Maurice:
>You can't put a black mark on the process because of one
>individual.  This is like saying, "All men are healthy, but George is fat,
>therefore all men are fat."  It makes no sense.  I forget the name for this
>particular fallacy, but you can find it in any basic logic textbook.  You
>cannot use the single example or person and generalize to a larger group.

He didn't generalize to a larger group--you did. He retold a story he heard.

>A rabbi using a monkey belt to evade customs....this is NOT a reasonable story
>to "prove" that kosher food is or is not paleo (and some is, and some is
>not--kosher certification certainly is NOT based on paleo guidelines, and I
>will say, some kosher food is as bad as could be in a health sense, with
>hydrogenated oils etc.  The issue in this list was about the meat, however).
>It is NOT RELEVANT.

It was a great story. Who said it proved anything? And I feel it was relevent.

Val:
>What you call "accurate information" is hearsay.  Wouldn't be accepted
>in a court of law, and wouldn't be accepted as evidence in most
>kindergarten disputes.  "I know a guy who knew a guy" doesn't count as
>truth; it's only anecdote.  In this case, vicious anecdote.

Most of the posts to this lists are similarly blighted--if that is the
right word. Ray's recent "story" of human prehistory would have all these
problems, for example. Yet I am glad he posted it.

>You didn't need
>to tell a horrible story (which may or may not be true) about a rabbi
>and a monkey, that had nothing to do with the topic at hand.  Even if
>the story is true, it is the evil action of an individual, but by the
>way you told it, you left the impression that any rabbi might be
>suspected of such.  It's a typical anti-Semitic tale.

I wasn't left with the impression that any rabbi might be suspected of such
behavior. It was just a story about an individual to me.

>It is possible to find an awful story about some individual member of
>any group of people, to shock and smear and to appear righteous or
>clever.  I could tell a story about "a butcher I knew" that could make
>any nasty point I wanted, and the story might even be true.  But while
>it would be true about the individual man in the meat business, it
>wouldn't be true about ALL butchers, and it would be wrong for me to
>tell the story in such a way that I seemed to imply that all butchers
>inject their product with formaldehyde to keep it nice and red on the
>display.  (There was a guy in Tennessee who did that, was actually
>convicted of it after someone got sick on the meat, years ago.)  But it
>would be wrong for me to tell that story in order to stir up suspicion
>against all butchers.

Why not? (And you just did--to people who are extremely pro-butcher for
whatever reason.) We should probably be suspicious of butchers, as well as
bakers and candlestick-makers.

>And yet, in your story, that's your stated
>intent:  to stir up suspicion against all people who produce food
>labeled kosher.  Shame on you.

Shame on _you_. Dismissing a single story as unacceptable and branding an
individual as malicious simply because it offends your sense of right and
wrong. We're all big boys and girls and being politically correct is not as
important as telling a good story once in a while. His stated intent was
not to stir up suspicion--he stated that he was passing on an incident he
heard about. If the story was about some other religiously-associated
individual (or even an individual with no religious association) I would
still enjoy hearing it just as much. The story is about abuse of power, not
the Jewish people. Lighten up and keep your shame to yourself, would be my
unsolicited advice.

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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