The Jewish View on Weapons

As we debate gun policy in the wake of Newtown, we should heed the wisdom of the Jewish sages

The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School has sparked passionate debate about whether or not we need stricter gun-control laws in this country—and the Jewish community is no exception. For every organization like the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which aggressively advocates for strict gun control, there are others like Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, who call gun control “code words for disarming innocent people.” Both camps, of course, claim that Judaism is on their side.
Who’s telling the truth? What does Judaism actually have to say about guns? The question can’t be answered with the perfect passage from the Torah or the Talmud, in part because the rabbis could never have fathomed the destructive nature of modern guns, like the ones that took the lives of 27 people in Newtown last Friday. To understand what our sages would have thought about our modern problems of unlimited ammunition and semiautomatic weapons, we have to examine their perspective on the dangers of their time—such as swords, dogs, stumbling blocks, and snakes. Their wisdom remains eerily relevant.

Swords and Other Weapons

There is little doubt that our rabbinic forebears lived in a violent world: The Talmud is full of stories and rules regarding ropes, chains, stocks, swords, and shields. Yet their views on these implements were not monolithic. On the one hand, the 13th-century Spanish commentator Nachmanides says that when Lemach, Adam’s great-great grandson (mentioned in the fourth chapter of Genesis) taught his son to smelt metal, his wives protested. They worried that through this simple act, Lemach was bringing death into the world since now humans would be able to make swords. However, Lemach, according to Nachmanides’ interpretation, replied to the wives that murder existed well before weapons. After all, his great-grandfather Cain killed his brother Abel with his bare hands. The story is perhaps the oldest variation on the phrase made famous on so many bumper stickers: Swords don’t kill people. People kill people.
But the story of Lemach is not even close to the Jewish tradition’s last word on the matter. The Mishnah, in Tractate Shabbat, records a debate between Rabbi Eliezer and a group of rabbis called the sages about whether one may carry weapons on Shabbat. According to Eliezer, weapons like swords, bows, or cudgels were considered “adornments” like jewelry or hair ribbons. Since these items are essentially like one’s clothing we don’t have to worry about them violating the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat, he argues.

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Poll: Majority of Israelis prefer two-state solution

Smith Research poll shows majority of Israelis fear a bi-national state; youth hold more right-wing positions.

A clear majority of Israelis believe that the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state is Israel’s best chance to remain a Jewish and democratic state in 20 years’ time, a Smith Research/Jerusalem Post poll showed on Monday.

The survey, commissioned by Blue White Future, was conducted among 500 respondents from a representative sample of the adult Jewish population in Israel.

According to the survey, 58 percent of Israelis would prefer to see Israel remain as a Jewish, democratic state through fixed borders along the route of the West Bank security barrier, with Israel preserving its character alongside a demilitarized Palestinian state.

A majority of 62% supports the principle of “two states for two peoples.”

The survey shows that younger people have more right-wing positions than adults, with 69% of respondents aged 50 and above supporting the two-state principle, compared to 63% among those aged 30-49 and 42% of those aged 18- 29.

Furthermore, 25% of those aged 18-29 supported a scenario involving the annexation of the territories without granting full rights to the Palestinians in order to keep the state Jewish and democratic, compared with 16% of those aged 30-49 and 7% aged 50 and above.

Meanwhile, a panel discussion at the Sapir Academic College near Sderot on Tuesday titled “Agreement for Peace” elaborated upon public opinion about the conflict and premises for its resolution.

Prof. Tamar Hermann presented a study carried out by the Israel Democracy Institute, which dealt with the position of the Jewish Israeli public towards peace with the Palestinians.

The research illustrated that such a peace is one of the lowest measured priorities for the Israeli public – with an index of 14.7 in 2012 compared to 56.8 in 1969.

The social justice protests of 2011 had “almost no effect” on the rate of achieving peace with the Palestinians, the study surmised.

MK Arieh Eldad (National Union) commented on the findings, saying the public is “not ready to buy the faulty product we call Oslo [Accords],” adding that partition cannot solve the conflict, which is centered around far more than just territory.

Israeli Technology Turns Tumors Into Ice Balls To Cure Cancer

Breast cancer patients could be treated without surgery following the development of a technique that destroys tumors by turning them into a ball of ice. Doctors have begun treating women suffering from breast cancer in trials of the device, which uses a super-cooled needle tip to repeatedly freeze then defrost tumors so that the harmful tissue is damaged and ultimately dies.

The technique, which does not require general anesthetic and can be completed in about 15 minutes, could provide an alternative to surgery, which often requires women to stay in hospital for up to a week and can leave them with scars.

The needle is cooled to -274F (-170C) by pumping liquid nitrogen through a network of tiny tubes, allowing the surgeon to control the size of ice ball produced to ensure it freezes the entire tumor.

Scientists behind the device say it is possible to treat tumors up to the size of a golf ball. It has already been used on benign tumors and doctors have now begun a trial of the procedure in 30 breast cancer patients.

Freezing instead of boiling

“The cells in the human body are made mainly of water, which means they freeze,” said Hezi Himmelfarb, the chief executive of IceCure Medical, the Israel-based company that has developed the system.

“There have been attempts before to use heat to destroy cancer cells like this but that can be extremely painful because our bodies are very sensitive to heat.

“Cold has an anesthetizing effect, so the patients feel very little pain during or after the procedure. We have developed the system so it can be carried out in a normal doctors’ surgery as it is minimally invasive and relatively quick.”

The procedure, known as cryoablation, controls the size of the ice ball produced to ensure that the tumor can be destroyed without damaging healthy tissue.

“There is very little scarring as it is only the needle that is inserted and the tumour does not need to be removed,” added Mr Himmelfarb.

The device has already been approved for use in the United States and IceCure is hoping to get European approval in the next year.

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The Soloveitchik Who Loved Jesus

A Yale president’s forebear was an enigmatic and pro-Christian member of the famed rabbinic dynasty

Peter Salovey’s recent appointment to the presidency of Yale University, founded by Congregationalist ministers, was cause for celebration for those who admire the Soloveitchik dynasty, an illustrious family of rabbis from Lithuania that includes Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk (1853-1918), one of the most creative and important Jewish sages of modern times, and Rabbi Joseph Dov Ber Soloveitchik (1903-1993), known simply as “the Rav,” the leader of Modern Orthodoxy in America. In a breathless column, a writer for the Yale Daily News reported on the new president’s rabbinic lineage—under which Salovey himself commented, proudly affirming his place in the family tree as he had come to understand it.

But what went unmentioned in the celebratory genealogy is that Salovey’s forgotten forebear, R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, was forgotten for a reason: his love of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Rabbi Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik (aka Elias Soloweyczyk, 1805-1881), the grandson of R. Hayyim of Volozhin, was an enigmatic traditional rabbi who in the middle decades of the 19th century wrote a commentary to parts of the New Testament (Mark and Matthew) and a book, Kol Kore, which argues for the symmetry between Judaism and Christianity and claims that there is nothing in Christianity that is alien to Judaism.

Much of what we know about R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik is contained in the work R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik: The Man and His Work [Hebrew] (Jerusalem 1995) written by Dov Hyman, a British-born dermatologist who lived for many years in New York before emigrating to Jerusalem in the 1970s. Hyman’s father and grandfather both studied in the yeshiva in Volozhin. After finding R. Elijah Zvi’s work cited in an obscure “messianic” journal he came upon in the library of the Great Synagogue, Hechal Shlomo, in Jerusalem, Hyman collected everything he could find on the man and his work and published it in this book. Because of the delicate nature of the subject he printed only 50 copies and distributed them to scholarly friends, family, and those who helped him in his research. (I was given a copy, and provided information about the author, by my good friend Menachem Butler, through the generosity of one of Dov Hyman’s sons.)

Rabbinic writing about Jesus was very popular in the mid 19th century, especially by liberal and Reform rabbis arguing for Jewish emancipation. What is striking about R. Elijah Zvi’s work is how different it is from that of reformers such as Joseph Salvador in France, Abraham Geiger in Germany, Claude Montefiore in England, and Kaufmann Kohler, Isaac Mayer Wise, and Joseph Krauskopf in America. Many of these rabbis were quite critical of Christianity and focused largely on the historical Jesus to argue that Judaism was the religion of Jesus while Christianity was the religion about him—implying that Christianity and the teachings of Jesus need to be viewed as distinct. In fact, for most of them, their positive appraisal of Jesus was a veiled critique of Christianity.

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Fascination With a New Yankee’s Jewish Roots

It has been a game of sorts over the years — marveling when ballplayers turn out to be Jewish and straining to expand the parameters of the religion so that as many players as possible can be included.

For years, Kevin Youkilis has been a leading figure in this odd, but entertaining, sport that was elevated to on-air comedy in 2006 when the actor and comedian Denis Leary, in an extended bit of shock, wrestled with the startling fact that his beloved Red Sox first baseman, with a name like a Greek omelet, was, incredibly, a Jew.

“Now, Youkilis, is he a Greek kid?” Leary asked that night during a visit to the Red Sox television booth. When told that Youkilis was, in fact, Jewish, Leary reacted with manic glee. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “That’s one bottle of whiskey away from being Irish Catholic. They got the Manischewitz, we got the Jameson’s. It’s the same guilt, the same bad food. That’s fantastic. We got a Jewish first baseman!”

The Youkilis family story is as traditionally Jewish as you can get — filled with name changes and tales of persecution in Eastern Europe — and now that the hard-nosed 33-year-old veteran with the unusual batting stance has signed with the Yankees, his background should especially resonate in the New York market, where many fans are Jewish and have immigrant roots similar to Youkilis’s.

The Youkilis family was not originally named Youkilis. Far from it, although exactly what occurred on the other side of the Atlantic more than a hundred years ago is more spoken lore than documented fact.

“There are so many stories in the family,” Mike Youkilis, Kevin’s father, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But we’ve agreed on one.”

In that story, there was, sometime in the 1800s, a teenager with the last name Weiner, who is believed to have been Kevin Youkilis’s great-great-great-great-grandfather — give or take a great — and who lived in what is now Romania. Fearing the Cossacks, who were no friends of the Jews, and of being drafted at age 16 into the army, he fled to Greece.

“Apparently, there was a family friend there with a name like Youkilis,” Mike Youkilis said. “A couple of years later, he got homesick, and when he decided to go home, he couldn’t come back with the name Weiner or he’d be thrown in jail. So he took the Greek name. He met a lady and they married in Romania and started to have kids. And we kept the name.”

Edward Youkilis, Kevin’s uncle, could not recall relatives ever suggesting that the name be restored to Weiner. “We grew up with everyone thinking we were Greek, but never once did I hear a relative say let’s change it back,” he said by telephone. “It wasn’t something we thought was unusual in those days.”

Changing back to Weiner would have deprived Red Sox fans of shouting “Yoooouuuk!” at Youkilis after he emerged as a stalwart in the Boston lineup.

Mike Youkilis’s father, a jeweler, and his 10 siblings ultimately left Romania for the United States, all detouring first through Canada. Some settled in Cincinnati, where Mike owns a wholesale jewelry business, and where Kevin was raised. When Kevin was in the minor leagues and making little money, his father said that he told him, “I’ll put you to work here.”

“But he hated it,” Mike Youkilis added. “The joke was, ‘If you don’t start hitting, you’ll be doing this.’ ”

One aspect of the fascination with Jewish ballplayers — of whom there have never been many — is whether one’s mother is Jewish. That, by traditional Jewish law, makes one Jewish regardless of whether someone is observant of the religion, or oblivious. On that score, Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ star outfielder, is not considered Jewish by some because while his father is Jewish and was born in Israel and lost family members in the Holocaust, his mother is Catholic. Braun himself has embraced his Jewish identity.

Then there is Ralph Branca, who learned last year, at age 85, that his mother, who had raised him Catholic, was actually Jewish. That makes Branca Jewish, too. And yet Shel Wallman, a co-editor of Jewish Sports Review, said that Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers right-hander who gave up Bobby Thomson’s famous home run, could not be in his publication because he had followed a different faith all his life.

There is little ambiguity when it comes to Youkilis, though. While his mother, Carolyn, a West Virginian, was not raised Jewish, she converted after marrying Mike.

And there was never any doubt that Kevin would have a bar mitzvah at age 13, his father said.

Mike Youkilis said the ceremony was held in 1992 at Adath Israel Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Cincinnati.

“Kevin was superb,” Mike Youkilis said. “We had a luncheon and a party the next night.”

And, he added, “None of us speaks Hebrew well, but Kevin can still read it — with the vowels.”

Irvin M. Wise, the senior rabbi at Adath Israel, was asked about his former student Wednesday and responded in an e-mail: “As you can imagine, he is quite the ‘man’ in Cincinnati in general and especially in our Jewish community.” He said he last saw Kevin at a baby-naming ceremony a few years ago but hopes to see him next at one of the monthly “Cincinnati nights” that are held at Edward’s, the restaurant in TriBeCa owned by Youkilis’s uncle.

Whether or not Youkilis becomes a TriBeCa habitué, he is almost certain to be in high demand from Jewish groups. Scott Barancik, who runs the Jewish Baseball News Web site, said that Youkilis should handle the extra attention well. “He’s always worn his Jewishness proudly,” he said.

In fact, back in 2009, Ian Kinsler, the Texas Rangers second basemen, who has a Jewish father and, like Braun, embraces the Jewish part of his identity, said that Youkilis was always mindful of their shared heritage when they crossed paths on the field. “He’ll just say, ‘Happy Passover,’ or something like that,” Kinsler told Bloomberg News at the time. “He’s pretty into it.”

In New York, plenty of other people will now be, too.

Britain appoints special technology ambassador to Israel

UK prime minister personally announced appointment of ‘tech envoy’ Saul Klein

Relations between Israel and the United Kingdom are generally good, despite the diplomatic flareups that make for bombastic headlines. In the day to day, both countries collaborate on a wide variety of projects in the defense, political, and social welfare areas — as well as in technology. In fact, as far as London is concerned, the latter category is important enough that the government announced Tuesday that it was appointing a special technology ambassador to Israel.

Britain was the first — and still the only — country to established a special government-sponsored mission in Israel, called the UK-Israel Tech Hub, to deal specifically with programs that will facilitate cooperation between Israeli and UK companies, universities, and institutions to develop leading-edge technology in computers, networks, medical devices and technology, and other high-tech areas. That program has been so successful — and important — to London that Prime Minister David Cameron himself announced the appointment of British businessman Saul Klein to the post of tech envoy to Israel, an appointment Cameron said he hoped would further enhance tech relations between the two countries.

Announcing the appointment Tuesday, Cameron said that the UK “wants to work much more closely with Israel on innovation and technology. That’s why a year ago we launched the UK-Israel tech hub at our embassy to link up with UK Israel Business, the Israeli Embassy here in London and countless talented young people in both our countries. I am delighted to announce today that we are appointing Saul Klein, someone with huge experience in early-stage investment, to be the UK’s first tech envoy to Israel.”

That the prime minister himself would personally announce such an appointment is impressive — but just as impressive is the fact that Cameron is apparently keeping track of the breadth and depth of those relations.

“Just last week the Tech Hub and the UK Trade & Investment organization brought over 19 Israeli tech companies over here to meet the best of British companies and investors,” the prime minister said.

Lest one think that Cameron was “going through the motions” and reading a prepared statement for some political purpose, Matthew Gould, the UK’s ambassador to Israel, said that the government in London sees developing tech relations between Israel and Britain as a top priority.

In fact, Gould said at a recent event hosting British and Israeli start-ups, it is “one of the things I, and the government, care most about.”

“Israel is full of disruptive and innovative technology,” he said. “If we could bring just a portion of that technology to Britain, instead of to Silicon Valley where much of it goes now, it would do wonders for the UK economy.”

Partnering with British tech companies, said Gould, was a smart move for Israeli start-ups, too. “It’s about building partnerships, and a relationship on something positive, a much better situation for me as ambassador, allowing me to focus on the positive things instead of the differences and disagreements between our countries,” he said.

And now, Gould will get some help in managing those tech relations, as Klein, a British venture capitalist, takes on the job of tech ambassador, and directorship of the UK-Israel Tech Hub. Among his activities, Klein founded the Seedcamp organization to help European entrepreneurs successfully build technology businesses, was part of the original executive team at Skype, and has invested in dozens of successful start-ups — all of which made him the right choice for the job, said Cameron.

Commenting on his appointment, Klein said: “I have worked in tech in both the UK and Israel, and I know that there is a huge potential synergy between our two tech economies. Britain could get a huge economic boost by partnering up with Israeli tech. Israeli innovation could benefit from using Britain’s global reach, world-class companies, our scientific base, our capital markets and our business development expertise. So I am excited to be appointed Britain’s tech envoy to Israel. It’s appropriate that our first ever Tech Envoy should be to the Start-Up nation, and I look forward to helping build the tech partnership that ought to exist between us.”

Hamas: 25 Facts For 25 Years

Much of the media covered the weekend’s events in Gaza, where Hamas leader Khaled Meshal commemorated his terror organization’s 25th anniversary.

What is Hamas really celebrating? Here are 25 facts to remind you:

1. Hamas takes its name from an acronym that means “Islamic Resistance Movement” in Arabic.

2. Hamas refuses to recognize the State of Israel’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, and is totally opposed to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of its charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, that “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”

3. Hamas is committed to jihad. Its charter stresses the importance of jihad (holy war) as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals: An uncompromising jihad must be waged against Israel. Jihad is the personal duty of every Muslim.

4. Hamas is an anti-Semitic organization. According to its charter, the Jewish people have only negative traits and are presented as planning to take over the world. The charter uses myths taken from classical European and Islamic-based anti-Semitism.

5. The Hamas Charter includes anti-Semitic myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (mentioned in Article 32) regarding Jewish control of the media, the film industry and education (Articles 17 and 22). The myths are constantly repeated to represent the Jews as responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for all world and local wars: “No war takes place anywhere without the Jews’ being behind it” (Article 22). The charter demonizes the Jews and describes them as brutally behaving like Nazis toward women and children (Article 29).

6. Hamas is the local Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which recently took control of the Egyptian government.

7. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan.

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