Anger and Freedom: Some פסח Torah

What follows is based on Rabbi Shmuel Lewis's weekly שיחה at the Conservative Yeshiva on April 2.

The גמרא gives us two answers to the question of why פסח is זמן חרותינו - the time of our freedom, both of which make their way into the הגדה. The first is עבדים היינו לפרעה במצרים וה' הוציא אותנו - we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God took us out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and yada yada yada. The second is עובדי עבודה זרה היו אבותינו - our ancestors were idol worshippers but we are henotheists. Freedom, then, is about a physical freedom from a political oppressor or a spiritual (yet confoundingly rational, no?) freedom from the anathema notion of polytheism. Note, please, that both languages speak of "freedom from," not "freedom to."

Anger is an emotion that defines "unfreedom."

The מהר"ל of Prague: One of God's name is הקדוש (as in הקדוש ברוך הוא). The root ק.ד.ש means "separate."

Separate from matter, separate, therefore, from materiality. (As to defining "materiality," Reb Shmuel suggests a גזרה שוה between "spirit" and "spirituality" to "matter" and "materiality.")

Imagine, then, anger as material in a Newtonian system. It is "unfree," unchangeable (see last post). If it does change, its change can be predicted by certain simple rules - akin to the movement of billiard balls on a pool table. Matter follows Newton's three laws of motion: inertia, F=ma, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Note:

• "You made me angry" is a version of F=ma
• Social workers and therapists utilize an "objectification" approach to serious anger management cases. In such scenarios, we acknowledge that anger is other, that the anger is not the child or part of the child, but that "The anger is acting on me."
• In other cases, social workers and therapists encourage strong hugs and intense physical contact as a way of reassuring children with serious anger management problems. This paints the opposite picture of anger-as-matter - not objectified but materially present, as if a force must be applied to it so that it will stay within the body and not "explode" out.
• "Pushing my buttons" is anger as matter
  

Human beings are composed of material things (and their limitations) but also possess a soul which is capable of overcoming material limitations. Our soul - our consciousness, our mind - allow us to overcome impulses, inertia, forces on us and our unvoluntary forces against things.

Belief is the source of emotion. It is a cognitive first step that leads to the having of a feeling.
Anger is the belief that I or another has been slighted - that the value of an individual has been attacked.

In the political realm, when someone's inherent value has been attacked, one gets angry as a sign of self-respect. Such is the righteous-indignation of an African victim of apartheid. Once we shift, however, into the interpersonal realm, what was in the political realm the defense of self-respect too often morphs into self-importance. When we are made fun of on the playground, our anger, which we couch in the language of self-respect, is actually an arrogant statement of self-importance - I am worth too much to be treated in this way.

Personal mistreatment does not fundamentally question my value as a human being. Not all things that challenge me are attacks on my basic self worth. We can be hurt without being insulted. Anger, then, is only justified when it is "necessary" - when it emerges as a defense of human worth. (Note, here: Obama - "I'm angry;" the populist backlash against the AIG bonuses last week.) In interpersonal settings, we experience belittlement; in political settings, we experience a categorical denial of rights.

Reactions:
So what, then, of what I'll call the "liberal freedom paradox." As a liberal, I want freedom and for others to be free, but that freedom opens us up for more hurt. Totalitarian cultures do not hurt - they act materialistically. Things happen on an even-keel; the world functions in particular ways based on predictable rules. Freedom is messier, more painful, freedom to assemble, petition, speech, the press. Freedom means winning one election and losing the next, but still serving the nation.

So, perhaps, a totalitarian culture might create a better self-image in those who oppose it than does a democracy instill in those who accept it. (This speaks to the complex educational issue of short-term and long-term goals. Dicey one.)

Then the question arises of us living in our highly politicized culture, where "personal is political." In such a world, a slight that is theoretically "just personal" might actually speak to a larger political landscape where one person is speaking on behalf of the entire political system. (E.g., what happens to women in math and science classes in high schools.)

But to what extent is it a good thing to always bring the political perspective into a situation?

Reb Shmuel: The question is not so much whether the slight was political or interpersonal, but how the slighted person should react. Even if the bully on the playground represents a political agenda deeply embedded in a given culture, should the reaction to that bully be full-blown anger at the slight?

I find that this begins to slide too close to absolving any given insulter of guilt - either they are representing a political opinion they themselves did not form, or they are somehow acting out from their own deficiencies. But in this microscopic approach to a given insult, where is evil? And whose fault is the pain?

Someone asked Reb Shmuel about שפך חמתך - his response:
The Jewish people have been oppressed, and we'd like our oppressors to stop. As Jews (and, ironically, one reason why we always get oppressed) we'd rather not make the oppressors stop ourselves - we'd rather have God do it for us. But we are not asking God for violent vengeance, we're asking God to find a way to let our oppressors know that they're being bad to us (and such a message is best conveyed through anger) so that they can stop doing it.

Something to think about at your סדר.

On Impermanence as the Way of the World

Say what you will about Sukkot, Pesach is the real holiday of impermanence. The story of the Exodus is, in the most obvious way, a story about the cyclical nature of things, the overturning of one world view for another, the rise and fall of civilizations. Just as powerfully, the expulsion of חמץ from our homes - originally what was probably the yearly disposal of a yeasty dough culture from which pre-modern people would make their bread - and with it the entire spring cleaning ritual, is a material reminder that what is here one day may, literally, be gone tomorrow. Life changes; shit happens; humans plan, God laughs.

I've been thinking about impermanence a lot lately, particularly the manners in which certain specific phenomena have assumed presumptively permanent status. And then I read one of the best essays I've read in years, "The Great Reset," by Kurt Andersen in this week's (April 6) Time. Andersen's writing here is writing par excellence - interesting, fun, insightful, and wide-ranging. He makes his points colorfully and compellingly. A true pleasure.

I've been pondering this notion of the inevitability of impermanence for months, and have found three areas on which to focus: international borders; newspapers; and companies. (I'm also interested in the applicability of these ideas to the Jewish community, but will save that for a different post.) Especially on the topic of newspapers, there were massive amounts of articles a few weeks ago that I will not now take the time to reconstruct.

Andersen writes:

For years, enthusiasts for unfettered capitalism have insisted that the withering away of enterprises and entire industries is a healthy and necessary part of a vibrant, self-correcting economic system; now, more than at any time since Joseph Schumpeter popularized the idea of creative destruction in 1942, the world must endure the shocking and awesome pain of that metamorphosis. After decades of talking the talk, now everyone is obliged to walk the walk.

The obvious is worth stating: we all know that nothing is permanent, but we all hope and wish for permanence in our own short lives. We are lucky if the upheavals of the world do not impact our own existence, if we avoid the shifts in power and resources that have disrupted so many over so long.

Jonathan Sarna likes to say that "the history of Jewish camping in America could be better articulated as the history of Jewish summer camps closing." But no one ever talks about the programs that never got off the ground, that faded from prominence slowly and painfully, that were shut down before anyone could notice. The Roman Empire did not last forever; neither did British, Spanish, or Vatican dominance over Europe. Some day, American power will be greatly reduced or destroyed - institutions that existed will be no longer. The great universities of Europe, founded maybe nine hundred years ago, are no longer the intellectual leaders they once were. The same will, someday, happen to Harvard and Yale. The Washington Monument and Golden Gate Bridge will not survive forever.

Yet we insist on assuming permanence, on crystallizing things as they are. Such is the strange and perplexing fate of the Israeli-Arab situation in the last sixty years, where, as far as I can tell, for the first time in history we have decided that, war or no war, righteous or not, boundaries must be fixed as they once were, because that is the way it must be. Where were these same thinkers as the United States expanded, as the Moorish toehold on Europe disappeared, as the same powers carved up Europe and Asia as it saw fit in the wake of two world wars. Is the Pakistani-India border sacred, after colonial powers decided to draw it? What makes Jammu, Kashmir, and the West Bank any different from those areas of Italy and Switzerland that are being redrawn due to glacial melting? (Well, a lot, but the point still remains.)

The key factor of the booming economy of the past twenty-six-odd years was expansion and growth. But in spite of that expansion, why is it so difficult to imagine that periodicals will close their doors, that the culture of information will actually shift instead of merely spreading, that at some point in time the banks, airlines, auto companies, and more will need to be thinned like an overgrown forest? And so, then, how could Congress be playing God any more than in maintaining a status quo that the cycles of life demand go through stages of birth and death, contraction and expansion? Why should Detroit's Big Three survive when, at some point in our past, the steamboat companies of New Orleans and the gold rush industries of San Francisco faded into oblivion, irrevocably altering those cities as well? What does it mean to be "too big to fail" - were the dinosaurs?

Clearly, many of my examples are more complicated than we would all like, but so too are the complex dynamics of Darwinian principles, which might predict that cockroaches are more likely to survive a catastrophic explosion - man-made or of natural origins - than the human animals who can mass produce poison that kills cockroaches. Happiness is no factor in nature, neither is success other than genetic transference. Has the survival of the idea of Judaism been worth the pain and heartbreak endured by generations of dead Jews and their suffering relatives? Will the cultural and economic triumph of the Western World matter when our birthrates plummet and the fundamentalist hordes run over our cultural infrastructures with their superior abilities to live?

And it is worth noting that it is in the shadows of destruction - of our reminders that we live and die, that winter eventually follows spring - that life sprouts anew. Andersen writes:

Recall, please, the mood in the mid-'70s: after the 1960s party, America found itself in a slough of despondency, with an oil crisis, a terrible recession, a kind of Weimarish embrace of decadence, national malaise - and at that very dispirited moment, Microsoft and Apple were founded.

He continues, a few sentences later:

The great dying off of quintessentially 20th century businesses presents vast opportunity for entrepreneurs. People will still need (greener) cars, still want to read quality journalism, still listen to recorded music and all the rest. And so as some of the huge, dominant, old-growth trees of the economic forest fall, the seedlings and saplings ... will have a clearer field in which to grow.

Change happens, whether we want it to or not. Great leadership rides change's biggest waves, at once pointing us in the direction of something new and holding our hands as we learn towards what we are moving. Sometimes, the bright future lies too far off for us to see, as those trodden by the Dickensian Industrial Revolution did not live to see the flowering of America's middle class in the glow of the post-World War II military-industrial complex. Such was the plight of the generation of the wilderness, the generation that left Egypt. The Torah seems to consciously teach that they who had experienced history's greatest high were too stained by some prior experience (or the sublime moment of God removing them from danger) for them to truly grasp the new world where their ginormous wave left them. Such is evolution's peculiar pendulum that those most keenly adapted to identify society's hypocrisies and contradictions (the Baby Boomers) are not adequately equipped to move beyond the divisions that those identifications caused. Cue the entrance of an outsider with the correct narrative arcs of history's great heroes - fatherless, transformative, able to keep his eye on a future prize that, for the time being, exists only in his mind's eye. He cultivates hope.

My mother likes to remind us that "change is neither positive nor negative - it's just change." In truth, change is often good or bad for a given individual - it's hard to imagine that the collapsing stock market was good for those invested in it. Similarly, it's difficult to imagine that the engineers who might lose their jobs as Gates and Obama reshape the defense department's priorities are benefiting from this change. But change is neither positive nor negative - from a global perspective, it is change. From Marty Linsky's "balcony," lives are people's movements on a chessboard or, if you prefer, through the game of Life.

International borders will change, as surely as the ancient weapons of money and culture alter borders without the politicians and generals being aware. The press will continue to evolve, and evolution means both the creation of new species and the extinction of those left behind. However well stewarded the world economy is in the future, businesses will fail, and as they leave the scene they will, at times, be missed. Some will die fantastic deaths (Royal Japan), others will bleed off into history (the British Empire). In some cases, the morning after a great upheaval will be bright; other times things will grow much darker before the gravity of human progress inches things forward again. Such is the lesson of the Passover - that rays of sunshine can penetrate utter darkness, but also that gray clouds can cause shade on even the brightest of days. Change is permanent; impermanence is the way of the world.

Low Hanging Fruit

As we move into Pesach mode, I'm planning a series of posts on Pesach themes. I'll start with a classic Passover tradition - hitting someone who's already down. Not only was this the great critique of the Amalekites (and they paid for it), it also seemed to be the m.o. of the God of the Hebrews in the story of the Exodus. As the הגדה itself points out, דינו - pretty much every intermediary step would have been enough (ok, maybe the song is facetious). So, who is there to beat while they're down?

The Palins.

I haven't yet seen the entire interview on the Tyra Banks Show (poor kid couldn't even get a spot on Oprah? Did Obama nix that?), but it seems Levi Johnston (a relative of משה רבינו?) had a blast throwing the Alaskan First Family under the proverbial bus.

My favorite headline on CNN.com, maybe ever: Bristol's Ex: Safe sex "most of the time."

That's abstinence education at its most successful. Just to beat a dead horse: Is safe sex "most of the time" the same as being a responsible Vice-President "most of the time," or lifeguarding decently "most of the time," or how about being a decent public school teacher "most of the time?"

Which reminds me of one of Tina Fey's great lines on SNL this fall, which she attributes to Seth Meyers's mind in her previously alluded to conversation with Terry Gross:

LATIFAH AS IFILL: "Governor Palin. Would you extend same-sex rights to the entire country?"

FEY AS PALIN [thickly accented]: "You know I would be afraid of where that would lead. I believe marriage is meant to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers."

[For the complete transcript, click here. For a video of the faux debate, click here.]

If the first six plagues weren't enough, and fiery hail, locusts, and darkness were all necessary foreplay, then I'm not done making fun of the Palins yet either.

Rare In This Day and Age

As Jon Miller (broadcasting with Joe Morgan on ESPN's normal Sunday night team) reported during the top of the 7th inning of yesterday's game between the Yankees and Orioles:

This is the 15th consecutive season that Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera have been each other's teammates.

Last time that happened?

Paul Molitor, Robin Yount, and Jim Gantner with the 1992 Milwaukee Brewers.

17 years!

The Coolest Thing Brandeis Could Have Done

Just when it seems I'll be seriously slowing down my blog pace, in part to cope with the realities of Pesach break, in part to focus on some longer posts, lightning strikes.

It's been a tough few months for Brandeis University. Today, unrelated to the financial crisis gripping the school, I was sent an announcement about an unbelievably awesome new program (seen in the picture) through the library.

The program allows you (anyone, I think) to sign up for an RSS feed (click here to read or here to watch a short video explaining what RSS is) from the library consisting of new publications in forty-three different categories (or all together, sorted either by date or by title). This has inspired me to finally utilize Google Reader (which I know some of you use to read my blog) in that I subscribed to 17 different topics. (I am my father's son, as my mother is surely saying to herself as she reads this.) The only travesty is that subscribing to the "Mathematics" and "Science" areas didn't make any sense because everything was computer science bs.

Never one to shy from a new challenge, I have now subscribed to an additional nineteen other feeds from a variety of blogs and websites, and have thus cut down on a good number of quicklinks in my browser. I also now have at least 983 unread messages waiting for me. This will pose some filtering and time constraint "challenges."

Mad props to Brandeis - unbelievable service!

Pretty (Fun), Witty (It Was), and Gay (Couldn't Resist)

A few weeks ago there was an event at the Center for Conservative Judaism celebrating the second anniversary of JTS's decision to accept openly gay rabbinical students. (For the funniest Freudian picture you've ever seen, check out the New York Times's article last year commemorating the first anniversary.) In case you're keeping track, it was a group of JTS rabbinical students living in Israel last year who tried to plan a celebration at Machon Schechter that ended up spiraling out of control and resulting, ultimately, in the American Jewish University (AJU - gesuntheit) (formerly the University of Judaism) pulling out of a partnership with Machon Schechter and sending their rabbinical students (beginning next fall) to the Conservative Yeshiva.

The event, which was relatively well attended (maybe a little less than 100 people) consisted of two speakers, Amichai Lau-Lavie and Chaim Elbaum, and the screening of a 30-minute-ish short movie called ואהבת, "And Thou Shalt Love."

Amichai, a dear friend of JAR (and future מסדר קידושין) and former employer of mine on a research project, is the founder of Storahtelling and a current Mandel Fellow in Jewish Education (formerly [and still?] the Jerusalem Fellows program). He spoke first about his experiences and shared with us two powerful anecdotes (which, unfortunately, I'm not remembering as well as I would have had I written this when I should have, a few weeks ago).

Amichai was part of a conversation with Rick Warren a few years ago, where the prominent pastor (whom I've written about positively on this blog, here) was asked a question about why he believes that God (Jesus) loves all people and forgives all but hates homosexuals. Warren responded with, as it were, a version of the positivist response of which Joel Roth is so fond: "My hands are tied; that's what the Bible says." Amichai said that the mood in the room was to accept Warren's throw-away response. For whatever reason (those who know Amichai can guess as to the reasons) Amichai wouldn't have it, and so asked it again: "Why does God not love me?" To which Warren responded, "Of course God loves you." "But I'm gay." (There may have been a punchline to the story but, if there was, it's lost to my memory.)

The second story involved Amichai trying to donate blood to מגן דוד אדום in Jerusalem a few months ago. Before he could donate, he filled out the lengthy questionnaire, including the question "Have you had sex with a man since 1978?" To which he responded, "yes." When he went to turn the form in, he asked the woman behind the desk, and she told him it was better he not give at all. "But," he told her, "this form says that even if the blood is not used for donations it will be used for science." "Yeah," she told him, "but that's not true - they just throw it out." Amichai then explained to her how he could produce his documentation that he is HIV negative but, of course, she couldn't do anything about that. He told us that he made it clear to her that he was not upset with her; she, of course, had done nothing wrong. He concluded by stating the obvious: no one wants tainted blood in the system; but what if the blood is not tainted? Isn't there a way to account for that?

Before I get into the movie itself, which was really enjoyable, I'll segue into where Amichai's second anecdote brought me: the irony of sitting in an event "celebrating" JTS for accepting rabbinical students when the ass-backwards (pun, actually, not intended) Dorff, Nevins, Reisner (that's right, DNR - which should be everyone's philosophy towards replicating their approach) teshuvah is on the books (which I've previously skewered here). In other words, the same sex act that makes Amichai ineligible for donating blood would also make him ineligible for being a student at JTS's Rabbinical School (whose dean is now Rabbi Nevins), just as eating shrimp, cheeseburgers, or driving on Shabbat would. Doesn't that seem a little preposterous? To me, this undermines much of the so-called "progress" that's been made, and makes celebrating JTS for intellectual hypocrisy and bad legislation (not to mention their unwillingness and/or inability to actually account for what their policy might look like when they graduate openly gay students in a few years) less than ideal.

I asked a question version of the last paragraph (in fewer words, I hope) to Amichai and Chaim. The room was a bit astir (I tend to have that impact on audiences when I ask a question), but both gay men seemed to dodge the question. If I recall correctly, Amichai responded with an "at least we're in; let's be happy for what we have" approach, and Chaim, pretty much unaware of the politics and background to my question, seemed to respond relatively naively. Part of his response, it seemed, emerged from an understanding of the halachah (which I believe he articulated as his actual ideal understanding of the halachah) that the פסוק outlaws a single act, not the lifestyle surrounding that act. It seemed, from what he said, that he might believe that, were he not to engage in anal sex with his partner (not sure about other sex), then he wouldn't be in violation of the halachah, but that if he did have anal sex, he would be committing the תועבה. (If I may grossly compare across contexts, it was almost like hearing an African American in the Jim Crow '20s argue that even though he's dumber than most white men, even stupid white men can vote, so why can't he?)

I was also struck during this part of the conversation (if not before) by an overwhelming sense of wanting to protect my students as, I imagine, a parent wants to protect their children. This is a metaphor I have implicitly, at least, explored in my thoughts on a pedagogy of unconditional love, and it is one that bears heavily on my own thoughts, as an educator, in issues like intellectual dishonesty (especially in the teaching of Myth and religious guidance), gender dynamics, and sexuality. I assume that, quite often, some of my educational instincts are actually blinded by my harking back to my relationships with the vast majority of campers in the four עדות with which I worked closely at camp. How do you prepare all children for a world in which homosexuality as what it is, when you believe deeply that homosexuality is not a choice and that, even if it were, you love your students for being able to make choices?

On to the movie, before returning to some of the questions and answers post-movie.

Chaim attended an arts school for דתי students called מעלה. The school, founded in 1989, has created a track into Israel's dramatic world (mostly for filmmakers and producers) for children who grew up observant (practically unheard of in Israel's performing arts industry). Each student in the four-year program produces and directs a final project.

Chaim realized, at the point in his schooling when he needed to announce his final project, that he had two options: to quite school and move into something like dentistry (his example), or to engage with his homosexuality in film and, therefore, come out to his class. When asked how people reacted to him coming out of the closet (his classmates were the first people he ever told), he said that a number of the girls started crying - whether those were tears of sadness for the difficult lifestyle ahead of him or tears of jealousy because he was now off the market, he did divulge.

The movie is a really well-crafted story of a yeshiva student struggling with his homosexuality. The film does a great job - and, I think, an even-handed job - of depicting the "normative" homoeroticism of a yeshiva environment as חברותא partners hold hands to make a point, get in each other's faces on an argument, and dance together. The movie also does a great job of utilizing classical text well, including the almost over-the-top incident where the protagonist and his חברותא, who has just returned from army service for a break, learn the subtly pornographic סוגיא of ריש לקיש and רבי יוחנן swimming together in the Jordan. The major vein of textual interpretation is the ברכת כהנים, a blessing of peace (וישם לך שלום) given in love (לברך את עמו ישראל באהבה). Great movie - worth watching in educational settings and as triggers for conversations in the Jewish community. (And, I am quite sure, unavailable for purchase.)

In one of the questions after the film, Chaim responded - and this was quite moving for the audience, you heard audible gasps - that the movie was not meant to show a(n unrequited) love affair between the two yeshiva students, but a (mutual) love affair between the protagonist and God. In addition to striking a powerful, Heschelian tone for the JTS-y audience, the notion itself is an idea that feels good to contemplate both emotionally and intellectually, a statement that brought us back to Rick Warren's "God loves everyone but gays" and one that helps to frame, I think, all of our struggles with who we really are.

At the very end of the session, Chaim finally called on an individual in the audience who had had their hand up from the very beginning. In a fascinating triple-twist, this person, who for the previous hour had been "invisible" to the speakers in the room who passed over him/her again and again in taking questions, was courageous enough to describe his/her double-invisibility to the Jewish community, as a bisexual and a halachically-committed, serious-minded Conservative Jew. The תשובות passed by the CJLS which allowed JTS to accept homosexuals, made it quite clear that, for them, bisexuality indicated a fluid sexuality of choice and that the ideal (and only acceptable) choice was a heterosexual lifestyle. This after watching a movie where a young man struggles with an essential part of who he is but cannot speak its name (a little Voldermort-y); is an anonymous caller to a help line for religious Israelis struggling with sexual identity and, near the end of the movie, finally gives his real name to the voice on the other end of the phone, only to hear from this "therapist," "it doesn't matter who you are;" and a movie in which the antagonist - God - is never seen. Impact.

I close with Chayim's dream. When asked what his dream of a future was, he said it was to walk hand-in-hand with the Chief Rabbi of Israel during the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, because homosexuals are not outlawed by הלכה.

Chayim's dream, as JTS's policy, seems to begin implicitly acknowledging what Rick Warren has been unable to: ואהבת is meant as both a subjective and objective experience for humanity in our relationship with God (though Judaism's שמע only highlights the subjective, and Christianity tends to only emphasize the objective), and that means accepting people for who they are (as is highlighted by the Prophets' embrace of the widow and orphan and modern-day Christianity's forgiveness of murderers' and would-be assassins) as we accept God for who God is (Auschwitz-, cancer-, and tsunami-enabler if not enacter). What both Chayim and JTS seem to ignore (and of what, I imagine, Rick Warren might be all too aware) is that the love for the other ought to be accompanied by an avenue for which that love to be expressed in pragmatic, lived (וחי בהם) terms, terms that allow for the "accepted" person to live his life. Amichai is there - and has left a halachic framework for an aggadic, anti-denominational worldview. May others follow.

Dateline: 1854?

I was reading over Shabbat about the opening of a new religious seminary in central Europe aimed at creating a new generation of clergy versed in the vernacular language and culture of the community's constituents instead of shipping in backward thinking reactionary clerics who harked back to a different time.

Was I reading a newspaper article from 1854 about the opening of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, the forerunner to the founded-in-1886 Jewish Theological Seminary of America?

Nope.

An article about the Buhara Institute in Berlin. In the Newsweek from March 21, 2009.

I don't know much about the emergence of a European Islam (well, other than the failed attempts at Tours in 732 and the ultimate ass-whooping in Granada in 1492), but I like its promise, especially relative to its Arabian-, African-, and Central-Asian- cousins.