The Dark Light Invasion of College Campuses Begins
December 9, 2006 Ohr Somayach/Dark Light
Ohr Somayach, a fundamentalist international organization that seeks to bring secular Jews into unmitigated haredism, is beginning to implement an aggressive recruitment strategy of college students on their campuses, and has already begun successfully doing so in Chicago. Shockingly, some chapters of Hillel in Chicago appear to be helping them. It’s organization, “JET,” does not acknowledge its relationship with Ohr Somayach in any way on its website except to note that Rabbi Kahn studied there, but manipulatively uses a Holocaust project, “60 Days for 6 million,” as a way to appear mainstream, and secure endorsements from secular leaders and Federation media who are suckers for this type of bait.
In their newsletter, Ohr Somayach boasts,
Rabbi Kahn consulted with Rav Mendel Weinbach, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr Somayach in Eretz Yisrael.Rav Weinbach encouraged Rabbi Kahn to set up his own organization – he even helped him come up with a name – and so JET, the Jewish Education Team, was started. Initially funding came from the Maimonides Leaders’ Fellowship Foundation. Now on his own, Rabbi Kahn received seed money from the Wolfson family, and did some private fund-raising.
Chicago is different from most other cities with colleges in that there are many campuses all over the city, with varying sizes of Jewish populations, and each with a different student culture. Rabbi Kahn has been able to establish a good working relationship with many of the Hillel branches. They actually offer him space for the class to meet, as well as advertise the program in their e-mails to students.
They actually should not be offering them a damned thing! They should be on Hillel’s missionary list! Where the hell is NJOP? NJOP!!!!! Get your ass over to Chicago!
The program is open to any student, not just the students of the campus it is based on [ed. note: Oh aren't you soooo inclusive.]. JET runs programs at Loyola, Northwestern University, DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition, students from 10 other schools, including the Illinois Institute of Technology, Columbia College and Truman College attend programs.
If any of you readers are out there, please inform Hillel leaders in Chicago and elsewhere that “JET� is not an merely “Orthodox,� it is Ohr Somayach, the Dark Light itself, and fundamentalist to the core. Please keep in eye out for “JET,� and let everyone know who Ohr Somayach is, and the fundamentalism they preach once in their full-time institutions. There is no way in hell these guys should be allowed on campus.
The goal of this is to recruit to Ohr Somayach’s full-time furnace of misery in Jerusalem. As Ohr Somayach notes at the beginning of their newsletter, Rabbi Kahn, the leader of “JETâ€? is going “to bring a nice sized group to Ohr Somayach for the upcoming JLE.”
JLE is a winter and summer program that “introduces” students to “Judaic studies” through discounted rates where they get to enjoy “tours,” but are also encouraged to eventually drop out of college take a summer and then a year (or seven) off and learn full-time and discover the joys of poverty and nepotism rampant in fundamentalist B’nai Torah enclaves.
Tell Hillel not to facilitate student recruitment to Ohr Somayach. Don’t learn from NCSY! Dark Light is so notoriously bad that even Left-Wing ultra-Orthodox Aish HaTorah defenders desperate to find some way Aish is redeemable will invoke Dark Light for comparison, noting, “Well, at least Aish isn’t as extreme as Ohr Somyach!”
Great. And O.S. isn’t as bad as the Taliban! Shkoyach! Way to set the bar high. Now get them the hell off campus! Tell Michelle Maer that we don’t need to help such people. With her background, Ms. Maer should know this organization is highly problematic, both in its extremist outlook, and and its deceptive practices, like at Chicago’s Hillels. She may not be aware of what is going on, or who these guys are. Please tell her this is unacceptable, and that Ohr Somayach is bragging that many of the Hillels in Chicago are “actually” helping them recruit students to fundamentalism under the guise of “Orthodox.”
7 comments
A rabbi i know who runs one of these “Maimonides Leadership” kiruv programs has said to me explicitly that his goal is to get college students to drop out and go to yeshiva instead. Not to go to yeshiva in addition to college. Not to take time off from college for yeshiva and then go back. To completely drop out and go to yeshiva instead.
Awful!
DK, why do you worship at the altar of college? What is so great about college besides the free beer and sex? From your earlier comments it sounds to me as if it is the credential, for purposes of career advancement. But credential-based professional progress is just one way, and an increasingly irrelevant one I think, to make a living. You must be a big “choices” guy — why not respect the choices of people who realize what a joke college really is for most (not all) people?
Ron,
I got something out of some of my courses in college. I did. I’m sure you did too.
But my real issue is poverty. Haredim seem real good at making poverty, and hating secular education of many forms outside of college. And this is a core issue for me. They are related.
All too often, their institutions preach a poverty and ignorance ethic. The differences between them is how much, and how intense.
It’s all part of the social downward mobility. You were a star, so it’s different. But you must have seen what they preached to the masses.
You make good points here. There is an imbalance to the “business plan” of haredi society that defies logic — no one would invest in a reverse pyramid scheme! The fact that we have predicted its demise for decades and yet it grows is a wonder; yet the fraud and the criminality that flourish in the efforts to keep up with the Schwartzes, and the obsession with materialism, are antithetical to what attracts people to a community.
But, you know, people make their own choices.
And in true Aish fashion, I’ll remind you to examine the alternative set of assumptions critically as well. Yes, I was a star, went to the best college, so an investment in my college and law degrees looks pretty good. But most of the time and money spent on college below the first tier, and even in the soft zones below the tippy-top, are of very questionable economic benefit. Rather college is assumed because it is part of the standard track, a four year waiting room in the offices of adulthood. Okay, the research suggests suggests it does, for most people. BT’s are not, after all, the ones in the frum community who are going to go into Zeydie’s real estate, jewelry or im/ex business.
But you know, people can and do make choices. If they’ve thrown away their ability to think critically and to take control of their own lives with their blue jeans then they are simply what Reb Noach calls frum zombies, and I have no more respect for them than you do. Okay, maybe a little more. Because if they’re going to be zombies, yes, they may as well do it on the right side of the line. Most people in this world are zombies, and I know from my little exposure to your outlook that you know this (and that it pains you).
OK, we again press the limits of what may be accomplished in HaloScan. Have a good Shabbos!
Ron,
I have sympathy for the “frum zombies.” I do not want people (secular Jews) being fed bad advice and sent on unsatisfying trajectory. No college and inferior college or just a wrong college — will do that.
It’s not fair to attack the frum zombie for absence of critical thinking. Many who lean toward becoming rigidly observant and who are caught in the baal teshuvah vortex tend to be in soft spots in their lives and already disposed to some form of spirituality. In other words, they’re fragile and at a fragile time in their life. This fragility is also what makes them far more receptive to the teachings they receive, but it also makes them vulnerable.
As you well know, very often there is an attendant roller coaster ride involved where they may be married rapidly or, as David has been pointing out, involved in joining a yeshiva (or both). David is adding to the equation the problem that perhaps youth are being targeted here, without their parents’ knowledge or wishes, to take on this lifestyle and devotion to a particular line of Judaism. One of the consequences is their removal from the mainstream culture and its related career paths, including attending college or at least attending top colleges.
This is done in the name of bringing people closer to Judaism, but it’s being done to people who may be at a place in their life where their vulnerability may cause them to be making a wrong choice. It’s very difficult sometimes to undo wrong choices like marrying too young or the wrong person or not going to a top college in favor of a good college. All of this is very troubling and should not be condoned.
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