Rachmana Litzlan: Did you ever think you would see the words “Yeshiva” and “LGBTQ+” in the SAME sentence?
We are tragically losing our way! There are many undercover Reform-sponsored or Reform-style organizations quietly leading us OFF the Torah path.
BS”D
This post addresses the third topic in a series that Be’ezras Hashem is bringing awareness to our communities about those who seek to quietly tear down Judaism from the inside.
This article has six parts, and each one is critical. Please read until the end to gain a deeper understanding of one of the most dangerous movements facing Klal Yisrael today.
The big news recently was the passing of the “Respect for Marriage Act”, (that ironically means exactly the opposite, enshrining to’eiva unions to be legally binding in every state), which puts us all in danger of legal prosecution if we oppose “marriages” which fly in the face of the Torah.
But as much danger as we’re in from the government’s terrible law, the threat from our own is much greater.
There are a number of organizations who are working from the inside to normalize LGBTQ+/transgender and other forbidden relationships in our communities, and lead us off the Torah-true path. They often come in under the guise of kosher organizations who are here to help with physical or mental health. In other cases, they are open about their agenda.
In either case, they represent a grave danger to Klal Yisrael, which must be nipped in the bud.
Did you ever think that the day would come when we would be earnestly told that we must be “more inclusive and welcoming” to those who openly and proudly practice an Isur D’Oraysa - which HKB”H deems in the Torah as “to’eiva”, and which was the cause of the mabul - as part of their lifestyle?
If someone regularly flaunted pictures of their dinners of pork sandwiches, bacon and eggs, ham, or cheeseburgers on their social media pages, would they have the chutzpah to complain that they “don’t feel accepted as a member of the Orthodox community?”
Either you keep G-d’s rules, and be part of us, or, if you don’t keep the rules, don’t pretend to be part of the Torah-observant community and ask for the privileges that come along with being frum. Being “gay” is not called being “religiously observant.”
Tragically, there are a number of supposedly “Orthodox” organizations that are not acting in accordance with the Torah.
1. What is going on at “Yeshivat Chovevei Torah”?
YCT is pleased to announce the launch of its LGBTQ+ Community Initiatives and the hiring of David Pernick as Director of the Initiatives.
The LGBTQ+ Community Initiatives project seeks to help create a culture of true inclusion in Orthodox communities for our LGBTQ+ members.
The need for such a project is real and urgent. Our rabbis-in-the-field are regularly fielding pastoral, communal, and halakhic questions from and regarding its LGBTQ+ members, and they are turning to us for guidance and support. Heightening the urgency is the fact the LGBTQ+ community gets repeated signals, both implicit and explicit, that they are not wanted in the Orthodox community. We ourselves have had our own challenges in this area and the need to do better pushes us forward in this work.
We are guided in these efforts by our understanding of the Torah and Torah values. We believe that a community that embodies Torah values is one that cares for, supports, and affords maximum dignity and respect to every one of its members and that we must do what we can to help make this a reality.
YCT will focus its efforts in three areas:
(1) running programs and events in partnering communities with the goal of educating and advancing the discourse around these issues and of helping the community become more aware of and sensitive to its LGBTQ+ members and their lived realities;
(2) developing resources for rabbis and their communities, including guidance from Jewish leaders who have made meaningful steps forward;
(3) advancing the state of the halakhic discourse in these matters.
David Pernick, who as Director of LGBTQ+ Community Initiatives will oversee and drive these efforts, is a graduate of Tufts University and is currently pursuing a Masters of Social Work at Stony Brook University specializing in mental health care for Jewish, LGBTQ+, and youth populations.
As YCT believes strongly in the principle of “Nothing about us without us,” David—himself a member of the LGBTQ+ community—will be devoting his first two months in the position to a listening tour across the U.S. There he hopes to hear from LGBTQ+ members of Orthodox communities, as well as from those who have left Orthodoxy, about their priorities and how they believe we can be most helpful and impactful in our work.
YCT is grateful to the leadership of Eshel for its input and wise counsel these last few months as we have worked to best shape this project and its goals. We look forward to partnering with Eshel in many of these initiatives and hope to collaborate with additional organizations as we move forward.
This project came about as a result of a years-long process that YCT has been undergoing to determine what role it can play in this area so that it can help make our communities truly inclusive of all our members.
With our network of almost 200 alumni-rabbis, we have the opportunity to partner with many rabbis and communities who share our goals so that we can together effect real change—in individual communities and, hopefully and eventually, in the Orthodox community as a whole.
May the new year ahead be one in which we are able to see the divine in every individual and give each person the dignity and respect that they deserve, so that they know that they are loved, welcomed and valued by God and by the Jewish community as well.
Source:
In case you’re wondering whether Yeshivat Chovivei Torah is Orthodox, that’s a good question.
If someone calls themselves Orthodox but acts like Conservative/Reform, what does that make them?
“Rabbi” Avi Weiss of YCT signed a letter several years ago “permitting” an Orthodox man to undergo a “gender changing” surgery. The man currently lives as a “frum” “woman” in an Orthodox community.
What stream of Judaism does that sound like?
Here is a book which was just brought to my attention, explaining why “Open Orthodoxy” is not Orthodox. The book has a foreword by Rav Aharon Feldman Shlita. While I haven’t read the book yet, I am familiar with YCT and their very problematic hashkafos from a series of articles which the Yated ran about them several years ago.
“Since 1997, Open Orthodoxy, through its institutions, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat, has ordained over 100 students, most of whom serve in positions throughout America. It is most often viewed as - and claims to be - a branch of Orthodoxy. However, the truth is far from this.
Citing countless statements from the leaders and disciples of Open Orthodoxy, this book shows beyond a shadow of doubt that this movement is not Orthodox, and in fact, seeks to undermine Orthodoxy.”
From the foreword by Rav Aharon Feldman:
“…Open Orthodoxy is a movement which poses as Orthodoxy, with teachers who pose as Halachic authorities and students who pose as Orthodox Rabbis.”
To order “Why Open Orthodoxy is NOT Orthodox”: https://a.co/d/dxvq9EG
Speaking of people posing as Rabbis, do you know that there are all kinds of “Rabbis” who are “interpreting” the Torah anew, seeking to justify mishkav zachar?!
Do these people actually think that, chas veshalom, Klal Yisrael had it all wrong for thousands of years, as we knew clearly from the Torah - handed down to us at Har Sinai - that marriage is the union of a man and woman only, and mishkav zachar is an abomination? Do they think that all our Nevi’im, Geonim, Tana’im, Amora’im, Rishonim and Acharonim who spoke on this topic had, chas veshalom, the wrong meaning, but the new generation, coming to twist the Torah to suit the times, has gotten it right?
Anyone who believes this way belongs in a Reform temple, and so do these “Rabbis”, no matter what they call themselves.
What they’re doing is EXACTLY what the Reform movement did. They are destroying Judaism.
I’m sure that if they try, they can also invent interpretations to allow driving on Shabbos, chas veshalom, and consuming anything they wish. This is NOT Torah. This is abomination.
In fact, a prominent Talmid Chochom explained to me that lest you even think that it is acceptable al pi Torah to have same-gender attraction as long as one does not act on it, and simply remains unmarried, that is not so.
He quoted what the Ramban in Parshas Nitzovim says on למען ספות הרווה את הצמאה: that this whole perversion only comes as a result of being SO invested in Tuma that one has no more attraction for normal and needs the thrill of the forbidden.
So no, that’s very NOT ok.
The Talmid Chochom also told me:
Another important fact not known by many is; when the women in the family are prutzos, the boys become desensitized to women, and then more and more will have an attraction for men. This also fits with the Ramban. I once found a פסוק מפורש in Novi saying that.
And he gave me this amazing personal story:
I had a Talmid who had a brother who insisted he had same-gender attraction and couldn’t get married. I told him he could too. And if he had any difficulties it would be surmountable. Fast forward; he made the Chasunah of his fourth or fifth child recently. He has TEN children and a few grandchildren already.
A few years ago he visited the US with all his progeny. When I met them all, I said to him, “These are all mine.” He said, “Yes, they are.”
When we deprive people with same-gender attraction of true, meaningful help, this nachas, this meaning, this continuity, of fathering a family and having doros - THIS is what we are robbing them of.
2. What is Nafshenu Alenu?
Nafshenu Alenu advertises themselves as a new mental health initiative in the Five Towns community, bringing speakers in each week to a different shul in the Five Towns, for a series of talks over the next several months.
Nafshenu Alenu is coming in under the guise of “helping with mental health in the community.”
The hidden agenda is to deal with LGBTQ issues in our communities - but they’re not here to stem the tide. They’re coming to infiltrate, to normalize, and to expand LGBTQ in our communities.
While they have some speakers who may appear OK, giving the the organization a veneer of acceptability, upon taking a closer look, Nafshenu Alenu isn’t very kosher at all. Many of the speakers are strange choices - “role models” who are not Jewish. They’ve got a whole mix of good (?) and bad, and therefore people are confused, and believe the organization is on the up-and-up.
Disturbingly, one of the scheduled speakers for Nafshenu Alenu, Rabbi Menachem Penner - a Rosh Yeshiva of RIETS at YU - has a son, Gedalia, who is “married” to a man, and Rabbi Penner and Gedalia give talks together.
Rabbi Penner, his Rebetzin, and their LGBTQ+ promoting son already spoke jointly for a different organization on October 31, at the Shomrei Torah shul in Fairlawn NJ. See this flyer.
(On a side note, the “Rabbi Menachem Bombach” pictured in the “Unconditional Love” flyer above, who spoke at Shomrei Torah last week, is actually a completely irreligious person who disdains Torah but still “dresses frum,” and in this way leads people astray. For example, when Bombach’s son got married, it was immediately evident to the kalla that the chassan had not learned the laws of Taharas Hamishpacha at all. The couple ended up divorcing after the chassan tried but decided the halachos were just not for him. In Beis Din during his son’s divorce, Bombach’s mechutan asked him “What’s with you - why didn’t you teach your son?!” Bombach answered his mechutan in surprise, “Do you still keep those old things?!” Bombach’s dangerous “leadership training” organization is the Reform-funded Machon Mandel.)
Back to Rabbi Menachem Penner and his LGBTQ+ son Gedalia. They are scheduled to speak jointly on February 21 for Nafshenu Alenu at Bais Tefilla in Woodmere, about “diversity.”
Nafshenu Alenu was started by Rabbi Yehuda Septimus, the Rabbi of Young Israel of North Woodmere. One of the Nafshenu Alenu speakers is his wife, Lisa Septimus, scheduled to speak 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.
Source: https://nafshenualenu.org/speakers/
This organization and their problematic speakers didn’t “just happen.” There is a plan here. This is infiltration.
A partner organization listed on Nafshenu Akenu’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
Perhaps Rabbi Septimus doesn’t know what Rabbi Dr. Farber and ITIM are really about. But 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 - which itself is not a Jewish group, and is pro-to’eiva. See these screenshots about MHFA, chock-full of LGBTQ resources, which my friend took from Nafshenu Alenu’s website last week. Since then, they have taken down this information from their site.
There were also many abortion resources on the MHFA page of the Nafshenu Alenu site:
MHFA has already infiltrated chareidi schools in Eretz Yisrael.
I’m sorry, Nafshenu Alenu. You’ve got it wrong. We have a mesora for how we treat those who violate the Torah. We do NOT accept them. Acceptance means approval and encouragement of their actions. That is false, is a Chilul Hashem, and encourages more of the same. It violates our Torah duty to register our protest.
Should a child-molester, a serial adulterer, or a murderer expect our warm embrace? Of course not, and neither should someone who is “gay”, because Hashem has decreed his actions an abomination.
Would anyone who is publicly and regularly Mechallel Shabbos dream of pretending to be frum and whining about not being well accepted by the frum community?
3. What IS the Torah answer for these people?
You surely are wondering what would be the response to those individuals who are suffering because they don’t possess the normal opposite-gender attraction which G-d built into Creation.
The answer is to get help, to resolve their issues - NOT to try to normalize and make this OK in the community. And there IS help.
However, the evil powers who are invested in the promotion of to’eiva have viciously fought against and closed down these avenues of help with every bit of their immense power.
Tellingly, in some locations, the government has made it illegal for therapists to help people with abnormal attractions to heal from their problems and attempt to become normal.
(Yes, there is an OUTSIDE agenda with an unlimited budget, pushing transgender to the max all over, including into our communities. More on this later.)
Here are excerpts from an article which illustrates perfectly what we are up against.
Arthur Goldberg has spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of others and promoting biblical morality.
Now, at the age of 81, Goldberg, a devout Orthodox Jew and president of his local synagogue, is engaged in the moral and legal fight of his life.
His offense: insisting that Jewish men and others have the right to obtain counseling and therapy to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA) and founding a nonprofit organization to refer them to places of help.
“For promoting those rights, providing seekers with that information, and referring them for gender affirmation therapy, I have been canceled,” Goldberg told The Epoch Times.
“Where is the person’s right to determine his or her own therapeutic goals? Where is the freedom to choose? What happened to a person’s right to voluntarily choose to change his or her sexual orientation?
“Men and women desiring help with SSA are being denied the right to information about the availability and effectiveness of gender-affirming methods and therapies.”
According to Goldberg, gender affirmation therapy is the empowerment of willing individuals combating unwanted same-sex attraction to affirm the gender of their birth.
(BW: Note that the anti-G-d movement uses the term “gender affirmation” in the opposite meaning - that of “changing” gender (which is of course technically impossible and fake.)
When Goldberg, a retired investment banker, saw the painful struggles of some acquaintances dealing with SSA, he was moved to co-found a nonprofit organization called Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) to offer them hope and assistance.
JONAH’s mission was to refer primarily Jewish men struggling with SSA to professional and religious counseling.
The goal was to help them fulfill their desire to live a life consistent with the tenets of their Jewish religion as declared in the Torah (the five books of Moses), which holds to heterosexuality, the marriage of a man to a woman, and the bringing forth of children within its confines.
“I saw many Jewish men, as well as people of other faiths, who wanted to be free from same-sex attraction and who desperately wanted to start a traditional family,” he said.
“They needed to know that there is available to them a guided process involving professional counseling, self-discovery, and a combination of spiritual and behavioral self-adjustments characteristic of the Jewish concept of teshuvah, meaning ‘returning to the path,’ or repentance.
Further on:
“Once we threw away the compass of right and wrong passed down to us from ancient wisdom, self-indulgence has become the rule, supported by a good deal of creative rationalization.
“We live in a time of moral relativism, which has led to an intolerance of objective morality and those standing for it.”
Goldberg says his activism on behalf of those voluntarily seeking help with SSA, or other forms of what he calls “sexual brokenness,” is for him a religious and moral imperative.
“If a Jewish homosexual turns to another Jew for help in finding a way out of his homosexuality, the Torah indisputably forbids turning him or her away,” Goldberg said.
“A person struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction is told by the gay activist, ‘You can’t change.’ He is told by the ultra-conservative, ‘You are loathsome.’ He is told by psychiatrists and psychologists, ‘Accept your gay feelings and act upon them—even though they might conflict with your internal values.’
“In my opinion, such attitudes are immoral and irresponsible when there is help available for those desiring it. But the cancel culture is keeping people from knowing about that help and is suppressing their right to treatment.”
Goldberg is paying a stiff price for standing for the teachings of the Torah and the rights of others. A series of lost court battles designed to silence him over the past decade has plunged him $3 million in debt for attorney fees, costs, and fines.
Goldberg said he has never taken a salary from the two philanthropic institutions he’s been a part of.
Mounting legal bills forced Goldberg and his ailing wife, Jane, to mortgage the Jersey City, New Jersey, home where they’ve lived for nearly 50 years.
Even the crowdfunding platform he created to help pay his legal bills was shut down by the court.
“With little prospect of a conservative like me being able to use existing crowdfunding platforms, I founded a platform called Funding Morality. They soon went after it and shut it down.
“The Cancel Culture employed a strategy of bringing legal action against me and then cutting off the purse strings in order to break me financially,” he said.
His foes were not only successful in getting the court to bar Goldberg from referring anybody to counseling and gender affirmation therapy, he has also been banned for life from participating in or serving on the board of any nonprofit organization in the state of New Jersey.
Goldberg’s latest legal setback came in February, when the Supreme Court of New Jersey refused to hear his appeal to preserve his constitutional rights of freedom of speech, association, and to freely exercise his religion.
He said for him, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court at this time appears unaffordable.
Goldberg says his main adversaries over the years have been the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and what he calls the “gay lobby.”
The irony of a noted civil rights advocacy organization working to cancel a civil rights advocate isn’t lost on Goldberg, who during the 1960s traveled to the South as a Freedom Rider to fight for the civil rights of black Americans.
During the 1990s, when the Soviet Union broke up, Goldberg worked in the humanitarian effort to resettle Jews fleeing Russia in the United States.
The SPLC sued Goldberg several times in a local New Jersey court, forcing him to shut down the two nonprofit organizations he helped found to further his causes.
No - same gender attractions are NOT on the spectrum of normalcy (sorry to be politically incorrect!)
Back when the world was more sane, same-gender attractions were classified as a mental illness.
An MD whom I interviewed last week described his work many years ago helping “gay” people (before there was propaganda promoting the movement, resulting in an explosion of people calling themselves such), and how he had found that what they all had in common was abuse or trauma in childhood (not just being molested, but also more subtle forms, such as emotional abuse.)
These people need help.
They don’t need us to normalize their to’eiva. They need us to help them out of it. They need to heal from the underlying causes.
Something is wrong with them, and if we pretend everything is right, it will never get fixed - leading to a lifetime of sin, no resolution of their emotional pain and illness, and likely, no biological children.
4. What is happening at Yeshiva University?
Many people know that a group of students wanted to have a to’eiva club at YU, the school didn’t want to allow it, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the students.
Is anyone asking, though, how it could possibly be that an “Orthodox” institution allowed such a group of students - who flagrantly violate what the Torah terms an abomination - to exist in its midst to begin with?
Rav Mordechai Gifter, zatzal, back in 1988, had some very strong words to say about Yeshiva University’s reluctance to call out groups who violate Halacha for what they are. Rav Gifter, who had himself attended YU, blasted them for compromising on speaking the Torah truth in order not to alienate their donor base.
See:
Now, according to the recent Supreme Court ruling, YU is forbidden by law from refusing to hire an applicant because of their to’eiva lifestyle. Do we hear pushback from the Roshei Yeshiva, saying that they will shut down rather than comply with laws that are against the Torah? Am I missing something? I have not heard it yet.
The last I heard was that some kind of compromise “Halachic” club supporting the LGBTQ students would be formed at YU. Somehow, I don’t quite understand that means. What about actually not allowing people who practice this to’eiva to be part of the supposedly Orthodox school? https://5townscentral.com/2022/10/24/yu-approves-a-new-student-club-grounded-in-halacha-to-enhance-support-for-its-lgbtq-undergraduates/
Unfortunately, this compromise didn’t get them much respect anywhere, as a large contingent of almuni and current students wrote a letter blasting YU for not being accepting enough of to’eiva. That has been followed by a second letter, and both can be seen here, https://yeshivaunited.org/ along with the original letter’s signatures. Strangely, it’s called “YUnited – An appeal to authentic Torah values” - as they twist the Torah to pretend that loving acceptance of to’eiva practitioners is a Mitzva.
Part of the first letter:
“These students wanted a forum where they could offer each other strength and support, where they could talk about shared experiences without shame or fear. But even more than that, they wanted a space where they could feel safe expressing the fullness of their identities, as Jews, as Orthodox Jews, and as LGBTQ+ Jews. All they were asking for was to be allowed to tell us who they are. YU’s refusal to sanction the club insinuated that such a simple statement of identity would contravene Torah values…. It implied that no authoritative interpretation of Torah values can allow for even the most basic inclusion of openly LGBTQ+ people in Torah-observant communities.”
No, an LGBTQ+ Jew is not an Orthodox Jew. And yes, that’s correct, Torah values do not allow for any condoning of the lifestyle of openly LGBTQ+ people in any shape or form. Just as we are repulsed by an adulterer’s or molester’s lifestyle, we are repulsed by yours. The message is, you have to get help to change, because what you’re doing is not OK.
If only Yeshiva University could spell that out.
Did the letter-writers never notice the strong reactions by our leaders as detailed in Chumash and Navi to those who flouted the Torah? I did not see loving acceptance or “safe spaces” for sinners to “express their full selves” anywhere.
The fact that there are 1,700 signatures underscores that we are in terrible trouble. Not having come out firmly enough against to’eiva long ago, the YU administration is now stuck in a very uncomfortable place, as the to’eiva students’ demands conflict increasingly more with Halacha. But why did the administration compromise in the first place?
(One of the signatories to the YU letter is Miriam Andrusier of JOWMA - more about her and JOWMA later on.)
What YU and all the wish-washy make-nicers don’t seem to realize is that accepting a behavior normalizes it and brings more of it. And thus goes the destruction of Kedushas Yisrael, chas veshalom.
The following is a very sad but powerful spoof on the YU story which drives home what we are coming to.
https://chananyaweissman.com/article.php?id=480
What is very strange is that everyone seems to have forgotten that the Torah clearly tells us that the Mabul was brought because of these very same actions. Not only were they involved in forbidden relationships, but they legalized them. Writing marriage contracts between man-and-man and between man-and-beast was the clincher for the destruction of the world.
5. What is going on at JOWMA (Jewish Orthodox Women’s Medical Association) and Shalom Task Force?
What would you say to an organization which has the name “Orthodox” but that quietly has as one of its heads a woman “married” to a woman? Or of people who call themselves “Orthodox” but approve of and promote same-gender relationships, or who partner with those assisting people in leaving Yiddishkeit?
JOWMA is government-funded, but they keep that quiet. They have slyly inserted themselves into our community as “trusted medical professionals”, advertising widely and running webinars, in order to gain a foothold of influence and respect by which to subtly change attitudes in the frum community, bit by bit.
JOWMA was actually crafted for the express purpose of influencing the Torah community with foreign, “liberal”, Reform-aligned values, especially in regards to topics around marriage, the sacred bedrock of our community and our very eternity.
Shalom Task Force is government-funded, pro-LGBTQ, helps to break up families, openly says that they are NOT a Jewish organization, and partners with Footsteps.
See:
• History Is Made As JOWMA Advisory Board Member Miriam Andrusier And Her Lesbian Partner Paige Herman Are The First Same-Gender Couple From SUNY Downstate To Attend Harvard Together
“As a gay woman in the Hasidic faith, I hope to create avenues for other women from the ultra-Orthodox community to pursue careers in medicine,” said Ms. Andrusier.
• Here, a survey with very disturbing questions, meant to be filled out before JOWMA’s marital education webinar, which was sponsored by Shalom Task Force:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeehQYTTllQpBha6vrddsH6p8ZklPD6NhjiMKXsL-27bgmnw/viewform (Please notice questions 11 and 12, and remember this was supposed to be a webinar for religious women.)
• The recording of the marital education webinar itself, which was given by JOWMA and sponsored by Shalom Task Force, contains statements that are unquestionably against Halacha.
It would be very illustrative to include it here, but a Rav from the Five Towns community who saw the video said that he holds it’s asur to watch it. In any case, we would not feel comfortable including the video, for tznius reasons. However, if you are a Rav or kalla teacher who needs the video, the audio, or the transcript, in order to understand and publicize the danger that JOWMA and that Shalom Task Force pose to Klal Yisrael, we can send you the material. Please email exposingtumah@yahoo.com.
• Here is a small clip by the doctor who emceed the above webinar hosted by JOWMA and sponsored by Shalom Task Force. Dr. Sahar Wertheimer is one of the heads of JOWMA. This clip illustrates her pro-to’eiva views very well. She says that she really feels the pain of people who are unable to have children for various reasons - including being in a same-gender relationship. https://www.bitchute.com/video/HxC5knj4oZ17/
• Dr. Elissa Hellman is a JOWMA OB-GYN who has a practice specializing in kallahs and kallah education. She calls it “The Confident Kallah.” Her views are blatantly anti-Torah. Dr. Hellman advocates a lifestyle of do-whatever-you-want, unconstrained by Torah rules, in one’s private life and relationships, and believes that we should be supportive and validating of anyone who embraces any anti-Torah lifestyle. She doesn’t seem to think that faithfulness to a spouse is a must. Her site: https://www.theconfidentkallah.com/ We have her podcast containing her statements, but don’t want to be mefarsem it here, for tznius reasons. As above, please email exposingtumah@yahoo.com to receive Dr. Hellmann’s podcast or the transcript of it, if you’re someone who needs to know.
• Here is JOWMA’s anti-Halachic mikvah advice, generously given on their own da’as, no Rabbi involved, no Rabbi needed. https://www.mikvah.org/covid.pdf
• The Executive Director of Shalom Task force is Dr. Shoshannah Frydman. Here you can get a glimpse into her hashkafos: (“Shoshanna Frydman likes this”… “Happy Pride Month.”)
• Shalom Task Force Executive Director Dr Shoshana Frydman Acknowledges The Organization Is Not Jewish:
• Shalom Task Force held sensitivity training for its employees for dealing with LGBT people.
• Here is an article showing how JOWMA partners with Shalom Task Force, which in turn partners with Reform groups and Footsteps, the organization which assists and encourages people in going off the derech of Torah: https://tinyurl.com/Jowma This is a very informative article. Here is a bit of the information:
At the end of 2020, senior staff at STF joined forces with Footsteps to offer a three-part “lunch and learn” CLE series to lawyers. The classes were geared towards attorneys practicing family law. Of note, were some of the people on the panel of the class:
•Chani Getter, Senior Director of Footsteps, an OTD former chassidshe woman who is openly lesbian and presently an inter-faith-based minister. She spoke twice.
• Deborah Feldman, who penned the original Unorthodox book and Netflix movie, also an OTD former chassidishe woman.
• Dr. Shoshana Frydman, executive director of Shalom Task Force.
• Erin Bistricer, Senior Attorney of Sarah’s Voice. Sarah’s Voice is the legal department of Shalom Task Force. https://shalomtaskforce.org/legal-services
• Kim Susser, who is the managing director of Sarah’s Voice, Shalom Task Force. https://shalomtaskforce.org/staff It’s not clear if she’s even Jewish. She’s certainly not frum at all.
• Other senior attorneys and members of Footsteps.
• According to the Shalom Task Force website (https://shalomtaskforce.org/staff), Kim Susser is the managing director of their legal department (“Sarah’s Voice”.) Susser has helped Footsteps (https://footstepsorg.org/) create a guide for people leaving Yiddishkeit on how to win custody and take their children with them. See the guide here: https://footstepsorg.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Footsteps_LegalManual_November-2020.pdf (The last page acknowledges Susser. Page 36 acknowledges Shalom Task Force.)
• Here is Shalom Task Force in a panel discussion with the Reform group JWI, talking about the results of the study they did together:
Have you seen JOWMA’s and Shalom Task Force’s advertisements in virtually every frum publication?
Unfortunately they are ubiquitous. No one seems to realize who they really are.
With their classes, activities and advertisements, these organizations change attitudes and norms in our communities to ruin our kedusha, families, and our Torah way of life.
Do JOWMA’S and Shalom Task Force’s ads and workshops belong in our publications and in our communities? You decide.
6. Where in the world is all this coming from?
There is a concerted push from the UN and special interest groups to make “alternative lifestyles” mainstream, and to get as many young people as possible to identify as the opposite gender.
This is global, it is being very consciously engineered - it didn’t arise organically - and there are unimaginable sums being spent on advertising, social manipulation, influencing lawmakers, covering the medical costs, etc. Whoever tries to counter this movement often gets punished professionally, deplatformed, or otherwise taken down.
This is all coming into our own community, big time.
But it’s not originating with “us.” It’s coming from very, very sick and evil outside forces.
It is very strange when you think about it, because the expense to Medicaid or private insurance companies for the transgender surgeries, hormone blockers, psychotherapy, and everything associated with “gender change” is astronomical (I was given a figure of $600,000 per transgender individual.)
In terms of health, it is also extremely puzzling, if you are going with the assumption that the UN/governments/medical establishment/insurance companies’ desired outcome is improved physical and mental well-being.
It turns out that transgender youth have an extremely high depression and suicide rate, have ongoing severe physical problems from their surgeries, and actually have underlying mental health issues which aren’t being addressed - as they’re being led to believe by carefully engineered social propaganda that their problem is that they were born into the “wrong body”, and that changing their gender will be the cure for their problems.
Tucker Carlson spoke out forcefully against the horror of the children’s gender changing surgeries and treatments which are happening now on a widespread scale in the US:
WHAT IS GOING ON?
The answer is that the breakdown of family that is being engineered IS what the United Nations desires and has been working towards for decades.
Please see this article from 13 years ago.
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
MEXICO CITY, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights.
Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”
“In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis,” he said. “In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”
“Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family,” one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.
The comments followed close on the heels of the World Meeting of Families, which was held in Mexico City in January, and which strongly reaffirmed the importance of the traditional family and its indispensible role in transmitting values to the next generation. It was opened by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who observed that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births were contributing to the rise of violence and crime in Mexico.
Leonardo Casco, a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a citizen of Honduras, told LifeSiteNews that he wasn’t surprised that the UNFPA was denying the crisis in the family.
“They definitely have to deny that there is a crisis in the family, because they have created the crisis,” he said.
Calling the UNFPA “bureaucrats at the service of death,” Casco observed that “after 45 years of birth control, the pill, disrespect for marriage for the family, for children, etc, this is the result. Because of that we have violence, war, lack of respect of women, children.”
Through their promotion and distribution of contraceptives the UNFPA has become “a birth control agency at the service of the most powerful countries” said Casco. “They have destroyed the family, values, this is undeniable, it’s what everyone says … but they always have to deny it.”
Regarding Hoekman’s comments about “human rights,” Casco responded that UNFPA bureaucrats “have invented a series of new ‘human rights’,” that did not exist when the concept was defined in 1948, “with which they wish to justify all of their actions.”
The UNFPA recently celebrated the restoration of US support after seven years, during which they were denied funding by the Bush administration. UNFPA has cooperated with and even helped to subsidize China’s One Child Policy, which persecutes and performs forced abortions on women who have more than one child.
In addition to its support for forced abortions, the UNFPA has helped to administer forced sterilizations in South America and is involved in the distribution and promotion of contraceptives and sterilization worldwide, with a focus on poorer countries.
The UN has actually been using social media companies to influence the world.
Proof of the allegation:
For those who can’t view Twitter, I copy-pasted:
Inside every social media company is a team that’s directed by the UN. That would have been “fact checked” as a false conspiracy theory made without evidence before the Twitter layoffs revealed that yes there the case.
It has come out that twitter was coordinating with the UN to censor us. Since when has authority of this country been turned over to the UN? Who ceded it to then?
The source provided in the first thread:
Yesterday was my last day at Twitter: the entire Human Rights team has been cut from the company. I am enormously proud of the work we did to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, to protect those at-risk in global conflicts & crises including Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and to defend the needs of those particularly at risk of human rights abuse by virtue of their social media presence, such as journalists & human rights defenders.
The United Nations (UN) was actually founded for the purpose of ripping people away from the worship of One G-d, and with a charter laying this out, as you will see below.
The UN organization UNESCO has been actively working for years to shape curriculums in schools worldwide to achieve to their goals. The UN philosophy was shaped by the works of Alice Bailey (1880-1949), one of the founders of the “New Age Movement”, and her 10-Point Plan of the New World Order, which she wrote in the ‘40’s. The stated purpose of her charter is to “redeem the nations from Judeo/Christian tradition.” The people that Alice Bailey hated the most and most wanted to destroy, though, were the Orthodox Jews, as is seen in references she makes in her writings, “The Externalisation of the Hierarchy” and “Esoteric Healing”.
Digging a bit more deeply, it turns out that Alice Bailey was an occultist, and that is what her Ten Point Charter for the UN is meant to lead the world into. Her teachings are foundational to the UN, which has been actively shaping world policy, through its many branches and affiliated organizations, towards her stated goals.
Mrs. Bailey established the publishing company called “Lucifer Trust” which is now known as “Lucis Publishing Co” (located at 866 United Nations Plaza #482, New York, NY), and which published her works.
Her mentor was Helena Blavatsky, who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, and wrote “The Secret Doctrine” which espouses the theory of superior and inferior races, and was used by Hitler. (See Wikipedia for quotes - she actually said: “the inferior races....[are] now happily - owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction - fast dying out.”)
Here is Alice Bailey’s 10 Point Plan, available online, copy-pasted. (I edited a couple words for propriety.)
1. TAKE G-D AND PRAYER OUT OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM
2. REDUCE PARENTAL AUTHORITY OVER THE CHILDREN
3. DESTROY THE TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS FAMILY STRUCTURE She said: “It is oppressive and the family is the core of the nation. If you break the family, you break the nation. Liberate the people from the confines of this structure.”
She planned to break the family structure by promoting promiscuity.
4. IF …. IS FREE, THEN MAKE ABORTION LEGAL AND MAKE IT EASY
5. Make divorce easy and legal, and free people from the concept of marriage.
6. Make homosexuality an alternative lifestyle.
7. Debase art, music and drama and make it run mad and corrupt.
8. Use media to promote and change the mindset of men.
9. Create an interfaith movement.
10. Get governments to make all these laws and get the Church to endorse these changes.
That was Alice Bailey’s plan from the 1940’s to change the world and take people away from Hashem - do you think she has succeeded?
Please see Hashem’s actual words from the Torah, which He made before Creation and which served as the blueprint for the universe, and which He later gave us at Har Sinai, 3,334 (and a half) years ago. There can never be any compromise on these matters. Any (obviously illegitimate) “religious authorities” who pretend that there is wiggle room in the Torah to accept same-gender relationships are frauds, and aren’t speaking in the name of G-d and His Torah. (I wonder what they do with the Torah reading of the Mincha on Yom Kippur afternoon. Do they cut it out?) Here it is, Vayikra 18:22. The commentary underneath the verses is from Rav Shamshon Rafael Hirsh, a fearless fighter against those who sought to uproot Torah observance in 1800’s Germany.
Notice Rav Hirsh’s comment in which he quotes the pasuk from Yeshaya HaNavi 24:5, regarding the Canaanim: “They have changed the law into its opposite ; i.e. they have elevated immorality to become law.” He wrote: “..excesses among the Canaanite population had not only ceased to be considered as abominations but had, in fact, become sanctioned by custom and religious cult. They had become “statutes,” or “institutions.”
Does this sound familiar?
We know the end of the Canaanites in Eretz Canaan, and the Torah tells us the reason, too.
It is my fervent Tefilla that Hashem cause Klal Yisrael to awaken, realize the infiltration which threatens our very being, and throw it off.
Klal Yisrael is holy and pure. But we must remember who we are.
We wish to thank the organization Libah Yehudit and the others who helped with the research for this article. Hashem yeshalem scharchem.