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J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2538
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 - 9:46 pm: | 
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"I'd post a smily face but it really isn't funny - ironic? Yes."
Not ironic at all. Jews, being human, are no more or less capable of racism than anyone else. But if there are a couple of Orthodox Jewish racists in town, does this suggest that all Orthodox Jews are racists, or that the practice of their religion should not be accommodated in ways that affect no one but them?
"Make any special allowances? No."
Lydia, neither you nor I would have the slightest problem with native Americans erecting totem poles out of dead town trees. (At least, I hope you wouldn't...!) I bet we'd both find them interesting aesthetically and no genuine threat at all to the separation of church and state.
Jews putting invisible markers on telephone poles is, likewise, no threat to church-state separation. But do you know what is? Two churches in Mwd and SO whose leadership is not satisfied with the moderated school music policy that now permits (but does not feature) Christmas music in middle and high school. They feel the policy should go far beyond what I've ever advocated for (and further still beyond what you'd find acceptable), to permit Christmas carol concerts in elementary school.
Or perhaps we'll find one day a threat to church-state separation in the new fundamentalist Christian church--Grace Church--that has been advertising its imminent opening at the intersection of Parker and Prospect. Grace Church's doctrine holds (among other things you and I do not) that evolution is nonsense. In Houston, the congregation of Grace Church helped finance the legal defense of suspended Alabama judge Roy Moore, who wanted to display the Ten Commandments in his courthouse rotunda.
Not that one should entertain paranoia about the intentions of Grace Church in our community. There's no point in creating enmity or assuming villainy a priori. But given the array of things one could choose to worry about, why in the world is it that people get worked up over a small collection of Jews--of a variety wildly outnumbered by liberal Jews locally (who generally loathe the Orthodox)--who are essentially isolationist in nature, and whose beliefs and mode of worship have pretty much no measurable effect on anyone else?
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Illuminated Radish
Citizen
Username: Umoja
Post Number: 17
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 - 10:38 pm: |
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Question:
Does being anti-zionist make one anti-semetic? I think that's like saying being anti-affirmative action makes one anti-black. Maybe that's a weak comparisson though. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1638
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 - 10:52 pm: |
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Quote:Hoops- Everytime I expect a brief shimmer of light will shine through the fog that are your posts I get disappointed
funny thats exactly how I feel about you. |
Bob K
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12093
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 4:40 am: |
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Actually Grace Church, assuming it follows the now standard conservative Christian dogma, is probably a big supporter of Israel. Your may not like their reasoning, but conservative Christians tend to be supporters. 
Also, doesn't Orthodox Judiasm also believe that the Torah (aka Old Testament) is the actual literal truth? |
Eats Shoots & Leaves
Citizen
Username: Mfpark
Post Number: 3497
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 9:23 am: |
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Kathleen--we do not disagree. Note that I was very careful to say "some" in my initial post. I am very aware of the differences in Jewish experience and outlook. But some (and even many) Jews are sensitive to these issues in ways I described.
A joke:
A Jewish man was shipwrecked on a desert island. After many years, a passing cruise ship saw his signal. Landing on the island, the Captain looked around and saw three small buildings that the man had built.
"You live here alone, right?"
"Yup."
"So, why do you have three buildings?"
The man pointed at the first hut. "That is my house. And those are synagogues."
The Captain was confused. "If you live here alone, why do you have two synagogues?"
"Well, the first one is where I go to shul."
"And the second one?"
"Ach, that one I would never belong to." |
Lydia
Supporter
Username: Lydial
Post Number: 2052
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 12:03 pm: |
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JCrohn,
Quote:Lydia, neither you nor I would have the slightest problem with native Americans erecting totem poles out of dead town trees. (At least, I hope you wouldn't...!) I bet we'd both find them interesting aesthetically and no genuine threat at all to the separation of church and state.
The point isn't whether totem poles are delightful aesthetically, or the Eruv is invisible.
I support separation of church and state across the board - no exceptions.
It's a slippery slope to judge which forms of religious expression on public property is a "real" threat and which are "harmless".
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J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2539
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 12:04 pm: |
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"Does being anti-zionist make one anti-semetic? I think that's like saying being anti-affirmative action makes one anti-black."
I don't think being anti-Zionist necessarily makes one antisemitic at all. It's just that lots of people who are anti-Zionist do in fact hold antisemitic or propagandistic views (regardless of whether they dislike Jews per se). As for whether being against affirmative action equates to racism, well, the very same thing can be said about that.
I mean, if one believes that blacks are simply a bunch of hypersensitive complainers who left slavery behind centuries ago and no longer need a leg up, and that therefore affirmative action is unfair, then one probably holds some stereotypical and/or oblivious views about blacks that are close enough to racist that black people must be forgiven for concluding that the thing that quacks is a duck.
If, on the other hand, one objects to affirmative action because one sees in it the seeds of damage to black culture, or because it tends to benefit blacks who need it least, then, particularly if one is black and has a vested interest in black success, one is quite likely not a racist.
IMO, a good indicator that one's views are not racist is that they are both well-informed and nuanced. For instance, one might be for affirmative action, not out of any special affinity for African Americans, but because one believes it is the least bad means of ensuring that American society doesn't tear itself apart. Or one might be against it because one regards poverty as a greater disadvantage than race, and so one might therefore advocate for set-asides for people from lower socioeconomic strata, rather than for historically oppressed minorities.
In any case, a non-racist who opposed affirmative action would avoid couching his opinions in morally outraged, one-sided criticisms of black people or their representatives, then turning around and claiming that he only wants what's best for everybody, so let's repair to a premature utopia where everything is fair and color doesn't matter.
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J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2540
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 12:11 pm: |
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"I support separation of church and state across the board - no exceptions."
Well, American law does not, and never has. If it did, nobody would ever have gotten baptized in a municipally owned body of water, the pealing of church bells would be forbidden, and it would be illegal to wear religious garb in public buildings.
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Lydia
Supporter
Username: Lydial
Post Number: 2053
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:01 pm: |
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JCrohn,
Quote:If it did, nobody would ever have gotten baptized in a municipally owned body of water, the pealing of church bells would be forbidden, and it would be illegal to wear religious garb in public buildings.
Good examples, but that's the temporary use of municipal or public spaces - quite different from a municipality or state funding or fostering religious expression.
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kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 565
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:23 pm: |
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hoops,
heard that one! It cuts both ways.
And some other comments:
The Jeffersonian view at the American founding argued passionately for a far stricter separation of church and state in law than proved poitically achievable. Those politics could still change to enforce a much stricter separation and still be well within the original Constitutional framework envisioned by the founders. For a long time American law wasn't outlawing slavery and never had. Then the politics changed. Law in not apolitical. Although personally Jefferson held theistic beliefs, politically he was a fierce and unyielding proponent of a thoroughly secular constitution, and a definition of America as a secular nation. One of the hardest things for people to understand (or they are never taught it?) is that while America is filled with religious practice, the notion of nationhood for America was specifically set out to be not about commonality of belief but about the supremacy of Constitutional law in matters of state -- and in Jefferson's view, the Constitution needed to be absolutely secular and while religious practice couldn't be denied but it had no privileged position within it. It's always been a minority view in America but I think the better one.
(And it's a misinterpretation of "separation of church and state" to think it would ever outlaw religious expression by individuals in the public square.)
The political motives for some people supporting an eruv in Maplewood aside, the misunderstanding about the eruv seems to continue because people think the eruv is some sort of religious artifact. But it's no more a religious artifact than would be an arrow placed near Morrow Memorial Church indicating where to park or how to get to the church. As a matter of parity and neutrality about religion, a local government would be hard pressed to deny Orthodox Jews alone a limited right to use public property to provide direction to sites of religious observance. In the Jeffersonian view, that IS strict separation of church and state.
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kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 566
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:40 pm: |
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I've always thought this was an extremely good article about the separation of church and state, arguing for the original vision against today's revisionists:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/12/original_intent.html
Pertinent paragraph:
"Custom, rather than law, is the basis of the most common arguments for breaching the wall between church and state. ... Arguments relying on custom, bolstered by personal religious belief, have great potency when presented to a public with a shaky grasp of even the most fundamental facts of American history. In a 1998 survey by the National Constitution Center, only about one-third of teenagers knew that the Constitution begins with the words "We the People," so it is hardly surprising that college students at my lectures are often astonished to hear that the Constitution never mentions God."
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kathleen
Citizen
Username: Symbolic
Post Number: 567
Registered: 3-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:52 pm: |
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Wendy,
Sorry -- didn't mean to ignore your remarks to me above. I didn't see them until now. I've no problem with individual expression and can easily see why anyone would want to weigh in with their personal experiences. |
Bob K
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12102
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 3:07 pm: |
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It is hard to figure out if J.Chron regrets that church and state aren't more separated than they are or not. Minor accomodations, including Eruvs (which have been litigated, rather vehemently) and the local Dunkin' Baptists using a lake front (I don't think this has been litigated) are both minor accomodations as are things like holiday decorations on street lights.
Is J.Chron in favor of Eruvs, but opposed to Baptism on public land? Is there that great a difference in degree? Does the majority have a greater obligation to the minority than the minority has to the majority?
And Wendy, Israel is a theocracy, albeit a liberal one and a democracy. It stays a theocracy by making it very easy for Jewish people to become citizens (basically show up at the airport) while it makes it difficult for other faiths to gain citizenship. |
Wendy
Supporter
Username: Wendy
Post Number: 2713
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 3:23 pm: |
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And your point to me Bob K is ????? I was challenging this assertion of yours:
Quote:We shouldn't send troops to the Middle East to "defend" Israel. If we send more troops to that God foresaken part of the world it should be done to protect American interests. If that is anti-semitic in your very narrow view, so be it.
With this
Quote:In my humble, Jewish and for the most part liberal opinion, defending Israel does more to protect American interests - if by American interests we mean supporting a progressive, democratic country in the middle east - than ousting Saddam (and attempting to force democracy down the throats of people who are just entering the modern era) unless by American interests we're talking oil.
You then responded with this:
Quote:And Wendy, Israel is a theocracy, albeit a liberal one and a democracy. It stays a theocracy by making it very easy for Jewish people to become citizens (basically show up at the airport) while it makes it difficult for other faiths to gain citizenship.
What does the ease of getting citizenship - for a people that was almost wiped out in WWII when even our own US of A wouldn't let them in to escape being murdered - have anything to do with the fact that I said and you agree that Israel is a liberal, democracy?
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J. Crohn
Supporter
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 2541
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 3:31 pm: |
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"but that's the temporary use of municipal or public spaces"
Well, from the standpoint of your absolute separation principle, that should make no difference whatsoever. And in point of fact, all such uses as I mentioned tend to be repetitive and so are not, in practice, temporary at all.
Do they harm you, me, or secularism generally? No. So there is no utility in taking an extreme position with regard to them.
"quite different from a municipality or state funding or fostering religious expression."
As you know, eruvim are funded privately, not by states or municipalities. Nor are they examples of publicly "fostered" religious expression simply because they make use of telephone poles. Rather, they are permitted expression, the same as if a fundamentalist proselyte uses the publicly owned sidewalk to display himself wearing a placard declaring that the end is nigh. (Only, an eruv intrudes on no one's conciousness.) The same as if Jehovah's Witnesses use the street to approach my house and ring my doorbell so they can offer me a Watchtower. (Only, an eruv does not require anyone to stop what she's doing, restrain the dog from barking its lungs out, and answer the door, perhaps incompletely dressed, only to find two or three nicely attired Christians smiling hopefully at the prospect of rescuing her immortal soul.) Come to think of it, would you rather religious organizations use only private mail services so that the U.S. Post Office is not made to foster religion?
Honestly, a million and one steps on your "slippery slope" are taken every day and they do not mean we are falling into the abyss of state-supported religion (although far more serious things, IMO, do--restrictions on stem cell research, for example, or attempts to teach 'intelligent design' as science, or states outlawing abortion). To claim that the use of telephone poles to erect an invisible, imaginary border fosters religion seems to me quite a stretch and, frankly, picayune.
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Bob K
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 12104
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 3:39 pm: |
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I don't have a problem with the Law of Return, nor do I have a problem with Israel being a Theocracy. It is just a fact that it is. Obviously, the Zionist spirit behind Israel was to provide a homeland for the Jewish people at the low point of their history with six million killed, along with another four million people.
The United States acted in a most irresponsible manner before, during and I think after WWII as far as Jewish immigration was concerned. Anti-semitism was certainly part of the equaltion.
If at the end of WWII the Allied nations with space to spare (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil) had opened their borders to Jewish immisgrants I don't think Israel would have been needed, nor would there have been enough immigration to form a country. Again, true anti-semitism.
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Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 954
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 8:54 pm: |
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hmmmmm...
Too much to respond to in a short period of time, but:
Why would a couple of wires ("eruv") be logically conceived as deterring African-Americans from moving to Maplewood by any group? Why would a non-Jew object to an "eruv" accordingly, unless their concerns would be more Jews would move to Maplewood? .
Sorry, but I seem to detect some latent non-philo-semetic attitudes up in here.
Waiting for a couple of posters here to say the old, " some of my best friends are Jewish". . |
Spinal Tap
Citizen
Username: Spinaltap11
Post Number: 35
Registered: 5-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 9:00 pm: |
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Kathleen,
This should all probably be in its own thread but yours is an interesting post. One of the best defenses of separation of church and state I have read. I would add that while the constitution does not mention God, our other cornerstone document, the Declaration of Independence, written by Jefferson, does mention the Creator who gives us our unalienable rights. Since the constitution assumes these rights to exist pursuant to the Declaration, and restricts the power of government to take them away, can there be a U.S. without a belief in God?
You also wrote that Jefferson had strong beliefs regarding a secular constitution and nation. Other than his famous 1803 letter to the Danbury Baptists where he wrote his now famous line. Can you point me in the direction of other sources for his beliefs?
If the 1st Amendment mandates a separation of church and state, why did it take until the 1947 Everson decision for this term, upon which almost all subsequent decisions regarding church and state have been built, to enter into American jurisprudence? In fact, at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, several states had official state religions. It has been argued by some that the former Klansman who wrote that opinion, Hugo Black, a known anti-Catholic bigot, had more sinister motives.
As far as the comparison to slavery goes, slavery was a violation of the plain text of both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and was reinforced by the infamous Dred Scott decision which also ignored the plain text of Article IV that empowers congress to regulate territories which is where Dred Scott was, not in a state.
Also, are you an originalist on all constitutional matters or just this one?
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Spanish Inquisitor
Citizen
Username: Sinq
Post Number: 75
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 9:15 pm: |
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Specifically, the Declaration does not mention God, it mentions "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God", which is a deist god commonly found in Englightenment thought -- the prime mover rather than a personal father figure that contemporary religion has shrunk god into. |
Lydia
Supporter
Username: Lydial
Post Number: 2054
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 9:52 pm: |
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Factsv -
Quote:Why would a couple of wires ("eruv") be logically conceived as deterring African-Americans from moving to Maplewood by any group? Why would a non-Jew object to an "eruv" accordingly, unless their concerns would be more Jews would move to Maplewood?
The major fundraisers for the Eruv, (they're both elected officials so I suppose it's OK to name them) were gleefully reporting that attracting Orthodox Jews via the Eruv would keep out black folks.
I'll admit that when I heard that was the angle of the Eruv fundraising couple it turned me off and I haven't really weighed the ins and outs of what the implications of an Eruv is since then.
There is a long-simmering tension between some African-Americans and Jewish-Americans - for example: Crown Heights or Jesse Jackson's "Hymie-town" comment. I was bothered that in Maplewood some people encouraged that long-standing rift and want to roil tensions for their own racist beliefs.
I think I have to understand exactly what the Eruv is (JCrohn and Kathleen's posts have me re-considering) and separate myself from the ugly sentiments of the local fund-raisers.
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Spinal Tap
Citizen
Username: Spinaltap11
Post Number: 37
Registered: 5-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 10:00 pm: |
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And I see your Mother Jones and raise you a Heritage Foundation:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/fp6.cfm |
Factvsfiction
Citizen
Username: Factvsfiction
Post Number: 959
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 11:41 pm: |
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Lydia-
Seems to me that opposition to the stringing of some wires has more to do with fears of Jewish domination or control then any rational objection. I mean its not like the Jews are trying to put up cell towers on every block! It also doesn't mean a massive influx of orthodox Jews, either.
You don't have a mass of sustaining businesses within walking distance, or the potential for them, for such a community to develope in Maplewood. So our latent anti-semites' fears of Maplewood becoming the new Boro Park isn't realistic.
On the plus side of errecting an eruv, the homeowners in the area would get the option of an expanded pool of potential buyers when they want to sell their homes, and more sedate, mutually respectful neighbors than they might otherwise have. I have found that religious types don't have their music blaring at 2 am, their kids are pretty well-behaved, and they spend more time praying than doing stuff that might otherwise annoy you or lower your property values.
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