An hour after I left work, a few feet from where I work (near Olympic Blvd and the 405), an office was fired upon circa 6 pm Monday. A bullet, probably from a .22 rifle, pierced the glass, which crinkled up and was replaced that evening.
Nobody was in the office at the time.
Three police came to investigate.
Two other office buildings nearby were shot up. Nobody was hurt.
Apparently somebody was driving by and shooting up office buildings.
Dennis Prager writes: David Blankenhorn has committed his professional life to fighting for the institution of marriage. And as recently as 2010, he testified on behalf of California Proposition 8, which, in 2008, amended the California Constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman — and which was immediately challenged in the courts, where liberal judges overturned it.
Blankenhorn was vilified throughout the liberal and gay media (which, in their invective against proponents of retaining the man-woman definition of marriage, are indistinguishable). As Mark Oppenheimer, editor of the “Beliefs” column in The New York Times wrote:
“During the trial [over the constitutionality of Proposition 8] and in the immediate aftermath, Blankenhorn became a national figure; he was . . . the butt of ridicule . . . . And now, he has decided to give up that fight.
“Blankenhorn would be ridiculed in The New York Times, and he would be . . . [ridiculed] in a play by an Oscar-winning screenwriter, starring a bevy of Hollywood stars.”
Blankenhorn told Oppenheimer:
“I had an old community organizing buddy who wrote a note to me after the trial and said, how does it feel to be America’s most famous bigot? I used to think you were a good person. Now I know you’re a bad person. How does it feel to know that your tombstone will read that you’re just a bigot.”
Two weeks ago, Blankenhorn wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in which he announced that he now supports same-sex marriage.
As for Justice Roberts, he and his conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court have been the targets of media and academia vitriol and personal invective for years, and in some cases, decades. But while his conservative colleagues don’t care, Justice Roberts does.
As reported by CBS News:
“Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the Court when issues are pending . . . . They’ve explained that they don’t want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.
“But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As Chief Justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the Court, and he also is sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public. [“The public” means liberal media and academics.]
“There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court — and to Roberts’ reputation — if the Court were to strike down the mandate.
“Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.”
David Blankenhorn’s change — he has admitted he is tired of fighting the culture wars, and he has gone from being the object of New York Times derision to being a New York Times hero — and Justice Roberts’ change — New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column lauding Roberts for his “statesmanship” — reassure progressives that ridicule, demonization, and character assassination work. With the stakes so high in the forthcoming election, expect it to only increase.
The New York Post reports: Hatemongers have targeted Brooklyn’s Orthodox community with a vicious assault, a string of synagogue thefts and anti-Semitic vandalism targeting synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods.
In the most disturbing incident, a mob of six black teenagers shouting, “Dirty Jew!” and “Dirty kike!” repeatedly bashed Marc Heinberg, 61, as he walked home from temple in Sheepshead Bay last Friday at 9:15 p.m.
A thief or thieves also swiped seven silver ataras — decorative neckbands worth up to $600 each that are part of Orthodox prayer shawls — from five synagogues in Midwood last week.
And yesterday, vandals armed with a BB gun shot out windows of a dozen cars on Lee Avenue in Williamsburg, while a punk wrote “F–k Jews” in 3-by-3-foot letters at the Kererster synagogue on Berry Street.
Chaim Amalek posts: Was it necessary to mention that the mob of black teenagers attacking an elderly Jew was black? Such information can only serve to heighten racial tensions between these two groups. Let us all look beyond the issue of race (in any event a mere social construct) and instead celebrate our diversity.
Stephen Steinlight emails: I’ve been making the case for the last two years that immigration will emerge as a leading if not THE leading issue in the presidential race in 2012. Four recent related events guarantee it. The only other issue that will possess equal weight is Obama’s gross mismanagement of the economy.
The first of the four was President Obama’s flagrant display of contempt for the Constitution. In what amounts to the moral equivalent of a coup, he bypassed Congress and in effect made law — a realm reserved to Congress by the Constitution. He also determined immigration policy on his own, a realm again expressly given to Congress by the Constitution. Unable to get what he wanted in our democratic system of governance through our elected representatives, he enacted the DREAM Act by fiat, legalizing an estimated 1.4 million illegal aliens. The abuse of his parole power, a serious violation in-itself, pales in comparison to his assault on the very basis of our form of government. Previously he had shown his contempt for the rule of law by not enforcing immigration law; now he has surpassed himself by making law whose intent is to breed anarchy and chaos. In his dissenting opinion from the SCOTUS majority, Justice Scalia asserted these actions would have the Founding Fathers “rushing for the exits.”
The second was yesterday’s ruling by SCOTUS on Arizona’s SB1070. We we can take some measure of comfort in the fact that the most controversial provision — “show me your papers” — was upheld in theory (though the decision will open the door to endless legal challenges on the basis of “racial profiling”) and another dozen less disputatious parts of the law remain intact, but the decision, taken as a whole, is an act of folly. The Court should not have accepted the outrageous contention that Arizona “pre-empted” federal law. The state sought only to enforce federal law the Obama administration has chosen not to enforce. The danger to the rule of law comes out of Washington, not out of the states seeking to exercise the sovereign power given to them by the Constitution under our federalist system. If you have not read Justice Scalia’s dissent I strongly urge you do. He makes the case with great eloquence. (Forgive me for being house-proud, but I was deeply pleased to see research by my think tank, CIS, cited in the Court’s opinion.)
The third blow came yesterday. To effectively undo the Court’s upholding of “show me your papers,” the President ordered all federal agencies tasked to deal with immigration to cease cooperation with Arizona law enforcement. Thus, the one piece of cold comfort the decision gave us — the power of Arizona police to seek to determine the legal status of people stopped in the course of normal policing — has been rendered moot. It was this ugly, vengeful act that caused Governor Brewer to assert that President Obama has said “Drop dead” to the state of Arizona. What is happening to Arizona is a terrifying cautionary tale to any other state with the temerity to believe in the rule of law.
Finally, it has become a mantra among the liberal punditry that Governor Romney has been “mum” on the Court’s decision. That statement is false, no matter how many times it is reproduced in print. After the decision, Romney made the following statement in Phoenix: ““Each state has the duty — and the right — to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibilities.” Later, speaking in Scottsdale, Ariz., Romney stated he would have preferred that the court had provided more latitude to states. Romney added that under the decision the “states would have less authority, less latitude to enforce immigration laws.” It is very clear where he stands. Romney remains solidly in support of “attrition through enforcement.” In 2012 there is a clear choice to be made between the candidates on immigration policy.
Every political on-line publication coming out of DC — Roll Call, The Hill, POLITICO, Real Clear Politics, etc. — plus the newspapers “of record” and all the usual liberal and conservative papers and blogs are in agreement about one thing: immigration policy will be the centerpiece of the election; it will be the hottest of Third Rail issues; and the candidates will take strongly opposed positions on immigration policy.
My forecast has proven accurate.
Those of us who believe in the rule of law, understand the President’s first obligation as protecting the lives and livelihood of Americans, ending illegal immigration, protecting American sovereignty, defending the American workplace from cheap illegal labor during the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression — must recognize how much is unambiguously at stake in this election. CIS does not endorse candidates; we research immigration and advocate policies. However, our policy prescriptions for protecting our way of life have been placed in grave danger by the actions of the sitting president. We are non-partisan, so I will remind you that Obama’s play book on immigration is no different from that of George W. Bush who sought and failed to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” in June of 2007. Both spell disaster for the country we love.
Given these events which have created a crisis in our national life — not solely in terms of a misbegotten immigration policy but far more seriously in their implications for the maintenance of our Constitutional order — it is more important than ever for people to hear the message I bring from CIS about US immigration policy. With the election campaign going into high gear, this is the moment we must seize.
Chaim Amalek says: “Stupid Mick. More proof that the goyim are nothing without one of us to lead them. Look at where Christianity would be today but for the leadership provided by Jews. Ditto feminism, Marxism, Freudianism, and the Democratic Party. Thus declares AMALEK.”
Chaim Amalek posts: Once again, elements of the marginal media (my kind of folk) are suggesting that I am Luke Ford.
I will make it very simple for them. Luke Ford has had a journalist’s level of social intercourse with porn starlets and wishes he hadn’t, whereas Chaim Amalek has not but wishes he had. Luke Ford has a Rebbe, Dennis Praeger, whereas I had never even heard of this guy before Luke began writing about him. Luke Ford is master of all in his element, beginning with his neck and posture. And he knows such elite figures as that really tall and pretty academic woman who became a Jew. I, on the other hand, am a 350 pound man living out his golden years in a tiny rent controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, and the most elite group I know are those people who read the New York Post. (However, on occasion I do share an early bird special with my friend Elizabeth Irwin.) Luke Ford is a covert acolyte of Ayn Rand. Chaim Amalek is a progressive Jew who marched in Selma. So to the extent that I can make any of this clear no doubt I have.
Talk show host Colin Flaherty writes for WND:
If Chaim Amalek had his way, no one would know that mobs of black people are attacking and beating and robbing Jews in the New York area.
Or that they shout anti-Semitic epithets.
Or that they target Jews because “they don’t fight back.”
“Such information can only serve to heighten racial tensions between these two groups,” said Amalek, an alias for New York video blogger Luke Ford. “Let us all look beyond the issue of race (in any event a mere social construct) and instead celebrate our diversity.”
In this case, the New York Post saw a pattern that most other media outlets never see. To some, it was jarring.
“Anti-Jewish crime wave,” read the June headline about a series of recent anti-Semitic attacks. “In the most disturbing incident, a mob of six black teenagers shouting, ‘Dirty Jew!’ and ‘Dirty kike!’ repeatedly bashed Marc Heinberg, 61, as he walked home from temple in Sheepshead Bay (in June.)”
This is one of several black mob attacks on – and robberies of – Jewish people in Brooklyn over the last two years, leaving broken bones and life-threatening injuries in their wake.
The assaults are part of a larger pattern in the New York area and around the country: Black mobs assaulting, robbing, destroying property and creating mayhem – hundreds of times in more than 60 cities.
Orthodox Jews may bear a disproportionate amount of the violence in New York. But the lawlessness that black mobs inflict throughout the area is not limited to Jews. Much of it is on YouTube.
Dorothy emails me:
I found your website after doing an internet search for your name based on your comment on the New York Post article which was just picked up by World Net Daily yesterday. By the way, I’m also Jewish. You should check out
http://violentflashmobs.com/I disagree with your comment based on research I’ve done on the New Age movement over the last 30 years. New Age is a resurgence of Nazism. The New Age movement is very antisemitic. Yes there is a culture of violence in a subculture of the black community, but here we have a deliberate attacks on Jews, by name. There is no other community being attacked by description. If you do some research you’ll find the Afrocentric movement, which was an offshoot
of the New Age movement, was and probably still is very antisemitic. The material I gathered several years ago in my trips to Afrocentric bookstores in the Chicago area over a period time, plus trips to a Chicago college are about a foot thick. In Chicago we also have the very antisemitic Farrakhan. I worked as a clerical in a Jewish organization, JFCS for 8-1/2 years. There were only two clericals, an office manager and myself in a center room. The office manager for a long was a Farrakhan follower. She would suck up to the Jewish
social workers and talk behind their backs to family and friends on the phone after they left, making terrible remarks about Jews. The feelings against Jews have been fanned and flamed and go beyond what one can see on the surface.Jews seem to feel the need to cover their ears when someone is trying to tell them things they don’t want to hear rather than confronting topics with contrary information. The pedophilia cases are only one example of that. Please don’t stay with those that act that way.
I have a friend who has many of the same demons that have plagued me.
His girlfriend notices that when he devotes himself to pleasing her, he loses his excitement.
He notices that sex with his girlfriend tends to distance them, because when he engages in it, he does it through the prism of his eroticized rage.
Over the past few years, I’ve devoted myself to leading a more chaste life. One of the benefits of this that I notice is that I no longer store up eroticized rage scenarios as I no longer have use for them. I used to go through the day collecting little stories that I’d feed myself with later in the evening about what a powerful man I am and how the women — in my dreams — cater to me.
If you have eroticized rage (anger that is sexualized), it is going to get expressed in a way that damages you and those around you even if you hold yourself to the strictest ethical standards. It will come out in your jokes and in your conversations (with yourself and with others).
In his third lecture on R. Meir Simcha of Dvinsk for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro says: The best proof for me of the truth of Torah it is not at all intellectual. It’s the feeling of a good Shabbos or a good holiday. For Rav Soloveitchick, it was listening to a good shiur.
I have an essay where I wrote that Jewish history is the greatest proof for God’s existence. That the Jewish people survived. The state of Israel.
In his second lecture on R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro says: You cannot be a Lubavitcher and be a Zionist. Lubavitch was always opposed to Zionism. Practically, you can support the state.
When you read the correspondence between R. Zevin and R. Menachem Schneerson, it reads like correspondence between equals. R. Schneerson never pulls rank.
There was a whole era before WWII of Hasidim who were beardless. Even though they went to a rebbe, they still sent their kids to university. They still were Zionists.
Today it is rare to have a beardless Hasid or a Hasid who doesn’t hold by everything his rebbe says.
In his second lecture on R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro says: Every Jew knows that if you had only one Jewish grandparent, you were sent to the camps.
Not true. If you had two Jewish grandparents and you identified as a Jew and you went to synagogue, then you were on the train to Auschwitz, but if you didn’t identify as Jewish and you had two Jewish grandparents, you weren’t sent to the camps.
According to Wikipedia: “[Yosef Yitzchok (Joseph Isaac), the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe] Schneersohn argued against his Hasidim leaving Russia[in the 1920s, 1930s], even if they were able do. He explicitly forbade his followers from leaving, describing those who did as “deserters”.”
In his first lecture on R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro says: Any rabbi [in the Soviet Union in the 1920s] who could get out, did. Rabbi Zevin remained.
For all the problems living under the czar, he was not concerned with how you lived your private life. As long as you were not interested in getting involved in politics, you could have religious freedom.
The communists were interested in uprooting religion. Their primary persecution was against Christianity.
Legally, anyone could go to church or synagogue, but if you wanted to advance in society, you could not go.
The Hasidic rebbes took many followers with them [out of the Soviet Union]. They encouraged them to leave.
In the summer of 1925, it was obvious that there was no future for Jewish life [in the Soviet Union].
Yosef Yitzchok (Joseph Isaac)Schneersohn issued an opinion that emigration from the Soviet Union was forbidden.
In 1927, the rebbe was arrested. After being released, he left the Soviet Union and by 1930 he was telling his followers that there was no future for them in the Soviet Union and that they should leave.
In my family, there was eight children. Four came to America [circa 1921], four remained in the Soviet Union. All of them assimilated. All intermarried. Only one moved to Israel. He was intermarried.
It should’ve been clear that this was a hopeless mission [to remain] in the Soviet Union. It meant sacrificing thousands of people and their families and their futures at a time when they would’ve been able to leave. His intentions were good but the results were disastrous.
The ones left in the Soviet Union had no education, no nothing.
This was a terrible terrible mistake to tell thousands of Hasidim who could leave that there place was here [in the Soviet Union]. It was a tragedy.
It’s only in the 1930s that Yosef Yitzchok (Joseph Isaac)Schneersohn realized he had to get out.
The Communist era was something entirely new. For the first time in maybe 2000 years, you had a government telling you that you could not observe Judaism. The Rambam is clear that if you are in a place where you can not openly observe Judaism, you are obligated to get out of there as soon as possible.
On the one hand, this says great things about Chabad. Who’s going to Bangkok, Thailand and trying to open up a shul there for tourists? And Nepal? It’s not people in the yeshiva world. You can’t ask someone to move to a place where there is a not a Jewish school and yet Chabad has always been willing to make that sacrifice.
They’d go to cities in America where there was no yeshiva and they would home-school their kids, and send their kids to public school and teach them on their own until sixth or seventh grade and then send them off to Crown Heights. It’s all coming from a good place. They were willing to make the sacrifice to stay in the Soviet Union because they are selfless people and the rebbe was selfless and they weren’t thinking about themselves. But if you look at what it led to, it led to a complete disaster. It led to complete assimilation of all these Chabad families. These families that were cream of the crop.
That’s when Reb Moshe Feinstein decided he had to leave, when he saw that he could not raise his children Jewish.
At a young age Rabbi Zevin was appointed rabbi of his birthplace, Kazimirov, and served as editor of the journal “Shaarei Torah.” He later served as rabbi of Klimon and Novozybkov.[2] He took an active role in the underground struggle to preserve Jewish observance in Soviet Russia after the Communist Revolution; this effort was headed by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn. Beginning in 1921, he edited a Torah journal, Yagdil Torah, together with Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky of Slutsk; for this crime he was imprisoned by the Communist authorities.[3] He founded Orthodox Jewish journals that dealt with problems of the time.
At the age of 18, Rabbi Zevin began corresponding with leading sages. He also began at a young age to serve Russian Jewry in various communal capacities. During the brief period of Ukrainian independence after World War I, Rabbi Zevin served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament. He also served as a member and officer of the parent body of Jewish communities in Ukraine.
In 1935, Rabbi Zevin settled in the Land of Israel and began teaching at the Mizrachi-affiliated Bet Midrash L’morim. He also served as a member of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate Council.
In 1947 the first volume of the Encyclopedia Talmudit was published under his editorial oversight. Zevin continued to serve as editor-in-chief until his death in 1978. This multi-volume work continues today.
Rabbi Zevin frequently corresponded with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe; this correspondence is printed in the Igrot Kodesh series. He used concepts in Chabad philosophy to clarify halachic principles.
