Worst Haredi Hasbara of the Day #2 for 30.04.2013

I might have been too quick to hand out the last prize. NRG has this story title (translated)

Porush: finance non religious schools according to their levels of violence.

And here is my translation of the first paragraph:

The Haredi response to the non religious sector's demand to finance the Haredi education institutions according to their study of core subjects: a new law tabeled by MK Meir Porush would condition a schools funding according to the level of violence at the school

התגובה החרדית לדרישה החילונית לתקצוב מוסדות החינוך החרדי בהתאם לשעות לימודי הליבה בבתי הספר: הצעת חוק חדשה של ח״כ מאיר פרוש תתנה את תקציב בתי הספר החילונים בהתאם לרמת האלימות בבתי הספר.

The basic assumption being that violence is a problem that doesn't exist in Haredi schools.

Worst Haredi Hasbara of the Day

"Aren't there enough arguments? Do you want everything to go up in flames? if not for us, the Haredi public, there wouldn't even be a Kotel. There were people who said that it is only stones"

MK Moshe Gafni (Yahdut Hatorah) during a Knessett Committee discussion on the Women of the Wall. 

One has to think fairly hard to explain how the Haredim have any credit for the Kotel. I suspect that the answer is a fairly general one where the Haredim insist that they are the true representatives of Judaism through the ages. If that is true, its even more offensive. 

The Jewish World Pie Chart

From World Jewish Population, 2012, a report by Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, published by the Berman Institute – North American Jewish Data Bank at the University of Connecticut:

Some thoughts - as we can clearly see, Israel and the US dominate this graph. Most other countries barely manage to get a "slice" of the pie. I was also surprised to learn that France had the third largest Jewish population in the world, followed by Canada.

 Surprisingly the UK comes in only fifth. 

The Rabbi, The Egg and The Schnitzel

This video is doing the rounds (again...its old). Some of you can probably guess why.

Good Question on Rabbi Broyde's Latest Controversy.

 On April 12 TJC revealed  that Rabbi Michael Broyde, a leading Modern Othadox Rabbi had for years been using a "sock puppet" persona named "Rabbi Hershel Goldwasser" to publish academic works praising Boyde, and even worse to join rival rabbinical organisations.

Now the story has gotten even worse. Yesterday (April 24) TJC published a report claiming that :

 a second identity uncovered by The Jewish Channel might have gone farther down the road of academic misconduct than did the Goldwasser character. The second identity, claiming to be an 80-something Ivy League graduate and Talmud scholar in 2010, alleged he’d had conversations with now long-dead sages in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The alleged conversations were used to produce a manufactured history of statements from long-dead scholars that buttressed an argument that Broyde had made in a highly-touted article published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Broyde, in a later publication, subsequently quoted this second identity’s alleged findings as further proof of his original argument. 

The  highly-touted article that was referred to is Broyde's 179 Page essay on Hair Covering and Jewish Law. Allegedly a fake letter was sent to Tradition (the magazine which published the essay) where:

Someone claiming to be David Tzvi Keter wrote one of those letters to Tradition from a Gmail account, establishing a biography in which he claimed he had “moved to Israel in 1949 after graduating from Columbia,” and that he then went on to learn at one of the most prestigious yeshivas in the world at the time, Jerusalem’s Etz Chaim yeshiva, under a major sage of the time, Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer.

The Keter character then goes on to provide a history in which he gathered the oral testimony of several prominent sages of the mid-20th-century on the topic of women’s hair covering. His letter provides their comments 60 years later to add them to the historical record Broyde had been analyzing in the Tradition article.

Simon Lerner on Twitter askes the following question:

i don't get it. guy writes 179page, well researched, paper. was some unknown 80yr old's hearsay from R' Shach really what was missing? why?!
— Shimon Lerner (@slerner) April 25, 2013

This question reveals much about our current state of affairs. It would seem that people are more likely to accept a position, if they can ascribe it to Rav Shach's offhand comment, then if they can ascribe it to a 179 page study.

Cartoon of the Day

"I wish he'd go back to Facebook" (UTJ MK's Meir Porush, Moshe Gafni re: Yesh Atid Finance Minister Yair Lapid)

Via: Religion and State in Israel

Did You Know That the Rulers of Qatar are Jews?

Spotted in the Guardian (oh, I read them all), in a piece describing the plight of Christians in Syria:

Bishop Khouri, who is known as an ultra-loyalist, accused western countries of betraying their own religious heritage by backing the rebels. "France likes to say that it defends Christians but they help terrorists to come to our country," he complained. "How is that Qatar can influence France and Britain with their money? It is well known that the leaders of Qatar are Jews."

As always, I'm the last one to know. I'm wondering how long before they start getting some schnorrers.

I Get Why Jews Is A Dirty Word, But Why Are Nightgowns?

Al-Monitor reports on academic censorship at a Gaza University:

“I was completely bereft when he pulled me by my hand and embraced me. … I felt warmth emanating from his chest.” This sentence in a short story titled “Love in War” was enough for Gaza's Al-Aqsa University to launch an investigation into faculty member Dr. Khoder Mahjez.

I could understand an Islamic "University" having problem with some light sexual comments. However it gets worse:

In an interview over the phone with Al-Monitor, Mahjez said that the obscene words — which he was accused of using by the investigation commission during the interrogation attended by the dean of the Faculty of Arts and a legal advisor — were present in a story he had used as an example in his book, which carries the same name as the course. He added that there had been objections to the use of certain words — such as "women," "sons of a bitch" and "Jews" — as opposed to using terms with ideological connotations that are preferable to the university, such as sons of "monkeys" and "pigs."

Ok, so we can't use the words "women" or "Jews" either. Could we get even sillier? oh, we can. This is how a University representative defended the University:

He added that he was ready to disclose the student’s complaint to the press. He repeated that Mahjez had used what he described as “obscene” expressions during his lecture, such as, "He cracked her bones when he embraced her," and other terms such as "nightgowns."

Nightgowns! What could be worse?

Whoops..Reuters Publishes Obituary of Still Living George Soros

I guess reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated:

Soros obituary published in error; financier is alive

Thu Apr 18, 2013 7:59pm EDT

Reuters erroneously published an advance obituary of financier and philanthropist George Soros. A spokesman for Soros said that the New York-based financier is alive and well. Reuters regrets the error.