But what about the proponents of “white” magic or witchcraft?

Many proponents of modern witchcraft insist they only use "white" magic and that "white" magic is just great.

They offer innocent-sounding examples, like chanting a spell (which merely comprises a request phrased in Greek) that helps them find a parking spot.

Furthermore, modern children's fantasy novels & movies incorporate characters who use magic to help others & save the day.

So first of all, murmuring silly spells to help you with things like finding a parking spot is total kefirah (heresy).

And guess what, wacky Wiccans? HASHEM creates parking spots. You can murmur your parking pleas to HIM.

Replacing Hashem with kishuf destroys emunah & ultimately warps the soul.

Even seemingly helpful acts of "white" kishuf, like healing others, denies Hashem’s Power & creates the impression of the machshefah’s machinations as the source of the healing power.

(And because kishuf utilizes kochot hatumah, which utilizes harmful entities, you end up paying a nasty price for any seeming good you do with the kishuf.)

Note: If you’re wondering what the difference is between that and the blessing of a tzaddik or the use of a segulah, the answer—on one foot—is that these claim only to work with the help of Hashem. A lot of them facilitate inner growth in YOU yourself. (White magic does not make the receiver a better person or facilitate inner growth.) Likewise, prayer turns to Hashem for the healing. Greek-language gibberish & goddess incantations & occult-based methods totally deny Hashem’s Mastery & Influence in the world—which is the prime severity of kishuf.

Hashem is so Good & Compassionate—and kishuf spits all over this.

A holy person connects to Hashem’s Holiness, to His All-Encompassing Presence & Oneness—and this increases emunah & holiness within the person. A great many Jews have become much better people after an encounter with a holy Jew.

However, an unexpected discovery demonstrated to me why even dabbling in “white” kishuf not only distorts emunah, but reaps lethal consequences.

​I stumbled across a particular writing blog & immediately fell in love with it.

This blog covered so many different aspects of writing because of the blogger’s vast experience with all types of writing in a variety of genres: non-fiction, fiction, cookbooks...

She knew tons of stuff about writing, publishing, graphic design, marketing, ghost writing, outsourcing, research, and much more. She gleaned resources from all over.

Even if the topic didn't address my specific needs or plans, it was still intriguing to read about it.

I subscribed to the blog feed to never miss a post (I rarely subscribe to anything—and if I do, I usually unsubscribe as soon as possible.)

As time went on, I discovered that, being considered an expert in a couple of areas, she also spoke at national conferences and even appeared on TV (everything under an alias name). Though it didn't apply to me, I still enjoyed reading about her tips for appearing in (or partly narrating) documentaries & the behind-the-scenes glimpse into that industry.

(Just in case you're wondering how she stayed anonymous...she utilized photo software to morph photos of her & people who looked like her. So then her photos kind of look like her, but not exactly. She gave advice on this too. And documentaries either featured only her voice or her in shadows.)

Also, her website was so shockingly CLEAN:

No foul language, no naughty references, and no problematic images.

In fact, the website initially displayed no images at all.

Even more astoundingly in these times, if she linked to foul-mouthed content, she included warning before offering the link.

Finding her very approachable, I once emailed her with a brief polite question—to which she responded quickly with generous amounts of information.

As you probably already know, popular bloggers usually offer as brief an answer as possible (while hopefully still being pleasant—though not always even that).

It’s easy to understand how busy they are and, seeing as I’m a total stranger, I very much appreciated how much time (and typing!) she invested in offering all the information she thought I needed—and doing it so pleasantly too.

​However, the first inkling that not all was sugar & spice came when she spoke of weird interactions with “fans.”

A few tracked her down to her home, leaving stuff in her mailbox.

One even tried to run her over with his car—or seemed to. She was never sure whether it was overenthusiasm or a sadistic prank or a real attempt to hurt her.

She also alluded to receiving lots of particularly hostile reviews or reactions from critics.

I've been reading interviews & the personal blogs of successful writers for decades, and I never heard such extremes—especially the attempt to run her over.

Yeah, critics can be harsh. But she alluded to lots of angry readers with particularly hostile reactions.

​What material was this very nice, approachable person writing that incited people so severely?

At that point, I realized she wrote different types of paranormal fiction (in addition to several other genres), so I figured she probably attracted weirdoes from that.

But still. The above indicates extreme reader response, even for paranormal writers.
​
Side point: Another popular author cautioned writers against writing to trend because if, for example, the current trend was vampire stuff, then the trend-writing author could find herself at a writers convention in an elevator full of people wearing fangs, yellow contact lenses, and other vampire-goth paraphernalia—all following her around wanting to talk to her & get her autograph. Yes, the creepy world of writing today…so writing in weird genres can definitely attract weirdos.

​Then, going after an allusion to one of her aliases, I went to another website of hers under that alias and found lots of arts & crafts projects.

A lot of it looked charming, folksy, and whimsical.

Yet some of the dolls seemed…odd.

I can no longer remember exactly, but some of the dolls struck me as voodoo-y or witchy. Not necessarily meant to harm others, but meant for uses beyond standard doll use.

Then I came across instructions for making a fairy house. She offered parts for those too.

And by fairy house, I don’t mean a fantasy-themed doll house.

A fairy house is meant to attract fairies.

​Yes. That's right. Actual mythological fairies.

According to the website, you can bring fairies to your yard or your home with some fairy-bait (trinkets or food they like) in these houses meant to appeal to fairies.

She clearly believed in fairies and thought it fine—even fun—to attract them.

That rang a serious warning bell in my mind.

While the Anglo cultures provide a variety of names for a wide range of entities (fairies, goblins, gnomes, pixies, leprechauns, imps, elves, etc.), traditional Jewish sources lump them under the general category of mazikin or nezikin — damagers, destroyers.

They’re also known as shedim…demons.

Or chitzonim — externals or outsiders.

Or ruchin bishin — evil spirits.

In other words, these are not entities you want to attract.

The Hebrew & Aramaic terms make that clear.

She light-heartedly spoke of living with unseen fairies in her home who sometimes took small objects. She said she always responded by making an amused statement of need, after which she later found her missing object.

Despite their annoying behavior, she enjoyed the idea of hosting them in her home.

She made it sound innocent & simple, but in reality, humans cannot control these things.

These entities respond to their own rules—which means they only give you the desired response either if it suits them or if they're compelled to.

(Whether out of desire or compulsion, they only grant your desire if they benefit in some way.)

Judaism offers certain types of protection (prayers, mezuzot, etc.), but Jewish remedies focus on protection—not attraction—and Judaism focuses even less on appeasement (though appeasement plays a huge part in non-Jewish fairy lore & the customs of those who believe).

​The Jewish way primarily focuses on keeping these things OUT.

The non-Jewish methods of self-protection often utilize useless gestures at best or kochot hatumah (including kishuf) at worst. 

(The only techniques they find commonality with Jewish sources are avoidance, such as not being out after dark in certain areas or avoiding certain areas altogether.)

Also, non-Jewish traditions portray these entities as liable to steal babies & young children. People used to fear these things and in some areas, they still fear them.

Yet she claimed to host these things even though she has grandchildren visiting at times.

She seemed very content to live with these mazikin (damagers), which made me wonder what she did to protect herself that she wasn’t saying.

She also recommended watching out for fairy rings in the yard, not to step in them (that harms you) or damage them (that harms the fairies), but also to be careful when grandchildren come to visit because if the children step into the rings, they could disappear.

What?!

Now. Whether you believe this stuff or not, SHE believes it.

​Yet she creates objects to attract these entities into her yard and home, even though she believes it holds danger for young children (including her own grandchildren).

It all struck me as both weird & irresponsible, and not in line with the caring, down-to-earth, appealing persona that came through her writing.

Then, without even meaning to, I stumbled across her most famous alias—the one she tried so hard to keep secret—and realized it was her.

This was the alias she alluded to several times that earned her appearances at niche conventions & on TV shows (in which she either appears in voice only or in a way that shadows her real appearance).

This alias revealed she made a whole career out as a “paranormal consultant.”

In the self-photo for this site, she looked spooky & sinister, wearing the facial expression of someone about to put a hex the viewer.

How different than the friendly & approachable persona she displayed in writing on all her sites and morphed photographs or vertex portraits!

She also spoke openly about having descended from fairies centuries ago, making her a mostly-human-with-some-fairy hybrid. (Remember: When goyim say fairies, Jews say mezikin or demons. If she’s really a hybrid, that’s not something to be proud of.)

​Now you see why she attracted weirdos.

Yet even here, she discussed wacky stuff in a sensible manner.

For example, she cautioned against assuming that every seemingly haunted house was actually haunted; she recommended practical rationalist steps, like checking the plumbing & electricity before jumping to conclusions.

She enjoyed engaging with ghosts, helping them “pass” to other side (though she noted that just like with live people, they didn’t always want to let go of their issues).

Nonetheless, she enjoyed taking others to haunted areas (ghost tours, etc.). She stressed responsible behavior, safety precautions, and the importance of listening to "your gut feeling" in such areas.

She repeatedly stressed that if you even think you might be dealing with demons, to leave the area immediately and seek expert demon help (like a priest or demonologist or shaman, etc.).

This really disturbed me because the non-Jewish world gets mixed up about a lot of this supernatural stuff.

For example, what churches call “demonic possession” is often actually dybbuk possession—meaning a dead soul being punished in kaf hakela (Slingshot Hell) that chooses to enter a living body for respite from its angelic punishers. (Kaf hakela a way of cleansing the soul—very painful, but cleansing.)

And these souls often refuse to behave nicely because that’s why they’re being punished so badly in the first place: They were very bad people.

Furthermore, if you read how Jewish tradition describes different kinds of entities, then you discover that what the churches consider ghosts are usually demons.

(And that’s only if it’s real, and not a hoax or psychotic episode or something.)

Also, as I read the Me’am Lo’ez on Parshat Beresheit, he mentioned that while demons can take on any appearance they desire, their actual bodies consist of fire & air because Hashem refused to complete their bodies Erev Shabbat.

So when people take pictures of balls of light, which they label as ghosts, they are probably actually photographing demons.

​Indeed, some people even call these mysterious orbs “fairy lights,” which is a lot more accurate than calling them ghosts. (This all refers to lights with no apparent source, and not lights created by a reflection or chemical response in a bog gasses or something.)

Further reading revealed that even what she called ghosts weren't necessarily what she believed were ghosts (i.e. dead people who once lived & hadn't "passed over" for some reason).

"Spirits" she called these non-dead ghosts.

​In other words, yet another class of what Judaism calls mezikin or demons.
​
Anyway, knowing these entities are most likely demons (no matter what her “gut” says), I felt increasing discomfort as I read on.

(Especially since demons or mezikin cover such a vast variety of entities, you can't just use your gut feeling. After all, one demon pretending to be Eliyahu Hanavi proved a hard nut to crack for Rav Yehudah Petiyah, and even succeeded in fooling major Torah Sages like Rav Aharon Agassi & Rav Yaakov the son of the Ben Ish Chai...until Rav Petiyah saved the day [Minchat Yehudah, Parshat Miketz]. In other words, you cannot just rely on your "gut.")

Then I came across a major post of hers, which admitted to feeling compelled to discuss a specific cemetery reputed to host particularly active paranormal activity, something she’d avoided until that post because such reports attract certain types of people—and she desperately wanted people to avoid this cemetery because she deemed it too dangerous to explore.

How did she arrive at that conclusion?

One night, she decided to take a friend to this same cemetery in order to experience ghostly activity. While ghosts don’t usually perform on demand, the regular activity in this cemetery seemed a good opportunity for those who wished to see action.

However, while there, she and her friend ran into short, furry entities she’d never seen before—entities who clearly weren’t ghosts and who also gave her really bad vibes.

Only that...by the time her bad vibes vibed her, she and her friends were already well into the cemetery.

The bad vibes of strangeness & uneasiness increased until she ran into what she termed “a wall of evil.” (Nothing physical, just a sensation.)

She perceived it as sheer evil, and she felt sure that both it and the entities were entities of their own, and not entities that had once lived then died (like her darling ghosts).

At this point, she realized she was in way over her head and sought to flee with her friend from the distressing area and back to their car.

Yet disturbingly, her friend continued to suffer “issues” for weeks after the event.

​Entities visited her friend in the night, she struggled to sleep peacefully, and she felt generally stalked & harassed by these entities—even in the day time.

Apparently, this was not an unusual consequence of visiting this cemetery.

The paranormal consultant received phone calls from others who, in search of paranormal experiences, visited this cemetery, and later called her in desperation to plead, “Does it ever end? Does it ever go away?”

The paranormal consultant felt awful about the whole thing and advised the woman to contact a demon-expert or an experienced priest.

(Yet Jewish sources show that neither experts nor priests truly help. Yes, occultists developed occult methods to deal with demons, but they don't work at the foundation of the problem. Demons are notoriously deceptive and can simply lull you into thinking you’ve banished them so that you’ll leave them alone. Or you need to be a truly holy person, like our tzaddikim, and utilize things of kedushah, like a mezuzah—to effectively banish or protect against these mazikin.)

Not surprisingly (to us), consultation with a priest didn’t help the friend.

Advice from this paranormal consultant didn’t help either.

(And yeah, it's thought-provoking to realize how the paranormal consultant encountered these things without suffering ill consequences from the encounter, even though she experienced a more intense encounter at the cemetery than her friend. Why?) 

Mere weeks after the frightening encounter in the cemetery, this same woman (the friend haunted by entities after the cemetery fiasco) was found dead in her car in a parking lot outside a supermarket in the middle of the day.

The woman was only in her late thirties with no medical issues.

Puzzled medical experts declared her death a heart attack, but her family & friends felt she was killed by these entities who continued to stalk her. Or something. No one knew exactly what, but felt certain her death resulted directly from whatever she encountered at the cemetery.

Throughout, the paranormal consultant confessed how awful she felt about the whole thing.

​She struggled with feelings of guilt because, after all, she was the one who took her friend there in the first place—and kept her there throughout the initial bad vibes & weird entities, all the way until running smack into the wall of evil.

To my mind, there is no doubt that the friend died as a direct result from her encounter in the mezikin-ridden cemetery.

In fact, the Kav HaYashar (Chapter 69) similarly recalls a cellar infested with demons, which killed a young man who managed to enter. Only 15 minutes after he entered, the residents of the home found the young man lying on the threshold with no sign of any injury (other than the fact he was dead).

​That happened in the Polish city of Posen during the years 1681-1682.

Anyway, the paranormal consultant detailed all this as a warning to even the most foolhardy thrill-seekers to NOT go anywhere near that cemetery. 

When asked about the police patrolling the area, she said the police only patrol in pairs and do their best to stay in their police car. If they see people partying with alcohol or drugs in the cemetery, they try to break things up without leaving the car (i.e., calling out to the errant youth via the police bullhorn).
​
If forced to enter the cemetery, the police make sure to go in together and not to go in any further than absolutely necessary.

Apparently, she made the police feel comfortable speaking with her about their true feelings, but they refuse to embarrass themselves by speaking about their experiences publicly.

​Now, you might think the fact that, after visiting this cemetery, and after people call her up in tears of desperation asking when or if “it” ever goes away—and also that her friend actually dropped dead in broad daylight—you might wonder whether that might make her reconsider her career path.

Right?

But…no.

Mind-boggling as it sounds, she still kept going ahead with it (albeit currently hampered by corona restrictions) and working out a way to get a TV deal.

She simply emphasizes in no uncertain terms to avoid this particular area of paranormal activity, and is equally emphatic about listening to your gut feeling when seeking out the paranormal.

In her opinion, ghosts are fine, but other entities are problematic.

The problem is that by the time her own gut told her that the paranormal activity at the cemetery was not Casper the Friendly Ghost, but Dudley the Deadly Demon, it was too late for her friend.

Furthermore, she continues to sell “fairy houses” and kits to ATTRACT fairies to one's home!

Remember: Fairies are mezikin.

You DON’T want them in your home.

In fact, you don’t want them anywhere near you.

Regarding the fairy homes, she laughingly quotes another paranormal consultant who laughingly advises people not to bait their fairies with meat because “then you’ll attract things that eat meat. And you’re, well, meat. So you don't want to do that.”

Ho-ho-ho! Hardy-har-har!

It’s all potentially evil & very dangerous—chuckle-chuckle!

She—and other people into fairy stuff—laugh about hosting fairies in their homes. Fairies tend to do things like misplace their belongings (i.e., earrings and other miniatures) and generally act like little narcissists who engage in passive-aggressive behavior.

(Again: mezikin=damagers.)

And fairy enthusiasts find this cute.

As mentioned above, the other problem is that both in goyish fairy tradition & Jewish traditions regarding demons, some of these entities are known to harm, abduct, or even kill babies & small children.

Why have them in your house, especially if you have small children (or grandchildren) around?

This paranormal enthusiast also expressed pride in the “fairy ring” she hosts in her yard.

​And oh-so responsibly, she warns against allowing small children near fairy rings because they might “fall in” and never be seen again.

(Yes, this woman has grandchildren who visit her. Just watch out for that charming ring of mushrooms, kids!)

So this seemingly very nice, personable, helpful person engages in & continues to engage in activities that are most definitely not nice and even harmful.

​So again, I realize that many people reading this hold by a purely rationalist point of view. In that case, you attributed the friend’s sudden death to a freak heart attack—as sometimes happens, unfortunately.

You attribute the demonic stalking mentioned above to hysterical or paranoid reactions—produced by the brain and nothing more.

You see the paranormal consultant as a quack who accepts the money & clientele of gullible people, and that’s that.

That’s fine & I’m not going to argue with the rationalist point of view.

​After all, it is certainly the Rambam’s point of view.

In that case, the prohibition against kishuf remains a prohibition against deceiving people into thinking such powers exist, and weakening their emunah—a very serious harm indeed.

A rationalist might also feel angry about the death of the above woman because they view her as influenced by her mere belief in something evil stalking her, resulting in a kind of psychosomatic-imposed death—in other words, frightening her literally to death.

And a rationalist might feel angry over that, seeing the women as being brainwashed into believing something both untrue & harmful to her well-being.

However, other strong Torah traditions follow the numerous Sages who do believe in different dimensions beyond the standard 3, which includes an assortment of entities (mentioned also by the Me’am Lo’ez in Parshat Beresheit & Rashi in Parshat Noach, for example).

And it bothers me that not only have these people been harmed by looking for paranormal experiences (encouraged or even actively guided by paranormal consultants), but at least one person died in this case.

And despite the responsible-sounding warnings to avoid that particular cemetery and to listen to one’s gut, this same paranormal consultant also encourages fairy houses to attract fairies (i.e., demons) and continues to both encourage & guide others toward paranormal activity, under the impression that fairies are cute, ghosts are mostly harmless, and demons should be avoided (using your “gut” to determine the difference—at which point there is clearly an encounter occurring and is already too late to avoid…but no worries!

​Just go to a priest or demon expert, and all will be well, right? Don’t think so….

Just to go back to the original topic: This paranormal consultant considers herself completely legit, responsible, and helpful.

I don't know if she labels her methods with the specific term "white magic," but she definitely fits into the same category (regardless of specific label) that deals with kochot hatumah in a way considered harmless or even beneficial. 

Likewise, a lot of New Age material & methods utilize kochot hatumah. 

It doesn't matter what they call it, whether they use the term "kishuf" (or it's non-Hebrew equivalent). 

Ultimately, it all focuses on getting in touch with unhealthy spirituality that distances a person from Hashem & thus from true morality.
​
So this is the danger of “white” magic & helpful intentions of people involved in kishuf.

​In addition to weakening emunah & drawing people away from Hashem & from Torah-true morality, I see them (based on sources in Chazal) as causing very real harm—regardless of their intentions.

Furthermore, you see that they just won't stop, regardless of the harm they cause.

And regardless of whether you go according to the rationalist POV or the more comprehensive POV, you can see why the Torah viewed a practitioner of kishuf with such condemnation & severity.

​So getting back to the main problem discussed in Chazal: Machshefim decrease emunah in the world and detract from the appearance Hashem's Mastery. 

With the very "successful" ones, they make it look like they have special powers—like they're undefeatable.

But their power is an illusion, whether they're using sleight-of-hand or the power of suggestion, or whether they're tapping into literal kochot hatumah.

Hashem is controlling EVERYTHING.

Machshefim cannot operate against Hashem's Will. No one can.

But they make it LOOK like they can. And that proves the main problem with a machshefah or mechashef:

Whether privately or publicly, their machinations pull people away from doing teshuvah or praying or connecting to Hashem.

​They decrease emunah in the world.

Again, even for a minor private incident, like trying to find a parking spot, the machshefah encourages you to chant a spell rather than turning to Hashem.

So whether the machshefah is operating on a high public level or a low private level, they decrease emunah in the world by influencing people to turn to spells rather than tefillah or teshuvah.

(That's just one example.)

And in addition to the practical harm machshefim can cause, their puzzling lack of repentance and the very real impossibility of the surveillance necessary to ensure they aren't dabbling in kishuf again...

All this adds up to why the Torah views them with such severity.

To go back to:

• Part 1: What's So Bad about Kishuf? A Look at Halacha, the Rational vs the Supernatural, the 80 Witches of Ashkelon, and the Machshefah Midwife of the Me'am Lo'ez

​

• Part II: What's the Problem with Kishuf?–A Torah Discussion of Witchcraft, Sorcery, and the Occult from Both the Rationalist & Supra-Rationalist POV

My husband used to attend a late-night class on the Ohr Hachaim commentary on the parsha. The class took place in one of the more insular charedi neighborhoods.

One night, two secular-looking young men showed up wearing kippahs.

Although this class was not specific geared toward novices, it still welcomed anyone who wished to learn the Ohr Hachaim.

Everyone in attendence received the young men warmly, while at the same time, everyone felt curious about what brought these two davka to this class in this area.

At one point, the young men felt compelled to share what happened to them prior to their decision to attend this class.

Like many young Jews today, these two young men developed an interest in Torah observance & kabbalah.

Like a lot of Israelis, they weren't so secular at heart and via their grandparents, they received certain pure ideas about Judaism.

Other secular friends told them about an impressive "kabbalist" who lived in a secular moshav in central Israel.

(That in itself is a bit odd because most very frum people do not wish to immerse themselves in a wholly secular environment.)

The young men arrived by car to the home of the "kabbalist."

The first thing they saw was a fence which contained a large black dog guarding the entrance to the home.

That immediately struck one of the young men as shady.

Since when do holy Torah sages own big scary black dogs?

At that moment, the "kabbalist" opened the door and guided the two inside, away from the black dog.

Once inside, the "kabbalist" led them to his study, offered them chairs in front of his desk, then sat himself behind his desk.

Behind the "kabbalist" stood shelves of books.

The same young man who felt suspicious of the big black dog now scanned the titles of the books, which set off another warning light in his head: Most of the books seemed to be about the occult.

The "kabbalist" then asked them what they wanted to drink. He reassured them that he could serve them any drink they wanted.

Literally, ANY drink in the world...

That sounded weird.

But not wanting to trouble him, they agreed to a simple cola.

The "kabbalist" whisked a bottle of cola out of thin air right before their eyes.

After a split-second of stunned realization, they bolted from the room.

They shot down the hallway, out the door, past the dog, and to their car, speeding out of the moshav, never to return.

Desperately wanting some tohar (spiritual purity) after that unnerving encounter with tumah (spiritual impurity), they searched for a Torah class and somehow heard about the secluded Ohr Hachaim class.

Knowing that the Ohr Hachaim is for sure the real thing, they showed up to the class, still shaken over their encounter.

​They now realized how important it was to pursue real authentic tried-'n'-true Judaism, and not go for kabbalah stuff (or a "kabbalist") that sounds interesting, but is actually based on tumah, rather than the authentically pure & holy kabbalah of the Zohar.

As a side point, the above also shows that even a little bit of knowledge helps with proper discernment.

Meaning, these 2 young men realized that a large black dog indicated something "off," as did the rows of occult books on the man's bookshelf.

The cola-out-of-thin-air simply confirmed their suspicions.

In contrast, less knowledgeable people may not suspect anything upon seeing the large black dog & either not notice the occult books or not realize those books deal with forbidden kochot hatumah.

Finally, despite their predominantly secular background, they possessed enough tradition to realize the urgency of an Ohr Hachaim class to counteract their spooky tumah experience.

​(Many secular Jews never even heard of the Ohr Hachaim. But they had.)

​Yet the story doesn't end there.

Someone from the class decided to investigate further & discovered a woman who'd become a follower of this "kabbalist."

At first, it worked for her. These occult tricks often work for certain things for a short period of time.

The problem is that there's a price to pay.

If you want the "gift" to keep on giving, you need to keep paying.

(Which means it's not really a gift—after all, you're paying for it. Right? So it's a transaction...a transaction of only one side knows all the rules & stipulations—and it ain't your side.)

Eventually, the young woman came to the truth on her own.

​She couldn't keep paying and anyway, she started to sense something off about the "kabbalist" and, if I remember correctly, she also felt that he was davka blocking her in shidduchim, rather than helping her as he claimed.

​So she gradually ceased contact with him.

But he didn't let her go so easily.

As she cut off contact, all sorts of things suddenly started happening around her home—accidents, annoyances, and so on.

But the most frightening consequence was how her skirt suddenly caught on fire for no reason—meaning, there was no open source of fire. She wasn't standing near a gas stove or smoking or anything like that, no gas fumes in the air, etc.

Like, she'd just be standing in her living room and all the sudden, her skirt would be on fire.

​This happened several times.

Understandably freaked out, she went to a real Torah mekubal and he changed her name for her, plus he encouraged her in tsniyut (dignified modesty & behavior), plus certain Tehillim & davening, and so on. I think he also either had her mezuzot checked or he gave her some really high-quality mezuzot.

(As we know from Rav Chaim Palagi's Chaim Bayad mentioned in The Vital Importance of being Tamim with Hashem, kosher mezuzot do a great job of keeping out unwanted entities.)

Once her name changed, the skirt-fires stopped. The real mekubal explained that because the "kabbalist" had her name for davening (i.e., her full name, plus her parents' names), he could send demons her way.

So the mekubal also cautioned her not to reveal her new name in order to prevent the "kabbalist" from accessing her new "address" for the demons.

And that was that.

Note: Publicizing full names for davening is a praiseworthy & common custom, and people needn't fear the misuse of their names. Furthermore, if we know them & and their parents, we know many people's full names anyway. So, if I remember correctly, the fact that she facilitated a connection with this swindler, plus she herself gave him her name for this occult purpose—which she initially didn't perceive as occult--that's what caused the problem. She unwittingly opened a door to this dynamic & providing her name was simply part of that process, and not the only key to facilitating the frightening events that followed.

​The final say on that story was that she was in the process of doing full teshuvah.

Like the two young men, she started out as a mostly secular girl who stumbled upon this same "kabbalist."

While the magic trick frightened the two young men, it impressed others who considered it proof of having found a real mekubal.

And therein lies the problem with kishuf (witchcraft, sorcery): It removes people from emunah in Hashem and leads them down the path the mechashef (witch, sorcerer) wishes them to go.

Postscript: After hearing the above stories, a frum couple driving on their way home stopped to pick up a young newly married frum couple hitchhiking home. When the newlyweds stated their destination, the driving couple was surprised to hear it was this same moshav that housed this occultist posing as a kabbalist. Speaking with the newlyweds, they discovered that the groom had grown up on this secular moshav, becoming frum later, and married a fellow baalat teshuvah. Now they were going to stay with his parents for Shabbat. When the driving couple inquired as to whether the young man knew of the "kabbalist," the young man replied, "Yes, of course, everyone on the moshav knows about him. He is an ish tameh (a spiritually impure person), so we simply stay away from him."

I remember how impressed I was when, upon first becoming frum, I learned that Judaism says: So what if Chrixianity's founder walked on water or performed any other impressive feat?

It means NOTHING!

Wonders & marvels don't prove a darn thing.

If you go by the Rambam (who did not believe in demons or occult powers), then you consider such thing illusions & sleight-of-hand—definitely magic tricks, which only display the performer's deception.

However, if you go by the vast majority of the Torah Sages, then you acknowledge that while occult powers exist, they don't impress you or prove anything whatsoever.

All it shows is the performer's mastery over kochot hatumah...UGH.

With all our beautiful, protective, and uplifting connection to spiritual purity, like:

• the morning brachot
• Pitom HaKetoret
• the Aleinu prayer
• mezuzot
• chanukat habayit (when moving into a new home you purchased)
• tsniyut
• tefillin
• tzitzit
• Tehillim/Psalms
• and much more...

...we thumb our noses at the icky & constricting kochot hatumah. 

​It's very liberating to be released from finding anything impressive or intriguing about wonders & marvels & any other mysterious or supernatural phenomena.

So again, either way you slice it, we see the big problem with kishuf:

• From a rationalist point of view, the kabbalist-poser retarded the young woman's spiritual progress & her ability to get married.

Rather than dedicating her time & efforts to increasing her mitzvah-observance, she made no progress in actual mitzvah-observance & instead invested her money in supporting this harmful faker (rather than buy beautifully modest clothing or giving tzedakah, etc.).

So she felt like she was doing something, but wasn't actually doing anything—only she didn't initially realize it due to the kishuf deception.

A rationalist would feel infuriated with the swindler because of the block to the young woman's spiritual growth & also that he's stealing money from a vulnerable young woman.

Also, a rationalist would attribute all the household mishaps to the power of suggestion, like her perception of routine mishaps as connected to the mechashef (which the rationalist would reject as routine & not connected to the mechashef, except only in her mind).

As for the skirt-fires, a rationalist would attribute them to her standing too close to a heat source (like certain space heaters, from which cloth can easily touch the heat source & catch fire) or maybe the fake "kabbalist" even sprinkled a substance on her clothes that becomes flammable when it comes into contact with water.

Or that she's lying or exaggerating.

The skirt-fires prove harder to explain away using rationalist explanations, and you can see that the only ones I managed to come up with are far-fetched, but strict rationalists refuse to even contemplate any other explanation.

So to them, even the far-fetched (or viewing her in a negative light as a liar or unreliable) are acceptable.

She hadn't had contact with the "kabbalist" for a while (and she'd laundered her clothes since the last contact), she insisted she wasn't near any heat source—but a committed rationalist would dismiss these arguments as her forgetfulness or lack of attention. 

(Or again, demean her character by presuming her a liar or hysteric or attention-seeker or something like that.)

On the other hand, the cola trick can easily be explained via sleight-of-hand. After all, Israelis aren't generally going to request a strawberry daquiri or inconvenience the rabbi with a request for coffee—an Israeli would only ask for a common cold drink.

Knowing this, the swindler could easily hide a few bottles of popular drinks (orange-flavored, bottled water, cola, etc.) under his desk, then appear to whisk them out of thin air at the visitor's request.

• From a non-rationalist point of view, the block in actual mitzvah-observance is also of great concern, with the frightening occult attacks considered equally dangerous.

A non-rationalist would feel infuriated by the same aspects as the rationalists—with additional outrage & concern about the entities visiting her at home & causing her active harm in a way that's difficult to remedy.

As common with all kinds of swindlers & abusers, mechashefim initially present themselves as a source of assistance.

They offer their help in finding your zivug, protection from your fears, revenge, material improvement, success, health, new knowledge, adventure, entertainment, and much more.

​Only there is a price to pay...

Either way you look at it, the mechashef hits people where it harms them the most: their emunah.

In other words, mechashef causes very real harm & moves people away from Hashem & His Torah.

For a halachic discussion of kishuf, please see:

• Magic: As Innocent As It Seems?
• Balak – A Halachic Glance at Magic

Other posts in this series:

• Part 1: What's So Bad about Kishuf? A Look at Halacha, the Rational vs the Supernatural, the 80 Witches of Ashkelon, and the Machshefah Midwife of the Me'am Lo'ez

 

• ​​Part 3: What's So Bad about Kishuf? – What's Wrong with White Magic? LOTS!

Related post:

• The Lesson of the Witch Who Avoided Eye Contact with the Orthodox Jew

There is an enormous amount to say about Shemot/Exodus 22:17:
​“A machshefah shall not live.”

Machshefah (often translated as sorceress or witch) comes from the word kishuf (kee-shoof—often translated as magic, sorcery, witchcraft, divination, or occultism).

(And despite the feminine noun used, all the commentaries state that the prohibition definitely includes men: warlocks, wizards, sorcerers, etc.)

The translation causes confusion when people want to know whether this verse also prohibits magic shows and the like.

Modern Hebrew labels sleight-of-hand magic shows as kosmut (kohss-moot) and their magician as a kosem (koh-sem)—an “enchanter.”

It’s not real magic.

The magician relies on fancy handwork, gimmicks, assistants, and mirrors to achieve his “magical” results, which his delightful audience finds enchanting.

Nonetheless, halachic sources throughout the ages find even the gimmick-based magic shows problematic, albeit less so today because in our times, even young children respond to a magic trick by asking, “How did you do that?”—meaning, they know it’s not supernatural, but accomplished using very natural strategies.

Basically, the magician in a magic show must include a disclaimer that he is not performing real magic, but merely entertaining tricks with very rational strategies behind them.

However, acts in which the performer wishes to convince the audience that he uses supernatural or psychic powers (like bending a spoon with his mind) are problematic.

Rav Yehoshua Pfeffer (the author of the below articles) advises consulting with a halachic authority before entering the profession or arranging for a magic show.

For a comprehensive discussion of Jewish Law on the topic, please see:

• Magic: As Innocent As It Seems?
• Balak – A Halachic Glance at Magic

However, the machshefah referred to in the Torah isn’t a just a mistress (or master) of fancy handiwork. 

There are 2 types of forbidden kishuf (sorcery, witchcraft, magic):

• The fake, sleight-of-hand, gimmick-based magic mentioned above, but one that is used to deceive people into believing in the power of the occult & causes them to question, doubt, or deny Hashem’s power.

(Its intellectual twin is today’s atheist scientist, who exploits literary eloquence & layman ignorance, and utilizes weasel words to convince his audience of his personal mastery & to destroy people’s emunah.)

• Real kishuf. Meaning, the medium uses occult tactics or entities to achieve the desired effects. Such a person accesses the powers of harmful tumah (impure spirituality) to carry out his or her objectives.

​
This post focuses on the second type of kishuf: those involved in the occult—also known as those who utilize kochot hatumah (the powers of impure forces).

For a long time, I found it difficult to understand why kishuf merits the death penalty in the Torah.

That’s because I grew up with Halloween & its appealing presentation. In addition, the mainstream outlets presented kishuf as imaginary & fun.

Furthermore, old-time spiritualists & modern Wiccans emphasized the concept of “white magic” & “white witchcraft”—in other words, kishuf used for neutral (like finding a parking spot) or even for good (like healing others).

(You’ll see in a later post why even “white” kishuf is a problem.)
 
The only people I knew who took kishuf seriously were my church-going classmates & neighbors.

But I found it hard to take THEM seriously.

After all, these are the same people who insist on cultivating in children the belief that a dangerously obese man in a red wool suit rides around on a reindeer-driven sleigh & slides down chimneys to fill stockings & arrange presents under indoor fir trees—this belief cultivated by the same people who believe that 1 equals 3.

(Or that 3 equals 1? Whatever.)

They also related stories of people they knew struck by demonic possessions and cured by exorcisms.

My high school classmates even returned from a church youth group weekend retreat with stories of another classmate who displayed signs of demonic possession (uncontrollable shaking, etc.), and for whom only the intervention of their heroic minister ended the crisis.

Convinced only rational explanations existed, I refrained from arguing with them, but mentally chalked up such things to group hypnosis, the power of suggestion, bias confirmation, hysteria, etc.

Wholly secular at the time, I couldn’t even entertain the possibility of something supernatural occurring in those situations.

So I remained unmoved in my conviction of rational explanations only.

And those rational explanations really could have explained their experiences.

However, with their unintentional harnessing of themselves to the powers of tumah (there is no “son of God”—so to whom exactly are their prayers & religious energies going?) and the compulsion of some church leaders to create possession events, they really could be accessing the occult—even though that’s the very dynamic they claim to oppose & fear.

When I first started keeping Torah & mitzvot, my Orthodox community consisted of Jews who maintain strict allegiance to the rationalist stream of Judaism—mostly based on the Rambam.

I felt very comfortable there & continued to grow in my newfound Torah Judaism.

Much later, I began to realize that Judaism cannot be fully embraced within a 3-dimensional world of the strictly rational.

Too many questions remained unanswered.

For example, I found the concept of suffering impossible to accept without the concept of gilgul—reincarnation.

Gradually, I realized that the world must comprise far more than just 3 dimensions.

Quantum physics—still undiscovered in the Rambam’s time—opened up new venues of understanding.

Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that the most brilliant & holy minds of Jewish history overwhelming believed in the existence of worlds within our world, of unseen entities, a variety different dimensions, and much more outside the strictly 3-dimensional rational.

Not only that, they understood how this all worked, knew how to deal with them when encountering them (and they DID encounter them, even if they didn't want or mean to), and they also knew how to protect themselves from it all.

In fact, a significant chunk of the standardized Jewish daily prayer provides protection from harmful entities, like prosecuting angels (mekatrigim) or demons and that whole subset associated with harmful entities mazikin or nezikin (damagers), chitzonim (outsiders, externals), klippot (impure "shells" which imprison holy sparks), and so on.

These prayers are a gift from those same brilliant & holy minds for our protection.

In her book, To Play with Fire: One Woman’s Remarkable Odyssey, Tova Mordechai recalls the faith healings & spiritual highs she either observed or experienced during her years trapped in a church cult.

A rav explained to her that these events utilized kochot hatumah—the powers of spiritual impurity.

She noted how the rav's explanation finally explained why the aftermath of the spiritual high of these tumah-based “faith healings” always left her feeling depleted, with a dark emptiness inside.

Former practitioners of Eastern occult systems (who later became frum) also recall a dark empty feeling that replaced their initial spiritual high, leaving them feeling irritable.

Furthermore, aside from experiences with spiritual tumah, strange events occur to people that defy any rational explanation. (And I mean documented events by reliable people, not just claims by eccentrics.)

Books like Chessed L'Avraham & Kav Hayashar & Minchat Yehudah (or the Zohar itself) testify to all sorts of entities & events far beyond the realm of the rational.

Gradually, I made the shift to accept a world full of other worlds and beings.

Paradoxically, Judaism now made more sense than ever.

The Truth of Torah shined brighter too.
​
And with this, the capital severity of kishuf also became more understandable.

The deception produced by gimmick-based sleight-of-hand can cause severe injury to one’s emunah. Throughout the ages, clever tricksters gained followers in this manner.

Throughout history, thousands of people also lost their souls to these charlatans.

Ultimately, poverty, homelessness, rancor, illness, and death resulted from following such “magical” deception.

That’s reason enough for the death penalty.

But the implementation of supernatural kishuf deceives just as dangerously, with equally harmful results.

Its very hiddenness make it impossible to stop without executing the practitioner.

The classic story of this involves Rebbi Shimon ben Shetach’s handling of a mountain coven of 80 witches who were “destroying the world.”

One rainy day, Rebbi Shimon gathered 80 disciples wearing clean garments, and also 80 vessels. He instructed the disciples of their mission to deal with these 80 witches, then explained his strategy: They would all make their way to the cave of the coven, their clean garments kept bone-dry in the firmly sealed vessels.

Upon arriving at the coven, Rebbi Shimon planned to engage the witches, then he would whistle once—that was the signal for the men to don the dry clothes.

​A second whistle was meant to summon the men to come rushing into the cave.

And that’s what happened.

Rebbi Shimon reached the cave, his disciples hidden nearby. He called out to the witches, posing as an occult master like them.

They let him in.

Then, in what seemed to be a demonstration of skill & a challenge to this newfound "master wizard," one witch conjured up a loaf of bread out of thin air. Another conjured up a cooked meal while another conjured up wine.

“What can you do?” they challenged.

"I will whistle twice,” replied Rebbi Shimon, “and 80 men wearing clean clothes will come here to make you happy."

“We want them!” said the lascivious witches.

Rebbi Shimon whistled once, and the hidden disciples donned their clean, dry clothing.

He whistled a second time and they rushed into the cave.

​He hinted to them that each one must take a witch and raise her up off the ground because the loss of contact with the ground nullifies the occult power.

He told the one who conjured up bread, “Bring bread!”

She could not.

So Rebbi Shimon said, “Hang her!”

And so on throughout the remaining 80 witches.

Back at the ranch (so to speak), this caused quite a stir because Jews don’t judge 2 capital cases in one day, Rebbi Shimon handled the whole situation wildly differently than capital cases are handled, he did not follow halachic protocol, etc.

(Like any other capital case, a person accused of being a machshefah must be tried in a court of justice by a group of Sages possessing high-level wisdom & discernment.)

Why did the great Rebbi Shimon ben Shetach make such a radical detour in his handling of the 80 witches?

First of all, the occult acts were performed directly in front of the judge (Rebbi Shimon ben Shetach himself); there was no doubt involved.

Secondly, it was an emergency situation.

The witches were ruthless, conniving, and in possession of powerful supernatural powers.

They were said to be destroying the world with their hidden machinations.

It was either now or never.

So Rebbi Shimon acted upon the opening he’d created in that moment.

Another even more disturbing example appears in the Me’am Lo’ez.

​It relates the story of a machshefah who portrayed herself as a master midwife.

The women in her town suffered extremely difficult labors in which the baby seemed to get stuck and only her appearance on the scene seemed to finally enable the birth.

You can imagine how much the people revered her. You can imagine how willing even the poorest were to pay her whatever she demanded for her special “service.”

What they discovered, however, was that she both caused & enabled the births via kishuf.

She kept special sealed jars full of I-can’t-remember-what; the sealed jar associated with each birthing woman obstructed the delivery of the baby.

Whenever she was summoned to a stuck birth, she secretly brought the sealed jar with her. Upon arriving, she found a place where she could break open the jar undetected, then return to the birthing woman and “miraculously” deliver the baby.

At one point, she was killed.

(I can’t remember whether the court sentenced her to death or whether, upon the chilling discovery of her jars, something happened that killed her. But I think she was actually executed.)

This story stands out as an outlier because ever since the starring role of Shifra & Puah, Judaism shows a lot of appreciation for midwives.

The old-time Jewish midwives in Morocco or Yemen brought their emunah & Jewish compassion, along with their practical skills, into their midwifery.

In fact, one Yemenite midwife became a well-known healer of infertility after coming to live in Tiveria in Eretz Yisrael. I believe her name was Simcha Demari and she used reflexology & herbs & homeopathy to help women get pregnant.

(In fact, one of her successful patients told me that Simcha gave her capsules of myrrh & frankincense—both used in Ketoret—to assist with fertility. Now Simcha's daughters-in-law carry on the practice.) 

In contrast, if you ponder the machshefah midwife for a moment, her heartless cruelty stands out.

For example, despite what many natural-birth proponents claim, unmedicated births can be excruciatingly unbearable (ask me how I know...).

​(Just by way of brief explanation: The unmedicated birthers either don’t experience excruciating births or they love the idea of both facing & overcoming pain, feeling like triumphant winners when the ordeal ends. But many of us definitely do NOT feel that way.)

To intentionally cause a laboring women so much pain & emotional anguish is unforgiveable.

Furthermore, we all know that babies can suffer serious damage (or even death, Gd forbid) if they get stuck in the birth canal.

It can also harm the woman, with internal tearing or even a fractured tailbone.

The extreme distress caused to the woman and those attending her, the fear for her life and that of her baby—all so this machshefah could acquire power, honor, and wealth?

And even if she promised to never indulge in such kishuf again, how could anyone trust her?

​She already proved herself to be a merciless, greedy, conniving psychopath.

Can you trust her proclaimed repentance?

Furthermore, due to the easy concealment of kishuf, how could you ever supervise her future conduct?

Once again, if the Torah so strongly condemned a certain practice, then that means something.

I think all this together offers a clear idea why kishuf is much viler than portrayed in the movies and on college campuses and women's studies.

We can better understand why something so dangerous—and so incredibly easy to hide—demands such a severe consequence.

​Having said all that, we no longer judge capital cases in rabbinical courts.

We haven't done so for centuries.

We also don't commit vigilante justice.

For example, no one kills a Sabbath-transgressor (even though the Torah demands the death penalty for transgressing Shabbat).

Instead, we try to encourage the Sabbath-transgressor to learn more about Shabbat & Judaism so that he or she develops on their own a desire to keep Shabbat.

The reason why the response changed is discussed copiously in scintillating detail throughout millennia of rabbinical scholarship and too much to explain here.

But the end result is that no one executes Sabbath-transgressors, nor does anyone want to.

To read more in this series:

• Part II: What's the Problem with Kishuf?–A Torah Discussion of Witchcraft, Sorcery, and the Occult from Both the Rationalist & Supra-Rationalist POV

 

• Part III: What's So Bad about Kishuf? – What's Wrong with White Magic? LOTS!

I'm a bit late to the game regarding the toeva march in Eretz Yisrael; I've been paying a less attention to the news lately.

But it bears saying that if Hashem so opposed something, then it must be really bad.

If He calls it an "abomination" ("toeva"), then it must be REALLY bad -- and not just that uptight boors think it's bad, but that it actually hurts people, it hurts society, and it harms even at the simplest level in that it hurts just the two people people who are willingly involved.

Whenever Hashem declares something REALLY bad, then you can find compelling reasons in the natural world why that thing is bad, especially if it's also incumbent on non-Jews and included as a mitzvah or prohibition within the 7 Laws of Noach. Just as with polytheism, God expects us to know better.

(For the serious problems with polytheism, please see:
If the Torah is So Adamant, Then That Must Mean Something: Why Polytheism Really is So Awful

So what's up with toeva relationships, especially the big prohibition between 2 men? It's portrayed with so much compassion and naturalness in secular society, and there are some really nice people who happen to be attracted to their own gender. (Britain's Douglas Murray seems to be one, for example.)

So why is the Torah so adamant against it?

What's so bad about it?

First of all, the people who are behind the whole push to accept toeva relationships and toeva marriage are evil, corrupt people.

The whole push for this started in Hollywood. And even news outlets and book publishers are owned today by entertainment conglomerates.

An as has been an open secret in Hollywood for decades now, Hollywood bigwigs abuse children.

And the entire #metoo movement basically ignored this child abuse, even though these ladies certainly know about it.

Reports of assault on child actors by top movie stars or "grooming" parties in which pre-teen boys are invited to, say, a swimming pool by Hollywood moguls have been discussed for a long time now in the media (although it's never given the lengthy spot-light it deserves).

Corey Feldman in particular has been vocal about this abuse, his courage spurred on by the self-destructive behavior and eventual suicide of his close friend and fellow child actor, Corey Haim. Feldman never lost his conviction that Haim's penchant for self-destruction emanated from the profound pain he never managed to escape, the pain brought on by the abuse from Hollywood's heroes and idols.

Research points both to sxual abuse and the father-son relationship as being major influences on a guy's orientation.

No, it doesn't mean that every boy who lacks the paternal relationship he craves or who endures abuse will develop a taavah for mishkav zachar. Some never will and could never imagine being attracted to anyone but a woman. And some will develop an attraction to both genders.

To put it in oversimplified terms, it's like the potential is there but it's not activated until the abuse or relationship flip that orientation-switch, so to speak.

Many people refuse to accept the above, yet it's impossible to ignore the huge percentage of males attracted to their own gender who suffered abuse and/or a poor father-son relationship.

(I also want to point out the correlation between, say, an absentee, neglectful, or scary father and sxual abuse. Abusers prey on vulnerable children. If a predator senses that a child lacks protection, that the child's father is either not there, uninterested, weak, or conversely, so scary that the child will not confide in the father, then that is an ideal victim in the eyes of a predator. This goes for daughters too, BTW.)

And the Hollywood moguls want to keep feeding this lie because if orientation is entirely genetic and "born that way," then that lets them off the hook. The generally false theory of genetics and being "born that way" discourages people from digging further.

Also, these Hollywood creeps are not exactly family men, so they don't want to acknowledge a father's role in the well-being of his children. If father's aren't necessary to child development, then men can keep doing whatever they want and needn't commit to or invest in their children.

Furthermore, with the rise in single-motherhood (whether unwed mothers or divorced mothers), we've seen a rise in men attracted to their own gender.

Correlation does not prove causation. But when we add up all the correlations together, it creates an arrow that points at causation.

(And yes, I realized that some divorce and of course widowhood cannot be prevented. At the same time, what I keep seeing and hearing from the secular world and the reasons for many -- though not all -- divorces lack conviction. Widowhood is no one's fault and unfortunately, Hashem sometimes sends hard challenges our way, yet He also helps us at the same time. There's a difference between facing a challenge purely from Hashem -- like widowhood or a truly unavoidable divorce -- and facing a challenge brought on by your own bad middot, which are also from Hashem, but still.)

But the main indicator is this:
If the Torah condemned such behavior in such strong terms, then that means something.

It means that something about this behavior is extremely harmful.

Throughout human history, evil always appears in the guise of compassion.

Pharaoh portrayed himself as merely concerned for Egypt; all those Hebrew foreigners breeding and multiplying -- what's a pharaoh to do? (And most of the Jews got carried along with this propaganda and decided to prove their loyalty by volunteering for work.)

The Communist claim was simply a cry for rights and equality. The poor must be fed and cared for! Who can argue with or oppose such a compassionate and noble cause? Yet Communism became the impetus for millions of deaths, the impoverishment of millions, and slow torturous dying in Siberia. Even today, Communism is synonymous with government corruption & kangaroo court trials.

Nazism also came under the guise of caring for the poor and the disadvantaged. It opposed dangerous work conditions in factories and stopped class discrimination in schools. The first people sent to concentration camps were mostly not Jews; they were habitual criminals and corrupt people that no one wants in their society (plus some inconvenient political rivals). The first Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses was ignored by the German population. In fact, the only businesses successfully boycotted that day were enforced my Nazi brownshirts; otherwise the German people would've patronized those businesses too.

Shocking but true, here is a DIRECT quote from the fiendish fuhrer (yemach shemo) himself in 1943:
"We want a society with neither castes nor ranks…we want this people to be peace-loving, but at the same time to be courageous...both peace-loving and strong.”

In 1943, the Nazis were rounding up and executing the anti-Nazi White Rose members, liquidating the Krakow ghetto, burning alive all 156 inhabitants of Khatyn Belarus, fighting the starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, rounding up the Roma people for extermination, invading peaceful countries, and appointing Mengele as chief medical officer in Auschwitz. Horrifically, the Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria of 1943 were fully functioning and in use, decimating the Jewish people.

Does any of that sound peace-loving to you?

Does that sound like a society free of castes or ranks?

Didn't think so.

Yet as the Germans enjoyed their improved working conditions, their sharp reduction in debilitating unemployment, their new VW bugs, their newly affordable vacation resorts, their new equality regardless of class, the humane new laws for animal protection, and their new glorious self-image...the Nazis insisted that "racial purity" was the answer and therefore, the Jews must go.

So the same people who cared so much about the poor and underprivileged ended up burying babies alive and pushing toddlers in gas chambers.

Evil always presents itself in the guise of compassion.

So the people behind the scenes who are feeding the public with all sorts of propaganda regarding same-gender attraction to the point that if you disagree with one word they say (no matter your own observations and scientific studies and Torah Law), then you'll be shouted down and smeared.

But the ones pushing this agenda onto society, the ones hiding behind the scenes don't care about real freedom or fulfillment or love or compassion or any of those nice-sounding ideas.

All those pretty rainbows don't mean a thing; it's just pretty paint over a dark idea.

They just want to be able to keep abusing little boys.

And no matter how good and sincere your intentions may be, if you support same-gender marriage and the toeva march, and if you oppose any kind of reparative options, then please understand what you're really supporting and opposing.

Just for knowing, I stand against violence (including verbal harassment), except for cases of self-defense.

Anyone can do teshuvah and toeva is no exception.

No one is perfect and everyone has the right to try and even fail -- and then try again.

But approval? Never.
_______________
If you want to see the actual numbers, studies, and stories, you can start here:
Part I: What's So Bad about Adam and Steve?

For more about evil's guise of compassion and general deception, you can go to this 12-part series: America's Scary New Direction. Feel free to click on whatever part interests you, no need to read it all or go in order.

Nowadays, it can be difficult to understand why polytheism is so bad.

Many secular Jews are attracted to Buddhism and in general, the Far East religions strongly appeal to many Westerners, many of whom claim they find inner peace, inspiration, and a much-need adjustment of perspective by visiting these places and following their practices.

Many Westerners are enchanted by the lack of materialism and the seeming contentment of the locals with their poverty. Culturally, the people of the Far East are often very nice to socialize with.
The Far East also seems to hold a treasure chest of benefits:

• martial arts
• delicious and healthier foods
• inspiring philosophies
• meditative disciplines
• fortune cookies ;)
  

The problem is that polytheism always leads to cruelty in the end.

These same cultures that Westerners admire so much are also rife with female infanticide, racism, violence, starvation and malnutrition, the persecution of the helpless or minorities, elitism, government and police corruption, misogyny, domestic violence, child marriage, honor killings, and more.

Even more disturbing, these cultures have suffered from the above evils for millennia. Any current improvement in these cultures has only been brought about through the intervention of those from Western culture, particularly those who come from a Christian background (which derives any of its positive values from the Torah, however much they end up misapplying those same values).

It was the British who stopped the infamous Hindu immolation of widows in India. It is Western organizations who seek to rescue innocent village girls tricked into coming to the cities and forced to work in places of ill repute until they die of AIDS or botched abortions.
(And most of the activists who rescue these girls are the same “white guys” who are so vilified for their race and gender in their cultures of origin.)
As a group, the Hindus do nothing to help their society.
(And their cruelty and suffering inherent in their caste system deserves a whole post of its own.)

In China today, North Korean refugees are imprisoned and sent back to certain torture and death in North Korea unless they are rescued and sheltered by American and Canadian activists operating near the border. (Not all of whom are white, but all of whom grew up in America or Canada.) Not to mention, China’s one-child policy and the accompanying forced abortions for those whose parents didn’t comply.

In To My Daughters with Love, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck wrote of one of her mother’s most terrifying experiences living as a Christian missionary in China.

In the Chinese town in which Buck's parents lived, there was a terrible drought. During that night, Buck's father left town to take care of some business, leaving his wife and small children alone.

Buck describes the natives of this town as "usually kind."

However, the idolatrous temple priests (the same priests who everyone thinks have "achieved balance" and "attained wisdom and serenity") said, "The gods were angry because strangers, white people, were in the city."

This riled up the local “usually kind” Chinese until a whole mob came to the Buck home with sticks and knives, intending to stab and beat to death this lone woman and her young children.

Fortunately, with a courage that “came from despair,” Buck's mother shocked the raging mob by throwing open the doors to her home and with fearless composure, she offered the idol-worshipers tea and refreshments.

Then everybody went home.

That same night, it suddenly rained and it kept pouring all throughout the next day.

But look at the cruelty and stupidity that "usually kind" polytheists can suddenly commit when hard times come.

And the above is why Thailand can be known as the “The Land of Smiles” while being equally known for a brand of tourism that is licentious, diseased, and exploitative of impoverished females.

In the earthquake that crushed Nepal, we saw people who saved their idols before their fellow human beings and who invested money in their idols rather than in the rehabilitation of the homeless and injured people surrounding them.

Disturbingly, the much-admired monks and gurus meditating in their ashrams and temples, the same people who are lauded in the West as being “enlightened” and “compassionate,” do almost nothing practical to ease the suffering and injustices in their surroundings.

Sara Yocheved Rigler wrote of how her guru denied accommodation to flood survivors in New York merely because their traumatized state would disturb “the vibes” of the commune. Actually healing their trauma through kindness and generosity was not an option for this “enlightened” guru.

And there are many stories like this.

The source of the all the above-mentioned cruelty and warped thinking is lack of emuna.

However, emuna is impossible within a polytheistic mindset which believes in equal but opposing forces and all sorts of little tricks and ceremonies to combat mazal rather than engaging in a cheshbon hanefesh and accepting the paradox that both the sweet and the bitter emanate from One Source.

The Torah records the Jewish battle against polytheism throughout its 24 books. Polytheism of that time led to atrocities like human sacrifice, including child sacrifice.

Our Sages note that Lavan’s beloved trafim were the shrunken heads of first-borns that, with the right incantations, could speak with psychic insight. Did Lavan and his ilk actually wait until a first-born man died of old age before making off with his head? I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good.

Archeologists have dug up correspondence and declarations and other writings that shed light on the values of these cultures.

Princess and High Priestess or Snow White's Evil Stepmother?
In one long poem, a Sumerian princess and high priestess from Ur (around 2300 BCE) writes of her demotion and then later re-installment to her exalted position.

Far from mourning her spiritual descent and present inability to inspire others, she merely kvetches about her sudden lack of materialism: “Like the light of the rising moon, how she was sumptuously attired!” 
(Yes, she also refers to herself in third-person at times.)

Humility is also not one of her virtues—“I am the brilliant high priestess of Nanna.”

She tries to convince her goddess by reminding her that the goddess “loves the good headdress befitting the office of En priestess.”
(Because everyone knows how important fashion is in lofty spiritual service.)

Then she flatters her goddess by reminding the goddess of how incredibly violent she is (“Be it known that you crush heads! Be it known that you devour corpses like a dog!”) and how much suffering the goddess can cause with stanzas like, “Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and people walk along the path of the house of great lamentations” and “Your malevolent anger is too great to cool.”

She also addresses the goddess at one point as “Aggressive wild cow, great daughter of Suen.”

Her boastful description of her occult service is also disturbing:
“Also, I erected a temple,
Where I inaugurated important events:
I set up an unshakeable throne!
I gave out dagger and sword to...(?),
Tambourine and drum to [men intimate with men](?),
I changed men into women!

Obviously, nothing good can come of this.

Why is changing men into women even the goal? What is that supposed to accomplish exactly?

(I hope this has also helped to discredit the highly vaunted notion that goddess-centered religions were more nurturing and pro-female and more appreciative of the feminine roles and female empowerment than Judaism. In Ancient Near East findings, the above was not the only example of disturbing goddess-worship led by females.)

Some Ancient Fatherly Advice
“Advice from an Akkadian Father to His Son” (2200 BCE) reads:
Do not marry a kadesha, whose husbands are legion, an Ishtar-woman who is dedicated to a god, a kulmashitu-woman. . . .When you have trouble, she will not support you, when you have a dispute she will be a mocker. There is no reverence or submissiveness in her. Even if she is powerful in the household, get rid of her, for she pricks up her ears for the footsteps of another.

(If you're a learned Jew, you probably recognize "kadesha" from Tanach. And I couldn't find out what a kulmashitu-woman was.)

This indicates that despite the glory polytheistic priestesses enjoyed, there was no real spirituality or self-improvement involved and they were actually despised by the surrounding society, contrary to the fantasies of Women's Studies professors.

An Egyptian Princess Writes Home
The correspondence of an Egyptian princess to her father callously complains about several inconveniences in her marital home, one of which is that the slaves he sent with her just upped and died, much as one might complain about a trinket breaking.

The Crazy Code of Hammurabi
The famous Code of Hammurabi (1754 BCE) accepts trial-by-water as equal to trial-by-court-judges (and in some cases, insists on trial-by-water as preferable to holding a trial).

The punishment for a man who strikes and kills a pregnant woman is the execution of his daughter, who had no part in the violent death of her father's pregnant victim and may have even opposed it.

Likewise, it calls for the execution of the son of a builder whose badly constructed building collapses and kills the owner’s child, and so on.

What’s very disturbing about this is that the Code was not a list of laws, as many people think.

It was more of a statement of ideals which was meant to appeal to the general populace and increase the king’s popularity, much the way today’s politicians will make promises and declarations not based on what they actually think, but on what will increase their popularity and votes.

So the above values were so prized by that society that the king encoded these values to maintain his popularity.

So the Code of Hammurabi actually represents the values of the average Babylonian, and not necessarily that of the king.

Hittites are Just Gross
Hittite Law called for execution if a man had relations with a pig or dog. But with a horse or mule, it was totally okay—no punishment, not even a fine.

The Assyrian Koran?
Assyrian Law was very similar to Sharia Law. Enough said.

If you're a frum Jew, you've probably heard a lot about all the materialism and cruelty of Greek and Roman society. They're referred to quite often in the Talmud. And before that, there was Chanukah.

But suffice to say, Greek and Roman myths featured tremendous cruelty and capriciousness among their gods.

And like other polytheistic societies, a strong tendency toward inane distractions, immorality and self-indulgences, and cruel gladiatorial events loomed over anything good the West feels it inherited from these cultures.

In many other places around the world, the values Westerners consider most basic and self-evident are contradicted in places like Africa and other primitive areas.

In fact, travel warnings (both official and anecdotal) for both Africa (where animism is popular) and Papua New Guinea caution visitors against stopping to help an injured child or a pedestrian hit by a car even if it’s not your fault, or even if you’re clearly just passing by and not involved at all. Just the act of involving yourself anoints you with an aura of accountability.

“Yes, it’s difficult witnessing a hit-and-run with a child lying there injured,” the anecdotal warnings read. “But your instinct to save that child’s life could put in you in danger with locals who may not perceive your altruistic behavior in the light to which you are accustomed.”

These places also tend to be rife with wars, domestic violence, and tribal clashes.

Kumbaya, everyone!

As stated by the Rambam and others, Islam is one of the only (and perhaps the only) non-Jewish religious system considered monotheistic.

And Chazal predicts that Yishmael will eventually do teshuvah, may that day come soon.

But Islam is based on a moon-worshiping system (hence all those crescent moons that became swords upon their Islamization).

And that is why Islamic monotheism is often expressed in the way of ancient polytheists.

While Christians consider themselves monotheists, the Trinity is clearly polytheistic.

And true to their monotheistic aspirations, many of today’s Western Christians finally uphold the values of mercy, charity, and forbearance they’ve always claimed to have.

I do credit Christians with leading the battle against abortion and non-traditional marriage, among other important battles. Also, many Christians saved Jews during the Shoah. I believe this decrease in the savagery of Christians is because as literacy spread, Christians ended up reading Tanach too (as opposed to just listening to the propagandizing sermons of Jew-hating priests) as part of what they consider to be their bible, and because their gospels ended up paraphrasing Jewish ideas at times, and thus the Christian reader can't help imbibing Torah values along with all the polytheism-derived ideas.

But until relatively recently in Christian history, many Christians were easy to incite into the worst acts of violence and treachery.

And even today, you can find groups that still commit immoral and harmful acts (cough, the Catholic Church, cough) and uphold wonky, weak values.

Not to mention the undercurrent of resentment and envy against Jews that many Christians secretly harbor.

I guess that for people who love to quote pithy proverbs from Buddha and Confucius or who romanticize the hopeless Indian people living on a blanket spread out over a steaming sidewalk or who idealize Ancient Greece and Rome as the cradle of their beloved modern culture, then all these facts won't make a dent.

But it can't be denied that despite the West’s love affair with polytheistic belief systems and societies, the truth is that polytheistic societies have always sat on top of a dark underbelly of cruelty, excess, and sadism.

If God considered the system REALLY, REALLY BAD...then it just is.

And if you really look at what's going on within the polytheist societies and groups, you'll see just how bad it is.

Because I can’t personally know the effectivity rate of different resources for people who suffer from same-gender attraction and for the variety of factors involved as delineated in Part I, I can't personally vouch for any specific method or practitioner.

(Except one, and that's to use God as your therapist and healer, knowing that it will take time and feature ups and downs.)

And though I have no personal experience with the following resources, they certainly seem worth a try:

1) I guess the most well-known group is JONAH. They deal with healing and support for same-gender attraction and are definitely worth a look. I found their testimonials quite compelling.

2) Reading his articles shows that Dr. Zev Ballen has dealt with the most harrowing traumas and is also the founder of Emuna Therapy. Additionally, he has also trained many people to be Emuna therapists. A method using genuine emuna is definitely worth a try.

3) I do know that the late Dr. William Glasser had success using his Reality Therapy techniques for this issue (although I suppose you would have to find a Reality therapist nowadays who believes that this issue even needs healing).

4) As referenced in the section on Reparative/Conversion therapy in Part I, a comprehensive list and description of various practioners, methods, and studies is detailed here.

5) There are likely other options I haven't heard of, so feel free to check this out on your own.

If you're going to go through a therapist or rabbi or some other kind of adviser for this issue, the following qualities are very important:

• The person must be sympathetic.
• There needs to be deep appreciation for the difficulty of this particular nisayon along with the firm belief that success is definitely possible.
• There is absolutely no need for the adviser to display any disgust or harshness or ridicule.
• There should be healthy boundaries during the counseling and absolutely no indication of exploitation of any kind.

Whether you are looking for guidance for yourself or a loved one, it's important to check out the adviser's attitude and track record before putting yourself (or your loved one) in such a vulnerable situation.

Having said all this, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm personally not so into therapy for anything, even though I realize that many people have found therapy very helpful (or at least somewhat helpful), and even though many therapist sincerely mean well and as said, can actually help.

I realize that some people won't or don't know how to start out on their own, with just them and God, so I say the above for their sake. Trying in some way is a million times better than giving up.

Particularly for men, this is one of the hardest nisayons to deal with. Even if you rebound or stumble in some way during the process of healing, please remember that every step you take forward is changing the world in ways you can't perceive but for which you will receive unimaginable reward.

Especially in today's world where the entire Western society is saying that this IS good, that this IS natural, that it is your RIGHT, and so on...when you stop yourself from watching, doing, or even thinking anything to do with toeva, you have done something incomprehensibly powerful and good.

Why?

Because in today's world, the only reason to take steps toward healing this issue is purely because Hashem said so - solely because you have chosen to what Hashem wants, putting Hashem's desire ahead of your own.

That kind of thing can sweeten even the most firmly set and harshest decree.

This means that no matter who you are and what level you are on, you can prevent a terror attack or avert a any kind of disaster just in the privacy of your own room.

(Needless to say, these are not my own opinions, but are culled from Torah sources.)

Finally, it’s important to remember that this nisayon is from Hashem and dealing with it is somehow for your benefit, painful and frustrating though it may be. Regardless of what options you choose for yourself or a loved one, it is important to maintain a constant connection with Hashem and a firm belief in His Love for you, no matter how much you stumble.

Hatzlacha Rabbah to everyone.

P.S. If you want, you can send me your name for davening here and I will be happy to daven for you. I guess that sounds weird, but I mean it.

A friend of mine who worked for Hollywood once asked me, “If you want to justify your values and behaviors and make yourself feel good and legitimate, where do you point the camera?”

“Uh...” I replied.

She pointed to herself.

“Here,” she said. “You keep your camera pointed at yourself all the time.”

Since its inception, Hollywood has been the gathering place for twisted and lecherous minds. Even in the earliest black-and-white movies, you can see the promotion of values that went against the accepted American norms of that time. The twisted values were often presented with humor, which made the behavior seem harmless. In other cases, the hero with whom the audience identified and championed exhibited the offensive behavior, making it seem acceptable or even admirable.

(For a more detailed description of this, please see How Hollywood Corrupted America.)

Yet because of society’s intolerance past a certain point, Hollywood was forced to conform to a certain standard and prohibited from crossing certain lines – though it pushed that line with vigor and frequency, leading to what we have today.

Off the set, the behavior of many of the producers and writers from then until now displays a lot of disturbance and narcissism. So when we watch these people’s movies, we are watching products of their warped minds, even becoming temporarily absorbed into their sick psyches.

While the reprehensible casting couch for women has long been an open secret in Hollywood – and Broadway, for that matter – the toeva casting couch has gradually taken over, yet hardly anyone speaks about it. This is a large part of why toeva men (and not women) are overrepresented in the entertainment industry, both as actors and as characters.

"Monsters."
I remember the boys who became known as “the two Coreys” – Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, both Jewish child actors and close friends. After a long battle with drugs and several suicide attempts, Corey Haim eventually succumbed to overdose (though I think it’s officially reported as pneumonia), finally dying at the age of 39.

Yet even before his death, Haim publicly announced that he’d been repeatedly assaulted between the ages of 14-16 by a middle-aged Hollywood mogul.

Incensed by his friend’s needless death and the traumatic abuse that led to the initial drug use, Corey Feldman went public with the truth – and it was ugly.

The media published his story and publicized his interviews for a few days.

Then everything went silent again.

What was Corey Feldman’s message?

First of all, he stated that the biggest problem for child actors in the entertainment industry was the sxual abuse.

He emphasized that physical relationships between men and boys were “normal” in “the industry.” Recalling one of Haim’s confidences, Feldman said, “an adult male convinced him that it was perfectly normal for older men and younger boys in the business to have...that it was what all the guys do.”

(Again, this is highly reminiscent of a period in Greek society, when older men of the elite echelons took for themselves pre-adolescent or early adolescent boys as their "partners.")

Feldman also stated, “There's one person to blame in the death of Corey Haim. And that person happens to be a Hollywood mogul. And that person needs to be exposed, but, unfortunately, I can't be the one to do it.”

(Update: Feldman has since named actor John Grissom, child-talent manager Marty Weiss, and children's club owner Alphy Hoffman as 3 of 6 predators who abused him. But Feldman still won't get involved with the late Haim's allegations and won't name all his own abusers, particularly one he describes as a particularly powerful Hollywood guy from whom Feldman fears retaliation. In March 2018, Feldman was physically attacked in what he described as "attempted murder," which he is convinced is the result of his allegations.)

Feldman described pools parties given by older Hollywood men who invited pre-teen boys as a way to initiate the “grooming” process. Part of the grooming process is the introduction of drugs. Obviously, a drugged victim is more compliant and later, drug addicts are less likely to have their accusations taken seriously.

Corey Haim claimed to have turned to the police before the statute of limitations on his abusers would run out, but the police did absolutely nothing.

Feldman himself was abused many, many times. In desperation, he reached out to seemingly caring men in Hollywood, only to discover that they, too, were only interested in abusing him.

"Slowly, over a period of many years, I would begin to realize that many of the people I had surrounded myself with were monsters," he says. [Emphasis mine.] “There was a circle of older men…And they all had either their own power or connections to great power in the entertainment industry.”

He, too, turned to drugs to escape the terrible physical and psychological pain inflicted by all the abuse.

While Corey Feldman is the only one I’m quoting here, former actors and actresses, along with others who have worked in the entertainment industry, have made the same allegations, often anonymously.

We’ve all seen that the big push to proclaim toeva as “normal” originated in the entertainment industry.

Needless to say, news outlets must also be part of this.

Who hosts their networks?

Who are their producers?

From whom do they receive their studios and everything else they need to produce a news show?

Nearly all mainstream news networks blatantly push this agenda.

The push to portray same-gender couples (almost always male) as appealing and sympathetic on TV and in the movies comes from Hollywood. Popular literature (with the major publishing houses today being owned by media corporations) and movies and TV shows often portray toeva relationships as even more stable and harmonious than straight relationships, even though anecdotal evidence and actual statistics completely contradict this.

Yet who’s behind all this?

“Monsters.”

(FYI: The German media conglomerate, Bertelsmann, became the largest publisher of Nazi propoganda by 1939 and benefited from the Jewish concentration camp labor enforced by the Nazis. It owns the following publishing companies: Random House, Doubleday, Knopf, and Crown. Recognize any of those?)

Society needs to wake up to who is running things.

It won’t wake up, but it desperately needs to.

The Perpetrators of Horrific Ritual Abuse

Finally, and this is on a separate but parallel topic, I remember a friend from high school who was in therapy for the ritual abuse she’d undergone around age eight as part of a terrifying occult ceremony that involved death symbols.

The cult consisted of people who served in elite positions in society: judges, top lawyers, politicians – people who were her aunts and uncles. Her father was active in this secret cult and her mother, having also been a victim from a young age, repressed all memories and was unable to even acknowledge her own abuse or that of her daughter.

The parents divorced; I can’t remember why exactly, maybe because the wife and children weren’t needed anymore and the elitists were confident in their methods to guarantee their victims’ silence and lack of credibility. Anyway, the mother allowed her daughter to go into therapy in much the same way a parent would let her mentally ill deluded child go into therapy - meaning that her mother saw it as her daughter's delusion, and not as PTSD.

I’ll never forget my friend telling me: “judges and politicians.”

Who are the people defining “compassionate” for us?

Who are the people deciding for us what is fair and moral?

When we face situations like Hillary Clinton laughing while describing the actions of a man she willingly chose to defend, a man that Hillary clearly knew was guilty of an assault on 12-year-old girl Kathy Shelton, an assault so brutal that Kathy fell into a 10-day coma and was rendered infertile, when we look at the cover-up by the British social welfare system in Rotterham of over a thousand native British girls assaulted and exploited by Middle Eastern (referred to as "Asian" in British media) Islamic gangs, we know there is something very sinister beneath the surface. These are just the indications that come oozing out of a rapidly metastasizing wound.

The people pushing for immoral changes in society know what they are doing.
They know they hurt people, they know they hurt the most innocent and helpless members of society – and they don’t care.

They have their own agenda and that is all they care about.

And it’s very important to remember that evil people have always won support for their side by playing the victim card. Their strategy is to manipulate others into thinking that a compassionate “good” person is one who sides with their agenda.

Twisted "Compassion"
The wicked have always influenced others by manipulating the Divinely bestowed sense of compassion. Because the most compassionate heart is a Jewish one, even frum Jews can get suckered into cheering for the wrong side.

But the way to tell the difference is to look for whether the people screaming “Compassion!” are ignoring or even supporting real atrocities while demonizing minor injustices or even criminalizing genuinely moral behavior.

For example, Hillary Clinton laughed about successfully defending a man she knew was a dangerous monster and blamed his young victim for the crime and she also acts all blasé about the tragedy of Benghazi (which she allowed to happen).

Yet she showed serious resentment at what she clearly perceived as the gross unfairness of being asked questions first (“I keep getting the first question on aaaaall of these issues...”) whenever she debated Obama, emphasizing this several times.

So...in Hillary World, brutality against a young girl is a joke (and the girl’s fault anyway), the torturous deaths of American serviceman is ho-hum – but being forced to consistently go first in a presidential debate is a notable injustice?

Historical Examples of Twisted "Compassion"

The Primordial Snake
The Nachash presented himself as just trying to help Chava. "I just want what's best for you," he said k'v'yachol. "You'll be able to become like God - after all, aren't really good girls supposed to emulate the Creator? And you'll know the difference between good and evil - which will enable you to always do good and never sin! And you won't die either. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket."

Ancient Egyptians
The ancient Egyptians insisted on enslaving an innocent and highly moral population (us), which led to horrific atrocities against that same population. Egyptian society become convinced that a rapidly multiplying Jewish population was worse than cementing live babies into a wall, and that “good” Egyptians were supposed to believe that murdering babies in such a horrific manner was just while killing a sheep was an unthinkable taboo.

Many Pre-WWII European Christians
Christian clergy repeatedly convinced their followers that terrible atrocities against the Jews were very good and the responsibility of “good” Christians who truly cared about their society and their Afterlife. These clergymen justified these atrocities by demonizing a court sentence handed out against their founder by a small group of Jews over 2000 years ago. The rampant stealing, cheating, domestic violence, and alcoholism among the European Christian populations along with the repulsive corruption of the Church were not considered nearly as bad.

(And by the way, knowing what we know now about many Catholic priests, has anyone else wondered why, in so many blood libels against the Jews, the victims were often young boys “discovered” by a priest in the church basement? And why a church basement, davka? Please note that they generally weren't babies of either gender, nor were they usually girls of any age. Could those priests have been murdering these little boys to cover up their own crimes before their victims could have the chance to expose them?)

Communists
The fact that some people had money and abused their power meant that atrocities and genocide could be used against millions of people, rich or poor. “Good” people were supposed to betray even their own parents and torture and kill people for “crimes” like owning the picture of a Capitalist leader or not supporting Communism. Yet Communism was considered the compassionate ideology.

(For more on this topic, please see America's Scary New Direction - Part 2: Jewish Communists)

Nazis
Trees and dogs were highly valued. Environmentally unsound practices and the abuse of animals was considered very wrong while any “good” German understood that exterminating Jews and other undesirables was of great benefit to society.

Compassionate Germans were supposed to support the Aryan “race” while enslaving or annihilating everyone else, particularly innocent Jews.

(For more on this topic, please see:
How Ingratitude Leads to Genocide
America's Scary New Direction - Part 8: Clean Green Nazis
America's Scary New Direction - Part 10: New-Age Nazis)

Islamofacists
Murdering 12-year-old girls who’ve been brutally violated or have rejected a shidduch is fine, even admired, depending on the community. Domestic violence, the oppression and exploitation of fellow Muslims (especially if they’re poor), along with the Koran-mandated persecution and/or extortion of non-Muslims are also acceptable, even esteemed. In many Muslim countries, female genital mutilation is a must. Child brides in Muslim countries sometimes die of damage to their internal organs inflicted on their wedding night.

However, profiling Muslims at the airport or expecting a Muslim taxi driver to service a pork-carrying patron are considered serious human rights violations.

And right now, Western society imposes a straight-jacket definition of what comprises a compassionate person. Here are just two examples:

Abortion
Abortion is considered an act of compassion; anyone who disagrees is a misogynist (or a self-hating brainwashed woman). However, the thousands of women who deeply regret their abortions, the huge numbers of women who become depressed or suffer fertility problems or even commit suicide after an abortion, the unborn babies who die or are tortured to death, the fact that abortion clinics cover up the abortion-caused maternal deaths and sell baby parts, the women who say: “I was able to heal from the assault that led to the conception, but not from the abortion that ended that conception,” the appalling lies pro-abortionists have used in order to pass unconscionable laws and change society’s attitudes – these are almost completely ignored or denied within society at large. The act of abortion is deemed acceptable – even compassionate; presenting alternatives to abortion is considered a severe oppression (a "war on women") that must be fought tooth and nail.

(Randy Alcorn's book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments is an excellent resource for addressing this issue.)

Even vegans, who won't eat an unfertilized chicken egg or wear leather shoes, are often pro-abortion when it comes to human babies. It bothers many people that chickens live in overcrowded crates, but it doesn't interest them nearly as much that Planned Parenthood harvests organs from live babies and all the other tragic issues involved in abortion.

(I also want to point out that the abortion industry’s craving for money and the lengths they are willing to go to amass it are highly reminiscent of the materialistic culture featured in Rebbe Nachman’s story, The Master of Prayer/Baal Tefillah, in which wealthy people were considered gods and poor people were literally sacrificed to these "gods" because poor people were considered “not human.”)

Toeva
Toeva is considered a right and an inherently natural state, and the support of toeva rights deemed the compassionate response. The abhorrent abuse of young boys is swept under the carpet. Hollywood elites can do what they want because, after all, nothing should come between an American and his or her right to wallow in mindless entertainment. However, helping people heal from their inappropriate attraction (and healing from the events that often led to the development of this attraction), or being willing to explore the overwhelming correlation of the paternal relationship or sxual abuse to same-gender attraction, is proclaimed “phobic” and hateful – particularly by those very elites who themselves indulge in these terrible abuses.

I guess I don’t need to say more.

Perhaps it’s best to end with the well-know Midrash:
“Whoever is compassionate to the cruel will end up being cruel to the compassionate.”
_____________

• This series is NOT about anyone being inherently bad (except for maybe some of the people mentioned in Part II).

​

• I do NOT see any basis for believing that people attracted to their own gender are innately bad, anymore than any of us suffering from any other forbidden inclination we might have.

​​

• This is only about how indulging in a clear and major Torah prohibition that is totally forbidden for every human being across the board can warp a person and why it is so bad that legalizing davka this is one of the transgressions that creates a decree of destruction for that society.

Well, let’s start off by clarifying the contrasting opinions:

• Torah-observant people say that even if you are born with an attraction to the same gender, you cannot act on it because the Torah completely forbids this, especially for men. And this prohibition applies to both Jews and non-Jews.

 

• Liberals say that people can’t help how they feel ("Just like 10% of all people are innately left-handed, 10% are innately attracted to their own gender!") and that same-gender relationships don’t really hurt anyone anyway, and that everyone has a right to "love" and also to marry ("marriage" implies "to one person for the rest of your life") your one, true "love."

(By the way, the 10% claim was never true; surveys taken in Canada, USA, and Australia show same-gender attraction to be under 3.5%.)

I’d just like to show how every Liberal justification of same-gender intimacy is wrong.

And in Part II, I’m going to describe the very sick, evil agenda behind all the “toeva rights” hype.

Part III will briefly discuss healing.

• “I Was Born This Way!”

Actually, you probably weren’t.

Maximum, you may have been born with a latent tendency toward toeva. But something triggered you to pursue physical relationships within your own gender.

Okay, first of all, I’m going to slant this article.

Male toeva will receive more attention than female toeva.

This is partly because the Torah considers male toeva much more severe, partly because most of the attention is focused on male toeva, both in the news circuit and the entertainment industry (more on why in Part II), and partly because there is more information available about men.

• The Gentlemen’s Side

If you talk to toeva men, read their autobiographical literature, and peruse their statistics, you will see that a great many of them have been seriously abused as children or teenagers.

Studies report between 55.1% to 75% have been abused. 

Of course, people like to point out how “that can’t be true because not all boys who were abused in that way grow up to be attracted to their own gender.”

In particular, men who are firmly attracted to women find the idea of being “tipped” into toeva particularly mind-boggling.

The thing is, we all have innate tendencies toward different attributes – including good ones. Different experiences in life can “tip” us in the direction of that latent tendency.

Without that “tipping” experience, that tendency will never find expression.

(In contrast, a positive example of this is a person who opens up a chessed organization after facing a severe deprivation. Without coming face to face with that deprivation, he or she would not have established an organization to deal with that very need.)

Furthermore, different people react to abuse in different ways.

In girls, for example, such abuse can ignite the inclination for indiscriminate relationships in one girl while inducing frigidity in another.

Physical abuse can either habituate the victim to become violent himself or it can inspire visceral repugnance against all violence to the point of total passivity.

And so on.

• Personal Stories

When I was in college, a young man whose parents had divorced when he was a child confided that he felt confused about his orientation. He felt attracted to both genders.

In the course of our discussion, he recalled an sxually abusive incident perpetuated against him by a pre-teen neighbor in the hallway in front of his apartment before he could unlock the door to let himself in. (He was one of the “latch-key kids” of the Eighties.)

Without realizing it, he himself made the correlation between that traumatic incident and his present orientation-confusion.

So we discussed how maybe his attraction toward men wasn’t his natural inclination as the surrounding society kept insisting, and that maybe he should just focus on girls, and not have anything to do with boys.

Fortunately, Hashem had already led me to becoming frum, enabling me to realize what the moral choice was in this situation (which I wouldn't have before).

I also expressed my strong feeling that part of his confusion was because society kept telling him that his attractions were normal, even though he clearly wasn’t comfortable being attracted to men.

Without the “Anything Goes!” attitude around him, he might have just come to the right conclusion and feelings on his own.

I gently expressed my conviction that his innate attraction was probably toward girls and that he should just focus on that. His relief and happiness toward the end of the conversation were obvious.

Another college friend, a leading activist for toeva rights, admitted that he felt he might have been abused as a child, but that he couldn’t really remember.

He also said that most of the guys he knew who were into toeva had been sxually abused as children – but he immediately denied any bearing that should have on a person’s “right” to a same-gender orientation.

As I got to know him, I realized he had no father in his life and had nothing good to say about his father, though he usually didn't talk about his father at all, which I didn't know at the time can also impact a boy's future orientation.

But much later, I came to realize that a boy’s relationship with his father powerfully impacts a boy’s orientation, as described here.

And in this incredible article, "David" describes his need as a young child for physical contact with men, which stemmed from what he lacked in the relationship with his father.

This sheds light on the phenomenon many describe when they claim to have felt "different" from a very young age — a claim used to "prove" that same-gender attraction is innate, but a deeper look shows that their feelings had more to do with their relationship from their father and their personal needs in that relationship.

Yes, please note how he felt "different" even at a very young age, expressed by the way he threw himself at the muscular young man to the point that his behavior made everyone else very uncomfortable.

​Also, notice his relationships with older men in that phase and his hindsight into that.

A father who shows his son a lot of genuine affection, including physical affection, can have a powerful positive impact on his son’s orientation.

Again, it seems no coincidence that so many men attracted to other men have poor (or not as close as they crave) relationships with their fathers, as mentioned here.

• The Quest for Male Affection

In fact, I once knew a very sweet man who was the son of a strict Christian pastor. His father was a stern, distant man who believed in “spare the wooden paddle and spoil the child.” Before settling into a quiet, liberal, toeva life, this young man had joined the priesthood. After all, he wasn’t attracted to women, toeva was forbidden, and he was a sincere, idealistic type, so... (“You wouldn’t believe what goes on there!” he said. “Let’s just say that a lot of those guys have the same issues I did.”)

Later, he realized that the priesthood wasn't for him, so he joined a radical right-wing militia in the South. (“You wouldn’t believe what these people are planning!”)

It's clear from the above examples that he was looking for a masculine connection that was not necessarily physical, although he eventually came to expressing this desire for connection in a physical toeva way.

• Nipping Toeva Attraction in the Bud

In another case I learned of, the father instinctively didn’t bond with one of his sons, while the mother instinctively felt a great deal of affection for that same child. As the child grew, the father admitted that he even felt a bit repelled by this son.

Other family members noticed and appealed to the father to invest more in the relationship, even quoting Rav Dessler about how giving creates love, but the father just didn’t feel like it.

Then the little boy started seeking out male physical affection.

For example, he would slip his hand into his uncle’s hand, pretending it had happened by accident. At cheder, he would stand next to his rebbi until the rebbi finally realized the boy was waiting for a hug. And so on.

(Fortunately, Hashem led the boy to seek out affection from safe men who held his hand or hugged him in a purely fatherly way, but the mother felt it was only a matter of time before he might encounter a corrupt man in his search for physical affection.)

After finally convincing the father that the son was innocently heading down a dangerous road, the father started hugging him and holding him in his lap.

At first, the father was uncomfortable and stiff about it, but Rav Dessler was right, and eventually it became more natural and feelings of genuine warmth and affection developed within the father.

Not long after, the boy completely stopped seeking out physical affection from other men.

(It’s important to emphasize that the boy sought out hugs and touch from other men – and not boys and not females – despite the fact that he had always received plenty of physical and emotional affection from his mother; yet he still craved affection from a man.)

Note: Had the father not upped his game with regard to his son, the mother could have engaged in copious prayer to Hashem to remedy the situation. We can't control other people's behavior, but we can turn to Hashem for help.

And while I can’t prove it, I can’t help thinking that the rising number of toeva among males has been increasing along with the rise of single mothers (meaning mothers who were never married and in most cases, do not have their children’s father(s) consistently involved in the children’s lives).

Again, not all toeva men lack a relationship with their father and not all boys who yearn for paternal connection will end up attracted to men.

But the correlation is impossible to ignore.

Far behind, there is the old psychology theory that a domineering mother and a passive father can produce this orientation in a boy.

Basically, women seem too “scary” to get close to.

Based on the research, this is rarely the reason, nonetheless, I’ve still seen this dynamic.

• Just Another Form of Objectification

And a final point is this: Men have an innate tendency toward (how shall I put this?) idealizing physical aspects of a person or idealizing objects they associate with these physical aspects.

This same tendency rarely occurs in women.

Straight men express this through attraction toward certain physical aspects of a woman (or objects associated with) and in emotionally healthy men, this idealization is relatively normal and harmless, and varies from man to man.

A man married to a woman who doesn't fulfill his particular idealization is still perfectly capable of intimacy with her.

In less emotionally healthy men, this idealization warps into objectification and even obsession.

Despite the claims of modern-day propaganda, men attracted to their own gender usually seem perfectly capable of a relationship with a woman, and may have even had many female partners and long-term relationships with women.

But they hold a strong preference for their own gender, which further indicates that their same-gender-attraction is not some innate black-and-white issue, but normal male idealization that has become warped.

• The Ladies’ Side

With females, things get a lot simpler because many women are so open about this.

In high school, a girl was telling me about how tenth grade had been a huge experience in self-discovery.

She explained that the group she hung out with comprised a lot of people attracted to their own gender.

“So I thought I was that way, too,” she whispered. “And I started going out with girls. But then I met this guy...”

And she realized she wasn’t like her friends after all. And she was really happy to discover that at the end of the day, she was attracted to guys, not girls.

Another woman, who had been badly betrayed by significant men in her life, decided that it was “Ladies Only” from now on.

Eventually, she couldn’t deny her attraction to men, so she ultimately ended up going in the right direction.

And I remember the girl who stood up in the middle of class in college to speak passionately in favor of her right to be romantically involved with her own gender and the pain of discrimination against people “like her.”

Suddenly, she blurted out a particularly horrific and unnatural violation she suffered while on a date with a guy. It happened before she “came out,” but she insisted “that has NOTHING to do with the way I feel now!” I didn’t believe it and as I looked around, I saw the same disbelief on everyone else’s faces, but none of us were callous enough to challenge her.

With people in the know, the following situation is so common that it has even become a bit of a joke:

The sister/cousin/aunt who always had a girlfriend hits her thirties, realizes that her biological clock is ticking away, and suddenly ups and marries a man and has a kid.
Born this way, eh?

I've heard women say things like, “It was so popular and acceptable at my college that if I hadn’t come to this BT sem, I would’ve tried it out!” Or, “Now that I’m frum and married, I really wish I hadn’t had all those experiences with women.”

If you listen to actual people (rather than Hollywood propaganda), it becomes blatantly clear that there's a lot of toeva that is a choice, rather than an innate, irrepressible attraction.

Finally, some people theorize that we all have the ability to be attracted to either gender and our job is just to make sure it’s the halachically appropriate one.

(This reminds me of the theory of epigenetics, which basically says that you can activate or deactivate different genes with your thoughts and behaviors.)

Anyway, I could go on and on with self-contradicting anecdotes and stuff toeva people chronicle about themselves, but this is enough for now.

• “But I’VE Felt ‘Different’ Ever Since I was Very Young. That Means It IS Inborn – and Therefore, Natural – and Therefore, Permissible!”

No, that’s not what it means.

First of all, it is entirely possible that when Hashem decided that a person must go through the admittedly arduous nisayon of being attracted to one’s own gender, He caused the person to, indeed, be born "this way" for that is this person’s Divinely decreed lifetime challenge.

(We all have at least one.)

Secondly, if a boy, for example, is not getting what he needed from his father (as described above), then he certainly can feel "different" from the time he was very young.

• Reparative/Conversion Therapy

There are different kinds of therapists and organizations offering reparative/conversion therapy for people attracted to their own gender.

There are different methods of reparative/conversion therapy and each person needs to find the method that works best for him or her.

No, it doesn't always work, but it has worked for many people, further crushing the notion that the attraction to one's own gender is "inborn" or "genetic" or that there is no way to change.

Organizations that support toeva and the mainstream media hate the idea of reparative/conversion therapy because it defeats their aims (see Part II).

Individuals caught up in same-gender attraction often also feel a visceral opposition to reparative/conversion therapy because they are caught up in their obsession, so to speak.

(It's sort of like taking the needle out of the hand of a drug addict who is about to shoot up. You will make him or her very angry.)

In general, men on a very low level get REALLY angry if you interfere in their sxual desires (regardless of what those desires may be), sort of like with animals.

Normal, decent men do not, but boorish men do and that seems to be the source of the above rage.

So these groups and individuals either suppress the information or they launch a full-force attack against anyone promoting therapy.

One of their claims is that the general success rate isn't high, and that some people seem to undergo further damage as a result of reparative therapy.

However, like everything else, the success rate depends on the type of method used and on the ratzon of the client.

For example, Alcoholics Anonymous actually has a low success rate (it only helps between 10%-40% of alcoholics who try it, depending on which study you read), but that doesn't stop people from trying it out or recommending it to others.

​The alcoholics not helped by AA do not cancel out the ones who are helped by AA. Not surprisingly, the alcoholics most helped by AA were those with the strongest desire to stop drinking — again, ratzon.

Interestingly, the same people who will automatically recommend AA to alcoholics despite its low rate of success oppose reparative/conversion therapy on the claim that its low rate of success means that it doesn't really work or can even be harmful.

It's hard to judge the success of reparative/conversion therapy, partly because its success depends on the factors mentioned above. How motivated was the client in the first place? And what were his underlying motivations?

Another reason for the lack of majority success could derive from how much of reparative/conversion therapy is backed by Christians. And while many people are helped, a big part of their therapy is belief in and prayer directed at a long-dead man.

Needless to say, such a belief is not conducive to good mental and spiritual health. On the flip side, treating people from a purely psychological angle (i.e. an atheistic viewpoint) also cannot facilitate full healing, especially since so many of the originators of psychological theories were very messed-up themselves.

Furthermore, some methods are just ineffective or even abusive, such as those that involve hormone injections, surgery, tawdry images of the opposite gender, or electric shock.

In addition, opposers to conversion therapy point out that most studies which reveal improvement include a large percentage of men who weren't exclusively involved with men, but with women, too. However, this argument is a bit disingenuous because nearly all men who prefer men can be and have been with women.

(In other words, it's very rare to find a man who is solely into other men, to the point that he has never been with a woman and if given the opportunity, cannot physically carry out the act with a woman. Very, very rare.)

So the questions seem to be:

• How much does the client want to change?
• How is his (or her) orientation defined?
• And what kind of methods are used in therapy?
• What is the attitude of the therapist?

If you don't have the right combination of factors, the chance of failure will be pretty high.

Therefore, while the general success rate isn't high, some individual therapists or organizations claim a very high success rate, like Dr. Josef Nicolosi, who claims a 60% success rate and emphasizes that "Uncompromising honesty with oneself is a necessary requirement to treatment success."

• The Actual Numbers Contradict the Propaganda

A 1970 study by L. Hatterer involving 143 clients showed that 49 clients were considered as having made a complete adjustment, with 18 clients labeled as "partially recovered."

But as noted, personal motivation made a huge difference.

Of the clients who demonstrated no motivation to change, only 4.6% clients did change (which is actually pretty good considering that they wanted to remain within a toeva lifestyle).

But among those who were highly motivated to change, 24% reported a "straight" orientation after counseling. 

A 1979 study by C. Socarides reported that 20 of 45 (44%) men in therapy for same-gender attraction from 1966-1977 achieved what they considered to be a change to a "straight" orientation.

In a 1994 survey by H. Macintosh, 285 psychoanalysts who analyzed 1,215 psychoanalytic clients attracted to their own gender (824 male; 391 female) show that 23% of their clients changed to a "straight" orientation.

In addition, the analysts claimed that 84% of their clients reported significant benefits from analysis.

Finally, a 1980 study by L. Birk, using a combination of behavioral group and individual counseling with 14 men, claimed a 100% success rate for men exclusively attracted to other men with the intent to change. Of those 14 clients, 10 of the 14 were satisfactorily married to women at follow-up.

Even more interesting, Birk was particular to include in this group only men who had been intimate exclusively with other men, and never women. (How did he find them? Way to go, Birk!)

In comparison, Birk treated another group of 15 men who expressed no interest in changing their orientation. Yet 4 out 15 still reported a shift to a "straight" orientation.

For further details about the above studies, references, and much more information about the results of different therapies and methods, see here.

It seems that the opposition to reparation therapy isn't because it can't work, but because it can. And that defeats the agenda of its opposers.

• "What Happens behind My Closed Door is MY Business!"

Would it be that it were always only behind your closed door...ahem.

Lots of things happen behind closed doors and in bedrooms that are very much the business of society and the law: drug use, child abuse, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, bomb-making, computer hacking, murder, suicide, and so on.

Privacy is no justification.

• "We’re Not Hurting Anyone!"

Well, except for spreading an incurable 100% fatal disease, of course...

In L.A., for example, 1 out of every 10 males involved with other males is HIV-positive (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 2001).

Both men and women involved in physical relationships with their own gender show a much higher incidence of drug use, alcoholism, violence, diseases (both fatal and not), mental health issues, and crimes against children as described with documented sources here and here and here - and that's just for a start.

And except for confusing – and even pressuring – people with normal attractions and encouraging them into same-gender relationships that they later regret (as described above and throughout the rest of this post).

But there’s more.

• Suicide

A frum boy attracted to other boys ended up going off the derech and sinking into a life of drugs, night clubs, and guys.

His father had died when he was very young. At one point, he confided in a family member and the family member’s friend, both of whom were also off the derech.

They did the “right” thing according to secular Liberal society and accompanied the boy to movies and gatherings that discussed toeva rights, where everyone did everything they could to convince the boy that his feelings and actions were normal.

The boy was pressured to tell his mother, a frum lady from a particularly traditional background who had no background or resources for dealing with such a situation.

No one encouraging the boy to “come out” seemed to consider the importance of providing the mother with proper support or preparation - if not for her sake, then at least for the boy's well-being.

No one told the boy he had other options.

No one tried to find organizations that help these young men from a frum perspective.

No one cared that they were sentencing the boy to a life of random and rampant indulgence with no marriage and no children.

Believing the promises that telling his mother would bring him feelings of validation and liberation, he finally told her. He asked her if she still loved him and she replied that of course she did.

But she was shocked and understandably had no idea how to deal with such a situation.

So she turned to the person she always leaned on in difficult times since her husband's death: her older brother.

Her older brother was traditional (so he thought toeva was disgusting), but not actually religious (so he didn’t think to ask a rav, search out a frum organization or a frum therapist who deals with this issue). He took the boy aside and berated him for his orientation and for revealing it to his mother.

Mortified, the boy ran off and then overdosed. After overdosing, he tried to reverse the process, but it was too late.

At fourteen, he was dead.

A year later, his family member also committed suicide.

(While I wasn’t told the reason for the second suicide, it’s not hard to draw a correlation; he may have easily felt responsible for the younger boy’s death.)

Okay, so this might be more of a case of Death by Self-Serving Liberals, but the fact is that the toeva supporters at these gatherings thought it was most important for people to be open about their orientation.

The family member and the friend didn’t come up with this idea alone.

The concept of “coming out of the closet” was pushed without any regard for the boy’s vulnerability or personal situation. I can’t see that any of the people involved in pressuring the boy (except for maybe the family member) cared about the boy personally; it seems they only cared about their agenda.

If these people are so supportive and the lifestyle so natural and so great, then why did this boy feel that suicide was his only option?

They obviously did not care about the effect pushing their agenda would have on a young, vulnerable, and sensitive boy.

This is unconscionable.

​Furthermore, the permissive activity of toeva men is unbelievable.

In a 1997 study, a Paul Van de Ven survey revealed that toeva men average 100-500 partners over a lifetime, with 10%-15% averaging 1000 partners.

Non-monogamous straight men and women rarely reach the sheer numbers that your average toeva man does.

And that toeva activist I mentioned earlier? He said that he’d had over 70 partners by the time he was nineteen. “At least fifty of them were in this amazing weekend we had with our organization in southern Florida,” he grinned. “I sure hope my face doesn’t show in the pictures! Yeah, someone was filming the whole time. But I don’t care...”

(That was in 1991, long before selfies, pocket-sized digital cameras, and camera-inclusive cell phones were the norm, by the way.)

The male flight attendant allegedly traced to having initially spread AIDS throughout the Western world was said to have had over 2000 partners by the time he died.

In a class survey taken in the college I attended, the students who claimed to have had 50+ partners were all toeva males – not straight males and not females of either orientation.

If you listen to almost any toeva male speak about his relationships, you’ll see that this is true.

Despite the claims that this is attraction is totally normal and should just be considered an alternative lifestyle, there is obviously something very wrong with a person who is so unbridled.

They need healing, not approbation.

Furthermore, just like how guys without Torah principles can be very interested in seducing girls, toeva guys are the same with other guys.

In fact, I was told how a group of teenage boys involved in toeva from frum families would befriend a boy, then show him certain movies. Once that door was opened, they then insisted he try out what was in the movie. The boy got sucked in. And that’s how they built their group.

Historically, toeva males focused on seducing pre-teen and teenage boys (like that period in Greek history, in which much older Greek men preyed on boys in their early teens or pre-teens), and this still holds true in many cases today.

Furthermore, there is evidence that same-gender couples are much more likely to produce children who identify with toeva.

Obviously, genetics cannot play a very big part in this, although there are medical ways for a woman to have a child that is genetically hers without an actual partner. But with toeva couples insisting that they can be excellent adoptive or foster parents, it pays to look at the statistics regarding the effect their toeva has on the children they raise.

Walter Schumm, a professor of family studies at Kansas State University has been conducting the most exhaustive study to date on the impact of toeva couples on their children.

Interestingly, he was only trying to find out the truth and was not biased either way.

During a 2008 Florida trial trying to ban toeva parents from adopting, he even stated that people attracted to their own gender “can be good parents.”

Please note that he restricted his study to people in their twenties and older – people you assume have figured out their orientation and aren’t confused by experimentation and searching for identity, as is common today among teenagers.

58% of children raised by two female parents identified themselves as being attracted to their own gender.

33% of children raised by two male parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.

5-10% children raised by two straight parents identified themselves as attracted to their own gender.

Noting the large discrepancy between children raised by two women as opposed to children raised by two men, Schumm explained that because most such men have at some point been in a relationship with a woman, they were more understanding as to why their sons would date women.

In contrast, two women raising a girl would encourage her to “try out women” if they saw their daughter distressed over a relationship with a man. Schumm explains that the material he studied shows that some such women “have a hatred of men that’s intense.”
(More statistics are available here.)

This does not even begin to touch on the very real spiritual damage caused by toeva actions, including on the individual and on the society.

Jewish sources expound on the profound damage and severe judgment these actions (and especially the legalization of these actions) have on society and on the world.

Also, just to emphasize the counterclaim: This study shows a blatant influence on same-gender attraction, in that children raised by straight parents have very little chance of ending up attracted to their own gender while children raised by two women have an extremely high (over half!) likelihood of ending up attracted to their own gender.

The above also flies in the face of the false claim propagated by the pro-toeva crowd ("Just like 10% of people are left-handed, so 10% of people are attracted to their own gender!") and the more realistic statistics culled from surveys (less that 3.5% of people are attracted to their own gender).

58% and even 33% are so much higher than the real percentage (less than 3.5%) and even much higher than the false claim of 10%. This evidences a very real social influence on gender attraction.
​

• "We Have a Right to Get Married!"

Well, actually, that’s not true. But what is marriage?

Marriage is defined as a lifelong monogamous commitment between a man and a woman.

Not between a man and a man.

Not between a woman and a woman.

Furthermore, statistics show that a lifelong commitment between two men is a joke.

When Conservatives discuss this issue, they focus on the fact that by definition, marriage can only be between a man and a woman. Liberals don’t buy this and believe the definition should be redefined.

But either way, long-term commitment and monogamy among men in relationships with their own gender barely exist.

In a 2003/2004 online census involving 7862 toeva men, only 15% described their current relationship as lasting 12 years or longer, with only 5% making it to twenty years. The largest chunk (31%) stay together for only 1-3 years – but usually not monogamously.

95% can’t even stay together for twenty years.

And if you yourself have been married twenty years or longer, you know that it’s not so hard to make it to your twentieth anniversary.

But how many report that they maintain fidelity in their current relationship?

4.5%

In contrast, men married to women report a fidelity rate of 75.5%.

And married women report a fidelity rate of 85.5%.

Okay, so the above means that we are supposed to campaign for same-gender marriage as if it’s the Second Civil Rights Movement on behalf of a people of whom 95% cannot remain together for twenty years (let alone “till death do we part”) and 95.5% cannot remain faithful to one partner for even one year?

So what exactly are pro-toeva marriage people campaigning for?

Now let’s compare domestic violence statistics:

• 0.05% married men report physical violence in their marriage
• 0.26% married women report physical violence
• 11.4% women with women report physical violence
• 15.4% men with men report physical violence

The numbers speak for themselves.

• Sweet-Talking the Gullible Ladies

So in light of the above, why is there such a huge push to legitimatize toeva marriage specifically?

And why do you sometimes hear toeva men talking about looking for “love” when most people would say that the rampant infidelity and the short timespan inherent in toeva relationships cannot possibly indicate real love and commitment?

Well, interestingly, many of the main proponents for toeva marriage are females.

Many actresses and other female celebrities speak out in strong support of these unions.

Female authors are more likely to include toeva characters – especially male characters, for some reason – and to portray them in a way that women stereotypically find appealing (as loving, supportive, gentle, committed partners).

In fact, I recently (at the time of this writing) noticed a newly published male toeva romance – written by a woman.

The book Sefer HaZohar – Chok L’Yisrael im Peirush Hasulam, notes that the Nachash (the Snake of Gan Eden) seduced Chava by portraying itself as feminine. I still don’t understand from the text how this was expressed, but I can’t deny the truth of the idea.

Since time immemorial, the facade of female traits has been used to entrap women.

Even today in places like India, for example, those seeking to exploit innocent young girls send a middle-aged woman to remote villages, promising the parents that the daughters will be employed as house cleaners and maids in wealthy homes, and maintain their virtue and honor.

Then the woman hands them over to the behind-the-scenes exploiter who forces the girls to work immorally until they show symptoms of AIDS and are sent home to die.

And since time immemorial, when men have wanted to seduce women, they present themselves as having a stereotypically feminine attitude toward the relationship, talking about love, love, love, and being together forever, and other virtues that appeal to the female personality.

And so with the current toeva movement, they use proclamations of love and marriage as a way to seduce women into supporting the movement.

• "They Only Behave Deviantly because Society TREATS Them like Deviants!"

While many people know that adult male Greek elites went through a 3-century phase in which they took for themselves very young male “proteges,” many aren’t aware that there is a present-day culture in which toeva has been not only the norm, but the ideal. And that is the Sambia tribe in Papua New Guinea.

I can’t even give a vague description of the tribal customs and norms because they are so repulsive. But they are definitely deviant even according to the most Liberal, open-minded members of Western society.

By any standards, the traditional Sambian customs and rituals are extremely abusive and sick.

Furthermore, males who show a strong preference for females are made fun of by fellow tribesmen. 

​The Sambians are also extremely violent, which they express through being at constant war with neighboring hamlets, utilizing their toeva rituals to maintain this aggression, believing that these abhorrent rituals make them fierce warriors.

Needless to say, it is extremely disturbing to realize that Greek elites and the Sambians had no compunctions about compelling young boys into acts that the boys would find degrading, repulsive, and painful (at least initially).

Women are considered dirty and dangerous by the Sambians, despite the necessity of eventually needing a woman for procreation and child-rearing.

In Greek society, too, women were considered by these toeva-loving elites as being inferior to men and were treated accordingly. So it seems that toeva people do not need to be discriminated against in order to behave in a manner that degrades and discriminates against other human beings.

As shown above, the expression of same-gender attraction usually results from profound psychological damage, but let’s never lose sight of the fact that healing is always possible, no matter how low one has sunk.

Despite everything shown in this post, Hashem is still infinitely bigger than all that.
​

​Finally, for the sake of objectivity, I want to direct you to a couple general studies from respected sources, like this study from Harvard and this study from The National Center of Biotechnology Information.

Notice how they reveal telling statistics (like how men attracted to males, who represent less than 3% of the population, commit between 9-40% of the most reprehensible crimes against children), then they insist that this doesn't mean that such men are more likely to commit these crimes.

(It is true that many males attracted to other males would never dream of hurting a child, but that doesn't refute the higher incidence of the ones who do.)

It seems that these "objective" academics must toe the line of the Liberal agenda even as they present the cold, hard numbers that clearly contradict their politically correct declarations.

Part II: What's Behind the Big Push for Adam and Steve?