In a recent bloggingheads.tv episode, Reihan Salam cited a fascinating article from the NY Times Magazine from a few months ago about the Syrian Jewish community. I have been meaning to comment on it since it came out, as it contains numerous points that are worth expounding. In no particular order:

1) The "Edict" is, in some ways, merely a more explicit version of the traditional Orthodox position on conversion. Conversions for external motives are generally not accepted (and, to massively oversimplify, doing so for marriage can be deemed an invalid "external" motive). And traditionally, families would mourn an intermarried party as if he or she had died. The SY Edict parts ways with normative practice, though, in wholly rejecting even the possibility of conversion. And - as the quotes from the article demonstrate - the motivation is based on blood-essentialism. Any religion passed down by birthright must by definition have a heavy blood and clan component, but the possibility of conversion and voluntary acceptance of the "yoke of the commandments" balances that out, keeping the focus on the ideals. The SY Edict decisively tips the balance all the way towards the tribal.

2) And this leads to another trait of the SY community, which is described obliquely in the article: by focusing on blood, other traditional elements of the religious community - such as observance itself - take a backseat in determining identity. For example - as hinted in the article - the SY community famously does not put the same stresses on Torah study for its own sake as the Ashkenazim have done in recent centuries. Nor is there any indication that other traditional demarcations of comunal identity - such as Sabbath observance - have that level of importance in delineating SY boundaries. If the ultimate expression of American Jewish identity is "It's complicated" - a maxim that has launched thousands of books and media careers, as well as paying the college tuitions for the children of a thousand therapists - SY communal identity is as uncomplicated as it gets.

3) Speaking of Torah study, the anecdote about Rabbi Ovadya Yosef is an amazing one. Imagine the Pope coming to a small American Catholic ommunity to vouch for someone, and further imagine that community blithely ignoring his verdict. There are very few examples where that Catholic analogy would work well in a Jewish concept. This is one of them.

4) Despite the universal prohibition of intermarriage, I think that few segments of the American Orthodox population (outside of the most chareidi) would truly cut off all personal contact with an intermarried family member for decades on end (and yes, this likely does contribute to the increase in intermarriage). In order for the SY Edict to work, parents have to be willing to buy into it enough to impose the consequences on their children. And they are. (The carrots of the elaborate communal welfare state help they buy-in.)

Who can resist one of these quizzes?

Left Wing Modern Orthodox: 57%
Right Wing Modern Orthodox: 86%
Left Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 44%
Right Wing Yeshivish/Chareidi: 10%

Congratulations. You're Modern Orthodox all right, but wait! Just when you were ready to live an idyllic happily-labeled life they announce Left Wing and Right Wing Modern Orthodoxy. What the heck is up with that? Maybe you need to rethink and refine some of your positions, and then take the test again so I can put you in a little box.

Not shocked by the result, although I did quibble with a number of the questions. I'l skip the little box, thanks.

Our beloved Renegade Rebbetzin some cogent thoughts about her family's relative position and how they are forced into a persistent status of relative penny-pinching. Her descriptions of her (well-meaning) congregants' clueless comments on the subject deserve to be immortalized in any compilation of "The Thoughtless Things People Say (Volume XLVII)."

A related thought: I think RR is also touching on an explanation for another important phenomenon she's discussed before: why educated, MO-type women of our generation rebel against the "rebbetzin" label and unpaid responsibilities that come with it. While a lot of it has to do with the rebellion against the old European model and the presumed brain-death that comes with it (not that that's necessarily true, but the perception of June Cleaver in the shtetl, with many more children, summs it up), much of it also has to do with the fact that if the rabbi's wife works at a well-paying job, the financial stresses she aptly describes can be somewhat alleviated. (Another factor, of course, is the external validation that comes with "using" those advanced degrees.)

It's hard to be surprised when those who have the ability to avoid those stresses, choose to do so. But it does lead to a communal shortage of "rebbetzins."

A few years ago, during the initial contretemps over female "congregational interns," one of the women involved was quoted as saying something along the lines of (I don't have the exact quote) that her goal for that program wasn't the inauguration of female rabbis, but of women who would be appropriately recognized and compensated for performing the communal duties that rebbetzins have performed in the past. Regardless of one's feelings about that particular experiment, it seems that a shul (even one that doesn't want the kiss-of-death label of "progressive") should recognize the communal benefits of having a rebbetzin, and pay accordingly for those services. Then maybe RR could afford some better Chanuka presents.

On the other hand, most shuls don't have two nickels to rub together for a fire in case of a power outage (for reasons good and bad, also touched on in RR's post). So RR and her cohorts probably shouldn't include it in their budgets anytime soon.

In other disengagement posts, please read OOSJ for the best summary of the real stakes - far more important than who holds Gaza at any given time.

And I think Prof. Jeffrey Woolf has the best ideas for how to properly commemorate the exiting residents of Gaza.

(I can't let one thing pass, though. The first commenter to Prof. Wolff's post linked above argues that the proper response to the disengagement "should be a fight to the finish and not a total surrender." In the same comment, he then argues that the Religious Zionist community should, in the face of seemingly implacable opposition from an enemy (the larger secular society), voluntarily dismantle all yeshivot hesder and completely disengage from the army like the charedim. I'm not sure if the commenter sees the irony in those two arguments.)

Yes, I'm overdue to post on the hitnakut (disengagement) from Gaza, and we're all running out of time. (Can there be a more productive way to spend Tisha B'Av afternoon?). In lieu of a substantive post, I want to throw this question out to Ben, Prof. Wolff, OOSJ and all other interested parties.

Much of the anti-disengagement rage is directed at the defective nature of the plan's adoption. At one extreme, you have the argument that it would have been much more unifying for the country to have assented in a referendum (I strongly agree). At the other extreme, you have arguments that Israel has completely repudiated democracy by adopting the plan. Much of the criticism that I've seen has leaned more towards the latter extreme. But there's another way to look at things. Currently, the anti-disengagement forces can use the lack of a referendum to rationalize that the broader public may actually support their position. That may provide solace in the immediate crises, but is likely to have long-term costs.

Let's assume for a minute that Sharon had submitted the plan to a referendum, and invested some effort in campaigning for it & explaining why he thought it'd be best for the country. And let's assume further that the referendum would have passed by a comfortable margin, which is a pretty reasonable assumption. (Yes, I have seen arguments that the majority of the country does not, in fact, support the disengagement, and would not back it in a referendum. To be blunt, I think that people who believe that are deluding themselves.)

Would a referendum defeat have made it easier for the current disengagement opponents side to accept the plan? Or would it lead to even greater alienation from the larger society? If the editors of the New York Post were temporarily transplanted to Israel, Ma'ariv's headlines might describe a convincing referendum defeat as "ISRAEL TO YESHA: DROP DEAD." Would Rav Medan take some solace in the voting public's assent to the plan, or would his sense of betrayal at the hands of the secular elites be extended to the general public? I don't know what Rav Medan himself would do (though I know people who could ask him), but I suspect that many of his allies, admirers and followers would face the same dilemma. I suspect that the latter may be true. And that is pretty frightening, because those public sentiments will eventually be expressed in a way too unequivocal to be ignored or rationalized away.

I believe that Religious Zionism, its ideals and followers are resilient enough to withstand the crisis of disengagement. (I think that many of those who argue otherwise are predisposed to doubt Religious Zionsim's legitimacy, whether from the secular left or from the charedi right.)
But the procedural flaws in the Israeli government's adoption of the plan - and there were many - shouldn't be used as a rationalization to assume broader support for the Religious Zionist agenda than actually exists. That will only hurt efforts to influence society along Religious Zionist lines.

Here's an interesting post from an interesting blogger, arguing that the choice of a chancellor on the part of the Jewish Theological Seminary (the flagship institution of the Conservative movement) is very important...for Orthodoxy.

Without trying to narrow the very wide theological and Halakhic gaps between CM and MO/RZ Judaism, it is clear that a more self-confident leadership of both groups, even if it moves them further apart, is needed if contemporary world Jewry is to come to terms with some of the major issues that we will face over the next 50 or so years.

And our children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences.

I'm not sure I buy it, but it's worth thinking about.

In case you weren't depressed enough today, check out this cheerful profile in the Telegraph about a Palestinian female would-be suicide bomber.

Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"

A fellow female prisoner, convicted of aiding a suicide attack, was also featured:

Her fellow prisoner, Kahira Saadi, from Jenin, is one of the jail celebrities. A mother of four, aged 27, she was held responsible for an attack in which three people died and 80 were injured. Zipi Shemesh, five months' pregnant, and her husband, Gad, were among the dead. They had gone to an ultrasound appointment and had left their two daughters, Shoval, seven, and Shahar, three, with a babysitter. They never came back.

When? "I don't remember the exact date, only that it was Mother's Day. That's why I prepared him some flowers."

Keep reading for the punchline.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

OK - I'm the last one to point this out, but this is a truly extraordinary blog. No, I don't know if this author is for real, but it certainly sounds authentic (I do have my suspicions about certain other bloggers purporting to show the seamier side of Orthodoxy). No time to reflect on the ramifications now, but there are many. I certainly won't dismiss the term "shidduch crisis" as blithely as I might have been tempted to do in the past.

This was written when Arafat's death was announced, but I hadn't gotten around to posting it until now.
Finally, Yasser Arafat's death has been announced (we'll see when it actually occurred).

The most accurate oversimplification of Arafat's life is that he possessed a warped Midas touch: everything he touched turned to chaos and void.

More some other time.

Can any of my readers, rabbinic or otherwise, advise as to how reliable the hashgacha is of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of San Francisco?

I'm having trouble reproducing the symbol, but click here and scroll down a bit to see it. Mrs. Manhattan has recently seen the symbol on some products and is checking as to its reliability.

Time to give a shout-out to some new Jewish blogs I've encountered over hte last few months.

First is the vacationing Shaigetz, who can best be described as a more thoughtful, more consistently productive (in a blogging sense) and more British version of the dormant Hasidic Rebel. The Shaigetz has some really fascinating comment threads, as well as my nominee for the best title ever for a blog post.

MOChassid hails from the "old country" where I was raised. Living there does strange things to people. In his case, it turned him into a "Modern Orthodox Chassid," who attends the synagogue sometimes known as "Holy Smoke."

Next is the mysterious Ben Chorin ("free man" in Hebrew). Despite his position as a professor at an unnamed university, he clearly has retained a deep and broad intellectualism. I love reading his thoughts on..just about anything, and not just because we cite some of the same influences or because of anything he's written about this site.

Protocols has become something...different. How to describe it? Let's say that... it seems like a very long joke that I just don't get. But I'm not going to denounce Luke Ford too much, because he introduced me to the horribly beautiful Seraphic Secret, a blog written by an Orthodox Jewish screenwriter in Los Angeles mourning the death of his son. Some of the most touching parts of his blog were recently excerpted in a piece in the Jewish Press.

Finally, an introduction and belated Happy Birthday to my old college friend who now lives in and blogs from Israel, Chayyei Sarah. Please do click over and wish her a happy birthday, albeit a belated one.

I don't get as bent out of shape by the NYT's Israel coverage as I used to (such as here and here),for a variety of reasons. One is that the recent moves of the Bush and Sharon governments indicate an acceptance of reality, notwithstanding occasional denial of the same by the NYT editors and reporters.

Another reason is that even certain pieces that seem to be written from a pro-Palestinian perspective, such as David Rieff's profile of Arafat in this week's Magazine section, often backfire and paint the Palestinians in a worse light than may be intended.

Rieff's piece features a studied refusal to provide context for the Israeli moves in imprisoning Arafat in his bunker - you will search in vain for any reference to the orgy of suicide bombings in early 2002 that prompted Operation Defensive Shield and succeeding moves against the Palestinians. (There is one reference to suicide bombings that makes it sound like something the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, or that it is some natural force unconnected to anything the Palestinians do.) The point of that refusal is clear upon reading the piece, for what comes through - over and over again - is a refusal on the part of the Palestinains who are quoted to accept any responsibility for any part of their own fate.

Such as:

The Israeli government's decision to assassinate Sheik Yassin, the paraplegic cleric who was the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas -- and Sharon's subsequent declaration that Arafat himself should not think he is safe from a similar attack -- only heightened this sense of humiliation. The likelihood that only policy disagreements within the Israeli government, and American opposition to his assassination, were keeping him alive illustrated Palestinian powerlessness to Palestinians in a way that people on the West Bank described to me, over and over again, as unbearable. As one shopkeeper said: ''I have no authority as a father with my children. They know I cannot protect them from the Israelis. And Arafat is our Palestinian father, and the Israelis just toy with him.'' The fading Hebrew-language posters that Uri Avnery's group attached to canisters that serve as a barrier between the Mukata parking lot and Arafat's quarters -- they declare, ''There is someone to talk to'' -- seem from another geologic era.

...Hussain Sheikh, a senior Fatah leader and one of the younger generation that is intensely critical of the Palestinian Authority and in particular of Arafat, put it to me in this way: ''We Palestinians are suffering from two major problems -- Israeli occupation, and corruption. But what outsiders don't seem to understand is that the main obstacle to internal Palestinian reform is the Israeli occupation itself. Reform simply can't be the main item on the agenda while the occupation continues. The national issue has to have priority.''

...Over and over again on the West Bank, I met secular intellectuals and Fatah officials who refused to attack Hamas, even though they made it abundantly clear that the kind of Palestinian state the Islamists imagined was not one in which they would want to live. As one West Bank newspaper editor said, ''You cannot attack Hamas when Hamas is being attacked by the Israelis.''

...In fact, many Palestinians attribute precisely this kind of Machiavellian plot to the Israeli prime minister's decision to isolate Arafat. Above all, they say they believe that it is a way of making sure that American and European demands for reform within the Palestinian Authority never have a chance of being met. One senior Palestinian official, a reformist and a former Arafat loyalist, analyzed the situation in the following way: ''We want internal reforms, but no group can go into battle'' for them. To do so, he said, inevitably means criticizing Arafat. ''But the president's position is now so delicate that you can't criticize him. Arafat has been transformed into a holy icon. Anything that tarnishes his reputation, even for the sake of reform, would be thought of as playing into Israel's hands.''

Mentioning suicide bombings, other than as something that is "foreclosing Palestinian options" with no mention of who is actually conducting such bombings - i.e., giving context to why Israel has been doing what it is doing - would interfere with the chosen narrative of Palestinian helplessness. Rieff may think that his piece is showing the Palestinians in a positive light, but the emphasis on Palestinian passivity and fatalism is the best argument possible against a Palestinian state. For even if such a state were to come into being tomorrow, it would still have Israel as its great opponent and as an ever-present excuse not to implement internal reforms. (Those who persevere with such reforms, such as Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, deserve ten times the media coverage and support given to Arafat and Hamas).

Also, the piece somehow omits mention of how Arafat, notwithstanding his imprisonment, found time to conduct the "political assassination" of the best recent hope for Palestinian reform and salvation, Abu Mazen.

With the context kept in mind, it is hard to read the piece and not be reminded of what Benny Morris has called

a perpetual Palestinian whining—that, I fear, is the apt term—to the outside world to save them from what is usually their own folly. And the whining, more often than not, has been accompanied by mendacity. Thus it was in September and October 1936, half a year into the Arab Revolt, when they secretly appealed to the monarchs of the Arab states to save them from British suppression by issuing a call to the Palestinians to "graciously" halt their rebellion. Thus it was in April and May 1948, when they pleaded for the Arab states to invade Palestine and save them from the Jews (whom they had attacked between November 1947 and March 1948). Thus it was in September 1970, when they called upon the Arab world to save them from the Hashemite regime in Jordan, which they had just assailed and tried to subvert. And thus it is today, when Arafat and his minions, having unleashed terror on Israel's cities, desperately appeal to the West and to the Arab states to save them from Israel's wrath.

Attempts to cover up Palestinian agency in their own problems only increases the likelihood that those problems will continue and worsen.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike! Andrew Silow-Carroll, currently guest-blogging at Protocols, writes at his day job:

The pro-Palestinian movement is perhaps the most patronizing political cause the world has ever known. In the minds of the pro-Palestinian Left, the residents of Gaza and the West Bank are always objects, never subjects. They are passive characters in a drama being staged by Israel and the United States and bear no responsibility, or even ability, to make decisions that will better their own lot. So when Ariel Sharon takes a stroll on the Temple Mount, it was “inevitable” that the “street” would explode. When a youth is denied a livelihood because of security closures, it is “inevitable” that he will strap a bomb to his chest.

Thanks to such inevitabilities, the pro-Palestinian movement has succeeded in nothing over the past 56 years of Israel’s existence but in infantilizing the Palestinians and adding to their misery — and the rest of the world’s.

Lee Smith writes an important piece on Slate about Arab anti-American sentiment:

Of course, Arab displeasure with U.S. leaders hardly started with the Bush White House. As Noam Chomsky pointed out two years ago—or well before anti-Americanism reached its current heights—President Eisenhower talked about the "hatred against us [in the Arab world]" way back in 1958.

...[I]n 1956 the United States handed Nasser his greatest—indeed only—unqualified triumph at Suez.

After Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, the Israelis, along with the French and British, attacked Egypt. Nasser would have lost the war and almost certainly his life had President Eisenhower not ordered those three American allies to back down. Arranging a victory of that order for Nasser—a victory that made him the Arab world's greatest modern hero—would seem to be about as pro-Arab as you can get, and yet only two years later, Eisenhower was wondering why the Arabs hated us so much. One obvious reason is that by chasing out the two Western powers that had been the region's hate targets for over a century, the United States became a kind of surrogate for anticolonial sentiment, regardless of whether or not it had the same imperial ambitions as France and Britain. In other words, pro-Arab U.S. policies don't seem to put much of a dent in Arab anti-Americanism.

All true. Some more excerpts:

Is Arab anti-Americanism just an irrational phenomenon manufactured by presidents-for-life, kings, and military dictators who rule their countries without legitimate political authority? Yes, but there are also really bad U.S. policies in the Arab world—none of which seem to trouble most Arabs.

...Of course, it is because of Washington's ostensibly unbalanced support of Israel that the United States is genuinely loathed in the region. To be sure, the United States maintains that the state of Israel has a right to exist. At different times, as when the international community recently mourned the deaths of two Hamas leaders whose explicit goal was the destruction of Israel, it is not obvious that the rest of the world believes Israel has a right to exist. Similarly, the Arab and European outrage over President Bush's announcement that Palestinians have no "right of return" suggests that many people outside of Israel and the United States do not really believe in a two-state solution, even if they say they do. When much of the world seems not to mean what it says, U.S. policy cannot help but seem to be totally biased toward Israel.

Read the whole thing, of course.

The last excerpt is especially important: when nothing short of building crematoria in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will establish the U.S.' bona fide "neutrality" in the Arab world regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is it possible for the U.S. to avoid seeming "biased" towards Israel?

Much, much more on the topic later.

I heard this joke at my rabbi's table over Passover:

When the Jews were in the wilderness after leaving Egypt, God created the manna to eat. It miraculously tasted like anything the person eating it could wish for [according to rabbinical tradition].

It featured many different products, all of which looked very different. But miraculously, they all tasted exactly the same.

Well, something had to inspire me to post regardless of how crazily busy things are.

Megan McArdle asks:

The word mitzvah is often translated loosely as "good deed". Some things that observant Jews consider to be mitzvahs, however, would not ordinarily be classified by gentiles as "good deeds", such as saying certain prayers over food.

My question is this: does the reverse hold true? Are their things that could be classified as "good deeds", but that would not be mitzvahs?

The answer to Megan's question is actually a relatively simple "yes," because the premise is incorrect.

"Mitzva" is better translated as "commandment," not "good deed." (Loose translations...never trust 'em.) As a theological matter, Judaism makes no claims that the list of commandments that qualify as mitzvot (613 of them) is an all-encompassing list of all possible good deeds.

To make it more complicated, not all obligations observed by observant Jews are "mitzvot." Some may not meet certain criteria that must be met in order to be classified as one of the 613 "mitzvot." (Analyses of those criteria were the subject of many great rabbinic debates and scholarship about 800 years ago, and not everyone came up with the same list. Here's one version, which I haven't checked for accuracy.) Some are a lesser level of obligation, based on rabbinic decrees rather than explicit Biblical requirement - or, more technically and commonly, rabbinic extensions of biblical obligations. (Not all obligations are created equal. Think of it as a "first-level" obligation as opposed to a "second-level" obligation.)

Megan's example of food blessings is actually a pretty good one: most of them are not Biblical-level and thus do not rise to the level of "mitzvot," but they are still obligatory.

You may be asking: "well, aren't those second-level, rabbincally based obligations..less obligatory?" Sort of, as best illustrated with respect to Sabbath prohibitions: all prohibitions can be violated in situations of life-threatening danger, but you can take liberties with the "second-level" rabbinic prohibitions when faced with lesser levels of exigency. So you really need to know what is prohibited on which level in order to know what you can permit in what circumstances. Rabbinics isn't a full-time profession for nothing.

Finally, on a meta-level, the question of whether the universe of Jewish obligation (on all levels, not just the 613 "mitzvot") encompasses all conceivable "good deeds" is...a good question. The mysterious master of the "Four Questions" conspiracy once published an article on the subject, whose conclusion was essentially "It depends on how you define your terms." But it is at least conceivable that the answer is "no."

So Megan's question has a one-word answer: "Yes."

One year ago, Rachel Corrie crouched in front of an Israeli bulldozer and was crushed to death. Ruhama Shattan, an Israeli writer, delivers a proper memorial:

I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending.

Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall.

Ouch. But not nearly enough.

Apparently the Palestinians recently used a 10-year old boy (without his knowledge) to try to carry an explosive belt (to be used by a suicide bomber) into Israel:

Abdallah Quran, of the Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, makes a living by transferring bags from one side of the road block to the other. He told the soldiers that every day after school, where he attends the fourth grade, he takes his cart to the Hawara barricade to help invalids and women transfer their bags in his cart, while they wait in line for the security checks.

"A few people piled on their bags, and I waited for a few more because I get paid for every bag. A few people put their bag on my cart, and I don't remember who put the bag with the bomb," he said.

Avraham Bronstein provides an awesome example. I'm a sucker for great Purim Torah (Eli Clark-style), and this sounds almost realistic enough to be real. You don't have to drink too much to reach the level of ad de'-lo yada, if the issue is distinguishing between reality and satire.

Today's NYT has one of those only-in-New York-pieces glorifying the excess of (some) examples of the "bris" ceremony (and reception).

As referenced in the piece, the bris is traditionally done on the eighth day after birth (Genesis 17:12). But some people apparently are motivated to modify the tradition a little:

Rabbi Adam Mintz, who describes his congregation of 900 families at the Lincoln Square Synagogue on the Upper West Side as "modern Orthodox" and is president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said he doesn't think the world will end if a bris is postponed for the sake of the party. "Any mohel will tell you Sunday is the most popular day, and even among the Orthodox, people are choosing the date that's most popular," he said. "We have an in-house caterer, so 90 percent have it at the synagogue and 10 percent have it at home."
(Emphasis added.)

I assume that Rabbi Mintz was either misquoted or that the reporter misunderstood the import of his statement. From a halakhic standpoint, the only reason an Orthodox family could properly postpone the bris past the eighth day would be due to the baby's health concerns or the like - not merely for the sake of a party! (Priorities, anyone?)

I have a feeling that Rabbi Mintz has already lodged a complaint to Mr. Okrent or another editor at the Times, or he's getting an earful from his congregants as we blog.

(As an aside, the prior paragraph in the piece notes that some people - not necessarily Orthodox - prefer to postpone the bris for the sake of convenience, but then quotes a caterering manager giving examples of people who do the actual bris on the eighth day but have a reception at a more convenient time. That is much less problematic even from an Orthodox standpoint.)

UPDATE: Well, I was right. Rabbi Mintz has apparently circulated an e-mail, which is reproduced on Protocols. In the interests of publicizing the clarification, I will do the same:

I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize for the implications of my quote in the New York Times this morning. As you have probably guessed, as part of a longer interview, Alex Witchell asked me why Sunday has become a popular day for brises even among the Orthodox. I proceeded to explain to her when we allow for the delay of brises and the fact that the custom has developed, at least in certain circles in America, to be more flexible when rescheduling a delayed bris. Therefore, Sunday is often the day in which these brises take place.
I called Ms. Witchell and asked that a correction be printed in the New York Times. She explained to me that this was not "correction material" as there was no fact that was incorrect, only an impression that was created by the article.
I argued but did not convince her.
In the end, I am confident that Jews will not draw this unfortunate conclusion from the article and that both rabbonim and mohalim who advice parents on the timing of the bris will explain the misrepresentation of my quote.
May the spirit of ve-nahafoch hu transform this unfortunate episode into an important lesson for us all.
A freilechen Purim

Adam Mintz

(Emphasis added.)

So Rabbi Mintz's statement only referred to flexibility in rescheduling a bris when a delay had already been necessary for other reasons - not simply a matter of picking a more convenient time for a party. That's a much more accurate statement.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Times has issued a correction:

An article last Wednesday about the growing trend among American Jews to celebrate the circumcision ritual of the bris outside the home or synagogue and with increasing elaborateness included a quotation from Rabbi Adam Mintz of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan that referred imprecisely to his attitude about the timing of the rite, ordinarily carried out eight days after birth. He says that in remarking, "Sunday is the most popular day, and even among the Orthodox, people are choosing the date that's most popular," he did not intend to suggest that a bris could be postponed for the sake of holding a party at a convenient time — but rather that if it had to be delayed on justifiable grounds, there might then be flexibility in scheduling.

Go wish Allison Kaplan Sommer a mazal tov on her pregnancy. But be very, very scared of one reason she gives for her decision:

MORE LINKS AND HITS. I mean, why do we bloggers do ANYTHING? I figured that all of the congratulations and comments are good for a few notches on the Ecosystem. And nothing I write seems to merit an Instalanche. Maybe procreating will do the trick.

The scarier thing is that after you've blogged for a while, the argument seems reasonable...

Rarely have I ever read an interview as discomfiting as this Ha-aretz interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris. Morris, for the unfamiliar, was one of the pioneering "new historians" in Israel whose work was dedicated to exposing the flaws of the first generations of Zionists - most notably, arguing against the consensus of conventional Israeli history that the Palestinian refugee problem was solely the Palestinians' fault. Unlike many of his cohorts, Morris has also recognized the Palestinians' rejectionism, and how it belongs to both "history" and "current events."

In any event, this interview discusses the findings of his recent research into Israeli conduct during the 1948 War of Independence, and his conclusions.

Some things to discomfort Israeli partisans:

...What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

And some things to disturb facile supporters of "peace processes:"

Besides being tough, you are also very gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?

Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction to three hard years of terrorism?
"The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."

And these excerpts aren't even close to the most incendiary parts. It goes without saying: read the whole thing.

During my latest blog absence, I failed to comment on the bizarre recent article by Tony Judt, in which he advocates the suicide of Israel. (And "bizarre" is giving him the benefit of the doubt.)

As is usually the case, others have responded far more ably than I could or would have - most notably Leon Wieseltier and David Frum.

In his response to his critics, Judt shows that he is an example of the all-too-common species of intellectual who delights in tossing out outlandish and/or objectionable ideas and claims persecution when asked to think through the ramifications. (Link via Nelson Ascher.)

For a quick primer on the difficulties with Judt's preferred solution of a "bi-national state," check out Imshin's translation of an article in Yediot Acharonot.

And as long as you're at her site, check out this item she wrote in September:

Contrary to popular belief, Israel is not to blame for the situation ordinary Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip find themselves in. I know we are all in this together and Israel has certainly made many mistakes and done cruel things. Many things were done (and are still being done), that could be avoided, or maybe done in a more humane fashion. This is regrettable and should be seriously looked into and fixed. But these things are not representative of the whole picture. When seen out of context they look horrific, but this is not all there is to this.

So forgive me for not agonizing about the Palestinians all day, every day. I am sorry for them. They have terrible leaders who have been holding them down and leading them astray, and they have no way of getting rid of them. I can't change that. I have my say every four years, sometimes more often than that. I'm sorry the Palestinians don't have the same privilege. On second thoughts, maybe I'm not. They probably wouldn't elect anyone who would want to make peace with us.
(Emphases in original.)

Newly permalinked Naomi Chana has recently experienced some frustration with her Torah-study class in her synagogue:

[H]ere is an abridged list of things I could have said yesterday but didn't:

- "Blessing is not the same thing as prayer."
- "Also, blessing is not the same thing as arguing for direct divine intervention, but if you go on for much longer I'm going to be praying for God to pull the fire alarm."
- "We were talking about Abraham, remember? And this book we call the Torah?"
- "Could we please not rehearse free will vs. predestination before doing some background reading? And by 'we,' I mean 'you.'"
- "I don't care what you believe in. Really. Truly. Honestly. With all my heart and soul and might."
...
- "Ah, yes. Just the time to mention Islam. Some of us try to actually make a connection to the text, but I see you're brave enough not to bother with that."
...
- "I'm sorry, this is 'Torah study.' The 'share your Personal Spiritual Journey Unasked-For' class is next door."
...
- "You do not have a clue. You would not have a clue if an angel of the Lord appeared to you and told you that you were going to give birth to a clue after ninety years of barrenness."

There's more.
I wouldn't mind having her in my shiur. Yes, even in Orthodox synagogues, shiurim can get hijacked by the spiritual kin of Ms. Chana's co-participants.

To the third tier of the Jewish Press' list of "Favorite Websites." Next step: "Honorable Mention!"

Thanks for the tip, Mom! You and Grandma always knew I'd amount to something, someday. And thanks to author and reader Jason Maoz for the kind words; please keep coming back.

A Shana Tova to all. Thank you so much for reading. I will do my best to make this year more worth your while.

Edward Said passed away today.

I'm not qualified to judge his scholarship, though the fact that two of his biggest targets were Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami doesn't inspire confidence. And I'm not going to dwell on his complicated relationship with his past , his unique variety of "political protest", or even his general Palestinian activism.

In a 1999 profile, A.O. Scott wrote :

More than anyone else in his generation, Edward Said has sought to embody an unfashionable, perhaps obsolescent idea of the intellectual--immersed in culture and committed to politics, placing "criticism over solidarity," speaking truth to power, and steering clear of gods that fail.
(Emphasis added.)

I'd argue that few if any intellectuals of his generation can truly be said to have been more devoted to "gods that fail." Said spent much of the 1970s and 1980s advocating for a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. But when faced with the possibility that such a solution might actually be possible, Said became a fierce enemy of the concept and the means of its realization. Rather than agitating for a way to make the Oslo Accords better, he denounced Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a sellout. (The "dictator" part was certainly true, but Said's sudden discovery of those tendencies after a long history as an Arafat adviser does not speak well of his powers of observance.) Rather than trying to work against Arafat to build a better Palestinian society during the Oslo years, he became a leader of the intellectual resistance to the whole two-state enterprise. His proposal was a "secular, binational state" - an idea that only makes sense in the ivory tower. It is well known that the Palestinians supported Yasser Arafat's refusal to accept the Palestinian state offered at Camp David, believing they could get all of Israel. They were encouraged in this hope by intellectuals such as Said:

The intellectual guardians of Arab nationalist orthodoxy--Said, the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, Egyptian cultural leader Saad Eddin Wahbe, Egyptian editor and pundit Mohamed Heikal--have never accepted the fact of Israel; they cannot envision a world without the rallying cause of anti-Zionism. Nothing could have been more infuriating to them than the sight of Yasser Arafat, the embodiment of Palestinian nationalism, shaking hands with Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's late prime minister. They never forgave Arafat for bowing to what Ajami calls "the logic of brute, irreversible facts." To them, the 1993 Oslo accords meant settling for a sadly truncated form of Palestinian self-rule without extracting an Israeli admission of wrongdoing. Indeed, Said and other rejectionists showed a perverse glee when Israel's dovish Labor Party was defeated by Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud. Here, again, was a world they could understand. "Men love the troubles they know," Ajami witheringly observes.

The terror war waged against Israel over the last three years is a direct result of such fantasies - the refusal to engage reality based on enthrallment to "gods that fail." And nobody embodied that peculiar type of "intellectual" better than Edward Said.
Fortunately, he can no longer avoid accountability for the consequences of his actions.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn does it better, quoting something he wrote not long after 9/11:

Take away all the infidel products and you’d be left with a loser in yak-wool boxers standing in a cave shouting to himself. Osama had an infidel watch (Timex Ironman Triathlon), infidel fatigues (army-surplus US battle dress), infidel hand-mike, infidel camera. This is presumably an example of what Professor Edward Said, the distinguished New York-based America-disparager, calls the “interconnectedness” of the west and Islam. The Prof deplores the tendency, in the wake of September 11th, to separate cultures into what he called “sealed-off entities”, when in reality western civilisation and the Muslim world are so “intertwined” that it’s impossible to “draw the line” between them.

This pitch isn’t getting a lot of respect. “The line seems pretty clear,” said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. “Developing mass commercial aviation and soaring skyscrapers was the west’s idea; slashing the throats of stewardesses and flying the planes into the skyscrapers was radical Islam’s idea.”

The Jewish Week has a short profile of Rena Sofer, one of the stars of NBC's new series "Coupling" - a show which supposedly "follows the mating habits of six friends who stop having sex only long enough to talk about it."

Rena Sofer will have come a long way since her days as a yeshiva girl in New Jersey.

It’s not a likely career path for a former student of Achei Temimim, a Lubavitch grade school in Massachusetts, or the Frisch High School in Paramus. Sofer’s father, Martin, is an Orthodox rabbi, as anyone who peruses her online biography or recent media interviews will learn.

I wonder if Frisch will be publicizing Sofer as one of its alumni - probably not, unless she wants to make a large donation.

Sofer’s character, Susan, is “a beautiful and sexy go-getter with an uninhibited attitude toward life and the world of romance,” according to network publicity.

I don't think that was on Frisch's curriculum.

Here's the wedding invitation of Chanan Sand and Nava Applebaum:

(Thanks to Ephraim Shapiro for the image.)

Apparently the Jerusalem Post is in great disarray and has been for a while, with matters seemingly reaching a crisis point following its recent editorial advocating the killing of Yasser Arafat. Allison Kaplan Sommer, a former reporter for the JPost, has the scoop (and click here for more). We look forward to reading her tell-all memoirs of her time at the JPost - sounds like she has a lot of dirt to dish.

The following is part of an e-mail dedication from the head of Otzmah Project of Emergency Medical Volunteers that involves physicians being on call for Israel. Of course, the late Dr. Applebaum was instrumental in this project as well.
The complete e-mail can be found in the first comment here.

The anguish and anger expressed by a number of, you following the murder Dr. David Appelbaum z" l and the recent acts of terror of these last 48 hours remind us of the task at hand. Dr. David Applebaum z"l, Director of the Emergency Department at Jerusalem's Shaarei Tsedek's Hospital, was well known to us. This event dramatically reemphasized that terrorists don't discriminate. They want "only" to exterminate the State and the People of Israel, no matter who you are, - it's enough of an excuse for them that you're Israeli - or rather quite bluntly: that you're a Jew or are friendly to the Jews thus becoming a "legitimate" target.
For over fifty years the State and the People of Israel have struggled for survival. In the last two years an increasing number of people have begun to understand that we don't fight only here for own physical survival. We fight against is Barbarism, Darkness, Evil and for Civilization. The difference between Civilization and civilizations/cultures is very simple: in a Civilized Society every single human life is valuable. So long as the mothers of Palestinian terrorists will express their joy at the news that their son has committed a homicidal bombing, killing indiscriminately, as seen on the media, our fight will go on. We will keep fighting for ourselves, our families and our people, but also for all civilized people who hope that the future of mankind will be a "human future", not a barbarian one.
Today is September 11th. For the last two years we are no longer alone in this fight.
As it has been the case for the past three years, the medical services of the state of Israel are coping quite adequately with waves after waves of terror attacks. We are probably once again at the beginning of one of these murderous waves. The coming days are going to be uneasy ones. The State of Israel is once again on full alert. But things are somehow different that in the past. The American intervention in Iraq and the continuous presence of the American and coalition forces there has shuffled dramatically the cards in the Middle East. The threat on the existence of the State of Israel has been considerably diminished, and the eventuality of a generalization of the conflict with the Palestinian terrorists to a global Arab-Israeli war is currently very low. What remains is the threat of daily terror and the threat of a "mega-terror" event.
What is the task of the Emergency Medical Volunteers? The current assessment is that there is no real probability of a general call-up in the coming weeks/months. However these events must remind us that we have to maintain our efforts to widen the pool of EMV volunteers, to screen and train more and more volunteers, and to check that our new operational procedures will run smoothly. By doing so we will also demonstrate to the Israeli people that we care, and are concerned, by our active involvement by what is happening. It may be a small thing to you but it sends a strong message. From now on, each of the upcoming EMV training courses will be given the name of a member of the Israeli medical services who became a victim to the terror of the last years; sadly the list is not a short one. Therefore the next course, due to begin on October 26, will be dedicated to the memory of Dr. David Appelbaum z"l.

Here's a story about plans for a new emergency alert system in the American Jewish community:

It is believed to be the first crisis alert system serving a specific community in the United States.
The project, called Secure Community Alert Network, or SCAN, includes the leading Jewish organizations in the nation, as well as hundreds of Jewish community centers, federations and educational institutions.
...Hoenlein said in an emergency, SCAN will immediately notify about 150 contacts across the country via e-mail, pager, telephone and fax. SCAN will not stop signaling until the message is received. The contacts can then alert their memberships.
“We will activate this in a crisis, as circumstance demands,” Hoenlein said, stressing that the network “will be used on rare occasions” and not for general information.
An advisory team of law enforcement and Jewish officials will determine when SCAN will be activated.
Hoenlein noted that Jewish communities in South Africa, England and Australia have such alert systems, saying “it’s a good question” why American Jewry has lagged behind.

The network is apparently contracting to use certain communications technology that has previously only been used by the government and military.
This looks to be a fascinating experiment in creating small-scale information networks, and I'd expect it to be replicated if it works well. The story doesn't say, but it doesn't seem like the information flows from the bottom up. But a network on this scale should be able to accomodate such information flow.
This network could make the job of government easier in an emergency. Congratulations to the Jewish Week for picking the story up; it should attract more attention.

Buried in this human-interest piece about Nava Applebaum's grieving fiancee is the following shocking tidbit:

When he heard from his sister that people feared Nava had been hurt in the bombing, he went to Shaare Zedek Hospital, where some of the victims had gone and where her father was the head of the emergency room.
He and many family members waited there for news of Nava, already knowing that her father, David Applebaum, was dead. The two had gone together to the caf for coffee.
In response to how he felt about the news that the man responsible for the attack was among the 343 Palestinian prisoners released this summer, Sand said, "I never believed in peace. I knew it was a mistake, I didn't believe the lack of peace could impact me so much."
(Emphasis added.)
Has anyone else seen this information about the bomber's identity as a just-released prisoner? And if it's true, can anyone in good conscience criticize Israel for not releasing more prisoners over the summer as a "confidence-building measure" (that was, of course, not even included in the "road map")?

I'm having a lot of trouble getting over the killings of Dr. Applebaum and his not-to-be-married daughter. (Apparently Dr. Applebaum went to high school with my father-in-law.) In this day, has civilization advanced farther than the case of Dr. Applebaum? And when you consider that the Palestinians have consistently refused the benefits the rest of the world has tried to give them in favor of killing people like Dr. Applebaum, aren't those who support the Palestinians over Israel supporting the negation of civilization? Keep in mind, Dr. Applebaum and his daughter weren't just killed by a Palestinian terrorist. Their deaths were celebrated by Palestinains in Gaza.
Try this one, NY Times. One side in the "encounter" devoted his life to healing the victims of illness and terorrism, and was about to marry off a daughter raised in the same tradition. The other aimed to destroy the life so devoted, and was widely applauded by his own side for doing so.
Civilization, and its negation.

UPDATE: Apparently the terrorist in question may have been released before the summer's hudna-inspired release. It still doesn't exactly support the argument for future "confidence-building measures." (Thanks to commenters on Protocols for the link.)
ANOTHER UPDATE: Protocols has done some additional research (i.e., contacting the author of the JPost story) and the results don't engender great confidence in the Post story.

Check out this piece on the Upper West Side community of 20-something single Modern Orthodox - the "Metrodox:"

"No matter where one grew up -- their background, their religiosity -- the Upper West Side has become the hub for the post-college single Jew," says Isaac Galena who, along with his twin brother Seth, run the Metrodox Web portal, bangitout.com. "Most Jewish communities, if not all, have a tendency to make Orthodox single people in their 20's feel like freaks. As if there is something seriously wrong with them since they aren't married by the age of 23. The Upper West Side serves as a community that embraces people in singlehood. It makes them feel as though they belong and serves almost as a fun support group and a stepping stone during this interim period."
As Galena will tell you, an interim period implies that eventually the Metrodox will find a mate, get married, and graduate to greener, probably more suburban, pastures.
So, what's the dating scene like? Picture a Jewish Melrose Place. With thousands of young Jews packed into the same neighborhood, Metrodox dating has become a phenomenon all to itself. Consider this: Jewish singles from all across America travel to the Upper West Side just to go on dates.
One out-of-state 28-year-old male who, for obvious reasons, wished to remain anonymous, told Jewsweek he traveled to New York 13 times in one year alone, and has gone out on more than 100 dates with Metrodox girls. Asked why he didn't just move there, he had this to say: "If I lived in the Upper West Side and saw hundred of available Modern Orthodox women at synagogue, I wouldn't even know where to begin. It would literally be overwhelming and I'm afraid, like many who live there, I would just get jaded."
If desired, a typical Metrodox male could go out with a different girl every night of the week -- for an entire year. There's an entire cottage industry around Web sites that cater to the Metrodox's dating needs including jewishcafe.com and frumster.com. And once somebody gets engaged, they can post pictures and mazal tovs online at Onlysimchas.com. Some Metrodox check the site twice a day.

I've always looked at the Upper West Side community as an ideal place for a short visit, but I'm very thankful to have not had to live there for an undetermined length of time. It is indeed a fascinating place - many people really do navigate the dating scene while following the halakhic rules, while many others invent rationalizations that even Bill Clinton would have been ashamed of. For details on the latter, check out this entry by Allison Kaplan Sommer. For examples of the former and latter, see this story by an old friend.

Check out JPost correspondent Douglas Davis, writing in the Spectator on the "right of return," the Israeli fence/wall and why each is so important:

Offered an independent Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza, a share in Jerusalem and a limited return of refugees to Israel, Yasser Arafat’s response has been the violence that has convulsed Israel for more than three years. The frequent complaint of the West’s political and media classes, that Palestinian violence is a function of ‘frustration and rage’ over the lack of progress to peace, is ill-founded. On the contrary, the most intense spasms of violence have accompanied the most positive movements on the diplomatic front.
The reason is that a large body of Palestinians have still not reconciled themselves to the two-state solution. More specifically, they have not, despite the Oslo accords, come to terms with the existence of a Jewish state on what they call holy Muslim soil. The Palestinians remain as opposed to the existence of Israel today as they were when the Peel Commission recommended partition in 1936 and when the UN voted for it in 1947.
In Israel, by contrast, successive leaders, including the much-demonised Ariel Sharon, have warned Israeli voters to prepare for ‘painful concessions’ if a real opportunity for peace presents itself. No Israeli doubts that such ‘painful concessions’ would involve Israel’s evacuation from most, if not all, of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to make way for the birth of Palestine.
The reason the Palestinians have not run with the ball is that they are convinced that they have far more to gain by playing for time. On present trends, say the demographers, Palestinians will outnumber Jews in the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River — Israel, the West Bank and Gaza — by 2020. At that point, Israel will cease to exist as a democratic and Jewish state.
Why accept a truncated two-state solution in the West Bank and Gaza when the one-state solution down the road will deliver Israel, too? Not by suicide bombers or conventional military means, but by the simple expedient of eroding Israel’s Jewish majority. All the Palestinians have to do is breed for victory: make love, not war, and transform their womenfolk into what Arafat calls his ‘biological bombs’.
...When I raised the one-state idea this week with a senior Palestinian academic who has been in active contact with Israelis for years, he responded with a curious question: ‘Do we really need another state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan?’ He went on, ‘It would be much easier for the Palestinians to fight for equal rights rather than for another state.’ If he accepted a two-state solution now, he said, it was simply to ‘accommodate the Zionist desire for a Jewish state, not because I believe it is just’. As if Jewish national aspirations were uniquely illegitimate.
Few events have so galvanised Palestinian anger as Sharon’s decision, supported by an overwhelming majority of Israelis, to construct a fence roughly along the Israel–West Bank divide. From Israel’s perspective, the fence is designed simply to separate the populations and keep Palestinian terrorists away from Israeli throats. But while Israel insists it is an interim security measure that does not prejudge the outcome of negotiations, the Palestinians are convinced that the fence represents a unilateral Israeli attempt to impose a border, seal the two-state solution and destroy the goal of achieving a demographically driven one-state solution.
...The problem for Israelis, even those who might otherwise have been inclined to accept the Cook/Hain concept of a binational state, is that there is no precedent for secular democracy among any of the existing 21 Arab states. Nor does the Palestinian Authority give cause for hope that its own future state will deliver a democratic, pluralistic utopia. Rather, it stresses ‘the Arabness of Palestine’ and the intrinsic place of Palestine within ‘the Arab nation’ (it is difficult to understand, in light of such language, persistent Palestinian complaints of Israeli ‘racism’ when it seeks to safeguard its existence as a Jewish national home).
If the Palestinians today pay lip service to the notion of the two-state model, it is as a tactic, a matter of appeasing international supporters. The ‘phased plan’, explicitly enunciated by Palestinian leaders in the past and spoken of in more nuanced terms since Oslo, stipulates that whatever territory Israel surrenders will be used as a platform for further territorial gains until the ‘complete liberation of Palestine’ is achieved.
The Palestinians remain wedded to Arafat’s notion of a ‘biological bomb’ and committed to the ‘right of return’ for the refugees (along with unlimited generations of their progeny) not only to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but also to Israel itself. They know, as Israelis know, that it is a recipe for Israel’s destruction.

Also, check out Steven Den Beste's expert deconstruction of Hamas' latest threats. It's too long to excerpt, but worth the read.

This Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the ill-fated Oslo accords. The Jerusalem Post has two good reflections on its ramifications. First is the appropriately titled "One Cheer for Oslo," by Calev Ben-David:

I can be counted among the Israeli majority that once supported Oslo with cautious hopes, but now has no choice but to ultimately regard it as a failure, at the very least for having failed in its primary goal of attaining a "final-status agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians at anywhere near its original five-year timetable.
Having said all that, there is still at least one positive aspect of Oslo worth noting, and not just in the negative-lesson sense of having learned that Arafat is no "partner for peace."
...Protecting Jewish settlements and keeping the roads open were one thing; but increasingly fewer of us understood the need to keep a presence in the heart of Palestinian population areas, or to maintain control over the minutia of their daily lives. How was this helping to stop the rising tide of terrorist attacks? Not the massive suicide bombings of today, but broad-daylight individual assaults in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that were still shocking at the time.
Why was it necessary to keep a firm grip on every inch of the territories, when doing so still hadn't stopped an unprecedented wave of soldier kidnappings/slayings by Hamas? (I vividly recall taking part in the massive army sweep around Gaza in 1989 to search for the bodies of the ill-fated Ilan Sa'adon and Avi Sasportas.)
...But despite all of Oslo's declared intentions, for most Israelis it was never really about giving the Palestinians a state or even arriving at a peaceful final settlement. It was about Israel beating a tactical retreat out of a no-win situation in the Palestinian-populated areas of the territories, under what it thought the best-possible terms at the time - sort of an Israeli equivalent of the Paris Accords that enabled the US to end its disastrous involvement in Vietnam.
Although our hopes for working out a real peace agreement with the current Palestinian leadership have been dashed, the crucial underlying assumption behind Oslo - that Israel cannot rule over the Palestinians, not for their sake, but for ours - still holds no less true today. That's why even as we now search for other ways to move ahead - be it finding alternative negotiating partners to Arafat, building the security fence, or eliminating Hamas and Islamic Jihad on our own - no one outside the extreme right and settlement movement seriously suggests returning to a pre-Oslo position in the territories.
So on September 13 I'm prepared to give only one cheer to Oslo: It was at least the first step, even if not in quite the right direction, toward an Israeli disengagement from the territories.
Where do we go from here? I'm not so sure. But it doesn't take a road map to know it can't be backwards.

The second piece is Daniel Pipes' postmortem:

WHAT WENT wrong? Many things, but most important was that the deal rested on a faulty Israeli premise that the Palestinians had given up their hope of destroying the Jewish state.
This led to the expectation that if Israel offered sufficient financial and political incentives, the Palestinians would formally recognize the Jewish state and close down the conflict.
The Israelis therefore pushed themselves to make an array of concessions, in the futile hope that flexibility, restraint, and generosity would win Palestinian good will. In fact, these steps made matters worse by sending signals of apparent demoralization and weakness.
Each concession further reduced Palestinian awe of Israeli might, made Israel seem more vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilating it.
The result was a radicalized and mobilized Palestinian body politic. In speech and actions, via claims to the entire land of Israel and the murder of Israelis, the hope of destroying Israelis acquired ever more traction.
Thus did the muted Palestinian mood at Oslo's start in 1993 turn into the enraged ambition evident today.
When intermittent Palestinian violence turned in September 2000 into all-out war, Israelis finally awoke from seven years of wishful thinking and acknowledged Oslo's disastrous handiwork. But they have not yet figured with what to replace it. Likewise, the US government, with the collapse of its Mahmoud Abbas gambit last week, finds its road map diplomacy in disarray. It now too needs new thinking.
In the spirit of Oslo's 10 anniversary, I propose a radically different approach for the next decade:
Acknowledge the faulty presumption that underlay both Oslo and the road map (Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence).
Resolve not to repeat the same mistake.
Understand that diplomacy aiming to close down the Arab-Israeli conflict is premature until Palestinians give up their anti-Zionist fantasy.
Make Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence the primary goal.
Impress on Palestinians that the sooner they accept Israel, the better off they will be. Conversely, so long they pursue their horrid goal of extermination, diplomacy will remain moribund and they will receive no financial aid, arms, or recognition as a state.
Give Israel license not just to defend itself but to impress on the Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause.

Both Pipes and Ben-David are right.

It is almost impossible to comment upon this story:

Dr. David and Debra Applebaum and Zvi and Tamara Sand were to accompany their 20-year-old children Nava and Chanan to the bridal canopy in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, with hundreds of guests celebrating the event.
Instead, on Wednesday morning, thousands of mourners friends, doctors, nurses, patients, classmates, and admirers stood stunned at the Shamgar Funeral Home and said good-bye to David and his daughter Nava, two victims of Tuesday night's suicide bombing at Caf Hillel, which killed seven and wounded at least 30.
If Dr. Applebaum had not been at the Germany Colony cafe to have a heart-to-heart talk with his beloved daughter, he would undoubtedly have received a beeper message about the attack. He would have dropped everything, even on the eve of her wedding, and rushed to Shaare Zedek Hospital.
As director of the emergency department for more than a year, he had treated hundreds of terror victims and saved many lives. But the 50-year-old, American-born physician and his daughter died on the spot. He was identified by an Arab physician who worked at Jerusalem's Terem Urgent Care Clinic that Applebaum had founded in 1988. They never made it to Shaare Zedek's emergency room.
The staff had just finished treating a severely wounded victim, who died, when they first heard about the Applebaums. The stress of dealing with their own grief was helped by the fact that the number of wounded 11 or 12 was lower than in other attacks, director-general Jonathan Halevy said.
When Applebaum's death was confirmed, there was a gasp in the emergency room. People hugged each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Nava's intended, Chanan, fainted upon hearing of the deaths and had to receive medical attention.
"It was clear to me from very early on that when David Applebaum didn't show up, and I knew he was in Jerusalem and he hadn't called, that a terrible tragedy had occurred," Halevy said.
"Confirmation of my suspicions came shortly. Thousands of Jerusalemites owe Dr. Applebaum their lives. This is a terrible loss."
It was Halevy who managed to persuade Applebaum to return to the hospital, where the emergency physician had spent his initial years in Israel before establishing the Terem clinics, which pioneered community-based urgent care here and reduced the burden of less severe cases on hospital emergency wards.
Applebaum, born in Detroit, raised and educated in Cleveland, came on aliya with his wife, a Bible scholar and teacher, along with the eldest of their six children, in 1981. He had received rabbinical ordination at Yeshiva University, and was a student of the late Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik.
Nava, a graduate of the Horev girls high school, was doing her National Service with Zichron Menahem, a voluntary organization devoted to children with cancer. From morning until late in the day, she spent time with the youngsters, and only a few weeks ago she accompanied a group of them on a trip to Holland.
"She had an incredible smile, and she was an incredible girl," said one of her Horev classmates. "She studied biology because she wanted to help find a cure for cancer."
When Debra and her five remaining children, Natan, 24; Yitzhak, 22; Shira, 18; Shayna, 15; and Tovi Belle, 12, learned of the deaths, they tore their clothes as required by Jewish tradition and hugged each other, said Rabbi Shubert (Eliezer) Spero, Debra's father.
In his eulogy, Spero said: "God gave man the ability to cry, sob, and shriek. But sometimes the tragedy is so painful that the mind shuts down."
...As he spoke, former Horev Yeshiva head Rabbi Mordechai Elon hugged Nava's never-to-be bridegroom, Chanan, who had met Nava two years ago. A Horev graduate and a student at Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva before doing his army service, he gently placed the wedding ring he had bought for the ceremony on the blue velvet cloth covering her shroud.

Click here for a more in-depth profile of Dr. Applebaum. And what was this doctor doing before his daughter's wedding?

Earlier this week, Dr. David Applebaum, director of ER at Shaare Zedek Hospital, flew to the US along with director-general Jonathan Halevy.
Applebaum decided not to turn down an invitation from New York University; hundreds of doctors and potential donors wanted to hear how Shaare Zedek has coped with mass medical catastrophe during the bloody years of the current wave of Palestinian violence.
Applebaum felt it was his duty to go, even though his daughter Nava was getting married on Wednesday night, some 30 hours after his return. It was important to him to show people abroad how Israeli medical professionals had learned to save the lives of the critically wounded, he said, and to raise funds for expanding and improving the hospital's overburdened emergency facilities.
While in New York, Applebaum turned on a computer and went into the internal Web site that gave him a real-time view of the goings on in the Jerusalem emergency room.
"You see, even without me, the emergency department is functioning like clockwork," he told Halevy. "The average wait to see a doctor is 16 minutes."
His staff in Jerusalem those who knew him from his tenure in the 1980s and those who worked under him in only the last 15 months will have to learn permanently to continue meeting his strict standards without him.

Keep in mind that the terrorist intended to kill these people. Their lives were the opposite of everything represented by Palestinian terror. I'm not going into the topic at length now, but it is worth noting that Palestinian nationalism followed a history of Jew-killing, not the other way around.

And here's one comment, by the Jerusalem Post editors:

The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.
No one seriously argues with the fact that Arafat was preventing Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister he appointed, from combating terrorism, to the extent that was willing to do so. Almost no one seriously disputes that Abbas on whom Israel, the US, and Europe had placed all their bets failed primarily because Arafat retained control of much of the security apparatus, and that Arafat wanted him to fail.
The new prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, clearly will fare no better, since he, if anything, has been trying to garner more power for Arafat, not less.
Under these circumstances, the idea of exiling Arafat is gaining currency, but the standard objection is that he will be as much or more of a problem when free to travel the world than he is locked up in Ramallah.
If only three countries Britain, France, and Germany joined the US in a total boycott of Arafat this would not be the case. If these countries did not speak with Arafat, it would not matter much who did, and however much a local Palestinian leader would claim to consult with Arafat, his power would be gone.
But such a boycott will not happen. Only now, after more than 800 Israelis have died in three years of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, has Europe finally decided that Hamas is a terrorist organization. How much longer will it take before it cuts off Arafat? Yet Israel cannot accept a situation in which Arafat blocks any Palestinian break with terrorism, whether from here or in exile. Therefore, we are at another point in our history at which the diplomatic risks of defending ourselves are exceeded by the risks of not doing so.
Such was the case in the Six Day War, when Israel was forced to launch a preemptive attack or accept destruction. And when Menachem Begin decided to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. And when Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in Palestinian cities after the Passover Massacre of 2002.
In each case, Israel tried every fashion of restraint, every plea to the international community to take action that would avoid the need for "extreme" measures, all to no avail.
When the breaking point arrives, there is no point in taking half-measures. If we are going to be condemned in any case, we might as well do it right.

UPDATE: Here's the New York Times' profile of Dr. Applebaum.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's another profile of the family.

During the run-up to the war in Iraq, many columns were written purporting to explain the links between the "neoconservatives" allegedly responsible for forcing the country into war. Some of those pieces seemed to be entries in a contest for "Most Uses of the Word 'Strauss' in a Piece on Current Events, No Matter How Tenuous the Connection May Be."
It can now be revealed: the "neoconservative" conspiracy was merely disinformation for the real Jewish conspiracy at work. Operating semi-publicly on the internet, four former bochurim from a certain yeshiva in the West Bank (a settlement! The first indicator of evil...) have started blogs. Can the presence of four bloggers who attended the same West Bank yeshiva at the same time indicate anything other than a deep, dark conspiracy? Obviously not.
The title "Four Horseman of the Ablogalypse" may be taken, and it's not a Jewish concept anyway. I accordingly have named this conspiracy the "Four Questions" (if that doesn't sound ominous enough, think Steve Ditko).
I was sent out by our master, the mysterious HRA"L, to test the murky waters of the blogosphere. Having found them welcoming, I gave the all-clear for my former study partner, a newly minted rabbi and a programmer with a gift for detailed recreations of the ancient Temple.
(Cool graphics for our conspiracy along the lines of these are welcome.)
The four agents are in place, and the next stage of the conspiracy is about to unfold. Stay tuned...

Earlier this week, the NYT ran a front-page article with the following headline:
"Israelis Worry about Terror, by Jews against Palestinians."
The article cited the concerns of the Israelis about the likelihood of Jewish terrorism, and the steps taken to prevent it.
Avraham Bronstein of the great Protocols blog had the reaction that I figured many pro-Israel types would: “another example of moral equivalence.” In this case, though, he and they were wrong, for the following reasons:
1) The article put the concerns in the proper context:

...Israel has not confronted a Jewish militant group of any size for nearly 20 years.
...One of the few points of agreement is that attacks by Israeli civilians against Palestinians are rare. According to B'Tselem, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the last three years. At the same time, 328 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians inside Israel, and 190 more in the West Bank and Gaza.

2) Yes, Jewish terrorism is vastly less prevalent, less encouraged by the larger society, and more punished after the fact than the Palestinian variety. As such, it is less representative of Israeli society than its Palestinian counterpart. But the events themselves, and the perpetrators thereof, are no less evil. And there is no reason for the media not to pay due attention to such evil where it exists. Jewish-based suggestions to the contrary are, in my opinion, merely based on the all-too-common impulse to cover up bad news.
3) Most importantly, the headline itself was, in its own way, publicity that Israel should have paid for in its struggle against Palestinian terrorism:
"Israelis Worry about Terror, by Jews against Palestinians."
Israel is worried about the prospect of Jewish terrorism, and is trying to prevent it (even arresting the father of a murdered baby).
The same day this headline appeared, the Palestinians showed that they were not nearly as worried about terrorism, nor were they making such efforts to prevent it - in fact, they celebrated it.

I’d previously written that the “road map” process seemed perfectly designed to repeat every mistake made during the Oslo process and reject every lesson to be learned from such mistakes. Others made similar arguments, most notably Charles Krauthammer.
I had also thought that terrorists might attack hotels in the U.S. where Jews were celebrating Passover. I was wrong. I prefer being wrong about things like that.
This attack was a very big deal. The Passover Massacre, aside from culminating a massive terror onslaught in the spring of 2002, was perfectly calibrated to push the most sensitive buttons of the Israeli populace. By massacring a group of Holocaust survivors celebrating the formative experience of the Jewish people (literally, per the book of Exodus), the Hamas terrorists made it clear that their war was one of extermination rather than for territorial gain. As the Israeli papers quoted from the Haggada in the wake of the attack: “In every generation, they rise up to destroy us.”
This attack was similarly calibrated: a massacre of children who had just departed the holiest site in Judaism that Jews can visit (I’m not going to get into the Temple Mount issue now).
I think it is only a matter of time before another massive assault on the terrorists begins. Hopefully, Arafat’s deportation or death will be part of it. (Some Israelis think that Powell’s request for Arafat’s help was to help prepare the diplomatic ground for such a step. Let’s hope.)

Jay Nordlinger has a good joke about Israel. (Scroll down to the end.)

People … operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage. Many people think they are smarter than others in the stock market and that the market itself has no intrinsic intelligence –as if it’s inert. Many people think they are smarter than others in baseball and that the game on the field is simply what they think it is through their set of images/beliefs. Actual data from the market means more than individual perception/belief. The same is true in baseball.

- E-mail from Red Sox owner John Henry, quoted in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (pp. 90-91)

Growing up Orthodox in America almost invariably involves living in a cocoon. Absorbing the knowledge and folkways of an Orthodox-based lifestyle requires constant immersion and reinforcement, which results in a degree of separation from the rest of the world. To take the most obvious example, most self-professed Orthodox Jews would not dream of sending their children to anything other than 12+ years of Orthodox day school. And the necessity of living in the vicinity of such a school, along with synagogues, kosher food supplies, etc. creates an environment where kids grow up primarily (though rarely solely) associating with other Orthodox Jews.
For all but the most fanatically oriented segment of Jewry, the cocoon must be left at some point; few people can or wish to earn a living wholly within the cocoon. When is the “right” time to do so? For many Orthodox Jews graduating high school and considering where to attend college, this question is paramount. And there typically is no shortage of people volunteering for the conservative role of conscience, whispering messages of fear and caution.
21st century America, where a self-professed Orthodox Jew can come within a few hanging chads of the Vice-Presidency, has in many respects never been an easier place to be Orthodox. Yet as the larger society has grown more accepting of difference, Orthodoxy-style, the sense of fear over the prospects of preserving an Orthodox way of life (on both the individual and communal levels) has only grown for many people.
(Of course, the two factors are linked, and the link deserves its own discussion. And that discussion - for which the term “magisterial” should have been invented - has already been written by Dr. Haym Soloveitchik. Go and study. End of digression.)
With regard to the question of college and cocoons, some segments of American Orthodoxy have been discussing a pamphlet that has been widely circulated via the Internet. It is a well-written, well-reasoned journal of fear. It comes down squarely on the side of maintaining the cocoon through college. The piece is a worthy contribution to the discussion, though not nearly as important as its authors believe.
As an aside, the authors are imprecise in their initial definitions. While the pamphlet refers to “secular college,” the authors clearly don’t mean that term literally, as they approve of commuting to colleges other than parochial ones and living at home; the piece isn’t solely a brief for Yeshiva University. Thinking of the question as “cocoon v. non-cocoon” rather than “secular v. parochial college” makes the pamphlet more comprehensible, and the authors clearly assume that their readers will understand the distinction. But I thought I’d explain it for my readers who aren’t already familiar with the discussion.
I’m not going to further discuss the larger theological issues raised by the pamphlet or how certain details glossed lightly (at best) in the pamphlet can make all the difference in the Orthodox student’s college experience, nor will I base a critiq