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This is for those who receive my posts via email and have not seen posts in the last few days. The reason is because I moved over to a new system, Substack, which is much better in many ways, BUT comes with a drawback - if you are using Gmail, then the posts might be automatically moved to the "promotional emails" tab or even to Spam. Look for them there if you haven't seen them. Moving them to your inbox may stop that from happening again; if that doesn't work, then try hitting reply and writing something to me - once Gmail recognizes that we correspond, it may learn to place them in your inbox.

Blog Migration!

Birds migrate, butterflies migrate, whales migrate, and this blog is migrating! It's being moved over from Blogger to Substack. The URL is currently https://rationalistjudaism.substack.com but will hopefully soon also be accessible at www.RationalistJudaism.com. Hopefully the email subscriptions should still work - if you usually get this by email and suddenly stop hearing from me, please let me know!

Crazy Coincidence

This is wild!

In our exhibit of artistic model Noah's Arks, we have a section with arks by an artist who re-imagines the ark as different types of modern vehicles - an ocean liner, an airplane, a hot-air balloon, and so on. Two days ago I wrote to the artist with a suggestion of another vehicle that he should create:

Then, yesterday, none other than Elon Musk posted the following:

What a crazy coincidence!

Meanwhile, can anyone help with the following:

- Bringing a suitcase of model Noah's Arks from TEANECK

 

- Putting a nine-foot hammerhead shark in a lift from TEANECK

 

- Putting some seven-foot metal bars on a lift from anywhere in the US

 

- Bringing a suitcase of aquatic equipment from LONDON

 

If so, please email me. Will pay any fees involved!

Forget Ye and Fuentes, We Have Our Own Hitler Enthusiast

People are rightly up in arms about Kanye West's enthusiasm for Hitler and Trump's refusal to denounce Fuentes. The actions of both West and Trump will lead to a massive upsurge in antisemitism. Their many fans - many of whom have probably never even heard of Hitler - will start looking into who Hitler was and decide that their loyalty to their heroes means supporting their positions. 

But do you know what's even more painful and damaging? That when their fans start to look into whether Hitler was really the bad guy that the mainstream media insist he was, they'll be shown a video saying that Hitler was right about the Jews. And it's a video produced by an Orthodox Rabbi.

Yes, it's Rabbi Yaron Reuven's notorious Hitler video, in which he claims that the Jews in Germany really were destroying society and thus Hitler was justified in hating them. Reuven falsely insists that the morally degenerate clubs of Berlin "were all run by Jewish people" and that it's "absolutely true history" that the Jews destroyed the German economy with their financial greed. Of course this is utterly false, but when a bearded Orthodox rabbi insists that it's true, it's the ultimate vindication for antisemites.

When I originally drew attention to this, Reuven responded with glee. He claimed that it was a good thing that antisemites see that Jews are willing to call out problems in their own society. But while it is definitely true that we should be calling out problems ourselves rather than leaving it others to do so, that is not what Reuven did! He fabricated Jewish crimes. Rather than exposing the hatred and lies of antisemitism, he actively gave it false legitimacy.

In the past I've pointed out how various antisemites have used Reuven's video to justify their claims about the Jews. And now the latest Ye/ Trump fiasco has breathed new life into it. I received a new video in which someone points to Reuven's speech and, not unreasonably, asks why he isn't allowed to say that which rabbis themselves say. 

As I've said before, there's nothing that can be done to repair the incalculable terrible damage to our nation that Yaron Reuven has wrought. It's too late.

But we have to stop him from causing any more.

Yaron Reuven's YouTube and Facebook videos and accounts must be removed for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and inciting hatred and violence. He needs to be ousted from the Rabbinical Alliance of America (of which he proudly declares membership and legitimacy). He needs to be denounced, defrocked and condemned. We need to send a strong message to future would-be Reuvens that this behavior will have consequences.

You can reach the Rabbinical Alliance of America at Rabbi@Igud.US, 1-833-RAA-IGUD or by completing the form at this page. And if anyone has any influence with the Sefardic rabbis from whom Reuven received endorsements or other Sefardic rabbis of prestige, please speak to them. 

A Different Kind of Chocolate

With Covid having prevented my wife and I from celebrating a significant anniversary milestone, we finally took a long-overdue vacation - to the new hottest destination for Israelis, Dubai. It was exceedingly interesting, but in this post I'll just discuss one thing: chocolate.

Wandering around the fascinating spice and gold souks, I came across an upscale store selling chocolate. But this was like no other chocolate store I had ever seen. Most of the gold-covered chocolates were shaped in form of a camel, and the reason for this was that they were made of camel milk!

The Al-Nassma chocolate company uses milk from 3,000 camels at the Camelicious Farm in Umm Nahad, Dubai, which also produces bottles of camel milk and camel ice cream. The camels are milked twice daily, producing 5000 liters of milk. Camel milk is long favored by the Bedouin, and is richer in vitamin C than cow milk, while being lower in fat and lactose.

Camel milk is, of course, as treif as treif can be. But I decided to buy some of the unusual looking chocolate to exhibit at the Biblical Museum of Natural History in our Hall of Kosher Classification, alongside some other highly unusual camel-related items that I purchased on this trip. As I lined up at the counter, the man in front of me said, "Watch out, it's so delicious, you'll get addicted to it!"

Although he spoke to me in English, his heavy accent sounded all too familiar.

"Me'efa atah?" I asked in Ivrit. "Haifa," he replied.

I felt obligated to point out that the chocolate really is made from camel milk and is non-kosher. He responded indignantly that we don't even know what's in the water that we drink, so we might as well eat camel chocolate too. I must confess that I failed to follow this argument.

Interestingly, the Bedouin predilection for camel milk explains something in the Torah that I discussed in my book The Camel, The Hare And The Hyrax. Since the Torah specifies that animals must both bring up the cud and possess split hooves, the camel - which lacks hooves entirely - is obviously not kosher. Why, then, does the Torah need to warn us against eating it, along with the hare, hyrax and pig? The Sifra states that the presence of one kosher sign might lead a person to think that it's acceptable to eat them. But Chizkuni explains further that since the local nations eat such things, there is extra reason to spell out that they may not be eaten.

But what about those Jews visiting Dubai who, unlike the man from Haifa, keep kosher? Can they have regular milk in their coffee? Or does the local predilection for camel milk mean that there is a risk of camel milk being mixed in to regular milk? Instead of chalav Yisrael, could they be drinking chalav Yishmael?

It seems to me that there is no such risk. Although in some ways the UAE is far from a First World country - it's an authoritarian regime with no free press - in other ways it is highly advanced, including having very strict laws on quality control in food and correct labeling. 

But there's also another reason. Camels produce much less milk every day than modern dairy cow breeds. In addition, whereas male cattle calves are often killed, every camel must be kept near its young in order to continue producing milk, which means that two animals need to be kept fed. As a result of all this, camel milk is around thirty times more expensive than cow milk. The Gemara (Avoda Zara 34b) explains that there is no concern of non-kosher wine being secretly added to unsupervised imported fish stew in places where wine is more expensive, since there is no financial incentive to do so. The same logic would apply in Dubai - there is simply no incentive for dairy farms to use camel milk instead of cow milk.

However, with the enormous number of Israelis visiting Dubai, it's important for people to be aware that some of the chocolate there is very, very treife!

(Meanwhile, I am kicking myself for not buying a bottle of camel milk, emptying it, and bringing it back for a museum exhibit. So if you happen to be in Dubai, please get one for us!)