How Many Hasidic Rebels Are There?

[what losers]

The ultra-Orthodox gathering concerning the Internet in New York City last night attracted 60,000 attendees. The New York Times reported "several opponents" of the rally gathered outside the stadium.

Of course this doesn't necessarily prove anything. The other Hasidic Rebels may just have been too drunk or stoned to make it.

Orthodox Jewish Clothes: What They Mean

[the clothes make the man, or woman]

Clothing plays a practical role in protecting us from the elements. In cold climates, it prevents hypothermia while in deserts it can provide protection from the sun and wind.

Clothing however also plays an important role in communication. When we get dressed, we are often making various statements about ourselves. Obviously, professionals who wear a uniform such as law enforcement or the military are conveying their special roles with their clothing. Outlaw motorcyclists wear special vests indicating their rank and membership. Corporate executives usually wear a special type of outfit indicating their status - the business suit. Mark Zuckerberg, new Internet billionaire, wears a hoodie, supposedly to communicate to the public that he is an artist, not a salesman.

When a Jew gets dressed in the morning, what statement does he want to make?

In Judaism, sex outside marriage is prohibited. A Jewish woman wants to communicate that she is not available sexually. Clothing indicating sexual availability would include clothing revealing too much skin, wearing tight clothing, long, loose hair, high heels and brightly colored clothing. Therefore a Jewish woman's priority is to avoid dressing in a way which waves a flag in front of men reading "Come and get it!" On the contrary, an Orthodox Jewish woman in public wants to send a message "Men: leave me alone."

For men, clothing has little to do with sex appeal. However  for an Orthodox man, clothing is significant in other ways. Tzitzis are a Biblical commandment. Wearing a beard is Biblically mandated. Wearing a skullcap is an ancient Jewish tradition. Among most Hasidic Jews, an elaborate special dress code is customary. Essentially, the Jewish man, when dressing, wants to communicate that he is first of all an Orthodox Jew and additionally he may be communicating which Orthodox subgroup he is a member of. The Jewish man's clothing are a special uniform announcing "I'm a Jew".

Darwin: Wrong Again

[a modern fairy tale]

According to United States Census data released today, most babies born in America are not white.

In 1871, Charles Darwin predicted that in the not distant future, the Nordic peoples would wipe out the darker people.

So much for that.

Quote of the Day

[Professor Assaf]

"One of the most common factors leading religious youth away from the fold is the contradiction between sexual life and religious life. When you’re Orthodox and also a maturing young adult, you’re unable to express your sexuality, and that leads to significant inner conflict. Especially for men; where it starts with masturbation."

From an interview with David Assaf professor, Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, Israel; himself formerly Orthdodox

I pointed this out myself some time ago, and was greeted with vehement denials from Orthodox drop outs.

The New York Times and God

 [The Monsey Vizhnitz Rebbe and Michael Jackson - comrades in arms?]

The New York Times has been criticized by some people as having a liberal political agenda. I have the impression that the word "liberal" is being used in a pejorative sense and refers to atheism and socialism.

I had never really noticed this bias too much nor thought about it too much, until today when the Times wrote about something I happen to know quite a lot about - ultra-Orthodox Jews.

In an article entitled Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse the Times makes a few interesting points.

First of all it mentions that sexual abuse rates in the ultra-Orthodox world are roughly the same as those in the general population. The Times knows this because "scholars believe" it. We are not told who the scholars are nor why they believe this. In reality, the relatively low divorce rate in the ultra-Orthodox community, probably one tenth of what it is in the general population, along with the fact that single motherhood is unheard of, should imply that sexual abuse will be quite a bit more rare. Step-fathers and step-boyfriends are a frequent source of abuse.

Secondly, the Times explains that the very low number of convicted Orthodox sex offenders is not because there are very few Orthodox sex offenders (since, those anonymous scholars believe that isn't so) but rather it's because ultra-Orthodox Judaism teaches its followers to commit perjury and tamper with witnesses in order to help fellow Jews to avoid prison. In other words, ultra-Orthodox Judaism is a religion which preaches and practices felonies. In fact, no ultra-Orthodox Jew has been convicted of obstruction of justice in a sex abuse case, however the Times heard from several people that the practice is universal and it is generally encouraged by ultra-Orthodox rabbis.

So there you have it - rather than celebrate and admire the rarity of sexual molestation in the ultra-Orthodox community, as crime statistics and logic would indicate, the Times discovers just the opposite - plenty of abuse plus a religion which preaches serious crime, all based on almost no evidence.

You might however argue that this isn't a case of liberal bias - it's a case of anti-child abuse bias. Perhaps whenever the New York Times hears about any hint of pedophilia, they automatically rush to judgement and assume the worst.

However is that really the case? How would the Times handle an atheist or agnostic suspected pedophile?

Well, we need not wonder. Consider the case of Michael Jackson.

Mr. Jackson was accused of child abuse in 1993 and was tried for child abuse in 2005. In 1990 he paid someone $2 million in order to convince him not to press charges for child abuse. He also owned a mansion with a private amusement park where he often invited children to be his guests. Additionally, although Michael Jackson lived to the age of 50, only one adult has ever claimed to have had sex with him, Lisa Marie Presley in 1995. Now of course there isn't anything wrong with being a wealthy, world famous pop star who is celibate and who loves to have small children as guests. And he was never convicted of anything. But on the other hand, being a multi-millionaire, it surely would not have been difficult for Jackson to purchase the silence of many prosecution witnesses and to obtain the cooperation of many defense witnesses, making convicting him impossible. In fact, he apparently did exactly that in 1990.

Has the New York Times been hostile in it's coverage of Michael Jackson, emphasizing the near certainty that the pop icon was a child molester and guilty of obstruction of justice? Not to my knowledge. The Times obituary of Jackson was glowing.

So why the difference in attitude between alleged ultra-Orthodox Jewish child abuse and alleged Michael Jackson child abuse? My guess is because Michael Jackson did not openly speak about belief in God; he may well have been agnostic or even atheist. Therefore he's part of Team New York Times. On the other hand, ultra-orthodox Jews constantly speak about God, meaning that they are the enemy and they must be smeared.

Cadaver Dogs: the Nose Knows

[ready to go]

I am a little bit of a fan of true crime stories, and often dogs are used to find the remains of a homicide victim.

Cadaver dogs are trained to locate and follow the scent of decomposing human flesh.

Dogs' sense of smell is far more acute than that of humans – the nose of a German shepherd contains about 200 million olfactory cells, while a human nose has about 20 million.

In a recent study, the forensic pathologist Lars Oesterhelweg, then at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues tested the ability of three Hamburg State Police cadaver dogs to pick out – of a line-up of six new carpet squares – the one that had been exposed for no more than 10 minutes to a recently deceased person. Several squares had been placed beneath a clothed corpse within three hours of death, when some organs and many cells of the human body are still functioning. Over the next month, the dogs did hundreds of trials in which they signalled the contaminated square with 98 per cent accuracy, falling to 94 per cent when the square had been in contact with the corpse for only two minutes. The research concluded that cadaver dogs were an "outstanding tool" for crime-scene investigation.

In one study involving four dogs and their handlers, anthropologist Keith Jacobi of the University of Alabama says cadaver dogs were able to detect remains at all stages of decomposition. Performance varied between dogs, but some could locate skeletonised remains buried in an area of 300ft by 150ft. "The few single human vertebrae I used in the study were well over 25 years old, and dry bone," Jacobi says. "This made the discovery of one of these vertebrae, which we buried in dense woods 2ft deep, by a cadaver dog pretty remarkable."

Nobody really knows how they do it.

Mark Harrison, national search adviser for the UK National Policing Improvement Agency in Wyboston, Bedfordshire says: "If you ask me, 'Will a machine replace dogs?' I would say no."

This miracle of technology, beyond what any humans can devise or even understand, is an amazing testament to God's creation.

Judaism and Feminism

[Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique]

Judaism is opposed to sexual equality.

Within the Orthodox Jewish community, the primary decision makers should be men.

First of all, only men are permitted to attend Talmudic lectures. Since all important decisions in society are based on the Talmud, this effectively excludes women from community decision making.

Second of all, in Judaism, wealth generally is in the hands of men. If someone dies and leaves a son, the son inherits all regardless of the existence of daughters. If a woman marries and owns property, the property is controlled by her husband during their marriage. If a married woman works, her earnings belong to her husband unless she waives her right to spousal support.

The fact is, however, this is little different than in other societies.

In all human societies, even those which claim to endorse the principle of equality of the sexes, men are dominant. In politics, about 80% of all leaders are male. In the business world, there were 21 women from a total of 1,226 billionaires worldwide in 2012. (In fact, New Atheists leaders are called by some "sexist".)

Going a step further, among most animals and nearly all mammals, the male is larger and more aggressive on the average than the female.

Gender equality is therefore seemingly not only against human nature, but against biology.

In my humble opinion, Judaism handles male dominance in a very humane and reasonable way. Men are given greater decision making privileges than women. On the other hand, men pay a price for this – they have much heavier religious obligations than women. Secondly, men are obligated to treat women with a level of love and respect equal to that with which they must treat other men. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) applies equally to women and to ones wife. Insulting a woman is prohibited. Striking a woman is strictly prohibited. Forced sex is strictly prohibited. A man must financially support any children he has. I am aware of one case of spousal homocide in the Orthodox community.

Other societies seem to have an ideal of sexual equality, while in reality women are plagued by constant, horrific violence and victimized by "dead beat dads". Secular men seem to tell women "You're welcome to be as masculine as you want to be and we'll toss you some token crumbs of power, while at the same time we'll treat you like garbage."

I suspect that this philosophy, of a humane approach to male dominance, is one reason why very few Orthodox women choose to leave Orthodoxy, in comparison to the number of male "dropouts". Women know that they are getting the best deal possible.

Why Are There So Few Jews?

[The LORD did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people--for ye were the fewest of all peoples--  Deuteronomy 7:7]

If the truth of Judaism is so blindingly obvious, and I'm convinced it is, then one may wonder: why are so few people Orthodox Jews? Out of a human population of about 7 billion, merely about 2 million are Orthodox Jews. (Interestingly, this number has been more or less constant throughout history.)

I think the first answer is that people dislike sacrificing even when they know that doing so will be good for them in the long run. For example only about 3 percent of Americans make serious efforts to have a healthy lifestyle. Judaism requires more effort than being health conscious and the rewards are more abstract.

Secondly,Judaism discourages converts. We certainly don't make all sorts of proselytizing campaigns and holy wars. We are a little like the United States Marine Corp. We want a few really committed people, not a mass movement of half baked individuals who can't handle discipline.

Thirdly, a large segment of humanity, perhaps the majority of mankind does accept Judaism - to some degree, in the forms of Christianity and Islam. All of these people agree that God created the world and that He gave the Torah to Israel at Mount Sinai, however they have distorted Judaism to accommodate their own pre-existing cultures and biases.

I Heart Genocide

                           I

                     Genocide

Some people have criticized the Torah for being cruel because the Torah commands the extermination of certain ancient peoples, specificially the Canaanites, the Amalekites and the Midianites, including the killing of women and children.

I think that a few things must however be borne in mind.

These commandments were given by God who knows all of people's thoughts and all their future actions and the actions of their potential descendents. God knew that these people were evil, they were "bad to the bone", and the kindest solution was to kill them, for their sakes and the sakes of everyone else. Killing a baby is normally a heinous crime. However if someone would be truly psychic and would have truly been able to see the future, surely he would have done everyone a big favor if he would have strangled Adolf Hitler in his crib.

Additionally, we must bear in mind that these commandments were specifically regarding those nationalities. Orthodox Jews today are basically pacsifists who are almost never kill anyone.

The Gays - Where Did They All Come From?

What's somewhat puzzling is that until after the Second World War, homosexuality was unknown in the United States (in Western Europe, it began appearing after the First World War). This type of lifestyle was simply unheard of until quite recently.

Today, however, it seems to be impossible to watch a movie or a television program or to open a magazine or newspaper without some references to sexual perversions - gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

I believe that at least part of the explanation is: perverts create more perverts.

Homosexuals have a much higher tendency than heterosexuals to molest children and children who have been molested have a high tendency to become homosexuals. Add to that the recent Sexual Revolution which encouraged people to do whatever feels good plus the huge number of single mothers in society today compared to the 1950's (which means that suddenly many boyfriends and stepfathers have full access to children) and it's fairly obvious what's happening here. To begin with there may have been been a small number of people with perverse sexual tendencies, however they nearly always controlled themselves and lived normal lives. In more recent years, not only have they "come out of the closet" however they have traumatized millions of children who then grew to adulthood and molested others. Now all these people are insisting that any sex act is a "human right" and that they are a "racial minority".

This also helps us understand why in a society such as Orthodox Judaism or, to my knowledge, the Old Order Amish there is very little homosexuality. Single mothers and child molestation are much more rare.

A Case for Slavery

[Advertisement for Slave Sale, Charleston, South Carolina, 1760]

The Torah permits slavery ( Leviticus 25:44). On the other hand, Proverbs 3:17 states, in reference to wisdom, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” In that case, how can the Torah, the embodiment of divine wisdom, condone the evil of slavery?

I believe the answer is that slavery is not essentially evil.

Generally slavery occurs under certain specific conditions. First of all, there must be a high demand for unskilled labor. Second of all, there must be a large community of primitive people available who can be forced, with minimal supervision, to do that labor.

In ancient Rome, slaves were often German barbarians. In medieval Europe Slavs were often enslaved and the English word “slave” comes from them. In modern times, Europeans enslaved black Africans. I believe that generally, slaves were far more primitive technologically than their masters since otherwise it would be difficult to capture them and perhaps even more difficult to make them work without payment. Educated people tend to find ways to malinger, escape or revolt. They will only work under heavy guard, which is expensive and therefore negates the benefit of using slaves. (This probably was the real reason closing the Soviet labor camps in the 1950’s.)

Therefore, we see that slavery tended to introduce primitive people to more advanced societies and thereby to spread civilization. Seemingly, slavery is similar to colonialism and it often existed in connection with colonialism. Colonialism could be brutal, however it could be benign as well. The same may be true of slavery. I would not say that slave traders and slave owners were exactly Peace Corp volunteers, however that may not be so far from the truth.

Witness the results of slavery in modern times. Although I do not condone the unneeded cruelty of some American slave owners, and neither does Judaism, however if not for slavery, millions of blacks would not be enjoying a comfortable life in America. People like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright may be filled with hatred for white Americans, however perhaps they should have a little gratitude also. What type life style do their never enslaved cousins in Africa have? The life expectancy of blacks in America is  73 years, for blacks in Africa it's 46 years.

Within Judaism, slavery meant that the slave had a semi-Jewish status (he would be circumcised if male, observe the Sabbath, but not attend synagogue) and and upon being freed, which inevitably happened eventually to the slave or his descendants, he became a full-fledged Jew. There can be little doubt that the ancestors of many modern Jews were at one time slaves owned by Jews. Slavery therefore was a means to spiritually enlighten primitive gentiles. Apparently because of this, the Catholic Church fought repeatedly against the Jewish ownership  of gentile slaves.

The Uniqueness of Judaism

[Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt, 1659]

For ask now of the days past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever a people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? (Deuteronomy 4:32-33)

This remarkable Biblical statement points out one of the unique facts about Judaism: Judaism is based on a mass revelation, not a private revelation, therefore making it far more credible than any other religion. Furthermore, the author of the Bible somehow knew that never again anywhere else would such a claim be made. This was a one time event in world history.

Some people have claimed that the Aztecs had a similar myth, however this is incorrect. The Aztecs did not claim that our Creator spoke to millions of people.

The Aztec myth concerns Huitzilopochtli, who was a god of war, sun and human sacrifice. He sometimes appeared in human form. According to the Aubin Codex, the Aztecs originally came from a place called Aztlan. They lived under the ruling of a powerful elite called the "Azteca Chicomoztoca". Huitzilopochtli ordered them to abandon Aztlan to find a new home. Huitzilopochtli guided them through a long journey.

The story basically describes the public appearance of a superhero of some sort, not the public revelation of the Almighty Creator.

Also, the Aubin Codex is one book currently in the British Museum Library. It was written by an unknown author in the Aztec language in 1576. We don't know how many Aztecs actually knew of this story or believed it.

Someone's Going to Pay

The Canadian film 7 Days describes a fictional story in which a Quebec surgeon's eight year old daughter, a lovely and beloved only child, is raped and murdered in a park. Upon learning that the police have apprehended the perpetrator, the grief stricken father decides to take revenge. He abducts the suspect while the suspect is being brought to his trial. Over the course of seven days, the father uses his surgical skills and equipment to brutally torture his daughter's killer. I am not going to spoil the movie, however suffice to say, by the time the father is interrupted by the police, the killer is no longer in good health.

Frankly, I was shaken by this movie on many levels, not the least because I am the father of two small daughters.

However, as Jews, this story should fill us with an immense fear of God. This story can help us comprehend the potentially incomprehensible and inescapable punishment for sin.

The Ramban wrote in Shaar haGemul that one moment of suffering in hell is worse than suffering like Job for seventy years in this world. Whatever horrific suffering a person can imagine enduring in this world, for seven days or even for seventy years, it is nevertheless not comparable to a moment in hell.

God's Infinite Wisdom

I recently watched a movie called Limitless, which basically is about a fictional pill which temporarily endows anyone who takes it with virtually limitless mental abilities. At the end of the movie (1:35 point), a powerful CEO offers the chemically enhanced hero a job as his assistant. He answers "I see everything. I'm fifty moves ahead of you and everybody else. If I would work for you, you would end up as my b----."

It occurred to me that this may give us a glimpse into how ridiculous it is for mere mortals to attempt to understand God's motives - why did He design the world or the Torah this way and not that way and so on. It makes the well known quote of Richard Dawkins even more humorous: "The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, an ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide." God is not fifty moves ahead us, He is millions of moves ahead. How can any human, with the brain of an over-sized hamster, claim to even begin to understand, let alone critique, the wisdom of God which is obviously Limitless?

Chastity - a Foundation of Life

Probably the most basic change, which has taken place in European and European based societies since the Second World War is the idea that sexual intercourse should be based on mutual attraction rather than on long-term commitment.

Until at least the 1940’s, it was taken for granted in most of Europe and America that sex is something generally limited to marriage. If the married partners are attracted to each other, that’s fine, and if they aren’t so much, then they will live with that. However marriage was for life and normal, respectable people did not have sex outside marriage.

Today, this has completely changed. About 40% of babies are born to single women in the United States. (For women under 30, the majority of babies are born to single women. This compares to a 5% illegitimacy rate in the 1950s.)  Additionally it is roughly estimated that several percent of presumed fathers are not really the father. Based upon this, I think we can estimate that about half of sex takes place outside of marriage in Western societies today.

In earlier times, men and women were largely segregated and women were required to dress modestly in public. After a brief courtship or an arranged match, couples married at a young age and remained married until one partner died. Eroticism and sexual excitement played a small role in people’s lives. This is still true in traditional cultures today.

In recent times, especially since about 1970, adults see sexual gratification as an essential part of life, if not as a right and an entitlement. During a lifetime, people progress through many relationships, some longer, some shorter, all with the purpose of gratifying both partners to the greatest extent possible.

The problems caused by this are very serious.

- Depression. In a sex-based relationship, many times one partner is happy in the relationship while the other is dissatisfied for some reason and leaves. This can trigger depression. We can speculate that this may be one of the major reasons for an increase in the rate of depression since the Second World War in Western societies.There is extensive research indicating that people who have fewer sexual partners and who marry young are on the average happier. Whores and whoremongers are generally miserable.

- Disease. Frequent changes in sexual partners cause sexually transmitted diseases to flourish, resulting in physical suffering, infertility and sometimes death.

- Sexual abuse. When women bring new men into the home, as boyfriends or husbands, their daughters from previous relationships are at a high risk of being raped by them.

- Child Neglect. In “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study”,  Judith S. Wallerstein explains in great detail the emotional problems and mental anguish suffered by children who grow up in divorced homes. Many children in single-family homes live that way because one parent felt he or she would have greater sexual satisfaction in a different relationship.

- Abortion. Millions of babies conceived out of wedlock are simply killed before they are born.

Having sex with whomever you want to is probably similar to eating whatever you want to – it may sound good at first, it may not seem to make much difference for a few years, however the long term effects are deadly.

 There can be little argument that the Orthodox Jewish practice of chastity is ultimately far better for everyone involved.

Unmasking Imposters

[You are so busted.]

A serious problem within the orthodox community is the problem of impostors - people who were orthodox Jews, who no longer believe in the divine origin of the Torah yet who, for whatever reason, continue to pretend to be orthodox whenever orthodox Jews are watching.

One problem with these people is that they might kill us. Levi Aron is a Brooklyn resident who has confessed to murdering on July 12, 2011 an eight year old Orthodox boy. Prior to his arrest, Aron was a member of an Orthodox synagogue and had once studied in a yeshiva. According to news reports, police offered Aron food at some point the evening of his arrest. Aron said that he did not eat kosher and when detectives suggested he get Burger King or McDonald's, he said McDonald's. He wound up eating Chinese food. 

Additionally, these people may have a very negative influence on others – for example  they may secretly try to corrupt immediate family members, classmates, etc. I would assume that the kosher chicken scandal several years ago was the work of such an individual. We can only imagine in what other ways these people may be spiritually undermining the community – whether in making their family’s kitchen not kosher, writing not kosher mezuzos and tefillin, leading the congregation in prayers which they do not believe in, spreading illegal drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, etc.

Imposters may also commit crimes which are then a source of embarrassment to the orthodox community. The news will report "an orthodox Jew went to a prostitute" or "an orthodox Jew purchased child pornography" while in reality this person is merely an imposter who should have been exposed and shunned long ago.

If you suspect a family member of being an imposter there are, thanks to modern technology, simple steps which can be taken to clarify the situation.

First of all, if the suspect doesn't already have it, get him home Internet access and a smartphone.

Next, install monitoring software on the phone and the computer. With this configured, you will be able to track the suspect's location on a map in real time, record every keystroke he makes, every telephone number called and received, every webpage accessed, every photo or video taken with the phone, every text, email, etc. This should reveal a fairly complete picture of the suspect's activities.

If you suspect drug usage, then obtain a small hair sample and send it in for analysis. You’ll know exactly what he’s been using for the past three months.

If you suspect that your unmarried daughter is sexually active, and monitoring software has not answered the question, you might want to test her underpants for semen. This will reveal any unprotected, heterosexual vaginal intercourse.

Once a secret heretic is revealed he may then be expelled from our homes, synagogues and schools. I would ideally like to see a computer registry set up to track exposed secret heretics, similar to the websites now used for sex predators.

In addition to these practical efforts to track down and ostracize atheists, we must also fervently pray for the immediate destruction of Jewish heretics.

There is no reason for us to continue to be victimized by secret atheists. If we wish to, we can make secret atheism a thing of the past with a little serious effort.

Atheists Love Fun!

He's having fun - smoking and stinking of tobacco.
He's having fun - having sex with various average looking women and then wondering what that rash he keeps getting is and why it burns when he urinates.
He's having fun - drinking all night and waking up in mid-day depressed and with a splitting headache.
He's having fun - masturbating while using the Internet to the point where he is having difficulty ever functioning sexually at all.
He's having fun - taking more and more prescription pain pills, which make him more and more sick, to try and fight off his depression.
He's having fun - being poor because he can't hold a job.
He's having fun - being alone, because he's so selfish no one wants to be around him.
He's having so much fun that he wishes he were dead.  

What You Will Never See or Hear

The book you will never read:

Straightened Out: The Scandalous Rejection of My Gay Roots by Daniel Feldman

In the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, Straightened Out is a captivating story about a young boy determined to live his own life at any cost.

New York City's Greenwich Village community of gays is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. In this arresting memoir, Daniel Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a sexual tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms.

The child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned Daniel while he was still a toddler, Daniel was raised by his strictly homosexual uncle John and John's partner Tim. Along with a rotating cast of gay, lesbian and transgender friends, they enforced customs with a relentless emphasis on rules that governed everything from what Daniel could wear and to whom he could speak, to what he was allowed to read. As he grew from an inquisitive little boy to an independent-minded young man, stolen moments reading about the spiritual characters of the Bible helped him to imagine an alternative way of life. He had no idea how to seize this dream that seemed to beckon to him from the synagogues of Manhattan, but he was determined to find a way. The tension between Daniel's desires and his responsibilities as a good gay boy grew more explosive until, at the age of seventeen, he found herself trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man he had met in a local ally. As a result, he experienced debilitating anxiety that was exacerbated by the public shame of having failed to immediately consummate his marriage and thus satisfy his partner. But it wasn’t until he was nineteen that Daniel realized that his entire future was at stake, and that, regardless of the obstacles, he would have to forge a path to happiness and freedom.

You will never see this book published by Simon & Schuster or on the New York Times Bestseller list, because bashing Orthodox Jews is perfectly fine while bashing homosexuals is absolutely taboo.

The news story you will never hear:

Tzvi Klein was an eighteen-year-old student at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. His roommate Dharun Ravi and a fellow hallmate, Molly Wei, had viewed Klein donning phylacteries and praying via iChat between a webcam on Ravi's computer and a computer in Wei's dorm room without Klein's knowledge. Ravi later attempted to view Klein's religious practices a second time and drew attention to the event by making Twitter postings to friends. Ravi has been charged with invasion of privacy, bias intimidation, witness tampering, and evidence tampering, while Wei is not being charged in exchange for testifying against Ravi.

You will never see this story broadcast on television. The reason why is because prosecutors would never be concerned about the suicide of an Orthodox Jew, while a homosexual killing himself because someone embarrassed him is a national tragedy.

Wiping Out Amalek

[British bomber over Hamburg]

As we celebrate this week the Jewish victory over Amalek, it may be worthwhile to remember the fate of Jew haters in recent times.

Between July 27 and August 3, 1943 the appropriately named Operation Gomorrah was launched against Hamburg, Germany. During those days and nights 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Hamburg, killing about 50,000 Germans and leaving one million homeless. It was the heaviest aerial assault in history and the most devastating ever non-nuclear bombing.

 Most of the victims died during a three hour firestorm early in the morning of July 28. The huge concentration of incendiary bombs created a tornado of fire, a huge outdoor blast furnace, containing winds of up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and reaching temperatures of 800 °C (1,500 °F). It caused asphalt on the streets to burst into flame, cooked people to death in air-raid shelters, sucked pedestrians off the sidewalks like leaves into a vacuum cleaner and incinerated some eight square miles (21 km²) of the city.

While Hamburg became a hell on earth, 465 miles away there was another hell on earth: Auschwitz. The concentration camp was in full gear at that moment, working Jews to death, gassing them and burning them. The Warsaw ghetto  had been completely liquidated just three months earlier. The Holocaust was at its height. While Germans were busy burning Jews in Poland, the British and Americans were busy burning Germans in Germany. This was a modern day version of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Perhaps in the Hamburg firestorm there was a little payback for the Warsaw ghetto.

As the great rabbi, Hillel, once said (Pirkei Avot 2:7) when he a saw a human skull floating on the water “Because you drowned someone, you were drowned. And whoever drowned you, will be drowned as well.”

Every small child should be taught about examples like this of divine judgment. Everything has a consequence.

Finally a Jewish Skeptic Comes Out

[Deborah Phony]

Nearly all formerly Orthodox bloggers are anonymous. Generally they claim to be "afraid" to reveal their identities, however it's seems doubtful what exactly they are really afraid of.  

Well, one of them has finally come out in a very public way: 
Deborah Feldman.

And guess what - she's exposed herself as being a pathological liar. What a shock.

Dear anti-Orthodox bloggers: please write books! Call Simon and Schuster. Let's discover what obnoxious, selfish, whores, whoremongers, porn addicts, potheads, alcoholics and general losers you really are. 

You might get on The View.

I can imagine the next memoir entitled "Hassidic Cannibals: One Man's Escape from the Man-eating Jewish Tribes of Brooklyn". Oprah's going to recommend it.