From the 2012 Jewish Yearbook: Another issue that continued to divide Americans was the status of an estimated 11 million undocumented aliens in the US. Arizona enacted legislation known as SB 1070 that some considered draconian. The law expressed as official state policy the goal of “attrition through enforcement.” …Opposition to the law by American Jewish groups was broad and sharp. Jewish leaders argued that immigration law has been the province of the federal government and that the law would encourage racial profiling of Americans, particularly those of hispanic origin. HIAS President Gideon Aronoff said that while few Jews were directly affected by the bill, “we are all Americans, we are all our brothers’ keeper.” Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism called the law “inhumane and retrogressive:” and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center remarked that “this law makes no sense — it guarantees and stigmatizes people of color as second-class citizens and exposes them to intimidation and the use of racial profiling as a weapon of bias.”
* God lays down a lot of demands on the Jews. A less intelligent and less diligent group of people simply could not keep up with these demands. They wouldn’t have a clue. Mexicans have many wonderful qualities, but can you imagine God laying down these demands on a group of two million Mexicans or Africans or Arabs in the desert? I don’t think it would work. Less intelligent Jews over the past 2,000 years have probably converted out to the less demanding religions of Christianity and Islam. This has had a eugenic effect on Jews. Smart ones reproduce. Losers fall away.
* Jews talk a lot about “tikkun olam” aka improving the world. Like every group with spirit, Jews tend to think of themselves as the center of the world and as morally superior. Australians, Muslims, Chinese, Japanese, and every other group I know of thinks the same way. When I lived in Australia and watched Australian news, it was always underlain with the supposition that Australians had a superior morality to the rest of the world and if the rest of the world could only be more like us, it would be better off. When I was in England, there was a widespread assumption that English morals and English tele were superior.
Growing up a Christian, it was simply taken for granted that being “Christian” was the best identity one could take on and that Christianity was the world’s greatest moral system. When we saw problems in the world, the solution we thought of first was that these wrongdoers needed to become Christian. Jews don’t seek to make the world Jewish, but we tend to think we have more moral acuity than other groups. Jews tend to feel comfortable critiquing the non-Jewish world but we don’t like being critiqued by goyim. Most groups are like this. I assume the Japanese and Muslims and blacks and Christians don’t like being evaluated by outsiders. A person with a high IQ however finds it relatively easy to put himself in the shoes of another and to look at the world from another’s POV.
On this show, we’re critiquing the world from a Torah perspective, but with a little effort, we can look at Torah and at Jews from an outsider’s perspective. Different groups have different interests and these interests often clash. With a little moral imagination, we can sense what life looks like for blacks, for Chinese, for Muslims and Arabs and Australians and Russians. We can also use our moral imagination to look at the Jewish past and to understand where the actions of Jews contributed to anti-Semitism. Mastering our history is not easy. Blacks don’t like to look at where black behavior causes anti-black sentiments and Muslims don’t like to examine where Muslim behavior causes anti-Muslim animus. Once we decide to look at the world as rational, we can seek out the causes for why peoples act as they do.
When most Jews talk of tikkun olam, they refer to left-wing politics (empowering minorities at the expense of the white majority).
* Would the Israelites have been a stronger group if they had more diversity? If they were 10% Mexican and 10% African and 10% Egyptian and 10% Arab and 10% Persian and 10% Chinese etc? I don’t think so. If diversity would not have made Israel stronger, why would anyone think it makes America or France or Australia stronger?
I had a few years where I did much, perhaps most of my writing reminiscing about my past relationships. One day in writing class, my teacher gave me an assignment that changed my life. She suggested I write about my relationship from my GF’s point of view. I did that and then I had my GF write about how we met from her point of view. It was fascinating and destabilizing of my prejudices.
* If HaShem had given the Mexicans the Torah, there would be hundreds of millions of Jews in the world today.
* I’ve met rabbis with single-minded dedication and a lack of humanity. Everyone they meet is just fodder for Torah. They’re not interested in people qua people, but only as fodder for the cause. It’s rare I’ve been invited to someone’s home for a Sabbath meal and the hosts have no interest in me except as fodder for Torah, but it has happened on occasion. I notice this among BTs (Baalei Teshuva) more than FFBs (Frum From Birth).
The most dynamic public speakers tend to be cold in real life. Hitler watched an autopsy performed on his beloved niece. That’s cold blooded.
I’m often around drunk Orthodox Jews celebrating simchas (happy occasions). It’s not easy for me. I’m used to sober Seventh-Day Adventists. WASPs tend to extend you more body space than do Orthodox Jews.
* If family unfriends you on FB, would you take it as a spiritual lesson to mend your ways?
* Being tribal is not the typical white’s idea of a good time. Whites are the least tribal people around. When you have a dominantly white society, whites don’t have to get tribal. When you create a multiracial society, you set off uncomfortable tribalism among whites and they start seeking their own group interest (just like all other groups do automatically).
* The Pope just recognized the Armenian Genocide, something the ADL failed to do for many years because it valued Israel’s relationship with Turkey.
Just ask with these things — who benefits and who gets hurt?
Groups supporting Israel for many years did not want to recognize the Armenian Genocide at the hands of Turkey because Turkey was an important ally of Israel. Once Israel and Turkey fell out, Jewish groups had no problem recognizing the Armenian genocide.
Are Jewish groups evil because they think strategically? Not at all. Every group should think strategically. Ignoring the consequences of your choices to live out an ideal is not necessarily moral.
Every nationalism has a victimology and every victimology has a nationalism.
Why are there so many Holocaust museums and so few victims of communism museums? Who benefits?
Peter Novick wrote a great book in 2000 — The Holocaust in American Life. Since the 1960s, the Holocaust has become the sacred religious focus for many Jews. Until the 1960s, it was widely thought that the Nazis carried out the Holocaust. Then this religion of the Holocaust started and Germans got the blame, then all white Christians. This fuels an anti-white, anti-goyim animus among some secular Jews (chiefly of Eastern European origin who lived for centuries in a state of mutual loathing with the goyim).
By contrast, traditional Orthodox Jews don’t build special commemorations to the Holocaust and their religion has no more to do with the Holocaust than with other tragedies in Jewish history, such as the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem.
So many Jews grow up with the idea that the Holocaust (and with it hatred of goyim) is central to Jewish identity.
Some of the most powerful leaders in the American Jewish community have stepped forward in recent days to acknowledge the 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.
On the surface, this would seem unremarkable. As victims of the Holocaust, Jews might be expected to stand beside the Armenians and their tragedy. After all, the massacres and death marches across Anatolia during the fog of World War I became a model for Hitler himself.
But this sudden embrace of the Armenian Genocide actually marks a shameless turnaround for the major American Jewish organizations. For decades, they have helped Turkey cover up its murderous past. Each year, the Israel lobby in the U.S. has played a quiet but pivotal role in pressuring Congress, the State Department and successive presidents to defeat simple congressional resolutions commemorating the 1.5 million Armenian victims.
Genocide denial is not a pretty thing, they now concede, but they did it for Israel. They did it out of gratitude for Turkey being Israel’s one and only Muslim ally.
Now the game has changed. Israel and Turkey are locked in a feud over the Palestine-bound flotilla that was intercepted on the high seas by Israel. Turkey is outraged over the killing of nine of its citizens on board. Israel is outraged that a country with Turkey’s past would dare judge the morality of the Jewish state.
So the Armenian Genocide has become a new weapon in the hands of Israel and its supporters in the U.S., a way to threaten Turkey, a conniver’s get-even: Hey, Turkey, if you want to play nasty with Israel, if you want to lecture us about violations of human rights, we can easily go the other way on the Armenian Genocide. No more walking the halls of Congress to plead your shameful case.
If I sound cynical about all this, maybe I am.
In the spring of 2007, I wrote a story that revealed how genocide denial had become a dirty little pact between Turkey and Israel and its lobby in the U.S.
The story, as it turned out, was my last story at the Los Angeles Times, the only story in my 20-year career that was killed on the eve of publication.
Three years later, I can still hear myself framing its contours to one of our editors in the Washington bureau:
A rift over genocide denial has begun to crack open inside the Jewish community. If you listen closely, you can hear the stirrings of a debate.
Posted inTorah|Comments Off on Torah Portion Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47)
I talk to Miriam Puccio Sunday morning about RabbiTovia Singer.
Luke: “I’ve been tracking this guy for many years. He’s very slippery and often women don’t want to go on the record.”
Miriam: “They took away everything from me so I don’t have to fear anybody doing anything to me because they already wrecked my [Orthodox] conversion. I consider myself a Jew because I [went through the program and I] went to the mikveh but they [Manhattan Beit Din, run by R. Zvi Romm] never gave me my papers.”
“I’ve been divorced since 2010. Around 2008, I started looking into Judaism as an alternative to the religion I was raised in. I didn’t know what I believed. I went online and I started listening to Arutz Sheva which eventually brought me to his radio program. I would hear people calling in. I thought, ‘It seems like he talks to them pretty nice. Maybe I’ll call and ask a question.’
“So I started to do that once or twice a week. I called myself ‘Sarah.’ When I called, some time in 2009, he put it on his website, ‘Messianic calls in and leaves Christianity on air.’ He answered one of my questions.
“My husband at the time wasn’t really into it. After six months or so, it seemed like he was coming around. I emailed Rabbi [Tovia] at the address on his website to thank him and to tell him that my husband was also coming along with learning and all that stuff. He said, ‘That’s great. If you ever want to call, this is my phone number. Call with any questions.’
“Maybe a month later, my mother had a pastor call me. He said something and I didn’t know how to answer it. So I called up Rabbi Singer and asked him a question. It was very professional.
“My guess is that when I called him, my cell phone number came up on his phone or something, because at some point, he called me back. I was like, how did you have my number?
“I tell him I’m concerned about my husband. I’m concerned about this and that.
“I called Rabbi Singer and asked him about conversion and how do they do it in Israel. He didn’t know that much about it. He was like, why do you want to do that? Will your husband go along with it? I told him I didn’t know what was going to happen with my marriage. It was still very professional. He wasn’t in any way making it sound like he was interested in me.”
“In 2010, I couldn’t take any more. My marriage was really bad. My marriage was bad for ten years before any of this happened. My ex-husband was unfaithful over and over again. I took the kids. We were living in Maine at the time. There was an Orthodox rabbi out there we became friends with. I went to my mom’s house with the kids.
“Rabbi Singer called me up and asked me how I was doing. Maybe he saw something on Facebook that concerned him. I told him I was a mess. That I was having a hard time. That my ex-husband had been cheating on me and frightened me. I was in a really bad place. I was frightened. I had nowhere to turn. I had no one. That’s exactly the type of person that he targets — someone who has no one. I wasn’t Jewish. I wasn’t Christian.
“At that point, he started calling me all the time.”
“I lived with my mom for three weeks. Then I lived in a hotel until I got my apartment set up. This took about a month or two. I’m a nurse. I got a job in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I started working. He called me almost every night. I said to him, ‘Why are you calling me?’ He started telling me that he’s interested in me. He wants me to come to Israel. I said I can’t do that. This isn’t a good time. I’m not in a place to do that now. My life is a mess. You’re a rabbi. You’re a Cohen. You shouldn’t be interested in me to begin with. This is never going to to work out. I told him that from the beginning. He said, you could just come to Israel, for a week, and that’s it.
“I didn’t go. About a month later, he says, ‘I’m coming to the States and I want to come see you.’ Now we’re in May in 2010. He comes to see me. Of course we’re involved right away. He’s taking care of me mentally and emotionally. I was just a mess. It was a terrible time. I was very upset. He stayed a couple of weeks in my apartment and then he went back to Israel. He’s like, you should quit your job and just come here. I didn’t know what I wanted to do because I didn’t think it was a good idea because he was not really eligible to be with me. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t want to get messed up and attached to somebody and get hurt. I’m going through a divorce.
“I decided eventually, I’m just going to go. I’m just going to go to Israel. I just bought a ticket, and I quit my job, and I stayed there pretty much all summer. Almost as soon as I get there, it was OK for a few days, and then I saw how he lived and it didn’t make me happy. I didn’t like being hidden. I didn’t like having to walk ten steps behind him whenever he was on the street. So I told him I wanted to go home. He was very upset but my kids were going back to school. I wanted to be there for them. He’s like, ‘You lost your kids in the divorce. Don’t worry about it.’ I said, I have to go back and try. I was just a mess. I was really depressed.
“I went back to the United States. I basically broke it off with him. I got my old job back. My apartment. By October [of 2010], he started to contact me again. ‘I miss you. Blah, blah, blah. I’m coming to the States and I don’t have anywhere to live.’ I’m like, ‘You can’t stay here because I’m going through conversion. I’m officially in the process and I’m going to shul and you can’t stay here.’ And he said, ‘Why do you want to do that for? You don’t want those rabbis following you around. You don’t want them scrutinizing your every move.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean I don’t want to convert? This is all I’ve ever wanted. Of course I want to convert.’ This was a very confusing time for me. I had a lot of respect for him from the past when he was giving me all of that advice. Then I thought of him very highly. This was messing with my head. He was telling me to do all these things that didn’t seem right. He was always giving me a Talmudic reason why it was OK. And I didn’t know any better. I believed him. He said this is this and that is that and he seemed like a good person. He was the only one who seemed to care about me at the time. And so I let him in. I let him stay. And of course I was always struggling with it. He ended up staying a couple of years, from 2010 to May of 2013. Almost three years [in Allentown]. The whole time that he lived with me was not all good. It was a lot of me trying to break up with him. And me saying, ‘What’s going to happen to us in the future?’ I’m going through [Orthodox] conversion and I’m trying to hide him. This is not the life I want to have. I want a normal life where people can come over and be sociable. He didn’t want to marry me. He couldn’t marry me [according to Jewish law]. Or maybe he could. He was going to look into it. The years are going by. Nothing’s changing.
“He started acting very erratic. The whole time he’s on a ton of meds. He’s always up. He’s down. He’s awake all night, he sleeps all day. He leads a crazy life. There were times we were sort of at peace but most of the time I had this feeling, ‘This isn’t ever going to work out. I’m going to have to end it sooner or later.’ There were a couple of times I broke up with him. I took all of his things out of the apartment and put them in the hallway. He just wasn’t getting it. You have to go. He just never would. There were things he did that were very concerning. One time he started scraping his arms with the scissors when I told him we were going to break up. Things like that. Whoa, this is bad news here. He would always tell me, ‘Oh, you’re not well. I don’t know what you’re going to do without me.’ He was making feel like I was a head case. I have a friend, Vanessa, who worked with me and would be on call with me and she is my witness to some of the things that happened.
“Tovia was always threatening me that if I ever told anyone that he was there that he knew all these people. I’m just saying I have a lot of connections. He would say it in a joking way but there were times he said it in a non joking way. ‘I will stalk your ass if you ever break up with me until the day you die.'”
“Eventually we broke up because my daughter was living with me and she didn’t like him. He didn’t like her. She would mouth off to him. He didn’t like that. One night she was sleeping on the couch and she says he came out and was staring at her and it freaked her out. I asked him about it and he said, ‘Yeah, I was watching her. I was very upset. And she wasn’t really sleeping anyway.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. You don’t go out and watch my daughter. She’s 16 years old. You don’t go out and stare at her for two hours. That’s creepy. That’s it. You have to go. This is over between us. This is it.’ Of course he tried to talk me out of it but by that point I was grabbing all of his stuff and throwing it together. I said, ‘We’re done.’ He said, ‘I need time to find a place to live.’ I said, ‘Go stay in a hotel.’ And he wouldn’t. He would not leave. So I took my daughter and went and stayed in a hotel for three nights so he could get his s— out of my place. I didn’t want him near her anymore. He was losing it. When I told him that, he was punching himself in the face. I said, ‘Stop, stop, don’t hate yourself. What are you doing?’ He said, ‘This is what you do to me’ and he punches himself in the face. That’s when we broke up. And Vanessa was there for the whole thing. She saw the whole thing. She was with me because I was afraid to be alone.”
“She stayed with me for a few days. Once he was gone, it was instant relief. My life went back to normal. I had so much more peace. I was able to get back to normal. I met a nice man and we got married a few months ago. Things are good.”
“When Joe and I wanted to get marry, the rabbi here at the Aish Center, Aish Ha Torah of Washington D.C. where I live, we went to Aish for eight months. Joe didn’t go as much as me but he went sometime. We had to drive to shul because we didn’t live there. Joe’s not super observant but my conversion went to hell, so whatever. If I have to drive to shul, I drive.
“The rabbi wouldn’t marry us because he found out I was a convert and I never got my papers. He made me tell him the whole story. I told him all about Singer. He went to the Manhattan Beit Din. He spoke to Rabbi Romm who was head of the Manhattan Beit Din at the time [March]. And then he came back to me and said, ‘Rabbi Romm said that the reason you didn’t get your papers is because when they asked you if you lived with [Tovia Singer], you said no. I said, ‘That’s correct. He made me say no. He made me lie to these rabbis for three months and after they finally figured out that I was living with him, he accompanies me there. Tovia said, ‘I’m going to go with you because you’re just not strong enough to handle this.’ So he went and he did all the talking. And I didn’t know what happened. The rabbis said, ‘We’ll let you know. We don’t know when. It could be a week, it could be six weeks, it could be six months. We have to figure out what to do with you.’ I never heard from them again. They never answered my phone calls. I sent them certified letters, what’s going on? I paid all the fees for the conversion. Everything. Nothing. No response. To this day, I’ve gotten no response. The first inkling of information I got was two months ago when I went to get married, Rabbi Romm comes to my rabbi and says, ‘She can start the process all over again if she wants to, which would mean separating from this man she’s with, walking to shul, going through the whole thing again even though I have been living as a Jew for three years. I said, ‘I’ll think about. I’ll let you know.’ I gave them the same thing they gave me. And I never called them back.
“And there was a nice rabbi in New York who believed in me and said, ‘You’re Jewish, I don’t care what they say, because you went to the mikveh. You’re a Jew.’ So he agreed to marry us. He put it together and we got married in an Orthodox ceremony and that’s the last involvement I’ve wanted to have with these people ever again. It’s frustrating but I feel that now that I am married, it is not an issue any more. When I was single, it was a constant problem because you can’t date anyone. Rabbis won’t marry you. Everybody wants to know why you don’t have papers. ‘You can tell me! You can talk to me!’ When you tell them, they turn on you.”
“When Tovia went with me to the Beit Din, apparently Rabbi Romm said that Tovia’s father called and spoke to them and told them not to punish Tovia. They could do whatever they wanted with me, but please don’t hurt my son. Rabbi Romm told my rabbi at Aish that this is the reason they didn’t pursue to punish [Tovia Singer] in any way. He goes on teaching and whatever he does. I’m sure he’s screwing around with converts. I don’t think that’s right that people who are already vulnerable are being preyed on by this guy. He does what he can for as long as he can and then he moves on to the next victim, which is probably somebody else just like me who’s just as interested in Judaism and who you think is a big important person who’s interested in you and takes care of you supposedly, mentally talks to you, talks to you, counsels you, and then sucks you in like that. I just think it’s a shame that he has to prey on converts but it’s wrong.”
Luke: “Tell me again why you didn’t get your conversion papers?”
Miriam: “They [Manhattan Beit Din] asked me if I was involved with him and I said no.”
“A month after my conversion, the Beit Din sent me an email, saying, ‘We want to see how you are integrating into your community so come back and meet with us.’ So I go back there. They didn’t want to know how I was integrating into the community. They started right away questioning me — do you know Tovia Singer? How do you know Tovia Singer? Would you recognize Tovia Singer if you saw him on the street? It was all about him. So something tipped them off and I found out that what tipped them off was his father. The rabbis told me that it was the father who called them up and said this is a problem. Fix it so she can’t convert so that he’s free of her. Ruin it for them. He doesn’t want his son with someone like me.”
“I have a lot of pictures of us together. Us on cruises and places we went. I don’t have pictures of me and him in the apartment. He was very careful about having his picture taken [in Miriam’s apartment]. He’d say, ‘Today I don’t want my picture taken. I’m too fat.’ If we were out, it was OK. Now looking back, I realize it was very calculated. He’s good at this. He knows what he’s doing. He never sent any personal emails to me where he wrote anything down.
“I was friends with his whole family. I went to seders at his best friend’s house. I was close with his mom. I was close with his daughter. A couple of weeks ago, she sends me a message via Facebook, ‘Please don’t hurt my dad.’ Out of the blue, after two years, she sends me this message.”
Miriam: “According to Tovia, all these women are a nutcase. Shannon Orand is a nutcase. He was talking to her on the phone a lot when I was in Israel. This is May of 2010. It had just ended between them. She was still calling him all the time while she’s engage to this other guy. In the middle of the night, I’d come out and he’s on the phone with somebody. I’d say, ‘Who are you talking to?’ He’d go, ‘I know, sweetheart. I told her all about you. She’s so happy for me. She still calls me to ask me questions.’
“I said, ‘Do you really think that is appropriate? You want me to come here and live with you. And you’re still talking to your old girlfriend? And that wasn’t the only one. There were five or six a day texting him. They would come right up on his cell phone and say what you did to me. I was so in love with you. All these women. That was one thing that made me leave. I felt he wasn’t being straight with me. He’s just a player.
“He told me the whole story about Shannon [Orand]. I know everything that happened with her.”
Luke: “Did Tovia and Shannon have a romantic relationship? He denied that.”
Miriam: “Of course they did. He told me that they were together for a while. He never lived with her. She was in Texas and he would go there a lot. And they went on dive trips together. And then he said she was a little bit too crazy. When everything went down with Guma [Aguiar], she was afraid that Guma ratted her out and it just broke up their friendship. Guma didn’t like her, he said. Guma didn’t trust her. Guma ended up kicking him out of the Jerusalem apartment, which is why he had to come live with me that fall because Guma said he couldn’t pay for it anymore because he had that lawsuit.”
I see Tovia Singer showing up frequently for the past year on the Facebook page of a beautiful Jakarta woman named Elisheva Wiriaatmadja.
Elisheva Wiriaatmadja:
Follow · January 18 · Edited ·
“An informal, friendly and brilliant discussion with Catholic, Jesuit-educated lecturer, Hindu businessman and Muslim academics at the interreligion event. — with Petrus Lakonawa, Tovia Singer and Tovia Singerat Ubud Bali, Indonesia.”
“With Francis Piron, a Tovia Singer listener residing in Malaysia. — with Abigail Wiriaatmadja and Tovia Singer.”
“Little Trixie in the arms of Mama Papua and Rabbi Tovia Singer.”
“Eits Chaim Radio featuring Rabbi Tovia Singer — with Yokhanan Eliyahu D and Abigail Wiriaatmadja in Jakarta.”
“On a hill overlooking the Sentani Lake, just by the monument of General MacArthur. The forefathers of the tribe living by the lake came around 500-600 years ago from Peru. They were told that they had to flee for their lives, because the king of Spain sent his men to chase them. In their journey they received a prophecy that God had prepared an empty land for them, a land with blue mountains. After many years they came to the empty land that is now known as Papua, and settled right here by the Lake. — with Elena Lesiuk and Tovia Singer.”
“Rabbi Tovia Singer before lecturing, with some of the Indonesian Jewish community in Jakarta, Indonesia. — with Yenmi Chaiya, Yokhanan Eliyahu D, Tovia Singer and Abigail Wiriaatmadja.”
Miriam: “I looked at her Facebook page because for a while it pissed me off that he was out there doing the same thing. I saw her wearing the same diving gear he used to make me wear. He had an extra set for whoever his girlfriend of the time was. I saw pictures of them diving together. She’s got him plastered all over her Facebook page.”
“I went to Indonesia with him on a diving trip in June of 2012. It was two or three months that things were peaceful between us. He was very dishonest. I felt he was a bullshi–er but I wasn’t really sure. I was very torn the whole time we were together. He would tell me, ‘All the things you do for me. How can you doubt me? You’re the one who breaks up with me all the time.’ He made me feel really guilty.”
“He seems to go back and forth between Indonesia and Texas.”
“This guy’s on seven or eight Ambien pills a night to go to sleep. Tons of xanax. He would stumble around every night. And then he would say, ‘I’m in this condition because of you. You don’t know what you want. You want to break up with me.’ He would blame it on me and made me feel like s— for a long time.”
Elisheva Wiriaatmadja posts April 8 on Facebook: “Wow… greatest Jesus statue in the world will be built on Celebes island of Indonesia. Rabbi Tovia Singer, we’ve got more work to do LOL.”
Another Jewish woman tells me:
I wish I read all your posts before I got involved with Tovia Singer. Ambien Boy. Drugs, drugs, drugs. To wake up, to go to sleep. I was an object of interest while he could use me (not for drugs, btw).
I was interested in him when he came to my little neighborhood on a lecture tour. So I introd’d myself.
Luke: “You never Googled him?”
Woman: Yeah, but not like I did now.
I was swept away with the arm candy and the diving adventures and the lies. I’m attracted to Narcissists.
I thought I could be someone he could listen to about what I saw in him, which was different than all his other fuck buddies.
So, he ran but not before I got kicked out of my apartment because of my “indiscretions.”
I’ve been in recovery. I did well for years. Then Tovia.
I just got done reading all your stuff on him and had to do a re-read on the NLP. He not only is an expert on this, he also demonstrated to me how he does it!
I confronted him about being a drug addict and irresponsible.
He is a “master diver.”
Luke: “What drugs is he on?”
Woman: Ambien, Xanax, a suitcase full.
Says he has insomnia.
I had to take keys away when he drove.
Just wondering why this keeps happening to me since I’m embracing my Judaism and really trying to live a clean, orthodox life.
Tovia kept telling me what my biggest fear was…
It’s like…he knew already.
Then he booked. Like he didn’t even know me. 2 1/2 months of sex everyday and he dumps me after I get my walking papers.
Nice guy.
I texted him on FB to convey my disdain. He ignored me until I said not to worry, I wasn’t after him for child support (joke).
He’s a sex addict. Yeah, he’s angry at his mother.
Orthodox Rabbi, no less. It should be Unorthodox Rabbi.
Luke: “How many rabbis have you had flings with?”
Woman: Tovia is the only one that interested me, but yeah, there are plenty that would.
I also know that studying Torah and connecting to something outside myself is really the way to go. Not just that, but I happen to love the Torah and all it’s hidden messages.
A somatic narc is one who engages in sexual activities to get his/her narcissistic supply.
He puts on a sincerity schtick. Very convincing.
Ah yes, conversational hypnosis. You can just ask questions that lead to the other person introspecting about themselves and feeling grateful to you for the trip.
Something strikingly similar about you and him
…I was fucking him daily for a week …
And realized he didn’t know my name.
When I think of how he just needed a place to flop and how I was caught up in the excitement of the oxytocin pursuit…it makes me outright pissed off that he’s doing the same thing again…shamelessly.
In my face(book).
We’re over here putting every effort known to mankind in locating our missing yeshiva boys and the Holy Rabbi is converting and cavorting his new babe all over MY facebook pages. Get me a rocket launcher.
A third Jewish woman tells me:
He leads a secret private life of everything but an orthodox rabbi should.
Letting him be a semi secret public radio figure is just allowing him to have access of many poor souls. Yes he did [have a relationship with Shannon Orand]. but he had an affair with lots of people he counseled. he goes after married women who won’t tell. Guma gave him that apartment overlooking the Kotel.
And his women. wow. Married women he counseled. I would find so much he would leave on his computer screen when he would pass out from his over doses of Xanax extra. He is bipolar and quite sick. A master mind speaker through. What I want is for women to know what he does and stop him from his credability. Which is a totally sham. He is not an orthodox Jew. He seduces using his social work skills and charm
he gets his victims when they have nothing and are looking for reason to live. They hear him on arutz sheveh. or a lecture he gives especially to teenagers through out all the jewish moments,
His number is on his website, and I think his facebook and he will talk to anyone that IM’s him.
Luke: “How does he get women to sleep with him?”
Woman: He… hypnotizes them and tells them he will love them and be there for them. He knows how to take someone anxiety in his hands and then he convinces them to learn to scuba dive and go on trips with him.”
“Xanax and ambien. I didn’t even know what this stuff was before him and his relationships have to always be secret.
Luke: “Because they are improper?”
Woman: yes and because he is public figure and he tells that he doesn’t want his name and theirs to be in a scandal. The jewish world is small. A scandal would prevent the girl from ever getting remarried especially in the frum world.
An Orthodox Jew who knows Tovia and Miriam emails me:
Luke-
Thanks for your piece on Tovia Singer. For what it’s worth, my wife and I became friendly with her…
Years ago, I often helped a friend raise money… Tovia is a masterful speaker, and he got the job done with aplomb; but from the time I first met him, and onward, I always sensed a phoniness about him that belied…weirdness. Some close friends of min e- who were also close with his father – used to rave about Tovia’s abilities, kindness, and related qualities- all of which were complete and total bullshit in comparison to the sickness he demonstrated toward Miriam and apparently many others. Yet no one builds a rap sheet like Singer overnight; like a recidivist child molester, his bizarre characteristics and actions had to establish a track record of equally bizarre behavior- which simply could not remain concealed from those close to him. I’m sure they are guilty of willful ignorance with respect to what the real Tovia Singer was capable of.
I’ll close with a few quick comments:
1. Miriam’s description on your blog is virtually identical and consistent with the information she provided (voluntarily, with no cajoling on our part) to us during many Shabbos/Yom tov meals spent at our place. Not I’ve ever doubted her story, but certainly the story, indeed HER story, would lose potency if the facts, as she described them to different people over time, somehow changed from one time to the next. As far as I can tell – they did not.
2. Miriam’s story should be augmented by strong reference to none other than Rabbi Lieb Tropper. I’m sure you know much about him and his antics whilst head of Yeshiva Kol Yaakov, and a major bloodsucker who latched onto Guma, his uncle Tom Kaplan, and of course Sharon Orand (whose deft use of a cell phone helped bring the fat bastard down). There is also the fact – undeniable and tragic – that Tropper and Singer were (and perhaps still are) in cahoots with each other with respect to a) wealthy Jews and 2) converts – who are vulnerable.
3. The apotheosis of Tropper, and to a similar extent, Singer, is sadly also an indictment of the Orthodox world, whose leadership and laity are more concerned with the possibly of offending the accused than protecting the victim(s). If you divine a scumbag like Tovia or Tropper to be holier than the Pope, the person still remains a scumbag, at least in my book.
4. You may have seen the following post on examiner.com from one Vicki Polin, formerly of the Awareness Center. I was never too enthusiastic over her work, and she had plenty of critics who blasted her site for thriving on innuendo; nonetheless, I have no reservations about her description of Tovia trying to use payola to squash some bad press as being completely accurate.
There’s little doubt that Singer’s acolytes will jump to his defense and attempt to trashcan Miriam (again!), and probably you as well; such is the nature of the Orthodox world these days when you try to bring a “frum Jew” to justice. The posuk says: Zedek, Tzedek, tir-dof: Justice, justice you shall pursue – unless of course, the accused has Rabbinical ordination.
Another woman (Tamar Leah Miller) tells me:
I was a listener to The Tovia Singer Show, the Temple Mount Show with R Singer and Jeremy Gimpel and the tnt Tamar and Tovia show and would frequent the virtual studio beginning in July 2009-May 2010. I was also facebook friends with maria puccio (now known as miriam) back them until she defriended me in may 2010, which I just contacted her today after coming across her article and she said that tovia told her to defriend me. He and I were communicating via email and facebook for a brief time at the same time as I was going through a divorce also. However, he and I stopped talking and did not speak again until he called me July 2013. He and I met up and had a brief 5 month fling that includes going to 3 different swingers clubs together and atlantic city casino trip. I was single, going through a break up and just wanted to have fun. I can confirm that he was on a lot of pain medication and at one point was hitting himself in the face cause I wanted a good night kiss but he was in too much pain and just started hitting his face. He also told me he dated 2 strippers and had a threesome with his 2 maids at his New York home. He bought me marijuana and vodka and we would just meet at hotel rooms and spend time together. He became very cruel at the end, calling me Amoral,,,however the swingers clubs were his idea. We didn’t participate with others but were together there. We stopped hooking up and he moved to Indonesia shortly after. We last saw each other the end of december 2013 , we went to a Christmas themed swingers party in philadelphia, and after that i was done going to these types of places, so he lost interest. I dont care what the man does in private, but orthodox rabbi he is not, orthodox jew, he is not, he should not be on radio or have a public career. He needs to retire, settle down, and repent for all the people he mislead and hurt.
I would have let it go but seeing he caused miriam and i to lose a friendship when i needed a friend the most as i was going through a divorce and trying to convert to judaism back then. We stayed a hotels in Reading PA, Bethlehem PA, Philadelphia PA, New Jersey, and Atlantic city from august 2013-december 2013. Jeremy Gimpel knows who I am from the show, Tamar Yonah knows who I am and multiple facebook and previous virtual studio friends know who I am. I know he was leasing a Nissan, white. We went to Saints and sinners in philadelphia 2x. But I’m sure they keep names private. He paid.
Posted inR. Tovia Singer|Comments Off on Tovia Singer – The Rabbi Predator
I assure you Jews won’t stop telling Jewish jokes, well, maybe the dumb frightened ones will stop.
Chaim Amalek writes: “When Moshiach comes, the goyim will dance and tell jokes about themselves for our entertainment, and will never think to tell jokes about us. This guy [Trevor Noah] won’t last. Having this Mischelung sitting in what has become a ‘Jewish’ seat makes no more sense than having one run the Federal Reserve system.”
“There is no ‘satire’ in Torah. This discussion does not concern the torah-true Jew.”
“When Moshiach comes, no one will even think to hurt our feelings.”
Steve Sailer notes: Like I’ve been saying, 2015′s Muslim massacres of Jews in Europe has prodded a few of the smarter, funnier, more self-aware American Jews toward an agonizing reappraisal of their ancestral Diversity Uber Alles ideology. Has it hit diminishing returns?
But, mostly, as in this example, Muslims slaughtering Jews just encourages the dumber, more humorless, less self-aware American Jews to double down on the traditionally successful habit of guilt-tripping nice white gentile Americans about how at any minute they could start a new Holocaust, just like they did on June 6, 1944. (Oh, wait, maybe my historical analogy needs work … But my point is, basically, that I’m holding the Megaphone and you aren’t.)
How all this will deter homicidal Muslims is not obvious, but, hey, it’s enjoyable, easy, and risk-free in terms of career, so why not keep on keeping on?
Posted inADL, Jews|Comments Off on WP: Why We Have To Stop Telling Jewish Jokes
Steve Sailer writes: When I was young in the Sixties and Seventies, the Spirit of the Age was all about satire and disrespecting sacred cows. A lot of youngish people emerged triumphant from that era and many of them are still around. Perhaps not so surprisingly, from their august positions today they lecture us on the dangers of satire and comedy unrestrained by respect for proper thoughts.
Posted inSatire|Comments Off on What Happened To Satire?
Anatoly Karlin writes: Japan has a 5-7 IQ advantage over, say, Italy, but its GDP per capita (PPP) is similar, while its productivity is significantly lower – even though Japan rates higher on ease of business and perception of corruption indices. There must be other factors that are at play…
While all the countries of Western Europe hew close to the line of best fit, again there are three major exceptions: The US to the upside, and Japan and South Korea to the downside…
We know that in recent decades Europe received a lot of immigrants, whose IQs are far lower than those of the natives and show no signs of convergence. The US, meanwhile, is host to two major population groups – Blacks and Non-White Hispanics – with consistently subpar IQs that together make up more than 20% of the population. If anything, that should depress productivity, which probably partially explains New Zealand, where ~90 IQ Maoris and Pacific Islanders also make up slightly more than 20% of the population. In contrast, high IQ and ethnically homogenous Japan, Korea, and Finland all underperform, as do Canada and Australia, which are not ethnically homogenous but do make sure to have cognitively elitist immigration policies.
That said, there are two reasons why this effect might not be all that powerful for both Europe and the US. First of all, in both Europe and the US, these NAMs (Non-Asian Minorities) have a relatively greater demographic preponderance amongst the youngest cohorts, whose members are either not in the workforce at all (infants, schoolchildren, students) or aren’t able to contribute much anyway (they are younger workers with less experience; while they might be quicker on the uptake, older workers often beat them with experience, especially in the more cognitively intense professions). This will likely do Europe and the US no good in the longterm, as they develop ever larger, ethnically distinct cognitive/economic underclasses that will pull down overall GDP per capita and productivity, but this probably just doesn’t play that big of a role… for now.
Moreover, at least in the US, the situation is further improved by the presence of sizable “smart fractions,” which have a disproportionately large positive effect on overall GDP per capita according to many psychometricians like Heiner Rindermann. These smart fractions are both ethnic – most notably, the 2% of the population that is Jewish – as well as the result of a global cognitive clustering effect (many of the world’s brightest and most ambitious people are inordinately drawn to US universities and Silicon Valley). It would also explain Israel’s overperformance – while the national IQ is depressed by Arabs and Sephardic Jews, and the economy is burdened by Haredi welfare bums, the Ashkenazi Jewish cognitive elite still manages to compensate for all that and elevate GDP per capita above the global correlation curve.
Comments:
* I’m not aware of any Jews who contributed to the Industrial Revolution. Jewish contributions to science have been almost entirely in theory. Experimental science, discovery through tinkering with physical objects, the sort of stuff that Edison and Tesla did, even the sort of stuff that Korolyov and von Braun did – I don’t think that Jews have ever done that.
Posted inIQ|Comments Off on Anatoly Karlin: National Wealth and IQ at the Edge: American Exceptionalism, East Asian Mediocrity
Adam Kirsch writes: “To calculate the exact degree of damage to a woman’s reputation, the mishna lays down a very pragmatic rule: “One considers her as though she were a maidservant sold in the marketplace, and assesses how much she was worth beforehand and how much she is currently worth.” That is, Shmuel’s father explains in the Gemara, “One estimates the difference between how much a person is willing to give to purchase a virgin maidservant and how much a person is willing to give to purchase a non-virgin maidservant.” This is a completely “objective,” market-based way of valuing virginity as a commodity. If it strikes us today as an outrageous way of assessing the damage caused by rape, that is an index of how much our moral intuitions have changed—even, we might say, progressed—since the Talmud was written.”
Or maybe the Talmud is wiser than we are today?
Posted inRape, Talmud|Comments Off on How Does The Talmud Deal With Rape?
No entry in Google for the phrase “explores his Nordic roots.”
No entry in Google for the phrase “explores his Aryan roots.”
Tabletmag: “Wolf Blitzer Explores His Jewish Roots”
Chaim Amalek writes: “Ever see the move ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding?’ The groom is made out to be some pale, blank WASP who of course has no ethnic value worth speaking of. Which makes the rest of the setup more plausible, I suppose.”
Posted inJews|Comments Off on 1910 Google Results For Phrase ‘Explores His Jewish Roots’
Ashe Schow writes: When a sensational rape story is found to be fraudulent, there are few ramifications for those who perpetuated the hoax in the first place.
To take the most recent example, no one is getting fired at Rolling Stone for its fraudulent article about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia. The fact-checkers who failed to raise sufficient concerns about the lack of corroborating evidence, the editors who removed crucial details that would have made the article’s weaknesses clear, and the author who sought a sensational story to fit an agenda will all keep their jobs.
And beyond those at RS who allowed the hoax to go forward, those who helped spread the story once it was published faced no consequences either. U.Va. president Teresa Sullivan offered no apology for her role in treating Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity accused in the RS article, as guilty from the start. Similarly, there appears to be no investigation to discover the vandals who smashed windows and spray-painted hateful messages at the fraternity house.
Jackie, the source of the false article, still has her privileged status as a victim, despite there being no evidence that she is the victim of anything.
The same was true of the Duke lacrosse hoax nearly a decade ago. Richard Brodhead is still the president of the university. Wendy Murphy, who spread lie after lie about the case on television throughout the ordeal, is still being asked for her opinion (in fact she was quoted in the now-retracted Rolling Stone article — go figure). The activists and professors who smeared the lacrosse players were never held accountable.
Posted inRape|Comments Off on Few Consequences For Rape Hoaxes
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
