I feel you Fred. I can't help but agree about living with values. But not the Chassidim. I live here in NYC and have lived in Brooklyn for over 40 years. And of all the communities that preserve family values, I wouldn't want to use the Chassidim as my template.

... and all around her were men dressed in black suits ... kneeling ... and bowing, and clapping ... REPEATEDLY ... singing her praises. THIS IS DONE FOR EVERY WOMAN WHO GETS MARRIED."

What you didn't see was this young woman 8 years later. Her youth is gone. Her one shinning moment as a bride is a receeding memory. She has endured 8 years as a baby factory. Thanks to Jewish Fertility specialist she has had 2 or 3 multiple births (fertility drugs are rampant among the chassids) and after giving birth to 7 to 9 children (not uncommon) she is worn out and depleted not just as a woman but as a human being. In addition to being a baby factory she has had all these years of being a Household slave, whose days are spent making a home for her husband, by which he is judged and through him she is judged. If she has had the misfortune to produce only daughters she has no status. If she even worse hasn't produced a child, despite many courses of fertility drugs, she not only has no status; but just might have an "accident" (suicide is rampant among these barren women) and even if she has had sons, there is a higher than average statistical probability (due to inbreeding) that she will produce an impaired child; who will require her constant attention for the rest of her life.


This young woman KNOWS she has a community of men ... of brothers, uncles, fathers and friends who are going to be there as her allies ... and not her perpetrators. That's HUGE my brothers."

What planet do these Chassids come from? The Satmers and the Lubavitchers here in NY not only sexually abuse their sisters, but when they do so the girls are considered to be the blame. After the end of her child bearing years, she won't have a life partner, she will have an owner who considers all that she has done for the family to be nothing more than her duty. This is the point at which the men who still have sexual desires, start seeking outside sexual partners. The incidence of STDs amon the Chassidim is ENORMOUS. The incidence of AIDS has been growing in that community for years, due to the popularity of prostitutes among the Chassidic men. If you ever have the occassion to go to Central Booking here in NYC you will always see the Black suited Pais spouting Lantzmen, in handcuffs after being busted in a Prostitution sting. They are always in the nastiest Strip Clubs and Peep Shows. They often try to disguise themselves by replacing their frock coats with baseball jackets, but the Talis always gives them away.

"A culture can go no higher than its woman."

You are so right. But in the case of the Chassids and other super Orthodox Jewish Sects, their women are kept in near bondage. Just like any other fundamentalists sects, the more "conservative" their dogma; the more marginalized and objectified their women. Their plight is no different from that of the women in the society of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Polygamist Mormons in Utah, and Animist Traditionalist women in Africa. The only difference is that they are not subjected to genital mutilation.


"We need to get off our knees ...shooting craps ... dreaming porn dreams of fucking somebody in their behinds and getting our dicks sucked. Those or sordid dreams and low aspirations."

How true, but it is just as true and perhaps more so of the most repressed (sexually) populations anywhere. There is a direct relationship between, sexual ignorance coupled with hypocritical injunctions agains all forms of sex, and sexual dysfunction which expresses itself in patterns of behavior that are degrading to all the parties involved. The copying of behaviors seen in porn, is indicative of both sexual immaturity and sexual ignorance. As a society we would do much better if we were to provide our youth with instruction in sexual acts along with instruction in personal responsibility and morality. We would have a hightened respect for each other as people if we got beyond our cultural baggage and conditioning against masturbation. When she was Surgeon General (before being hounded out of office for her stance against the Incarceration-Industrial Complex as created by the "War Against Drugs"), Dr. Jocelyn Elders; who is also a mother and grandmother suggested that we would do better to teach our children sexual hygene and prevention of disease and pregnancy, and MASTURBATION!!! Of course the "Religious" community (including the "Black Church") demanded her hide for making sucha statement. Say what you like about it, but if our young men could find relief for their raging hormones by self-gratification, there would be no need to turn anybody's daughter into a hoochie or ho.

Our sexual natures are going to be with us as long as we incarnate in flesh. We are spiritual beings, living a physical existence. That physical existence determines the sensations of needs that we endure. It is both unnatural and unrealistic to demand that abstinence be the only solution to these urges. In the "enlightened" societies of Scandanavia and to a lesser extent in Japan. Sexuality is considered to be a part of life. Consequently the incidences of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned preganancies are at a fraction of what we experience here in America. Our abstinence only based Human Sexuality curriculum in our schools has lead to a pandemic of STD and a resurgance in the incidence of out of wedlock births; both of which were in decline, until the "conservatives" took over our schools.

Like you said Bro, "The way we've been ... DON'T WORK."