In support of Rabbi Dweck

I don't usually do this. I pride myself on detachment from subject matter. This will be written in a haphazard way, lacking clear editing, but I feel the need to say it in any instance. Witch hunts against good people are amongst the most vile moral crimes that can be committed. 

And it escalates until you have a mob at the gates with their torches and pitchforks, having forgotten to think about the issues in a critical and perceptive way. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Is this really the issue you should go to town about?

I hate to watch this - the best thing that has happened to the boring horizons of anglo Jewry was rabbi dweck's inaugration as chief rabbi of the SnP a couple of years ago.

 I only met Rabbi Dweck briefly but I was struck by something in particular - here was a man who was both sincerely and deeply religious but was well aware of the problems people faced growing up in a community whose religious leaders remain predominantly chareidi. In short, Judaism was either sweet chilly sauce on a Friday night or a boring sermon to a community waiting for their cholent. 

He was not a postmodernist, which I loved. He didn't try and pretend we could re-read texts and pick the happy parts, compatable with modern thinking. He wasn't an apologist. He didn't quote from French continental philosophers and try and make them into Jewish thinkers. He was unashamedly committed to a proud tradition exemplified by Maimonides of rational thinking and deep piety, unafraid to take those roads less travelled. 

Back then I knew that I had found someone who had that spark that could attract the disaffected youth and young adults and truly help many embark upon the rocky road of the religious journey.

 So perhaps it was inevitable that he would provoke the ire of the rabbinate one day, particularly with hundreds of people packing out his lectures, as he was prepared to rethink many of the areas that had been entrenched for generations as 'Orthodoxy' without losing sight of deep commitment to God and halakhah. 

And when it did break it was over an issue that many people are obviously uncomfortable with, sexuality, and the great fault line between 'Modern' and 'Orthodoxy' reared its ugly head. 

Academia is not flawless. Races for funding, personal smugness and bickering can proliferate. But one of its great strengths is its honest ability to criticise. Personal attacks are not acceptable (at least in theory). They can be criticised and called to order. So I listened to the main attack on Rabbi Dweck and was dismayed at the following issue: Sources were brought left right and centre but almost none of them were relevant to the issue at hand. 

I can also quote a source and make it say what I want it to say, and I knew what was being done - death by musar. 

It was the classic musar schmooze build up - quote here, there and everywhere, bring an anecdote or two about Volozhin and the glory days ( the irony of the musar movement facing far greater opposition than maskilic writings was not lost on me) and then go in for the kill - he is not one of us. 

The main issue that was raised was one of holiness - the Jewish people are holy, how dare you? Our rabbis were all on the same page on this and all cared so much about the greatness of sin, how could you minimise it? 

In short, it was a theoretical projection of an ideal that I had heard thousands of times before about the unanimity of tradition along kabbalistic lines. And it was used to assassinate the character of a good man who adopted a different view, whose points were not engaged with or addressed honestly. Not a perfect, ideal, super rabbi man, a good man.

Of course, the talk chose to ignore the subtleties and issues behind the issue - and this is the second point about the modern world that textual criticism demands - context! You can under no circumstances cherry pick bits and bobs from talks that you hear and bring it before the grand jury until you have considered how, where and why those comments were made.
But this set the wheels in motion. Suddenly everyone could pass judgement about whether he was us or them. And yes, when put under the microscope and have our every word scrutinised, how many of us pass every test? 

He appeared to slag off another rabbi? Grow up - we have all done it, and most of these comments serve a pedagogical purpose of encouraging independent thought. Look at the sefardi rishonim of the middle ages e.g. Ramban and Ibn Ezra - fire and brimstone my friend. Enjoy the debates - this is how great people are made.

The other fault line is freedom of speech. We should be able to express our views and thoughts and have them challenged in a way that is not a threat to our wellbeing. If you have a problem with someone, you talk to them in private. You deal with it in private. Issues with rulings and decisions? Ok, everyone has had problems with rulings - there are many left field halakhic thinkers - speak to the man and ask what is going on! Wait several months before then developing a quiet, nuanced understanding of the issue and have the decency to deliberate before sending a good man to the lions. 

Because as we become adults we realise that the mob mentality is very, very dangerous. And our community cannot afford to become a street gang battle, particularly in the current climate.  

And worst of all, how does this look like to Jews who want to explore the great avenues of our tradition, who want to embark upon the difficult but extremely fulfilling journey that Rabbi Dweck helps to facilitate with his talks and ideas? It looks like they should simply give up on Othodoxy as if this man of great integrity, wisdom and piety is persona non grata then what the heck does that make them? 

Who is wise, our sages say, one who can see into the future. Know the consequences of your silence.

 When a layman of no communal importance such as myself (this is not self deprecating, I have no communal position) has to say that rabbis you should know better to stand up for this human being who has been villified without a shred of evidence, or without public discussion of issues, and without kindness and transparency, it makes me sad. 

If Orthodoxy is truly only paying lip service to its belief in critical thinking and investigation, or its ability to struggle honestly with topics without recourse to denunciations and witch hunts (which is what this is, how must his family be feeling right now?) they should stand up and say so.

Stay strong, Rabbi Dweck. I feel self righteous saying this but I hope you see the respect that so many of us have for you and it gives you some strength. 

I hate to comment about public and controversial issues but if the speakers who insisted on denouncing him thought they were doing so for the sake of heaven, I also cannot 'go gentle into the good night'.

Ode to pessimism

Disappointment is one of those things that you never really know when to expect. Generally I pride myself on having quite low expectations of things, a very British quality having grown up watching Arsenal, the English football team and, of course, cricket.

(I wrote this sentence about two weeks ago. Much has happened since then so I kept rejigging parts of this diatribe. If my work is subjected to form criticism in 100 years, there will be scholars arguing for five authors and an editor in Peru. I digress. )

It's a sort of pessimism that actually turns out to lead to a positive mindset, because if before every significant event, interview, exam etc you expect failure, you work hard to overcome it and feel gratified when success comes its way.

 I don't know, maybe I see people and systems as being inherently flawed, so when scandals arise and famous faces turn out to be criminals its never a surprise, only a curiosity.

And of late, there have been many disappointments. Last week saw a disappointment in the rabbinic response towards one of the great religious leaders of Britain. A disappointment that, for some reason, people's horizons remain resolutely fixed and unwavering despite far more pressing issues in the wider world.

And for all my recent disdain for the left wing naive ideologically driven responses towards every terrorist attack, perhaps those individuals are reflecting a fundamental disappointment in their slow realisation that not all people think the same, and are not motivated by the same things. It reminds me of the book 'Heart of darkness' which I read for A level, and the bewilderment of an encounter with an unknown beyond any previous experience.

 Reality is cruel and uncompromising and weaving an ideology around it that explains and reduces everything to one key factor like power or economics is a nice and convenient way around it.

And yes, even if comrade Corbyn of the people's republic of insanity manages to get his way into power I'm sure I will stand resolute in my pessimiso-cryptico-optimism, having had little faith in the masses to act wisely.

And yet, this all has its limits as soon as it gets personal. And believe me, I have tried to limit the areas that I am personally affected by to the bare minimum.

I, for instance, became very comfortable with the image of myself as a Phd student. The coffee shops, reading and control of my own time. The nice feeling of smugness when disagreeing with Israeli academics who particularly wind me up. And the lack of public office which means that I can say what I want without any consequences.

 And the praise I had received in the past, making it seem that success was an inevitability. So along came the swagger, as if it was a birthright to achieve in this particular area. 

Also a certain smugness that I could actually do something I enjoyed rather than sitting in an office, stony faced in front of a computer.

But then, I was told that I wrote like a secondary school student. I had become so utterly complacent that I had forgotten the abcs of academic writing. Stupid blog with its platitudes.

Stoicism was an attitude I could adopt in all other areas of life but not this one. How do you fail something that defines you? And I resented everyone responsible. It was unfair. They had not applied standards equally etc. 

It took me about a month and a half to realise how much of a sore loser I had become, and how sensitivity to criticism had blinded me to the harsh reality that I had to do better and it would be hard work. Every other area, every other exam had not been 'natural' in success. It had taken hours of toil.

Afterwards you could look back and attribute it to some bland factors like being academic. But the only way that had happened was through painstaking work. As Dylan said once, 'there aint no success like failure, and failure is no success at all'. My naivete had replaced my usual pessimism and I woke up as a result.

In religious life, I suppose we often fall into the same trap. This is meant to have answers, meant to heal and console, at least until something comes along which requires healing and consoling. Meant to provide direction, well at least until you have cause to reject it. And then it doesn't.

Governments are the same. Things like security we take for granted until recently, moaning about everything else like its the biggest problem in the world until suddenly you are exposed by the most basic of fears, for our very lives. 

And suddenly those BBC articles about correct pronouns look a little embarrassing.

Which is when the individual comes roaring back into the picture. Pick yourself up, pick up the pieces and start again.

 I keep going on about religious life as being some sort of impetus to improve or personal aspiration, and whilst it can't be reduced to that alone I think at this stage it is the factor that needs dwelling on the most. 

And my rabbinical friends, when you straight jacket it under the guise of fear you just kill it man.

And what it actually does in situations which demand a response, or rather, whether you engage with it at all when making difficult decisions.

Because at one point the studying of laws and their details and recounting messages stopped having any impact because my mind was telling me to move on, enough was enough, it needed something new. So observance became more of a metronomic structure that has preserved me and the values I have absorbed over the years that I hold dear but no longer feel the need to focus on excessively. And this was not to demean their significance. 

 As I have become older, the law and order element of halakhah and value structures are things I increasingly admire and appreciate. In them I see the fruits of many societies that are created with the aim to do good for the sake of their children and broader society.

 But it was the trigger for the mind to wander to pastures new and with it came a realisation that I can no longer expect external sources to provide guidance from the air. You gotta make em work.

I suppose that life is full of disappointments and as human beings we need to be aware of that, resilient to that and proactive in dealing with that. Governments, rabbis or jobs aren't going to kiss it better. 

Thus ends my Tory manifesto. Let decency prevail.