The High Court of Justice is right - setting up separate areas
in hospitals for those wanting to eat food that isn't kosher for
Passover is a disproportionate, humiliating and unfeasible solution
Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, in Jerusalem
The High Court of Justice
did well this week when it criticized the state’s proposal to set up
areas outside hospital buildings where hametz – food that isn’t kosher for Passover – could be eaten during the holiday.
Justices Neal Hendel, Uzi Vogelman and
Ofer Grosskopf issued an interim order demanding that the state (albeit
after this coming Passover), explain why any food, including hametz,
can’t be brought into hospitals during the holiday, and that it instruct
the hospitals to find a different, proportionate way to maintain
kashrut during the holiday – for example, by using disposable plates and
cutlery. The state was also asked to explain why hospital security
guards need to be involved in enforcing kashrut regulations.
“Hametz areas,” essentially pens for secular and non-Jewish people, which the state wants to set up at the hospitals during Passover
to preserve their kashrut, is a disproportionate, humiliating and in
any case unfeasible solution. How can a hospital insist that bedridden
patients who want food from home go to a hametz area outside the
building? The state’s demand that the hospitals position a guard at the
entrances who will be authorized to go through people’s belongings not
just to check for weapons, but also to confiscate sandwiches to avoid
the dreaded hametz terror, is ridiculous and exceeds the hospitals’
legal authority.
Attorney Yair Nehorai, who represents the Secular
Forum, which filed the petition against the hospitals’ no-hametz
policy, argued that the law does not give the hospitals the authority to
prevent the entrance of non-kosher food, and that their executives have
no right to prevent anyone from eating what they please. “How do you
enforce this, when more than half the country doesn’t want kosher food?
Guards will find an older woman, a mother bringing food to her child,
and what will they do to her? File an indictment against her?”
Attorney Sausan Zahar of the Adalah –
Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel argued, “It’s
inconceivable that there would be a policy that prevents that Arab
mother or father who wants to bring food to their relatives from
bringing their natural food to a place where those same people are in
their weakest possible state.” She added, “We aren’t asking to mix our
food with the hospital food.
We are asking to bring food by ourselves,
for ourselves, in our own utensils.”
This marks a quantum leap in religious coercion
of individuals by the state, which undermines the individual liberty of
secular Jewish and Arab patients and employees, as well as the rights
and dignity of the patients. The State of Israel is taking giant steps
in a dangerous direction, from a secular state that is committed to
religious freedom toward a theocracy.
Israel is not a halakhic state, and its institutions may not trample on
individual rights. It would behoove the state to listen to the High
Court justices and adopt the proposed solution to use disposable
tableware on Passover, which is a balanced and proportionate solution.
On Sunday, a float rolled
down the streets of Aalst, a Belgian town, for carnival. It featured
two grotesque caricatures of Hasidic Jews, hooked noses, hands reaching
out for money, and a rat sitting on money bags. That’s 2019. A second
float, pictured above—in Marburg, Germany, in 1936—featured celebrants
dressed as Orthodox Jews. The only real difference is that the former
was more elaborately and professionally executed, and if anything more
grotesque.
Anti-Semitism,
or, to speak more plainly, Jew hatred, is the animus that never dies.
Like some malignant virus, it always lies dormant, ready to wake. Like
other viruses, it may be, at various times, more or less virulent, more
or less lethal. There probably will not be a massacre of Jews in Belgium
in the next few years. What happened a few years after the float rolled
down the streets of Marburg requires no elaboration.
In the wake
of the Holocaust, the deliberate killing of Jewish, non-Israeli
civilians is usually condemned across the political spectrum (butcheries
of Israeli civilians being often excused as an understandable
expression of Palestinian frustration). But those are easy sentiments,
because it costs nothing to sympathize with dead Jews as opposed to
standing up for live ones. The virus survives.
Some physical threats persist. A young male Jew wearing a yarmulke in the cities of so-tolerant Scandinavia (Malmö, for example),
or even on some of the streets of Paris in laicized France, risks a
beating or worse. And sometimes terrorists of the left or right decide
to shoot up a supermarket, a community center, or a synagogue. When they
do, the press usually describes them as lunatics rather than
ideologues. After the bodies have been taken to the morgue and the blood
has been mopped up, it is easier to rationalize the murders that way.
But
in the West, no one is going to massacre Jews or send them to
concentration camps. Other parts of the world—the Arab world most
notably—have been subject to such thorough ethnic cleansing in the
recent past that there are no Jews left to pummel or kill. To be sure,
that does not stop virulent anti-Semitism without Jews, a phenomenon
noted in Poland under communism in its later stages, and present today
in countries such as Pakistan, whose press prints cartoons
indistinguishable from those in the Nazi broadsheets of nearly a century
back.
Social
anti-Semitism, the kind permissible in polite society, continues. But
even that has changed. Once upon a time, it was a kind of establishment
or upper-crust disdain for pushy newcomers, the sons and daughters of
immigrants on the make. Sometimes it was subtly expressed. “Well, there
goes your Semite, Hugh. A different god, a different mountaintop,” said
John Gielgud in Chariots of Fire, a movie about the 1924 Olympics. In
the 20th century, it was usually just doors firmly shut at clubs and
universities. Why were so many hospitals with names such as Beth Israel
founded in the early 20th century? In part, to give Jewish doctors a
place to practice the healing arts. But social anti-Semitism, in the
sense of nonviolent Jew baiting, still exists in the West, even if some
posh columnists for prestige publications on the left or right are more
likely to drizzle their venom on “neoconservatives” than on “hawkish
foreign-policy Jews.”
Its
ugliest forms have been most clearly on display in Britain of late,
where the leader of the Labour Party refuses to acknowledge, and
certainly act against, the persecution of Jewish members of his own
party, a number of whose parliamentary members have now quit in disgust.
Jeremy Corbyn’s friendship with terrorist groups, his willingness to
pose near or under anti-Semitic caricatures, and his failure to do
anything to suppress the vile attacks on fellow leftists who happen to
be Jews are, at the moment, unique in liberal democracies. But other
leaders in democracies or quasi-democracies play with Jew hatred: Why
else does Viktor Orbán so insistently invoke the image of George Soros, a
bogeyman that some American white nationalists have similarly summoned
up? Jew hatred is of both left and right.
In
the United States, anti-Semitism has taken many forms—whether it is
nominally respectable professors insisting that a vast Israel Lobby
controls American foreign policy, or clueless congressional
representatives accusing American Jews of dual loyalties, or others
speculating about diabolical financiers dominating the 2018 midterms. In
each case, the unique feature of this kind of Jew hatred is the wild,
aggrieved indignation that results when it is called out or rebuked.
And
that takes us to the essence of anti-Semitism. It is not merely “the
socialism of fools,” as the German social democrat August Bebel famously
put it at the turn of the 20th century. It is a confession of weakness
and fear, a belief in occult forces that explain why you or your group
has failed in some way—whether it is in securing a foreign policy guided
by realpolitik or justice for a group you feel for, or a lost election,
or the fact that the bond markets occasionally go against you.
Anti-Semitism is, in short, the religion of people too lazy to accept
the complexity of reality, who hunger for enemies whose power excuses
their own deficiencies, and who cannot take responsibility for why their
side has not won. That is why it can be wildly contradictory: The Jews
are either rootless globalist bankers or the agents of a tiny
nation-state; they are either religious fanatics out to do in followers
of the Prophet (in the old days, Christ killers) or godless atheists,
the instruments either of bloody reaction or of no-less-bloody
revolution. Either way, it is a creed for losers.
For
some period of time after the Holocaust, once Americans and Europeans
could bring themselves to acknowledge what had happened, open Jew hatred
went into retreat. That has changed. In the form of Israel hatred—to
include a denial of that state’s right to exist, a complete disregard of
the threats it has faced, and simple lies about what it has done—it is
now acceptable in many places. But that channel of thought quickly
merges into the larger sewer, because despite their protestations, Jew
haters do not really distinguish between the Jewish state and the Jews
of other countries. That float in Marburg, after all, had a card on it
about heading to Palestine.
Anti-Semitism
is out there even in the United States. In 2017, the FBI recorded more
than three times as many anti-Jewish as anti-Muslim religious hate
incidents, or almost 60 percent of the total. In Europe, the European
Union Agency for Fundamental Rights has now published two comprehensive
reports documenting the spread and worsening of anti-Semitism in Europe
over the past five to 10 years.
There
are some limits to how far this old hate can go. The Jewish state has
mortal enemies; it also has a larger (and more effective) military than
Germany does, and a fistful of nuclear weapons. The basic norms of
civilized behavior in Europe and the United States have held, although
what individual Jews experience may be different from what political
leaders say they will tolerate. But what is particularly scary now is
that Jew hatred seems to bring with it no real penalties—indeed, it
feeds waves of indignation that haters can use to their advantage.
In
the end, this is less of a problem for the Jews than for everybody
else. The Jews are used to their enemies, and against all odds have
survived them. As the saying goes, the basic story line of most Jewish
holidays is, “They tried to kill us. They’re gone. We’re still here.
Let’s eat.” So it will be now as well. But what the resurgent
anti-Semitism of our times—and the numbers of incidents are
growing—tells us is that our societies are more troubled than we think.
Confident, thoughtful, and upright people do not go in for Jew hatred;
it is, rather, sick souls who do. They can be defeated only by their
own: the left by the left, the right by the right, the professors by the
professors, and, in the Muslim world, by Muslims. And if good people of
whatever stripe choose to say nothing and do nothing, who knows where
those floats will take us?
I spent 2 years cleaning houses. What I saw makes me never want to be rich.
Let me tell you something you already know: Your housekeeper spies on you.
We work alone. We get bored. What do you expect?
I
worked for a company cleaning houses for two years. It was flexible. It
paid well enough. I didn't think of it as a career, or identify with
it; it was just what I did to get myself through college as a single
mom.
At first I didn't snoop. When they set me off on my own with a
white binder containing directions for each house, I just dropped my
daughter off at day care and went.
I found the houses on little
winding roads, the hidden keys tucked under gnomes or rugs. I parked my
car where it wouldn't drip oil on their driveway, lugged my tray of
supplies inside, and called to clock in, standing by picture windows
overlooking the ocean, looking at the perfectly manicured lawn, the
chairs around the deck, the path down to the dock, and the boat that
glittered even in the rain. I cleaned, and I moved on. I had 20 clients
and two or three houses a day to get to, anyway.
But after a few
months, my boss told me to clean slower. (We didn't call it that, of
course. We called it "more detailed.") The company had a high turnover
rate, she explained, and we billed by the hour. If I cleaned houses
quicker than the girl who'd replace me, clients would want to continue
paying the lower rate.
So I started looking through the piles of
papers instead of straightening them. I looked for secrets in the
nightstands, for the story below the American dream. I searched for the
stashes of empty wine bottles and peeked into medicine cabinets.I
checked how many pills they'd taken in two weeks and learned which
prescriptions had turned into recreations. I found pills for everything:
pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, impotence, allergies, high
blood pressure, diabetes. There were other medications, too. My personal
favorite: a topical testosterone cream.
(I had to look that one up. It offsets a lack of libido in women. You apply the cream anywhere on your body except the genitals.)
I named my houses.
One
was the Porn House, for all the issues of Hustler in the nightstand and
for the bottle of lube that sometimes sat in front of the alarm clock,
illuminated by the red numbers. I had to change the sheets, of course,
but I never picked any socks up off the floor. There was always
something cooking in the crock pot; sometimes I'd walk in and the whole
house smelled of caramelizing ham.
The wife left notes addressed to "Cleaner" under a magnet on the fridge that said We're staying together for the cat. She slept in the spare bedroom.
Next to the Porn House was the Sad House. They shared a driveway, and both had large garages and living rooms facing the ocean.
I
did both houses every other Wednesday, but didn't go to the Sad House
much. The owner spent a lot of time in the hospital, and so his house
stayed clean, except for dust that settled on the kitchen counters and
the dining room table.
His wife had died some years earlier — I
guessed in the late '80s — but every trinket she'd collected remained on
the windowsills, and her to-do lists remained tacked to the cork board
by the desk in the kitchen.
"Get new hose."
"Fix crack in sidewalk."
"New latch for gate."
The
bathroom had two sinks. Hers still had a hair dryer plugged in and hung
on a hook. His side had a cup with a comb and whatever medication he
took in the morning and at night — it was different every time.
Across
from the sink was a wicker shelf. It had a picture of their eldest son
on top of a mountain. He had a green bandana and a beard, and gave a
peace sign; the photo was framed with that poem you see on bereavement
cards: "Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not
sleep." That's how it starts. I copied it down to give to a friend who'd
just lost her dog.
Beside the photo were two little boxes, one
made from a heavy clay, the other some kind of dark pewter. His wife's
picture leaned behind the clay box. I opened them once. They had ashes,
and tags and statements from the funeral home. I wondered if it
comforted him to have them there, behind him, while he combed his hair.
The
money my clients spent startled me. One house had a receipt for a throw
blanket more expensive than my car. I vacuumed children's bedrooms
bigger than my apartment. Rob's House — my picky Friday client who
adored me — had $3,000 worth of television and stereo equipment just in
the living room. The TV was always on. My Christmas card from him and
his wife contained a $100 bonus, the highest the company had ever seen.
That was around when the prescription bottles multiplied by the bathroom
sink and Rob's skin took on a yellow tone.
Usually I never met my
clients. I saw the lady from the Porn House after cleaning one time, at
the store. She had on green hospital scrubs under a long red coat. Her
short brown hair stuck out on one side, and she smoothed it while
inspecting the steaks on clearance. I stood about 10 feet away from her,
trying not to stare, holding cough syrup and juice for my daughter.She had no idea who I was. I knew she'd just gotten over a long sinus infection, and spat large wads of snot in the shower.
I
saw the lady who used the testosterone cream at a restaurant. Her date
was tall, in good shape, with fluffy blond hair. She had on high heels
and too much makeup. They smiled at each other, but didn't hold hands.
He'd left an overnight bag at her house that week while the kids were at
their dad's. It had lube and one of those egg vibrators in it. I stood
across from them at the bar, waiting for a friend, thinking how sad it
must be to lose something like your libido.
After a while, I got
used to the loneliness these houses held. I got used to Cigarette Lady,
whose husband went out of town a lot. She kept cartons of cigarettes in a
freezer in the garage. They were the long, skinny types; I don't
remember the brand. A pantry off the kitchen had fat-free soups,
crackers, and fat-free salad dressings. The refrigerator contained not
much more than water and lettuce. A toilet in the upstairs bathroom off
the kitchen always had crusted vomit under the rim.
My most
regular client had me come twice a week for a few hours. Along with
cleaning, I folded the laundry of a mother, father, and two young sons
and put it away. The mother came out from her office once to pay me, and
asked if I knew of any midwives in town. "I'm pregnant," she said. "I
can't believe I'm telling you this; you're the first person I've told
besides my husband."
We talked for a bit while I cleaned her
stainless steel appliances and granite countertops in the kitchen. She
wanted to try a home birth this time. I told her about mine. She hoped
for a girl but didn't really care either way.
A week or two after
she told me about the pregnancy, I noticed spots of blood by the toilet.
She told me about the miscarriage when I left. I acted as if I didn't
already know. She slouched. I wasn't sure what to say.
After a
while I decided to take on private clients along with my work for the
cleaning company. That meant doing everything from fielding the initial
call of interest to scheduling a day, time, and frequency of the clean.
It meant weeding out the ones who wanted me to clean in costume or
naked.
I stopped snooping after that. I didn't have to. The bigger
the house, the more they worked to afford it, the more prescription
bottles they had. I started to see the fact that I couldn't afford to
buy my daughter fancy electronics as a luxury. We went to the beach and
looked for crabs under the rocks instead. We spent rainy Saturdays doing
a 25-cent puzzle.
I vowed never to have a house bigger than I could
clean myself.
I soon made enough with my private clients to quit
the cleaning company entirely. I lost those houses, but there were no
goodbyes. I'm not sure if they noticed I'd been replaced.
Stephanie
Land is a writer whose work has been featured in Mamalode magazine, the
Huffington Post, and Scary Mommy. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with
her two daughters and their shelter dog. Read more of her story at stepville.com.
How bad would things get if everyone stopped vaccinating their kids?
One of the most recent videos takes viewers on a 4-minute journey
through a world without vaccines. We have all heard people say,
“Vaccines cause Autism.”
“There are so many toxins in vaccines.”
“I want to control what is put into my child’s body.”
With so many people believing that vaccination is a personal choice, many people fail to realize the impact of their decisions.
The video helps viewers understand that not vaccinating affects the
entire community. Viewers are reminded that vaccines help protect the
most vulnerable people in our communities from contracting preventable
diseases.
Social media has created a world where misinformation spreads
rapidly. Due to the misinformation, people wrongly believe that vaccines
are not safe. However, the video shows viewers that the world without
vaccines would be far more dangerous. A world without vaccines would
pose a considerable threat to the health and survival of infants and
children.
Misinformation is not the only reason people opt not to vaccinate.
The producers say that many people are ignorant to the severity of the
diseases or how much the diseases can impact people in society.
A few statistics provided in the film outline the impact on our community:
48,000 hospitalizations due to the measles per year
Over 500 deaths from the measles each year
10,000 hospitalizations from chicken pox
71 deaths from the chicken pox each year
For individuals that lack a scientific background, the video is
easy to understand. The easy to watch format is probably why the video
has over 9 million views.
Watch below and step into a world without vaccines:
President Donald Trump’s negotiating team may unveil its “deal of the
century” peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians soon after Israel’s
April 9 elections.
Gershon Hacohen, a recently retired Israeli major general and former
commander of Israel’s war colleges, now serves as a senior researcher at
Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Affairs, where
he writes prolifically on the military significance of Israel’s
relations with the Palestinians.
Hacohen is considered one of Israel’s most brilliant strategists. He
is also something of a voice in the wilderness among his fellow
generals, who almost unanimously identify with the left side of the
political and ideological spectrum.
In light of the various media reports that have surfaced over the
past year about the contours of the Trump plan, Hacohen has deep
reservations about the plausibility of the American efforts.
This week, Hacohen published a major study in Hebrew, which received frontpage coverage in
the Hebrew media in Israel. In it, Hacohen analyzed the military
implications for Israel of a possible Israeli withdrawal from Judea and
Samaria – otherwise known as the West Bank – in any deal with the
Palestinians.
In his report, titled, “A Withdrawal from Area C of Judea and Samaria
is an Existential Threat,” Hacohen argued that Israel cannot afford to
withdraw from any territory in Judea and Samaria.
Breitbart News spoke with Hacohen to discuss his paper and what its
implications are for the Trump administration as it prepares to unveil
its peace plan.
Breitbart News: How do you relate to the news that the Trump administration intends to release its peace plan after the election?
Hacohen: We still don’t know what’s in the plan. I
hope it is based on an understanding that we have to abandon the Clinton
Parameters. They render Israel indefensible.
[In December 2000, just weeks before leaving the Oval Office, then-President Bill Clinton presented what he referred to as the “Clinton Parameters”
for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Clinton Parameters
called for an Israeli withdrawal from 98 percent of Judea and Samaria,
along with 100 percent of Gaza, and the division of Jerusalem between
Israel and the Palestinians with Israel surrendering sovereignty over
the Temple Mount to the Palestinians. They called for Israel to swap
sovereign territory with the Palestinians for the residual land in Judea
and Samaria that it did not surrender. And they called for the
Palestinians to establish a fully sovereign state on the lands that
Israel transferred to their control. All U.S. peace plans since 2000
have been based on the Clinton Parameters.]
Hacohen: The Clinton Parameters constitute an
existential threat to Israel. They are a complete repudiation of
then-Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s principles for
peace with the Palestinians. I believe that Rabin’s four principles are
the only rational basis for peace with the Palestinians. They are the
only principles that will ensure that the Palestinians cannot pose an
existential threat to Israel.
Rabin set out his parameters in his speech to the Knesset a
month before he was assassinated on November 4, 1995. In that speech,
Rabin presented the Interim Peace Accord with the Palestinians for
ratification and set out his vision for what a permanent accord would
look like.
Breitbart: What were the four principles?
Hacohen: Rabin’s first principle was that Israel
must remain a Jewish state with an 80 percent Jewish majority. He began
ensuring that in July 1994, when Israel withdrew from most of the Gaza
Strip and set up the Palestinian Authority as an autonomous government
responsible for the Palestinians. The interim agreement, which he
presented to the Knesset a month before he was murdered, ensured the
completion of that mission. By extending Palestinian self-rule to the
Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria in January 1996, the
deal placed more than 90 percent of Palestinians under Palestinian
governance.
Ahmed Tibi, [one of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s advisors and the time
and a member of Knesset today] said then, “The occupation is over.” And
he was right.
Since Israel withdrew its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza has been the de facto Palestinian state. And in Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians have maintained their autonomous governance for 23 years.
Breitbart: The world, and even Israel’s left, continues to insist that the occupation hasn’t ended.
Hacohen:True, but they are wrong. Israel ended the
occupation in 1996. It does not control the lives or the governance of
the Palestinians. The Palestinians control their own lives and their own
governance.
Breitbart: What were the rest of Rabin’s parameters?
His second premise what that Jerusalem must remain united under sole
Israeli sovereignty. Rabin envisioned Jerusalem as being a much larger
municipal area. In his view, it should incorporate the major settlements
of Givat Zeev and Maale Adumim in its municipal boundaries. Rabin
understood that there is no military or practical way of dividing the
city. There is no “no-man’s land” in Jerusalem that would serve as a
natural boundary. Arabs and Jews live together. They cannot be separated
and any attempt to do so would produce a military and civilian
catastrophe.
Rabin’s third premise was that Israel needs to control the Jordan
Valley – broadly construed – in perpetuity. As he saw it, the Jordan
Valley includes all the land along Israel’s eastern frontier with
Jordan, and stretches to the eastern settlement band along the Samarian
mountain ridge in the north, and the Judean hills in the south.
Finally, Rabin said that the Palestinian entity that would be formed
in a final peace deal would be less than a state. It wouldn’t control
the electromagnetic spectrum. It wouldn’t control the airspace. It
wouldn’t have an army.
Breitbart News: Rabin’s premises seem to have been forgotten by history.
Hacohen: “Rabin’s premises were discarded five years after he was
killed. [In July 2000, then-Prime Minister] Ehud Barak ignored all of
them during the Camp David peace summit. Barak conceded Israeli control
over the Jordan Valley. Barak’s peace offer to Arafat divided Jerusalem.
It included no security arrangements. He gave the Palestinians an
entirely sovereign state. And he introduced the concept of “land swaps”
wherein Israel would give the Palestinians land in sovereign Israel in
exchange for retaining Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem built after
1967 and major settlements in Judea and Samaria. The idea was crazy.
Israel has no territory to swap.
Breitbart: So the Clinton parameters were just an extension of Barak’s offer.
Hacohen: That’s right. They were essentially an
expanded version of what Barak offered and Arafat rejected at Camp
David, and then in later negotiations. Arafat also rejected the Clinton
parameters. If Trump’s plan doesn’t get away from the Clinton
Parameters, and the assumptions that inform them, it’s a non-starter.
They are just too dangerous.
Breitbart: Why are the Clinton parameters so
dangerous? Most of the generals in the IDF argue that Israel can walk
away from Judea and Samaria and divide Jerusalem and survive.
Hacohen: One reason, which [former Israeli
ambassador to the UN and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs] Dore Gold explained a decade ago, is that the Clinton
parameters deny Israel defensible borders, in breach of UN Security
Council resolution 242.
[In the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the UN Security Council
passed resolution 242 which set out the basis for an eventual
Arab-Israeli peace. Resolution 242 called for the Arabs to recognize
Israel’s right to exist in “defensible borders.” Shortly thereafter, the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff presented then-President Lyndon Johnson with
a memo summarizing
what such borders entailed. According the their memo, to survive,
Israel needed to maintain control over much of the Sinai Peninsula,
Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights. Without that territory,
Israel lacked the strategic depth to defend itself from future
invasions.]
Hacohen: The other generals ignore the significance
of the joint doctrine our enemies Hamas and Hezbollah have adopted for
fighting Israel. Rabin’s belief was that peace with the Palestinians
would permit Israel to transfer its main military effort to fighting
Hezbollah in the north. Thanks to the joint war doctrine that Hezbollah
has crafted with Hamas since Israel withdrew from Gaza, Israel cannot
easily neutralize the Palestinians in Gaza in order to free itself to
fight Hezbollah in the north. If Israel withdraws from Judea and
Samaria, we will face a unified enemy on three fronts. And that will be a
disaster.
Breitbart: But the other generals claim that Israel
is strong enough to manage this threat, and it is safe to withdraw from
Judea and Samaria. What are they not seeing?
Hacohen: They think that we are much stronger than
our enemies, but when a thousand Lilliputians tied Gulliver down, he was
tied down. There are a thousand connections between Hamas in Gaza and
Hezbollah in Lebanon. If we leave Judea and Samaria, it will be
incorporated into their war doctrine. And if we have three fronts, it
will be a disaster. It is a threat that Israel won’t be able to surmount
because it won’t be able to free the forces to fight Hezbollah in the
north as its main effort.
Israel’s coastal plain doesn’t have the depth to protect the country.
Without Judea and Samaria, Israel cannot defend Tel Aviv. My claim is
that even in the age of peace we canI’t take the chance because we don’t
know what tomorrow will bring.
Breitbart: It seems that none of your fellow
generals agree with you. Former Chief of General Staff Lt. General Benny
Gantz is running as a peace candidate. And three other former chiefs of
staff may join him in his political party. Why don’t they see this?
Hacohen:Part of the issue is the sociological. The
leftist paradigm, that Israel can give up everything for peace, is the
ruling paradigm. Part of the answer is ignorance of military affairs.
They have not studied the wars of the past twenty years. They haven’t
studied the war in Ukraine, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. Maybe if they
studied them, they’d agree with me.
Part of the answer is that they simply don’t understand that the
world has changed since 1967. Some of my colleagues claim that if we
withdraw to the pre-Six Day War boundaries and the Palestinians attack
us, we can just repeat the Six Day War. That’s like saying that if we
all walked to the edge of the Red Sea and asked God to part it again
that it would happen. That isn’t strategic analysis.It’s fantasy.
I have closely studied the Hezbollah-Hamas war doctrine. They created
armed forces that can negate Israel’s comparative advantages as a
hybrid military force. Anyone who understands this threat recognizes
that Israel is hard-pressed to respond to this doctrine and force
structure when we face it in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel has no answer to this doctrine if it is also applied to Judea
and Samaria. To defeat Hezbollah, Israel needs to stay in Judea and
Samaria. Otherwise, in time of war, it will be unable to deploy its main
force in the North.
Breitbart: At base, your colleagues believe that the way to reach peace is to separate from the Palestinians.
Hacohen: My colleagues suffer from the same
groupthink in relation to the Palestinians, and to our strategic
environment more generally, as our predecessors suffered from in the
period leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was that groupthink
that left Israel unprepared for that war.
Regarding separation, [then-U.S. peace negotiator Martin] Indyk
[under Clinton] said, “Good fences make good neighbors.” And my fellow
generals agreed.
“But that is entirely wrong. The neighbors in question aren’t two
ranchers in Texas that go to the same church every Sunday morning. What
happened with Gaza is that Israel built a wall to defend itself from
Hamas. But instead of protecting Israel, it protected Hamas. It allowed
Hamas to build a military organization because the fence protected them
from [the] IDF. The fence created a reality according to which every
action by the IDF taken beyond the fence is a declaration of war.
In Judea and Samaria we don’t have a binary understanding of space –
ours or theirs. We have a hybrid system. Jewish and Arab villagers
living side by side is a better arrangement. It enables the IDF to carry
out small military operations. Today Israeli forces can operate in
Nablus every night. To do that in Gaza, you need a cabinet decision. If
we lose the freedom of action in Judea and Samaria, it will be a
disaster.
The generals’ second assumption is that if a new threat emerges, the
Israeli government will be free to deploy troops to Palestinian
territory to defend against it. What we learned from Gaza is that the
possibility of entering isn’t easy.
Third, they believe that the IDF’s superiority will bring victory
decisively and quickly, just as it did in the 1967 Six Day War. This is
false. It’s not the IDF is weaker than the combined forces of its
enemies. It is simply that Hamas and Hezbollah have developed a doctrine
that plays to their advantages while neutralizing many of Israel’s
advantages.
Finally, the generals believe that withdrawing from Judea and Samaria
will give Israel the international legitimacy to fight. This is also
false. We learned it from all the post-Gaza withdrawal operations – Cast
Lead, Protective Edge, all of them.
Rather than receive the support of the international community, we
have been vilified as war criminals for defending ourselves in the face
of massive missile attacks.
In other words, all of their premises are incorrect.
Breitbart:The news reports of
the Trump plan indicate that it expects Israel to withdraw from the
vast majority of Judea and Samaria, and divide Jerusalem.
Hacohen:I saw the reports. I also saw that the Trump administration denied them.
But they are a source of worry. Because if they are true, they indicate
that the Trump team has learned nothing from the past. And if they do
go forward with something that looks like what has been reported, then
their plan is a non-starter.
The man described by the Jewish News
as the “Rabbi of Hate”, Yosef Mizrachi, has been planning a visit to the
UK. No doubt he hoped that the universal condemnation that he attracted
from everyone from Chief Rabbi Mirvis to the National Autistic Society
in 2016 has died down enough to allow him to slide into Manchester for a
series of lectures. In the last day or so his platform at the
(state-funded) Beis Yaakov school has been removed and other lectures at
a local kosher restaurant have been cancelled after local uproar and
unflattering press coverage.
Rabbi Mizrachi is perhaps the best
illustration we have in the Jewish community of the manner in which the
internet provides a platform through which extremist discourse can reach
a worldwide audience. He is also a good example of the power of the
politics of outrage.
Mizrachi is best known as an internet
preacher, although he has recently published a book. He might best be
described as, essentially, a clown. Not unlike his fellow travellers in
other religions or in politics, he plays to the gallery. His messages
are both simple and clear, delivered with showmanship, in the
expectation that the lack of critical faculties, education and
discernment in his audience will save him from serious challenge. He is
also a bully who threatens his critics with the fires of Gehinnom or “a
thousand times Auschwitz” when challenged. Like a bully, he backs down
when faced with opposition from powerful organisations.
Here are some of Mizrachi’s greatest hits:
“Down syndrome, autistic and any other problem it’s a punishment as a result of a previous life”
“Mixed
parties bring tragedies to our children, there’s more accidents, there’s
more cancer, every minute there’s a new Jew who gets cancer
in the world, every minute. And that’s because of the way the women
dress, and that’s because of the sins that guys and girls makes
together”
A non-virgin girl is “like an open bottle of Coke”, a “used product”
The gay professor in the university (makes “mincing” gesture) ooo! You a rabbi! We are in the 21st century!”
“Chinese (people),
it’s one copy machine from 7/11 make 2 billion copies, all of them
straight black hair, yellow skin, eyes like this… If I showed you I had
in my computer, a picture of 20 Chinese, all of them twins!”
What is significant about Mizrachi is
not what he says. His core theology is largely warmed-over popular
mysticism extrapolated from the Zohar’s wilder flights or, at best,
bowdlerised aggadic speculation. Rather, it is the attitude of his
supporters. Under Mizrachi’s tutelage, a set of newly religious,
swivel-eyed bigots has emerged. Mizrachi’s attitudes to women, race,
sexuality, authority and international politics speak to their craving
for certainty and uniformity in a world that they find challenging and
complex. He speaks to those who yearn for “The Truth”. And Mizrachi has
all The Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything. Do as he says:
everything will be better. You will be the Elect. The Few. The Pure. G!D
Is on your side and soon your prejudices will be justified by Divine
Retribution.
It is the patterns of discourse that
reveal the commonalities between religious and political extremists.
Nobody is claiming that Mizrachi’s followers are planning a campaign of
bombs and stabbings. He is neither Hitler nor Nasrallah. But extremism
is not just about violence: a view that is shared by the UK Government.
It is about the creation of an environment dominated by fear and hatred
of the other, a self-imposed ghetto of isolation whose walls are
constructed from paranoia and ideological conformity. Like all such
extremist societies, evildoers are protected as long as they belong to
the right club, the criticism of authority is punished without mercy and
the reins of power are in the hands of a self-perpetuating élite.
Mizrachi’s extremism is another
ideology of protest. It comes from same deep vat of bile,
self-justification and the desire for privilege that powers both the far
Right and the far Left. It is a view that spurns complexity, subtlety
and thoughtfulness. It is significant that the loudest argument it can
marshal in its own defence is a supposed appeal to free speech. Mizrachi
is presented, like ‘Tommy Robinson’, David Irving, George Galloway and
David Icke as someone who The Powerful And The Politically Correct want
to silence. It is the classic “punching up” positioning: “What are you
scared of? He only speaks the truth!”
This argument is transparently
self-serving and hypocritical. Mizrachi was quick to join the vicious
and unjustified lynch campaign against Senior Rabbi Dweck. He is happy
to call for the ‘cancellation of democracy’ to suit his agenda. He
believes that the ultimate arbiter of world Judaism should be the
unaccountable nonagenarians of the Jerusalem-based ultra-orthodox Eda
Haredis religious court. His stated positions leave one in little doubt
that were his political programme to be implemented, it would result in a
sort of rabbinic ISIS, a “caliphate of the gedolim”. We spent years in
the UK ignoring extremist rhetoric as a sort of joke for credulous
fools. Continuing to indulge it is a foolhardy strategy.
Mizrachi has been loudly opposed
throughout the Jewish community. It is gratifying to see that common
decency is not dead and that so many Jews are prepared to fight to
preserve civil discourse and oppose extremism and internal
radicalisation.
To quote the journalist Jenni Frazer, “British Jews know offensive bigotry when they see it.”
Fresh challenge for Charedi schools in France as government confirms teaching about LGBT people will be compulsory
French government says new relationships and sex education must be 'inclusive of all pupils'
Charedi
schools face a fresh challenge as the government confirmed plans to
make teaching about LGBT people a compulsory part of the new
relationships and sex education (RSE) curriculum.
Intensive
lobbying by strictly Orthodox groups following the Department for
Education’s publication of draft RSE guidelines has failed to win a
religious exemption.
Charedi leaders are already in dispute with
Ofsted over demands that schools should teach LGBT awareness as part of
the British values curriculum.
But RSE effectively opens up a
second front. In its response to a public consultation, the DfE said on
Monday: “Pupils should be able to understand the world in which they are
growing up, which means understanding that some people are LGBT, that
individuals and their relationships should be respected, and that the
law affords them and their relationships recognition and protections.”
While
parents will retain the right to withdraw children up to the age of 15
from some classes, that will apply only to the sex education component
of RSE. DfE documents emphasise there is "no right to withdraw" from
relationships or health education.
Schools will have some
flexibility in deciding what age to introduce children to LGBT issues
and be able to take account of their own religious ethos.
But Monday’s document offers no scope to ignore this subject altogether, as Charedi leaders have argued for.
Schools should ensure RSE is inclusive to all pupils, whatever their sexuality
The
DfE said: “We believe that schools should ensure RSE educates pupils
about the world in which they are growing up and is inclusive to all
pupils, whatever their developing sexuality or identity, bearing in mind
the age, development and religious backgrounds of their pupils.”
But
there is a chink of light for the Charedi establishment. The RSE
guidelines will have to go to Parliament for approval, leaving time for
conservative religious groups to lobby MPs for amendments.
Also on
Monday, a parliamentary debate, triggered by a petition supported by
the Strictly Orthodox and other faith groups, considered whether the
right of parental withdrawal should extend to the whole of RSE.
If that were to be adopted, then Charedi schools could simply plead a mass withdrawal by parents.
Shimon Cohen, speaking on behalf of one Strictly Orthodox group, the Torah Education Committee, found some grounds of hope.
The
group, he said, was "encouraged by the government’s commitment that
these matters will not have to be addressed at primary level and that at
secondary level, a right to withdraw remains, with headteachers
empowered to discern how these issues are addressed.
"In
particular, the crucial recognition that parents are the primary
teachers of their children will help to ensure that their wishes are
respected. We appreciate the time and effort the government and senior
officials have taken to consult with the Jewish community on this
sensitive subject."
But the TEC remained wary that Ofsted would
"maintain the responsibility to police the implementation of the
guidelines and we will remain alert to their active role in promoting
and advancing lifestyles that go against traditional Torah teachings.
Much remains to be done.”
Chinuch UK, the Charedi educational
umbrella group, advised schools that it would be open to them "to
determine what content belongs in relationships education and what
content belongs in sex education. Schools will be able to include LGBT
teaching within sex education if that is what parents feel is
appropriate."
The group, explaining its understanding was based on
briefings with DfE officials, was satisifed that "the months of quiet
and persistent diplomatic efforts... have led to a postiive outcome".
But
Shraga Stern, the Stamford Hill-based campaigner who has been at the
forefront of attempts to revise the guidelines, drew little comfort. "
We are worse off today than we were yesterday," he said. "There is no
question of us teaching about different types of familiy, not in primary
schools and not in secondary schools."
He added, "This is a very
sad outcome in terms of religious tolerance in this country. The
Orthodox community will now have to consider what further steps it could
take to protect age-old parental rights."
Edwin Shuker, the Board
of Deputies vice-president for community and education, said: “It was a
positive step that the Department for Education’s new proposed
legislation will retain a measure of flexibility that will allow many
different Jewish schools to act according to their ethos, although we
note that the new guidance will continue to pose challenges for Strictly
Orthodox secondary schools."
The Board, he said, welcomed “the
focus on child safety and safeguarding for all of the protected
characteristics as outlined under the Equalities Act 2010. As the new
legislation comes into effect in 2020, we will continue to monitor how
this affects schools in the community and how they are inspected.”
Protected characteristics include same-sex orientation and gender reassignment.
There will be unease in some schools within our community.
Rabbi
David Meyer, executive director of Partnerships for Jewish Schools,
said it "strongly supports the importance of teaching every child
tolerance and respect and especially with regards to the all the
protective characteristics including LGBT. We also recognise the
importance of every school having a support system to support children
that may be questioning their own sexuality."
Pajes was "pleased
to see that the DfE has taken into consideration our concerns regarding
age appropriate education in ensuring primary schools will not be
forced to teach children at a young age details of sexual
relationships," he said. "There will, however, need some clarification
as to what Ofsted will require be taught within relationship
education."
There would also be "unease in some schools within
our community regarding the requirements at secondary level," he added.
"However, the determination as to is considered age appropriate should
in our view be determined by the governing bodies and school leadership
teams, in consultation with parents, and not legislated by government."
Rabbi
Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism, supported "the
government initiative to make comprehensive relationship and sex
education compulsory for all school children.
While responsibility
remains primarily with parents, research shows this is often hit and
miss and the education system needs to prepare young people for the
complexities of modern living."
Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers, Reform
Judaism's community educator, welcomed "this new compulsory focus on
mental health, diverse relationships and keeping safe online, reflecting
Reform Jewish values and practices. It is right that all children and
young people have the opportunity to build resilience and understanding
of these crucial issues and many of our Progressive and cross-communal
Jewish schools already do much of this work."
"Furthermore, obsession blinds a person to other flaws in the community
that require redress. Those who exclusively find fault with the left or
the right obviously fail to appreciate the complexity of most questions
in which each side has problems and weaknesses. One good example is R.
Gordimer’s sharing links to several glowing hespedimfor
Rav Yisrael Belsky. A reader of his post will not discover that R.
Belsky publically defended a confessed sexual abuser and accused the
parents of the victim, who later had to move out of Lakewood, of mesirah for going to the police. Obsession with the problems on the left blinds a person to deep moral flaws on the right."
"I am distressed that students are taught to belittle the discoveries of science..."
I Thought the Greeks Lost
by Dovid Landesman
Published November 2010 - Rabbi Landesman has since passed away. Yehi Zichro Boruch.
For
many years, the Torah Umesorah Annual Dinner was scheduled for the week
of Chanukah. One year, R. Gedaliah Schorr zt’l, rosh yeshiva of Torah
Vodaath, and at the time, the only member of the organization’s Rabbinic
Advisory Board who spoke unaccented and fluent English, was invited to
give the keynote address. The master of ceremonies, when introducing Rav
Schorr, decided to use the opportunity to offer his take on the
educational needs of the country. In his lengthy remarks, he challenged
Torah Vodaath to open a college and “show how it should be done.” When
it was finally his turn to speak, Rav Schorr stood silently at the
podium for a moment, a pensive expression on his face. He then turned
toward the m.c. with an enormous smile and said: “You know, I was under
the impression that we defeated the Greeks!”
(He was among other rabbis that signed a letter in 1946 approving the opening of a Yeshiva College under the auspices of Torah Vodaath - Moreover, one needed a Bachelors degree from a recognized university to meet the entrance requirements for the proposed American Hebrew Theological University. Rav Shraga Feivel passed away before he would be able to realize the opening of AHTU. P.M.)
Click On Images to Enlarge:The photos are add-ons by me.
In 1946, America's Top Non-Hasidic Haredi
Rabbis Wanted To Form A Jewish University –
For The First Time Ever: ENTIRE PLANS WITH THE NY BOARD OF REGENTS APPROVAL BELOW:
The relationship
between am Yisrael and Greece has always been somewhat equivocal. Greece
is counted as one of the four nations [along with Bavel, Persia and
Rome/Edom] who have subjected Israel to exile, yet throughout the period
when we were subservient to Greece, we were never physically absent
from the land of Israel. Moreover, the initial acceptance of Greek
domination was passive. Alexander the Great was crossing Eretz Yisrael
on his way to battle the Persians for world domination when Shimon
ha-Tzaddik – kohen gadol and leader of the sanhedrin – reached a
political agreement with him to insure that Yerushalayim was not
“accidentally” destroyed by the Greek legions as they made their way
east. The physical conditions of exile under the Greeks were benign
until the period of the Chashmonaim when the Jews revolted against their
rule; a revolt that was in great part a reaction to the assimilation of
Greek values by a significant portion of the Jewish population.
On
one hand, Greek culture is seen as particularly depraved. The worship
of beauty – especially of the human form – and the emphasis on
aesthetics [art and literature] is considered to be the embodiment of
the triumph of the physical over the spiritual. The proclivity towards
homosexual behavior, the lack of elementary tzniut at public events, the
vivid descriptions of intimacy among multiple gods in a series of
classic fables – all of these would seem to point to a culture that is
the absolute antithesis of Judaism. Thus, it is surprising to find that
Greek language is considered to be second only to lashon ha-kodesh in
its intrinsic holiness. I would expect that Chazal would have us avoid
such cultural assimilation at all cost.
Yaft Elokim l’Yeffet
v’yishkon b’ahalei Shem – God granted beauty to Yeffet so that it might
dwell in the tents of Shem. The simple explanation would suggest that
there is an entire area of Divine wisdom – the beauty of Yeffet – which
was made accessible to Shem through the good offices of Yavan [Greece],
the scion of Yeffet. Beauty has intrinsic value, for we find Chazal
(Shabbat 131a) interpreting the verse zeh keli v’anvehu – this is my God
and I shall beautify Him (Shemot 15:2) as indicating that in performing
a mitzvah, one should do so in the most aesthetically pleasing manner
possible. Given the clear link between the obsession with aesthetics in
Greek life and the excesses of Greek culture, one might expect this to
be less than important.
In building the mishkan, Moshe was
commanded to specifically utilize the craftsmanship of Betzalel because
he was blessed with extraordinary artistic talents in a wide variety of
fields. Betzalel is considered to be “filled with wisdom” because he
knew how to sew, weave and embroider magnificent tapestries – skills
that as far as I know, no contemporary yeshiva has ever encouraged!
True, these were undoubtedly inherent rather than learned qualities – I
would be very surprised to discover that Betzalel had been enrolled as a
student of the Ramses School of Design prior to yetziyat Mitzrayim –
but they are nevertheless talents that are not usually considered to be
part of Torah nor are they – or related fields like music or
architecture – part of the yeshiva curriculum.
In general,
Judaism does not seem to completely reject the absorption of values from
outside sources. Chazal declare chachmah bagoyim, ta’amin – recognize
that the nations are in possession of wisdom; i.e., there are valuable
fields of knowledge that are accessible without recourse to Torah. This
would not a priori mean that these fields of knowledge are unavailable
to one who has never been exposed to secular studies. In theory, one
could utilize his natural talents and eventually achieve the same
results. As far as I know, there is not even an illusion to the healing
properties of Vitamin E in Torah shebichtav or sheb’aal peh.
Nevertheless, even if I had never been exposed to the scientific process
of observation and experimentation through which all pharmacology is
established, I could in time determine the medicinal value of Aloe vera
on my own. Similarly, the complex nano-technology which allows for the
manufacture of microscopic devices is ultimately a result of the
scientific process that could theoretically be developed without relying
on the instruction of others. Obviously, however, it is more efficient
to utilize the publicized findings of others rather than repeat
experiments by yourself. But is this determination the totality of what
Chazal had in mind when they spoke of chochmah bagoyim?
I would
posit that chochmah bagoyim ta’amin means that we should accept that
this chochmah is valid even though it comes from non-Torah sources.
These fields of knowledge do not depend upon Divinely revealed wisdom
accessible only through Torah; they are a byproduct of the Divine gifts
of intelligence and creativity with which all mankind was imbued and
which everyone can develop to the extent that his potential allows. If
you decide that you will ignore scientific breakthroughs because they
are not rooted in Torah and instead engage in your own research and
experimentation so as to be sure that your life is al taharat ha-kodesh,
then know that you will be guilty of a grievous amount of unnecessary
bittul Torah.
I am distressed that students are taught to
belittle the discoveries of science, claiming that we have no need for
it since hafoch bah, hafoch bah, d’kulo bah – study it (Torah), study
it, for everything all [knowledge] is in it. I have often heard students
– and quite a few rebbis – point to the mathematical and medical genius
of the Chazon Ish as proof that there is no need to teach our children a
core curriculum of general studies. Glibly, they claim: “Look how much
the Chazon Ish knew without ever having gone to college!” My invariable
reply is that the Chazon Ish also achieved an incredible level of
mastery in all fields of Torah despite [or perhaps because of] the fact
that he never attended a yeshiva!
There is another factor that
needs to be analyzed when considering the extent of general knowledge to
which one allows himself to be exposed. Our ability to efficiently
utilize the wisdom of the scientific process is dependent upon a basic
familiarity with the fundamentals of math, science, and foreign
languages augmented by reading comprehension and writing proficiency.
Most of these areas of knowledge are not included in the basic cheder
curriculum in Eretz Yisrael. I wonder whether the excesses that the
scientific method is judged to have brought to society have led to a
rejection of the notion that there still is wisdom among the goyim.
Casey
Stengel once wisely commented that “nostalgia aint what it used to be.”
Nonetheless, I think that it is worthwhile to look back and see if we
can determine why the yeshivot a few decades ago were apparently more
successful in producing talmidim who saw no contradiction in straddling
the divide between Torah study and general education.
Forty or
fifty years ago, parents expected the yeshivot – at least the
non-chassidic mosdot – to provide their children with a decent secular
education, for the majority of them intended that their sons continue
with professional studies after they graduated high school. To be sure
there were a number of students who did not do so – if I recall
correctly, approximately 30% of the beit midrash bachurim in Torah
Vodaath did not attend college – but as a general rule, this was the
expected path.
For the most part, talmidim learned two sedarim
in the yeshiva and then attended college from about 5:30-10:30 two or
four nights a week. Many then continued onto graduate studies in a
variety of fields, including law, accounting, business, medicine,
engineering, psychology and the sciences. For the most part, and there
were of course exceptions, they remained bnei Torah and have built homes
that are paradigms of Torah and chessed. I would say without hesitation
that in the overwhelming majority of cases, their homes are more
strictly observant than those of their parents. Their immersion in the
world of general knowledge did not erode their level of observance.
Did
Rav Schorr see them as casualties of Greek culture? I obviously cannot
speak for him, but can only convey the impressions I have based on what I
heard from him. Rav Schorr also served as head of Beit Medrash Elyon in
Spring Valley – which was a parallel institution to Lakewood – but he
made the bachurim in Torah Vodaath feel that we were no less bnei Torah
than the students there. He stressed that the primary responsibility we
had was to establish our own identity as bnei Torah. Some talmidim
learned all day, others learned less while still others were kovea itim
for a defined period based on the time they had. But we were all equal,
for Torah was the mirror which we looked at when we wanted to see our
image.
The yeshivot – and roshei yeshivot – were able to convey
to the talmidim a sense of proportion. General knowledge was never
glorified but neither was it disparaged. The atmosphere in the yeshiva’s
beit midrash was eclectic; one year my morning seder chavruta was the
son [and eventual successor to] a prominent chassidic rebbe while my
afternoon chavruta was destined to become the chairman of the psychology
department at a well known local university. While the latter did not
wear the same garb as the former, there was very little difference in
their world views. The fact that they chose different “career” paths did
not translate itself into a parting of their ways. The talmidim felt
that we shared a similar commitment to Torah despite our diverse
backgrounds and aspirations which created a ruach within the yeshiva
that helped us when we were outside its doors.
Certain behaviors
were considered to be “conduct unbecoming” a Torah Vodaath boy and this
self-imposed and accepted code was a great source of support during the
times we found ourselves on the college campus. We did not need a va’ad
harabbanim to set these standards for us; the roshei yeshiva –
especially Rav Schorr and Rav Pam zt’l – made us feel that they trusted
us to do what was right. Perhaps the atmosphere on college campuses was
somewhat less hostile than it is today. Personally, I doubt that the
yetzer hara is stronger than it was then; it is the methodology that has
changed.
Today a bachur who leaves the beit midrash to study or
work is burdened by a sense of guilt; either because he is led to feel
that he must be a failure because he does not have sufficient motivation
to continue or because he lacks the mesirat nefesh (or deep pockets) to
survive the economic rough spots. That leaves him with few choices. He
can either plod on and increase his discomfort and sense of frustration,
masking it behind a false sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, or
he can break away – partially or completely. Without a sense of
accomplishment or identification with the yeshiva, the student seeks
those signs of success in the world of general studies. This is an
unnecessary tragedy that is the basic ingredient that allows the
contemporary Greeks their victory. Rejected in his own world, he seeks
acceptance and recognition elsewhere.
At what point does a focus
on the absorption of general knowledge and culture lead us to the point,
in Rav Schorr’s words, of providing the Greeks with a belated victory
and at what point does it fit into the rubric of chachmah bagoyim
ta’amin? Can we establish a quantifiable amount of general knowledge
desirable or is it a moving target that depends upon the era and
location of the community? At what point do we risk becoming assimilated
rather than acculturated?
I’m not sure whether there are clear
parameters that can be drawn. In one community in which I lived one of
the local roshei yeshiva would prepare his shiurim while listening to
Bach and Beethoven. I doubt that the people there would have been as
understanding if he had done so to the music of the Beatles.
Unquestionably lines have to be drawn; just as there are chochmot that
we can draw upon to enhance our Jewish lives, there are those that can
be misused and become destructive and dangerous. The trick, and
challenge, is to develop the skills to differentiate between them.
The
Greeks succeeded because they were able to convince the Jews that
adherence to Torat Moshe was primitive and uncultured. The contemporary
fallout from the yeshivot suffer from a similar damaged self-image.
Distanced for many reasons from the spiritual light of Torah – as
expressed by commitment to Torah study – which they cannot appreciate
and which brings them little satisfaction, they are easy victims for
seduction by the neon lights of the outside world. The antidote,
however, is not to lock them behind high walls and deny them the
benefits of general knowledge; that would be self-defeating as well as
increasingly unfeasible in a technology driven world.
At the
very least schools, mechanchim, mechanchot as well as parents must be
sure to reinforce the sense of self-worth of each and every talmid –
reassuring them that they all have their own portion in Torah – portions
that are of equal import provided that they are the paths that are
right for each child’s potential and ability. Chanoch lanoar al pi darko
– instruct the child according to his path – based on the road that he
can follow, not on a one size fits all course of study. For some
students that might be defined as spending years in a kollel mastering
many blatt gemara, for others it might be applying the lessons of
Choshen Mishpat that they have been taught in yeshiva in their
businesses or medical practices. Yaft Elokim l’Yeffet – the outside
world has considerable beauty. It can be threatening when glorified as
an end unto itself or it can be enriching when it is properly brought
l’ohalei Shem – to dwell within the tents of Shem.
[Rabbi
Dovid Landesman resides in Ramat Beit Shemesh where he comments on the
foibles of life in Israel. His collection of essays, There Are No
Basketball Courts in Heaven is available in Jewish bookstores and his
new book, Food for Thought – No Hechsher Required, will be published
b’ezrat Hashem this winter.]
The NY Board Of Regents Files are add-ons by me to Rabbi Landesman's essay.
In 1946, America's Top Non-Hasidic Haredi
Rabbis Wanted To Form A Jewish University –
For The First Time Ever, Here's Proof:
The questions posed with regard to problematic contemporary conversions are threefold in nature:
Rabbi Bleich
(1) Is it permissible for rabbinical courts to accept prospective candidates for conversion when it appears that application is made, not out of religious conviction, but as a matter of convenience, e.g., to facilitate marriage with a Jewish partner?
(2)
Is a conversion of convenience, i.e., one undertaken for marriage or
other ulterior motive in which the petitioner obviously has no intention
of abiding by the precepts of Judaism, a valid one?
(3)
Granting the validity and propriety of the conversion itself, is it
permissible for the convert to enter into marriage with a Jewish spouse
with whom the convert has consorted prior to conversion?
Let me be clear once again, this is about the rabbinical organizations and the various rabbis that conduct fraudulent conversions and has nothing to do with any individuals whatsoever.
Brooklyn yeshiva agrees to pay $2.1M to victims of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's child sex abuse
A
Brooklyn yeshiva quietly became the first Orthodox Jewish school to
compensate students who claim they were molested by a teacher when it
agreed to pay more than $2 million to two boys and their families in
2014 — and now it may be the first Orthodox school to default on a
settlement with sex abuse victims.
Yeshiva-Mesivta
Torah Temimah, a prominent Orthodox school on Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway,
agreed to pay one former student $900,000 and the other $1.35 million
in a settlement reached in October 2014.
The
agreements were originally confidential, but they became public earlier
this month after lawyers for the boys filed papers in Brooklyn Supreme
Court that said the school failed to make payments due earlier this
year.
"This
is the first time the public has known about these payments," said
sex-abuse expert Marci Hamilton, a lawyer and a distinguished scholar at
the University of Pennsylvania. "This is the first settlement with a
yeshiva that has been publicly disclosed. I was surprised as anybody to
see this.
A prominent Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn agreed to pay an
unprecedented $2.1 million to two former students who charged their
teacher — accused serial molester Rabbi Joel Kolko — of sexually
assaulting them, The Post has learned.
Kolko’s case marks the first time a New York yeshiva has paid off victims of sex abuse, experts said.
“This is unheard of. I am not aware of any other settlements,” said
Rabbi Yosef Blau, a spiritual adviser at Yeshiva University in Manhattan
and longtime victims advocate.
Secret settlements between Yeshiva Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway and
two boys — 6 years old when molested — were filed in Brooklyn Supreme
Court a week ago when the yeshiva failed to make payments.
Lawyers for the two plaintiffs filed a judgment for $1 million — the
total the yeshiva still owes both boys for the trauma they suffered.
Both lawsuits alleged the yeshiva and its leader, Rabbi Lipa
Margulies, knew for decades that Kolko was molesting students, but chose
to keep him on as an elementary teacher and “give him unfettered access
to young children.”
Kolko allegedly had boys sit on his lap and fondled their genitals.
For 25 years, the yeshiva received “multiple credible allegations of
pedophilia” against Kolko. It covered them up and even threatened
families who dared to complain, the suits charged.
Kolko, now 70, got a controversial deal from then-Brooklyn District
Attorney Charles Hynes in May 2012: He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor
counts of child endangerment and did not have to go to jail or register
as a sex offender.
