Elderly Woman Beaten for Teaching Converts

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4196645,00.html

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A 70-year-old ultra-Orthodox woman found herself the target of a brutal religious hate crime on Monday night, when four thugs broke into her home and beat her up before leaving her handcuffed and bleeding.

"They were sent by the Modesty Patrol," the woman, S., told Yedioth Ahronoth. "They told me, 'You are destroying the neighborhood with you missionary teachings."

She's not a Christian or Muslim missionary--she is a Jew who works with women who want to convert to Judaism.

I'm telling you, it makes me want to beat some people up for her. And it makes me want to go to Israel and openly work with converts and people who want to convert. If people had a problem with that, we'd soon find out who's tougher--Haredi fanatics or a redneck Jew from Tennessee. Certainly I'm not as easy a target as a 70 year old grandmother.

But, as I can't take or give an ass whopping on her behalf, I gave charity instead.

This can't be true?? How reliable is that website? It seems to portray Jews in a negative way. It's too gruesome to be true...in the Torah it states 35 or 36 times how to treat converts because they were once foreingnors themselves? Haredim may be a little extreme but this just can't be.

Bee wrote:

This can't be true?? How reliable is that website? It seems to portray Jews in a negative way. It's too gruesome to be true...in the Torah it states 35 or 36 times how to treat converts because they were once foreingnors themselves? Haredim may be a little extreme but this just can't be.

I don't know if it's true but it being grusesome and casting Jews in a negative light doesn't mean it isn't. That being said I think maybe that particular site may be known for being overly dramtic? I'm not sure but I didn't see the story anywhere else.

I know the spitting on a child was horrific and caused the country to react. This would be so beyond reaction, it would cause a revolt. I hope this is not true because it said they broke some of her limbs. Justice would have to be answered.

As long as we non-Haredim continue to believe that they are practicing authentic Judaism and continue to support their hashgachot, mashgichim, buy their tefillin, tallitot, and other Judaica, and let them run the Israeli Rabbinate, they will continue to get bolder and more dangerous. It's time that we cut them out of the Jewish people. Ahavat Yisrael should not extend to those who are trying to destroy the Jewish people. Let's not respect those who treat us like dirt.

Bee wrote:

in the Torah it states 35 or 36 times how to treat converts because they were once foreingnors themselves?.

In the Haredi mind, people who did not convert through a Haredi beit din and do not observe all 613 commandments all the time without ever slipping up, are not converts, and are therefore as Jewish as the pope or Ahmadinejad and thus the laws about treating gerim well do not apply. It's one of those laws like stoning unruly children that has been legislated out of practical existence.

Ynet is Jewish news from Jerusalem and, from references I've seen, seems to be pretty widely read in English-speaking countries. Some people accuse them of being sensational (their opinion pieces, especially), but I haven't seen them accused of lying about facts.

The violence by certain religious fanatics (I am still of the belief that this does not include most haredi) has been increasing in Israel lately, so it's not surprising, even if it is angering.

It scares me to think the possibility of Jewish terrorism, buy Jews who are suppose to teach Torah and be a light to all nations. I will wait and see if there is media coverage and give them the benefit of the doubt. Its too gruesome and will keep me up tonight.

There may be more to it than just the fact that she was teaching converts. Per Shmarya over at Failed Messiah:

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The woman is Sarah Vorst. She runs a conversion institute for women, Ohel Sarah Imeinu, closely linked to Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein, the haredi rabbi who helped Rabbi leib Tropper take over the conversion business in North America and who is Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv's point man on conversion.

Eisenstein specializes in telling converts that the Orthodox conversion they had is not really valid.

Ohel Sarah Imeinu strings potential converts on for what can be years, making them pay for life coaching classes and refusing to accept knowledge they've gained elsewhere as valid – even if that knowledge is 100% correct under haredi standards.

If you do a Google search for Sarah Vorst or Ohel Sarah Imenu, there's some pretty unsavory stuff out there about it, and not just from Haredi sources, either. Lots of cases of women being used as free slave labor by Vorst in exchange for her "support" of their conversion, getting the run-around from her and her organization, shelling out thousands upon thousands of dollars to try and convert.... Not a very pretty picture. Clearly, that doesn't justify what happened to this woman at all, but I'm not sure this is a case of a random modesty patrol.

Neither the original story nor the additional information about Sarah Vorst are what I would call glowing advertisements for the beauty of Hasidism or Yiddishkeit, unfortunately.

If that's true, then you would think what she was doing would fall under the Israeli equivalent of a racket (or cult), and if the community felt her activities were criminal, they should have reported her to the police.

I completely agree. I'm not condoning the vigilantism at all, only providing some context that I hadn't seen mentioned here. That doesn't mitigate the wrongness of what happened at all; I would just caution against trumpeting Sarah Vorst as a great friend of the convert, because that doesn't appear to be the case, either. My suspicion is that the guys who beat her may have actually thought (or been acting on behalf of people who thought) that she was some kind of underground missionary; the conversion racket I sort of doubt they care about, except possibly how it may look to have non-Jewish women traipsing in and out of their community.

I actually lean toward sharing Usuario's opinions, these days, myself.

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how it may look to have non-Jewish women traipsing in and out of their community.

Which begs the question: are there places in Israel where a non-Jew doesn't have the right to go? What about Jews that don't "look like Jews?" Who gets to make that decision?

I read another article that said that some women are requesting segregated maternity words--they don't want to share a room with an Ethiopian Jew or Arab. The medical community is starting to refuse all requests for room transfers that they suspect are racially motivated, because they do NOT want to start segregating hospitals.

Can you imagine a white person in America asking to be moved because they don't want a black or Muslim roommate? Sounds like Israel needs to have a civil rights movement.

Mychal wrote:

I read another article that said that some women are requesting segregated maternity words--they don't want to share a room with an Ethiopian Jew or Arab. The medical community is starting to refuse all requests for room transfers that they suspect are racially motivated, because they do NOT want to start segregating hospitals.

Can you imagine a white person in America asking to be moved because they don't want a black or Muslim roommate? Sounds like Israel needs to have a civil rights movement.

The problem is that in Israel, racial and ethnic discrimination can be easily disguised as religious discrimination. Don't like dark-skinned people? Just find a rabbi (like the Lubavitcher Rebbe) who ruled that Ethiopian Jews are not Jews. Then refusing to rent to them, or let them cook your food or marry your kids isn't racial bigotry, it's the TORAH.

Sorry, a rabbi--much less a single one--does not constitute Torah.

Besides, the rule of thumb is that the majority prevails. As the majority of Jews in the world accept Ethiopian Jews as Jews, then they are Jews.

Of course, there's a segment of the Jewish population which denies the right of Israel to exist. If you acknowledge that Ethiopian Jews are the Tribe of Dan, then you must also acknowledge that the in-gathering of Jews has begun--which would necessarily lead to the conclusion that Israel's existence is legitimate.