I looked at Torah Talks despite my busy schedule lately. I thought I might venture a word about the Kabbalah.
Although Rav Berg and the Kabbalah Center in LaLa Land is popular, neither has a good reputation among people who are interested in the Kabbalah generally. They are seen more or less as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker were in the Christian world.
It might interest you to know that the Kabbalah has long since escaped being exclusively an interest of the Jewish faith. It began to be Christianized in the 14th or 15th century, and in the Christian take on Kabbalah Christ is often associated with Tiferet. There is also an interest in the esoteric world, and in fact during a period in the 1900s when Kabbalah had virtually disappeared, it was kept alive primarily by the interest of British estoericists. One way to know which version of the Kabbalah you are reading is that generally the Hebrew edition is spelled with a K, the Christian with a C, and the esoteric as a Q. To some extent these are three different traditions all stemming from the same origin, but have developed in somewhat different directions. My view, as someone who has found the study of theosophical systems to be interesting, is that ultimately the Kabbalah is the Kabbalah, and insight can come to one from any of these sources.
Another point is that the Kabbalah does not consider itself to be a challenger to any religion. It’s place relative to different religions may be somewhat as yoga is seen relative to various religions. You can be a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Jain, a Sikh, a Christian, or a Jew and still practice yoga. The Kabbalah is often seen from a similar point of view. Naturally, some Orthodox Jews who regard themselves as Kabbalists would disagree with my explanation. They believe that one must be steeped in Torah for a very long time before one can study Kabbalah. In the old days, women were not allowed to study the subject.
Incidentally, I do not consider myself to be an expert, but I do know a little something about the subject.
Luke, one of the reoccurring themes in your discussions about your own aspirations is the desire to be ingratiated and accepted by some group. I’m not sure if you mean this to exclusively be Jewish groups, or you mean a broader focus. I think one of the best insights you’ve had is the idea that you get your biggest acceptance from idiosyncratic writers who don’t care very much about the herd instinct and social upward mobility of groups anyway. On the one hand, things you have said suggest that you would very much like to find yourself with this acceptance. However, one of the most interesting things about you is your assertion of your independence and a desire to prevail as a unique personality in the face of collectivism that demands the suppression of your true nature.
My view is that one part of religion is just as collectivist and committed to conformity as any other collectivist group. My feeling is that this ultimately grows out of the herd or pack instinct and is a part of religion that sometimes does as much to negate spirituality as it does to serve it. People I know who have achieved ingratiation into some affection group often wonder why they bothered once they get there. Anyway, if you accept who you are, I don’t think it matters a great deal whether everyone else accepts you or not. Your soul brothers are those idiosyncratic writers you talked about, and some people are just never going to get over your background as a reporter on the porn industry.
You know, one of the things that the Kabbalah says is that people with a checkered background who have found G-d are frequently more useful and more beloved by G-d than someone who has never strayed. In the Kabbalah the virtue of a person is entirely based on how related to G-d they are. Not what some might perceive as misbehavior in their past.
With all of the talk about sex I thought I would say that in my opinion celibacy always has the tendency to focus people’s attention on sexuality where otherwise the attention might be more moderate. Whether we’re talking about priests in the Roman Catholic Church or celibacy and chastity in Judaism, it’s always about gilding the fig leaf. The Jews that I know who are single are running around like horny devils all the time with sex seldom straying from their minds. Whereas in Protestant circles the idea as a generalization (obviously, there are differences, as you know) is that you shouldn’t have sex before marriage, but everybody fully understands that there is going to be some fooling around, especially in serious relationships where marriage is at least possible. And even after marriage, sex doesn’t come up unless a couple wants to bring some particular problem to the pastor. At least in my experience this more moderate approach to sexuality seems to work the best. To insist on celibacy is simply to spotlight it and insist that everyone become preoccupied with sexuality to the exclusion of other subjects they could more profitably be spending their time on.
Joe emails: The new Jewish Journal is so out of touch it is actually devilishly funny. The cover is devoted to the AJC’s and other’s efforts to build bridges with the Latino community. No doubt the jewish community has not learned its lesson from the no good deed goes unpunished experience of basically giving blood and benjamins for the black civil rights effort, to be repaid by Farrakhan, Sharpton, and generations of Jacksons.
Will the effort to be with the Latinos do any better? I do not know, but I learned something valuable in high school. If people do not want you as your friend, do not try too hard. I went to a party with some people who I thought were the cool group. They were cool, and when it came time to party, I sat alone. Then, when I hung out with the unwashed, i was welcome.
Latinos are not looking to make friends with the Jews. They are somewhere between Italians (who assimilated and who made friends with the jews) and blacks (who did not and did not) politically. Latinos vote Republican, but the leadership is more chip on the shoulder racial than the laity, and the reliance on the spanish language does not bode well for the political assimilation of the Latino community. Look, at some point latinos are going to want what the Democrats have given the Blacks, a president. In the case of the Blacks, there was no room in that mission for the Jews or Israel. I do not expect Latinos to leave room in their agenda for the support of israel.
What the jewish journal (and rob eshman’s attack on glenn beck) purposefully miss is that the state of israel relies on three things for its support in international affairs, first, american evangelical right wing, second, fox news, and third, the federated states of Micronesia and their perfect pro-israel record in the UN.
Glenn beck’s “anti-semitism” that Rob finds fault with is simply not the type of anti-semitism to worry about – and it does not affect Beck’s reflexive pro israel stand. He is against Soros and does use the imagery of a man behind the curtain as is found in the protocols of the elders of zion. There is one problem, Soros, who is biologically jewish, is psychotically anti-jewish. He hates israel. I applaud beck going after him.
As for Beck’s comments comparing faithless Reform jewish leaders to the treachery of islam, it is a reasonable claim – reform judaism is primarily political, with any element of faith last. So too with Islam. The only difference is that reform jewish leader’s politics consist of requesting confiscatory levels of taxes to redistribute income to the poor as “tikkun olam”, while islam’s political goals call for the demolition of jewish buses to fertilize the land with jewish blood. As much as i believe reform judaism is a corrupt organization that is committed to the destruction of judaism, i have not seen any attendees of stephen s. wise engage in jihad except where there is a sale at neiman marcus. Beck apologized.
The American Jewish Committee should spend less time in the barrio and more time in the bible belt. The evangelicals want to have a coalition with us, we are synergistic. I am not saying to leave the Latinos alone – i think it is a smart bet, but you hedge your bets by spreading your money on the whole field of horses. Well, except for the black community. Any attempt, after the obama administration, of working together in support of israel is about as pointless as nailing jello to a tree.
Thursday, March 10, 2011 Radio Show
20110310 – 01 Shame Liberal Media
Prager H1: The liberal media bias is in full display in Wisconsin. Can you imagine how the media would depict Tea Party Republicans rushing mob-like into a state capitol, taking over the building, demanding the governor change his policies? … A private K-12 school in Los Angeles urges parents and students to guard against heterosexism…
Thursday, March 10, 2011 Radio Show
20110310 – 02 Shame Columbia
Prager H2: 104-year-old Jacques Barzun, legendary historian, takes Dennis’s alma mater to task for blocking ROTC from the campus… Dennis talks to Brent Bozell, founder and President of The Media Research Center, home to one of our favorite sites, newsbusters.org. They discuss the lack of coverage of what should have been a major story – the murder of American servicemen in Germany by a Muslim terrorist eight days ago.
Thursday, March 10, 2011 Radio Show
20110310 – 03 Shame WI Democrats
Prager H3: Dennis talks to Charlie Sykes, popular talk show host on WTMJ Radio Milwaukee about the latest developments in Wisconsin. Democrats call on their supporters to mob the state capitol, holding up the state’s business for hours. Can you imagine if the Tea Party had done such a thing? Think the media would have been quiet about it?.. Democrats reactions to Congressional hearings about the threat of home grown Muslim terror has bordered on the hysterical. Dennis explains why.
Since the fall of communism in Europe, political Islam (think Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, Al Qaeda) has emerged as the biggest threat to human rights around the world.
On his radio show Wednesday, Dennis Prager said: “Those who want an Islamic government… We have the moral duty to judge an Islamic government the way we’d change a democratic government or a communist government or a fascist government. Then it is not just in the realm of religious faith. Once you want to establish a state, a government with many laws, then I have to judge you.”
In which countries — Dennis Prager asks — has Islam increased in political power in the modern age and personal liberty grown with it? I can not think of one example.
When countries are governed by Sharia (such as Afghanistan under the Taliban), they become evil.
When countries are governed by religious law, they become evil.
I think that if Israel became governed by Torah it too would be evil.
When a country receives a substantial inflow of Muslim immigrants, does liberty increase in that country? Think about Holland, for example.
When was the last time you heard a suicide bomber or a hijacker was a Catholic, Jew or Buddhist?
….however much violent terror reflects a distortion of the tenets of Islam, it is not only practiced by adherents of the religion but practiced in its name.
To ignore the religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb to politically correct delusion. To ignore the homegrown religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb even further.
As Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified last month before the House Committee on Homeland Security, “One of the most striking elements of today’s threat picture is that plots to attack America increasingly involve American residents and citizens.”
Napolitano wasn’t referring to right-wing militias or lone-wolf crazies. She was talking about “terrorist groups inspired by al-Qaeda ideology.” And, she pointed out, “This threat of homegrown violent extremism fundamentally changes who is most often in the best position to spot terrorist activity, investigate and respond.”
Or consider Holder himself, who told ABC’s Pierre Thomas in December that he is kept up at night worrying about homegrown terrorists. “The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens – raised here, born here, and who, for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” Holder said.
It is hard to imagine a stronger case for the topic of King’s hearings before the Homeland Security Committee.
…Yes, there are other sources of terrorism. Radical Islam is the biggest and most dangerous. And, yes, King is a flawed questioner. But the question he poses is an appropriate – and important – one.
By contrast with this moral clarity, please read this essay by Orthodox rabbi Yosef Kanefsky and Imam Jihad Turk:
We are both alarmed and disturbed by the fact that the American-Muslim community is now under official investigation, as House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has opened hearings to investigate “the Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”
The clerics writes: “Rep. King’s investigation brings with it great potential to plunge the entire Muslim-American community into the dark shadow of suspicion.”
It’s not the Peter King hearing that has plunged the Muslim-American community into “the dark shadow of suspicion.” It’s all the Muslim-Americans who are trying to murder innocent people without any pushback from their own Muslim-American community. When was the last time you saw Muslims marching to protest Islamic terror?
Almost all terrorism and hijackings since the 1970s have been done by Muslims.
If you hear that a cartoonist has had to go into hiding because of death threats, who do you think made those death threats? Buddhists? Bhai? Jews? Christians? Or Muslims?
The clerics write: “…the news story that Homeland Security is formally investigating the entirety of the Muslim-American community can only serve to reinforce people’s prejudices and fears.”
What news story? There’s no link or footnote of a particular news story that alleges what Kanefsky and Turk allege. What investigation? There is no Homeland Security investigation of the entirety of the Muslim-American community. Peter King does not run the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He only chairs a House panel on Homeland Security. He does not have the power to direct the department. The Obama administration does that.
The clerics write: “Muslim Americans are routinely the objects of suspicion and bias. Increasingly, Islamic women who cover their hair experience verbal harassment. Young people are bullied, are called “terrorist” and other hurtful names. Islamaphobia is an undeniable feature of American life. (Witness, for example the success of the author/lecturer Brigitte Gabriel, whose Islamaphobic message is epitomized in the title of her book “Because They Hate”.)”
I doubt these clerics even read Brigitte Gabriel‘s book which is clearly about those parts of the Islamic world that do hate non-Muslims and want to murder and subjugate them.
Hate crime statistic show that far more Jews are the objects of hate crimes than Muslims.
Hate crimes directed against Muslims remain relatively rare, notwithstanding the notoriety gained by incidents such as recent vandalism at the Madera Islamic Center.
Jews, lesbians, gay men and Caucasians, among others, are all more frequently the target of hate crimes, FBI records show. Reported anti-Muslim crimes have declined over recent years, though they still exceed what occurred prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Islamaphobia is an undeniable feature of American life? These clerics provide no statistic to back up their libel of the United States, a beautiful country that extends freedom and liberty to people of all religions and races, even to those who support destroying democracy and replacing it with Sharia law (at least a third of Muslims in the Western world according to numerous surveys).
The greatest moral threat in the world today is that part of the Islamic world that will murder non-Muslims to violently impose Sharia. Yes, this is a minority of Muslims, perhaps only the 10% who support folks such as Osama Bin Laden, but the other 90% of Muslims don’t count for much in this regard because they do so little to fight the jihadis in their midst. The majority of Germans did not vote for the Nazis in 1932 but they acquiesced to the Nazis taking power and starting a world war. The majority of Russians did not support Lenin in 1917 but they allowed his tiny group of Bolsheviks to take over the country and to support police states that murdered tens of millions of innocent people (with Russian support, Mao in China murdered about 75 million of his citizens).
The clerics Kanefsky and Turk write: “It is also easy to imagine that this calling out of the entire Islamic community for investigation will serve to reinforce the impression that young American Muslims already have, that they are perceived as unwelcome strangers here. This belief can have the effect of rendering them more vulnerable to the very extremist rhetoric that Rep. King is investigating, the rhetoric from which their parents and teachers are trying to immunize them.”
So Peter King’s hearings will likely make more American-Muslims terrorists? If such Muslims can be so easily led to terror, then what does that say about their community? On the basis of what the clerics write, we should have a dozen more such hearings because the threat is so huge.
I don’t agree with the clerics. I don’t think Muslims are so weak and stupid as to be led into terror by a congressman’s hearings on radical Islam in America.
On the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” Thursday, New York Times liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof said: “I am sure that at mosques around this country, especially in the more radical mosques, that this is going to be seen as one more evidence that people are picking on us.”
Dennis Prager: “We might upset radical mosques? The whole point is to identify radical mosques because they are producing radical Muslims who might kill us. We might get radical Muslims angry by holding hearings on radical Muslims?”
The clerics Kanefsky and Turk write: “Although Muslim and Jewish histories differ in many ways, it is nonetheless meaningful to invoke the experience of Jews as a community that has suffered the catastrophic consequences of collective suspicion, marginalization, and distrust. Jews have a unique perspective on being thrust into the general category of “mistrusted other” and bear a responsibility to at the very least refrain from jumping on the bandwagon when another community is being thus demonized.”
Are Muslims being demonized? As almost all terrorists since the 1970s have been Muslims, how can you say that Muslims are being demonized? Right now most of the Arab-Islamic world is bent on the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel and the genocide of millions of Israelis. This is the real evil in the world today, not these hearings by Peter King.
On his radio show Monday, Dennis Prager talked about the end of multi-culturalism. “Voters are starting to realize that you have to have shared values. The race of immigrants does not matter. It is the values of immigrants that matters.”
On Tuesday, Dennis said: “People don’t realize that you can lose your freedom. The biggest difference between the conservative and the liberal, the left and the right, is that the right understands how fragile goodness is. That is why the left is so at peace with profoundly transforming America and we’re not. It’s too dangerous.”
In recent days, critics in this section have pounded Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) for holding hearings to examine radicalization in the American Muslim community. They’ve accused him of “providing fuel for bigots” and “stoking irrational fears.” Really? It is hardly irrational for the chairman House Committee on Homeland Security to examine radicalization in the American Muslim community when top leaders of all three al-Qaeda networks that now threaten the homeland today have roots in this community.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen born in Las Cruces, New Mexico…
Al-Shabab/al-Qaeda in East Africa. In the summer of 2008, the Somali terror group al-Shabab formally merged with al-Qaeda, and last year released a video showing its fighters chanting “Here we are O’ Osama. We are your soldiers O’ Osama” and pledging to carry out jihad for him across the world. The group’s military commander is an American citizen, Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki (“the American). Hammami grew up in Daphne, Ala., just outside of Mobile, and was raised by a Syrian Muslim father and a Southern Baptist mother…
Al-Qaeda Central. The current operational commander of al-Qaeda — the position held by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when he planned the Sept. 11 attacks — is an American citizen, Adnan Shukrijumah.According to the New York Times, Shukrijuma is a “Saudi-born naturalized American… [who] spent part of his youth in Brooklyn, went to college in Florida and has long been on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted list.”CNN reported that he is “the eldest son of a Saudi Imam [who] came to America as a young child. They settled in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached at a mosque. They lived at a nearby house before moving to Florida in the mid-’90s. His father, who is now dead, opened a small mosque near Fort Lauderdale.”
Bottom line: When three top leaders of the three most virulent al-Qaeda networks are American citizens, it is ridiculous to suggest that the chairman of the House committee responsible for homeland security is out of line to investigate the subject of radicalization in the American Muslim community. Rep. King is not “stoking irrational fears” or “providing fuel for bigots.” He is doing his job.
WASHINGTON (ABP) — A Baptist advocate for religious liberty and the separation of church and state said March 8 that House committee hearings scheduled later this week on radical Islam should be broadened to other faiths.
“The implied suggestion that terrorist threats to the American people result from one religious group is an insult to the millions of peaceful Muslim American citizens,” Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said in a telephone press conference.
Walker joined experts in law enforcement, civil rights and Muslim advocacy to criticize Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, for a hearing scheduled March 10 titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”
Walker, an attorney who is also an ordained Baptist minister, said he knows a little about how it feels to be lumped with religious extremists. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a small independent Baptist congregation’s right to hold virulently anti-gay pickets near military funerals, Walker said he had to remind the media and friends that Baptists like Martin Luther King, Peter Gomes and Jimmy Carter were more representative of the denomination than Pastor Fred Phelps and mostly family members that comprise the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan.
Walker said the hearing’s narrow focus “will send a further message that Muslims present a greater threat of terrorism than other religions.”
“It would imply that the potential for terrorism from outside of Islam is not significant enough to merit a hearing,” he said. “Highlighting only one potential so-called breeding ground for terrorism ignores the reality that other sources of terrorism exist.”
“We recognize that religion is sometimes the impetus for acts of terrorism,” Walker said. “History is replete with examples of the atrocities that human beings have perpetrated in the name of their particular faith, be it Islam, Christianity or a host of others.”
But Walker said a general equating of terrorism with Islam is “both dangerous and disingenuous.”
“It is a ploy that plays on widespread misunderstanding of Islam, and it encourages the American people to view extremist outliers in Islam as representative of the entire faith,” he said.
He said the hearing would “set a troubling precedent that could lead to a diminution of everyone’s religious liberty.”
One reads and hears with increasing disbelief and anger that we don’t know the motive or motives of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who fired over 100 shots at his fellow American soldiers in order to murder and maim as many as possible. Hasan ended up allegedly murdering 13 people, but government and Army spokesmen and the mainstream media claim they just can’t figure out why he did this. They are, however, certain that it was not an act of terrorism.
Sunday’s New York Times “Week in Review” article about Nidal Hasan was titled “When Soldiers Snap.” The gist of the article was that Maj. Hasan had snapped — even though he had never been in combat. He snapped in advance. Just two sentences in the article were devoted to the possibility that his motives were in any way relatable to his Muslim faith.
As Chris Matthews put it, “it’s unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting.” To Matthews, not only was it unclear if Hasan’s Islamic faith was “the” factor, it was unclear if it was even “a” factor.
Likewise, on NPR, Tom Gjelten offered the novel explanation that Hasan, who has never been in combat, may have suffered from “pre-traumatic stress disorder” because he anticipated having traumatic distress. “Was he an example,” Gjelten seriously asked, “of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?”
And on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera, said, “I don’t know what motivates him … as far as I know … he’s a sociopath; he’s a criminal. He could have had a toothache and gone off because of that.”
The deaths and maiming at Fort Hood are heartbreaking and angering. But ultimately far more injurious to America than the act of evil that caused those deaths and injuries is the massive self-deception American society engages in out of fear of being called bigoted, racist or “Islamaphobic.”
Any American who is not prepared to lie to himself has reason to believe that Hasan’s religious views were prominent, if not exclusive, factors for why he slaughtered fellow American soldiers. The motives appear as clear as any could be.
Chuck Medley, Fort Hood’s director of Emergency Services, told Reuters that Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” — the Arabic incantation of “Allah is the greatest” yelled by Islamic terrorists before they slaughter people — just before the shooting,
Dr. Val Finnell told The Associated Press that he and other classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master’s program with Hasan at the Uniformed Services University had complained about his comments, including that the war on terror was “a war against Islam.”
Another classmate told the AP that he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the university. He also wrote to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an “intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology” in the ranks.
Other classmates who participated in a 2007-2008 master’s program at a military college said they, too, had complained to superiors about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s anti-American views, which included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution.
And ABC News now reports that Hasan had attempted to contact al-Qaida.
It is a given that the vast majority of American Muslims are loyal Americans. But that’s not the only given.
It is equally a given that a certain percentage of Muslims in and outside of the military are Islamists who want Americans dead and America Muslim.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011 Radio Show
20110309 – 01 The Children, the Children
Prager H1: President Obama won’t cut any funds for education. We have to invest in our children, he insists . How about leaving our children with unpayable debts and a near-worthless dollar?… Whoopi Goldberg, while making an oblique reference to Dennis, tells her “View” audience that she’s fine with a kinky sex college classes… NPR exposes its liberal bias.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011 Radio Show
20110309 – 02 Male/Female Hour: Lessons from Your GPS Device
Prager H2: Why do men always choose the female voice for their GPS device? There’s an important lesson to be learned from the answer to this question.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011 Radio Show
20110309 – 03 No No Fly Zone
Prager H3: China and Russia, those paragons of virtue, are blocking the idea of imposing no-fly zone on Kaddafi. Do these countries every support anything decent or a moral?… Every day new unintended consequences of the poorly written ObamaCare bill emerge… The father of a soldier killed this weekend in Afghanistan talks to Dennis… We are becoming the United Welfare States of America. Can we reverse this trend?
Dennis Prager writes: On Feb. 21, the 600 Northwestern University students enrolled in the popular Human Sexuality course taught by professor John Michael Bailey were told that if they wished to stay after class — it was clearly made optional — they would see a live demonstration of female ejaculation, the subject of that day’s class. A naked young woman (not a student) would demonstrate a “f—saw” and come to orgasm in front of the students. About 120 students stayed.
When word came out about this contribution to young people’s understanding of life, the university defended it. Its official spokesman, Al Cubbage, released this statement:
“Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines. The university supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.”
We will return to that statement in a moment.
But first, here are excerpts from the longer statement released by Bailey on March 1, after the story had begun to be national news:
“On the afternoon of February 21st Ken MB and colleagues arrived while I was finishing my lecture, on sexual arousal. I was talking about the female g-spot and the phenomenon of female ejaculation, both of which are scientifically controversial. I finished the lecture and invited the guests onstage. On the way, Ken asked me whether it would be ok if one of the women with him demonstrated female ejaculation using equipment they had brought with them. … My decision to say ‘yes’ reflected my inability to come up with a legitimate reason why students should not be able to watch such a demonstration. … The demonstration, which included a woman who enjoyed providing a sexually explicit demonstration using a machine, surely counts as kinky, and hence as relevant. … I did not wish, and I do not wish, to surrender to sex negativity and fear. …
“While I watched, I experienced some apprehension. None of this apprehension had to do with the possibility of harm to any observer, and none of it had to do with a lack of educational value. … Rather, I was worried that there could be repercussions that would threaten the valuable speaker series that I have built over the years. …
“Do I have any regrets? I certainly have no regrets concerning Northwestern students, who have demonstrated that they are open-minded grown ups rather than fragile children.”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
