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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28496 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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The influential Balkany called Cohen, complimented his Kohanem status, told him he silenced a fellow Jew planning to report him to the SEC, and then requested millions of dollars for his Jewish school. In this case, Cohen ratted him out, but this wasn’t a one time scam. Balkany, by the way, was Rubashkin’s lawyer when he was charged with the largest illegal immigration employment violation in US history

So again, your stories are littered with countless examples of secular Jews ratting out Chareidim to secular and substantially gentile authorities and this proves…that the Chareidim consider them their in-group rather than an out-group they’d like to convert?

It is non-central because they are interested in increasing their size and political power, thereby increasing Semitic power, thereby decreasing the threat of antisemitism.

I don’t think that a rapidly growing ultra-orthodox population gaining more political power reduces the threat of antisemitism at all (if anything the opposite), but perhaps you disagree. In their brazen conduct, the Chareidim increase antisemitism, and the few who engage regularly with the outside world are almost certainly intelligent enough to realise it. They do it anyway.

It is speculative because we don’t know the extent of Haredi donations

We know that the Chareidim (whose perspective you can easily see on their forums, yeshivaworld etc) almost universally despise these secular Jewish organizations for their social liberalism out of the sincere belief that they are trying to corrupt their children in the same way that all similar religious conservatives do for secular progressive advocacy groups.

your stories are littered with countless examples of secular Jews ratting out Chareidim

It would be survivorship bias to conclude that these are rare scenarios. In the first case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his outgroup. In the second case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his ingroup. How the secular Jew responds to fraternizing by the ultra orthodox is obviously a separate discussion topic, as it doesn’t tell us the median belief of Orthodox Jews to born-Jews. We know about these cases because we have been told about these cases, and we would not know about these cases if the secular Jew did not “rat out” the Orthodox. It would be a mistake to quantify the membership of the Italian mob based on how many Italians rat them out, right?

i don’t think that a rapidly growing ultra-orthodox population gaining more political power reduces the threat of antisemitism at all

It’s a question of when the gentiles realize the consequences of the population shift. Right now I would put my money on team ultra orthodox. The average American’s intuition is shifting toward Semite-skepticism but the average knowledge about the ultra orthodox among those who aren’t their neighbors is merely that they build funny tunnels. Their best bet is to increase their numbers. Increasing numbers increases political power when you block vote.

the Chareidim increase antisemitism

The Hasidim don’t care about bad words on the internet, which do not affect them. They care about political pressure against them, and increasing their numbers and influence increase their political advocacy.

We know that the Chareidim (whose perspective you can easily see on their forums, yeshivaworld etc) almost universally despise these secular Jewish organizations

That is motivated by their fear of assimilation with the goy. The secular Jew is still Jewish and they want him to be like them.

The secular Jew is still Jewish and they want him to be like them.

Is an Evangelical flyover state Republican who desperately wants to convert blue tribe Americans, preaches to them, sees them as brothers going down a lost path, and does everything in his power to bring them to the church part of the same ‘in group’ as them? This is what you’re implying in this case. Wanting to convert someone you hope or dream will be sympathetic to your tribe doesn’t make that person part of the ingroup.

The only difference is that because of the Jewish prohibition on proselytization, the pool of ‘potential converts’ who can be openly evangelized to is limited to secular Jews.

The evangelical does not define his membership by genealogy. He does not make daily prayers to a people and a tribe and a nation. A better example would be an evangelical trying to save a different evangelical who is living in sin. In this case, yes, they are the same ingroup. The Orthodox are compelled by their belief system to consider lapsed Jewry to be their ingroup due to their qualitatively distinct divine spark as described in the Tanya and spoken about by Schneerson, their quasi-messiah. This is a very fitting parallel — per Forward,

The Rebbe believed that every Jew, even one who had helped Stalin to murder other Jews, could be saved. “When you go back the next time,” the Rebbe said to a Jewish dignitary who was to have an audience with Lazar Kaganovich, “you should tell him he should still do teshuvah,” referring to repentance. “[H]e still has a chance.”

That belief that all Jews contain a spark of the divine undergirded his belief in kiruv, or outreach, at a time when most Orthodox Jews believed that less observant Jews were something like possible contaminants. Today, other Orthodox groups do outreach work, and even leaders of the Reform movement point, perhaps with a gulp, to the Chabad model.

Schneerson identifies with secular Jews to an extreme degree:

”Every Jew, regardless of differences and levels of observances, is part of Am Echad.”

”Anyone who berates any Jew is touching the apple of God’s eye.”

The Rebbe believed that every Jew, even one who had helped Stalin to murder other Jews, could be saved. “When you go back the next time,” the Rebbe said to a Jewish dignitary who was to have an audience with Lazar Kaganovich, “you should tell him he should still do teshuvah,” referring to repentance. “[H]e still has a chance.”

Is an SSPX hardcore ultra-tradcath who believes the only just form of government is Catholic monarchy under the Pope (but not the current one) the same in-group as a (sex-having) gay liberal Catholic who believes women should be ordained as priests, that Jews don’t have to convert to go to heaven, and that abortion isn’t a sin? This seems like a semantic difference in our positions more than anything.

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