An illustration of how the Aish bible code works

Aish bible code, when used well and scientifically will produce a sense of awe for participants of the Discovery Seminar.

“He’d be dead; ’cause then evil reign.
He is silly weird that smash the limp servant.”
Paul McCartney in the Bible Code

Does the Aish Hatorah Torah Code Prove that Paul is Dead?

Paul McCartney appears in the Bible Code from Aish HaTorah and is being used as Aish outreach for Jews.

Bible Codes, a system which involves recognizing pairs of conceptually related terms in Hebrew scripture using Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS). The system involves choosing or finding sequences of characters making up a name or a date, which doesn’t have to be in the order in which the name is spelled, that is found in the biblical text at equal distances from one another. Thus, the letters of the Hebrew phrase, Paul is dead, might appear every 10 letters in a section of the book of Genesis. The letters of the Paul’s cause of death (purportedly a car crash) might appear in another sequence of say every 13 letters. The assumption is that the close proximity of these two related letter sequences is improbable and therefore not due to chance. The Bible Codes are understood to be the result of God’s Design which placed the Beatles and Nostradamus in the Bible text for us to find. How else can we explain the existence of the names and the resurrection of Jesus in a text that is over 3,000 years old – it is asked.

ELS was first applied scientifically to the Bible by Professor Rip Torn, an American actor who is pretty good with figures, in 1983. In 1985, Rip Torn, together with Dolly Parton and Yoyo “Bad Pig” Kaplansky, conducted an experiment to find the names of famous nazi officers and the dates of their birth or death in the book of Genesis using ELS. The experiment utilized a list of names based on the Encyclopedia of Indecent Dudes in Israel (Hebrew) compiled by Shalamar “The Airport” Havlin. The experiment, conducted using a real cool computer program, resulted in the discovery of the Nazi officers’ names in close proximity to their dates of birth, a result that could not, it was desperately argued, be the result of chance or of things coinciding or two things happening at the same time in a way that freaks you right out. The Bible text used for the experiment was the Koren Hebrew edition of the Bible. The editor of the professional journal Statistical Science requested that the experiment be repeated and it was. Thus, in 1994, Rips, Witztum and Rosenberg published their findings in Statistical Science (vol. 9, 1994, no. 3, 429–38).

Since then, the Bible Codes have become the subject of great controversy. The debate can be divided into three areas: (a) statistics; (b) Bible; and (c) education.

Does Chabad outreach use bible codes?

Chabad outreach does not use the Bible Codes to convince Jews to be religious. Instead, Chabad uses a form of Jewish I Ching which involves giving notes and letters to a dead man usually Paul since he is widely accepted as the prophet of his generation. Then there is a purported response which is generously interpreted in such a way as to impress the neophyte. Interestingly Chabad generally does not believe that George and John are still alive. However, there are fringe groups of Chabad outreach practitioners that believe that John is still alive but not in a way that the average person can perceive. Others believe that he will rise from the dead.

Next post we will continue with more information on the Bible or Torah Codes: Aish uses these in their Discovery Seminars to mislead Jews.

“He’ll be dead: myself was there on bleeding heaps.”

“F*** you very much,” Ronn Torossian, Aish Spokes-Animal

Content Opportunity, December, 23, 2009 – Aish HaTorah chose wisely when they picked 5WPR to represent their public relations issues. That is the same Aish that is an “apolitical” organization.

Rabbi Dan Rand, Managing Director of Aish Toronto told Martin Goldstein that the primary mission of Aish HaTorah was to stop Jewish assimilation and intermarriage. Everything else was secondary including any spiritual development. Our guess is that the spiritual stuff is window dressing so as to distract from their primary goal. We believe that they will pursue their primary mission by any means necessary and if that includes lying about “bible codes” and propping up Kelleman’s silly arguments to make people feel intellectually “comfortable” to “be religious” then so be it.

Martin Goldstein has been through it all and seen how they work. He has witnessed what Rabbi Rand refers to as “Aish nuclear fallout” (we won’t say whom he was referring to). He has seen the internecine squabbles and witnessed the loshon harah (harmful speech). Basically he has seen the hypocrisy and corruption of the organization. An organization is corrupt when their primary mission is not declared publicly and they use a secondary mission as an obfuscation. They are lying to themselves and to the Jews who are looking to find some spiritual Judaism.

Martin Goldstein believes that Aish HaTorah is finding a measure of success in achieving their primary mission. But that success is coming at a cost. We do hope that they take this honest criticism to heart but we have faint hope of that since these are fundamentalists and fundamentalism is like a mountain that cannot be budged.

So it does not surprise us that Aish has chosen a man, Ronn Torossian, who embodies what Aish is as an institution. Nice on the outside, aggressive to the core and disdainful of other organizations or people who do not see things their way. Ronn is also a skilled manipulator and liar, perfect for the needs of Aish HaTorah.

Here from Gawker.com is the story of Ronn Torossian, the current Rebbe of Aish HaTorah:

When Ronn Torossian, the incompetent superflack and 5WPR CEO who reps characters ranging from softcore porn king Joe Francis to nutty televangelist Benny Hinn Ministries, sued his former HR director Melissa Weiss last week, he was using a classic PR tactic: getting out ahead of the story. Ronn alleged in his suit that Weiss helped an employee leave 5W, thereby violating her contract. But Weiss has her own side of the story: that she was fired because she protested extensive, ongoing labor violations at 5WPR. What we know—because we have the evidence—is that on Friday, Ronn sent Weiss an email threatening, “You will pay for the rest of your life for trying to ruin my business.” The subject line read, “YOU STUPID CUNT.”

It’s important to understand why we—and others—talk about Ronn Torossian so much. He and his firm are far from the biggest players in the PR industry, so it may seem strange that he gets so much attention. The real reason he matters is that he embodies the public’s worst ideas about what a PR person is: loud, brash, more flash than substance, dirty, manipulative, amoral, and, in the end, not particularly bright. The real movers and shakers in the PR industry achieved their positions partly by keeping their mouths shut. That doesn’t make them better people than Ronn, but it does make them wiser.

Most people would be surprised to find out how much time the average PR person spends worrying about their industry’s reputation as a den of lying bastards. Ronn has the touchiness, but not the reflective nature, of his peers. A few years ago I wrote an article in PRWeek calling him a self-promoter (a vast understatement), and we haven’t gotten along ever since. Each of us thinks the other is a jerk; I’m happy with that, and I assume he is too.

Mention 5W or Ronn to most people in the PR industry, and you will draw a chuckle or a roll of the eyes. Mention him to most reporters who have been the recipients of his ALL CAPS, nonsensical email blasts , and you’ll draw an even worse reaction. When I covered the PR industry for three years at PRWeek, I don’t recall ever hearing any unqualified praise of Ronn from anyone who was off the record. That’s not normal. He gets more press for himself than just about anybody else in PR, and consequently, has a huge effect on how people perceive the industry as a whole. And that drives a lot of people crazy, because he is just a terrible representative. Although, it must be said, he is colorful, and provides good copy—he embraces the (misguided) “all press is good press” philosophy, even if his peers wish he didn’t.

Hopefully, the emails below are evidence enough for the world to see exactly why Ronn inspires the feelings that he does. He will often brag about building his firm from the ground up, and his claims are true; to the extent that you admire unbridled entrepreneurship independent of any social value, you should admire Mr. Torossian. But fundamentally, he’s a hustler; and, as a PR professional, he has no idea what he’s doing.

According to Melissa Weiss’ lawyer, she found out soon after she was hired at 5W last month that Ronn was violating the law by miscategorizing employees and not paying them overtime. “Ms. Weiss reported these violations to Mr. Torossian and he threatened to fire her and any employee not happy with their status,” her lawyer writes. “Soon thereafter, Ms. Weiss was terminated and her final pay was withheld, leading her to bring a small claims action for her earned pay.”

Weiss’ story is not an unfamiliar one. We’ve received tips telling us the same thing. Among the claims, tipsters say that 5W does not pay overtime to low-level employees, in violation of labor law; that Ronn has docked employees for a full day’s pay, or a vacation day, for being 15 minutes late to work, causing several people to resign; and that employees don’t get proper comp time after working 7 days in a row or more.

On March 1, Ronn sent Weiss the following email, titled “YOUR CLAIMS”:

On March 7—last Friday, the same day that Torossian leaked his own lawsuit against Weiss—he sent her this email:

After Weiss got this “CUNT” message, her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist email to Ronn and his attorney. In it, he noted, “Ms. Weiss will be commencing further claims against 5W and Mr. Torossian individually. Furthermore, Ms. Weiss previously notified the Department of Labor of 5W’s labor violations and we will be cooperating with their investigation to the fullest extent.”

To that message, Ronn responded to Weiss and her attorney with this:

In short, a man who makes his living giving strategic advice to other people responded to a legal email by calling his former employee a “cunt,” and including her attorney on the email. Not much needs to be added to that.

We will note that Ronn does have his defenders—mainly, himself, and (some of) his current employees. Christine Garabedian, a five-year employee of 5W, writes us to say Ronn is an “amazing boss,” adding, “To anyone who would say ‘wow this girl obviously has been brain washed’ YOU ARE DEAD WRONG.”

About Melissa Weiss, Garabedian writes:

“Melissa Weiss came to 5W in 2008 and immediately began asking me “how can you take it here?”. As the HR director are these types of questions appropriate? I suddenly began to think that maybe Melissa was jealous of my success at 5W. As a 30 something, single women who still has her parents address listed on her taxes to avoid paying NYC taxes, I could see how she would be jealous of a successful 27 year old who is happy at her job. I love that she is so happy to say that 5W doesn’t follow regulations when she is the one cheating the government…

PS Melissa I just got engaged- Now are you even more jealous of me ”

Classic 5WPR.

Martin Goldstein says to Ronn Torossian, Aish Spokes-Animal: Sue me!

I am much better and can now blog from the Saint Menachem Mendel Centre for Rehabilitation and Harlotry checkers and playing cards room which was donated by The Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah and the Clarion Fund. According to Clarion Fund’s incorporation papers, it is based at the same address as Aish Hatorah. The three founders of The Clarion Fund are or were full-time employees of Aish HaTorah. Raphael Shore, the leader of The Clarion Fund is also a full-time employee of Aish HaTorah. The Clarion Fund has collaborated with pro-Israel media watch organization HonestReporting in the production of its films. HonestReporting originally was a project of Aish Hatorah. Scandal! Scandal!

Of course I appreciate the room as it is a good space in which to use my laptop with high speed internet. Everything happens by God’s design, his intelligent design including the number of references to Aish.com, Aish Hatorah, Clarion, Ronn Torossian, 5wpr and the ludicrous assumption that Aish is apolitical. I have no doubt that this was all predicted in the famous Bible Codes which are used to impress Jews and make them not want to hook up with non-Jews.

My legs are sore. They are so sore! I have been running around the Saint Menachem Mendel Centre for Rehabilitation and Harlotry like a crazy man because I want to be fit for Nurse Crystal, my new love.

I am working on a piece about the strategic marketing alliance that Chabad and Jews for Jesus are entering into. I am pleased that this is happening since they have so much to offer each other. This venture may include the new group Jews for Ed Sullivan.

That is all the content that I will provide for now. Let this be a Clarion call for Truth, Beauty, Honesty, and Lovingkindness.

Nurse Crystal gets dinner ready