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FORUM Why Is Shanks a Palestinian Sympathizer? Why is Hershel Shanks a Palestinian sympathizer ("How the Palestinians Can Achieve a Palestinian State," August 1991)? Why can't he be for the Jews?...

...The Jews owe the Arabs nothing...
...But voices of dissent are critical to maintaining a democracy's moral barometer...
...However, any teacher worthy of the name would naturally study the book upon which the guide is based to fill in those gaps...
...At any rate, thank you for added insight into how Jewish marriages operate...
...But this is already emphasized much earlier than that...
...True, in some congregations the choir functions as a proxy congregation and might be considered dispensable...
...Richard Jacoel, Cochairman Jordan IS Palestine, Inc...
...There are, of course, significant differences between our traditions...
...Most problematic is the author's suggestion that Jewish tradition permits oral sex...
...Jacobs would have us believe that years of war and terrorism have not damaged Israel's soul...
...Israel Laggard on Ethiopians The rescue of the Ethiopian Jews described in the articles by Rabbi Fackenheim ("Was Addis Ababa Kept Open One Day Longer...
...F O R U M In fact, it is the Jbrah that is expanding this obligation to include the slave girl...
...In Ari Goldman's article ("My Search for God at Harvard," August 1991), his response to a friend used a four-letter word...
...In peace it is understood...
...Shanks is in great need of historical guidance...
...Reuven P. Bulka Ottawa, Ontario Michael Gold Responds: I thank Rabbi Bulka for his kind words and his learned elaborations on my article...
...Nevertheless, I have the highest regard for Rabbi Bulka's scholarship and used his book, The Jewish Pleasure Principle (Human Science, 1989), frequently in my own research...
...Your publication portrays the proper priorities...
...Instead, I found that the man at the helm places his hope for peace in the goodwill of his proven enemies...
...In fact, where one of the partners is not willing to share in such a manner, it is considered grounds for divorce (.Evan kaEzer, 76:13...
...He states: "In Christianity, the holiness ideal is abstinence and celibacy...
...Carmela Ingwer Chicago, Illinois Will There Be an Establishment Takeover at moment...
...Jacobs states that "the intentions of well-meaning Jewish and non Jewish critics to prod Israel to improve are used as a weapon against her...
...Why is Mr...
...Kol hakavod [bravo...
...The author speaks about the Talmud explicitly recommending nudity...
...Christian Views of Sex As a Christian interested in exploring my roots in Judaism and in building bridges of unity, I was surprised to read Michael Gold's obviously biased references to Christianity ("God in the Bedroom," August 1991...
...I agree with Jacobs that the Jewish community must respond to anti-Israel campaigns...
...Unnatural sex was in the Talmudic view still considered sex, whereas oral sex was'hot considered a legitimate sexual expression...
...On the contrary...
...It is true that this is necessary, but it is not sufficient...
...Your subscription solicitation promised a sophisticated journal of diverse Jewish thought...
...Jim Crow laws and the war in Vietnam were once supported by the American majority...
...Your courageous honesty promises to become a needed and important voice for our Jewish community...
...He clearly sees the presence of different viewpoints regarding Israeli policy as a threat to Israel's survival and is intolerant of them...
...However, my pleasure soon turned to disappointment as I read further...
...There is a long tradition in Christianity that identifies sex with sin and depravity and views marital sex as a compromise at best...
...The Israeli political, economic and social spheres reflect some of the same patterns of discrimination that fuel white racism in the U.S...
...While that may be true with rabbinical law, what of the Mosaic commandment, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" (Exodus 20:17...
...Were I to share this poster with students as part of a class highlighting various Israeli perspectives on the occupation, would Jacobs consider me to be engaged in Arab PR...
...The anti-Zionist Jew and the self-loathing Jew are entirely too common among us...
...You ask why there is no Shalom Achshav [Peace Now] equivalent in the Palestinian carnp...
...Tosefot says such unnatural sex is permissible if occasional (Rashi and Tosefot on Yebamot 346...
...If he only knew that 77 percent of the Jewish patrimony is already in Arab hands under the fictitious state titled the "Hashemite kingdom of Jordan," if he only knew thatjudea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan are only 5 percent of this patrimony and that Israel controls only the remaining 18 percent, he would not come out with such an article...
...Your attitude trivializes their predicament...
...We can gfow'and respond to the challenges facing our community only if there is a free press that can share ideas and opinions regardless of who may be offended...
...The author refers to the fact that the master had to provide food, clothing and conjugal rights to the slave girl and that the rabbis "expanded its application to relations between any husband and wife...
...But what constitutes an anti-Israel activity...
...Hopefully, you will remain free of any powerful influence or establishment takeover...
...I have been searching for an effective publication that is free to speak out...
...Those not expelled are kept as political hostages, e.g., in Syria...
...For a modern scholarly look at this issue, see Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent [Random House, 1988...
...I liked what I saw, so when the invoice came, I put it with my bills to pay...
...By 1983, the Israeli Ministry of Education could no longer ignore the level of anti-Arab prejudice among Jewish schoolchildren and endorsed a program of educational reform aimed at undoing the image of the Arab as enemy...
...Surely Wyschogrod knows that—at best—a religious belief is an allegory that only approximates reality...
...No Four-Letter Words I sent for the sample issue of moment, and when it came, skimmed it first...
...Additionally, Arab and Jew, both book and study guide, devotes equal time to Arab stereotypes of Jews...
...He juxtaposes this image with the inflammatory, antisemitic rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael, branding both as equivalent examples of dangerous Arab PR...
...Young unites that my "allegory" may be best for me but not for someone else...
...What Cantors Can Do I read Francine Klagsbrun's August 1991 column with interest and sympathy...
...His counsel that Palestinians recognize that "progress toward that goal [a Palestinian state] will be gradual and proceed in stages" is quite reasonable...
...I am returning your trial copy and request that you send me no more...
...That did not make them just policies or invalidate the opposition that eventually dislodged them...
...Even more important, the cantor can provide a sensitivity to the text that untrained people rarely do, leading the congregation to even deeper kavanah [appropriate concentration...
...Such dialogue would enable us as a community to reject Jacobs' insidious appeal to our fears and prejudices...
...In counting Muslims, one would include several thousand black Muslims living in Detroit...
...Gillette asks how I can reconcile this source with the tenth commandment: "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife...
...It's good to know that the desire to have healthy, happy, sexually fulfilling unions is not one of the differences between our faiths...
...she says she is willing to die for the self-determination of her people...
...Another good example of this is the Torah's statement that one may not destroy trees during war...
...So, for Catholicism, just as for "the rabbis, a marriage without sex is not truly a marriage...
...A 1990 poster put out by Yesh Gvul, an Israeli group urging refusal to serve in the occupied territories, depicted a blood-red flower superimposed on the face of an Arab child blinded jn one eye...
...Walter A. Sheldon Lido Beach, New York Bigotry toward Other Beliefs Michael Wyschogrod writes in his August 1991 column that, for reasons "not entirely clear" to him, God has taken up "abode" in the Jewish people...
...He is anxious to dissuade anyone from legitimate criticism of Israel...
...The absolute last thing we need is for prominent Jews such as Mr...
...He mentions oral sex in the same category as unnatural sex, but it is a quantum leap to jump from the one to the other...
...Clearly, the dialogue between our two traditions on this, as on so many other topics, has only just begun...
...Critics of Israel are no less entitled to freedom of expression...
...While this Pollyannism has been all but buried by the blood and ashes of Jewish history, it is still potentially too destructive for me to subsidize...
...Indeed, one wonders if for Jacobs such a phenomenon can exist at all...
...Wyschogrod's allegory might be the best for him but not for someone else, and neither can adduce a shred of credible evidence that one allegory is any more accurate than the other...
...The difficulty to this approach lies in the Israeli government policy of continued taking of Palestinian lands in the occupied territories in an attempt to foreclose territorial compromise and the possibility of a Palestinian state...
...The PBS teacher's guide, written largely by David Shipler, author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land (Times Books, 1986), does have gaps...
...At best, the cantor provides the knowledge to keep the service both familiar and fascinating, so that the congregant has moments of intense interest as well as a tune to sing...
...What he is asking for is Israeli humiliation, that the Jew get down on hand and knee and humbly apologize for protecting his right to exist...
...hen Israeli communities expressed alarm that Sharon's plans for trailer homes for Soviet immigrants would create slum neighborhoods, Sharon responded that he would build in the territories, where "there is never a problem...
...He not only must seek that permission, he must gain that permission...
...Matt Young Boulder, Colorado Michael Wyschogrod Responds: For someone devoted to tolerance, Mall Young seems remarkably intolerant of those not sharing his relalivistic interpretation of religion...
...Cantor Gershon Silins Temple Avodah Oceanside, New York The Harsh Realities Of the Occupation As a Jewish educator, I strongly object to Charles Jacobs' premise that labels educational materials and television programming depicting the harsh realities of the occupation as anti-Israel ("Arab PR: How the Palestinian Viewpoint Is Promoted in America," June 1991...
...What was disturbing to me, though, was the idea that one must choose between a "small, intimate and informal" service and a cantor and choir...
...See also Hebrews 13:4 ("Marriage should be honored by all") and 1 Corinthians 7:5 ("Do not deprive each other [sexually] except by mutual consent and for a time...then come-together again...
...With allowances for immigration, natural increase and misidentification, we estimate the current Arab/ Chaldean population, Muslim and Christian, in southeast Michigan to be about 100,000, or about the same size as the Jewish population in the area...
...By placing nearly all the onus of the current situation on the Palestinians and indicting Israeli authorities only for humiliating Palestinian drivers at security checkpoints, you ignore the more serious reasons for Palestinian resentment...
...Whatever, it was definitely a most revealing introduction...
...This by implication suggests that such rights already were basic to husband and wife...
...However, it is important always to add the proviso that this can only be done with the full agreement of the wife...
...Of these, approximately 14,300 are estimated to be Iraqi Christians (known as Chaldeans in the Detroit area...
...Patricia C. Becker, Consultant Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit Detroit, Michigan Our source for Detroit area Muslim population figures was the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn.—ed...
...The Tosafot that Rabbi Gold cites is not a proof for the permissibility of oral sex...
...I found the magazine most interesting and looked forward to subscribing...
...You bet the reasons are not entirely clear...
...The Torah often does this, applying a principle to an extreme situation, strongly conveying the message that this surely applies in other cases...
...Rashi defines unnatural sex as sex "where semination is not in the usual place...
...Jacobs cites the desperate remarks of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl quoted in funior Scholastic...
...See Erubin 100b, where the principle is applied even to encores...
...Does it not follow that Young's interpretation of religion may be best for him but not for met If so, why is Young so angry at me for daring to dissent from his understanding of religion...
...Over 60 percent of the land in the territories has now been closed to Palestinian development, and additional confiscation for Israeli settlement continues...
...The author quotes from The Holy Letter [Iggeret haKodesh] as a precedent for concern with woman's orgasm...
...Instead, Young is a dogmatic relativist who tolerates only other relativists...
...In no way was I trying to denigrate Christianity...
...Otherwise it is abuse and is forbidden...
...Would Yesh Gvul, the poster and I all fit into some scheme of traitorous complicity...
...Deborah Lurya Orange, California Shanks is Naive: Jordan Is Palestine I take issue with editor Hershel Shanks' Perspective, "How the Palestinians Can Achieve a Palestinian State" (August 1991...
...But I'm glad I read the entire issue before I got around to paying my bills—because I am not going to subscribe...
...Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding in Cana, turning water into wine when the host's provisions ran out...
...Gillette, I believe there is not one unified "Judeo-Chrislian" sexual ethic...
...If Young were a true relativist, he would also have to be tolerant of nonrelativists...
...The sad fact is that there are many Jewish racists in Israel...
...Yet Jacobs is outraged by what he perceives as the guide's attempt to slot Jews as racist...
...Worse, it displays a kind of bigotry toward other religious beliefs that would be unseemly in a fundamentalist but is outrageous in a professor of philosophy...
...Lucy Kline Port St...
...it is for the permissibility of "occasional unnatural sex...
...The statement is unprovable and indefensible...
...Aside from these comments, the author's piece is enlightened, on the mark in terms of its capturing the essence of rabbinic tradition with regard to sex and, as per usual for the author, eloquently expressed...
...and "Bring the soldiers home...
...August 1991) and Micha Odenheimer (The Ethiopian Airlift—Radically Redefin-ingjewish Identity," August 19^91) was a most remarkable and uplifting achievement...
...Where was the Shalom Achshav equivalent in the Zionist camp during the days of the British mandate...
...Usually the Torah forbids actions, not inner feelings...
...We are treating you better than you would have treated us because we are a civilized people...
...Arabs, on the other hand, have no shortage of supporters, apologists and propagandists...
...His exposition is laced with inaccuracies and biases...
...As Jordan and Israel are the two successor states of the mandate for Palestine, and Jordan controls 77 percent of that same mandate, would it not be more correct to say that Jordan is Palestine...
...I don't think in telling the story, he had to spell it out—and for the editors to then print it in its four-letter entirety, rather than the usually acceptable f—, was more than I care to accept...
...Regarding oral sex, Rabbi Bulka is correct in that the issue is troubling to authorities and the Shulchan Aruch seems to forbid it...
...His points are all well taken, and I will include his insights in my forthcoming book...
...Shanks' well-meaning piece, inviting your readers to follow his liberal concepts, imagines that there could be peace provided that enough of them could join in a crusade and browbeat Israel into giving up its claim to yet another slice of the land promised to the Jewish people in the British Mandate...
...I do, however, admire the efforts of many authors to build a Christian sexual ethic that celebrates the gift of sexuality...
...And although Roman Catholicism does, chastity, not celibacy, would have to have the nod as the holiness ideal with regard to sexuality...
...Services soon freeze in the form easiest to sing along with, which is usually simple and often not appropriate...
...Rabbi Gold's reference to Matthew 5:28 regarding the sin of lust was correctly interpreted, but he says that "Jewish law is concerned with a person's behavior, not fantasies...
...They certainly do not need to be demoralized by PLO sympathizers and propagandists...
...The continuing Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories, expulsions and house demolitions, preventive detention without trial for six months or even a year, school closures, the continual wrangling over Palestinian representation at future peace talks—there are enough real issues for Palestinians to be angry about...
...It is far too early to wrap up that dialogue with a judgmental aphorism...
...How dare Wyschogrod argue that only a Jew can either sanctify or desecrate the name of God...
...Hundreds of thousands of Jews have been expelled from Arab countries...
...Much of the tsuris [troubles] in the world is a direct result of religious intolerance...
...Sexual Dialogue Rabbi Michael Gold's article, "God in the Bedroom" (August 1991), underestimates the depth and richness of Christian tradition (s) concerning sexuality when it states that "In Christianity, the holiness ideal is abstinence and celibacy...
...Thank you, but no thank you—and cancel my subscription...
...This regards the utter revulsion for a man kissing a woman in her most private part...
...Relativism refutes itself when it claims that everything is relative (no "one allegory is any more accurate than the other") except the statement that everything is relative...
...Protestant Christianity, for example, does not have a tradition of clerical celibacy...
...New Hyde Park, New York Goodwill from Israel's Enemies...
...must we endure such intolerance even in a magazine as generally good-natured as MOMENT...
...If in a publication that reflects our religion we cannot keep the standards above the pollution level, if we have to resort to language unbecoming educated people, then I don't want this publication in my house...
...in war it still remains operative and imperative...
...Ibn Ezra, in his Torah commentary, expresses surprise at this commandment...
...He writes that even if one has the inner feelings, one must team not to act on them from the youngest age...
...There are wonderful monuments of Jewish music that can seldom be heard unless sung by a choir, and we shouldn't forget that we can also pray while listening...
...While reporting in a sidebar story the Kosmin-Scheckner work, your caption quotes the figure of 250,000 Arabs in the "Dearborn-Detroit area," of which 230,000 are estimated to be Muslim...
...Klagsbrun will revise her concept of the synagogue from "headed by a rabbi" to "led by a rabbi and a cantor...
...But these cannot adequately be discerned by way of unnuanced dichotomies...
...You finish by offering advice to the Palestinians as a Jew rather than "inveighing against the Israelis or...ululating over the injustices the Palestinians have suffered...
...Merle Thorpe, Jr., President Foundation for Middle East Peace Washington, D.C...
...M. A. Kipper, Rabbi, Founding Director, Emeritus Alexander Muss High School in Israel Coral Gables, Florida...
...if you had conquered us you would have murdered our men, women and children and/or driven out all the remaining Jews...
...This task's importance should not be overlooked by Jews everywhere...
...Ellen Gillette Fort Pierce, Florida Michael Gold Responds: / appreciate Ellen Gillette's comments on my article, "God in the Bedroom...
...Dan R. Friedman Forest Hills, New York Shanks Ignores Reasons for Palestinian Resentment I just received my first issue (August 1991) of moment and was pleased as I began to read the Perspective, "How the Palestinians Can Achieve a Palestinian State...
...Below, the captions read, "Daddy, what are you doing in the occupied territories...
...I admit I was surprised to find a Talmudic source that permits sexual fantasies...
...Jacobs unremarkably fails to mention this fact...
...The guide as a whole is admirably conceived and facilitates assessment of the stereotypes Arabs and Jews have of one another...
...Shanks to champion the cause of their sworn enemies...
...It would not be considered an expansion to extend this application to the peace situation...
...Marriage, in Catholic tradition, is a sacrament for which intercourse is as necessary as the bread and wine are to the Eucharist...
...Israel's attitude toward the territories was reflected in a recent exchange between Housing Minister [Ariel] Sharon and Yehial Leket, director of the World Zionist Organization Settlement Department...
...See 1 Corinthians 7 and the writings of Augustine...
...He is a Jew, is he not'Jews have no shortage of enemies...
...This is obviously dishonest...
...another 5,000 to 8,000 are Lebanese Christians...
...But this is certainly not true of the cantor...
...Personally, I see a world of difference between fantasies and actual coveting...
...Arabs have sought to destroy Jews...
...Advocating suppression of the bitter realities of the occupation runs counter to sound educational principle and practice...
...In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul connects marriage with the mystery of Christ (the bridegroom) and the Church (the bride...
...Amy Davidow, Cochair National Middle East Task Force, New Jewish Agenda Minneapolis, Minnesota How Shanks Could Have Made a Greater Contribution Hershel Shanks' August editorial ("How the Palestinians Can Achieve a Palestinian State") has much to recommend it, but it contains one weakness...
...What is frequendy missing from congregant-led services is the richness of nusach [traditionally accepted chants] with which most lay-leaders are unfamiliar...
...Shanks concerned with Arab sentiment when his own people are fighting for basic survival...
...In Judaism, the holiness ideal is marriage and family...
...But I am fed up with moral and verbal pollution...
...The author quotes the oft-stated rabbis' comment that a man may do whatever he pleases with his wife in conjugal visitation (Nedarim, 20b...
...I just wonder whether this aliyah [immigration to Israel] could not have been accomplished less dramatically had the Israeli establishment recognized the Ethiopian Falashas as Jews decades ago when their plight was first reported by Diaspora Jewish groups...
...Shanks, while urging Palestinian patience, had also counseled Israeli restraint in land taking and setdement, he would have made a greater contribution to an understanding of the issues...
...We might then more constructively face the issues determining Israel's future...
...I have abetter statement that the Israeli soldier should make to the Arab: Thank God that you are being occupied by Israelis...
...I hope that Ms...
...Regarding the husband changing his profession and making himself less available for conjugal visitation, the author writes that "he must seek permission from his wife...
...That is not a very high level of toleration...
...Yet, the Shulchan Aruch often takes a more conservative view than earlier fewish sources...
...I do not understand why it is such a quantum leap based on these definitions to include oral sex under the rubric "unnatural sex...
...Ex-chief of staff Raful Eitan's anti-Arab statements and the platforms of Kach and Moledet are glaring examples of bigotry...
...It would be useful in this regard to look at the clear statement as codified in Shulchan Aruch, Orah Hayyim, 240:4...
...Shanks and his naive, acquiescent readers are misguided for they are deluding themselves by building hope in the Arab side, in effect preparing the way for another war against Israel—a holocaust of unimaginable proportions...
...Rabbi Gold didn't do his homework...
...Your statement criticizes those Jews (including Shalom Achshav members) who have been steadily working on the Jewish/ Israeli side to create the means for and an environment conducive to peace...
...Surely God's laws transcend those of man, and he saw fit to include an injunction against mental sin, knowing full well that what a man thinks about, he is likely to eventually act on...
...First, there is no evidence to support the figure of 250,000...
...John, Florida Muslims in Michigan Your June 1991 article, "The Rise of Islam in America," included some interesting numbers about the count of Muslims in the Unites States...
...Israeli Jews need to keep up their morale and strength...
...Leket criticized Sharon's trailer plans as "dumping them in the territories...
...Palestinians see patience as simply insuring further dispossession, leaving nothing for negotiation...
...Granted that the language in The Holy Letter is more explicit, but if the author wanted to point out a concern for women's orgasm a thousand years before it became general conversation, he could have gone back even earlier, to Talmu-dic mention of this (see Niddah, 71a...
...Unlike Ms...
...It is also counter to Jewish tradition, in which honest dialogue is a precious value...
...Local work by Wayne State University's Center for Urban Studies and United Community Services estimated the 1980 Arab populations at no more than 60,900...
...For those of us who were born in Israel, fought there several times and know the Arab mentality through and through, it is impossible to conceive that a sane Jewish mind could come out with such nonsense as appears in Shanks' Perspective...
...I admit to being very pro-Palestinian...
...I even favor a Palestinian state" is his opening phrase...
...The Fine Points of Jewish Sex An otherwise excellent treatment of the topic of marital sex by Rabbi Michael Gold in the August 1991 issue ("God in the Bedroom") has a number of points that deserve elaboration...
...The search for an authentic and congenial worship is not easy...
...Eugene J. Fisher National Conference of Catholic Bishops Washington, D.C...
...I was attempting to teach fews some of the differences between fudaism and Christianity...
...Shanks' proposed law, that the Jewish soldiers apologize to Arabs, is disgusting...
...If Mr...
...I'm not sure whether I was lucky or unlucky that my subscription to moment began with the issue that featured "How the Palestinians Can Achieve a Palestinian State" (August 1991...
...Rabbi Dr...
...This is traditionally seen as divine blessing on the institution of marriage (see John 2...
...Nor should the choir be entirely discounted...
...Which Zionists at that time would have accepted a UN autonomy plan that did not specify a date when autonomy would turn into independence, as you now advise the Palestinians to do...

Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6


 
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