And Now For Something Completely Revealing
by: Schvach Yid

At: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

and at: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125728,

And from Atlas Shrugs at http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/03/islam-and-the-n.html

The Rightful Place of Sarcasm
by: Schvach Yid

‘Wipe the blue off the flag and talk to Hamas’, Jonathan Mark urges the Israeli leadership in a piece he wrote for the March 14^th edition of The New York Jewish Week, at:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c40_a4861/News/Israel.html

He, like so many other Jews, is evidently sick and tired of spectating Israel’s ineptitude and impotence at dealing with its foremost problem – Moslem hatred of Jews and Judaism, acted out as maniacal homicide.

No, the ‘pc’ Liberals among you might say? Just consider the machinations of the Arab national leadership in the years leading up to the Second World War to bar Europe’s Jews from immigrating to what at the time constituted the British Mandate of Palestine. That’s Jew hatred!!!

Mark is right in this piece. The Israeli habit of emulating the old British Mandatory Authority’s practice of blowing up the homes of ‘Palestinian Jews’ suspected of activities that countered Britain’s interests in the area, by blowing up the homes of Arab terrorists, achieves nothing for Israel but bad press.

And don’t be concerned with public outrage voiced as accusations of apartheid and Nazism pointed at Israel for its management of the problems foisted the Jewish State by the Moslem Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs are anything but innocent; they’re waging murderous war against the Jews of Israel. By contrast, the Jews of Germany, and of elsewhere in Europe, waged no war against the Christians of Europe in the decades prior to World War Two. No political spiel by Germany’s Jews advocated freeing the land of Germany and replacing German rule with Jewish governance.

No Jew advocated running the Christians out of Europe or ever blew up Christian civilians in a trolley car in Vienna, Austria.

Quite the contrary, Yiddin were busy jumping onto the bandwagon. It’s called assimilation. Wissenschaft des Judentums was the fodder for this mass egress of Jews from the life of frumkeit. We never sought to overthrow or destroy Christian Europe and replace it with a Jewish government. The Jews of Germany were German patriots until they were informed in no uncertain terms their fealty was no longer welcome.

My paternal grandfather served in the German coastal artillery in the First World War; my maternal grandfather simultaneously served as a cavalry officer in Austria. No assertion of a separate nationalism was ever made.

This is in utter contrast to the Arab Palestinian ‘plight’ invented by the Arab Palestinian leadership (remember Yasser Arafat?) and the mass media. They have only one problem, and they’ve foisted it onto Israel – Jew hatred.

Jonathan Mark is right. Ariel Sharon needs to be reinvigorated and made young again so that his former strength on behalf of the Jewish State could now be applied to Israel’s present predicament. So too with the former leadership provided by R’ Meir Kahane. It’s a sad day when one has to invoke fantasy in defense of a country and one’s self interest. Fantasy is no substitute for substance; the current administration in Israel is no substitute for Israel’s former leaders.

Hitler’s aggression was directed at victimizing and annihilating innocent people; people who were otherwise eager and productive participants in the health and welfare of the European countries of their births. The smear of comparing Israel with the Nazis is pure imposture – and it’s vile. It’s right up the Arabs’ alley. It was the Arabs who courted the Nazis and who leveraged the British against us.

In honor of Ariel Sharon’s former self, and to properly memorialize Rabbi Meir Kahane, perhaps Israel should found yet another political party, to be named Zachor!. Perhaps its leadership would do something tangible in defense of the Jewish State of Israel.

Putting On The Bris
by: Schvach Yid

One of my favorite topics is up and running, or at least was, in the March 21^st edition of The New York Jewish Week. Yesiree jadies and jents, it’s the topic of Jewish circumcision, better known to us members of the Tribe as Brit Milah.

George Robinson reviews a new (?) documentary on this subject by film maker Eliyahu Unger-Sargon titled, ‘Cut: Slicing Through the Myth of Circumcision’ (sorry, the review is not listed on The New York Jewish Week web site).

Here is my very personal admission concerning this ‘controversial’ subject. I’m circumcised. I should know – I was there when it happened (and not by coincidence) although I don’t remember a thing about the event (in that case perhaps I shouldn’t know!). It’s not that I have to ask about the matter to be certain of the fact; it’s just that I should, and do, know.

My circumcision was not a religious ritual, but medical. If I recall correctly, back then the New York City Department of Health (I’m a native New Yorker) required circumcisions of all newborn males. Despite this fact, my mother informed her obstetrician that she wanted me circumcised, and according to my mother’s account, she (that’s right, a female obstetrician in 1953) answered ‘well, I’m not a rabbi, but I’ll do it’. Voilà!

Thanks to my mother’s acceptance of this important mitzvah, I’ve spent my life to date with the ability to sit at a Pesach seder with a clear conscience.

Have I ever been self-conscious about my circumcision? Not at all! I surely wouldn’t want my you-know-what to look like some wűrst in the display case at Schaller & Weber.

Personally, I love being circumcised. It’s one of many facts of my life that lets me know in no uncertain terms that I’m a Jew – of the male variety. Sorry jadies, but you can’t have one – you have nothing to circumcise (and the Aybischter never commanded bris milah for females).

This brings my spiel to the point of the matter. George Robinson’s review reveals that Unger-Sargon’s flick serves, at least in part, as an apologetic. The various introspective and social/political issues seem to have been covered (I haven’t seen this documentary), but less we forget, we Jews should all be reminded that we circumcise our infant sons, hopefully on the child’s eighth day post-partum, in compliance with HaShem’s mitzvah to do so, and not for reasons of health promotion, politics, social confrontation, marital isolation, or any other ‘pc’ concern.

It’s a part of Judaism – we do it because Gd has commanded us to do it.

And I thank my parents, as well as HaShem, for my medical, as opposed to religious, bris. A bissele wine for an eight day old is okay, but in the matter of circumcision, Betadine beats the pants off saliva, every time.

Recently there have appeared in print several Schreie about circumcision. The first, as I recall, was a book written by a Moslem author who suffered through a Moslem circumcision at the prescribed age of thirteen years (in emulation of Ishmail in the Chumash).

Now two Yiddin have deemed appropriate to jump onto the bris-bitch bandwagon. The second of these, who’s publication pre-dates the first, is Shalom Auslander with his book ‘Foreskin’s Lament’; I haven’t read this ditty, but here’s a website by and for the author: http://www.shalomauslander.com/book_foreskins_lament.php; there’s even a video on this site.

Here’s the URL to a review of the book, complete with a brief bio:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/14/RV2QSB9D0.DTL

Auslander just happens to live in Woodstock, NY, situated just off Route 28 out of Kingston (NYS Thruway exit 19). Woodstock is an old childhood summer haunt of mine; back then, it was the hippie hangout of the Northern Catskills.

What can I say? I’m satisfied.

The World of ‘Jews By Choice’ According to Schvach
by: Schvach Yid

I’ve recently taken up the habit of reading blogs by self-labelled ‘Jews by Choice’. I enjoy their accounts of discovery and self-fulfillment realized through the aegis of religious conversion to Judaism, which they relate through their writings.

First, I want to extend a hearty mazel tov to them all. Secondly, I wish to invite each and every one of them to stop sweating over their decisions to convert to Judaism. Lastly, I encourage these Jews to once and for all accept themselves as Jews. Evidently, some of them don’t; I do!

We Jews come in a great variety of sizes, shapes, complexions, nationalities, races, etc. You get the point. Some of us have succeeded in tracing our Jewish genealogies back many generations. A Simple Jew has posted one such account at http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/01/guest-posting-by-rabbi-shlomo-slatkin.html; it’s a beautiful story told by Rabbi Shlomo Slatkin.

If you’re like me, then the account of one’s Jewish roots can only be traced for four generations or so, yet we are taught by our rabbis that we are Jews by virtue of our matrilineal descent from Sarah. The Kabbalistic account deals with ‘misplaced’ neshamot and their rediscovery. Frankly, I have no idea if my family’s Jewish identity extends back to Sarah, but my ‘Jewishness’ has never been called into question. It could be that my claim as a so-called ‘Jew by birth’ is an unintentional fraud – how can I knowledgably and accurately account for my maternal lineage from a Jewish Biblical origin?

Despite this very real possibility, I have never questioned my Jewish identity; I’m a Jew – the genuine article, and so too I accept converts to Judaism, without proviso.

For the purpose of highlighting our varied forms (I hate using the term ‘diverse’ – it’s become so politically charged, clichéd, and trite), here are some bits from YouTube. Again, the message is clear.

Some Birthday
by: Schvach Yid

Today is my father’s birthday. He’s 86 years old, and I mean old. He doesn’t know it’s his birthday; in fact, he no longer seems to know anything. Four years ago he suffered a stroke, superimposed on an already evident yet incomplete senility. Then, perhaps a year following his stroke, his caretaker, in a moment of unintended(?) negligence, allowed him to fall, crashing his noggin against the concrete patio. Back he went into the hospital, and upon discharge, was little more than a vegetable.

So my father has suffered three cerebral insults. There’s not much left to him. He sits in a wheelchair clad in a diaper, fully dressed and fully nonfunctional.

My mother feeds him, dessert included. Just put some food in front of his mouth and down it goes. He has a hemiparesis, so he regularly chokes on his food, but so far he’s managed to avoid aspirating the stuff.

The brain department was never my father’s strong point. Oh what the hell, he was always a dumb ass. I know I shouldn’t say such things about one of my parents, but it’s true. He grew up as the pee-on of his family, eclipsed by his older-by-one-year brother, who didn’t amount to a hill of beans but was nevertheless his mommy’s favorite, so my father paid. Regrettably, this family collusion followed him into, and has remained throughout, my father’s adulthood. He never learned how to manage the situation. Learning wasn’t one of his talents.

I shouldn’t eulogize my father – he’s still alive. His birthday is not the occasion for his obituary. This is no time to recite Kaddish, but his brain is dead, or mostly so, so perhaps a Kaddish for my father might be appropriate. He can no longer think, ergo, he isn’t, but thinking was never one of his talents, so just what’s the loss?

He was never a nice guy. He was never a bad person. He was always angry, and always vulgar, specializing in dishing out ridicule and belittlement. I was always ‘you schmuck’, ‘the biggest schmuck in the family’, a ‘schmuck mit zwei Ohren’ (a penis with two ears). My mother was ‘that f*cking woman’. There were lots of insults. Can you say primitive? He no longer can.

Okay, okay, life hit him in the face with a shit pie. He grew up in Germany under the rise of the Nazis. He was marched to the front of one of his classes, as a child, and used as an object lesson on the physical characteristics of a member of a genetically inferior race - after all, he’s Jewish, so link that experience to his family’s lack of savvy in raising their children, and voilá.

When things got too hot in his home town of Bremerhaven his parents sent him off to Berlin to attend a vocational school for carpentry run by Beitar and the Jewish Agency. The goal was to train Jewish German youth for export to British Palestine. During one of their classes the Brown Shirts strolled in and trashed the place, then set it on fire. What a joyous childhood experience.

Off they went to America – by the hairs on their chiny-chin chins. No English. Ah, New York; no school. My father found work with a furrier, pushing ‘Jewish airplanes’ (racks of fur coats) from one building to the next. That’s the way to go through adolescence.

The he was drafted. The Army and the Pacific; Guadalcanal and Guam, as a medic. Well, at least the Army made him an American citizen, but not before he successfully completed basic training – citizenship was conditional. Decades ago I got a peek at the letters he wrote to his parents from the Pacific – in German. I asked him why in German. Simple – at that point he still couldn’t manage much English. His lousy brother, and their lousy cousin, neither of whom was ever nice to my father and who both would gang up and insult him in the presence of the rest of the family – I was there – both got to stay in the US for their Army service.

Isn’t life grand? Well, at least he got out of Germany and away from the Nazis. Good thing we won the war, eh?

So today is Dad’s birthday. Happy birthday Dad, and with whatever remains of your brain, why don’t you tell life to go f*ck itself!

The Deception of Christian Zionism
by: Schvach Yid

It’s nothing new. President Bush is presumed to be something of a Gospels totter, yet his support for Israel has been lax, to say the very least.

Take ‘the West Bank’, properly termed Judea/Samaria – YESHA. The Moslems refuse to share this Jewish turf with Jews, so too for the Temple Mount. According to the Western (read Christian) world, if the Moslems want Jewish turf, it’s theirs, and we Jews have nothing to say about it.

Of course, the whole argument is couched behind platitudes about human rights (for the Palestinian Arabs, not for Jews), the need for understanding and accommodation (on behalf of Palestinian Arabs, not Jews), the obligation of the ‘well off’ to condescend to and provide for the less fortunate – you know, the standard politically Liberal line for the benefit of Palestinian Arabs at the expense of Jews, as though Israeli Jews are wealthy and Middle East Arab Moslems are poor, and lastly, that great icon of secular Western Jewish existence, education. We are well educated compared to the Palestinian Moslem Arabs, therefore we pay.

At the heart of this conflict over Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland is the conflict that under rides Western religious existence, namely, the assertion that each one of the three Western religions trumps the other two – the ‘true faith’ assertion.

Never mind the fact that Western religions numbers 2 and 3 are both knockoff attempts at emulating and surpassing Judaism. This, of course, will never be admitted by adherents to either of those two other faiths.

No, the admission of a Jewish right to sovereignty in the Holy Land by Christianity would of course negate Christianity’s claim of legitimacy, even if that Christian support of a Jewish State were made to counter the Moslem claim. Islam’s acknowledgement of an inherent Jewish right to the land would likewise serve as an admission by Islam of its own illegitimacy.

The claims of religious efficacy rest entirely on the claim of Gd’s revelation. Each of the three Western religions invokes its scripture in support of this. The Jewish claim to the Land of Israel is based on HaShem’s revelation to us, given in Torah. Acknowledge that, and the rest follows, because Gd’s word is Gd’s word.

The Christian Zionists are well informed about this. So too are the Moslems. The British ‘promise’ of a Homeland for the Jews in the old Mandate of Palestine, and beyond, was, and continues to be, slowly and gradually eroded to virtually nothing. Britain was a Christian nation; its leaders were Christian and understood very well the need to negate the claims of Judaism as a requisite of their own claims of religious legitimacy. So too for the dynamic duo of Bush and Rice. So too will it be for their successors.

The eagerness, or alternatively the complacency, of Israel’s leadership to fall in line with the demands in support of the religious claims of Christianity and Islam serves only to negate Torah. In an apparent paradox, the century-old scam of disguising religion as politics by the Christian world has been met by Israel’s refusal to recognize the identity of the beast. There is no peace on the horizon for Israel, at least not until the Israeli populace finds its brain and uses it.

I Didn’t Know He’s Jewish, Either
by: Schvach Yid

That’s Bernard Lewis jadies and jents, the famed and very oratory British chochom on the subject of Islam, now an elder gentleman and Professor Emeritus of Princeton University.

I first heard him – a real treat, and I mean it – on an edition of C-SPAN’s Book TV years ago, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since.

I, being a self-professed chochom of sorts, suspected that Prof. Lewis might be Jewish, but I didn’t know. Now, thanks to Ruthie Blum of the on-line edition of The Jerusalem Post, I do. Mazel tov Schvach! Here’s the link: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1204546415778&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

In the C-SPAN interview, the interviewer innocently asked Prof. Lewis which translation of the Koran he uses as his source material. He gave bit of a start and answered, ‘the original Koranic Arabic, of course’ (he didn't add 'you dummy', but it was implied).

On the flip side is our very own Yiddishe mama of meteorology and weather reporting, Stephanie Abrams, of The Weather Channel (if you think I’m a Jewish chauvinist, how right you are!). Recently I’ve taken to watching The Weather Channel, and Ms. Abrams appears to have ramped up her entertainment gig a bit, complete with views of her trousseau and décolletage.

Surely, someone can cue her into derech hatznius, but I’m proud of her anyway.

During one report, she blurted ‘oy vey!’ – emes. Such nachas I get from her, and I don’t even know her; I wonder if The Weather Channel management put words on her afterward. I am sure.

The Bestiality of Islam
by: Schvach Yid

Thanks to the obsession the various cable news channels have with the current presidential primary race, I didn’t learn about the latest tragedy in J’lem until today, since regrettably I don’t have a computer of my own. I hope they’ll revert to reporting the news, rather than pursuing their habit of turning the current bid for the presidency into a knockoff sports event. Until then, I think I’ll cancel my TV cable subscription.

According to the ‘Protocols of Political Correctness’, there are Moslems, and then there are ‘Islamists’. ‘Islamists’ are supposed to be the extremist minority within the world’s general Moslem population. Baloney! ‘Islamist’ are nothing other than the military wing of the world’s general Moslem population, and like all military forces, they constitute a small percentage of the total population of their society. They don’t have formal uniforms, you may counter? They

don’t indulge in ritual pomp and ceremony, you may protest? Schmonses; they constitute a citizens’ militia, but unlike the Minutemen of the American Revolution (in whose honor a class of America’s ICBM’s are named) the ‘Moslem Citizens’ Militia’ commit murder in the ‘cause’ of Jew-hatred.

This past week, eight Jewish kinder – yeshiva bochurim all, were murdered in cold blood as sacrifices in Islam’s hatred against Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish homeland. These eight Jewish youngsters were all made of ‘The Right Stuff’ – proud Jewish youths who loved their people, Torah, and Israel.

And to what end was this atrocity committed? The arabist throwbacks to T. E. Lawrence’s day might inveigh Arab nationalism. The UN, in its long established convoluted way, would assert ‘humanitarianism and world peace’. The current administration in the US would figure out something – anything – supportive of ‘Palestinian rights’, and Olmert and his crew?

Who can successfully decipher the ways of Olmert and the Israeli Left? I don’t know if that bunch really means what they do in their endless pursuit of capitulation, or if their backs are truly against the wall. Olmert, after all, is not only the Prime Minister, but also a prime assassination target. I imagine that not too much is needed to position a Palestinian Arab assassin to do the dirty deed.

What is clear is that the proud days of Israeli chutzpah, at least in terms of national defense, are over, replaced by luxury high rise condominiums in J’lem and the expulsion of Jews from Judea/Samaria. Ah, the legacy of the Olmert administration. ‘World peace’ might as well be ‘whirled peas’.

By comparison to this past week's tragedy, 'only' seven people were murdered in the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Valentine's_Day_Massacre). The ‘Moslem Citizens’ Militia’ has been out-doing Al Capone for a very long time – just count the Jewish corpses.

And here, courtesy of A Simple Jew is a lesson to be learned from Gemara, at:
http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/03/sderot-tel-aviv-lesson-from-gemara.html

photo credits: top-Arutz Sheva; bottom-Wikipedia

A Great Find Has Been Found

by: Schvach Yid

At the Atlas Shrugs blog site at: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/02/jerusalem-is-je.html

According to Pamela Geller, author and founder of the Atlas Shrugs blog site, this past Thursday Israeli archeologists announced the unearthing of a 10 centuries-old artifact that proves the Hebrew biblical claim over ancient Jerusalem.

An ancient seal bearing an archaic Hebrew inscription dating back to the 8th century BCE has been uncovered in an archeological excavation in Jerusalem's City of David, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Thursday.

Geller then provides a list of responses to offer any individual who might take issue with our rightful Jewish claims over Jerusalem.

Perhaps to counter our assertion, the Waqf of Jerusalem would like to provide some archeological evidence that Islam’s prophet ascended to heaven from the Temple Mount.

Haveil Havalim #155

is up and running at http://wwwjackbenimble.blogspot.com/thanks to Jack of the Random Thoughts blog site (formerly known as Jack Be Nimble, Jack’s Shack, Talk To Jack Now); Jack has been very busy and has done an exemplary job of organizing and running this Jewish blog carnival. Jack gets help - others do host Haveil Havalim (Hebrew for ‘Vanity of Vanities’ of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes fame), but Jack is primary. So chaptzem read!

What’s in a Name?
by: Schvach Yid

Catholic Israel? Huh? I’ve searched for the paper in which this bit of Conservative Movement philosophy was first introduced and espoused in 1896(?) by one of the founding machers of the Conservative Movement, Solomon Schechter, but alas, my effort has been fruitless, except for a brief (I assume) excerpt found in Marshall Sklare’s An American Religious Movement, Conservative Judaism (1985, University Press of America, Inc.). So if anyone who reads this can provide me with a link to the on-line text, thanks in advance.

The concept of Catholic Israel has subsequently been re-defined by Robert Gordis, but here’s the bit from Schechter, via Sklare:
It is not the mere revealed Bible that is of first importance to the Jew, but the Bible as it repeats itself in history, in other words, as it is interpreted by Tradition…Since then the interpretation of Scripture or the Secondary Meaning is mainly a product of changing historical influences, it follows that the center of authority is actually removed from the Bible and placed in some living body, which, by reason of its being in touch with the ideal aspirations and the religious needs of the age, is best able to determine the nature of the Secondary Meaning. This living body, however, is not represented by any section of the nation, or any corporate priesthood…but by the collective conscience of Catholic Israel as embodied in the Universal Synagogue

Schechter continues: Another consequence of this conception of Tradition is that it is neither Scripture nor primitive Judaism, but general custom which forms the real rule of practice…Liberty was always given to the great teachers of every generation to make modifications and innovations in harmony with the spirit of existing institutions…The norm as well as the sanction of Judaism is the practice actually in vogue. Its consecration is the consecration of general use – or, in other words, of Catholic Israel.

Voguish Judaism? Do as you please Judaism? What’s catholic about that? Remember, the etymology of catholic derives from the Greek katholikos, meaning universal or general, but those who conceived this contentious title had to have had something else in mind, I assume, especially given that the founding raison d’être of the Conservative Movement was in response to another free-minded version of Judaism, Reform Judaism, while simultaneously striving to remain distinct from Jewish Orthodoxy. It comes across as an attempt at niche cutting.

I have to assume that this piece of nouveau Jewish philosophy was an in-your-face challenge to the Roman Catholic Church, but what on earth for? And so I continue to shrug my shoulders at the Conservative Movement. I still think it’s a bad idea in search of a very elusive justification. It’s not that the Movement needs one, but its leadership evidently thinks one is required.

The recruitment of the term ‘catholic’ is probably more a function of the ‘philosopher’s’ opinion of the Roman Catholic Church and his attempt to analogize the masses of Jews with the mass of followers of the Roman Catholic Church, not to mention an attempt at emulation. This, too, is my biased assumption.

Judaism is Judaism, and those who attempt innovations to the ‘original’ are bound to screw up. That’s another of my highly biased opinions. Here’s another one: I think philosophy makes a poor profession.

Let’s not forget that the Conservative Movement, like the Reform Movement, was invented by immigrants who undoubtedly wanted to fit into their new home (my parents and grandparents, all immigrants, certainly did), not to mention their descendants, some of whom found/find the sights and sounds of traditional Judaism to only serve as sources of embarrassment.

In an opinion piece published in the January 4^th edition of The New York Jewish Week (I have to write about this paper; after all, I subscribe to it), Rabbi Barry Gelman has espoused his own bit of philosophy – that the Orthodox community, in light of its successes in recruiting Jews back into the Orthodox fold, can “reshape the way it is perceived if it becomes more engaged and relevant by broadening its conversation”. He wants Modern Orthodoxy to speak to all Jews “by speaking out on the major cultural and ethical issues of the day”; you know, Darfur, global warming, immigration.

Sound familiar? It’s the Conservative Movement all over again; Conservative Judaism, The Sequel. By extension, the MOs should go ‘catholic’ according to Gelman (no, he doesn't use that term). In other words, he wants to emulate the emulators. Isn’t he informed about the demographics of the Conservative and Reform Movements, and he want to hop onto their sinking ship?

I think he’s right about leniency verses stringency in the everyday adherence to Halacha, but different shows attract different audiences. I doubt that those who eschew Jewish religious observance will go MO if these changes are implemented, while the current MOs will likely find other Orthodox ‘venues’ to join if Rabbi Gelman’s suggestions are adopted.

Worst of all, organizational fealty is raising its ugly head in this construct of a new Orthodox Judaism, and this really recapitulates the error of the Conservative Movement. It is organizational allegiance which, I think, most overtly identifies the Roman Catholic Church. I believe Schechter’s use of the term ‘catholic’ was employed to stress the intended organizational nature of the Conservative Movement that, like the Roman Catholic Church, would demand fealty from its members. I hope the MOs don’t follow this same path.

Hot Off the Press – A Year Ago
By: Schvach Yid

So I’m slow. I admit it, but thanks to Chavi Jo of the Just Call Me Chaviva blog site (not to mention of the Jews By Choice blog site), I’ve learned about the World Jewish Digest website where I found this little ditty by Jessica Steinberg:

Located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, this bedroom community has energized Israel’s outsourcing movement with its population of young, ultra-Orthodox families. Since most of the men there learn in a kollel—a yeshiva for adult men—it’s the women who both work and care for their growing families. Given the employment needs in Modi’in Illit, then, and the industry’s demand for inexpensive, skilled labor, community members conceived the idea for an outsourced computer-programming company that specifically employed Haredi women.

“This is a town that has been severely affected by the government budget cuts to yeshiva students,” explains Libby Affen, a mother of six with 30 grandchildren and a long career as an information-technology specialist. “Most of the men here are learning, and their wives are young with kids.” Thus, the extra income is a necessity.

In 2004, community members approached Mordechai Gutman, C.E.O. of Matrix IT, an information-technology company in Herzliya that has 2,500 employees and is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. He jumped at the idea, and within two years, he opened two centers in Israel, one in Modi’in Illit and the other in Beit Shemesh, another town with a large Haredi population. The centers, called Talpiot, now employ 300 ultra- Orthodox women.

“The average age is 24,” says Affen, Talpiot’s chief operating officer. “They work from 8 [a.m.] to 4 [p.m.], and they work here because they can zip home.”

What a fabulous idea. And I never married – schmuck! But of course, it’s the ingenuity of this program that intrigues me. It’s very smart, and that, perhaps, is what we Jews like the most about ourselves, isn’t it?

The Chump
by: Schvach YId

Please forgive the filthy photo.

Oh, how ‘they’ love to chump me. Maybe it’s my ponim. Maybe it’s my obvious lack of savvy. Perhaps it’s my obnoxious swagger. Maybe it’s me.

So there I was, ten years ago, working on a new job as a technician in a university-based academic biomedical research lab (NIH funded) and the post-doctoral fellow with whom I was assigned to work - a young (?) woman from Slovakia (my maternal grandmother’s birthplace; in fact, this youngish woman’s mother and my oma came from the same town) – had reached the end of her stay and was scheduled to leave for a faculty appointment (mazel tov!) in another city. A going away party had been planned, to be hosted in the home of one of my boss’ faculty colleagues, and I was invited. Little did I suspect.

Party day. There I was, and there they were, in the home of the professor whose lab adjoined my boss’ lab. The hosting professor was married to an age peer German woman. They had met when he was a graduate student and she was a lab technician in the same lab, at that same university where I was then employed. As it turned out, the wife’s aunt was visiting from abroad.

There she sat on the couch in their home located along a canal that emptied into a bay in this piece of America’s Bible Belt. She was an elderly woman; she spoke German exclusively to her nice - the wife of the hosting professor - and to the several Germans from the campus who were invited.

As she spoke I was reminded of my paternal grandmother, who had also been German, and who had died just two years before. As I looked at this old German woman she returned my gaze, bolted in her place, and exclaimed that old familiar German ditty, ‘Gott is viel’. I was then informed of the relationship between her and the host’s wife. She was referred to as Traudl! Perhaps the host assumed that I had made the connection, but no, I was too oblivious.

I should be well informed about the cast of characters of the Holocaust, especially of those who dolled it out to us, but regrettably at that point in my life, I wasn’t. Everyone in the lab knew about my Jewish German/Austrian background. On a few occasions I had been asked about it, so given the identity of this German relative and her intended presence at the party, why had I been invited? The joke, if it could be considered a joke, was on me. The egg on my face is still dripping.

Traudl Junger was one of Hitler’s five personal secretaries. She, according to historians, had been present in Hitler’s bunker when he and Eva Braun are reputed to have committed suicide, and according to what I’ve read about her on the web, Traudl Junger had applied to work as a secretary in Hitler’s chancellery rather than having been conscripted. This photo suggests she also knew how to get around the neighborhood.

I didn’t learn of Traudl Junger until years later, but upon viewing her photo, the match of faces and names were unmistakable.

This had been chump escapade #2. Number one had occurred ten years before, when I was employed as a nurse in a large hospital in the neighboring large city.

There, an elderly man had been admitted to the hospital, had undergone a coronary artery bypass, and had been transferred to the surgical telemetry floor where I was employed as a staff RN. His patient chart stated he was 72 years old and that he resided in Nicaragua. The name was overtly German.

When I was assigned to this patient I was told that I was not to touch his food tray except to collect it once his meal was completed. The patient refused to speak to me or to anyone else in my presence, but freely spoke to all other staff members and to his visiting daughter (who said she lived in Switzerland where she worked as a psychiatrist, and who refused to identify herself by name), as long as I wasn’t present. I was informed that I was required to prepare all of his medications in his presence; no other care giver was given the same instructions.

On the second day of this charade, I asked him if he wanted to walk to the toilet – in German (willst du zu klo gehen?). He gave me a look..., and not a word in response.

Working on this same nursing unit was a nurse’s aide, a woman, who spoke with a pronounced German accent. Blond and blue eyed, I never learned her country of origin, but on that same day of theater, she walked up to me and said ‘don’t you think there’s something peculiar going on with that patient?’ Some more was said by her about ‘the war’. The next day the patient was gone from that nursing unit, and so was the nurse’s aide.

To this day I have no idea who he was, but I'm certain of what he was. I cringe at the thought. I'm also certain that the hospital and everyone concerned was fully informed, except me.

The assistant head nurse of that unit made a hobby of provoking and ridiculing me. The head nurse was impotent in her role as manager; I was isolated as a Jew without access to a support network, and as I was then in the process of learning, the local Jewish community was very well kept in its place. It wasn’t New York – unfortunately (years later, during a visit to the same head nurse, she freely admitted that the then assistant head nurse was a class A Jew hater; appropriately, neither one was then working in nursing).

Such lugubrious 'honors' are conferred upon me. There’s more, but not now. I feel a need to wash my face.

Missing the Boat
by: Schvach Yid

The Chumash, and in fact the entire Tanakh, is filled with violence, especially violence performed or commanded by HaShem. Anyone, rabbinical seminary professor, rabbi, student, or lay person, who has bothered to read the weekly parsha for the entire yearly cycle, knows this.

Judaism is not about peace, nor is it about violence. It’s about living in accordance with Gd’s commandments as given in Torah. As any good New Yorker will tell you, one has to ‘do what you gotta do’. In the case of Judaism, this means living in compliance with Gd’s given commandments. And no, it’s never about interpersonal abuse.

There is an enormous difference between living a life of Torah and mitzvot, and carving out a career as an academic in a nouveau theme-defined school that attempts to meld rabbinics and academics by abandoning tradition and advocating concocted social/political policies.

It appears that those in the Jewish community who have chosen to assign to themselves positions of religious leadership and the usurped authority of redefining Jewish life and values have spent their time missing the curb, always landing their misguided strides off target.

As a result, after more than a century and a half of these poorly directed ambitions by the ‘sub-Orthodox’ movements of Judaism, we of the Jewish community are in the sad state of having to describe ourselves as ‘Jewish communities’, with nary any agreement between Orthodox Jews and ‘all other’ Jews, not to mention the often times overt animus expressed by followers of one strain of Judaism toward the others.

As substitutes for Jewish Orthodoxy that have attempted to retain Jews who are insistent on the pursuit of non-Jewish lives, and who in fact have little use for Judaism, these organizational proxies for Orthodox Judaism have largely failed.

I think politics has a poor place in Judaism. Regrettably, politics is forced on Jews as a national entity, but as religious life it just doesn’t belong. To invent a Jewish organization that purports to constitute a ‘movement’ of Judaism, thus recruiting organizational fealty from Jews and redefining Jewish identity for its adherents, and that replaces the traditional teachings and emunah of Judaism with politics and social activism on behalf of ‘greater causes’, has been self destructive.

The Jew who is sufficiently distracted in his life as a Jew with world over population and his own ‘carbon footprint’ to the elimination of a life of Torah hasn’t redefined Jewish values at all. This individual has simply left (get it?) Judaism.

I once heard a Conservative Movement rabbi declare in his sermon, ‘Judaism is the pursuit of the good life’. Lousy salesman.

All this critique is intended as a response to the kvetch of a rabbinic student at the Reform Movement seminary HUC, as posted on Seraphic Secret at:
http://www.seraphicpress.com/archives/2008/01/the_death_of_to.php

No offense is intended, certainly not Leshon Hara, but the fact is the Reform Movement of Judaism is lost. They evidently want to be Jewish without being Jewish - not too Jewish, but instead not Jewish at all - but they still insist on clinging onto the identity, as though the identity alone, devoid of the substance of a life of Torah and mitzvot, confers personal value. That just isn’t so.

Judaism is about neither liberal politics, nor conservative politics. Judaism is not about politics. HaShem didn’t appear to us at Mount Sinai and say: ‘Here’s my platform, vote for me’. Were our antecedents commanded to schech rachmonas on the poor slain Egyptians?

What was Joshua commanded to do upon entering the ‘Promised Land’? Go ahead and chaptzem read, there’s nothing nice about it, and yet we are commanded to provide for the stranger among us.

These things we do because they are mitzvot, not because they feel good, and certainly not because they provide the ambitious individual Jew with a career niche. I wish this HUC rabbinical candidate all the best in his life’s pursuits. I think the Reform movement, and the professor he described, have gotten it all wrong.

Behold, Neither Slumbers Nor Sleeps…
by: Schvach Yid

…the guardian of Israel; this we daven in Psalm 121. There are often times when we see proof positive of this maxim of Jewish belief.

Yesterday, Soccer Dad posted Haveil Havalim #150, and in doing so awarded the Post of the Week to My Shrapnel, the blog site of Gila Weiss, an olah from the United States who suffered injury in a terrorist bombing attack in Jerusalem in 2002.

Here’s what she writes as her side bar ‘message’:

I am, of course, neither sad, nor heroic nor particularly victimized. What I am is an "ordinary Joe" who was seriously injured six years ago in a suicide bombing while waiting for a bus at the Machane Yehuda open air market in Jerusalem.

Ever since I learned how to write, writing has served as a sort of therapy for me. In the months and years after the bombing, I did an enormous amount of writing. What I was thinking. What I was feeling. How the world reacted to me. How my bombed-out self reacted to the world. Some of the articles were sent to friends and relatives via email lists. Many more of them just sat on my computer. I always meant to do something with them.

Of course, I never got around to it.

This year, I promised myself that I would, at last do something. And since blogging is the best way to do something without having to do all that much (no publishers, no rejections, no work apart from editing), I decided that this was the way to go.

Please comment. I am putting these out so that people will read them. Let me know that you are reading.

Thanks.
Gila

You know the old cliche, 'words alone cannot express..' Well, I am at a loss to express my gratitude for the heroics of this heroine of Zion. To read her blogs is something akin to watching a remake of the old flick Fantastic Voyage, but this time viewing the horror experienced by a target of a terrorist’s bombing. She’s stoic, but at the same time candid and sharing, evidently extending her concern for others who have perished in similar atrocities or for those who might unwittingly fall victim, as she did.

On line, we are favored to learn about the life events of others, some of who share their naches, while others choose to share their experiences with the other side of what life can, and all too often does, dole out. Gila manages to combine the two, by providing a paradoxically positive reflection of this event, which was momentary in its execution and yet life long in its impact, and on her devoted attachment to her Jewish identity.

She provides a superb reputation to the efforts of personal introspection.

My many thanks are extended to her. Baruch HaShem she has succeeded where her attacker failed, and may she know only joy, success, and brachot in the Jewish Homeland.

The Descent of an Honored Reputation
by: Schvach Yid

As a youngster, and for that matter as a young adult, I was one of those higher education ‘worshipping’ (not literally) kind of guys. I thought the university scene was the cat’s meow. As a native New Yorker I would regularly take the subway to the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University and amble around, taking in the sights. I considered myself apolitical and socially liberal. I wasn’t religious (sorry), I never participated in a political or social public demonstration, I never thought about the Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union (sorry), and as for Nathan Sharansky - ? Back then, Rabbi Meir Kahane was not among my favorite personalities.

As I grew older and accumulated both lousy life experiences and increasing amounts of adipose, my view of life soured and changed profoundly.

In retrospect I’m grateful I can claim to never have been one of those Yiddin who took the bait set out by the Buddhists and Hindus. For the most part, I shrugged off John Lennon’s music on the one side, and Orthodox Judaism on the other.

I’ve spent a fair amount of attention alternating between laughing at those Jews turned JuBu or HindJu and lamenting their averos.

Today, I’m pissed.

In recent posts by Rabbi Avi Shafran for Arutz Sheva, and by Little Green Footballs, the fifth grandson of the late, great promulgator of non-violent protest and world peace, Arun Ghandi, has shone a new light on just where we Jews stand as members of humanity, and just in time for the annual commemoration of one of Mahatma Ghandi’s great disciples, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Arun Ghandi’s analysis of the Jews’ ‘condition’ in the world is neither flattering to us, nor correct, and as a blood line descendent and spiritual disciple of his grandfather, Mahatma Ghandi, Arun Ghandi should know better, except for the opinion of his esteemed grandfather regarding us Jews, according to Rabbi Shafran’s article. Arun Ghandi’s opinion concerning Israel, the Palestinian Arabs, the Holocaust, and various other matters Jewish, can be viewed at:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/arun_gandhi/2008/01/jewish_identity_in_the_past.html. He is president and co-founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, now at the University of Rochester in New York.

Here’s a sample of his ‘informed wisdom’:The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs.

He wants us to lay down and die. Maybe Ehud Olmert would like to appoint him to his cabinet. Sorry Arun, Judaism forbids suicide; in the Jewish community, stupidity might be considered a capital offense (not Halacha).

As for the Jewish Nation's anchored in the past, what can one say? Tanach! Perhaps Arun Ghandi calls our Torah the 'Old Testament'. Perhaps he'd prefer a shortened version of some of HaShem's commandments to us, you know, like the PesachHagaddah: 'in every generation you will regard yourselves as though you personally were taken out of Egypt'.

Judaism is all about our Jewish past as applied to our current lives, as in HaShem's revelation to us at Mt. Sinai. In Judaism, the past is present for indeed, in every generation, they have risen, and continue to rise up, against us.

Mr. Arun Ghandi, say Hari Krishna!

…Now Go And Learn!
by: Schvach Yid

If you have an appetite for a nice dvar Torah, try two postings at A Simple Jew. The first is found at: http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/01/question-answer-with-dixie-yid-teaching.html, which deals with the difficult topic of teaching children painful lessons from the Chumash (Teaching Sensitive Topics In Chumash) while the second, which was first posted as a comment to the above entry and then reposted as a separate blog, is found at: http://asimplejew.blogspot.com/2008/01/hide-what-you-want-him-to-seek.html.

Yasher koach to both Dixie Yid and Gandalin on their insightful shiurim.

For another lesson on the topic of teaching children (what the Alter Rebbe, Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Lubavitch, call Chinuch HaKatan), just tune into http://dixieyid.blogspot.com/2008/01/guest-post-by-rabbi-chaim-morgenstern.html.

Nicht Fűr derJuden
by: Schvach Yid

Once again Yo, Yenta! has pointed my nose to the worthier side of Jewish jibe, at http://www.yoyenta.com/?p=1743#comments. This bit is about a Jewish NASCAR race driver, a native of New Jersey, who for some as yet undisclosed reason has strayed into the very un-Jewish world of professional car racing (why doesn’t he just don a blindfold and go swimming with alligators?).

Here in America’s Bible Belt, where I reside, NASCAR is godliness; no self-respecting Southerner (I’m talking about the Caucasian variety folks) dares to stray away from it, but even among long time Jews of the ‘genteel’ South, nary a Yid flips the tube to car racing. It just isn’t us (I’m a native New Yorker).

Enter young (20 years old) Jon Denning (not a Jewish name) who, as a child, got ‘infected’ with the car racing bug. But not all is placid for the Jew in this very non-Jewish sport, having been counseled by his Southern Baptist racing associates: ‘Your luck would be better if you came to Jesus," he said associates told him, suggesting that blown-out engines, flat tires and other failures would disappear once he converted’ [to Christianity].

Gevalt; for this his parents raised him? Well, cheer up folks. Having won 7 races, and ranked 498 in the top 500 among NASCAR racers, and having also suffered the slings and arrows of peer exclusion, Mr. Denning is now investigating a possible career in investments. Bravo!

I’d feel better about all this had the bocher done professional skiing instead.

You can read about him at:
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/2008011520080113nascar.html

Talk about Jews in sports, do you think NASCAR shuts down for the Jewish High Holy Days (and when is the NASCAR racing season, anyway)?

Here are links to two Jewish sports legends who did:
http://espn.go.com/classic/s/merron_on_green.html
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/4552/edition_id/82/format/html/displaystory.html

http://www.jewish-holiday.com/koufax.html