I've been engaged in a bit of to-and-fro-ing with eminent (and local) Rabbi Menken over at Cross-Currents. It should not need pointing out that Rabbi Menken is a good and solid leader of our community, and my disagreement is with his comments, not the man himself.
Anyhow, my disagreement with him revolves around the question of whether the Orthodox community experiences indifference to the suffering of others. What I disagreed with most strongly was his attempt to put a positive, or religious, spin on the issue.
When I entered college full-time, fresh out of more than a decade of single-sex, single-mindset education, the idea that shocked me the most was the realization that many character traits that had been described to me as being unique to Orthodox Jews were, in fact, quite commonplace. In base terms, goyim are people, too.
It is difficult to describe how much of a revelation that was to me. I make no claims that this sort of prejudice is widespread, but the anecdotes in my life are numerous: the daughters of a black ger tzedek weretaunted mercilessly by their classmates; another couple actually sat shiva when their child married the child of such a marriage.
Rabbi Menken described the limited Orthodox reaction to what can only be described as a Sudanese holocaust as an efficient economizing of resources that can be best most effectively used elsewhere. He may well be explaining his own reaction (and I mean that only in a respectful tone), but I truly believe that this also illustrates a weakness in our society.
- Moishe Potemkin
Posted by MoisheP at December 29, 2004 03:26 PM