An Approach to Kiruv by critiquing Postmodernism & the left
The Kiruv speaker at a college campus will face hostile questions: “Isn’t Judaism a primitive religion with animal sacrifices in a Temple?” or “My professor showed us that the Bible was just a series of ancient folk traditions pasted together, it’s a myth like any other. And Judaism is a patriarchal religion!” 
Some Kiruv speakers use an apologetic “so is Judaism” approach by trying to show that Judaism is environmentalist, supports feminism, “animal rights,” etc. This is counter-productive because Judaism is a conservative way of life that sustains memory, families and a civilization based on integral identity, whole and unified like the Creator whereas postmodernism promotes ‘relativism,’ denies truth while privileging ‘narratives’ and pretends to be ‘non-judgmental,’ none of which hold up to scrutiny.
The basis of an updated approach to Kiruv will show that the unifying principle behind the various ideologies of the left, which these college students view as received wisdom having received it since kindergarten is nihilism and the purpose of all of them is to enslave people via emotionalism and a related loneliness and improvisational rather than mentored approach to learning; living in the present, and via collective attitudes including “group think” as in Comte, Huxley and Orwell, some form of socialism where the few control the many according to laws they invent or attitudes they promote and reward; and moreover in which the Torah emphasis on the wonder of creation, with human beings at its head to dominate and make it fruitful and increasingly abundant yield to Malthusian principles in which sterility complements depravity, increasingly visual, “cold” and virtual, in-your-face depravity hand- in-hand with social, economic and political repression.
Actually, the mitzvot in the Torah, which the average college students thinks of as rule by Ayatollahs, if he thinks of them at all, are what enable people to be free as readily can be demonstrated from Torah guarantees for private property that include charity, personal responsibility and unswerving family loyalty including condemnation of a “quarrelsome” feminist attitude (see Rav Hirsch on Mishlei, Sefer Nashim, Hilchot Ishut, etc).
Sometimes moral lessons in the Torah might seem trivial to these students. For example, they might think that one of the lessons of the Akeda, that human sacrifice is not acceptable, whereas animal sacrifices are an acceptable form of worship might seem obvious. However, the left with its description of terror victims as “victims of peace” has promoted a kind of human sacrifice, where Israelis are not allowed to defend themselves because their lives are subservient to a “peace process” which does not bring peace.
Aldous Huxley’s brilliant but little known satirical novel Crome Yellow (1922), describes the ideologues in the future, as sophisticates much like the ideologues of the left today, i.e. those journalists, writers, academics, and other “intellectuals” who invent the “rational” basis for all the left holds sacred. They are amusingly depicted as enthusiastic but shallow utopians “preaching and practicing with a generous mania the coldly reasonable projects of the Directors from above. When these projects are accomplished, or when the ideas that were useful a decade ago have ceased to be useful, the Directors will inspire a new generation of madmen with a new eternal truth.”
These madmen and their projects are a daily feature of our time, and the average student doesn’t understand that they have an agenda that is different from their declared aims. For example, when the Arabists in the state department wish to apply pressure to Israel, they might bring a well known figure such as Jimmy Carter down from the shelf, dust him off, and send him around the world promoting a book, which was ghost-written for him, comparing Israel to an apartheid State, — while Jews are forbidden from living in most Islamic States.
Some examples:
* Post modernism and moral relativism, i.e. there is no absolute truth (except for the truth that the ruling clique of self-styled leftist “enlightened ones” promote) On the other hand, if there is absolute truth, as the Torah provides, people can always challenge those in power, as the prophets challenged the Kings of Israel for their abuses based on Torah principles.
* Environmentalism [so-called] works by controlling people, inhibiting productivity and often suppressing, inventing or distorting science by using the ‘there are only opinions’ or ‘narratives’ dogma of postmodernism. Commenting on the global warming hysteria, the president of the Czech Republic noted that “environmentalism is the new communism.” The Torah teaches us that man is obligated to develop the world, and indeed history and science show us that human beings greatly increase the world’s miraculous fertility and ability to support life. In contrast, we note that those who fund “environmentalism” and junk science are the major foundations and their groups that for a century have been committed to population control and reduction, the antithesis to the Torah emphasis on life and commandment to increase.
*Darwinism – Among many others by top scientists, Dr. Gerald Schroeder’s books on Torah and Science demonstrate that evolution cannot work as a completely random process without the intervention of a “Designer.” A comprehensive approach to evolution would go beyond Dr. Schroeder’s analysis and explore Darwinism’s links to Eugenics and to the control and ‘design’ of other people (e.g. Dr. Thomas Molnar’s works on public education as “social engineering”), key agendas of the left which usurp the role of the Creator. Those who revived evolution as Neo-Darwinism included Sir Julian Huxley, one of the founders of the UN and a leader of the world eugenicist movement for decades. The work is now progressing into “transhumanism” and other disturbing, anti-Torah means of engineering “more efficient” kinds of ‘humans.’
The reason that professors who point out problems with evolution are banished from the university, as documented by Ben Stein in his film Expelled is NOT because the deans wish to eliminate “superstitious ayatollahs” from the university, but because,
1) Darwinism is essential for the left’s social engineering and eugenics goals that are enacted, ironically, through the politics of ‘compassion,’ a lust for power disguised with rhetoric of ‘concern’ and ‘therapeutic intervention,’ e.g. we are depriving you of your rights “for your own good,” and NATO’s new mission of “humanitarian interventions” with the definition of “humanitarian” decided by NATO’s top brass; and
2) Darwinism for which there is no proof, cannot stand up to scientific analysis and debate so critics are silenced, a feature of regimes based on coercion and tyranny rather than ordered freedom and discussion.
Kiruv speakers also should note that Darwinism promotes animal “rights” (which now include, in the EU granting legal “human rights” to chimpanzees) and preference for un-peopled nature. Its articles, photos and film suggest that we get rid of (most) people and impoverish the remainder in the name of ‘saving the earth’ via junk science like global warming or ethanol produced from corn, which has played a major role in driving up the price of basic foods. These attitudes are akin to the “eugenics” of Malthusians like Peter Singer who argues for expanding legal infanticide to an age of several months and will exclude fathers from any role even in saving the life of their child.
An example of the warped values resulting from Darwinism is the exaggerated concern by animal rights activists for the pets left behind in the wake of the expulsion of Jews from Gush-Katif while the same members of the left applauded when the pet owners were expelled from their homes. Note: the expulsion from GK emphasizes that burying the Jewish ethos is central to the postmodern world and its tenor of sterile oppression. Ethnic cleansing of Jews is termed “peace” in the new Orwellian dispensation of the global Masters, the “sordid buccaneers” of a new Feudalism.
*Spread the wealth: confiscate the earnings of hard-working people then pay other people not to work; this is theft that suppresses tzedaka; and government, like large bureaucracies absorb and de-personalize what should go from one person to another. They destroy human freedom, responsibility and dignity at both ends of the taking, — and give a frightening boost to the power of those who control the government. The model of an Israeli state is decentralized and flexible, with a local kupat tzedaka responsible for the welfare of the community members.
Modern finance and economics also destroys and displaces the Torah emphasis on “fair weights and measures,” debasing / inflating currency, and destroying life-savings with “fiat money,” paper unbacked by real value. This is but one of a host of “paper instruments” being used to pauperize entire nations at the expense of a small elite, the antithesis of the Torah model of an integrated and resilient nation.
Multinational business and geo-political agendas similarly suppress family farms in favor of agri-business that destroys freedom, integrity of families and communities, depletes soils, and erodes boundaries (these are essential Torah) in the name of “free trade” and “sharing” the wealth of the planet (among an increasingly small oligarchy).
Multinationals and international corporate oligarchies and their servitors also deride patriotism and the bond of a people to its land; another reason why they hate Jews and the return of Jews to sovereignty in their land, — and, in academia, deride the Torah which enshrines and mandates this ‘patriotism’ (honor of the Avot) as a keystone of existence.
They denigrate sovereignty, property and freedom, as in the Yovel principle of inalienable inheritance, where after 50 years, the true owners return to the parcel of Eretz Yisrael which belonged to their forefathers (Vayikra, Behar). This is why Navot refused to give up his land despite Achav’s demand.
The globalists who for a century and more have set as their enemy national sovereignty hate Judaism and Jews in Israel as a matter of course; the sovereignty of Israel is integral and testifies to the Unity of the Creator. Moreover, Torah states the world is composed of seventy nations, discrete peoples with their own character that can not be blended in an international stew with rules set by clever and scheming Nimrods. The light of Torah, via the Noahhide laws are an example, — not an international police force — to elevate mankind in body and soul, to sanctify our world and relations in joy and abundance.
The proponents of a homogenous ‘global’ family, from theosophists to modern ‘pragmatic financiers’ cannot abide Israel’s assertion of unique identity, — indeed, while celebrating superficial individualism, they cannot tolerate dissent and true individual integrity itself — and mandate to be “a nation that dwells apart.” No nations are to be distinct in the ‘global marketplace’ as we see increasingly now every day.
The fact that the left promotes or sanitizes contradictory ideologies such as feminism and Islam shows the incoherence of its ideology. An example of this is its refusal to condemn female circumcision or slavery in Islamic countries while at the same time espousing feminist doctrines.
The left tends to the extremes, sometimes, as in this example, both extremes when they contradict each other, whereas Judaism clings to moderation, a strong family structure where fathers teach and are honored as teachers and husbands, while wives and children are protected by the Torah.
Lastly, one could note that the left’s hatred of the Torah has its origins in Christian anti-Semitism and its scornful comments about the ‘Law’ as they call the Torah, which they describe as rigid, punitive and outdated by their “new dispensation” from a deity they invented in part from metaphors in Torah; whereas their ‘religion of mercy,’ taken from Judaism in the original postmodern “appropriation” and “identity theft” has slaughtered Jewish communities for 1700 years and, by claiming to be “the new Israel” negates the very existence of Jews and Judaism itself with the Road Map, sold as “irreversible” geared at separating Jews from their holiest sites and ancestral lands. Indeed, their religion and its frequent opponent and collaborator from Arabia is intrinsically imperialist while Judaism is national, measured with borders, no more and no less. It teaches by example from its own land, not by domination even though other nations never tire of occupying and denouncing the Jewish home, however tiny and reduced it is as the recent limited action against Hamas showed again.
Please visit the contact page to book a lecture on these topics while there is time to save not only Israel but Judaism and Jewish values which alone may save the West.