Part 3: The Reform Inside Our Communities - A Purim Message
Please give this serious thought and please share, l’maan hatzalas Am Yisroel.
BS”D
In the last two articles, we have shown grave proof of the Reform infiltration into the “Chareidi” community, by means of various Reform-funded organizations, chief among them the leadership training institute, Machon Mandel, whose graduates include the owner of the largest English-language frum weekly magazine.
In this article, we will move on to other examples of infiltration. But first, a preface.
Some people immediately and instinctively understood the deep trouble we are in, when I spoke of Machon Mandel and Mishpacha. Others are so used to the state of affairs that they just don’t “get it” and became very upset.
It is Min Hashamayim that my son shared an illuminating talk with me b’nogaya to Purim, which might help those who couldn’t see the truth of what I said about secular culture-Reform infiltration until now.
My son said over from Rav Aharon Lopian that, most of all, Hashem judges us by what we enjoy. That shows who we are.
The ikkar problem with Klal Yisrael’s behavior in the time of Achashveirosh was that they were comfortable in the non-Jewish culture. Chazal tell us that they were nehene from Se’udas Achashveirosh - they enjoyed the party. That is why they were chayav misa.
In fact, it was such a terrible thing that Klal Yisrael had done, by enjoying Achashveirosh’s party, that it resulted in the entire nation having a gezeira of destruction on them - one of only two times that this has happened in our entire history (the other time being the aigel.)
Think about it - the Jews could not have enjoyed the party if they had felt extremely uncomfortable in the non-Jewish environment. They must have been already integrated into the surrounding culture to a certain degree, or the great mistake which caused a decree of death for every man, woman, and child, could not have happened.
The commandment to remain apart from the non-Jewish world and not become immersed in, or comfortable with, their culture and mores is not a chumra of the “ultra-right wing,” as some may presume. It is an essential requirement of the Torah. We see it repeated many times in Hashem’s directives to us, such as “va’avdil eschem bein ha’amim” - “and I will separate you from amongst the nations, and you will be for Me.” It’s not optional.
In fact, Rus told Ne’ami that this is a foundational point of Yiddishkeit - we do not go to the theatres of the non-Jews - meaning, we may not share in their places and forms of entertainment and culture.
Importantly, Rav Aharon Lopian stressed that sitting in a theater is already the problem, regardless of the movie watched.
Many people reading this would not go to a theater. That doesn’t mean we’re doing great. The theater is only one example. We have to think of all the ways that the surrounding culture has influenced us, and root it out.
This is not only a Chiyuv Min HaTorah, it is the very BASIS of our survival. And not just our spiritual survival - but our physical survival as well. Because when we “forget” our purpose, and become “fargoyisht,” immersed in and enjoying the surrounding culture, Hashem has to send anti-Semites to remind us.
The Torah makes this abundantly clear. Look at Golus Mitzrayim; we are told very clearly when and why the enslavement began. Look at Moshe Rabeinu’s warnings to us in Sefer Devorim. Look at the Nevi’im.
Look at history, think of what happened to the Jews of Spain before the expulsion and Inquisition. They were in a position very similar to ours now.
And in modern times, courageous tzaddikim desperately warned before the Holocaust of the destruction to come, if we did not throw off the secular culture and become what we are supposed to be - a nation that stands ALONE, a nation for Hashem.
Perhaps now you can see more clearly that when our magazines, and the lives we learn to lead - are “inspired by” secular culture, we are very far from where Hashem wants us to be.
On to the next chapter.
Machon Mandel is not Reform’s only way of pulling our communities away from our Mesora. Here is another major example, which I wrote about before Chanuka, but many readers may have missed. I will include some of the information from that article and also expand further with new reports from people on the ground.
A large focus of that piece - which showed the terrible inroads that to’eiva is making into our communities - was Nafshenu Alenu, a new Five Towns mental health initiative, which turns out to have a Reform connection.
Two of the speakers that Nafshenu Alenu had scheduled were Rabbi Menachem Penner, a Rosh Yeshiva of YU’s RIETS, and his son Gedalia, who is “married” to a man, who had spoken as a team in Shomrei Torah in Fairlawn NJ on October 31, (as part of the same series as Bombach’s December 6 talk at Shomrei Torah.)
Gedalia is described as an “LGBTQ+ advocate within the frum Jewish world.”
Shomu Shamayim.
The Penner duo was scheduled to give a talk in February for Nafshenu Alenu - see below.
Gedalia “lives in Riverdale with his husband, Caleb, and his dog, Booker.”
Source: https://nafshenualenu.org/speakers/
While quick action by a community member who alerted Rabbonim caused the cancellation of Rabbi Penner’s Nafshenu Alenu talk, (and you will no longer see them on the Nafshenu Alenu site), the program itself has unfortunately gone on, and I received a hair raising report from someone who attended three of the talks for the purpose of documenting the horrors.
What is Nafshenu Alenu?
Nafshenu Alenu was started by Rabbi Yehuda Septimus, the Rabbi of Young Israel of North Woodmere.
Nafshenu Alenu advertises themselves as a new mental health initiative in the Five Towns community, bringing different speakers each week to a different shul in the Five Towns, for a series of talks.
Nafshenu Alenu is coming in under the guise of “helping with mental health in the community.”
A hidden agenda is LGBTQ - they’re coming to infiltrate, to normalize, and to expand to’eiva in our communities.
While they have some speakers who appear frum, giving the the organization a veneer of acceptability, upon taking a closer look, Nafshenu Alenu isn’t kosher at all. Many of the speakers are strange choices - people who should never be our “role models.”
It also turns out that the speakers who “look frum” aren’t really that frum, either. Look at the the shocking contents of the three talks that the community member I spoke to attended. (All these speakers and their bios can still be seen on Nafshenu Alenu’s site.)
Lisa Septimus, wife of Rabbi Yehuda Septimus, spoke on December 27 at Young Israel of North Woodmere. Her bio includes her “ordination” as a Yo’etzet Halacha, and her serving as a “Shoelet U’meishiva” at Stern. From the site:
Lisa Septimus
Relationships
December 27 Young Israel of North Woodmere
Lisa Septimus is a graduate of Nishmat’s first U.S. Yoatzot Halacha cohort and has worked as Yoetzet since 2013. She has fielded thousands of questions related to Taharat HaMishpacha with sensitivity, knowledge, relatability, and warmth. In the past, she also served as the Yoetzet Halacha for Great Neck, and Interim Yoetzet Halacha of Manhattan. She holds a masters in Bible from Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School and is a graduate of Stern College’s Graduate Program for Advanced Talmudic Studies, where she subsequently served as the program’s shoelet u’meishiva. She teaches Judaic Studies at North Shore Hebrew Academy High School in Great Neck, NY, where she also serves as Director of Student Life. In her active role as rebbetzin at the Young Israel of North Woodmere (NY) she is integrally involved with adult education and youth programming. She has taught at The Jewish Center in Manhattan, Riverdale Jewish Center, Drisha, Yeshiva University’s Summer Learning Program, and served as scholar in residence in numerous synagogues. She and her husband, Rabbi Yehuda Septimus, are the parents of four children.
Lisa Septimus appeared together with a sheitel-wearing “relationship expert,” Devora Levy. In this mixed crowd of men and women, Lisa kept bringing the conversation back to the most private topics, which are never meant to be discussed publicly. She spoke in a vulgar manner, completely lacking tznius, with no busha. Unbelievably, she downplayed the severity of adultery, claiming that we all commit sins all the time - as if adultery is not worse than other sins - and Devora said that it is common, (what?!?) and that many couples move on and get past it, if adultery happened.
Lisa expressed her consternation that when she goes into “the most sheltered of high schools,” in Brooklyn and New Jersey Heimishe communities, the girls aren’t yet knowledgeable about private topics, and claimed that they are so grateful to her for “educating” them. Having heard a recording of one of her talks, I shudder to think of the terribly destructive effect her “education” has had on our girls.
(Hashem yeracheim - WHO is bringing this woman to Heimishe schools? Who is letting her in??)
Rabbi Yehuda Sarna spoke on February 7 about “diversity,” and said we should give up “our unconscious biases.” He did not specify whether he meant those “unconscious biases” that would be positive to give up, (sinas chinam?) or “unconscious biases” that we’re supposed to have, such as those against dangerous people and enemies of Hashem. Rabbi Sarna talked about his “respected colleagues and friends” from NYU, among them a woman who turns out to be a feminist that has authored books promoting abortion.
Elisheva Liss spoke for Nafshenu Alenu on February 14, to a room full of dozens of men and women seated together at HALB, speaking openly about the most private topics with no shame, in graphic, explicit detail. It was horrifying and disgusting - and nobody seemed to have any problems with the lack of modesty.
Elisheva looks like a frum woman, but has a website which speaks for itself about her actual values.
Here are little “gems” from the site of this therapist who describes herself as “serving an almost completely religiously affiliated population.”
Fighting about Whether to Have a Baby
How do you decide when to start a family?
How many kids to have?
When to stop having kids?
Even if we knew exactly how many kids we hoped to have before we started, we’re often poor predictors of how we’re going to feel when the time comes. And we also have partners to consider.
One of the common arguments I see as a couples therapist, particularly serving a mostly religious population, is the one about planning procreation, decisions like:
When to start “trying”
How far apart to space the kids
When we’re “ready” for the next one, and when the family is “complete”
The initial assumptions about family building are often very culturally based. Many religious systems prohibit or discourage the use of birth control and prioritize childbearing. So in these cultures, the baseline is:
“We should start a family immediately, or have another child, unless there is some clear, specific reason not to.” Predictably, in these communities, large families are the norm.
In the more dominant, secular culture, the baseline is generally the reverse:
“There’s no rush to procreate. Kids are expensive, exhausting, and time-consuming. We should build our relationship first, our careers, some financial stability. If or when the time is right, we will/ may try for kids/ another baby.”
Many contemporary couples find themselves somewhere in the middle, or split between the two.
Choosing to have kids is a big deal. Each child we have is a serious commitment to another human life.
When someone wants to have a child, particularly a first child, it can feel like an obsession. Especially for women. Some people equate meaningful adulthood with parenthood, and the idea of not being able to fulfill that need when and how you want to can be incredibly painful. When the reason for the delay is the spouse, it can take a serious toll on the marriage, especially if the onus of birth control is on the person who would prefer to be “trying.”
There are different reasons people crave parenthood, most of them emotional: instinctive, religious, peer pressure, spiritual, the desire to give, to fill a home with the joy of family.
The objections are mostly logic-based, but sometimes emotional: Children change things. They generate expenses, more responsibility, mess, lack of privacy, sleep deprivation, stress, noise, constraints on travel and recreation. Even pregnancy itself can be complicated and unpleasant. The more kids you have, the more of all that there is.
She concludes:
Other times, it’s more a matter of individual, personal feelings, one spouse not feeling ready or wanting to have a baby, right then, or even at all. And generally, it goes deeper than the surface question about whether to, and touches on the why: what would having this child (or not having it) mean, signify, elicit from each parent emotionally.
This is a heavy topic, and there are no templated, simple solutions. You can’t really compromise- like: “let’s have half a baby.” But like with most areas of relationship conflict, the broader context and the way a couple navigates the discussion generally make more of a difference than the actual outcome. When one partner feels steamrolled or silenced by the other, the pain will build and fester. When the topic is handled with sensitivity and empathy, it might not get resolved easily but it can preserve the foundational love and respect in the relationship as they rumble with this very personal issue.
I do not see anything above which indicates that Ms. Liss conducts her therapy practice from a place of Torah observance and values. Perhaps she ought to change her name to something more secular, and remove her shaitel, in order to avoid misleading her clients.
Did this new organization, Nafshenu Alenu, and their problematic speakers “just happen?”
No. The infiltration of the community is multi-pronged and has been many years in the making.
For one, a partner organization listed on Nafshenu Alenu’s site, MHFA - Mental Health First Aid Israel, is connected with ITIM, as they have a board member in common. On the surface, ITIM appears to be a Dati-Leumi type organization, but upon investigation, it’s actually funded by Reform.
ITIM is promoting Reform infiltration of geirus in Eretz Yisrael.
The head of ITIM, Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber, came in 2012 to speak at Young Israel of North Woodmere, the shul of Rabbi Yehuda Septimus, the Rabbi who started Nafshenu Alenu.
https://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/preventing-civil-war-closing-the-religious-rift,3192?page=1
Here is a video which shows the partnership between ITIM and Matan Kahana, who was the Religious Affairs Minister, as they worked together to try to change the status quo in Eretz Yisrael and allow Reform conversions.
About Matan Kahana’s work: https://www.jta.org/2022/12/08/israel/as-religious-affairs-minister-matan-kahana-tried-to-bring-israelis-closer-to-judaism-by-reducing-religious-laws
Back to MHFA - Nafshenu Alenu’s “partner organization” - which itself is not a Jewish group, and is pro-to’eiva. See these screenshots about MHFA, chock-full of “LGBTQ resources,” which someone I know took from Nafshenu Alenu’s website in December. Very soon afterwards, they took down this information from their site.
There were also many abortion resources on the MHFA page of the Nafshenu Alenu site:
Someone involved in fighting the government push for teaching to’eiva in schools in Eretz Yisrael informed me that MHFA has already infiltrated chareidi schools there.
Moving on to schools: a high school student of Lisa Septimus shared what she had been taught in class, and again, Shomu Shamayim.
This was previously a Gemara class for the girls, and it had been switched to become a, let’s say, “marital education” class - but not the type you would want your daughter in.
Lisa always starts off with a pasuk, to make what she’s saying appear to be “al pi Torah.”
The “prustkeit,” lack of tznius, and almost total lack of ruchniyus, and lack of assumption that girls would definitely keep Halacha, was shocking to hear.
The girls were being spoken to as if they were irreligious kids. Like, if someone wants to be religious.. yes, it is very challenging, but it’s rewarding (to keep the halachos.) Torah observance was presented as an option, not as a given.
Her exact words:
“And I understand, at your age, for someone who really strictly wants to follow the mizvot, it’s super, super challenging. There is no outlet. It is restrictive.”
Hashem yeracheim.
Lisa Septimus is not the end of the infiltration of the schools in that community.
In the school library of North Shore Hebrew Academy, (where Mrs. Septimus teaches Judaic studies), there are books on to’eiva and pornography.
The students have also been made to read a series of no less than seven books since the school year began, all novels with the theme of women who commit adultery. I have been told that when parents approached the administration to voice their concerns, they were told that this literature meets the standards of the Modern Orthodox community, and other schools were named that are using the books as well. Students who asked to read classical books instead were turned down.
The high school students were taught about the Crown Heights riots, and a moral equivalency was drawn between the accidental killing of Gavin Cato and the cold blooded murder Yankel Rosenbaum. If this had been a public school, the leftist, woke indoctrination would be sickening, (but expected at this point), but in a Jewish, ostensibly religious school?!?
Are Rabbi and Mrs. Septimus, RIETS, the administration of North Shore Hebrew Academy, the other speakers at Nafshenu Alenu, and the attendees, etc, part of the frum community, or the Conservative-Reform community? It appears that they have already chosen, by their actions, a place outside the camp.
At some point, there has to be a demarcation, a split. If you are changing the Mesora MiSinai, you cannot call yourself Orthodox. You can’t play on the the Reform Team and on our team, too.
A Rabbi who is himself of YU, publicly called out those who are Conservative-Reform in beliefs, spirit and action, while still referring to themselves as Orthodox, six years ago. He said that he refuses to use the term “Open Orthodoxy,” and instead calls these people “neo-conservatives.” Tragically, it appears to him, based on history, that the rift is permanent, and that these people are on an irrevocable course out of Yiddishkeit.
In a different, recent talk, he points out the obvious, that one change leads to another change.
I want to clarify that the unbelievably huge push for to’eiva normalization, “education,” and proliferation also comes from the governments of countries around the world.
In fact, in December, the Centers for Disease Control issued an “assessment tool” for “teachers to measure their commitment to LGBTQ inclusivity in their classrooms.”
As Breitbart News reported:
“The CDC’s imprimatur on this ‘self-assessment tool’ — and the inclusion of numerous links to resources and activist organizations — amounts to little more than bullying teachers, administrators, and school health professionals who might have reservations about ‘affirmation’ and ‘inclusion’ efforts in schools,” Parents Defending Education founder and president Nicole Neily told Breitbart News. “It is troubling that during a global pandemic, this is where the CDC’s efforts were focused.”
This is global, originating from the U.N., as I have previously shown.
Communities around the world are facing the same coordinated push at the same time. Here is one example: https://www.publicchildprotectionwales.org/_files/ugd/9e6336_31b8fe32ce984637be1661b85be6d2e1.pdf
Make no mistake, even if the Heimishe schools here are not currently being forced to teach to’eiva, there is no question that this is where the government is leading up to.
I regret to tell you that the government-ordered removal of Emuna from our curriculum has started even in Chassidishe schools. I just received multiple shocking examples of it recently, which I hope to cover here soon, Be’ezras Hashem.
Is this anything but Amalek himself, of whom we just had a chiyuv D’Oraysa this Shabbos to be reminded of his wicked attack on us as we left Mitzrayim, and his “cooling off” of Emuna in Hashem?
The Sefer Be’Emuna Sh’laima explains how Klal Yisrael became vulnerable to a weakening in their Torah learning and Emuna, which caused them to be susceptible to Amalek’s attack. It was because the wicked Amalek was in their vicinity. Being near reshaim and kofrim - even their existence in the same world - has a negative effect on us and makes us weaker in our faith in Hashem, even if we don’t even read or hear their words ourselves.
The churban of our People that today’s Amalek is causing is inestimable.
What will be?
From our history, it is abundantly clear who will still be around in generations to come, and who is writing themselves into oblivion, as all the prior Torah-changing movements of the past have done, without fail.
If we do not act quickly to stop the infiltration and the landslide, and reverse their effects, countless more members - entire segments - of Klal Yisrael will be lost, chas veshalom.
The Torah has no place for “modernization” and no place for common cause with those who despise Mitzvos.
WHEN WILL WE STAND UP AND SAY “NO MORE?!”
Be strong and ACT NOW to say NO to all forms of anti-Torah influence. SPEAK UP and ROOT IT OUT FROM YOUR COMMUNITY.
May Hashem have mercy.
A freilichen and meaningful Purim. May we see yeshuos bekarov.