Showing posts with label Rav Soloveitchik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rav Soloveitchik. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Mistreating Men/Trusting Man: Impediments To True Repentance

Disclaimer: Here at "The Judean Hammer" we never hesitate to call out other Jews for their dangerous beliefs and actions which harm us as a people. Ideally, we prefer to engage in civil dialogue with civil Jews and gentiles, but to do this, the other party has to be civil. When nasty folks take it to the gutter, we respond in kind, and all bets are off. This includes those weakling social media twits who eschewed civil debate on these issues long ago.

Despite the fact that many of my Jewish detractors would gladly run over me with a truck if they could, I forgive most of these humorless, angry, WEAK Jewish hasbarites, despite their slander and libelous efforts to run myself and my colleagues through the mud. Unlike one misguided angry fellow, I would risk my life to protect his nasty self were his Arab gardener to suddenly turn on him.

But I will also call him and his ilk out, whether they be overt leftists aligning with Arabs or attacking "settlements", hasbarite celebrity hounds who employ Arabs and get hot and heavy over the next Eurovision, or religious Jews who betray Torah and the nation for free evangelical labor in Samaria.

I will not belabor the point. Civility for the civil. Sarcasm and satire and mockery for simpletons who started with the name calling. And if I believe that a forum is limp-wrist-ed, weak, spineless, and an echo chamber of triggered neurotics, I will state that outright. And if the party becomes unhinged, (and they will) that speaks more about their own insecurities and neuroses than anything else.

I am resharing something different this evening. Because proper Jewish actions are an extension of proper Jewish thoughts. And in an era where we all too often resort to the superficial digital world, sometimes articulated thoughts falls by the wayside.  These are my reflections on teshuva before Rosh Hashana. Originally published in The Jewish PressMistreating Men/Trusting Man: Impediments To True Repentance

Sunday, September 18, 2016

"Confrontation" Revisited: Rav Soloveitchik's Classic Treatise

In these trying times when ignorant, unlearned, and unprincipled Jewish "leaders" align with evangelical missionaries for their purported support of Israel, it behooves decent Jews to revisit Rav Soloveitchik's classic works on interfaith dialogue. What we are saying today reflects the vacuum of Jewish leadership of our times. Not only are those engaged in these dangerous relationships violating the most basic aspects of the Rav's position, but most of them are frighteningly ignorant (and largely disinterested) of the issues involved. Dark times indeed.

Monday, September 7, 2015

The New Jews For Jesus

“Hear, O Israel! The L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd alone.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) JPS Hebrew-English TANAKH, 2003

“The very existence of the State of Israel is a denial of basic Christian doctrine, according to which the Jews lost the rights of Eretz Yisroel and their role as the Chosen people. The Christian church seeks to resolve the contradiction between the State of Israel as a historical entity and the Evangelion, by conversion of the population.”(Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “The Rav Speaks: Five Addresses on Israel, History, and the Jewish People”; pg. 122)

The spiritual enemies of the Jewish people who harvest the Samarian vineyards take no sabbaticals during shemitah. They of course refrain from picking grapes for the year, as they must, out of deference to the enduring Mosaic shemitah Law. Yet the most important crop of all is harvested year-round regardless of season. Evangelicals see every season as a time to bring the “good word” to Jews, or to be blunt, to harvest Jewish souls. For the devout evangelical, the Jewish soul is sweeter than grapes, and like all difficult quarry, the religious Jew is most desirous, since he represents the challenge of an elusive prey who poses an eschatological road-block. The kind of prey who supposedly can’t be caught, yet according to their religious beliefs, must be caught, in order for the “Second Coming” to arrive.
Trying to bring religious Jews to the cross is no easy task, as long as Torah Jews remain insulated from evangelicals. As such, they require the aid of Jewish insiders to penetrate the castle. And they have found them. Previously insular communities in Israel are no longer a fortress. The missionaries have discovered that for the right price, their religious Jewish friends will open the door. More than that, at least one prominent religious-Zionist rabbi has even sanctified his presence in the agricultural fields by declaring that “the harvesters” are fulfilling prophecies. And these same Jewish friends battle on their behalf by hurling defamation and invectives towards the few Jews who have the courage to say anything.
And so it should come as no surprise that Tommy Waller’s “Hayovel Ministry” is working overtime during shemitah, even as the vineyards of Samaria remain dormant for the year. The off season is when they return home to their American congregations and communities to amass their forces. Now is the time to schlep Jewish representatives around with them on the speaking circuit, to generate energy and excitement as they try to bring “the good word” to Jews in Israel. It is a labor of love. This is where their cadre of Jewish friends come into the picture; those perplexing individuals with kipot and tzitzit who have participated in some of the most outrageous interfaith events to date. 

“Religious” Jews for Jesus?
Most Jews have heard of “Jews for Jesus” and recognize the spiritual threat they pose to our people. But how many Jews know about the growing number of religious Jewish leaders and advocates who have become a new kind of “Jews for Jesus”? How many know about the particulars where these same Jews have trampled upon Halachic boundaries and thrown themselves into the forbidden waters of interfaith dialogue? How many Jews are privy to the gradual process where these Jews are sanitizing Jesus and making him kosher for Jewish consumption? How many are aware that these individuals are inadvertently aiding the missionaries in their ultimate goal of converting Jews? Allow me to clarify:

• When I speak of “religious Jews for Jesus” I am not speaking of actual messianic Jews who believe in Jesus and accept him as divine, but of those religious Jews whose clarity has become so blurred and distorted due to their involvement and exposure to evangelicals. I speak of rabbis who have described Jesus as a rabbi, and as a “kosher” concept that Jews can embrace without sacrificing their most basic Jewish beliefs.
• I speak of “Halachic” Jews who have either unconsciously or otherwise mastered the tongue of Christian theology, as they try to harmonize inherently contradictory teachings, out of a desire to strengthen an alliance with Christians.
• I speak of those who are engaged in activities that no religious Jewish leader in history ever engaged in. I speak of those who would been condemned by great Rabbis in previous generations, when we had strong Torah leadership.\
Hayovel and other evangelical missionary groups require such Jews. They require individuals like Jeremy Gimpel, a renowned Jewish advocate, radio personality, and ordained orthodox Rabbi, who has done as much as anyone on the scene, to grab the evangelical hand and pull him in for an interfaith bear hug. “JewishIsrael” recently came out with a shocking expose regarding Gimpel’s participation as the main speaker at a Hayovel sponsored event in Nashville. Every Jew must read this disturbing article and watch the accompanying video. The jaw-dropping finale featured Caleb Waller inviting the notorious Jew obsessed missionary, “Papa” Don Finto, onto the stage to bless the audience. (A brief internet search will tell you all you need to know about Finto.) Don Finto proceeded to lay his hands on Jeremy Gimpel to bless him and Hayovel, and even concluded with a recitation of Birkat Kohanim! And all throughout this whole disgraceful episode, Gimpel remained on stage.

I need not go into great detail, since the article presents all that transpired. Yet I would like to reiterate one salient point to the reader. Bear in mind that this is yet another documented example of Hayovel’s missionary agenda.  Despite the same shrill cries of their Jewish enablers, Hayovel’s sponsored event saw Caleb Waller invite a notorious Jew missionary to bless the audience. Those who would still deny their intentions are either cognitively impaired, naïve to the point of cognitive impairment, or lying for any number of reasons. There are no other logical explanations.
The following article will address another disturbing event. On February 16th, 2015, the same Jeremy Gimpel participated in an interfaith Question & Answer session at the Fellowship Bible Chapel in Columbus, Ohio. The chillul Hashem that transpired from his involvement in such an affair, as well as the responses he gave to the audience was astounding; and they require an uncompromising response to bring clarity to the picture. I will be addressing several of Gimpel’s more outrageous statements point by point. (Those with strong stomachs can also view excerpts of this video here.) 
As an aside, while I have never met Jeremy Gimpel, he and his co-host Ari Abramowitz were kind enough to have me as a guest on their Voice of Israel radio show a while back to discuss my articles addressing the dangers of evangelical support for Israel (minute 27). I found them to be genuinely friendly and warm, and they gave me a fair opportunity in the allotted time to present my views. In short, I harbor no animus towards Jeremy or Ari. I liked them both.

There is nothing personal here, save for my concern over what I consider grotesque violations of Jewish behavior, in the form of the most extreme examples of prohibited interfaith dialogue. As I hope to show, from a Torah perspective, Jeremy’s responses were outrageous. Many were inaccurate and theologically ambiguous, and some even bordered on the kinds of positions that could be deemed heretical or worse. Indeed, Jeremy’s own words could Heaven forbid be used one day to ensnare Jews.
A quick word on interfaith dialogue, since this is the back-drop to this whole tragic affair. How did this all come about? In recent years, prominent “modern-orthodox” (I hate the term) leaders and others laid the groundwork for the various forms of interfaith dialogue we are witnessing today. They created a forum for discussion/meetings which never existed, and by doing so, many of them trampled upon their rebbe’s Halachic position. As is well known, Rav Soloveitchik (of blessed memory) prohibited any form of religious discussion, debate, or dialogue with members of other faith communities, and his position was articulated fully in his classic essay “Confrontation”, his subsequent  addendum, and other written works. The Rav's views represent the most comprehensive ideological approach to date on the matter of interfaith relations/discussion, and his position both asserted and demanded that we Jews respectively maintain a distance between the two faith communities, and refrain from any attempts to merge them. (Naturally, since this essay was written in the context of the American Jewish experience, allowances were made for situations where Jew and gentile shared communal concerns and only addressed such non-religious matters. In Eretz Yisroel, the biblical prohibitions inherent in the discussion render many of the points of the article less relevant or perhaps even irrelevant, since the Halacha clearly defines which gentiles may even enter the land.)
In one of the more egregious examples of blurred theological lines that invariably ensue from such encounters, one former student of “The Rav” even adopted the language of the missionary, and he was featured several years ago in videos where he called Jesus "Rabbi Jesus," and used such ideologically problematic terms as "branches" and "grafting," which are laden with unmistakable Christian associations. The missionaries had a field day with this trove of material. Is it any wonder that we have a new category today, of a religious Jewish activist who engages in the kinds of things that none of our forebears would have ever thought possible or permissible?
Jeremy’s Q&A Session at the Fellowship Bible Chapel
Those Jews who may have met or heard Jeremy Gimpel speak, may be taken aback by my remarks. I allow Jeremy’s own words to speak for themselves. Again, I advise the reader to refer to the video footage of this encounter. Here are some of the highlights:
      Quoting the Gospels: Early on in the session, Jeremy referenced the “humble of spirit” and participated in a rare spectacle which boggles the mind. Consider the image of an ordained rabbi standing before an audience of evangelical missionaries, quoting from the book of Matthew (5:5). “The meek will inherit the earth,” declared Jeremy, “that is the spirit of the bible.” My response: When a rabbi quotes “Matthew” what more can one say? Can there be a greater desecration of Hashem’s name?
      “A Jew Is a Jew”: In response to an inquiry from a participant about the status of a Jew who converts to Christianity, Jeremy responded that despite a Jew’s attempt to leave the faith, he nevertheless remains a Jew. While this is generally accepted as true according to Halacha, Jeremy failed to emphasize that despite the Jew remaining a Jew, acceptance of Jesus as either divine or a messiah is inherently incompatible and contrary to Jewish beliefs. Even Jeremy’s mentor, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, (who has been involved in questionable interfaith- exchanges himself) has explicitly stated: “Jews can never accept Jesus as the Messiah – anyone who does so is ipso facto not a Jew…” Acceptance of Jesus is the antithesis of Jewish belief. Jeremy’s failure to point this out plays right into the hands of the missionaries who maintain that such a belief actually makes the Jew more “Jewish” by “completing” him.
      Granting Legitimacy to Christian Interpretations: When one woman inquired how a religious Jew such as himself would interpret a certain prophecy of Zachariah, Jeremy went into a convoluted, inaccurate, and dangerous response, which legitimized the standard Christological distortion of the verses, and exposed a confused perspective on a host of Jewish concepts. It was patronizing and pandering, and his answers illustrated the dangers and futility of trying to harmonize incompatible beliefs. Ironically, the questioner seemed equally dissatisfied with his responses. Here was the exchange:
Jeremy: “To answer really simply, maybe everything that you believe in the book of Zachariah, that the messiah will do, we believe too. I mean that’s why the argument is sort of like…uhh …it’s not a waste of our time… but like….When a man comes and he fights the wars of Israel, defeats the enemies, builds a temple, peace on earth, the leader that did that, we will all kneel before the king. (Jeremy actually kneels down.) Do you know what I mean?

Whoever that is…so your vision of that, you say it’s a second coming, OK, we say it’s a first coming…we actually do…what do we...we know that we don’t know…that’s sort of like where the Jews are at right now…we just like…uhhohh (inaudible sound)…I guess when the messiah comes, the messiah comes. Right now, that’s just not uuhhh…right now, what do we have to do? We got to be good with G-d. We have to like bring G-d into our lives, that’s really important.”

At this point, Jeremy made a clumsy effort to reconcile the impossible divide, and reassure the woman of our “shared visions”:

…….”your vision of the messiah’s second coming is our vision of the messiah’s first coming. All of the messianic prophecies that will be fulfilled, when they’re fulfilled, we’ll recognize that as messiah.”

Response: There is no commonality whatsoever between the Jewish understanding of a righteous human Messiah who will fulfill all the Halachic criteria and fights the wars of G-d, and the pagan notion of a divine man (part of a triune godhead), who died for mankind’s sins, was resurrected, and will eventually return in a Second Coming. The latter belief is for those who sacrifice their rational faculty to accept a theology borrowed from the major pagan religions of the ancient world. In a final attempt to harmonize the validity of the two faiths, Jeremy expressed his perspective on how the arrival of the messiah will play out, in a way that accepts the legitimacy of both.
“I always feel like how is that gonna to play? Are we…is one of us just gonna have a theological crisis…I mean like oops…or is it going to be like somehow we are both right? I don’t know. I feel like G-d’s ways are more than what we think. I intuit… that somehow both of us are gonna to be right, but not in the ways we think we are gonna to be right. I don’t know.”
Response: Moshe Emet V’Torato Emet. The words of Moses are true and his Torah is true. Judaism 101. With all due respect to the other faiths who maintain a similar position about their own beliefs, we are not both correct. The truths of Judaism are inherently in opposition to Christianity and there can be no harmonizing of the two faiths. The truths of Judaism and Torah are the only truths. There is no theological crisis.
“For in point of fact, Judaism and Christianity are not basically one but are, as Professor Freidrich so aptly states, fundamentally opposed to each other.” (Judaism and Christianity: The Differences, Trude Weiss-Rosmarin; pg. 10)

      Jesus- as played by Gimpel the actor: Jeremy borrowed a page from basic Christian theology which posits that the Mosaic Law is impossible to keep, when he “admits” that as a Jew, “Jews, often get lost in religion.” (Where have we heard that before?) And in a theatrical performance that in this internet age will never go away, he fell into the character of Jesus by explaining:
“That was what Jesus was talking to Jews. He’s like folks, you’re getting lost in the law. You’re getting lost in the details. Don’t forget the big picture.”
Response: How to convey the shock one feels when he hears a Jew speak this way? Images of classical Christian anti-Semitism come to mind, replete with invectives hurled towards “the Pharisees.” There is no way to get lost in the law for one who truly upholds it. As an example, to the extent that man’s adherence to the law could cause him to behave in an ill manner to his fellow man, this is hardly proof of getting caught up in the law. On the contrary, this constitutes proof that the individual never truly followed the law! When properly kept, the Halacha is the only solution for the religious Jew. Torah is not merely law. It is a way of life required by Hashem, and it remains the only way for man to perfect himself. Jeremy gave the missionaries an unexpected gift with these statements. This is precisely what they argue when they try to explain how G-d’s law is no longer relevant or obligatory, at that only a blind acceptance of Jesus can bring one “salvation.”
 Since Jeremy referenced a historical Jesus, a few words need to be said about the question of the historicity of Jesus. Jews who speak of a historical Jesus who was both “religious” and even a “rabbi” are playing a dangerous theological game. The obvious conclusion of such thinking is that you can “follow” him and still remain a good Jew, the same position which the messianic argues. The missionary’s challenge is to expand upon this concept and convince the Jew how to follow Jesus. Not only is this a perilous path, which from the onset is contrary to Jewish thought and Law, it also blindly accepts the notion of a historical Jesus as a fact.

Did Jesus Exist?
Short answer for the Jew. Who cares? There is no definitive evidence that a specific historical Jesus existed that has any commonality with the many contradictory and mythical accounts in the gospel. Any scholarship that argues such a position is premised on a particular historian's viewpoint, which is contested by many other scholars. From a Torah perspective, whether or not Jesus was a real Jewish figure, a composite of several figures, or based upon two different figures in the Talmud, Judaism doesn’t venerate his memory. If he existed at all, he was not a good Jew. The ancient historians certainly don’t provide a strong case for a historical Jesus. In 26 Reasons Jews don’t believe in Jesus”, Asher Norman notes: 
The works of 41 historians who lived during the first century and early second century and wrote about Judea and Rome have survived. Significantly, none of them mentioned Jesus, his alleged disciples, his apostles, or any of the so-called “miraculous” events described in the gospels. It is difficult to understand how this is possible, if the gospel stories about Jesus described historical events.” (Page 182)
The Talmud never mentioned a “Jesus of Nazareth.” The Tosefta and Baraita reference two different men that people mistakenly associate with Jesus. Take Yeishu Ben Pandira for example. He was never crucified. He was stoned to death for sorcery and hung from a tree. This occurred one hundred years before Jesus, during Alexander Jannaeus's reign in Jerusalem. Yeshu Ben Stada presents other problems. He lived one hundred years after Jesus.  And while his manner of death and subsequent hanging for sorcery on the eve of Passover are the same, he was killed in Lydda. These were clearly two different personalities, and neither of these men were killed by Romans. They were executed in different towns, and neither was killed via crucifixion. The dates don't correspond to the dates of Jesus that Christians accept. Did Jesus exist according to rabbinical sources? Rabbi Jehiel ben Joseph said that the Yeshu referenced in rabbinic literature was a disciple of Joshua Ben Perachai, and NOT Jesus the Nazarene. Nachmanides rejected the idea that the Talmud referenced Jesus, whereas Maimonides maintained that it did. (Norman, 186-187).
Believing in an historical Jesus is not a fundamental tenet of Judaism. Ultimately, the historicity of Jesus is irrelevant for the believing Jew. But believing in the ideas associated with him is not irrelevant, and they constitute a rejection of everything Jewish, and a descent into idolatry. And the theology that is based upon the figure of Jesus is prohibited to the Jew as idolatry according to all rabbinic positions.
      Jeremy Kashers Jesus: Jeremy continued to stumble, by explaining that a theoretical belief in Jesus as the Messiah is not problematic, as long as he is not deemed divine.

“It’s much less a problem for Jews, the Messiah part of things.”

As proof, he cites the unfortunate case of what has transpired in the Chabad world which is rife with the tragic belief that their deceased Rebbe is the messiah. Jeremy incorrectly maintained that this aberrant belief is acceptable to mainstream religious Jews, in a sense, by arguing that it boils down to the theological equivalent of one’s preference for apples and another man’s penchant for oranges.
My response: The reality on the ground says otherwise. Outside the influence of Chabad circles, mainstream religious Jewry finds these notions anathema to Judaism. What transpired in Chabad is terrible and has created a dangerous un-Jewish belief system which threatens fundamental Jewish beliefs. The notion of a dead Messiah is abhorrent to mainstream Torah thought. (I don’t want to get side-tracked but I would like to say one thing. As someone who doesn’t follow Chasidism, I nevertheless revere the legacy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory. What has occurred today is a disgrace to his righteous name.) Jeremy continues: 
“When Christianity became like woe, that’s different, is the divinity of Jesus that too much for Jews to swallow….. If we hold that G-d is one there should be no other G-d’s before him, G-d is G-d the father and there is no other trinity manifestations. It’s just one. That’s where the real challenge becomes.”
My response: What challenge? What a foolish use of words. There is no challenge for us. G-d is One. These are the basic tenets of Jewish thought and belief as expressed in our sacred Shema prayer. It is a concept of Oneness that is unlike anything else in the world, including our standard perception of the concept of one. Defining it as a challenge is dangerous for two reasons:

1)     It suggests that the challenge can be intellectually met, and that theoretically someone could present an idea that could bridge this gap and make the idea palpable to Jew.
2)     It challenges the missionaries to overcome this hurdle. It also defines the “hurdle,” and feeds the missionary agenda.
As if that wasn’t enough, Jeremy dropped another bombshell:

“As far as the messiah, there is no problem to believe that Jesus is the messiah…really, according to Jewish law. You could believe that. And you can follow in his ways, like literally hold him as a Rebbe…and even the idea of a righteous rabbi dying for atonement is not a foreign idea in mystical Judaism. So there is so much that there is what to work with.”

Response: Here I find it difficult to convey what I am feeling, because I am screaming inside. WHAT? No problem to believe in Jesus as the messiah? Of course there is! Jesus, real or imagined, never fulfilled the criteria to be the Jewish messiah! Furthermore, we Jews believe in the coming of the messiah, not the messiah himself. Allow me to explain. The messiah will not require a blind belief, because by fulfilling the criteria, he will identify himself to be the correct individual. Jesus met none of these criteria. Judaism rejects Jeremy’s notion of atonement as being compatible with Jewish belief. It is not. He can cite “mystical Judaism” which is a vague term that doesn’t mean anything. We don’t believe in a dead messiah who didn’t complete his mission. By its very definition, death is the most obvious proof that one was not the Messiah.

Yet the most troubling notion can be found where he states, “So there is so much that there is what to work with.” What does this mean? If ever there was an open invitation to the missionaries of the world to accept Jeremy’s ambiguity as a call to try harder, this is it. This is a call for missionaries to become more creative by working with Jeremy’s concept of a flexible ideology, in order to harmonize Jesus. This was an outrageous statement that was as dangerous as a hail of bullets shot into a crowd of Jews. What is there to work with? What does that even mean?

  Jeremy Panders To Christians Regarding The Temple Mount: Jeremy spoke about the unfortunate situation on the Temple Mount, where the Jordanian Waqf prohibits Jewish prayer. The problem with this exchange was that he reinterpreted the prophetic vision of a Third Temple, as one where Christians can pray as Christians under the rubric of Isaiah’s “House of prayer for all nations.” Christian prayer and worship are certainly not acceptable on the Temple Mount, neither in its current state of ruin, nor in the eventual Third Temple. Halacha will determine who can even enter the land, not to mention who can ascend the Temple Mount, and how prayer can be offered. (As for those righteous gentiles who intend to truly call out in Hashem’s true Name, the Third Temple will certainly be a place where they will have a means of expressing proper expressions of thanks and praise to The Almighty.)
Reflections: Jeremy and others often present these interfaith events as a unique and new opportunity in Jewish history to engage in a form of Jewish outreach to Christians. When I was interviewed on his radio show, he admitted to me as much. I rejected the notion that even if one could avoid the problems of interfaith dialogue, one could never engage in outreach with evangelical missionaries. I recommended that we Jews invest our time with the righteous gentiles of the Bnai Noach world instead. There are so many of them today.

It is interesting to note that at the conclusion of this event at the chapel, Pastor Steve Mitchell reiterated and reaffirmed for the audience, the primary Christian beliefs, as I see it, to negate any of Jeremy’s final words. These evangelicals are clearly not open to becoming B’nai Noach, and they themselves do not want their flock to believe that Judaism offers an alternative path to the truth. They are firm believers in their faith, and their uncompromising belief in a divine Jesus, and we should understand this without accepting the naïve notion that it’s a mitzvah to engage with them. Our own people will only lose spiritually in such an encounter, because the evangelical isn’t interested in reason, but the blind faith of dogma and indoctrination. And his theology allows him to engage in duplicity to lure the Jew in.
Human Psychology
Selective Vision. As the old adage goes, we see what we want to see. As complex people we all engage in this delusional process to some extent. Selective sight allows us to continue to live the way we want, and avoid the things we refuse to confront or accept. There are many reasons we ignore the obvious. Some dwell in darkness because ignorance can be comforting. Some of us prefer not to dwell on things that make us wince. We sometimes wear filters over our eyes to ensure that our world schema remains intact. 
And yet, taking human psychology into the equation, I still cannot fathom how Jews allow themselves to be deluded by these dangerous organizations. As I’ve noted many times before, there is a world of documentation confirming the dangers of the evangelicals in Israel. And thanks to JewishIsrael’s recent article, we now have yet another piece of video footage exposing the notorious Waller family and their Hayovel Ministry’s missionary agenda. The vitriolic responses of those self-appointed Jewish leaders who aid Waller and others, cannot negate the facts, even if they choose to cast them aside.

Most native born Israelis have no understanding of the evangelical personality and are ill-equipped to read his pulse. Their unfamiliarity with English renders them vulnerable to the evangelical’s clever use of language to convey theological beliefs. But the fact remains: the missionaries are here in Israel, and many of them are relying upon religious Jews to sanitize their image. People like Jeremy Gimpel, who are well intended, but are nevertheless engaged in spiritual Russian roulette, and others who have been featured in some of my past articles, are harming the Jewish people. As Jewish boys and girls continue to be exposed to a strange admixture of holy and profane, it won’t be long before some of them eat the forbidden fruit. It is a subtle process, which Hayovel’s beloved messianic preacher “Papa” Don Finto understands well. He is ecstatic, because he and his ilk understand that they never had such an opportunity in history to enter religious communities and break down the barriers between Jew and Christian. He foresees the day when more Jews will (Heaven forbid) kneel before the cross and accept “that man.”

Various efforts are underway to apprise major Jewish leaders and organizations of the full extent of this spiritual menace, which is not monolithic, but an elaborate network of missionary organizations. Many Jews are ignorant of the problem. Many more allow themselves to remain so. There are several good rabbis who are mortified about what is going on, and yet for some reason, they lack the courage or the organizational ability to take a strong stance. So we continue to fight the lonely battle to chip away at their resistance. Because if we don’t fight the good fight, the spiritual death toll for the Jewish people will be incalculable.

Every Jew in turn can do his part by writing about this problem, speaking with other Jews, and informing their community leaders. Jews need to write letters to major Jewish organizations both in Israel and across the diaspora, demanding that they publicly acknowledge the problem and articulate an aggressive plan of action. Of course, the battle needn’t be left to religious organizations. All concerned Jews are welcome to contribute. A major part of the effort to combat this spiritual period of “shmad” requires that we publicize all of the major personalities who work with these evangelicals. As such, the actions of Jeremy Gimpel and others must be exposed. “Good intentions” are no excuse, when Jewish souls are in danger.

Ironically, many of the same Jews who promote the evangelicals are upset when Israel consistently appeases the murderous beasts of Fatah who mask their true intentions, which mirror the genocidal dreams of Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet they fail to recognize Fatah’s spiritual equivalent, and on this issue at least, they show the equivalent stupidity of any card carrying member of “Peace Now.” Learn to recognize the missionary equivalent of the duplicitous Arab. Learn to recognize “Brother Esau” who comes to us with a smile, lots of cash, a willingness to harvest grapes for free, and an undying enthusiasm to bring the “good word” to us. Learn to scream, “mechabel” - “terrorist” - even when the assailant holds nothing in his hand but a cross and a fervent desire for you to kiss it.

Learn to comprehend his duplicitous language, so that you can read what is really in his heart. Here’s a brief lesson to get you started. Conversational Evangelical Language 101: When he says “the Father” he really means Jesus.
“V’alu moshi’im B’har Tzion, lishpot et Har Esav…..” – Ovadyah 1:21
Don’t delude yourself. Our visions and beliefs are incompatible. Santayana’s words are certainly true for the Jew. History always repeats itself. Har Ha’Carmel 2015.
Where is Elijah?

*I would like to thank Avraham Leibler and Ellen Horowitz of JewishIsrael for their contribution to this article.

Mistreating Men, Trusting Man: Impediments To True Repentance

Elul is upon us, and with it comes the requisite obligation to engage in the process of “teshuva gemura, the highest most comprehensive form of repentance. In this period of the coming Yomim Noraim (“High Holidays”) the severe and somber concept of Divine judgment is fused with the joy afforded us by this unique opportunity. It is the season for the most efficacious form of personal and national repentance, and we Jews have supreme confidence that we can obtain it.

The ability of man to spiritually elevate himself has its price: the ever present potential for spiritual degradation. Unlike the animals who are expressions of instinct, man can degrade himself to a status lower than an animal whose life is dictated by biology. Sin is a reality, and Judaism has a specific formula for avoiding it, including the mechanisms of preventing sin, and the opportunity to return from it.

Judaism has an essentially positive approach to man’s spiritual development. The fundamental belief that given a proper healthy nurturing environment, a life of Halacha will articulate the best in man, while restraining and containing the negative. At its core, Judaism rejects the deterministic outlook of another faith system which deems man sinful from birth. Christianity is premised on the negative belief that man cannot perfect himself, and the solution proposed was contrary to everything that Judaism believes in, including the most fundamental beliefs relating to the one true Creator, Hashem. Idolatry became the mechanism for repentance. Like the former, Islam also rejects personal perfection, and instead glorifies the attribute of subjugation, cruelty, and coercion. Subjugation via the sword negates the basic Jewish tenet of free will.

The correct system of repentance is contingent upon one’s personal belief in the overall system which encompasses biblical and rabbinic prohibitions and positive injunctions. A breakdown of commandments relating to man and The Almighty, and those between man and man.
 I would like to share a few thoughts on the latter category, since there is a tendency for many to define their religiosity with actions relating to our Maker, while sometimes neglecting issues related to man. The Almighty is all merciful and in many ways teshuva with our Creator is an easier process than the tedious task of repairing a wrong with one’s fellow man.

Man vs. Man 
“Ahavas Yisroel, jackass!” The words I hollered at a Jewish driver some 17 years ago, when this allegedly religious miscreant nearly ran me over with his station wagon. Evidently, he wanted to arrive in shul before borchu to pray maariv (the evening prayer service). The absurd irony of a man who would run over someone to pray to G-d! This episode, though humorous now, conveys for me a prime example of this fundamental problem, when man’s obsession with matters between man and G-d, comes at the expense of normal relations with other people. I see this as a tragically dominant phenomenon in many circles, where people place extraordinary emphasis on ritualistic matters of man and G-d, while sometimes neglecting and abrogating those mitzvoth relating “bain adam la’chaveiro,” between man and man.

A Torah life. Here we have a semantic and a label that all too often is misapplied. Identifying with and accepting the divinity of Torah is surely one way of defining who is religious, particularly when the individual subscribes to the “big three.” Yet if one’s flawed behavior is manifest to the public, in the form of theft/dishonesty, cruelty to others, aggression can one be truly deemed “frum”? Can an obsessive adherence to matters between man and G-d while simultaneously abusing and mistreating his fellow Jew be a truly religious person?

I am not Heaven forbid discouraging or minimizing the importance of fulfilling those mitzvoth relating to matters between G-d and man. I am stating that a fixation with the former sometimes results in undermining those issues relating to man and his fellow man, which by its very definition, expose the fact that one is greatly lacking in all matters of observance, including those with his beloved Creator.

Flawed Figures: Reflections on Disgraced Torah Leaders 
The most tragic examples of this tendency are found when people representing Torah betray the system, since while man sometimes has the tendency to mistreat his fellow man, he has the ironic tendency to sometimes idolize specific men. In such instances, the chillul Hashem is even greater, since the damage to the Jewish community irreparable. The system is ruptured when men who are supposed to lead, teach, and embody Torah fall on their faces before our eyes. Ironically, even as we sometimes sacrifice our obligations to our fellow men, the tendency to elevate individual men to such high standards allows for the potential for devastation when they betray the system.

It matters not whether these religious men are “our rabbis.” While the greatest examples of this can sometimes be seen in the popular cult of the “tsaddik” who is sometimes the antithesis of the true man of Torah, the individuals needn’t rise to this level of worship. To the extent that they represent some faction of Torah based Jewry, the damage affects us all, when the Torah is disgraced in front of the world.

All too often today, we read horrific stories where purported men of Torah took advantage of vulnerable people and preyed upon them sexually. From a psychological perspective, it is only natural for the victims of abuse, (and abuse manifests itself in many ways), to abandon Judaism after a negative experience, particularly when they believe that there were other parties involved that enabled the abuse. It’s sad to see people lose faith in Torah. Yet too often Judaism is judged by the practitioner rather than the system. The inherent dangers to the system are manifest when this becomes the anchor for one’s faith. And it’s not only the extreme case of sexual abuse which tests men. Lesser offenses also present Torah as a flawed system, though the desire to see it as such is naturally based upon emotional reactions and betrayed expectations, rather than the perfect rational system of Torah itself.

Several months back, we had the chillul Hashem of a prominent American rabbi, who was found guilty of a crime of moral perversion. Fortunately, the disgraced sexual “rodef” was convicted and sentenced to six years in jail, which although a ridiculously inadequate punishment, will hopefully keep him away from people for many years. And prison is no cake-walk for sex offenders, so the opportunities for additional punishments in prison certainly exist.  Here was a man heading a prestigious Washington synagogue, a scholar in Torah, an academic, a supposed voice of moral reason. He sat on prominent rabbinical boards in high positions. And nevertheless, he undid himself after what must have been a protracted period of idealization of sin followed by comprehensive steps to actualize his thoughts. His actions required extensive research and planning which included but was surely not limited to the following:
  • Indulging and engaging in the kinds of dark sexual fantasies whose articulation jeopardized his spiritual integrity, personal reputation, personal standing (not to mention the image of Orthodox Judaism as a whole), and personal freedom.
  • Making a concrete decision to actualize these thoughts in deed. Researching the kinds of cameras that could be covertly placed in the women’s mikvah, actually purchasing the model and mastering this usage.
  • The final nail in his coffin: installing it. Maintaining his addiction by maintaining the device. Downloading the videos. Allowing it to remain affixed in the mikvah.
Throughout this entire process, one would think that a flawed but G-d fearing person suffering from such a sexual addiction would have time to find some outlet, possibly serious therapy and counseling, to redirect his energies. A certain Gemara comes to mind where it is deemed preferable to sin away from one’s domain in the confines of anonymity. Here we have an intelligent man endangering everything in his life for the pursuit of sexual fantasy. There are two dangers when reacting to this incident:
  •  Failure to learn from this negative spectacle.
  • Drawing the wrong conclusions.
Both are likely possibilities. Religious Judaism has had enough sexual scandals in recent years that came to the public eye and no groups are free of this shame. In many instances, the abusers were enabled both willingly and unwillingly by those who apologized, looked away, and often ignored what was before them. I want to reiterate that from the chareidi world to those in the “modern-orthodox world”, no group can say that they have clean hands. The historical account can attest to this.

And then there are the asinine conclusions of those who don’t understand Torah. The shrill voices of those not personally affected who insist that Judaism needs to change to adapt to this and other incidents. Judaism needs to change? Of course change is needed! Every person, organization who could have prevented such incidents betray this fact! Yet, the Divine system of Torah is perfect, and requires no changing, despite the sentiments of too many who clamber onto the wagon which demands that “orthodox Judaism” needs to evolve. The hysterical reactions of those who view spiritually depraved evil people as representing the system need to reassess their thought process. If change is needed, it is in the practice of Judaism which have become corrupted and politicized. The morality of Torah is perfect. Man is not. And some men are more imperfect than others. Some desecrate G-d’s name while wearing the cloak of the religious G-d man.

The warning signs are usually there. And by warnings, I mean red flags of strange behavior that may not even be motivated by abusive motives but by a distorted dysfunctional personality. It requires a discerning eye and some seichel. Sometimes it boils down to a hunch. A gut feeling that something is amiss. The sense that a rabbi shouldn’t be acting this way.

Several years back, while attending a bat mitzvah in a “modern-orthodox” circle with my wife, we witnessed a peculiar spectacle which led me to opine certain sentiments. The bat mitzvah girl’s “rebbe” was jumping rope with his class of pre-pubescent girls. It was undignified and perverse, yet in this “open” environment no one seemed to notice or think something amiss. Let’s avoid the most blatant halachic issues that come to mind which certainly forbid/discourage such behavior. Even if one could interpret the actual context in a way that didn’t involve prohibitions, one’s internal hunch screams (the hashkafa bone if you will) that something is terribly inappropriate. No normal religious man (rabbi or otherwise) would ever place himself in such a position. A sane cogent man would not want the public to even have a “haavah aminah” that something not so kosher was transpiring. I’m not accusing this man of any sexual indiscretion, G-d forbid. But we have seen too many examples of such close-knit “kiruv encounters” over the years, have we not?

So my second point is this. We need to celebrate the perfect system of Torah, and be wary when it comes to idealizing or idolizing man or men, all the while rejecting the equally un-Jewish notion that man is essentially evil and flawed. Certainly we should honor and revere and seek to emulate true men of Torah, who in the vast majority of cases will not disappoint us. We should make for ourselves a “rav” as instructed by chazal in “The Ethics of The Forefathers.” Yet we should internalize the words of Rav Soloveitchik of blessed memory who noted the following:

“We may trust man, have confidence in him, but we may not have faith in him. Faith connotes absoluteness and no man is worthy of absolute faith. Faith is only applicable to G-d.” (Reflections of the Rav, Abraham R. Besdin, pg. 67)

With these ideas entrenched, we are in a position to truly rehabilitate ourselves and the dysfunctional aspects of contemporary Jewish life, which rupture the ideal Torah system and bring man to sin. And the teshuva process itself becomes grounded in real things, true perfection, and not the trappings of “popular” teshuva which is sometimes monolithic in scope and simple-minded in its articulation.

For a truly comprehensive treatment of issues pertaining to repentance, I suggest people study the Rambam’s “Hilchot Teshuvah” in the Mishneh Torah, and Rav Soloveitchik’s classic work, “Al Ha’teshuvah” (On Repentance, available in English and Hebrew) which represents a treasure trove of gems discussing every nuance of the subject. In my humble opinion, as one who merely benefited from this gadol through his writings, I firmly believe that the “Rav’s” legacy of Torah on the process of teshuva are unparalleled in history.

May Hakadosh Baruch Hu grant us the wisdom to discern His truth, the strength to pursue it, and the fortitude to spread His Torah message to the entire world, both Jew and gentile.  And may we all engage in a process of genuine “complete teshuva” to hasten the coming of the true Moshiach.

Featured in the Jewish Press: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/fuchs-focus/mistreating-mentrusting-man-impediments-to-true-repentance/2015/09/07/

Sunday, September 6, 2015

The Demon Within (audio)

Reflections on the religious Jewish leaders, figures, and communities that are aiding the evangelical xtians in their missionary efforts in Israel. The lure of economic and personal benefit gain is evidently too much for some to resist.
MP3 File