Wednesday, July 13, 2016

The Court Looked At The Farce That Was The Trump Fraudulent Conversion by Lookstein, Hershel Schechter & the RCA...and Made the Correct Ruling!

Supreme Rabbinical Court declines to recognize Rabbi Lookstein's conversions.

Israel’s Supreme Rabbinical Court on Wednesday night ruled it does not recognize conversions by US Orthodox rabbi Haskel Lookstein, forcing a woman seeking to get married to reconvert and calling into question other people converted by Lookstein, including the daughter of Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump. 

Haskel Lookstein
Rabbi Haskel Lookstein.


In a hugely controversial step, the Supreme Rabbinical Court asked a female convert of prominent US Jewish leader Rabbi Haskel Lookstein to declare her acceptance of the religious commandments in court so as to avoid doubt as to her Jewishness. 
The ITIM religious services advisory group which was representing the convert, Nicole, in court denounced this step, saying it amounted to a rejection of Lookstein’s conversions and constituted blackmail, while Nicole herself said she felt she had been humiliated. 
US Jewry and critics of the religious establishment in Israel have denounced the ongoing failure of the rabbinical courts system to recognize Lookstein’s conversions as “extremist,” saying that such a stance drives a wedge between Diaspora Jewry and the Jewish state. 
The judges of the Supreme Rabbinical Court said they did not want to get involved in whether or not her conversion through Lookstein was valid, and so requested that she undergo what is known as “a conversion for stringency.”
This type of conversion is performed in a case when the Jewishness of an individual is in doubt, and involves a declaration of Gods oneness and an acceptance of the commandments of the Torah. 
Due to a wish to get married on the wedding date she and her fiancee have set, Nicole reluctantly decided to do the conversion for stringency out of a fear that a failure to do so would require her to postpone the wedding. 
The court then affirmed her declaration and said she could now marry her fiancee.  
In a statement made to ITIM, Nicole expressed disquiet at the way she had been treated by the court. 
“I feel humiliated, what they are saying is that they don't recognize my Judaism,” she said. “I love Rabbi Lookstein, he is my rabbi, he led me into the Jewish world and I don't want his conversion to not be recognized.”
ITIM director Rabbi Seth Farber was strongly critical of the court’s actions, saying that the judges had “blackmailed” Nicole into performing the conversion for stringency by implying that actually clarifying whether or not Lookstein’s conversions are valid could lead to the postponement of her wedding. 
“Today, the Supreme Rabbinical Court has imposed a heavy cloud upon the conversions of thousands of converts, who were converted by orthodox rabbis in the United States,” said Farber. 
“This is a sad day for the converts and this is a sad day for the relations between the state of Israel and the United States Jewry. In their ruling, the Rabbinical judges have humiliated not just the convert, but also hundreds of rabbis in the diaspora and their congregations.” 
Although both chief rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef have said publicly that they do recognize the validity of Lookstein’s conversions, a statement was released in the name of the Chief Rabbinate praising the Supreme Rabbinical Court’s solution.

Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky said in response to the incident that "today’s decision by the Supreme Rabbinical Court, which effectively delegitimized a prominent rabbi in the American Jewish community, demonstrates why Israel is in danger of being delegitimized as a center of religious authority in the eyes of world Jewry. I call on the Government of Israel, which recognizes the vital importance of the Israel-Diaspora relationship, to take immediate steps to change the attitude of Israel’s religious authorities toward the spiritual leaders of the Diaspora."

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Supreme-Rabbinical-Court-sidesteps-recognition-of-Rabbi-Looksteins-conversions-460321
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What Is a policeman?


Race relations will be Obama's biggest failure

By Silvio Canto, Jr

Obamacare is a huge problem that President Obama will leave his successor.  And there is Iraq, Libya, and so on.  Lots of messes for his successor to clean up, indeed.  

In retrospect, race relations will be his biggest failure.

Back in November 2008, I voted for Senator McCain but looked forward to our first black president bringing us together.  I was anticipating that he'd talk about the structural problems in the black community, such as the collapse of the black family unit and black-on-black crime in Chicago and other inner cities.

Instead, Obama has made things worse by focusing on the police and doing nothing about black districts lacking any hope and seeing no change.

A few months ago, Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University, wrote an article that looks rather interesting after Dallas:

The last Democratic president and the last Republican president both managed race relations more effectively than Obama has. Seven years after American voters made history by electing the country’s first black president, racial tensions have worsened.
  It didn’t rank on Obama’s one-item list of his “few regrets” during his State of the Union address. But signs of Obama’s failure are on our streets, on our campuses and among our leaders, left and right.“Ferguson” has become shorthand for African-American fury objecting to insensitive white cops harassing young blacks. 

 The “Black Lives Matter” movement has spilled into American campus culture, as privileged kids attending the world’s finest universities bemoan their alleged oppression — bullying anyone who challenges them.

This black backlash has prompted a white backlash, personified by Donald Trump. 
Every justifiable police shooting called “racist,” every Halloween costume labeled politically incorrect, every reasonable thought censored makes Trump look like America’s last honest man.
Amid this tension, Obama has been disturbingly passive — even during America’s first serious race riots since 1992. 
He acts like a meteorologist observing the bad weather, not a president able to shape the political climate.

How embarrassing that Obama’s most memorable act of presidential leadership on race may end up being inviting a black professor and a white cop to the White House for his 2009 “beer summit.”

Yes, President Obama will be remembered for two things:

a) The articulate president who could not articulate a message to bring us together.  In other words, the man can speak but has little of consequence to say.

b) The first black president who did not understand the real problems in black communities.

His legacy will be that he left us more angry and divided than ever.
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