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Failed Messiah
Alleged Mikva Voyeur Rabbi Falsely Claimed To Have Coined The Republican Catch Phrase “Family Values”
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Rabbi Barry Freundel, who was arrested last week for allegedly secretly videotaping naked women preparing to immerse in his community’s mikvah (ritual bath), claims he created the Republican Party’s catch phrase ‘family values” and was the man behind the US Military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy on homosexuality.
In one of his books, Contemporary Orthodox Judaism’s Response To Modernity, Freundel writes that an aide to then-VIce President Dan Quayle heard Freundel use the term in a Shabbat drasha (sermon) in his synagogue and the aide to her boss about it and included the term in a speech writen for Quayle. Quayle added in criticism of a Murphy Brown episode and the speech – and the term “family values” – became history.
On the Jewish Values Online website, Freundel was asked the following question:
“What is the Jewish view on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and gays serving openly in the U.S. military? Does it matter that gays serve openly in the Israeli military?”
Freundel answered this way:
I will reveal something in this response that only a few people know.
The military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy was based on an article called “Homosexuality and Halakhah” that appeared in The Journal of Halakha and Contemporary Society in the mid-late 1980’s.
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