Posts from — July 2007

Jewdar, Heeb’s humor editor and author, reviews a new Islamic video game.

We at Jewdar are tickled pink to hear about the new video game developed by Iran’s Union of Students Islamic Association. The premise involves an Iranian scientist and his wife taken prisoner by the Americans and, of course, the nefarious Israelis.

Now, we haven’t seen a screen capture yet, and don’t know if it plays well, but how funny is it that the game involves Iranians rescuing hostages?

Full smackdown.

Mik Moore finds it curious that on a recent podcast between Rabbi Laura Novak Winer (Reform) and Rabbi Jack Abromowitz (NCSY macher and macro-evolution denier) on sex education, Rabbi Jack…

“says the community should NOT advocate (â€?not appropriateâ€?) because the schools should do what the parents of the kids in schools want. He argues that this kind of advocacy by Jewish orgs would be like telling a school that it must be kosher.”

Moore continues to question this, as,

Given the willingness of the OU to aggressively promote a public policy agenda, Abramowitz’s response is a little out of left field. The notion that Jews should abstain from advocacy on issues about which Judaism has something to say because that engagement would lead to the imposition of religion on government is, well, weird. Did the OU suddenly become 1st Amendment absolutists?

Or do they not really believe that the policies of the OU are appropriate in the public schools; eg: what is good for their Jews (abstinence) isn’t the right approach for public school students?

Moore adds, “Let me know if I’m missing something obvious here…�

He has. See the full article (and then my comment) on jspot for what.

The North County Gazette reports,

A New York City Grand Jury has indicted 10 individuals for their involvement in a scheme to create and sell fraudulent student transcripts at a local college based in Manhattan. Some of the defendants charged in the indictment include the former director of admissions and the former director of the computer center for Touro College, three students who attended Touro College, as well as three New York City Public School teachers.

Read all about it on Failed Messiah

Anyone still want to dispute that it is inappropriate for NCSY to be steering Jews from liberal and secular backgrounds to Touro?

DEMAND that NCSY stop sending kids to Touro programs NOW. Demand that NCSY rescind their bias against “Poison Ivies� in favor of dual curriculum schools.

Will third tier Touro still be considered a better option to NCSY for “at riskâ€? BT teens than attending legitimate colleges? Of course it will. Here’s a link to my articles on NCSY and Touro.

The Federation newspaper of Portland, Oregon, the Jewish Review reports,

Before this year, there had been JSUs on-and-off in Wilson and Lincoln, but with the Spivaks coming to Portland, Portland Jewish Student Union has become much bigger,” said Silberberg. “We are looking to expand more in the next couple of years.”

Spivak said that next year she wants to concentrate on developing the existing clubs to their full potential before adding clubs at any more schools. The exception might be a club at St. Mary’s Academy since initial work to launch that club began this spring.

“We were able to open so many clubs at one time,” said Spivak. “To start seven clubs in one year is considered amazing.”

JSU clubs meet weekly at their schools.

“Most (I think 60 to 70 percent) of the kids who come to the clubs are unaffiliated,” said Spivak. “We are able to reach almost 200 kids a week. They are in school anyway so it’s a small commitment on their part and I’m able to provide some Jewish education.”

Rabbi Spivak works for the Portland Kollel, and the Jewish Student Union IS NCSY. Guess where the new JSU club president was named?

At the Regional NCSY Shabbaton Memorial Day weekend, [student] was named JSU Club President of the Year, and [student] received the “Torah Im Derech Eretz” award.

Isn’t that wonderful? The organization that pushes third tier Touro and calls the best colleges in the nation “Poison Ivies� is handing out a Derech Eretz Award.

The Portland Jewish Federation should get a “duped by the frummies� award, since like so many, they have given a blank check to NCSY because they used all the right buzz words about intermarriage, Jewish engagement, and Jewish identity.

You think this is limited to identity and literacy and engagement? This is also about skirt to the floor haredism — from whoever they can get it from.

Rabbi Burg, Rabbi Burg, the national director of NCSY, and the dean of the JSU, shepped nachas from this young woman who wrote,

“Thanks to NCSY, a lot has changed since then. Wearing skirts in a school like mine is not easy, especially when even parents join in the criticism.�

Parents, NCSY is not your friend nor ally. You are part of the sales pitch. You are part of the problem.

Me: Things were terrible under Dinkins.

Lefty Girl in Politics: Maybe it was the times, not Dinkins.

Me: No. It was Dinkins.

Lefty Girl in Politics: I know. I just thought I should try to promote the party line.

A lot of time is spent in Jewish history looking down on the Romans and Greeks.

The Romans outlawed the forced circumcision of slaves. We claim the slaves wanted this and it was their own volition, but this is exceptionally dubious. We forcibly circumcised our slaves, in accordance with Jewish law, and the Romans made us stop, as they themselves outlawed castrating slaves, and all forms of genital mutilation of slaves.

So my question is, how angry at the Romans should we be? Wasn’t this oppression of the Jewish people? Jewish law was correct, and the Romans were wrong, right?

Right?

A baal teshuvah friend of mine called me recently for help on business venture. “It’s funny,â€? he said, “I trust you more than my more religious friends.â€? The thing was, this didn’t surprise me at all, and I wasn’t even flattered a little bit. Should I have been? Is that a compliment? Would you be flattered if someone told you, “I trust you in business even more than I trust ultra-Orthodox Jews,” or is that maybe not such a big compliment?

Of course, there are plenty of possible explanations for this, but I have to wonder…do people generally trust secular Jews more than Orthodox Jews when it comes to money matters? And is this fair? Should, say, a gentile be as trusting of a Chassidic person from Monsey as a Reform Jew from Westchester? And why do even some BTs not feel protected in business among their own? Are the communal pressures to at least treat your fellow frumme yid fairly not as strong somehow when it comes to dealing with baalei teshuvahs?

If I said that (all else being equal) that I would prefer to work for a secular Jewish company than a black hat company, would that sound like “Ortho-bashing,� or would that sound like sound street smarts?

Can we admit that ultra-Orthodox Jews do not have the same reputation for stringency when it comes to business dealings as when it comes to why they can’t eat a bagel with butter because the hechsher isn’t good enough?

I received the following joke via email. There is a problem with the so-called Talmudic logic. Let’s take a look:

The priest meets his friend, the rabbi, and says to him, “You have taught me many things but there is one thing in particular that I want very much to learn, but you refuse to teach me: I want you to teach me the Talmud.”

The rabbi replies: “You are a gentile and you have the brain of a gentile. There is no chance that you will ever succeed in understanding the Talmud.”

The priest continues in his attempt to persuade the rabbi to teach him the Talmud.

Finally, the rabbi agrees.

The rabbi says to the priest: “I agree to teach you the Talmud on condition that you answer one question.”

The priest agrees “What is the question?”

The rabbi asks: “Two men fall down through the chimney. One comes out dirty and the other comes out clean. Who of those two goes to wash up?”

“Very simple,” replies the priest. “The one who is dirty goes to wash up and the one who is clean does not go to wash up.”

The rabbi responds: “I told that you w ill never succeed in understanding the Talmud! The exact opposite is true: The clean one looks at the dirty one and thinks that he is also dirty and goes to wash up. The dirty one, on the other hand, looks at the clean one and thinks that he is also clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up.”

The priest says to the rabbi: “I did not think of that. Please ask me another question.”

The rabbi asks: “Two men fall down through the chimney. One comes out dirty and the other comes out clean. Who of these two goes to wash up?”

The priest answers: “Very simple. The clean one looks at the dirty one and thinks he is also dirty and goes to wash up. The dirty one, on the other hand, looks at the clean one and thinks that he is also clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up.”

The rabbi responds: “You are wrong again! I told you that you will never understand: The clean one looks in the mirror, sees that he is clean and, therefore, does not go to wash up. The dir ty one looks in the mirror, sees that he is dirty and goes to wash up.”

The priest complains, “But you did not tell me that there is a mirror!”

The rabbi responds: “I told you: You are a gentile. With your brain you will never succeed in understanding the Talmud. To understand the Talmud, you have to think of all possibilities.”

“All right,” groans the priest, “Let us try once more. Ask me one more question.”

“For the last time”, asks the rabbi, “Two men fall through the chimney. One comes out dirty and the other comes out clean. Who of these two goes to wash up?”

“Okay. This is now very simple!” replies the priest. “If there is no mirror, the clean one will look at the dirty one and will think that he is also dirty and, therefore, will go to wash up. The dirty one will look at the clean one and will think that he is also clean, and, therefore, will not go to wash up. If there is a mirror, the clean one will look in the mirror and, therefore, will not go to wash up. The dirty one will look in the mirror and will see that he is dirty and, therefore, will go to wash up.”

The rabbi responds: “I told you that you will never succeed in understanding the Talmud. You are a gentile. You have a non-Jewish brain. Tell me, just how is it possible for two men to fall through a chimney and one to come out dirty while the other comes out clean?”

Do you see the problem? The problem is the the final question, “How is it possible for two men to fall through a chimney and one to come out dirty while the other comes out clean?”

This is not a proper Talmudic question. the fact is, one guy came out clean, one came out dirty. The rabbi is asking a veibershe kasha (woman’s question, a pragmatic question), I could give you a situation where you would find such a thing. The first guy absorbed all the dirt, it was just cleaned except for at the bottom, whatever. It is a question why one was clean and the other wasn’t, but it isn’t a good Talmudic question. We are told one is clean and one isn’t. Take it from there.

Ever wonder why we use the Yiddish word Yarmulke instead of a Hebrew word? Because there is no Hebrew word.

Alex wrote on a comment on Failed Messiah that,

“The word Yarmulke is a Yiddish word. It derives from the Polish word “jarmulka” meaning cap. The popular claim that it comes from an Aramaic phrase “Yari Malka”, meaning “Fear of the King,” is without evidence, as is the claim of the Hebrew phrase “Ya’are me Elohim”, “To tremble beneath the Lord.â€? The interpretation that it is a tribute to God is emotionally resonant for Jews, which probably explains the popularity of this folk etymology. In Hebrew, the word kippah means dome. It is fascinating to note that the ancient Gothic word kappel still exists in the Yiddish term today. The equivalent of the Hebrew word kippah is the French “calotte” and the Italian “calotta”, meaning an architectural dome.”

No one wore streimels in ancient Israel, and no one wore yarmulkes. That’s why there is no Hebrew word for streimel, and there is no word for yarmulke. Both are a European invention, as is the idea that men have to cover their hair at all times.

Do you know why men started wearing hats of all sorts more often in Poland? Not because they decided they need to because they were on a lower medregah (spiritual level) than their ancestors, and not because of some oblique concept of identity or pride. This was Poland, not NCSY. They covered their hair more of the time because Poland is cold.

Also, some of the hat wearing was legislated by anti-Semitic regimes. A real traditionalist should wear a Judenhut to work and school. Don’t be ashamed! Be proud! Wear your Judenhut and show those bastards that they can’t break you!

There are those who look at the Three Weeks as a time for teshuvah.

I have to disagree. To me, quite frankly, this reeks of duplication with Elul and the High Holiday season. It makes no sense. This is not the time for teshuvah. The heat is often rising and oppressive. This is the time for anger, and sometimes destruction. This is often the time shit goes down.

This was the time when the Zionists zealots were revealed to have a false, uncompromising attitude. Declaring God agreed was on our side proved a very bad insurance policy for declining to negotiate with the Romans. I am quite sure more than one finger wagged in their faces and noted, “You see what you did?�

Anyway, I just mention this because I just published one of my rare articles for Jewschool. It’s about the issue of “ben niddah.â€? It’s a problem, and I personally think the three weeks is a great time to discuss such problems in the community.

Update: Annie weighs in, with some nonsense about how a shower counts as a dunk in a mikveh according to someone, somewhere. But I don’t think this opinion HOLDS WATER.

Further Update: Failed Messiah weighs in, and asks,

“No matter how you slice it, Orthodoxy has a caste system based on a metaphysical taint that can never be removed. How many Jews would become Orthodox if this were widely known? How many non-Orthodox philanthropists would fund Orthodox institutions?

A lot fewer than do so today would be my guess.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see how many that would be?”