A Jew's view from the capital of Israel and the future site of the Third Temple, may it speedily be rebuilt.
Former first daughter Ashley Biden this week filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years, according to reports.I posted about the so called "marriage" way back when. Go ahead, read the post. It's a good one!
Hopefully Dr. Krein learned from his mistake and will find a nice Jewish girl to marry.
Way back in 2014 I blogged about a gay "wedding" that took place in a Conservative Temple in New Jersey. I had left a comment on the web site that reported the deplorable event:
The job of a rabbi is to uplift them to the Divine ideals of Torah and not lower them down into the depravity of ancient Egypt:Did I really expect these clergy to uplift the congregation? If so, I was really naive! Take a look at what their clergy are doing today:“Lesbian relations are forbidden and it is among the “doings of Egypt” that we have been warned about as it is said, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do”. The sages said, “What did they do? A MAN MARRIES A MAN, and a woman marries a woman, and a woman marries two men.”
From Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Relations 21:8
Rabbi Ariella Rosen and Rabbi Becca Walker tied the knot at the Conservative movement’s camp in Palmer, Massachusetts, last month, with yet another queer woman rabbi, Megan GoldMarche, officiating. Rosen’s father, Rabbi Jim Rosen, also played a role.Sad.
A big thumbs down to all the "rabbis" that took part in this farce. You guys are harming yourselves and your congregations.
American Jewry, as a community that is connected to world Jewry at large, is in free fall. If the polls are to be trusted, 70% of American Jews voted against the man who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. 70% of America's Jews voted against the man who signed an executive order making Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act apply to anti-Semitic acts. 70% of American Jews voted against who advanced peace between the State of Israel and several Arab countries. This is a shocking lack of solidarity, not only with the Jews of Israel, but also with their own children who suffer abuse from the radical left on college campuses.
Now let us take a look at whom they did vote for: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. These two people are living examples of the destruction of American Jewry through intermarriage. Joe Biden's daughter is "married" to a Jew. I blogged about that "marriage" and some of its disgusting aspects way back in 2012. Kamala Harris is "married" to a Jew named Douglas Emhoff.
When learning the history of Jewish communities in the Diaspora, a pattern becomes clear. Each community has a period of growth until it reaches its pinnacle. Eventually, there is a decline: "But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot...". Sometimes the decline is gradual. Sometimes the decline is speedy and violent. Remember what happened to the Jewish communiites in Babylon, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland. It seems to me the Golden Age of American Jewry is now officially over. It is time to come home.
It is Friday afternoon in Hollywood, Florida. Dr. Neta Peleg-Oren, a secular psychotherapist, and Yehuda Kornfeld, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and educator, are sitting opposite me. Both are former Israelis and they are worried.Read the rest.“This Won’t Happen to Me” is the name of the workshop they conduct together and it is also the title of their soon-to-be published book. “This won’t happen to me” is the sentence that almost every Israeli parent in America utters regarding the assimilation and intermarriage of his/her children, but it happens. There are more than half a million Israeli-Americans and a significant majority of their children marry non-Jews.
Some think that if they water down the Torah they’ll be doing a great service by making it more accessible, but not only is this not doing anyone a favor, it’s doing a disservice; instead of drawing people closer, it distances them from the true word of God.
Aly Raisman, the Olympic gold medalist gymnast, told a BBYO conference she drew strength from her Jewish upbringing.Of course she is right. Being Jewish is about being a good person. However, there are plenty of good people from other nations and faiths. I've met many fine Catholics, Protestants, Koreans, Irishmen, and Italians, just to mention a few. Being Jewish is also about being a good Jew: Being faithful to God, His Torah, and His nation. It is something that encompasses every aspect of life. It is something that one must devote a lot of time to learn.Raisman, addressing the pluralistic youth movement’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida on Friday, said she wanted to “talk about how proud I am to be a Jewish athlete,” which drew cheers.
“Being Jewish is all about family and I think being Jewish is all about being a good person,” she said. “I have so many amazing memories of being with family during the Jewish holidays.”
But who is going to listen to me? I haven't won any gold medals.
In the Passover Haggadah it is written that "everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy." I think that one who discusses at length the miraculous accomplishments of the State of Israel, which are numerous, this is also praiseworthy. For one will come to see the hand of Divine Providence that has accompanied the Jewish People from its outset.
I have been here for more than thirty years. In this time period I have witnessed so much progress here. This little country is advancing, not only in the physical realm but in the spiritual realm as well.
“And the gold of that land is good...” (Gen. 2:12) “This teaches that there is no Torah like the Torah of the Land of Israel.”
As I write these words the people of Israel mourn the soldiers that gave their life protecting the country and its people. Tomorrow night at this time the country will a sharp turn to rejoice and gives thanks to the Lord of Israel for giving us the opportunity to live here as free men and fulfill our potential. As Rashi explains, "...there I will make you into a great nation..."
I myself really want to celebrate Israeli Independence Day, but I cannot help but remember what I left behind. All of those poor American Jews, who may be well off financially, may have multiple degrees in higher learning, but never had the privilege of learning Torah or learning what Judaism, real authentic Judaism, is really about. If I have been blessed in seeing the State of Israel blossom, I have also been so unfortunate to watch American Jewry shrivel up and fade away.
Perhaps I should be indifferent to the demise of the American Jewish Community. Our sages tell us that only one fifth of the Israelites actually left Egypt, while the others died during the plague of darkness. Why did they die? Because they did not want to leave Egypt! I have a feeling that the Israelites that did take part in the Exodus did not mourn their brethren who were "stuck in the darkness". So why should I care about the Jews that are "stuck in America"?
Of course this is nonsense. We are one nation, one big family, responsible for one another. The holy Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria taught,
Every morning, before your prayers, commit yourself to love every other Jew as your own self. Then your prayers will be accepted and bear fruit.I am not a kabbalist or even a Hasid, but this is part of my daily routine. I cannot possibly be completely happy while so many of my brothers and sisters are drowning in the sea of assimilation.
This Israeli Independence Day is an opportunity for every Jew to realize that he is part of a nation that in many ways was dormant but has now come back to life. It is time to free ourselves from the chains of the Diaspora, physically and spiritually. A voice is crying from Mount Horeb, and Rachel is crying for her children. Our mother, the land of Israel, is beckoning. "Whoso is wise, let him observe these things, and let them consider the mercies of the LORD."
Five months after agreeing to go on a date with tight end Colton Underwood, Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman has let the cat out of the bag and revealed they are officially a couple!Gevalt!The two walked the red carpet on Monday night at the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Ceremony 2016 at Barclays Center of Brooklyn, New York.
Whatever offensive things he has said are actually tame compared to the lyrics of rap, the ranting of bad comedians, and what the tawdry culture celebrates. We should remember that New Yorkers first got to know Donald Trump as a real estate developer, but much of the rest of the country became familiar with him as an entertainer. This is the culture. What so many of his critics loathe in Trump is, perhaps, what they should loathe about American society but they don’t. They are just looking in the mirror and don’t like what they see.And here is another worthy quote from the rabbi's post:
Perhaps it is worth mentioning a cartoon that has made the rounds in the last week, with the caption: “The difference between Donald Trump and most leftist American Jews is that Trump has Jewish grandchildren.” If only these groups would realize that intermarriage is the most serious crisis facing them today, and compared to that, politics is beanbag.Mr. Trump seems to be just the right man to lead America in this generation. I wish him much success.
The decay of American Jewry has of course had an effect on its relation with the State of Israel, I recommend reading a series of essays at Mosaic Magazine that deal with the topic:
If American Jews and Israel Are Drifting Apart, What's the Reason?
How American Jews Have Detached Themselves from Jewish Memory
Unspoken Reasons for the American Jewish Distancing from Israel
Israel: The Canvas on Which American Jews Project Their Hopes and Fears
Dear American Jews:
"The Holy One Blessed Be He gave three good gifts to Israel, and all of them He did not give except through affliction, and they are: Torah, and the Land Of Israel, and the World To Come.(Berachot 5A)"The time has come! You have been given three special gifts! Come and claim them!
Update: Rabbi Alderstein also took notice.
An indictment was submitted Wednesday to the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court by the state attorney's department for the investigation of officers, charging Border Police officer Matan Amichai with harming privacy and misusing his post.The accusations against Amichai refer to an incident half-a-year ago, when during a routine mission to identify crimes adjacent to the Shiloach (Silwan) neighborhood just south of Jerusalem's Old City a Border Police force checked a car in which two Arab residents of Silwan were riding with two Jewish girls.
Amichai, who was part of the Border Police force, is accused of taking the teudat zehut (ID card) of one of the Jewish girls and photographing it with his cell phone.
Later he sent the image through the WhatsApp phone application to former MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, with the words: "the ID card of a girl who went with two Arabs and her friend to Eilat, the two are from Silwan, Michael if you can pass this to the proper sources please do. We are Magavnikim (Border Police officers - ed.) from Silwan, please save this anonymously. I wanted to cry now."
He also sent the image to Bentzi Gopshtain, director of the Lehava anti-assimilation organization.
"We members of the Border Police of Silwan stopped a car next to Silwan and saw two Arabs going with two Jewish girls to Eilat, here is the ID card of one of the girls, please do something...we can't do anything in a case like this," he wrote to Gopshtain, again asking that the matter be handled anonymously without referencing him as the source of information.
According to the indictment, Amichai knowingly misused the private details of a person and arbitrarily harmed her rights.
Rolling Stone magazine has this wonderful quote from Sanders:
You've said of Netanyahu, "I'm not a great fan." What's your issue with him?In order to evaluate Sander's expertise on the matter, here is a summary of his military experience:Do I think that Netanyahu overreacted? Yes, I do. War is terrible unto itself. But I think that Israel overreacted and caused more civilian damage than was necessary. They have very sophisticated weapons systems. They make the case, and I respect that, that they do try to make sure that civilians are not damaged. But the end result was that a lot of civilians were killed and a lot of housing was destroyed. There was terrible, terrible damage done.
Sanders applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, at which point he was too old to be drafted.As an aside, how can a conscientious objector desire to be Commander in Chief of the most powerful army in the world? Would not he object to sending young men and women to kill and die?
It should be noted that Bernie Sanders, who said he is "proud to be Jewish", has the dubious distinction of being a pioneer of intermarriage in the United States, back in the 1960s, when the intermarriage rate was only about 10%. He divorced his non-Jewish wife two years later, fathered a child out from a different woman out of wedlock, and married his current gentile wife in 1988. Proud to be Jewish? Give me a break!
I would also like to note that I think that his socialist agenda is a disaster.
Woe unto humanity if this guy becomes President of the United States!
(The title of this post was inspired by this classic essay.)
We have the problem of assimilation. We have the problem of intermarriage. We have the problem that too many generations of Jews don’t realize the importance of our institutions strengthening our community—particularly with the rise of anti-Semitism and global intolerance.Intermarriage is a problem. Then we have this:
At an annual Jewish community event in my congressional district, I spoke about my personal connection to Judaism and in a larger context about the loss of Jewish identity and the importance of connecting younger generations to the institutions and values that make up our community. I do not oppose intermarriage; in fact, members of my family, including my husband, are a product of it.So Wasserman-Schultz does not oppose intermarriage, even though it is a problem. Do you see the logic here? I don't.
The real problem here is not whether Debbie Wasserman Schultz opposes intermarriage or does not. The real problem is that most American Jews have no idea what being Jewish is all about. They are unaware of our role in the world, that of being a "kingdom of priests, and a holy nation." They replace our dedication to God and His laws with loyalty to the Democratic Party, its platform and "social issues". And when our real goal is missing, when being Jewish has been stripped of its original and genuine meaning, there really is no reason to be Jewish, to separate yourself from the rest of the world.
The good news is that any Jew who really wants to know what his heritage is all about can find out. The web is full of genuine Jewish web sites. It is all a matter of if one really wants to know.
Media outlets two months ago touted "coexistence" as Muslim Arab Mahmoud Mansour (26) married Moral Malka (23), a Jewish woman he met in their native Yafo - now Mansour has been arrested for drug trafficking and assaulting a police officer.Not only that, according to the Walla web site:Mansour was arrested last weekend after more than 10 grams of cocaine were found on him, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.
Police say that he was riding on a motorcycle in Yafo when he saw officers in the area, at which he threw aside a bag containing 20 additional grams of cocaine. As he was being arrested, police say Mansour struck one of the officers.
למנסור עבר פלילי עשיר בעבירות של סחר בסמים. הוא ריצה בעבר עונש מאסר ואף נושא עונש של מאסר על תנאי של 40 חודשים בגין עבירות סמים, אשר הפרקליטות תבקש לממש. זאת, בנוסף על העונש שהיא רוצה שייגזר עליו בגין העבירה שהוא נחשד בה כעתFor those of you who (still) do not understand Hebrew, here's a translaton:
Mansour has a rich criminal background in dealing narcotics. He has spent time in jail in the past and currently has a 40 month suspended sentence for drug related crimes, which the prosecution will request to implement, in addition to the punishment which it (the prosecution) wants him (Mansour) to be sentenced for his current crime.Now the question is what will Moral do? It seems that in Islam it is not easy for a woman to initiate divorce:
Khula is the right of a woman in Islam to seek a divorce or separation from her husband. A Muslim woman may petition a qadi, or in non-Islamic areas an Islamic community panel, to grant her divorce if the husband refuses. The waiting period (iddah) of a woman who seeks a divorce is one menstrual cycle or one month if she is post-menopauseal, i.e. ceased menstruating. This is to ensure she is not pregnant.[27] If the woman is pregnant, then the waiting period is until she gives birth.I, in any case, hope that Moral does the moral thing and returns to her people.Women's right to initiate divorce is very limited compared with that of men. According to shari'a law, there are two reasons for a wife to be divorced: when she can prove that the husband did not have intercourse with her for more than two months or if the husband does not provide her with what she needs for living such as food and shelter. While men can divorce their spouses easily, women face legal and financial obstacles.[28][29] For example, in many cases the woman must repay her dowry and marriage expenses. In general she also has to forfeit child custody, if the child is older than seven years. Even if she gets child custody, she has to give it to the father, when the child reaches the age of seven.[28][29]
The proportion of Jews who say they have no religion and are Jewish only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture is growing rapidly, and two-thirds of them are not raising their children Jewish at all.The JTA also points out:Overall, the intermarriage rate is at 58 percent, up from 43 percent in 1990 and 17 percent in 1970. Among non-Orthodox Jews, the intermarriage rate is 71 percent.
* Overall, 22 percent of U.S. Jews describe themselves as having no religion, and the survey finds they are much less connected to Jewish organizations and much less likely to be raising their children Jewish. Broken down by age, 32 percent of Jews born after 1980 — the so-called millennial generation — identify as Jews of no religion, compared to 19 percent of baby boomers and just 7 percent of Jews born before 1927.The New York Times brings us the following from the survey:* Emotional attachment to Israel has held steady over the last decade, with 69 percent of respondents saying they feel attached or very attached to Israel. Forty-three percent of respondents said they had been to Israel.
* Far more respondents said having a good sense of humor was essential to their Jewish identity than observing Jewish law — 42 percent compared to 19 percent.
* Approximately one-quarter of Jews said religion is very important in their lives, compared to 56 percent among Americans generally.
* Less than one-third of American Jews say they belong to a synagogue. Twenty-three percent of U.S. Jews say they attend synagogue at least once or twice a month, compared with 62 percent of U.S. Christians.
Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.Excuse me while I puke!
You can read the full survey here.
I found the reaction of this non-Jew to the survey fascinating:
Though I, obviously, am not Jewish, I find this deeply troubling, though sadly predictable. Apart from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there is no way to hold onto Jewishness across the generations. Modernity is a harsh solvent; only the Orthodox Jews, who are committed to living religiously, and as a sign of contradiction to the modern world, are holding the line. The lesson here is that if you are only passively Jewish, your grandchildren will probably not be Jewish at all.He understands what so many "Jewish leaders" simply fail to grasp.
