Tuesday, February 02, 2016

A brief elegy for Failed Messiah: A valuable and important blogger

FailedMessiah has hung up his sneakers.

I didn't know Shamrya as well as I would have liked, but I had a real respect for his ability to ferret out scandals. He was muckracker in the grand old tradition of muckrackers, shining a bright light on the dank corners of Orthodox Judaism.

Lots of people thought he was an embarrassment to Judaism, but I dissent from that opinion. Shamrya wasn't an embarrassment to his people. Shmarya was a national treasure. The corrupt, thieving, phonies who were daily described on the pages of Failed Messiah were the Jewish embarrassment. If they didn't exist, Shamrya wouldn't have come to point them out.

Some people were disturbed that Shmarya, in the style of an Old Testament prophet, chose to focus primarily on Orthodox Jewish malfeasance. It should bother you more that such a focus was possible. If Jews were as great as we say we are, Shmarya would have been out of business a long time ago.

I usually didn't like what Shamrya found, but I was glad he was out there looking. I hope his presence kept some people honest.

As a send off here are some posts of mine in which he is mentioned. Read them all: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/search?q=shmarya

Query: Now that Shmarya is gone, am I the longest serving Jewish blogger? Who's left from the area other than Gil?


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