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I Worry I’m Going Soft. Why Am I Republishing This?!

Were We Wrong About Chabad?

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For decades, Chabad’s want-to-wrap-tefillin legions made us feel uncomfortable. More bluntly, we mocked them.

To be sure, that was only half of the picture. We openly admired Chabad’s mesiras nefesh, and their very real love for all Jews. Parts of their modus operandi, including the tefillin thing however, just struck us as goofy. We couldn’t relate to hundreds of people spending all that time just trying to put tefillin on bemused non-religious Jews. Just how important could that single moment be? If anything, it seemed to violate our sense of the extreme kedushah of tefillin. We didn’t buy into the idea that acquiescing one time to humor a guy in a Fiddler On The Roof outfit would erase a lifetime of ignoring the mitzvah – something no one thought was his fault in the first place, having been disconnected from Torah for generations – and save him from the Talmud’s description of the fate of those who did not wear tefillin. Lots of wasted energy there. Better that the folks who manned the booths should be in the beis medrash.

Looking back at recent events in Israel, it appears that we were all wrong. So wrong, that perhaps we should be reevaluating how we do what is popularly called “kiruv.”

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From Cross-Currents, here.

Rabbi Hirsch’s Rejection of Maimonidean Philosophy

436) A Hirschian rejection of Maimonides

Introduction

This article, based extensively on the research by Professor Micha Gottlieb,[1] examines the sharp anti-Maimonidean writings by the nineteenth-century rabbi, Shimshon Refael Hirsch. In the previous article, “An ‘enlightened’ rejection of Maimonides,” we discussed how the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment movement) wanted to adopt Maimonides as their official ideologue and ‘poster rabbi’ because he encouraged secular education, and elevated the position of the sechel (intellect) as the prime component of the human being. We then showed how this ‘enlightened’ focus on Maimonides was severely challenged by R. Shmuel David Luzzatto, initially a member of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the official arm of the Jewish Enlightenment). In this article, we examine another rabbi also somewhat associated with the Haskala, R. Shimshon Refael Hirsch (1808-1888), who similarly rejects Maimonides and his rationalism, but for different reasons.

The Nineteen Letters

  1. Shimshon Refael Hirsh’s approach to Maimonides is to be found largely in his monumental work on German Neo-Orthodoxy, theNineteen Letters, compiled around 1836. R. Hirsch claimed that Maimonides had overstepped the mark with his emphasis onrationalism over traditionalism (Gottlieb 2009:284). R. Hirsch was also concerned that the Haskala was attempting to use Maimonides as an example of an early ‘reformer’ of Judaism, which may have served the agenda of factions within the Haskala.
  2. Hirsch and theHaskala
  3. Hirsch describes his upbringing as “enlightened and religious” (erleuchtet religiös).[2]His paternal grandfather was a personal friend of Moses Mendelssohn, the founder of the Berlin Haskala; and his uncle was known as the “Moses Mendelssohn of Hamburg.”

However, by 1818, when R. Hirsch would have been ten years old, the Hamburg Jewish community had become more secularised and the first Reform Temple was established in that city. This means that R. Hirsh would have been aware of what he would have considered a downside to the benefits of the Haskala, something his predecessors might not have yet been alerted to. R. Hirsch then decided to devote his energies to promoting a culture of Halachic observance although within an ‘enlightened’ framework (Gottlieb 2009:271).

The problem was that by the mid-nineteenth century, even the moderate branch of the Haskala, was no longer able to maintain the delicate Halachic-Hasklic balance. And they were using Maimonides to argue for reform to traditional Judaism.

Maimonides is used as ‘leverage’ to promote the abandonment of the mitzvot

One did not have to look far for instances where previously religious people had used Maimonides as a precedent for abandoning their observances. Shlomo Maimon serves as such an example, and R. Hirsch would have been well aware of these occurrences:

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From Kotzk Blog, here.

Caitlin Johnstone Does Not Mince Words!

Presidents Keep Hiring Elliott Abrams Because The US Empire Is Just That Evil

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

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CNN reports that President Biden has nominated criminal neocon Elliott Abrams for a position on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which according to the US State Department is responsible for “appraising activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics” and pays “acute attention” to the US government’s official foreign propaganda arm, the US Agency for Global Media.

Usually when you hear someone called a “neocon” it’s not a strictly accurate description from a technical point of view and is frequently used to just mean “warmonger”, but Abrams is actually a proper PNAC neoconservative ideologue with deep ties to the old-school neocons of the 1970s, and has helped promote violent US imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East for decades.

In addition to serving as the Trump administration’s special representative for both Iran and Venezuela (two of the nations where Trump’s foreign policy was at its most murderous), Abrams is probably best known for confessing to his role in the criminal coverup of Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration. CNN — notoriously reluctant to criticize both US foreign policy and Democratic presidential administrations — was surprisingly critical on this point in its report on Biden’s nomination of Abrams to the position.

In an article titled “Biden nominates controversial former Trump-appointee to Public Diplomacy Commission,” CNN’s Jack Forrest writes the following:

Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations, most recently acted as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Iran and Venezuela where he was tasked at the time with directing the campaign to replace Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.

The Republican insider’s long history in foreign policy is marked by a 1991 guilty plea for withholding information about the Iran-Contra affair that earned him two misdemeanor counts, two years probation and 100 hours of community service — though his crimes were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

The secret Iran-Contra operation, which took place during Abrams’ time as an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, involved the funding of anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua using the proceeds from weapon sales to Iran despite a congressional ban on such funding.

Again in his role under former President Ronald Reagan, Abrams was also blasted by a Human Rights Watch report for his attempts in a February 1982 Senate testimony to downplay reports of the massacre of 1,000 people by US-trained-and-equipped military units in the Salvadoran town of El Mozote in December 1981 — the largest mass killing in recent Latin American history. He insisted the numbers of reported victims were “implausible” and “lavished praise” on the military battalion behind the mass killings — stances he doubled down on when they were put on display during a 2019 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, who used his history in Latin American to call into question his credibility.

When you’re so gross that even CNN is disgusted by you, you’re a special kind of gross.

YouTube:

As Forrest noted, this would be the fourth presidential administration that Abrams has been a part of, despite being a confessed crook and despite pushing for bloodshed at every opportunity in some of the US empire’s most notorious criminal actions. Abrams is such a cold-hearted killer that he openly admitted during a 1985 conference that the purpose of aiding the Contras in Nicaragua was “to permit people who are fighting on our side to use more violence,” and has promoted US military violence against Iraq, Syria and Iran with remarkable forcefulness throughout his career. The fact that someone so tyrannical, so corrupt and so unscrupulous keeps getting appointed to positions involved with US foreign policy tells you everything you need to know about the nature of US foreign policy.

It’s actually a damning indictment of our entire civilization that swamp monsters like Elliott Abrams remain esteemed members of society instead of reviled outcasts who can’t safely show their faces in public. They should be driven from every town they try to enter and unable to secure even entry-level jobs working for minimum wage, but instead they’re employed as high-profile pundits, think tankers and political officials providing expertise on some of the most consequential matters in the world.

To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti, it is no measure of health to be well-rewarded in a profoundly sick society. Because our society is so profoundly sick, one of the fastest ways to fortune and esteem is to be as gross as Elliott Abrams. That’s how messed up you have to be inside to rise to prominence within the US power structure: willing to say and do whatever needs to be said and done in order to secure the continued dominance of a global empire that is sustained by human blood.

From Caitlin Johnstone, here.

Hey Reb Avreich, Stop Thinking Government Welfare for Kids and Kollel Is a Panacea!

Thomas Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies

Feb 25 2008

Thomas Sowell of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies. He discusses the misleading nature of measured income inequality, CEO pay, why nations grow or stay poor, the role of intellectuals and experts in designing public policy, and immigration.

Continue by listening here…

From Econ Talk, here.

Why Is America at War With Its Jews? Because American Jews Worship Other Gods

How to Eradicate Judaism in Two Generations or Less

Reviewing: “Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership,” Compiled and edited by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, published by Wicked Son, an imprint of Post Hill Press, ISBN: 978-1-63758-879-6, 2023.

How did we get here, to a point where Jews wearing kippot are attacked on the streets of New York City, and the offenders are out on bail by the evening, if they’re even apprehended at all? Or worse, why are American Jews gunned down simply for being in a synagogue or a kosher supermarket in Pittsburgh, Poway and Jersey City? According to two co-authors, the answer is that American Jews started worshiping other gods.

Who are these gods? The social justice, equity and inclusion movements, belief for and against various “-isms,” like anti-racism, and the wholehearted belief in the Palestinian victim narrative and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), which runs gleefully unchecked on American college campuses.

Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, two community organizers and the co-founders of the Boston-based Jewish Leadership Project, believe that the major organizations of the secular American Jewish community have changed their priorities to align with Judaism’s most ardent enemies in the name of tikkun olam (healing the world). Unfortunately, by doing that and by adopting various causes related to social justice, the view of the Jew as a servant of God and as a light unto the nations is being snuffed out.

In their book, “Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership,” Jacobs and Goldwasser compile 22 essays that they believe show how various organizations tasked with protecting the Jewish community have actually accomplished quite the opposite. The essays’ authors, many of them well known right-wing commentators, focus their arguments almost entirely on the threat to Jewish continuity from the left wing.

Jacobs and Goldwasser lead by delivering a stinging indictment of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the North American Jewish Federations and the Networks of Jewish Community Relations Councils (JCRCs). Later, they also condemn the Reform Jewish movement for siding with social justice movements against Israel and American Jewry. The essay collection “is intended to publicly critique a failing Jewish establishment with the full understanding that many Jews view such rebukes as divisive and prefer to show unity,” they write.

“Ironically, for too many American Jews, the democratically elected leaders of the Jewish state can be pilloried time and again, but the undemocratically, donor-selected leadership here may not be questioned as this would ‘break Jewish unity.’”

Through articles by politically conservative heavy hitters like Alan Dershowitz, Morton A. Klein, Jonathan Tobin, Caroline Glick and others, the book paints a bleak picture of a Jewish world literally destroying itself, by making political choices over religious ones, justifying social justice fads and moving away from Jewish law in the name of religion.

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From Jewish Link, here.