Stuff One No-Account Blogger Says About Oorah.

Part One of my anti-Oorah Screed here

separated at birth?

Well as reported in my previous post they asked for it (what I think / say about Oorah) so here it is in no particular order.

O Oorah...How do I hate thee...let me count the ways:

1. Employing cult-like guilt trips you consistently underpay your tutors, mentors and counselors.  That's when you pay them at all and don't guilt-trip them into volunteering outright.  Assuming for a moment that dee vuss zitzen bahm shissel are NOT getting very rich very fast (a very naive assumption indeed) but are "pouring everything back into the business" you really need to re-prioritize and spend less on mass mailings and marketing and more on compensating those doing the recruitment and teaching grunt-work in the trenches.

AFTER THE JUMP

2.  Kiruv is great.  Kiruv is holy. Kiruv is serious business.  I prefer my Kiruv people to possess idealistic natures, gentle middos and genteel manners .  As if further evidence were needed the creative minds running Oorah are geribbena cynical Leytzonim the absolute worst sort of people to be doing this kind of work.  How can you convince a secular Jew of the sanctity and sacredness of Torah and Mitzvos when you yourselves hold that absolutely nothing is sacred or  undeserving of mockery?  You don't have to be Julius Streicher to disqualify yourself from running a Kiruv Opertion.  Here's what I mean to say:  You needn't paint Jews and Judaism as malevolent,parasitic and hellbent on world domination. It is quite sufficient to portray Jews and Torah Judaism as trite, ugly and irrational.  At this Oorah has always done a wonderful job.  More so in this their latest offering.

3. Where the hell do you get the right to make khozek of every identifiable eidah of yidden?  I have watched many a shmorg in which every group from Yiddisha Mommas to Yiddisha Bobbehs, from starry eyed Chavakuks to Russian BTs, from MO professionals to Professional Rebbeim are spoofed and mocked.  And this is your idea of "kosher"  entertainment?!?  Better the kinderlakh should watch Peter Pan or Marry Poppins and not have ingrained prejudices and dismissive attitudes towards other types (their own types???) of Jews from their youngest childhood.  

The send-up of the various types of BTs is particularly egregious.  Many veteran BTs suffer from buyers remorse years after they return finally realizing that, no matter how far they've come in knowledge and piety, in great swaths of the FFB community they will always be regarded as second class citizens.  But in Oorahs case  all the prospective mekurovim need to do is look at the stuff you produce yourselves and they'll know all about it in advance.  Oorah really shooting its own efforts in the foot.  Who would want to join a religion populated by irrational, illiterate, obnoxious cynical bozos particularly when those same irrational, illiterate, obnoxious cynical bozos somehow maintain a sense of dismissive superiority over the BTs they are asking the new recruits to become?!?

4. I'm no bukee in the sugya of Gezel Akum but Kars-4-Kids ads make me ashamed to be a member of the same religion / ethnicity as the folks from Oorah. (Come to think of it ,nearly everything Oorah does fills me with this shame) The Genevas Da'as is ekkelhaoftig (evocative of nausea and chucking ones cookies). Seriously, how many non-Jews or non-Orthodox Jews would ever donate a single Car (forgive me, Kar) if they new  that whatever small percentage of the proceeds of the sale that filter through the administrative advertising and marketing skimming are used to send Jewish kids to reeducation camps that convert them from one branch of Judaism to another?  Does a local kiruv outfit in North Jersey really need to be soliciting donations from non-Jews in Wyoming and Montana??? If I'm not mistaken several lawsuits have already been filed in several states to try and get Oorah to cease and desist from these deceptive practices.  Each one constitutes a massive Khilul HaShem and provides grist to the anti-Semitic propaganda mills that claim that Jews are sneaky, deceptive and  have sleazy business ethics.

Besides, the tune ripped off from Country-Yossis It's gonna be the little kinderlach that make Moshiach come (which in turn was ripped off, like all of his songs, from some earlier popular tune) [on May 16th an anonymous comment was left stating that was an original composition by Country Yossi Toiv ואם קבלה היא נקבל my apologies CG  BOF] has always grated on my nerves.  How much more so now that I've been listening to it for more than a decade ad nauseum and now that they've made it even more unlistenable with a souped-up, rocked-up version.

5. What they consider cool is just plain dumb at best and off-putting more often than not. Oorah marketing and advertising, while indeed slick, is characterized by sophomoric humor, tin-ear comedy, childish stereotypes, ripped-off ideas  (Fiveish is Gumby, Hirby-Kirby is Barney) and poorly executed memes.  I mean just looking at their latest offering.  Anyone with a pair of eyes can see that there's scarcely an original idea there.  The images and style were ripped off (right down to the style of the eye glasses) from here and here.  Once again this makes them the worst possible ambassadors for Torah-Judaism.  What kind of lumpen-proletariat dregs can actually be attracted to Torah and Mitzvos by such appeals???  Yes I know, the target demographic of Oorah is elementary age children.  But these kids have parents too.  And what rational, reasonable parent would not run like a fire clutching their precious children, from the makers of these advertising and marketing campaigns???

I have more to write but am now out of time and strength.