The Judenrat and Kapos are still with us.

When one asks a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps what was their most horrible experience, many will say it was the Jewish overseers: the Judenrat, and the Kapos, - Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. The evil of the Nazis is comprehensible for evil is ever present in their world, but the Jews who cooperated in the genocide of their own people is beyond imagination. The Judenrat and Kapos are still with us.

According to the great Soviet dissident Nathan Sharansky we can recognize Jew-hatred when manifested against Israel by the 3 Ds: demonization, double standards and delegitimization. By this definition J Street is loudly and proudly anti Semitic. Jewish Voices for Peace has gone so far Progressive that they honored Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, an IslamoNazi Jew killer who is about to be deported by the United States.  The Democrat Party has gone full and poisonously “Progressive anti-Israel” by aligning itself with J-Street as demonstrated by Nancy Pelosi’s speech at the most recent AIPAC policy conference when she read the manifesto for a two-state solution written by J-Street staffers. The crowd of 18,000 pro-Israel supporters was for the most part unusually quiet. No clapping, no standing ovation.

American Jewish Progressives worship at the altar of the liberal state. Their religion is not Torah Judaism but Progressive values. They identify with the power of progressive liberal government so closely that they stifle conservative dissent within their houses of worship, much like the Kapos of WW2. In the mind of Jewish progressives, they would rather do outreach to radical Islamic Imams than reach out to their conservative brothers.

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Politics and public policy has no place in modern Judaism, and I predict that this desire to worship at the alter of Progressive liberal values will continue to imprison those who only want spiritual Judaism, not a political manifesto.

The Reform Jewish Movement: "Liberalism-as-Judaism"

Why does a 3^rd generation Temple Israel Reform Jew take an associate membership at an Orthodox synagogue? To get his spirituality back.
There is a school of thought within the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) that Reform Judaism is nothing more (or less) than the American liberal political agenda, including the advocacy - in the name of Judaism and "Prophetic Ethics" - of liberal fashionable political ideas. The beginnings of this were in the New Deal era, when American Jewish support for Franklin D. Roosevelt was nearly unanimous. It continued after World War II.
 The "Liberalism as Judaism" School argued that all of Judaism and Jewish tradition could be boiled down into a search for civil "justice" and secular "freedom". Since it was axiomatic, in the eyes of Jewish liberals, that the liberal political agenda was synonymous with justice, freedom, and righteousness and that the opponents of liberalism were evil and unjust; "Judaism" itself could be conscripted in the cause of promoting liberal partisanship.

Jewish liberalism was never based upon any serious study of social science methodologies and tools of analysis, but rather upon self-righteousness, compassionate posturing, and the appealing to smug moral high-mindedness. Jewish community leaders and liberal Rabbis have no training whatsoever in policy analysis, economics, statistics or accounting. Their liberalism is based on making themselves feel righteous and accepted, not on resolving real-world problems.

This “liberalism equals Reform Judaism” has had a profound effect on the small but growing minority of politically conservative members of at Temple Israel and across the URJ. Going to Friday night services to hear sermons FOR gun control or AGAINST President Trump’s proposed immigration policy may play well to the majority, but it alienates those who are politically conservative realists. Lord Acton said it best - “The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.” Well, the conservatives are feeling a bit abused by the tyranny of the liberal majority. Maybe instead of Temple Israel only “reaching out” to the Muslim and Christian communities it should consider reaching out to it’s conservative membership. A house of worship should be a haven for spirituality. It should not be an invasion of one’s sensibilities.

The hypocrisy of the “Liberal Reform Movement” is also a bit hard to swallow. The “Reform Left” has no problem criticizing POTUS Trump for a sexist comment he made 10 years earlier (on a bus that was secretly recorded), yet public statements in a YouTube speech by a Yale educated Muslim Professor (Yasir Qadhi) invited to speak at Memphis’s Temple Israel states that “Jews and Christians are filthy and that their lives and property can be taken in jihad by the Muslims ” – and it is overlooked as a youthful indiscretion.

I am not quitting Temple Israel. I am a 3^rd generation member, the next two generations of Fargotstein’s are members there, generations of my family are buried there, and I will be buried there. I will, however, continue to stand up for Temple to become the inclusive, spiritual political free zone that it needs to be in order to return to it’s mission of Jewish spirituality, rather than the religion of liberalism.

Jack and June Fargotstein

This may or may not be news to you but it is news to me. I never really knew why Jack Fargotstein left Memphis and what happened to him and June or his family after they moved to San Diego, Ca.  Donna Field said he told his family that he “didn’t get along” with his siblings. I will fill in a few blanks and tell you what I know. I expect that I will be able to add to this significantly after making more inquires….

Jack was the oldest of all of Sam and Sally Fargotstein’s 4 kids. Evidently, there was a family business dispute and he up and left and went down to New Orleans and opened up a successful Watch Parts and Jewelry Supply business. Evidently he had an opportunity to sell his company and cash out to take an early retirement and moved to San Diego, California. According to Donna Field, his former daughter-in-law, he was pompous. June was very nice and they had many friends and a good social life in San Diego. He was rather wealthy since they only had 2 kids and I am assuming that he invested well.

Jack and June had 2 children:

Stephen Samuel Fargotstein: Born 9/4/40 – died 3/21/12

Had a child with Donna Kornfield Fargotstein named Mark Edward (Fargotstein)

Stephen shortened his name to Fargo at some point. He had a difficult life; he was married at least 5 times. He spent time in prison in 1985 for insurance fraud and possibly other crimes. I will look in to it. He disappeared for years.  He had one child with Donna (Kornfield) Fargotstein. According to Donna, Stephen had moved to Costa Rica – possibly to avoid incarceration in the USA…at the time it was a haven for U.S. citizens fleeing persecution. Sadly, I am told that Stephen died in Costa Rica and Mark, their son, hadn’t heard from him in years and had no idea that he was even in Costa Rica. He found out about his father’s death via a Costa Rican government letter. Stephen’s ex-wife (Mark’s mother) now goes by the name of “Donna Field” and she lives in Denver, Co. (303-341-8050  / donnanmusic@yahoo.com). Evidently she is remarried and happy. They had one son, Mark Edward Fargotstein – who now goes by the name Mark Edward, but legally it is still Mark Edward Fargotstein.

Mark Edward (Fargotstein)

41 years old

Had one son, Aaron Xavier Edwards (born 9/5/97 – 18yrs old) who has Cerebral Palsy and lives in Loveland, CO., near his grandmother Donna Field (72 - in Denver).

Jill Ellen (Fargotstein) Taylor

Born 2/11/1943– Not sure if she is still living. According to Donna Field, Jill Fargotstein was very beautiful woman who was a model in England and evidently she had a car wreck that ended her modeling career.  Evidently, since Stephen died first, leaving Jill and only child, she inherited a substantial estate from June Fargotstein and the story is that she had a drug problem and went through the money. Neither Donna nor Mark has heard from Jill in years, as there is a lot of bad blood.  With that said, somewhere along the way Jill married someone named Taylor and they had a child named Lila Taylor who lives in Santa Cruz, Ca.

Democrat's attempt to de-legitimize the Trump Presidency will only strengthen him.

The Democratic Party’s resistance to acknowledge President Elect Trump’s legitimacy AND their gearing up to “resist “anything coming from the Trump White House is totally counterproductive. The celebrity boycott of his big inauguration party was catnip to Trump, which took to twitter to crow that the stars of his inauguration were the “People,” not liberal elites and Hollywood icons that have lost touch with ordinary Americans.

The Democrat’s “resistance” strategy is not only silly, it is also counterproductive. The “party poopers” are solidifying the image of liberals in the popular imagination as sore losers (a label that we thought would apply only to Trump prior to his win) willing to spoil what is, in effect, a celebration of American Democracy (which they evidently don’t respect). And just as the “birthers” wound up helping Obama by presenting his Republican opponents as extremists, the anti-Trump resistance is doing the same thing for the 45th president. The Democrats look like sore losers, obstructionists, and un-American.

If the Democrats and the liberal media want to continue this “resistance” for the next two years, they will probably find themselves further on the outside of American politic mainstream after the 2018 elections. As for our Congressman Cohen’s open disdain for the Trump presidency, I doubt this district will benefit from his childish behavior.

The U.N. has proven itself to be a failed Institution.

No one on earth likes what has happened to Syria. With 500,000+ dead and millions displaced, a reassessment of the U.N., as an institution must take place. Not all conflicts have a political/diplomatic solution.

What happens in Syria going forward no one knows, but one thing we do know: Even though Russia’s economy and military are a fraction of America’s, Russia’s willingness to use their assets to intervene in world conflicts has raised their stature among their allies and raised the fear factor among their enemies.

When the history books are written about the Syrian conflict, I can only imagine how it will treat President Obama. His half-hearted meddling in the conflict…his threats of political and military action that never materialized, only served to pro-long the war and gave the Assad regime the “go ahead” to use chlorine barrel bombs after the Obama “red-line” disappeared.

Whether you like it or not, the only thing that stopped this festering 6 year war was the intervention of the Russians with their willingness to backup their ally, Syria, with unwavering military support in order to defeat their enemy and force a truce on Russian terms.

The shame on the U.N. (and the Obama administration) is that this war never should have happened. The very least the U.N. could have done is created “safe zones” to protect civilians and prevent the displacement of millions of Syrians from their homeland. What did the U.N. focus on while Syria burned? It continued its obsession against Israel - the only true beacon of peace, stability and democracy in the region – aided by the Obama administration. 

I hope that the Trump administration forces the U.N. reform itself (if that is possible), because as it stands now, it is a forum for banana republics and dictators to make a mockery of the very high minded concepts on which the U.N. was founded. As for Obama gnaging up with the rest of the U.N. on Israel: If the USA didn't have a seat on the Security Council - which gives it blanket amnesty with it's veto - the U.N. would be obsessed with ganging up on America like it does on Israel.