Editorial: Righteous indignation, rinse and repeat
Yes, there are some things worth fighting over. There was a clear consensus in the frum world, or as close to consensus as you’d ever hope to get, that the seeming ordination of a female Orthodox rabbi was a bad thing. It was fought out, someone backed down, and that should have been it. Last Pesach is ancient history.
Therefore, an invitation to Rabba Sara Hurwitz, the first and likely the last person to hold that title, to speak in a local shul did not need to become World War III. If the rav of a shul decides that something is acceptable for his congregation within its four walls, and it’s not illegal, immoral, or fattening, then others really ought to leave it alone. In fact, one local rav who habitually criticizes others from his pulpit hides behind that very doctrine every time he lobs a hand grenade into the public discourse: he only speaks for his kehilah, he explains: why should anyone be upset?
The problem is, however, that since some people both seem convinced they are G-d’s Earthly Representatives, and lack any discernable sense of irony, we wind up with an episode of extreme intolerance toward others, plus vitriolic personal attacks, even as the Chofetz Chaim’s anti-Loshon Horah banner flaps in the breeze. Or maybe it’s twisting in the wind.
Cold war, old war: Obsolete spies
The FBI stunned the country this week when agents rolled up a ring of nearly a dozen deep cover Russian spies who had been living seemingly middle class, suburban lives, mostly on the East Coast.
The investigation was underway for years, but the arrests were made quickly after one operative, known as Richard Murphy, seemed to be about to leave the country for good. Another, a 28-year-old woman known as Anne Chapman, who was described in the Daily News on Wednesday as “the spy who loved us,” was grabbed as she realized that her cover was blown. Federal agents snapped the cuffs on right after she purchased a new, untapped cell phone to warn her bosses in Moscow.
Comparisons to Cold War-era spycraft and spy novels are obvious. The criminal complaint makes reference to coded recognition phrases, transmissions of short bursts of information, meetings at crowded rail stations, agents and handlers exchanging nearly identical bags — one packed with cash — as they brushed past one another, stacks of money buried upstate for other agents to dig up years later.
One operative, a Yonkers woman, was actually a public figure — a newspaper columnist who wrote for the Spanish-language daily El Diario.
It’s a truly fascinating story. But some of the luster fades when you realize that the whole thing was pointless. So much so that there have been no espionage charges filed so far — just accusations of money laundering and failing to register as agents of a foreign government, almost as if they were lobbyists. No deep, dark secrets were passed.
Why? Well, one reason might be that in 1998, several years after the ring was reportedly up and running, two college students formed a company called Google.
That’s right. While James Bond might be timeless, the search for pedestrian, everyday information about the US of the sort these agents allegedly sought, no longer requires couples to assume new identities and even have children together as they pose as husband and wife. Because it’s all online.
