Sunday, August 27, 2017

Positive Role Models - Present Authentic Torah

When I was a child and had one of those boxes with colored images that burns brain cells and causes a host of emotional deficiencies [called "TV"], I would watch the "Mary Tyler Moore" show. She seemed like a decent enough, nice, normal person.

But she was faking [called "acting"]. She actually had a completely broken personal life that included [among other things]  being an alcoholic and two failed marriages [the third, sadly, was to a Jew]. What is worse is that she actually tried to murder her brother [from a Jewish perspective]!!! 

I am not making this up. 

From the "Washington Post":

... Life, though, wasn’t done with Moore. Her remaining sibling, a brother named Robert, was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer, forcing Moore to do the unimaginable in 1992.

“He called me one day to say goodbye,” Moore wrote of her brother’s attempt to end his own life. “He had stashed hundreds of painkillers and had tried to end his life by taking enough to kill himself. He fell asleep before he could ingest enough to finally end his pain. He felt he could do it again.”

So the next day, with Moore at his side, he again attempted to overdose on painkillers. “He asked me to mash them into ice cream,” which she did. Though the suicide attempt failed, she told the Daily News she “would do it again.”

THAT is homicide [if he fed it to him] or at least being an accomplice to causing someone else's death. 

In her defense - she had a rough life, her mother was an alcoholic, her only son accidentally shot himself to death etc. etc. Poor lady. [Of course that doesn't excuse helping her brother kill himself]. 

However, I find it despicable that a so-called kiruv website that often distorts Torah in order to be mekarev people [to what?] posts a very positive article about her.

And - when I was there I saw - also about Jerry Lewis whose life is just another tragic story of an assimilated Jew. We shouldn't be celebrating him [as does this website] but mourning the eternal loss of a Jewish soul who lived like a Goy for over 90 years. 

If we want to do kiruv [which we should all be doing] we have to be honest about truth, even if it is not politically correct, not distort the Torah, be careful about tzniyus [another problem over there], and find positive role models.

Of course there are many fine things about the site but it seems clear that they have no Talmidei Chachomim who view their content to insure that they are properly transmitting Torah values and not this feel-good-new-age-everybody-is-cool-we're-hip-Judaism.