Smash Your Attitude, Not Your iPhone

by Rabbi Gil Student

Recent news stories about wedding witnesses disqualified for their smartphones and a rabbi-led iPhone smashing ceremony need not generate feelings of alienation among moderates. We all need to remember a simple message: Even a united global Torah community has sub-communities with different customs and standards. What works for some people may be totally inappropriate for us. However, responsible Internet usage is a universally obligation, even if it takes different forms in different communities.

Over the past few months, Torah leaders have reminded us that filters are not enough for a kosher online experience. While someone with enough time and skill can always bypass a filter, even those with no such desire or ability need more. Filters, at their best, keep out the shmutz and other inappropriate websites. Frum Jews have a higher standard than that. As we rapidly transition to a digital age, we have to remember that people are still people and the Torah is still our guide.

R. Mordechai Kamenetsky tells the story of people paying a shivah call to his grandfather, Reb Yaakov. The large crowd required additional chairs. As individuals went to the basement to bring chairs, Reb Yaakov encouraged them to take a chair for someone else. In that way, he explained, you can turn a simple necessary act into an act of chesed. We, too, can raise our time online from a necessary chore into a mitzvah, an opportunity to help others spiritually.

Internet Is Necessary

Calls for restricting Internet usage to business needs will fail. We increasingly accomplish our household needs online. We not only shop, pay our bills, file our insurance claims and the like on the Internet but we also learn online about medical symptoms, home maintenance, travel destinations and much more. Information has been overwhelmingly transferred to the Internet, which has in turn become the primary information resource for our everyday lives. If you want to know a museum’s hours for a summer Sunday family trip, you check its website. If you need directions to a wedding hall, you use Google Maps. And if you want to know whether New York State vehicular law allows a u-turn from the right lane, you search for it online.

More than that, Torah sails through the cyberwaves in previously unimaginable ways. Some yeshivas place recordings of every single shiur online so alumni and others can learn from their rabbeim. I can access literally hundreds of thousands of hours, perhaps millions, of high-level shiurim on my smartphone. One website provides the entire text of Tanach, Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmud Bavli, Yerushalmi and Mishneh Torah. Another contains tens of thousands of sefarim for free download. Ten years ago, I was a frequent visitor of the New York Public Library’s collection of obscure sefarim in Midtown Manhattan. Now I just download them onto my iPad. The process of learning has not changed but the method of accessing texts and classes has, particularly for those who have left yeshiva.

Time Is Precious

We cannot avoid the Internet so we must embrace it with basic guidelines. In addition to the filters and image blockers we install, three Torah principles must stand at the forefront of our minds. The first is bitul zman, wasting time. Everyone needs down time to relax, shmooze, recharge your batteries and allow for random thought association. We are more creative when our minds have some time to expand beyond our normal corridors of thought.

But beware of the Internet time hole. Websites make money by keeping you online for long stretches of time. The easiest way to counter that effort is keeping a log of how much time you spend online each day, outside of work-related activity. Hashem gave you enough common sense to know that spending hours on end each night engaged in leisure activity is simply wrong. It is a waste of your short time in this world. When you keep a log, you gain the power to make informed decisions about how best to spend your time.

Behave Yourself

Second is tznius. While we often speak of tznius in terms of how we dress, we know that it also applies to how we act. Filters and image blockers can remove pictures that fail our standards of modesty but our conscience must guide our interactions with others. Your online interpersonal conduct must follow the same high standards as your offline public interactions. The language you use, the aggressiveness you exhibit and the intimacy of your interactions with others on the Internet must demonstrate your best behavior. Oversharing, flirting or developing close relationships with members of the opposite gender are just as inappropriate online as off.

Kiddush Hashem

Every interaction we have with others, particularly in public, is an opportunity to make a Kiddush Hashem. With nearly the entire civilized world active on the Internet, your time online is just such an opportunity. Whenever you are online, regardless of which website you are visiting, try to make a Kiddush Hashem. Act with sterling midos, show respect to others, let the whole world know that you and your community–Hashem’s chosen people–serve as positive role models.

You are smart enough to know that even when you are correct, insulting others will offend. You know that honey attracts more than a sting. When you are online, you are in public and need to be the honey that attracts people to the Torah. You must demonstrate that the Torah refines people into exemplary individuals worthy of emulation.

The three Torah concepts we discussed are only some of the many that should guide your Internet use. Most importantly, you have to realize your obligation to rise above the chaos of the Internet, just like your offline behavior rises above levels exhibited on the city street. We must not only avoid improper online behavior but actively show the beauty of a Torah lifestyle. In doing so, we raise our Internet activities into mitzvah acts, spreading Hashem’s glory across the world.

Rabbi Gil Student blogs at TorahMusings.com and maintains a website dedicated to responsible frum Internet usage, InternetInJewishHome.com.

East Ramapo Anti-Semites refuse to allow frum residents to take short cut thru public schools eventhough they pay the school taxes

About eight parents patrolled the grounds of Grandview Elementary for two hours, informing dozens of walkers who were taking a shortcut through the property that they were trespassing and asking them to find another route. A district security officer joined them “We’re concerned that we don’t know who’s walking through … it’s a security issue,” said district critic Peggy Hatton, shielded under an umbrella as rain pelted the grounds around noon. Most of the men and a few women cutting across the school’s expansive back lawn were Orthodox or Hasidic Jews observing the festival of Sukkot, a time when they typically do not drive. Most quietly ignored the parents’ requests and continued walking. “Enforce it equally,” one man called out as he headed toward the Wesley Hills neighborhood behind the school. Another man approached parent Keith Meyers and called him an anti-Semite, which led to an exchange of angry words. “This is what my taxes are paying for,” another man grumbled, as parent and district critic Tony Luciano trained his video camera on the scene. One woman refused to leave the grounds and got into a shouting match with parents. Police were notified but no arrests were made, Ramapo Sgt. Tom Dolan said. The push to keep strangers off school grounds during school hours — in a district whose large Orthodox and Hasidic population walks many places — is nothing new. At least 200 parents have cited concerns about trespassing and alleged other misdeeds in a class-action lawsuit filed against school board members and district officials this summer. Sexual predators are another concern, parents said. Nearly 20 registered sex offenders live within two miles of East Ramapo’s public schools, records show. “At the end of the day, it’s about the safety of our children,” said Cassandra Edwards, a mother of two middle school students who attended Grandview.

Video surfaces of Obama in 2007 suggesting racism slowed aid to post-Katrina New Orleans

In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism

“The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.”

The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s carefully-crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America. The mostly black audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.

Obama gave the speech in the middle of a hotly-contested presidential primary season, but his remarks escaped scrutiny. Reporters in the room seem to have missed or ignored his most controversial statements. The liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan linked to what he described as a “transcript” of the speech, which turned out not to be a transcript at all, but instead the prepared remarks provided by the campaign. In fact, Obama, who was not using a teleprompter, deviated from his script repeatedly and at length, ad libbing lines that he does not appear to have used before any other audience during his presidential run. A local newspaper posted a series of video clips of the speech, but left out key portions. No complete video of the Hampton speech was widely released.

Obama begins his address with “a special shout out” to Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor who nearly derailed Obama’s campaign months later when his sermons attacking Israel and America and accusing the U.S. government of “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color” became public. To the audience at Hampton, Obama describes Wright as, “my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.”

By the time Obama appeared at Hampton, Jeremiah Wright had become a political problem. Wright told The New York Times earlier that year that he would no longer be speaking on the campaign’s behalf because his rhetoric was considered too militant. And yet later in the Hampton speech Obama explicitly defends Wright from unnamed critics, a group he describes as “they”: “They had stories about Trinity United Church of Christ, because we talked about black people in church: ‘Oh, that might be a separatist church,’” Obama said mockingly.

Thousands of sukkahs destroyed as violent storm hits Israel

A rare violent summer storm hit Israel over the first day of Sukkot leaving thousands without power and destroying thousands of sukkahs.

Thousands of people were left without power for hours during the first day of the festival of Sukkot on Sunday night and Monday. High winds brought down power lines in the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak, causing power outages throughout central Israel. Power failures were also reported in some parts of northern Israel, as fallen trees due to strong winds hit electrical wires.

Most power outages extended from a few minutes to about an hour, but in some places the lights

were off for several hours. Israel Electric Company emergency crews worked to ensure that hospitals and defense facilities were able to get power restored first.

 IEC warned residents of the affected neighborhoods not to touch the wires that had fallen to the ground. As many as 9,000 homes were without power much of Monday.

Weather in Israel was unusual for the first day of Sukkot, with cloudy skies and extreme moisture conditions in many parts of the country, with rain falling in the north and center of the country.

The forecast for Tuesday is possible rain, falling temperatures and humidity gradually reduced over the next few days.

Supreme Court Rejects Rubashkin's Appeal of 27-Year Sentence

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a 27-year prison term issued to a former kosher slaughterhouse executive convicted of financial fraud following a huge immigration raid at the Iowa plant.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to consider an appeal filed by former Agriprocessors Inc. vice president Sholom Rubashkin.

He was convicted of a scheme to cheat the Postville plant’s lender out of $27 million by submitting fake invoices that made its finances appear healthier than they were. His arrest came after immigration authorities raided the plant and arrested 389 illegal immigrants.

Rubashkin had argued that U.S. District Judge Linda Reade could not be impartial because she met with investigators to plan the immigration raid. He also argued his prison term was too long for a first-time, nonviolent offender.

Jewish Bastards bless Ahmadinejad (Hitler) and present him with a gift

The film below actually happened in 2007, however they met with Ahmadinejad this year as well.

Reuters and AP use picture of Netanyahu to make him look like Hitler

The National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called two published wire photos of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “ugly, disgusting, and offensive.”

The photos, published within moments of each other by The Associated Press and Reuters, show Netanyahu addressing the United Nations and raising his left arm in a gesture reminiscent of Adolf Hilter’s infamous Nazi salute.

“I can’t believe it, if it in fact happened,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman told The Daily Caller. “I think it is ugly, disgusting, offensive. Strong words to follow.”

The wire photos from The Associated Press and Reuters are in stark contrast with photos of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week. In recent days, Ahmadinejad has frequently been pictured by both news wires flashing a “victory” sign.

Foxman described Netanyahu’s speech overall as effective and a “unique history lesson.”

“All these terms — nuclear bombs, fissionable, centrifuges, red lines — it doesn’t mean anything to most people. He brought it down to a reality,” said Foxman.

Netanyahu used a visual aid a bomb to represent how close Iran is to stockpiling enough highly enriched uranium to construct a nuclear weapon.

“He communicated the message of what a red line is. He delivered a message to a lot of people who either did not pay attention before, or did not understand,” Foxman continued. “I applaud him.”

“There’s talk, talk, talk and nobody really remembers what anybody says. They will remember the picture. They will remember the graphic.”

The Weekly Standard first notedthe AP and Reuters photos on its blog Thursday afternoon. “Of the hundreds of professional photos taken at this speech,” the right-leaning magazine noted, “the AP and Reuters decided to push these onto the wire.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/27/anti-defamation-league-leader-ap-reuters-wire-photos-of-netanyahu-offensive/#ixzz27mnEIIFX

Netanyahu's Speech to the United Nations, Video

YOM KIPPUR ... Kol Nidrei Video!

Henry Kissinger says Israel will not exist in 10 years

Henry Kissinger the former Secretary of State in the United States and current spokesperson on the state of the world, had some dark words for the state of Israel.

Middle East horror, Democratic Party dissing Jerusalem, Washington anti-Israel mentality, Obama busy raising reelection funds with no time for beleaguered Netanyahu, the attitude in the Oval Office toward the Red Line and the vow of Iran to destroy our only friend in that part of the world, is just the latest reasons behind his prediction.

"In 10 years, no more Israel, I repeat: In 10 years, no more Israel," Henry Kissinger said according to a report in the New York Post.

Henry Kissinger is a German-born American author, political scientist, diplomat and businessman.

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he served as national security adviser while later as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. After his term, his opinion was still sought by many presidents and many world leaders.

Kissinger remains an influential figure public. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.