Category — Aish

There is something you should know about Big Kiruv, and it requires understanding an axiom of the black hatter-kiruv mindset.

The haredi believes that a secular or liberal Jew is going to hell. Perhaps of equal importance, he believes they he be greatly rewarded if he convinces someone to “become frum.”

So he will lie. Remember yesterday’s blatant lie from Big Aish? Why would they print that? Because they deem it beneficial towards cultivating baalei teshuvahs over the long haul. How does that justify lying? Because it is “pakuach nefesh” — saving a life or a soul. Just as you are allowed to save someone from the czar’s army, so too you are allowed to lie in order to get someone to wear a black hat on shabbos. And so too, places like Neve Yerushalayim and Ohr Somayach will lie to their students and to their families. So and so “just needs a few more months” in yeshiva/seminary.

Modern Orthodox Jews do not generally accept this mentality. But you should understand why Big Aish and other ultra-Orthodox kiruv-institutions are so frequently dishonest and deceptive. They believe that they are permitted to lie to you. At least, they pretend to themselves and each other that they believe that. And they are just smart enough to know that naked ultra-Orthodoxy is not an easy sell. Not at all.

If you were in their shoes, you would also be tempted to lie, deceive, and mislead. A lot. The only difference is, you might not actually do it.

There is almost no common denominator too low for Big Aish to try and tap into. The most inane fantasy…the most vanilla pop cultural references…Big Aish will either try to usurp the party, or use it as a straw men, a false dichotomy to the superior “authentic” Judaism of Big Aish.

This is a case study of the former. Big Aish has reprinted an article first published on the silly religious-Zionist site named Tzipiyah about how Judaism has something to do with the newest Batman movie.

“Judaism sides with Batman.”

No. Judaism does not, in fact, “side with Batman.” Judaism is not about vigilantism. Nor is it about superheroes who fly like bats.

The Judaism of Big Aish and Tzipiyah is a fantasy Judaism, with little or no connection to the actual paradigms of our religion and history. If this is traditional Judaism’s answer to assimilation, rest assured that the bulk of American Jewry will be Christian within a generation or two.

And if Big Aish really represents traditional Judaism, well…they are probably better off.

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…

Part IV

Nancy Cuevas Guzman alleges,

Speaking of sex harassment, a rabbi at Aish HaTorah took my hand and placed it on his crotch…he had an erection. That was my first wake up call. When any of these guys, even a rabbi, sees an American woman, Baal Teshuva, he thinks he has a victim.
They know they can easily “de-rail her”….like placing a stone before a blind person. Many young girls…and older, fall in love with their rabbis. This one wanted me as his concubine in addition to his wife.

I reported it and it seems they have handled it.

Earlier: Baruch Lanner’s most significant enabler working at Aish HaTorah

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of Cross-Currents is not very happy about the Jerusalem Post’s article, “You’ve been Aish’d.” He claims that it “alternates between silliness and shallowness.”

Intriguingly, Adlerstein writes,

The author makes it clear that she believes that the claims of Orthodoxy have some facial appeal, but nothing rigorous to back them up, and then proceeds to pen many declarative sentences – with nothing to back them up. Perhaps she was more influenced by her kiruv experience than she realizes.

Huh. It seems Adlerstein actually is well aware of the pitfalls of kiruv. So what’s the problem, Rabbi Adlerstein?

Orthodoxy “fails to acknowledge that Halacha has had a variety of interpretations across different times and cultures.” Gosh. Guilty as charged. I have failed to tell newcomers that some people don’t brok on Pesach. I guess we are even, though. The author doesn’t tell the reader that in all those different times and cultures, at least in the last two thousand years, all the differences concerned how to observe halacha, not whether to observe it, which is the issue for Jews outside of Orthodoxy.

This is a grotesque attempt at glossing over a very real and serious problem in the ultra-Orthodox kiruv world. Do not be fooled by Adlerstein’s feigned outrage. I was there. Many of these places often view Modern Orthodoxy as the primary theological enemy. This is not a phenomenon limited to ultra-Orthodox Judaism, either. As I learned in Dr. Heilman’s class, “Comparative Fundamentalisms,” all fundamentalist movements in the Abrahamatic faiths view their respective traditional religious communities as their primary rivals, even though the fundamentalist strains are in fact, the new and different paradigms. The traditional communities challenge and in fact, contradict their revisionism.

This is the reason that Rabbi Shafran of the Agudath Israel and others yell and scream that there is no such thing as “ultra-Orthodox.” This is not to feign unity, but rather, to insist that THEY are the regular Orthodox. It is to suggest — through name — that it is the Modern Orthodox who have shifted in paradigm, while they have not.

And this is simply not true.

As is customary in these circles, sex drives are blamed as the primary – perhaps only – reason for not being haredi. The headline for this essay, “Hormonal Judaism,“ is revealingly, and Adlerstein writes,

In other words, at the core of Judaism is the mind leading the heart, not the reverse. There is always room for disagreement, but I will take the Judaism of the mind and soul over hormonal Judaism.

That’s right, Rabbi Adlerstein. Mind = fahfrumpt, or you are clearly merely following your hormones.

Adlerstein is saying the same thing as Big Aish’s boner rabbi, advocating what we should call the hormonal straw man. That if you aren’t doing things their way, if you don’t believe as they do, it’s clearly because of your hormones.

There is no other explanation. If you are a woman and you don’t want to be ultra-Orthodox, it is because you are a complete and utter slut.

Earlier: They’ve Been Aish’d

Danielle Kubes penned an article for the Jerusalem Post, ‘You’ve Been Aish’d,’ that illuminates a few problems with Big Aish. These are savory accusations, so let’s chew them slowly.

How did a 15-year-old girl of the 21st century, who gave no thought to slipping tank-top straps, underage clubbing and kissing boys in camp cabins, end up considering covered elbows and knees a necessary virtue?

High school and university campuses have noticed this phenomenon for years: Their friends come back after school breaks from Orthodox outreach programs clutching Artscroll siddurs, imbued with a penchant for Zionism and an aversion to intermarriage.

“They’ve been Aish’d,” is the commonly whispered comment, equivalent to “They’ve been brainwashed.”

Of course, by the way, Aish’s PR people (5WPR is Aish’s PR firm…who better?) are typically batty in that self-righteous, infuriated way, and actually ask why brainwashing is a problem, and insist universities do the same thing. See the comments section.

Remember, Aish is not the most extreme of the Big Kiruv orgs, she is just one of the glitziest and sleaziest. Let’s rejoin Danielle as she exposes more of Big Aish’s greasy sleights of hand, and touches upon the Big Lie of Big Kiruv.

As valuable as the Orthodox lifestyle may be, the methods used by these organizations are eerily cultish and the results often short-lived.

The organizations present their Judaism as the uniquely accurate one, the Halacha that the non-Orthodox have merely forgotten but that all their ancestors invariably followed. Their assumption that all our great-great-grandparents grew up in an Eastern European shtetl contributes to divisiveness among Jews, for it fails to acknowledge that Halacha has had a variety of interpretations across different times and cultures.

What happens when someone brings this up?

A fellow participant on my trip was ignored by advisers when she remarked that for some Sephardim, the only halachic requirement was to be more modest than one’s neighbors, and that the stringent laws that guide current frum fashion (good-bye collarbones, elbows and knees) were unnecessary. Outright dismissal of alternative views may drive sales of skirt manufacturers, but it is not beneficial to learning about the history of Judaism.

Why the trips in the first place?

They remove participants from their normal environment and place them in a new, vulnerable context. Traveling is a mentally exhausting experience in any case. How much more so that is in Israel, where one suddenly finds oneself part of the majority - an intensely emotional experience that these programs capitalize on. Foreign ideas suddenly seem reasonable: Instead of lecturing someone with mostly secular friends to stop eating pork, it is easier to just stop serving it for a month in a completely Jewish environment.

Within such an environment, participants are made to feel guilty about a lack of observance. The organizations criticize the secular lifestyle as hollow so that young people, always in search of identity, undergo a crisis of confusion about which path to take.

A FALSE dilemma is presented: Be secular and remain in impurity, where life is merely a game played for fun - or move toward a purpose and filled with holiness.

When presented so simply, which road seems more attractive?

And remember…everything is wonderful in Frumville!

But the teachings are superficial and the Orthodox world they present bears not a trace of dissatisfaction: Never did I ever hear a speaker or trip leader discuss any problems within the Orthodox world. Apparently, as long as they follow proper Halacha, everybody is happy and fulfilled, with neither depression nor repression, money nor domestic problems.

If you or someone you know has a loved one or family friend–especially a young person–caught in the tangly web of Big Kiruv, please make sure they are aware of the true cost of these “subsidized” trips.

Protect our youth from getting Aish’d up!

Hat tip: JTA via EV

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…

Project Inspire, an Aish HaTorah program, has a full-line of frummer than thou “kiruv professionals” lined up to promote Big Aish’s glitzy brand of left-wing ultra-Orthodoxy. Just look at these hats:

We have Rabbi Yosef Viener, author of the must-read MO classic, “An Overview on the Role of Da’as Torah.” We have Rabbi Eliyahu Bergstein, who got his start the way any Big Aish “kiruv professional” should…selling the Torah Codes! And we have Rabbi Yaakov “The Genius” Salomon.

And they have backing. From the most intensely anti-Modern leaders of the haredi world. Read the “haskama” (certificate of kashrut) they are touting. Signed by the leaders of Israel’s right-wing ultra-Orthodox movement, Rabbis Elyashiv and Shteinman, Big Aish/Kiruv.com boasts that their mission is to stop the “devastating spiritual holocaust.” and lashes out at the “Inciters from both within and without.” They want to “save” (this is their language, sound familiar?) secular and liberal Jews.

No surprise, these “kiruv professionals” will be gracing Ohr Sameach, Monsey. Guess where else they will be instructing the faithful to stop the “spiritual holocaust” and stand up to the “inciters”?

The Young Israel of Kew Garden Hills.

The Young Israels were traditionally Modern Orthodox, albeit right-wing Modern Orthodox. My brother, in fact, was president of his local Young Israel. Having a Big Kiruv conference there—especially considering who is backing them–is absolutely egregious. This Young Israel is holding hands not only with the left-wing ultra-Orthodox, but the right-wing ultra-Orthodox. These are the people who denounce secular studies and the work ethic in their entirety.

This is whom the Young Israel of Kew Garden Hills is collaborating with. This is whom they take directives from. Absolute, no holds barred, haredim.

Perhaps our friends at Beyond BT are promoting this series? They have posted information on it, and they themselves live in Kew Garden Hills. Perhaps they can explain why right-wing ultra-Orthodox recruiters are being invited to their own local Young Israel?

The National Council of Young Israel, who is so concerned that nothing of left-wing Modern Orthodoxy invade their synagogue spaces, apparently has no such parallel border when it comes to a policy against the radically fahfrumpt.

Maybe before allying to convert those “wandering in darkness,” the NCYI should take a long look in the mirror.

Just another stab in the back of secular and liberal Jewry by the right-wing Modern Orthodox.

This post was edited to better flesh the men behind the “hats.”

Further Update: It seems important, on occasion, to contrast the lies and fanaticism of Big Kiruv to that of the Modern Orthodox, (or close to it), even if it isn’t nearly as widespread. I feel they (Rabbis Student and Steve Brizel) want this known, so I’m going to help them out, and end on a positive note for the beginning of the week. I personally don’t really believe the following, but I don’t not believe it. And I do respect it as a legitimate approach to offer the secular and liberal Jewish community. Not like the Torah Codes/Gedoylim worship/Sloppy and Sleazy Salesmanship of Big Aish and Co.

Hirhurim writes,

Each Jew has an opportunity to be a part of something bigger, to transcend his own personal abilities and join a group spanning the world and the centuries, to not only follow in their footsteps but to add to their accomplishments — to add a unique letter to their Torah scroll. Perhaps you can do that with other religions but as someone born Jewish, you have a unique opportunity to join the famous Jewish story and add your own chapter to it. If you have to ask why, then this argument is not for you. However, I believe that in this modern world that is full of alienation, this is a powerful and attractive argument.

Big Aish is back online! Let’s give them a hug to welcome them back.

Recently, rabbi Harry Maryles agreed with Marty Bluke that Big Aish’s lying for the sake of kiruv is not okay.

Now, before we say, “But it’s pakuach nefesh! Big Aish is helping the Jewish people by lying to them,” let’s keep an open mind, and look at the objections of two Modern Orthodox Jews to Big Aish lying for kiruv.

The statements in question from Big Aish’s article are as follows.

Let’s get something perfectly clear: Jewish women work. One of my neighbors is a nuclear physicist. I’m a zoo veterinarian.
[...]
And nowadays, like women all over the Western world, they work in every field. Some run their own businesses or are part of a larger corporation. Here in Israel one of my neighbors is a nuclear physicist. Another is a school principal. Several good friends are lawyers. One’s a pediatrician. Two are successful artists. I’m a zoo veterinarian.
[...]
My point is, little is forbidden to us. We work in the fields we want. We have open choices. We can choose to work part-time or full-time.

First of all, Israeli ultra-Orthodox society is not “like the western world.” Not for women, not for men. Okay?

So. Our friend Morty wrote,

If Aish Hatorah was a Modern or Centrist Orthodox institution then these statements would be perfectly true and not misleading. However, Aish Hatorah is a Charedi institution and it’s goal for it’s students is that they join Israeli Charedi society. The fact is that if Elizabeth had been born to a Charedi family she would not have had a choice to be a veterinarian, a nuclear physicist or anything other then a school teacher. University study is strictly prohibited. In Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak even getting a high school diploma is prohibited (see this post No Bagrut for Beis Yaakov girls?). All the women that she brings as examples fall into one of 2 categories:

1. Baalei teshuva
2. They grew up in modern homes

None of the women cited grew up in a Charedi home in Israel, because if they had they would not be where they are today.

In addition to the issue with secular education and university, there is an issue of tznius. In many parts of the Israeli Charedi world women are not allowed to drive a car because it is not tzanua. There are many seforim published in the last few years on tznius which prohibit women from working in any non-religious workplace. Therefore to state little is forbidden to us is misleading if not an outright lie according to Aish Hatorah’s hashkafa.

I find it very offensive when Charedi kiruv institutions use examples of Baalei Teshiva or people who were brought up in a more Modern home. Using these people as examples of how well religious Jews can fit into society is very misleading when the institutions themselves don’t believe in that hashkafa. According to Charedi hashkafa, Modern Orthodoxy is pasul and University study is prohibited, yet those are the examples they site when trying to be mekarev people. None of the faculty at Aish Hatorah in Yerushalayim send their daughters to university and their daughters do not have the ability to do what they want.

Rabbi Maryles thought Bluke’s post was so important and well written that he reprinted it in its entirety. He noted in the comments section that,

The Aish site implies that such options are perfectly viable when in fact it actually discourages going to college.

In addition to the lies, which is not the fault of the author, is something else kind of interesting. Buried in the usual Big Aish blather about how the Western world sucks and the haredi world rocks…

The Western world defines success as being at the top of ones field, wielding power and making lots of money. In stark contrast stands the Jewish definition: To what degree have you become a developed human being?

…is a shocking admission on how weird, even freakish, are the demands on professional women if followed seriously.

Because, lets face it, I looked weird: the only one in a dress on night duty during large animal rotations.

I would love to meet the rabbi who encouraged her to wear a dress during “large animal rotations” so I could grab his black hat off and smack his head with it over and over and over….