Well, it looks likes Arthur Abba Goldberg’s shady past as a con artist is even too much for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) to stomach. As of today, he is no longer listed as an officer with the quack association.

Dunt, dunt, dunt….another one bites the dust.

I’d like to say that I felt bad about his rapid demise. But, I don’t. I am very proud to have exposed this liar and hypocrite with my friend Norm Kent of South Florida Gay News. One more time…

Dunt, dunt, dunt….another one bites the dust.

Rabbi Denise L. Eger warned the Jewish Community about convicted felon Arthur Goldberg (aka Arthur Abba Goldberg, Arthur A. Goldberg), who was a mini-Madoff on Wall Street before being jailed.

After his probation ended, Goldberg found a new group of people to con – gay Jews and their families. Goldberg co-founded Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). Rabbi Eger took this slippery charlatan to task on her blog:

He was a financier who bilked people of millions of dollars. Even though he was disbarred he holds out his Law degree–Juris Doctor as some kind of credential. And yet he set up JONAH and pretends to be an expert.   Far from it.  The Ex-gay industry regularly uses outdated and disproven research to base its “therapy” upon.  Goldberg and his ilk are the real frauds forcing their particular brand of lies upon desperate and sometimes very fragile people who desparately want love and acceptance while unable to embrace their full selves.

The truth is that God made us who we are.  B’tzelem Elohim–we are made in the image of God.  That is the truth that should win out for everyone.  We in the Jewish community must expose such chicanery and lies  that are done in the name of our tradition.  And we must demand that con men like Goldberg that continue to practice their criminal behaviors of con jobs must be held accountable.

Once a con man always a con man.  BEWARE!

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami: West Hollywood’s Reform Synagogue.  She is a currently the Board President of the Southern California  Board of Rabbis.

By now, the world knows that Arthur Abba Goldberg was a big-time crook. After he left prison and his parole was up, he founded Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). He also became a major player in the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality (NARTH) During his decade-long tenure he never revealed his sordid past.

He hid by slyly dropping the “Abba” from his soiled name. For 10 years, he has posed as a moral paragon and paraded himself around the nation as an “expert” on homosexuality. The truth is, he is just an ex-con up to his same old tricks. Except this time, his con game is “curing” LGBT people.

Today, I went into the bowels  of a musty New Jersey library to retrieve old copies of The Record (Bergen) from 1989. I had to use microfiche, giving me flashbacks of my high school investigative reporting classes.  Below is a crook photo of Goldberg from the July 18, 1989 issue of The Record under the headline, “SWINDLE: Bond Whiz Admits Guilt in $2B Fraud.”

The sub-headline is “Abracadabra is No Houdini.”

Sadly, Goldberg and his apologists are already spinning his criminality and moral turpitude. They are saying that his appalling past is being distorted by gay activists. And, they are claiming that his crimes are minor…..because we ALL know someone who tried to steal $2 billion dollars. More on that another time. For now just enjoy the newspaper clips.

Ex-Gay Watch contacted NARTH’s David Pruden today for an on-record statement.

Goldberg is listed on NARTH’s website as an Executive Secretary and they have a long history with him.  In his response, Pruden confirmed that JONAH’s Arthur A. Goldberg was indeed Arthur Abba Goldberg.

I know nothing about the content of the article from Arthur or anyone else. I can say that everyone I know, knows his name is Arthur Abba Goldberg. I’ve seen it on documents, email communications, etc. for years. No secret there.

Pruden is referring to the article we sent him from the South Florida Gay News (SFGA).  As such a revelation, particularly on the record, amounts to something of a statement against interest, we give it substantial weight.

Mr. Goldberg has still not publicly commented, although there is evidence that he may be tampering with his Wikepedia page.

May we suggest he simply retires, rather than subject himself to further embarrassment.

(Arthur Abba Goldberg’s original article is HERE)

By: Erez Harari

“If you want to be gay, gey gezunta heit (you should live and be well)”

This catchphrase, coined by Arthur Goldberg of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) is used to illustrate that his “reparative therapy” organization believes that individuals who “choose” to be gay have every right to do so, just as an individual has a right to choose to “change”.

However, a recent article written by Arthur Goldberg on Arutz Sheva (a national Israeli news station) belies the disingenuousness of this message when Arthur lambasted a recent Yeshiva University event entitled “Being Gay in the Orthodox World”. This event was intended to illustrate some of the struggles, both internal and external, that Orthodox Jews have when trying to negotiate their religious and sexual identities (videos of the event are on vimeo.com, search: “YU gay panel”).

The purpose of the event was solely to raise awareness and tolerance, and it was explicitly stated that the event would not address halachah (Jewish law), reparative therapy, or the biological vs. social nature of sexual orientation. It was merely a chance for people to share their personal, often heart wrenching, stories about growing up gay in the Orthodox Jewish community.

This message was completely lost on Arthur Goldberg, who works with individuals “struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions” on a daily basis.

He begins his article by stating that the program “illustrates a classic strategy designed to manipulate Jews”. He clearly  twists a simple plea for awareness and sensitivity into some sort of nefarious plot concocted by individuals with sinister ulterior motives. He then suggests that the panelists, a group of four Yeshiva University alums in their 20s, some of whom only came out within the past year or two, were “clever purveyors of a propaganda effort to alter attitudes within the Orthodox community”.

It’s surprising that raising awareness of the fact that homosexuality exists in the Orthodox community and encouraging sensitivity towards homosexuals is turned into a bad thing. No one violates Torah law by being nice to people.

Arthur claims that members of the “ex-gay” community were denied an opportunity to speak on the panel. This is blatantly false. The panel was comprised exclusively of Yeshiva University students and alumni and Arthur was denied a spot on the panel because he is not an alumnus. (Read More)

Ex-Gay Watch reports that convicted con artist Arthur Abba Goldberg, who dropped the “Abba” in his name and co-founded JONAH in 1999, is trying to create yet another false identity by manipulating the wikipedia website. His latest assumed name is Arthur “Avrum” Goldberg.” Here is what Ex-Gay Watch had to say:

However, in what seems too coincidental to be such, the longstanding “Arthur A. Goldberg” in the Wikipedia article about JONAH was changed to “Arthur Avrum Goldberg” on February 8th.  The editor goes by the name of Ann Jonah.

Avrum is Yiddish for Abraham, which in turn means “father of nations” or father in general to the Jews.  Abba also means father and so we think Goldberg is being cleverly deceptive here.  We also think we know why this edit was made several days before the current story hit.  This post will be updated once confirmed.

Apparently, a con artist just can’t stop conning, even when the jig is up. It is almost amusing to watch Goldberg’s useless machinations on his wiki page, even as the story of his true identity goes viral on the Internet. Arthur Abba Goldberg is clearly the “father” of falsehoods.

There is still no public statement from Goldberg. He is still manipulating and maneuvering behind the scenes like a trapped wet rat. I suggest he come out of the convict closet and admit he is a snake oil salesman. No matter how hard he tries, he will not be able to rewrite history.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, the Virginia offshoot of the Family Research Council, criticized the Jews of Yeshiva University, the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a community library in suburban Milwaukee, for their efforts to defend academic integrity and intellectual freedom.

PFOX accused Yeshiva University of “censorship” for refusing to allow an ex-gay propagandist to harangue a forum of four gay Orthodox Jews who spoke of the spiritual and emotional pain of being forced to stay in the closet. PFOX asserted that JONAH, an ostensibly Jewish organization which uses Christian evangelical literature to encourage Jews to stay in the closet and pretend to be heterosexual — should have been included in the forum for balance. Both PFOX and JONAH clearly missed — or intentionally disregarded — the purpose of the forum.

Censorship is an act by government censors to suppress speech or delete communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government. In the case of Yeshiva University, however, a private institution and its faculty and students exercised their right not to have their own freedom of expression hijacked by a rival private group. PFOX and JONAH, on the other hand, sought to force a private institution to air their unfactual and off-topic views.

PFOX also called upon the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to rescind an Intellectual Freedom Award granted to the West Bend (Wisconsin) Memorial Community Library. The library was honored, according to the School Library Journal, for resisting pressure by local social conservatives and city officials to ban 58 young-adult books which addressed sexual orientation and gender identity. The books included Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club (HarperCollins), Stephan Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Esther Drill’s Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a gURL(both S & S). The conservatives later sought, again unsuccessfully, to move these and 24 other books to a restricted adult section of the library.

In the latter case, PFOX sought to force the library to carry ex-gay propaganda regardless of its factual inaccuracies and poor literary quality. No government agency stopped PFOX from publishing and distributing its propaganda. And one suspects that PFOX supports the social conservatives’ own attempts to rid the library of books relating to sex and gender.

If PFOX ever donates factual books, such as the excellent scientific analysis Ex-Gay Research or Wayne Besen’s primer Anything But Straight, we’ll be first to support the donated books’ inclusion in library stacks.

Journalist Ted Cox went undercover to explore Journey into Manhood (some call it Journey into ManHunt), a campy “ex-gay” camp that practices bizarre techniques and traffics in outdated stereotypes.

This creepy program sends gay men off into the woods, for a hefty fee, to become more macho (group picture left) and to share each other’s pain. Of course, much of the heartache and suffering is caused by anti-gay teachings, but they won’t tell you this obvious fact as your roast weenies by the candlelight, uh, I mean campfire.

Cox posed as a gay man for two years and attended weekly meetings for several months at two churches in California and a two-day camp at a ranch in northern Arizona in February. Alternet interviews Cox about his experience in these “pray away the gay” programs.

Needless to say, these groups never return the money when the program fails – which it inevitably does. This is why I define “ex-gay” groups as consumer fraud.

I was at the gym tonight thinking of a documentary I recently saw – “Chasing the Devil.” In the film, a Jewish “ex-gay” organization, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) is featured.

I am profoundly disturbed by this slippery organization that pretends to be Jewish, while it is really promoting right wing Christianity. Jewish parents should beware that JONAH recommends and promotes fundamentalist Christian books in the guise of helping people “change.”

Worse, they underhandedly use a discredited therapist with a Jewish sounding last name, Richard Cohen, to recruit new clients. The truth is, Cohen abandoned his Judaism long-ago for the Moonies and then switched to fundamentalist Christianity.

So, why is Cohen still JONAH’s leading therapist? Are there no Jewish therapists in New Jersey, where the group is based? If not, are there none in New York City, directly across the river? I suppose JONAH  thinks all those guys with beards I see in Brooklyn, where I live, are  actually Amish.

Basically, Jewish parents who send their gay children to get “help” from JONAH – will introduce them to Christian missionary work. Come to think of it, JONAH should change its deceptive name to “‘Jews’ Offering New Alternatives To Judaism.” (JONAJ)

JONAH should start acting like a Jewish group or drop its misleading name.

Excerpt from David Benkof:

In the process of writing Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View, the most important (really the only significant) full-length study of homosexuality and Jewish law, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport asked Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) if he could speak to some “success stories” – and he was unsatisfied with its meager response.

I have had much the same experience; while I have spoken to about two dozen JONAH men on the Internet, on the phone and in person, I have never encountered a single Jew who was gay (not bisexual) and became straight (not bisexual) due to the techniques recommended by JONAH. If its approach was effective, shouldn’t there be at least five or 10 men and women I could speak with who say that JONAH did for them what it claims to be able to do?