Posts from — December 2006

Scientific evidence for circumcision as a prophylactic against Aids in Africa as a substitute for condoms (which are more effective) is typically being misappropriated by the Jewish community for areas where condoms are both readily available and used. That is to say, the west. It is for that reason that routine circumcision is not being advocated in Europe, and is not practiced. Misappropriation by Jewish bloggers is available here, here, and here.

But the general American landscape is not Jewish, and therefore less prone to swallowing our self-deception and cultural bias if they are given the opposing view. And the pro-circ camp is therefore in for a beating.

The Hankyoreh reports in “Circumcision reduces sexual satisfaction: study� that,

A survey of 373 men 30 years or older in South Korea was taken by Seoul National University professor Kim Dae-sik and JoongAng University professor Bang Myeong-geol. They found that men who underwent circumcision felt less sensation during orgasm while engaged in masturbation or sex than when they had been uncircumcised.

The research, which is scheduled to be posted to an academic journal in Britain in February, was conducted with 255 men who underwent circumcision after the age of 20 and 118 who did not.

According to the research, 20 percent answered that their level of satisfaction in sex fell after circumcision, compared with 6 percent who said the level rose. The remaining 74 percent said no change was seen after circumcision.�

While, “Statistically, there was no meaningful difference seen in terms of sexual desire, erectile function, never the less according to Dr. Bang, “We can make the conclusion that circumcision poses a negative impact on [enjoyment of] sex by damaging peripheral nerves.”

The report is “to be posted to an academic journal in Britain in February.� I predict it’s going to set off a wave of indignation. And the more we point to Africa, the more people will realize that isn’t the issue for us, and ask, “Why are the Jews insisting this is a health issue for them? And why do they want us to be a part of this?�

To all my readers, Happy Jesus Circumcision Day!

I can’t believe it. I simply cannot believe it. I actually read something intelligent on Big Aish. About the composer Steve Reich, about the Hebrew language, and his incorporation of it into his composition, and his contributions to Jewish literacy.

One of his great pieces of that era (1981), is called Tehillim — not Psalms, but Tehillim. The skills that he gained and his mastery of cantillations and Hebrew grammar are obvious in that musical piece.

Okay, I’m sitting down. I’m breathing deeply. There must be an explanation. There must be a reason. How could someone from Aish HaTorah write this? Nothing about this article screams glitzy, creepy fundamentalism. The author actually went to see a classical music concert, like it is completely normal for an Orthodox rabbi to do so.

Let’s see who this author is…it’s …oh, for crying out loud. It was written by Rabbi Buchwald. He runs NJOP. He’s Modern Orthodox. This guy has nothing to do with Big Aish. They must have paid him decently for the article, or more likely, paid for it as a reprint after being printed somewhere else. It costs less that way.

False alarm. Everyone go back to sleep.

Man, that was disconcerting. Like when someone starts talking while in coma. Okay, what is else is on Big Aish this week?

Okay, let’s see…top story is a piece by a real Aish writer, Rabbi Salomon. About celebrity.

Today it might be Brad Pitt; tomorrow it could be Jennifer Hudson. For some it is Tiger Woods, for others it is Cate Blanchett, or whoever the lords of People magazine decide to deify this week. It doesn’t really matter. These personalities are but mere instruments in our empyreal attempt to borrow a morsel of associative greatness.

There we go! Keep it smarmy, keep it silly, keep it lowest common denominator.

Big Aish’s brand message is back on track.

There is snow in the Holy Land. What does it mean? Mystically speaking, of course. Let’s go to the powerhouse of Kaballah, Big Aish.

“With a cold Amalekite attitude, the growth that we fought so hard to gain throughout the Jewish holiday period in the Spring and Summer months, can be lost to the deep freeze and the cold winter snow.”

Amalek? Of course – the Israelites were walking through the desert, and there must have been snow everywhere when they were attacked. Amalek is clearly represented by snow (see Exodus 17:8-16; Deut. 25:17-19). But wait! There is flip side to it…it can be holy, but is also spiritually dangerous, because, “Snow is not always pure!”

Snow is a symbol of purity and holiness, but paradoxically within it lies the potential for evil. The Yetzer Hara knows how powerful and inspirational snow can be, and therefore has his stake in snow as well, trying to force people to view it only as negative […]So when those white flakes begin to fall, and a blizzard is on the way, let’s fight cynicism and win the battle for positive attitudes. Let’s stay away from cold, Amalekite snowball fights. And let’s become holy “snowmen” instead.

Yes, instead of snowball fights, lie in the snow, and move your arms to create snow angels, just like the Christian kids I grew up with did, but my mother disapproved of me doing so, because of the suspected theological content.

Holy Snowman Trinity! What theology is this?

Full 100% authentic Jewish explanation of the meaning of snow.

JVoices, the single funniest Jewish site on the internet (but they have no idea how many giggles they create!) takes on the important daring question: Should we boycott our straight friends weddings in order to force the gay marriage issue?

After all, since “all of the arguments against Gay Marriage are Homophobic,� Mike Finesilver is not going to attend straight weddings anymore. Additionally, he is unwilling to “provide a large and usually overcompensating gift.�

Now Mike, with all due respect, let’s be honest. The gift aspect is completely unrelated to your homosexuality or your gay activism. It’s because you are a cheap Jew. Please don’t go and confuse identities like that. It gives victimology a bad name!

Now you are probably wondering whether I will join in the straight marriage boycott. Well, quite frankly, if the wedding is outside Manhattan, I’ll use whatever excuse I can come up with to justify staying home.

If NCSY is going to continue recruiting for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) baal teshuvah (newly Orthodox) yeshivas and seminaries, every secular Jewish parent must receive a warning letter, and it must be posted on all NCSY websites. Something like this:

Dear Secular Jewish Parent,

Fair warning: NCSY actively recruits public high school graduates for ultra-Orthodox institutions and dual curriculum schools in Israel and in the U.S. We are not just about shabbatons and “identity.” We want your kids to be Orthodox, and do not believe they will remain that way if they go straight to a regular college. So please understand that at NCSY, your child may be discouraged from attending the better colleges, and instead may be encouraged to attend a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) institution, and enter a haredi lifestyle that if followed properly starting and at a young enough age, offers limited socio-economic opportunity. This is official NCSY policy. You may think that because of the values you instilled in them, your kids are better suited for a quality secular education than born and bred Orthodox Jewish kids. In fact, from where we are standing, and certainly from where our haredi partner institutions in Israel are standing, that makes them even more at risk if they attend these places, and such colleges an even less appropriate option. What is difficult enough for born and bred Orthodox kids is an exceptionally difficult challenge for yours. It is certainly done, obviously, but this is not what we will advise.

We are believers, and we want your kids to be believers. That is to say, fully practicing Orthodox Jews. For us, this is paramount. And between the choice of college and a secular lifestyle or ultra-Orthodoxy and poverty, we would choose the latter for your children. We are not saying it has to be that way, but the fact is, the ultra-Orthodox options for secular Jews from a public school background are more readily available than those advocating a Modern Orthodox outlook, and that does translate into a greater risk of disengagement, underemployment, and even eventual poverty (at least by your standards) if they go to one of our recommended haredi institutions. We have been operating since 1959, and even according to a dated study (baal teshuva yeshiva and seminary growth has been exponential in recent years) historically have influenced more than one out of four public school kids to significantly change their educational and vocational trajectory.

Please review our Educational Guide for general policy and our list of recommended yeshivas and seminaries for a partial list of whom we recruit for. But do not expect us to explain the downside of these places. We want your kids to be Orthodox. That’s it. The rest is your responsibility.

Sincerely,

Signature [Regional NCSY Director]

It’s one thing when the far-Left and far-Right start in about “The Neocons.� But when TNR does it, it’s positively delicious. Because we don’t like them (the Neocons), but when we say “Neocon,� we mean neoconservatives. Not Jews.

Anyway, in “Sucker Punch,� Jonathan Chait zings some tasty one liners at the Neocons, and their relationship with Bush, and how “fewer people seemed to have noticed that the reverse is also true: Bush suckered the neocons.�

Like,

“So [Bush] ended up pursuing Dick Cheney’s foreign policy with Bill Clinton’s army.â€?

And in terms of what tax cuts meant.

“It turned out there wasn’t any money left over for a big troop increase, an eventuality nobody could have foreseen unless they knew how to add and subtract.”

Taking a shot at the Weekly Standard’s explanation on why they were fooled by Bush, Chait “translates,�

“We thought Bush was just lying to the American public, but now we discover he was lying to us also!�

Anyway, I don’t usually get involved with anything Bush, but I love it when the Social-Democrats (yes, they kind of are that) go after the Neocons. And I do accept Chait’s assertion that the Neocons were fooled by Bush.

It’s not that hard to scam a Neocon. You don’t have to be a Chalabi. These guys are an absolute joke in terms of their naiveté. Unfortunately, the joke’s on the U.S. And American Jews generally are all too frequently considered the preferred butt of the joke.

And that’s not very funny at all.

A couple friends asked me to explain what exactly I mean when I say I am Secular-Orthodox. Really,this demands a three part essay, but on one foot:

It means that I am not terribly religious, but still intolerant.

You know — the best of both worlds.

Too bad Steve Brizel didn’t check with me before his investigation of Dark Light. I wasn’t concerned about whether bochurim waited until the second year to wear black hats, or whether there are seforim in the Bais Medresh (That’s right, DK! In your face!), or whether Ohr Somayach sends students from their yeshiva to yet other yeshivas (No way!) or Kollel (Holy Cow! A charedi yeshiva does that? Oh wait, Steve didn’t actually mention anything about O.S. *graduating* their students into the Kollel system in his attempt to make Dark Light seem normal. I wonder why… ). And shocking to say, I don’t really give a hoot whether Rabbis Schiller and Weinbach or their talmidim can give an inspiring d’var Torah that can bowl Steve over. Even if the divrei Torah were so good it made him grab a bunch of hats and start dancing in a circle (is there any other kind of dancing?) it isn’t relevant.

These are the points I am concerned about, and would have asked him to consider:

1) Is Hebrew Ulpan taught sufficiently? How many levels? When is it taught? As part of the normal schedule, or during the nap break at midday? How many levels are offered? Are the “Bais Midrash� students encouraged to learn Hebrew as well?

2) Since this is a haredi yeshiva, and its curriculum Talmud intensive, is there an Aramaic Ulpan for these baal teshuvahs? If so, same questions as above.

3) How is Modern Orthodoxy presented by the Rabbinical staff?

4) How is Yeshiva University and Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik presented by the rabbinical staff? Is Modern Orthodoxy presented as somehow insufficient and “not really� religious?

5) Is scientific method accepted? What is O.S.’s position on evolution? What is the position on Rabbi Slifkin?

6) What is the position of Ohr Somayach on college studies FOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUTES LIKE THE ONES NCSY RECRUITS? Does Ohr Somayach discourage or advocate postponement of college education to its students who have not yet attended or finished college?

7) Is it explained that though most Eastern European Jews descend from “Orthodoxâ€? Jews, if their families came over before WWII, they were not haredi, or does Ohr Somayach attempt to convince their students that their ancestry was haredi, for many a blatant revisionist lie, as part of Ohr Somayach’s attempt to promote haredism instead of Modern Orthodoxy?
Is stringency presented as normative halacha?

9) Is lying to students considered acceptable since it’s “pakuach nefesh� (saving a soul)?

10) Is the western world taught as incomplete in terms of what it offers a traditional Jew, or is it presented as depraved in its entirety and engagement presented as something to be avoided? Does Rabbi Weinbach (the Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr Somayach) consider the secular world in its entirety an “environment of sin?”

11) Is poverty common among those recruits who are “successful� when they come from middle class backgrounds?

12) Is Kollel instead of a vocation advocated as preferable to advanced students?

13) Are students taught how to live as Orthodox Jews, or are they taught to despise their upbringing and backgrounds to a debilitating degree?

14) Are students taught to think for themselves, or are they taught they are ill prepared to do so, and must trust only their Rabbis instructions and assessments?

15) Are students taught to place a modern emphasis on the near infallibility of “Great Leaders (Gedolim)� as an ancient Jewish concept?

16) Are students encouraged to disengage from the world to the point of not even reading newspapers?

What checklist points would you have given to Steve Brizel to consider?

And why does Steve care about Ohr Somayach? Why does he seek to minimize their haredism? Steve is Right-Wing Modern Orthodox, not haredi. Why does he care so much about ‘proving’ Dark Light is A-okay? From one stupid Chanukah party?

Because NCSY is sending teenagers there. Right after high school. That’s why. Isn’t that why you care about Dark Light, Steve? Isn’t that what this is all about? NCSY’s recruitment practices?

We feel left out. Forlorn. Alone. You know, sober.

So we turn to Ariel Beery, and his pals and (many) gals. For leadership. Chizuk. For a sympathetic ear.

Photo courtesy of CK. Ear courtesy of Jaded Topaz.

Our frum friends at Beyondbt have posted a letter from Steve Brizel which included his assessment of Ohr Somayach from a Chanukah party he attended, where they surely celebrated our continued war against the Hellenists, which was never ever written down in a document known as Maccabees I-IV.

I’m thrilled Steve is having such a wonderful time, and look forward hearing some great Gedoylim and mammish mesiras nefesh stories he certainly was fed while at Ohr Somayach’s Chanukah party. However, I feel his generally glowing recommendation of Dark Light doesn’t answer the “factless” allegations I have raised both here, on Beyondbt, and elsewhere.

After dismissing my “factless” allegations against Dark Light as “misinformed,” Steve claims,

“Ohr Samaeach has successfully tapped the market of Jewish post [college] graduates from all sorts of backgrounds and created a program that helps realize their potential as Bnei Torah who then progress to yeshivas across the Torah spectrum.�

The issue is not the college graduates, but rather, the high school graduates who go there. While they certainly help these young men subsequently attend other yeshivas, they do not encourage them to go to college, which is the problem. Who sends them to Ohr Somayach when they aren’t college graduates? Well, the largest recruiter outside of Ohr Somayach itself appears to be NCSY. And as Steve appears to be conceding, they are guided to further yeshiva study at Ohr Somayach instead of college. The fact that O.S. also has many of the same seforim as in any other yeshiva (and not just Artscrolls) is irrelevant to this problem, and to the fact that their parents aren’t informed of what type of indoctrination their kids are facing, even if they aren’t encouraged to don black hats their first year (of more than one year) there.

If Steve agrees with me that this is the situation, then he should also agree that NCSY should not continue to keep recruiting for Ohr Somayach, but should instead only recruit public high school graduates for yeshivas that do not encourage their students to restrict themselves to yeshiva studies, but also promote their students attending college to aid them in success or what we in the treifa medina call “parnassah� (livelihood).

The idea that Ohr Somayach is only servicing a post-college population (which Steve suggestively references numerous times in this post) is not the main issue or the reality, or NCSY would not be recruiting for them, would they?

Glad we agree.

NCSY, stop recruiting public high school kids for Dark Light, or secular parents will stop sending their kids to your programs. You think they aren’t going to find out? They are going to find out. Education about what and whom you are recruiting for is your worst enemy, and it is happening. In order to maintain your numbers, you will need secular (half) Jews so far removed from the affiliated Jewish community you won’t know where to start. Instead of dealing with questions of trick or treating on Halloween, prepare for more frequent questions about having Chanukah Bushes. How are you going to mix them with your FFB kids?

Keep up the bullshit. Keep promoting fundamentalist places that promote poverty and discourage college like Dark Light does. But you are going to pay the price. You don’t get to keep kneeing kids in the groin forever without it coming back to haunt you. From a socio-economic standpoint, of course. Not that you would literally ever allow such a thing under your watch. You’re the good guys, right? Right?

NCSY: National Collaborator of Sinister Yeshivas