Search Results for: feminist

A 1903 Convention of Polish Rabbis REJECTED Establishing Girls’ Schools. Then Came Sarah Schenirer…

A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy Revisited

By Leslie Ginsparg Klein

On a rainy Sunday morning in March of 1935, the streets of Krakow, Poland filled with mourning girls. They joined other Orthodox Jews in paying their respects to Sarah Schenirer, the founder of Bais Yaakov, who had passed away the day before. After the funeral, the girls went back to their school building. There, in the words of Schenirer’s student Pearl Benisch, they sat until late that night, “lamenting and mourning the loss of our dear mother . . . retelling stories and anecdotes about our noble mentor’s great acts of piety and loving-kindness.”1 These girls’ reaction to a teacher’s death might seem a little extreme, but to them, Sarah Schenirer was not just a teacher. She had become their spiritual leader, and she remains a spiritual leader today.

A little more than a year ago, the Orthodox world marked the eightieth yahrtzeit of Sarah Schenirer and events commemorating the occasion attest to the continued centrality of Sarah Schenirer in Orthodox Jewish life. On a brisk Tuesday morning in March of 2015, over 14,000 women and girls gathered together in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center from all over North America—with many more watching via satellite hook-up. They came to commemorate the life of a woman they had never met, but who impacted their lives profoundly. Sarah Schenirer turned the socially unacceptable idea of girls learning Torah in a Jewish school into a way of life for Jews all over the world, providing a model of how to successfully balance tradition and innovation.

Modest. Radical. Pious. Revolutionary. Staunch traditionalist. Proto-feminist. All of these words have been used to describe this woman. Even more than eighty years after her death, Sarah Schenirer is consistently invoked to defend diverse viewpoints on contemporary issues. For example, Rabbi Avi Weiss, in a Jewish Week editorial supporting women’s ordination (11/3/15), presented her as proof that women can be spiritual leaders in line with tradition, a forerunner to the Orthodox women rabbis of today. The following week, Rabbi Efraim Epstein, in a Jewish Link of Bergen County editorial opposing women’s ordination (11/12/15), presented her as an example of a true Orthodox woman leader, who unlike the women seeking ordination, remained faithful to the mesorah without sparking controversy or being influenced by the secular ideologies of the day. Who was this complicated personality and how does her influence continue to impact the Jewish community today?

Sarah Schenirer founded Bais Yaakov in Poland in 1917. Before that time, Orthodox communities in Eastern Europe considered formal Jewish education for girls to be unnecessary, inappropriate and even forbidden by Jewish law. For most girls, Jewish education took place in the home. Taught by family members or private tutors, girls’ education generally consisted of basic literacy in Yiddish and enough Hebrew to read a siddur. Anything else a girl needed to know about halachah or Jewish observance could be learned by observing her mother and other women in the home.2

With government laws mandating compulsory education, more and more Jewish children began attending secular public schools. While significant numbers of boys and girls attended modern secular schools, a far greater number of girls than boys received this type of education. Some Orthodox Jews considered it preferable that women should spend the time acquiring secular skills, so they could later use them to help support the continued learning of the men in their family. One rabbi, in looking for a shidduch for his sister, boasted that she knew how to write Hebrew, Polish and German fluently and had knowledge of Russian as well. These were qualities that could secure a woman a good shidduch in those days.

Pupils in the Bais Yaakov religious girls’ seminary of Krakow during a visit to Rabka, Poland, interwar period. Courtesy of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Archive

But as a result of their exposure to secular learning, girls experienced a great disparity between their intellectual engagement with secular studies and their informal training in the laws and traditions of Judaism. These girls, who were never formally taught about their Jewish heritage, saw religion as archaic and a hindrance to intellectual growth. Assimilation, intermarriage and conversion became rampant.

Some rabbis blamed this development on the girls’ lack of any significant Jewish education, but community leadership remained steadfastly opposed to any innovation in women’s education. In 1903, at a convention of Polish rabbis held in Krakow, a delegate called for the establishment of schools for girls, stating that his colleagues had neglected girls’ education. The conference almost unanimously opposed his suggestion and stated in its resolutions that Jewish parents should definitely educate their daughters at home, but for the community to establish schools would be wrong.

Where others failed, an unknown Polish seamstress and her grassroots Bais Yaakov movement would prove astoundingly successful. Sarah Schenirer was born in 1883 to a prominent Chassidic family in Krakow, Poland. She attended a state school until age thirteen, but her family’s poor financial condition precluded her from pursuing her formal education any further. Schenirer taught herself to be a seamstress and continued her secular learning through reading and attending lectures. She also actively pursued a Jewish education through self-study. She writes about studying the Tze’na Urena, a Yiddish translation of the Chumash that was standard fare for women. However, she also mentions studying texts that were more unusual for women to study—such as a Yiddish version of the Chok L’Yisrael, which contains a daily portion of Chumash, Navi, Mishnah and Gemara.3

Schenirer wrote in her autobiography that she became concerned about assimilation in her community for a number of years before she started Bais Yaakov. She recounted attending a meeting of a Jewish girls’ organization on a Friday night. She expressed her alarm at seeing girls, who had grown up in Chassidic families like her own, violating Shabbat and making heretical remarks. Schenirer also described a gap she perceived between girls and their families in her Chassidic community. While Schenirer saw boys and men involved in intense Jewish learning and spending the yamim tovim gaining spiritual inspiration from their rebbe, she viewed women’s religious lives as empty. She is quoted as saying, “We stay at home, the wives, the daughters with the little ones. We have an empty yom tov. It is bare of Jewish intellectual concentration.”4 Schenirer perceived girls and young women growing disconnected from religion and tradition, and blamed this distance on their lack of Jewish education.

Sarah Schenirer did not envision playing a part in a solution to this problem until she fled to Vienna during World War I and became exposed to and profoundly impacted by the Neo-Orthodox thought of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Rabbi Hirsch’s works were not available in Poland and many Eastern Europeans leaders considered his writings non-applicable to their insular society, which had not yet come into much contact with Reform Jewish thought. Schenirer thought that if she could only transmit these ideas to Polish women and girls, they would feel connected with their religion.

Upon returning to Poland, she resolved to teach what she had learned. After failing in her first attempts at teaching women and older girls, who mocked her religiosity, Schenirer decided that her best plan of action would be to start a school for young girls, whom she hoped would be more responsive. Her brother discouraged her from getting involved in such a controversial and political project. He suggested she go with him to visit the leader of their sect of Chassidim, the Belzer Rebbe, and ask his advice. He likely assumed the highly conservative rebbe would say no and thereby put an end to his sister’s crazy plan. The rebbe, however, responded to her query with two words, “Berachah v’hatzlachah” (“blessing and success”). Even though he did not allow the daughters of Belzer Chassidim to attend Bais Yaakov, his blessing was a strategic coup for Schenirer. In subsequent years, Bais Yaakov received approbations from prominent rabbis including the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman and the Chofetz Chaim. The Chofetz Chaim in general stressed the propriety of Jewish education for girls and stated that the old system needed to be readjusted in accordance with the times. Jewish communities were no longer isolated from the outside world, as they might have been in the past. Therefore, it was necessary to teach girls about Judaism if they were to stay in the faith.5

Continue reading…

From Jewish Action, here.

Start with ‘No’: The Bureaucratic/Academic Mindset

Excerpted from an article on Lewrockwell.com:

The academic mind, like the academic guild, is closed. It is trained from high school on to focus on what is irrelevant and therefore safe. The process is, as they say, majoring in minors.

I recall the day I took my young wife to a lecture at a Protestant seminary. The lecture was being given by a not-quite Ph.D. who was candidating for a teaching position. I told my wife the following before the lecture began:

This will be the most boring lecture you have ever heard. You will not have heard of the facts he mentions. The speaker will draw no conclusions of any importance.

After the lecture, she said, “How did you know? I almost fell asleep.” Here was my answer (approximately):

The guy was candidating for a job. He did not want to make a mistake. He therefore summarized his Ph.D. dissertation, as I knew he would. The topic is sufficiently narrow so that nobody on the faculty could spot a major error. Also, nobody is ever not hired because his lectures are boring. Lots of people are not hired because their lectures are lively, which might embarrass the other faculty members.

The man was hired. He has been president of the seminary for years. He is a very good lecturer. He speaks at denominational family camps, where teenagers attend. They apparently enjoy him. His insufferable boredom that candidating day was a product of the academic system, not his abilities.

The academic is a trained bureaucrat. He has survived a long system of specialized training in the rules of bureaucracy. Everything is tied to tests, term papers, and formal requirements. Academics and priests were the original trained bureaucrats. This is because they were literate. Kings made use of priests to do administrative duties.

Academics have less power than bureaucrats. They have fewer official responsibilities. Tenure converts fearful people into bored people. Nothing threatens an academic more than a requirement to perform. If he must face a free market, he is terrified.

The scene in Ghostbusters, where the three parapsychologists are fired by the university, is among my all-time favorites. Dan Ackroyd’s character warns the other two:

I liked the University. They gave us money, they gave us the facilities, and we didn’t have to produce anything! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there.

The rule of survival in every bureaucracy is “Safety first.” Corollaries are: “Don’t make a mistake.” “Keep your head down.” “Do it by the book.” “Don’t make waves.” But the central, unbreakable rule of a master bureaucrat is this one:

Always say no initially. It’s a matter of leaving room to retreat. You can retreat from no to yes, and the person asking you to do something is happy. If you have to retreat from yes to no, you’ve made an enemy.

I remember that one clearly. It was the answer given to a reporter by the Washington bureaucrat with the longest tenure in 1976, upon her retirement. He had asked her how she had survived for so long.

The free market’s law is to say yes initially. The salesman wants the commission. To the question, “Can I get it in blue?” the salesman answers: “Will you sign the contract if I can get it for you in blue?” After the contract is signed, the salesman puts the pressure on the company to deliver it in blue.

…

A decade ago, the neoconservative classicist Victor D. Hansen co-authored a book, Who Killed Homer? I have read it twice. It is a great little book. He shows how few students earn degrees in the classics today: under 600 a year. The entire field is dying. Who killed it? His conclusion: the professors themselves — the feminists, the quibblers, the purveyors of arcane specialized linguistic studies.

That sounds good, but he neglects to mention that the quibblers and the purveyors of arcane linguistic studies dominated classics departments early. They set the pattern, not just for today’s classicists but for all academia. They were paid to study the past and make judgments about the past — judgments that could be verified only by other scholars. Then they decided to narrow the field: to study the grammar and vocabulary of dead languages, which was really safe. Nobody spoke these languages. Who could say what the facts were? Only other specialists.

What we need is an amateur army of skilled analysts in every field from outside academia — people who have the basic skills of the scholar, but not the mindset. They need to know how to understand and interpret the past in terms of the present, in preparation for the future. This, the academic mind is trained not to do. The exceptions — the feminists, the Marxists, and the deconstructionists — are at war with the society that funds them, especially the taxpayers, who are deeply resented for not forking over even more of their income to fund their own destruction.

Education must be decentralized. It must be taken off tax-funded life support.

…

Read the rest of it here.

Rabbi Noah Weinberg: ‘Every Jew Is a Neurotic’

Next Year in Jerusalem, Conclusion

May 12, 2007  |  by 

 

A groundbreaking chronicle of spiritual search, originally published in Rolling Stone magazine, April 1977

Click here to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Click here for a pdf version of the entire article.

There began to be moments – usually early in the morning, before I forced myself to get up and face the day – when I was more inclined than not to believe that it was all true, that I was only resisting because I couldn’t stand the pain of admitting how wrong I was. What about the prophecies … and the way modern history seemed almost a conspiracy to drive the Jews back to Israel … and the Bible… Mike and I had been going over Genesis, along with the Rashi commentary, and I had had a sudden vision, like an acid flash, of a Garden, and a Presence … and my personality, my Sagittarian compulsion to aim straight at the cosmic bull’s-eye… “The blessing and curse of being a Jew,” said Reb Noach, “is that Jews are thirsty for God, for the absolute. A Jew can never have peace. Whatever he does he’ll be the best at, whether it’s being a radical or being a criminal. It’s all misplaced searching for God. Every Jew is a neurotic...”

Insanity, decadence, call it what you please, I could never be a traditional Jewish mother. But maybe I didn’t have to be.

And if I became religious, what would I do? Insanity, decadence, call it what you please, I could never be a traditional Jewish mother. But maybe I didn’t have to be. Actually only men were subject to a specific mitzvah to marry and have children. And not everyone took the Weinbergs’ hard line on procreation – according to one rabbi I’d met, a psychologist, the halacha permitted contraception when necessary to preserve a woman’s health, including her emotional health. Nor were the role divisions in the family absolute, no law actually forbade women to work outside the home, or men to share housework. Even within the bounds of Judaism I could be a feminist of sorts, crusading for reforms like equal education, perhaps contesting the biased halachic interpretations of male rabbis. And my experience would put me in a unique position to reach women like me and bring them back.

In private I could have this fantasy, even take it seriously. Which would not stop me, an hour or a minute later, from getting into a furious argument with a man. It was one thing to consider the abstract possibility that women’s role in Judaism was not inherently oppressive, another to live in a culture that made me feel oppressed. Once when Mike and I were dinner guests of another of his teachers I complained, “You know, it makes me feel like a servant when you sit there like a lump while I help serve and clean up.”

“It isn’t customary for the men to help,” Mike said, “and if I got up I’d make everybody uncomfortable, including the women.” He had a point – when in Rome and all that – but it was a point he was not exactly loath to make. The fact was that for Mike, moving from Western secular society to Orthodox Judaism had meant an increase in status and privilege; for me it meant a loss.

One night Mike and I got together with Dick Berger, one of his best friends at the yeshiva. Mike was very high on Dick, who, he said, was an unusually perceptive person with a gift for sensing someone’s emotional blocks. He had been encouraging Mike to get more connected to his feelings. I had met Dick once and he had told me a little about himself. He had been a newspaper reporter in Pittsburgh, had written an unpublished novel, had been into psychedelics and Transcendental Meditation. Later he had told Mike that he felt I had seen him only as material for my article. I didn’t think that was true, but I worried about it anyway. I hated it when people claimed to know my motives better than I did, but I always worried that they were right.

The conversation that night was pleasant enough until Dick and I got into an argument about men sharing child care. Dick suggested that 3,000 years of tradition shouldn’t be tampered with, and I started getting angry in a way I knew from experience led to no good. Then he really pushed the wrong button.

“You’re so emotional! Can’t we talk about this objectively?”

“You’re hardly being objective. It’s in your interest as a man to think what you think.”

“I’m feeling detached,” Dick insisted. “By that I mean attached to my basic essence. You’re reacting out of your conditioning in Western culture.”

“You’re reacting out of your male-supremacist prejudices, only you have 3,000 years of tradition on your side.”

“But I’m not being aggressive and hostile – you are!”

“You can afford to be ‘objective’ and ‘detached’! You’re happy with the system – I’m the one who’s being oppressed by it! Why shouldn’t I be hostile – what right do you have to demand that we have this conversation on your terms…” My sentence went hurtling off into the inarticulate reaches of un-God-like rage.

Another time, another friend of Mike’s: Harvey, a tall, dark, intense South African. “I’m not here because I want to be,” he said. “I want freedom and money and the pleasures of the body. I was happy in my non-religious life – I miss it. But once you know there’s a God…”

We started arguing about design and evolution. “Either there’s a God,” Harvey said, “or all this harmony and purpose is a coincidence.”

“Those aren’t the only possibilities…”

“And there are vast odds against coincidence. If you had a dart board that had lots of red and just a little white, where do you think your dart would hit?”

“That’s a silly analogy,” I said.

“What if you had to lay money on it?”

“I’m not going to play this game! It’s ridiculous! It’s irrelevant!”

“Answer me,” the prosecutor insisted. “Would you bet on white or red?”

“I’m not Pascal!” I yelled. “And I’m not about to change my entire life because of some abstract intellectual decision about what the odds are on there being a God!”

“The Torah isn’t only a carrot, you know. It’s a stick, as well. There’s punishment – you get cut off…”

And I’m not going to play your guilt game, either! You men are not going to cram your sexist religion down my throat!

There it was, the dirty little secret: I might be persuaded to return to Judaism – but not by a man.

* * *

V. EXODUS

You know her life was saved by rock and roll. – VELVET UNDERGROUND

Mike and I were walking in Mea Shearim talking about happiness. My revised departure date was nearly two weeks away, time for plenty of changes, but I knew that I would not, at least for the present, become an Orthodox Jew. My decision had involved no epiphany, no cathartic moment of truth; my doubts remained and perhaps always would. But to put it that way was looking at it backward. The fact was that only a compelling, inescapable moment of truth could have made me religious. Nothing less could shake my presumption in favor of a life that made me happy.

From Mike’s point of view, I was refusing to accept the truth because of a strong emotional resistance; though he too had resisted, his unhappiness with secular life had made it easier to give up. On the other hand, he kept suggesting, I might be a lot less happy than I thought.

“Dick sees you as a very unhappy person,” Mike said. “And Reb Noach thinks you’re really unhappy.”

Continue reading…

From Aish.com, here.

Figuring Out the ‘Nusach’ for a Women’s Zimun, Eh…

Wikipedia in its article on “Orthodox Jewish Feminism” provides an update on the female zimun for the Blessing After the Meal:
One formula for the women’s zimmun is exactly the same formula as the zimun of men, but substituting ‘chaverot’ (Hebrew: friends (f.)) for the word ‘rabotai’ (Hebrew: gentlemen) at the beginning of the invitation, thus feminizing the call.
Wait, shouldn’t it be ‘achayot’ (Hebrew: sisters), seeing as feminists are a big, warm “sisterhood”?!

Why Is EVERYTHING ‘Anti-Semitism’ All of a Sudden?!

Answer: Because it’s about totalitarian thought control and speech control. Anti-semitism is just a useful excuse for controlling subjects (same as “racism“, “xenophobia“, “misogyny“, etc. etc.).

הוו זהירין ברשות, שאין מקרבין לו לאדם אלא לצרך עצמן…

“Definition Creep” aside, I don’t think antisemitism is a useful term almost any time or anywhere. Oh sure, it exists, but it still can’t be nailed down. That’s why academics move from “classical” Jew-hatred to New antisemitism to the 3D test of antisemitism to the Working Definition of Antisemitism to…

Oh, and by the way, I have a Chazakah of being Jewish.

Here are some ridiculous definitions of anti-semitism by an evil NGO:

“Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”

Aha! So, it’s all about stopping populism, “radicalism”, “extremism”, and other buzzwords, which all just convey a threat to current politicians’ sovereignty and legitimacy. Because everyone — including Jews themselves — surely calls for harming and killing at least some Jews in the name of some goal, such as supporters of the Jewish or non-Jewish death penalty, Torquemada‘s Inquisition, abortion, expelling Jews from their homes, prisoner exchanges, suicide, Rabin o.a.m. giving Arafat guns, sabotaging Holocaust rescue attempts, etc. ad nauseam. I guess harmful, but non-radical ideology (e.g., socialism) or harmful non-extremist religion (e.g., Cursedianity) is all fine and dandy.

If the writers meant GENOCIDE, then why not say so? Because you don’t want to hear the “Amalek” counter?

“… [Repeating] the myth of Jews controlling the media, government, the economy, or other societal institutions.”

Well, the real problem with so-called “Economic antisemitism” is just economic ignorance — shared by approx. 90% of the population…! And why “myth”? Yes, there is a Pareto distribution in economies, and yes, Jews are often “disproportionately represented” in these loci. This is not because of incoherent “exploitation” and misunderstood economic “control”, but because of the blessing God gave to Avraham and his seed after him in Parshas “Lech Lecha”:

ואעשך לגוי גדול ואברכך ואגדלה שמך והיה ברכה. ואברכה מברכיך ומקללך אאר ונברכו בך כל משפחת האדמה.

Rabbi Touger’s Translation:

And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will aggrandize your name, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.”

And we’re on our way to taking over the whole world ASAP, God willing, so maybe the Goyim sense that. But not by our hand, Heaven forfend, but by Hashem’s help. And plenty of other nations think and anticipate exactly the same thing about themselves — and make the same prophecy about themselves and their eschatology, for good measure; don’t you deny it!

“Accusing Jews as a people of responsibility for real or imagined wrongdoing by individuals, even those committed by non-Jews.”

Let’s translate: The words “even those committed by non-Jews” is supposed to counter the “Most communists were Jews” claim discussed here in the past.

But some Jews really ought to stop promoting open borders or counterproductive “Hate Speech” criminalization or disgusting auto-idolatry, and maybe some criticism will help! And as for “imagination”, what’s wrong with that?! Sure, as the Chosen People, our sins do cause the whole world to suffer (not that we cannot counter-sue, though…). (As for “peoplehood”, see the next item.)

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

Recognizing “Man” somehow consists of both individuality and nationhood (as is clear throughout the whole Tanach, even for non-Jews) is antisemitism now?! Do whole nations wage war with other nations (a useful fiction), or do politicians go shoot other politicians themselves, eh? And so on.

As for those Jews who don’t like being verbally accused of deserved faults? Maybe that’s because they are trying to assimilate and become like the Goyim?

“Accusing Jews of being more loyal to the state of Israel than to their own countries.”

Oh, you mean like asking: “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars – Shouldn’t they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?” Sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me!

The truth is, Jews worldwide used to endanger themselves to assist the Mossad’s agents worldwide, but no longer do. Sephardic Jews made Aliyah, then some of them went back to spy on the Arab countries they hailed from. Not to mention Pollard. And perhaps Jews will become hyper-patriotic again in the future. Most American support for Israel comes not from Jews, as is well known. And if the two loyalties aren’t mutually exclusive (as, indeed, they aren’t, unless either state is interventionist or war-mongering [OK, so they both are…]), dual-loyalty or even greater loyalty to Israel is all academic, anyway. Who knows? Who cares?

And loyalty to the state of Israel is hardly loyalty toward Jews. Indeed, supporting the Israeli state (let alone specific policies) is itself to support “harming and killing” Jews, since the Jewish people practically have no greater enemy in the world today than that monstrous institution which enslaves, murders, expels, taxes and endangers them in their own land and property, and all in their name! We’ve said it before: Yom Ha’Atzma’ut Commemorates a Poor, Wicked Decision. Haven’t you noticed Jew-haters applaud when the state’s thugs throw Jews out of their rightful homes or torture innocent Jewish boys?!

“Applying double standards by…”

Yes, we ought to be held to a higher standard than non-Jews, just like women have less mitzvos because they are inferior to men (follow the hyperlink for proof). We are capable of more and are therefore to be held culpable for slighter infractions! That’s why world media (mostly controlled by consumer preferences, not stockholders) are “obsessed” with Israeli war crimes and oppression, as opposed to African or Arab quantitatively larger crimes. That’s how it should be (not that it has discernibly salutary effects!).

(Besides, can’t people specialize in criticizing one country or state, such as, say… Israel?)

Next…

“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

So Yeshayahu Leibowitz (of the “Judeo-Nazi” epithet fame) et alii are antisemites (or are we supposed to buy into “auto-antisemitism”)? “Administrative Detention” practiced both against Jews and non-Jews wasn’t copied from the Nazis (who got it from the Brits)?! The occupied Civil-Authority,-Hamas-and-PLO-controlled zones are not open-air detention camps?! Mo’etzet Yesha’s quislings are not best compared to the Judenrat? Why not?!

And now people all over the planet finally know more about the Nazis’ war crimes than half of the rest of history (let alone of Mao, Stalin, etc.), due to the Holocaust educational crusade (yes, hyperbole), all of a sudden mental shortcuts based on those same Nazis are forbidden? That’s mean.

And without the Torah (so to speak), are the Nazis and Jews a priori incommensurable? No. So, you are trying to employ the Torah for your own purposes, but also deny any obligations it places on Jews, like Ben Gurion quoting Scripture to back up Zionism?

“Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism…”

Right (eyes rolling). So… although antisemitism is admittedly “classic” and of traditional provenance, Goyim are supposed to reject their own storied heritage?! They must despise their blood ancestors’ blood libels and love the Jews for the sake of trendy political correctness? (But not convert to Judaism, either…) Ha! Good luck with that one…

“Holocaust, blah blah.”

I’m with Rabbi Meir Kahane on this… See also: Is Criminalizing Holocaust Denial Wise?

OK, enough said for now.

Question: Well, what’s your definition of antisemitism?

Answer: I don’t have one.* I think antisemitism is a (limited) counterfactual taught by Chazal. You know Goyim hate Jews. I know Goyim hate Jews. Even Goyim know Goyim hate Jews. But one can almost never manage to point to a specific person or action and apply the antisemitism label.

Cease with the “antisemitism” this, and “antisemitism” that — a strategy created and taught not chiefly by Torah greats from any era, but by atheistic Jews and their unjewish organizations (go check it out). They are deluded they’ve altered the immutable; Goyim can’t help themselves, nebbech. It’s halacha (read: human nature), and halachos are unchangeable, sniff all you like: רבי שמעון בן יוחאי אומר הלכה בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב אלא נהפכו רחמיו באותה שעה.

Want to solve the antisemitism problem? Here’s a novel idea: Carry a gun, and learn how to shoot.

If a non-Jew harms you, take revenge. If they credibly threaten you, strike first. And if they insult you, bear it (or don’t!). And suggest they convert to Judaism, so they swoon and gag!

Here’s what not to do: Don’t shoot spitballs at people with atom bombs, and don’t antagonize the “70 Wolves” without good reason.

Let me remind you: I myself have a Chazakah of being Jewish.

If you are a Jew currently living outside the land of Israel, and you don’t love this article (Megillah 7a: קנאה את מעוררת עלינו לבין האומות), I will say two words, appending my twentieth exclamation mark: Make Aliyaaaaaah!

*Well I do, but it’s unmentionable in any setting:

“Antisemitism, noun. The state of refusing to convert into Judaism.”