Rabbi Weissman: Kefira Times

 

Tzohar's Insidious Kefira Reaches New Lows

Please share this article outside your echo chamber

Friday morning (7:42)  on the way to shul I picked up a copy of Tzohar’s weekly kefira magazine, The Kiddush Times. I don’t look for it, but there it was, a bundle of them lying on the ground outside a small “charedi” Beis Midrash, where some delivery person drops them off every week. 

I have no idea why they do this. There is a sign on the door instructing people not to bring alonim — booklets, parsha sheets, and the like — into this Beis Midrash. There’s no chance Tzohar’s garbage is being read by anyone there. Most of the people who go there aren’t Anglos, anyway.

But I passed by before someone threw the booklets into the nearby dumpster (I shouldn’t have passed up the mitzvah myself), and couldn’t resist taking a copy for myself. There is no heter to read such material — it’s religious pornography — except to fight back against it, as I will once again do presently. Needless to say, I will not be depositing The Kefira Times in sheimos; it definitely qualifies as sifrei minim, and even the faint Torah content in their pages has no kedusha. 

I don’t plan on continuing to write about Tzohar’s kefira week after week, for several reasons:

1. At some point it becomes repetitive and pointless. If you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you won’t.

2. I cannot possibly keep up with them anyway. Tzohar has hundreds of rabbis, and thousands of members! They pump out the kefira faster than any one person can dismantle it. 

   Besides, who wants to spend his life trolling kofrim? Occasionally people send me vile material from Slifkin Harasha, presumably hoping I will give it attention and tear it to shreds. It wouldn’t be difficult; his sewage is shallow and filled with distortions. His kefira is blatant. I don’t think God is real to him; there’s definitely no yiras shamayim or kabbalas ol malchus shamayim to be found. (Not surprisingly, he’s been published in Tzohar’s rag.)

   But what’s the point? Who wants to spend their time endlessly debunking intellectually dishonest featherweights who feed off attention and mainly cater to an echo chamber of fellow kofrim, cynics, and lowlifes, none of whom have much likelihood of ever performing serious introspection and doing teshuva? They have thousands of followers not because their work has merit, but because feces attracts more maggots. 

3. I have so much Torah to write and share, and would much rather devote my limited time to this. Decent, intellectually honest, God-fearing people will easily be able to tell the difference.

That said, when the kefira is particularly egregious, and it’s coming from a large, influential organization like Tzohar, it’s important to expose it for well-meaning Jews who need to be properly educated. After the previous article, one of my readers emailed me that The Kefira Times gave him an uncomfortable feeling, but he couldn’t put his finger on the sore spot, and thanked me for clarifying it for him. That’s why I do this.

(I told him it’s not a sore spot; the entire publication is a cancerous tumor.)

Onward. Whoever designs the covers for The Kefira Times seems hellbent on reaching new lows. Here’s this week’s:

With an un-Jewish flag, the Jerusalem light rail, and immodestly dressed women in the background — secular Zionist trademarks — we have a gratuitous image of young religious boys and girls holding hands and dancing together. So innocent! So pure! So heartwarming! So definitely notCharedi!

So insidious and revolting.

What subliminal message are they trying to send? That this is proper chinuch? That’s it’s permissible, because little children won’t have inappropriate thoughts? That something that looks sweet cannot possibly be wrong? That all the much older “Religious” Zionist boys and girls who are holding hands, dancing together, and quite a bit more, are also engaging in something innocent, pure, and perfectly okay?

This is the nachamu we have been waiting for — to be brought back to Eretz Yisrael so we can desecrate the land again? 

Previous covers have displayed Eliyahu HaNavi flying an IDF fighter jet during the Pesach Seder, and hate-bait against “Charedim”, but this might just be the worst. You tell me.

Then we come to clergyman David Stav’s “Thought for the Week”. I’m not going to devote 1000 words to his latest secular-statist drivel. Just a couple of excerpts:

In our own generation, when we celebrate our Independence Day with great joy, we cannot forget the heavy price we paid for it. Does the terror of the Holocaust disappear, even for a moment? Heaven forbid. Likewise, when we remember our loved ones lost in the Holocaust, do we forget the immense wonder called the State of Israel? Certainly not.

Immense wonder indeed. No, it was not worth the heavy price, which grows with each Jewish body and soul destroyed on the altar of secularism and Religious Zionist delusion. Could we at least get a refund for the nearly 20,000 Jewish soldiers maimed and killed in little Gaza in less than two years, in exchange for . . . what? Whatever it is, it certainly wasn’t worth the cost.

Stav’s concluding paragraph begins as follows, in the familiar style of false prophets I wrote about last time:

It’s hard to think of a generation that has merited what ours has merited: the ingathering of the exiles, wonderful young people, who teach us, every single day, a lesson in mesirut nefesh (self-sacrifice), a strong, vibrant state, a moral army the likes of which we have not had since the days of Joshua son of Nun.

After the requisite celebration of Molech sacrifices and secular nationalist pride, intended to help you cope and keep serving up more sacrifices, Stav makes a stunning comment: the IDF is not just a moral army (LOL), but the IDF is the most moral Jewish army since the days of Yehoshua!

What? How? 

Because they have female soldiers all over the place, and non-Jewish soldiers, and promiscuity, and rampant Shabbos desecration, and indoctrinate soldiers with kefira, and destroyed Gush Katif, and show wanton disregard for the physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being of conscripts, and stood down on October 7, all while demanding more love, devotion, and sacrifice in return?

The IDF is more moral than every army we have had in history since the first generation that entered Eretz Yisrael? The IDF is more moral than every army during the period of the shoftim, more moral than King David’s army, more moral than every army during Bayis Rishon, and they are even more moral than the Maccabees?

According to false prophet David Stav, yes.

(Fun fact: the Maccabees went to war against Jewish Hellenists — Tzohar types, only with more scholarship.)

Do any Religious Zionists stop and think about any of the crap their leaders tell them? Or are they too busy celebrating their oppressors and blaming Charedim for all their problems?

Reminder: David Stav is the Chief Rabbi of Shoham and the chairman of Tzohar, which represents many hundreds of rabbis, teachers, and influencers all over Israel and beyond.  This is their message, day after day, week after week.

According to their 2025 annual report they boast more than 37 million social media views, and an annual budget of over 45 million shekels. Tzohar received over 2.5 million shekels from the Israeli government. My tax money is funding this? I’d much rather have it go to support struggling kollel families.

While it’s only about 5% of their budget, 2.5 million shekels pays for a lot of copies of The Kefira Times, which may explain why they don’t mind dumping them in front of shuls that won’t take them inside. Genuine, God-fearing Torah scholars can’t afford to be so wasteful. They can’t afford to print glossy magazines full of graphics and spread them all over the country and beyond. They have to struggle to get by and share their Torah on plain printouts, which far surpass anything Tzohar’s harem will ever produce.

Later in the issue we have an article called “Tzeniut for Men” by David Stav’s son, Avraham, an “author of books on Halakha and Jewish Thought”. His question: How clothed should men be when swimming in the presence of women? (We’re taking it for granted that religious men will be doing this.)

Again, I’m not going to devote 1000 words to it, but suffice it to say no one will mistake it for a teshuva from Rav Moshe Feinstein. The problem is that 99.9% of readers of The Kefira Times never read a real halachic teshuva, couldn’t read one, and don’t even aspire to.

Without citing the actual source or getting into details, he references a responsa from the Petach Zutah and writes: 

Some took issue with his ruling, but in any case, this is not a source that condemns a group of teenage boys swimming in a spring in their boxers too harshly.

Okaaay then. 

I guess no context is necessary, and the fact that young people in his community increasingly identify as LGBT doesn’t factor into it.

Here is a key excerpt, which demonstrates the Religious Zionist methodology in a nutshell:

Because the sources were ambiguous, we took a somewhat different approach. We put together a questionnaire, which we circulated in several women’s groups, trying to understand the natural, human reaction to the sight of men spending time at the beach in minimal clothing. The results pointed to one clear answer: it is simply unpleasant. Not in the sense of tzeniut, of “improper thoughts” that troubled many of the poskim, but simply plain discomfort. It is an unsettling feeling having people around you without clothes. It is a feeling that is disrespectful, intrusive, one that at its core creates an atmosphere far removed from anything modest. Even if the sources offer no precise boundaries here, to my mind, that is reason enough to wear pants and a shirt when swimming in streams and springs.

According to this Tzohar “posek”, halachic standards of modesty and decency can be determined based largely on a social media survey of women. 

Perhaps if women are comfortable with the sight of young strapping IDF soldiers swimming in their boxers, it should be allowed? And is it really so bad if it titillates them? We’re all adults here, right? 

This actually aligns with the gross laxity of Religious Zionists when it comes to female modesty. They argue that since men have become used to seeing married women with their hair uncovered, and this no longer excites them, this halacha — referred to by Chazal as part of das yehudis, basic laws of modesty for Jewish women — no longer applies. After all, as far as these Reform Jews in disguise argue, the reason no longer applies, so we can dispense with the age-old law as well. 

It is for this reason that Religious Zionist clergyman and “thinkers” condone increasingly promiscuous dress in women and free mingling of the sexes. Since men are accustomed to it, it no longer leads to inappropriate thoughts or improper behavior (ha!), so it’s fine. As society gets more desensitized to promiscuity, we can simply keep moving the line of what halacha considers immodest. 

It is no wonder that Religious Zionist standards of modesty and decency continuously deteriorate, all while they purport to be morally superior to those who are strict, and mock them for being overstimulated by any small thing. No matter that Chazal and Gedolim throughout history took these matters with grave seriousness, and didn’t even trust themselves, let alone far less saintly people.

Of course, Religious Zionists mock them too, and believe they could have all used therapy.

If you want a plausible spiritual reason for why their community is being physically and spiritually decimated, this is an excellent place to start, though only one of many worth considering.

There’s another irony here that must be noted. This clergyman advises men to clothe themselves in the presence of women to demonstrate respect and not make them uncomfortable. Very nice. What about religious men who ask the same of women whose style of dress — or undress — makes them uncomfortable?

Oh ho! That is “erasing” women! Women have the right to “be comfortable” and show themselves, and if you have a problem with it, it’s your problem! Why are you looking? Why are you obsessed? How dare you?

What a sick bunch of charlatans.

I cannot cover everything, but I must write briefly about a couple of other items in this issue of The Kefira Times.

A rabbi by the name of Alex Israel writes about his longstanding daily commitment to study Mishnah, and how he has completed the entire Mishnah several times over thirty years. He writes:

Why am I sharing this? Because I know how difficult it is for many people to commit to daily learning. Mishnah really works for me…

I’m all in favor of studying Mishnah as part of a well-balanced Torah diet, but this is embarrassing. How can a rabbi imply that, at least some of the time, his daily Mishnah study is the sum total of his learning? How can he imply that completing Mishnah several times over thirty years is a remarkable achievement when perhaps hundreds of thousands of regular Jewish men who study Daf Yomi complete all of Shas several times during that span?

Fine, each on their own level. But why is a rabbi normalizing the fact that many people in his community do not even learn a small amount of Torah every day? It’s difficult? Is it difficult for them to eat every day? Is it difficult for them to spend time on social media every day? How can a rabbi not emphasize the critical importance of every Jew studying Torah every day, making it a priority, and aspiring to reach great heights — even at the expense of work, entertainment, and exotic vacations? 

This is pathetic. 

Alex Israel seems like a decent fellow. But if this is what Religious Zionism has come to, it’s time to stop pretending this experiment of grafting Judaism with Zionism has been a success. It’s over.

On that note, let’s skip to the last article in The Kefira Times, by Yael Ne’eman. Her husband was killed in the sham of a war following October 7, and she writes a column from the perspective of an IDF widow. Recounting a visit to a friend, whose husband was hit by an RGP and whose life hung in the balance (thankfully, he survived), Ne’eman writes the following:

She realized that I thought she was about to join me in the “coveted” status — a widow.

Even though she puts “coveted” in quotation marks, it represents the mainstream Zionist and Religious Zionist view of women whose husbands die in the IDF. They have a vaunted status, just because of that. Their voice automatically carries more weight, just because of that. They are admired and loved more than almost anyone, just because of that.

Why? Because they “sacrificed” more than you did on the altar of the state. 

(Mind you, if one is livid toward those who got their loved one killed for dubious reasons, would not be proud to continue offering potential sacrifices, and is fed up with the whole charade, they are not offered columns and airtime to share their feelings and opinions.)

Incredibly, this IDF widow later shares what happened before her husband was killed:

In September, shortly before Sukkot, I asked to resign from my job as a civilian IDF employee. In response, “This employee is not worthy of the IDF” was written in my personal file. 

Perhaps the IDF was not worthy of her husband?

Perhaps the IDF is not worthy of her continued love and devotion?

Perhaps this is an abusive relationship, a Molech death cult that only demands more sacrifices as it delivers less in return?

You will never see such sentiments expressed by Religious Zionists, let alone by anyone affiliated with Tzohar.

It would be kefira.

I don’t intend to continue writing about Tzohar, unless they really push the envelope even more; I spent several hours on this, and I made my case. 

I call on all well-meaning Jews who bought into this decrepit, un-Jewish ideology to face the truth about Religious Zionism. It’s high time you leave their communities, pull your children from their institutions, and return to true Torah observance. If you cannot save others, at least save yourself. There is no alternative.

Please share this article outside your echo chamber. Hopefully some people will take it to heart.

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False Prophets, Idolatry, and Tzohar

Questions for a Tzohar rabbi, and astounding answers

Rav Elchonon Wasserman vs. Tzohar Kefira

Religious Zionism Is Officially Bankrupt