Excited to share my first essay for
@tabletmag
.
In it, I expose the false dichotomy of either an inhumane & dehumanizing prison system that leads to more criminality versus the no consequences approach, then lay out the Jewish vision of rehabilitation.
The Twin Towers did not contain the headquarter of a terrorist group, as well as its entire command currently meeting, in a time of war.
Hope that helps.
Over 36 years, the IRA killed between 500-644 civilians.
In a single day, Hamas killed 695.
If Northern Ireland had been firing tens of thousands of rockets all over England then landed troops near Blackpool & perpetrated an October 7-style massacre, you’d have razed Belfast.
Are Muslims today legitimately not aware that they’ve built the two Mosques on the Temple Mount over the remnants of the Temples, and did so all over the country over any synagogue they could from the 7th Century invasion onwards?
What if a person with a Lebanese pager was juggling to entertain sick kids in a hospital and the explosion caused a rube goldberg series of events that propelled an oxygen tank in the anvil factory next door, causing one to fall on a box of orphaned handicapped homeless kittens?
This is what happens when you invent history.
Arabs from Judea & Samaria are horrified to find out that instead of proving the lies they’ve been told, DNA shows exactly who they are: the descendants of economic migrants who came between 1890-1930 from Syria, Egypt & Lebanon.
Can someone give me a valid reason why Jews shouldn't be allowed to build a synagogue or at least pray on the Temple Mount without disrupting anything that's not "Because it would make Muslims very angry?"
Can you imagine how emasculating it must be to simultaneously believe you’ve been chosen by Allah to conquer the entire world by sword or quran, disbelievers are to be slaves and pay a tax, and yet 15 million Jews are constantly triumphing over your alliance of 4.3 billion people
What’s happening in England is the perfect example of how Zionists manipulate the media to pin Christians and Muslims against each other.
Divide and conquer.
Apparently, being conclusively disproven once wasn't enough.
Another thread debunking the antisemitic fabricated/manipulated Talmud quotes from
@DanBilzerian
and
@Haqiqatjou
:
Muslim woman attacks Jewish man and steals his property, and while he is outraged, acts with restraint. All this while the world looks on and blames him due to their blatant antisemitism.
Perfect encapsulation indeed.
Preface: None of this is new; most of these fake quotes originate from a couple of antisemitic German books that are over a hundred years old and they've been debunked over and over in many places. Sadly, most of them are not so accessible so I'll go over them myself.
Since October 7th, I have come to a harsh realization, and it’s not that antisemitism has exploded.
I don’t believe there are more antisemites today than there were on October 6th. I believe they just feel that the time has come where it’s allowed for them to be public about it.
This is giving me a headache.
Not the antisemitism, but the sheer ignorance, misinformation and mispronunciation.
The only true thing she says is that she hasn’t done enough research on this or anything else.
A short thread debunking some of those mind-boggling ignorance:
Candace Owens goes on an endless rant about how the Star of David isn't actually a symbol of Judaism, but comes from magic and sorcery.
She then implies Jews are demons.
Very cool, Candace, not unhinged at all.
One of the most vile (and oft repeated) accusations against Jews and Judaism is that the Talmud (Ketubot 11b) permits relations with a girl as long as she is under the age of 3.
A thread debunking this absolutely horrific libel.
As far as my credentials, I'm a Rabbi who is in his second decade teaching Talmud for a living. This is something that occupies a large part of my day.
It's truly an eye-rolling moment whenever I see these quoted. Let me show you why:
@abduleldesouky
1) That’s not what I asked.
2) That’s literally what Muslims did all over Israel.
3) That’s literally what they did over the ruins of the Temple.
* Jewish hate crime rate is 35.8/100k
* 94% of victims are Orthodox
* Orthodox Jews 373.4/100k
* Non-Orthodox 2.4/100k
* African-Americans 8.4/100k
An Orthodox Jew is 44.5 times more likely than an African-American to be victim of a hate crime & 155.6 more than non-Orthodox Jew.
Jews kicked out of theaters. Jewish hospitals picketed. Jewish businesses vandalized. Jews insulted & assaulted for being visibly Jewish.
I'm not surprised that this is happening.
I'm surprised at how quickly it was normalized and deemed unworthy of mention in the public square
Regardless of your politics, the fact that we’ve moved on from a centrist Orthodox Jew getting the VP nomination to a progressive Jew not getting the nod because his Jewishness would alienate too many voters is not a good weather forecast for Jews in America.
Iran has voted to execute 15,000 protestors currently under arrest.
An emergency session of the UN Security Council has been called for tomorrow, where they are expected to vote to condemn Shlomo Yitzhak of Maalei Adumim for extending his patio by 3 feet, at the behest of UNHRC.
My wife, her assistant & almost 20 kids were at the zoo today, this being parashat Noach and all
A man, around his 50s, was also visiting the zoo and, upon seeing the 5 year olds with their kippas & tzitzis, went
“F*** Jews”
I can’t imagine being so hateful children anger you.
“You can’t bomb an ideology. No matter how many you kill, Hamas is an idea & can’t be defeated that way.”
You know what else is an ideology? National Socialism
Turns out getting rid of their entire military & leadership then deprogramming their population worked out pretty well
1) Soferim 15
Mistranslation + taken out of context.
In a discussion about generalities, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said that even the best members of your enemy nation, you should kill in a time of war instead of having mercy on them. This is rooted in the exodus from Egypt:
Have you ever noticed how it’s never the visibly identifiable Jews who comment on how it’s perfectly safe for Jews to walk the streets?
That’s because Orthodox Jews were over 156 times more likely than non-Orthodox Jews of being victim of a hate crime prior to October 7.
As a Jew in America, I resent the implication that Jews in America are unsafe and that they must rely upon a foreign government, rather than their own, to make them safe.
To this day it's illegal for a Jew to pray on the Temple Mount, but did you know that this was the case for most holy sites during the Islamic rule of the land of Israel?
For example, Jews were only allowed up to the 7th step of the Cave of the Patriarchs for over 700 years:
Maimonides literally wrote that he lived an absolute wretched life as a slave to Saladin and considered living under him the worst curse that G-d had put on the Jews for disobeying Him.
The Islamic historical revisionism around Maimonides is simply too much.
@KInghasha
@shevereshtus
Saying ‘non Jewish’ king because if he said that mainonedes was king of Salahudhin Ayubi a muslim king liberated Jerusalem from Crusaders back into Muslim rule, he will have to admit the centuries long cordial relation between jews and Muslims in Muslim empires🤣
France’s riots have devolved in absolute antisemitic demonstrations. Alongside screams of “death to cops” comes “death to Jews”.
Jewish businesses vandalized, synagogues desecrated, visible Jews attacked in the streets and avoid going out at night.
Antisemites? “Jews did this”
Celebrities attacking Israel or showing 'solidarity with palestine' is common not because of antisemitism, but because it's the easiest low-risk way to establish an illusion of social consciousness with as little backlash or cost possible.
A cynical thread about self-serving PR.
Conclusion:
This wraps up this ridiculous piece of propaganda. None of the quotes were 1) accurate, 2) complete and 3) in context. Some of them, straight up lies.
Don't learn theology from memes, people.
“Believe all women” was always an absurd overreach: woman should be heard, claims should be investigated, but evidence is required. The same is true of the allegations out of Israel.
But also, this isn’t a “believe women” scenario bc no female victims have offered testimony.
This is why Rabbi Shimon says that, in a time of war, don't have mercy on 'the best' of your enemies but rather kill them. We can see from this that they might have been the best members of their society but they still ultimately wanted to go through with their murderous intents.
It says that after the plagues, when the Jews were in the midst of the sea, they were pursued by Pharoh and the rest of the egyptians on chariots. Now, how could they have chariots if all of their animals died in a plague?
Those who feared G-d brought them inside as per Moshe.
Scolding the youth, telling them “we tried to instill in you [things detached from Judaism], but we did not intend for you to [be detached from Judaism]” isn’t gonna be successful.
If you tell a kid kosher just means ethical eating, don’t be surprised when he becomes a vegan.
To all our young people this
#YomKippur
: we tried to instill in you a sense of justice, righteousness and honor for all people. We are proud when your generation actively pursues these values. But we did not intend for some in your generation to turn their backs on our people…
At this point, we just need to re-establish patrols in our neighborhoods of men who will be able to deal with these situations swiftly and make sure that everyone knows Jewish blood isn't cheap and there are consequences.
If the City, NYPD & DAs won't do anything, it's up to us.
So, they believed in the words of Moshe, they believed that G-d was sending those plagues on Egypt, and yet they still decided after seeing everything all the miracles they saw and knowing what they put the Jewish people through, to pursue them at sea in order to kill them.
I am not worried or shocked by Kanye’s antisemitism. We’re talking about someone who is bipolar, in a manic phase, and might be saying things he doesn’t really believe or mean. If he does, the he’s a jerk.
What I’m worried about is 1) the 45k+ likes before the tweets was deleted
Yevamot 98a
Fake translation, and out of context.
There's a discussion about what happens when identical twin brothers converted, one marries a Jewish woman and he dies without having an heir: does his existing brother perform levirate marriage, or give her a form of divorce.
People who are not part of the Haredi community don’t understand how it’s basically impossible for an outsider to credibly pretend to be one of us.
A short thread on why it’s so easy to spot fakers
To back this opinion, a verse from Ezekiel about the licentiousness of the Egyptians that compares their views on relationships with the way animals mate with each others without caring about who they mate with.
So, in no way does it say that "children of non-Jews are animals."
4) Gad Shas 2:2
This is a fake quote. There's no such thing as Gad Shas.
In fact, both the Bible & Talmud prescribe lashes for a Jewish man who engages in relations with a non-Jewish girl whether for pleasure or "marriage" (such unions are not legally recognized as marriage).
Rep. Balint does not describe herself as Jewish but "Jew-Ish." She has Jewish ancestry but isn't Jewish herself. She describes her religion as "an amalgamation of Judaism, Quakerism and Buddhism."
She is in no way a representative of how American Jews feel.
This, however, is:
Rep. Becca Balint is now the first Jewish member of Congress to come out in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.
She is incredibly brave, taking a stance rooted in her commitment to human rights and protection of the innocent.
Read her words. Support her.
Proud to call her a friend.
For the record, Halacha also permits you to straight up kill this victmizer if you catch him in the act and it's necessary to stop, so it's not like he's being protected or we don't believe his crime is not something heinous.
So, Rabbi Shimon is not saying here that "non-Jews are not human", there's nothing about how non-Jews are beast at all mentioned there. In fact, the ones being compared to animals here are Jews (sheep).
What’s happening right now in Lebanon is a very good litmus test to determine if someone’s views are aligned with good or evil.
Anyone complaining about the most targeted attack on a terrorist group to ever happen is tipping their hand & telling us exactly where they stand.
Now that Twitter has pontificated that the British Empire’s imperialism and colonialism was evil, can we also agree that the Arab Islamic imperialism which lasted for 1300 years & either subjugated or erased all other ethnic groups from the Horn of Africa to India was evil too?
There's a whole debate about whether or not he's permitted to do a levirate marriage.
One of the arguments that is brought is that since there's so much licentiousness in the non-Jewishness nation at the time, we don't know who is anyone's father as such, we don't allow it.
He quotes a verse in relation to ritual purity that says that only Jews are called "Adam."
Now, antisemites translate this as meaning man. Except, there are four terms that define man: Adam, Ish, Enosh and Gever. They all have different spiritual meanings.
Ta-Nehisi Coates saw the Jews succeed where he feels he & his people failed, and it led him to wishing for our death & daydreaming about participating it in 10/07.
Pure rank jealousy. “If I can’t have it, neither should they.”
The exact same feeling plaguing white supremacists.
3) Bava Metzia 114b
Fake translation, and completely out of context.
In short, there's a discussion about the idea of ritual purity, and whether the corpse of a non-Jew renders you impure if you touch their grave or not. According to Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, no. Here's why:
5) Avodah Zara 36b
Fake translation and out of context.
Yes, non-Jewish girls are considered niddah from birth. So is the status of any non-Jewish woman who is unmarried as well. And married women for nearly half a month.
It has nothing to do with "filth" at all.
In fact, the reason why the Rabbis decreed that non-Jewish women are considered to be in a state of niddah from birth is to make it an even worse punishment if a Jew were to stay and have relations with one of them.
The Torah is really big into not intermarriage. Lots of verses.
This is why so many of these are infuriating. This is one opinion talking about how someone "ought to" get something for doing something, but somehow it becomes transformed as "This is what Judaism believes."
It's our holiest site, while for Sunni Muslims only their Third and until Jews started to come back in the land it was entirely left in disrepair, and doesn't even make top 5 for Shia.
Irregardless, even if it was holiest for all three, why shouldn't Jews be allowed to pray too?
6) Sanhedrin 54b
Fake translation & wildly out of context.
This is a discussion specifically about *forbidden relationships* and whether it makes you susceptible to the death penalty. What's debated here is whether a person who engages in such horrible actions is put to death.
The Sages determined that before the age of 9, children are completely unaware & don't understand what relations are. Between the ages of 9 & 13, while they do understand, they are not considered guilty whether passive or active.
The whole discussion is about their victimizer.
"You have the Jewish community beginning to call her not Candace Owens but Candace Ovens."
Rabbi Shmuley and Candace Owens give their opening statements for tonight's debate.
Watch more here: 📺
@piersmorgan
|
@RealCandaceO
|
@RabbiShmuley
The world doesn’t care about Jews.
Whether it’s an orthodox assaulted in New York, attacked in Paris or murdered in Jerusalem.
It’s time for Jews to stop caring what the world has to say and do the things we need to do to protect ourselves.
Time to do the right thing.
This woman is not Jewish.
Why would any synagogue allow a non-Jewish woman who accuses Jews of being complicit in genocide, defends Hamas and has denied the October 7th atrocities at their Pesach Seder?
What a chutzpah to complain about this & subject that synagogue to abuse.
The synagogue where we have celebrated Passover since moving to Qc is having their first seder since the pandemic.
And my family is has been told that because of our position on Israel's genocide, we are not invited.
The answer to people posting fake Talmud quotes and wildly out of context comments is not to run the other way around and pretend that the Oral Torah is not just as important as the Written one and not the foundation of Judaism.
I’ve seen many Jews do that, and it’s not the way.
You just know this guy is basing his whole argument on low res "Jewish Talmud" memes.
Most Jews have never read the Talmud. It's not even a rulebook or scripture.
It's essentially millennia old Twitter fights between rabbis who all hate each other.
I accidentally clicked on those pictures.
I…
Nothing short of completely uprooting Hamas to the point where hearing their very name is enough of a reminder for people not to even think about harming a Jew for a hundred years is good enough.
So here, the Jewish that is codified is that if a man forces someone between the ages of 9 & 13 to engage with him, that person gets the death penalty (and his victim does not) and under the age of 9, he does not get the death penalty but rather he gets lashes in public.
9) Tosfot Yevamot 84b
Fake quote.
I mean, I went through the Tosafot on that page twice and there's absolutely nothing even close.
It's also confusing, because why with a dog specifically? That has no meaning to us, dogs aren't seen as particularly bad in Judaism.
My mentions are blowing up harder than a Hamas weapons factory disguised as a UNRWA elementary school right now
People really don't like when you point out that over 500k Arab economic migrants moved to Israel between 1918 & 1948, and that they were the majority of Arabs overall
The fact that he gets lashes for it instead of the death penalty doesn't mean that it's less than a crime. It's because it's considered something other than having relations, because a child that age is unable to understand what is happening and as such it's a different crime.
7) Sanhedrin 58b
Fake translation
The opinion of Rabbi Chanina is that if a non-Jew strikes a Jew, he is worthy of receiving the death penalty, as we saw when an Egyptian struck a Jew and Moshe killed him.
Jewish law, however, says that a non-Jew is not executed for this.
The most frustrating thing about Candace Owens’s hatred is not her boastful arrogance, but its origin in utter ignorance.
To claim Joseph Stalin was Jewish flies in the face of every single thing we know about a man who rivalled Hitler in his antisemitism.
A thread.
@DrewPavlou
His real name was Josef djugashvilli. His entire cabinet. Guess what djugashvilli means in Georgian?
What do you suppose moved he and Lenin to change their names? What were they hiding? Why do you believe so many Christians were mass murdered?
If you think it’s outrageous that the New York Times decided a swastika was a great idea for their crossword puzzle on the first day of Hanukkah, maybe you should remember that the next time you read their reports about Haredi yeshivot & ponder whether there might be bias there.
To boast about banning experimentation on live animals while they simultaneously were making grotesque experimentations on live human beings tells you all about the depravity of these people, and those who praise them.
National Socialist Germany was the first nation to ban the testing and experimentation on live animals.
Hermann Göring was quoted saying; "Not only is this a necessary law to protect animals and to show sympathy with their pain, but it is also a law for humanity itself."
8) Sanhedrin 57a
Fake translation, plus out of context.
Here, there is a whole discussion about the 7 Laws of Noach and whether a non-Jew who transgresses them is liable to the death penalty or not.
Here the Talmud states that laws against murder are stronger for non-Jews.
Since for Jews there are 613, there are more punishments than just the death penalty/nothing, which means that in certain cases, a Jew might be punished with lashes or spend the rest of his life in prison versus being put to death. Doesn't mean that non-Jewish lives don't matter.
The only distinction here is that "7 mitsvot you can't violate, you can do whatever you want but otherwise you deserve the death penalty if you violate them."
Think of it like Adam in the Garden being told he has one thing to do, and one thing only. Breaking it is much worse.
So, if a non-Jew hired a hitman, locked someone and left them to starve to death or pushed them in front of a lion, they will be put to death while a Jew might not be in this situation.
That doesn't mean that a Jew is allowed to do such a thing; the Jew will in fact be punished.
There's a debate: did the owner despair of finding the object and, as a result, it is considered ownerless so the person who saved it is permitted to keep it, or does it still belong to his original owner who still hopes to retrieve it eventually.
On 10/7, palestinians entered our synagogues to torture, molest and murder anyone they could lay their hands on.
On 12/13, Israeli soldiers entering a mosque proclaimed G-d’s unity, and sang Hanukkah songs.
Spare me the fake outrage.
Obviously I'm aware of the Halachic issues and I am not saying it's my personal shittah to agree to build one, but it seems to me that the only reasons not to do so is because of Islamic antisemitism.
It's crazy to me that based on not hurting feelings, the world agrees to this.
I want to thank those Neo-Nazis. No, really, I do.
On the left, Rabbi Yosef Konikov, helping victims of Hurricane Ian. On the right, high school dropout Jon Minado screaming at Rabbi Konikov.
It's rare to see such a clear example of good & evil together for everyone to see.
White supremacist group 'Goyim Defense League' - led by Jon Minadeo II - is harassing elderly Jewish people as Shabbat starts in front of the Chabad of South Orlando
When will your office do something about this neo Nazi harassing Jews in your state
@RonDeSantisFL
@TorahJudaism
What kind of a Haredi Jew would be tweeting in the middle of Maariv in shul?! Or post about Turkish elections (?!) on Shabbat Shavuot?!
Well, when you realize the account is ran by a Turkish Muslim, it makes a whole lot more sense.
10) Bava Metzia 24a
Out of context.
This is the closest one to being accurate, and yet at the same time wildly out of context. We start by discussing a case where a man saves a lost object from a wild animal, at sea, the flooding of a river, or finds it in a public place.
As is codified in Halacha, a non-Jew who kills a fetus for example is going to be put to death, while it might not be the case for a Jew depending on the case. Same if he killed someone who was dying, or put them in a situation where they died indirectly because of him.
“Israelis: We want to live”
“Palestinians: We want you to die”
“The World: Let’s meet halfway, shall we?”
No thanks.
No ceasefire, no truce, no more Hamas.
BREAKING: New Palestinian public opinion poll released by PCPSR — the first since October 7th. Main findings:
🔸️72% support the 10/7 massacre
🔸️Support for Hamas triples in West Bank (82% supported the massacre)
🔸️Support for "armed struggle" rises ten pts to +60%
I don’t understand why people are wasting their time talking about how Cleopatra was ethnically Greek or justifying she would have a Mediterranean skin tone/features.
It’s not Gal Gadot’s face or skin tone that bothers people, it’s that she is a Jewish Israeli. That’s it.
Can you believe for a second that if a “settler” had murdered at least 26 people then became a beloved folk figure in Israeli society which wanted him as PM that he’d get 1% of that kind of puff pieces from the likes of Amanpour and CNN?
They just love those who shed our blood.
To many Israelis, he’s a terrorist.
To many Palestinians, he’s their Mandela.
Marwan Barghouti’s story is told in new documentary Tomorrow’s Freedom, and I spoke with co-director Sophia Scott and Marwan’s son Arab Barghouthi about the film and Barghouti's standing today.
What is one supposed to do to stop the madness? People have protested, written letters, advocated, resigned, been fired, camped, lost degrees, filed for court ruling, demonstrated beyond any unreasonable doubt Israel's genocidal intent, and still, the killing machine is on.
Them: “Habibi, we love Jews! We just hate Zionists! Jews and Muslims lived together in harmony for thousands of years before the zionists created division! They forced the Jews to leave, you were our neighbors!”
Also them:
Hi, I'm an Orthodox Rabbi who, as the tweet states, deals with conversion/converts amongst other things.
It's interesting for you to claim I don't have a say when my testimony to the Beit Din is literally part of the decision whether some people will be allowed to convert/when
"We put Jews in ghettos, forced them to pay exorbitant taxes while publicly humiliating them, forced them to wear specific clothing items, prevented them from riding horses & forced them to walk in the gutters when Muslims were in the street" = A universal show of respect & love
@shevereshtus
Inaccurate description of the Muslim world. There is a Jewish quarters (ex Marrakech)in almost every Arab country that everyone respects and loves to visit. This victim mentality while committing a genocide is mind blowing, requires studying by scholars in the years to come.
I teach Talmud five hours a day, so I'm used to reconcile seemingly impossible positions into a single coherent argument.
How someone can simultaneously hold that "words are violence" but that taking four people hostages did "not hurt anyone"?
That's far beyond my capacities.