FROM PEW TO PRAGER TO PENN TO PSEUDO-RESEARCH

 So this is how my mind works:

I wanted to write something about the Pew Report called A Portrait of Jewish Americans, which seems to be showing that American Jewry is in a flaming tailspin and that the rate of intermarriage and assimilation is at an all-time high, and that at this rate, the only American Jews who will be identifiably Jewish in a few decades will be the Orthodox. And I have been reading opinions and commentary by people who are by far smarter than I, including the always interesting Dennis Prager, who has written a piece called ‘Why Orthodoxy is Growing’. He says it has to do with ritual observance, with living among other Orthodox Jews, with sending kids to Orthodox schools, with valuing marriage and having more children (not buying into the ‘nihilistic nonsense- and the Jewish dead end- of the zero population growth movement’ that ‘many non-Orthodox have’), of believing that G-d chose the Jews and is the author of the Torah, with the centrality of Israel to most Orthodox, and with non-Orthodox accepting, in fact being ‘steeped in leftism’. And as usual, Dennis does not wave the flag for anyone, he is just stating the truth. Make of it what you wish.

So I started thinking. What other groups can I think of who would fulfill some of these criteria? And how are they doing? And, of course, I immediately thought of the Amish. You can’t get past the beards and the hats!

So I started looking up stuff about the Amish, and it seems that they are doing very well. New Amish communities are being established, in fact, 60% of existing communities have been established since 1990. There are about 500 settlements each of 40-60 families, about 251,000 people.

I don’t know that much about the Amish beyond a few books and the movie Witness, but it seems that they are fairly insular, live largely agrarian and simple lifestyles, have their own schools, speak a German dialect called Pennsylvanian Dutch as a first language and English as a second and keep largely away from technology. As there is only a limited amount of farmland, they also work as artisans, crafting furniture and selling it, and they take jobs in surrounding towns. They travel by horse and buggy but they are allowed to ride in cars and trains, and they play baseball and they like in-line skates. Some communities are more stringent than others about technology. They marry young, after their rumspringa, which means ‘running around’. After 16, the young Amish are allowed to go out into surrounding communities or wherever, and they have some time to decide if they want to return to their own community and be baptized into the faith, after which it’s for keeps. That’s the whole shtick, you see, they believe that baptism should be a decision made as an adult, not something done to a clueless infant, which is why they and the other Anabaptists had a broygess with the mainstream Protestants in der Heim, and ended up in North America.

And the interesting thing is that the vast majority of Amish kids come back from their rumspringa. And marry young, and have 6-7 kids. And there is a bit of a problem with certain genetic conditions as they are pretty inbred; most of today’s Amish descend from 100 original migrants. They do accept converts but they don’t evangelize.

So: Insularity- check. Amish schools- check. Valuing marriage, large families-check.  Quite a few parallels with Orthodox Jews, you might say, and they are doing OK.

But then my research to a left turn, because I saw an article entitled ‘Why don’t the Amish have Autistic Children?’

They don’t? thought I. So I had a look, and the second I opened it I could see that it was an anti-vaccination website and I was going to be treated to all sorts of information which, on further study, would prove to be the usual hodge-podge of facts and diatribes and dodgy ‘research’ with people commenting in the threads, saying things like ‘you have given me some intresting things to think about’ and ‘I knew there was a conspirassy’ etc.

And I was not disappointed. This site really looks persuasive though.

Anyway, according to the learned writer, of course the reason that the Amish don’t have autistic children is that they don’t vaccinate their children.

Not that they live hard-working simple lives eating simple food, not smoking or drinking, and eschewing modern farming practices of using artificial fertilizers etc, or that they don’t spend their lives breathing in car exhaust, or that they marry when they are young and not when they are 30-40, or that the pregnant women don’t drink diet Coke, or that they give birth with traditional practices with little medical intervention. Or that they don’t sit in front of screens all their lives. No, none of those things even figured in this learned analysis. I didn’t even mention that the writer’s information on the scarcity of autistic children was based on a field trip in 2005 among some of the 500 communities. Population unspecified, methods unspecified, diagnostic criteria unspecified. 3 autistic children were found! One adopted from China, who had been vaccinated, a second who had been vaccinated and ‘developed autism soon after’, and the third child- err, umm, vaccine status unknown.

Bullshit piled on bullshit. But vaccination causes autism! All the clues are there!!!

Amish also have lower cancer rates, according to a real study. Considering the inbreeding problem, one would have expected higher rates, but the opposite is true. Probably nothing to do with the clean living, probably because they don’t vaccinate, right? Whatever.

So that’s how you go from the Pew report to the Amish to another critique of stupid pseudo-medical opinion (doesn’t deserve the title of ‘research’).

Actually, I can pull it all together! Someone I knew, a secular Jew, once joked that he had had only a little bit of Jewish education, and as with a vaccine, where a tiny bit of the disease prevents getting the serious disease, the tiny bit of Judaism he was exposed to ensured that he would never catch the real thing. He married out. Not such a funny joke, really.

THE WORST NIGHTMARE

A while back I visited some friends who were sitting shiva for their son who  had committed suicide at the age of 28. There is a younger sister. He had been struggling with depression for some years and it got the better of him.

There was no attempt to hide the fact that it was a suicide and there was no sense of ostracism as might have happened in the past. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery and it is understood that he was ill; depression is an illness, not a moral failing or sin.

His parents were devastated but were trying to comfort themselves with the fact that they had had him for 28 years; that he was ‘alternate’ but not alienated from them. Throughout the visit, young people, his friends and cousins, came in and out, everyone with a story of his kindness, his generosity, his humour, his quirkiness. The atmosphere almost became festive at times, kids laughing and reminiscing. Until the parents started weeping again.

There is nothing worse than having to bury your child. No matter what the cause of death; suicide is probably worse than disease or accident. I lost my brother when I was 18 when he was killed in the Yom Kippur War at the age of 22. There is nothing that can be said to comfort bereaved parents but people were trying to say that it was somehow better because he died defending Israel. Well, maybe. But dead is dead, gone is gone. And bereaved parents can find it hard to continue to be parents to surviving children, and that’s a whole other story.

I have just heard of a suicide of another young man in the community. I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to say to any young person, or any person contemplating suicide, that the world is never a better place without them. That it may seem all horrible and insurmountable today but it might get better tomorrow. That we are not meaningless specks in an uncaring cosmos, we are here as the creations of G-d and that fact alone means that we matter, that our existence matters, perhaps in ways that we can’t see or comprehend, but still we matter.

I believe that if this young man, the one I knew, and perhaps any suicide, could have seen the pain that he would be putting his family through, he would never have done it. I believe that in the moments of awareness between the act and the loss of consciousness, the suicide truly regrets the act; but it is too late. The sense of loss is so deep, so tragic, so pathetic, there are no words. He is gone. He is never to be a husband, a father, he will never be an uncle to his sister’s children; the loss to his family and to his community is unfathomable.

I want to say to his parents, the pain will never go but it will lessen over time; that they must not forget that they have a daughter, and that she will need them more than ever now, even though it looks like she is OK, laughing with her friends. She is not OK. I want to say that, although it is dark and cold now, that one day the sun will shine on their faces again, that life goes on, not because the world is callous and uncaring, but because Life is powerful and it will always prevail. But we must choose Life. It is a choice. We must all choose Life.

WHEN CARDIGANS ATTACK

I bought this really nice knitted jacket/cardigan thing when I was in New York earlier this year. When I am in NY, I go to Bloomingdales, and I particularly like this designer, Eileen Fisher, who does a plus size range called Eileen Fisher Woman, and who really seems to understand that being plus size does not automatically mean that you want to look like an upholstered sofa, as so many of these so-called designers seem to think. The clothes are usually simple pieces in flattering shapes, mix and match, and usually of natural fibres. She uses a lot of silk and cotton, as well as linen. And wool, cashmere, mohair, sometimes with a bit of elastane for shape and metal thread for a bit of understated bling. The clothes are practical and comfortable, not cheap, but they last well. I’ve been buying Eileen Fisher for some years and hardly a dud piece.

So I was rather enjoying this cardigan jacket. It’s a great layering piece, not too warm (important for us larger ladies who are also menopausal), in a nice knit of black and white, so you get this uniform grey marle sort of appearance. I wore it to Shul during Yom Tov once, but generally I wear it as work wear or on Shabbos.

So comes the time to clean it, and I checked the laundering instructions label, only to be greeted with this information:

51% Linen

49% Wool.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHATNEZ!

I truly can’t believe this. I thought I always check clothing labels. I warn my sons when they buy suits, about the freaking LAPEL STIFFENER. I once made my daughter take off a skirt she was wearing in a hotel bathroom because I had seen that skirt in a store and I knew it had a leeetle bit of wool along with the linen and cotton blend. And she took it off willingly! And now I HAVE BEEN WEARING A PORK CHOP. TO SHUL, noch.

I have been like Lady Gaga, but the meat dress was actually BACON and SHRIMP.

This is for real, folks. This is just as bad as eating a bacon cheeseburger. After a starter of oysters. And it makes no damn sense AT ALL. Just like Red Heifers and Kids Seethed In Their Mothers’ Milk. This incomprehensible Jewy stuff that I take upon myself as part of my relationship with G-d.

I’m not complaining. I accept this stuff that is above my level of reasoning and pay grade. But DAMN, I liked that cardigan. DAMN.

So, my non-Jewish friends, anybody want a free Eileen Fisher garment, size 1X? Almost new. Very elegant and most comfortable, I can personally vouch for that.