Identity Politics

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Luke Ford

Stephen Steinlight posts on FB: “One of the gods of my youth [Jim Brown] unsurprisingly gets is exactly right. All of us should be unhyphenated Americans first, last and always, and we should honor our national symbols. Then — yes — let us act on our consciences and political judgments, which will inevitably differ from time to time and sometimes passionately — but not to the insane Identity Politics extent of deconstructing America.”

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Rabbi claims he was vilified for welcoming non-white members

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

A lot of Jews do not want non-whites in their synagogues, schools and neighborhoods. Jews tend to lead white flight though some Hasidic Jews stay (such as Chabad in Crown Heights).

New York Post: A Westchester rabbi who sought to diversify his synagogue was panned by its “racist” board members for turning the congregation “Spanish and Black,” according to a federal discrimination complaint.

Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Viñas, a Sephardic Jew who trained as an Orthodox rabbi, claims the board at Lincoln Park Jewish Center in Yonkers has a “long history” of discriminatory practices against “non-Whites.”

Viñas’ explosive allegations are laid out in a complaint recently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“Racist members employed subterfuge and sabotage against not only Rabbi Viñas but new Latino and African American members,” the complaint said. “They have attacked any bi-racial or non-white member as ‘not really Jewish.’”

Viñas, who joined the synagogue in 2003, claims one board member, Helen Schwartz, commented, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if the darkies took over the synagogue?” without realizing the rabbi’s Cuban background.

In 2011, Schwartz also allegedly complained to a director that Viñas wasn’t actually Jewish because of his “Sephardic/Hispanic background.”

Board members allegedly spread rumors that the rabbi was out to turn the congregation “Spanish” – and even accused him in 2008 of stealing from the rabbi’s discretionary fund to change the congregation to Spanish members.

“An investigation revealed that the funds were properly distributed,” the complaint said. “However, the very same false allegations arose again several months later, again with no finding of wrongdoing.”

Viñas accuses the board of doing nothing when a White congregation member with a Dominican spouse and biracial kids complained of racist treatment in 2010.

“Specifically, board members raised her biracial background, claimed she ‘didn’t look Jewish’ and said the family was ‘creating the wrong impression at the congregation,’” the complaint said.

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May Gentiles Play Music For Jews On Shabbat?

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

This no longer happens in Orthodox life (it has generally been forbidden since the destruction of the temple in 70).

In his first lecture for Torah in Motion on the Ben Ish Chai (Baghdadi rabbi in the 19th Century, handled business for the Sassoon family), Marc B. Shapiro says:

“There was a custom in Baghdad on the Shabbos after someone’s wedding, he was accompanied to the synagogue singing and dancing accompanied by non-Jews playing musical instruments.”

“The Shulchan Aruch is explicit that you can have non-Jews play music at wedding celebrations on Shabbos. If any of us tried that, we’d be [called] Reformers.”

“Let me give an example from my town with my family four weeks ago. This is an uncontested halacha. There aren’t many halachot that aren’t contested. This is in the Shulchan Aruch. All the commentaries agree. A boy under bar mitzvah can get maftir (except for parasha Zachor and Paroah) — he can get the aliyah, read the Torah and read the haftorah.”

“My son, who is 11 years old, and wanted to learn his parasha early, and we asked the rabbi and he said ok, but we don’t want to do it in the main shul, people won’t understand, do it in the side minyan… For Sephardim, a five year old can lein (recite) the Torah.)”

“It was the practice in Europe that on bar mitzvah, the boy would get an aliyah. He wouldn’t lein… Then people got the idea that he should do more… This led the average person to think that you need to be bar mitzvah to do the haftorah, which is not true.”

“In America, you have a lot of people who dress haredi who are really religious Zionists.”

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We Need To Start Befriending Neo-Nazis

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

Bethany Mandel (who has blocked me on Twitter because I criticized her) writes:

The subject of our third remarkable story is Derek Black, the scion of famous white supremacists. His father, Don Black, was the brains behind Stormfront, the Internet’s first and biggest white nationalist site with 300,000 users. His mother, Chloe, had been married to David Duke, who was Derek’s godfather. “They had raised Derek at the forefront of the movement, and some white nationalists had begun calling him ‘the heir’,” the Washington Post reports ,

Black was outed on his college campus as an anti-Semite. But one of his classmates, Matthew Stevenson, the only Orthodox Jew on campus, decided to invite Black to a Shabbat meal.

“It was the only social invitation Derek had received since returning to campus, so he agreed to go,” writes the Washington Post. Stevenson told the other guests, “Let’s try to treat him like anyone else.”

Pretty soon, Black became a regular at these Shabbat meals. And eventually, Black, like Phelps-Roper and the two hundred men (and women) Davis befriended, renounced the ideas that had once filled him with such hatred.

I am not made of the same fiber of Davis, Abitbol or Stevenson. I spent the entire Republican primary being attacked by white nationalists and landed myself on a top ten list compiled by the ADL of Jewish journalists targeted by them. Unlike these three remarkable human beings, I did not engage with any of these individuals as human beings once. But maybe I should have, and maybe I should in the future. Because hating people for being hateful obviously isn’t getting us anywhere.

Someone once tweeted, “There is not a single good person who voted for Trump. Not one.” To which Federalist writer Tom Nichols responded, “This is a recipe for a second Trump term.”

…It’s time to admit that even in the wake of Charlottesville – especially in the wake of Charlottesville – the only way we’re going to get our country back is to change minds. This might mean we need to start befriending nazis.

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When Is A Pardon Shameful?

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Luke Ford

Stephen Steinlight: Do you have any idea what percentage of Americans who are Jews the Jewish Establishment speaks for? As in most other subjects you address — but especially when you discuss the Jews on whom you obsess — you show bloody ignorance. The leadership cadres are tiny and most Jews are unaffiliated to secular Jewish orgs or to religious institutions. As usual, you are shooting at the wrong target.

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