Konversations with Kevin #7

This is to elaborate on a particular point made by Kevin D. Akin as portrayed in my piece, Konversations with Kevin #6 [http://janbtucker.com/blog/2012/10/25/koversations-with-kevin-6/]. In his recent email about me (Jan B. Tucker), he made the statement:

In fact, he appears to have been raised by parents who, despite having Jewish ancestors, did not participate in any way in any Jewish activities. He knows nothing of any religion, including the ones he sometimes claims to be in.

I do know a few things about lying and deception. While working undercover as a private investigator I have to use pretexts, false identities for safety’s sake, and all kinds of subterfuges when dealing with everybody from terrorists to organized crime figures to deadbeat dads I’m trying to track down to enforce child support orders. I’ve also been trained and tested on detection of deception. In a blind test conducted by the late Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan of the University of San Francisco, I scored a very rare 8 out of 9 correct in determinations of truth or deception.

With that background, training, education, and experience (private investigator since March 1979) I long ago formulated Tucker’s first rule of prevarication: don’t lie when the truth is easily ascertainable!

Kevin D. Akin has clearly violated that rule in the above quotation from his widely circulated email. He also violated the principle of California Penal Code Section 125, which states: “An unqualified statement of that which one does not know to be true is equivalent to a statement of that which one knows to be false.”

More to the point, since Kevin’s statement is about the ethnic and religious affiliations of my parents and my knowledge of religion, and because Kevin converted to Judaism which inherently implies that he actually believes in the metaphysical existence of god as per the Old Testament as well as in god’s purported commandments, then Kevin must either know less about the Ninth Commandment than I do, or else he is just a hypocrite who professes to be a Jew while flouting the Ten Commandments. The Ninth Commandment prohibits the bearing of false witness.

Moreover, lying is proscribed by Judaism:

There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. —Proverbs 6:16–19

Now before I begin my rendition of why Kevin doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground about my family’s history and my own knowledge of Judaism, let me draw a comparison to Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II, lest I be accused of plagiarizing the concept without attribution:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

Kevin says that my parents “did not participate in any way in any Jewish activities.”

My father was a member and officer of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order. I can understand why Kevin, as an apostate ex-Communist Party member and adviser/speech writer for Stewart Alexander of the Socialist Party might not consider the JPFO to be Jewish, since the JPFO was formed as the pro-Communist Party faction out of the The Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring (the original social democratic Jewish movement of the Yiddishist tradition).

Growing up, our family always had Hannukah and Passover ceremonies, because these holidays emphasize struggles against slavery and for national liberation sympatico with my parents’ left-wing ideology. I attended Kinderschul and Mittelschul, where we studied Yiddish, Yiddish literature in translations such as the writings of Isaac Lieb Peretz and Sholom Aleichem. I watched Luther Adler-reputedly through Jacob Adler a distant cousin on my mother’s side-perform in Fiddler on the Roof at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. I sang in Yiddish and performed a solo one year at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center of Rozhinkes mit Mandlen at a community Passover seder.

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

Because I wanted a more extensive Jewish education, I got myself into the Rambam Torah Institute, an Orthodox Yeshiva, on full scholarship, studying Hebrew, Aramaic, Talmud and Torah along with secular studies. I was elected to student council and because I believed in practicing the Jewish precepts of freedom and equality, I wound up out of the academy after supporting the student body president’s motion in student council to go on strike for co-ed (non-sex-segregated) classes and an 8 hour day.

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

My certificate of circumcision accorded me the name of (translated from Hebrew) “Blessed hand of Moses, son of Happy Samuel.” My father’s Hebrew name was “Happy Samuel.” “Hand of Moses” was the name of my Great, Great grandfather, a Ukrainian Rabbi of five brothers, all Rabbis. The “Blessed Hand of Moses” as a name confers a great onus upon me, as it refers to Moses’ role in stopping the beating of a Hebrew slave. That incident is described in Exodus 2:11-12 and in the New Testament, Acts 7:24. In some translations it has been written as Moses smiting an Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew slave of Moses’ own Tribe of Levi, with one blow. I am named for the Blessed Hand of Moses that he used to kill the Egyptian overseer.

The Midrash Rabbah gives one traditional edification on this incident:

In the section of Talmud called Midrash Rabbah, the rabbis argue that what Moses saw wasn’t merely the absence of witnesses. Rabbi Yehudah said, “[Moses] saw there was no one who would be zealous for the Holy Blessed One [ie, no one else who would do God’s work] and so he [Moses] killed him [the overseer].” Later in that same passage, we read that the Sages said, “[Moses] saw that there was no hope that righteous persons would arise from him [the overseer] or his descendents until the end of generations.” The Sages then go on to explain that Moses had a chat with the angels, who agreed with him, and gave him license to kill the overseer.

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

At one time I was a member of the American Israeli Civil Liberties Coalition which was dedicated to promoting a secular Israel with complete separation of church and state and full equality for all citizens of Israel, not just Jewish citizens.

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

I have been involved in litigating actions that have involved the Los Angeles Bet Din, the religious court which operates with the authority of the Rabbinate of Israel, which in turn has authority over Jewish family law matters in Israel. For example, a divorce which begins in the Israeli family law system (controlled by the various “official” religions of Israel) can be continued and completed in the Bet Din for the entire Western region of the United States. This whole situation frankly disgusts me as an American. I wonder what Kevin’s view on this state of affairs is.

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

Every year I hold a combined Passover seder and “Reversion” ceremony for my Sephardic brothers and sisters, the Anusim descendants of the forcibly converted ones, who were not as lucky as my Sicilian Jewish ancestors to be able to pay the exit tax to leave Spanish territory on July 31, 1492 under the Edict of Expulsion. Many of my Chicano/Mexicano/Latino friends have gone through the “Reversion” ceremony. Over 500 years ago the Sephardic Rabbis concluded that forced conversions of Jews were inherently invalid so that to rejoin The Tribe so to speak, a forcibly converted Jew or their descendant “reverts” to get back in rather than “converts” the way that Kevin did to become a Jew.

Incidentally, it has been traditionally forbidden for Jews to proselytize since the days of Roman domination. I believe that this is probably because the Jews who wound up writing the history of the time consider the Herod family to have sold us out to the Romans (if that is a correct interpretation, we sure got a great deal out of it from Caesar but that is another whole peripheral story). The Herod family were Edomites (reputedly the descendants of Jacob’s elder brother Esau, who had been kin and traditional allies of the Jews) who’d been conquered and forcibly converted by the later Maccabee dynasty. Therefore it seems the Rabbinate forbade any attempts at conversion of Gentiles and laid down the law that even if they come to you seeking conversion, a Rabbi must thrice attempt to talk a Gentile out of conversion during the process (ergo, Kevin must have really, really, really wanted to be a good Jew and believe in god and all the other tribal mythology to get in).

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

Finally, let’s do a comparison of Kevin’s basic Jewish precepts and those that I adhere to.

You can find my beliefs at: http://janbtucker.com/jews/2011/08/24/announcing-jewish-existentialist-world-society/

At the risk of making an argumentum ad hominem circumstantial, as a Jew who converted he likely espouses the so-called “Ten Commandments,” whereas I formulated with suggestions from adherents to the Jewish Existentialist World Society (JEWS) the Ten Principles for Humanity:

But Kevin Akin says that I have no Jewish roots and no knowledge of Judaism, and Kevin is an honorable and truthful man.

Or is he?

Well Kevin, there it is. Stick that in your shofar and blow it!

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