Rambo Rabbi Training Chosen Guns

Well, the New York Post earned its fifty cents today. Let's start with the cover, which at first glance seems like a work of fantasy but actually documents a real-life, tough-talking rabbi and his plastic pistol-packing "God Squad." Jewish security forces are hardly new to New York (Hasidic communities like the Satmar Jews in Williamsburg have their own private patrols, for instance), but none have produced a training video as uplifting as this one. A mix of Wes Anderson, Adam Sandler, and the "Sabotage" video, it depicts Rabbi Gary Moscowitz, who was an NYPD cop for nine years and holds a black belt in karate, training his fellow Jews to defend their synagogues. Enjoy!

Moscowitz is founder of the International Security Coalition of Clergy, whose mission is to train Jews in self-defense and advance fighting techniques in the event of a terrorist attack on a synagogue. He says business was slow for his Coalition until May, when the FBI arrested a group accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in The Bronx. But now Moscowitz's 100-hour synagogue self-defense course is in high demand. With his course, you'll learn how to:

• execute a somersault while drawing a gun
• use a table as cover from gunfire
• take down a terrorist by the neck

Moscowitz tells the Post, "Jews are not like Christians. If I turn my cheek, I'm coming around to make a kick." The rabbi says the NYPD isn't qualified to guard synagogues because they don't know members of the congregation, so they can't stop a terrorist who wants to put "a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says Moscowitz was fired from the force in the early 1990s, but claimed not to know details. Regarding the Rabbi's criticism of the NYPD, Browne cryptically added, "Blessed are the tight of lip, for they shall resist speaking ill of the ill-informed."

By John Del Signore