REPORT: As we prepare to mark the shloshim for the victims of the Egged 402 bus accident that claimed six lives, HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Zilberstein, Rav of the Ramat Elchanan neighborhood of Bnei Brak speaks to the tzibur. The accident hit the chareidi tzibur particularly hard.
During a talk in beis medrash, Rav Zilberstein explained he has been approached by many people seeking an explanation that resulted in such tragedy for so many families.
Rabbi Zilberstein quotes the kuntres Rachmei HaRav from HaGaon HaRav Shmuel Halevy Wosner ZT”L, in which Rav Wosner writes women should not get a drivers license. He explains that while this is somewhat commonplace today, it is not advised for the actual process of obtaining the license results in compromising her modesty as does actual driving of a vehicle by a woman for this exposes her to sites in the streets and marketplace.
“וליבי אומר לי שהוא אחד הגורמים של האסונות הגדולים שנעשים בדרכים בארץ ישראל המפילים כל כך חללים והרגו כבר טובים וצדיקים וזה מצורף לכל העבירות הנעשים בדרכים שמולידים המחבלים שמסכנים הדרכים”.
The kuntres adds “My heart tells me this is one of the causes of major catastrophes on the roadways of Eretz Yisrael that claim so many lives including many fine people, tzaddikim, and this coupled with the many [traffic] aveiros that made the roadways so dangerous”.
Rabbi Zilberstein adds as Posek Hador, Rav Wosner is giving piskei halacha from Shomayim and this is one of the causes that so many good people are killed.
He adds Rav Wosner in some exceptional cases permitted women to drive, for example a sick child in one’s home and a child with special needs that requires transportation to and from an institution but these exceptions were rare.
Posted inRabbis|Comments Off on Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein Says Women Should Not Drive As It ‘Compromises Tzniyus’
The Orthodox Community Responds to Donald Trump at AIPAC
March 18, 2016
Dear Mr. Trump:
We are writing to you as you prepare to address the largest pro-Israel gathering in North America. We care deeply not only about America’s relationship with Israel, but the values and character of this special land. We hope you will use this occasion to articulate the values that friends of Israel hold so dear.
To begin, you should use this opportunity to categorically repudiate racism. There is simply no place for it in our shared discourse. As the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel enshrined in law its commitment to protect the rights all of its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. When the Jewish people returned to Israel after centuries of persecution and exile, they chose to pursue a path of inclusivity. Rather than perpetuate a culture of prejudice, they chose instead to create a culture of tolerance. Freedom of worship is sacrosanct in the Holy Land and upon its founding, Israel’s government vowed to safeguard the holy places of all religions. You should declare in no uncertain terms that bigotry is as dangerous as it is wrong.
We also call upon you to denounce the language of hatred and xenophobia. There is no mitzvah in the Torah repeated more often than the embrace of the stranger. The Jewish story is itself the history of exiles seeking shelter; of refugees seeking asylum. And since it became a sovereign nation, Israel has proudly stood by and supported peoples of all backgrounds in their times of need: From Haiti to Taiwan; from Sudan to Nepal. Jewish tradition demands that we look past what separates us and instead keep our eyes trained on our shared humanity.
Finally, you need to reassure our community that you understand that there can be no moral equivalency between a sovereign government acting in self-defense on the one hand and a terrorist organization committed to genocide on the other. The pro-Israel community is starving for peace. The notion of shalom represents one of our greatest aspirations – one for which we pray daily. But a lasting peace will only come with the help of a political ally who recognizes Israel’s right to self-determination. Let your listeners know that you would never strong-arm Israel into negotiating a peace deal when Israel has no partner for peace.
Mr. Trump: In these fraught times, make it clear to the pro-Israel community that you stand not only with Israel’s people, but with Israel’s principles. We cannot abide a discourse that inflames intolerance and foments fanaticism. The future of our people is too important.
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Rabbi Herschel Billet
Rabbi Yisroel Ciner
Rabbi Daniel Cohen
Rabbi Mark Dratch
Rabbi Yitzchok Feldman
Rabbi Joel Finkelstein
Rabbi Barry Gelman
Rabbi Yaakov Gibber
Rabbi Yaakov Glasser
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
Rabbi Zev Goldberg
Rabbi Moshe Grussgott
Rabbi Kenneth Hain
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld
Rabbi Joshua Hess
Rabbi Daniel Korobkin
Rabbi Simcha Krauss
Rabbi Joel Landau
Rabbi Philip Lefkowitz
Rabbi Yosie Levine
Rabbi Marc Mandel
Rabbi Adam Mintz
Rabbi Jonathan Muskat
Rabbi Elazar Muskin
Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky
Rabbi Zev Reichman
Rabbi Shaul Robinson
Rabbi Zvi Romm
Rabbi Allen Schwartz
Rabbi Ronald Schwarzberg
Rabbi Mordechai Sevy
Rabbi Adam Starr
Rabbi Josh Strulowitz
Rabbi Mayer Waxman
Rabbi Jay Weinstein
Rabbi Neil N. Winkler
Rabbi Alan J. Yuter
Rabbi Dovid Zirkind
Are these rabbis aware of Israel’s restrictive immigration policy? Do they think Muslims can immigrate to Israel? Because I want the US to have the same restrictive immigration policy and the same type of walls that Israel has and I would hate to think that Modern Orthodox rabbis deem it normal to have one standard of acceptable behavior for themselves, and a totally different standard for the goy.
I have no objection to dual morality systems (where you have one ethic for how you treat members of your in-group and another ethic for how you treat outsiders). Most peoples have this, but it is a bit rich for exponents of a dual morality system such as Orthodox Judaism to lecture outsiders on the evils of racism, discrimination and bigotry.
A friend: “The rabbinate has not gotten the memo that the rest of the world is on to them and this is a perilous course for them to follow.”
My first response to these rabbis is that their letter is not, thank God, from the Orthodox Jewish community. It is a letter from a handful of Modern Orthodox rabbis who esteem themselves as representing Orthodox Judaism.
Come November, most Orthodox Jews will vote for Donald Trump, whether or not he does any of the things the rabbis urge in this letter. Fighting racism is not much of a concern to the traditional Orthodox Jew. He doesn’t usually recognize “racism” as a sin, rather, it is more like commonsense.
Rabbis: “To begin, you should use this opportunity to categorically repudiate racism.”
What is racism? There is nothing in Torah condemning racism. There is no such sin as “racism” in Torah. This is an entirely made-up moral offense. The term did not even exist prior to the 20th Century.
I’ve never heard a traditional Orthodox rabbi give a sermon against racism in America, against bigotry in America, against intolerance in America, unless he’s referring to Jews as victims of such. The more traditional the Jew, the less he’s concerned with gentiles.
What gadol (great rabbi) has ever written a book against racism? Short answer: None. What gadol has ever written a book about the “values and character of this special land [America]”? Short answer: None.
That no great rabbi has ever written a book on these themes reveals that the claims of this rabbinic letter are a lie. These rabbis are just posing. Their every word drips with deceit.
What gadol has ever written a book propounding beauty of the following: “Israel enshrined in law its commitment to protect the rights all of its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Short answer: none.
Contrary to this rabbinic letter, Torah contains many negative statements about blacks (just as the black tradition contains many negative statements about Jews). Here is Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 12:11: “I have known for a long time that you are of beautiful appearance, but now we are coming among black and repulsive people who are brothers of the Kushim (Ethiopians) and are unaccustomed to seeing a beautiful woman.”
I’m not ashamed of what Rashi wrote. I do not think he sinned because I do not believe there is any such sin as racism. It is normal, natural and healthy for members of one group to be less than thrilled with outsiders, and blacks from a white perspective, are outsiders.
I look forward to hearing that these Orthodox rabbis had the courage of their convictions and stood up in front of their congregations and denounced Torah for its bigotry, racism and xenophobia. Let them be consistent and start tearing out pages of Torah that do not comport with modern morality. Let them stand tall for what they believe by having bonfires filled with bigoted sections of Torah. Perhaps they should start with the injunction that non-Jews who steal from Jews should be put to death and as Torah is the property of Jews, goyim who study it should likewise be executed (this has never been practiced in Jewish history, but hey, it’s the principle of the matter).
The controversy surrounding journalist Max Blumenthal continues in the wake of the release of his video of intoxicated American Jews in Jerusalem insulting President Barack Obama, but he rejects the claims that the footage fuels anti-Semitism.
The video shows young American Jews, who are apparently very drunk, criticizing Obama for his Mideast policies and describing him in derogatory terms. It has also had more than 400,000 hits on YouTube.
“I have received death threats from people, mainly ones calling me a self-hating Jew. I am self-hating, but my self-hatred has nothing to do with me being Jewish,” Blumenthal told Haaretz this week.
Blumenthal says the ad hominem attacks against him and co-producer and cameraman Joseph Dana are being used to obscure the message of the video, and to ignore the statements made by young Jews who could be the relatives of any of us.
From a black website: “Dov Lior, a popular chief rabbi in Israel, recently called Obama a Kushi, which is Israel’s equivalent to nig*er. Most Americans are completely unaware of the general contempt that many Jewish people have towards blacks, as Max Blumenthal found out when he interviewed dozens of young people in Israel who reiterated the Rabbi’s sentiments about Obama. Blumenthal’s video titled Feeling the Hate in Israel was removed from YouTube, Vimeo, and the Huffington Post shortly after going viral.”
If you could do a secret poll of Orthodox Jews in America and ask them would the country be better or worse off without Muslims, what do you think the result would be? The overwhelming majority of American Orthodox Jews would prefer that America be free of Muslims and of blacks. They also would prefer that Israel be free of Muslims. Most Israelis wish in their hearts that all Palestinians would disappear and I suspect that most Israelis also wish that blacks in Israelwould leave.
Rabbis: “There is simply no place for it in our shared discourse.”
If the rabbis believe this, then they are saying there is no place for Torah in America as the Torah tradition contains many statements that would be widely considered racist. Orthodox Jews, more than any other Jewish group, are likely to say things the conventional morality will condemn as bigoted.
Rabbis: “As the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel enshrined in law its commitment to protect the rights all of its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. When the Jewish people returned to Israel after centuries of persecution and exile, they chose to pursue a path of inclusivity. Rather than perpetuate a culture of prejudice, they chose instead to create a culture of tolerance. Freedom of worship is sacrosanct in the Holy Land and upon its founding, Israel’s government vowed to safeguard the holy places of all religions. You should declare in no uncertain terms that bigotry is as dangerous as it is wrong.”
Israel is the Jewish state run primarily for the benefit of Jews. Non-Jewish citizens of Israel are keenly aware of being outsiders in the Jewish state, much more so than non-whites and non-Christians feel like outsiders in America. I am glad Israel is the Jewish state, and I think it is ludicrous to argue that the Jewish state has pursued “a path of inclusivity” and “a culture of tolerance.” Israelis routinely chant “Death to the Arabs.” Nothing like that goes on at Donald Trump rallies.
I don’t blame Israelis for wishing death to the Arabs, just as I don’t blame Arabs for wishing death to the Jews. Both groups are fighting over scarce resources. It makes rational sense that they would hate each other.
For all its inclusivity and tolerance, Israel is widely hated around the world. Such inclusivity and tolerance has not helped Israel’s safety and well-being. Should America wish to be as hated and vulnerable as Israel? The more tolerant and nice Israel gets, the more vulnerable it becomes.
Rabbis: “We care deeply not only about America’s relationship with Israel, but the values and character of this special land.”
Is anyone not revolted by this oily language? Rabbis do not care about America’s relationship with Israel except to the extent it redounds to the benefit of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Judaism does not have much to say about how Jews should try to shape the values and character of gentile lands. Judaism’s focus is on how Jews should perform its commandments, preferably in the Jewish state.
When minorities talk about American values, they’re usually looking to manipulate the majority into giving them more rights. You never find a large number of Jews fighting on the side of gentile majorities against minority rights, instead you usually find in the diaspora a disproportion of Jews fighting to expand minority rights at the expense of the majority. When it comes to the Jewish state, however, the Torah is clear. There is no room for non-Jewish citizenship and no non-Jewish should ever be in charge of a Jew, not even in charge of water carriers.
The values and character of America that these rabbis are fighting for are whatever they think is best for the Jews such as multiculturalism and mass immigration, things that are bad for America’s white majority. Different groups have different interests. Jews aren’t being un-American or perfidious in pursuing their group interests over the interests of other groups. They are following a biological necessity, without such self-interest groups die out. Every group seeks to maximize its own interests with little regard for other groups.
Groups such as Jews, latinos, blacks, white, Muslims are in constant conflict over scarce resources. Rarely does one group surge ahead without negatively affecting other groups. When Jews rise in power in America, for instance, other groups lose power. The United States used to be ruled by the Protestant ethic. Jews overcame that and now Jews compose much of America’s ruling elite and more than any other group they determine the Overton Window.
Rabbis: “When the Jewish people returned to Israel after centuries of persecution and exile, they chose to pursue a path of inclusivity.”
What gadol has written a book on this theme? Short answer: None. When thousands of books are produced each year by Orthodox rabbis and none of them see fit to write about the themes in this rabbinic letter, you can be sure that this rabbinic letter is a fraud and that all of its signers are paid liars willing to peddle the most outrageous deceit for an advantage.
Rabbis: “Freedom of worship is sacrosanct in the Holy Land…”
Which gadol has written a book on this theme? Short answer: None. Torah makes no provision for and grants no sanction to non-Jewish forms of religious expression in Israel. In a Jewish state run by Torah, there won’t be any churches and mosques.
Rabbis: “You should declare in no uncertain terms that bigotry is as dangerous as it is wrong.”
What gadol has written a book against bigotry? Short answer: None.
Rabbis: “We also call upon you to denounce the language of hatred and xenophobia.”
Because hatred is unknown in Torah? That’s nonsense. Torah is filled with hatred. I am not ashamed of that. If you love something, such as God, you must hate those who are the enemies of God. If you love your family, you hate those who threaten your family. If you love your people, you hate those who threaten your people. Hatred is simply the flip side of love.
What gadol has written a sefer (book) against xenophobia? Short answer: None.
Onkelos son of Kolonikos … went and raised Titus from the dead by magical arts, and asked him; ‘Who is most in repute in the [other] world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He said: Their observances are burdensome and you will not be able to carry them out. Go and attack them in that world and you will be at the top as it is written, Her adversaries are become the head etc.; whoever harasses Israel becomes head. He asked him: What is your punishment [in the other world]? He replied: What I decreed for myself. Every day my ashes are collected and sentence is passed on me and I am burnt and my ashes are scattered over the seven seas. He then went and raised Balaam by incantations. He asked him: Who is in repute in the other world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He replied: Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. He then asked: What is your punishment? He replied: With boiling hot semen. He then went and raised by incantations Jesus [in Vilna edition: “the sinners of Israel”; “Jesus” appears in Munich 95 and Vatican 140 manuscripts and “he went and brought up Jesus the Nazarene” (Editions or MSs: Vatican 130)]. He asked them: Who is in repute in the other world? They replied: Israel. What about joining them? They replied: Seek their welfare, seek not their harm. Whoever touches them touches the apple of his eye. He said: What is your punishment? They replied: With boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: Whoever mocks at the words of the Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement. Observe the difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the other nations who worship idols. It has been taught: Note from this incident how serious a thing it is to put a man to shame, for God espoused the cause of Bar Kamza and destroyed His House and burnt His Temple.
— Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b-57a
So when the Talmud pictures Jesus — the god of the goyim — suffering for eternity in boiling hot excrement, is that hate speech? Asking for a friend.
I’m not arguing that Jews and Judaism are bad or nasty or bigoted. I’m just arguing that it is normal, natural and healthy for all strongly identifying in-groups such as Jews and Muslims and blacks to have suspicion and negative feelings towards out-groups.
There are six things that the Torah commands us to remember. Optimally, these verses should be recited out loud each day and their meanings should be considered…
3. Amalek’s Evil Attack Remember what Amalek did to you on the journey when you left Egypt. They met you on the way and ambushed those who were lagging behind. You were tired and exhausted, but they did not fear God. Therefore, when Hashem your God relieves you from your enemies in the land that He will give you to possess, you must erase the memory of Amalek from beneath heaven. Do not forget. (Devarim 25:17-19) Amalek is different from other nations that attacked Israel in that we are commanded to eradicate them. Why should they be punished more harshly than Egypt, which oppressed the Jews for hundreds of years? One reason is because Amalek “did not fear God.” They dared to make war not just with the Jews, but with God Himself!
Is that hate speech?
I have no moral objection to hatred. I just want it properly directed. I have no moral objection to Torah, I just want to point out that there is no widely-used definition of hate speech that would not include much of Torah.
“Jewish tradition demands that we look past what separates us and instead keep our eyes trained on our shared humanity.”
Jewish tradition does not focus on training Jews to look past what separates us and to instead keep our eyes trained on our shared humanity. For instance, in the Havdalah prayer, we thank God for separating Israel from the nations. One of the commonly accepted arguments among Orthodox Jews for keeping kosher is that it separate you from non-Jews. This separation is a taken for granted virtue in Orthodox Judaism (and other insular traditional ways of life).
If rabbis keep lying like this, the nations are going to want to increasingly separate themselves from both the people of Israel and the nation of Israel.
Jewish elites can’t pursue their group interest through any means necessary while denying the same privilege to the goyim. If nationalism is good for Jews, it is also good for gentiles. If separation is good for Jews, then it is also good for gentiles. If Jews want to have sacred spaces reserved for Jews, gentiles should be allowed their own hotels and restaurants and clubs free from Jews (if the goyim wish).
Strong Group Identity Always Brings With It Group Contempt For Outsiders
I’ve been arguing with Orthodox Jewish friends who want an Orthodox Judaism that does not have contempt for non-Jews.
It’s not possible, I tell them. Sure, you can have individual Orthodox Jews who are strong in their Jewish identity and non-contemptuous to non-Jews, but as a group, Orthodox Jews are always going to feel varying degrees of contempt for non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews. It’s inherent in group identity. If you believe that you are living God’s will, that your group is the best, by definition all other groups are not the best and not living out God’s plan as much as you are.
To have a strong group identity and to not feel contempt for outsiders requires a high IQ. It’s a unique combination of traits akin to juggling balls and discussing philosophy at the same time. Not many people can do it.
I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist with a strong Adventist identity. Accompanying my strong group identity was the feeling and belief that outsiders were lost. Sure, some of them might still inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, but they weren’t among God’s elect, God’s Chosen. That was reserved for Seventh-Day Adventists.
There’s never been a strong group identity that did not carry with it general group contempt for outsiders. When Germans were strong in being German, they had varying degrees of fear, loathing and contempt for outsiders such as Jews and slavs and the French, etc. When the French felt strongly about being French, they had, as a group, a tendency towards contempt for the non-French. When the Commanches were strong in being Commanche, they had, as a group, contempt for outsiders.
When Jews say things like the following, it’s never a compliment for non-Jews:
* He’s thinking like a goy.
* That’s goyisha kup (Gentile thinking).
* What a goy!
The stronger a Jew feels about being Jewish, the more a Christian feels in Christ, the more a Muslim feels Islamic, the more contempt he is likely to feel for outsiders.
I have an Orthodox Jewish friend who decided to start wearing colored shirts on Sabbath. Normally, Orthodox Jewish men wear white shirts on the Sabbath. My friend was sick of the contempt he’s seen displayed towards non-Jews by Orthodox Jews and so he wants to make a statement that he is not like those contemptuous white-shirted Orthodox Jews. By dropping the uniform to express his universal tolerance, he’s reducing his group identity and has taken a step towards assimilation.
Uniforms are a kin component of group solidarity. Imagine how much weaker the KKK would be if they stopped wearing their uniforms. Imagine how much weaker the SS would have been if they dropped their uniforms. Imagine how much weaker Islamic identity would be without distinctive Islamic garb.
Liberal Jews omit the following lines from the Aleinu prayer: “For they worship vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save.” Traditional Jews say the lines just as they were written hundreds of years ago. These lines express contempt for the prayers of non-Jews. Now, if I were doing Jewish apologetics, I’d say that these lines were composed with pagans in mind, not the righteous non-Jews of today, but between you and me, we know that this still expresses Jewish contempt for non-Jewish religions, just as non-Jewish religions express contempt in varying ways for religions different from their own.
Christians, Muslims and Jews have always, on average, despised each other.
Bigotry, racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism are not useful concepts. You will think more clearly when you replace such nonsense with the idea that different groups have different interests. Germans who loved being German prior to WWII saw that they had to get rid of the Jews if they wanted a truly Aryan state. Arabs and Muslims around Israel see that they have to get rid of the Jewish state for as long as Jews are around them and living free, they will excel them and that’s humiliating. As long as Jews were free in Germany in large numbers, they were going to affect society in ways that Aryan Germans would not like.
Organized Jewish life in the United States (including the Orthodox Union and Agudas Yisrael) has pushed for immigration amnesty because they see it (unconsciously in many cases) in the Jews’ interest for the white goyim to lose control of the United States. Organized Jewish life pushed for the removal of prayer in public schools in America because a weakened goyisha religious identity was thought to be in the Jewish interest. Jews have been at the forefront (through the Frankfurt school etc) of claiming that there is no meaning to race. This weakens the goy’s racial identity. Jews have been at the forefront of denouncing nationalism because that weakens the goy’s national identity and thus makes life easier for the Jews (who retain their own nationalism and Zionism).
All of these agendas pushed by the Jewish community (not by every individual Jew) have been contrary to the interests of white Americans. White Americans and black Americans and Mexican-Americans and Jewish-Americans have competing interests and this inevitably leads to conflict.
Over the past 600 years, Ashkenazi Jews in Europe have, on average, lived better than their non-Jewish neighbors (most have been in white collar jobs) because they had higher IQs and superior group solidarity.
Goy Philosopher emails:
I agree with almost everything you say here, and it’s terrible that only a few people are saying it. Yes, these statements are transparently dishonest and “oily”. Disgusting. At least, I find it impossible to believe that these guys really believe in the ‘inclusive’ or ‘anti-racist’ principles with which they try to confuse and manipulate gentiles. It seems insulting that they expect us to believe it. Here they are, practicing this blatantly ethnocentric (and arguably ‘racist’) religion, insisting on an openly alien national identity and openly divided loyalties — but at the same time they have the chutzpah to spew forth all this mush about open-ness and egalitarianism and universality, etc. Do they think the rest of us are really too stupid to notice the inconsistencies? Or is it a compliance test: will the goyim prove their subjugation by going along with obvious lies and double-talk? Or maybe they’re trying to humiliate us (or Trump) — not proving their power but just enjoying it, toying with us? I don’t know but I just can’t believe that they are really so dumb or unreflective that they really believe their own bullshit. As you said: it’s as if they will settle for nothing less than Hitler.
There are two places where I may disagree with your views. One has to do with ‘racism’. I wouldn’t use the word, but I do think that some very strong forms of ethnocentrism or double morality are morally wrong. Judaism, or some forms of Judaism, may be examples — e.g., the attitude that it’s fine to lie or cheat or steal from those not in the group, or that those outside the group have no real moral standing, don’t matter, etc. I think everyone has some basic moral importance and deserves some basic form of respect. Or almost everyone, at least. So rather than saying it’s okay for Jews to be that way but also okay for others to be that way, which seems at times to be your attitude (?), I’d say it’s unacceptable for any group to behave that way. And it’s especially wrong in the case of organized Jewry, since Jews are a lot smarter and more self-aware and more philosophical than many other groups; they really should know better, and probably do. So I don’t accept that we can regard conflicts between human groups as merely some kind of amoral struggle for survival. (Just as we can’t regard one individual murdering or exploiting another in that way.)
Another possible point of disagreement, relating to that last one: I take the passage you cited from the Talmud to reflect _very_ badly on Judaism, if that’s what Jewish authorities really think. Obviously Jesus was a very impressive and special person, and something must be very wrong with people who who try to demonize or ridicule him. Also, it seems pathetic and childish to imagine your enemies boiling in shit, let alone to write this down as part of some putative religio-philosophical commentary. It’s base and stupid. I would never be able to take seriously as a religious or moral authority someone who wrote about Jesus, or any other obviously superior person, in that kind of way. If most Jews are aware of this kind of thing but aren’t turned off by it, that makes me wonder about their character. I’m not aware of any important or canonical Christian texts that direct such base and stupid slander against Jews or Jewish heroes, etc. So rather than saying it’s only normal and perfectly fine for groups to think about the beliefs or character of outsiders in this way, as you seem to be saying, I’d hold everyone to a far higher standard.
Report: Bronxwood Home for the Aged could soon be required to pay $6.9 million in restitution to New York State and be kicked out of Medicaid for three years over administrative violations.
…OMIG found 133 documents provided by Bronxwood that had purportedly been signed by a doctor named Owen Golden and used to bill Medicaid. Yet Golden never saw patients at Bronxwood. According to OMIG, the evaluations may have been conducted by other doctors, or may not have been conducted at all.
Bronxwood’s attorney and Golden did not respond to multiple requests by the Forward for comment.
The conclusion of the Bronxwood probe was conducted in parallel to an unrelated federal investigation into fiscal abuse by Haredi Orthodox educational institutions. On Wednesday, dozens of FBI agents and detectives searched yeshivas and tech vendors in New York for records accounting for equipment allegedly bought by religious schools with millions in federal education technology dollars. They confiscated documents and hard drives from several locales.
Posted inAbuse|Comments Off on New York Nursing Home With Ties to ultra-Orthodox Charities Faces Medicaid Ban
Rabbi Gil Student writes: “I have never liked Trump on any level but with all the talking heads bashing him, the contrarian in me is increasingly reconsidering my lack of support. Anyone on whom liberal rabbis will walk out as a group is someone I need to consider seriously. Every time Trump is compared to Hitler, he gets another vote.”
Ken writes: Yesterday was one of those rare occasions when I wore a necktie to shul – an old Donald J. Trump brand tie. So I was asked: Do I support Trump? No – I do not. So why the tie?
Couldn’t find my Rubio tie – must’ve dropped out of the drawer.
My Hillary tie is a little worn and the integrity of the fabric isn’t up to standards.
My Bernie tie – such a fiesty pattern, but I shared it with a friend who shared it with a friend, who shared it with a friend…
My Cruz tie purports to be fine silk, but feels awfully stiff.
Why the Donald J. tie? I picked it up a few years ago at the 99 cents-only store after his tie company tanked, leaving him free to pursue a career in genteel rhetoric…
Posted inDonald Trump, Jews|Comments Off on Jews Coming Around On Trump
From CNET: Former Intel CEO Andy Grove is dead on about the dire need to come up with policies to create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Look no further than the bustling economies in Asia if there is any doubt.
Here’s a key point Grove makes in the Bloomberg piece. “Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system–the freer, the better…So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.”
And, in a corollary, he says that the relentless push by U.S. companies to move manufacturing overseas breaks the innovation and job-creating chain, what he calls “scaling up” where companies “work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.”
Grove continues. “Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.”
Grove is right. I lived in Japan for 10 years (until 1993). I worked mostly as a journalist, covering the Japanese high-technology industry. In one job, I translated and rewrote reams of articles from the Japanese industrial dailies (covering machine tools, cars, chemicals, computer components) over a three-year period (which, by the way, we sent to clients like AT&T, Motorola, and IBM), giving me pretty good insight into Japan’s vaunted manufacturing system.
The underlying philosophy–monozukuri (making things)–was so beneficial to the Japanese economy and Japanese employment that it was copied all over Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, and China, to mention a few. I don’t think I need to argue how successful those economies have become. In fact, the problem for Japan is that those countries have been so adept at aping monozukuri that they have become formidable Japanese manufacturing rivals and sucked a lot of the manufacturing out of Japan.
Witness Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, Co., which seems to make everything under the sun including the iPhone and iPad. And Samsung, now the No. 1 manufacturer of LCDs and flash memory chips and the supplier of the core silicon in both the iPad and iPhone 4 (where Intel is conspicuously absent).
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Former Intel CEO Andy Grove compellingly argues that more manufacturing needs to be done in the U.S.
Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto (Calif.) restaurant introduced me to his companions, three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something did not add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late—unless you’re counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
What Went Wrong?
Scaling used to work well in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs came up with an invention. Investors gave them money to build their business. If the founders and their investors were lucky, the company grew and had an initial public offering, which brought in money that financed further growth.
I am fortunate to have lived through one such example. In 1968 two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel (INTC), making memory chips for the computer industry. From the beginning we had to figure out how to make our chips in volume. We had to build factories, hire, train, and retain employees, establish relationships with suppliers, and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later the company went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S.
Not far from Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., other companies developed. Tandem Computers went through a similar process, then Sun Microsystems, Cisco (CSCO), Netscape, and on and on. Some companies died along the way or were absorbed by others, but each survivor added to the complex technological ecosystem that came to be called Silicon Valley.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S. China opened up. American companies discovered that they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done more cheaply overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
The 10X Factor
Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000, lower than it was before the first PC, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975 (figure-B). Meanwhile, a very effective computer manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers—factory employees, engineers, and managers. The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenues last year were $62 billion, larger than Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), or Intel. Foxconn employs over 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Intel, and Sony (SNE) (figure-C).
Until a recent spate of suicides at Foxconn’s giant factory complex in Shenzhen, China, few Americans had heard of the company. But most know the products it makes: computers for Dell and HP, Nokia (NOK) cell phones, Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, Intel motherboards, and countless other familiar gadgets. Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.
You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work—and much of the profits—remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?
Since the early days of Silicon Valley, the money invested in companies has increased dramatically, only to produce fewer jobs. Simply put, the U.S. has become wildly inefficient at creating American tech jobs. We may be less aware of this growing inefficiency, however, because our history of creating jobs over the past few decades has been spectacular—masking our greater and greater spending to create each position. Should we wait and not act on the basis of early indicators? I think that would be a tragic mistake, because the only chance we have to reverse the deterioration is if we act early and decisively.
Already the decline has been marked. It may be measured by way of a simple calculation—an estimate of the employment cost-effectiveness of a company. First, take the initial investment plus the investment during a company’s IPO. Then divide that by the number of employees working in that company 10 years later. For Intel this worked out to be about $650 per job—$3,600 adjusted for inflation. National Semiconductor (NSM), another chip company, was even more efficient at $2,000 per job. Making the same calculations for a number of Silicon Valley companies shows that the cost of creating U.S. jobs grew from a few thousand dollars per position in the early years to a hundred thousand dollars today (figure-A). The obvious reason: Companies simply hire fewer employees as more work is done by outside contractors, usually in Asia.
The job machine breakdown isn’t just in computers. Consider alternative energy, an emerging industry where there’s plenty of innovation. Photovoltaics, for example, are a U.S. invention. Their use in home energy applications was also pioneered by the U.S. Last year, I decided to do my bit for energy conservation and set out to equip my house with solar power. My wife and I talked with four local solar firms. As part of our due diligence, I checked where they get their photovoltaic panels—the key part of the system. All the panels they use come from China. A Silicon Valley company sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films. They ship close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing (figure-D). Not surprisingly, U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000—just a few percent of estimated worldwide employment.
There’s more at stake than exported jobs. With some technologies, both scaling and innovation take place overseas.
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Steve Sailer writes: In 1982 I was driving with a college friend from Houston through Dead Man’s Curve on Sunset Blvd but there was a traffic jam. Eventually, we saw why: Scott Baio, star of the then hot new show “Joanie Loves Chachi,” had smashed his brand new sports car (with dealer paper plates into a tree) and he was standing on the curb talking into a pre-cellular radio phone in an agitated manner.
My friend went home to Texas feeling his first trip to L.A. had fulfilled all of his hopes for what L.A. was like.
According to Snopes: “Exactly where Los Angeles’ version of “dead man’s curve” can be found is the subject of some debate, but by general consensus it’s a tight corner of Sunset Boulevard near the Bel-Air Estates north of UCLA’s Drake Stadium. (In this map of the UCLA campus, it’s the curve of Sunset just above Drake Stadium, which is identified with a yellow number 78.) This turn is particularly tricky for persons driving eastbound (left to right on the map above) on Sunset, as a long downhill stretch on which it’s all too easy to spurt well over the 35 MPH speed limit leads up to the curve, where a driver suddenly finds he must bank sharply left or centrifugal force will send his car crashing through a wall of trees bordering the UCLA campus. Motorists unfamiliar with this part of Sunset Blvd. (or those who know about it but opt to tempt fate and test their driving abilities by approaching the turn without slowing down) can easily find themselves yanking the steering wheel too hard to the left and spinning off the road or into oncoming traffic.”
* It’s funny, the first time I rolled around dead mans curve, I thought, “this is a curve designed to kill people,” having no idea it was the famed curve. It would be worth shutting down Sunset to get that curve graded correctly. Whomever allowed it should have been shot.
* In the clip below, after the line, “let’s see if you still have balls, terry,” you’ll see a shot of “dead man’s curve” on Sunset.
Note the angle of the road, and how it can effect high-speed drivers like those depicted in the movie. Most of Sunset is graded very well for high speed driving, except “dead man’s curve.” Many asses have been kicked there. Scared the hell out of me the first time I rounded it.
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* I attended today’s [Trump] event at Fountain Hills, first time ever at a political rally.
I was impressed by how many young people there were. Nice small talk in the crowd, joking a bit about the protesters who blocked the road for half an hour. Most of us had already been there for hours. There was a little crowd of protesters circling around behind a few fences, but they didn’t seem very organized. Some chants and banter back and forth, but nobody was really getting under anybody’s skin.
Maybe it was wild in Tucson, but you’d have to use some creative camera angles to make it look bad. Arizona is pretty laid-back, I’d say. Fair weather fans kind of thing.
You couldn’t buy an official hat or campaign gear. Volunteers explained that the real ones are expensive and too hard to keep in stock, being made in America. Sad!
The volunteers who explained the hat shortage were two teenage kids handing out bumper stickers, so I don’t know if it’s the official story.
But here you have a genius business man who’s had 12 months to figure out how to source these things, and I had to buy a hat from a Bulgarian lady on the side of the road.
For the record, I like Donald a lot. Also for the record, the crowd was diverse for Arizona, and I stood next to a black university student at the rally. Behind me were four girls who were pretty obviously there to protest (believe me it was obvious). People were nice and gave them water. Then, a few minutes into the speech, they did their thing and were escorted to the gate. Trump didn’t flinch. I honestly expected more vitriol.
It was a short speech, but he used one line I hadn’t heard before, something to the effect of “For a while anyway, I’m the kinda guy we need. For a while is all I’m saying.”
He’s giving people a good excuse: “In 2020 or 2024 we can go back to voting for sober statesmen types, but, desperate times. . . just for a while, maybe we could use a bit of this east coast bull in a china shop type thing.”
* I call that the Diminishing Marginal Utility theory. Trump’s way of saying that is a lot more comprehensible.
* What irks me is that the Left is unable to protest without infringing upon other’s rights. By blocking that road, those protesters where preventing people from using public roads. Additionally had an ambulance been trying to transport someone to the hospital, it would have been prevented which could have had catastrophic results. Additionally the initial roadblock could have resulted in accidents as high speed vehicles would have had to come to an unexpected stop. Their protest put people’s lives in danger. Yet they are never held to account for this.
* Trump said something very similar back in Clear Lake, IA during that now infamous takedown of Ben Carson the day before the Paris Attacks. He even expanded on it slightly, dabbling, you might dare say in a bit of political philosophy. Quoting from memory:
“Hillary said she doesn’t like my tone. Jeb said the same thing. I tell you what, don’t worry about it folks. We can go back to the guys with the nice easy tone later but let me straighten things out first and then I promise I’ll leave you alone. And then you’ll go and blow it all for the next 20 years and you’ll get someone else like me in there again.”
* We were in Tucson, on the floor in front of the podium. The whole rally was very last minute – announced the day before. There was, weirdly, an anime convention also at the Tucson Convention Center, so there were some cos-players milling about. Made for some interesting pics.
The protesters were marching around and beating drums, but we got there early before they really got going. By the time we went through security they were outside the doors screaming “Shut it down.” The crowd was for the most part low-key, and you could definitely tell who the protesters were going to be. There were two punk-rock dressed girls with a folded up sign that were standing off to one side on the floor. After Trump got to the stage they started waving their sign, and a huge veteran (he raised his hand when one of the speakers before Trump asked how many vets there were) ripped the sign out of their hands and kept it.
There were a bunch of protesters seated behind the podium with anti-Trump / BLM signs that refused to leave for a long time, but overall the police/security were good about getting them out of there. The biggest thing was of course the one protester getting beaten pretty bad by a black man in the audience. He and his female counterpart were on the floor near us, and the guy looked very nervous before they started doing their protesting. The girl put on a KKK cap and was wearing it while they were escorted out. Some are saying the black guy might have been a false flag, but Tucson’s (small) black population is largely military, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a real Trump supporter. Most of the people selling Trump swag outside were black, weirdly.
Towards the end of the speech Trump brought a latina on stage who had a “Latinos for Trump” sign, which everybody loved. After the speech was over we went out the back entrance, and the protests near the front entrance wen ton for a long time. A lot of Native people and Latinos, as well as whites, but for the most part the Trump supporters ignored them as they left – no scuffles that we could see. Very different environment than Chicago.
* When it came to his healthcare plan, one thing Obama didn’t want to talk about was tort reform. Of course, the trial lawyers are one of the biggest pro-Democrat lobbies. Maybe with a president who’s not beholden to them we could get tort reform?
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* Then there are people like my friend who have voted GOP for decades but thinks Trump too “vulgar” and “unqualified” and “doesn’t mean anything he says.”
Honestly the entire thing is taking a real toll on our friendship because, as flawed as Trump is, he is the only non-cucked option. But my friend sounds absolutely indistinguishable from my loopy hyperliberal sister who wouldn’t vote for Trump if her eight year old daughter were gang raped by an illegal, a BLMer and a Muslim right in front of her face.
* Paul Ryan is the typical Republican “palooka” that Hillary and Bill have been meeting and disposing of for decades. He is a guaranteed GOP defeat and the bitterness among Trump supporters that would result from Trump being denied the nomination at the convention would probably mean a 45-48 state Hillary blowout. But, as other commenters have pointed out, the cucks in charge of the GOP would prefer that to a Trump victory.
* I’ve told a couple of friends I really don’t want them coming around the house anymore because the family doesn’t need to hear the “anyone who considers Trump is a dumba$$” smack talk. It has become my own personal secession plan, dump the negative ninnies in my personal and business life.
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Milo writes: In Shakespearean times, cuckolds were referred to as “he who has horns” — an issue everyone else can see, that’s not obvious to them. Everyone else sees his shame immediately, but the cuckold can only tell by looking closely in a mirror. Perhaps the same is true for censors, who insist that they adore free speech while mercilessly trampling it at the slightest opportunity.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, whom I wouldn’t even right-swipe on Grindr (ironically one of the few social platforms left without Orwellian speech suppression), recently made a visit to The Today Show where he firmly proclaimed that his site doesn’t censor its users. Dorsey made his extraordinary statement following Matt Lauer’s claim that his Twitter followers named censorship as one of the most important issues facing the social media platform.
Jack is the CEO of two companies, and bad at running both, but Twitter has really been the worst of his two failures. Imagine taking a company from the “free speech wing of the free speech party” to shadowbanning, politically motivated de-verifications and banning “problematic” accounts (usually conservative or libertarian).
Since Dorsey returned to the company that he considers his “first born son,” the site has transformed from the public’s megaphone into the public’s muzzle. He’s calmly drowning free speech in the bathtub while adding unwanted features like algorithmic timelines and sponsored tweets.
Verified Twitter accounts are given to significant individuals (like me) who are likely to be impersonated on the platform. I’m probably the most impersonated person on the internet who isn’t Beyoncé. The blue check society is a club to which I once belonged, but since Twitter has revealed its willingness to censor and “shawdow-ban,” it’s a club I’m a lot less interested in rejoining.
Earnest made it clear the President believes that the success of social media platforms is “predicated on the important protection of First Amendment rights to self-expression.” He also recommended that Twitter users who feel aggrieved by the platform’s policies should turn to lawsuits as a response. I’m betting that’s a future the site’s investors, already worried by the company’s tanking stock value, would want to avoid.
Although Twitter’s appeal for many has been the absence of internal algorithms that control what you see and what you don’t see, Dorsey and co. in a recent change added a platform-wide filter that aims to weed out harassment and abuse. Jack, do you find conservative and libertarian thought so radical and fringe that its mere existence is on par with actual harassment and abuse? Do you think a gay conservative with an opinion is too dangerous to be legitimized on social media with your coveted blue check mark?
If Twitter really isn’t interested in ideological censorship, as Dorsey claims, then they should launch an immediate crackdown on employees who are. They should start with Michael Margolis, the man who allegedly asked his bosses at Twitter to unverify me and was pictured with feminist games critic Anita Sarkeesian just a few weeks later, donning his best in Sarkeesian apparel.
Does Twitter believe his political sympathies had nothing to do with his determination to target my account?
Twitter desperately needs to improve its user experience to revive flagging numbers, but it won’t invest in basic necessities like employing enough staff with time to deal with contextual issues of speech. Twitter hoards its cash like a bad landlord ignoring necessary repairs — kicking out the people who make legitimate complaints and rewarding the snitches. It has become an Orwellian paradise.
“They are very good at hiding whatever algorithms they have,” said Baldwin at the time. “They don’t explain themselves and they are not transparent. The onus is on Twitter to explain exactly why they ban people. It’s their company. I just choose not to participate in the suppression of ideas any more.”
I’m not so sure why Jack Dorsey refuses to understand that Twitter’s demise is inevitable if they don’t allow society’s most significant, compelling and attractive individuals — like me! — to use the platform to freely express themselves. This cautionary warning doesn’t just come from me, but from President Obama too.
Speaking of politicians, it’s worth noting that Dorsey’s aspirations include becoming mayor of New York City. The social media guru who decides restricts content on his platform would feel right at home running a city that places restrictions on the size of your soda cup.
Still, politics can be difficult if you have a string of business failures behind you. As the social media platform’s stock price continues to plummet and advertisers continue to flee, maybe Dorsey will realize that taking away my check mark was the first step towards the death of his first born. Still, it could be worse for Jack. At least he’s not Nick Denton.
"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)
