A friend says: Naftali Bennett is probably pissing his pants out of fear that NY and DC Jewish orgs are going to cancel the US’s special relationship with Israel over the latter’s anti-gay positions if his party is brought into a coaliton. I’m sure Adelson is on the phone right now with the mainstream Israeli parties, insisting that they as well as Bennett will have to move more liberal on “social issues,” like he demands of the Republican party. #consistency #organizedJewry
REPORT: Bezalel Smotrich, eighth on the Bayit Yehudi’s list, came under fire for calling LGBT people “abnormal” while on a panel at a school in Givatayim on Sunday.
“Every person can decide he doesn’t want to live a normal life; that’s his right,” Smotrich said in a recording from the event played on Army Radio. “He does not have a right, just because he doesn’t feel comfortable being abnormal, to demand from all of us to destroy the concept of normalcy and say ‘there’s no such thing as normal anymore.
“Every person can be abnormal in his house and form whatever family unit he wants. He can’t make demands from me, as the state.”
Gay people, Smotrich said, “feel uncomfortable being unusual. It’s not fun, so they come out of the closet and then run and say they’re proud of it.”
Posted inHomosexuality, Israel, Jews|Comments Off on Bayit Yehudi candidate: I’m a proud homophobe
A Jewish friend says: There’s an aspect to the hostility toward Jews in France that is never mentioned. That is, the Jewish community, on the whole, sided with the French colonialist over the Arab nationalists which created a bitter divide that is still with us. The hostility there is a fabric with a number of threads. There is another divide, which is the Palestinian issue. So, what’s going on in France isn’t some rebirth of European hostility toward Jews so much as hostility between 2 communities. That is, if the Jews or the Arabs weren’t in proximity to each other, there wouldn’t be an issue. If the Arabs weren’t in France, the number of hostile acts would also be negligible.
Posted inAnti-Semitism, France|Comments Off on What’s With French Anti-Semitism?
I was new to Temple Ohev Shalom in Orlando in late 1993, I was troubled and I was frightened and I was far from home, and this guy I just met in shul gave me his card and said, “If there’s anything you need, a job, a car, whatever, call me.” I’ve met a lot of Jews like that. They’re the most generous people. Yeah, they may cut some corners that WASPs wouldn’t countenance, but it doesn’t take much for them to start treating you like family, which means a great deal when your own family is on the other side of the world.
When I first started talking to rabbis, I was largely bedridden by CFS, and their first concern was for my recovery, not for my soul. I’ve never had a rabbi ask me what I believed about God. Instead, they wanted to know if I needed anything such as a car, an apartment, a job, a doctor, a place for Shabbos.
I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist, a high-intensity religion. Adventists take good care of their own. And then I joined Judaism in 1993, and I found even more intense community.
I couldn’t imagine living without community, and yet most people I know prefer to live without it. They don’t want it cramping their style.
Living in community means constantly subordinating your own desires for the good of the group. It’s not a sacrifice most people want to make today. For me, the rewards are worth it. I love how Judaism balances individual freedom with group cohesion.
Freedom and community are opposites. You have to give up some freedom to have some community, and you have to give up some community to have some freedom.
Community is a bit like having a job. When you work for someone, you’re a slave to that entity for a certain number of hours a week. Most people most of the time find that sacrifice is worth it.
I’ve never been married, but I assume staying in a marriage means often subordinating what you want for the sake of your family. I assume that for most people, this sacrifice is a good deal.
Chris: “Jews are a communitarian minded people/community. WASPS think of themselves as competing isolated individuals who just happen to share a common ethnicity or cultural background.”
My own cold uncaring heart is unfathomable to most Jews. That I could write something negative about a fellow Jew, let alone a group criticism of Jews, is beyond the pale.
I notice that all high IQ groups tend to take good care of their own while low IQ groups rely on government welfare generation after generation.
I read: “Despite the traditional German Jewish antipathy toward the unwashed, crude and lack of refined eastern European Jews, the German Jewish immigrants set up Jewish Hospitals, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and many other social and practical institutions to help the more recent immigrants. The German Jews did not want to be judged by the Ostjuden’s appearance and conduct.”
Posted inJews|Comments Off on All groups could learn from the way Jews take care of their own
And I would have expected that kindness and gentility would rule the day at Rikers prison. How shocking that there’s hard behavior going on there. I would think they would all have tea and cucumber sandwiches every day and discuss Jane Austen novels.
NYT: “But The Times’s examination makes clear that the violence has continued largely unabated, despite extraordinary levels of outside scrutiny, a substantial commitment of resources by Mr. de Blasio and a new team of high-ranking managers installed by the correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, who took over the job in April.”
Posted inCrime, Prison|Comments Off on NYT: Even as Many Eyes Watch, Brutality at Rikers Persists
That’s a huge problem for the tech economy. According to the industry group Code.org, computing jobs will more than double by 2020, to 1.4 million. If women continue to leave the field, an already dire shortage of qualified tech workers will grow worse. Last summer, Google, Facebook, Apple and other big tech companies released figures showing that men outnumbered women 4 to 1 or more in their technical sectors.
It’s why the industry is so eager to hire women and minorities. For decades tech companies have relied on a workforce of whites and Asians, most of them men.
A well-known engineer at Pinterest, 27-year-old Tracy Chou said she was once bypassed for promotion at a previous start-up, where she sensed a pattern of being excluded from conversations and “an undercurrent of sexism.” (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
Gee, why would she notice an undercurrent of sexism? Why would men want to respond to her in a sexual way given how she dresses? She’s deliberately posing for the Los Angeles Times wearing a dress that goes a foot above her knee? Why would she expect men to react to her in a sexual manner?
She’s the one choosing to pose as a sex kitten but men are the bad guys for responding to her in that way.
If things are so dire for women, why don’t they form their own companies? How many little girls grow up dreaming of coding?
As I’ve been pointing out for a couple of years, we constantly read news stories out of Silicon Valley about male chauvinist brogrammers oppressing women whose only dream in life since they were little girls has been to code. And yet, upon inspection of the details, another word often comes to mind: adventuress.
…You might think that Ms. Pao’s predation upon Mrs. Nazre’s marriage might be an issue, but that’s missing the point, which is that John Doerr is a deep-pocketed rich white man and therefore must pay. Woman v. woman conflicts, while fascinating to other women, don’t fit well within the dominant feminist legal and media frameworks, so they are of no serious interest.
…Note that Snatchsnap wouldn’t be worth a dime if young women didn’t provide it with so much free content to monetize by taking pictures of their more intimate regions.
Posted inComputers, Feminism|Comments Off on LAT: Women are leaving the tech industry in droves
Yezter Hara: “Do you find white and asian women more feminine than black women?”
Luke: “Yes.”
YH: “Is it weird that I find arab women more attractive than black or hispanic women.”
Luke: “Not weird to me.”
YH: “Or are most jewish men the same even if they hate arabs?”
Luke: “Probably. The penis never lies.”
YH: “Also you ever notice jewish women kiss up to blacks more than jewish men?”
Luke: “Oh yeah. I had a Jewish girlfriend who told me she would rather I was a felon than a Republican. She dated a black felon. Was proud of it. She’s barren now. No kids.”
YH: “Jewish men don’t need their approval. What is it jewish women need from thrm? Why? Is it that jewish women are even more victimy than jewish men? Or more hostile? Or just more radical? Or foolish?”
Luke: “How many jewish women marry black men? They play with them.
Black men are just physiologically more attractive to Jewish women than black women are to Jewish men. It’s not a choice. I don’t know any Jewish women who have married black men.”
“After you get past the exciting exotic factor, blacks and Jews lead as separate lives as possible.”
YH: “Jews use blacks civil rights against whites not because they hate whites and love blacks, but because they hate whites and detest blacks.”
When I hang out with blacks, they always give me more compliments than any other race (Persians come in second). They love me. They call me James Bond. They invite me to party with them, to smoke dope with them. Their women often want to sleep with me. They’re always saddened by my lack of confidence. That’s something they don’t lack. They have it in spades. They see me as this adorable nerdy self-doubting nebbish. We get along so well because I don’t expect them to act white.
Posted inBlacks|Comments Off on Jewish Women & Black Men
Comment: Didn’t Kevin MacDonald say that guru-ism is a bigger thing among Jews than among wasps and whites?
Guru-ism is about loyal admiration and worship of a great man of learning and spirituality in Jewish tradition. The man is seen as superior to others around him. Indeed, he is so great and amazing that he expects devotion from those around him.
Guru-ism is a form of super-individualism that works against democratic individualism. It says there is this great prophet, seer, genius, or whatever whose individual worth is so superior that others cannot equal him. Never. So, they must suppress their own inferior individualism in honor of the great individualist. There was some of this in Marxism where Marx was not to be questioned. There is some of this in Ayn Rand philosophy where some individuals are deemed to be so great that they should never compromise whereas others should submit to the great man’s will. Though some people think Rand was for the common individual, she was only for the super-individual. At the end of FOUNTAINHEAD (the movie), the the rich guy submits his will to that of Howard Roark. He gives his woman and money to Roark so that the tallest skyscraper will be built exactly as Roark envisions it. And Rand certainly didn’t see others as equals. She saw herself as a great prophet and expected those around her to agree with her. And Freud was the same way with his followers. Though Susan Sontag didn’t have acolytes and devotees, she was also a very difficult person who acted like she knew everything, and she had no time to disagree with those less brilliant than her.
Thus, the cult of ultra-individualism (of the great guru) is anti-democratic-individualist and anti-middle-individualist. It simply won’t recognize other individuals as equal or equally worthy.
Jewish individualism is a blend of both ancient tribalism and radical modernism. There is the element of the devotion to the Great Prophets. It also has the element of the cult of the towering visionary genius who sees farther than others and plays the role of Prometheus.
In contrast, the most prevalent kind of American individualism was middle-individualism if not mass-individualism. It tended to be suspicious of ‘great thinkers’ who seemed to know everything and ‘great artists’ whose vision and passion were so great that they had every right to violate all social and communal norms.
So, American individualism was said to be conformist, philistine, and anti-intellectual. But it was democratic in the sense that every person’s individualism was respected as equally valid and worthy as anyone else’s. For all individualisms to count as equal, a culture must be wary of ultra-individualism that says a certain guru is so very great that others should suppress their ‘lame and square individual’ and look to him for answers and guidance.
For American middle-individualism to sustain itself, it had to rely on manners (though this was bigger in UK) and community standards. Manners and social values are something that can bind everyone from rich to poor, smart to dumb. And Bob Hope represented this kind of middle-individualism. He could be goofy but he was always mindful not to offend or go against the prevailing stands of what was considered tasteful and decent.
But with the rise of Jewish influence, guru-individualism took over. It claimed to present new views, new visions, and new concepts that were so startling that they simply could not conform to the common standards of white-gentile-dominant society. The new expressions could be intellectually bolder than anything that came before, sensually more erotic than any that came before, humorously more outrageous and funny than anything that came before, and etc.
As much as people pretend to love ‘equality’, they also want to worship something that is deemed super-astounding and great. Cinephiles prefer to study Kubrick than John Sayles. Rock fans find Dylan more fascinating than Gordon Lightfoot.
In a way, Jews and homos have come to monopolize a kind of group-guru-ism whereby they are seen as so great that the rest of us should get on our knees and worship at their feet.
There was some of this guru-ism in German culture too, what with the cult of Beethoven, Wagner, and Nietzsche, later leading to worship of Hitler.
Ironically, though Jewish-ism and German-ism went head to head in a bad way in the 20th century (USSR was influenced by Marxism), both tended to indulge in guru-ism that was so much at odds with the more moderate middle-individualism of Anglos and Anglo-America.
Guru-ism can be useful in supporting geniuses, but it can also foster mindless cultist worship of individuals as gods. And that is always dangerous.
Many people ask converts to Judaism if they feel accepted by other Jews and some converts complain about a lack of acceptance. I’ve found that most Jews I’ve known accept me 100% as Jewish and treat me indistinguishably from others Jews. I’ve long been counted in the minyan and called to the Torah for an aliyah. I may be fooling myself, but it sure feels like acceptance to me. They’ve brought me into their homes for meals, they’ve set me up on dates with Jewesses born into the tribe (usually the dregs, but hey, no rabbis daughters have come my way), they’ve offered me jobs, they’ve rented apartments to me, sold me cars, etc. Most of the Jews who don’t accept me don’t accept me on my own demerits and they do accept other converts who have gotten with the program.
When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fucking special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t care if it hurts
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I’m not around
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
She’s running out the door
She’s running out
She run run run run…
Run…
Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fucking special
I wish I was special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong here
“White people have this innate thing where they want to feel bad. That’s why they voted for Barack. I’m a creep. I didn’t own slaves, but I’m a weirdo.”
An important bit of advice by O’Neal for nonwhites trying to learn how to deal with whites: “You cannot meet passive aggression with aggression.”
Microaggressions are a hallmark of a high civilization — e.g., the dialogue in Jane Austen’s or Evelyn Waugh’s novels — so they are particularly irritating to people worried that they come from a lower civilizational level, inciting them to respond with macroaggressions.
If I look for rejection from Jews, I can find it. If I look for acceptance, I can find that too. I guess it is up to me to decide what to concentrate on.
Steven: “When I worked at Strand book store in New York City one of my supervisors was a black American convert to Orthodox Judaism. He chided me about being non-observant (I was raised Reform and never Bar Mitzvah-ed). He wore a prayer shawl and payos at work. I never doubted this guy was a zillion percent more Jewish than I was.”
“Judaism is a religion, and despite Hitler and all the DNA research into Jewish genetic relatedness (which I welcome), it is not a race. When I worked at Strand I respected my black convert supervisor Tom Weatherly as a Jewish elder. Tom knew and experienced more about Judaism than I ever did or will, as I am sure Luke Ford has done. The faith and the culture of Judaism means more than genetics. It’s both offensive (and unfounded) to say otherwise. I’m sure a hell of a lot of Islamic supremacist Palestinian Arabs have ancient Hebrew ancestors. What’s important is the choices you make and the tradition you identify with.”
Chris: “What polite Jews may say to your face, Luke, and what they really think of you, could be entirely different things. I don’t believe Jews really trust any Goy deep down, even converts to the tribe, or those who marry into it. At best, it is grudging acceptance, though they aren’t really happy about it.”
Chris: “Jews are not a race in the classic sense of the term and run the gamut of phenotypes from kinky-haired and hook-nosed Mizrahis to Aryan blond, blue-eyes, snub nosed Ashkenazi, but there is a peculiar mentality ingrained in Jews culturally and spirtually where they see themselves as and often act as if they are racially distinct from the Goyim they live amongst.”
Corwin: “It’s a figment of your self regard that any jew would ever welcome you into his family. Sorry, bud.”
Luke: “Jews aren’t polite. So when a Jewish family has me over for Shabbat meals in excess of 50 times? That is all just for show? I’m not sure exactly what they get out of my presence if it is just for show. Show to whom? I don’t think anyone can read my blog or my FB and think I slant my impressions in favor of the Jews.”
Corwin: “A friend, a Shabbat guest, a co-religionist — sure. When you say that you have been set up with jewesses, I’m sure it’s not by a father with a daughter, but with a distant relative or cast of acquaintance.”
I’ve had Jewish fathers try to set me up with their daughters, but admittedly the daughters were 5s or below if I recall correctly. Some of them were a bit retarded.
JCW: Los Angeles/Sherman Oaks Community Alert: Sholom (Dovber) Levitansky has been added to the Wall of Shame due to his alleged sexual abuse of a number of female minors.
Multiple victims have testified to JCW that they have been abused by Levitansky. After an investigation by JCW’s investigative team that spanned 18 months and following a review by JCW’s board, it was determined that public exposure was warranted and necessary.
Levitansky, aged 38, is from the Los Angeles area and is the director of Jewish Hospitality/Congregation Bais Avraham.
Who helped cover up for the abuser in the following story? According to 27yo Sima Yumash, it was Rabbi Avraham Union, Rabbi Gershon Bess, R. Berish Goldenberg (all of the RCC), R. Yosef Shusterman, and social worker Debbie Fox.
Sima Yarmush is the daughter of Rabbi Boruch Rabinowitz, a Chabad shaliach (emissary of the rebbe) at the Living Torah Center at 1130 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Rabbi Sholom Dovber Levitansky (I don’t think Sholom Dovber is actually a rabbi, I believe he flunked out of yeshiva, but in deference to his prominent Levitansky family, people called him “rabbi”) worked as an assistant at the center. When Sima Yarmush told her father about what Sholom Levitansky had done to her, Rabbi Rabinowitz asked Sholom who admitted what he had done. Rabbi Rabinowitz immediately fired him and told the wider Los Angeles community about the predator.
KosherDelight.com contains this decade out of date information about the Living Torah Center:
Living Torah Center
1130 Wilshire Boulavard
S. Monica, CA 90401 USA
Tel: 310-394-5699
Fax: 310-453-1936
Email:
Website:
Rabbi Boruch Rabinowitz, Director
Rabbi Sholom Levitansky, Associate Director
Apparently, Sima was not the only girl that Sholom Levitansky abused. After he was fired from working in Santa Monica, Sholom Dovbear Levitansky went to work in a rabbinic capacity in Florida, then Palm Springs before ending up in Sherman Oaks.
Here are some highlights from Sima Yarmush’s talk about her childhood in the Santa Monica Chabad community of the Living Torah Center and how Rabbi Sholom Dovber Levitansky, the son of Rabbi Levitansky of the Chabad in Simcha Monica at 1428 17th St
Santa Monica, CA, groomed her and then abused her, starting at age 14 and ending when she was 17 and able to get away:
My parents [Chabad shluchim aka emissaries] were told about a social worker [Debbie Fox] who at the time was working at Aleinu Family Services at the Jewish Federation building on Wilshire Blvd. I met with the social worker Debbie and told her everything. She promised me and my parents that she would help us and she would get four rabbis from the halachic [Jewish law] advisory board involved. Four Los Angeles rabbis were assigned to my case. Rabbi Yosef Shusterman of Chabad of North Beverly Hills, Rabbi Berish Goldenberg of Toras Emes, rabbis Gershon Bess and Avrohom Union of the RCC. A hearing was scheduled.
You might be wondering why I didn’t go to the police and press charges. I didn’t go for many reasons. I’ll share a few. I was 18, unmarried, and terrified of the public finding out I was sexually abused. The idea of fighting a legal battle with a man who repulsed me was terrifying. For some reason, I had this very strong… faith that these prestigious Los Angeles rabbis would certainly help me notify the public about the dangerous man. Wrong.
The meeting with the rabbis was very emotional for me. It was the first time I was openly talking about the sexual abuse I had endured. The social worker, Debbie, and I sat down with the rabbis. There was a mehitza between us and the rabbis… I told them everything…
The rabbis then told my family that everything will be taken care of and that we should not mix in. That we should leave all matters of the story of my abuse to them. They will take care of everything.
To make a long story short, my family got absolutely no backing nor support to show our community that the allegations were true. I was not offered any help or support. Until this day, not one of those rabbis has called me to ask me how I am doing. They simply sent me off that night with random blessings that I should heal and be well…
At one point after the meeting, being that we were shluchim, my parents had a private meeting with the Chabad rabbi who was at the meeting [R. Yosef Shusterman]. We had this huge community that was about to fall apart. He told my parents that they had absolutely no moral, legal, ethical or halachic reason to say anything about the abuse to anybody. He also told my parents numerous times to tell our community that this rabbi would be leaving for personal reasons and not to disclose the real reason.
I later learned that my abuser was sent to therapy by the rabbis, and that one rabbi in particular [R. Berish Goldenberg] took him under his wing to guide him. My abuser told everybody he is resigning from his position at our shul and went on to live in a different community, becoming a serious danger to the people around him there. The community that he moved to was not informed and had no idea about any of this. The rabbis who knew about the abuse did not warn the community…
My parents began telling my beloved shul members that my abuser was indeed fired and had to go because serious allegations of sexual abuse had come to their attention. They told everyone the truth — that the rabbi molested girls. Yes, we found out it was not only me.
My family got a whole variety of reactions from my community. Some families didn’t believe my parents. Some families blamed my parents… Some families boycotted our shul. Some families even went to the California Chabad headquarters to try to get my parents fired as Chabad shluchim [emissaries].
Meanwhile, as soon as my molester’s family heard that my parents were telling people that their son was fired from our shul because serious allegations of child sexual abuse had come to their attention, they called my parents liars.
One of the other shluchos called my mother to tell her that she is no longer welcome to bring other women to the only women’s mikveh in Santa Monica.
It was my parents who were warning others about a sexual predator who people were getting upset at…
I don’t cry because I was sexually abused. I cry because the people from my childhood who I cherished the most were not there to support me. I cry because important rabbis did not support me. I cry because I stood up for the truth and all I received in return, for the most part, was ambiguity and silence. So almost ten years have passed since I came forward to the rabbis, and I refuse to remain silent any longer.
After my abuser moved to another city, he opened up an organization and a website, offering a whole variety of rabbinic services including tutoring, counseling, Shabbat dinners, holiday parties, which provided him with access to children and teens. He recreated the perfect environment for himself to continue [molesting].
Meyer Seewald called my abuser asking him about the allegations. Meyer asked him if he ever apologized to any of his victims. The conversation was short. He denied everything. My abuser called [R. Berish Goldenberg], the one who took him under his wing, who in turn called Meyer, perturbed at the possibility of JCW exposing my abuser. For a short while, my abuser’s website was down and when it was back up again, it was updated with the word ‘Adult’ strewn all over the place.
Sholom Levitansky’s family’s Santa Monica Chabad (1428 17th) was the site of many child molestations. An older kid would recruit younger vulnerable kids into playing what he called “the privacy game.”
This older kid was never charged with any crime and he’s now an adult and still at large in the Los Angeles Jewish community (though not a rabbi and not in any position of authority).
A. asks: “Why is Debbie Fox still allowed to practice as a social worker? She’s a mandated reporter.”
Comment: “Because the victim is above 18. Legally, the adult is on her own. A mandated reporter is for children. There is nothing anyone can do if the victims themselves don’t come forward. The social worker has her hands tied in the back.”
Here is a common reaction I hear around Orthodox Los Angeles: “So angry that after so many years, the same people continue to victimize people in the community they allegedly lead.”
In the past, I often burned out covering these rabbinic sex abuse stories.
A Jew tells me: “I completely understand. I hate to think about the bad guys anymore at this point. I spoke with someone very involved in this case, though. And I basically realized that this issue – sexual abuse of children – is the tipping point. Screwing over righteous (would be) converts and agunot is upsetting, but has never been quite enough to get people to revolt. This, though, this is bad. It’s time for some change, in my opinion. Or as Meyer Seewald so eloquently pointed out, it is appalling that people here have shown more outrage at the prospect that they were given some questionable / not kosher meat (allusion to Doheny Meats) than that their own children are being molested and abused.”
A Youtube comment:
I was present at this event but just re-watched it here. What an incredibly intelligent, articulate, communicative and strong young woman Sema is.
Question: what’s the statute of limitations on pressing charges against the perpetrator and holding Chabad of Southern California–who obliterated your parents sole vocation, life’s purpose and source of income–not to mention turning the other cheek & destroying lives; and to Toras Emes whose head mentored, enabled and reassigned the abuser to a mere 18 miles away to an unsuspecting Sherman Oaks public, accountable?
The Catholic Church sold a LOT of property to pay for reparations to the children its priests sexually abused. Isn’t it time Cunin’s SoCalChabad Empire does same? There’s a Jewish boys school on 3rd street West of LaBrea that used to belong to the Catholic Church. It’s one of the properties they sold to free up cash for reparations. Every time I drive past it I think, “this Cheder made possible by the Catholic Diocese; this is the Cheder that Catholic Abuse Built”.
Another Youtube comment: “I have no words to describe my feelings after watching this lady’s amazing story, I am just so heartbroken that she was made to suffer so much. And I am angered. I am even more angered at the rabbis who chose not to do anything but sweep this under the rug. I really wish the molester Sholom Dovber Levitansky answer for what he has done. A a big apology from the community is owed to this courageous woman. I am shocked that rabbis who are involved in and head the RCC, regarded with an obligatory prestige in their Kashrus certification and which seems to have a monopoly on Gerus in LA was able to just sit by and do nothing upon hearing the name of the accuser.”
Melanie posts to Youtube: “I feel such pain and anguish listening to Sima, your courage is a blessing. Boruch Hashem you have a wonderful supporting family who have stood up for you. The Rabbis who were involved should be totally ashamed, they should resign or be fired from their positions as they have NO credibility or moral ethics. People who shamed your parents or shunned any of you should hold their heads in shame. I wish I had your courage to tell my story that I have lived with for over a decade. May Hashem Bless you your family and all who have supported you.”
Andrew posts to Youtube: “I am very moved and grateful to Sima for her determination to prevent further abuse. It is, unfortunately, very typical of our communities that victims and whistle-blowers are punished. Although the conduct of this ‘beis-din’ is reprehensible, it is unfortunately not surprising. Sima is blessed that her family supports her. There are many other victims who are shunned by their families. It also sounds like her family and their Chabad House will be ok. I suggest it would be worthwhile for criminal charges to be pressed against the perpetrator. I think that would make it less likely for him to ever be in a position to have access to more potential victims. There is certainly a mitzva to report him to the authorities, as the prohibition of mesira does not apply here in any manner.”
Chayale Mendy posts to FB: “Silence only creates a thicker smokescreen for abusers to find new victims and to evade the consequences for their crimes. This woman is a true hero. May all the bent and broken be lifted upright and be placed among the leaders of our nation.”
Chaya Esther Ort posts to FB: “I am so impressed and moved by the courage, bravery, and honesty of this beautiful young woman. I am likewise impressed by the successful efforts of JWC in supporting and encouraging victims of sexual abuse, and providing a forum for them to share their experiences. I am utterly mystified that rabbis, community leaders, friends and neighbors would protect and support perpetrators of sexual abuse. Anyone complicit in covering up abuse, enabling abusers to escape being exposed or moving to other communities, intimidating and ostracizing people who report abuse is as bad as or worse than the actual abuser, since it can be argued that the abuser is sick. May Hashem bless Ms Yarmush, and all the victims of sexual and physical abuse with safety from harm, and healing from trauma. And thank you to Meyer Seewald and JWC for bringing this issue out into the open.”
Miriam Hendeles posts to FB: “Unbelievable. What a brave and courageous woman. So sad that she suffered so much. She has such presence in the way she delivered her message. Clear. Direct. So important. Wow.”
A post to Youtube:
I see what she means. The abuser’s picture or name does not appear on his website, he added the word adult to all of the services said to be offered, and only uses his first name in a reference to himself (“Ask the Rabbi”) http://jewishhospitality.org/home.html
G-d bless this woman and give her and her family health, long life and all kinds of brachos and protection. She looks like she indeed has inherited her grandmother’s DNA including the courage and strength.
Benny Forer posts: “Thank you for your amazing courage and bravery. Shame on those that committed the crime, covered up the crime, and passively encouraged crime. Those Rabbis should be deeply ashamed of their actions.”
Here is video from Sunday night’s Jewish Community Watch event.
Heidi posts:
I am so impressed and moved by the courage, bravery, and honesty of this beautiful young woman. I am likewise impressed by the successful efforts of JWC in supporting and encouraging victims of sexual abuse, and providing a forum for them to share their experiences. I am utterly mystified that rabbis, community leaders, friends and neighbors would protect and support perpetrators of sexual abuse. Anyone complicit in covering up abuse, enabling abusers to escape being exposed or moving to other communities, intimidating and ostracizing people who report abuse is as bad as or worse than the actual abuser, since it can be argued that the abuser is sick.
After highlighting so effectively the importance of outing abusers, it was surprising that Ms Yarmush did not mention the name of her abuser, or his website. If anyone knows of any rationale for failing to mention these things, i would be interested in hearing it.
May Hashem bless Ms Yarmush, and all the victims of sexual and physical abuse with safety from harm, and healing from trauma. And thank you to Meyer Seewald and JWC for bringing this issue out into the open.
NHMusic posts to Youtube:
What an amazing & courageous woman!
It is extremely sad & scary how many survivors have been and are currently being shunned by those they have turned to for support/help – as well as those who have had their experiences ignored/belittled.
As someone who grew up & currently live in a religious community in NJ it scares me how sexual abuse is ignored/ barely acknowledged as something that occurs on a daily basis -let alone exists. I can only hope that the JCW-JCW events makes its way down to NJ to raise awareness and tell survivors the importance of coming forward and telling their stories as well as, not to be ashamed for they are the true heroes/heroines.
Shlomo posts: “Unfortunately I can relate to every word you are saying. Your pain, your feelings of abandonment by the “Rabbis” and friends you grew up with, your hesitation to come out in public for many reasons you mention and more. The incredible indifference of our “Rabbis” is inexplicable or defensible at any level. Do not stop now or ever. You are courageous beyond belief. You must continue. This is just a beginning for you. Chazak Chazak Venischazaik. And thank G-d for the courageous people behind this organization.”
The Journal is not printing the rabbi’s name because he has not been charged with these allegations in court, but among the Los Angeles audience during Seewald’s recent visit, the rabbi’s name was well known — so it goes in the close-knit Los Angeles Orthodox community.
Sima Yarmush, now 27, gave her own testimony to the community at the event, accusing this rabbi of numerous acts of molestation. She was 14 at the time.
Yarmush began by telling her story about growing up in Chabad, her bubbe (an Auschwitz survivor), her stifling shyness as a little girl and then about that aforementioned rabbi — how he took her under his wing, charming her and the whole community before, she alleged, abusing her sexually.
When she was 18, after coming home from a year in Israel to attend seminary, she said she decided to speak out and take action. Yarmush was assigned four rabbis who conducted a beit din (rabbinical court) and, for the first time in her life, she recounted the events in explicit detail; the rabbis, separated by a mechitzah, listened to her story with clasped hands. Finally, one of the rabbis asked her, “Who did this to you?”
That incriminating question with only one answer.
Finally, she thought to herself, after four years, the moment has come. And as she opened her mouth to answer the question, a Chabad rabbi interjected, “Let’s hold off on saying the name.” Furious and voiceless — yet again — Yarmush said she disobeyed the rabbi and spoke up.
“They simply sent me off that night,” she recalled. Her alleged molester got off scot-free, was sent to therapy and relocated to a nearby Chabad community in the Los Angeles area, she said…
Although JCW has not been sued for libel or defamation, it isn’t without flaw. In August 2012, Seewald immediately responded to an allegation made by an autistic boy, who falsely accused a Crown Heights special education teacher of sexual abuse. As a result of his entry into the JCW database, the man lost his job and was publicly shunned — before Seewald repealed the entry. But by then, the damage had been done and JCW’s integrity was compromised.
How did this event damage JCW’s integrity? How does the Jewish Journal know that the allegation was false? The Jewish Journal sides with the powers that be.
As for not naming Rabbi Sholom Dovber Levitansky because he has not been charged in court, the Jewish Journal has no problem publishing all sorts of negative things about people who are not charged in court. One example, Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz in 2008.
Sholom Dovbear Levitansky is the son of the pioneering Chabad shalich Avraham Levitansky, who died in May of 2007:
Jewish Journal: Rabbi Avraham Levitansky, one of Chabad’s first West Coast shlichim, or emissaries, died in his home on May 27, following a long, undisclosed illness. He was 67.
Levitansky headed Santa Monica’s Chabad for 23 years. He was the first shliach brought to the West Coast in the mid-1960s by Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin. Cunin, the director of Chabad on the West Coast, was the first person the Lubavitcher Rebbe selected to appoint other emissaries.
Levitansky was originally brought to California to help launch Chabad’s Talmud Torah. He also helped launch Chabad’s first Gan Israel day camp and helped establish a program to help children in public school receive a Jewish education.
In 1970, when Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson asked for 70 new Chabad centers to be built for his birthday, Cunin committed to opening 12. He appointed Levitansky to open one in Santa Monica, or “Simcha Monica,” using the Hebrew word for happiness instead of the Spanish word for saint.
“Rabbi Avraham Levitansky was a dear, personal friend of mine for more than 50 years. He was my schoolmate, my comrade in arms, and more than anything else, he was a real brother to me,” Rabbi Cunin wrote in a statement to The Journal.
Levitansky’s synagogue was the first Chabad in Santa Monica and he later brought in Rabbi Boruch Rabinowitz to help. Fifteen years ago Rabinowitz opened another center, The Living Torah Center, which now operates a pre-school.
Rav Adlerstein said that about a decade ago in Fairfax, an Orthodox woman repeatedly left and returned to her abusive non-observant husband. Finally, he murdered her.
Rav Adlerstein did not mention any names or further details, but I will.
Six years ago, the Orthodox Counseling Program (OCP) of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles began a hot line to help women such as Ilana. But at the time, OCP’s Dr. Michael Held staunchly refused to talk about the hot line. “If something is difficult to accept and you splash it all over the front page,” he said, “people will clam up, and you’ll find yourself farther away from the people you want to help.”
Instead, Held and his staff quietly worked behind the scenes, meeting with many of the more than 100 practicing Orthodox rabbis in Los Angeles, and their efforts have paid off.
…What opened the community’s eyes, sources say, was the 1993 murder of Rita Parizer, 36, an Orthodox wife and motherwhose strangled body was found wrapped in a sleeping bag in a garageowned by her husband, Shalom, at 325 N. Orange Grove Ave. Rita previously had reported a marital rape but refused to press charges, LAPD Det. David Lambkin said. In August 1994, her husband was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to lifein prison.
“More than anything, the Parizer case brokethrough the community’s denial,” said Shirley Lebovics, a licensed clinical social worker who is observant and a domestic-violence expert. “It made rabbis stop and say, ‘This can happen. This is frightening. This is real.’”
…Rabbi Aron Tendler of Shaarey Zedek, however, said, “Abuse has nothing to do with one’s moral upbringing, but with the [generational] cycle of violence.” Tendler speaks about the phenomenon in a new videotape produced for the Jewish community by the National Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence.
“When I counsel couples, I tell the woman, in front of her intended husband, that if he ever raises a hand to her, she should pick herself up and leave until the problem is resolved,” Tendler said. “And if a woman is unsafe, it is incumbent upon every rabbi to pull out all the stops, including saying from the bimah that a man is not welcome in the community, because he abuses his wife.”
Rita Parizer went for help to the Orthodox Hotline and was seen by Dr. Michael Held and Mrs. Shirley Lebovic who did not report to the authorities the abuse Rita suffered at her husband’s hands.
Dr. Held worked as a psychologist at YULA. Later he was hired by Shirley’s husband as the director of a home for orthodox children with developmental problems called Etta Israel. As for Shirley Lebovic, she’s in social work.
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Sam Vaknin: Narcissists invariably react with narcissistic rage to narcissistic injury. Narcissists see themselves as perfect and entitled to special recognition, regardless of his accomplishments. Any threat to this perception is a narcissistic injury. A narcissistic wound is a repeated threat to the narcissist’s false self. A narcissistic scar is a recurrent defense against a narcissistic wound, intended to preserve the narcissist’s grandiose self-perception, to preserve the narcissist’s false self.
The narcissist actively solicits narcissistic supply, admiration, attention, compliments, or fear. He solicits this to sustain his fragile ego. Thus the narcissist constantly courts possible rejection, criticism, disagreement, or mockery. The narcissist is therefore dependent on other people. He is aware of the risks associated with such dependence. He resents this dependence. He dreads disruption of the flow of his drug, narcissistic supply. He’s caught between the rock of his addiction and his feeling of superiority. No wonder that the narcissist is prone to raging and envy.
The narcissist’s thinking is magical. He views himself as perfect. Compliments that accord with this false self are taken for granted. Having anticipated the praise as fully justified, he feels that he has made the kudos happen. He annexes positive input. He feels that the source of this input is internal. He feels that he generated it. He is responsible for it. The narcissist takes positive narcissistic supply for granted. But the narcissist treats disharmonious input differently. He accords a far greater weight to this destabilizing information because they are felt to him to be more real. He takes any slight as more real. The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. He is hyper-vigilant. He perceives every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection of his entire false self. His mind turns into a battlefield of paranoia. Most narcissists react defensively. They become aggressive and cold. They detach emotionally for fear of yet another narcissistic injury. They give you the silent treatment. They devalue the person who made the unflattering observation.
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"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)
