A personal relationship with Gd

[Note: I've discussed this theme somewhat in my columns on “Avoiding the appearance of showmanship” and "Is religion private if your family sees you?, and in a derashah on Private Religion and Public Religion.]

Rabbi Shalom Carmy hits what is, for me, another home run in his column, “He thought she was drunk,” in the Summer 2010 edition of Tradition. In particular, one part of his article criticizes what I do, sometimes, on this blog: public sharing of religious intimacy.

R' Carmy cites Rav Soloveichik, from a eulogy for Rabbi Zeev Gold:

If it is good for a man, and his heart is full of joy, let him reveal his feelings to God…thank Him and yearn for Him; but not exhibit them to others,lest an alien gaze desecrate this holy of holies. If, to the contrary, it is bad for man, and he is given over to distress, beneath the yoke of suffering and affliction, and fi nds himself abandoned and forlorn—let him confess before God, weep and entreat Him behind the curtain, but let no stranger approach the holy of Holies lest he desecrate through his indifference the sanctity of mute suffering oppressing him (Leviticus 16:17).

I know that this citation doesn’t explain why sharing the intimacy debases it. Further, R’ Carmy does note the need to share that intimacy for pedagogic purposes as well as for our health as social animals. But I think the case for this main point is strong.

To cite myself, from the derashah linked above:
Private religion is Moshe on Har Sinai, Adam and Chavah and Gd in the Garden, a direct relationship that is neither open nor shared, intimate, monogamous, an immanent relationship that bonds each Jew uniquely to Gd. Gd knows me, and I know Gd through my experiences of a lifetime, and no one else on Earth can claim the Gd-experience that I have.
Michah ordered us, והצנע לכת עם אלקיך, walk in צניעות with HaShem. צניעות is not specifically about covering a part of the body, or being humble. צניעות means privacy. We are to walk privately with HaShem, and so experience a faith which is intense and personal.

If our relationship with Gd is shared with others - even spouse, children, students, close friends - then will we ever have an authentic religious experience which is not for sharing, which we don't set about describing in print, which we don't photograph and email to all of our contacts, which is just "me and Gd"?

This matters. It impacts prayer and ritual, obviously. How could I seriously contemplate Gd in Shmoneh Esreih, if I never thought about Gd, if I never communicated with Gd, outside that davening framework?

Less obviously, it also impacts Olam haBa. One of the visions of Olam haBa [the “world to come”, Heaven, etc] I find most authentic is a description of a world in which the soul is fully exposed to Gd, and one can appreciate Gd at whatever level of purification, sensitivity and understanding he achieved in this world. Years ago, when I would imagine this potential future I would worry that I might find it boring. After all – none of the elements of daily life would persist, none of the distractions would be present, none of the usual types of satisfaction would be present. What would I do for eternity, locked in a room (so to speak) with Gd?

Ineed to think about this some more.

Science Update: Chimps and Death, Melanin Protection for Radiation Therapy, and Learning Hebrew

Not much time for original writing today, but here are excerpts from a few recent ScienceDaily reports I have found interesting:

How Chimps Deal With Death: Studies Offer Rare Glimpses
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2010) — Two studies in the April 27th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offer rare glimpses into the ways that chimpanzees deal with the deaths of those closest to them. In one case, researchers describe the final hours and moment of death of an older female chimp living in a small group at a UK safari park as captured on video...
In the days leading up to the chimp's death, the group was very quiet and paid close attention to her, the researchers report. Immediately before she died, she received much grooming and caressing from the others, who appeared to test her for signs of life as she died. They left her soon after, but her adult daughter returned and remained by her mother all night. When keepers removed the mother's body the next day, the chimpanzees remained calm and subdued. For several days they avoided sleeping on the platform where the female had died, even though it was normally a favored sleeping spot, and remained subdued for some time after the death.

Novel Nanoparticles Prevent Radiation Damage
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2010) — Tiny, melanin-covered nanoparticles may protect bone marrow from the harmful effects of radiation therapy, according to scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University who successfully tested the strategy in mouse models. Infusing these particles into human patients may hold promise in the future.

Teaching a Foreign Language? Best Teach in the Accent of the Listener
ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2010) — Perception of second language speech is easier when it is spoken in the accent of the listener and not in the 'original' accent of that language, shows a new study from the University of Haifa. The study was published in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research.
Many adult schools teaching second languages insist on exposing their students to the languages in their 'original' accents. However, this new study, carried out by Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim and Dr. Mark Leikin of the University of Haifa's Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, Prof. Zohar Eviatar of the Department of Psychology and Prof. Shimon Sapir of the Department of Learning Disabilities, found that this system is not necessarily the best and certainly not the most expeditious.

Dumb Israeli smokers, Smart Israeli rats, and more Science News

[This week’s Haveil Havalim is here]

I'm having a very busy few days as the kollel resumes programming and as my counterparts at various shuls and organizations return to normal business.

I'm also into "Do it Yourself" season - I've recently dismantled and cleaned my car brakes, re-hinged a door, washed my entire stock of white shirts by hand (long story), re-potted a few plants and replaced all of the buttons on my davening jacket.

Bottom line: I'm short of time to write. Nonetheless, here’s a round-up of some recent scientific stories I have found interesting:

Smoking Is Dumb: Young Men Who Smoke Have Lower IQs, Study Finds
A study led by Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry and the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer Hospital has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. Tracking 18- to 21-year-old men enlisted in the Israeli army in the largest ever study of its kind, he has been able to demonstrate an important connection between the number of cigarettes young males smoke and their IQ.
The average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, the study determined. The IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. An IQ score in a healthy population of such young men, with no mental disorders, falls within the range of 84 to 116.

New, Inexpensive Way to Predict Alzheimer's Disease
Your brain's capacity for information is a reliable predictor of Alzheimer's disease and can be cheaply and easily tested, according to scientists.
"We have developed a low-cost behavioral assessment that can clue someone in to Alzheimer's disease at its earliest stage," said Michael Wenger, associate professor of psychology, Penn State. "By examining (information) processing capacity, we can detect changes in the progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Simple Test Can Detect Signs of Suicidal Thoughts in People Taking Antidepressants
While antidepressant medications have proven to be beneficial in helping people overcome major depression, it has long been known that a small subset of individuals taking these drugs can actually experience a worsening of mood, and even thoughts of suicide. No clinical test currently exists to make this determination, and only time -- usually weeks -- can tell before a psychiatrist knows whether a patient is getting better or worse.
Now, UCLA researchers have developed a non-invasive biomarker, or indicator, that may serve as a type of early warning system.
Reporting in the April edition of the peer-reviewed journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, Aimee Hunter, an assistant research psychologist in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, and colleagues report that by using quantitative electroencephalographic (QEEG), a non-invasive measurement of electrical activity in the brain, they were able to observe a sharp reduction of activity in a specific brain region in individuals who proved susceptible to thoughts of suicide -- within 48 hours of the start of treatment.

Inkjet-like device "prints" cells right over burns
Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, U.S. researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts.
They have mounted the device, which has so far only been tested on mice, in a frame that can be wheeled over a patient in a hospital bed, they reported Wednesday.
A laser can take a reading of the wound's size and shape so that a layer of healing skin cells can be precisely applied, said the team at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"We literally print the cells directly onto the wound," said student Kyle Binder, who helped design the device. "We can put specific cells where they need to go."

And one more:
Why Israeli Rodents Are More Cautious Than Jordanian Ones
Is a border line simply a virtual line appearing on the map? If so, why is it that Israeli rodents are more cautious than Jordanian rodents? Why is it that there are more ant lions in Israel than in Jordan? And how come there are more reptile species in Jordan than in Israel? A series of new studies at the University of Haifa's Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology and the University of Haifa-Oranim's Faculty of Sciences and Science Education are exploring the answers.

The New York Times on Birkat haChamah, the “Blessing of the Sun”

The New York Times on Birkat haChamah, The Blessing of the Sun, April 8, 1897:

HEBREW FESTIVAL MARRED

Rabbi Arrested for Observance of an Ancient Talmudic Ceremony In Tompkins Square.

THE BLESSING OF THE NEW SUN

No Permit Had Been Thought Necessary for the Gathering and Policeman Foley Could Not Understand What It Meant – Occurs Once in 28 Years

Orthodox Hebrews in every part of the world celebrated yesterday what is familiarly known among them as “the new sun.” The festibal comes once every twenty-eight years, on the fourth day of the first week of the Hebrew month Nisan, corresponding practically to the month of April. The celebration in New York was spoiled for some hundreds of people by the interference of two park policemen with a gathering in Tompkins Square, the arrest there of Rabbi Wechsler, and the flight of Rabbi Klein.


See the whole piece here, in the New York Times archive.

My favorite quote:
The celebration is rather a complicated matter to explain to anybody. Rabbi Klein’s knowledge of English is slight, while Foley’s faculties of comprehension of matters outside of police and park regularions and local events are not acute. The attempt of a foreign citizen to explain to an American Irishman an astronomical situation and a tradition of the Talmud was a dismal failure.

Gotta love it.

And the result:
Both became excited, and the people who clustered around them increased the confusion. When Foley was told in broken English about a “new sun,” he was doubtrful whether it was an attempt to guy him, or whether some new infection of lunacy had broken out on the east side. His demonstrations became so threatening that Rabbi Klein understsood that he was in danger of being arrested and clubbed, and chose the easiest and fastest plan of escape.

Only in New York, folks.

[For specifics on this mitzvah, see my three other posts linked under Birkat haChamah.]

Amortality: A Consequence of Early Mortality

Catherine Mayer writes in Time about one of Ten Ideas that are Changing the World: Amortality. She writes, “The defining characteristic of amortality is to live in the same way, at the same pitch, doing and consuming much the same things, from late teens right up until death.” Ms. Mayer observes that this is more than a result of boomer age-resistance; it’s actually a separate (if related?) phenomenon.

I have noticed this “amortality” in myself, although I have tended to write it off as a product of life on the early side of middle age. I have assumed that my desire to pretend I am still in college is either some form of mid-life crisis, or some immaturity I will outgrow, or both.

But, in any case, I think Amortality is a consequence of Early Mortality, of the death-cult envelope in which every member of the developed world now lives.

From the earliest ages, we are super-aware of death and its causes:

• Posters in our local pediatrician’s office show pictures of slim children and obese children, and list the statistical likelihood of illness and death for each.

• The ebullient BNL song, “If I had a million dollars, I would buy you a fur coat, but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel – I would buy you an exotic pet, like a llama or an emu – We wouldn’t have to walk to the store, we’d take a limo ‘cause it costs more” is sadly irrelevant. If I had a million dollars, I’d stick it in a CD or a mattress and wait for the market to improve, so that I’d be able to afford long term healthcare.

• News websites feed our hunger for statistics as well as fear, plugging us with numbers on the top ten causes of death in our country, state and hometown, broken down by age, demographic and social status.

We worry about diet, exercise, retirement accounts, long term care insurance, war and terrorism, global warming, social collapse, anxiety disorders.

We start forestalling death in our youth, with everything from college-prep pre-schools to pre-arranged funerals.

So it’s only natural that, with death constantly on our mind, we live every moment to its desperately youthful fullest, to the best of our ability, resisting any change, any concession to the grave. We are afraid to do otherwise.

The irony is that this desperate amortality is, itself, a contributing factor for those anxiety disorders. As the Talmud teaches, one who is forever worried about tomorrow’s bread has no life at all.

We might do well to acknowledge the grave even as we forestall it; acceptance tends to be a healthier option, physically, than denial.

Evolution and the Moving Eye of the Flatfish

I am not a fan of the evolution/Creation debate. Aside from the frustrating fact that it never evolves beyond the same arguments, vitriol and narrow stereotyping, I am fundamentally embarrassed by some of the views espoused by the Creation side - and no argument is more embarrassing to me than the challenge, “That could not have evolved!”

This approach is as old as Darwin, and, indeed, he was stymied by a few cases from its class, such as, “The eye is so complex, it could not have evolved in successively functional steps.” It demands either a logical explanation for an evolutionary step, or, in the absence of such an explanation, it demands physical evidence that such an evolutionary step occurred.

But I don’t like or trust this approach.

One reason I don’t like this argument is that it rarely considers new evidence or arguments, relying instead on outdated literature. Every few years scientists discover another missing link, or develop another explanation for an unlikely evolutionary process, but the creationists never update their data to include, or refute, these findings. In response, evolutionists reject the creationist view as outdated – which, in this respect, it is.

A second reason I don’t like this argument is that it sets up an unfair logical playing field, demanding Reason from the evolutionist side but not from the creationist side. The evolutionist does not have a good theory and does not have all of the evidence to support his theory, and so the creationists are going to call him on his lack of evidence. But when the evolutionist calls the creationists on their own lack of evidence – ie where is Noah’s Ark? – then he is told to accept it on faith. If we can accept Creation on faith, the scientist must be able to accept a theory even in the absence of a complete constellation of evidence.

But the third and strongest reason I don’t like this approach is this: Evidence which is missing now may well be discovered later. Theories which are gapped today might be made whole with the passage of time. People who pin their hopes on today’s inadequate science are due for a surprise tomorrow.

Witness this ScienceDaily report from July (I meant to blog it ages ago, but never had the chance):
Flatfish Fossils Fill In Evolutionary Missing Link
Opponents of evolution have insisted that adult flatfishes, which have both eyes on one side of the head, could not have evolved gradually. A slightly asymmetrical skull offers no advantage. No such fish -- fossil or living -- had ever been discovered, until now.
All adult flatfishes--including the gastronomically familiar flounder, plaice, sole, turbot, and halibut--have asymmetrical skulls, with both eyes located on one side of the head. Because these fish lay on their sides at the ocean bottom, this arrangement enhances their vision, with both eyes constantly in play, peering up into the water…
But in the 10 July 2008 issue of Nature, Matt Friedman, graduate student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago and a member of the Department of Geology at the Field Museum, draws attention to several examples of such transitional forms that he uncovered in museum collections of underwater fossilized creatures from the Eocene epoch--about 50 million years ago...
Friedman examined multiple adult fossil remains of two primitive flatfishes, Amphistium and a new genus that he named Heteronectes.
"Amphistium has been known for quite some time," he said. "The first specimen was described more than 200 years ago, but its placement in the fish evolutionary tree has been uncertain ever since. Close examination of these fossils yield clues that they are indeed early flatfishes."
The most primitive flatfishes known, both Amphistium and Heteronectes have many characteristics that are no longer found in modern flatfish. But the one that caught Friedman's attention was the partial displacement of one eye, evident even in the first Amphistium fossil discovered over two centuries ago.
"Most remarkably," he said, "orbital migration, the movement of one eye from one side of the skull to the other during the larval stage, was present but incomplete in both of these primitive flatfishes." For both sets of fossils, the eye had begun the journey but had not crossed the midline from one side of the fish to the other.
"What we found was an intermediate stage between living flatfishes and the arrangement found in other fishes," he said. These two fossil fishes "indicate that the evolution of the profound cranial asymmetry of extant flatfishes was gradual in nature."

I certainly believe that Gd created the universe, and I am no wiser than anyone else regarding the mechanism Gd used. But this I do know: Arguments predicated on " I found a gap in your theory" and "Where is your proof?" are doomed by the march of theoretical development and investigation.

I'm dreaming of a pasul sefer torah

First, a few quick items:
1) The Kosher Cooking Carnival is here; thanks for the great billing, Isramom!
And while we’re on the topic of cooking, the wonderful Rebbetzin came across a great-looking Rosh HaShanah recipe, “Roasted Chicken, Apples and Leeks,” here at Real Simple.

2) You already know I love my ScienceDaily emails; here are two more reasons, from the “No Kidding!” department:
Fake Popup Warnings Fool Internet Users Even After Repeated Mistakes
and
Facebook Profiles Can Be Used To Detect Narcissism.
Thank you for making this possible with your tax dollars, and your contributions to your university’s endowment fund.

3) Oh, and one more weird one, from a Real Simple article on Apple-Picking:
Pack an old-fashioned bag-and-thermos lunch, but swap the typical PB & J for something more interesting, like Roasted Sweet Potato and Apple Soup and Cucumber and Goat Cheese Sandwiches.
Um… I guess you and I have different definitions of “Real Simple.”

But back to the topic of this post:
I had a dream last night, in which I was leining the pasuk, כי חלק ה' עמו יעקב חבל נחלתו, but the word נחלתו was missing. I hunted for it, and eventually found it written in the wrong place, a line before the spot in which it belonged. (Translation: The sentence was supposed to be, For Gd’s nation is His portion; Jacob is the portion of Gd’s inheritance. The word missing was of Gd’s inheritance. It’s Devarim 32:9.)

It’s not that unusual for me to experience a stress dream about having a Torah-reading problem. I am the shul’s regular baal keriah, I lein all the time, so this is the equivalent of a public speaker dreaming about getting up to speak and finding he can’t read his notes, or a chef dreaming about not being able to locate the salt.

The dream was also missing a key realistic element, which makes me more likely to dismiss it: That sentence comes from the shirah of Haazinu, which is written in the Torah in poetic columns, but in my dream it was in the Torah’s normal paragraph format. Even in the middle of the night I would remember that detail; Haazinu is one of my favorite segments in the Torah, with its beautiful poetry.

Still, the dream disturbs me.

What could it mean? Some possibilities:
It’s a reminder to speak about Israel, our נחלה/inheritance, more often.
It’s a reminder to speak about Jewish unity, which makes us a single portion of Gd.
It’s a warning of guilt for me; our status as Gd’s inheritance relies on the merit and covenant of our ancestors, and I am not living up to that merit and covenant.

I don’t know. I’m not about to declare a תענית חלום (taanit chalom, a fast undertaken to atone for one’s sins, triggered by a frightening dream) for myself, but I wonder what was going inside my head last night.

Lion of Zion, if you want to shed light on the leining issue, go ahead. Therapydoc, you're welcome to weigh in on the dream.

Sh’ma Magazine article: Blame the Jews for Domestic Abuse

At the outset, let me speak plainly: Domestic abuse is a horrible crime, deserving of jail or worse. A horrible disease, it exists in every culture on earth, including among Jews of all types of observance, and the leaders of every society must do everything in their power, and then some, to root it out. Within the context of Orthodox Judaism, that means that rabbis, as supposed social leaders, must take concrete steps, including speeches and classes as well as personal counseling, to eradicate this crime.

Having said that, I was deeply disappointed by Naomi Graetz’s column, Silence is Deadly, in the February/March 2008 issue of Sh’ma Magazine. Graetz took an earthshatteringly important issue and cheapened it into political fodder.

Graetz starts strong, talking about the problem of domestic abuse and the need to eliminate it, and the extent of its presence in Jewish and Arab populations in Israel. But then she veers off into something that sounds an awful lot like anti-Jewish hate speech:

Where does the attitude come from that physical and mental abuse against women is acceptable? Does it start at home, in school? Is it supported by the rabbinate? What gives some men the right to think that silencing women is permissible? Is it because, as our sages say, a woman would prefer any marriage to not being married at all?

As Graetz presumably knows quite well, and as I stated above, domestic abuse exists in every society on earth - Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Atheist, Aboriginal, European, South American, Eskimo, you name it. Any decent psychologist can tell you that it is a product of human dysfunction, traceable to insecurity or depression or childhood trauma or chemical imbalance or a combination of other ills. So why allege that rabbis support it, or silence women? Is Torah responsible for Hindu domestic abuse, perhaps? Are rabbis fomenting misogynist behavior in Iceland or Indonesia? And no basis is presented for her suggestion - only that insidious, hideous allegation.

And Ms. Graetz continues:

Some religious leaders choose to ignore the distress of battered women; family stability and obedience to rabbinic law trumps the suffering of the individual. These sages are silencing women’s voices. In Israel, jurisdiction in matters of personal status is given to the Orthodox rabbinical courts, which means that all matters of marriage and divorce are adjudicated according to the interpretations of Jewish law. Although ample precedents exist for interpreting halakhah in a way that might favor women, rabbis who sit in today’s rabbinical courts have no such incentives.

Notice the “some religious leaders” and “these sages” in there? No names, no cases, no statistics or specific data, just a broad-brush stroke attacking nameless leaders and sages.

Graetz then reveals her rabbinic target as she turns the second half of the article into a diatribe against the Israeli rabbinate, alleging that they are biased against women and that they don’t admit the problem - even as she grudgingly admits that “Orthodox and Haredi” communities have now set up safe houses for women. Despite this and associated steps to address the problem (there are now “some rabbis who don’t automatically side with the husband,” to cite Graetz’s damning praise), her solution includes the important charge to “dismantle the rabbinate’s monopoly on divorce.”

And that will solve this problem? Come on. I am no fan of כפייה דתית, religious coercion, but the real issue is addressing mental illness and protecting the vulnerable, not shuffling the rules of which agency processes an application for divorce.

I’m disgusted. I’d rather fight domestic abuse than use it for political agitprop.