Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Reform US Jewish leaders are fighting the wrong battle
by Rabbi Berel Wein
Often times, if not even always, telling the truth is a painful experience both for the teller and for the listener.
Our entire life is wrapped up in avoiding painful truths. And even if we are aware of them, not communicating them to others because that will make us very unpopular is also stressful.
The rabbis of the Talmud called this world “a world of falsehood.” This is so ingrained within us that we expect that our leaders, political and otherwise, are never telling us the truth. Our political campaigns are based on slogans and promises that we all know to be false but since these are apparently the rules of the game, we accept them even though we know they contain little truth.
No politician runs on the truth that taxes have to be raised, deficits have to be closed and that there is no guarantee for an easy life for anyone else. Instead we are surrounded by promises of rose gardens, unending prosperity and a chicken in every pot. However, when one of our government leaders or ministers steps out of line and actually tells us the truth, the reaction from his or her colleagues, the media and all of the professional experts is one of shock and horror.
Apologies must be made for telling the truth so that we can continue to flow along the river of falsehoods that eventually will endanger our survival and success. In the “world of falsehood” we really cannot expect a different result in such situations.
Recently a government official here in Israel dared to say that the Emperor known as American Jewry has no clothes.
There can be no denying the fact that for the vast majority of American Jews, Judaism, the state of Israel and traditional observance of the Jewish way of life no longer exists. The birth rate and American Jewry, if one factors out the Orthodox population, is insufficient to maintain the weak numbers that already exist.
The intermarriage rate, again factoring out the Orthodox, encompasses 2/3 to 3/4 of American Jewish youth.
The alienation of most Jewish youth in the United States towards any Jewish causes, philanthropic, religious or communal is a true and tragic fact.
So, when an Israeli political leader and government minister noted this publicly and warned about the deterioration of Jewish values and especially of support for the state of Israel financially and politically, she was immediately castigated by the powers that be for having spoken the truth.
It was not politically correct for her to do so and she was forced to apologize in order to restore the fake picture of American Jewry that our leadership continues to assert. The crisis of faith and identity that has beset American Jewry is in my opinion the greatest challenge and potential tragedy of our time.
American Jews in the main may know that somehow they are the people of the book but they don't know what book is being referred to. Under these circumstances there is little hope for their eventual survival as a vital part of the Jewish people. It is good that someone had the nerve to say so. It is tragic that instead of supporting that message of truth, all of the sycophants deny it and force unnecessary and very false apologies.
In my opinion this is very telling regarding the Conservative and Reform movements here in Israel and in the United States. They are witness to their decline in numbers and in Jewish loyalty. Many of their congregations are no longer populated by Jews, no matter what standard of conversion may be applied to them.
They have been unable to inspire generations of Jewish children to remain loyal to the Jewish people no matter what type of rules of observance exist. There are very few great-grandchildren or even grandchildren that exist within these groups. Their struggle here in Israel against the traditions of the Jewish people that most Israelis, secular or observant, hold dear is really one of the shameful chapters in our current story.
Instead of fighting about location at the Western Wall, should not the battle be against intermarriage, against remaining single, against a declining birthrate, against an abandonment of all moral tenets in the face of popular current political correctness?
The truth hurts both the teller and listener as I have mentioned above. But at least once in a while it should be publicly stated so that we will realize the true problems that face us and in what direction we should turn.
Lakewood Yungerleit Join Anti-Semitic Protest In Manhattan
Below video hear them calling other Jews that don't agree with their bizarre SHIT'ah "Rashoim" Wicked!
Hear the mamzeirim call Rabbi Litzman, Rabbi Gafni, Rabbi Purish......
רשעים,מסיתים ומדיחים
Then watch the stupid Lakewood Yungereleit shaking like poisoned monkeys
Chaim Shragai 66 Year old Yerushalmie "Chazir" Serial 'mikva rapist' charged for assaults on teens
A 66-year-old Jerusalem man was indicted on charges of sexual assault and sodomy Sunday in a Jerusalem district court. The charges stemmed from a series of rapes and sexual assaults which took place in a Jerusalem mikva (ritual bathhouse) where the accused worked.
According to Sunday’s indictment, the suspect, Haim Shragai, raped three local teenage boys over the course of three years.
The victims ranged in age from 13 to 16.
Shragai helped manage the mikva where the attacks took place, Behadrei Haredim reported, and used his position to trap his victims.
Authorities say Shragai would approach the teenagers while they were using the mikva, and blocked their exit if they tried to escape.
When the teens refused to submit to his demands, Shragai would threaten to leave the victims locked inside the facility, and warned that he would tell the victims’ parents that they were guilty of various offenses. In some instances, Shragai showed his victims pornographic material, then threatened to tell their parents.
After each incident, Shragai would pay the victim a small sum, usually several shekels.
The prosecution has requested that Shragai be denied bail and be held in custody until the end of his trial.
Jackson Township NJ Routinely Monitored Jewish-Owned Homes .... This in the USA!!!
New leaked documents appear to show a pattern of surveillance of Jewish-owned homes in Jackson, New Jersey. Attached emails show the practice was discussed over a span of several months among upper-level township officials, including council members, zoning officials and the township’s chief counsel.
One must wonder why the township was monitoring lawful activities conducted in the privacy of resident’s homes, and with whom they were doing it with. It appears the township used spies in unmarked cars to monitor houses on a regular basis, who kept detailed notes on the otherwise benign activities at private properties.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Reform "Rabbis" Trying to Destroy Tzipi Hotovely
by Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
The writer is adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, congregational rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served for most of the past decade on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, and Israel National News.
There are moments in life when a person gets “discovered.” Entertainers perform for decades before getting “discovered.” So it is with the writers of great books, the thinkers of great thoughts, the leaders of political movements. Often, when they finally experience their breakthrough, they inevitably are asked: “Where were you all this time? What were you waiting for?”
November 2017 has been the month of Tzipi Hotovely. She finally — finally! — has been discovered.
I have been following the Deputy Minister from her earliest notices, even as she was just emerging as a novice within the Likud. An Orthodox woman. Law school graduate. Quite photogenic and telegenic. Incredibly brilliant. Well spoken. Fabulous command of English. Uncompromising in her support for the Jewish right to Yehudah and Shomron (Judea and Samaria). Kind-of “too good to be true.”
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Replica of Arch of Titus in New York
Lindsay Neathawk first saw the Arch of Titus on a visit to Rome in 1998. A teenager at the time, she could not have imagined that two decades later she would make the first hi-tech replica of the ancient monument’s famous “Spoils of Jerusalem” panel commemorating Roman forces’s capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the Holy Temple in 70 CE.
Using cutting-edge digital tools, Neathawk, a graphic designer and owner of a sign carving business in Williamstown, Massachusetts, spent a straight 49 days last summer creating the replica.
It was carefully transported in late August to New York City, becoming the centerpiece of the current “The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Back” exhibition at Yeshiva University Museum.
The replica is made of high density urethane foam and weighs around 1,000 pounds. It is a one-to-one copy of the panel on the monumental arch erected on Rome’s Via Sacra, the “Sacred Road,” around 82 CE, shortly after Emperor Titus’s death. One of three interior relief panels on the arch, “Spoils of Jerusalem” depicts Titus’s triumphal procession into the Eternal City in July 71 CE. Roman soldiers are seen carrying sacred vessels of the Jerusalem Temple, and at the center is the seven-branched golden menorah.
The replica produced by Neathawk in collaboration with VIZIN: Institute for the Visualization of History, is based on three-dimensional and polychrome scanning conducted in 2012 by an international team of scholars led by cultural historian Dr. Steven Fine, founding director of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies.
Fine, an expert on the Greco-Roman period, immersed himself in the study of the Arch of Titus, and last year published a book on the Menorah and its evolving symbolic significance over 3,000 years.
Fine’s enthusiasm for the monument rubbed off on Neathawk, 37, who decided to take on the Spoils replica project despite having never carved anything bigger or more complicated than signs for local merchants.
“This project was in a totally different league, both in terms of size and intricacy,” Neathawk said.
“But our motto is, ‘If you can think it, we can do it,’ so we went for it,” she said.
According to Fine, a handful of other replicas of the Spoils panel exist around the world. Some are casts, and one is what Fine described as “an artful reproduction.” This latest one is the first to use advanced digital tools to not only make a copy of the relief as it exists today, but also to project onto it what it would have looked like at the time of its original creation.
Archeologist Donald Sanders of VIZIN, who oversaw Neathawk’s work, provided her a digital rendering of the panel based on Fine’s scans from Rome. This was converted into code read by Neathawk’s computer numerical control (CNC) carving machine.
Neathawk used her expertise to choose the correct bits for the CNC machine, many of which broke due to intensity and duration of the carving, which on many days went nonstop around the clock.
Exhibition co-curator Jacob Wisse noted that although the $50,000 replica is a crucial element of the Yeshiva University Museum exhibition, it is not the only star of the show. Also highlighted are rare artifacts from all eras on loan from more than 20 individual collectors and institutions, ranging from the Library of Congress in Washington, to the Israel State Archives in Jerusalem, to the Istituto Luce Cinecittà Historical Archive in Rome.
“The exhibition is about the changing nature of the Arch of Titus, and not only in terms of physical changes, such as its restoration by Pope Pius VII in the 1820s after its falling into a ruinous state by the 19th century,” Wisse said.
“It also looks at how this monument has been appropriated over the course of history as a symbol by everyone from emperors and popes to Jews and Christians, who re-interpreted the meaning of the arch in modern times,” he continued.
The most notable reinterpretation by Jews in the current era is the State of Israel’s adoption of the Menorah as its official symbol in 1949. Exhibition visitor Bonnie Zaben found this to be of major emphasis, and somewhat at the expense of the Spoils replica.
“I really didn’t expect the Menorah as Israel’s symbol to be such a large part of the show. I was actually surprised that the Spoils replica was not more central. It’s the biggest element in the room, but it is at floor level and placed against a wall instead of elevated as a centerpiece,” Zaben said.
“You don’t even see it immediately upon entering the gallery. It’s on a wall to the left of the entrance,” she added.
Wisse said the replica’s placement was deliberate, with it serving as a point of reference, both literally and figuratively, for the entire exhibition. The layout is such that the Spoils panel is repeatedly in visitors’ line of sight as they walk through the various sections of the show.
“The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Back” exhibition runs at Yeshiva University Museum until January 14, 2018.
Anger as ultra-Orthodox demonstrators block Jerusalem entrance for 3 hours
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox youths from a fringe religious group took to the streets of Jerusalem on Sunday, causing traffic mayhem and shutting down the capital’s light rail service to protest the jailing of young seminary students for draft-dodging. The demonstrators blocked the main entrance to the capital for three hours.
The fresh disruptions sparked anger, with public figures calling on police to take a tougher stance against the protesters.
Police used force to try and disperse the protesters, some of whom clashed with angry motorists and resisted attempts by police to remove them. They also used water cannons and a foul-smelling skunk spray.
Police said they had detained 35 “extremists” who refused to clear the road. One demonstrator received medical treatment from police. Demonstrators later moved on from their original protest and shut the main entrance and exit to the city.
The main entrance to the city was shut for more than three hours despite police efforts, until the demonstrators headed a call from the head of the so-called “Jerusalem Faction” Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach to return to their yeshivas.
The disruption to residents and commuters sparked widespread anger.
“The time has come to end this disruption to the lives of Jerusalem residents. The right to demonstrate is a sacred right when it is done legally. Anyone who breaks the law, for any reason, must be dealt with harshly,” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
“The police must use all means at its disposal to disperse the illegal demonstrations. I call on the police to restore normal life in the city,” he said.
Likud lawmaker and Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick also slammed the protesters.
“The demonstrations in Jerusalem now have no connection to Torah,” Glick tweeted. “It is simply hooliganism. I hope that the police will deal with the protesters as they deal with all hooligans.”
Auerbach had announced on Sunday morning that the demonstrators would return to the streets to defend the “dignity of the Torah.”
The protest began at around 3:30 p.m., when dozens of ultra-Orthodox men blocked the busy intersection of Jaffa and Sarei Yisrael streets.
The location, adjacent to the city’s Central Bus Station, is on several main bus routs as well as the track of the light rail, which was canceled from there to the Damascus Gate of the Old City because of the protests.
The statement from the “Committee to Save the Torah World,” which has been responsible for organizing recent demonstrations against the army draft, said that Auerbach had ordered the demonstration “to protest for the dignity of the Torah, which has been ground into dust by the incarceration of 12 prisoners of the Torah world for extended periods. Last week, the Haredi masses took to the streets to protest, and hundreds were arrested and four more prisoners of the Torah world were handed over to the military authorities.”
On Saturday night, the statement explained, committee members visited Auerbach and heard him reiterate “the requirement to continue protesting and taking to the streets.”
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