New York Rabbi Finds Friends in Iran and Enemies at Home

It was a bizarre sight: a cadre of Orthodox Jews, with their distinctive hats, beards and sidelocks, standing alongside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran last month at a conference in Tehran debating the Holocaust.

Among them was Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman and assistant director of a small anti-Zionist group with a foothold in this town in Rockland County, home to one of the nation’s largest communities of Hasidic Jews.

Unlike Mr. Ahmadinejad and most of the others present, including the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Rabbi Weiss does not deny or question the Holocaust; his grandparents died at Auschwitz, as did several of his aunts and uncles, he said. What he and the Iranian president have in common, he explained, is their belief that the Holocaust has been exploited to justify the existence of Israel....

...Back home, Rabbi Weiss and the others were met with anger and scorn. Since their return, they have been ostracized by synagogues, denied service at kosher stores and vilified in Jewish discussion boards on the Web. Posters have surfaced in the Satmar Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn, calling the members of Neturei Karta “rebels” and “outcasts” and asking Orthodox Jews to “totally cut off ties with this gang.”

I think you might want to reread the Jerusalem Post: HERE. The quote from this article is: "...Plus, Jews - who voted overwhelmingly Democrat in the November election (87 percent, according to exit polls) - often see more eye-to-eye with Democratic members on domestic issues and have strong personal relationships with them, according to Ira Forman
1. Those are the questionable exit polls, I mentioned.
2. Most American Jews don't vote based on Israel or Jewish law. They vote based on secular liberal principles.

Speaking as a person who has worked and will work in campaigns I must say if you read: THISyou cannot be impressed with the very accurate forecast of the Jewish vote made a full month before the election.
The NJDC suggested that 67-75% of American Jews would vote democrat. I said that 70-75% did. There is no disagreement.
Of course, the NJDC did spend months lying about the goals of liberals and leftist Democrats to the Jewish community.

I suppose we can quibble over the number of Jewish voters who vote RAT but I can't imagine anyone not recognizing that Jews overwhelmingly vote RAT. This is important for two reasons--on international matters it weakens Israels case and on domestic matters it identifies at least nonobservant Jews with liberalism especially in respect to social issues.
I see political damage to Israel, but no damage for its case. At any rate, I don't have a problem with American Jews not making Israel a political priority. My problem is the reflexive, ahistorical, and anti-Jewish liberalism.

My final thought on this is how can such staunch defenders of Israel vote RAT full well knowing almost every Muslim does likewise.
Honestly, this has not occured to a lot of liberl New York Jews I spoke to. Many think that the Muslims vote Republican on social issues. They also are deluded enough to think that the Democrats care about terrorism.

Also, note that people like George Soros who wish to see the right of return and pre-1967 boundares and are willing to spend 200 million to defeat us are also members of the RAT party.
And the Hungarian-proclaimed non-Jew and former Arrow Cross Youth, who spend 1943-44 stealing Jewish property, now pretends to be Jewish and has spend millions to create more leftist-Jewish groups trying to destroy Israel and America.

The hard Talmudic line was condemning Hassidic Jews as well.

The major causes for the philosophic rejection of Hassidism have all been erased in time. There is little difference in the observance or study of Torah between observant Jews these days. If you were to ask your Polish-Jewish friends why they have such opinions, they probably could not tell you. Much of the methods of outreach, discourse, and prayere in the Hassidic movement are emulated by those same same Polish Jews. There is much written about this.

1. What exactly was this philosophical or theological difference?

It is a long answer but in brief: a Rabbinical luminary (the Baal Shem Tov) emerged that espoused a number of different approaches to general outlook, prayer, and the offering of certain teachings previously hidden from public discourse.

A few of the differences in general outlook:
* The return of the asking for the coming of "Moshiach" (the ultimate redemption), which was banned from prayer after the Shabatai Tzvi debacle.
* The public teachings of certain knowledge from Jewish Mysticism to encourage Jews to return to their faith
* The encouragement for the non-observant to take on some observance of the commandments, even when all are not observed.

There is much more, but the fight between the opponants and the Hassidim was an angry and violent one. The opponants' leaders demanded excomunication for all Hassidic Jews and attacked them visciously. This includes the "informing" on adherents and leaders so that the Russians and later the communists would imprison them in Siberian labor camps or prisons for torture and death. While the physical attacks have ended, old predjudice remains.

2. What is the position of NK toward Hasidim today?

I don't believe that they have any position for or against Hassidism. They will argue that the great luminaries of the Hassidic movement supported their point of view entirely. Their mistake lies in the failure to complete the story. Once the Jews came to Israel in such large numbers, the Hassidic dynastic leaders openly supported the defense of the new population Jews living there, while still openly opposing a secular government. Never do the leaders of the Hassidic movement, with only one exception (Satmar), ever demand that Jews lay down their weapons and let their enemies take over.

Is it true that some elements derived or akin to Shabbataism were present in early Hasidism? If so, were they purged out later?

Shabbatai Tzvi was an anachronism. His failure led to so much disappointment that Jewish leaders felt they had to ignore basic tenets of faith that demand the calling for the coming of Moshiach. It is the Rambam that codified the call for Moshiach in the 13 principles of faith. It is a matter of Jewish law that the opponants of Hassidism themselves believe. The Hassidic movement merely returned the physical action of the call for Moshiach to its previous place in faith in defiance of those that tried to hide it.

This, as much as anything else, was a slap in the face to those Jews who revered those leaders. There were acrimonious debates and much strife. The NK's position on the modern state of Israel is looked as stupidity by the opponants AND the Hassidim. :)

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