#MeToo is a Jewish Problem

So in re: Sargon's video "The Holocaust gets #MeToo'd" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doVndjZa8fg)  I thought I'd share my own Me Too experience with a very Jewish pervert.

Rabbi Barry Freundel, for those who missed this story, was an Orthodox rabbi at Kesher Israel in Washington DC, taught courses on Judaism at a number of universities, and was frequently consulted by congress about issues that concerned Jews (probably because of being Joseph Leiberman's rabbi). Then one day a woman went to the mikvah (ritual bath--think baptismal, but different conditions need to be met including ending your monthly period) and saw him fiddling with a suspicious looking clock that it turns out was a camera. He had been filming women who were using the mikvah since at least 2009 and had over 150 victims, of which 52 were within the statute of limitations. He was arrested, plead guilty and was sentenced to six and a half years. I'll link the related wikipedia page below (1) in case anyone is interested in reading more.

So other than him being an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, what was so Jewish about his crime? His first victims were all non-Jews who he encouraged to take "practice dips" for extra credit in his university classes or to help facilitate their conversions to Judaism. After a while, he started adding women who had already converted to his list of victims. After all, according to Jewish law they are by definition prostitutes. (2) It was only after years of filming non-Jewish and convert women that he felt comfortable "upgrading" to also include Jewish women who were Jewish from birth in his voyeurism. It doesn't come as any surprise to me that as part of the #MeToo movement, mostly non-Jewish women have been victimized by mostly Jewish men.

This makes the case a uniquely Jewish offense because not only was it committed by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, he justified his actions to himself using Jewish law. As I said, this is my own story because I am one of the potential victims. Since I have (probably childhood PTSD related [3]) memory loss from that period of time, I asked the prosecutor not to tell me whether or not I was one of the identified victims but provided a picture of myself for their records.

So how do we solve this very Jewish problem?

I think part of the reason Freundel--and perhaps other Jewish perverts--chose non-Jewish victims was because he saw them as inherently beneath him and lacking dignity. Jewish law does say that the flesh of non-Jews is as the flesh of donkeys and that to sleep with a non-Jew is wrong because it is bestiality, and also encourages you to kill those who would give that information to non-Jews:

Rabbi Shila administered lashes to a man who had intercourse with a gentile woman. The man went and informed on him to the government [for extra-judicial courts and punishments]. He said: There is a Jewish man who holds court without royal appointment. The king sent an orderly to him [summoning R. Shila to appear]. When he came, they said to him: Why did you flog that man? [R. Shila] answered: Because he had relations with a donkey. They said to him: Do you have witnesses? He replied: Yes. Elijah came in the form of a man and testified. They said to him: If so, he is liable for death. [R. Shila] said: From the day we have been exiled from our land, we do not have permission to put someone to death. You can do whatever you want with him. While they were analyzing his case, R. Shila began: (1 Chronicles 29:11) "Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the strength, the splendor,..." They said to him: What are you saying? He replied: This is what I am saying: Blessed is G-d who has given an earthly kingship similar to the heavenly Kingship and has given you dominion and made you merciful in judgement. They said to him: The honor of the government is so dear to you? They gave him a strap and appointed him as a judge. When [R. Shila] left, the man [who was punished] said to him: Does G-d perform miracles for lies? He replied in this way: Wicked one, are they [non-Jews] not called donkeys, as it says (Ezekiel 23:20) "whose flesh is the flesh of donkeys"? He saw that this man was going to inform on him [to the non-Jewish king] that he had called them donkeys. He said: This man is a pursuer and the Torah says that if someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first. He hit him with the strap and killed him. Berachot 58a

And no, that's not a fake quote despite it being used a lot by actual anti-Semites. It is in fact in the Talmud. Scrolling down to the citations (4) will give you a link to the full Talmud so you can read it in context. It's not anti-Semitic to quote the Talmud. It's not my fault that the Talmud isn't politically correct and makes the religion look bad. It's still Jewish law, it's still accepted by religious Jews as a fundamental source for their faith, and it's racist and immoral.

So what do we do about it? I think acknowledging the problem is an important first step. In my recent article where I recommend bringing a ham to the table to celebrate Hannukah (5), I suggest that we celebrate the lives and traditions not of the Maccabees, but of their Jewish victims. The Maccabees and their spiritual successors, the Orthodox Jews of today, were and are only one of the types of Judaism. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE they were able to assert dominance over the other forms of Judaism and control the narrative. However, pluralistic versions of Judaism that function better in a world filled with non-Jews have existed both before and after them. Versions of Judaism that do not treat non-Jews as soulless animals and allow intermarriage. Given the extreme inbreeding of the Ashkenazi Jewish community and in particular the cloistered ultra-Orthodox Jews in Meah Shearim and the Bronx, it is clear that there is no future for that version of Judaism. All that remains is demographic collapse due to the number of people who can't or don't want to marry within the ultra-Orthodox community. Every person who leaves to marry a non-Jew contributes to the problem of the next generation not being ultra-Orthodox just as much as every person who stays and continues to pop out children who will die young and horribly of genetic conditions or will be carriers of those conditions to the next generation. Intermarriage, and more broadly treating non-Jews as equals, is as much the past as it is the future. The Jews who have been persecuted by Ezra and Nehemiah, by the Maccabees, and by the mobs of Meah Shearim have as much claim to being the true Jews as the Jews who persecuted them. There has always been a plurality of Judaisms and the ones that treat non-Jews as equals, accept intermarriage, don't practice circumcision, and don't keep the strict laws of kashrut are as much the traditions of our fathers as the ones who do. Jason, the high priest that the Maccabees probably martyred for practicing his faith, had as much claim to be practicing an authentic version of Judaism as the men who killed him, but our history was written by the victors. We shouldn't let the ISIS or al Qaeda versions of Judaism define what Judaism "really" is. Sure, in their version of Judaism theirs is the only truth and everyone else should be sentenced to death for not practicing their version of Judaism, but since when is terrorism a good reason to discard our identity?

And another thing. If you accept that "kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh" (all Israel is responsible one for another), doesn't that include before gentiles and their laws as well as before God? If you have the responsibility to reign in your fellow Jews when you see them doing things that are wrong because they will bring spiritual pollution to the entire community, why shouldn't that include calling out fellow Jews who have broken the laws of the land, even if those laws are not halakha? After all, dina d'malkhuta dina (the law of the land is law). Lashon hara (the prohibition of slander) should not be stretched to include those who have broken the laws of the land. Of course the rapists and sexual abusers are going to tell you that it's as much a sin for you to uncover their sin as it is for them to be rapists. They don't want to be punished. That doesn't mean that they're right.

If we want to stop the problem of Jewish perverts, we need to stop the perception of non-Jews as inferior and not deserving of human rights. This needs to be done by Jews. Jews need to get comfortable having a conversation about racism against non-Jews in the Jewish texts and the Jewish community. Jews need to get comfortable reporting the crimes of their fellow Jews, "even if" it's to defend non-Jews. Jews need to accept the humanity and right to dignity of their fellow man, including non-Jews.

tl;dr: To solve the problem of Jewish perverts, make Judaism Hellenist again.

References:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Freundel

2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1486819?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A3867901a1f3718b2421b4720eaa2c9af&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

3) https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/ptsd/how-ptsd-memory-loss-are-connected/

4) https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.58a?lang=bi

5) https://www.minds.com/SafiyaMukhamadova/blog/a-different-hannukah-tradition-1005703262367928320