The UCLA Knifer Thought He Was A Victim

The bloke from Belize who knifed that girl in lab for no good reason last week thought everyone was out to get him.

I get nervous when people tell me about how everyone is out to get them. I hear this from homeless people on the street. I hear this from people who think that Jews run the world. I hate dealing with people who think they’re victims (unless they are genuine victims, victims of a drunk driver, a crippling disease, etc).

Frankly, I hear this "victim" talk from a disproportionate amount of black people and women.

Most women seem to believe that life is harder on women and therefore you have to put up with their emotional blackmail aka that they will throw a fit if they don’t get their way.

I wonder if this knifer was the product of affirmative action. A lot of black and latino kids get into universities through affirmative action and then can’t keep up. They then blame others for this. They would’ve been better off at community colleges taking remedial classes.

I get nervous when I’m around people who are upset that others are making "offensive" comments. This is girl talk. Men shouldn’t talk this way. That this bloke was complaining about "offensive" talk shows how off his rocker he was.

When I was a kid, my dad would spank my bare bottom so hard I couldn’t sit down for days. He’d tell me before delivering the punishment that if I cried, he’d hit me harder and longer.

That’s why I’m such a manly man and don’t go around knifing girls in labs.

If only more people could be like me. Oh what a beautiful world that would be.

From the LA Times:

UCLA professor Stephen Frank, who taught Thompson in his Western Civilization class, said Saturday he told a university administrator 10 months ago that he was concerned about Thompson’s mental health after receiving e-mails from the student.

In the e-mails, Thompson complained to Frank that classmates sitting around him had been disruptive and made offensive comments to him while he was taking a written exam, Frank said. In one of the e-mails, Thompson also accused Frank of taunting him.

"I believe I heard you, Professor Frank, say that I was ‘troubled’ and ‘crazy’ among other things," Thompson wrote in the e-mail. "My outrage at this situation coupled with the pressure of the very weighted examination dulled my concentration and detracted from my performance."

Frank denied Thompson’s claims and told administrators the e-mails indicated Thompson was in need of help, urging university officials to take action. Frank said he was told other professors had reported similar exchanges with Thompson, who complained he was constantly taunted by students across campus — in dorms, dining areas and the library.

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Are You On A Spiritual Journey?

I chose to click the Barry Gelman link in my Google News Alert for "rabbi" because I am a masochist. I know that whenever I read this Orthodox rabbi, I will be annoyed by the shallowness of his thought.

Here’s his opening statement today: "Now that all the “bells and whistles” of the high Holidays and Sukkot are gone, what will be of our spiritual journey? There is a lot that attracts us to synagogue during the month of Tishrei. With the excitement of Rosh Hashana, the awe of Yom Kippur and the joy of Sukkot amnd simchat Torah behind us, what will serve as the attraction to shul and renewed Jewish commitment."

What bugged me particularly in this paragraph were the two words "spiritual journey".

I’m really tired of spiritual journeys. I find the phrase is usually used by narcissists.

I am a narcissist. I know narcissists. I don’t like to be around narcissists and I am not interested in their spiritual journeys.

"Spiritual journey" reminds me of my childhood when the Christians around me were preoccupied by their individual salvation. They’d get together and tell stories of how they came to Jesus. All the sinning they did beforehand always sounded more exciting to me.

I understand "spiritual journey" as a quest for the transcendent. That’s no foundation for Yiddishkeit. Spiritual journeys are likely to be faddish. Frankly, I usually get more spirituality out of going to yoga than praying in synagogue.

My conversion to Judaism and my commitment to Judaism has nothing to do with a spiritual journey. It is based on my belief that this is the most effective vehicle for morally educating myself and for furthering goodness in the world and for fighting evil. It’s not about my spiritual highs. Spirituality don’t enter into it. If I encounter it, that’s nice.

If Judaism competes in the marketplace on the basis of spiritual highs, it will lose. Judaism is the most this-worldly of the world’s religion. It is unromantic religion, as opposed to Christianity’s romantic religion. Judaism is consumed with prosaic details.

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My Rabbi Does Good

The first rabbi I became close to was Rabbi Aaron Rubinger of Congregation Ohev Shalom in Orlando, Florida.

I moved to Orlando in August 1993, shortly after my initial conversion to Judaism earlier that year through a Reform rabbi in Sacramento (most of my Jewish friends from Grass Valley who assisted me on my journey to Judaism were Orthodox or on the way to becoming Orthodox, I was bedridden most of the time because of my illness and I made my initial conversion through the rabbi closest to me in Citrus Heights, Marvin Schwab, who gave me my first pair of tefillin).

Ohev Shalom was my first shul. I eventually moved across the street from it and davened there several times a week. I hung out in the library. I began to get my sea legs as I made a slow and awkward recovery from being bedridden with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to increasingly leading a normal life.

Rabbi Rubinger and the rabbi emeritus Rudolph J. Adler were enormously kind to me as were many others in the congregation.

Ohev Shalom will always have a warm spot in my heart and I can’t wait to return there one day. I want to wait, however, until I have done something terrific, done something to repay their kindness to me, something that shows I was not a mistake, that my time there was not a burden without a payoff. I want to return in triumph. I want to be a big shot. I want to be a mentch. I want to be married with kids.

Back in 1993 and early 1994, I was a real handful. I wasn’t the gentle Torah giant I am today. I was a bit weird. I was controversial. I was often popping off with shocking and inappropriate statements. I chased women. I cried over women. I lusted after women. I felt confused and scared and I was holding on to Judaism for dear life.

Rabbi Rubinger taught me how to put on tefillin and how to tie a tie and how to be a mentch.

From Examiner.com:

Two weeks ago, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) infuriated a wide variety of people with comments about the Republican plan for healthcare. Asserting that the plan encourages the sick to "die quickly," Rep. Grayson called the U.S. healthcare system an "American holocaust." An addition to an uproar from the Republican party, the comment generated a non-partisan protest from the Jewish community, especially in Central Florida where Grayson hails from.

In a poll by the Orlando Sentinel, 62% of the readers agreed that Grayson went "too far" with his comments about the healthcare system. Among that percentage, quite a few leaders in the Jewish community in Orlando shared these sentiments. Rabbi Aaron Rubinger of Congregation Ohev Shalom appeared on the local Fox News to denounce Grayson’s use of the word "holocaust." Additional comments were made by members of the Executive Board of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Maitland, FL calling Grayson’s choice of words "regrettable."

Grayson, who is Jewish, emphasized that he never drew parallels between the healthcare system and the tragedies in Europe during WWII, saying that he used the words "a holocaust" without intending it to have the capitalization given to "The Holocaust" of the 1940s. Supporters and critics alike have questioned whether or not Grayson’s use of the word was specifically to attract media attention and boost fundraising, a motive that would clearly be unacceptable. Although Grayson told the Heritage Florida Jewish News that his only motive is "tikkun olam" or "repairing the world," but Rabbi Rubinger isn’t accepting that excuse. Heritage quoted him as saying:

I really believe that it was a political stunt to garnish massive headlines. To make use of that type of rhetoric—about the Holocaust—for political gain is very, very shocking and offensive…Maybe he thought that he could pull it off because he himself is Jewish. It shows to me, Jewish or non-Jewish, a complete lack of sensitivity to what the Shoah (Holocaust) means, especially to Jews.

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Summertime Is Rape Time In Europe: ‘The Uncovered Meat is the Problem’ Says Muslim Cleric

Apparently there’s an epidemic of Muslim youths raping white girls in Scandinavia and Australia.

From the blog Gates of Vienna, April 29, 2009:

Sweden tops European rape league

Sweden has the highest incidence of reported rapes in Europe — twice as many as “runner up” the UK, a new study shows. Researchers behind the EU study, which will be presented on Tuesday, conclude that rape appears to be a more common occurrence in Sweden than in continental European countries. In Sweden, 46 incidents of rape are reported per 100,000 residents. This figure is double as many as in the UK which reports 23 cases, and four times that of the other Nordic countries, Germany and France. The figure is up to 20 times the figure for certain countries in southern and eastern Europe.

My comment: As I have explained in my book Defeating Eurabia, where I devote an entire chapter to explaining the appalling situation in Sweden, Ethnologist Maria Bäckman, in her study “Whiteness and gender,” has followed a group of Swedish girls in the suburb of Rinkeby outside Stockholm, where natives have been turned into a minority of the inhabitants due to immigration. The subjects “may encounter prejudices such as the idea that Swedish girls act and dress in a sexually provocative way or that blonde girls are easy.” Bäckman relates that several of the Swedish girls she interviewed stated that they had dyed their hair to avoid sexual harassment. They experienced that being blonde involves old men staring at you, cars honking their horns and boys calling you “whore.”

A report from the organization Save the Children told that Swedish girls are scared of being raped, a possibility that appears very real to them. A survey carried out among ninth-grade boys in the immigrant-dominated suburb of Rinkeby showed that in the last year, 17% of the boys had forced someone to have sex, 31% had hurt someone so badly that the victim required medical care, and 24% had committed burglary or broken into a car. Sensational statistics, but they appear to have been published only in a daily newssheet that is distributed free on the subways.

“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid, in an interview about a gang rape involving a Swedish girl and immigrant perps. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f**ked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity… It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f**ked to pieces.”

In an article from June 2007 with the title “Summertime — rape time,” Aftonbladet, one of the largest dailies in Scandinavia, linked the spike in rapes during the summer to the warm weather. The official number of rape charges in Sweden has more than quadrupled during one generation, even more for girls under the age of 15. If this is due to the warm weather, I suppose the Scandinavian rape wave is caused by global warming? The fact that a greatly disproportionate number of the suspects have an immigrant background according to statistics from neighboring Norway and Denmark is purely coincidental, no doubt.

HERE’S A REPORT FROM A SWEDISH NEWS SERVICE SEPT. 20, 2009:

Every third young Swede has been subjected to repeated harassment, threats or violence over the past year. Six percent of young girls have been raped, a new report from Swedish researchers shows.

SULTAN KNISH WRITES:

More than 5000 women are victims of honor killings each year. Most of those women are Muslim, and while most of them are killed in Muslim countries– more and more of them are being killed in Europe, Canada and America. A 2007 study by Dr. Amin Muhammad and Dr. Sujay Patel in Canada’s Memorial Hospital observed that honor killing spreads when those whose who practice it emigrate to Western countries.

Honor killings however are only the final act in the drama of a Muslim woman’s life. Before that she is expected to walk behind a man, to be a second class citizen, to cover herself as much as possible in order to deflect male desire and to take the blame for the sexual intentions that men have toward her. She knows that if she fails to deflect male desire, she may suffer a variety of penalties from imprisonment to death. In countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran, those penalties are imposed by courts. In countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan, they are imposed by rough tribal justice. In the West, where there is no Islamic court system or tribal courts, they are imposed by the family.

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN OCT. 26, 2006:

THE nation’s most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don’t wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals.

In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress … "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years".

"But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he asked.

The leader of the 2000 rapes in Sydney’s southwest, Bilal Skaf, a Muslim, was initially sentenced to 55 years’ jail, but later had the sentence reduced on appeal.

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

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Should The Sephardim Go To The Back Of The Bus?

Orthodox rabbi and history professor Marc B. Shapiro blogs Nov. 7, 2007:

I read about the outrage taking place in Emanuel, where in the local Beit Yaakov Sephardi students are being segregated from Ashkenazim to the extent that the two are not even permitted to play together. The Shas party has referred to this as nothing less than Apartheid, which it surely is.[22] What’s next? Mehadrin buses where the Sephardim sit in the back? Of course, when this happens the justification given will once again be that Ashkenazim are on a higher spiritual level and that’s why they can’t sit with Sephardim, not that they are racist, chas ve-shalom.

I mention this because R. Mazuz has made a comment that is relevant in this regard. Speaking to Ashkenazim who like to imagine the tannaim as “white”, he has called attention to Negaim 2:1, where R. Yishmael states that Jews are neither black nor white, but in between. In other words, the tannaim looked like Sephardim.

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Orthodox Jews Vs. Child Abuse

The New York Times reports:

For decades, prosecutors in Brooklyn routinely pursued child molesters from every major ethnic and religious segment of the borough’s diverse population. Except one.

Of some 700 child sexual abuse cases brought in an average year, few involved members of the ultra-observant Orthodox Jewish community — about 180,000 followers of Hasidic and other sects who make up the largest such cluster outside Israel.

Some years, there were one or two arrests, or none.

But in the past year, there have been 26. District Attorney Charles J. Hynes has brought charges against a variety of men — yeshiva teachers, rabbis, camp counselors, merchants and relatives of children. Eight have been convicted; 18 await trial.

If the sudden spike in prosecutions is startling, even more surprising is the apparent reason: ultra-Orthodox Jews, long forbidden to inform on one another without permission from the rabbis who lead them, are going to the police and prosecutors on their own.

FailedMessiah and TheUnorthodoxJew are cited.

The father of Orthodox therapist Asher Lipner — who is cited in this article — teaches in San Francisco – Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, the founding head and dean of the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy of San Francisco.

Y. Aharon posts on Hirhurim: That last link on the sexual abuse of minors in the Orthodox (Hareidi) community refers to a balanced and informative article in today’s NY Times. The cited comments by Mr Zwiebel of the Agudah and rabbi Fund are revealing, if not outrageous. Mr. Zwiebel would have OJ offenders treated differently than any other criminal, and rabbi Fund professes concern only for the repercussions to the family of the accused molester. We could do well without such spokespeople. If cited accurately, they are part of the problem, not participants in its resolution.

Gil Student responds: I think you are being ungenerous in reading the quotes of Rabbi Zwiebel and Fund. I agree with you that I don’t understand Rabbi Zwiebel’s comment about "religious sensitivites". As presented, it doesn’t make sense to me. But Rabbi Fund is only saying that you have to look at the whole picture, not that you should ignore victims. I think most reasonable people would agree with him.

Oldest Member says: Of course, I don’t want to see OJ breadwinners sent to prison. But their treatment should be no different than Christian breadwinners or atheist breadwinners.

Any other treatment would violate the Equal Protection clause and possibly the Free Exercise clause, and would also be unwise even from a parochially OJ viewpoint.

Joseph Kaplan writes: While R. Fund’s comment is not completely clear, it seems to me that he is saying that victims should consult with rabbis before going to the police because in some instances the rabbis will tell them not to go to the police. If this is, indeed, what he is saying then I hope that most reasonable people will strongly disagree with him (and you). If that’s not what he means, he should clarify his remarks.

Y. Aharon posts: The following is what is cited in that article about the views of Rabbi Fund:

Rabbi Meir Fund, who leads a synagogue known as the Flatbush Minyan, said that child molesters should be prosecuted, but that victims should consult with a rabbi before going to the police. Connections among the haredim are too entangled to discount the damaging ripple effects of accusations on the accused person’s family, Rabbi Fund said – NYTimes

Does the "explanation" cited make any sense? What molestation is at issue? One can and should distinguish between a single pat on the behind or a kiss on the forehead, and genital groping or contact – much less, sodomy. The latter clearly require immediate notification of the police to arrest the perp, whether that perp is a rebbe or rosh yeshiva. The former may initialy require only notification of the employer that such behavior is entirely unacceptable and must be immediately halted under threat of firing. If the employer expresses disbelief or refuses to take action – much less, attacks the accusing parent, then the police are the only option.

It is an essential parental obligation to protect one’s child. There is also a moral obligation to protect others – particularly children. Once convinced of the nature of the offense, the repercussions for the employing institution or the family of the perp should not be a primary concern of the victim’s family or the community.

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Is It A Mitzvah To Pray With A Minyan?

Joe Schmo comments: Rabbi Enkin,

"the majority of North American sacharit-davening Jews do not daven in a minyan. "

"I cant beleive that anyone would declare all these people sinners."

The fact that "everyone is doing it" means it has to be right? Perhaps many American Jews do not realize something is more important than they thought?

I’m not arguing either way, for davening with a minyan as a requirement or as a meritorious practice, but certainly you cannot expect us to accept a decision based on the reasoning of "most american Jews do x, so therefore x is the correct way." That is not logical and does not get to the root of the issue.

With all due respect, it sounds as if you already had your mind made up beforehand, based on what American Jews do customarily, and then surveyed a bunch of sources and tried to find justification for it, or at least that ‘justification exists (somewhere in there) if it needed to be found and asserted’ within the sources. Is this really a proper halachic methodology?

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Gore Vidal Speaks To 92nd Street Y

The New York Post reports: GORE Vidal, who’s been accused of anti-Semitism, is scheduled to speak at the 92nd Street Y next week to promote his book "Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare," a collection of his personal photographs with commentary. Former mayor Ed Koch offers two possible explanations. "Those who invited him are, as Jews, either most forgiving, or schmucks. The latter word is intended to cover masochists," Koch told blogger Evan Gahr. Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said, "It is appalling that a Jewish institution would make a reckless decision to give a podium to Gore Vidal. He has continually displayed enormous antipathy towards Israel and Jews." Vidal’s literary executor, Jay Parini, who will interview the author at the Y, told Gahr, "I’ve known Vidal for three decades, and I know that he does not hate Jews. In fact, he admires them and the vast accomplishments of countless Jews over the years. He has had quarrels with the Likud Party in Israel, as have many Israelis."

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What Would Make You Believe In God?

From Prager University, where I got my BA:

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Dennis Prager Explains Male Sexuality

I found this very helpful in understanding myself:

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