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| Eytan Kobre |
They are virtually identical in Hashkafa – which is decidedly
Charedi. How Charedi are they? Well neither of them will show a picture of a
woman no matter how Tzanua (modestly dressed) she is. Even if she were wearing
a Burka. That’s pretty Charedi.
At the same time they both seek as broad-based an Orthodox readership
as they can find. Thus they will feature very positive articles on both the
Satmar Rebbe and Rav Hershel Shachter of Yeshiva University.
While I believe they are both absolutely wrong in excluding pictures
of Tzanua women - I applaud them for their broad based approach to Orthodoxy. There
are many informative articles and weekly columns by talented writers in both
magazines. But all is not rosy. I often find things in these magazines which are
truly maddening. This week both magazines had articles like that.
In what was an otherwise very positive story in Ami about
how the Jewish community’s extraordinary efforts in alleviating the pain of
those who have suffered – and are still suffering – the after effects of Superstorm
Sandy, there was one little blurb that bothered me. It read as follows: “The
Rosh Yeshiva gave us a Psak to help anyone who asked.”
On the surface that sounds wonderful. The Rosh Yeshiva is
Rav Reuven Feinstein. He of course said the right thing. Now the Yeshiva
students who were working so hard helping their fellow Jews could also help to
alleviate the plight of non Jews suffering the same fate.
Really? They had to ask a Shaila? Did they think that if a
non Jew desperate for some help - they should tell him, “No”? “Sorry, we can’t
help you”? “We can only help Jews”?
That too is a Shaila? What kind of Chinuch do these young
Jewish students get that causes them to hesitate in feeding a fellow human
being in need? The implication is obvious. Had they not been able to ask a
Shaila and a non Jew desperate for food - saw these boys handing ou t food and
asked for some himself, they may very well have refused them until they asked a
Shaila. Can there be a greater Chilul HaShem than that?
Now I don’t know if they didn’t “shoot first and ask questions
later”. Maybe they did feed the needy non Jew and merely wondered if they were doing
the right thing. But even that is ridiculous. A fellow human being needs food
to survive – you give it to him. Did they think God would punish them for doing
so?
There is something terribly wrong with Charedi Jewish
education if it does not make obvious the absolute requirement to help your
fellow man in these circumstances.
On a completely different subject - this week’s column
in Mishpacha by Eitan Kobre really got me upset. In yet another in what seems
to be a never ending assault on the President by right wing pundits, Mr. Kobre
goes to town on how stupid the black community in Washington DC is for voting
for the President.
I am going to stop short of calling Mr. Kobre a racist. I
don’t think he is. After all in using economist Thomas Sowell - a black man - to
bolster his opinion it is kind of hard to say that he is prejudiced against
black people.
But still there does seem to be a subtle prejudice that is hard
to prove. He is not castigating all black people. Just those who voted for the
President. Which - if I recall correctly – was well over 90%. He attributes
this to voting racial pride rather than voting for what’s good for you. As an
example of that he points to the fact that Republicans advocate vouchers which –
where they have been used - has
benefited the black community immensely. I believe that many black people
endorse vouchers. And yet they voted for a President that will never implement them
and instead will continue funneling money into the black hole of the public school
system.
But is it really so surprising that people will vote their
racial or ethnic pride – choosing that over someone whose substantive positions
have proven to be more beneficial to them? How many Jews vote for the Jewish
candidate because he is Jewish? Are Jews stupid too? Besides - are vouchers the only thing to base
one’s vote upon?
To be clear, I have no problem with Mr. Kobre’s arch conservative
politics. Although I am more of a centrist than a political conservative, I tend
to lean a bit more toward the conservative approach. So politically we are
not that far apart.
But to bash the President as if he were some sort of socialist
“Robin Hood” interested in taking from the rich via taxes and giving it away to
the poor via an enormous increase in entitlement programs - is taking the
criticism to a new low. Mr. Kobre may not have used those terms in his column.
But that is clearly how he thinks of the President. (Not that he’s alone. As I
said Thomas Sowell agrees with him. As do many conservative pundits. In fact
Rush Limbaugh makes Mr. Kobre look liberal by comparison.)
I do not recall this kind of criticism made against any
other Democratic President. Nor even against a democratic candidate for
President. Is he the most left leaning President or Presidential candidate in
recent history? You would think he was the second coming of Karl Marx if one
looks at the sheer venom of some critics. While I wouldn’t go that far with Mr.
Kobre’s criticism, there does seem to be an inordinate amount of dislike for
the man that goes beyond politics.
Like I said, I do not accuse Mr. Kobre of being a racist. And
yet he goes to extraordinary lengths to foment hatred of the man by the Jewish
people. Why else did he once again make reference to the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright?! What was his point here other than to somehow connect the President to
Wright’s rabid anti Israel stance?
And all this in the face of the President’s unqualified
support of Israel’s bombing raids in Gaza. I wonder how Reverend Wright characterized
it?
Adding insult to injury - that Mr. Kobre wrote this article and
that Mishpacha published it before there was a cease fire and while Hamas was
still firing rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem make it even more egregious. Especially
since it was the Obama administration's financial investment in the Iron Dome
Defense system which prevented the kind of carnage that would surely have ensued had
it not been there! If anything Mr. Kobre should be thanking the president
profusely instead of calling black people stupid for voting for him.
Come on Eytan. You can do better than that!
