Islamic courts in Britain

NYTimes reports:

LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.

But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.

In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had d his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.

The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.

This is Islamic justice, British style. Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country.

The Church of England has its own ecclesiastical courts. British Jews have had their own “beth din” courts for more than a century.

But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue, assuaging critics while trying to reassure a wary and at times disaffected Muslim population that its traditions have a place in British society.

Boxed between the two, the government has taken a stance both cautious and confusing, a sign of how volatile almost any discussion of the role of Britain’s nearly two million Muslims can become.[...]

Conversion - Join IDF & become a Jew

JPost reports:

Like thousands of other young immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Ukrainian-born Igor Lermont always considered himself Jewish, even though his mother is not Jewish.

"When I was young, I thought I was Jewish," the 22-year-old IAF technician told a small delegation of North American Jews attending the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities in Jerusalem on Tuesday. "I thought it did not matter that my father is Jewish and mother is not."

When he arrived in Israel four-and-a-half years ago, Lermont soon discovered that according to Jewish law, a person's religion is determined by the mother - regulations that are strictly followed by the government, as the Orthodox have a monopoly on religious affairs.

After enlisting in the army, Lermont heard of an educational Jewish-Zionist educational program, offered in conjunction with his military service, which culminates with official conversion performed by the IDF Rabbinate.

The program, called Nativ, offers soldiers and officers who are not Jewish according to Halacha a seven- or 11-week intensive course in Judaism to prepare them for conversion.

After completing the course and being sent back to their bases, soldiers interested in proceeding with the conversion process are then invited to two two-week seminars, with a month off between them, before undergoing the official conversion by three rabbis of the IDF Chaplaincy.

The programs, which are a joint project of the IDF Education Corps and the Joint Institute for Jewish Studies, are made possible with the support of the Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency for Israel. They offer thousands of IDF soldiers an opportunity to convert in an Orthodox-recognized process with like-minded peers in a friendly environment, bypassing the rigid civilian conversion system.

"I enlisted in the army specifically to take this course," said Cpl. Sophie Shapira, 19, who immigrated to Israel as a baby from Moscow, never knowing she was not considered Jewish by her adoptive country. She is now nearing the end of the course.

"Back in Lithuania, I knew that I would not be considered Jewish in Israel, and I thought it was a joke," said Lt. Dalia Desiatnik, 21, a basic training platoon commander. "When I got here, I understood it was no joke."

One million Jews from the former Soviet Union have immigrated to Israel over the last decade and a half, but about a third of them are not Jewish according to Halacha.

Today one out of every five soldiers is a new immigrant, with one of four new immigrants serving in a combat unit.[...]

Molad - Moon's Race against Earth

From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA) by Avraham Broide

(Jerusalem based translator and journalist. phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il) 

==================================================================================

The moon is an erratic traveler, sometimes zipping through its monthly circuit at high speed, and sometimes gliding along at a more leisurely pace. Because of this, the difference between a long month and a short month is sometimes as long as thirteen and a half hours.

Why does the moon speed and slow down with such maddening irregularity?

Let us explore what the Molad, or "New Moon."

About every 29.5 days, the moon begins a new month at the Molad, soon after it passes directly between the earth and the sun. Sometimes, the moon blocks the sun's light from earth during this maneuver and we experience a solar eclipse. Why does the moon take varying times to run this monthly race?

The answer is based on the difference between circles and ellipses. If the moon and earth traveled in perfectly circular orbits, Molads would always arrive with (almost) perfect regularity, since objects traveling in circular orbits never alter their speed.

However, since the moon and earth have elliptical orbits, and objects move in elliptical orbits vary their speeds, the earth and moon constantly slow down and speed up depending on their place in orbit.

Illustration: The earth moves slowest when it is furthest from the sun on the left, and speeds up as it moves nearer the sun towards the right.  

This is why the moon has irregular molads!

If the moon is moving slowly towards the end of the month and the earth is moving faster, the moon takes longer to catch up with the sun-moon-earth axis and you have a longer month. The opposite happens when the moon is moving fast and the earth is moving slowly. In such a circumstance, the moon catches up with the sun faster and you have a shorter month.

Illustration: In this example, the moon is near earth and moving faster, while the earth is far from the sun and moving slower.

Some time after the Churban, Hillel II created the modern calendar which avoids the irregular-month problem by using the average month-length mentioned by Raban Gamliel (Rosh Hashana 25a): "So I received from the house of the father of my father; the renewal of the moon is not less than 29 and a 1/2 days, 2/3 of an hour, and 73 parts (1/18^th of a minute)."

With this average molad, it is very easy to calculate the average molad of any month of the past or future.

However, incredibly accurate as Raban Gamliel's average month-length may be, it is gradually becoming less precise due the "stretching of time."

What is the "stretching of time?" Not some obtruse, Einsteinian concept, but simply the gradual lengthening of the day due to the moon's constant tugging on the world's oceans. Friction caused by the tides' flow and ebb is slowing down the world's spin, lengthening the days by about 0.00175 seconds per year, and due to this our modern days are about 1.75 seconds longer than the days of a thousand years ago.

Since Raban Gamliel's average month-length is tailored for the shorter days of the past, the lengthening days have gradually pushed Chazal's molad so far backwards that unlike the time of Hillel II when it was accurate to milliseconds, it is now off by about 0.6 of a second per month. These small differences have added up and nowadays, on average, the average molad calculation runs about two hours late!

This does not matter, since the Chazon Ish lays down a general rule in connection with a similar issue that Chazal's measurements do not have to absolutely coincide with reality. Also, using a chelek (1/18 of a minute) as his smallest unit, Raban Gamliel could in any case not have expressed the molad average with more accuracy.

DIFFERENT MONTH MODES

We mentioned that the Molad calculation began ticking from the time of Ma'asei Bereishis. If so, what is the meaning of Hashem's command in Egypt (Shemos 12:2), This month shall be for you the first of months?

In his fascinating discussion of this verse, the Ramban not only explains this point, but also resolves a triple contradiction.

First, he explains that This month shall be for you the first of months is saying that just as it is a mitzvah to constantly remember Shabbos by calling the days rishon b'Shabbos and sheni b'Shabbos, so it is a mitzvah to start the counting of the months from Nissan, in order to remember the redemption from Egypt.

But how can one say that the count begins in Nissan? The year begins with Rosh Hashana in Tishrei as it says (Shemos 34:22), And the festival of ingathering [Sukkos] at the changing (tekufas) of the year? The Ramban answers that although we call Nissan the first month and Iyar the seventh month, this does not mean that they are the first or seventh months of the year, but that they are the first or seventh month since our redemption.

The Ramban now raises another difficulty. How why do call the months by the names Nissan, Iyar, etc? Isn't this a violition of the Torah's command to name them Rishon and Sheni after Yetzi'as Mitzrayim?

To answer this question, he cites the Yerushalmi (Rosh Hashana 1:2) that states, "The names of the months came with them from Bavel." In other words, the Jews innovated a new month innovation system after returning from the second galus. Why? In order to fulfill the verse (Yirmeyahu 16:14,15), It will no longer be said, as Hashem lives who raised bnei Yisroel from the land of Egypt, but, as Hashem lives who raised bnei Yisroel and who took bnei Yisroel from the land of the north [Bavel].

"We reverted to called the months the names they are called in Bavel to be a reminder that we were there and that Hashem, may He be blessed, raised us from there," the Ramban concludes. "Because these names, Nissan, Iyar, and the rest, are Persian names, and are only mentioned in the sefarim of the prophets who were in Bavel (Zechariah 1:7, Ezra 6:15, Nechemiah 1:1) and in Megillas Esther (3:7). ...And until today, the nations in the lands of Persia and Madai, so they call them Nissan and Tishrei and all of them, like us. And so we make remembrance, with [these] months, of the second redemption, as we had made until now of the first [redemption]."

Actually, the people in Bavel pronounced them a little differently, for example, Simanu instead of Sivan, Du'uzu instead of Tamuz,  and Arakhsamma instead of Marcheshvan. Also, they counted Shevat before Teveis. But our version is close enough to eternally remind us of our redemption from the land of Nevuchadnezer and Haman.

THIRTY DAYS HATH SEPTEMBER

In light of the Ramban's statement that the Hebrew month-names and their numerical symbols serve such important functions, how can we use non-Jewish month names such as January and February, that remind us neither of Yetzias Mitzrayim, nor of our escape from Bavel?

One intriguing answer is that, in the Torah view, non-Jewish months are not months at all as their timing is purely arbitary and has nothing to do with the Molad. In fact, the earliest Roman calendar created in about 3008/753 BCE by the mythic first king of Rome, Romulus, did not even have twelve months, but only ten! This early ten month system helps explain a surprising incongruity connected with these month's names.

Most of the first four months are named after false gods, raising a sha'alah how we are permitted to use them. Martis was the god of war, Aprilis probably refers to hog raising, Maius was an Italian god, and Junius was yet another god.

By the time he reached the fifth month, Romulus' imagination seems to have ran dry as labeled the remaining six months as 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th, or, in Latin, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December.

Since this ten month year had a miniscule length of only 304 days, far less than the solar year of 365 days, in about 3061/700 BCE, the Romans tacked two more months to the year, Januarius and Februarius, stretching it to 355 days.

Centuries later, Julius Caesar, made the names of the last six months a joke when he shifted the beginning of the year from March to January, so that the names September, October, etc., no longer make any sense. Also, Quintilis was renamed Julius after Julius Caesar, and Sextilis was later renamed Augustus after Augustus Caesar, bringing the month's name to their present form. 

All this makes it obvious that the secular months have nothing to do with our lunar year. They are not months in the Torah meaning of the word, and thus one can argue that using them does not constitute a substitute for the names of the Hebrew months.

Of course, it is no big mitzvah to use them either.

(Sources: Duncan David Ewing, "The Calendar," 1999, Fourth Estate, London. Source of molad information: Dr. Bromberg Irv of University of Toronto, Canada, "Moon and the Molad of the Hebrew Calendar." )  

Third Year Seminary cancelled

Chedrei Chadarim reports:

Valis sentenced for killing son

JPost reports:

The Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday sentenced Yisrael Valis,convicted of killing his infant son in 2006, to six years imprisonment and a two-year suspended sentence. Valis was convicted of manslaughter earlier this year for beating his three-month-old son to death.

The baby died in the hospital on April 10 2006, a week afterhis then-19-year-old father hurled him against the wall when he startedto cry.

The young father's arrest led to days of haredi rioting in Jerusalem, after leaders of the vehemently anti-Zionist Edah Haredit community - which the Valis family was part of - accused police of concocting a 'blood libel' identical to European blood libels against the Jews.

Valis, who was arrested after he admitted during police questioning to repeatedly beating his child, later retracted his confession in a court hearing, saying that it had been coerced by police.

Prague CER conference & R' Tropper

Rabbi Tropper was asked to speak at the recent CER conference in Prague - but I heard that his presentation ran into serious difficulties. Any clarification of what actually happened and what is happening - apparently a major change in Rabbi Tropper & EJF's status - would be appreciated.

Conversion - Europe vs. Israel/ Whose rabbis?

JPost reported:

At a Conference of European Rabbis in Prague last week, rabbis from Europe's smallest Jewish communities said the current policy of the European Orthodox establishment was limiting the growth of small communities at a time when interest in Judaism is being rekindled among assimilated Jews and their non-Jewish descendants.

"If I can start to convert observant people who have already been coming to my synagogue for the past five years, I can have a minyan," explained Rabbi Kotel Dadon of Zagreb.

Instead, he told hundreds of assembled Orthodox rabbis from across Europe, he faced a catch-22 that is keeping his community from growing.

Only with conversions can he build a viable community, but the poskim (halachic decisors) and batei din (rabbinic courts) of Europe won't convert someone living in a community that lacks the institutions necessary for Jewish life, such as the schools, ritual baths and kosher slaughterhouses required for an observant lifestyle.

Most prominent among these poskim is England's Rabbi Chanoch HaCohen Ehrentreu, who sat a few meters from Dadon as he and many other rabbis - from Budapest, Zurich, Helsinki and elsewhere - explained their difficulties and sought advice.

"The question is whether Croatia has an infrastructure for Judaism," explained a rabbi familiar with Ehrentreu's opinion. "What is conversion? It's an acceptance of the yoke of mitzvot. If [the aspiring convert] doesn't know what mitzvot are, or cannot fulfill them, how can he accept them?"

Former French chief rabbi Joseph Sitruk agreed. "To convert someone who will be the lone Jew in his area is to put a stumbling block before the blind. How can you keep Torah and mitzvot alone?" he asked.

"Conversion can be the salvation of a community, or its destruction," said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow."If it is done according to law and custom, the convert can be the strongest link in the community, but if [the convert] continues to behave like a Gentile, sending the message to our youth that it's permissible to be Gentile, to marry Gentiles, this will destroy a community."

But the rabbis from the struggling communities did not come to Prague to rail against the senior rabbinic leadership of European Orthodoxy, but to beseech its help.

"They are my beth din," said a rabbi from a tiny Balkan community. "We need a beth din to have a communal life. I can't grow the community without them. So I must convince them to help me. That's what I'm doing here." [...]

Another complaint of Europe's rabbis was perhaps moresurprising. Many Israelis attended the conference, including chief rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger. The Israelis held the more conservative position throughout, and came to be seen by many participants as unhelpful.

One organizer said that the many Israeli participants "were more trouble than they're worth.

Next year, we're considering not inviting the Israelis."

The CER was meant to deal with European problems, said rabbis atthe conference, and the Israeli rabbinate's push to standardize conversion under its authority worldwide has met with much resistance both in the US and Europe.

"In Europe we could get a consensus of opinion [on conversion]to which most of Orthodoxy would agree," said one of Europe's most senior rabbinic figures. "But I don't think you'll ever get an international consensus on conversion."

"Right now, unity is not possible," agreed Belgian chief rabbi Albert Guigui. "The Jews of Brussels are not the same as the Jews of Bnei Brak. Perhaps we need to establish consistent guidelines in all countries to preserve the principles" of Orthodox conversion.

At the conference's concluding meeting, former French chief rabbi Sitruk read a decision of the CER, according to which"Conversions will be done in Europe solely by dayanim [rabbinic judges]approved by the standing rabbinic courts of Europe, in cooperation with the [umbrella] European Beth Din headed by Rabbi Ehrentreu."

The message was clear, said conference organizers: conversions in Europe will not be opened to Israeli influence.

IDF - Should teach Jewish values?

Haaretz reports:
The chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces is sticking to his position that the military rabbinate must be involved in inculcating soldiers and officers with "values and Jewish awareness," despite the opposition of the education corps.

"There is a crucial need to connect [the] soldiers with their roots and Jewish values," Rabbi Avihai Ronski wrote in a letter he sent earlier this month to officers in the military rabbinate, in response to criticism that arose in response to a Haaretz article describing the rabbis' activities. "Thank God we have the privilege of dealing with this. We should continue to act in the area of Jewish awareness."

Haaretz reported a month ago that the IDF rabbinate was getting involved in areas under the responsibility of the education corps and quoted senior officers as saying the IDF rabbis are dangerously close to preaching that troops become religious and introducing soldiers to their right-wing political views.

In his letter, Ronski said "it seems utterly plain" that IDF rabbis are supposed to be involved in inculcating Jewish values. He said he met with dozens of unit commanders before he took up his post and was told they saw the job of the IDF rabbinate as being "to teach us, who did not grow up in a religious home, what Judaism is." [...]

Child Abuse - A sefer on the Jewish perspective III/ changed focus

My sefer discussing child abuse has passed the 300 page mark and is growing by the hour. It has become obvious that most of the material I am citing is not specific to child abuse. Issues such as rodef, mesira, etc are in fact applicable to other issues such as wife or hsuband abuse, self abuse in the form of drug, alcohol or tobacco abuse, etc etc.

Therefore I have decided to expand the focus of the book. It is now enttled:

 "Abuse of Others (including Oneself) in Halacha and Hashkofa"

All support is greatly appreciated either with 1) sending me relevant sources and issues, 2) financially (through my Paypal account on my blog) and/or 3) buying the sefer when it is out in a projected 5 months.

Child abuse - Heter to call police/ Rambam

Among the various justifications for calling the police in the case of child abuse is the following Rambam [Shulchan Aruch C.M. 388:12 according to Gra & Shach] which is found in his discussion of moser. A major concern is the source of this Rambam. There is no direct source in Chazal which says this. It is discussed at length by the Chasam Sofer and the Minchas Yitzchok. Is it a viable source to call the police? Ask your local posek.

Rambam (Hilchos Chovel uMazik 8:11): ...Similarly concerning all those who distress the community and harm it – it is permitted to hand them over to the non‑Jewish government to be beaten, imprisoned and punished. However if the person is only disturbing an individual and not the community – it is prohibited to hand him over....

רמב"ם (הלכות חובל ומזיק ח:יא):עשה המוסר אשר זמם ומסר יראה לי שאסור להרגו אלא אם כן הוחזק למסור הרי זה יהרג שמא ימסור אחרים, ומעשים בכל זמן בערי המערב להרוג המוסרים שהוחזקו למסור ממון ישראל ולמסור את המוסרים ביד הגוים להרגם ולהכותם ולאסרם כפי רשעם. וכן כל המיצר לציבור ומצער אותן מותר למסרו ביד גוים להכותו ולאסרו ולקנסו, אבל מפני צער יחיד אסור למסרו, ואסור לאבד ממונו של מסור ואע"פ שמותר לאבד גופו שהרי ממונו ראוי ליורשיו

שולחן ערוך (חושן משפט שפח:יב):

כל המוסר [המיצר גר"א וש"ך]הצבור ומצערן, מותר למסרו ביד עובדי כוכבים אנסים להכותו ולאסרו ולקנסו; אבל מפני צער יחיד אסור למסרו. הגה: (וע"ל סי' תכ"ה ס"א). מי שעוסק בזיופים וכדומה, ויש לחוש שיזיק רבים, מתרין בו שלא יעשה, ואם אינו משגיח, יכולין למסרו ולומר שאין אחר מתעסק בו אלא זה לבד. מי שרוצה לברוח ולא לשלם לעובדי כוכבים מה שחייב, ואחר גילה הדבר, אין לו דין מסור, שהרי לא הפסידו רק שהוצרך לשלם מה שחייב, מכל מקום ברעה עשה דהוי כמשיב אבידה לעובד כוכבים; ואם גרם לו היזק, חייב לשלם לו מה שגרם לו (מהר"ם מרוזבורג).

Secular conversions in Israel?

Haaretz reports:
The Knesset caucus for secular Judaism and organizations from all streams of Judaism have created a coalition of conversion courts independent from the Chief Rabbinate. The coalition, which was approved last week, is being coordinated by PANIM for Jewish Renaissance, an advocacy group for pluralistic Judaism.

The goal is to create two new tracks in Israel for conversions to Judaism, one secular and one national-religious, both independent from the Chief Rabbinate. These come on top of the conversion courts of the Reform and Conservative movements, which produce about 300 converts a year.

Converts of the new coalition will not be permitted to marry through the rabbinate, but rather in accordance with a ruling by the High Court of Justice that these converts will be registered as Jews in the Interior Ministry's Population Registry.

One of the coalition's main innovations is the inclusion of Ne'emanei Torah Vaavodah, a moderate Orthodox movement, in a forum that recognizes Reform, Conservative and secular conversion. The chairman of Ne'emanei Torah Vaavodah, Yonatan Ben Harosh, said at the forum's latest meeting that his movement plans to establish independent conversion courts "in close cooperation with two other organizations: Mavoi Satum (Dead End) and Kolech, Jewish Woman's Voice."

The forum's founding document explains that "300,000 of the immigrants to Israel who are eligible under the Law of Return are not recognized in Israel as Jews in the Population Registry. Most have integrated into Israel and have forged a covenant of fate but are not accepted by us into the Jewish people, with all that entails: the stripping of citizenship rights, alienation and rejection."

The organizations in the forum say that "the opportunity given by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel by the state to respond to the challenge of conversion in Israel has been exhausted. [The rabbinate's] monopoly must be taken away from it."

The main obstacle to mass conversion is the demand by the Chief Rabbinate and Conversion Administration that converts conduct a religiously observant lifestyle and send their children to religious schools. The crisis between the national-religious public and the government's conversion system was created by a ruling by the Great Rabbinical Court seeking to void even conversions carried out by the head of the administration, Rabbi Haim Druckman.

The Reform and Conservative movements, like the Conversion Administration, require potential converts to complete hundreds of hours of instruction in Judaism. The secular Judaism institutions might very well do the same, but they will not demand that converts change their lifestyle.

The secular Knesset caucus is headed by outgoing Meretz MK Yossi Beilin, a pioneer of the idea of secular conversion. Currently the only secular organization initiating a secular conversion process is Tmura, the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. Rabbi Sivan Maas, a director and assistant dean of Tmura, said the organization's first conversion course is scheduled to begin in January. [...]

Treasury bailout - Paulson's failure

Chron.com reports: Similar comments from Time / Wall Street Journal / Newsweek

Henry Paulson became Treasury secretary 28 months ago, when he was at the top of the financial world: Wall Street’s best-paid chief executive officer,capping his career with a high-profile sojourn in public service.

Today, two months before he leaves office, some say Paulson is a reduced figure, damaged by the financial-market meltdown that happened on his watch and by the government’s struggles to respond to it.

Like many others who have served in President George W. Bush’s administration — among them former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Treasury chief Paul O’Neill — Paulson, 62, will leave office casting a smaller shadow than when he arrived.

“Paulson’s credibility has certainly been substantially diminished,” said Peter Wallison, who was general counsel at the Treasury under former President Ronald Reagan and is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “There has been a lot of shifting back and forth and he clearly hasn’t thought through much of these policies. He has lost a lot of confidence from the market from all of this.”

The latest blow was his announcement last week that the Treasury is abandoning his plan to buy devalued mortgage assets — the one he unveiled dramatically just eight weeks ago, and defended against congressional and market skeptics.

“This is a flip-flop, but on the other hand, when they first proposed the thing,they didn’t really know what they were doing,” said Bill Fleckenstein,president of Fleckenstein Capital in Seattle and author of the book Greenspan’s Bubbles. Paulson has pushed some “cockamamie schemes,” he said. “So one has to ask, does he have any clue?”

“This is not something he’s going to be proud to put on his résumé,” said James Cox,a law professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., who has testified on securities regulation before Congress and served on legal advisory panels for the New York Stock Exchange and National Association of Securities Dealers. “It does tarnish Paulson’s image, because it shows that a lot of political capital was spent on something that most of us thought was not a good idea to begin with.”

Only history will render a final verdict on Paulson’s handling of this year’s cascading economic crises. But he surely couldn’t have wanted to spend his final days in office this way: spearheading the massive government intervention in the banking, insurance and mortgage industries;fielding requests to bail out automakers and even heating-oil retailers.

“He’s ended up really in kind of a hair-on-fire thing,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “Particularly in his position, of somebody who was going to be a government official for a very short time and then ride off into the sunset, it’s been very different from what he had in mind.”

The Treasury chief last week said he had no regrets over reversing his plans for the bailout program. “I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change,” Paulson said at a press briefing.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, he said “the original plan was a good plan. What changed was our understanding of the magnitude of the problem.”[...]

History - The Serious Side of Chelm

Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know)
From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)

by Avraham Broide
(Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)

The Chelm people laugh at was a parallel universe of a real Chelm where Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews everywhere else.

You want to know the truth? Chelm was really a perfectly normal town, practically indistinguishable from hundreds of similar shtetls peppered over Poland and Russia. So how did that vibrant little community become buried beneath a mountain of jokes? The Chelm Memorial Book published after World War II devotes some pages analyzing this weighty question.

According one opinion, the Chelm humor tradition, like so much Jewish humor, was rooted in tragedy.

The story began with an Easter Church procession in 1580 that degenerated into an anti-Semitic riot. Ruffians attacked the Jews in the middle of their Passover prayers and a number of them barricaded themselves with shutters on the shul's roof. Afterwards, people joked that the Chelm Jews had installed shutters on their roofs instead of in their windows and, for better or worse, the town's reputation was sealed.

According to another theory, people picked on Chelm because in Slavic cholem means a fool.

Most likely, however, people picked on Chelm for the same reason other nations picked on particular towns as the butt of their jokes. The ancient Greeks picked on Abdera, the Syrians picked on Sidon, the English picked on the village of Gotham, the Dutch picked on Compen, the Arabs picked on Chevron, and Germany picked on number of towns including Shilburg. In fact, the 1597 publication of a Yiddish book titled, “Shilberg, a Short History,” provided much of the raw material later utilized for Chelm jokes.

For a while, Chelm jokes were an oral tradition. They first appeared in print after a small booklet printed in Vilna in 1867 included a chapter titled “the Wisdom and Witticism of a Certain Town Ch.,” and from then on Chelm jokes were fruitful and multiplied.

In the fullness of time, the real Chelm morphed into a full-fledged parallel universe.

Chelm was once a regular town, it was said, until one day when the angel that dishes out men's souls winged over the place hauling a sack of foolish souls on his back. Now, as everyone knows, Chelm lies adjacent to a sharp peaked mountain. This ripped open the sack, the souls plunged downwards, and ever since the town was never quite the same.

Despite their intellectual shortcomings, the Chelm Jews were of a different stamp than run-of-the-mill fools. Their idiocy stemmed not from lack of intelligence but from their insistence on being over clever, a trait known in Yiddish as being an uber chacham.

For example, the town's charity box was hung high beneath the shul's ceiling as a precaution against theft. When people complained that they could not reach there to drop in their donations, the town's wise men hit on the solution of propping up a ladder beneath to enable people to climb there. Chelmites always knew how to leap between the horns of dilemma.

When the town sexton complained that he was getting too old to make his early morning rounds rapping on people's shutters to wake them for prayers, the city elders collected the populace's shutters and piled them up in his house. Now he could rap them without having to stir outdoors. In his earlier years, when he complained that his shoes got filthy trudging through the town's muddy alleyways in execution of his duties, the town had appointed four strapping youngsters to carry him around the streets on a door.

The real Chelm was a different place altogether where perfectly regular Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews in other towns.

Jews first arrived in this small Polish town that lies 40 miles south-east of Lublin in about 1300, in order to wheel and deal with traders passing through on international trading routes between the Black and Baltic seas. Come to think of it, Chelm wasn't such a miserable place after all. By the middle of the 16^th Century it boasted a population of 371 at a time when even the capital of Cracow only had 1,800 Jews. It also had its own yeshiva and a cadre of prominent rabbis and sages.

By the outbreak of World War II, Chelm had a population of about 15,000 Jews, including refugees. Most of them perished. Although the Chelm district lies right on the Eastern border of Poland next to Russia, and was the first Polish district liberated from the Nazis in 5704/1944, by then it was too late; most of Chelm's Jews had perished in the nearby Sobidor Extermination Camp and those who struggled back were greeted with hatred.

But the legacy of Chelm humor lives on, helping to soften the hard bumps of life's road.

Economy & Boro Park

JPost reports:

Medium box. I need a large! I have my children to feed, please - please can I have a large box?

Sorry. Medium box.

That's how it went on a recent Thursday night at the TomcheShabbos food pantry in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood, one of theseveral that provide weekly baskets of strictly kosher food to 500needy haredi families.

Jeno Herschkowits, who has run the pantry since 1975, sayssupplicants have gotten noticeably edgier in recent months, as peoplewho were narrowly avoiding ruin before this fall's stock market crashfind themselves slipping over the brink, now that the American consumereconomy has ground to a near halt.

"People are desperate; they get aggressive," he said. "And there are more people, but less money."

Evidence of pain is everywhere, from deep discounts at chainstores - as much as 60 percent off fall merchandise, that began weeksbefore the traditional Thanksgiving sales - to empty restaurants andupticks in late-night subway ridership by those who might previouslyhave splurged on cabs. But in New York's haredi neighborhoods, wheremost families subsist on a single income, the strain shows up in weeklydebates over "small," "medium" or "large."

A WEEK ago, New York exploded with euphoria after the historiclandslide election of Barack Obama to the presidency on promises ofbringing change, and hope, to America. Now, his transition team isalready racing to craft plans for his first weeks in office, among thema $175 billion stimulus package that would include extendedunemployment benefits and food assistance.

But inauguration is still 68 days away, and in the meantime,financial markets are continuing their downward spiral, with Bushadministration officials taking steps to make bailout money availableto credit-card and student-loan companies, in hopes of keeping cashflowing into consumers' wallets. Investors have responded to theapparent uncertainty over how to spend the $700 billion in bailoutfunds, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down another 400 pointson Wednesday alone.

That, in turn, threatens to empty state coffers of much-neededtax revenue next year. New York State officials are already bickeringover a proposed $5 billion in education and health-care cuts to close ayawning budget deficit, stoking concerns that food-stamp programs mightbe next on the chopping block.

Private charities say that if that happens, they will beill-prepared to make up the difference, because donations have driedup, and fund-raisers are working overtime just to get donors to satisfytheir current pledges, let alone worry about those to come next year.

"We lost one donor who used to give us $400 a week," saidAlexander Rapaport, whose Masbia kosher soup kitchen provides about 160meals a day, prepared by a caterer at a local school. He said he hastaken out advertising on local radio stations citing this week's Torahportion - on Sodom and Gomorrah - to inspire donations.

While Masbia qualifies for some government grant programs, theorganization's strict observance of kosher standards means he can'tmake use of many restaurant or overstock giveaways available for thosefollowing more relaxed codes.

Pantries that follow looser restrictions said they had seen aspike in requests from non-Jews, along with more Jews asking for help.One, the Oneg Shabbos pantry - run by Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch andhis wife, Pe'er - has installed a fence along the sidewalk to protectbags of carrots and potatoes waiting to be packed in with containers ofSabra-brand feta cheese and other goodies for people who wait in a linesnaking up the block.

"We're seeing families who never in their lives thought they would have to ask for food," Pe'er Deutsch told The Jerusalem Post."The thing about us is that we pack it into boxes, and it looks likegroceries - people know they can come here and the kids never have toknow."

LEADERS OF haredi organizations understand the irony of theirconstituents - most of whom backed Republican presidential candidateJohn McCain - waiting for a rescue from the incoming Obamaadministration.

"Our man always wins," said Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israelof America, winking. He said his organization, which has a staffertaking calls for assistance from the newly jobless or helpless, hasalways been able to work with both political parties, even if "peopleon the ground" disagree with one side or the other.

So, he said, there is hope. But with the first cold snap, the clock is already ticking.