RE: Fraudulent GRASSROOT MOVEMENT "' JEWISH RENEWAL"

Hannah had this to say:

DS,

 

"What is this Jewish Renewal Movement?"  Very good question, and the answer is not at all good.  Its backers are bigger than New Israel Fund or Ford Foundation.

 

You can get an overview (with documentation) from my research -

http://searchlight.iwarp.com/articles/na_missionize.html

 

(JR is examined under no. 2, "spiritual salads - Judaism laced with paganism")

 

To paraphrase Eeyore when he realized he had lost his tail... "It explains Everything."

 

cheers,

Hannah

DS's answer to her:

Hannah,

You really did a lot of research. Good job. Just a few points:

1. Maybe the spiritual root is deeper. What I am interested in is the MONEY TRAIL. They always say: follow the money. By that you can see whose interests this really serves. And from what I see, the New World Order benefits handsomely.

 

That can be misleading.  Our enemies know (as do our own sages) that there are things more valuable than money that are worth fighting for.  Like the mind and soul.  The interests of those parties might be furthered by funding, but don't be fooled into thinking that money is the end-game.  (BTW, that is a NA stereotype of the Jews: "they measure everything in materialistic terms".)

DS:YOu misunderstood my point.

2. Re: your research. I understand your aversion to anything even remotely tainted with non-Jewish sources, after your 11 year old stint with some of these people.

My feeling is: Chachamim say that there is a lot of WISDOM in the Goyim. But if you are looking for TORAH, you won't find it.

So why throw out the baby with the bathwater? There is a lot of good that can be learned from all these teachers. You just have to know  where to draw the line, and be EXTREMELY CAREFUL not to cross it.

 

Yes, the goyim do have wisdom, and we can learn from them when it doesn't do violence to Torah.  Like how to eat healthy, for example.... Great wisdom for them and for us. 

We can even take it in stride when they have their own thing going... like eating crabmeat.  They can, it's just that we don't.

But what we have here are Jews bringing us crabmeat, with their kashrut stamp on it, saying "come on - it's okay, really !" That's when it becomes a danger, and we need to sound the warning.

DS:Forgive me if I disagree. Some of the stuff is really Avoda  zara. but some of your examples are really exaggerated. Maybe you were a little bit traumatized by your experience and are overreacting?/

On the other hand, for Jews who have had no exposure to real Torah, ever, it is very difficult to draw that line, and therefore yes, such groups can be very misleading. That is why I am warning against them, specially considering that they are being FUNDED by our ENEMIES.

 

I'm way more concerned by the fact that they are being promoted by our own people. Some very respectable names are associated with Jewish Renewal, or tolerate them.

But still, as J. said, HE learnt a lot from similar groups. By the way, I did too.  So , who knows, maybe there is some good in it after all..........don't know.........

 

Reb Zalman Shacter (initiator of JR, originally a Lubavitcher rebbe) did invent a beautiful rainbow tallit, and some other creative ideas that found their way into mainstream Jewish practice. 

But he's also pulled a lot of Torah-hungry Jews straight into Buddhism... still wearing their beautiful rainbow tallits and doing their creative stuff. 

Is that a fair price to get a few pretty things back into Judaism?

DS:Again, I think you are stretching the truth. There is really a lot of good to learn from  them. You just have to know how. It is like the story of the Pardess: Rabbi Akiva, , Acher, and I forgot who the last two were. One died, one became an apikores, one went crazy, and one became a Talmid Chacham. And then, Rabbi Meir LEARNT from ACHER who had become an apikores. He just knew how to differentiate between good and bad. He knew how to extract what he had to learn from them, and throw out the rest. I think that by closing ourselves off, we just become stupid.



That is the trick. For that you have to be very wise.

 

brachot,

hn

DS;same

DS