Religious Kindness

 I have been thinking about kindness recently. How can we raise a generation which will have a normalized sense of kindness? For whom thinking of the feelings of another is second nature? I think that Judaism does something like that by teaching certain strange things.

Should we be kind to people? Sure, but halacha doesn’t start or stop there. Consider the laws of shilu’ach hakein (sending away a mother bird when raiding a nest for its eggs) and even oto v’et b’no, the law forbidding slaughtering a mother and child cow on the same day. These are designed to rein in the cruelty element of our nature and recognize how our actions have impact on other things.

Sure, you say, other things…like cows and birds? Well, if we codify concern over the feelings of animals, then we will become used to considering how our actions might cause pain to other people. Even the notion of shechting (and tza’ar ba’alei Chayim on the whole) is about reducing strain and pain for the animal. Why should we care? Kill the animal and be done with it, right? Somethings gotta get et. But then I think back to The Frisco Kid in which the inimitable Gene Wilder says, while chasing a chicken (and I paraphrase) “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to eat you.” This would be the exact moment when kindness should not matter – when I want to use a resource that God provided, I still have to recognize its inherent soul and feelings and I have to be kind even while do what could easily become a cruel exercise of power.

But Judaism takes it a step further. On Friday nights, when we set the shabbat table, we put the challah on the table first and then we cover it before pouring the wine. Ask any 2^nd grader why, and he or she will probably mention some notion of “so that, when we make the blessing over the wine first, the bread won’t be shamed – placed first but eaten second.” I learned that when I was little and, admittedly, I never looked it up to see if there is a source but as I grew older, I realized that the story is weird. Does my challah have feelings? And not just the basic perception of pain when I cut it, but an embarrassment at a perceived slight or social faux pas!

But if we teach children this lesson before they have the sensibility to look at it and say “wait, what?” then we will accustom them to considering, even in their intentional and proper acts with supposedly inanimate objects, that there is a power we have, a power to hurt even when we don’t want to. We teach care and care leads to kindness. We need to say thank you to automatic doors. We need to avoid knocking over the traffic cone. We need to see that we share our space with “things” and our responsibility to be civil includes these things – not because they need it, but because we need to engrain positive habits into our every moment. Kindness must be intertwined into our being.

That said, I have also been wondering about a potential tension between two halachic mandates.

We have the idea of “danl’chaf z’chut” – to judge favorably and assume the best, not worst in people or situations. Don’t jump to negative conclusions.

We also have the idea of “lo teetein michshol” don’t place a stumbling block before a blind person (don’t create an unfair challenge or a temptation which might lead someone else to doing something wrong or being unable to do something right).

Don’t they contradict? If I judge everyone favorably, then I will suspect no one a priori as being, for example a thief. But if I put all of the jewelry away before my guest arrives then I have decided that I’m worried she or he will be tempted to steal (which is not judging anyone favorably) so I remove the valuables so as to avoid creating a stumbling block which might entice people to sin.

So which is it? Do I think people are potential thieves or do I believe that people are good and won’t steal?

I’m sure that there are subtleties regarding the implementation of these broad rules and granular discussions about when each one applies and how, but the underlying thinking still lends itself to the question, do we think that the nature of mankind is inherently prone to fail (thus we don’t tempt) or prone to succeed (as we judge all people favorably). Are we being kinder by removing temptation or by assuming that people are good?

This does lead to the old medrashic concern about how kindness is not always expressed as niceness (one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel the kind). How do we teach that kindness is not in opposition to justice and not always synonymous with mercy?

No title for this one as I don't know what it is about

 for a long time the internet was the ultimate playground with its own social hierarchy and rules. And in it, way back when binary still had only 1, the nerd could be king. The one who was ostracized for playing with technology was unexpectedly ahead of a major curve so he becomes the expert and the role model for his 15 minutes. And in the online communities, the lone gun who can come in and settle a flame war with a single, silver tongued post, the guy so smooth when he sets a trap and shows the other guy is wrong - the virtual beat down. Knowledge rules and this is the nerd's home field. Trivia matters and finding stuff in the early, unsorted cloud was the skill native to growing up with a friend who is a librarian.

Search engines and GUIs tried to level the playing field. Once even the jerks have access to the compendium of all human knowledge that is the interwingle, even jerks can find-a-fact. But the finding isn't easy and the nerds still hold an advantage -- experience in negotiating search terms and communicating with the computer, a most trusted friend. As is always the case, the expert could still reign by knowing things on the assumption that not every analog memory has been digitized somewhere so that knowing defies www. But if something had to be found, it was the webizen who knew how to read the map.

Now AI makes us fake experts not in knowing, but in finding. Instead of pretending we found the facts when wikipedia found the facts, and then writing the paper we are now feeding the teacher's prompt into an AI interface and having the AI spit out the response. We pretend we even made an effort when in truth we didn't. In the earlier case, you walk away without the content knowledge needed to craft the paper. In the later case you walk away with no skill acquisition on any level.

I'm not saying that "no skill on any level" is necessarily bad, but I'd like a representative from the next generation(s) to defend it so I can hear the argument.

Reading right to wrong

 Here's some confusion to chew on. I will have to take a test to measure my proficiency in Hebrew. Fact is, I am very proficient in Hebrew as long as it is translated into English.

Part of any preparation is a review of the structure of a test. Here are some random snippets I have learned while researching the exam (all are quotes from websites and AI summaries but I added color):

"The YAEL test is approximately one and a half hours long and consists of three sections: the first three sections contain multiple-choice questions, and the fourth section is a writing task..."

It is a 3-part exam, each part allocated 20 minutes."

"The computerized YAELnet exam consists of two or three scored multiple-choice parts. Each part contains 22 questions and you are allotted 20 minutes to complete each one. Each question features four answer options."

"Grading the two multiple-choice sections used for scoring (out of three total sections)"

I have yet to figure out the Hebrew because I'm still wrestling with the English.

A Thought Question

 Here is some information about a hypothetical country that has these rules regarding religion.

"_____'s status as the state religion intertwines it directly with the political and legal systems through several key mechanisms:

The senior religious figures hold automatic, unelected seats in the government allowing them to vote on, debate, and amend all national legislation.

The ruling leader serves as the supreme religious figure and must be a ________ connected to the religious establishment, swearing an oath to maintain it.

Government Appointments: The Prime Minister advises the religious leader on the appointment of religious roles, giving the secular government an official role in religious leadership.

The religion's governing body, can pass measures that become national law, but these require formal approval from the secular branches of government "

Opinions about this intertwining? Is this some form of apartheid?

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Can anyone name the country? Mr. Mayor, I'm looking at you. 

The Zoomies

 We are living in an age of unfettered access to the entire compendium of human knowledge. If it is known, we can know it. And this is the problem because if it can't be known, we can also know it.

When knowledge is excised from context it becomes trivia or fiction. Or both.. Lost forests will end up with dead trees.

Context is the ultimate gatekeeper and we're lucky for it. Our brains slurp that up, establishing and testing patterns, strengthening some connections, weakening others. That web of silken thoughts helps hold us together.

But if that fourth Indiana Jones movie taught us anything, it is that without a filter or twelve, the overload of unsorted mass media input laughs at any attempt of a reasonable sense ratio. We are drinking from a fire hose and expecting to emerge somehow better off for the experience. You can't suddenly know the universal everything without your head exploding. Facts.

Judgement, we hope, grows as the temple waxes (h/t Billy S.), but it does so in steps. You can't go from knowing nothing to having any reasonable level of understanding in an instant and you don't have any way to contextualize each of the voices for its agenda so you can't assess validity. You can't go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

So we have instant experts with intellects built on sand and the more we know, the less we can know what is right or wrong.

If you go from 0-60 too quickly, you'll break your own neck. Or so I've heard.

Let's Be Friends

I am approaching my Heinz birthday and I don't have many friends. I don't think that that is unusual -- I have never been especially social or sociable so I never had many to begin with but as I age and forge my path, I find that making friends just doesn't fit in. I was wondering why that was and here is what I have figured out.

When I was young I was relatively simple. My tastes were not yet established and I had fewer experiences and preferences as I was still developing and learning about myself. I was, you could say, like the cockpit of a glider.

There are a few basic controls and a simple readout that lets the pilot know when things are basically level. I grew up with those so they made sense. I could find my happiness with relatively little effort.

I was a piper cub

Meeting someone who is similarly simple then allows two of us to take a flight using both of our simple controls -- like a two person glider

As we grow together and learn about ourselves and the world, new controls are added. We learn them together and add in each one slowly -- there is a process of increase.

Years go by and we don't notice that another button, another routine, another measure is added in because the growth is incremental. By the time we are both in a fancier cockpit, we are familiar with each other and every device.

But then, imagine starting fresh with someone, anyone, in your mid 50's. You introduce yourself to someone and say "come on in!"

"Interesting," the other person says, looking at all there is to learn about me. And then that person introduces him or herself to me and says, "Have a seat!"

To quote Gary Gulman, "Yeah, no."

The Epstein Files

So here it is, my official and public statement about the Epstein files.

I haven't read them. I know very little (in terms of proven fact) about the Epstein case. He either killed himself or he didn't (as I believe the options to be) and he had files. Lots of files that apparently every world leader has and is using to blackmail Pres. Trump. In his spare time he was a monster, and we suspect that anyone who spent any time with him is therefore a monster. I'm not taking a stand on any of this because it is well beyond my ken. But there is another angle to it I would like to discuss.

I spend time online discuss/arguing about Judaism and Israel. I'm found in the "pro" camp. One of the things I see quite often is that people decide to use examples like Epstein to prove something about Jews. Jews, they say, are monsters, because Epstein was a monster and he was Jewish. I see the same thing when it comes to discussing other people (on both sides of various issues) and it is getting annoying. Why must people inject religion into a discussion when it is conspicuously absent.

Let's assume that Epstein is guilty of crimes 1 through 12. Unless his actions when committing those crimes were driven by his religious belief, or he used his religious identity to defend them, then the fact that he happens to be Jewish is as irrelevant as Charles Whitman's interest in coin collecting.

And attribute is relevant when it helps identify or explains a motive. I don't care what Hitler's favorite flavor of ice cream was unless it was that choice of flavor which drove his Final Solution. So if it wasn't, don't give me a headline "Austrian Strawberry Eater commits genocide; the Strawberry Eaters are gonna getcha!"

It works in the other direction as well -- someone shouting down Israel or Judaism finds a supportive quote by someone. That someone happens to be Jewish so the anti- person will point out the Jewishness as if that makes an opinion WHICH IS UNRELATED TO RELIGION somehow more powerful and relevant. It doesn't. So Einstein was against certain aspects of Israel's politics. Why does his Jewishness have any relationship to that? Did he make his statements because of his religion? Does he use the texts and beliefs of his religion to explain his position?

One reason that people get called "anti-semite" isn't because they are posting things that are false, but because they are laying behavior unrelated to religion at the feet of the religious group. Can we try to keep our hatreds in focus, people?

I am not defending Epstein -- he has done the world a disservice on so many levels (not the least of which is that I can't enjoy Welcome Back, Kotter as much anymore) but let's not let the actions of individuals become a reason to hate a group, nor let the hatred of a group impact an approach to the law.

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Trying to fall asleep but another point appeared in my head. 

When you start to accuse someone and draw from that accusation an attack on an entire group, you can pick any aspect of that individual's identity and decide that that's the dimension of identity that you'd like to tar with this particular accusation. So if a some famous person commits a bad act you can look and say oh that's the exactly the kind of thing an Irish person would do, or, for the same person that's such a left-hander's attitude, or the Democrats all think like that. 

You can pick any aspect arbitrarily and that's the one you can decide is participant in the bad act. But mostly, monsters are not monsters as an expression of a singular affiliation but because they are monsters.