My Response to the Disgraceful Stephen Weiss of “The Canonist”

Stephen I. Weiss, the author of the Canonist, is a nasty fellow. I was shocked to read his very personal attacks on me in his recent post, including its headline which labeled me a “Jackass”, since I never met the guy, nor have I ever had any form of correspondence with him.

But I would at least hope that someone who had written for the Forward would attempt to be fair. But of course, he was fired from the Forward for not taking his meds for undisclosed reasons. Quickly. Quite quickly.

Which says something, doesn’t it?

In between his unrelated insults and a totally bogus anecdote, he also made some very misleading statements about my story on Jewschool about the Forward’s latest section “The Shmooze”.

First of all - only two stories were part of “The Shmooze”, while Weiss pretended all five on the page were part of that section, when only two of them were. This is not my misunderstanding - it is his. For intance, “Forward: Looking Back” is a section that has been going on for years. It is not part of “Shmooze” as Weiss asserted.

Weiss insisted that my joke about Satmar Hassidim not dancing a hora was wildly inaccurate and “ignorant” because Eastern European dances, particularly Hassidic ones, influenced the modern hora.

But the Satmar dances are different. For instance, they don’t have mixed dancing. Not the last time I checked.

And they certainly don’t call it a “hora”. Ever.

That is like insisting they are “Zionist” in the same way as secular nationalist Israelis because of the influence the Hassidim had on the Zionist movement through their messianic utopianism as well as the Ba’al Shem Tov’s own push for a return to the land of Israel which influences this national, secular movement.

They did influence Zionism, but the Satmar simply aren’t “Zionist”, and would not refer to themselves as such. There are some critical differences.

Did Weiss really not understand this? Did he really need this explained? No, he isn’t “intellectually incapacitated” (which he called me) - but he seeks to prove I’m an ignoramus, and if there isn’t material there to prove his arguement, he pretends there is through intentionally obtuse distortion. He brings up the hora thing again on yet a second post on this same issue.

It’s all he’s got!

Weiss is unremitting in his lies. He overreacts to my “frowning” on the Forward generally, while the first paragraph was essentially a love letter to the Forward, and many of the few posts in the short life of my blog have praised the Forward consistently.

To boot, he gives a bogus anecdote of some “editor” at Heeb, without revealing who it was, and pretends that this maisah represents Heeb’s view of the Forward.

Weiss writes,

“I’m reminded of one time I tried to help out a Heeb editor by introducing him to Eden, thinking that he could get some writing gigs at the Forward through the connection. The genius went on to deride the Forward for being irrelevant, and not covering the kinds of things he’d like to read.”

It is one thing to not reveal your sources - it is entirely another to not reveal the subject who “proves” the position of an institution.

Again - it’s all he’s got. The Forward, contrary to what Weiss would like, has been quite supportive of Heeb.

Maybe, as Weiss contends, I “know nothing” and “have accomplished nothing”, and only feel comfortable referencing the Forward because of my “membership in ‘edgy’ endeavors like Heeb.” Maybe I read my first Forward yesterday.

Or maybe I worked on the business side there, schmuck.

And at least I worked at the Forward (for two and a half years) without getting fired.

Before your time, you punk.

And I chose to move on to other venues, including but by no means limited to Heeb.

We’ll see what you do.