It’s time to take away Obama’s weapons of mass distraction and expose his Trutherism for what it is. Islamic terrorism isn’t caused by a thousand different problems, conditions, conspiracies and excuses. It’s caused by Islam....

Gun control is the latest weapon of mass distraction.

Trutherism is taking root - it seeks a conspiracy or other reason for every terrorist act, except for Muslim terrorism.

Each and every act of Muslim terrorism is followed by a wave of denial.  The politicians who have done the most to cause the latest disaster are the eagerest to blame it on something, anything else.


The San Bernardino Muslim massacre was blamed on postpartum depression at CNN. Bill Nye blamed the latest Paris attacks on Global Warming. According to Hillary Clinton, Benghazi was a movie review with artillery. Islamic terrorism was blamed by the State Department on a lack of jobs, but Syed Farook had a good government job and his wife was the daughter of a wealthy family.


After rummaging through their big brass chest of excuses, Obama and his media allies have settled on gun control as their latest weapon of mass distraction. California has the toughest gun laws in the nation. Unlike Ted Kennedy, the terrorists weren’t on the no-fly list that has become the latest desperate meme of mass distraction. And, despite Obama’s claim in Paris that mass shootings don’t happen in other countries because of gun control magic, they most certainly do.

European gun control didn’t stop a Muslim mass shooting in Paris that killed 130 people. Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik had built pipe bombs. The latest attack in the UK involved a knife. So did quite a few in Jerusalem. The Boston Marathon massacre used fireworks and a pressure cooker. The Muslim mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 was carried out with box cutters.

If only we had some way to ban terrorists from buying pressure cookers, knives and box cutters.

Gun control is a distraction. A way to make something other than Islam into the problem that needs solving. If we banned guns, then the problem would be foreign policy. If we spent all our time working to aid Islamist political takeovers, then it would the weather. Obama has tried to aid Islamists and lower sea levels, so he has been reduced to blaming the inanimate objects of the latest terror attack.

 Denialists will ignore the allegiances of terrorists like Nidal Hassan and Syed Farook to Jihadists to focus on individual pathologies. If that doesn’t work, they’ll pull back to a planetary focus and blame the weather patterns of the entire planet. They’ll zoom in with great detail on weapons purchases while ignoring the ideology that motivated the attacks.

They’ll have a hundred different explanations for each attack that fail to account for the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism as a whole. These aren’t reasonable arguments. Taken together they form a pattern of conspiracy theories. The most basic aspect of the conspiracy theory is that it bypasses the obvious reasonable explanation and vanishes down a rabbit hole of complicated alternative explanations that make no real sense but allow the conspiracists to avoid dealing with the implications of the actual event that took place.

Leftists did not want to deal with the fact that JFK had been murdered by one of their own. So they invented a bunch of alternative conspiracies involving the CIA, Cubans and other “right-wing” villains. These conspiracies allowed them to avoid dealing with the violence at the heart of the left. But that violence continued to spill over anyway leading to riots and terror plots. In their alternate reality, none of it was their fault. The “Fall of Camelot” was caused by some “miasma of right-wing hatred” in Dallas.

Their response to 9/11 flirted with conspiracy theories. A poll found that more than half of Democrats believed that George W. Bush had carried out the 9/11 attacks or knew about them beforehand. 1 in 4 Democrats believed that the World Trade Center attack was staged. 1 in 5 believed that the Pentagon attack was carried out by the United States government.

Democratic politicians, with some exceptions, usually knew better than to openly air blatant 9/11 conspiracy theories.  But they instead embraced a “soft” left-wing Trutherism that shifted the focus away from Islamic terrorism to alternative explanations that were meant to distract Americans from what really happened by finding sideways angles for blaming the attack on Bush and Republicans. Bush may not have masterminded it, but Republican foreign policy caused it. Or worsened it.

It’s 2015 and the Terrorism Truthers have been reduced to frantically scrambling for any explanation from postpartum depression to the weather to explain the persistence of Islamic terrorism. Trutherism works best when the Truthers aren’t in power. Muslim terrorism can’t be blamed on the government when both France and America are run by ridiculously notorious leftists. All that’s left is a “soft” Trutherism that seeks alternative explanations without being able to consistently answer the central question of why these attacks are taking place.

And this lack of a plausible central conspirator is the weak point of leftist Terrorism Denial. Leftist Truthers like Obama are forced to constantly substitute new “right-wing” villains. Today it’s the NRA. Yesterday it was a Coptic Christian who made a YouTube video. But like the USSR’s efforts to blame its economic failures on a shifting gallery of villains, these explanations are unsatisfying. And they leave even leftists, never mind ordinary Americans, uneasy about a crisis they don’t understand.

But what if Muslim terrorists are attacking us because they’re Muslim terrorists?
There is something of Orwell’s “We have always been at war with Eastasia” to these deceits. Today Muslim terrorists are attacking us because of the NRA. Yesterday it was because it was too hot. Before that, it was because of Israel. And before that, it was because of Bush.
But what if Muslim terrorists are attacking us because they’re Muslim terrorists?

What if we can’t beat them by banning guns, changing the weather, supporting Islamists or any of the other magical answers that completely fall apart at even the most casual examination?

The left’s response to Islamic terrorism has been built around a frantic effort to distract and divert us from exactly that question, blaming anything and everything but Islam, while sharply denouncing anyone who ignores the distractions and addresses that central question.

Attorney General Lynch responded to the San Bernardino terror attack by assuring Islamists that she intended to crack down on criticism of Islam. Criticism of Islam is dangerous, not because it leads to a mythical anti-Muslim backlash that we are constantly warned about as if it were more dangerous than Muslim terrorism itself yet never actually materializes, but because it destroys Terrorist Trutherism.

If Islamic terrorism is the problem, then the left and the Democrats who handed over their party to it are guilty of ignoring, minimizing and lying about a serious problem. They have to go on lying, ignoring and minimizing, and even threatening to dump the First Amendment along with the Second, because they have long since become complicit in the crimes of their Islamist partner organizations.
Yesterday they blamed the weather. Today they’ll blame guns. Tomorrow, it’ll be something else.

We are always at war with Eastasia, unless it’s Eurasia. We are never however at war with Islam. The issue may be anything so long as it isn’t Muslim terrorism. Those are the words that no Democrat will utter. They will call it “man-caused disasters” or “violent extremism” or “hybrid workplace Jihad”. It’s time to call this what it is, denialism, trutherism and conspiracism.

The famous epigram, “Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason”, expressed the absurd hypocrisy of a government of traitors. But what happens when there is a government of conspiracy theorists? Then conspiracies exist to divert attention from the failures and crimes of those in charge. The conspiracy theory itself becomes the conspiracy.

It’s time to take away Obama’s weapons of mass distraction and expose his Trutherism for what it is. Islamic terrorism isn’t caused by a thousand different problems, conditions, conspiracies and excuses. It’s caused by Islam. Every attempt to distract from that is Denialism and Trutherism. And we owe it to the victims of the latest attack and all the attacks to end the denial and the lies.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18112#.Vnn7h1ncg1M

The “Nazis are not German” President would have been impeached and arrested as a traitor....

 

Op-Ed: Nazis were German and Islamic-extremists are Muslim 

 

If in the 30s, if one said “Nazis are German,” no one meant “All Germans are Nazis.”  However, if you spoke about Nazis in the 30’s and 40’s, as Obama speaks about Islamist-extremists today, and said something like “Nazis are not Germans,” you would have been forcibly admitted into an insane asylum.  Or worse, in the 30’s, let alone the 40’s, imagine the President of the United States being so delusional that he refused to say “Nazis were Germans” because “We don’t want to insult all Germans” and because “We’re not at war with all of Germany.”

The “Nazis are not German” President would have been impeached and arrested as a traitor. 


Nowadays, Islamic-Extremist-terrorists are to Islam, what yesterday’s Nazis were to Germany.  In the 30’s, the Germans themselves, were the first, and last, line of defense to the Nazi hijacking all of Germany, and bringing all of Germany into a world war.  Today, the Muslims, themselves, are the first, and last, line of defense against Islamist-extremism hijacking Islam, and bringing all of Islam into a world war.  What’s worse, Obama’s and Clinton’s rhetoric “The terrorists are not Muslim” only gives Islam a total pass on trying to defeat Islamist-extremism from within Islam.  Instead of protecting Islam, Obama and Clinton are insuring Islamist-extremists hijack the entire world of Islam, just as the Nazis hijacked all of Germany.

Prominent Sunni Saudi journalist Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the former editor of  the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat and former director of Al-Arabiya TV,recently wrote an opinion-piece explicitly asserting today’s Muslim extremists are to Islam what Nazism was to Germany in the 30’s and 40’s.  If Muslims are writing that Islamist-Extremists are Nazis, why can’t I? Why can't my president?

Al-Rashed wrote:

“After Adolf Hitler committed suicide and following the burning of his body, the war’s winners did not just raise the flag of victory over Berlin but they also banned Nazi ideology. They prohibited teaching it or marketing it and also prevented those who are in any way related to it from practicing any social activities.

"Today’s extremist Islam is also fascist, and it resembles Nazism which is based on the concepts of discrimination and elimination. Like Nazism, extremist Islam is based on absolute loyalty to an ideology and to hatred and hostility against others, whether Muslims or not. If you want to eliminate al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Nusra Front, you have to go after the ideology. Without doing so, we can expect the next century to be filled with anarchy and terrorism.”

My only small quibble with Al-Rashed is that he didn’t add the Shiite-Safavid-Nazi-Khomenei Regime of the “Islamic Republic of Iran” to his list of Islamic-Extremists.

Muslim extremists are to Islam what Nazism was to Germany in the 30’s and 40’s.
At the core, there are several main reasons Obama’s absolution of “Islam” as an element of Islamic violence is the direct source of the current explosion of world Islamic terrorism and violence.

  The first reason is that Obama is, at heart, an anti-Colonialist-Islamic-Extremist himself who believes the only way Islam can eradicate all the vestiges of British-colonialism is to be extremist and unite as one Islamic Superpower.  Could anyone imagine the world class catastrophe had Obama succeeded in defeating Egypt's Sisi and Morsi were still in charge?

Sadly, Obama is the leader who bought the Islamic-extremists-anti-colonialist mantras, hook-line-and-sinker.  Obama is fighting an anti-colonialist bogeyman that doesn’t exist.  Britain left the Middle East decades ago.  Whatever democratic idea of governance the British left behind (i.e. Israel) is actually the only hope Islam has to defeat the Islamic-Extremists.

Ironically, Obama’s Islamophilic Islam-can-do-no-wrong psychosis has brought about the greatest ever mass-genocide of Muslims that the world has ever seen.  Obama green-lighted and rewarded the Iranian-Shiite-Islamic-extremists with a nuclear-deal that, in effect, validated all the other forms of Islamic extremism everywhere.  Everybody seems to want to crown a different Caliph or Ayatollah of the “real Islam.”

Consequently, all the different forms of Muslim extremism are not only at war with non-Muslims, they are at war with themselves.  Obama, and Obama alone, is responsible.  Not only did Obama openly validate and glorify Islamic-extremism, but he also opened the Pandora’s box of Islamic-extremist crazies, and let all the Islamic lunatics out of Gitmo.  Obama shouldn’t have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize, he should have been institutionalized.

But more darkly related to Obama’s enabling Islamist extremism is  Al-Rashed’s statement that "in the Middle East, our version of nationalist fascism is religious extremism, which is just as dangerous and destructive"…

“Nazis believe in elevating the white race above all others. Nazism caused the destruction of Europe, with 60 million people killed. After this disaster, the majority took it upon itself not to allow this extremist ideology to dominate in their societies. One can be religious, patriotic and nationalistic without being committed to eliminating others. We fear that we are at the beginning of the road to destruction in our region by allowing extremists to impose their agendas on society…


"Confronting these groups is everyone’s responsibility. Governments have major duties to fulfill, their core task being to provide protection from the evils of extremist groups that operate across borders…”

Obama and his government's repeated lunacy of publicly absolving and/or excusing Islam and/or divorcing Islam from any Islamic violence ensures that all the good, peaceful people in Islam are prevented from successfully weeding out the bad extremist people in Islam.  How can a well-meaning Muslim attack the violence of Islam if the President of the United States repeatedly says that violence and murders made in the name of Islam are not at all Islam’s fault?  In fact, if a well-meaning Muslim tries to expose any violent Islam in his mosque he will have Obama’s “Islam is a religion of Peace” thrown in his face.


The result of Obama’s “Islamic-Violence-has-nothing-to-do-with-Islam” is that good Muslims are afraid to denounce Islamic-terrorism because they are afraid they will be killed or their families will be killed.  Because of this, virtually no American Islamic religious figures condemned the Fort Hood Shootings, Boston Marathon Bombings, or the San Bernardino mass murders.  In fact, Obama has validated the Islamic-extremist ideology that “Islam is the victim.”

 

So, if Muslim leaders, and Muslims can’t publicly accept that Islamic-terror originates in Islam, and publicly rail against it, how can Muslims ever root out the Islamic-extremists in their mosques.  Obama’s lunacy of publicly absolving and/or excusing Islam and/or divorcing Islam from Islamic violence insures he has paralyzed all the good people in Islam from weeding out the bad people in Islam. He has guaranteed that all the “Adolf Hitler’s” of Islam will win, and will soon come to rule Islam as Hitler ruled Germany.   It is a tragedy that the President who has repeatedly pontificated “We will never be at war with Islam,” has, in reality, set an almost irreversible path to such a terrible war.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/18105#.VniLPVncg1M

What Jews Are Willing To Do For A Little bit of Money! --- $150,000 – Ohr Torah Stone --- A net of institutions for Jewish education, focusing on social justice and Jewish unity. Founded in 1983 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin.

23 Israeli Charities Receive $3.2 Million from John Hagee Ministries

 (AS CHRISTIANS INCREASE THEIR FRENETIC MISSIONARY ACTIVITY IN ISRAEL)

“Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.” (Genesis 18:18)

John Hagee of Christians United for Israel and Tony Gelbart of Nefesh B’Nefesh embrace at the Night to Remember Israel event. 

At the recent 34th annual “Night to Honor Israel” event held by John Hagee Ministries, various charity and non-profit organizations from all over Israel were presented with donations which will allow them to continue their work for the Jewish State. Over the years, John Hagee Ministries has given over $95 million in donations towards humanitarian efforts in Israel, cementing the strong bond between Christians and Jews. A the 2013 “Night to Honor Israel” event, John Hagee Ministries presented $2.7 million to 26 charities, and at the event in 2014, the organization gave $2.8 million to 26 charities. 

 This year’s donations represent a 12.5% increase over last year.

Here are some of the organizations honored by John Hagee Ministries and the amounts they received followed by a video from the event.

$400,000 – Nefesh B’Nefesh  

Headed by Rabbi Yehoshua Fass and Tony Gelbart (pictured below), this organizations Jewish residents of the United States and Canada immigrate to Israel.

Rabbi Yehoshua Fass (left) and Tony Gelbart (right).

 

$250,000 – Shurat HaDin

Shurat HaDin – The Israel Law Center directed by Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner (pictured below) helps victims of terrorism fight in court for legal justice.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner (left) and John Hagee (right).

 

$200,000 – Netanya Academic College

Netanya Academic College senior vice-president Dr. David Altman (pictured below) shakes hands at the “Night to Honor Israel” event in Texas.

Dr. David Altman of Netanya Academic College shakes hands at A Night to Honor Israel.

$200,000 – Galilee Medical Center

The Medical Center Of The Galilee is a hospital located in the coastal city of Nahariya and is the second largest hospital in northern Israel. It was established in 1956.


Galilee Medical Center

$200,000 – Laniado Hospital

Laniado Hospital, also known as the Sanz Medical Center, is a voluntary, not-for-profit hospital in Kiryat Sanz, Netanya, Israel, serving a regional population of over 450,000 in Netanya and the Sharon plain.

Laniado Hospital

$200,000 – Herzl Institute 

The newly established Herzl Institute was founded by Dr. Yoram Hazony,  in Jerusalem. It seeks to contribute to a revitalization of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the family of nations through a renewed encounter with the foundational ideas of Judaism.

$150,000 – National Council of Young Israel

Young Israel is a network of affiliated synagogues originally founded in 1912. Representing the group was Rabbi Pesach Lerner (pictured below) who served as executive vice president for over 20 years.

Rabbi Pesach Lerner of the National Council of Young Israel.

 

$150,000 – Just One Life

Just One Life offers expectant mothers assistance and empowers mothers to continue their pregnancy through social services and financial support.

$150,000 – Ohr Torah Stone

A net of institutions for Jewish education, focusing on social justice and Jewish unity. Founded in 1983 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin.

Ohr Torah Stone

$150,000 – Save a Child’s Heart

Save a Child’s Heart improves the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart disease, and who cannot get adequate medical care in their home countries. It was founded in 1996 and is based at Israel’s Edith Wolfson Medical Center.


Save a Child’s Heart

$125,000 – Lev Benyamin 

Sondra Baras (pictured below) is the head of of Christian Friends of Israel Communities Heartland (CFOIC), which supports Lev Benyamin (Heart of Benjamin), an organization that helps children with Down Syndrome.

Sondra Baras of the Lev Benyamin (Heart of Benjamin) organization that helps children with Down Syndrome. (Photo: screenshot)

$100,000 – Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum

The Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum headed by Father Gabriel Naddaf (pictured below) assists Israelis of Christian background who choose to join the Israel Defense Forces.

Father Gabriel Naddaf was born near Nazaerth and is a spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

$100,000 – Koby Mandell Foundation

Rabbi Seth Mandell (pictured below) and his wife founded the Kobi Mandell Foundation in memory of their son., The group runs therapeutic healing programs for those who have lost a loved one to terrorism including overnight camps and retreats.

Rabbi Seth Mandell, head of the Kobi Mandell Foundation shakes hands with Father Gabriel Naddaf of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum. (Photo: Screenshot)

$100,000 – American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

The JDC provided rescue and relief assistance for Jewish communities in crisis in more than 70 countries and in Israel. It was founded in 1914 initially to provide assistance to Jews living in the Land of Israel under Ottoman rule.

American Jewish Joint Distribution Commitee

$100,000 – Magen David Adom

Magen David Adom is Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service. Jonathan Heart to Heart director Jonathan Feldstein, director of Heart to Heart Israel has worked closely with pastor John Hagee to arrange the donation of ambulances.

Jonathan Feldstein stands behind John hagee at the Night to Remember Israel event.

 $75,000 – Friends of the Israel Defense Forces

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces was established in 1981 dedicated to assisting active IDF personnel, wounded veterans, and the families of fallen soldiers.

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces

$75,000 – WIZO – Women’s International Zionist Organization

The Women’s International Zionist Organization is a volunteer organization dedicated to social welfare in all sectors of Israeli society, the advancement of the status of women, and Jewish education in Israel and the Diaspora.


Women’s International Zionist Organization

$75,000 – Afikim Family Enrichment Association

Afikim is a network of afternoon centers across Israel for disadvantaged, troubled families.


Afikim Family Enrichment Association

$75,000 – The Jewish Agency for Israel

The Jewish Agency for Israel is the largest Jewish nonprofit organization in the world. Founded in 1908, it is best known as the primary organization responsible for the immigration (“Aliyah”) and absorption of Jewish people and their families from the Diaspora into Israel.


Jewish Agency for Israel

$75,000 – The Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio

Since 1975, the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio has raised awareness of the dangers which prejudice, hatred and violence brought about during the Holocaust.


Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio

$75,000 – Israel Help and Educational Center at Kiryat Gat

The Israel Help and Education Center at Kiryat Gat, helps children and needy people that have little to no other means of support or family care. Kiryat Gat is located in the southern district and was founded in 1955 as a development town by Jewish families who were depopulated from Morocco.

Israel Help and Educational Center at Kiryat Gat

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/52517/23-israeli-charities-receive-3-2-million-from-john-hagee-ministries-video-biblical-zionism/#MPo2ImSAp8uuJoVs.97

John Hagee declares Jesus king and lord over new Jerusalem and the world, in a sermon delivered from the Southern Wall steps of the Temple Mount (excerpts, 2014)

Not unlike his declaration from the Yeshiva Aish HaTorah rooftop in 2012, John Hagee again uses the… Tags: Temple Mount, Southern Wall Jewish Israel

http://jewishisrael.ning.com/video/video/listForContributor?screenName=3rdwqmfrm19qa

According to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, one of the statement’s initiators, the “real importance of this Orthodox statement is that it calls for fraternal partnership between Jewish and Christian religious leaders, while also acknowledging the positive theological status of the Christian faith.”

Orthodox Rabbis Issue Groundbreaking Declaration Affirming ‘Partnership’ With Christianity

A group of prominent Orthodox rabbis in Israel, the United States and Europe have issued a historic public statement affirming that Christianity is “the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations” and urging Jews and Christians to “work together as partners to address the moral challenges of our era.”

“Jesus brought a double goodness to the world,” the statement reads. “On the one hand he strengthened the Torah of Moses majestically” and on the other hand “he removed idols from the nations,” instilling them “firmly with moral traits.”

This year 2015 marks the 50^th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the declaration issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council, which marked a watershed in Jewish-Christian relations.

In language unusual for its day, Nostra Aetate stated that “God holds the Jews most dear,” stressed the great “spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews,” and condemned “hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”

Now, a group of Jewish leaders has responded in kind, expressing their desire to accept “the hand offered to us by our Christian brothers and sisters.”

“Christians are congregations that work for the sake of heaven who are destined to endure, whose intent is for the sake of heaven and whose reward will not denied,” the text reads.

The statement bears the title, “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians,” and is signed by over 25 prominent Orthodox rabbis, who invite fellow Orthodox rabbis to join in signing the statement.

“Now that the Catholic Church has acknowledged the eternal Covenant between G-d and Israel, we Jews can acknowledge the ongoing constructive validity of Christianity as our partner in world redemption, without any fear that this will be exploited for missionary purposes,” it says.

Echoing recent words by Pope Francis, the document states: “We are no longer enemies, but unequivocal partners in articulating the essential moral values for the survival and welfare of humanity.”

“Neither of us can achieve G-d’s mission in this world alone,” it says.

Steven Riskin Experiencing Jesus  & Perlow's Disease

According to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, one of the statement’s initiators, the “real importance of this Orthodox statement is that it calls for fraternal partnership between Jewish and Christian religious leaders, while also acknowledging the positive theological status of the Christian faith.”

“This proclamation’s breakthrough is that influential Orthodox rabbis across all centers of Jewish life have finally acknowledged that Christianity and Judaism are no longer engaged in a theological duel to the death and that Christianity and Judaism have much in common spiritually and practically. Given our toxic history, this is unprecedented in Orthodoxy.” said Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, Academic Director of CJCUC.

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/17/orthodox-rabbis-issue-groundbreaking-declaration-affirming-partnership-christianity/

• Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries: Introduction
• Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries
• The Earliest Christians
• Political Changes
• Peaceful Coexistence and Papal Intervention
• The Medieval Era
• European anti-Semitism after 1800
• Summary

Introduction to Gerald S. Sloyan’s article on Christian Persecution of Jews Over the Centuries

By Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, PhD

Professor of Social Ethics, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago
Member and Former Chair, Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Council

Antisemitism has many parents. Scholars of ancient civilizations have revealed the presence of a cultural antipathy towards Jews and their religion in Greco-Roman society. There is little question that some of the early Gentile converts to Christianity shared in this cultural bias. As Gentiles they also were not well acquainted with the internal life of the Jewish community at the time of Jesus. Hence they read many of the New Testament texts as condemnations of Judaism as such rather than internal quarrels which were commonplace within the Jewish community of the period.

This image of a medieval etching, depicting Jews committing a purported ritual murder, was featured on the front page of the Nazi weekly Der Stürmer in 1939. US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Competition for converts and other factors led to an intensification of Jewish-Christian conflict towards the end of the first century even though there is evidence of continued Jewish-Christian interaction, including Christian participation in Sabbath worship, in some areas well beyond that. These conflicts had a negative impact on the writers of certain parts of the New Testament especially the author of the gospel of John which was compiled about this time. In several places John’s gospel associates “the Jews” with darkness and with the devil. This laid the groundwork for centuries of Christian characterization of Jews as agents of the devil, a characterization which found its way into medieval popular religion and eventually into passion plays.

In the second century and beyond, many of the principal Fathers of the Church began to write of Jews as a “rejected people” who were doomed to a life of marginality and misery. Jews were to wander the world as a “despised people.” This image persisted in Christian preaching, art and popular teaching for centuries to come. In certain countries it often led to civil and political discrimination against Jews and in some instances to physical attacks on Jews which resulted in death. While some Popes, bishops and Christian princes stepped up to protect Jews, they were clearly a minority. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations issued major statements repudiating this anti-Judaic theology and began a process of constructive Christian-Jewish interaction.

A page from an antisemitic book for children, titled Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), distributed by Der Stürmer’s publishing house in 1938. US Holocaust Memorial Museum

When the Nazis came on the scene in Germany they were able to draw upon the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism even though biologically-based antisemitism went well beyond classical Christian anti-Judaism by arguing for the annihilation of the Jews rather than only for their misery and marginality. Christian antisemitism provided an indispensable seedbed for the success of Nazism on the popular level. It led some Christians to embrace the Nazi ideology and many others to stand on the sidelines as masses of Jews were exterminated.

In the following pages noted Scripture scholar and theologian Gerard Sloyan has detailed in chronological fashion the “shadow” on the cross of Christianity. It does not make for pleasant reading. But it is a legacy that must be confronted with honesty and remorse. Knowledge of this history of antisemitism within the Christian churches is indispensable for any full understanding of the Holocaust.

Read excerpts from Gerald S. Sloyan’s article
Download a full printable version of Gerald S. Sloyan’s article (PDF)

Two millennia of Jewish persecution

An overview of 2,000 years of Jewish persecution

http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers2.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_pers3.htm
http://www.academia.edu/7994345/Violence_and_Persecution_Medieval_Jewish-Christian_Relations
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/HistoryPersecution.htm

The "expert" in Orthodox Jewish matrimonial law - and his "Jewish" toys! Missing from these pictures is Thug-In-Chief Yisroel Belsky - The mastermind of these criminal acts!

Rabbi sentenced to 10 years for leading a gang of men who used electric cattle prods and handcuffs to torture Jewish husbands reluctant to divorce their unhappy wives

• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT  
• Mendel Epstein from Brooklyn, New York, was dubbed 'The Prodfather' 
• Beat the men so they would comply after the women paid them thousands 
• Gang of ten men used rope to tie up victims and masks to intimidate them
• The expert in Orthodox Jewish matrimonial law was convicted on April 21 
• Epstein told a court the last two years had been a 'living hell' for him
• He added: 'When I listen to the tapes, I'm embarrassed and ashamed' 

+8

Mendel Epstein, 70, from Brooklyn, New York, who was dubbed 'The Prodfather', has been sentenced to 10 years behind bars for torturing husbands who were unwilling to divorce their unhappy wives 

A rabbi who used electric cattle prods and handcuffs to torture husbands who were reluctant to give their wives religious divorces has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Mendel Epstein, 70, from Brooklyn, New York, who was dubbed 'The Prodfather', was the leader of a gang who would beat the men into submission to make them comply after receiving thousands of dollars from their other halves.

They also used rope to tie up their victims and wore Halloween masks and balaclavas to intimidate them. 

The well-known expert in Orthodox Jewish matrimonial law was convicted on April 21 after an eight-week trial on one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, along with two other rabbis including Martin Wolmark, 57. 

The plot began to unravel after Wolmark was recorded by an undercover federal agent who posed as a woman seeking a religious divorce, known as a 'get.' 

Epstein told District Judge Freda Wolfson that he got caught up in his tough-guy image, which he says helped him persuade men to give their wives the religious divorces. 

He says he was helping the women out of a sense of compassion because they couldn't remarry without it. 

A judge rejected pleas from Epstein's daughter for leniency, and told him her must serve at least eight-and-a-half years in prison.

But he did say that he could surrender to authorities on March 1 and begin his jail term then. 

In a 10-minute address to the court prior to learning his fate, Epstein took responsibility for his actions, the Ashbury Park Press reported.

'The last two-plus years have been a living hell, and I have only myself to blame,' he told the court.

'When I listen to the tapes, I'm embarrassed and ashamed,' he said, referring to a series of incriminating comments he made on the FBI's surveillance videos and audio tapes, which turned out to be the most damaging evidence against him. 

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The well-known expert in Orthodox Jewish matrimonial law was convicted on April 21 after an eight-week trial on one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping. He is pictured outside court in February 

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The FBI released graphic images taken during the investigation. Including this one of a man who was tied up and beaten by the gang 

'In them, he describes using kidnapping, cattle prods, phony license plates, an untraceable cell phone and 'muscle men' in an effort to force resistant husbands to grant their wives a 'get,' or Jewish divorce decree.

'I feel when I watch the tapes I'm in the midst of a root canal,' he added.

Wolmark put the woman and another agent posing as her brother in touch with fellow Orthodox Rabbi Mendel Epstein, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday. Epstein was acquitted of attempted kidnapping.

Jewish law mandates that the get be presented by a husband to a wife to make a divorce official.

The female undercover FBI agent testified that Wolmark said she needed 'special rabbis' to get the job done. He said Epstein was a 'hired hand' who could be 'very helpful' to them.

The two agents told Wolmark that the sister's husband in Argentina wouldn't divorce her, even after they were 'shaken down' for more than $20,000. Wolmark warns the agents that it could be a costly process and recommends Mendel Epstein, according to the recording.

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One of the men who was beaten into a submission is pictured being treated in a hospital bed 

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This plastic Halloween mask was one of the face covers the gang used when they staged their attacks 

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The gang used a variety of devices to try and force their victims in submission. This was a blade found during a raid on a New Jersey warehouse that was part of the investigation 

'You need to get him (the husband) to New York to harass him or nail him — plain and simple,' Wolmark is heard telling the agents.

After meeting with Epstein, Wolmark set up a rabbinical court that determined the husband could be coerced. Eight men then traveled from New York to a warehouse in Edison, New Jersey, with the intent of confronting the man.

Instead, they were arrested. 

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The men even brought vodka to the tortures. It is not known whether they drunk it themselves or fed it to their array of victims 

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Investigators also found rope in the bank of one of the vans the men used 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361751/Rabbi-sentenced-10-years-leading-gang-men-used-electric-cattle-prods-handcuffs-torture-Jewish-husbands-reluctant-divorce-unhappy-wives.html#ixzz3uVmbnF9s

 
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By The Numbers - The Untold Story of Muslim Opinions & Demographics --- Clarion Project - Challenging Extremism....

Egyptians Hilarious Reaction To Obama’s Speech At A Military Base Declaring “Climate Change” As The Greatest Threat To National Security  

 

Even the Muslim world believes Obama is a fool…

Vaccinations save lives.” "Get your advice from a doctor, not from some quack who's opposed to vaccination based on dodgy science..."

Surprise: School That Is Tolerant of Anti-Vaxxers Suffers Massive Chickenpox Outbreak    

Tolerance of racial and cultural diversity is good. Tolerance of those who endanger the community by refusing to vaccinate their kids is not. An Australian primary school just learned that the hard way: A bout of chickenpox has swept Brunswick North West Primary School in Melbourne, infecting at least 80 of the school’s 320 students within the past two weeks, reports The Age.

Well, what did they expect? In a recent newsletter to parents, the school’s pincipal Trevor Bowen* directly tells parents that they should tolerate the vaccine dodgers among them. And there are a lot of them to tolerate: Just 73.2 percent of students at the school had been immunized, compared to 92 percent within that postcode district and 90.4 percent in all of Victoria, Bowen reported in May.

From the Principal’s Message:

We expect all community members to act respectfully and with tolerance when interacting with other parents and carers who may have a differing opinion to their own. This includes an opposing understanding about child immunisation.

People from both sides of the discussion have expressed their thoughts in terms of the wellbeing and ongoing health of the children they care so much for. This is most admirable. I ask all community members to interact respectfully at all times and with a sense of tolerance and acceptance of diversity.

Those words may sound “respectful” and “admirable”—until 25 percent of your school is rendered itching, scratching, and out of commission. Health officials in Australia are rightly concerned about the possibility of this happening elsewhere as vaccination rates plateau. As Health Minister Jill Hennessy put it: "The science on this issue is really clear. Vaccinations save lives.” "Get your advice from a doctor, not from some quack who's opposed to vaccination based on dodgy science," she added to The Age.

In January, Australia’s “No Jab, No Play” policy is set to take effect, which will prevent unvaccinated pre-schoolers from attending child care or kindergarten. It's part of the country's $19 million effort to boost immunization rates, which has included making it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children in order to get childcare tax benefits and rebates. The new policy, however, does not apply to primary or high schools. In schools like Brunswick, parents have to report their kids’ immunization status, but no kid can be barred from enrolling for not having been immunized.

“While vaccination rates in Australia have increased ... vaccine objection rates for children under the age of seven have also increased steadily, especially under the conscientious objector category,” wrote former Prime Minister Tony Abbott* in a statement in the Sunday Telegraph introducing the effort earlier this year. “More than 39,000 children aged under seven are not vaccinated because their parents are vaccine objectors. This is an increase of more than 24,000 children over 10 years.”

So how are parents reacting to the Brunswick outbreak? At least some appear to be unperturbed: “Given that he was only out of school for a week, it’s just one of these things that happens,” one parent tells 7 News Australia with a shrug.

The problem is, that isn’t true. Out-of-control epidemics of chickenpox that tear through schools aren’t just an inevitable occurrence, like the annual coming of winter or Donald Trump saying something awful on national television. They’re preventable through the simple act of vaccination. When you extend an attitude of “tolerance” to parents who are against vaccinating their kids, you endanger the whole community.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/12/10/chickenpox_outbreak_at_anti_vaxxer_tolerant_melbourne_school.html

For decades, diversity-obsessed college administrators have tried to conceal information on admissions and student outcomes broken down by race, but the data that have become public is devastating ...

Scalia Was Right About Race Preferences

The debate about these college-admissions policies is too focused on their legality, not their efficacy.

Jason L. Riley

132 COMMENTS 

 

With the regularity of Old Faithful, honest remarks on racial matters these days are followed by geysers of liberal indignation and outrage. That is what greeted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s suggestion last week that less-qualified black students might be better off at less-selective colleges.

During oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a case concerning race-conscious college admission policies, Justice Scalia cited research that shows how racial preferences can handicap some black students by placing them in elite schools where they don’t have the same credentials of the average student and struggle academically.

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school—a slower-track school where they do well,” said Justice Scalia. “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”

Liberal public figures and media types promptly denounced the remarks. Democratic leader Harry Reid, ever the statesman, stood on the Senate floor Thursday and accused Justice Scalia of endorsing “racist theories.”

We live in a political environment where the intent of a policy aimed at helping minorities is all that matters; questioning the policy’s actual effectiveness is tantamount to racism. Our national debates about racial preferences tend to focus on their legality, not whether they work as intended. Yet both are important, and Justice Scalia is right to question the assumption that racial favoritism in college admissions has been a boon for blacks.

A 2012 book, “Mismatch,” by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor Jr., illustrates why Justice Scalia’s concerns are warranted, and the book has helped revitalize the discussion over affirmative action’s efficacy. But it is worth noting that such concerns have been voiced by conservative and liberal scholars alike and are as old as the policies themselves, which date to the late 1960s.

Nearly 50 years ago, Clyde Summers, a professor at Yale Law School and longtime critic of labor-union discrimination against blacks, explained how preferential admissions policies at elite law schools like his own damaged the educational prospects for black students not only at Yale but also at less-selective schools. When a top-tier school like Duke lowered the admissions criteria for a minority student who met the normal admissions standards for a second-tier school like North Carolina, he noted, the latter institution was left with a smaller pool of qualified applicants and forced to begin admitting students who would be a better fit for a third-tier school, and so on.

“In sum,” wrote Summers (who died in 2010), “the policy of preferential admission has a pervasive shifting effect, causing large numbers of minority students to attend law schools whose normal admission standards they do not meet, instead of attending other law schools whose normal standards they do meet.”

For decades, diversity-obsessed college administrators have tried to conceal information on admissions and student outcomes broken down by race, but the data that have become public is devastating. An analysis of black students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1980s found that they had scored in the top 10% nationally on the math portion of the SAT but in the bottom 10% among their classmates at MIT. As a result, black students were dropping out at much higher rates, and those who didn’t leave typically received lower grades than their white and Asian classmates. Affirmative action had turned some of the smartest kids in the country into failures, in a misguided effort to obtain some predetermined racial mix on the quad.

After racial preferences were banned in the University of California system in 1996, black enrollment at higher-ranked UCLA and Berkeley fell, but black academic outcomes improved. Mr. Sander and Mr. Taylor have demonstrated empirically that as more minority students attended schools where they weren’t at a preparation disadvantage relative to their classmates, grades rose along with graduation rates. That isn’t surprising. Historically black colleges and universities, which are less selective than the top-tier schools, produce about 40% of blacks with undergraduate degrees in math and science, despite accounting for only around 20% of black enrollment.

Racial preferences almost certainly result in fewer black professionals than likely would exist in the absence of such policies, which is bad enough. But they also have a long track record of poisoning the academic environment. The racial unrest on campus today is a byproduct of college admissions schemes that place race above ability. It is also nothing new. 

Thomas Sowell, a longtime critic of racial double standards, predicted in his 1990 book, “Preferential Policies,” that they would be “educationally disastrous” for blacks and increase racial tensions and resentment on college campuses. Reviewing the book in the New York Times, liberal scholar Andrew Hacker of Queens College sounded a lot like Justice Scalia. “I agree,” he wrote, “that some of the minority students being recruited by high-powered colleges would be better served at schools like my own, where they could proceed at a pace more in tune with their preparation.”

Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor, is the author of “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (Encounter Books, 2014).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/scalia-was-right-about-race-preferences-1450046813

“It’s my belief that childhood sexual abuse will never stop. I’d like to see more people learn how to provide help and support to the child victim as soon as possible,” said Mitchell in the video, adding that he never got help for the years of abuse he suffered starting at age 11 or 12....

Beyond silence: Confronting child sexual abuse in Jewish community  

 A few years ago, Congregation Beth Jacob faced a situation without precedent in the Redwood City synagogue: a teenage student working as an aide in a religious school classroom was accused of inappropriately touching two young girls.

“My community was rocked,” said Rabbi Nathaniel Ezray. “I’m sometimes amazed about how we’re ill-prepared for things we need to be prepared for.”

The experience provided a quick education for the congregation, which reported the situation to authorities and consulted with an outside expert for guidance in handling it. The synagogue now has explicit guidelines for those who work with children. Still, several years later, the pain hasn’t gone away.

“I think that trauma takes a long time to resolve,” Ezray said. “I think people think it was dealt with thoughtfully.”
Handling the delicate, troubling and painful issue of child sexual abuse is challenging for any synagogue, where staff members typically are not experts on such matters. Clergy and administrators may suddenly find themselves in the unexpected position of making reports to legal authorities, counseling the families of victims, protecting the rights and privacy of the accused and rethinking safety and hiring policies.

“I know when I called around to tell people what happened in our school, many people confided that they don’t have policies in place,” Ezray said.

The Jewish community operates a range of programs for children, including preschools, synagogue Hebrew schools, day schools, summer camps and youth programs. Yet across the Bay Area, those institutions have a wide variety of policies, from robust to minimal, when it comes to preventing, reporting and responding to allegations of child sexual abuse.

“We heard from people that [they’re] seeing complex situations but don’t know how to handle it,” said Naomi Tucker, longtime executive director of Shalom Bayit, a Bay Area Jewish organization dedicated to combating domestic violence in Jewish homes.

Concerned that the topic is insufficiently addressed within the Jewish community, a coalition of local Jewish organizations, including Shalom Bayit, the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, Jewish LearningWorks and the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, organized a conference last month at Peninsula Temple Sholom. The Nov. 18 gathering in Burlingame, called “Beyond Silence,” brought together more than 150 Bay Area rabbis, cantors, temple administrators, educators and Jewish agency executives for a day of educational workshops about how to recognize and prevent childhood sexual abuse.

“Every one of you here are agents for change and light,” Ezray told the group during the opening plenary session. “Every one of you here has courage and strength to be the difference.”

Underlining the importance of the dialogue, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen and San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer, both Jewish, attended and spoke at the conference.

“We read in Deuteronomy, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue,’” said Rosen, who spent five years exclusively prosecuting child sexual abuse and rape cases as an assistant DA. “Child sexual abuse doesn’t get taken care of unless it’s pursued by a community.”

The conference was the first time the local Jewish community had come together to talk openly about child sexual abuse, said Tucker, who sees parallels to attitudes she encountered when she began organizing around the topic of domestic abuse in the Jewish community 23 years ago. One of her major obstacles then was convincing people that domestic violence was a Jewish problem.

“Congregations and clergy said, ‘Abuse? That doesn’t happen here,’ ” Tucker said. Now, the Jewish community is undergoing a similar evolution in its understanding of child sexual abuse, she said. “I’m so thrilled to see this tremendous leadership move in our community today.”

In the United States, about one in every three to four girls and one in every six to eight boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18, the majority of them — 90 percent — by someone their family knows and trusts, according to Miriam Wolf, a licensed clinical social worker and director of forensic interviewing for San Mateo County, who gave the day’s keynote address. The rates are similar in the Jewish community, experts agree.

Rabbi Nathaniel Ezray

The Beyond Silence coalition came together two years ago following a cover story in J. that revealed a terrible secret about a much-loved figure in the Bay Area Jewish community (“Former Bay Area Jewish leader accused of molesting boys in ’60s and ’70s,” Oct. 24, 2013).

As detailed in the article, Sheldon Mitchell, who died in 1980, was the founder of Camp Arazim, a Northern California Conservative summer camp (now closed). He also co-founded the regional arm of the United Synagogue Youth program. In 2013, his son, Tom Mitchell, posted on a Facebook page for Camp Arazim alumni that the elder Mitchell had molested him and other boys repeatedly over the years, using his position as a trusted youth leader to gain access into their lives. Several other victims came forward and confirmed the allegations anonymously to J.

Tom Mitchell, now 57, addressed last month’s conference by video, saying, “No kids or adults spoke out” about the abuse. He claims that camp officials learned of the abuse at the time, which led to his father abruptly leaving his position as administrative director in the summer of 1976. But they didn’t report it to authorities or to the children’s parents, according to Mitchell.

“I assume that the adults who knew didn’t know what to say or who to tell and that they swept it under the rug,” he told J. shortly after the conference.

It’s that culture of silence that Mitchell hoped to change by telling his story. He told J. that he believes the most important ways adults in the Jewish community can help fight child sexual abuse are by reporting it immediately when they learn of the abuse and focusing on bringing help to the victims. 

“It’s my belief that childhood sexual abuse will never stop. I’d like to see more people learn how to provide help and support to the child victim as soon as possible,” said Mitchell in the video, adding that he never got help for the years of abuse he suffered starting at age 11 or 12. That contributed to ongoing problems in his life, he said, including using drugs, dropping out of school, developing an eating disorder and falling into bankruptcy.

“I was objectified and dehumanized. I didn’t receive the support or tools needed. I learned to disassociate and lost my identity,” he said.

The Beyond Silence campaign initiated by Mitchell’s story was an attempt to respond to the incident and bring the attention of the Jewish community and Jewish leaders to the issue of childhood sexual abuse. It started with an ad campaign in J. meant to convey that the Jewish community was paying attention to and cared about the issue.

Santa Clara DA Jeff Rosen

Ezray, who knew the Mitchell family when he was growing up in Sacramento, was shocked by the disclosure and felt firmly that a strong response was necessary from the clergy. He took a leading role in organizing the Beyond Silence conference and wrote a February 2014  op-ed in J. to accompany the first Beyond Silence ad, signed by 130 local rabbis.

“I think that [clergy] are the voices of Jewish values, especially when it comes to issues where people are afraid to talk,” Ezray said. “When I read of Tom’s story, when I heard of his pain and had that terrible awareness that I probably know many who suffered at the hands of his pedophile father, I knew I had to do whatever I could do.”

To the Jewish professionals who convened at the November conference, the message was clear. Because they interact frequently with children, they have the opportunity to play a crucial role in combating child sexual abuse at every level: by preventing it within their institutions, by recognizing it and reporting it when they see warning signs, and by helping children, families and communities to heal when it has occurred. Yet, due in part to a lack of communication about the issue, consistent protections are not in place across Jewish institutions, and at some the existing policies are insufficient, according to Tucker.

No comprehensive survey has been done about how Bay Area Jewish institutions handle child sexual abuse, and it’s rare to find a Jewish leader who would admit their community’s policies don’t measure up.

Still, said Tucker, “you have many, many synagogues that are connected to children’s programs, religious schools and preschools that don’t have a clear protocol in place.”

Most Jewish organizations do a good job with one aspect of the issue, which is reporting signs of child sexual abuse to child welfare officials. People who work professionally with children, such as teachers and day care providers, are legally required to report abuse when they suspect it, and generally, Bay Area Jewish organizations that serve children and families train their staff well on that point, Tucker said.

Tom Mitchell addresses the conference via video. photo/courtesy tom Mitchell

But for some organizations, that’s as far as it goes. And it’s not enough, Tucker said. A good child sexual abuse policy “has to flow through every aspect of the organization.”

On the prevention side, that means careful screening during the hiring process and having guidelines in place regarding appropriate interactions between staff and children. Those guidelines should be thoughtful and tailored to the mission of the organization, according to Jenny Pearlman, the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center’s senior program manager for community education.

For instance, Pearlman doesn’t recommend that organizations implement blanket “no-touch” policies between staff and children. “If you’re a mentoring organization, a Boys & Girls Club, that doesn’t work,” Pearlman said in a Beyond Silence workshop about prevention. “That was the old policy.”

Instead, Pearlman recommends defining appropriate and inappropriate touch: nurturing touch or touching while playing sports is appropriate; punishing or sexual touch is not.

Some Jewish camps and schools engage children in dialogue about staying safe and establishing healthy relationships. Because their work is focused directly on children, they have often given more thought to these issues than synagogues, which serve many different populations, experts say.

Conference participants gather in a closing circle after a day of workshops.

Camp Tawonga, a Jewish summer camp near Yosemite National Park, has robust abuse protection policies in place meant to help staff understand how to interact with campers in a healthy way and to raise red flags when something doesn’t seem right. Jamie Simon-Harris, Tawonga’s camp director, said at the Beyond Silence conference that the camp’s hiring process is meant to carefully screen applicants through the interview and training process. Campers are taught the mantra, “If you see something, say something.” Every year, Simon-Harris said, she receives multiple reports of familial abuse from campers who have heard something from a friend.

“It’s kind of the anti-narc,” she said.

Though it may not be possible to end child sexual abuse, it is possible to help children by intervening quickly and helping them heal emotionally, said Wolf. Research shows that the kind of response children get when they tell trusted adults that they have been abused affects how they understand the abuse, as well as how quickly and effectively they can overcome its effects.

When they feel believed and are made to understand the abuse was not their fault, children show more positive outcomes, even when they have endured terrible trauma. In this way, Jewish traditions and teachings and the support of trusted mentors and relatives can offer a framework for helping abused children, according to Tucker
.

Beyond Silence attendees work at an art table.

“When a leader of your synagogue or your school acknowledges to a survivor or to their family that they believe you, that carries a lot of weight,” Tucker said.

“It’s a Jewish responsibility to provide a safe and nurturing space for kids. We also have millennia of spiritual tools to help people recover from trauma,” said Rabbi Mike Rothbaum, director of education for Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El, who attended the conference with four other staff members. “[This conference] encouraged me to talk to my other colleagues at Beth El and make sure we had a clear and consistent set of policies about this.”

In this way, synagogues arguably have a unique role to play in helping victims and, more controversially, helping perpetrators of abuse to heal. Many participants at the Beyond Silence conference spoke of teshuvah, or repentance.

“At the end of the day, what this community may understand, more than others that I speak to, is that the issue of child sexual abuse is one in which hurt people hurt people,” said Manheimer, the San Mateo police chief, referring to the fact that many abusers were victims themselves as children.

“This is an area where clergy can also be of huge impact dealing with perpetrators and really talking about concepts of teshuvah and accountability and knowing what it takes to change behavior, knowing that that’s a really hard thing to do,” Ezray said.

Last month’s conference was just the beginning, organizers said. Participants suggested a number of further ideas, including creating a central resource to help Bay Area Jewish agencies share their policies with others and formulating best practices for different types of institutions. Tucker said the Beyond Silence coalition will meet again within the next two months to discuss next steps.

“What is clear is there’s already more awareness than there was” before the conference, Tucker said. “We also know it’s happening, and staffers are talking about it and they’re hungry for information.”

For information, see http://www.norcalrabbis.org/beyond-silence.