Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity

Amritas linked to an article on Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. I opened the link with some trepidation, since Amritas’s post warned:

Zoroastrianism was once a major religion which influenced Judaism and Christianity.

Not that it bothers me that Zoroastrianism might have influenced Judaism. But there seems to be a Christian concept of what Judaism is, which is not exactly right, which informs perceptions of Judaism even among philo-Semites. (When I'm in the US I often feel like people see me as mythical being come to life.) And Zoroastrianism is so essentially different from Judaism: It is a dualist religion, proposing that there are two essential forces in the world. A Zoroastrian is one who pledges fidelity to the force of good, rather than the force of evil. (I will leave it to a Zoroastrian to debate whether these forces are internal or external.) Judaism, on the other hand, is uncompromisingly monotheistic: God is all-powerful, and ultimately responsible for everything. (We do have free will, though, despite the fact that there is a will greater than ours. But I don’t want to get into that right now.)

It turned out that I had no reason to fear. The article that Amritas linked to is excellent. Nevertheless, I want to clarify a couple of points that a reader new to the subject might miss.

First, in Judaism there is no concept of Heaven or Hell in any form that remotely resembles the Christian notion of them - Satan appears only in the book of Job, and even there he is referred to as Hasatan - the satan. More important, Satan has no place in the Jewish religion outside of the context of Job. The idea of eternal reward in Judaism is deliberately left vague. Even the idea of Messiah in Judaism is deliberately vague. We are not supposed to know the answers to these questions at this time. (The same thing is true about God Himself - He is unknowable to human beings.)

Second, the major influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism (according to the article) is during what the article calls the "inter-testamental" period. For the most part, these ideas (such as Gnosticism) were rejected by Judaism, but some of them were evidently adopted by Christianity – such as Heaven, Hell, and the apocalypse.

As a child I was often asked what Jews thought about Jesus, Heaven, Hell, etc. I sometimes found myself saying things that I knew weren’t right, but didn’t know why. It was because the questions themselves don’t make sense in the Jewish context (what color is sound?). In English, the word “religion” is almost synonymous with “faith” – they are often used interchangeably. But Judaism is not really a faith-based religion (though there are a few articles of faith, like belief in one God). It is more like a lifestyle. The question Judaism asks is not so much, “What should a person believe” but “How should life be lived”.

No alternative to oil – but don’t panic!

Steven Den Beste says there is no alternative to Arab oil. For those of you who read his post with increasing dread and desperation I have a few words of comfort.

1. They are more dependent on oil than we are. If their oil were to disappear the market would find alternatives (such as coal, as Steven points out) for us, but not for them.

2. Oil helps us more than it helps them. They sell oil to provide for their basic needs. We buy oil to provide for our (more complex) needs and advance our society and technology.

3. Competition is keeping the price of oil down: There are major non-Arab sources of oil such as Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, the UK, Norway, Nigeria and Indonesia. (On the demand side there are about 2 billion rapidly industrializing Indians and Chinese who will increase demand for oil in the short run. But don’t panic – the other factors are true also for them.)

4. Conservation is keeping the price of oil down: Businesses always seek to reduce their costs – energy is one of them.

Oy and Uhy

Amritas has responded to my previous post. For those of you with Real Players, you can listen to Rabbi Yochanan the Shoemaker's Melody, played by my friend Yehoshua Rochman, while you read this post. It’s a traditional Hasidic nigun (melody) of the kind you might have once heard from Ukrainian Yiddish speakers.

Amritas says:

varfn to voyfn reminds me a bit of bird to boid in Brooklynese, though the start and end points are not quite the same. (Brooklyn oi is said to be more like 'uh-ee'; if so, then the 'oi' I've heard on TV is a spelling pronunciation.)

I've heard both oy and uhy (@y) in Yiddish. But I don’t think that it had an influence on Brooklyn English. According to Noel Pangilinen, that is a result of the Irish influence:

New Yorkers have the Irish to thank for their now famous "toity-toid ohn toid". [33rd (street) and 3rd (avenue) – DB] A Hofstra University professor, Francis Griffith, attributes New Yorkese speakers' habit of interchanging the diphthong "oi" with "er" to Gaelic language.

It also agrees with my gut instinct (for what that’s worth) that Yiddish speakers would pronounce “er” something like “uhr” (or “@r”, as Amritas would say) where the “r” is not quite a uvular trill.

Speaking of, er, “er”…

I was raised in Boston, my parents were from in New York, and I spent 4 years in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, so I've had a fair amount of contact with North-East US dialects. My impression is that the major differences are sociological rather than geographical. My parents and I speak what I might call an middle-class-North-East English, rather than a specifically Bostonian or New York English. When I hear English speakers from Montreal, for example, they sound "normal" to me. But Torontonians sound to me like Mid-Westerners.

However, there is definitely a Brooklyn accent that is different from a New York accent. For example, most New Yorkers pronounce "car" as "caw" (actually more like "c@w") while Brooklyners say "caa". (Bostonians [not me] say "cae", kind of like "cat" without the "t".)

I was disappointed with the description of the Philadelphia accent that I found in The Mid-Atlantic Dialects. The most notable and universal features (at least to me) are: “er” is pronounced R (syllabic “er”, like the “er” in better) in all positions (not just at the end of words) for example, America is pronounced AmRica; and o is pronounced like e + u (this is so pronounced that it almost sounds like two syllables to me).

The Philadelphia accented word that I thought was the funniest is pronounced RrR. Can you guess what word this is?

UPDATE: If any of you can tell me how to keep a blank window from opening up when I click on the Real Media file, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know. (And don’t tell me to remove the <BASE> markup – I don’t want to.)

Continue reading "Oy and Uhy"

Ukrainian Yiddish vowel shift

Amritas links to The Darkest Days and asks, “but what's with all the vowels”?

If I knew something about Ukrainian, Polish (the region was once ruled by Poland), and Yiddish, maybe I could work out the mystery of the double names for Kolomyja/Kolomeya (j is just another spelling of the sound [y], so it's no big deal, but was e a Yiddish substitute for the y vowel?) and Dunaivci/Dinavitz (c and tz are probably just different spellings for the sound [ts], but what's with all the vowels other than a?).

At least part of the answer is the Ukrainian Yiddish vowel shift:

The main difference between the Ukraine and the normative Yiddish vowels is as follows:

'a' sometimes becomes 'o': hant -> hont (hand)
'o' becomes 'u': dos -> dus (this)
'u' becomes 'i': du -> di (you)
'e' often becomes 'ey': geven -> geveyn (was)
'ay' often becomes 'a': shraybn -> shrabn (to write)
'o' sometimes becomes 'oy': geborn -> geboyrn (born)
'r' sometimes disappear after a vowel: darf -> daf (need)

Gini coefficients

Here’s a handy-dandy table of Gini coefficients (via The Gweilo Diaries). The Gini coefficient measures income inequality – the lower the number, the more equal. Israel comes in at .36, quite a bit more equal than the US at .41, and the same as the UK, Ireland and Portugal. I would like to see the same figures excluding immigrants. A lot of the income inequality in both Israel and the US (and perhaps the other countries) is a result of immigration, but I don’t think anyone would suggest that the immigrants would be better off if they were excluded.

Tax revenues soar

Great news: Tax revenues soar 12.2% since January.

Income tax revenue rose 8.9% in May to NIS 6.88b. and 11.2% to NIS 34.1b. for the full five month period. Customs and VAT Authority revenue shot up 15.7%, reaching NIS 6.3b., despite a slash in customs duties on electronic appliances and a one percentage point roll back in VAT to 17%, which took effect March 1. Since January the Treasury saw a 12.9% rise in its revenue to 28b.

My big worry is that due to political issues, the government won’t survive to complete its economic program. The problem with economic policy is that good policies usually hurt in the short run and pay off 4-5 years down the road. That means that the current government has to survive that long before it can get popular support for its economics. Netanyahu has done some amazing things for the economy, the best being his pledge that, “Every additional shekel in state revenue will go to reduce taxes, not to increase the budget framework or spending”. A few months ago he did just that. Now he as another chance. Netanyahu: Do your stuff.

Israeli Media Bias

The usual media bias is alive and well in Israel.

I could not help but notice just how downbeat and negative the general tone of Israel's news media generally proved to be, and how intent they seemed on tearing down just about everything of value in this country. With their decidedly left-wing agenda, anti-religious bias and outright demonization of certain sectors of the population, the Israeli media long ago ceased to be a unifying or even enlightening factor in the country's civic discourse.

The Darkest Days

Amritas links to an astounding story of a group of 38 Jews who hid from the Nazis in caves – in one cave for half a year, until they were discovered, and in the second cave for 344 days.

The Darkest Days:

The millstone really struck me. I am in my 50s but pretty strong, and I couldn't even move it. Yet Nissel Stermer carried it on his back for three or four miles. That millstone was their life. They used it to grind grain to make bread, which was the main part of their diet. Nissel must have gotten a lot of strength from his family. I think it's like the stories about mothers, full of adrenaline, gaining superhuman strength to lift cars or bend metal to save their children. Nissel knew this millstone would save his entire family. That hit me like a brick wall.

Off the Face of the Earth:

Zaida Stermer, his wife, Esther, and their six children dug up their last remaining possessions from behind their house, loaded their wagons with food and fuel, and, just before midnight, quietly fled into the darkness. Traveling with them were nearly two dozen neighbors and relatives, all fellow Jews who, like the Stermers, had so far survived a year under the German occupation of their homeland. Their destination, a large cave about five miles to the north, was their last hope of finding refuge from the Nazis' intensifying roundups and mass executions of Ukrainian Jews.

The dirt track they rode on ended by a shallow sinkhole, where the Stermers and their neighbors unloaded their carts, descended the slope, and squeezed through the cave's narrow entrance. In their first hours underground, the darkness around them must have seemed limitless. Navigating with only candles and lanterns, they would have had little depth perception and been able to see no more than a few feet. They made their way to a natural alcove not far from the entrance and huddled in the darkness. As the Stermers and the other families settled in for that first night beneath the cold, damp earth, there was little in their past to suggest that they were prepared for the ordeal ahead.

No Jew survived the Holocaust without an amazing (and usually tragic) story. I could fill up a whole blog linking to them. But this one has personal angle, which is why I’m linking to it. The caves are near the town of Korolówka, Ukraine. If you follow the link and zoom out one level (to level 5), you can see on the left a town called Kolomyja – the birthplace of my paternal grandfather. On the right is a town called Dunaivci – the birthplace of my maternal grandfather. (The names my grandfathers used are Kolomeya and Dinavitz.) With 38 people in that cave, it is more than likely that one knew a relative of mine – or even, perhaps, was one of them.

President Bush’s speech at Normandy, ‏2004

Steven Den Beste has posted his fantasy of President Bush’s speech at Normandy. I might as well post mine.

Sixty years ago our soldiers came to these shores to save this land from brutal dictatorship – savage tyranny on a scale never seen before – many of them never to come home. By the end of the Battle of Normandy, there were over 200,000 allied casualties, plus 20,000 French civilian casualties – mostly collateral damage of allied bombing. Today these numbers would be unacceptable – too high a price to pay for another country’s freedom. Even if allied casualties were minimal, 20,000 French civilian casualties would be too high a price to pay. The French would rather be Nazi slaves than lose 20,000 civilians and be free. No matter that the Nazis killed many times that number in France alone – it’s purely an internal matter, they would say. The US is in violation of international law. The President is a war criminal. The Americans are acting unilaterally, with only the usual Anglo-Saxon hangers-on and a few suspect French exiles that are, no doubt, pawns of the Americans.

The most tragic thing is that this horrific loss of life, not to mention the murders committed by the Nazis, could have been prevented by a modicum of courage at an earlier date.

America didn’t go to war willingly. The American peace camp kept us out of the war while it raged in Europe and Asia, while Germany occupied most of the continent of Europe, and began the “Final Solution” – the systematic extermination of the Jews. It was only when the United States itself was attacked that we went to war. Who knows how many lives we would have saved – our own and others’ – if we had gone to war a few years earlier.

But even this should not have been necessary. The occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany in 1941 [UPDATE: 1939, see comments], usually considered the beginning of World War II, was only the last of a long series of provocations, any one of which could have justly led to war – a shorter and less destructive war than the one which, in the end, we were forced to fight. In 1938 Germany demanded part of Czechoslovakia – the Sudetenland – which the UK and France were bound by treaty to defend. Shamefully, they backed down under the threat of violence, convincing themselves that they were acting nobly in the interest of peace. Hitler didn’t appreciate the subtlety and nuance of this thinking (or maybe he appreciated it only too well) and took it as a sign that he could occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia at will.

Six months before the German occupation of the Sudetenland, Germany occupied Austria. That was another lost opportunity to stop the Nazi terror. But the best opportunity was lost five years earlier. In 1933 Germany violated the terms of Versailles treaty, militarized the Rhineland, and occupied the Saar. It is now thought that any military opposition by France would have led to the overthrow of Hitler. But there was no opposition.

We are now engaged in another war, in another country, for the freedom of its people, the people of its region, and the world. Let us not repeat our mistakes.

Imagine

Amritas includes a take-off of John Lennon’s Imagine in his last post. I always found the original chilling enough. It’s a beautiful tune, one that reverberates in my head – like a beautiful but evil nemesis. It proposes to solve all the world’s problems by eliminating everything that makes life worth living, and winds up:

You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Lennon’s idea of “one” of course.

Chilling.

UPDATE: Of course, Amritas’s version is not really a take-off at all; it just fills in some of the details.

Gore is like the Instapundit

I am not referring here to ideology. The Instapundit says:

Once again, the Gore endorsement looks like the kiss of death.

I think that Glenn well knows that this is a case of correlation rather than cause-and-effect. The same way that Glenn instinctively links to important news, Gore instinctively links to wacky causes doomed to fail.

UPDATE: An economist might call Gore a leading indicator.

Negative Feedback

A brief illustration of negative feedback:

If you want to design a car to go from point X to point Y there are two possible ways to do it. One way is to point the car at point Y (remember it’s already sitting at point X) and calibrate all the systems very carefully to make sure that it veers neither left nor right. You better make sure that you do an excellent job, because any imperfection will keep it from reaching its destination.

Another way is to not worry so much about the calibration of the systems. Instead add a feedback system that tells the car to turn left if it veers to the right, and right if it veers to the left. This is a much more robust way to design a system, because it will work even when the calibrations are off. Notice that the feedback is opposite in direction to the car’s deviation, that’s why it’s called negative feedback.

(For the sake of completeness, negative feedback will not work if it results in a greater deviation than the original one – for example, if veering to the right results in a deviation to the left that is greater than the original deviation to the right.)

Media bias and feedback systems

Steven Den Beste has an excellent post on media bias. Among many other things he says:

But that [bias] also will happen in other kinds of organizations. In academia in the most leftist departments it's deliberate activism, but in news organizations it tends to be more indirect. Promotion is more based on merit, but senior people will evaluate the writing and performance of juniors partly on the basis of ideology, even if unconsciously: what they write will be seen as "more accurate", "making more sense" if the junior person's politics and world view are similar to the senior. Thus there will also be a tendency within news organizations for ideologies to reinforce, and for objectivity to transform into bias. (And note that when people in those organizations deny bias and claim that they are objective, they're not lying even though they may be wrong. They truly think they are objective; most of them see themselves as "moderate" and "centrist" even when they are well away from the broader consensus of the population.)

Steven is a systems engineer, so he probably recognizes this as a system with positive feedback. In systems engineering positive feedback is a bad thing. It means that random deviations – in this case, ways of understanding the news not derived from reality, but from the unconscious ideology or worldview of the reporter – are fed back into the system and amplified. This self-reinforcement (positive feedback) will result in the whole system spinning out of control – in this case, not reporting the truth.

One engineering response would be to look for some kind of flywheel (the flywheel is a device for regulating the inherent positive feedback in steam engines – it provides the negative feedback which the system otherwise lacks). Another would be to look for ways to redesign the system so that it doesn’t have positive feedback to begin with.

I can’t think of realistic ways to implement either of these solutions in the media. Steven offers the following, simultaneously rejecting it:

Some will say that the general tendency of individual news organizations to move from objectivity to bias can be handled through competition between independent news organizations, but there's a problem with that. Competition would reward reportage of what is popular, not reportage of what is true. Do we want the media to tell us what we want to hear, or what we need to hear?

The initial state of having several news sources which were biased in several ways would permit individual citizens to look at them all and try to get an idea of the reality behind those reports (similar to how juries compare the cases made by opposing attorneys).

But that kind of competitive system is unstable and tends to shakeout and concentration. If one network gets good ratings in part because of a particular bias, other news organizations will eventually move to similar positions. There may not be business shakeout but there will be ideological shakeout.

If viewers prefer one TV network over another in part based in differences in bias between them, and reward one with better ratings, then this substitutes the consensus bias in the electorate for the internal bias of the news organizations. That may be a change, but it isn't clear that it's an improvement.

I think that this analysis was correct in the pre-internet age, when barriers to entry into the media market were very high. But if barriers to entry are sufficiently low, the “ideological shakeout” will not occur. If there is any market at all for a particular point of view, then it will be expressed. (In the business world this is called a niche market. A lot of money can be made by selling to niche markets, maybe not as much as selling to broad markets, but one of the wonderful things about the free enterprise system, is that if there’s money to be made by offering a particular product, someone will do it, no matter how small the profits are in absolute terms.) Over time, a minority point of view may even become popular. I understand that the popularity of a point of view does not necessarily depend on its merits. But neither to I think that, over time, it is completely divorced from its merits. In any case, this is our only hope.

Heroism and esprit de corps

Steven Den Beste posts about heroism. Why do heroes do what they do? Steven concludes (I am radically paring down his words) that it is because of esprit de corps. In other words – it is our tribal instinct.

It is not uncommon for people to look back at their time as a soldier and report that “it's the only time I ever felt alive”. Part of the reason is surely that it is a peak experience. But part is that it is an intensely tribal experience.

I have spoken a lot about tribes without defining them – I will now attempt to do so. A tribe is a voluntary social unit in which its members have (to some degree) an altruistic relationship with each other. It is the state of being which is most natural for humans – the state in which human beings feel most alive.

I followed Steven’s link to Bunker Mulligan, where one post down I found the following quote:

People in this country share something with me that those in other countries don't. People who want to denigrate that opinion need only ask themselves (honestly) whom do they cheer for in Olympic events.

It is a sign that there is something healthy about American society: to some extent people feel they are part of a tribe.