What The Yeshivas, Agudath Israel, BMG - Lakewood Yeshiva...Can Learn From The Donald Sterling Saga...

Personally, I do not care what Sterling said to his girlfriend in private; the man is a lowlife in the worst order! His actions  ----  being a miserable philanderer his entire life and having the prostitutes on his arm at the Clippers games for all to see, to me, are worse than what came out of his filthy mouth in the confines of his home.

Yet, Yeshiva Gedolah had no problem putting his name on their building and taking his filthy money!

Even the NAACP - yes, that pathetic reverse racist organization, will stop honoring him for now!

BMG, the Agudath Israel and numerous other organizations --- know --- that the entire NBA --- you know the guys that get paid million$ to throw a ball in a hole - were on the verge of NOT playing ball until Sterling was removed from their organization!

Jews are just not that smart!

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/04/28/clippers-owner-donald-sterling-has-long-history-of-trouble/

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Donald Sterling has been known to heckle his own team from the center-court seat where he has sat for decades, whether with his now-estranged wife or women young enough to be his granddaughters.

Sterling has faced extensive federal charges of civil rights violations and racial discrimination in business, making shocking race-related statements in sworn testimony before reaching multimillion-dollar settlements. He has also been sued for sexual harassment by former employees, and the court proceedings detailed an outlandish list of Sterling’s personal proclivities.

Cui Bono? - "Who Benefits From This?"

Attorneys use the above Latin phrase often - not as often though as evolutionary biologists. I trained myself to think in these terms - when I do, I am always able to shine a light on the essential causes of why people do what they do.

Men (humans) are extremely selfish animals. One just needs to view their surroundings, and we will see people keeping busy with their own needs, primarily. The failure to realize what's good for us is also good for our neighbor (and the converse), is exactly what is destroying our civilization.

So when we clean our yard - and we dump the trash over the fence - our yard is clean - but the trash is still there and toxic. When we send our children off to school in the morning; if there's dangerous bacteria in the school dining room, or there's a teacher, a principal, or any school employee that is emotionally ill with a mental health infirmity, it is only a matter of time when your child could be debilitated by an illness or damaged emotionally by a person who is so sick that they are unable to control their deviant proclivities.

Stephen Jay Gould, the famed paleontologist, in his work - "Rock Of Ages", went through great lengths to reconcile science and religion, with his theory of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria". He claimed that science explained the natural world, while religion spoke for morality. His students actually pointed out that religion was redefined as a moral philosophy.

An overwhelming number of scientists and philosophers called this intellectual rubbish, and were shocked that a man of such brilliance could actually delude himself by claiming that morality was something that only religion could articulate.

Nothing could be a bigger falsehood! When we put religion under the microscope - all religions - we discover that humankind is being destroyed in the name of religious morality. Cui Bono? Who benefits from religion today? Not the masses of people or the plain-folk! It is the leadership and the leadership only.

There is no greater corrupt body of people in the history of mankind than the "religious" leaders!

Who benefits?

1 - When your children are kept ignorant and discouraged from getting an education that would permit them to develop their intellect and have the ability to discern right and wrong, truth from lie - other than what their religious leaders are telling them?

2 - When the leadership themselves are ignorant, evil and deceitful charlatans?

3 - When the so-called leadership, line their coffers with your money - while they amass fortunes in real estate for themselves and their families - while you can barely survive paying your monthly expenses?

4 - When the Agudath Israel allies themselves with the Catholics to keep law enforcement out of the religious schools while our children are endangered by sexual predators, whilst the teachers, principals and the schools' finances are not held accountable to anyone!

5 - When poverty is encouraged for the masses - by encouraging your children to rely on God and miracles for a living!

Every rabbi sitting on the Moetzes Gedolei Torah is directly responsible for protecting and enabling child rapists and child abusers!

And there are scores of people that choose to remain anonymous, that accuse them and tens of other rabbis for knowing about other rabbi-rapists, and have done nothing!

Is this the moral philosophy that religion is suppose to have given us? When the Agudath Israel's allies, the Catholics, knowingly let millions of Africans die rather than educate them on sexual disease prevention - is this the morality of religion?

The children, the helpless, the poor, the ill, the weak --- are not these the people that religious morality dictates that we do everything possible to prevent them from a tortured existence? And yet, these religious leaders are the most responsible for the hell on earth that they visit on their flock, with total impunity! No police --- No IRS audits - No taxes ---- NOTHING!

What morality does religion exactly provide us with?

Yisroel Belsky will not perform a bris unless he performs metziza b'peh; yet he had no problem letting any child's bris kodesh be fondled and violated by Kolko, and only God knows how many others over his fifty plus year history in supervising children - In Camp Agudah, Pirchei Agudath Israel, Camp Torah Vodaath and Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. We're going to be extra cautious on the halacha - are we now? Did anybody notice that he was not on the list with the twenty five other whiskered cows visiting Postville the other week. He's even too corrupt for the OU to roll him out in public anymore!

This it what it's come down to - We've let every single outside decadent influence into our homes and souls - we don't have any idea what morality looks like any more.

Why The Yarmulke?

יאַרמולקע, from the Aramaic meaning "fear of the King" (i.e. God)) --- According to some authorities, however, it has since taken on the force of law because it is an act of Kiddush Hashem (lit. "sanctification of the Name", referring to actions which bring honor to God).  Kitzur Shulchan Aruch cites a story from the Talmud (Shabbat 156b) about Rav Nachman bar Yitzchok who might have become a thief had his mother not saved him from this fate by insisting that he cover his head, which instilled in him the fear of God.

 

                     

READ ARTICLE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/nyregion/rapfogel-pleads-guilty-in-scheme-to-loot-new-york-charity.html?hpw&rref=nyregion

Standing On The Shoulders Of A Giant!

Among Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz's ztvk"l last wishes, was that his son in-law, Rabbi Alexander Linchner, go to Israel and "rateve der Sefardishe kinder" - save the Sephardic children! This, from a humble Jew from Europe, whose sheer breadth of human compassion was beyond imagination, and concern for the well being of children was a paramount concern to him. Even as he lay on his deathbed.

He was the human Hubble telescope - he saw universes and galaxies beyond what anyone else was able to see or fathom.

Yes, the children were his primary concern -- because it is they that would carry the Jewish people forward until the coming of Moshiach. A well-educated, emotionally healthy child, imbued with the appropriate set of values, Torah values, would keep Yiddishkeit's light burning throughout the planet! The torch or "shraga" would light Torah fires in every nook and cranny on the planet Earth.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said about RSFM -- "every single student in a yeshiva in America, now and forever, is a talmid of RSFM"! He loved Jews and Judaism with a passion unmatched in recent history. He fought off his detractors - the naysayers that scoffed at him and his concept of the new American Jew. He could care less what the masses thought about his concept of Torah (Im Derech Eretz) education in America. He battled the kannoim - the crazies. He declared war against self-inflicted poverty of the mind. Many of his dearest talmidim were encouraged to seek a parnassa outside the walls of the yeshiva. He battled Rabbi Aron Kotler on "high school" education in yeshivas. It is not for naught dear Zeide. The American Yid will survive, although this generation has lost its way.

"Your children" were trampled on, your values were spat upon, your way of dress has been soiled by gangsters, your pure Yiddish language has been twisted into vulgarities, your yeshiva kinderlach were sexually and emotionally raped by animals posing as rabbis, your battle for the sanctity of kashrus has been turned into a -- big illicit profit crooked gesheft, your Bais Yaakov girls were violated by beasts posing as rabbis, teachers and principals.

There is still a fire in a few Jews that will never give up, never! We will battle your battle until our last breath, as you did! We will turn the world upside down -- until your values return to the nation of Israel.

Your values will return to the Jewish people, I promise! Beseech God on behalf of your kinderlach dear Zeide - we need your intervention with the Ribbono Shel Olam -- we must prevail, we must not fail!

RABBIS.....

The UOJ Archives

by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobowits

(Sent in by a reader-Tradition. Deserving of its own post.)

By the encouraging response from many readers to our observations under this heading in our last issue, we venture now to expand on this theme and to offer some constructive solutions to the problems posed. The principal criticisms leveled at the existing tendencies in the preceding review may be summarized by the following five points:

1. The denigration and usurpation of the role of practicing rabbis by yeshivah deans had virtually eliminated the traditional place and functions of the rabbinate in the spiritual government of the religious community, resulting in the disappearance of the public Torah image in the community at large.

2. The transfer of rabbinic jurisdiction from communal rabbis to academic scholars confined to yeshivot had severely limited the scope of contemporary Halakhah and caused substantial deviations from the traditional pattern in the methods used to determine Jewish law.

3. These unprecedented developments had led to the displacement by yeshivot of kehillot as the institutional center of gravity in Jewish religious life.

4. The yeshivot's discouragement of rabbinical careers was directly responsible for the spread of mediocrity in the rabbinate and the growing scarcity of candidates forleading rabbinical positions.

5. Yeshivot, by tending to stifle rather than to promote a sense of commitment to the wider community, had been equally unsuccessful in raising a community-minded laity, so that public Jewish life became increasingly drained of rabbinical and lay leaders alike.

To reverse these baneful trends will require much courage and vision. But the foremost requisite is a willingness by all concerned to engage in a dispassionate debate, to tolerate genuine criticism and dissent, and to sweep away the cobwebs of conformity and stereotyped thinking to make room for honest search and bold correctives.

The following observations and suggestions on the above five points are offered in this spirit:

1. The answer to the first challenge is obviously the restoration of rabbinic authority. "Jephtah in his generation is [vested with as much authority] as Samuel in his generation, to teach you that even the most unworthy person, once he is appointed w a leader over a community, is like the mightiest of the mighty" (Rosh Hashanah 25b). Rabbinical authority, our Sages averred, derives from communal appointment, not from mere wisdom or learning. As expressed so forcefully in the incident on fixing the date of Yom Kippur (Rosh Hashanah, 2:9), a Rabbi Joshua, however superior his scholarship, must submit to the rulings and decrees of a Rabbi Gamaliel as the practicing office-holder. There can be no substitute for, or challenge to, an official and legitimate incumbent of a rabbinical post.

A part of the problem may lie in the current use and abuse of the rabbinical title.

Semikhah (rabbinical ordination) is traditionally the conferment of power and responsibility to exercise rabbinical jurisdiction, as emphasized in its wording yoreh yoreh-"he shall surely give rulings." It is the passport to an office, not some honorific title or degree. It is a charge to practice rabbinics, a "crown" of sovereignty that confers obligations as well as rights, as the wording of the document implies.

It is definitely not just a certificate of academic proficiency.

"Any scholar who has attained hora'ah (or semikhah) and does not exercise it withholds Torah and causes the public to stumble; regarding him it is written: 'A mighty host are all her slain' (Prov. 7:26)" (Yoreh De'ah, 242:14), just as a qualified physician who does not practice medicine is deemed guilty of bloodshed (ib., 336:1).Semikhah ought to be awarded only to candidates for the active rabbinate and not as a kind of higher yeshivah graduation diploma, and the use of the rabbinical title should be limited to practicing rabbis. It was never meant as an incentive to Talmudical studies. "A man should not say, I will study so that people will call me 'Rabbi' " (Nedarim 62a). If any such incentives or rewards are really needed, let us reintroduce the time-honored titles of "Morenu" and "He-chaser" as a mark of distinction for scholarship and piety. Let outstanding masters be known by the affectionate "Reb" or the more eminent "Hagaon."

Even many Talmudical savants were content to forego any rabbinical appellation, men like Hillel and Shamai, or Abaye, Rava and Samuel, amongst numerous others!

Businessmen, accountants, or insurance agents using the title of rabbi without exercising it can hardly contribute to the public respect for the rabbinate, especially in our confused society.

Historically and halakhically, a rabbi is an administrator of Jewish law, a spiritual guide and a communal leader. Yeshivot, as the custodians of Torah education, should be the first to acknowledge the function of rabbis in this capacity, and not merely as expedient fund-raising agents, if the Torah image and authority are to be restored in Jewish life.

2. The effectiveness of rabbinical authority today largely depends on public endorsement. For the first time in our history Judaism must be vindicated in a democratic age. Gone are the days when any ex cathedra pronouncement or dogmatic ruling by a rabbi would automatically command popular respect by virtue of his learning or standing.

In the administration of Jewish law, justice must not only be done, but be manifestly seen to be done; as far as is possible, the logic of halakhic decisions must be demonstrated before the bar of public opinion to win acceptance.

To translate this essential ideal into practice, three elements are required: (a) relevance, (b) sweet reasonableness, and (c) a measure of tolerance.

(a) Halakhah must be, and appear to be, a guide to human progress, not a brake on it. All too often rabbinic judgments deal with religious problems in the light of modern conditions, not with modern problems in the light of religious conditions. Vast segments of our people are alienated from Torah life because they believe that Halakhah creates problems instead of solving them.

This is bound to result from the emphasis in rabbinic rulings on subjects of little relevance to the average modern Jew rather than on the great moral, social, and intellectual challenges troubling our age. To make Judaism meaningful and true to its primary purpose, halakhic guides must address themselves increasingly to defining the contribution of Jewish thought and teachings to such areas of current concern as birth-control, juvenile delinquency, the use of leisure, the economics of automation, Jewish-Christian relations, and the place of religion in public life. Halakhah cannot become a popular guide to life unless it embraces all life.

(b) In making halakhic decisions, the reasons given are as important as the conclusions. Even Moses was charged "to trouble himself in making everyone comprehend the reasons" for his teachings (Rashi, Ex. 21:1), and the Shulchan Arukh forbids rabbis to issue permissive rulings "which astound the public" because they are unintelligible (Yoreh De'ah, 242:10). Today more than ever before, rabbis must interpret or explain as well as adjudicate the law if they are to enjoy the fealty of the public.

They must serve both as priests "to teach God's judgments to Jacob and His Torah to Israel" (Deut. 33:10) and as heirs to the Prophets (B. Batra 12a) in presenting the moral and universal aspirations of Jewish existence.(c) The third requisite, tolerance, is equally indispensable for the restoration of rabbinical authority. Differences of opinion are the dynamics of Jewish learning and practice. They have always fertilized the very soil of the Torah "tree of life." The cause of Torah Judaism is hindered rather than helped by the present tendency towards ever more rigid uniformity, turning stringency into a fetish and branding all dissent as heresy. The violent agitation against Rabbi Mosheh Feinstein's ruling on artificial insemination and against the Manhattan Eruv, though both based on unimpeachable authorities, are cases in point drawn from recent experience in New York.The absence of all these three desiderata is inherent in the exercise of rabbinical jurisdiction by yeshivah deans who are remote from the concerns of contemporary society, shielded from the pressures of public opinion, and conditioned by the unquestioning loyalty of their yeshivah students. Practicing rabbis, on the other hand, are necessarily exposed to the broader challenges of real life, required to win consent as well as obedience, and compelled to explore legitimate concessions or to tolerate dissent.

3. Rabbinical offices cannot be filled with incumbents, adequate in quality and in quantity, without training them.

A lamdan (Talmudical scholar), however learned, is not necessarily a rabbi and may be a far cry from it. 

To meet the exacting and manifold tasks of rabbinic leadership, especially in our trying times, numerous skills are required in addition to scholarship. The spiritual leadership of a congregation calls for a high degree of proficiency in the presentation of Jewish thought, in the exploitation of public and personal relations for religious ends, in the impressive conduct of religious services and functions, in communal vision and diplomacy, in educational expertise, in some literary finesse, and above all in competently grappling with the intellectual challenges of our age. The exercise of purely rabbinical jurisdiction as a moreh hora'ah (an administrator of Halakhah), too, requires far more than mere competence in a few Talmudic tractates and some one hundred chapters of Yoreh De'ah dealing with ritual slaughter and kashrut, as presently constituting the semikhah program. To pass halakhic judgments a rabbi must be at home in all parts of the Shulchan Arukh, especially the Orach Chayyim and Even Ha-Ezer, familiar with the responsa literature and its methods, and proficient in the shikkul ha-da'at (weighing of opinions) indispensable for all rabbinic rulings. These skills can be acquired only by years of training and experience (shimmush), and through the constant consultation of writings and masters reflecting this experience.

The requirements for rabbinic ordination, therefore, should be amended to include this training, both in theory and in practice. To authorize rabbis to practice rabbinics and to guide congregations by virtue of their Talmudic learning only is as irresponsible as to qualify physicians to treat patients and to administer hospitals merely on the basis of some academic studies in the principles of medical science and without any clinical or hospital experience. Yeshivot devoted to theoretical studies in Talmud and parts of Yoreh De'ah can no more turn out competent rabbis without the help of rabbinical seminaries than medical schools and textbooks can produce qualified doctors without hospitals.The rabbinate today demands highly specialized professional skills to be an effective agency of spiritual leadership and halakhic jurisdiction. To ensure an adequate supply of high calibre rabbis professional schools are no less essential than for the training of any other professionals. The yeshivot can continue to ignore this need only at the cost of letting countless more spiritual "patients" die for lack of competent healers.

The appalling toll of defections from Judaism, of religious casualties, will hardly abate unless rabbinical functions are restored to rabbis equipped to respond to the questions and questionings of our times-men able not only "to learn and to teach" but also "to guard and to act."

4. Yeshivot are meant to make Jews, kehillot (congregations) to preserve them; the former prepare for Jewish life, the latter act it out. When Moses communicated the main principles of Jewish living to the Children of Israel, he assembled them in "congregations," not in yeshivot (Ex. 35:1; Lev. 19:2, and Rashi). For countless centuries congregations led by rabbis have always been the backbone of organized Jewish life. Under their umbrella all other facets of communal activity grew up and operated: education, rabbinical courts (batei din), mikvaot and welfare services. Today, with the disappearance of kehillot as the principal bulwark of Jewish life and their replacement by yeshivot, many of these communal amenities are largely either non-existent (such as communal batei din), or in unreliable private hands (such as kashrut and shechitah), or under non-religious control (such as the social services of the federations, etc.), and the religious community is fragmented and impotent in guiding the destinies of our people.This situation will not be ameliorated until the yeshivot orientate their students towards a sense of communal responsibility, as expressed, in the first instance, by active membership in established congregations.

So long as our most valuable human resources are absorbed and nullified by communally ineffective shtibels, which neither demand nor offer any contributions to the wider community, the most vital potential for building up the organism of Jewish religious life is frittered away, and the congregations that do exist are religiously emaciated for want of members who are intensely committed and exemplary in their learning and conduct.

The allegedly low standards of observance and religious fervor in larger synagogues are no excuse for defying Hillel's maxim, "Do not separate yourself from the congregation" and for surrendering our public institutions to the rule of ignorance and apathy. On the contrary, "where there are no men, you endeavor to be the man!"

The decline of our congregations calls for mobilizing the support of our yeshivot, not for their withdrawal and indifference. The dearth of Torah-committed members in our major Orthodox synagogues does not excuse the yeshivot - it indicts them.

5. The Torah tradition, as "a tree of life to them that strengthen it," has always given equal recognition to the scholar and to the supporter of scholarship, to Issachar and to Zevulun who shared the rewards and the responsibilities for Jewish learning in identical parts. Hence, it was considered no less important to raise Zevuluns, dedicated to the support of Torah learning and living, than to produce Issachars, devoted to the mastery of Torah studies.Today this essential balance in Jewish life is being dangerously upset. The yeshivot, by their monolithic program aiming at the accomplished lamdan as their sole ideal, seek to fulfill one requirement whilst ignoring the other. As the main custodians of public Jewish education, yeshivot will have to be more diversified in their curriculum and objectives to meet all our needs. The graduation of a potential Zevulun-a successful and devout businessman or professional -should be as urgent and precious a task as raising a profoundly learned Issachar.

To this end, yeshivot (at least the larger ones) should have a dual program of Jewish studies: one, stressing intensive learning designed to train competent scholars, rabbis and teachers, and the other, with an academically more limited scope, aimed at producing dedicated and knowledgeable ba'alei battim, distinguished by their piety and public-spiritedness rather than their scholarship.

These latter products will eventually swell the ranks of an enlightened and loyal laity from which our lay leaders and Torah supporters are recruited. Not every yeshivah student is fit or willing to be fashioned into a lamdan. By focusing the entire educational system on the few who are intellectually and otherwise endowed for Talmudic excellence, the yeshivot neglect all others and they are often lost to traditional Judaism later in life. With proper modifications in yeshivah policies, aims and methods, this large group could be turned into an element no less vital for the preservation of the Torah community than the most erudite scholars.

It is to this group of deeply committed "plebeians," at present completely ignored in the yeshivah "world," that we must look for providing our scholars with followers and financial support and for replenishing the thinning ranks of our lay leaders and communal workers.

Without Zevuluns, Issachars will eventually disappear, too, and it is up to the institutions of Jewish education to raise the former as well as the latter if creative Jewish living is to be perpetuated, and if the Jewish people is to recover its national purpose.

Yisroel Belsky Pesach Special - Buy One Hazmana For Loshon Hara - Get One Free!

Excerpted from The Jewish Fress Pesach Edition:


JF: Rabbi Belsky, what do you make of the D.A. now going after pigs/pedophiles in yeshivas?

Belsky: Boruch Hashem you asked.

Mendel Epstein and I have been scratching our seder plate beitzim about this - the only solution is purchasing a loshon hara hazmana from us. Mendel came up with the concept of "buy one get one free" - cash only no checks - if not, he gonna breaka you face and you gonna swim with der fishes. 

Boruch Hashem you asked!

Click on sample hazmana to enlarge:

"When We Resolved To Take Communal Affairs Into Our Hands, We Discovered A Serious Evil In The Midst Of Our Community!"

A Rabbinical Decree (g'zeirah) to the Jewish community in Cairo in the year 1167, believed to have been written by Maimonides, anonymously, as his first act as a Jewish leader.

"In times gone by, when storms and tempests threatened us, we used to wander about from place to place; but by the mercy of the Almighty we have now been enabled to find here a resting place. On our arrival, we noticed to our great dismay that the learned were disunited; that none of them turned his attention to the needs of the congregation.

We therefore felt it our duty to undertake the the task of guiding the holy flock, of inquiring into the condition of the community, of "reconciling the hearts of the fathers to their children," and of correcting their corrupt ways.

The injuries are great, but we may succeed in effecting a cure, and - in accordance with the words of the prophet - "I will seek the lost one, and that which has been cast out I will bring back, and the broken one I will cure" (Michah iv, 6).

When we therefore resolved to take management of the communal affairs into our hands, we discovered the existence of serious evil in the midst of the community, etc...."

Chag Sameach - חג שמח

Talk Yiddish To Me

"What better way to counter Israel's most recent attempts to eradicate Torah study than to celebrate its miraculous continuity with a gadol b'Yisrael?"

This Is What Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Pornography Looks Like!

It's Monday, the day after the Atzeres Hatefillah in Yerushalayim, and I am on my way back from Tzefas when my cell phone rings. Reb Shmuel Karelitz, Rav Nissim Karelitz's son, is on the phone. "Now is a good time to come to Bnei Brak," he says. "Rav Chaim will see you to talk about the kollel." I was elated.

Kollel Chazon Ish is one of the most esteemed Torah institutions in the world, and Rav Chaim Kanievsky is one of the world's greatest Torah authorities. So my elation doesn't require any explanation. What better way to counter Israel's most recent attempts to eradicate Torah study than to celebrate its miraculous continuity with a gadol b'Yisrael?

Bnei Brak is a rather difficult place to navigate by car. Small boys and girls tend to dash across the street without bothering to check if any cars are in close proximity, and the other drivers are equally oblivious to your presence. When we arrive safely at Rechov Rashbam, I am more than a little relieved. 

The kollel is housed in an imposing dun-colored building several stories high. Maariv is starting in the large beis midrash on the upper floor and I join the mispallelim. After davening Reb Shmuel Karelitz introduces me to Rav Binyamin Shikovitzky, one of the kollel's roshei chaburah. Rav Binyamin joined the kollel after he got married; he is now in his seventies but as fresh and motivated as if he had just arrived. We find a place in the office where we can all sit down comfortably...

You Want Crazy - Here's Crazy! - Hitchens Got This One Right!

Slate Magazine
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 29, 2005

I can never read the name "Michael Bloomberg" without an automatic free-association that flashes up in my mind. "Little putz," is what my internal prompter always cues to me. Obviously this and other intuitions must be prompted by whatever grand intelligence originally designed me, because here's what I read on page B5 of the New York Times on Friday, Aug. 26:

"Circumcision ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jews has alarmed city health officials, who say it may have led to three cases of herpes—one of them fatal—in infants. … The practice is known as oral suction, or in Hebrew, metzitzah b'peh: after removing the foreskin of the penis, the practitioner, or mohel, sucks the blood from the wound to clean it".

Last week, Emily Bazelon launched Slate's circumcision research project, a "study of men who have experienced sex as both circumcised and uncircumcised." The continuing scandal of this practice, which most Jews abandoned many years ago, is newly illustrated by the death of one little boy from type-1 herpes, and the infection of two others, in Staten Island and Brooklyn, after they had been subjected to this ritual by the same mohel. Let's be clear what's involved here. The Times refers to an article published last year in the journal Pediatrics that argued that metzitzah b'peh carries a serious health risk and is, for that reason alone, a violation of Jewish law. ("We suspect … that this entity is underreported for cultural reasons and that the studies described here are only the "tip of the iceberg" of the true incidence of the disease," the authors note). None of this should be hard to comprehend: If it risks the life or health of an infant, then no religious allegiance is or should be required for its condemnation. Q.E.D., as you might say.

What's Bloomberg got to do with this, you may be impatient to know by now. Well, the mayor of the great city where these children were deliberately exposed to infection and death has had a meeting with the Orthodox authorities who like to see this happening to small putzes, and he has expressed himself thus, on his own radio show, again as per the Times:

We're going to do a study, and make sure that everyone is safe and at the same time, it is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion.

Study? What study? Can't the fool get through an article by a Jewish authority in Pediatrics? For the Times reporter to add that Mayor Bloomberg's comment appeared to be designed not to "upset a group that can be a formidable voting bloc" was, in the circumstances, worse than superfluous.

Where to start with this? I could wish that Bloomberg were always so careful about keeping out of other peoples' business: He has made it legally impossible to have a cigarette and a cocktail at the same time, anywhere in the city. But I'll trade him his stupid prohibitionist ban if he states clearly that it is the government's business to protect children from religious fanatics. Female genital mutilation, for example, is quite rightly banned under federal law, and no religious exemption is, or ever should be, permitted. The Mormons were obliged to give up polygamy and forcible marriage before they, or the state of Utah, could be part of the United States. A Christian Scientist who denies urgent medical treatment to his or her children may well be hauled up for reckless endangerment, as may those whose churches teach redemption through violent corporal punishment. The First Amendment does indeed forbid any infringement of religious freedom, but it is not, as was once said, part of a suicide pact, let alone a child-abuse one.

Let's by all means hear from Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who emerged from his meeting with Bloomberg to inform us that: "The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years. We do not change. And we will not change." You can preach it, rabbi, but you have no more right to practice it than a Muslim imam who preaches the duty of holy war has the right to put his teachings into effect. And Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, the 57-year-old man who ministered to the three boys in question, is currently under a court order that forbids him from doing it again—pending an investigation by the health department. What "investigation?" If another man of that age were found to be slicing the foreskins of little boys and then sucking their penises and their blood, he would be in jail—one hopes—so fast that his feet wouldn't touch the ground. If he then told the court that God ordered him to do it, he would be offering precisely the defense that thousands of psychos have already made so familiar. Preach it rabbi. Preach it to the judge.

A few years ago I traveled to Calcutta with the brilliant photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has made the eradication of polio his signature cause. In 2001, there was a real chance that this childhood-wrecking and frequently lethal malady could go the way of smallpox. Only a few outposts, usually in very bad war zones like Afghanistan, had not been reported as "clear." (The two sides in the civil war in El Salvador observed a truce so that the vaccine could be safely distributed.) But some mullahs in Bengal spread the rumor that the vaccine led to impotence and diarrhea (a bad combo) and urged mothers to keep their children away from the nurses and physicians. Most Bengalis are too smart to listen to ravings like these, which exactly resemble the view of Dr. Timothy Dwight, one of America's founding divines, that vaccination against smallpox was an interference with the divine design. However, in northern Nigeria, where imams now hold state power in many provinces, the polio vaccine has been denounced as a plot "by the US and the UN [!]" to "sterilize Muslims." In consequence of this fatwa, the disease has returned to Nigeria this year and also spread back to several African countries that thought they had bidden farewell to it. Decades of patient and skillful work have been ruined, along with the lives of uncounted children.

Jewish babies exposed to herpes in New York, thousands of American children injured for life after the rape and torture they suffered at the hands of a compliant Catholic priesthood, prelates and mullahs outbidding each other in denial of AIDS … it's not just your mental health that is challenged by faith. Anyone who says that this evil deserves legal protection is exactly as guilty as the filthy old men who delight in inflicting it. What a pity that there is no hell.

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ!

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15, 2008. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world. REMEMBER AS YOU READ -- IT WAS IN A SPANISH PAPER.


ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ
By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.

Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe ...

*

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics: (zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population. They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino

TOTAL: 129! (The updated list boasts 181 Jews.)

% Jewish

100% CA Senators 1996 17% Nobel Physiology and Medicine
85% College age Jews in college 16% Time Most Important 25
76% Most influential intellectuals
(Alan Dershowitz) 15% MacArthur "Genius" Awards 1981-97
60% Yale Grad students 15% Time 20 20th Century Inventors
60% Top Hollywood positions
(60 min) 15% USA Today College Academic Team
40% Lawyers at best NY and DC law firms 14% Clinton Cabinet 1997
20-30% Westinghouse Science Prize 11% Nobel Physics Prize
30% Faculty at elite colleges 10% Pulitzer 1997
30% Supreme Court Law Clerks 10% US Senate
27% Ivy League Survey 10% US college faculty
26% US Law Professors
(Volokh UCLA) 7.7% Corporate Boards
25% ACM Turing Award 7% Forbes HiTech 100 1997
23% Wealthiest Americans 3.0% US Voters 1996
23% Top 100 wealthy Canadians 2.0% US Population
17% Boston Symphony Strings 0.25% World Population

The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu

General Eisenhower warned us. It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. In memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked the other way.

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

UOJ

Turning the Myth Called "Da'as Torah" on its Head Once and For All!

"...In fact not a single Agudah attendee could forsee that their families and communities would be reduced in the near future to freakish exhibits of mountains of hair, gold teeth, eyeglasses, and shoes..."

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE:

A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY - CLICK ON LINK BELOW

http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%209%20Bobker.pdf