kvetch \KVECH\, intransitive verb: To complain habitually. noun: 1. A complaint 2. A habitual complainer.

The JC reports,

His journey from yeshivah boy to blogger began only by chance several years ago when he was in Israel to visit a prominent Chasidic Rebbe. “A friend of mine mentioned that he was going to an Aish seminar, which gives you a crash course in learning in how to answer questions about Judaism and the historicity of our stories and reconciling science and the Creationist view,” he recalled.
[...]
The seminar impressed him, offering ideas on how evolution can be squared with Genesis and evidence for the Exodus. When he got home, he decided to follow up what he had heard, looking up websites on his computer. But the more he began to scour the internet, the more the Aish arguments – and eventually his faith – began to unravel.

I guess most haredim avoid the subject of evolution precisely because they know that it leads to heresy. Almost everyone in the haredi world intuitively understands that their outlook will be destroyed by the light of knowledge.

Haredism is a vampire.

Hat tip: Failed Messiah

Porn is more acceptable to the haredi than mixed dancing

Unfortunately, as the apparent smear by Moses Greenfield and his lawyer Peretz Bronstein demonstrates (because we really need more proof that the haredim are challenged when it comes to ethics or sexual issues), the ultra-Orthodox truly appear to view mixed dancing as worse than non-penetrating pedophilia.
[Read more →]

Richard Hoste is one of the bloggers for the new site, Alternative Right. In his defense of the new site, Hoste explains,
[Read more →]

A couple of weeks ago, the NY Jewish Week republished Steve Lipman’s piece on how he became a baal teshuvah at the Monsey branch of Ohr Somyach.

Needless to say, it was a real metzizah b’ peh.
[Read more →]

David Klinghoffer penned a bitter rebuke to the haredim in the Forward. Beyond BT republished it.

Klinghoffer notes,

For all its outward vigor, the Orthodox community, which is my own, appears to harbor a sickness. You don’t have to be an ideological critic of traditional Judaism to wonder if the cause should be sought in Orthodoxy itself.

But this call will not be heard, never mind heeded, by the Matzav readers, the VINN crowd, or any of the hardline heimeshes. Rather,
Failed Messiah, the Forward, and Beyond BT published it.

Those who committed the least sins are beating their breasts the hardest.

Most of us are fans of Stuff White People Like, a great stealth paleo-conservative voice that many mistake for hipster self-deprecation.

There is a Jew who is writing blog after blog inspired mostly by the latter interpretation. Stuff Jews Hate. Stuff Shmeckles Hate. Stuff Nazis Hate. They are all written by the same person, and no, not by me. If I did a Stuff Jews Hate blog, it would be quite different.

Update: The author noted that I forgot “Stuff Tushies Hate.” I don’t know how I forgot that one.

…for making a hero and martyr out of an ignorant asshole.

Thank you so much, organized Holocaustian community. I feel so much safer now.

Remember, Holocaustians just want to fight. Even if that means legitimizing and amplifying the unknown dregs of society. They don’t care. They want to fight the antisemites. Must fight the antisemites. Will fight the antisemites.

“Dummköpfe.”

This Intactivist site is so well done that it is barely perceptible as satire to many. In fact, “clean and sexy” has numerous Muslim friends, not just Intactivist ones.

Embedding is not enabled, apparently because of Youtube discrimination. But I hope my allies find a way to promote these videos.

This post is dedicated to our sometimes-more-PC-than-fair friends at Jewschool.

Rabbi Natan Slifkin has weighed in on our conversation about the existence of a half dirt, half flesh mouse, an animal Rabbi Chaim Salenger of Ohr Somayach has asserted that I cannot PROVE did not exist.

In response to Rabbi Chaim Salenger’s suggestion that Rabbi Slifkin had made a “mistake” (one of many), Rabbi Slifkin has weighed in on the discussion.

The funny thing is that Rabbi Salenger thinks he is presenting the view of Rav Aharon Feldman, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. R. Salenger states that spontaneous generation is “patently and obviously absurd” but that Chazal did not believe in it; when they wrote about the mouse that is half flesh and half-dirt, it was a Midrashic statement that must be interpreted allegorically.

But this is not Rav Feldman’s position, and with good reason. The discussion about the mouse is not a Midrash or an aggadata – it is a Mishnah, and a halachah. [Read more →]

The Forward has a front page story on the success of the Jewlicious Festival.

Not bad. Not bad at all, guys.