We thank God, that someone else besides Maurice Pinay is writing about how Francis’ teachings are nothing more than regurgitated Kabbalah — which Francis then sells as authentic Christianity. The whole key to understanding who Francis is and why he says what he does are the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and Hasidic Judaism. Thanks to One Peter Five for publishing this article by H. Reed Armstrong! Please share this article with those who don’t understand that Francis preaches a Yiddish gospel and not the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. (And please keep Mr. Armstrong in your prayers!)
Yael Kushner (aka Ivanka Trump) was the special guest of Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, at the Broadway musical, “Come From Away” on Wednesday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City. She sat in Row F next to the Canadian clown. The idea for the musical was conceived of by Michael Rubinoff, a lawyer and theater producer, who then partnered with Irene Sankoff and David Hein, known for their 2009 hit musical “My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding”. The premise of “Come From Away” is on 9/11 the United States of America’s federal government shut down all airspace in the country which resulted in a partnership with Canada’s government called Operation Yellow Ribbon. Under this operation, all USA bound international flights landed in Canada. The musical focuses on the town of Gander in Newfoundland which had 38 planes with 6,579 passengers diverted to their airport. Wikipedia has this to say about the musical, (underlines ours for emphasis):
To alleviate rising fear and mounting tensions ("On The Edge"), the passengers are invited to be initiated as honorary Newfoundlanders at the local bar ("Heave Away / Screech In"). The "islanders" in Gander and the surrounding towns open up their homes to the "plane people", regardless of their guests' race, nationality or sexual orientation. The travelers are initially taken aback by their hosts' uncommon hospitality, but they slowly let their guards down and begin to bond with the quirky townsfolk.
The gravity of the attacks nevertheless continues to set in as US airspace is eventually reopened. One pilot comments on how her once optimistic view of the world has suddenly changed ("Me and the Sky"), while the mother of a firefighter learns that her son lost his life during the rescue efforts in New York City. One pair of passengers starts to develop a romance ("Stop the World"), while another pair sees their long-term relationship fall apart under the stress of the event.
As the passengers and crew fly away to their homes, they joyously exchange stories of the immense kindness and generosity that was shown to them by the Newfoundland strangers in their time of need ("Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere"), but not before a Muslim traveler, faced with increasing prejudice from his fellow passengers, undergoes a humiliating strip search prior to boarding. The townsfolk return to normal life, but comment on how empty their town now seems and how different the world now feels ("Something's Missing").
How is this clown a prime minister?
Mocking God and the Catholic Faith is just fun and games to Justin!
Mr. Trudeau a former substitute teacher and the current prime minster of Canada is a socialist whom supports open borders, homosexual marriage, and chabad. Here’s what he wrote about family friend, Fidel Castro when he died:
It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President.
Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.
While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”.
I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba.
On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.
Trudeau’s message to the Chabad-Lubavitchers
Recall that Yael Kushner and her husband went to the tomb of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to perform a Hasidic ritual to their totem. You can read about it here, Ivanka Trump Visiting Ohel Of Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Women’s Day, by posting this to her social medias.
So what else does Yael Kushner have in common with Trudeau besides Chabad and communism? She and her husband Jared are supporters of the LGBTQ perversions. So much so in fact that the two put the kibosh on the executive order her father, Donald Trump was going to sign which would have rolled back all the special rights extended to LGBT peoples under the Obama administration and expand legal exemptions based on religious beliefs against these lifestyles. We can hear you say but the Jews are against homosexuality and everything associated with it! Are they? The Haaretz article, Homosexuality Is Part of Jewish Tradition reads,
The Jews did not strictly preserve “the heterosexual principle.” Intimate relations between men existed in Jewish communities and apparently were also common. Historian Yaron Ben-Naeh has shown in his research that despite the explicit biblical prohibition, in Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire same-sex relations were rather common. This is indicated by dozens of sources. Moreover, until the modern era, grown men who had a need for the favors of youths did not have a negative image in Jewish society.
Yes, we know, you think that the Jews follow the Old Testament, or the Tanakh, Mikra, Pentateuch, Torah, etc... Well they do follow the Torah Shebeal peh but not the Torah SheBiehtav. The Torah Shebeal peh is also known by its other name the Talmud and it nullifies the Torah SheBiehtav (the first five books of the Old Testament). For further reading on the subject see, Jewish roots, Anti-semitism, Nostra Aetate, blah, blah, blah.
Thanks to Maurice Pinay, we have what the Talmud says about homosexuality. There are loopholes for both committing “unwittingly” sodomy and “unwittingly” bestiality.
So what’s this all have to do with 9/11? Well, the only accepted version of the event is one read through Talmudic and Kaballahistic lenses. (See, Cui bono? or 9/11 cui bono? for the unofficial account.) The musical “Come From Away” says that race, nationality, sexual perversions, and religion don’t really matter and that unless one welcomes these attitudes into their lives then they will feel empty. The sad part is, all the Christians who will swallow these attitudes hook, line, and sinker and even propagate this garbage. We’d go so far to call Francis a gleefully willing accomplice. This politically correct ghetto mentality is one of the facets being pushed since 9/11 onto Christians of all stripes and Yael Kushner is this movement’s current cover girl.
If you guessed Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, you are correct!
What do Francis & Steinsaltz have in common?
Adin Steinsaltz the famed translator of the the Babylonian Talmud, nasi of the Nascent Sanhedrin (some say he resigned from this post), and Talmudic teacher of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, traveled to Rome where on Monday he had a private audience with Francis. It wasn’t Steinsaltz’s first trip to the Vatican, in 2002 he spoke there and again in 2005. Little has come out about the meeting between Francis and Steinsaltz but it was filmed and photographed. Call Me Jorge... will update this post if further information comes out. The day after the private audience Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz returned to Jerusalem where he suffered a stroke and underwent an angioplasty at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He is currently in a medical induced coma.
Below are excerpts and articles from the Jewish media on what a great man Justice Antonin Scalia was. We include this as an addendum to our earlier post,R.I.P. Antonin ‘Nino’ Gregory Scalia. As always the underlines in the articles are ours for emphasis.
Hillel and Shammai
A Lesson in Scalia-Ginsburg’s Bond for U.S. Presidential Candidates
Like the Houses of Hillel and Shammai, the two Supreme Court justices understood how to have a deep and healthy relationship with their intellectual or political opponent. If only our politicians could do the same, it would unite our country, instead of dividing it.
...Scalia’s death prompted pundits to highlight his now-famous relationship with Jewish liberal justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. Despite their radically differing political philosophies, they remained close friends throughout their years on the court. They would attend operas together and their families would vacation together. Their off-the-bench friendship was so similar to a Romeo-Juliette bond that they even inspired an opera.
Yet there is also this beautiful sense of, almost Talmudic, dialectic in the way the two engaged in pilpul (back and forth) to help sharpen one another’s legal arguments. They scarcely agreed, and yet they had a healthy, mutual respect for one another’s intellect. When Ginsburg was voted one of TIME’s 100 most influential people this past year, it was Scalia who wrote that he could “attest that her opinions are always thoroughly considered, always carefully crafted and almost always correct (which is to say we sometimes disagree).” Over the years, Bader Ginsburg would pay similar compliments to her judicial foil. As the best of Talmudic hevrutot (Jewish study groups), they used one another to sharpen each other’s arguments and were the better for it. And they did not let their political disagreements affect their personal relationship.
In Jewish tradition we have our own Scalia and Ginsburg, who understood how to have a deep and healthy relationship with an intellectual or political opponent. They were named Hillel and Shammai. Living around the turn of the last century, Hillel and Shammai only disagreed five times, but the two set the precedent for the students from the Houses of Hillel and Shammai to disagree with one another a total of 316 times in rabbinic literature. Shammai’s school was generally viewed as more machmir, more stringent on matters of Jewish law, while Hillel’s was more meykil, lenient. In the end, we are told that in nearly every case, we are to side with the House of Hillel, who were viewed as more lenient. Yet, that is hardly the final word on Hillel and Shammai. For all of their disagreements on matters of Jewish law, the Babylonian Talmud Yebamot 14b teaches that “though those forbade what others permitted, Beit Shammai nevertheless did not refrain from marrying women from the House of Hillel, nor did Beit Hillel refrain from marrying women from the families of Beit Shammai.” Even though the followers of the two factions rarely agreed, they too had a healthy respect for each other. The idea of Jewish peoplehood transcended politics.
Watching the American political debates on television, I can only pray that someday the idea of American peoplehood will transcend politics. Rather than political, the differences currently feel like they are deeply personal: instead of saying he disagrees with her positions, Republican candidate Donald Trump called the Democratic Hillary Clinton, “in a certain way, evil”; and rather than sharpening one another in matters of policy, Trump and his rival for the GOP leadership Jeb Bush have gone back and forth calling one another “loser” and “jerk.” The relationship between Scalia and Ginsburg shows us a vision for a different direction that, instead of dividing the country, can bring us closer together. It is one where our sons and daughters would still marry, whether or not we disagree.
[CMJ's comment: Between Scalia & Gimsburg, who is Hillel and who is Shammai?]
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (pictured with white fan) and
Scalia (center) pose with members of the cast of "Ariadne auf Naxos"
following a performance at the Washington Opera on Jan. 8, 1994. The
justices, both opera lovers, appeared as extras during the performance.
Toward the end of the opera Scalia/Ginsburg, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: "We are different, we are one," different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve.
[CMJ's comment: What common institution were Scalia and Ginsburg serving?]
Scalia with his Talmud teacher, Adin Steinsaltz
[CMJ's note: In the following article the word yiddishkeit is used several times. *Yiddishkeit = Jewishness or Jewish essence especially in reference to (Talmudic) Orthodox Judaism, of or relating to Talmudical studies]
Though dubbed 'bad for the Jews' for his stance on religion and state, the fiery Italian Catholic judge was a friend of the former Israeli Chief Justice, and brought 'chutzpah' into the Supreme Court.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia, weighing on one of his final Supreme Court cases, made it quite clear where he stood on the issue of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
When the ruling in Zivotofsky v. Kerry was issued last June, Scalia made the unusual move of reading his dissenting opinion out loud in court - a sign to court-watchers that a justice’s disagreement is particularly strong.
That 6-3 decision struck down a law which would have allowed American citizens born in Jerusalem to list “Israel” as their birthplace on their U.S. passports instead of “Jerusalem.” The State Department had fought the law fiercely, defending its passport policy as necessary to maintain a U.S. position of neutrality on the question of Jerusalem’s sovereignty.
In the oral arguments that preceded the ruling, Scalia’s political leanings were evident in his statements from the bench. Opposition to putting “Israel” on passports does not imply sovereignty, he said, addressing Zivotofsky's attorney, it “just has an effect on the State Department's desire to to make nice with the Palestinians, and your position is Congress has no compulsion to follow that.”
Then, in the written dissent he read in court, he strongly attacked the majority’s ruling which placed the power to recognize foreign governments exclusively with the president, thus giving the White House the right to require passports to state “Jerusalem.”
But Scalia argued that Congress “has the right to decide that recording birthplaces as ‘Israel’ makes for better foreign policy. Or that regardless of international politics, a passport or birth report should respect its bearer’s conscientious belief that Jerusalem belongs to Israel.”
It happened that Aliza Lewin, the attorney who represented 12-year-old Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky, was the daughter of attorney Nathan Lewin, the lawyer in a key decision Scalia participated in only a few years after he joined the Supreme Court, that rocked the American Jewish community - Allegheny v. ACLU in 1989.
In that decision, the court’s majority, including Scalia, ruled that a Chanukah menorah, when placed alongside a Christmas tree displayed on government property, did not violate the U.S. constitution’s Establishment Clause, which forbids official government endorsement of a religion, and was permissible. That decision opened the doors to a plethora of Chabad-Lubavitch menorahs in public spaces across America every holiday season.
Though Scalia’s positions warmed the heart of Chabad, the vast majority of American Jews, who are liberals, sharply disagreed with his church-state positions and wide berth for religion in public life and too-lax interpretation of the Establishment Clause.
In 2009, JJ Goldberg wrote in the Forward that Scalia was “bad for the Jews” pointing to his defense of an eight-foot metal cross erected as a war memorial on federal parkland as evidence of what Goldberg felt was his troubling “radical Christian majoritarianism.”
On a personal level, though, Scalia had a disarmingly warm connection with individual liberal Jews, most famously his Supreme Court colleague and ideological opponent Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he befriended when they worked together on the on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, bonding over their shared love of opera and sparking a tradition of spending New Year’s Eve together with their respective families and friends.
“As annoyed as you might be about his zinging dissent, he’s so utterly charming, so amusing, so sometimes outrageous, you can’t help but say, ‘I’m glad that he’s my friend or he’s my colleague,’” Ginsburg was quoted as saying of Scalia in the Washington Post. He also had a close relationship with former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, although the two disagreed sharply on fundamental principles of jurisprudence.
When Barak was awarded the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists 2007 Pursuit of Justice Award, it was Scalia who publicly presented the prize to the man he called a “good friend.” The Forward reported that in Scalia’s introductory remarks, he was “quite comfortable on his home turf, quickly dispensed with one element of incongruity: He was not Jewish, he conceded, merely the most senior justice available. Yet he contended that his Queens upbringing provided him with a sufficient endowment of Yiddishkeit to justify the selection.”
He acknowledged his differences with Barak but “went on to celebrate his fruitful and long-standing relationship with the Israeli judge, and to affirm a profound respect for the man, one that trumped their fundamental philosophical, legal and constitutional disagreements.”
Another impressive claim to fame for Scalia among the Jews was the fact that he - an Italian Catholic - turned out to be the first Supreme Court Justice to use the word “chutzpah,” which he included in a 1998 decision.
The case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, was one in which a group of artists sued the federal body claiming that being denied grant applications violated their constitutional rights. This prompted another withering Scalia dissent to the majority opinion saying, “Congress … was not constitutionally required to fund programs encouraging competing philosophies of government ” and that therefore “it takes a particularly high degree of chutzpah for the NEA to contradict this proposition, since the agency itself discriminates … in favor of artistic (as opposed to scientific or political or theological) expression.”
One commentator attached greater meaning to Scalia’s introduction of the word into the Supreme Court’s vocabulary, saying that “although Justice Scalia felt the need to define the words ‘decency’ and ‘respect’ and called on the use of the American Heritage Dictionary to do so, he did not define ‘chutzpah,’ no doubt because the word is so obviously a part of the English lexicon.
“What does increasing use of the word chutzpah signify?” the analysis continued.
“Perhaps it reflects the developing mosaic of the United States. American Jewish lawyers initially faced discrimination in the United States. Large law firms were closed and bar associations turned a cold shoulder. But now a Yiddish term is used in a U.S. Supreme Court decision with hardly any notice.”
Thanks to Scalia, Chabad puts their menorahs up on government property. Here one of their menorahs is shown on the lawn of the White House. There is separation of Church & State in the United States but not of Synagogue & State which are joined at the hip.
Enthusiastic participant in symposia on Jewish and U.S. jurisprudence
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away on Feb. 13 at the age of 79, is being remembered as a champion of freedom of religious expression with a deep appreciation for Jewish law, who was a thoughtful and enthusiastic participant in legal symposia on Jewish and American jurisprudence during his tenure on the court.
“When there was no Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, I considered myself the Jewish justice,” Scalia once told legal scholar and attorneyNathan Lewin.
Lewin, a friend and classmate of Scalia’s at Harvard Law School, had argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court, including County of Allegheny v. ACLU in 1989, when Scalia was part of the majority in a landmark ruling that a menorah erected by Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries could stand on public property.
Lewin said that after Scalia’s appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, he saw himself as “the guardian of the Jewish heritage within the Supreme Court” since no Jewish justice sat on the court between the resignation of Justice Abe Fortas in 1969 and the 1993 appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by President Bill Clinton. Although diametrically opposed on most legal issues, Ginsburg recalled that she and Scalia remained “best friends” during more than 20 years of working together.
Scalia’s interest in Jewish law was longstanding. Lewin said Scalia believed that much of Lewin’s legal acumen was rooted in a lifelong study of theTalmud. He also pointed out that “the justice’s admiration for Jews and Jewish learning explains the frequent references in his opinions to the Talmud and other Jewish sources, and the significant number of Orthodox Jewish law clerks he hired.”
“I recall a 2009 decision (Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 901),” continued Lewin, noting that Scalia occasionally cited the Talmud in his opinions, “where Justice Scalia concluded a dissent by quoting the English translation of ‘hafoch ba ve-hafoch ba, ki kulo ba’–‘Turn it over, and turn it over, for everything is in it,’(Avot 5:24).”
In his first public participation in a formal symposium on Jewish and constitutional law, Scalia was a panelist and keynote speaker in 1995 at the National Conference on Jewish and Contemporary Law in Los Angeles, attended by some 500 judges, attorneys, law professors and rabbis. Also on the panel and also delivering a keynote address was Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) of Jerusalem. Both scholars spoke of the contrasts between the two legal traditions. Earlier in the day, Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) and Scalia led a closed seminar for judges on “The Art of Judging.”
In later years, Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) and Scalia would participate in a number of joint symposia on Jewish and civil law, including a 2014 dialogue at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.
‘The Unique Dynamics of Jewish Law’
As part of the 1995 symposium, Scalia began the main session with a story of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, recalled event organizer Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, director of the North County ChabadCenter in Southern California. “He arrived with a profound sense of inquiry and came to understand the unique dynamics of Jewish law. It was rooted in his deep sense of intellectual curiosity,” said Eliezrie.
Rabbi Nachman Levine, an academic and educator who attended the symposium, recalled that true to his reputation, Scalia was “very funny” and made it a point to speak in a booming baritone so that everyone could hear him during Shabbat, when there were no microphones as they could not be used by Jewish participants.
Levine recalled that since Scalia’s approach to constitutional law was rooted in understanding and not tampering with the original intent of its founders, a fair amount of discussion centered around the Oven of Akhnai. In this Talmudic lesson, the sages determined that even though miracles and heavenly voices supported the opinion of one rabbi, the final law followed the rule of the majority of sages.
“He was very clearly familiar with the story and how this Jewish legal principle of majority rule among expert judges—and not even Divine signs—serves as the foundation for Jewish jurisprudence,” said Levine.
“I asked one of the judges at the Shabbat table how many jurors would need to vote guilty for O.J. Simpson, who was then on trial for murder, to be convicted,” recalled Levine. “The Jewish judge said it would need to be unanimous. I said that in Jewish law, if the verdict was unanimous, then the plaintiff would walk.”
The judge called out, “Nino! [Justice Scalia’s nickname] You hear that? In Jewish law, if the jury is unanimous, he walks!”
“Scalia slapped the table so hard that the gefilte fish flew and said, “I like that! Let me think it through ... of course: It’s a Jewish court. If everyone agrees, something is wrong!”
Scalia then asked if the Jewish judges could “see each other’s cards.”
“What if one person saw that everyone voted guilty, and he holds that the accused is innocent? Maybe he should vote guilty to get the guy acquitted?” mused Scalia. “He was so quick!” said Levine.
On Private and Public Rights
In 2002, Scalia spoke at the National Institute of Jewish Law’s inaugural event at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Rabbi Nosson Gurary, director of the Chabad House of Buffalo, N.Y., who then was a professor at the University of Buffalo Law School, recalled at the time speaking to Scalia about the importance of American jurists’ studying other systems, especially one as richly developed as Jewish law. “Knowledge of another legal system helped him to understand [the U.S. legal] system better,” said Gurary.
In a session on “The Right to Privacy and Individual Liberties From Ancient Times to the Cyberspace Age,” Scalia argued that while there is not necessarily a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy that protects every detail of a person’s life from being published on the Internet or elsewhere, that freedom should be used responsibly.
“The American right to privacy is a complex and obscure right that the judiciary should tread lightly when analyzing,” Scalia suggested. The justice system, he declared, is meant only to define the rights specifically declared in the Constitution and, if need be, to decide whether the legislature overreached in its interpretation of America’s foundational document of governance.
“The vast majority of [one’s] rights are not constitutional,” Scalia asserted. “Most of them can be taken away.”
Rabbi Yaffe recalled that “Justice Scalia’s intelligence, decency, passion for truth and respect of our Constitution are legendary. Many disagreed with his positions on a broad range of issues, but none doubted his sincerity.”
“Every human society must create a just and equitable legal system—governed not by the personal caprices of the powerful or the mood of the mob, but by the rule of law,” concluded Yaffe. “Justice Scalia devoted his life to this endeavor.”
‘The Flexibility of His Mind’
Scalia, who was married for 56 years and the father of nine children, was remembered by Lewin and Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) as a warm and engaging individual.
“He and his wife were guests in our sukkah,” recalls Lewin, “and he was kind enough to meet with law-school classes I brought to Washington to hear Supreme Court arguments.
“Zealously liberal students who claimed not to be able to tolerate Scalia’s judicial philosophy melted into personal fans after they met and spoke with the human being,” recalled Lewin. “Rather than meeting the cantankerous grouch they were expecting, they saw and heard from a funny, modest, gregarious and intellectually honest judge.”
Lewin said Scalia would readily accept recommendations to address Orthodox Jewish gatherings, such as colloquia run by Chabad; sessions and dinners with Agudath Israel of America; and a mass meeting at YeshivaUniversity, where he and Lewin discussed current issues of constitutional law and public policy.
Each event, said Lewin, was “thunderously successful.”
Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) recalled that “in our conversations, I understood something about his brilliance and his efforts to get to a permanent understanding of law. His stance on the Constitution seemed to do with the personality, with his belief in constant and permanent standards, and also with the flexibility of his mind.”
“In his death, America has lost one of its most prominent figures,” the rabbi concluded. “He was very straightforward and very courageous, pleasant, without losing his core. With all the brilliance of his mind, he was, in truth, a believing person and a good man.”
Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, was found dead yesterday at the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Texas. He was found in his room with a pillow over his head. Judge Cinderela Guevara ruled that Scalia died of natural causes and no autopsy was necessary. It was determined by bureaucratic fiat he died of a heart attack. Whatever the circumstances of his death, Scalia was a chameleon to most Catholics. For most if asked would say he was a staunch traditional Catholic who attended the Indult Mass. If pressed a few might mention his ties to the supposedly ‘uber-Catholic’ Opus Dei. Almost none would know of, much less bring up his obsession with the Talmud and Talmudic law, nor his close ties to the Orthodox community of Talmudic Jews. Below are articles (as always the underlines in the articles are ours for emphasis), Scalia's own word, and photos which highlight this.
left to right: Nathan Lewin (author of article), Sima Soumekhian, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Marc Zweben at the Char Bar in Washington, D.C., the kosher restaurant owned by Soumekhian and Zweben, May 2015.
Scalia had been on the Supreme Court since Ronald Reagan appointed him in 1986, so there were seven years during which Scalia saw himself as the court’s guardian of Jewish heritage. The New York-raised judge was shocked that he had to teach his colleagues how to pronounce “yeshiva” (Chief Justice Rehnquist William called it “ye-shy-va”) and, Scalia added proudly to me, “I even told them what a yeshiva is.”
Scalia’s admiration for Jews and Jewish learning explains the frequent references in his opinions to the Talmud and other Jewish sources, and the significant number of Orthodox Jewish law clerks he hired.
[...]
We became friends again when Scalia was named by Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In my first appearance before him, Judge Scalia gave my legal arguments a thorough drubbing and wrote the court’s opinion rejecting every legal claim I made – and then some. He did, however, vote to rehear another appellate-court decision that had rejected my constitutional claim for an Orthodox Jewish Air Force psychologist who wore a yarmulke with his military uniform. When he was promoted to the Supreme Court shortly thereafter (which I viewed as appropriate Divine reward because he and Ginsburg both made it to the highest court after they voted with us in the yarmulke case), we revived our law school friendship.
Scalia and his wife were guests in our sukkah, and he was kind enough to meet with law school classes I brought to Washington to hear Supreme Court arguments. (Zealously liberal students who claimed not to be able to tolerate Scalia’s judicial philosophy melted into personal fans after they met and spoke with the man. Rather than meeting the cantankerous grouch they were expecting, they saw and heard from a funny, modest, gregarious and intellectually honest judge.) He also accepted my recommendations to attend and address Orthodox Jewish gatherings such as colloquia run by Chabad-Lubavitch, sessions and dinners with Agudath Israel of America, and a mass meeting at Yeshiva University where he and I discussed current issues of constitutional law and public policy. Each event was enormously successful.
We seemed to share identical views on church-state issues. Scalia did not read the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as broadly as secular Jewish groups do. In cases I argued before the court, he voted with a court majority (against the ACLU and the American Jewish Congress) to sustain the Chabad menorah in front of Pittsburgh’s City Hall and dissented when six members of the court held that public financing of a school reserved for handicapped children in the Satmar Village of Kiryas Joel, New York, was unconstitutional aid to religion. His views on government financing of religious institutions were applauded by Orthodox Jewish groups.
[...]
I asked Scalia how he could possibly reconcile that 1990 decision with the 1984 vote cast, when he was a federal appellate judge, in favor of the Air Force psychologist whose religious observance compelled him to wear a yarmulke. Scalia was, as usual, entirely forthright.
“I was on a lower court then and had to follow Supreme Court precedent,” he said. “When I was on the Supreme Court, I was the one who decided what the precedent would be.”
Apart from that one significant departure, Scalia had a consistent record of supporting minority religious observance. In June 2015, when he announced the decision he wrote in favor of a Muslim applicant for a job at Abercrombie & Fitch who was unlawfully denied employment because she wore a headscarf, he called it an “easy case.”
There is universal agreement that Nino Scalia was brilliant, amazingly articulate and a real mensch. There is strong disagreement, however, over the side he chose in ideological battles. Scalia is, of course, an Italian name. If one writes it with Hebrew letters, there are two possible – albeit squarely contradictory – ways of writing Scalia. One is to use the letters sin, kaf, lamed, which are also the root of “sechel” – Hebrew for “wisdom.” The other is to use the Hebrew letters samech, koof, lamed, which are the root “sokol” – meaning “to stone.”
Some praised Nino’s wisdom; others were ready to stone him. But all must concur that he was a great man, that the United States he loved is greatly diminished by his loss, and that he greatly revered Jews and Jewish tradition.
Scalia is regarded as the embodiment of the Catholic conservatives. He is careful not to be seen mixing politics and religion, but his faith clearly influences his work on the high court. While he is not a member of Opus Dei, his wife Maureen has attended Opus Dei's "spiritual functions," says an Opus Dei member. Scalia's son, Father Paul Scalia, helped convert Clarence Thomas to Catholicism four years ago.
But the ban did not hold. Many prominent Orthodox rabbis had plenty of good things to say about the Steinsaltz Talmud and today it can be found on countless bookshelves around the world. According to the website of Shefa, the organization publishing and promoting Steinsaltz’s works, students include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, US Senator Joe Lieberman, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti. In 1988, Steinsaltz received the Israel Prize and earlier this year was among the first recipients of Israel’s Presidential Award of Distinction.
Founding Partner Leon Wildes, pictured with Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Honorable Antonin Scalia and Aviva Miller, Development Director National Yiddish Theatre – Folksbiene, attended The Aleph Society Dinner on June 10, 2014.
On Tuesday, June 10, 2014, the 20th Aleph Society Dinner was held at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, NY. Founded in 1988, The Aleph Society supports Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s worldwide network of institutions, educational programs and publishing projects and has operations in Israel, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The dinner honored the work of Rabbi Steinsaltz and featured a tribute to the late Italian Prime Minster Guilio Andreotti for his generous and crucial contribution to the revitalization of Jewish life in the Former Soviet Union.
Not only is Leon Wildes considered a scholar in the field of U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law, having founded Wildes & Weinberg, a boutique immigration law practice with offices in New York City, Englewood, NJ, and Aventura, FL, nearly 55 years ago, he successfully represented Former Beatle John Lennon and his artist wife, Yoko Ono in their deportations proceedings, the circumstances of which have inspired many articles, books, and films. In addition, Leon Wildes served as an Adjunct Professor of Immigration Law at The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City for 33 years prior to handing over the reigns to his son and law partner, Michael Wildes, who now teaches a course on Business Immigration at Cardozo.
According to Leon Wildes, “it was so nice to meet at The Aleph Society dinner with the Honorable Justice Scalia, who has been proudly serving the U.S. in his capacity of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court since 1986 and to be reunited with my former student, Aviva Miller, Development Director of the National Yiddish Theatre – Folksbiene, a performing arts company whose events celebrate the Jewish experience and transmit a rich cultural legacy in both English and Yiddish. For over 25 years, the Aleph Societies across the world have worked hard to promote the development of Jews, Jewish identity, and Jewish communities. May they continue to actualize their mission for many years to come.”
Describing himself as a "fairly centrist judge, by my standards at least" on religious observance cases, Scalia noted that he voted with a high court majority that ruled observant Jews in the military do not have a constitutional right to wear yarmulkes on duty. In the wake of the court decision, Congress voted to permit the skull caps, if designed and issued by the military.
The conference explored the contrasts and similarities between the 3,000-year-old Talmudic tradition of Jewish law and contemporary American case law. Jewish law, much like American case law, relies on precedent, said Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen, of Congregation Shaarei Tefila in Los Angeles.
It is "not simply the precedent of law, but argument of logic to rationally think through issues, and not take things simply by rote," he said.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of Jerusalem, who is responsible for the definitive English translation of the Talmud, delivered the day's other keynote address on the contrasts between the two legal traditions.
Earlier in the day, Steinsaltz and Scalia led a closed seminar for judges on "The Art of Judging."
Mr.Steinsaltzhas had public dialogues with other notable people. The time he had a dialogue with Alan Dershowitz, he said, Mr. Dershowitz's mother was in the audience. Asked about a dialogue he once had with Justice Antonin Scalia, Mr.Steinsaltzsaid, "There was something very wrong about one of us - we seemed to agree about so many things." A Catholic Supreme Court justice and an Orthodox rabbi and Talmudic authority found much in common.
Publisher's note :Adin Steinsaltz is widely acclaimed as the greatest rabbi of our time. His most fervent disciple in this country is Arthur Kurzweil who has accompanied him on his regular travels throughout the US for 23 years, shepharding him to hundreds of speaking events, learning seminars, special appearances on national media, at the US Senate, universities, think tanks, secondary schools, synagogues, colleges, graduate seminars, and countless encounters with journalists, politicians, religious and spiritual leaders, public figures, and various celebrities. In this book, Arthur will present stories about this wise and holy man as he has never been seen before, personal, humorous, inspiring tales of the great Rabbi as he gives Talmud classes to Senator Pat Moynihan, Yitzhak Perlman and Justice Antony Scalia, lectures Ministers of the Chinese Government, and appears on major media with Ted Koppel. In this unprecedented and intimate view of his guru, Kurzweil writes about Rabbi's Steinsaltz views on Jewish identity and role in modern society, on parenting, marriage and divorce, the Rabbi's background growing up in a secular, socialist home, his views on Madonna and the popularization of Kabbalah, on smoking marijuana, non-kosher food, and dozen of other topics never mentioned in his previously published books. Filtered through Kurzweil's story-telling, Rabbi Steinsaltz comes alive in a much less academic and scholarly than in his previous books, including Simple Words (a philosophical discussion of death, love, goodness), Simon and Schuster, 40,000 copies sold) and our recent publication We Jews (a collection of essays by the Rabbi, just published, with 6,628 to date), and previously Opening the Tanya ( 8,577) These more difficult titles are filled with ambiguity, nuance, and unanswered questions. That's why this new book -- the first deliberate package of anecdotes, stories and quotations -- is a really original version of Rabbi Steinsaltz's life and work that can break through the more traditional, observant Steinsaltz market and reach a much broader audience. In this delightful, inspiriting, and entertaining book, Kurzweil will talk about his personal experience with the Rabbi, very much like Tuesdays with Morrie . In all a revealing, entertaining, inspiring, easy to understand version of this holy man's wisdom in a package that will appeal far beyond his traditional market.
An interviewer ofRabbi Adin Steinsaltzcan ask a single question, sit back and witness an amazing stream of topics, the workings of an uncommon mind. The rabbi’s clear blue eyes light up when he knows he has taken a particularly satisfying ramble. Many speak of his genius: A master ofTalmudiclaw and of Judaism’s hidden wisdom, his interests and command of subjects is vast.
Rabbi Steinsaltz is a man who moves easily in many worlds. He is devoted to his family, has written more than 60booksand set upinstitutionsof Jewish learning in several countries. He is sought out by religious leaders of other faiths and major thinkers in various fields. He has met with the Dalai Lama, Alan Dershowitz, Leon Kass and Woody Allen, and has studied Talmud with Yitzchak Perlman as well as a group in Washington including the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Justice Antonin Scalia and Sen. Joseph Lieberman.
President Richard M. Joel introduces Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, center, and attorney Nathan Lewin, second from right. Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik (left) moderated the panel.
Scalia, however, thought Talmud study did offer his Jewish classmates one advantage: “They knew from the beginning of the year that there were no answers to the questions we were studying.”
The topic Scalia and Lewin discussed was “Synagogue and State in America: The Landmark First Amendment Cases of Our Age.”
What does the Talmud have to say about legal and moral controversies in modern America?
Plenty, according to the creators of the new Washington-based National Institute for Judaic Law, which opened with a lavish Supreme Court dinner last month.
Some Orthodox activists say they can’t figure out exactly the point of the whole thing. But Noson Gurary, a Lubavitch rabbi who came up with the idea and won backing from some top Jewish legal experts, harbors no doubts.
“It will be an eye opener for judges, scholars and law students,” he told The Jewish Week. “Before you know where you’re going, you have to know where you came from. And Jewish law is the basis of our legal system in America.”
Gurary said that the idea for the institute came in an exchange of letters in which Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most conservative Justices, expressed his “fascination with Jewish law.”
“And as a teacher of Judaic studies, I began to see the excitement of students who were being exposed to Jewish law for the first time, who now had a better understanding of where Western law come from,” Gurary said.
Gurary, who teaches at the University of Buffalo law school, said his target audience includes judges around the country and law students, not politicians and lawmakers.
According to Gurary, the group, which has hired two researchers to compile reports, will focus initially on the issue of business ethics. Eventually, the goal is to compile a library and database in Washington that will offer Jewish law insights into a host of contemporary issues and to help create courses on the subject at law schools nationwide. The institute will also inaugurate a monthly lunch series for legal machers in Washington.
The Buffalo rabbi is a relative unknown in the Jewish world. Not so some of the participants in the new project, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman and top constitutional lawyer Nathan Lewin and his law-partner/daughter, Alyza.
Alyza Lewin noted that “the idea is to make Jewish law accessible to the public — to jurists, legal scholars, the press, anybody.”
Jewish legal experts have created a new institute that will educate jurists and others about 2,000 years of Jewish law and promote the application of the teachings to contemporary legal disputes and other modern-day issues.
The launch of the Washington-based National Institute for Judaic Law was marked Tuesday night with a kosher dinner at the Supreme Court attended by 200 people, including three Supreme Court Justices - Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, and Antonin Scalia.
Justice Scaliarecently spoke about privacyat a conference hosted by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. The event sounded quite interesting, and I wish I could have been there. AnAP reportprovides a brief overview of Scalia’s views on privacy:
Scalia said he was largely untroubled by such Internet tracking. “I don’t find that particularly offensive,” he said. “I don’t find it a secret what I buy, unless it’s shameful.”
He added there’s some information that’s private, “but it doesn’t include what groceries I buy.”
Data such as drug prescriptions probably should be protected, he said, suggesting areas off-limits to data gatherers could simply be listed for legal purposes.
Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court judge, is said to be a devout Catholic with a fascination for Jewish law. Under circumstances that are not explained, Justice Scalia developed a correspondence with Rabbi Noson Gurary (a disciple of the late Rabbi Schneerson). During this exchange, Scalia mentioned his "fascination with Jewish law."That prompted Rabbi Garary to found the National Institute for Judaic Law (NIJL).(45)The Institute promotes courses on Talmud-based law in American law schools and otherwise injects Talmud-based law into American society. The founding of NIJL was celebrated by a gala kosher dinner on November 5, 2002.Justice Scalia and two other Supreme Court judges were among 200 dinner guests. Where was the dinner held? In the Supreme Court building. The American public first learned of the Supreme Court kosher dinner by reading the news inThe Jerusalem Post, November 9, 2002.(45)This remarkable event was not reported contemporaneously by eitherThe Washington PostorThe Washington Times. Missing fromThe Jerusalem Postcoverage was the role Scalia may have played in securing the use of the Supreme Court building as a banquet hall for Rabbi Gurary. Why a devout Catholic like Justice Scalia would promote Talmud-based law is not clear. The Talmud classifies Christians as idolaters, and the Noahide regulations require that idolaters — devout Catholics, for example, people exactly like Justice Scalia — be put to death. Could it be that Rabbi Gurary did not tell Justice Scalia about the Noahide provisions to execute people like Scalia?
Justice Scalia has demonstrated a soft spot for Judaism in other ways. He was the first judge to use the worldchutzpahin a Supreme Court decision.(41) According to an article in Jewish Law, "… Justice Scalia … has repeatedly called for more expressions of tradition and religion in American society. The use of the wordchutzpah, with its historical roots and association with Judaism, may fulfill such a role. It also comports with his legal philosophy. He favors the 'nonpreferentialist' view, which posits that government may support religion in general but not in a way that prefers any particular religion. For Justice Scalia to use a term of a Jewish cultural language in a Supreme Court decision could be viewed as in keeping with the nonpreferentialist legal doctrine." — Jewish Law (54) The wordchutzpahis not a religious word, nor is it a traditional American word. It is a Yiddish word meaning, roughly, "unmitigated gall." It is surprising thatJewish Lawwould attach such significance to the incidental use of a Yiddish word. If given a judicial opportunity, will Justice Scalia rule in favor of the Noahide Laws? He could describe them as "nonpreferentialist," in the much the same way that Congress described them as "the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization." That sounds most "nonpreferentialist," provided one does not mention death sentences for Christians. Talmud law also provides that Jews and non-Jews be judged by dramatically different standards. For example, in capital cases, 23 judges must sit in judgment on a Jew; two eyewitnesses must have witnessed the offense, and warned him of the potential penalty. In contrast, a Gentile gets one judge, and is convicted on the testimony of one eyewitness with no warnings. SeeUS v. Talmud Lawfor more details on capital cases. SeeThe Talmud Lives for Jewsfor details on civil cases. Justice Scalia has sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Given that the words Equal Justice Under Law are emblazoned over the cornice of the very building that houses Scalia's office, Justice Scalia is oneVery InterestingPerson. (41)
"While the Messiah Tarries," by Rabbi A. James Rudin, Forward, February
22, 2002: http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.02.22/oped2.html cached
at: http://www.come-and-hear.com/editor/forward.
"I assume I'm here to talk about federal law because I must confess that my Daf Yomi attendance has been lackluster," joked Scalia, a Roman Catholic, referring to the daily study of Talmud.
