Mark Oppenheimer: ‘My lesson in free speech: As a Jew, meeting with Holocaust deniers actually left me feeling empowered’

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Luke Ford

Mark writes an Op/Ed in the LA Times:

In 2009, I interviewed Mark Weber and Bradley Smith, two amateur historians notorious for being among the leading Holocaust “revisionists.” Smith is an old-school denier, dubious about the existence of gas chambers, while Weber merely believes that Jews exaggerate history to help consolidate Zionist power.

I interviewed Weber in his offices outside Los Angeles, and Smith at a coffee shop close to the border of Mexico, where he lived. In each case I went alone. Although I wasn’t afraid — neither had a history of physical violence — meeting with two men who’d spent their professional lives spinning theories about the perfidy of my people was, at the least, a bit creepy. Let’s put it this way: I hugged my wife extra tight before leaving home.

Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about my time with Smith and Weber, and not just because white nationalists now have a president who they feel is sympathetic to their cause. Rather, the triggering event, if you will, is the national debate about how to confront speech we find odious…

…What was it like to meet with Holocaust revisionists? And then spend many more hours on the telephone, listening to their cracked, sinister theories about me, my relatives, my dead co-religionists?

Truth be told, it was invigorating. They were so deluded, so sad, and so alone in the world. Their lives were tangled webs of failed ambitions, failed ideas, even failed marriages. They weren’t well. I was. It was heartening to listen to my enemies respectfully, and conclude that in a country that permits free inquiry, they would never win.

Interviewing Smith and Weber — two men who downplay the literal genocide of my people; who dehumanize me more profoundly than even Murray’s critics believe that he dehumanizes others — actually empowered me as a thinker, as a progressive, and as a Jew. Having looked at evil, I found it puny. “We can beat this,” I found myself thinking.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2009:

Less than two weeks after Holocaust denier James von Brunn was arrested and charged with killing a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., an online magazine has begun publishing a four-part story on two of the leading figures among Holocaust revisionists.

Mark Oppenheimer’s story based on his interviews with Holocaust revisionists Bradley R. Smith and Mark Weber began on Tuesday and will run through Friday in “Tablet Magazine,” a daily online magazine about Jewish life that debuted this month.

Smith, 79, founded an online magazine called Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, and he also blogs on the Holocaust and more mundane matters such as his medical travails. Weber, 57, is director of the Institute for Historical Review, which published the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review until 2002. He incurred the wrath of fellow revisionists, including Smith, in January when he posted an article on his website arguing that Holocaust deniers have had little success in persuading people, and it was time to focus instead on the harmful impact of “Jewish-Zionist power” around the world.

Oppenheimer, who got a doctorate in religious studies at Yale, spoke several times in person and by telephone with Smith and Weber between February and May. He tracked down one man’s Jewish ex-lover and the other’s rumored Jewish sister. Both men “loved Jews,” Oppenheimer wrote. “They don’t love Jews generally, of course, but each man has a Jewish woman in his past with whom he had a close relationship.”

Weber “seems a good deal smarter than Smith but also a good deal less mirthful,” Oppenheimer concluded. In fact, Weber holds a master’s degree in European history from Indiana University. Oppenheimer marvels at Weber’s knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish holidays, the founding of the state of Israel and seemingly all things Jewish. “It became clear that he reads the Jewish press more closely than I do, and I write for the Jewish press,” Oppenheimer wrote in his story’s second installment.

Weber seemed especially dismayed that Smith and French Holocaust revisionist Robert Faurisson are interested in little more than questioning the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps. He says he’s interested in a wide array of questions regarding Jewish influence.

Smith rejects Weber’s assessment of him, telling Oppenheimer that he is a passionate libertarian concerned with protecting freedom of speech. Smith was jailed in Los Angeles in the early 1960s for selling Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer at the bookstore he owned at the time.

“Put simply, if we take these men at their words, Smith sees the gas chambers as a question of free speech; Faurisson as an underpinning of a fraudulent Jewish state; and Weber, as a distraction from the machinations of Jewish power in America,” Oppenheimer writes. “These distinctions may seem trivial to some, different facets of the same anti-Semitic menace; but for the men struggling for the soul of Holocaust revisionism, these differences are all that there is.”

Mark Oppenheimer emailed me for help with a story a year or two ago, but when I called back, he didn’t answer because he had concluded I was too weird.

Here is my analysis of his work with the Holocaust revisionists.

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WEHT To Emma Watson?

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: Because movie stars are movie stars because they appear to be highly sexed.

Emma Watson is an anomaly in that she was signed for an eight blockbuster run before puberty. At that point she looked like she’d grow up to be a beautiful young woman, but that didn’t quite happen, at least not by the extreme standards of movie star beauty. But she was heavily exposed by being in 8 Harry Potter movies. It seems like unhappy people gravitate toward her, daring the rest of the world to point out she’s not really all that pretty, and she accommodates their unhappiness by playing the offscreen role of political correct scold.

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Steve Sailer: “Intercept:” Harvard-Westlake School Is Alt-Right Madrassa

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: “[Julia] Hahn’s September 2015 article about Camp of Saints followed by a few weeks Ms. Merkel’s decision to act the novel out in real life; and Ms. Hahn is Jewish and it’s quite possible she didn’t like the increasingly anti-Jewish tenor of Islamic terrorism in Europe.”

“I have to confess to only now finally reading Plato’s “Republic.” I was rather struck to discover that Socrates’ definition of “justice” is translated variously as “minding your own business,” “not being a busybody,” and “not being meddlesome.””

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* California is the canary in the coal mine that is Anglo-America…..

Hence, it’s not surprising that some of us are “Woke” to what’s coming…

* Brittany Pettibone is another girl of the same vintage, with similar politics and from California too, I believe.

She and Lauren Southern spoke at Berkeley recently. Lauren herself is in France too right now embracing the Identitarians:

* Interestingly, this rambling piece from The Intercept never mentions the fact that Julia Hahn is Jewish. So maybe, instead of being a dangerous Neo-Nazi, Hahn is actually a patriotic American Jew, who doesn’t fear and loathe white Christians. Here’s an unintentionally hilarious post from The Forward expressing shock that a Jewish girl would work for Donald Trump and Steve Banon.

* They prattle on about “infamous” graduates of Harvard-Westlake.

How could they fail to mention the intrepid Heather McDonald?

* Yeah, someone asked in the Trump open thread if Trump groks the threat of demographic change. Probably not as much as a Hahn or a Miller who grew up in the Los Angeles area over the last couple of decades. It’s not as visible for someone living in Manhattan.

* It should be noted that Julia Hahn’s full name is Julia Aviva Hahn, and her boyfriend in college was latino.

* The likeliest explanation is not that they fell under some charismatic alt-rightist’s spell at Harvard-Westlake, but rather that they rebelled against its pervasive left-wing secular piety.

Nietzsche was a son of the manse; his father and both grandfathers were Lutheran ministers. As an adult, he gained fame (or infamy) as the man who said “God is dead.”

Aleister Crowley was brought up in a strict Plymouth Brethren household. He became “the Great Beast,” England’s most notorious diabolist.

On the other hand, Malcolm Muggeridge grew up in a secular Labour household; his father was a founding member of the Fabian Society, and a Labour MP. As a young man Muggeridge was attracted to Communism, but he was disillusioned by what he saw in the Soviet Union, and ended up a strong anti-communist, a Tory, and a Christian apologist.

David Horowitz was a red-diaper baby and an early adherent of the New Left; now he is a prominent critic of the left, his appearances on college campuses frequently triggering riots.

Some fraction of persons raised in an atmosphere of stifling religious or ideological conformity will inevitably reject it and in the process embrace strongly opposed views.

* I always find it interesting that people automatically assume that California must be uniformly liberal. Didn’t California produce Reagan and Nixon? Didn’t California vote solidly Republican in the post-WWII era? Wasn’t Orange County previously considered a bastion of conservatism?

It seems a lot of the fiercest brawls (between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces) have happened in California (especially Southern California) – Huntington Beach, Anaheim, San Diego, Berkeley.

Here’s an article on how California is full of pro-Trump intellectuals (such as Steve Sailer, Ron Unz, Mickey Kaus, Claremont, etc).

* By the way, Southern California is now only 30% Non-Hispanic White. For those under the age of 30, the figure is 22%. If you subtract out “white” ethnic groups like Persians and Americans, that percentage drops even more. If you subtract out recent Eastern Euro migrants, the figure drops even more. Of the remaining White-Americans, a substantial number are Jewish.

So White-American gentiles likely are under 20% of the population of SoCal. For residents under the age of 30, likely only 10%. Truly amazing.

SoCal is usually thought of as being the best place in America to live. It’s got beaches, amazing weather, nightlife, beautiful suburbs, large cities, etc. What a tragedy that Americans can’t even live on the best real estate in America.

Americans have basically been ethnically cleansed from the best real estate in their own country. A country their fathers/grandfathers fought for in WWII……… Go fight in WWII and when you come back home, give your prime living areas over to foreigners.

It’s not just SoCal. Whites are around 30% (20% for white gentiles) in NYC and South Florida too.

Of the three best areas in America (SoCal, SoFl, NYC), whites are finished in all of them.

What a country.

* Look what massive invasion did to California. It used to be a white state with lots of space and opportunities. Now, except for Hollywood and Silicon Valley, much of California might as well be Parts of Mexico and other Third World nations. This is what happened to the once-native majority of California thanks to mass invasion. So, this is what Europe should look forward to by welcoming massive invasion from Africa and Middle East? Why would Maass want this? Isn’t he white? Shouldn’t he defend white lands? I guess he’s too much of a virtue-vanity-preening ideological narcissist who inhales PC like an addict sniffs glue. He loves to feel ‘morally superior’ by virtue-signaling as a “caring compassionate and progressive white guy who rejects ‘racism’.” But, if ‘racism’ means a people defending ethnos and territory in their own homeland, what is wrong with ‘racism’? I mean, were the Vietnamese wrong to wage war on French, Americans, and Chinese for invading or occupying Vietnam? Are Palestinians in West Bank wrong to oppose continued incursions-invasions by Zionist colonizers?

Also, PC has a perverse concept of Tolerance. Since every nation has some minorities, I would argue that it’s good to be tolerant of existing minorities. But PC demands more. It says the existing majority should adopt demographic policies that will turn them into a minority in their own ancestral and historical homeland!!! Like what happened to Palestinians and native Hawaiians. Crazy!

Given what demographic imperialism does to a people, why would Maass support the invasion of the West?

Non-white aggression against whites in the Age of Fanon and Sartre made sense. European invaders still held parts of Asia, Africa, and Near East. So, non-white aggression was necessary in order for non-whites(such as Kenyans, Vietnamese, Algerians, Zimbabweans, etc) to reclaim their homelands from white invaders and colonizers.
And they won, and whites went home. Algerians, for example, expelled the French.

Now that white Europeans are in their own homelands, what is the problem? If it was wrong for non-white regions to have been invaded by whites, why is it good for white nations to be invaded by non-whites?

It’s like Russians, French, Poles, and others had every right to repel the German invaders in WWII. But once the Germans were out of their nations and defeated, there was no reason for them to deny the right of Germany to exist. Let Germans be German in Germany. As long as Germans are minding their own business in Germany, what right do other peoples to invade and occupy Germany?

It’s like Japanese once colonized huge areas of Asia. Asians kicked them out with help of US and USSR. It was justified to attack and repel Japanese imperialists. But once Japanese are back in their homelands, there is no justification for other peoples to invade and take over Japan. Let Japan be Japan, and let Japanese have the right to make sure that their territory, heritage, and identity are preserved in Japan. After all, Japan is not the world. It is just one nation among many in the world. Globalism’s open borders imperialism threatens to turn every nation into a total mess like Brazil or Venezuela.

INTERCEPT has done some good work in exposing abuses of the US government and empire. But all said and done, it is just another globalist-imperialist mouthpiece. Instead of supporting national sovereignty as the bulwark against Globalist-imperialism, it actually serves the Sorosian globalist project of smashing all national barriers so that the entire world will be exposed to US military domination, Wall Street takeover, and third world mobs who come for one thing only: free stuff and sex with white women.

American nationalism is good. It means America minding its own business than playing sheriff of the world. US in globalist mode since the end of Cold War has led to horrors in Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and EU. US aided in the financial rape of Russia. Its intervention in Muslim world led to blowback and more invasions, and that led to massive influx of Muslims and Africans into Europe.

Now, we have morons like Macron saying, “There is no French culture. There is just diverse cultures in France.” He sounds like some American moron in community college brainwashed by PC and Hollywood. So, this is what PC does to a culture and heritage as great as that of France. It turns everything into PC, rap, Hollywood, and celebration of homos.

* Jewish behavior sometimes seems like group PTSD. Understandable, maybe, but still PTSD and often not making sense. At all costs young Jews must not deviate from the party line that America is about to Holocaust them, any hour now. Like a horse that can’t separate the past from the present and can’t go down a road where something bad happened.

* Membership has its privileges. Being Jewish and having dangerous opinions can get you a lot farther than dangerous opinions on their own. We can see it in France with Eric Zemmour and Alain Finkielkraut, in Canada with Ezra Levant and in the US with a list too long to name. It’s kind of the modern equivalent of being a liberal or radical member of the gentry back in the 18th or 19th century.

* In my short time living in California I observed that the whites fell into three categories:

1.) True believers. Genuinely believe a majority Hispanic California is better than the majority white California was. Almost always baby boomers. Often had substance use issues in their past but since it was a less cutthroat time didn’t end up on the bottom rungs. Often grew up during the majority white period and experienced the majority Hispanic period as an established adult, so their primary experience with diversity was cheap gardeners and ethnic restaurants. While welcoming to immigrants generally are less enamored with NW Asians. Can’t understand why their kids are doing poorly and seem to resent them when all they have done all their lives is love and accept everybody.

2.) Resisters. Steven Miller, etc. Skew young.

3.) Quislings. Realize that they have essentially been defeated and have commenced with the boot licking. To keep some semblance of dignity, they pretend to be 1.)

Group 3.) is by far the largest. Fairly heterogeneous, though, some are complete cowards, some are biding their time.

* Steve Sailer:

“The concept that America’s 21st Century rich ought to feel a sense of noblesse oblige toward their less privileged fellow American citizens simply doesn’t register in the conventional wisdom. Fellow American citizens would charge the residents of Beverly Hills more for servant duties than illegal aliens would, so screw them, those racists”

You clearly don’t understand what noblesse oblige is, or the social context of societies that practiced it.

Old aristocratic societies had noblesse oblige because aristocrats had *higher legal status from birth*. Only they could exercise position in government, and they had literally powers of life and death over plebeians. An aristocrat could literally murder a commoner with no justification whatsoever. In those societies, aristocrats had an obligation to take care of commoners because those were the “pets” of the aristocrats.

With the Enlightnment, everyone became equal before the law. In a capitalist bourgeoise society, there are no social obligations at all, because people relate to each other voluntarily and through contracts. Salaries are negotiated based on supply and demand, and on the skills you have to offer your employer.

You supporting noblesse oblige for a society like the U.S is ridiculous because there is no inherited priviledge. Money is not priviledge because everyone is free to make it. Money inheritance is not the same as inheriting more political rights than others because a higher political status gives you true power over others while money does not. One gives you power of coercion over others, while the other doesen’t. A rich man cannot kill you in cold blood and get away with it(like an aristocrat could). Sure, he can hire better lawyers, but he will face the same laws as everyone else. A rich man cannot go to your house and rape your daughter and get away with it(like an aristocrat could). He cannot put you in chains and force you to work for him(like aristocrats could). Having money only gives you power over others if they allow it to, such as in a work contract. But even then the power is very limited. Your boss can fire you if you do not show up to work, but he can’t beat you or force you to work. Having a superior political status is a *whole* other ball game in terms of power than the power of money.

* Is there something else going on between Maass and Hahn? Maass appears to have stewed over the Hahn article for a year and a half. He alludes to the fact that they grew up about a mile from each other (albeit at different times). He’s doing research into her personal background including delving into her FB and Instagram accounts.

And now he comes out with this piece in The Intercept. Maass is really concerned and upset about this girl!

Quite strange….Maybe Maass wanted to mentor Hahn, and she rebuffed him? I don’t know…but Maass’ article reads more like a call for help— an attempt to let others in on his stalking ambitions. Perhaps somebody who cares about Maass can step in and slow his roll before he does something stupid.

Posted in Alt Right, Jews, Los Angeles | Comments Off on Steve Sailer: “Intercept:” Harvard-Westlake School Is Alt-Right Madrassa

The Long Strange Journey Of David Brooks

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Luke Ford

November 18, 2013: “Divorcing: David Brooks and Sarah Brooks, after 27 years of marriage. The respected New York Times columnist, 52, and his wife met as students at the University of Chicago; she converted to Judaism and changed her named from Jane to Sarah when they wed in 1986. Just last year, Brooks said “I go to colleges and I tell kids if you have a great career and a crappy marriage, you will be miserable. If you have a crappy career and a great marriage, you’ll be happy. So every course you take in college should be about who to marry.” The couple, who upgraded to a $4 million home in Cleveland Park last year, have three children.”

David has now remarried and is teaching about character and why it matters.

Free Republic:

Okay, we have read a lot recently about the irreparable divide in American politics nowadays. However, I am happy to report that there is one thing about which the left & right are in mirthful unity about: the incredibly tacky David Brooks wedding registry.

Brooks got married again last Sunday after dumping his wife of 27 years for a much younger mate. That actually isn’t the funny part. The laughter comes from the wealthy columnist and his bride publishing online (since taken down) of a wedding registry consisting of expensive as well as tacky items.

The question is why even post a wedding registry? Like does Brooks & Bride really need all this stuff that he can easily afford? Why didn’t Mr. Moralizer who frequently wrote incredibly boring columns denouncing materialism just suggest that in lieu of wedding gifts that people just donate to his favorite charity?

He didn’t do that and the comedy result has been tons of well-deserved (and hilariously brutal) reaction on the web. The most notable such reactions have been on TWITTER where they have subjected Brooks to merciless mockery.

This mockery comes from both left and right. From the left comes a Wonkette PAGE so brutal that I can’t even post the title here so if you are offended please remember that I warned you. That same Wonkette page, in the spirit of political ecumenism, also contains an equally brutal (but absolutely funny) post from Luke Ford on the right.

You can find many other such postings but here is a really funny DISCUSSION THREAD on the topic of Brooks’ tacky wedding registry. Here is a sample of one of the observations:

lmao @ all those fancy plates next to oxo good grips. and just one set of measuring cups? do you even gluten contamination, bro? just another shmuck with shmutz for brains, with a camouflage kitchen to paper over a liquor and take out lifestyle

So read and enjoy. Oh, and please remember you were warned about strong (but hilarious) language you will encounter so don’t complain if you are offended.

I’m surprised that David and his new bride would be so dense as to have a wedding registry, let alone make it easily public online.

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Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23)

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Luke Ford

Listen here.

Yesterday’s parasha included the most famous one in Leviticus — Kedoshim as well as Acharei Mot. This week we study Emor: “The parashah provides purity rules for priests (כֹּהֲנִים‎, Kohanim), recounts the holy days, provides for lights and bread in the sanctuary, and tells the story of a blasphemer and his punishment. The parashah constitutes Leviticus 21:1–24:23.”

* When I was high school and college in the 1980s, LA was regarded a glamorous place filled with beautiful white women. Is it still regarded that way? In the 1980s, I longed to move to LA, but it wasn’t because I longed to be surrounded by Mexicans.

* LAT: “The killing of Jordan Edwards shows again how black males — even children — are viewed as a threat”

* Nature has color-coded plants and animals for evolutionary reasons.

* What if it all means something? In Orthodox Judaism, your every choice, every deed, every word has significance. If you have visited Israel, you know a place where living is intense. If your life drifts along and you have no meaning and purpose, then seek help. One possible path to meaning is to read the Bible.

* “Counting of the Omer (Hebrew: ספירת העומר‎‎, Sefirat HaOmer, sometimes abbreviated as Sefira or the Omer) is an important verbal counting of each of the forty-nine days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot as stated in the Hebrew Bible: Leviticus 23:15–16.” (Wikipedia)

* Lag B’Omer begins Saturday night, May 13. “The origins of Lag BaOmer as a minor festival are unclear. The date is mentioned explicitly for the first time in the 13th century by the Talmudist Meiri in his gloss to Yevamot 62b. The Talmudic passage states that during the time of Rabbi Akiva, 24,000 of his students died from a divinely-sent plague during the counting of the Omer. The Talmud goes on to say that this was because they did not show proper respect to one another. Meiri named Lag BaOmer as the day when, “according to a tradition of the geonim”, the “plague” ended.”

“While the Counting of the Omer is a semi-mourning period, all restrictions of mourning are lifted on this 33rd day of the Omer. As a result, weddings, parties, listening to music, and haircuts are commonly scheduled to coincide with this day among Ashkenazi Jews. Families go on picnics and outings. Children go out to the fields with their teachers with bows and rubber-tipped arrows.”

“The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, encouraged Lag BaOmer parades to be held in Jewish communities around the world as a demonstration of Jewish unity and pride.” (Wikipedia)

* The Torah is not a suicide document. So when it says to love your neighbor as yourself, it means your Jewish neighbor. You are not expected to love your goyisha neighbor who hates you. The Torah lays out a tripartite division: humanity, Israel and priests. As the priests are to Israel, Israel is to be to the world. Even resident aliens must follow the holiness code or else God will leave and He won’t bless the land with fertility and security. (Jacob Milgrom)

* “The magnified risk of priests who work inside the sacred sphere is best illustrated by the tragedy of Nadab and Abihu (10:1-3). The x-ray physician is far more at risk than is the patient. Thus those who work directly at the heart of danger must implement heightened precautions.” (Milgrom)

* For the ancient aryans of Northern Europe, their main battle to survive was against the elements, not against other groups. So when they ran into strangers, they tended to trust them because strangers could help you survive a harsh environment. This trusting trait was evolutionarily adaptive for that particular time and place but it is now maladaptive. Jews, by contrast, come from the Middle East. They’ve always been highly ethnocentric because their main battles were with other groups for resources, not against the environment. Jews are evolutionarily adapted to group competition.

* The Torah is not libertarian. The whole camp must stay holy, and by extension, the land of Israel, else the land will vomit out the people Israel, just like it vomited out its previous inhabitants.

* The Torah is concerned with sanctifying space and time. The holier the place and the person, the more restrictions.

* The Torah is not esoteric. There is no hidden knowledge that only the priests or privileged classes know. The Torah is for everyone. By contrast, we discuss Nazism & occultism. Ariosophy refers to the wisdom of the Aryans. Wise proverbs from Africa. I have a friend who’s obsessed with Caitlin Jenner and trannies and it is ruining his mind.

* Lev. 20:24: “I am the Lord your God who set you apart from other peoples. So you shall set apart the pure quadrupeds from the impure…”

* Jacob Milgrom: “Israel’s attainment of holiness depends on setting itself apart from the nations and from prohibited foods.”

* Sex and food prohibitions are linked. Ex. 34:15-16: “You must not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for they will lust after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and invite you, and you will eat of their sacrifices. And when you take wives from among their daughters for your sons, their daughters will lust after their gods and will cause your sons to lust after their gods.”

* In Herman Wouk’s novel, Marjorie Morningstar, the “Jewish heroine finally succumbs to her seducer when she tastes pork for the first time. It is no accident that the author is a learned and observant Jew who understands that a breach in the dietary system may endanger one’s entire religious structure.”

* One of Christianity’s first acts was to abolish the dietary laws to abolish the distinctions between Jew and gentile.

* A crippled cohen can’t serve as a priest.

* “Israel was obsessed with fear of contamination of the dead…to wean Israel from the worship of the dead.” (Milgrom)

* “In Israel, there is no stigma attached to a raped or seduced single girl (Deet. 22:28-29) if she is the daughter of a layman. But a stigma may well exist if she is the daughter of a priest… Consider the case of a husband who finds that his bride is not a virgin; for her deception, she is put to death. However, a priest’s daughter who is neither married nor betrothed, but just promiscuous, is burned by fire. Finally, in view of the high degree of purity demanded of a priest’s bride in Second Temple times, it is plausible that in the biblical period rape disqualified a woman from marrying a priest.” (Milgrom)

* A Cohen can’t marry a divorcee or a convert.

* According to Plato, a prospective priest “must be screened to see to it that he is sound of body and of legitimate birth, reared in a family whose moral standards could hardly be higher.”

* “The list of blemishes for priests (21:17-23) was compiled match that for sacrificial animals.”

* “The impeccable appearance and behavior of the ordinary priest…is Israel’s responsibility.”

* For a rabbi, how many plooks until you’re out? How much illegitimate sex do you get before you are no longer a rabbi? It seems like Seventh-Day Adventist clergy have higher moral standards than many rabbis because the church is hierarchical while Judaism is congregational. If a rabbi owns his shul, who’s going to kick him out of it?

* “Holiness enters our life as a “still small voice” and will utterly transform every aspect of who we are and how we perceive and relate to the world around us, if only we allow that still small voice to to emerge and fill our reality.”

* Last show.

Posted in Torah | Comments Off on Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23)