Yechi Creedmoor Le'oilam Voed! - my first and only serious rant on this blog

BS"D

I know that I have said many times that I am going to stop because I feel I have run out of material, but I have made a final decision to keep Creedmoor updated as best I can for the foreseeable future.

First of all, I would like to thank my fans, both those who admit to it and the many anonymous visitors from around the world for your support.

However, my reason for remaining is not to please fans; it is because I feel that Creedmoor, as a satire of some very real problems in the community as well as a source for a few good laughs, fulfills a very real need.

On the one hand, the problems exaggerated and satirized in Creedmoor do exist. 

There most certainly is abuse of entitlement programs in our communities, and it is time that this stops especially with the present political and economic situation in the US. And there are, unfortunately, a small but loud and egregious minority of so called haimishe Yidden who think that violence and extreme actions are the proper way to respond to those who fall victim to the influence of modern society on our Torah way of life. 

But these people represent nothing and no one. As long as Hashem made us with a yetzer horo, these real life Creedmoorers, the Ponzi schemers, the welfare fraudsters who present Medicaid cards and EBT cards while wearing Prada tichlach, the Elchanan Bouzaglos, Elior Chens and Shlomo Helbranses, Moshe Aryeh Friedman, Monsey and London NK etc will exist and cause very real chilul Hashem.

Nevertheless, they and their antics are not a reflection on anything and are therefore best dealt with not by airing our dirty laundry out for everyone to see (because no matter what, our dirty laundry is better than their newly dry cleaned Armani suits and Versace dresses), but rather via satire.

Of course I push the envelope a bit, but what I write is really no different from some of Reb Yom Tov Ehrlich's lyrics from his songs that dealt with the encroachment of modern society on our world and how some were falling fast, or from the Gelt song which gave me so many ideas when I got started.

And it is very different from the ramblings of those who use the depraved depradations of a few real life Creedmoorers to write blogs in which they try to tear apart frum society while living on its fringes and reaping its benefits.

Most importantly, it is an answer to the few loud fools, and that is what they are, who use the existence and antics of the Creedmoorers to justify their selfish and ill advised decision to leave Judaism altogether. 

Sadly, I know this from experience - I was a victim of someone who is lower than a Creedmoorer in that his criminality does very real damage to Yidden which cannot be ridiculed, and it caused me to leave for far, far too long. 

Still, I myself was a direct victim - it is not as if I was busy reading about Shereshevsky, or the convicted warehouse burners of the J clan, or the abuse cases (which I cannot and will not satirize), and used that as an excuse to leave - I left in great sadness and disappointment and regret every moment of it. 

I can understand when a real abuse victim leaves Yiddishkeit and I believe that the tznius patrol types should use every means necessary to punish real abusers, including what is probably incorrectly defined as mesira, rather than directing their violent nature toward those who are struggling with modesty or family purity issues. But for every real abuse victim, there are twenty fakes who decided to leave and then make up an instance of abuse which is either exaggerated or never happened altogether.

But the Orthoskeptics (a new online term for grube yunger/maydlach) and the fryouts are just looking to be holier than thou and using the Creedmoorers as ammunition for their own egos and tayvas. Sorry, but lowering of tznius standards and expectations will not put an end to Elchanan Bouzaglo and company, nor is it a proper protest against it. Returning to the lax norms and standards of the  1950's (or as some people mistakenly define it, becoming more "modern") and seeing secular education as a value in itself and a source of moral instruction as opposed to a bedieved means for parnosso is no protection against becoming a Shereshevsky. 

Never mind that the writings of the likes of Voltaire and Nietzche which are part and parcel of secular higher education, are no better than Mein Kampf as a moral compass. In fact, some of the worst Wall Street fraudsters have advanced degrees; for every clown of a haimishe arsonist who perhaps causes 20,000$ in damage to an insurance company, there are 20 attorneys, accountants and securities dealers who cause real damage by stealing the hard earned money of victims who look to them for professional advice. 

I will not be surprised when an insider trading scandal is uncovered among self defined left wing MO, who bend all halachas when it suits them, claiming so nobly that they are more machmir regarding bein adam lechaveiro when in reality they are machmir only on tefillin dating and on using their law degrees and MBA's to make sure their scams are so complicated they never get caught..until now when in the wake of the Madoff scam the "Feds" are closing in on many suspected financial fraudsters. 

As for bein adam lechaveiro - when they land in the hospital (even for childbirth) they are the first ones who rely on the bikur cholim of Satmar whom they ridicule and despise, and when they travel they have no problem eating at a Chabad House as they disturb the shaliach's Shabbos by arguing David Berger's (may he have a refuah shelema) positions with him. They are but one step above the chiloni in EY (who truly knows no better) who gets a wheelchair from Yad Sarah and puts a Dros Kol Dos sticker on the back. 

And the worst criminals in the Jewish world are not the goofball arsonists and entitlement program scammers in Otisville. They are secular. Bernard Madoff. Ivan Boesky. Dennis Levine.

Yes, our worst is better than their best. 

That is because even though we have a yetzer horo, when it strikes we KNOW we are wrong and we do NOT admire those who are exposed as having fallen victim to the yetzer. (with the exception of dirty money going to tzedoko and buying respect, but often it is not known that the money is dirty until the very end and unless it is known there are issues of LH and MSR involved that are so complex that a top posek must be consulted regarding this).

Of course we should also know to get help before the yetzer leads to a chilul Hashem but sometimes the yetzer is just too strong. One who does not have Torah, or who tries to bend Torah chas vesholom worries only about being caught by the secular authorities or exposed by the community in which he lives because deep down, he does not believe. That is the case be these violations bein adam lamakom or bein adam lechaveiro.

And nowhere does it say that being "frum" means you will not do any aveirois. 

In some cases it means that because someone is on a high level, the yetzer hits even harder. If keeping kashrus to the "naki mekol chashash timas haTsionis" level of the Admou"r were a vaccine against welfare fraud, arson, theft or even murder, there would be no dinei mamonois and dinei nefashois in the Torah!! (or, as the Admou"r puts it - Yiddishkeit is nit nor gefilte fish un bagels and lox - s'iz skila, sreyfe, hereg, chenek in karays!)

OK enough is enough! This is not even remotely a serious blog or a place to discuss real issues. And since it is not a democracy either, I will announce right now that any comments defending the fryouts or the Orthoskeptics and their fouled thinking will be relentlessly Creedmoored in posts of their own.

I hope to update Creedmoor at least every Sunday; I still need to finish the Kabbalah of Investing post and to collect all my parody song lyrics and hope to do so this coming Sunday. I also need to see which posts I left unfinished and write the part 2's or part 3's of those that are worth finishing and I may clean the blog of those that can't be finished for whatever reason. 

I will probably wait until I have access to a recording studio to do any serious audio but if anyone wants a teaser audio of "Rabbi Itzhak Arnona", the EY/Sefardi version of the Admou"r meCreedmoor please contact me via my profile. Of course it will cost you 750 food shtempelach and a square meter of spiked kokosh cake but hey, it will probably become a collector's item...

In the meantime, see the next post for the latest psak of the Admou"r, just in time to make your Shabbos shopping a bit cheaper if more complicated ... again I promise NO MORE serious posts or rants here!