Hurricane Katrina Relief

Donations to help victims of Hurricane Katrina can – and should – be sent to the United Jewish Communities Hurricane Fund or to the American Red Cross.

Comments

[Contributor]

"... can – and should – ..."

Aniyei irecha kodmin?

[Shmarya]

You have hundreds of thousands of refugees in your town? They have no drinking water or food? They're sleeping on freeway overpasses?

These people need help now or they will die. Can't you understand that?

[Baruch Tegegne]

What about us Scott? How can you divert resources from us to others? You need to only help your black jew friends from the old country.

[Editor's note: This comment is ***NOT*** from Baruch Tegegne. This commenter has used three different names to leave comments, and is therefore banned. If he sends me an e-mail promising to stick with one alias (that is not the actual name or alias of another person), or to use his real name (which appears to be Rabbi Dovid.G.), I'll reinstate him. Make sure to include your IP address in the e-mail.]

[rebeljew]

Unban him anyway. I am sure he has more to say about your "black jew friends".

[Isa]

This might prove to be W's undoing

Isa from Houston

[Contributor]

If you want you can donate to http://www.chabadneworleans.com/ which, I presume, will ensure that every homeless Jew has a Tanya. That is, after the shluchim use the bulk of the money they receive to retile their kitchens. After all, they have to ensure pleasent accomodations for any refugees that they might bring into their homes.

[Mendy]

Indeed, how much did you contribute, bug talker?!

[Osman Sheik]

It is not right to "should" on anyone. Who died and made you God? And why divert funds away from your black jewish friends?

[pushkina]

on behalf of the "black jewish friends", again you are all showing your ignorance in ways that are astounding.

do you all know how old the jewish community in new orleans is? it has been there since the 18th century, a time when most of your polish/russian/yiddish ghetto ancestors were groveling, starving in filth,looking not much better than the folks in new orleans (except their skins were white), in the muck of eastern europe. the new orleans community was founded first by spanish-portugese refugees, then french jews, west indian jews, followed by germans who were definitely trying to avoid your ancestors. all these jews had a history of opening their houses and homes to fellow jewish refugees.

they also didn't have the same kinds of racial hatred aimed at blacks that many of you show; in fact, there was a lot of fluidity between jews and blacks, as jews understood that as long as there were blacks below them socially, jews benefited from white skin privilege and would never be assigned the pariah status they had in europe.

i'm black and jewish: my mother from an old yekke southern, pre-civil war family and my father from ethiopia. when i was small and we went south, i used to have to hide under a blanket in my white grandparents' car, so as not to have any trouble. i know what the old-style southern racism was and you people are far worse in many ways, than the classic white supremicists (who arent' too happy with you all either and would just as soon see you all as dead as they'd like to see blacks.)

reading what some of you narrow-minded, slimy, morally irresponsible folks write about blacks, black jews, shmarya just because his point of view on that anti-jewish movemnt, chabad,makes me sick and ashamed of being categorised the same as you: a jew.

i live overseas now, in a city where chabad has grabbed,stolen, threatened, abused and maybe even killed to take and keep power over this community. those of us who may wish to keep kosher cannot get any non-chabad meat, in this entire country, because of how chabad has manouvered its way into being the only producer of kosher meat. it is so bad that the local federal government is investigating their commercial corruption. and of course, since they have become secret messianists, nothing they touch is kosher.

i have always been proud to be known as an american jew: american jews are at the heart of the modern jewish identity. you yeshiva trained people may not know this: the american jew has always been proud to be a jew and has never been afraid to call those in power into line, since the time of president washington. we fought on both sides of the civil war, 15,000 men out of a tiny community. the american jewish community has created international institutions which assisted the remnant after the shoah and, once they figured it out, has never wavered in both supporting israel and america. that american jewish identity predates the arrival of the ignorant, medieval minded, yiddish, eastern european jews, whose descendents many of you probably are.

you people, who have never left brooklyn, except to go to israel; who have suffered the exquisite anti-semitism of the A, D and F trains, i am so sorry for you because i don't think you really realise what it is to be an american jew, you are so busy with being torah jews and you're failing magnificently in that.

the folks in new orleans who are starving and dying may look black to you but to the rest of the world, they are americans and the world is saying if this is how america treats its own, how can we expect any better from them ever? this natural disaster has become an ethical and moral problem, as well as political and diplomatic one. as jews, we are supposed to understand morality, compassion, being degraded by the state; after all, we have made it an art form to complain about it and to deal with it.

i really don't think that hillel, shammai, akiva, the rambam, or any gadol of note, of ashkenazi, sefardi or mizrachi origin would deny that these peoples' lives are worth saving and so mandated.

so yes, it becomes a should/must to help them, as well as a should/must to avoid corrupt giving gifts to corrupt organisations. that is, if you are not ready to put your torah judaism on the line and really live it: open your houses to let some of these families and their sick children in to live with you.

when that happens, then my faith in the torah judaism of many of the posters here will be restored.

[Contributor]

Pushkina,

Your faith in Torah Judaism, as you call it, should not be contingent on imperfect humans beings. Don't think of these people as Torah Jews who are corrupt and hypocritical, rather as corrupt and hypocritical Jews who are making some pretense to live by the laws of the Judean Nation while in exile. Your faith should be in the ideal - unconditionally.

[shmuel munkes]

pushkin - you do know that scotty's available - does anyone feel a shidduch in the making?

[pushkina]

shmueli munkes, (short for munkatch perhaps?)

i'm already married thanks, to a budapest hungarian child of survivors, who were afraid when i was going to marry their son that i was "too jewish." don'tmake snide and disresepctful remarks, unless you have the wherewithall to defend yourself or them.

and to contributor: my faith relies on g-d, not on the questionable actions of ignorant folks running around knowing nothing of who they are and from whence they come. there are and have been many judaisms but, fortuantely, there is just one g-d. everything else is temporary.

[Contributor]

Pushkina,

There is just one God, but there is just one Judean law as well. You're very knowledge that you are Judean is affirmation of your obligation to be a law abiding Judean citizen and embrace the underlying philosophy of its laws. You cannot deny Judean law, it is recorded and documented. All you can do is disregard it, or demean it with titles you choose like "Torah Judaism." It is not a religion, it is a nationality to which you belong. And it is your duty (as it is the duty of all Judeans, whether or not they abide by their duty) to adhere to the laws of your nation, and to struggle to reconstruct our national government and end the exile of our nation.

[Conserva-Girl]

It's brilliant how all of the commenters after Pushkina's post have failed to grasp the meaning of Pushkina's post and have instead piled on more disgrace. You'd think that Torah Jews, or whatever you folks like to be called these days, would take a little more care now that Elul's here.

Pushkina, I hear what you're saying and I totally agree. I don't know where all these brazen, supposedly mitzvah-observant Jews come from, but the stuff they say on this site would make the Chazal blanch.

Just something to think about while y'all are saying your "al het's"...

[Contributor]

Then you completely misread my post. I agree entirely with Pushkina, up until the point where she blames her disregard for Judean law on the very people she identifies as corrupt. "One God" - that is very arbitrary. The Judean ideal stands alone.

[Conserva-Girl]

C-

Oops, I didn't mean you. Sorry ;-)

But...this is what Pushkina said: "when that happens, then my faith in the torah judaism of many of the posters here will be restored."

There's a big difference between this so-called Torah Judaism (handy catchphrase meaning "we're holier/more devout/better than you") and the Judaism practiced worldwide by those outside of Lakewood/Brooklyn, etc.. And there's no denying that corruption exists within the bounds of these insular factions which has had a tendency to spill over into many other American (and now world-wide) Jewish communities. But that issue has been dealt with in other posts on this site.

To identify a "Judean Ideal" means that every Jew, everywhere, has always, does now, and will always agree on what that ideal is. (If you'd be so kind as to allow me a few seconds to get up off the floor- I was laughing so hard I fell off my chair...). I'm really having a hard time seeing that, espcially since there are Jewish cultures all over the world that have maintained their own "ideals" since time began and have no interest in conforming to the One True Ideal, no matter how good the food is.

Back to the point at hand: many Jews are racists. Many Jews who comment on this site are racists. However, all Jews are not racists, and as Pushkina's pointed out, many Southern Jews- who had established their lives down south long before your Zaide even left the Pale- have a long history of living and working alongside black communities. Unfortunately, that tradition hasn't held up throughout history- the Jews who risked their lives during the Civil Rights movement pretty much marked the end of that "we're-all-in-this-together" era.

So now we have a rare opportunity to do tshuva- a whole lot of people are sick and dying, and there are things we can do to help. Now's not really the time to sit around bashing racial groups and those showing empathy.

[Contributor]

There have always been diverging movements among the Judean nationals (and before that among the Israelite nationals). But all those who are known as Jews today stem from one specific faction, and there is one central formulated system of law and there is one central underlying philosophy. It is our heritage, and it is our legacy.