Blimey Cor, Reform Rabbi Jonathan Romain Declares War on Jewish Education

Rosh Hashana is usually the time when Jews gather to repent and to plan for ways to do good next year. But the way Satanist Churches have upside down crosses and black masses that are said backward, Reform take everything Judaism does and run it through backward. While Rabbis at Jewish synagogues were probably thinking of how to get more children involved in Jewish education, Rabbi Jonathan Romain of the Maidenhead Synagogue did his own Black Mass and came on a Rosh Hashana (or is that Ahanhsah Hsor) commitment to waging a relentless war on Jewish education.

On Monday the Jewish New Year begins. Unlike the secular new year — largely a boisterous time characterised by revelry and champagne — Rosh Hashannah is a very serious and sober occasion. Jews spend the day in synagogue, even the lapsed ones who do not normally attend services. We reflect on our conduct during the past 12 months and make resolutions to repeat the good things we did, remedy the hurts we caused and set goals for the coming year. Here lies my problem. My resolution this year may make sense to some, but will be seen as heresy to others, especially fellow rabbis (and many vicars and imams). I resolve to speak out against faith schools,

Isn’t that wonderful. It’s about time a Rabbi had the courage to condemn Jewish education and call for tearing down the Yeshivas. Johnny Romain (Lettuce?) may go down as the greatest Jewish thinker since that guy who sacrificed a pig on the altar in the temple 2000 years ago or so.

The problem with faith schools is not their purpose but their consequences. They may be designed to inculcate religious values, but they result in religious ghettos, which can destabilise the social health of the country at large. Even those faith schools that genuinely try to reach out to the wider community and teach good citizenship still segregate Jewish, Muslim or Catholic children from each other and bring them up in what amounts to an educational apartheid system.

Rabbit Jonathan Romain has got a point. No denying that. But his “modest proposal” doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Why draw the line at faith school apartheid, when house of worship apartheid goes on. Why should we segregate Jews, Muslims and Catholics in Synagogue Apartheid. We all know having different religions is socially destabilizing, it creates ghettos, perpetuates divisions and makes Jeebus cry. I know, he told me so personally while I was studying a picture of his mother hugging Michael Jackson on a tree stump!

Eliminating Faith Schools doesn’t go nearly far enough. We have to work harder to eliminate religious differences than simply denying our children a Jewish education. No, we have to tear down Synagogue Apartheid too. Down with the Yeshiva, Down with the Synagogue, Down with Judaism. Let’s all be one religion. Skin color will still be a problem, but we can all dye our faces purple.

Also no more single sex bathrooms. Bathroom Apartheid must end. Because there’s no such thing as legitimate separations, are there. Anything separate is apartheid. Down with Apartheid!

Of course we’re going to have to get rid of Rabbis too. We’ll need a new title that encompasses a universal religious leader, with Rabbi Jonathan Romain as our model. How about Spiritual Wanker of No Faith?

I want my children to sit next to a Sikh in class, play football in the break with a Methodist, do homework with a Hindu and walk to the bus stop with a Muslim before returning to their Jewish home.

I’ve kept my mouth shut before, but now Rabbi Jonathan Romain is just shamelessly plagiarizing Dr. Doolittle

If I could talk to the Methodist, and maybe a Sikh or two
and curse at him in fluent Hindu
Share a dirty joke with a Buddhist, Kick a football at a Muslim
Before returning to our intermarried, atheist, completely secular, don’t ask us about our religion… Jewish home!

Hey kids, for 50 points, can anyone tell me why Reform Judaism is dying out? Can’t be the lack of a Jewish education. Oh wait.

I’m not sure if watching the Reform post-Judaism movement commit suicide in such a public way is sad or funny. Sadly it’s probably a little of both. For a while now the movement has talked about embracing Jewish education. Oops apparently that’s Apartheid.

However good some faith schools are individually, collectively they are a recipe for social disaster. Leaders of all faiths should put aside religious self-interest and make national cohesion a higher priority. At the same time, MPs who can see political advantage in supporting local sectarian demands should have the courage to ignore calls for religious preferences and work towards the greater good of communal integration.

Assimilation today! Assimilation tomorrow! Assimilation forever! I recommend that Johnny Lettuce begin his “Tear down the Schools” crusade with the Muslims. Then after they fish all 14 pieces of him out of the river, we can bury him in 14 different religious cemeteries to accommodate his commitment to ecumenism uber alles.

And in case you’re wondering, Rabbi Jonathan Romain’s Saturnalia resolution next year will to speak out against Faith Synagogues.

Update: Rabbi Romain is a member of ACCORD, a group created by a member of the Anti-Religious British Humanist Association (atheist), which campaigns against religious schools.

The goal is to destroy religious education.

ACCORD calls for schools with mandatory infterfaith student bodies and staff and to…

“Follow an objective, fair and balanced syllabus for education about religious and non-religious beliefs – whether determined by their local authority or by any future national syllabus or curriculum for RE”

So Rabbi Lettucehead’s fun version of Judaism would be taught by whatever the British government decides is a “fair and balanced” approach to balancing Judaism and every other religion, and atheism too.

And of course nothing as dirty and ugly as prayers

“Provide their pupils with inclusive, inspiring and stimulating assemblies in place of compulsory acts of worship.”

So yes this is exactly about destroying religious education backed by the rhyme scheme of Dr. Doolitle.

It’s possible for children to learn to coexist with others, without backing a heavy handed government scheme to enforce its version of education, while banning all others.

And now let’s look at the membership of ACCORD

There’s the The British Humanist Association, The Campaign for State Education, The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and The Socialist Education Association.

They seem to have left out Joseph Stalin, but that’s about it.

Orthomom Denounces Rabbi for Criticizing Haman

Poor Orthomom. She came to Shul to find out who on her Five Towns block bought a Lexus this week (Oh, wow he got a promotion. I didn’t hear about that. Yistabach Malkeinu. Calf leather cushions???)

but instead of giving a vague speech about how we need to be nice to each other that Orthomom and her friends could talk over as usual (so his son just got accepted to Harvard? What specialty is he going into. Remind me after davening to get the address of Dr. Kupfer over there and he can talk to the admissions office), the Rabbi actually tried to do something meaningful and warned the congregation about Haman, also known as Barack Hussein Obama

“Vayovoi Haman, Vayovoi Barack Hussein Obama,” Orthomom sits smiling and chatting about next week’s weather when suddenly the Rabbi proclaims, “Vayovoi Haman” and she sits up frowning. “This will never do,” she thinks.

Haman is here but all Orthomom wants is for the Rabbi to shut up about it and stop making a fuss. After all everyone knows it’s all just a smear campaign. Hitler and Stalin are just nationalists. Arafat has learned his lesson. Ahmadinejad is just a clown. Obama is pro-Israel. So let’s be good liberals and sit in our pews and vote down the party line and stop shouting, “Vayovoi Haman” especially in Shul, which has no place for outrage or for saving Jewish lives. Let’s read about who had a Bar Mitzvah this week and let millions burn in flame again. Let them all burn but let us never raise our voices and shout, “Vayovoi Obama”

Too many liberal Jews sit around like the Jews at Ahasveirosch’s feast, downing their glasses, drinking more and more until they’re drunk out of their minds and there are few Mordechais to slap them across their fat faces and tell them, “WAKE UP, WAKE FROM YOUR SLUMBER BECAUSE MURDER IS HERE, DEATH IS HERE, THE HOLOCAUST IS HERE AGAIN.”

Yes they read about Iran getting the bomb and they got an email forwarded about how Obama is friendly with radical Muslims but it goes in one ear and out the other. The really important things to soulless liberals like Orthomom, to lukewarm Jews like her, are school boards and committee meetings. In her universe Rabbis don’t denounce evil, they denounce vague bad things and then shake everyone’s hand and go home.

Blow ye the horn in Zion, is not for such people. These were the same fat self-satisfied soulless liberals like Orthomom who sat smugly in their pews while six million burned to ash and would not tolerate a Rabbi who criticized Saint FDR. Now they will not tolerate a Rabbi who will criticize Saint Obama. It interferes with their chatting, with their fat self-satisfied lives.

(So who do you think will run for the board this year? Really? Are you sure about this, after that whole scandal with the divorce and everything? That’s so interesting. Tell me more.)

If there is one thing that really outrages such as Orthomom, it is not people who kill Jews or plot to kill Jews, it is Jews who get too worked up about it. Angry Jews, frustrated Jews, dissatisfied Jews. Jews who get up to the Bima and instead of reading the wedding announcements, shout, “Vayovoi Haman. Vayovoi Obama.”

“Shhhh,” the Orthomoms of the upscale liberal Jewish communities reply, “stop making such a ruckus. You don’t have all the facts and you’re interrupting our conversation. Go back to talking about being kind to others or Lashon Hara or something we can all pretend to listen to while we talk among ourselves.

“Stop shouting Vayovoi Haman because shouting Vayovoi Haman is for small children. Adults aren’t meant to do it. Adults have more important things to discuss, like who’s running for the board and who bought a new Lexus and whose son got divorced and whose son got accepted into Harvard. We’re having a good time feasting at the Democratic Party’s feast. We like our suburbs and our cars and yes Israel is important and Jewish lives are maybe important but not really, not to us. We are independent people with our own priorities and we don’t like to hear someone shouting ‘Vayovoi Haman’, it perturbs us.

“So go away and come back when Jews are actually dying. Well more so than right now. Not by the singles or the dozens or even the hundreds. Maybe by the thousands or the tens of thousands or the hundreds of thousands. Then we’ll listen. Maybe.”

(Did you hear about that latest divorce? They seemed so happy together. She worked at NYU. No kidding? He had a great career. I wonder why they couldn’t make it. I just don’t know.)

Vayovoi Obama. Vayovoi Haman.

Hechsher Tzedek: What a Scam!

I’m not a conservative and I’m not a liberal. I’m just a Jew and I get mad as hell when liberals and conservatives try repackaging their politics as Judaism. I’m mad when Rabbi Avigdor Miller or Rabbi Daniel Lapin did/do it. I’m mad when Rabbi Eric Yoffe or Rabbi Joshua Hammerman does it. It’s obscene and it’s a scam. Vote for whoever you want but don’t come back from the Republican or Democratic conventions trying to claim that your politics should be our religion. It’s not. Not even if you’re a Rabbi.

Don’t try and repackage the agenda of the Republican Party as Judeo-Christian Values. Don’t try and repackage the agenda of the Democratic Party as Prophetic Values. It’s a scam. And Hechsher Tzedek is a scam and will always be a scam no matter how many quotes its supporters drag out of context to try and promote it. It’s bad enough that Reform Judaism is indistinguishable from the Democratic Party. It’s bad enough that Rabbis have been turned into canvassers. Leave our food alone.

You know when anything gets too big, some other guys are gonna come along and try to grab a piece of the action. Kosher has been getting too big lately. Too popular. It was bound to happen. Now how do you grab a piece of the Kashrus action? You create a Liberal Hashgacha that has squat to do with Kosher and is all about stamping a union label on food disguised as a Hashgacha. Throw out all the euphemisms and that’s what the Hechsher Tzedek scam is all about.

Enough people have called the Hasgacha business a shakedown but Hechsher Tzedek adds a new layer to the shakedown. Forget about plants spending money on just paying the Rabbis and organizations who certify the food. With the Hechsher Tzedek you’ll be paying for union labor and environmental certification organizations. And the same unions collect their dues from their members and pass them on as donations to politicians and other liberal organizations, like the same ones that will be promoting Hechsher Tzedek no doubt. You wash my hand and I wash yours. You impose Hechsher Tzedek on food, kick back the money to the unions at the expense of the consumers, the unions pass along the money to politicians who do them some favors and pass it along to some of the same liberal Jewish groups as a little thank you. The Liberal Rabbis pushing it get to pose smugly against a self-righteous canvas. And you’re paying for it all! Can you smell the Tzedek on that Hechsher Tzedek?

See for all the Jews out there who actually care about the Halacha of Kashrut there’s a whole bunch of Jewish activists who can stuff themselves with cheeseburgers but stay up nights worrying about cows farting a hole through the sky into space. These same guys behind Hechsher Tzedek could give a rat’s ass about the price of Kosher meat but they stay up nights terrified that the Mexican illegals driving the truck might actually get deported back to Mexico after they’re caught molesting a kid for the fourth time. (No human being is illegal my ass.)

Now I’m all for freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom of labeling. You want to create a certification program that says the meat has passed Al Gore’s high standards (except when it comes to the fish at his daughter’s wedding) and Michael Moore’s high union standards (except on his own shoots) be my freaking guest. Just don’t call it a Hechsher Tzedek and no disguising it as a Hechsher Tzedek doesn’t fool anyone except consumers. It’s a scam. And you bastards know its a scam. Kashrut has to do with the food. Hechsher Tzedek is focused on labor rights and environmental impact and all that other crap. It has to do with imposing an ideology on the food that is not Jewish. So stop trying to pass it off as Jewish.

Kashrut is about standards set down explicitly by G-d in the Torah. You don’t believe in the Torah, that’s your business, but we do. And the Torah tells us not to mix meat and milk. It tells us not to eat certain animals and birds and fish. It tells us which we may eat. That is Kashrut. The Hechsher Tzedek is not Kashrut. It is not Jewish.

You want to create a social values hasgacha, gey gezunter heit. You want to make sure that none of the food ever made a Guatemalan sad or made a penguin cry and has been approved by fifty thousand unions, go ahead. It’s your right. But don’t call it a Hechsher Tzedek, call it what it is. Approved By Al Gore.