Chutzpah: Look who's sermonising Rambam and Remah!!

Should we laugh or cry? An assistant "rabbiette" from Melbourne's Reform Temple is "delving into Jewish sources" - quoting Shas and Poskim about the "religious obligation" to report child abuse allegations. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

[Just to make it clear, AJNWatch does not at all disagree with her conclusions about this sad and tragic issue and we accept the Psak Halacha of the gedolei hador, Rav Wosner, Rav Elyashiv, Rab M Shafran and others, that abuse claims should at the first instance be referred to the police and those authorities who are legally qualified and trained to investigate and handle these charges.

Having said that,] we express our incredulity at the unbelievable gall of a Reform clergyperson piously lecturing us and referring to the Chazal, Rambam, Rema and even Rav Eliezer Waldenberg.

(The same condemnation, by the way, goes to the AJN and its editor. Zeddy Lawrence really couldn't find a more suitably qualified writer, ie, an Orthodox Torah observing rabbi to state the Halachic case? Does anyone doubt that eg, Zeddy's brother. Sydney's Rabbi Jeremy couldn't have given the Torah viewpoint?) 

But seeing that you are "delving into Jewish sources", why don't you, Madam Rabbi, tell us what all of them have to say about the lifestyles of you parishioners and indeed members of the clergy of the Reform religion? Eg, the desecration of the Shabbat, intermarriage and/or consumption of Nevelot uTreifot? Indeed deleting almost the entire body of Halacha!

Or maybe you can inform us of their views regarding the way that you have duped hundreds of thousands of naive gentiles into believing that your hocus-pocus ceremony in a "Temple"  transforms them into Jews. And how they then marry them to trusting but ignorant "Kosher" Jews who have no idea that Halachically their new spouse isn't Jewish at all. And in cases where the 'convert' is female, neither are her children. Though, as this blog has previously revealed, being a 100% gentile is no holdback from becoming a rabbiette - as is a  colleague of yours (an unconverted daughter of an unconverted gentile woman). We wonder what any of the "Jewish sources" you quote would say upon hearing that not being Jewish is no bar to being employed as Temple clergy. 

Seriously, you sure have a nerve lecturing on what "Jewish sources" decree. Sources that you and your colleagues have disregarded and defied from the day that the deformed Reform idea was launched.

In addition to the reader having to endure your disingenuousness you mislead and deceive by 'cherry=picking' both your Rambams and your Chillul Hashems. This is unforgiveable.

You sanctimoniously quote Rambam thus:

but completely and deliberately overlook a few paragraphs on, where he so perfectly describes the appalling Chillul Hashem (and immeasurable damage) that you Reform clergypeople have been responsible for for almost 2 centuries - promoting assimilation and spiritually destroying vast segments of Jewry. 

Read here what else the Rambam has to say about Chillul Hashem and put his words in your next AJN article.

By the way, we wonder, seeing that Kim is such an expert on the Rambam, did she happen to notice how she and her religion contravene and corrupt thousands and thousands of edicts stated in that very same Mishnah Torah? How could she not feel hypocritical when writing that article?

Furthermore, seeing that you are in to Psika of Rav Waldenberg maybe you could bring yourself to be honest enough to tell us about his views on you and all other Reform "rabbis" and about the caricature and mockery of Judaism that your version of religion has created.

From the US edition of the Yated: When "Orthodox" is really “Kosher-Style” Reform

An important article published in the American edition of the Yated Ne'eman newspaper. Many of the points raised are more than relevant to our own "Orthodox" bodies.

When "Orthodox" Is Really “Kosher Style” Reform

By Rabbi Avrohom Birnbaum

There comes a time when one is compelled to take a stance. Our sages tell us, “Bemokom she’ein ish, hishtadel lihiyos ish - In a place where there is no man, try to be a man.” When it comes to addressing the increasingly shrill attacks on Judaism, halacha and mesorah by people who call themselves Orthodox rabbis, and the near deafening silence by organizational Jewry, we are left with no option other than to take a stance. We would have preferred that the stance be taken by publications affiliated with the Orthodox Union, RIETS, the RCA or Young Israel. Unfortunately, that has not been done…yet.

THE PRIMACY OF LANGUAGE

Let us begin by talking about language. Language is important. Very important. If one uses a word or idea and continuously hammers away promoting that word or idea, that language and its associated meaning become mainstream and shape the narrative. A few examples:

Occupation. The Palestinians have used this word ad nauseam to describe the Israeli presence in Yerushalayim and Yehudah v’Shomron, Judea and Samaria. The Israelis are “occupiers” - a terrible connotation. Menachem Begin would say, “We are redeemers, not occupiers.” Nevertheless, the use of the word “occupation” has been so successful that even right-wing Israeli politicians use it today.

  Speaking about Yehudah and Shomron, the “West Bank” is another example of how language can transform Yehudah and Shomron, an undisputed piece of Biblical Eretz Yisroel, into just the west bank of the Jordan River.

 Then there is the word “terrorist.” For some reason, when it comes to terrorism against Israel, the perpetrators are no longer “terrorists,” but “gunmen” or even “freedom fighters.”

“We can’t be judgmental,” say the New York Times and the mainstream world press, “can we?” Perhaps the Israelis are the terrorists and the Palestinians are “freedom fighters,” they connote. These terms, however, infiltrate, and if they are used enough, they become the mainstream narrative.

“Pro-choice” is another. Pro-choice really means pro-abortion, or pro killing unborn children. “Choice” makes it sound so benign, like the waiter asking if you would like chicken or meat. But that, too, has gone mainstream. Once the media adopts the language of one side, it inevitably becomes the default language, for better or for worse. Today, the term “pro-choice” has been adopted by virtually everyone. It is a term that, at its core, legitimizes the snuffing out of unborn life.

THE HIJACKING OF THE WORD “ORTHODOX”

Language is very important, words are important, and that is why the abuse and misuse of the word “Orthodoxy” when describing Jewish affiliation must be analyzed and challenged.

 Over the last few years, a group of clergymen who call themselves Orthodox rabbis have begun engaging in a headlong dash to introduce Reform innovations and label them “Orthodox.” They insist on calling themselves Orthodox rabbis and classifying their behavior and innovations as “Orthodox” or “Open Orthodox.” They are using - nay, abusing - language to deceitfully try bringing Reform Judaism into their synagogues, many of them affiliated with the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) under the guise of Orthodox. They are co-opting language, lying and calling themselves Orthodox in order to slip under the radar and introduce Reform anti-Torah, anti-halacha innovations into Orthodoxy.

 It is high time we started using language correctly to unequivocally declare that these clergymen are Reform rabbis and unveil their insidious sneaking of Reform practice into Orthodox synagogues by having the audacity and moral turpitude to call it Orthodox. 

It’s time to label “Open Orthodoxy, “Yeshiva Chovevei Torah,” “Morethodoxy” and “International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF),” et al, as Reform organizations. Yes, they are Reform organizations. No, they are not (yet) affiliated with Hebrew Union College, but their behavior, their innovations, and their own stated aims are exactly those of the Reformers of old.

 It is precisely because language is important that these organizations and their rabbis should be called what they are: “Reform” organizations, “Reform Rabbis” and “Rabbahs.” This writer will henceforth call them what they are and we hope that other publications who value halachic Judaism will do the same.

 REFORM PRACTICES UNDER THE GUISE OF ORTHODOXY

 Let us now give a quick refresher course on just a sampling of their latest excesses, which are completely consistent with bygone Reform innovations:

TAMPERING WITH THE SIDDUR:

 One of the things that characterized early Reformers was their discomfort with the siddur. They felt that it was backwards, antiquated, and not in keeping with the “enlightened” times in which they lived. They therefore decided to cut out and change sections that they felt did not belong in a “progressive” age.

Last month, a clergyman named Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky advocated removing the brochoh of “Shelo asani ishah.” Rabbi Kanefsky decided that the brochoh takes away from a “woman’s dignity.” He is obviously far more cognizant of what dignity is than our holy sages of the Gemara who instituted this blessing. His halachic rationale would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic. He writes, “Simply for lack of male reproductive organs, otherwise qualified women are still barred from the rabbinate, and from many positions of communal leadership. She can be a judge, but not a dayan. A brain surgeon, but not a posek. And often she must content herself with davening in a cage in shul, from where her desire to say Kaddish for a parent may or may not be tolerated. This is no way to run a religion that claims wisdom as its inheritance…”

 Is this the laughable halachic rationale that a rabbi who purportedly represents the “People of the Book” puts forth? It looks more like a political stump speech. Is Kanefsky a rabbi or a politician?

 ASSAULTING LAWS MANDATED BY THE TORAH:

Let’s analyze another Reform nugget from Kanefsky’s diatribe: “She can be a judge, but not a dayan… This is no way to run a religion that claims wisdom as its inheritance…”

As my esteemed colleague, I. Schwartz, pointed out in his Yated article some weeks ago, “Kanefsky assaults halacha, treating dinim de’Oraisa (such as women not serving on a bais din) as if they were capriciously invented by some hateful and prejudiced rabbis, scathingly reprimanding the halacha: ‘This is no way to run a religion.’” Is criticizing a halacha derived from a gezeiras hakosuv and suggesting we do away with it not Reform practice?

 Later, Rabbi Kanefsky pulled his article off the internet and wrote the same thing in language that he thought would be a bit more palatable to people not as “enlightened” as he.

LEGITIMIZING CONDUCT THAT THE TORAH LABELS TOEIVAH

Rabbis affiliated with “Open Orthodoxy” have written and released “A Statement of Principles” seeking to legitimize and neutralize the aversion to acts that the Torah calls “toeivah.” Rabbi Hyim Shafner, a clergyman who claims to be Orthodox, wrote on the Morethodoxy website that “the engagement of a couple involved in toeivah should be celebrated at the Kiddush in shul with a cake that says mazal tov.”

I kid you not. This was written by a rabbi who calls himself Orthodox.

 I ask my dear readers and anyone seeking to minimize the attack on Hashem and His Torah that Open Orthodoxy represents: Is this cavalier discarding of p’sukim in the Torah, discarding “outdated” p’sukim to conform with the “enlightened” view of this issue, not Reform Judaism? Surely, it is. Are these rabbis who advocate such aberrations not Reform rabbis? Surely, they are, regardless of what they call themselves.

 Language is important and we cannot let Reform rabbis hijack the name Orthodox in an attempt to spread their malignant disease. We have allowed their reprehensible conduct, their lies and their obfuscation to metastasize for far too long.

Space constraints prevent us from outlining other Reform practices that they have instituted, such as the ordination of women rabbis, tampering with the chupah ceremonyby allowing the kesubah to be read by women, and interfaith rituals. Perhaps worst of all, the IRF has made a mockery of the laws of geirus, not even requiring kabbolas ol mitzvos, the acceptance of mitzvos, as a prerequisite for conversion. And the list goes on.

“KOSHER STYLE” TARFUS

They have been very clear about their objectives. Just as Reform proposed changes in the most sacred of matters, halachos and practice to conform with what was then in vogue, so are Open Orthodoxy and the others trying to take Judaism and make it conform with the left-wing liberal ideals in vogue today.

 The insistence by Open Orthodoxy, Morethodoxy, IRF and others to call themselves Orthodox is an insidious campaign of obfuscation of their goals to deceive unwitting Jews into believing that you can call yourself an Orthodox Jew while conducting your life like a Reform Jew.

 The only difference between them and Reform is that they insist that their brand of Reform should be “kosher style” Reform. We have all seen those delicatessens labeled “kosher style.” They sell a mean corned beef on Jewish rye sandwich, delicious kosher style pickles, a piece of kishka reminiscent of the kishka your grandmother could have made, but it is all treif. Glatt treif.

 Open Orthodoxy is Reform Judaism for those wanting a certain comfort level with Orthodox ritual and some aspects of Orthodox practice, but just as those delis are glatt treif, so is Open Orthodoxy. In this sense, they are worse than conventional Reform. Just as unwitting Jews may mistakenly patronize kosher style delis, look at the menu, and assume it is kosher when it is actually treif - after all, who would sell kishka if not a kosher place? - so too, unwitting, often innocent Jews who don’t know any better are being ensnared in the trap laid before them by the Reform purveyors of Open Orthodoxy.

 THE TIME HAS COME…

In 1956, a famous p’sak halacha was released by many of the great roshei yeshiva of that era, prohibiting collaboration of any sort with Reform and Conservative clergy. I have absolutely no doubt that if they were alive today, the roshei yeshiva would treat Open Orthodoxy and all of its mutations with the same stringency.

 As I. Schwartz pointed out a few weeks ago in these pages, Open Orthodoxy has given us ample proof of where they stand. They have repeatedly shown that they have no fidelity to halacha, no fidelity to the words of Chazal, and no fidelity even to p’sukim in the Torah itself.

The only weltanschauung to which they seem to have deference is the liberal value system in vogue in university campuses and certain corners of the media and intelligentsia.

 It is finally time to take a stand. Organizational Orthodoxy must take a stand. Anyone who holds dear the word of Hashem, the Torah, and the Shulchan Aruch cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.

 The holy Chofetz Chaim writes (laws of loshon ho’ra, 8:5), “It is permitted, and even a mitzvah, to speak loshon ho’ra about an apikores.” The Chofetz Chaim defines apikores as someone “who denies the Torah or the prophecies of Yisroel, either the written Torah or the Oral Torah, even if he says that he believes in the entire Torah except for one verse or one law which is derived from the Torah through the principles transmitted at Sinai.”

 As outlined above and in the article by I. Schwartz, the Reform rabbis who are purveyors of Open Orthodoxy have shown time and time again that they wholly conform to the Chofetz Chaim’s definition of apikores.

It is time for organized Orthodoxy to take a stand. It is time for Agudas Yisroel, Young Israel, the Rabbinical Council of America, the Orthodox Union, and the leadership of RIETS to publicly ostracize Open Orthodoxy and declare it beyond the pale of Orthodoxy.

 The Gemara (Shabbos 54) states that he who is able to protest and doesn’t is himself culpable in that transgression. The Gemara (Gittin 55) teaches us that when rabbonim do not protest, it is even a greater transgression: “From the fact that the rabbonim kept quiet, it shows that they agree.”

 As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the Yom Hadin, we must all conduct a din vecheshbon, a self accounting. Will we and the organizations with which we are affiliated be able to say, “We did our part in stopping an organization that is attacking our holy Torah and our holy Mesorah”?

And a vintage cartoon depicting the products of the JTS seminary (from the "On the Main Line" blog:

 

"Nit Yisrael" - an accurate name for a Reform temple

The "Mother Synagogue of Progressive Judaism in South Africa" deserves credit for being honest enough to publicly inform - at least those who understand Yiddish - that it is not a Jewish establishment.

A pity, though, that its English label isn't as truthful.
"Temple Not Israel" would be the correct translation for the Yiddish "Nit Yisrael", to describe that country's Reform mother-ship.
                                                                      Hat tip TN

Guest Post - from a Perth reader

We have been contacted by a Perth reader who has noticed similarities between the aims of this blog and one that originates in his city. We invited him to forward a guest post which shows that frum Jews in Perth have been pro-active in defending themselves far better than we on the Eastern board of the continent. We commend them and wish them much Hatzlacha.


Guest Post by Perth Sam

Thank you AJN Watch for accepting my offer to report from the other (and often forgotten) side of the country.Some of the problems you have with the AJN are replicated in our local publication The Maccabean. Nothing was done about it until, thank G-d, a group of bloggers here got together to expose and counter articles and writers who are Torah-unfriendly and/or disparage observant Jews. Their blog http://www.jewgleperth.com/ is worthwhile checking out - even if you do not live in WA. It includes lots of Jewish and Perth information. Amazingly, this site has a larger readership than The Maccabean, which should give hope to those behind the AJN Watch blog.

To introduce Easterners to some of the offensive material we cop, here’s a sample pack of posts and comments on JewglePerth:

Extreme insult and an utter disgrace

There is nobody from the Orthodox Jewish community that writes each week in the Maccabean about their authoritative understanding of progressive Judaism, and in the process insults, misquotes and misrepresents what its ideals stand for. There is a person from the progressive Jewish community that writes each week in the Maccabean about interpretive ideals of Orthodoxy with an unbelievable bias of hatred and vicious twisting of ideas. I have just chosen to no longer attend the Kristallnacht commemoration as this person will be a speaker, and I am embarrassed that somebody who can direct so much warped analysis and insulting commentary about my beliefs is extended the respect to represent the community publicly. Why does our harmonious and generally placid Jewish community subjected to such divisive and unfair badgering? The Maccabean has totally lost the plot. SNIP.
How are we expected to tolerate such madness? How low does the Maccabean have to get, that it now reaches the point where it can sanction the use of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust to bash down the beauty of Judaism. To the editors of the Maccabean - it is incumbent on you to apologise to the members of your community who are followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and it is incumbent on you to stop insulting our religious beliefs by printing obscenely inaccurate accounts of what Orthodox Judaism stands for. November 7th, 2008

Responses to “Extreme insult and an utter disgrace”
JJ Says: As the editors of the Maccabean are by and large all secular and reform who equally despise orthodoxy, I don’t expect any apology to be forth-coming. I suggest a complete cessation of purchasing it. Permanently. It is, after all, basically the temple newsletter.Votewith your subscription Says: JJ - Finally some common sense - Vote with your subscription. I agree.

Mordechai Says: The Perth Jewish Community would be in excess of 95 percent Orthodox affiliated The only way to put a stop to the current situation is for all lay as well as religious community leaders to meet with the Maccabean board of trustees and explain why the current situation CAN NOT be allowed to continue

Maccabean makes a mockery of Judaism

Any self respecting Jew who is a reader of the Maccabean should be outraged by the article in this weeks Did you Know column. The column notes its own disclaimer: “I too would like to alert my fellow Jews that some of the material contained in the article may differ from the belief in Torah MiTzion in the belief that the Torah was given to G-d on Mount Zion (sic) a little less than 5769 years ago. A Judaism has always accommodated various and sometimes even opposing Jewish ideas and so I feel justified in assuming mutual respect for our doctrinal differences is still a hallmark of Judaism in the 21st century”.

Maybe Judaism has accommodated various and opposing Jewish ideas. But Ken, the problem is that your ideas are not Jewish. And no, they are not mutually respected when they pollute the pages of the Maccabean masquerading as Jewish expression. Here are some of the supposed “facts of Jewish history” that Ken asks us to respect:
[My apologies, Apikorsus deleted –PS]
…The irony of some of the text about the history of Moses being sourced from Midrash, which the author probably both does not realise or does not believe in, is amusing in itself. But why should we have to put up with this continual insult of the Jewish faith? SNIP Once again, shame on the Maccabean for choosing to insult the Jewish community of Perth, and shame on Ken Arkwright for writing such provocative and uninspiring revisionist bulldust. If you are a reader of the Maccabean and agree that this content in our paper is an intolerable insult, please make sure to make the editor aware of your dissatisfaction.

Predictably Pathetic

How predictable! During this time of nine days when Jews should be unified in understanding the implications of the Temple’s destruction that the Maccabean has to publish a column that totally discredits all that the Beit Hamikdash stood for. How predictable! That this blog will pick up the matter and profile the outrageous insult that has once again been hurled at the Perth Jewish people through the very pages of their own newspaper. If you look closely at the reform liturgy, especially the German prayer books of the early 20th century, you will see that references to Jerusalem, the Temple Service (avodah) and a return to Zion were removed. Under this movement a German identity could not be transposed with a Zionist identity. The yearning of our people for the service of the Beit Hamikdash was our desire for 2000 years. The reformist Jews disowned this heritage, and to this day cannot reconcile their intellectual relationship with Jewish spirituality with the practicalities of halachic observance.But wait, there’s more! In order to satisfy their own shortcomings, they need to discredit those who still believe in the concept of the ingathering of exiles and the redemption of the Jewish people. They have to selectively misrepresent passages of Tanach without the aid of interpretive sources, and then have the chutzpah to present so-called Rabbinic contradictions from the Talmud as proof, even though they reject the virtues of Torah Shebalpeh in the first place. SNIP

The article says it all when it quotes that “Progressive Judaism never considered the Temple on Zion as the focal point for Jewish worship.” Perhaps the best compatible quote to accompany this statement is from Charles Golding who writes “The halachah is what it’s all about. Make no mistake: Reform, progressive, Conservative, Masorti, reconstructionist these man-made groups operate a pick-and-mix style halachah more akin to ”Jewish-style” food: it looks and smells like the real thing, but it isn’t. Without the halachah, it is impossible to be Jewish.”

I will spend the 9th day of Av, alongside millions of Jews around the world, contemplating the reasons why the Jewish people endure exile. I will lament over the words of the prophets, and reaffirm the centrality of the avodat Beit Hamikdash to the fulfillment of Jewish ideals, Sadly, there will be Jews in Perth who will at the same time be sitting outside with their bagels, reading the Maccabean, and completely missing the meaning of what it means to be Jewish. SNIP

On it goes

Let’s lay into the Maccabean again for printing another grossly offensive article to followers of Judaism. It gives us no pleasure to continue to badger this disgraceful display of destructive invective, but the Maccabean must be held to account for its persistence in being an anti-Jewish publication.

We can put on record that the readership of this blog exceeds the readership of the Maccabean, but we much prefer to be a blog, not a competitive form of media, nor a Maccabean watchdog. Nothing would be better for us than opening a Perth Jewish newspaper each week and reading interesting news about our community, but sadly it all gets spoilt by the insulting and inaccurate nonsense written by Ken Arkwright.

There are so many good things about this community, but the Maccabean refers to draw on the negative misrepresentation of Judaism instead.This week the article contains a subheading ”Torah spelling errors”. The reference to the Tettragrammaton, when pronounced Yud K Vav K, is described in the article as a nonsensical word. In fact the word is so holy to Jews that it is only pronounced in the Beit Hamikdash. The word is also related to the word Havayah, which means existance. The word says “Hashem is”. The Maccabean takes the word and removes everything G-dly from its meaning. SNIP

Shame on the publishers of the Maccabean for yet again delivering anti-Jewish literature into the mailboxes of Jewish homes in our city.

Responses to “On it goes”
Yisro Says: The issue is that many people have written in to the Maccabean on their persistent publication of this particular column, and the response has always been that they don’t find it a problem and won’t be changing anything. The key issue here is they present to a largely uneducated population Mr Arkwright’s fiction as fact. The average reader of the Maccabean is potentially going to come away viewing Judaism through Mr Arkwright’s eyes - and that’s a very sad sight to see, I’m sure. Ken presents Judaism as a fictious, hypocritical, non-sensical joke. A man-made concept which is largely borrowed from other religions, in particular Christianity (which he seems to hold in higher regard), despite the fact that Christianity came long after Judaism. Readers who view the Maccabean and a source of genuine information are (not counting their own naivety and lack of critical thinking) being done a massive disservice. If they would only present the column as “a Reform Judaism Opinion” or some other more appropriately named column (perhaps “I’m Insecure So I Attack Other’s Belief’s”), the complaints would stop. However they refuse to take even this minor “editorial” advice. Perhaps a real issue is that while the Maccabean may be an important news publication for Perth’s Jewry, it is largely seen as the mouthpiece of the Reform and secular communities. The Orthodox community feels maligned and marginalised by this publication and in reality, it serves to deepen divides, not bridge them.

Gedalia Says: ….This is not a campaign to shut down Ken. It is a campaign to tone down the rhetoric, and to stop the author’s deeply entrenched hatred for Orthodoxy seeping into what is presented as scholarly research. If I was to write an article that delegitimised reform, I suspect the Maccabean would not publish it. In fact, I hope they would not. However it has to work both ways. What if I was to write an article that said that all Jews have to accept Jesus as the Messiah? Would the Maccabean consider that appropriate for its readers? If not, then why is it acceptable to write that the Tetragrammon is nonsensical, the Torah is not Divine, that Judaism accepts virgin birth, or that the Ten Commandments demonstrate hypocrisy? The truth is that most Maccabean readers are so ignorant of their own tradition and religious dictum that they are not even aware of the insidious nature of these articles. Which is quite sad, because it’s not always that subtle. Do not mistake this anger from amongst the Orthodox as either intolerance or an issue of perspective vs free speech. It’s about respect for Jewish values, and the limitations of how far an interpretation can carry before it loses all semblance as a credible position expressed in the name of Judaism...

Abomination

How much longer do we have to put up with our local Jewish newspaper discrediting itself and the community, by publishing material that is beyond the bounds of normative Jewish interpretation, insulting to intelligent readers, and offensive to believing Jews? The assertion that the message of the book of Ruth is that we should embrace the concept of mixed marriages is simply absurd. The inference that assimilation should be fostered is destructive. It is entirely relevant that Ruth is the descendent of a Moabite (a nation precluded from Jewish destiny) and the progenitor of the Messianic era, but for the exact opposite reasons as the ones suggested in the Maccabean. Ruth represents one of the most awesome twists in human history, teaching us the miracle of divine intervention. Ruth allows us to understand that if we show faith, despite the most seemingly infallible challenges in the world, then reward will come. It is not a theological “problem” that Ruth was a convert, as the Maccabean would have us believe. It is precisely the point. Ruth is symbolic of Jewish loyalty to Torah, paradoxical to the suggestion that she represents the idea it should be disbanded. Ruth secured her place in Jewish destiny by saying “Wherever you go I will go; wherever you lodge I will lodge. Your nation is my nation; and your G-d is my G-d.” This is the true way to react positively to changes in society. The alternative is to water-down, reinterpret, change, bastardise, and misrepresent Jewish ideas that have remained true and authentic for 4000 years. The Maccabean article talks in general terms about all religions, and advocates that religion needs to respond to changes in societal values. That response, writes the pages of the Maccabean, should be to sanction and encourage assimilation, homosexuality, or anything else that is desired in the form of a human relationship. Once again, the Maccabean has shamed its readership and contributed towards the destruction of Jewish identity in Perth.

Taking Stock

January 2009 was an interesting month for the Jewgle Perth blog. We had 5,000 different users view our site, with around 50,000 hits. By comparison, during 2008 we welcomed 30,000 people to this blog who took the time to read through our pages some 200,000 times. The surge of traffic in January was no doubt due to Israel’s Gaza incursion, and the material we published to advocate for the sad but necessary action that the Government of Israel needed to take for the sake of its citizen’s security. Thank you to all of those people who have viewed our blog, engaged in debate, and sent in feedback. These figures go to show just how more effective the online media is by comparison to the print media in this day and age. It is timely to remind our readers, many of you regular readers, and most of you local to Perth, why this blog was first established.

You can read more in the about us here http://www.jewgleperth.com/?page_id=2 , but essentially we were established to provide a medium for profiling and discussing local Jewish issues from an Orthodox perspective. We started this blog when, some years back, we were concerned that not all of the important issues were being raised, and that neither the local or national Jewish newspapers were always appropriately ‘representing’ Jewish values. On occasions the Jewish media went as far as presenting our community with content that is the very antithesis of traditional Jewish values (masked as Jewish commentary) which undermines the halachic integrity that has sustained Jewish communal life for millennia. All of this has been permitted in the supposed name of plurality, through the mechanism of intellectual dishonesty. The impact of this destruction of communal unity and dilution of Judaic interpretation is more destructive than its publishers could imagine, and represents a blight and an embarrassment to the Jews of our generation. Sadly this remains the case today. We therefore consider that one of the functions of this blog is to put forward a critical (often contrary) position that keeps our communal discussions focused on both substance and accuracy where we believe that a stand needs to be taken. SNIP.

The Jewgle blog will continue to be an advocate of traditional Jewish thought, and sadly but not apologetically, we often have to be outspoken in order to achieve this.

Meshumad dies

Melbourne rabbi who became Christian dies

PETER KOHN AJN

HAROLD Vallins, a Melbourne rabbi who converted to Christianity after forming a breakaway congregation in the 1990s, died suddenly earlier this month.

Vallins declared himself a Christian some years after founding a small Jewish congregation in Gardenvale, following an acrimonious split with Bentleigh Progressive Synagogue (BPS) in 1991.

British-born Vallins, an atheist in his youth, said he took up rabbinical studies at the Leo Baeck Theological College of Judaic Studies in London after a rabbi showed him the potential of Judaism. He became a rabbi himself in 1970.

Vallins arrived in Australia in 1981 with his wife Naomi to take up the pulpit at BPS, but tensions between him and the synagogue board led to a parting of the ways 10 years later, triggering a workplace dispute.

His departure from BPS aroused fierce criticism within the synagogue and shortly afterwards, a breakaway congregation, Beit Hatikvah, was founded, with Vallins as its rabbi. But some time later, Vallins, who was involved in interfaith work, stunned congregants by announcing he had converted to Christianity. He left Beit Hatikvah and the congregation was later dissolved.

Vallins attributed his conversion to a number of influences, including a close friendship with a local Church of Christ minister and a prayer session at a Christian conference he attended in Washington DC.

Not too long ago - a Jew who converted out of his faith was considered to be on the lowest rung of his people. He was a Meshumad, despised, cursed and loathed by all. As for a 'rabbi' 'shmadding' himself, that was something virtually unheard of. (Though we all have heard the infamous accursed Shabsi Zvi.)

But typically for the AJN, the death of such a traitor and defector from our faith - is worthy of a sympathetic report. Shame.

OTOH, there are those that claim that from the POV of Judaism, Vallins the Meshumad was no worse than Vallins the Reform clergyman (or actually even than the AJN). And they may well be 100% right. Think about it.