Jack Abramoff's E-mails

Republican lobbyist and Orthodox Jew Jack Abramoff's e-mails reveal much about his apparently criminal motivation.

Abramoff defrauded* the Choctaw Indians in order to have more cash to pay for his Orthodox school and for other Jewish charitable causes.

(You'll note that Rabbi Daniel Lapin appears to be lying in the second linked article. Why? Read the fully-quoted e-mails in the first article and compare them to Rabbi Lapin's statement in the second.

Rabbi Lapin, the founder of Toward Tradition, has a history of shady business dealings – including investiments in an LA slumlord. He is sometimes accused of running a cult, and is the rabbi and mentor of talk radio host Michael Medved and author David Klinghoffer. Abramoff was for a time on the board of Rabbi Lapin's Toward Tradition. Medved often defends Tom DeLay's role in this scandal and does so without mentioning his own very personal links to Rabbi Lapin, Toward Tradition and Abramoff.

Fpr more on Rabbi Lapin, see this article in tomorrow's Washington Post, The Republicans' Rabbi-in-Arms.)

*Are you listening, Oglala Sioux? This is not the "Peace and Justice" Orthodox Judaism you are familiar with.

Comments

It is a shame that kanoodle.com has decided to place advertisements on your site, I have written to them asking them to remove them and I urge everyone here to do the same.

[Shmarya]

Did you sign your name to that letter or did you hide behind anonymity?

[Shmarya]

By the way, Kanoodle is *NOT* supposed to put dating ads and the like on this site. I've asked twice for this to be corrected. If they don't fix this problem soon, I'll drop them.

[Paul Freedman]

Does Rabbi Lapin have any real juice with connected Orthodox rabbis in the United States (traditional or Modern)? Ditto for Abramoff who basically comes off as a run-of-the-mill goniff. OK, run-of-the-mill but highly successful until his own appetites drove him into the wall. There was a guy who did the same kind of thing for Nixon back in the day--another briefly well-known nobody.

[Schneur]

Rabbi Lapin has much in common with many of the Chabad shluchim. They live off publicity and survive by allying themselves with the rich and famous. Lapin has become a yes man for every type of fundamentalsit Christian preacher.
Lapin does not need a shul or school , he just needs a tv camera to thrive on.
Indeed we need to wrok with and connect to our fundamentalsit American community, but we need not agree with them onall issues. Lapin has become a complete apologist for the most absurd positions adopted by the right.