Bad Day Starts at Sundown

At least if you are Jewish.

It will Tisha B'Av, the 9^th day of the Hebrew month Av, and a small subset of the nasty bits of Jewish history follows:

1. The report of the spies from Canaan, resulting in the people of Israel spending 40 Years in the Desert.
2. The destruction of the 1^st Temple.
3. The destruction of the 2nd Temple.
4. The Romans razed Betar, killing 100,000 Jews.
5. The Romans plowed the temple mount.
6. The start of the 1^st Crusade.  (You see it as a coming together of Christendom.  I see it as a pogrom with years of murder and rape.)
7. The expulsion of Jews from England.
8. The expulsion of Jews from France.
9. The expulsion of Jews from Spain.
10. Germany entered the WW I. (Can be legitimately claimed to have directly led to the Shoah)
11. Formal approval of the "Final Solution" by the Nazis in 1941.
12. Deportations to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto begin in 1942.

Excuse me while I find something sturdy to cover my head with. 

It's not a day for this Yid to do anything, and for the first time, I'm fasting, or at least trying to.

Between Donald Trump and my job search, I'm feeling a bit superstitious. 

 

OK, I Think That I Understand a Bit of Family Jargon Now

There is a term that is used in family, "Comyuckle," that generally means lame person.

It's used as a loving insult inside the family.

I thought that it was some sort of Yiddishism that came from my mom, but I could never find anyone outside of the family who used this term.

Well, I did another search today, and I found this mention from the Joy of Yiddish:

While visiting with my 94-year-old mother earlier this year, we were talking about the everyday person on the street. She said, “You know, Chaim Yankel!.” I instantly cracked up as she did as well. My husband who was sitting with us had never heard of Chaim Yankel. Mom and I were both stunned.

I grew up on Long Island and my husband in Queens. Yet he never heard of him. So I did a quick check with others. A good friend from Long Island had also never heard of Chaim Yankel, but my friend from the Bronx knew instantly who he was; she, too, started laughing as she hadn’t heard his name mentioned in a long time.

In his splendid book, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten gives two definitions of the Yiddish term Chaim Yankel:
1. A nonentity, a nobody, any “poor Joe.”
2. A colloquial, somewhat condescending way of addressing a Jew whose name you do not know — just as “Joe” or “Mac” is sometimes used in English.

So, "Comyuckle," is probably a corruption of Chaim Yankel.

Needless to say, I need to share this with my sibs. 

Quote of the Day

There’s This Hysteria That We Apparently Have a Gang Problem, but What We Have Is a Slumlord Problem in the City of Aurora

—Aurora City Councilwoman Alison Coombs as quoted by the Denver Post

A slumlord operating buildings in Aurora, Coloradowho has been sued by multiple times by the city of Aurora as well as by current and former tenants.

They have been so bad at this that the city has already closed down one of the apartments operated by CBZ Management, LLC. (They have refused to provide legally mandated assistance to the tenants evicted as a result)

In response to their cruelty and greed, they hired a PR firm and started claiming that the problem was that Venezuelan criminal gangs had taken over the complexes.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman (a Republican) made extensive statements to this effect, as has the Donald Trump campaign.

As to CBZ management, they are located in Brooklyn, New York, and the owner is Zev Baumgarten, and two other senior managers are Shalom Baumgarten and Shmary Baumgarten.

Yeah, these jerks are Jewish.  It's a Shanda Fur die Goyim.

As Shalom Alechem once wrote, "Shver TSU Zayn a Yid (שװער צו זײן א איד)."*

They have used these claims to get delays in its trials.

CBZ is run by horrible people, and should be shunned by all people of good will:

The frenzy over a Venezuelan gang’s presence in Aurora reached a fever pitch over the holiday weekend, fueled in part by viral video of men with guns knocking on an apartment door and by a presidential election in which immigration and border security will be key issues for voters.

Right-wing social media influencers and citizen journalists seized on video shared by Denver’s Fox31 television station showing armed men at an Aurora apartment complex, often adding their own captions and commentary, as it made the rounds on TikTok, X and Facebook.

Even former President Donald Trump weighed in during a podcast interview, repeating unverified claims that gangs were taking over big buildings with “big rifles” in the city.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman appeared on national TV and posted about the Venezuelan gang on his Facebook page, contradicting his police chief about the severity of the situation, and saying the city was preparing to go to court to get a judge’s order to clear out the apartment complexes where the Tren de Aragua gang operates. However, city staff on Tuesday said that is not the immediate plan.

Aurora and Denver police have publicly acknowledged there are Tren de Aragua gang members in their cities, but they say the gang’s numbers are not large and they operate in isolated areas. Others say the Tren de Aragua presence in Aurora, a city of nearly 400,000 people, has been overhyped.

“Those stories are really overblown. If you didn’t live here, you would swear we were being taken over by a gang and Aurora was under siege,” Aurora City Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock said Tuesday. “That’s simply not true.”

………

“There’s this hysteria that we apparently have a gang problem, but what we have is a slumlord problem in the city of Aurora,” City Councilwoman Alison Coombs said.

This makes me sick to my stomach.

^*It's tough to be a Jew.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Bernie Sanders reminding everyone that he’s Jewish. pic.twitter.com/ngo0FxcwYQ

— Yonah Lieberman 🔥 (@YonahLieberman) July 17, 2024

This is truer than taxes. 

To be a Jew is to worry.

I am not sure why this is so, but it is, as Mt. Everest is, and Alma Cogan isn't.

Worst Ear Worm Ever

The Horror!

So, I have had this ear worm for the past few days, and I think that I am going to lose what little is left of my mind.

The tune in question, Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," is a fun catchy tune, but this is not the problem.

The problem is that I am hearing it in my head with different lyrics.

Specifically, I am hearing the tune, but they lyrics are the Jewish Hymn Adon Olam (אֲדוֹן עוֹלָם).

This hymn, which ends almost every Jewish service has a number of commonly used tunes, and it is thought by some to be able to be adapted to any tune.

I do know that in addition to the aforementioned Paul Simon song, that it works well with the Iron Butterfly anthem "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

In any case, here is the full text of the hymn:

אֲדוֹן עוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר מָלַךְ
בְּטֶרֶם כָּל יְצִיר נִבְרָא‎

לְעֵת נַעֲשָׂה בְחֶפְצוֹ כֹּל
אֲזַי מֶלֶךְ שְׁמוֹ נִקְרָא‎

וְאַחֲרֵי כִּכְלוֹת הַכֹּל
לְבַדּוֹ יִמְלוֹךְ נוֹרָא‎

וְהוּא הָיָה וְהוּא הֹוֶה
וְהוּא יִהְיֶה בְּתִפְאָרָה‎

וְהוּא אֶחָד וְאֵין שֵׁנִי
לְהַמְשִׁיל לוֹ לְהַחְבִּירָה‎

בְּלִי רֵאשִׁית בְּלִי תַכְלִית
וְלוֹ הָעֹז וְהַמִּשְׂרָה‎

וְהוּא אֵלִי וְחַי גּוֹאֲלִי
וְצוּר חֶבְלִי בְּעֵת צָרָה‎

וְהוּא נִסִּי וּמָנוֹס לִי
מְנָת כּוֹסִי בְּיוֹם אֶקְרָא‎

בְּיָדוֹ אַפְקִיד רוּחִי
בְּעֵת אִישָׁן וְאָעִירָה‎

וְעִם רוּחִי גְוִיָּתִי
אֲדֹנָי לִי וְלֹא אִירָא‎

Kosher Lysistrata?

One of the peculiarities of Jewish jurisprudence is that only a man can request a divorce.

This has led to Agunot (literally, "Chained women) who cannot remarry, as a result of their husband's spite.

Because of the biblical definition of adultery, a married woman having relations with someone not her husband, this means that her children with a future partner are mamzerim (bastards, but with far greater religious consequences), while his are not.

This has been recognized as unfair and unjust by many scholars, and many of the sages thought that it was appropriate to physically beat a man in order to make him grant a get.

Women activists in the Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish community are now threatening a sex strike over the indifference shown by male members of the community over the plight of the agunot.

About f%$#ing time:

It’s a movement to stop the schtup.

In a rare display of public protest, women in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community are railing against a traditional practice that makes it hard for married women to get a divorce– by going on a sex strike.

The collective action was sparked by the plight of Malky Berkowitz, an Orthodox woman in upstate New York whose husband has for years reportedly refused to grant her the religious document that would allow her to officially separate from him and remarry, according to organizer and influencer Adina Sash.

“It's been four years and they've been trying to help free Malky from the clutches of a very toxic relationship that has multiple levels of coercive control,” Sash said in an interview. And they approached me and they said, ‘We need you to come out loudly and we need you to raise awareness,’”

Sash is a self-proclaimed Orthodox feminist and activist based in Brooklyn who often speaks out on her Instagram account, Flatbushgirl. She said this is not the first time the community has rallied around an “agunah” — a woman “chained to a dead marriage” — with a public pressure campaign.

………

Sash says Orthodox women can protest sex just by refusing to go to the mikvah – a religious bathhouse where women cleanse themselves after menstruation. If they don’t go, their husbands cannot be intimate with them.

She said this particular form of protest is a very effective way to get attention from men in the community, who primarily control the religious court that issues gets.

“They're saying, ‘You want me as your wife to partake in our physical intimacy union, then what are you doing to protect me from being the next agunah?” Sash said. “What are you doing to protect my sister?’”

While Sash noted that she can’t exactly “go into people’s bedrooms” to verify how many women have joined in the strike, she estimates that hundreds of women from Brooklyn to Kiryas Joel in Orange County are participating based on messages she’s received.

“I was speaking to a mikvah attendant who told me that she was actually shocked that she is seeing a decline in the number of women who are coming to her local mikvah, which is in a prominent Brooklyn neighborhood,” Sash said. “And I've been hearing from a lot of men who are very irritated about the fact that their wives are taking their sexual agency into their own hands.”

………

Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a prominent community leader affiliated with Yeshiva University, even issued a statement on the subject, where he condoned “demonstrations in front of the home or place of employment” to pressure an unwilling husband to give his wife a get, but stopped short of approving the sex strike.

“To suggest such a tactic on a mass scale involving women and men who have no social relationship with the recalcitrant husband, is a recipe for disaster,” Schachter wrote in a letter viewed by Gothamist.

The statement by Schachter, about public shaming of husbands who refuse to grant a get is in fact the normative position of Judaism, with a lot of discussion about this in various tractates:

Hilchos Geirushin 2:20

If the law requires a man to divorce his wife but he doesn’t want to, the court can have him beaten until he agrees to do so, at which point they have a get written. Such a get is valid in all times and places (as opposed to requiring a Sanhedrin). Similarly, if non-Jews beat the recalcitrant husband, telling him to yield to the court order, and the court has the non-Jews pressure him until he agrees, the divorce is valid. However, if non-Jews of their own volition compel a man to divorce his wife, the get is invalid. The difference in these cases is that in the former scenario, it is the law that requires the man to divorce his wife. One might think that even the former get should be void because the man is being coerced. However, the idea of being coerced only applies when a person is being forced to do something that the Torah doesn’t require of him, such as if one is beaten until he agreed to sell something, or to give it away (i.e., such a transfer of ownership is not binding). However, if a man’s yeitzer hara (evil inclination) keeps him from performing a mitzvah or drives him to violate a prohibition, and he was beaten until he did the thing that was required of him, or he ceased the prohibited activity, this is not considered being coerced. Rather, it was the person himself who was causing this scenario. Accordingly, this man who refuses to divorce his wife ultimately wants to be a Jew in good standing, performing mitzvos and avoiding sin. He is only refusing because he is being compelled by his yeitzer hara. Therefore, when he is beaten until his urge to disobey diminishes and he agrees to give the get, he is considered to have done so willingly. Let’s say, however, that the law doesn’t require a man to divorce his wife but he is nevertheless compelled to do so by the court or by lay people. In such a case, the get is invalid but since he was compelled by Jews, he should complete the divorce. If non-Jews compel a man to divorce his wife when not required by law, divorce is not effected. Even if he told the non-Jews that he agreed and instructed Jews to write and sign a get, the get is meaningless because the law didn’t require divorce of him and he was coerced by non-Jews.

Jewish marital law, except for the issues of divorce, are actually fairly forward looking, despite having been formalized over 1,000 years ago.

For example, the obligation of sex in marriage is from the husband to the wife, and if a woman refuses to have sex and husband coerces here, it is viewed unequivocally as rape, something that occurred in US civil law around 1975.

Even more surprising, women in Kiryas Joel, arguably the most orthodox community in the United states has seen protests on behalf of Mrs. Berkowitz.

Here is hoping that the local rabbinates become more responsive to this issue.

Signs of the Apocalypse

I agree with Satmar Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Satmar Haredi sect, they are arguably the most hidebound and medieval of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects in the United States, if not in the world.

Well, Teitelbaum just gave a speech at a yeshiva stating that, "Trumpism has infiltrated the Jewish camp and twisted so many minds."

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, issues with the increased affiliation of Orthodox communities with the far right led Charlie, a confirmed lefty, to terminate his regular Torah studies at a Park Heights Jewish Center.

Of course, Teitelbaum blames this on computers and the internet, because, in contravention of the requirement that Jews engage the world as it is in an attempt to improve it, he and his followers attempt to separate themselves into the 1700s:

“Trumpism has infiltrated the Jewish camp and twisted so many minds,” Satmar Grand Rebbe Aron Teitelbaum said in a beginning-of-semester address to Satmar Yeshiva students in Kiryas Yoel, New York.

………

According to Satmar Headquarters on Twitter, the rebbe blamed many in his community for being involved in “Trump meshigas,” or madness.

Tech versus Torah
He specifically singled out the use of modern technology as a distraction from Torah and the ultimate cause of "Trump meshigas" in the community. "Those who are connected to WhatsApp [as opposed to Torah] – that’s where it’s coming from,” he said.

 We live in very strange times.

If Not at the Top of the Fascist Hit Parade

Antisemitism is always in the top 3: 

Amid the discussion around the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and what it might mean for Trump and the rule of law in America, there is a detail that I worry isn’t receiving enough attention but that points to a dangerous reality in the United States today. 

It centers on Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who signed the FBI's search warrant. As his name became public, he has faced a withering volume of threats from those who believe Trump should be above the law. In today’s America, with the MAGA crowd revved up for attack, that was to be expected. But that attacks were to be expected should not obscure the fact that they are dangerous. Very. The possibility of their leading to violence should not be underestimated. 

Many of these threats focused on the fact that Judge Reinhart is Jewish. It got to the point that the synagogue where Judge Reinhart sits on the board had to cancel Shabbat services:

"Temple Beth David in South Florida has canceled its Beach Shabbat this week under a deluge of antisemitic threats about Bruce Reinhart, the judge who signed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and sits on the synagogue’s board." https://t.co/3e8h1Bp7hw

— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) August 12, 2022

It really does surprise me just how eager some Jews, particularly among the Orthodox community, are so eager to act as Kapos for the right wing.

If (probably when) these folks come, they will not spare you.

I Want this Book

A cache of ancient Jewish recipes dating back to the inquisition has been found in Miami.

It has been published, and I want a copy:

A few years ago, Genie Milgrom came across a treasure trove of old recipes stashed away in her elderly mother’s kitchen drawers. There were hundreds of them — some in tattered notebooks, others scribbled on crumbling scraps of paper.

Upon closer examination, it became apparent to Milgrom that these were the handwritten notations of generations of women in her family. The recipes had traveled as an intact, ever-growing collection from Spain to Portugal to Cuba to the United States, reflecting not only the lives of Milgrom’s ancestors, but also the hidden heritage they had for the most part unknowingly safeguarded since the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

Milgrom, who grew up devoutly Roman Catholic in Havana and Miami, has Crypto-Jewish roots. Her ancestors were Jews who practiced Judaism in secret while outwardly living as Christians to avoid being expelled, tortured, or killed by the Church. They were Crypto-Jews until the late 17th century, and lived as Catholics from then on. Through a decade-long, intense genealogical search, Milgrom discovered that she has an unbroken Jewish maternal lineage going back 22 generations to 1405 pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal.

Her new kosher cookbook, “Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers: Unique Recipes and Stories from the Times of the Crypto-Jews during the Spanish Inquisition,” is a tribute to those female relatives who repressed or forgot their Jewish identity over hundreds of years, but managed to preserve vestiges of it through their food.

This is is awesome.

Do Not Make the Torah into a Crown with Which to Aggrandize Yourself or a Spade with Which to Dig*

The state of affairs in New York Yeshivas is scandalous, with many children not receiving even the most basic secular education.

In a New York Times OP/ED Shulem Deen talks about the real world consequences of this:

Last Friday, as observant Jews hurried with last-minute preparations for Passover, one Orthodox Jew was in Albany, holding up the New York State budget. He was insisting that this roughly $168 billion package include a special provision that would allow religious schools to meet the state’s educational requirements by using their long hours of religious instruction.

In recent years, education activists, among them former Hasidic yeshiva graduates, have pushed aggressively to bring the yeshivas into compliance with the state’s education laws. Simcha Felder, the state senator from Brooklyn who represents the heavily ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Borough Park and Midwood, was on a mission to get legal permission for the state to turn a blind eye to the near-absence of secular instruction in many yeshivas. The upshot? Tens of thousands of children would continue to graduate without the most basic skills.

I know about the cost. I was one of those kids.

………

During my senior year of high school, a common sight in our study hall was of students learning to sign their names in English, practicing for their marriage license. For many, it was the first time writing their names in anything but Yiddish or Hebrew.

When I was in my 20s, already a father of three, I had no marketable skills, despite 18 years of schooling. I could rely only on an ill-paid position as a teacher of religious studies at the local boys’ yeshiva, which required no special training or certification. As our family grew steadily — birth control, or even basic sexual education, wasn’t part of the curriculum — my then-wife and I struggled, even with food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers, which are officially factored into the budgets of many of New York’s Hasidic families.

I remember feeling both shame and anger. Shame for being unable to provide for those who relied on me. Anger at those responsible for educating me who had failed me so colossally.

A woman I know works as a physician at Maimonides Medical Center, in heavily Hasidic Borough Park in Brooklyn, and often sees adult male patients who can barely communicate to her what ails them. “It’s not just that they’re like immigrants, barely able to speak the language,” she told me. “It’s also a lack of knowledge of basic physiology. They can barely name their own body parts.”

………

According to New York State law, nonpublic schools are required to offer a curriculum that is “substantially equivalent” to that of public schools. But when it comes to Hasidic yeshivas, this law has gone unenforced for decades. The result is a community crippled by poverty and a systemic reliance on government funding for virtually all aspects of life.

………

According to a report by Yaffed, or Young Advocates for Fair Education, an organization that advocates for improved general studies in Hasidic yeshivas, an estimated 59 percent of Hasidic households are poor or near-poor. According to United States Census figures, the all-Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, an hour north of New York City, is the poorest in the country, with median family income less than $18,000.

………

Knowing all of this, it takes a special kind of audacity on Mr. Felder’s part to successfully strong-arm the state’s highest legislative body to legally deprive his own constituents’ children of an education and a future. Some might call this chutzpah. In Borough Park, it would be more properly called a Chillul Hashem: a desecration of God’s name.

I think that Deen does a fantastic job of describing the real world consequences that salutary neglect has had on the Orthodox Jewish community, but, unsurprisingly given that it is an editorial in the
Times, he does not go into the deeper theological issues beyond calling this state of affairs a Chillul Hashem.

I would argue that the current state of affairs in places like Kiryas Joel is more than a disservice to the members of the community and the taxpayers of New York, I would argue that it is in direct opposition to the basic tenets of Judaism.

The scriptural quote in the title of this post, is just one such example, and the behavior of these leaders constitutes both self-aggrandizement and an attempt to make the study of Torah remunerative, largely by gaming the state welfare system, which is clearly prohibited.

There is more to it than that though:  A Jew is REQUIRED to engage the world in order to make it a better place, to be, "A light unto the nations."^† (Or LaGoyim)

More generally, we as Jews are placed on this broken world to mend it. This is frequently called Tikkun Olam.

In order to fix this world, one has to understand it on some level beyond that of signing one's name on a wedding license or application for food stamps.

One needs to do more that take from society, one has to give back to society.

This is more than a Chillul Hashem, is is a Shanda fur die Goyim.  Their behavior shames the whole Jewish community.


^*Perkei Avote, Ch. 4:3.
^†"I the LORD have called unto you in righteousness, and have taken hold of your hand, and submitted you as the people's covenant, as a light unto the nations" Isaiah 42:6, among others.

What a Surprise

That Jewish lawyer that Kayla Moore invoked to defend her husband, Roy Moore from accusations of anti Semitism is not Jewish:

Kayla Moore, the wife of failed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, has revealed the identity of the Jewish attorney she cited to defend her husband from anti-Semitism charges — and that attorney is a Christian.

The identity of the lawyer was the subject of intense curiosity in the Jewish community ever since Kayla Moore proclaimed at a campaign rally last month, “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Moore told local news website AL.com on Thursday that she was referring to Martin Wishnatsky, a staff lawyer at the Foundation for Moral Law, which she runs.

………

Wishnatsky, who got a doctorate in political science from Harvard University in 1975, says that he accepted Jesus Christ as the son of God two years later. He first started exploring Mormonism, but later distanced himself from it; he went on to write a book called “Mormonism: A Latter Day Deception.” He now identifies as a Messianic Jew.

………

After two decades in North Dakota, Wishnatsky went on to graduate from law school at Liberty University before clerking for Roy Moore in the Alabama Supreme Court, then working for the Moores’ foundation, where he writes friend-of-the-court briefs.

Wishnatsky’s personal website includes links to poetry, books and legal briefs he has written, as well as coverage of his exploits in church musical performances, talent show competitions and community theater.

………

Kayla Moore had also said last month that she and her husband “have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis and we also fellowship with them.” According to Southern Jewish Life magazine, she was referring to leaders at Beth Hallel, a Messianic Jewish congregation in Birmingham.

What a surprise. 

She's either lying through her teeth, or has no conception as to what Judaism is.

The Term Here is Mensch

Alexander Rapaport is an Orthodox Jew who runs a soup kitchens in and around Borough Park.

He expressed support for the plight of immigrants shut out by Trump's now enjoined immigrant ban, and what followed was an exodus of donors who turned out to be bigots:

Alexander Rapaport, a Brooklyn Hasid, says his experience being the victim of anti-Semitism forces him to call out hatred against others. So Rapaport, who runs a network of kosher soup kitchens, helped organize a communal show of support last week for a local Yemeni-owned bodega in reaction to President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Not everyone was happy about the gesture.

“I received your solicitation letter in the mail along with this phone number,” read a text message he received Wednesday. “After seeing, though, that you protested President Trump’s executive order, and thus shamefully sided with those who are putting American lives in danger, I am no longer able to donate to your organization.”

………

Rapaport, who lives in the strongly Hasidic Borough Park neighborhood, said that other donors approached him in the street to complain about his stance on immigration following his show of support for the shop. Last week, after Yemeni-American bodega owners organized a strike to protest the president’s temporary travel ban, Rapaport showed his support by going to a local store with other community members and pasting Post-it notes with “messages of love and solidarity” on its storefront.

………

The 38-year-old father of seven has gotten complaints after he spoke up for immigrants previously and lost funders who were unhappy that the strictly kosher soup kitchen serves anyone who wants a meal, regardless of religious background.

In December 2015, Rapaport attended a protest at New York City Hall following a call by Trump, then a presidential candidate, for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

While Rapaport has considered being less outspoken, he said hiding his views wouldn’t be honest.

“I don’t want to take anyone’s money under false pretense. Yes, I am personally very pro-immigrant, and if that makes me unqualified for your donation, please don’t give it to me,” he told JTA.

Rapaport has received support from many parts of the Orthodox community, but I have a message for those parts of the community who seem determined to allow their personal bigotries rule their actions:

The stranger who sojourns with you shall be as a native from among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God.

:כְּאֶזְרָח מִכֶּם יִהְיֶה לָכֶם הַגֵּר | הַגָּר אִתְּכֶם וְאָהַבְתָּ לוֹ כָּמוֹךָ כִּי גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם אֲנִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

Drops mic.

This Guy is Going to Destroy Israel

I am, of course, referring to Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, who penchant for considering nothing but his own prospects for political power are a clear and present danger for the State of Israel.

The latest case of this is Netanyahu's willingness to use the most polarizing issue in Israeli politics to help build a coalition, at least if reports that he will kill conversion reform in order to placate right wing parties: (This is Arutz Sheva, so a grain of salt is recommended)

Sources in Shas and United Torah Jewry said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the Likud on rolling back recently approved rules on conversion. The changes had been designed to remove some of the power over the conversion process from the Chief Rabbinate and install it in the local authorities, where some jurisdictions would presumably be more liberal in their acceptance of converts.

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counting on them to join his new government, MKs from Shas and UTJ are insisting on rolling back the laws on conversion to what they were before Netanyahu's last government – with the Chief Rabbinate solely responsible for the conversion process, overseeing the entire process without government interference.

In the November change, the government voted to allow municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts, which were to receive administrative and budgetary backing from the state. A rabbinical committee whose makeup is specified in the decision was to oversee the courts, which would exercise their own judgment regarding each conversion.

With several cities already appointing very liberal rabbis as the heads of their committees, the government''s intent was to provide venues for converts to receive approval from authorities more easily than they would have from the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, which until then had sole jurisdiction over conversion. The newest deal restores that situation.

This is arguably the most contentious issue in Jewish Israeli society, and, after years of tumult, they made these baby steps toward sanity.

And now Netanyahu is going to douse this issue with gasoline, and light a match because he is worried about forming a coalition government.

As a secular Zionist, I find this extremely self destructive, but I am not surprised:  Netanyahu ran an explicitly racist campaign.

From the perspective of normative Jewish theology, it was this kind of short sighted bullsh%$ like this that got both temples destroyed.

H/T Failed Messiah.

We Might All Be in Hell

NPR just finished a series where it talked to prominent theologians about the nature of the afterlife.

One of the segments was immediately followed (it might have been preceeded) by a story about the government shutdown and potential debt default.

Then it hit me:  No one that they had talked to even mentioned the possibility that we might already be in hell.

Of course, Gnosticism, the religion that most closely hews to this philosophy, no longer exists as an organized religion, but it does seem to me that this is a reasonable conclusion.

As a Jew, I find the discussion of the afterlife largely irrelevant.   The afterlife is simply not a significant of Jewish theology.

The consensus on the afterlife in Judaism is, "Yes," with some people going with a conventional heaven and hell, and some people, particularly Kabbalists, believe in reincarnation, and a whole range in between.

In Judaism, the important thing is that to whatever degree our world resembles hell, it is our job to fix it.

This concept is called Tikkun olam (תיקון עולם).

This reminds me of an old joke:

A Shmuel dies and is sent to hell, and he boards an elevator going down.

The elevator operators calls out, "Hell, level 1, all Atheists and Agnostics out."

Shmuel looks out, and sees a bleak landscape, black sands, and a merciless sun beating down, and the air smells like.

The elevator moves further downward, and comes to a stop.

"Hell, level 2, all Muslims out."

Shmuel smells brimstone, hears screams, and sees rivers of flowing lava under a black sky.

Shmuel is now rather concerned.

The doors close with a sepulchral finality, and the elevator drops.

"Hell, all Christians out."

The door opens, and Shmuel can see nothing but flames in front of the door. He can feel his skin blisters from the heat even as he pushes himself against the back of the elevator.

As the doors close, Shmuel is now terrified.

"Hell, all Jews out.

The doors open, Shmuel feels a cool breeze on his face. He sees lush, green rolling hills. He smells citrus in the air.

Shmuel is stunned. To no one in particular, he says, "But ……… I thought it would be worse!"

The elevator operator looks up, and says, "It was. You cannot believe what they can do with irrigation.

Perhaps we should all spend some more time irrigating.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

In Brooklyn, Mafiaesque "Modesty Patrols" are terrorizing the Ultra Orthodox community:

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

“The man said, ‘Do the neighborhood a favor and take it out of the window,’ ” the store’s manager recalled. “ ‘We’re trying to safeguard our community.’ ”

In many neighborhoods, a store owner might shrug off such a call. But on Lee Avenue, the commercial spine of Hasidic Williamsburg, the warning carried an implied threat — comply with community standards or be shunned. It is a potent threat in a neighborhood where shadowy, sometimes self-appointed modesty squads use social and economic leverage to enforce conformity.

The owner wrestled with the request for a day or two, but decided to follow it. “We can sell it without mannequins, so we might as well do what the public wants,” the owner told the manager, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals for talking.

………

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who prosecuted the Weberman case, has now received allegations that members of a modesty committee forced their way into a home in the borough, confiscating an iPad and computer equipment deemed inappropriate for Orthodox children, officials say. Allegations have also surfaced that a modesty committee threatened to publicly shame a married man who was having an affair unless he paid the members money for what they described as therapy.

“They operate like the Mafia,” said Rabbi Allan Nadler, director of the Jewish studies program at Drew University in Madison, N.J.

Rabbi Nadler, who testified at Mr. Weberman’s trial, said that modesty committees did not have addresses, stationery or business cards, and that few people seemed to know where their authority originated, though it was doubtful, he said, that they could continue operating without the tacit blessings of rabbinical leaders.

Jeebus.

Another  Shanda before the Goyim,.

Religion, You Gotta Love It

This is Brilliant

Or someone has too much time on their hands.

Or maybe both.

About Damn Time!

We are finally starting to see public questioning of the extensive subsidies for the ultra-Orthodox Heredim in Israel:

Chaim Amsellem was certainly not the first Parliament member to suggest that most ultra-Orthodox men should work rather than receive welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study. But when he did so last month, the nation took notice: He is a rabbi, ultra-Orthodox himself, whose outspokenness ignited a fresh, and fierce, debate about the rapid growth of the ultra-religious in Israel.

“Torah is the most important thing in the world,” Rabbi Amsellem said in an interview. But now more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel do not work, compared with 15 percent in the general population, and he argued that full-time, state-financed study should be reserved for great scholars destined to become rabbis or religious judges.

“Those who are not that way inclined,” he said, “should go out and earn a living.”

In reaction, he was ousted from his own ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, whose leaders vilified him with such venom that he was assigned a bodyguard. The party newspaper printed a special supplement describing Rabbi Amsellem as “Amalek,” the biblical embodiment of all evil.

Actually, "Amelek" means more than the embodiment of evil.

The Torah says that they are to be killed, the men, women, children, their animals, etc.  There is an affirmative requirement that they and their families be murdered, and that their works be destroyed.

This is what happens when you f%$# with somone's welfare check, I guess.

As an aside, one of the towering figures of Judaism in the past 500 years, the Baal Shem Tov, worked digging lime, as a kosher butcher, and later running an inn, and it is ludicrous to suggest, as the Heredim do, that there are tens of thousands of people whose scholarship is so valuable that they cannot be allowed to do productive work.

Two Shot at LA Synagogue Parking lot

Just heard it on the radio.

No clue as to what is going on, but it was an underground lot for the synagogue, so whoever did this wasn't just a crime of opportunity.

Ummmmm...Not So Fast

It appears that the Telegraph in the UK has reported that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's family converted from Judaism to Islam and changed their name when he was 4 years old, largely on the basis of the change in family name from Sabourjian.

The problem is that this is simply untrue, according to the Guardian.

First, the Telegraph says:

• That "Sabour" is the word for Talit used by Iranian Jews.
• Not true: it means "thread painter", and refers to those who work coloring fibers for Persian carpets.
• Note that thread painting is not a traditionally Jewish profession in Iran.
  
• The word used by Iranian Jews for the Tallit is "Tallit" (my experience with Iranian coreligionists) or Titzit (19^th Century Iranian Judaism Scholar David Yeroshalm), both Hebrew words from scripture.
• According to scholars, there is no word Sabour at all among Jewish dialects in Iran.
  
• That "Jian" is a suffix that almost exclusively refers to practicing Jews.
• Simply untrue. It's a fairly common suffix.

What is true, however, is that surnames have come fairly recently to Iran, and that the "hicks in the sticks", typically had surnames associated with the family profession, like "thread painter":

The reason that Ahmadinejad's father changed his surname has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.

The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.

But wait, there's more:

Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad's mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.

So, even if his father, or his father's family were Jewish, he would not be, because Judaism is matrilineal, and if your mother is not Jewish, you are not Jewish, except by formal conversion.

Of course, I am competing with two links from two papers, the Telegraph, and the The Grauniad^*, so why am I taking the side of the latter?

It's pretty simple really: First, I have had Iranian Jewish friends, and the phrase "Sabour" never came up, and we did talk about Tallit in shul, and second, because the source was a newspaper formerly owned by Conrad Black, before he was sent off to a very well deserved stint in jail, and every story from a news outlet formerly owned by Conrad Black should be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Additionally, you will note that that the Telegraph provides no on the record sources for its analysis, while the Grauniad^* does, and goes into some detail as to the background of these sources.

^*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It's nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, "The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad."