First Asian-American To Head CA Supreme Court

I bet Asian-Americans are just ecstatic over this news. I bet they’re rioting in Chinatown and overturning cars and just going crazy with joy. Wow, one of their own will head the prestigious California Supreme Court.

Perhaps Asian-American kids will now have a role model. I wonder if they will start studying in school? Perhaps doing wuch work will no longer be regarded as “acting white” in Asian-American life.

It’s morning in America!

The Los Angeles Times reports: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated 3rd District Court of Appeal Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye as the next chief justice Wednesday morning, which would make her the first Asian American to lead the state’s judiciary and give the California Supreme Court a female majority for the first time in its history.

Cantil-Sakauye, 50, a Sacramento native who rose through the trial courts, served as deputy legislative secretary and deputy legal affairs secretary under former Gov. George Deukmejian. He plucked her from the Sacramento district attorney’s office and later appointed her to the Sacramento Municipal Court.

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Sex Under False Pretenses

Here’s a hilarious story from Israel: “A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape by deception after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew.”

Oy, what will the goyim think?

Oy, did I ever get things from women under false pretenses? Did I pretend to be Orthodox prior to completing my Orthodox conversion?

I don’t think I want to answer these questions.

Prior to 2009, most people in my life assumed I had already completed my Orthodox conversion because, for all intents and purposes, I lived as an Orthodox Jew.

Now, according to some rabbinic commentators such as the Meiri, I was already Jewish prior to my 2009 Orthodox conversion because I was committed to living by Jewish law and I had been immersed in a mikveh (in my 1993 Reform conversion).

I remember this one woman I’d been with was not happy when she learned that during our time together, I had not been converted by an Orthodox beit din. She had assumed that I had been because she’d met me in an Orthodox shul where I looked like one of the gang.

From Failed Messiah:

Bassy the Haredi Slayer posts: Sex under false pretenses can be rape in most localities.

In the LA area it is common to hear about arrest of people who had consensual sex with girls who were promised a role in a movie/production or something like that in exchange to sex.

Maybe rav Luke Ford can elaborate on it.

EFFIE POSTS: Are you pulling our leg, Bassy? Common to hear these stories but no arrests otherwise, most production in LA would come to a halt.

However, in LA men have been arrested for rape under false pretenses. The facts are more egregious. They usually involve a man posing as a shaman. The women are grief stricken over a fiancé or husband who has died and they never consent to have sex with the fake shaman.

ITCHIE POSTS: “I believe this was the correct ruling. Interestingly, there are halachic ramifications for this woman, such as she is henceforth not allowed to enter into a relationship with a Kohen.”

Jay posts: “If every man , or woman, who had sex under false pretenses was arrested- there’d be hardly anyone left on the street. What’s next? Imprisoning a woman for faking an orgasm? Imprisoning her for lying about loving a man? Convicting a man for lying about his profession or income?”

Chaim posts: “How serious a relationship could she have expected if they were having sex in some random building shortly after meeting?”

Post: Where:
In a 100% Christian village in the West Bank.

What Happened:
Mohammedan [Moslem] pogrom against this village.

When:
Recently

Why:
Christian man had sex with a Moslem women

I remember that Kach [Rav Kahane] handed out flyers telling Jewish women, visitors/tourists to to inspect the Tohodat Zehot [Identity Card] when they meet men.

In most of the Islamic world it is a crime for a Christian man to have sex with a Moslem woman.

Post: Man lies to get sex?
Yep. That’s world-shattering international news.

Justin posts on FB: “I once told a girl i was in med school and that i had a house on the water in Montauk just to get a piece of that ass. I also told a girl that i’m looking to settle down and be serious just for a piece of that pie. I’d be doing life in prison if the law worked that way. I should be in jail too!”

An Orthodox rabbi tells me: “A bit extreme, but what if he was Jewish and said he was single and turned out to be married – i think he should have gotten the same punishment.”

LUKE SAYS: I love this story for many reasons. I think it illuminates important issues while entertaining.

One. In the pick-up artist community, they say that most women have an anti-slut defense that kicks in if they ever have sex with a guy after knowing him for less than four hours. Such sex is fool’s mate because in all likelihood it will never happen again. If a woman quickly has sex with a guy upon meeting, she’ll berate herself for being a slut and regret the sex. She’ll look for ways to excuse it.

Two. Even when sex is engaged in casually, it can have serious repercussions. No matter how much we want to have sex as a sport, it will often get complicated. A man may just want a fling but often the woman will want to hold on to him and she’ll go psycho if he pulls away. She might start a blog and berate him for being a lousy lover. She might get him fired from his job and banned from his shul. Not that I know about any of this from first-hand experience.

Three. If you ever burn someone by getting something under false pretenses, people will often react badly. Sometimes they will pursue legal remedies. Other times they will go outside the law to ruin your life.

Thus, it is best to live your life on the straight and narrow. You’re less likely to end up as a laughing stock.

Four. No man would ever launch a frivolous complaint like this. Men are more likely, I think, to take responsibility for their actions.

Five. I don’t have much sympathy for either character in this story. You have quickie sex with a stranger. What do you expect?

I have the least empathy for the woman in this story. Filing a criminal complaint over this? Oy vey!

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Pedophilia and the Talmud

Jacob Stein writes: Considering this, how frequent are sexual relations between adult Orthodox Jewish men and little girls, with the blessings of the rabbis? Not very. I know of no Jewish bride in modern times who was under 17. In ancient times, my impression is that typically brides were 12 while the grooms were 18. In fact, the Talmud Tractate Kiddushin 41a states “It is prohibited for a father to betroth his daughter in marriage until she matures and declares that she wishes to marry the groom.” Tosafos however does qualify that by saying that in a situation of extreme poverty and economic uncertainty, as was the case for Jews in medieval France, a man may marry off his small daughter if he is afraid that later he will not have the financial means to do so and she will therefore remain a lifelong spinster.

In conclusion, based upon the available documentation, a sexual relationship between an adult man and a little girl, with the consent of the rabbis, seems to have been a rarity which was permitted in some unusual, emergency situations in medieval Europe. Today it is unimaginable.

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Waves Too Big For The Rabbi

Rabbi Hershel Rabbs Remer “can’t win. The 9 days finally finished, summer weather finally arrived, but the waves are too damn big for me to surf this afternoon. Today is 4-6 ft with occasional 7s. I’d get my Jewish butt kicked out there. I like 1-3. I lost so much neck and shoulder strength after the car crash, that I don’t have the power to paddle through all of those big waves to get to the breakers, and I’ll just get thrashed instead.”

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A Cool Thing I Did Before Becoming Religious

Winner of Miss Bikini World Australia Ema Masters is given a helping hand by Martin Carroll, Graeme Dobson, Ryan Abbott, John Schlimmer and Luke Ford.

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It Was So Hot In The Hood Last Week The Daily Pogrom Was Called Off

Manuel Rosado posts to Rabbs’ Facebook: So I’m sitting here listening to you and Luke and once again Luke just makes me LOL and wonder what your neighborhood is like? It was so hot the goyim weren’t engaging in pogroms? LOL The other day Luke was assuring us goyim you mean us no harm and now he’s relieved it’s so hot the daily pogrom has been called off. …LOL Man, who knew Malibu was like that?!

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Thank G-d For The PDA

Thanks to PDAs like the iPhone and the Blackberry, the pious Jew can now call up his required prayers any time he needs them. He can hold up his PDA and sway back and forth talking to HaShem from the depths of his heart and his technology.

I am not a pious Jew, but I am doubly blessed by this development. Not only can I find the prayers I need whenever I need them, more importantly, I can find the New York Times when I’m at minyan and instead of going out of my mind with boredom during my required prayers, I can sway back and forth calling out to G-d from the depths of my being while reading interesting articles about the world around me.

My Blackberry is truly a lifesaver.

I used to read books during minyan. Pious books (does Philip Roth count as pious), or at least Jewish-themed books, would get me through these dreaded minutes and hours of tedium. But this was rude of me. It disrupted the holiness of the minyan. It made me look checked out from the obligation to pray. It brought everyone down.

Now I can sway back and forth as vigorously as the most pious Jew but not go out of my mind because while it appears I am reciting my prayers from my PDA, I’m reading the Drudge Report.

Mahla posts: “Jews were pioneers in electronic prayers, were they not? With the fax service to put prayers in the Wall.”

Dave emails: “At the Tisha Bav reading of Lamentations at Bath Jacob, I saw several losers following the chanting on their PDAs. One guy was even sticking his iPhone in peoples’ faces to show them how “cool” he was for downloading Eicha. Imagine following such a stirring description of exile and destruction on a technobauble.”

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God Loves You!

Have you ever heard a Jew talk that way?

I have not. If we heard a Jew talk that way, we’d send him for psychological help, notes Dennis Prager.

So why don’t Jews talk that way?

The Torah has a lot about love in it. God loves Israel. We’re commanded to love God, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

I think I know why Jews don’t talk this way. Because Christians do.

(Mark Kirschbaum says Jews don’t talk this way because they are reluctant to talk for God. He’s right. You don’t hear Jews going around talking for God.)

I heard so much about “God loves you!” growing up as a Christian, that I never want to hear it again.

Jews living in Christian lands hear so much Christian love talk, faith talk, charity talk, that they never want to talk this way. The pragmatic concrete practical Jewish mind is repelled by this Hellenic airy fairy talk.

When the goyim lean to extremes, the Jews tends to go to an extreme in the opposite direction.

Christians talk about God directing their lives. Jews never talk this way.

Yet I doubt that Jews living in Muslim countries told their kids before tucking them in bed at night, “God loves you!”

Rabbi Joe emails: Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Uvikashtem Misham (translated as And From There You Shall Seek) is all about man’s love of God and God’s love of man.

This is from page 154: The Torah, which bases all of Judaism on the
principle of creation and providence, but also on the principle of the
chosenness of the Jewish people, introduced into the center of our
world the concept of lovingkindness and of love as a reciprocal
process. The creation of the world is the embodiment of God’s grace.
God’s providence over His creatures in general, and His choice of the
congregation of Israel in particular, is a manifestation of infinite
love. Anyone who says that Judaism commands the individual to love God but does not promise him reciprocal love is a heretic. How unfortunate it is that many scholars pursued folly and suspected that Maimonides, Heaven forbid, agreed with the teaching of Aristotelian philosophy that the yearnings of the world for God are one-way, without any reciprocal yearnings.

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A Convert Laments

I’m tired of all this Jewish lamenting over the latest conversion bill.

I’m a convert to Orthodox Judaism and a well respected one at that!

Like Jewish philosopher Jacob Stein, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Orthodox Jew who has a negative word to say about me.

I don’t have a position on what sort of conversion bill Israel should pass. I’m just anti-hysteria.

I know almost nothing about the latest bill, but I know this stuff has been rattling around the Knesset for more than 20 years and American Jews in particular have been getting their panties in a knot over it.

Does not our Holy Torah command us men to not wear women’s frilly undergarments?

I say chill out and watch my videos instead.

If you want to join a religion that immediately embraces you and assures you of your eternal salvation, then fall on your knees before a statue of Jesus Christ and invite him into your heart.

If you want to be a man, don’t get emotional when making logical arguments and don’t depend on others for your identity (Jewish or otherwise).

If you’re committed to Judaism, nobody in the world can take that away from you. Nobody can stop you from keeping the Sabbath. Nobody can stop you from finding a shul that’s a good fit for you and finding a rav to guide your walk through life.

If all else fails, you’re always embraced by me. I do quickie conversions accepted by the sternest of rabbis. All you have to do is paypal me $50 and I’ll pronounce you Jewish and send you an email to that effect. No refunds!

(See? My conversion has made me smarter already.)

Here’s the latest lament in the Jewish Journal: “But my Jewish identity, the Jewish identity of hundreds of thousands of faithful Jews around the world who happen to be converts or their offspring, the Jewish identity of our own beautiful daughter-in-law, who lived in Israel during the terror of the Second Intifada, who worked for AIPAC and Jewish Big Brothers, and who is the wife of our son, an IDF veteran, and the Jewish identity of our sweet grandson, have become innocent pawns in a game of coalition power politics 7,500 miles away. And I fiercely resent it.”

What kind of talk is this? What kind of man makes a foundational argument out of his feelings? So what if he resents it. So what if he’s offended. That’s not a Torah way of talking. Can you imagine a yid in the desert saying, “Gee, Moses, these Sabbath restrictions, they offend me.”

By choosing to convert to Judaism, you have chosen to make your life more difficult. I know from personal experience. I finished my Reform conversion in 1993 and then could not get through an Orthodox conversion program until 2009. For 16 years I lived with the anxiety of not getting through, not being fully accepted as Jewish.

So what if my anxiety never goes away due to Israeli politics?

We all have to learn to hold ourselves up and to handle our own anxiety. If one Beit Din (Jewish law court) rules you are not Jewish and won’t convert or marry you, then you have to find another one that will. There are dozens of Jewish law courts in the world. You might have to Beit Din shop.

Throughout the course of Jewish history, thousands of people joined themselves to the Jewish people without ever passing a Beit Din. According to the orthodox rabbinic commentator the Meiri, to become Jewish one has to be dipped in a mikveh and committed to Jewish law. That’s it.

If you are serious about becoming Jewish, connect to a Jewish community and follow Jewish law, learn Hebrew, and become knowledgeable about Torah. If one rabbi or one Beit Din knocks you back, pick yourself up and go on to another community.

There is nobody in the world who can determine that you can never become Jewish. If you do what I say above, you’ll find a way to join the Jewish people.

Through the course of Jewish history, the rigorists have won out. In Orthodox life, the chareidim are kicking the ass of the Modern Orthodox. Because the chareidim study more Torah and do more mitzvot, they dominate. That is their rightful due for all of their hard work.

God doesn’t like complainers. He let them die off in the desert 3200 years ago rather than enter the Promised Land.

Don’t whine. Don’t base arguments on your feelings. Don’t assume that what makes life easier for you is what will be good for the Jewish people. Finally and most importantly, follow the moral leader.

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How The Orthodox Deal With The Non-Orthodox

Orthodox rabbi Marc B. Shapiro blogs:

In general, there have been some real changes in how Orthodoxy deals with the non-Orthodox, and Adam Ferziger has recently published a valuable article on the topic. In reading the article, I was surprised to learn how even haredi Orthodoxy has begun to expand the boundaries in dealing with non-Orthodox movements and institutions. It appears that the Reinman-Hirsch book was only one aspect of this change. Here is some of what Ferziger reports:

ASK [Atlanta Scholars Kollel], however, has demonstrated a willingness to meet its constituency on its own terms by running a biweekly introductory prayer service in one of Atlanta’s largest Reform houses of worship, Temple Sinai of Sandy Springs. To be sure, the meetings take place in a social hall rather than in the synagogue sanctuary, but this is a clear departure from the guidelines set down by Feinstein. Similarly, members of the Phoenix Community Kollel have taught classes at the community sponsored Hebrew High that is housed at the Reform Temple Chai. . . . [T]he head of Pittsburgh’s Kollel Jewish Learning Center, Rabbi Aaron Kagan, meets on a regular basis with his local rabbinic colleagues from Reform and Conservative synagogues to study Torah together. . . . Based in Palo Alto, California, the Jewish Study Network—one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding of these kiruv kollels—does not limit its interdenominational contacts to private study. Its fellows work together with Conservative and Reform representatives to create new Jewish learning initiatives throughout the Bay Area and to offer their own programming in non-Orthodox synagogues. Rabbi Joey Felsen, head of the Jewish Study Network and a veteran of five years of full-time Torah study at Jerusalem’s venerable Mir yeshivah, made clear that he was not opposed to presenting Torah lectures in a non-Orthodox synagogue sanctuary, although he preferred to teach in the social hall. Indeed, according to Rabbi Yerachmiel Fried, leader of the highly successful Dallas Area Torah Association (DATA) Kollel and a well-respected halakhist, insofar as Jewish religious institutions were concerned the only boundary that remained hermetically sealed was his unwillingness to teach in a gay synagogue. . . .

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