Friday, September 07, 2007
My contention is that cults proliferate because people who have unusual needs have to go to places that provide supports for them that they can’t find in the usual and standard religious groups and civic centers. I am a primary example of this.
In my case, my family was dysfunctional when it came to religion. Only my nephew seems to have been able to manage his life despite all the problems he was born into. He once complained to me, “My life is all screwed up and I can’t unscrew it.” Nevertheless he managed and is now in medical school at Yeshiva University.
My life definitely took some pretty strange turns. In Christianity they have a saying, “God has a plan for your life!” I once told someone, “Yeah, and it probably involves a hammer and nails!” I have been in dangerous situations quite a few times and survived them.
Jack Hickman’s (“Abba Yaakov Abensur”) cult, Shoresh Yishai was one of the most precarious situations I ever got myself into. Like I said elsewhere, it all started off so innocently. We had a potluck dinner. We chowed down together and shared fellowship with each other. It was a really high time for bonding. What we didn’t know was that Hickman was an alarmist who thought that the “End Times” were coming and he felt a need to turn us into an Apocalyptic cult.
The New Testament says, “All powers and principalities are authorized by Christ Jesus” or words to that effect. To broaden the scope of this we can say that God authorizes all the organizations that exist in a given area and time.
I have a lot of questions for example as to where the US government has been the whole time I was abused by a lot of people including my father, the derelicts I went to school with in LI and the Chasidim when I had problems with them. It seems that all of them were able to dance on my grave and nothing was done about it. But when I react and fight back, then all of a sudden I get mail from Jewish organizations that never even knew I existed until I became anti-Zionist because of the problems I had in Israel over the years.
As a person who always wanted to be involved in Zionism as a youth, I was steered away from it by my father and his associates in his fraternal organization the American Veterans of Israel. They seemed to think, as did Betar, the JDL and the JDO that I didn’t have what it took to be part of them.
But when I became a published author and relayed my consternation about the state of affairs in my life on this site and on Amazon and elsewhere, then I became an issue. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said, “The biggest chutzpah is to think that you’re nothing and you have no connections to anything, because you never know who you are connected to.”
Year ago, I felt that I wouldn’t even live to 40 years of age and I told this to my mother. She really was taken aback. But luckily, the government in this country has a lot of support for disabled, developmentally disabled and mentally ill people.
Shea Hecht and Alex Carlebach used to sing Shlomo Carlebach songs to me until 1 AM or later to extricate me from Ben Yishai. They couldn’t get me out because I had nothing to go to. I would not have lasted 5 minutes in Crown Heights back in ’76 and I knew it. I also had issues with Chabad’s doctrines and I instinctively knew that something was nutty about them too. Oh, how right I was. They were crazier (and bigger) than Hickman.

Quote
richardmgreen
Friday, September 07, 2007
My contention is that cults proliferate because people who have unusual needs have to go to places that provide supports for them that they can’t find in the usual and standard religious groups and civic centers. I am a primary example of this.
In my case, my family was dysfunctional when it came to religion. Only my nephew seems to have been able to manage his life despite all the problems he was born into. He once complained to me, “My life is all screwed up and I can’t unscrew it.” Nevertheless he managed and is now in medical school at Yeshiva University.
My life definitely took some pretty strange turns. In Christianity they have a saying, “God has a plan for your life!” I once told someone, “Yeah, and it probably involves a hammer and nails!” I have been in dangerous situations quite a few times and survived them.
Jack Hickman’s (“Abba Yaakov Abensur”) cult, Shoresh Yishai was one of the most precarious situations I ever got myself into. Like I said elsewhere, it all started off so innocently. We had a potluck dinner. We chowed down together and shared fellowship with each other. It was a really high time for bonding. What we didn’t know was that Hickman was an alarmist who thought that the “End Times” were coming and he felt a need to turn us into an Apocalyptic cult.
The New Testament says, “All powers and principalities are authorized by Christ Jesus” or words to that effect. To broaden the scope of this we can say that God authorizes all the organizations that exist in a given area and time.
I have a lot of questions for example as to where the US government has been the whole time I was abused by a lot of people including my father, the derelicts I went to school with in LI and the Chasidim when I had problems with them. It seems that all of them were able to dance on my grave and nothing was done about it. But when I react and fight back, then all of a sudden I get mail from Jewish organizations that never even knew I existed until I became anti-Zionist because of the problems I had in Israel over the years.
As a person who always wanted to be involved in Zionism as a youth, I was steered away from it by my father and his associates in his fraternal organization the American Veterans of Israel. They seemed to think, as did Betar, the JDL and the JDO that I didn’t have what it took to be part of them.
But when I became a published author and relayed my consternation about the state of affairs in my life on this site and on Amazon and elsewhere, then I became an issue. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said, “The biggest chutzpah is to think that you’re nothing and you have no connections to anything, because you never know who you are connected to.”
Year ago, I felt that I wouldn’t even live to 40 years of age and I told this to my mother. She really was taken aback. But luckily, the government in this country has a lot of support for disabled, developmentally disabled and mentally ill people.
Shea Hecht and Alex Carlebach used to sing Shlomo Carlebach songs to me until 1 AM or later to extricate me from Ben Yishai. They couldn’t get me out because I had nothing to go to. I would not have lasted 5 minutes in Crown Heights back in ’76 and I knew it. I also had issues with Chabad’s doctrines and I instinctively knew that something was nutty about them too. Oh, how right I was. They were crazier (and bigger) than Hickman.

What is your point? Are you looking for sympathy? Are you looking for support? Are you looking to expose certain groups and people as frauds?

Please, clarify your intentions.

Quote
Vodnik

Quote
richardmgreen
Friday, September 07, 2007
My contention is that cults proliferate because people who have unusual needs have to go to places that provide supports for them that they can’t find in the usual and standard religious groups and civic centers. I am a primary example of this.
In my case, my family was dysfunctional when it came to religion. Only my nephew seems to have been able to manage his life despite all the problems he was born into. He once complained to me, “My life is all screwed up and I can’t unscrew it.” Nevertheless he managed and is now in medical school at Yeshiva University.
My life definitely took some pretty strange turns. In Christianity they have a saying, “God has a plan for your life!” I once told someone, “Yeah, and it probably involves a hammer and nails!” I have been in dangerous situations quite a few times and survived them.
Jack Hickman’s (“Abba Yaakov Abensur”) cult, Shoresh Yishai was one of the most precarious situations I ever got myself into. Like I said elsewhere, it all started off so innocently. We had a potluck dinner. We chowed down together and shared fellowship with each other. It was a really high time for bonding. What we didn’t know was that Hickman was an alarmist who thought that the “End Times” were coming and he felt a need to turn us into an Apocalyptic cult.
The New Testament says, “All powers and principalities are authorized by Christ Jesus” or words to that effect. To broaden the scope of this we can say that God authorizes all the organizations that exist in a given area and time.
I have a lot of questions for example as to where the US government has been the whole time I was abused by a lot of people including my father, the derelicts I went to school with in LI and the Chasidim when I had problems with them. It seems that all of them were able to dance on my grave and nothing was done about it. But when I react and fight back, then all of a sudden I get mail from Jewish organizations that never even knew I existed until I became anti-Zionist because of the problems I had in Israel over the years.
As a person who always wanted to be involved in Zionism as a youth, I was steered away from it by my father and his associates in his fraternal organization the American Veterans of Israel. They seemed to think, as did Betar, the JDL and the JDO that I didn’t have what it took to be part of them.
But when I became a published author and relayed my consternation about the state of affairs in my life on this site and on Amazon and elsewhere, then I became an issue. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said, “The biggest chutzpah is to think that you’re nothing and you have no connections to anything, because you never know who you are connected to.”
Year ago, I felt that I wouldn’t even live to 40 years of age and I told this to my mother. She really was taken aback. But luckily, the government in this country has a lot of support for disabled, developmentally disabled and mentally ill people.
Shea Hecht and Alex Carlebach used to sing Shlomo Carlebach songs to me until 1 AM or later to extricate me from Ben Yishai. They couldn’t get me out because I had nothing to go to. I would not have lasted 5 minutes in Crown Heights back in ’76 and I knew it. I also had issues with Chabad’s doctrines and I instinctively knew that something was nutty about them too. Oh, how right I was. They were crazier (and bigger) than Hickman.

What is your point? Are you looking for sympathy? Are you looking for support? Are you looking to expose certain groups and people as frauds?

Please, clarify your intentions.

I have well over 500 postings on this site. You might want to view some of them. As far as my intentions, I provide people with support who have had negative experiences in various religious settings like the Baal Teshuva Movement and also in Christian groups that lose their focus. My take on Shoresh Yishai was that it became a cult when the message was diverted from Jesus to Jack Hickman.