The so-called “separation between church and state” is enshrined in section 116 of our constitution, which states: The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth. While this seems to be loosely based on the first amendment to the US constitution, the highest courts in the US have tested the separation to a far greater extent than have we.

In any case, this section makes it very clear that we are a democracy, and not a theocracy. Marriage is an institution enshrined in (secular) legislation. Anything the Church or the Rabbinate say about an issue like gay marriage carries no weight. So why do religious groups comment, and what do they seek to achieve by getting involved in such a debate?

Let’s take a step back and consider the extent of the separation between religion and state in Australia. As indicated earlier, it’s far less so than in the US. We continue to debate the issue of religious instruction in public schools, and there is plenty of government support for religious schools and institutions. The Secular Party of Australia would like a far greater separation than we already have, including teaching of “secular values” in schools, the removal of any religious references. They feel that while separation is enshrined in the constitution, Australia is practically more of a pluralistic theocracy, where the state supports many religions.

To understand this, we have to look beyond religion (in the way that it relates to the state) and instead to the values that underpin our western democratic society. These are commonly referred to as Judeo-Christian values, because their source is biblical, and because while the founders of modern western societies like Australia and the US were themselves Christian, they sought to create states that embodied their values, and balanced them with the principles such as equality for all, and freedom of religion for their citizens.

The slogan of the Secular Party is “Freedom of religion and freedom from religion”. What they seek to do is break with the religious values that underpin our society so that it no longer “weighs down” secularism with its absolutism and old-fashioned dependence on that archaic Bible. It seems to me that in fact they are actually mandating the pseudo-religion of “secularism” to replace the support for any other religions that we have now.

Much of the objection to gay marriage takes the form of a slippery slope argument. That is, we are against X not on the grounds that X itself is bad, but rather because if we allow X, then it will lead to Y and Z, which are things we definitely don’t want. Interestingly, this is similar to the principle in Pirkei Avot 1:1 of making a ‘fence’ around the Torah (beware of anything that could lead to dancing).

While the defence against this argument is usually that the chain of logical implication is not established, with the likelihood of gay marriage being legalized here, the polyamory community has jumped on the bandwagon, and sees this as an important step in allowing their relationships to be legally recognized. This style of argument is also used by the right against euthanasia and genetic engineering. However, those on the left rely on similar arguments against such technologies as genetically modified crops.

Uriya Shavit writes a great piece in Azure about the Muslim Brotherhood’s idea of democracy. Strange as it may seem, their ideal society borrows much from democratic values, yet maintains Islamic law above all. It’s not quite the theocracy that operates in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The common factor in all these examples is the growing chasm between the historical values of a society, often absolute and based on religion, and their contemporary ones, which are relative and fluid.

What sort of society do we have? What sort of society do we want in the future? What are the values of a truly Godless, secular society? Is it one where PETA and Peter Singer elevate the rights of animals at the expense of humans and we euthanize those people who are too great a burden for us to maintain? These shifts happen over decades, not months, which is why the slippery slope argument often raises its head in debates like this.

I venture that the argument of religious groups against gay marriage are a reflection of their discomfort with the moral relativism in society today. The family unit is one of the building blocks of society, and an essential element in intergenerational cultural transmission. Seeing it being tampered with is a signal that the divergence between traditional religious values and contemporary values has clicked another notch. They see the values of our society as a house, with Judeo-Christian values as the foundation. Chip away too much at the foundation, and the whole house comes crumbling down.

The Treasury at Petra, one of Jordan's most popular tourist sites, perhaps in part due to these three gentlemen

By David Werdiger
Q. Why do the Irish have the potatoes and the Arabs have the oil?
A. Because the Irish had first choice.

Natural resources are both a blessing and a curse. While they can be a source of wealth and prosperity for a country, they are something that is obtained with relatively little effort. As such, they can invariably lead to laziness and complacency. Just have a look at rates of literacy and innovation in so-called “rich” Arab nations – they are among the worst in the world. While there are many reasons for this, their economic dependence on oil was certainly a contributing factor.

In Australia, we are running a two-speed economy in the current mining boom. Demand from China and India for the stuff we have in the ground is one of the reasons our economy has stayed out of the deep recession affecting other countries. But what of the non-mining industry? Retail is weak, business confidence and investment is down, and people don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I was thinking about all of this as I pondered this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, in which God promises the land of Israel to Abraham. There are two angles to this:

Israel is variously described in the Torah as a land flowing with milk and honey; a land of brooks, waters, and fountains; a land whose stones are iron and from whose mountains you will hew brass; and so on. This doesn’t seem to correlate with the Israel we know today. Agriculture has not come easy, water is scarce, and there is little in the way of natural resources. So what’s the big blessing? I’m not about to launch into an exposition and explanation of how we might understand these attributes and what they mean (because I don’t know). However, I think the lack of natural resources in Israel is itself a form of blessing, because it has led modern Israel to be one of the leading knowledge economies in the world. Israeli companies are world leaders in technology and innovation. Israel’s economic success has been built not on the stuff in the ground, but on its people, and that is a resource that won’t run dry in 2050 like an oil well might.

The other thing that came to me today was about another natural resource found in abundance in the Middle East, but one whose economic potential has not yet been fully realised. What is the world’s biggest industry? Tourism. Imagine the huge untapped market for biblical tourism that could be unlocked if countries like Iraq were more open to the western world. Christians and Jews would flock to visit ancient cities and to follow the historical trail of the Patriarchs.

Historical sites are a far better natural resource than oil. They don’t deplete, and a strong tourism industry leads to cultural exchange and tolerance for others. And a bit of tolerance for others wouldn’t go astray in the Arab world.

Yes, I know it’s a bit of a pipe dream for a group of Jews to celebrate the weekly Torah portion of Lech Lecha by visiting Ur (the birthplace of Abraham), but as they say, “if you will it, it is no dream!”

This article was originally published here at David Knows.

Collingwood football star Harry O'Brien, seen here presenting a football to the Dalai Lama, mixes his spirituality with his football career. Is that a scarf-tallis Harry's wearing?

By David Werdiger

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook: “The sounds of the Shofar can only mean one thing – the countdown is on to the impending footy finals. Go [nickname of AFL team that I can’t bear to put in writing]!” The relationship between AFL finals and the holiest days of the Jewish calendar – Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – is paradoxical, incongruous, and uniquely Melbourne.

Maybe people have mixed feelings about that “one day in September” (and I’m not even referring to the film of the same name)  – they both invoke powerful, emotional wishes for success, a build-up over many weeks, a loud siren sound that pierces the air and electrifies the atmosphere, and a religious fervour.

AFL has so much in common with religion that many fans describe it as one. It has all the cultural elements of religion – uniting family and community, inter-generational transmission of values, passionate loyalty and one-eyed defence against “non-believers”, a host of rituals, and regular attendances – how many people would say they go to the footy “religiously”? Indeed, what Rabbi wouldn’t want people to be as “religious” about attendance to shul as they are to the footy? (To which the shul member replies, “If you provided as passionate and uplifting experience as 70,000 screaming fans at the MCG every week, I’d be there religiously too.”)

Fortunately or otherwise, my High Holyday prayers have not been distracted by thoughts of my football team for many years. But what happens when the two religions clash? There are many stories to draw upon, most famously in the US when Sandy Koufax didn’t play in the 1965 World Series because of Yom Kippur, or when NFL games were rescheduled two years ago because they affected New York fans. Closer to home, the famous pre-Neilah words of Rabbi Lubofsky OBM on Yom Kippur 1966 (“I would like to announce that St Kilda has won the Grand Final – now get back to your praying”) is embedded in St Kilda shul folklore, and David Smorgon’s decision not to attend an AFL final on Rosh Hashanah in 2009 was met with praise from all circles. Situations like these are a Kiddush Hashem, when public figures step up and declare unequivocally that their Judaism comes first.

But while it looks like Judaism trumps AFL, it is only by the slimmest of margins. The Jewish “finals” come before AFL finals, but on a regular Shabbat, football seems to get priority among most fans. Indeed, one shul I know of has an unwritten rule that the Shabbat service doesn’t go much past midday during season.

The 2011 AFL Grand Final will take place on Shabbat Teshuvah (the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), which this year falls immediately after a Thursday and Friday Rosh Hashanah. If there is another replay, that would fall on Yom Kippur itself.

While some of us look back on a long season (year) of ups and downs, and think about what we would have done differently, and how we’d like to change for the future (and some of us are thinking about our own lives, not our footy teams), perhaps it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the roles of football and religion in our lives. There is certainly scope for comparing our relative commitment to each, and our attitudes and behaviours. Do you talk about religion at the footy? If not, then why do you talk about footy at shul? Would you ever arrive to the game after the opening bounce? If not, then why do you come late to shul? Conversely, perhaps our Rabbis can learn a thing or two from football culture to help people be more religious, about their religion?!

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova – a year of health, happiness and blessing.

The natural reaction of parents is to become extra protective. Between this and the regular breaking news about the alleged cases of sex abuse within our local community have come renewed efforts to educate our children about ‘stranger danger’, and how to pick up the signs of potential abuse. The police team investigating the reports has been recently expanded to meet the huge surge of complaints as victims come forward, the blogosphere and online media are buzzing, and with that, we need renewed efforts to educate ourselves about ‘gossip danger’.

There have been several examples of anonymous accusers naming names in online media and directly accusing individuals of awful crimes. It almost goes without saying that hiding behind a veil of anonymity to accuse others by name is a most cowardly and disingenuous thing to do. Most recently, fake comments have been posted in the name of a known community member in these pages, and it took several hours (during which several people responded to the fake comment) for the moderators to deal with it. It is a constant challenge for the editors of GA and other online media to strike a balance between facilitating free and open debate and ensuring commenters do not impersonate other and laws are not broken. Many accusations and suspicions floating around in some unmoderated blogs are still there!

As important as it is to report suspected crimes to the police, it is equally important to understand how dangerous and damaging public accusations of any kind can be. For us as a community to act collectively to root out the scourge of sexual abuse that has been lurking in the shadows for way too long, we must work with the relevant authorities exclusively, and let them do their jobs. Only by following due process and allowing these things to take their course can we bring about just outcomes. All it takes is one false accusation that blows up into a nasty law suit, or an innocent person’s reputation or family tainted for life, and we will be find ourselves jumping back to the dark culture of secrecy that we are seeking to escape from.

Our natural desire to talk about these things (whether motivated by a desire to protect, or simply nosiness) causes gossip and rumour to spread quickly, and here, people need to apply a simple test. Do they want to help the victims? (after all, it is primarily about the victims, isn’t it?) If they do, then they should consider any discussion about the topic in that light. Talk of “X is about to be arrested”, or “Y was abused as a child”, or “Z is under investigation” not only add nothing (and are probably lashon hara or motzi shem ra), but also may cause victims to feel less willing to come forward, and can destroy the reputation of innocent people. After all, our system of justice presumes innocence until proven otherwise. If we don’t uphold these same standards ourselves, then our community risks becoming a hotbed of fear and suspicion.

A Pandora’s Box has been opened. It cannot (and should not) be closed. If we don’t find the right balance in the way we deal with these matters, we will only do our community more harm.

Gold Coast coach Guy McKenna, doing his best to relate to his Suns

By David Werdiger

והגדת לבנך - שמות  יג”ח

And you shall relate to your son – Exodus 13:8 

As Pesach approaches, preparations go into full swing, and my mind jumps around between where we will be eating the various meals, where my children will be spending Pesach, the various tasks I’m going to do, and all the other “baseline” stuff that sits in my head: work and study.

Study has kept me busy this year, and as I move ever closer to completing, I enjoy the way learning has energized and stimulated my mind. There is a lot to absorb, and a few key things stick for various reasons, and form associations in my mind.

Organizational culture is something that has always interested me: how companies (or more widely organizations) learn and transmit knowledge. Look at the Gold Coast Suns, for example. Football clubs all have a culture, and as new players come, they seem to adopt the culture that is already there. For the Suns, they are starting with a blank slate. A dozen players from all over the place, plus the pick of young talent from all over the land, and suddenly, they are expected to play and perform as a club. The biggest challenge for their coaching staff is not football skills, but building a culture, and it will take them several years to do this. Only once that process has taken place will they see material gains in the way they work together as a team.

So how is culture transmitted? It’s not big glossy mission statements or expensive internal communication strategies. The research tells us that storytelling is one of the most powerful transmitters of culture. In the political world, the term “narrative” is used, which sort of means “our version of how things happened”.

The other study topic that has been high on my mind is marketing. Every day, people are bombarded by over 3000 advertising messages. Companies spend millions trying to convince us that their soft drink is better, or that we should buy their washing powder. They do this using every trick in the book, and are always seeking out new ways to understand why people do what they do. From market research to neuro-marketing, which studies how the brain responds to different marketing messages, it’s a never ending game of cat and mouse.

Marketers need to understand how the human brain processes information and makes decisions, and an important part of this is the human memory. My apologies go out in advance to all the experts out there for this very simplistic interpretation. Unlike a hard disk in a computer, our brains store information by complex chains of associations. Broadly, we have three levels of storage: semantic – like where we store the meaning of words; eidetic – where we store images, and episodic/narrative – the time relationship of events. It is the latter – stories – that is the easiest to store in our long term memories. This is consistent with the organizational culture view of storytelling.

With all of this floating around in my mind, and thinking about the upcoming Pesach seder, it all clicked into place. The purpose of the seder is to transmit a cornerstone part of Jewish culture – the Exodus from Egypt and our formation as a nation – to the next generation. And this is done through the most powerful and effective transmitter of culture – storytelling. That is why it has assumed its place as the preeminent cultural event in the Jewish calendar.

The biblical injunction to celebrate Pesach and have a seder is drawn from the verse “v’higadtah l’bincha” – “and you shall relate to your son”. This succinct phrase encapsulates the two key elements of the seder: (a) “l’bincha” – “to your son”, stressing the important a trans-generational communication, and (b) “v’higadtah” – “and you shall relate” – the medium for the communication: telling the story of the Exodus.

Like other ancient and enduring cultures, and long before modern researchers understood the why and how, the Torah spelled out the formula for its own perpetuity. While specific customs relating to Pesach have diverged over time, the essence of the seder has been celebrated for thousands of years.

Chag Sameach.

Even after 900 years of experience, some still don't trust Rav Yoda's rebel hechsher

By David Werdiger

The “kosher wars” have been reignited recently with the release by Rabbi Moshe Gutnick of The Kashrut Authority (I will refer to them as KA(Syd) to avoid ambiguity) of a statement regarding the standard of kashrut of Rabbi Rabi’s Kosher veYosher (KVY) at an establishment in Sydney. It should be noted that KVY is Melbourne-based, and KA(syd) has the closest thing to a monopoly on kashrut in Sydney. Indeed, the statement states that “[t]he appearance of Kosher V’Yosher in NSW has prompted us to make an announcement at this time”.

Rabbi Gutnick claims “first hand knowledge of the kashrut practices of [KVY]”, and refers to KVY’s controversial “soft matzah” as a representative example of the inadequacies of KVY’s kashrut supervision. KA(Syd)’s statement was posted on these pages and resulted in further debate on the issue.

In the course of this discussion, Anthony Frosh, one of the editors of this publication, has suggested that it is inappropriate for people to make allegations against rabbis without declaring their identity. This issue of commenter anonymity has comes up several times recently in these pages, and frankly, I think it’s a non-starter. An online magazine that wants to stimulate public debate on an issue needs to accept that in the internet world (and certainly in the WikiLeaks world), many people choose, for a host of reasons, to stay anonymous. Pressing them for identity or questioning their agenda simply because they are anonymous directs discussion away from the core issues, and will only stifle further debate. On several occasions, those anonymous commenters have backed away citing battering they have received as the reason. GA should put up or shut up: if this site wants to introduce a stricter comment policy, then it should do so officially, and start moderating all comments. Personally, I feel this would be a huge step backward.

More importantly, there are angles to this debate that go well beyond the kashrut standard or credentials of KVY (about which I will not comment).

There is the matter of laypeople making judgments about kashrut matters. With the launch of soft matzah, suddenly everyone became a kashrut expert, knowing about whether locally produced flour is washed, what the definition of chametz is, and what level of supervision is required for food establishments.

What if we were talking about doctors, and not rabbis? Would laypeople (perhaps not even their patients) constantly second guess them and suggest they know better? Would they say “I have read all about this, and I disagree with your diagnosis”? And if they did, is it reasonable for them to have the same credibility as a doctor?

In an age of modern food science and manufacturing, kashrut supervision has become a very complex matter indeed. There are many issues that can crop up in the end-to-end production of almost any food, and rabbis who work in the industry need a combination of halachic knowledge and manufacturing subject matter expertise.

So what is the layperson to make of a debate between rabbis over who of their supervision is or isn’t kosher? This is the core issue for most of us (who care about eating kosher).

The fact is that in a complex industry like kashrut, there are many valid opinions, and many shades of grey. KA (the Melbourne one) maintains both a regular and mehadrin (“extra kosher”) standard. What does this mean? Is “regular” kosher or isn’t it? Of course it’s kosher, KA would say, but some people prefer to observe extra hiddurim – “beautifying” mitzvot by doing them the best way possible. Why do some mezuzahs cost $50, and some $150? The same applies for a pair of tefillin, an etrog, or any number of other mitzvot.

So in kashrut, as in most of Judaism, there is a spectrum of observance. The spectrum is very wide, and there are no shortages of opinions. One person’s hiddur is another person’s extravagance, and what is a basic level of observance for one, may be quite unacceptable for another.

A while ago, there was a debate between KA and Adass kashrut about that fine product, Nutri Grain, which contrary to its healthy sounding name, happens to have the most sugar of any breakfast food. Adass said it was 100% kosher, and KA said it was 100% not. How could this be? Aren’t both of these Orthodox supervising agencies run to a very high standard (at least on my spectrum of observance)? It came down to a difference of psak (halachic ruling) about a particular ingredient. Eventually, the two organizations sat down, managed to work out their differences, and now Jewish children are all the less healthy for it.

Any kashrut authority establishes a standard for itself, often based on its target market, and/or its mission. One may choose to offer the highest standard possible without compromise. Another may choose to offer a lower standard so as to cater to a larger market. Whatever the case, they all must balance standards against available resources and other market forces.

If you are ill, you can search out the best specialist available in the world, or you can go to the nearest public hospital and wait for hours to see a second-year resident. What you do depends on how seriously you take your ailment, and what resources are available to you. Because the laws of kashrut are religious in origin, one could think of kashrut rabbis as spiritual doctors. The ultimate failure for a doctor results in the death of the patient. When a rabbi certifies food to be kosher when it isn’t, the result is spiritual damage to the consumer – something that most people are unable to perceive. At the end of the day, in both medicine and kashrut, people choose a standard that works for them.

In the interests of disclosure: the writer is a relative by marriage to the owner of Kosher veYosher, and was not solicited in any way to write this piece, nor consulted the agency.

I’m visiting Israel very briefly, and again find myself enamoured with the “minyan factory” known as Shtiblach Katamon. It happens to be about five minutes walk from where I’m staying, which is very convenient indeed. Let me describe how it works: it’s a big house with about six rooms and a foyer/lobby. During busy times, a man stands in the foyer – I like to call him the traffic cop. He directs people to which room a minyan is either about to start or has just started. For example, the minyanim for shacharit (morning service) run every 15 minutes like clockwork, from about 6am until 10am on weekdays. It’s the same sort of thing for mincha and maariv. On Shabbat, things start a little later, and finish a lot later, and slightly different rules for Shabbat mincha (a new minyan is allowed to start as soon as a minyan in progress has completed hagbah (the lifting and display of the Torah that occurs after the reading)). The full schedule can be found here (search for the word “Shtiblach”).

Of course this isn’t the only minyan factory around. One of the largest and best known is Zichron Moshe in Jerusalem, where a maariv can be had at all hours of the night (which is very handy for people arriving from abroad who need to say kaddish), and of course there are similar Shtiblach in the frum neighbourhoods of Bnei Brak and Boro Park.

Besides the obvious convenience (especially when suffering from jetlag), what I really love about the place is the way it unites people. At any given minyan, you will find a diverse mix of all types of Jews: Sefardi and Ashkenazi, Chassidim & Mitnagdim, kippot of every size, shape and fabric, and all different styles of peyot. The shul has no standard nusach (form of prayer) – whoever leads the service prays in his own nusach. The sorts of things that sometimes cause friction in some shuls simply don’t happen there. Everyone respects the cultural diversity of the place and each other, abides by the rules, and it just works.

Could such a thing work in Australia? Probably not. The Yeshivah shul in Melbourne already has a handful of daily shacharit minyanim (6:10, 6:15, 6:45, 7:30, 8:30), Adass has a few more than that, and we are blessed with plenty of shuls already (some might say too many, but that’s a whole other topic of discussion). David Havin publishes a minyan finder twice a year that tells you the when and where.

What is required to make a good minyan factory? The most important thing is the infrastructure: a foyer with several adjoining mini-shuls, a couple of Sefer Torahs in each, and someone to direct the people. The matter of nusach could certainly be a barrier in a city like Melbourne, where people go to a shul because they are a part of that particular community. That said, many of us who live in the ‘ghetto’ are so lazy that we wouldn’t go to a place ten minutes away when there’s one five minutes away – something that could be called ‘elasticity of demand’. So we probably don’t have the Jewish population density for such a venture to succeed. Nevertheless, these shtiblach, wherever they are, stand as an outstanding model of Jewish unity.

A promo from Charleston, South Carolina, that displays its humid sub-tropical climate that apparently allows for Chanukah parties on the beach

By David Werdiger

The chagim are spread widely across the calendar year, with the “major” ones like Pesach and the High Holydays falling usually around April and September. These correspond to the seasons of autumn and spring in Australia, and the reverse in the northern hemisphere. Since the weather is usually ambivalent during those times, and they are close to the equinox, the difference between the experiences in each hemisphere is not great.

Chanukah, on the other hand, falls during summer down under, and in winter in the northern hemisphere. This makes for a radically different experience. While other countries may dream of a white Chanukah, we generally associate them with hot weather, late summer nights, and barbeques.

The uniquely antipodean cultural associations with Chanukah make a huge contrast for people who come here from other countries. For those who light candles at dusk, there is no need to rush home like crazy Friday afternoons during winter. Indeed, summer afternoons with the added bonus of daylight savings mean there is ample opportunity for post-work Chanukah functions (as well as the mandatory end-of-year drinking sessions that seem to fill our calendars at these times). Imagine staging the events like the outdoor Chanukah in the Park with everyone rugged up in warm coats and snow everywhere.

And then there is the great Aussie Chanukah barbie. This is one of the times our large family all get together for a huge meat-fest, with latkes as the principle side-dish, and hot fresh doughnuts for dessert. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

How do you celebrate Chanukah “Australian-style”?

David is chairman of JBD – Jews of the CBD, which has this year organized a series of after-work doughnut and latke gatherings, in all corners of the Melbourne CBD. For more information, contact jbd.melbourne AT gmail.com.

In the weekly portion of the same name (Numbers/Bamidbar 22), Balak, the king of Moab, commissions the gentile prophet Balaam to curse the Jews who are travelling through his land on their way to Israel. While Balaam plays along (and is happy to accept Balak’s money), ultimately he is unable to disobey God and at every attempt, instead of cursing them, confers upon them some of the most beautiful and prophetic blessings in the Chumash. In his third and final attempt, while Balaam is looking down at the Jews’ encampment, he utters the classical phrase: “How lovely are your tents, Jacob; your dwelling places, Israel”.

Quite incredibly, the blessing of this evil man found its way into the daily morning prayers, as the opening verse of the prayer Mah Tovu (according to some nuscha’ot of prayer, the very first thing recited each morning). It is the only piece of liturgy attributed to a non-Jew (as an aside, in the prayer customarily recited by some congregations during the Priestly blessing (birchat Kohanim) on Festivals, we pray to God that any bad dreams be transformed to good ones, and invoke Balaam as the prototypical example of such a radical transformation from bad to good).

Rashi, in his commentary on the Chumash, wonders what exactly was so good about the Jews’ encampment in the eyes of Balaam. Observing them from atop a cliff, Balaam noticed that the tents were arranged so that the doors were not directly across from one another; it is appropriate that the Godly presence should rest upon them as they were following a code of modesty – “tzni’ut”. Their tents were positioned in a manner that would afford each family its privacy, and they did not, nor did they desire to, look into each other’s tents without permission.

The attribute of modesty is linked to God’s presence and protection, as alluded to in scripture: “… walk humbly (hatzneah lechet) with God” (Michah 6:8), and “… that He see no immodesty (ervat davar) amongst you, and turn away from you (Devarim 23:15). Indeed, after Balaam’s lack of success, they sent Moabite women to seduce the Jewish men, which resulted in a plague.

This came to me while thinking about the Jewish attitude toward social networking web sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. These platforms encourage us to have friends (so many friends that I don’t know who my real friends are any more), and to share aspects of our life with them. But is sharing such a good thing? And how much is enough? Indeed, Twitter, where this is done using phrases limited to just 140 letters and often from a mobile phone (this is how it started in the US, and was because of the technical limit in the size of an SMS), came under fire in its early days as people would post the most banal minute-by-minute commentary on their lives: “had eggs for breakfast”, “train running late”.

The Torah well understood the power of the network, which is expressed so succinctly in the Talmudic principle: “your friend has a friend, and your friend’s friend has a friend” (as an aside, the “be discreet” appended in some quotations is incorrect). It is used in a handful of places (Tractates Ketubot, Bava Batra, Erchin) to convey the principle that once you have told something to three people, it is deemed to be public knowledge. Anyone who has had an e-mail forwarded without their knowledge or consent can certainly empathize with this.

In an article about Muslim censorship of social media, Liel Leibovitz argues that the so-called “Web 2.0” – internet-based applications that facilitate collaboration – is governed by a logic that is inherently Jewish. While this may hold for group or collaborative learning (for example, in hundreds of years of the development of the Talmud and its subsequent commentators), the notion of living our day-to-day lives in the public internet is an inherently un-Jewish concept.

Social networking is a powerful tool, yet it’s way too easy to over-share. This modern phenomenon conflicts with the principles of tzni’ut and privacy espoused by the Torah, and certainly dilutes the notion of friendship. The lesson of Mah Tovu is that we should ensure that our virtual tent doors are not directly across from those of all of our friends.

Image source: HolyHeretics.blogspot.com

By David Werdiger

To paraphrase Kilgore in the epic war film Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of chickens in the morning”. I don’t. I actually can’t stand the smell. It’s 5am, and I have just performed the pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kaporas. Not the sanitized version with a bag of coins that go to charity. Rather, a dawn trip in suburban Melbourne, with a buzz of people, chickens, and unpleasantness almost anywhere you step foot.

Kaporas done this way is probably one of my favourite Jewish rituals.

It is dark and cold. The smell is pervasive. The chickens are clucking loudly. Fortunately, most people know how to hold them correctly. Families are clustered together, often with the father doing the honours on behalf of his children who wouldn’t dare touch a live chicken. My son, now taller than me, insists that I hold the chicken for him. Who’s the real chicken? But then I make him hold it while I do kaporas for myself.

Then comes the most intense part: We stand in line, chickens in hand, waiting for them to be slaughtered. We are inside a huge poultry factory, the start of the journey that results in “chicken tonight” at someone’s dinner table. My turn comes, and I hand the chicken to the shochet. He takes it, then quickly and deftly, as he has done many thousands of times, slices it through the neck, and spills some of its blood on the ground, before handing it off to an assistant, who places it into the huge machinery that will “process” it.

For just a few seconds, I am directly faced with death. A death that, minutes before, I declared should happen to this chicken instead of to me. Thoughts rush through my head about what I have done in the past year that may be deserving of such a fate. The experience ignites the spark of teshuvah, of repentance.

As the dead chickens move past in a huge conveyer machine thing, I am reminded of the liturgy of Unesaneh Tokef, where the process of our annual judgment is compared to a flock being counted off by their shepherd. Who will live, and who will die, decides God. The chickens all die; our prayer and hope is that we all live.