The Heresy of Nosson Slifkin

Very well-written analysis of the situation. Congrats.

A random thought: do you think that the feeling of being part of a worldwide community of Jews is predominantly good for you (cos you feel like you're letting more people down if you behave unethically) or bad (cos there's a tendency towards isolationism)? It's not something I've really thought about before.

So the ultra-orthodox Jewish community's proclivity to ban books they find theologically unacceptable has finally gotten the attention of Panda's Thumb. Slifkin's books were banned in that very small, fanatical and extremist community almost two years ago. About ten years ago they banned Judah Landa's work titled TORAH AND SCIENCE (I was not the editor of that book and I never worked for its publisher, KTAV Publishing House) because they deemed it "irreverent". Even the great Maimonides' books were banned over 900 years ago when it was misunderstood as not adhering closely to the party line. Many other examples of this sort of activity have occured over time.

Essentially these fervently observant Jews are very cognizant of the importance of supervising what their children's minds and eyes are exposed to. They also ban television from their homes and don't go to shows, movies or concerts unless approved by their rabbis. Among the consequences of these practices are: a virtually drug free society, very stable families for raising children, a very low divorce rate and few straying spouses, great attachment to education and learning, an exceedingly low crime rate, and many other positive attributes. But these clearly come at, what most ordinary folks would consider to be, a very hefty price.

My Sympathies. Fundamentalism, per Martin Marty, is a world wide phenomena, infecting all religions. The devotees have more in common with one another than they do with mainline co-religionists of their own religion.

How else can you explain the political bedfellows, Opus Dei RCs, pentacostal fundies, baptist etc. style fundies, Mormons, I have friends amongst them and they dispise one another, but still sleep together at the voting booth.

Rob

Carol, why is it that every one of your posts manages to mention Judah Landa somewhere someway somehow?

Are you in love with the guy or what.

The Good Rev Lenny,

I submit to you that the premise of your question is false. Ninety percent of my posts mention Landa not at all, but they are followed by a post of yours that does mention Landa. So it just seems that way to you.

Why don't you do some research, good scientist that I am sure you are, and check this out?

The ID fundies like to blame all the world's problems on "Darwinism" and, now, "Naturalism". However, they seem to ignore the fact that most of the world's problems were occurring long before Darwin and before what has become modern science. In fact, monotheists have been warring among themselves and killing each other for centuries in the name of their One True Intelligent Designer.

Maybe the real cause of all this was the rise of monotheism in the first place. Monotheism provides a hierarchical system in which men can subdue or dispose of others in the name of a god. In a polytheistic system, one could legitimately ask a self-appointed spokesman of god which god he claimed to be speaking for.

Dembski, et. al. don't want to face up to the Multiple Designer implications of their assertions. This would open up the real possibility of polytheism and destroy their ecclesiastical authority. Since they claim they can detect design, they should be required to teach this controversy.

Almost all of your initial posts to a thread reference JL, Carol, and most of those manage to work in a reference to the book that you edited. The only time I can recall that the initial post didn't reference JL, you made up for it a few posts later. Once you have established that your positions are derived from his book, usually after several pointed reminders that it is his book or arguments you are advancing, you often leave out his name. But almost all of your posts refer to him, his books, or the arguments he presents in his books (note that "or" is not an exclusive "or").

Questions, Carol.

1) Are you married to him or otherwise related to him?

2) Aside from two of his books, does Jay-El Publications have any other publications? If so, what are the titles, and are they written by someone other than JL?

3) Are two of the three reviews on Amazon of the book you referred to in your first post to this thread written by you?

Refuse to give clear answers and I will conclude 1)yes 2)no 3)yes until you say otherwise.

Essentially these fervently observant Jews are very cognizant of the importance of supervising what their children's minds and eyes are exposed to. They also ban television from their homes and don't go to shows, movies or concerts unless approved by their rabbis. Among the consequences of these practices are: a virtually drug free society, very stable families for raising children, a very low divorce rate and few straying spouses, great attachment to education and learning, an exceedingly low crime rate, and many other positive attributes. But these clearly come at, what most ordinary folks would consider to be, a very hefty price.

The Good Rev Lenny, I submit to you that the premise of your question is false. Ninety percent of my posts mention Landa not at all, but they are followed by a post of yours that does mention Landa. So it just seems that way to you. Why don't you do some research, good scientist that I am sure you are, and check this out?

Total Posts: 110 Total references to Judah Landa: 34 Percent of posts referencing Landa: 30.9%

Total threads particpated in: 14 Total threads containing references to Judah Landa: 9 Percent of threads referencing Landa: 64%

Hmm, it would seem that while "author equals me" sounded grammatically correct at the time, the translation into "me wrote" was most unfortunate!

"The Good Rev Lenny, I submit to you that the premise of your question is false. Ninety percent of my posts mention Landa not at all, but they are followed by a post of yours that does mention Landa. So it just seems that way to you. Why don't you do some research, good scientist that I am sure you are, and check this out?"

— carol clouser

Shill

By January, 23 rabbis had signed a full-fledged ban, which was pasted on walls throughout the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim. "The books written by Nosson Slifkin present a great stumbling block to the reader," the ban declared. "They are full of heresy, twist and misrepresent the words of our sages and ridicule the foundations of our emunah [faith]. Heaven forbid!... I therefore declare that these books should be distanced and it is forbidden to read, own or distribute them." Modern-day Judaism has no Temple, no High Court, no centralized authority with the power of the Vatican; theoretically, any rabbi in the world can place a ban on anyone else. But there are a few Torah scholars whose opinions are sought in virtually all crucial legal matters, and one of these, the Jerusalem rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, signed the Slifkin ban. As a result of Elyashiv's influence, Slifkin faced serious repercussions. His publisher, the religious Targum Press, halted publication of the books, and countless religious bookstores removed the copies that were still on their shelves. The ArtScroll book imprint, whose Jewish books are standard edition at most English speaking yeshivas, removed Slifkin's name from the second printing of a text that he had helped to translate. Many schools were afraid to ask him to speak and one of the seminaries where he taught asked him to resign. But if the ban was intended to draw interest away from Slifkin's ideas, it had the opposite effect. Within a few days, his out-of-print book was selling at used book stores for four times its original price of $24.95. Unprompted by the author, an international group calling itself Jews For A Re-Evaluation Of The Rabbi Nosson Slifkin Ban wrote a counter-petition, urging the 23 signatories to change their minds. Hundreds of outraged students protested the ban in long Internet postings, and numerous ultra-Orthodox rabbis, including Rabbi Aryeh Carmell of the Jerusalem Academy, penned scholarly essays in Slifkin's defense. Rabbi Tzvi Hersch Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, threw his support behind Slifkin, telling The Forward that Slifkin had used "impeccable traditional Jewish sources to back up his views." Some of the rabbis who had written public endorsements for Slifkin's books saw the ban as an attack on their own judgment. "This author has his name on every one of the banned books," wrote Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein in a public statement. "I am as supportive of the thrust of those books as when I first wrote those approbations.... I am also proud to be in the company of many talmidei chachamim [wise scholars] who did not sign the letter, and of more chaverim [friends] than I could count who think the same way." Slifkin himself was unsure how to handle this maelstrom of condemnation and praise. At first, he added a "Controversy" section to his web site hoping to dispel rumors and place the photocopied passages in context. After a few weeks, he removed it, then posted it again after several months. One prominent rabbi, Aharon Feldman of Baltimore's Ner Israel Yeshiva, condemned Slifkin for defending himself. In a widely circulated email, Feldman lamented that Slifkin and his supporters had made the ban's signers look like simple-minded fools. "As a result," wrote Feldman, who did not sign the ban, "many thoughtful, observant Jews were beset by a crisis of confidence in the judgment of the signatories. This was an extremely vital crisis since these authorities constitute some of the greatest Torah leaders of our generation, authorities upon whom all of the Jewish people rely for their most serious decisions. More important, it threatened to make any of their future signatures on public announcements questionable. The irony of it all is that the books, which had originally been written to defend the honor of Torah, became one of the most potent vehicles in our times for weakening the authority of Torah." None of the rabbis who signed the ban was willing to speak with me, but I reached Feldman this summer while he was vacationing in Israel. I asked him to explain how the ban's signers differ from fundamentalist Christians: Both groups believe that Darwinism is heretical and that the world is 6,000 years old. Feldman, who speaks English with strong Yiddish inflections, replied that he was not familiar with Christian ideas but was reasonably sure that they were nothing like Jewish ones. "We rarely can converge with Christians on anything," he said, "so I doubt we agree with them on this matter."...

W. Kevin,

You have some Chutzpah.

I care not one iota what you think.

I will not engage here in any activity that can be misunderstood as marketing. If you want to take this off site, contact me via email. If you ask me courteously and sincerely, I may step out of my role as editor and do you the favor of having a catalogue sent to you. Jay El Publications is in the business of creatimg educational materials for school, institutions and organizations.

Tiax and Don,

I accept your limited data although I am perplexed, Tiax, by your reference to some posts being a "hoax". Excluding situations where I respond to other posters, such as the good Rev Lenny, who frequently and purposely goad me into
further discussion of Landa, I thought my original mentions were a mere 10%. But perhaps I under estimated. I will make a sincere effort to cut back on these significantly.

And I wish to reiterate once again, I never ever thought about sales when posting here. And I have no reason to do so.

Hisss! These rabbis ought to remember that they are not priests, nor even "in charge" of Judaism. As noted above, Judaism has no priesthood, and hasn't for milennia. Instead, we have scholars who are expected to engage in dialogue with each other, not issue summary demands for an author to "recant or be condemned".

Like fundamentalists in other faiths, these people have retreated into infantile dualism, where all that is not Good(tm) is "EEEVIILL", and they themselves are defined a priori as Good. To their threats against the exploration of science, I say: just ignore the meshuga!

Fundamentalism, per Martin Marty, is a world wide phenomena, infecting all religions.

G Carol
Whats the matter the storage space bill com in ?
You can't afford the ink for the next run ?

Hey ....why don't you put a big Panda's thumb sticker on the cover of each book with
the blurb "as NOT recommended by PT" and give Moment a call and tell 'em you want some inches for an ad.
Or is it cheaper here, pity no one is too interested in your buckets of dusty dry alphabet soup.... oh well love coquers all as they say.... especially self love.

Hey, I've been trying to get you guys to read my blog for the last 3 weeks and no one bothers to look or even insult my shilling. At least the guys over at dembski's site occasionally throw an insult my way. Hmmm. Maqybe I'm on to something there.

Carol, Do the christians/jews/muslims ignore you on their sites? I believe I'm beginning to see a trend. But before I go making any claims about statists, I thought I would get some more input first. (I wouldn't want to look stupid saying something like 10% of my posts that mention my blog generate visitors from dembski's site while maybe .0001% do from this site. I thought I would investigate a little more first to see if I was really seeing a trend or if my writing was simply so bad that no one who knew anything about my subject would read it.)

I am dead serious. Do you get ignored on the religious blogs?

I'd like to somehow clarify the real situation regarding Slifkin's affair. It should be noted that the ultra-orthodox rabbis who banned Slifkin's books are headquartered in Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem. Perhaps many readers of this blog do not know what Mea Shearim is. When you walk into Mea Shearim's street, the first thing you see are giant slogans painted on walls which proclaim: "Zionists are not Jews." Mea Shearim is the den of religious fanatics who do not recognize the state of Israel, where men do not work but spend their lives "studying" the Torah (and exist mainly on donations and government largesse because they all have large families where having more than 10 kids is quite common). Certain sects there are virulently anti-Israel. They despise and hate everybody beyond their small world, including the rest of the Jews, not just the secular ones but also those less fanatical. Interestingly, besides Slifkin, there are several other writers propagating ideas similar to those of Slifkin, such, as, for example, Schroeder or Aviezer, but those fanatical rabbis did not pay attention to their books. Perhaps it is so because, unlike Slifkin, Schroeder and Aviezer are not rabbis but physicists?
Now, as a result of the affair, Slifkin is better off than before. Until the ban, his books did not enjoy much popularity, but as soon as the Mea Shearim fanatics announced their infamous ban, Slifkin's books became collectors items, selling for over 100 bucks for each used copy. He must be smiling all the way to the bank. Many rabbis who are more reasonable than the Mea Shearim psychopaths, spoke in Slifkin's defense.

And now about the quality of Slifkin's books. I certainly empathize with him as a victim of a medieval intolerance. This alone is, however, not a sufficient reason to praise his output. I believe many of PT's visitors would be disappointed if they started reading Slifkin's production. I had a chance to see his first book in a manuscript form before it was printed. It was a rather standard, poorly substantiated defense of a thesis according to which the Torah is fully compatible with science. It contained a large number of quotations from various sources, separated by Slifkin's own comments. All those quotations were supporting his thesis, while there were no quotations against it, as if such did not exist. Overall my impression was of an unconvincing attempt to prove unprovable, little differing from books by Aviezer, Schroeder, Spetner, or Kelemen. While every decent person must justifiably stand up for Slifkin's right to evince openly his views, their doubtful merits have to be judged independently of the condemnation of religious fanatics who banned his output.

This sort of thing is nothing new, really, though I suppose the extreme extent of banning books, etc. might be. When I was an undergraduate, I took a sociology of religion course. One of the events in the class was a guest lecture by a Lubavicher rabbi. I took the opportunity in the Q&A part of the talk to ask him what his views on evolution, the origin of the universe, etc. were, and he not only was a YEC, but also referenced some of the usual tracts that we see the Christians using. A clear case of religious syncretism!

The reason the Mea Shearim rabbis pounced on Slifkin's books but remained silent on Schroeder, Aviezer and the others, is that Slifkin managed to get rabbinic endorsement of his works and publicized that fact in his books. The Mea Shearim rabbis were therefore trapped into a situation where they needed to speak out or their own silence would foster the impression that the entire rabbinate supports Slifkin's views.

Let us also put the word "ban" into perspective. The rabbis are in no position to enforce a ban on anything (even in religious courts) and no one is compelled to abide by anything of the sort. No force or violence was ever contemplated. Instead, we have here a publicly organized recommendation by the rabbis to their willing adherents to stay away from those books. The rabbis have the right to make said recommendation and their followers have the right to respect those rabbis and heed those recommendations. It is a silly, wrong and ineffective thing to do, but not really a "ban" in the normal sense of the word.

Mea shearim is a very tiny enclave in Jerusalem. Mark's description of the views, feelings and attitudes of its residents are very much off the mark (no pun intended).

http://odograph.com/?p=396

This guy brings up an interesting issue. THe debate between those who would have verifyable evidence and those who would shun it is getting hotter.

I think there have always been book bannings. There have always been religious nutjobs and business interests who do not want to know the science because it would harm their positions. THe difference is that now we, as a people, are allowing their voices to get louder and sympathizing with their positions to some extent. Maybe nothing has changed but it seems to me that with the rise of the christian right, came a general attack on science as well. Granted this group is not american and is a part of a long history of small groups that for whatever reason chose to attempt to escape reality and hide in a mythology that allowed them to escape their own demons to some extent. But the larger context here is maybe that we wouldn't be too surprised to find prominent people in america doing the same thing.
???

By the Carol, that is why you are a target of sarcastic remarks here. I appologize for being offensive because I know that it doesn't really help but I, and probably many other people who post here, am truly horrified to watch the culture that I find myself in believing in crap that religions and polluters put out.

More recently, however, some prominent Jews have shown interest in ID. Most notable in this regard is the willingness of Commentary Magazine, a politically conservative magazine of Jewish thought, to publish the awful diatribes of David Berlinski against evolution and other aspects of modern science.

The rabbis are in no position to enforce a ban on anything (even in religious courts) and no one is compelled to abide by anything of the sort.

— Carol

"Zionists are not Jews." Mea Shearim is the den of religious fanatics who do not recognize the state of Israel

— Mark Perakh

Dogbert once invented a newspaper which was good forever. Its stories would be true all your life, and so this is the only newspaper you'd ever need, he claimed. One of his stories, IIRC, was "fighting breaks out in Middle East."

It was never told what the other stories in the paper were, but one of them could have been "Religious Fundamentalists Protest Science."

Or, as in the Star Trek movie where they go back to San Francisco to fetch a couple whales (and a fetching marine biologist for Kirk), Atomic Talks Stalled!

Andrew McClure (comment 60821): Yes, Andrew, they live in Israel. There are several sects in Mea Shearim which differ in the degree of their opposition to the state of Israel. Perhaps the most extreme is the sect named Neturei Karta. They have sent letters of support to Arafat, and are extremely hostile to the state of Israel which, in their view, is illegitimate because a Jewish state only can be reinstated after the coming of the Messiah. Other groups in Mea Shearim may be less extreme, but most of them also do not recognize a Jewish state established before the coming of the Messiah. They do not serve in the army, their kids do not study anything beyond the Torah (and girls not even that). There are also anti-Israeli Jewish sects outside Mea Shearim -for example the Satmar sect which mostly concentrates around the town of Beit Shemesh (they are present in the USA as well). On the day of independence, which is an Israeli holiday, one can see scores of black flags on Satmar's homes - for them it is a day of mourning.
It is telling that Carol Clouser chose to defend the sectants of Mea Shearim.
Of course, the Satmars and Mea Shearim's sectants, as far as I know, have never killed anybody, and are not in the habit of taking hostages; one can rather safely walk the streets of Mea Shearim and even apply for an interest-free loan, and get one from one of many charities there(unless one tries to drive there on Saturday - his car would be stoned without regard to the car's occupants'safety). Still, in their intolerance and fanaticism they are rather similar to Muslim extremists sans murder and hostage taking. Mea Shearim is not that small population-wise as it is very densely populated, and there are also other towns where religious fanatics, only slightly milder than Mea Shearim's sectants, hold the sway. Their number is rapidly growing as they tend to have a lot of kids so their percentage is larger every year. They are a serious danger to Israel's survival.

I will not engage here in any activity that can be misunderstood as marketing.

Mark, interesting, thanks.

I will make a sincere effort to cut back on these significantly.

In the interest of accuracy I've gone over every post I have of Carol Clouser from PT in my database.

Total Posts 109
Of these 109 posts 35 out right talk about Landa and or his book and another 5 clearly reference the book it.

Below is a ASCII graph of Carol's post grouping them by week
* = Posts pitching Landa's book
# = Posts on other topics
Each set represents 1 week that does not overlap with any other week. I've remove periods of time that Carol has not posted for over a week and started the week on her next post
numbers at the bottom are the "Pitch book"/"Not Pitching Book" comments for that week.

#
#
#
#
#
# #
# # #
* # # # #
* # # # *# *
* # # # # *# *
* # # # # *# *#
* *# # # # *# *#
* *# # # *# *# *#
*# *# # # *# *# *#
*# * *# *# # # # *# *# *#
*# *# * *# *# *# # # *# # # *# *#
9/3 2/1 1/0 5/9 2/10 1/7 0/2 0/2 4/11 0/1 0/1 8/16 8/6

Wayne's data in a pretty graph

Ouch! Bar graph for this kind of info please! Line graphs are supposed to show transitions, bar graphs compare.

:)

Do you not like my ASCII Bar Graph?!!?!?! :)

Carol,
If you are still lurking, please tune in tomorrow morning.
Sincerely