Forum
FORUM Pat, We Love You Anyway I am flattered to receive a mailing declaring me to be an "important member of the Jewish community." Mrs. Moynihan and I have enjoyed moment through the years, but...
...In April Esther came home shouting "matzah" while showing off her hand-crafted fabric matzah cover (at her former, secular day-care center she would have made Easter eggs instead) and she says "laila tov" when she gives her teacher a "loud kiss" goodbye every day...
...It has been 12 years since I left Synanon, but I remain very influenced by my experiences there...
...a togetherness that sets one another free to grow and change without being left for it...
...ADL also regularly condemns anti-Arab prejudice and violence—during the Gulf War and after the World Trade Center bombing, for instance...
...Put into action, this vision extended grace to people who constituted the shadow side of society—the prostitutes, the pimps, the rapists, the battered wives, the thrown-away children, the hit men, the jazz musicians, the addicts, the chronically lonely—and the "squares" drawn to a life more fully lived...
...We take issue, however, with Kalmanofsky's depiction of our response to the investigation as "klutzy damage control...
...After eight years of Jewish community service, I say that making the community accessible is our biggest challenge...
...What does exasperate me is when you try to tell me that what you arc doing is permissible under any representation of Jewish law...
...What are we doing to teach ourselves, our relatives, our friends and the community at large the Hebrew maxim, "Respect him, but suspect him (or her)" as an antidote to "Be open-minded—at all costs" when it comes to destructive cults...
...Many times media silence on a problem can lead us to believe that it has somehow healed itself, moment's recent treatment of Jewish cult involvement (August 1993) reminds us that this problem is alive and as destructive as ever...
...I am a 46-year-old Jewish Scientologist...
...More importantly, it is clear that we do not have all the questions...
...I arrived after the process of destruction from within had begun...
...They have also had the good fortune of seeing their elder son realize great successes in his life, also as a result of Scientology...
...My parents have watched my metamorphosis and are thankful to Scientology for helping to make my life as happy as it is...
...I am 63, a Holocaust survivor, born and raised in Frankfurt am Main, Germany...
...That's why when we kosher a kitchen we clean the kitchen, but when we kosher for Passover we clean the entire house...
...The kashrul of pet food is not a matter of what the animal eats, but of what the owner owns, and the pet food advertisement got the matter exactly right...
...Moynihan and I have enjoyed moment through the years, but I'm not sure that our readership represents an acceptable form of conversion according to anyone's definition of "Who is ajew...
...Every morning Esther (now two) announces, "1 wanna go JCC" and every evening she describes, her accomplishments in cooking, swimming, petting animals, riding a pony and so on...
...Spirituality plays a pivotal role in the lives of those who have become members of these groups...
...The challenge that some cults pose to the Jewish community lies less in what they do wrong than in what they do right...
...My parents understand that even though they are not Scientologists, they have benefited gready in seeing their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren applying Scientology technology to their lives and growing up to be happy, healthy and prosperous...
...I am not trying to convince anyone of my sanity, because if the ways of the world presently are sane, then I am definitely crazy...
...Jews came in all these guises...
...It is fine to have an abortion, but don't tell me, "I think Jewish ritual should be brought in...
...We are completely delighted widi the quality of care our daughters receive...
...Jeffrey and Leslie Sokolow Roswell, Georgia This letter is typical of the many letters loe received from Jewish day-care centers, federations and synagogues in response to Francine Klagsbrun's assertion that the Jewish community is doing "very little" in providing day-care sendees.—Ed...
...The challenge of cults and other such groups is not exit counseling...
...If not, don't...
...The meaning of life escapes us sometimes, and we let it go...
...Afine young woman, herself captured some five years earlier, simply attracted him...
...Growing up, my mother and I had such a horrible relationship that all I could ever think about throughout my school years was how I could move out of my parents' house and survive on my own...
...Death is a disease to be abolished, and now is the time to do it...
...I have been a Scientologist for over 24 years...
...Kalmanofsky then faults me for not visiting San Francisco until May 3; he fails to mention that I was previously out of the country due to the death of my mother in April, and that ADL national chairman Melvin Salberg and other ADL representatives arrived on the West Coast within a week of the police search...
...That's what Raquel and I are creating in Scottsdale, Arizona, with Charles Brown, Bernadeane Sittzer and James Strole: a togetherness that goes beyond every judgment, prejudice, opinion or belief...
...Most of my good fortune and success can be attributed to the technology that L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, developed to help people improve their lives...
...I am open to David and Livia with all my heart...
...We certainly did...
...Rabbi Robert Kaplan Associate Executive Director, B'nai B'ritti Hillel/ Jewish Association for College Youth New York, New York Psychological Appeals, Not Promises of Immortality, Lure Cult Victims Although your August issue on cults performs a public service, you still don't get it: Totalist groups capture people and hold them by high-pressure techniques that have virtually nothing to do with "ideas" or "beliefs" these groups claim to espouse...
...There, local leaders and other victims bombarded him with professions of love and intense pressure to stop thinking for himself and yield to cult control, as did his attractive friend...
...Intensive, irrational psychological pressures are what enable cults to capture victims...
...Raquel is a hairstylist and I am a writer and a fashion model...
...It was a place of confrontation with self and others, of philosophy free from academic pedantry, of passionate discourse and disclosure, of unexpected changes that left one breathless, and of ceremonies without religion...
...You can't control damage if there isn't any, and until the police search of our San Francisco office on April 8, we were explicidy and repeatedly told by the District Attorney's office that ADL was not a target of the investigation...
...I didn't want rapists to go unchecked...
...In fact, ADL is concerned with anyone hostile to Israel—regardless of their ethnicity or race...
...It's really quite convenient for them, like the Stalinist policy of dealing with dissenting opinions by declaring opponents insane, or the haredi practice of saying Kaddish over those who marry out of the sect...
...If that experience is as rare as Klagsbnm says it is, then we are very fortunate indeed...
...It seems to me that some Jewish groups like the Lubavitch meet every definition of a cult set out by Arnold Markowitz ("Jews in Cults," August 1993), including devotion to a messianic figure and isolation from the rest of society...
...ADL had never targeted any individuals because of their race, religion or ethnicity...
...I do not discount the psychological harm that can be caused by the group's manipulation of the spiritual life of the member...
...In most cases, the group will abuse normative and healthy religious and spiritual concepts to control the member...
...One aspect of cult involvement not discussed and often overlooked by professionals is the spiritual well-being of the cult member...
...crazy like Abraham, crazy like the Wright Brothers, crazy like Galileo...
...According to Alan Unterman's Dictionary ofJewish Lore & legend, the luz bone at the base of the spine, which survives the disintegration of the body after burial and around which the new body will be formed at the resurrection of the dead, is stimulated by davening: "Those who bow to God in prayer are thought to guarantee themselves a resurrected body because they stimulate the bone when they bend their spine...
...But if I am only for myself, what am I?" Abraham H. Foxman National Director Anb-Defamanon League New York, New York A Third Mhzvah Offers A Specific Reward Deborah Lipstadt writes in "Why Be Jewish" (August 1993) that there are "only two places in the Torah in which a specific reward for the fulfillment of a particular mitzvah is cited...
...This four-year experience allowed me a view of a spiritual life never afforded by my limited Jewish education...
...Self-interest is not incompatible with social responsibility...
...Rabbi Nahum Schulman Minneapolis, Minnesota Shuckling Stimulates The Immortal Bone I would like to add to Rabbi David Golinkin's Responsa on shuckling ("Why do Jews sway when they pray and study Torah and are diey obligated to do so...
...They open the member of the group up to a world of experiences that were previously missing and, if partaken of without the manipulative and coercive atmosphere, could lead to a profound and healthy spiritual life...
...Davrd J. Bardin Washington, D.C...
...I call on them to go beyond their own opinions about my life, to accept me as I am, so that we can continue to* share our lives again...
...I didn't want to engage in daily social lies...
...I think we must pursue it—vigorously—and give up certain comforts on the way...
...Can Jews and Judaism extend "the vision that life is a gift not to be wasted...
...During those months, none of us came to his rescue...
...Mark Zomick Teaneck, New Jersey Jewish Day-Care Is Not So Rare Francine Klagsbnm (column, August 1993) is certainly on target when she says that "parents would clamor to get their children into "a fine Jewish educational center with well-trained staff...
...a togetherness that is biological, unconditional and forever...
...I own a successful business, have been happily married for over 20 years (to another Jewish Scientologist), and am the mother of three fabulous children and the grandmother of two beautiful girls...
...Rabbi Nachman does not suggest this as a good alternative but laments this as a sign of the times...
...It was the place where I learned about tikun olam...
...a perfect and just measure shalt thou have...
...The issue of Jews and cults is linked to the r () r u m issues of assimilation without and pluralism within...
...The psychological attacks had worked and the cult's psychological chains were now firmly attached...
...The editor asks, "If Garfield can have shrimp, then why can't I?" The answer is that the Torah belongs to you and not to your cat Jewish law forbids Jews from eating shrimp, but not from feeding it to their pets...
...Once cult members have been recruited, they often undergo a dramatic spiritual transformation...
...Joe Bardin Responds To David and Livia I write in response to David and Livia Bardin's article 'Hanging by a Thread" (August 1993...
...August 1993...
...It was a process of compromise and crime that began at the top and trickled down...
...These facts belie Kalmanofsky's assertion the "ADL...helps other minorities when their interests coincide...
...My message is that human beings are absolutely unlimited in every way, including life span, when they truly come together for this purpose...
...I didn't want to watch.the newspeople tally human losses while neighbors stood powerless before the murderers in their midst...
...Last time I checked, having abortions was only tolerated, according to halachah, in extenuating circumstances, and the "choice" was not completely left up to the parents...
...Klagsbnm is also right that centers can introduce even veiy young children to Jewish values, customs and ceremonies...
...Debbie Shulman Evanston, Illinois Jews Shuckle to Show God We're Alive Allow me to clarify shuckling or swaying when we pray (Responsa, "Why do Jews sway when they pray and study Torah...
...Your Cat Can Eat Shrimp, But You Can't In Spice Box (August 1993), there appeared an advertisement of Passover Food for Your Pet that included shrimp...
...I stayed long enough to see Synanon's visionary work irreparably damaged, and I made compromises of my own that were hard to live with then and are harder to live with now...
...In fact, before he joined, he told a friend that the group had some silly ideas...
...Rowena Arbiter Urbana, Illinois Can Judaism Match the Spirituality of Cults...
...Since then, my mother and I have become best of friends and we both treasure our close relationship...
...What we need is one another, in a total biological agreement to live...
...The ideas held no charm before he yielded...
...If there's one thing I've learned living in Israel, Ireland, New York City and now, Arizona, it's diat no culture answers the needs of human beings on .this planet today, and none ever will...
...It is hypocritical to deplore David Koresh and Reverend Moon while viewing intolerant cults within modern Judaism as acceptable expressions of religious thought...
...While we sometimes wish it were possible for one of us to stay home full-time, we are reassured knowing that our children are well cared for in a loving and sumulating Jewish environment...
...I was hurt by David and Livia's article, but I will not let it come between us...
...Yet I do not cancel them out as human beings, nor do I love them any less...
...Let David and Livia speak about their own life's passion, their own vision of what they'd like to see created for mankind, beyond the reharnessing of a wayward son...
...The question that remains is why these groups are so successful in marketing and delivering the transformative spiritual message while we in the Jewish community seem to fail to achieve the same rate of success...
...In over 10 years of counseling members of these groups, I have found that at the time of recruitment, the member was actively seeking answers for major and minor life questions and dilemmas...
...The influence of such cults has been damaging to Israel and world Judaism through their promotion of an extremist version of the "one real truth...
...August 1993...
...Not even other streams of Judaism are seen as valid by the ultra-Orthodox...
...Of course she gets this at home, but die center reinforces it...
...My father says that in his wildest dreams, he could never have imagined that my mother and I would wind up sharing the incredible love we have for each other...
...They make their own choices, and are responsible for them...
...He was not "lured" into a cult by being "promised" immortality ("In A Moment," August 1993...
...Acceptance, confrontation, meaning, justice, honesty—these are what young people seek...
...As further disproof we might add our opposition to restrictions on Haitian immigration, our advocacy for reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, our vigorous support for Bosnian Muslims, and our record of support and activism on behalf of African-Americans, dating back to the 1930s...
...Although I saw the highest principles of the place (sobriety, social change, nonviolence) laid low by the highest ranking members of the community, although my last months there were unpleasant and the circumstances of my leaving worse, I feel grateful for the best Synanon had to offer...
...Certainly the Jewish spiritual message is more compelling and profound than those of cults, aberrant missionary or other such groups...
...that thy days may be long...
...We just built up so many problems communicating with each other that it got to the point where we couldn't even talk about anything without a major blowup ending in hysterical screaming matches...
...We make no secret of this concern, and we exercise our right to collect information about relevant groups in a lawful manner, and to voice our opinions...
...But don't let the hysterical response of one pair of parents stand as the record for what my life is about Friends from Washington who have come to visit me are surprised to findi that we live in our own apartment, work, eat, defecate, play basketball, etc., because of the stories my parents tell...
...Still, for most, these spiritual experiences are powerful...
...There is a third place in the Torah (Deuteronomy 25:15) for which a specific reward is cited: "A perfect and just weight shalt thou have...
...But our critics, and Israel's critics— whether Arab, Jewish or those of any other provenance—have exacdy the same right...
...While not all centers are asjewishly oriented as ours is, we are very pleased that kosher meals are provided daily, and that kosher for Passover delicacies were brought in from a caterer during the intermediate days of Passover...
...Synanon was a place where hard work could refer to physical labor or personal growth...
...I, too, lament the need for my journey, but know that if not for it I probably would have never returned to the life I now live...
...I always accepted this explanation as valid, and I have yet to find a learned rabbi who would challenge it...
...Yes, we have our differences, but this does not mean that we must be painfully cut off from each other...
...Rather than accepting my own feelings about my own life, David and Livia have made me in their minds into a non-person, a victim, a good Jewish boy led astray...
...Then, "Joe's terrible personality suddenly changed," as one of Joe's fellow victims told me in Haifa...
...Joe did not fully yield for seven months—a long time—during which he insisted on speaking only Hebrew at cult meetings, even though leaders urged him to speak English...
...The League's efforts have ranged from joining in a 1987 Supreme Court case involving anti-Arab bias to decrying the FBI's intention to target Arab-Americans for unwarranted questioning during the Persian Gulf War...
...She says "Shabbat Shalom" when she leaves on Friday and calls all bread "challah...
...I didn't want to walk past people sleeping in boxes, or see public servants clean the vomit, urine and trash left behind in the places where people gathered to amuse themselves...
...With best wishes, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) Washington, D.C...
...Even today, I find our ability to actualize Judaism's profound and rich spiritual life lacking...
...Defending the rights of one group helps to secure the rights of all...
...Synanon promised, and for a long time delivered, what the founder's wife, Betty Jean Dederich, called "a glimpse into the vision that life is a gift not to be wasted...
...David writes, "I have yet to read anything that focuses on the pain of women who choose to have an abortion...
...My story is quite opposite to the one told in "Breaking the Chains of Mind Control...
...This was quite contrary to the dreams my mother had for me, which was to marry a nice Jewish man and raise a family, as she did...
...My mother was not a terrible person...
...Secondly, we strongly disagree with Kalmanofsky's suggestion that ADL's defense of the civil rights of minorities may not be "compatible" with its monitoring of "Arab-Americans for their opposition to Israel...
...nothing he had learned at home or from Jewish day-school curricula armed him sufficiently to rescue himself...
...Rabbi Nachman tells a story of a Jew who needed to travel to a far-off place to learn from a non-Jew the beauty of his own place in life...
...I think it's absurd for David and Livia and others to pacify themselves with images of an afterlife, rather than moving right now to make changes in diet, lifestyle and outlook that would enable them to stop the aging process...
...It had vital strengths as well as crippling flaws...
...While a college student in the early 1970s, I became a member of a group that espoused an eclectic belief system made up of Hinduism, mystical Christianity and New Age notions...
...Jews experience or observe all the brokenness in the world and, like the rest of society, there are certain issues we would rather not admit or discuss...
...In each case, a closed society nullifies the intrusion of what is new and different by making the messenger disappear...
...He went with her to numerous weekly meetings in Tel Aviv and Haifa...
...This is what Livia and David have tried to do to me...
...I was taught how to pray properly by my Orthodox father, who gave me the following explanation: "When Jews pray we must show God that we are alive and so we move, as a live person...
...Certainly there are more pressing matters at hand in the world than keepingjoe in line with Conservative Jewish correctness...
...As a person who is Orthodox religiously and conservative politically, I have no problem with people who are pro-choice or homosexual or in any other way anti-halachah...
...Joe Bardin Scottsdale, Arizona Scientology Improved My Life I am concerned about the incredible misconception about Scientology promoted in your article, 'Jews in Cults" (August 1993...
...Why is heaven easier to believe in than one another...
...Leaven, though, is in a different category, because on Passover Jews may not even have leaven in their possession...
...I think we can, but we must do so on levels more basic than those at which we normally express our concerns...
...David Pollock's contention that ADL released its official response "about 10 days late" implies an arbitrary deadline—10 days late for what5 Our overriding concern was to issue a comprehensive and accurate statement regarding the manifold allegations arising from the case...
...If this sounds good to you (and it should), come check it out...
...Moreover, ADL has repeatedly defended the right of Arab-Americans, as it has diose of other minority communities...
...Marsha Friedman Palm Harbor, Florida Is Lubavttch Judaism a Cult...
...After I got into Scientology and learned about the components of a good relationship and what caused them to go awry, I was able to see what I had done to create this dreadful situation, not only with my mother, but in any area of my life that had gone wrong...
...Kalmanofsky implies that the ADL only acts selfishly, an unfair and miserly characterization of the assumption underlying the work of all leading civil-rights groups—ones founded on shared vulnerability and a commitment to democratic pluralism...
...The challenge is for our community to examine itself to see what we are not doing, to recapture the strength and beauty of Judaism and to share it with our fellow Jews...
...Surely Kalmanofsky is familiar with Hillel's great dictum, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me...
...Not everyone is vulnerable all the time, but almost everyone is vulnerable at some time...
...But we, like the rest of society, have a distance to travel yet No one sect, religious or political, has all the answers...
...When I left, these were the realities I faced...
...Rabbi Jonathan Israel Kohn Beth Israel Synagogue Center Derby, Connecticut What Cults Do Right I celebrated my 18th, 19th and 20th birthdays in Synanon, one of the organizations profiled in your issue on "Jews in Cults" (August 1993...
...Let's face it: parents unhappy with the choices made by their children is not a new phenomenon in the world...
...Jon Lomberg Honaunau, Hawaii Explaining ADL's "Klutzy Damage Control" Jeremy Kalmanofsky's overview of the San Francisco District Attorney's investigation involving the Anti-Defamation League is, on the whole, a judicious and balanced treatment of the matter ("Defaming the Anti-Defamation League," August 1993...
...Cults exploit the needs society overlooks or refuses to acknowledge...
...Ultimately, I was tricked into leaving by my mother, without whose intervention I may have dithered for many - more months, because even when I knew things were bad there, I stayed because I thought what was on the outside was worse...
...She will be pleased to know that in the city where her project was located 20 years ago, the Atlanta Jewish Community Center provides a wonderful pre-school program and accepts infants as young as six weeks of age...
...There are a thousand reasons for people to separate in this world, a thousand judgments of what is right and wrong, a thousand expectations waiting to be disappointed...
...Gene Selig Irvine, California Grief from Abortion Should Not Be Assuaged by Halachah In response to Shohama Wiener's Responsa on mourning the loss of a miscarriage (April 1993), I found Rabbi Jo David's comments (Forum, August 1993) irritating...
...Let me give you one example...
...I didn't want to live in a ghetto of privilege, or worry that if I lost just one paycheck, I'd lose the roof over my head...
...Joe Bardin ("Hanging by a Thread," August 1993) was captured in Tel Aviv by irrational psychological techniques...
...I've chosen a very different life from my parents, so different, in fact, that they can't or won't receive me now as a free and responsible human being...
...The Jewish response can be preventive, non-exploitive...
...A woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy, granted not an easy decision, should not look to halachah to ease her grief...
...The same could happen to others, perhaps yourself, perhaps more quickly...
Vol. 18 • December 1993 • No. 6
