Posted on 12/25/2014 10:16:04 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A few weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed in The New York Observer entitled “B’nai Jeshurun: Do Jewish Lives Also Matter?” I noted that “high-profile Upper West Side Jewish temple B’nai Jeshurun led a protest after the tragic death of Eric Garner at the hands of the New York Police Department. Then, there was a pre-scheduled event at BJ honoring Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and the attendees included such luminaries as Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Congressman Jerry Nadler and others.” Multiple rabbis and liberal Jewish communal leaders were arrested in acts of civil disobedience during that protest. In times of injustice, rabbis and leaders should speak out.
I took (and take) issue with the fact that leaders of B’nai Jeshurun (and similar minded liberal organizations) rally quickly for perceived and real injustices when it comes to every other group – as long as they are not Jewish or pro-Israel causes. They are also quiet when it comes to causes that they consider to be conservative or right-leaning, which include traditional Judaism, Israel, and now, police officers (including those who are not white).
No protest marches or acts of civil disobedience have come from these uber-liberals defending the police officers who protect New York. Unsurprisingly, this community has been silent in the aftermath of the murders of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. These two men, one Asian and one Latino, were patrolling Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn when a man executed them as they sat in their police car. The killer had posted in his social media pages that he was avenging Eric Garner. Supporting police officers should not be a political decision.
On the other hand, Rabbi Avi Weiss held a prayer vigil and memorial for the cops outside of his synagogue’s local police precinct on Monday morning. As Weiss noted, “In this time of tragic loss for the NYPD and all New Yorkers, we stand here with you. You, the New York Police Department, are New York City’s finest – a racially diverse force. Every day, you risk your lives for us. You protect our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our institutions, our businesses, our homes – for this and much more we are eternally grateful. With great empathy we declare: your pain is our pain, your suffering is our suffering.” How right he is.
If only more people of all religions and beliefs would stand up in support of decency – at all times –for all people in need. Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe columnist has criticized “warped Jewish liberals” on multiple occasions, saying “This liberalism isn’t rational. It isn’t sensible. It certainly isn’t good for the Jews.”
Rabbi Hillel famously asked, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And, if I care only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?”
Liberal? Decency? The words you speak are strange to me. Are these not separate things entire?
Agreed. The title is oxymoronic.
The Jewish people are attempting to do as well for themselves as they can for now without acknowledging the need of a Savior. It is by the grace of God that they continue. There is a plan and place in the future for them, and if they vanish the whole Christian bible has been wrong.
Without the Savior in their view, their focus is at best imperfect. I keep on saying, until I am blue in the face, that liberalism is quite often an attempt to do the love aspect of Christianity but without the power and authority of Christ. It will never work because it is as fallen as the rest of humanity. Even “conservatism” had better watch itself lest it forget God, begin riding on pride instead, and find in itself its own nemesis.
The answer is in the question. Leberals are liberals first. The leftist marxist utopian revolution is the number one priority. EVERYTHING is used for the liberal goals or discarded and destroyed.
Correct. For many Jews, certainly not all, liberalism is their golden calf.
beat me to it! A reminder folks...there is no such thing as a good muzzie, child molester or a registered Democrat....
“You, the New York Police Department, are New York City’s finest – a racially diverse force...”
Yeah, I have a comment. What the f*** difference does it make that NYPD is “a racially diverse force”? How fine or not fine NYPD is, and “diversity”, have nothing to do with each other.
Classical liberalism is all about decency. The people who call themselves “liberals” and “progressives” today are totalitarian clingers.
And according to Jewish law, women cannot be rabbis. So "rabbi" Sharon Kleinbaum is as much of a rabbi as the cat currently circling my ankles in search of a snack. The very fact that she calls herself a rabbi should be a LOUD clarion call that she is not acting within the confines of Jewish law and therefore should not be regarded as representing Jewish ANYTHING. She is playing fast and loose with Jewish law, making it up as she goes along.
Those named in this article as being followers of hers are similarly playing fast and loose with civil laws. Randi Weingarten is a self-serving thief who used her leadership (oh, such leadership...right into the abyss) of the UFT to catapult herself into a much higher-paying job allowing her to screw ever so many more teachers. Her word is worth about what lies in my cat's litterbox, so it is entirely fitting that she would also follow the word of a fake rabbi. Oh, and she's a well-known lesbian, which is WAY outside the confines of Jewish law. Don't count her among any "Jewish voices", for so many reasons including that.
Jerrold Nadler is one of the farthest left of the left. So it would logically follow that he would sign up for anything labeled "leftist" without even looking up. I'd be willing to bet that he would soundly flunk any quiz on basic Jewish concepts, except perhaps "What is a bagel?". Therefore, it is ludicrous to count Nadler as representing Jewish anything as well.
I have come to the uneasy conclusion that the worse you treat Jews, the more they pity you.
It’s the Upper West Side. Sickest group in NYC. And don’t think they don’t call the cops on a regular basis when something as mundane as a stopped-up sink sends them into melt-down.
How DARE you bequeath upon yourself the authority to state that "their focus is at best imperfect" and that is due to the absence of YOUR god in their lives? Similarly, my religion does not need Allah, Zeus, Shango, Quetzalcoatl, or Vishnu.
Rabbi Shimon HaTzeddik ("Simon the Righteous") was the High Priest in the early Second Temple period. He lived at the end of the period of the Knesset Hagedola ("Great Assembly"). In the Talmud, in the tractate Pirkei Avos ("The Ethics of the Fathers") , he says that "The world is based upon three things: on Torah, on service [of G-d], and on acts of kindness." This is one of the best-known and most-quoted passages of Torah.
The constant exhortation to Jews since infancy to do kindness has to have, as we say in biology, a "target organ". This is defined as "a tissue or organ upon which a hormone exerts its action". In other words, there is specific tissue which responds to the actions of a hormone, and the presence of the hormone has no effect on other types of tissues. If the Jew in question has been deprived of a Torah education, they have not been schooled in appropriate target organs for the kindness they've been bred for, for countless generations. Thus they take up with non-Jewish causes in a sad attempt to take out their urge to do "kindness". There is nothing wrong with their wanting to "do good"; it's what they choose to apply their energies to which is the question.
The answer is to have a concerted effort to make sure more Jewish children have an appropriate Torah education so that they will channel their prodigious energies into the causes the Torah intended them to be directed toward instead of these poor secular substitutes. Certainly not the injection of elements of other religions into a religion which is perfect just the way it is.
I would not dare to bequeath it upon myself, but you know in your heart of hearts that is a begged question on your part!
Jesus, incarnated God, always WAS part of the Lord’s plan from the word Go and was told about amply in the oracles of God which the Jews were given as stewards of. Your modern take is NOT the Lord’s intent.
Your scolding just shoots right over me, harmlessly.
The meaning of Jeshurun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeshurun
Jeshurun in the Hebrew Bible, is a poetic name for Israel, derived from a root word meaning upright, just or straight. Jeshurun appears four times in the Hebrew Bible — three times in Deuteronomy and once in Isaiah. It can mean the people of Israel (Deut. 32:15; 33:26), the Land of Israel (Deut. 33:5;), or the Patriarch Jacob (whom an Angel renamed Israel in Genesis 32:29):
‘But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick’[1]
‘Moses commanded a law for us, a heritage of the congregation of Jacob. He was King in Jeshurun, when the leaders of the people were gathered, all the tribes of Israel together’.[2]
‘There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides the heavens to help you’.[3]
‘Fear not, O Jacob My servant, and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen’. (Isa. 44:2).
In the Midrash, Rabbi Berekiah in the name of Rabbi Simon interpreted Jeshurun to mean the Patriarch Israel. (Genesis Rabbah 77:1.)
The word ‘Jeshurun’ may have a relationship to the same root as the Hebrew word “upright,” “yesharim”. Numbers appears to use the word “upright,” “yesharim,” as a play on the word “Jeshurun” to refer to the people of Israel. (Num. 23:10.) Similarly, Rabbi Berekiah in the name of Rabbi Judah b. Rabbi Simon interpreted Jeshurun to mean “the noblest and best among you.” (Genesis Rabbah 77:1.)
Rabbi Aha bar Jacob told that the breastplate of the High Priest (or Kohen Gadol) contained the words “The tribes of Jeshurun,” thus supplying the otherwise missing Hebrew letter tet in the word “tribes.” (Babylonian Talmud Yoma 73b; see also Exodus Rabbah 38:9.)
In the Zohar, Rabbi Hiya explains that “Jeshurun suggests the word shur [row, side] and indicates that he [Jacob] has his rank on this side and on the other.” (Zohar 1:177b.)
In the Chassidic discourses of the Baal Shem Tov and his students, it is suggested that the word Yeshurun comes from the root “shir”, meaning song or ring, suggesting the circular nature of melodies, i.e. that Jacob’s descendants will sing mystical melodies in the coming redemption.
References
Deut 32:15
Deut 33:4-5
Deut 33:26
Sons of Jeshurun.
Kind of an odd name to take. Mystical meaning or no. Sounds more like it is about being cool than about devotion to the Lord.
“We already have a Savior, and His name is G-d. Not JC, not Buddha, not anyone else.”
Jesus is God - and thank Him so many Jews believed Him. And now it is happening again: some Jews are coming to believe in Christ.
The difference between classic vs. modern liberalism is embodied in what Isaiah Berlin described as negative vs. positive liberty. Negative liberty is the absence of constraints. Positive liberty is what the government gives you in order to enable equality. The latter concept is extremely flawed to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
The neurotic habit of hyphenating God is curious. It stemmed from an anxious overinterpretation of a command not to erase God’s name — and the conclusion was made that if it is not written then it cannot be erased... and it is used even in ephemeral media. (Why don’t they pray to “Gee dash Dee” in that case? Surely the sound will die out and they would not want to “sin” thereby.)
But this part of the command when seen in the fuller context is litotes. Like calling something good by saying it is not bad. The idea is to expand the mention of the Lord everywhere possible. If it is expanding then by intention is is not “being erased.”
Take your misguided attempt at proselytizing to the religion forum, where maybe someone would halfways care. If you had to depend on that to make a living, you'd surely starve.
I've seen enough evil committed in the name of YOUR god against Jews and that tells me all I have to know. I've experienced plenty of it in my own life. Nothing says "I love you" like an act of antisemitism.
No sale, Fuller Brush Man. Who is so insecure that he has to peddle his religion door to door.
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