JustASC

Iran’s Press TV reports:

Iranian swimmer, Mohammad Bidarian, has refused to compete with his Israeli rival in the 100-meter freestyle event in Croatia…. Despite the fact that he had a chance to get an Olympic berth for his country, the 19-year-old Iranian national gave up the competition as he was grouped with an Israeli swimmer on Thursday evening.

I’m not one to be giving advice to the Iranians, but why did Mr. Bidarian give up a chance to BEAT an Israeli? Wouldn’t that have been a propaganda coup, as opposed to appearing too scared to share the same water?

The White House announced a new Liaison to the Jewish Community: Scott Arogeti, who has served at the White House for over two and a half years, replaces Jeremy Katz. The announcement explains that he received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Georgia – where, according to a quick Google search, he was “public relations chair for Dawgs for Israel.” (Relax — Georgia’s mascot is a bulldog.) Apparently he graduated high school in 2002. 

Over at Cross Currents, Rabbi Avi Shafran laments Leona Helmsley’s bequest of billions to canine charities and the Spanish parliament’s vote to comply with the Great Apes Project, which argues that “non-human hominids” should enjoy the right to life. Each development, writes Shafran:

dovetails diabolically with larger societal changes taking place all around us. Unborn human life is terminated for reasons of convenience, patients in extremis are considered unworthy of care, any and all means of behavior are endorsed as nothing more than “personal lifestyles.” We are, the thinking goes, mere physical creatures, not different in any meaningful way from the rest of the animal world.

The result, he suggests, may well be a world which will condone murder, and society will be rendered “soulless.”

But I have to ask: What makes Shafran so sure of the direction of the slippery slope?  

I agree the Great Ape folks have overstepped philosophically  (although not in their goals, which are to keep some pretty magnificent creatures from being killed, penned, and tortured).  But isn’t there also a slippery slope when we treat all creatures as mere human property, when nature is viewed as mere expediency for human ends? If humans ignore the obvious pain of a fellow creature – creatures with complex social communities, creatures who suckle their young and protect them from danger – might not that lead to a general coarsening of our attitudes toward human life as well?

Besides, just whom is he arguing against? Leona Helmsley is a target of ridicule because she gave her fortune to dogdom – it’s not as if there was a fervent “Amen” when the news was announced. That being said, the ASPCA and similar groups are slavering over the possibilities of Helmsley’s money, not because they degrade human life, but because they are right that humans often treat their animals cruelly and organizations like theirs have an important role to play.

The irony here is that the Agriprocessors  kosher slaughterhouse scandal more than suggests that the slippery slope is actually slick with the blood of slaughtered cows. The owners’ indifference to animal life seems indistinguishable from their indifference to their workers’ rights and well-being.

It would be an interesting bit of halachic sociology to ask if what Shafran calls the “affirmation of the singularity of the human soul” extends in the mind of Agriprocessors Chabad owners to their non-Jewish workers and if they resist making the distinctions, heard in their teachings (go here, and scroll down to “What is a Jew?”), between Jewish and non-Jewish souls.

Condo association, and appeals court, gone wild:

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Fair Housing Act does not protect the right of condominium owners to display a mezuzah on their door frames.

ABA Journal explains that a condo regulation in a Chicago building called Shoreline Towers “barred signs, shoes and other objects outside residents’ doors.” The owner of 3 condos sued ”after building managers took down the plaintiffs’ mezuzot inscribed with Hebrew verses.”

The majority opinion by Judge Frank Easterbrook [of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] said the regulation was content neutral. “It bans photos of family vacations, political placards, for-sale notices and Chicago Bears pennants.”

Dissenting Judge Diane Wood said the rule operated as a constructive eviction of observant Jewish residents.

The O.U. has weighed in, saying that

to ban a Jewish tenant from affixing a mezuzah ought to be viewed as a constructive eviction from their home and thus illegal under the Fair Housing Act.

FYI, the condo ruling is no longer in effect.

Here’s a fun idea: Profs. Sarah Bunin Benor and Steven M. Cohen of Hebrew Union College are conducting an online survey of the Hebrew and Yiddish words and phrases you use (and don’t use) in everyday language. Nu? Take the survey here.

Not to be snarky, but doesn’t this headline from the Star-Ledger suggest that nothing happened? 

2 workers unhurt after near miss at airport

It’s at times like this that I really miss George Carlin.

I’m reading The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier, which inspired my column this week:

I worry that a religious education can be an obstacle to a full appreciation of the human intellect, and its ability to bust through the limitations of the known to reveal the unknown. If Einstein doubts that God plays dice with the cosmos, I doubt that God would implant in us a brain of such subtlety and power, only to say, this much truth, and no further.

Read the whole thing.

From JTA:

Noah’s Ark Processors in South Dakota, which sells kosher meat under the Solomon’s Finest Glatt Kosher label, is expecting to slaughter its first elk for the commercial market on Monday.

“Noah’s Ark” is either the creepiest or cleverest name for a kosher meat company — I can’t decide.

A few weeks back I asked readers of the blog and NJJN to describe what Judaism means to them in exactly seven words. (The inspiration was writer Michael Pollan’s advice for healthy eating: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”)

In this week’s paper we printed some of the best responses:

“Continue writing our story, for mankind’s benefit.”
- Daniel Treiman, Brooklyn

“Torah. A way of life. Read. Learn.” – Ruth J. Abramowitz, Asbury Park

“‘Know before Whom you stand.’- Pirkei Avot” (serious)
and “Enemies conspired. Failed! Let’s pray…and
eat” (humorous).”- Harry Glazer, Highland Park

“Earn the world’s riches. Give them away.” – Regina
Thomas, Tinton Falls

“Live, regret, discuss, ask God’s forgiveness, repeat.”- Stephen Carroll, Hastings, NY

“Food, family, and the pursuit of specialists” and “Invite four. Be prepared to feed 40.” - Laverne H. Bardy, Newton

“Do unto others. Get off my foot!” – Larry Yudelson, Teaneck

“Hebrew school after bar mitzva? No, thanks.”- Ron Kaplan, Montclair

“Make your world a little better place”- Shari Tosk Solarski, Aberdeen

The NY Times reports on today’s attack in Jerusalem, with a headline making it sound like an outtake from Transformers :

Construction Vehicle Kills 3 in Israel Attack

 (Hat tip to Elli Wohlgelernter) 

UPDATE: Later version updates the headline to read, much more accurately, ”Palestinian Kills 3 With Tractor”