Lashon harah?

Reuven sent you a message.

"Hello, as a Rav and a mechaber of seforim, I don't understand how you can run a "blog" that becomes a forum for all types of lashon hara?"

Rabbi Bomzer defended

rabbi has left a new comment on your post "R' Bomzer censured by Vaad for Conversion":

I am an Orthodox Rabbi of an Orthodox shul with over 200 families. A year ago I performed a wedding of a wonderful and observant couple who lives in my community. The bride was converted a few years before she met her husband by Rabbi Bomzer. Among her papers of conversion, was a letter where she was asked by the Beis Din to sign a statement accepting upon herself all of the mitzvot including Rabbinic and Torah Mitzvot. I was impressed at the specificity of the listing of the mitzvos and saw that it was obviously an added protection for her that the beis din was responsible enough to ask her questions verbally as she reported to me about the mitzvos and whether or not she accepted all of them and of course she did and to go the extra mile of having her sign it on paper. I asked her about the process of the beis din and I am satisfied that it was completely done according to halacha.

She did not pay $10,000 dollars as was suggested here somewhere and it was obvious to me that this was a serious process. Today, a little more than one year later I know for sure that she is observant, she covers her hair with a tichol and she attends the mikvah regularly and her family is shomer shabbos and kashrus. I have no reservations whatsoever eating at her home and I am absolutely certain that this guir is complete and legitimate.

Additionally other colleagues have told me when I asked about Rabbi Bomzers giur that it is accepted by most and especially by Rabbi Kotlarsky of Lubavitch and many many others. All of them told me that the paperwork they have seen included this formal acceptance of the mitzvos and all of the gerim that we have seen or heard about have been observant Jews.

I do not know why this terrible letter was put out and I do not wish to get involved in the politics of Rabbi Tropper vs Badatz etc. But it should be stated that he does get the kabolos hamitzvos in writing and that many of us in practical Rabbonus do accept his giur and have seen that all the gerim that we have seen have been observant yorei shomayim frum yidden.

Guma Aguiar - RaP's commentary

Recipients and Publicity comment to post "Guma Aguiar of EJF - raised as Christian":

Guma Aguiar of EJF & Nefesh BeNefesh controversy: False messiah or hero?

Clashing media depictions from America and Israel about Guma Aguiar's philanthropy and his agenda

First off, thank you for the good wishes from poster Roni/Tropper and his willingness to debate and be frank about many issues relating the still unfolding EJF-Guma Aguiar saga and his wife Jamie with the doubtful conversion from Rabbi Bomzer and the Chabad rabbi. We have all learned a lot and benefited from Roni's/Tropper's seemingly obvious first-hand knowledge about the Guma-EJF-Jamie-Tropper situation.

But it is now time to move on, not be mired and sit with the old slogans and accusations and the old points that have been repeated a hundred times by now. We need to take stock and move on because from the very bosom and heart of EJF, its still official Co-Chairman, has arisen one named Guma Aguiar who until a few days ago was only an elusive mysterious name and person in the background of the EJF story and controversy, but who now, with his "Aliyah" to Israel and having given a huge donation of a few million dollars to the Nefesh BeNefesh organization (that has support from Christian Evangelicals in America), hyped by the ultra-Zionistic Arutz Sheva media outlet, see Oil Tycoon Cashes In on Spiritual Dividends in Jerusalem (01/28/09) and Aguiar: We've Got to Climb the Ladder(01/29/09), and having declared an agenda of "starting" with bringing 100,000 new "olim" of all stripes to Israel, all this must be noted and analysed. [...]

[Rest of post is in comments section "Guma Aguiar of EJF - raised as Christian":]

UNRWA admits IDF didn't hit school

Arutz 7 reports:

During the Cast Lead operation in Gaza, IDF tank fire near a United Nations school in Gaza was blamed for the deaths of dozens of civilians who had taken refuge in the building. The incident became one of the most highly publicized attacks in the war, and led to heavy international criticism. However, recent reports suggest that the incident was not accurately portrayed by senior U.N. Officials.

John Ging, the director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, spoke to the Toronto Globe and Mail last week and agreed that no shell had actually struck the school building. Ging said he had never claimed that the school itself was hit, and he blamed Israel for confusion over where the strike took place.

Shortly after the alleged attack, Ging harshly criticized Israel for firing near the school, saying he had given the exact coordinates of the compound to the IDF and suggesting they had failed to avoid hitting the building. While admitting that Israeli fire had not hit the school compound, Ging insisted it made little difference. “Forty-one innocent people were killed in the street... The State of Israel still has to answer for that,” he said. [...]

Rav Sternbuch - Next step

Guma Aguiar of EJF - raised as Christian

RaP forwarded

Arutz 7: Amongst the famous names in Israel rubbing elbows at a cocktail reception launching the 6th annual Jerusalem Conference on January 26, Israel National Radio's Yishai Fleisher spoke with oil magnate and philanthropist Guma Aguiar, the chairman of this year's conference, about using his personal gain in order to transform the Jewish dream into a reality, and using discoveries which changed his life and the lives of thousands of Jews throughout Israel.

Email readers, click here to watch video interview with Guma Aguiar

"The dream that our parents, grandparents, and great-great grandparents had…it begins with a profound trust in G-d and is accomplished by gathering the Jewish people from the Diaspora to their homeland," Aguiar told Fleisher, in a joint interview broadcast on Israel National News TV and Israel National Radio. "Unless we have the dream of having a Temple that we would be able to serve our G-d with all of the [commandments], then ultimately, what are we doing here in Israel? That's the reason why my family came to the Holy Land. That's the reason why all our forefathers longed set foot in Israel. Based on my studying of our Hebrew scriptures, it is clear to me that our focus must be focused on sacred matters here in Israel. This inspiring endeavor will strengthen the Jewish state and, please G-d, hasten the redemption."

Aguiar has come a long way toward these understandings. Despite having been born Jewish, Aguiar was raised as an Evangelical Christian, encouraged to participate in Christian youth groups and church events throughout his young life. At the age of 26, Aguiar moved to Houston, Texas with the determination to find oil beneath the soil. Seeking out a Christian congregation to join, he encountered Rabbi Tovia Singer who has devoted his life to helping Jews in the church return back to the truth and beauty of the Jewish faith. Rabbi Singer is the founder of Outreach Judaism and pop ular talk show host on Israel National Radio.[...]

Bialik & Sefardim

YNET wrote:

Long-held notion that national poet hated eastern Jews stems from statements wrongly attributed to him, say researchers

"The national poet of Ashkenazim only," "A well-known Sephardim hater," and "a famous racist" are only some of the sentiments – often expressed in talkbacks as well – aroused by the name Chaim Nachman Bialik. The national poet himself has been dead since 1934, so he is not here to defend himself. However, the notion stems from a statement attributed to Bialik: "I only hate the Arabs because they resemble the Sephardim." But it turns out that Bialik never said those words, but rather editor and translator Aryeh Leib Smiatzky.

Smiatzky included the statement in his book "Bialik on Atar" as a joke, and some researchers later claimed that literary circles hostile to Bialik attributed the words to him in a bid to besmirch him. Notably, none of Bialik works includes any mention of hatred or patronizing towards Sephardic Jews. [...]

Guma Aguiar - philanthropic activity

Chabad Lubavitch global network

Rabbi Moshe Meir Lipszyc announced today that Guma L. Aguiar co-founder of Leor Energy, an oil exploration and production company based in East Texas, contributed an additional half million dollars to Chabad Lubavitch of Fort Lauderdale. The center will be renamed “The Guma Aguiar Family Campus.

Guma has a heart of gold,” said Rabbi Lipszyc.In recent years, he's funded much of Chabad of Ft. Lauderdale's dynamic growth. "He's now agreed to make his most recent contribution public because he wants to show the world that this is how Chabad responds to the oppressive darkness of terrorism, by taking action and growing.”Aguiar, 31, told Lubavitch.com that, like the rest of the world, he was stunned by the news of the terror attacks in India. Groping for answers, Aguiar considered Chabad’s place in the world. [...]

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Haaretz reports

An American businessman and philanthropist has recently donated $8 million to Nefesh B'Nefesh, the organization announced on Sunday. Guma L. Aguiar, who joined the Nefesh B'Nefesh board this June, made the gift to support the organization's work in helping Western Jews immigrate to Israel and integrate into Israeli society.

The money, which was donated in several installments during the second half of 2008, is "being used to help meet the needs of thousands of recent newcomers," Nefesh B'Nefesh explained in a statement.

Tom Kaplan wants director of Kaplan Foundation removed

The Sun-Sentinel reported: [Jersey Girl forwarded]

Fort Lauderdale, FL - In the legal annals of Broward County and the often furious back-and-forth between people suing one another for supposed lying, swindling, cheating and other misdeeds, this may be a first. The director of one of South Florida's most generous foundations, the Lillian Jean Kaplan Foundation, believes he is the Messiah and has been spending the foundation's millions to bolster his image, a lawsuit filed by his uncle claims.

The alleged Messiah wannabe, Guma Aguiar, dismisses his uncle's assertions as nonsense. If he truly believed he was the savior, he said, he would belong in a mental institution. Aguiar's rabbi says the businessman is exceptionally giving, donating millions to improve the world. "He is a person who has a heart that is not matched by anybody," said Rabbi Moshe Meir Lipszyc of Chabad Lubavitch of Fort Lauderdale. But Aguiar's uncle, Thomas Kaplan, wants a Broward County judge to remove his nephew as director of the foundation created to honor Kaplan's mother, and to which Kaplan says he has contributed more than $40 million. The Lillian Jean Kaplan Foundation, in existence for seven years, handed out nearly $4.9 million in 2006 to causes ranging from Jewish charities to the digging of water wells in Africa, according to the last federal tax return available online.

It's not those gifts Kaplan is objecting to, but to the more than $7 million he says his nephew, 31, doled out last year to advance what the lawsuit calls his "claim that he is the Messiah and to promote his messianic mission."

Kaplan's attorney, Harley Tropin, declined to comment on the case, saying the Jan. 9 lawsuit speaks for itself.

At the root of this unique court action may be a family falling-out over a business deal. Aguiar and Kaplan have dueling lawsuits involving a company they founded, Leor Exploration & Production LLC, which was sold for $2.55 billion after discovering huge natural gas reserves in East Texas. The nephew is demanding an accounting of where the money from the 2007 sale went, saying he is owed at least an additional $17.6 million. The uncle is accusing Aguiar of misappropriating Leor's assets for personal expenses and demanding his nephew pay back nearly $200 million. In an interview, Aguiar said that since the sale of the energy company, he's been dedicated to using his newfound wealth to promote good deeds. Last year alone, he gave more than $30 million to charitable causes, one of his attorneys, Greg Miarecki, said.

As for the Messiah business, Aguiar said he's never told anyone he's the Messiah. He does say, though, that he feels very blessed. "People have said what an amazing accomplishment it was that I started a company at 26 from nothing and built it up to be so successful," Aguiar said. "When I sold the company I gave credit to God."

Aguiar says he was largely responsible for Leor's success, having moved to Houston from Florida at age 26 and immersing himself in the world of oil and gas exploration. Leor ended up tapping into what turned out to a multi-trillion-cubic-foot field of natural gas. In 2007, he was named Executive of the Year by Oil and Gas Investor magazine. While Aguiar portrays his uncle as having a minimal role in the company, Kaplan maintains he guided the business every step of the way. Before Leor, Kaplan already had made millions in the mineral and energy industries. [...]

Three Oaths - Prevent settlement of Israel?

Rabbi David Bleich (Contemporary Halakhic Problems I page 14):

The prime argument cited in objection to the War of Independence, and indeed to the very establishment of the state itself, is based upon a literal understanding of the Talmud, Ketubot 111 a. In an aggadic statement, the Talmud declares that prior to the exile and dispersal of the remnant God caused the Jews to swear two solemn oaths: (I) not to ke the Land of Israel by force, and (2) not to rebel gainst the nations of the world. Rabbi Zevin maintains that these talmudic oaths are not binding under circumstances such as the ones which surrounded the rebirth of the Jewish state.

In support of this view he marshals evidence from a variety of sources. Avnei Nezer, Yoreh De'ah, II, 454:56, notes that there is no report in any of the classic writings regarding an actual assemblage for the purpose of accepting these oaths, as is to be found, for example, in the narrative concerning the oaths by which Moses bound the community of Israel prior to the crossing of the Jordan. The oaths administered before the exile are understood by Avnei Nezer as having been sworn by yet unborn souls prior to their descent into the terrestrial world. Such oaths, he argues, have no binding force in Halacah. Similarly, the Maharal of Prague in his Commentary on the Aggada, 11 a, and in chapter 25 of his Netzah Yisrael, interprets these oaths as being in the nature of a decree or punishment rather than as injunctions incumbent upon Jews in the Diaspora. There is obviously no transgression involved in attempting to mitigate the effects of a decree.

A third authority, R. Meir Simchah of Dvinsk, author of the Or Sameach, accepts the premise that these oaths do apply in a literal sense. However, he expresses the opinion that following the promulgation of the Balfour Declaration, establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine no longer constitutes a violation of the oatb concerning rebeIIion against the nations of the world. The text of Or Sameach's statement on this important issue is reprinted by Z. A. Rabiner, Toledot R. Meir Sameach (Tel.Aviv, 5727), p. 164. Rabbi Zevin adds that this argument assumes even greater cogency subsequent to the United Nations resolution sanctoning the establishment of a Jewish state.

There is yet another line of reasoning on the basis of which Rabbi nature of these oaths at the present juncture of Jewish history. He advances a forceful argument which, particularly in the present post-Holocaust era, must find a sympathetic echo in the heart of Jews who have witnessed an unprecedented erosion of all feelings of humanity among the nations of the world which permitted the horrendous oppression and torture of the Jewish people. The Talmud, loc. cit., records that the two oaths sworn by the people of Israel were accompanied by a third oath which devolves upon the nations of the world; namely, that they shall not oppress Jews inordinately. According Zevin and others who have advanced the same argument, these three oaths taken together, form the equivalent of a contractual relationship. Jews are bound by their oaths only as long as the gentile nations abide by theirs. Persecution of the Jews by the nations of the world in violation of this third oath releases the Jewish people from all further  obligation to fulfill the terms of their agreement.

Intent to sin - counted as sin?

Kiddushin(81b): Every time R. Hiyya b. Abba fell upon his face he used to say, ‘The Merciful save us from the Tempter.’ One day his wife heard him. ‘Let us see,’ she reflected, ‘it is so many years that he has held aloof from me: why then should he pray thus?’ One day, while he was studying in his garden, she adorned herself and repeatedly walked up and down before him. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I am Harutha [a well known prostitute], and have returned to-day,’ she replied. He desired her. Said she to him, ‘Bring me that pomegranate from the uppermost bough.’ He jumped up, went, and brought it to her. When he re-entered his house, his wife was firing the oven, whereupon he ascended and sat in it [He tried killing himself]. ‘What means this?’ she demanded. He told her what had befallen. ‘It was I,’ she assured him; but he paid no heed to her until she gave him proof. ‘Nevertheless,’ said he, ‘my intention was evil.’That righteous man [R. Hiyya b. Ashi] fasted all his life, until he died thereof.

Rav Sternbuch - Our source of security

We must stop using the word 'miracle' and start referring to ' hashgacha pratis'

Hamodia , 26 Teves January 22nd,

Refusal of talmid chachom to go to beis din

Regarding the discussion on this post regarding whether a talmid chachom needs to appear before a beis din. All I have been able to find is the following halacha

שולחן ערוך חושן משפט ז סעיף ו - מי שתובעין אותו לדון לפני דיין שקטן ממנו, אין הדיין יכול לכופו לילך לפניו, אלא מכנפי מאן דאיכא התם מחכימי ומעיינים בינייהו.

ערוך השולחן חושן משפט סימן ז סעיף ח
אם תובעים ת"ח לדין לפני דיין שקטן ממנו בחכמה אין הדיין יכול לכופו שיבא לדון לפניו וכיצד עושים אוספים כל החכמים שבעיר ודנים ביניהם דכיון דמתאספים כל החכמים ליכא זילותא כשידין בפניהם [או"ת] ואף אם הת"ח גדול מכולם ואם רצון הת"ח לבא לפני הדיין הרשות בידו דחכם שמחל על כבודו כבודו מחול ואם יש זילותא להת"ח לעמוד ביחד עם הבע"ד שלו שולחים הדיינים סופריהם ומקבלים הטענות בכתב ודנים ע"פ הטענות שבכתב [סמ"ע] ועי' מ"ש בסימן קכ"ד:

This is based on Kiddushin (70a):A certain man from Nehardea entered a butcher's shop in Pumbeditha and demanded, ‘Give me meat!’ ‘Wait until Rab Judah b. Ezekiel's attendant takes his,’ was the reply: ‘and then we will serve you.’ ‘Who is Judah b. Shewiskel,18 he exclaimed: ‘to take precedence over me and be served before me!’ When they went and told Rab Judah, he pronounced the ban against him. Said they to him, ‘He is wont to call people slaves,’ whereupon he had him proclaimed a slave. Thereupon that man went and summoned him to a lawsuit before R. Nahman. When the writ of summons was brought, he [Rab Judah] went before R. Huna [and] asked him, ‘Shall I go or not?’19 ‘Actually,’ he replied: ‘you need not go, being a great man; yet in honour of the Nasi's house,20 arise and go.’

Arab Muslim - commentator

I am making this comment a post as a reminder that the internet is not a private converation. Furthermore it does provide the opportunity to discuss issues with those that you don't normally meet in your daily routine. I do appreciate the fact that this commentator did take the time to send us his observations. For a related issue see Hasbara - Army of bloggers And Facebook battleground.

Just a gentle reminder to everyone that all comments require a name other than anonymous. I made an exception in this case.
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Anonymous [ has left a new comment on your post "Should Jews hate Arabs?":

Jersey Girl, I would like to show my support to you. I'm of Muslim and Arab background. It makes me happy to see that are some decent Jews who have compassion and understanding. In history Jews lived under Arab/Muslim ruler in relative peace and harmony example the golden age for the Jews in Spain before the Christians took over and forced the population to convert to Christianity or die. What is happening Israel/Palestine is sad and tragic. And for the Muslim on the street supporting Hamas - well who should they support when there are innocent civilians being killed, and no democratic government is doing anything to stop it. Zionism turned to terrorism pre 1948 killing many innocent people.