1. God made the world in six days as per the sequence set forth in Genesis?
2. The story of Noah is correct?
3. God dictated the Talmud to Moses on Mt. Sinai?
4. The Jews were held as slaves in Egypt, and then fled in the hundreds of thousands as set forth in Exodus?
5. There exists a God who gets angry at you when you wear garments that contain both linen and wool?
No to all of them. I believe in a God who gave the Torah (exactly how that happened, I am agnostic). I believe that God demands that Jews not wear garments made of linen and wool but I don’t think he gets as angry over these ritual transgressions as when we hurt innocent people.
Chaim Amalek responds: "Then how can you possibly be part of orthodox Judaism? Why do you even try/pretend to be one of them or someone whom they should embrace as one of their own? You might make a plausible reform Jew, but by your own words, you are not and cannot be an orthodox Jew. Your life would have gone better if you had taken a more adult approach to your religious beliefs."
Because I believe that in the final analysis God is the author of the Torah and of Judaism and Orthodox Judaism is the most effective way that I know to that divine presence and to the good life. If you want to practice Judaism, you need to do it within a community, and with few exceptions, the only observant communities in Judaism are Orthodoxy.
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Given my status in life, the time has come for me to vote my class interests ahead of the national interest. I will, therefore, be supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton in her drive to become the 44th President of the United States of America. Only she supports the kind of universal health care coverage that might enable me to one day see a doctor, and only she has shown an understanding of the economic consequences of immigration.
Luke, you are in the same boat. You should join me in voting for Hillary on Tuesday.
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If you saw Friday’s brief item on Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at the 92nd St. Y and wanted to know more about the "good old-fashioned debate drama" it hinted at, other observers have offered their perspective online, but first, let’s take a look at the video evidence:
Everybody who’s blogged about the event seems to agree: Boteach was an embarssingly inadequate advocate for his God. FishbowlNY‘s Neal Ungerleider described the evening as "90 minutes of watching Hitchens verbally disembowel Boteach," and noted that even in his weakest rhetorical moments, Hitchens "stayed on message." (But in that vein, one might add, Andy Partridge of XTC articulated one of the most solid, consistent arguments against Judeo-Christian religion ever, in under four minutes, and it rhymes.) Rachel Sklar of The Huffington Post called Boteach’s contribution to the evening "time-wasting bloviations, attacks on Hitchens himself… and shameless name-drops about when he was at Oxford." Phoebe Maltz found herself constructing a coherent argument against Hitchens even though she shares his atheism, just because Boteach had so miserably failed to do so.
And they were just three of the many bloggers Jewcy cited in a roundup of reactions. I wasn’t there, but my brief viewing of that clip above makes me wish that Rabbi Gillman had been the one carrying God’s banner in the debate; the outcome might well have stayed the same, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so lopsided.
Boteach — an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, comes out of the same media tradition as Christian personalities like Creflo Dollar, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen. He’s a man of the cloth who counts Michael Jackson and Uri Geller among his past professional collaborations. Boteach has books to his name like Kosher Sex and Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments and hosts the cringe inducing TLC program Shalom in the Home. Slate’s Benjamin Soskis once accused Boteach of promoting a religion "grounded in utilitarian justifications and stripped of inconvenient legalisms" — in other words, a Jewish version of the Christianity lite of Osteen & company.
There are a lot of believers whom we would like to see debate Hitchens. Religious historian Karen Armstrong, for one. Rabbi Michael Lerner for another. Religious porn blogger Luke Ford. The erudite Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Hell, even Catholic League honcho William Donahue. But we had to settle for Boteach.
If buildings could speak, the message of Dallas’ new Ohr HaTorah shul is one of pride, confidence, and inclusiveness. Simply put, it is – architecturally – the most impressive building of a right-of-Orthodox-center shul I have ever seen.
The community that built it lives up to the promise of the structure.
It wasn’t the shul that brought me to Texas. A group of seasoned activists within the United Methodist Church, America’s largest mainline Protestant denomination are up to some serious anti-Israel mischief. They are trying to get the rank and file to pass a divestment resolution at their General Conference in April, so my day job took me to Fort Worth last week to see what I could do to counter a bald lie that they have carefully nurtured for years. (Of all liberal Protestant denominations, the Methodists promote the ugliest and most imbalanced set of materials about Israel and the Middle East.) The Jewish community is so divided about Israel, they argue, that taking the side of the Palestinians will not harm Jewish-Methodist relations. Of course, every time they make the argument, there is a large cheering section on hand of vocal, marginal, and irrelevant Jewish groups who see Israel is the root of all evil. My mission was to begin the process of reality-checking, demonstrating that the vast majority of the Jewish community cares very much indeed about the safety and security of Israel, and regards imbalanced and unfair treatment of Israel as a body-blow.
There may be more relaxing ways of spending what to many was winter-break week. Going in to a different community as live bait is not a commonly accepted form of recreation. (Truth be told – it was not unpleasant at all. I never came face to face with the established Bad Guys. The people I met and conversed with – both delegates and officials, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian – were genuinely gracious and warm. They were mostly also hopelessly clueless about both the history of Israel, and the realities on the ground. Steady brainwashing by the Bad Guys has taken a toll.) Accepting the mission was made easier by the fact that the site of the pre-convention was only about 35 miles from my oldest son’s house in Dallas, which by Texas standards is about the size of an average driveway. So it was Methodists by day, my grandchildren by night, followed by the decompression and holiness of Shabbos.
Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, died this weekend at 98, leaving a colorfully offensive legacy and, thanks to the political correctness of the mainstream news media, a bit of a mystery as to why he’s died in such ignominy. Those of us of a certain age remember old Earl as one of the evil old squares of the psychotic Nixon administration– but not a criminal— though he was a criminal, gong on to serve time in federal prison for tax evasion— but as an unhinged loose cannon who was forced to give his resignation to Gerald Ford for a racist "joke."
This morning, obits in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times mention that “Mr. Butz was forced to resign in October 1976 after telling a joke that was derogatory to blacks… Two years earlier, Mr. Butz apologized to the Vatican after criticizing the Roman Catholic Church’s stand on birth control by using a mock Italian accent while referring to the pope.”
But these papers of record protect us from the words that had become part of the cultural fabric in the Seventies thanks to Rolling Stone magazine, which in those years was an important political and cultural force itself.
Even Butz’s hometown paper, the Indianapolis Star, which adds to Butz’ legacy by reporting that “he suggested there would be more food for humans if people would stop feeding dogs and cats,” drops the ball in the Pope’s court saying only that Butz made a “birth control joke, involving Pope Paul VI, in a mock Italian accent,” and whitewashes his racist joke as an “infamous gaffe… an off-color joke about blacks, bathrooms and sex, told in private but made public."
It’s bad enough that most of these major newspapers rely on an Associated Press obituary for the man who was the oldest living Cabinet member of any administration (when we now know they all have Britney Spears obits ready to roll), but it’s most disheartening that the average American newspaper reader must finish the story and wonder: "What the Hell did the guy say?" Was he a Don Imus? A Charlie Rose? That chick from the Golf Channel?
Butz was wilder than that. He was one of the foremost casual bigots of our time.
His Papal barb:
"He no playa the game,
he no maka the rules."
Butz uttered the line in a “mock Italian accent” at the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, making fun of Pope Paul VI’s opposition to "population control.”
A spokesman for New York’s Cardinal Cooke of the New York archdiocese demanded an apology, and the Secretary was reprimanded by the White House, which forced him to apologize. Butz issued a statement saying that he had not "intended to impugn the motives or the integrity of any religious group, ethnic group or religious leader."
His racist quip:
“The only thing the coloreds
are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes
and a warm place to shit."
News outlets revealed that Butz had made a racist remark in front of entertainer Pat Boone and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the Republican National Convention.
The October 18, 1976 issue of Time let the cat out of the bag:
Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. When the conversation turned to politics, Boone, a right-wing Republican, asked Butz why the party of Lincoln was not able to attract more blacks. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. Butz said that "the only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight p – – – – , loose shoes and a warm place to s – – -."
Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. But New Times magazine enterprisingly sleuthed out Butz’s identity by checking the itineraries of all Cabinet members.
Some newspapers published the remark. Others stated only that Butz had said something too obscene to print, and invited their readers to contact the editors if they wanted more information. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy of the whole quotation to anyone who requested it; more than 3,000 readers did.
Butz was forced to resign his cabinet post on October 4, 1976. He became the most sought–after Republican speaker on the lecture and after dinner circuits, and was named dean emeritus of Purdue University’s School of Agriculture.
That’s the story the "mainstream" newspaper editors were protecting all you young voters from.
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If New England wins the Super Bowl, they complete football’s longest undefeated season, earn their fourth title in seven years, and ensure they will be remembered until the sun implodes or soccer catches on in America, whichever comes first. Incidentally, this is Patriots’ receiver Randy Moss’ second brush with eternal fame. In 1998, the then-rookie keyed the Minnesota Vikings’ unprecedented offensive explosion as they surged to a 16-1 record… only to have his team lose in overtime to the Atlanta Falcons and sink into a morass of sex party boat rides and ticket-scalping coach scandals. In honor of Randy’s shot at redemption, count down the people who nearly reached the Heavens only to have hubris or plain bad luck trigger an unexpected return to the muck.
#1. Steven Hill Could Have Been Brando
Martin Landau once said, “When I first became an actor, there were two young actors in New York: Marlon Brando and Steven Hill. A lot of people said that Steven would have been the one, not Marlon. He was legendary. Nuts, volatile, mad, and his work was exciting.” One of these men went on to revolutionize acting and win two Oscars. What happened to Hill? Orthodox Judaism! Deciding he needed to devote himself to his faith, he chose to honor the Sabbath by not working from sunset on Friday to sunset Saturday (believe it or not, some producers felt this could be inconvenient for a production). He finally achieved a taste of success playing D.A. Adam Schiff on Law & Order only to have his happy days of bantering with A.D.A. McCoy come to an end when he was replaced by Nora Lewin (screw you, Dianne Wiest!). That said, he was awesome in Yentl. (Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage.com)
Posted inOrthodoxy|Comments Off on Ten Who Could’ve Been Great
A source says: "You might want to check your sources. I hear he quit because Jerry was going behind his back on budgetary issues. Jerry does not pay his salary . Roland Arnall placed Millman in that position with conditions to Friedman that Ken Millman put Shalhevet’s house in order or else he pulls his support."
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Friends tell me that when Chabad moves into a small Jewish community, they suck up the available funds (Jews prefer to give to Jews who look like authentic Jews), weaken existing communities, but often fail to create communities of their own because most Jews are not willing to live Lubavitch. One example given to me was Fort Worth, Texas.
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The LAT reports: "Park La Brea: A white man and a white woman, approximately in their 60s, were found dead inside their home at 200 S. Detroit St. in the Park La Brea area at about 11:23 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. Officers with LAPD’s Wilshire Division responded to reports of gunshots. Upon arrival, officers discovered the man and woman dead from gunshot wounds, said Officer Mike Lopez of LAPD’s media relations office. The woman was found inside the bathroom and the man inside the bedroom, he said. Paramedics declared both victims dead at the scene. Detectives have not determine the cause of the shooting, Lopez said."
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ? On Monday, authorities identified a husband and wife who died in an apparent murder-suicide in the Park La Brea area of Los Angeles.
Bruce and Terri Nadler, both 61, died on Saturday of gunshot wounds that
authorities believe were inflicted by Bruce, said Craig Harvey of the coroner’s office.
Officers were sent to the 200 block of South Detroit Street on a "shots fired" call about 11:25 a.m. Saturday, and found the bodies in their home, the Los Angeles Police Department reported.
Homicide investigators believe they’ve also found the weapon used in the killings, but have not established a motive.
A source says: "Their family is Orthodox. Their kid is (I think he is black hat)… I know all the cousins and the wife’s (who was killed) brother is. I don’t know exactly how religious the husband and wife were – but definitely an overall Jewish family in the community. The funeral was today."
I hear that it was a murder-suicide. There was a note… Apparently the man was an avid gun collector and also suffered from depression. I don’t know his name – but the his wife’s maiden name is Tomashevsky. I was told the note said that he was seeing a therapist and the therapist wanted to commit him. I believe he used to be a plastic surgeon. The couple’s son lives on the same street.
In its latest issue, the Jewish Journal calls Detroit the holiest street in Los Angeles. The column is titled "Rebbe Road."
Joe emails:
– The patient was depressed. – He is a gun collector. – There was reason for hospitalization (the note states that.) And… The patient was free to go home? and then kills his wife and himself?
There are clear guidelines in cases like this – It is called Tarasoff: In memory of a woman by that name who was murdered by her husband. The therapist knew it may happen and did nothing to prevent it.
The law states that any time a therapist knows of a case that:
1. The patient is might be dangerous to himself or others
2. The Therapist has learned of a plan and a means (gun, knife)
The therapist must break confidentiality and immediately inform police and follow up with a written report. The patient is admitted to the hospital for observation, even against their will. This is called 5150 (Britney Spears was hospitalized both times on it.)
#1. Steven Hill