Oh dear, I felt awful when I read about the racist yobbos who beat and tried to kill Jamal Julani. What’s the point of any philosophy or civilization or religion if it leads to gangs of youths roaming the streets looking to beat to death those they don’t like? This was in Israel; is this the end to which 60-plus years of Israeli society has led?

Hate crimes have been with us for decades, and they exist in every country, regardless of its style of civilization. Remember Vincent Chin in Detroit? Remember Paki-bashing (beating up supposed Pakistani immigrants) in England?

Surely, such hate crimes are an aberration in a civilized country. In countries where we think  xenophobic brutality is commonplace, perhaps our impression–formed at a distance–is wrong; even if our impression is right, perhaps in time a natural feeling of human compassion and tolerance will overcome short-lived hatred. Perhaps, and perhaps not.

This week’s sedrah (Deut. 21:18-21) discusses the incorrigible child. What is to be done if he won’t listen to his father or mother despite their efforts at discipline? The Torah prescribes death. Why the death penalty for someone who has not committed a capital crime? Rashi explains it’s because such a person is bound to turn to thievery and murder. Can you every be sure that a child is unredeemable?

Of course, the Torah is full of death penalties that are never imposed. During all of Moses’ time as a lawgiver, only two people are executed, and in both cases the penalty is uncertain. The Talmud says many capital crimes outlined in the Torah never occurred, including the case of an incorrigible child, though one rabbi says not only did it happen, but “I sat on his grave” (B.T. Sanhedrin 71a). (JewishVirtualLibrary.org has a useful review of the topic of capital punishment in Jewish tradition.)

So, is there such a thing as an incorrigible child? (Got a teenager in the house testing the limits of your love?) If so, what are the parents to do? And if they ask the authorities for help, what are they to do?

I’m sure many people have quick answers to these questions based on the best scientific research and theory. But as for me, I can only think of the misery involved, shame for the families of the perpetrators, pain and anger for the families of the victim, and hope that some fresh tolerance and understanding will emerge from this shameful act of xenophobia.

Just back from a trip to Europe, with its charming cobblestone alleys and enduring traces of anti-Semitism.

Jewish life is enshrined in museums as a tourist attraction, and when I peer at the kiddush cups and Torah pointers I wonder if the other tourists realize that objects like these are still in use and the rituals explained in museum placards are still practiced today. Hey, look at me! I’m one of the Jews whose culture you’ve paid to see!

In Prague, I went to the famous Altneuschul (gosh, I even got the Levi aliyah!), saw Rabbi Sidon’s recently published chumash with Czech translation, and visited the rest of the well-preserved Jewish sites. Prague started a Jewish museum in the early 1900s, and perhaps that’s why Hitler left the Jewish quarter intact, as a theme park to commemorate “a vanished race.” The Jews haven’t vanished, but you can’t tour the Jewish quarter without thinking of Hitler’s heinous legacy. Can I celebrate the survival of Prague’s Jewish Quarter–must I thank the Nazis for this relief while I mourn the millions of people and thousands of communities they murdered?

In Nuremberg and Regensburg, I wanted to see the Judensau sculptures on the cathedrals. They’re on the outside, a couple of dozen feet off the ground, not at all easy to see. Should these offensive sculptures should be retained and acknowledged as a moral failing in medieval art, like the Prioress’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? Nuremberg Cathedral staff found a brochure for me all about the anti-Jewish artwork in the cathedral, and in Regensburg a plaque explained that the Judensau sculpture faced the ghetto. Some online commentators complain that these explanations are “only” in German; to me this seems an arrogant complaint, as if English is the only language that counts, and it means a great deal to me that explanations are aimed at the locals who feel that the cathedral–with all its imperfections–is theirs.

On the Charles Bridge in Prague is a crucifix with Hebrew words around it. A plaque in Czech, English and Hebrew explains the anti-Semitic history behind the sculpture. Apparently, a 16th-century Jewish resident was accused of showing disrespect to the cross, so the locals forced him to pay for decorating it with large gold Hebrew letters saying “Holy, holy, holy, etc.” Some Jewish commentators are indignant that sacred Hebrew words could decorate a cross, and I could imagine Christian commentators indignant that the words are in Hebrew instead of Latin. Perhaps it’s a good lesson that all religions should share the sacred, and let it guide them to do good.

(While I remember Jewish suffering, I also remember think of the suffering of other religious communities, such as the Waldensians. Whenever one feels victimized, the Wikipedia article on the Waldensians is healthy reading.)

So that’s Europe: Judaism breathes again where once it was most threatened; Jewish history and tradition are tourist attractions; traces of anti-Semitism are still to be seen but publicly deplored. The cobblestone alleys are charming, the coffee and cream cakes delicious, but there’s a bitter aftertaste for the Jewish traveler.

Hmm. That’s the Hebrew Aleph-Bet, or Alef-Bet, if you’re going to be picky, and if you’re going to be picky you won’t be satisfied with the standard answer of 22.

If I told  you to make a series of letters to convey all of God’s message to humanity, or at least to Jewmanity, do you think you could do it with 22? And by the way, two of them are silent. Maybe three.

Okay, the silent letters in the Hebrew alphabet (using the English word for the series of letters) are aleph and ayin. Now, a shin with the dot on the left is a sin, but a dot on the right makes it a shin (unless you are one of the Ephraimites with some kind of speech impediment who can’t pronounce the sh sound in shibolet (Judges 12:5-6), but they all got killed off, I guess, which left only Hebrew-speakers who could say shibolet). But what is the sound of a shin without any dot, as in Issachar (יִשָּׂשכָר)?

But wait: if the dots here and there make shin and sin separate letters because the sound is different, how about the dots inside all those other letters? No, no, you can’t claim to have another letter just because the sound is different!

Nor can you claim to have two separate letters just because their shape is different. You have five final letters in Hebrew; you can’t add them to the 22, can you? Look the English E and e: two different shapes, one name, so one letter out of 26. If you added all the English capital letters, you’d have to say there are 52 letters, and we all know that’s not true.

The Hebrew shin and sin have two names, but we ignore the difference and count one letter.

There’s a letter in the Thai alphabet that changes the tone of the following consonant. This letter has a shape, a name, no sound, but it does something. Turkish has an i without a dot; the sound is like i in sir–is that a sixth vowel, or no vowel at all? In English, the g in tough doesn’t sound like the g in age or grow.

My teachers promised me that Hebrew was phonetic, that the letters wouldn’t confuse me, that it all made sense. Maybe I misunderstood them, though I was a dutiful and timorous student, given to tears at moments of adversity. Maybe they lied.

Even the Rabbis of the Talmud had to wonder about aleph and ayin. How come a word sometimes uses an ayin and sometimes an aleph, they wondered (BT Shabbat 77a-b).

I’m glad I don’t have to face a class of Hebrew school students and teach them the letters.

It’s getting more and more difficult to count letters in an alphabet. The shape doesn’t matter. The name doesn’t matter. The sound doesn’t matter. What matters, then? Is the answer (roll of drums, thoughts of Tevye) TRADITION?

Please, no, don’t tell me so!

This morning, I heard Mitt Romney say, “If religion is to be free of government intervention …” I can finish the sentence: then abortion must remain legal. Why? Because in certain cases, it’s required by Jewish law. For example, if pregnancy threatens the mother’s life, there’s little question that an abortion is required by Jewish law.

Of course, Jewish law applies only to Jews, so non-Jews (as far as Jews are concerned) are welcome to kill mothers in order to save their babies. Since Macduff was “from my mother’s womb untimely ripp’d,” something Macbeth discovered shortly before Macduff killed him, I bet Macbeth would have favored the Jewish approach.

I’ve been thinking about this topic since last Michael P. Warsaw’s op-ed in last Wednesday’s New York Times. Mr. Warsaw feels the government intrudes on his organization’s freedom of conscience by requiring medical plans to pay for abortion and contraception. Many people whom I respect share his views, but I hope they will admit it’s possible to differ, and the basis of this difference is rarely reported (as far as I can see).

I wondered about a source for the Catholic objection to abortion. To my astonishment, an article by Robert Brom, Bishop of San Diego, cited Exodus 21:22. But–I said to myself–that verse is the very proof that in the Bible’s view, destroying a foetus is not murder. The penalty for causing a miscarriage is monetary compensation; it’s not a capital crime like murder. I’ve always wondered how opponents of abortion who base their views on the Bible can cope with that verse.

But now I see that there are different ways to interpret one verse of Torah. Here is the verse, with a couple of my translations:

Exodus 21:22

וְכִֽי־יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים וְנָגְפוּ אִשָּׁה הָרָה וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ וְלֹא יִהְיֶה אָסֹון עָנֹושׁ יֵעָנֵשׁ כַּֽאֲשֶׁר יָשִׁית עָלָיו בַּעַל הָֽאִשָּׁה וְנָתַן בִּפְלִלִֽים

If men are brawling and they hit a pregnant woman and her fetuses come out, and there is no other harm , somebody has to be punished as the husband demands and he presents to the judges.

If/when men are fighting and they push/hit a pregnant woman and out come her offspring and there is no harm, punish he-shall-be-punished as the master of the woman shall lay upon him and he-shall-give/it-will-present in/with/to the judges.

You can see the verse and several translations here. Click the letter C to see a word-by-word translation from Hebrew to English.

Room to Differ

The verse certainly has room for different interpretations. One question is whether “and there is no other harm” means harm to the mother or the offspring. For Jews, it’s harm to the mother, as Rashi (the greatest of Jewish commentators) says; for Bishop Brom, it’s harm to the foetus.

Now, we could spend a lot of time arguing which interpretation is correct, but cyberspace doesn’t have room for a full discussion.

Who is Right?

To me, it has always made sense–when a decision has to be made–to protect the mother’s life rather than that of the foetus. Others see the opposite, but their position seems to undermine women’s rights.

So who is right? I think it was the Pilgrims. They fled England to avoid religious persecution and found a safe haven “far from the storms’ and Prelates’ rage,” in Marvell’s words.

In reports on the question of abortion, I have never seen any mention that there is a Jewish position, based in part on the Jewish understanding of this apparently crucial verse. I hope that Jewish people can continue to follow their legal system, developed over millenia and still evolving to meet contemporary needs, without the governmental interference that Mr. Warsaw and Mr. Romney fear.

I think that both the Catholic and Jewish positions deserve consideration, and I believe there are competing valid claims that must be settled case by case. Mary Midgley, that very wise writer, says: “In the seventeenth-century wars of religion, as in earlier disputes, enormous issues of doctrine were repeatedly treated as factual questions with a single right answer, reachable through controversy. Once political sides had been taken, it became extremely hard to suggest that the truth is so vast that both these doctrines may be only attempts to grasp at the part of it” (Science as Salvation, 95).

Nothing I say will conclude the debate; I only wish that more people who base their position on their understanding of scripture would realize that valid interpretations can differ. Then, perhaps they would realize that scripture’s voice in government is advisory and not decisive, that government must regulate society in order to protect all citizens–even to protect them from religious doctrines that they do not share.

I have written this with trepidation because I mean no disrespect for any religion, for we all seek truth and (if we are honest) admit that our insight is limited.