 days off
C) Only the first and last days.
D) You tell him the truth, that work is unaffected.

3) A close relative is seriously ill, and you really want to help. What do you do?

A) You fly to a famous Eastern European cemetery, where you recite a prayer.
B) You have a prayer said in the synagogue the next time you are there.
C) You recite Psalms at home.
D) You recite Psalms and give charity.

4) In selecting a bride for your son, how much of a role does her parent’s wealth play?

A) Hugely important, I am tired of supporting him.
B) Hugely important, my son is too learned to have to worry about money.
C) If they have money, it means they are smart, and I want a girl with good genes.
D) More important is how they got the money: is the money kosher?

5) In checking out a potential shidduch, which of the following is a deal-breaker? (Select only the most important, if several qualify)

A) The boy/ girl has been in trouble with the police over drugs & alcohol
B) The family has a history of relatives in jail.
C) The family eats “gebrokts” on Passover.
D) The potential groom/ bride is overweight .

6) If your plumber is known to be refusing to give his wife a “Get”, and your dishwasher isn’t working, what do you do?

A) Call him anyway, since it is impossible to live without a dishwasher.
B) Hire a cleaning lady until you get a number for another “heimishe” plumber.
C) Call a different plumber from the Yellow Pages.
D) Call him, tell him why you are not using him, and call a different plumber from the Yellow Pages

7) Your young child tells you that his Yeshiva is cheating, taking government funding that it isn’t entitled to by inflating attendance figures. He thinks it’s all good fun. What do you do?

A) Ask for a discount on your tuition.
B) Nothing, the Rosh yeshiva is a Godol, and if he does it, it must be okay.
C) Spread the news around in shul.
D) Protest formally to the yeshiva, and take your child out, explaining why.

8) You are down to your last money for the month, there are still four tzedaka appeals in front of you, and you can only respond to one. Which do you send to?

A) Pidyon Shevuyim for a Satmar in jail for beating up an anti-Zalman.
B) Pidyon Shevuyim for a nursing-home crook, a Talmid Chochom caught faking mortgages, or a frum smuggler who “didn’t know”.
C) Kupath Ha’ir, despite their inane ads
D) Your local needy person and/or shul.

9) How do you fulfill the custom of “Kaporos”?

A) I go to the closest place that has live chickens. Period.
B) I use live chickens, but only if they don’t look like they are being abused.
C) I do what my neighbors do, and that’s good enough.
D) I use money only.

10) I skip my evening Daf Yomi when…

A)… Only when my wife won’t find out
B)…..I can find an excuse.
C) . .. I am tired
D) …I need a break.

11) In making a simcha, the following is NOT a factor at all:

A) Money
B) What the “machatonim” want
C) What the kids want
D) What others think

12) My reaction, when I see headlines accusing a religious man of criminality, is:

A) To accuse the media of being anti-Semites.
B) To judge him innocent, period.
C) To judge him innocent until proven guilty.
D) To be ashamed.

13) I drink only Chalav Yisroel…

A) When anyone is looking
B) Always
C) Unless I’m out of town
D) Except for ice cream and candy bars.

14) Shtreimels are…

A) As important as anything else in the Torah
B) Almost as important as anything else in the Torah
C) Optional
D) Too hot to wear in the summer

15) My wife’s hair covering must be…
A) All of it, all the time, double-wrapped.
B) Sheitel, snood, I don’t care as long as it’s covered
C) Whatever, as long as she’s still attractive
D) Basically covered, but it’s really her decision

16) Shabbos meals must be…

A) Precisely the same menu, 52 weeks a year, because it’s holy
B) Absolutely must have at least fish, chicken, kugel and chulent
C) Can vary a little bit, if the Mrs wants
D) Must be inviting to those eating them.

17) After the “Motzi” blessing, I cut the Challah, and then...

A) Handle each piece, dipping it in salt and handing them out
B) The law says to dip it in salt, so I dip it, of course!
C) Realize that salt shakers are a recent invention, as is hygiene
D) Just cut them and pass them around on a plate with the salt shaker

Chai) On Rosh Hashana, the following is on my table:

A) Honey, a dozen fruits whose names I don’t know, and a big animal head
B) Honey, some fruits, and I have no idea why
C) Honey, a pomegranate, and some odd fruit for a shehechyanu blessing
D) Honey, a pomegranate, and a printed guide from a charity that lists customs I can make fun of.

How to score your results:
For every A answer, add one point.
For every B answer, add two points.
For every C answer, add three points
For every D answer, add four points

Add the numbers together to get a total

If your total is:

18 or 19 You should not be reading this, you should be on Yeshiva World or Vos Iz Neiz writing nasty bigoted comments in broken English and in all caps. Also, you need to shower more frequently. Even if they didn’t in the old country.

20 to 36 You are badly in need of continuing education in Judaism’s core values, ethics, and basic morality. Also, you should brush your hat.

37 to 50 You aren’t as closed-minded as some, but you are still far from being a complete human being. You need to learn more about Halacha and about Jewish values.

51 to 65 Mazel Tov, pat yourself on the back, you’re several steps above a Neanderthal. At least you understood all the words here, and most likely feel entitled to act really superior now that you have proven that you are too smart to read the Jewish Press anymore. Still, don’t get too snooty since you actually did demean yourself by taking this quiz.

66 to … Have you already calculated what the highest score could be? I thought so. I also think that you probably cheated a little, choosing answers for point value more than for veracity. So, you’re a top scorer, you think that makes you a mensch? It doesn’t, since you have already betrayed insecurity in your religious values by taking this dumb test. Get with the program- the real program- and start learning so you can help rescue the ignorant from sinking into the morass of ignorance and superstition that is overtaking Orthodox Judaism.

Three year old save his mothers life

This is a beautiful story and has really made my night! (How sad am I?)

A woman had an epileptic fit and her three year old son phoned 999 to tell them his mum was ill and his dad was out. The battery on the phone ran out before he could tell them much, so he found another phone and rang back.

Inspector Ormiston said:

Without doubt, young Jack has saved his mum's life. For such a young boy to have the presence of mind to not only phone 999, but to phone us on another mobile phone after the battery had run down, is phenomenal.

Here Here!

(And for a change in the mood, I'm off to choral selichot)

R' Hirsch against Kabbalah

I was reminded of these quotes by a conversation I had yesterday (you know who you are!).

The good Kantian that Hirsch was he could never accept all these other world that Jewish mystics dream up, to escape to.

What should have been eternal, progressive development was considered a stationary mechanism and the inner significance and concept thereof as extra-mundane dream worlds. . . Practical Judaism which comprehended in its purity, would perhaps have been impregnated with the spiritual became in it, through misconception, a magical mechanism, a means of influencing or resisting theosophic worlds and anti-worlds (N.L., p. 187).

Oh, but for those extra-mundane dream worlds! I must say, I can't be against them as much as R' Hirsch albeit that my sentiments being rather the same. In fact, I'm always quite clear the problem is not with kabbalistic, mystical or chassidic ideas themselves. Then again, maybe it is with those, but not against the sources and beliefs they derive from. The problem is when these original beliefs are taken out of context and turned into something quite alien. They are shorn free of their halachic or aggadic context and made into pseudo-philosophical beliefs. Same words, different beliefs. But anyway, the point is that 'in their place' they... well.. have a place.

The problem that I do have with these beliefs, in common with R' Hirsch, is not simply theory but how it affects the Jewish attitude to the to man, to the world, to G-d and thus, to our task:

A perverted intellect comprehended the institutions which were designed and ordained for the internal and external purification and betterment of man as mechanical, dynamical, or magical formulas for the up-building of higher worlds, and . . . thus the observances meant for the education of the spirit to a nobler life were but too frequently degraded into mere amuletic or talismanic performances (N.L., pp. 9-100).

Kabbalistic views of other worlds, as expounded through current Chassidic and Charedi Judaism, takes away from Halachic Judaism. This is not to say practically, because shemura matzot and all, mystics tend to be extremely strict in halacha (or at least ritualistic elements anyway). They do the acts, as R' Hirsch says above, but what is the quality of the acts? Halachic Judaism frames our attitudes and world-view in a particular way. Now, in this, sense Kabbalah often leads away from what Halachic Judaism teaches us is the main focal point of G-d's will for us: THIS WORLD. As R' Wurzburger (tzatzal) says:

Since, according to Halakhic Judaism, it is our task to seek to encounter God’s presence primarily in the lower realms of being (ikkar shekhinah ba-tahtonim), we must not escape from this world by a flight into transcendental spheres. The human task is to create an abode for God in the here-and-now

Thinking of mitzvot in terms 'other worlds' makes them 'mere amuletic or talismanic performances'; perhaps ways to get our seventy virgins in heaven!

Proof that man evolved from fish...

OLD WOMAN

BLOB FISH (Psychrolutes marcidus)

That is what I call incontrovertbile proof. Suck on that toothless creatures.

Why did so few Talmudic rabbis win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

....apart from of course it wasn't around. But that's a minor point I believe (c.f. the Midrash on Tractate Nobelim)

In English at school they always told you to describe things so you could imagine them. Build up the characters. Set the scene. Have long-winded, really annoying, irrelevant descriptions about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Okay, so they didn't say the last one but that was the (esoteric) ikkar. That's why I never read much, the literature was too "good" (and by "good" read snotty, pretentious, A* at English). No, I always preferred a book to have a plot, at least of sorts. So that counts out Catch 22: I struggled on to page 150 and there was not a single thing that had happened. Honest! It's through action and dialogue that you really learn about character, not through telling me about character.

The Rabbis in the Talmud, on the other hand, well.... they weren't French existentialists or self-styled radical philosophers; let's put it that way. Not really an artistic bone in their body. They go for the main plot elements, and the main plot elements only. The extreme opposite of Catch 22, and perhaps too much the opposite.

The following story made me laugh. It follows from a discussion about how long men can be away from home (studying) and away from their wives without permission. The halacha according to mishna and Palestinian Talmud is 30 days without exception (and then should stay at least one, probably two months at home). The Babylonian Talmud, however, goes to great lengths, presumably to justify existing practice, and relies on a minority opinion of (guess who?) Rabbi Eliezer which allows them to go away for 'two or three' (Talmudic for 'a few'). However, it is still not 'correct behaviour' to ignore your wife (!) as the following story makes clear:

Rav Rehume would regularly visit his wife every year on the Eve of Yom Kippur. One day, his studies absorbed him. His wife was waiting, "Now he will come, Now he will come". He did not come. She became upset, and a tear fell from her eye. He was sitting on the roof. The roof collapsed under him, and he died

The main story arc:

SHE THOUGHT HE'D COME

HE DIDN'T COME

SHE WAS UPSET

HE DIED

Get it? GET IT? You ignore your wife, YOU DIE. She cries, YOU DIE. (If you are going to study on roof, and you haven't had a civil engineer in, YOU DIE.) GET IT?.

Now of course there is a bit of irony which ups the literature points a bit. Clearly he didn't study too far away as otherwise a day engrossed in study wouldn't have stopped him getting home. Even so, he missed his 'regular' yearly visit. YOU DIE

There is a bit of emotion. The heart rendering moment, a rabbinical extravagance, when 'a tear fell from her eye'; I was almost in tears. THE DESPERATION... and moving on...YOU DIE (probably helped the wife).

But all in all, it's to the point. Not going to win a Nobel Prize. Zero marks for subtlety. But it's too the point. And more happens here than in the whole of 'Ushpizin'. You can't say fairer than that

Kiruv proofs: Rambam and Rav Hirsch speak out

Rambam, the master of criticism, speaks out against the popular theologians of his day, the so called defenders of the faith.  He criticises the Mutakallemim and the method of the Kalam philosophy.  These are mostly 'Mohammadean' but was very worried about the rise of such philosophy 'amongst our co-religionists'.  He thinks the right way to respond to such people  is to say to them: "'Will you mock at Him, as you mock at man?' for their words are indeed nothing but mockery."  These are the people who in trying to bolster religion bring all sorts of 'proofs' to demonstrate the fundamentals of our faith. 

 

In the specific case I will draw from here they try to prove that the world was created (sound familiar?).  He says that "all the proofs of creation have weak points, and cannot be considered as convincing except by those who do not know the difference between a proof, a dialectical argument, and a sophism".  [Proof of the soul kind of misses the point of why we hold the belief, don't they?; it is not something that simply 'is' but something we are called on to be]. In all cases the proofs are "questionable because propositions have been employed that have never been proved".  [As you know, 600,000 people couldn't have lied about the revelation, but on whose authority do we accept that there were that many people? The thing whose very truth we are trying to establish?]  The mistaken tactics of these mediaeval kiruv workers include  mistaking the imaginable for the possible. [Of course one can imagine that G-d created the fossils a few thousand years ago, but really? Really really?]

 

But hey, what's the problem?  If people end up believing the right things, who care about the method they get there?  Turn a blind eye.  They have grown up 'children of the gentiles' .   They want proofs, give them proofs.  But Rambam very well sums up the danger of such an approach:

 

I will not deceive myself, and consider dialectical methods as proof; and the fact that such a proposition has been proved by a dialectical argument will never induce me to accept that proposition, but, on the contrary, will weaken my faith in it and cause me to doubt it.  For when we understand the fallacy of a proof, our faith in the proposition itself is shaken.  It is therefore better that a proposition which cannot be demonstrated be received as an axiom, or that one of the two opposite solutions be accepted on authority

A proof is not only not possible but undesirable!  Here he is not criticising 'dialectical arguments'.  These are the kind of arguments that help you 'see' the world in one way rather than other [the glasses through which the world is seen in correct focus].  Ultimately proofs where there is none, will lead to the destruction of the basic axioms of Jewish belief.  It will fundamentally misunderstand what they are.  These are the principles by which we understand everything else.  Why put forward a fallacious argument that in the end leads to doubt about the very propositions we are trying to protect?  Rambam saw it as a major task to bring down such proofs along with the proofs of the alternatives (in this case the eternity of the world).  Both fundamentally misunderstand the role of such doctrines.

 

As ever, R' Hirsch puts the points beautifully:

 

What is the use of torturing the youthful mind with "proofs" of the existence of G-d... and the rest of what is called rational religion or rational theology?  In reality the maturest mind of a philosopher knows no more about the essence of G-d than the simple mind of the child; nor is it necessary for the moral behaviour of man in this world to know more than the Torah tells us about G-d.  It is not the longing for the world beyond which is the essence of Jewish piety; it is.... to use all the material and spiritual means at our disposal for the noble and enobling purpose of the great edifice of mankind which G-d wants to erect from the generations of the human family.

 

The 'knowledge' of G-d that the Torah gives us isn't the kind of knowledge which waits approval by proof or evidence.  Nor is it the kind we would expect to be.  Is creation simply teaching us some lame 'fact' about how old the world happens to be?  Have those master theologians happened to stumble upon and discover that we are made of a 'spiritual substance' which all those ignoramuses have somehow happened to miss?  A* for your history lesson about that little rock in the middle of the Sinai dessert.  No these aren't facts awaiting discovery but the very starting point of our search:

 

The basis of your knowledge of G-d does not rest on belief, which can, after all, allow us an element of doubt... [The] fundamental truths accordingly are completely out of the realm of the mere believing or thinking and are irrefutable facts which must serve as the starting point of all our other knowledge with the same certainty as our own existence and the existence of the material world we see about us.

 

Hirsch rather runs amok with the notion of 'fact' and especially 'irrefutable facts'.  Nevertheless the point holds, that 'knowledge of G-d' is the very means by which we frame our experiences and our knowledge.  One doesn't wait upon proof of some vague philosophical concept of 'physical world' before acting on it (philosophers have tried unsuccessfully for centuries). [ We don't proof we have eyes by looking for it.  The eyes is not 'in the visual field' but is the very thing that sees.]  It is as Rambam says (if we do have to be philosophical) an axiom.  This might all be nonsense, but that's the very point... If its wrong to believe in G-d or creation (etc) it is not because its false but because it's nonsense.  Either acting upon G-d's word 'makes sense' or is simply a condition of madness.  I keep using the metaphor of sight: either these doctrines are the right prescriptions for our eyes or they are fundamentally blurred.

 

I've got a bit philosophical here, and I don't want to make it seem that I have tried to make it clear what the roles of these doctrines are in Judaism.  Or why we should hold them (as opposed to thinking they are nonsense).  Or what the beliefs lead to.  In fact, I haven't shown much.  But kiruv methods of 'proof' are fundamentally misguided, practically, theoretically and Judaically.  Practically because they will lead us to doubt the fundamentals of faith.  Theoretically because the arguments are logically fallacious.  Judaically, (and this is what I haven't claimed to show) because they miscontrue those very beliefs they aim to defend.

When so little can be done

A couple of months back the excitement was palpable, well it was for me.  Yet no-one else seemed that bothered at the revolution that was taking place.  Robert Mugabe was defeated.  One tyrant down.  No-one including me was so naive to think that Robert Mugabe would go without a fuss, yet the pressure to go seemed overwhelming.  Yet quietly and without (relatively speaking) fuss, he managed to keep hold of his grip on power.  He let the waters settle but managed to stay in the race on a legal technicality (alright.. his opponent didn't have enough to defeat him but still)! 

Then quietly and without much international fuss he starts to murder people and drive others out of their homes right in the pubic eye.  And now the opposition party has pulled out (citing unfree and unfair elections), Mugabe gets to be upset that the average Zimbabwean is deprived of his/her vote.  And what happens... China, Russia and South Africa for the first time agree to a non-binding, watered down resolution.  As if Mugabe could care about a UN resolution, economic sanctions (he's not affected or not being part of the commonwealth  (I'm sure his loyalty to the queen is minimal).

Maybe I should write a letter to my MP and get an emphatic statement read in parliament.  Or maybe I should get depressed about the state of the world and be apathetic and think about me.  Or maybe just pray.  Of course my real instinct is to blat him. Wipe him out.  Diplomacy is great and all but that only works with someone who gives a damn.  What possible advantage does he get from it?  But violence, is that the answer... if you wipe out one dictator there are ten more to take his place.  And what does that say about the rule of law?

It's an easy life for tyrants.  Maybe I should consider my future career prospects.  Hmm