October 26, 2014 The Laws Of Converting To Orthodoxy Judaism Luke Ford No sacred cows.

The Laws Of Converting To Orthodoxy Judaism

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Elchonon Tauber, a leading expert on Jewish law in Los Angeles, says in this class posted online: “We don’t encourage proselytizing. We have no intention of making goyim into Jews. There’s no mitzvah. Chazal (Talmudic rabbis) say that converts as as difficult for Israel as a nasty skin disease.”

“Should you [a Jew] adopt a Jewish child? The Lubavitcher Rebbe said no because of yichud (being alone with a member of the opposite sex not a family member). Many gadolim hold that we should not adopt non-Jewish children and make them into Jews.”

“There are many incredible converts but all rabbis have met converts who turned out to be a disaster.”

“Some converts only want to be Modern Orthodox with a lot of cutting corners, not covering their hair, etc. I try to stay away from such converts.”

“There’s a rabbi called Abner Weiss. He used to do conversions. He’s not learned. He’s a good speaker. Beth Jacob needed a good speaker. He’s a Cohen and he married a divorcee. I got a phone call from Brazil once. He said that this Rabbi Weiss made a conversion a long time ago. I said, then it was good. Later he became not-good.”

“You fell in love with a girl and we should make a conversion? A learned Beit Din (Jewish law court) won’t touch this. We don’t accept this but if a Beit Din did it, it’s a kosher conversion.”

“There’s someone in the news [Barry Freundel]. Let’s say his sin was pornography. If it was that, that’s complicated. If a dayan (rabbinic decider) speaks lashon hara (evil speech), are his conversions invalid? It’s complicated.”

“If we can prove that he slept with a woman who was not his wife, then his conversions after that are invalid. But you need two kosher witnesses.”

“You have to keep all the mitzvahs [to be a valid convert to Judaism]. I’ll say this on the record. I’m not afraid. The RCC has a Rabbi Adlerstein and he signed a letter a year ago saying we accept everyone, there are different types of Judaism… He was talking about the ladies demonstrating at the Wall (Kotel). I showed it to Rabbi Shochet and a few rabbis. This sounds like he does not believe in the 13 Principles of Judaism as listed by Maimonides.”

Here is the letter in question published in the Jewish Journal June 6, 2013:

“There are no villains in this story.” Those were the calming words of Natan Sharansky, renowned human rights champion and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. The story was of in-fighting that has erupted among Jews at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Sharansky, tasked with resolving the issue by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to a group of Los Angeles Rabbis last week, knowing that the monthly Jewish holiday of Rosh Hodesh will arrive this Sunday – and many Jews will gather again for prayer at the Western Wall. The prospect of clashes has unsettled the Jewish world.
Some of those gathering will be part of “Women of the Wall,” a group of women and men meeting every Rosh Hodesh for almost 25 years. The women will be praying as a group in the women’s section. Others will be women and men who believe that the way “Women of the Wall” pray violates Jewish law. Last month on Rosh Hodesh these differences led to an ugly confrontation. As the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote a generation ago, “From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring.” From the place where we are right, violence erupts.
We are American rabbis from different denominations; we know there are different ways to be a Jew. We know that the ability to disagree civilly does not grow spontaneously. It takes many years of cultivating relationships and building trust through meeting, listening, sharing, and working together. This is a process that diaspora rabbis and Jews have been engaged in for decades, one which has begun to bear real fruit in recent years.
Here in Los Angeles many of us are reaching across our divisions to model a relationship of respect and dignity. Despite our deep differences, we all equally love the Jewish people and the State of Israel. We dare not demonize or dehumanize one another.
The Western Wall is a central symbol to all Jews. But this Wall that has united people can also divide us. Winston Churchill used to say that Americans and the British are two peoples separated by a common language. The two groups vying for control of the Western Wall are two communities separated by a common scripture, the Torah. Matters of conscience are not themselves amenable to compromise or negotiation. Still, we all believe that a principal element of conscience is to listen and learn from one another and to show the respect and dignity that befits an ancient people and a great tradition.
Few know that better than Natan Sharansky, who languished in the gulag for eight years. He was chosen by Israel’s Prime Minister to come up with a solution, one that would defuse a dispute that spilled over to Jewish denominations in the United States, and strained relations between diaspora Jews and the State of Israel at a time that she is threatened existentially by Iran and the possibility looms of a front opening up with Syria. Sharansky reminded us that while each was – and still is – convinced of the justice of his or her position, there was another side to be heard.
Freed in exchange for a Soviet spy in 1986, Sharansky explained that he was whisked off to Jerusalem, now in the company of his wife Avital from whom he had been separated so many years before, right after their marriage. One of his first stops, of course, was the Western Wall. He clung to Avital’s hand to remind himself that this was no fantasy, no dream from which he would wake up in solitary confinement once again. Nearing the Wall, however, he and Avital had to briefly part company, as men and women are separated in prayer in Orthodox tradition. He did not convey this with any resentment. (His wife, in fact, is Orthodox.) He told us of what he understood at that moment. The Western Wall serves as a place to pray for countless Jews. But it also serves as a powerful focus of national Jewish yearning and aspiration, quite apart from religious belief. Somehow, both have to be satisfied, and that is what his plan would try to do, embodying the key Jewish and democratic values of mutual respect, inclusion and tolerance. Sharansky and the Government of Israel should be commended for engaging in this ambitious effort to resolve such a difficult problem.
We believe that this is a message that resonates not only among the Jews of our great city, but among all our neighbors as well. At a time when the Middle East faces increasing upheaval and bitter partisanship has become a norm even within many democratic countries, this is a theme worth amplifying and repeating. And with the help of G-d, perhaps some of our determination will reflect back to Jerusalem, the “City of Peace,” and make it more peaceful yet. With some gentleness we can ensure that flowers will always be able to grow.
Signed,
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Rabbi Denise Eger
Rabbi Ed Feinstein
Rabbi Morley Feinstein
Rabbi Laura Geller
Rabbi Judith HaLevy
Rabbi Eli Herscher
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky
Rabbi Elazar Muskin
Rabbi Kalman Topp
Rabbi David Wolpe
Members of a Task Force on Jewish Unity comprised of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Progressive and Reconstructionist leaders

Rabbi Tauber: “I’m not sure his conversions are kosher. They say he did it for political reasons.”

“There’s a rabbi [Yosef Kanefsky] who announced publicly he no longer says the blessing, ‘Thank you God for not making me a woman.’ To me, he sounds like an apikoros (heretic).”

“R. Shmuel Kamanetsky says in Philadelphia, they made a Modern Orthodox conversion. The rabbi came from a shul without a mehitza. Rabbi Kamanetsky declared the conversion invalid. He made the lady do a more strict conversion.”

“Or if you find out the rabbi was a molester, but you have to know when that started.”

“I was shocked that the RCA came out and said [Barry Freundel’s conversions were kosher]. Maybe something will come out? Maybe there are witnesses?”

“In the 1970s, there were a lot of hippies who became Jews and it didn’t take long and they became goyim. The rabbis got together and they decided to make prospective converts live like an Orthodox Jew for a year before converting.”

“I once heard from a ger (convert) that Yom Kippur didn’t work for me.”

“Why don’t we teach them about sex [when they first seek to convert, instead we teach them Shabbos and kashrut]? I ask a lot of people who became religious what was the hardest thing? And they said sex. Sex is the most powerful.”

I’m translating the rabbi’s comments, best I can, into English. I’m not doing a literal translation. I am trying to convey the sense of the rabbi’s comments.

Posted in Conversion, Orthodoxy | Comments Off

What Will A Haredi Israel Look Like?

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Luke Ford

Alex Trivunovic: “Are you guys worried about Israel once the haredis take over? I mean due to their unwillingness to get a secular education.”

Chaim Amalek: “It will be several generations yet for that to happen. The haredim are not exactly “zionists” but rather believe in their rebbis and in superstitions from 18th century eastern europe. I cannot peer that far into the future, except to say that they are not the stuff of which a nation can be built.”

Luke: “I am not worried Alex. They will adapt. More of them are working. They have high IQs. I wouldn’t bet against them. Alex, very few of them are anti-Zionist. They’re not Zionist, but they’re usually glad to live in the Jewish state and want it to prosper. Jews are incredibly pragmatic. They don’t see that as a conflict with ideals. Jewish ideals are rooted in reality, in what makes sense in a difficult circumstance when you have to choose between competing goods.”

Chaim: “It was the secular German Jews who got out when they could. It was the secular Russian Jews who fought back against the Germans. The Haredim? They sat in their yeshivas until the Germans stopped by to collect them for slaughter. But B’H’, their leaders, like the Satmar Rebbe, managed to get away in the nick of time. As I think about this, I believe that what the haredi will do is sit in their yeshivas learning, and hire mercenaries to do their fighting for them. Every pushka (charity can) in Brooklyn will say something like ‘for what it takes to fill this can with quarters, we can hire three shvartzes to fight for us while we daven and learn.'”

Posted in Haredi, Israel | Comments Off

Diversity Has A Price

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Luke Ford

The Los Angeles Times reports: “Suspect in killing of Northern California deputies was previously deported, authorities say”

Chaim Amalek: “Everything of value has a cost: a shiny new automobile, a nice home, fancy Rabenu Tam Tefillim. We know that these are wonderful things to have, but we also accept that we must pay for them. So it is with diversity. It is a wonderful thing to have, but it is not free. But still, we pay and pay because it is so wonderful to be diversity.”

Posted in Immigration | Comments Off

Israel Supreme Court Rules That Jewish Communities Can Exclude Non-Jews

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Luke Ford

Jews have been at the forefront of the racial integration fight in the West, but in Israel, Jews have the right to maintain Jewish-only communities.

All of the major Jewish organizations stand for multi-culturalism for you goyim, exclusivity for my group. Orthodox Jewish groups such as the Orthodox Union and Agudas Yisrael want the strictest and most selective standards for converting to the Jewish people but they simultaneously support immigration amnesty for America’s millions of low-IQ mestizo Mexican infiltrators.

Josh: “Arabs have had Arab only neighborhood policies in Israel (and in their own countries) for years, somehow that is never news.”

Chaim Amalek: “Goyim! The Torah presents God’s Declaration to the World that Israel is to be an example worth emulating. So, emulate Israel and live. If you look at this assertion more granularly, Jews have been at the forefront of integration in this country primarily as it affected goyishes schools and neighborhoods. Jews with the means, liberal or not, seldom ventured their children for use as laboratory rats in any of these social experiments, and generally choose to live apart from non-whites. Hence, the Upper West Side. Curiously, there is one group of Jews that seems at least willing to live in the same neighborhoods as dusky folk, namely, certain Hasids (e.g. Chabadniks).”

Luke: “Jews tend to lead white flight while at the same time push for civil rights for blacks.”

Chaim: “Based on the few data points I have directly observed, yes. Except for the Haredim, for whom the quality of the local public school system is irrelevant, since they don’t use it. Or perhaps because their leaders ordered them to stay put in places like Crown Heights. Luke, a true Torah Jew favors borders and barriers at every level.”

From The Huffington Post:

On September 17th, 2014, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court of Israel dismissed various petitions filed by human rights groups against the “Admissions Committees Law” enacted by the Knesset in 2011. In text, this law allows decision-making bodies in 434 small communities in the Negev and the Galilee to reject housing applicants based on their “social suitability” and the communities’ “social and cultural fabric.”
In practice, these committees — which include a representative from the Jewish Agency or World Zionist Organization — are now permitted to refuse residency based on any “undesired” identity, such as Palestinian, Sephardic, African, gay, religious, single-parent, non-Zionist or others. Despite petitions condemning the law from all these angles, the five majority judges claimed that it was too soon to determine if the law would indeed have discriminatory effects — a deliberate tactic to avoid setting a precedent on a case of far-reaching importance.
The purpose of the Admissions Committees Law is no secret in Israel. Fifteen years earlier, on March 8th, 2000, the Supreme Court issued a major ruling that the town of Katzir, built on state land by the Jewish Agency, could not deny the right of the Arab Ka’adan family to live in the town simply on the basis that they were not Jewish. This was the first time that Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the state’s population, successfully challenged the legality of “Jewish-only” communities, many of which, though small, were strategically located to prevent the expansion of Palestinian towns and had bylaws that forbade the leasing of property to non-Jews, though built on confiscated Palestinian lands.

The implications of the Ka’adan ruling alarmed Israel’s right-wing political elites. Under the 2009-12 Likud-Beiteinu government, the Knesset introduced new legislation to counter Palestinian citizens’ efforts to end the state’s discriminatory land and housing policies. Many among the Israeli Jewish public did not question the intentions behind these laws, agreeing that full equality and freedom for Palestinian citizens could threaten the Jewish “character” and demographics of their communities. The authors of the Admissions Committees Law even openly declared that, though deliberately written in neutral language, its main aim was to prevent Arabs from living with Jews.

Posted in Immigration, Israel, Jews | Comments Off

Strong Group Identity Always Brings With It Contempt For Outsiders

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Luke Ford

I’ve been arguing with Orthodox Jewish friends who want an Orthodox Judaism that does not have contempt for non-Jews.

It’s not possible, I tell them. Sure, you can have individual Orthodox Jews who are strong in their Jewish identity and non-contemptuous to non-Jews, but as a group, Orthodox Jews are always going to feel varying degrees of contempt for non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews. It’s inherent in group identity. If you believe that you are living God’s will, that your group is the best, by definition all other groups are not the best and not living out God’s plan.

To have a strong group identity and to not feel contempt for outsiders requires a high IQ. It’s a unique combination of traits akin to juggling balls and discussing philosophy at the same time. Not many people can do it.

I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist with a strong Adventist identity. Accompanying my strong group identity was the feeling and belief that outsiders were lost. Sure, some of them might still inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t among God’s elect, God’s Chosen. That was reserved for Seventh-Day Adventists.

There’s never been a strong group identity that did not carry with it general group contempt for outsiders. When Germans were strong in being German, they had varying degrees of fear, loathing and contempt for outsiders such as Jews and slavs and the French, etc. When the French felt strongly about being French, they had, as a group, a tendency towards contempt for the non-French. When the Commanches were strong in being Commanche, they had, as a group, contempt for outsiders.

When Jews say things like the following, it’s never a compliment for non-Jews:

* He’s thinking like a goy.
* That’s goyisha kup (Gentile thinking).
* What a goy!

The stronger a Jew feels about being Jewish, the more a Christian feels in Christ, the more a Muslim feels Islamic, the more contempt he is likely to feel for outsiders.

I have an Orthodox Jewish friend who decided to start wearing colored shirts on Sabbath. Normally, Orthodox Jewish men wear white shirts on the Sabbath. My friend was sick of the contempt he’s seen displayed towards non-Jews by Orthodox Jews and so he wants to make a statement that he is not like those contemptuous white-shirted Orthodox Jews. By dropping the uniform to express his universal tolerance, he’s reducing his group identity and has taken a step towards assimilation.

Uniforms are a kin component of group solidarity. Imagine how much weaker the KKK would be if they stopped wearing their uniforms. Imagine how much weaker the SS would have been if they dropped their uniforms. Imagine how much weaker Islamic identity would be without distinctive Islamic garb.

Liberal Jews omit the following lines from the Aleinu prayer: “For they worship vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save.” Traditional Jews say the lines just as they were written hundreds of years ago. These lines express contempt for the prayers of non-Jews. Now, if I were doing Jewish apologetics, I’d say that these lines were composed with pagans in mind, not the righteous non-Jews of today, but between you and me, we know that this still expresses Jewish contempt for non-Jewish religions, just as non-Jewish religions express contempt in varying ways for religions different from their own.

Christians, Muslims and Jews have always, on average, had some negative feelings about each other.

Bigotry, racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism are not useful concepts. You will think more clearly when you replace such nonsense with the idea that different groups have different interests. Germans who loved being German prior to WWII saw that they had to get rid of the Jews if they wanted an Aryan state. Arabs and Muslims around Israel see that they have to get rid of the Jewish state for as long as Jews are around them and living free, they will excel them and that’s humiliating. As long as Jews were free in Germany in large numbers, they were going to affect society in ways that Aryan Germans would not like.

Organized Jewish life in the United States (including the Orthodox Union and Agudas Yisrael) has pushed for immigration amnesty because they see it (unconsciously in many cases) as in the Jews’ interest for the white Christian goyim to lose control of the United States. Organized Jewish life pushed for the removal of prayer in public schools in America because a weakened goyisha religious identity was thought to be in the Jewish interest. Jews have been at the forefront (through the Frankfurt school etc) of claiming that there is no meaning to race. This weakens the goy’s racial identity. Many Jews have been at the forefront of denouncing nationalism because that weakens the goy’s national identity and thus makes life easier for minorities.

All of these agendas pushed by the Jewish community (not by every individual Jew) have been contrary to the interests of white Christian Americans. White Christian Americans and black Americans and Mexican-Americans and Jewish-Americans have competing interests and this inevitably leads to conflict.

Over the past 600 years, Ashkenazi Jews in Europe have, on average, lived better than their non-Jewish neighbors (most have been in white collar jobs) because they had higher IQs and sometimes superior group solidarity.

Posted in Jews, Race | Comments Off

ESPN 30 For 30: Ghosts Of Ole Miss

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer notes that sports writers tend to be the most politically correct writers around because they are faced constantly with obvious racial differences but to keep their jobs, they have to ignore that.

I enjoy the the ESPN documentary series 30 for 30, but it slants left.

This particular episode is based on an article by Wright Thompson, Mississippi native, who begins: “When I was 5 or 6, because of my dad’s political activism in the Mississippi Delta, local white supremacists burned a cross in our front yard. My parents had a decision to make: Wake me up or let me sleep. They chose sleep. On that night, hate and fear would not be passed to another generation.”

Notice how whites are the only group who are not allowed to think of themselves as supreme. Jews believe they are God’s Chosen People, the Japanese believe that the sun rises first on Japan and then goes to the rest of the world, the Chinese believe that China is the center of the earth, and every group thinks of itself as the greatest and looks at the world through a lens in which they finish first, but the only group who are bad to do this are whites. Jewish supremacists, black supremacists, Mexican supremacists, Japanese supremacists are all fine and dandy, but white supremacists are evil. I don’t buy this. I accept that it is natural, healthy and good for every individual and every group to think of itself as supreme.

I don’t think I ever seek anything for my group that I would not want for other groups (such as organizing in their self-interest and protecting their territory and culture).

I don’t see burning a cross on a front lawn as any more heinous than Jews spitting at Christians in Jerusalem and the other things that people do to assert the hegemony of their group in a particular place. It is natural, healthy and good for a group to want to protect its own turf and if you are an outsider and want to dwell on somebody else’s turf, you should be very careful to follow the customs of the town (as the Talmud advises). To try to revolutionize a town’s social order is asking for trouble. When Jews in the South pushed for civil rights for blacks, that caused a backlash against Jews (which often stopped when Jews stopped upsetting the apple cart).

Thompson wrote: “On that night, hate and fear would not be passed to another generation.”

That’s nonsense. It is inhuman to live without fear and hate. If you have values, people and acts that are antithetical to your values are feared and hated.

Thompson wrote: “In the years that followed, my parents raised my brother and me to leave old prejudices behind. They enforced strict rules that made our home something of an oasis. Respect all people. Understand other points of view. And, of course, no N-word, ever, under any circumstance.”

Does that include having empathy for southern whites whose civilization was being destroyed by Civil Rights? Should you really respect all people? What about shoplifters, rapists, torturers and murderers? What about adopting “prejudices” about different peoples that are purely in line with the facts, such as that blacks are more likely to commit than whites and orientals? What about the prejudice that it is dangerous for blacks or whites to live in a black neighborhood? What about the prejudice that rape and other crime rates will go way up when you let blacks into your school?

As an Orthodox Jew, I want Israel and Jerusalem to be as Jewish as possible. I want all policy questions settled on the basis of what is good for Jews. I want all Arabs and Muslims to leave Israel. I want Jews around the world to think in terms of — what is good for Jews?

I want the same thing for all peoples. I want whites to maintain white civilization. I want blacks to develop their own unique talents. I want Korea to stay Korean and Japan to stay Japanese.

In the case of the America, I want it to stay dominantly white and Protestant, just like the people who founded the United States. The American South developed a particular way of life that clearly separated white and black. That’s a natural and healthy way of living. I love the old Southern ways.

In this documentary, whites rioting in 1962 to protect their white way of life is regarded as a shameful thing, but when Jews in Israel riot to protest in 2012 to protest African illegal immigrants, that does not get the same attention.

The Jerusalem Post reports: “Police arrested a total of 17 people during and after a protest against African migrants in south Tel Aviv Wednesday night. The arrests were made for rioting, attempted assault, possession of knives and looting store fronts.”

I wonder who controls the narrative?

Thompson writes: “A young politician named William Winter looks around and feels like a stranger. How can this be happening? The crowd shakes with indignation, the air filling with Rebel yells, from the mouths of doctors and bankers and lawyers and priests, and Winter thinks: So this must be what a Nazi rally felt like.”

All nationalisms require a willingness to commit genocide. That’s not unique to the Nazis. Jewish nationalism requires a commitment to kill as many people as necessary to preserve the Jewish state. Jews had to kill to create Israel and as long as Arabs keep attacking Israel, Jews will keep killing Arabs.

When you gather with your people and you feel the world turned against you, that induces pre-traumatic syndrome. It’s a powerful recipe for uniting a group and getting it ready to do whatever it takes to survive.

In nature, you’ll never find more than one sub-specie in the same place.

James Meredith, the first black student at Ole Miss, went on to work for David Duke.

In this documentary, he equates himself with God and exudes an Obama-like calm.

Posted in Blacks, Jews, Race, Sports | Comments Off

The Jewish Story Of New York Marathon Director Fred Lebow

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Luke Ford

I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist in Australia. In May of 1977, when I was turning 11, I moved with my parents to Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley (where I lived for the next three years and returned to frequently during high school when I lived in Auburn, CA). I was running a mile or two a day at the time and as a way of adjusting to my new home, I began racing long distance in 1978-1979, finishing five marathons (26 miles 385 yards each).

As was my bent, I read many books and magazines on running. There I kept encountering stories about Fred Lebow, the director of the New York City marathon. I always skipped these stories as much as I could. I had no interest in Fred Lebow. I had no interest in such icky self-promoters. I had no interest in tribal identity.

In late 1979, I developed Osgood Schlatter’s disease and had to quit running. That was devastating because at the time running was my primary source of self-esteem.

After 1984, I was able to run again, but never went longer than three miles. In 1988, I got sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and haven’t been able to run since without getting a CFS relapse. As a result, it’s painful for me to immerse myself in that world. I don’t read or watch much about running anymore.

In 1989, I became interested in Judaism and eventually converted to the religion of the Jewish people.

I notice that exploring Jewish identity is a favorite theme in the media (exploring white identity, by contrast, is a horrible thing) but I also get why many non-Jews are sick of it. What’s with this tribal obsession? It’s so contrary to the WASP worldview. Christians love to talk about how much they love Jesus but they rarely talk about their Christian identity. Jews rarely talk about how much they love God, but they love to talk about being Jewish.

The other day, I watched the Netflix documentary on Fred Lebow called “Run For Your Life.”

Fred was born Fischel Lebowitz in 1932 in Romania. He and his family escaped the Holocaust and moved to New York.

A friend remembers Fred in the late 1960s when Lebow worked in the knockoff schmatta business: “All these women were models and they were tugging at his shoulders. I don’t know if he had that set up.”

Friend: “Fred had more girlfriends than anyone I knew.”

To a WASP, working in a fashion knock-off business would have been too humiliating to contemplate as would arranging models to publicly tug at you all night. Many things that are abhorrent to the WASP (and the German Jew) are common to the Ashkenazi Jew. WASPs lack chutzpah. Perhaps that is a reason why WASPs are in decline and Jews are in ascendancy.

Fred could talk about himself without end and he knew how to manipulate people so that he would be the constant center of attention. Fred had no wife or kids. He liked playing around too much.

Peter Roth, Treasurer of the New York City Road Runners Club: “His identity in the world was all about confusing people.”

“It was all about mirrors and shells and moving things around and hiding things. He did that to create the first five borough marathon. He knew that we needed people to believe in us. And we didn’t have anything to believe in yet except for his vision of how great it was going to be. So he assured everybody that the numbers were there for everyone. And he even made up numbers. And he assured the runners that we had plenty of support, plenty of sponsors. We didn’t have it.”

Howard Rubenstein: “The Road Runners and Fred were broke.”

Charlie McCabe: “Fred was out there looking for money. I guess the garment center produces a different sort of salesperson.”

Friend: “Fred felt like he was a missionary, to convert people to the marathon.”

Friend: “He was like a rock star. He had a personality that women were attracted to.”

Anne Roberts, Fred’s former employee at the Road Runners Club: “We were traveling to Amsterdam. We were sitting in the lounge at JFK. Fred said to me, ‘When we go to the gate, you walk ahead of me. I don’t want people to think that we’re together. You’re too old for me, Anne.’ And I’m about 20 years younger than Fred.”

Fred: “I get bored with women easily. That’s the main problem. Once I have achieved anything in life, I’m not satisfied with it. I love the chase.”

This Lebow documentary reminds me uncomfortably of my own story. Kinda like that movie Greenberg (2010).

Near the end of his life, Fred went back to the name “Fischel Lebowitz.”

Posted in Adventist, Christianity, Jews, Running, WASPs | Comments Off

When Do Children Rebel?

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Luke Ford

Blog: My theory: a child will adopt a parents’ tastes and values and outlook in inverse correlation with the narcissism of that parent. If a parent is a blowhard — of high or low IQ — who can never admit his mistakes, his child is likely to adopt an opposite outlook. And vice versa.
If a parent is too rigid in his or her thinking, the child will see that and instinctively go in an opposite direction. And if the parent is loathsome in his hypocrisy, that will also drive the child (or anyone else) away.

Posted in Parenting | Comments Off

Why Do Men & Women Lie?

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Luke Ford

Alison Armstrong tells Dennis Prager: “We’re born liars.

“There are three main instincts that humans share with all other critters and there’s an order: Procreate, protect, provide.”

“We’ll do dangerous things to procreate that we would not do to protect and to provide.”

“The masculine will lie to fulfill his sex drive. There’s deception, exaggeration, manipulation. That gets a lot of press.”

“There’s not as much of a stink that women do this equally. It’s just different. Our procreative drive shows up less in sex than in being all about babies. We’ll lie about using birth control to get pregnant. We’ll lie about the father of our babies to get the best one to provide and protect for our babies. We steal babies.”

“We’ll lie to protect ourselves from the things we fear such as fear, abandonment. We’ll lie to fit in.”

“When we love someone, when we’re strongly attracted to someone, we will be more likely to lie.”

Posted in Alison Armstrong, Dennis Prager | Comments Off

Jews, Mel & War

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Luke Ford

IN 2006, according to a police report, Hollywood star Mel Gibson asked the arresting officer if he was Jewish and then said: “F**king Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

When you really truly hate people, such as Jews, you say stupid things like this.

Until WWII, the United States had a strong isolationist streak. After WWII, that attitude was portrayed as irresponsible and America become the world’s policeman. Today, the average American strikes me as uninterested in invading more countries. American Jews, overall, don’t care much about Israel. A minority of American Jews, however, care more about Israel than about America. Speaking as a converted member of the tribe, let me tell you that it’s exciting to have your own country in the Middle East. It’s better than rooting for your favorite football team.

Jews who care about Israel are going to push for the United States to become more involved in the world and to funnel aid to Israel and to support Israel against its enemies and to want to flatten Israel’s enemies with American might. Ironically, as Steve Sailer points out, the more the United States becomes involved in the Middle East, the less it can afford to be strongly allied with Israel. Without other involvements, the US can relate to Israel as a charity case.

So would 9/11 have happened without the U.S. involvement with Israel? I doubt it. Would America have invaded Afghanistan without Jewish neo-conservatives pushing for it? Yes. Would America have invaded Iraq in 2003 without this? Yes. These wars were not the fault of the Jews.

A Jewish friend says about America:

We’d be involved in the mideast for sure since they have oil. But it is a mistake to blame all of our foreign misadventures on the Jews. Did “the Jews” irresistibly command LBJ to send 500,000 Americans to Vietnam? Also plenty of Jews opposed the war in Iraq. The man who sent Americans there was a WASP Christian, not a Jew. All of our involvement in avoidable wars has been contrived by WASPS. All of them. Perhaps we should ask “Would America have squandered its strength had Jews been running the place?”

Another Jewish friend says:

Until recently Jews lacked the influence to shape any nation’s policies regarding war.
It is also questionable whether the U.S. never participated in wars until the 20th century.
In 1804 we fought the Barbary pirates in North Africa.
In 1812 we initiated the War of 1812 to annex Canada.
In 1846 we fought the Mexican war leading to the annexation of much of the Southwest United States including where we live today.
In 1898 we fought the Spanish American war which allowed the U.S. to claim Puerto Rico and the Phillipines as colonies. (and then we fought a several year guerilla war in the Phillipines itself)
I don’t think Jews were behind any of these wars.
Of the major historical battles, from the Persian-Greek wars up through Trafalgar and Waterloo, I don’t think there was any significant Jewish involvement. (although Napoleon did liberate the Jews from ghettos in countries the French conquered as part of his public position that he was the successor leader of the French Revolution.) (and as a result of his own sources for private intelligence on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo, Nathan Rothschild, made a financial killing on the outcome)
Jews were not involved in the American Revolution, nor the French Revolution, nor in any of the internal struggles of England in the battles for succession between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, or when Oliver Cromwell took power, or during the Jacobin struggles or Germany, either when Prussia became the dominant state and Germany was unified. Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and played no role in the expansion of the Spanish Empire. The Dutch, German, English, Spanish and French empires with their vast overseas colonies, many of which were conquered militarily, were not engineered by Jews or Jewish interests.

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