Posts from — June 2007

Terrible news, friends. Children will no longer be looked upon as the racial pawns that they are. They will no longer be denied acceptance to elementary schools according to race.

This calamity has occurred because one Crystal Meredith did not properly appreciate the social benefits to the state stemming from the fact that,

“Her child was twice denied the school nearest their home and had to endure a three-hour bus ride to a facility that was not their top choice. Many African-American parents raised similar concerns.�

These people clearly do not understand the paramount benefits of diversity. Of course, neither did the supreme court.

Ruth Bader “Jewess� Ginsberg did, though.

Wonderful.

Full story.

I predict mostly silence from the Lefty group blogs. Remember, Jews swerve right on affirmative action – especially overt (and really stupid) affirmative action programs.

In prison, the (relatively) more feminine men become identified as females. So too with the haredim! Since kol isha (womens’ singing voices) is banned in all its forms, in whole or in part, in order to achieve maximum halachic compliance (is there any other kind?), they often listen to male voices (particularly young, pre-pubescent male voices) that still sing soprano and alto.

Anyway, for the first time, this too is being banned.

The Jerusalem Post reports (via Failed Messiah),

The songs of 20-year-old Eliyahu Faizkov, a yeshiva student from Netanya, were recently banned by haredi pirate radio stations because his voice is uncannily feminine.

“At first my songs were received positively by the haredi radio stations,” Faizkov told the Ynet Web site. “But I suddenly noticed that they stopped playing my songs. It was as if someone confiscated them all. I contacted the stations to find out what was going on and the answer I got was precisely what I had feared, ‘Your voice is too feminine.’”

Apparently, listeners had called in to complain about Faizkov’s voice.

The truth is, the little bitch was asking for it. Look at this kurveh – he provocatively doesn’t button his collar button beneath his overly colorful tie, and he isn’t even wearing a hat.

What a slut!

Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Success joins other Republicans (for a change) in attacking liberals demand to raise CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. His reasons include that raising CAFÉ standards won’t “even really help reduce fuel consumption,� and that “increased CAFE standards as a cure-all is almost certainly simplistic, because it makes the cardinal mistake in microeconomics of not allowing for the large multiplicity of moving parts in economic policy-making.�

Ron is right. In the end, we have to radically decrease automobile driving, and ownership. And no, I am not kidding, and yes, there are ways to achieve that.

But let’s not go there. Not yet. Clearly, Ron and others at BEST think it would be a nice thing to decrease our oil consumption. At best.

So let me talk in a language even right-wing Jews understand.

Forget about the environment for a minute. Let’s talk geopolitical risks.

The world’s addiction to Muslim oil is going to destroy the State of Israel, American cities, Western cities, and probably the world. It is only a matter of time before fundamentalists get their hands on nuclear devices and successfully detonate them.

Oil is fueling both terrorism and fundamentalism. Let me ask you this:

How exactly is Iran financially supporting both Hamas and Hizbollah? How is Saudi Arabia supporting Wahhabism? How did the Bin Ladin family make so much money in construction? Do they got their cash for this from their ever-expanding, Milton Friedman style free market economies, Ron?

Oil allows backwards and tyrannical thinking to expand. Unlike drugs, the trade of which is much harder to control, the demand for oil can be changed through government regulations and public works projects.

But before we do that, we need people like Ron to understand the problem. Because it isn’t going to do anyone a lick of good to figure out afterwards that those of us concerned about our addiction to oil are not, in fact, in search of “demagoguery,� but rather, see an impending doom that we would like to delay, even if we can’t avert.

Let us be clear. The oil addiction is identifiably destructive, and it will quite possibly lead to the destruction of the Zionist Entity. Because the pushers do not want our money.

They want us dead.

How scary is an Islamic takeover of the West? Scary enough for German Jews to join German nationalists to prevent a “Londonistan.�

The Washington Times reports,

“We don’t want to build a Turkish ghetto in Ehrenfeld. I know about ‘Londonistan,’ and I don’t want that here,” he added, referring to a phrase used to describe the rising trend of radical Islam in England.

Mr. Uckermann is part of a curious coalition of protesters that united Jewish intellectuals with hard-core nationalists.

Leading the charge is Ralph Giordano, a prominent Jewish author, who wrote recently that Germany is witnessing a “clash of two completely different cultures” and questioned whether they could ever be reconciled.

Stating that he had received death threats for his opinions, he added: “What kind of a state are we in that I can face a fatwa in Germany?”

For Mr. Uckermann, who belongs to the conservative CDU party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Giordano’s comments smashed a long-held taboo in Germany.

“Giordano broke down the wall,” he said. “Before, if you criticized this monstrous mosque, you were a Nazi. But we have a problem with the integration of Muslims. It’s a question of language and culture.”

At the Islamic Union, every effort is made to address those fears. “We run German-language courses,” said Ikbal Kilic, a spokesman. “And the design of the mosque features a lot of glass, so people can see in. We want to be open.”

But within the exquisitely carved walls of Cologne Cathedral, those promises are not enough. “We live in a land of religious freedom,” said Prelate Johannes Bastgen, the cathedral’s dean. “But I would be very glad if the same principles existed in Muslim countries.”

Germany’s Jewish communal leaders refuse to live in the past, but feel forced to reckon with new realities.

A pity U.S. Jewish communal leaders do not see the same need.

Via: Inverted World

Rabbi Marc Angel is the retiring leader of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest congregation in America – or, to be precise, the founding congregation of America. For my haredi readers who may be confused, that is meant as a compliment. My point is, when he has something to say, we need to listen.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen and Stewart Ain report,

As he prepares to retire from the pulpit this fall, the prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi and former president of the Rabbinical Council of America, has fired a salvo at his own movement, saying it is “slipping over the line to a cultic superstitious kind of religion.�

“In the early part of my rabbinate, Orthodoxy was free, open to dialogue and discussion, and had a message for other Jews and for the world,� he said.

But during his 38 years as spiritual leader of the Upper West Side’s Congregation Shearith Israel, known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi Angel said he has seen a growing insular perspective that shuns innovative thought and relies instead on the opinions of so-called authorities.

“There’s been an increasing tendency to defer to certain authorities and of the individual rabbi or individual Jew to back off on personal responsibilities,� he told The Jewish Week.

Thus, instead of answering a congregant’s question about halacha or Jewish law, many Modern Orthodox rabbis are turning to a rosh yeshiva (the head of a yeshiva) for the answer.

“If the rabbi doesn’t know the answer, he should try to find out� and can consult a rosh yeshiva as part of his research, Rabbi Angel, 62, suggested.

“The answer should come from the rabbi of that congregation. He shouldn’t say, ‘I’m not capable of answering; that kind of question has to go to a rosh yeshiva.’

“And in general, this is what is happening. … The Modern Orthodox have surrendered in almost every area of responsibility to the more right-wing group.â€?

The result, Rabbi Angel said, is that “people with independent opinions get shut out. When people stop thinking and expressing creatively, then there’s no more intellectual dynamism.

“Once that intellectual dynamism is gone that’s the beginning of stultification, of cultism. There’s a very fine line between true religion and cultism. Orthodoxy to a certain extent is slipping over the line to a cultic, superstitious kind of religion,� he said. “It bothers me endlessly.�

Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queens College who has written extensively about Orthodox Judaism in America, agreed, saying that there are younger rabbis today who were educated by “more haredi and less modernist� Jews.

If this is how one of America’s most important Modern Orthodox leaders view today’s right-wing Modern Orthodox, how should secular and liberal Jewry view them?

Should they be happy they are infesting their public school system? Should the federations be supporting this infestation?

Please note, this should be used as an opportunity for introspection, and not as an opportunity for haredim to whine about how they think Dr. Heilman is a “haredi basher.”

Not one to sit quietly when their heterosexuality is at stake, The Jewish Press Blog calls for some good old fashioned queer bashing instead of all this sissy prayer stuff.

We live in an insane world.

Glancing at today’s Israel news, one learns that several “leading” rabbis (whatever that term is supposed to mean as I don’t remember the last time rabbis really led anybody to do anything besides burn Asian wigs) have told their followers that they are not to violently protest tomorrow’s gay parade in the world’s holiest city. Prayer, they said, is more effective.

Really? And I thought G-d actually likes action. I suppose He despises men like Abraham who battled rather than prayed for his nephew Lot’s release, Pinchas who killed rather than prayed when two brazen Israelites publicly sinned against G-d and, more recently, Peter Bergson who worked tirelessly rather than prayed to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

But what do I know. These are “leading” rabbis talking after all.

I want to be clear, of course, that The Jewish Press is right. Burning Asian wigs is an okay start, I guess (though burning the entire Asian woman is probably a better idea, you know how much trouble those Moabite-esque women are), but are we going to just sit still in American when we can watch a full-blown brawl? Who do these people think they are, going out there and protesting like it’s a free country? It’s the Middle East, for Mohammad’s sake! Show these infidels who’s boss!

If you don’t despise Abraham, please be like Peter Bergson and work tirelessly to beat up a fagelah!

Luke Ford has a thing for Amy Klein. So he gives it the ol’ grammar school try, and pulls her ponytail whenever he can.

This one deserves a yelp.

Amy wrote,

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenberg, who joined the congregation in March, was formally welcomed last month at the Orthodox synagogue’s annual dinner. He is replacing Rabbi Aron Tendler, who stepped down in March 2006 after 22 years at the synagogue when rumors re-surfaced about “inappropriate misconduct” while teaching at YULA in the 1980s.

Luke Ford writes,

“I don’t think this is accurate. What sunk Aron Tendler was not rumors of “inappropriate misconduct” while he was teaching at YULA in the 1980s but telephone recordings of Tendler engaging in phone sex from the Shaarey Zedek office with one of his former YULA students…â€?

Well, then.

It’s not fighting “racism,� though it was at one time. All too often, it’s what we all know: Affirmative action is not ensuring people get where they deserve, but rather, helping them get to where they don’t deserve.

Inside Higher Ed reports,

The percentage of African American, Hispanic and Native American students admitted to the University of Michigan Law School for next fall fell from 39.6 percent for those students whose applications were considered before enactment of a state law banning race-based preferences in December to 5.5 percent thereafter [… ] “ I would expect that the percentage of students who were getting racially discriminatory preferences in their favor would go down when those preferences stopped.� That doesn’t mean that those students won’t go on to lower-tier law schools or even to become successful lawyers, Clegg said — referencing research by Richard Sander, of the University of California at Los Angeles, finding that by admitting poorly qualified black applicants who would perform better at less prestigious institutions, top law schools actually do them a disservice.

“That’s the point, Clegg said, “that kind of discrimination should stop. And … when that discrimination would stop, of course there are going to be lower admit rates to the University of Michigan.â€?

One of the strangest lies of the domestic left is the mythical supreme benefits of diversity. We have been trumpeting these fantasies for so long now, we forgot we made them out of thin air. Then we go to test them, and it turns out they’re not true, and we’re as surprised as the protagonist in “Angel Heart.”

The NY Times writes,

But what if diversity had an even more complex and pervasive effect? What if, at least in the short term, living in a highly diverse city or town led residents to distrust pretty much everybody, even people who looked like them? What if it made people withdraw into themselves, form fewer close friendships, feel unhappy and powerless and stay home watching television in the evening instead of attending a neighborhood barbecue or joining a community project?

This is the unsettling picture that emerges from a huge nationwide telephone survey by the famed Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues. “Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation,� Putnam writes in the June issue of the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.�

In highly diverse cities and towns like Los Angeles, Houston and Yakima, Wash., the survey found, the residents were about half as likely to trust people of other races as in homogenous places like Fremont, Mich., or rural South Dakota, where, Putnam noted, “diversity means inviting a few Norwegians to the annual Swedish picnic.�

More significant, they were also half as likely to trust people of their own race. They claimed fewer close friends. They were more apt to agree that “television is my most important form of entertainment.� They had less confidence in local government and less confidence in their own ability to exert political influence. They were more likely to join protest marches but less likely to register to vote. They rated their happiness as generally lower. And this diversity effect continued to show up even when a community’s population density, average income, crime levels, rates of home ownership and a host of other factors were taken into account.

I understand that we don’t want anyone in our society to be denied opportunity because of race, gender, or whatever. But that doesn’t mean diversity itself is really anything special. In fact, overall, it may be more of a liability.

Regardless, I’m simply not going to pretend it’s the most important thing to accomplish in every facet of work, education, and life. It isn’t. And affirmative action is one of the most egregious ways of cheating to get just that.

On the website “Why Date Jewish?,� a “project of NCSY,� which is really an appeal for liberal Jewish parents to look upon their proselytizing work and the kiruv movement as a whole with less apprehension and resistance (than is warranted, parents should be very afraid) since it encourages endogamy.

Anyway, lchaimlover over at Oybay ponders the existential question of whether or not intermarriage is a bad thing. Of course, that’s right where NCSY and the kiruvniks want you! On the Big Questions, on Hashkafa.

I can’t help you with those questions, lchaimlover. But if you let me, I’ll show you a sleight of hand I found interesting.

Note that for this study, the two categories for Orthodox Jews are: Modern Orthodox and Orthodox. That’s it. No category for ultra-Orthodox. No such thing. Rather, Modern Orthodoxy is not quite Orthodox. In between Conservative and Orthodox.

Do you see the way NCSY subtly disparages Modern Orthodoxy and makes haredism – no matter how fahfrumpt – seem like normative Judaism? Modern Orthodox isn’t quite Orthodox. But say, metziza b’peh performing, Yiddish as a first language Chassidim, well…that’s just regular Orthodox!

Isn’t NCSY clever and tricky?

But wait! This study is from the “simple to remember” site. Maybe I should be blaming them, not NCSY! Maybe NCSY only transferred the chart as is?

Nope. Simple to Remember divides these categories into Centrist Orthodox versus Yeshiva/Hasidic Orthodox.

This is NCSY’s own unfortunate (but revealing) choice of terms.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli school system has partnered in rigging the school system to favor ultra-Orthodox school systems in a manner that proves tempting to secular Jews of modest means.

“Free transportation, it turns out, has a critical role in persuading non-religious and traditional families to switch to networks of ultra-Orthodox schools intended for the newly religious.

And not only free transportation. The free hot lunches provided in these schools for those finding religion - as well as the meals in ultra-Orthodox schools in general - are an important means of making these schools much more attractive to parents, at the expense of the state school system.

In the competition for the hearts and minds of students from the lower classes, such services can be very important, and in this battle the ultra-Orthodox schools have the upper hand.

The reality is that services the state schools cannot afford to provide are passed out freely by the ultra-Orthodox schools. Education Minister Yuli Tamir attributed this in a conversation with TheMarker to the charitable contributions the ultra-Orthodox religious schools receive, since they are semi-private. This allows them accept such contributions legally.

However, the Justice Ministry’s investigation revealed that Tamir’s explanation is only a partial one at best. Only a small part of such additional services provided by the ultra-Orthodox schools are paid for by contributions. Most of the money seems to come from government funding - the Israeli taxpayer - via the Education Ministry budget.

In some cases, the ministry allocates the ultra-Orthodox specific budgets for these services, thereby clearly discriminating against the regular state schools.�

Full story

Of course, at least in Israel, this sort of corruption exists outside of the secular school system itself. In the U.S., we allow the proselytizers into our secular school system under false ecumenical pretenses, and allow them to prey not only upon our poor, but even our middle-class.

But the U.S. isn’t the Zionist Entity, and Jews do not directly depend on Haredi political support for power. We don’t need to offer the allies and recruiters of the haredim child sacrifices.

Get NCSY/JSU out of our public school system! This isn’t Israel or every other secular Middle East country heading towards fundamentalism. We can still say no!

Hat tip: Failed Messiah