Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinberg, leader of the Orthodox Union, is out with an inspiring op-ed carried by JTA about how we as Jews should respond to massive disasters. It’s well worth a read.

In it he grapples with the question that is always unanswerable, though it is the subject of milennia of soul-searching and at least one book: Why do bad things happen to the innocent. In dealing with this subject in the past, I have put my foot in my mouth as many others, including Pat Robertson, have by trying to come up with a rational explanation when there clearly is none, at least in this world. In lieu of one, too many people make what they see as the logical leap that people who are suffering have done something to deserve it, or that they are paying the price for the sins of others, present or past.

Rabbi Weinreb’s take: “Our tradition insists that we “shelve” [this] type of question. Judaism insists instead that we ask the question of the second type. We must inquire as to the response that God requires of us. And to that inquiry the answer is powerful and clear: See! Feel! Act!”

The anonymous group Jewish Women Watching has come out swinging against the alleged disparate reaction — in a racist way, in their view — of the “mainstream Jewish community” to the openings of two New York City public charter schools. In a campaign called “Critique Responsibly,” JWW notes that some flew off the handle at the thought of the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran Academy in Brooklyn, while taking a measured response to the opening of the Hebrew Language Academy, also in Brooklyn.

There is probably a fascinating analysis of this theme to be done, but on the face of it, Jewish Women Watching has not done it. What they have done is compare apples and oranges. To make their case of hypocrisy, they would have to compare the reactions of the same leaders to identical phenomena occurring in two different communities.

Instead, JWW is distributing a bookmark that displays a quote from Daniel Pipes of the pro-Israel Middle East Forum, warning that Gibran will  “generate serious problems…imbuing pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism, proselytizing for Islam, and promoting Islamist sympathies will predictably make up the school’s true curriculum.”

Leaving alone the question of whether Pipes’ concern is valid, the commentator, while he may be Jewish, has not, as far as I’ve heard, claimed to be a representative of the “mainstream Jewish community” or a spokesman for anyone but Middle East Forum. Clearly his quote was featured solely because it is one of the harshest available on the subject.

The contrasting quote is from the American Jewish Congress, which does hold itself out as a “defense agency” that concerns itself with the well-being of the Jewish people. No quote is featured from the Congress on Gibran, and my recollection and preliminary search results suggest they offered none. But JWW presents a paragraph from the Forward paraphrasing  the agency’s Marc Stern, an expert on matters or religion and law, on the Hebrew Language School that opened its doors a year after Gibran.

“Stern said he does not believe that a Hebrew-language charter school inherently poses a challenge to the constitutionally mandated divide between religion and state. But…it would be impossible to distinguish exactly what element might be used ‘as a means of furthering Judaism.’”

Opposition to the Gibran Academy centered on concerns that the school would be a taxpayer-funded Madrassa that fomented Islamic funadementalism. Those concerns were deemed unfounded by the Department of Education and the mayor, who went ahead with opening the school as planned, although the founding principal had to step down as a casualty of that pressure.

Since Hebrew and Israeli radicalism have proven to be far less a danger around the world, and not at all in New York, opposition to the Hebrew Language Academy, such as it is, centers around constitutional issues, the impact on local Jewish day schools and whether students there will substitute its curriculum for a Jewish education.

Completely different people addressing  completely different issues, and as far as I can see, most leaders in the community staying out of the fray in both cases.

It’s rare that a major story we cover comes to such a complete and sudden end, as in the case of the U.S. Holocaust Museum shooting last June.

James von Brunn, the outspoken racist who was shot by museum guards in the attack and charged with the murder of one of the guards, has died in a prison hospital. It’s unclear if his death was a result of his injuries. He was 88 years old, and spent much of those years spewing hatred against Jews.

So there will be no trial in the murder of Stephen Johns, the guard who courteously held the door at the museum before he was shot to death. Museum security had been reviewed and undoubtedly enhanced. Johns has been buried and his story will, unfortunately, fade from our collective short memory. A sad chapter closed.

Von Brunn will take to his grave any insight into how an educated man, Navy veteran and former advertising executive became the crazed extremist who tried to take hostages at a federal building in 1981 and later spent his time obsessing over and publishing Holocaust revisionist theories. We’ll also never know what about today’s hateful climate may have prompted his final rampage. Maybe there are no answers to such questions.

But his death also spares us the possibility that he would use his trail as the forum for Holocaust revisionism and other conspiracy theories that he always craved.

Note: I rather cavalierly stated below that the people who go swimming in the ocean during the winter do not seem to do so when there are no cameras around. I stand corrected. For the record, at least one of these groups meets every Sunday during the winter.

Anyone who watches or reads the news in New York has to be aware of the Polar Bears, that wacky group of folks who annually celebrate the new year by jumping into the icy Atlantic from Coney Island beach.

A majority of these folks, for some reason, seem to older Jewish men. Maybe it dates back to some European custom they remember from the old country. Or for something deeper you can add your own cliche about a culture of prevailing over adversity and needing to build stregnth and tolerance. (My former colleague, Toby Axelrod, once told me about her grandfather’s custom of washing his face in the first snow of the season — a version of making lemons from lemonade — and it’s a custom I’ve followed ever since.)

Some of these ice bathers will argue that there are health benefits to this freezing dip, but doctors will note that hypothermia and frostbite are largely considered harmful conditions.

Since few human Polar Bears are spotted bobbing in winter surf when there are no cameras around, the more cynical will suspect that a large part of the motivation is the desire for publicity on a slow news day. As we have learned from “Fear Factor,” “Survivor” and the Balloon Boy, the prices people won’t pay for their 15 minutes these days are few and far between.

But publicity aside, there does seem to be something enticing about poking your finger in nature’s eye and doing something that’s, to be generous, counterintuitive. So it has always appealed to me as a once-only challenge, or an item for the (eventual) Bucket List. Since I already get a fair amount of publicity in my life, I could write off that motivation and embrace it simply as a self-dare.

So, when this year a friend and neighbor, Alan Skorski, noted on Facebook (in a long thread about global warming, which he dismisses as a liberal plot) that he was considering taking the plunge, I told him if we did he’d have a partner.

If anything, it would help settle our ongoing clash about climate change. If we emerged unscathed, basking in the January sunshine, I’d win. If we turned blue and had to be defrosted with hair dryers, he could make a strong case against Al Gore’s agenda of panic.

Roughly a week before the new year, Alan, being a charitable soul, came up with the idea of making something noble out of our escapade, drafting a letter to local shuls looking for sponsors. Similar to a bowl-a-thon or a race-for-the-cure, we would stay in the water in ten-second increments for each sum pledged to the local food bank for needy families. (For the record, though, Alan works in the food industry and has had more ability to experience and adjust to frozenness, which would give him an edge, whereas I keep a chair warm on my job.)

I anticipated a chilly reception, and was right. Two shuls in our neighborhood declined sending out e-mails, probably worried about the potential legal and moral liability if the stunt went bad. We considered fundraising among friends, or just putting up some money on our own. But in the end, cooler heads prevailed.

We both ended 2009 with colds, and going into the holiday weekend, it dawned on us that the timing wasn’t encouraging. The bears gathered at noon on Friday, with Shabbat just over four hours away, with potential traffic heading back to Long Island. With New Year’s Day falling on Saturday next year, there’s plenty of time to gather courage, and maybe some sponsors, for 2012.

And so, for now, we put our mitzvah on ice. Which is surely the least painful thing to put there.