So there is yet more to be written about Isaac Abrahan, candidate for City Council, and his refusal to attend a political meeting in a childcare center because it was in the basement below a church.

This issue led to much private discussion among my liberal Jewish friends (including with an Israeli co-worker of mine). And to more attention that it deserved on this blog. But the reason it got undue attention is that behind what really was little more than a well-known media hog's wanting to martyr himself for publicity are some very real issues. And issues that are seldom easy to balance.

The key point is the interaction between an individual's personal beliefs (in this case a Hasid's refusal to enter the religious building of another religion) and the wider community. In this case it is more of an issue because had Isaac Abraham merely wished to live in Brooklyn without entering a church no one would have thought anything of it. In this case it is an issue of someone from a community known for its avoidance of outside cultural influences wanting to represnt the wider community in a public office. Is this possible?

Of course it all depends.

My initial reaction to Isaac Abraham's actions was very negative for one simple reason: I imagined what would have happend if Isaac Abraham had been a Muslim and had refused to enter a synagogue. That is often how I test these situations: by changing around the players a little and seeing how it works. I believe that any Muslim who had publicly refused to enter a synagogue would have been vilified by both press and community, rather than treated sympathetically as Isaac Abraham was at least to some degree. I also imagined what would have happened if a Christian had refused to enter a mosque. It would have been taken as yet another example of Bush era intolerance towards Muslims. And worst of all, in America what would happen if an atheist politician had refused to enter any place of worship. The atheist would have been treated harshest of all.

So it occurred to me that only a Jew, particularly a Hasid, could so easily get away with, in the eyes of the larger community even if not in his own eyes, slighting the religious institution of others in the community. And, as I said before, I do not wish to hold my fellow Jews to a lower standard than I would hold others.

But I also don't want to hold my fellow Jews to a harsher standard. There is another way to rearrange the characters and see how it all fits that leads me to a different reaction. What if the criticism of Isaac Abraham had come from, let us say, Bill O'Reilly, the rabidly anti-diversity fool who thinks America is a Christian nation. What if it has been Bill who had criticized Isaac Abraham...or the Muslim refusing to enter a synagogue, or the atheist. My reaction would have been to defend Abraham, or the Muslim or the atheist. Now this would partly be that Bill O' is himself biased and I would be reacting to the known bias of this awful person.

So here again we have conflicting issues. It is true that only a Hasid could so easily act in a way that, intentionally or not, slights another's religion and get away with it. And it is also true that had the criticism come from a different set of biases, I would have defended Abraham over the criticsm.

So I looked deeper into this and how I felt about it.

And to a large degree I think the main fault in this ever being an issue was Isaac Abraham's own faults. NOT because of his religious principles, but because of how it was handled.

It has been pointed out to me that other religious Jewish politicians, Mitnagdim or Hasid, also shun entry into the religious institutions of others without a problem. And without taking it to the media as a publicity stunt.

So here's the sequence of events as I can piece them together.

First, CBID routinely meets in a childcare center at the basement of a church. They meet there because it is cheap and convenient. It has never occured to them before (should it have?) that the Hasids in the community would be excluded.

Then, the first time CBID ever heard that Isaac Abraham had a problem accepting their invitation to speak at their club was when my wife, as corresponding secretary, was contacted by the media to get CBID's view of the problem. So this suggests that Isaac Abraham or someone associated with him did NOT first go to CBID to discuss the issue, he went to the media to play martyr as a nice little (and I will add very successful) publicity stunt.

I am told that Isaac Abraham is well-known as a media hog. He loves publicity and knows how to manipulate the media for maximum attention on himself. So, this is typical of Isaac Abraham's MO. And typical of the media's willingness to play his game.

Then CBID's first public reaction was to question whether Isaac Abraham, as part of a group known for isolating itself from the community can adequately represent the community.

A fair question, though it was not handled in a way that really got at the root of that question. It was handled a bit roughly, but it also voices a question the larger community really is, openly or not, asking Mr. Abraham. It is a legitimate question anytime someone with strong beliefs runs for office. I know someone who questions whether a Quaker (as a pacifist) could properly represent him. The ability of JFK, as a Catholic, to represent the nation was brought up. The ability of Joe Lieberman, as a religious Jew, to represent America was questioned. This can come up from actual bias or it can come up because the more a person isolates him or herself from the larger society, the harder it will be for that person to represent larger society in office. Harder, but not impossible. And, to give Americans credit, when these questions come up openly and honestly, generally Americans are willing to admit that someone from a different part of society (Quaker, Catholic, Jew, black, etc), even with strong beliefs, is perfectly capable of representing wider society. It is generally when these issues are mishandled than people's biases, rather then honest and open discussion, dominate.

So most Hasids running for office are very open and honest with their restrictions and the reasons for them and are very capable of turning awkward situations into honest and open discussions of how an individual's pesonal beielfs intersect with the expectations of the larger society. Such discussions are critical in a diverse society.

Isaac Abraham did not do this as far as I can tell. It seems he chose to take umbrage and create a media scene. Again, this is what he is known for and the media are happy to play along. After all, as my own pieces also demonstrate, umbrage attracts readers. But this means Abraham missed his chance to have the kind of open and honest discussion about an individual's place in society and instead opted for a cheap PR stunt. And I think CBID didn't quite realize what was going on and reacted to being attacked for doing what is common practice in Brooklyn: renting space in a church or synagogue because it's cheap. To CBID Abraham was rejecting what is common practice in Brooklyn politics and doing so in a particularly self-rightous way.

And, of course, all of this was perfect for the Isaac Abrham/media circus. But not for the open and honest discussion of social issues.

I talked to some of the other candidates in the same race as well as to other members of Brooklyn's reform clubs, and they all thought similarly. No one minded trying to accomodate the individual candidates' needs. After all we are all liberals, not Bill O'Reilly who probably would have told Isaac Abraham to "go back to Israel," as he did to a caller objecting to Christian displays on public space. But Abraham was widely seen as mishandling it, probably deliberately.

What a shame Isaac Abraham prefers self-martyrdom to open and honest discussion.

In the end CBID is happily changing the venue to Camp Friendship (ironically the original location of the same Methodist Church that has caused the whole tsimis, according to the Methodist Church's website). They are willing to spend extra money to rent space to accomodate Isaac Abraham, but of course this will probably be ignored by the newspapers that reported on Abraham's supposed martyrdom.

So Abraham and the newspapers got their little moment of sensationalism while missing pretty much all the important points of the story, including that CBID and the other candidates were pefectly willing to discuss alternatives had Abraham only approached it like an adult.

But my take home lesson is that Isaac Abraham, by choosing to handle the situation so poorly, amply demonstrated why he is not qualified to represent the district. Not because he is Hasidic and Satmar, but because he, himself, is a schmuck.