Reichman and Mishnah Zebahim 12:2-3

Yesterday, I talked about Jacob Neusner's treatment of Sifra Leviticus. Essentially, Neusner believes that Sifra Leviticus was a third century C.E. attempt to ground certain items of the Mishnah in Scripture. In Neusner's scenario, the Mishnah came before Sifra Leviticus, which interacted with the Mishnah.

But Ronen Reichman has a different point-of-view. In Mishna und Sifra, he argues that the Sifra is older than the Mishnah, and that the Mishnah used the Sifra. In this post, I'll discuss one of his arguments.
Leviticus 7:8 affirms that a priest who offers a burnt offering can keep the skin of the animal for himself. Mishnah Zebahim 12:2-3 talks about this issue. According to this passage of the Mishnah, the priest does not acquire the right to the skin of the animal until the sprinkling of blood---which is when the animal can be sacrificed on the altar. But what if the animal, while it was being slaughtered, was not intended to be a burnt offering, but some other kind of offering, but it is offered up as a burnt offering? In that case, it does not count for the offerer, who must bring another animal to fulfill his obligation. But the priest can still keep the animal's skin. And the skin belongs to the priest whether the offering was brought by a man or a woman.

The Mishnah then goes on to say that the skins of the lesser holy things belong to the owner, whereas the skins of the most holy things belong to the priest. Mishnah Zabahim 5 tells us which sacrifices are among the most holy things, and which are among the lesser holy things. The most holy things include the whole burnt offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the entire congregation's peace offering on Pentecost. These offerings were slaughtered on the north side of the altar. The lesser holy things include the thank offering, the ram of the Nazirite, the peace-offering of individuals, the firstling, the tithe of cattle, and the Passover offering. These could be slaughtered anywhere in the Temple court.

Back to Mishnah Zebahim 12:2-3! We know that the priests have a right to the skin of the whole burnt offering. But do they have a right to the skin of the other most holy offerings as well? Paragraph 3 uses a lesser-to-greater argument to answer this question in the affirmative. In the whole burnt offering, the priests have a right to the skin of the animal, but not to the meat. In other most holy things, however, they eat some of the meat. If the priests have the right to the skin of offerings that are so important that they can't even eat the meat, then one can conclude that they have the right to the skin of lesser (yet still in the category of most holy) sacrifices, whose meat they can eat.

The Mishnah then says (quoting from Danby's translation) that "The Altar affords no proof since the hide never pertains to it." What the heck does that mean? It is elliptical. The Sifra provides more detail on the context of this statement: what the objection is, and how the altar affords no proof because the skin does not pertain to it. Reichman's conclusion, therefore, is that the Mishnah used the Sifra and abbreviated that part of it because the Mishnah's compiler could always check his copy of the Sifra whenever he needed to do so.

Reichman can envision the Mishnah abbreviating the Sifra. But he does not think that the Sifra was fleshing out the Mishnah, for why would the Mishnah be deliberately elliptical? Reichman's treatment of the relationship between the Mishnah and the Sifra may overlap with a similar debate on which came first: the Mishnah or the Tosefta? Some say that the Tosefta came first because the Mishnah is incomprehensible without the Tosefta. The implication is that an incomprehensible Mishnah would not be floating around on its own, without a Tosefta that could help one to make sense of it. Others argue, however, that the Mishnah came first because the Tosefta is incomprehensible without the Mishnah! Reichman's argument seems to be that the Mishnah does not make sense without the context that the Sifra provides, and so the Sifra came before the Mishnah.

I spent some time detailing the argument in Mishnah Zebahim 12:2-3, and so I'd be remiss if I did not tell you what the Sifra says about the altar! The issue is this: The Mishnah and the Sifra are envisioning someone making an objection to the argument that the priest has a right to the skin of all of the most holy sacrifices. The objection is based on making an analogy between the priest and the altar. The altar acquires the flesh of the burnt offering but not the skin, and so the conclusion is made that the priest, too, can eat the meat of most holy offerings (except for the whole burnt offering, for all of that meat is consumed on the altar), but that does not mean that he's entitled to their skin (again, except for the whole burnt offering, for Leviticus 7:8 entitles the priest to the skin, in that case). The objection here is trying to poke holes into the lesser-to-greater argument that we saw above. The lesser-to-greater argument said that the priest was entitled to the skin of the whole burnt offering, which he couldn't eat, and so he is also entitled to the skin of other most holy offerings, which he can eat. It is almost as if, in this lesser-to-greater argument, the fact that the priest can eat these offerings is a crucial factor in his entitlement to the skin. But the objector is saying "Not so fast!" The altar eats the meat of the whole burnt offering, yet it is not entitled to the skin of the animal (which belongs to the priest). Consequently, contra the lesser-to-greater argument, eating something does not entitle one to its skin.

But, according to the Mishnah and the Sifra, this argument mixes apples with oranges. The altar does not have the right to the skin of any animal, whereas the priest does. One cannot appeal to the altar as an analogy to determine rules about when the priest does and does not have a right to the skin of an animal, for such a question is utterly irrelevant to the altar: the altar is never entitled to the skin of the animal! But, because the priest has right to the skin of some most holy sacrifices, he has the right to the skin of all most holy sacrifices.

Whereas the Mishnah simply mentions the altar and states that the skin never pertains to it, the Sifra actually gives details about the objection: that the objector is saying that the altar eats the flesh but is not entitled to the skin. And the Sifra then responds that the altar never has the right to the skin, anyway, but there are cases in which the priest does.

Mishnah and Scripture

In my post on Seth Schwartz's summary of trends in scholarship on rabbinics, I referred to Schwartz's statement that Jacob Neusner agreed with Saul Lieberman that the rabbis were influenced by Hellenism, yet he concurred with E. Goodenough that the rabbis were marginal. Schwartz may be correct, for Neusner has written numerous books, and, in some of them, he may very well have asserted that the rabbis were not as prominent in Late Antiquity as they claimed. But, in my reading of Neusner's Introduction to Rabbinic Literature and Uniting the Dual Torah, I found something different: that the Mishnah was the law in courts of Palestine, Babylon, and Iran, shortly after its promulgation around 200 C.E.

In this post, I will not try to arbitrate the debate regarding the influence of the rabbis in Late Antiquity. But I will talk about the discussion for which Neusner's view in Introduction and Uniting is a starting point: the rabbinic attempt to relate the Mishnah to the written Torah. According to Neusner, the Mishnah was widely influential, and yet it was a mystery. Here the Mishnah was being used in the courts, and people wondered what exactly its basis for authority was. The written Torah was definitely deemed to be authoritative, such that writings that sought to be accepted as revelation interacted with the written Torah in some way---by claiming to have been written by a biblical personage (i.e., the pseudepigrapha), or by imitating biblical Hebrew, or by interpreting the biblical text.

But the Mishnah does not do any of these things. Although it attributes certain opinions to rabbis, the compilers are anonymous, in that the text does not explicitly tell us who they are. The Mishnah also does not imitate biblical Hebrew, but it uses Mishnaic Hebrew instead. And, while there are a few occasions in the Mishnah in which rabbis base their opinions on Scripture, there are even more opinions that are free-standing---they are not supported by Scripture. Another relevant issue is that the Mishnah for years was circulated orally, whereas people wrote down messages that they considered to be divine revelation. So the Mishnah was unlike documents that claimed to be divine revelation or authoritative within ancient Jewish religion.

The rabbis addressed this problem in at least three ways. The first approach was to assert that the Mishnah was oral Torah that was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, after which it was transmitted orally down to the time of the rabbis. According to Neusner, a generation after the promulgation of the Mishnah, the first apologetic for the Mishnah, Avot, proposed that the Mishnah's authority went back to Sinai. Avot is now a part of the Mishnah, but it was not originally.

The second approach was to use Scriptures to substantiate items in the Mishnah. This is something that the Tosefta (ca. 300 C.E.) and the Jerusalem Talmud (ca. 400 C.E.) do. And the third approach is that of Sifra Leviticus (third century C.E.): to use the written Torah as the basis for organization, and to show how the Mishnah coincides with Scripture. In Sifra Leviticus, the Book of Leviticus itself shapes the order of the document, and the Mishnah and the Tosefta are used to discuss Leviticus; this is different from the Tosefta and the Talmuds, which follow (or have) the order of the Mishnah and cite Scripture in a discussion of Mishnaic topics.

I do not entirely comprehend Neusner's treatment of Sifra Leviticus, to tell you the truth. On the one hand, Neusner states that the people responsible for Sifra Leviticus believed that the Mishnah was oral Torah and that they were bringing written and oral Torah together---as they sought to understand the mind of God. Perhaps Neusner's point here is that the compilers of Sifra Leviticus saw that there were two independent items of revelation---the written Torah and the oral Torah. Both were from the mind of God, and yet they appeared to be unrelated to each other. But their concepts had to be intertwined with each other in some way, for they were both from the same divine mind! Consequently, those who put together Sifra Leviticus sought to integrate the oral Torah into the written Torah---to demonstrate that the oral Torah was consistent with and based on the written Torah.

On the other hand, Neusner contends that Sifra Leviticus is arguing against the Mishnah's presentation of opinions without Scriptural support. For Neusner, the goal of Sifra Leviticus---and also Sifre Numbers and Sifre Deuteronomy---is to show that human reasoning is inadequate when it is unaided by Scriptural exegesis. The tactic of these documents is to demonstrate that an idea is reasonable, and yet Scripture says something different, showing that reason does not lead a person to the truth. Although Sifra Leviticus does view the Mishnah as authoritative, it appears to subordinate the Mishnah to written Scripture, as if the Mishnah cannot stand on its own as an authority and is wrong to present human reasoning as the determiner of truth. But, if the Mishnah were revealed from Mount Sinai, why doesn't the Mishnah stand on its own as an authority? And the Mishnah is not presenting human reasoning as the determiner of truth, for the Mishnah was revealed by God!

(UPDATE: At the same time, in what I read, Neusner does not say that the people responsible for Sifra Leviticus believed that the oral Torah was revealed at Sinai.)

Tomorrow, I will talk about another view: that the Mishnah is actually based on a version of Sifra Leviticus. Stay tuned!

Shmuel Safrai on Rabbinic Literature's Value as a Historical Source

On Jewish Perspective Online, I read Shmuel Safrai's "The Value of Rabbinic Literature As an Historical Source". Safrai's argument is that rabbinic literature accurately reflects realities in the Second Temple Period. This is a controversial proposition. Scholars have disputed that rabbinic literature is useful for understanding the New Testament, since rabbinic literature emerged after the historical setting that the New Testament depicts. Moreover, some, such as Jacob Neusner, appear to be skeptical about attempts to reconstruct the history of the rabbis from rabbinic literature, for rabbinic literature is edited and quite ideological.

Like many Israeli scholars in the field of rabbinics, Safrai has been characterized as a maximalist when it comes to rabbinic literature. But my impression from this essay is that he's not uncritical in his treatment of sources. Safrai acknowledges that rabbinic literature conflates historical events and contains layers, and that there were cases in which the names of sages attached to a tradition were replaced with names of other sages, which shows that oral traditions were changed as they were passed along. Safrai says that it's not always evident to which period a piece of rabbinic literature belongs, or what is behind a saying, act, or debate. Safrai also states that not everything in rabbinic literature that is attributed to the Second Temple Period is really from that period, and he admits that there are times when aggadot exaggerate.

But Safrai documents that rabbinic literature does overlap in areas with things that we know about the Second Temple Period, from such sources as Josephus, Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, Roman records, and archaeology. Examples of issues on which rabbinic literature coincides with Second Temple sources include: the existence of an educational system for Jewish children in Palestine; the leniency of the Pharisees in capital cases; the widespread annual donation of a half-shekel to the Temple, which the Pharisees advocated, but which the Sadduccees and Qumran community did not; a high priest who had a nocturnal emission the night before Yom Kippur; the prominence of the Pharisees in Second Temple Judaism, explaining why the Sadduccees followed Pharisaic halakhah on many occasions; the physical dimensions of the Temple; and a dispute over whether water in a pure cup becomes impure after some of it has been poured into an impure cup (the Pharisees and the rabbis say "no", whereas the Sadduccees and Qumran say "yes").

Some of Safrai's arguments here may be problematic. For example, Safrai presumes that Palestinian Jewish literacy was widespread during the Second Temple Period and the time of the rabbis, but such a notion is disputed on the basis of rabbinic literature itself (see my post here, and also Steph's comment, which argues that literacy actually was widespread). While Josephus affirms in Against Apion 2:178 that the Jews know their laws, he does not say (as far as I can see) that most of them were literate and educated in formal institutions. As I talked about here, Ben Zion Walcholder argues that the Temple in the Mishnah is different from the Second Temple, for the Mishnaic Temple resembles the eschatological Temple of Ezekiel 40-48, showing that the Mishnah was presenting halachah for the Messianic Age, not discussing the Second Temple. And there are scholars who have disputed Josephus' claim that the Pharisees were influential in the Second Temple Period, contending that Josephus was portraying the Pharisees as influential so that the Romans would put their successors (the rabbis) in charge of Palestine after 70. In my opinion, some of Safrai's specific arguments may be off, but he's not wrong in his overall proposition that there are times when rabbinic literature accurately reflects the Second Temple Period.

But what are the implications of Safrai's argument? That we should generally believe rabbinic literature because there are times when it is right? Or that we should accept what rabbinic literature says about the Second Temple Period when it coincides with Second Temple sources? My impression is that Safrai does not necessarily require that rabbinic literature be supported by Second Temple sources to be accepted as historically-accurate. For example, he states that we can conclude from the various rabbinic stories about Yochanan ben Zakkai that Yochanan did not join the rebellion against Rome, that Yochanan left Jerusalem and turned himself in to the Romans, and that Yochanan sought to rebuild Judaism at Yavneh---and that Yavneh gradually (and with difficulty) became a center of Jewish leadership and Torah study. Safrai appears to look at these stories for something plausible, which he can use to reconstruct a historical event.

And there are times when Safrai concludes that the rabbinic narrative is historically implausible. For instance, when Tannaitic sources claim that there were very few disputes before the deaths of Hillel and Shammai, and that disputes proliferated because their pupils did not learn Torah adequately, Safrai does not think that this picture is historically accurate, for the Mishnah and rabbinic literature also talk about disputes occurring during the time of Hillel and Shammai. Safrai also notes an example of the Mishnah projecting second century C.E. terms---such as nasi---onto the Second Temple Period. So there are times when Safrai deems the text to be plausible, and times when he does not.

Seth Schwartz on the History of Modern Scholarship in Rabbinics

Something that I've wanted as I've studied for my rabbinics comp has been a summary of the history of modern scholarship regarding rabbinics. It's not hard to find a history of Hebrew Bible scholarship. For that, you can look at the Face of Old Testament Studies, or books by Jean-Louis Ska and E. Nicholson on the Pentateuch. But, in my opinion, it's difficult to find comparable works on rabbinics scholarship. I read Jacob Neuser's Studying Classical Judaism: A Primer, hoping to be set on the path of learning about the scholarly trends in the field of rabbinics, but the book turned out to be Neusner's account of why other scholars are wrong, whereas he is right.

In light of my disappointing experiences so far, I was refreshed to read Seth Schwartz's article in the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, entitled "Historiography on the Jews in the 'Talmudic Period' (70-640 ce)". This article set things that I have read---by S. Lieberman, J. Neusner, S. Safrai, etc.---in a larger context. In this post, I will share some of what I read in Schwartz's article.

Before Zionist scholarship on rabbinics, Schwartz narrates, the focus of scholarship was on philology. But Israeli scholarship then tried to reconstruct history from rabbinic texts, in a manner that was naively uncritical about the rabbinic sources. How this played out varied from Israeli scholar to Israeli scholar. G. Alon, for example, focused on politics and presented the Palestinian Jews after the Destruction as united in their opposition to Rome, as well as in their obedience to the rabbis. Alon disagreed with Saul Lieberman's view that Palestine absorbed Greco-Roman culture, instead portraying the Palestinian Jews as self-enclosed and not highly literate in Greek. At the same time, however, Alon held that there was not always harmony within post-Destruction Judaism, for he maintained that the rabbis fought among themselves for power. Alon also acknowledged that there was collaboration among some Jews with the Romans, and, although Alon was primarily interested in rabbinic courts, he admitted that many Palestinian Jews brought legal cases to the Romans.

Israeli scholar E. Urbach overlapped with Alon in that he viewed post-Destruction Judaism as largely homogeneous, under the leadership of the rabbis. Unlike Alon, however, Urbach emphasized religion, as well as depicted the rabbis as united in their aim of shepherding Jews through the crisis. But Urbach brought up a thorny issue, which would become significant (as we shall see): the archaeological discovery of art---much like Roman pagan art---in synagogues. Urbach's approach to this issue was to say that the rabbis allowed art and even idols because they were concerned about the Jews' economic well-being, and that the art had lost its pagan significance and become purely decorative by the time that it entered synagogues.

The issue of synagogue art will come up again in this post, but, right now, I want to turn to the issues that Israeli scholar Y. Feliks brought up. Feliks accepted rabbinic literature's figures for the agricultural yield of wheat, as well as appealed to the agricultural practices described in the Mishnah and the Talmud to describe ancient Jewish agriculture. According to Schwartz, the problem with Felik's methodology was that the figures for the wheat yield were idealized in rabbinic literature, making them unreliable for historical reconstruction. Feliks also sought to present the land of Palestine as exceptional. D. Sperber rejected and then accepted Felik's figures, but he maintained a "glass is half empty" approach to Palestinian Jewish agriculture after 300 C.E.: he portrayed the size of the average Palestinian Jewish plot of land as small, and he asserted that its small size hindered the introduction of new technology that existed elsewhere in the Roman world, undermined agricultural self-sufficiency, and detached Jews emotionally from their land. Like Feliks, Sperber uncritically accepted the picture that rabbinic literature provided as he sought to reconstruct the past.

Z. Safrai was more optimistic than Sperber in his depiction of Palestinian Jewish life. Safrai took rabbinic passages about individual villages having communal and religious institutions, and extrapolated from them the notion that all Galilean villages had these institutions. According to Safrai, Palestine had patriarchs, a Sanhedrin, schools on the Bible and the Mishnah, synagogues, a public bath, a rudimentary court system, and committees that supervised markets and trade according to the dictates of Jewish law. Safrai did not agree with Felik's Jewish exceptionalism, however, for he asserted that Palestine was poorer and less developed than parts of Roman North Africa and Italy, contrary to the views of twentieth century economic and social historians. But Safrai still portrayed Palestine during the time of the rabbis as prosperous and populous, and, in his eyes, a factor behind that was trade. Safrai maintained that different regions in Palestine performed their own individual tasks: Galilee produced olives, Judea produced grapes, the Jordan Valley produced dates and balsam, etc. For Safrai, the Jews traded, but they were not economically dependent on pagans and Christians. (We may see here traces of the anti-foreigner nationalism that characterized such Israeli scholars as Anon.) Safrai's conclusions were disputed by Israeli archaeologists Magen Broshi and Israel Finkelstein, on the basis of archaeological calculations regarding such factors as the capacity of the land and population density.

We now turn to non-Israeli scholarship. Here, the issue of art plays a significant role. Saul Lieberman presented the rabbis as the Hellenized leaders of the post-Destruction Palestinian Jewish community. E. Goodenough, however, noted that the rabbis disapproved of the art that was used in the synagogues, meaning that (1.) contra Lieberman, they were anti-Hellenistic, and (2.) that they were far from being the leaders that many scholars assumed them to be, for the fact that their opinion on art did not prevail indicates that they were on the margins until near the end of late antiquity.

Jacob Neusner agreed with Lieberman that the rabbis were influenced by Hellenism, yet he also concurred with Goodenough on the marginality of the rabbis. Neusner was also influenced by Morton Smith, who identified a synoptic problem, in which different versions of the same material appeared throughout rabbinic literature. Although Neusner was initially a positivist---one who sought to reconstruct the history of the rabbis from rabbinic literature---his attitude shifted. Rather than treating rabbinic literature as a repository of accurate history about the rabbis, he began to view it as a series of texts that were influenced by social realities and shaped by authors or compilers to promote an ideology. Like Goodenough, Neusner did not uncritically take for granted the rabbinic texts' picture of post-Destruction Palestinian society, in which the rabbis were in charge of Jews, who followed their halachah. And, from Morton Smith, Neusner was sensitized to the reality that the rabbis adapted traditions for different purposes---which was why one could see different versions of a common tradition. I learned from Catherine Hezser's chapter on "Classical Rabbinic Literature" in the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies that scholars of rabbinics sought the original tradition, the one behind the different versions, but Neusner did not think that this was even possible: in his eyes, all we have are ideological texts from rabbis who dreamed of being in charge, but who were not.

According to Schwartz, there are scholars who do not embrace the uncritical attitude of Israeli scholarship, yet also shy away from Neusner's more skeptical approach of treating rabbinic literature primarily as a literary expression of rabbinic ideology, not as a source to reconstruct what the rabbis did. Shaye Cohen, for example, discusses such topics as conversion, mixed marriage, and circumcision. His approach is to find the earliest attestation of practices within rabbinic literature, and to speculate on why certain practices changed---what factors contributed to the shift in words' meanings, or why attitudes were altered at particular times. For example, Cohen argues that the shift from a focus on ethnicity among Jews to a focus on religion occurred during the Hasmonean Period.

Schwartz states that, since the 1990's, even elements of Israeli scholarship have become less accepting of the historicity of rabbinic sources. For instance, Hanna Colton has been working on Greek legal documents from the Judean desert, and she has challenged the notion that rabbinic law was normative for Palestinian Jews after the Destruction.

I'll stop here. There are still loose ends that I need to tie up for myself, but I hope you found my summary of Schwartz's article to be useful.

Green on Midrash and Deconstruction

I'm taking my rabbinic comprehensive exam today, on June 13! But I'm actually writing this post before then, on June 6. So, over the course of this week, you will be reading posts that are from my study for my rabbinics exam, even though they will appear after I have taken it.

Here's the reading on which I will comment: William Scott Green, “Romancing the Tome: Rabbinic Hermeneutics and the Theory of Literature,” Semeia 40 (1987) 147-168.

As you can see here, the last time that I blogged about this article, I really did not understand it. But, after reading it just now, I have no earthly idea why I didn't understand it. But I understand it better now, and that's the important thing!

Green is essentially taking on those who view rabbinic midrash as similar to contemporary literary approaches to texts, such as deconstruction. In rabbinic midrash, diverse interpretations of the biblical text are present, and even the meaning of a word can be variant, for a single word can be used in different ways---and with different meanings---throughout the Hebrew Bible. Consequently, a word in a particular verse can have a variety of possible meanings and implications, which entails that the verse itself can have a variety of meanings. For some, in rabbinic midrash, language is indeterminate, diversity is allowed and preserved, and there is no authority saying that the text absolutely must mean only one thing. This sort of anti-authoritarianism and belief in the freedom of language is characteristic of deconstruction, which is open to different (and sometimes subversive) meanings of a text.

But Green disagrees with those who regard midrash as similar to deconstruction. His overall point is that rabbinic ideology shapes how the rabbis interpret the texts. Because the rabbis believe that God spoke to Moses and not Aaron, for example, they disregard or seek to subvert texts in which God spoke to Aaron, claiming that the text actually means that God spoke to Aaron through Moses. So not all interpretations are created equal! Moreover, in Tannaitic halakhic midrash, there is a formula saying that one might think something, but Scripture teaching something different, and so one must go with Scripture, even if it appears to be illogical. In such cases, Green argues, the rabbis are not allowing the text to mean anything and everything; rather, they are trying to eliminate error, which is the opposite of pluralism. They are imitating their priestly predecessors, whose cult could not tolerate ambiguity.

Green's points should definitely be kept in mind. But there is still diversity and pluriformity within rabbinic literature.

Herman Cain

Last Sunday, I was watching ABC This Week, and GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain was on. He was quite impressive! To me, he seemed like a conservative version of President Barack Obama: smart, charming, articulate, cool, down-to-earth. I watched a YouTube video in which he was challenging President Bill Clinton in 1994 over health care, and he really shone in that! Sparring with Bill Clinton is no easy task, since Clinton is practically a walking encyclopedia. But Cain responded to Clinton's numbers with numbers of his own---and it was like both of them were walking calculators!

Moreover, I admired Cain's gentlemanly quality. In the video from 1994, he thanked President Clinton for bringing attention to the health care issue, and he expressed his disagreements with Clinton in a respectful manner. And, on ABC This Week, he mingled quite well, even with the Democratic pundits (such as Dee Dee Myers). He came across as someone who knew what he was talking about, and was able to conduct himself in a manner that is respectful towards others. Although I expected Romney to get the nomination, I thought it would be nice if Cain would be the one challenging Obama in the general election. Granted, I'll probably vote for Obama, but it would be nice to have a Presidential race that is about issues rather than attacks.

But I was disappointed after watching this video, in which Cain affirmed that he would not appoint a Muslim to his administration, as well as expressed concern that Muslims were trying to impose Sharia law on the United States. Maybe he's identifying a legitimate problem somewhere, but, when he says that he will not appoint a Muslim to his Administration, he's lumping all Muslims together, and I think that's wrong (see my post, "Islamophobia"). I'm not saying that he has to appoint a Muslim---but Cain's talking as if being a Muslim would disqualify a person from serving in his administration. In my opinion, that is prejudiced.

After watching Cain on ABC This Week and on the YouTube video, I was eager to register to vote here in New York, so I could vote for Cain in the GOP primary. Now, I am not so eager. And, to be honest, none of the other Republican candidates excites me. I was really enthusiastic about Ron Paul in 2008, since he was libertarian and controversially anti-war. I still like to watch YouTube videos of Paul's 2008 debates! But, this time around, I'm not rushing to register to vote so that I can cast my ballot for Ron Paul in the primary. For one, I have problems with someone criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And second, I've gotten tired of libertarians talking about "liberty" this, and "liberty" that, when, in my opinion, their idea of liberty leaves people vulnerable. "Liberty" was shouted to oppose an attempt at health care reform, and so the libertarian use of the word has left a sour taste in my mouth. Moreover, as I've said before, while I think that Republicans have good ideas on health care, my problem with them is that they are never aggressive in enacting them when they are in power. So I'll probably vote for Obama, notwithstanding his flaws, because at least he tries to fight for the vulnerable in society.

Message for Those Who Comment Here

I just want to let you know that I won't be publishing comments on Sunday and Monday of this week, for I'll be traveling to New York City to take my comp. But I'll publish them when I return! Stay tuned!