Posts from — February 2007

Big Aish tackles all the possible objections for why you wouldn’t want your little ones to attend Jewish Day School instead of public schools. Ross Hirschmann answers all of them. Well, he tries anyway. Not all of his ‘compare and contrast’ examples work completely.

“I still remember [my daughter] coming home so excited to tell us how she learned all about Mozart and Beethoven in school — Jewish Day School. Even I, who played the violin as a kid, didn’t learn about Mozart until college.â€?

Um…as a public school Jew who also played the violin as a kid – but perhaps, unlike Ross, not the air violin, but the actual wooden thing with strings and a bow… well, anyway, I learned about Mozart a long, long time before college. Something isn’t right in his story at all.

But anyway. Ross explains why Jewish Day Schools are so wonderful, and so much better than public schools. But you know what he doesn’t discuss? The price. Nowhere in this love letter to Jewish Day Schools is the price of these schools.

One of the best formidable reasons to avoid becoming a baal teshuvah is the financial burden. In the U.S., the cost of yeshivas or day schools is the worst manifestation of that. I have heard first hand horror stories from parents and students (yes, they suffer this as well if their parents are struggling) about the economic realities of day schools.

As always with Big Aish, the real problems in kiruv are ignored in their entirety, and instead, focus is restricted to the cutesy fantasy straw man.

Update: TM has a point. Jewish private schools are critical to Jewish literacy and continuity. I would like to clarify that I am not anti-day school. My concern is the cost of education needs to be addressed, and should be a priority of the Jewish community. We build Holocaust Museum after Holocaust Museum, and our youth cannot spell their names in Hebrew, and do not know Jewish history prior to 1933. I would personally like to see subsidized Orthodox schools (or at least, Orthodox inflected schools) that service a secular Jewish community. But schools not run by haredim.

Is America as bad as life under the Nazis? Of course not. It’s worse. Just ask Dark Light.

Ohr Somayach’s leader, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, explains in his just-in time-for-the-Purim-party-essay, “Which side of genocide?�

“Which side of genocide does our own generation face? The threat of physical genocide which reared its ugly head in the Holocaust still echoes in the Arab call to Jihad against the Jewish State. But this danger is nowhere near as tangible as that of the spiritual genocide which is decimating our ranks in the form of widespread assimilation and intermarriage.

This is not the spiritual genocide of Hellenist, Crusader or Inquisitors. Nowhere are Jews being forced to choose between the cross and the stake, the crescent and the sword. Our problem is that of the Moabite kind, submission to passion for pleasure exacerbated by the powerful forces of social conformity, the age-old desire to be a nation like all nations. This is a situation of “do-it-yourself genocide” where more than six million are trying to achieve a final solution of vanishing into the family of nations, rather than serve as a model for them.“

More than six million. And at their own hands! Like here — in the treifa medina itself, the United States of Assimilation. Of course, not everyone in the kiruv world agrees with Dark Light that it’s worse. Like NCSY. They’re real moderates. They don’t say it’s worse. They say it’s just as bad. That’s why they call it a “fourth Reich.â€? Because it doesn’t have to be worse than the third.

But it might be! Bwahaha…

Rabbi Steve Burg in his post “Challenging Your Sense of Basic Decency Young Minds,� explains that,

At Regional 300 Jewish teens were ushered into a fictional “Judaic Park� museum that commemorates the successful destruction of the Jewish people through assimilation through the “fourth� Reich. For an hour and a half, the NCSYers sat mesmerized, shocked, and inspired in a redesigned ballroom at the Costa Mesa Hilton that housed the Judaic Park auditorium.

Get it? Judaic Park instead of Jurassic Park? Pretty cool, huh? Well, that’s our Rabbis Burg and FE. They certainly are cool advisors.

Misappropriating the Holocaust can be fun! And all the kiruvniks are doing it! It’s cool!

On their new site to promote kiruv (kiruv.com), Big Aish offers tales of peoples’ “return” to haredism. Let us be clear – most of these people descend from families who were never, ever haredi. This is a first.

Additionally, let’s call it like it is. Most of these people come from backgrounds both exceptionally secular and, well…rich.

How else do you explain this?

Sarah Schapiro writes,

Maybe it dates back to when they first found out about the religious emphasis in the educational curriculum — morning hours, Torah studies; afternoon for secular subjects. But how will she get into a good college?

Apparently, she did not. But why is she dismissive of this question? The italics were her own. I can’t help but suspect that perhaps someone has no need for a good college to survive. I can’t help but suspect that someone has gelt. Isn’t it implied that her child doesn’t need to worry about food and shelter? Well, Ms. Schapiro herself grew up in New Canaan, CT, which we know from yet another story on tales of the “return.” And um…New Canaan isn’t exactly working class central, now, is it?

Rabbi Goldson writes of his own exceptionally secular background, and has written elsewhere about attending an Episcopalian private high school.

Sara Yoheved Rigler does claim to come from a middle class background, but espouses one of the most ubiquitous and despicable lies of the haredi kiruvniks, which to be fair, she may very well believe herself.

“I started studying at Neve Yerushalayim, which was then billed as a “women’s yeshiva for baalei-tshuva” — Jews returning to the religious observance of their great-grandparents.”

But if her great-grandparents came to the U.S. pre-WWII, they were absolutely not haredi, certainly not like these “The World is a Very Narrow Bridge” fundamentalists at Neve are.

The fundamentalism of Neve has little to do with the Judaism of our ancestors. And if Neve and Aish weren’t transplanting a Judaism at least three generations removed, they would not be able to pretend it does.

Oh, and to their own, Aish still offers “proof” of their Bible Codes.

At this point, the scientists told the hundreds of avid listeners in the Catskill resort, they felt that being true to their own scientific method demanded their acknowledging that the Torah could not have had a human author. Not even Moses sitting atop Mt. Sinai with a P.C. could have embedded codes referring to people and events far in the future.

The same lies over and over again. Someone will be hearing them for the first time. In fact, many will. More people than ever before.

Will you stay silent? Will you justify your silence in the face of their lies because “they make people frum.”

Is that what Judaism demands? Is that what God wants?

Love is in the air at Heeb.

In “My Niece Has Two Daddies,� the Forward proves that even the venerable voice of the moderate Jewish Left can’t escape having a writer on staff who thinks like Deborah Nussbaum Cohen.

Anyway, I’m not sure which southeast Asian country the child originates from, but she’s here now, and the welcoming party is on. And since the adopting couple is gay, and the child isn’t Jewish and really we all know that is being converted, clearly we need to invoke every possible flakey liberal multi-culti-Jewey straw in our arsenal.

Obviously, they had a Simchat Bat, had the ceremonial feet washing, declaring, “May you always pour old wine into new flasks — to take the tradition and make it speak to your life by renewing and reinventing the rituals of Judaism that carry so much meaning.� Then there was the mandatory comparison to wild geese, and with Purim right around the corner, clearly it was only appropriate to light the Chanukah menorah. Still, one also must light a separate candle for tikkun olam, specifically in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

You know, at the end of the day, there are damned good reasons not to leave the Orthodox world entirely. I mean, forget about belief. This stuff is just sloppy and silly. This is embarrassing. I hate being an American Jew when I read this. I want to be anything else. Am I a self-hating Jew? Well, I am now! No wonder liberal Jews are leaving the fold. Who can tolerate this cheesiness? This is the pits. These people are secular missionaries for the dominant culture and religion. Because many types of Christianity beat the shit out of this. If this is Judaism – and for many American Jews, it is – our numbers are going to decline dramatically.

There is no need to insist on passing this sort of thing on to anyone.

I never could stand this guy, but Jesus Christ…

The Forward reports,

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the longtime activist and editor of Tikkun magazine, has published an essay saying he is open to the possibility that the American government may have been behind the September 11 terrorist attacks. “I would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow the attack on 9/11,� Lerner wrote in an essay published in the new book, “9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out.� Lerner added that he would also not be surprised if it turned out that the attacks were not the result of a government conspiracy.

“I am agnostic on the question of what happened on 9/11,� he wrote in his essay for the book, which includes articles by other contributors arguing that a government conspiracy was behind the September 11 attacks[…]I salute the people in this collection of articles who are doing an amazing job of examining what may prove to be one of the most perverse conspiracies in the history of democratic governments,� Lerner wrote.

Asked about this passage, Lerner responded, “It says ‘may.’ This is very tentative. It’s not like what I believe to be.� He added: “This is like a bone thrown to them to say, ‘Well, sure, keep up the good work, go and investigate.’ I don’t feel that this investigation is going to lead any place, but it might, and if it does, I don’t think that it’s going to produce a conspiracy of the president and the vice president…. I would be surprised if that turned out to be true. So maybe I shouldn’t say, as I said before, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ I guess I would be a little surprised.�

Yes, maybe you should have thought about what you were writing before you suggested it was perfectly natural for 9/11 to be an inside job, you shmuck.

This guy has ALWAYS been a joke, but if anyone thought he was harmless, let it be clear, this guy is bad news.

UOJ and Failed Messiah are discussing Rabbi Wasserman’s infamous letter, and how he — like so many of the haredim — advised his followers to stay in Europe and face physical danger (a.k.a. the Nazis) rather than risk the “spiritual dangerâ€? of the U.S.

Well, he (and they) had a point. There is little spiritual danger when you are dead.

Instead of deemphasizing the leadership capabilities of those who dictated these horrifically irresponsible emigration policies, they are considered not only “Gedoylim (great leaders),� but even in the issue of the U.S. being a “treifa medina,� (non-kosher nation) the “Gedolylim� are considered by many to have been correct for their time and place, even though so many died on account of their anti-American nonsense. This anti-Americanism still shines through in many haredi communities, even though the domestic haredim no longer explicitly call the U.S. the “treifa medina.�

So let me ask you this: If a group considers rabbinical leaders who preempted emigration from Europe prior to the war heroes, what do you think their position will be in terms of creating poverty and discouraging a quality secular education?

Any misery Haredi ideology incurs should not be a surprise. These people still worship leaders who actively restrained Jews from escaping the death camps of Europe.

Understand that this brand of Judaism — of intentionally risking destruction as well as poverty — is simply not the heritage of those descending from pre-War American Jewry. To present it as such is historically inaccurate. Yet it is done all the time.

In order to make their anti-Americanism palatable, haredim often present their anti-Americanism as something new and recent, a reaction to the post-sexual revolution America, something that began in the 60’s.

But they have always felt this way.

Tinok shenishba is the term employed by haredim to Jews from non-Orthodox backgrounds. This term is meant to explain why Jews who did not grow up Orthodox should not be hated. But the term itself refers to an infant Jew abducted by kidnappers into gentile society, and this is troubling. This is a terrible thing to say about a person’s caring and loving biological Jewish parents. It also suggests you have license to take extreme measures in order to rescue the person, or should we say, “save� them. As many of you probably know, certain kiruv organizations and professionals have been known to employ dubious methods in order to do just that. One of those organizations is Aish HaTorah.

Unlike Ohr Somayach, Aish HaTorah is careful to avoid the term “tinok shenishba� on Aish.com. I have not been able to find it there.

But I found it now. And it’s meaning and contempt for Jewish families is not in morse code. From no less than the head of Aish HaTorah himself, Rabbi Noah Weinberg, on kiruv.com, a site for the already frum, not for the secular Jew.

This is what he thinks of non-Orthodox Jewish parents. Read what he says, and ask yourself if it is surprising that Aish is deceptive. Ask yourself if it is surprising Aish is on Rick Ross’s blacklist. A category in fact, a most dubious honor.

Rabbi Weinberg writes in “Lessons from the Frontline� (because this is a war for him and for Aish),

At the end of the Second World War, Rabbi Eliezer Silver zt”l received a commission from General Eisenhower to become an officer in the US army, in order to continue his Hatzala work in the displaced persons camps. Amongst the many activities he worked on; getting survivors clothing, shelter, medicine, kosher food, visas for the US…he also compiled lists of the Jews who survived.

As a commissioned officer; he had a jeep at his disposal and GI’s guarding him wherever he went.

During his time in Poland, Rav Silver would go to church every Sunday morning. That’s right! The Rabbi would enter a Catholic church at high mass, when they were all performing their ritual service, stride right up to the front of the altar, his bodyguards with him, and turn around to face the congregation. Then, at the top of his lungs, he would shout out: “Shema Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echod!”

The worshippers would stop their prayers in astonishment and Rav Silver would quickly search the faces of the children in the crowd, to see which ones recognized those holy words. He knew that there were many Jewish children whose parents had turned them over to Catholic families for safety, and these Jewish neshamos, whose parents had died al kiddush Hashem, were being raised as Catholics.

With his ingenuity and fearlessness, Rav Silver was able to save tens, perhaps hundreds, of innocent Jewish children.

Now what do you say: were these children baalei tshuva, namely Jews who have repented from their deliberate transgressions and taken on a new path in life, or tinokot shenishbu (Rambam Hilchos Mamrim 3:3) ,unschooled captives that were mercifully returned to a Jewish life?

Who among us, with Rav Silver’s courage, wouldn’t do the same thing? And you can, figuratively, by sharing the wisdom and relevance of our heritage with the secular Jews you meet. Non-observant Jews are captives to their upbringing, prisoners to the powerful and enticing society around them. They are not potential baalei tshuva, for they have never consciously left Torah. No, my friends, they are all tinokot shenishbu, Jewish souls that were stolen at infancy and denied access to their rightful heritage.

These children are in as much danger of being lost as those precious souls shining out amongst the Polish worshippers.

I have to protest. This kind of comparison is absolutely unacceptable. The conversions of young Jews that took place in Poland during that era is not what is going on when secular Jewish parents raise their biological children according to their value system. I hear this horrible, misappropriated term all the time, this term, “tinok shenishba.�

I don’t expect kiruvniks to accept non-Orthodox Judaism or secularism as okay or equally legitimate. But you have no right to look upon biological parents as kidnappers. That is what you are doing. And it shows. It shows in your behavior.

If you have ever heard the haredi stories of the maskilim (enlightenment Jews; secularists), they all start and end the same way. The maskil asks a tough question, but the haredi answers him, shutting him up, proving once again the superiority of haredism to secularism.

Avakesh, one of the most interesting frum defenders on the net, says something different. I would have argued that the Haskala won the majority of world Jewry except for the Orthodox, but Avakesh argues that they captured even more than that.

There are many frum Jews who are maskilim, in the sense that the values of Haskala are their values. We must remember that while Chareidi ideology barely survived, the Haskalah won. Haskalah had a right wing, fully Orthodox G-d fearing scholars who would never compromise one iota of religious observance. That is who we are now - right wing maskilim. We speak English, dress in the modern fashion and study secular subjects, at least through high school. The divide between the right wing of Haskala and its Chareidi detractors had never been bridged; it is just that the opponents of Haskala renamed the situations that they were willing to tolerate, so that they may survive. Now they are stronger and are reopening hostilities.

I would note that in fact, there are gradations of left and right in the secular Haskalah as well, and that for those of us who remained Jewish in the U.S. for generations, the rejection of Judaism was never complete.

But just as a connection to Judaism was transmitted by our ancestors, so was a connection to the Haskalah. And as we enter haredi life, the maskil is also educated. Even if the haredim assiduously avoid teaching us important general skills we would most appreciate, they still teach us the nonsense we learn to despise. And in the end, many of us desist being baalei teshuvahs, but become baalei maskilim.

And if the haredi kiruvniks want war with us, which apparently they do, who are we to say no? It’s going to feel like 1897. All over again.

Poster satirizing the Slifkin Ban courtesy of Failed Messiah.

Big Aish has released yet another movie (which we need like we need Rocky VI) on kiruv and a corresponding website, kiruv.com, both with inspiration and instruction on how to solicit converts to ultra-Orthodoxy. Of course, Aish insists that people should be accepting of others “no matter what level they are at,� but it is implicitly suggested through the choice and framing of subjects in the trailer, a “higher level� is preferable, and “higher� or “lower� means more or less haredi respectively.

Rabbi Yaakov Salomon, a Big Aish macher, explained that the first “Inspired� was “not a film; Inspired was a revolution.� Perhaps because in haredi circles, the revolution will not be televised, the movie is playing in the frummest of communities, Or perhaps it’s because Modern Orthodox Jews don’t want to hear Big Aish’s propaganda. Regardless, if you happen to be slumming in Boro Park, Monsey, or Passiac when this film is playing, let us know if haredim talked to the guys in the movie as if they can hear them found this film inspiring.

We will have a deconstruction on aspects of “kiruv.com“ over the coming weeks. For now, let’s just say this new Big Aish site is even funnier than Jewlarious.