Agency Detection and The Foundation of All Foundations
I would like to offer that more than the Biblical God - let alone other deities, souls, etc - are challenged by cognitive sciences suggestions about the role of "Hyper Active Agency Detection" in religious belief. Any belief in there being That Upon Which All Else Depends for existance, but which "Itself" is radically independent (X for short) - is also challenged.

This belief is - according to a great number of the greatest minds throughout human history - not only the fundamental binding feature of all historical religions, but (following Dooyeweerd), all higher theorizing - philosophies, materialisms, naturalisms, etc.

Central to every religion is a teaching about what is divine—about what is regarded as utterly independent and on which all else depends. No matter what or whom any religion considers to be divine, that is what it recognizes or defines as the unconditional reality. The divine, in other words, is whatever people consider to be uncaused and unpreventable—as "just there".
The crucial point for our discussion is that this definition of religion makes clear that ideas of divinity are not confined to traditions most people recognize as "religious." Some people trust various parts of this world as divine. For example, some ascribe unconditional or uncaused status to matter, or to mathematical, logical or biological laws, or to the universe as a whole...this is certainly religious, even though, from a biblical point of view, it is false religion.

Whatever is regarded as ultimate, independent reality thereby has the status of divinity, no matter how it is conceived and regardless of whether it is worshipped. Worship is not essential to religion; there have been beliefs in gods that did not include worship and there still are versions of Hinduism and Buddhism that include no worship.

Understanding religion in this way also allows us to see that there are many more religious beliefs involved in scientific theorizing than are generally recognized. No matter how thoroughly some people avoid all organized religious traditions, worship, doctrines, and practices, and no matter how sincere they are about being atheists, they still have a religious belief insofar as they regard anything as being utterly independent or uncaused while all else depends on it.

It is also important to notice that while anyone who believes in God, in Brahman-Atman, or in the Tao is almost certainly aware of doing so, many other beliefs often take the form of unconscious assumptions. A belief that certain aspects of the universe are divine, or that the universe as a whole is divine, often has this character. A person may be unaware that he or she is presupposing that matter is the ultimate, independent reality. But that does not make such a belief any less a religious one, and it still renders any theory based on that assumption a religiously guided theory. Any theory, therefore, whether scientific or otherwise, can be understood only when its basic presuppositions are examined, and there are as many possible versions of a theory as there are religious beliefs that it can presuppose. So the idea that a theory can be religiously neutral is an illusion brought about only by calling an entire range of religious beliefs "secular."

The corrosive effect of such criticisms from cognitive science would then impact all such theorizing - about all origins. X is the Throne, as it were, the foundation belief in that which is the basis for belief in God or anything as Uber Alles. If it the throne is denied, if it is not there to be sat upon...none can be said or believed to sit in it.

Contrary to Dawkins, this divine category belief is not exclusively a pernicious, fruitless "religion problem" or spandrel. This "God" Gene would be the basis for solving anything and everything, and every fruitful error therupon based! It is the very grounds, the very explanation for the capacity for people to convert between divergent uber-perspectives (however erroneously) - be they Mormonism to Atheism - the common Rule by which one converts to believing Matter to be X (i.e., materialism).

If a "God gene" or material 'spot' in the brain can be found, and it be forthwith removed or genetically-engineered out of man, I suggest he'd be less than a beast - due to the heights from which he would be 'falling' - from much higher than we'd thought. On such terms, what would successful Artifical Intelligence really be, or what would it's existance "prove?"

With permission, hopefully granted this week, I will present some material from Kelly James Clark along with Rambam, lhvd'l Hermann Dooyeweerd et al, that will help makes sense of the above ramble.

More Avraham Avinu "Deep Critique" Radicalism
vs. Contemporary "lifestyle Liberalism"

Derrick Jensen;

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? [all matters that had historical precident solutions in modalities fostered by deeply transpersonal, society-wide Biblical Ethical Monotheism - ironically condemned and lambasted by Jensen et al as being the source of the problem] Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this [what "this" is seems clear, but our ecoystemic knowledge of water systems is bracketed by our knowledge of economic and political systems] we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

An exchange on this article appears here. I hear an awful lot that's pertinent to current Jewish religious banter here; our individual acts (sins/mitzvot), are often described as accumulating to make global/communal difference in either social or spiritual capacities (depending on if you're closer to the 'rationalist' or kiruvy Charedi "spiritual" approaches). Such perspectives are often sold with the accompanying counsel on "what you can do" to make "a difference"; those who implant these perspectives want you to see them as the source of the Jewish route to feeling re-empowered, now through their particular Jewish route).

I think there are also similar "misdirections" on the Jewish societal level, steering away from making any system-wide critiques, which might risk shifting ones own perspective on a deep level away from the sanctioned Jewish perspectives. For example, strategic removal of particular teachers is seen as a 'concrete' step in ending sexual abuse in schools - but there is huge debate about reconsidering student/teacher power structures that might "risk" solving several problems at once, but also make for dangerously-democratic and less authoritarian educational settings...

Asking questions of any [dominant] Jewish system can indeed lead to doubts about that Jewish systemization as such...- which can, regretably, lead to dissention from religious modalities themselves (Torah, the inheritance of Israel). but they are more likely to lead to disillusionment and dissention in belief in comparably-recent human institutions (C/O/R Judaisms, Yeshiva world, etc), that may have religious motivations, but not be sacred and hallowed by time unto themselves. Such disillusionment frequently occurs, and is celebrated by the Orthodox when Conservative and Reform-affiliated Jews become [Orthodox-identifying] Observant, lamented when Orthodox kids go Off "the" Derech. But even such dissent is rarely all-or-nothing (systematic). Faranak Margolese determined that upwards of 60+% of adults who left Orthodoxy still believe in God and Torah from Heaven, and maintain certain observances.

The noble goal of consistancy and purity of deed and creed (mitzvot include deeds as well as beliefs), sounds to goal of "lifestyle liberalism", but I fear we are in a state now where "Avrahamic" radical critique may very well be the only way forward through the tyranny of Galut, rife with patriarchy, destruction of the natural world and moral decay, and our coercion into relying on such a system.

But when has all of Klal Israel honestly been fully, systematically observant without some society-wide element of coercion? When Jewish communities met Enlightenment ideas, the capacity of the rabbis and leaders to coerce fell - and so did observance on a huge scale. Is the Ghost of Cain in everything that we do? Is Rav Solveitchik's "Two Adams" as much pathological as it is "progress", technology, science and "dominion" over the earth? We are now in a situation where we are in a network of pathological, counteracting relationships, within Judaism and the greater world.

I think there is a component of the "the source of the problem is the source of the solution", if we admit certain things we already speak. Torah and Tanakh is multivocal. Tanakh contains events and settings in the world at large (expelled from eden, mabul, famines, etc), that are the basis for decisions positive and negative, and condemns the behaviors of certain figures in our history. I think it is doing just that..it's not present in the text merely to prove their sacred origin because, for example, "no other human works condemn in their founding texts condemnations of the founders". Nor is Tanakh giving a little mere environmental background for the Avot changing their social setting. Many societal systems are protrayed therein, some condemned as whole systems, some evidently shared by Israel, changed due to external environmental circumstances, some we transition from and to. But in all of them, we're to have a certain ethic. And interestingly, the social consequences of the narrative of the Mabul included a change in diet and lifeways evidenced in a new convenant with all the Nefesh creatures. We maintain memory of all of this by learning and recounting the deeds and lives of the Avot, from Adam on, transition from Eden to the city-state of Ur and out to the wondering pastoralism to entering Mitzraim.

Tanakh in the hands of the Nations has indeed been used to justify imperialism, slavery, patriarchy, environmental degradation, etc, etc. And at the same time it has been evidenced as being a true awakening away from such negatives as they blossomed in the ancient world. Even as a system, R. Nahum Rabinovitch shows that Judaism can been seen as weening away from certain of it's own Divinely Decreed observances that are no longer morally justifiable - due to the proliferation of other Torah moral principles.

More later, gym beckons.

"He suspended the mountain over them like a barrel"
R. Daniel Gordis from here;

"In the famed sugya in which God suspends Mount Sinai over the heads of the Jews assembled around it, the Gemara asserts that the original circumstances of the covenant at Sinai may well have been coercive, thus rendering the "contract" null and void. If that is the case, what authority does the Torah — and by implication, the entire halakhic system — have over us? Rava's celebrated response is crucial, not only for what it says, but for what it does not say and also for what it implies.

When R. Aha bar Ya'akov asserts that God's suspending the mountain over the Jews offers a legitimate reason to reject the halakhic contract (which could then have been accepted under duress), Rava responds that Sinai is not the enduring reason for the contract's validity [and therefore I don't not think the Kuzari's argument for Torah from Sinai must be treated as enduring - within it is a very sound, textual argument for the account of the experience at Sinai, details of the revelation aside for later, derivative arguments]. Rather, he asserts, the halakhic contract is still in force because in the days of Esther the Jews accepted the arrangement once again (kiyymu v-kibbelu). On the surface, Rava's response simply asserts that although the circumstances of Sinai may have been coercive, Jews subsequently invested the tradition with authority when they accepted it "anew" at the time of Ahaseurus [and again, in a sense, in the time of Ezra, when it was again received - and subsequent in more recent history; see below]. On that level alone, it is an interesting claim for the rabbinic tradition to make.

But Rava's prooftext is significant in additional ways which are easily over-looked, for what is most important is what he does not say. Within his response is the subtle claim that theological arguments for the authority of halakhah do not matter. What matters, he suggests, is the [preternatural?..] power of the tradition to make Jews Jewish — the unique power possessed only by halakhah to infuse the lives of Jews with Jewish resonance and passion. Although Rava does not use such language, the sugya contains a variety of subtle suggestions that this is the point he wishes to make.

The fact that the verse cited is from the book of Esther has profound implications. Not only does Rava himself not inject the issue of God into his discussion of the authority of the tradition, he selects a prooftext from a biblical book well-known for its glaring omission of God's name. Could the implication be that God's [open, miraculously apparent] authority in the creation of the covenant is secondary to the spiritual needs and desires of the people? [with this language, he's kind of losing me, but it picks up later on].

If we are willing to hazard an affirmative answer to that question, other issues arise immediately. Just what are those needs and desires? Would it be pushing this sugya too far to remind ourselves that one of the central themes of the book of Esther is assimilation? The names of the two primary Jewish characters, the fact that they hide their Jewishness, and the fact that Esther "marries" a pagan king all attest to the centrality of this issue.

Could it therefore be that Rava was suggesting in part that the reason for our communal acceptance of the covenant must be not a theological argument, but the deep-seated sense that without a unique pattern of Jewish behavior we will ultimately blend into the larger culture that surrounds us? Could he similarly be arguing that Jewish life without a sense of partnership with God as expressed through command cannot arouse the mesirut nefesh - which we will here call devotion — necessary for sustaining proud, committed Jewish life? Is it possible that Rava chooses a book whose central theme is assimilation because he wants to argue that without halakhah at the core of its communal ethos, Judaism simply cannot survive?

We will never know how far Rava would have been willing to "push" the significance of his choice for a prooftext. But even if that argument is not Rava's, it virtually beckons to the leadership of Conservative Judaism today. For it suggests that what effectively justifies the tradition and motivates our attachment to it is not "authority" in the sense that we have traditionally used the term, but "power" in the sense of the mystery, joy, and belonging that halakhic living adds to our lives. Ultimately, when we set aside nizhuni banai for kafa aleichem et ha-bar ke-gigit, we move our arguments for halakhic commitment from claims of legitimacy to claims of relevance. It is ashift, in other words, from historico-theological arguments to personal, spiritual claims about the religious power of a traditional Jewish way of life and the unique ability of that way of life to perpetuate Judaism as we know it.

I find this interpretation envigorating in the same manner I find a useful insight from Alan Yuter's review of T. Ross's "Expanding the Palace of Torah";

TR is the first Orthodox theologian to apply critical method in her search for truth and to write an apologia for its use. Her boldest effort lies in her adoption of Process Theology, a literal Protestant modernist theology that views God as a process in the mind of humans and not necessarily as an external Being. The first Jewish writer to adopt this position is the Conservative/Reconstructionist Rabbi Harold Schulweis, whose theology is incompatible with Orthodoxy in any of its current manifestations [that last bit reveals more of R. Yuter than I think he means to, but he's well known for shooting - and writing - from the hip].
Nevertheless, TR's efforts ought not to be dismissed with haste. Pope Benedict's recent Jesus of Nazareth, the work of an intensely devoted believer who concedes the merits of academic criticism, argues that revelation is an unfolding of truth in divinely inspired narratives revealed in historical and social contexts. Therefore, if TR makes the Schulweis/Reconstructionist claim that God is only and limited to the interior sense of divine presence, she would have placed herself outside the pale of the classical Jewish Tradition. But if she contends that this interior sense is how God is approached by finite humans but does not exhaust the infinitude of divinity, she would be well within the Tradition. Given her work on Rabbi Kook, a fair reader is constrained to make the more generous reading.

R. Yuter suggests that, despite Ross' controversial and seemingly unjustifiable claim for a Jewish Process Theology (though it can obviously apply to other suppositions in engaging critical scholarship), if she FIRST assumes God's Omnipotence and then suggest that He Chooses to reveal Himself to man by that means, she may not be deviating terminally, or even significantly - from a Covenant tradition that is filled with such willed choosing on the part of the Divine; He chooses to work with and through a particular universe and it's laws, one from among others He'd Created, He covenanted with the nefesh'ed creations therein, and individual humans He'd met over time and ultimately with a people He freed therein though laws He'd selected, etc.

With "kafah aleihem", it would seem that, as with "not being in the fire", but in the still small voice; or after setting fire to His altar in the face of the Ba'al worshippers, but then telling His prophet not to affix significance to the miraculous - He shows Himself to be beyond the necessity of showing "power" - by not choosing the most blatant, obvious and compelling means of revelation - even discounting the miraculous within the miracle-filled narratives themselves!

And so with theological arguments; He will not grant certainty to the the human justifications of history or authority deriving from human perceptions of the Divinely-initiated event of revelation - no matter how true and valid the Event behind them may be as empirical, historical occurrence. He almost seems to chose evidence be presented in a way that requires a covenantal community, one that fractals new contexts made up of "covenant-stuff", (as with the rise of science in the Biblical west, of egalitarianism and democracy in the United states under Biblical/Jewish influence in Joshua Berman's new book). It almost looks that He wants that the perennial 'proofs' or evidences people derive and make for His existence and relevance be, in the language of Joshua Golding - "rationally defensible" rather than "rationally compelling" - so as to not limit our freewill, and engagement with the Truth-bound Tradition that is the doorway, among many Tradition-bound truths - as profound as they may be.

One could argue with the secularists that making any significant decision based on anything less than 'reasonable' certainty is crazy - He might agree. Limiting, but not eliminating, the force of the religious proofs would militate that we really think and ask our way through to whatever basis for ethical actions and set aside (but not discard..), the theological foundations. We can then point to the considerable, but not compelling, case for the validity of the Jewish way of life, Made "independent" from Sinai (according to R. Gordis' presentation), a Divinely-received Torah from bequithed generation to generation, in that the Divine in and among us as a people, Receives Torah each generation. He Spoke unspeakable power to choosing, to covenanting, grants meaning to the divinely-human capacity for choosing, and growing cumulatively from the community setting over millenia after millenia - though Giving and Receiving may not occur in their fullness at the same time.

As with the times of Esther and Ezra (both under Persian rule?..), it would seem those communities who *choose* Judaism in every era are those ones who give rise to the next era - and currently it indeed seems to be those communities who go by the communal moniker "Orthodox" - since so few observant Conservative Jewish kehillot can collectively maintain the necessary scale and "breeding population" to make a future for 'themselves'. I personally do not think they are going their struggle alone - metaphysically speaking. They really are something of a righteous remnant to my mind and heart.

I think this goes far in answering the challenge posed to a life of believing observance that is made by religious coercion, the compelled observance which caused such an exodus after Emancipation, depicted in Albert Baumgarten's, "Two paradoxes: reflections on history and belief", Judaism, Summer-Fall, 2004

Why we have Bereshit; "There is no personal solution"
If we want a sustainable world, we have to be willing to examine the power relations behind the foundational myth of our culture. Anything less and we will fail.
Questioning at that level is difficult for most people. In this case, the emotional struggle inherent in resisting any hegemony is compounded by our dependence on civilization, and on our individual helplessness to stop it. Most of us would have no chance of survival if the industrial infrastructure collapsed tomorrow. And our consciousness is equally impeded by our powerlessness. There is no Ten Simple Things list in the last chapter because, frankly, there aren’t ten simple things that will save the earth. There is no personal solution. There is an interlocking web of hierarchical arrangements, vast systems of power that have to be confronted and dismantled. Lierre Keith

I can almost hear the Canfei Nisharim people now; "But Avraham Avinu was just one 'person', and every little bit counts and everyone can do their part and it will all just mount into this wonderful fulfillment of every diverging and...uh...conflicting agenda, dream and illusion we have!". And just one little drop of cynicism forestalls the arrival of Moshiach!" It's just this sort of "Golly Gee Willikers" Judaism that drives me from identifying with the LWMO settings - where a significant percentage of "prominent", idealized "devoted" members of the communities doubt that Avraham Avinu even existed...who doubt the kashrut of Torah as the yardstick by which their lives, livelyhoods and pasttimes are to be measured.

Even they fall prey to the typically-Charedi "anything for chinnuch, anything for kiruv", where all manner of delusions and wishful thinking and half-baked revisionism can be put forth to bolster unrelenting, unimpeded, un-reflective optimism to keep true believers and gain new ones in the face of complexity (at times verging on a Jewish YCYOR, of sorts). Do Jews honestly so believe that virtually every facet, every power structure, every social and industrial system can be kashered or rendered muter (Where there's a rabbinic will, there's a halachic way"...)? That industrialized Western Civilization - over all others, in actually or potentiality - has some haskamah from On High, that this state of affairs is fate itself, and that the only way is more and faster management of the world?

Read with deep, fundamental questioning in mind, I think Avraham Avinu would have been more in agreement with the mode of thought of this quote than in the outcry against it. A little chinnuch and counseling here-and-there was not how he related to the excesses of civilization of his day. "Civilized" isn't an inherently kosher notion. He left a deeply complex, deeply imbedded, corrupt and destructive 'high society', considered the height of the ancient world (ditto for Israel in Mitzraim....)! Does that even have to be mentioned?! What did he do next; move to a new city where it would be safe to raise kids and find nice, eidle work? He became a sheepherder. Who founded cities anyways, as far as Torah is concerned?...Caine. Throughout Tanach is, I believe, the refrain that "stages" of cultural evolution are human projections, that the kashrut of a society is determined by how well it optimizes actual Jewish modes of life (which is not be definition, always convenient), and that certain ranges and depths of human civilization can be koshered - and certain are to be avoided at all costs. And the differences between them are not always obvious.

Throughout Tanach we have people who were "frum" in various societies - The Avot and their struggles are not there as a reminder of "humble origins" in a "rags to riches" climb to the top of industry, progress, leisure and empire - Bereshit is there to remind us of timeless mandates of fundamental ethics - do good, be good and ethically sound, etc, etc, etc in the way of The Avot...we're counseled to follow the ethics (the central lifeways), of the city-leaving, nomadic, sheep-herding Forefathers...All of which is to some degree possible in virtually any situation we find ourselves, from rural Saskatchwan to H"V a deathcamp to nebach, Deal, NJ. But obviously some are more preferable to others. Where Jews revere Shlomo haMelekh in much popular Jewish literature for the vastness of his empire, his connections, etc, etc...the very same Jew's Tanach criticizes these very achievements (accumulating horses, i.e. chariots, a standing army of conscripts, marrying for political allegiances to expand the empire, etc). I think the current setting of the post-industrial West is reaching the "get the hell out of Dodge" stage, by the sweat of our own brow.

Paleodiet and Animal Consumption II
From a post on the UTJ listserv earlier this year;

"The Rav said: The precepts were given only in order that man might be refined by them. For what does the Holy One, blessed be He, care whether a man kills an animal by the throat or by the nape of the neck?"
--from Genesis Rabbah 44:1 as found on page 39 of "Jews and Judaism in the Middle Ages" by Theodore L. Steinberg.

From this I take it that the killing of an animal is meaningless. What is important is how the character of a man is shaped when he does it. That was my impression. I am willing to be corrected.

My initial response to the brief exchange;

I've been following this discussion, I'm not responding to anyone on particular. I grew up in Appalachia, hunting was quite common. Using the phrase "hunting for sport" would have earned you a "Mah zeh?" facial expression and a "You mean going on Safari, in Africa?...".

Hunting is a big investment of time, money and energy, and just getting some antlers or a head is simply not worth all that effort. I asked a chassidic rabbi about hunting once, and he was clear that from his perspective there was no issur in it inherently (let alone what sort of 'middot' in fosters), as long as benefit was derived from the taking of the animals life - and this would be especially so for a gentile, who is permitted to consume the meat (even possibly halachically, as pe Ever Min haHai). He seemed to have a clear consciousness of life relying on death, plain and simple (or maybe it's the fur shtreimels and spodeks they wear..). The kinds of weapons (razor-sharp arrowheads and high caliber, mushrooming bullets), are literally designed to cause as much swift bloodloss as possible, all to the end of shortening the 'dying' of the animal. I eavesdropped once on a hunting class where the teacher was specifically talking about these attributes, emphasising the point of shortening the suffering. And they've lived a natural, predator/prey existence until the point they're taken...been in a slaughterhouse laterly?

I think the attitude that hunting AS SUCH fosters 'bad middot' (or reading R. Landau's "hunting for sport" as simply "hunting") is, I'm sorry, complete narishkeit compared to the dehumanization fostered by the mechanical, agribusiness mass carnage approach we get most of our 'kosher' meat from, let alone so much dehumanizing that comes with 'modern' existence [at the time I hadn't read R. Landau's tshuva, where he clearly is against hunting as such; my language would definitely have been different had I been clear on this - though I definitely the hunting endeavor has definitely changed since the place and time of which he wrote]. And I believe rabbis of 200 years ago would probably agree, if they could see the degree to which we've manipulated and industrialized the living, breathing world around us. These animals have literally be bred and chemically modified to be muscle-bound, docile and slow-witted, or with dairy cows, chronically pregnant for better milk-bearing - herded through some of the most profoundly disgusting and smell factory settings you can imagine. At the other end of the process, there's scarcely an indication that a living animal was even involved; nicely package in plastic wrap or cartons, etc, etc.

We're so removed from the fact that life requires death one way or another - and we call such ignorance "being civilized".

I have not known people, personally, who hunted regularly who were not very serious, conscious and respectful about what they do. they know full well that they are using deadly weapons and that they are taking a life - unlike many of the people who spend money for OTHERS to KNOW THE HALACHOT, to do the shechting, plucking, salting, etc...virtually ALL of which Alter-Alter-Zeyde probably did out of simple workaday life.

A response from a rabbinic list member (my emph);

My yore deiah rebbe was a schochet himself. He was both a legalist and a spiritualist. He said that the long ritual o schechita was partially to sensitise the slaughterer to the issues of life and death. Each kill should be done consciously and judiciously [the exacting terminology of "clean kill" and "fair chase"...in hunting].

30 years ago he decried the assembly line slaughter of meat and chickens as not complying with the spirit of the law; and the ensuing numbness of the hands during the course of each shift violated the letter of the law too since a very sensitive feel is a prerequsite for a schochet to be aware that he has complied with the law.

Bottom line, he would concur with pierre (imho) that today's agribusiness is a complete abuse of the kosher slaughtering law. As ramban would put it, disgusting within the confines of Torah.

We have gotten away from nature and we are paying a high price.

I'll bet the rabbis of old and the native amerindians would find a lot of common ground concerning nature and respect for life and the ecology of producing meat for consumption. iow do slaughter and do eat meat but do it judiciously.

I responded;

I had a fantastic story in an email about R. Shlomo Aviner who was consulted about whether or not a certain product was kosher based on the heksher. He said in the letter than all supervision should be assumed to be kosher. Obviously, not because all supervision is adequate for one's give hashgafa - but because it is very inappropriate to say that the supervisors under that hashgacha are falsifiers, etc. I will try to find the email.

My main point in mentioning hunting as I did is, I think it's fair to say that many people do find themselves divorced from the processes of halacha, the processes of the natural world, etc (and not just modern condition or existential angst), such that people can really live radically divided lives; going to ivy-league law schools and denying non-Torah laws as merely baseless and arbitrary; going to medical school and denying fundamental principles of biology, etc, etc. And the affluence that comes with certain segments of the charedi community entering these professions is it's own mess. How people can spend years in yeshiva and have no working knowledge of Hebrew is something that's come up in the educational sphere that was terrifying to me. But it's one of many realities about the Jewish world that are terrifying. James Howard Kunstler recently wrote "The long Emergency; Surviving the converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century". The Jewish world is experiencing some of it's own converging catastrophes, and as with the general world experiencing climate change [or not], economic crisis [or not], peak oil [or not], islamofacism [or not], we experience shidduchim crises [or not], abuse crises [or not], educational crises [or not]...naysayers all along the way from left, right and not on the 'spectrum'. I think, jewishly, the idea of a spectrum is the problem, and generally, mass civilisation the problem. Not that there's ever been any way to turn back...only turning.

A later followup when the rabbi respondant asked permission to post my hunting-related comments to his blog;

That people who even eat meat have such deep reaction against the "taking life" part of hunting was just one example of losing grasp of responsiblity, the limiting of engagement with the realities of life (i.e., at times death is necessary for our life), losing touch with or letting go of the awesome, defining awareness of protecting life, of making and crafting life individually and collectively, and at times taking life into your hands. I think of the manner in which HKBH stipulates exactingly about shechita, korbanot, statecraft, business, war - details! - not merely the *efficient* pat division of "ben adam l'Makom/l'Chavero", that has moderns acting and thinking merely in terms of 'ritually' and 'ethically', 'deed and creed', etc. I've blogged a bit recently about the diffusion of obligations and rights that are part of the Torah derech, and that consequences when people wave certain duties and privileges due to perceived or engineered notions of 'changing times' or "the evolution of human society".

In tanach as recently noted by R. Joshua Berman in "Created Equal" (a great book I can't push enough), there is enlightening comparison to be made between ancient suzerainty treaties and covenant in Torah. But in Torah there is a diffusion of duty and privilege between EACH individual Jew and HKBH - not between one king and a King. There are obligations made over all israel that in other texts are made only between certain individuals or certain groups; in Torah, the entire nation are to be priests, the entire nation are obligated in military service - and in the ancient-through-early modern world...these have been specific classes within hierarchical societies.

The pervasive mindset these Torah obligations COULD have created over millenia is very different from what evolved to be the 'modern' mindset of Professionals, of Experts, of specialization (the restraint on horses made on Shlomo HaMelekh being about a limit on the extent and nature of the military, which was to be largely a militia of the people for defending the land, not necessarily for charioting out to expand an empire) - where certain duties and knowledge that would seem to be incumbent on all reasonable human beings (self-preservation, responsibility for ones health and livelyhood, etc), are privileged information or privileged access to "experts". The fact that the following quote from sci fi author Robert Heinlein seems rather extravagant should give us pause for thought;

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,
analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently, die gallantly."

I think it's not the content of his contention so much as the opening we have problems with; many of us have a real hard time cognating "A human being should" - and many people think we're more 'civilized' for not having that breadth and detail of perspective and experience that makes for real Common Knowledge. Many people think a "civilized" Jew should not know how to change his/her oil, or more seriously, use a firearm to defend oneself and family against immediate danger, as was a not infrequent reality in the recent past and present. This general 'point' could be made at the yeshiva world and the MO world. For all their learning, secular and religious, neither - or either - could be the nation mandated by Torah. Where the contemporary non-Jewish world grew enormously from Jewish ideas and often from the presence of Jews, Jewish national society doesn't seem to have actually evolved productively. I say this not because I think I can propose some "new Israelite" model, like R. Yuter might do. I say this because I'm scared, and I think in the relatively near future we're going to suffer the consequences of the smallness of mind and heart and hand, as 'civilized' humans and as Jews.

How far is a "nation of doctors/nation of lawyers/nation of programmers/nation of CPAs" - none of which are mandated in Torah - all of which are represented in the yeshivish/MO worlds...going to take us into the future? I might have mentioned before the piece "living in the shadow" from Nishma's Introspection. I think it's totally deadon and it should be a "must read" in this social/economic climate. Maybe R. Hecht could be confinced to post it as a special piece on Nishma's page. I think it's that important.

Yisachar and Zevulun; Another Model, b'Zman haZeh?...
From Hirhurim;
The Yalkut Shimoni (par. 960) writes: Click here for more

שמח זבולון בצאתך מלמד שהיה זבולון סרסור לאחיו והיה לוקח מאחיו ומוכר לכנענים ומן הכנענים ומוכר לאחיו.

Rejoice, Zevulun, in your going out -- This teaches that Zevulun was a broker for his brother and would buy from his brother and sell to the Canaanites (or merchants) and buy from the Canaanites and sell to his brother.

In other words, Yisachar was a local merchant, which allowed him to stay at home rather than travel. Zevulun was a traveling salesman who enabled Yisachar to stay home, which presumably allowed him more time to study.
According to this version of the midrash, both Yisachar and Zevulun were businessmen. Neither learned Torah full-time. One, however, was able to choose a profession that allowed more time for religious study and the other chose a more challenging profession to enable the other to have more time.

This is an important lesson for those at the time of their lives when they are choosing their professions. There are different kinds of jobs and you need to choose one which fulfills your goals in terms of time consumption. You can choose a profession that allows you more time to study Torah or you can be an enabler of Torah.

A recent issue of Jewish Action Reader (v. 70 #1), had a piece featuring several people, mostly in business, who managed to be just such Zevulun’s. R. Gil concludes with the obvious, but something that, regrettably, must be stated;

Of course, you can be something else entirely. There are more tribes than just Yisachar and Zevulun.

Also "of course"; they are other tribes - which is to say, whatever ones derech, it must have something of a communal component very close to the core. But how does one manage such a range of choices, in life and profession? Suggestions from R. Cherlow/Sherlo (here), and R. Yosef Blau (here).

Paleodiet and Animal Consumption

In the first third of the above video, professional hunter and lay preacher Phil "The Duck Commander" Robertson makes use of a pasuk from Torah regarding the animals being given over to human beings for consumption, post-Mabul. I had late last year asked a Modern Orthodox pulpit rabbi and intellectual about the permissibility of hunting, which is generally assumed by those who ask such questions, to be forbidden to Jews (based on a tshuvah by the Noda b'Yehudah). Not only did he say it was not forbidden, when I repeatedly asked for clarification from him, he literally cited as plainly as the Duck Commander this very verse. Several years ago, I'd actually asked a Chassidic rabbi the same question, and he clarified that so long as Tzaar baalei Haim was not violated (i.e., that the taking of the animals life must not be a wasteful act), there is no issur. Both rabbis were in the position to offer the famed responsa of the Noda b'Yehudah - neither of them did.

Though consumption of game that is "hunted" is forbidden Jews (netting is definitely a means of hunting and might be possible, though difficult - let alone unnecessary even in a survival scenario), and there's plenty of discussion of the merits of vegetarian diets over omnivorous diets and books 'hinting' at the spiritually-preferable nature of abstention from meat consumption, I'd like to do a few openly-apologetic posts on the nutrition (particularly the Paleodiet), and ethics of meat consumption in the modern world, as well as the relationship of animals and man, the law "against" Jews being involved with hunting and the place of loss of sensitivity to death in our lives and related meanderings. Next post should be some annotated links on different aspects of all of the above.