Category — Haredim

Just a reminder to my fellow American Jews…please make sure to check with the Israeli Gedoylim before voting!

The Forward reports,

The American presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain heads into its final stretch, a group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel is preparing to release a statement that urges the country’s American expatriates to exercise their voting rights in November by casting absentee ballots.

The statement comes on the heels of a visit to Israel by Haredi lobbyist Rabbi Yehiel Kalish, who is the director of government affairs at Agudath Israel of America, a leading Haredi advocacy organization. Kalish spent a week in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak early this month, meeting with rabbis to request their help in mobilizing Americans living in Israel to register and vote.
[...]
Political activists were more direct. “You would have trouble convincing me that this is not done in support for McCain by people who favor McCain,” said Gershon Baskin, founder and CEO of the dovish Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

If you think this is just some general “get out the vote” push, you should have your brain examined by the Chazon Ish.

Despite the activists’ enthusiasm for the drive, the notion of a nonpartisan campaign is lost on some of them. While Agudath Israel has stated that it will not show favoritism toward either candidate, Neuwirth holds out a hope that the rabbis encouraging participation in the poll will also offer recommendations of whom to vote for. “The same as happens in [elections in] this country, we will vote for whoever the rabbis say is better,” she told the Forward.

These people have no moral right to call themselves American. Dual citizenship with ANY Middle Eastern country is a very bad idea. People should have to choose.

Hat tip: EV

Luke Ford has the story.

Oh, he was also part of the smear against Rabbi Slifkin. Because as we all know, embracing an “Old Earth” and macro-evolutionary theory means you aren’t a TRUE JEW.

But stealing…well, that’s just fine, now, isn’t it?

Barry writes,

Whilst DK concerns himself with such naarishkeit as public transportation, Rabbi Yosef Aryeh Lorincz, Rosh Kollel of ‘Dirvei Shir’ of Bnei Brak, two times prize winner of the Bnei Brak Council Torah Sefer Prize (for his sefer on Pikuah Nefesh and his sefer of R Akiva Eiger) and the son of former long serving hareidi Knesset Member Shlomo Lorincz, has published a further scholarly sefer called ‘Pelaot Edotekha’ in which he considers some of the most important issues facing Jewry today such as:-

”Is it permitted to eat the flesh and drink the blood of demons bearing in mind that although they look a bit like people they are neither human nor animal and secondly do they carry Teumas Meis or are we forbidden to have advantage of a deceased demon like a gentile”

Bearing in mind that both Rabbis Lorincz and Weismandl are of Hungarian stock, perhaps the later should contact the former to discuss providing hechshering for Demon gulash.
–
If anyone knows the answer to this important shaylah (question), please feel free to write in, but remember to source properly!

Not only can’t men and women sit on a bus together, but apparently, boys and girls are not allow to fly in the air. No, not in a plane. The old fashioned way — with their arms/wings! That’s right, male and female superheroes are not allowed to fly together.

Failed Messiah has the story.

What is your opinion about male and female superheroes flying together? Would you let it go, as no worse than just breaking the law while screwing and brutalizing your illegal workforce, or would your foot down and say, “Vusvusvusvusvusvusvusvusvus!!”

MOChassid (found via Dov Bear) found a doozey in Mishpacha Magazine.

The widespread poverty in the chareidi world – according to government statistics 18% of Israelis living below the poverty line are chareidi – will only worsen, as the parental resources to assist each successive generation become thinner and thinner. What the solutions might be I do not know.

Wow…if only we could somehow think of some way to alleviate this growing haredi poverty…

Many in the Orthodox community dismiss any and all of PETA’s complaints as the machinations of anti-semites. I don’t. Because sometimes the anti-semites are right.

Just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean their complaint is wrong.

Maybe when the chassidic ritual of kaparos was five chassidic dudes in a shtetl swinging five chickens, it was one thing, but for the masses of Brooklyn, this thing is out of hand, and it must stop.

Hat tip: The JTA

For a tenth man for your minyan, is it better to free a slave or build a golem?

When you are in the Dark Light, you simply ignore so much of the strange buzz flying around the edges of the superstitious and silly haredi communal mindset. Only later does it become clear that this absolute fundamentalist nonsense is coming from the top. As Shmarya likes to quote that old Yiddish saying, “The fish stinks from the head.”

Anyway, never mind what I think. Clearly the Talmud is always true and absolutely literal. Let’s take a look at this week’s Talmudic lesson from Dark Light, on the choice between getting your 10th man for a minyan from a slave you free, or through making a golem.

Rabbi Weinbach, the “dean” of Ohr Somayach, writes,

There were only nine Jews in the synagogue without a tenth man in sight to complete the minyan-quorum necessary for communal prayers. Rabbi Eliezer deemed the situation an emergency and liberated his Canaanite slave to complete the minyan.

How could he do so, asks the gemara, when it is forbidden to liberate such a slave, in accordance with the Torah command “You shall enslave them forever” (Vayikra 25:46)? The answer given in our gemara is that this ban does not apply when the slave is liberated for the sake of fulfilling a mitzvah. (In Mesechta Berachot 47b this answer is challenged on the grounds that you cannot fulfill a mitzvah through the committing of a sin, and the response is that a mitzvah of communal nature has a special status.)

The question has been raised as to why it was necessary for Rabbi Eliezer to come into conflict with the ban on liberating slaves in order to complete his minyan if he could simply have created a tenth man? The Talmudic sages certainly had the power to do so as is evident from the incident described in Mesechta Sanhedrin (65b). The Sage Rava created a man by using the mystical formula in “Sefer Hayetzira” and sent his creation to his colleague Rabbi Zeira. When the latter spoke to this creature and received no response he realized that this was a man-made man with no soul and the power of speech that goes with it. He therefore ordered it to return to its dust.

If Rabbi Eliezer preferred liberating his slave to making a man, it would seem that this is proof that a man-made man is not considered a Jew who can complete a minyan. What is interesting, however, is that the question of whether such a creature (commonly referred to as a “golem”) is eligible for inclusion in a minyan was actually dealt with some three centuries ago by Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi in his Responsa of Chacham Tzvi (93). He concludes that even though there is an argument to be made that since the creations of tzaddikim are considered as their offspring and therefore the golem should be considered a Jew, the aforementioned incident of Rabbi Zeira consigning Rava’s golem to the dust bin proves that such a creature cannot be included in a minyan. His reasoning is that Rabbi Zeira decided that the speechless creature had no value and if he was capable of completing a minyan he would not have so readily disposed of him.

Rabbi Mendel Weinbach is unreal, and so is the haredi world he recruits for. And they become so infuriated when you say they have a “medieval” mentality.

If this is “Torah true Judaism,” we don’t want any.

The Gedoylim Offer Salvation!

One of the many things not taught either in liberal Judaism or Modern “Orthodoxy” (Remember! A little Torah is sometimes worse than no Torah!) is to trust the Great Ones to protect you from spiritually damaging information. This is a popular concept in right-wing ultra-Orthodoxy. So popular, in fact, that a post on this very subject is touted as the most popular editorial ever online for the haredi Dei’ah V’ Dibur, which has strong ties apparently to the Israeli Yated Ne’eman.

In “Why We Censor,” DVD notes,

Yet the spirit of the Western world, in its media, in its science, in its art, in its politics, is a challenge to the authentic Torah spirit from the floor to the rafters.

Learn this. It says it all. This is the Harediban mentality.

What is their solution?

FOLLOW THE GEDOYLIM!

Whoever wants to, is free to go it alone. He or she can plunge in to the treacherous waters of the modern world alone, and try to reach the truth heroically alone. It is a big task for an individual.

The rest of us will take shelter under the banner of gedolei Yisroel. As in the generation of Chanukah, so too in our generation — the gedolei veziknei hador cry out to us all: Mi laSheim eilai!

Whoever wants to reach Hashem should join them!

A Chassidic man and six other men are facing indictments for beating the shit out of a woman and threatening to kill her for refusing to move out of the community after leaving ultra-Orthodoxy, and for talking to men.

While the right-wing ultra-Orthodox ban careers and secular education, apparently, Baruch HaGedoylim, there is money to be made in brutalizing women. The ringleader of this modesty vigilante was apparently paid $2,000 for his role in this vicious beating.

What neighborhood does this modesty vigilante group feel comfortable attacking woman and threatening her to leave?

Maalot Dafna. Home of the Dark Light.

All the haredi leaders in the vicinity connected in any way to these Harediban criminals should be asked to publicly condemn the violence that took place. If they do not, all institutions they are connected to should be asked to disassociate from these rabbis. If the institutions refuse, then the yeshivas, synagogues and day schools they are connected to should be bulldozed.

Hat tip: NCG

Hopefully, management will take control of these crazed penguins, but the truth is, you know you are hitting home when the frummies start violating Godwin’s Law. I suspect a lot of them are Chabadniks, because, 1) The Rubashkins of Agriprocessors are a Chabad affiliated and supported business, and 2) Chabadniks are notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism. Big Aish and of course, OU types simply don’t behave this way unless they are very young. Even Dark Light type fundies don’t act like this. They just scream about how Evolution is a scam and we can’t understand the reasoning behind some stupid, stupid new Gedolylim ban because WE AREN’T ON THEIR MEDREGAH!!!! Idiots. Anyway, I wrote the following:

Listen up, penguins. Some of us came here way before you people, when you were still shlugging kaparos (oh, right, you still do that, sorry) and cursing the “treife medinah.” And OUR ancestors fought hard for workers rights and conditions, so if you think we are going to shut up because you call us “Nazis,” well, you are in for a rude shock.

We will gladly end the supply of kashrut rather than allow these shenanigans to continue in the name of kashrut. Got it?

So why not just clean up your act?