And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to...
You may be surprised to read what follows and you may be sure that I'm even more surprised to be writing it. Those who follow my tweets (do, they're pretty good) will know that, to put it mildly, I'm neither a fan of Pinter nor of the UOHC Rabbinate. But since the two are almost always on the same page I do not often have to make the invidious choice of who is the better looking or has the tidier beard. This time, however, after their very public falling out it is precisely this choice which falls to me and if needs must we might as well get on with it.
The facts are pretty basic. Pinter expressed himself 'shocked' after the local MP Diane Abbott failed to oppose or even speak out during a debate on the local Labour party motion that the Labour party is not institutionally antisemitic. A pen pusher from her office then turned up at the UOHC Beth Din to complain about Pinter following which the UOHC Rabbinate approved the above letter. I have highlighted the salient passage where Pinter is dismissed as a mere unrepresentative 'one individual'. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
Before we move on to the madness and badness of this letter, it's worthwhile putting it into context. A week earlier Shlomo Sinitsky, the chairman of Kedassia, had resigned and the entire Rabbinate debased themselves in order to bring him back. Every one of them personally signed not one but two letters in his support, senior rabbis paid him a home visit, the original offenders issued public apologies and all in an effort to get Sinitsky to retract his resignation.
How then should Pinter feel seeing all of this? Without meaning to devalue Sinitsky’s work, his is an administrative job which with some training can be picked up by another competent administrator without too much disruption. Pinter on the other hand is the public face of our community. I do not agree with much of what he says or does and it would sometimes be nice if he wasn't so much in love with his face. But it's not me that matters here.
From the point of view of the rabbis, Pinter has been providing them and their community a stellar service for decades. I'm not now referring to the schools but to the public relation he conducts on behalf of the community and the rabbis. I've heard from askonim within and from outside journalists how no one but he will speak up for us. It is them rabbis who keep on stepping right into it and parading it to the world thinking it smells of besomim, it is they who time and again abjectly fail in their duties as leaders and it is to him that they turn to pick up the pieces and stick out his neck for them in public.
Speaking out for our community is a thankless task. Far too often we put ourselves out as objects of scorn by seeming to condone if not actively facilitate shady activities, by covering up all forms of abuse, by engaging in practices which win us negative headlines with unseeming regularity. In those situations the rabbis lock themselves away, at best mumble some incomprehensible mutterings into their moustaches and at worst aggravate an already bad situation with pearls of wisdom such as 'the police are not the solution'. It is at times like these that Pinter pops up on the radio, television and in newspapers to spin some yarn on their behalf. Yet it is precisely in this arena where they chose to cut him down.
Gosh, I'm enjoying this so I might as well continue. If there was any logic or calculation behind this I may have tried to understand them. If they had eased Pinter out of 'his' school I would have paid tribute for the credit due to him and optimistically (or naively) looked forward to a new governing body to put their house in order. If they had put the wedding hall on a fair footing I would have cheered them to the rafters. But none of this will change and they at UOHC know that for these reasons the Sinitsky route is not available to Pinter. UOHC is itself a beneficiary of the wedding hall shenanigans and they wouldn't want him to go either.
So they stuck the knife in where they know he cannot strike back, on the public stage he so covets and in relation to the local MP who is also a national figure. And you ask yourself why? For what rhyme or reason? All Pinter had said was that he was 'shocked' by Abbott failing to speak out on a local Labour Party motion. On a scale of 1 to 100 of political expressions, 'shocked' comes in at about 5.5. To put it into context when in a parliamentary debate on antisemitism Abbott caused an outcry by trying to deflect criticism of Labour in pointing the finger at Ofsted, it was Pinter who stood up and defended her. If some of the rabbis are unhappy with the inertia of ChinuchUK they have plenty of opportunity to make themselves known. But this is of an altogether different nature and what calculation however Machiavellian could have been behind it? But there is none.
I know I'd be expected to say something about Shraga Stern but I shan’t. Shraga Stern does what Shraga Stern does best. He claims to speak on behalf of no one, he's a disruptor activist elbowing his way to the top and so far he's been doing rather well. There is, however, absolutely no reason why the rabbis should be behind him if they chose not to. They told Stern to back off on the Board of Deputies demonstration which he did. It is the rabbis who signed the letter in support of Corbyn, again the rabbis who ruled for Stern in his Freedom of Information dispute with ChinuchUK and now yet again the rabbis who authorised this anti-Pinter letter.
This is about the rabbis and them alone. Even if I was inclined to be generous to them by saying they did not mean to give him a kick it would still be beside the point. How stupid must one be not to realise that if a pen-pusher from Diane Abbott's office turns up in front of them he must have been put up to it? Are the rabbis so self-obsessed to think that anyone outside our square mile has even heard of them? They think they are invincible because they can expound on bulls goring heifers and come up with wheezes on a watertight sales contract for chometz and so they must also understand the real world of everything including labyrinthine politics which they neither follow nor understand. Who knows, perhaps they have something to say on nuclear diffusion too.
We now know that they're useless at kashrus which is a central part of their remit - don't take my word for it; 30 odd of the town's dayonim have so confirmed. But yet it hadn't dawned on them perhaps to defer, to discuss, to consult before issuing this letter. And even if they were inclined to proceed, wouldn't common decency and mentshlichkeit prompt them to pause before stabbing one of their most senior lay leaders? Is this what their superior 6th sense of Daas Torah guides them to do? That when a problem is brought before them they grab a knife instead of a pen to kill off the goose that most protects their golden eggs? We confuse the rabbis' survival skills in protecting their positions for themselves and their kids as indicators of good sense. In reality, as this incident shows, there is simply no seichel there in any meaningful way. Even from the vantage point of their self-interest, they shuould not heap ridicule on their public face in this shameful manner.
It’s shameful indeed that it’s left to me of all people to remind them that Pinter is not ‘one individual’. He is a UOHC trustee, he is chairman of the external affairs committee, for better or worse he runs our flagship school and to top it all he more than anyone is the public face not just of our local community but of the national chareidi community.
If senior rabbonim paid Sinitsky a home visit to placate him, then the entire Rabbinate, their wives, kids, daughter in laws and grandchildren should be crawling in front of him. No one expects that to happen but where are Pinter's senior colleagues who should at the very least be extracting a 'clarification' from the Rabbinate on its position. Where is Frand? Where is Baumgarten? Where are Goldman, Rothfeld, Gordon, Kesselman and the other bigwigs who sit round the table with Pinter at those grand-sounding subcommittees? Why when the community at large is firmly anti-Corbyn are the rabbonim knifing Pinter when all he did was to respond to a motion widely seen as anti-Jewish by Jews and non-Jews alike? If the rabbis were naïve in the pro-Corbyn letter what is their excuse in this anti-Pinter missive? And if the rabbis can't see the point, where are the lay leaders?
The answer is plain to see. There is simply no one there. The same people who stab us daily by tripling the price of foodstuffs and weekly by denying us an eiruv will stab their own when it suits them. No calculations, no grand plan, just shamelessness, ineptitude and idiocy on a gargantuan scale. Hardly anything we hadn't known before but from time to time they'll do something just in case we hadn't been paying attention.
The legal position is clear. Alderman's favoured tactics of insult and obfuscation will not prevail in a courtroom. Trolling about Article 9 when precedent clearly qualifies it in respect of Article 8 rights will convince only the learned professor. He should stop exhibiting his obvious grief and come to terms with his daughter's sexuality in a less public sphere.
ReplyDeleteTaking this matter to court will clarify it further, and impede any chance of an informal margin of accommodation. Stern knows this. And yet he pressed ahead. Is he concerned about the children, or is he concerned about promoting his own profile?
You have contributed more than you would care to admit to the current febrile atmosphere of anarchic hefker.
You put your own humongous and fragile ego first and foremost. The (delicate) moral issues and the welfare of children simply didn't come into it.
You have nothing to say about Stern because he skillfully exploited your prejudices to the detriment of gay children. He used you to build a profile, and you willingly complied because you underestimated him.
As for you stating that he doesn't claim to represent anyone - that's a big fat lie. He claims to represent the Charedi community in the press releases.
So what's your plan Tickle? Do you think Pinter would have been toppled without your early connivance with Stern? We remember your "arsekonim"gibes at a man making a good faith effort to be the adult in the room.
No calculations, no grand plan, just shamelessness, ineptitude and idiocy on a gargantuan scale.
Well-done, the Hat. You've offered a clear analysis of the situation. Mr Tickle, your hatred of Pinter blinded you to the extremism of Mr Stern who played you as he played Alderman whom he completely despises. You say that the rabbis don't know what they're doing. That doesn't make sense. They have their interests. Perhaps you don't want to see it. It's very likely that they side with Mr Stern.
DeleteYes. same things i gonna write here...Mr. Hat have done good analysis though. Keep it up.
DeleteWhat is shocking is the political ineptitude of the UOHC. Rabbi Pinter is a member of the Labour Party and an ex councillor and it is clear that he was speaking as such. If Hackney Labour were unhappy with Pinter's comments then they should have taken internal disciplinary steps against him rather then involve a third party, but of course they would not do so because many leading Labour politicians would come to his support as seen in the widespread condemnation of Hackney Labour by Labour moderates in the mainstream press. The UOHC should have made it clear to Hackney Labour that they are not their tools in internal disputes. What next will Hackney Labour demand from the UOHC? A declaration that Hareidi conservative voters have no chelek in the Olam Habo or that Zionists bake matzos with children's blood?
ReplyDeleteShraga Stern's mistake were fundamental 1) accepting the risks of abuse associated with failing to provide sex education generally 2) choosing to mislead the entire community about legal advice he had received 3) falling to acknowledge the science that some people are born gay and 4) working to undermine the majority of the community by being present and involved with a man whose hatred towards Israel was conspiratorial and tribal.
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ReplyDeleteIt is not for a Jew, and certainly not for a gentile, albeit a Cohen, to traduce Satamr as a group as "noble savages", "obscurantists which reject every step humanity has taken from religious domination since the Enlightenment."
Cohen's mockery of "Yiddish accent, beard and ringlets" is equivalent to Jonhston's jibes about burqa letter boxes. His invocation of the Shylock trope "Labour should check out how migrant workers were treated on London sites" is offensive. But offense is far less important than intellectual vacuity.
The Enlightenment an important reference point. The centuries of European wars of religion were started by an absolutism which thought that society would be improved by imposing an orthodoxy of religious and cultural norms upon the entire citizenry. The lesson on the Enlightenment is that there are limits to the power of the state to impose its vision - of religion - or freedom from religion - upon the citizenry. Cohen misunderstands his own Enlightenment - what hope has he of understanding the strength of belief of others?
I cannot defend Stern's vision of SE. I cannot defend his denial of the reality that a percentage of people are born gay. It must be awful for that percentage to be brought up hating yourself for what you are, and the truth is that the Stamford Hill community is not a safe place for these children. In fact, Stamford Hill is not a safe place to be a straight child - inadequate, unsafe, premises, lack of safeguarding procedures and education to protect from sexual abuse, poor educational standards, lack of accountability for those standards, the continued use of physical punishment, excessively long hours, poor provision for less gifted students, and a narrow curriculum - all problems that are being passed over with the current focus on the issue of sexual education.
And what's the Orwellian alternative? Is the state to take 97% of the the 10,000 children in Stamford Hill who are heterosexual into the dubious care of the state because of their parents’ views on the other 3%? To incarcerate parents for refusing to participate in what parents genuinely see as an education into promiscuity and prostitution? Could the state provide an education to the approximately 1,500 boys "missing" in Stamford Hill? Is there capacity locally? What would happen if the state compelled these children, so very different to their neighbors culturally, linguistically and - yes - in terms of religion - to attend the schools of Hackney, what would happen? Is outsourcing the problem of Charedi extremism to other countries - for be in no doubt, that is what would happen if the British state were to assert itself - a moral outcome? Is the state, the very state which until very recently, under section 28, conformed to the same vision as Shraga Stern is promulgating - the best arbiter of morality? Is it fair to use the label of "extremist" to terrorist suicide bombers and schools which censor the very mention of any sexuality, but have no intention of harming anyone?
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ReplyDeleteThere have been attempts to usurp the role of the parent. Kibbutzim, orphanages – all failures. There are times where parents are so toxic and vile that a child must be removed and put into care, but these are the least bad from a selection of bad choices.
And that is what has been missing throughout the whole debate is a focus on the interests of the children. For all their faults, their prejudices and their obscurantism, the state cannot hope to adequately substitute for parents' love and care.
Many of us need to look in the mirror. Insofar as Shraga Stern betrays us as a people when he sits down with Corbyn, do we not betray Charedim every time we caricature this entire community as "extremists" to the outside world? While Satmar's objections to the state of Israel are theological, the theology always had regards for the interests of Palestinians as a significant strand woven into vayoel moshe. Satmar displayed achdus with the Jews of Yemen. We cannot dismiss Satmar as Kapos for their beliefs, just as they cannot dismiss us. We should not abandon Jewish unity for a sympathetic name-check in the Guardian.
But Satmar are "obscurantists which reject every step humanity has taken from religious domination since the Enlightenment" and anyone, be they Jewish or not, must have a right to point that out, especially if failure to recognize that fact, harms public policy. Neither was Cohen traducing Satmar as 'noble savages'; he makes clear that he does not believe in that concept which he sees as created so as a form of racism of low expectations. He is not mocking the Yiddish, beards and ringlocks but pointing out that these result from a deliberate policy of insularity to maintain pre-Enlightenment religious domination which those on the Left would otherwise condemn.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson of the Enlightenment is that not only that the state not use it powers to oppress the private citizen for his religious or ideological beliefs; it is that the state must use its considerable powers to prevent private citizens from oppressing other private citizens for their religious and ideological beliefs be it the Church, employers, landlords, schools and even (if not especially) parents.
You claim that such attempts to ween children away from indoctrination by the religious are doomed to failure, however we only need to look at society outside N16 to see how successfully modern Britain and Europe have disestablished themselves from their religious past without the use of Orwellian methods. There are 10 million children in 30,000 schools in the UK. You think the system cannot handle an extra 1,500 boys?
Satmar's anti-Zionism is irrelevant to the education issue. It arises from cognitive dissonance relating to the failure of its religious lifestyle to lead to divine protection from the Holocaust (whose fate Zionists who moved to Palestine escaped). The idea that Satmar are concerned with the fate of the Palestinian Arabs is ludicrous.
Corbynistas (especially those in Jewish Voice for Labour) suffer similar cognitive dissonance arising from Communist role in empowering Hitler and causing World War II.