Two Observations To Close Out the Night

• I will never read "The Jewish Daily Forward" again. They belong right with "Tablet Magazine" among the intolerancia of the Jewish community, especially since that automatically deleted a comment just because I quoted Dr. Ya'akov S. Ariel, who said to the "Washington Jewish Week" 

“I see Messianic Jews as a legitimate group. It’s an outcome of the engagement of evangelical Christians with Jews. This is a new way for Jews who have accepted Christianity to maintain their ties with Judaism. And in the last 30 years it has become much more Jewish.” 

(The "Washington Jewish Week" is also among the intolerancia. Edith Brown was no "victim". She simply could've taken the pamphlet and read it or trashed it.)

To quote someone to make the point that some mainstream Jews actually do consider Messianic Jews as Jews is not proselytizing, much less sharing the Messianic faith (asked or unasked). I also quoted Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, by the way, to make that point.

• To take a rabbi like Rabbi David Wolpe (who questioned the historicity of the Exodus, and during—of all times—Pesach) seriously is laughable, if one wants to talk about something that is actually laughable. Hediyotot like Drs. Amy-Jill Levine and Yaakov S. Ariel are more credible than rabbonim like Rabbi Wolpe will ever be.

וזה, הוא כל ללילה הזה. לילה טוב.

How A Skewed Taglit-Birthright Study Endangers Both the Jewish Community At Large And Will Taglit-Birthright's Reputation

I see plenty of issues with this study:

1) "Saxe and research associates Michelle Shain and Shahar Hecht collected data from August 6-11 via an online questionnaire, which included versions of the Pew survey questions. It was sent to eligible US Birthright Israel-Taglit candidates who had applied for a trip between summer 2011 and winter 2013/14."

There is no real "control" group. There are only Birthright applicants.

2) "Encouraged through an an opportunity to win one of two $100 Amazon.com gift cards, 1,756 young Jewish adults filled out the survey. The respondents included 1,122 who actually did go to Israel on a Birthright trip, and 634 nonparticipants."

The one group that there was, was pooled and divided unevenly. There should've been a total of either:

1.  878 Birthright travelers and 878 non travelers (still 1,756 people total, and and bringing in a control subgroup of 878 people—because, again, there was no control group; and a control group within a group does not count as a separate control group), or 
2. 1,122 travelers and 1,122 non travelers (keeping the 1,122 travelers who filled out the survey and bringing in a control subgroup). 

Either way, the surveyed ("treatment")-to-control group ratio is completely absent, let alone lacking.

3) "For the study, the Birthright applicants’ results were compared to a recent Pew survey and a Gallup poll, both of which were completed at the end of July."

The same problem regarding the subject pool and control groups is here, and data collection is also a problem here. Data from June 21, 2011-December 21, 2013 is older and more plentiful than data from July 2014, for example. Thus, there is no adequate amount of recency and amount of data to compare. In other words, the study would have been less skewed if both sets of data were from June 21, 2011-December 21, 2013; June 21, 2011-July 31, 2014; or July 31, 2014.


4) "Saxe feels the young Jews polled are a representative cross-section of young American Jews for several reasons. Primarily, bluntly, “because Birthright is free — and fun,” said Saxe, meaning the trip doesn’t only draw those who think it’s worth spending money on  a trip to Israel."

Any "representative cross-section of young American Jews" would include Messianic Jews (who are banned from applying to [and even specifically targeted for persecution by] Taglit) and others who Taglit bans .

In fact, the specific wording is in part:

"Eligible individuals are those who identify as Jewish and are recognized as such by their local community or by one of the recognized denominations of Judaism. Applicants must also have at least one Jewish birth parent, or have completed Jewish conversion through a recognized Jewish denomination. 

"*Those applying for trips leaving from the Former Soviet Union are eligible if they have at least one Jewish birth grandparent. The accuracy of information pertaining to the heritage of an applicant for a trip leaving from the Former Soviet Union is also verified by a local Consul before an applicant is considered eligible."

This on an international level alone would single out Karaites (who Rabbinate Judaism often slanders) and many other Jews, including Lemba Jews (who go by Patrilineal Descent and are mostly Messianic— despite that most sources try to separate them from the Jewish community at large because they "are Christian" [as if Christianity is not Jewish], etc..). Therefore, this certainly would not allow for just a "representative cross-section of young American Jews".

5) "Saxe said his team has analyzed the backgrounds of those who responded and the profiling is in context with last year’s massive Pew survey study of American Jews. The years of Jewish education, day school all look just about the same, he said, noting one slight difference — Birthright draws a lower proportion of children from intermarriages."

This skews the study as well. The "cross-section" are mostly Rabbinically-Jewish Rabbinical Jews (with a Rabbincally-Jewish Rabbincal Jew being a Jew who has at least one Matrilineally-Jewish parent "[and/]or have completed Jewish conversion through a recognized Jewish denomination".

([Do not kid yourself; Taglit would not look twice at Jews whose family was raised outside of a Rabbinate shul for two or more generations. In other words, for instance, Isaac Kaganowicz would not be considered a Rabbincally-Jewish Rabbincal Jew if both of his parents were Atheistically-raised Jews who were raising Issac in the same way that their parents raised them.)

"Since Taglit was founded in December 1999, annually some 20-25% of candidates have had no prior involvement in Jewish life, said Saxe. “The great piece of Taglit is that it levels the playing field,” said Saxe."

They do go to shul, though. In fact, I had a peer at UMBC who is an Atheist and whose family goes to a Reform shul. So, the "20-25% of candidates" have either parents and/or grandparents who at least go to shul.

6) "Pew doesn’t consider many of the people who went on Taglit to be Jewish because they don’t call themselves Jewish by religion, rather by parentage. “They might not count themselves as Jews until they go on Birthright,” added Saxe."

The Pew data also skews the study.

In other words, the Taglit study (which is called a "Brandeis University" study) is flawed and both dangerous to the Jewish community at large (who, for example, loses numbers according to Taglit-Pew-Saxe standards) and Taglit Birthright itself (and Taglit Birthright has had trouble in the past).

Wikipedia: Laughable In Smaller Matters If Not Dangerous In Larger Matters

Why I'm glad that I didn't attempt make a new account at dishonest, revisionist Wikipedia (who, e.g., considers the Nazis [National Socialist German Worker's Party] "Far Right") when I made the article on the Andrulewicz Family:

"This submission's references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability—see the general guideline on notability and the golden rule. Please improve the submission's referencing, so that the information is verifiable, and there is clear evidence of why the subject is notable and worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.
What you can do: Add citations (see Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners) to secondary reliable sources that are entirely independent of the subject."

Their hypocrisy and revisionism is stunning. Firstly, they talk about "references do not adequately evidence the subject's notability"--when the specifically-listed family members are clearly notable, and with two of the noted members have Wikipedia pages. Secondly, they talk about "reliable sources that are entirely independent of the subject". That would be laughable were Wikipedia not so hypocritical. Ancestry.com and Findagrave (despite their bad points) are considerable "reliable" (and FindAGrave is referenced on Teddy Andrulewicz's page), and JewishGen Genealogy is also considered (and is) reliable and without controversy. So is Yad Vashem (who accepted a submission for and lists Bronislawa Andrulewiczowna Pozniakowa, Teddy's cousin and part of the family, as clearly a victim of the Shoah--she did die in Orlinek in 1944, and Anusim as well as Openly-Jewish Jews were affected by the Shoah.).

This is the same organization who allows the Nazis to be called "Far Right" without reliable, credible, non-revisionist sources; yet they can't trust Ancestry.com (who is working on their credibly issues), FindAGrave (despite what an evil it is), JewishGen, and Yad Vashem, and records therefrom--again, would be laughable if not so hypocritical (and in the cases of the Nazis being considered "Far Right", absolutely dangerous).

By the way, I got banned for setting the record straight on the Far-Left Nazis, and giving Jews such as Eugen Kogon (Kohon) and Sergei Levitsky (Lvitsky) a chance to have their Jewishness noted, for example. That tells you what Wikipedia (which one has to take with a grain of salt at best, and be highly skeptical toward at worst) thinks of history that doesn't fit their mold, and of Jews who don't fit their mold, by the way.