Meor is an Orthodox Jewish outreach organization, or so it claims. As you may know, Orthodox Judaism is supposed to be a religion of modesty and careful regulation of sexual matters which generally involves separation of the sexes. Certainly, clothing is supposed to be modest, married and unmarried men are not allowed to dance with women or to touch them, and generally they don't even talk to one another. And that's the kind of life that Meor is trying to draw people into. However, they use deceptive methods to draw people in and to bolster their attendance figures so as to attract more donations. These are photos from the Meor websites.
From the standpoint of general secular society, this all looks fine. But these people are being drawn into a life where men and women barely talk to one another unless they are relatives, don't shake hands, and the women don't wear shorts, halter tops, or much of what you see in these photos. So the events that draw these people in and the photos on the websites are dishonest.
Meor claims to have developed a revolutionary program that it calls the Maimonides Leaders Fellowship. In reality, it's just a bunch of standard outreach schtick that is neither about Maimonides or Leadership and isn't really a Fellowship either. We can see that what Meor is really built on is sex.
It gets even worse on social media. Meor's Facebook pages:
This one says it all, raising millions of dollars and celebrating with a mixed gender beer party.
From the Wolchok foundation page: (photos obviously supplied by Meor)
Women, women, and more women
and the rabbi likes it!
The great majority of the pictures of people are pictures of pretty females and sexy females. There are few photos of men (or not so attractive females - do they only do outreach to gorgeous women?) Well there are photos of men with pretty women.
And now ladies and gentlemen, the lovely ladies on the staff of Rutgers Meor. The treasurer:
Social media intern:
Marketing person:
Recruiter:
Yes, the young woman pictured above (name covered over here) does recruitment for Meor. Here's a closeup. I'm not criticizing her. She doesn't know any better. But for Meor to show photos like this? What is their message?
Here's another recruitment ambassador for Meor (name covered over here):
I guess that's one way to do recruitment. The spy agencies use such methods. It is called a honeytrap.
And here's the Head of Recruitment:
Interesting. The director of recruitment is showing bare arms and shoulders. Here are the rules about that from Jewish Virtual Library:
Regarding modesty and community customs dictate the dress code for women. This "code" is practiced primarily by Orthodox Jews. Typically, women are expected to wear sleeves extending at least to the elbow, blouses or dresses with necklines that do not expose any cleavage and skirts long enough to cover the knees when seated.
Even CNN understands this:
This usually means the following for Orthodox women: trousers are not worn, and skirts and dresses must fall below the knee, including when sitting; arms are covered to the elbow, and necklines are high-cut.
And here's the RJX president:
And the secretary:
This header from the RJX home page shows the link with Meor:
The Meor IRS 990 also shows the connection to the Rutgers Jewish experience, whose legal name is Rutgers Learning Network. Evidentially, they started with more Lakewood style jargon (that's the legal address) and learned to jazz it up and secularize it by taking out the word learning and making themselves seem non-denominational. Meor gave RJX over $200,000.
This is outrageous stuff. It's bad enough if Meor posts photos of immodest women or men and women all mixed together at an event. They don't need to show those photos. But for the staff to be dressed like this? What's the excuse?
Some of these pictures are glaringly salacious. I'd say the message is come to Meor and get lucky. There are over 100 photos here that are problematic according to Orthodox Jewish standards. Why so many? It's because they dominate Meor social media. The main lure is sex. Now is that appropriate for an organization run by Orthodox Jews whose purpose is to involve young people in Orthodox Judaism which prohibits even holding hands with the opposite sex before marriage? Isn't it a little deceptive? It's one thing to have mixed events, but to paste immodest photos all over the websites -- that's deceptive recruiting. It's also a violation of Jewish law and morality.
And it's not just that they are indecent enough to show photos of mixed events with immodestly dressed people with their arms around one another. The staff is immodest in their official photos!
And let us note that at Machon Shlomo, one of the two schools in Israel that Meor sends guys to (and operates), students are not allowed to date until after Chanuka in the second year. That means they'll be celibate for at least two years. And in Orthodox Judaism, celibacy means complete celibacy if you know what I mean. OK, I'll tell you, even masturbation is not allowed. So they tempt you with sex and impose on you long-term celibacy. You know who else does that? The Moonies.
In sum:
Here, watch the exciting dance in action:
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