Subscribe to Print Edition | Fri., September 05, 2008 Elul 5, 5768 | | Israel Time: 05:01 (EST+7)
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Jewish blogger is the watchdog of the Orthodox world
By Anthony Weiss, The Forward
Tags: FailedMessiah, blogging 

Picking up the phone at 4:30 in the afternoon, Shmarya Rosenberg answered in a voice still bleary from sleep. He explained that he was just napping after having blogged the whole night, and most of the morning.

"It's hard to do one of these blogs," Rosenberg said. "It owns you. It's terrible. If I had any idea four years ago that it was going to do this, I don't think I could've started it."

Rosenberg is the man behind FailedMessiah.com, one of the essential stops on the Jewish blogosphere. Rosenberg blogs full time, often posting multiple times a day to report on the shortcomings that he sees in the world of Orthodox Judaism - a beat that endlessly supplies him with material.
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Rosenberg's primary targets are what he sees as examples of hypocrisy and the misuse of power, and he is relentless in cataloging the failures of rabbis and others who hold positions of authority, citing examples ranging from a recent ban on a concert to corruption and child abuse. With the outrage of Jeremiah and the surgical delicacy of a meat cleaver, Rosenberg goes after his targets in plain and aggressive English.

"It's raining nutcase rabbis over in the Holy Land," one post begins.

"Rabbis Call for Jewish Terrorism, Vigilante Violence" is the title of another.

Though many of his frequent postings are links to news reports on other Web sites, Rosenberg also does original reporting. On July 9, he made headlines when he caught public relations powerhouse 5WPR leaving comments on blogs under false names. As this newspaper has reported, 5WPR denied his accusation, then reversed course.

Rosenberg says that he is driven by a sense of outrage and by a determination to look out for causes and people that are being ignored.

Also known to his friends as Scott, Rosenberg grew up in St. Paul, Minn., in a family that he describes as Jewish but not particularly religious. He became active in Jewish student politics when he was a teenager, and it was his activism that brought him to Chabad. In the summer of 1983, while still a college student at the University of Minnesota, he was making the rounds of local rabbis with a letter on the plight of Ethiopian Jewry when he dropped by the office of Rabbi Moshe Feller, a Chabad emissary.

"He read that letter in his office and cried," Rosenberg recalled. "His was the most genuine response of anybody."

Rosenberg became a Lubavitch, donning the traditional black hat and caftan and throwing himself into study and rigorous observance. He abandoned his ambitions of becoming a songwriter, and for the next 20 years he was an observant, ultra-Orthodox Jew.

Now, he says, "I lost 20 years, and it bothers the hell out of me." Today he is in his late 40s and no longer actively religious.

Ironically, just as Ethiopian Jewry brought Rosenberg to Orthodoxy, it drove him away, leading to the birth of FailedMessiah.com. In 2004, Rosenberg came across an unsigned draft of a letter written by Chabad's late rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, which was published in Kfar Chabad magazine.

Rosenberg recognized that the letter had originally been addressed to him, but never sent, in response to a letter he wrote two decades before, demanding that Schneerson focus more of Chabad's attention on saving the lives of Ethiopian Jews. Schneerson, in his response, suggested that Rosenberg focus his efforts on helping Jews in his own community.

Rosenberg was outraged.

"He tried to make an equivalence, as if stopping a secular Jew in Minnesota and saying, 'Put on a pair of tefillin with me' is the equivalent of saving somebody's life that's dying in Ethiopia. I mean, it's insane," Rosenberg said. A Chabad spokesman declined to comment on Rosenberg's interpretation.

With the help of some technically savvy Lubavitch friends, he posted Schneerson's letter, his own letter and other supporting documents on a blog. The moniker Failed Messiah mocked the belief among some Lubavitcher Hadisim that Schneerson was the messiah.

That, according to Rosenberg, was supposed to be all. But Rosenberg worried that if he didn't keep posting, his blog would be shut down, so he periodically added links to articles, mostly about Lubavitch messianism.

The response was more than he bargained for. Within a few months, he says, he was excommunicated from his synagogue and shunned by his friends in the Lubavitch community. He says that his blog was hacked and that he received death threats. The hostility only made him more determined. Rosenberg broke his own ties with the ultra-Orthodox world and kept on blogging.

Since then, he has blogged - almost literally - day and night.

"There is no day," he said, "just one long, unending, bizarre blog with a few moments of sleep scattered through it."

Rosenberg typically blogs all night and through the morning, sleeps a couple hours, blogs a few hours more and takes a nap; then the routine resumes. He occasionally leaves his apartment to go to the gym or to make a visit to a nursing home.

His income comes from some freelance advertising consulting and from what little money he makes from donations and from sales of T-shirts and other merchandise (for example, a T-shirt picture of a bleeding cow with the caption, "I was slaughtered Glatt kosher and all I got was this horribly painful hook in my throat").

Rosenberg has blogged himself to the point of exhaustion, and he has tried to quit. But he decided he would like to stay available to people who want to come forward about being abused.

It's been a difficult career - some of it rewarding, some of it frustrating. But he says he has seen a few small signs that he and the other bloggers on his beat have made a difference.

"People are a little less willing to ignore a kid who says his teacher abused him," Rosenberg said. "They're just less willing to take the crap."

Also on Haaretz.com:

My rabbinical family

Surf's up - but it's kosher!

Splintering into tribes in the name of unity

Yeshiva U. head challenges Orthodox communities in U.S., Israel to open up

Breaking with tradition

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  1.   It`s too easy to become a rabbi. 22:55  |  MIKE 28/07/08
  2.   The FailedChasid.com 23:02  |  Paul 28/07/08
  3.   Wisdom and discipline a fool despises -- Book of Proverbs 23:19  |  Shimon 28/07/08
  4.   The haredim are a blemish on Judaism. 23:32  |  Nathaniel 28/07/08
  5.   Failed Moshiach 00:51  |  Steve 29/07/08
  6.   Nate - seek help for your condition! 00:58  |  sz 29/07/08
  7.   London schools` abuse 01:16  |  Akiva 29/07/08
  8.   Nepotism, corruption ... 01:18  |  Avi 29/07/08
  9.   The author seems to have enslaved himself to his computer 02:28  |  Mike 29/07/08
  10.   Clearly mentally disturbed 02:33  |  Mordehcai 29/07/08
  11.   #4 Nathaniel is a real blemish on Judaism . 02:47  |  TOMY 29/07/08
  12.   Shmarya Rosenberg - a self hating Jew 03:06  |  Josh 29/07/08
  13.   hateful blog 04:17  |  AVI 29/07/08
  14.   Shortcomings of Orthodox Judaism 04:58  |  Ben Kobi 29/07/08
  15.   Why not? 05:06  |  Mark Lincoln 29/07/08
  16.   TAKE A MATHEMATICAL APPROACH 05:13  |  Barry S. Roffman 29/07/08
  17.   - 06:44  |  fred 29/07/08
  18.   Needs Help 06:54  |  Samarius 29/07/08
  19.   Faith vrs WW III 06:59  |  dave 29/07/08
  20.   Jewish Blogger Convention 07:24  |  Jewish Blogger 29/07/08
  21.   Finally some one tells them the truth 07:48  |  SJ 29/07/08
  22.   Scott is long-time nut. 07:56  |  Marc Yaffee 29/07/08
  23.   #7 Avi - The conduct, not beliefs 08:11  |  Nathaniel 29/07/08
  24.   Mark Lincoln and the Baal Shem Tov 08:20  |  Ramius 29/07/08
  25.   Ben Kobi, so the man said he was a rabbi?! 09:46  |  Zev Davis 29/07/08
  26.   Reply to # 1 Semicha 10:22  |  Ben Azai 29/07/08
  27.   Problems need to be dealt with 10:37  |  Danny 29/07/08
  28.   This guy really needs a life 12:19  |  Benny 29/07/08
  29.   Don`t be provoked 13:54  |  Rockin Bob 29/07/08
  30.   How is this news???? 14:12  |  Jewish State 29/07/08
  31.   bummer 14:46  |  Shalom 29/07/08
  32.   Why pick on the fraction of the smallest fraction of the world. 15:58  |  JMK 29/07/08
  33.   Judaism to Christianity 16:12  |  American Christian 29/07/08
  34.   Internet schoolyard bully 16:49  |  Simcha Hellinger 29/07/08
  35.   I disagree so he`s a self-hating Jews and other nonsense... 19:10  |  Czarkazem13 29/07/08
  36.   The Arabs are sitting back and laughing 19:17  |  Harvey 29/07/08
  37.   Interesting Story 19:41  |  Gordon 29/07/08
  38.   Harvey, how do you figure? 20:00  |  Czarkazem13 29/07/08
  39.   T-shirt right on target 20:29  |  David 29/07/08
  40.   Worthy of applause 21:02  |  THK 29/07/08
  41.   Typical rich spoiled brat 21:18  |  Seth 29/07/08
  42.   Jewish Blogger 23:16  |  Jeremy Rosen 29/07/08
  43.   Jewish State, It`s news from the Jewish Daily Backwards 23:40  |  Zev Davis 29/07/08
  44.   He makes alot of sense too bad too many others don`t 01:28  |  Yochanan EzeNdubuisi 30/07/08
  45.   JMK # 32 01:52  |  THK 30/07/08
  46.   he`s just doing what most people here on the TB do - 02:52  |  ivo 30/07/08
  47.   Good Morning Shmarya 05:50  |  Shimon Cleopas 30/07/08
  48.   Message to Scott 11:26  |  Former MN. Resident 30/07/08
  49.   Watchdog of what he feels likel is more accurate 00:52  |  Benny 31/07/08
  50.   To Danny in London #27 13:51  |  Reader 03/08/08
  51.   Nathaniel in outer space 01:17  |  sptz 17/08/08
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