Category — Judaism

In the comments section, Cross Currents has posted a comment by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. Rabbi Slifkin, of course, was targeted by Tropper for bans and slander for embracing science that contradicts the New Earth policy of the haredim.

Tropper’s downfall should be taken as a warning by all haredim tempted to deny the imprint of God because of the nonsensical worship of rabbis, or Avodas Gedoylim.
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The concept of “yeridos hadoros” the idea of a falling of the generations, a fantasy in ultra-Orthodox Judaism that each generation since the revelation at Sinai is less in tune, or perhaps even less wise or even intelligent than the last one — is discussed at Rationalist Judaism, a Rabbi Natan Slifkin blog.
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I saw “A Serious Man” last night with Halfsours, who contributed ideas to the following.

Do not believe Big Aish. “A Serious Man” is a wonderful film, one of the very best intensely American Jewish movies, perhaps the greatest (excluding documentaries…apples and oranges).

The wise, Orthodox rabbi is certainly not “defamed” as Aish asserts. Not at all. It is he who has the best answer, not the Reform-ish and Conservative-ish rabbis. But his wisdom isn’t accessible, for authentic tradition itself is perceived as utterly fossilized.

It is liberal institutional Judaism that is portrayed as ineffectual to the point of being lethal.

In this week’s parsha (Torah portion), Pinchas, we learn that if a Jewish man sleeps with a gentile woman, they both deserve to be put to death with a spear through their genitals.

It is pretty hard to find middle ground on intermarriage with the Orthodox when this is their starting position.

Whenever I heard this parsha as a young adult, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Who are these Midianite women, and why don’t they attend my high school?”

Family members of mine are going to attend a wedding of two Lesbians (neither is family). They are not thrilled about this, and like me, see no rationale for same sex marriages in so-called “traditional” Judaism. (Note to my social-Left readers: not seeing a rationale for same sex marriages under traditional Jewish auspices is not the same as stoning gays to death — thanks in advance for recognizing this subtle, but important distinction.) What I find so grating is that the Conservative Movement has moved towards endorsing same-sex marriage even as they continue to rail against intermarriage. That’s just weird. At least the Reform are consistent in their absolute rejection of the need for any semblance of a traditional Jewish family unit. (I guess).

Of course, the Modern Orthodox are not exactly consistent either. They have little problem with adoption of half of Korea by Orthodox Jews who can’t have kids and dumping them in the mikvah, but God help you if you marry out.

Then there are the haredim, who are so busy keeping converts who don’t reject an “Old Earth” science or macro-evolution, that they are destined to accept no one but freaks, and will then dutifully whisper to each other how converts tend to be nuts, even worse than BTs (baal teshuvahs).

The fall of the Conservative movement to this nonsense was quite natural, of course. Their young rabbinical types are frequently dour, humorless types whose only pleasure in life is pushing the envelope on social revolution issues against dour, sometimes quite funny people whose only pleasure is differentiating the Conservative movement from the Reform.

“Accept it as ‘a gift from G-d’ and keep quiet.”

This is another heartwarming story from Rabbi Weinbach — the nefarious leader of Ohr Somayach, the leading institution bent on spreading quiescent fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox Judaism to unsuspecting liberal and secular Jews.

According to the Rosh Yeshva of Ohr Somayach, you had better count even your pocket change when dealing with the grubby hands of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Rabbi Weinbach warns,

Several years ago a rabbi from out-of-state accepted a call to a community in Houston, Texas. Some weeks after he arrived he had an occasion to ride the bus from his home to the downtown area. When he sat down he discovered that the driver had accidentally given him a quarter too much change. As he considered what to do he thought to himself, “You’d better give the quarter back. It would be wrong to keep it.”

Then he thought, “Oh, forget it, it’s only a quarter. Who would worry about this little amount? Anyway, the bus company charges too much fare; they will never miss it. Accept it as ‘a gift from G-d’ and keep quiet.”

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Sometimes it seems that Judaism itself is headed either for oblivion or fundamentalism. And suddenly, a new hope arises. “From out of the ashes,” as the Zionists would say.

This, brothers and sisters, could be a new beginning. If only we believe. If only we find the strength.

The Forward reports,

More and more foods have been classified as kitniyot in recent years, as Ashkenazi rabbinic positions have hardened across a wide expanse of Halacha, or traditional religious law. Of late, however, something of a rebellion has erupted among pockets of Modern Orthodox Jews who have decided to eat kitniyot
[...]
“The attitude in the last few decades has changed and become stricter to the point of absurdity,” said kitniyot expert Daniel Sperber, a professor of Talmud at Bar Ilan University. Recent additions to the kitniyot list, he said, include cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil and even hemp.

Opponents of the growing list point out that many products now deemed kitniyot, like sweet corn and soybeans, were unknown to the medieval sages whom today’s rabbis claim to follow, and therefore cannot be covered by their prohibition.

The people have spoken, rabbeinu. Enough is enough. Dayeinu.

For if you had merely prescribed that we separate milk and meat, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we wait an hour between milk and meat, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we abstain the week of menses, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we cut off the tip of the foreskin, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we not wear short-shorts, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we wear a hat of any kind when davenning, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we listen to the rabbis on issues directly related to ritual, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we keep one day yom tov, it would have been enough.
If you had merely prescribed that we not eat bread during Pesach, it would have been enough.

Day, Dayeinu, Day, Dayeinu, Day, Dayeinu, Dayeinu, Dayeinu!

Amy Klein reports,

On April 5, 1968, Arthur Waskow was walking to his house in Washington among rioters and armed guards. It was a neighborhood under curfew, the night after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
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“I was walking home past the army, and my kishkes began to say, ‘This is Pharaoh’s Army,’ ” recalled Waskow, now a rabbi who lives in Philadelphia.

This is how Rabbi Waskow describes our army and national guard who were merely trying to prevent rioters from burning and destroying our capital after that horrific event.

To describe U.S. efforts to protect our capital from even more extensive destructing than she received in such terms is as bizarre as it is deplorable. Keep in mind, this statement is decades later.

Back then, he was hardly a practicing Jew, and that night, for the first time, he really thought about what freedom meant at the Passover seder.

Uh huh. Clearly the Hagaddah teaches us we shall let the people riot and allow them to destroy their own (and others) neighborhoods. So happy you found meaning in the Exodus story, Rabbi Waskow.

Frightened and inspired, Waskow went on to write a new version of the Haggadah…

Yeah, well, your *contemporary* interpretation is going to need a new text, now, isn’t it?

Lawrence Auster, a Christian conservative of Jewish descent, asks on View From the Right,

A reader says that I am unfairly blaming Jews for the open-borders position promoted by well-known Jewish organizations which he says are not real Jewish organizations but liberal groups dishonestly calling themselves Jewish. I reply that he’s doing vis a vis liberal Jews what Islam apologists do vis a vis extremist Musims, claming that the extremists are not “real” Muslims.

The answer is yes and no. Progress By Pesach indeed is an American Jewish movement, because it is endorsed by the mainstream Jewish establishment. There is no way around this at this time. This is fact.

However, there is an important difference with the Muslims, and an internal contradicton as well. The Jewish state of Israel herself is NOT interpreting the Torah to mean open borders, or more accurately, amnesty, to illegal aliens. If it stopped there, then you would have the Jewish state at odds with the center of the Diaspora, and that alone would suggest that indeed, there is good reason to trust that this is quite a different situation than if, say, Muslim apologists claim “real” Islam dictates that shoplifters should receive community service and psychological counseling, while Saudi Arabia says they should have their hand chopped off.

But the situation is not even that.

More telling, the vast majority of mainstream Jewish organizations claiming that the Torah dictates such policies to the Jews to advocate “a path to citizenship” to illegals do not claim such interpretations are mandatory for the State of Israel.

Hmm….

The real question is, Mr. Auster, if these mainstream Jewish groups are so sure of their Torah interpretation…why aren’t they pressuring Israel as well?

The best answer I can come up with is that they themselves don’t really believe that this is, in fact, the only, or even best, possible interpretation for “Loving The Stranger,” and therefore they themselves don’t believe this is actually Judaism.

Therefore, the question is not on we few outspoken affiliated Jews who dispute that this is a correct interpretation of the commandment to “Love the Stranger,” but rather, a question on the majority of American Jewish ogranizations who do claim to a Biblical mandate to love The Stranger as defined by amnesty and an end to raids. Yet strangely, they do not seem concerned AT ALL that Israel is actively declining to do so.

So the real question is on their inconsistency. Only when this question is resolved do you arrive at the real question. Because the question is not whether or not they are Jewish. They most certainly are. The question is if even these Jewish machers themselves believe this interpretation is Judaism. Because even they do not appear to seriously believe that, or they would be up in arms over Israel’s strangers. The only ones who really seem to believe consistently are the far-Left.

And we all know that they have a propensity for crafting some very dubious interpretations about what it means to “love the stranger.”

I have long noticed that while mainstream Jews will become infuriated when Messianics attempt to merge Judaism and Christianity, many don’t seem to mind much when Jews dabble in Buddhism, or even identify as Buddhists, even while maintaining a Jewish identity.

Why not?

Leonard Cohen attempts to answer this question.

The NY Times reports,

Mr. Cohen is an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath even while on tour and performed for Israeli troops during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. So how does he square that faith with his continued practice of Zen?

“Allen Ginsberg asked me the same question many years ago,” he said. “Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I’ve practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity. So theologically there is no challenge to any Jewish belief.”

Zen has also helped him to learn to “stop whining,” Mr. Cohen said, and to worry less about the choices he has made. “All these things have their own destiny; one has one’s own destiny. The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

Obviously the fact that Cohen performed in Israel during the Yom Kippur War is a far less pertinent question about his Buddhism than his shabbos observance. Not sure how they botched that one so badly.