Remember the IRS Scandal? It was Fake News All Along

 https://www.newsweek.com/remember-irs-scandal-it-was-fake-news-all-along-681674

Once that news broke, we were off to the races. Despite a complete lack of evidence, Republicans in Congress immediately claimed that this was a political hit job directed from on high in the Obama Administration. Not only was there no evidence to support such claims, but the TIGTA report had made clear that the IRS had already stopped using those filters.

IRS targeting controversy

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.^[3] A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.^[4][5]

Lauren Boebert 'Genocide Squad' Abortion Comments 'Disgraceful': Dershowitz

 https://www.newsweek.com/lauren-boebert-genocide-squad-abortion-comments-disgraceful-alan-dershowitz-1723146

Dershowitz said that the way Kavanaugh was treated was "absolutely disgraceful," but he also responded to Boebert's remarks.

"Look, I oppose the reversal of Roe v. Wade," Dershowitz said. "I think, by the way, what Congresswoman Boebert said—calling people on my side of the issue the 'genocide squad' and saying that we are prepared for babies already born to be killed—is even more disgraceful than anything that happened to the justice.

LGBTQ couples to take advantage of ZOOM civil marriages ruling

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/356239

The Central District Court ruled in a precedent-setting decision that the State will be required to register as married Israeli citizens who married 'abroad' in a civil ceremony via ZOOM, even if they never physically leave Israel's borders, Reshet Bet reported.

According to the report, the State has the option of appealing to the Supreme Court. Should the Supreme Court uphold the ruling, the State will have no choice but to recognize these ZOOM marriages.

Israel Grants Residency Status to Rabbi Convicted of Child Sex Abuse

 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-07-07/ty-article/.premium/israel-grants-residency-status-to-rabbi-convicted-of-child-sex-abuse/00000181-d80b-d9a3-a3e1-fdbb8dc00000

In 2002, Lanner was convicted of sexually abusing two teenage girls who were students in the 1990s at the Hillel Yeshiva High School in Ocean Township, New Jersey, where he was principal [https://www.jta.org/2002/10/11/ny/lanner-gets-7-year-prison-term]. An appeals court later dismissed one of two child endangerment charges against him [https://www.jta.org/2005/02/18/ny/split-ruling-on-lanner-appeal]. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, served nearly three years and was released on parole in early 2008.

US probes rare, intensive audits of Trump critics

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62088872

The US is to investigate how two ex-FBI heads - both critics of Donald Trump - were subjected to rare, intensive tax audits during his presidency.

The request to check James Comey and Andrew McCabe's cases was made by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to the Department of the Treasury.

The news that both men were selected for an uncommon type of audit was first reported in the New York Times.

Individuals are supposed to be selected at random for the audit.

The Times calculated the odds of an individual being selected for the IRS's National Research Program in 2017 at about one in 30,000.

The Militant Conservative Who Played the Long Game on Abortion

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/07/leo-brent-bozell-abortion-game-00044246

Joe McCarthy, for one, was impressed, hiring Bozell as his adviser and speechwriter. So was Arizona GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had Bozell ghostwrite his best-selling The Conscience of a Conservative. Some conscience. In it, Goldwater explained that he was not “impressed by the claim that the Supreme Court’s decision on school integration is the law of the land.”

Pantheism

https://mikyab.net/en/Co/פננתיאיזם

Hello Rabbi, I remember a week's lesson you talked about Rabbi Kook's teachings and claimed that his perception of Gd is not fundamentally different from Spinoza. (Pantheism versus Pantheism). Can you explain to me exactly what you meant or refer me to where you wrote about it? And do you actually define Rabbi Kook's conception as heresy?

I do not remember. I am not knowledgeable enough in his teaching to state this. I know that there are interpretations of his doctrine that see him as a pantheist (everything is divine), and in fact a continuation of the Hasidic approach that believes that reduction is not as simple. Others try to explain subtleties in this difference, thus defining pantheism (all in divinity) versus pantheism (all divinity). This distinction is not clear to me (and I suspect neither are those who raise it). If we are part of it or its organs, then again we are back to pantheism and reduction not literally. And if the intent is that it works in us and revives us or something like that, then I do not understand what is new in this approach. Perhaps the meaning is that the relationship between him and the world is like between soul and body (like the gemara known in blessings), it may be different but in my opinion those who bring it up will not really stand behind the consequences (e.g. he chooses and thinks and not us).

The Thought of Rav Kook- Lesson 17 Heresy

 https://www.etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/great-thinkers/rav-kook/heresy

In a volume of eulogies -"Eder Ha-Yakar" - written for his father-in-law, Rav David Rabinowicz, Rav Kook has a pamphlet - "Ikvei HaTzon." In this collection of articles there is an article entitled "Da'at Elokim." Here Rav Kook discusses a metaphysical paradigm diametrically opposed to that of Transcendental Monotheism: Pantheism - an approach associated with Baruch Spinoza in the seventeenth century. Pantheism has as its central dogma "Deus sive natura" - God is nature.

Having rejected Transcendence and Pantheism as problematic theological models, Rav Kook favors a third alternative, panentheism, meaning the world is in God. (Pantheism = all is God; Panentheism = all is in God.)

Coping with Modernity: An interview with Rabbi Emanuel Rackman

 https://thejewishreview.org/articles/?id=184

Jewish Review: There are those who regard your openness to secular thought and your call for halakhic sensitivity to contemporary life as evidence that you are closer to a Conservative approach to Judaism than you are to Orthodoxy.? What would you say differentiates your views from those, for example, who form the so‑called traditional, right‑wing at the Jewish Theological Seminary?

A Call For The End Of Dishonest Jewish Outreach

 https://www.jta.org/2012/06/07/ny/a-call-for-the-end-of-dishonest-jewish-outreach

Orthodox groups engaged in kiruv include the National Jewish Outreach Program, with events at 3,700 locations throughout North America (and nearly 40 nations); Chabad, with its more than 3,000 emissaries (shluchim) in 70 countries; and groups such as Aish HaTorah, JAM, Maimonides, and Ohr Somayach. Of course there are thousands of other professionals (across the ideological spectrum) at Kollels, Hillels, shuls, and schools also doing significant outreach work. There are so many responsible and ethical Orthodox outreach professionals in the field that we cannot let those who are more narrow and deceptive ruin the perception of the rest. Outreach professionals are often courageous leaving their comfort zone to engage others in the tradition in inconvenient ways. However, many have been very critical of some kiruv tactics, especially among the Hareidi, for refusing to acknowledge any opinion but their own and for not answering difficult questions. One critical blog quoted Rabbi Emanuel Rackman’s critique of this closed, fundamentalist mindset that can be found:

We are gradually becoming majority Charedi

 https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/we-are-gradually-becoming-majority-charedi-6CLtk8IzZnHFOb79OJ0Wt9

The data are in. There are 2.1 million Charedi Jews in the world today, comprising one in seven of the global Jewish population. By 2040 they are projected to reach about four million and comprise at least one in five. That’s not speculation; it’s as certain as any demographic projection ever gets.

The figures in the UK are even more striking. 80,000 Charedi Jews live here, constituting one in four of the whole. In fact, Charedi Jews comprise a larger fraction of the total Jewish population here than in any other country in the world, bar Belgium. And by 2040, the proportion here will be somewhere between one in every two or three.

The Kabbalah and Pantheism

 https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/judaism/judaism/kabbalah#The_Kabbalah_and_Pantheism

It is evident, therefore, that while not a single kabbalist school of thought ever claimed that God has no existence apart from created beings, the position most commonly held was that He was nevertheless to be found within them in variously definable ways. Hence, too, the neoplatonic assertion frequently encountered in kabbalistic literature that God is "the soul of souls," a claim which is not entirely free of pantheistic nuances although it lends itself to other interpretations as well

How Is Chassidic Thought Distinct from Pantheism?

 https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/512437/jewish/How-Is-Chassidic-Thought-Distinct-from-Pantheism.htm

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman,

I have read many of your articles about soul matters. You often explain that G‑d is somehow “divided” into “sparks,” and those “sparks” are present in everything, including non-animated objects such as sand. How can this idea be reconciled with G‑d’s absolute unity? And what then is the difference between this way of thought and pantheism?