I have a question, if Aron is not to live in Baltimore, where can he live? Nobody has accused him of violence.
I get this email:
TO ALL SURVIVORS OF ARON TENDLER – WE NEED YOUR HELP!
"I have been after Aron Tendler for over 5 years. I have pleaded with major rabbis (who knew what he had done and was doing) to stop him – they refused to help. When I went to a very well known rabbi/psychologist and told him of a "rabbi" who had severely molested teenage girls and who was now a rabbi of a shul, the rabbi replied "maybe he doesn’t have access to children!!!" I pleaded with him to intervene – He would not. This rabbi would not even let me tell him Tendler’s name!
When I went to a well known Rabbi of a well known yeshiva for advice (I had not told him who it was yet, only that he was a rabbi in California) he told me I should talk to Aron Tendler about it and he would be able to do something. He told me I could trust Aron completely.
I told him that I couldn’t do that since Aron Tendler was the one I was talking about.
I pleaded with him to intervene and get him away from the shul and possible future victims. He would not.
I spoke to a rabbi from the RCC several times over the last 5 years. Each time he pushed me off saying they were looking into it. Then he told me that the RCC couldn’t do anything because in exchange for Aron stepping down from the RCC, they signed a confidentiality agreement with him. When I called him another time he told me that the shul board was looking into it and that he had in his possession an inappropriate email that Aron had sent to his daughter’s friend, BUT "he didn’t think he had enough to do anything with it."
A year ago Aron came to Baltimore – he tried to buy a house here. Certain people in the community were able to stop him from doing so. He told the rabbis that he had received "in- patient therapy" and was "rehabilitated." The rabbis said that he still could not stay because there were victims of his in the vicinity and it would cause them great distress. He promised that he would not move there and that he would find somewhere else to live. I kept on asking the rabbis if he was still there – they said he was in the middle of moving out.
THAT WAS A YEAR AGO.
He has not moved anywhere.
He even had his address changed to a Baltimore address. He has no intention of moving anywhere. I went back to the rabbis and "they told me that they are not sure what they can do at this point." How can this be happening????? No one in Baltimore has been told about this man. He is free to go wherever he wants and to interact with whomever he wants.
THIS NEEDS TO STOP!!!!!
I am a victim of rabbinic abuse myself. I know the devastating effect this has on survivors. I know how to stop this but I need your help! Please contact me at – [email protected]. – You don’t need to tell me who you are – you just need to hear my solution. We need to protect potential victims and we need to help heal his many survivors. We need to show the rabbis that we will not tolerate their weakness and inabilty to protect our community from sexual predators, here in Baltimore, or anywhere.
Rabbi Sharon Brous of Ikar begins the movie: "I’ve traveled all over the world and I’ve prayed with talit and tefillin in trains in Japan in airplanes going to Prague and to France and the only place I’m actually scared to put a talit over my head to pray lest I get hit over the head with a chair or have feces thrown at me is at the kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem."
Rabbi Denise L. Eger of the gay-friendly Reform temple Kol-Ami on Sunset Blvd: "The women of the wall are the prophetesses of our time because they are challenging injustice in sacred space. There isn’t anything more prophetic than that."
Rabbi Laura Geller: "This movement began because Jewish women want a relationship to God and a relationship to Jewish tradition."
The women of the wall make a powerful case for equal access to the Western Wall to pray in the way they seem fit, only their case comes from feminism and other secular notions, and not from Judaism.
When I watch this movie, I feel like I’m watching Martin Luther King marching in Selma, Alabama.
Unless you are rooted in tradition, these women seem like civil rights activists.
I’ve watched this movie three times and I’m looking forward to seeing it again, to watching it with people from all perspectives.
This is totally a movie to catch a wife with, even if she’s a lesbian who wants to wear tefillin and blow a shofar.
I feel like you can tell what every character is going to say simply by looking at how they dress. The traditionalists vs. the moderns. It goes down the line. The Reform and Conservative Jews look like moderns and take modern positions. The traditional Orthodox women carefully cover their hair while the women of the wall tend to be more free with theirs.
The Women of the Wall says: "We stand far from the Wall so as not to offend anyone."
I like that. It’s just the thing you say when you know you don’t have much power and that you could get into big trouble. I’ve said the same thing myself many times. "Just let me stay. I’ll be real quiet. I’ll just sit over here. I won’t disturb anyone."
A leader of the Women of the Wall says: "I don’t know why we’re such a big threat. Why are women raising their voice in prayer supposedly undermining the Jewish tradition?"
Tens of thousands of Jewish women raise their voices in prayer at the kotel without disturbance. The problem is that this group deliberately violates the norms of a sacred space by taking on practices traditionally reserved for men. If I went to a NOW convention wearing a right-to-life t-shirt, I couldn’t expect a friendly reaction.
A Modern Orthodox girl is asked if she wants to pray like a man.
She responds: "A Jew doesn’t do what he wants or feels like doing. The Torah says what’s forbidden or allowed, what we must do."
"If my husband says something, he knows what’s best for me because he studies Torah."
Q: "You don’t know what’s best for you?"
A: "No."
Rabbi Daniel Sperber at Bar Ilan says: "Nothing prohibits women from reading the Torah. Anyone may be one of the seven customarily called to the Torah. Namely, anyone may read from the Torah on Shabbat, the seven sections, including women and children."
This is not the normative Orthodox view.
Rabbi Samuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi of the Western Wall, says the normative Jewish position: "People can’t just do what is right in their own eyes."
The late Shinui politician Tommy Lapid weighs in on the side of the Women of the Wall as does Shulamit Aloni. So when the anti-religious are choosing the side of the Women of the Wall, it makes you wonder how normatively religious these Women of the Wall are?
Rabbi Andrew Sacks of the Conservative movement says the Orthodox have driven away "most Jews who want to pray differently."
If he means that most Jews in Israel want to pray differently from the Orthodox, then he’s saying something absurd. The people who the overwhelming amount of formal davening in Israel and around the world are the Orthodox. They are the ones who show up to shul every day to daven and learn Torah.
The Reform and Conservative movements in Israel have never gained much of a following in Israel.
Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef says, according to a newspaper: "Bury the Refom women wrapped in prayer shawls."
Anat Hoffman, a founder of Women of the Wall and a leader of Israel’s Reform movement, says: "We want to show other women and girls that women can read Torah."
Well, when Anat and company do that by the Wall, the other women beat them up. It doesn’t seem they wanted to be educated in modern ways.
Anat: "There is no reason that this group, observing Jewish law, can’t be in the women’s section at the Kotel."
Well, few Orthodox rabbis would say this group’s aims are in line with Jewish law, which mandates separate roles for men and women.
Rabbi Samuel Rabinovitch: "It is inconceivable that everyone should do as they see fit."
Haviva Ner-David is throughout this documentary. She’s presented as "Dr. Haviva Ner-David, Post-denominational Rabbi, Women of the Wall, Orthodox."
I got a voicemail from R’ Aryeh Strikovsky this week wanting to follow-up on our conversation last week about Haviva Ner-David’s certification [1,2]. Maybe he’ll have something vastly different to say this time around, but it was pretty surprising to receive this letter from Ner-David this morning:
Subject: Thanks a lot!!!
Body:
Steve, I don’t know what your agenda is, but I smell something fishy. Why did you want to prove on your blog that what I got from Rav Aryeh Strikovsky is not smicha? You asked me to forward you the smicha document, and yet, you did not put it in on your blog, at least not that I could see. Is that because it would show that it is indeed smicha? What are you trying to prove? Are you some right-wing reactionary? Do you have something against the idea of women rabbis? I’m trying to understand what makes you tick. I am not sure what Rabbi Strikovsky actually told you, but I am sure you must have misquoted him or misunderstood him. Either that, or you scared him away from saying the truth. He signed the document I sent you. His only reservation was about giving me the title of Rav because he felt the Orthodox world was not ready for that yet. But the more people like you hound him, the more he will feel threatened and scared and reluctant to admit the truth.
So what is your agenda exactly? Why didn’t you include the document or at least quote from it?
I know I learned one thing from this, which his not to trust people who pose as reporters, I should have checked your credentials before being helpful.
I try to live by the ideal of dan lekaf zechut, but it is getting harder and harder these days.
Haviva Ner-David
My response:
Haviva –
I did post the document, and I quoted R’ Strikovsky precisely on what he told me — and it was he who called me, gave me the quotes, and ended the conversation; I’m not being selective. He did leave a message on my answering machine asking to do some follow-up, which I will do.
I have no agenda as to whether or not you’ve been given semicha; I don’t know you and don’t know much about you (though your letter certainly reveals a tendency toward paranoia, overstatement and hyperactivity). I was simply seeking the truth, and the quotes I got from Strikovsky are not only real and complete — they echo his statements to the Jerusalem Post that what he gave you was not semicha. Indeed, I find it pretty curious that you’d be so angry at what the rabbi said; this would seem to indicate the two of you are not exactly on the same page.
I certainly did not “hound him.” I left a message for him, he called me back, and I quoted him on what he said. It’s not my job to put your words in his mouth, just to quote him accurately.
As to my credentials, I don’t know what you checked up on, but here’s my standard bio:
Steven I. Weiss is an award-winning religion journalist in New York City who has written for such publications as New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and Radar. He is currently the New York correspondent for the London Jewish Chronicle, and is a former staff writer at the Forward.
keep it good,
Steven I. Weiss
Haviva says about the Women of the Wall: "It is in accordance with Jewish law."
"We have to be confident that what we’re doing is for the sake of Heaven, even if it is a bit new and revolutionary."
People who are confident that what they are doing is for the sake of Heaven don’t need to tell themselves to be confident that what they’re doing is for the sake of Heaven.
I was struck that one of the opponents of the Women of the Wall has a hyphenated last name, "Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt."
She tries to take the Torah scroll from the Women of the Wall when they’re davening and an amusing fight breaks out.
Mrs. Shira Leibowitz Schmidt heard about the planned demonstrations on the Monday night English-language news. Unlike most Torah Jews, who have long since learned to filter out such news items or convinced themselves that they are helpless, Mrs. Schmidt has become something of a one-woman truth squad.
When she hears or reads such a news item, she starts with the assumption that something has been misunderstood and does not rest until she gets to the bottom of the issue. So when the story of Rabbi Abergil’s psak broke, the first thing she did was to call Rabbi Abergil, whom she did not know. He told her that no one from the press or Machon Hoda’a had ever contacted him, and that he was very disturbed about the way his words were being distorted and misquoted. He faxed Mrs. Schmidt his psak.
Next Mrs. Schmidt contacted the Maariv reporter. He admitted to her that he had not contacted Rabbi Abergil. Worse, he had never even seen Rabbi Abergil’s actual psak, but had only learned of it from an informant. The only thing he could offer in his defense was that Rabbi Abergil’s failure to respond after the story was already published proved that it was accurate.
After that, Mrs. Schmidt contacted the op-ed editor of the Jerusalem Post and offered to write a piece placing the entire hullabaloo in perspective. Her lengthy response was prominently featured in the paper’s Friday magazine.
Even then, Mrs. Schmidt did not rest content. She proceeded to track down every news outlet that had carried the story of Rabbi Abergil’s psak and the subsequent demonstrations to inform them of the inaccuracies and politely suggest that an apology to Rabbi Abergil was in order.
All in all, Mrs. Schmidt provides a remarkable example of how much each of us could do if we only set our minds to it and did not leave the task for others.
If similar news items come to your attention, please contact [email protected].
Shira Leibowitz-Schmidt responds to a different item by Jonathan Rosenblum: "Sometimes, Jonathan….
…the situation is vice versa- people from the national religious (knitted kippa) stream “take the rap” for something that characterizes the haredim. A group of knitted-kippa wearing yeshiva boys from a hesder yeshiva where the boys alternate periods of study and army service went on Israel’s Memorial Day to fallen soldiers to say Psalms in an army cemetery. To honor the fallen they donned white dress shirts. While they were there I saw a woman (from her dress probably not observant) go over to them and lambaste them for not serving in the army, mistakenly identifying them as yeshiva students with deferments. They tried to gently explain that they do serve in the army. But in her rage she couldn’t listen and shouted, “I bet your rabbis tell you not to serve” “why don’t you at least guard kindergartens” etc. (Eventually her husband, who did realize they were yeshiva-student-soldiers-dressed-in-white-shirts calmed her down.) After witnessing this I understood why many from the national-religious sector are particularly vehement against deferred yeshiva students. The non-haredi yeshiva students are often grouped along with haredim in the mind of the public, just as in Jonathan’s case (of the spitting) the haredim may have been grouped along with non-haredi yeshiva students."
Here is an online bio of Shira: "Shira Leibowitz Schmidt was raised in an assimilated Jewish home in New York, and became observant while studying at Stanford University in California. In June 1967 she told her engineering school professor she would miss the final exam because she was going to Israel to volunteer during the Six Day War. "That’s the most original excuse I have ever been offered," he responded. She arrived during the war and stayed, receiving her BSc in absentia. She subsequently met and married the late Elhanan Leibowitz, and they raised their six children in Beersheba. Shira acquired a Masters in Urban & Regional Planning from the Technion, and an MSc in Civil Engineering from University of Waterloo. She remarried Dr. Baruch Schmidt, and they live in Netanya where she currently works as a translator and writer, and does volunteer work for the Shas Ha’maayan Torah day schools."
Here’s another online bio of this woman: "Shira Leibowitz Schmidt has six children and eight grandchildren … so far. She is a lapsed engineer and co-authored Old Wine, New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition (New York, 1997) with Nobel chemist Roald Hoffmann. She is currently affiliated with the Haredi College in Jerusalem and writes polemical articles on controversial issues for The Jerusalem Post."
Danielle Bertsin of WOW says about her critics: "How are they so sure that their way is the right way?"
Well, Danielle seems pretty sure her way is the right way.
The documentary ends: "The Women of the Wall continue their struggle to give women’s prayer a voice."
YAEL KATZIR – Director Filmmaker, college professor , wife and mother, Yael Katzir was born in Tel Aviv in 1942 After completing the required training in the Israeli army, Yael served as an officer in the IDF until 1962. Studied at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, at UCLA, Los Angeles, California and received her Doctoral Degree in History. She completed a Masters at Boston University, MA, in Broadcasting and Film.
Director of Beit Berl College Communal Cable Television Center, broadcasting regularly on Cable TV Channel 25, and Sattelite Channel 90 aired country wide. Previous head of History Department at Beit Berl College, she is now a lecturer on film and history as well as independent documentary filmmaker, director and producer; she is also a published author.
Filmography: PRODUCER , DIRECTOR AND SCRIPTWRITER:
The Jewish Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe, 1987 / (13 min) 16mm; Harvard University. Cambridge, MA, US
Jews in Uniform in world War II – 1988 / (26 min) Video, Beit Berl College, Israel
Open Door – A Meeting Between Arab and Jewish Children – 1991 / (26 min) Video, on behalf of the Ford Foundation
To Brave a Dream -The Story of the American Colony in Jaffa,1992 / (30min) Video, Israel Broadcasting Authority, Channel 1
Jerusalem Spirit and Matter 1993 / (13 min) Video, on behalf of Land of Israel Museum, Tel Aviv
There Is A Place For Every One Elijah’s Cave on Mt Carmel – 1995 / (26min) Video, Haifa International Film Festival; Israel Channel 1 TV
Lake of Galilee from the Window of Rachel – 1996 / (16 min) Video, for Tourist Center, Kinneret, Israel, Channel 2 TV, 2001
It Is Hard To Choose ¬ – 1998 / (25 min) Video, Cable Television, Israel
Company Jasmine, Women Officers School – 2000-1 / (55 min) Video, Israel Channel 1 TV 2001-2 and Channel 2 TV 2003
Shivah For My Mother, Seven Days of Mourning (55 min) Video, 2004 / Israel Channel 8, September 2004
Women of the Wall (WOW) is an organization in Israel, with members and supporters around the world, who have organized a series of Women’s prayer groups at the Kotel (Western Wall) each month on Rosh Hodesh. The groups have included women reading from the Torah and wearing tallit, tefillin, and kippah.
The Kotel is a central Jewish holy site, part of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount on which the Second Temple stood before the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE.
The Kotel is in the control of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Based on a decision of the Israeli Government, security personnel have prevented the Women of the Wall from holding organized prayer groups in the women’s section of the main public area of the Kotel plaza. In addition, members of the Women of the Wall have reported that their efforts to assemble in the women’s section in the plaza in front of the Kotel have been met at various times with violent and abusive behavior from Haredi worshipers.[1]
Since its founding in 1989, Women of the Wall has fought a legal battle asserting a right to conduct organized prayer at the Kotel and challenging government and private intervention in its efforts, which ultimately led to two Israeli Supreme Court decisions and to a series of debates in the Knesset. In its first decision, on May 22, 2002, the Supreme Court authorized Women of the Wall to hold prayer groups in the women’s section of the main Kotel plaza undisturbed. Four days later, Haredi political parties introduced several bills to overturn the decision, including a bill that would have made it a criminal offense for women to pray in non-traditional ways at the western wall, punishable by up to seven years in prison.[2] Although the bill did not pass, the Israeli Supreme Court reconsidered its earlier decision. On April 6, 2003, the Court reversed itself and upheld, 5-4, the Israeli government’s ban prohibiting the organization from meeting at the main public area at the Wall, on the grounds that continued meetings represented a threat to public safety and order.[3] The Court required the government to provide an alternate site, Robinson’s Arch.[4] The Robinson’s Arch site was completed by October 2003.[5]
I began working construction in June 1986. Pale and skinny from my long bout with mono, I showed up to my first day of work wearing white tennis shoes and a long pointy hat that made me look like a penguin.
Everybody laughed at me. They didn’t think I’d last.
For the first three days, I did nothing but swing a pick and push a shovel. I collapsed in bed when I arrived home. Nobody thought that I’d last. I quit working mornings during the week at the radio station.
On Friday, the bosses Carl Elrod and Lee Gardner selected me to work on a special project the next day. I said that I couldn’t do it because I anchored weekend news on KAHI radio. Carl and Lee then got on my case and I changed my mind.
I got to work at KAHI early that next morning, did the first couple of newscasts live, taped my news segments for the rest of the day and left.
I drove to the Roseville home of Dominion Enterprises owner Doug Hanzlick and it was mutual affection at first sight. He correctly noted my accent to be Australian and he remembered my name. Doug also introduced me to his youngest daughter Becky, 16, who loved Australia.
Becky and I flirted most of the afternoon and that day became a turning point for my landscaping. For the first time I enjoyed my work. The Hanzlick family of parents Doug and Sharon, the two older daughters Cheryl and Shelly, and Becky praised me to my bosses Carl Elrod and Lee Gardner. They in turn promoted me to more important and better-paying work than swinging a pick.
Not only my muscles but also my ego swelled that summer. I logged over 400 hours landscaping some months, along with working 12-18 hours a week at the radio station.
On and off for the next two years, I dated Becky – the exotic dancer (not a stripper, a real dancer) whose hair color varied across the spectrum of the rainbow every few weeks.
Our love was pure. I never even kissed her though I did bring her home to meet my parents one Sunday night. They looked quite puzzled when she said she liked German industrial music.
The raunchiest we ever got was when we danced at an INXS concert in the Bay Area. We drove all the way and back in my 1966 VW Bug.
I heard from Becky a few months ago. She’s a married mom now. She said that Lukeford.com "was a very interesting web site."
Daniel writes on Failed Messiah: "I am so curious if you have any more info on rabbonim reacting negatively to to the Chafetz Chayim‘s works on shmiras halashon [holy speech]. I have long felt that by setting an impossibly high standard, he caused the area to be abandoned (practically) as a reachable standard."
Here’s my new cam description borrowed from a friend: "He has inspired many, comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable. He reflects back to people their most gorgeous selves, shares teachings of love, pricks egos, and calls others, by his very being, to truth and integrity. For some YML is a teacher, for others a spiritual friend, for still others a spiritual artist, and for still others a revolutionary catalyst of social change. In the words of one leading feminist, YML combines radical brilliance with a willingness to be vulnerable, and radical kindness with an ability to probe deeply."
guest49: Instead of being a "moral leader" – a bit of sarcasm that has gotten old – you need to begin captioning yourself as something else. Why not "Luke Ford, Spiritual Artist?
guest49: g92 that sounds gay
guest49: Have you any eggs?
YourMoralLeader: i know her – she’s all woman
guest92: yes, some are scrabled
guest49: More sarcasm?
guest92: thanks hon….your all man and then some
guest49: g92, the homosexual is known to be attempting to insinuate himself into this otherwise healthy heterosexual milleau, hence my skepticism
guest92: 49, you get stuck in the rain?
guest49: Sometimes they go so far as to marry a woman, just to deny another man a chance at heterosexual happiness and thus make him more vulnerable (they falsely suppose) to the blandishments of their gay selves.
guest49: Rain?
guest92: its raining men….
guest49: It’s been like a desert here
guest92: where’s that?
guest49: Pahrump, Nevada
guest49: Where do you live?
guest92: one hump or 2?
guest92: yenemsvelt
guest49: Pahrump is about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
guest49: Where is yenemsvelt?
guest92: where I am
guest49: Is it in a city with a real name?
guest92: as real as this chatroom
guest49: Sounds like you use these chat rooms as fantasy playgrounds for escaping from life
guest92: whats life?
guest49: An essential characteristic of the vagina-averse homosexual
guest92: whats wrong with a little fantasy play?
guest49: It is boring
guest92: not with Luke in a mankini its not
guest49: Andlife is too short for it
guest49: mankini?
guest92: wait for the photos.. coming soon
guest49: Real life is what we live here in Pahrump
guest92: I’m putting the finish touches (sequins)
guest49: We live life in the raw.
guest92: I just live on my rump
guest49: You could do that here. Brothels are legal here
guest92: I didn’t say I allow others on my rump
guest49: Soon Brother Obama will be POTUS
guest49: 100 days to go
guest49: Luke, you need to try out Radiohead.
guest92: i heard they instituted a 4 day work week in nevada? is this true?
guest49: Maybe some Coldplay. Just to let the younguns know you still have a pulse
guest49: No it is not true
guest49: Very little regulation here
guest49: No state income tax
guest49: Low cost of living, outside of Las Vegas
guest49: Plenty of culture.
guest92: heidi i’m comin to find me a man there
guest49: Many men here.
guest49: What sort are you pining for whom you might plausibly get?
guest92: i want a heidi fleiss man without a bird
guest49: She is simply a media story, nothing more
guest92: someone who will covet my semi fresh eggs
guest92: but you will seem to think the chances are as slim as my thighs
guest49: Luke, why not consider spending part of your year in Pahrump?
guest94: and leave the hovel?
guest49: You could get a decently paying gig here that would let you keep your pad in LA and get material for new books
guest49: He could be a greeter at one of the local hovels
guest94: meet me greet me and please me
guest49: Also, there is rumor that the same Jews who went into Postville, sensing the end there is near, are looking to establish a "glatt kosher" establshment in Pahrump
guest49: Luke, this is a big opportunity
guest49: Part of your faith
guest94: it is a big mitzvah plus i get paid with tips
guest49: In fact, Luke, why shouldn’t YOU be the one to open?
guest94: i will fund this endeavor
guest49: It would be legal, safe, you have no criminal background to complicate licensure
guest49: And it would be kosher
guest49: Sometimes my genius scares me
guest49: The gentiles won’t know, but the Jews will
guest94: have a schwarma joint in the back
guest49: Only kosher food
guest49: Hang pictures of all the great rabbis on the walls
guest49: Everyone would be made to wear modest clothes
guest94: and blintzes cause luke likes em
guest49: And discuss their yicchus
guest49: Rabbenim from all over the world would come to visit, and you could have master classes with each of them
My biggest daily struggle is with fatigue. I’m just exhausted most of the time and discouraged from 20 years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
So to start myself up through the day, I have various tricks that work at times: Action films, highlights of the Dallas Cowboys triumphs, Emergen-C, cottage cheese and lots of pop music. I find energetic music gets me pumping and blogging. Seeing people I like also sparks me up.
I was walking through the heat Shabbos afternoon when I ran into Dr. Don on Beverly Drive and suddenly I felt great.
This morning I went to the DocAviv International Documentary Film Festival in Tel Aviv with other members of Women of the Wall to see Praying in Her Own Voice (Hebrew title: Kol be-isha tefilla), a film about our group and its legal struggle that was made by history professor and filmmaker Yael Katzir. I came out extremely moved, and wonderful to relate, I wasn’t the only one by far. It seems that the entire audience—which filled the largest auditorium at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque almost to capacity—was, too.
Yael, who spent four years making this film, put her heart and soul into it. Most important, she understood us. She got us: who we are, what we’re about (and, just as important, what we’re not about), what we want and why it is important to Israeli society and to Judaism as a whole. Thanks to her film, Israelis now understand that for the first time… and if we can judge by the audience’s reaction—prolonged, loud applause at the end of the film and the heartfelt comments they made to us after we left the theater—they get it, too.
People have already asked me where they can buy Praying in Her Own Voice on DVD, and I hope that soon I will be able to tell them. I recommend it highly: not because I am involved in Women of the Wall or because I appear in the film (a little), but rather because in my opinion it shows who we are, truly and simply, and why our struggle for the equal right of Jewish women’s prayer groups to worship according to their custom at the Western Wall has implications that go far beyond ourselves.
Dennis: "If there’s a stupider group in America than bankers, I would like to meet them. I’ve come to the conclusion that banking is too important to leave in the hands of bankers. It is the most self-destructive class of capitalist Americans."
"’Oh, look they are all making money giving irresponsible loans to Americans who can’t afford it… And we know because we are bankers that real estate can only go up. There will never be a bubbles that bursts."
"What Chuck Schumer did was not hurt the bankers but the depositers and the economy, four to eight billion dollars worth."
David: "Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac are government sponsored enterprises that are semi-private. If you look at the salaries its executives get, you’ll know its private. They earn multiples what the president of the United States get."
Dennis: "They are private corporations backed by the government?"
David: "Everyone has understood for years that there’s this implicit guarantee which is not the same as explicit. If the federal government took a hard line, which I advocate… These are private. We should not bail them out. Let the investors take the loss."
Dennis: "If they were allowed to crumble, what would happen to the economy?"
David: "There’s a word people use as a substitute for thinking. ‘Systemic.’ People say, ‘Oh, there’s this systemic risk, this systemic problem with the economy.’ I don’t think so. If they were allowed to fail, they would file for bankruptcy and their assets would be sold off. There would not be a huge effect, just a huge wealth loss to stock holders and bond holders (they are the ones being bailed out).
"I think it is a good idea to let them fail.
"Because branch banking laws have been reduced, we do have the ability for banks to diversify their mortgage portfolios. There’s less of a need for a secondary market, and to the extent that there is a need, the private market can provide it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had an advantage in that market. They could get a better deal because everyone assumed there was this government guarantee (and could get better rates)."
Dennis: "My respect for the term ‘banker’ has gone down more steeply than the steepest ski slope."
David: "You’re reacting as a collectivist. You’re lumping all bankers together. Some of them deserve this and some don’t."
Dennis: "Bankers have no reason to be smart because they’ll be bailed out."
David: "They have less reason to be smart. If you are bailed out from the consequences of risky decisions, you are going to make more risky decisions and the consequences will be bad."
Robert says the government is bailing out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. "They are providers of mortgage credit. If you are as old as I am, you remember the days when home mortgage loans were primarily provided by savings and loan associations and banks. You went to your local bank, they looked at your credit records, looked at the value of the home you wanted to buy, they looked at whether you were a reliable borrower, and whether the home was worth as much as you thought, and then they made you a loan. Those loans were financed by deposits to the banks.
"Over the last 30 years, we’ve had a revolution in finance. Most mortgages today are not financed by depositors to banks and savings and loans. They are financed by pooled securities that are then purchased by pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds… There are a number of different financial institutions that put together these pools of mortgages and sell them. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the largest of those.
"You go to a mortgage broker or bank. They process your application. They may initially advance the funds to you but they immediately sell the mortgage to someone else, usually Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They have guidelines for what kind of mortgages they will accept. They will either keep them for their own portfolio or sell them to somebody else with a guarantee that if you the homeowner default on the mortgage, they will make up the difference to the lender.
"They are the mechanism by which 30-50% of mortgages are normally financed. In today’s market, they are now the financing mechanism for 70% or more of U.S. homes."
Dennis: "If they know if they just irresponsibly buy loans irresponsibly made and it won’t matter because if they go down, the country goes down and the world economy goes down, what stops them from acting irresponsibly?"
Robert: "Both of these enterprises were set up by the government."
"They are now publicly traded companies. They are overseen and regulated by OFEO so they don’t do what you say. In practice, some of what you describe did happen…because of the general climate between 2002-2006 that the housing market was going to go up forever. Almost anybody could borrow because the homes were presumed to go up in value. It was make believe. A lot of bad loans were made."
Dennis: "The interest in giving these weak loans was that the more loans we give, the more our shareholders profit?"
Robert: "People profited by doing more business. The incentive to do this was straight forward. It did reveal the weakness of this new system of financing by securitizing these loans. When the local bank held the loan, it had an interest in making sure the borrower could perform. The more people you put between the original borrower and original lender, the less the interest that any one of those middlemen has insuring the borrower could pay the loan. Most of these middlemen weren’t holding the loan at the end of the day."
"In retrospect, everybody failed. Was OFEO’s failure the central cause? No.
"The central cause was the political and popular climate that favored home ownership so much so that almost anything done in favor of home ownership was regarded as good. As the home ownership rate edged up, people congratulated themselves. The American dream was spreading… There was a climate that mitigated at looking at these things and asking if these people should be home owners. Were the documents they presented reliable? Many people could buy a home without putting down a down payment."
Dennis: "What do you recommend?"
Robert: "The public want two mutually exclusive things to happen. They want housing prices to stay up because homes are the biggest asset most people have. On the other hand, we want the housing market to start up again and homes to be more affordable. This effort to prop up housing prices, which is what is going on in Washington today, is really opposed…to the housing market to reinvigorate itself."
I received Ordination many years ago from a well-regarded Orthodox institution in New York. Contrary to some rumors, that Ordination was never revoked. I retain a letter on my computer in which I wrote the president of the institution stating that our paths had parted in such a significant way that I no longer wished to hold Ordination from them.
I also passed a several-hour oral exam with one of the great Rabbinic minds of Israel today, representing the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and authorizing me to be a rabbi?particularly what is termed a Rav Yishuv. I retain that document in my records as well.
I have been asked whether I had, or have, Ordination from Reb Zalman Schachter. I retain in my records a document that Reb Zalman wrote for me several years ago. The document is not an Ordination, but rather an of my previous Ordination from the Orthodox institution mentioned above. When I returned that Ordination in 2004, Reb Zalman’s letter, which was based on my first Ordination, ceased to be valid. I have never held, nor do I seek, independent Ordination from Reb Zalman.
I am not a student of Reb Zalman’s nor have I ever been. I have in some very important ways benefited from his work, and I have publically and privately thanked him for all this. I appreciate and respect some important contributions that he made to Jewish teaching.
I have tried in many ways, large and small, to be of service to Reb Zalman and have sought a particular kind of relationship with him. I have failed in this respect. I have not been in substantive contact with Reb Zalman since March of 2006, other than a private exchange of two e-mails.
I feel very connected to a close friend and chevruta, Rabbi Gershon Winkler. Reb Gershon, with grace and dignity, gave me the transmission of his lineage’s rabbinic ordination, as a friend. This Ordination may be found here in both English and Hebrew.
I feel connected to the same soul root as Reb Gershon. His primary ordaining teacher was Rav Ben Zion Bruk of Jerusalem, a great Master of Mussar, whom I feel connected to both through Rabbi Hillel Goldberg’s transmission of his Torah and through Reb Gershon. At this time, I am working with Reb Gershon on a major work, which we hope will serve as a kind of Spiritual Code of Jewish Law for those who will seek its counsel.
Regarding academia: Virtually everything I have learned has been in the classic auto didactic manner. However, my B.A. is from Edison College (a completely reputable joke of a school, which gives credit for non-academic work). I studied for one semester at Yeshiva University and one semester at Queens College. Neither worked for me. Back then, I wanted to study only what I wanted to study. So, I followed my heart and dropped out. I only received my degree from Edison later on so my mom would be happy. Later in life, I earned a Master’s degree in Jewish Philosophy from Bar Illan University. And still later, I wrote a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Professor Moshe Idel and Professor Norman Solomon at Oxford University. My doctoral dissertation was approved by Oxford University on April 2, 2008.
The book (The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet) underlying our discussion is here.
Here’s a selective transcript of what I thought were the most important parts of our exchange:
Marc: "I’m working on making a movie on and writing a book on the dark sides of the internet. The relationship between privacy and freedom of speech and slander and Roman coliseum type energy in the blogosphere where there’s this kind of mass hysteria. A particular story we talked about this Shabbat was the dog poop girl."
Dog poop girl was an incident on a South Korean subway that was recorded and published, resulting in a backlash by Internet vigilantes.
In early June 2005, the woman, who appears to be in her 20s took her lap dog on a subway in Korea. Her dog defecated on the floor of the subway car and, when asked by other elderly riders, she declined to clean up after it. Another subway rider offered the woman a tissue, which she used to clean the dog but not its waste. When other passengers suggested she clean up the mess, she ignored the requests and departed the subway at the next stop. Another female commuter, using a camera phone, took several photographs of the woman and dog, and posted them on a popular Korean website.[1][2]
Soon after the unaltered photos were published, Internet vigilante group, Anonymous, closely examined the picture and within days she had been identified and her personal information released on the Internet. The photo quickly became one of the most popular image searches on popular Korean web portals and a source of parody and derisive satire.[3][4][5]
The woman quit her university in shame and published a photo of her dog and a public apology in Korean.[6][7][8]
The reaction by Korean netizens to the incident prompted several Korean newspapers to run editorials voicing concern over Internet vigilantism, suggesting that the effect of world-wide crowds do not result in wise, uniform judgments and appropriate punishments via social stigma. The implications for personal privacy were raised. Some said that posting the woman’s picture was acceptable, but that posting her personal information was inappropriate. Others said that her face should have been obscured in the widely circulated picture, in order to protect her identity.[9]
Marc: "She was having a bad day…and she forgot to pick up the poop and went on her way."
"She dropped out of school and for a time her life was destroyed. Is that appropriate internet behavior?"
Luke: "I don’t remember the same facts. I don’t remember anything about her having a bad day and I don’t remember her forgetting to pick up her dog’s poop. She refused to pick up the dog’s poop. She grossly violated social norms in public… Someone was smart enough to snap her photo and to blog it, which seems appropriate. Where it went too far was to demonize her. She did an ugly thing and she deserved to castigated for it. Posting her address, bringing her parents into it was wrong. Anything beyond saying this was a girl who did one bad thing [is wrong]."
"You can’t expect anonymity. You can desire it. You can’t expect it."
"Everything we do will reflect on our parents, our community and our friends. When she did an ugly thing, it’s not surprising that her family was shamed. It’s not necessarily a bad thing… It has to be appropriate to the degree of the sin."
Marc: "The problem with the internet is irresponsibility, a lack of proportion."
"Everyone has a don’t-pick-up-the-poop moment in life."
"What the internet allows for a demonization on a Roman coliseum throw-her-to-the-lions scale."
People should always act as if their every public act is going to be televised around the world and they can’t expect 100% privacy for all their private acts. What you do in the privacy of your own home does affect other people. Everything we do affects other people.
Marc: "Levi published a long essay about me with about 50 empirical errors. He went through it and corrected the errors."
"There’s a sense that bloggers can say what they want because no one can reach them."
Luke: "The case of the dog poop girl reminds me of how human sacrifices probably worked in human societies. You see someone doing something egregious and you want to sacrifice someone to send a message to clean up the dog poop."
"Some people may have said this girl’s life was ruined over this. I don’t think her life was ruined. She can let this ruin her life, but I know that if this happened to me, I would respond vigorously. I would get that video camera and I would go out on the streets and I would pick up dog poop for days. I’d say on camera that I behaved despicably. I would thank the people who publicized me bad behavior. You were right to castigate me. You put up an ugly picture of an ugly part of myself that I didn’t want to look at and you helped me transform myself. I want to know how many other ways do I act in an equivalently ugly way.
"I would embrace the criticism. I screwed up. I bet this is not the only area where I screw up this way and I’m going to go out and make restitution and I’m going to show you how serious I am about transforming my life. I would set up a website and tell what happened and link to the people who criticized me."
"About Marc Gafni’s story: I don’t trust people’s portrayal of their own life. I don’t know how accurate Marc’s portrait of his own life is. I know that my own understanding of my own life is severely flawed in ways.
"What I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks with Marc is been going through things I’ve written about him and where he says something is factually not right, I’ve generally speaking taken it down, and I’ve made a note of it in a separate file, and I’ll go back to other sources on Marc’s life and work it through… We’ll have to weigh the evidence. Get both sides on the phone and work it out.
"The writer and his subject will always have moments of tension."
Marc: "One of the great fallacies of what Levi does it to set himself up as judge and jury. He forgets that nobody actually appointed him. He’s claimed that job and there is an enormous inappropriateness in that claim."
"I’ve spent my life using every piece of energy I’ve had to help people."
"Whenever you’re a strong teacher, you’re going to have a group of people who….respond to you negatively. Like many teachers or artists, I’ve also had that group of people. To any of those people, I would sit down at a table in a facilitated context and see how do we get to healing."
"I wish Levi would find something else to write about [than Marc Gafni]."
Luke: "I get this all the time. I don’t think it is an intelligent or thought-through response. Who appointed me to blog? Who appointed Marc Gafni to write his book ‘Soul Prints’? His readers appointed him. His publisher. Why is that any more or less credible than the thousands of people who choose to read me each day? I’ve made a living as a blogger for eleven years. I think there are two other people in the world who can say that… Obviously those of us who are making a living from blogging, there’s something formidable about what we’re doing. Some days I get 30,000 readers of my blog. I don’t see how the people who choose to read me are any more or less credible than the people who choose to read Marc Gafni or Dennis Prager… Almost every form of major media in the world has quoted my work. That’s because my work is significant. And it is no more or less significant because I choose to work on my own than if I chose to work for some media entity or non-profit foundation."
"Marc’s second point — that we don’t have the right to punish. That belongs to God. Well, God explicitly gives us the right to punish. The only law explicitly in every book in the Torah is the death penalty. One of the seven laws of the Sons of Noah is to set up courts of law.
"I have values and I make judgments. The important thing is that your judgments be correct."
"I don’t accept that punishment and making judgments is best left to the courts. Court just as often get these matters wrong as bloggers do… In the end, only that which is right is right. If it is a blogger who is crying out what is right, even if all the courts in the world disagree with him, he’s right."
Marc: "We were reading the other day in the book The Future of Reputation, a discussion of any number of internet sites that just regularly slander people without checking. They know that people really don’t have the energy or time to sue them for libel. Or they publish salacious personal details of people’s lives by doing the circuit of cocktail parties and picking up gossip putting it on half true, half not true, knowing full well they’re not going to be subject to libel. That’s not cool. There’s a site called Gawker.com which engages in that kind of activity… That’s a gross violation of personal norms."
"In real life, if you say something grossly wrong about someone, you’re going to see them in church or synagogue that week. It’s the ability to kill someone by pushing a button. You don’t have to look in their eyes and wield the sword. Once you look in their eyes, it changes the conversation."
Luke: "As someone who’s made his living blogging since the fall of 1997, I’ve written critical things probably about thousands of people. I’m amazed at how clueless people are in responding to things they believe are unfair or inaccurate.
"Here’s how you should. You should made a good faith effort to contact the person whether through phone or email or fax. Be real nice. It’s in your self interest. When I get someone screaming at me over the telephone, I’m not in a space to listen to them.
"People often write inaccurate or unfair things about me. I respond to them and point out where I think they’ve been unfair.
"If that doesn’t work, can you take the person to lunch? That’s a great thing to do. Call them up and ask them for their favorite restaurant and offer to take them there. Sit them down and learn where they are coming. Talk to them for an hour or so, and after you learn where they are coming from, after you’ve Googled them and spent a good hour reading about them, and then say, hey, I think you were unfair in this instance. Here’s why I think that.
"So few people do that and it is such an effective way of dealing with it.
"If that doesn’t work, the next step may be to go to one of their friends. I have dozens of friends and acquaintances and if someone made a case to them that I had been unfair, they’d come to me and say this.
"Another alternative is a lawyer. Don’t send off a threatening email. Just say you’re a lawyer who hates dealing with libel cases and that you think that these particular sentences may put you at legal peril.
"Then, if necessary, slowly ratchet up the pressure."
"If someone writes something unfair or inaccurate about you and you stay silent, you are consenting to their portrayal as accurate. As the Talmud says, silence implies consent."
"Don’t just demonize the writer as someone evil. They are probably a human being like you, deeply flawed…"
Marc: "In an ideal world, that’s good advice. There are several structural problems with it. Number one, most people can’t afford to deploy a lawyer. Most people don’t have camcorders. They work for a living. They’re not engaged in the blogosphere. They’re overwhelmed."
"I did demonize you. Then I asked myself, ‘Maybe this stuff is distorted?’ However, if you had not reached out to me, the chances of us talking would have been minimal. And both of us took a great risk and tried to find the human being…"
"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)
‘Praying In Her Own Voice’
Rahel Jaskow writes March 23, 2007:
This morning I went to the DocAviv International Documentary Film Festival in Tel Aviv with other members of Women of the Wall to see Praying in Her Own Voice (Hebrew title: Kol be-isha tefilla), a film about our group and its legal struggle that was made by history professor and filmmaker Yael Katzir. I came out extremely moved, and wonderful to relate, I wasn’t the only one by far. It seems that the entire audience—which filled the largest auditorium at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque almost to capacity—was, too.
Yael, who spent four years making this film, put her heart and soul into it. Most important, she understood us. She got us: who we are, what we’re about (and, just as important, what we’re not about), what we want and why it is important to Israeli society and to Judaism as a whole. Thanks to her film, Israelis now understand that for the first time… and if we can judge by the audience’s reaction—prolonged, loud applause at the end of the film and the heartfelt comments they made to us after we left the theater—they get it, too.
People have already asked me where they can buy Praying in Her Own Voice on DVD, and I hope that soon I will be able to tell them. I recommend it highly: not because I am involved in Women of the Wall or because I appear in the film (a little), but rather because in my opinion it shows who we are, truly and simply, and why our struggle for the equal right of Jewish women’s prayer groups to worship according to their custom at the Western Wall has implications that go far beyond ourselves.