I went to Guidestar.org and found this 990 form filed for 2013, which listed salaries as follows:
* Anthony Edmondson: ~$242,000
* Rebecca Meyer: ~$158,000
I went to Guidestar.org and found this 990 form filed for 2013, which listed salaries as follows:
* Anthony Edmondson: ~$242,000
* Rebecca Meyer: ~$158,000
I went to Guidestar.org and found this 990 form filed for 2012, which listed salaries as follows:
* Donald Meurer: ~$218,000
* Doug Richardson: ~$187,000
* Phyllis Halliday: ~$333,000
* Rick Walker: ~$134,000
* Adrienne Brown: ~$147,000
* Warren Stafford: ~$138,000
* Eva Sanchez: ~$143,000
* Julio Espaillat: ~$146,000
* Mary Dargan: ~$135,000
I went to Guidestar.org and found this 990 form filed for 2013, which listed salaries as follows:
Barbara Whitehead: $110,000
Elizabeth Marquadt: ~$121,000
Raina Sacks Blankenhorn: $120,000
David Blankenhorn: ~$331,000
The 2013 revenue was ~$1,400,000 and almost all of that went to salaries and a third of it went to the Blankenhorns.
The Frankfurt School was a bunch of neo-marxist Jews who dominated social science discourse post WWII and through that power, they shaped the acceptable narratives in the Western world. You might have noticed that most Jews in the social sciences are secular Ashkenazim who promote a left-wing agenda.
What was the Rebbe’s agenda? I’m reading Joseph Telushkin’s biography (Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History) and he sets out the Rebbe’s ten point plan:
To get Jews to:
* Put on tefillin (men)
* Light Shabbat candles (women)
* Jewish education (chinuch)
* Observe kashrut (Jewish dietary laws)
* Giving charity (tzedakah)
* Get every Jew to put up a mezuzah
* Observe the laws of family purity
* Torah study
* Build a Torah library
* Love fellow Jews
There’s nothing in the Rebbe’s program about fighting anti-Semitism, building Holocaust museums, rallying for Soviet Jewry, fighting racism, pushing for immigration amnesty, promoting multiculturalism and Freudian analysis and gay rights, and all the other nonsense pushed by the secular Jewish elite. There’s nothing in the Rebbe’s program that would hurt non-Jews (unlike the devastating effect that Jewish communists have had on the world).
The Rebbe’s agenda was sane living for Jews so that they could help each other and be a light to the world.
R. Telushkin writes that according to the Rebbe, a Hasid “should not think of postponing college education when he or she completes high school, but simply not consider college at all in that period of one’s life.”(pg. 72)
Without the left-wing brainwash they get at university, fewer Jews would vote Democrat and embrace radical causes such as immigration amnesty and massive non-white immigration into the first world.
From pg. 114-116 of R. Telushkin’s biography:
The Rebbe’s avoidance of unhappy terms did not only apply to words, but also to events. To this day, Chabad remains the one large Jewish group in which little emphasis is placed on the Holocaust, both in terms of erecting memorials and sponsoring events about it. The Rebbe opposed such a focus from early on. In 1952, when his cousin, Yitzchak Schneerson, wrote of his involvement in Paris in the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr to memorialize victims of the Holocaust, the Rebbe expressed a polite, but forceful, demurral. “Forgive me if my view is not in accordance with yours.” He then explained, “Now, at a time when there are hundreds of thousands of living martyrs, not ‘unknown’ by any stretch, who live in abject need physical bread, and many more in need of spiritual sustenance, the main impediment to meeting their needs is simply lack of funds. Therefore, whenever monies can be procured, this immediately creates a dilemma: Should be the monies be used to erect a stone [memoriam] in a large square in Paris, to remind passersby of the millions of Jews who died sanctifying God’s Name, or should these monies sustain the living who are starving, either literally or figuratively, to hear the word of God? The soluation to [your] dilemma is, I believe, not in doubt.’ The Rebbe’s lack of emphasis on the building of Holocaust memorials was certainly not dictated by indifference….
In Chabad outreach, and in the Rebbe’s speeches throughout the post-war years, the emphasis was never on the Holocaust, but on simcha shel mitzvah, the joy of doing a mitzvah. This probably had to do both with the Rebbe’s naturally optimistic inclination and with a strategic assessment that the Holocaust does not ultimately provide a positive motivation for Jews to go on leading Jewish lives… Underlying the Rebbe’s campaigns to teach Jews to observe the comandments was his assumption that if a Jew enjoys studying Torah, putting on tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles, praying to God, and performing acts of charity and kindness, five of the activities most commonly promoted by Chabad, he or she will want to lead a Jewish life. But if a Jew does not experience Judaism on a meaningful basis, to ask him or her to perpetuate the Jewish people in essence to spite Hitler will not guarantee Jewish survival or a healthy Jewish psyche.
From pages 255-258:
Public opposition to the prayer [in public schools] came largely, though by no means exclusively, from the organized Jewish community; secular organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which had a disproportionately high percentage of Jewish members, were heavily involved in this battle as well. A brief urging the Court to outlaw all such prayers in public schools was submitted by the Synagogue Council of America, a national organization representing rabbis in the different denominations, and the National Jewish Community Relations Council, representing Jewish communities throughout the United States. The brief’s essential argument was that although the New York State prayer did not advocate a specific religion — it spoke rather of “Almighty God” — it still violated the First Amendment, which ordains that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Although this constitutional provision is popularly understood as meaning that Congress is forbidden to establish a state religion, the Jewish organizations argued that a prayer promoting an “acknowledgment of dependence upon God and the invocation of his blessings” constitutes a preference for theistic religions that affirm a personal God, over nontheistic religions, such as Buddhism, which do not. In the view of these organizations, such a prayer has no place in a public school. The government, they argued, is obliged not only to be neutral among competing faiths “but also between religion and non-religion.” The state, quite simply, has no business participating in any way in religious affairs. The signatories emphasized that their opposition to prayer in public schools had nothing to do with opposition to religion. Indeed, they had submitted this brief “on behalf of the coordinating bodies of 70 Jewish organizations, including the national bodies representing congregations and rabbis of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism….
The [1962] ruling [of the US Supreme Court prohibiting prayer in public schools] was widely hailed throughout the American Jewish community, many of whose older members recalled a time when readings from the New Testament were commonly conducted in public schools. The fact that the New York State prayer was decidedly nondenominational had not allayed the common Jewish fear that any opening in the wall between religion and state could eventually lead to the favoring of Christianity over other religions.
The most noted leader within the Jewish community who stood out almost alone in opposition to this commonly enunciated Jewish position was the Rebbe.
The Rebbe also pushed for government support of religious schools, something the organized Jewish community opposed (pg. 266-268).
R. Telushkin writes on pg. 229-230:
The Rebbe then said that Kaganovich was a “big rasha” (an evil person) but added, “But you never know, maybe he’ll repent. When you go back the next time, you should tell him he should still do teshuva, he still has a chance.”
Lazar Kaganovich was among the horrific mass murderers of the twentieth century… It is likely that Kaganovich brought about the deaths of more people than any other Jew in history.
Kaganovich had the unique “distinction” of being the one Jew who always remained on close terms with the highly antisemitic Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. It was Kaganovich whom Stalin called upon to enforce the policy of forced starvation of kulaks (relatively well-off peasants) in Ukraine, a policy that resulted in the deaths by killing and starvation of an estimated six million people.
An effective administrator, Kaganovich also headed the construction of the subway system in Moscow. It is unknown how many over-worked and maltreated laborers died in the extremely rushed process of building the underground rail system (in addition to those executed for making critical remarks about Kaganovich’s employment practices. Stalin rewarded Kaganovich by naming the subway system the Kaganovich Subway.
Robert Conquest, the foremost historian of Stalin’s years of terror, portrayed Kaganovich as “a brilliant administrator. A clear mind and a powerful will went with a total lack of the restraints of humanity… There was no…pity at all in his make-up… He took the extreme line that the Party’s interests justified everything.” Referring on more than one occasion to the murderers of millions of people carried out under his and Stalin’s direction, and to the realization that many of those killed must have been innocent even by Kaganovich’s standards, Kaganovich explained that there were bound to be occasional mistakes: “When the forest is cut down, the chips fly.”
Basic to Kaganovich’s philosophy was that a Communist must be ready to sacrifice himself for the party: “Yes, ready to sacrifice not only his life, but his self-respect and sensitivity.”…When his wife criticized him for enforcing an antisemitic policy (“Have you no sense, no compassion, no feelings for one of your own?”), he told her not to bother him with such pleas: “Stalin is my god. Doy ou hear me? Hear me good.”
…In another instance, the Rebbe encouraged outreach to a man who had long expressed antagonism about his Jewish background and who subsequently evolved into a vicious antisemite, Bobby Fischer. Fischer remains well known to this day as perhaps the greatest chess genius in history.
The Rebbe started Chabad’s public celebrations of Hanukkah in the early 1970s, again opposing the Jewish establishment.
The head of the Reform rabbinate in America, Joseph Glaser, wrote to the Rebbe:
It has come to my attention that Lubavitcher Chasidim are erecting Hanukkiot and holding religious services in connection therewith on public property in various locations throughout the United States.
This is as much a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state as is the erection of Christmas trees and creches depicting the birth of Jesus. It weakens our hand when we protest this intrusion of Christian doctrine into the public life of American citizens and thus, it is really not worth the value received…
On pg. 264, R. Telushkin wrote:
…Glaser offered a rationale rooted in Jewish law for his position: Since the obligation to light Chanukah candles is fulfilled when the menorah is lit on Jewish property, there is “no halachic necessity for doing so on public property.” Glaser insisted, therefore, that in addition to being unnecessary, such an act also is undesirable. Jewish comfort in the United States has resulted in large part from the constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state… If Jews do not want to be exposed to Christian observances that they find “offensive”…then it is equally wrong for them to carry out Jewish religious rituals in the public square.
The Rebbe was unmoved.
* From 1942 to 1945, the Rebbe worked as an electrical engineer in the Brooklyn Navy yard. “I at least did my share for the war effort of the United States, which gave me shelter,” he said. (Pg. 471)
* The Rebbe opposed interfaith dialogue. “There is no need whatsoever for us whatever to have any religious dialogue with non-Jews, nor any interfaith activities in the form of religious discussions, interchange of pulpits, and the like.”
* In 1982, the Rebbe pushed for America to become energy independent. The Rebbe opposed those “who, for various reasons, oppose the development of domestic resources, whether it be oil, coal, etc.”
Here’s a great lecture by R. Shlomo Einhorn on the Rebbe’s life lessons. He says that the Rebbe told Edgar Bronfman, “You weren’t born a Jew just to fight anti-Semitism.”
* Is Israel Better Off For The Presence Of 120,000 Ethiopians With Average IQs Of 63?
Why do civilizations decline? Psychologist J. Philippe Rushton described one 19th Century theory:
The character of a civilization was determined by the traits of the dominant race, often created by the union of several related tribes. If wealth grows, cities develop, and an international society forms. Among the new arrivals are persons belonging to ethnic taxa that have never initiated a civilization. Degeneration sets in and the intrinsic worth the people originally possessed becomes lost, for the population no longer has in its veins the same quality blood with which it began. (Race, Evolution and Behavior, pg. 274)
I started paying attention to the wonderful story of Ethiopian Jewry in 2004 when I began reading the Failed Messiah website. In 1984, Shmarya Rosenberg had written to the Lubavitcher rebbe to complain that Chabad wasn’t doing enough for Ethiopian Jews. Rosenberg did not get his hands on the rebbe’s reply until 2004. It disgusted him because it seemed to him that the rebbe did not show sufficient concern for Ethiopian Jews and so Rosenberg quit Chabad, quit observing Orthodox Judaism, and set up his website with the latest news, usually bad, about traditional Judaism.
So I read Rosenberg’s protests and I read a book about Ethiopian Jews and I saw some videos about the ingathering of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. I might have even shed a tear or two at the beauty of it. And then I forgot about Ethiopian Jews.
In 2013, I started reading about IQ again (in 1998, I read the book, The Bell Curve) and I came across information that Ethiopian Jews averaged IQs under 70. “That can’t be right,” I thought to myself. “Jews are very smart people and all the right people say that these Ethiopians are Jews. I’m sure they’ll assimilate into Israel just like the rest of the country’s immigrants.”
Then I started noticing that as Israel got richer, all sorts of people around the world started discovering they were Jewish and demanding the right of return.
I did a little research and found out that the Ethiopians are not assimilating into Israel, just as most African-Americans haven’t assimilated into America after four centuries.
So I didn’t like these thoughts I was having because they get you run out of polite society and they made me feel uncomfortable, so I cast around for other explanations, and found this one by Dr. Girma Bermahu, who writes a review of Richard Lynn’s book entitled, “Black Intellectual Genocide: An Essay Review of IQ and the Wealth of Nations”:
First, I am principally concerned with the way the authors interpreted the data about Ethiopian immigrants’ “IQ values” from Israel and how Ethiopia, my homeland, was described as one of the “dumbest” countries with the lowest IQ, in fact second from last. That figure – average IQ 63 – which was attached to Ethiopia as
average national intelligence in their book (see p.75, p. 137, p. 204) had an extremely negative effect on me and at the same time saddened me about what that message conveys to the bright, struggling, and hard working young boys and girls of ancient Ethiopia whose contribution to world civilisation as the cradle of human civilization/species and its astounding histories were
undeniably documented. (Note that this same IQ datum (63) has been (as a third-hand information) used in a most Tatu Vanhanen
recent article in the November issue of the British Journal
of Health Psychology by Satoshi Kanazawa (2006) where the author confidently stated that low IQ levels (rather than inequality, poverty, and disease) are the reason for African nations chronic ill-health, high infant mortality rate, and low life expectancy. Kanazawa claims that he has reached this conclusion by comparing
national IQ scores with indicators of ill health in 126 countries)…The IQ figure which stood in the authors’ book to represent Ethiopia came from Israel not directly from Ethiopia. I have met some of those who tested the young people (newly arriving immigrants from Ethiopia) and I have probably met half of these
immigrants. It is very possible that a few of them are my acquaintances. That was made possible because I collected data for my PhD dissertation from Israel; my research concerns Ethiopian Jews’ school achievement and integration process in Israel (Berhanu, 2001). The IQ score which Lynn and Vanhanen assigned to Ethiopia was simply picked from Kaniel & Fisherman’s article that appeared in The International Journal of Psychology (1991, 26, pp. 25-33). Lynn & Vanhanen (2002:204) wrote:“Around 1989, data for a sample of 250 15-year-old Ethiopian
immigrants to Israel tested with the Standard Progressive Matrices
have been reported by Kaniel and Fisherman (1991). In relation to
the 1979 British standardization sample, their mean IQ was 65.
Because of the 10-year interval between the two collections of data, this needs to be reduced to 63.”Here one could question the validity of the writers’ knowledge of these 250 Ethiopian immigrants. These 15-year-olds came from a region called Gonder. They lived most of their lives in the countryside with rudimentary knowledge of “school-related tasks”
that so-called modern industrialised societies highly value. They were airlifted by Israeli security agents in extremely dramatic circumstances, and their arrival in Israel was abrupt. Many lost their near relatives in this dramatic episode; and many more
were unattended, solitary children. Family disintegration, psychological trauma, confusion, dislocation, and cultural shock were rampant at the moment when the test was administered. Most of these students who are described as having low IQs are presently enjoying a satisfying life and are occupationally competent and socially adequate; they are now in their late 20s or early 30s.
The story of how the Ethiopian Jews – known as Falasha, meaning “gone to exile”–survived for so many centuries in exile clinging to their Jewish tradition and how, finally, they came to Israel is fascinating. As to their history and origin, there are contradictory statements and theories, and it has been an intensely debatable issue, especially in Israel among different religious Jewish authorities, pertaining, for instance, to their rights to Israeli citizenship and the authenticity of their Jewishness.
It was not until 1973 that they were officially accepted as having the right to “return” to Israel and become Israeli citizens. It is important to recognise that while in Ethiopia the Ethiopian Jews lived most of their lives in isolation both in time and space. They
have a singular, defined traditional way of raising and educating children. Therefore, the abrupt transition (Aliya) from village life in Ethiopia to Israel, which occurred en masse within the past two decades, has been accompanied by adjustment crises which
in turn greatly affected their learning and integration into Israeli society (see Berhanu, 2001). From the very start, the absorption of Ethiopian Jews was, to say the least, bumpy…In the original study Kaniel and Fisherman suggested that the low performance of the Ethiopian immigrants reflects cognitive delay rather than cognitive difference. They stated that there are two approaches to characterizing the “lower performance” on intelligence tests of minorities and immigrants: The first is that ethnic differences and genetic make-up are sources of variations in the time of cognitive development.
Regarding this approach, the authors referred to, among others, Arthur Jensen. The other approach is, as they stated, minorities’ low performance in cognitive tests, due to differences in culturally induced psychological, cognitive, and behavioral
strategies. Although the way they described the social, cultural and historical circumstances of these newly arrived, most of them “illiterate” immigrants from Ethiopia logically would allow them to adopt the second approach, they preferred to hypothesize (as in other distorted studies, interested in ‘highlighting’ the black-white gap in intelligence) that low performance of the Ethiopian immigrants is caused by cognitive delay rather than cultural difference. They were out to confirm this and it was very easy to do so.
Yes! That must be it. I am so mad at Richard Lynn for writing books that hurt people’s feelings, and damage their self-esteem, leading to lowered educational performance and a life of crime.
I wish we had PC police who could arrest people like Richard Lynn, Arthur Jensen and Charles Murray for crime think.
The problems of Ethiopians in Israel, and Ethiopians in Ethiopia, and Africans in Africa, and African-Americans in America and aboriginees in Australia and African descendants in the Caribbean are all the fault of white racism. All black problems are the fault of the evil white man.
Once I arrived at this thought, I immediately relaxed.
According to Wikipedia: “Despite progress, Ethiopian Jews have so far largely failed to assimilate into Israeli-Jewish society. They remain, on average, on a lower economic and educational level than average Israelis. Also, while marriages between Jews of different backgrounds are very common in Israel, marriages between Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians are not very common. According to a 2009 study, 90% of Ethiopian-Israelis – 93% of men and 85% of women, are married to other Ethiopian-Israelis. A survey found that found 57% of Israelis consider a daughter marrying an Ethiopian unacceptable and 39% consider a son marrying an Ethiopian to be unacceptable. Barriers to intermarriage have been attributed to sentiments in both the Ethiopian community and Israeli society generally.[124] A 2011 study showed that only 13% of high school students of Ethiopian origin felt “fully Israeli”.”
When I have daughters, I’m going to force them to marry Ethiopians! I am going to march off to shul, demand an aliyah, and then announce to the whole congregation, “Baruch HaShem! My daughter’s marrying a schvartze!”
I am now sure that before Barack Obama leaves office, African-Americans and Ethiopian Jews will assimilate into their host countries and produce educational and socio-economic results on par with their fellow citizens. And if they don’t, I know who to blame — evil white men!
From The Forward: “…Bene Israel of India nor Ethiopian Jews. Genetic tests show that both groups are converts, contradicting their founding myths.”
Between 1984 and 1991, Israel achieved a public-relations coup by importing tens of thousands of Ethiopians who claimed to be Jews. Over the last decade, however, Israel has been taking direct action to limit its black citizens’ fertility.
Originally, Israel had banned immigration by the various sub-Saharan African tribes that claim some kind of hazy Jewish heritage, arguing that they aren’t real Jews. (Recent DNA studies suggest that Ethiopian Jews are only tenuously related to other Jews. These communities probably had a limited number of Jewish ancestors, travelers who married into the much larger local populations.)
In the fevered post-1967 ideological climate, however, Zionism was denounced around the world as racism, as the latest manifestation of white colonialism. The Jewish state hit upon the PR masterstroke of embracing its Ethiopian aspirants.
This didn’t mollify the Arabs, but the symbolism pleased a more important audience: American Jews concerned about Israel appearing racist. Unsurprisingly, this living proof that you could be Israeli and black proved immensely popular with American Jews, who showered Israel’s small community of Ethiopians with $600 million in donations.
Also unsurprisingly, the Ethiopians have proved increasingly less popular with their Israeli neighbors, who have come to view them and their children as backward and crime-prone…
In Israel, Ethiopian women have said on camera that Israeli immigration officials told them that they wouldn’t be allowed into the country without taking Depo-Provera shots. They claim to have been subsequently browbeaten into staying on the contraceptive. One study found that Ethiopian women account for 57 percent of all Israel’s Depo-Provera prescriptions.
In December, an Israeli news show recorded an Israeli nurse telling an Ethiopian immigrant that the injections are given “primarily to Ethiopian women because they forget, they don’t understand, and it’s hard to explain to them, so it’s best that they receive a shot once every three months…basically they don’t understand anything.”
Anonymous writes: “The Ethiopian “Jews” are not Jews at all. That is a scam and everyone knows it. US liberal Jews forced them on Israel. The problems with them are not stopping. There are 5000 Ethiopians in the IDF, a very small percentage, but 11% of all persons in jail in the IDF are Ethiopian. Whether you think this is due to the army or the Ethiopians depends on whether you are a US or Israeli Jew. Israel has received millions of immigrants and some from very primitive countries, but none like this before.”
Here’s an English translation of the rebbe’s 1984 letter:
By the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson
– as published in Kfar Chabad Magazine, Volume 1079, 5 Shevat 5764 (January 28, 2004) Page 35.[The letter the Rebbe was responding to can be read here: Part 1; Part 2.]
Baruch HaShem
12 Shevat 5744 [Monday, January 16, 1984]
Brooklyn, NYMr. Shmarya Rosenberg1
S. Paul, MN 55116Shalom u’Bracha! 2
Your special delivery registered letter with enclosures dated 7 Kislev [Sunday, November 13, 1983 — two months before the Rebbe wrote this letter] was received in it’s proper time. You are raising several questions beginning with a question that is related to a complicated problem of Jewish law (“Halakha”). As is well-known and widely publicized, it is outside the scope of my duties to render Jewish legal decisions (“paskin shailot”). I can only suggest that your question be addressed to a qualified rabbinical body, like Agudat HaRabbonim. 3
Aside from this, I am surprised by the wording of your letter because I do not remember receiving any letter from you in the past. 4
Your attitude appears presumptuous and unbecoming. You demand to know why Chabad-Lubavitch representatives (“shluchim”) are not doing anything or are not doing enough, related to this problem that you are very concerned with. Not only this, but your letter is tasteless and illogical, because your questions would be no more logical if you asked a physician why he is not actively involved in a matter related to engineering.
You should know that Chabad-Lubavitch representatives (“shluchim”) have a specific mission assigned to them, which is to spread Judaism in the communities designated to them. Congressional resolutions and the like are not part of those duties that are planned for them.5, 6
Furthermore, there is very little — if anything — they can achieve in the area that interests you most. Therefore, to divert their minds and to turn their energies and their time to something not related to their mission will be wasteful and diversionary to the work that they already do superbly and with full devotion.
Equally, your claims regarding scholarships and other projects you mention in your letter are not logical and they do not fit in with the activities and duties of Chabad-Lubavitch institutions of representatives (“shluchim”).7
The impression received from your letter is that you are probably not familiar with the correct way to achieve success for the cause you are so eager to work for.
In light of the above mentioned, and because you have begun your letter with B”H [an abbreviation for Baruch HaShem, Blessed is God], it is absolutely correct for me to ask you two questions related to this matter:
1. Remember the law (“din kadima”) that the needs of the poor of your own city come first. Did all the Jews in your city receive adequate necessities to cover their Jewish [i.e., spiritual] needs? If not, why not?
2. What have you done and what are you currently doing — are you doing all you can? — to convince and encourage the Jews in your community — men, women and children — to live their lives as truly devoted Jews, Jews devoted to the Torah and its laws, fulfilling the daily mitzvot and acting as Jews? If not, why not?
Of course, there are many differences between your questions and mine. In fact, an operation to benefit the Jews of your community (along with it having precedence in Jewish law, “din kadima”) can be carried out without the necessity of assistance from the American Congress and without the approval of any foreign government. Furthermore, such an operation would undoubtedly be successful — it depends only on you and your willingness and determination to carry out such an urgent action. 8 Surely there is no need to explain to you the conditions in America — including in your state and in your city — that so very many Jews — men, women and young children — are carried away on the stream of assimilation, influenced by foreign surroundings that leads to intermarriage, etc. So many of them are lost to our people day-after-day, and, according to our sages, even the soul of one Jew is regarded as an entire world, and certainly it is so with regard to the rescue of so many of our brothers [from assimilation].
I must say that the purpose of my letter to you is not to argue with you or even to give you mussar (“moral guidance”) because I do not know you. Your letter is one of very many letters I receive and your letter does not fit in with any of them. It occurs to me that perhaps it is providential (“hashgakha pratit”), and that this gives me the opportunity to bring to your attention the fact that the many Jews nearby you have important needs and that an effort must be made to reach and save them — they have the priority, the first claim on Jews like you.
May G-d give you the correct answers to answer my questions, not for my self-indulgence but for the sake of our brethren (“acheynu b’nai yisrael”), especially the younger generation in your city, assuming that you are a resident there for at least a few years or perhaps were born there.
With The Respect That Is Fitting (“B’Kavod HaRoy”),
[Signed]
P.S. I would like to respectfully ask you as an additional question related to this matter: In what way can it be helpful to this issue (that you are so angry about) for you to be well-informed on what I do or do not do to benefit it?
UPDATE: Jacob Fetman’s rejoinder.
CFO Allegedly Embezzled $20 Million From Aish HaTorah New York
Jacob “Yaakov” Fetman allegedly stole $20 million from Aish HaTorah New York over a 17-year period ending last year, and the beit din ruling against him ended up in secular court.
Jacob “Yaakov” Fetman allegedly stole $20,000,000 from Aish HaTorah New York over a 17-year period ending last year using secret bank accounts opened in Aish’s name and other means, and the beit din ruling against him ended up in secular court, where most of it was upheld.
Read the secular court’s decision, issued late last month, here.
Here are some comments on FM:
* I wonder if he used Torah codes to encrypt the bank accounts.
* So when the Rabbis want their money, they are OK with secular courts, but for the average Joe Jew who wants enforcement to go with a bet din ruling, the secular courts are forbidden?
* This chilul Hashem will be fodder for the secular media and will do terrible damage to Aish’s reputation and fundraising capacity. I just looked at Aish NY’s 2012 tax return. Signed by Fetman. They raised approximately $4.6 million in 2012. No wonder they needed to turn to arkayos to collect.
* What kind of joke of an outfit has no controls in place or audits able to identify a problem allegedly taking place for 17 years?
Here are the salaries from Aish New York’s 990 form filing with Guidestar.org:
* Kenneth Greenman, executive director, made: ~$195,000
* Nicholas Davidson: $90,000
* Jacob Fetman: $91,000
* Wayne Goldhar: ~$100,000
* Yaakov Giniger: ~$56,000
* Josh Winter, ~$61,000
* David Markowitz: ~$113,000
* Matt Tropp: ~$115,000
* David Steinberg: ~$72,000
* Michael Nordman: ~$51,000
* David Rabinowitz: ~$68,000
Aish International lists Richart Rabinowitz as executive director with compensation for 2012 of $210,000.
UPDATE: Jacob Fetman petitioned the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County, to hear his appeal and it was denied by Justice Demarest.
Jacob Fetman maintains he is innocent. He says on an invite-only blog that “Aish NY used a sham ‘rabbinical arbitration’ that after 3 meetings decided I owe 20 million dollars!”
UPDATE JULY 22, 2015:
A source emails:
With regards to the allegations against Jacob Fetman, an attorney familiar with the case points out that Justice Demarest in her decision to confirm Rabbi Cohen’s award of $20,000,000 (twenty million dollars), made it clear that she did not review the merits of the case – her focus was to confirm or reject this award. As it is the public policy in NY state to uphold arbitration awards and because of the fact that there were no transcripts of the arbitration sessions (4 sessions totaling 140 minutes) she had no choice but to confirm the award – despite her reservations about Fetman’s allegations of the many violations of his Due Process. For example, in court it was acknowledged that a forensic report, which R’ Cohen bases his award on, was never provided to Fetman and in fact, once the judge ordered Aish to produce it (April 25, 2015 – almost 18 months after the award was issued), it was found to be dated AFTER the last session and on the date of the AWARD. Clearly, there was no chance for Fetman to dispute any of its ‘findings’.
It is note worthy that a criminal complaint which was alleged by Aish against Jacob Fetman is still pending in Brooklyn Supreme court for the alleged theft of $236,000 over five years – Mr. Fetman plead Not Guilty to this allegation and a trial is pending.
While Aish is a wonderful organization, with a very important mission, in court papers it was alleged by Fetman that executive compensation was substantially under reported and disguised as activities. Rabbi Greenman’s compensation over 2012 reported as (aish 990 filing) $101,409 taxable income and an additional $94,000 non taxable income was in fact almost double that. David Markowitz’s taxable compensation of $62,500 with an additional $50,000 non taxable compensation was in fact about $150,000. 2013 reported income for Rabbi Greenman was $118,310 taxable and combined compensation (with non taxable compensation) $216,929. Aish chose not to divulge any other executive compensation.
If the allegation against Fetman is correct – Aish NY, an organization with an internal budget of about $3 million dollars annually could have not “noticed” that $1.2 million annually was being stolen from it?? Why is it that Aish will not submit to examination of the ‘forensic report’ – what was the rush to issue an award when an attorney intervened on behalf of Fetman?
See attached Justice Demarest’s decision that Aish must produce the ‘forensic report’ to Fetman – when it was acknowledged that Fetman never received it. The award was issued 12/17/2013 – This decision by the court is 4/25/2015.
See the attached DA statement – Aish NY used Fetman and Merkaz the Center as a funnel to transfer monies from Project Inspire to Aish NY. Hundreds of thousand of dollars were transferred this way.
Lastly, see Dan Stein’s (Fetman’s original attorney and now the Chief of the Criminal Division at the US attorney General’s Office NY Western District) letter to R’ Cohen right after the award was issued and another letter to Mel Zachter, a noted accountant who agreed to examine the ‘forensic report’ but Aish never agreed.
R. Cohen’s decision states that Fetman took property from Aish which was proven in court that those properties were purchased prior to Fetman even working at Aish. That part of the award was struck out by the judge. The confirmation is pending an appeal.
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As a recent article in the Forward states – its well known that Courts rubber stamp arbitration awards. Rabbi Greenman and his excellent attorneys took advantage of this perfectly.
G – Dan Stein letter to R Cohen 12 27 2013 Mel Zachter agreement 5 30 2014 brooklyn DA press release Jacob-Fetman-grand-larceny-indictment decision of judge demarest that aish must get me the report before the beis din session
Whether or not there are Judeo-Christian values depends on whether or not the concept of “Judeo-Christian values” is good for the Jews.
I think that’s the point of Steve Sailer’s blog post here which consists entirely of an excerpt from an essay by an Orthodox Jew:
From the Jewish Press:
GOYESHE KOP
There’s No Such Thing as Judeo-Christian Values
The label “Judeo-Christian” tends to assume, at the expense of Judaism, that Christians and Jews believe essentially the same things.
By: Yori Yanover
Published: December 26th, 2013
… The paragraph reminded me of the old Jewish joke, which is better spoken, but since I don’t know most of you personally, you’ll have to do the voices in your head:
A gentile professor of Judaic Studies in Iowa finds out that to really learn the Talmud he must go to the Boro Park section of Brooklyn and find himself a teacher. The professor flies over and knocks on a basement door and this little Jew comes out. Upon seeing him, the professor asks to be taught the Talmud, but the little Jews says, “I can’t teach you Tal-mud, you got a goyeshe kop, you just don’t think Jewish.”
The professor insists. The little Jew says, “OK, solve this problem, and I’ll teach you:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets completely schmutzig, filthy. Which one washes up?”
The professor eagerly answers, “The dirty one, naturally.”
The little Jew wails: “Goyeshe kop, goyeshe kop! I told you I can’t teach you anything. Listen, the schmutzig guy sees the clean guy. Schmutzig doesn’t see any problem. But the clean guy sees the schmutzig guy and figures he must be just as dirty, so he goes and washes. I told you, you got a goyeshe kop. I can’t help you.”
The professor begs for another chance, and the little Jew gives in, suggesting a new problem to solve:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets completely schmutzig. Which one of them would wash up?”
The professor says, “Sure, I know this one, it’s the clean fellow.”
At this, the little Jew wails, “Goyeshe kop, the clean one takes a look at the dirty one and says, Moishe, you’re all schmutzig, go wash already! Enough. I really can’t help you, mister, you got a goyeshe kop.”
The professor begs for one last chance, and the little Jews says, “Fine, one last chance, I’ll give you a completely new problem, then you’ll leave me alone:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets completely schmutzig. Which one of them washes up?”
At this point, if you’re telling this joke, it’s all physical stuff, as the poor professor from Iowa freezes, unable to decide which of the two conflicting solutions to choose. The little Jew can’t stand it anymore and interjects, “Goyeshe kop, who ever heard of two people going down a chimney and only one of them gets schmutzig?”
For me, this joke illustrates the essence of Rabbinic Judaism. Hardly interested in developing uniform answers or dogmas, Rabbinic Jews love dispute, which enshrines all opinions.
I asked some Jewish friends to explain to me why Steve Sailer chose that excerpt. What point was he making?
One friend said:
It’s almost the same thing I explained to you the other day in regards to Apartheid. The goy is dumbstruck at the Jew’s ability to explain the theory behind his answer, not understanding that the theory is irrelevant to his choice of answers. The answer is whichever is good for the Jews.
The rabbi in the story does not want to teach the goy Talmud. Teaching the goy Talmud is not good for the Jews. Therefore, whatever answer the goy gives is wrong.
The goy seeks a universal moral compass he can be loyal to and serve, but for the tribal Jew, the answer depends on what is good for the Jews. The primary question is what is good for the Jews.
There is therefore no Judeo-Christian morality.
Another Jewish friend explained:
I think he is saying that Levi Ford is an oxymoron.
Seriously, the anecdote shows how Jews do not have Christian values when it comes to consistency and honorable debate in arguments. Thus the Christian accepts the Jews logic and uses it in answering the next question and the Jew changes the standards previously enunciated in the earlier question and answer.
Judeo values are not Christian values. This is clear since the Christian God is love and the Jewish God is a jealous angry one. The Christian God is accessible to everyone. The Jewish God may be omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, but selected a chosen people to give his message to and requires a strict embrace of rules if you want to convert.
Steve Sailer’s blog gets some sharp comments including this from Syon:
RE: Judeo-Christian,
1.Well, one can speak in terms of a broad commonality (e.g., certain shared texts, mythologies, etc). Of course, this commonality only really comes into focus when the two faiths are matched against something that is wholly other: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, etc. And when you are doing that, it is probably best to speak in terms of the Abrahamic faiths ( Judaism, Christianity, Islam) on one side and everything else on the other.
2. Judaism and Christianity or Judaism and Islam or Christianity and Islam. As for how these faiths relate when compared to each other, that’s tough. On the one hand, Judaism and Islam are more orthopraxic in orientation, while Christianity tends to emphasize Orthodoxy more. So, from that perspective, Judaism and Islam are on one side, while Christianity is on the other.
On the other hand, Islam and Christianity are both universal, proselytizing faiths, which sharply distinguishes them from Judaism, with its tribalistic focus.
3. Shared Lineage: Of course, one thing that does unite Judaism and Christianity is the fact that both religions grow out of Second Temple Judaism. Hence, there is a strangely intimate nature to their quarrel, rather like two sisters arguing over which one should inherit Dad’s estate…
4. Lastly, one has to also bear in mind the very strong impact that Protestant Christianity has had on Judaism in the last 150 years, particularly in the USA. Conservative and Reform Judaism are, to a considerable degree, Protestantized forms of Judaism…
* Here’s Rabbi Martin Siegel quoted in New York Magazine in 1972: “I am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish.”
* Israeli Jews tend to be warmer to the evangelicals than are politically left wing American Jews. They realize that it is unwise to turn away a potential friend. They also remember the crucial assistance given to the Jewish community in Palestine by Orde Wingate, a British evangelical from a family that belonged to the Plymouth Brethren.
* The term “Judeo-Christian” was hardly used prior to WWII, or more especially prior to the 1960s/70s.
I can remember a time in the 1970s when Jews as such were still barely perceived to exist in the larger Christian culture; sure if you understood the code Jews were everywhere but the typical gentile was clueless. This changed when the whole Holocaust/Jewish victimology campaign was launched to make Christians feel guilty for merely existing.
Christians used the term “Judeo-Christian” to seem more inclusive and not seem “anti-Semitic” whereas as late as the 1950s/60s you could still refer to our common Christian civilization, or Christendom, without irony and without qualifications or caveats or weasel word terms like “Judeo-Christian”.
So this statement is in fact the opposite of the truth: “The label “Judeo-Christian” tends to assume, at the expense of Judaism, that Christians and Jews believe essentially the same things.”
No, it tends to assume that Christians and Jews believe essentially the same things so as to disarm, disadvantage, and delude the Christian masses, who fear being called anti-semitic. It assumes that the two things are alike at the expense of Christendom. When Christians still had a culture of their own they did not feel the need to be “inclusive” by tacking on other terms our qualifiers to their own name.
* Steve, I’m surprised you fell for this hogwash, and even more surprised that Razib Khan is ignorant of how the Founding Fathers (in public at least) meticulously compared American Independence to that of the founding of Israel. Indeed for Protestants who read the Bible A LOT, far more than Catholics, identification with Jews was (and is) commonplace. Lincoln’s speeches are filled with allegories comparing Americans to Jews, and the Puritans appropriated this language, citing Boston as a New Jerusualem.
Feminist #1, that most Christian of Poets, William Blake, even wrote an Epic Poem called Jerusalem wherein he compared the English to Jews.
So, history did not start last Thursday. And historically, Americans from Cotton Mather to Ronald Reagan have invoked Jewish history and seen themselves as “New Jews” in a continuity.
Secondly, the “removed,” Amish-like Rabbinical attitudes expressed in the column are not representative of most Jews. Most Jews today are secular, profoundly integrationist, and reflect what Steve you noted Revealed Preference in their mating habits.
To take one prominent Jew: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg married his Asian girlfriend. Or Mr. Amy Chua, one Jeb Rosenfeld, would be another example.
I would argue, and there is considerable weight in actual, real-life Jewish behavior on this front, that Jews have largely (and lamentably I might add) adopted many Christian Doctrines at least on the broader fronts:
**Original Sin.
**Universalism.
**Utopianism.
**Worship of Non-Whites as Racial Redeemers.
**Original Sin as Racial Original Sin.
**Pacifism.
When the Bombay / Mumbai Massacres a number of years ago happened, with LeT running amok in fire-teams killing all sorts of people, one of their targets was a Jewish family running some charity, Chabad I think, in Bombay. When I read this my though was, why on earth were Jews from Israel there in the first place? The reason was the typical NGO-type feel-good charity, the same stuff producing Medicin sans Frontiers, Greenpeace, and the other universalist, utopian, pacifist, “White people are the original sin” and “non-Whites the redeemers.”
It has taken literally the threat of Israel being overwhelmed by Africans in a matter of months if not weeks and constant rocket attacks from Hamas to convince Israelis otherwise on the matters of fences, borders and deportations, and it is an open question if the Israeli Courts will acquiesce in non-suicide or insist on Open Borders because Jews were not allowed in Sweden or Switzerland in 1942 or something.
The problem with Christianity is that it is too successful: Europe, America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, are among the nicest places to live and Jews are no different from other peoples in wanting to adopt success including many fundamental moral assumptions. Assumptions that I find an utter disaster. Secular Jews are no less religious than say, Jerry Falwell or Oral Roberts, they just don’t got to church when they pray (or Synagoge). Instead their daily rituals are green recyclable bags at the grocery store, Global Warming, and Universalism Utopian Open Borders, beliefs they share with most of the secular and religious Christians.
Both Mark Zuckerberg and say, the Lutheran World Council (and the Catholic Church if it comes to that) are in favor of Open Borders and anyone who wants to come to America to be allowed to do so.
I’d say that’s shared Judeo-Christian values. Just bad ones.
* In 1700, a Jew speaking like this to a Christian would be caned. Someone of that era hearing this joke would not understand why the professor would tolerate such impudence from a Jew of all things, let alone return for more, therefore the joke wouldn’t work. It only makes sense in a modern Western society where the verbal aggressiveness of Jews is well-known and tolerated.
* Wasn’t “Judeo-Christian” a term specifically coined to allow people to refer to the moral basis of Western Civ without making Jews feel excluded?
* I always thought “Judeo-Christian” values/civilisation/culture etc was a silly and somwhat obnoxious phrase. The Christianity of America derived from three strands: ancient Judaism, Greek or Greco-Roman philosophy, and pre-Christian northern European pagan culture. The Judaism of America derived primarily from Rabbinical Judaism plus some influence from northern-European Christian culture. There is no ‘Judeo-Christianity’.
My impression is that the phrase is used to mean that American culture is not specifically Christian. Originally this was a Liberal-Progressive Jewish idea, that Jews were as American as Christians. Then as Christianity weakened, it became a Conservative or Neoconservative idea, that America had a specifically Judeo-Christian culture,as opposed to being a Multicultural void.
So when I saw The Daily Show comedians sneering at the term, they were sneering at it for being a conservative/right-wing concept. An earlier generation of Liberal Jewish comedians would have championed the concept, while derogating Christians who claimed America was specifically Christian.
* The Jewish view of Creation seems to be that’s still in a state of churn and chaos while the Christian view is that it’s is something of apparently infinite complexity but also something essentially ordered. For Christendom, Creation – ie this world and universe in which we find ourselves – is something we can use our mortal minds to at least partly make sense of because it’s something that obeys laws; laws that are good because Creation is good. Jews, on the other hand, seem to see this world as one fundamentally broken, chaotic and wrong and something they’ve been given the task of repairing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
Gentlemen, let us wrap our minds around that concept: that Jews believe they are a people with the cosmically important right, duty and ability to eventually re-order the universe because God didn’t finish the job. No wonder they feel like they could “create their own reality” in something as piddly as the Middle East or the US Federal Reserve.
Until that cosmic healing and order is established though, Jews apparently see themselves living in a world of false idols, false nations and false kings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleinu
What about Christendom? Well, as Charles de Gaulle said about France “we are, after all and above everything, a European people of the white race, of Greek and Latin culture and of the Christian religion”. The Greek and Latin part of this mix is crucial; so crucial that both secular and religious scholars have said it was in at the foundation of Christianity, let alone the West.
Over the centuries Christianity developed into a religion and world-view for people who had to run things, figure things out and make sense of the world. Out of that we got Scholasticism and the modern university. In the meantime we had rabbinical scholars engaging in minor trade and “creating their own reality”.
* Chabad isn’t a universalist organization on par with Catholic Charities or something. They are by Lubavitch Hasidim for other Jews, especially religiously inactive ones. Lubavitch philosophy says that increasing the number of Jews performing commandments will hasten the coming of the Messiah, so they want secular Jews to take up praying and keeping kosher and so on. The Holtzbergs weren’t in Mumbai to help the Indians, they were there to provide kosher food and religious services to Jews in the area, mostly business travelers and secular Israelis doing a gap year backpacking.
* Nowhere in the joke do the two parties discuss anything. Instead, the Rabbi ridicules the professor. The whole point of the joke is that there is no rhyme or reason to the Rabbi’s arguments, other than the following – the Rabbi is always right. Whatever the Rabbi says – even if it contradicts what he said five minutes ago – is correct. That’s the moral of the story. The “dispute” “enshrines all opinions” only if all of these opinions belong to the Rabbi.
* The joke is similar to that scene in “The Life of Brian” where the shopkeeper tries to get Brian to haggle the price of the gourd. Brian keeps accepting whatever price the shopkeeper offers, much to the shopkeeper’s frustration.
It’s really a joke about the difference between the two cultures: one where people use argument to search for solutions in an orderly fashion, and one where people value the argument itself as the highest virtue.
* The Jews really are the intellectual descendants of the Sophists in their willingness and eagerness to be prepared to take any side of any issue with any kind of clever reasoning, and disinterest in and devaluation of objective truth.
* According to the Pew survey (linked below) asking various people to rate how warm they felt to various religious, the group that felt the most personal warmth towards Jews was white Evangelicals. In addition white Evangelicals felt more warmth towards Jews than they did to any other religious group, including their fellow Christian Catholics.
If the pro-semitism of American Christians was merely a response to modern political correctness, we’d find them to give lower Jewish warmth scores than atheists or agnostics, who tend to be much more cosmopolitan and liberal. America is a deeply pro-semitic country. And unlike American pro-black or emerging pro-gay attitudes, it wasn’t manufactured by the political correctness machine. Middle-class, Republican, church-attending middle America represents the core of America’s pro-Jewish sentiments. (The little religious anti-semitism that exists in the West comes from either fringe Catholic groups, a la Mel Gibson, or Russian Orthodox churches).
The Obama coalition is an amalgamation of America’s peripheral groups against middle America. They’re bound together by ridiculous fear-mongering: telling single women that Mitt Romney wants to ban birth control, telling blacks that Republicans want to put them back in chains, etc. No group in this coalition is more misinformed than middle-class Jews. The liberal media has brainwashed them, reinforced by the cultural memory of living next to barbaric slavic peasants, that middle-American white Republicans would run Fiddler on the Roof style pogroms if give full power. And some of the Kevin MacDonald parroting clowns around these comments, seem to have the same notion that all it takes to break “Jewish power” is a revival of white middle-class political awareness.
In reality nothing could be further from the truth. The devout white Evangelicals that make up the core of the Republican right are probably the most pro-semitic group of gentiles in history. If you ever actually bothered talking to Evangelicals, you’d realize that the vast majority feel a deep spiritual kinship with Jews. Most consider Jews to be God’s chosen people, consider them to be saved simply by virtue of being Jewish, and feel a religious obligation to defend them around the globe. They see parallels between historical Jewish oppression and what they consider modern-day oppression of believers by Godless secularists. They largely consider their to be a global atheist-Muslim alliance that forms a war on Christians, and consider the groups that attack Israel, and their international sympathizers, to be the front lines of this group.
YISROEL EMAILS:
I think it’s funny. It made me laugh.
If I understand Australia-born Rav David Bar-Hayim of Machon Shilo in Israel correctly, a lot of the hair-splitting of Talmud Bavli is due to the
Golus (Exile) practices it (incorrectly) seeks to uphold and defend.
Quoting [with emphases added by me] from vosizneias.com:
Rabbi Bar Chaim is a talmid of Rav Yoseph Kapach zatzal, the Yemenite Maimonidean scholar. Although Australian by birth, Rabbi Bar Chaim has adopted the full gamut of Yemenite pronounciations – th for saf Jimel for Gimel and the full guttural Ayin or Gayin. He also studied in Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, although he is not too fond of the manner in which Yeshivos teach Torah. Even Merkaz HaRav did not escape his criticism.
As a preface, Rabbi Bar Chaim is of the opinion that Eretz Yisroel has a unique Torah heritage called Torath Eretz Yisroel. He distinguishes between this Torah and what he terms “Torat HaGaluth.” How far he takes this notion is where the controversy lies.
He has issued rulings and opinions that are quite startling. He ruled that the Birchas HaChama should not be recited on Erev Pesach this past cycle. He advises people to recite a blessing when they take off their Tefillin. He disagrees with the identification of oats and rye as two of the five grains of the Mishna, and the list goes on and on.
The questioning began. How do you openly disregard the positions and decisions of the Talmud Bavli?
He calmly responded that even the Rambam writes that Torah thought is not monolithic and comprises a multiplicity of voices that include the Sifra, Sifri, Mechilta, Yerushalmi and Bavli. He noted that many times the Rambam himself rules like the Yerushalmi instead of the Bavli.
When it was pointed out that the Meforshim will constantly cite other passages in the Bavli as supporting the Yerushalmi position Rabbi Bar Chaim dismissed these views as apologetics.
Another question. How do you openly disregard the views and conclusions of the Shulchan Aruch? He responded that numerous meforshim will disagree with the Shulchan Aruch and Ramah, and it is a misnomer to state that Klal Yisroel took it upon themselves to follow the Shulchan Aruch completely. He claims it never happened and that the often dissenting views of the Shach demonstrate this point.
Regarding the blessing on Tefillin (a custom in Maarava according to the Bavli), he quoted Rav Hai Gaon and the Ramban who ruled that it is permissible to follow this view.
When asked about the oats and rye he cited a Yerushalmi describing it. “Shiboles Shual” is supposed to grow upward and straight – oats are very spread out. He cited other indications too including the archaeological record. When it was pointed out to him that the Egyptians did in fact cultivate and sell oats according to Col[u]mbia University professors and that Rav Moshe and the Chazon Ish had previously dismissed this assertion, he was unfazed.
What about that HaMavdil Bain Kodesh Lechol sentence on Motzei Shabbos? From his writings it is clear that he does not hold of it. Only a Havdallah in Shmoneh Esreh or on a Kos is valid in his eyes. Even though the Talmud Bavli (Shabbos 150a) states it explicitly, it does not seem to matter to the Rabbi. Clearly, the Rabbi is not afraid of extremely controversial views.
Another aspect of Rav Bar Chaim is his vision of developing and spreading a renaissance of religious nationalism in Eretz Yisroel. Although this message would appeal to certain masses of the religiously observant, there is one aspect of his views that will most decidedly not appeal to them. As interesting a person as Rav Bar Chaim is, he does characterize the Talmud Bavli itself as Torath HaGaluth. In the country of Israel this is like attacking motherhood and apple pie.
Does he have Rabbinic backing? Aside from a Rabbi Bock who has joined him in Machon Shilo the Rabbinic establishment has not seemed to have made any comments one way or the other. In the interview he did quote a well known Mashgiach of a Yeshiva who consulted with him on Birchas HaChama. He seemed to indicate that this Mashgiach did trust his Psak.
It’s not unusual for a struggling business to ask all of its employees to make the case for why they should retain their jobs.
I think individuals and groups should think the same way about their relationship to their host nation. They should not take their citizenship for granted.
I suspect that in their heart of hearts, most Americans are skeptical of low IQ blacks and Muslims and Mexicans and Central Americans (I think fewer than 10% of Americans would like their country free of Jews). Therefore, I think it would be a good idea if blacks, Mexicans, Muslims and all minority groups in America, including Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Armenians, etc, took preemptive action and made their case to the rest of the country through righteous living.
As a Jew, I think Jews make tremendous contributions to America and it would not be too difficult to argue why we should continue to be a valued part of the country. And if our critics wanted to argue otherwise, I would welcome that debate. Are most Jews on welfare? Do Jews commit crimes at a high rate? No, in fact we do those things at a lower rate than the average American. Do Jews innovate and start businesses and invent technologies and make medical advances? Yes, in large numbers.
Blacks made their own distinctive contributions to America (such as in faith, sports, entertainment, music, literature, etc) but as with all groups, they also create trouble. Young black males commit violent crime at a rate 23 times the general population. Blacks in general commit all types of crime (except the highest IQ crimes) at a much higher rate than the average, are on welfare at a higher rate than the average, have a higher rate of out of wedlock births and of STDs and other social pathologies than the average white American.
I think America would be a better place if we started thinking about how our actions affected the country. Is our group holding its end up? How would blacks behave if their future in the United States depended on living up to a standard that they be more of a blessing than a curse? How would Muslims behave? I may be biased, but I have no doubt that Jews are more of a blessing than a curse to America (but Jewish intellectuals and organizations who push left-wing craziness such as immigration amnesty are a curse to this country).
How would minority groups behave if their very future in America depended on reducing their crime rate below the national average, reducing their out of wedlock births to below the national average, reducing their welfare dependency below the national average, reducing their STD rate below the national average and raising their IQ (through eugenics) above the national average?
For the past 50 years, America has bent over backwards to accommodate its minorities. I think it is time that America’s minorities start bending to the norms of the majority. There’s a saying in the Talmud that when you come to a town, you follow its customs.
Chaim Amalek writes: What we all need, what would be most interesting, is say, a multi-volume book presenting a complete taxonomy of the human race, tribe by tribe, including a chart of “who hates whom”. You know, you would be able to look up a group and find an honest summary of their group strengths and weaknesses, their economic niches, if any, who their traditional enemies/competitors are, the qualities of their women, proclivities towards perversion and crime and so forth. Luke, were you more ambitious, this would be the book that made your name a household word everywhere.
Here’s a great lecture by R. Shlomo Einhorn.
R. Einhorn says that a couple of years ago he went to see Tony Robbins and it was an amazing experience. People walked on fire, etc.
The Jewish Chronicle reviews the new book by R. Joseph Telushkin on the Rebbe:
Under the leadership of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Chabad (Lubavitch) grew from a small circle of Chasidim (no numbers are given in this book) into an omnipresent and unified force in world Judaism. Most importantly, he had the talent to ensure it would survive and prosper after his death by creating an atmosphere and structures in which the very idea of a successor was out of the question.
Such institutionalisation is an essential attribute of a charismatic leader who seeks to perpetuate his movement. According to Joseph Telushkin, the attempts to proclaim Schneerson Messiah infuriated him, though others have suggested that, in his later years and especially after the death of his wife, he may, perhaps unwittingly, have indulged it. Either way, if that faction had won, it would have derailed the continuing development of Chabad into a successful modern movement able to survive and grow without a living charismatic leader.
As a sage or rabbinic authority, Schneerson was, I need hardly say, different. As a Chasidic Rebbe, he left specific rulings to others, but Telushkin lists innumerable instances of sage advice on the practical problems of life that people brought to him. He also avoided pronouncing, for example, on the question, “Who is a Jew?” In this, he contrasts with other prominent rabbis. For example, the reputation of Ovadia Yosef, leader of the Shas movement in Israel – which surely learnt a lot from Chabad’s methods of bringing people to teshuva – rests on his innumerable published rulings.
Like other leaders of large-scale, innovative religious movements, Schneerson created an apparatus around himself to calibrate and ritualise his every public appearance: his meetings with thousands of individuals who would queue up patiently and seek his advice, after which he would give them each a dollar bill as a signal of their obligation of tsedaka, were his trade mark.
News report: There are people in Sweden who support Israel…and give hope to those who believe that things will get better here. One of them is Barbara Spectre, a former American who made aliyah and then ten years ago, with the help of the government of Sweden, set up a non-denominational institute of Jewish learning with the Greek name of Paideia here in Stockholm. She believes the current wave of anti-Semitism in Sweden will pass and Jews have an important role to play in a current undergoing profound change.
Barbara: “I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time, Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural and I think we’re going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role but without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive.”
There’s nothing in Torah that says Jews should take a leading role in the multicultural transformation of formerly monolithic goyisha countries. These leftwing Ashkenazi radicals like Barbara Spectre are a curse to the Jews and to the world.