A BARMY old goat, who describes himself as a “proud primitive” rabbi, caused outrage in Israel when he offered, on TV, to usher a family into a state of mourning – because they have a lesbian daughter.
After hearing a young religious lesbian say that her parents did not welcome her and her partner on the sabbath, Rabbi Menachem Froman, of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, sparked uproar when he declared:
Rabbi Froman, with one of them religious boxes on his head that causes panic on aircraft
I’m willing to talk with your parents. Give me the address, I’ll talk and tell them ‘parents, come and sit shiva for her, cry (for her)’.
In Judaism, shiva refers to the week-long period of mourning for the seven first-degree relatives of the deceased.
The rabbi, who appears on the Jewish S.H.I.T List for being too LIBERALÂ – “he is well-known for promoting and leading interfaith dialogue between Israeli Jews and Palestinians” – went on to say:
You want legitimacy for your world? There’s (also) my world. The world of the primitive, of Menachem Froman, who is a proud primitive.
The two appeared in a programme titled Vacuum for Israeli Educational Television. Several segments have already uploaded to the Havruta website, which caters to religious gays.
Rabbi Froman told Ynet that the expression to “sit shiva” implies great suffering and that he did not intend on making a halachic ruling, according to which the parents should grieve.
I wanted to say that I would meet her parents in order to try and console the parents and reconcile the family with words of encouragement and support.
The rabbi confessed:
I may have opted for an expression which doesn’t sound good.
But he added that that he himself would indeed “sit shiva”, should a son or daughter of his declare themselves gay.
According to Rabbi Froman the case amounts to a great human loss since relations between a man and a woman are at the centre of life.
He stressed that he fully respects those with “inverse tendencies” who manage to withstand the great trial that he himself was not required to stand, but would not legitimise those who do not overcome their “instincts”.
Rabbi Dr Benny Lau, who is considered one of the leading moderate figures in religious Zionism, slammed Froman, and said:
This does not come from the Torah, it’s not a halachic stance, it’s Rabbi Froman’s personal viewpoint. It’s an extreme position which completely strays from the halachic way. It’s a halachic deviation.
Safed chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu also participated in the panel and defined homosexuality as “a disease”.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 18th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I don’t take advice from or listen to scary looking old farts who wear little black boxes on their forehead. The box fails at giving him a look of real intelligence.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
He looks like Fagan! I’d like to see him repent his stupidity by way of a tap-dancing rendition of “Reviewing the Situation”. The manky old cunt.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
So Froman, with his cute lobotomy cover, thinks parents should mourn a gay child; of course in his world, better dead than gay eh? My parents weren’t too surprised when I came out to them and they got over it eventually but didn’t mourn.
Quote: Safed chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu also participated in the panel and defined homosexuality as “a diseaseâ€. Er no, homosexuality is just another branch of the evolutionary process. Religious belief: now that is probably the worst possible disease spread by humans.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
One can’t help wondering what the crash investigators would make of Froman’s black box if the plane in which he was travelling suddenly fell out of the sky… just a thought before I have a siesta.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Well clearly, Mr Duke, they would recognize that the empty black box contained all the twat’s onboard data. Sweet dreams.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Shiva is a mourning for a Jew who has died or is regarded as dead to the godphuqt. Fanatics also “sit shiva” when a relative marries a non-Jew (such as a Christian or nontheist) or even an adherent of a more liberal form of Judaism. Antisemitism did not begin in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the racism of the Jewish Tanakh, just as the Crusades were a reaction to Islam’s genocidal expansionism. The only way that Osama bin Laden differs from Benjamin Netanyahu or Joseph Ratzinazi is that only the former is free to put his hatred of the human race into practice without having to answer to anybody capable of stopping him. ALL religion is institutionalized hatemongering.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Only a religiot could possibly boast of being “primitive”!
February 18th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Antisemitism did not begin in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the racism of the Jewish Tanakh
I’m generally known for being mild mannered, but fuck you.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
He looks like he could be a relative of the vile homophobe Jan Moir…. they both have bronze age attitudes !!!
February 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Oh, come on guys…I believe that when you would meet this old goat you would probably find him very sympha, like the french say.
The man is pretty old and I believe he wouldn’t lift a finger against any homosexual. Just let him rant on. Jezus.
And Heather…’twat’, ‘cunt’, don’t insult that organ between your legs. It doesn’t resemble an old shit! I like twats and cunts also.
They are more mysterious than the God person.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
he looks like bad santa.
The thing on his head contains a small bird which jumps out on a spring crying COOKOO! everytime the man opens his mouth.
February 18th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
what a fucking nasty bigoted piece of shit.
Again – can anyone remind me what the fuck religion is for?
Other than polluting minds with anti-human bullshit, antisocial / even murderous attitudes and ignorant stupidity of everything around them.
What good is it? Where is the evidence of the peace, love, understanding, compassion, etc that all religions supposedly purport?
I see nothing beneficial – but a catalogue of vile stupidity, that utterly overwhelms the charitable efforts – that anyone with a brain in their heads does anway!
February 18th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Either “Don” has never read Deuteronomy 7:1-23, which reads like an excerpt from Mein Kampf, to cite only one of the Tanakh’s racist passages, or he is unteachable. If his excuse is ignorance, he should also read Leviticus 20:10, which makes clear that Jews are only forbidden from knocking up the wife of a “compatriot”, meaning FELLOW JEW; Exodus 20:16, which only prohibits perjury when it is “against your compatriot”; Exodus 20:17, which only prohibits lusting after “your compatriot’s house”, “your compatriot’s wife”, or “anything else that YOUR COMPATRIOT owns”; and Ezra 10:3-19, in which the spokesman Ezra convinced the Jews who had returned from Babylon to expel all of their non-Jewish wives, and the children they had born them, to starve in the desert, in recognition that the Jewish god hates non-Jews. In The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated, page 320, I include a note after Ezra 10:4, “Note the chronicler’s tacit approval of Ezra’s vicious racism that only Adolf Hitler ever equalled.”
And in case anyone is unaware, the entire “ten commandments” only restricted the way a Jew could treat a fellow Jew. They placed no restrictions on the treatment of non-Jews.
Anyone else considering criticizing a biblical scholar is advised to start by getting his facts right.
February 18th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’
Do I win the caption competition this time?
February 18th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
‘Either “Don†has never read Deuteronomy 7:1-23, which reads like an excerpt from Mein Kampf, to cite only one of the Tanakh’s racist passages, or he is unteachable’
Neither. Of course I am familiar with the OT. It is your assertion that anti-semitism was a consequence of jewish seperatism that I take issue with.
‘Anyone else considering criticizing a biblical scholar is advised to start by getting his facts right.’
Oh, are you a biblical scholar? A reputable one? Then school me.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:03 am
William is bang on, I was brought up on a forced diet of bibble bobble brainwashing, and I used to struggle with the irony of Jews claiming persecution when they as a race performed jolly genocide with abandon according to that book.
I am sick and tired of hearing about how Jewish people are so bloody hard done by. I don’t condone any of the nasty things that happened during WWII or at other times in history. However I do take umbrage at being expected to make special allowances for people who weren’t even bloody born at that time, on account of ‘the suffering my people endured’.
I am sorely tempted to dig up some huge event from my genetic background and use that to get to get special allowances, maybe I can get extra club points in Tesco or something!
February 19th, 2010 at 12:29 am
The man said it: “primitive”. No need to expand on his fevered imaginings.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Moron.
February 19th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Don and Harwood,
Since Judeaism and Islam are both Abrahamic religions, and they both hate each other to death, doesn’t that really settle the issue.
Fact: The secular state of Isreal is plagued by fundamentalist Jews that believe that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews because Yahweh promised it to them. What is interesting is the Jewish history, in the Book of Joshua, which recounts the cataclysmic genocide committed by the Isrealites as they militarily stole the land. Also, it is interesting to note that never once did the Israelites really militarily control the traditional boundaries of the twelve tribes. At any given point in history, the Amorites, the Philistines, or some other invading hoarde held some significant portion of their gift from god. Some promise?!?!? “Go murder men, women and children until your forces are spread so thin you can’t defend it, that is your god given inheritance”. It’s obviously just another chapter in our barbaric past and has no other significance.
A quote from the threadhead: “Rabbi Menachem Froman, of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa”.
My question would be, “what the fuck is this pinhead rabbi doing practicing his religion outside his borders, on land given to the Palestinians by the UN?” That is what I am talking about, these illegal incursions on Palestinian land are the foremost of all the obstacles to peace in the middle east, and they are fueled by the headbanging, wall praying, penis mangling, fundamentalist Jews, who just happen to have a vote. Just like UK and US, these shit for brains still have a vote and can move politics.
NeoWolfe
February 19th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Deuteronomy (7:1-2): “When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you’re about to occupy, and driven out many infidels before you … you’re to cut them down and exterminate them. You’re to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.”
7:6): “For you are a nation sacrosanct to Yahweh your gods. Yahweh your gods has chosen you to be his pet nation, ahead of all nations on the surface of the land.”
(7:23): “You’re going to exterminate them in a massive genocide until they’re eliminated.” (Translations are from The Protestant Bible Correctly Translated, ed & tr by William Harwood, World Audience 2009)
That is RACISM, and calling it “separatism” (misspelled) does not change that reality. I suggest that anyone who is ignorant of my status as a biblical scholar go to http://www.worldaudience.org , click on the titles of my books, and read the reviews by editors of freethought publications. For all of my book titles, go to http://www.amazon.com .
I have 3 graduate degrees in history, including religious history. My 2009 book, God, Jesus and the Bible: The Origin and Evolution of Religion, does to the god delusion what the first photographs of the Martian surface did to the canals delusion. That is all I am going to say. I will not engage in a battle of wits with an opponent who is unarmed and lacks the moral courage to use his real name.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:55 am
@Don
Pay no attention to the arrogant, thick cunt that is Harwood. The only voice he respects is his own and he is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. I just ignore his tiresome posts…
February 19th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
@MrMonist if you ignored his posts you’d not be commenting here then would you? What a nasty little creature you are!
February 19th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
If I may interject. This forum is becoming a bit unpleasant with some nasty personal abuse attacks and some rather offensive language. Are we not, as the title of this forum suggests, freethinkers for whom intellectual debate mixed with a bit fun is paramount? We are in danger of showing ourselves to be no better than our real opponents: the religious.
Tin hat ready.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Being brought up amongst jewish families. My family were never really religious, although were good and sometimes did what they were told to do by absolute strangers how to live their lives. I loved the food but the religion never seemed relevant to me. It seems that if you have money in the jewish faith, as in others, you are welcome.
What right have these silly people have to interfere in lives of others.
I read the bible for curiosity and from that day I found how evil religion was.
Beyond belief that people can be so gulible.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
You’re only partly right, @NeoWolfe. The Zionists believe that God has promised the Jews ALL the land “promised to Abraham” in Genesis 15, not just the “Kingdom of the Twelve Tribes”: viz “from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates”, and from The Yemen to Turkey if you examine all the tribes mentioned!
February 19th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
It’s a bloody warzone here!
February 19th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
william,
I already told you that I am familiar with the bible, including Deuteronomy. Why on earth you would cite Deuteronomy as a source of anti-semitism is a mystery. Do you imagine that the early anti-semites saw it as you or I would – as a catalogue of atrocities? No, they loved it. To the Inquisition it was almost an instruction manual. (Except the part about burning the loot – the got less literal when there were pickings to be had.)
If you want a biblical source for anti-semitism I suggest John 8:44 and throughout. Or Paul. Hatred and demonisation of the Jew had nothing to do with the fate of Moab, no-one cared. It developed when the Christians were a minor Jewish sect – there is no hatred as great as sectarian hatred.
To Augustine the suffering of the Jews after the destruction of the Temple was wonderful, demonstrating through the punishment of those that denied Christ’s divinity that he was indeed divine.
To Christians the Jews were the worst of heretics because the explicity denied the divinity of Christ. It was a structure of hate deliberately built up and propogated by the church, from the blood libel (still catholic doctrine into the twentieth century) to claims that Jews were effectively another species.
Your claim that they somehow brought it on themselves by the brutal way the tribes took over the ‘promised’ land is ridiculous.
My … book… does to the god delusion what the first photographs of the Martian surface did to the canals delusion.
Modest.
I will not engage in a battle of wits with an opponent who is unarmed
Witty.
lacks the moral courage to use his real name.
Of course it’s my real name, you pompous fool. What ‘moral courage’? Does that even mean something?
February 19th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Angela_K
Sorry if the offensive language, um, offended you. I really am the most mild mannered of people.
But I think the suggestion that Jews brought anti-semitism on themselves needs to be met with a blunt and unequivocal response.
February 19th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Just because the inventors of the Jewish religion also invented racism, that does not make what Hitler did “poetic justice.” And just because a fanatic Catholic named Adolf Hitler made Jews the primary target of his hatred of opposition religions, that does not make Jews sacred cows who cannot be criticized for supporting Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and racist, repeat racist, treatment of the people whose stolen land it continues to occupy.
That should surely make my position clear even to slow learners.
The racism of the Tanakh is indeed no worse than the vicious antisemitism of the Christian gospels, and present-day antisemitism indeed owes more to what is in the gospels than what is in the Tanakh. The godphuqt do indeed hate opposition religions more than they hate nontheists.
It has been my observation that persons who are modest have a lot to be modest about.
Warning to persons who do not wish to be viewed as trolls: Beware whom you ally with.
February 19th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
the inventors of the Jewish religion also invented racism,
You claim to be an historian?
sacred cows who cannot be criticized
Who said that? And dragging I/P into this doesn’t help your position.
That should surely make my position clear even to slow learners.
Still with the wit.
It has been my observation that persons who are modest have a lot to be modest about.
Actually not your observation. Churchill’s.
Warning to persons who do not wish to be viewed as trolls: Beware whom you ally with.
You can view me any way you want, pal.
February 19th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
If you respond to the criticism of a pseudointellectual, the argument becomes a circular one and you’ll be here all night.
Some of you are very self-obsessed which makes for extremely dull reading.
Without mentioning any names, if your posts are this banal, I hold out little hope for your book sales.
February 19th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Oh, come on, Heather. Mention names.
February 19th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
@Heather Flight
Excellent post. I shall temper my language… it’s just that people like him are infuriating.
I read Dawkins after hearing all the criticism of his ‘spiteful vehemence’, I was quite shocked to see the man is a kindly old pussycat of a fellow. The unnamed practitioner of banality deserves that reputation so much more than lovely old Dawkins…
From now on I shan’t use such language (though it was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare and Joyce) and I shall simply avoid all posts by him and comments towards him.
Without him this site would be my favourite blog of all, but he does so much damage it drags the level of debate down to the gutter. The rest of you are lovely though… XXX
February 19th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
@Don
At best he is an “I’m not an anti-Semite but…” sort of chap. Ignore him and engage with all the other hate-free posters here. I know I will. It’s a variation of ‘don’t feed the troll’ (except, as a newcomer, I’m more of a troll I suppose)
…שכח ×ותו
February 19th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
you guys are just proving williams point. if anyone dares to critisise jews they are labelled anti-semetic! which is funny considering the semite race extends beyond judaism, therefore the critisism of the la+ter should hold no baring on the former. jews are just as bigoted and dangerous as muslims and fundi xtians, so to wrap one in cotton wool because of a recent hardship their relatives suffered is very dangerous indeed, and one reason israel is doing exactly wha+ it likes wi+hout punishment.
February 19th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Each additional post indicates that the difference between my position and that of “Don” is less than it previously appeared. Even his implication that racism existed before Judaism is not indefensible, since the ancient Egyptians’ attitude to non-Egyptians can reasonably be viewed in the same light. It was the Tanakh authors who first entrenched racism into their philosophy by justifying it in writing. Perhaps that is not the same thing as inventing it.
I am “a historian”, not “an historian.” “dropping H’s everywhere”, as ‘enry ‘iggins once said.
I reepeat my warning that anyone who associates himself with a jackass who has been blown out of the water risks being tarred with the same brush.
February 19th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I tried to correct the spelling mistake in the previous post, but the way the system is set up, the line containing the error refuses to stay in range long enough to make a change.
I also appreciate being told the source of an unattributed quote.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
William, does this strike you as the sort of environment were spelling is of any consequence? Worry not. I particularly hate that my iPhone put’s an apostrophe in the possessive preposition “it’s”, which of course should be “its” and I often fail to correct it in the review period.
I can only apologise for my shortcomings, but I am not an author; I work in a factory.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Each additional post indicates that the difference between my position and that of “Don†is less than it previously appeared.
(a) Wrong.
(b) It’s my name, you twerp. Stop putting punctuations around it.
I am “a historianâ€, not “an historian.†“dropping H’s everywhereâ€, as ‘enry ‘iggins once said.
Does that mean something?
I reepeat my warning
Do you now? I repeat my indifference.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:05 am
I agree that this is not the place to make an issue of technicalities. Nonetheless, let me recommend the fifty-page chapter, “Synopsis of English Grammar,” in The Disinformation Cycle. Page 239 identifies “its” as a possessive adjective.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Ok, I got it.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:32 am
Quoting Harwood:
“Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and racist, repeat racist, treatment of the people whose stolen land it continues to occupy.”
While that is somewhat accurate, it’s simplistic. The nation of Israel exists by international law, and at it’s beginning, not one square foot of land was stolen from anyone. Those who owned land inside the new national border had only to register their property with the new government, and were welcomed as citizens. Those who bet that the Jews would be driven into the sea, and who abandoned their land rather than to submit to a Jewish state, fled to refugee camps in the West Bank, and there they and their children remain. They made their bed, now they don’t want to sleep in it.
However, the flip side of that coin is the Israelli settlements dotting Palestinian land. That is a directive fed by those who think that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews. Ridiculous!!! Jericho didn’t belong to the Jews until they murdered every man, woman and child in the city. But, flip the coin again, and you see that Arab Palestinians are not the rightfully returning occupants before the Israelites launched their genocide. They are descendants of Ottoman Turks and Persians, and the raped Israelite women.
My point is, that at this stage of human affairs, the sane approach is to defer to international law. The nation of Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, but, it does not have a right to expand its borders by convenience. I personally would grant them the Golan Heights as stategic high ground, taken at high cost, but, the jewish settlements in Palestine have to stop!!!!!!
NeoWolfe
February 20th, 2010 at 4:02 am
I am sick of this shit. Typing a carefully thought out response and have it disappear into oblivion by this site’s software.
NeoWolfe
February 20th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Whilst anyone would find the sort of genocidal land-grabbing behaviour described in the Old Testament quite distasteful and barbaric, surely one has to bear in mind that (a)that was the sort of thing practised by most peoples in Bronze and Iron Age times, and (b)we can’t take it as “gospel” that these events actually occurred just because the Tanakh says that they did. Where is the evidence of this all-conquering Israelite army that devastated the land in days of old? (They didn’t come from Egypt, did they? They arose in Canaan itself.) Where is the evidence that the great warriors like Joshua, or kings like David and Solomon, actually existed? Maybe the tales of their exploits are based on stories of tribal leaders of the past, so that they do have some basis in fact (much like the tales of King Arthur), but surely we can’t take them too seriously? Any thoughts Dr Harwood?
February 21st, 2010 at 12:41 am
That box looks like it take four AA-Type batteries.
February 21st, 2010 at 8:35 pm
The evidence on which to base conclusions about Jewish history prior to the Babylonian Captivity is so sparse that competent scholars have reached widely differing conclusions. My view is that Joshua is essentially fictitious, and the worst atrocities attributed to him represent what the Elohist of c 770 BCE and the Priestly author of 621-612 BCE considered ideal. I am reasonably confident that David and Solomon were real persons, petty chieftains whose hegemony did not extend further than 30 kilometers from Jerusalem. Moses was a fictionalization of an Egyptian prince named Atonmoses, a grandson of Ramoses II too low down in the line of succession to see a bright future for himself in Egypt, who made himself the Israelites’ sheikh when they were expelled from Egypt at the demand of Egyptians who wanted their land and their jobs. He was assassinated when he started to take his position as their lawgiver seriously. Joseph was a fictionalization of Pharaoh Akhenaton’s Viceroy of Phoenicia, Yanhuma, who invited the Israelites to settle in Goshen as a first line of defence against the invading Jews whose leader was the role model for Joshua.
There are points on which I view anyone who disagrees with me as indefensibly wrong. None of the foregoing falls into that category. I recommend reading God, Jesus and the Bible to answer any other questions.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Thanks, Dr H. It seems a disaster in so many ways that Jewish history appears to have been completely rewritten to fit the agenda of their leaders at one specific time in their history!