Off the Derech

Gotta love this...

2009-11-14T13:39:00.001-05:00

From here.

For my two or three fans

2009-11-14T13:31:00.001-05:00

I’m doing fine.

I won’t be posting much.

Some are more equal than others

2009-11-14T13:21:00.002-05:00

A year ago, I mentioned (#10 here) that I remembered no one gave a crap that hundreds of thousands of people died in Asia during that tsunami. As a humanitarian, that was alarming beyond belief, and it didn’t surprise me (why is that not a surprise?) but nevertheless it disgusted me how ethnocentric and heartless frum people were. You’d think we believe people were created in God’s image, right? You’d think we believe in human rights. And equality. Take a long, deep breath, and think again.

Enshrined in your Torah and Shulchan Aruch is vicious racism. Garnel claimed on that post that his shul had a fundraiser for the tsunami victims. I didn’t really believe him then, but I had a small kernel of doubt that maybe he was being honest. This was before I realized the man has not a shred of integrity, and could not tell the truth to save his mother’s life. Back then I just knew he was a doctor and religious; you’d think he might have a little bit of morals, right? Haha.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s halachically permissible to collect money for this kind of thing. Read up on “lo te’chonem.” But I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised. Garnel or anyone else, if your Orthodox shul raised funds for this disaster, please leave relevant links or evidence from websites or pictures of posters that might indicate that they indeed raised funds. Again, I’m 99% sure not a single Orthodox shul did raise funds, but hey, I can admit when I’m wrong. I think I even want to be wrong. I’d like to think most of my family and friends aren’t barbarians and being led off a cliff by violently insane, zombie rabbis (such as Garnel). Unfortunately, I’m afraid I know better. But I sure as hell wish I was the idiot here, and my family will be alright.

You people are worse than Nazis

2009-11-14T13:20:00.000-05:00

They thought they were better than everyone else. So do you.
They, however, didn’t believe it in a spiritual way. They thought of it as a physical reality. Physical realities can change, at least our perceptions can. You, however, think of it as a spiritual truth. Your God told you you’re better than everybody else. That’s not something that can or will change. That’s the great danger of religion, incidentally, and why it’s traditionally been used to oppress so many people. You literally can make up anything you want, and say it’s God’s word, and get away with it. Can anyone prove it’s not God’s word? It’s literally a free-for-all, as well as a license to kill. Thank goodness we no longer live in theocracies. Oh wait. Shit.

Oh, I forgot. It makes you moral. I guess you’d be a serial killer without your religion, no? Thank Jesus for your religion. And don’t forget, Garnel. If you want it to be true hard enough, you just might change the reality! Isn’t it great? It’s true because you believe it is!!!! Could there be a greater mass delusion and insanity than religious “belief?” Extremely unlikely. But keep whining. That should also help to alter the reality. And keep shoving your fucking religion down defenseless throats, dimwit. Making people miserable is a mitzvah, you know. God’s word!

Great link and a video

2009-11-14T13:07:00.001-05:00

This. Also this.

Frum people are moral

2009-11-08T21:21:00.001-05:00

Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

Comment of the Month

2009-11-08T20:39:00.001-05:00

By Vashty. From here.

Hmm, I think I'll make up the lovey-dovey explanations that Chabad might use...

There's always the "separate but equal" argument. Women have a special kedushah in the eyes of Hashem. There are female sefirot which come together with the male sefirot when a husband and wife do their Friday-night duty. But this doesn't work as well when the woman's organ has lost its keter. A retarded woman or an old maid of thirteen do not need the keter because who will marry them? As for the three-year-old, our sages lived before a time when our minds were polluted by genetics and evolution. They lived in a time of pure Torah study, a time when hymens grew back if broken before the age of three. Let us follow their example and live a life of pure Torah, scrubbed free of scientific practicalities. Just as the Sages believed that a hymen grows back if broken before the age of three, so, too, we should believe in seven days of creation, spontaneous generation of insects, and the immutable status of women as helpmeets and chattel, whose kedushah lies in the great mitzvah of enabling their husbands to do mitzvos. Amen selah.

Then there is the blame-the-victim argument. If there were no witnesses and the woman could not cry out, what was she doing violating the laws of yichud anyway? Why didn't she bring a male relative to chaperone her? Why was she not weaving and baking in the home at the time of the rape? This is Hashem's way of telling us that the kedushah of a woman's tzniyus must be guarded by her and her family at all times- asu seyag latorah! By extension, we can say that this applies to all aveiros: in order to avoid committing a sin, we must avoid chicken with milk, kitniyot on Pesach, secular books, and fraternization with goyim who might lead us astray.

As for my interpretation, the rabbis were probably following the practices of the late antique Near East with a little dose of Greco-Roman influence and a dash of Persianization. Plus, the rabbis had little authority to enforce these mostly theoretical laws...

Nach

2009-11-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

One of the last things I did as a frum person was learn Nach. If I remember correctly, I had been skeptical of religion for a long time, and I decided to learn all of Nach to see if there was anything to my religion. You know, to give it one last chance to make its case before I dumped the whole darn thing.

In most yeshivas, you’re not supposed to learn Nach. It’s highly frowned upon (as is not learning until 11:00 every night). You’re not even really supposed to learn Chumash. It’s pretty much gemara all the way, folks. There’s a very strict set of what is learned and isn’t learned (usually decided by some rabbi) and I darn sure hope you like it, because hey, you don’t got a lot of choice, kid. And I should mention gemara is full of some pretty insane shit, and if I remember correctly, I didn’t learn a single teaching that might be considered moral in today’s day and age in all my years of learning gemara. So maybe before spouting your sacred myths that your religion is extremely *moral*, maybe crack open a damn book, goddammit.

Anyway, I remember being extremely excited for my new project. Opening my fresh Artscroll translated Tanach, I was going to delve into the ancient books of my religion and see if there was anything worthwhile there (as it turned out, there wasn’t much. Sure, it was a bit better than gemara, but it’s the narcissism of small differences).

I spent a few months poring over my artscroll Tanach. I went from the beginning right through to the end, reading mostly only the English side. I remember experiencing the whole gamut of emotions, from exhilaration to severe depression (okay, I’m overdoing it). Being shocked, appalled, and sometimes even surprised at what the “prophets” had to say. One hell of an experience, I assure you.
What really struck me was the power of the literature. Some beautiful, epic stories, and you could really see how some of them affected Western civilization and the Jewish people. Some really impressive stuff, and some really shameful stuff, too, I daresay. What really impressed me though, was the utter consistency of it, in that Divrei HaYamim (Book of Chronicles) was hardly distinguishable from say, Genesis. A lot of the books looked so similar internally, it was hard to tell who wrote what. I hadn’t been formally introduced to biblical scholarship and the Documentary Hypothesis beforehand, but it was almost obvious to me that the writing styles through so many of the books were practically the same, and there was hardly any reason to believe that, say, the Five Books of Moses, were written by God, or dictated by any sort of deity. Plenty of talented writes for thousands of years could have written the same kind of thing, and it would have looked just about the same. That was one of the things that really hit me, the linguistic implausibility of any of these books being authored by anyone other than human beings. Belief in TMS down the toilet.

What really really really blew away though was when I came across verses in II Kings 22:8 and Nechemiah 8:13 that said the Children of Israel “forgot” the words of the Torah for many years before people like Ezra “reminded them” of it. That really blew me away. I had often heard the Kuzari “proof” of the historicity of the mass revelation at Sinai. Essentially the argument goes: we have a chain going all the way back to Sinai saying that we received the Torah by revelation at Sinai. In front of millions of people! And why would so many people lie about such a thing? I had always bought the Kuzari argument (pretty much hook line and sinker) but here I had staring me in the face from the Bible itself problems with this. We all know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if the Children of Israel “forgot” the Torah for a while and then were “reminded” of it by a couple priests, what kind of mass tradition is that? So we don’t have a chain going back all the way to Sinai (though it sounds really nice). We have a chain going back at best to several hundred years *after* Sinai, and anything before that is really fuzzy. So what kind of BS is this?

Perhaps it is for this reason that rabbis don’t generally allow their students to learn Nach. Maybe it gives them a sense of irreverence for certain holy books, and makes them aware that most of Orthodoxy is just castles built in the air by rabbis over the millennia, and that there’s not much support for anything they say in Tanach, and Tanach could easily be used by any number of other religions, to say things wildly different than what rabbis say (I think Christianity does that to an extent, although I’ve always wanted to study the New Testament. Must stay on topic.) It’s ironic, because in the gemara the rabbi are always cherrypicking verses from Tanach to support what they say, or to attack someone else, or their opinion. They never quite in-depth study Tanach, instead they mostly dissect Mishnas, which are just the ramblings of other, older rabbis about mostly thing like halacha, and have even less to do with Tanach. Sure, it’s an ancient religion, and it’s about some old myths, traditions, and practices, but it would be nice if there was a truth factor involved, as well.

If your own holy books contradict your beliefs, what do you want from my fucking life?

Morality?

2009-11-08T19:25:00.000-05:00

I’ll never forget the image.

A grown man crying.

I was in seventh grade. The teacher was a good family friend of ours, a baal teshuva. A wonderful man, with a heart of gold. I remember being excited to be in his class, and I remember he was excited to be my teacher. The first day, after being subjected to the most cruel taunts by my classmates. In the staff room, crying his heart out. I’ll never forget it. A grown man, a big guy. I’d never seen him cry before, I’ve never seen him cry since. Had been frum for a long time, and never imagined frum people could be so cruel.

I wonder, does your religion teach you to be good? I know Christianity does. And Reform, and other forms of non-Judaism. But Judaism? From what I remember, it was more about halacha and emunah and mussar (which was mostly about emunah) and Torah, above all. Morality? Not so much. It’s a Christian thing anyway, you know.

I think it’s sad that kiruv places give people such an unrealistic glimpse of what they can expect in their new cult. (Can anyone say used-car salesmen?) It’s too bad they can’t be honest.

I think anyone who claims Judaism makes people do good has clearly never stepped foot inside a yeshiva classroom. I still remember my class priding themselves on going through, I don’t know, six? teachers in one year. But we’re better than those public school goyim!! Where do they get their morals from?!! Hahaha.

Horrible Story

2009-11-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

Here.

What an idiot

2009-11-08T16:09:00.002-05:00

Listen to this shit.

The guy is a fucking idiot. And he's one of the most respected chinuch people in the world. Maybe the problem is not kids and OTDers. Maybe the problem is the leadership, and your holy leaders, and the morons who fall for this shit. Not the lucky few who see past all this BS. It makes me sick.

HT.

The Consequences of Morality

2009-11-08T10:10:00.001-05:00

I think it’s very simple why people do “good” or “bad”: they have free choice.
It’s one of the things I find ridiculous about religion: How can you claim that your religion teaches people to do good, and keeps them on track if you acknowledge that they have free choice? Even if your religion tells people to do good, one’s relationship with their religion, or with God if you will, is an intensely personal thing, and there’s no way of knowing who’s sincere and who isn’t (my guess is no one is sincere, but that’s just me). Everyone is free to believe and act as they like, even if they’re told to do good, because remember, they’re free, so that’s no way to police a society. It’s kind of like saying, “everyone who goes to ninth grade is probably moral” but acknowledging they’re free to act immorally. It’s kind of absurd and cruel too, to tell people that certain people are *probably* moral, when you know good and well that they’re probably not, and you have no way of knowing if they are, in any case.

I think this is one of the greatest challenges to the absurd claim that religion makes people moral (I have yet to meet a single person who religion hasn’t made him *less* moral). What’s the point of free will? And also, what a cruel trick for God to play on humanity. He could have taken away our free will, and eliminated human corruption. Instead, he made us free to choose, and that explains why so many assholes exist. You know who’s fault Hitler is… Oh, silly me, I forgot. God only cares about Jews. Nobody else. Am I allowed to say goyim don’t count? Or is that a Chillul Hashem? Shhhh.

Snarkiness aside, humanists like myself often have a high regard for human nature, no religion necessary. Actually, we find religion often interfering with humanism. Say my father’s brother married a shiksa. Humanism would certainly tell you, by all means, to have a relationship with your brother. Yet religion might tell you to never speak to him again. Interesting. Or humanism might tell you to hang out with your family and break bread with them. Religion might tell you that their food is unkosher, they’re a bad influence on your children, and avoid them unless you can convert them to your faith. What fun!

As I said before, I have a high regard for human nature. You might even say I went from believing in God to believing in people. Decent tradeoff, if you ask me. You go from believing in imaginary (albeit powerful) friends to believing in real ones. I think humans (all humans, by the way. Probably not Garnel though.) have a highly developed moral conscience. We have the ability to teach ourselves to be kind and to treat others with respect. In short, I think we can and do teach ourselves and others morality. Unfortunately, it sometimes comes with strings attached, but even then, it’s all humans teaching humans. Sure, some believe in sky-fairies, but most don’t, and thankfully, no sky fairies are necessary for a healthy moral compass. (Although I’m sometimes tempted to think they *are* necessary for an ass-backwards, corrupt, insane, and above all, unjust one.)

There’s even support for this in the Mishna (Word of God, you know). In Avos (probably the only useful book ever penned by barbarians/rabbis) it says, “The reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward for an aveira is an aveira.” Often, fear of death and hell is dangled in front of believers (do good, you go to heaven. Bad, you go to hell), and if the rabbis believed in the afterlife (and this might be evidence that it’s a later fabrication and plagiarization from other tribal myths) wouldn’t they say so in the Mishna? If you’re going to fry in hell for not praying hard enough, or checking your mezuzas often enough, and oh, also for killing other people, wouldn’t the rabbis say so? Instead, it says your punishment is the aveira itself? What the hell? What kind of morons wrote this thing? Hey, if I’m going to give you a million dollars for something, you think I would find it necessary to give you other reasons?

Perhaps the rabbis sensed a fundamental secret of human nature. Humans don’t need promises of an afterlife, or even divine/rabbinic orders to do what they feel is right and to not do what they don’t feel is right. Say I hurt someone; do something wrong. No one may ever know. But *I* know. And I’ll sleep a little less easy at night, knowing the awful thing I’ve done, and I’ll have a harder time looking myself in the mirror in the morning. Conversely, if I do something thought of as “good”, I’ll sleep a bit more restfully at night. I’ll feel better about myself. I’ll hold my head just a little bit higher as I walk down the street. The reward or punishment for a deed is the deed itself. If I do something bad, I’ll forever be haunted by the memory. If I do something good, I’ll forever be buoyed by the memory. The rabbis tapped into the great secret of human morality: our conscience and guilt. To hell with hell.

Of course, another point to mention is it’s often in my own best interests to do good. If I help a friend, it’s not only for selfless purposes that I do so. And if I feel a sense of connection with all of humanity, why would I want to hurt anyone? So much good can be done for purely selfish purposes as well. My company donates a lot of charity. I’m sure they do it for altruistic purposes, but I’m sure they also have an idea that it does great things for their reputation to be known as a corporation that’s active in the community. A lot of morality is simple win/win strategies, you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours. I put a smile on your face, you put a smile on mine. Remind me why we need religion again?

Update: I just repaid a sixteen year-old favor. I feel like a million bucks.

Akeidas Yitzchak

2009-11-07T23:19:00.001-05:00

The child sat
Listening to his father
Tell the tale of Abraham and Isaac.

His father retold with relish
How Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son
because a voice in his head told him to
Not only that, the son begged him to tie him up
so it would be a kosher shechita!!
A machmir, was he.

When the father was finished telling the story
In all its gruesome detail,
A strange light shining in his eye
The son asked in a small voice,
“Daddy, if it was me… ?”
The father didn’t answer right away,
the son knew what the answer was,
why of course he would,
g-d’s will, after all,
We don’t always know God’s plan,
but it’s always for the best.

The son sat,
Horrified,
Dreaming of the day he’d escape this primitive religion
Where no one was divinely commanded to kill
Or not to kill
A world where people answered to other people,
Not to voices in their heads,
and crooked politicians and men of the cloth
I’d rather trust human nature,
than these barbarians,
he said.
There’s far more good
in a simple human being,
than in all the great religious imaginings,
he thought.

Great video

2009-11-06T14:03:00.000-05:00

I've posted this video before, but I felt like posting it again.

The Why of OTD

2009-11-03T20:11:00.004-05:00

See this post by this moron, entitled "The Why of OTD."

He gives his first reason:

The reason most often thought to be responsible for that is a very negative emotional experience- often ongoing - with the religious community. This can involve living in a dysfunctional family or being sexually molested by a religious Jew. I think that’s right. Most people who go OTD do so because of bad experiences like these.

Then he says it's our inferior scholastic abilities. Then he says way too quickly:

And finally there is the intellectual component. There are some cases where young people go OTD because of questions of faith. When they see things like the origins of the universe explained in ways that make more sense to them than what they’ve been taught by their Mechanchim. They start asking questions. And when they do not get satisfying answers they start questioning it all.

I don't even know where to start in fisking a piece like this, so I don't think I will. I should mention R' Maryles is one of the more sensible MO people on the net. (XGH has a response here.)

The comments there are also very illuminating, and you have this gem from Garnel: "if you're willing to listen to stuff about the documentary hypothesis and give Dawkins a hearing just to be fair, then you're going to be led astray."

Three quick points: 1) how many converts and BTs don't have emotional issues? 2) How many ordinary frummies don't have major issues? Is there a reason why frummies only use frum therapists? Or is it perfectly self-evidently obvious to the rest of the world's population that they're not batshit insane? 3) You admit in the freaking post that "TV movies, radio, newspapers, the Internet - are all off limits to them." If that's the signs of a healthy culture, please tell me what an unhealthy culture looks like?

New blog

2009-11-02T12:15:00.002-05:00

Chatzkaleh/Jewish Rebel has finally started a blog. He's been around for a while, and he started this facebook group and this website. So far, it looks great. (This post is recommended). Head on over.

2009-11-01T19:01:00.002-05:00

I had an interesting email exchange with Aliza from this blog. She was horrified with the way JP was treating others in the blogosphere. It goes without saying that I respect her as an individual and as a Jew. I think the majority of people by default respect others and treat others with respect, and I think it's a crying shame that a few disrespectful bastards get to give all the rest of you a bad name. You might want to do something about this. Here's what Aliza had to say (posted with permission):

Aliza: Hey, OTD, did Tova's issues with JP get resolved? In all of my two years of blogging and the disgusting abuse I have taken (I had someone regularly mocking the child abuse I experienced and others just told me I was a disgrace to Jews and Dominican on a constant basis), I never, ever saw anything like that exchange. Maybe (and thank G-d), I've been sheltered.

Aliza Hausman
Writer, Blogger, Educator, Speaker, Conversion Counselor
Check out my blog and portfolio: http://www.alizahausman.net
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/alizahausman
Become a fan on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/argjtv
Join my online Orthodox Conversion support group: http://tinyurl.com/yhazbxv

OTD: Wow, that's pretty awful. It's amazing how many nasty commenters are out there! I was blown away when on my very first day, I got bucketloads of hate, Garnel called me a Nazi that first day, and never left my blog til i kicked him out like a **********

Yeah, Tova got it rough. I don't know if anything was done. It looks like he managed to keep his job somehow, and his rabbi will likely do nothing. Although maybe people will complain to Family and Child Services, and he may lose his kids. I think that would serve him right.

Aliza: I had to make the decision that I would not allow Anonymous comments on my blog. It means I don't get as many comments as Heshy but also, it's better for my head and my heart.

Unfortunately, I know from experience from dealing with Child Services, it's almost impossible to take someone's children away...even if they DESERVE to have their chlidren taken away. I kidnapped my sister when I was 21 (she was 14) and I had to fight my abusive mother for custody for 3 years! I won but they left my baby sister (to this day) with my mother. And Child Services turned against us from the first family meeting saying that three of us daugthers and runaways and our word was no proof of actual abuse. Even if there was abuse, a supervisor told us, "You have to love your mother no matter what." Our good grades were used against of examples of how we were acting against "abusive child type."

The thing is as you pointed out frequently in your responses to JP, people doing stuff like this probably have other deep, serious issues and who knows what his family life is like or what kind of mental illness he's suffering from. His comments are an alarm system but will anybody respond to it and be able to actually effect change? Who knows.

Boycott the religious

2009-11-01T14:31:00.006-05:00

Have you seen this post? R' Harry Maryles calls for residents of NY to boycott some famous rebbes from Israel. I guess he figures the Haredim have been giving the MO bad press lately, what with all the Mea Shearim stonings and other insanity leaking out from that part of the globe. So perhaps it's time to stop enabling them, and stop funding them. What he's forgetting is this has been going on for years. Whether or not they're making it into the media, they've been living the exact same way for the last few hundred years, with virtually no changes. So either you're admitting you've turned a blind eye until now, in which case you're spineless, or you were unaware, in which case you're a nitwit.

Anyway, according to Garnel, these rabbis are perfectly innocent anyway. THEY'VE HAD THEIR SIGNATURE STAMPS STOLEN YEARS AGO!!! That explains it!

But hey, if you want to be responsible for children starving in the streets, that's your business. Surely you know the Jews you're now boycotting may call you Nazis. They may even be justified. Compared to the kinds of people you call Nazis on a regular basis, you're probably a lot worse, actually.

JP is back

2009-10-31T23:03:00.004-04:00

I was hoping JP would be gone by now. Apparently, he hasn't lost his job yet, and he's still blogging. Oh well.

I did get a response from R' Senter (his rabbi). It was mostly lame-ass B.S. and he requested twice! for me to respect his privacy, and not post his email publicly, which is why I'm not posting it (for now, haha).

Anyway, in honor of JP, here's a post I wrote last year about stupid trolls.

Work

2009-10-30T13:07:00.003-04:00

Read this crazy story. Does the craziness ever end? (Apparently not, as long as religion's around and respected, and thought of as a good thing.)

Here are two frum responses to the story (admittedly semi-logical responses).

The insanity is so bad, and they wonder why I want nothing to do with the Orthodox.

Censorship?

2009-10-28T09:34:00.006-04:00

Great post by a frum woman here about book banning. Here is an excerpt:

I wish my kids would be able to read Maya Angelou’s books in school, I wish they didn’t have to be ashamed to say they read all the Harry Potter books...How does censoring what they read make them better people? It doesn’t.

It's a very important topic, one that should be addressed by school administration, if they were at all accountable or responsible. But they aren't, of course.

Like most people with a frum background, I have lots of experience with book-banning and censorships. I guess it's easier to keep people in the dark if you hide books from them. Oh wait, the book will make them go OTD. That's it. Wouldn't want anyone going OTD!

My high school didn't even allow us to go to the library. Hey, we could go to the beis medrash anytime. And torah is Word of God, RIGHT? And it's full of wisdom, right? You're not implying the Torah is deficient in any way, now are you? So what's the problem? Aha, you hate Torah. But I agree. If all copies of Torah are taken off the shelves, I think everyone should go back on the d.

Talk about thought control and mind police. You realize there are frum schools where your kids would get tossed if say, they read books, or if you had the Internet. I wonder why that is.

Or maybe we should be dan l'kaf zchus. Maybe there's a legitimate reason why they ban books in today's day and age. Maybe we should ask Garnel.

Oh, they burn books too. I remember schoolkids always talking about burning their schoolbooks. If that doesn't tell you all you need to know about Orthodox respect for secular knowledge, I don't know what will.

JP

2009-10-26T09:23:00.003-04:00

JP has been harassing Tova of this blog here for the last week or so.

A friend of this blog, Cipher, suggested that people write to his rabbi, Rabbi Ari Senter and try to convince him to do something about JP. Also suggested, is to report him to Blogger, using the prompts on the front page of his blog. I fully support these ideas, and think reporting him to his rabbi and to Blogger are the very least he deserves. Other suggestions are floating around, such as reporting him to his employer and to Child and Family Services. While I’m open to these ideas too, I think it’s open to debate whether that’s overdoing it. Maybe. Though I certainly think it’s far from a no-brainer. Real-life abusers are reported to the authorities (well, not in the frum world, of course, but you know what I mean…), so why shouldn’t online abusers?

Anyway, I urge you all to report him to Blogger, and to send an email R’ Senter’s way. I should mention I really like this idea, and I think it's about time something was done about online abusers (Garnel, you're next.) You're free to disagree with me, by the way. Just kindly don't call me names. R' Senter's email address is: arisenter@kof-k.org

Here is an excellent sample letter Cipher sent to the rabbi. Feel free to forward it, or use it to make your own. Hm, maybe we should have a contest. Best letter wins! :D

Dear Rabbi Senter,

I am writing to you concerning Jacob Stein, who, as you know, claims you as his rabbi. I'm aware of at least one other instance in which you were contacted and asked to intervene in his affairs, but my understanding is that you prefer to remain uninvolved. I'm asking you to reconsider that position.

I have no way of knowing how familiar you are with Stein's online activities; you may not be aware that they go far beyond the parameters of his own blog. Stein goes all over the Internet, targeting Jewish blogs, particularly those maintained by Orthodox or formerly Orthodox Jews who are struggling with their faith, or even merely asking reasonable questions. Once he's discovered such a blog, he becomes what is commonly known as a "troll" - he badgers the blog owner and his/her regular participants, uses abusive language and makes ridiculous and non sequitur accusations, particularly of sexual impropriety. In short, anyone who expresses even the slightest reservation or disagreement concerning his extreme views is labeled a 'sexual pervert". This is ironic, as he customarily makes lewd and suggestive remarks to young women; I refer you to this recent example: http://righteousrasha.blogspot.com/2009/10/jew-president-two-patriots.html . It is one of many such examples posted over the past several years. He has an obsession with sexual topics; here:

http://jewishphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/11/anti-gay-pride.html

is an article in which he advocates the death penalty for gay men. My understanding is that this isn't even a position supported by Talmudic authorities, the penalties prescribed in Tanakh being inapplicable in galut.

Although there are numerous groups he dislikes, he seems to have a particular hatred of Orthodox Jews who've fallen away from belief. Here:

http://jewishphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/10/secret-orthodox-atheists-and-how-to.html

http://jewishphilosopher.blogspot.com/2008/11/hunting-secret-atheists-beginners-guide.html

are two examples in which he advocates using stealth techniques (including the use of computer monitoring software and hidden cameras) to discover frum Jews who no longer observe strictly, to humiliate them publicly and to purge them from your communities.

Of course, he is, to an extent, free to say whatever he wishes to on his blog; however, he routinely crosses the line from personal opinion into the territory of hate speech, inflammatory rhetoric and incitement to violence. These are also indicative of the sort of remarks he makes on others' blogs, unwanted and uninvited, on a regular basis. I have reported him to Blogger on these grounds, as he violates their policies in these areas on a constant and ongoing basis.

Although nearly everyone he encounters online finds him singularly offensive, most have opted to do nothing about it. I represent a group of Jewish bloggers who have decided to take action. You may be hearing from some of the others as well, who are also reporting him to Blogger for violating its policies on hate speech and personal privacy. The father of the young woman whose blog I linked to above, himself a frum Jew (and who also may be contacting you), plans to print out the comment thread, in which Stein speaks suggestively to his daughter, and send it to Stein's wife. We are also contacting the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. Quite frankly, we fear for the safety of his wife and children; it can't be a healthy environment for children to be growing up in, overshadowed by a man so thoroughly obsessed with what he considers to be sexual "perversion", and who routinely advocates violence against any group - gay people, "heretics", Muslims, the list goes on - that arouses his ire.

Rabbi, permit me to be blunt. I realize that in your world, the opinion of a frei Jew means very little, especially if an accusation is being made against a frum person. I am also aware of the mutually protective nature of Orthodox society. I am asking you to look beyond these considerations. This is not about ideological differences; it's about putting a stop to a severely disturbed man who causes pain and distress wherever he goes, and who may be a very real danger to his family. At the very least, what he is doing constitutes a tremendous Chillul HaShem.

I urge you strongly to use whatever influence you may have, over him and within your community, to reign him in. He is in dire need of professional help, but I'm sure he wouldn't be amenable; rabbinic authority is probably all to which he'll submit or respond. If you will do nothing else, please at least disavow him publicly; that will discredit him and may serve to curb his activities.

If he has misrepresented himself as your talmid, or if you no longer consider yourself to be his rabbi, please forward this email to whoever now serves in that capacity.

Thank you for your attention.

College

2009-10-24T20:38:00.009-04:00

Okay, I posted two articles the other day but haven’t had a chance to fisk them, until now. Here goes. This is The knock on secular college, by Rabbi Reuven Spolter:

Your son is ecstatic. He just received a letter granting him admission to the summer program of his dreams; five weeks at the highly prestigious summer science learning program in Maine where he’ll study with noted experts in physics and chemistry; areas of particular interest to him. You’ve been encouraging him to expand his horizons; taking him to scientific competitions and lectures for years, so you find his enthusiasm encouraging.

What about kashrut? Shabbat? Sure, it might be challenging for him to deal with religious observance over the summer. But that’s what real life is about, isn’t it? But then your rabbi confronts you with a troubling statistic: 25 percent of all Orthodox attendees to the summer program drop their Orthodoxy. Despite your skepticism, the rabbi shows you the surveys and it’s true: one-quarter of all Orthodox camp participants abandon Orthodox practice.
Would you encourage your son to go? It’s my article so I can say it: I wouldn’t. After
spending so much time, effort, blood, sweat, tears and money on conveying the importance of Jewish life to my children, how could I risk it all on one summer — no matter how enriching it may be?

If you haven’t realized it by now, I’m not writing about a summer program. No, I’m writing about attending secular college.

In a fascinating symposium published in a special education issue of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s Meorot Journal, Rabbi Todd Berman writes about preparing students to thrive in non-Orthodox environments, specifically secular colleges. His essay focuses on important ways to mitigate the effects of the pressures to abandon religious life on campus, like sending educators from high schools to visit kids on campus; helping students form critical social bonds within the Orthodox groups on campus; and offering valuable courses both in high school and in Israel to help prepare them for college life.

All of these represent good ways to help our kids retain their connection to
Orthodoxy on the college campus. And yet, I wonder. Rabbi Berman himself states the numbing numbers: “one-quarter of the students who come to college as Orthodox Jews…changed their denominational identity while at college.” (Avi Chai Foundation, “Particularism in the University: Realities and Opportunities for Jewish Life on Campus,” Report, Jan. 2006)

That’s right. One quarter. If twenty students graduated this past June from your local yeshiva high school and headed off to campus, five of them won’t consider themselves Orthodox in four years — after a full twelve years of intensive Orthodox education. What causes this drop off? It’s not the intellectual pressures, by and large. No, it’s the social environment.

The campus culture, while ostensibly “celebrating pluralism,” often lacks tolerance for what is seen as xenophobic tribalism. Orthodox students are sometimes made to feel odd for maintaining religious observance at the expense of partaking fully in the smorgasbord of offered cultural delicacies.

However, both of these issues, while not insignificant, pale in comparison to the social pressures and realities of campus life. As one junior put it, “it is hard to be ‘shomer negi`ah’ when a girl sits down on your lap during orientation.” From the promiscuous parties sponsored by the university to the open support of binge drinking, to the small things like the experience of living in an openly coed dormitory, students are
made to feel, as one student told me, odd for not being sexually and socially active. A former student once remarked that just as the State of Israel lowered the red line on the Kinneret Sea, pretending that the water level had not yet declined to the danger zone, so do students redraw their own red lines, or even worse, forget why they were there in the first place. It is quite difficult to describe the tsunami of social-sexual pressure crashing down on the religiously oriented student. These social pressures, and not the academic or even the cultural, are the most difficult to withstand.

We often overlook this reality by telling ourselves that sooner or later our children will have to confront “real life.” I’m sorry, but the college campus does not represent “real life.” In “real life,” women don’t sit down on men’s laps. In a normal workplace, that would constitute an inappropriate sexual advance which would be addressed immediately. Binge drinking might happen after work hours, but no one forces you to join your coworkers at the bar. In “real life” you can choose your roommates and the values you wish to maintain in your home. Can you do that on campus? In “real life” Orthodox people have the ability to avoid many of these challenging situations — something they cannot do on the college campus, where the parties take place on your floor — and probably right in your room. Still, we satisfy ourselves with platitudes: “no solution works for every student” and “Yeshiva University isn’t the answer for everyone.”

Of course that’s true. But we then use those platitudes to justify sending our children to terribly dangerous spiritual situations. There’s a world of difference between “perfect” — or a zero percent drop-off rate — and “exponentially better than twenty percent,” Rabbi Berman writes.

Without a doubt, Yeshiva University remains for many a safe haven; yet more and more yeshiva high school graduates are bound for secular campuses. I have a simple question: If a “safe haven” exists, why do parents send “more and more” of their children to “unsafe” environments? In trying to offer solutions to a glaring problem, we’re avoiding the elephant in the room, and failing to state the obvious: Secular residential college — any secular residential college — presents a serious and even mortal danger to our childrens’ well-being. It’s just not worth the risk.

Sadly, while many in Jewish education agree with me, no Modern Orthodox educator or administrator can actually say this. Parents would never tolerate an educator who, in their minds, discouraged his or her students from attending college (which they would not be doing; they would only be discouraging them from attending a residential college. Plenty of yeshiva students — both male and female — attend numerous secular colleges during the afternoons and evenings and seem to thrive both educationally and spiritually). Educators do not tell the truth for fear of losing their positions. Even Rabbi Berman seems to play this game.

“It is incumbent upon the community to empower our students to succeed in the college environment,” he writes. “We can achieve this goal if we keep several issues in mind: the positive social networks in place in high school or Israeli yeshiva should be maintained through developing programs for our alumni, refocusing our expenditures of energy on what is happening on the campus, promoting key social networks in college, and being realistic about what we expect to accomplish.” Which is it? Can we achieve this goal of empowering our students to succeed in the college environment? What then does it mean for us to be “realistic about what we expect to accomplish”? What’s a realistic drop-off rate for Orthodoxy? Fifteen percent? Ten percent?

It’s time for Jewish educators to start speaking the truth: We cannot “achieve this goal.” The college campus promotes values antithetical to Orthodox Jewish life. Those are simply the facts, and we permit ourselves to pretend otherwise at the expense of our children’s spiritual well-being.

So I’ll say it: Please do not send your child to a secular residential college — even one with a strong Hillel and Orthodox community on campus. It’s not worth the risk, and certainly not the benefits. The options truly abound. He or she can attend YU, or Lander — or even college in Israel; he or she can live at home or study in a yeshiva and attend college at night, and still gain admittance the most exclusive graduate schools in the world. Many, many Jewish kids have and continue to do just that.

And while the numbers aren’t perfect, the vast majority of them still consider themselves Orthodox today.

Like most rabbis, this rabbi is absolutely full of it, and here’s why.

>Rabbi Berman himself states the numbing numbers: “one-quarter of the students who come to college as Orthodox Jews…changed their denominational identity while at college.”

Yay me! I changed my denomination even before college! No college necessary for this sonofabitch.

>That’s right. One quarter. If twenty students graduated this past June from your local yeshiva high school and headed off to campus, five of them won’t consider themselves Orthodox in four years — after a full twelve years of intensive Orthodox education. What causes this drop off? It’s not the intellectual pressures, by and large. No, it’s the social environment…It is quite difficult to describe the tsunami of social-sexual pressure crashing down on the religiously oriented student. These social pressures, and not the academic or even the cultural, are the most difficult to withstand.

Yeah right. It’s not the intellectual pressures. It’s social pressure. Hey, at least he’s not blaming the kids . Or the parents. Or the lampposts. Or, er, his religion.

>As one junior put it, “it is hard to be ‘shomer negi`ah’ when a girl sits down on your lap during orientation.”

Girls sit on your lap during orientation?! Which school does this guy go to? And where do I sign up?

There’s so much pressure to be “sexually and socially active” on college campuses? I was simply unaware. No one in my school has pressured me at all yet. It could be because I’m ugly as sin. It could also because it doesn’t happen much. I should mention even if the SEXUAL “problems” with college campuses are not exaggerated by our brilliant rabbi here (and they most certainly are), they don’t apply to commuter colleges, just residential ones.

> Without a doubt, Yeshiva University remains for many a safe haven

For you Modern Orthodox atheists, yes. For most of the ultra-Orthodox, college will never be an option. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, asshole.

>The options truly abound. He or she can attend YU, or Lander

Wow! I know! The options truly abound, don’t they?

> The campus culture, while ostensibly “celebrating pluralism,” often lacks tolerance for what is seen as xenophobic tribalism.

LMAO. Really, we’re not xenophobic. Really. We just don’t trust anyone, is all.

You see what he’s doing though? The typical Orthodox heave-ho when it comes to blame. The age-old scapegoating game. The same way the goyim *used* to blame the Jews for all their problems, and frummies love blaming OTDers and atheists!!!! for most of the world’s problems, here we’re blaming college for OTDers. Let me see if I follow: there’s a twenty-five percent drop-off rate from kids who are raised in your (cult) who are exposed to the secular world in a college. Must be the fault of the college. Or, it’s the eeeevil sssinning goooooing on, with all the promissscuuuuuuity. Oooooooh, it’s such a shaannnda!

Of course, our dear deluded moron of a friend is ignoring the problem here, the REAL reason why so many of your youth are escaping at the first possible opportunity, and the very real elephant in the room, sir: YOUR ENTIRE RELIGION IS ONE BIG PILE OF BALONEY AND A HUGE CROCK OF SHIT, ASSHOLE!

There. Now fuck off.

Oh, and this ties into the general theme of xenophobia in the frum community. How many frum kids go to secular elementary school? Secondary school? Didn’t think so. You people hide from the goyim because you know that everyone is two minutes away from going OTD. There’s nothing wrong with the colleges; there’s something wrong however with a cult that knows there’s a huge chance people will stop believing its crock as soon as they’re exposed to outsiders, chas v’shalom chas v’shalom chas v’shalom. I had a discussion with my high school-aged brother the other day. Not only would he refuse to go to a more Modern Orthodox (atheist) high school, he couldn’t even imagine going to a secular, or public, high school. After all, the crime there must be so bad, how could we expect him to come out alive from that beis avoda zora! Can’t argue with that logic, can you?

What this asshole is doing is blaming secular college for the huge dropoff rate among Orthodox kids, as well as trying to strong-arm parents into sending their kids to Jewish schools, most likely his employers, by scaring them. I wonder what he has to say about the hundreds of Orthodox yeshivas in AMERICA that take boys ages 18-108 and makes sure they never step foot in a university, heh? Or about the hundreds of kollels. Hey, I have a better idea: why not just lock them all up in caves for the next hundred years? Oh wait. You already do that.

The Orthodox world is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.

Great video

2009-10-23T10:59:00.001-04:00

Great articles

2009-10-19T12:14:00.001-04:00

Should Modern Orthodox kids go to secular colleges?

Israel's economy being ruined by the haredim.

HT: Alternative Genesis and Failed Messiah.