Posts from — January 2007

I’m not advocating drugs (on this post), but ck of Jewlicious is absolutely missing the real fuel that funds terrorism in his post, “Eilat Bombing: The Aftermath,� which blames marijuana and houses of ill repute in Israel for funding terrorism. Now if ck were some fundamentalist arguing that it was sin that was creating terrorism, we would simply understand that his friends at Big Aish had got to him, and the poor guy was losing it from too many crazy melave malkes.

But that isn’t what he is saying. Rather, the Zionist One is claiming that,

So next time you and your buddies go off to Tel Aviv for a special massage with a happy ending, or next time you light up your darker variety of North African hashish (now that Lebanese Blond is no longer available), keep in mind that your are supporting an organization that aids and abets terrorists.

Dude. The sponsors of terrorism – like our fine artistic friends curating Holocaust Denial exhibits in Tehran – are being funded by OIL. Not marijuana, not handjobs…oil. Everything else is bubkes compared to that.

Do I disagree with ck’s contention that vices end up funding bad people? Well, no…I mean, I think we’re all against handjobs over here (right, guys?), and that no one should pay for those, but we know the power oil gives Israel’s enemies. And ck spends zero time preaching alternate fuels to oil. Instead, he worries only about the economic role of vice.

So we have to wonder if maybe someone is, in fact, partying melave malkeing it a bit too hard. Because surely ck can’t be oblivious to the role of oil in our tragic global geopolitical reality.

Can he?

Like many of you, I worry about what Satan is doing to stop the haredization of our youth. So does Cross-Eyed-Currents, the frummest group blog this side of the Internet ban.

Jonathan Rosenblum reveals Satan’s machinations, and I hope, strengthens us for victory in this crucial battle between good vs. evil (others might call that haredi vs. Modern Orthodox, but it’s the same thing) taking place.

Rosenblum writes,

Such a positive development could not proceed without the Satan fighting back. Not everyone was thrilled with the change of tone in the American Orthodox community. Already 15 years ago, articles started to appear warning parents of the danger of their children returning home “too frum.� [Editor’s note: Clearly there is no such thing!]
The rosh yeshiva of one post-high school yeshiva told me how a father threatened to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the yeshiva a “cult� if his son insisted on returning to Israel rather than taking his place in the freshman class of the father’s Ivy League alma mater. Never mind that the boy’s older brother, who had gone to the same college, was no longer observant. The Satan had other tricks as well.

Rosenblum is correct. Frankly, Satan can be found pretty much at every college (except Touro, of course). So who is the real “cult?� I would have to say any institution where Satan attends. But don’t look for a full page ad in the NY Times warning about that! No, of course not. The Modern Orthodox don’t worry about such things.

You know how they are.

Hat tip redundancy: Satan himself and Failed Messiah

I met a young woman at a safe house. She looked and dressed very frum. But of course, she wouldn’t have been there reading The Humanist if that were the case, We began to talk, and she explained that she comes from a near-haredi background, and a haredi school system. She is no longer religious, and is now getting her doctorate, which was difficult for her to secure, as she learned little from her “dual curriculum� bachelors she earned at a seminary in Israel while still frum. But she is brilliant and determined, and that helped a lot.

She told me of how liberated she feels, and noted that what she finds most liberating is not the foods she can now eat, or not having to contend with lockdown for 25 hours a week, or being able to date anybody (she has not yet dated outside the tribe, but expects to eventually) but rather, the ability to think any thought, consider any subject and possibility, without making her way to the usual prescribed answers. I was stunned, as for me, this is sometimes one of the most terrifying, even debilitating, aspects of secularism.

I had always thought that it was Judaism’s greatest strength that our focus was always on the questions, not the answers. But perhaps that is because we aren’t really allowed to question the big answers…only how we get there.

Perhaps our greatest strength is, for some, our greatest weakest. For some. As in, some of our best and brightest. Or should I say, some of the haredi world’s best and brightest.

The Orthodox Union wrote,

Midwest NCSY was approached by Agudath Israel Midwest and offered the opportunity to expand Camp Gesher to two three-week sessions. In addition, the Agudah-NCSY partnership will allow the camp to move to its own facility: a beautiful site in Marshall, IN near Indianapolis.

In this partnership, Agudath Israel has agreed to provide both the facility and funds for the camp, while NCSY will be given charge of staffing, developing programming and running the camp[…]“Rabbi Greenland is a true visionary and saw immediately the chance that existed for both organizations to create a tremendous opportunity while remaining loyal and true to the values, ideals and programming that has made NCSY the leading force in the Jewish outreach world,� declared Rabbi Michael Rovinsky, founder of Camp Gesher, and now Director of Camp Nageela Midwest.

“The idea that such outstanding, yet diverse, organizations have come together to inspire Jewish growth among primarily unaffiliated youth is a powerful message to the entire Jewish community that we are united in reconnecting as many Jewish youth as possible to their heritage,â€? concluded Rabbi Rovinsky.

The Agudah is haredi (ultra-Orthodox), and once again, NCSY is partnering with haredim in order to convert secular and liberal Jewish youth to ultra-Orthodoxy. Do you really think the Agudah is going to do all of this for NCSY without demanding any imprint or influence? And who knows what they are really getting in return for their generosity.

Please note in your files yet another example of NCSY working with their ultra-Orthodox partners for the purpose of proselyzation.

NCSY = Haredism

As some of you may know, a few sensitive souls were upset at Amren’s last conference, where it turned out that a party can’t hold Jewish race realists and well, Nazis. The real kind…I don’t mean someone who’s like David Duke – I mean actually David Duke. He was there, he said something, the yids said something back, and they had a big fight…anyway, the thing was, Amren, which is Jared Taylor’s organization, (the man some far-left thugs roughed up and silenced in Halifax) was trying for a long time to bridge Jewish “race realistsâ€? and White Nationalists. In the end, the Jewish “race realists” felt Taylor was too tolerant of his Nazi friends’ views (and there were some other disconcerting details, but that was the big final one) and some of them left.

So anyway, what is a yiddishe “race realist� to do? Sigh…the options are limited. But now, there is a new site, The Inverted World, for paleo-conservative Jews who think Neocons are whack, and like to shoot the shizzle about immigration and eugenics, but in a safe, heimeshe environment, without all the Jewish conspiracy theories and Hitler lovin’. The site is clearly influenced by Amren, and has the same sort of article links by date.

Still, exactly how Jewish are these guys? And how proud of being Jewish (as opposed to white) are they? Well, they don’t like it when a cross is taken down in a college’s chapel. They may be dark whites, like Turks and Albanians, but dammit, they’re still white. And they aren’t really impressed with the Ethiopian Jews, who they claim have a mean IQ of merely 65, which is impossible. This is the demarcation line for mentally retarded. Were new immigrants “tested” in Hebrew as soon as they got off the planes? A mean I.Q. of 65 — is that really your claim? Can we see more details about this supposed “test,” please?

Hey, I have my own skepticism about the supposed benefits of “diversity,� as well as a preference for changing our immigration policies in our post-9/11 world. But none of this need be race based. In fact, my objection to the former policy is that it is race based. In the end, there is no explicit word in the Torah for race. Yes, there are such recorded rabbinical opinions, but they have always been controversial and contested.

To use a racial lens as a primary understanding of the world seems antithetical to Judaism, though it is done on the far-Left, and on the smaller far-Right.

But in the end, this means they are reporting and identifying more with White Nationalists than they are with Judaism and Jews. But as we know, White Nationalists are not reliable allies, as Jews are central to what the editor of “Inverted World� himself calls “the theology of Jewish evil.�

What exactly are your goals? Who do you count as your friends?

Who,at your core, are you? Aren’t you the inverted mirror image of the social far-Left you despise? Acting as a step-sister sidebar to White Nationalism…hey, it’s human nature to want to be a member of a club that won’t have us, but isn’t this taking things just a wee bit too far?

Update: The editor of The Inverted World is not, in fact, Jewish. I misunderstood this for a variety of reasons, including this man’s intense condemnation of the “theology of Jewish hate” emanating from large swaths of the White Nationalist community and his eventual decision to build an alternative camp because of it.

I apologize for my misunderstanding.

What is the best possible deal we can negotiate for our national heroin? It depends on the mood of our masters in Arabia.

The NY Times writes,

“Saudi Arabia, which benefited immensely from record oil prices last year, has sent signals in the past two weeks that it is committed to keeping oil at around $50 a barrel — down $27 a barrel from the summer peak that shook consumers across the developed world.�

This is the best of times. The bad times will return, with greater and greater force. Our addiction is great, and the addiction ofothers is growing, even as the pushers and the supply are unreliable. Our transportation system is powered predominantly on oil. Hence, those with oil have the power. And like all men of power, they are cryptic, and reluctant to show their hand. We sit and wait on their will and whim.

The Jewish Student Union: Part 1

The Orthodox Union’s NCSY (National Council of Synagogue Youth) is recruiting public school kids to Orthodoxy through an ecumenical front, the Jewish Student Union(JSU). Rabbi Burg, the “dean� of JSU, is also the national director of NCSY. Therefore, the ideal goal is to make high school students from secular and liberal Jewish backgrounds Orthodox.

But NCSY’s Jewish Student Union does not reveal its true identity anymore than it does its true goal.

NCSY/JSU declares that,

The mission of Jewish Student Union is to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!!!

In fact, it is not quite that simple; that is most certainly not “it.� JSU strives to do much more than “something� Jewish.

Their website may not be for high school kids primarily, but more to ease potential concerns of parents and school administrators who may have interest in the position of this youth group.

As part of NCSY/JSU’s deceptive attempts to suggest they are an ecumenical organization without a specific religious bent, JSU offer links including the Conservative Movement’s youth group, United Synagogue Youth, as well as Hadassah’s Young Judea.

This is an intentional red herring. Every one of the “cool advisors� of JSU is Orthodox, such as Rabbi FE, the charismatic west coast director of NCSY. But NCSY attempts to conceal this fact from the casual observer. On their “cool advisors� page, they do this two ways, both quite clever. They have more than half of the “cool advisors� in costume or choosing superhero photos for their picture. But there is a picture of a woman wearing a short sleeve shirt. However, as clicking through her link will reveal, she is not actually a JSU advisor. Only NCSY approved Orthodox Jews are “cool advisors.�

NCSY maintains control over these unions in order to recruit to NCSY proper, and of course, to offer solely Orthodox approved content. But that isn’t the reason they offer for the purpose of the cool ones. Rather, a cool one,

* Spends time working with the President to develop programs and program resources.
* Meets on a regular basis with all of the officers of each club to work on developing leadership skills and help them learn to work together as a leadership team.
* Meets with the faculty sponsor and/or the school administration to keep the lines of communication open.
* Provide after school engagement activities such as Latte ‘n’ Learning discussion groups and other programs.
* The most important thing that the Advisor does is maintain contact via email and phone with all of the JSU teens who come to meetings. A weekly call to a teen to say “Shabbat Shalom� goes a long way in cementing that relationship and reinforcing the Advisor as a positive Jewish role model.
* The number of hours necessary per week, based on 5 clubs, is forty.

Nothing about Orthodox proselytizing.

Rather, JSU claims the expected content of these clubs is:

* A club business meeting
* Speakers from other organizations
* Visitors from Israel
* A discussion or debate on current events
* Holiday celebrations
* Falafel-eating contests
* A rousing game of “Jewpardy�
* In addition, and most important to some teens, is the free pizza or falafel! Teens may come for the food, but they stay for the discussions and sense of community.

Maybe that’s why the kids are there, but those aren’t the reasons NCSY is. NCSY wants to recruit secular and liberal Jews to Orthodoxy. JSU is a gateway into NCSY proper. Rather, JSU is NCSY proper.

This may not be understood by parents or students, because NCSY prefers they do not understand this, and is taking great pains to hide this fact.

Additionally, NCSY has a grim view of the best colleges, and prefers all NCSYers go either to “dual curriculum� schools (such as Touro, a third tier college NCSY is heavily allied with) and to ultra-Orthodox institutions that discourage all full-time secular studies.

The Orthodox Union, the parent organization, is quite proud of NCSY’s success in discouraging Ivy League schools specifically (which NCSY refers to as “poison ivies� in their eponymous essay on the subject in their educational guide) and through their haredi partners, discourage college generally, to even the brightest public school students for after they graduate, and have boasted of this in their house organ, Jewish Action. Note how they declined to name their “clubs� by the official name (Jewish Student Union), even as they boasted how so many of them declined to go to Ivy League Schools because of their influence.

The fact that they brag about this to Orthodox Union members means that they feel comfortable their members will approve of NCSY’s desired results. To be fair, the Jewish Action article did not reveal the deceit employed by NCSY facilitating their entry into the public school system.

Do not expect these policies of NCSY’s JSU to be discussed in your local Jewish weekly if it has any ties to the UJA (United Jewish Communities).

The Jewish Student Union –- though a deceptive Orthodox outreach program seeking public high school converts — is a beneficiary of many local federations, and these newspapers rarely are critical of Jewish Federation beneficiaries, because they depend on the Federation for funding and their circulation, and are expected in return to promote the Federation’s specific beneficiaries as well as the umbrella organization generally.

According to the Fall 2005 Jewish Action article, NCSY has over one hundred public high school clubs across North America. JSU is a major source of (deceitful) recruitment of Jewish teenagers into their general NCSY programming. Parents may have no knowledge ( never mind interest) that their teenager is facing proselyting efforts to become Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox in his or her public school, by an organization that disapproves of secular college attendance, and advocates and negotiates full-time study at ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and seminaries in Israel after graduation.

But this only happens if they listen.

Update: NCSY is apparently beginning to work with BBYO in Chicago. They are protecting their recruitment clubs through such partnerships. These clubs will continue to recruit to NCSY regular programming — first latte learning, then shabbatons, and we know where they seek to take kids from there. They are absolutely not content to throw pizza parties for publics school kids, or for them to just do “something” Jewish. They want more, and that’s fine. The problem is what they really want, and what they’ll really do, if they can have their way with them. “It’s that simple!!!”

There are certain issues where Neocons expose themselves for whom they truly are. Unmitigated Republicans. We know the big current policy issues (How ‘bout them Yankees Shiites!). But there are historical issues as well, beyond foreign policy.

Like, say, Robert Moses.

The NY Sun moves to defend Moses, with Francis Morrone writing,

In 2007, the world regards New York as a major urban success story. Five years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with construction booming all around the city, and with large-scale development projects such as the Atlantic Yards in the works, a re-evaluation of Moses’s legacy seems in order.

This makes no sense. Moses has been out of power for decades. What on earth does this building have to do with him? Nothing.

Moses made the views more awesome when he added the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to the picture in 1964. Nowadays a New Yorker can take the R train to Bay Ridge, enjoy a lovely dinner in one of that neighborhood’s many good restaurants, then sit dreamily on a Shore Road bench watching the lights of the bridge twinkle in the dusk. That perfect New York evening is ours in part by way of Robert Moses.

In fact, the story of the Verrazano was cut from Caro’s Power Broker, but I really am not concerned primarily with the views of Bay Ridge. I am concerned with the misuse of RM’s power (and, to honest, on his attainment of power) and most importantly, the halting of any public transit improvements (and even the preemption of future ones) during his decades of unelected rule.

So glad the view is beautiful. But that R train which you can take – that’s no thanks to Moses. Maybe think about all the trains we could have had in Queens, Long Island, and other parts of Brooklyn. Maybe that’s something to think about that while you’re admiring the bastard’s handiwork.

This next investigative article is not going to be pretty. Lies, lies, lies. Blatant ones. And I’m connecting the dots. And it’s all based on NCSY’s own words.

If secular parents read this, there is going to be hell to pay. Not just for NCSY, but for all those facilitating their work. Those other organizations are going to have to answer some tough questions as well. They might think twice about working with NCSY in the future. That would probably be a very good idea.

NCSY, you went too far. And this started a long time ago. And what I have found could and should have been found by the same newspapers that reported on Lanner.

Did it not make sense to do a general audit when the Lanner issue emerged? Well, none was done.

But you know who else missed an opportunity? NCSY itself. NCSY could have used the Lanner situation for an honest and deep cheshbon hanefesh. Instead, NCSY treated it as a PR disaster only. NCSY fixed the symptom, not the underlying disease. And I don’t care if most of the people there now weren’t there when Lanner was there. The culture of ‘ends justifies the means’ kiruv continues. No, you can’t knee boys in the balls or touch the girls inappropriately anymore. Yes, that party was stopped. But that wasn’t the whole problem. That was a symptom, gory and destructive as it may have been. The root problem was why NCSY thought it was better to ignore it in the first place. That was because NCSY felt the bottom line – the only bottom line — was to “make them frum.â€?

Outside of physical abuse, that is still the bottom line. And bottom lines like that have a cost. And it is time for NCSY to pay up.

A new angle, a new outrage.

Monday (bli neder!).

NCSY, if you have any intention of stopping recruitment of underage public high school students to Touro and haredi institutions against the will and without the knowledge and the understanding of their parents, now might be a good time to speak up. Things are about to get rather awkward. So find me if you have any alternative ideas to me exposing your lies! Remember, this is all about your recruitment practices. This is about you recruiting for the likes of Ohr Somayach and Touro, and discouraging the good schools. The best schools. You want to say, “At least they’ll be frum,� well, their parents have a right to know, and to know what that means.

And they are going to flip.

So get your anonymous blogspots in order. You are going to need them next week.

It’s time to ransom the children the haredi kiruvniks in NCSY are kidnapping. Tinok sh’nishba indeed.

Note to readers: Monday’s (bli neder!) article will be written in away that even secular Jewish parents will understand, and some past articles will be briefly mentioned and linked to, and I apologize in advance for that redundancy. But there will also be new, and I’d like to think, exciting, information.

Jared Taylor is a “race realist.� He is, to be clear, not a Nazi, though he certainly has friends who are. Though polite, intellectual, and sophisticated, a cold and brutal outlook on life shines through.

But. He was forcibly removed by masked protesters in Canada the other day in order to cancel his speaking engagement. And because I abhor such measures, I am writing this post. To make it clear that the end does not justify the means, and than if you have to wear a mask to do something, well, it probably shouldn’t be done.

The Halifax Daily News reports,

HALIFAX - A group of protesters took matters into their own hands yesterday evening, preventing a speech from an American journalist on controversial ideas about race.

“Get out of town, you’re a racist and a Nazi,” were the shouts coming from between 20 and 30 young protesters, some with bandanas over their faces, toward Jared Taylor as he prepared to speak on the topic Racial Diversity: North America’s Strength or Weakness at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax yesterday[…]

Eventually, members of the gathering decided to forcibly remove Taylor from the small conference room.

They tore up copies of Taylor’s magazine, American Renaissance, which he had brought for distribution, and several protesters formed a human fence, pushing him out of the room while others stacked the chairs.

Once he had been pushed out, the crowd cheered.

But what bothers me most is the Jew in the story, because he’s more of a reflection on me than the dudes wearing masks and kefiyas.

“One man at the protest, who would not give his name but said he was the director of an Atlantic Canada Jewish organization, said the best way to deal with someone such as Taylor was not to listen.

“This guy is a hate monger,” he said. “Ignore him.”

Now, he was clearly not comfortable with the measures used to remove Mr. Taylor from his hotel. But he declined to say, “This is wrong.� And that’s…disappointing.

For those of you wondering am I really defending a man who is a racist and friends with neo-Nazis, the answer is yes, I am. I do not believe any victory will occur because of the actions of these hoodlums. Today they silence Jared Taylor. Tomorrow that same guy in the red kefiyah or someone like him will silence a “Zionist,” because he’s –that’s right — a “racist” and a “Nazi.”

Because of the way Mr. Taylor was treated and silenced, and because Jews did not speak up sufficiently, I feel obligated to give him the last word.

When asked what he thought about the crowd’s reaction, Taylor said he hadn’t anticipated such a reception.

“If what I have to say is either wrong or loathsome, it should be very easy to refute.”

Update: According to this report, Jon Goldberg of the Atlantic Jewish Congress did try to intervene, and this is corroborated on Jared Taylor’s own site, Amren, though readers appear divided about Goldberg because of his “unfortunately” quote. Of course, Amren readers are usually divided in their understanding of The Jews, so this is to be expected.