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| Letter From Rav Shach Stating Only Students Who make their Torah "Umnoso" "his trade" should get exemptions, all others must serve in the IDF
By Dov Lipman
Dov Lipman served as a member of Knesset (2013-2015) with the Yesh Atid party. He is the author of seven books about Judaism and Israel, and holds rabbinic ordination from Ner Israel Rabbinical College and a masters in education from Johns Hopkins University. He has been at the forefront of combating religious extremism in Israel and is a leader in efforts to create Jewish unity both in Israel and around the world.
When an ultra-Orthodox young man appears before the IDF draft board to receive his exemption from serving in the army, he does not say “I am ultra-Orthodox.” He declares that “his Torah study is his trade.”
That phrase in Jewish tradition refers to someone who is so dedicated to Torah study that he cannot do anything else. We are talking about unique individuals who separate themselves from the physical world and engage in Torah study alone.
The Talmud teaches that these people are so committed to Torah study that they shouldn’t pause their studies for prayer! The great Rabbi Yochanan comments that this category only applies to someone like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai but it doesn’t apply to people like himself. The Talmud relates that many people tried to live in accordance with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s way of life in which Torah was his trade and he did not work for a living — and they failed.
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Sunday, September 17, 2017
Charedi draft law needed to restore the glory of Torah
Time to Take Back Our Religion, PART 2
A Jewish Father responds to his critics
Last week I posted a letter from an anonymous father and now responds to his critics
I appreciate the feedback, both in support of how I resolved my very real dilemma, and against. Some of you were really passionate. I think that’s great!
Let’s brainstorm together how to collectively get out of this quagmire before our children are totally lost at sea.
The goal of my article was not to divide the community, but rather to rally a response that will raise this dilemma to the rabbinic leadership of our communities as the number one threat to the future of American Orthodox Jewry.
Every Yom Kippur sermon this year, after the appeal is over, of course, should find the rabbis of the shuls standing humbly before the communities, publicly repenting for what they have and have not done this past year to help solve the problem of overpriced Judaism that is slowly bleeding the community dry. If the rabbis won’t lead us out of this problem, then it really is up to us little guys to make it happen on our own. Happy New Year! Now let’s get to work.
So what are the answers everyone is looking for?
New York Times Upset that Harvard Rejected a Women Who Tortured and Murdered Her Own 4 year-old child
Guys, you cannot make this stuff up. This is the new definition of privilege ....
A black woman who kills her child is praised and placed on a pedestal as somebody who is worthy. Being a "published scholar" washes away the brutal torture and beating death of a helpless 4 year old little boy according to NY Times.
What an awful example of humanity. And what an awful, corrupt organization that praises her. And Jones still won't reveal what she did with his body. This women hasn't even demonstrated credible remorse!
I wonder why the Times doesn't hire her as a daycare worker for its employees.
Read below and vomit!
Zionist Group Brings Almost 10,000 Jews Back to Israel with Help From Christians Around the World
Jerome Henri Cohen was born in Paris and he was also born a Jew. But despite his heritage, he was living a secular life, first as a journalist and then as a successful lawyer in the French capital.
Cohen did not feel any discrimination because of his heritage — until he decided to embrace Judaism. Things changed when he asked for time off from work to celebrate the Sabbath and other aspects of practicing his faith proved challenging.
That changed when the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) helped Cohen move to Israel in July where, under Israeli right of return law, he was granted citizenship and is getting help for his first six months in his new homeland, including with housing and employment.
“That’s my dream,” Cohen told Breitbart News of his repatriation to Israel. “That’s what my ancestors wanted.”
In fact, like the organization that helped him come to Israel, Cohen believes his return is fulfilling biblical prophecy that says all Jews will return to the land God promised them.
“We are making history,” Cohen said. “I changed the destiny of my family.”
“It’s huge,” Cohen said, adding that he believes the mission of IFCJ — which embraces the Zionist belief of Jews returning to their ancestral home, with the help of Christians around the world — is healing the rift between the two faiths that has existed since the birth of Jesus and the founding of the Christian church.
“It’s really wonderful to feel that,” Cohen said. “We are doing something that is important for us and for humanity.”
Cohen’s “aliyah,” or immigration to Israel, is part of the larger mission of IFCJ, according to Yael Eckstein, senior vice president of the organization founded in 1983 by her father, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein to “promote understanding between Jews and Christians and build broad support for Israel,” according to its website.
“Christians around the world are able to show their love from Israel and the Jewish people,” Eckstein told Breitbart News.
Eckstein said that her organization is not a fund-raising organization but rather a “bridge-building” group that gathered as much as $150 million a year in donations to help repatriate Jews, help care for the poor in Israel and contribute to the effort to protect Israel from its enemies.
Eckstein said that the interest from Christians around the world to help Israel — especially among Evangelicals — has increased dramatically in recent years, as has the need for Jews to escape persecution around the world. This includes a record number of 26 non-western countries where IFJC is helping Jews repatriate to Israel.
“That has grown dramatically in recent years,” Eckstein said. “We see a rising need to escape these countries.”
Those countries include — for the first time since World War II — Russia, and the Ukraine, where she said Jews now arrive in Israel at least once a week.
In all, Eckstein said, some 10,000 Jews have been brought to Israel.
“We putting in place a whole new reality — tapping into this prophetic reality that is unfolding before our very eyes,” said Eckstein, who has been in Israel for more than a dozen years and all four of her children were born here.
The work of IFCJ also has included building 5,500 bomb shelters and providing food for Israelis in need, Eckstein said, noting that Israel does not have a national food program.
The Jewish American media outlet, The Algemeiner reported on Friday that IFCJ, which is based in Chicago and Jerusalem, will provide $1.5 million to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in annual Rosh Hashanah “Fellowship Gift Cards” to 12,000 IDF soldiers marking the upcoming Jewish New Year.
“The initiative, coordinated in collaboration with the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers and the LIBI Fund, will provide more than 10,000 lone soldiers and soldiers $140 gift cards. Another 2,200 soldiers will receive gift cards worth $100,” the Algemeiner reported.
The cards “will allow the soldiers to celebrate the New Year without the burden of financial stress,” the organizations said in a statement issued last week.
“The vouchers can be used at some 90 major Israeli retail chains to purchase food, clothing, shoes, sporting goods and leisure products,” the Algemeiner reported, adding that 840 soldiers serving in the IDF are from the United States.
Eckstein said the long history of Jews being persecuted and attacked by enemies around the world continues and she said told Breitbart News that she hopes Christians from America come to Israel to see beyond the “fake news” presented by the U.S. media.
“Come visit, come experience, come see the beauty beyond the politics,” Epstein said, adding that she is grateful for Israel-loving people around the world.
“Thank God we are not alone and that there are people who understand the difference between good and evil,” Eckstein said.
Zoltan Hirsch One of Five handicapped New Yorkers behind hundreds of lawsuits
Five New Yorkers in wheelchairs are behind nearly 400 lawsuits brought against small businesses for lacking handicap access.
Such legal claims have been criticized as part of a “cottage industry” of “serial plaintiffs” who target mom-and-pop establishments for quick cash settlements. But others see the suits as helping enforce the American with Disabilities Act.
Wheelchair ramps and bathroom doors are not the only battleground. Two blind New Yorkers have taken the fight online, filing a combined 23 suits against business Web sites that didn’t have screen-reading software for the visually impaired. And a woman cited seven businesses for not allowing her service dog inside.
Zoltan Hirsch, 37, a double amputee from Brooklyn, is hell on wheels for those who fail to make their establishments wheelchair accessible. Since 2010, he has filed suit against 195 businesses ranging from a Soho eyeglass shop to Brooklyn non-kosher bodegas to a Hell’s Non-Kosher Kitchen restaurant.
Friday, September 15, 2017
Sexual-Assault Accusation Shaking Up OTD World ...
A Note about sources for this article: Some of the information here was gleaned from the nominally private Off The Derech Facebook group. Group rules urge members to be mindful of the fact that some members are “still in the closet” and to be respectful of that by “not reposting anything from this group”.
Nevertheless, we have decided to base some of the reportage in this article on what is accessible only to members of the private group, owing to the following:
- The incident has now become a cause celebre among thousand in the OTD sector and beyond, whether intended to or not, and is no longer, de facto, private.
- Where possible we are not reposting content verbatim from the Facebook group, and never with attribution to the real identity of its commenters.
- The accusation was originally posted to a 2,525-member group with the express intent that as many people become aware of it as possible. Many others have been notified through illicit emailing and screenshots. At this point the OTD and the public’s interests are best served through a more complete, accurate, and balanced version of events.
A woman in the OTD community whom we shall call A.B. has publicly accused a fellow man who we shall call C.D. of raping her. Her initial announcement was made on September 11 in the Off The Derech Facebook group:
It is unusual in general and unprecedented in the OTD sector that a supposed rape victim makes her accusation public and names her alleged perpetrator. (The law usually protects the identity of rape complainants in order to encourage them to come forward; hence genuine rape victims who seek justice avail themselves of that protection.) The blunt Facebook post therefore engendered a heated response of 143 likes and 82 comments. Virtually all of the commenters were unquestioningly and unconditionally sympathetic and supportive, even though the accusation did not include any details about the event, e.g. whether A.B. had known C.D. prior to the event, how they went about courting, if any, and whether she had at any point willingly participated in the acts leading up to the intercourse that the A.B. now defines as “rape”.
The tone of the response was rage and indignance. The mob directed their ire not just on the alleged perpetrator but also on Footsteps, believing that Footsteps should have done more to protect A.B. from her alleged rapist. The mob was also furious that Footsteps wasn’t swiftly and decisively banning C.D. from the organization now that the event has come to light, or meting out some other punishment.
Others debated whether A.B.’s refusal to report the event to the police was tying Footsteps’ hands on the matter given that the organization is not equipped to investigate, let alone punish criminal behavior. Still others questioned why the organization hadn’t reported the incident to government authorities as “mandatory reporters” of molestation or abuse, to which the retort by the legally proficient members was quickly provided: mandatory reporting only applies with respect to minors. Adults can and ought to report to authorities alleged assault themselves. Besides, a Footsteps report would be useless if A.B. then refused to cooperate with a police investigation and press charges.
NYU Welcomes Back Students With Handbook Focusing on the Evils of Israel
To the surprise of precisely no-one, least of all those of us who had studied or taught there, New York University kicked off the new academic year this week with a student-produced guide focusing on Israel as more or less the source of all existing evil.
You can read the guide here, if you’re in to that sort of thing. If you’re not, the indispensable Washington Free Beacon crunched the numbers for you: “Israel is mentioned 55 times” in the report, the Beacon found. “That’s more than the number of references to ‘Trump,’ ‘alt-right,’ ‘racism,’ ‘fascism,’ ‘white supremacy,’ and ‘socialism’ combined.”
Not that socialism isn’t mentioned:
If you make it all the way to page 38, you’ll enjoy the heartfelt plea to dismantle capitalism. But this is just a fleeting distraction, and on page 41 the guide gets back to what really matters, which is the dismantling of the Jewish state.
Two organizations that support the annihilation of Israel in its current form:
—Jewish Voices for Peace
and
Students for Justice in Palestine—
are recommended as “radical” groups students might enjoy joining, and NYU’s Tel Aviv campus is decried as one of the university’s “imperial projects.”
Toss in a series of wildly inaccurate historical maps, and a call to boycott Birthright—the free trip, thunders the guide, is “pure propaganda designed to obscure the destruction of Palestinian homes, lives, history, and culture”—and you know exactly who your son’s or daughter’s new classmates are going to be if he or she were fortunate enough to make it into the Greenwich Village campus.
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