Posts from — June 2008

The JTA reports,

A Paris teen is in a coma after being beaten in what French Jewish leaders are calling an anti-Semitic act.

The 17-year-old boy was beaten over the head with metal bars Saturday night in eastern Paris. Media reports offered varying figures on the number of attackers, who were black, ranging from six to 30.

They smashed his skull.

Why would the press feel these black gangs were anti-semitic and targeted this young man (who was wearing a yarmulke) because he was Jewish?

The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism said that Jewish community leaders in the low-income 19th district of Paris had warned officials last week about groups of young blacks wandering through the neighborhood park threatening to attack Jews.

So anyway, please join the mainstream Jewish community in fighting to keep immigration to this country open to everyone, and let’s all find a way to blame this on the racism of white French people–and not the poor African-Muslim gangs who themselves are clearly only acting out from understandable socio-economic frustration by seeking out individual Jews to attack.

Do you know how many mainstream American Jewish organizations have rethought their position on immigration, and decided that maybe massive Muslim immigration is not in our interest?

That would be zero.

Shmarya Rosenberg has an article on Jewcy about five haredi rabbis most responsible for the un-conversion crises, and for making it harder to convert in an Orthodox non-haredi fashion. One of these five is Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein. This pillar of Maalot Dafna, the fundamentalist neighborhood that houses the Dark Light, came up with a few minor suggestions that he wanted Modern Orthodox rabbis to enforce, like say, a belief that the world is less than 6,000 years old.

As Shmarya writes,

Speaking at an EJF convention late last year, Rabbi Eisenstein said anyone believing the universe to be older than 5768 years is a heretic who is unfit to serve on a beit din (religious court). This would make any conversions done by that rabbi or beit din invalid. Eisenstein’s source for this ruling? Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

Now, Rabbi Eisenstein may seem like a hardline person on paper because of little theological matters like demanding a rejection of scientific method in order to be frum enough for the macher of Maalot Dafna, but apparently, in person, he’s sweet as can be, and straight as an arrow.

Nancy Cuevas Guzman wrote in to Jewcy noting,

Many women are still coming before Rabbi Eisenstein’s Beit Din, in his home in Maalo Dafna, as did I with my 3 other Orthodox witnesses. We were all shocked at the abuse that was hurled at us by Rabbi Eisenstein and his “secretary”, Rabbi Adelman. The both of them were caught in lie after lie, to our amazement they had no shame when we brought to their attention all the discrepancies in in their statements. It was so unexpected to watch this rabbi shout ruthlessly at 4 women for virtually nothing. He apparently had made his decision, that I would not be allowed to go to the mikveh and that he would not allow the giyur l’chumrah, as I was offered at my previous Beit Din appearance before him. He had insisted that I remain a student of Ohel Sarah Imenu, a conversion program which I had long out-grown and which was demanding $50 US dollars an hour to train me and is not State-approved! I was already in an Orthodox seminary and I am already a Jew. I am a “marrano”, a Levy. I only wanted the paperwork in case of marriage. The four of us left the Beit Din in utter shock at what transpired and we all called it a “disgrace in Israel”. Instead they called She’arim had me kicked out of seminary for being a marrano!….a Jew! Many other women have told me similar stories. I was humiliated, lied to and drained financially for I had gone to tremendous expense to bring back all documents from my family’s country at Rabbi Eisenstein’s request….”get the documents and bring them back”

How can this be happening?

The NY Times reports,

Some thought that offering standardized tests was “a crucial step in a prolonged effort to equalize access to programs that critics complained were dominated by white middle-class children whose parents knew how to navigate the system,”

But in fact,

under the new policy, children from the city’s poorest districts were offered a smaller percentage than last year of the entry-grade gifted slots in elementary schools. Children in the city’s wealthiest districts captured a greater share of the slots.

Now, granted…if we were comparing a disparity between rich whites to poor whites, we would not be shocked. But here, where the underclass is overwhelmingly a different race, well…we simply cannot tolerate this!

“the administration is intent on ensuring equal access to the system’s most coveted offerings and closing the racial achievement gap, which Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein frequently refers to as a critical front in the civil rights battle.”

The NY Times notes,

School districts nationwide are struggling to make gifted programs more racially and economically diverse.

And to think this is even a problem in Jew York City….

Which community’s kids do you think are going to be passed over for the gifted programs for the sake of racial diversity? And don’t kid yourselves…important rich Jews who send their own kids to private schools will be all too willing to rig the schools against middle class Jews in order to prove how progressive they are, and even the majority who won’t support such measures will refrain from fighting them in any significant way.

Has Ohr Somayach falsely accused a town in Galicia of burning a Jewish woman to death? A reader claims this story never could have happened. History buff writes,

The story is entirely phony.
There is no recorded blood libel in 1310.
Drohovitch is in Galicia was not settled by anyone until the 14th century and certainly lacked Jews until much later.
Blood libels did not occur in Ukraine, rather Central European lands.
Kiknish (”don’t look”) is a fake name- check genealogy sites for the name.
If convicted of blood libel- conversion would not have helped.

How about challenging them to come up with a source?
Or how about writing a version in the style of the author Saki, where she is punished for lighting shabbos candles.

On top of it, using one of the calender calculators on line.
The date was a Wed, not Friday.

Rabbi Weinbach, the head Ohr Somayach, indeed did not provide any source.

We must all demand that Ohr Somayach explain this situation, and if this blood libel story is indeed false, Ohr Somayach must retract this story, and apologize for inventing it.

Ohr Somayach must answer this charge.

Aish HaTorah likes to encourage people to perform Jewish ritual through stories about the Holocaust. But the Ohr Somayach approach is broader, encouraging Jewish ritual because of other past martyrdoms as well as the Holocaust.

Rabbi Mental Weinbach, the Imam of Dark Light writes,

“On Erev Shabbat, 27 Elul 5070 (1310), the saintly woman Adel, daughter of Rabbi Moshe Kiknish, sanctified the Name of G-d and martyred herself on behalf of the Jewish People, may G-d avenge her blood in this merit.”

Thus read a tombstone in the European town of Drohovitch. Behind this inscription is a moving story of heroism.

A dead Christian child was found in the home of Adel on Pesach eve and the gentile maid claimed that she had slaughtered the child at her mistress’ command on behalf of the Jewish community. In order to save the community from the tragic consequences of this blood libel, Adel decided to take the entire blame. The confession of the maid that she had lied failed to persuade the judges to change their verdict of death by the burning stake for Adel. Efforts by the priests to convince Adel to convert to Christianity and be spared proved futile.

The execution was scheduled for late Friday. Adel donned her fine Shabbat garments, lit Shabbat candles and went to her fiery death as a martyr for her people.

So, um…anyway, please don’t let the evil Jew-burning townspeople and blood libeling maids of Drohovitch win! Rather, make sure to light shabbas candle like Adel did, EVEN ON HER WAY TO A HORRIFIC FIRE BURNING DEATH BY ANTI-SEMITES!!!!! DO IT FOR ADEL!!!!

I never noticed this, Big Aish apparently doesn’t worry about using a dash instead of an o in “God.”

In a story somehow connecting Bob Dylan to becoming frum, Big Aish writes,

Dylan knew how to go knockin’ on Heaven’s door, and in general, there was a certain God-consciousness in the underpinnings of his songs that were full of Biblical imagery…

The NY Post may have got the story, but the JTA, in its spanking new column, “The Fundermentalist,” crashes the cymbal with, “Man Bilks Dog.”

Leona Helmsley’s pooch *only* gets $100,000 for round the clock security, and that’s just one annual expense among many.

Pretty funny, right?

But this isn’t funny…the JDC is suffering from the weakness of the dollar and troubled economic times…and so are its clients. 32,000 elderly Jews in Russia “have been shaved from the JDC rolls of those who received aid since 2006, when the number peaked at 220,000, JDC officials said.”

Not good.

And it isn’t just the elderly.

In addition to cutbacks on social services to the elderly, JDC also has cut back dramatically on Jewish identity programs such as arts festivals and education activities.

In Moscow, communitywide Jewish outreach to the unaffiliated has been significantly reduced, according to a JDC impact assessment provided to JTA.

Rabbi Black, of Ohr Somayach in Zichron Yaakov, approvingly quoted a rabbi (I forgot his name) who argued that when a Jew was intermarrying, you should “break his legs.” He explained that in previous generations, one could tell the man that such a union was “past nisht” (not fitting), and that would be enough, but today, it would not be, so just “break his legs.”

To some degree, of course, this statement is hyperbole. But it reveals the level of contempt with which non-Jewish women are viewed by the B’nai Torah.

Do we outside of the haredi community say that such contempt is a problem, do we demand that as a community we get past all the tribal xenophobic bullshit, or do we point to the story of Pinchas and say racism and even hatred towards gentile women is okay since there is a Torah source one can rely on if they interpret it as such?

As the haredim are escalating the hoops a convert must jump through to prove him or her convictions, conversion to Orthodoxy is becoming less and less of an option for the partners of many Jews who don’t marry “in.”

We can’t change haredi minds, and we can’t force Israel to stop bowing down to the Gedolim. Telling the State of Israel to stop bowing down to the Gedolim is like telling a street-whore to stop getting on her knees for her Johns. In one orifice, out the other.

We can’t change the mind of Israel or their haredim. But we can embrace liberal Jewish options, and we can change our own views on intermarriage.

It’s simple to remember.

Rabbi Gil Student defends traditional Judaism against a certain R.D. Gold, who wrote “Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit.” But he does give Gold credit for “utterly demolishing” a favorite proof of Rabbi Gottlieb, a prominent haredi-kiruv lecturer of Dark Light.

[Gold] also utterly demolishes R. Dovid Gottlieb’s so-called proof (also known as “The Kuzari Proof”) for the Torah. Over the past few days, I read the latest updated version of R. Gottlieb’s book. It is not my place to argue in detail with his logic but I found it to be fatally burdened with unstated and unproven assumptions about psychology, sociology and Jewish history.

Guest Post by POLJ

American Jews today have “a fear to commit to Israel,” said [an American who immigrated to Israel in the 1970]. “That is something we did not have.”

As a well connected, involved Jew in the Jerusalem of the Diaspora, I must say this is just untrue. I have been to Israel three times, once in high school for six months, again in college for ten days of social justice work and again later in life as a Birthright advisor. However, the disconnect has less to do with fear and more to do with reality.

In the early years of the State of Israel, many didn’t make the trip to visit, there was not Ha’aretz or Jpost online, JTA was covering the fact that Israel existed (hurray) but not that it had internal political issues. We did not get past the myth of the perfect Israel for nearly four decades. Then all of a sudden, this mecca of felafel, pantheon of bronzed-gun-toting-Jews, was exposed as just another country. Regardless of the tacit and implicit support that is needed of this state, people started to understand, that when given a country, Jews act like everyone else.

JTA covered a film screening in Jerusalem about this so-called disconnect between Israel and the diaspora, it is where the above quote is pulled from. Israelis say we are scared of Israel and its reality. I say it is crap. North American Jews aren’t afaird of Israel, they just have nothing in common with it. Israeli Jews are either religious or secular (granted there is a growing yet tinny minority of liberal Jewish movements) American Jews are Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Conservodox, Flexidox and any other set of religious identities.

But most importantly, North American Jews are not nationally Jewish. We use a Western definition of national identity, where as Israelis use an ethic explanation of nationality. I do not believe Israel should stop doing this but it would be nice if the Jewish community stopped worrying about it. More younger Jews are going to Israel than ever before, all major candidates for President are strong supporters of the State and the money continues to flow from charities and governments to the pockets of Israel. I don’t understand why there needs to be the same kind of Jewish life in North America as there is in Israel.

I have no fear in committing to Israel. I just don’t want to nor think I should. Until the day that Israel starts addressing human rights as a security issues, my sensibilities will remain out of line with Israel. When Israel is a pluralistic in religious expression, when the state allows non-Orthodox religious figures to preform rites of passage, when Israel’s values are in line with my own, then there may be a deeper connection. But I don’t see that day coming very soon. There is no fear in my understanding of this relationship. I live a different reality and don’t want to change it to support a nation that does not or in many cases doesn’t care live to up to the standards and values I hold dear.