Zackary Sholem Berger's Blog, page 39
October 25, 2011
Redeeming captive concepts in halachah
Last Shabbat, our rabbi led us in a group discussion about pidyon shevuim, the redemption of captives, and then related some basic information about the relevant mishnah, which I went and studied. The discussion in the Gemara is not as complicated as it is elsewhere, with the main considerations being the ability of the society to absorb the payment (dekhoka detsibura) and the fear that, sometime in the future (or in the present day) marauding bands of bandits will take Jews captive in order to ransom them (but see this mention of further complexities). There are various elaborations on these topics (Tosfos strive to reconcile the Mishnah with other episodes, where it seems that captives of special status can be redeemed for higher-than-normal sums; Rambam generalizes the marauding bands to "enemies"), but in the end the decision comes down to how like our situation is to the situation mentioned in the Mishnah.
This is the tricky part of halachic analogizing. Sometimes it's quite a stretch to find the source text which matches our present-day situation. Conversely, sometimes the governing principle seems clear to everyone (pidyon shivuyim was the halacha everyone readily referred to in the Gilad Schalit case), even though (a) he was not kidnapped by bandits, but by terrorists at war with an independent Jewish state; (b) the ransom paid for Schalit is possibly not a significant change from the past. With such dissimilarity one can ask if the original category applies.
You can always ask whether the concepts apply. This overlaps with a related question, whether halachah is (to use the common and frustrating term) "binding." If a halachic category is inapplicable to the present-day situation, no matter how God-fearing, or even intellectually respectful towards the halachic enterprise, we are, we can't possibly apply an inapplicable analogy. It would be like using a map of South America to navigate a college campus. More relevant than "binding," in such a case, would be the terms "useful" or "comparable."
Someone always needs to decide what is applicable. Don't swerve to the right or left – that's the Biblical verse which justifies rabbinical authority. But any rabbi which cannot justify his or her analogies is not someone whose psak we can follow. Analogies are made convincing by a number of strategies: either communal suasion/coercion or effective rhetoric. Psak is a lot like politics in this way. Thinking about it in this context, the catch-all of "siyata dishmaya" (Divine aid necessary for religiously "reliable" psak) is indeed necessary even to the modern mind: whatever makes an analogy convincing is just like whatever makes a novel speak to our heart. Who says the Divine isn't involved in that?
October 24, 2011
Matthew Wynia on communication, medicine, and professionalism
I neglected to jot down some notes at the time about Matthew Wynia's plenary speech at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare. I think I was too nervous about getting out of the auditorium after the speech in time to overspend at the American Girl store and the Lego outlet. Wynia has a multifarious research portfolio. He has researched the ethical nightmares of medicine during the Holocaust with attention to its implications for today's practitioners (on which see here). He is also head of ethics at the AMA (the existence of which post, given the AMA's position until recently on improving access to care for America's uninsured, gives one some pause).
His talk was a restatement of the aims of professionalism. Starting with the School of Hippocrates, Wynia traced the ethical foundations of medicine – with communication with the patient at its core – to the present day. (I summarized some of his references on my Twitter feed.) While professionalism means different things to different people, Wynia pointed out the etymologic (and to his mind, the true) meaning. To profess means to promise; members of a profession aim to promise something to society; and, thus, professionalism is the means by which a profession ensures that those promises are kept.
Since the mission of medicine is ethical, professionalism must include ethical standards. The obvious question is how these profession-wide standards are meant to reinforce the relationships that develop in the context of the patient-doctor dyad. Wynia did not address these questions, but he did – in the final part of his talk – emphasize the importance of an institutional culture in making communication (as part of professionalism) possible. I left with many thoughts about how to do this, and – specific to my interests – how best to make autonomy part of initiatives in quality improvement. More to come, I hope, on this effort.
October 23, 2011
October 17, 2011
Health literacy, policy, and society: A few quick notes on Rima Rudd's plenary at ICCH 2011
She spoke on health literacy – what it has achieved and what next needs to be done. There is a consensus, she says, that decreased health literacy leads to poorer health outcomes, and that materials in a variety of settings – and in society at large – are not matched to the health literacy of individuals. Health literacy is poor in a number of industrialized nations. Despite these research findings, and consensus as to need, policy and standards of best practice have not yet redressed the balance. She adduced three domains of health literacy that R. Nutbeam, from Southampton, has proposed – functional literacy, interactive literacy, and (a new domain) critical literacy, the ability to participate in discussions of policy and change. As foundation for these various domains, she referred to theoretical works by Kurt Lewin (who invoked "force fields" and the removal of barriers) and Paolo Freire, who believed in the silenced individual as the master of their domain (cf. public health efforts to match, e.g., parasite eradication efforts to individuals' knowledge of their own worlds). She concluded with a call to action on the fronts of policy, research, practice, and advocacy, while forecasting the merging of several branches of research (communication, culture, and literacy).
October 11, 2011
Not in the Same Gust
Or, I suppose, De Gustibus Non Disputandum (de dum, de dum).
I'm reading poetry on the 18th in Chicago, 6:30pm at the Harold Washington Library Center. You should come, or send a Chicago representative.
October 6, 2011
Befriend & be fascinated: an email chat with karate-ka and ottava rimist Elinor Nauen
Q: How does a nice Jewish poet from South Dakota end up moving to New York and going for a black belt in karate?
A: If you're from SoDak, you are very likely to move on, especially if you're Jewish. And New York is still the golden medina for Jews. Actually, being Jewish is somewhat connected to my studying karate. When my best friend at the synagogue died in 2007, I felt dislocated & that I had to do something different, and maybe something that involved punching. There are many similarities between karate & observing Judaism–a lot of rules that seem arbitrary from the outside, for example, and a strong emphasis on ethics (at least at my dojo).
Q: Was the ottava rima in your book something imposed from without (it "called" you) or something you actively chose?
A: Very much BOTH. I wrote a single stanza, idly, and I felt exactly as I had the first time I ever came to New York City: THIS is what I was waiting for, this is what I was looking for. I moved here in a flash and never looked back, and in the same way, I knew ottava rima was mine and would be there for as long as I needed and wanted.
Q: I haven't read Ko, though I keep meaning to. Now I realize that a long poem with a lot of baseball can be moving & funny at the same time, even though I'm not a baseball fan (or just ignorant of all sports).
You need to be lucky to write a poem like yours. You have a husband who stars in some sections, a baseball-star obsession in others, and – in still others – a synagogue, of all places. Unlike many Jewish authors, you don't go on and on about how you are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by the Tradition. You write about shul like you write about your friends.
A. Zack! I love that you said one needs to be lucky – I secretly envy people who have "something to write about" – who have suffered or been a weird tabloid hero or a firefighter. I always feel I'm just plugging along, living my life, which I find totally entertaining but it's just my life. And I love that you say I write about shul like I write about my friends. That's exactly right & the plan of my life – befriend & be fascinated.
I didn't have much Tradition or yiddishkeit growing up & have always felt lucky I didn't have to fight against it – as soon as I realized it was there & there for me, I could stroll right in and take what I wanted. I'm the rich lady who doesn't have to look at the price tags.
I love Kenneth Koch but Ko least of his works. His ottava rima (there's also The Duplications) is more formal than mine. I don't think it was an influence but I'm always wrong. I used to introduce a poem I liked a lot, so I read it a lot, as "my Jimmy Schuyler poem" until someone said it had nothing to do with Schuyler and could I please stop saying that. Which goes to show that what you consciously grab, in technique or tone or form, may not be what really shines through the work. What influenced So Late? Well, besides Byron? Ashrei for the acrostics and similar wordplay. John Clare for not getting Byron right, which left me room enough to plunge in. Probably in some completely random, inexplicable way, whoever I was reading along the way–Donne, Whalen, Myles (etc).
Q: You're a Jew, and a poet: what does the conjunction of those things together mean to you? Does it have to mean anything?
A: Let me back into an answer or take the out you kindly offered: No, it doesn't HAVE to mean anything. Hard, though, to imagine that something as central as being Jewish doesn't at least inform what one is most absorbed with, that is, poetry. If Judaism isn't the subject, is it therefore not part of the process or the poem? No, I don't think so.
I'm still backing in and out of an answer, aren't I? I'm a lot of things: I grew up on the prairie and so my lines are (usually) long, out to the horizon. I'm female, so I'm concerned with cutting men down to size (ha!). I'm a baseball fan, a wife, a sometime gearhead, a karate-ka, easily amused, very tall (Zack, please don't correct that!) –it's all part of how and why the work gets written.
I keep wandering away from an answer. So instead, very Jewishly, I will ask: Can an American Jew be a Jewish poet? Can one write a Jewish poem without being a Jewish poet? What is a Jewish poet, anyway? Can I be a Jewish poet if I've never asked myself before if I was a Jewish poet? What makes a poet or poem Jewish? So Late into the Night contains two acrostics: does that make it Jewish? Should I stop right here?
Q: When is Derek going to read your book?
A. He's not much of a reader, I'm pretty sure. My experience is that public figures don't really like to read poetry about themselves. Or poetry at all.
October 4, 2011
אַ ביסל ייִאוש אין די פֿאָרכטיקע טעג (פֿון אַ לענגערן פּרוּװ אין גאַנג)
יאָרן באַגאָסן פֿלאַם
רגעס אָן אַן אַנקער
אָפּגעלעבט אַלץ סתּם
טויטן מיטגעטרויערט
טויטן איגנאָרירט
וואָס האָבן אָבֿות קאַליעטשעט
וואָס האָבן זיי געשפּירט
וווּ נעמט מען מיר אַ דרך
וווּהין זיך פֿירן וווּ
איך ווייס ניט וווּהין קערן זיך
צי ניצן כּלל "וווּהין"
ייִאוש איז קיין חידוש ניט
היינט צו טאָג בפֿרט
און ווער עס ווייסט דעם תּירוץ
זאָל מאַכן מיר אַ לייט
מיר אַ לייט
September 28, 2011
Moses is the warmup act?!
Well, no. But Haazinu is certainly a tough act to follow. I'll be reading poetry at shul (?!) this Shabbat Shuvah, and relevant to topics of the day, I will be reading the following translation, as well as a couple of my own poems. Come by!
The Kabbalist's Lullaby
Aaron Tzeitlin
Like buckets
in a well, calm,
the sleep of redemptions.
With eyes open,
dreaming Orot.
Drowsing Portals.
Like little kids
with their heads down,
sleep supernal Crowns.
Evil spirits rest,
dreaming
angels of peace.
Now judges
have left off punishing.
How still they slumber.
Watching over –
in constant flight — them all
a bright Ki-Tov.
from Yiddish: Zackary Sholem Berger
September 26, 2011
Happy New Year greenness
Greenness of dark pines through a fog;
Greenness of a cloud with a burst gallbladder;
Greenness of mossy stones in rain;
Greenness uncovered by a hoop rolled by a seven-year-old girl;
Greenness of cabbage leaves in splinters of dew that bloody the fingers;
First greeness of melted snow in a circledance around a blue flower;
Greeness of a half-moon, seen with green eyes from under a wave;
And celebratory greenness of grasses hemmed graveside.
Greenesses stream into greenesses. Body into body. And the whole earth has turned into a green aquarium.
Closer, closer to the green swarming!
From Avrom Sutzkever's Green Aquarium. My translation. Happy incipient 5772!
September 15, 2011
Glossifying and dancitization
Yes, it's just a viral video. On the other hand, what does its form and content(lessness) say about Judaism in 2011? One thing it reveals is that, for Aish, from the simple apple and honey prayer to the literary acrostics of Kallir, the liturgy has become sterilized to contemporary Jews. Scenes of pathos, hope and joy, Sarah's hope for a child and Abraham's long look into Isaac's eyes—none of this can mean more than breakdancing and autotune. Such latent assumptions constitute a horrifically uncharitable judgment of the Jewish people. Rather than attempting, as Jonathan Sacks has done, to revitalize the poetic language of the liturgy or to tell the universal story of human emotions that's right in front of us on Rosh Hashanah, Aish chooses again and again to glossify and dancitize as a response to the presumed emotional and intellectual retardation of contemporary Jews.
Go to Chakira to read the whole thing.
