{"id":84,"date":"2009-05-13T02:15:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T02:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html"},"modified":"2009-05-13T02:15:08","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T02:15:08","slug":"dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Dancing with Other Men &#8212; and Liking It!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I attended a Chasidic wedding Tuesday night and came away with a thought about religion generally, sparked also by an insight on economics, not my own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>On Monday I heard a great lecture by my friend Jay Richards at the Discovery Institute on his new book\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Money-Greed-God-Capitalism-Solution\/dp\/0061375616\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1242195423&amp;sr=8-1\">Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem<\/a><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: normal\">.\u00a0Jay pointed out a fallacy that many liberals hold that drives their hatred of capitalism. They compare the actual economic system in our country with a fantasy, a utopia that never existed and never will exist until such time as the Messiah comes and establishes God&#8217;s kingdom on earth.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Same things goes in Judaism, as in other faiths. Chasidic Judaism is constantly sniped at, and there are things about it I&#8217;d find fault with. But this is comparing a reality to a fantasy. Compared to other versions of Judaism that are actually in existence\u00a0in the real world\u00a0&#8212; Orthodox and non-Orthodox &#8212; it has all the competitors beat.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>The wedding I attended was so joyous and\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">innocent<\/span>. Dancing and dining were both segregated by sex. Since World War II, this has become customary in traditional Jewish circles. So men danced in circles with other men. Lots of sweaty men with arms around each other. The groom danced atop a table held aloft by other men, despite the safety hazard and admonitions from the hotel staff. It was all about wishing the groom a great, warm\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">mazal tov<\/span>\u00a0on his joy in getting married. I&#8217;m among the most uptight, emotionally repressed people you will meet. But even I can get into it. Just imagine &#8212; me,\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">dancing<\/span>, in public, with\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">other men<\/span>\u00a0&#8212; and\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">liking it<\/span>!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The same upbeat mood pervades Chasidism, at least in its Chabad variety that I know best. For all that Chabad attracts criticism from other Jews, what it reflects back is totally devoid of negativity. Nor is the cheerfulness without intellectual weight. Anyone who has tried studying the classic work of Chabad philosophy, the\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Tanya<\/span>, knows how challenging and how rooted in ancient sources it is. Chabad is not perfect but it is full of qualities to admire.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>When I try to compare it to other strains in Judaism,\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">they<\/span>\u00a0all come up short &#8212; whether for lack of joy, lack of authenticity, or both.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I attended a Chasidic wedding Tuesday night and came away with a thought about religion generally, sparked also by an insight on economics, not my own.\u00a0 On Monday I heard a great lecture by my friend Jay Richards at the Discovery Institute on his new book\u00a0Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-observance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dancing with Other Men - and Liking It! - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dancing with Other Men - and Liking It! - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I attended a Chasidic wedding Tuesday night and came away with a thought about religion generally, sparked also by an insight on economics, not my own.\u00a0 On Monday I heard a great lecture by my friend Jay Richards at the Discovery Institute on his new book\u00a0Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-13T02:15:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dancing with Other Men - and Liking It! - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dancing with Other Men - and Liking It! - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"I attended a Chasidic wedding Tuesday night and came away with a thought about religion generally, sparked also by an insight on economics, not my own.\u00a0 On Monday I heard a great lecture by my friend Jay Richards at the Discovery Institute on his new book\u00a0Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-05-13T02:15:08+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/05\/dancing-with-other-men-and-liking-it.html","name":"Dancing with Other Men - and Liking It! 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His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}