Orthodox Jews

Surfside condo collapse heavily affected Orthodox Jews; the Washington Post explains why

Surfside condo collapse heavily affected Orthodox Jews; the Washington Post explains why

My second journalism job took me to South Florida, a part of the country I didn’t know at all, to work as a general assignment reporter for a small daily based in the beach city of Hollywood. We covered news in South Broward County.

I was the only reporter there interested in developing a religion beat, so it didn’t take me long to figure out the two major religious groups in town were Catholics and Jews. There were some large Protestant congregations in the area as well, but they didn’t have the same influence as the Catholic and Jewish communities.

When it came to covering Jewish life, I learned my readership was an astute one that wanted pieces on complex issues and not just some fluff pieces on Rosh Hashanah. Folks wanted to know about the new eruv being constructed in one of Hollywood’s tonier neighborhoods; they were curious as to which synagogue had the best hamantaschen for sale during Purim; what that Messianic congregation in Fort Lauderdale was all about and how much of the funds raised for the local Jewish Community Center were really going towards it.

Halfway through my sojourn in Florida, I moved from Davie, a town in central Broward, to North Miami Beach in Dade County, which is how I became aware of the tremendous concentration of Jews living in condos lining the beach. One of those condo communities was in Surfside, the site of the ill-fated building collapse last week.

As this piece in the Washington Post points out, there are a ton of Jews living in similar spots all up and down the beach reaching up to the Broward County line. There are several articles out there on the number of Jews affected by the collapse, but this one stands out for its details on the religious angle of the disaster.

SURFSIDE — Jewish congregations in the Miami area have a growing mi sheberach, a list of Hebrew names included in a public prayer for those in need of divine good, especially those requiring healing. The number of Jewish missing or dead in last week’s building collapse at 8777 Collins Ave. has crept to nearly 50, almost a third of the total number.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Global COVID-19 parables: What responsibility do faith groups have to the larger society?

I’m a great fan of a magical sense of awe, that heightened state of awareness during which the transcendent feels most palpable. However, I am decidedly not a fan of magical thinking that denies the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic.

I consider the latter delusional at best. The pandemic will not end because some — particularly those in positions of authority — wish it away. It can only be tamed, I believe, by limiting its spread until medical researchers develop a dependable vaccine or cure.

Until then, our responsibility as members of a highly interdependent society is to protect ourselves and each other via responsible social distancing and by always wearing a mask when adequate distancing is impossible. Anything less, in my book — speaking as someone who due to age and preexisting medical conditions is at great risk — is selfish and irresponsible.

Nor do I care whether the deniers are bikers in South Dakota, frat boys on any number of university campuses who can’t resist a keg or political libertarians who insist that their individual choices are at least as, if not more, important than the communal good in a national health emergency.

Ditto for the most sincerely devout of fatalistic religious believers who think their faith will protect them and their co-religionists. Or who insist that government — any secular government — lacks the authority to limit their religious expression in any way.

My news feeds have been replete with such examples. Here are three that have particularly aroused my pique. I consider each a clear example of self-aggrandizing, potentially deadly religious entitlement.

One story is from Israel and concerns a group of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews who have insisted on making their annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to a Ukrainian city where their deceased spiritual leader is buried. This, despite the probability that they’re likely to bring the pandemic with them.

A second from, South Korea, tells the tale of a megachurch that found itself at the center of a coronavirus cluster, which it blames on misleading figures released by government opponents.

The third involves the Rev. John MacArthur of Los Angeles’ Grace Community Church, who recently claimed that the number of American COVID-19 deaths is way below the generally accepted figures reported by mainstream news outlets. MacArthur claimed that there is no pandemic.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

When covering Jewish views on abortion, don't forget the Orthodox, U.S. Judaism's fastest growing branch

When USA Today ran a piece last week, suggesting that Christians have misappropriated the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible — for their views on abortion, I took notice.

What I found was an article that quoted the most liberal Jewish voices on these biblical issues while ignoring everyone else.

There is a range of rabbinical opinion on this issue, but you wouldn’t know it from this piece. That’s bad journalism.

The lead sentence begins with the assertion that the anti-abortion views of Christians are connected to their faith. Then:

This is a familiar argument for the Republican Party when it comes to abortion access. In January, Kirk Cox, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, cited biblical scripture when he came out against a proposed bill that would lift late-term abortion restrictions.

"You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” he said, quoting Psalm 139. “You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.”

But for many leaders in the Jewish faith, such interpretations are problematic and even insulting.

“It makes me apoplectic,” says Danya Ruttenberg, a Chicago-based rabbi who has written about Jews' interpretation of abortion. “Most of the proof texts that they’re bringing in for this are ridiculous. They’re using my sacred text to justify taking away my rights in a way that is just so calculated and craven.”

Like, how is this view of Psalm 139 “ridiculous”? It clearly states that the unborn child is a person knit together by God.

Also, if “many” Jewish leaders are offended by this kind of interpretation of a Psalm, which is true, the implication is that there are other points of view inside Judaism. Correct?


Please respect our Commenting Policy

This is a viral news story, obviously: What religion groups oppose vaccinations and why?

This is a viral news story, obviously: What religion groups oppose vaccinations and why?

THE QUESTION:

In light of the recent measles outbreak spreading from certain enclaves of U.S. Orthodox Jews, does their religion, or any other, oppose vaccination?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The current epidemic of highly contagious measles is America’s worst since 2000 when the federal Centers for Disease Control proclaimed the disease eradicated. At this writing there are 704 known cases of the disease, three-fourths of them in New York State, but no deaths yet. The epidemic apparently originated with travelers returning from Israel and then spread out from close-knit neighborhoods of strict Orthodox Jews (often labeled “ultra-Orthodox”) in New York City’s Brooklyn borough and suburban Rockland County, where some residents have not been vaccinated.

New York City has undertaken unusually sharp measures, leveling fines for those lacking vaccination and shutting down some Jewish schools. Significantly, vaccination is being urged by such “Torah true” Jewish organizations as Agudath Israel, United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association, the Yiddish-language newspaper Der Yid and by rabbinic authorities in Israel.

Medical science is all but universal in refuting claims that have been made about some unexplained link between the increase in autism and the customary MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) or other inoculations of children. Though individual rabbis may hold anti-vaxx ideas, avoidance is not a matter of religious edicts but a secular counterculture, including a since-discredited medical journal article, Internet propaganda and publications from groups like Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health (PEACH) and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense, certain entertainment celebrities, and an offhand remark by candidate Donald Trump.

The journal Vaccine observed in 2013 that outbreaks within religious groups result from “a social network of people organized around a faith community, rather than theologically based objections.”


Please respect our Commenting Policy

The Independent somehow manages to quote zero Jews in news about Jewish school

How many Jews does it take to write a newspaper story about same-sex education in private schools?

When the article is about an Orthodox Jewish school, it would be nice to have at least one.

It would be especially appropriate to quote an Orthodox Jewish scholar familiar with British laws affecting religious liberty.

The Independent ran an article on a government report that found an Orthodox Jewish girls school did not meet its standards in providing instruction to its pre-teen students on LGBT issues. The article entitled “Private Jewish school fails third Ofsted inspection for not teaching LGBT issues” is a fiasco, in terms of journalistic integrity.

It talks about and around the subject of the story, giving voice to critics, but does not speak with the subjects -- not one person who could offer an explanation why a Jewish Orthodox school might not be all that keen to conform to the cultural standards of The Independent and its left-wing readers.

The lede sets the tone for the story -- by being shown false by the second sentence of the story and setting forth The Independent’s biases.

A private, faith-based school in London has failed its third Ofsted inspection for refusing to teach its pupils about homosexuality.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

Getting upset while doing errands and listening to NPR stories about Israel

Getting upset while doing errands and listening to NPR stories about Israel

National Public Radio floats in and out of my journalistic consciousness, but not as much as in the past. Since I (thankfully) no longer commute for work, I now spend little time in my car stuck in rush hour traffic, the only time I listened to NPR with any real consistency.

I appreciate NPR's attempts to deliver a quality product.  And while it often succeeds, I do not think everything it does is top-notch. Like any news operation, at times it messes up. Then there's the brevity of the broadcast news format; outside of special features, it leaves little time for context and nuance.

Clearly, I'm a print guy. Though I did a short stint back in 1970 writing rip-and-read, top-of-the-hour, news roundups for United Press International radio clients when I worked in the agency's San Francisco bureau.

One subject about which I think NPR could do better is its coverage of Israel and Israeli Jewish society. I'm not alone on this. Right-of-center pro-Israel groups have long claimed that NPR is biased in favor of the Palestinian side, and goes out of its way to make Israel look bad.

Click here for an example of that criticism. To read an NPR ombudsman's response to the bias claims, click here.

My take is that the right-wing media watchdogs -- whose complaints help swell my email inbox -- too often find bias where I find only journalistic tripwires, such as quoting the same available officials over and over, or favoring English speakers over others simply because the NPR audience is English speaking.

However, two recent NPR stories I heard on separate days while in my car doing local errands did get under my skin more than usual.


Please respect our Commenting Policy

I confess: I brought a basket of stereotypes with me to the religion beat. And you?

I confess: I brought a basket of stereotypes with me to the religion beat. And you?

I knew very little about the world of religion when I became the full-time religion-beat reporter at the Los Angeles Daily News back in 1985. I knew next to nothing about how religious organizations functioned and not much more about the myriad ways that religious beliefs play out in people's lives.

That included Judaism, the faith into which I was born but to which I was barely culturally connected at the time. I also possessed what I soon realized was a superficial understanding of the Eastern meditative traditions to which I had become attracted.

But Pope John Paul II was scheduled to visit LA in 1987 and I'd had enough of seeing bad movies at odd hours in small screening rooms and talking to self-important studio public relations hacks on the Hollywood film and TV beat. My way forward came when I realized that the paper would need someone to lead what would surely be saturation papal visit coverage, and that that someone (meaning me) would need a long lead time to get prepared.

My one great advantage was that my editors knew even less than I did about covering religion. That, and I volunteered for the beat before anyone else. And so began my on-the-job training.

I made many rookie mistakes, including mistaking titles for actual names (don't ask). Despite that, I quickly realized that I needed to rid myself of my stereotypical thinking about religion and religious believers.

An early lesson came at the 1985 Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas. It was there that I came to understand that not all Southern Baptists -- and by extension, not all evangelicals -- were alike in their theology and practice.

It was also in Dallas that I realized just how politically brutal religious organizations can behave.


Please respect our Commenting Policy