You may not get to see this fine publication; it may be Monsey-area only. I didn't see last week's issue, where they mentioned Shlomo and Meir Kahane's Yohrtzeits, so I don't know what it was exactly that they wrote. But my son ZG"Z (= zol gezunt zein) brought this to my attention. He knows by now what gets my goat, I guess. What strikes me as really weird about this is the fact that I'm sure that an organization like Areivim - "From Crisis to Control" - is not a very rigid operation when it comes to saving at-risk youth. Meaning that they'll allow things like watching sports and maybe even non-Jewish music at their centers/functions - if they have any. I'm sure that Carlebach is just fine too. Now I know that allowing it doesn't make it right, but being that Shlomo was active in saving at-risk and lost youth you'd think that they would cut him some slack. Also, if you teach kids that people like SC and Kahane are not "true gedolim" will that make them wanna come and be helped by an organization like yours? Aren't you then like the Mesivta Rebbi or principal that he so dislikes?? That's all besides for the fact that Shlomo and Kahane resonate very strong with OTD and AR youth. I assume that there were complaints about them, but complaints can be handled in several different ways. Writing a childish retraction like the one here is just that, childish.
The Cover. Notice how they only use Rabbeinu Tam's zman for מוצש"ק.
hirshel says: " but being that Shlomo was active in saving at-risk and lost youth "
ReplyDeleteערבי ערבי צריך
וערבי דערבי?
ReplyDeletehirshel: וערבי דערבי?
ReplyDeleteא"כּ אין לדבר סוף
Hirshel
ReplyDeleteYou can not take out Monsey from Monsey
I am not hurting your feelings, since you live in Hempstead
The whole nonsense New Age attitude that Carlebach personified is exactly what OTD kids do NOT need. This organization should not have even bothered to mention him. His name should be forgotten, except as a composer to those who like his music.
ReplyDeleteKahane was a gutte meshuggener, more talk than walk.
Kahane was 1) a talmid chacham and a yodaya sefer. 2) baal mesiras nefesh, 3) vehoo ikar a "kadosh" bepoyel mamash - died al kiddush Hashem. I don't even understand how they can even be refered to bechaada machta - thay (SC and MK) are kash and borsht.
ReplyDeleteBemchilas Reb shlomo a"h who was mekarev many he was not "shomer negeeya" veda"l. But MK had no such shenanagens.
I'm just rying to put myself in their shoes (areivim) to try and figure out what's buging them, but their shoes are to inflexable...
I think even yeshivesh had nothing major aginst MK
YT Sheini
YT Sheini
ReplyDeleteI am not in the rechilas industry, but there are some Rumors on Reb Mier too...
Why is everbody so self-righteous when it comes to anyone who's a little different?Join the revolutionary guards in Iran and tell everyone what the thought police has decided is appropriate for a young statisher bochur who needs the bigtime shiduch.The 60's and 70's were not today's world where everyone is frum with a huge$200 Borsalino. . Reb Shlomeh and Reb Meyer Kahane struggled to make sense out of Judaism in an America that looked at them and other frum Jews as practicing a primitive,superstitious faith.Let's see what kind of greiser tzuleiger you'd be if you lived in different times.By the way,how many people did Shlomo pull out of depressions and hopelessness thru his songs and torahs?Or is the only thing that counts the stuff that the number crunchers in BP and Flatbush can quantify and label?What Orthodoxy needs is a new Besht to breathe some life in the fossilized ideaology of contemporary Haredi Judaism.Go check out the gemoroh about Menasheh hamelech and Rav Ashi and perhaps you'd think twice about your viscious assaults on R. Shlomo and R. Kahane.
ReplyDeleteBy the way R. Shlomo.and R.M. Kahane were instrumental in the free Soviet Jewry movement. Much of the success of the movement could be attributed to them[ among others].So before you start fireing your guns read a little history and find out the truth.
ReplyDeleteYT Sheini,
ReplyDeleteif you want to judge who is a bigger yode'a sefer of the two, carlebach would win hands down.
btw, r' meir was not shomer negiyah when it came to punching girls who heckled him when he spoke at college campuses (video is on youtube)
This blog is censored so you won't know that Kahane was far from shomer negiah.
ReplyDeleteJJJ
ReplyDeletedid I not publish your attack on Kahane? why then would you say that it's censored???
The approach of Kahane especially, but also Carlebach, only made trouble for the Jews in the times of the USSR.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, they don't belong in the same basket. While there were rumors that Kahane HYD worked for the CIA and did some things against halacha when he did so, he clearly espoused adherence to halacha. (I have no idea if those allegations against him were proven; they come from the NYSlimes).
Carlebach der menuval gave women smicha, tore down mechitzas and was way, way OTD.
We don't need anyone to tear down boundaries. Deformed, deconstructionist and new age does that just fine, and Carlebach was basically one of that crowd. His songs depress as many people as they supposedly lift up. I love them because they're perfect for Peerim with slightly different words.
We need people who can explain the values behind the boundaries.
I retract my allegations of censorship.
ReplyDeleteEpes modneh said...
ReplyDeleteBy the way R. Shlomo.and R.M. Kahane were instrumental in the free Soviet Jewry movement. Much of the success of the movement could be attributed to them
nor kalya gemacht
With all the right things that Kahane said about needs of strong stand against arabs in Eretz Isroel he was not instrumental but detrimental to the plight of Jews in USSR by making Soviets to do things just to spite his demonstrations and attacks.
ReplyDeleteRebbe advocated quiet diplomacy with Soviets and pointed how the confrontational approach actually endangered Jews in Russia.
Go read some history of the 60's and 70's. As a result of the SSSJ,RebMeir Kahane,and Reb Shlomo hundreds of thousands of Jews left the USSR. These are facts that thousands of people remember and can verify. So quite frankly all you guys with your snide comments just don't know what you're talking about.Go back to arguing whether the demonstrations were a sibah or only a siman.
ReplyDeleteI'm far from a fan of Kahane, but let's look at things in context. Gorbachev acknowledged that US economic pressure in the form of the Jackson-Vanik amendment did play a role in the Soviet Union's changing approach to the Jews.
ReplyDeleteNow why did Jackson-Vanik happen? No, it wasn't directly because of Kahane's playing Bad Cop. But why did the American Jewish establishment wake up and play Good Cop? Was Soviet Jewry a priority before? No it was not. Playing Good Cop most certainly was in part to marginalize Kahane, whose stunts were embarrassing as heck. And it was the AJ establishment that made Jackson-Vanik happen. So in a very real sense he did have en effect on US foreign policy which actually was beneficial to Soviet Jewry.
Depends on what books and who wrote them.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who lived in USSR during 60-s - 70-s - 80-s and being acquainted with a handful of refuseniks I heard from them that they were frankly told in KGB that they would be out already for long time if not for the demonstrations "of your american friends and their terrorist activities".
(To tell the truth, the refuseniks themselves were fascinated by Kahane's actions and happy someone teases the mighty USSR)
Well, there are testimonies that these activities made the situation much worse and actually caused more repressions against the refuseniks and delayed their coming out from behind the iron curtain.
Yom Tov
ReplyDelete", r' meir was not shomer negiyah when it came to punching girls who heckled him when he spoke at college campuses "
I ,think the Debrecener has a teshuva regarding beating the wife in her non thara days
House of Pot
ReplyDelete"they come from the NYSlimes)."
it is only the NYT, the minute u mess with the CIA, for ill or for will, they will not stop at anything.
Yakov
ReplyDelete"they were frankly told in KGB that they would be out already for long time"
is everything the KGB said true?
JJJ
ReplyDeleteyour post is not censured it just landed in the wrong spot
SSSJ And Kahane=400-500,000 Jews leaving the USSR
ReplyDeleteQuiet diplomacy=several hundred here several hundred there[like Nahalas Har Habad]
You do the math.
Now the sources say, and you can find them if you want, that the quiet diplomacy was going on and the Soviets were very angry with all these demonstrations and turned down what was already decided regarding the freedom to leave.
ReplyDeleteSo all these 400,000-500,000 were not because of Kahane but despite him.
But you are welcome to believe whatever you choose. It seems to me you just like the stuff in the form of more violent versions of Occupy Wall Street.
BTW SSSJ and Kahane is not the same, Kahane tried hard to make SSSJ to act in terrorist way.
ReplyDeleteNormal policies of SSSJ were forceful but not ugly, and that worked, but whatever Kahane did for Soviet Jews was detrimental.
Epes Modneh
ReplyDeleteTe quie diplomacy was not for chabad chasidim only, it was for every jew of russia,,
Mishemes Reb Mier Botlo Demagoguery...
You will not be his successor(hikind tries already) so don't even try
"As someone who lived in USSR during 60-s - 70-s - 80-s and being acquainted with a handful of refuseniks I heard from them that they were frankly told in KGB that they would be out already for long time if not for the demonstrations "of your american friends and their terrorist activities"."
ReplyDeleteThe problem with assuming that the KGB was simply acting with integrity and telling them the truth rather than engaging in another form of cruel intimidation is that this is what they would have said even if it wasn't true. So how do we know it is? Besides, who says that the KGB agents who told them this had any intimate knowledge of the politics high up over their head?
There was barely any quiet push outside the USSR for Soviet Jewry quietly until people started making noise.
Now, I do not dispute the possibility that certain individuals were directly harmed because of all "their american friends and their terrorist activities." This certainly raises ethical questions. But that it hurt in general, rather than helped in general? Come on, you'll have to show something besides what the KGB told the people they were assigned to harass.
Yakov is 1000% correct. Rav Moshe Feinstein also said not to get involved in the whole SSSJ mess.
ReplyDeleteThe KGB kept real refuseniks like Reb Yitzchok Kogan waiting till the last minute, and instead let out hordes of Jews who hardly cared about being Jewish. The ones they let out in the 60s and 70s were mainly economic and not political refugees. They also send quite a few hardened criminals to the US and those criminals became the community leaders, sucking others into their criminal activities. In the US they became the nucleus of today's Russian mafia and scam rings. That was the response of the USSR to all of these demonstrations - they emptied their trash cans the way Castro did with the Mariel boatlift. The USSR derived benefit from losing those emigrants; their departure was the USSR's gain and the US's loss.
If anything, they probably let the Nachlas Har Chabad crew from Samarkand out davka because the Rebbe did not advocate what Kahane was doing, and instead just sent people to bring matzos, sforim etc. Many of them got out at the very beginning of the emigration.
And in the end, it all crashed anyway. Jews are returning to the former Soviet Union from Eretz Yisroel, and they become far more Jewish back home than they were in EY.
I am not saying that the efforts had to be just poor man asking a nedovo. The pressure had to be applied in high echelons and so on. But the terrorist actions of Kahane crowd were detrimental and set it back.
ReplyDeleteI am bringing this KGB "leaks" only because they in this case correspond to what the Rebbe was saying.
Unfortunately I don't remember where I read about the talks between Nixon and Brezhnev and later Gorbachov and Reagan and how the show and how they discussed the Russian Jews and the show ups on these demonstrations were driving Russians just to do in spite. So OK, I don't have tools to convince you. On the other hand whatever I remember even without exact source I consider to know so I voice my disagreement when I see praise for detrimental actions.
BTW, can you provide documents that would show that these (Kahane's) actions were beneficial?
I can't. What I am going on is the fact that Gorbachev acknowledged that Jackson-Vanik actually made a difference, and what I believe is very obvious, namely that the establishment never would have taken the Soviet issue seriously had it not been shamed into doing so by Kahane. I know that may be a leap for reasonable people, but I just don't see how anything was being done beforehand, and I don't see what the catalyst for waking up Jewry to the plight inside the USSR would have been otherwise.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is a leap IMHO. I read (in the book Dyedushka) about a lot of behind the scenes work done by Chabad to move some actions like Jackson-Vanik, and I am sure there were others who did the similar things in one form or another.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how is it obvious that Kahane crowd's actions shamed the establishment into action.
S.-You are of course right.Yakov has to defend the Rebbe's position and House of Pot believes he knows everything from Carlebach to Russian Jewry.The Russian Jewry matter is well remembered and documented and you're quite correct in your analysis.Those in doubt can go back and read the old NYTimes and Jewish Weeks and even Algemeiners and you'll see for yourself.
ReplyDeleteJackson-Vanik was not the work of the hooligan demonstrators. It was the work of the non-frum "shtadlonim" of various agencies that probably don't exist today.
ReplyDeleteI was going to join some friends and get my tuches arrested once at the embassy, but I asked a real rov. He told me that Rav Moshe, who, like the Rebbe, had lived under Communism, said that it would only create trouble.
Who founded that SSSJ? Chuck Sheer, the sellout lefty rabbi of Columbia who ended up thrown out for not being lefty enough. Avi Scheiss of Maharat fame. That says it all.
Kahane was not even a welcome presence at those rallies. The kids who demonstrated were spoiled Teaneck and 5 Towns types who would never shoot anything but their mouths. They just wasted police time, and this during the high-crime days when cops were very much needed to do more important work.
As for Carlebach, yeah, he strummed a guitar in Moscow and came up with the irritating and tacky Am Yisroel Chai, but what in the world did that accomplish?
ReplyDeleteImagine if he had tried his shtick with women in Moscow?!?!
Maybe we're not communicating properly.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that Kahane accomplished Jackson-Vanik (which I am glad to see where are all in agreement about, that it was effective and important). I am saying that "the non-frum "shtadlonim" just didn't care enough about Soviet Jewry and were embarrassed by the hooligans into taking it seriously. I am saying that they would not have made the effort, had no plans to make the effort, without being shamed into it by the Bad Cop tactics of Kahane. I can't say that he intended or anticipated that, only that this is what appears to have happened.
The fact that Reb Moshe or the Lubavitcher Rebbe were afraid of antagonizing the Soviets (from personal experience) doesn't surprise me, nor does it contradict the premise that antagonizing them did end up having an impact, by spurring on the Very Important Jews who had been ignoring it to stop ignoring it.
Suffice it to say that I am more than qualified, both in terms of personal and academic knowledge, to disagree. The demonstrations did not lead to Jackson-Vanik. Besides, what good was Jackson-Vanik if every issue of Time and Newsweek during the cold war period had an ad for Stolichnaya and every liquor store carried it? I used to keep a bottle of Stoli that someone gave me under the sink next to the jugs or Clorox and acid I kept for Pesach cleaning because I was embarrassed to even have it in my possession until the very late 80s.
ReplyDeleteDo you know how much barter and counter-trade went on with the Soviets? I sure do, and this is personal knowledge that you can verify with a quick Google search.
Kahane HYD nearly blew everything with the Sol Hurok escapade. He was a loose cannon. Meant well, but missing about a good-sized Lowe's worth of screws.
A big part of my opinion is derived from Gorbachev's acknowledgment that Jackson-Vanik was a big deal. (Can't find a link at the moment, but lo ra'inu eino rayah).
ReplyDeleteSo my contention is not that the demos caused it, but that without the demos the American Jews do little more for the Soviet Jews than try to get them matzah.
As for whether or not screws were loose or missing in his head, was that ever in dispute?
OK, now I see what you mean - and you are way off.
ReplyDeleteGorbachev had to do whatever Reagan, and then Bush, wanted him to do because the USSR was an economic, political and social shambles when he took over. In essence, Gorbachev needed US aid, which did him no good because the USSR fell apart anyway.
Jackson-Vanik was meant to punish Brezhnev. Brezhnev then was like Putin now - he just thumbed his nose at the world because of geological wealth. With every foolish demonstration, Brezhnev just locked the doors tighter. Brezhnev also did a very good job letting out scum from his prisons when he did allow emigration. Brezhnev's gifts to Brooklyn include Munya Elson, a true credit to Am Yisroel who is a murderer, drug dealer and counterfeiter.
Even without Jackson-Vanik, Gorbachev would have had to allow free emigration. And when he did allow it, Jackson-Vanik still remained in force. And then, once the USSR was gone, it did not matter.
The Gorbachev emigration was terrible - terrible for real Jews, the most entrepreneurial of whom came back to the FSU and do very well, or went on to the US or Germany, and terrible for Eretz Yisroel because of the 300,000 non-Jews who emigrated. EY got a bunch of drones from second-rate engineering colleges, most of whom don't even work in their fields and plenty of whom remain on the dole.
Most of all, certainly you are aware that Jackson-Vanik is still ON the books. It was never repealed.
That is proof positive that it did no good.
I don't have access to old issues of NY Times and Jewish Week and Algemeiner to check whether they write how instrumental Kahane was to bring about the release of Soviet Jews (not that I would particularly trust NY Times anyway), but the memoirs of those who were involved show different picture. Of course you can say that all these people are Chabad or Chabad friends and therefore are not trustworthy.
ReplyDeleteAs about defending Rebbe's position - Rebbe does need defending as whatever he said is the best defense as a side point. As for his position itself - of course it is more valid than anyone else's as all other positions are marred by creeping ego:):)