FailedMessiah.com

Hasidic Transvestite Murders Rabbi–Pictures Of The Rebbe Found Plastered On Walls With Porn

It Doesn't Get Much Stranger–Or Much Sadder–Than This:

Goldstein answered the door in high heels, makeup, lipstick — and a filthy pair of slacks. He initially told police he hadn't seen his roommate, but cops noticed a foul smell and found Sultan's body in a pool of blood on the living-room floor.

The cause of death was listed as multiple blunt- and sharp-force injuries with a skull fracture and laceration of the brain.

Neighbors said Goldstein moved into Sultan's apartment a year ago, after the older man's wife died, and had been helping with the rent.

Inside Goldstein's locked bedroom, cops found walls plastered with pornographic pictures and portraits of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitch sect leader.

Next to his bed stood a rubber sex doll dressed in black lace, with custom-made water-bottle-top nipples.

You can read it all here, here and here.

The Documents

An English-language translation of the Rebbe's letter on the rescue of Ethiopian Jews can be read here.

Information on Chabad, Holocaust Rescue and Ethiopian Rescue can be viewed here.

A teshuva from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein can be viewed here.

Rabbi J. David Bleich's overview of the halakhot regarding Ethiopian Jews, excerpted from Contemporary Halakhic Problems (Vol. 1), can be read here.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner rule that a cohen can marry and Ethiopian Jewish woman.

A rabbinic 'protest' to this website can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here. [It is also posted on the Adath.com website.]

[It is important to realize that I did not see the Rebbe's letter written to me twenty years ago until it was published (without my permission) nine months ago in Kfar Chabad Magazine. If I had received the Rebbe's letter then – in other words, if the Rebbe's office had not confiscated it, which is what seems to have happened – I would have publicized it immediately. Chabad bought twenty years of silence by confiscating that letter.]

Please click on the thumbnails to read the documents. Thank you.

Corruption, Chabad-Style: A Deal To Make The Rebbe Proud

From Ha'aretz:

It is hard to stay apathetic about the tender results for purchasing properties in Kfar Chabad, which were published last week. For each of the 171 tenders that the ILA published, only one bid was submitted.

In almost all of them, the bid was pretty close to the minimum price required by the ILA, and all the bids were won without problems, objections, or superfluous questions.

Rabbi Steinsaltz On New Sanhedrin

A unique ceremony - probably only the second of its kind in the past 1,600 years - is taking place in Tiberias today: The launching of a Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the Land of Israel.

The Sanhedrin, a religious assembly that convened in one of the Holy Temple chambers in Jerusalem, comprised 71 sages and existed during the Tannaitic period, from several decades before the Common Era until roughly 425 C.E. Details of today's ceremony are still sketchy, but the organizers' announced their intention to convene 71 rabbis who have received special rabbinic ordination as specified by Maimonides. . . .

Rabbi Ariel said that the rabbis there included many from the entire spectrum:
"Hareidi, religious-Zionist, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, hassidi, and many others - such as Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, Rabbi Adin Shteinzaltz, and many others... We can't expect a great consensus; that's not how things work here. But sometimes that's how the process goes, from the bottom up."

More here.

The Alter Rebbe's Son Converted To Christianity

Yair Sheleg writes in Ha'aretz:

Very few among Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidim know this story, and those who do go to great lengths to deny it. After all, it is not easy for the Hasidim to accept that Rabbi Moshe, the youngest son of the founder of their movement, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1902-1994) - better known in Jewish history as the Ba'al Hatanya and the author of the Likutei Amarim Tanya, a basic book on Hasidic philosophy - converted to Christianity.

Discrimination, Chabad-Style

"Habad, one of Israel's stronger orthodox religious groups, doesn't recognize Ethiopians as Jews or allow their children into its kindergartens."

Understanding Rav Ovadia Yosef, shelita

A new biography of Rav Ovadia Yosef has been published:

Rabbi Ovadia's life story contains all the stuff of myth: growing up poor, setting oneself an ambitious goal from childhood, a meteoric rise to fame, and upon reaching the top, a tug-of-war between heirs and members of one's inner circle. . . .

At the age of 14, he was forced to leave the yeshiva, until one day the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Ezra Attia, came to the store and begged the father to let the boy return. "If you need help in the store, I'll stay. Keeping me away from Torah study matters less than keeping this boy away." . . .

In this manner, Rabbi Ovadia worked his way up the ladder, waging a one-man campaign to "restore the glory of Jewish tradition" - which he did without any organization behind him or any financial backing. The outcome was not only a political party with 17 seats in the Knesset, but an educational network from kindergarten to higher yeshivas devoted to disseminating Rabbi Ovadia's own teachings. These teachings were not a recycling of what he learned from his rabbis, but an attempt to create a cultural renaissance that would link Jews living in Israel today with the halakhic traditions of the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael in the 16th century, when Rabbi Yosef Caro wrote the Shulhan Arukh. . . .

Without budgets, without a foothold in any ministry, Rabbi Ovadia began to spread his teachings, with a little help from his son. Only after Shas was founded and its people were instated in the Ministry of Religious Affairs did the marketing machine go into full gear.

In contrast, for most of his pre-rebbe adult life, the Rebbe lived a life of privilege, studied philosophy (and, less frequently, engineering), frequented the cafés of Berlin and Paris, and did not work to help Jews. Even after he was saved from Hitler's (yemakh shemo) Europe, the Rebbe played no significant role in the attempt to rescue of the millions of Jews still trapped in Europe. Perhaps the Rebbe's avowed preference for alleviating the "spiritual needs" of assimilated Jews as opposed to aiding the rescue of dying Jews is at the root of his inaction in the face of slaughter.

A Lesson For Rebbes & Hasidim: A Responsible Transfer of Leadership

Cambodia has chosen a new king:

For the ailing Sihanouk, King Sihamoni's appointment will bring huge comfort.

The 81-year-old former monarch ruled Cambodia for more than half a century, and had been troubled by the prospect that the Khmer royal line would die with him.

He was also concerned that - even if the monarchy continued - there could well have been a succession battle after his death.

Cambodia's monarchy is hereditary, but any descendent of the past three kings can be chosen, and there were dozens of potential candidates to chose from.

"My abdication allows me to give our country, our nation and our people a serious opportunity to avoid mortal turmoil the day after my death," Sihanouk wrote recently on his website.

There's a profound lesson in this story to be learned by rebbes and hasidim alike.

Status of Falash Mura Children Debated

The Conversion Section of the Prime Minister's Office has indicated that it favors changing current procedures whereby single mothers in Falash Mura families must obtain the written consent of the other parent before their children can be declared Jewish, the legal adviser of an Ethiopian advocate organization said Wednesday. . . .

The Falash Mura are an Ethiopian community whose members were originally Jewish but converted to Christianity many decades ago in order to escape persecution. The Chief Rabbinate has declared that as long as a member of the community can prove a consistent matrilineal descent from a Jewish woman, the members of that family are Jewish and do not need to convert to Judaism. Instead, they must undergo a procedure known as "return to Judaism," which involves study and observance of the religious strictures. . . .

Yitzhak Dasa, the director-general of Tebeka, charged that the requirement to obtain the consent of the other parent for single parent families returning to Judaism applies only to the Falash Mura. "In this way, they are discriminated against and their rights are violated," charged Dasa.

Dassa added that it is virtually impossible to track down the husbands of the Falash Mura mothers and that in many cases, their husbands are dead. . . .

Read it all here.

The Current State Of Chabad

Many Lubavichers descended on the depleted communities of Europe and the former USSR. Alas they found a fertile ground. They call themselves Chief Rabbis. They lay claim to real estate abandoned by dead Jews and in the case of Russia they are supported by Jews with "questionable sources of income". They live in mansions and have homecare army befitting feudal lords. Shlichus is a business, often a big business . . .

Is he right?

The Company They Keep

The recent publication of a Chumash (Pentatuch) with the commentary of the late Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, has won rave reviews from non-Chabad sources including Yeshiva University's Rabbi Norman Lamm, noted Sqverer posek Rabbi Gavriel Zinner, Great Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, R. Gershon Tannenbaum of Igud HaRabbonim, and former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.

So, what's the problem?

If you scroll down this page, you'll notice that Chabad has garnered other endorsements of note for the "Rebbe's Chumash," including the noted messianists R. Avrohom Osdoba, R. Nissen Mangel and R. Shloma Majesky.

My, my. The company some people keep.

People Who Need Crutches

And now relaxing, he made a tent of his slender fingers, fixed me with his eyes, and said with a surprisingly sweet smile, "How come you visit us so often and appear to be so close to us, yet you never became a Lubavitcher? Why?"

I sat back stunned at the directness of the question. It was true. This probably was my third or fourth meeting with the Rebbe. Over the years I had become a sort of unofficial liaison between various Israeli prime ministers and the Lubavitch court.

Swallowing thickly, I muttered, "Maybe it is because I have met so many people who ascribe to the Rebbe powers which the Rebbe does not ascribe to himself."

Even as I spoke, I realized I had presumed too much. I could hear my voice trailing away . . .

Failed Messiah?

The Baltimore Jewish Times has this revealing interview with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, founder of CLAL:

Rabbi Greenberg also contends that Jesus was not so much a false messiah, as mainstream Judaism has steadfastly declared for some 2,000 years, but a "failed" messiah - a category into which Rabbi Greenberg also places the patriarchs Abraham and Moses, the prophet Jeremiah, and the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, among others . . .

Outreach–With A Hitch

"Would you care to shake the Lulav and Etrog?"

"Yes"

"Great. Now, repeat after me: 'Yechi Adonaynu Moreynu v'Rabbaynu Melech HaMoshiach l'Olam Voed!'"

Is Chabad Racist? Chabad Schools Ban Ethiopian Jews

"Not a single Ethiopian Jew is enrolled in the [Chabad] educational network."

Chabad schools ban Ethiopian students. Why? According to the following article, they do so because the Rebbe instructed them to. But, Chabad spokesman Rabbi Menachem Brod disingenuously claims,

"The problem with the Ethiopians arose with the arrival of immigrants in Operation Solomon, when they were flown by their leader and refused to undergo conversion according to halacha, as the Operation Moshe immigrants did. Therefore, their Jewishness is in question..."

What Rabbi Brod fails to say is that Chabad refused to take Ethiopians before Operation Solomon as well. Chabad now claims that it will only accept Ethiopian students who have undergone a full conversion (a process that often takes years) even though Rav Moshe Feinstein -- the rabbi the Rebbe referred this issue to -- ruled that only a giur l'chumra (a pro forma conversion) was necessary. But, as the article states, "not a single Ethiopian Jew is enrolled in the [Chabad] educational network."

Should a member of a movement that brazenly lies be a teacher of your children? Should he be your rabbi? Can you trust the kashrut of his food?

Is Chabad racist? . . .

Progress

According to Ha'aretz, Israel now has 13 Ethiopian attorneys, 15 Ethiopian law school graduates waiting to take their Bar Exams, and 75 Ethiopian law school students. Not bad for a population that just 20 years ago lived in rural mountain villages in mud-thatched huts and was largely illiterate.