Letter to a Catholic Friend - Rage against the creeps and the weirdos, against the thrill-seekers and the power-hungry, against those who hijack your voice but do not share your humility, your compassion, and your depth of faith and feeling

 

A warning about what is being advanced in your name

"Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time," Saint Joseph's University.

Editor’s note: I sent this note last week to a Catholic friend, who asked me to publish it. Here goes.—Liel Leibovitz 

Dear Friend,

On my desk, right next to my siddur, or prayer book, I keep a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions, a work I return to often with humility and awe. And whenever asked to give a list of things that the world needs to set it right, among my answers is always a strong Catholic Church, standing between us and barbarity. I’m writing to you, then, because I want you to flourish, and because, right now, I see you getting terribly, cynically, and, if things go very wrong, irreversibly played.

The reason I can see what’s happening to you is because it happened to me. For two decades, loud-mouth lightweights with thin connection to Judaism or Jewish life have rushed into the spotlight, declaring themselves representatives of the Jews. 

Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace, for example, which are neither Jewish nor interested in peace, routinely declare that only by embracing Hamas can one live a truly Jewish existence. Bend the Arc, New York Jewish Agenda—there’s no shortage of groups rising to speak “as Jews” while interested in anything but the actual welfare of actual practicing Jews or, for that matter, in preserving Judaism’s real, core tenets.

And now a similar thing is happening to you. Let me show you how.

“I’m a Catholic,” Carrie Prejean Boller, the now-former member of the White House Religious Liberty Commission thundered as she took the mic in a hearing last week, “and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, just so you know.”

Boller then proceeded to grill each member of the committee whether they considered criticism of Israel to be antisemitic, showing little interest in their considered and nuanced responses and repeatedly accusing Israel of genocide. She also used her time in the limelight to defend her friend and fellow Catholic convert, Candace Owens, arguing that the popular podcaster was “not an antisemite. She just doesn’t support Zionism.”

That would be the same Owens who called Judaism a “pedophile-centric religion”; argued that Jews believed in incest and child rape “as the sacramental rites”; urged her listeners to read a text by the German antisemite August Rohling accusing the Jews of drinking Christian blood; called Judaism “the synagogue of Satan”; and claimed that the Jews were behind every great evil, from the slave trade to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject the loonies in their midst? What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream.

You may dismiss voices like Boller’s or Owens’s as shrill. You may argue that they’re marginal. But to ignore them is a mistake. Owens was recently invited to keynote the annual gala of a growingly influential group calling itself Catholics for Catholics.

Never heard of that outfit before? That’s the point. It’s part of an astroturfing effort meant to create a new impression of American Catholicism, led by a few high-profile standard-bearers who look and sound nothing like average Catholics.

Which is why, above all of this, the actions and words of America’s most prominent Catholic today have become so important, and so troubling. I admire Vice President JD Vance’s journey, and I want to believe that he respects my people and faith as much as I respect his. But watching him in public these days sends shivers down my spine. With one morally clear statement, he could disempower this entire emerging false idol. Instead, he’s doing the opposite.

Take, for example, his recent interaction with a student at a Turning Point USA event.

“I’m a Christian man,” the student inquired, “and I’m just confused why there’s this notion that we might have owed Israel something, or that they’re our greatest ally, or that we have to support this multi $100 billion foreign aid package to Israel to cover this, to quote Charlie Kirk, ‘Ethnic cleansing in Gaza.’ I’m just confused why this idea has come around, considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution [sic] of ours.”

It was a question with a very simple answer. Vance could have—and should have—explained President Trump’s Middle East policies and how they served America’s national security interests. He could have—and should have—also informed the young man that whatever he may think about Judaism, it most definitely does not advocate the persecution of Christians.

Instead, Vance went on to assure the young man that the Israelis are “not controlling the President of the United States,” and then went on to wax theological. “It’s one of the realities is that Jews do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah,” he explained. “Obviously, Christians do believe that. There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews. My attitude is, let’s have those conversations. Let’s have those disagreements when we have them.”

Really? Imagine a prominent American politician standing up and suggesting that as Catholics don’t believe what Protestants do, we ought to have a public, political conversation about whether a Catholic president, say, will obey the Vatican and open America’s borders to comply with the Pope’s teachings. 

Such a statement would be scurrilous, and recall some of the darkest moments in America’s recent history. That the Vice President would choose to center his faith not in deep, meaningful, personal, and evocative ways but as a facile and misdirected talking point is concerning. When we say we want more faith in public life, I’m not sure even the most ardently observant among us has in mind a world in which our elected officials are guided by theological urges rather than by America’s cold, hard interests.

But honestly, even that pales next to the coldest truth about Vance, which is that the most prominent American Catholic today is also the person not just shielding but promoting America’s most prominent antisemite, Tucker Carlson. There’s no need to say more here. It’s poison, and no fancy words will make it otherwise.

As I watch Vance, I can’t help but think of how he could help men like Bill Donohue, the long-time head of the Catholic League, who is in the trenches fighting the hijacking of Catholicism by high-profile charlatans and publicity-seeking frauds. (There is no shortage of these frauds by the Jews. PM)

 Donohue took to the Internet after Boller’s horror show to remind anyone who needed a reminder that for any one person—especially a recent convert to the faith who neither runs an organization nor possesses any special credentials—to claim to speak on behalf of all Catholics everywhere was, at best, “presumptuous and arrogant.” Boller, Donohue pointed out, wasn’t really interested in having a good-faith theological discussion—she was there for petty political hand-to-hand combat, which is why she arrived wearing a Palestinian flag pin.

What happens if good men and women don’t take up the fight and vociferously reject the loonies in their midst? I’ll tell you, because, again, I’ve seen it happening in my own community. What starts with the fringes soon takes over the supposed mainstream. Before you know it, you have folks like Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, making common cause with the Reverend Al Sharpton, a man who still hasn’t apologized for inciting a pogrom that claimed Jewish lives in 1991. Before you know it, you have the UJA Federation of New York, arguably the largest and most influential Jewish organization in America, writing a million dollar check to Gaza. Before you know it, you have politicians like Chuck Schumer prancing around and talking about how they’re defending the community’s interests while doing everything they can to side with its most prominent adversaries and support policies that outrightly endanger its members. Before you know it, you have people like Phylisa Wisdom being propelled from their role in some marginal, radical left-wing group to become the Jewish liaison to the mayor of New York City, home to the largest population of Jews in the U.S. In other words, before you know it, the Overton Window has shifted so far and so fast that even groups that ought to know better now feel that they have no choice but to amplify or parrot the crazies.

So, friend, beware. We American Jews have been far too slow to reject our kooks. We allowed mendacious and malicious ideologues to sow too much discord, alienate too many potential allies, and cause too much damage. We spent too much time having inane and fruitless theoretical discussions about Zionism before we wised up to the fact that the un-Jews didn’t really care about us, or Zionism, or Judaism at all—they cared only about power, their own and that of their fellow travelers. And now the un-Catholics are treating you to the same playbook.

Do not go gently into this plight. Rage against the creeps and the weirdos, against the thrill-seekers and the power-hungry, against those who hijack your voice but do not share your humility, your compassion, and your depth of faith and feeling.

I realize it’s no easy task to keep your heart and your mind both wide open and your arms outstretched to embrace your fellow believers while at the same time fiercely rejecting those who approach your community and your faith with a bad conscience. But the tension is the key challenge of our time. Rejoice and love like you have no enemies, and fight like you have no friends, and maybe you—maybe we—will find, as we always do, that our faith forever triumphs over even the gravest of challenges.

 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/letter-catholic-friend?

 

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more   Watch now   When the police and the army have to flee the Haredim inside Israel, few red lines remain And predictions are that in 2050, the Haredi population will be close to 25% of Israel. Forget Iran. Forget the Palestinians. If you want to know what may take this country down, just look. Daniel Gordis Feb 17   READ IN APP   If you blinked during the first few seconds of the video above, which was posted by YNet on its Facebook Reels, you missed the important part. So watch it again … What you’ll see are two women wearing white shirts, being hurried away by police from a menacing crowd in Bnai Brak, a Haredi section of greater Tel Aviv. What’s with the white shirts? That’s what many women soldiers wear under their uniforms. Photo for illustration purposes only So what happened to their uniforms? They took them off, hoping that the gathering crowd might get confused and not realize that they were the soldiers that the enraged Jews were hunting for. Why were they in danger? Because a huge, seething, menacing crowd of Haredim—who incorrectly thought the women were there to hand out draft notices—were after them. The police came and extracted the soldiers. From Bnai Brak, right near Tel Aviv. Remember when we used to extract soldiers from some Arab village that they’d mistakenly entered over the green line? No more. Now, soldiers still aren’t safe in Arab villages, but they’re not safe in Bnai Brak either. And the police? Note that they’re fleeing too. Not turning around and facing down the crowd. The police had weapons. Had this been Arabs, what would they have done? Perhaps, some people are asking, it’s time to spread that net wider? Amazingly, the police (ultimately under the command of Itamar Ben-Gvir) had an explanation for the violence—the army screwed up. Main Heading (Red): The Chaos in Bnei Brak Main Headline: Tel Aviv District Commander Accuses: “The female soldiers passed through the city without coordination” Sub-headline: The Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Attacked: “We will not tolerate harm to soldiers” | The reactions to the riots The blame, they said, lay with the army (and not with the marauding Haredim), because the army should have coordinated with the police before sending soldiers into Bnai Brak. But soldiers in Israel go everywhere … to get home, to the playground with their kids at the end of the day, to the mall. What, to protect Haredi sensibilities, the IDF should get permission to enter parts of Israel? And what about when they are there to serve draft notices. Then it will be OK for the Haredim to attack them? You can only say that if you’ve given up on the idea of Israel as a sovereign state.

We have raised a generation of Haredim on a steady diet of contempt!

 

R' Moe, R' Larry, R' Curly SHLITA

There are riots in the streets of, Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. Girls in olive uniforms are spat at, cursed, called names that no daughter of Israel should ever hear. Young women who chose to serve the Jewish people—whether you agree with their choice or not—are treated as if they are Amalek. And then we pretend to be shocked.

Do not be shocked.

When you spend years teaching that the Israel Defense Forces is a spiritual abomination, when you describe it as a factory of impurity, when you speak of its soldiers as if they are lost souls beyond redemption, what do you imagine will grow from that soil? Roses? Or rage?

We have raised a generation on a steady diet of contempt.

From podiums and pulpits, certain rabbinic voices have not merely argued for the primacy of Torah study. That would be legitimate. Torah is our oxygen. But they have gone further. They have painted the IDF not as a complex national institution filled with Jews—religious, secular, traditional, Ethiopian, Russian, Moroccan—but as an enemy encampment. An alien force. A spiritual Auschwitz in olive drab.

And then we act surprised when teenage boys absorb the message.

If the army is treif incarnate, if its commanders are destroyers of souls, if its culture is described as an assault on Heaven—then a female soldier walking through, Bnei Brak and Meah Shearim is not a sister. She is a symbol. A provocation. A target.

This is not modesty. It is not tzniut. It is not yiras Shamayim.

It is a failure of leadership.

Let us speak plainly: The problem is not that Haredim cherish Torah. The problem is that some leaders have defined their entire religious identity in opposition to the State and its army. Hatred has become a boundary marker. Contempt has become a badge of purity.

And when you sanctify contempt, you should not be shocked when it erupts as violence.

No one is demanding that Haredi girls enlist. No one is forcing rabbinic leaders to endorse mixed units. The halachic debates are real and serious. But there is a vast moral chasm between arguing that military service poses spiritual risks and screaming at a nineteen-year-old girl that she is a shiksa in uniform.

The Gemara teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred. Sinat chinam did not begin with fists. It began with words. With narratives. With leaders who convinced their followers that other Jews were existential threats.

Have we learned nothing?

The IDF is not a monolith of wickedness. It includes religious combat units. It includes soldiers who put on tefillin between operations. It includes officers who whisper Tehillim before entering Gaza. It includes boys from Bnei Brak who quietly enlist despite the social cost. To reduce all of that to a cartoon of impurity is not piety. It is propaganda.

And propaganda has consequences.

If a rabbi repeatedly describes the army as a machine of spiritual destruction, he cannot wash his hands when his students treat its soldiers as enemies. Words create worlds. Halachic rhetoric shapes moral reflexes. When you delegitimize an institution that defends Jewish lives, you are playing with fire in a house filled with gasoline.

Yes, there are real tensions between Haredi society and the State. Yes, there are coercive policies that feel threatening. Yes, there is cultural arrogance on all sides. But riots against female soldiers are not a defense of Torah. They are a chilul Hashem of epic proportions.

What does it say to the broader Israeli public when black-hatted Jews scream at Jewish girls in uniform? What does it do to the fragile threads holding our people together after October 7? Do you think secular Israelis distinguish between “fringe extremists” and the rabbis who have spent decades depicting the army as a spiritual plague?

Leadership means responsibility not only for what you explicitly command, but for what your words unleash.

If you tell your community that the IDF is a spiritual Nazi, do not be surprised when someone decides to resist it like one.

If you tell your followers that female soldiers embody moral collapse, do not be shocked when those followers treat them as walking affronts to Heaven.

Torah without derech eretz becomes cruelty dressed in black. Piety without responsibility becomes mob rule with a hechsher.

The tragedy is that it did not have to be this way. A rabbinic leadership secure in its faith could say: “We do not send our daughters to serve. We believe Torah study protects the nation. But those who serve are Jews. They are our brothers and sisters. You will not touch them. You will not curse them. You will treat them with dignity.”

Imagine the power of that message.

Instead, too often, we have heard a different tone—one of suspicion, delegitimization, and apocalyptic language. And now the streets reflect the sermons. You cannot cultivate hatred for decades and then feign innocence when it blooms.

If we truly fear Heaven, then we must fear the consequences of our own rhetoric. The Jewish people cannot survive endless internal wars. Not theological wars turned physical. Not in Jerusalem. Not now.

If there are riots against female soldiers, the question is not only what the boys in the streets have done. The question is what the men at the lecterns have been saying. And whether they have the courage to take responsibility.

 

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/we-have-raised-a-generation-of-haredim-on-a-steady-diet-of-contempt/

Remarks by PM Netanyahu at the conference of presidents of major American Jewish organizations

 

America’s Interests Will Not Always Align - Why Israel Must Be Prepared to Go It Alone

 

A dangerous lullaby is being sung in Hebrew and English on both sides of the ocean. It goes like this: America will always be there. The melody is reassuring, almost parental. It has the tone of permanence. But it is not history. It is hope masquerading as strategy. And Jewish history is merciless toward those who confuse the two.

For more than seventy-five years, Israel has lived beneath the protective shadow of the American eagle. Military aid, diplomatic cover, vetoes at the United Nations, joint exercises, intelligence cooperation, Iron Dome funding, aircraft carriers stationed in the Mediterranean like steel mezuzot affixed to the doorposts of the Jewish state. The relationship is real, deep, and unprecedented in Jewish history. But in real life relationships change in scope, narrative, needs, interests and motives.

To say this is not an accusation against the United States. It is an observation about how great powers behave. America is a superpower with global obligations: China, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, oil routes, trade corridors, domestic political cycles, public opinion, and an ingrained reluctance for open-ended wars in distant deserts. At some point—whether in five years or fifteen—a president will sit in the Oval Office and ask a question no Israeli prime minister wants to hear: Is stopping Iran worth risking American lives, American bases, American elections, and American stability? The honest American answer may be no. Not because America hates Israel, but because America is not Israel.

At the moment, Washington and Jerusalem share overlapping concerns: Iranian expansionism, terror proxies, regional instability. But this alignment is conditional. If Iran becomes, in American eyes, a containable nuclear power rather than an imminent one; if Hamas becomes a manageable nuisance rather than a catalyst for regional war; if American voters grow weary of Middle Eastern entanglements; if China becomes the overriding strategic obsession—the calculus changes. For America, a nuclear Iran may become a problem to be managed. For Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential clock. These are not the same category of threat. Pretending that they are is a form of strategic self-deception.

Here an uncomfortable Jewish reflex must be confronted. Jews have a long and tragic habit of believing that powerful nations will ultimately protect Jewish continuity because doing so is moral, rational, and mutually beneficial. Spain. Germany. Russia. France. Poland. The pattern is painfully familiar: they need us, they value us, they understand. Until the moment they do not. 

 The entire purpose of Jewish sovereignty was to end this reflex. The founding idea of Israel was radical in its simplicity: the Jews would never again outsource their survival to the goodwill, political moods, or fatigue of another nation.

Yet, quietly and comfortably, Israel has slipped back into a familiar psychological posture. America will restrain Iran. America will deter Hezbollah. America will manage Hamas. America will supply the munitions and apply the diplomatic pressure. America will draw the red lines. But America draws red lines with erasable ink. Israel writes them in blood.

Tehran understands this dynamic with unnerving clarity. The Iranian regime is patient, strategic, and civilizational in its thinking. It is not trying to defeat America; it is trying to outlast America’s interest. Each year, it enriches a little more uranium, arms Hezbollah a little more heavily, strengthens its regional proxies, and watches American elections, American divisions, and American fatigue. The calculation is chillingly simple: if they wait long enough, the day will come when America decides this is no longer worth the trouble. On that day, Israel will face a problem that can no longer be postponed.

The Hamas catastrophe exposed more than a security failure. It revealed a conceptual one. Israel convinced itself that Hamas could be contained through deterrence, intelligence, and a stable regional equilibrium underwritten by American power. But enemies animated by theology, grievance, and martyrdom do not operate by the logic of containment. They operate by the logic of destiny. Iran and its proxies are not trying to manage the conflict. They are trying to reshape the region over decades. America manages. Iran endures. Israel cannot afford to be the manager in a struggle where its enemies are zealots.

This leads to a thought Israeli leadership is reluctant to voice publicly: there may come a moment when Israel must choose between waiting for American approval that will not come, or acting alone and absorbing the diplomatic, economic, and military consequences. That moment is not a distant hypothetical. It is the predictable outcome of how alliances evolve. Every empire eventually recalculates its interests. When it does, it does not ask Jerusalem for permission.

To speak of “going it alone” is not a call for recklessness or ingratitude. It is a call for psychological independence. Israel must cultivate the capacity—military, economic, and political—to act in a scenario where American support is delayed, diluted, or denied. This means independent strike capabilities, stockpiles sufficient for sustained conflict, strategic doctrines not reliant on Washington’s green light, and a political culture that understands the real cost of sovereignty. Sovereignty is not tested when your ally agrees with you. It is tested when they do not.

There is also a moral dimension deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. Classical Jewish law does not treat delay in the face of mortal danger as prudence; it treats it as negligence. When a threat to Jewish life is imminent, waiting for external permission is not piety. It is abdication. Jewish history did not assume Rome’s approval before defending Jewish lives. It is not obvious why Jerusalem should assume Washington’s.

One can easily imagine a headline a decade from now: U.S. Urges Restraint as Israel Considers Action Against Iran. The phrase “urges restraint” is diplomatic shorthand for something far more consequential: this is your problem now. On that day, Israel will either be prepared for independent action, or it will discover that it spent decades confusing alliance with insurance.

Alliances are blessings. The American–Israeli alliance is one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern history. But alliances are never substitutes for self-reliance. America is Israel’s greatest ally. It is not eternal, not uniform in its politics, and not bound by Jewish fate. Israel is. And only Israel is.

The greatest danger to Israel is not Iranian uranium or Hamas rockets. It is the quiet, comforting belief that someone else will ultimately handle the decisive moment. That belief has followed the Jewish people for two thousand years. It should not be allowed to take root again in the era of Jewish sovereignty.

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-israel-must-be-prepared-to-go-it-alone/

More than his support for Israel, more than his empathy for the Iranian people, Donald Trump needs to stand by his word

 

Trump and His Word   When it comes to Iran, today’s meeting between Netanyahu and Trump could prove fateful. Michael Oren Feb 11   READ IN APP   In my media interviews, I am always being asked what Trump is thinking and what he is going to do about Iran. The questions are more pressing today, as Prime Minister Netanyahu holds his seventh meeting with President Trump in the United States. And each time I am asked “what is Trump thinking,” I have to answer with the three hardest words every analyst can utter, “I don’t know.” But what I do know is this: Even as Trump’s representatives, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, negotiate with the Iranians, the United States continues to build up massive military forces in the Middle East. On a single day last week, 117 large military transports landed in the area carrying hundreds of tons of weapons, ammunition, and anti-missile systems. Another aircraft carrier, the USS H.W. Bush, will soon join the USS Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. Together with other U.S. naval and air forces, they will threaten Iran with hundreds of jet fighters, strategic bombers, and sea-to-land missiles. Immense assets will be needed not only to destroy Iranian bases and command centers but to protect U.S. ships from the thousands of rockets, drones, and suicide speedboats that the Iranians will surely unleash in retaliation for any American attack. With many in his own MAGA movement already criticizing his involvement in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Gaza as a betrayal of his promises to put “America first,” Trump cannot risk an even bigger involvement in Iran that costs American lives. So why, then, would Trump take the risk of attacking Iran? Why not cut a deal that freezes, rather than dismantles, Iran’s nuclear program, and declare it better than the deal that Obama signed in 2015? The answer stems from the one thing I know most of all. More than his support for Israel, more than his empathy for the Iranian people, Donald Trump needs to stand by his word. He publicly vowed to rescue the Iranians from their evil government and to overthrow it. Failure to do so could result in the president being labeled as a leader who draws a red line but recoils from enforcing it. Today’s meeting between Netanyahu and Trump, consequently, could prove fateful. The prime minister needs to clarify Trump’s goals in the negotiations and to learn, to the greatest degree possible, if, when, and how the U.S. will attack. He must seek assurances regarding Israel’s participation in any military operation. And if the administration’s talks with the Iranians conclude without eliminating or limiting Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities—a potentially existential danger for Israel—Netanyahu must seek American backing for unilateral Israeli action to destroy it. This article was adapted from a Hebrew version originally published in Ynet on February 10, 2026.

Historic Asifah Of The Sons Of American Admorim Regarding The “Vaad Hakehillos” Approval Seal For Technological Devices

 

 Kesh Diszcont - CODE- GROISERFERD

 

The Rabbonim have discussed the guidelines and are requesting that all Kehillah members purchase phones and MP3 devices only if they bear the approved seal of Vaad Hakehilos 

 MORE:

 https://www.boropark24.com/news/photo-gallery-historic-asifah-of-the-sons-of-american-admorim-regarding-the-vaad-hakehillos-approval-seal-for-technological-devices

The Era of No Orthodox Jewish Leadership

We are living in the most religiously crowded and spiritually leaderless era in Orthodox Jewish history.

There are more rabbis than ever, more roshei yeshiva than ever, more kollelim, more batei medrash, more seforim, more shiurim, more conferences, more proclamations. And yet, there is less leadership than ever.

Because leadership is not measured by how loudly one can forbid. Leadership is measured by what one is willing to confront. And nothing real is being confronted.

The Orthodox world today has authorities. It has committees, letterheads, signatures, bans, and gatherings about smartphones, internet filters, artificial intelligence, tznius, music, wigs, and hemlines. But it does not have a single figure willing to stand up and say: we have built a system that is collapsing under its own dishonesty.

No one is addressing the economic suffocation of families crushed under tuition and housing while being told this is the ideal Torah life. No one is addressing the institutionalized dependency created by the “learn forever” model that was never meant to be universal, never meant to be permanent, and never meant to be financed by magical thinking.

No one is addressing the thousands of young men quietly drowning in a system built for the elite but forced upon the masses. No one is addressing the girls raised to marry learning without being told who will pay the rent. No one is addressing the silent crisis of men who feel like failures because they cannot live up to a model that was never realistic to begin with.

No one is addressing the rabbinic culture of pretending everything is working, because admitting it is not would require moral courage. Leadership would mean saying: we made mistakes. And that is something today’s Orthodox leadership cannot afford to say.

So instead, they manage optics. They manage narratives. They manage image. They manage their tens of millions of dollars in tax free real estate!

They fight the internet because the internet exposes reality. They fight AI because AI exposes questions. They fight anything that allows ordinary Jews to think without permission. But they do not fight the one thing that is destroying the community from within: the myth that this system is sustainable, honest, and ideal for everyone.

In previous generations, rabbinic leaders confronted reality. The Rambam fought the misuse of Torah. The Vilna Gaon fought corruption. Rav Hirsch rebuilt Torah with dignity inside modernity. Rav Shraga Feivel built institutions that prepared Jews to function in the world, not hide from it.

Today’s leadership fights Wi-Fi. Because Wi-Fi is easier than truth.

You can ban a device. You cannot ban a question. You can sign a letter. You cannot sign away reality.

You can gather thirty rabbis to discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence. You cannot gather one rabbi willing to discuss the dangers of intellectual dishonesty. And so we have entered an unprecedented era: an era where Torah scholarship is abundant, but Torah leadership is absent.

Torah leadership requires risk. It requires the willingness to be hated for telling the truth. It requires the willingness to lose honor, lose donations, lose control, lose myth. It requires saying to a generation: we must course-correct.

Instead, we are told everything is fine. Just learn more. Give more. Obey more. Ask less. And the community feels it.

The young feel it most of all. They are not rebelling because they hate Torah. They are suffocating because they do not see honesty. They do not see adults willing to admit complexity. They do not see leaders willing to speak plainly. They do not see anyone willing to say that Torah and reality were never meant to be enemies.

So they leave. Or worse, they stay and go numb. This is not a crisis of faith. This is a crisis of credibility.

Orthodox Judaism does not suffer from a lack of observance. It suffers from a lack of courageous rabbinic integrity. The tragedy is that everyone knows it. The donors know it. The parents know it. The rebbeim know it. The roshei yeshiva know it. And the students know it.

But no one at the top can say it, because saying it would require leadership. And leadership today is replaced by administration. Administration preserves systems. Leadership reforms them.

We have administrators. We do not have leaders.

And until someone with rabbinic stature stands up and says publicly and unequivocally, “we must rethink the model—not the internet, the model,” this era will be remembered as the strangest chapter in Orthodox history: When Torah was everywhere, and leadership was nowhere. 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-era-of-no-orthodox-jewish-leadership/

"The Jews Have The Honor Of Being Hated!" --- The Speech Never Given By Any Living Rosh Yeshiva Or Orthodox Rabbi --- Bret Stephens' State of World Jewry Address

 

You’re a sex offender? You can work in a New York religious School!

 How prevalent is child sex abuse in our schools? 

 

Exact numbers do not exist, but there are credible estimates. A 156-page and well-publicized 2004 U.S. Education Department report, “Educator Sexual Misconduct”, authored by Prof. Charol Shakeshaft, estimates that 9.6 percent of all k-12 students are sexually abused by school personnel. The report makes multiple recommendations for preventing abuse – including, mandatory job applicant fingerprinting in all public and private schools. 

by Elliot Pasik

 

9.6 percent of all k-12 students are sexually abused by school personnel.

....Meanwhile, society has changed. Today, the U.S. Justice Department describes its “Project Safe Childhood” as a “nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse”. Arrests and convictions of child sex abusers are a daily occurrence, duly reported in the media. A typical headline is, “More than 100 NYC educators accused of sexual relationships, communications with students as DOE finally mulls a crackdown”, N.Y. Post, January 25, 2025.

This situation did not exist in the 1930s nor prior.

Currently, there are 800,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. There are 40,000 in New York State. These sex offenders represent persons who have been convicted of serious sex crimes, served their sentences, and are released into society as registered sex offenders who can be identified on public Internet registries.

The intense public focus on child sex crime, particularly occurring in schools and houses of worship, first began in 2002, when the Boston Globe newspaper exposed child sex abuse in religious schools and houses of worship. Victims spoke up loud and clear. Many state legislatures swiftly responded with “Megan’s Law” sex offender registries, mandated child abuse reporting laws, mandated child abuse education for school employees, and job applicant fingerprinting. Statutes of limitation for both criminal and civil cases were relaxed or eliminated. The New York courts are now filled with thousands of child sex abuse cases. 

The private Jewish schools are especially lagging in fingerprinting their job applicants. There are about 325 private Jewish schools in NYS, educating 140,000 children, and according to the State Ed FOIL response, only thirteen Jewish schools are fingerprinting – Abraham Heschel, Emet Classical Academy, Hannah Senesh Community School, Kulanu Academy, Leffell, Luria Academy, Manhattan Day School, Mazel Day School, North Shore Hebrew Academy, Ramaz, Shefa, Shema Koleinu, and Stella K. Abraham. (ALL NON-ORTHODOX)

Meanwhile, the web sites of the ultra-orthodox Jewish group, Agudath Israel, and the modern-centrist, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, are silent for job applicant fingerprinting.

The Orthodox Union silence is particularly puzzling. In 2013, Yeshiva University retained the big law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to investigate, report upon, and make recommendations as to the sex abuse occurring at their Y.U. high school. The law firm issued a 53-page public report specifically recommending the fingerprinting of all job applicants.

As a keen observer and participant in the legislative process in New York, I can testify that progress has been slow. True, some very helpful laws have been enacted, but work remains. What work? I will explain.

 

About the Author

Elliot Pasik is a graduate of Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, J.D.; Clark University, B.A.; Bronx HS of Science. He is a civil litigation attorney, and resides in Long Beach, NY. He has published several articles on child abuse. Notably, Elliot is the original and successful proponent of New York's first employee background check law for religious and nonpublic schools, enacted in 2006. He is also co-founder and president of a small nonprofit group, Jewish Board of Advocates for Children, which advocates for child protection legislation in our faith communities. He may be reached at efpasik@aol.com.

 

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