Brookwrite

Rabbinical Discombobulation

By Doug Brook
Deep South Jewish Voice Columnist

As you've read by now, unless you're among the throngs who read this newspaper in traditional Hebrew style (from right to left, thereby starting with this humble column), this time of year brings you a very special annual issue.

But after you put down the 40th Anniversary Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and stop wondering why the Deep South Jewish Voice doesn't yet have its own annual Swimsuit Issue, you'll notice that this is the annual Simcha ("celebrations", in Aramaic) issue.

As if by divine providence, just in time for the deadline, this column received another on its long list of accolades. This time it even comes from someone outside the columnist's immediate family.

Michael Fitzmaurice, from all the way in Great Britain, informed this columnist that he is "a fine example of a Googlewhack."

Hold your champagne flute by the stem so the bubbly stays chilled while I explain.

You might have heard of one of the internet's most popular search engines, Google. Well, there's a site called googlewhack.com. In its second year, it is populated by people who, instead of holding up liquor stores, spraypainting graffiti, or rooting for the New York Yankees, enter potentially unique search phrases in Google.

If Google returns only one entry from the entire internet for that search, the owner of that lone website is a Googlewhack. Mr. Fitzmaurice confirmed that I am a Googlewhack thanks to the phrase "rabbinical discombobulation" hitting my December 1998 column ("Debunking the Chanukah Mythos") and nothing else. He emailed me because it is customary for the searcher to inform the owner of such discoveries.

Even more staggering than this near-Pulitzer acclamation is the fact that no other webpage on the entire internet has ever joined the words "rabbinical" and "discombobulation" in the same thought.

But it's not just that nobody else ever used that phrase. I didn't, either. Nobody else has ever used those two words even at any separate points on the same webpage!

Scientists and scholars will study this amazing anomaly for ages.

You might wonder, now that this second column is on the internet, am I no longer a Googlewhack even though I own both hits? I consulted the long list of rules on the Googlewhack website to learn the answer. I can't figure it out, it's like reading the Talmud.

Therefore, in what might cause another episode of rabbinical discombobulation, I'm putting out an open request that two Talmudic scholars explore this question further, in the hopes of getting their three answers in time for a future column.

Speaking of rabbinical discombobulation, an alert reader forwarded a news item from Reuters on February 13 entitled, "Rabbi Urges Pig Fat on Buses to Stop Bombers."

The article says that Rabbi Eliezer Fisher, an Israeli rabbinical judge, wrote a letter to Israeli police suggesting that bags of pig fat be hung on Israeli buses to deter Muslim suicide bombers. It is against Islamic law to come in contact with animals biblically deemed unclean, such as pigs. Of course, there's one catch. It's also prohibited by Jewish law.

The original source material for this prohibition goes all the way back to the Torah, where it is clearly prohibited to come in contact with the skin of a dead pig. Naturally, this prohibition explains why very few Jews or Muslims have successful NFL careers.

Israeli Deputy Public Security Minister Yaakov Edri, after stopping for breath once he completed stating his full title, was quoted as saying, "I personally support it. If it can deter even one suicide bomber then wonderful."

The Israeli newspaper Maariv (the newspaper of choice to read during daily evening services) posted the rabbi's proposal on their website. It prompted dozens of reactions which covered the entire spectrum.

Fisher's letter points out that this ultra-Orthodox rabbi officially believes this to be an instance in which Jewish law can be broken in the interest of saving lives.

Life-saving exceptions to Jewish law are not uncommon. If you need medicine, you're not only allowed to break the Yom Kippur fast, you're required to. If you listen repeatedly to Barry Manilow's greatest hits, you're required to go to therapy, even if it means driving on Shabbat.

But before too many rabbis discom their bobs over this ruling, here's the next bigger question. If Jews are allowed to be near pig fat in the interest of saving their lives (though jeopardizing their olfactory senses), why wouldn't Muslims be allowed to be near pig fat in their holy quest to murder their enemies? After all, Islam says "thou shalt not kill" just like their Judeo-Christian brethren. But they're allowed to bypass that in the interest of killing Israeli Jews. Is a little pig fat going to matter to them?

I wouldn't bet the farm on it. If approved, its futility would merely be that much more pork barrel legislation. It's a nice idea, a noble cause, and an expression of the extreme interpretations we'll go to in the search for peace, prosperity, and the ability to take a bus to work each morning without updating our wills during breakfast.

Palestinian sources told Reuters that using pig fat on buses will do nothing to bring home the bacon. Suicide bombers (also known as homicide bombers, in some circles), are sent on their way with the promise that a successful attack guarantees them a free pass to paradise in the great hereafter, regardless of how they achieved their goal.

With the promise of paradise from the only people to whom they grant credibility, figuring a way to stop them (peacefully or otherwise) from further attacks is, in today's world, the truest cause of rabbinical discombobulation.

Doug Brook is a discombobulated technical writer in Silicon Valley. He directed the acclaimed comedy Lend Me a Tenor, playing through mid-March in Santa Clara. For more information, past columns (including the newly celebrated December 1998 column), other writing, and other current events, visit his website at http://brookwrite.com/.