ATTRACTION, LUST & IDENTITY: A TORAH AND SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
Introduction: Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz, Rabbinic Advisor, Jewish Family Forever, Featured Presenter: Dr. Koby Frances, Clinical and Education Consultant, Jewish Family Forever
Session One: Secular Culture’s “Sexual Ten Commandments”: How to teach and counsel new generations of religious people who have unwittingly adopted a secular version of morality
If you or anyone you know is struggling with questions around sexual attraction or sexual identity, you are not alone. Help is available. Please visit https://www.jewishfamilyforever.org/ or https://www.kobyfrances.com/.
This presentation and the professionals involved in it have no association whatsoever with gay affirming therapy or with conversion and reparative therapy
The Ugly Conversion Racket - Under Control By The RCC, RCA - Headed By Guys Like Hershel Schachter & His Ilk.
Sexual Harassment in the Jewish Conversion Process: What You Need to Know
This wasn’t easy to make.
I’ve been part of the Jewish community for years now, but there are
some things I still carry quietly. One of them is how vulnerable
conversion candidates can be – and how rarely we talk about it.
Sexual harassment and abuse do happen during the Jewish
conversion process. Sometimes it’s a rabbi. Sometimes it’s a community
member. Always, there’s a devastating power imbalance and an unspoken
pressure not to make waves.
In this video, I speak plainly about what I’ve seen, what I’ve
experienced, and what I wish every conversion candidate knew from the
beginning. I cover red flags, power dynamics, practical ways to protect
yourself, and why your gut matters.
This video is not meant to scare you. It’s here to protect you.
If you’re going through the conversion process, or walking alongside
someone who is, I hope this helps you feel more prepared, more aware,
and less alone.
If you or someone else need support, contact the following organizations: (not affiliated) The Hotline – the National Domestic Violence Hotline (US) Shalom Task Force – Support for abuse survivors in Jewish communities
If
you’re currently in the conversion process, consider bookmarking this
or sharing it with someone you trust. You might not need it now – but
one day, it could help you recognize something you otherwise would’ve
explained away.
You’re not imagining things. You’re not too sensitive. And you’re not alone.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Sexual harassment and assault do happen during the Jewish conversion process. Learn how best to spot it and protect yourself.
It is remarkable how difficult this is for me to talk about. I still have so much PTSD around this topic.
The conversion process is full of humans. And let’s face it, humans do terrible things sometimes.
Sexual harassment or assault can be done to anyone, by anyone, regardless of the genders involved.
In most cases, it’s women being harmed by men, especially in the
Orthodox Jewish situations. But don’t let that stop you from believing
someone else’s story because it doesn’t fit that narrative. The
narrative does not describe every case that exists, and you would be
shocked to find out some of the things that have happened in this world.
Why are conversion candidates so vulnerable to sexual harassment and
abuse? One, because we’re not Jewish, we are often new to the
community, and we have few or no allies in the community.
And we probably don’t have any allies in the broader Jewish world outside the community.
Jewish geography is power in our community. At its base, that’s what a
macher is, who you know and who you can get to do a favor for you.
The conversion process itself is so imbalanced in power. Rabbis are literal gatekeepers. If they say no, you’re done.
You make one rabbi mad, and he can literally shut off every
possibility you have of converting. And even if he’s not the one in
charge of it, he can shut it off with one phone call or one email to the
right person. And he knows the right person. You don’t.
They hold your future in their hands, quite literally. If you are in
the conversion process, you already know this. But for those of you who
are not in the conversion process, this is to tell you that yes, they
control where you live, where you’re working, when you can move, when
you date. They control your life basically for several years.
Everything you’ve worked for, sometimes for years, can be destroyed with one phone call or email.
Especially in the Orthodox world where conversion has become so
centralized. The system currently under the RCA is a monopoly system
where one beit din is controlling a large geographic area. If you make
someone mad in that office, you cannot convert for several states. You
may have to move across the country in order to be able to try to
restart the conversion process.
Ask me how I know.
Thankfully I had the opportunity to prove my innocence. Not many
people are that lucky. Quite frankly, I’m the only person I know of that
has been that lucky.
Thanks to the internet and blogging, I had a small army of rabbis and
Jewish lay people who I had been building relationships with, and they
went to bat for me. They had no reason to have to go to bat for me, but
they did, and I am here and Jewish because of that.
People who want to abuse other people can see these weaknesses in the system. They exploit these weaknesses.
And do you know how many consequences I have seen for them? I’ve seen
one, folks, one, and that was because the police got involved. Anything
that stays below “call the cops” you’re probably gonna get away with it
because who are you? You’re not even Jewish. Why should they believe
you?
Let’s talk about those things you might overlook or assume that you must have misunderstood.
If you’re normal, you’ve probably put your rabbis and other mentors up on a pedestal. You want to believe they can do no wrong,
and so you’re gonna talk yourself out of it if you think that you
find something suspicious. No, they didn’t really mean it that way. No,
that was an accident.
Worse. It’s not always a rabbi or a mentor. It can be someone just in the community.
And if that community member has more power than you do, if they are a
major donor or a machar, someone who’s very influential. Who’s your
rabbi going to believe? It’s probably not gonna be you.
Emotional abuse, financial abuse. It’s all abuse and it all comes from the same desire to control.
So how can you recognize sexual harassment and better yet, how can you protect yourself?
The first rule of “is this sexual harassment” is to trust your gut.
If someone is creeping you out or making you feel uncomfortable,
there’s probably a very good reason why. Your body will tell you.
I’m gonna start with how you protect yourself because quite frankly,
you might not be able to. It is very common for people to get away with
this stuff.
There may very well be nothing you can do if you still wanna convert.
This is the reality that conversion candidates deal with.
This is the reality I myself dealt with.
Really the best thing you can do is document everything, write it down, pull up Google Drive, make yourself a spreadsheet,
add some columns for date, time, location, who was present, and what happened.
You may never need that list, but if you ever do, it’s worth its weight in gold.
And start tracking before you think you need it. Don’t wait for it to
pass some arbitrary point of no return before you start writing down
the weird stuff. Abusers start low and ratchet it up. Track as soon as
you are feeling weird stuff consistently.
So what does sexual harassment actually look like? Basic safety rules
apply. If your boss did this, would you be weirded out? Would he be the
creepy boss? Because that’s what rabbis and mentors are to you. They’re
your bosses and they have the power to fire you, meaning kick you out
of the conversion process if they don’t like what you do.
“Would this be okay in an office?” That is your measuring stick. If not, it’s not okay in a conversion.
Keep your ears open for the whisper network. People who do not have
the power to bring consequences on people who hurt them whisper. They
will tell when they are safe to do so. They will try to prevent other
people from getting hurt. If you hear rumors, don’t believe them
automatically, but do file it away.
Keep that in case you need to know that later. If your experiences
corroborate that rumor, then you know someone you need to avoid as much
as humanly possible, which may not be very possible for you, but you can
do your best.
Most obvious kind of sexual harassment is what’s called quid pro quo.
“This for that.” It means being asked to trade sexual favors for
something you want. In the conversion context, that may be agreeing to
convert you. It may mean agreeing to serve as your mentor.
Or make a recommendation or a referral or to hook you up with the people you need.
You would be shocked how many times this comes up, but a rabbi should not ask you out on a date.
Where it gets tricky is if they are asking you to do things that are
date-like and you feel that you are not allowed to say no. So if they’re
inviting you alone to a dim romantic restaurant for meetings, that’s a
red flag. That’s bad. They should not do that.
If for whatever reason this rabbi who is converting you wants to date
you, they can do the right thing and they can wait until your
conversion is done and you two can interact as peers, as equals.
Also, you would be surprised how often this comes up. A rabbi should
never ask you to come to his home alone with no one else there. A lot of
rabbis have asked people to go to their home and do filing paperwork
and other menial tasks, but sometimes cleaning their house and that’s
not okay.
They are asking you to do manual labor in the hopes that you get
brownie points towards a faster, smoother conversion. That in itself is
abusive, but that is not the type of abuse we are discussing today. But
doing it alone in their house, that starts to send off red flags and
beebo warning sounds.
Some rabbis have started that way and it’s progressed. Do be very
careful if you are being asked to do private personal work for a rabbi.
Red flags.
He may touch you in ways that feel just too friendly and kind of
creepy. Especially in the Orthodox context, no rabbi should be touching a
woman at all. We have shomer negiah, rules between the genders of not
touching each other. If an Orthodox rabbi is hugging you or putting
their hand on the small of your back and you’re a female, that is just a
bucket of red flags.
I can’t even tell you how many red flags that is.
That is abnormal.
Sometimes this touching is played off as accidental, like maybe they
accidentally brush into your breast. Like once is a thing, but like when
it’s a pattern, you should be writing it down.
It can also manifest as a near constant intrusion of your personal
space. If you cannot get breathing room around your rabbi, that is a
control tactic. They are taking up your space.
You should not be getting unwanted texts, phone calls, social media messages, visits from a rabbi.
Same with unwanted gifts. If these things happen in an office and
you thought about calling HR about it, then it’s wrong here too.
The relationship between a conversion candidate and a rabbi should be
professional and polite. They’re not your friends. Never mistake them
for your friends because as we said, they’re the gatekeepers. Their job
is to keep you out if you’re not appropriate.
I hate that we have to say this, but rabbis should not be making
inappropriate comments in front of you. Definitely not about you.
This is actually the one you’re most likely to see. They should not
be making lots of comments about your appearance or the appearance of
other people, especially if it’s a man making comments about the bodies
of women.
And it doesn’t have to all be positive attention. It can be insults,
derogatory comments, negative comments, rude comments, jokes, those can
all still be sexual harassment.
So here’s where it gets hairy: pervasive or inappropriate personal questions.
You can argue that there is some need for personal questions during
the conversion process, but how much is pervasive? How personal does it
have to be to fall into the category of inappropriate?
The lines are very hard to draw here, and it is the exact place where you are going to reason it away.
Even when it is blatantly inappropriate, you will still try to rationalize it away.
In the moment I completely explained away this kind of behavior. It
didn’t hit me until later, and a friend was telling me, “dude, this is
really not okay,” and I had to hear that from someone else in order to
be able to listen to my gut.
There was a reason I left all these meetings with this person crying.
After all, we did everything the “right way.” We were across a table
from each other. There was no touching. The door was open. There was a
male secretary right outside the door that we could see, and if he
looked over, he could see us.But that rabbi sat there and asked me very
detailed questions about my sexual history. I cannot think anywhere
that would be considered appropriate. Your sexual history should be
irrelevant to the conversion process.
In this case, I sat there and I blamed myself.
And guess what? He’s still overseeing conversions. I’ve tried for
years to get people in power to care, and let me tell you, they are not
interested in doing things that are uncomfortable or that would rock the
boat or upset power alliances.
So here’s the summary. Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, it
probably is wrong. Don’t twist yourself into pretzels trying to make it
all right.
Listen to the whisper networks. You might hear things that are useful
to you. And understand that you may not be able to do anything about it
if someone is sexually harassing you. Allegedly, there are processes in
place to report people who are sexually harassing or otherwise abusing
people.
But don’t be surprised if those reporting mechanisms don’t work.
But remember the most important thing of all. Write it down. Keep
track even if you are questioning yourself. Like, do whatever you need
to to keep track of these things before you need it, because after you
need it is too late.
And keep those records, don’t delete them just because you’ve
finished the conversion process. Don’t delete old emails. Don’t delete
the Google Doc. You never know when you might need it again, because
maybe one day we’ll reach the point of the straw that breaks the camel’s
back and your evidence will be necessary.
People who abuse others aren’t just doing it to you. They don’t stop at one. It’s a pattern. Pikuach nefesh, y’all.
An Orthodox parent whose child tells him he’s been sexually abused
may not take that child’s claim to the police without first getting
religious sanction from a specially trained rabbi, the head of America’s
leading ultra-Orthodox umbrella group has told the Forward.
FOX
35 Investigates after a local school employee was arrested for sexual
abuse of a child, and the alleged victim reached out to us about the
arrest. A man who works at the Orlando Torah Academy was arrested on
Monday in Chicago and charged with criminal sexual abuse of a person
under the age of 17. Today, the school told staff the employee has been
removed from his post for now.
The Brief
An
Orlando school employee was arrested earlier this week after turning
himself in to police following allegations of sexual abuse of a child.
FOX
35 began to investigate the incident after the alleged victim reached
out, saying he had initially reported the incident to police back in
2021.
Avraham
Levin is being charged with criminal sexual abuse of a person under 17,
which is a misdemeanor, since Levin was also a minor at the time. He is
scheduled to be in court next month for the case.
ORLANDO, Fla. - FOX
35 is investigating an Orlando school employee who was arrested for the
alleged sexual abuse of a child. The victim reached out to FOX 35 about
the case, saying he’d actually initially reported it to police back in
2021.
Avraham Levin, who goes by Avi, turned himself into police this week following the allegations.
Levin is now scheduled to be in court next month for the case.
What led to the investigation?
What we know:
Levin's arrest actually stems from a case in Chicago.
Chicago
police say this all happened between October 2010 and April 2011, when
Levin was 15 and then 16 years old. Michael Weldler, the alleged victim
in the case, was 11, turning 12, at the time.
Chicago
police confirmed with FOX 35 that they started investigating the case
back in 2021, when Weldler first reported the incident. The group
representing Weldler says Levin was arrested in 2022, but was let go
over a confusion over the statute of limitations. FOX 35 is still
working to independently confirm this with police.
Police say Levin moved to Orlando and was hired as a staff member at the Orlando Torah Academy last August.
Officials
also confirmed the arrest this week is in connection with the case
Weldler brought forward almost three and a half years ago.
What they're saying:
About
four months before Levin started working in Orlando, Weldler said he
went to Beth Din, part of the Chicago rabbinical council that hears
abuse cases. This council can take actions within the Jewish community,
such as warning others about previous allegations and barring people
from certain religious ceremonies.
Weldler said he was uncomfortable about coming forward, but he knew he had a responsibility to help protect other children.
"I
realized I had a responsibility to (the) kids," Weldler told FOX 35. "I
can't change what happened to me, but I could prevent it from happening
again. … I'm not one to put my face out there. I don't like it out
there at all. I don't like talking, but this is so important to me that
I'm willing to go against everything that I personally feel makes me
comfortable in order to stop this, because that's what I need to do."
Avraham
Levin is being charged with criminal sexual abuse of a person under 17,
which is a misdemeanor, since Levin was also a minor at the time. He is
scheduled to be in court next month for the case.
The
Orlando Torah Academy declined to comment on the case when FOX 35
Reporter Marie Edinger went by on Thursday, and they did not answer any
emails on Thursday or Friday.
However, in a
message sent to staff on Friday, they said they’ve "removed [Levin] from
his post until further notice" following his arrest. The center also
sent out an email to its attendees on Friday evening, adding that Levin
is also no longer welcome in the synagogue.
FOX
35 also reached out to the Chicago Rabbinical Council on Thursday and
Friday to ask if they were investigating the claims, but did not hear
back yet.
In an email to Weldler, a detective on the case said that he wasn’t getting much help from them either.
What's next:
Records show Levin has bonded out of jail in Chicago.
Levin
is scheduled to be in court next month in Chicago for the case. He is
being charged with criminal sexual abuse of a person under 17, which is a
misdemeanor, since Levin was also a minor at the time.
FOX 35 attempted to call and text Levin Friday, but he didn’t answer.
Milton Friedman Speaks: Tariffs and Free Trade - Capitalism and Freedom with his "classical liberal"
stance that government should stay out of matters that do not need it
and should only involve itself when absolutely necessary for the
survival of its people and the country. He recounts how the best of a
country's abilities come from its free markets while its failures come
from government intervention.
President Trump turned up the pressure on Federal Reserve Jerome Powell again on Thursday, saying in a social media post that he should lower interest rates and that Powell’s "termination cannot come fast enough!"
The president's comments posted to Truth Social came one day after Powell said the central bank will "wait for greater clarity"
before considering any rate adjustments as he warned Trump’s tariffs
would likely generate "higher inflation and slower growth."
He
predicted those twin developments could create a major dilemma for the
Fed — which is obligated to keep prices stable while also maximizing
employment.
"We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension," Powell said.
The
tariffs roiled markets and stoked new uncertainties about the direction
of the US economy, putting pressure on the Fed to consider a rate cut
as a way of preventing a downturn.
Donald Trump Frontal View
Trump
on Thursday said Powell is "always TOO LATE AND WRONG" and "should have
lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago," referencing recent
monetary policy easing on the part of the European Central Bank.
"He should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”
Powell’s
time as chair expires in May 2026, and he has said he intends to serve
out the entirety of his term. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said
earlier this week he expects to start interviewing Fed chair candidates
in the fall of this year.
The
Fed chair on Wednesday again reiterated the independence of his
institution and his own job, saying it’s "a matter of law," and pledged
not to act in response to any political pressure.
He did discuss a case now before the Supreme Court
that is testing Trump’s ability to remove board members at other
independent agencies in Washington, D.C., a case that some Fed watchers
worry could threaten Powell if the administration wins.
But
Powell said, "I don’t think that’s a case that will apply to the Fed."
Nonetheless, the central bank is "monitoring it carefully."
Trump
started his second term in office by softening his criticisms of the
Fed's monetary policy decisions and even made it clear he didn't intend
to fire Powell, someone he criticized repeatedly during his first term.
Bessent
and other Trump aides repeatedly stressed that the president was not
focused on the Fed and was instead trying to bring down 10-year Treasury
yields.
President Trump on Thursday argued he would be able to
remove Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell if he wanted to, ratcheting
up his criticism of the leader of the central bank.
“Oh, he’ll leave. If I ask him to, he’ll be out of
there,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I don’t think he’s
doing the job. He’s too late. Always too late. A little slow. And I’m
not happy with him. I let him know it.”
“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,”
Trump said, despite Powell’s repeated insistence that he cannot be fired
and will not leave before the end of his term.
The president went on to accuse Powell, a fellow Republican, of “playing politics.”
Trump earlier Thursday bashed Powell in
a social media post, bemoaning that the Fed chair has been “too late”
to cut interest rates. Trump said Powell’s “termination cannot come fast
enough.”
Powell’s term ends in 2026. He said last November he would not step down if
Trump asked, and that it is “not permitted under the law” for the
president to fire or demote him or any of the other Fed governors with
leadership positions.
Trump’s comments set up the possibility of a standoff with the
central bank, which could further rattle already anxious financial
markets amid the president’s expanding trade war.
Powell’s chutzpah may be the antidote to economic chaos - Bloomberg
In Powell We Trust
Here’s
a loaded question. Who would you rather have at the helm of the US
economy: President Donald Trump, or Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell?
For me at least, the answer is easy — it’s the headline to this item.
Amid
the tariffs that Trump has unleashed on the world, it’s comforting to
know that the anchor for the US financial system (and in many ways the
economy as a whole) is a dispassionate former investment banker who
steered the country through the whiplash of a global pandemic.
Trump doesn’t see him that way, of course. He wants the Fed to follow the lead of the European Central Bank, which just reduced rates for a seventh time since June, so the president is bashing Powell for not cutting interest rates. He has taken to his favorite platform, Truth Social, to engage in one of his favorite pastimes, Fed-bashing. “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” wrote the man who nominated Powell as Fed chair in 2017.
Trump’s ire at Powell goes beyond impatience with the Fed’s desire for more clarity on the fallout from abrupt US tariffs. As Jonathan Levinwrites,
what offended the president is that Powell dared speak his mind about
tariffs, the Fed’s independence and other things that affect the economy
at a question-and-answer session during an appearance at the Economic
Club of Chicago.
“Powell
portrayed chaotically implemented tariffs as plainly bad for the
economy; slammed the approach taken by the Department of Government
Efficiency; and issued a legal defense for why he thinks he can
withstand any attempt by Trump to fire him,” Jon writes.
Presidents like low interest rates because they spur economic activity. As James Carville observed
more than three decades ago, elections are won and lost on how people
feel about the economy. Trump knows that his agenda will stall and he
will face an avalanche of congressional investigations if Republicans
lose either the House or the Senate in next year’s midterms. Expect
Trump’s vitriol toward Powell to heat up.
None of this is Powell’s concern, nor should it be. President Joe Biden wasn’t thrilled with
the Fed raising rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023 to fight inflation —
but it worked. Inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, has settled
back down to 2.4%. Now Trump is upset because the uncertainty swirling
around his ever-changing tariff policy has made it impossible to know
whether inflation will roar back and the economy will enter a recession.
It
would be irresponsible to continue lowering rates in the face of such
uncertainty. That’s why the market demands an apolitical central bank.
As Jon writes: “Investors need to know that America’s central bank
remains committed to its goals of maximum employment and stable
prices, even if it needs to fight for its ability to carry out its
work.” In the end, Jon says, “I suspect that Powell’s chutzpah will
prove an asset for the economy and markets.”
Trump Waved Off Israeli Strike After Divisions Emerged in His Administration
Israel
developed plans for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities that would
have required U.S. assistance. But some administration officials had
doubts.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a meeting with President Trump this month.
Israel
had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but
was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating
a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to
administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.
Mr.
Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to
pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s
ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened
militarily and economically.
The
debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American
cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault
on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a
larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military
action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.
Israeli
officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites
in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were
optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the
proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back
Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.
Almost
all of the plans would have required U.S. help not just to defend
Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli
attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the
attack itself.
For now, Mr. Trump has
chosen diplomacy over military action. In his first term, he tore up the
Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But in his
second term, eager to avoid being sucked into another war in the Middle
East, he has opened negotiations with Tehran, giving it a deadline of
just a few months to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program.
Uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, Iran, last year
Earlier
this month, Mr. Trump informed Israel of his decision that the United
States would not support an attack. He discussed it with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu when Mr. Netanyahu visited Washington last week,
using an Oval Office meeting to announce that the United States was
beginning talks with Iran.
In a statement delivered in Hebrew
after the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu said that an agreement with Iran would
only work if it allowed the signatories to “go in, blow up the
facilities, dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision with
American execution.”
SCHACHTER'S RESPONSE - We created another club to counter the other club ---- SHAMEFUL SHGATZIM!
Yeshiva University’s inexcusable surrender
The
prohibition against the homosexual act is clearly stated in the Torah.
While that does not mandate ostracizing anyone, allowing an LGBT club is
tantamount to approval of a way of life that is forbidden.
Yeshiva University
On
Thursday, Yeshiva University (YU) caved to leftist lawfare and will now
permit an LGBT club to operate on campus. I am not surprised – nor
should anyone else be who has followed developments at YU in recent
years.
After all:
• From 2008-2021, YU employed a transgender professor.
• It currently employs a Bible(!) professor who has publicly advocated that we ignore Judaism’s stance on homosexual “marriage.”
• In 2022, its social work graduate school held a pro-abortion event.
• That same year, it featured a lecture by a female Reform "rabbi."
YU safe zone
In
short, either YU lacks principles or, to borrow a line from President
Theodore Roosevelt, it has the backbone of a chocolate eclair. Most
likely, a combination of both.
YU’s surrender to students who
demanded an LGBT club on campus is particularly inexcusable in the wake
of Donald Trump’s victory in November and the concomitant cultural shift
to the right. For the first time in decades, the LGBT movement is on
the defensive. The federal government officially recognizes only two
genders now and is pulling funding from any university that allows
cross-dressing male students to play in female sports.
Even before
Trump’s victory, the LGBT movement had suffered a setback with support
for homosexual “marriage” in 2024 declining for the first time since
2015, according to mainstream news reports. Had YU continued battling
the radical LGBT activists demanding a club, it very likely would have
won in the Supreme Court considering the court’s 6-3 conservative
majority.
Instead of fighting, though – instead of making a kiddush Hashem (sanctification of G-d's Name) before Christian and conservative America – it decided to make a chillul Hashem (Desecration
of His Name). It decided to please the forces attacking Biblical
morality rather than those defending it. Just as the LGBT movement was
beginning to suffer losses on the cultural battlefield, YU decided to
throw it a lifeline and give it a stunning victory and fresh impetus to
fight further.
I
don’t mean to give the impression that YU is entirely spineless. It is
not. When it comes to the “far right,” it can be intransigent. For years
now, it has refused to allow me to sell books by Rabbi Meir Kahane,
z"l, even religious ones, at its annual Seforim (Book) Sale. You would
think that October 7 might have softened its stance. But you would be
wrong. YU is so angry that I protested its decision to ban Rabbi
Kahane’s books from the Seforim Sale in 2016 (the same year it sold
books by Mordechai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism)
that it won’t permit me to sell any books at the sale anymore.
If
YU is going to ban books from the sale, you would think it would at
least explain and permit an appeal of its decision. And surely, you
would think, its decision-making process would be transparent since we
all know that transparency is the hallmark of liberal institutions. But
you would be wrong again. YU bans books without explanation, and the
names of the people doing the banning are unknown.
I
have appealed YU’s decision in the most respectful of tones many times.
I have gotten nowhere. And when I distributed flyers on campus last
year publicizing the university’s decision, YU reacted by banning me
from campus.
I once liked Yeshiva
University. I was frustrated by some of the close-mindedness I had
experienced growing up in black-hat (haredi, non- Zionist) schools and
found YU to be a breath of fresh air when I arrived on campus in 2002.
But it turns out that YU is just as close-minded as the black-hat world.
The only difference is that the black-hat world is intolerant of ideas
it considers spiritually dangerous. YU is intolerant of ideas that violate the post-modern liberal ethos.
So Kahane? Absolutely forbidden. The LGBT agenda? Come right on in.
This
is a disgrace and it is a shame that we, the Nation who received the
Torah at Sinai, will have to look to the Southern Baptists, the Vatican,
and Muslim clerics for integrity on this matter. Opinion.
Rabbis Reject an LGBTQ Club as Incompatible with a Torah institution
Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500
traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, today expressed
shock and dismay at the recent announcement by Yeshiva University (YU)
that it will host an LGBTQ+ club on its undergraduate Yeshiva campus.
This followed nearly four years of litigation during which YU strove to
establish its legal right, as a religious institution, to not support
such a group.
President Trump said on Monday that he will “solve the Iran problem” and that “it’s almost an easy one.”
Almost.
What
is “the Iran problem”? Trump seems to think it’s Iran’s efforts to
obtain nuclear weapons, which, he has said, “they can’t have.” Iran has
enriched uranium to 60 percent purity — close to weapons grade — and
“might be able to enrich enough uranium for five fission weapons within
about one week and enough for eight weapons in less than two weeks,”
according to the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
It would take additional time to make the parts needed to turn this
fissile material into a bomb, but this could be done in small, secret
facilities.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s emissary, said last week
that the administration’s red line was “weaponization” of Iran’s
nuclear capabilities. Incredibly, that conceded more to Tehran than
Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal — the one Trump correctly
canceled in his first term for being too weak. After meeting with
Iran’s foreign minister over the weekend, Witkoff appeared to walk back
his original suggestion, posting on X on Tuesday that Iran must
“eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Tehran
has been playing Western diplomats for fools for decades — including
through Obama’s much-ballyhooed Iran deal. That deal’s nuclear
restrictions, had they remained in place, would soon be expiring;
mostly, what the deal accomplished was to expand Iran’s regional power
by lifting economic sanctions. Iran also has a richlydocumentedrecord of cheating on its agreements, a fact that was exposed by Israel when it stole the regime’s nuclear secrets from a warehouse in Iran in 2018.
If
Witkoff really thinks there’s any kind of inspection or verification
process that will keep the regime in check, he’s naïve. But the larger
mistake is to think that the Iran problem is fundamentally about nuclear
weapons. France and Britain also have nukes, but not many people lie
awake at night worried about them. The Iranian regime is different not
because it might acquire nuclear weapons. It’s different because its
ideological character, geopolitical ambitions and raging
anti-Americanism and antisemitism, as well as its long record of
supporting terrorism, might dispose the regime to brandish or even use
them.
That’s
what must change if the nuclear question is going to be fully resolved.
Which brings us to something else Trump has said of Iran: “I want them
to be a rich, great nation.” Good. The question is how.
There
are two paths here. One is a reprise of some version of the
sanctions-for-nukes deal that lay at the core of the 2015 agreement and
that Iran says it wants today. But that deal is destined to fail because
it does nothing to change the character of the regime.
The second path is more ambitious but also, potentially, more promising. It’s what I previously called normalization for normalization.
Here
is what normalization would require of the United States: The
resumption of full diplomatic ties between Tehran and Washington,
including the reopening of embassies that have been shuttered for
decades. The end to all U.S. economic sanctions, including secondary
sanctions imposed on foreign companies for doing business with Iran.
Direct, bilateral trade and investment. Thousands of student visas for
Iranians wishing to study in the United States. The offer of U.S. arms
sales to Iran, at least of a conventional kind.
And here is what normalization would require of the Iranian regime: It would have to start behaving like a normal country.
A
normal country doesn’t finance and arm terrorist groups that start
regional wars and disrupt global commerce, like Hezbollah, Hamas and the
Houthis. A normal country with the world’s third-largest proven oil
reserves but an otherwise collapsing economy doesn’t need to spend
billions of dollars to enrich uranium or produce plutonium. A normal
country doesn’t call for the elimination of other countries, even hostile ones. A normal country doesn’t take foreign nationals hostage as a routine part of its diplomacy. A normal country doesn’t seek to assassinate former U.S. government officials or dissident exiles. A normal country doesn’t hang gay people. A normal country doesn’t gang rape women in prison to enforce a so-called modesty code.
If
Iran wants to solve its pressing economic and strategic problems — a
cratering currency, energy shortages, widespread popular opposition and
the decimation of its regional allies — all it has to do is change its
own behavior.
If Trump wants his own Reaganesque “Tear down this wall”
moment, proposing normal for normal in an Oval Office address would be a
good way to do it. Iran’s leaders would almost surely brusquely reject
it. But Iran’s restive people would be inspired by it, and it would
clarify the real nature of the crisis with the regime — a crisis that’s
chiefly about values, not weapons.
And
to give this rhetorical diplomacy some teeth? Trump can also lease
modern aerial tankers and old bombers to Israel, which the Jewish state
would need to carry out a comprehensive attack on Iran’s nuclear
facilities. As negotiators like Trump and Witkoff should know, an olive
branch is easier to accept when it is offered from the tip of a sword.
Contrast His Older Brother's Views Consistent With Torah Values & Mesorah From The Avos. Rav Moshe Lichtenstein Served In The IDF Proudly, In Gaza & Lebanon!
A
Hasidic community announced that it will stop sending updates via email
to its followers as part of its struggle against technology.
The Slonim Rebbe
The
Slonim Hasidic community announced on the eve of Passover the cessation
of its weekly email service that had operated for about a decade.
The move was made under the direct instruction of the Rebbe and as part of a broader struggle against the dangers of technology.
The
last email sent to hundreds of followers on the eve of the holiday
contained the following message: "At the request of several individuals,
from the Shabbat before the weekly Torah portion 'Vayigash' of 5774,
and weeklyever since, we have provided pdates every Shabbat about good
news, community announcements, the 'Chayenu' organization, and charity
funds; we did not hold back from emphasizing the importance of donations
to the Land of Israel."
"We
have received guidance from our esteemed Rebbe, and we did not refrain
from executing his holy words immediately. From now on, this weekly
announcement will no longer be sent," the last message stated. "As we
received reward for doing it, we will be rewarded for stopping, and we
will lack for nothing."
This
is an unusual step even within the Haredi framework, as the email
service is seen as a 'clean' communication channel that does not require
internet browsing.
In
many Haredi communities, dozens of public computer points provide
access to email only, and it serves as a central communication tool for
transmitting community information, happy events, and announcements..
"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"
