Last Thursday at Kehilath Jarvanka (3/7)
David Shasha
Kehilath Jarvanka Does Orthodox Jewish COVID
We already know that KJ refuses to discuss its two most high profile members, Jared and Ivanka:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/VRJd-Y42GCk/m/zg76Hfs2AgAJ
This past Thursday the notoriously silent Synagogue had a special event on COVID and the Jews:
https://images.shulcloud.com/727/uploads/08Tetzaveh2021.pdf
Here is the description:
This week, Join Rabbi Steinmetz, Rabbi Pini Dunner of Young Israel of North Beverly Hills and Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt of Park East Synagogue for a fascinating discussion on the topic of How Will Jewish History Judge the Jewish/Rabbinic Response to the Covid Pandemic.
I posted many articles on the damage that the Trumpscum Kushner did to our country with his botched response to the Pandemic:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/F4efk9I73pQ/m/bRSRIGysBQAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/vuYCKBtU5IM/m/gCmCTkhLAwAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/VB2ikYuWicM/m/PeN_C4JJAQAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/LQrcHTZwxno/m/2BJCRianCAAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/4xtqGYaLF8U/m/jQf_3Z4SCgAJ
It is unclear whether the discussion will include any of that information.
Moreover, we have a connection with Rabbi Pini Dunner and Trump:
https://twitter.com/pinidunner/status/938977269590253568
The video post contains a live shot of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik expressing his great joy for the Murderer-in-Chief.
I did not know who Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt was, so I googled his name and found a Washington Post Op-Ed dealing with COVID that had an unexpected Sephardic twist:
Though he never uses the word “Sephardic,” it is clear who he is talking about when he mentions his ancestor in Suriname:
In the Dutch colony of Suriname, in the capital city of Paramaribo, a 34-year-old rabbi named Moses Lewenstein stepped up to the podium.
In his hands, he held 25 handwritten pages: a sermon praising the Netherlands’s abolition of slavery. Today, this would be a no-brainer — but what he was about to do had high stakes at the time. His congregants were wealthy Dutch Jewish plantation owners — Jews who had moved to the northern tip of South America to live a peaceful and prosperous life by profiting from running sugar plantations operated by enslaved people. The abolition of slavery was about to cut his congregants dry of cheap labor — and he was about to tell them to celebrate.
The anecdote reminded me of Jonathan Schorsch’s exhaustive work trying to prove that Sephardim are inferior to Ashkenazim by using the example of Slavery in the West Indies:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/kKoo0WTd4Pk/m/EiVX0avmAgAJ
In this case the Russian-born Goldschmidt actually has a family connection, but it is always curious to see how Ashkenazim proclaim their moral superiority to others.
I discovered that he is married to Forward reporter Avital Chizhik, who has told her side of the story in Salon magazine:
Her husband in an interesting Modern Orthodox character whose defense of the Haredim can be seen in this article from Haaretz:
His short bio captures the new ethos:
Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt is a rabbi in New York City. He studied in the Ponevezh (Bnei Brak), Hebron (Jerusalem) and Lakewood (New Jersey) Yeshivas
Though I could not find any direct connection between him and Trumpworld, I could also not find anything he might have said – as his ancestor proudly and correctly did in the face of Slavery – that would be critical of Trumpism and the Alt-Right racists.
“Broken Yet Beautiful”!
In an interesting twist on the above note, KJ Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz posted the following article on Thursday afternoon:
http://chaimsteinmetz.blogspot.com/2021/03/broken-yet-beautiful.html
It is an article that naturally links Religious Zionism to the Hebrew Bible, as it continues to remain obstinately silent on Trump.
I was particularly struck by the following passage:
For this reason, the Talmud explains that we must honor a rabbi who has forgotten his learning. The broken Tablets receive honor, because even when broken, they are still holy; the same is true of a rabbi struggling with the depredations of age and illness. We need to see what remains within the broken tablets.
Indeed, it is unclear whether the passage on the rabbi who is struggling with the depredations of age and illness refers to anyone in particular.
Though we have been seeing many tributes to Rabbi Norman Lamm, who was disgraced by his refusal to deal with pedophilia in the YU system:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/1FZAvTWyM6Y/m/BUhi_Xb6BQAJ
Here is a very brief list of some of them:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/tribute-rabbi-norman-lamm
https://www.yu.edu/about/lamm-heritage/tributes
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=274889000533234
https://www.jewishideas.org/blog/memoriam-rabbi-dr-norman-lamm
https://www.broydeblog.net/uploads/8/0/4/0/80408218/lamm_in_jewish_press_1.pdf
Tradition magazine is currently raising funds for a Lamm memorial volume:
https://traditiononline.org/rabbi-dr-norman-lamm-memorial-volume/
I also included a Steinmetz article in the Lamm SHU post, “Why Are There Unethical Rabbis?”
It seems that the KJ macher has something stuck in his mind!
And, of course, there is his boss Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, who also suffered from the same Lamm problem:
But since this is all about White Jewish Supremacy, there is never any reason to air the dirty linen in public.
“Broken Yet Beautiful” indeed!
David Shasha