Another kiruv organization success story in LA
I don’t know if you folks saw this, but I didn’t realize exactly how bad yet another (Hi, JAM!) LA kiruv organization is behaving.
When you look at intermarriage as a “spiritual Holocaust, ” you have to ask, where are the “spiritual” Nazis?
Rabbi Shlomo ‘Schwartzie’ Schwartz has the answer. That answer would be the gentile partner.
The LA Jewish Journal reported his lunatic tantrums against non-Jews who showed up at the Chai Center, and that,
Filled with foul language and content that can easily be construed as bigoted, sexist and threatening, the e-mails seem to contradict the rabbi’s aura of openness and non-judgmental warmth.
What are the emails that could be construed as somehow, in some way, “sexist” according to some? Let’s take a look at this prize.
“”How dare U B so nervy as 2 criticize me when U r the brazen hussy slut chasing after Jewish men (even when they R Orthodox & you KNOW tht it is against their G-d & religion). Shame on U 4 yr disgusting unpaid whoring ways 2 try & take Jewish men away from Jewish women. Hitler murdered Jews & U R also trying 2 exterminate Jews.”
Fortunately, though, Schwartzie explained the miscommunication to the JJ.
It’s destroying Jewish people,” he said, explaining his visceral abhorrence of intermarriage. “This is not just a sin and you shouldn’t do it, like don’t eat lobster.”
Fixing his blue eyes in a fierce stare, he tried to convey the vehemence of what he wants to get across to the women he calls “shiksas”: “You are a f—ing Nazi. You are killing a Jew and I hate you for that and I’ll piss on your grave. You are not going to kill my Jews.”
The guy has serious issues with gentiles. This is not the kind of leadership the secular Jewish community should be tolerating or supporting in any way. And I highly doubt that others in the LA kiruv community are unaware of his views. Which means they tolerate it.
The defense of his son Mendel is indicative of where the anger of many at the “spiritual Holocaust,” and their exceptionally negative feelings for gentiles, may ultimately be stemming from.
“[Mendel Schwartz] explained that his father’s outburst comes from his deep and personal commitment, as the son of Holocaust survivors, to do what he can to save Jews.”
The acceptance of a Judaism that is so hostile to western culture and so contemptuous of non-Jews resonates more frequently and more intensely with descendants of Holocaust survivors. By no means is it ubiquitous, but it is there. And blaming such behavior on the real Holocaust is not an acceptable excuse. Rather, it is a confession that one is unfit for leadership in the general Jewish community.
We don’t need more of this poison. Holocaustism plus haredi-kiruv should have no place in the liberal or secular Jewish community.
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Ol’ blue eyes might want to check his own family tree for ovary-nazis. Afterall, and this comes as an upset to many, when Jews had adopted last names in medieval Europe, the custom of naming tradition was the same as that of their non-Jewish neighbours, i.e. the names were handed on down the patrilineal line.
Yes, eating lobster is clearly the same as intermarriage. Obviously.
I do not believe that the Ultra-Orthodox kiruv community have a problem with Rabbi Schwartz’s Holocaust narrative although they may not like the vulgarity of how he expresses it. Neither am I sure that the term ‘Holocaustism’ as commonly understood can be applied to Ultra-Orthodox ideology.
Da’as Torah see gentile wickedness as a divine punishment for Jews sins. The catastrophes suffered by Jews since 1750’s are seen as a divine punishment for Jews being happy to breach the Ghetto walls and their acceptance of modernity. Racism against Jews is not a cause of suffering but a tool.
Judith Tydor Baumel, Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University wrote the following essay:-
The Ultra-Orthodox has long employed an alternative Holocaust narrative in order to further its own spiritual and political agenda. By creatively interpreting and skilfully manipulating the history of the Hitler era, the group has turned the Holocaust into additional ammunition to be used in its struggle against the Jewish entry into cultural modernity and the development of Zionist-Jewish nationalism
In the eyes of much of the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox leadership, the Holocaust is considered a direct punishment from God for a plethora of sins, the most serious of which was assimilation and, in the eyes of some, Zionism. Adhering to the widely held Ultra-Orthodox motif that God directly administered the catastrophe as a punitive action for Jewish misbehaviour, this group has adopted a Holocaust narrative which differs from that of other Jewish groups. One example is that proposed by the late Rabbi Isaac Hutner, member of the Council of Sages of Agudath Israel of America, who placed the events of the Holocaust within the historical continuum of the flow of Jewish history since the destruction of the Temple. Claiming that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for Jewish enlightenment and assimilation, Hutner stated that its uniqueness stemmed from a meeting of Occidental and Oriental persecutors: Hitler in Germany and the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseni, in Palestine, thus laying the blame for the Holocaust squarely at the feet of the founders and early leaders of the State of Israel (Hutner 1977: 8). Viewing the artificially contrived terms Shoah and Holocaust as implying an isolated catastrophe, Hutner substituted the word Churban (destruction, or catastrophe), locating the Churban narrative within a never ending cycle of destruction, exile and ultimate redemption of the Jewish people which characterized their history for the last two and a half thousand years.
Rabbi Hutner’s spiritual pronouncement was accepted by many in the Ultra-Orthodox world and delimited the dimensions for the Ultra-Orthodox historical Holocaust narrative. In this narrative God and human were omnipotent punisher and sinner; the location of the Holocaust was not solely European, but extended to include the Arab countries under the spiritual domination of the Mufti; the action of physical destruction was actually that of spiritual annihilation of the Jewish people; the Nazi intent was not racial but religious; the chronology of the event which began with Jewish assimilation during the post-emancipatory period and continued as a result of the Zionist movement’s expansion during the early twentieth century, reached its zenith during the war years of 1939 to 1945. Citing the need to remain within a traditional historical framework, the Ultra Orthodox have long been adherents of what historian Yosef Haim Yerushalmi terms “Jewish memory” as opposed to “Jewish history,” had in effect composed its own alternative Holocaust narrative based upon its Ultra-Orthodox spiritual interpretations.
The Ultra-Orthodox group’s Holocaust narrative furthers its own contemporary political agenda. This includes separatism, anti-modernism and anti-Zionism, all representing the Holocaust as part of the flow of a specific cycle in Jewish history characterized by sin, punishment and eventual redemption; determining as its uniqueness a factor which few if any historians would agree with.
END of essay
For those however who hold the Da’as Torah narrative, Rabbi Schwartz’s behaviour is not some vulgar tantrum but a warning of imminent Nazi like danger which naturally one would express in the most forceful way possible.
Hmmmm, what if God punished (the) Jews for the Orthodox movement?
I actually think fundamentalist Islam may be a punishment for Jewish fundamentalism.
Inbreeding is bad genetically AND culturally. Insularity leads to gradually worsening inability to relate to the rest of the people we share the world with. My mother-in-law was born Jewish, my wife brought to it as an adopted three day old baby, and I am a convert after a lifetime of Country Club Catholicism.
In each case, we have a unique POV not just because we are unique individuals in the continuum, but also because the circumstances of our uniqueness each affect ourselves, how we deal with each other, and thus affect ourselves again through them.
Besides, how weak does he think Jews are compared to Christians? Christians don’t sit around worrying that their kid will marry a Buddhist. They have a tacit assumption that however they raised the kid, and however the kid as an adult is today, the religion he was born and raised to will remain a big influence but ultimately they must decide what to believe for themselves. This guy sounds like he pictures Judaism to be a slight frost on a fall morning and some Christian will somehow melt it away in an instant.
Some sense of confidence in the faith he has.
Well this might not be the best place to get an answer to this, but aren’t Jewish guys now considered to be a hot commodity in the shiksa community?
From your mouth to the shiksa community’s ears.
Keep dreaming, guys.
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