DOVBEAR

Here are some of the things Chaya didn't mention in her infamous xoJane article

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:41:00 +0000

Chaya, hard at work, on her xoJane article.

You've heard, I'm sure, that a woman called Chaya has published an article on xoJane in which she claims that life for Hasidic women is nothing short of grand and glorious. Chaya's own life sounds quite good, I agree, but there's far too much her little whitewash leaves out. For openers:

Sadly, Chaya omitted the most crucial details about her identity, namely that she is a member of the most liberal Hasidic sect (Lubavitch) and that she is a Ba'al Teshuva, which translates as someone who returned to the faith. So a woman who resided on the most liberal end of the spectrum in the most tolerant of all Hasidic sects, who had chosen this way of life after she had already had access to a secular education, wrote an essay on behalf of all Hasidic women across the global spectrum, telling women's media that all is glorious and wonderful in their world

But that's not all she left out. After the jump, I try to fill in the blanks, line by line. As usual, I'm in green.

Hi. I'm Chaya, and I am a Chassidic Jewish woman. I am also a media professional with a degree in Women's Studies from a large, very liberal university (magna cum laude, baby!).

Chaya is a Lubavitcher, who embraced the teaching's of her sect after she was already an adult and after she finished school. How many from-the-womb Vishnitz, Square or Satmar Hasidic women have fancy jobs and fancy degrees? (hardly any at all, baby!)

In the past few days, I've been reading the backlash against "the asifa," a recent mass meeting of religious Jewish men meant to draw a few boundaries around Internet use in our homes (meaning religious Jewish homes; not your house).

You're off your talking points Chaya. According to the spokesmen women were included. Not at the event itself, perhaps, but they were still welcome to watch the presentations on TV from remote locations.

Whenever religious Jews make a stink about some cultural issue, the media moves in on it with a bizarre kind of vengeance. Like yesterday, Katie J.M. Baker published an article on Jezebel about the event, in which she actually compared Jewish men to ants!

See: "While men in traditional Orthodox garb filed into Citi Field as steadily as a never-ending line of ants approaching an anthill…" Um, where have I seen Jews compard to insects before? Oh, wait, WWII.

Also the Bible! אַף כִּי־אֱנֹושׁ רִמָּה וּבֶן־אָדָם תֹּולֵעָה to cite just one example.

As a resident of Brooklyn, the epicenter of all things hipster and the home of many, many clad-in-black religious Jews, I'd like to clarify a few things for all of you. Here are a few things you need to know about Chassidic women:

1. We are not imprisoned.

The last time I checked (which was right now), I am free to do whatever I want to do. Nobody is making me do anything. If I want to leave the community I live in, whether to go grocery shopping or to put on a pair of pants and go to a disco and snort coke, I can. Nobody is going to stop me. Would I wear a pair of skinny jeans and snort coke in a disco? No. Why?

Nobody is going to stop you, sure, but a household full of kids and the absence of an education or marketable skills might stop some of your sisters. Not all chains are made from metal.

2. We like ourselves the way we are. And most of us are happy.

Poor Deborah Feldman got the short end of the stick. She got a dysfunctional family and a crummy school. But listen: That happens everywhere. How many (non-Jewish or secular Jewish) friends of yours come from dysfunctional families and crappy schools and just couldn't wait to leave home? Did they represent your entire hometown?

I hate to trade in anecdotal evidence, but my friends in the health professions who work in Hasidic settings say "everyone" is on some kind of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug. This claim is not worth anything, but perhaps should be considered alongside your own anecdotes. If we're going to agree that Deborah Feldman's unhappy story proves nothing, your happy story is similarly worthless as a proof.

We call becoming lax in religious observance and adopting a secular lifestyle "frying out." People fry out all the time. Most of us, though, feel like we are leading pretty rewarding lives.

Probably true. Most Hasidim probably do feel like they are living rewarding lives.(Though the fact that people fry out "all the time" suggests two sides to this story.) Still, I don't think your point is in dispute. In fact, I'll add that most people -- Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike - say their lives are rewarding.

Look at it this way: When your friends go to India to learn how to meditate and come home "leading spiritual lives" and suddenly won't go out for barbecue with you, you think it is cool. Your friend is leading a spiritual life. Spiritual lives involve boundaries and not just doing whatever your body feels like at that second. We lead spiritual lives. Leading a spiritual life is rewarding.

For some. Not for all. And others decide that it is "rewarding" because there are no other options available.

3. We find our husbands attractive.

You know those guys with the long beards and the black coats who are always reading something in Hebrew on the train and you're kind of freaked out by them? So they're our husbands.

My husband has a very impressive beard. He wears a black suit, and a kippah and a black hat. He is also the most handsome, hot, attractive man in the entire world to me. Nobody forced me to marry him. My father did not trade me to him for a flock of sheep.

Perhaps you feel like you had a choice. Your 17 and 18 year old Satmar sisters who find themselves engaged after one "sit-in" may not agree. In fact, they may be three or four children into the game and still not yet 23, before they realize who they are and what they want.

Fun fact: Jewish law prohibits marrying someone who you're not attracted to.

Fun fact: In every practical sense this law is unenforced in places like Square, Vishnitz and Satmar.

Another fun fact: In the Jewish marriage contract, one of the conditions of marriage is that a husband is obligated to sexually satisfy his wife. If my husband would deny "conjugal rights" to me, that's grounds for divorce. Pretty effing progressive if you ask me.

"We hold these truth to be self evident that all men are created equal" was, for its time, pretty... um, effing progressive. Only it took another 200 years for America to fully deliver on this promise. So, sure, the Talmud says "satisfy your wife" but there are no orgasm police making sure it happens. In the bedrooms of Boro Park and Kiryas Joel plenty of Jewish men are defaulting on this promissory note.

4. We have been happily shagging for millennia. Jews never had the concept of "original sin."

Judaism is the original sex-positive culture. What? You heard me right. Y'all need "sex-positive Third wave feminism" to help you feel like having sex is OK. Jews bypassed the whole Christian idea that all sex, even in marriage, is a sin. And Protestant asceticism just never happened for us.

It is not a Christian idea that all sex, even in marriage, is a sin!! Irony much? You fundamentally misunderstand Christianity in precisely the same way you complain that people misunderstand Judaism. In the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament. The Catechism says that "sexual relationships in marriage are a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity" The Christian view of sex has always been the same as the Jewish view, namely that anything done within marriage is licit. So you see, Christians, too, have been "happily shagging" for millennia. (Why do you think there are so many of them?)

G-d likes it when a married Jewish couple has sex. Jews never got a message that sex is dirty. We think sex is good. It is so good that having it is actually a commandment. No, we cannot shag "anything that moves." No, we can't sleep around or have sex outside of marriage. But once you're married, sex is totally cool and awesome and G-d likes it.

Which is what the Catholic Church and the major Christian denominations have always taught!

I don't know who made up the dumb story about having sex through a sheet,

Probably the same person who made up the dumb story about Christians thinking sex within marriage is dirty or a sin.

but let's bury that old chestnut now. Having sex through a sheet is actually prohibited by Torah and we are commanded explicitly by G-d to get totally naked to shag. Just in case you're wondering.

Which, when you think about it, is not so effing enlightened. What if one wishes not to shag "while totally naked" What if one wishes to don fetish wear or haute lingerie? What does the God of Israel say then?

5. Mikveh is awesome. We don't go to the mikveh because we're "dirty."

Holy moly! How many times have I heard feminists totally misread the Jewish practice of abstaining from sex during one's period and then immersing in a mikveh (a ritual bath)? It is hard to explain this one to people who grew up in Puritan America.

Is "Puritan America" a place where everyone wears skinny jeans and snorts coke? Up above you suggested it was. And what makes a Puritan cognitively unable to understand concepts of ritual purity? I'd think the true Puritan would have an easier time with it than most.

When you hear the word "impure," it has a totally different meaning than the meaning it has in the context of Torah. In Torah, you're dealing with states of being that are related to the service in the Beis HaMikdash (the Great Temple). It's called "ritual purity" and "ritual impurity." These states of being have nothing to do with being dirty or clean. You could, in fact, not shower for days and roll in the mud and you'd still be "ritually pure."

Nothing to do with a clean or dirty that can be seen, but the point of the mikva is to remove uncleanliness all the same. Invisible uncleanliness. A dip in the mikva takes something that's unfit, and makes it fit. Your feminists friends aren't far off, and may in fact be closer to the truth than you.

Are you confused? You should be. We think about these things in a paradigm that is so not the dominant paradigm.

All you need to know is that the practice of not touching your husband when you're on your period and then immersing in a mikveh is awesome.

Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength. Mikva is awesome. Slogans are smart!

Most women's mikvehs are like spas. Picture the most beautiful spa you've ever been to, in a quiet all-girls safe space, and that's mikveh.

Is this woman on drugs? A nice mikva is certainly clean and well appointed but still a million miles away from the "most beautiful spa"; also, what this nonsense about "quiet all-girls safe space?" Sure, no men are allowed, but you don't luxuriate in a steam room discussing chick literature. You're in and out, as quickly as possible, and at the best-run mikvahs you see no one but the attendant.

Incidentally, Orthodox Jewish women have one of the lowest rates of cervical and other reproductive cancers because of…wait for it…these customs.

We also have super high blood pressure, ridiculously frequent instances of diabetes, plus you can't walk down 18th Avenue without side-stepping a fat man. These are also the blessings of... wait for it... our customs.

We do not have sex at times that our vaginas are vulnerable to infection (such as right after birth).

But we do slather our penises with saliva within seconds of circumcision. Also, the Hebrew bible for all its good advice, contains not one word about indoor plumbing or potable water. So perhaps we should be a bit modest in assigning health benefits to the dictates of the tradition.

Because we do internal checks for menstrual blood the week after we finish menstruating, the rate of early detection of (G-d forbid) tumors and cysts in the vagina is very high.

And because we wash with a cup instead of with soap and water, shigella shows up in yeshivot more often than it should.

You think we are sexually repressed and afraid of our own bodies just because we dress modestly? Every single Chassidic woman you see sticks her own fingers in her own vagina at least twice a day for 7 days of the month. The chicks in my women's studies classes didn't even do that.

Sure, but the chicks in your woman's studies class probably had sex more frequently and more creatively so, odds are, they win the sexual adventure contest.

In conclusion…

When you slam Orthodox Jews because you think you're defending or somehow liberating the women of our communities, you're actually doing us a huge disservice.

What if they defend or somehow liberate the women without also slamming? Or is any comment you find disturbing by definition a slam?

Search for more information about truth in blogging at4torah.com

Catholics... Muslims... Haredim?

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Identical daughters of the same parents

From the comment pile:

Your parallels between the Catholics and the Charedim (those that quake - or quakers?) brings to my mind Huxley - “A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.” Seems to me that the increase in fanaticism - among American conservatives, fundamental islamists, and our own charedi velt - is built on their recognition that they are wrong, and their primal fear of having to change is driving ever more angry, separationist, and violent behavior.

For American conservatives, the bush tax cuts, the iraq war, the emasculation of regulation nearly destroyed our economy, and yet the grown up who is trying to fix it is evil, unamerican, socialist, so no compromise, self-destructive fundamentalism of the tea party.

For fundamental Islam - centuries of charedi-like attitudes towards the secular has driven the world's leading culture of year 1000 into one of the most backward. Confronted with happier, better off Europeans, Mohammed Atta (yemach shemo) retreated into fundamentalism to lead the largest mass murder on US soil ever. So too with nearly all fundamental islam, perhaps the greatest global threat today.

Not le''havdil, our Charedi world has retreated over the past several decades into the walls of the beis medrash. The self-indulgent fantasy that everyone (i.e., men) can be a talmid chacham. But this leaves the women to make life happen with day to day things like jobs, earnings, etc. But these more worldly women then pose a threat to their menfolk who haven't a clue about the outside world, so they cage their women and ban the outside world. Then the Internet happens - penetrating their homes, removing the filter of Daas Torah that covers up sex abuse scandals and letting too many of the masses see that life is really in full color outside of Pleasantville (or as R Wozner put it "blue shirts"). We may be less violent (lack of exercise?) than our islamic/tea party cohorts, but the lack of any exhortations from the Citifield Dais to look at ourselves (Beit Shemesh riots and concentration camp uniform demonstrations from Israel, and sex abuse scandals in the US) are certainly as damning. -- Solomon

Search for more information about things that are the same at4torah.com

Preposterous Pentecostal Parlor Games

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:24:00 +0000

If you're the parent of small, haredi-educated children you're likely to be told about one or both of these silly numerical coincidences over the upcoming holiday weekend. As a service to you, my dear freeloading reader, I've provide appropriate rejoinders

Remarkable Ruth

"The gematria of Ruth is 606. Add that to the seven mitzvot she kept before her conversion (righteous gentiles keep the seven Noahide laws) and the sum is 613, the number of mitzvot she kept after conversion."

Problems to point out

#1: Gematrias are notoriously slippery. If Ruth calculated to something else, don't you think the perpetrator of this silly parlor game would have found a way to make it work anyway? By adding the number of times the word mitzvah appears in Ruth, let's say, or the number of days it took the Jews to get to Sinai after the Exodus?

#2: Ruth didn't keep 613 mitzvos after conversion. Many of them are only applicable to men, or to kohanim, or to land-owners. Ruth was none of those things.

#3: Why are we certain Ruth kept the Noahide laws. Perhaps she had a taste for shell food? (Prohibition of eating flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive) And isn't it likely she worshipped idols?

Miraculous Milk

"We eat dairy on Shavuot because Moshe was on the mountain for 40 days, and 40 is the gematria of milk."

Problems to point out

#1: So what? Why should the length of his sojourn on Sinai have any bearing on the contents of our holiday menu?

#2 Does it follow from this that the Sages sat around the wisdom table, planning out new customs when someone said, "Okay, we need something spiffy for Shavuot. Who has ideas? "

Search for more information about dumb things that pass for Torah at4torah.com

Great Moments in Opposing Technology

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:08:00 +0000

If men learn writing, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks; what you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. - Plato, complaining about pens

Abundance of books makes men less studious; it destroys memory and enfeebles the mind by relieving it of too much work. -Hieronimo Squarciafico, complaining about the printing press

The webbed mind has to struggle to understand Torah. There are those who sit at home and click and click into oblivion. - R. Ephraim Wachsman, complaining about the Internet

Search for more information about things likely to destroy society at4torah.com

Fisking "Thou shalt not text"

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:39:00 +0000

Eytan Kobre, who first made his blogging name with an over-the-top complaint about the prevalence of underwear ads in the New York Times, is back on our radar thanks to his, presumably, self-appointed role as spokesman for the CitiField Internet rally. Here is what he published last Sunday in the New York Post, a paper that unlike the Times, is known for modest, straitlaced writing. My poor comments in green.

Thou shalt not text
Jews mass at Citi for exodus from cyber-slavery
By EYTAN KOBRE
Last Updated: 10:59 AM, May 20, 2012
Posted: 12:38 AM, May 20, 2012

The known dangers of the Internet include the pervasive accessibility of pornography online, which has reached epidemic proportions. But we don’t view this in strictly Jewish or religious terms. It is an assault on human dignity, eating away the fabric of society. It debases and objectifies women, at times leading to violence against women, and the break-up of marriages.

We can agree that pornography is bad but it was available before the Internet. Where was the asifa against corner drug stores? Did we rally in the Polo Grounds to denounce the newfangled cars our forefathers used to visit prostitutes? About porn's effect on rates of violence against women, however, we must disagree. Over the last 20 years, as it has become easier than ever to acquire porn, rape in America has declined by more than 70 percent while other sexual assaults have fallen by over 60 percent. If Kobre was correct about porn "leading to violence against women" we'd see an increase, wouldn't we? Instead, we've seen the dramatic opposite. As one wag put it "As raunch waxes rape wanes."

We can also talk about aggression, or the verbal violence the Internet has released. Look at the comments section of any newspaper or blog and you see how the anonymity and the lack of accountability allows people to savage each other with words. This pollutes the societal atmosphere, and ratchets up the aggression tearing at the social fabric of the country.

Who's surprised that a card-carrying Agudah-ist and contributor to Cross Currents thinks anonymous blog comments are the second worst thing about the Internet, after pornography? The Federalist papers were published anonymously, many great writers use pseudonyms, and many great actors use stage names. Did society fall apart? Just how fragile is Eytan Kobre that he finds an anonymous comment so threatening to his sense of self? Just how fragile does he think society is if it can't withstand a flame war. The Rishonim were obnoxious to each other, too, at times. No one thinks any of this brought society to its knees. To the contrary, by allowing people to speak freely, without fear of reprisal, anonymous blog comments can actually lead to better arguments, and facilitate important conversations about problems within the community, problems that non-anonymous people are often too frightened to discuss honestly. In this way, anonymous blog comments strengthen society.

Of course the real reason that Kobre and other agents of the status quo object to anonymous comments is it forces them to actually consider the argument, while comments attached to real names can be dismissed with an ad hominem or defeated with a call to the writer's rabbi. Moreover, such dainty caterwauling about the polluting of the social atmosphere is undermined by some of Eytan's own writing, as well as some of the articles published on his blog, Cross Currents. All of it is attached to a real name, but much of it is no less obnoxious and no less savage than an anonymous blog comment.

There’s a trail of casualties inside and outside the Jewish community — marriages that have crashed and burned, spouses who have walked away from their families because of people they met in chat rooms or social networking, through something as seemingly innocuous as texting. It’s the anonymity and lack of accountability, the 24/7 accessibility, that breaks down our natural human barrier of shame and fear of consequences.

A marriage that collapses because of a chat room is a marriage that was already on the rocks. The Internet isn't what makes spouses unhappy; it only allows people to act on their unhappiness. Protesting the Internet is like protesting the bus the unhappy husband takes to visit his mistress or like protesting the ax an angry wife uses to slaughter her husband. Did we have an asifa against Lorena Bobbit's knife? Anyway, has Eytan lost track of his argument? A moment ago he said "It’s the anonymity... that breaks down our natural human barrier of shame and fear of consequences." but those who are using the Internet to meet each other are, by definition, not doing it anonymously.

Studies show what the Internet is doing to other areas of human life, to privacy,

The Internet is damaging privacy? That's great news for Google and Facebook. Apparently, its the inanimate, no agency, Internet causing the privacy problems, and not corporations, manged by people who create and impose bad policies and intrusive practices. I look forward to Zuks using "The Internet made me do it" the next time his critics come after him with pitchforks.

and the damage these sites have done to our ability to have real relationships with people. We replace relationships with superficial connection, and we’ve replaced conversation with tweeting and twittering our way through cyberspace.

Dude. Nothing stays the same. A wiser person reconciles himself to this. No doubt an earlier version of Eytan Kobre fretted about steamships or printing presses or telephones. Certainly, there were many who bemoaned the loss of letters and the rise of informal phone chats. And you know what? All of those earlier Eytans were correct. New types of technology do change us. They do change the way we think and behave. Our Eytan is also right: Twitter and FaceBook (not to mention Google) are changing the way our brains work. There's no doubt about it, but so what: Dude. Nothing stays the same. There's no correct, first cause, condition for our neural circuitry. There's only what obtains at the moment. Every generations changes in its own way. The "webbed" brain denounced at the asifa by R. Wachman is not a corrupted version of the true brain. Its simply the latest variation of the human brain, the latest in a series of variations that go back to the beginning of time

We have the evidence, we hear what professors are telling us,

LOL. Sorry. I can't help but laughing out loud whenever an Aguda spokesman asks us to consider what science and the "professors" are telling us. Let's make a deal Eytan. You listen to Biology professor Jerry Coyne, and I'll listen to the professor who says the Internet is changing our brains. Oh wait. I already am listening (see previous paragraph) I just think the change wrought by technology is (a) self evident (b) inevitable (c) impossible to stop and (d) not necessarily a change for the worse

what the Internet is doing to the brains of students. There’s no research anymore — just Google it — no retention of information. Now academia is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Agreed. This has happened. And before the invention of the printing press human beings were capable of astounding feats of memory. No longer. And before the supermarket we were capable of growing and hunting our own food. No longer. Just how far should we try to roll back time?

No one lives in the moment anymore. No longer are people able to be alone with themselves and comfortable without being connected to other people.

Is he talking about the telephone? He might be. Anyway, we had extroverts before we had Twitter, and arguably tools like Twitter make it easier for introverts to interact with other people.

Gadgets are supposed to free us, but ironically, they have enslaved us and left us with much less time for ourselves, our families and the things that are important in life.

We've been saying this since the 50s at least. Everyone knows that inventions like the vaccume cleaner and the washing machine made life harder for housewives, not easier.

It’s a subtle but very nefarious assault on us as a people. On the one hand, we want to be connected, but it’s creating alienation. People don’t want to get involved on a one-to-one basis anymore.

And after the ball-point pen was invented it became easier to skip the town meeting and send a letter, instead.

All community members will be urged to adopt as a minimal base line of protection the installation of a filter on every computer at home and the workplace. It is fully recognized that this is far, far from the conclusive answer to the problems the Internet poses — it is merely a first step evidencing our seriousness and resolve to find the best solutions and implement them.

Liar, liar pants on fire. What actually happened a few hours after this article was published was quite different. When Rav Shmuel Wosner addressed the crowd, he did not say "Use Filters" He said "Any kid from an Internet home is hereby banned from our schools" Perhaps Eytan, having spent too much time on Facebook, has lost the ability to recognize the difference between these two statements. And just as a brief aside, it does not speak very well for our community that we're just discovering filters in 2012. We're at least four years behind the rest of the human race.

This is just a first step — the beginning of a journey toward protecting ourselves. It will be followed by technology expos around the country, reaching out to other faiths — and society as a whole.

Reaching out to other faiths? REACHING OUT TO OTHER FAITHS? We're going to bring the gospel of the filter to the Mormons? We're going to lock arms with the Christians against Google? So happy 2000 years of petty disagreeing about the nature of Jesus can be put aside now that we've identified FaceBook as a common enemy. And they say the modern Jews are relativists.

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Echoes of Catholic catastrophes at the CitiField asifa (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:13:00 +0000

Earlier, I posted that the disaster at CitiField last night reminds me of the disaster of pastor aeternus, the encyclical that defined the Pope as infallible and in some ways ruined the Catholic Church by placing too much unquestioned, unchecked power in the hands of one, out-of-touch, monarch.

In this post, I add to my criticism of the asifa by explaining how the gathering in general and Rav Wosner's pronouncement in particular, closely parallel a second Catholic catastrophe: Humanae Vitae, the reafirmation of the Church's ban on birth control published in 1968 by Paul VI. Here is the story:

Though the Church had historically been opposed to contraception, the formal rationale was not spelled out until 1930 when Pius XI published Casti connubii.

By the 1960s enough had changed in the world, that Catholics were ready for the ban to revoked. In particular, oral contraceptives had been introduced and it was generally believed that the rational presented in Casti connubii could not apply to them. A commission appointed by Pope John XX111 agreed, proposing that such forms of birth control were not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves how to use them.

John died before the commission finished its work, and rather than accept the commission findings, his successor, Paul VI, used Humanae Vitae to explicitly reject their recommendations. Instead of liberalizing the Church's teaching on contraception as the laity had expected and as the commission had advised, the old ban was reiterated and widened to include oral contraceptives.

In his dissent from the commission's report, John Ford argued why the Pope had to disregard the findings of his own commission:

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XII's address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.[38]

Or, in other words: If we go back now, we'll make our predecessors look foolish, we'll concede that Popes are fallible, and we'll give our enemies in the Protestant churches a victory. Nothing else matters.

And so it was. Rather, than do all of these things Paul chose to reaffirm the ban --and in the process severely damaged his Church. American and European Catholics rejected Humanae Vitae in large numbers. Some left the Church. Others ignored the encyclical, and presumably soon realized that ignoring Church teachings produces no ill effect, thus making it easier to ignore other teachings. To this day, the Vatican has not recovered from the blow to its credibility caused by Humanae Vitae.

Are the parallels between this and the asifa not obvious? For weeks we were told that no one at the asifa would not articulate a ban on the Internet. The event's first marketing materials made this promise explicit stating "We can't live without it." We were led to believe that the earlier ban on the Internet, had been reconsidered.

But something changed. At some point, the Sages arrived independently at John Ford's argument and realized that they could not permit what they themselves had prohibited while simultaneously claiming to be inerrant. Instead of confirming that "we can't live without it," Rav Wosner reiterated the disastrous ban of six years ago and ordered us to do just that. If his words are heeded, thousands of our children will be banned from schools or thousands of parents will be forced to lie to schools about their Internet usage. And if his words are ignored, and the schools continue to accept children from Internet homes, the emperor's nudity will have been made obvious to all.

In a year or two, we''ll know who won this game of chicken. But the tragedy is all of this could have been avoided with a little common sense. But, rather then confess their error in banning the Internet six years ago, the Sages did as Paul VI did and chose instead to provoke a crises by doubling down on their own infallibility.

POST SCRIPT

Humanae Vitae, which told Catholics how to conduct their marriages, was articulated by a never-been married seventy-year old virgin. The ban on the Internet was announced by someone who was old before color televisions were introduced. Paul VI, at least, ignored a professional commission of experts who studied the matter for five years. Rav Wosner, on the other hand, likely has at his disposal nothing but a carefully curated collection of anecdotes about the Internet and its victims.

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What does Ultra Orthodoxy have against Mexican women?

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:59:00 +0000

This company sponsors the New York Mets and a picture of their bottle is prominently displayed on the CitiField scoreboard.

Last night, the non-misogynistic Ultra Orthodox made sure no one at the asifa could see the pretty Mexican face that adorns the bottle:

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Echoes of Catholic catastrophes at the CitiField asifa

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:02:00 +0000

I'm alone on this, I'm sure, but when I look at the just-concluded CitiField asifa I hear only echoes of Catholic catastrophes.

The first parallel is with the doctrine of papal infallibility declared as dogma in 1870 at the First Vatican Council in pastor aeternus. This doctrine granted the Pope the sole and exclusive power to determine the Church's formal beliefs and practices and was approved by the Council at the moment when the Pope's power was at its lowest ebb. Once a temporal king, by 1870 the Pope had lost control of the Papal States and was facing renewed challenges from secularists across Europe and on his own doorstep in Rome. Declaring the Pope infallible was a way to grant the Pope spiritual powers to compensate for the influence he'd lost in the real world. Having lost power in this world, the council gave the Pope an invisible one.

The Charedi Sages are in a similar position. Though they never ruled as kings, there exists a nostalgic fantasy that they once possessed similar powers. Also, there once was a time when Rabbis actually did function as leaders of Jewish communities and their guidance actually was sought in most matters. In those pre-modern days Rabbis led entire communities, rather than sects, and because so little was known about the natural world science and religion were not yet seen as non-overlapping magisteria. In such a world, at such a time, it made sense to consult spiritual leaders on matters of politics and medicine. To a large extent the Rabbis were the community's political leaders and religion was still understood as inseparable from science.

Over the last several decades, much has changed. Charedi Sages no longer attempt to lead anyone but Charedim, and the phrase Klal Yisroel has been redefined to reflect this. No one recognizes them as political leaders and our commitment to the idea that science and religion are one has all but disappeared.

In our lifetime, it has become clearer than ever that authority of the Sages is limited to questions of halacha, and only questions of halacha. The emphasis on Daat Torah, which reached its absurd height at last night's asifa, must then be understood as a backlash against all of this. Having suffered dramatic reductions of their power in this world, they are claiming for themselves an invisible one.

Next post: The second parallel

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Who needs Rush Limbough when we have Cross Currents?

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:30:00 +0000

If you're puking all over your shoes this morning it might be because you've read Phillip Lefkowitz's complaint about Affirmative Action on Cross Currents, a complaint that will be familiar to any fan of All In the Family.

In brief, Archie Lefkowitz says he once upon a time knew a Jewish kid named Jerry who was turned down by Brooklyn College the same year a black kid with a lower GPA was admitted. Then Jerry committed suicide. So, case closed, Affirmative Action is evil. Alert the Supreme Court.

There are so many things wrong with Lefkowitz's approach, its difficult to keep track. For instance, we're not sure why Jerry committed suicide. It helps Lefkowitz's argument to claim that Jerry threw himself off a roof because he was upset about having his College application rejected, but come on: Does a healthy person respond to adversity this way? Isn't it more likely that Jerry suffered from some mental disease, and that he might have eventually committed suicide even if Brooklyn College had accepted him? Or maybe the mob was after him. The point is we don't know.

Another problem is that Lefkowitz's opposition to Affirmative Action rests on the belief that Jerry suffered an injustice, but that's not clear either. Maybe more went into the admission decision than GPA? The black kid might have written a better essay or dazzled an admissions officer at his interview. Or perhaps the college simply wanted a diverse student body. You're not owed admission to a college simply because you've met a set of objective criteria. Harvard doesn't admit every H.S valedictorian who applies. A college is entitled to take other factors into account for the sake of creating a certain student population or student experience.

In private correspondence with one of the ranking Gedolei Torah, I added the following observations:

Greater injustices that this are committed by the admissions department of any yeshiva. Where are the angry protests from Cross Currents? Why is it that a yeshiva can pick and choose from among applicants based on criteria as nebulous and undefinable as "our type" and no one says boo, but let a college choose based on some desire to meet some objective or subjective criteria of its own and suddenly its a Spanish inquisition?

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Romney vs Wright

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:21:00 +0000

It looks like playing dirty is still the GOP's favored strategy. According to a report in the Times today a billionaire Obama-hater plans to bankroll a series of advertisements that will attack the president for his relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

This should be fun.

I hope the president fights back by linking Mormon Mitt Romney to some of the evil things his own church has said and done .

No, not polygamy. I'm referring to institutionalized racism. Until 1978 it was osur for a black man to serve as a Mormon priest. Not only is there no record of Mitt ever repudiating this, he also worked as Mormon missionary in the 60s. This means that during the Civil Rights era, Mitt Romney worked to convert people into a faith that practiced overt racism. He might as well have been a hiring manager for the Birmingham Alabama sheriff's office.

Though Romney, ad hayom hazeh, refuses to badmouth any Mormon doctrine past or present, it still doesn't follow that he is a racist. Nor, does it follow from his association with Rev. Wright that Obama hates America. But if we're going to discredit Obama for attending a church with a preacher who denounced the United States, shouldn't we discredit Romney for his membership in a racist church? Obama at least has attempted to distance himself from the terrible things Wright said; Romney, on the other hand, has never publicly disagreed with Mormon teachings.

If you're going to argue that Obama should have known better then to stay in Wright's church, we can also argue that Romney should have known better then to remain a Mormon.

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If you love Torah Judaism stay home on May 20

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:39:00 +0000

You're required to attend Met games.
Otherwise we'll look bad in in front of the Yankee fans.

If a Met fan tried this argument, he'd be laughed right out of the room. And with good reason. We understand that the Mets have to earn our support. Unquestioned loyalty invites laziness, and even corruption, from the objects of such loyalty. Why should the Mets pursue free agents or invest in their farm team, if they can count of the fans to show up anyway? For the matter, why should General Manager Sandy Alderson put in an honest day's work if the stadium is going to fill up irrespective of his efforts? If Met fans don't punish bad teams with poor attendance, players and management are encouraged to coast.

This is why any loyal fan of charedi Judaism should be deeply offended by the message currently being used to promote the CitiField Asifa on May 20. Instead of telling us why the Asifa is important, we are being urged to save the organizers from embarrassment. Rather than put a good team on the field, the event organizers are asking us to prop up a bunch of farm hands and, through our attendance at the Asifa, shield them from the consequences of their own failures.

I agree that the gedolim will look bad, if the stadium is not filled on May 20, but I think we owe it to ourselves and to the community we cherish to make them look bad. If you stay home on May 20, the message will be clear: We do not agree with your leadership on issues such as the Internet. We think your positions to date on this subject have been flawed. By "making them look bad", we make plain our disagreement with their approach. And though some of the sheep in the audience my be reluctant to deliver such a strong message to the Sages of Israel, consider the alternatives. If you don't let the leaders know when they're not performing up to expectations, they have no incentive to change their ways.

Autocracy is founded upon the Gedolim's self-understanding of themselves as the depository and bearer of absolute truth and it is the duty of people to conform to the truth. Democracy is based upon the understanding that truth is available to human beings only in partial ways and therefore all people can contribute to the search for truth in "creative mutuality [Adapted from here] Leaders, even autocratic leaders, derive their power from the people. They lead us because we let them lead us. As a wag said about the Pope, "He has primacy over the council because the council gives him primacy over the council" So to with us. The gedolim have primacy over us, because we grant them primacy. If we're not happy with their leadership, we have the right, indeed the obligation, to refuse to be led. Staying home on May 20 is a start.

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More anti-science nonsense from Avi Safran

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:27:00 +0000

How does Avi Safran find the nerve to churn out nonsense like this on a regular basis?

Once again: the climate may in fact be in crisis What discomforts me, though, is the stance of those who insist that they know with absolute surety—which they can’t—that it is. And that by lambasting any who dare dissent from their pronouncement, they show unwillingness to even consider the possibility that the world G-d created for us humans may not need our help to stay inhabitable—that, in His wisdom, He may have imbued not only our skin with the ability to heal its wounds, but the earth’s to do the same.

If the climate "may in fact" be in crises, why is he criticizing scientists for lack of faith? His opening sentence concedes they may be right to worry. And though comparing the earth to the human body is a flawed analogy, why doesn't Avi see how his own analogy trips him up? Yes, the human body has the power to heal itself, but human beings also have the power to kill each other! Is it really such a serious lack of faith to suggest we also have the power to "kill" the earth?

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Posters supporting Weberman are up in Williamsburg

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:07:00 +0000

Posters such as the ones pictured above are being used to invite Willamsburg pedestrians to a fundraiser on behalf of accused sex offender Nechamia Weberman. Victim groups think this awful. I disagree.

Weberman hasn't been convicted yet. He merely stands accused of committing a heinous crime, but the jury - quite literally - is still out. If his friends and neighbors believe he is innocent and wish to help him, what's wrong with that?

Though much has been said about victim harassment, this belongs to a different category. Abusing your authority to silence or intimidate a victim is evil. Supporting your friend is something else. The former is harassment; the latter is avdocacy.

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Secret origins: Challah dipped in honey

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:29:00 +0000

Does this sound familiar?

After all the preparations have been completed, the father offers each member of the family a piece of bread dipped in honey, which had been previously blessed in church.

From this account of the traditional Christmas eve feast in the Ukraine

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Secret origin of kreplach

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:24:00 +0000

The people of the Slavic lands are big into pierogi, a dumpling made of dough, shaped into a semi-circle and filled with meat, potato or cheese. Listen to Wikipedia:

Some cookbooks from the 17th century describe how even during that era the Pierogi were considered a staple of the Polish diet, and each holiday had its own special kind of Pierogi created. There were different shapes and fillings for holidays such as Christmas and Easter, and important events like weddings, had their own special type of Pierogies "kirniki" – filled with chicken meat. There were also Pierogies made especially for mourning/wakes, and even some for caroling season in January.

The very name of the dish is derived from "pir" the Proto-Slavic word for festivity, and the dish is associated with Saint Hyacinth a 13th century Polish friar. To this day, pierogi are a signature item of Polish cusine. They are also well-loved in the Ukraine, where they are called varenyky and considered an indispensable part of the Christmas eve feast.

Though its roots are in Germany, Ashkenazi Judaism continued its development in the Slavic lands. Somewhere along the way, our own style of pierogi developed and we called it kreplach.

The origin of kreplach really is as simple as that. We ate therm because everyone in that time place ate them. It has no more mystical significance then the Ukranian varenyky or the Russian pelmeni or any of the other Slavic dumplings that developed in around the same place at around the same time. However, nothing is more human then inventing significance for ordinary things - and then forgetting what you've done.

We've already seen how a pagan hair-cutting ceremony was transformed into an essential Jewish rite of passage after someone clever associated it with Deut. 20:19 ("Man is like the tree of a field...") and with orlah, the restriction on taking fruit from a tree before its third year.

The same sort thing happened with kreplach. At some point someone clever came up with reasons for associating kreplach with Yom Kipppur, but those reasons were invented after we were already eating kreplach on erev Yom Kppur. At the beginning, the reasons were probably accompanied with a knowing wink. Or, perhaps the reasons were invented after the milieu changed and Jews were no longer surrounded by people who all celebrated their solemn days with dumplings.

What seems perfectly obvious, though, is that we eat kreplach because once upon a time some of our ancestors lived in a place where eating dumplings and celebrating a most solemn holiday was culturally inseparable, and not because a wise man proposed a new food to symbolically represent judgement wrapped in mercy.

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Mocking the Matzav

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:43:00 +0000

A note from EFREX

DB: Thought you might get a kick out of this one.

For some reason, I periodically trawl the bastion of intellectual cowardice and moral hypocrisy known as matzav.com. Yesterday, they posted the following article on Obama’s gay marriage stance (as usual, ripped from another site with all external links stripped and a snide comment thrown into the headline):

http://matzav.com/your-president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-gender-marriage#comments

The comments are the usual sprawl of incoherent rantings, but I thought commenter #24’s line wins the prize for unintentional hilarity:

“Another sign that it’s time to head over to Eretz Yisroel. The frum community has focused on this issue in recent months (e.g., the Weprin-Turner election). This time we ought to vote with our feet and stand up for Torah values.”

I’m all for anything that inspires religious aliyah (even in the charedi community), but I’m pretty sure this commentator is pretty clueless about Israel’s policies on gay rights, which are so far to the left of anything in this country that Obama’s comments would qualify him as a political conservative in the Knesset (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Israel)

One of these days, some Republican family-rights wingnut is going to go to Israel, spend a Friday night in Tel Aviv, and have his head explode. I can only hope that Jon Stewart is around to chronicle it…

Take care!

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What are some of the things every Jew should know?

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:42:00 +0000

The time has come to update the famous list created here exactly six years ago (and curses on JS/Kit and Echo for devouring Haloscan and your great comments.)

The folks on Twitter want an open thread, so here you go and have fun.

An incredibly stupid thing, a smart person said

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Rabbi Marc D. Angel:

‎"The real issue here is not “marriage equality”—but how the moral foundations of society are established. If decisions are entirely in the domain of human beings, then a civil society can make whatever rules it wants, without reference to any Divine authority. The problem with this approach is that it essentially undermines a Divine foundation for morality, and leads to a subjective human-made morality that ultimately has no clear boundaries. Once God is removed from the equation, everything is—or can be, or should be—permissible."

News flash: A subjective and human-made morality is the only kind of morality there is because all morality is based on how we human beings choose to accept and understand and interpret the sources of morality we have, in turn, chosen to accept.

Furthermore, "Once God is removed from the equation, everything is—or can be, or should be—permissible." is the sort of fallacious statement you expect to hear debunked in a first year philosophy class. Over 2000 years ago, Plato demonstrated that God and morality are not connected. The terminal flaw in Angel's argument becomes apparent with one question:

Is gay marriage wrong because God said so, or did God say it was wrong because it is?

If God said gay marriage is wrong because it is, it follows that morality is independent of God. He saw it was wrong, and ruled it forbidden. Presumably so can we because the standard exists apart from God. On the other hand, if gay marriage is wrong only because God said so, it follows that morality is arbitrary.

Note: This is just an example. To the best of my knowledge God has never expressed an opinion on gay marriage.

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Time magazine puts a breastfeeding four year old on its cover

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:22:00 +0000

Time opts for scandalous with its current cover shot, managing to offend mothers by suggesting they're pathetic wimps if they stop nursing after their kids grow teeth* while also wrecking the life of a little boy. Well done, Time magazine!

*Significant because a kid with a full-set of teeth can acquire nutrients from regular food, and thus has no further "natural" need for breast milk. A woman who continues nursing past that point isn't a super mom. She's someone who puts her own needs, and likely her own insecurities, ahead of the kid.**

And hey, not to open up another round of debate, but do any of you really want to see something like this, coming soon, to a shul near you?

** For good measure, chew or suck or whatever on this:

The Case Against Breast Feeding by Hanna Rosin

In certain overachieving circles, breast-feeding is no longer a choice—it’s a no-exceptions requirement, the ultimate badge of responsible parenting. Yet the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates. Is breast-feeding right for every family? Or is it this generation’s vacuum cleaner—an instrument of misery that mostly just keeps women down?

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Down with the Internet!

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:27:00 +0000

Here's another one of those terrible things your unsuspecting, innocent children might find online: a New York Times article describing the lengths Hasidim take to prevent abuse and molestation cases from going to trial.

The story is long and the reporting is thorough. It describes intimidation, threats, and attempts to pay-off victims and witnesses to keep them from testifying. Agudath Israel, and their dangerous, irresponsible policy on child abuse, also gets a mention:

"You can destroy a person's life with a false report," said Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zweibel, the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, a powerful ultra-Orthodox organization, which last year said that observant Jews should not report allegations to the police unless permitted to do so by a rabbi.

Rabbinic authorities "recommend you speak it over with a rabbi before coming to any definitive conclusion in your own mind," Rabbi Zweibel said.

Zweibel's policy is reprehensible, and part of the problem not the solution. He should be criticized from every pulpit and every blog by people who recognize his policy for what it is, namely, an attempt to protect rabbinic privileges and prerogatives at the expense of children. The Times' reporting makes it clear that Zweibel's approach is bankrupt by describing several cases in which the consulting Rabbi protected the perpetrator and by association his community's reputation at the victim's expense.

Though, I understand the traditional Jewish concerns about reputations and established Torah law, I'm nearing a breaking point. Every week, it seems, I hear a story about savage abuse in a cheder, some of it recent, some of it perpetrated years ago by people who are still teaching.

At what point do we concede that our deferential approach is not working? At what point do we say that our worrying about loshon hara is failing to keep children safe? When do we point at the rebbes and the mashgiachs and their gabbaim and say, you have failed to keep children safe? We need a Zola and a J'Accuse describing the widespread abuse in Hasidic schools and the indifference and hostility that victims suffer when they try to report it. We need to drop the deference and the shuffling and the irrational fear of hereditary leaders and their imaginary magical powers and say the words that need to be said. We need to finally stand up, as a community, and say that we will no long allow children to be beaten in Hasidic schools

I'd write the call-to-arms myself, but my name carries no weight. I would be ignored like so many other wannabees have been ignored. This has to be written by someone who has the respect of the establishment, someone like Gil Student or Yaakov Horrowitz. And, as I've asked them both many times: What are you waiting for?

HT @marksofla and @krum

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Did Matisyahu Solomon put a child abuser in charge of the anti-Internet rally

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:02:00 +0000

The story of the day is that one Nechamiah Gotleib is the mastermind behind the Internet Asifa. The other story of the day is that Gotleib is a viscous child abuser who routinely beat kids when he ran a school in Lakewood.

You can see the discussion and comments here and draw your own conclusions. In short, many people are testifying that Gotleib has a long, ugly record as a child abuser but was nonetheless accepted by Matisyahu Solomon as the leader and main organizer of the anti-Internet rally. They are also alleging that Gotleib owns a filtering company and that he will benefit personally from the asifa.

If this is true, I say that Matisyahu Solomon, the Skullner Rebbe and anyone else who leaves his name on the promotional materials or otherwise associates himself with the Asifa should be given the Jimmy the Greek treatment--- and I hope Orthodox Jewry has the guts to do it (though I won't hold my breath.)

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Obama to address gay marriage stance

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Here's a sociology sidebar from a post on Character Grades about MadMen

You know what's hilarious? Peggy's Mom is religious and old fashioned and believes that her daughter moving in with a man without marrying him is immoral and unnatural. We the audience know that eventually Peggy's Mom and Her Kind will die and the idea of a young couple moving in together before getting married will become normal. We can also safely assume that this same phenomenon will occur in our generation as well. The people today who oppose gay marriage are going to die. They will be replaced by more open minded little Peggys and Abes and today's thorny issue will become tomorrow's norm. I think this is called progress.

I bring this up, because Obama has given ABC an interview about gay marriage and speculation is rife that he is FINALLY going to stop being Peggy's Mom and offer support for same-sex marriage.

UPDATE: HE DID IT
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day. “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.

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Lag B'omer Music

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:08:00 +0000

Ok, with the annual fast on music already over in the Middle East, its time for a a few words about the three, and pretty much only three, songs connected to the holiday

Bar Yochai

Format: Extremely long and repetitive piyut, oddly beloved by people who tend to hate piyutim
Traditional tune: Beyond boring [Lets give credit to Moshe Skier for trying to improve it]
Overall DovBear ranking: Wow, does this song suck. I don't think even the best performer can make it bearable. Proof: SoulFarm are truly fantastic performers and their version isn't much good, though they can't be blamed for failing to make bearable something that is inherently unbearable.

L'kovod Hatana Ha'elokai

Format: Extremely long and repetitive piyut, oddly beloved by people who tend to hate piyutim
Traditional tune: Not bad
Overall DovBear ranking: A good song, that can be great in the hands of a talented artists. Unfortunately, I can't find such a performance on the Interwebs. You'll have to make do with this scratchy, difficult to enjoy version, though it offers the added fun of dancing Hasidim

Omar R. Akiva

Source: Based on what is probably Rabbi Akiva's best, most famous and most important homily. See my discussion here.
Traditional tune: Awesome
Overall DovBear ranking: A great song, so great that even a terrible musician can't get it wrong. And boy are you in luck, because I have found a fantastic rendition of the song performed by some Hasidic musician in which he absolutely blows the doors off it. You're welcome. (Its just a shame that after about 3 minutes it cuts short, and turns into UGH Bar Yochai)

Hey, are you hearing these songs for the first time? If so, I'm really curious to hear what you think of them. Please share your reactions in the thread.

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Yes, yes Republicans are peaceful, sane, sensible

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Here are some recent signs of the crazy from ranking Republicans....

First up, Scott Boston, a St. Louis Tea Party activist, who stood up at a rally and recommended murdering Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). “She walks around like she’s some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something but really she’s an evil monster,” he said. “We have to kill the Claire Bear,” he added. McCaskill's opponent Sarah Steelman (R) was in the audience when these words were spoken. As of yet, she has said nothing.

And, thanks to this anti-tax, anti-government genius, the police are providing McCaskill with additional police protection -- at tax payer expense.

Next we have Ponch McPhee, who edits a newsletter for the Republican Party of Greene County in Virginia. Here is what he published this month, beneath a charming recipe for "Conservative Potato and Egg Delight":

We have before us a challenge to remove an ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized. . . . The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse[sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November. This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue

Armed revolution? Has the Republican Party picked up the mantle of the Black Panthers?

See the screen grab after the jump

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A guest post on the Baltimore Werdershiem verdict

noreply@blogger.com (DovBear) — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:00:00 +0000

by BJ

The judge was finally reached a verdict on the case of the two vigilante Shomrim who were accused of beating the shi.., er, "stuffing" out of a 15 year old black kid walking through northwest Baltimor'es "frumland." Actually, to be fair, only one of the accused was actually a member of the Shomrim at the time, and he is not longer a member of the organization. I have some interest in this matter, as I have lived in this neighborhood since 1979, and serve as a volunteer in the other citizen's watch patrol, which is keeping a very low profile, for good reason, I suppose.

Here's a link to the verdict from the local fish-wrapper:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-werdesheim-verdict-20120503,0,2736517.story

This was a bench trial, lawyers for the defendant didn't believe they could get a fair trial from a city jury, er, bamboozle a city jury to to find for their client, I mean. (Of course, part of tht problem is the frum Jews in Baltimore City do their damndest to get out of jury duty, and if they do have to come downtown, they'll do anything to keep from being assigned to a trial. I've seen this firsthand, so no arguments!)

So the judge looked at the evidence, and convicted the older brother (Eliyahu) and acquitted the younger one (Avi). Apparently Avi was hust along for the ride, and didn't actually confront the victim or beat him up. Looks like the victim's erratic behavior on the stand didn't make much of a difference in the end.

The following are some interesting exceprts from Steve Kilar's article in the Sun dated May3, along with my comments.

"He relied on his military training to take Ausby down," White [the judge] said about Eliyahu, a former Israeli special-forces soldier. "I also find that the contact was not legally justified."

This just goes to show you that military training is totally inappropriate preparation for police work. This may explain, in part, the problems the Israelis have had in the territories. I have a nephew who just made aliyah and got sucked into Zahal. I sure hope he doesn't end up in the territories with the kind of training this nudnick had.

The Werdesheim brothers followed and frightened Ausby, now 16, as he walked down a residential street in Park Heights, causing the teen to pull a nail-studded board from a construction site, White said in her ruling. To get Ausby to drop the board, Eliyahu struck him in the head with a walkie-talkie and held him on the ground, she concluded.

That must have been some walkie-talkie. The ones that the other neighborhood watch group issues to us are pretty wimpy, and I wouldn't want to use them to defend myself.

The brothers got out of Eliyahu's car and confronted Ausby, White said. Avi said, "We know who you are; we saw you on Park Heights; you don't belong here," the judge said. That's when Ausby became scared, went to get the board and continued walking down the street, she said.

Looks like there was enough evidence for the judge to believe the victim's side of the story.

The trial was filled with a string of unreliable witnesses, she [Judge White] said. Shomrim members who testified were not credible, providing statements they believed were in their own best interests or best served the neighborhood watch, White said.

White's rebuke of Shomrim members' credibility followed a year and a half of criticism from community leaders that the group lacks oversight and structure. Eliyahu, who testified Wednesday, said that the group had no written rules and only a "loose mentorship program" for training.

He testified to that? Now in the other neighborhood watch group, we're not exactly the police academy, but they did have some written guidelines for us. And the cop who works with us has said a couple of things about the Shomrim that confirm Judge White's findings.

"I think the trial showed the Shomrim group was really out of order," said Tessa Hill-Aston, president of Baltimore's NAACP branch. Community policing groups like Shomrim should have organized training and accountable record-keeping — so that everyone knows who is out on the street doing patrols, she said.

I would agree with that. The other neighborhood watch I think keeps good records. Perhoas some additional training would be in order,too.)

The Police Department should increase their oversight of groups like Shomrim, and background and mental health checks should be conducted for anyone who wants to take part in community watch patrols, said the Rev. C.D. Witherspoon, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

That's going too far -- as long as the patrollers stay in the car and radio a cop to investigate, and don't confront people.

Joe Bondar, a resident of the Cheswolde neighborhood for the last 30 years and a friend of the Werdesheim family, said crime occurs in the community every night, and complaints that Shomrim and other community watch units are the problem — or aren't trained for the work they do — are misplaced.

"How about training the hoodlums who terrify the community night after night, break into houses, break into cars?" he said. "The police do absolutely nothing, and to put the blame on someone who's trying to do something about it? It's ridiculous."

Bondar continued: "It doesn't matter if it's a white person or a black person. It's not a racial issue. It's a safety issue."

Excuse me Mr. Bondar, did you just step out a time machine from 1978? Yeah, back then, there was a bit of a problem in the area. That's why they set up the other neighborhood watch group, which was wildly successful and caused crime to drop to the point that unescorted frum women have been walking outside at night for years. Of course there's some crime. When I moved in to my current house, one of my first evenings, I saw a bunch of kids steal a car from across the street. Of course, that was in 1984. I've had my car broken into (that was in 1994) and my lawn mover stolen (that was some time in the 1990s, too.) The crime rate in ournorthwest Baltimore neighborhood is ridiculously low, and the fear-mongering by Mr. Bondar is nonsense, and it's a shame that the reporter from the Sun uncritically reported it. As for the police doing "absolutely nothing," that's also nonsense. I have personally called the police, and they are as responsive and professional as one would expect. As for it not being a racial issue. Ho-ho-ho, and what bridge to Brooklyn are you trying to sell me today? I've been a Shabbos guest enough times to hear some racist crap spewed out that would be right at home at a Klan rally. Sure, not all the Orthodox are that way, but there are sure a lot of them. (To be fair, there's a good share of borderline racist non-Orthodox, too, but they usually have the manners to keep their mouths shut about it.)

Frankly, I don't see the need for the Shomrim, at least not in Baltimore, as the other neighborhood watch patrol was doing a perfectly good job without resulting in trials for assault and false imprisonment, and our police department is perfectly competent and professional. But then I don't see the need for a Hatzolah organization in Baltimore either, as our fire department has perfectly good paramedic services wit excellent response times. I think it's something about the Orthodox wanting to have their own little separate alternative reality.

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