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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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Secular Jews may want some of the Haredim to become more secular, but by and large they are allied politically, culturally, and religiously with them, and do zero to combat their corruption. Meanwhile, Chabad houses are becoming the center of religious life for non-orthodox Jews in America.

Who do you think funds efforts like this (given an extensive write-up by a Jewish journalist for NPR), where non-Haredi Jewish journalists are hired to dig up stories on political and financial corruption, sexual abuse and so on in that community, founded by an ex-Haredi guy who hates them?

Moster says the stories on the Shtetl website aim to present what's often missing in the Haredi press: stories about contentious issues such as corruption, white-collar crime and sexual abuse. One recent Shtetl feature details how Haredi Jews took over a village in the Catskills by claiming it was the primary residence of Jews who spend most of their time living in Brooklyn. Another, written by Hakimi, describes a series of anonymous ads for a family court judicial candidate in one of the Haredi towns in the suburbs north of New York City.

I see how secular Jews (not just leftist or even progressive ones) talk about the ultra-orthodox. Many advocate Xinjiang-level re-education, completely unironically. They hate them, especially those that live near or alongside them. In New Jersey, the reality of state politics and the fact that the Democrats don't have a supermajority means that the ultra-orthodox can ally with the state GOP to stymie legislative measures against them.

Okay, so are you referring to the slumlords that have gotten away with corruption / discrimination so far? What helped them get away with it for so long?

NYC slumlords have always gotten away with it, the occasional lawsuit etc excepted, especially when it comes to simply having poor conditions rather than discriminating based on race. All these guys were sued dozens of times, pursued by the city. Again, that's true for all slumlords historically, including the many, many gentile ones. The aggressive pursuit now is arguably because the largely progressive Jewish donors who funded Bragg's DA campaign care about it a great deal.

That’s again not true. Their secular advocacy groups made it a national news story. There were statements made by every politician. Their politicians secured them more security grants.

The ADL lobbies harder about a swastika on an elite university campus than they do about dozens of attacks by black people on Jews in NYC. The biggest complaint is typically that they don't even, uh, 'name' the perpetrators, so to speak.

What exactly am I supposed to glean from the rare cases of non-religious Jewish journalists investing Haredi? When I know that billionaire Thomas Kaplan, the billionaire Guma Aguiar, the billionaire Kushners, the billionaire Lev Leviev, the billionaire Ron Perelman, the billionaire Tevfik Arif, the billionaire Israel Englander, and even the Ukrainian former billionaire Kolomoisky, are all either funding ultra orthodox schools and organizations, or have funded them in the past? You wrote “it’s often secular Jews at the forefront of anti-Haredi policies” — no, they are at the forefront of funding them. And a journalistic website is not a “policy”. You are showing me a puddle in the concrete and telling me that it’s the forefront of water in the area, while I look behind you and there’s an expansive ocean with waves crashing against the pier.

Did you mean to write, “some Jews write about things against the ultra orthodox”? Well, sure. You’ve missed the best ones though, like the guy who writes the FailedMessiah blog, or the writer who wrote “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America”. But these guys don’t matter when they are a puddle, and the ocean = secular Jewish billions and literal Mossad.

The aggressive pursuit now is arguably because the largely progressive Jewish donors who funded Bragg's DA campaign care about it a great deal

If you have a source I would be interested in reading it. When NYT “aggressively” wrote a front page piece on ultra orthodox corruption in schools (which was honestly great journalism), nothing actually came from it.

Thomas Kaplan, the billionaire Guma Aguiar, the billionaire Kushners, the billionaire Lev Leviev, the billionaire Ron Perelman, the billionaire Tevfik Arif, the billionaire Israel Englander

Englander is Orthodox and attended yeshiva in Crown Heights growing up. Kaplan donates primarily to zionist causes and tiger conservation charities, I couldn't find much about very large contributions to chareidim but will assume you have done more research here than me. Aguiar was an Evangelical Christian of Jewish descent who became (with his formerly gentile wife) a revert/baal t'shuva to ultra-orthodox Judaism under Tovia Singer, for whom that's a life calling. He then seemed to steal a bunch of money from his uncle, Kaplan, and then used it to fund a rabbi with wacky views about the age of the earth in the hope that he would one day proclaim Aguiar to be the biblical messiah. Personally I don't consider that to be a standard story of secular Jewry funding the ultra-orthodox, but I digress. The Kushners are Orthodox and long have been. Leviev was born an (Orthodox) Bukharan Jew and remains Orthodox. Perelman was born to a conservative family but became Orthodox, writing "as soon as I got married, we kept a kosher house, we became much more observant. We moved to New York shortly thereafter and joined an Orthodox synagogue". Arif is not Jewish at all, though his business partner is.

So not one of the examples you cite (except, possibly, Kaplan with the weird messiah nephew, and I strongly doubt someone that invested in minutiae of the Israeli rabbinate around the issue of the age of the earth isn't religious) is, in fact, a secular Jew.

Kaplan and Aguiar: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/prodigal-son

Kushners are modern orthodox, hence why Haaretz writes “It might seem odd for a Modern Orthodox Jewish family to join a Chabad synagogue”. But sure, are we only counting atheist Jews?

Why did you ignore Kolomoisky? He was secular until his 40s. This is a trend, where secular Jews start associating with the orthodox when they acquire age and income.

Then there’s Sheldon Adelson; JPost writes,

https://m.jpost.com/opinion/article-691444

SHELDON WAS not an Orthodox or halachicly practicing Jew, in the strict sense of the word. Yet, in other ways he was ultra-Orthodox. If being an observant Jew means believing in the destiny of the Jewish people and safeguarding a vulnerable nation from harm and valuing the infinite worth of every member of our nation, then Sheldon was off-the-charts religious.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2006/12/08/Billionaire-plans-donation-to-Jews/48901165618085/

https://m.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/billionaire-adelson-to-boost-birthright-organization

He has also built a Chabad center there. Adelson, a major funder of Republican candidates, is also involved with the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee