Posts from — September 2007

How much does Rabbi Burg, the national director of NCSY, and the “deanâ€? of NCSY’s deceptive front, the Jewish “Studentâ€? Union, love Ohr Somayach? So much he seeks to take credit for NCSYers attending that fundie black hole of destruction of self even when he didn’t directly send them there. And they do directly send them there. Oh, yes. Oh, yes they do.

“Dean� Burg writes, in an embarrassing self-congratulatory letter on the socio-economic ruin that NCSY inspires called, The Unknown Impact of a NCSY Shabbaton,

One of the most fascinating Yeshivot I visited was Ohr Sameach. This single institution houses at least 25 programs alone![…] The young man hurriedly approached me to inquire if he could join our NCSY group for Shabbat. I responded that we would be honored. As a result, this young man celebrated one of the most spiritually meaningful Shabbatot with NCSY. It strengthened his resolve to remain steadfast in his observance and faith and a few weeks later he boarded a plane to Israel to study at Ohr Sameach where he is currently a student.

Awwwww…don’t you just love happy endings? And there are so many happy endings with such very bright futures just like with that guy! Just give NCSY more public schools with which to work their magic.

A very high-level NCSY administrator recently told me that, “We stand by Ohr Somayach and Aish HaTorah.” He did not tell me that to clarify the situation. He told that to me because he is one of the (relatively) more Modern NCSY leaders, and he was defiantly and contemptuously pissing on my concerns.

The video below is the kind of bullshit NCSY stands by (for public school kids — not for their own). This is Ohr Somayach’s trip to see the grand fundamentalist B’nai Torah leader, Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman. Rabbi Shteinman who equates a trade with poison, and demands that women only be taught “the minimum of the minimum.” He is the Bnai Torah’s penultimate leader (after Rabbi Elyashiv, the numero uno “Great One of the generation” who can’t find enough “lewd” things to ban) who is really setting parameters and policy at places like Ohr Somayach, and all the other like-minded haredi-kiruv pits of misery.

Surrendering your will to the Gedolim is freedom.

NCSY is in our schools and seeks to recruit as many kids to that beautiful mental place as possible. As we know, NCSY is all too happy with the poor drones you see in this video. They are going nowhere fast. Well, that’s the appropriate place for most baal teshuvahs in such communities. Watch this video, and tell me if this is normal.
Behold, “the beauty of the Torah-true lifestyle.”

In this month’s Jewish Action, the Orthodox Union magazine, president Stephen Savitsky describes the commitment of the Orthodox Union to recruiting liberal and secular Jews into the Orthodox community as “a war.” Lest this be dismissed as an inconsequential slip, note that this was specifically a call for a “large-scale war.”

Wars, particularly the larger scale ones, have collateral damage, not unlike the “bochrim” you see in the above video. So far this has been one-sided. I am beginning to think that it’s time to send the Orthodox Union generally a message, not just track NCSY’s endless misdeeds and deceptive and predatory practices. It is the OU that needs to be sent a message. They need to see that a “large-scale war” is not for free. They need to see that if P.O.K.s (prisoners of kiruv) are not treated respectfully, there will be consequences. You don’t get to direct a trail of tears to Jerusalem and B’nai Brak with our kids you recruited in our public schools without paying a steep price. And that price is going to have to be something that right-wing Modern Orthodox Jews are more sensitive to than the socio-economic future of public school Jews. For them, that’s right up there with animal rights.

It’s time to draw blood from the Orthodox Union itself.

Lawrence Auster, a prominent paleoconservative of Jewish descent, wrote something interesting in terms of why he insists on speaking in terms of race when his primary concern is cultural. A reader asked,

When reading your blog, I am struck by the number of times you and others talk about the “white race” or a “white majority.” You seem fixated on race.

However, the battle we are fighting has little to do with “race” and everything to do with “culture.”

Auster explained,

A massive number of people of different race fundamentally changes the whole society. Then it becomes a matter, not of individuals joining a culture, but of one group and its culture replacing another group and its culture.

This distinction is all important. You must understand it if you are to understand the immigration problem.

If you don’t get the distinction between a few people and a lot of people, you are going to go on believing the neoconservative fantasy that you can transform an entire country from a 100 percent or a 90 percent white country to a majority nonwhite country and everything is going to remain the same. You’re not going to see the reality of, for example, the Mexican invasion, in which Mexicans are involved in a national/racial takeover of major parts of the U.S., in which they, the Mexicans, are conscious of themselves gaining power as a group, and of the whites as losing power.

To me, this seems to imply that according to Auster, race is primarily (in terms of immigrant threat) a divider between cultural and group identities. Still, could not the same thing happen between those of a similar (even exactly the same) race? For instance, when haredim move into and take over a formerly secular and Modern Orthodox neighborhood, the same dynamics without a disparate racial ingredient play out in a similar fashion in terms of cultural takeover.

If we accept that, then the question remains, why talk (primarily) in terms of race?

Update: Mr. Auster replied in the comments section that,

Why does the Kvetcher assume the most simplistic possible interpretation of my position? Have I ever said or remotely implied that race is the only basis for division between people? The human world is organized into all kinds of larger wholes–family, ethnicity, culture, race, religion, nation, civilization, political philosophy, economic class, and on and on. Divisions can occur along any of these divides.

But among these divides, and among the most intractable, is race. And when you have large, conspicuosly different racial groups inhabiting the same society which is lacking an unquestioned majority culture, serious culture/racial conflict is inevitable. A society must have a recognized majority culture and people if it is to thrive and survive.

Just as Jews were celebrating the High Holidays, a major, major reason for communal distress was found in New Jersey. Anti-Semitic cornfields.

Fox News reports,

As Jews around the world gathered in synagogues last Friday night to mark the start of Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — someone was apparently busy fashioning a massive swastika into several acres of a cornfield in Washington Township, N.J.

The swastika was spotted by a New Jersey State Police helicopter during a routine maintenance mission.

Local residents told the Star Ledger newspaper of Newark, N.J., that they were unaware of the reviled symbol of hate.

Now, some of you may think this is an isolated incident. It is not. In fact, it happens all the time. Like say, just last millennium.

Another swastika — this one estimated to be 130 square feet— was carved in the field in July 1998, and a bigger 600-by-600 foot version of the Nazi symbol was found in a nearby cornfield almost a year later, the newspaper reported. No arrests were made in either incident.

Please, friends, try to avoid (after nightfall) cornfields (in the Newark environs) until these cornball hate criminals are apprehended. At least, don’t frequent them alone. I realize this is a tremendous inconvenience, but one must be cautious.

The Anti-Defamation League said the swastika “shows the persistence of anti-Semitism and hate.”

Obviously, it goes without saying that the ADL should immediately be sent a check.

Unfortunately, the Iranian president’s speech at Columbia is closed to the general public. However, if I were able to attend, I would ask him the following hard hitting questions on behalf of New York’s Jewish community.

1) According to what you have heard in your circles, what are some of the better Persian restaurants in the city?

2) Is Jewish-Persian food the same as regular Persian food? Because I didn’t like Jewish-Persian food all that much when I had it.

3) I find Persian women very attractive, but have heard they are often hairy. Is this true, or is it a Moroccan slander?

4) I have met Zoroastrians, and they seemed tolerant and quite interesting. Much more so than the run-of-the-mill monotheist (yawn). Do you ever think maybe you guys made a mistake becoming a Muslim nation? Why did you feel you needed to become more like the Arabs? Do you ever have buyer’s remorse?

5) What words of encouragement do you have for New York’s intactivist community?

Pictured: Some Jew protesting academic free speech, courtesy of NY1.

The Forward wins big with the WebAward for Best Newspaper Site! Amazing. And guess who won a second tier award? The Frederick News Post! (That’s important, because I am from Frederick, MD).

Young machers according to Heeb Magazine in the Heeb 100 of 5767.

“Inspiring A Fahfrumpte Future”

NCSY is allowing a bit of a preview of their new site. If the front page is any indication, the new glitzy site is even more deceptive than the last one (as if that’s really possible). “Inspiring the Jewish Future,� is the new catch phrase – nothing about “making them frum� and sending them to Touro instead of a decent, normal college.

Additionally, I predict that Rabbi Burg will take down his “personal” blog, which he has not updated since May, in order to attempt to prevent his words from being used against him by taking them in context.

NCSY is sucking up Jewish communal funds like a street whore snorts up coke, and using our public schools as a base for recruitment to Orthodoxy, often right-wing Orthodoxy.

Make no mistake about it – these guys are laughing at the liberal Jewish community and its weakness. And rightly so. What a joke we are. Who is even protesting what they are doing on a communal level? No one knows, no one cares.

If I met Rabbi Burg on the street, he would surely laugh at me. He would laugh at the audacity that I think I could stop anything he or the Orthodox Union intends for secular Jewish public school teens. NCSY will continue to send teens into haredism. NCSY will continue to send teens to Touro. And NCSY will continue to send teens into poverty. NCSY will continue to do so through recruitment from the public schools, and with Federation and liberal Jewish funding.

Why wouldn’t he laugh? Rabbi Burg and the other OUniks are laughing all the way to the bank.

Pizza, anyone?

In response to my post on the banning of Extreme Godol Hador from the Hirhurim blog, Rabbi Student noted the following in comment three of that post:

1. I have banned XGH a number of times over the past year or two and he keeps coming back. Most recently, I banned him at the end of July.

2. As a general rule with some exceptions, I do not allow heresy on my blog or in the comments sections to my post. Note that I do allow exceptions. Reshimu does not yet have a set policy on this in general but I have been given permission to maintain my current policies on my section of Reshimu. I answered XGH about this on Hirhurim repeatedly. I only lashed out at him for a very specific reason and after numerous attempts to stop the discussion.

3. I have no interest in frum skeptics and while I wish them well as people, I do not want the types of discussions they carry out on my blog. Those discussions detract from the experience of the vast majority of my readers.

4. As to my using unorthodox (and un-Orthodox) venues, I have never indicated any opposition to doing so and I am surprised that it is even an issue worthy of discussion. Although, of course every case has to be evaluated on its own merits.

Prior to the announcement that Hirhurim has joinied forces with Tzemach Atlas, Luke Ford, and others in a new group blog, reshimu, Rabbi Student took a strange last dig at an old nemesis on Hirhuirm. He banned eXtreme Godol Hador, the most popular of the current frum skeptics blogs. He seems to be quite upset about it, and I just want to let him know that surprising as this may seem, not all of us are in tow with Rabbi Student. In fact, XGH once commented on this here blog, and I let it pass without even a threat. Anyway, according to XGH, Rabbi Student defended this decision to ban him with the following words of praise,

“Like it or not, you are a nihilist. You believe in nothing, stand for nothing, and only get pleasure by trying to tear things apart with your oh-so-clever attempts at logical pigeon-holing. And then you protest in your innocence that you are only searching for truth. No one believes you except your self-affirming skeptical friends. Please take your cynicism and hit the road.’â€?

I know for a fact that Rabbi Gil Student has utilized non-Orthodox sites for kiruv “conversation” purposes, and find his sudden inappropriate public assertion of XGH’s supposedly purely nefarious motives a cheap way to silence legitimate questions. Considering where he is going now, this is even more difficult to understand.

Hirhurim was about to announce his intention to close his blog in order to bolster Reshimu when he banned XGH from Hirhurim. Perhaps he is sending his new partners a message. It seems more likely to me that a person like Rabbi student did think this out, as he is a bright and calculating person (I don’t say that in a negative way…this is true of any leader worth his weight).

Still, XGH has not taken this lightly, and has attacked Rabbi Gil Student in numerous posts, and has also attacked the intolerance of RWMO (right-wing Modern-Orthodox) and LWUO (left-wing ultra-Orthodox) leaders. Best of all, there are a lot of Rosh HaShana/Teshuvah tie-ins. And since he has been banned from having his opinions heard, I feel obligated to amplify his defense and counter-attacks.

Let’s take a look.

“that’s exactly the kind of remark which makes me sick of the so called ‘faithful’. As if they are so pious because they refuse to question their beliefs! As if they are so holy because they refuse to use their brains! As if they think God (assuming He exists) will reward them for acting like a**holes! And God will punish honest skeptics for not being able to force themselves to believe in Him! (that last one was aimed at chaim b). And on top of all that, they are so freaking two faced it’s unbelievable.â€?

XGH asserts that Rabbi Student will allow heresy if money is involved.

XGH asks, if I am so wrong, what are you afraid of?

The proof of this is that the skeptics NEVER censor anything. Why? They don’t need to, because they are not afraid of rational discourse. However the believers ALWAYS are censoring things. Why? Because they are AFRAID of rational discourse, because they always lose. I lost all respect for Gil when he started censoring comments. Of course he can censor trolls or pritzus, but he cuts off any discussion when the skeptics start winning. He wants to post his DH apologetics, but then he doesn’t want to debate whether the DH is true. What a fraud.

XGH notes that his buddy Dov Bear finds Hirhurim annoying also.

I hesitate to write this post because I’m genuinely scared of the possible consequences, but what the heck. One of the things that has always annoyed me and DovBear is Hirhurim’s holier than thou attitude, refusal to link to our blogs, and general demeanor that DB and I are just ‘blogscum’, and he is too pious to link to us.

OK, we didn’t like it, but it’s true that Hirhurim was always an extremely respectful blog, while me and DB tend to rant and rave sometimes, so we let it slide. He was a little hypocritical back then too, feeding me and DB the juicy stories and inside information that he couldn’t post himself, but OK, that’s fairly normal in the media world. Different outlets have different standards and all that.

XGH calls on Skeptics to do Teshuvah. Of sorts. Step one is Blame.

XGH also offers Teshuvah for Believers, including:

I am sorry for committing the sin of arrogantly asserting that my sub sect of my religion is the one true sub sect.

I am sorry for committing the sin of arrogantly asserting that my religion is the one true religion.

I am sorry for committing the sin of falsely accusing skeptics of being arrogant and only running after their taavos [desires].

I am sorry for committing the sin of intellectual dishonesty.

I am sorry for committing the sin of pushing skeptics further away from Judaism by falsely accusing them of nihilism.

I am sorry for committing the sin of pretending to have answers when really I have doubts.

I am sorry for committing the sin of hypocritically bashing the right wingers for calling me a kofer [heretic], but then turning round and bashing those to the left of me with the exact same accusation.

Anyway, XGH, you shouldn’t let the RWMO hardliners get you down any more than you should let the RWUO hardliners get you down. Do you lose sleep when a Chassidic rebbe says something off the wall? No. Ain huchie numi (So too, here also).

Update: Rabbi Student responds in comment three.

One of the strange aftermaths of the Duke debacle is the question of race and sexual attacks. Is there a greater chance white men will assault a black women than a black man will assault a white woman? According to numbers, the answer should be yes, simply because there are many more white men than black men in the U.S.

The Duke case was not the first time some screamed bloody murder over a bogus rape charge of white men against a black woman. The agitators claimed they wanted a discussion of race and rape. Well, it appears they are getting one, and it isn’t what they had in mind.

Is this possibly because the truth is the inverse of what they (and others) want it to be?

Robert Lindsay writes,

An incredible anecdote: In a 3-yr period in the US, there were 9,000 cases of group Black on White sexual assaults - about 10 per day. In that same 3-year period, Whites, with a 4.5 times greater population, committed exactly zero group sexual assaults on Blacks. That figure alone is simply stunning.

The Left loves to talk about hate crimes, but the only hate crimes they are interested in are White hate crimes against non-Whites. The report makes it quite clear that Blacks are much more likely to commit hate crimes against Whites than vice versa.

What is fascinating is that the media plays up White on Black hate crimes for weeks on end as the crime of the century, while Black on White hate crimes are met with deafening silence from the media. That right there would seem to give the lie to the notion that the US media is hopelessly prejudiced against Blacks and in favor of Whites. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case.

(See The Color of Crime from 1999)

I have also asked friends if these statistics are real. Most have said no, but no one has explained how they are flawed. Lawrence Auster claimed in Front Page Magazine that,

In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man.

What this means is that every day in the United States, over one hundred white women are raped or sexually assaulted by a black man.

Why this is a Jewish issue

No one has been a bigger supporter of Hate Crimes than Jewish defense groups. And Hate Crimes seem to target white crimes against others, and are only reluctantly enforced against those who attack regular whites. The underlying fear seems to assume that white crimes against minorities is a significant problem. But the statistics seem to say something quite different.

Additionally, our ownership of media outlets is, well, disproportionate.

If there is a blackout on these types of crimes, we have a strong hand in enforcing it. Why is that?

And what exactly are we afraid of?