Posts from — July 2008

The BTs have not listened to Toby Katz, and that is unfortunate. Toby Katz is mammash like Moshe Rabbeinu, and the BTs are complaining like the eruv rav they are.

Mrs. Katz is rightly justified in her wrath, and writes,

OK, for you dyslexics out there, let’s read this slowly and carefully. Did you get that phrase “one major factor”? Let’s look at it again. *ONE* major factor.

And did you get that bit about “In all the articles and comments…..”? Huh? Huh? See, that means “There have been a LOT OF ARTICLES AND COMMENTS and they raised a lot of points and I don’t have to rehash EVERY SINGLE POINT EVERYONE EVER MADE before I can add one more comment of my own!”

I just wanted to add ONE factor, one factor that nobody else mentioned. I did not want to, and did not need to, repeat what everybody else has already hashed and rehashed ad infinitum, about everything that is wrong with Orthodox Jews. It’s coming out of my ears already. Got that? OK everybody now go away, all this negativity is totally getting on my nerves.

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To my BT bretheren: You don’t have to take this abuse! You can leave the prison of B’nai Niddah/Baal Teshuvah that Toby’s father and others of his ilk have built for you. The doors may look locked, but they are not. You can just walk out the door. Just push it open…you can walk right out. It looks scary, and it is…but you can leave this community as much as you want to. Go Modern, go secular, but for crying out loud, who needs this? The promise of “nachas” moments aren’t worth this kind of treatment and contempt…make your escape…it’s not too late.

Shmarya “The Heretic” Rosenberg explains how it works.

Toby Katz, the daughter of the late Rabbi Bulman, who was the mashgiach at Ohr Somayach in the 70s, wants you BT people to stop complaining all the time about not being accepted by the FFBs – FFBs…you know, the Fundamentalist from Birth folk.

Mrs. Katz writes on Cross Currents,

In all the articles and comments about whether Ba’alei Teshuva are fully accepted in Frum from Birth communities, one major factor I haven’t seen mentioned is the character of the individual BT. This applies also to gerim (converts). I know a convert who is a sweet, outgoing, pleasant, talented, easy-going person, and she finds the charedi community to be delightful and wonderful. Everyone is good, warm, intelligent, altogether admirable. I know another convert who is sour, dour, prickly and altogether a difficult person, and she finds the Orthodox community to be cold, unwelcoming, uncaring and exclusionary. And both of these women formed their impressions while living in the same neighborhood! Fancy that.

Well, surprisingly, not everyone is very happy with Mrs. Katz. In fact, there are a lot of complaints, including some angry at Cross Currents moderators for not allowing their comments through that to rebut Mrs. Katz. Their complaints are not getting through, but some of their complaints about their complaints not getting through are getting through, and…my gosh, these bnai niddah baal teshuvah people really do complain a lot!

And look – even someone claiming to be Miriam Shear is complaining…remember Ms. Shear? She’s the maniac who went crazy when the nice haredi men tried unsuccessfully to help her be like Rosa Parks and sit in the back of the bus.

Why won’t these all these people stop complaining and accept their lot at the back of the bus? They are so lucky to be there…so fortunate that the Dark Lights of kiruv have taken them out of the slavery of Egypt that the secular world truly is…and instead of eternal gratitude and simcha, they have so many complaints.

Fancy that.

…in the secular schools

His Mentalness, shlita, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, writes,

Immorality parades before us in the permissiveness of dress and unrestrained interaction of the sexes, and reaches new depths with the efforts to legitimize gay activity. Have we done enough to condemn this mode of behavior which is wreaking havoc on so many families and society in general? Murder is the extremist form of violence but its subtler forms of physical and verbal abuse are so prominent that even in the secular schools in our Jewish state there is so much violence by pupils towards teachers and fellow pupils, and the number of battered wives and abused children keeps growing.

Are our government and our educational system doing enough to control this modern form of murder?

Clean your own house, Rabbi Mental! And notice the “unrestrained interaction of the sexes”? That’s a reference to the push for “mehadrin” buses, where women must sit in the back.

Ohr Somayach remains in solid standing with Yeshiva University.

Nancy’s Story: Part VII

[An Aish Rabbi] frantically called me after mentioning it to another rabbi at Aish who apparently impressed upon him a “state of emergency” should I go to the press. [An Aish Rabbi] stated that he was not aware, even himself, of the great impact this action would have. It was obvious that [Aish Rabbi] believed every word he was told. Prior to speaking to another rabbi at Aish, he was quite calm.

This is why I am sure it was not his idea. He was scared!

He scared me saying that I wa in “grave spiritual danger” and that I will be responsible for destroying the faith of many secular people who would otherwise come to believe in the Torah. He said
the Jerusalem Post has done much damage to Judaism.

Update: Nancy adds,

DK….this was not about the injury…..it was about the Rabbi Eisenstein’s sham Beit Din which he conducts from home after being kicked off the “real” Beit Din of Jerusalem….. and about Rabbi Eisenstein having me kicked out of seminary…..which is much worse to me than the injury. I loved my school and Rabbi Eisenstein had me kicked out for being a Marrano Jew. I am more upset about injustices than physical injury.

The rabbi who urged my silence had my confidence and promised me in front of the entire class that he would personally see to it that this matter was resolved and I would be re-instated in my seminary. He never kept his word….he only scared me into keeping silent about Rabbi Eisenstein and that program he is affiliated with, Ohel Sarah Imenu. “Rabbi Eisenstein operates like a mafia”, I told the Aish rabbi. This Aish teacher told me not to use words such as, “corruption” and “mafia”. He told me I looked “emotional”. I felt that was a very manipulative statement geared to make me feel “silly” or “childish”. I lost respect. I became “wayward”.

This does not reflect on all of the teachers at Aish. Most have been very fair and kind to me

I personally have no problems with Aish for they took care of business when I needed them and taught me a lot. They took me from step one and gave me some direction. I am grateful for that. Rabbi Coopersmith and others were ones who did the right thing for me when I reported sexual harassment.

This situation which is on the board now was mostly about corruption. The teacher involved was not “ordained” but is called “rabbi”. But, I am also disappointed that they instruct students to keep silent.

In regards to the violence, when it first began to happen, the broken windows, etc., I called a different Aish rabbi from my neighborhood to help me. He did not believe that it could be Haraedim doing such things. He claimed there were burglars about.

However, this is not to say that he didn’t offer some tangible and helpful advice….

The rabbi in question in our current story knew all about the many violent attacks before
the 2 X 4 attack. The best advise he offered me was to go to a Kabballist. I had much admiration for him in the past but I saw clearly that they just wanted to keep me silent and blamed these incidents on some kind of “spiritual attack” stemming from my past.

In an essay foul and offensively self-aggrandizing even by Big Aish standards, Nechemia Coopersmith, the editor of Aish.com, explains the basis for Aish’s success in employing sleazy, deceptive, and glitzy tactics; from Bible Codes to a Zionist facade.

Actually, it’s simple. Aish HaTorah and other outreach organizations have the most powerful “product” in the universe - the Torah. Torah is the Almighty’s instructions for living. The Torah teaches us how to maximize our pleasure and potential in life. It’s the owner’s manual, the blueprint of creation and the most revolutionary book in history. As the Talmud says: “Turn it over, turn it over - everything is in it.”

Torah sells itself[...] Everything Aish does stems from this.

See? Big Aish’s success is from the Torah! Apparently, the Torah wants you to lie, deceive, and give glitzy canned answers, without even basic fact checking. That’s Torah, folks — that’s Big Aish. To attack Big Aish–on anything– is to attack the Torah itself. Big Aish IS the Torah, and Big Aish’s rabbis all Moshe Rabbeinus.

So please remember to address the Rosh Yeshiva in third person as a sign of worship respect!

These people are such incorrigible egoists they are actually heretics. They need to have their “museum” removed from its proximity to the Kotel. The Kotel — sponsored by Big Aish!

These maniacs cannot be allowed to represent traditional Judaism.

Aicha…

Susan Jacobs Jablow, a supporter of NCSY, writes in her op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, “Right of Reply: Happy to be Aish’d,” about her experience on an NCSY trip to Israel.

I also participated in a very intense summer program - a six-week NCSY Israel travel/study program for girls that was by turns exhilarating, inspiring, exhausting and emotionally overwhelming.

This from a woman who wrote this op-ed to defend NCSY.

Earlier: NCSY boasts that their trips produce public school “yeshivah products”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, once upon a time a bastion of civil rights work, has resorted to attempting to smear Steve Sailer as some sort of white supremacist the likes of David Duke and the music group Prussian Blue.

Why would they do such a thing? Are they really that thick that they can’t tell the difference between a moderate race realist like Sailer and a conspiracy theorist white supremacist like Duke?

Yes. They are really that thick. But they are also probably aware that Sailer put them on his “Scam Watch.”

The SPLC has long lost its way. I would strongly urge our more liberal friends to view them according to today’s reality, and not through prideful lens of yesteryear.

Unrelated money quote of Steve Sailer for today:

The plain truth is that, the farther up the social ladder a black person is born, the more money affirmative action puts into his pocket.

This is the wound it made.
These are some of the police reports (and affidavit) for various haredi harassments Nancy received.

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Liberal and Secular Jewish Parents, Warn Your Teens Not to Accept Candy From Strangers, or Pizza From NCSY/JSU!

The Orthodox Union president, Stephen Savitsky is busy. Busy, busy, busy. Turning liberal Jewish kids into yeshiva products! Thanks to the OU, your kid can have the value system you instilled in him replaced in a mere six weeks!

Steve Savitsky, the president of the Orthodox Union, the parent organization of NCSY, writes in the official organ of the OU, Jewish Action that,

“Six weeks of a camping experience can turn a Jewish public school student into a yeshivah product.”

Isn’t that wonderful?

Remember, though, it’s a process:

1) JSU public school recruitment through pizza parties
2) Latte and Learning
3) Shabbatons
4) Trips

Now, for those kids who are really open to rejection of western civilization and replacing it with a flat-out fundamentalist approach, have we got a trip for you! NCSY’s Kollel trip – because nothing advocates “Modern” Orthodoxy quite like “Kollel.”

“Six weeks of NCSY Kollel can transform a nice day school student into a budding ben Torah.”

To find a JSU chapter near you (and there are over 170 chapters, most, but not all of which are run by NCSY advisers who want to help your kid think like they do and not like you do, please go here.

These are the goals of NCSY. Not “to get more Jewish teens attending public high schools to do something Jewish! That’s it! It’s that simple!!!” They want to make the into “yeshivah products” — the head of the OU’s own coarse words. Not mine. Or, if they can, to make them into “b’nai Torah” — a type of Orthodoxy usually reserved for black hatters.

This is what they want. This is who they are.