When Bad Rabbis Happen to a Good People
By Stella Paul
Are you ready for Rabbis Gone Wild — Boston Edition? In the latest installment of this tragicomedy, the progressive Jewish leadership of Massachusetts decides to break the arrogance barrier and set new records for dangerous egomania.
First, let’s meet our cast: seventy distinguished rabbis in Greater Boston, including the Past President of Hebrew College. Boy, you could fell an ox with the collective weight of these worthies’ credentials.
And now, the bloodcurdling story: On June 10, these seventy men and women publicly condemned and virtually excommunicated one of the finest American Jewish leaders and human rights activist alive today.
Why? Because Dr. Charles Jacobs has the chutzpah to present documented facts about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Boston’s increasingly infamous, radical-linked, Saudi-funded mega-mosque.
In a broadside entitled “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community ,” published in the Jewish Advocate, seventy rabbis signed their name to a letter demanding that “Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.”
The rabbis then referenced the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: “Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear.”
Way to go, rabbis! Stirring imagery! Biblical metaphor! Huge spiritual uplift! No, wait, that was my lunch.
To get the full flavor of the rabbis’ epic stupidity, let’s meet the victim of their “Jewish fatwa,” Dr. Charles Jacobs. In the late ’80s, Jacobs co-founded Boston ‘s branch of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America , to expose and combat media bias against Israel . A few years later, he founded, along with Christian and Muslim Africans, the American Anti-Slavery Group. Charles Jacobs was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for his work helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan .
In 2002, he founded The David Project, a powerhouse organization that trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus. He currently heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he founded in 2008 to protect American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims. In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America ‘s top 50 Jewish leaders.
So let me ask you, O Great Progressive Rabbis, this is the man you want to casually destroy? While you were risking nothing more than the stampede to the canapés at some interfaith blabberfest, Charles Jacobs was flying to Sudan to redeem slaves with money he raised and bring them to freedom.
While you were chasing the latest must-have fad in “social justice” and ignoring the rising storm of campus anti-Semitism, Charles Jacobs was doing the grunt work of establishing an organization on the ground to help besieged Jewish students tell the truth about Israel .
While you were playing patty-cake with Jew-hating imams, Charles Jacobs was investigating the facts about their disgusting affiliations and helping moderate Muslims stand up to the radical takeover of their institutions.
O Most Compassionate Ones, do we really have so many people like Charles Jacobs that you can afford to toss him in the trash?
Now let’s look at the people you do like, those spicy characters you’re staking your reputations on. They’re all linked to Boston ‘s mega-mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is run by the Muslim American Society, or as federal prosecutors like to call it, “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) cavalcade includes its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently rotting in jail on a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks; the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi , wart-faced “spiritual” leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who’s banned from the U.S. but served as ISB Trustee; Osama Kandil, ISB Trust President, director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government; and Trustee Jamal Badawi, unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial who tells Boston Muslims they must live only under Sharia Law.
How do I know these facts? Because Charles Jacobs has worked doggedly to expose them, for which I’m immensely grateful. Now, Wise and Wonderful Rabbis, why aren’t you grateful, too? Why aren’t you saying, “Thank you, Dr. Charles Jacobs , for being our modern-day Paul Revere, the Boston hero who alerted us of invasion from a hostile power. Have an honorary degree on us!”
Instead, you flew into a rage at Jacobs’ latest shocker: a video of Beantown’s jihadi rock star, Imam Abdullah Farooq, instructing followers to “grab onto the gun and the sword. Don’t be afraid to step out into this world and do your job.” More chilling than Farooq’s words is their context: urging Muslims to support two violent locals, “the Grey Lady of al-Qaeda,” Aaafia Siddiqui, who’s convicted of shooting FBI agents in Pakistan ; and Tarek Mehana, the excitable Sudbury youngster arrested for plotting to murder shoppers in New England malls.
Does this Imam Farooq sound like the kind of fellow you want training your police force? Not unless you want police so “sensitive” they polish their badges while the next Tarek Mehana decides to give New England shoppers a side of bullets with their fries.
And that’s why Jacobs’ video criticized Governor Deval Patrick for publicly embracing Imam Farooq and accepting a $50,000 check of dubious origins from him to train police in “Muslim cultural sensitivities.”
And for this act of supreme civic responsibility, you defame and slander Charles Jacobs ? For this, you accuse him of a “destructive campaign against Boston ‘s Muslim community” and expose him and his family to potential dangers from vengeful Islamists? For this, you sear the Scarlet B of Bigot on his forehead and cast him into the cold?
Dear Loving and Highly Spiritually Evolved Progressive Rabbis, you’re always yammering about dialoguing with “the other,” right? So here’s an “other” you might try dialoguing with: any Jew who has an ounce of sanity.
You know, all those nice people in your much-vaunted “community” who aren’t willing to have their throats slit just because you insist it’s the tolerant, hate-free thing to do.
Quick question, O Learned Ones: What are you going to do when jihad-crazed maniacs like Tarek Mehana come after your family with machine guns in the mall? Swat them with your diplomas? Teach them the finer points of Rashi? “Dialogue” on which of your limbs to chop off?
As for all you lovely lady rabbis on the list — enjoy sermonizing in your burqa! And just hope your daughters don’t have to endure the female bris ceremony.
Now, rabbis, I say this only out of the deepest concern for your mental health: Ask a doctor in your congregation to check if your Galloping Smug-itis has reached Stage 4 yet.
Because I’d like to think there’s still hope for you. But you’re making it really tough.
And by the way, nowhere in your job description can I find “will work to self-righteously deliver congregants into the hands of genocidal maniacs who conspire to shoot people in shopping malls.”
You want me to pay dues for that? Two thousand dollars a year for you to hand me over to the Jew-hating nuts? I want my money back!
And please spare me your teary speeches about the Holocaust and your bus trips to the Holocaust Museum .
To you, Never Again apparently means Never Again Will We Bother to Flick An Eyelash In the Annoyingly Icky Direction of Genocidal Threats.
And finally, here’s something you may never understand: One Charles Jacobs is worth more than seventy of you. Why? Because he fights for the truth
Another Broad who talks like me, sort of? 🙂
What a warped and spiritually diseased Sanhedrin the Boston Jewish community has chosen for its leadership.
The next Holocaust will in all likelihood be hosted by Leftist Jews, practitioners of the most malevolent and savage form of anti-Semitism that has ever existed in human history. And now they have their rabbis – frightened little rabbits, 21st-century Kapos hoping to avert disaster by helping their enemies escort their “fellow” Jews to the crematoria.
Think for a moment about the Maccabean Wars: Jews fighting – and killing – Hellenized Jews. Who were these Hellenized Jews?
They were enlightened, spoke Greek, studied the philosophers, and it was reported that some young Jewish men even reversed their circumcisions in order to participate in sporting events (all performed in the nude as was Greek custom). It is highly likely that these Jews, thoroughly modern for their time, would have liked to see the end of traditional Jewish culture in Judea. No doubt they mocked the priesthood and stopped observing the holidays. It was probably an embarrassment to them.
And we might say, yes, they were right to abandon an antiquated religion in favor of progress. And had they succeeded, the Romans would have invaded anyway, and dispersed the remaining people, and there would have been no traditions to hold them together, and there would never have been a Talmud or Mishna and in the 21st century nobody on the planet would remember what a Torah is – as the Jewish people would have gone the way of the Amalekites and Moabites.
Wonder what today’s world would look like, in the absence of a culture that has contributed more to the advancement of humankind than any other in history?
Mr. Charles Jacobs has identified our enemies as radical Islamists and their enablers – and most unfortunate for the Jewish community, most of those enablers are among our “own.”
In my small community, we have only one Temple and it is a Progressive type with a “Rabbi” from Boston..If they want him back, he can go with my good graces.
I can tell by the names of the so called Synagogues they lead that they are so called Rabbis
Compare with a real rabbi who deserves that title!
Shlach: Repairing the Sin of the Spies
Unlike all the other occasions when the Israelites rebelled, this time Moses was unable to annul God’s decree. The entire generation died in the desert, never making it to the promised land. The best Moses was able to do was to delay the punishment for 40 years.
In a letter from 1908, Rav Kook wrote that we still suffer for this catastrophic error. The root cause for all exiles and humiliations of the Jewish people, throughout their long history, is due to the failure to correct the sin of the spies.
How can we rectify the sin of the spies?
To truly repair this national failure, we need “teshuvat hamishkal” – a penance commensurate to the sin, thus ‘balancing the scales.’ If the spies defamed the Land of Israel, as it says, “And they despised the desirable land” (Psalms 106:24), then we must demonstrate our great love for the land.
“(We must) declare to the entire world its magnificence and beauty, its holiness and grandeur. If only we could express, with what may appear to us to be greatly exaggerated, even a ten-thousandth of the desirability of the beloved land, and the splendorous light of its Torah, and the superior light of its wisdom and prophecy!
“The quality of delightful holiness that Torah scholars seeking the Divine may find in the Land of Israel does not exist at all outside the Land. I myself can attest to this unique quality, to a degree commensurate with my small worth.” (Letters, vol. I, pp. 112-113)
For Rav Kook, this recommendation on how to address the sin of the spies was not just a nice homily. Stories abound of his burning love for the Land of Israel, and his indefatigable attempts to encourage fellow Jews to move to Eretz Yisrael. Below are a few examples:
God Willing
During a fundraising mission to America in 1924, Rav Kook tried to convince a wealthy Jew to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael. The man gave various reasons why he could not yet leave America, but concluded, ‘God willing, I too will soon make Aliyah to Israel.’
Rav Kook replied to the man, “God is certainly willing. After all, settling Eretz Yisrael is one of His commandments. But you also must be willing …”
The Leniency
Once, in America, a number of shopkeepers asked Rav Kook if there exists some leniency in Jewish law that permits one to work on the second day of Yom Tov.
“Yes,” he replied, “there is a leniency that is accepted by all halachic authorities.”
The shopkeepers were thrilled. They eagerly asked for details about this leniency.
“Come to Eretz Yisrael,” Rav Kook smiled. “Then you will always be permitted to work during the second day of Yom Tov.”
Without Calculations
Once, a Jewish tourist visited Rav Kook in Jerusalem, seeking advice as to the possibility of living in Eretz Yisrael. During the discussion, the visitor calculated the pros and cons of moving to Israel, and in the end decided that it was not worthwhile.
Rav Kook told the man:
“Before the Israelites entered the Land in the time of Moses, they first needed to kill Sichon, king of Heshbon. This teaches us that one should come to the Land of Israel without making calculations (“bli heshbon”).
Kissing the Rocks of Acre
The Talmud states that Rabbi Abba would demonstrate his great love for the Land of Israel by kissing the rocks of Acre (Ketubot 112a). What was so special about these rocks that Rabbi Abba would kiss them?
Rav Kook explained that if Rabbi Abba had kissed the soil of Eretz Yisrael, we would assume that his love for the land was due to the special mitzvot that are fulfilled with its fruit — tithing, first fruits, the sabbatical year, and so on. Only the soil, which produces fruit, reflects the importance and holiness of the land.
But Rabbi Abba’s love for the land was not dependent on any external factors (see Avot 5:16; Orot p. 9). Rabbi Abba cherished the intrinsic holiness of Eretz Yisrael. He recognized that the special qualities of the Land – such as its receptivity to prophecy and enlightenment — go far beyond the holiness of those mitzvot connected to agriculture. Therefore, he made a point of kissing the barren rocks and stones.
(Adapted from Malachim Kivnei Adam pp. 221,222,237)
Seems to me this article is all about a group of totally freaked scared out their gourd Liberal Jews fighting among themselves as to who can suck up to the gentile more.
I wonder how many of these pseudo (sic) rabbis were orthodox? How many reform and How many conservative. Just curious.
I didn’t know there are no poor Jews left in America? No young people in need of counseling,no Jewish weddings to officiate at or funerals? No sick to visit no students to teach, no 3 services a day to attend, no dealing with the rising tide of Jew hatred in America and support for Israel? Oh, Yes there are Bar Mitzvot and Bat Mitzvot.
A real practicing Jewish rabbi would have so much on his plate with Jewish matters I doubt he could even if were inclined to have time for all these other irrelevant extracurricular activities.
Dr. Charles Jacobs. Sounds like a good man but I must take exception to all his non Jewish activities.
Just goes to show you that all liberals are not the same. Some liberals are more brain dead than others, some more scared, some more Jewish but at the end of the day they are all liberal and all have that acrid liberal smell including and maybe even especially Dr. Charles Jacobs.
I guess he likes the awards and Kudos from the gentiles as no real Jew calling himself rabbi would ever leave a Jew hungry and in distress to go and help instead non Jew however worthy their cause.
Outstanding article. As I have said a number of times, the greatest threat to the Jewish people are Jewish liberals.