"...Do not steal. What can be more Jewish than that?" (Abramoff)

[sabra]

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/28216/format/html/displaystory.html

If Abramoff is truly frum, I’ll eat my black hat

by eliyahu stern

The New York Times and ABC News just could not understand why Jack Abramoff, a master of public relations, would walk out of a courtroom — where he pleaded guilty earlier this month to three felony counts — wearing a Mafioso-styled black fedora. Whose sympathy exactly was he after?

While the Times could not understand the bizarre spectacle, Jews recognized Abramoff’s headgear all too well as a sign of Orthodox piety.

...

I’m sorry, but no matter how much you keep kosher and castigate Americans about sexual morality, if you support corrupt power and act unethically toward other human beings, you are a failure as a Jew.

Abramoff’s hat signals the extreme lack of self-reflection in his religious life. Before the Bible says anything about black hats, abortion or kosher restaurants for Washington insiders, it says “Do not steal.” What can be more Jewish than that?

Hypocritical moralizing treats the public as fools and does a disservice to all those who take Judaism seriously. Being a frum Jew entails being an example for humanity. It means that we hold ourselves to a higher level of ethical correctness. If using an Orthodox yeshiva to launder ill-begotten money does not embarrass us, then what does?



Eliyahu Stern is a scholar-in-residence at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue and a member of Edah, an advocacy movement for modern Orthodox Judaism.

[rman]

1. excellent

[formercia]

2. Abramoff is not a Mench by a long shot.

Neo Nazis will use him as a poster boy.

[sabra]

3. he's a disgrace.

[formercia]

6. He should be cast out like Cain and shunned. n/t

[MADem]

4. Good lord--wrapping himself in the Star of David!!!

And with the help of a real shill of a rabbi, too!!!

....So he reportedly called his “rebbe” and longtime supporter Rabbi Daniel Lapin, head of the right-wing organization Toward Tradition, and asked him if he could patch together some award in his honor — “something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies,” Abramoff wrote in an email to Lapin. While Lapin was at it, Abramoff asked him if he could make it appear “that I received these in years past.” Lapin assured him it was no problem.

The story only touches the surface of the disturbing symbiotic relationship between Abramoff and his rabbis. Abramoff founded the Eshkol Academy, an Orthodox Jewish school in Maryland. David Lapin, Daniel’s brother, served as the dean. According to emails revealed during U.S. Senate hearings into the Abramoff-Ralph Reed Indian gambling scandal, Lapin was reportedly paid $20,000 a month through Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation.

The Eshkol Academy closed in 2004 after questions were raised in the press about Abramoff’s financial dealings with Indian tribes. Thirteen former Eshkol employees have sued the academy for back salary and claimed that the Capital Athletic Foundation “was used to launder funds from the tribes to Eshkol.” Federal tax records show that various Indian tribes donated more than $1 million to the foundation.

Behind every corner of this investigation there is another right-wing rabbi or “observant Jew” ready to “kasher” Abramoff’s actions. If it wasn’t one of the Lapins, it was every evangelical’s favorite Jew, David Klinghoffer, a writer who, along with conservative talk-show host Michael Medved, was part of Lapin’s group American Alliance of Jews and Christians, which was geared towards promoting “morality in American public life.” ....

Ha! Michael Friken MEDVED!!!! Wonder if we will see his pontificating ass out and about any time soon? This is a scream--I'm guessing the Christians are happy that they aren't the only ones who have the occasional toads as religious leaders!

[applegrove]

5. Yes I agree. He is a bad example of a human being all the way around.

Beware of the spin. It is the man's actions... not who he is or how he was born that is up for discussion.

[formercia]

7. This is true but bad people will use it to say:

See, just like in Nazi propaganda posters. This is why what he did was so bad, pretending to be observant and having people associate him with good and observant people. Shame.