Heartbeat By Yael Meyer

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Luke Ford

Yael Meyer is from Chile. She now lives in Los Angeles.

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Yisroel Pensack: Yemen-Based, Anti-American Muslim Cleric Linked to Fort Hood Suspect Had Connection to 9-11 Hijackers While in U.S.

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Yisroel Pensack

The New York Times reports: 

WASHINGTON — Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.

But the federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages from the psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, did not suggest any threat of violence and concluding that no further action was warranted, government officials said Monday.

Major Hasan’s 10 to 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshiped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but that the authorities left him in his post.

Counterterrorism and military officials said Monday night that the communications, first intercepted last December as part of an unrelated investigation, were consistent with a research project the psychiatrist was then conducting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There was no indication that Major Hasan was planning an imminent attack at all, or that he was directed to do anything,” one senior investigator said. He and the other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying the case was under investigation…

Given the radical views of Mr. Awlaki, however, the conduct of the F.B.I. and the military is likely to come under intense scrutiny from Congress…

The communications provide the first indication that Major Hasan was in direct communication with anyone who espoused militant views. On Monday, Mr. Awlaki praised Major Hasan on his Web site, saying that he “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim…

The imam whom Major Hasan made contact with is an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He wrote on Monday on his English-language Web site that Major Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

Mr. Awlaki added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Awlaki was quoted as disapproving of such violence and was portrayed as a moderate figure who might provide a bridge between Islam and Western democracies. But since leaving the United States in 2002 for London and later Yemen, Mr. Awlaki has become, through his Web site, …a prominent proponent of militant Islam.

“He’s one of the most popular figures among hard-line, English-speaking jihadis around the world,” said Jarret Brachman, the author of “Global Jihadism” and a terrorism consultant to the government.

Mr. Brachman said Mr. Awlaki was especially appealing to young Muslims who are curious about radical ideas but not yet committed. “He’s American, he’s funny, and he speaks in a very understandable way,”Mr. Brachman said.

In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Awlaki served as an imam at two mosques in the United States frequented by three future Sept. 11 hijackers. Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended the Rabat mosque in San Diego, where Mr. Awlaki later admitted meeting Mr. Hazmi several times but “claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed,” according to the report of the national Sept. 11 commission.

Both Mr. Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, later attended the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., after Mr. Awlaki had moved there in early 2001. The Sept. 11 commission report expressed “suspicion” about the coincidence, but said its investigators were unable to find Mr. Awlaki to question him.

Major Hasan attended the same Virginia mosque, but it is not known whether they met there.

Mr. Awlaki, who is in his late 30s, had returned to Yemen with his family as a child. He received a religious education in Yemen and later earned degrees in engineering at Colorado State and in education leadership at San Diego State, according to his Web site.

His writings urge Muslims to dedicate themselves to defending Islam, including pursuing “arms training,” in such works as “44 Ways of Supporting Jihad.”

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Dennis Prager’s Thoughts On The Fort Hood Murders

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Luke Ford

Dennis condemned on his Friday radio shows "news media reports that mentioned everything about the man except his religiosity. On the three major networks, only Charlie Gibson of ABC mentioned it. That is disgraceful. The people who wrote those news reports should not be writing news for a living. They are politically correct shields. They are not purveyors of truth. I’m told ad nauseam that he’s a psychiatrist."

"The agenda is not to have anybody possibly link the fact that the man is Muslim is what he did, as though we are not bright enough to realize that this says nothing about all Muslims. But it says something about him. There’s a percentage of Muslims who try to murder all non-Muslims."

"The under-coverage in the media of the four or five plots of mass murder by Muslims… Is there anybody in his right mind who thinks that all Muslims are a danger?"

"If this amount of murder took place in the name of Judaism or Christianity, we would do soul-searching. When Yitzchak Rabin was killed by an Orthodox Jew, the amount of soul-searching that took place in Israel about what happened to Orthodox Judaism… And it was one guy. And the Orthodox asked, how did we produce such a monster? That’s what they kept asking. It’s easily seen on the internet.

"One hears zero about how did we [Muslims] produce the 9/11 terrorists and the terrorists around the world like that. We’re always told that only seven to ten percent of Muslims agree with Osama Bin Laden. That’s 70 to 100 million people. And they’re all believers. How were they produced? Why isn’t that in the front ranks of questions being posed in the Islamic world? There is minimal non-Islamic solution. It’s within Islam."

"I believe there should be armed people on college campuses. There should be armed people everywhere. …When people who want to murder large numbers of people know that nobody else can shoot them, they are given an invitation to do their bloodshed."

Caller: He was protected from his warning signs for fear of being Islamophobic.

Dennis: I am certain that would’ve been a factor.

"Political correctness is lying because one is a coward."

"The biggest cause of evil is thinking you’re a victim. Walking around thinking that you are a victim is a green light to be despicable, to be evil, and to murder the innocent. It doesn’t say anything about how he was treated. It’s about how he justifies murdering evil people."

"Thomas Friedman, who is eloquent on foreign affairs, has said over and over that all the unemployed in the Muslim world are the fodder for terror. I think that if every Muslim in the world was employed we would have one less terrorist. This guy was employed as a psychiatrist. His medical education was paid for by the U.S. Armed Forces.

"This guy was angry. Not coincidentally, he was unmarried. It’s harder to maintain constant anger if you are married. Somebody will be saying, honey, what’s going on? If you are unmarried, it is easier to keep your lousy moods and perpetuate them."

"If everyone who was picked on murdered, no one would be left on earth."

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I Drove 700 Miles Sunday To Monterey And Back

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Luke Ford

I got up at 4 am. We left the house at 4:30 am. We got home at 10:30 pm…We made it all the way to Monterey (via the PCH) with an hour to walk around before sundown, showed my friend Monterey for her first time. Exhausting drive home on 101 in 4.5 hours, covering 350 miles. I got lots of video and pictures. Highlights include lying in the trees under the sun beside a Big Sur cliff overlooking the ocean, hiking in Big Sur national park, revisiting Monterey, which played a big role in my childhood in 1980, and 1981. I revisited in 2001. Wondered why I had changed so little. Now I feel I am on a good trajectory.

Nov. 8, 2009:

Luke at Big Sur:

Summer of 1981, same place (Monterey Convention Center):

August 31, 2001:

I drive through Santa Barbara:

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Yisroel Pensack: Britain’s Top Court Grapples with “Who Is A Jew?” and “Who Decides?”

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Yisroel Pensack

The New York Times reports: 

On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another. 

“This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.”

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts.

Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application.

That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer.

In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.”

The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.

“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”

The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year.

…The case has stirred up long-simmering resentments among the leaders of different Jewish denominations, who, for starters, disagree vehemently on the definition of Jewishness. They also disagree on the issue of whether an Orthodox leader is entitled to speak for the entire community.

“Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,” [Jon] Benjamin said in an interview. [Mr. Benjamin is chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.] “That the community has failed to grasp this has had the very unfortunate result of having a judgment foisted on it by a civil court.”

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one’s mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Lauren Lesin-Davis, chairman of the board of governors at King David, a Jewish school in Liverpool, told the BBC that the ruling violated more than 5,000 years of Jewish tradition.

“You cannot come in and start telling people how their whole lives should change, that the whole essence of their life and their religion is completely wrong,” she said.

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Yisroel Pensack: Store Video of Fort Hood Shooting Suspect Wearing “Traditional Garb”

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Yisroel Pensack

This CNN video reportedly shows Fort Hood shooting suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan wearing "traditional garb" while shopping in a convenience store early yesterday morning about seven hours before the shooting.

A CNN producer’s narrative from 2:25 to 3:25 in the video describes concerns Hasan reportedly expressed to the store owner about a week ago about his upcoming deployment and his possibly having to shoot, kill, injure or fight fellow Muslims in the future.

From 4:00 to 4:36 in the video, a CNN editor reports that the Arabic-speaking store owner said that Hasan had told him that he’s "from Jordan" but was born here. 

From 5:10 to 5:55 in the narration, the CNN editor reports that the store owner said that Hasan was a "devout" Muslim who regularly attended Friday prayer. 

According to an AP report in the Detroit Free Press, "Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’ — an Arabic phrase for ‘God is great!’ — before opening fire, the base commander said today."

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The Role Of Women In Orthodox Judaism

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Michael Broyde discusses this issue and Jewish law.

Joseph Kaplan comments on Hirhurim: As always. R. Broyde’s clear and rigorous analysis is extremely helpful, certainly to me, in thinking through important issues, and we should be grateful to him for allowing Gil to share this analysis with us.

One question that I have about his analysis relates to the question of motive/sincerity. People are complex and they often do things for complex reasons. In this area, for example, a woman may want to be a shul president (to take a particular issue R. Broyde mentions) because (a) she believes as a general principle that woman should be allowed to perform in the public arena to the best of their abilities on an equal par and in the same way as men, (b) she believes that there is no halachic impediment to her doing so, and (c) her talents are such that her being president will be a true service to the Jewish community at large and the particular halachic community of which she is a part, and will thus be a true part of her avodat Hashem. Is this a sincere motive, non-sincere, or mixed? And if it is mixed, how do we parse out the different elements?

It seems to me that the issue of motive/sincerity is a very difficult and tricky one, and may sometimes say more about the rabbi who is deciding the issue presented than the woman/women involved in it. I would be interested in some additional explanation or guidance of how R. Broyde would deal with this aspect of his analysis.

MYCROFT WRITES: It would appear that Rabbi Broyde is downplaying the importance of tradition. On a purely halachik issue it is atleast possible that a women could lead Kabbalat Shabbat in schul-it is not Tfilah, there is nothing bikdusha so why not? Or onYizkor which also has no minyan required let a women lead the service-there is no halacha against it. Both could be led by a monkey. But I submit that the Rav would not have tolerated such behavior in a schul because of tradition-women leading any parts of what appears to be a service have no place in a schul
One can’t overestimate the importance of minhagim and accepted behavior to the Rav.

NACHUM LAMM POSTS: The Rav didn’t seem too thrilled about women wearing tallit and tefillin, which is certainly a mitzvah.

SETH GORDON POSTS: My first reaction to the essay was surprise and disappointment that it even had to be written; why don’t rabbis consider the halakhic angle first as a matter of course? Isn’t that what they were trained to do?

Is this a consequence of the modern tendency for poskim to make decisions that are yotzei kol de’os instead of picking one shita and standing behind it?

FRIEND POSTS: Following up on Joseph Kaplan’s comment, a fairer judgment is that the hypothetical individual’s only MOTIVIATION is "(C)," her belief that "her talents are such that her being president will be a true service to the Jewish community at large and the particular halachic community of which she is a part, and will thus be a true part of her avodat Hashem." Just as this hypothetical individual views item "(B)," the absence of a halchic impediment, as just that — the absence of an impediment, not an affirmative motivation — the fairer articulation of her "feminist" sentiments in item "(A)" is likely also a mere absence of impediment — "she believes as a general principle that there is no reason that women should not be allowed to perform in the public arena to the best of their abilities on an equal par and in the same way as men."

An analogy: I believe that Jews should be eligible for any public office in the United States. If I choose to run for public office, however, my motivation is not to make that point, but, rather, to get elected.

REUVEN POSTS: n my experience it is not the "equality" that many women are looking for, rather it is the notion that they have relatively little to do in terms of active performance in their religious lives. They no longer want to be bystanders, and prefer a more active role.

It is more personal and not motivated by feminine equality.

I line up, usually, on the Right side of the issue, but it just seems that the root of the problem is that many women yearn to have an active, participatory religious life, and many feel our current state does not fulfill that yearning.

RABBI GIL STUDENT WRITES:

I am in the middle of reading David Gelernter’s eloquent new book, Judaism: A Way of Being. From what I understand, the core of this book is in a series of essays the author published in Commentary a few years ago.

One chapter addresses the following questions:

  • Isn’t normative or Orthodox Judaism inherently anti-woman, insofar as its public ceremonies are conducted by males?
  • Assuming we reject the idea that women are in any way inferior, aren’t we forced to make basic changes in Judaism?

His discussion is profound and provocative. Later in the chapter, he addresses specifically the issue of women rabbis. Here are some of his thoughts. Note that his discussion is not about the strictly halakhic issues. They have already been addressed on this blog and in my book, although there is always room for further discussion.

Here is a relevant excerpt from Gelernter’s book (pp. 109-111):

Still, the nonexistence of female rabbis in normative Judaism has unquestionably taken on (for some women) the force of tragedy. Judaism can sympathize but can’t do anything about it: if you create woman rabbis, you not only break the law, you break the poetry. And law and poetry are all there is…

Times change. But people don’t go to synagogue to study social trends… Those who long to keep religion up to date miss the point. Religious practices do change, but must be moved as slowly and gently as a brimful glass of wine. Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai tells us in a midrash not to change our ancestors’ customs, and cites: "Remove not the ancient boundary stones, which thy fathers have set up" (Proverbs 22:28). Rabbi Yohanan agrees, and cites a different verse: "Heed the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the teaching of your mother" (Proverbs 1:8).

The woman who yearns to be a rabbi resembles the openly practicing homosexual who wants the same thing. Both cases suggest a man who yearns to be a hazzan but lacks the ear or voice for it, or hopes to be a rosh yeshiva (the head of a yeshiva is an honored leader of the community ex officio) but lacks the temperament or brains, or wants to be a poet but has nothing to say. In none of these cases can Judaism wave a wand and make the obstacles disappear. Opportunities and limitations are innate in who you are; accepting that fact is one of the stiffest trials of growing up…

In the end, such issues have little to do with Judaism and much to do with character and personality. In Persuasion, Jane Austen describes a woman who had once been rich, married, and happy but is now, though still young, a poor and ailing widow. She ought to be miserable but isn’t. She has been given every reason but has declined them all. "Here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from Nature alone. It was the choicest gift of heaven."

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The Reason Nidal Hassan Snapped

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

It’s buried deep in this Washington Post profile:

Hasan is an avid Redskins fan. "That was his main entertainment," his aunt said. "He was not a movie watcher. He worked hard and had been studying for years. He buried himself in his work."

Nobody should have to suffer like Redskins fans are suffering this year. It can be too much for even the gentlest of men.

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Check Out The Dirty Play In This Women’s Soccer Game

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

This Elizabeth Lambert should be banned from soccer for life. She’s a dirty vicious player. What kind of person is she? I wonder who dates her? I wonder what her parents think of her? Her pastor or priest?

From Sportingnews.com:

Soccer can be a rough game, especially in the top-flight European leagues, where jersey pulls and raps on the shins are basically part of the fabric of the game. But it’s apparently roughest in the Mountain West Conference’s Women’s Soccer Tournament, where BYU beat New Mexico 1-0 in the semifinals and probably only scored a draw in the battle royale.

The two teams combined for what would seem like a stunning 25 fouls, but that’s actually not a huge number: In the three games of last year’s Women’s Final Four, there were 23, 24, and 33 fouls. The shocker is that only one yellow card came out in this game, which seems wildly out of proportion to the amount of brutality in the above video.

But that yellow card did at least go to Elizabeth Lambert, the Lobo who does the dirty work in the above video. Her bio says she "is fearless when making a challenge," which is a nice way to say she will rabbit punch you, yank you down by the ponytail, and slap your face while you are in mid-air. I don’t know why, exactly, she got carded for a fairly routine trip outside the box instead of the other chippiness.

HER BIO SAYS: "Born Elizabeth Ann Lambert on December 29, 1988, in Lancaster, Calif. … daughter of Clark and Diane Lambert … has three siblings, Christine, Keith and Samantha … enjoys camping and surfing in her spare time … favorite food is tacos … sister Christine played college volleyball at the University of Connecticut, while brother Keith played college soccer at Humboldt State University … is majoring in University Studies with a focus on Occupational Therapy."

I’m not going to forget about this woman until she’s brought to justice.

Kyle Koster blogs: Today is not a good day to be Elizabeth Lambert.

The New Mexico women’s soccer player has to wake up with the realization that a large portion of sports-loving America has seen her on-field antics against BYU on Thursday.

And by antics, I mean hair-pulling, punching, slapping, squeezing and anything else that would fall under the umbrella of dirty play.

USA TODAY UPDATES:

Amid a hoard of attention from the blogosphere today, New Mexico announced that Lambert has been suspended indefinitely from all team practices, competition and conditioning activities.

"I am deeply and wholeheartedly regretful for my actions," Lambert said in a statement posted on the school’s web site. "My actions were uncalled for. I let my emotions get the best of me in a heated situation. I take full responsibility for my actions and accept any punishment felt necessary from the coaching staff and UNM administration. This is in no way indicative of my character or the soccer player that I am. I am sorry to my coaches and teammates for any and all damages I have brought upon them. I am especially sorry to BYU and the BYU women’s soccer players that were personally affected by my actions. I have the utmost respect for the BYU women’s soccer program and its players."

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Fort Hood Murderer Was A Muslim

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Luke Ford

The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

…The former imam at a Silver Spring, Md., mosque where Major Hasan worshiped for about 10 years described him as proud of his work in the Army and “very serious about his religion.” The former imam, Faizul Khan, said that Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed.

“He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said.

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