His book is a delight to read, if only because
readers will find the emails (especially from the
kibbitzers) enlightening, exasperating, overly
emotional, sensible, and entertaining.
The topics invite rabbinical sermons that attend
to the problems people have to deal with on an every-day
basis.
A
century ago the Daily
Forward offered a forum to people with problems in its
Bintel Brief column, a forerunner to Dear Abby, Ann Landers,
Ask Amy, and other advisers who dispense common-sense,
no-nonsense answers. Modern
times provide a high-tech opportunity to advise the
distressed: email. Someone
with a problem can get answers from anybody, anywhere, and
if not a solution, then certainly an opinion.
Gil Mann runs BeingJewish.org, a website derived from
his work with AOL’s “Jewish Email of the Week.”
Mann is a journalist by trade, and he freely admits
he is not a rabbi. His
column serves in many ways as a clearing-house, for he
doesn’t hesitate to recommend relevant books and articles
or to solicit expert opinions from rabbis and scholars.
The
main thrust of BeingJewish.org lies in its providing an
opportunity for Jews to express personal concerns, problems
that plague lots of people.
Mann gives opinions, but he isn’t opinionated. He
sees the essence of Judaism in three overlapping
categories—Ethics, Spirituality, and Peoplehood, and the
problems that people write to him about fit into those
categories (sometimes into more than one).
Anyone looking for solutions to Israeli-Arab problems
won’t find them here (unless an Israeli and an Arab want
to get married and both families object).
This forum is for the Jew whose second wife is a
Lutheran who has converted to Judaism, but whose children
were raised Lutheran, and when they come to stay for the
winter holidays should they have a Christmas tree in the
Jewish home. Or
a Jew who wants a tattoo or a body piercing but has heard
this violates Talmudic law.
Or when the boss at a company dinner gives an
invocation and says thanks for the food in Christ’s name.
Mann’s
book contains nineteen chapters divided into the Ethics,
Spirituality, and Peoplehood categories.
Each chapter—sample titles include “Can Jews
Donate Their Organs?” and “Why Does Judaism Discriminate
Against Women?”—begins with an email from someone who
raises the issue. Mann
offers his views on the topic, and then opens the forum to
emails from anyone who wants to give an opinion.
Mann then concludes the discussion with a comment,
“Concluding Thoughts to Copy, Cut, Paste, and Save.”
All of the emails and comments come from his website,
which means that this book presents just a sampling of the
wide range of opinions that people email to Mann.
It
would seem that everyone in the world is a kibbitzer,
non-Jews as well as Jews.
Christians have something to say about inter-faith
marriages; so do Jews by Choice (the term Mann prefers to
“convert”), the children, the friends, and the
occasional anti-Semite who stumbles across the website.
Mann keeps all contributors anonymous, with rare
exceptions. He
credits his mother as saying the website is a “modern-day
Talmud.” Many
of the problems discussed could also be called a
“People’s Supreme Court” in that what may appear to be
a personal, trivial problem is actually a really big problem
to the person involved and to a lot of other people as well.
This solution(s) to that problem may be far more
complex than when first considered, especially after people
commenting on it describe their own experiences with the
problem.
As
noted above, Gil Mann doesn’t claim to be a supreme
authority, but he does offer his skills as a communicator
who welcomes everyone to the forum.
His book is a delight to read, if only because
readers will find the emails (especially from the kibbitzers)
enlightening, exasperating, overly emotional, sensible, and
entertaining. The
topics invite rabbinical sermons that attend to the problems
people have to deal with on an every-day basis.
From encounters with discrimination to inner demons,
from questions about faith to the lack of it, and from the
realization that whatever the problem is, there are lots of
people out there who either share it or want to talk about
it.
Abraham
Hoffman teaches history at Los
Angeles Valley College.
