There are about 100 guys who wear shtreimels in Hancock Park but I’ve never heard that any of them consider themselves Satmar.
There used to be a Satmar synagogue in town — Mogen Abraham, but its rabbi (Abraham Low) got busted for money laundering and left town 15 years ago.
Historian Marc B. Shapiro responded to my inquiry: “I am not sure what they mean by “important”. Is important the same as influential? They have many of the big ones, but are also missing some. How about the Satmar Rebbes, who have a very large following. I think R. Herschel Schachter has to be at the top of the list if we want to know who is the most influential Orthodox in the Orthodox world. However, he doesn’t have influence in the Jewish community at large, while Krinsky, Hier et al do.”
Here are the Orthodox selections in Newsweek’s list of the top 50 rabbis in America:
Orthodox selections:
2. Yehuda Krinsky (Orthodox)
No. 1 the last two years, Krinsky is still at the top of his game,
running the sprawling and influential Chabad movement, though not
without a few hiccups this past year. Dogged by pesky lawsuits and
still embroiled in a decades-long litigation to reclaim the late Rebbe
Menachem Schneerson’s collection of books and manuscripts from a
Russian government that has refused to return them for 70 years (the
lawsuit took a particularly nasty turn this year when the Russians
retaliated with an art embargo of the U.S.), Krinsky nonetheless
remains among the most influential clergy spreading a brand of Judaism
to the furthest reaches of the globe. Chabad opened a new center in
Portugal this past year, the 78th country it can now boast a presence
in among the thousands of centers it has opened in the past few
decades.” They even have outposts in such unlikely places as Harlem,
the Bowery, and Phnom Penh. One hundred twenty new educational
institutions were established in 2011, and Chabad’s conference for
female shluchot (emissaries sent out to spread the message) drew more
than 3,000 women in February. (2011: #1)
8. Marvin Hier & Abraham Cooper (Orthodox)
We’ve grouped Hier and Cooper because these rabbis represent the same
L.A.-based Jewish human-rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, a crucial watchdog of anti-Semitism throughout the world.
Founder and dean Hier, who is also a member of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences and produces films on Jewish subjects,
recently called upon the Obama administration to investigate the
display of the SS flag by American Marine snipers. (The Marines
maintained the soldiers didn’t realize the significance of the
double-S symbol.) Abraham Cooper, who meets regularly with
international leaders, recently trained the spotlight on Holocaust
denial. Hier and Cooper issued a statement about Iran in February
saying, “This is the first time since the Nazis’ Final Solution that
such explicit plans for a genocide against the Jewish people is being
promoted.” (2011: #5, #28)
11. Avi Weiss (Modern Orthodox)
Richard
Senior rabbi at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Weiss is considered the
father of a brand of Orthodoxy he calls “Open Orthodoxy,” which
maintains strict observance while also expanding its definition. He
founded Yeshiva Chovevei Torah (YCT), whose graduates continue to earn
impressive placements in shuls, schools, and organizations, though
some face resistance from the old guard who challenge YCT’s Orthodox
credentials. He will soon face the controversial question of what to
call the women graduating from Yeshiva Maharat—the second seminary
he’s founded and the first for Orthodox women spiritual leaders. Known
for his decades of brash activism, Weiss was arrested last fall in
front of the U.N. while protesting the Palestinian statehood bid.
(2011: #12)
12. Hershel Schachter (Orthodox)
Considered one of the few living sages for his sweeping expertise in
Talmud and a beloved teacher by many, Schachter is widely thought to
have pushed Yeshiva University to the right religiously, socially, and
politically. He is against various forms of modernity in the name of
preserving rigorous Halacha (Jewish law), opposing organ donation for
brain death, not recognizing female prayer groups, and resisting the
initiatives of his fellow YU alum Avi Weiss (#11) to foster women as
spiritual leaders. Schachter is a dominant, intimidating force behind
the RCA (see Goldin, #16), but his sense of humor was glimpsed this
year when he made a brief cameo appearance in one of the hip
Maccabeats’ viral music videos. (2011: #14)
16. Shmuel Goldin (Orthodox)
This year Goldin became head of Modern Orthodoxy’s largest rabbinic
association, the RCA (Rabbinical Council of America), whose membership
has clashed recently over whether women can be considered clergy and
whether only a select list of Orthodox rabbis can perform authentic
conversions. Known has a conciliator amidst extremists in the RCA (and
expected to use his new position to staunch the right-wing drift),
Goldin has, for 28 years, served Congregation Ahavath Torah in
Englewood, N.J. He also teaches at Yeshiva University, a feeder to the
RCA, which has turned its back on Avi Weiss’s graduates from YCT (see
#11) who are refused membership. (NEW)
21. Shmuel Kamenetsky (Haredi)
The vice president of the Haredi umbrella organization, Agudath Israel
of America’s Supreme Council of Rabbinic Sages, Kamenetsky has
enormous sway when it comes to the official Haredi position on social
and political issues or halachic questions. Last fall he urged the
rabbinate to sign a “Declaration on the Torah Approach to
Homosexuality,” which advocates “reparative therapy,” and last July,
while the tragic disappearance of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky was in its
second day in Brooklyn, he said that sexual abuse should be reported
not to the police but to a rabbi, who would then decide whether to
call the cops. (After an uproar, he softened this position.) The dean
of the Talmudical Yeshiva in Philadelphia, Kamenetsky is one of the
most esteemed gedolim—arbiters of Jewish law in the ultra-Orthodox
world. (NEW)
24. Asher Lopatin (Modern Orthodox)
unknown
The rabbi at Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in
Chicago known especially for its famous member Rahm Emanuel, Lopatin
plans to make aliyah (emigrate permanently to Israel) this summer to
“build a pluralistic and diverse community in the Negev.” (Thirty
families from his congregation have already made the move at his
urging, but Lopatin was delayed because his 9-year-old daughter faced
a life-threatening illness best treated in the U.S..) Lopatin has
always been a bit of an amalgam: he mixes his Yeshiva University
education with his M.Phil. in medieval Arabic thought from Oxford
University, earned while on a Rhodes fellowship. He also writes about
hot-button issues such as feminism, conversion, and the Arab Spring
for Morethodoxy, a liberal Orthodox blog on which male rabbis write
alongside Sara Hurwitz (#32). Recently he blogged a whirlwind
interfaith tour from Jakarta, through Dubai and Amman, to Jerusalem.
(2011: #21)
26. Haskel Lookstein (Orthodox)
The rabbi who converted Ivanka Trump, Lookstein has pledged to rebuild
his historic synagogue, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, after a
devastating fire last summer. Known for his irreverence when it comes
to towing the Orthodox party line, this longtime principal of
Manhattan’s Ramaz School, recently came down hard on the
ultra-Orthodox in Israel who terrorized 8-year-old Naama Margolese on
her way to school. He called it a “tragedy in the form of the
increasing demonization of women by extremists in the Haredi community
and, unfortunately, in a broader segment of religious society.” He
turned the mirror back on his own community, and many consider him a
rare combination of modern thinking and unimpeachable scholarship.
(2011: #30)
27. Arthur Schneier (Orthodox)
AP Photo
Schneier, a Holocaust survivor, just celebrated 50 years at the helm
of New York’s Orthodox Park East Synagogue. (New York Assembly Speaker
Sheldon Silver introduced a legislative resolution to honor him.)
Though many grumble about Schneier’s self-importance, there’s no
denying that his reach and recognition are global: in 2011 he
participated in the fourth annual forum on development in Doha, Qatar,
as an ambassador of the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, he took a
humanitarian mission to Cuba to seek the release of American prisoner
Alan Gross, and he received the French Legion of Honor medal and an
Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for helping develop
Polish-Jewish dialogue. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations,
Schneier is also the father of Hamptons Rabbi Marc Schneier (#35) who,
years ago, was being groomed as Park East’s heir apparent, but who
clearly preferred to carve his own path. (2011: #26)
30. Shmuley Boteach (Orthodox)
Known for his bestselling books on parenting and sex, Boteach “threw
his yarmulke in the ring” to run for a congressional seat in New
Jersey to “bring Jewish values into the political discourse” and won
the Republican nomination. He has said he’ll consider legislation “to
re-create an American Sabbath so parents have an incentive to take
their kids to a park rather than teaching them to find satisfaction in
the impulse purchase.” There is ample Boteach bashing among fellow
clergy because of what’s perceived as his unremitting self-promotion,
and his political candidacy has not been helped by a report in The
Forward that said an “examination of public records reveals that the
charity Boteach heads spends a significant portion of its revenues on
payments to Boteach and his family.” (2011: #11)
32. Sara Hurwitz (Modern Orthodox)
Considered a full member of the clergy by her Modern Orthodox
congregation, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (her title is “Rabba” not
“Rabbi”), Hurwitz continues to be outspoken on the value and
legitimacy of women in Orthodox spiritual leadership. She recently
joined the debate about modesty and gender segregation in Israel and
America, writing, “Halakha [Jewish Law] should not be manipulated into
a smokescreen shielding men and sidelining women who have the
potential to enhance our community.” She is the dean of the first
seminary created expressly to train Orthodox women for leadership,
Yeshivat Maharat. It remains to be seen what title will be given to
women in the first graduating class when they go job hunting next
year. (2011: #32)
35. Marc Schneier (Orthodox)
Richard A. Lobell Photography
Though many would prefer he spent less time in the tabloids, this
rabbi of the popular Hampton Synagogue on Long Island (and son of
Arthur #27) has done consistently bold work on Jewish-Muslim
coexistence. In partnership with Imam Shamsi Ali, a Muslim scholar who
leads New York’s largest mosque, and through his Foundation For Ethnic
Understanding, which is chaired by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons
(Schneier and Simmons enjoyed a private audience with Israeli
president Shimon Peres last month), Schneier charts unorthodox waters
for an Orthodox rabbi. This past year, he worked behind the scenes to
get a group of American imams to write a letter to Hamas making the
Koranic case for releasing Gilad Shalit. (REINSTATED FROM PRE-2011
LISTS)
40. Shmuly Yanklowitz (Modern Orthodox)
The energetic Founder and President of Uri L’Tzedek, an influential
Orthodox social Justice group, Yanklowitz was described by one
observer of the Jewish world as “the face of the future, because he
works round the clock and creates a new organization every week.”
(His latest is a center for Jewish vegans, cofounded with musician
Matisyahu.) The author of Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for
the 21st Century, he trained at Avi Weiss’s YCT (#11) and is probably
the first Orthodox rabbi to quote Foucault to advocate for prison
reform. (NEW)
42. Dov Linzer (Modern Orthodox)
The dean of the Modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT),
(founded by Avi Weiss, #11) Linzer stirred the Orthodox waters in
January with his provocative New York Times op-ed claiming that
Haredim “objectify and hyper-sexualize women” against the letter and
spirit of the Torah and Talmud. Over the past 10 years, 80 of his
graduates have been placed in—or have created—significant synagogues,
schools, and national organizations, including Shmuly Yanklowitz (see
#40) and New Orleans’s Rabbi Uri Topolosky, who lost his temple in
Hurricane Katrina and will be rededicating a new one this coming
summer. (2011: #44)
44. Steven Greenberg (Modern Orthodox)
A senior teaching fellow at CLAL and a founder and co-director of the
new group, Eshel, which aims to expand the welcome for GLBT Jews in
Orthodox communities, Greenberg is considered the first openly gay
Orthodox rabbi and is often asked to talk about his landmark book,
Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition.
Last fall Greenberg performed what was considered the first gay
marriage by an openly gay Orthodox rabbi in Washington, D.C. “I did
not conduct a ‘gay Orthodox wedding,’” he wrote in The Jewish Week. “I
officiated at a ceremony that celebrated the decision of two men to
commit to each other in love and to do so in binding fashion.” (2011:
#50)
By Sofia Rasmussen
In May 2010, Haaretz reported that higher education flourished in Israel during the first decade of the 2000s. In 2008, roughly 3 in 10 Israelis held a college degree, which was up nearly 40 percent from 1995. As enrollment and graduation has increased, the number of doctorate programs in the country has remained relatively low, even despite the recent advent of a handful of accredited online PhD programs. However, many of these existing traditional programs are among the most revered in the world.
The recent academic interest among Israelis can be linked to other advancements Israel achieved in the first decade of the second millennium. In 2010, roughly 91 percent of households had Internet access; 15 years earlier, only 27 percent of Israelis owned a personal computer. Cell phone ownership also spiked, peaking at 2.1 phones per household in 2008. As Israel modernized and its citizens became more tech-savvy, the country’s colleges witnessed a dramatic influx of post-graduate applicants.
There are currently eight universities in Israel recognized by the Council for Higher Education of Israel. There are also several colleges, but only universities can confer doctorate degrees to their students. The council, which operates much like the U.S. accreditation system, has the power to recognize institutions and award degrees, while a board of governors regulates each university.
The country’s second largest university, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, enrolls 2,700 doctoral students every year. Though the school’s Clinical Doctor of Pharmacy was ranked as the best Ph.D. program in Israel by University Directory Worldwide, HUJI doctorate students can also earn degrees in law, medicine, veterinary medicine, bioengineering, philosophy and education, among other subjects. In April 2011, HUJI collaborated with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University to create a Ph.D. philosophy program in environmental life sciences.
Another Israeli campus full of doctorate students is Bar-llan University, which is located in Ramat-Gan, a populous Tel Aviv suburb. Eight Ph.D. programs—including law, humanities, engineering, Jewish studies and exact sciences—are available, as well as a M.D. at the Faculty of Medicine. In addition, five interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs are offered to Bar-llan students: hermeneutics and culture studies; brain sciences; gender studies; conflict management and negotiation studies; and science, technology and society.
However, critics note that many Israeli schools have failed to adopt doctoral programs, including the country’s largest institution, Open University of Israel in Ra’anana. Though nearly 40,000 students attend the university every year, no doctoral programs are offered—in fact, even master’s programs are sparse. This inaction has left the country with a limited number of domestic doctoral programs—and as a result, many Ph.D. hopefuls opt to earn their degrees abroad. Another common criticism of Israeli university graduate programs is an inherently lax set of standards. For example, the council fined Bar-llan University last year for admitting too many students without Bachelor’s degrees into Master’s and doctorate programs.
As Israeli society continues to catch up with the developed world, these flaws in the country’s university doctorate system will presumably be corrected. Now more than ever, citizens of Israel are showing a desire to achieve academic success. This development bodes very well for a nation long touted for its progressive ways.
Jewish Theological Seminary professor Alan Mittleman wrote in First Things in 2003:
There is a pamphlet making its way, via the Internet, through the Modern Orthodox stream of the American Jewish community. Written by Gil Perl and Yaakov Weinstein, graduate students at Harvard and MIT respectively, the pamphlet presents itself as “A Parent’s Guide to Orthodox Assimilation on University Campuses” and warns Jewish parents of the moral and spiritual corruption that awaits their children should they send them to elite secular universities.
…. Modern Orthodoxy for too long has relied on sociology—familism, solidarity, youth groups, institutional loyalties—instead of intellectually sophisticated apologetics. It has written off the bolder elements of its own Hirschian legacy, let alone any ongoing engagement with modern philosophy, in favor of an increasingly otherworldly fundamentalism. Its synagogues have jettisoned the hoary Hertz Pentateuch, which, to be sure, was florid in its Victorian prose but also honest in its confrontation with modern scholarship, in favor of the rigidly fundamentalist Art Scroll translation. Likewise, Modern Orthodoxy’s immense success in building up a socially vibrant culture in the American suburbs has distracted it from the requisite intellectual task of providing depth and justification for its way of life.
I asked history professor Marc B. Shapiro for his opinion. He replied:
I think it obviously depends on the children. But I attended Brandeis for three years and worked there as the Orthodox chaplain for three years and in all that time I only saw two people who gave up religion on campus. Both were baalei teshuvah (one was semi-Lubavitch) for whom observance wasn’t a long term identity. On the other hand, I saw many people become baalei teshuvah. So to repeat, in my seven years on a secular college campus I did not see one long term Orthodox student give up observance (not one!). My experience is the exact opposite of the pamphlet, in that the secular university was not at all a threat to observance..
What you have a lot of, and this is often confused by the opponents of secular universities, is that there are plenty of people there who grew up Orthodox and are now no longer so. But what I saw is that these people were not observant from day one. In other words, already in high school they had lost interest, and now, for the first time, they were on their own and had no interest in coming to shul. From their first weekend on campus they had given up Shabbat. From the first day at college they took off the kippah. So it is not that the campus turned them irreligious, but for the first time they have the ability to make their own choices, away from their parents, and they chose to give up observance (and will come back later in life). The only time I ever saw these students was on parents weekend, when they came to shul with their parents.
So in general, I don’t think parents need to worry about sending their kids to a secular university if there is a strong Orthodox community there and the child is committed to observance. But again, every child is different. For some kids, sending them to YU will push them “off the derech” (to use an expression that I never heard growing up)..
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PDT on the rabbi’s cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47).
* In the sacrificial system, if you didn’t have enough money for a pigeon, you could bring grain, but you’re not off the hook entirely if you’re poor.
* Should Orthodox parents worry about sending their kids to a secular university? Can Orthodox Judaism stand up to that challenge?
* Are we about to enter the era of Moshiach? From Chabad.org: “Finally, our sages describe the whole of human history as a seven-millennia week, consisting of 6,000 years of human labor in developing G-d’s world and a seventh millennium that is wholly Shabbat and rest, for life everlasting — the era of Moshiach.”
* I’ve often played with strange fire and I’m jolly grateful I haven’t been consumed. From Chabad.org: “A central event in the Parshah of Shemini is the death of Aaron’s two elder sons, Nadav and Avihu, who “offered a strange fire before G‑d, which He had not commanded”—the result being that “a fire went out from G-d and consumed them, and they died before G‑d.””
* The Torah reminds us not to let important moments pass by unnoticed.
* Is it important to have a beautiful synagogue? Why should all beauty be secular? God had beauty and music in the ancient temple. Men with deformities can’t serve as priests.
* The high priest is commanded to wear linen and wool, but only he. In this sacred garment, it is ok. For the rest of Jews, this is forbidden.
Joe emails: To me, daf yomi is a necessary semi-good, semi-evil. There is this belief that knowledge of the entire Talmud is part of being a torah jew. I would begrudgingly concede that it is a neat thing to have read the 2500 or so folios of the Talmud, but it is something like reading ally 2700 pages on obamacare, it may just be time better spent.
Talmud has become increasingly a study of topics not entirely applicable to modern life. I do not say “irrelevant”, the Talmud and its commentary is most relevant to developing a mind and spirit that a jew needs. However, the disputes in the Talmud that related to very much he said/he said are becoming antiquated in the face of modern technology. Take the very first case in Bava Metzia in which two claimants claim they both purchased the same item, but the seller does not know who was the purchaser that the seller sold to.
Today, this argument would be resolved in almost every case by reference to a credit card receipt, email, fax, phone call, recording, or other outside nonbiased confirmation of the parties’ claims. That is not to say that understanding the Talmud’s discussion of this point is irrelevant, no, the first page of Bava Metzia would likely take days (and this is short shrift) of analysis to comprehend. But to just learn that the claim is resolved by splitting the item is no analysis at all, it is almost child’s play it is that simple. But it is only that simple as a finished product, it is the harmonization of several different disputes that is the key to delivering a simple solution that is still applicable in a case where there is no evidence to support either purchaser’s claim.
Talmud is like chess in this regard. Speed or blitz chess is fun and very popular among young players. They like racing through positions, effecting tactics, and finishing the thing off. Daf yomi is like that, it is a fascinating and quick trip through the Talmud with and end in sight of a remarkable accomplishment.
But Daf yomi does not make you a better student of the blueprint, just as someone who is superb at blitz chess is usually not a master at classical chess.
In my view, the hour daily spent learning daf yomi would be better spent learning the Talmud in depth. However, that is probably not possible. The study of Talmud in depth is enervating and cannot be accomplished in one hour blocks. To prepare for a one hour in depth Talmud lesson probably requires at least two hours (more like three) of preparation. No one has that kind of time anymore, so we are left with Daf Yomi.
It is a worthwhile task, but maybe when one has time on the weekend to devote 3-4 hours, he should take on a tractate and devote a 3 years span to it (150 weeks should be enough to cover 60-75 pages). Maybe Daf yomi is just for the weekdays, but should not supplant and replace in depth Talmud study.
In the Spring of 1999, Dennis Prager gave a series of four lectures on male sexuality at the University of Judaism. Here are some highlights:
I talked to other guys and I realized I was in the normal range of perversion…
Jean Calvin was astonished to not find an explicit reference to fornication (sex between the unmarried) among the sexual prohibitions of the Hebrew Bible.
The area of greatest divergence between Christianity and Judaism, aside from theology, is in sex. Fornication is mentioned repeatedly as a sin in the New Testament. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament.In attitudes towards sex, we live in a Christian country. The dean of the Harvard Divinity School, on his computer was found pornographic images. It was so terrible that it was assumed he would have to resign. I suspect that if he were at Hebrew University, the Harvard of Israel, in a similar capacity, he would not have to resign. People would’ve said, it’s none of our business.
In Israel, which is permeated more by Judaism than the United States, prostitution is largely legal. In the United States, it is not…
There are times when a woman would have to say no. There are things that a woman has a right to say, ‘Honey, I love you but that is not something I can engage in.’ On the other hand, it depends on what it is. A woman has a perfect right to say, ‘I don’t want to be urinated on.’ If that’s his thing. If it’s her thing too, then it’s beshert. They have met their divine partner.
If she says, ‘Fellatio just grosses me out,’ that’s a problem. It should not gross you out to have oral sex…
I have read almost nothing intelligent on this subject [pornography]. It is so emotionally charged.
…Playboy is pornography. I subscribe. My father subscribed… Is it softer than Juggs? Yes!
The levels [of pornography] are fascinating to understand the power and meaning of sex. One level was pubic hair. Pubic hair was a major moment when Playboy began to allow pubic hair. Female genitalia is the dividing point between hard and soft porn. And pubic hair is not genitalia…
What is our aim with regard to men? Do we want to produce a man who doesn’t lust except after his wife? That’s the aim of traditional religion. That’s the aim of women… I don’t want to create men who only lust for their wife. That’s a saintly ideal I don’t hold for the real world. In Heaven, that’s the way men are. I’d like to create a man who leads an upright life, an honorable man, who’s responsible, good and faithful to his wife and to his family, and treats women as befits the treatment of fellow human beings made in God’s image…
I should dedicate this course to my father. He did a rare thing. He juggled a religious life, he’s been Orthodox his whole life, and subscribed to Playboy. I learned as a child that the two are not mutually exclusive — being decent, upright, monogamous and being lustful.
When it came to masturbation, my father said to me when I was nearing puberty, ‘Dennis, I don’t know if you’re masturbating. I don’t want to embarrass you. Let me just tell you, in my view it is morally equivalent to urinating.’ That was the end of the discussion. We never discussed the issue again.
I carried on this venerated Prager tradition of taking this attitude when I became a camp counselor at an Orthodox day camp. One summer I was the counselor to 13-year old boys, who were monsters. The first night of camp, I would give them a birds and bees talk. All of these kids went to yeshivas. I told them what I thought of masturbation. The effects were very powerful. I don’t mean the beds all started shaking.
The boys would come over to me, not knowing any other boy had, and told me how fraught with guilt they were because their rabbis had told them that this is a grievous sin. One Jewish text compares it to murder as though one could kill sperm.
One boy had the added burden of being the child of Holocaust survivors. He was unbelievably wracked with guilt and he did it frequently.
He wrote to me constantly. I was a junior that year and I went to England. He wrote to me about his struggles with this issue. He couldn’t stop writing to me about this. There was somebody he could talk to. The bigger sin in my book was what the rabbis told them, not what the boys did. I couldn’t understand who was hurt by the masturbation. Who’s the victim?
…I’m not going to make the case for pornography. We’re not a great world for having all these magazines on the newsstand. We’re also not a terrible world. There’s nobody in any religion who’d rather live in any of the societies that ban pornography than to live in this society. There’s a direct correlation between the banning of pornography and other human freedoms. You can’t pick and choose the freedoms you want to allow.
In one lecture in the series, Dennis read a list of about 40 different fetishes from a porn site. He defined “scat.”
Growing up a Seventh-Day Adventist, I heard far more about what an evil place the outside world is than I have as a convert to Judaism. At the same time, there was no security in my Adventist upbringing. There were no guards at church. People were never frisked for weapons. There were no physical threats to Adventist safety.
So then I convert to Judaism and almost every time I go to shul on the Sabbath, there are guards. When I go to Jewish events, people are often forced to go through metal detectors.
I’ve never experience anti-Semitism. It’s been hard for me to internalize awareness of it. I read about threats to Jews but I’ve never had any to me.
I know first-hand about the superiority of Jewish life to the alternatives. Jews are smarter, better educated, more affluent, more charitable with one another than the people around them. It’s always been this way. When we’re not getting persecuted for being Jewish, it is a great way to live.
Jewish communities have developed exceptionally sophisticated systems of protecting themselves – in many places they have had little choice. Sometimes this is with aid and advice from Israel; most often they work very closely with the state security services themselves – another example of successful (while regrettable ) Jewish integration into mainstream society.
In Britain, for instance, the Community Security Trust enjoys an immensely cooperative relationship with the police and intelligence services, and because of basic trust in the security system, anti-Semitic attacks are likely much more often reported than attacks against other ethnic minorities who have less faith in the state’s interests in protecting them.
But Jews also like to do it for themselves, having experienced not infrequent examples throughout history where supposedly friendly societies have failed to look out for their interests.
Sam Harris is one of the famous atheists endlessly crusading about how stupid theistic belief is.
I met him at a lecture on Islam a few years ago. We talked for a few minutes and I was impressed by him. Obviously I am not an atheist, but I could see that his thinking was clear. He believed in right and wrong and he didn’t call evil good or good evil.
Consider the position of Israel, which is so regularly vilified by the Left. As a secularist and a nonbeliever–and as a Jew–I find the idea of a Jewish state obnoxious. But if ever a state organized around a religion was justified, it is the Jewish state of Israel, given the world’s propensity for genocidal anti-Semitism. And if ever criticism of a religious state was unjustified, it is the criticism of Israel that ceaselessly flows from every corner of the Muslim world, given the genocidal aspirations so many Muslims freely confess regarding the Jews. Those who see moral parity between the two sides of Israeli-Palestinian conflict are ignoring rather obvious differences in intent.
I found this video brutal. For a little while, it was funny. Then it became depressing. But it’s an accurate look at love in the secular world.
I like Ilana Angel’s new photo. The old one kept me from reading her posts. This new one is super-cute. The old one was cheesy.
Ilana Angel writes: I was recently sent this video and thought it was funny, but when I got to the last line, it suddenly became perfection. If you have spent any time on JDate you quickly see that it is sex driven. I imagine Ashley Madison may be the only other dating site that has more sex drive than JDate.
Are Jews super sexual? If you look at 10 random profiles on JDate you will be surprised by how many reference sex. They openly discuss that they want it, are looking for it, and in some cases demand it. I once went out with a man who said he needs sex on a first date to continue.
This video is a funny, graphic, honest and brilliant look at online dating. It’s comedy to be sure, but it comes from a place of truth and that is always the source of great comedy. This type of thing happens in real life! The negotiations for sex when dating are a well choreographed dance.
I’ve never gone into negotiations quite like this, but I get it, appreciate it, marvel at it, and laugh out loud at it. Again, if you are easily offended by sexually explicit content, or are sensitive to graphic language, then please don’t watch it. If you can handle the truth, then take a look.
