Emes Ve-Emunah II

They are Animals!

2012-01-10T14:04:00.004-06:00

My Kind of Rabbi

From VIN:

Jerusalem - A well known Rosh Yeshiva who is also a popular figure in the Sephardi kiruv world had nothing but contempt and scorn for Charedi Israeli extremists.

Rabbi Rafael Zar, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Ohr Dor – Ohr Yehuda, a noted baal mussar and considered by some as a spiritual leader, had strong words for those who resort to extreme measures, in the name of tznius.

“They are the worst kind of evildoers, far worse than the most secular individual,” said Rabbi Zar. “If I could I would break their arms and legs. This is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of Chazal. They would catch them, give them lashes and break their bones for their appalling behavior.

Spitting on women? I am appalled by this and any true Ben Torah feels the same way about this garbage. The people who do this are nothing more than garbage and they bring a foul stench to the scent of Torah in this world. It is repulsive. To spit on a Jewish Girl? Who do you think you are?

Anyone whose middos are so corrupt, is not a Jew in my eyes. He is an animal.”

“Someone who commits a Chilul Hashem like this does not deserve to have a beard. It is an embarrassment. According to the Holy Tazdik Baba Sali Zt’l there are Jews that when they will go to gehenim, the fire will start from their beard, because they don’t deserve to have a beard.”

Rabbi Zar further continued to lambast those have created the furor over segregation in Israel, saying that those who refuse to sit next to a woman on a bus should get off the bus and take a different bus with fewer women because a true yarei shomayim would not raise a commotion over an issue like this.

He also added that he suspects that many of those who pretend to be overly pious in public are probably guilty of transgressing the gravest sins that can be committed by a Jew in private.

Natan Slifkin's Take

2012-01-08T15:36:00.004-06:00

The following was published in the Jeruslam Post. It is a must read.

Everyone agrees that the Battle of Beit Shemesh – my hometown for over a decade – is about a group of hostile, hateful people trying to impose their ideology on a group of nice, normal Jews. But whereas the secular, national-religious and moderate haredim (ultra-Orthodox) think that the group of hostile, hateful people trying to impose their ideology on others are the haredi extremists, mainstream haredim think that the group of hostile, hateful people trying to impose their ideology on others are the secular.

Hadash, the weekly haredi newspaper in Beit Shemesh, was formerly owned by Mayor Moshe Abutbol’s official spokesman. It was sold to new ownership which maintains devout loyalty to the mayor and the haredi community. A giant front-page headline last week screamed “THE BLITZ!” Under that, the article said haredi residents of Beit Shemesh have become “a target of persecution, the likes of which have never been seen.”

The entire issue contained article after article about the terrible, evil secular campaign against the haredim, with each article including a graphic captioned “The city under attack!”The lead editorial ranted on and on about the terrible, baseless persecution of the haredi population and denounced the kippa-wearing people who brought the Banat Orot school situation to the attention of the wider public. There was not a single word condemning the haredi thugs.

Especially ironic was a half-page article about a Haaretz journalist who allegedly spat on a little girl. This was in a newspaper which never prints articles about the countless acts of harassment against the national-religious that have taken place for years in Beit Shemesh – stealing flags, throwing stones, spitting, threatening businesses, attacking children and much more. Even when there was a mob beating of national-religious kids which resulted in my neighbor’s child requiring stitches in his head, the newspaper claimed that it was all the kids’ fault!

JUST AS important, however, the secular interpretation of events is sometimes no more accurate. Many secular Jews possess the absurd belief that all haredim, or even all religious Jews, are of the same mindset as the extremists. Former Meretz Party chairman Yossi Sarid declared that Judaism itself halachically mandates such behavior (!), and that all religious parties should be disqualified from the Knesset.

The widespread talk against religious Jews is no less offensive than the curses heaped by haredi extremists upon others. This also has the effect of encouraging the wider haredi world to adopt a siege mentality and prevents them from acknowledging any wrongdoing in their own camp – which in turn lends credence to the secular charge that haredim are indeed all of the same mindset.

Thus, the ultra-secular and the ultra-Orthodox are locked into a vicious cycle which brings out the worst in each.Yet another interpretation of events was apparently held by the groups that joined the rally in Beit Shemesh, who portrayed the issue as one relating to women. But aside from the question of whether some of them were seeking to force a rift between Netanyahu and his coalition, even those genuinely motivated by a desire to improve the status of women were missing the point.

The events in Beit Shemesh had little, if anything, to do with the oppression of women. The haredi extremists did not object to Banot Orot because it was a girl’s school; they objected to it because it was national-religious. And those who linked the Beit Shemesh extremists to the soldiers who walked out of a ceremony in which women sang got it entirely wrong. Walking out may well have been unwise and even unnecessary, but in that case, the soldiers did not impose their mores upon others; if anything, secular mores were being insensitively and unwisely imposed upon them.

THE INTERPRETATION and reaction among religious Jews outside of Israel is diverse. Modern Orthodox groups such as the OU and RCA issued harsh, unequivocal and unqualified condemnations of the haredi extremists. So did important moderate haredi figures such as Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein and Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz. The mainstream haredi world, however, watered down their condemnations of the extremists by stressing that the (alleged) ultimate goal, of increased modesty, is holy. As in Israel, more extreme elements of the haredi world in America adopted the siege mentality of presenting the entire situation as a secular campaign against Judaism.

But virtually the entire religious community commits the error of attributing all the problems to a miniscule group of extremists. (For foreign-born religious Jews, this often stems from sheer horror at the thought that it could be any more than that.) Yet this is no more accurate than the belief of the secularists that every haredi Jew is a rock-throwing, cursing spitter. The problems in Beit Shemesh are more complex and widespread than that.

It is true that the vast majority of haredim would never dream of spitting on people and cursing them. These are the actions of a fringe element that are feared and detested by the rest of the haredi world. But the mainstream haredi community is supportive of the ultimate goals, and does not see such actions as being terrible enough to justify joining with “outsiders” in order to condemn it. A letter expressing support for Banot Orot and condemnation of the extremists was signed by over a dozen national-religious and moderate haredi community rabbis in Beit Shemesh, but not one mainstream haredi rabbi signed on to it or made any similar such public declaration.

In addition, haredi society is pervaded by a fear of not appearing adequately “frum”; people in haredi communities are always looking over their right shoulders. And it is often the zealous elements that manipulate the “Gedolim,” the elderly Torah scholars that are ostensibly the leaders of the haredi world. As a result of all this, those practicing intolerance and extremism always exert a disproportionately large degree of influence in haredi society as a whole.

THE MORE general problem is that at many levels in haredi society, there is inappropriate behavior towards nonharedim, which is felt particularly strongly in the mixed city of Beit Shemesh. For example, as noted, the Hadash newspaper never reports on attacks against non-haredim; haredim are always innocent and non-haredim are always the enemy. And many haredi rabbis in Beit Shemesh have either overtly or tacitly supported mild harassment of non-haredim and attempts to impose haredi mores on the rest of the city.

The Ramat Beit Shemesh district was originally designated as a mixed area for haredi, national-religious and secular Jews. But the latter group fled after harassment, and Ramat Beit Shemesh is on its way to emulating Beitar, where the national-religious were effectively forced out of the city and extreme haredi elements took control. Under the current mayor, this is an accelerating process, as he gears the expansion of the Ramat Beit Shemesh district primarily towards haredi purchasers.

I don’t know what should or even can be done about the larger social problems of haredim vis-à-vis the rest of Israeli society. But I do know that the first step to solving a problem is facing up to its existence and understanding its nature.

It’s Time to Act

2012-01-04T16:08:00.005-06:00

Wow! Maybe things are beginning to change. These seems to be a groundswell of Charedi outrage about the the Chilul HaShem that the Meah Shearim crowd has been responsible for - both in Bet Shemesh and on their home turf. The following is a front page editorial published in the very Charedi newspaper, Hamodia. It was written and signed by the publisher Mrs. Ruth Lichtenstein. This is unprecedented. It is republished in VIN. I republish it here in its entirety:

Last Shabbos morning was exceptionally beautiful in Yerushalayim. As always, the streets were full of Yidden going to and from shul, passing walls plastered with a variety of posters and advertisements.

Suddenly I noticed a placard announcing a demonstration in Kikar HaShabbos, to take place on Motzoei Shabbos.

Participants would be required to wear a yellow star and don prisoners’ uniforms, similar to what was worn in the Nazi death camps, and demonstrate against the harassment of the authorities with regard to the mehadrin lines and other similar grievances. I was horrified.
In a subsequent conversation in which I described the placard, its content and style, to a resident of Yerushalayim with a lot of life experience, I was surprised at his calm response. He just brushed it off with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense! Meshuga’im!” he exclaimed.

But this time, these “meshuga’im” overstepped the line. They went too far. What has been imprinted in everyone’s memory, with the eager collaboration of the secular media, is the horrific image of a small child wearing a yellow star, with his arms raised, and, not coincidentally, remarkably resembling the famous photo of a child with his arms raised in the Warsaw Ghetto.
How did the hands of the parents not tremble when they dressed their small child in this horrific uniform?

What does this father know about the Holocaust, about children in the Holocaust, about the significance of such a photo? Obviously, less than nothing. With pre-meditated cynicism, the fringe group to which he belongs has desecrated an iconic symbol for their own ends.
What will this father tell his son when he grows older and tries to understand how his father opted to turn him into a symbol that will haunt him all his life?

It’s not pleasant to be a chareidi in Yerushalayim — or anywhere else in Eretz Yisrael for that matter — these days. During the remainder of my brief stay in Eretz Yisrael, wherever one went the reaction was the same: “You chareidim! Shame on you!”

The more polite, well-mannered people said, “We know they are a radical minority, we know they are casting a stain on the entire chareidi community with their behavior, but why do you remain silent?”

The time has come to shatter the silence. Ignoring these fanatics is no longer an option, since they go out of their way to attract the secular media in order to broadcast their warped messages to the entire world.

I make no demands on this group, since they are not rational. The father of that child and his cohorts not only did not apologize or explain themselves, they even pledged to continue in their ways, according to secular media reports.

My demand is from us: How did we, in our naiveté, think that the actions of this fringe group could just be ignored? How did we give them a platform, allowing them to act as the representatives of chareidi Jewry?

What we desperately need is a serious media campaign to present the true position of Torah Jewry to the world. As my father, Rabbi Leibel Levin, z”l, and Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l, understood when they founded Mercaz L’hasbarah Datit and Am Echad, respectively, for this purpose, we dare not relinquish the spokesmanship of Klal Yisrael to irrational, irresponsible and self-serving fringe elements.

If we want to survive, if we want to merit understanding in Israel and abroad as Orthodox Jews who want to live our lives in accordance with the Torah, we must act — immediately!

Postscript: VIN also has this from Rav Ovadia Yosef. Finally the righteous outrage I have been waiting for!

An Orgy of Hatred

2012-01-03T13:24:00.002-06:00

On my main blog today, I wrote about one secular Jew in Israel that turns my stomach. I usually try and give secular Jews the benefit of the doubt. But Yossi Sarid has made that virtually impossible in his case because of the screed he wrote.

But not all secular Jews are alike. Amnon Levy - who if I read correctly is actually an atheist - has my respect. His article is published in Ynet. It follows.

In recent days I’ve been quarreling with all my friends. They are good people, these friends – liberal, tolerant, moderate and sensitive to any injustice. These are people that in our complex reality were never confused between good and bad. This is why I love them, among other things. I’d like to think that we are cut from the same cloth. That’s why I’m so amazed to see how uncaring and hateful they become when a group of people known as the haredim comes up for discussion.

My liberal friends propose various steps against the haredim and religious: A cadet who cannot bear female singing will not be an officer in the IDF, said one friend. As simple as that (“as simple as that” or “at once” are words that always accompany discussions about the haredim.) A segregated bus shall be stopped! The driver and bus operators should be sent to jail. A yeshiva that will not teach the core curriculum shall be closed at once! We shall not allow primitive ignoramuses to be raised here, and at our expense no less. A neighborhood that features separate sidewalks for women shall immediately lose its municipal services! They can go ahead and choke in their own garbage.

There are more proposals that are even more terrifying. Disconnect haredi neighborhoods from electricity, water and whatnot. The same people who would quiver, and rightfully so, if such proposals were made about Gaza, forget that behind the dark clothes, odd views and challenging (and annoying) behavior lie human beings. They are different than us, but they are human beings.

I’ve been following haredi society for many years yet I don’t remember such anger. And that’s odd, because the secular fury comes at a time when secularism is winning while the haredim are on the defense. Once upon a time the haredim sought to educate us. They made pretenses of telling us where and what to eat, what to do on Shabbat, where and how to be buried, and how to get married. Some time has passed, and the seculars won most battles.

Today it’s the seculars who wish to educate the haredim. The seculars are upset by the segregated bus routes. This doesn’t upset haredi women, but it does upset the secular Tania Rosenblit. The seculars are upset that math is not being taught at yeshivas. They know better than haredi parents what’s good for their sons. The seculars are upset by the relationship between men and women in haredi society. Why can’t the haredim be like us?

Wild incitement
I look at the holy secular anger and fail to understand it. It lacks the modesty of one who looks at another society from the outside. It has no hesitation – maybe we are wrong after all? Perhaps we failed in understanding the other?

I, for example, very much want the haredim to study the core curriculum, I will try to convince them this is needed, but I won’t enforce it upon them. Why? Because somewhere in my head I’m not certain that the core curriculum is truly important for the life meant for a haredi child. Perhaps for him math and English are less necessary than another Talmud class? In all such matters I will hesitate, because in my view when a civilized liberal looks at someone who is different, this should be done with the required modesty.

However, the seculars are furious and are unwilling to show any modesty in the way they look at the haredim. Had I been a religious Jew, I would be concerned. I would take this fury seriously and understand how I contributed to it. I would try to calm the atmosphere through some concessions.

And here I get to the heart of the matter: We need a new social covenant. The old status-quo may have secured political calm, yet caused a flare-up in secular-haredi relations. Both sides must be brave and go for a new covenant premised on a simple principle: Life in the country will be secular in every way. The haredim will let go of their need to care for our secular souls. This means buses on Shabbat, civil marriage and everything associated with a modern state.

On the other hand, the secular majority would allow the haredim to have full cultural autonomy within their neighborhoods. This means letting go of the need to education them and allowing them to live their life as they see fit. And yes, this means segregated buses in haredi population centers and tolerance to haredi education.

That’s the principle. Implementing it isn’t simple because there would be red lines, of course. If the haredim want to educate their children by beating them up, we won’t agree to. However, within the boundaries of logic, we must make every effort to accept the differences of the other.

In my arguments with my liberal friends, one of them sometimes places a hand on my shoulder and asks in a concerned voice: “Amnon, what happened to you? After all, you are secular, a devout atheist; what’s happening to you?” So here is the answer: It appears to me that being a liberal, progressive and humanist today means resisting this blatant incitement against the haredim; standing up against the bon-ton and saying: I’m not taking part in this orgy of hatred.

Orthodox Jewish Drunk Drivers

2011-12-07T13:09:00.005-06:00

Wow! Finally some sanity on a serious issue - the irresponsible consumption of alcohol by religious Jewish young people.

This is of course not the first time Rabbanim have spoken out on this issue. But for every Rav that speaks out about it, it seems that there is another that does not consider it a real problem - and even encourages drinking at Simchos... or on Purim ...or on Simchas Torah.

There was a serious and outspoken criticism of this probem by at least one Rav (and from his words - I assume he is Charedi) It was becuase of an incident that occurred in New York. A 19 year old teenager who learns in a prominent Yeshiva was caught by the police driving while intoxicated. This happened in Flatbush - a very Orthodox section of Brooklyn. Flatbush is where Yeshivas Chaim Berlin is located. (I don't know if this is the 'prominent Yeshiva' this young man attends. I mention it by way of identifying one such Yeshiva that is located there.)

In any case here is a post from YWN in its entirety! It is one post on YWN with which I completely agree:

A Yeshiva Bochur returning from his friends Chasunah was arrested for DWI, Tuesday night.

According to our sources, the boy was stopped by officers from the NYPD in the Flatbush area, after displaying signs of being intoxicated. The 19-year-old Bochur, who is a student at a prominent Yeshiva was taken into custody, and will now need to face the consequences of his irresponsible, and potentially deadly actions.

Thankfully, he did not hurt or kill anyone – including himself – while at the wheel.

YWN spoke with a leading Rov on Wednesday morning to hear his thoughts on this story.
“It’s time people dig their heads out of the sand, and deal with this issue head-on”, he said.
“This story should be a wake-up call for Klal Yisroel, and no I don’t mean to discuss it at an Agudah Convention. I mean to DEAL WITH THE ISSUE, and once and for all eradicate this plague of Yeshiva Bochrim drinking at weddings, vorts, shabbos meals etc.”

He added that “Klal Yisroel should give Shevah V’hodaah to the Robono Shel Olam that this Bochur ended up in police car, rather than in an emergency room or worse, Chas Veshalom”.

The Good Old Days

2011-12-01T09:23:00.004-06:00

Why can't we go back to the good old days... when Gedolim and their families looked normal - like this photo of Rav Ovaidia Yosef and his family when they were all relatively young?

Disconnect

2011-11-23T16:40:00.002-06:00

The Genius of Rabbi Berel Wein

I wish I had said this.

Well... actually I have. Many times. His words follow:

I think that one of the more difficult situations that exists in the Jewish world of today, especially, in my humble opinion, in the Diaspora, is the widening disconnect between the vast bulk of the population and the rabbinic leadership.

While there are many rabbinic pronouncements on the minutiae of Jewish law, customs and observance there is very little that is said and heard about the major problems that face the Jewish world – the security of the Jewish state, the dire financial situation that threatens the entire system of Jewish education, the astounding rate of poverty and unemployment (voluntary and involuntary) in religious Jewish society, children at risk because of one-size-fits-all educational institutions, growing rates of divorce and family dysfunction, an unhealthy and misogynic system of dating and marriage, growing anti-Semitism and a seemingly unstoppable rate of assimilation, secularization and intermarriage that guarantees a shrinking Jewish population in a few generations.

Rather than address these terribly difficult issues, Jewish leadership is engaged in fighting over – again - the battles that destroyed the Jewish world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whether we like it or not, whether it is theologically acceptable to us or not, the State of Israel is a reality where six million Jews live. The predictions by many Jewish leaders made in the 1950s that the state would not survive for twenty, thirty or fifty years have all proven to have been incorrect.

We have no choice but to support the state with all of our might, prayers, talents and resources. So why don’t we hear that call from our leadership, whether it be from any grouping of the Jewish people? The disconnect from reality is truly astounding!

The tuition rates for attending Jewish schools are rapidly reaching the breaking point. A small percentage of parents – those who pay full or almost full tuition at schools – are subsidizing the rest of the parent body who cannot afford the astronomical amounts that are termed full tuition. But that group of people – those who can and do pay full tuition – is a rapidly diminishing breed. Instead of addressing this problem – the true time bomb that threatens the future of Torah education – we spread our wealth so thin that we are unable to help the situation.

It may be important to help a father of a daughter to raise many thousands of dollars to buy an apartment for her and her prospective husband in Israel but it certainly is more important to provide for Jewish education to one’s own children and for one’s own community. This is part of the current disconnect – the inability to view the forest and remain fixated on the trees or even the bushes.

The fact that there is an enormous proliferation of small yeshivot, all of which are basically similar in curriculum, method and purpose is not only very inefficient and enormously costly but it has yet to prove that its educational accomplishments and scholarship are in any way superior to a large institution that would prove much less costly per student to maintain. Part of the problem is that there is such a surplus of kollel “graduates” who have no other employment potential except for yeshiva teaching so that somehow there have to be many such institutions simply to absorb some of this surplus of talent and scholarship. This is also part of the disconnect that exists in our world.

Having just recently completed the production of a documentary film about the Jewish world of the 1930’s, I am very concerned about the similarities of the anti-Semitic mood of the present decade to that past decade. It is much more insidious today because this anti-Semitism is encased in the pious cloak of anti-Israel rhetoric and policy. And unfortunately there are many Jews who are themselves entrapped in this self-destructive dance. And many of these Jews live in Israel!

But again all voices against this threat are muted and very little leadership is exhibited to address the problem. This is not merely a matter for the Anti-Defamation League to fight. We are all in a precarious and vulnerable position. Our leadership should warn us about this situation.

Again, silence is a great example of the disconnect that afflicts us. We should demand more from those that claim the ability and knowledge to lead us. Connection to the true large problems that face us is and should be a basic requirement of leadership and serious opinion.

Shabat shalom.

The Great Orthodox Comeback

2011-11-01T16:28:00.003-05:00

The following article by Lawrence Grossman in 'Jewish Ideas Daily' makes some profound observations in my view.

The resurgence of Orthodoxy may be the most profound, and is certainly the most surprising, transformation of Judaism in the past 60 years. Even more surprising, the most energetic part of it is not "modern" Orthodoxy but a culturally insular Orthodoxy—made up of Hasidic courts, men educated exclusively in Talmud, and a culture suspicious or even dismissive of secular society. This is the Haredi world.

The growing importance of the Haredim is especially evident in Israel, where Haredi political clout shapes public policy and antagonizes the less Orthodox. Even in America, where one form of Judaism cannot dictate to another, the Orthodox upsurge is palpable and has political implications: Orthodox Jews vote Republican even more overwhelmingly than other Jews vote Democratic.

At the end of World War II, no one would have predicted this. The Nazis had destroyed Eastern Europe's great centers of Orthodox culture. Moreover, Orthodoxy had been in decline for more than a century. In central Europe, it fell victim to emancipation, acculturation, and emergent Reform Judaism. In Russia, beginning in the 19th century, many children of the Orthodox defected to socialism and secular Zionism while others emigrated, often abandoning religion altogether.

So, how to explain the Orthodox comeback?

The Orthodox themselves give a two-fold answer. They believe that Orthodoxy is the only sustainable Judaism because it is the only "true" Judaism; and, because they believe it, they work to make it true. Scholars who prefer more impersonal explanations see the Orthodox resurgence as part of the broader erosion of Western liberalism and strengthening of religious fundamentalism: Haredim are, mutatis mutandis, the Jewish equivalents of Islamists and Christian Evangelicals.

Perhaps both explanations are wrong, or at least incomplete. Although "great man" theories of history are out of fashion, Benjamin Brown of the Hebrew University contends that a single man played a strategic, perhaps dispositive role in Orthodoxy's rise. His case is impressive.

This single man is Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (1878–1953), known as the Hazon Ish (hazon means vision; ish means man and is the Hebrew acronym for the rabbi's first and middle names). Brown's new book about him, written in Hebrew with a five-page English abstract, is The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer, and Leader of the Haredi Revolution. Based on Brown's doctoral dissertation, the book is massive, learned, and comprehensive. Brown is equally at home in the complex halakhic issues that the Hazon Ish addressed and the works of general legal philosophy and jurisprudence that provide context for them. Admiring his subject without necessarily sharing his views, Brown avoids the hagiography of much of the earlier literature on the Hazon Ish and presents an objective assessment of the man. It is not too much to say that this biography marks a new era of critical scholarship in the history of 20th-century Orthodoxy.

Karelitz was the home-schooled son of a small-town Lithuanian rabbi. Withdrawn and single-mindedly devoted to rabbinic scholarship, the young man was married off to an older woman who ran a store while he spent all his waking hours in study. The marriage was unhappy and childless. Until he was 55, Karelitz lived in Vilna. He published four books there but held no rabbinic office and remained out of the public eye. Much of what we know about his Vilna years comes from the great Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, who studied privately with him for several years and fictionalized him as Rabbi Yeshayahu Kossover in his masterful novel The Yeshiva.

Karelitz arrived in Israel in 1933 and began attracting attention with his steady stream of publications, including innovative responses to practical questions: Should Jews in East Asia take into account the International Date Line when observing the Jewish calendar? May Jews sell their Palestinian land holdings to Gentiles for the sabbatical year, thus exempting them from the biblical injunction that they lie fallow? How should we calculate the amounts of substances used for ritual purposes, such as wine for kiddush and matzah at the Passover seder?

After World War II, the Hazon Ish came to be acknowledged as the Gadol Hador—the great man of the generation, the pre-eminent authority on halakhah. The once-retiring Hazon Ish also took upon himself the religio-political leadership of non-Zionist Orthodoxy in Palestine, later Israel. This status was confirmed by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion himself, who, in an event that became legendary among the Haredim, visited the home of the Hazon Ish in 1952 hoping to formulate a modus vivendi between the traditional Orthodox community and the secular Zionist state.

While no actual modus vivendi emerged from that encounter, the Hazon Ish developed a communal strategy that was adopted by mainstream Haredi Jewry: neither to accede to Zionist nationalism nor, like Neturei Karta, to fight it actively. The Hazon Ish accepted the legitimacy of the state of Israel and directed his efforts toward what Brown calls "spiritual fortification": building a strictly Orthodox subculture within the state through a network of yeshivas and kollels. Brown believes that if Haredi Jews had not followed this "middle path," they would not be in the strong position they hold today.

Before his death, the Hazon Ish fought and won critical political battles to exempt yeshiva students from the army and to keep strictly Orthodox girls from any form of national service. Yet these very successes lead Brown to end his book on a doubtful note. The Hazon Ish crafted a strategy meant to provide an independent social space for Haredim within Israel, yet today it increasingly entangles them in Israeli secular life. When he called for army exemptions for the 400 yeshiva students in 1949, did he dream that the number would multiply to 62,500 by 2010, triggering intense resentment among their fellow citizens? Would he have been satisfied to see that many of the Orthodox women he tried to protect from the secular world have become deeply involved in this world to support their husbands learning Talmud full-time?

Perhaps the Haredi case is one more example of a recurring phenomenon, the revolution so successful that it betrays its architect.

Lawrence Grossman is the director of publications at the American Jewish Committee.

Think Again: Mayor Abutbul – say no to extremism

2011-09-11T11:16:00.003-05:00

The following article by Jonathan Rosenblum appeared the September 9th edition of the Jeruslaem Post. With the exception of one gratuitous slam against the secular media - calling it anti Charedi - it is a home run!

Mutuality is not just a basic moral intuition; it is a fundamental principle of the Torah

In September 1998, a two-room school opened up in Tzoran – a residential community of 1,500 young families, nestled among the agricultural settlements east of Netanya – for 25 six- and seven-year-olds. When they arrived in school that first day, the children were confronted by a chanting mob of 60 adults, some of whom had tied attack dogs to the school gates. Despite the heat, the principal had no choice but to close the windows, as curses and stones rained down on the school.

The same scene was repeated every morning for the first few months of the school’s existence, and the premises were defaced and repeatedly vandalized over the course of the year. The demonstrators’ purpose was to terrorize little children by forcing them to run a daily gauntlet of verbal abuse and physical menace.

The confrontation in Tzoran was not widely reported in the Israeli press, certainly not compared to the efforts by a group of religious extremists to prevent the opening of a national religious girls’ school in Beit Shemesh last week on a plot long designated for the school and lying adjacent to both haredi and national religious neighborhoods.

But Tzoran has a lot to do with why I am so strongly opposed to the vandalism, taunts and threats used to prevent the Beit Shemesh girls’ school from opening. The small school in Tzoran, you see, was haredi-run, and I wrote in these pages at the time strongly condemning the demonstrators there.Mutual respect for the rights of others is the necessary basis for any democratic society. Mutuality is not just a basic moral intuition; it is a fundamental principle of the Torah. Hillel taught: That which is hateful to you do not do to others. One cannot with consistency condemn the demonstrators in Tzoran and turn a blind eye to the extremists in Beit Shemesh.

BUT I have an even more fundamental objection to these extremists: They distort the Torah and make it something ugly. They would exercise a territorial imperative – that we establish the rules wherever we live and adjacent thereto – that is more in tune with Islam. Islam is a religion of conquest, which divides the world into territory it has conquered, or dar al- Islam – in which Shari’a, Islamic law, must be imposed – and territory not yet conquered.Judaism, by contrast, was never a religion of conquest outside of Eretz Yisrael, and Jews have never viewed territorial conquest as the primary sign of Divine favor. More fundamentally, Jewish law recognizes the legitimacy of parallel legal systems, as expressed in the famous Talmud statement “dina d’malchuta dina” – the civil law of the country is the law.

Last week, I found myself praying Minha in Kiryat Sanz in Netanya, prior to spending a few hours at the separate beach across the road. Kiryat Sanz is a largely self-contained neighborhood of Klausenberger Hassidim, though the late Klausenberger Rebbe insisted from the beginning that there be a Sephardi community within it. Laniado Hospital, which the rebbe built, lies at the edge of the neighborhood.While in Kiryat Sanz, I noticed one or two women in decidedly non-hassidic dress walking through the neighborhood. No one paid them any attention.Just to make sure that my powers of observation were not waning, I called a doctor friend who lives there, and he told me a story of rabbi who once spent his summer vacation in the neighborhood.

After a week, he complained to the Klausenberger Rebbe, of blessed memory, that he was shocked by the presence of immodestly dressed women there.The rebbe replied, “That’s amazing. I’ve been here over 10 years, and I never saw anything like that.”My friend then told me another story that captures the ahavat Yisrael – the love for one’s fellow Jew – that the Rebbe made the animating value of his community, along with devotion to Torah study.

Once, the rebbe heard that some hassidim had shouted, “Shabbes!” at seaside bathers. He ordered them to cease and desist forever.“Nobody ever came closer to Torah because someone shouted at them,” he said. “Open your windows and sing Shabbos zemiros [songs] at the top of your lungs. That might have a positive effect.”How do I know that the relations between Kiryat Sanz and secular residents of Netanya are normative Torah behavior, and threats by a handful of newly arrived, self-proclaimed “zealots” in Beit Shemesh to their national religious neighbors that they’d better remove their TVs or else, are not? Because the Klausenberger Rebbe was a universally recognized giant of Torah scholarship, while the “zealots” listen to no rabbinic authority.

Rabbi Aharon Feldman, today the head of Ner Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore, once told me how, 30 years ago, he and a group of some of Jerusalem’s most distinguished younger talmidei hachamim tried to convince a group of kids throwing stones on the Ramot Road on Shabbat to stop. The kids just laughed at them.And my conclusion is confirmed by the dozens of places around the country where haredim live harmoniously with secular neighbors – in mixed cities like Petah Tikva, in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood with its large group of Stoliner Hassidim, or Arad with its large population of Gerrer Hassidim.Unfortunately harmony never garners media attention, perhaps because it does not further anti-haredi propaganda.

JEWS, UNLIKE Muslims, have a millennia-long history of living as a despised minority. Minority status has imbued us with some prudential values. Satmar Hassidim in Williamsburg, for instance, do not post dress code advisories in the elevators of buildings they share with Puerto Ricans.Despite its rapid growth – or perhaps because of it – the haredi population in Israel today is highly vulnerable.Secular Israelis fear haredi domination, just as many of those of native European stock fear the loss of their cultural patrimony to rapidly growing Muslim populations. And fear triggers backlashes.

That has certainly happened in Europe in response to the growing number of Muslim neighborhoods that are “no-go” zones for the police, the assaults and worse on European women who do not conform to Muslim dress codes, and the retention of Islamic customs, like honor killings, even when they contravene the criminal law. The leaders of Germany, France and Britain have all declared multiculturalism a failure. Anti-immigration parties are ascendant, and a number of countries have enacted restrictions on Muslim dress. Some observers warn that the blood of native European and Muslim immigrant combatants will flow in Europe’s streets.

Haredim in Israel cannot afford such a backlash.And nothing will do more to trigger one than assertions of territorial sovereignty by those who profess to believe that we are still living in galut (exile).

Contrary to what the protesters on Rothschild Boulevard may think, for instance, the haredi community suffers from a critical housing shortage.Haredim will have to move, many to mostly secular cities (which I view as largely positive development for a number of reasons). But many mayors have actively fought to prevent haredim from moving to their cities, in part motivated by fears that once haredim become a critical mass, they will demand that streets be closed on Shabbat and the like.

EVEN THE danger they represent to the larger haredi public is not, however, the greatest threat posed by the small group of “zealots.” I spoke last week to one of the veteran leaders of the Eda Haredit and a resident of Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood for more than 70 years, Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim. Ironically this outspoken opponent of violence was one of the prime movers behind the move of thousands of former Mea She’arim residents to Beit Shemesh, among them the group of “zealots” in question. “I envisioned them teaching Torah to their neighbors,” Rabbi Pappenheim told me.

In the course of the conversation, he shared the view of his teacher Rabbi Tzvi Yosef Dushinsky, the late chief rabbi of the Eda, that the coming of the Messiah only requires some spiritual arousal from below, not that every Jew first become Torah observant.

The latter is God’s business, not ours, and will only happen after the Messiah’s arrival, Rabbi Dushinsky taught.Anyone who makes the Torah ugly in the eyes of the broader public, in that view, is doing nothing less than stymieing the redemptive process itself.

I DON’T expect the “zealots” to be convinced by anything I write. They don’t listen to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv; why would they listen to me? But I do expect the haredi mayor of Beit Shemesh to take a strong stand that violence will not be allowed to establish facts on the grounds and that all the city’s residents will be treated fairly and equally. Doing so will constitute a powerful statement that the haredi public understands the requirement of mutual respect and tolerance in a diverse society, and allow us to maintain the moral upper hand when we demand fair treatment in places like Tzoran.

Shmuley Does it Again!

2011-07-21T09:13:00.003-05:00

No matter how much I see support of Israel and the Jewish people by Evangelical Christians, I am wowed every time I read about it. It seems like it's increasing exponentially every day. Shumley Boteach's report from CUFI is nothing short of amazing! As an important aside - it is also interesting to note how this avowed (but rejected) Lubavitcher seems to disavow in clear and unambiguous terms the idea that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is or ever will be Moshiach:

We can never accept the Messiahship of any personality, however noble or well-intended, who died without ushering in the age of physical redemption.

That was from a later portion of that article that was no excerpted. The following is what I DID excerpt. From today's Hufffington Post:

The Christians United for Israel dinner in Washington, DC was an experience I won't quickly forget. Until you sit in a room with five thousand Christian lovers of Israel and absorb their enthusiasm for the Jewish state and the Jewish people you would be hard pressed to think it possible. But there I was, surrounded by Christians from all over the nation waving Israeli and American flags, pledging eternal love and support to the most vilified country on earth.

The speeches came fast and furious. The statements bold and unapologetic. Israel must never trade land for peace. Every attempt to do so has led to terror bases for Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel is one of the freest and most democratic nations on earth. President Obama better stop pressuring Israel or pay for it at the polls. Iran is an existential threat to both Israel and the United States. Those who treat the Jews poorly are abandoned by G-d, as history has shown time and again. The American University campus has become a hub of anti-Israel hatred. We're deploying our legions to fight it.

Sheesh. I could scarcely sit down. Nearly every line deserved an ovation.

The crowd was anything but monolithic. The head of CUFI's campus operations is a young African-American student who pledged his life to fighting for Israel. Shades of all colors were to be found in the audience with a smattering of yarmulkes dotting the landscape as well. Glenn Beck, the keynote speaker, is a Mormon even though the vast majority of participants were evangelical Christians who are often suspicious of Mormonism.

An orthodox Rabbi gave the opening benediction. My friend Dennis Prager addressed the crowd the night before the banquet, and my friend Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, gave a moving historical account of Christians over the last century who were moved to support Israel based on Biblical teaching.

Israeli music filled the room, sung by Christians from Texas whom I could swear sounded indistinguishable from musical acts from Tel Aviv. "I am an Israeli," declared CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee, swearing to forever defend Israel against attack at the risk of life and limb. "It's not only the support we offer Israel," said Beck, "that matters. The reason for doing so is also important. We can't do this because we think it will bring final salvation or for any other reason.

Rather, it's about love. Why did Ruth declare to Naomi, "Where you go I'll go. You're G-d is my G-d. Where you die I'll die, and there I'll be buried. Because she loved her. This has to be about love." His words directly addressed the discomfort some Jews feel with Christian support for Israel as being based on end-of-days prophecy and a necessary precursor for the return of Christ.

I sat there thinking, if only the Jewish community could offer such unequivocal support for Israel...

Evangelical Christians have emerged as Israel's most stalwart backers. They have been at the forefront of calling out President Obama for his pressure on Israel to make concessions while requiring little if anything of the Palestinians. While many Jews made peace with President Obama's reference to Israel's 1967 borders, evangelicals have refused to give an inch.

Lawlessness and Disorder

2011-07-06T15:23:00.004-05:00

What do you get when there are so many people saying that their values supersede the values of the nation? You get lawlessness.

There is so much anti government or anti police feeling among various opposing factions in Israel that even if they are at each other’s throats, they will stand as one when it comes to calling the police thugs, Nazis, …what have you.

Charedim and Religious Zionist extremists can’t be farther apart ideologically. But when it comes to the police - they are all on the same page. That’s why there were 2 lawless protests when two religious Zionist rabbis were questioned by police. There are no 2 ideologies further apart than the Eida HaCharedis and Religious Zionism. But the Eida jumped at the opportunity to join forces with the them so they could protest the government.

The end product of this kind of disdain for the government is lawlessness and vigilantism by ideologues.

The government is ignored because they know popular support is waning. Especially when mainstream respected personalities join in the severe criticism against them. The following story from Ynet is just the latest example of that:

Who is trying to hurt Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch? The Western Wall rabbi received a personal bodyguard several weeks ago after getting telephone threats and being harassed on a regular basis for the past few months.

In the past month, unknown assailants threw stones at the rabbi's car. Luckily, he wasn't hurt. In a separate incident, the car's tires were slashed.

"There are radical groups of settlers and haredim which are trying to hurt the rabbi," says a source involved in the affair. "They opposed his activity at Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's tomb on Mount Meron, when he tried to find a solution for the control struggles around the complex, and the renovation of Joseph's Tomb by Arabs, which the rabbi was responsible for.

"Settlers have been making statements against the rabbi, like 'If you harm the Land of Israel – you'll be harmed."

In the past, the rabbi was attacked by an angry mob, members of the extreme Eda Haredit faction, while leaving the home of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.

The Prime Minister's Office, which the Western Wall rabbi is subject to, is funding Rabinovitch's security expenses following the police's evaluation of the situation.

Shmuley - in the Jewish Journal

2011-06-20T14:01:00.002-05:00

The growing anti-Semitic images and caricatures associated with the attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco are disturbing. These include the highly inflammatory “Foreskin Man” comic, depicting a superhero saving innocent boys from evil circumcisers, which the Jerusalem Post reported to have been produced by Matthew Hess, “one of the central backers of the anti-circumcision measures.”

Indeed, the attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco smacks of a nefarious campaign on the part of the ban’s organizers to portray circumcision as genital mutilation that gives the lie that Judaism and Jewish practice would ever harm a child. I debated Lloyd Schofield, the main man behind the ban, on CNN. I later respectfully asked him to debate me in public where we would have more time and, after he penned a friendly email which curiously implied that there is not much difference between our two positions, he suddenly declined.

But if the case against circumcision is so clear-cut, and it is a grievous assault on a harmless infant, then why decline the debate? Perhaps it is because the organizers know that in any debate their attempt to correlate the excising of the male foreskin with the removal of the female clitoris – a point they have repeatedly made – will be shown up to be a malicious and absurd lie. Female circumcision is all about removing a woman’s ability to have pleasure during sexual relations and is a barbarous act of mutilation that has no corollary to its male counterpart.

 In my book Kosher Sex I demonstrated conclusively that Judaism celebrates the sexual, intimate, and erotic bond between husband and wife and the attempts to malign circumcision as a method of denying a man’s sexual pleasure are ignorant and biased.

San Francisco is supposed to be the city of live-and-let-live even as it now betrays a curious attachment to the male foreskin, with its ludicrous attempt to punish its large Jewish community with a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail for simply honoring the oldest of all Jewish practices and rituals.

When I lived in Western Europe for 11 years it was common to hear attacks on circumcision and shechita coming together, as if there was some correlation between the humane slaughtering of an animal with the cutting of a child’s foreskin. Sweden has a reputation of being a pretty laid-back nation but it stiffens in the face of circumcision.

In 2001 when it enacted a draconian law requiring a medical doctor or an anesthesia nurse to accompany a registered circumciser and for an anesthetic to be applied to a baby beforehand. Swedish Jews and Muslim banded together to object and the World Jewish Congress condemned the law as “the first legal restriction on Jewish religious practice in Europe since the Nazi era.”

All this, of course, belies the medical facts. Circumcision has been proven as the second most effective means – after a condom – to stop the transmission of HIV-AIDS, with the British Medical Journal reporting that circumcised men are 8 times less likely to contract the infection. Circumcision removes Langerhans cells in the foreskin with special receptors that may grant the virus access into the body.

Circumcision also significantly reduces the transmission of other STD’s like genital herpes and syphilis and also reduces the risk of urinary-tract infection, and me who are circumcised have 100 percent immunity from contracting penile cancer.

Male circumcision is much healthier for women, significantly reducing the risk of cervical cancer by at least twenty percent according to an article in the British Medical Journal in April 2002. Cancer of the cervix in women is due to the Human Papilloma Virus which can thrive under and on the foreskin from where it can be transmitted during intercourse.

So why the effort to ban circumcision? Simple. Radical secularists for whom Judaism is a target of choice wish to portray religion as so barbarous that it excises any pleasure in sex, reducing copulation to a cold and sterile act of baby-making.

The lie that religion frowns on sexual pleasure is widespread. In fact, deeply fulfilling, ecstatic, and climactic sex is a must in Jewish law which makes it a sin for a man to have sex with his wife without pleasuring her first. Judaism insists that sex be accompanied by exhilaration and pleasure as a bonding experience that leads to emotional connection and intimacy.

Indeed, we Jews could teach even the highly sexually adventurous people of the Golden Gate City a thing or two about great sex, the proof of which is that we alone, among all the nations of the world, are still here after thousands of years, due to the fact that our circumcised ancestors were pretty good at doing it.

Had Messrs. Schofield and Hess canvassed Jewish husbands and wives before they got the attempted circumcision ban on the ballot, they would have discovered that we Jews are doing just fine in the sexual department and could really do without their bothersome assault on our ancient rituals and the privacy of our sexual connection.

Circumcised Jewish men are great lovers and I would strongly advise Schofield and Hess to keep their nose in their own business and maybe even read my other two books The Kosher Sutra and Kosher Adultery to receive some great Jewish advice for take-me-to-the-moon-and-back sex which might rescue them from their own repression that necessitates their peering into other people’s bedrooms.

As I Was Saying…

2011-05-30T08:57:00.003-05:00

From Ha'aretz:

Police are reluctant to enter the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea She'arim because of residents' violence, a police spokesman said during a recent court hearing over the remand of a neighborhood resident.

A police official said in court Thursday that the reason the police had not arrested a wanted man for more than a month, despite knowing where in Mea She'arim he was, was that every time they go into the neighborhood police property is damaged and they do not want unnecessary confrontations.

Police issued an arrest warrant on April 13 for Shalom Baruch Roset, who is accused of assault, property damage and making threats.

The official said police have "often tried to detain suspects for questioning" who belong to the same group as Roset, with the result that "we were attacked and the station chief sustained a head injury as a result of a stone thrown at him."

He added that efforts to send police patrols into the neighborhood have "failed."
Roset was arrested last week, an hour after arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport, where he was planning to catch a flight to England. Police asked for Roset to be held in custody for six days.

Roset, 54, is considered to be one of the leaders of a radical Neturei Karta faction in Mea She'arim known by some as the Sicarii, after the Jewish zealots who fought the Romans in Jerusalem around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.

Roset's group has a running dispute with the Gur Hasidim, who they say are trying to push them out of the "Warsaw homes," 150 19th-century homes in the neighborhood that are designated for Jews from Poland.

Roset was arrested over what police said was a leading role in an April 13 fight that has come to be known as the Warsaw Homes Pogrom, in which a group of Hasidim broke into a home, destroyed the kitchen, poured kerosene on a 1-year-old girl and tried to light the home on fire.

Several violent altercations followed the incident.

I recently wrote a post on my main blog expressing my view that certain types of Chasidim are virtually consumed with violence and that they will often use fire in service to that end. After reading this news report - need I say more?

Wow!

2011-05-26T08:15:00.000-05:00

Thank You Mr. President

2011-05-23T19:08:00.007-05:00

I would like to thank the President of the United States for his statements last week with respect to Israel. He is truly a friend in ways he could not possibly have imagined. And he probably didn't imagine them when he made those statements.

Last week he said what had never been said before by an American President: Israel must move back to the pre 67 lines. (He added that land swaps would accommodate border settlements built during the period between then and now).

I had written this off as meaningless rhetoric that added nothing new to the conversation. He suggested offering Palestinians something that has already offered to Palestinians by Israel itself almost 10 years ago. But it was the first time the words '67 lines' were said.

That has opened a firestorm of support for Israel (mostly from the President's political and ideological opponents) the likes of which I haven't seen since... well 1967. (See for example here.) But never in such a unified and singular fashion coming fast and furious. It actually makes me 'Kvell' with pride in my countryman. And for the first time in a long time the critics included some media pundits who are usually on the other side of the issue.

I loved it. If only it can be sustained.

This is not to say that the President didn't have his supporters. He did. Nor am I even critical of the support he's getting. Like I said, he hadn't really added anything that wasn't there in theory already. But still... support of this magnitude is very hard to come by.

In any case - thank you Mr. President.

Nice Job, Aish!

2011-05-04T17:55:00.003-05:00

Happy BirthdayIsrael!

The Thin Jew Line

2011-03-26T21:54:00.002-05:00

OK. I'll add my blog to the 5 million Jewish blogs that have already featured this very funny bit on the Daily Show. Watch it and laugh.

The Daily Show - The Thin Jew Line
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Bethooven's 7th Symphony - 2nd Movement

2011-02-27T22:51:00.003-06:00

Why Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived:

A Friend From Antwerp

2011-01-10T15:55:00.004-06:00

There was a comment on Matzav that said that the real purpose of a visit if some Roshei Yeshiva to a West Virginia prison was not primarily for the stated reason of giving encouragement to Jewish prisoners. The commenter said that It was reported in a Yiddish language newspaper that it was to deliver a personal letter from the head of the Eida HaCharedis, Rav Tuvia Weiss. Here is the comment in it's entirety:

According to Die Tzitung this visit was specifically for R. Yisroel Moshe Weingarten and a letter of support was delivered from Rav Tuvia Weiss, GAVAD of the Eida Charedis in Yerushalayim. They printed the letter in which R. Weiss spoke fondly of RYMW as his friend from Antwerp.

If this is true, it is one of the most disgusting things I can ever imagine about a religious leader of Rav Weiss's stature. Yisroel Weingarten, a Satmar Chasid, was convicted in an Amercian court of law of raping his daughter for years! She is no longer religious and will likely suffer from this trauma for the rest of her life! Mr. Weingarten is serving a 30 year prison term for his offense.

I don't see how a rabbinic leader from any segment of Judaism would ever want to comfort a piece of human slime like this! The only rationale I can possibly conceive of is that Rav Weiss has decided to believe the father who has denied this accusation form the very beginning and continues to do so. He claims his daughter has been lying about this from the very beginning. Perhaps Rav Weiss feels that the daughter - who is no longer religious cannot be believed over the father - who is religious. In other words she has no Ne'emanus and since he is Frum he has a Chezkas Kashrus and therefore Ne'emanus.

Talk about burying your head in the sand! Has anyone read the victim impact statement to Rav Weiss - or to any of those Rabbanim who visited Weingarten in prison? Or the fact that there had been some knowledge about the sex abuse in the past - where apparently nothing was done? I can't believe the extent of denial, that goes on in these circles!

The New Format

2010-11-30T08:19:00.004-06:00

I had a poll up asking people if they liked the new design of this blog. The poll is now closed and the new design has won the competition. The spread was pretty even (except for 'dislike it' category - which no one voted for) But 'Love it' garnered twice as many votes any of the others.

Here is the percentage breakdown in each category:

Love it - 40%
Like it - 20%
Neutral - 20%
Dislike it - 0%
Hate it - 20%

So for the time being the new look is here to stay. There may yet be some additional tweaking but this is basically it.

If there is any further critiquing of the new look please do it now in the comments section. Why do you: love/like/dislike or hate - the new design. If there is something specific please tell me what that is and explain why you do or don't like it.

A Lonely Position on Jerusalem

2010-11-24T12:21:00.004-06:00

Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim – Tishkach Yimini!

I am so tired of the ‘world’ telling me that Jerusalem is not ‘my home’ and is up for grabs. That’s what this AP ‘editorial’ says. Israel has every right to claim ‘East’ Jerusalem as its eternal capital. That Palestinians contest it is their business. That the ‘world’ sides with them on this issue just mean they are wrong. Do we judge truth only by what ‘the world’ thinks?

Whether Israel should allow construction there as part of the ‘settlement freeze’ is a separate issue. But how on earth can anyone with any sense of history –Jewish or otherwise - say that the Jewish people have no special claim or right to live in Jerusalem and call it their capital?! …especially if they respect the bible?

That said I agree with the fact that there are certain people that have contributed to this attitude – stirring up resentment with their actions as the end of this editorial points out. But that doesn’t justify the view that Jerusalem isn’t ours. And I don’t care if it is a lonely position.

What follows is the article in question… and Yes. It makes me angry. And I am a ‘land for peace’ guy!

JERUSALEM (AP) — If there is ever to be Middle East peace, here's a knot that must somehow be undone.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have moved to sprawling Jewish areas in east Jerusalem believe they are ordinary residents of their capital who will never be asked to vacate their homes. It's a sentiment shared by most of their countrymen and affirmed by lawmakers who voted this week to limit a government's ability to ever pull out.

But it's a lonely position: no other government recognizes Israel's 43-year-old annexation of east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians are increasingly vocal about insisting that what Israelis universally call "neighborhoods" are in fact illegal "settlements."

Eight years ago, Herzl Yechezkel, an Israeli lawyer, was one of the first residents to move into the new Har Homa neighborhood, built on land Israel captured in 1967.

"Our neighborhood is inside the Jerusalem municipal area, and it's legitimate to build in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people," he said Tuesday, a day after the Knesset voted to require a special majority or a referendum before any pullout in east Jerusalem. "The Americans see Washington as their capital. Jerusalem is the same."

Few outside of Israel see it that way, though the issue of Israeli construction in east Jerusalem long took a back seat to the controversy over the more populous settlements in the West Bank and to the more explosive dispute over the walled Old City with its holy sites and echoes of biblical history.

But it is now taking center stage amid efforts to restart peace talks. The U.S. is pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank to draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Israel wants written assurances that east Jerusalem will be exempt, while Palestinians — who see it as their future capital — insist it be included.

In Monday's Knesset vote, lawmakers passed a measure requiring any future pullout from Israeli territory, including east Jerusalem, be approved by a two-thirds majority. If that fails, the matter would then go to a national referendum, where it would likely face an uphill battle.

While most Israelis recognize that Israel will have to withdraw from much of the West Bank and uproot at least some settlements, the Jewish areas of east Jerusalem are seen as part of the capital. Most residents were drawn by affordable prices and quality of life, rather than ideology, and many seem hardly to be aware that the areas are in dispute.

In past peace talks, Palestinians quietly acknowledged these neighborhoods would remain part of Israel under a final accord. The Oslo peace process of the 1990s went ahead while Israel built freely in east Jerusalem.

But the east Jerusalem neighborhoods have become increasingly contentious since the Obama administration put a spotlight on settlement construction and called for a full halt after taking office.
Palestinians have since demanded the freeze as a condition for talks, a position that lies at the heart of the current impasse.

Since the 1967 war, Israel has built a dozen Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, a semicircle of sorts ringing the Old City and filling in gaps between Arab areas.

Distant from the ancient holy sites at the city's heart, they are mundane urban neighborhoods of apartment buildings faced with beige stone, dotted with small shopping plazas. They are now home to 200,000 people, more than a quarter of Jerusalem's population.

Another 250,000 Arabs live in east Jerusalem, and 300,000 Jews live in the city's western sector.
Har Homa, in southern Jerusalem, is a good example of how integrated these areas have become. When the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot ranked the hottest neighborhoods in the country earlier this month, Har Homa — where housing prices have doubled in eight years — came in third. The paper made no mention of political complications.

On Tuesday, bulldozers started clearing land for 1,000 new housing units to expand Har Homa's population by a quarter. What might not have drawn much attention several years ago, however, drew reprimands this month from the U.S., the Palestinians and other countries.

While the Palestinians always viewed Israel's Jerusalem project "with great concern," said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and analyst, only recently did they come to top the agenda of the political elite. The change, he said, is connected to a generational shift to a younger leadership more sensitive to the threat posed by settlements to a future Palestinian state.

"The issue of insisting that Jerusalem settlements must be included in any freeze is something that has developed over time," Shikaki said. "A new leadership has emerged. The old guard is no longer in the driver's seat."

Palestinian officials have begun to lobby journalists to stop using the term "neighborhoods" when describing east Jerusalem.

"Israel's attempt to deceive the international consensus, and to redraw that consensus, has not been successful," said Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian spokesman. "These are not neighborhoods. They are illegal colonies, extraterritorial entities on occupied territory."
If Israel has lost international understanding where the east Jerusalem neighborhoods are concerned, it has itself at least partly to blame, said Yitzhak Reiter, an Israeli expert on Jerusalem at the Ashkelon Academic College.

For decades, Jews in east Jerusalem lived only in Jewish neighborhoods, largely avoiding daily friction with Arab residents. But in the last decade, several thousand ideological Jewish settlers have moved into the heart of Arab neighborhoods, where they live in isolated enclaves under heavy guard.

"In these places there is tension and violence that move the conflict back 40 years," Reiter said. "This is helping to end the quiet acceptance of the new reality Israel created in the older Jewish neighborhoods."

Thank You Christians

2010-11-23T12:23:00.004-06:00

I don’t agree with everything Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says in this op-ed. But I do agree with his take on Evangelical Christians - and the IFCJ (International Fellowship of Christians and Jews) that my friend Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein founded and leads.

And lead he does - to the tune of 100 million Christian dollars donated to Israel and other Jewish causes every year. As Shmuley says, this is a staggering amount of ‘no strings attached’ money! And it is money that we - the Jewish people would never otherwise see! I am therefore pleased to present this Jerusalem Post op-ed in its entirety!

Every year, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raises about $100 million from mostly evangelical Christians in the US for distribution to social-welfare projects in Israel and the former Soviet Union. This is a staggering sum, making the IFCJ arguably the largest foundation for needy Jews in the world. One would think that the Jewish community would show immense gratitude to our Christian brothers and sisters for such love. I therefore found it extraordinary to hear that there is a campaign in the Israeli rabbinate to discredit the organization and forbid Jewish groups from benefiting from its funds.

In our religion, the worst of all character traits is to be an ingrate. Denying the goodness that others perform on your behalf leads to a closing of the human heart. No one wants to be taken for granted. So great is the Jewish emphasis on appreciation that our greatest prophet, Moses, was commanded by God not to strike the Nile River and turn it into blood (in the first plague against the Egyptians) because that same river had saved his life when he was a baby. Later, in plague number three, God warned Moses against smiting the dust of Egypt (and turning it into lice) because that dust had saved his life when he had to bury the body of a murderous Egyptian taskmaster.

Imagine that. A man who spoke to God “face to face” was told he must show thanks to water and dust. Such is the extent to which Judaism demands gratitude.

Over the past two decades, evangelical Christians have emerged as Israel’s most reliable friends. Pastors like John Hagee, my friend Pat Robertson and countless others have galvanized colossal Christian support for Israel. Even in the worst bombings of the second intifada, when tourism to Israel fell off a cliff, Christians still came in their millions. The same is true of stalwart Christian political support.

While President Barack Obama continues to bully Israel over apartments in Israel’s undivided and eternal capital, many American Christians have a litmus test for their elected leaders: You don’t support Israel? You’re out.

As I write these lines, former president George W. Bush is enjoying a public renaissance in America with the publication of his book, Decision Points. The best friend Israel ever had in the White House makes clear, at the beginning of his book, how he turned his life over to Jesus, and there can be no question that there is a direct link between his deep Christian faith and his unyielding support for Israel against those who, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seek its annihilation.

I am well aware of our differences with the Christian evangelical community, and would venture to say that I have conducted more debates with leading Christian scholars and missionaries – like my friend Dr. Michael Brown – on the messiahship of Jesus and the evangelical insistence that only Christians go to heaven than any other American rabbi over the past decade.

Jesus was a devout and observant Jew for every day of his life. He ate kosher, honored the Sabbath, donned tefillin and insisted on the indivisible unity of God. It would behoove our Christian brothers and sisters to conclude that they have much to learn about the historical Jesus from Jews.

Indeed, not only must attempts to convert Jews be emphatically resisted by the Jewish community, but precisely the opposite is true; Christians must learn from the Jews to reject any deification of Jesus – something which he would have seen as the ultimate sacrilege, and which is the subject of my upcoming book. They must follow Jesus as teacher and prophet rather than as God. Every human being is a child of God, as the Bible makes clear in Deuteronomy.

But whatever our theological differences, nothing negates the unparalleled kindness and friendship these Christians show Jews and the Jewish community.To say they do this merely to convert us, or because gathering Jews to Israel will usher in the apocalypse, is to perpetrate sacrilegious character assassination.

I was disheartened, in a recent visit to a mega-church in North Carolina, to hear even a renowned Christian scholar tell me the only reason American evangelicals send money to Israel is because they mistakenly believe that the funds are used to proselytize Jews.

Bullocks. I meet these evangelicals all the time. I have travelled with great men like Glen Megill of Rock of Africa on Christian relief missions to Zimbabwe, the poorest country on earth, and have listened as they told me their first commandment as Christians is to love and protect the Jewish people – for no other reason than that God commanded it.

Israel is a nation that dwells alone, with few friends and many enemies. Rather than rabbis and lay leaders attacking Christians for having nefarious motives for their charity, we should offer thanks and gratitude to all the hardworking Americans of faith who believe, as the Bible says, that through Israel all the Earth is blessed.

Yeshivos and Kollelim

2010-11-22T10:45:00.002-06:00

The following is a practical view of the reality of the Yeshiva system. It is not based on my views of Torah uMada which sees Mada as having intrinsic value that should be studied L’Shma.

Let me begin by saying that I have profound respect for all Roshei yeshiva as the leaders of Klal Israel. I believe that they are responsible for providing us with the next generation of Roshei Yeshiva and Gedolim. They provide the guidance spiritually - and a place to learn and thereby produce individuals who are capable of becoming our future leaders.

I would, also, like to make it known that my son is currently learning full time in Yeshivas Mir Yerushalyim, and is a Shoel uMeishiv to a Beis HaMedrash of over four hundred students in a new Beis HaMedrash there. He also has my full support to learn full time for the rest of his life, if he so chooses. This should give you some idea of my perspective. I am not a Yeshiva or Kollel basher.

The Problem

The problem is the systemic abuse of the Kollel and the Yeshiva in the sense that many Avreichim stay there far too long, and when they finally do leave they have virtually no training to enable them to compete in the Job market. I have spoken to many Roshei Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel about this problem and, so far, they privately agree with me. They, however, do not want to go on record.

To date as far as I know the only Rosh HaYeshiva who went on record was Rav Aaron Soloveichik, ZTL. He stated publicly as well as in print that not everyone is meant to learn full time, that learning full time is meant for the Yechidei Segula. " Vehogeisa Bo Yomim Va Lailos" is an imperative for them, in that fashion. The rest of us can fulfill our obligation of "Vehogiso" by being Koveiah Itim (setting aside time) both in the daytime and at night for learning Torah. One can theoretically even fulfill his obligation to learn Torah by reciting Krias Shema.

There are some Avreichim who don't have what it takes to make it in learning and, nevertheless, continue to doing so trying to “make it” despite years of not succeeding, instead of perhaps going into a field where they can contribute to a much higher degree to serve God and Klal Israel ( i.e. be more productive! ) Change is needed. The attitude needs to be developed that it is OK to get a job. It's not the end of the world if you want to support your family. In fact it is a very positive thing.

The problem is that The Roshei Kollel and Roshei Yeshiva are encouraging a “Torah only” approach as the only legitimate approach to Torah study. This attitude is based on the writings of Rabbi E. E. Dessler: Throw 1000 Bachurim into a Beis HaMedrash and if one rises to the top and the others fail, so be it! This is the “price” of creating a Gadol! 999 Bachurim or Yungeleit, who don’t make the grade don’t matter because: we need Gedolim!

I don’t agree that this is the “price”. Yes we need Gedolim, but we shouldn’t have to sacrifice anyone. A Torah nation requires the full spectrum of goods and services that all of society requires and we should be encouraging our students to follow their “calling”. If, for example a student has a certain facility for science, why not encourage him to go into medicine or scientific research?

Maybe that student is bright enough to be a big Talmud Chacham, but his real brilliance may be in medicine. Under the prevailing conditions in the Yeshiva system, that student’s desire to go into medicine or science will be discouraged.

The Solution

As I have said many times all Bnei Torah should spend time learning full time after high school for perhaps at least 5 years. But in most cases there should be preparation for some of that time, in conjunction with learning, for one's Parnassa. Although I believe all Bachurim need to learn post high school for at least a year or two without any of the distractions of college etc.) I believe that the Roshei Yeshiva who in many cases are surrogate fathers to these Bachurim should be more proactive in guiding those who do not "have what it takes in learning" into other areas.

Any Rosh HaYeshiva worth his salt knows which of his students are destined for greatness (and should be encouraged to stay in learning full time) and which of his students are not destined for greatness in learning. They should be guided into Parnassa.

The benefit of such an approach is immeasurable. In addition to contributing to Klal Yisroel in a better way ( each individual custom tailoring his contribution), the money needed to support the vast amounts of people presently in Kollel will be freed up and better distributed to those Avreichim who DO have what it takes.

They currently learn with great material sacrifice to themselves and their families. Why shouldn't they be able to learn full time L’Shma and not have to struggle for their own material well being and that of their families? Wouldn't their learning improve if they didn't have to worry about how they were going to get their next rent check?

A former Avreich confided in me that the peer pressure to stay in Kollel is enormous, and that while one is in Kollel the impression is made on the Yungeleit that leaving learning is a terrible thing. He was able to leave and found out that it wasn't that terrible, and in fact he is pretty well accepted by all of his Kollel friends.

Wow!

2010-11-04T20:39:00.006-05:00

That's all I can say about this Kiddush HaShem. Wow! Saw it on Hirhurim. Watch it and feel proud of our people.

Peace - Above All!

2010-10-28T08:51:00.004-05:00

This video has received over a million hits. If it does not bring a tear to your eye, you're not human.

Did Someone Say It's 10:10?

2010-10-10T22:10:00.002-05:00

It is at the very moment of this posting
10:10 0n 10/10/10

How often does THAT happen?!

Just thought I'd mention it!

When Shmuley’s Right…. He's Right

2010-09-28T13:30:00.003-05:00

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is one of those people I truly have ambivalent feelings about. On the one hand I more often agree with him than not. He is a great communicator. And his message is often my message.

On the other hand his fawning over the Lubavitcher Rebbe as though he were the Messiah (No - I don’t think he’s a Meshichist – it’s just an expression) is a big turn off. Nor do I like his fawning all over celebrities. His relationship with Michael Jackson for example was downright embarrassing.

I’m not sure how I feel about his custom of inviting non Jewish celebrities over for Shabbos meals almost every week either. What exactly is he trying to accomplish with that other than buying their affection? How does that enhance his Shabbos table?

His book ‘Kosher Sex’ is an embarrassment as well.

And though I understood his point his fawning praise of Noah Feldman who married out of the faith was grossly out of place.

It is almost as though his life’s goal is self promotion.

But… I have to give Rabbi Boteach his due. When he’s right – he’s usually very right. That is the case in his latest op-ed in the Jerusalem Post. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Come to Israel for Succot and there are many things you’ll see at night on Rehov Ben-Yehuda, Jerusalem’s premiere recreational thoroughfare. You’ll experience outstanding cafés and mouth-watering restaurants, families with strollers and tourists buying souvenirs. Wait till later and you’ll see American teenagers taking over the street, many of them drunk.

You’ll see friends guiding their inebriated colleagues home, navigating broken glass and discarded bottles. But one thing you will likely not see are their yeshiva and program heads, those responsible for their supervision. Yes, the kids are alone, away from mom and dad and away from nearly any kind of responsible supervision.

Welcome to the Israeli-American religious-industrial complex, where a year abroad for many American Jewish youths means enrolling in a program that costs their parents over $20,000 and is supposed to enhance their religious commitment, but in reality is just a year-long opportunity to drink and behave like hooligans.

Let me be fair. There are many American Jewish youths who avail themselves of the opportunity to study the great Jewish texts and immerse themselves in serious study and religious reflection. They emerge immeasurably enriched by the experience, and infinitely more attached to the Jewish state. But for the hundreds who gather nightly on Ben-Yehuda, the idea of spiritual uplift is about as distant as Jerusalem is from Malibu.

I could not agree more.

Apology NOT accepted!

2010-07-27T12:44:00.004-05:00

Stone apologized today for his moronic comments about Jewish control of the media and the foolish comments about Hitler and the holocaust.

That's nice. But as one report I saw said in the name of one of the Jewish organizations - I don't recall which one - his words may or may not express true contrition. he said them in a moment of candor. He is now guilty until proven innocent. Frankly I don't believe his apology. If he follows them up with deeds to match his apologetic rhetoric - I will accept them. Until then his apology is meaningless to me.

What kind of deeds? Well... he can start by making a positive movie about Israel and the Jewish people. He can follow that up by donating the proceeds of that film to the Weisenthal Center. After that... we'll see.

Oliver Stone - Fool!

2010-07-26T08:32:00.005-05:00

What a moron!

Ever since his idiotic movie JFK I had always though Oliver Stone had smoked one dubie too many. Hence his last name is Stone. It should have a 'd' placed at the end of it to more accurately reflect his usual state of mind.) Now I'm certain of it. The Jews control the media and therefore there is no open debate about the holocaust? Is he out of his mind?! Either that or he is clearly an anti Semite.

It isn't that some of his comments aren't valid. Of course the holocaust is a lot more complex than blaming the whole thing on one man - Adolf Hitler. But to say that Jews prevent that kind of discussion is as ridiculous as his conclusions about conspiracies everywhere he looks.

Thank God the vast majority of American people see this guy for the idiot that he is. Unfortunately there is a sizable minority that actually listen to morons like this as though they really know something. But as I said they are a small minority. Nonetheless whenever idiotic statements like this come out by prominent figures - they cannot go unchallenged. They have to be put in their proper place - the trashcan!

Police Brutality?

2010-07-21T08:29:00.000-05:00

text to follow on main blog.

America – I Love You!

2010-07-15T16:06:00.003-05:00

Why am I so in love with this country? Because of its people.

There has been much discussion recently about eroding support for the Jewish State. The signs are everywhere. Academia - permeated with leftist ideologues- is rife with anti Israel –pro Palestinian sentiment.

Some entertainers have succumbed to pressure to boycott Israel too by left leaning pro-Palestinian groups. Most recently Meg Ryan canceled an appearance there.

And some mainstream Christian Churches have been advocating divestment with Israel too because of the ‘occupation’.

Not to mention the Obama administration’s recent fallout with the Jewish State over settlement issues. (That has been somewhat reversed.)

And the mainstream media forever focuses on the plight of the underdog Palestinians while criticizing Israel.

And then there some of are our own people- like J-Street and the Peter Beinarts of the world - who may as well just join the Palestinian Authority since their views about peace are so closely aligned with theirs.

But the American people are not buying any of it. How do I know? George Gallop told me:

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Support for Israel among Americans is at a near record high, a new poll showed.

According to the Gallup Poll, 63 percent of Americans say their sympathies in the Middle East conflict are with Israel, while 15 percent side with the Palestinians. The rest favor both sides, neither side or have no opinion.

Support for Israel was higher only in 1991, shortly after Israel was hit with Scud missiles during the Gulf War, when it was at 64 percent.

The poll, conducted in early February, was part of Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey in which Americans were asked a series of questions about their opinions of 20 countries or entities, including Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel’s ranking, at 67 percent favorable, was among the highest of the countries surveyed. The Palestinian Authority, at 20 percent, was among the lowest.

Support for Israel increased more among Republicans and independents than Democrats, the poll showed. Since 2001, there has been an increase of 25 points among Republicans and 18 points among independents. Support for Israel among Democrats has stayed about the same.

Asked whether peace eventually will be reached in the Middle East, 67 percent of respondents answered “doubtful” and 30 percent said “there will come a time” when there will be peace.

In a general trend over the past 10 years, Democrats were more optimistic than Republicans about the chances for peace. Thirty-nine percent of Democrats said it will come; 25 percent of Republicans agreed.

Pollsters conducted telephone interviews with a random sampling of 1,025 American adults between Feb. 1 and 3. The poll has a 4 percent margin of error.

We Will Fill the Jails

2010-05-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

Protestors were arrested to the tune of dozens of detainees. Including a Chasidic Rebbe Rav Avraham Chanun Shlita. Their response? “We will fill the jails!” …as if to say we wear these arrests as a badge of honor.

Baruch HaShem. The Chasidim of Meah Shearim are finally co-operating. I firmly believe that we should honor their wishes and arrest as many of these Charedi looking gang members as participate in the disruption of society.

What’s more Edah HaCharedis head HaGaon HaRav Y. T. Weiss Shlita will be leading another protest in Jerusalem. Hopefully he will be arrested too.

Ma Rabu Ma’asecha HaShem!

If all the jails fill up in Israel with these thugs I hear Guantanamo will soon be available. I hope that the Obama administration will have the common decency to offer it to the Israelis.

The Meah Shearim Mob

2010-05-13T11:52:00.006-05:00

There is an op-ed in Ha’aretz about the mob violence in Meah Shearim . Nothing really new there. Here is the opening paragraph:

Soldiers patrolling through the streets of Mea She'arim during Passover week found themselves in a situation they generally encounter only on the Palestinian side of the border. Local residents, the hard core of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox community, began hurling stones at them. The soldiers were at a loss. The police were called in and were greeted by similar violence. The assailants explained to the ultra-Orthodox media that the army was using the neighborhood to simulate operations in an inner-city environment, and the Haredim didn't want to let the authorities ruin the holiday atmosphere.

The article goes on to say that there is hardly a week that goes by without some sort of violence these days. And gives examples of other incidents of violence. It then criticizes the police for treating these people with ‘kid gloves’ because of Charedi politics.

Unfortunately this op-ed was written by Shahar Ilan a secular Jew. This means that it will be totally discounted as anti Charedi bias by Charedim. He will be labeled a Rasha – an evil person. But is that fair? Is it fair to call someone a Rasha just because he tells you an unpleasant truth? I don’t think so. He may or may not be a Rasha - but he does speak the truth. I have said virtually the same things he has. And so have some Charedi writers.

This article should be added to the many others that have reported on this issue and it should not be discounted. The truth exists where ever you find it. Even in dark clouds like this one.

But in every cloud there is a silver lining. The increase in violence increases media attention to it. That makes the public more aware. Maybe all this negative publicity will spur action. If not by the Charedi world - then maybe by the police. At least I hope it does.

Are Ashkenazi Charedim Racist?

2010-04-29T12:13:00.002-05:00

If this story in YWN doesn’t say it all, nothing does:

“In chareidi education, we don’t accept Sephardim, monkeys, Russians and Ethiopians”.

This was a comment supposedly in jest made by Jerusalem Councilman Yitzchak Pindrus who is himself Charedi.

There’s more:

When questioned regarding the incident on Wednesday by Haaretz, Pindrus is quoted as stating, “The readers of Haaretz are not my constituency so I have no interest in even apologizing.”

Although there were witnesses to the remark he later denied making it.

Right!

What was that about Ashkenazi Charedim and prejudice against Sephardim? Did someone say it doesn’t exist? …That a segregation case against a Beis Yaakov in Emmanuel pending before the Israeli courts is a nothing more than an attempt for the government to get a foothold in the Charedi educational system? …That the Agudah Moetzes in Amercia is screaming bloody murder about – calling it interference by the secular government into religious Charedi education – which ‘we must fight with all our strength’?

Hello? I can’t hear you…!

Can These Seven Patriots All Be Wrong?

2010-04-27T13:40:00.003-05:00

What do Nicholas Katzenbach, Ramsey Clark, Edwin Meese, Richard Thornburgh, William Barr, Janet Reno and Kenneth Starr have in common with the Agudah, the OU, Chabad, and Young Israel?

They have all signed on to the notion that the proposed life sentence the prosecution has recommended for Shalom Rubashkin is excessive and that a much lighter sentence is warranted.

If those names are familiar it is because six of them were attorneys general in both Democratic and Republican administrations ranging back to President Johnson all the way up to the Clinton administration. And Ken Starr too said he will sign a letter to that effect (already signed by those attorneys general). He was the lead prosecutor in the investigation of President Clinton that lead to his impeachment in the US House of Representatives. It should be noted that the politics of these individuals vary widely.

Here is a portion of the letter that they have signed:

“We cannot fathom how truly sound and sensible sentencing rules could call for a life sentence -- or anything close to it -- for Mr. Rubashkin, a 51-year-old, first-time, non-violent offender whose case involves many mitigating factors and whose personal history and extraordinary family circumstances suggest that a sentence of a modest number of years could and would be more than sufficient to serve any and all applicable sentencing purposes”

This should tell you something about justice in this case. I hope the judge in that case takes notice and follows their lead.

Perhaps just as important is to note the lack of any anti-Semitism among these great American patriots on both the left and the right.

No Need to Apologize, General

2010-04-26T22:14:00.004-05:00

You know, I really think Abe Foxman ought to get a life. He was apparently upset by a Jewish joke made during an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy - by Jim Jones, National Security Advisor to the President. If one reads the joke, it is actually pretty funny. But Abe Foxman thought it was anti-Semitic.

Have we lost our ability to laugh at ourselves? This joke is what bothers Mr. Foxman?!

Please! There is no way that a joke like this is sourced in anti Semitism. I have heard anti Semitic jokes. This one doesn’t come close.

That General Jones felt he had to apologize is a very sad commentary on the hyper-sensitivity of people like Mr. Foxman. He should know a lot better than that. If anyone should know what real anti-Semitism entails it is the heads of the anti defamation League, Abe Foxman. Making an issue about this is foolish and counterproductive.

There are a lot of things to worry about with respect to the Obama administration that are legitimate issues for us – such as the President’s foreign policy decisions. Or the Presidents recent rather shabby treatment of the Israeli Prime Minister, or his warming up to the Arabs and cooling off to Israel. And his lack of a plan to deal with Iran now that his diplomatic efforts have proven fruitless.

If Mr. Foxman wants to worry about something these are a few of the things he ought to be thinking about. But this joke? Give me a break!

Completely Evil People

2010-04-20T09:42:00.001-05:00

The following is reported in YWN. Here it is in its entirety:

A violent protest took place earlier in Bnei Brak, in front of Ponavez Yeshiva and the area of Chazon Ish and Yismach Moshe Streets as the nation marks Independence Day. According to reports, most of the participants are not areas residents, but from Yerushalayim.

An Israeli flag was set ablaze in front of police in front of the yeshiva, as a large flag waves on the pole above the yeshiva building as is the custom annually on Independence Day (reported earlier today by YWN Israel). At least one police car was damaged as a result of the protestors throwing rocks. At this time, it appears the main protest has dispersed but there are occasional reports of rock-throwing and minor disturbances.

I have no clue who these people were. The story says they were probably from Jerusalem. I assume they are Meah Shearimniks. But let us even assume that they are Ahmadinijad hugging Neturei Kartaniks whom everyonme condemns. Why are they tolerated? What possible justification is there for them to do these things? I get so angry when I see these kinds of things happening. It goes against every fiber of my being.

Flag burning may be legal. It may even be a form of free speech. But so is shunning these people as pariahs. They ought to be vocally condemned for what they do by their own leaders even if they agree with them in spirit. And certainly the Roshei Yeshiva at Ponevezh should. These people are nothing more than evil incarnate- Reshaim Gemurim! To the extent that what any of they did is illegal it would be a Mitzvah Min HaMuvchar to report them to the police and testify against them in court.

I don’t care how long their beards are. They will get their just deserts in the world to come. And it isn’t going to be the kind of 'deserts' they like.

Not So Silent

2010-04-15T08:50:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted on EvE II for awhile. Been busy with EvE I. But I just noticed that my last post about Matzav.com considering eliminating the comments section has in fact been resolved. One can still comment there more than six weeks after they considered stopping it.

It's nice to know that even a very Charedi blog like this allows the voice of the people to be heard.

Just thought I'd mention it.

A Silent Matzav

2010-03-04T17:17:00.004-06:00

Matzav is thinking about removing their comments section. That will end up boring the heck out of people. But I understand why they are doing it. Many of their commenters have made some embarrassingly stupid comments. Some of them generating a real Chilul HaShem. On the other hand they have been an excellent resource providing me with material for some of my better posts!

It probably serves the greater good if they just cut that out and make it a Jewish news website. But will it reduce their readership? I think so. But I'm not sure it will reduce it significantly. I have no clue what their hit count is. But I think it's probably pretty high. It's going to go down.

The better solution for them would to better monitor the comments and not allow as many of them to be approved. But it's their call (or the call of their Poskim).

Anyway... I wish them Hatzlacha no matter which way they go.

An Enlightened Rosh HaYeshiva

2010-02-23T15:46:00.004-06:00

The following is the copy for this video located at YouTube:

yeshiva machane yisrael is a yeshiva for baalei teshuva in the beit yisrael section of jerusalem near the mir yeshiva. the rosh yeshiva is opposed to the use of computers, and therefore even the yeshiva office uses none. here we can see one of the many computer smashing ceremonies held at the yeshiva, with a brief introduction by the rosh yeshiva Rabbi Findler who explained how in this particular instance, the computer was used for purposes of earning a livelihood by the owner until he decided to make the move and dispose of his laptop. this is an exercise carried out by trained professionals, please don't try this at home but if you do please wear safety goggles!

When I first saw this video I had to laugh. I thought, “How primitive a response like this is to the problems with the internet!” The truth unfortunately is that it isn’t so funny. Not that I am all that surprised by it.

I am not going to go into the pros and cons of the internet. I’ve done that more times than I can count. But I do think it is important to see exactly what a Charedi Rosh HaYeshiva for Baalei Teshuva thinks is the appropriate way to show his contempt for it. He actually believed that a symbolic smashing of a laptop would make his point more valid. It seemed apparent from the video that he knew he was being videotaped. It is also fair to assume that the purpose of taking a video of this event was for the purpose of making his point to a wider audience.

Unfortunately for him, the message received is not really the one he wanted to send. He was trying to show what he thought ought to be done to this conduit of evil. But the general response to this video has been one of ridicule and laughter by just about everyone who has seen it – as far as I know.

I think this Rosh Yeshiva has clearly demonstrated why people who have this attitude about the internet and this methodology of dealing with it ought to be as marginalized as possible from the Torah world. By their actions they show just how shallow and backward they really are.

Judaism is not a religion of primitive fanatics that deal with problems by smashing valuable educational tools. I can respect their total opposition to the internet even if I don’t agree with it. But smashing a laptop only makes them look like ignorant fools. How exactly does this appeal to a potential Baal Teshuva? Is anyone with even a modicum of intelligence going to say, “This is the kind of religion I want!” “One that smashes laptops!

The Clock is Ticking

2010-02-16T13:39:00.003-06:00

An article on Matzav tells us of a last minute appeal from the Pope via Vatican official Archbishop Fernando Filoni. He like others who have been seeking to at least stay his execution until all appeals are exhausted argued that he has changed and is now a man of faith.

Indeed many people have accused the Orthodox Public service organziations now actively involved in this that they are only doing it because he is now a Frum Jew.

Really! Frum Jew? I’m not so sure about that. From Matzav:

Grossman, meanwhile, has declined the traditional last meal. Instead, he will have banana cream and peanut butter cookies, canned fruit punch and a chicken sandwich he bought himself from the inmate canteen, according to the Department of Corrections.

Is this what a Jewish man of faith does just before he is about to meet his Maker? Eat Treif?

Hmmmm….

Not saying we should give up trying to save him. I still believe that his sentence should be commuted to life in prison without parole.

But Wassupwidat?

Who Was The Greatest?

2010-02-10T12:17:00.002-06:00

And the Winner is… Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. That’s who I believe had the greatest impact on Orthodox Jewry in the 20th century. Back to that later.

The poll closed yesterday and the results indicated otherwise. The results of the very unscientific poll showed Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe with 69 votes to have had the greatest impact, followed very closely by Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe who garnered 65 votes. There were 260 votes cast. Here is the breakdown:

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn 69 votes - 26% (of the total)
Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum 65 votes - 25%
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein 39 votes - 15%
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik 37 votes - 14%
Rabbi Aharon Kotler 25 votes - 9%
Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz 22 votes - 8%
Other 3 votes - 1%

The question must be asked as to why the top two vote getters received more than 50% of all the votes counted. Can it be that this represents the feeling of all Orthodox Jews? I doubt it. I think what probably happened here is that followers of these two great rabbinic figures somehow heard about this poll and had a ‘voting war’. My last poll only generated only 129 respondents – about half as many as this one did.

Now it is possible that these two rabbinic giants would have won anyway. But it is hard to know one way or another. Factoring out the top two winners it seems that Rav Moshe is seen as having had the greatest impact by a very slight and probably statistically insignificant margin over Rav Soloveitchik. I tend to question that result too since I presume that many if not most of my readers tend to be from the broad spectrum of Modern Orthodoxy. The lower vote of Rav Aharon Kotler I think might reflect the fewer numbers of Charedim that might read this blog.

So in the end, this poll proves absolutely nothing. Except that my choice was deemed least important of the candidates.

Why Reb Shraga Feivel? Let me start by statiing why not the others.

Anyone who reads my posts regularly knows that of all these great figures, I was most influenced by the writings of Rav Soloveitchik. None of the others had anywhere near his impact on me. But at the saem time I recognize that his impact did not really go beyond the world of Modern Orthodoxy, I’m not saying that he didn’t impact it at all. Fair minded people of all stripes will admit that he did. Some will say for the worse. But in the Orthodox world he is basically ignored by all but Modern Orthodox Jewry.

Rav Moshe is definitely the Posek Acharon for our times. Few people dare to disagree with his Psak on most issues and rarely do. There are some like the Satmar Rebbe who disagrees with R’ Moshe on some key issues but his views are mostly followed by his own constituents. Rav Moshe is by far the most universally recognized Posek of the post war 20th century and beyond. But as much as he impacted Psak, I don’t believe he impacted all of Orthodoxy in any way that was ‘game changing’. Orthodox Jewry would have more or less developed as it did without him. The void in Psak might have been filled by other Poskim. In most of the way we lead our daily lives Halachic observances would not be that significantly different.

The Satmar Rebbe truly did impact the 20th century significantly. He basically single handedly transferred Satmar from Europe to the United States and Israel and shepparded it into exponential growth. It is a world unto itself whose members are unique and dedicated Chasidim. I would even venture to say that if not for Satmar, I’m not sure any of the other Chasidic groups would have grown as much – at least in the US. I will agree that in Israel, the Gerer Rebbe is the one who might have that title.

But all of his aceivements are primarily in the world of Chasidus only. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews, while respecting him in both torah knowledge and leadership capacities, are not influenced by him.

The Lubavicher Rebbe too is limited in his influence. His impact is in the world of Kiruv and his opwn Chasidim. Of all the rabbis listed, he is the one who is most venerated by his Chasidim. In some cases obsessively so – to the point of calling him Moshiach. His movement grew from a miscule one into one of the largest and most powerful ones in the world. But even with all the secular Jews who have been convinced to become Frum, it is only Lubavitch that sees him as a leader. Even the Baalei Teshuva he brought in were brought in as Lubavitchers. His impact on Orthodox Jews outside of Lubavitch therefore is realatively small.

By contrast Rav Ahron Kotler’s impact is felt by Orthodox Jews all over the world. He recreated the world of post high school Yeshivos and Kollelim in America. Without that accomplishment, Orthdoxy as we know it today would not exist – at least here in America. Even though Israel had its’ own builders of Orthodoxy like the Poneviszhe Rav, the Chazon Ish, and the Brisker Rav… they focused only on Israel which was a much smaller community then.

That community has indeed grown today and is possibly even bigger than the one Rav Ahron Kotler built in America. But I don’t think Israel would be what it is today without Rav Ahron Kotler. His influence in America has created a mindset in many young men who choose to go to Israeli Yeshivos like Mir and Brisk instead of Lakewood. Many of those stayed on and live there. I don’t think Israel would have the high numbers of Lomdei Torah today without him.

In my view, Reb Shraga Feivel’s accomplishments are even greater. He created a school system that enabled virtually all of Orthodox Jewry to get an Orthodox Jewish elementary education. These were the feeder schools to places like Lakewood. Without Reb Sharga Feivel I don’t believe Orthodoxy would have anywhere near the numbers we do today. To the extent it would exist at all it would look nothing like it does now.

That said there were day schools established before Reb Sharga Feival. But they were few in number and not that popular. And they were Hashkafa specific – mostly being either Modern Orthodox or Lubavitch. Reb Shraga Feivel had only one goal: to teach Judaism to Jews at the earliest ages. He did not see his mission in Hashkafa specific terms.

Though a school system like this may have emerged anyway since the demand for them rose after the holocaust- he is the one who actually did it. He is truly the one who in my view built the foundation of Orhtodoxy catering to the widest spectrum of all of Jewry across America – which had the largest population of Jews were at that time. By far.

There are other heroes that had similar accomplishments. One cannot minimize the accomplishments of Rabbi Bernard Revel who founded Yeshiva College which has since become Yeshiva University. If not for him - I’m not sure there would be a legitimate and vibrant Modern Orthodoxy today.

And then there is Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan. She was a protégé of Rebbetzin Sara Schenirer and established the Beis Yaakov school system for girl’s education that we have today. While other school systems exist some of which actually predate her - to the best of my knowledge this one is by far the largest. She is perhaps the only person that can rival Reb Sharga Feivel’s achievement. I was remiss in not including her.

But although it is close - I still put him ahead of her. His accomplishments were at the entry level of Jewish education for all Jews of both sexes. His first religious day school was the prototype for the majority of all day schools across the country. That day school was in Detroit and is my alma mater Yeshivath Beth Yehuda.

Their Impact on Orthodox Jewry

2010-02-02T09:14:00.002-06:00

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein
Rabbi Aharon Kotler
Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum

The list is of course incomplete. There were many great figures that impacted Judaism in the post holocaust 20th century. I could probably add a dozen or more names. But in my mind these six were probably the most influential. Some names are controversial. But no one can deny they each had a major impact. For me it would be almost impossible to say which one of these contributed the most. Although I do have a choice. I am curious to find out what others think? Do one of these stands out more than the rest?

A brief bio of each might be in order.

Rabbi Feinstein is perhaps considered the greatest Posek of the 20th century.

Rabbi Kotler established Lakewood Yeshiva which has been the standard bearer for Right Wing Orhtodoxy.

Rabbi Mendlowitz is responsible for the establishment of religious day school education in America.*

Rabbi Schneersohn is responsible for bringing masses of Jewry to observance.

Rabbi Soloveitchik was the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University which is the standard bearer of modern Orhtodoxy - a movement that he helped define and led for decades.

Rabbi Teitelbaum is responsible for establishing and leading the largest and most dominant Chasidus in the world.

* Reb Shraga Feival (as he was lovingly known - he shunned the title Rav or Rabbi) died in 1948, just a couple of years after the holocaust. The others lived well beyond that. But R’ Shraga Feivel’s contributions were mostly felt after his death so I include him on this list.

Obviously these descriptions fall very short. Many might say it is unimportant to know who contributed the most - that they all made major contributions and there are no contests about greatness in Judaism. I understand and kind of agree. But there is the concept of Gadol HaDor which is a recognized one throughout our existence - starting with Moshe Rabbenu. I am merely expanding on this idea here.

Others may feel that I emphasized the wrong thing about one or more of them. I will concede that point. People have different perspectives and focus on different things. But in the interests of keeping this post brief I limited it to what I think was at least one major aspect of their lives.

I have set up a poll on the right margin. After you’ve voted if you are so inclined you can explain your vote in the comments. If you feel there are others greater than those I listed. Please feel free to mention them and tell me why you think so.

Digging the Hole Deeper

2010-02-01T11:34:00.003-06:00

You know…. Sometimes it is just better to say nothing. The more explanations I read about why there has been reluctance to act on the part of the rabbinic establishment with respect to Tropper, the more skeptical I become.

Rabbi Dovid Ribiat has granted another interview to the 5 Towns Jewish Times where he further explains why the rabbinic establishment has been so reluctant to do or say anything.

The gist of his argument is that there is just not enough Halachic evidence to do or say anything. Rabbanim have a responsibility to follow the Halachic parameters of Jewish Jurisprudence and do their due diligence. This is what they are doing now. In the meantime they must allow things to go on as they are – as though Tropper were completely innocent of any wrong doing. And he adds:

We do recognize that Rabbi Tropper has also made positive contributions in the past.

In other words - let’s not forget that Al Capone was a Big Baal Tzedaka.

I’m sorry. It all sounds like one big tap dance at this point.

In the meantime Tropper remains in his position as the Rosh HaYeshiva of Kol Yaakov. He is teaching Baalei Teshuva how to be Jewish. They look up to him as a man of honor and integrity while the establishment is ‘being careful’.

Students best learn by example more than they do by word. By now I’m sure many if not most or - even all - of his students have heard the ‘rumors’. He has of course vehemently denied them privately. One of his former students that I am very close to asked his ‘Rebbe’ if the rumors were true. Can anyone guess what Tropper told him?

Perhaps they are buying it now. But it is only a matter of time before this man will be fully exposed for the fraud he is. What will that do to his ‘students’? What message will they learn from the experience? How many will become jaded by it, turn around to mock him, and thereby the Torah he claimed to be following?

‘Why’ …they will ask, ‘were we not warned about this man sooner?’ Why was he allowed to teach us holiness when he was the opposite of holy by his actions?’ Why was there silence?’

This is not due diligence. This is dragging their feet. At the very least they should have privately and publicly asked Tropper to take a leave of absence from Kol Yaakov until this issue is resolved. Even if Tropper declined to do that. At least they would have been on record as doing… something. They would have at least publicly expressed their concern about a man whose character is being challenged by strong evidence of conduct unbecoming of a Rosh HaYeshiva.

Instead there is silence and excuses. Which is why I continue to have a problem with the rabbinic establishment.

Rabbi Ribiat’s explanations does not really address the problem at all It in fact just raises the greater issue of the lack of leadership. All he ends up doing explaining away their behavior.

The evidentiary questions that are holding back condemnation didn’t seem to bother Rav Sternbuch or Rav Dunner. They quickly and without hesitation condemned Tropper and explained why they believed him to be guilty. Is he saying the rabbinic establishment in Monsey or New York is more careful in deliberating this issue than Rav Sternbuch or Rav Dunner? That his ‘Gedolim’ are more concerned with the Halachic aspects than Rav Sternbuch and Rav Dunner?

It is one thing to say that we - the common clay of the earth (otherwise known as Am Haratzim) - are unqualified to make these judgments. That we should not judge the rabbinic establishment unfavorably. They are Daas Torah. We are not. They know the Halachic issues and act accordingly. We do not.

Rabbi Ribiat can say that about us. But by implication - isn’t he then saying the same thing about Rabbis Sternbuch and Dunner? I guess so.

I didn’t know Rav Sternbuch was such an Am Ha’artez. Nor did I know Rav Dunner was. Good to know. I’ll make a note of that for future use. Thank you Rabbi Ribiat!

Rabba Hurwitz?

2010-01-28T13:25:00.003-06:00

Rabba? What’s next? Rava? This is really getting ridiculous.

Rabbi Avi Weiss has ordained the first female Orthodox rabbi. Her name is Sara Hurwitz.

We can discuss whether what he did was appropriate and what the impact is on overall Orthodoxy. There is debate about whether that is a good idea or a bad one. One can discuss the legitimacy of ordaining women.

As I have said in the past I do not see anything Halachicly wrong with it since today’s version of Semicha has absolutely no basis in Halacha.

It is just recognition that one has studied and mastered certain sections of the Shuchan Aruch, knows how to learn Gemarah, has successfully studied it along with Rishonim and Poskim for many years, has exemplary Midos, and will faithfully promote and beautify the ideals of Torah.

Passing tests to that effect grants one permission to serve as a rabbi in any Orthodox community.

As I have said before - I am nevertheless opposed it for various reasons. I’m not going to rehash them all here. Suffice it to say that I do not believe it is normative Judaism even if it is technically not against Halacha.

But like it or not the fact is that Rabbi Weiss has by his own admission conferred Semicha upon Ms. Hurwitz. That makes her a rabbi. Not a Maharat. Not a Rabba. But a Rabbi. An Orthodox one. It is insulting to call her anything else and I challenge him to rectify that.

Multiple Choice Quiz

2010-01-27T21:05:00.002-06:00

Can anyone identify who made the following comment?

Because the Jewish people remain witnesses to God’s presence and to divine revelation at Sinai, Hitler knew that to destroy God and God’s moral law, he needed to murder the Jewish people first. This is an enormously significant theological statement, acknowledging that Jews and Judaism continue to play an essential role in the unfolding of God’s plan for humanity.

Let me help with a list of possible candidates:

A) Ghandi
B) Abraham Foxman
C) Pope Benedict
D) Rabbi Marvin Hier
E) Rabbi Elya Ber Wachtfogel
F) President Barack Obama

Analysis of my Latest Poll

2010-01-26T14:03:00.004-06:00

The poll to the right closed yesterday. I have analyzed the results on my primary blog Emes Ve-Emunah where it will get more attention because I think the results of this poll are important. I am reposting it here for convenience.

There were 129 respondents to to a poll asking what issues are the most important ones affecting Orthodox Judaism in our day.

First the standard disclaimer: This poll was not scientific. I realize that it is not necessarily representative of all of Orthodox Jewry. For one thing the number of respondents is less than a tenth of my readership. And my readership is heavily weighted toward right wing modern Orthodox and moderate Charedim (as per my last poll results). Nonetheless I somehow think that it more or less reflects Orthodox thinking - even if not in the exact proportion that the poll indicated. Here are the categories - in alphabetical order - and the breakdown:

Agunos 0%

Cheating the government 9%

Kids at risk 6%

Poverty 10%

Sex abuse 10%

Shiduchim 1%

The slide to the right 26%

Tuitions 36%

Here is my homegrown analysis.

Considering the fact that every other category has either devastating effects on the family or is responsible for major Chilul HaShem, it was a bit surprising that tuition costs were the number one concern. 36% of those who responded indicated that tuition is the biggest problem facing Orthodoxy in our day.

I suppose that most people realize that most of the other problems on the list are more devastating to those individuals personally affected by them. But I guess when you get hit in the pocket book that is what you feel the most. I also realize that tuition obligations are back breaking to most families. Very few of us pay full tuition. And tuition costs hit everyone (i.e. - those with children). That is perhaps why this category received the greatest number of votes.

$100,000 sounds like a pretty good income. But is it? A typical family like that with say 5 children at a cost of $10,000 (minimally) per child will have a tuition bill $50,000. How many people even make $100, 000 per year? And yet - is it even a consideration that such a family pay half of their pre-tax income for tuition? Of course it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean they don’t pay anything. Families like these are asked to pay as much of that $50,000 as they can. That means sacrificing a lot.

Most families make less than six figure incomes and more than a few have more than 5 children. They are squeezed the most. I guess I shouldn’t wonder why parents seem to be focusing on this issue. Financial pressures can break down a family. Squeezing parents like this does not help.

To the average tuition paying parent this is what is what seems to be on their daily plate. How are they going to be able to afford to pay tuition? How will they be able to live a half way decent middle class lifestyle without maximizing debt – even at $100,000 per year?And yet from the school’s perspective – how can they ask for less? The teachers deserve to be paid. By not maximizing tuition schools run the risk of falling short in their payroll - especially in this economy where fund raising efforts are being negatively affected.

Of course I have been through all this before. The cost of Jewish education is definitely a major issue for our time - a fact that I have never disputed. And one that seems to defy solution. It’s just that some of these other problems seem to be a so much more serious in the over-all scheme of things.

Is not sex abuse a bigger issue?

Or the poverty that is rampant in the more Charedi sectors – especially among the Avreichim in Israel?

What about Shiduchim? How many young women – and even some young men - are there that are single and desperately trying to get married and getting older with every passing moment? That population seems to be growing by leaps and bounds in all segments of Orthodoxy.

What about the slide to the right? Doesn’t that affect us all? Taken to its logical conclusion, doesn’t living in a world full of isolationism, ignorance, and Chumra scare anyone? On the other hand this category got the second highest number of votes at 26%. But that is still a full 10 points lower than the concern over the cost of Jewish education.

What about the rampant disregard for the laws of the land that result in cheating the government? Is the huge Chilul HaShem resulting form that a cause for great concern? Does that not increase anti-Semitism in the world? That affects all of us.

What about Agunos? OK, I realize that as a percentage of the population they are very small. But what does it matter how small the numbers are when it God forbid happens to you? Can anyone imagine what it is like to be an Agunah? Never being able to marry again? This category received no votes at all!

Last but obviously not least what about the Kids at risk phenomenon? This category does not have small numbers. I’m sure that everyone knows at least one family that has a child who is at risk of going off the Derech – or worse. The numbers are so huge that they have evolved into an entire community of their own. One that some experts say is here to stay. Is that not a bigger problem for Orthodoxy than tuition costs.

Please do not misunderstand. The high cost of Jewish education is definitely an important issuee. One which I have addressed many times in the past. But I just didn’t realize it was the number one item on most people’s minds. I guess I was wrong.

I guess the question now is - what do we do about it?

Notice: I will shortly (hopefully) have a new poll up.

Murder Ain't Beanbag

2010-01-24T21:36:00.002-06:00

Post of the Day

The story is unbelievable. Mercy is being asked by activists. They want the governor to commute his sentence. According to this report this man is truly remorseful and has done Teshuva. He is currently as observant as possible under his imprisonment conditions.

While I’m sure he is sincere, he did brutally murder someone. And although he was under the influence of drugs at the time - murder ain’t beanbag (to paraphrase Congressman Tip O’Neil of the Reagan era).

He has also asked for a Kosher burial after his execution now scheduled for February 16th. I don’t think that should be a problem. What a sad sad story!

From VIN:

Florida - On January 12, Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed a death warrant for Martin Grossman, convicted of murdering a Pinellas County wildlife officer in 1984. Grossman was 19 years old when he and a friend went to a wooded area in Pinellas County, Florida to shoot a stolen handgun.

Grossman, who was on probation for burglary when the event occurred, pleaded with Florida Wildlife Officer Margaret Park not to report the incident as both possession of the weapon and being outside of Pasco Country, were violations of his parole agreement. When Park attempted to radio for help, Grossman struck her, while his accomplice beat Park. Grossman, who was high on drugs when the incident occurred, wrestled Park’s gun away from her and shot her in the back of the head.

Activists, who argue that while Grossman is guilty of murder, he never should have been found guilty of murder one or placed on death row, are gearing up to ask Governor Crist to commute Grossman’s death sentence. Grossman is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on February 16th at 6 PM.

VIN News has learned that Grossman, who practices Judaism as much as possible in the Florida prison, has requested a proper Jewish burial.

Rabbi Menachem Katz of The Aleph Institute, an organization that provides for the needs of Jewish inmates and their families told VIN News that there is a strong case to be made for commuting Grossman’s death sentence. According to Rabbi Katz, not only was this not a premeditated murder, but Grossman was high on numerous drugs at the time of the crime, had a very difficult upbringing which affected him psychologically and is not the same person he was 25 years ago.

Rabbi Katz, who visited Grossman last week on death watch and received special permission from the warden to allow Grossman to put on Tefillin, says that Grossman “has changed a great deal and is highly remorseful.”

Suicide Bomber or Orthodx Jew?

2010-01-22T10:57:00.005-06:00

This is from Ha'aretz. But it has been widely reported. Should one put on Teffilin in a plane if that is the only time he will be able to do it that day? One young Orthodox passenger thought it was OK and did. What happened to him? Read on.

A U.S. Airways passenger plane was diverted to Philadelphia on Thursday after a religious item worn by a Jewish passenger was mistaken as a bomb, Philadelphia police said.

A passenger was alarmed by the phylacteries, religious items which observant Jews strap around their arms and heads as part of morning prayers, on the flight from New York's La Guardia airport heading to Louisville.

"Someone on the plane construed it as some kind of device," said officer Christine O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia police department.

No one was arrested or charged, O'Brien said.

The plane landed without incident and the passengers and crew were taken off the plane, a spokesman for U.S. Airways said.

Phylacteries, called tefillin in Hebrew, are two small black boxes with black straps attached to them. Observant Jewish men are required to place one box on their head and tie the other one on their arm each weekday morning.

Thursday's incident was the latest of several false alarms on U.S. flights since the Dec. 25 incident in which a Nigerian man attempted to detonate a bomb in his underpants from materials he smuggled onto the plane just as his flight was about to land in Detroit, authorities said.

The device did not explode and only burned the man, who was pounced on by fellow passengers. Since then several flights have been diverted by security scares that have turned out to be harmless.

Rules of the Road

2010-01-19T20:00:00.002-06:00

This little gem was written by a Baal Teshuva. But these are words of wisdom most everyone should hear. From Beyond BT it is my 'post of the day'.

1. Listen to the wise advice of Pirkei Avos. Make yourself a rabbi and acquire yourself a friend. It’s essential to have a reachable rabbi who has a good brain, a good heart, a sense of humor and lots of practical good sense. It’s also important to have an understanding and patient friend whom you can cry on, vent on and kvetch on.

2. Don’t be like the guy who’s always changing the hands on his wristwatch whenever he spots a different time on someone else’s. Maybe, just maybe, the other guy is wrong! And that’s even if the other guy is an FFB going back to the Vilna Gaon. That’s why you need the reachable rabbi and the patient friend mentioned in #1.

3. Having too much money will never be a problem again.

4. Having too much leisure time will also never be a problem again.

5. Angels are perfect. Human beings, even if they wear black hats or sheitels, are not.

6. It is the most wonderful experience in the world to be a grandparent to frum from birth grandchildren. Unfortunately, you first have to pass through a stage known as Being a Parent. Being a parent to frum children is a three-way race to see what you lose first: all your sanity, all your money, or all your hair.

7. Parts of New York are their own planet.

8. Do one tremendous awesome Yom Kippur to atone for all of those sins in your previous non-frum existence. From then on, take it one year at a time.

9. Learn to read Hebrew. You don’t need to actually speak it, unless you’re planning on moving to Israel. You do, however, need to learn frummisher sprach (all of those Yiddish-Yinglish-whatever slangy expressions which are sprinkled through FFB speech). “Our b’chor won Chosson Bereishis on Simchas Torah at his Yeshiva Gedola by pledging to learn two thousand blatt.” “Bli ayin harah, my machatenesta is in remission from yenem’s machalah.” “The rav’s aynekel’s bris was on Shabbos Chol Hamoed, so they invited the entire kehillah to a fleishige seudah in the shul sukkah.” English, of course, right? But would anyone not part of our culture understand what you were trying to say?

10. Reach out beyond your reachable rabbi and your patient friend to a support group, like the people right here at Beyond BT dot com.

11. Distinguish between those family members who are supportive and those who are toxic. Spend quality time with those who are supportive and caring. Send Rosh Hashanah cards once a year to those who are not.

12. Gehinnom was created on Erev Shabbos. That’s why Fridays are frantic and stress-filled no matter whether sunset is four-thirty or eight-thirty.

13. Bosses are generally more willing to let you leave early on Friday if you work late on Thursday. The problem is, that’s also when you have to shop and cook for Shabbos. So say goodbye to any chance of getting to sleep at a decent hour Thursday nights.

14. If you have two cents the kids’ yeshivos will take it. See Number Three above.

15. Find a spouse who’s in it for the long haul.

16. Pray to G-d a lot.

I’m sure my fellow BT’s out there will have their own tips, strategies and survival secrets to pass along to new BT’s (hopefully without scaring them off).

What Kind of Orthodox Jew Are You?

2010-01-18T13:33:00.005-06:00

I have just concluded a poll on this blog that asked what the Hashkafa of my readers are. It is not a scientific poll. Far from it. For one thing not everyone who reads this blog participated. There were only 112 respondents. I have thousands of readers on my primary blog Emes Ve-Emunah on a regular basis. But I still think that the results are probably fairly accurate. They more or less matched my expectations.

In the categories I listed here is the breakdown:

Chasidic: 4%
Right Wing Charedi: 2%
Moderate Charedi: 26%
Right Wing Modern Orthodox: 31%
Left Wing Modern Orthodox: 23%
Lubavitch: 6%
Orthoprax: 5%

Here is my very unscientific analysis.

Most of my readership is drawn from those who generally agree with me and are closest to my Hashkafa. I am basically a Right Wing Orthodox Jew (with an asterisk – in some things I might be in the moderate Charedi camp and in others I may be in the LWMO camp).

At 31% - it is the largest percentage and seems to be drawn from this group.

At 26%- Moderate Charedim are a close second which to me indicates that they pretty much tend to like what I write and identify with many (but not all) of my positions. In conversations with moderate Charedim who have mentioned that they read my blog - this is what they say.

I would also note that the close numbers between RWMO and moderate Charedim supports my theory that our values and views are similar. That – in turn - supports my theory that these two groups are well suited for the integration that is going on. The two categories combine form a majorty of the posters who responded

At 23% - I was a bit surprised that LWMO had such high numbers. I guess there are many from that demographic that identify with my views on the Issues. That is an encouraging sign. That said, it is also very possible that my readership does not support me at all and just reads my blog to see my views – agree or not.

At 4% - I was a surprised at the low numbers of Chasidim. I guess my strong criticisms of Chasidim like Satmar and Toldos Ahron in Meah Sheraim and Chasidic Rebbes like the Spinka Rebbe pushed many of them away.

At 2% - I was not at all surprised by the low numbers of RW Charedim. They are understandably turned off by my questioning their hard core values

Lubavitch obviously has a problem with me. I have been very critical of them and continue to be. Boyotting me is therefore not al that surprising. On the other had – at 6% they were the largest of thsoe who only garnered single digits.

Orthoprax Jews got 5% of the vote. I suppose that these observant skeptics do not consider my views about the Torah to be Emes. They probably see them as being more about Emunah. But at the same time they must also see that I do not question the sincerity of their doubt. And do not dismiss them as just a bunch of Kofrim.

So, I am a bit surprised at just how their proportion is here.

Those are some of my observations. YMMV (Your mileage may vary). I fully accept that these numbers may in fact not be accurate and that my analysis may be off.

Update: (1/19/10 - 10:27am CST): A new poll is up.

Michael Medved's Kiddush HaShem

2010-01-15T09:11:00.005-06:00

The Tonight Show and the personalities surrounding it have been in the news a lot lately. NBC has become an object of ridicule of late because of all the controversy about the hosts and the changing time slots . But here is an inspiring story involving that show that happened many years ago. It was both materially rewarding, a Kiddush HaShem, and a tribute to Michael Medved.

Hat tip: Saul Z. Neuman

When The Tonight Show invited the Sabbath-observant Medved to discuss his awful movies, he had to beg off because it was scheduled for the night of the second Passover Seder. The producer suggested an alternate date, but that date was on the last days of Passover, which also precluded participation. At this point, the disbelieving producer said that there would be no more alternative dates.

Desperate, Medved read the producer the biblical passage forbidding work at the end of Passover, and the producer relented. Medved's eventual appearance was viewed by another producer, of Sneak Previews, who offered Medved a spot on the show. Of course, the episode on which Medved appeared was the only time that year the Sneak Previews producer had watched The Tonight Show, making this the 20th-century equivalent of a Hasidic tale, where strict observance begets material success.

Setting the Record Straight

2010-01-14T19:23:00.005-06:00

Post of the Day

Occasionally I will be putting up what I believe is the best or most interesting post I have seen while perusing some of the blogs I regularly read. Today is one of those days.

The post of the day is the Shannon Orand story on Failed Messiah. Here is it is in her own words:

I was married to Charles Brady Orand. Brady had several affairs. I was very much a Christian. I believed if I prayed enough God would change him. That wasn’t going to happen.

My husband had wanted some sexual things that I wasn't comfortable with but did because they were important to him.

Brady was working in Ohio and coming home every other weekend. I decided to surprise him for Valentine’s one year and went up there and met all of his friends in a bar up there – a get-together party I went to.We fought while I was up there and we decided to get divorced.

When I got back I got calls from two women. They told me I’d done the right thing. Brady had been sleeping with both of them and neither knew about the other or that he was married. So I separated, took the kids and went to an apartment.

I had kind of left Christianity and was not doing much at all religiously…

There are rumors I had affairs. That’s not true … I started seeing a secular Israeli guy…very anti-religious, very against everything I now stand for.…He was also separated and going for a divorce.

He wanted to take me to Israel to meet all his friends over there.When I was in Tel Aviv I contacted my mother. She was very religious, very Christian, and she was complaining I was spending all my time in Tel Aviv partying, going to clubs and meeting his friends and family, and on the beach. You’re in Israel and you’re not going to see the places Jesus was? So I decided to spend one day in Jerusalem. When I came back I started going back to a messianic synagogue – I had been involved in the messianic movement but not so seriously – and at the same time I started studying all the counter-missionary stuff. And then I started my studies [for conversion to Orthodox Judaism]. That started my studies.

During the separation Brady molested my daughter. She was mine before I married him. She’s from my first marriage. My son is from my second marriage to Brady. She knew him as daddy. So when we were separated, that was her house, too, and she wanted to go back to visit and she wanted to see him. We had two kids – she didn’t know him as a stepdad.When she had weekends available, she would go visit just like my son would go visit, just like a normal visitation, even though she wasn’t his child.

She was ten. My son was five.One of the times, she came back, and nothing happened. But the next week – it was vacation, it was the 4th of July – she was supposed to go with him because I had to work and then go with my mother for the rest of the week, but she said no, I don’t want to go to daddy, I want to say here. We tried to talk her into it. She got very upset and said she can’t go. She pulled my niece aside and said you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to tell grandma not to let me go to daddy’s.

The next day my mother called me and said we have to talk. The reason my daughter didn’t want to go is because on the last visit he got into bed with her and messed with her. He fingered her and he hurt her. She said, “Daddy you’re hurting me,” but he wouldn’t stop.

My son and my daughter were in bed together when Brady abused my daughter. My daughter got away from him by asking to use the bathroom, and she tried to stay in the bathroom for a long time hoping he would fall asleep. But then she went back in the bed. We asked her why and she said, “Because my brother was there, I didn’t want him to hurt him. He was going to hurt my brother.” Brady was charged. We prepared for the trial. The prosecution had the doctor’s report of my daughter’s medical examination. It showed the physical damage. The first day of the trial he decided to take the plea bargain, which was ten years probation. So he didn’t have to serve time.

I was abused as a kid. I was so young, it wasn’t as if I was being violated – it was all that I knew. My daughter was old enough to know she was being violated. It started when I was three and I didn’t know anything was wrong until I was nine years old and there was a McGruff the Crime Dog program at school telling kids what’s wrong and what’s right. If anyone does this to you you go to an adult. That was the first time I knew anything was wrong and I right away said someone does that to me! A much older step-brother, my mother’s husband’s son.

My abuse was long-term. My daughter’s was one time, maybe. I thought maybe she wouldn’t suffer so much, but she did. She suffered terribly.She chose to go to an all girls school just to avoid being around boys. She used to put up booby traps in her room when she’d sleep so no one could get in. She’s been affected very, very much.It was a long divorce. He told friends that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t abuse my daughter, and that that this was all about me wanting to get half of the house. So I ended up dropping everything and signing the divorce papers right away and left with nothing and threw all of my focus into my daughter’s case. And then we went to the criminal trial.He pled guilty in 2007. I agreed to the plea bargain that was in print. There were special restrictions for sex offenders. One of those was that he could not have any access to children under the age of eighteen.

While they were in front of the judge, his attorney said he wanted to add a line on there: “With the exception of my son, if the family court permits.” So he hand-wrote that on there.

The judge looked at that and said, that’s for the family courts to decide, and okayed it, not knowing there was already a standing court order – which was a divorce – which was a standard custody just like any other father gets, full access to my son.

So the DA took me out and said this was approved, this was put in there, you go to a family court right away and get this changed, so he can’t have access to your son. And that’s what I did.

He fought it and said he wants standard visitation. I wanted to leave Houston and get as far away from him as I can so he couldn’t have access to my son. My attorney said you’re going to have to take this to trial, and the trial is going to cost you at least $20,000. I went to friends. I went to advocacy organizations. I tried to find someone to take the case pro bono. She tried to bide time while I tried to come up with the $20,000. It wasn’t working and we had a deadline.

She said: Either you come up with the money for the trial or we have to withdraw the case – and then it reverts back to the family court order and he gets full access to your son. And that is when I approached Rabbi Tropper, who was overseeing my conversion. He had access to money. He’s an organization and he had access to Tom Kaplan. He was a rabbi. I ended up crying to him about everything. I even told him about my husband's sexual demands. Tropper offered to help me. That was May 2009.

He created a job for me with EJF. He brought me to Monsey to meet everybody in the office, to have meetings with Rabbi Jacobs and Rabbi Medows about how I could help. I was going to raise money and I was going to run programs in Houston. That was June. He started pressuring me.The video was the first recording I did. It was in Monsey on that trip. That’s when I bought the camera. I didn’t have time to set it up. The date’s wrong on the video. When I saw it I said, oh, that’s wrong.

He wanted to get me together with his wife. He said he wouldn’t touch me. I didn’t know if she was going to do it. He asked what it would take to get me together with his wife. I said it made me very uncomfortable. I tried to get out of it a little bit and Tropper could tell I was uncomfortable. He said: Maybe if I wasn’t there you’d be more comfortable. Then I talked to Leba and found out she’d never really been with a woman. She’d just been making up stories to please Tropper. They were just lies. She’s very submissive. She’s a victim in all this. So I told Tropper I’d be much more comfortable if he wasn’t there, and if it would be an ‘encounter’ we’d tell him about later. Tropper wanted to be there for the last five minutes. He still said he wasn’t going to touch me but I wasn’t so sure, so I went out and bought the camera. Leba and I didn’t do anything. We just rehearsed our story, the story we would tell Tropper. When he called to say he was coming we got undressed and waited.

I knew someone who was well-connected in Israel with the rabbis. The tapes were supposed to go to leading rabbis and everything was supposed to be handled internally. And it was working. Rabbi Amar broke with EJF and the European rabbis publicly condemned EJF.

But someone leaked the tapes.I didn’t know my name was on one until you told me on the phone. It was horrible. The trial was supposed to conclude Monday. My daughter was supposed to testify in the morning and then the verdict would have been that afternoon. When we got to court my ex-husband’s attorney had copies of the New York Post article. Because it said the money Tropper was giving me was for legal fees, it was admissible. My ex-husband’s attorney had been terrible throughout the trial. We’d been living as frum Jews for years, and his attorney used that against us. He played up Orthodoxy as some kind of religious cult. He made Modern Orthodoxy seem like hasidim. He also kept saying it was only one time, and that’s horrific to me, because how many times is okay for a father to rape a ten year old girl?

There was child porn. I found a lot of it [before the molestation]. He came up with excuses why it was there I fell for.My attorney pulled me aside and said I’d have to explain the article on the stand. I said, “No, I can’t. This is a different case. It’s not relevant. It has nothing to do with my children. Somehow you’ve got to get it out of there.” But she said, no, it’s totally relevant. In there it says the money you received went to the attorneys. My attorneys had been in touch with Tropper all the time. Tropper is a control freak. He had constant contact with them wanting to know what was going on, and he was sending the checks. And they knew all the money was coming from him. And that put us in a tough spot, because we’d have to say the money came from him.

This would have extended the trial, and I was already $10,000 negative – the money Tropper wasn’t going to give me. She said, “Gosh, you can’t afford this, another week or two or three at $2,000 per day for me to represent you. The audios are going to have to come out.”She said, “Your only choice is to settle. You’re going to have to allow visitation.”I’m looking at a picture of me and Tropper being distributed all over the courthouse. I panicked and I freaked. To me, settlement was the only option we had. There’s no way I could get on the stand and go through all this stuff. I didn’t know until the Friday you called me that my name was connected to it.

They wanted regular visits with his wife as supervisor. I said no way. She’s never going to tell if something is wrong and she has to sleep sometime. She can’t stay awake for seventy-two hours three days straight. My son and my daughter were in the bed together when he abused her, and he had a girlfriend in the house. So just because she’s there it’s not going to protect my kid. So then it was, he can have visitation but no overnight visits. That’s what it ended up being. He can have them for the three days and his wife is the supervisor but he can’t keep them overnight.“It was horrible watching my daughter fall apart like that. She’s just now getting better.”

Heeb?

2010-01-13T20:45:00.002-06:00

Joe Aaron, editor and publisher of the Chicago Jewish News is a brilliant but controversial writer. He writes a weekly column on various Jewish topics in the back of his paper. While I don't always agree with him, I admire his skill in presenting his view. And very often - I do agree with him. This is one of those times.

The following is an excerpt from last week's column. This one... I agree with.

Do we have to demean Judaism in order to save it? I have always hated Heeb magazine. That's the magazine begun as a way to reach out to young Jews who don't care about Judaism. It's supposed to grab them by being hip, irreverent, cutting edge.

Instead, it's mostly disgusting.

First, the name. How sad to use a slur as a way to attract young Jews. Those who hate us have called us Heeb, which is why we shouldn't use it any more than any self-respecting black publication would use the n-word as its title. I know, I know, using Heeb is supposed to be a way for us to take away the word's power, make it an object of ridicule.

Baloney. It's an ugly word and sends a loud and wrong message to young Jews about what Judaism is about. Even worse, the magazine seems to feel mocking Judaism, diminishing Judaism is the route to getting young Jews to want to embrace Judaism.

Again, I know young people need to be approached in ways they can relate to, in the methods they are used to in today's world. That's fine. But while the means can be unconventional, the goal should be to show young Jews the beauty of Judaism, why living Jewish lives will be so enriching to their lives, will give them meaning and joy.

Instead, among the things Heeb has done is host a Chanukah party featuring a game of "Strip Dreidel," with Jewish porn stars, publish a cover with Roseanne Barr dressed as Hitler and baking burnt Jew cookies ... I could go on, but I won't.

Tasteless doesn't begin to describe it. Nauseating comes closer.

Yes, the Jewish world has done a horrible job of finding effective ways of reaching young Jews and making the case to them for being Jewish, but coming out with a magazine named for a slur and celebrating Jewish porn stars, does not convey the essence of Judaism, nor does it tell young Jews that Judaism is anything but to be laughed at.

The Tel Aviv Cluster

2010-01-12T20:47:00.003-06:00

What a great article about... US! It's by David Brooks. It's in the New York Times. Just had to post it. Read it and enjoy.

Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

In his book, “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement,” Steven L. Pease lists some of the explanations people have given for this record of achievement. The Jewish faith encourages a belief in progress and personal accountability. It is learning-based, not rite-based.

Most Jews gave up or were forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages; their descendants have been living off of their wits ever since. They have often migrated, with a migrant’s ambition and drive. They have congregated around global crossroads and have benefited from the creative tension endemic in such places.

No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement. The odd thing is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest. Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.

Milton Friedman used to joke that Israel disproved every Jewish stereotype. People used to think Jews were good cooks, good economic managers and bad soldiers; Israel proved them wrong.

But that has changed. Benjamin Netanyahu’s economic reforms, the arrival of a million Russian immigrants and the stagnation of the peace process have produced a historic shift. The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation’s public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.

Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined.

As Dan Senor and Saul Singer write in “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,” Israel now has a classic innovation cluster, a place where tech obsessives work in close proximity and feed off each other’s ideas.

Because of the strength of the economy, Israel has weathered the global recession reasonably well. The government did not have to bail out its banks or set off an explosion in short-term spending. Instead, it used the crisis to solidify the economy’s long-term future by investing in research and development and infrastructure, raising some consumption taxes, promising to cut other taxes in the medium to long term. Analysts at Barclays write that Israel is “the strongest recovery story” in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.

This shift in the Israeli identity has long-term implications. Netanyahu preaches the optimistic view: that Israel will become the Hong Kong of the Middle East, with economic benefits spilling over into the Arab world. And, in fact, there are strands of evidence to support that view in places like the West Bank and Jordan.

But it’s more likely that Israel’s economic leap forward will widen the gap between it and its neighbors. All the countries in the region talk about encouraging innovation. Some oil-rich states spend billions trying to build science centers. But places like Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv are created by a confluence of cultural forces, not money. The surrounding nations do not have the tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity.

For example, between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the U.S. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652.

The tech boom also creates a new vulnerability. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has argued, these innovators are the most mobile people on earth. To destroy Israel’s economy, Iran doesn’t actually have to lob a nuclear weapon into the country. It just has to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them already have contacts and homes. American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the U.S.

During a decade of grim foreboding, Israel has become an astonishing success story, but also a highly mobile one.

Shanon's Story

2010-01-07T19:41:00.008-06:00

The following is from a blog called Jewish Israel (JI). It is an interview with Rachel (Shannon) Orand after her conversion to Judaism. The story is riveting! Congratulations to Rachel on her sincere conversion and to JI for getting this 'scoop.' - HM

Jewish Israel would like to wish a heartfelt Mazal Tov to JI member Shannon Orand upon her conversion to Judaism which she received in Israel earlier this week. Welcome to the Jewish people, Rachel (Shannon’s Hebrew name)!

Members of the Beit Din were Chief Rabbi Dov Lior of Hevron, Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed, and a respected rabbi who requested that his name be withheld. In addition, another recognized Chief Rabbi facilitated in the conversion process.

Shannon withstood an extremely challenging test over these past few weeks, as news of Leib Tropper’s compromising behavior hit the press and blogosphere. Shannon is a valued member of Jewish Israel. She actively participates in our interactive forums and talkbacks, and provides us with invaluable information. We were in touch with her and very much aware of the disturbing circumstances involving Leib Tropper. We offered Shannon our hopes and prayers for a quick, proper, and decent resolution to this episode. We opted not to publish any information until this incident came to a positive and fruitful conclusion, and indeed it has.

Jewish Israel had the opportunity to speak with Shannon this week, and she graciously afforded us this interview:

[Note: one of the rabbis handling Shannon’s conversion asked that she no longer refer to Leib Tropper as “Rabbi”]

JI: How are you feeling? You’re a Jew now.

Shannon: Relieved after such a long process. I feel like I came out of Egypt. Many potential converts undergo severe testing, and I’ve certainly had my share.

JI: Were the rabbis involved with your conversion fully aware of the episode that transpired over the past few weeks?

Shannon: They were fully aware of the situation, are in possession of tapes, heard evidence, thoroughly questioned me, and required me to submit a written statement.

JI: Is there something you would like the online public to know that was not exposed in the press reports? Is there a statement that you would like to make?

Shannon: I think it needs to be understood that the information which went public was intended for trusted rabbinic authorities only. It should never have been leaked. The worst thing for me is the chilul Hashem that was created by all of this and the pain it has caused the Jewish community. I’m sick over the media’s treatment of this episode and the aspects they chose to focus on.

The outstanding questions are, how did I allow this situation to happen? Why didn't I put a stop to it and just go elsewhere?

But the press reports virtually ignored the fact that I have been immersed in an ongoing legal battle involving my children and my ex-husband who sexually molested my daughter, pleaded guilty, and is a registered sex offender. Leib Tropper was taking care of the tremendous legal expenses I was incurring – which put me in a terribly difficult situation. I don’t think the press or blog reports conveyed the desperate and powerless situation I found myself in.

JI: In addition to the humiliation and pain caused by the Tropper scandal what are the other emotional costs you have incurred?

Shannon: I lost the trial and although my ex-husband is forbidden from seeing my daughter, he has been granted visitation rights to see my son. I had planned on making aliyah, but after this verdict that is no longer possible at this time.

A major concern I have is, how will the people in my community react? They are confused, and because I have been silent thus far, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. I want the opportunity to clear my name, and to be accepted by the community as a Jew.

There are other costs. My mother, who is a devout evangelical/messianic and was never supportive of my conversion efforts, has told me that I’m going to hell and taking her grandchildren with me. My father, who used to be a preacher, has left the church and now considers himself Bnai Noach. He is supportive. (Shannon’s parents are divorced.)

JI: And you still insist on being a Jew after all of this?

Shannon: Yes. I came from an idolatrous Christian background and worshipped a man instead of G-d. And now I have a relationship with G-d that no man can take away from me. I began studying counter-missionary literature when I was part of the church. I realized that the Christian bible had been severely altered, and that’s how I became interested in Judaism.

JI: You’ve had a chance to explore the rigors of the conversion process in both America and in Israel – in the Hareidi and the religious Zionist worlds. Is the approach different?

Shannon: I found that the Israeli process is just as stringent, but was far more focused on what it means to be a Jew, whereas the American Hareidi system placed a great – almost exclusive - emphasis on halacha. For example, the Israeli rabbis asked me questions about halacha, but also asked me questions pertaining to the 13 principles of faith, the idea of messiah, belief in one G-d, the importance of the land of Israel, the mitzvot, and what being a Jew means to me. The American rabbis grilled me on the various laws pertaining to Shabbat observance. I have to say that I found the Israeli approach to be refreshing and inspiring.

I feel very fortunate to have had what I consider to be the best of the best conversions, under such an amazing Beit Din. To be able to sit in front of and speak to such pure individuals that I respect and admire was beautiful. These people understand what it means to be a Jew, that it’s much more than a black hat, and they live it every day.

JI: Shannon, thank you for your honesty. May G-d grant you the strength, focus and wisdom needed to continue on the correct path and to meet the challenges ahead.

We hope the Orthodox community in Houston will welcome Shannon as a valuable member of the Jewish community, assist her, and enable her life and the lives of her children to return to normalcy.

Murdering One's Child

2010-01-06T12:24:00.000-06:00

What is THIS about? In a post on YWN Zaka founder and former Edah HaCharedis official, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav seems to be implying that a Charedi father murdered his infant? Is that what happened? Is this the harsh realities in the chareidi neighborhood he is talking about? If it is I give him credit for recoginzing that probelms like this exist and bringing them to the attention of the public. The post from YWN follows. - HM

Following the tragedy in the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood of Yerushalayim earlier in the week that resulted in the death of an infant, by the hands of her father R”L, Zaka founder Yehuda Meshi-Zahav spoke with Kikar.net, expressing his pain over harsh realities in the chareidi neighborhood.

After having to deal with the infant, even people like Meshi-Zahav find it difficult, overcome with strong emotions and hopefully, a “cheshbon nefesh” as he puts it, the need for the chareidi community to finally come to terms with some harsh realities, realities that we prefer not to admit to ourselves.

Meshi-Zahav, a former ‘operations officer’ of the Eida Chareidis, explained that he lectures in chiloni forums frequently, and discusses difficult issues. He explained that anyone who engages in this type of askanus of Zaka and similar organizations understands these concepts more than the average person.

Meshi-Zahav intervened between police and chareidim present at Bikur Cholim Hospital, and he transferred the body of the infant to Shamgar, to the Chevra Kadisha, explaining the emotions that accompanied him during the trip, a most difficult one, even for someone who has been at the scene of many terrorist attacks, among the most heinous known.

He explained others involved in this kind of work are aware that in the chareidi community, some of the urgent issues, the problems that no one wishes to discuss, are not addressed appropriately - the issues that are ignored in the hope they may disappear, or at the very least, escape the scrutiny of the public eye.

When asked what one can do, he explained a good start would be to prioritize, explaining that while the battle for kedushas shabbos must maintain prominent significance, there are things more important than Intel.

“We of Zaka are the ones who deal with the consequences of such horrific incidents, and we mustn’t close our eyes. Action must be taken, appropriate action, such as in this case as the community becomes aware of a father’s deteriorating mental state”.

Haredi Web geeks fight rabbis' crackdown on Internet

2010-01-05T10:02:00.000-06:00

As if to underscore my post on EvE the following story by Yair Ettinger showed up in today's Ha'aretz. Is the Charedi public ignoring the ban? See the bolded section near the end. - HM

Under a blitz attack by ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the people behind the country's ultra-Orthodox Web sites are attempting to return fire.

Guy Cohen is the CEO of Global Networks, the Internet media company whose Web portals include the ultra-Orthodox Behadrei Haredim. He is threatening a million-shekel lawsuit against Rabbi Moshe Karp of Modi'in Ilit, the behind-the-scenes leader of the three-week-old campaign against the sites.

The campaign has already led to the closure of one major ultra-Orthodox public Internet site and the resignation of key figures from others. Cohen, a businessman who is not religiously observant, is hoping to save Behadrei Haredim, considered the most important ultra-Orthodox Web site.

Haaretz has learned that on Saturday night Cohen met with Karp and gave him a letter claiming that the rabbi, under cover of the official boycott, was slandering him and engineering threats to the site's advertisers. The letter informed Karp he could face NIS 1 million suit for slander.

The boycott began with a letter in the party-controlled ultra-Orthodox dailies that had been signed by dozens of the most important rabbis in the Haredi community, beginning with Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. (Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the most senior ultra-Orthodox adjudicator, did not sign the letter).

The letter, which Karp is thought to have written, targets not the estimated hundreds of thousands of Haredim who use the Internet, but rather the operators of the Haredi sites.

"Recently, 'Haredi' Internet channels have been sending forth all sorts of reports and gossip and slander against the Haredi public..." the letter said in part.

The undersigned rabbis called on the Haredi community not only to avoid looking at the sites but also not to cooperate them in any way and not to advertise on them as individuals, organizations or companies.

Subsequently, both editors in chief of Hadrei Haredim, David Rotenberg and Dov Povarsky, announced they were leaving the site. One of the sites that continued operation, Kikar Hashabbat, is being attacked directly in the Haredi press. The ban generates headlines on a near-daily basis. Hamodia's front page yesterday featured an article in which the great adjudicator of the Hasidic world, Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner, was quoted saying that the "steadfast battle against the Internet and 'Haredi' sites that destroy all that is good is a moral war."

Behadrei Haredim continues to operate, and Guy Cohen said recently that user numbers have not declined.

Cohen said he has, however, been hurt by the flight of advertisers from the site.

At a meeting last Saturday night at Rabbi Karp's Modi'in Ilit home, Cohen offered to submit the portal to the rabbis' authority, including increased supervision of forums by the direct representatives of the rabbis. According to sources who attended the meeting, he was rebuffed. Karp demanded that Cohen close the site, and that is when Cohen produced the letter informing

Karp of his intention to sue. Both Karp and Cohen declined comment.

Paving the Road

2010-01-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time. When I first heard about the widely attended gay panel at Yeshiva University sponsored by their Wurzweiler Graduate School for Social Work and the YU Tolerance Club – I thought, Wow! ...what a bold move. Finally - a forum whereby one can learn to hate the sin and not the sinner.

I made clear at the time that as long as Halacha is followed one should not condemn someone who is physically attracted to members of the same sex. If one has such a drive but does not act on it, he is to be lauded. And for those who succumb to their Ta’avos, they should be treated no differently than any heterosexual that succumbs to their own forbidden Ta’avos. I of course still feel that way.

Unfortunately most hereosexuals especially religious ones don’t. They tend to feel extreme prejudice against homosexuals. I should add that it is quite understandable that a heterosexual would feel revulsion at gay sex. That makes it very hard even counter-intuitve to be toerant. We have to work very hard to over-look that feeling of revulsion.

But what is revolting to us is normal to a homosexual. By having no Halachicly permissible outlet for their sex drives, one needs to bend over backwards to understand their predicament. It is my understanding that the suicide rate among homosexuals is higher than it is for the general public. I think that the public revulsion to the act that to them is the only act that is sexually gratifying contributes mightily to the potential depression and higher suicide rate they have. They know our revulsion. It depresses them that they are sexuallyaroused on by something that most people are disgusted by.

The assembly in YU a couple of weeks ago did not come off as advertised. Instead of talking about tolerance it ended up almost a legitimizing the lifestyle itself. Maybe not in those explicit terms. But in the over-all tenor of the event.

Rabbi Mayer Twerski spoke passionately about this to students in YU’s Beis HaMedrash earlier this week. Here is an excerpt taken from DovBear who published his words:

Unfortunately, the way the Chillul HaShem unfolded and how the event occurred, it was billed as being gay at YU. The Chillul HaShem unfolded as a reflection on the institution, on all of us, because of people in the event, attending the event, and when that’s how the Chillul HaShem unfolds – not only is there a need to find some forum, some vehicle to go on record against this Chillul HaShem, and in this case the obligation is many times over. The picture projected, one of total distortion, is that it reflects on the yeshiva. It reflects on every segment of the yeshiva, administration, rabbeim, talmidim, everyone was implicated by how the program was projected and how it came off: “Being Gay in YU.” Two of the four presenters also spoke about actual mishkav zachor, in addition to the distortions we’ve spoken up until now. The transcript talks about applause at many points – but no mecha’ah. That’s where the record stands. SO everyone in our community must say that is not us, we reject – we disassociate ourselves from all of that.

I agree. I had no idea this assembly degenerated to that. Had I known I would not have applauded it. I would have condemned it. It was indeed a Chilul HaShem - good intentions gone horribly wrong. Perhaps I should have realized that something like this would happen. But I didn’t and apologize for any contribution - no matter how slight -I made toward that end. I am fully supportive of the Roshei Yeshiva of YU and its administration headed by Presidnt Joel who had earlier expressed similar feelings to those of Rabbi Twersky.

I had originally hoped that the whole world was watching when YU seemed to be confronting an issue that had too long been in the closet. I now regret that it did. Those 6 Roshei Yeshiva who protested it before it happened were right. When there is potential for such a degradation of the Torah, all good intentions should go out the window. Yotzah Sechro BeHefsedo. Any benefit gets washed away by the loss. All I can say in my defense is that my heart was in the right place. I now condemn what happened as a Chilul HaShem.

I think it should be noted that Yeshiva University stood up to the challenge here. This includes not only the faculty of Rabbeim and Roshei Yeshiva. That was to be expected. It includes almost all of the students and the administration represented by President Richard Joel. There can be no controversy about YU’s position here. YU has certainly had its share of criticism from the right in the past - on many issues. One could debate the legitimacy of those criticisms. Had this event gone un-protested, that criticism would have increased – perhaps rightfully so. Those criticisms would have been difficult to refute.

It should also be noted that the nature of a Yeshiva like YU encourages its students to live in the modern world and it teaches them how to do it. But it is also true that Yeshivos like this are vulnerable to abuse of that approach. To say that something like this could have never happened in Lakewood is true - but there is no comparison.

Lakewood is a closed society. It purposely isolates itself from the culture. There is indeed no way this could ever happen there. The more open minded a school is – the more easily it can fall prey to an event like this. YU is open minded - and it happened there – all with good intentions. Thankfully that was not the end of it. The Yeshiva did the right thing to strongly protest it and set the record straight.

It took courage to have this panel. That ended up being a big mistake.

It took even greater courage to condemn it afterwards. For that it deserves tremendous praise. Self criticism is very hard. I hope that the rest of the Yeshiva world appreciates that.

Who Is a Jew

2009-12-31T12:56:00.000-06:00

The following is an artilce that appeared in JC. It continues the conversation about Tropper, EJF and conversions. But the funniest line is below in bold italic print. When I read it I couldn't stop laughing!

In applying stringent policies, the United Synagogue finds itself with some dubious bedfellows.

By Miriam Shaviv, December 30, 2009

Three children rejected from JFS, their parents’ conversions in doubt and their own Jewish identities in tatters. A legal ruling by a British court establishing “Who is a Jew” in a way at odds with the traditional Jewish definition. A community at risk of schism.

How did we get into this mess?

A scandal currently unfolding in New York, at first glance completely unrelated, may shed some light on the current farce.

Two weeks ago, devastating recordings began circulating on the internet of salacious phone conversations between a man and a woman. The man talks about the woman having sex with him and with other men. He also fantasises about rape scenes and discusses cash payments.
Although the tapes remain unauthenticated, it has been widely reported that the man is a certain Rabbi Leib Tropper, who just days earlier had resigned from the conversion agency he founded, Eternal Jewish Family, “to pursue other interests”. There has been no denial. The woman was Shannon Orand, one of his own conversion candidates. Last week Ms Orand claimed she had been told by Rabbi Tropper: “If you fulfil my needs, I’ll fulfil yours — and you need a conversion”.

What really compounded the scandal is that EJF, the organisation Rabbi Tropper fronted, was an enormously influential international pressure group calling for the strictest of standards in conversion, such that only converts adopting a Charedi lifestyle would be acceptable.

Not long ago, Rabbi Tropper nullified a conversion he himself had carried out because the female convert was seen wearing trousers (an irony, perhaps, in that he was allegedly willing to offer Ms Orand a conversion for removing hers).

Another EJF leader declared in 2007 that any rabbi who believes the world is older than 5,768 years is ineligible to sit on a conversion court.

Their biggest success came in 2006, when the Israeli rabbinate declared it would not recognise Orthodox conversions carried out in America, except by a tiny group of mostly Charedi rabbis. This was seen as a deliberate (and successful) attempt, spurred on by EJF, to disenfranchise Modern Orthodox rabbis.

EJF’s actions were highly controversial, exclusionary, extreme and schismatic — even before the current scandal. And therein lies the Anglo-Jewish connection.

A prominent member of Rabbi Tropper’s organisation is Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu, former head of the London Beth Din. He has spoken at EJF conventions — most recently in November — and is chairman of its halachic committee in Europe. Moreover, he has been quoted on Charedi websites encouraging EJF to expand its activities into Europe — although the Conference of European Rabbis (whose beth din he also heads) recently passed a resolution strongly objecting to this potential interference.

Dayan Ehrentreu took up his position with EJF only after he retired from the LBD in 2006. Nevertheless, it is legitimate to ask why he was — and, judging by a letter he signed last week praising the group, still is — willing to associate himself with EJF, whose values are openly antagonistic to those of the supposedly centrist United Synagogue.

What does this say about his attitudes while still in office? Dayan Ehrentreu was, for years, a dominant force behind the policy on conversions for the London Beth Din. It was his ultra-strict approach to giyur that resulted in the annulment of the Orthodox conversions of Helen Sagal and Kate Lightman — ultimately paving the way for the father of Boy “M” to sue when his child, son of a Progressive convert, was rejected from JFS.

To what extent were these policies determined in New York and Bnei Brak? Dayan Ehrentreu would doubtless be shocked by Rabbi Tropper’s alleged immoral behaviour and nobody would accuse Dayan Ehrentreu of anything underhand. But his attitudes do not exist in a vacuum. The policies EJF has pursued stem from an expressed desire to impose Charedi standards for conversion across the world, obliterating any local discretion which might take into account the character and nature of local community cultures. In North America, this agenda was pushed hard by one zealot, whose religious pretensions — if the allegations are true — are a corrupt, hypocritical and scandalous charade. In Israel, it is pushed by a Charedi-dominated rabbinate with a highly political agenda.

Is this really a “gold standard” that United Synagogue members are comfortable with? Perhaps the real problem is not the Supreme Court imposing on us a Christian idea of Who is a Jew but the London Beth Din imposing on us a Charedi idea of Who is a Jew.

What's the Matter with These People?

2009-12-28T21:28:00.000-06:00

From Friday's Jerusalem Post:

Police officers on Thursday morning were attacked by a haredi mob after being dispatched to the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in Jerusalem to tend to a woman who was assaulted by the "modesty patrol."

When the law enforcement officials arrived at Rehov Admon, haredim began to congregate and throw stones at the officers.

The police car was slightly damaged, but no officers were hurt.
Reinforcements were dispatched to the scene.

The modesty patrol, an all-male vigilante group which has been active in the city's haredi neighborhoods, has been linked to numerous acts of violence over the years in their attempts to ensure the city's haredi residents conduct themselves in accordance with the conventions of their ultra-Orthodox lifestyle.

On Wednesday, a group of haredi men attacked a police car that was alerted to Jerusalem's Avodat Yisrael Street in the Mea She'arim neighborhood.

The group called the policemen "Nazis" and kicked the car, causing light damage.
No one was hurt in the incident and the suspects fled the scene.

You've Got a Friend

2009-11-17T08:52:00.000-06:00

Saw this on Chaptzem:

What exactly happened to Motty Borger during the last few seconds of his life I will never know.

One thing I do know is that Motty loved people. He loved everyone around him and was a good friend who you could always count on for a quick sharp one-liner or a good hearty laugh.

I spent a lot of time with Motty throughout the years, he was there for me in my time of need, fully and completely without hesitation and without the expectation of reciprocation.

Motty was a true friend and I now miss him dearly.

There are many things that I do not know, but I know one thing for sure. I want to remember Motty exactly the way he was on his wedding day, happy, joyful and full of hope, looking eagerly into the future to his whole life ahead of him.

To this I say, "AMEN!"

My Picture

2009-11-02T20:24:00.001-06:00

For those who want to know what I look like, I have added my facebook badge. It is on the right. I am accompanied by my three daughters.

Yael Trump

2009-10-28T18:13:00.000-05:00

This video is amazng! Ivanka Trump is now an Orthodox Jew... Who'd a thunk it? Note the invitation in this video. It looks like a typical Frum invitation. And she changed her name to Yael. Doesn't Donald Trump care that his daughter converted to Judiasm? I guess not. He seems to be OK with it.

5770 - Does anyone really know what time it is?

2009-09-18T08:06:00.000-05:00

As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said

Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
Weve all got time enough to cry

And I was walking down the street one day
A pretty lady looked at me and said her diamond watch had stopped cold dead
And I said

Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
Weve all got time enough to cry

And I was walking down the street one day
Being pushed and shoved by people trying to beat the clock, oh, no I just dont know
I dont know
And I said, yes I said

Background:
People runnin everywhere
Dont know where to go
Dont know where I am
Cant see past the next step
Dont have time to think past the last mile
Have no time to look around
Just run around, run around and think why

Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
Weve all got time enough to die

In Tribute to a Local Hero

2009-09-09T12:16:00.000-05:00

The following was posted in a comment on UOJ.

I am not in the habit of quoting from his blog. Not because I don't I approve of his goals. I do. But because I do not approve of his methods.

This comment deserves to be singled out. It is a tribute to someone I know who quietly and without pay does the work that few people are willing to do even for pay. I salute him!

"Until someone swims against the tide of denial, stops the flow, builds a dam, and changes the minhag child sexual abuse doesn't go away on its own."

Our Rabbi in Chicago, Rabbi Finkel told us the same thing. IT'S UP TO EACH OF US to stop the cycle of abuse. It's either your FOR it or AGAINST it. Once a victim acts on the sickness, he is NO LONGER A VICTIM, HE's A PERPETRATOR.

We took Rabbi Finkel up on his challenge to find meaning in our life. Many of us are on our way back or have already arrived. We were treated like GARBAGE by the community and the so called "Rabbis" because we were challenging the way things were done in Chicago for ages. We have our own Rabbi who went through the same treatment for turning the tide.

We are so proud to have stood up, and still stand up against all garbage thrown at us. The MORE DIRT THE RABBIS AND COMMUNITY THROW AT US, THE CLEANER WE FEEL. We won't continue the chain of abuse. Thank God he came into our lives when we finally hit bottom and strengthened us and challenged us to make a life for ourself.

IF WE CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU!! We know how bad off we were yet OVERCAME, YOU CAN ALSO!! Don't give up, you can do it. It might take a REAL RABBI to help you along, we found ours, we hope you find yours. They exist in every city, please find that man and give it a try.

STOP THE CYCLE! TAKE THE KNOCKS PEOPLE WILL GIVE YOU! IT MAY BE HARD! IT MAY HURT! BUT, WHEN YOU DO IT, THERE'S NO FEELING LIKE IT!

Rabbi Finkel thank you for throwing us a lifeline when we were about to drown. You should reap the benfits of your work and have Nachas from your kids and future generations. Working for no money shows the dedication and care you have for suffering souls. By us spreading your teachings, you have no idea how many people's lives you have touched.

SHANA TOVAH!

Putting our Best Foot Forward

2009-09-03T16:22:00.000-05:00

Well our people have once again made the New York Times. Doesn't this make Judaism appealing? Read it and weep!

Religious-Secular Divide, Tugging at Israel’s Heart

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — On Saturday, as on every Saturday in recent weeks, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered before dusk on the terraces above the Carta parking lot just outside the Old City walls. In black silk Sabbath robes and fur hats, they lined up in rows, perched and waiting.

Suddenly their foot soldiers arrived on the street below, protesters who surged past the newly opened luxury Mamilla Hotel. Police officers mounted on horses rushed to meet them as hotel guests looked on, bewildered, from windows on the upper floors.

This summer, radical elements of the ultra-Orthodox community have been demonstrating and rioting against city authorities, welfare officials and the police. For Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, a secular high-tech millionaire trying to attract more business, tourism and professional types to the city, the timing has been inopportune, to say the least.

The tensions in this contested city usually run along an east-west, Jewish-Palestinian divide. But within the western, predominantly Jewish, section of the city, the cultural fault lines between religious and secular Jews run deep. Any change in the delicate status quo seems capable of setting off a riot, as Jerusalem’s most zealous Jews and liberals vie for the city’s character and soul.

“It is all part of the special human mosaic that makes up Jerusalem,” said Israel Kimhi, a director of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, an independent research organization here. But the recent turmoil “does not do much for the image of the city,” he added, arguing that a small but strident section of the ultra-Orthodox population has grown increasingly extreme.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as haredim, or those who fear God, went to battle in years past to ensure observation of the Jewish Sabbath, and tried to force the closing of movie theaters and roads. From sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, strictly observant Jews do not work, use electric devices, spend money or drive. There are no municipal services during the Sabbath in Jerusalem, and on the Jewish side most businesses are closed.

But after a 13-year lull in what local residents call the “Sabbath wars,” another round started one Saturday in June, when City Hall decided to open a parking lot. With the security situation in Jerusalem relatively calm, tourists and day trippers have been flocking back to the Old City on weekends, prompting a need for somewhere to park their cars.

At first, the mayor opened a municipal parking lot under City Hall. When that led to protests, he opened the private Carta lot under Arab management, and made it free of charge. The protests only intensified.

Yoelish Kraus, the operations chief for the Eda Haredit, the militantly Orthodox organization behind the protests, said the mayor’s mistake was announcing the opening of the parking lot at a news conference. As soon as there is a public sanction for violating the Sabbath, he said, “we
have to fight.”

The ultra-Orthodox make up about a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population, and the adherents of the Eda Haredit are only a fraction of that. But with an average of 10 children per family, Mr. Kraus said, the community is growing fast.

The rabbinic sects of the Eda Haredit are the scions of Orthodox Jews who were in Palestine before the foundation of Israel in 1948. In the absence of the Messiah, they fervently reject Zionism and the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

The protesters called the police “Nazis” and spat at them. Special Force police officers dumped troublemakers into the fragrant rosemary and lavender bushes along the sidewalk. Protesters who tried to block the road were sprayed with pepper gas and carried off in a prison service van.
A small knot of secular counterprotesters sang songs at a bus stop while ultra-Orthodox demonstrators threw plastic bottles of water and pebbles at them. “The parking lot will stay open because we will not let it close,” said Nir Pereg, 29, a secular resident of the city, as his companions belted out a round of “Jerusalem will not fall.”

The Eda Haredit has also rallied around one of its members this summer, a mother who was arrested on suspicion of starving her 3-year-old son. Her supporters rioted in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and set fire to a local welfare office where she had met with social workers before being detained.

Fierce riots broke out on Sunday night after the police entered a central ultra-Orthodox neighborhood to remove the body of a murder victim from a hostel. The riot seemed to have more to do with a general hatred of the police than the killing itself, which did not even involve a member of the ultra-Orthodox community. For the first time, the police used tear gas and stun grenades and fired in the air to disperse the crowds.

The Eda Haredit called the police “murderers,” saying later in a poster that a young yeshiva student had been run over and badly wounded by a vehicle of the “Zionist Gestapo” force.

Violence then broke out again on Tuesday night, when a mob attacked a taxi driven by an Arab driver in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. The driver escaped, though the car was battered.

In a modest counterstrike on a recent weekday morning, eight non-Orthodox Jewish activists — six women and two men — got on a No. 40 bus heading from the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot D into town. The women sat down in the front rows. The men went to the back.

Ramot D is an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood where rigid religious rules are applied. The No. 40 is one of several public bus lines designated as “mehadrin,” or strictly kosher, where the men sit in the front and the women behind. The activists view this draconian interpretation of the modesty code practiced by Orthodox Jews as discriminatory, and the policy is being appealed in Israel’s Supreme Court.

Stern black-coated male passengers muttered their disapproval, but the Rosa Parks-inspired act of civil disobedience took place peacefully, largely because the bus driver, an Arab, decided not to try to enforce the rules.

Some ultra-Orthodox women said they liked the separate seating arrangement. Others took advantage of the activists’ presence and moved to the front.

Tonight You Belong to Me

2009-08-27T23:08:00.000-05:00

I love this song

This is an excellent version of it.

Some Ideas for Funding Jewish Education

2009-08-27T22:48:00.000-05:00

Original Draft of Emes Ve-Emunah Post

There is a lot of wisdom out there.

In a recent post I wrote about the overwhelming expense of Jewish education and the underwhelming resources available to pay for it. That post drew a lot of responses. 89 comments have passed moderation thus far. Many of them contained various suggestions - both good and bad - on how to improve things.

I thought it might be useful to review some of them and to include of my own ideas.

First I should define the type of school that I think is indispensible for a successful Jewish education. I am not necessarily suggesting an ideal school. Nor am I promoting a specific Hashkafa. I am only suggesting that it is at a minimum - what is needed.

First I am limiting this to elementary and high schools. Post high school is a stand-alone subject that deserves its own treatment.

Here is the model. A school should have both a good religious and secular studies program. It should have the religious studies in the morning and secular studies in the afternoon. Both religious and secular studies faculty should be well trained and paid in accordance with their talents, skills, and level of education. There ought to be one principal and two vice principals –one for religious studies and one for secular studies. The Religious curriculum should be geared toward advanced Yeshiva learning and the secular studies should be an academic one. In high school there should be a college preparatory type curriculum. The building facilities need not be lavish but do need to be in good repair, clean, and user friendly.

That is the basic outline that in my view would produce a well rounded, educated, and productive Jew.

Obviously a good faculty and administration will necessitate teachers being well paid. You will not get good people to work in a school for peanuts no matter how dedicated they are. Nobody wants to struggle just to pay for their food bills. Nor should they have to. Good teachers deserve to be paid well so they can live like the rest of us. There is also a competitive market out there requiring every school to compete for its teaching talent. Housing for the school is not free either.

How to pay for it.

A huge portion of course comes from tuition paying parents. But as I said - that can only pay for a part of it. Almost all parents are on at least a partial scholarship. And the current economy has caused increased scholarships.

Then there are the general Jewish community dollars that religious schools receive via Jewish federations. Some cities do better than others. But none get full funding for the budget gap. It has been suggested that federations should be scrutinized to explore ways to better prioritize their financial allocations.

I suppose from an Orthodox perspective - that’s right. But it is not a realistic option. Most federation members are not orthodox and do not have that perspective. Trying to convince them otherwise would be an exercise in futility and would be counterproductive. Factoring in the fact that federations are not orthodox - they are very generous to religious education. At least here in Chicago. I would not want to jeopardize that.

That leaves fundraising events to fill the gap. But that too is not enough as the increasing budget deficits of day schools and Yeshivos show. Due to the state of the economy philanthropy dollars are decreasing too. In that regard it is usually worthwhile hiring a good executive director who can raise more than his salary. He would also add tremendously to all fundraising events by organizing them to run smoothly.

There is one idea that is being tried here in Chicago that adds annual revenue to al the religious schools. It’s called The Chicago Kahilla Jewish Education Fund. Jews are asked to pledge a monthly amount that is distributed annually to all the schools. Donations can vary anywhere from 10 dollars per month - and up. All donor amounts are automatically deducted from checking accounts. Most people will not feel a ten dollar monthly deduction. Those who are more affluent they will not feel their higher monthly deductions. There are currently over a thousand members distributing about $600,000 per year to the schools here. And the list keeps growing.

Another thing would be to reduce costs. But how does one do that without reducing the quality of education?

I have long proposed that religious studies teachers be trained to teach secular studies. That would not only reduce costs but it would increase the quality of the education. Doing this one thing would have multiple benefits not the least of which is financial.

Schools could reduce the overall expense of teachers’ salary packages. Instead of having two teachers with two expensive benefits/health care packages we would have one teacher with one health care package. Addionally it is always cheaper to have one salary than two.

What I am saying is that a religious teacher who teaches secular subjects in the afternoon would not necessarily need to be paid the additional full salary of an afternoon secular teacher. He or she would get a sizable increase but less than a separate teacher would.

This is fair because it does not involve a separate commitment from someone outside the school, nor is transportation an issue. They are already there. Religious school teachers are already making relatively decent salaries and health packages. And if they have children in the schools that usually includes hefty tuition discounts for their children.

In my view afternoon secular teaching duties should not require the salary demands a teacher from the outside would make. That’s where dedication to the ideal comes in. The resulting salary increases and tuition reductions would provide a very decent middle class lifestyle and it would significantly lower costs for the school.

Not only would you decrease the size of the budget – but you would have religious teachers there for the entire school day. They would not only be role models in the mornings, they would be role models in the afternoon. What better role model could there be than a Rebbe or Morah who teaches Gemarah or Navi in the morning and math, science, or English in the afternoon.

Another good idea in my view is increasing the class sizes. I’m not sure what they typically are now but I’m sure they can be increased slightly without sacrificing the quality of the education. If even one teacher’s salary package can be eliminated that would help.

What would not work in my view is using the public school system. The idea would be to have an afternoon school system for religious studies. While saving money it is a very risky move. I realize it’s possible but it has not worked well in the past. Even if we were to try eliminating the deficiencies of the past or improving the quality of education in religious afternoon schools, I don’t think the odds are very good for a successful Jewish education. No child is happy to see their public school classmates go home and have fun while they are forced to go to another school in the afternoon. I think most kids will end up building resentment toward religion.

Nor is home schooling such a hot idea in my view. True that it has been successful in a few cases but it requires a lot of time and dedication on the part of parents who are generally ill-equipped to do it. And the very important –in my view – social component is missing. Interacting with peers during a school day is an important part of a child’s education in my view.

Going back to the era of the 1950s is not a good idea either. The idea that teachers do not go into education for the money but for the ideal sound goods, but starvation wages will chase even the most dedicated teachers away.

These are but a few ideas that I have either thought about or have gleaned for the collective wisdom of the readership here. There is more but I do not want to make this post too long and cumbersome to read. I do however want to thank all of those who made positive contributions to this very difficult issue.

Exemplars of the Jewish Faith

2009-08-26T09:21:00.000-05:00

Post from Emes Ve-Emunah

It’s nice to know that the Edah HaCharedis has an e-mail address. One can send them comments about their activities. Of course that doesn’t mean they will pay any attention to them or even read them. But at least they give you the address.

Here it is: edaharedit@gmail.com

How do I know this? It was sent to me by several people - accompanied by some photos presumably published and distributed by the Edah.

The most fascinating photo is the one where you see a caricature of the section process at Auschwitz. Hitler is standing at the gate while he selects who goes right meaning death by gassing. There are signs posted that obviate the selection process though. Once points to the right and says Charedim. The other points left and says Chilonim.

Chilonim get to live. Charedim get to die.

Aiding Hitler is a hospital worker - presumably from Hadassah Hospital. Next in line standing before them is a Yiddshe mama with her two children clinging to her shivering and sweating in fear. Hitler seems to be listening to his ‘advisor’ as he points his long finger to the right.

This - my friends - is what your Edah is doing for you. I strongly urge that you show your support for this lovely organization and send them your dollars right away.

Hat tip: Marty Bluke

Paying for Jewish Education

2009-08-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

Original draft of today's Emes Ve-Emunah post

It’s that time of year again. In a few days the new school year will begin. Tuition and scholarship committees are in full gear right now dealing with a record number of applications.

That there is a financial crisis in American Jewish education is not news. This has almost always been the case. I recall many a strike by Rebbeim at my elementray Jewish day school because they hadn’t been paid in months. And that was in the late 50s when tuitions were actually more or less affordable (and teachers salaries embarrassingly low)!

Fast forward to 2009. The current financial crisis is greater than ever. Tuitions are at record levels and teachers still do not make enough – although their situation has vastly improved since the fifties - even since the seventies. Although tuitions are at record levels so too are the deficits of nearly all the religious educational institutions.

The financial situation of most religious schools is as follows.

Tuitions generally represent the cost of education per child. Simply stated - the entire budget of the school is divided by the number of students enrolled and that should more or less equal tuition – plus a slight excess to cover scholarship children.

Most parents of the parents I know cannot possibly afford full tuitions arrived at by this formula. If a tuition is $12,000 per child (a low figure for most Yeshivos and day schools if I understand correctly) then a family of four children pays $48,000 per year; a family of five children - $60,000. So it is quite understandable that the typical parent rarely pays full tuition. Deficits run up pretty quickly if the student body is large enough.

In the past fund raisers like banquets and concerts helped make up the difference. Some cities like Chicago have generous allocations from their Jewish federations as well. And there are always the ‘sugar daddies’ – those generous Jewish philanthropists who are always turned to in order to save an institution form going under. But all that is not enough. Religious schools are not solvent. Most of them are in debt and getting deeper into it.

And the current economic situation is accelerating that. Some parents have lost their jobs. Some cases two income families have become one income families. Some philanthropists’ finances have actually crashed and burned and others have had their incomes cut severly and their donations reflect that. School budgets have increased - but so have scholarships.

Looking at these factors it is not all that difficult to understand the crisis that we are in.

As a result the unthinkable – at least for a religious Jew -has happened. Religious parents are starting to seriously consider public schools as an option. It is unthinkable because the history of publicly educated children in the past is not a good one. The vast majority of students who attended public school in the past are today not religious at all. Many of their children are intermarrying. While there are ogther factors that contributed to this – the lack of a good Jewish education is not the least of them.

The influences in today’s public schools are far worse than ever. Being religious is no longer the only concern. The deeper you go - the worse it gets. Just look at moral standards of any college campus. Not to mention the rather casual attitude on these campuses about illegal drug use.

But I digress. The point here is losing Jewish children from Judaism. That - for the first time in decades – is a real concern.

This concern was a while back. I recall a story published about a religious parent deciding to pull his kids form a day school and send them to public school. It was an anomaly then - but it seems to be taking hold somehat now - as the Jewish Star recently reported. Parents struggling severely with their finances to the point of dire need are pulling their kids.

Let us look at the budget side. Why have they increased so drastically? There are many reasons - most of them good ones.

Teachers in the past were paid near poverty level wages. This meant that very few qualified people were getting into that field. Of the few who did get into Jewish education and were good at it - demand for their services was high. Competition for them between schools ended up raising their salaries.

Benefits packages have increased too. Health insurance premiums have gone up dramatically and that has increased the budgets without teachers even feeling any benefit. They still get the same coverage. Only it costs the school more.

Administrative salaries are much higher now than in the past. Good principals are hard to find and if you want good people in education running your child’s school your are going to have pay for them. Good pricipals will be recruited from outside education with tantalizingly higher salaries being dangled in front of them for their talents. Dedicated as they are they stay in education even though it usually means they still make less than they would in the business world. But they would not stay for peanuts!

The there are special educations programs offered dealing with LD children or gifted children. There are teacher’s aides, small class sizes, good secular teachers… on sight psychologists, physical education teachers, music teachers, theater productions ( e.g. Erev Shira), expansion costs …it all adds up to something the community cannot afford. But where do you cut?

There is an idea floating around about a no frills day school. If I recall correctly it was an initiative proposed by a Rabbinical Council of America committee who had worked on it. It would eliminate some of the expenses by increasing class size, doing away with enrichment programs and other cost cutting measures. But I doubt that a school budget of even a no frills day school will be reduced by all that much. The lion’s share of any budget is teachers’ salaries. Teachers and principals still need to make a decent living. The era of poverty wages for educators is over. Thank goodness.

That is the ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of why the budgets have increased. And why the deficits have too. And it is why in part the Jewish community is in biggest educational crisis since World War II.

As I said I have no real solutions. We can neither afford to lose students to public schools nor good teachers and administrators to the business world.

But if things keep going the way they are... we may lose significant numbers of both.

The Extremist Mainstream American Charedi

2009-08-23T12:45:00.000-05:00

Original draft of today's Emes Ve-Emunah's post

As many know from reading this blog, I am a fan of Jonathan Rosenblum even though our Hashkafos are different. He is a Charedi with strong ‘Torah Im Derech Eretz’ leanings. I am a Centrist who believes in Torah U’Mada. Even though we may occasionally disagree - that does not diminish my respect and admiration for him.

On the contrary. I find him to be honest and forthright proponent of his Hashkafos. He is both an intelligent and erudite writer with few peers in the Charedi world. In fact I find myself agreeing with him more often than not.

In a recent article published in Hamodia, Jonathan took issue with the current custom of automatically going to learn in Israel for a year or two which has created an explosion in numbers of American students now learning in Israel. Specifically - he lamented the fact that this has given rise to a significant increase in the risk of young people going ‘Off the Derech’ to one degree or another. He therefore admonished parents to be more aware of these risks and be more hands on in selecting a Yeshiva. Perhaps more importantly he urged parents to realistically evaluate their child’s commitment to the beliefs and values in which they have been raised.

This certainly seems like a quite reasonable concern to be vigilant about.

But Jonathan seems to have been victimized the same as I have been when criticizing the Charedi status quo. The minute one takes a critical view of things Charedi one becomes subject to attacks by Charedi Kannoim - usually anonymously. But there is a difference when I get it. My criticisms are usually met with comments like ‘Who are you to criticize? You are an outsider?’ That is followed with the typical ‘You’re nothing more than a Charedi basher!’

That of course is a false reading of my motives and a gross misrepresentation of my views. Nevertheless I can certainly understand that a given Charedi might make that assumption . The thinking goes: I have an agenda to promote my Hashkafos. And it serves my purpose to put down other Hashkafos which automatically builds up mine. Understandable but wrong.

But Jonathan can certainly not be criticized that way. He is ‘one of them’. But that didn’t stop it from coming:

Here is an excerpt from his recent article:

My op-ed " " in the July 23 Hamodia has occasioned more than the usual amount of comment, both in the form of an unusually large outpouring of published letters to the editor and in phone calls and private comments conveyed to me. Some of those comments have been favorable, even effusively so, and some no less critical – at least one anonymous caller took the time to call from the States to convey his opinion that I had lost my Olam Haba, chas ve'shalom.

He loses his Olam Haba. This is how some in that world see it. They will not accept any criticism at all. The slightest suggestion by anyone that something is wrong rewards them with this kind of retort – even when the benevolent intent is clear.

This response was not from some fringe fanatic. There are obviously some Charedim who believe that what Jonathan said was absolutely wrong in the extreme. Were this comment from some hot-headed fanatic Jonathan probably would have ignored it. The only difference is that he went so far as to ‘inform’ Jonathan that he actually lost his Chelek in Olam Haba – his portion in the world to come.

Based on my own experience there are indeed many Charedim who think this way: One may not criticize the status quo. One should leave any criticism in the hands of ‘the Gedolim’. If they haven’t said anything there must be nothing wrong. So any criticsm is - not only not warranted but – but it assures that one will lose his place in the world to come.

I have asked this question before. But I raise it again. Where do these poeple get these ideas from? How can anyone criticse another for expressing a heartfelt suggestion clearly made in the best interests of that very community? By one of their very own?

They want to criticize me? OK. I understand that they might see me as ‘the enemy’. But Jonathan Rosenblum?

The only answer that seems to explain it is that this is how they are indoctrinated: The world of Torah is holy. Don’t dare tamper with it – if ‘the Gedolim’ haven’t said anything is wrong then we are not permitted to entertain that notion… Not without risking our portion in the afterlife.

There are sincere constituents of the Charedi world that think this way. I used to get a lot of them commenting right here on my blog – in far less flattering ways than Jonathan did.

I can only surmise that there are competing versions of Charedi Chinuch. There are Mechnchim that advocate the approach of Jonathan’s critic. And there is another – far more realistic Charedi approach that is more self examining - willing to listen to criticism.

The question arises, which Yeshivos teach their students to think in this Kanoistic way? And why? And how many students as a percentage of all Charedim get indoctrinated this way?

My guess is that they are in the minority. I believe that moderate Charedim are indeed in the majority.

But that doesn’t elimnate the problem. There seems to be significant numbers of Yeshovos and Mechnchim that indoctrinate their student like this. Left unchecked their numbers will grow.

The battle lines are drawn. I really do feel that there is a war between the two Charedi approaches even if many Charedim would disagree. It is the moderate Charedi world against the extremist Charedi world. And by extremist I am not talking about the Meah Shearim types. They are a horse of an entierly different color. I am talking about mainstream, American Yeshivos that teach this rigid kanoistic version of Charedism.

It is imperative to fight this mindset. I will continue to do my part. But it is far more important for the moderate Charedi world to fight this with every ounce of strength they can muster. They cannot afford to sit on their hands and say. ‘Not to worry - the majority of us are not like that.’ There are enough Kannoim out there like Jonathan’s critic to intimidate the system into their world view. Moderate Charedim need to realize that the determined response of a zealous minority can be far more effective than the complacent attitude of the majority. And they need to fight it.

What Do Women Want?

2009-08-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

Original Draft - Post for Emes Ve-Emunah:

What do Women Want? This is title of an article in Ynet - a question that is ostensibly answered by one Shimon Stern who is a spokesman for some sort of Rabbinic Committee for Transportation Affairs in Israel. One wonders exactly who comprises this committee. I doubt it would be anyone who I would see as my rabbinic authority.

Be that as it may, his answer to the question is that women want to sit separately from men on the back of a bus. I wonder how women that I know would respond to that question. I doubt that a single one would respond the way he says they would.

Mr. Stern ‘proves’ his contention from other countries that have gender segregated buses. This shows it to be a universal and not necessarily religious goal for women. Women who therefore want to eliminate sex segregated buses in Israel are dismissed as obsessive radicals! Here is the way he describes them in an article in Ynet:

(They are) reformers and other radicals (who) are suddenly coming up with ridiculous claims in order to tease and destroy something that only has to do with the ultra-Orthodox community. We are dealing with a handful of people who are obsessed with the haredim.

Right! He read their collective minds and knows their motivations. He goes on to claim that protests against gender segregated buses have been meager compared to thousands who rallied in favor of the segregated buses in Jerusalem…

His answer to those who say that segregated buses have led to violence is that violence occurs in non segregated buses too. And in any case when laws and regulations are established such violence will end. Tell that to Mrs. Miriam Shear who was beaten to a pulp for sitting in the men’s section of a mixed gender bus that was only unofficially used as a segregated bus. The rules and regulations were on her side!

Another assertion he makes is that it is a universal Halacha to segregate the sexes:

Every haredi, man or woman, follows Jewish Law – which according to all rabbis rules that segregation is mandatory.

He also claims that even some secular women have communicated their preference for sex segregated seating.

What he fails to understand is that sex segregated buses are not a Halachic requirement despite his claim to the contrary. If it were you would never see any Charedi Rabbanim on non sex segregated buses. Nor would you see Teshuvos by such eminent Poskim as Rav Moshe Feinstein who does not insist that segregation is mandatory.

What he additionally fails to understand is that the democratic concept of ‘the majority rules’ should not deny the rights of the minority. That the majority of his community wants this arrangement entitles them to have it - destroys the rights of the minority who do not. It is wrong to force your religious standards of the majority upon minority that does not want it.

Mr. Stern does come up with one intelligent statement:

Each person has the right to decide, for themselves, what constitutes humiliation or respect.

That is absolutely true. But he uses that to springboard to his unsustainable conclusion:

I therefore think that it is clear that a community espousing gender-segregated systems at schools, synagogues, and celebrations is also allowed to decide that sitting separately is not humiliating…

The conclusion should be exactly the opposite. Different people have different attitudes about what constitutes humiliation or respect. And the rights of all should be protected. One segment should not have their way if it sacrifices the rights of others. If there is a woman who feels humiliated by being forced to sit at the back of a bus her rights ought to be protected. Not that he cares.

One might ask what about those who feel humiliated by sitting in a mixed gender bus? They are certainly the majority in those neighborhoods.

There is only one answer to this problem. They should have their own busing system. And in this I sympathize with this community’s past efforts to have one. The powerful government owned bus monopoly thwarted all their past efforts in doing that. The government did not want to lose the business. I can’t imagine why though. They are so heavily subsidized - they would probably save money by allowing them their own buses.

If the Charedim want to have their own bus lines, I think the government ought to let them. Public on the other hand buses should be as they always have been in Israel since the beginning of the State (until about 15 years ago). Mixed gender. In the long run I think that would make everyone happier.

The Dependency Class

2009-08-19T12:22:00.001-05:00

Original draft of Emes Ve-Emunah Post

The world of Charedi Avreichim – married students who spend many years in Kollel - has evolved into a dependency class. They survive almost entirely on government handouts. This is true for both Israel and the United States. It was not always this way. Avreichim in Europe of less than even 100 years ago were an small but elite group of brilliant students that were supported by their communities. The vast majority of Charedim worked. But now there are huge numbers of Avreichim that cannot survive without some sort of government handout.

But government handouts are not enough to maintain an even modest middle class lifestyle. So other handouts are sought usually from parents and grandparents who have made money the hard way – by working for it.

In most cases parents supporting children with large families is a near impoverishing exercise. They have worked a lifetime to pay for the Jewish education of their children; to pay off a mortgage; to have a retirement nest egg. But supporting multiple large families in a Kollel empties out bank accounts; re-establishes mortgages; and even life insurance policies are cashed in - all so that their sons and sons-in-law along with their large families can be free of the burden of work and learn Torah full time for many years. All while putting many middle income parents into the poorhouse in their golden years.

This gross injustice to these hard working parents is unconscionable - even though they may be willing participants. But that is not the only problem. This cannot go on forever. The next generation of Avreichim will have even poorer parents to rely upon since they will have been in Kollel and end up with lower paying jobs not requiring higher education. Nor are government handouts a sure thing for the future. In this economy government handouts are not guaranteed. The government may legislate stricter guidelines for welfare which will be detrimental to Avreichim.

What makes this type of dependency class even worse is that many Yeshivos and Kollelim - not the least of which is Lakewood - actually encourage it. They pressure parents for support and examine every possible way to get money out of the government. They will utilize every loophole so that their married students can somehow survive without working.

Charedi Yeshivos like Lakewood see welfare payments as a sort of government based stipend for their ‘graduate students’ (Avreichim). This abuses a government program designed for the poor - not for middle class Avreichim.

This is not only a Chilul HaShem in my view but lends itself to tremendous abuse. It is not a big step from legally abusing the system to illegally abusing it. How many Avreichim who come from middle class backgrounds and live basically middle class lifestyles – and nonetheless use every possible loophole of every government welfare program to help finance their learning in Kollel? While they may be technically eligible – it is an ethical lapse of monumental proportion in my view.

They will rationalize and say things like: if a common neighborhood crack-head mother gets welfare checks - why shouldn’t I?

It is not hard to see how this kind of thinking leads the justifications of massive frauds like the recent cases of money laundering by ‘religious’ Jews. They think the government wastes so much money on useless projects and lowlifes anyway– why not divert some of that waste it to a better use in one of their holy institutions?

Dina D’Machusa Dina? Phtttt! What’s that?! - compared to the need to keep Yeshiva X open? Or to make sure that teachers are paid on time? Or to help a community of poor Avreichim can survive? -especially in these economic times

Chilul HaShem? ‘That’s ridiculous’ - they will tell themselves. ‘We will never get caught!’

Well guess what. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And the proverbial chickens will come home to roost. But don’t listen to me. Rabbi Berel Wein said it so much better than I can in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. My constant harping on the need for Charedim to get a decent secular education seems to be shared by over half of them - even in Israel - according to another article in the Jerusalem Post:

The Shiluv Group, the Israeli representative of the Millward Brown research company, asked a sample of 500 haredim if they would be interested in earning an academic degree in preparation for professions such as medicine, nursing, economics and law.

53% said they would be interested. Among Chasidim the percentage rose to 59%! On the other hand among the non Chadsidic ‘Lithuanian’ Charedim the percentage is only 42%.

This is good news. My only question can these numbers be translated into reality? Can we turn desire into actual attendance? Can we get 53% of all Charedim in Israel and the US to go to college? I sure hope so. Because that would mean a major change in the way things work in the Charedi world – for the better. This may not be a win for Torah U’Mada - or even classic Torah Im Derech Eretz. But it is a major win for Torah U’Parnassa.

We need to make it happen. Because the dependency class is doomed to failure.

Grrrrrrr!

2009-08-17T19:21:00.000-05:00

I have tried several times to get haloscan on board here. ...followed the instructions each time. Each time they told me I should see haloscan here. But got absolutely nowhere.

Perks of reaching 50 or being over 60 and heading towards 70!

2009-07-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

Sent by my friend Steve Katz (Pictured with his lovely wife Ellie)

01. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
02. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
03. No one expects you to run-anywhere.
04. People call at 9 PM and ask,"did I wake you?"
05. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
06. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
07. Things you buy now won't wear out.
08. You can eat supper at 4 PM.
09. You can live without sex but not your glasses.
10. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
11. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
12. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
13. You sing along with elevator music.
14. Your eyes won't get much worse.
15. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
16. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.
17. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.
18. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.
19. You can't remember who sent you this list.
20. And you notice these are all in Big Print for your convenience.

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night

Top Ten Signs Your Rabbi was Indicted Yesterday:

2009-07-27T10:42:00.000-05:00

Several people sent me the following list. I only laugh when it hurts!

10 Suddenly takes on minhag to wear hat on face
9 Synagogue Charity Auction now includes "Kidney"
8 Unless you work in criminal defense, you ain't getting Shlishi
7 Rebbetzin is suddenly on Jdate
6 Afternoon Halacha Shiur now entitled: "Ankle Monitors on Shabbat"
5 Will be spending the rest of the summer "upstate"
4 Sermon comes in form of an Affadavit
3 Keeps tying everything to an obscure "Yosef in Jail" metaphor
2 Pretty sure he just referred to Bernie Madoff as "Shlita"
1 He's still wearing Black & White, only this time, it's all stripes

And Now a Word from our Sponsor

2009-07-16T21:50:00.000-05:00

Classic Insults by Classic People

2009-07-13T19:57:00.000-05:00

Got this in an e-mail. It is hilarious:

There was a time when words were used beautifully

These glorious insults are from an era when cleverness with words was still valued -- before a great portion of the English language was boiled down to four-letter words!

1. The exchange between Churchill and Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband, I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd take it."

2. Gladstone, a member of Parliament, to Benjamin Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, sir," said Disraeli, "On whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

3. "He had delusions of adequacy." – Walter Kerr

4. "She has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

5. "A modest little person, with much to be modest about." – Winston Churchill

6. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." -Clarence Darrow

7. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

8. "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

9. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

10. "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln

11. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

12. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

13 "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

14. "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second.... if there is one!" - Winston Churchill, in response.

15. "I feel so miserable without you. It's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

16. He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

17. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

18. "He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

19. "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -Jack E. Leonard

20. "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

21. "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

22. "In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

23. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

24. "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain
25. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

26. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."- Oscar Wilde

27. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support, rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

28. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

29. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

Who wants to Marry a Boro Park Millionaire?

2009-06-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

Guuest Post by Scoogie spin genius Martin Bodek

Good evening New York daters and welcome to 'Who Wants to Marry a Boro Park Millionaire?'
I'm your host, Martin Bodek.

We only have 5 contestants because the other 5 got stuck in Boro Park traffic
behind some hocker who triple-parked his Lexus on 13th avenue.

So let's introduce the remaining 5:

Noote Naftooleh Feinshmecker from Boro Park!
Chezkiyohee Leepeh Yom Tov Yoel Hausbucher from Williamsburg!
Avrohom Mendel Farshleptekrenk from Monsey!
Yechiel Alter Nuchem Wheelstolease from Sea Gate!
Patrick O'Brien from Boston, Massachusetts!

Now that you've met our contestants, it's time for the fastest finger question!:
Put these Jewish vacation spas & resorts in order of fancy-shmanciest to filthiest rat-infested dirtpile:

A) The Homowack
B) The Tamarack
C) The Concord
D) The Nevele

The answer in correct order is:

A) The Concord (.4 cockroaches per square foot).
B) The Nevele (1.3 ants per square inch).
C) The Homowack (2.7 termites per square centimeter).
D) The Tamarack (17.9 writhing maggots per square millimeter).

And the winner is - Noote Naftooleh Feinshmecker!

Come on down, you're the next contestant on The Price is...oops, wrong game show.

MB: So Nooteh Naftooleh, what do you do for a living?
NN: I enter game shows, play the lotto, and I'm Publisher's Clearing House most gullible customer.

MB: You think you're gonna support my daughter making a...oops, bad date-interview flashback, anyway, are you ready to marry a Boro Park Millionaire?

NN: Yes, I am, Martin!
MB: Okay then, for $100, here's the question:

1. What exactly are chasidim?

A) Disciples of the teachings and traditions of the heiligeh Baal Shem Tov, Zatzal.
B) Those guys from ZZ Top.
C) A recently discovered lost Indian tribe.
D) Litvaks.

NN: I would have to say A, Martin.

MB: Is that your final answer?
NN: Yes.
MB: Your absolute final answer?
NN: Yes.
MB: Your absolutely finally final finale answer?
NN: Want me I should smack you?MB: No, because you are CORRECT!
NN: Yay.
MB: And now, for $200, here it is:

2. What exactly are Litvaks?

A) Anyone caught within a 3 mile radius of Chaim Berlin.
B) Anyone caught within a 30 mile radius of Lakewood.
C) Anyone caught within a 300 mile radius of Lithuania.
D) Yeshivish people.

NN: I would say D.
MB: Is that your final answer?
NN: Yes.
MB: You're sure?
NN: Want me I should call the Shomrim on you?
MB: Not necessary, because you are CORRECT!
NN: Yay.

MB: Now for $300, here it is:

3. 'Takeh epes gradeh b'di-eved l'choirah gevaldig tzigedacht' is an example of what?

A) Severe head trauma,
B) A drunken stupor.
C) An incurable stutter.
D) Yeshivishe reid.

NN: That would be D.
MB: Is that your final answer?
NN: YES!
MB: CORRECT! And bli ayin horah you still have all your lifelines intact!

So for $500, here we go:

4. What is the most popular underwear for chasidim?

A) Boxers.
B) Briefs.
C) Boxer-briefs.
D) Rabeinu Taam Gatches.

NN: That one's easy, D
MB: You're RIGHT! Was that your final answer?
NN: You're getting on my nerves.
MB: It's my job! Now then, here it comes for $1,000:

5. What is the typical way a Boro Parker starts a conversation?

A) Whazzzzzzzzzzzzzzup?
B) HaYOOdoin??
C) Como esta?
D) Nu, so tell me something.

NN: I would say the answer is D.
MB: Is that your fina-
NN: YES! And it's interesting, most of the answers are D.
MB: That's because I have to set up the punchline.

Now for $2,000, here it comes!:

6. How do you say the word 'cucumber' in Yiddish?

A) Kartofel
B) Tzibileh
C) Igerkeh
D) Gebeks

NN: A is Potato(e)s, B is onions, D is cake, so Igerkeh must mean 'Cucumber'
Final answer.

MB: Would that be your final answer?
NN: Didn't I just say that?
MB: Oh, you did. Sorry. And you're right!

Now for $4,000, here it is:

7. Which of the following is NOT a Yiddish word?

A) Ibergebliben.
B) Nechtigentoog.
C) Rishvoolkeh.
D) Hoisentrageh.

NN: That's a trick question! Nechtigentoog is TWO words! Aha! Gotcha! My answer is B.

MB: Good thinking, Naftooleh! You are absolutely diddly doodly final answerly correct!
NN: I'm gonna shoot you when this game is over.
MB: Is that a threat?
NN: Yes.
MB: You think you could take me?
NN: Yes.
MB: You want a piece of me?
NN: SHOMRIM!
MB: No wait! I'll behave!

Okay, for $8,000, here it is:

8. What imaginary creation do Boro Parkers believe in that the rest of humanity does not?

A) Santa Claus.
B) The tooth fairy.
C) Leprechauns.
D) The eiruv.

NN: I would have to say the answer is D.
MB: Your answer is D
NN: My answer is D.
MB: Not A, B, or C?
NN: Not A, B, or C.
MB: So it's D as in doughnut? As in disaster? As in.....
NN: CHAPTZ EM!
MB: Okay, okay, that's the last time I annoy you.

Now for $16,000, here it comes:

9. What is NOT the correct definition of the word Nissan?

A) The first month of the Jewish new year.
B) The manufacturer of the Maxima.
C) The Yiddish plural of the word 'nuts'.?
D) A Jewish first name.

NN: Hmmmm, this looks like another trick question. I'll say 'A' because the first month of the year is Nissan, but the first month of the NEW year is Tishrei. Almost got me there.
MB: You're absolutely right!
NN: Pshew!

MB: Now for $32,000, here you go:

10. What are the real names of Bob Dylan, George Burns, Kirk Douglas, & Mel Brooks?

A) Bob Dylanovitch, Joel Bernstein, Isidore Hoffman, & Melvin Brookman.
B) Robert Zimmerman, Nathan Birnbaum, Isser Demsky, & Melvin Kaminsky.
C) Bernie Dylman, Jacob Birnbaum, Kirk Levitch, & Martin Brookstein.
D) Robert Zimmer, Nathan Burns, Israel Kubelsky, & Milton Cohen.

NN: Oy vey iz mir. Okay, let me think about this for a minute. This is a tough one.
MB: Is that your final answer?
NN: I'm going to ignore that.
MB: You know you still haven't used any of your lifelines.
NN: When I'm done with you, YOU'LL be begging for a lifeline!

Now I think I heard somewhere that Dylan's real name is Zimmerman, so I'm guessing B

MB: It's a good guess! And you win $32,000! Now for $64,000, here it comes:

11. Why did the Lubavitcher cross the road?

A) To get to the other side.
B) To avoid the treif Brooklyn Museum of Art on his way to 770.
C) To be mikarev the chicken.
D) Why not?

NN: As we all know, any Jewish question can be answered with 'Why not'? D is my final answer.
MB: It's a good one! You win $64,000! Are you ready for the next question?
NN: Yes I am, Martin!
MB Then here we go for $125,000!:

12. Where does the term 'Yeki' come from?

A) Spanish Jews of old were Yak herders, hence, 'Yeki'
B) It is the Hungarian term for 'Jew.
C) German Jews were the first to wear short jackets, Yeki' means 'Jacketpeople'.?
D) 'Yeki' is an old version of a Jewish 'Krechtz,' much like 'Oy'.

NN: Would you believe this was discussed at a shiur I went to last week? I think the answer is C.
MB: Hey Nooteh.
NN: Yuh?
MB: You're right!
NN: Hooha! Yoy, I'm getting nervous now.
MB: You better be! Because here comes the $250,000 question!:

13. Approximately how many chasidim live in the entire New York City area?

A) 34,000.
B) 98,000.
C) 165,000.
D) 283,000.

NN: The answer is C, Martin.
MB: How do you know that?
NN: I did some quick math.. I know about half the Chasidim here, so I just doubled the number!
MB: Well, your math is good, you win $250,000!

And here is your $500,000 question!:

14. Why do Jews 'vinch' for people to live 120 years?

A) Because Moshe Rabeinu lived 120 years.
B) Because Rabbi Akiva lived 120 years.
C) Because Noah's Ark took 120 years to build.
D) Why not?

NN: You're not going to get me with the 'Why not' question. The actual answer, I believe, is C.
MB: Are you sure? What's your reasoning?
NN: The dor hamabel was given 120 years for teshuva. We vinch our friends that time to do the same.
MB: You know, this game show started out funny and is suddenly turning into an intellectual discourse. Not only that, you're absolutely right!

And finally, here we go, here it is, here it comes. For $1,000,000!:

15. What exactly ARE the 'Five Town'?

A) Bell Harbor, Lawrence, Atlantic Beach, Inwood, Woodmere.
B) Far Rockaway, Inwood, Lawrence, Hempstead, Hewlet.
C) Plainview, estbury.
D) Hewlet, Woodmere, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Inwood.Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, W

NN: Oy vey! I have no idea! I think I'm going to use a lifeline. I'm going to poll the audience.
MB: Ok then, audience, using your clicker thingie, choose which answer you think is correct.
NN:
MB: Okay, and here are the results of the audience poll!:

A) 25%
B) 25%
C) 25%
D) 25%

NN: Oy gevalt. I need another lifeline. I'd like to phone my chaver, Yankel Shmeel Kollelmasmid.

MB: Okay, let's see if our friends from AT&T can find Yankel.

AT&T: Ring ring!

MB: Hello Yankel?

YS: Who is this?

MB: It's Martin Bodek, from 'Who Wants to Marry a Boro Park Millionaire'?

YS: Voos hertz zich?

MB: Ales gitz, your friend Nooteh Naftooleh is stuck on a million dollar question and needs your help.
YS: Tell him I'm in middle of a shvereh mishneh and I have no time.
MB: But he's depending on you!
YS: Too bad, Torah is the iker.
NN: I'm going to kill him, but before I do that, I'm going to take the 50/50.
MB: Okay computer, please take away 2 of the wrong answers, leaving two correct:

A)
B) Far Rockaway, Inwood, Lawrence, Hempstead, Hewlet.
C)
D) Hewlet, Woodmere, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Inwood.

NN: I'm going to have to guess.'D.'
MB: D?
NN: D.?
MB: D - bist gerecht! You get to marry a Boro Park Millionaire!
NN: Woohoo!
MB: Shprintzy Krasi Roizy Genendel Teitelbaum, meet your new chosson!

NN: It's love at first sight!

MB: But she's hideous!

NN: Who says money can't buy love?

MB: Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell!

NN: But their marriage is getting annulled. Yiden can't do that.
MB: Oh, well good luck then! And there you have it folks.

Stimulus Explained

2009-03-22T09:08:00.000-05:00

This is an important subject for the entirety Klal Yisroel. The economy affects everyone. My friend Bonnie Slotnick sent the following to my wife, Annie. It is a must read primer on the what it is and what to do with it. - HM

This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV Set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Below is some helpful advice on how best to help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China. If you spend it on gasoline it will go to the Arabs. If you purchase a computer it will go to India. If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic). If you buy a car it will go to Japan. If you purchase useless garbage it will go to Taiwan.

If you pay your credit cards off, it will go to bank management bonuses and they will hide if offshore. Same with stock investment.

Instead, you can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or spending it on prostitutes, beer and wine (domestic ONLY), or tattoos, since those are the only American businesses still operating in the US.

With Friends Like These...

2009-03-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

The blog, Circus Tent is run by the son of an old Chicago acquittance of mine. This fellow is a Lubavitcher although his parents are not. About a year ago when I was writing about some of the problems I saw with Lubavitch. He contacted me and we discussed the issues involved

In the course of those private discussions we became friends and he revealed his identity to me. But now I am beginning to wonder just what this friendship really means. In yesterday's guest post I was viciously attacked. And the comments that followed were even worse. Here is my comment back to him:

My, my my.

This is quite revealing. I didn't know there was so much 'love and understanding' by your friends about me. Except for one or two rather gallant defenders, almost every other comment was completely vile.

And you Mr. 'Tzig' (alias of the blog-owner) allowed this drivel?! You forget that I know who you are. And I could easily expose you. But don't worry, I won't do that.

I have never written one negative word about you nor would I even consider allowing others to do so. But you not only allowed it - you allowed unbelievably nasty comments to be made.

I have not written anything negative about Lubavitch in many months since there has been nothing to write about. But that doesn't stop Mr. Gurewicz from writing a most hateful essay.

I don't know where all his hate comes from. Maybe it's because I chided him a while back about sending his daughter to the Meshichist high school here in Chicago - I don't know. But I will be sure to mention this to him next time I see him in the Lubavitch Shul here - Bnei Reuven where I Daven twice a day as the Shaliach Tzibur.

25 Phrases Of Wisdom

2009-03-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

From my Friend Steve Katz:

1. If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.

2. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

3. Going to church doesn't make someone a Christian any more than going to a garage makes them a mechanic.

4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

12. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.

15. No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.

19.. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.

25. Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.

Lion's Tail

2009-02-24T16:21:00.000-06:00

The following is a post by Rabbi Shael Siegel. It appears currently on his blog, Rabbi Shael Speaks. I normally do not post verbatim essays from other blogs. But this one is right in my wheel house. It is a touchdown, a home run, a hole in one - to use some sports metaphors. Why do I use these sports terms? Read on. This post speaks for itself and needs no futher comment from me.

“No. You are a Jewish girl who got mixed up in the culture of the heathen-Greco-Roman-America of today. Look what they use you for: to sell their soft-porn smut through reaching out to the lowest aspect of humanity and to make airports a place where mothers have to cover children's eyes. How many lascivious thoughts has your image evoked? How many jealous thoughts? How much wasting of time? How much degradation of values?...…But you are not the only one to blame for this ignominious degradation.

All those Orthodox Jews who take pride in having kosher hotdogs and a Maariv Minyan in Madison Square Garden - they too are to blame. Oh, they would claim that their worship of professional sports has nothing to do with your public exhibitionism. But it does, because both come from the same root; that is, the Greek and Roman fascination with the body. Is it a coincidence that Sports Illustrated caters to both the pro sports and the soft-porn crowd? Of course not, because both pro sports and soft-porn are flip sides of the same coin. What can one expect from the secular Jews when Orthodox Jews act like Hellenists?…Orthodox Jews sitting in a stadium munching on kosher dogs while watching today's gladiators compete? This is not the stuff of a better world, nor the actions of a G-dly people…

…It is time for the Jewish people to end our addiction with animalism. It is time that we stop being the heads of foxes by helping the world plummet in its moral decline. Instead, it is time for us Jews to be the tails of lions, that is, to fulfill our role by being a "Light Unto The Nations" nation. The time has come to get up, shake off the dross of 2,000 years, and get to some real work. We have better images to put on the sides of airplanes and on magazine covers. We have a chance to make great things happen in this generation: to help breathe the breath of life back into a world that has chosen physicality over spirituality, and to remind mankind that we are all created in the image of G-d, and not vice-versa.”

This is an excerpt of an article by Yishai Fleisher which appeared on February 17, 2009 in Arutz Sheva. If you haven’t guessed, it was written in protest to Bar Rephaeli appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine as well as having her image graced on the side of a Southwest airlines Boeing 737.

The author while protesting the lack of tznius, revealed a warped and unhealthy resentment towards western culture to the point that it has corrupted his own understanding and appreciation of Jewish culture as it has evolved through the ages. Under normal circumstances I would have read the piece, chuckled and moved on. However, what I find most troubling is that Fleisher’s point of view is finding wider currency among a growing number of right wing orthodox Jews.

He may be right about the lack of tznius but his condemnation of western values is not the answer and is therefore of great concern.This growing community of people seems to equate sports with pornography, spirituality with a rejection of physical beauty. In rejecting the display of flesh in public they are throwing out the baby with the bath water. If there is anything sensual or erotic about an object d’ art it must be rejected.

There is a display not only of intolerance but fanaticism that defies any logic, common sense and is indicative of a total lack of contextual understanding of our history and culture. His rant flies in the face of our tradition which offers ample examples of the balance and value we place on aesthetics. Parshat Terumah is a good example of that.

My intention here is not to use parshat Terumah to rationalize the behavior of any model or the display of oneself in an immodest manner. My intention is to contextualize our history and tradition and demonstrate how timely and beautiful it can be while appreciating physical beauty for what it is.

Parshat Terumah begins with a description of gifts to be accepted in the building of the Tabernacle and its vessels. “And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold silver and copper; blue purple and crimson yarns fine linen, goats’ hair; tanned ram skin, dolphin skins, and acacia wood.” (Exodus 25:3-5)

From this description one can assume that color, texture and materials were very important to the building of the Tabernacle. It teaches us too that physical beauty was something which ought to be appreciated. We give gifts of things that are precious to us. Obviously these gifts were highly prized and appreciated. The text underscores and encourages our appreciation of beautiful things.

Indeed the aesthetics involved in the design of the structure was as important as the message emanating from it. Otherwise, why the detailed description in our text of the materials, colors and fabrics involved in the construction of the Tabernacle. Over the centuries and perhaps because of the long exile the Jewish religious aesthetics lost its unique signature and adopted many of the art forms from other neighboring or host culture. During those periods and perhaps because of our experience in exile we shunned art forms that were pagan or Christian in nature, perhaps as a way of maintaining our unique culture and resisting assimilating into the neighboring culture.

Our sages and rabbis however were wise and they were able to draw a qualitative line between enjoying art for the sake of its beauty and appreciating it for its religious value.There is a Mishna in Talmud Avoda Zara that tells an interesting anecdote about Rabban Gamliel, president of the Sanhedrin who frequently bathed in the Aphrodite bathhouse in Acre. One of the pagans bathing there at the time that Rabban Gamliel was there asked him how it was that he was bathing in a place where there was a statue of Aphrodite.

Rabban Gamliel answered him that one has to make the distinction between that which is important and that which is irrelevant as well as the intent of the statue. Had the statue been placed there for religious worship it wouldn’t have been permissible to bath there, but as it is there only for aesthetics it is permissible to bath there and to enjoy the aesthetics.

This is a fascinating Mishnah because it demonstrates the balance in Rabban Gamliel’s approach to Jewish living, halacha and appreciating the Greco – Roman world of culture.Rabbi Yosef Karo, editor of the Shulkan Aruch made a similar distinction when he said that statues in a small village aren’t to be viewed whereas those in larger cities are permissible.

The reasoning being that those placed in a small village were done so for religious purposes and therefore a Jew isn’t allowed to get any pleasure from it. However those placed in larger cities were placed there for the purpose of art and aesthetics, not for religious purposes and therefore can be viewed for artistic appreciation.

It would appear that the ability of our sages and rabbis to make these fine distinctions in order to appreciate art and architecture of the ages has been lost on many of our 21st century rabbis and scholars. There is a trend as demonstrated by Fleisher and others towards a fanaticism that has no genuine grounding within our tradition. The ability to balance Jewish living and the world we live in was a talent that our rabbis and sages valued and honed. Unfortunately it is fast disappearing.

Word Games

2008-09-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

My wife just sent this to me:

Someone out there either has too much
spare time or is deadly at Scrabble.
(Wait till you see the last one)!
----------------------------------------
DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM
----------------------------------------
PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER
----------------------------------------
ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER
----------------------------------------
DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT
----------------------------------------
THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE
----------------------------------------
GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE
----------------------------------------
THE MORSE CODE :
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS
----------------------------------------
SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME
----------------------------------------
ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY
----------------------------------------
ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT
----------------------------------------
SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S
----------------------------------------
A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
IM A DOT IN PLACE
----------------------------------------
THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE
----------------------------------------
ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE
----------------------------------------
AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:
MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER
----------------------------------------
Yep! Someone with waaaaaaaaaaay
too much time on their hands! (Probably a son-in-law)

Social Kissing - Mutar or Assur?

2008-08-28T22:24:00.000-05:00

Many people have the custom of social kissing as a form of greeting people of the opposite sex. Is this OK? What about Issurei Arayos... Halachos forbidding physical contact between the sexes.

Can we judge appropriate behavior by observing what people - including many Orthodox Rabbis - commonly do?

Someone suggested that they see the argument inheres in what the masses are doing, not in a she'eilah to the rav. But that said kissing and chibah (sexualy oriented contact) are not so separable. Sure, when it's your great aunt Sally. But what if it's her grandchild, your physically attractive second cousin?

Here is my response:

What the masses are doing is directly connected to the concept of Derch Chiba (sexually oriented behavior). In cultures where this is common practice, it is less likely that doing things like this are B'Derech Chiba.

Physical attraction is highly subjective. The concept of Derech Chiba is based on that. If someone is attracted to a member of the opposite sex then, IMHO it would be problematic to claim that a social kiss is not B'Derech chiba. I say problematic because even in such circumstances it might not be Derech Chiba if this is the standard practice in a given community.

But if one is not attracted and it is just a social norm, then it is highly unlikely that it is B'Derech Chiba at all. So in your example it doesn't matter how young or attractive she might be. It only matters how you perceive her.

I think this is what the Gemarah means by saying that it is Assur to derive pleasure by even looking at the little finger of a woman. It is about pleasure derived, not the actual looking at a little finger. It is about one's own subjective thought and/or purpose in looking at that finger and deriving some sort of sexual stimulus by looking at it. If the act of looking at a little finger alone were Assur, then certainly looking at a woman's face should be. And we know that is not Assur to look at a woman's face at all... unless we derive 'pleasure' from it - pleasure in the sexual sense.

This is how I understand the concept of Derech Chiba. It's all subjective and social norms play a big part in that.

Let it Be

2008-08-25T12:43:00.000-05:00

I could never understand the Israeli government postion to bar the Beatles from performing in their coutry back in the sixties. Especially since David Ben Gurion’s expressed statement that Israel would not be a country unless it had brothels. The stated reason was that the Israeli government would corrupt the morals of the nation’s youth.

Are they kidding?

The immoral culture of sexual permissiveness that pervades Israeli armed services mandory of all citizens - towers over anything the Beatles sing about! I hardly think that John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have add anything more morally corrupting than that with their music.

I mean… really!

Well that wrong has been righted. Paul McCartney will be performing in Israel. Here is the story from JTA:

Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney will perform in Israel 43 years after government officials banned the Fab Four.

His Sept. 25 concert in Tel Aviv's HaYarkon Park is expected to be one of the largest in Israeli history.

The show is part of a world tour by McCartney comprised of more than 100 shows.
Earlier this year, Israeli Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor invited McCartney and Ringo Starr to perform in Israel for the country's 60th birthday.

In 1965, Israeli government officials denied the Beatles a permit to perform out of fear their music would corrupt the morals of the nation's youth.

J-Bloggers Post Script

2008-08-21T11:37:00.000-05:00

I was suprised to see how few bloggers spoke about the j-bloggers conference held yesterday in Jerusalem. But one blogger - Dovbear - has a nice post about it.

The Blogger Conference

2008-08-18T21:17:00.000-05:00

The bloggers are in the air. I wish I could be with them. I hear that former Israeli Prime Minister will be addressing the conference. That's pretty cool.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

The Retired Man

2008-08-07T17:29:00.000-05:00

The other day I went downtown to run a few errands. I went into the local coffee shop for a snack. I was only there for about 5 minutes. When I came out, there was this cop writing out a parking ticket.

I said to him, 'Come on, man, how about giving a retired person a break?' He ignored me and continued writing the ticket.

His insensitivity annoyed me, so I called him a 'Nazi.' He glared at me and then wrote out another ticket for having worn tires.

So I proceeded to call him 'doughnut eating Gestapo.' He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he wrote a third ticket when I called him a moron in blue.

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I talked back to him the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn't really care. I came downtown on the bus. The car that he was putting the tickets on had one of those bumper stickers that said, 'Obama in '08'.

I try to have a little fun each day now that I'm retired. The doctor tells me that it's important to my health.

Endangered Species

2008-08-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

Question: Does God want man to save an endangered species from extinction?

I don't see any Halachic imperative here. The way I see it – the survival of any species is up to nature. If the species can survive extant conditions it will. And then reproduce into the future. If not it will eventually become extinct.

To the extent that man has any part in the extinction of any species is irrelevant in my view. Man’s job is to perpetuate its own species. To that end we should do what's necessary to constantly improve our own chances for survival by increasing our possibilities for reproduction. If by doing that another species becomes extinct, that is simply nature taking its course.

Those who claim that we have some sort of moral imperative to make sure that other species survive because of some sort of ecological disaster or at least an imbalance in nature that would result, need to prove their case. In my view they have yet to do that convincingly. Since animals that once existed in great numbers and are now extinct it proves such thinking to be pure nonsense.

That said, I don't think we shouldn't try to preserve an endangered species if possible, but not at the expense of man’s own welfare.

Had a Bad Day

2008-08-04T20:51:00.000-05:00

Where is the moment we needed the most
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost
They tell me your blue skies fade to gray
They tell me your passion's gone away
And I don't need no carryin' on
You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You're faking a smile with the coffee you go
You tell me your life's been way off line
You're falling to pieces every time
And I don't need no carryin' on
Because you had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't know
You tell me don't lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day
The camera don't lie
You're coming back down and you really don't mind
You had a bad dayYou had a bad day
Will you need a blue sky holiday?
The point is they laugh at what you say
And I don't need no carryin' on
You had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't knowYou tell me don't lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day
The camera don't lie
You're coming back down and you really don't mind
You had a bad day(Oooh.. a holiday..)
Sometimes the system goes on the blink
And the whole thing turns out wrong
You might not make it back and you know
That you could be well oh that strong
And I'm not wrong(yeah...)
So where is the passion when you need it the most
Oh you and I
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost
Cause you had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't knowYou tell me don't lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad dayYou've seen what you like
And how does it feel for one more time
You had a bad day
You had a bad day

In My Life

2008-07-29T20:14:00.000-05:00

There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed

Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you

And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before

I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before

I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more

Joke Dejour from Galicia

2008-07-28T22:59:00.001-05:00

Can you say this ten times fast?

‘Fin Ades biz Abisk, trugt a fix a bix in pisk.’

My father could. This is an old Galician Yiddish tongue twister. Try it. I’ll bet you can’t. If you cant' say that. try saying this ten times fast:

Rubber baby buggy bumpers.

Here are two other great ones:

She sells sea shells by the seashore.

and

I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit. And on the slitted sheet I sit. (My all time favorite!)

Vantage Point

2008-07-28T17:17:00.000-05:00

I rented a movie last night called Vantage Point. It was about a terrorist plot surrounding an American President attending some sort of peace initiative with Arab leaders in Spain.

The presentation of the story line and plot was somewhat novel. It kept repeating the opening scenes where the President is seen being shot which was followed by some explosions. But each time the scene repeated it was from a different character’s perspective. And with each new repetition the timeline was a bit longer and more of the story and plot was revealed.

This movie was definitely action packed. It contained one of the best chase scenes ever filmed. Its PG13 rating was probably for violence and language. And as it was used in this picture, the language was relatively mild by movie standards. And there was absolutely no nudity or even immodestly dressed women in it.

Over-all though, it was a pretty forgettable picture. Nothing of substance there. A few plot twists here and there but very little character development.

Despite the gimmicky way it was presented I was left feeling flat. If I hadn’t seen a whole bunch of other action pictures like this before, maybe I would have enjoyed it more. I had a sort of ‘been there - done that’ feeling by the end of the film ...and felt that I could have found better ways to spend my time. But it wasn’t terrible either. For kids aged 12 and up… I think they’d love it. This movie got great reviews, if I recall correctly. I give it a B-.

Tnai B'Get

2008-07-27T09:24:00.000-05:00

At the end of Parshas Matos, we see Moshe Rabbenu commanding the Bnei Gad and Beni Ruven regarding there request to settle on land on the east side of the Yarden. He agrees but makes them promise to cross the Yarden and fight with the rest of the Bnei Yisroel to capture the land. Ve’Avar Lochem Chalutz Es HaYarden.

The Bal HaTurim explains that the word Chalutz has a second meaning here and refers to Chalitzah. The removal of the shoe a man does when Yivum is refused. Yivum occurs when a man dies childless - His wife must then marry a brother or perform Chalitza with him to sever that bond and then marry whomever she wants.

The Bal Haturim explains that if one goes out to battle in a war, one should write a Get, a divorce for his wife so that she will not have to resort to Yivum or Chalitzah should he die. Moshe required that here and this is what the words VeAvar Lahem Kol Chalutz means to tell us.

David HaMelach learned from that.

The Gemarah in Kesuvos (Daf tes amud beis) explains that according to R’ Shmuel Bar Nachmeni, Amar R’ Yochanan - Bat Sheva was not forbidden to David even though she was still apparently married to Uriah. This is because Beis David required all of his soldiers to write Gittin before going to battle. Rashi explains that this was done in case the soldier would die The Get would be valid from the time it was written. This is called a Get Al T’nai. A conditional Get.

In David’s case, Uriah the husband of Bat Sheva died in battle and was thus retroactively divorced.

However - If this practice was instituted to prevent Yibum or Chalitza, then if a man had had no brothers – or children - it would not be necessary. If he dies - his widow could marry whomever she wants. Tosphos and other Rishonim ask - if that’s the case, what is the point of requiring ‘All’ that go out to war to write a Get? Why the wording “All”?!

Tosephos and the Ramban explain that Rashi did not necessarily mean that a Get was written ‘in case of death’ but I case they do not return immediately from battle leaving doubt as to whether he died. Rashi used the word ‘die’ because typically when someone doesn’t return from battle its because he was killed. But the Get took place even when a husband is taken captive thus freeing her from any doubt.

So why don’t we do a Get Al T’nai today? That’s because of Rabbenu Tam and the Rashba. They explain that Rashi means that a get was actually –delivered- to Bat Sheva prior to battle and not just written Al T’Nai. This was done to prevent her from becoming an Agunah. The Navi reprimands David – not - for taking a married woman… but because this was done improperly by David since he did it in private thus preventing others from courting her. And in my own view this also created a Maaris Ayin situation since his Taking Bat Sheva would have appeared to be taking an Eishes Ish

The Ri M’Paris took from the words of Rabbenu Tam that the Get of a Shechiv Mira - someone who is in a terminal state of illness - should not be written Al T’nai because the fear of error on the part Sofrim an the details of such Gittin. So he Paskin’d that if a Shechiv Mera wants to prevent his wife from going through a Chalitza, he must give her a Get outright without a T’nai. If he recovers he an then re-marry her.

The Marsha point out that in his day a Get Shechiv Mera is given without any T’nai according to the Psak of the Ri MiParis. And indeed Uriah gave Bat Sheva an actual Get and she was a Penuiah - free of any marital bond.

Source: Torah L'Daas

The Quest

2008-07-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

Bryn Christopher

I’m leaving tonight
Going somewhere deep inside my mind
I close my eyes slowly
Flowin’ away slowly
But I know I’ll be alright
It’s coming stronger to me
And I know someone is out there
Lead the way
Lead the way
Show me the answers I need to know

Chorus

What I’m gonna live for
What I’m gonna die for
Who you gonna fight for
I can’t answer that

Verse 2

All my life/love it is
It is all my love
All my life/love it is
I know it is a life to live lately
From above I hear
I hear the sound of them sinkin’
I feel numb, I’m alive
I know I’m getting closer

Chorus

What I’m gonna live for
What I’m gonna die for
Who you gonna fight for
I can’t answer that

Bridge

My life has had it’s share of troubles
And now I found a place to go
I’ve said goodbye to all my troubles
’cause now I’ve find my place to go

What I’m gonna live for
What I’m gonna die for
Who you gonna fight for
I can’t answer that

A Girl with an Apple

2008-07-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

From Deborah Lipstadt:

There is a Holocaust story making the rounds on the Internet which is clearly not true. It's about an inmate of a camp [a sub-camp of Buchenwald] who connects with a young girl outside the camp. She throws him an apple everyday over the fence.

He tells her one day in May 1945 that she should not throw any more apples because at 10 a.m. the next morning he has appointment to appear at the gas chamber to be killed. This story has so many shortcomings that one hardly knows where to begin.

Let me focus only on the most fundamental one: Buchenwald had no gas chambers. In May 1945 no one was still being gassed. Moreover, Jews were not told ahead of time that they were going to be gassed. The whole idea behind the gassing was surprise and deception.

[There is another version on the Internet that places the camp at Terezin/ Theresienstadt and the author says that they were told to report to a section of the camp the next morning at 10 a.m. and they knew this meant they were to be gassed. But there were no gas chambers in Terezin.]

If you get this email do NOT send it on to other people. Delete it.Not only do we need to be historically accurate for the simple sake of history. But on top of that, this kind of stuff is fodder for deniers.

There are many amazing stories about the Holocaust. Just the fact that some people managed to survive this hell is amazing in and of itself. We don't need embellished and/or false stories. The truth is far more than enough.

Love Hurts

2008-07-20T22:55:00.000-05:00

This is one of my all time favorite songs... written by Roy Orbison. I think. This is the 'Nazareth' version which in my view is better than the Everly brothers performance - which is pretty darn good too. Listen and enjoy. Here are the lyrics. Sing along. It'll make you feel good.

Love hurts, love scars,
Love wounds, and marks,
Any heart, not tough,
Or strong, enough
To take a lot of pain,
Take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud
Holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts

Im young, I know,
But even so
I know a thing, or two
I learned, from you
I really learned a lot,
Really learned a lot
Love is like a flame
It burns you when its hot
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts

Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
Theyre not foolin me

I know it isnt true,
I know it isnt true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh,ooh love hurts
Ooh,ooh love hurts

[guitar solo]

I know it isnt true,
I know it isnt true
Love is just a lie,
Made to make you blue
Love hurts, ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh love hurts
Ooh ooh...

Baruch HaShem

2008-07-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

From The Jewish Magazine:

In the religious area of New York, a Rabbi left the pulpit to open up a business. After working very hard for several years and finally making some money, he decided to purchase a new automobile. Upon entering the local new car dealer, he was quickly spotted by the salesman.

"Have I got a car for you!" he exclaimed, unable to conceal his delight at finding an obviously religious man. The Rabbi turned business man, dressed in a dark suit, sporting a long beard, looked at the sales man in apprehension.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah ha," the salesman said rubbing his hands together. "Let me shown you the latest technological advance. An American car with Israeli designed computerized digital commands."

"W-What's that?" the Rabbi asked hesitatingly.

"Come right here and let me show you. You will never believe your eyes." The salesman opened the door of the new and shiny sedan. "Please sit down and I will show you.

"A one of a kind, I tell you. You won't believe your eyes. You see this car has no pedals. That's right no gas pedal and no brake pedal."

"B-But how do you stop and start?"

"Ah, that's the beauty of this, with the Israeli computerized technology all you have to do is to speak and the digital processor will convert your voice into an electronic signal that tells the motor what to do."

"I don't believe it."

"Watch, it's true. This was programmed for the religious consumer. To start, just say "Baruch HaShem" (Hebrew: Thank G-d). As the salesman spoke those words the car began to drive.

The Rabbi, was taken back, "Wow, I don't believe it! How do you stop the car?"

"That's no problem, all you have to say is 'Shema Yisroel' (the prayer declaring the unity of G-d) and the car will stop." As the salesman spoke those words, the car rolled to a halt. It's as easy as can be just say 'Baruch HaShem' to start and when you want to stop just say 'Shema Yisroel'. "

Well The Rabbi was very impressed and bought the car on the spot. Entering the car he said the magic words, 'Baruch HaShem' and the car was soon heading out and on to the local highway. Soon the Rabbi had left the city behind and was looking at the beautiful country scenery. As the car continued, the Rabbi failed to notice a sign saying that the road is closed. As the car continued it went up onto a half completed bridge.

"Oh no! We are going to crash!". Instinctively his feet searched in vain for the brake pedal, but there was none to be found. "What do I say, WHAT DO I SAY!!!" panicking he could not remember what the salesman had told him. His mind was a blank and the car was approaching the end of the unfinished bridge, together with a majestic plunge into a ravine, hundreds of feet below.

"This is the end!" the Rabbi thought. And preparing for death he began to declare the unity of G-d,."Shema Yisroel!" he said, and in a moment the car screeched to a stop with half of the car resting in a tilted manner, precariously over the bridge.

The Rabbi, soaked with perspiration, removed his trembling hand from his forehead, and looked at the miracle and exclaimed with deep feeling 'BARUCH HASHEM'".