Reb Baruch’s Musical Warning to the Haredi and Chassidim

A guten teg, a gute yahr, Chaver.

Reb Baruch would now like to address a very serious issue to the Haredim and Chassidim, one which he perceived when he recently watched a collection of video clips of the Bobov, Satmar, and other groups holding various religious celebrations.

While it was moving and invigorating to see so many Yidn dedicated to living a life according to Torah, there was one jarring note, one macula of the modern world which Reb Baruch cannot understand being permitted in these holy events.

We know the power of music. We know that Chassidism has laid an especial emphasis on music, on the power of Chassidic melody, and its effect on the soul. Rabbi Chaim Kramer of the Breslov Institute has written an entire work on the famous Chassidic Rabbi, Rebbe Nachman, and his discussion of this musical power.

And therefore Reb Baruch was somewhat startled to hear, in the midst of a sermon delivered in Yiddish, and a room full of Frumer Yidn in traditional dress, a Chassidic melody being played … on a synthesizer.

And not only that, but a lot of the music in the various clips was accompanied with what sounded like a drum machine, so inhumanely precise was it in the regularity of its beat.

Synthesizers and drum machines in the midst of a community that is committed to upholding the traditional values and ways of Judaism? Reb Baruch was both shocked and taken aback.

All these Chassidic and Holy melodies came into consciousness through the vehicle of the vibrating air, on instruments like the human vocal chords, the violin’s cat gut, and the clarinet’s reed and bore. The process was no different than what had gone on for over 5700 years. But now the modern world creates sound based not on the natural vibrations of the air, but on electronic circuitry. And that circuitry produces a sound which has never been heard before by the human ear, a new sound of devilish perfection, never before interpreted by the human brain, a new rhythm of diabolic precision, so unhuman in its lack of flaws.

Rabbi Chasam Sofer, the Chief Rabbi of Pressburg once said “Chadash asur min ha-Torah”, or “The new if forbidden by the Torah”. Now, the Vilna Gaon would surely have disagreed with that, since for him every expansion of scientific knowledge and technique augmented our knowledge of Torah, and Reb Baruch would have to agree with The Gaon. But in this case, in the realm of Art and Music, he’d have to side with the Pressburger Rebbe.

And so, Reb Baruch must issue his injunction to the Haredi and the Chassidim, not to use synthesizers or drum machines in the playing of Chassidic or Sacred melodies, and not even to listen to such so-called music. The Nefesh Yehudi responds to the vibrating air, so simple in its function; but it is Goyified when it listens to these modern sounds, created by the products of electronics, and so hollow and cold in their beauty.

Nor should one even program a phone or any digital device to electronically play a Chassidic, Yiddish, Sacred Hebrew or traditional Jewish melody.

About 50 years ago, Seymour Silbermintz and the Lubavitcher Chassidim put out a series of Chassidic Nigunim that were played solely on piano, violin,  and drums, with chorus. Though the playing often had slight flaws, and the voices and rhythms may not have been perfect, they were all perfectly human. Adding synthesizers or drum machines to such an assembly would have been a tragedy. And perhaps a blasphemy.

Reb Baruch hopes the Haredim and the Chassidim will take his warnings seriously, and think over what he is saying to them. Since they are the vessels of the purest form of Ashkenazi Judaism left around, they should not let these modern influences subvert the integrity of their music.

When it comes to synthesizer music and drum machines — gai in droysen!

Gai shloofn, Kinderlech — Baruch Ben-Zev

Dreizig Yahrzeit Of Yiddish Comic Shimon Dzigan: Laughing All the Way to the Hospital

Heint iz der dreizig yahrzeit afn Shimon Dzigan. Dzigan, the famous Yiddish comedian had an incredible life, startiing off in the Lodz Jewish community, escaping with his later comic partner, Shumacher, from the Lodz Ghetto when the Germans closed it off, landing in Russia, being sent to Siberia for one-too-many jokes about Papa Joe Stalin, being released from Siberia, going to Israel, where he found a chilling reception for his love of Yiddish, in a land that only wanted to love Hebrew. And moving to Argentina.

Not an uneventful life.

Now, thanks to the resources available on the internet, those  interested in Dzigan’s comic contribution to Jewish culture, can see and hear this comedic genius at work ( youtube.com, savethemusic.com, etc.). But also those students of Yiddish, who have been starved up until now for material in the mame-loshn with simultaneous translations,  as is available with virtually every other language on Earth,(and why does Google translator not include Yiddish?) can now expand their vocabulary and their familiarity with commonly used phrases and usages by watching and absorbing his work. And what a wonderful, funny, and entertaining way to learn a language that should be learned by every Jew. The best thing since Mickey Katz. S’iz a mechaya.

Does Dzigan know that, 30 years after his passing, the shows he filmed  more than 35 years ago are helping to spread his beloved Yiddish like a wildfire, even if it is a slow-moving one? (The wood is still damp, but wait till it dries out!) Ben-Zev thinks it could be so.

Shimon Dzigan was taken ill during a public performance, on April 14, 1980. It is said that he cracked jokes in the ambulance all the way to the hospital, where he passed away.

Shimon Dzigan, laughing all the way to Eternity.

Zayt gezint, kinderlech,                                                         — Baruch Ben-Zev

Of Vitamin B12 and the Nefesh Yehudi

A gutn teg, a gutn yahr, Adon Fleyshfresser. Voos machtste? You don’t look so great. What’s up?

You seem excited, Adon Fleyshfresser. What’s this? Du hob mir im Warshau? You’ve got me, eh? OK, let’s hear it, Mr. Fleyshfresser. Tuchus afn tish!

I see. Since Vitamin B12 has been shown to be essential to human health, and since you say I can’t get Vitamin B12 on my vegan diet, therefore the vegan diet is unhealthy for the human, and Baruch Ben-Zev’s firm conviction that Judaism is a vegan religion, as evidenced by G-d’s statements in B’rasheet (Genesis) 1:29 on what Man is permitted to eat, is incorrect. And the end result is, you are right, I am wrong, and you can go on eating meat, and feeling like you are an observant Jew.  So you really think you have Ben-Zev in Warsaw on this one, eh?

Well, Mr. Fleyshfresser, not so fast. Haven’t you heard of those many vegetarian Hindus, some of them vegan, who lived to be over a hundred. If B12 (and the amino acid carnatine, found in meat) are so essential to human health, how did these men achieve their fivescore years, and without evident neurological damage?

Ah, but wait, Ben-Zev, you say. When Hindus came to Britain, and maintained a vegan diet, they did start suffering from Vitamin B12 deficiencies. So there.

But, Mr. Fleyshfresser, be not so sure. You’re talking of well-washed industrial food, not the village greens that the Hindu vegan would have eaten in his native land. Evidentally, the amount of B12 naturally occuring from insect deposits on the produce, as well as normal bacterial contamination from small plot gardens, and cold-water washing of such produce, provided enough natural B12 to prevent those conditions that became manifest once these individual removed to Britain, and other western cultures. So, under pre-industrial conditions, vegans could indeed have obtained their B12 from eating a purely vegan diet, providing it was grown and processed under those “primitive” conditions.

Don’t look so downtrodden, Adon Fleyshfresser. You may get yet another chance to “hob mir in Warshau.” — Baruch Ben-Zev

Of Skinheads and Tattoos: Denying G-d’s Laws

Two of the most current manifestations of the alienation of modern culture from the insights of Judaism are found in the recent decades-long fads of shaving the head, and adorning the corpus with tattoos. Both of these are reflections of how far man has strayed from the natural ways, and an introspective examination of both would be fruitful.

Cutting the hair is forbidden in Judaism, if one takes the injunction “Thou Shall Not Round the Corners of Thy Head” seriously. Ben-Zev finds it curious that Orthodox Jews will refuse to cut their beards, as well they should, but are willing to cut their hair. Does not “corners of thy head” include the top of the head if it includes the bottom?

It’s very clear from the Samson story, that Jews were intended to keep their hair intact, and wear it long. Now what could be the reasons for this?

Modern statistics on melanomas have shown that intense sun on the skin for protracted periods is not healthy. Could it be that the founders of Judaism understood this, and urged people to keep their hair in order to shield the skin, especially the neck, and the ears with their ultra-thin skin, from the intense ultraviolet rays of the Middle East? In hot desert climates, we often find people fully cloaked all day long, because they know that direct sun on the skin is worse that the retention of heat caused by the clothing. When they have the genetic ability to grow their hair in long wavy strands, they tend to do so. (Note that many Hindu holy men in hot India grow their hair down their backs.) Is this Nature’s way, or G-d’s way, or giving them a sort of head shield against the sun? Or did they feel that as an emanation of the body, and an attractive one at that, hair was an expression of the masculine fertility of G-d? Masculine we say because, as one will notice, the human male tends to be much more hirsute than the female. And are we wrong in our impression that the Essenes did not clip their hair? And one should also note that, prior to modern times, in that other great cluster of cultures that worshiped the One Great Spirit, the American Indians, we find them almost invariably wearing their hair in accordance with Jewish law, except for the Mohawks who yet did not completely shave their heads. It’s safe to say there were no skinheads in America before the coming of the White Curse.

We find it interesting too that in both Greece and Imperial Rome, short hair and, in the Roman case, facial shaving, were very “in” for both the ruling classes and the masses. These “beautifications” of the male would seem to fit in well with the sexually inverted cultures which these slave-owning, essentially Fascist, societies extolled as a virtue. But in Judaism we find no such confusing the male as object with the male as power. Judaism regards the male as human moral power, realized in the act. Greece and Rome saw the male as an object, to be humiliated and exploited through slavery and conquest. One philosophy raised human dignity; the other destroyed it.

Now, all this does not mean that Ben-Zev thinks that modern Jews shouldn’t wear their hair or beards exactly as they want, nor does it mean he thinks that anyone who wears their hair short, or even barely visible, and also shaves their face, is somehow perverse. How to wear one’s hair and beard is purely a matter of taste, and actually to conform to some norm out of fear of being different is in itself not a very masculine quality. So the modern “masculine” thing is to display oneself just as one wishes, and not worry about what anyone thinks. Shave if you want, wear your hair like you’re living in a prison camp if you want, it’s a minor peccadillo compared to the crimes that are going on in the world. But somehow, Ben-Zev envisions the modern Jew looking something like Samson, bringing down the pillars on those mahmzers.

And what about that modern abomination called Tattooing. “Thou shall not make unto ye a graven image.” And the body of living energy that is a human being, made in G-d’s image, is now subject to having graven images tattooed all over it in this sick modern world. Thank G-d, Jew’s are not as prone to this as non-Jews in the general culture. But can there be anything more depraved then a modern Jew with tattoo artwork all over his skin? He has been taken in completely by the non-Jewish culture. But again, a person who has had tattooing should not be treated any differently than any other person. The sin they have committed is against themselves, because they did not understand, or because they were never exposed to someone who said. “Tattooing? No way! But this is why.” Then they might have understood.

However, this does not in any way denigrate the tattooing carried out by native tribes all over the world. Perhaps such tattooing is a mechanical attempt to counter the constant deterioration of the human body, once it passes its physical apogee of perfection. Perhaps it is a reaction to a hard, arduous life, without the framework of the Torah as a set of guideposts to guide reflection. Perhaps it arises out of boredom, or the very popular, Ben-Zev has noticed, activity of human beings known as “trying to improve their appearance”. But it is not the product of being exposed to the modern plastic world.

So skinhead and tattoo: let’s leave them as the last relics of an effete, dehumanized society. Ben-Zev feels they have no place in Jewish culture, or the Coming World.                      —        Baruch Ben-Zev

Reply to Reb “Factual Basis” on My Blog: Judaism: The Vegan Religion

Abi gezint, kinderlech.

A blogger who wrote a responsum to my first blog, “Judaism: The Vegan Religion”, in his blog “Meat Your G-d” by factualbasis, criticising it from various angles, seemed to be a little irritated by my arguments (maybe I got his goat), and even had to slip in some distortion of my positions, which I will attempt to clarify here.

Firstly, and a minor point, he claims that I implied that the B’rayshiyt, the First Book of the Testament, which the Gentiles refer to as “Genesis”, was written by a girl. I made no such implication, merely stating a view I had read, years previously, in an old copy of the LA Times, in which a professor at USC claimed that, in his opinion, he thought Genesis had been written by a woman, and giving his reasons which I thought at the time were interesting. I threw this in  just because it is so easily assumed (and I assumed it myself) that it was written by a man. It certainly seems a masculine, robust document to me, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that it was written by a woman. And to my anonymous critic, I would point out there is quite a difference between a girl and a woman, in case he hasn’t noticed. To say that I implied a girl wrote it, is a complete distortion of what I wrote in my blog.

Then the critic goes on to wonder how I can possibly say that Judaism is not a meat-eating religion, even encouraging its followers to eat meat, and also to wonder why didn’t G-d explicitly forbid it.

He seems to completely overlook the reasons I gave in my blog for meat-eating having been part of the religion in the past, and also to deny G-d explicitly forbade it, when that is exactly what He did do in B’rayshiyt. He listed specifically what was necessary for man to live in harmony with his laws, when he told Adam, “stick to the grass and tree fruits, these shall be to you for food”. But as I also pointed out, man in the Middle East didn’t know nutritional science, and so meat eating was anecdotally observed to keep people going into their 50′s and 60′s, and since the first law of Judaism was to be fruitful and multiply, these rules permitting meat were put into the rule book. In this historical sense, my critic, Reb “Factual Basis” — a strange name for a Reb I must say —is correct in that Judaism was historically a religion that permitted meat eating, and animal sacrifice. Remember though that this was after Noah, after G-d saw that man was not just that angel Adam, the seed of His consciousness, but also a conniving devil, who would do all kinds of nasty things for coins, and the things they bought. Remember these meat-eating laws are given in a time in Torah prior to the Messianic Age, or the Age of a Perpetual Sabbath. (Do you remember the saying that if there were two consecutive days that were the Sabbath, the Messiah will have come?) So just because these laws were back then, doesn’t mean they are the be-all and end-all of Judaism, and as we said, they were adopted most probably to ensure a nutritional basis for human survival in the desert before science brought the light of truth to help illuminate the traditional texts. Did not the Vilna Gaon say that every advance in science deepens our knowledge of Torah? How true, though we must always be a bit sceptical of every new “scientific breakthrough”, for a lot of them have been reversed.

This logical argument for why men ate meat in the old days and why it is permitted after Noah, is completely ignored in my critic’s hatchet piece.

Then he criticises my view that only a Jewish vegan can be a true Jew, except in the bloodline aspect. Yet bloodline is just as valid a reason as any other and not to be sneezed at, nor are we denying that person’s membership in the religion. Would my critic say that a secular Jew, or a Reform Jew, is not a Jew because they do not follow the Orthodox Laws to the letter? Should someone who “rounds the corners’ of his head, or shaves, should he be drummed out of Judaism?. I think not (but I don’t shave, so maybe it feels wickedly sinful). But what I meant was that to enter the deepest reaches of Judaism, one must be at least prepared to take the journey, and no Jew who is not a vegan, or at least a lacto-ovo-vegetarian which does not involve killing an animal (like not eating cheese containing rennet), can hope to attain to the compassion and friendliness to all living things that is necessary for that entry. A meat-eater lives in fear for he knows he has brought a horrible, yet unnecessary, end to a sensate creature that if it were he himself, and he were the victim,  he would cry out, “Please G-d not me. Why me?” Why, indeed, to bring such misery on such innocent creatures, who’ve never harmed you, and will warm to your hand at the slightest sign of affection. Those animals waited billions of years for their chance at life, and you steal it for a few meals you could have made out of kasha and nuts. I find the beings of most animals far more angelic that virtually all humans I meet. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Finally, Reb “Factual Basis”, exhorts me to open up the book and read, if G-d’s OK with it why shouldn’t I be?, he asks, as if G-d IS OK with it, now we have all these other sources of nutrition, and know how to combine proteins, but I say that G-d WAS OK with it, when people thought it meant survival, but not any more. Torah was written by wise people, who didn’t know nutrition, though they knew the human psyche, and how to distinguish virtuous behaviour. But they weren’t perfect. After all, Reb “Factual Basis”, doesn’t it say somewhere that “You shall not suffer a witch to live?” How about the order to stone Gays to death? Do you think those maxims should be kept in Judaism? And what about capital punishment, which the State of Israel, the Jewish State, forbids, except for Nazi war criminals? Capital punishment is the same kind of bestiality as meat-eating, and the Jewish mind perceives it, but it is mentioned in the Bible frequently. But I would not forbid meat-eating if it were truly the case of a human being starving to death if there were no alternative.

Remember that modern Judaism even welcomes atheistic Jews who live a highly virtuous life, or secular humanistic Jews, who may be agnostic. We don’t exclude anyone who lives a highly moral life, no matter what they think about Jewish Theology.

And what of the prohibitions in Judaism against hunting for so-called “sport”, one of the most heinous of human crimes, like a mob of Nazis hunting down a child. Since we know and can get an incredible array of foods in virtually every large city in the world, and most rural areas, how does penning up, and finally murdering a gentle animal differ from the blood-crime of hunting?

Shtayt azoy, Reb “Factual Basis”.                                                                          — Baruch Ben-Zev

Judaism: The Vegan Religion

A guten teg, a guten yahr, kinderlech.

In this, our initial blog, we wish to state why we believe Judaism is a vegan religion, and why it is axiomatic for anyone calling himself a true Jew, except through bloodline alone, to be a vegan, or, at the least, a lacto- or lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

The basis of this, of course, is found in the initial instructions to man in the Bible, after the “be fruitful” bit, which is obviously intended to make sure this wonderful game of life keeps going. But right after that bit, we are given our dietary instructions from the Unnameable Name, in B’rashiyt 1:29. Basically everything that comes from a tree, and its seeds, and everything that comes from plants and their seeds, these shall be to you for food. Very clearly and very specifically stated, a vegan diet.

The courage of such an approach is truly amazing, when we consider the precariousness of life in the ancient Middle East as far as food security went, and nutritional knowledge. In some instinctive way, whoever put down that first book of the Testament (and some think it was a woman) knew that vegan diet was best for mankind. And this, notwithstanding the fact that in olden days people must have noticed that those who ate meat and were active, kept their muscularity, while those forced to eat one grain alone, or a very low-protein diet, had very small musculatures, unless they could eat large quantities of that grain, especially wheat.

Modern dietary theory seems to be indicating that the supposed necessity of mixing amino acids at one meal from different sources is not a necessity, as was theorized by the protein combining vegetarians of the 1970′s. It turns out that you can get the protein from one source, but only if you eat very large quantities, far beyond what is normal for most people, and far beyond what you’d need to if you were combining. Nor was combining necessary at one meal; the grain might come at breakfast if the beans or nuts came at lunch. But combining made it much easier to achieve this blend of essential amino acids, so that one could get by with eating one pound of oats a day, with beans and nuts, instead of 5 pounds of oats alone, or 3 pounds of wheat alone. Few had such opportunity for largess and profligacy in the old Middle East. That the ancient vegan Jewish sages, like the Essenes, knew a vegetarian diet was a necessity to be a truly observant Jew, speaks amazingly for their inner insight into human nature, and human physiological nature, in the face of horrendous times, and great insecurity.

Now we have the facts of nutritional science and diet before us, and a series of “Rebs and Rabbis of Diet and Nutrition”, many of them not even Jewish, people like Gary Null, Nathan Pritikin, Dr. Gershon Lesser, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Edell, and Professor Neal Benowitz, and many others, (perhaps beginning with Carlton Fredericks and Adele Davis), to refer to, ponder, and study. We have a vast array of knowledge about diet and nutrition which points to the fact that vegan diet is not just an eccentric luxury of the “slightly not there”, but a necessity for good continual health and longevity. The final word, of course, isn’t in, and we should always remain skeptical as to the truth of any categorical imperatives in diet, but the preponderance of evidence is there, and perhaps Gary Null, and the late great Nathan Pritikin, have been the most  instrumental in spreading the word. And Dr. Gershon Lesser’s decade long radio stint on PBS from Santa Monica City College should never be forgotten in getting a lot of the LA crowd to awaken to diet and health. All these men have done great Mitzvah’s with their speech boxes and pens, even if they sometimes unwittingly gave out misinformation based on what they actually believed at the time (for example, the approval of 400 I.U. of Vitamin E -alpha tocopherol- which was later shown to mask the lack of delta tocopherol — and didn’t lead to the miraculous longevity many were proclaiming its use would engender). But nutritional science is a bit like tacking into harbor against a headwind; there is a lot of back and forth motion necessary to get into port, but at least you’re headed for port, and not drifting out to sea with no provisions, and no radio.

We also have the natural sciences now kicking in on the side of the Jewish vegan diet. The anthropologist Richard Leakey, son of the famous Louis B. Leakey, has theorized that ancient man was, in normal times, a pretty strict vegan, but in times of drought was forced to the disgusting necessity of eating the carcasses of dead animals he would find lying about all over the place. Before fire, this must have been really rough. But that is why our teeth and digestive juices seem to be geared to an omnivorous diet. But it was omnivore out of necessity of bestial survival, not out of choice. And of course, many tribes, noticing the meat/musculature connection mentioned previously, must have opted for hunting as a lot easier that growing beans, which they didn’t know enough about, or in nut-free areas, where a regimen of berries and pot-herbs alone made that musculature an arduous attainment. Easier just to spear or blowdart a monkey, antelope or bird. But these tribes did not have the vegan insight of Judaism.

Finally, and exceedingly persuasive, is the fact that man’s closest cousin,  in psychological consciousness, is the gorilla, and the gorilla, who does not have a hinged thumb like man, and so cannot engage in agriculture. — the gorilla is a strict vegetarian, save for one element: he eats insects, which are very high in protein. But insects are but a tiny part of his diet. And look at the strength of the gorilla; in mythology he is felt to be of an almighty strength, as is shown by the “Mighty Joe Young” and “King Kong” fictions, who have to be shot to ribbons with bi-plane machine guns over and over to bring them down.  Our closest relative in consciousness is a virtual vegan. If Ha-Shem had given him a hinged thumb, Ben-Zev thinks he would be purely vegan.

And finally we have the ethical compassion of Judaism, that would forbid killing such beautiful innocent animals, like cows, sheep, lambs, goats, ducks and geese and chickens, and fish, all innocent children enjoying this miraculous life G-d gave them. And suddenly, in the pink of their life and health, they are taken out one day and murdered, as we see in the sacrilegious Rubashkin slaughterhouse practices at Agri-processors.  Aaron Rubashkin, a man bringing great dishonor on our beautiful religion of peace, compassion and human wisdom, as are all so-called Kosher slaughterers, a convenient myth for those who want to forget the incredible misery and suffering they impose on defenseless animals. And no wonder that 30% of the Haredi community in Crown Heights is classified as grossly overweight or obese — that is one of the punishments for such behaviour. While man eats meat, the messiah is not here.

Alles flaysch iz trayf, kinderlech. Shtayt azoy.                                         — Baruch Ben-Zev

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