The Vicious Circle of the Full and Empty Wagon (Column 165)
With God’s help
For quite some time now, an aggressive campaign has been underway on behalf of LGBT people, one that seeks to intimidate and frighten anyone who thinks of expressing a "non-standard" position. This terror is wielded in a very heavy-handed way by many journalists (almost all the senior ones) in the general media (as distinct from religious and sectoral media), and by others as well. Anyone who dares express a different position is rebuked by harsh and violent protest, branded with epithets (homophobe and benighted), and of course assailed with "scientific" declarations, some of them baseless (it should be remembered that this terror exists in the academic and research sphere as well. There too, and especially in the pseudo-sciences, there are things one is not allowed to say, even when they are facts). This terror leads to a situation in which people are genuinely afraid to express a position that appears "non-standard" to those who set media bon ton. It is no wonder that the public square looks as though the law against homophobes and their accomplices were being implemented.
I, precisely as someone who supports granting equal rights to LGBT people (and I have written this more than once), am outraged by this terrorist witch-hunt. Silencing people, even when the position in question is benighted or simply one that neither you nor I likes, is a recipe for violence and darkness, and usually does not help the cause either. On the practical plane, it mainly provokes resistance, and the reaction against it is likely to be strong. An example is the nationalist extremism that occasionally pokes through in our society (and elsewhere in the world as well; cf. Putin, Trump, Orban, and others), which in my view is largely the fruit of the excesses of universalist left-wing terror. Oppressed people who are required not to express their views and to think "correctly," people who are constantly silenced and told that their position (one shared by quite a few people, and sometimes actually by the majority) is illegitimate, burst out in protest that takes them precisely toward the "forbidden" pole in an extreme way. Thus, ironically, the war against "La Familia" is what builds it. Many people come to feel that there are things one may not think, certainly not say, even though some of them are indeed problematic and others that get swept into the same package are legitimate and entirely innocent. Since these thoughts exist among many people, a reaction is created that leads to extreme expressions. The war probably does not really help eradicate these phenomena, and may even be harmful in that respect.
I have written here before (see Column 6) that I also oppose the law prohibiting Holocaust denial. So long as a person expresses a reasoned position, whatever it may be, he has the right and the duty to express it. The claims should be examined on their merits, and I have no interest in some paternalistic body (a newspaper, a court, the minister of education, or the Knesset) examining them for me and deciding what I should think and what I should not. As far as I am concerned, only I am supposed to decide whether there was a Holocaust or not. And in order to decide, I need to hear the views and the arguments on all sides openly.
Not surprisingly, of late there have been more and more voices of people who have decided to stop yielding to this liberal terror, and that is a good thing. Reasoned arguments are being written on the subject (see Nir Menussi’s article in Hashiloach, the post by Bezalel Smotrich on his Facebook page, and others), and nearly all of them deal not only with the issue itself but also, and sometimes primarily, with the violence of the discourse and the silencing of some of the views within it. These arguments, however reasoned and restrained they may be, are of course themselves subject to attempts at silencing, but that leads me to another related point that I wanted to make.
"The Rabbaniyot Letter"
About a week ago, a public declaration was published in the sectoral press, which came to be known as the "Rabbaniyot Letter", concerning the LGBT struggle, and this was its wording:
What we have here are astonishingly moderate statements, almost trivial: there is a prohibition in Jewish law, it is important to be considerate and accepting, there is a recommended family model from the standpoint of Jewish law, and above all, to my mind, the subtext of this declaration is not the prohibition but a protest against silencing and a call for free discourse. This is a justified and remarkably mild counterreaction to the silencing and violence adopted by the "liberal" side.
Paradoxically, though not surprisingly, all sorts of criticisms and protests immediately arose over the fact that women academics were speaking on charged and controversial matters (especially when they express such "benighted" positions), and, of course, the predictable feelings of offense and demands for apology were not long in coming. Within the university system (Bar-Ilan), demands were raised not to use institutional affiliation when signing such declarations (academics usually sign public declarations with their title and/or position).
Why is this paradoxical? Because this declaration warns against silencing and against injury to freedom of discourse, and its critics, who accuse it of silencing discourse (homophobia), are themselves in fact trying to silence these voices, thereby proving the correctness of the proclamation. All this is done, of course, in the name of tolerance and inclusion, freedom of expression, and the values of open discussion and listening (to ourselves). Women members of an academic institution call for free discourse, and are rewarded with criticism that tries to shackle the discourse once again to the chains of political correctness. This reminds me of the amusing remark that circulated online about Bibi’s response to the claims of the family of the soldier Oron Shaul, whose body is being held by Hamas. They claimed that Bibi had accused them of lying, and he replied that this never happened (that is, that they were lying). Note this well.
On the Asymmetry of Free Discourse
Academic institutions and their leaders express positions on various issues on the agenda, particularly value-laden ones. Thus, for example, with respect to the Surrogacy Law. There were many private bodies that issued official statements against the law and the discrimination against LGBT people embodied in it. As for private bodies, fine. Let each do as he thinks. But there were public bodies there as well, particularly universities, which also came out against the discrimination against LGBT people embodied in that law. These statements were issued by the heads of the universities in the name of the university, although I assume they did not conduct a poll among the faculty as to whether these statements reflected their view. Why? Because these are statements in the "politically correct" direction. In such a case, it was obvious to them that universities can and even must express a sharp and unequivocal position in the name of the university itself (and, by implication, in the name of all its academic staff). By contrast, a declaration that calls for freedom of discourse and expresses entirely standard positions of Jewish law, issued by private women who merely note their institutional affiliation but do not speak in the name of the institution itself, is not legitimate. Why? Because that is the "incorrect" and "illegal" side of the discourse, which must be silenced.
What Is Liberalism?
But my problem is not only this irritating asymmetry, but what it reflects. In my view, this contradiction is not manipulation but an expression of the liberals’ sincere and naive conception. The subtext is that liberalism is not a position but the infrastructure for discourse about positions. Therefore, here the university can, and even must, come out and express an official position of its own. By contrast, a conservative, traditional, religious position, even though it too speaks gently in favor of free discourse, is not legitimate, even if it is not expressed in the university’s name. Because that is a position, an agenda, and such things have no place within the university. Those are matters for private individuals. More than that, it even contradicts the university’s own position, and therefore people are required even to conceal their institutional affiliation.
In fact, there is a kind of dancing here at two contradictory weddings. Aharon Barak has written and said more than once that he is not a party to public disputes. He merely sees to it that the possibility of conducting them is properly arranged. But most of his opponents thought he was very much a party to the dispute, and they said so to him again and again (without success). I actually believed in his sincerity, and was impressed that he really and truly believed he was the UN. When the dispute is about liberalism itself, people like Barak genuinely fail to grasp this. In their eyes, this is a dispute between a vacuum and a position with an agenda (remember Ruth Gavison, who was not appointed to the Supreme Court because Aharon Barak claimed she had an agenda). When there is a dispute about liberalism, the liberal side sincerely feels that it is not representing a side at all. This is not an agenda but the necessary consensual infrastructure of discourse. It is not a specific position within it, but the agreed infrastructure upon which discourse must proceed.
Thus Haim Gans (a law professor at Tel Aviv University and one of the founders of "Peace Now"), in the introduction to his book Obedience and Refusal (the introduction was written following Rabin’s assassination), explains with excellent sense and judgment why refusal to serve from the right is illegitimate while refusal to serve from the left is legitimate. One of his arguments was that refusal from the left is for the sake of universal values, whereas refusal from the right is the specific position of a certain group.
An Empty Wagon or a Full One?
In fact, the meaning of this assumption is that liberalism is an empty wagon. Liberalism is a "transparent" and agreed conceptual and social infrastructure that makes public discourse and argument about values possible. And what are the values themselves? Ironically, for the liberal who accepts this assumption, it seems that there are none. He has liberal values, but under the assumption I described these are transparent and agreed principles and not really values. From his perspective, this is almost self-evident logic that there is no point in discussing. Liberalism is not up for discussion, just as the laws of arithmetic or logic are not up for discussion. They are conditions for discourse. At most, people and groups have needs and interests, or personal desires and personal taste, but not values in the usual sense.
There is an inherent absurdity here, since the liberal infrastructure is supposed to enable discourse about values, but there are no values beyond it itself. In Column 116 I described a conference in which I participated that raised the problem from a somewhat different angle, and tried to push in the direction of post-liberalism, which recognizes that liberalism is not empty. I explained there that no such possibility exists: either one adopts empty liberalism, or it is not liberalism.
What emerges from my remarks here is that liberalism is in fact an empty wagon. Its purpose is to allow people to live and not tell them how to live. Therefore it quickly, and sometimes without noticing, shifts from values to needs and interests. Thus postmodern discourse is created, replacing values with interests and plots. From this conception grows the feeling that liberalism itself is not open to discussion. As though we had here a collection of religious dogmas whose status is above any dispute (like the laws of logic or the principles of religion in the eyes of believers).
But if you tell these people that their liberal wagon is empty, they will be very offended. What do you mean?! They have alternative cargo. In place of religious values they have liberal and enlightened values (and "Jewish" ones too, of course). They stand on the same footing as I do (the believing Jew). There is a full religious wagon and a full liberal-secular wagon. One has to understand that it is hard for a person to admit that he is an empty wagon. In an argument he will never present his positions as a vacuum but as alternative cargo.
But then I return and wonder: if that is the case, why do they assume that liberalism is the framework of the argument rather than one particular side within it? After all, someone who expresses another view is my disputant, and the argument over liberalism is a legitimate value dispute like any other. But no: whoever opposes liberalism (especially in its politically correct interpretation) is illegitimate (a benighted homophobe), because he is breaking the framework of discourse. So is liberalism the framework of discourse or a value position within it? Is the liberal wagon full or empty? Let the post-liberals provide the answer.
A University’s Positions
This is the reason academic institutions allow themselves to express an institutional position on controversial issues. They do not perceive this as an institutional position for or against one side in the debate. They are not a side. They are the UN, exactly like Aharon Barak. Therefore every dispute over the status of homosexuals is perceived as a dispute between the children of light and the children of darkness, between democracy and an Iranian dictatorship. It is not a discussion about the character of democracy but about whether there will be a democracy here at all.
Well, in truth, a discussion of democracy itself is not conceivable at all. You can found a party that denies the existence of the State of Israel and no one will manage to disqualify it. But if you found a party that advocates undemocratic ideas (and again, even according to their politically correct interpretation) – you have no chance. You will be disqualified immediately. This is not a legitimate discussion. This of course raises the question whether a majority of the public cannot decide that it does not want democracy. Why not? And if that is indeed a legitimate discussion, how exactly can it take place if the government and the legal system do not allow such a party to be founded and such a discourse to be conducted?
Malice or Naivete?
Many think there is malice here, that is, a scheming and self-interested action on the part of liberals. They use the demagogic cover of labels and tagging while fully understanding that this is not the real situation. That is their way of advancing their agenda. But to the best of my judgment, that is not correct. These are naive actions. These people are utterly convinced that they are not a side, that is, that they are the UN and have no agenda. To them it is obvious that any opposition to granting rights to homosexuals is homophobia, and every call for discourse is an attempt at violent takeover and the destruction of democracy. When they talk twice a day about the apocalypse of the end of democracy, I believe them. They truly think so. That is the nature of preaching and living in a fanatical religious bubble. Readers of "Haaretz" and its satellites are a no less closed and fanatical religious group than any other religious group.
Incidentally, such a state of affairs is far worse than demagogic and malicious discourse. If a person is malicious and uses demagogic tricks, he understands that people are fighting him. It is also easier for us to fight him, because he is a malicious person playing tricks on us. But if he is naive and truly convinced that he is not a side, then he sees the others as his enemies and as enemies of truth and peace in general. Then, of course, he is unwilling to listen or argue, and because he is naive it is also hard to oppose him with forceful measures. And this again brings us back to the frustration I described above. This frustration among those who hold more nationalist and less liberal positions (or liberal positions interpreted in a non-politically-correct way) naturally leads to radicalization. And that, in turn, naturally comes back and proves to the liberal children of light that they were right, namely, that the others are children of darkness and that one must fight them and shut their mouths, and so the cycle repeats.
Open Discourse
Here I return to my opening point. The only way to move forward from such a state is to conduct discourse in a completely open way. To allow every position to be expressed, every party to be founded, and every judge to be appointed. Freedom of expression should be curtailed only in a situation of real danger. No position is illegitimate, including the claim not to be a position at all (that is, to be transparent and agenda-free). This misleading discourse must stop. One can struggle over all these things within the framework of the discussion, but it is very important to conduct it and to understand what the rules of the game are and what values are contending within the field.
As I explained above, this is truer on the practical, goal-oriented plane as well. What happens today is that the discussion cannot take place at all. Fear of the results of discussion (nationalism, violence, homophobia, etc.) leads to steps (silencing) that lead directly to those very same results they were meant to prevent. So why wage the war if it fails? Would it not be better to conduct an open discussion instead? That at least might help us reach a conclusion or an agreed decision.
A Note on Public Institutions
There is a certain accepted assumption that public institutions in our country (and in a democratic state generally) are secular in their essence. Incidentally, I tend to agree. But here the question of the wagon’s cargo returns once again. If secularity is a vacuum, then there is indeed logic to this claim. If society is torn in its values, it is reasonable to base its governmental and public frameworks on the lowest common denominator. The vacuum is what is shared, and from that point on we can argue within that framework. But once the secular person claims that he is not an empty wagon but is filled with alternative cargo, the concept of secularity becomes charged with specific (liberal) content, and at that point the built-in superiority of his conceptions falls away. Why should the state be secular in the "full" sense if that is not a common denominator for all citizens? Secularity in this sense is no longer shared by all of us, and therefore it is not a reasonable common denominator on which to build public life, but a mechanism of majority tyranny.
And again we have returned to the question whether the liberal side is one side in the argument, that is, whether imposing its conceptions is an elementary requirement not open to dispute, or whether this is majority tyranny. A university as a public institution is not supposed to take part in a value-laden and ideological dispute. Members of the faculty, of course, may do so, like any other citizen in the state. But it is not right to express an institutional position on matters under dispute. This sounds unreasonable, and is also a recipe for preferring people with certain outlooks over others (quite apart from academic considerations). So if rights for homosexuals are a question in an ethical dispute, the university should not express an institutional position on it. Expressing such a position indicates that the university sees this as a foundational discussion that, at least in democratic thought, is not supposed to depend on value positions. As a private individual you may perhaps think in so benighted a way, but there is no possibility of conducting a legitimate public debate over this in a democratic state. It is part of the wagon itself and not of the character of its cargo.
But the opponents think that this itself is one side in the argument. It is part of the cargo and not part of the wagon, and therefore it should be debated honestly, that is, public institutions should stay out of it. The people who work in them may of course express a position, each according to his own understanding, and also state their institutional affiliation (so long as they are not speaking in the name of the institution). I agree that the university should be a secular institution in the "thin" sense, but there is an attempt here to drag it into secularity in the "thick" sense, and in my view that is illegitimate. As noted, this is part of that very same silencing that they supposedly attack and against which they supposedly defend themselves.
Midreshet Sde Boker as a Public Institution
This reminds me of a story that took place about fifteen years ago when I lived in Yeruham.[1] At Midreshet Sde Boker, which is a branch of Ben-Gurion University, a new synagogue was established through a donation from some philanthropist (it is not clear to me why). There were two traditional Jews there, and they initiated a plan whereby every day a group of kollel students from Yeruham would come there for the afternoon and evening prayers, pray, and give a lesson. The residents of the Midrasha were alarmed, formed an association, and launched a public struggle against this initiative. They argued: we are a secular place! Soon the Haredim will come, close our streets on the Sabbath, make our sons and daughters religious, and so on and so on. The people from Yeruham asked me to go and speak with a group of residents from the Midrasha.
When I arrived there, I asked them what would happen if I, as a religious person, were appointed a lecturer in physics at Ben-Gurion University and wanted to come and live in the Midrasha. The answer, of course, was that there would be no problem; everything would be according to the criteria (mainly academic). I chuckled to myself, and in the end they understood very well that there was no substance to what they were saying. They would not let me live there, and if there were a chance that I might come, they would also act to keep me from being accepted to the university at all. I then asked them in what sense the Midrasha was a secular place. After all, anyone who works at the university, where things are supposedly determined by academic criteria, can decide to come and live in the Midrasha. I argued to them that they viewed the Midrasha and the university as secular institutions, but that was incorrect. These are public institutions, whose workers/residents are at present mostly secular. But that is a contingent situation—or so they say. If, according to the criteria, a majority of religious lecturers were to arise there "by chance"—or so they say—the place ought to take on a religious character.
In the terminology I have presented here, my claim was that the university and the Midrasha are indeed secular institutions, but only in the thin sense. They are not supposed to be run according to any value scale. The moment secularity becomes an alternative value system, the appeal to the secular character that public institutions are supposed to have becomes a cover for forceful and demagogic takeover, and in fact for majority tyranny. They conceal a secular ideology of a wagon full of alternative values under the cloak of an empty wagon. As though all that were at stake were merely a basic and agreed infrastructure for discourse and for life, one not subject to dispute, whereas in fact what is at issue is the imposition of a specific value system.
What Does This Mean in Practice?
There is no doubt that the distinction is not sharp. It is hard to draw a clear line between thin secularity and democracy and an alternative wagon. I also do not think it is practically possible to run a state or an institution with no agenda at all, that is, in a purely "thin" way. The common denominator of all the groups in the population is the empty set. The rules of discourse and conduct are bound up with values (the cargo depends on the wagon itself). But the logic at the base of this distinction is nevertheless very important, and it is worth paying attention to it. More important still is to notice when sand is being thrown in our eyes (usually innocently, as I said) and we are told that liberalism is not really open to dispute because it is an empty wagon, while at the same time, when that is less convenient, it is presented as an alternative full wagon (and perhaps called post-liberalism).
[1] I recounted it in my book Two Wagons in the context of the distinction between tolerance and pluralism. Here I am dealing with another aspect.
Discussion
There is no symmetry. From the perspective of LGBT people, this is about their very lives, after years of being silenced, and of course also among secular publics.
There are liberals (and conservatives too) who simply like to silence others because they don’t give a damn about anyone else, and there are those who see this as a matter of life and death, and therefore show no openness to the other side.
I think the main problem is that you think in a cool, measured way, but our public media sphere is an arena of emotions, so it’s no wonder there is silencing of the dark and backward person who “opposes progress.”
And in general, today the Western religion of equality draws many emotional worshipers after it, so “throw away your brain” and start shrieking!
With God’s help, 5 Elul 5778
The Western world, of which we are to one degree or another a part, is a ‘supermarket’ of opinions,
And in a supermarket, as in a supermarket, there is a fast lane for empty carts, which quickly display their wares at the checkout, and just as quickly as they entered—so they leave, and ‘it was not known that they had gone into them’.
By contrast, the one who leaves the ‘super’ with great possessions is the owner of the ‘full cart,’ who indeed waits a long time for his turn, but leaves the ‘super’ with his panniers full and overflowing with abundance.
And the moral is that shallow discourse makes a lot of noise, but just as it appears quickly, so it fades quickly, and today’s scandal makes us forget yesterday’s scandal. If we lived according to the media, we would think the whole nation is extreme left-wing, and lo and behold, when election day comes, we see that after all the media noise, the right-wing and traditional force is very strong, and the more the left makes noise—the stronger the right becomes.
The people are not stupid. When people recognize deep and complex discourse, they treat it with respect and trust!
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Perhaps I didn’t sharpen the point enough. I have no complaint against LGBT people. They are indeed mistaken and silencing others, but that is understandable because this touches their very lives and is a reaction to the silencing of them. My claim is mainly against their helpers.
In paragraph 3, line 1:
…who indeed waits a long time for his/her turn, but…
At the beginning of paragraph 5:
The people are not stupid, …
Chayota,
Your claim is not really clear. Sometimes for those who disqualify LGBT relationships, this too touches their very soul.
A dictatorship of opinions is wrong in any case, and silencing is not an appropriate response to counter-silencing.
Regarding the main thesis of a full cart versus an empty one:
An empty cart is far preferable to a cart full of nonsense and the values of primitive tribes.
Historically, humanity had to fight to rid itself of the negative inheritances that came from religions. Clearly, we still need to fight on specific issues such as LGBT matters.
The line between modern and postmodern is not sharp, whereas the identification between modernity and religion is weak.
By contrast, the opposition between religion and modernity is clear to every modern person (though not to most religious people).
Roni and Rabbi Michi—my response was meant to distinguish between a position of fervor—of the sort “it is our very soul”—on both sides, and a position of blindness and hardness of heart, on both sides. Both the liberal camp and the conservative camp contain both kinds.
Sh.Tz.L., I liked it.
It came out as a pun, but what I meant simply was—fervor, in the sense of enthusiasm and flame 🙂
From the perspective of the secular elite, religiosity is an impulse that a mature person learns to control. Accordingly, a religious person is not mature enough to receive important roles in the society upon which that society is built. In the best case he will suffer quietly. In the worst case he will be silenced.
In my view there is not much to be done. I already wrote to the rabbi of my hope for an alternative to this reality of Haredi violence and secular silencing. They are both two sides of the same coin.
Leo Strauss, in a series of essays in the book Liberalism and the Crisis of Modern Jewish Thought, writes quite a bit about these issues. According to his view, the contradiction between liberalism and society is a product of modernity itself, while in his writing he tries to return to earlier models.
Personally, the answer to this reality of silencing lies in what Hazal said: “Just as it is a mitzvah to say things that will be heeded, so it is a mitzvah not to say things that will not be heeded.” Following Hazal, I do not believe in the sanctity of expression, and therefore if I see a reality of things that will not be heeded, I simply remain silent.
With God’s help, 6 Elul 5778
The aggressive silencing of every voice that says LGBT inclination is not a preordained fate ingrained from the outset has brought about a situation in which no scientific research can be done that tries to find solutions for changing the situation. Whoever tries to seek a remedy for the inclination is immediately denounced as a ‘homophobe,’ and no scientific institution will allow him to operate, and certainly will not support his research.
In a scientific world that accepts no medical or mental limitation as unchangeable, a scientific world that succeeds in coping with congenital defects and severe addictions—it throws up its hands in advance, because it is not ‘politically correct’; and still, after many years of ‘scientific recognition’ of the normativity of LGBT, they continue to live with high rates of depression and suicidality.
Indeed, silencing every attempt to bring healing comes at a heavy price!
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger.
Ami,
It’s very nice to speak on behalf of history. Do you need to take some special course for that, or do you get a license just based on personal connections?
That is simply not true. The Christian religious establishment had a great deal of motivation to investigate and find solutions. And at the moment it seems there is no serious scientific solution.
There is only one solution to pseudo-liberal condescension: cooperation with Muslim, Christian, and Druze religious leaders, whose religions also reject homosexuality. The pseudo-liberals can proudly look down with contempt on the religion of their own people, the Jewish religion—but the values of Christianity, Islam, and the Druze faith, after all, ‘political correctness’ requires them to respect :).
I recall that about twenty years ago our Supreme Court ruled that a lesbian couple should be recognized as mothers of a child. The decision was adopted by a majority of two Jewish women judges against the minority opinion of Judge Zoubi. Good that there are also Arab judges who are not ashamed of their religious tradition. May there be many like them in Israel!
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Y.D.
Do you think the world has progressed morally since the giving of the Torah? If so, you see modernity as something positive.
The main thesis in religion is that there is religious decline.
That is, one should return to a period when people were executed for religious offenses and other things of that sort.
An excellent article, and I identify with most of what was written.
One question: with regard to the statement of Chaim Gans (about the moral advantage of the universalism of the liberal left over right-wing conservative ethnocentrism), about which I want to ask: in some cases, is there not truth to this claim? I agree that in general left-wing universalism fails—especially on “big” questions. But if, for example, we consider the aspiration for equality on a humanistic basis for Arabs, women, gays, etc., then at least ostensibly the leftist is right. If morality is first and foremost a universal demand, and if the leftist succeeds (and I admit this is difficult…) in showing that his concern is broader, then he has succeeded in proving moral superiority in this case over the right-winger of “narrow interests.”
In fact, when a person like you supports full political rights for LGBT people, he himself has internalized a liberal truth (even if only a partial truth). If I am right in that last sentence, then your (partial) internalization of human-rights discourse is an admission of the superiority of liberal discourse, at least in this context.
Your opinion?
With the first I agree, but then one chooses the side of the empty cart, and I see no room for outrage over that term. As you wrote, it is a factual description.
The second I didn’t understand.
Roni, despite the formal similarity there is a certain asymmetry. Among religious people, opposition to LGBT is in their soul in the ideological sense, but it is still intervention in other people’s lives. Among LGBT people, religious opposition is a personal injury to them themselves (they are not allowed to live). With that kind of symmetry one could also get to the point where the fact that my neighbor eats pork touches my very soul, and the fact that he wears ugly clothes touches my very soul. Therefore it is still accepted to distinguish between things that bother me about the other person and things that interfere with my own life.
Ami, it is hard to respond seriously to a collection of unsupported declarations and slogans (which are also incorrect).
Chayota, regarding the solutions, that is indeed the accepted way of thinking (that there are none), but I am really not sure. The silencing of every politically incorrect voice lowers my trust in the data quoted in this context. Anyone who claims that conversion therapies helped someone is immediately showered with contempt and silenced. I indeed have no other information, and it is fairly clear that there are cases where it caused harm and certainly did not solve the problem, but in such a situation it is hard to take the data seriously. Until there is freedom of speech and research on this issue—it is impossible to make serious use of the data published by either side.
Ami,
First, it is worth responding in the correct thread. You moved to a different thread.
Second, you continue to toss out assertions based on mistaken assumptions. A sentence like “the main thesis in religion is that there is religious decline,” beyond its flawed and vague wording, apparently (if I understood it) assumes something about Judaism that has no basis. There is indeed a view among some religious people that the situation in the past was ideal, but to make that into “the main thesis in religion” is unserious charlatanry.
Michi,
Accepted. There is no complete identity between the cases.
But harming the right to hold a non-politically-correct opinion is also intervention in other people’s lives.
And in that respect there is a certain symmetry.
As a rule, I am not dealing here with the history of ideas. There is indeed considerable liberal influence on me (I myself define myself as a liberal), but from my perspective, after I adopted it, this is my own position and not someone else’s. I am dealing with the argument being conducted now, that is, between people living now after all the influences, and not with an argument between the roots of positions that once existed.
Beyond that, what I claimed is that liberals must decide whether their cart is full or empty. Whether it is the correct cart or not—that is another question (as stated, I identify with most of it).
Indeed. And about that I wrote.
“To conduct the discourse in a completely open way”—is that part of the framework, or is it a value position?
The claim is that there are positions that are illegitimate; thus a position that does not grant equality to blacks, to women, and to Jews is not part of the discourse.
In your view, is it legitimate to advocate racial segregation, or to hold positions that distinguish between a woman/an American Jew and a white American, or are such positions outside the framework of discourse?
If in your opinion such positions are not legitimate, what is the difference between that and the claim that it is not legitimate to hold positions that discriminate against LGBT people?
Fascinating. It is interesting, by the way, to note that conservative thinkers always fought for freedom of speech; see, for example, the First Amendment to the American Constitution. Today’s liberalism (which is really a kind of socialism) has a serious and explicit problem with freedom of speech.
In my opinion this stems from the fact that conservatism is not really concerned with “what society should look like” but rather with what the *government* is allowed to do.
The U.S. government, most of the time, gave its citizens a much greater degree of freedom and did not engage in the attempts at shaping society that were common in Europe, and behold, American society is the most conservative in the West.
So this is not necessarily a matter of a full cart versus an empty cart, but of what you filled your cart with. If your goal is to shape society in a certain way (sharp examples: German Nazism, Italian fascism, Russian communism. Softer examples today: French secularism, Polish nationalism, Israeli “statism”), you will most likely restrict freedom of speech to one degree or another.
If it is not society that concerns you but the individual (that is, his liberty), it is unlikely that you will try to silence opinions contrary to your own, because according to your view everyone has the right to express himself as he wishes.
But I can agree that the matter of the full and empty cart is expressed in the fact that the conservative does not want a government that tells him how to behave—because his *personal* cart is full (with religion, or with basic human morality). And therefore it also does not bother him that “someone said something.”
With God’s help, Sabbath eve, “and you shall inquire and investigate thoroughly,” 5778
Religion did not bring war and violence into the world. Violence and war were abundant in the pagan world without any religious background. People fought in order to conquer and rule, and they acted cruelly because that is one of man’s inclinations. Those who excelled in violence were the Romans], among whom deadly gladiatorial combat was public ‘entertainment,’ and the barbarian tribes that invaded Europe—Germans, Franks, Goths, Vandals, Normans, and all the rest, forgive me if I skipped any of them.
Obviously, when you dress ‘a religion of love and kindness’ of Jewish origin upon the descendants of the Romans and the barbarians, who really do not fit with the Jewish demand that ‘let him offer his cheek to his smiter; let him be sated with disgrace’ (Lamentations 3)—it does not work, just as monotheism did not really work among them. Just as idolatry ‘peeked through the cracks’ and became ‘one who is three’ and image-worship—so too the values of excessive ‘love and kindness’ turned into riots, crusades, and the Inquisition. Instead of entertaining the crowd with crucifixions and gladiatorial battles—the ‘religion of love and kindness’ supplied the bloodthirsty crowd with pogroms and the pyres of the ‘auto-da-fé’ (‘death without bloodshed…’ 🙂
As opposed to Christianity, whose flagship book exaggerates in moral sanctimony—the Torah severely prescribes harsh punishments and wages an all-out war against idolatry and the sexual immorality associated with it—but it was the Torah that imposed stringent rules of evidence, witnesses and prior warning, inquiry and cross-examination and inspection, which made the death penalty almost impossible to implement. Judaism invested in education in Torah and kindness, and precisely because it made very little use of severe punishment—it merited establishing a society in which serious crime was very rare.
In Islam too, religion improved the condition of the Arabs in the days of the ‘Jahiliyya’: from a situation in which war was a ‘noble sport,’ war became purposeful, and once the goal of establishing a Muslim empire had been achieved—the ‘commanded war’ ceased, and the Muslim regime was commanded to grant patronage and protection to the religious minorities within its domain so long as they accepted its authority submissively. It seems that when one does not proclaim angelic norms of love and kindness openly—there are fewer riots and pogroms. (The prohibition of wine-drinking also made a positive contribution to curbing violence.)
What was the effect of modernity? In Europe, wars and violence did not diminish. Only their justification changed. Instead of fighting in the name of religion, people began to fight for national, imperialist reasons, and in the name of ideologies. How many lives did the French Revolution take, murdering in the name of freedom? How many lives did the Communist revolution take in the name of ‘liberating the workers’? And the least pleasant of the lot, the Nazis, who enlisted the ‘natural selection’ of evolutionary science to justify their murderousness. The development of science perfected the means of mass destruction, so that in one world war 20 million were killed, and in the second 60 million.
What reduced violence and wars in the West was not lofty moral values, but nuclear weaponry that created a ‘balance of terror,’ which succeeded in weaning the Western world off world wars for more than 70 years—a span of quiet the like of which had not existed since the outbreak of modernity.
Modernity also had a negative effect on Islam from the standpoint of violence. They learned from the West how to fight; in particular the Soviets encouraged terror in order to penetrate places where Western European hegemony prevailed. The atheist Soviets also aroused and encouraged fanatical Muslim terror, a relatively new phenomenon in the Muslim world, which replaced nationalist and communist justifications with a pseudo-religious justification.
A decisive part in encouraging violence in the East was consumption of Western media full of violence. Western man enjoys seeing blood and shocking violence, and Islamic terror supplies it to him splendidly. It is no accident that young people raised on violent Western media flock to ISIS and the like, where they can realize their violent desires with religious sanction.
In short:
‘Ambush culture,’ founded by the Romans and the barbarian tribes, is the source of violence and bloodlust, which for some two thousand years found ideological justifications, religious or secular. In the West they have already been weaned from wars because of the nuclear balance of terror, and suffice with brawls in bars and football stadiums, and above all with watching shocking violence for pleasure. In the awakening East, they still have not ‘merited’ a calming ‘balance of terror.’ Perhaps one should supply an atomic bomb to Tehran and at the same time to Saudi Arabia, and world peace will appear 🙂
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
When LGBT propaganda tries to influence young religious or traditional people that this inclination is fine—we are supposed to accept this with ‘stoic calm’.
As educating parents, it is our right and duty to say to the confused young person:
If the God of Israel forbade this in His Torah—then there is a clear divine statement here: it is possible to overcome this urge. If you struggle stubbornly and persistently, even if you fall seven times—this is the way of the righteous man: ‘for the righteous falls seven times and rises.’ Hard struggle with urges is the lot of every Jew since he was commanded, ‘You shall not covet.’ Do not despair and do not sink into self-pity. Do what you can, seek professional help, and God will help you!
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
You are conflating incorrect with illegitimate. There are incorrect positions that are legitimate. The position that discriminates against LGBT people is legitimate but, in my opinion, incorrect. But that is not relevant to our issue, and that is not what the discussion is about.
What is relevant is that you are conflating positions with actions. Any position can enter the discourse, so long as no danger is posed by it. There is room to discuss anything.
Indeed. And I truly oppose social engineering. Social change should proceed through discourse and discussion, not through engineering from above.
Mainly in response to Sh.Tz.L.—I would note that much of the barbarism really was for “religious” purposes. Gladiatorial fights were intended to appease the spirits of the dead by accompanying them with a few more dead people (until they became entertainment, and afterward, according to certain theories, a field for military experimentation, and much more could be said), and the “Vikings” believed that the highest goal a person could achieve in the world was to be killed in battle in order to join the army that would fight at the end of days (they believed their gods initiated battles as a means of recruiting people to the army of the latter days). I haven’t researched this subject, so I can’t bring solid sources, but on the other hand one has to remember that motives are not always what we think. In any case, I agree that not all barbaric behavior stemmed from religious reasons, and not every religion causes the same types of behavior. In the end, the public that adopted monotheistic belief systems is today more refined, and the Jewish people in particular are much more refined in their general conduct.
The second claim might perhaps be called “second-order liberalism”—if I am a liberal, I must define what I am not liberal toward (am I willing to accept 1+1=3? An atom bomb on London? Someone else’s predators being housed in my home? Theft and murder without limit?). Therefore a certain belief system was created (I’m not expert in all the theories of the social sciences, but broadly something like the social contract), intended to enable proper life as a liberal. If someone comes along and decides he is allowed to keep predators in my house, I have justification, in the name of the value system deriving from liberalism, to oppose him. It is perhaps somewhat similar to the argument that took place between the Indians and the English, when the Indians said their custom was to burn widows together with their dead husbands, and the English answered that their custom was to hang people who do that.
In short—even an empty cart accepts certain assumptions as necessary, assumptions that religion also disputes only within the framework of a “necessary evil”; but if I am a liberal, I have no reason to accept that this evil is necessary.
Moshe, this is a common claim and in my opinion a mistaken one. I devoted a chapter to it in my book God Plays Dice. Once everyone was religious, and everything they did was done against a religious background. There may perhaps be a correlation between the processes, but not necessarily a causal connection. Many times we attribute norms that come from culture to religion (such as honor killing in Islam. Once someone told me that this is an Arab norm from the deserts of Arabia and has nothing to do with Islam). Once the norm was to murder and abuse enemies more than it is today, and once everyone was also religious. That does not mean the two processes are causally connected.
And as for great murderers and atrocities, even when the world became secular there were murderers no less great, and even greater.
So what is the claim? I agree with all of this. That is why I spoke about self-defense and danger as a qualification on liberalism (even the thin kind).
I’m not sure I understand your answer.
In your view Gans is speaking the truth (that is, in your opinion too cosmopolitan liberals are allowed what conservatives are forbidden), only he is simply inconsistent because he zigzags between two carts?
I disagree with Gans and think there is no difference between the refusals. Both are legitimate. I do not know whether Gans thinks secularity is a full or an empty cart, and therefore I cannot criticize him for that.
Doron, in my humble opinion, the view according to which equal rights should be granted to everyone is very shallow and superficial, and certainly says nothing about liberalism.
After all, no one is talking about discrimination against LGBT people in businesses or workplaces. We are talking about far more complex matters such as surrogacy, adoption, or recognition of same-sex marriage, whose significance is mainly declarative.
I prefer to conduct a discussion that relates to each case on its own merits and does not flatten the debate.
If someone thinks rights should be denied to Jews, that is interesting—we’ll hear why.
If someone thinks every right is equal to every other right and every public is equal to every other public, meaning that a terrorist’s right to murder a Jew is equal to an LGBT person’s right to be married by the state, that too is an interesting position. But in general, every position deserves to be heard, so long as it does not lead directly, immediately, and clearly to actual violence.
How can one claim there is no causality between religion and the primitiveness that existed in the past, when the Torah itself commands killing for various kinds of offenses that today are regarded as minor, or commands killing women, children, and animals in every war, which is absolutely not accepted today, and also treats foreigners (gentiles) contemptuously regarding compensation for damages and theft? Either the Torah was influenced by what was accepted then and there is a different question here about the giving of the Torah from heaven, or the religious commands really were primitive.
I didn’t understand who spoke about primitiveness and religion. In what context were these things written?
As for the matter itself, let us take Sabbath desecration, for which one is liable to death. From a secular or moral perspective, this is not a light offense but no offense at all. The same is true of eating pork (for which one is liable to lashes). These are religious offenses, not moral ones. So if you are looking from the moral perspective, there is no point at all in talking about the severity of the offense. But from the religious perspective, which sees this as an offense, I do not understand how you decide which offense is light and which is not. And what does that have to do with primitiveness?
There is no commandment to kill children and women in every war. Where did you get that from? That was said regarding Amalek or the seven nations, and there were special reasons there.
And regarding the treatment of gentiles (the prohibition of theft), you are speaking from an anachronistic perspective. The gentiles of whom the Torah and Hazal spoke were gentiles who themselves stole and were stolen from and disdained property, and therefore the Torah permitted their property. This is explicit in the Gemara in Bava Kamma and in Rambam and elsewhere.
I was speaking in connection with a response here, and I don’t know how to respond specifically to it. The exemption in the case of an ox that gores and does not pay full damages to a gentile applies specifically to gentiles who stole and showed contempt? As I know it, this is true of any gentile—‘a people like a donkey’; that seems to be a reference to all kinds, it seems to me.
Bava Kamma 38a:
“If an ox belonging to an Israelite gored an ox belonging to a Canaanite, he is exempt.” They said: whichever way you look at it—if ‘his fellow’ is precise, then when a Canaanite’s ox gores an Israelite’s one, he too should be exempt; and if ‘his fellow’ is not precise, then even when an Israelite’s ox gores a Canaanite’s one, he should be liable. Rabbi Abbahu said: Scripture says, ‘He stood and measured the earth; He saw and released the nations’—He saw the seven commandments that the children of Noah had accepted upon themselves, and since they did not keep them, He arose and permitted their property to Israel.”
And in Rambam on the Mishnah there (37b):
“If a case occurs involving an Israelite and a gentile, then the manner of judgment between them is as I shall explain to you: if according to their laws we have an advantage, we judge them according to their laws and say to them: thus are your laws. And if it is better for us that we judge according to our laws, we judge them according to our laws and say to them: thus are our laws. And let this matter not be difficult in your eyes, and do not wonder at it, just as you do not wonder at the slaughter of animals although they have done no wrong, because one who has not attained the human qualities is not truly a human being, and his purpose is only for man; and discourse on this matter requires a separate book.”
And of course the Meiri expanded on this greatly in dozens of places, and completely equated the law of the gentile with that of the Jew in all interpersonal matters.
As for the comments, in each thread there are several sub-threads, and at the beginning of each sub-thread there is a Reply button. If you click it and write your response, it will appear after the last comment in that same sub-thread.
For example, in Meiri on Bava Kamma 13a (on the law mentioned in Rambam above):
“If the tax collector was from the ancient idolaters who are not bound by the ways of religions, and one evaded the tax from him, since there is here no outright theft and no desecration of the Divine Name, they are not particular about it. Likewise, one of these who comes with an Israelite to judgment in the courts of Israelite judges—if the judge can vindicate him according to Jewish law, that is preferable; and if not, he should return to vindicate him by their statutes and customs, and he may say: this too is your law. And if not, since he finds no way to exempt him by argument, he should obligate him and compel him to pay, so that they will not say they show favoritism to their own. Nevertheless, with those who are bound by the ways of religions, this was not said; rather, if they come before us for judgment, we do not bend the path for them by the breadth of a needle, but ‘the law pierces the mountain,’ whether for him or for his counterpart.”
Another example of the claim in the article—Yael Dan does not represent a left-wing agenda but a humanistic agenda (as opposed to right-wing broadcasters, who apparently are incapable of being humanistic):
https://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/380461
Thinking about what she said, I thought that the main problem lies in the belief of private individuals that they can represent an agenda—a kind of general will, if we adopt Rousseau’s phrasing. This is true of religious people as well, who often believe that God is in their pocket and that there is a convergence of interests between them and Him. The way the Midrash interprets the conversation between God and Elijah at Horeb highlights this well:
“And he said: ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of Hosts,
for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant’—the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: My covenant—is it perhaps your covenant?
‘They have destroyed Your altars’—My altars—is it perhaps your altars?
‘And Your prophets they have slain with the sword’—He said to him: And what do you care?
He said to Him: ‘And I, I alone, remain, and they seek my life to take it away!’
In the end, we are all private individuals, and there is a certain arrogance in saying that we represent some general will, whether secular, liberal, humanistic, or religious and believing.
In this context people tend to follow Rousseau’s solution to the problem of the general will and forget James Madison’s solution in Federalist 10 to this problem. According to Madison, the answer to the tug-of-war among various factors on behalf of their own interests is not to be found in some person who will have a general agenda. Everyone has interests, and he too has interests (in the rabbi’s words, everyone has a full cart). The solution lies in understanding this fact, and therefore in broadening the body of voters such that each individual’s private interests will be insignificant. That is, the more people the deciding body represents, the less its tendency to give weight to a private interest at the expense of the other interests, and therefore it represents the general will of all people much more than the interests of this or that group of people.
This is a demonstration of the assumption that liberalism is not an agenda, whereas it definitely is. Yael Dan advances an agenda with all her soul, to the point that when I hear her on the radio I switch stations (I can’t bear listening to her). But she does not perceive herself that way. Incidentally, she also advances a left-wing political agenda and not only a liberal one (but apparently does not feel it because from her perspective it is part of liberalism).
But I do not agree with your conclusion regarding the individual as representing an idea. A person should represent an agenda, but do so fairly and consciously. I do not agree with the assumption that it will somehow emerge on its own through the masses. After all, if each individual in the masses does not represent an agenda, then Madison’s idea too will not materialize (for he is speaking about the sum of the agendas).
And finally, just one remark. Your words remind me of the ontic translation people make to moral ideas (though that is not exactly what you wrote, of course). This past Shabbat we studied in Ein Ayah in our synagogue a passage by Rav Kook in which he explains that a person who acts morally displays concern for his environment because he identifies himself as an organ within the collective. In my translation: this is egoism, but toward another entity (the collective entity). If so, then in fact there is no category of moral action at all; there are simply different ontologies. But we are all egoists. Perhaps I will devote a column to this.
There is one sentence in the rabbaniyot’s letter that is infuriating:
“From the Torah we are commanded to love, to love every one of Israel and to feel partnership and brotherhood also toward those who are struggling in the area of their sexual identity.”
For most LGBT people (except perhaps bisexuals), there are no difficulties in the area of their sexual identity, which is as clear to them as a garment, just as it is clear for most straights.
It is a patronizing sentence, not in the Torah sense but in the sense of empathy toward the orientation.
I really do not agree. First, it may be that they are speaking about religious gays, and they certainly do have difficulties with their sexual identity. Not in the sense of lack of clarity about the identity, but in the sense that it arouses difficulties for them. And perhaps even regarding those who are not religious one can say that there are difficulties even if they are not aware of them (since halakhah forbids them to realize their inclination).
I do not see what here should be infuriating. Are the rabbaniyot supposed not to relate to the Torah as something true and binding, even for those who do not acknowledge it? Is saying that a Sabbath desecrator is mistaken patronizing? If so—then I too am patronizing. These are the wonders of logic: if in my opinion one should keep Shabbat, it follows that whoever does not keep Shabbat is mistaken.
Sexual identity means whom you are sexually attracted to.
If religious people have a difficulty, it is with religious identity.
Sexual orientation = sexual identity are generally a natural thing.
To tell a person with a sexual orientation that he is mistaken is completely different from saying so to a Sabbath desecrator.
One can escape Sabbath desecration without traces.
One cannot escape sexual identity.
All right, this is empty pilpul. A religious person with a homosexual sexual identity is in difficulty because of the conflict between the two. Whether the difficulty is because of the sexual identity or because of the religion is, in my eyes, similar to the question whether 2+3 does not equal 11 because of the 11 or because of the 2+3.
This reminds me of the immortal question: “What is the difference between a rabbit?” and the no less profound answer: “That both its ears are longer than one another by an equal amount” (and one must investigate whether the left ear is longer than the right by an equal amount, or the right ear longer than the left by an equal amount, and further study is required).
This really seems to me a dialogue of the deaf. I did not say anywhere that a person with a sexual orientation is mistaken about anything. I said that he is in difficulty because of the contradiction with his religious belief. And to your claim that this is paternalism, I answered that this seems to me similar to the claim that saying a Sabbath desecrator is mistaken is paternalism. This is logic and that is logic. Someone with a homosexual sexual identity cannot have heterosexual sexual relations, and halakhah forbids other relations. Therefore he is in difficulty. QED. If this is paternalism, then the statement “2+3 = 6 is a mistake” is also paternalism.
Two more remarks:
A. I am not sure that sexual identity cannot be changed. This myth is presented as fact, but there are challenges to it, and I do not have much trust in declarations subject to political correctness and LGBT terror.
B. I am also not sure one can escape Sabbath desecration, for a person convinced that religion is just an outdated and irrelevant delusion cannot really refrain from it. The physical possibility of refraining is meaningless. This is precisely the reasoning of a “captured infant”: coercion in beliefs is also coercion.
I relate to the rabbaniyot’s letter not as a letter that comes to state what the straightforward halakhah is, for such a letter would not be issued only regarding Shabbat.
The letter states the straightforward halakhah and the normal state prior to the coming of Judaism into the world, and tells our LGBT brothers that their sexual identity is problematic in the face of human normality (and not only Torah normality).
When I taught in religious institutions, I saw students whose sexual identity is not straight hearing again and again from their teachers and their friends the Torah’s view. And my heart ached over this.
And so too because of the rabbaniyot’s letter, who do not see the pain of Yishai Meir and Ze’ev Shweidel and many other good people.
From where did you draw that interpretation? It is beyond me. I do not see the slightest hint of it in their words. I personally would sign that sentence when in my eyes the only difficulty here is the conflict with halakhah.
Isn’t liberalism, by definition, an empty cart? (Not as an insulting term, but as a factual description.) The assumption of liberalism is freedom, that is—there is no value that limits you, and you do whatever you want.
The claims against religion are on two levels:
First, that religion restricts where liberalism does not restrict, and therefore this is “tyranny,” because we want an empty cart.
Second, that the restrictions of liberalism (for even liberals do not claim that absolutely-everything-everything-everything is permitted, because that lies outside the “boundaries of the cart”) are unacceptable to religion.