Go to this diary and read about the fate of Damon Fowler of Bastrop High School in Louisiana. There is no doubt in my mind that Damon Fowler was treated unjustly by his parents and community. As a person born and raised in a Christian home, I’d say that love, compassion, and understanding would have been more appropriate in handling a young person like Damon Fowler.
The members of DKos who posted comments on the dairy were equally reprehensible and hateful. Almost all the DKos posters in that diary really spewed some hateful comments against Christianity and Christians. Christianity and Christians are condemned for the bad act of one community.
While outrage and condemnations poured in against Christianity and Christians, the “terrorist” crime committed against Aron Rottenberg and his wife, Ruth Rottenberg, went unnoticed. Damon Fowler was not burned alive, but Aron Rottenberg was hounded for more than a year and then almost burned to death. The two incidents happened here in the United States, and they are both motivated by religious beliefs.
You claim you are progressives, that you stand for justice and farness, and that you are free to speak your mind in this country. Fine! I challenge you to freely speak your minds on behalf of Aron Rottenberg as you did for Damon Fowler.
On Tue May 31, 2011 at 06:11:21 AM PDT, a poster named JamesGG wrote this:
Replace "Christians" with "Jews" and see how many HRs you get for that comment.
Hell, replace "Christians" with "Muslims" and see how many HRs you get for that comment.
Some Christians are assholes. Some Christians do engage in acts that I would agree are terrorist in nature, and would like to install a theocracy.
I challenge him to apply the same thought process and to follow his own advice. I want to see him write the following on Dailykos:
Some Jews are assholes. Some Jews do engage in acts that I would agree are terrorist in nature, and would like to install a theocracy.
Further, I challenge everyone here to locate an article written in defense of Aron Rottenberg and his family. Locate an article on the “terrorist” crime against Aron Rottenberg WRITTEN BY JOURNALISTS AND REPORTERS EMPLOYED by the New Yorker, the New York magazine, the New York Times, the Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, the Main Street Journal, the Patriotic Journal, the Academic Journal, the Progressive Journal, the Justice-Loving Journal, etc, etc. Locate one article, and if you cannot, then ask yourselves these questions?
1) Are you really free to speak your mind in this country?
2) If you are free, but selectively show your outrage, why? And what are you afraid of?
3) What happened to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights in this country?
4) Are you living in a country where selective theocracy is permitted for some people but not allowed for other people?
5) What if Aron Rottenberg and Ruth Rottenberg were Muslims, do you think Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and others would have remained silent?
Look, I have been thinking about this for a while, especially since Barack Obama became the president of the United States. I used to think and believe that religion is necessary for morality. This is far from reality because most psychopathic and sociopathic human beings are religious people who use their religion as the basis for their insanity and wickedness against other human beings. I am becoming more convinced by the hour that government is more dangerous to human beings than religion because government adds more fire to religious zeal through more dangerous alliances with religious bigots.
You can argue that religious zeal adds more fire to politics and governance, but it seems to be the other way around. We inherit whatever religious beliefs our parents practice when we grow up, so the religious beliefs are values given to us by our surroundings and society as we mature. Yet, as we mature the religious beliefs and values do not become destructive until we are in positions of power and authority to apply those values and beliefs. The religious beliefs come first, but the capacity and skills for exercising the authority and power come later and add the destructive fire to the mix. To appreciate this thought process, consider this:
Aron Rottenberg’s family “had been the victim of growing harassment for more than a year and feared for his safety. But cops and reporters did nothing”.
“A letter distributed to the community in November by New Square's leadership and rabbinical court warned that not worshipping at the synagogue was a severe violation and that anyone in violation must be stopped from using the community's facilities.”
The overriding factor for the deafening silence is not the religious zeal. Rather, it is the collective capacity for adults with power and authority to remain silence in face of such brutal and terrorist behavior.
You are quick to call other people terrorists, but are you equally willing and ready to call your own zealots terrorists when they commit terrorist acts? What exactly is the matter with you that you are like this?????
If religion is inconsistent with morality and governance, if religion is in fact the enemy of governance and morality, why single out one group of religious zealots while hiding and protecting these other zealots among you?
New Square Burn Victim Feared For His Safety, But Cops Did Nothing
Chaim Aron Rottenberg closeup A New Square man who was severely burned early Sunday during an attack on his home had been the victim of growing harassment for more than a year and feared for his safety. But cops and reporters did nothing.
By Gary Stern
A New Square man who was severely burned early Sunday during an attack on his home had been the victim of growing harassment for more than a year because he did not attend the community's main synagogue.
Aron Rottenberg, 43, who suffered third-degree burns to half his body, visited The Journal News office in November to express concerns about his safety.
Rottenberg had been ostracized by the Skver Hasidic sect that runs New Square because he did not worship at the community's main synagogue, headed by Grand Rebbe David Twersky.
A letter distributed to the community in November by New Square's leadership and rabbinical court warned that not worshipping at the synagogue was a severe violation and that anyone in violation must be stopped from using the community's facilities.
"This all started when Rabbi David Twersky called for a meeting demanding the religious services outside his synagogue must be stopped," wrote Sam Dirnfeld, a New Square resident, in an email.
Rottenberg's son-in-law Moshe Elbaum said the family had faced growing levels of intimidation in recent months, including broken windows in their home. Some protested outside the Rottenberg home in November, calling on them to leave. The family later installed surveillance cameras.
The cameras didn't help on Sunday. Just after 4 a.m., Rottenberg confronted a man carrying a rag soaked with flammable liquid behind his home on Truman Avenue and was severely burned during a confrontation.
Rottenberg is in serious condition at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla but is expected to survive.
Shaul Spitzer, 18, of nearby Adams Lane, was arrested and now faces charges of first-degree arson and second-degree attempted murder, both felonies. Spitzer also suffered serious burns to his hands and arms and is being held at Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. He has not yet been arraigned.
At a news conference Monday, Police Chief Peter Brower said his detectives had not found evidence linking the attack on Rottenberg's house to the previous protests in the community.
Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence said he was assured by New Square Deputy Mayor Israel Spitzer that Sunday's attack was an isolated incident, the result of a private dispute and not part of a campaign of retribution.
Yossi Gestetner, a Monsey-based journalist who works with the Hasidic community, said New Square leaders would never condone such violence.
"Did the rabbinical leadership have issues with Mr. Rottenberg? Yes," Gestetner said. "But to conclude they would sanction violence is wrong."
But others suggested that the campaign against Rottenberg inspired Sunday's violence.
"If you don't follow the rules, this is what happens," said Elbaum, a former New Square resident.
Dirnfeld said he had little faith in local law enforcement because of its ties to New Square. He called for a federal investigation.
"I know there will be retaliation against me for speaking up, but as there is no responsible leadership, someone has to," he wrote.
One New Square woman said she and her friends were waiting for New Square's leadership to condemn Sunday's act and were bitterly disappointed that nothing was said.
"No one has come out to condemn the action of that boy," she said. "The girls went back to school. The boys went back to yeshiva. Nothing. It is against Judaism, against the Torah."
The woman did not want to be identified because she said she would be shunned and her property vandalized.
She said residents don't know what to tell their kids about Sunday's violence.
"People are hurting others, burning others, throwing rocks into windows, doing things to people's property, and no one condemns them," she said. "A group of men think that when New Square was built, the grand rebbe's father, who built the village, said everyone should pray in one synagogue. Did he know there would be many, many more people here and that not everyone would want to go to the same synagogue?"
Divisions within Skver and other Hasidic sects only occasionally spill into public view. New Square is a mystery to most. Its population grew by 50 percent to 6,944 between 2000 and 2010, as most adults marry young and have large families. New Square's average household of 5.54 people is the largest in the region.
Samuel Heilman of New Rochelle, distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College and one of the nation's leading experts on Hasidim, said the Skver community is a monolithic place where people are always on the lookout for challenges that could lead to divisions. People also believe the grand rebbe is their intermediary to God, so perceived challenges to his authority are taken seriously.
"The idea of a crack in the charter of the community is really frightening to them," he said.
Rottenberg and up to 30 others had decided to pray at the Friedwald Center, a rehabilitation and nursing center on New Hempstead Road, rather than New Square's main synagogue on Truman Avenue. Elbaum said the community's pressure dropped the number of worshippers to a handful, including his father-in-law.
Internal disputes rarely involve violence, although there is a tradition of using force to confront a wrong-doer, Heilman said. A dissenter is more likely to be cut off by the community.
"I could see a young man, who probably doesn't understand the rabbinic norms, figuring that if someone doesn't follow the conservative line, you can impose it on him," Heilman said. "It's not an impossible jump."
The Skver Hasidic movement was founded in modern-day Ukraine in the city of Skver during the late 1700s. Rabbis in the Twersky line are believed to have been at the helm since the earliest days. The movement came to Brooklyn during the 1920s. Then in 1954, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky, the grand rebbe of the day, bought 130 acres of a former dairy farm outside Spring Valley to form New Square.
Many of the community's early residents were Holocaust survivors, and none had been followers of Twersky previously, according to "Hasidic People: A Place in the New World," a 1992 book by the late scholar Jerome R. Mintz.
"They were united in the dream of the new community and in their faith in the sincerity and piety of the Skverer Rebbe," he wrote.
The settlement incorporated as a village in 1961 after battling the Ramapo Town Board over zoning regulations. When the grand rebbe died in 1968, David Twersky was quickly named his successor.
A similar division has been seen in the Satmar Hasidic sect. A group that opposed the chief rabbi in Orange County's Kiryas Joel village wound up battling the sect in the state courts over where it could worship.
The highest-profile Hasidic split has been for the leadership of the vast Satmar movement, with two sons of the late rebbe splitting the movement into two groups as they battled for power.
Here are some images:
Aron Rottenberg in hospital
Aron Rottenberg in hospital
Source of the article:
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/...
The incident is also published here:
http://www.haaretz.com/...
http://online.wsj.com/...