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Stupid Column of the Week

Generally only online columns in the three New York Jewish weeklies are eligible for the stupid column award. This week two Jerusalem Report columns - neither of which is online - are far more meritorious, and therefore are the co-winners.

First, Leonard Jason, a psych professor at DePaul, writes that family therapy is what's needed to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jason says that if each side communicates "in safe and supporting settings, past animosities are de-intensified." He suggests "sharing personal narratives and intimacies."

I'm sure Jason is well meaning and on an individual level his point might make some sense. But the idea that family therapy would solve the problem on a national level is silly.

Second, Daniel Landes, head of Pardes, writes about what Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik "would have done" if he were alive today:

"The Rav well understood anti-Semitism and he loved the land. But he would have feared religious settlers who take us to the brink of war for territory alone, as believing in a false messiah. He would have despised the racism that has crept into religious discourse."

It's annoying enough when people insist on "what the Rav would have done," with respect to an issue of Jewish law. When it comes to Israel's current political situation, it's absurd.

Rabbi Soloveitchik did, and would today, oppose racism and nationalist fanaticism from religious Jews. But he was a staunch Zionist, and a supporter of settlement in Judea and Samaria. He would not support "religious settlers who take us to the brink of war for territory alone," but he would likely reject Landes' notion that settlers, and not Palestinian terror and rejectionism, have brought Israel to its current situation.

Landes has a right to his political views, just as we all do. But applying his own political values to the current situation has nothing to do with the Rav. Using those values to argue that Rabbi Soloveitchik would do today exactly what Landes wants done is speculation at best, and possibly a distortion of the Rav's thinking and legacy.
posted on 1/02/2004