Vox Day Reveals That He’s a Moron and that Condoleeza Rice is Jewish

From WorldNetDaily, home of all that’s wacky in Christian Dominionism, comes Vox Day, who after an accident with a government haircut became a libertarian. Vox Day proclaims that Ann Coulter is right. What else did you think he was gonna say?

Ann Coulter, being a Christian, understandably knows her Christian theology rather better than her interlocutor last week, a Jewish gentleman by the name of Donny Deutsch. Apparently Mr. Deutsch hasn’t paid much attention to a best-selling book that has been published a few times over the last few centuries,

Vox Day is confused. I think he means the unauthorized sequel to the bestselling book. With the Old Testament being kind of like Frank Herbert’s Dune and the New Testament being Brian Herbert’s Dune. I mean people buy Brian Herbert’s Dune novels mainly because Frank Herbert hasn’t written any in a while on account of being dead. Also they want to read more about sandworms even if the story doesn’t make sense any more. That’s your New Testament right there.

But the debate was never over Christian theology. It was over how you treat people of other religions and how rudely you can talk about them on national television. Christian theology concerns Christians only. How you treat other religions concerns everyone.

Given that Jesus Christ and all of the apostles were Jews before they were Christians, it shouldn’t exactly have surprised Deutsch or anyone else that Christians view Jews as pre-Christians, incomplete Christians, elder brothers in faith who are errantly awaiting a Messiah who has already come

Some Christians do, some don’t. There’s actually a diversity of theological opinion within Christianity on that. Luckily in between Ron Paul rallies, Vox Day didn’t get the chance to learn that. Maybe he should read more Brian Herbert.

In addition to the ineptness of his analogy, this would appear to be an extraordinarily silly demand, except for the fact that Vanity Fair has recently announced that a remarkable 51 percent of the Vanity Fair 100 Power List are Jewish in a country in which Jews make up approximately two percent of the population. Jews also make up seven percent of the current House of Representatives, 13 percent of the Senate, and, according to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of “The Israel Lobby,” roughly 100 percent of George W. Bush’s foreign policy advisers.

Also they control the earth from their underground base in the center of the planet. Thankfully though we have Vox Day to inform us that Condoleeza Rice is Jewish. I wouldn’t have known it by looking at her but luckily Ron Paul supporters and the mentally retarded have Vox Day to tell them these things. Also apparently Colin Powell was Jewish.

But here’s the funny thing. Evangelical Christians also exercise electoral power out of proportion to their numbers. So do Mormons and a bunch of other groups. Once you begin complaining about the Jews… well where does it end?

Now Ron Paul supporters exercise even more disproportionate influence online out of relation to their numbers. So really Vox Day is part of the smallest minority around.

as the Israel lobby’s petulant demand for a third Middle East war, this time in explicit defense of Israel rather than U.S. national security, already has the potential to severely divide America’s Jews from the rest of the country, Christians and nonChristians alike.

Yes because the Iranian advisors and weapons killing US Soldiers are in defense of Israel or something. Also when Iran chants Death to America, they really mean Life to America.

Given this irritating behavior, and the historical fact that Jews have worn out their welcome in literally dozens of countries over the centuries,

Jawohl Mein Herr.

it is the height of foolishness for a small number of misguided individuals to demand that 80 percent of the American population remain silent about the tenets of its religious faith.

Here we go again with a few million members of a particular Christian denomination claiming they’re 80 percent of the population. That actually tops Abe Foxman for arrogance.

Christians are dying for their faith in the Sudan, in North Korea, in China, Vietnam and Myanmar; they are not about to shut their mouths simply because a few Jews in the media disapprove of their beliefs.

They’re dying for their beliefs in Sudan and Vox Day is whining about his beliefs in Idaho

And I have more bad news. Miss Coulter only expressed a desire that Jews would recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah, but the truth is that Christians believe that one day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The only choice for you, me, Richard Deutsch and everyone else is whether to do it now, or do it later.

Actually the choice is whether to toss you a nickel now or keep walking and hope social services takes care of you.

But, until that day arrives, there is no reason why American Jews and American Christians should not get along in perfect amity.

Well yes except for the thing where all these black Jews keep telling Bush what to do. We can’t have that. Also they object when we say they’re heathen pagans and Hitler had the right idea about them after they “wore out their welcome” in Germany.

t is as absurd for Jews to hold modern Christians responsible for the Jews persecuted in medieval times as it was for those medieval Christians to have held those medieval Jews responsible for persecuting them in ancient times

Huh? Did they burn too close to the Christians and singe them maybe?

Despite its flaws, America has been one of the best friends the Jews have ever had. It would not only be a tragedy, it would be a stupid and wasteful one if Americans were provoked into developing the instinctive anti-semitism that currently pervades Europe, the Middle East and so much of the rest of the world.

In other words don’t piss us off with your Black Jewish control of the Presidency and your complaints about our evil talking blonde scarecrow or we’ll begin to hate you… which we already kinda do anyway.

Vox Day is a Christian libertarian opinion columnist. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and IGDA

And is retarded enough to brag about it. A Moron says what? I rest my case.

Lakewood NAACP: Shut the Hell Up

Last night at the Township Committee meeting there was a prayer service for the recovery of Mordechai Moskowitz and the arrest of the man who beat him nearly to death with a baseball bat

“We would’ve hoped that meetings like this would’ve made attacks like these impossible, but that proved not the case,” Rabbi Lee Paskind, a response team member, said. “In this case, it was an Orthodox person. It could’ve been an African American, a Latino or a white person. It simply doesn’t matter. As a citizen, they have the right of protection to live safely in our community.”

Yet James Waters, former head of the NAACP’s local chapter, criticized the team.
“I would’ve liked to see (the response team) give Jamarr Dickerson the same kind of consideration. When something bad happens to anybody we have to have the same vigilance, the same concerns and the same sympathy, because everybody’s equally important.”

This is why people hate the NAACP. Jamarr Dickerson had minor bruises. MINOR BRUISES. Rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz was nearly beaten to death. His face was an unrecognizable mess.

Jamar Dickerson was held down after trespassing on someone else’s property. He was not beaten. He had no actual injuries. Rabbi Mordechai Moskowitz was walking down the street when he was beaten over and over again with a baseball bat until he was a bloody mess. See the minor difference here James Waters?

This is why people hate the NAACP.

Some Lessons for the Jewish Press on Blogging

I don’t know whether to laugh or yawn at this point. Now Chumi Friedman has apparently unilaterally edited Elliot Resnick’s post in order to get across “The point he wanted to make” even as she deleted what he wrote in his own defense, calling it an administrative decision. I think this officially qualifies as a disaster in damage control.

Something to remember the next time the Jewish Press sneers at other newspapers. The Jewish Press wanted to get into blogging on the cheap, but if a newspaper runs a blog it had better do it professionally. The Elliot Resnick mess was unprofessional. Elliot Resnick slandered an entire Jewish community and Chumi Friedman made it worse with a clumsy coverup, lashing out at everyone for engaging in Lashon Hara and claiming that Elliot Resnick was only guilty of a poor choice of words.

Sorry but this is not a poor choice of words. “Unfortunately, some Jews, including — or perhaps especially Chassidic Jews, will make sure never to shake a woman’s hand and to always faithfully wear a black hat but lie (stretching the truth is perhaps a more delicate term) with astonishing some ease.”

Or as Chumi Friedman says, “The point he wanted to make was that not all, or most, or even many Chassidim or Chareidim (or Modern Orthodox Jews for that matter) are guilty of the behavior described in the post; however, it is not an uncommon occurrence in Orthodox communities.”

Nope, his point was that this is common among Chassidim. That was the whole thrust of his post. It was wrong halachically. It was wrong ethically and it was wrong journalistically. Just admit it and move on.

The Jewish Press Blog Tries to Play Cover Up for Elliot Resnick

“Being a Jew means that we don’t get to pick and choose which of these laws we follow. It means that we don’t get to set ethical standards – they are set for us.” Chumi Friedman on the Jewish Press blog writes in regard to the fallout from Elliot Resnick’s Chassidish Bashing blog post.

For Elliot Resnick and the Jewish Press blog though, apparently you do get to pick which laws to follow and Rechilut, Lashon Hara and Motzi Shem Ra aren’t on the list. Neither is journalism. They do get to set their own ethical standards.

Why is it that governments throughout the world seem to get a free pass from the UN and media, but Israel is constantly being accused of wrongdoing? Goy kadosh – more is expected of her as Jewish state.

Oh please Chumie stay away from political analysis, it’s not your field. The UN is dominated by Third World states, many of them Muslim or with large Muslim minorities. They don’t recognize Israel or Jews as a Goy Kadosh. They think they’re the Goy Kadosh. Heaven preserve us from political insights from frummies.

Elliot Resnick made some of these points in his posting last week. The nature of a blog is such that individual people have the right to express their opinions on a variety of topics – and you as the reader have a right to disagree with them.

So does that mean every viewpoint is represent on the Jewish Press blog or only those sanctioned by the management. If it’s the former than where are the Yesh Gvul voices. If it’s the latter, Chumie’s point just became irrelevant because Elliot Resnick’s views are sanctioned by the Jewish Press management.

Elliot’s right when he says that some people who wouldn’t think of touching a woman, who wouldn’t think of being mechalel Shabbos, who wouldn’t dream of eating non-kosher, wouldn’t think twice of cheating or lying or stretching the truth in a business deal or their personal lives.

Yes and some newspapers who wouldn’t think twice of running ads for pork will run posts full of lashon hara and motzi shem ra.

It is just a few short weeks since Rosh Hashanah – it behooves us to accept the mussar without shooting the messenger.

Not when the message consists of random and baseless bashing of entire communities based on one second hand incident and one miscommunication that demonstrates Elliot Resnick thinks that a Chassid who questions the honesty of the JTA proves that he’s a compulsive liar.

Elliot Resnick’s post was bigoted and stupid. It violated every basic rule of journalism but instead of disavowing it, the Jewish Press is wrongly and feebly trying to defend it. Do plenty of frum people have ethical problems? Sure. Everyone does. Does the Jewish Press Blog have ethical problems? Ding ding. They sure do.

Jewish Press/ Resnick: I Hate Stupid Haredi/Chassidish Bashing

Now reg readers if I’ve got any know I do my share of windmill tilting here taking on Haredi and Chassidish nonsense. I don’t spare no sacred cows because I only care about the truth. But what I can’t stand is this kind of stupid elitist bashing you see in MO circles.

Here’s the difference

Real criticism: The whole premise of Chassidism is grounded in creating separatism in Judaism

Stupid bashing: I once saw a Chassid go into a porn store. All these people are phonies and fakers and their shtreimels are just a disguise.

Now guess which category Elliot Resnick’s “Truth and Certain Jews” on the Jewish Press blog belongs to? Now I’m happy that the Jewish Press every now and then challenges conventional orthodoxy. I’m glad they publish Chananya Weissman of End the Madness, I’m less glad that they publish Marvin Shick’s tedious observations but I’m all for criticism of frum communities. But Elliot Resnick’s piece is stupid and bigoted.

Why? It uses the typical bigot’s tactic of condemning by example. It takes two supposed incidents involving Chassidim and uses that to paint a portrait of an entire community and that’s ignorant and dishonest. Let’s look at this.

“Why should they exaggerate?” I asked him, knowing that the JTA is a professional agency, not a propaganda operation.

It was to this question that I received his “Why shouldn’t they exaggerate” reply.

To be honest, his question rang so strange in my ears that I had a hard time formulating an answer. And then a few minutes after the conversation’s conclusion it came to me: Why shouldn’t they exaggerate? Because doing so is false!

This point is obvious of course. But not apparently to this ostensibly religious Jew. To him, the question wasn’t why someone should depart from the truth, but why one would ever tell the truth in the first place.

Hey Elliot, here’s a possibility you haven’t considered. Maybe, instead of being some sort of fundamentally dishonest individual, the Chassid just didn’t trust the JTA? I know Elliot that you probably get down on your knees and worship the JTA three times a week but most of us think it’s a shoddy and sloppy agency that slaps together stories with obvious mistakes and bias.

It’s a warped mind that takes someone’s statement that he distrusts an organization as proof that he’s incapable of not lying. If one of your buddies at a West Side Synagogue gave you that same shrug and dance about the Bush Administration, would you assume that he and everyone there are a bunch of ethically defective people who can’t tell lies from truth? No and the reason you wouldn’t is culture. And the reason you assumed the worst here, tossing Dan Le Kaf Zechus overboard is culture. And he’s made the classic bigot’s mistake of portraying another culture in the worst possible light.

Unfortunately, some Jews, including — or perhaps especially — Chassidic Jews, will make sure never to shake a woman’s hand and to always faithfully wear a black hat but lie (stretching the truth is perhaps a more delicate term) with astonishing ease. When one witnesses such behavior one wonders what makes these people so religious after all.

What a stupid question. What makes any of us religious? Is Elliot under the impression that being religious means being perfect? The same thing that makes Elliot religious, makes the lying Chassid religious. That Chassid stretches the truth in business, Elliot stretches it on the blog of the Jewish Press.

But what exactly is Elliot’s basis for claiming that Chassidim are more likely to be liars, zippo. So he’s got lying and motzi shem ra which puts him behind the hypothetical lying Chassid in the gehenom sweepstakes.

The impulse among many to come closer to God by becoming better Jews is laudable. However, these Jews and all Jews should attach greater importance to basic Biblical values and laws, such as the value of truth, than they do to ensuring that their tzitzis are clearly visible to all.

Yes they should. And perhaps Elliot Resnick should attach greater importance to such basic Biblical value and laws as Lashon Hara, Motzi Shem Ra, Rechilus and fun stuff like that. I mean it’s laudable that he has the impulse to come closer to G-d by calling Chassidim a bunch of dirty liars who steal other people’s yogurt but maybe he can learn some Chofetz Chaim now and then.

Unfortunately, the following story tells it all:

You just know with an opening like that, that what follows will be the Klansman’s equivalent of that black guy eating a stolen watermelon story or the illegal Mexican collecting welfare. Yes Elliot please tell us your anecdotal story that will reaffirm your prejudices. Please.

The next day, finally understanding the sad reality of present day Jews, he wrote the following: “Not chalav yisrael.” The milk was untouched.

Ha ha. No see get it. They care about Chalav Yisrael but not about stealing, cause they’re all thieves! Now let me tell the one about the negro who tried to cash a welfare check. Or how about the single Modern Orthodox guy who asked if his girlfriend could go the Mikvah. Let’s slander everyone based on some second hand milk stealing incident in the name of preaching morals to them. Why don’t we all spread some more sinas chinam so we can bring Moshiach in a thousand years or so.

Oh by the way, if that bottle of milk was at the Jewish Press offices all he had to do was write an RCA Hasgacha on it. Heh

Who’s Afraid of Orthodox Women’s Prayer Groups?

For quite a while now, the women’s prayer group debate has gone on and on, mainly with Rabbis writing psaks that have no actual halacha whatsoever to back them up really but like Rav Kook, are primarily concerned that women’s prayer groups are something foreign and that they uproot tradition and open the door to feminism.

The chief argument against women’s prayer groups is that they uproot tradition, the mesorah and der heilige mincha. To cite R. Gil Student’s piece,

R. Meiselman writes, “The fact that we have a mesora, a tradition from each previous generation, to praise and how to praise God, enables us to proceed. Halakha and tradition enable us to engage within prayer. The moment we deviate from these guidelines, our prayer loses its meaning, and more importantly, its justification.” He further writes, “In the area of the halakhot of prayer, minhag has greater power than in other areas of the halakha… For the Rav, minhag bet ha-keneset also had great significance…”

So you mean we can’t just decide to uproot minchag by innovating a new nusach. Which is why major portions of the Jewish world followed their mesorah and is davening Nusach Sefard and is following customs innovated by the Arizal or R. Chaim Vital? Oh wait, that was a giant splintering of minchag and mesorah. In fact we follow a whole load of minchagim that were the product of innovation in the last few centuries. We follow the Zohar which has no revealed mesorah.

Minchag Bet Ha Knesset? Please. Go to your average Chassidische Shteibel and you can see a whole bunch of new minchagim that completely splintered their mesorah.

Take a look at Machon Shilo’s Nusach Eretz Yisrael to see just how far we’ve left those halachic guidelines behind. Oh and remind me how many of us this sukkot slept in a sukkah, something that was viewed as mandatory in the time of the Mishna? Oh right, I forgot, our toesis get cold at night so we can toss Halacha out the door. But when a few women want to daven together, it’s suddenly the end of the freaking world!

Let’s face reality, this objection is completely hollow. Women’s prayer groups don’t innovate nusach and minchag. If they were men, there would be no issue here. If they were boys, there would be no issue here. But boys have the right of chinuch but women even lack that because children are seen to have a religious future while women have none.

The fact of the matter is that in your average shul women sit at the back of the bus, for all their torah tapes rhetoric, they are marginalized when it comes to davening. Is it so wrong for them to want to experience what it’s like being the focus of the davening, instead of the spectators on the outside?

Then there’s the debate over the motivation behind women’s prayer groups. No doubt some of those pushing the women’s prayer groups would like a lot of things that don’t jibe with Orthodoxy. Then again most don’t. And if the motivations of women who want to daven in prayer groups are to be held to account with the worst possible interpretation, then so should those men who reject prayer groups no matter how much they are compromised and conducted within the grounds of halacha.

The Frimers write, “[T]he women engaged in a women’s service were missing out on tefilla be-tsibbur, the recitation of various devarim she-bi-kdusha, and a proper, halakhic Torah reading-available to them only if they attended a regular minyan. Granted, women are exempt from the obligations of public prayer, but the Rav was deeply disturbed that women who had consciously chosen not to stay and pray at home, but rather to participate in a women’s tefilla group, were actively and deliberately opting for the inauthentic in place of the authentic.”

Similarly, R. Meiselman writes, “First and foremost, halakha simply does not allow one to opt for a secondary level of religious performance. We are absolutely obligated to pursue excellence in our divine worship. One who opts for mediocrity in his religious worship is not only a second class citizen, but also has violated basic precepts in Jewish law.”

I’ve seen this gem repeated over and over again a thousand times. Let’s pause to contemplate the absurdity here.

Halacha does not allow one to opt for a secondary level of religious performance… as applied to women who have no obligation in this case anyway and who are routinely kept away from prayers. If women have no such obligation, then imposing an obligation to pray with a men’s minyan is absurd. If women do have such an obligation, then doesn’t that justify Women’s prayer groups in the first place. You can’t toss women out the door and at the same time castigate them for not meeting the obligations they don’t have in the first place.

But first let’s contemplate of authentic and excellence in divine worship. Is it more authentic and more excellent to pray in a way that allows you to raise your voice and feel yourself as an active partner in prayer, rather than an unwanted spectator, muted behind a curtain? Is it more authentic to meet an obligation you don’t have anyway while diminishing the quality of your davening. Is that the best way to achieve excellence in divine worship?

Having denied women an equal part in davening, the argument is that separate but equal won’t fly either. It has to be segregation or it has to be nothing at all. Either stay home or stay behind the curtain. Is that really about concern with authentic divine worship or is that about control?

If women have no role in a men’s minyan and are expected to daven at home, then what is the real objection to their creation of a place where they can daven together?

The problem with control is that it’s elusive. The more you tighten your grip, the less control you really have. When you create a vacuum, something else replaces it. Take a look at Boro Park where some Chassidish groups have cut women out of much of Davening and then note how popular energy healing and similar practices are. Cut off women in Boro Park from Chumash and Tefilah and you get witchcraft, why be surprised over that. Cut off Modern Orthodox women and they’ll find other outlets, non-Jewish ones. Because much as many Rabbis fail to recognize it, there is a hole left in Orthodox Jewish women by alienating them from much of religious life. And that hole will be filled. One way or another.