The Orthodox Union’s Large-Scale War and the Worship of Fundamentalist Leaders

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.