We are voluntary members of the “commonwealth of Israel”, defending the rights of God-fearing gentiles among Jewish diaspora communities and also in Israel/Palestine. As our welfare depends on the safety and dignity of Jews in exile, and on their right to return and establish a Jewish state in their historic homeland of Palestine/Israel, we hold their safety, dignity, and rights as dear as our own. From the river to the sea, The holy land is not for free. Anyone who wishes to contend is invited to respond in a Israel palestine debate. The Gerim Defense League is a separate organization from the RCIF, which is sharing space on their website, as we prototype www.gerimdefenseleague.org. This is a work-in-progress.

 ברכות השחר וכונות לאלקי שעשני כרצונו Morning Blessings for sexuality and creativity for Women and Men

פיוטי וברכות השחר לנשים ולגרי תושבים  Morning Praises and Blessings for Gerei Toshav and Israelite Women and Servants

Blessings over Torah study for Noahides and Gerei toshavim

Fear God and keep his commands, this applies to all humankind Noachide Covenant:  the seven commandments, the Adamic blessing as the "very good" τελος / purpose / final cause of human nature

Arab convert, victim of intentional manslaughter by IDF reservist, post-humously granted citizenship after IDF apology.

• Reform the university: revive the trivium of liberal arts so that students become capable of believing, recognizing, and affirming logical and moral truth, and rejecting falsehood. Revive the humanities by reuniting it with the study of divinity: teach metaphysics, ontology, theology, and ethics.
• Open Letter to PSU and all American Universities
• Open Letter to UO

• Deprecate use of the word “goy” to refer to idolater, use “oved ha kokavim” instead. Maimonides at fault for this equivocation?
• Deprecate use of the word “notzri” to refer to christians, it should be used only for orthodox Jews who prepare for Moshiach, and early Jewish-christians who were excommunicated by the church for maintaining observance of Torah.
• What is the Halakha? The trial was illegal on three counts and conducted by Sadducee heretics.
• Vacate Maimonides affirmation of the trial court's judgement against Joschka, exonerate the Jewish people from bloodguilt.

• Letter to Holocaust Museum of Rockland County, New York
• Letter to Oregon Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Portland
• Holocaust museums.

Moreover,

• the UN Declaration of Human rights does not replace the holy Torah
• the United Nations and the Ivy League do not replace God
• arts and culture and cooking do not replace Jewish prayer and worship
• the Democratic party platform does not replace the Sinai covenant, and
• exclusive fixation on 6 million dead Jews in Germany does not promote Jewish futures or honor the memory of so many others in 1,900 years of Jewish history in exile.

But by making and publicly insisting on all these false replacement theories, holocaust museums are miseducating the general public, squandering an opportunity to make allies and friends by sharing “light to the nations” and teaching them the Noahide covenant, failing to refute the false premises of racist anti-semitism, and actively promoting or enabling anti-Judaism. Moreover, America does not replace Canaan as the promised land, and Israel is not a colony of the American democratic party. It should not be pressured to function as such. See also: antisemitism and antiJudaism - legacies of imperial christianity. (Nirenberg, 2014)

Consistent with this declaration, we propose these rewrites.

• Revised IHRA definition of Antisemitism c.f. https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism
• Revised Jerusalem Declartion c.f. https://jerusalemdeclaration.org
• Revised Nexus Document c.f. https://nexusproject.us/the-nexus-document

The signatories of all these documents are failing to come to terms with each other or with their opposition - the anti-semites themselves. Equivocation is inevitable when you let the anti-semites define the terms, and these competing definitions are worse than a red herring: they stipulate with the anti-semites that Judaism has been replaced. We call on all the signatories to either repent and return to Torah Judaism, or else assimilate to mainstream culture, consider themselves mere semites, “cut off from the covenant”, and cease their efforts at redefining Judaism according to their crafty rationalizations in order to satisfy their wandering desires and ignore their prophets. They are promoting anti-semitism, by choosing to deny the covenant and promote enlightenment rationalism in a manner that many find contemptible. If they are held in contempt, they have no-one to blame but themselves, and their complaints are petulant.

• Prayers for the Secular Government and for Final Redemption
• Prayers for the State of Israel (5783)
• OU 180 days letter to Biden Admin

http://www.ahavaizedek.org is the doppelganger congregation of http://www.nevehshalom.org

• Doorkeepers in the Houses of Holiness
• Cease and desist letter to MJCC
• Commendation letter to PPB officer Gervais for response to MJCC trespass complaint
• Security help wanted at MJCC and Jewish synagogues in Portland
• Demand letter to MJCC

• libraries_should_recognize_passover_and_the_asian_heritage_month_of_nisan. Passover was totally ignored at the Central library and three other branches I visited.
• I asked the Board to acknowledge Passover as a heritage week.
• tishrei Totally ignored by the libraries in their feature book displays, were the biblical high holidays of rosh hashana and yom kippur, and the harvest festival of ingathering and booths “sukkot”.

reverse chronological order

D.A. Mike Schmidt et al acknowledge “Crime Victim's remembrance week” (after having spending the previous two hours neglecting to comment on the County Budget priorities or any other significant item of business before the Board, and instead operating on his cell phone/minicomputer) Comm. Stegman acknowledges “Administrative Assistant's appreciation week” Comm. Meieran acknowledges “Vietnamese American remembrance day”

• Claremont Iron Front, incidents at Pomona and Claremont Colleges
• Los Angeles Iron Front
• Seattle Iron Front
• PSU

Proposal for Campus Sukkot 2024.

accused of selectively enforcing its anti-discrimination policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, ignoring their pleas for protection, and hiring professors who advocated anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda.

“the plaintiffs have reasonably argued that Harvard's response to incidents on campus was insufficient and that the facts, as presented, show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,” ruled the US District Court Judge Richard Stearns.

He also added that he was, “dubious that Harvard could claim that some of the pro-Palestinian or anti-Jewish activities were protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.”

Harvard's motion to dismiss denied: Judge Stearns added that the plaintiffs can also pursue two other claims: that Harvard breached a contractual obligation to enforce its non-discrimination policies, and treated students unfairly by failing to enforce those policies “evenhandedly.”

Class action filed against Columbia occupiers, including the congressional Progressive "squad"

“The Gaza Encampment was extreme and outrageous conduct. It was illegal. It violated university rules. Its occupants harassed, followed, physically blocked, intimidated, and bullied Jewish students,” the lawsuit states, adding that the disruption to studies caused “real damage” to Columbia's 36,000 students.

“In a civilized community, one does not call for the obliteration of a major metropolitan area, praise terrorists, or threaten death and destruction upon our classmates and their families, friends, and coreligionists,” the litigation states.

Attention Deputy Consul Zamir and Israeli Hasbara

• Letter April 2024: Rise Early and Act first
• Letter April 2024: Thank Mayor Wheeler
• Your country's recent failure of public diplomacy in America and Europe is caused by your abandonment of Jewish values to embrace secular neo-liberal values instead, and also by your country's embrace of American imperialism, which is increasingly unpopular among Americans themselves. Reliance on foreign empires such as Egypt is denounced by the Hebrew prophets, and has repeatedly brought disaster on your holy nation. Julius Caesar, father of Palestine. “If the Jew does not make qiddush, then the goy will make havdalah” - and that is occurring now. Your teshuvah should include the following:
  • Hasbara must start and end with Jewish apologetics.
  • Israeli hasbara must start with denunciation of Palestine as a colony of Roman, Islamic, and Christian empires, and Israel as a national liberation of the Jewish people, that will serve to emancipate humanity at large.
  • Netzach yehuda should be re-assigned to hasbara
  • The Haredim should be recruited into hasbara, and be prepared for this service by yeshivas that train them in Jewish apologetics, Qiruv, chaplaincy, singing tehillim with instrumental music, prayer and torah service leading, and hashgacha for IDF camps and for radically reformed Mosques and Churches in the territories. Altars must be dis-assembled; idols can be shipped home to Italy by their owners, if not destroyed. IDF and COGAT battalions should accept upon themselves at minimum the Noahide covenant and its 7 laws, and be equipped to teach it to friendly Arabs, as terms for their residency in the holy land. Yeshivas should Learn Maimonides' and Newton's corrections to Aristotle, and train bochurim in public disputations, and sophistical refutations of the Epicureans and the Mutakalmim.
  • We endorse Isaac Herzog's response to the ICJ ruling on Judea and Samaria

• MultCo Commission 10.12.23 1:23 Matan Zamir, SF office of Israeli Consulate, expresses shock for three minutes, mentions 1,200+ Israeli dead, 150+ hostages, including 22 Ameican citizens, taken by “Hamas terrorists”, but doesn't make a single demand of the Board, doesn't ask them to condemn the massacre, doesn't list a single Israeli war goal or foreign policy objective.
• Michelle Mench, Jewish Federation neglects to even mention the massacre, doesn't condemn it. Complains about “phone ringing off the hook”, “social media lighting up”, “grim news”, and asks them to light up the bridge in blue and white, and makes a plea for support. Neglects to propose a resolution, neglects to ask the board to condemn the massacre, which she failed to even mention, or list any other Israeli war goals or foreign policy objectives, or local Jewish community needs.

Jewish community responsa

2:25:31 Oregon was second state to recognize Arab-American heritage month in a 2021 Oregon law.

2:57:04 Denies history, falsely accuses Israel for starting the war: “More relevant than ever as Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment have resurged after the Oct. 7th 2023 War in Gaza”. In fact, Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment resurged after the Oct. 7th 2023 War against Israel launched by Muslim Arabs from Gaza, and a worldwide intifada and public influence campaign to drop support for Israel and let it perish at their hands, with dishonest representations that deny history and blame the victim, as in the present case. The “War in Gaza” began either on 8th October with aerial bombing, or 27th October when Israel invaded to redeem its hostages and remove Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from power. The County's Proclamation should acknowledge the historical facts, or at least it should present falsehoods.

WashCo's proclamation of April as Arab-American heritage month is acceptable. MultCo's is not.

Mayor Wheeler's response to calls for permanent ceasefire in Gaza 4/17/2024 33:08

Libraries should Recognize Passover and the Asian heritage month of Nisan

After uproar, Portland teachers’ union removes pro-Palestinian lesson plans from website

These groups have made opposition to Judaism and to Israel their purpose of existence

• The Goyish Defense League
• The Jewish Voice for Peace (The Ex-Jewish Voice for War) JVP/xJVW

Locally active groups focused on other issues, who have taken anti-zionist stances, while immersed in the systemically anti-Jewish ideologies of Enlightenment rationalism or Marxist historic materialism. Instead of taking account of their American privelege, they scapegoat Israel and project onto it the distinctly American sins of settler colonialism and systemic racism. Vis a vis the Palestine issue, most take their direction from the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and from Samidoun, the international Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network of the PFLP, which are Marxist-Leninist terror groups. Since the 2020 protests, Samidoun affiliated groups have adopted the “police abolitionist” position, hijacking the protests, chanting “death to Israel” and “death to America” in the Portland plaza on July 1st at the “Palestinian Day of Rage”, promoting riots, crime, and terrorism. They discredited and set back a decade or more the righteous cause of police reform and accountability, and the rioting effectively resulting increased funding for police departments across America. Samidoun was designated a terrorist organization by Israel in 2021, by Germany in October 2023, and by the Netherlands, Canada, and the US in October 2024. Samidoun is based in Vancouver Canada.

• Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
• Party for Socialist Liberation (PSL)
• Portland Public Teacher's Union
• Graduate Teaching Fellows of PSU and UofO

Jared Essig publicly recognizing Jewish high holidays and sukkot at 09.26.24 Regular meeting of Multnomah County Board of Commissioners 11.46 Recognizing the new moon of the harvest month, and Proclaiming Oct. 3rd as the universal New Year's Day (Rosh haShana), day of trumpet blasts (Yom Teruah) and Day of Judgement (Yom haDin). God is the source of all good, and to him thanks are due. Thanksgiving will be held this year on Oct 17th, the full moon and 14th of Tishrei.

Now, O kings be wise, accept instruction o ye rulers of the earth (county commissioners, city councilors, university chancellors and officers of the faculty senate) Serve the LORD with fear, rejoice with trembling. (Psalm 2). The God of nature has through nature itself, rendered judgment through nature itself on our crops and gleanings. The fear of heaven comes more naturally to farmers and shepherds than it does to bourgeois liberal like us, who are insulated from the changing seasons by our technology, wealth, and power. Therefore cultivate fear, and prepare yourselves to receive the judgment on the coming year. Take a searching and fearless moral inventory, an audit, an annual budget review. Take an accounting of your soul. Recognize Tishrei as a universal heritage harvest month, in Multnomah County and everywhere (calling on libraries, public schools, and universities, and students and faculty unions, and other cities and states to make an equivalent or similar recognition)

The Noahide Deception, by so-called "Rabbi" Mordechai (Mark) Griffin The first few pages of Mr. Griffin's book are available in the Amazon's preview, and they reveal him to be either ignorant or dishonest on the following counts:

• The Noahide laws are indeed mentioned in the Talmud in several places; they were not an invention of the Chabad rebbe or of the Rambam as he reports. Mr. Griffin is either unaware or unwilling to admit this.
• The Noahide covenant is expressly taught in Genesis 9, and Mr. Griffin obviously knows this, and is culpably dishonest for refusing to admit it up front before launching into his polemic.
• The seven Noahide laws, even if not learned in that particular enumeration from the Talmud or Maimonides Mishneh Torah, are logically and necessarily derived from the first few chapters of Genesis - this becomes apparent from a close reading of the text, and is confirmed by Micah 6:8 and the rest of the prophets, which all seem to assume this premise in laying out the parameters of divine judgement against the idolatrous nations. Therefore a God-fearing gentile with access to the scriptures, even if he has never read the Talmud or the later sages and never encountered a Jewish community to hear of the “sheva mitzvot” per se - is still obligated in them and is without excuse.
• The negative commands are not only very important, they are applicable to both Jews and gentiles, and he doesn't admit this although it is obvious from natural law and philosophy. Furthermore, the negative commands are what are listed in the second table of the decalogue, and he has no right to dismiss or depreciate them. They can be extremely empowering for people who've been exploited by sinners, to know that God disapproves and will judge this, and they can be liberating for sinners who have spent years stuck in lives of sin or crime, and they are the best ethical starting point for cultivating the positive virtue that is opposed to the prohibition. This is not “nothing” or “spiritually useless”, as Mr. Griffin slanderously misreports.
• The assertion that Noahide life is “unfulfilling” is an unsound inductive inference. This may have been the unfortunate case for himself or some of his friends, but it is unfair to assume that this is common, and even more unjust to project this as necessary in the experience of all Noahides, whom he has not met and with whose learning and life experience he is unacquainted. If he or his acquaintances experienced “unfulfillment” as a Noahide, that may have been due to their own ignorance or moral error, or to the absence of teaching from orthodox Jewish communities local to him, or to both of these deficiences, but is not necessarily the case nor even generally by accident. My own spiritual life presents a counterexample, and there are many others to disprove his fallacious generalization, which was apparently made on the basis of pride and prejudicial self-promotion, rather than on sound reasoning and scriptural witness, both of which Mr. Griffin is already demonstrated to lack.

From the books preface: In the last few years, a movement has developed among certain Jewish sects in which they encourage non-Jews to become Noahides while discouraging them from formal conversion. The movement suggests that it has its roots in antiquity and its mission founded from Mt. Sinai. However, this is not the case. Nevertheless, the Noahide movement has continued to gain popularity and has been successful at deceiving a great many disillusioned gentiles into entering a life that is, to say the least, less than fulfilling. Even worse, entirely spiritually useless. In this work, Rabbi Mordecai Griffin seeks to expose the falsehood of the Noahide movement and encourage the reader to seek the true Divine path intended for the non-Jews of the world which is conversion.

After hearing Rav Weisman's preliminary research of this man, and then doing my own, I observe that he is apparently a convert to Judaism, who has not fully learned halacha or proper character traits before presuming to teach Torah, and he seems to have started a novel religious cult. His example of interpretive and moral error makes me grateful that I didn't give into the temptation to follow that path myself. Although this was apparently common in antiquity, it's rare to find an actual example in our day and age. So this specimen affords an unique opportunity to analyze the phenomenon of Judaizing denounced by the apostle Paul, and also by the sages of the Talmud.

The book of Galatians was written precisely to refute Judaizers like him, and to discourage other God-fearing gentiles from believing the false teaching that conversion to Judaism is necessary for salvation or for authentic faith. It is important that in interpreting Paul's epistle, and in refuting Mr. Griffin today, we do not blame Jews or Judaism for the bad example of these misguided teachers and cult leaders, some of whom may end up exploiting their followers.

I neither endorse nor denounce Paul's epistle in its entirety, but reference him for these two reasons: 1) to demonstrate that Christianity has profoundly mis-interpreted Paul as an attack on Judaism, although he merely attacks the (mostly) gentile religious cultists, and instead defends Judaism (even non-messianic Judaism) from those among his own followers who presumed to “boast against the root”. 2) Even if Paul's reproofs are found to be excessively judgemental or hyperbolic or lacking the appropriate context, nevertheless some reproof or correction along the lines given by him, can and should be given to Judaizers like Mr. Griffin who misunderstand or misappropriate Torah for the sake of self-promotion.

Collins Dictionary "Place Names in the Bible" reports that Judaea and Samaria were “divisions of ancient Palestine”. While this is accurate after 135 C.E., it is false and prejudicial to anachronistically project this backward on a list of “Biblical place names”, especially while ommitting the most salient fact - that Judaea and Samaria were “divisions of ancient Israel”, according to unanimous opinion of all the authors of the new testament books. https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/NT_Geography.htm is similarly dishonest, in imposing the anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism of Christianity, backward onto the New Testment, when the New Testament does not support those doctrines and in many ways explicitly refutes them. This same pattern is found throughout christian and post-christian reference books on “the Holy Land”. List of biblical places includes Palestine, even though that toponym does not occur in the bible, but anachronistically refers to the same landmass as “Israel”

* America was founded on Christian anti-zionism. “A City on a Hill cannot be hidden.” * Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum speaks at 2024 RNC. We endorse in part, and we condemn in part. We are “grateful”, not proud, that God formed us according to his will, and Mr. Kestenbaum should be too. “Humility comes before honor, but pride comes before a fall”. Not all Jewish values are American, and not all American values are Jewish.

Venezuela's Maduro accuses international zionism for protests after disputed election. Jean-luc Melenchthon of La France Insoumise fails to denounce Maduro.