Is the Israeli Government Press Office right to sanction journalists who participate in the flotilla to Gaza?

12:37 am

Jul 04, 2011

Schnaiberg, your comments show you are more concerned with tooting your own horn than you are concerned with the Jewish people. All success and accomplishment comes from Hashem, not you. And anyone that states they do not believe in the coming of the Moshiach just does not understand Torah or Gemara. My suggestion to you is that you read Torah and Gemarah, and The Garden of Emuna and The Garden of Gratitude and The Path of the Just. Why do you think statistics about Jews Congress or on the Supreme Ct are relevant? That is silliness. Furthermore, the US does not “donate” a penny to Israel. As part of our foreign aid budget we help allies that are in our best interest and Israel has been in the best interest of the US for a long time. Sec of State Alexander Haig said Israel was worth at least $20 billion a year to our defense and foreign policy. And saying that we “donate” money to the Jews is demeaning and insulting to Jews like me. And so what if Obama has some Uncle Tom Jewish friends that is like saying you are not racist because some of your best friends are black. If you have been practicing law for 50 years it certainly has not been trial law. Obama told Israel that he support the arab’s positions down the line and he did this in public gratuitously and that took away American support of Israel in the negotiations. That, my friend, is totally overt and unapologetic anti Israel behavior from Obama. Obama has also said that for the Jews, who are the indigenous people of Israel, to live in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem is “illegitimate.” and the Jews are occupiers. That is another down the line support of the anti Israel agenda of Obama. Your defense of Obama is laughable, no one with a brain supports your view unless they put their own left wing political views above their support of the Jews. So stop with the holier than thou talk, and get yourself right, stop being an Uncle Tom Jew and start being a Jew that supports the Jewish people. Your man Obama is a supporter of Jew haters and racist anti-Semites and any defense of him that denies the facts is merely a ploy.

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H. Laddie Schnaiberg

12:40 am

Jul 04, 2011

Albert, your last diatribe is hardly a reply to what I wrote. It is unfortunate that you are filled with such hate that you are unable to comprehend another person’s opinion. I will not engage is any further communication with you.

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H. Laddie Schnaiberg

12:55 am

Jul 04, 2011

Rick; If Hashem accomplishes everything, why do people spend years in University to be scholars and professionals? Why do people go to work every day? Why do people take risks in business? Why don’t we sit and do nothing and let Hashem do everything.

Your vituperative and hateful comments leave me quite cold. I will not communicate with you any further.

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Albert Reingewirtz

1:06 am

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Laddie you are able like a regular lawyer that you are to describe white as black day as night. What I wrote is out of love for my people, the Jews I care about more than you will ever know nor understand. I survived the Shoa, my parents didn’t and the rest in fact were refused a visa to the USA and they too are gone thanks to your kind of Jews who voted for Roosevelt and now support Obama. All of you and the court Jewish jesters in The White House will forever be regarded as mosserim. My answer to you was about what you said that upset me and not what you expected to read. You and your kind have long ago stopped being Jews. Eating bagels and schmoozing in a Synagogue doesn’t make one a Jew. Jews in trouble once could call on other Jews somewhere else but not today’s America. The whole Arab world wants to destroy Israel after having cleansed themselves of any Jew and you take their side with your buddy anti- Semite Obama.

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Albert Reingewirtz

2:01 am

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Laddie soon you will talk only to yourself. What kind of lawyer faced with objections runs away telling I will non-longer talk to you? I have a feeling that you were a corporate lawyer with no experience in court. Any defendant choosing you as his lawyer would be making a big mistake. As for me, I am a Jewish atheist. As a 10 year old I had come to the realization that Shomer Israel was either asleep or more than likely did not exist when Amo Israel was burning. With Jews like you, Israel is in big trouble. I have a question. Do you ever look in the mirror?

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H. Laddie Schnaiberg

4:39 am

Jul 04, 2011

Albert, I am a labor and employment lawyer and I plead approximately 50 cases each year. One of my specialties is representing employees who are fired without just and sufficient cause. I am afraid of no one. Your comments are not objections but rather unintelligent comments filled with hate. Good Bye Albert.

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Albert Reingewirtz

4:58 am

Jul 04, 2011

Ladie, did you walk away when somebody said something contrary to your deep beliefs? That is what you are doing here. I like the idea that protected labor. I have been a Liberal most of my life. I used to knock on doors for the party, answer phones. You name it I volunteered for the Democratic party. Today, I am non-longer a Democrat but an Independent. I had to weigh my priorities. Which one is more important to me? Abortions rights, the right to join a union…? Or the survival of another 6,000,000 Jews and their retaining their eternal capital, Jerusalem. I have no choice, I care about the Jewish nation more than the right to have an abortion. Thus I can’t vote for anti- Semite Obama. You call that “full of hate?” If you and I are not for our people who will be? The court jester Jews in The White House?

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Laurie Dinerstein-Kurs

6:37 am

Jul 04, 2011

While I find much if your positing somewhat annoying…particularly when you seem to suggest that people have less influence on outcomes than hashem (which I understand is the party line)……had the Good guys sat back on their haunches and did nothing – waiting for hashem to fix the problem…Hitler would have murdered MORE than the 6 million.
I take particular offense at your glib remarks regarding abortion…as if that issue fits here well. If you believe so strongly that one jew must come to the aid of another jew,…then you ought to be able to believe as strongly in MY belief that as a woman, I have to come to the aid of another woman. While you are focused on anti semites attacking jews….in a world view, I am focused on women right here in my community, shul, and country in which attacks on women occur everyday. And if through the attack, and often the attack is by a father, grandfather, uncle, brother, stranger – and often the victim is young – 14,15, etc….is impregnated….how dare you suggest that your lack of interest in this young girls travail is not worthy of consideration and should be cast aside and ignored.
Your priorities are yours…sheer chutzpah to make light of other choices.

You are intolerant of other voices –
The world is greater than you…and please do not be intolerant of others beliefs, choices and priorities because they differ..

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J.M.Jordan

9:10 am

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Reingewirtz, thanks for sharing your personal Hashem Shoa conclusion. It’s fully understandible that many many Jews think like you after what happened and I’m absolutely sure He sees them as the just people needed to save the world, He who knows the heart of Man. I have also read your Schalit post attentively. It has come to my ears that though life saving of one man’s life is like saving the whole of mankind, there exist rabbi opinions that this isn’t the case if by saving this man other Jewish lives might get exposed. Of course prisoners may come back to their old ways though statistics where I live show that this individually is very very different so that here most prison sentences de facto only comprise 2/3 time of the sentence. I am as keen as you on having no more Jewish blood spilled than inevitable. However, it’s just therefore that I plead for Schalit to come out, as I believe AS YET still crossing in alive given since all that time he’s the ONLY chip the Pals hold to get out their prisoners. For if he doesn’t and gets a second Ron Arad case, WHO’ll still serve in the IDF or give his/her best there, and how infinitely more lives will be the cost than with just one or the other prisoner getting blood on his hands again. Think twice.

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Albert Reingewirtz

10:38 am

Jul 04, 2011

Laurie you are able to understand what I say as if you had a selective hearing mixing apples with oranges. First of all I am a Jewish atheist. As a 10 years old I had abandoned this ridiculous belief in a God that did zero for my nation including my parents and most of the rest of my family on my mother side and more. They all perished while I still wake up at night remembering. I am on your side on abortions and had volunteered for Family planning. That is how strong I feel about it. One Pourim festival someone had a booth to help Soviet Jews. The management made them take it off saying that this was political. Holding a baby I stood on stage telling them what I thought of Jews saying that it is political and should not getting involved in Jews suffering in the USSR! They screamed cut the mike! I never returned, disgusted. Today the Arab world continues regarding Israel as a tumor that has to be destroyed by any mean necessary and replaced by an Islamic state. Jews continue to be same and they side with enemies of Jews and continue helping the chief anti- Semite siding with the Arab world. Should I continue being Democrat because they support abortions rights and workers right before the rights of Bankers to screw the public? Today the Democratic party has become anti- Semitic in the main numbers of members. I am now an independent I had to make a choice. In the balance what is more important to me? The fight to continue having the right to have an abortion or the survival of the nation of Israel? Today, already like during the Nazi regimes San Francisco tries to pass a law against Schchita (The ritual slaughter of animal) under the claim that stunning is more humane. It is now the law in Holland. Abortions rights, workers rights, will have to be defended by someone else than this ex- Democrat. All my being is now stressed like the string of a bow for the survival of the Jewish state of Israel.
The problem with US Jews is that their parents regarded the USSR as some social experiment to better humanity while Jews suffered there all along and they claimed “That’s political if someone spoke about the Jews suffering in the USSR. US Jews today are not any different then their parents. They too claims “It is political” that Israel is forced to defend itself against Arab states and Arab terror with one hand behind it’s national back because 80% of US Jews voted for anti- Semite Obama. As a real Jew, you all make me puke!

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Albert Reingewirtz

10:52 am

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Jordan here is the reality. Like you I would like Shalit at home with his parents. But giving back 1000 Hamas Terrorists thirsty for Jewish blood released would cause this situation: One Jew saved, Shalit while countless Jews in Israel will certainly die. Then having had success once the process will start over and over again never ending the Jewish blood letting by Hamas, and Fatah and all the other competing Arab terror gangs.

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J.M.Jordan

4:09 pm

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Reingewirtz, thanks for what you today shared! My view of the situation differs from yours. Keeping myself daily top informed about Israel’s situation for personal engagement reasons, lately I’ve come to assess the various dangers Israel’s in as grave indeed. And I don’t see how the country’ll manage to get through it all without a fullhearted fight of its IDF!!! In my view undercutting the IDF’s faith that the State will do all that’s needed just as the IDF does all that’s needed for Israel poses an enormously greater danger than the sum of calamities that the prisoner deal possibly entails. As to the kidnap encouraging part you see, for my part I believe that having had to wait for over 5 years is a clear proof that this is far from being honey licking and not at all a self-starter. Deep in my heart I do believe now’s the time and now it has to be! Still once, please think twice.

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Albert Reingewirtz

4:33 pm

Jul 04, 2011

It is interesting to note, Mr. Jordan that you jump to the conclusion that because Shalit is already kidnapped for 5 years now is the perfect time to release 1,000 terrorists who have slaughtered many Israeli’s to retrieve one Shalit. If this is so the next kidnapped Israeli will have to wait 5 years to arrive to the magic time when Israel will have to release not 1,000 Terrorists who killed many Israelis and most among demanded to be release will have killed again after being released. It is a nice slippery slope you want the Israeli public to be subject to, isn’t it? Instead Israel should cut everything going to Gaza since in fact all of Israel is under a public constant attack to be slaughtered by Hamas. Those who claim that it is a indiscriminate punishment of an innocent population are wrong. The innocent population is Israel’s. Gazan elected willingly Hamas who’s charter anyone can google and read that it’s aim is the destruction of Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state. In addition all of the Hamas leaders should like Hitzbollah’s Nasrallah live in spider holes the rest of their life fearing an Israeli effort to eliminate the varmint just like the US just did to Osama bin Laden thousands of miles away for the USA while Hamas leaders are just next door scheming and holding all of Israel hostage.

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David Feder

6:47 pm

Jul 04, 2011

This deviation from the topic of this chat is unfortunate.
First, I address both of you combatants, Albert and Laddie, as both of you express some core views that are fundamentally hypocritical: A lack of belief in Moshiach. Laddie, your highly impressive resume of Jewish “leadership” for half a century crumbles to dust when that leadership is into an abyss of assimilation and secularism. A Jew believes in Moshiach, end of story. The same to you, Albert: To be a Jewish atheist is to consign Israel to being like any other piece of real estate and thus legitimizes the Muslim cause through removing that which makes Israel worth being Jewish nation. Moshiach is not the Christian concept of some benevolent guy in a white robe turning the other cheek; Moshiach is he who HaShem will send to lead us into the era of G-dliness that will make Yerushalayim the center of the Earth from a spiritual standpoint as HaShem establishes His kingdom here. It is a fundamental principle of faith — and that by its nature means we do not have to understand the fullness of the concept of Moshiach, we must believe in the capacity of HaShem to establish His Divine presence among us. As human beings, we need a guide for such, an interpreter if you will between the Holy and the Earthly (remember, to look upon His face directly is too much for our forms to bear). So it only stands to reason as his flock astray he must send his shepherd.
Laddie, I will adhere to the side of the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean something similar when you refer to the Messianic Age and your belief in same.
Now to address the connection between Shoah and HaShem’s place in it. But two preambles: First, contemplating the horror of the Shoah is the greatest test of faith for a Jew, or any human for that matter. With all the subsequent (and previous) genocides the world has seen, nothing ever came close, not even Stalin with his greater total head count, to the cold, systematic, mechanistic bloodlust murder perpetrated by the Germans and their Eastern European minions. Second, I made the following statement in an editorial years ago and was damn near strung up by my community for it…until coincidentally a few weeks later the Chief rabbi of Israel made the same statement. HaShem warned us he would visit the Shoah upon us. He gave us an intricately and intimately detailed account of exactly what he would do to us if we turned our backs on him. That the innocent were butchered with the guilty also was warned by Him and He even went so far as to explain His reason: We are a single people. It is internal divisiveness — sina’at chinam — that brings disaster upon us. My heart cries for my people, even though the losses experienced personally for me were only the absence of all of my father’s family but the immediate nuclear family. (My mother is mostly Sephardic and all but a handful were spared.) I was born 13 years after the Shoah, so I only knew the tendrils of its remaining shadow. And I in no wise am attempting diminish or rationalize the incalculable horror of the Shoah. I merely point out that HaShem said, verbatim, what he would do and the only sad surprise should be that He spared us as long as He did from His wrath.
But to all of you, HaShem also kept His promise that after our near destruction he would bring us back to our land to rebuild it. If anything, the disaster and subsequent miracle should have been ample proof of HaShem and the validity of Torah (beside the abundant and ever-increasing archaeological evidence for the latter). But true to our stiff-necked nature, we let that opportunity slide, we relied on the sensibilities of men and “chariots” let politicians keep us from evicting Amalek from our land completely in 1948 and totally in 1967, when he gave us yet another miracle and chance. THAT is when we should have leveled the Temple Mount and rebuilt the Bet HaMikdash. Instead, we converted Eretz Yisrael into Medinat Yisrael, with many divorcing the miracle from its maker and thus diminishing Israel’s “legitimacy” in our own eyes and the eyes of the Christians and Muslims.
We have the strength once again. Once again HaShem is giving us the chance. And the Muslim Barack Hussein Obama is our best hope because he will force us to rely on ourselves and G-d, not outsiders. (I still won’t vote for him though; didn’t and won’t.)
As for divorcing ourselves from US aid, Netanyahu once promised to do just that, to cut those strings that keep us from thinking of our People and G-d first. IY”H he will remember that and do so now. We US Jews can continue to support Israel privately and dispense with the onus of having people diminish our validity by holding the investment over our heads.
Finally, we must must must get over our propensity — all too amply displayed on these comment pages — for sina’at chinam.
Shavua tov, v’shalom,
David

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Albert Reingewirtz

7:11 pm

Jul 04, 2011

Mr. Feder you write like a automaton fed a diet of religion and nothing else. Shomer Israel was either asleep at the wheel or he doesn’t exist when fully one third of Am Israel went up in smoke. Either way, I should be thankful that at the age of 7 I was alone to fend for myself? What kind of God would devise such a test burning 1/3 of a nation to test our belief in him? So excuse me while I puke having read your garbage. I have yet to see a proof that this God of your exist or every existed. Mostly Israel came back to life in spite of Orthodox Jews who said that it was a sin to restart Israel since this was supposed to be the Mashiach’s job. But later on when Ben Gurion gave away free religious education and financial support for every religious anything and no military service for Orthodox Jews, this in time of war. You all flocked to Israel for the free lunch. Give me a break! I am a very proud atheist Jews, deal with it the way you can shmendrik!

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J.M.Jordan

12:02 pm

Jul 05, 2011

No, not going to deviate the mainstream discussion; just a “last not least” thought regarding Schalit. If “Intransigence=NeverAgainKidnaps”, how come there were the 2 at the Lebanese border and 1 (Schalit) at South border — although the IntransigenceCase Ron Arad’d already happened.

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Albert Reingewirtz

12:41 pm

Jul 05, 2011

Ron Arad? Mr. Jordan They did not made demands for terrorists, they had killed him. Shalit is the first one of a new offending offensive of kidnapping to force returning Arab terrorists who have slaughtered Israeli civilians. They have decided that from now on kidnapping is the way to go. So Israel must show them that is the very way they should not even contemplate.

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David Feder

3:33 pm

Jul 05, 2011

Albert, your response is utterly sad; and it serves to support my point more than yours, that you are reduced to name-calling and unkindness and can only strike out to hurt your fellow rather than to disagree with discourse. I am sorry for what the Shoah did to you on that score. For the record, I was raised mostly secular. It was as a scientist who adhered to logic and empiricism and an archaeology student in Israel that I began to adhere to our faith because when abundant proof appears before one’s eyes again and again, in the form of tangible evidence from digs that match the narrative of Torah to the detail, and a line of history that fulfills the blueprint of the owner’s manual that is the Torah, then the sincerely open-minded person recognizes there is truth. The Gentiles do not have this, the Muslims do not have this – their books are not evidenced in the fabric of material culture as ours is. Above this, a person with no sense of the Divine has been diminished greatly — your true automaton. The greatest sins of the Nazis did not include the blunt finality of murder but the stripping of hope and faith coupled with the assimilation and indifference that stained so many Jews afterward. You went through Hell, Albert — of that there is no doubt. And little surprise that you’ve carried so much of that Hell with you out of the abyss. I could not have been as strong as you, of that I am certain. But that strength you have above mine could certainly be put to greater use by being employed to shuck off that Hell you carried out of Europe on your back.
I am neither an automaton nor a shmendrick. I am your family and I deserve at least a portion of the respect I give to you.

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rick geiger

3:55 pm

Jul 05, 2011

As someone holds the core Jewish belief of Emuna, that everything that happens to us in life is a product of Hashem’s loving grace, it might be helpful for Jews that have the interest to read “The Garden of Emuna” by Rabbi Shalom Arush, translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody. All I can say is that I was born Jewish and reared in a Jewish home but when I read this book is changed by life for the good. Everyone needs to come to their own views of course, but it is a relatively short book, but it is also very powerful. I wish I would have had it earlier in my life, but, alas, that was not meant to be.

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Albert Reingewirtz

4:05 pm

Jul 05, 2011

Mr. Feder, I am sorry for the last word I attached to you. In fact, felt bad immediately after posting it. It came out of me because of my inability to convey to my fellow Jews the obvious. We are still around after more than 2 millennia not because God protected us. Not because we were brave and fought back. We survived as a pitiful remnant of a nation from antiquity while normally we should have been by now a major nation in numbers already. How did we do it? Any Jew in trouble always knew that over there a Jewish community would absorb the remnants of destroyed Jewish communities. Jews helped Jews in trouble. That is how we survived 21 centuries of anti- Semitism. Today, it is non-longer true. Anti- Semitism that forced us together is non-longer ruling everywhere, least of it in the USA. This is why US Jews I was enjoying their Jewish Center were calling Soviet Jews’ suffering “Political.” Why they voted for Obama without shame. While someone like you looks around and see that everywhere he looks in Israel fits the Biblical narrative thus proving the existence of God. It only proves that the Bible was written by Jews in their homeland and the narrative is about the home land as a background to the narrative. It could not have been about a background in Belgium or the USA. If there had been a God we call Shomer Israel, The Guardian of Israel would 6,000,000 of us have gone up in smoke? Ghettoes? Expulsions? The inquisition? 21 centuries of merely surviving most of the Jewish nation still believe in this childish belief in this Guardian of Israel and his future Mashiah, a Jewish invention made while the nation was being destroyed by Rome and adopted by other religions as their own central religious dogma. There is no hope for Israel because fellow Jews having not suffered anti- Semitism see themselves as not part and parcel of the Jewish nation always under the danger of being destroyed daily. They judge their fellow Jews defending themselves against implacable Hamas seen meek while holding a kidnapped Israeli for 5 years and no one has seen him alive for years. Today I have more faith in non-Jews than in US Jews. Can you understand this horror for a Jew that survived the Shoa? Not much can be more disgusting, more appalling to me.

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David Feder

4:07 pm

Jul 05, 2011

I second Mr. Geiger’s review — the Garden of Emuna is excellent, as is the Garden of Peace and Rabbi Brody’s own writings. (For those who can read Rev Arush’s books in the original, I recommend it. I have to read in English and struggle with the Hebrew, but I saw enough in the Hebrew edition to find Rev Brody’s translation abilities lacking, not just from a grammatical point of view where it’s laced with small errors here and there, but there were some sense errors too. Rev Brody’s translation of what Rev Arush writes about depression is a case in point: The English version comes across as harsh, insensitive and a tad supercilious toward that emotional state.) Short reads and worth every word.

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