After Shabbat this week we opened our mailbox to find an envelope seemingly addressed from us to us (it had our return address).
Inside, we found a four page letter in English purporting to describe the Halakha that a Jew may not avail him or herself of the “non-Jewish” court system.
To sum up the whole, the letter threatened the Jew who did so with death (“…he is treated as a Rodeph” “…whoever knows of these transgressors should supply us with their name and address”).

The document was signed by “The Alliance for Authentic Judaism” and was a printout from a website …well perhaps the less publicity for that one, the better.

Well, being generally concerned (and frankly personally scared that as an attorney in that “non-Jewish” system, I may be perceived as a target for some “Jewish fundamentalist”) I quickly got on the internet to see what this site was and whether I could get any further information on who was threatening me, my neighbors, and my clients.

Sure enough – the website this letter was from was an amazingly extensive and well structured mass of anti-semetic propaganda purporting to prove from the classic Jewish sources that our culture is one of secret perversion and blood lust and that there is a massive Jewish push to infiltrate and subsume the American political and legal system. The site included arguments to appeal to the traditionally Christian, the Muslim, and the “secular” individual of conscience. The article I had received in the mail was one of the documents this anti-semetic site provided as a research item.

Searching not too much further, I found the site of this so-called “Alliance”. This seems to be a modest “What do Jews do” sort of website with an “Ask the Rabbi” section. At first look, and at a second, “moderate” Jews and those from unhalakhic movements will dismiss it as simply an “ultra-right O” site (and sure enough, it is unfortunately listed as a Jewish resource with a good number of “gateway” sites – including the big “official” Jewish ones). Looking closely, however, there were certain “tells” that made it clear that the site is definitely a Fraud.

…I find myself uncertain how to close this note. I wasn’t arguing FOR much – just wanted to give expression to my unease and to let the community know about the situation. And unfortunately, not the least of my unease is that in the current climate of …what to call it? “lack of discretion”, “lack of brotherly love” this Fraud CAN pass as a plausible Jewish expression.