onionsoupmix

09:10 am: Flirting with Avodah Zara
As I spend my last days as a bochur, I strive that they should be spent in holiness and purity, in learning and teaching Torah, and doing Mivtzoim. I strive that I be zoiche to get married in Kedusha to the other half of my Neshomo, the young lady the Rebbe has chosen for me. I yearn for the day we'll set out for Shlichus to do the Rebbe's work. What more can I ask for?! The Rebbe blesses my life. The Rebbe guides my life. The Rebbe is my life. From here.

There are some meshichist statements that bleed over to the elokistim side. In my opinion, this is one of them. This person clearly believes in Hashem, believes in the Torah, etc, but sees all heavenly events as going through the Rebbe, who is a conduit for God's interactions with the world.

Is this Avodah Zara? I mean, if the Rebbe blesses my life and guides it, why shouldn't I daven to him? Maybe he'll bless it and guide it a bit more.

For those of you who think this is idolatry, do you think that all the halachos of an idolworshipper apply to this person? Would you daven in a minyan with him? Eat from his shechita? How is this bochur different than someone who just believes in angels who bring messages from God or something like that? Where's the fine line?

For those of you who do not think this is idolatry, what would the person have to say for it to be consider idolworship? Would he have to assert that the Rebbe created the world? What is it that idolworshippers believe which this person does not? Christians do not think Jesus created the world, are they idolaters, in your opinion?

What about a religion like Hinduism, in which the gods are various forms of a Supreme Being? Is that idolatrous?

Tags: chabad, meshichism

08:29 pm: Shalom J.C. Rubashkin
Dear Crazy People!

Thank you for playing our very fun game of America's-Funniest-Rubashkin-Post-Verdict-Comments.

The First Place winner is Boruch Hoffinger! The winning comment is:

...If Shol-m Rubashkin is a tzaddik then he's going to jail (Hopefully only a short time.) and suffering because of our 'averot.' From Here, #99.

and the Runner Up is Mr.Milhouse with a very insightful commentary on the criminal justice system:

...The fact is that there is nothing in Shulchon Oruch that says we may not break the law. Nothing. And this is only logical. If something was mutar before Congress banned it, how can it be ossur now, and if it was ossur before Congress permitted or required it, how can it be muttar now? How did Congress get the power to turn good into bad, or bad into good? From here.

Congratulations to the winners! We are still working on figuring out your prizes. Stay tuned.

Tags: chabad, crazy, ha-ha, rubashkin

11:32 am: Don't Worry About That Silly Ten Commandments Thing. Really.

So my last two posts focused on the Rambam and whether Torah morality is eternal. The vast majority of my commenters here clearly thought the rambam's principles applied to his day and time and do not apply to ours and should not be taken out of context. The consensus was that those chapters are essentially...irrelevant to modern society.

Now we have Rav Yitzchak Shapira and Toras HaMelech, a  recently-published sefer in which this Rosh Yeshiva explains that Jews are actually allowed to murder gentiles, even Chassidei Umos HaOlam, even women and children, even if they are not responsible for a threat to the Jewish people. From here.  

YWN, of course, tells us that this is all exaggrerated and silly nonsense, the book is a work of  theoretical halacha and should not be used as permission to take the law into one's own hands. Good to know.

So here are the questions for today.

1. Do you think this guy is just a crazy extremist whom we should just write off? It shouldn't matter that he's a Rosh Yeshiva of a big chabad school? We should just hide our head in the sand and pretend only Islam has problems with crazy extremists? Should we also dismiss Rav Yitzchak Ginsburg, another famous chabad rabbi associated with this whole lunacy, who goes on world-wide speaking tours?

2. Do you think these books & pamphlets are a cause of actual crimes against gentiles? If not, why not? Why should inciteful material somehow have no bearing on behavior? If they are a cause of actual crimes, how are these sefarim different than the Rambam's works? So why should we all learn Daily Rambam and his halachos of rape and murder, but we should not learn Toras Hamelech?

3. Why did Rabbi Shapira choose to give us frum yidden a heter for murder, instead of say, something more practical, like a heter for  cheeseburgers? Maybe he can write a sequel about how yidden can eat treife food on shabbos for the purpose of protecting the Holy Land or something like that. I would buy that book. Heck, I'll help him write it.

Tags: chabad, crazy, criminals, gentiles, rabbis

11:44 pm: Tricky God Strikes Again.

I was curious about light years recently. More specifically, if a star is hundreds of thousands of light years away and we see its light, how is the universe still 5769 years old? 

 So, I went on AskMoses and chatted with one of their scholars who told me that the stars were created with existing light and if they move or explode then that is the way God created them and it just appears to be exploding millions of years ago, but really it  was created 5769 years ago in that exact way.

It's late at night and I'm very dimwitted today and AskMoses has no patience for me, I think. So help me out here.

1. Did the star in the above scenario ever actually explode? When?

2. Did the star in the above scenario ever actually exist? When? Before it was created to look like it exploded or after?  

3. Do creationists not believe in light years? Speed of light?

4. Doesn't that mess up with physics in general, GPS systems and so on?

5. If you were God, wouldn't you just make the stars closer? Why go through the whole charade of creating illusionary stars that appear to have existed and exploded millions of years ago if the world is less than six thousand years old?

Tags: astronomy, chabad, creation

03:10 am: Just a Bit Ironic

The honorable judge Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix ordering the hearing on the Crown Heights Community Council Elections is  female.

Females are not allowed to vote in these elections. Even though the 19th amendment was ratified almost  90 years ago.

More on this here.

Tags: chabad, crown heights, women

11:14 pm: Senseless Revenge & Attaining Maturity

I used to post more about theological questions, somehow all these social issues get in the way:)

Anyway, the Dinah story is pretty bad. We sort of skimmed it in school, but from what I understand, Dinah is kidnapped and raped by Shechem, a prince of a town by the same name. The prince decides he likes her and proposes to marry her and join clans with Yaakov's tribe. Shimon and Levi pretend to agree on the condition that all the males undergo circumcision. Following the mass circumcision, Shimon and Levi kill off all the men of the town and take their sister back.

Okay, whatever, I understand that in those days killing a whole town in revenge for a rape was par for the course. That's not really my problem. My problem is that the age of a bar-mitzvah is determined by this story because apparently the text calls Levi a man and according to some other calculations or something, he turned thirteen that day. So what kind of ridiculous story is this to exemplify maturity? What, there are a shortage of heroic deeds in the chumash, that this one is the one chosen?

Chabad tries to answer here, but the explanation is weak. Basically, since the act was sincere and passionate and "deeper than reason," therefore it signifies maturity. Huh? Anyone get this? Children are classic examples of beings who act sincerely and passionately and completely without reason, without thinking through the ethics or the consequences of their actions. How is this supposed to be indicative of an adult demeanor? 

It's almost like a joke. Well, Mrs. Imeinu, we have good news and we have bad news. The bad news is that your sons are murderers and killed a whole city in a senseless, violent act of rage that makes the Columbine school shootings  look like a peace rally. The good news? Well, the good news is that they passed the Jewish initiation ceremony and are now full-fledged adults.   Congratulations! Mazel Tov!

Tags: chabad, parshah

02:32 pm: Good News Alert: The Golden Rule Applies Only to People With Whom You Agree.

In this thread, I take offense to the idea that all Reform and Conservative groups are comprised of selfish and superficial Jews who wouldn't know self-sacrifice if it hit them in the head. In response, I get called a crank, scoffer and a ho. Yep. Check it out before the thread disappears. 

And it is precisely because of the Shoah that we owe goyim nothing except to make sure they leave us alone (and keep the 7 Mitzvos Bnei Noiach which include leaving us alone). Rare is the goy who says a word when a Jew bleeds. Most secretly rejoice. When every Jew is fed and has proper medical care, then we can worry about tribesmen who slash each other up and who would slash us up for a fiver given half a chance. Nevertheless, plenty of shluchim help goyim, if only by providing them with employment at wages far above the average in remote locations. But most do far more, and many is the goy who pretends he is a Jew to get assistance, and is rarely questioned because the shluchim would rather err than let one Jew fall into hunger .  From here.

So the liberal self-hating Jew has spoken again! I think a good dose of Chassidus can clean up some of the poison I see here.
mcp is a scoffer who only shows how grub she is every time she vomits out another silly post. Here.


How many times have we heard chabad spout  PC lines such as "there is no such thing as a reform or conservative Jew, just a Jew" and that labels are for cans, not Jews?  Well, yeah. That's what they tell the secular world when they are trying to mekarev them. But in private, when they think no one is watching, many Lubavitchers will sing a different song. Lest you think that this thread is an abberration or full of  random crazy people, note that many, many Orthodox people allow speaking loshon hora against reform and conservative movements in the guise of " we must eradicate the evil from our midst." Basically, the way it works is that in some segments of the frum world,  Ahavat Yisroel applies pretty much to those people you agree with and are friends with anyway. It most certainly doesn't apply to anyone whose ideas you don't agree with and can label as dangerous or subversive.

For the record, there were people on that thread who defended me by posting that I am not, in fact, a ho or that such terminology is inappropriate for a chabad site.  Oddly, though, there weren't many posts noting that painting all non-orthodox Jews as selfish, poisoned and "deformed" is inappropriate for a chabad site because Judaism/Torah/Hashem/ Rebbe wouldn't have wanted  anyone to speak like that about others. Why is that?

Tags: chabad, conservative, why the messiah is not even close

02:03 pm: Good News, Bad News
So the good news is that The Neshei Newsletter printed a scathing letter to the editor in response to the rant against gentile babysitters. Dr. Levenstein from South Africa basically called the author of the letter a racist and compared the writing to Nazi bigotry.

The bad news is that Dr. Levenstein probably never read the Tanya  or other chassidic texts which encourage such bigotry and that the next Newsletter will contain many letters advising him to learn up on the fact that the souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever,  and this is the foundation of chassidus.

On a similar note, during the sedarim, I peeked in the back of the chabad haggadah, which has many brief little divrei torah. One commentary on page 87 reads as follows : the behavior of the child and the environment around him must not be like that of the non-Jewish environment. One must be ble to recognize in the child an absolute Jewish identity and if the child does not sense the principles of "who separates between Israel and the nations" and "You have chosen us from among all the nations," then even when he will have set times for the study of Torah, when he will pray and observe mitzvot and so forth, those mitzvot and that Torah will be bereft of the proper holiness.

Think about that for a minute. Even if you are doing everything right, observing and praying and so on, if you are not aware of your separate, chosen, special status, your prayers and study are of a lower value. There's a very fine line at which national pride becomes bigotry and hatred and this is precisely where the line is. If you cannot fulfill your role as a religious person without the constant awareness of your superior status, you have turned from someone with cultural pride into a bigot. Most Lubavitchers have crossed this line a long time ago. Those who have not are typically college-campus rabbis who know how to keep a good PC face on.

Tzvi Freeman, one of the more PC chabad spokespeople, writes that quite simply, what the tzadik is to the Jew, the Jew is to the non-Jew.

Many people have explained that this is an effective strategy to ward off assimilation.
Sure, believing that goyim are scum will minimize intermarriage. At what cost, though? Do you want your children to avoid intermarriage at the risk of growing up bigoted? Is preserving the Orthodox traditions that important to you that you will risk your child actually growing up to believe in his or her own innate superiority and that everyone who is not Jewish is just a lower life-form? Is it worth it?

Tags: chabad, gentiles, neshei

07:14 pm: How to Trick God, Tip Number 4359

God is a bit of a doofus, from what I gather.

In the most recent copy of the Neshei Newsletter, a letter to the editor strongly urges all women to breastfeed for the purposes of spacing their children naturally. If you practice ecological breastfeeding, you can get that breather between babies as it was meant to be -from Hashem...It seems a little cruel to impress upon these young married girls the importance of not practicing (pharmaceutical) family planning, as the N'Shei Chabad Newsletter has done many times, and yet, give them no help whatsover in the natural way to do it.

It's good to know more strategies to trick our Clueless Creator. Apparently, He is not aware that the estrogen and progesterone in hormonal birth control are "natural" substances.  

In other words, our All-Knowing, All-Powerful Lord does not approve of women using birth control because that is interfering with His plans, but nursing your child specifically for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy is permitted. Moreover, this woman did not even suggest that we all run to ask our rav if this is allowed because it is so clearly permissible. But birth control pills? The kind that come in a little round pack?  For a Lubavitcher? Cha's ve Shalom, after all, the Rebbe has spoken so many times about the evils of family planning.

As an aside, I just wanted to let you know that I, personally, will be breastfeeding my children until they are 18. After that, I will be breastfeeding other people's children. Take a number.



Tags: birth control, chabad, neshei, women

09:20 pm: Neshei Newsletter

This is copied from a letter to the editor in the most recent Neshei Chabad Newsletter. This is one of the primary chabad publications in English and it is sent to shluchim all over the world. I am copying the letter directly, emphasis mine.  

Non Jewish Babysitters
Shock #1: Coming home from shul on Yom Kippur, I noticed two little children outside alone. I looked around for a parent, but saw only a lady wearing pants who didn't look Jewish. I got scared. What if she was dangerous? How shocked I was to learn that she was their babysitter.
Shock #2: On my way to shul on Shabbos, I saw a little girl crying on the sidewalk next to an apartment building. By the time I got close, a non-Jewish-looking woman had come out to look for her. When the girl saw her, she ran away and cried harder. The lady ran after and picked her up angrily and carried her back to the apartment. I tried to ask her who the child was so I could call her parents, but she made sure to leave quickly.
Shock #3: I saw two non-Jewish women strolling down the avenue, talking to each other, pushing two Jewish children in strollers. The children were snacking on some packaged snacks. Were the snacks kosher?
Dearest parents, how can you put your child in the hands of a non-Jew? Do you think that that lady you hired cares about your child? There is a halacha, "Eisav sonei es Yaakov" ( Rashi on Breishis 33:4). She will not show it to you, but how can you trust her not to poison your precious child with goyisheh lullabies, treifeh candies, callousness or malice? Young children cannot tell their parents how their day was. And if they are old enough to talk, their babysitters may have warned them to keep their mouths shut. Don't be naive! The worst Jewish babysitter will be 100% better for your Jewish child than the best non-Jew! If it's a problem of money, pool together and find a Jewish woman to watch two or more children at a time. I can assure you she'll do a better job than a non-Jewish woman watching just your child.

The next letter on this topic suggests that in the light of the gentile babysitter who saved Moshe Holtzberg, the little boy from Mumbai, perhaps it may be okay to hire a gentile, if she is significantly cheaper than a Jewish nanny. However, " in an ideal world, this person would also be Jewish and frum."

Frankly, I don't even know what to write in response. Should I tell you about my friend whose young daughter was molested by a frum babysitter and is now happily thriving a non-Jewish preschool?  Should I tell you about the hundreds of geirim who will read this and be offended beyond belief? Should I talk about how people in chabad houses will pick up this newsletter and read this crap and walk out? Should I link you to blog posts by a "shabbos goy" who writes about how she is treated by frum people? Do you want to hear about frum schools where corporal punishment is still acceptable?

Tags: chabad, chinuch, crazy, gentiles, neshei

09:56 pm: The Safest Place for Your Money

I don't want this to be a big shock or anything.

But there's a good reason Bernie Madoff lost all our money. This tragedy happened because many of the charitable funds were going to non-chabad causes. Yep. The main lesson to learn from all of this is that your money is safe with chabad. Elie Weisel's organization is a waste anyway because he's a humanist. And so much Jewish money is wasted on building stupid things like hospitals that don't even serve kosher food. Or morons like Haym Solomon who financed the American Revolution instead of giving to his own people first. You can't go wrong with giving all your money to Chabad.
 
I, OSM,  personally recommend this chabad charity as well as this one and, of course, this one. These are excellent places for your money, unlike Bernie's scams.





Tags: chabad, crazy, sad and funny at the same time

12:03 am: For Frum Ladies Only.

Look people. I have three finals in the next two weeks. So I can't write a lot just now.

But I did want to take a moment out of my busy evening to let you frum ladies know that even if you wear long skirts, you are probably still going to hell if they are made out of denim. There are very few things as shameful and distressing as the sight of a bas yisroel dressed in a long denim skirt. Where is your self-respect?  



Tags: chabad, crazy, sad and funny at the same time, tznius

09:08 pm: The Talmud on Gentiles



So here is a Antisemitic website which tries to prove that the gemara subscribed to the doctrine of Jewish Supremacy. I am sure you have all seen these, there are so many of these on the web.

And here is an Orthodox Jewish website trying to reject these accusations and explain the gemara's statements to make them more palatable. Okay, that's to be expected as well.

Yep, and here is an Orthodox Jewish website trying to prove that the gemara ( as well as other sources) did, in fact, subscribe to the doctrine of Jewish Supremacy. Ever seen that before? No?  

 Well, then here are some highlights: 
 ( Read more... )

Tags: chabad, gemara, gentiles

09:57 pm: Meshichism

What can I say after reading this article? I feel bad for the Rebbe. Rolling over and over in the grave must be uncomfortable for a guy whose been dead for 14 years.  

Here are my favorite parts:

From behind their table festooned with (what else?) yellow flags, the boys ask Jews to pray with them—specifically to repeat, word for word, a prayer referred to as the Yechi chant, which identifies the rebbe as the messiah...

...The store appears to be out of stock. The clerk—who doesn't wear a yellow pin—says to Kanevsky, in Hebrew: "With your luck, Yechi ha Melech, you'll find the meat." She reaches into a pile and finds the last package for sale. Yet another miracle...

...Unlike the thousands of other Lubavitchers, Sara Kanevsky has never paid a visit. She doesn't know who or what is in the grave, but she's certain it's not the rebbe...Two years ago, she walked around eating ice cream in 770 on a fast day, which led to her being kicked out. And on the most recent fast day this summer, she talked with some Chabad members in Florida who were enjoying a spaghetti dinner. Kanevsky has even written a book in four languages on the new rules...

 

I want the book. Anyone know where I can get one? What are the new rules? Can I write my own book of new rules?

Tags: chabad, crazy, meshichism

05:56 pm: Visiting the Ohel
In the latest Neshei Chabad Newsletter, there is an article (pp.12-16) entitled, "The Ohel of a Tzaddik: A Gate to Heaven." 

As the title promises, the article discusses why davening at kevarim is an important, time honored tradition. It doesn't stop there, however, but goes on to explain that "we need the tzadik to intercede for us, because the illumination directly from Hashem is too great for us to endure...Hashem's presence is found within the tzaddik...a tzaddik in whom Hashem dwells, is compared to the Beis Hamikdash... this means that the tzadik of the generation possesses the same power to convey our prayers to Hashem as did the Beis Hamikdash." 

Okay, so if you are okay with the whole idea of intermediaries, the article is not bad. It compares the tzaddik, whether before or after his passing, to the Beis Hamikdash and then explicitely emphasizes that "you are not speaking to the dead; you're not speaking to the body inside the ground. You're speaking to the tzaddik's neshamah and to Hashem through your presence at that location. Just like when we stand by the Wall in Jerusalem, we're not speaking to the stones; we're speaking to G-d."

But as with all ideologies, the proof is in the behaviors, not the lofty explanations. On page 54 of the same issue, Neshei Chabad printed a story of the Chabad community of Daytona Beach and how they got a new building for their shul in 1998. Apparently, at a critical farbrengen (after the petirah), one man banged on the table and demanded silence. He began to talk very slowly with tears rolling down his cheeks. He cried out: "Rebbe... we know you are here and you are listening... as the nosi hador who feels the pain of every Jew and you do not leave your flock, please, we need your brochos now more than ever. For our future Chabad Center, we need a miracle now that we should not lose the property. Help us to realize our dream for  a new building!"  Needless to say, the shul got the new building. 

I just wanted to know if anyone here has ever addressed the Kosel in that way, asking the Kosel directly for a bracha or a miracle. Or maybe if anyone knows whether in the times of the Beis Hamikdash people addressed their requests directly to the building itself. Because it would seem that if you are addressing a dead person directly in your prayers, it kind of weakness your argument that  you are actually trying to speak to Hashem.

Tags: chabad, hashkafa, meshichism, rebbe

08:07 am:  Is anyone bothered by this? Maybe it's just me.

“When I think about why Israelis visit Pushkar, I can’t find any logical reason except for the fact that it’s a G-dly birur of a place that needs it so badly. The most amazing thing is that right in the center of impurity, hundreds of Israelis return to their Father in heaven, and connect with the ‘tree of life,’ the Rebbe. 

From here, as always. Since when do we refer to the rebbe as the tree of life? Is that just since his passing?


Tags: chabad, imamother, rebbe

07:23 pm: When I was young and knew everything...

About ten years ago I was taking a class at Georgia State University. It was called something like  Sociology of Race. We had just moved from Crown Heights to Atlanta for my husband's job and I had to finish up a couple of credits for my undergraduate degree. So this class looked easy and I signed up. 

The professor was white, I was white and that was about it. The first part of the class was easy. We talked about the development of racial identity, interracial families, the immigrant experience and so on. The second part of the class was harder. He talked about racism. Tthe discussion was mostly in platitudes and I was young and unprepared. The professor pushed the theory that group racism comes from a lack of contact between these groups and consequent mistaken assumptions.  I had just arrived from Crown Heights, where Jews hated blacks and blacks hated Jews and everyone had way too much contact with each other. I remember trying to question his assumption and getting offended when he seemed to blame it all on the chassidim and their air of superiority. To his credit, he invited me to chat with him more after class and to my discredit, I never did. 

Since then, I have thought quite often of that class and the complexity of the racial tensions in Crown Heights. This past Chol Hamoed Pesach, Andrew Charles, a black community college student, was beaten by a group of frum boys who managed to put him in a hospital. Andrew happens to be the son of a police officer and the reaction from the cops was swifter than that of the January incident, when Shmuel Balkany was beaten by a group of black teens.

Living in Crown Heights for five years, we got to see a slice of all this. My husband was called names and had food thrown at him from one of the local public schools as he walked home from the subway. I saw black teenage girls harrassing a group of younger yeshiva boys and then had the interesting follow-up experience of  watching the girls try and figure out whether I was Jewish or not when I stood up for the bochurim. I also remember the songs Ohalei Torah boys would sing in which prominently featured racial slurs. As a seminary girl, I remember my embarrassment at being asked to leave a shabbos meal because I carefully, politely voiced my doubt about whether nigger jokes were okay at the Friday night table. 

Another standard answer is that it is poverty that creates tensions and when you have two very different but very poor groups living in close proximity, hostility will be inevitable. This is better, but still insufficient. I live in a racially mixed, relatively middle-to-lower class neighborhood that is turning increasingly poor thanks to foreclosures and the general bad economy.  We don't have this hostility, we don't have anything close to this. Okay, so my kids don't have many black friends, but people still smile and say hello and chat about the weather and hold the door for each other at Walmart and push each other's kids on the swings at the park.

I also don't know to what extent I can blame it all on the Tanya, as much as you know I would love to do that.  Works of Chassidic philosophy, in line with other classic Jewish texts, are supremely biased against the gentile. For the most part, the persecution-filled history of the Jews is adequate to explain the venom spewed forth by the Rabbis. But nowadays, there are places where this venom is more accepted than others. There are places where frum Lubavitchers struggle to explain the first perek of the Tanya (in which the Alter Rebbe explains that gentiles have no Godly soul), not only to their chabad house members, but also to themselves, and sometimes they give up in confusion. They don't know the gentiles described in that sefer, the ones that are selfish and vain and are nourished by the impure forces in the world.   And then there are other places where the first perek of Tanya is not seen as needing any explanation at all, where people wonder what all the fuss is about in the first place, because to them, the term "gentile" is synonymous with the loud and obnoxious black teenage gang member leering at their daughter from across the bus aisle.

Maybe the answer is in poverty of experience. Which of course, is related to financial, social and religious limitations as well. There are plenty of good people in the world and plenty of shitheads too. Chances are, though, that if you live in one little insulated community your whole life and go shopping at the same two-three supermarkets and send your kids to the same school you went to as a kid, chances are that you are not going to have much variety in your experience. You are not going to college and so you will not meet the brilliant Latina girl who speaks three languages and writes top quality essays in her sleep. You are not going to work in a nonJewish environment and so, chances are you are not going to meet the friendly and funny Muslim co-worker who used to be married to an Orthodox Jew and knows more about your minhagim than you do. You are not going to meet the dedicated and ambitious black principal who insists her students use formal language and wear neatly pressed uniforms. The black community has some of the same insular attitudes as well and they know it. In many places it is not cool to do well academically and if you don't use ebonics, you are assimilating into the evil majority culture.  

What else, though? Are blacks in a better position to move beyond their preconceptions because they don't have the same level of deference to authority that Chabad Jews do? Are Lubavitchers in a worse position to do the same because we have seforim and rabbonim who back up these bigoted views? Are Lubavitchers in a better position than other insular ultra-orthodox groups because of chabad's extensive outreach activities?  Or is it all a matter of youth and teenage boys will beat the crap out of each other regardless of race, location, or century, for that matter?

Tags: chabad, crown heights, racism

09:40 pm: Happy Cleaning, Part Two

Pesach is one of the more ironic holidays, particularly because of the cleaning.

One aspect of this irony is pretty well known. To celebrate our freedom from slavery, many will exhaust themselves cleaning and cooking and shopping and blow-torching and foiling and peeling and serving and ... to the point that many women do not end up functional during the seder. People make jokes about this. Dirt is not chametz and your children are not the korban pesach. Ha-ha.

Another bit of irony that has been addressed much less often is the whole mystical meaning of Pesach. I love this one. Pesach, according to chassidus, is all about humility. The chometz symbolizes arrogance and we must work to rid our personalities of even the tiniest trace of  haughtiness. Countless sichos and divrei torah and classes revolve around this theme, especially in chabad.

Of course, it works out that the people who kill themselves to clean the most, the people who are most machmir not to eat any processed food items, the people who boil sugar and peel tomatoes and don't use utensils if they drop on the floor and don't use garlic because it used to be shipped in beer ...those people are usually the least humble of all. 

For example, the threads on Jewish womens forums these days feature wide-spread condemnation of people who go away to hotels for Pesach. They are missing  the entire point of Pesach, they are following goyishe values, they are the essence of what is wrong with the world today. Someone actually wrote that. This is the central problem in Judaism today- people who go away to hotels for Pesach. And then let's discuss whether you sell actual chometz or only kitniyos? And how could you sell actual chometz, what is wrong with you and your rabbi? Do you buy chometz after Pesach from store owners who have sold actual chometz? And now shall we talk about what you actually eat on Pesach. Do you eat at other people's homes on Pesach? Did you know that is NOT OKAY?  Do you make your own juice? Do you have separate knives for cutting and peeling, since the peel may have chometz on it?

Why should they be humble? They worked the hardest and allow themselves the least luxury. Hashem loves them best, assuming He even cares about who cleans how much for Pesach or who eats the least processed foods. Be proud and be loud. 

On the other hand, maybe the biggest threat to Judaism is not actually hotels, but rather people who invent new chumros each year to outdo their neighbors. Maybe the world would be a better place if we all ate matza-meal cakes and didn't worry about kashering the kitchen and vacuuming behind the fridge, but were instead more machmir on not showing off how much God loves you. And for all the posters who are going to suggest this, no, you can't have it both ways. Humility is pretty much mutually exclusive with starving your family and working yourself to death to prove your devotion to God.

Tags: chabad, holier-than-thou, pesach

10:30 am: Why We Need Chabad
 
So I went to a shabbos class this week. It was at my friend's house and I had to go.  

The lady was giving over a sicha about para adumah, the red heifer. The point of the sicha was that just as the cohen made himself impure to purify the nation with the ashes of the red heifer, so too we need to step out of our comfort zones and help another person in need. Anyway, people were jumping in with questions here and there and at some point, they mentioned that a person who is tomei meis and tries to bring a korban is chayav koreis. So I said my little piece about how you can't really contend that you believe in a Good and Just God if your deity will cut people off just for a relatively minor thing like forgetting to get sprinkled with the right ashes before going to bring a korban. This started off a little discussion and interesting debate. Someone brought the overused analogy of a child who doesn't understand the parent's commands, etc. and I was explaining how this analogy is flawed, so on and so forth. It was all pretty friendly and good spirited.

Then this lady, (to clarify, not the same one who was teaching the class) asks for her turn to speak. She proceeds to tell me that we can't intellectualize everything, that we need to FEEL chassidus with our hearts and that we shouldn't debate in class, we just need to accept what the Torah tells us. Chassidus is a whole system, one in which you can't use the intellect to dissect the topic, but rather you need to just listen and absorb the Torah and feel it with your soul, with your heart.  She doesn't want to have debates at shabbos class, some people believe and some people don't believe yet and that's okay. She leaves it to Hashem to judge and she will not pass judgement. I shouldn't think so much, I should just let go and let the words of chassidus enter my heart. A couple of other people seemed to agree with her point of view.

I was duly chastized, the speaker finished her sicha overview and we had some fruit and cookies. I also spent the rest of the time thinking how good it is that we have chabad and chassidus. Really. Because if there was no chabad, these BT people would have joined a more serious and harmful cult, one in which you have to give all your money to your leader and stand on the street corners selling flowers or one in which everyone is destined to committ mass suicide at the end. But instead we have chabad, a rather harmless fringe group, which attracts and retains all the people who don't like to think, who just like to follow and obey and feel the love. And they get their community and social needs met and they go through life in a relatively harmless way. 

Yay Lubavitch!

Tags: chabad, kabbalah fluff, parshah, shabbos class

10:52 am:
This is apparently part of a transcription of a speech which was said and/or edited by the Rebbe on the topic of secular books for Jewish schools.
 

 

So I fail to understand what we can expect from Lubavitcher chassidim if the Rebbe came out and openly stated that racial equality is against the Torah. Of course they are all going to be racist and ethnocentric bigots and those who are not are simply either not aware of what the Rebbe said or work in kiruv or shlichus and are very adept at hiding the dark side of frumkeit and Lubavitch. 

At the same time, is there really any way to explain ata bechartanu and also believe in the equality of all people, regardless of race or religion? The yeshivish and Modern Orthodox world tries to couch  all of this in the language of "everyone is equal, but we just have more responsibility". Then the analogy of trash collectors is given. Everyone is important in a society, doctors and garbage collectors, but what can you do? Doctors just have more responsiblities. In my view, this is pretty much the same as what chabad states, just phrased more subtly and delicately. We are all equal before God, but somehow Jews have more important work to do. I think the problem is that if you really, really believe that Gentiles are just as close and equal to God as Jews are, the question of why keep the other 606 mitzvos becomes very difficult to answer.


  

Tags: chabad, gentiles, rebbe