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.

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.  

Not By Chance

[it would never work]

What are the chances that we got here without God?

Apparently very slim.

Here are the more optimistic opinions which I have found:

Regarding the issue of how likely it is that the universe is spontaneously fine tuned to support life:
"Other Values for Physical Constants May Not Be Physically Possible"
"Other Values for Physical Constants May Be Highly Improbable"
"There May Be an Ensemble of Other Worlds"
according to Theodore Drange Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University, where he taught philosophy from 1966 to 2001.

Regarding abiogenesis: "At the moment, since we have no idea how probable life is, it's virtually impossible to assign any meaningful probabilities to any of the steps to life" according to Ian Musgrave who is a senior lecturer for medical research at the University of Adelaide.

Regarding evolution: "In particular, the extremely small probability of the spontaneous emergence of intelligent life, as calculated (usually not quite correctly) by the opponents of the hypothesis of life’s spontaneous emergence, by no means indicates that the spontaneous emergence of life must be ruled out." according to Mark Perakh professor emeritus of Mathematics and statistical mechanics at California State University, Fullerton. 

Other estimates are more pessimistic:

The probability of an environment occurring where life could exist among all the possible results of the Big Bang is on the order of one in 10^123 according to Roger Penrose, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.

“The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” according to Ilya Prigogine chemist and Nobel Laureate.

"The probability of human evolution is about: 10^(‑100x 3000) or 10^‑300,000." according to R. Webster Kehr B.S. Mathematics, BYU.

In other words, it seems to be very unlikely, if not impossibly unlikely, that we or any type of comparably complex living things could exist unless God created the universe and created life.

The atheistic response to this decisive refutation is as follows: God's origin would be even more improbable than the origin of life and the universe. Therefore belief in God resolves nothing.

This response is nonsense since God is eternal. For their argument to be valid, atheists would have to prove that an eternal Creator cannot exist, however of course they can't.

Divine creation is the only plausible explanation for our existence. 

The Universe: The Greatest Magic Show?

In his book The Illusion of Conscious Will, Daniel M. Wegner a professor of psychology at Harvard University, claims that our sense of conscious agency is ALWAYS imaginary. In other words we are actually robots or zombies who only imagine ourselves to have free will.

Richard Dawkins, the chief atheist propagandist, has likewise declared that living things possess a very successful "Illusion of Design", so successful that to this day most Americans "stubbornly" refuse to believe it is an illusion.

So according to atheists, we live actually in  a strange magical world where nothing is what it clearly seems to be.

How convenient for psychopathic hedonists. The idea that God created us, that we have a soul, that there may be an unavoidable reward or punishment in the afterlife, that we even have any free will and moral responsibility to begin with are all illusions. Whatever the atheist does he can claim that his hormones, brain chemistry and bad parents made him do it and so long as he can avoid going to jail (not difficult if you have a little luck and/or a good lawyer) he has nothing to worry about.

I personally believe that, barring very strong evidence to the contrary, things are what they appear to be. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

The Divine Wisdom in a Bug's Shell

Surprisingly the north African desert scorpion, Androctonus australis, unlike other desert animals, does not dig burrows. It is a resistant to sand storms. When the sand whips by at speeds that would strip paint away from steel, this scorpion is able to survive without apparent damage. 

Recently, Dr Han Zhiwu of Jilin University, in China, and his colleagues found that Androctonus armor is covered with dome-shaped granules that are 10 microns high and between 25 and 80 microns across. The granules disturb the air flow near the scorpion's surface in ways that appeared to be reducing the erosion rate. Their computer model suggested that if scorpion exoskeletons were smooth, they would experience almost twice the erosion rate that they actually do.

Aircraft engines and helicopter rotor-blades are constantly abraded by atmospheric dust, and a way of slowing down this abrasion would be welcome. 

The research team placed samples of steel in a wind tunnel and fired grains of sand at them using compressed air. One piece of steel was smooth, but the others had grooves of different heights, widths and separations, inspired by scorpion exoskeleton, etched onto their surfaces. Each sample was exposed to the lab-generated sandstorm for five minutes and then weighed to find out how badly it had been eroded.

The result was that the pattern most resembling scorpion armor proved best able to withstand the assault. The lesson for aircraft makers, Dr Han suggests, is that a little surface irregularity might help to prolong the active lives of planes and helicopters, as well as those of scorpions.

From this we see another example of remarkable divine wisdom in nature. Human engineers are able to learn from humble little bugs.

The New Year for Trees

Tomorrow is known in the Talmud as the New Year of Trees, on which it is customary to eat fruit. Therefore this is an appropriate time to note God's gift of the orange.

What a masterpiece of intelligent design! The fruit is sweet, delicious and nutritious. The peel is a beautiful wrapper, easily removed. The pits may be thrown on the ground and, in the right conditions, will each grow into a tree that will produce thousands of additional oranges. Imagine being able to break off part of a computer, throw it on the ground and see a computer factory grow from it.

Human breeding has improved upon the original wild citrus, however those are merely small finishing touches on a masterpiece.

To counter that this all appears to be designed, however in reality has been created by chance, is like saying I only imagine that I am a human, however I am in reality an earthworm dreaming that he is human. It is a denial of what our senses perceive bordering on madness.

Why We Should Be Orthodox

(Sabbath table)

Believing, observant Jews are going to eternal paradise according to the Talmud Berakot 17a: In the World to Come there is no eating nor drinking nor propagation nor business nor jealousy nor hatred nor competition, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads feasting on the brightness of God's presence.

Nonbelievers are going to hell forever according to the Talmud Rosh haShanah 17a. The Talmud Berakoth 57b explains that the fire of hell is sixty times stronger than ordinary fire.

This is referred to in the book of Daniel 12:2-3:

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence. And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn the many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

The evidence supporting this is clear beyond any reasonable doubt.  

The Torah is validated by nature and history

by the descending levels of Jewish literature

by the wisdom of the Torah

by the honesty of the Torah

and by the Holocaust.

Atheists attempt to debunk the Torah using evolution

the documentary hypothesis

the suffering of the innocent

and all sorts of logical fallacies.

In fact, it's obvious that atheists do not really believe their own stated beliefs.

Food for Thought

Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist

a few interesting quotes.

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”

“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”

"People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to."  

Newt Is Onto Something

Newt Gingrich speaking on 3/27/2011 

"I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Gingrich said he hadn't intended to fight another political battle, and was looking forward to relaxing in private life after leaving public office. But in 2002, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance was unconstitutional (the ruling was later overturned).

"I had been watching the courts grow steadily more secular and steadily more anti-religious starting with the 1963 school prayer decision," he said. "But for some reason this particular decision struck me as so blindingly stupid, so profoundly un-American."

"Bravery will come from our churches, our synagogues, everyday folks," Gingrich said. "It won't come from the elites. It won't [come from] those currently in power because if it could have come from them, it would have."

I'm starting to like this guy a little. I would add that bravery may come from a few bloggers too.

[Disclaimer: I do not know if Gingrich is God fearing. In fact he is probably not. However he is claiming to enthusiastically support God fearers, and that wins him a point with me.]

As a pessimist, I believe that the larger cultural battle has been lost many years ago. The United States in a decade will probably look very much like Ukraine does today, with it's poverty, alcoholism, crime and corruption. (Zbigniew Brzezinski published a new book this week in which he compares the US today to the USSR in 1988.) Nevertheless, within our own orthodox communities we will survive. We must emphasize a maximum of Torah study. We must emphasize kindness - and that begins at home, making peace with our spouses and children. We must use software to filter and monitor Internet usage in our homes. We must shun and expel drop outs from our communities.

A Rose with a New Name

This blog's name is now Torah Philosophy and the domain name is torahphilosophy.com. All of your old links to jewishphilosopher.blogspot.com will continue to function.

I decided that acquiring a custom domain name would give an added impression of prestige and authority to this blog, however nothing else has changed.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" Shakespeare 

Enjoy! 

Comparative Chronology

Jewish chronology of the Torah period

3760 BCE Adam & Eve created

c. 2500 BCE period of "mighty men that were of old, the men of renown" Genesis 6:4

Tuval-cain was the first man to work with iron (Genesis 4:22). According to Jewish tradition he was the brother in law of Noah who, according to Jewish tradition, was born in 2704 BCE.

2102 BCE The Flood

1765 BCE The Dispersion

1313 BCE Exodus from Egypt, Revelation at Mt Sinai

1272 BCE Joshua leads Jews into Israel


Gentile chronology of the Torah period

3300 BCE Bronze Age begins in the Middle East

3200 BCE writing begins in Egypt and Sumer

2600-2400 BCE Stonehenge constructed

2540-2560 BCE Giza Pyramid constructed

2500 BCE the earliest iron tools are smelted 

c. 2200 BCE A severe climatic event causes a cultural upheaval. It is very likely to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.

c. 1700 BCE the written history of China begins

c. 1700 BCE Vedic culture begins in India

1550 BCE Jericho destroyed

1206 BCE the entire eastern Mediterranean area is mysteriously, suddenly destroyed (approximately corresponding to the time of the Ten Plagues in 1313 BCE) 

1200 BCE Hazor destroyed

1200 BCE Egyptian inscription mentions Israel

1200 BCE Israelite highland settlements established

c. 1100 BCE oldest Hebrew inscription

Broadly, there is an agreement between archeology and the Torah and relatively minor differences I believe can be attributed to the inaccuracy of current archaeological knowledge. If the Torah was indeed fabricated by Ezra the Scribe as atheists believe, then he really made some lucky guesses. In contrast, the Book of Mormon for example is entirely baseless archeologically.

Regarding the prehistoric era, prior to the Bronze Age, the Torah is silent, however I have a theory about that.

The Atheist "Rabbi"

[here's Jeff]

I came across this week a blog entitled The Atheist Rabbi. The blog is almost entirely devoted to denigrating anyone who believes in God. Comments are moderated. No critical comments will be posted by the "rabbi". Apparently criticism embarrasses him since he cannot respond to it intelligently.

It's written by a man named Jeffrey Falick.  He is about 50. He writes that he was ordained by a Reform seminary in 1989 and is currently a member of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, a small sect which is even more secular than Reform.

He is openly homosexual and resides with his male partner.

Based on research that I have done, I happen to know that he was previously married to a woman and fathered a daughter in 1991. The daughter today is apparently orthodox.

He is currently employed as Assistant Executive Director for the Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center in Miami, Florida.

I have never written a post about another blog before, however I am making an exception in this case. I believe that it is an incredible insult to the rabbinate for an individual like this to claim to be a rabbi. If he simply called himself "Mr" I wouldn't give him a second thought. The Internet is loaded with liars, lunatics, perverts, scumbags and so on of all stripes. That's nothing noteworthy. However I do feel the need to protest when one calls himself "rabbi". I really haven't seen something like that before, surely not such an extreme example. Even Reform Judaism officially accepts a belief in God. A militantly atheist "rabbi" is just absurd. How can a clergyman be openly antireligious? Can one imagine the harm done if some naive person were to approach this man for spiritual guidance? I feel it's as if someone like Ron Jeremy (also Jewish by the way) would start calling himself "rabbi". Imagine the storm of disgust and protest that would provoke. What's next - "The Neo-Nazi Rabbi"? "The Islamic Terrorist Rabbi"?

As publicly listed on the Internet, Falick resides at:
1621 Bay Rd, Apt 507
Miami Beach, FL 33139-3250
(305) 531-7720
jfalick@yahoo.com

He works at:
Dave and Mary Alper JCC on The Jay Morton-Levinthal Campus
11155 SW 112th Avenue Miami, FL 33176
Telephone: 305.271.9000 ext 239 
Fax: 305.595.1902
rabbi@alperjcc.org
 
Joan Stern
Human Resource Director
305.271.9000 ext 347
jstern@alperjcc.org

the president of the Dave and Mary Alper JCC is:
Jorge Rawicz
office:
President, Terra Mortgage Bankers
1900 N Bayshore Drive, Unit 204-A
Miami, FL 33132
(305)921-0818
home:
20379 W Country Club Dr
Aventura, FL 33180-1666
(305) 931-7876

Does Egyptian History Contradict the Torah

[Great Pyramid of Giza]

One apparent conflict between secular history and Judaism is that according to traditional Jewish chronology, the Deluge (Genesis 7) occurred in 2106 BCE. The Dispersion (Genesis 11) occurred in 1765 BCE. This means that between those two dates, for a period of 340 years, the earth was uninhabited outside of Mesopotamia. Also people after the Dispersion spoke different languages than they did before the Deluge. According to Tan. Buber, Noach 28, prior to the Dispersion all people spoke Hebrew.

Egyptians, however, supposedly the spoke the same language from 3400 BCE until 1700 CE. How can this be explained?

I would assume that the antediluvian Egyptians were among the “mighty men of old” (Genesis 6:4). They built the Great Pyramid and spoke Hebrew. They died in the Deluge. [I suspect that this early race of superior men also built the remarkable Stonehenge monument which dates from about the same period.]

Following the Dispersion, new settlers arrived in Egypt who wished to revive the culture of the earlier inhabitants. They never approached the architectural achievement of the original Egyptians, however they emulated Old Egyptian culture and claimed descent from them. (Many ancient dynasties claimed descent from ancient gods or heroes.)

Until about 1300 BCE, writing was pictographic. This means that each character represented a word, not a sound. This system is still used in eastern Asia today. Therefore, we cannot know what ancient Egyptian sounded like. For example, today, Japanese writing is derived partly from Chinese characters, although the two spoken languages are entirely different. The written language may have no connection to the spoken language in some cases. The antediluvian Egyptians may have spoken Hebrew while Egyptians after the Dispersion spoke Egyptian, but continued to use hieroglyphics.

This is to some extent similar to the Latin alphabet which continued to be used long after the destruction of Rome. In fact, this blog is being written in the Latin alphabet. Classical Greek and Roman architectures were also often revived. Most people today use a slightly modified Roman calendar. So the old Egyptian writing continued long after the original old Egyptians were gone.

Interestingly, the Egyptians are virtually the only ancient culture not possessing a flood legend, I would suppose because they wished to deny their lack of continuity with the pyramid builders.

The Fanatic Fringe

[the orthodox terrorists]

It's come to my attention that there exists a group of Jews in the Jerusalem area known as Sikrikim. They have recently received a huge amount of attention as violent ultra-orthodox extremists.

I just want to make a few points.

In a world population of about two million orthodox Jews, these people amount to a few hundred.

Everyone else thinks they're crazy.

To the best of my knowledge they have caused no bodily injury to anyone beyond a few bruises. They have engaged in some property vandalism and some screaming.

Therefore it may be a little bit early to condemn orthodox Jews as being the next wave of religious terrorists. Comparing the Sikrikim to al-Qaeda or the Irish Republican Army is laughable. They are more on the level of Occupy Wall Street. These few unbalanced and pretty much harmless clowns merely provide some filler for the news media on slow days. Let's hope that after a few land in jail, the rest settle down. 

The Real Analgesic

[Amy Winehouse - there is a better way]

Many people suffer from severe emotional pain of some sort. They feel disappointed, insulted, rejected, poor, lonely, hopeless, worried about the future, miserable about growing uglier and weaker with age and so forth.

To cope with this pain, people turn to painkillers of many types: alcohol, heroin, prescription pain killers, marijuana, etc. These substances unfortunately all become less effective with use, which encourages the use of higher dosages and as a result leads eventually to very serious and possibly fatal side effects. They may be good short term solutions, however in the long term they are horrifically damaging. (One biographer of Ernest Hemingway, the brilliant but atheistic and alcoholic writer, mentions that after age 45 he became more insane each year [ Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn page 532], until his suicide at age 61.)

What is the solution? Why can't doctors invent a powerful analgesic to which we will not develop a tolerance?

Fortunately, orthodox Judaism has solved this problem thousands of years ago. When one is suffering, he need merely remember that everything is from God and everything God does is good. The Talmud teaches us "one must receive the evil with gladness". It is all for our good. Everything is an atonement for our sins and prepares us for paradise. Furthermore, if one is unhappy with anything material, he may recall the words of the ancient rabbis who taught "This world is [merely] like an entrance chamber before the World to Come. Prepare yourself in the entrance chamber so that you may enter the banquet hall." Numerous inspirational works are available which expand on these and similar themes.

How precious is Thy lovingkindness, O God! and the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Thy wings. Psalms (36:8)

This is the real analgesic. 

Close to the Truth

[the real Hitchens - a parody of the far left]

from the archives
APRIL 23, 2003 | ISSUE 39•15

SPARTA, TN–Noted author, social critic, and political gadfly Christopher Hitchens was once again the focus of controversy Monday, when he was forcibly removed from Happy Trails trailer park following a drunken confrontation with Noreen Bodell, 39, his common-law wife of 14 years.

Responding to a domestic-disturbance call, police arrived at the couple's double-wide trailer at approximately 2:15 p.m. to find Hitchens and Bodell throwing dishes at each other. When the officers attempted to remove Hitchens from the premises, the leftist intellectual became physically and verbally abusive toward the officers, calling them "shitkickers," "bitches," and "effete liberal apologists for the atrocities of late-stage capitalism."

An inebriated Hitchens is forcibly removed from the Happy Trails trailer park. Having consumed what sources described as "a substantial amount of single-malt scotch," Hitchens then burst into tears, yelling, "That woman never understood me for who I am. I want to talk to [Harper's editor Lewis] Lapham. Lapham's the only one who understands me."

Charged with disturbing the peace, Hitchens was taken to the Sparta police station at 3 p.m. and released four hours later.

Little is known about Bodell, a heavy-set blonde who has been known to use several different surnames. According to sources familiar with the couple, the incident marks the third time in as many weeks that police have been forced to intervene in their volatile relationship.

"We're down at the old Hitchens place probably twice a month at least," said Sgt. Wilson Vernon, the first of three officers to arrive at the scene. "Once his blood's up, old Hitch can get meaner than a three-legged coon hound. From what the neighbors told us about this latest incident, Noreen was all worked up, accusing him of drinking and womanizing. He was angry with her refusal to acknowledge that there is ample evidence to make a case for prosecuting Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. She just kept shouting, 'No, there ain't!'"

Police were initially summoned when neighbors reported hearing shouting and a loud crash, followed by a rambling polemic on Kissinger's alleged covert approval of Indonesia's illegal invasion of East Timor in 1975.

Though the belligerent Hitchens required three officers to subdue him, police do not consider the incident serious, calling it "business as usual" and describing Hitchens as a "hot-tempered but essentially harmless provocateur for the Far Left."

"Hitch is an all-right guy once he sobers up," Vernon said. "He just gets a little wound-up sometimes, like when his woman stays out all night down at Smokey Joe's Tavern, or he has a deadline looming for his Vanity Fair column."

Hitchens' run-ins with the law have not been restricted to Sparta city limits. In May 2002, he was arrested for drunkenly singing 1930s union songs while driving a stolen riding lawnmower through the streets of Boston, where he was attending an international women's-rights conference. Hitchens accused police of "atavistic, morally reprehensible Stalinist scare tactics" before being bailed out by conference organizers the following morning.

Sgt. Ed Poole of Boston's 11th Precinct said there was no love lost between Hitchens and his arresting officers.

"Word got around the station that this guy wrote a whole book claiming that Mother Teresa was a stooge of right-wing dictators," Poole recalled. "Supposedly, he said her hypocritical approach to charity for the poor of Calcutta, as well as her steadfast advocacy of the Catholic Church's doctrine prohibiting birth control, made her an essentially immoral individual undeserving of the mantle of sainthood. Well, a lot of the boys here are Irish-Catholic born and raised, and they don't take too kindly to people speaking ill of nuns."

Town officials in Sparta, where Hitchens has maintained an on-again, off-again residence for two decades, admit that he may be "a handful" at times, but they insist he is not a danger to himself or others.

"If I know Hitch, by the end of the week, he and Noreen'll be back together, cuddlin' and kissin', just as happy as two crawdads in a pond," Sparta Police Chief Buck Perkins said. "We don't get a lot of ultra-progressive agitators 'round these parts, but Hitch is okay. Plus, he earned a lot of points with the townsfolk for his vocal criticism of the anti-war movement. Even though he was attacking the war opponents from the left, folks around here don't necessarily understand the implications of that, so he's an all-right Joe in their book."

Added Perkins: "So long as Hitch can learn to keep his mouth shut about Christianity being symptomatic of the 'savage and ignorant prehistory of our species' and whatnot, I'm sure he'll cause no trouble that a few cups of black coffee and a night in the drunk tank can't solve."

The Crime of the Century

[AIDS orphans - thanks a lot sodomy advocates!]

The Gay Liberation Front was organized in New York City in the summer of 1969. Afterwards states began repealing sodomy laws.

Having recently achieved equal rights for blacks (which Jews have nothing against by the way; the modern Western concept of "race" is unknown in the Talmud), atheists needed a new cause célèbre to make them feel good about themselves. Homosexual rights fit the bill. Furthermore, the gay rights movement had, for atheists, the added bonus of making traditional monotheists appear to be "racist" since they could now be portrayed as irrational persecutors of a helpless, pathetic "sexual minority".

The first cases of AIDS were reported in New York and California in 1981. It usually takes 10 years or more for an HIV infection to turn into AIDS. Therefore these homosexual men apparently became infected with HIV about 1971.   

In  1984, AIDS was reported in Africa. (Just for the sake of comparison, AIDS was first reported in Brazil and England in 1982, in China in 1985 and in India in 1987. Thanks to modern jet travel, the plague spread quickly worldwide.)

In the 1990s, life expectancy in many parts of Africa dropped by about 10 years due to AIDS.

Today about 15 million children in Africa are AIDS orphans.

I just have a small question to ask gay rights activists: Was it worthwhile to cause this immense suffering, which far outweighs the Nazi Holocaust, for the sake of a few million American men being able to fully indulge themselves sexually? Or would it not have been far wiser and kinder to continue to outlaw sodomy, as the Torah commands? Rather than condemning the Torah's strict prohibition of sodomy as being "homophobic" and "genocidal" shouldn't it now be recognized as a remarkable sign of divine wisdom?

Have any gay rights activists even bothered to apologize? Or are such psychopaths incapable of regret?