Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Trump and the star that winked at anti-Semitism::A letter published in his son-in-law's paper



Observer

An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees

Dear Mr. Kushner,

My name is Dana Schwartz and I’m an entertainment writer at the Observer, the paper owned by your publishing company. On July 2, as I’m sure you’re aware (and have probably been wringing your hands about for the last three days), your father-in-law Donald Trump tweeted out an image of Hillary Clinton in front of raining money with a six-sided star declaring she’s the “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”[...]

I responded to the meme, calling out its blatant anti-Semitic imagery because people can play ignorant, blame the corrupt liberal media for trying to “get” Trump, but it takes only a basic knowledge of world history or an understanding of how symbols work to see a wall of cash, a Star of David, and the accusation of corruption and not see the subtext.

But deny or play dumb as you might, when I tweeted out my response, my worst fears were realized: his message, whether purposeful or inadvertent, was met with cheers by those to whom that star’s message was certainly clear. Mr. Trump’s tweet was seen as a winking promise to this nation’s worst and most hateful individuals.

Here are just a tiny sample size of the responses I received: [...]

A few hours later, Trump deleted the original image and re-tweeted it out, this time with the star crudely covered by a circle (the tips of the star still visible), and a new hashtag: #AmericaFirst. Forgive me if I condescend in any way or explain what you already know, but I’m sure you’ve been busy lately so just a quick refresher: America First was a movement led primarily by White supremacist Charles Lindbergh advocating against American intervention during World War II. The Anti-Defamation League has previously asked that Trump refrain from the slogan due to its overt anti-Semitic implications.[...]

He and his campaign deny that the image—which had been found, previous to Trump’s tweet, on a white supremacist internet forum—has any Jewish implications at all. Instead of acknowledging the obvious, he and his campaign used it as an opportunity to undermine the free media in the style of the most dangerous regimes in history, and mock those like me, who had been getting strangers on the Internet telling her to put her head in the oven for the past day and a half.


Here are some of the excuses I’ve seen, both from Trump’s camp and Trump supporters:

“It’s available on Microsoft shapes.” There are a lot of symbols you can make on Microsoft Word, and sometimes symbols SYMBOLIZE ideas, concepts, or groups. A cross for instance. I feel silly explaining this to you. This explanation is so inane that I feel so condescending refuting it to you, ostensibly my boss, that it feels insubordinate. 
“It’s a sheriff star.” Because users on the white supremacist forums where this image was found were no doubt implying Hillary is in the pocket of the sheriffs. You know, sheriffs. The group stereotypically associated with greed and money. 
“He didn’t make it; he’s too busy to pay attention to everything he tweets out.” This is not an excuse for racism. Trump’s twitter account is seen by millions of people, and he is responsible for the message he’s sending to his supporters. Besides, Trump is running for president. Making mistakes because he wasn’t “paying attention” isn’t an excuse that qualifies him for the highest office in the land in any way. 
“It was an accident.” Then where is the apology?
These explanations are so facile, infantile in their blatant disregard for context or logic that I can only imagine them being delivered by someone doing so while grinning and winking. [...]

And then there’s the final explanation, the one most frequently cited by Trump’s most “reasonable” supporters on the Internet:

“Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, and granddaughter: he can’t be anti-Semitic.”

Mr. Kushner, I invite you to look through all of those images in the slideshow above, the vast majority sent in your father-in-law’s name. Right now, this hate is directed to one of your employees, but the message applies equally to your wife and daughter.

You went to Harvard, and hold two graduate degrees. Please do not condescend to me and pretend you don’t understand the imagery of a six-sided star when juxtaposed with money and accusations of financial dishonesty. I’m asking you, not as a “gotcha” journalist or as a liberal but as a human being: how do you allow this? Because, Mr. Kushner, you are allowing this. Your father-in-law’s repeated accidental winks to the white supremacist community is perhaps a savvy political strategy if the neo-Nazis are considered a sizable voting block—I confess, I haven’t done my research on that front. But when you stand silent and smiling in the background, his Jewish son-in-law, you’re giving his most hateful supporters tacit approval. Because maybe Donald Trump isn’t anti-Semitic. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he is. But I know many of his supporters are, and they believe for whatever reason that Trump is the candidate for them. [...]

I can’t abide another defensive blame-shift to the media or to “politically correct culture gone amok.” David Duke, outspoken and explicit white supremacist, anti-Semite, and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, saw the image your father-in-law tweeted out, and to him the message was quite clear to him. Those aren’t stereotypical “sheriff” hands in the corner.

The worst people in this country saw your father-in-law’s message and took it as they saw fit. And yet Donald Trump in his response chose not to condemn them, the anti-Semites who, by his argument were obviously misinterpreting the image, but the media. [...]

And now, Mr. Kushner, I ask you: What are you going to do about this? Look at those tweets I got again, the ones calling me out for my Jewish last name, insulting my nose, evoking the holocaust, and tell me I’m being too sensitive. Read about the origins of that image and see the type of people it attracted like a flies to human waste and tell me this whole story is just the work of the “dishonest media.” Look at that image and tell me, honestly, that you just saw a “Sheriff’s Star.” I didn’t see a sheriff star, Mr. Kushner, and I’m a smart person. After all, I work for your paper.

Edmund Burke once said, in times that are starting to seem more and more similar: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Well, here I am, and here we are. Both Jewish, both members of the media. And you might choose silence, but I’ve said my piece.

Respectfully,

Dana Schwartz

Knesset officials visit Ma'aneh - the haredi sexual assault victims center in Beit Shemesh

Arutz 7   The Knesset Special Committee for the Rights of the Child visited a Beit-Shemesh based organization dedicated to providing help and psychological treatment for haredi children and youth who've suffered sexual assault, the Haredim 10 website reported. The organization, named "Ma'aneh", is focused especially on dealing with the issue in the context of the complexities of haredi communities.

In today's (Tuesday) visit, Committee Chariman MK Yifat Shasha-Biton of Kulanu said: "In every place and in every sector of the population, it is our duty to confront this issue. We can't afford to sweep things under the carpet. Someone who's sexually assaulted a child once will do it again. Every community, secular, religious and haredi, has to find the best way to deal with these issues and confront them head on."

Beit Shemesh Mayor Moshe Abutbol approved of the committee's visit: "Sometimes we speak in different languages, but we all mean the same thing. We all want to eliminate this phenomenon, we just need to coordinate. The "Ma'aneh" center deals with all these kinds of matters, while cooperating with community Rabbis, so that they get to the root of the problem."

Ma'aneh CEO Aryeh Levi cited some statistics to convey the magnitude of the problem. "Since the institution opened in 2011, some 600 cases have been taken on, and some 400 of those were taken care of completely. The number of appeals for help we get is rising. We took on 182 cases in 2015 alone. It's very difficult for people from this community to ask for help in this matter."

Levi explained that Ma'aneh's activities were only made possible after an arduous process, in which the institution was made fit to operate in the local haredi community, and the consent of all community elements was obtained. Chief among these community elements are the rabbis. [...]

MK Shasha-Biton directed the Welfare Ministry to begin a dialogue with the Ma'aneh center. "There is no question that the treatment of sexual assault victims is a complex matter, especially within the haredi community. The Ma'aneh center has the ability to operate within the community and give the government authorities all the tools they need to deal with the issues. We all have to cooperate, everyone will benefit, especially the children."

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Meir Pogrow: A plea from Yehuda - his brother and victim

update: Yehuda Pogrow asked me to publish his full article. I had originally published the major points but he felt that that had led to misunderstandings by some of the readers.


Yehuda Pogrow's Facebook page is here

https://www.facebook.com/yehudapogrow


update: Since posting this I have gotten a number of negative responses to Yeduda Pogrow's analysis and his conclusions. Most focusing on the fact that aside from being beaten up by his brother - he doesn't seem to have any direct knowledge or experience of what the community is doing for child abuse or what should be done.

While the article is obviously written from a sincere desire to be helpful and to empathize with victims - the sweeping condemnations of the community leaders and institutions are problematic. Basically he just woke up to the fact that there is a problem and the first thing he does is scream "fire". As he himself has noted there already are a number of excellent organization that are working on the issues. There are rabbis, educators and community leaders who are working on solving the problems. I would suggest his first step is to work with the organizations and leaders - rather than tell others what to do.
==================================================================
Times of Israel   

Meir Pogrow, the justly-condemned sexual predator, is my older brother. He is roughly nine years my senior. I share my story because I hope to launch a movement that will raise from the ashes of this tragedy a new hope for all victims of child abuse — whether or not the specific abuse is a crime in a given jurisdiction, or whether the victim is a minor or a young adult vulnerable to abuse by a perpetrator who holds a position of authority.

I identify with my brother’s victims, because I was — perhaps — his first. He first abused me approximately 30 years ago, in my boyhood years. My brother did not attack me sexually. Rather, over a period of roughly 10 years, he subjected me to severe physical, verbal and emotional abuse. He is short, but he was strong. He would lift me above his head, my whole body parallel to the floor, just let go, and walk away as I crashed to the floor.

I was 17 the last time my brother physically abused me. I had finally grown strong enough to defend myself. He chased me and tried to hit me, but I deflected him. When I thought he had quit trying to hurt me, I dropped my guard. He then stared me in the eyes with a gruesome expression. My arms were at my sides when he punched me, breaking my nose and giving me a concussion. The next day he told me — gleefully — that he broke my nose intentionally. He also explained that I deserved it, because I did not spend enough time studying Torah during my time off from yeshiva.

In my journey of recovery from my brother’s abuses, what has been most difficult to overcome is not the impact of the physical pain — what is most enduring is the psychological trauma and manipulation that he used in order to groom me for the physical pain.

It is this psychological torment that he inflicted that makes me identify so strongly with his later victims. Numerous victims of his torment have spoken out on Facebook. I suspect that it was on me that he first exercised those psychological abuses.

My brother’s carnage is massive, and it spans multiple continents, but it is tragically far from the only carnage. Abuse by faculty in the yeshiva school system has occurred for decades; yet today there remains no system-wide enforceable plan to protect children. Far too many administrators are enablers — at a minimum due to failures to act on complaints brought to their attention — in many of the crimes committed by faculty in yeshivas across the globe.

My brother taught at YULA, a Los Angeles yeshiva, in the 1990s. On Facebook, in a comment replying to a post about my brother, one YULA alumna stated, “But I clearly remember discussing him with other staff members and no one taking us seriously.”

In a separate comment, that same alumna wrote, “I do clearly remember discussing my discomfort about him to another teacher, possibly the principal after a discussion that he instigated about masturbation.”

The YULA administration should issue a public statement to either discredit this former student’s version of events, or confirm that it dismissed Meir immediately after they verified her complaints, and that it did everything in its power to ensure my brother was never allowed in a classroom again.

After leaving YULA, Meir joined the faculty at Michlalah, a school for young women in Israel.

Numerous Michlalah alumnae I met during my time as a student at Queens College in New York told me that my brother was verbally abusive, and that he fostered a cult-like mentality. His groupies were known as “Pogs.”

The Michlalah administration should issue a public statement to confirm that it never received any complaints of abuse of any form perpetrated by my brother. If Michlalah cannot make such a statement, it should publicly provide a detailed accounting of how it acted on all complaints against my brother.

My brother was not the only perpetrator of abuses I experienced as a child. I was a victim of severe physical and emotional abuse in Yeshiva Bais Mikroh in Monsey, at the hands of Rabbi Gavriel Bodenheimer, among others. Bodenheimer and other faculty abused me — and many other children — more than two decades ago, as fellow faculty and my schoolmates looked on. Bodenheimer has since pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. He is also subject to the typical restrictions imposed on sex offenders.

How could Bodenheimer have remained principal at Bais Mikroh until 2015?

I believe that on a per-capita basis, the magnitude of the cover-ups of sexual, physical, emotional and verbal abuses in the yeshiva system is on par with that of the Catholic Church. There are many wonderful Orthodox rabbis and administrators — I have worked alongside some and proudly consider some my friends and mentors — but the Orthodox Jewish clergy as an institution has lost its credibility. Much like the Catholic priesthood, the rabbinate has its work cut out if it wants to earn back its credibility on matters of child safety.

A fundamental and systemic reform of yeshivas is necessary. Unfortunately, the rabbinate has forfeited its right to lead that reform.

Recent pronouncements by Torah Umesorah of new initiatives to expand education surrounding the issue of child abuse for parents, children, camp counselors and teachers are but a minuscule step forward. Does Torah Umesorah genuinely believe that expanded education will touch the root of the problem?

Where is the joint pronouncement from Torah Umesorah and Agudath Yisrael of America (the Agudah) laying out a concrete plan of action to root out the perpetrators and enablers currently in the system?

Where is the declaration that any teacher or administrator who in any way whatsoever prevents a claim of abuse from getting to the police will be immediately fired?

Where is the directive to every teacher and administrator to advise any complainant who comes forward that he or she (the teacher or administrator) is not equipped to determine the validity of the accuser’s claims?

Where are the instructions for teachers and administrators to immediately direct all allegations to the police?

(Teachers and administrators should, of course, offer any complainant any support they are indeed equipped to offer, including accompanying the alleged victim to the police station.)

Where is the Agudah’s pronouncement that it has reversed its opposition to pending legislation in New York State that would reform the Statute of Limitations (SOL) on child sexual abuse? Does the Agudah really want to be on the same side as the Catholic Church on this issue? Does the Agudah’s concern for the ability of its institutions to financially and reputationally withstand an onslaught of criminal and civil cases justify not doing everything in its power to prevent just one more instance of child abuse?

At the 2016 Torah Umesorah convention, Yaakov Perlow, head of the Agudah, in an attempt to explain the Agudah’s opposition to SOL reform said, “Yes, we want to protect our mosdos (organizations). We want to be able to prevent somebody who wakes up 40 years later, and he sues a yeshiva for something that happened who knows how many years ago. But at the same time, we have no sympathy for perpetrators.” Perlow also stated, “The rabbonim (rabbis) sitting here, knowing perhaps better than I do, how many hours and hours and dozens of hours throughout these last years we’ve sat and deliberated and talked about every single aspect of this problem.”

I would ask Rabbi Perlow, if you have no sympathy for perpetrators and are committed to fixing this problem, why not reverse your opposition to SOL reform and allow the judicial system to assess the validity of victims’ claims?

Is the possibility of even one additional criminal conviction of a predator still operating in a yeshiva not reason enough for the Agudah to lobby for SOL reform?

A committee of mental health professionals, law-enforcement experts, survivors, and child abuse activists should be given free rein to institute the required reforms in the Yeshiva system. This committee will solicit guidance from thoroughly-vetted rabbis and yeshiva administrators.

Further, an independent committee should be empowered to investigate all yeshivas where any claim of abuse has ever been made, with a possible exception for claims that have been previously dismissed by the police or judicial system.

To My Fellow Survivors:

We need no longer scream in silence.

We are hurting. Our lives have been forever altered by sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of those we trusted implicitly. We struggle with emotional and physical intimacy because our innocence was stolen and our trust betrayed. Many of us have nightmares; sometimes we wake up screaming.

We felt so alone in our pain; no one would listen. We were told we deserved it — some of us told we were bad, some of us told we were oh-so-special. Many of us are well into our adulthood, still only beginning to understand the full scope of the damage our tormentors inflicted upon us. We live with the scars and we try to move forward, but we can no longer stand by and watch as crimes continue in a corrupt system that harbors perpetrators.

Over time we discovered that our friends who were not direct victims became victims indirectly. They tell us that when they learn that clergy they had revered committed heinous crimes against their classmates, it shakes their faith. They are so tired of having to study techniques to train their children to defend their bodies and souls against predators. Is it too much to ask, they wonder, to trust that their children will be kept safe from the time they leave for yeshiva in the morning until the school bus returns them home?

No one understands us better than we understand one another. Let’s meet each other. Let’s unburden ourselves of our pain by sharing it with one another. Let’s harness our awesome collective strength. Let’s be angry, but let’s direct our anger constructively, and as One.

Speaking out is terrifying. It has taken me 30 years to come forward.

Tragically, I believe there are thousands of us. I know — I just know it in my gut — that with the Strength of Numbers we can march together right on through the shaming collaborators may attempt, stronger — and more determined — than ever.

We have so very many good guys on our side jumping up and down for us, laying their necks on the line for us, yelling at anyone who will listen for us. They need our help. Some of them tell me the full scope of necessary reforms will not be implemented for many years, if ever. But an army of survivors speaking out publicly can bring about a sea change. And that’s where we come in.

This is a moment we must seize. The tides are turning our way. A Beit Din (religious court) just formally condemned a rabbi via media outlets worldwide as a rasha (evil man) because of his sexual abuses. I believe from a place in my heart that two weeks ago I did not know existed that we can achieve massive structural reform. I beg you. Please dig deep.

Let’s grab back from our tormentors our overwhelming collective power. We can achieve this. Let’s not stay on the sidelines another day. Let’s get this done.

Our fellow survivors who have already publicly blazed this path before us stand ready at our side.

There are organizations staffed with professionals ready and begging to help survivors. Among them are Jewish Community Watch and Magen. Please reach out to them or other organizations with similar missions.

Should a survivor wish to contact me, he or she may email me at [email address deleted. Not convinced that a victim of abuse should contact an untrained volunteer to deal with this problem DT]  Survivors may feel free to maintain their anonymity when contacting me.

Moshe Stavish: Convicted abuser of children to be released soon from prison

Jewish Community Watch issued the following notification

Warning to the people of Israel.

Moshe Stavish was sentenced to 12 years in prison by the district court in Jerusalem in 2005 after pleading guilty for the molestation of 11 boys and girls ages 5-13. At the time of his arrest, Moshe lived in Har Nof, Jerusalem.

At the time of his sentencing it was determined that Moshe is a stalker level 3-at high risk of re-offending.

Now he is expected to be released. Anybody who knows anything about whereabouts after release is asked to contact our mother.

A politically correct Swedish politician: Migrant rape isn’t as bad


Swedish Left Party politician Barbro Sörman has suggested that it’s “worse” when Swedish men rape women, than when immigrants do so.

“The Swedish men who rape do it despite the growing gender equality. They make an active choice. It’s worse imo [in my opinion],” Sörman tweeted.

Sörman, a self-described socialist and a feminist, made the observation in response to what she claimed was excessive media focus on the fact that most of the rapes in Sweden are committed by immigrants.

She explained that Swedish men are brought up in a society that believes in gender equality and therefore should be held to higher standards than migrants, who come from cultures where women are treated as second-rate citizens.

When faced with a storm of indignation, she tried to walk back the comments and admitted that her sentiments had been “clumsily expressed”.

She later deleted her Twitter account altogether.

'Rape capital'

Sweden is widely known as the rape capital of Europe. It has been noted that Muslim immigrants are massively over represented in the official rape statistics.

Sweden has the fastest growing population in Europe, due nearly totally to the influx of Arabs and Muslims from the Middle East. At the same time, its crime rate has increased astronomically: In 1975, 421 rapes were reported to the police; in 2014, it was 6,620.

“77.6 percent of the country’s rapists are identified as “foreigners” (and that’s significant because in Sweden, ‘foreigner’ is generally synonymous with ‘immigrant from Muslim country’), wrote conservative columnist Selwyn Duke. ‘And even this likely understates the issue, since the Swedish government — in an effort to obscure the problem — records second-generation Muslim perpetrators simply as ‘Swedes.’”

Conservative politicians who try to draw attention to this problem have been charged with hate crimes, while some Swedish rape victims are said to be reluctant to report sexual assaults to police because they fear it may “offend” the perpetrators. [....]

Monday, July 4, 2016

Jack Sabbagh - NYPD cop convicted of molesting 13 yr old girl after caught on tape admitting to the crime

NY Daily News    A Brooklyn jury convicted an NYPD officer who'd been caught on tape admitting to molesting a young girl.

Jacob Sabbagh, 33, was busted in December when the now 21-year-old woman came forward to report a family friend touched her inappropriately numerous times when she was between 10 and 13 years old.

“Her parents trusted him. He is a member of their religious community. No one would think a 23-year-old man had an interest in their 10-year-old girl,” said Assistant District Attorney Grace Brainard in her closing arguments in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday.[...]

Sabbagh faces up to seven years in prison when Justice Alan Marrus sentences him Sept. 7. The judge ordered Sabbagh to turn over his Israeli passport.

The abuse happened between 2005 to 2008, before Sabbagh joined the NYPD in January 2009. The victim’s family moved to Israel, which is where she reported the incidents to police, prosecutors said. Authorities in Israel then reached out to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.[...]

Sabbagh’s attorney John Arlia argued that the victim is “delusional,” and was “troubled” because, at the time, her parents were going through a divorce.

The jurors rejected those claims — thanks in large part to a 40-minute conversation the victim had with Sabbagh that she secretly taped.

“The past is in the past, you have to move on from this ... this should have never happened, it was a mistake,” Sabbagh said on the audio recording.

Jerusalem school bus driver arrested for sexual assault on 13 year old chareidi girl passenger

Update: Source BeHadrei Haredim

Arutz 7   A driver for a haredi girl’s school in Jerusalem was arrested on Sunday, amid suspicions he repeatedly sexually assaulted a 13-year old passenger over the course of a year.

The man, a resident of the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, allegedly assaulted the young girl, who was assigned to assist students enter and exit the vehicle.

According to the police report, after the driver had dropped off all of the students assigned to his route, he would drive the victim to a secluded area to commit his crimes unimpeded, BeHadrei Haredim reported.

Following a complaint by the girl, the driver was arrested and interrogated. Out of consideration for the suspect’s family, Jerusalem police allowed him to voluntary report to a police station rather than arrest him at his home in Ramat Shlomo. [...]

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Rabbi Maurice Lamm, z”l

Cross-Currents by Rav Yitzchok Adlerstein

We note with great sadness the petirah of one of the deans of the American rabbinate, Rabbi Maurice Lamm.

My most vivid recollection of Rabbi Lamm is of the person who firmly put a smug young man – me! – in his place. It was during one of my earlier years in Los Angeles, when I still saw things as sharply divided between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness. The latter, of course, included Modern Orthodoxy, something that I had turned off to growing up in Kew Gardens Hills and watching what happened to my friends. So when I was invited to a community event at Cong. Beth Jacob, the flagship Modern Orthodox shul in Beverly Hills, I had no problem accepting the honor. It essentially meant debating Rabbi Lamm on the merits of large synagogues (we used to call them synagogues with Edifice Complexes) versus the increasingly popular (and much frummer shteibels.

I made my case, and didn’t think I had done so badly. I had walked into a trap, however. Rabbi Lamm rose up to cream me. He made a number of good points that I had not considered, and he was entirely correct. I don’t think he touched my arguments for why people enjoyed the smaller shuls where each person meant more, but his counter-argument was impressive. If you splinter a community into small devotional cells, entire aspects of community life disappeared. Some important activities required a critical mass of people to sustain them. Only larger shuls could deliver them.

To Rabbi Lamm, this was not a question. He understood what fewer and fewer of us today understand: HKBH expects us to give up parts of our individual comfort for the good of the tzibbur.

His challenge to me resonated, and changed me for life. We subsequently became friends. When he published a book introducing Judaism to non-religious teenagers (writing for a vastly different audience showed his great agility as a writer), he asked me to review it for Jewish Action. Years later, his brother Rabbi Norman Lamm יב”ל, then President of Yeshiva University, turned to him to figure out who this Adlerstein guy was. Was he so black as to hate YU and everyone in it?  Rabbi Maurice assured his brother that Adlerstein’s bark was worse than his bite.

The commitment to tzibbur was something that he lived. He was the consummate old-school shul rov. Anything that was important to his flock was important to him – and he did not delegate. He did it all himself.

His sefer on aveilus became and remains a classic. While in circles further to the right halachic detail became the only concern, Rabbi Lamm understood the need for many people to engage the whys and wherefores of what they were living through in their times of tragedy. The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning is still the book you want to give to people who want the comfort of context and explanation.

 יהי זכרו ברוך

Donald Trump Deletes Tweet Showing Hillary Clinton and Star of David Shape

NY Times

Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came under fire on Saturday for posting on Twitter an image of the Star of David shape next to a picture of Hillary Clinton and calling his opponent the “most corrupt candidate ever!”

Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came under fire on Saturday for posting on Twitter an image of the Star of David shape next to a picture of Hillary Clinton and calling his opponent the “most corrupt candidate ever!”

Saturday, July 2, 2016

R D Hartman: "God must not be our top priority" - rebuttal by Rav Yitzchok Adlerstein

update: Donniel Hartman Is So…Yesterday!
Cross-Currents by Rav Adlerstein

In a new twist on the old “Jews to the back of the bus” routine, Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, wants the Jewish G-d to take a back seat as well. In an extensive interview in the Times of Israel, Hartman explains the thesis of his new book, Putting G-d Second. The purpose of religion ought to be the creation of the ethical personality.[...]

Hartman sees this preoccupation with G-d as blinding us to the plight of Palestinians and migrants seeking entry to Israel. He notes that in all of Israel’s wars, it was religious MKs who pushed for pushing on in battle while their more secular colleagues wanted to call it quits.

Religion gets in the way of what should be our real focus: inculcating ethical values in our personalities, and democratic processes in our societies.

He does not want to do away with religion as we know it. He wishes for G-d to be number two, not to disappear, or even show up as number twenty. Two can’t be so bad, he says. Religion is a “powerful vehicle” for making ethics central to our lives. And while the violation of the ethical renders all other attempts at spirituality meaningless, there are spiritual dimensions that are valuable if the ethical is there, front and center. Religion can transmit them. Moreover, religion helps create community, which banishes loneliness. So we ought not to discard or minimize religious practice – as long as it does not interfere with the primary goal of ethical development. (He therefore mocks the notion of an Orthodox woman at Bar Ilan not singing at a Holocaust commemoration, in deference to the halachah of kol ishah, which interferes with our ethical sense of egalitarianism. And he tells baalei teshuvah that if they refuse to eat at their non-observant parents’ home, they can stop calling themselves his students.) To the contrary, Hartman wishes that Israel firmly embrace a Judaism whose first passion is the ethical, and bringing its values to the rest of the world.

None of this is particularly new. It is rather old and tired. The derogation of the ritual and ceremonial in favor of the ethical has a storied past, all of it ending the same way. More religious denominations than we can easily keep track of – Jewish and otherwise – hoped to revitalize interest by accentuating good character, or (more recently) good deeds. Think, in modern times, of Felix Adler’s (said to having been inspired by a Berlin lecture by Rav Yisroel Salanter) Ethical Culture, and what is left of it. Consider the attempts by the mainline Protestant denominations move towards social justice as their primary concerns. Or the elevation of so-called tikun olam as the only principle of faith of the Jewish heterodox movements. What they all share is younger people stampeding out the door, fossilizing those who remain behind. Without coupling character and social action with responsibility to a personal Creator, too many give up on the entire enterprise of religion. We have very little reason to believe that all those who have fled from religion are better people, or have succeeded in making ours a better world. Meanwhile, the only group within Judaism that is growing is Orthodoxy, with its insistence on G-d centeredness. And in the Christian world, the fastest growing group are Pentacostals, who distinguish themselves for seeking an immediate, strong connection with G-d.

Hartman is also so….incredibly wrong on the intellectual level. The words that stood and stand before the baal tefilah for centuries – שויתי ה לנגדי תמיד (Tehillim 16:8) cannot possibly be rendered, “I have set Hashem before me some of the time.” Hartman would certainly cheer Rambam (Shemonah Perakim), who insisted that the development of an ethical character should optimally become a natural part of one’s personality, rather than a response to Divine command. The same Rambam, however, wrote (Hilchos Teshuvah 10:3)

What is the proper love of Hashem? It is that a person should love Hashem with an extraordinarily great, strong love, so that his soul is connected to Him through love, to the point that he is preoccupied with Him at all times…

Hardly a second-place finish.

Is ethical development really the summa bonum of Yiddishkeit? When the Khazar king argues something similar to the chaver (pointing to the same lines from the prophet that Hartman does, expressing Hashem’s preference for proper character over a surfeit of Temple offerings), the latter explains that Judaism has two chief goals. The first, earlier goal that must be achieved is the creation of the ethical individual. Having attained that goal, the Jew is then positioned to achieve the next goal: becoming more G-d-like, through the performance of myriad mitzvos.

For good measure, we’ll throw in the Ibn Ezra to Tehillim 84:6, “Praiseworthy …[are] those with paths in their hearts,” who explains that those paths focus on a single goal – getting close to Hashem.[...]

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Donniel Hartman, the head of an educational powerhouse, argues heretically that the great monotheistic religions are fatally flawed — by an obsessive focus on God that overwhelms what should be our prime imperative, to live decent, moral lives. [...]

Hartman argues that ethics — living honestly and decently — should be the first priority of the religious human being, of all human beings. Most of us would agree with that.

He laments that in Judaism, as in all the great monotheistic religions, the obsession with God has been allowed to take intolerable precedence over that prime ethical imperative. Many of us would agree with that, too.

Most controversially, however, he asserts that the exaggerated, over-elevated focus on God in religion is actually not the fault of the religious, the practitioners, but of monotheism itself. “I go further than most critics of religion,” Hartman acknowledges, setting out his challenge during a heartfelt interview in his office at the institute, “because most critics of religion say that the problem is religious people who distort it. I don’t think that’s the case. I think there is an auto-immune disease embedded in religion. There’s something flawed in the system that the system doesn’t fully understand. I don’t think religion understands God’s impact on people.”

So, no, Donniel Hartman insists his resonant call to put God second isn’t some superficial provocation. Rather, it’s issued out of a conviction that “the more we put ethics first, the more I am a religious person” and the less that God is “a destructive force in our lives.”

Does that make him a heretic? Maybe, he allows, if it’s heretical to admit “that religion has flaws, and that religion can fail.”

He’s not calling to close down religion; far from it. Like the subtitle says, he’s trying “to save religion.” But, again, “if criticism is heretical, which it can become, then yes, I’m proud to be a heretic,” says Hartman. “But in our tradition, criticism is the greatest sign of love.” [...]

I think God wants to be second, or at least one reading of Judaism wants God to be second. God didn’t come into this world for self-aggrandizement. It was in order to create a different type of human being, in order to elevate this world. But unfortunately, through God intoxication and God manipulation, the idea of God becomes a catalyst for evil. God intoxication is where our devotion to God is so all consuming that we no longer hear or see the needs of others. God manipulation is where we transform God into the private advocate for our particular needs and agenda. The devil quotes scripture. It’s there. It’s embedded. I’ve grown up witnessing how the devil’s chapters impact people.

Then it is heretical, your book. You’re saying the flaw is in the religion. I have a very close relative who is very Orthodox, very sincere, who always says it’s not the religion that’s to blame. The religion is wonderful. Religion is a code of life that, if people followed it, the world would be a wonderful place. It’s the people who are distorting and unbalancing. That’s her view. But you’re saying, No. You’re saying that built into what the religious think they should be doing is a tendency, a focus, that will make them bad.

That’s correct. There are really two religions. And we have to make a choice between the two. And part of what this book is about is forming a narrative for the religious life which places ethical responsibility at the center. That’s why I quote so many sources. There are two narratives. Narrative A starts with the Akeda (the Binding of Isaac) or starts with Lech Lecha, where it says, If you want to walk with me, you have to disassociate from anything that you care about. Anything. That a love of God is all-intoxicating. And God wants to see: Are you willing to fundamentally submit everything that you care about, that you love, that you think is good, to Me? Kill your son. Discriminate against a non-Jew. And I’m on your side because you’re the chosen ones. It goes on. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai exits out of the cave and says to people that all they should be doing is loving God, thinking about God, reflecting on God’s word. What do you mean, you’re working the field? When he sees farmers, he destroys them in the name of God. That is God intoxication.  [...]