Giving Cathy’s Family Privacy

Debbie, Cathy’s cousin, posts to Cathy’s World March 25:

I take real issue with certain comments that Luke Ford has recently put on his blog. Cathy and her sister had their conflicts but they should not be aired publicly. I know that this is hurting her sister and I am sorry for that. I know that people – in pain- can say things they do not mean. This is not the time to make public everything that Cathy might have said in private. I think what he did STINKS!!! As a family member, I know Cathy from a different perspective than the rest of you. She loved all the attention that she received but she had demons like the rest of us. There are certain personal issues that I would never divulge about Cathy, yet I am reading about her "personal feelings" from L.Ford and I believe that is wrong. Maia is young and in mourning. She has lost her mother and that is not to be taken lightly. The family should also be given some respect at this time.

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Cathy Seipp’s Last Request

In January, Cathy asked me to do a proper Wikipedia entry on her. I never got around to it.

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This Conservative Shul Is Dying

Ary blogs:

As a member of my synagogue’s Ritual Committee, I heard the Vice President lament that several Conservative synagogues are in financial trouble. Apparently, our synagogue has a budget gap of $100,000. Attendance at our daily minyans are so low, the Ritual Committee is considering, consolidating their daily services with a dying Conservative shul one village over.The Conservative movement is clearly dying. Once the most dominant form of practiced Judaism in the United States, it‚Äôs loss of membership can certainly be traced to their decision of making themselves more like Reform Judaism. The Conservative movement, like the Orthodox, believed in Jewish law. They made some minor changes, like having combined seating between men and women. In the last 30 years, the Conservative movement has ordained women rabbis, implemented egalitarian services, and allowed driving on Saturday to synagogue (which is prohibited). Now the Conservative movement has passed two resolutions, one calling for gay marriage and the ordination of gay rabbis, and one still opposing it. My rabbi lamented that people have threatened to leave our shul (including me) if gay marriage is implemented. He laments that people don‚Äôt get this upset about Kosher and Saturday observance. Our shul doesn‚Äôt have that many observant Jews, he cries. The reason why, Rabbi? Our observant members are now members of the Modern Orthodox shul down the road. The Conservative movement has betrayed its roots, being more like Reform won‚Äôt increase membership. Pink tallits don’t get rear ends in the seats on Shabbat. If people want a lack of Jewish law or they want gay marriage, they’ll join a Reform shul. If they don’t, they’ll join a Modern Orthodox shul. It’s as simple as that. Religion is a lot like politics, you have to play to your base. The Conservative movement in the center was a thriving movement. Center left doesn’t work. If they continued Center or center right, Conservadox would have been more popular than Modern Orthodox. The Upper West Side would have been a bastion of the Conservative movement. Watering your beliefs down because it’s politically correct will only further destroy your membership rolls. Our shul is dying and no one understands why. I do.

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When Stories Read A Little Too Good

Jack Shafer writes on Slate:

Another public storyteller whose personal recollections don’t jibe with reality is David Sedaris. Alex Heard’s examination of Sedaris’ nonfiction in the March 19 New Republic reveals the humorist taking broad and routine liberties with the facts in pursuit of laughs.Sedaris’ stories derive their punch from the fact that they’re supposed to be true, a standard he embraces in the introduction to his 1997 collection Naked. "The events described in these stories are real," Sedaris writes. Even so, nobody expects a humorist to apply the absolute faithfulness to characters, dialogue, and events in his stories that an AP reporter brings to a congressional-hearing dispatch. No scold, Heard bends like a contortionist to accommodate Sedaris, writing that it’s OK for a "humorist to recreate dialogue that captures the general spirit of how a conversation unfolded." But this artistic license doesn’t give humorists the right to remember their stories more vividly than they actually happened and still call them real. If humorists pipe lines of dialogue like a playwright (as we now know Sedaris does) or remold scenes from life like a novelist (as we also know he does), they’re basically writing fiction and should cop to it. If we label Sedaris’ pieces fiction, are they as hilarious? I think not, and I think Sedaris knows that, and I think that’s why he presents them as nonfiction.

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Fox News Story On The Battle Over CathySeipp.com Is With Fox’s Lawyers

Michael Park’s story on FoxNews.com appeared March 28. Here’s some background on the fight.

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Steinhardt’s Shtick

Samuel Freedman writes: Earlier this month, the Reuth social-service organization held its annual fund-raising dinner in Manhattan, at one point offering its podium to the philanthropist Michael Steinhardt. He took the occasion, according to a report in the New York Jewish Week, to say of Orthodox Jews, "They come from a different planet." Out in the audience, the newspaper went on to explain, those observant guests in attendance "shook their heads" or "squirmed in their seats."

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Rabbi Hagai Batzri Returns To My Gossip Column

An acquaintance emails:

Dear Luke, For a long time I defended Rabbi Hagai Batzri, I can no longer do it. He has not yet given his wife Nechama Batzri, a gorgeous convert to Judaism a Get [Jewish divorce], and yet he is living with a member of his shul at Magen David. How can Rabbi Toledano, Michael Fallis and Joe Fallis allow this to happen? His public display of kissing, groping and their live-in arrangement is not a good example of Judaism. Converts are supposed to be loved more than any other Jew. What is your opinion on his behavior. If it was kept quiet, fine, but they walk home from shul together into their apartment. How can he lead a congregation and then desecrate the lifestyle of Judaism?

Joe* emails:

Dear Mr. Ford, I’ve come upon your website and sometimes find it outrageous and sometimes funny. I wonder if you could help me or direct me to the right direction. I understand Rabbi Hagai Batzri, who is the Rabbi at Magen David in Beverly Hills, is still married to his second wife. Why must she still cover her hair, not be able to date and he is free to date? I did see this with my own eyes, along with my girlfriend. We are now coming back to Judaism and her seeing this kinda freaked me her out. Do you know if this is the true way of the Torah and/or Judaism. My girlfriend and I are awaiting your answer. ….Any news? We saw him again, this Shabbos afternoon with her and I would like to soon ask my chick to marry me, but what chance do I have is this kinda stuff goes on within the Rabbinical community? How can Rabbi Toledano and Magen David support this type of actions? …My girlfriend is freaking out about this. Any idea how to get rid of him?

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JTS To Accept Gay and Lesbian Students

That’s Yossi Abramowitz’s headline for his latest scoop. JTS has always accepted gay and lesbian students just as it has always accepted students with inclinations towards orgies and adultery (every male). It has not accepted, until now, those who openly acted on such urges and publicly proclaimed there was nothing wrong in doing so. I keep hearing, "But they were born gay." Yeah, and every man is born an adulterer, but the Torah and Western tradition asks him to restrain himself. Just because a man is born wanting to bugger another man or children or multiple women does not make it OK for him to act on these urges. Yossi writes about gays at JTS having nervous breakdowns over their fear of being outed. I’m sure plenty of heterosexual men have felt they were suffering a nervous breakdown over fears that their heterosexual sins would be outed. Why should we have any more compassion for the homosexual than the adulterer? Because heterosexuals don’t whine as much at not getting to act on their urges and have it be declared publicly acceptable? When I walk down the street and see a beautiful woman, I often feel deep pain that I don’t get to have sex with her (or anyone aside from my future wife). Where’s the compassion for me? David Klinghoffer writes on Jewcy.com that liberals want to reduce human freedom:

Gay marriage: The implicit justification for this insists that gays are in the grip of nature. They have no choice about their sexual behavior. So let‚Äôs endorse their love in civil law.Abortion: Here it‚Äôs women who are supposedly in the grip of nature, specifically sexual desire. The lady made a mistake and got pregnant. Liberals believe she can‚Äôt be held responsible for this, as denying her an abortion would do. The solution to unwanted pregnancy is a material one (ten minutes of vacuuming the uterus) over a spiritual one (taking responsibility for the outcome of sexual intercourse). Gun control: A gun isn’t a force of nature, but it’s treated as if it were one. If this particular material object is found in the house, we are virtually compelled to abuse it, endangering ourselves and others. The only solution is to restrict gun ownership. Global warming: We are in the grip of a vengeful, enraged nature! ‚ÄúAngry nature is holding a gun to our heads,‚Äù as the magazine of the Sierra Club warns. Affirmative action: Racial discrimination, whether favoring a minority or not, is based on the assumption that people are trapped by naturally-determined limitations associated with their skin color. Other liberal views don‚Äôt make an issue of nature as such but still implicitly deny what Hirsch calls our ‚Äúunique position of freedom,‚Äù advocating material mechanisms to keep us safe and happy rather than relying on free choice.

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Yeshiva University Apes Aish HaTorah

A friend comments: "Click on the YU Center for the Jewish Future ad. Is it me, or is there something depressing about this ersatz version of an Aish ad campaign?"

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LAT: ‘The blogosphere rumor, coverage, malice and celebration around writer Cathy Seipp’s death last week’

Sandra Tsing Loh writes in The Los Angeles Times March 27:

On the one hand, it would be hard to confuse cathyseipp.com with her actual site. On the other hand, when the cyber-squatter last week reverted to his earlier ways, posting a "last blog entry" signed "Cathy Seipp" in which Cathy supposedly begged final forgiveness for her politics, her friends and her parenting, this seemed to cross a new line. By week’s end, Cathy’s family and friends were debating whether to take legal action. Everyone was offended, exhausted and still staggered with grief. The public expression of which Cathy’s funeral was, of course, recorded without our knowledge and posted by another blogger. Yep, it’s all out there on the Web, just start Googling you’ll see snot pouring out of my nose as I wail helplessly through my eulogy, which, along with everything else involving the ceremony, has all already been critiqued online. "It’s like Cathy was the only thing that kept these people civilized!" was the horrified comment of friend Andrew Breitbart who, one should note, edits the Drudge Report. Even he!

Fox News report.

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