Category — Charedim

Even for only a “half-hearted defense of AptriProcessors,” this is absurd.

Tamar Fox writes that,

We should also not forget ways in which the Rubashkins have been generous in the past. This includes donating kosher meat to various Jewish institutions, and exporting members of their small community to even smaller communities that otherwise wouldn’t have had a minyan for the High Holidays.

With all due respect, WHO CARES?!? If they would export their minyan back to Russia (for good) then the American Jewish community should be grateful.

Rubashkin — just another post-war haredi success story.

Reb Leibish wrote an interesting explanation on why kosher slaughtering is similar to other industries that are legal but in disrepute. I strongly recommend that the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), the Orthodox Union (OU), and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) consider what Reb Leibish has to say, instead of their knee jerk reaction to blame a fast deteriorating situation–in terms of gentile goodwill–on unions and anti-semitism. I know it is hard for Orthodox Jews to believe that Orthodox Jews are ever at fault, but try to listen to Reb Leibish.

Mohammed wrote,

“A hechsher is to certify that the food is kosher.”

Mohammed you are both right and wrong. There is a bigger picture which Haredim would do well to take account of-

Mohammed, you do not understand that Shecitah is extremely controversial within non-Jewish society. Non-Jews are not that bothered by the fact that the Kosher meat industry is as big a scam as the television evangelical movement praying on superstition and delusional neuroses. If Jews are happy to be victims of their clergy and their agents then who are non Jews to protest. What bothers non Jews is the slaughter of cattle without pre-stunning. They regard such cattle as being victims of a patently cruel and barbaric practice. The denials of cruelty put forward by the advocates of Shecitah are regarded by non-Jewish society as being motivated by self-interest and as true as the claims by the gambling industry that gambling is just another harmless form of entertainment or the recent claims of the smoking industry that the dangers of smoking are unproven. Notwithstanding those doubts, Shecitah is tolerated in the USA just as gambling and the tobacco industry are tolerated. When you operate within an already barely tolerated industry, you need to be very careful in not making enemies. So for example, if I wish to operate a casino, it would be wise of me to accept restrictions on the income I might make and to avoid employing anyone who might have underworld connections. So too, for example, I may agree to restrict the number of slot machines, or the maximum stake permitted, or the sale of alcohol so as not to antagonize local community leaders. Likewise, it would be wise of me to be scrupulous in paying taxes and wages and complying with health and safety laws. As a casino owner I am in a far more vulnerable political position then say a building contractor who cheats on taxes and exploits workers and my actions should reflect this.

That is the trap the Hareidi rabbis have fallen into with the Rubashkins. It should be obvious to Hareidi rabbis that a person who runs a controversial business such as slaughtering animals without pre-stunning has to be of utmost moral and legal probity just as someone who runs a casino. In order to avoid criticism, the rabbis claim to be a supervisory authority interested in Kashrus alone and to be independent of Rubashkin, but only a Haredi would fall for such a legal fiction. Clearly Rubashkin and the kashrus authorities are tied together and in each others pockets. If anything, Rubashkin can be considered as much an agent of the rabbis as they can be considered his agents! Just look at the clean bill of health just given by those Rabbis to Rubashkin! What are the rabbis scared of? That is what turns peoples stomachs against Hareidim. Their fanaticism is matched by their stupidity and political naivety.

The Hareidim have created a lot of new enemies for Kashrus amongst non Jewish Americans. Mohammed, it may come as a shock to you but in order to survive attacks on animal welfare grounds, kashrus in the USA needs the moral and political support of both Jewish and non-Jewish Americans. The Hareidim, through supporting Rubashkin, have done a lot to lose such support. Unlike the NK, the existence of Kashrus in the USA cannot rely on the Iranians.

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.

–
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.

Gitty is speaking on a site created to support her in her struggle. I don’t want to take sides, but I would just say that no matter which side you are on, we should all appreciate that it isn’t easy for a young woman who loves her daughter very much to stand up for her rights to a fundamentalist underworld that hates her for returning to the liberalism of her ancestors.

Welcome back to the Haskalah, Gitty. Please keep us updated. You may not be quite home yet, mammelah, but you are on your way back.

May all the children of the Haskalah (and their friends and family) who lose their way, and fall to the dark entrapments of haredism be comforted. And may they, or at least their descendants, find the strength to find their way back.

And to all the children of the Haskalah caught in the misery of haredism, whether Chassidic or B’nai Torah, I would remind you of this:

Sometimes the gates to a western civilization are open, and sometimes the gates to western civilization are closed. But the gates to personal acceptance of science, history, and an appreciation of nature and the arts are always open.

I heard through the grapevine that friends of Gitty Grunwald are exploring options to sue the Satmar community of KJ in Monroe. KJ pressured Gitty to get engaged, and then they expelled her from school for being engaged. Gitty does not have the degree nor the education needed for vocational success. The only thing these KJ Satmar people are trained for is to be ultra-Orthodox fanatics, so they can pay for those individuals who decide they want to burn in hell and do something else.

If you or someone you know would take this case on consignment, please contact me, and I will pass along your information to those who need to know.

Abbot Katz joins the black-hatters who cunningly object to the term “ultra-Orthodox.” What do they want? What they really want is to be identified as the real “Jews,” nothing less. They will complain at every other possible term until everyone else is deemed treif/insufficiently frum (that’s you, Modern Orthodoxy), until and unless they are accepted as the standard, despite their ever-expanding new stringencies and radicalism.

Katz writes in the Forward that,

“Orthodox Jews seem to be seen as marking the spiritual baseline, while the “ultras” are typed as a kind of fanatic insurgency, sparse but dangerous.”

Oh, no one is saying you people are “sparse.” Your numbers and power grows everyday.

“In fact the Chasam Sofer is very much of a piece with his rabbinic predecessors and successors. Nowhere in the yeshiva world is he credited with striking a stance at any fundamental remove from his forebears.”

Why is this about the Chasam Sofer? He is hardly considered the father of ultra-Orthodoxy. Let us be clear. Katz is avoiding the true areas of significant change, from traditional Judaism to quiescent fundamentalism.

The two substantial quiescent fundamentalist movements are the Chassidic movements and the contemporary yeshiva movements respectively. These movements have changed, and their creations were both departures from normative Judaism. Additionally, many sectors of each group became more radical over time, particularly in the post-war period. That is to say, more fahfrumpt, with a greater interpretative stringency in Jewish law aimed at maximum disengagement with the secular world.

“Again, this peculiarly binary view suggests that those rabbinic giants who predated the Chasam Sofer were by definition something less, or other, than “ultra.”

No. This is to say that the normative pulpit rabbis who preceded the likes of “gedoylim” like Rabbi Ahron Kotler and the Chazon Ish were by definition something less, or other, than “ultra.”

Yaakov Menken weighs in on the ULTRA_ORTHODOX blog Cross-Currents, where he displays a profound ignorance of the difference between activist and quiescent fundamentalist classification.

“Most complaints about the use of the “Ultra” modifier stop there — pointing out that the term is both inaccurate and pejorative, and seems to lump Satmar Chasidim together with Kahanists and Yigal Amir.”

This is SUCH nonsense. Kahanists, like Rabbi Kahane himself, are rightly considered to be radicals stemming from the Modern Orthodox camp. And both Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir attended the flagship right-wing Modern Orthodox universities, Yeshiva University and Bar Ilan respectively. A full embrace of religious-Zionism is outside the tenants of ultra-Orthodoxy. Menken clearly doesn’t know what he is talking about. I’m shocked, just shocked, at his ignorance. Who would think that the creator of Cross-Currents and “The Everything Torah Book,” would get these basic sociological classifications so terribly wrong?

The big lie of the ultra-Orthodox is that they are normative traditional Judaism. And this is one of the reasons they prefer hagiography to history. History is not their friend. And the entire haredi-kiruv industry would fall apart if their lies were exposed.

I hope, over time, they will be.

Some of you may know I have some misgivings about the whole “year in Israel” at yeshiva and seminary. Having done that myself, I will probably send my kids to France instead. At least there, they may learn a second language.

Ezzie writes of his rebbe’s sound advice.

I still recall a conversation I had with a Rebbe in a certain yeshiva I was in for a few months. …

As we started to walk up the hill toward his home, he asked me a few basic questions, including what my plans were for the coming year. I responded that I was likely going to be going to Lander College. He questioned why I was going to college, to which I looked at him, slightly confused, as I really didn’t understand what he was asking. After a couple of seconds I responded that I needed to get a degree so I can make a living. He immediately spoke up and said simply

“That’s a copout.“

This is what is being promoted in far too many yeshivas in Israel. This is what they stand for.

The road to nowhere.

It’s crappy, awful frum music with some lame-ass hip-hop influences and…oh…oh wait…could it be…the “hip-hop” influences the Great Ones object to? Is that the issue?

Hat tip: SJ

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