I always used to watch horror and sci-fi movies. So what does this have to do with an Anticult site? Basically, a lot actually. Keep reading this posting.
A friend of mine gave me the movie; I was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon. It was Landon’s first movie role.
In the movie, a custodian for a high school who is from the Carpathian Mountains explains the werewolf legend. And the Chasidic movement started there because that is where Israel Baal Shem Tov was from in Okupy, Europe.
All kinds of superstitions and legends abounded in that region. Vampires, werewolves, witches and demons were reputed to lurk in the wilds and in heavily wooded areas where people didn’t know what was in the forests, their imaginations ran wild and they concocted all these old wives tales.
Romania and Transylvania were also in areas near by. And look at all the spiritualists; psychics and mediums, not to mention the Dracula legend based on Count Vlad the Impaler. Hitler killed the gypsies before he even killed the Jews.
The Baal Shem Tov drew heavily from the Kabbalah, which is steeped in unscientific doctrine. (The golem was the prototype for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and there are various demons like the dybbuk, incubus and succubus) Also, when the Jews were persecuted, often times they retreated into the fantasy world of studying these mystical works and doing such made them feel better. It was sort of like my reading comic books as a child.
Some if the people I know from the churches I attend maintain that they believe that they cast out demons and some of them were against my viewing the Charmed TV show even though those witches were so-called white witches or “good witches.”
The Baal Shem Tov asserted that the messianic redemption would happen when his teachings spread to the whole earth. And that is most certainly one of the reasons why the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson set up all his infrastructures all over the globe.
Years ago, I took philosophy at Suffolk County Community College and my professor made me rate a fellow student’s paper. The student was also Jewish and we discussed the so-called geulah or redemption. He told me “It isn’t well thought out.”
Well, when Jack “Abba Yaakov Abensur” Hickman of Shoresh Yashi talked about the coming of the mashiach, he exclaimed, “Then just as the last Jew dies, mashiach will come!” He said it with fire in his belly and I remember it years later.
You also have to note (I put this on the site many years ago, but it’s worth repeating) that the Talmud maintains that the world will only exist for 6 thousand years. After that who knows. What’s the current Jewish year on the calendar? I think it’s around 576X. And some people can analyze this in terms of being an apocalyptic cult.
But there is also a quote that says, “Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end because if the time elapses and the messiah doesn’t arrive, they lose their faith.”
This whole idea needs to be analyzed. Schneerson’s Global Noahide Campaign is the stuff that anti-Semites feed off of. They point to the Protocols of the learned Elders of Zion that infamous forged document that has plagued the Jewish community for years. Even Henry Ford, an anti-Semite who repented said it was forged.
According to Chabad The Sheva Mitzvas (“7 Commandments”) B’nei Noach (“applicable to Noah who survived the flood” and all humanity since everyone on Earth is descended from him) really have to be expanded into 66 commandments. Can you see what we are up against here?
Now, I don’t think that the Reform or Conservative Jewish movements are trying to do something crazy, but as I have posed on this site before, just what would these Orthodox Jews do to the rest of us, if they had the power to do just anything they want to do? And I am not stopping with how they would treat the rest of the Jews but also the whole world if they had carte blanche to do just whatever they really want to do to everyone.
I know that my grandmother and I drove my father crazy over his “lack of religiosity.” Luckily, my father was economically viable so he didn’t have to live with her and rely on her for anything.
Do you know how lucky my Jewish people are to be alive at all? We have been attacked and persecuted for millennia. We are survivors.
It appears to me that despite the problems we have been up against (except for the pogroms, blood libels, Inquisition and Holocaust) we have fared much better as a people living in dispersion than we would if we were not in all the foreign countries. Simply put, we are doing better in the hands of the non-Jews than the non-Jews would do in the hands of the orthodoxy, especially the haredi or ultra orthodox Jews if they could do just whatever they please.
When I went to Yeshivat D’var Yerushalayim 30 years ago this month, the Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Baruch Horovitz once gave a speech and said “We need to tear down all the public schools and put up yeshivas instead!”
And how much hi-tech knowledge is taught in an haredi yeshiva? They usually don’t get into higher mathematics. Forget about computers and our modern age of advanced appliances let alone weaponry.
One rabbi complained in a shiur (“class”) he gave at D’var that Bar Ilan University was not good enough. Bar Ilan is Modern Orthodox and they are sophisticated.
Horovitz forgot that the building he was in was originally used by a yeshiva that was massacred by the Arabs. It was the (“Hebron”) Chevron yeshiva and they were an haredi institution.
You have to realize that some haredi groups (and the lunatic fringe, Neturi Karta, “Guardians of the City”) really liked living under Arab rule. They thought it was “more Jewish and holier” when everyone was forced to live according to the rules of the ultra-orthodox rabbinical establishment.
One of the complaints leveled against the modern State of Israel is that before the State, there were no Jewish criminals and no Jewish prostitutes. I am not sure if that is actually correct. I would have to research it.
Some years ago, I wrote an email that was published in a local Jewish NJ paper and I said that there are some Orthodox Jews who don’t believe that anyone who isn’t Orthodox is Jewish. I was called an anti-Semite and the person who called me that said, “We even do outreach to people like you.” I told her, I didn’t want her “outreach.”
I already let the ultras run my life several times and look at the poor results.
One Israeli politician, Yitzchak Peretz (he had various portfolio positions in the Israeli government) once said, “It is the first time in 2 thousand years that a Jew can be in Israel and live like a goy (“non-Jew”).” They have no respect for anyone who isn’t ultra-Orthodox, let alone isn’t Jewish.
Years ago, I corresponded with Israeli Hillel on their Guest Book. I related some information about my weightlifting etc. (not to mention my having been fed up with the Baal Teshuva Movement). I used to be capable of doing about 400 lbs in the bench press and I did 370 in May of ’92 at the YMHA in Highland Park, NJ.
One Orthodox Jew accused me of being all pumped up on steroids and because I was outspoken about my views as per these so called “outreach workers.” So I replied that I also had a Summa Cum Laude at Long Island U and I asked him how I did that, “Did I use gingko biloba?” was my reply. I was called, “Nothing but goyim trash!” Is this the way these people view non-Jews? I hope not.

According to some legends Adam (the first man's) first wife was Lillth. She demanded equality with Adam and was cast out from the Garden of Eden. She became a demon.
There was a legend in Mesopotamia that there was a female demon called Lillutu. All of this was absorbed into the fictional accounts in various extra-biblical works of the Jewish people.