Posts from — February 2008

In response to the Talumidic claim that nail clippings can induce miscarriages, C-Girl noted that,

“Nail clippings were very powerful in the days of the Talmud. They have lost their potency since then…”

It has come to my attention that not all my readers recognized C-Girl’s acid sarcasm for what it was.

To clarify, one of the most asinine ways haredim attempt to defend the long-outdated science and nonsensical kaballah voodoo of the Talmud is to claim “the world has changed.�

This is, of course, quite risible, and when haredim make this claim, you should make fun of them publicly. Find out which masechta they are quoting and what page, rip that page out, and make the haredi eat it in front of his seventeen children. Then make his entire congregation wear an ill-fitting, awkward hat as a punishment, and march them all down the street in it. Within two weeks, they will declare this haredi-hat a minhag, and wear it all the time with pride. Don’t let that frustrate you. We will find a more atrocious hat to make them wear next time they say “the world has changed…� –- and surely they won’t embrace even that hat! Anyway, we’ll think of something. The point is, we have to employ collective punishment as a way to expose the haredi rejection of scientific method to the world.

Haredism: The more you know, the less you like Judaism generally.

As we all know, the Talmud is packed with ooky spooky Kabbalah voodoo nonsense science and health information. Like the importance of not offending preggos with nail clippings and inducing miscarriages. Duh!

Dark Light leader Rabbi Mendel Weinbach notes,

The only problem which nail-biters face is what to do with the nails. Since discarded nails are a threat to the health of a pregnant woman it is forbidden to cast them in a place where such a woman may pass. Rabbi Yochanan’s action took place in a Beit Midrash that women never entered. Some nail-biters solve this problem by simply chewing and swallowing their nails while others restrict their nail-biting to areas such as the one mentioned in the Rabbi Yochanan precedent.

So please be more careful in regards to this matter. Okay?

In every generation, a cadre of Jews arises that puts the Jewish community into unnecessary conflict and controversy. Into something even my activist, socialist ancestors would caution is “not our fight.� There is always a cost for such imprudent behavior. For overextending. And always, there are assurances beforehand that there will not be such a cost.

But there is always such a cost. And rarely are the promised benefits for getting into a fight that is not ours reaped in any significant way.

Once again, Jewcy knows all, and is pushing its big nose into shit that it has no business getting into.

This time it’s Kosovo. To be clear, I have no position on this ancient conflict. I am not saying no one should have a position, but I do not think that there is a compelling reason for the Diaspora Jewish community to have one. That the Zionist Entity is concerned with unilateral process is a good reason to me as any for the Diaspora Jewish community to shut up.

Instead, the Jewish community has been disproportionately represented in this ancient conflict in recent years, and for what?

I am not taking the Serbian side here, but why should I be impressed with the Albanian side?

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz offers that,

Although Saudi Arabia maintains a relief office in Prishtina, and built a small number of mosques in Kosovo, their presence is resented. Kosovars disliked the Saudi Wahhabis, who defaced cemeteries on the argument that grave markers are idols, and who sought to replace historic Ottoman and modern Albanian mosques, which are also built in the Ottoman style, with new, Gulf-style mosques.

That’s nice, but why should I be so happy to see an Islamic presence in Europe? Because they aren’t Saudi? They might just find some other way to cause trouble and spread the good word of The Prophet.

Adam Lebor writes,

But across Kosovo there is a widespread sympathy for Israel, as the homeland of another oppressed people, the Jews, who have had to fight to carve out their state. Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s prime minister, has repeatedly spoken of his respect for Israel. He recently gave an interview to Ha’aretz, pledging that Kosovo will be not be an Islamic nation. and asking for Israel to recognise the new country.

This seems quite speculative. Why should we believe that this Muslim country will indeed prove friendly to Israel?

Lebor offers,

“Thaci’s desire for ties with Israel are also about realpolitik.�

No shit. And that could change once they get what they want. And you know who once again doesn’t have realpolitik? That would be Jewcy.

So what is the real problem with Jewcy? Why do they do these classic big nose mistakes that so many Jews throughout the modern age have made?

Because they don’t recognize an eternal truth about the Jewish condition. We are in exile. We have been in exile for almost all of our history, And we still are. Jewcy doesn’t like that. They laugh at such a mentality. But that doesn’t make our situation different. History does not stop with us because hipsters decide it should.

Better we should ask, what does it mean to be in exile?

We are a small people. We cannot boss everyone around. We are to be a quiescent people. We are to look within, not bark foreign policy orders. Or even domestic orders. When we act in a big nose fashion, it always comes back to bite us in the ass. This will too. Just you wait, Jewcy.. Just sit back, kick up your feet, and wait for this one to bite us in the ass also.

And next time, remember…

“Shah, shtill!�

Oh, this says it all. Remember our man Rabbi Lipa Margulies? The enabler of Kolko, the big Brookyln child molester of both Italian and Chassidic kids? Well, he may not be willing to protect children from lap dances and what we in the secular world would call underage homosexual assault…but darn it, when it comes to a concert deemed demeaning to the Great Ones…he’s there in full throttle to demand a boycott of a concert benefiting orphans.

Failed Messiah has the story. Read it and hurl.

Probably not Reform, right? Not LWMO either. Rather, either far-right religious Zionist, or better yet, Haredi.

The following story isn’t pretty. It is the nauseating, high-pitched, nasal self-congratulatory squeals of glee of frummies stroking and admiring themselves. But I think we need to take a look, at least a little bit, as there are some important lessons over here.

First of all, how do the haredi-kiruvniks justify their paths to poverty, such as Dark Light? Two ways.

1) They pretend all secular Jews are fabulously wealthy and have everything
2) They pretend that everyone is miserable from vapid materialism

These are the two implicit justifications for sending secular Jews into the misery and poverty of right-wing ultra-Orthodoxy.

Rabbi Meir Goldberg wrote in 5 Towns Jewish Times (and Hamodia, the official newspaper of the fahfrumpt) that,

Perhaps the one thing that the secular world seeks more than anything else is happiness. They search and search, yet they cannot seem to find it. Americans spend millions each year pursuing happiness. Some wait on line for days (yes, they really camp out around an electronics store) waiting to buy the new iPhone. Others insist on driving the fanciest cars or going on the most exotic vacations. Yet, when all is said and done, we live in one of the unhappiest societies in history, where divorce is rampant and children who have every conceivable material advantage turn to drugs to escape from the tremendous void that they feel. Perhaps we should not expect anything more from a society that considers the convenient use of a MasterCard as “priceless.�?

Years ago, when the teshuvah movement was in its infancy, frum Jews often thought it strange that a non-frum person would want to become a baal teshuvah. After all, they have no restrictions and can have everything. Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky [Editor’s note: for more on Orlovsky, formerly of NCSY who now works at Dark Light, see Failed Messiah’s article on how he tarred and feathered Rabbi Slifkin in a most sleazy fashion], a well-known mekarev from Ohr Somayach, told a story of a woman that once approached him: “Rabbi,�? she said. “Do you know why you are such a threat to me? It’s not any of your classes or talks that threaten me. Rather, here I am a secular Jew, unrestricted in anything. I can do whatever I want. You are an observant Jew with many varied requirements and restrictions. Yet you are clearly enjoying life more than me.�?

You see? When you throw a Jew to Dark Light or Neve Yerushalayim…he/she is CLEARLY going to be happier than when he camped out (for days!) to secure some new electronic device, which most of them do.

Name calling regretted and removed by site owner.

Yoffie’s star just keeps on rising. I am working on a conspiracy theory on him…make take me a bit…and I may try to post it somewhere else…it’s pretty nifty, if I can fit all the pieces together.

Anyway…don’t you get fed up with all those Jewish political hacks who speak on behalf of all of us? Don’t you kinda want to slap them, sometimes? Well, guess what? Rabbi Yoffie doesn’t like it either!

The Forward reports,

Yoffie said it was critical for all Jewish leaders to realize that “nobody has the right to speak in our name.”

It’s not another nail in the coffin of what was once a global U.S. empire…oh, no, no, no, no, no…Pakistan is another victory for Bush democracy

The NY Sun editorializes that,

So when President Bush talks of the universality of the human desire for freedom, it turns out to include the people of Pakistan. So the victory by civilian political parties in Monday’s vote in Pakistan opens a new chapter in the march of democracy […]

Whatever the short-term tribulations, a democratic majority can only strengthen Washington’s hand.

Oh, sure…lots of strengthening of Washington’s hand is going to be seen coming out of those parts. A real iron fist we shall have when Pakistan’s “democracyâ€? is through “strengthening our hand.”

Don’t you wonder why it is that the NY Sun hasn’t captured a significant readership? I mean…you have to admit…this stuff is a lot less depressing than what most of us would consider…a lucid analysis, right? Who else is going to look at Pakistan and see “the march of Democracy� which will surely “strengthen Washington’s hand�?

Heh, heh…those darned Neocons. Who knew in the 90s that one day, so many of us even in the Jewish world would one day agree with so many of those “hateful” things that Pat Buchanan said about you?

On a cursory read of his most recent essay, “Every Jew Counts,” (awwwwwww) one could believe — if you don’t know anything about Dark Light – that its leader, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, is a real populist.

The stringent one (for others, that is)writes,

“One of the most disturbing features of life in Israel is the tremendous gap between rich and poor. This expresses itself not only in the differences in housing, automobiles and other elements of a material standard of living but also in the quality of education and medical care[…]

While we cannot realistically expect a totally egalitarian society today we should learn two important lessons from this Torah chapter — that every single Jew counts, and that we should strive for greater equality to make the Jewish state a fairer Israel forever.”

So…is Rabbi Weinbach a haredi Bernie Sanders?

Not quite.

Rabbi Weinbach’s position is that of the right-wing ultra-Orthodox haredi leaders (whom he reports to directly) who do not allow higher education for women, and do not allow secular studies at all for their yeshiva students. Absolute socio-economic devastation is preferred and mandated, and achieved for all too many in Israel’s B’nai Torah world.

Rabbi Weinbach is one of the most prominent proselytizers of this path to misery for Anglo-Jews. It is his conviction that anything else besides yeshiva is an “environment of sin.”

So what is he saying here? Why is he suddenly a socialist?

Because it isn’t about rich and poor, or those who work versus those who own. It is about those who are haredi and don’t work, versus those who aren’t haredi and do work.

Rabbi Weinbach is demanding that the secular government give still more money to the haredim to do nothing…so that even more of them can languish away for longer in accordance with the “Bnai Torah” leaders wishes.

And if his people are unhappy…and they are unhappy…it is the state’s fault…for not being more generous. Not the fault of the “Gedoylim�? for insistng they do this in the first places…oh no, no, no…it’s the SECULAR government’s fault – they are greedy and do not share all the wealth.

Weinbach’s evil manipulation is quite common for Israeli haredi leaders. When there is discontent of your own making, blame it on the secular government and/or on secular Jews even when they are doing all they can to accommodate your insanity…which is in and of itself, a tragedy. They (the secular and Modern Orthodox Jews) Jews should fight the haredim for the sake of the Jewish people. Including the Jews Rabbi Weinbach tricks, traps, and hobbles.

And don’t forget….Rabbi Weinbach and Rabbi Nota Schiller and their families make a nice living off teaching other people to become poor.

I have long noted that Rabbi Yoffie is ‘the man,’ and someone who is firmly committed to increasing the Reform movement’s power. The spiritual fight in the U.S. for American Jewry has ultimately been between the Reform and the Modern Orthodox. Eldridge Street was created in order to stand up to the Reform. And the Orthodox Union was formed at the Eldridge Street Synagogue for similar reasons.

The Orthodox Union is the true rival of the Reform. And Rabbi Yoffie is certainly aware of that. And it is the Orthodox Union who has led the strongest Diaspora resistance against Olmert negotiating away any part of Jerusalem.

Haaretz reports,

“The president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, promised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week that his movement would support the government if a peace treaty with the Palestinians is reached, including concessions in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yoffie told Haaretz that if the Israeli right wing mobilizes its supporters in the United States against such an agreement, the Reform Movement would respond in kind.�

Notice that Yoffie is not pushing for anything specific…he is only promising to support such a policy IF the Israeli government arrives at such a conclusion. The Reform’s ancient rival, the Orthodox Union, is therefore positioned as anti-democratic, against the will of the Israeli people.

Haaretz notes,

Yoffie said that he understood that there is no choice but to include the future of Jerusalem in these negotiations and, “If the government of Israel were to reach an agreement in which real peace would be achieved also by concessions in Jerusalem, I am confident that American Jews would support it. Of course though, this is the sole decision of the government of Israel.”

Yoffie to Orthodox Union: Try it, and we will fuck you up!

Yoffie said that despite their statements, he doesn’t believe that the right-wing elements in U.S. Jewry would mount a serious public opposition. “Such an agreement would also be a major part of American foreign policy and they wouldn’t dare to try and derail it,” he said. “But if they do try, we would also mobilize our people against them.”

This is the fight between ethical Monotheism and Modern Orthodoxy. It is the most dynamic debate going on in the Diaspora. And it is not a new one. There is no greater question in Judaism. For most pre-war American Jews, this has always been the question.

And it appears to be reaching Jerusalem.