Abrabanel: Musings on the Jewish condition

We’re on vacation, so things are coming slower this past ten days or so. We’ll be back in force after Rosh Hashanah. In the meantime, things you really shouldn’t miss if you read blogs like this one:

• Bill Clinton explains multiple times that he won’t campaign on the Jewish High Holidays. Yeah, we’re not sure what this means either.
• Yossi Melman of Ha’aretz argues that Russia’s anger at the West is bringing about the collapse of the sanctions regime against Iran. “Russia is strengthening the Iranian regime and signaling to it that the basic, though superficial, international consensus against it has ceased to exist.” Yossi Melman is a clever old hand in this business. His say-so is more significant than some New York Times foreign affairs columnist.
• A great review of an excellent new book on Maimonides.
• Oh, and the universe is, as always, more complicated than we once believed. Scientists have found an unexplained “drift” or “flow” of immense galactic clusters in a single direction, as opposed to motion in all directions as space itself expands. As The Daily Galaxy explains, “A black hole can’t explain the observations – objects would accelerate into the hole, while the NASA scientists see constant motion over a vast expanse of a billion light-years. You have no idea how big that is. This is giant on a scale where it’s not just that we can’t see what’s doing it; it’s that the entire makeup of the universe as we understand it can’t be right if this is happening.”

For Rosh Hashanah, a beautiful Orthodox call to generosity and humility:

God reminds us that the benchmarks of our being judged is made by ourselves.

The way we judge others determines the bar by which we shall be judged. By right, only God judges alone. Ruth 1:1 reminds us that the Messiah’s line continued “during the judging of the judges.” When human judges ignore the rules when judging those who are deemed to be not important, those judges become a nullity, and become impotent. My teacher, Rabbi Faur, teaches that Jewish courts that ignore Torah law are to be ignored. It is the din of the Torah and the policy of the judge that must be applied…

How are to judge others? Gently, generously, and with humanity. By judging others with kindness, we build the bar by which we are judged. By acting kindly toward others, we walk humbly before God.

This is particularly interesting:

Professor Menachem Kellner, an Orthodox scholar of the Medieval Jewish mind at Haifa University, has argued that a non-observant Jew who believes correctly regarding God and who is meticulous regarding ethics, is for Maimonides, the master of masora, tradition, a living example of the Israelite ideal. In other words, the more we judge others, the more we condemn ourselves.

This falls into the “our Sages were cool too” department. But it’s also true. Maimonides recommended a diet of modest consumption, with an emphasis on whole grains:

In his fascinating work, known as The Preservation of Youth, he emphasizes the importance of eating whole grains, and he explicitly warns the young prince, son of sultan Saladin, to avoid consuming refined flour, meat, or dairy-rich foods.

The Rambam was unrelenting in his condemnation of gluttony as a chief cause of illness. Certainly in America and in Israel today— when the average adult man or woman is overweight— this viewpoint is much needed! The Rambam advocated daily vigorous exercise to the prince who was very depressed. …

He stressed that our emotions play a vital role in affecting our health. He identified chronic anger, worry and sadness as particularly destructive. In this light, he suggested that periodic soul-searching, meditation and inward “stock-taking” are crucial elements for health and longevity.