BALTIMORE COMMUNITY - UOJ ALERT - ARON TENDLER - SERIAL ADULTERER AND ACCUSED CHILD MOLESTER ---------- is living in Baltimore with Naomi and Jeremy Goldman in the Greenspring area. 6304 Lincoln Av. Tel. # 410-358-1832 *************************************************
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For at the very least - twenty years, YULA and the RCC (Rabbinical Council Of California), have been enabling Shalom Tendler and Aron Tendler to be in a setting that caused great harm to their victims, under the cloak of respectability. There are numerous victims that could have been spared a life of misery if YULA and the RCC would have expelled these two vicious sub-humans when they became aware of their activities in the late 1980's.
The civil liability may extend to the Shaarey Tzedek Congregation, and the Young Israel Of North Beverly Hills as well and their officers.
I urge the victims to consult, anonymously if you wish, with Jeffrey Herman Esq. the world renown sex abuse advocate at: jherman@hermanlaw.com--1800-686-9921. His website is hermanlaw.com for information about his successes.
Please contact as well, Amy Klein at The Jewish Journal - amyk@jewishjournal.com
and the religion editor of the L.A. Times, Mr. Steve Padilla:steve.padilla@latimes.com.
It is long past due that we hold everyone accountable for the damage caused to Judaism and our children.
CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE: DIRECTIONS TO ARON TENDLER'S NEW HOME!
359 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 359 of 359Does anyone know what the relationship between Kastner and Kuhl was?
"Does anyone know what the relationship between Kastner and Kuhl was?"
That depends if you can believe the Fartscroll version of events in Recha Sternbuch's "Heroine of Rescue". While Recha was a big tzadekkes, I don't know that Nosson Scherman would put out any info on her close relative Kuhl if it was unsavory.
Kuhl's visas were bought and paid for by Kastner for his friends. Kuhl came to Toronto after the war with Kastner's blood money.
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2007/07/the-law-of-unin.html#comments
You gotta love it. Shmarya has finally met his match. The blogress "Orthomom" has gotten into the fray and put the putz in his place. While it's easy for him to delete common readers who shlog him up, he cannot easily do so to a blogress who can expose him on her very high traffic blog.
Orthomom sums up Shmarya as a smug jerk who fires off darts to badmouth frum Jews, which he then paints a target around. She has Shmarya scrambling to defend the faulty data he provides. He's really in knots because he never admits he's wrong.
Even funnier than that is Shmarya, who is looking pathetic cornered by Orthomom, is defending himself with a straight faced bald lie that he has nothing against frum people but is hoping that some rabbonim reading his blog who care will quietly fix the problems that he raises awareness about. This after he gave free reign to his cheerleaders who hurl Nazi-like insults against rabbonim, all frumma Yidden and the Torah itself, straight out of Der Sturmer.
I'm not defending or condemning Kuhl at this point. Just because Kuhl was on the train does not mean they were in bed together. The Satmar Rov & R' Yonosson Steif were also on the train because Kasztner had to cover all kinds of political bases. The Satmar Rov knew full well what a murderous two faced phoney Kasztner was and screamed about him for years afterwards.
Kuhl may have gotten a seat for other reasons like his relation to Sternbuch.
Can you provide any evidence of a conspiracy?
We have been asked by 42 Broadway not to reveal what we were shown in the Agudah archives.
Thank you very much.
It's called Fartscroll-Agudah privilege.
The older Hungarian survivors who are now in their 80's are the evidence. Call them in Toronto. They've been screaming about Kuhl for the last 60 years.
"They've been screaming about Kuhl for the last 60 years."
Maybe you can give us a synopsis of their taynos against Kuhl (sans the nauseating Hungarian accent).
I wonder if this new interest in Kuhl will bring Steve I Weiss and his groupies out of retirement again.
They have to defend the fort.
Something doesn't make sense to me. The Kuhl family got all kinds of kovod in Toronto from the rosh yeshiva who survived the Nazis, while his parents were shechted and the shuls down south like Viewmount, etc. Toronto has the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel so the survivors abound in most of the places being mechabed the Kuhls.
Am I missing something here?
I only recently heard something about the IOUs and execution style killing, but only after UOJ stirred things up and I asked around.
Margo was also a shainer yid and all the agudah gedolim until UOJ stirred things up.
Is there a more despicable character in the kashrut industry today than Lubinsky? He brazenly takes money from Rubashkin to shamelessly shill for them, while he bashes the bloggers who are only looking out for the kosher consumer. We need to shut down his fraud of a magazine along with the whole Rubashkin operation.
Menachem Lubinsky
Editor-in-Chief
Kosher Food Industry
New Power of Kosher Blogs are a Mixed Blessing, Kashrus Officials Say
New York... by KosherToday Staff Reporters... A new powerful medium in communicating the latest information on kashrus is the ever-growing number of Jewish blogs. While kashrus officials were quick to welcome this new way of communicating kashrus alerts and updates, they were also wary about the frequent errors and incomplete information that can potentially destroy a kosher establishment. Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the Orthodox Union (OU) reflected the sentiment of many kashrus officials: "We always welcome and encourage consumer comments and concerns. There are, however, blogs where people post comments without the proper knowledge of the kosher food regulations. What we don't want is people making assumptions and commenting on issues that they are not experts in." One blog last week announced that a local Brooklyn store was no longer under kosher supervision, but two days later reported that it had learned that the store was under another kosher supervision. The store claimed that the quick and inaccurate reporting by the blog caused it "a great deal of damage." Another blog, popular with Orthodox Jews, quoted verbatim from a press release by PETA, the animal rights extremists, accusing a plant in Gordon, NE owned by the Rubashkin family of gross abuse of animals without including the retort by the USDA that no such violation took place. Kashrus officials say that consumers can get the most accurate information from the web sites of major kosher certification agencies and from such sites as www.kashrut.com. The officials did not hide their concern that the speed with which kashrus information is posted on the blogs could at best be a mixed blessing
Is there a more despicable character in the kashrut industry today than Lubinsky?
--------------
He was trained by the wiz of deceit...Moshe Sherer and the Agudath Israel..at good ol' 5 Beekman.
--- Changing the laws so that religious orders join the ranks of mandated
reporters is the right thing to do. And the time is right now. ---
My Response---
I am all for mandated reporting and even more. However, how in the world do you expect to enforce such a law, especially in the Yeshiva Circles?
Do we suddenly think that just because one is deemed to be a mandated reporter, that they will ultimately be spurred to act upon and report the abuse, as opposed to prior, when there was no such law in place - that they would have simply felt compelled not to intervene?
Let me put it this way. Rabbis, teachers, faculty members, secretaries, janitors, and anyone else that comes into daily contact with children - who are privy and witness to child abuse taking place in a YTT, YOB, GER, NIRC, BOBOV, SATMER - Should all fall under the same umbrella of "mandated reporter" and by law be required to report the abuse. Will that prevent more crimes and cover ups from re-occurring in the future? I don't think so. I really don't.
Lipel Margulis and his hoodlums would have used the same catastrophic criminal behavior tactics - regardless of the mandated or non-mandated reporting. Ditto for YOB and Shlomo Mandel. Same for NIRC with their goons, Yaakov Hopfer, Moshe Heinemann, Sheftel Neuberger etc.
Let us take this even a step further. ANYONE THAT HAS KNOWLEDGE OF, OR SUSPECTS THAT CHILDREN ARE BEING ABUSED, WEATHER IT BE IN A SEXUAL OR PHYSICAL FORM, HAS A MORAL OBLIGATION AND RESPONSIBILITY TO REPORT THE ABUSE TO 911 OR ABUSE HOT-LINE IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT EVEN THINK FOR A SECOND THAT REPORTING IT ONLY TO YESHIVA AUTHORITIES WILL RESULT IN ACTION AND CORRECTIONS TAKING PLACE THAT ENSURES THE SAFETY, WELFARE, AND WELL BEING OF THAT CHILD OR ADULT VICTIM. IF HISTORY IS ANY INDICATION, IT SHOWS THAT THE JEWISH VELT IS MORE INTERESTED IN HIDING THE ABUSE, THAN EXPOSING IT. GET THE POLICE INVOLVED AND HAVE NO GUILT IN DOING SO, BECAUSE THERE SHOULD BE NONE WHATSOEVER. DO THE RIGHT THING AND STOP THE DESTRUCTION AND HAVOC WE'RE FACING RIGHT NOW. IT'S TIME TO STOP THE BLEEDING!
Mandated reporting is a 'nice' idea, but there is MUCH more that is needed. The # 1 solution IS ALWAYS PICKING UP THE PHONE AND DIALING 911 to report all suspected cases of abuse.
Solution # 2 kicks in ONLY AFTER COMPLETING SOLUTION # 1.
Solution # 2
Taking away the self-governing aspect which permit and allow private schools and religious institutions to get away with their crimes. There should be an independent board/committee set up for moderation on all issues of abuse etc. The committee should consist of professionals, non-rabbis (the exception being - only Rabbis with a proven track record of advocating for victims rights. i.e Rabbi Yosef Blau, Rabbi Mark Dratch) that will hold meetings and sessions to improve all fundamentals of Jewish outreach pertaining to keeping everybody safe and sane. The committee will be asked to intervene and make rulings, recommendations, and improvements to keep men, women, and children safe from abusive individuals and organizations. ALL YESHIVA'S WILL BE REQUIRED AND OBLIGATED TO PARTAKE IN AND ACCEPT THE VERDICT THAT THE BOARD BRINGS FORTH. FAILURE TO ABIDE BY OR REFER ACCUSATIONS OF MISCONDUCT AND ABUSE TO THE MODERATION COMMITTEE WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE AN INDICATION OF GUILT FOR THAT INSTITUTION AND FOR THE PERSON WHO THE ALLEGATIONS ARE BROUGHT AGAINST!
(Kashrut Abuse is another whole dimension in which all those responsible for animal cruelty and bogus hechsherim must be dealt with in a manner that befits these evil pieces of drek).
Dear Posek Hador,
I was talking about wild strawberries, blackberries, etc. that grew without any pesticides. G-d did not create thrips in the year 2007 or perhaps you do believe in evolution and a super-bug called the thrip suddenly evolved and began sucking strawberries.
Gee take an invertebrate bio course or go to an agricultural school. The elimination of use of pesticide does not create bugs. The pesticide controled them and they were happily munching on pesticide-free berries since creation.
GIRL, 4, IN MOLEST NIGHTMARE
By PHILIP MESSING
July 18, 2007 -- A mysterious predator snatched an unattended 4-year-old Hasidic girl outside her Brooklyn home, forced her into his car and sexually abused her before dumping her off to wander the streets alone, cops and neighbors said yesterday.
The little girl was finally discovered walking 10 blocks from her Borough Park home at about 9 p.m. Monday, more than two hours after her frantic parents reported her missing to the local Jewish security patrol, Shomrim.
Shomrim's NYPD liaison officer, Yanky Daskal, said the child had been playing with her 9-year-old sister in front of their house at about 7 p.m. when the older girl left her to hang out with other kids.
The victim said she was sitting on her steps when a white man in a black car pulled up, started talking to her, then forced her into the vehicle, Daskal said.
After taking her to an unknown location, the kidnapper exposed himself and forcibly touched the girl, Daskal said.
A pair of elderly sisters-in-law eventually found the frightened child wandering near the intersection of 16th Avenue and 61st Street at about 8 p.m.
"They were sitting outside their home and this girl walked up the block," said Lillie Ann Appel, the daughter of one of the women.
"My aunt approached her and asked if she was lost. She said yes and said that she had no panties because the man threw them out of the car."
The women, 84-year-old Josie Paterna and 78-year-old Anne Paterna, soothed the girl and tried to find out her address before deciding to call police.
"As a parent and as a grandparent, you don't want to hear that a 4-year-old experienced something like that," said Appel. "It's just an unfortunate thing."
Tot's hell ended in arms of neighbor
BY ALISON FOX, ERNIE NASPRETTO and TINA MOORE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Posted Wednesday, July 18th 2007
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the girl did not appear to know her abductor and told cops he was a white man driving a black car. Detectives were exploring whether any similar crimes have been committed in the area.
Kelly, who said the girl was not hurt, called the crime "horrendous."
"You're in this business a long time but you still can get shocked by the depravity of some kinds," he said.
Neighbors in the child-friendly community with a burgeoning Orthodox Jewish population were upset.
"This is a peaceful neighborhood," longtime resident Morris Leiner said. "It's extremely scary. I'm stunned."
Ari Noe, a father of four who lives across the street from the girl, said it's common for large numbers of children to be playing outside.
"A lot of the kids were playing there and all of a sudden she was missing," he said. "Somebody took her."
Noe said detectives came to his house at 3 a.m. Monday searching for any surveillance tapes that might have caught the attacker in the act the day before. He did not have any tapes, he said.
"She's such a cute blondie," said Noe, whose daughters are 5 and 8. "A real adorable girl and everybody knows her."
When her parents realized she was missing, they contacted the Shormin patrol - a civilian patrol group, Noe said.
The group brought the parents to the nearest police stationhouse, a police source said, which connected the girl with Paterna.
The girl fell asleep on Paterna's shoulder while they waited for police, she said, and was taken to Maimonides Medical Center when they arrived.
Noe and his wife, Sarah, spent the early morning trying to console the girl's parents, who were "pretty upset."
Kastner did not sue Greenwald. The Israeli government sued Greenwald. Why? Because Kastner was due to get a big job in the government and so they wanted this "irritant" to go away. The trial was not supposed to last more than a week, if that. Katner was his own worst enemy on the stand. The trial lasted for four years. Greenwald was a simple Jew, who wasn't going to hurt anyone. Kastner was not assasinated by the "right wing" in fact his killers were linked to the Shin Bet. Why was Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy" banned in Israel for so long? Is there something the government didn't want the people to know about its sorid history and failure to save the Jews of Hungary?
First the Agudah gangs up on UOJ. Now the Rubashkin hacks like Lubinsky and the OU try to smear Rabbi Yudel Shain and tell the masses it's verboten to get their information except from websites that they control.
I once sent out to some friends an email cut & paste of a newspaper article about the OU. Some OU rabbi who felt the article was "unfortunate & misleading", had my email forwarded to him. He fired off a note to me outlining his consternation and demanding that I not forward anymore articles about them unless I get verification from the OU that the article is correct. I asked the drey kop what his problem was with the article. His complaint was so ridiculous, I can't even believe he wasn't embarrassed to open his mouth.
I think you made a mistake on the Tendler address in Baltimore...
Kastner Papers to Yad Vashem
by Hillel Fendel
Three boxes of documents belonging to Israel Kastner were presented to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem this week. Negotiations between Kastner and Nazi Leader Adolph Eichmann to free Jews in exchange for cooperation from Kastner remain controversial to this day.
The private archives, comprising three boxes of letters of correspondence with Nazi officials, Jewish organizations and families, were presented in an official ceremony on Sunday. In attendance were Kastner's daughter, his granddaughter Merav Michaeli (a popular television personality who MC'ed the event), survivors of the “Kastner Train,” and others.
The papers, which also document Holocaust rescue efforts of the Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, were given to the Holocaust museum by the historian Dov Dinur. Dinur received them in 1981 to help him research the Kastner Affair.
The Controversy
Kastner has long been a controversial figure in Israeli history. A leader of the Zionist movement in Hungary during World War II and the co-chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee, Kastner aided Jewish refugees who reached Hungary during the first years of World War II.
In April 1944, a month after the invasion of Hungary by the Germans, the Committee began talks with the Nazis regarding the saving of Hungarian Jews in exchange for money, goods, military equipment and cooperation. These negotiations took place under the shadow of the deportations of over a hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to death camps. In June 1944, a trainload of 1,684 Jews traveled to safety in Switzerland. A Yad Vashem statement says the negotiations also resulted in the diversion of 20,000 Hungarian Jews to an Austrian labor camp, preventing their expulsion to extermination camps.
In 1954, Kastner was accused by Malkiel Grunwald of having collaborated with the Nazis, and Grunwald was sued for libel. Grunwald claimed that Kastner struck a deal with the Nazis whereby he could handpick the 1,684 Jews to be saved on a train to Switzerland in exchange for encouraging the rest of Hungarian Jewry to get on the trains to the death camps.
Concluding a two-year trial that gripped the nation, Judge Binyamin HaLevi acquitted Grunwald and found that Kastner had "sold his soul to the German Satan."
In 1958, Israel's Supreme Court overturned most of the judgment - a year after Kastner's assassination by a Holocaust survivor.
Some consider Kastner a hero who should be credited with the saving of the nearly 1,700 Jews on the "Kastner train." Yad Vashem Chairman Yosef Tommy Lapid, a former government minister and founder of the anti-religious and now-defunct Shinui party, said at the ceremony that Kastner was one of the Holocaust's great heroes. “There was no man in the history of the Holocaust who saved more Jews, and was subjected to more injustice than Israel Kastner,” Lapid said. “This is an opportunity to do justice to a man who was misrepresented and was a victim of a vicious attack that led to his death.”
Others, however, agree with Grunwald, who accused Kastner of a series of unforgivable crimes: "costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews;" testifying in Nuremburg in defense of SS Col. Kurt Becher, a high-ranking Gestapo official and murderer; saving "no fewer than 52 of his relatives, and… people with connections," and "making a fortune in the process;" saving many of his own townspeople; and of agreeing to keep quiet about the fate of the other tens or hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews who were murdered.
Kastner was serving as spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Trade when Grunwald published his charges in the form of a pamphlet. Representing one side of the long-running controversy, his lone daughter Suzanne said at the ceremony, "I think the State of Israel has finally retrieved some of its lost honor over this entire affair."
Very interesting study.
Obesity is 'contagious,' study finds
Friends help friends get fatter, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine indicates.
By Denise Gellene, Times Staff Writer
July 26, 2007
Obesity can spread among a group of friends like a contagious disease, moving from one person to another in an epidemic of fat.
That's the finding of a novel study released Wednesday that reported that having close friends who are fat can nearly triple your risk of becoming obese.
The effect is so powerful that distance doesn't matter — the influence is the same whether friends live next door or 500 miles apart, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study, conducted by Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James H. Fowler of UC San Diego, is the first to document the spread of obesity through a social network — a pattern of contagion most often associated with infectious diseases such as influenza and AIDS.
Instead of transmitting germs or viruses, people infected each other with their perceptions of weight. For example, a man attending a Thanksgiving meal may notice his brother has gained weight and conclude that it's OK to be heavier, Christakis said.
"It's about the spread of norms from person to person," said Christakis, a professor of medical sociology.
The phenomenon worked in the other direction as well. People who become thinner, increase the chances that their friends and relatives will lose weight too, researchers said.
The report added a new theory to help explain the remarkable increase in the rate of obesity, which has doubled in the U.S. over the last 25 years.
One-third of American adults are obese, and that proportion may increase to 40% in the next eight years, according to a recent Johns Hopkins University study. Many in public health describe obesity as an epidemic that has helped fuel a rise in diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.
The trend has been linked to inexpensive fast food, a sedentary lifestyle and genetic factors. The new research suggests that those factors have a role but that their influence is amplified through social connections.
"This is a seminal study," said Richard Suzman, director of the National Institute on Aging's behavioral and social research program, which funded the research. "It takes what was seen as a noninfectious disease and shows it clearly has got communicable factors."
The report is the latest to apply network analysis — a concept with roots in computer science — to the study of human behavior. Instead of focusing on individual cases, researchers analyzed the spread of obesity through a network of 12,067 people over 32 years.
"It is very plain to those of us who work in community settings that health behaviors occur in the context of a social network," said Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a childhood obesity expert at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who was not connected with the research.
Researchers said the methodology could also be used to devise ways to break the social connections that feed smoking and drug addiction.
"People are interconnected, and their health is interconnected," Christakis said.
In the latest study, researchers used data from the decades-old Framingham Heart Study, which has collected information on health, diet, exercise, family ties and, to a limited extent, friendships among the residents of Framingham, Mass.
They used a standard measure, body mass index, to determine whether a subject was obese. BMI is a ratio of height to weight; a person with a score of 30 is considered obese. For example, a man 6 feet tall and 225 pounds has a BMI of 30.5.
Researchers looked closely at the influence of gender, smoking, socioeconomic class and geographic distance among participants.
They found that the influence of friends on weight gain was as powerful as the effect of genetics found in other studies.
Neighbors who weren't friends had no influence on each other, suggesting community characteristics often linked to obesity — such as a lack of parks or a dependence on cars — weren't as important as previously thought.
Overall, researchers found that if a person becomes obese, the chances that a friend will become obese rises 57%. Among siblings, the risk goes up 40%. Between spouses, the odds rise 37%.
Mutual friends — study participants who identified each other as friends — had the greatest influence. If one became obese, the risk skyrocketed 171%.
The gender mix in friendships played an important role. In same-sex friendships, the chance that a friend will become obese increases 71%. Friends and siblings of the opposite sex had no influence on weight gain, researchers said.
Researchers constructed diagrams of social networks and plotted the spread of obesity through chains of friends.
They found that a person who becomes obese increases the odds of obesity in about 100 people connected to one another though family or friendship.
"It is not only friends, but friends of friends' friends who are affected by this," said Fowler, a political science professor.
But Paul Ernsberger, an obesity researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, said that there are many reasons why people become fat and that friendship may be a marker for social forces the researchers were not able to measure.
He said body weight varies by social class and religious denomination, so it was possible that friends who got fat in the study were members of a larger group, such as Baptists, with a greater tendency for becoming overweight.
Discrimination might also explain the friendships between fat people, he said.
"Thin people may be excluding overweight and obese people from their social networks," he said.
"What they are showing is birds of a feather flocking."
However, Christakis said, the dynamic of spreading obesity was more complex because friends weren't getting fat at the same time.
Christoffel, the Northwestern researcher, said the report suggests diet and exercise plans focused on obese individuals would not be as effective as interventions aimed at networks of overweight relatives and friends.
Obesity treatment programs should move away from their emphasis on individual willpower, she said.
"The truth is almost no one can do it own their own," she said.
"Obesity is 'contagious,' study finds"
These "studies" come a dime a dozen.
Next UOJ is going to say I started wearing 100 pairs of tzitzis to look more like my fat pal Margulies.
http://jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-anyone-have-any-information.html
What's the story with "Dr. Vivienne Damelin" (AKA: Rebbetzin Miriam Spalter) ?
There's merit to the obesity study. About 40% of Americans are obese (50 lbs. overweight) another 30% are overweight, in B.P., Flatbush and Monsey the numbers appear to be closer to 90% overweight. Conventions, simchas, kiddush clubs (official or otherwise)and in general everything surrounds unhealthy food.
Thanks to Rabbi Blumenkranz and others, healthy foods like fruits and vegetables are suspect.
When was the last time you were at a smorg and you saw the behaimas line up 40 deep at the fruit and vegetable tables?
Witness this exchange on VIN regarding the hassidic looking attempted rapist who slashed and seriously wounded the woman hitchhiker he picked up. The first anon claims to know who the perp is from the police sketch, but he refuses to go to the police because of mesira:
Anonymous said...
SHOW ME A REAL WRITTEN HETER FROM RABUNIM THAT IN THIS CASE IT'S NOT MESIRE, AND I AM CALLING THE POLICE RIGHT AWAY WITH THE NAME.
MESIRE IS TO BIG AN AVIERE TO RELY ON A BLOG'S HETER
July 24, 2007 11:24 AM
Anonymous said...
If this victim were your daughter would u run to ask the rabbunim if you can be over on mesira or would u call 911 and tell him that u know the killer . GET REAL BUDDY!!
We are beginning to think that with your twisted and convoluted thinking that maybe YOU are the RAPIST or accomplice.
July 24, 2007 12:16 PM
Anonymous said...
3:02, YOU'RE RIGHT ON.
AND EVEN IF I DID RUN TO THE POLICE IF MY FAMILY (CHAS VESHULOM. and for any family) WAS INVOLVED, IT STILL WOULDEN'T MAKE IT RIGHT ACCORDING TO THE TORAH.
WE NEED A WRITEN HETER.
AND IF IT'S SUCH A CLEAR CUT CASE, THAT IT WARRENTS A HETER, THEN YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET IT FROM A RUV FORTH-WITH.
BUT, YOU HAVE TO GET IT!
July 24, 2007 5:06 PM
Steve,
"They" all look the same.
STEVE,
"PINK-ASS SHEINBERG" IS NOT GONNA GIVE THE HETER, dont you remember "no penetration no violation".
Hey pink-ass! be carefull your tzitzit sould'nt get shtupt in the wrong place, you might qualify for a violation there.
It's been a very long time since I heard about anything happening with the civil suit filed against defrocked "rabbi", Mordecai Tendler.
Does anyone know if the rumors are true that he may also be moveing to Baltimore to be near his brothers Aron Boruch and Hillel Tendler and other family members?
I was also wondering if anyone knows what rabbi Matis Weinberg is up to these days? He's a cousin of the Tendler boys, roomed with Shalom Tendler(l.A) in Baltimore as a teenager, and the son of the past Dean of Near Israel Yeshiva in Baltimore.
I also think it's interesting that the Tendler's are related to the Eisemann's, Eisgrau's and Neuberger families via marriage. I guess Ner Israel is just one big family affair.
posted by Jewish Survivors at Thursday, July 26, 2007 2 comments
Are The Baltimore Neighbors Concerned?
One has to wonder how the neighbors of Rabbi Moshe Eisemann, Rabbi Eliezer Eisgrau and Rabbi Yaakov Menken feel about living right near alleged sex offenders?
The odds are that they are not even aware. The charedi (ultra-religious) rabbis of Baltimore are known to keep the names of sex offenders secret in hopes of not embarrassing their family members. They neglect to realize that offenders who abuse outside the home are more likely to also offend with in the home.
The rabbis of Baltimore have an obligation to keep our communities safe. By not reporting all allegations to the child protection hot-line or helping victims contact local rape crisis lines they are enabling offenders to continue creating more survivors. In many states they open themselves up for civil litigation.
If you know one of the neighbors of Eisemann, Eisgrau or Menken please make sure to warn them about how potentially dangerous these men are to your children and young adult men and women.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc. will spell out that its Aquafina bottled water is made with tap water, a concession to the growing environmental and political opposition to the bottled water industry.
According to Corporate Accountability International, a U.S. watchdog group, the world's No. 2 beverage company will include the words "Public Water Source" on Aquafina labels.
"If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it's a reasonable thing to do," said Michelle Naughton, a Pepsi-Cola North America spokeswoman.
Pepsi Chief Executive Indra Nooyi told Reuters earlier this week the company was considering such a move.
Pepsi's Aquafina and Coca-Cola Co's Dasani are both made from purified water sourced from public reservoirs, as opposed to Danone's Evian or Nestle's Poland Spring, so-called "spring waters," shipped from specific locations the companies say have notably clean water.
Coca-Cola Co. told Reuters it will start posting online information about the quality control testing it performs on Dasani by the end of summer or early fall.
"Concerns about the bottled-water industry, and increasing corporate control of water, are growing across the country," said Gigi Kellett, director of the "Think Outside the Bottle" campaign, which aims to encourage people to drink tap water.
San Francisco's mayor banned city employees from using city funds to buy bottled water when tap water is available. Ann Arbor, Michigan passed a resolution banning commercially bottled water at city events and Salt Lake City, Utah asked department heads to eliminate bottled water.
Critics charge the bottled water industry adds plastic to landfills, uses too much energy by producing and shipping bottles across the world and undermines confidence in the safety and cleanliness of public water supplies, all while much of the world's population is without access to clean water.
But industry observers said such opposition is unlikely to drain U.S. sales of bottled water, which reached 2.6 billion cases in 2006, according to Beverage Digest. The industry newsletter estimated that U.S. consumers spent about $15 billion on bottled water last year.
"Consumers have an affection for bottled water. It's not an issue of taste or health, it's about convenience," the newsletter's publisher, John Sicher, said. "Try walking up (New York City's) Third Avenue on a hot day and getting a glass of tap water."
Dave Kolpak, a portfolio manager at Victory Capital Management, said the environmental objections will have little impact on the bottom line for either Pepsi or Coke, though he admitted it could slow the market's growth rate.
"Pepsi and Coke do not make a lot of profit" on bottled water, said Kolpak, adding that people may talk about the issue, but will likely continue buying some bottled water. Victory Capital owns about 3 million shares of PepsiCo among its $62 billion under management.
If he murdered the hitchhiker, chas vshalom, they will still be questioning whether it is permissible to turn him in. Just wait, once they catch this fiend b"h, there will be a pidyon shvuyim fund set up for him. They probably bought him a one-way ticket to EY to join Mondrowitz and Leizerowitz. Charlie Hynes has been given the directive not to pursue any further. As for the victim, they are calling her a zonah for getting into his car and provoking his yetzer hara. It was all HER fault (I'm not making this up, read the comments on VIN from 7/3). Tell me, who is acting according to the laws of the Torah? We, who are raising hell on the blogs and writing to politicians to correct such injustices, or them, who cry about mesira, lashon hara and rechilus? The term chassid shoteh was created for these people.
http://jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-baltimore-neighbors-concerned.html#4472914137752935746
Anonymous said...
I've seen Moshe Eisemann a few times going into a home at Cross Country apartments. This is where a Russian couple lives. The couple has two young children. Eisemann has been doing kiruv with this couple for some time. He brought them from Kishiniev so the husband could attend Ner Israel. My fear is that ...
Off topic---but not really!
Pepsico announces that their bottled "spring" water...is TAP WATER!
Can you imagine the party the Chinese are having with our "kosher" food???
http://www.ou.org/ou/event_more/ask_ou_los_angeles_halachic_adventure/
Be sure to make your reservations for the OU FressFest(not sure if the Agudah already trademarked the name) at The Prime Grill in Beverly Hills on August 5. They will be serving quail as part of the 18 course fress (very appropriate, since it was quail that was served to the gluttons in the desert.) Also, The Prime Grill prides itself on being "nationally acclaimed for dry aging steaks". According to Gemara Sanhedrin,the Ben Sorrer Umoreh, the wayward, gluttonous son, referred to in Parshas Ki Teitzei, stole and ate aged meat. To make it a trifecta, they should postpone it for two weeks so that it will be in the week of that parsha. In the words of Rabbi Meir Kahane a"h, "Glatt Gluttony". Never mind the words of the Rambam and Ramban, the OU encourages all to fress away. UOJ posted an article about obesity. If we keep on fressing on OU endorsed 18 course meals with quail and aged steaks, is there any wonder that we've become obese and grotesque? Vayishman Yeshurun Vayivat! Shamanta Avitta Kassita! Instead of spending $1,200 to feed yourself and your buddies at Prime Grill, help feed the poor and needy that hardly have enough money for a loaf of bread!
"Dear Posek Hador ... I was talking about wild strawberries, blackberries, etc. that grew without any pesticides. G-d did not create thrips in the year 2007 or perhaps you do believe in evolution and a super-bug called the thrip suddenly evolved and began sucking strawberries. "
Chuchem, if you were following the thread you would have seen R' Yaakov's psak that everyone from R' Shimon Schwab to R' Shlomo Zalman Auerbach concurred with, that because we now know new information, we are forced to asser what was previously eaten. R' Yaakov was fort angry at the Lakewood yungerleit because there is no chiyuv to go looking for the problems.
"Thanks to Rabbi Blumenkranz and others, healthy foods like fruits and vegetables are suspect."
UOJ, you are mistaken, at least as far as Rav Blumenkrantz is concerned. He wrote very detailed information on how to get around his chumros on produce. Additionally, the biggest machmirim on bugs in lettuce, the 5 Towns Vaad and Rav Beck from Flatbush, give hashgocho on abundant supply of the leafy greens that are truly bug-free, unlike the joker-rabbonim who put yellow hashgocho stickers on bags full of bugs. Rav Beck also goes down to the largest producer of preserves / jams, to make sure the berries are properly strained.
"When was the last time you were at a smorg and you saw the behaimas line up 40 deep at the fruit and vegetable tables?"
Granted it's not like at the meat carving stations, but the bahaimas do it all the time for chocolate covered fruit and, at least until the recent kashrus pirsum, plain strawberries.
Chuchem,
They knew about bugs in Europe and just did not look that closely. It was not new info in the 70's! Frum yidden felt that if it was not apparent to the naked eye one was not required to check more. Don't you remember the idiots on Erev Pesach looking for bugs with a light box. One idiot used to do it in my family! The oilam was quite aware of bugs but mostly did not give a damn. The feeling was that if you had to put it up to a light box or if you had to look at the specks with a magnifying glass you belonged in an insane assylum. So your brilliant " that because we now know new information, we are forced to asser what was previously eaten" shows that you know nothing of the Jewish frum population in the Seventies and Eighties!
Well guess what--If we all follow these nuts we will be more concerned about nearly invisisible bugs than we are with how orphans and the underprivileged are treated.
To describe the state of Orthodoxy today it is insular and only concerned with shiduchim and how we look and what we eat rather than our role in the world as the spreader of Torah values.
I recently had the opportunity to spend an extended period of time with people who never knew that Judaism was suppose to be "A light onto the nations!" Chillul Hashem that we are more concerned about eating bugs than . . .
From The (Five Towns) Jewish Star, July 27, 2007, Editorial, "Pushing and Prodding on School Background Checks", page 4:
"Here it is, Shabbos Nachamu, and the whole second half of the summer is stretched out before us. For some this amounts to nearly another whole month of sunshine and leisure.
This, of course, is dampened somewhat by the sobering knowledge that at many major retailers the 'Back to School' sales are well underway.
When the sales wrap up and that exciting, promising first day of school arrives in September, students in each private school across the state of New York - be it a yeshiva, a Bais Yaakov, a day school, a Catholic school or a prep school - will still lack a basic protection to their lives and well-being that has long been enjoyed by students enrolled in public schools.
In the public school, every member of the faculty from principals to substitutes, every member of the non-teaching staff from secretaries to janitors, will have undergone and passed a screening process, including fingerprinting, which confirmed that none of those people had a record of cirminal activity which could pose a danger to the children with whom they come into daily contact.
Disturbingly, private school students will not have that protection, and not for lack of trying.
A bill that would have provided that security, introduced by State Senator Dean Skelos, passed in the Senate 60-1 on June 19. It never reached the Assembly floor for a vote. The legislative session is over and the bill now seems to have died a quiet death for this year.
As a reuslt, for the 2007-2008 year, a convicted predator, out on parole, has just as much a chance of being hired to teach in a local yeshiva, as your neighbor's idealistic young daughter from down the block with her newly-minted teaching degree.
One reason for that, in our opinion, is that national Jewish organizations involved in Jewish education, have offered, at best, lukewarm supoprt for change.
A representative of one distinguished group with a less than distinguished history of action in regard to abusers on school payrolls recently told The Jewish Star that his group is concerned that mandatory background checks would place a burden on private schools.
While we would certainly agree that a future law should require the state to absorb the costs of the background checks, we would not agree that concern for costs is a reason to continue to disregard the underlying problem.
We're sure that the supporters of change will press the issue again in Albany. Perhaps, first, lobbying efforts of individual parents should be directed to Jewish organizations that have accumulated political sway and know-how over the years, and make certain that some of it is placed in service of protecting our children. Perhaps the organizations can convince Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to allow a vote."
A representative of one "distinguished" group with a less than distinguished history of action in regard to abusers on school payrolls recently told The Jewish Star that his group is concerned that mandatory background checks would place a burden on private schools.
Do not despair, friends. The Speaker has announced that the Assembly will be returning for a day or two in October. A vote can take place then - maybe.
"Frum yidden felt that if it was not apparent to the naked eye one was not required to check more."
No duh. You and the Shmaryas of this world keep pushing the false premise that aphids, thrips, etc are not visible when they are very much so. R' Moishe has poskened that even if you see a tiny speck that is only discernable as a bug under a microscope, it is still assur.
The rant that you launched into orbit with about shidduchim etc has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
http://jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-anyone-know-whats-happening-with_26.html#7107869667305148270
Anonymous said...
I hear Mordechai Tendler is moving to the san gabriel valley area of california, either monterey park or san gabriel to start a boys yeshiva program for 7th -12th grade.
The area is not known as a jewish area, but land there is cheap and it is about 20 miles away from the la brea area. One of the draws to the area is the ability to buy up an old LA public school and start a small school. Also, the area is on the way to the palm springs area, which would be used on the weekends for camping.
July 29, 2007 9:32 PM
"the bahaimas do it all the time for chocolate covered fruit"
UOJ knows our modus operandi. We grab whatever's in sight without any concern for other guests. We stuff the horde of goodies that we can't possibly finish eating into bags and boxes to take back to our hotel rooms. After we feel like vomiting from overeating, we leave the excess food strewn about the lobby.
There is no geshmak that comes close to being an Agudah fresser.
Kosher Pigs -July 2005
UOJ archives....
Those that follow the news know that new species of animals are being found.
A new breed of animal was recently found that should render the animal kosher once shechita is performed.
Of course there is a dispute brewing because there is no reference to this behaima in the Torah or in our Mesorah.
I say there are so many behaimas walking around that the Torah does not specifically mention.
A new species of monkey was recently found as well in the mountains of South America.
I wondered to myself how gratifying it must be to discover a new species of behaima,chaya or oif. I would love to be able to make the brocho of Oseh Maaseh Breishes upon discovering a new animal.
This last month I attended a combined total of 33 simchas,mostly unenjoyable because I was running from place to place.
And then it struck me!I looked around at a particular chassunah where there was a huge smorgasboard,and ut,a new species, Kosher Pigs!
Yes,people were grabbing food with their hands,stuffing their mouths with whatever fit in,non-stop.Before their mouths were empty,they kept loading up their plates,one plate with fish and another with meat and another with cakes.One of this new species was actually juggling four plates!
I was not quite sure if I was required to make a brocho or not.Actually I have seen this all my life and it may not require a brocho.So I decided this would be a good shaila for the Yated Poskim,and would wait for a psak before I chas v'sholom would make a bracha livatala.
Maybe I should call CNN or the Discovery channel to report this new species?What would we name them?
Aha!
"Jewatawedding"!
It is not everyday you see people that look somewhat like people, but act like animals.
At every kiddush and every simcha we attend,I guess the animal in us just comes out.
I would wager that the people in Darfur would behave with more dignity.
Larry King would definitely like to get a panel going on this topic.
He could get a Glatt Kosher caterer,a member of the Rubashkin slaughtering house with the dancing cow after it was killed,a Rav Umachsir or two or three or four or five,depending on the type of hat they wear,and of course members of the OU,KAJ,OK,KKK,and all the AK's in Brooklyn that have nothing to do that night.
Smorgasboards have become a contact sport,just watch what happens to the waiter that walks out of the kitchen with a new tray of food. A Hatzoloh ambulance can never be too close.
I know that we eat only to have enough energy to learn Torah and perform mitzvos.
We also want our kids at home to have enough energy to learn Torah and perform mitzvos,therefore after the simcha we take home anything on the table that is not nailed down.
Well,the July blues have set in,and the cows are grazing in upstate New York.
The simchas have tapered off,the husbands are left to their own devices for the week days(wipe those smiles off your faces),and the nebach wives are scrubbing the floors in their country homes,while the kids are making their own beds in camp without help from Maria.
Life's a b...,and then you die.
UOJ, this kosher pigs post got me "hooked" (pun intended) on you.
Lakewood Talmid
Do you follow Reb Moshe's more liberal p'sak's
Huh
Daughter Sought In Father's Castration Killing
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=3518310
-----------------------------------
Street justice,
kolko-eisman-eisgrau-leizerowitz-mondrowitz, beware.
http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/philjacobs/
No Henchmen
There are no “henchmen” out there getting in my way to investigate individuals or institutions.
I am not under anybody’s “thumb” to prevent the writing of stories on certain rabbis in town who are under suspicion of past sexual molestation.
So for those bloggers who feel that the have “inside” information as to the progress of any one investigation in progress. You don’t. All you are doing is creating hysteria and panic.
I ask you to let the truth set us free on these issues. It will be the truth that brings any further information to the forefront.
Rest assured, I am working on collecting the truth.
But it is of no help to me if you take license with what I am doing and spread it as if it were gospel.
Bloggers, if you want to know what is going on with a particular investigation, simply pick up the phone and call me. I will be happy to share with you what I may.
I’m not being secretive, nor am I taking my time out of any kind of fear.
Please, the recent track record should say to you more than ever, that this delicate issue is being handled correctly.
My time table might not fit your’s. But the timetable of truth is all that matters to me. That and the timetable of protecting future generations from sexual molestation.
Don’t ruin this with any suggestions that there have been threats towards me. There have been absolutely none.
Don’t take off on this with false information. Not one rabbi has tried to hurt me any way at all.
Be patient.
The stories will come.
And they will be accurate and done at the correct time.
Posted by Phil Jacobs on 07/27/07 at 12:00 PM
Fraudulent Nigerian weddings are causing alarm as penniless tricksters try to marry their way into a better life.
By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2007
KANO, Nigeria — Auwalu Ise is a picture of sartorial elegance. It takes the finest imported shoes, a splash of perfume and an imperious manner to complete what he calls his "silent deceit."
His secret weapon is a can of spray-on starch to make his expensive garments shiny and crisp, one more ingredient in an elaborate ritual to win the heart of even the hardest woman and fool the canniest future father-in-law.
When he tells his targets that he is really a poor man, their voices tinkle with delighted laughter at the presumed joke.
"It's all about deception. I don't have to tell lies verbally," he said. "But I tell a silent lie, by the way I dress."
Ise, 30, is a master of the fraudulent wedding, known as auren yaudara, that is raising alarm here in northern Nigeria's Kano state. So masterful, in fact, that he offers his services to others, sometimes for a hefty fee, to help them fool the daughters of the very rich into opening their hearts and their family's purses. Mothers weep at the ruin he creates. The government has done little to remedy the situation.
Ise sees it as a thrilling battle game. He has married six women, four of whom divorced him for being "too strict." Polygamy is legal in this predominantly Muslim state, and Ise has his sights on two other women. He's better off than when he started — with fancy clothes and a house with several rooms — but he still hopes the next nuptials will pay off big.
"This kind of thing is like a business," he said. "When you get into it you are likely to hit the jackpot. A rich family can take you in and set you up in business."
He has another secret weapon that helps him attract unwary brides: "I have this look of someone who's docile and stupid," he said. "A woman wants to marry someone who will not boss her around and who will comfort her."
More than 61% of households in Kano state are poor. Youth unemployment is over 40%. The state, which has adopted Sharia, or Islamic law, has a high rate of divorce, many initiated by deceived brides shocked by the penury of their lying grooms.
The area's high unemployment rate and a culture that accepts divorce more readily than regions dominated by conservative Christian churches have contributed to the problem in Kano.
YOUNG men on the prowl rent expensive watches, fancy clothing, imported shoes and hats. Some tongue-tied suitors even hire actors to do the talking for them. They borrow good cars and pretend they have jobs, university degrees and their own houses, only to ensnare their chosen woman in the one-room hovels most occupy.
"There's so much unemployment. These young men want to get married, and traditionally parents would not give their daughter to anyone who's jobless," said Sadiya Sarki of Bazwara, a nongovernmental group with about 3,000 divorced female members in Kano.
Victims are not always women of means. Often, poor women are deceived by their own dreams of a rich groom, only to be turned out on the street to beg for their spouses and, inevitably, their children.
The group fosters education and helps the women earn money through small enterprises, such as sewing.
Ise advises fellow Lotharios to conceal their poverty until it is too late for the family to do anything.
"You try as hard as possible to consummate the marriage and make her pregnant," he said. "The parents now have two options: either to set you up in business so you will be able to take care of their daughter, since you love her … or they may dissolve the marriage and take back their daughter and the grandchild. It's a very difficult choice for them to make."
Ise estimates he gets about 10% of his income from helping men set up such marriages, not counting the many gifts from grateful grooms.
With stings so complex and carefully planned, Ise makes Nigeria's notorious e-mail scammers look like high school dropouts.
He regards his most recent triumph as his best yet. Last year, a friend named Danladi, a butcher who supplied meat to rich customers in the capital, Abuja, fell for a girl named Umma, a medical school graduate and part of a wealthy Kano family.
"I told him point-blank, 'She's out of your league,' but he insisted."
Besides expensive clothes, Ise borrowed fancy cars for Danladi, relying on another friend who works in an auto dealership. He always accompanied Danladi on his visits to Umma and her family, never twice in the same car.
He persuaded traders traveling overseas to take out false passports and buy tickets in Danladi's name. They left the used tickets lying casually on the dashboard, and Umma could not resist picking them up.
Ise spent $15 to bribe a security guard at the half-built mansion of a former government minister. In return the guard was perfectly obsequious to Danladi when he posed as the owner and gave Umma and her family a tour. They also showed her six fancy dowry boxes, each crammed with treasures worth $10,000. The delighted family had no idea the boxes were for someone else.
But before weddings can be finalized, families must meet and agree to the marriage. Danladi's real parents, threadbare rural folk, were out of the question. So the pair bribed female traders, adorned with gold they bought in Dubai, to pose as close relatives. After a successful meeting, the date was set.
But how to pay for a grand wedding feast?
"My friend lectured her for an hour on religion," Ise said. "He told her that as a devout Muslim there could be no parties or picnics to celebrate the wedding."
After just two weeks of marriage, the butcher's cover was blown by a customer who happened to be a family friend of Umma.
"The mother burst into tears," Ise said. "Then the heat came onto me. She called me and cursed me for ruining her and her daughter."
With a possible scandal engulfing the family, Umma decided to stay with the love-struck butcher, provided he let her return to work as a doctor and that he change his trade, which her family considered beneath its dignity.
As Ise's story unfolded, a call came on his cellphone: another would-be groom scheming to get a wife.
COMPARED with Ise, Ibrahim Mohammed, 36, is an amateur. He admits he lied nine years ago when he wooed Amina Abdullahi, then 16, the daughter of a well-to-do textile trader. There were five other suitors, some very rich.
He was unemployed, without a house or prospects. But Abdullahi rejected a wealthy trader to marry him, despite her parents' objections.
"I used to tell her lies. If you told a woman all your problems, she would not accept you," he said. He pretended to have a college degree and said he owned a house; he also promised her a hefty housekeeping allowance that he had no way of providing.
"Later, when she came down to that small, small house, she found out from my relatives that it didn't belong to me. So she saw the kind of lies I told her."
Initially, Abdullahi had been charmed by his kindness and genteel manners.
"He told me he had a good flat with all the electronic gadgets I would need. I was really shocked, really mad when I stepped into the house with all my friends running behind. I was embarrassed. My whole world crumbled."
She had to maintain her dignity until the last ululating guest left. Then, she said, "I cried bitterly. I wept. I was thinking of the other suitor who had means and who was really serious and didn't have to lie.
"I told him, 'I trusted you. You put me to shame.' Honestly, at that moment I just hated him completely."
At the beginning of the marriage there were eggs for breakfast and a kerosene stove. But when the little cash he had ran out, she was forced to eat cornmeal and collect firewood.
There were quarrels. Sometimes when Mohammed could not borrow any money, he would come home late at night with nothing, hoping she would have fallen asleep.
"I felt disgraced. I used to hate myself at that time," he said.
After a year, the couple had a baby and things got worse.
"Sometimes I'd start the arguments," Abdullahi said. "I'd feel really angry, like hitting him.
"My parents blamed me for discarding good people for this man. It was as if they were stabbing a festering wound. I felt like I hated myself. When I think back to what happened, I still hate myself."
After 18 months of marriage, she demanded a divorce. He lay in his shabby room crying for three days after she left.
"I still love her," he said recently.
"No," she responds, shaking her head curtly, on hearing of his feelings. "I don't love him."
There is practice of sending un-paid teenaged girls from New York and Canada to work at summer camps around the country. The girls receive housing and transportation, and in return work a full day for two to six weeks as camp counselors and classroom teachers. The program has strict rules that the girls are not allowed to be in the same room as unmarried male workers, lest they converse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah_Umesorah_-_National_Society_for_Hebrew_Day_Schools#Project_SEED
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah_Umesorah_-_National_Society_for_Hebrew_Day_Schools#Relevant_employment_laws
As these entries are easily deletable, the un-OJ might consider capturing the text on the blog.
--A concerned neighbor of a volunteer and parent of a camper
The program has strict rules that the girls are not allowed to be in the same room as unmarried male workers, lest they converse.
--------------
The much greater problem Michelle, is the relationship that these young, vulnerable girls have with male married workers. As we now know, rabbis have notoriously used these children for their own pleasure. Every thinking parent should indeed be concerned, very concerned!
The Novominsker Rebbe has a new project to involve himself with. The meeting to discuss what to do about the serious mistreatment of chickens by Kaporos.
The Novominsker is furious that PETA is trying to crush the "SACRED, HOLY JEWISH CUSTOM" of mistreating animals.
Rabbi, what about the abused children of Klal Yisroel? What about the battered women of Klal Yisroel? What about the innocent victims being mistreated by loan sharks? All these problems are D'Oiraisah, and you are concerened about Minhagim?
We are supposed to be a light unto the nations. The nations of the world see that Jews act no different than the Cosa Nostra. Why are you turning your cheek from real problems and worrying about defending Minhagim?
Both Tendler cases are tragedies of injustice within the Jewish community. Two rabbis have had severe allegations against them, and no communal servant — whether newspapers, rabbinic organizations, synagogues or individual leaders did a God damn thing about it since 1987.
This is no different than the Kolko case.
Are you serious about the Novominsker and kapparos? How did PETA even hear about it?
Kosher Consumer Beware!
By Robert Kapp-CSM
Fri Aug 3, 4:00 AM ET
PORT TOWNSEND, WASH. - Americans are again upset about China, this time thanks to a spate of product safety and food contamination cases, the revelation of slave labor conditions at a rural north China brickworks, and the execution of the head of the State Food and Drug Administration for health-threatening corruption.
American diagnoses are familiar: "Wild West capitalism," "spiritual vacuum," "local protectionism," absence of the rule of law, the ill effects of one-party rule.
The larger conundrum evoked by current developments, however, is the frailty of the social compact in modern China.
As with every society, China today is heir to its past, and the seeds of its current challenges germinated last century.
By the 1920s the fledgling Republic of China was stumbling badly. Regional warlordism split the country. Foreign powers exercised privileges exacted over eight decades from a helpless China. Exploitation of the powerless ran unchecked. Famine, epidemics, and social violence stalked the land.
China's plight was a source of profound concern for Sun Yat-sen, the man credited with leading the 1911 revolution that ended 2,000 years of dynastic imperial rule. In 1924, just before his death, Dr. Sun wrote a powerful diagnosis of China's ills and a recipe for the nation's salvation:
"...[W]e should therefore be advancing in the front rank with the nations of Europe and America. But the Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit.
Therefore even though we have 400 million people gathered together in one China, in reality they are just a heap of loose sand. Today we are the poorest and weakest nation in the world, and occupy the lowest position in international affairs.… If we wish to avert this catastrophe, we must espouse nationalism and bring this national spirit to the salvation of the country."
Sun's alarm sounded a central theme in China's tumultuous modern history: the need to bind together a vast, poor, and fragmented population into an organized polity, founded on a new consciousness of a nation-centered identity.
Twenty-five years later, Sun's Chinese Nationalist Party heirs were driven from the Chinese mainland by Mao Zedong's Communists. With the ruthless but effective organizational discipline of the Communist Party, its intense mythmaking ideology, and its monopoly of force, social and political consolidation finally seemed to be at hand. The possibility of forming a new Chinese social compact beckoned.
The foreign gunboats, swashbucklers, and proselytizers were gone. Regional armies and local militias were eliminated. China's catastrophic opium epidemic was ending. Village exploiters were stripped of their power.
To Mao, as to millenniums of imperial predecessors, it was a given that the strength of the nation was inseparable from popular values. To imbue China's masses with a new national belief system, the communist propaganda apparatus turned to political indoctrination and social mobilization.
The rhetoric, imagery, and even China's convulsive political campaigns (such as the Great Leap Forward) emphasized self-sacrifice for the good of the nation, "Serving the People," and the individual's commitment to shared moral-political codes.
In the late 1970s, after the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, China's surviving political leadership turned to "reform." Deng Xiaoping's regime began to open the floodgates to market economics at home and to China's immersion in the global economic mainstream.
All along, the Communist Party has remained supreme and vigilant against organized challenge. The Leninist structures that provided the organizational template for national consolidation after 1949 still operate. The 70-million-member party affirms that without its economic and social leadership, China's blazing economic advance could not have happened.
China's current economic progress and global clout would surely please Sun. But the conundrum of the social compact remains.
Nothing in contemporary Chinese ideology validates selling fake, nutritionless "baby formula" to families whose children starved.
Nothing in the canon of officially promulgated popular values would endorse the production of useless or lethal counterfeit medicines.
The executed official who took bribes to approve unqualified pharmaceuticals, was not thinking about "Serving the People," or Sun's "heap of loose sand." Nor were the brick kiln owners of Shanxi Province. Nor are the local officials and party cadres in myriad places around China, who evict farmers from the land in order to reap windfall real estate development profits.
Behind the 21st-century features of these revelations, the older dilemma still lurks: How can China establish the normative social consensus needed to rein in entrenched habits of social predation?
For millenniums, China's traditional order was loosely but durably knitted together by pervasive codes of individual, societal, and governmental conduct. China's 19th- and 20th-century upheavals turned much of that to ashes. Today's call by China's leaders for a "Harmonious Society" and the denunciations of official corruption are a response to this persistent dilemma.
Ironically, the achievement of Sun's vision of a China respected in the world has arisen less from an engineered "national spirit" than from the lightening of ideological intrusion into the economic lives of China's talented and energetic people. China's national pride increases noticeably with its economic progress. But the other side of the old spirit problem – the dilemma of civic spirit – persists. That is the deeper message of this summer's reports of product safety problems and bitter social misfortunes.
• Robert Kapp, a China business consultant, served as president of the US-China Business Council and taught Chinese history at Rice University and the University of Washington.
"How did PETA even hear about it?"
A. There is a PETA activist who lives in Boro Park and walks around cataloging kapparos locations. I think she's a freye Israeli girl.
B. In what was tzaar baalei chaim and a huge chilul Hashem, some putz in Flatbush left all of the chickens cooped up in cages last year on Coney Island Ave over Rosh Hashana. Most of them died from heat or starvation by the time someone called the police. The newspapers were all over it and the surviving chickens were taken to a refuge upstate.
On July 30, PETA sent a letter, a video and still photographs to Dr. Thomas Friedan, NYC's commissioner of health. PETA is concerned about the handling of chickens during the kapporot ritual held every fall during the week before Yom Kippur. Of special concern is the large kapparot factory set up in Crown Heights.
The letter was supposed to remain private. Someone of Friedan's staff or the staff's of the cc'd office holders leaked the letter to the rabbis, who tipped VIN. (A quick look at the cc'd office holders will show you that Brooklyn's DA, Charles Hynes, received the letter, the video and the photographs. Hynes runs an especially porous office, although the leak could have come from any of the recipients, especially from Rabbi Weiss, head of Kosher Law Enforcement.)
PETA alleges unsanitary conditions, violations of health and other regulations and poor animal handling – some of which violates the law.
PETA's strongest case is made regarding the unsanitary conditions and violations of local and state law. The handling of the animals by the people using them for kapporot seems fine to me. But the handling of the animals before and after kapporot by the staff leaves much to be desired.
PETA notes animals are often left for days without food or water, and rejected animals are simply left caged to die of dehydration.
VosIzNeais, the Satmar news blog, was given the story by Brooklyn rabbis. VIN implies incorrectly that PETA wants to force Jews to replace kapport done with live chickens with kapporot done with money, although granted that may be PETA's ultimate intention. But the letter, reprinted in full after the jump below, does not make this claim. Then VIN reports:
Rabbanim of all sects are greatly alarmed and have called for an emergency, mass asifah for this upcoming week.
Some rabbonim are also linking this to Dr. Friedan's attempt to regulate metzitza b'peh, the oral-to-genital-suction done by the mohel on the baby's open circumcision wound.
Read the letter here.
July 30, 2007
Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., Commissioner
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
125 Worth St.
New York, NY 10013
RE: Cruelty-to-Animals and Health Violations During the Kapporos Ritual in Brooklyn, N.Y.
A video (9 minutes, 11 seconds) and still photos are enclosed. The footage was taken in October 2005 and September 2006 in Crown Heights, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Frieden:
Kapporos is a religious slaughter ritual performed in the ultra-Orthodox/Hasidic Jewish community the week before Yom Kippur. Thousands of chickens are roughly handled in the largest kapporos ceremony in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and then sacrificed in a makeshift slaughter area on a public street. The slaughtered chickens are later trucked back to a processing facility to be prepared as food. These massive slaughters have been taking place without any apparent regulation or enforcement.
Because of the mounting incidents of cruelty to animals recorded on video and published in media reports as well as the public health hazards involved in operating a de facto slaughterhouse on a busy urban street, the issuing and conditions of any permits for the kapporos ritual must be examined. It is a serious health concern that children handle live, feces-covered, and possibly diseased chickens and wade through the blood of slaughtered poultry. The risk of communicable avian diseases and bacterial contamination is alarming, and the inhumane treatment and mishandling of animals at every stage of the process must be prevented. Below is a full description of violations and concerns pertaining to sanitation (regarding human health and food safety) as well as cruelty to animals during transportation, handling, and ritual slaughter.
Note: The next kapporos slaughter period is scheduled for the week between Monday, September 17, and Friday, September 21, 2007. The largest kapporos event takes place near the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
We are writing to you in advance to request that measures be taken to ensure that any communities or congregations participating in poultry slaughter for kapporos are in full compliance with all municipal, state, and federal laws. We also request that a methodical enforcement plan be developed.
It is important to note that there is no religious requirement for slaughtering chickens on kapporos and that most Modern Orthodox Jewish congregations do not practice this form of the ritual. Even Chabad Lubavitch—the organization behind the largest kapporos street slaughter event—sanctions, on its Web site, alternatives to chicken slaughter for kapporos, including symbolic sacrifices, such as donating money to charity. Although PETA would prefer that chickens not be slaughtered, we do request that authorities insist that basic animal welfare laws be strictly observed and health codes be strictly enforced during the practice of this ritual.
To this end, we urge you to consult with Dr. Joe Regenstein from Cornell University, who is a specialist on kosher and halal foods, and Dr. Temple Grandin, who is a world-renowned expert on animal welfare and slaughter methods in particular. Both have written extensively about kosher slaughter and serve on the Animal Welfare Technical Committee of the Food Marketing Institute and the National Council of Chain Restaurants. Through this process, we hope that clear standards and increased scrutiny and enforcement along with education will minimize the negligence and egregious conduct seen in previous years. We have already been in contact with Dr. Regenstein on this matter, and he is eager to help your departments develop clear guidelines for kapporos that will ensure that organizers are in legal compliance without conflicting with the religious components of this ritual. He commented that, at this point, the practices that he observed in the enclosed video are not even up to the basic standards of the National Chicken Council, the United Egg Producers, and the American Meat Institute.
Dr. Regenstein can be reached at:
[…]
In 2006, Dr. Regenstein attempted to set up a private discussion with Yossi Fraenkel, the organizer of the large kapporos ceremony in Crown Heights, in an effort to discuss Dr. Regenstein's plan to improve practices and ensure that the event is in full compliance. However, Mr. Fraenkel declined. If necessary, Mr. Fraenkel can be reached at:
[…]
Please also note that the Community Council of Brooklyn representative we spoke with cited that, in her long tenure at the office, the only permits required for kapporos organizers (that she is aware of) have been for Dumpster disposal. During the 2005 and 2006 kapporos ceremonies in Crown Heights, there was no visible presence of any enforcement/inspection officials—city, state or federal—to oversee transportation, handling, slaughter, and sanitation, and the only police activity was to block off intersections.
Below is a comprehensive list of health concerns and cruelty violations filmed at the 2005 and 2006 kapporos events in Crown Heights. A videotape of this footage is also enclosed for your review.
Alleged Cruelty Violations
Chickens—while still conscious in the bleeding-out cones, where they are placed immediately following the ritual-cut slaughter—had their heads pulled off by teenagers who were working in the slaughter area.
Bleeding-out cones (i.e., cut-off traffic cones) were too small, and many chickens jumped out of the cones onto the ground following shechita (ritual slaughter). Because of the rapid slaughter rate, many birds were removed from the cones prematurely while they were still conscious and tossed to the ground onto piles of dead and other dying chickens.
Many chickens—while still conscious and struggling following shechita (religious slaughter—were shoved into garbage bags. The bags were then tied up, leaving the chickens to suffocate.
Birds crammed into extremely crowded cages were left exposed to the elements and unattended without any food or water. In other locations in Brooklyn, the ASPCA had to respond to multiple similar incidents of neglect and abandonment, which sometimes continued for days before and after the ceremony. In one highly publicized notorious incident in October 2005, "surplus" birds (chickens who were not slaughtered during the ceremony) were abandoned in a parking lot. The chickens were crammed into crates, stacked on top of one another, and left out in the rain for days. These birds were encrusted with dried feces, urine, and blood. Many suffered from severed toes, plucked-out eyes, and severe dehydration. ASPCA agents had to sift through the pile of discarded chickens in order to rescue the remaining live ones.
Volunteers and hired workers crammed injured and sick chickens into reject crates along with chickens who had already perished.
Participants, including children, were given no training or instruction on how to handle birds. Birds were teased and violently handled and exhibited distress as a result. Participants who had no training awkwardly grabbed chickens and swung them over people's heads during the ceremony, causing the chickens to vocalize in pain and fear.
Volunteers and hired workers threw crates containing live chickens several feet to the ground—without any regard for the safety of the animals.
Health Risks and Violations
Thousands of chickens were trucked in and parked on major public streets. Cages were piled high on the crowded transport trucks, causing chickens to be covered in feces and urine that had seeped and fallen through from the cages above. These included sick, dying, and dead birds—some of whom were filmed arriving in an advanced state of decomposition. The public was exposed to the birds in this dangerous and debilitated condition.
Dead chickens who perished during transport were thrown aside onto the public streets and sidewalks. Flies swarmed over the rotting carcasses as pedestrians walked by and children examined the corpses. Volunteers and hired workers—many of whom are children and teens—separated the obviously sick and dying chickens from other birds. Most workers didn't wear any protective gear (e.g., gloves, smocks, masks, hair/beard nets).
Individuals and families that participated in the ceremony (which consists of waving chickens over their heads) handled live, feces-covered chickens. Most did not wear gloves.
Children also handled the live chickens during this ceremony, mostly without gloves.
There were no wash stations or sanitary wipes of any kind.
There was only a token separation between the makeshift slaughter area and the public ceremony area. Participants stood by the slaughter area, passed chickens to the slaughterer, and stood only a few feet away while they watched the slaughter. Participants were regularly splashed with blood, feces, and body parts from the slaughter and walked through the residue on the ground.
Shochetim (kosher slaughterers), paid workers, and volunteers were splashed with chickens' blood and body parts with little protective gear, and the slaughter rate was so fast that the shochetim and the workers stood in piles of carcasses four to five chickens deep.
Slaughtered chickens sat out in the heat in the slaughter area for as long as several hours. The garbage bags with carcasses—which were destined for poultry processing—contained either no ice at all or only nominal amounts of ice. Only after hours of sitting in the heat were the birds' bodies loaded into the back of a van. The projected length of time between slaughter and processing when the birds' carcasses and flesh weren't refrigerated was alarming.
Following the slaughter, blood, liquid residue, and some body parts littered the ground—sometimes for days.
We respectfully request that all these cruelty and public health issues be resolved before the September 2007 kapporos ceremonies. We have submitted this in advance of the kapporos ceremonies in the hope that positive measures will be taken that will prevent the worst abuses. PETA will again have a presence at the 2007 event to investigate any egregious behavior, but we hope that by addressing this matter now, it will avoid any public exposé that could cause embarrassment to the Hasidic community and the enforcement and administrative agencies responsible. We look forward to your response.
Thank you for your attention to this issue.
cc: Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney, Kings County District Attorney's Office
Pearl R. Miles, District Manager, Community Board No. 9
Patrick J. Brennan, Commissioner, Mayor's Community Assistance Unit
John Huntley, D.V.M., Director, Division of Animal Industry
Rabbi Weiss, Kosher Law Enforcement, New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Brooklyn Office
Haroon Mian, District Manager, Food Safety and Inspection Service
UOJ,
Are you going to have another post about your conversation with reb yaakov in miami beach over 20 years ago ??
UOJ, I've been thinking about this for some time now.
Our communities are woefully unprepared for peak oil and this economic mess that is fast approaching. We have known these things were coming for the last several years, truth be told. But we have done nothing to make our communities self-sufficient. We are more dependent on cars than ever, our young men are not learning the trades, skills and crafts to keep our communities running when cash and credit and gasoline are hard to come by - indeed, even people on the Orthonomics blog can't seem to grasp that things are going to be very different and we should make some effort to prepare. No one seems to be thinking about how kids will get to the dayschools, or how already crowded families are going to have to make room from grandparents when the "golden retirement" paradigm disappears, or how we'll even get groceries home with no SUVs - presuming there are kosher groceries to be had. In order to live within walking distance of a certain shul (and Hashem forbid they would go to some other shul - those slackers!) very few live within walking distance of their job - or even a mass transit line. And most of us are so far in debt that there's no real way to get out of it anytime soon - with no relief in sight since dayschool tuitions keep getting worse. People can't seem to think outside the box - or their Rabbis won't let them, I don't know which.
But anyway, I was wondering if you could use some of your impressive influence to get people to start thinking about making our communities more self-sufficient and recession-proof (or depression-proof, as the case may be). I know it probably won't help, but it won't hurt to try. If tefillin and Torah scrolls are all we can produce as a community, we're in big trouble.
Lishitaso said...
Steve you're thick and you take the Ramban out of context
UOJ, I know that you told me not to waste my time with this idiot, but Shlomo Hamelech said "Anneh Kesil" when it comes to Torah matters. Mr. Akshan, since you don't trust my translation, I will post the Artscroll english translation (word for word from the Chumash) of the words of the Rambam(Maimonides)and the Ramban (Nachmanides).
RAMBAM(Moreh Nevuchim 3:48)-The reason for this commandment, as for the prohibition of slaughtering a mother animal and its young on the same day (Oso V'es B'no. Vayikra 22:28), is because it is cruel to do so, especially since ANIMALS INSTINCTIVELY LOVE THEIR YOUNG AND SUFFER WHEN THEY SEE THEM SLAUGHTERED OR TAKEN AWAY.
(UOJ: because the suffering of the mother is unbearable for her to observe; to see her offspring - hurt, slaughtered or captured.")
RAMBAN (NACHMANIDES): These commandments are meant to inculcate compassion in people, not, as some think, that G-d himself pities the birds and animals. It is forbidden to say so (Berachos 33b) because G-d permits people to use and slaughter animals for their own needs. Rather, such commandments teach that people should accustom themselves to act mercifully.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/kaj-v-weismandel.html#c3729062380077659417
Rubashkin Warning said...
A two-faced store owner trying to cash in on anti-Rubashkin sentiments started telling everyone that he dropped the line because he agrees with the chashashos of kashrus problems. I caught him red handed two weeks later still selling it. I know that he has Lubab Meshichist customers that bug him for it. He had some salamis that he tried to hide behind other things but everything got moved around and you could see them. I asked him why he still has Rubashkin. I was met with denial. When I replied that I saw them, he turned red and quickly said that he sells the whole unit to select customers. When I said they are cut open, he claimed he does it with a knife and not a slicer. He's obviously not being honest and any of his workers could just serve any customer on the slicer.
I don't trust those who now jump on the anti-Rubashkin bandwagon when they knew about the problems at least 6 months earlier.
Ahem Mr. Anon...I'm sorry to get you upset...Where did we hear about this before?
----------------------------
MARK HULBERT
90 minutes of fame
Commentary: Positive reaction to Fed rate cut proves short-lived
By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch
Last update: 10:09 p.m. EST Jan. 30 (MarketWatch)
-- For about an hour and a half on Wednesday afternoon, it looked like the Federal Reserve had succeeded in pulling another rabbit out of its hat.
It had already pulled off such a feat last week, of course. Investors could have interpreted its emergency rate cut then as the panicked reaction to a financial market that was far worse than previously thought, but chose instead to see the cup as half full rather than half empty. By the end of last week, things had returned to at least a superficial sense of normalcy.
And in the immediate aftermath of the announcement Wednesday afternoon of the Fed's latest rate cuts, Wall Street seemed positively giddy. Around one hour after the announcement, in fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was more than 200 points higher than immediately prior to the announcement.
Then came rumors that a bond insurer's credit rating was about to be cut, and the rally fell apart. Those 200 points quickly disappeared, leaving the Dow at the end of the day almost precisely where it was before the Fed's announcement.
For insight into what the Fed's rate cuts mean for the economy in general and the stock market in particular, I interviewed Dan Seiver, editor of the PAD System Report newsletter. Seiver is an emeritus professor of economics at Miami University of Ohio and currently a visiting professor of economics and finance at San Diego State University.
Seiver's newsletter has a creditable long-term track record, and he's particularly worth listening to now, since he foresaw the economic slowdown in general, and the housing crisis in particular, much earlier than most advisers - and far earlier than the Fed.
"Wall Street is addicted to these rate cuts," Seiver commented. "They want the punch to be spiked. They took one sip on Wednesday afternoon, and were pleased. But after that first sip, they took one look around and didn't like what they saw."
Above and beyond the bond insurer's credit downgrade, Seiver believes there's plenty more for investors not to like in what they see. In fact, Seiver thinks there is now the distinct possibility that, because the Fed got behind the curve in fighting the economic slowdown, it will continue to find itself behind the curve over the next few years forced to over-react to counteract the effects of its previous overreactions.
For example, Seiver says that he suspects that the recent rate cuts will cause inflation to heat up so much that "by the end of this year the Fed will be looking to raise rates." Seiver adds, however, that because the Fed's actions don't have an immediate effect, inflation could easily be too big a threat by the time the Fed eventually acts, forcing it to raise rates more aggressively than it would have otherwise.
This in turn would set in motion an aggressive rate cutting even further down the road, by which time it would be too late: "Given the lags (between the Fed's interest rate decisions and the effects on the economy), they (the Fed) could be constantly behind the curve - 180 degrees out of phase," Seiver said.
One consequence of Seiver's analysis is that inflation will soon become significantly worse. He believes the Fed will eventually regret cutting rates as much as it has already, and will especially regret it if it cuts rates even more - as the market is now betting that the Fed will.
Seiver therefore predicts that the Fed will not cut rates any further beyond the next half point that the market is anticipating.
How does Seiver react to the evidence from the bond market that inflation does not seem to be heating up? Why, for example, hasn't the spread between the yields on the nominal 10-year Treasuries and 10-year TIPS widened significantly recently, especially over the past week? See Jan. 15 column
Seiver responds that he thinks the bond market is simply getting the inflation threat wrong.
"I hate to take on the bond market," he said. "but I think they are underestimating the potential for inflation."
Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.
Ahavah,
Your comments are refreshing in the sense that there are some (too few) people that are smart and get it.
The entire structure in the American Orthodox Jewish communities is one huge economic Ponzi scheme with the ruthless and spineless rabbis at the heads of their organizations/yeshivas...
leading people to disaster and collapse - financially and emotionally.
I did a few posts on kollel fraud, kashrus fraud, and of course the many ugly faces of corruption.
Who benefits???
The answer keeps coming back to haunt me and does not let me find peace. That's the truth.
The Ponzi scheme is crumbling quickly...like water being sucked down a bathtub drain!
I will, in the future, write more on this topic. I invite you to write a full post that I would put up as a headliner.
Thanks for writing,
UOJ
Another rebbe busted in YTT. How can that place still exist?
If it still remains open, why isn't anyone checking out the rebbeim there?
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 31, 2008; 5:49 AM
BEIJING -- China on Thursday said it had stopped production at and exports from a company whose insecticide-tainted frozen dumplings sickened 10 people in Japan, in the latest crisis to rock China's food export business.
The dumplings were contaminated with traces of an organic phosphorus insecticide called methamidophos, which caused severe abdominal pains, vomiting and diarrhea, Japanese officials said.
Three people in Hyogo and seven in Chiba, near Tokyo, were sickened, some of them seriously, including a 5-year-old girl who regained consciousness after falling into a coma
no longer naive said...
Another rebbe busted in YTT. How can that place still exist?
If it still remains open, why isn't anyone checking out the rebbeim there?
3:36 AM, January 31, 2008
who is this rebbi? please send your info to uoj so he can confirm your allegations and if true post his name/picture where he lives, his neighbors have a right to know of his sickness so they can protect their children.
As for torah temima, I think they should keep him as a rebbi there to hell with it they should even take back kolko as rebbi and why not make a deal with mondrowitz to join the royal staff when he gets back to the u.s. leizerowitz and colmer can be in charge of toilet cleaning/training and boiler room maintenance, as for grubba lipa, he fits right in, no need to get belsky to sign a kol korah to enlist your children to this neverland school, the parent body of tt will do so gladly, anyone else care to enlist with such a royal staff?
The Labor Department reported that the number of laid off workers filing applications for unemployment benefits soared by 69,000 to 375,000. That was the highest level for jobless claims since the week of Oct. 8, 2005, when the economy was dealing with the disruptions caused by Hurricane Katrina and the other Gulf Coast hurricanes.
UOJ, du mechutzef! The Agudah does not market untzniusdikka briefs. Only boxing shorts!
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/was-your-gefilte-fish-kosher.html#c6933429576596664918
Lakewood Laibel said...
Who is the OU Rabbi at Alle?
Who is the OU Rabbi at Chaimowitz?
Who is the OU rabbi at Rubashkin?
The answer is that the OU trusts the hechsher of the Nirbater, Debrucziner and weismandel. They just put on the rubber stamp and get their fees. Weismandel has been up to the OU a few times, but I do not know what was said behing closed doors
Rabbi Kravirz hated Rubashkins and told everybody AFTER he left the job at the OU. Rabbi Mandel is mostly on the road visiting plants so that they can say that they show up every so often to get their check. Rabbi Genack is too busy campaigning for Hillary .
Shafran picked me because I have the most yeshivishe beard from all the job applicants.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charney17jan17,0,6365222,full.story
By Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 17, 2008
Dov Charney, founder and chief executive of casual fashion giant American Apparel, acknowledges that he has appeared in his underwear many times in front of male and female employees.
And yes, on a few occasions during work meetings, he donned a skimpy garment that barely covered his genitals.
But those events, he said, have to be understood in the context of the fashion industry.
As early as next week, Charney may find out how his explanations play in court, when trial starts in a lawsuit brought by a former employee alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination.
The case is the fourth against him alleging sexual harassment. One was dismissed. Two others were combined and settled. He has denied the charges in all of them.
Charney's eccentric behavior in and out of the workplace has become legendary. Most notably, he masturbated in front of a magazine reporter interviewing him in 2004.
The case about to go to trial was brought by former sales employee Mary Nelson, who contends that Charney, 38, created "a hostile work environment" by using sexually explicit language and behaving in sexually inappropriate ways. During several meetings with her -- including one at his home -- he was dressed only in his underwear, the suit alleges. On another occasion, according to the suit, he appeared in a skimpier garment.
(The Los Angeles Times and other media outlets have been subpoenaed by Nelson's attorneys, who are seeking access to unpublished material. The media organizations are fighting the subpoenas.)
Nelson, 36, who worked for American Apparel for a little more than a year, claims Charney also referred to women as "whores" and "sluts" and invited her to masturbate in front of him. Nelson's suit alleges she was fired the day she consulted a lawyer.
The company contends that there was no harassment. Rather, "American Apparel is a sexually charged workplace where employees of both genders deal with sexual conduct, speech and images as part of their jobs," Charney's lawyers said in court documents.
Indeed, sexually suggestive marketing is part of what has propelled American Apparel's rapid growth in the T-shirt and cotton fashion market.
The provocative photos Charney shoots of young men and women wearing American Apparel clothing are featured in the company's ads and on its website.
And young shoppers have responded, snapping up the company's close-fitting soft jersey T-shirts and other cotton staples, as American Apparel stores have opened around the world.
American Apparel, which runs the largest garment factory in the United States, also earns high marks for its treatment of workers who make its clothing in a sprawling pink building in downtown Los Angeles.
The company's very success, Charney says, supports his contention that Nelson's allegations are overblown. "I'm the CEO of a public company," he said in a recent interview. "I manage 7,000 employees in 14 countries. . . . Could I have done all this where I'm inappropriate all the time? Where I'm running around in my underwear all the time?"
As creative director of the company, he appointed himself fit model, the person who tests the look and size of his men's line. He has even appeared in the ads. "I weigh 155 pounds, I'm five-10. Am I not fit? Is there any job that is not appropriate for me to do?" he said. "All the big guys did exactly what I do. Versace -- they all wore their own bathing suits."
In a deposition, he said that during the time of Nelson's employment he "frequently had been in my underpants . . . because I was designing an underwear line."
"I'm very proud of the underwear," he added.
In an interview, he also defended appearing in front of Nelson with just his genitals covered. "The demonstration of the" garment, Charney said, "was a product we were considering -- and I was in fit condition for it." He ultimately decided against putting it in the American Apparel line. "It wasn't classy," he said.
Charney's court papers portray Nelson as a poor sales rep who was frequently emotional. By November 2004, according to the papers, Nelson had earned less in commissions than the company had advanced her against those commissions.
"She wasn't performing well," Charney said in an interview. "And we were moving away from commissioned sales people."
Nelson alleges in her suit that she was fired in January 2005, but Charney says he offered to keep her on salary for three months while she looked for other work. "She disappears, never to come back," Charney said. He denies that he ever invited her to masturbate in front of him.
In an interview, Nelson's attorney, Keith Fink, disputed Charney's assessment of Nelson's performance. "If she was a bad sales manager, why did she get a raise? You won't see a single piece of paper in any of her files saying she did anything bad. . . . She was on salary plus commission. She sold more than $3 million worth of merchandise."
Charney casts the world of American Apparel in particular and fashion in general as a business where everyone casually dresses and undresses for creative reasons and uses foul language with abandon.
"You talk to any man who works in entertainment or fashion, and if he tells you he has not used the word 'slut' . . . I think he's lying."
Fink rejects Charney's argument. "It's the height of absurdity that because it's the garment industry, that allows him to call women" by particularly vile words, Fink said.
On a tour of American Apparel's offices Monday, two employees said that language gets "salty" at the office.
A journalist for Jane magazine wrote that during a series of interviews she conducted with Charney, he masturbated in front of her "eight or so times." Asked about the article, Charney said in an interview, "I didn't think she would exploit our relationship."
During the conversations, he says, he thought it was simply "two people having a private time. You could say, 'You knew she was a reporter.' I made a mistake."
The journalist, Claudine Ko, acknowledged that the situation was "unconventional" but said she made clear she was doing a story. "At all times, my recorder and my note pad were there," she said.
Charney met a Times reporter Monday in his loft-like office at the American Apparel factory looking like a rumpled preppy, which he once was. He graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. He wore an untucked blue button-down shirt and dark-blue cotton trousers on his skinny physique, his bearded face framed with oversized square eyeglasses.
On a wall covered with framed notes and pictures, a long string of calendar photos showed bare-breasted, smiling Polynesian women in tropical locales. "That's just something personal," he said. "Reporters always go to that," he chided.
Although many clothiers have created an overtly sexual mystique to sell their wares, Charney has pushed things further than most. In the signature American Apparel photos, young women -- never professional models -- peer at the camera, sometimes in T-shirts and little else. The company's skin-tight shorts and leggings are sometimes photographed on topless women contorted into porn magazine poses. But what makes the photos particularly edgy is their flat background and the lack of glamorous makeup, leaving the subjects looking vulnerable and raw. His fashion colleagues generally commend Charney's ad campaigns. In 2005, he won an LA Fashion Award for marketing excellence.
"I think it's no worse than the old Calvin Klein ads that looked like they were shot against a grainy wood paneling in someone's basement," said Los Angeles-based designer and retailer Trina Turk, recalling the uproar that the Klein ads caused more than a decade ago. "The people are sort of normal-looking. That's kind of refreshing. They haven't been retouched to within an inch of their lives."
No one wanted to venture a comment on the sexual harassment case that Charney faces. "I think he's built an amazing business," said Turk, who burst into laughter when told of Charney's reason for wearing his underwear in the office.
"That's hilarious," she said. "I guess I'm glad I don't work there."
carla.hall@latimes.com
Brian Persaud, a 38-year-old construction worker, says he was forced to undergo a rectal examination after sustaining a head injury in an on-the-job accident at a Midtown construction site. Persaud was taken to the emergency room at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he received eight stitches to his head. Persaud says he was then told that he needed an immediate rectal examination to determine whether he had a spinal-cord injury. He adamantly objected to the procedure, he said, but was held down as he begged, “Please don’t do that.” As Persaud resisted, he freed one of his hands and struck a doctor. Then he was sedated with a breathing tube inserted through his mouth.
After he came to, Persaud was arrested on assault charges. His lawyer, Gerrard Marrone, got the criminal charges dropped and then sued the hospital. The hospital says it didn’t do anything wrong. “Psychologically, it changed his life completely,” Marrone told the Times. “He hasn’t been able to work. He has absolutely no trust in the system at all: doctors or the police. He has post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
Slate Magazine picked up on the story yesterday and featured it in its essential “Explainer” column. Can doctors force a test or procedure on a patient, it asked. “Not without a really, really good reason,” says the Explainer. “A doctor can’t force anything on a patient who is competent to make medical decisions and refuses care.” There are exceptions — certain emergencies, if the patient is unconscious or lacks mental capacity.
The case is set to go to trial in March in New York state court.
Last update - 19:40 24/01/2008
In praise of the Jewish blogosphere
By Richard Silverstein
Tags: Blogosphere
I began my blog, Tikun Olam, in February 2003, one month before the Iraq war began. Even more than opposition to the imminent war, what motivated me was my passion to speak out on behalf of Israeli- Palestinian peace. Military force, I have always believed, though it might serve a legitimate defensive function, ultimately could never resolve the conflict. I have been dedicated to this cause all my adult life, but until blogging developed, I had no regular, public means of expressing my views.
It was lonely at first. The world of blogs, not to mention of progressive Jewish ones, was much smaller five years ago. But what drove me was seeing blogging as a personal expression of angst, passion, anger, identity - whatever are your deepest emotions.
In the beginning, I reached out with mixed success to other like-minded bloggers. In 2005, I created Israel-Palestine Forum, for progressive discussion, and in the hope that this would amplify our message in the greater blog world. But bloggers are fiercely independent creatures. They don't necessarily want to be organized or part of a community. So I've had to adjust my ambitions and set humbler goals.
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After five years of blogging, 2,000 posts, and 6,000 comments, I have a modest but substantial readership with 200 subscribers and 200,000 unique visitors annually. I would like my impact both on the blog world and the broader debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be larger. But bloggers are often seen by "serious" journalists as shouters, dilettantes and dabblers rather than serious participants in the media discourse. While these generalizations sometimes are true, many of us break important stories and do serious independent research. Some of us have sources, life experience or expertise that few journalists have.
In the age before blogs, Jewish leaders were like political bosses. They ruled their roosts, and anyone who questioned them was easily frozen out of communal discourse. Their politics were conservative and generally supportive of the Israeli right. For its part, the Jewish media was a corporate entity that largely expressed the views of such leaders. The few dissenting individuals and organizations made barely a ripple in the communal pond.
Blogs have changed that. Now, Jewish "bosses" can be held up to immediate public scrutiny. When Abraham Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the Jewish press and bloggers took him to task and he backed down. When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a quote falsely attributed to Desmond Tutu equating Israel with Hitler, the MuzzleWatch blog brought this to the Jewish community's attention, and JTA corrected the record.
More importantly, when Israeli policy goes off the rails, as it did during the Second Lebanon War, peace bloggers published almost minute-by-minute coverage documenting the carnage and folly of the military-political decisions that informed the conflict, demonstrating the power of the Internet to circumvent the control of governments and centralized authority.
And if most Israelis who supported the war while it was happening concede today that it was a failure, I would argue that that is, in part, because of the dissenting voices in the Israeli and world media, including blogs like mine and others, which caused a reconsideration of both the cost of the war and the supposed benefits touted by Israel's politicians and generals.
Bloggers conducted a furious debate for and against the war. No one could pull the plug on us, and even if we weren't feared or noticed by the Olmerts and Halutzes of this world, we could have our say and people listened.
Not that all's always well in the Jewish blog world. The breaking down of communal consensus has caused a breakdown of civility, and some blogs are characterized by a barrage of hate, invective and verbal assault.
There has also been a steep rise in partisanship. More radical, violent and racist ideas get more attention than they ever did in the past. I have been unsuccessfully sued for libel for calling militant pro-Israel activist Rachel Neuwirth a "Kahanist." The owner of another far-right site, Masada2000, started a mock blog in my name, which included pornographic references and a stolen image of my son and me, with a caption saying we were making bombs (we were baking cookies). Masada2000's owner also threatened me with genital mutilation. Members of the Kahanist Jewish Task Force Web site wished that I would get cancer of the rectum. It would be wrong to see these merely as aberrant Jewish expressions or the actions of lone troubled individuals (though they might be that). For the Internet has given nuts a huge megaphone to amplify and spread their hate.
My aim is to improve the Jewish blogosphere by encouraging more liberal voices to join the debate. We need more prominent communal figures and even journalists to understand the power of blogs and begin writing their own. Some, like Leonard Fein, Bernard Avishai and Daniel Levy have already done so. But there is room for much more. And, as more newspaper readers migrate to the Web, I'm hoping that the mainstream media both in Israel and America will expand their interest in blogs and incorporate what we have to say into their reporting.
Richard Silverstein blogs at Tikun Olam about Israeli- Palestinian peace, world and Jewish music, and U.S. politics. He lives in Seattle with his family.
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How can they leave out uoj, who has taken over not only the jewish blogsphere, but all of blogsphere.
The Ninth Circuit tossed the fraud conviction and 15-year sentence of a former dot-com executive, ruling that the trial-court judge should have disqualified himself because of stock holdings in a firm linked to the case. Stuart Wolff, the former CEO for Homestore (now called Move), is now entitled to a new trial before a different judge.
In 2006, Wolff received a stiff sentence after being convicted for his role in a revenue-pumping scheme at the dot-com highflier. (He didn’t act alone — ten other Homestore executives pleaded guilty.) Most of the deals in which Homestore padded in sales numbers were struck with AOL. But on Monday, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Judge Percy Anderson should have stepped down from the case because he owned stock in AOL, an alleged participant in the scheme.
Judge Anderson had disclosed his AOL holdings before Wolff’s trial, and another federal judge ruled that Wolff’s lawyers hadn’t established sufficient grounds for recusal. But the Ninth Circuit begged to differ, ruling that Anderson’s rulings in Wolff’s case “could potentially have had a financial impact on AOL.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/01/31/eli-lilly-in-advanced-talks-with-feds-over-zyprexa-probe/
Oh, to be an in-house lawyer for big pharma. Busy busy busy times. The latest: Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors are discussing a settlement of a civil and criminal investigation into the company’s marketing of Zyprexa, an antipsychotic drug. The settlement could end in Lilly’s paying more than $1 billion to federal and state governments, which would be the largest fine ever paid by a drug company for violating federal laws on drug promotion.
Zyprexa, Lilly’s most profitable product with sales of $4.8 billion last year, is approved to treat people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But documents from Eli Lilly show that the company has encouraged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to people with age-related dementia, as well as people with mild bipolar disorder.
The fine would be in addition to $1.2 billion that Lilly has already paid to settle 30,000 lawsuits from people who claim that Zyprexa caused them to develop diabetes or other diseases, two of the most significant side effect.
The Zyprexa situation crossed our radar screen early last year, when Judge Jack Weinstein castigated a plaintiffs’ expert, an Alaska lawyer and a New York Times reporter for attempting to circumvent a protective order concerning internal Lilly documents. Those documents led to a lengthy NYT article at the end of 2006 outlining Lilly’s marketing efforts for the drug.
http://www.nysun.com/article/70378?access=975538
An aging and ailing entertainment lawyer was sentenced to six months of home detention yesterday for his role in what prosecutors contend was a kickback scheme operated by one of the nation's most prolific class action law firms, Milberg Weiss.
Judge John Walter imposed the sentence on Seymour Lazar, 80, of Palm Springs, Calif., who pled guilty to taking secret payments from Milberg Weiss for helping to bring dozens of securities lawsuits by serving as a plaintiff or arranging for his relatives to do so.
Three former Milberg partners, William Lerach, David Bershad, and Steven Schulman, have also pled guilty in the scheme. The firm itself and one of its founders, Melvyn Weiss, are fighting the criminal indictment and face trial later this year on racketeering, fraud, and other charges.
Lazar, who has suffered from lymphoma and heart problems, sought a sentence of probation, but the judge rejected that. He also imposed a $600,000 fine on top of a forfeiture of $1.5 million previously agreed to by Lazar.
According to a statement from the prosecution, Judge Walter said he would have sentenced Lazar to a substantial prison term if he were younger and healthier.
Editorial - NY TIMES
After the Fed
Published: January 31, 2008
Whether or not the Federal Reserve’s recent dramatic interest rate cuts are the right medicine for today’s stalling economy — and the jury is very much out on that — it is clear that the Fed has used up a big chunk of its recession-fighting ammunition in a very short span of time. In just over a week, it has slashed its benchmark interest rate by a total of 1.25 percentage points, to 3 percent. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to cut further without opening the door to a potentially nasty upsurge in prices, which are already rising at a worrisome rate, and a possible disorderly decline in the dollar.
For now, however, the Fed has obviously concluded (and we hope it’s right) that it’s more important to try to mitigate current conditions than to worry about hypothetical concerns. Economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2007 slowed to a barely perceptible 0.6 percent. Housing is already in a recession, and manufacturing is headed down. Foreclosures are rising. Lending is constrained. Consumers are pulling back in the face of job uncertainty and a reduced ability to borrow against their homes.
The next employment report, due Friday, will provide more evidence of the extent to which jobs and paychecks — the linchpins of Americans’ economic well-being — are at risk. Last month’s report was grim: Employment in the private sector contracted and the ranks of the unemployed swelled.
With so much going wrong, even aggressive rate cuts are unlikely to turn things around anytime soon. Lower rates won’t loosen lending as long as lenders are preoccupied with mounting losses on securities and existing loans and fearful of more to come. Anxious, debt-burdened and unemployed consumers are unlikely to spend freely.
In short, no matter what the Fed does, it will take time, certainly a period of retrenchment, and quite likely of recession, to work off the excesses of the bubble years. That means foreclosures and financial ruin for some, joblessness and belt-tightening for others and less vibrant and less viable communities for many.
The damage, now becoming apparent, demands that policy makers take stock of how the economy arrived at this place. The bubbles in housing and mortgages would not have been possible were it not for the progressive deterioration in regulation over the past several decades, culminating for all practical purposes in a regulatory collapse during the Bush years. The antiregulatory ethos, in turn, derived its potency from a pervasive ideology that markets are self-regulating and self-correcting and therefore best handled with incentives and voluntary best practices, rather than rules and boundaries.
The task of reinforcing the regulatory apparatus of the nation’s economy is as formidable a challenge as managing the downturn, and ultimately of more lasting importance.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSEIC17931820080131?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69
Unhealthy enemas put tourists in hospital
Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:02pm EST
The OU response to the latest kashruth scandal:
Products of Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation (FFMC), located in Winnipeg, Alberta, Canada have been certified by the Orthodox Union for many years. This facility, which only processes kosher fish, has been carefully reviewed and accepted by many respected kosher certifying agencies worldwide.
Recent irresponsible and false claims have been published concerning the integrity of the hashgacha as it was administered more than seven years ago, under a previous mashgiach A''H (who is no longer living), alleging that non-kosher fish was sold as kosher. It should be noted that the writer of the piece was identified by the newspaper as "a former fish marketer who believes the FFMC's monopoly should be broken."
OU Kosher urges everyone to realize that charges leveled in print can be, and often are, false. The Orthodox Union urges the kosher-consuming public to recognize such spurious innuendo for its true nature.
The problem IS its true nature. This scandal and every other OU scandal's "true nature". With all due respect to R' Yaakov Kaminietsky zt"l, these days I don't even know if you can trust their salt!
WHAT IS GOING ON IN TORAH TEMIMAH? IF IT IS NOT TRUE, PLEASE DO NOT SPREAD RUMORS. IF IT IS...
TORAH TEMIMAH IS CELEBRATING ITS "YOVEL" CELEBRATION - 50 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE!!!
Why the Rich Are Losing Trust in Charities
When Texas entrepreneur Philip Berber decided to give away $100 million several years ago, he started by researching big charities.
What he found appalled him. The big non-profits were rife with financial waste, inefficiency and fraud. They provided little or no transparency to donors. They offered no way of measuring their effectivess. The scant financial information that was available showed they were spending a huge chunk of their dollars on marketing, fundraising, and administration. The money wasn’t going to the needy — it was going to black-tie balls and bureaucracy.
“Most NGOs, if they were private companies, would be in bankruptcy,” Mr. Berber told me. “In our lifetime, we’re going to see the winds of change and we’re going to see donors become more educated about directing their dollars. If anyone knew that some of these charities only spend 19 cents of every dollar on the people they claim to be helping, they would be shocked.”
The winds of change are already blowing. Mr Berber, for instance, decided to form his own foundation to help the poor in Ethiopia, bypassing CARE, UNICEF and the other old-line philanthropy giants. (For more, click here.) He has entrepreneurialized charity. And he, along with many others, has helped lead the way to a new kind of giving, sometimes called venture philanthropy, performance philanthropy, or just effective giving.
In today’s Journal, my colleague Sally Beatty sounds a clarion call for charities to get with the new program, declaring that “it’s time to make sure our gifts are being used as intelligently as possible.” Aside from just listing their revenues and spending on Guidestar, charities should provide “detailed information on the results of their efforts.”
It will be a long fight. When the Wise Giving Alliance, which evaluates charities, asked charities for detailed information this year, about a third failed to provide it, up from 22% a year ago, according to Ms. Beatty. In other words, many charities just don’t get it.
Today, at the peak of the charity season and the height of the wealth boom, the charity world needs to wake up and realize that the rich have changed. The new wealthy aren’t content to write checks and hope for they best. They are self-made entrepreneurs who want to give away their money just as they earned it — by measuring everything, by being in control, by cutting out waste, and by finding a more-efficient way to deliver a service. They want transparency and concrete results.
Charities that make the change can win big amidst record giving — $295 billion last year, up 65% from a decade ago. But the charities that don’t will lose the trust and confidence of their donors — as well as the people they’re trying to help.
I'll take you up on that offer, not this week, obviously. Too late for that. I'll email you something the first or second week of February, ok?
I'll email you something the first or second week of February, ok?
--------
Got a deal!
Ahavah,
Looking forward to it, I cant wait.
http://www.oukosher.org/index.php/consumer/alerts
The OU is so dishonest that they are even covering up for what happened under the old mashgiach. I know for a fact that 2 different OU officials have admitted to outside rabbonim that the mashgiach was a huge problem and had to be fired. It also speaks volumes of OU uselessness / corruption that it took them over a decade to deal with it.
The OU even denies that Freshwater Fish processes non-kosher species when Freshwater's own website says they do.
The OU then pulls a Lubinsky and smears the writer of the article. You see, according to the OUs, Rubashkins and Lubinskys of this world, if you question their mighty authority, you cannot possibly be correct. Your ulterior motives are the only explanation.
"Spurious innuendo" ? Spurious means counterfeit which about sums up OU kashrus. They are really sinking to a new low here, taking a page from the Avi Shafran book of denying the metzius of child abuse in yeshivos.
Blogs, blogs and more blogs, uoj, never give up its our only hope against the fraud and dangers that lurk out there, keep on yelling from the roof tops, its working.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950374.html
Last update - 14:54 01/02/2008
Bloggers try to counter anti-Israel media bias with bad news on other states
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: blog, Israel, media bias
What began six months ago as a brazen attempt to counter a perceived anti-Israel slant in the Dutch media, has evolved into a network monitoring the media in eight countries across the world. The idea is simple: Beat press bias at its own game by advertising only bad news about one place.
Over the past months, seven activists from Israel and elsewhere have been exposing online readers to scandalous yet accurate reports from media in Britain (violent drunk teens), France (high homeless mortality), Norway (serial child molesters), Finland (sexual harassment in parliament), Sweden (soaring suicide rates), The Netherlands (menacing Muslim unrest), Mexico (rampaging flood victims) and Los Angeles (drive-by killings).
The seven bad-news activists visit one another's online blogs and have incorporated links referring the dozens of surfers who visit their pages every day to sister-sites. Though they all act out of a desire to counter what they see as media bias against Israel, they operate independently and have little communication with one another. Some of them rely on friends to send them interesting bits of bad news.
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"This project demonstrates how media coverage can degrade any country's image by using selective news without context," explains media analyst Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld from Jerusalem. His seminar last summer, entitled "Bad News about the Netherlands," became the kernel of his blog.
Gerstenfeld told Anglo File at the time that by maligning Dutch society he was "merely employing the methods of some in the Dutch media." Those parties, he said, habitually report only about Israeli aggression while omitting any reference to Palestinian violence, among other tactics.
The Netherlands' former ambassador to Israel, Bob Hiensch, indicated he found the project "simplistic and naive" - which hasn't stopped Gerstenfeld from updating the site every day. His blog attracts up to 300 readers a day.
Dr. Genevieve Benezra cites a sense of deep frustration in explaining what made her launch her bilingual Bad News from France blog two months ago. "For years I'd fume over bias in French papers and television," she says. Benezra, a retired jurist from Kfar Hayam near Hadera and veteran French immigrant, heard about the initiative from Gerstenfeld last year at a conference for child survivors of the Holocaust.
It was around that period the British blogger, who preferred to remain anonymous, joined the Bad News club. John (not his real name), who immigrated to Israel from Britain 12 years ago, heard about Gerstenfeld's pet project at a lecture. "We agreed we could make a very good one on Britain," he recalls. "I realize this can be seen as unpatriotic, but the truth is British society never fully accepted me. I was always a Jew there," says the 69-year-old academic. "You could say I have a chip on my shoulder, even though I love British culture in general."
David Silon, a Los Angeles are Jew from birth, runs Bad News from L.A. He says defaming his hometown - which enjoys some degree of glitz in foreign media - is only a means to demonstrate how easily media reports can be manipulated.
Appearing patriotic seems to be of little concern to Kenneth Sikorski, a Finnish non-Jew who runs both Bad News from Finland and Bad News from Sweden. "Even harsh criticism does not generally register as unpatriotic in Scandinavia," says the 48-year-old retired paper industry machinist. Sikorski, who was born in the U.S. and immigrated to Finland 20 years ago, has been monitoring the media for years. "I observed egregious errors in the reports about Israel. One major newspaper said the Separation Fence was electric instead of electronic," he says.
"I have written countless letters to editors," says Leif Knutsen, 48, who runs Bad News from Norway. "I usually received no response and my letters weren't published." Knutsen, a management consultant who converted to Judaism and immigrated from Norway to New Jersey 15 years ago, says the Norwegian press is particularly hostile to Israel. Part of this, he says, draws from Norway's strong peacenik tradition of the 1960s, which Knutsen thinks has resulted in "a simplistic world view where Israel is seen as the one remaining imperialist client state of the U.S."
Gerstenfeld would most like to see a bad news blog covering Belgium. "If it faced Israel's difficult position, Belgium would have disappeared long ago," he says. Benezra would especially like to cover the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. "I may include it, though I don't know how helpful my blog is," she says. "At least it relieves some of my frustration."
The Bad News Blogs:
Bad News from Los Angeles
Bad News from The Netherlands
Bad News from Mexico
Bad News from Britain
Bad News from Sweden
Bad News from Finland
Bad News from France
Bad News from Norway
Related articles:
In praise of the Jewish blogosphere
Nobel laureate cancels trip to 'anti-Israel' U.K.
Of polls and prejudice
http://muqata.blogspot.com/2007/12/this-aint-your-bubbys-burka.html
This Ain't Your Bubby's Burka
The Beit Shemesh Burka: Extreme Tznius (modesty). [Please note, this is NOT a parody. This is a real posting, summarized and partly translated from the Haaretz newspaper]
Kabul arrives in Beit Shemesh Bet -- and manages to even surpass the Beit Shemesh Bet "Tznius Patrol."
A group of Ultra-Orthodox chareidi women in Ramat Beit Shemesh have hyperbolated tznius to the extreme and now wear burkas whenever they go outside their home. Not advocated by any known rabbi, the burka fad is apparently radical chareidi feminist "invention", and many are wary if this custom should be adopted or repudiated. The radical Beit Shemesh tznius patrol is even scratching it's head whether someone managed to out do them, and leave them in the dust with the liberal left.
The husband of one such woman took his wife to Beit Din (religious court) to request from her to remove the burka due to shalom bayit (a peaceful home). The court ordered a religious divorce even though the husband didn't even request one -- because the court found her behaviour to be so bizarre.
The women in Ramat Beit Shemesh receive their instruction from Rabbanit Bruria Keren, who advises about 20 women in the 20s and 30s how to dress, pray and conduct their lives.
The burka dress fashion has spead to Elad, Beitar Elite, Teverya, Tzefat and even the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem.
"I don't want men to look at me. I'm happy being modest. In the past, I felt uncomfortable to walk around [sans-burka], in such a wanton fashion. At first, I just wore a wig. Now, when I see a woman with a wig, I pray to G-d to forgive her for wearing that "thing" on her head. It's difficult. We get humiliated. What haven't they said to me? My neighbors yelled at me, "Leave us alone, you smelly arab." I was pushed. But this is a test from G-d. At the Central Bus Station I undergo security checks and am asked for identification. I don't want men seeing my ID picture, so I just show them my children to prove I'm not an Arab."
--Quote from a Burka and Hijab wearing Jewish woman in her late 20s, who lives in Jerusalem.
The above synopsis is just a small part of an entire article in Haaretz. Unfortunately, it's all in Hebrew, and I don't have time to translate the entire article in English. Suffice it to say, the above is more than enough.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a789053981~db=all~order=pubdate
Think the current housing downturn and the subprime mortgage mess is the worst of the housing market’s problems? Not so, according to a report published this month in the Journal of the American Planning Association.
About to wreak havoc on the housing market are the 78 million American baby boomers who will “retire, relocate, and eventually withdraw from the housing market,” according to report authors Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography in the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California, and SungHo Ryu, an associate planner with the Southern California Association of Governments.
Using demographic data to show that individuals in their mid-60s tend to sell more often than buy, the authors contend that when boomers — a “dominant force in the housing market” — start reaching the age of 65 in the year 2011, a market shift will occur. Some retirees will be looking to downsize, others will relocate to warmer climes, while others will move to nursing homes, says Mr. Myers. As they transition out of the housing market or look to sell their homes, in some states there will be “more homes available for sale than there are buyers for them.” Home prices will soften.
The “sell-off” will create a sizeable hurdle for the housing market, because as Mr. Myers puts it, “It isn’t money that buys property, it’s warm bodies. If you don’t have enough warm bodies to fill up the space, the space stays empty.”
The report points out that the ratio of those aged 65 and older to working age (25 to 64) adults will increase by 67% between 2010 and 2030, and that when these older adults try to sell their “high-priced homes” to a “relatively smaller and less-advantaged generation” — a cohort whose buying power was diminished through the housing boom’s price increases — there will be more homes for sale.
In some states – namely Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – the process has already begun, with sellers starting to outnumber buyers, Mr. Myers says. He contends that the East Coast, particular Maryland and states north, face a double hurdle because there aren’t enough young people to pick up the slack as boomers sell off and because prices are so high that many will not be able to afford these homes.
“In some states like New Jersey, it could be 20 years before prices recover,” he says, explaining that the generational trend is one that could stretch for decades.
dear UOJ i have some information to send you regarding the RCC abuse but dont know where to email you. please let me know how to email you.thanks morris
Morris:
E-mail:a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com
Thanks
I too am shocked that the OU will even cover up an indisputable fact that the mashgiach, initials G.M., was fired.
The rabbi who fired him 9 years ago, who still works at the OU, has admitted it to rabbonim outside the organization.
I was also within earshot of a conversation this week in which a rov questioned a very high ranking OU official about the gefilte fish scandal. While I was disappointed that the OU official did everything he could to downplay what happened in ridiculous ofanim, he still admitted that the mashgiach was in fact fired. The OU official very cleverly worded his arguments that he may not be aware of "all" the facts when he denied that the fish company processes dagim timeyim.
The OU is also trying to use the petirah of the mashgiach to their ends. They emphasize umpteen times in every conversation that he is deceased, as if that changes what happened when he was alive. They also seem to be using it as a guilt trip to shut people up from speaking about a dead man.
The OU is also trying to use the petirah of the mashgiach to their ends. They emphasize umpteen times in every conversation that he is deceased, as if that changes what happened when he was alive. They also seem to be using it as a guilt trip to shut people up from speaking about a dead man.
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Let's tell everyone that the mashgiach is still alive and UOJ interviewed him and he said that the talking fish in Skver was processed in that plant...and the Skver fish was actually a dag tamei who spouted nevolus and that fish was the ONLY dag tamei.
Sounds as real as the other OU stories.
The BIG BEATLE in the salad that was slandered by the ex-OU mashgiach was dead. How dare he speak about a dead BIG BEATLE that cannot defend itself?
"There are serious signs that the economy is weakening and that we got to do something about it. Today we got such a sign when after 52 consecutive months of job creation, we lost 17,000 jobs."
Manischewitz and others have a right to ask the OU for a refund and possibly even sue for damages beyond the actual fees for the fake "supervision" of the gefilte fish.
Does anyone know what the OU does in cases like this? Do they suck it up and pay or do they play hardball and start threatening the client?
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/news/2008/02/01/brothers_stealing_house/
QUEENS–Two brothers, one who had been employed at a Queens real estate brokerage firm and the other at the family’s fish market in Brooklyn, have been charged with fraudulently selling the Cambria Heights residence out from under a retired New York City correction officer suffering from dementia and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the home’s equity.
One of the brothers is in custody and the other is presently being sought internationally.
The defendants are Moses Brach, 30, of 182 Lynch Street in Brooklyn, and his brother, Joel Brach, 27, who lived at 137-68th 70th Avenue in Flushing and is believed to have fled to Israel. Moses Brach, who is employed at the family-owned 18th Avenue Kosher Fish Store in Borough Park, Brooklyn, was arraigned Thursday in Kew Gardens before Acting Queens County Supreme Court Justice James P. Griffin on a four-count indictment charging him and his brother with second- and third-degree grand larceny and second- and third-degree criminal possession of stolen property.
Brach, who, along with his brother, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, was ordered held on $25,000 bail and to surrender his passport. His next court date is April 14.
“The victim is alleged to have been swindled out of his life savings and his home by the two defendants who are accused of taking advantage of an elderly man suffering from dementia to strip the equity dollars from the victim’s home without regard to the financial consequences or human suffering that their alleged actions would cause”, Queens district attorney Richard A. Brown said. “Fortunately, the victim had a guardian angel watching over him in the guise of his eldest daughter, a New York City police officer, who reported the matter to the District Attorney’s Economic Crimes Bureau.”
Brown said that, according to the charges, 71-year-old Hoesey Walker sought the aid of Home Engergizer, Inc., a real estate brokerage company formerly located at 189-07 Jamaica Avenue in Hollis, in February 2007 to assist him in the purchase of real estate. Joel Brach, an employee of Home Energizer, allegedly handled the transaction involving Walker’s purchase that same month of two properties, one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens, for a total of $1,370,000.
The district attorney said it is further charged that shortly after the purchase of the two investment properties, Mr. Walker’s daughter, New York City Police Officer Kim Walker, discovered that her father exhibited the warning signs of dementia and that he did not understand the financial consequences of purchasing the two investment properties. Officer Walker also discovered, it is alleged, that her father’s primary residence at 114-121 228th Street in Cambria Heights had been sold.
It is further alleged that the Cambria Heights residence was sold in March 2007 to Joel Brach and his brother, Moses Brach, for $440,000 and that the equity proceeds from the sale of the house, $217,000, were placed in a Wachovia joint banking account in which the two Brachs and Walker were listed as the account holders.
An investigation by the district attorney’s Office determined that the account has allegedly been opened in March 2007 in Joel Brach’s name only and then his brother’s name was added as an account holder, and then finally that Walker’s name was added as an account holder, unbeknownst to him and only after the sale of his residence.
Finally, it is alleged that Walker was not present at the closing, which took place at 8 p.m. at the defendant Joel Brach’s Flushing residence. As a result of the sale, it is alleged, a check was made payable to Walker in the amount of $217,000, which was then deposited into the Wachovia account that the Brachs had established.
Brown said that the existence of the check and the account came to light when a Wachovia representative contacted Walker and his family due to the suspicious nature of the deposit. At the request of the district attorney’s Office, the account’s assets have been frozen.
The district attorney noted that, as a result of the alleged fraudulent sale, a mortgage in the amount of $407,537 in the names of the Brachs has been filed against Walker’s property and that mortgage is near foreclosure. Prior to the sale, Walker only had a mortgage of $187,633 on his property
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20080201/can-us-shake-iodine-deficiency-risk
Feb. 1, 2008 -- There are fewer food sources of iodine in the American diet than there were just a few decades ago, raising the risk of iodine deficiency in a growing number of people. So says a researcher who calls himself an "iodine activist."
Even people who buy and use iodine-fortified table salt may be at risk, says Purnendu K. Dasgupta, PhD, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dasgupta and colleagues recently tested 88 samples of iodized salt and found that 47 of them, or 53%, did not meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's recommendations for iodine levels.
Increasing popular "designer" table salts, such as sea salts and Kosher salts, usually do not have iodine, and neither does salt used in most fast foods and processed foods.
Add to this the fact that iodine is no longer used in the production of commercial breads and dairy products, plus the ever-present public health warnings about restricting dietary salt, and iodine deficiency becomes a real threat for some people in the United States, Dasgupta says.
Steve what's wrong with you? said...
Steve your either thicker then thick or just wacked out of your mind!
You yourself quote the Ramban as saying "not, as some think, that G-d himself pities the birds and animals. It is forbidden to say so (Berachos 33b)"
That's the point! IT IS FORBIDDEN TO SAY SO! It is forbidden to say that the reason for this mitzvah is because G-D has pity on the birds which is precisely what the UOJ said "The Torah commands us - in the very essential mitzva of Shiluach Hakan...shalach tishalach es ha'em...send away the mother-bird before you capture the child-bird - BECAUSE (DO YOU READ WHAT HE WROTE? BECASUE)the suffering of the mother is unbearable for her to observe; to see her offspring - hurt, slaughtered or captured".
One is supposed to correct this blunder which is what the Mishna says to do-Mishaskan Oso.
The Rishonim disagree whether we can derive from this mitsvah to act mercifully or as the Ramban himself says "it would be better to say that the reason is for our tikun hanefesh so that we shouldn't learn to be achzarius". However they all agree that one is FORBIDDEN TO SAY THE REASON FOR THIS MTSVAH IS BECASUE G-D pitied the birds.
Regarding the Rambam in Morah Nivuchim that you quoted, you left out the rest of the Rambam where he defends himself for saying this against the Mishna. Are you now saying that the UOJ who posts these ACHZARIUS DISCUSTING pictures (and I don't mean the Rabanim I mean the content) is like the Ramabam in Morah Nevuchim which is either one of the most Kabalistic seforim a direct conflict with the UOJ, or has been pronounced controversial and forbidden to learn specifically for such people like yourselves who misconstrue his words?
How sickly and crazily ironic!?
I was reading a commenter or rather a “victim’s advocate” on your blog who so eloquently described sexual abuse as being made-up of two components. One is the sexual abuse itself, and two is the abuse of the cover-up. However he/she omitted a third very important component of abuse. This third component which is given very little, or perhaps no attention here and elsewhere, is called THE ABUSE OF “THERAPISTS”.
Yes you read me right; “psychologists”, “therapists and “social workers” can be one of the most fraud businesses around.
They will lie, mislead, distort, and screw with THEIR victims minds while playing the all know it, caring, and loving G-D, who knows all the reasons while these bad things happen to you and your family, eventually even making a devastating pass on THEIR victims as well, ALL for one purpose: TO SUCK EVERY LAST DIME AND NICKEL OUT OF THEIR POOR VICTIMS AND CASH IT IN FOR THEMSELVES.
Well guess what “therapists” out there; you haven’t fooled me and you surely haven’t fooled G-D!
One experience after the next has become more and more disheartening. The most common form of this abuse is therapists who take upon themselves sexual-abuse cases they haven’t the faintest clue how to deal with, only to intentionally lead THEIR victims on an endless road of hopelessness. Rabbi AJ Twerski says “one in a thousand therapists knows a little bit of what their doing”, and guess what; if they do, they will stall, procrastinate and delay the healing process, for as long as they can, in every possible way, for one and one simple purpose ONLY, GELT GELT GELT AND MORE GELT!
Typically, these therapists will sit on high pedestals and captivate THEIR UNDERAGE VICTIMS by advising them all the things they know, will cause them to feel at loss without them. They will never give their CLIENTS one true piece of advice, since they know, the day they do that, they’ll be heading out their office. Probably this itself should be their best piece of advice, TO LEAVE THEIR OFFICES AND FIND EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ELSWHERE.
They’ll have a million excuses not to face the real tough issues at crunch time, such as hiding behind their family needs, or ending the session or changing the topic coincidently just as THEIR VICTIMS gain strength and begin dealing the pain.
Any of this sounds familiar to you then “you’re not alone”, you’re in good company, all these THIEVES play the same game!
They’ll consciously put THEIR victim’s hopes-up for dead-end meaningless things- only to eventually have their hopes come crashing down for yet another devastating blow- which now causes THEIR VICTIMS to feel the need for even more “therapy” -and the spinning wheel of lies just keeps on turning. These are just a few examples of the sickly, abusive, criminal behaviors of therapists, but unfortunately there’s a world more of this crap out there.
To you grown-up victims, I say; the day you walk out on your therapists and find other victims, family or friends who will humanely sympathize with your pain FOR FREE not as A BUSINESS, is the day YOU ARE FREED of the dishonest circus called sexual abuse. As long as you stay in those confined offices of roller coaster lies and distortions you’re allowing another abuser to reenact the abuse and pain, in just another form.
I know this sediment may cause some victims to feel at lost, but if anyone here on this blog is searching for the truth, then you shouldn’t turn a blind eye from this ugly truth as well.
I eagerly wait the day when you internet bloggers will post up pictures of all these SHADY GANAVIM who rape their victims of every last penny and ounce of sanity and maybe just maybe then... the full picture of this ugly abuse will be exposed. Thank you!
Are they reusing the matza flour? Did it become chometz when it was removed by the Fire Dept? The NY Times says it used to be a pasta factory. Was it properly cleaned out of chometz to begin with?
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/4/31_04matzobawl.html
Scores of loft dwellers huddled in the lobby at 475 Kent Ave. for their turn to gather their possessions from the shuttered building on Tuesday afternoon — but for at least one tenant, the emergency eviction was par for the course.
Getting a deal in Williamsburg or Greenpoint sometimes means putting up with such inconveniences as faulty sprinklers, city code violations and having an illegal matzo factory in the basement.
All three conditions forced the Sunday night evacuation of 200 some tenants from the building, which is between South 11th Street and Division Avenue on the Williamsburg waterfront, city officials said.
“I’ve been through all this before,” said Doris Josovitz, who moved to 475 Kent three years ago after being evicted from 808 Driggs Ave. under similar circumstances. “So I guess I’m getting used to it.”
Still, the controlled chaos wasn’t easy for non–eviction veterans. Tenants were given about an hour to gather whatever they could.
“There’s a complete lack of co-ordination,” complained Kathryn Cook, a 28-year-old photographer who has lived in the building for three years.
The Department of Buildings cited landlord Nachman Brach for illegal basement kitchens and failing to maintain the sprinkler system, among other violations.
The Fire Department also cited Brach for several violations stemming from the allegedly illegal matzo factory in the basement.
Tenants were set to get more time in their units later in the week after three tons of grain were removed on Wednesday from silos that fed that factory.
But the ultimate fate of the tenants remains in limbo.
This isn’t the first time Brach has gotten into trouble by housing people in old industrial buildings. He was fined in June after a firefighter died battling a blaze at Brach’s converted sewing factory at 83 Meserole St.
http://jewishjournal.com/forum/main/read.php?f=1&i=2302&t=1834
What kind of awful psychotherapist would try to suck money out of people?
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Traffic_fee_picks_up_speed_in_new_plan/11634.html
Bloomberg must be stopped! Not only is he supported by UOJ, but he's going ahead with the fee to enter Manhattan. Vos vet zein when I go to Le Marais to fress on treif steaks and salad with BIG BEATLES?
"The FDR Drive and West Side Highway would no longer be free"
Agudah Fresser, this is worst part. Bloomberg hott nisht kein recht to add an $8 tax to our constitutional right to putz around the bunglow!
http://www.vosizneias.com/2008/01/new-york-complicated-heart-of-simple.html
Miami real estate millionaire (and OU Vice-President) Harvey D. Wolinetz doesn’t do business like most tycoons. For him, it’s a matter of faith. Deals are made on a handshake.
And so it was when he met Lakewood, New Jersey developer Eliyahu Weinstein, a fellow Orthodox Jew. Weinstein told Wolinetz that he was a rabbi and his father had been a rabbi.
Weinstein and some of his New Jersey friends abused Wolinetz’s trust and took him for $78.5 million in loans and real estate investments in an eight-month period in 2005, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami federal court this month.
Wolinetz “deals with the world in a trusting way, and they took advantage of that trust,” said his attorney, Melanie Damian of Miami.
The nut of the fraud lawsuit rests in Wolinetz’s ties to Weinstein as members of the same faith.
“Members of the community believe that a man’s honor is his most valuable possession and a man’s word is as good as any written contract,” the lawsuit said. “As a result, business is often transacted without any documentation or through simple letter agreements prepared by the parties themselves.”
Another lawsuit has been filed by Wolinetz against Weinstein in New York State Supreme Court in Staten Island. A British investor also sued Weinstein in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia last March for $36.5 million on unrelated properties. Read extended article [dailybusinessreview]
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-flsdce/case_no-1:2008cv20011/case_id-307873/
Wolinetz et al v. Weinstein et al
Plaintiffs: Harvey D Wolinetz, Park National Capital Funding, LLC, Park National Mortgage Servicing, H.D.W. 2005, LLC, H & N Associates, Aretz Associates, H.D.W. 2005 Forest, LLC, H.D.W. 2005 New Castle, LLC and H.D.W. 2005 Edgewater, LLC
Defendants: Eliyahu Weinstein, Rivka Bichler, Simcha Shain, Elana Shain, Michael Gindi, Barbara Gindi, New Cedar Holdings, LLC, Ocean Realty 101, LLC, Pine Projects, LLC and NH-K Memphis, LLC
Case Number: 1:2008cv20011
Filed: January 3, 2008
Court: Florida Southern District Court
Office: Miami Office [ Court Info ]
County: Miami-Dade
Presiding Judge: Judge Patricia A. Seitz
Nature of Suit: Contract - Other Contract
Cause: 18:1962 Racketeering (RICO) Act
Jurisdiction: Federal
http://bp0.blogger.com/_PxepB5WL1N0/R6U5qAS9JfI/AAAAAAAAAIM/T7GZtrlGuoQ/s1600-h/Eisemann_Moshe2.jpg
Picture of Rabbi Moshe Eisemann with eyeglasses on his peepers. No squinting like in the other picture that's all over the blogs.
R' Lipa Margulies & R' Aron Twerski assure me there are no such problems.
http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=8303&TM=32649.19
Rabbi Dovid Niman, principal of the boys division of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, said drugs and alcohol "are out there and our kids are exposed to it, and we're not naive enough to think that they're above it."
https://www.dailybusinessreview.com/archive/purchase_article.html?news_id=46671&message=
Here's the full story on the Weinstein scams if UOJ would be so gracious to pay $6 for it.
There have been drugs in YTT including in a chushive mishpuche that daven by me. Oh, and the Tort Putz had a brother a'h who davened by me too.
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/state/hc-30175731.apds.m0771.bc-ct--bombjan30,0,2137318.story
January 30, 2008
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A man already facing charges in a 2002 pipe bomb attack in New York that blew off part of a man's leg was arrested Wednesday in Connecticut after he was found asleep in a car with homemade explosives and other items including a disguise, federal authorities said.
Yung W. Tang, 38, a citizen of China who lives in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., was charged with transporting explosive materials without a license and possession of an improvised explosive device not registered to him in national records.
Federal authorities were investigating why Tang had the materials. A public defender representing him declined to comment.
In the 2002 case, a pipe bomb was placed next to the van of Brooklyn businessman, Yisroel Halberstam, and blew off part of his right leg. The 46-year-old Halberstam, who also goes by the first name Israel, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee.
The blast occurred just after 11 a.m. in Borough Park, one of Brooklyn's busiest Jewish neighborhoods.
Halberstam owned Audio House, an electronics store in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. He has had financial business problems, having been cited in several civil court judgments for failing to pay debts of nearly $45,000.
Arrest records did not indicate how or if the two men knew each other. Yang was arrested after he allegedly admitted to the crime, according to the documents.
Yang was charged in December in the New York case with first-degree assault, reckless endangerment, first-degree arson and criminal possession of a dangerous weapon. His bail was set at $50,000.
In Connecticut, police found Tang sleeping in a car in a preschool parking lot in Wallingford early Tuesday. Authorities said Tang indicated he was driving from Boston to New York and had pulled off the highway to sleep.
Tang was arrested after police say they learned that his driver's license was suspended, the marker plates on the car belonged to another vehicle, and he could not produce registration or insurance information.
Authorities said a search revealed a black duffel bag containing what appeared to be the components of a pipe bomb; another bag containing a fake mustache, makeup, and gum remover; a digital timer and a bag containing wires and caps.
An investigation revealed that Tang allegedly possessed two improvised explosive devices, two radio-controlled initiators that could be used to remotely activate an IED, and two firearm silencers.
Tang also had "multiple large bundles" of cash in his pockets, ranging from $700 to $880, and a pair of clear plastic gloves, authorities said. He also had a medicine bottle containing a black power substance that appeared to be gun powder and a knit hat that can cover an entire face, according to an affidavit.
The affidavit described other apparent bomb-making materials in the vehicle, including a cylindrical tube with threaded ends, and plastic foam coffee cups with a hard white substance inside.
An FBI agent who is the weapons of mass destruction coordinator for the New Haven division wrote in the affidavit that the devices "reflect a significant level of sophistication and experience with assembling and constructing bombs and explosive devices."
Wallingford police referred comment to federal authorities.
"We just think he got off the wrong exit and got picked up by the right police officer," said Lt. Marc Mikulski, who said the suspect was questioned by Officer Brad Marshall.
Tang appeared in federal court in New Haven and was detained pending a hearing Feb. 5.
Both charges against Tang carry up to 10 years in prison.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3473131,00.html
The couple, who set the Israeli fastest-divorce-ever record, arrived at the Rabbinical Court less than a week after the wedding: four days to be exact. The husband argued his wife refused to live in his parents' house while his bride claimed her husband promised her they will rent an apartment and live on their own.
The newlyweds also had some financial disputes: According to the wife, the husband's family gave cheap gifts and therefore, her share of the wedding gifts should be larger.
The rabbis, who failed to convince the couple to reconsider, granted the wife her wish and gave both the divorce papers.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3501806,00.html
Ultra-Orthodox press digitally erases women from images
Haredi print, internet media refuse to publish photos of women, even those in prominent positions; female member of Winograd Commission omitted from photograph on news website
Neta Sela
Published: 02.02.08
So how many members were there on the Winograd Commission? A prominent ultra-Orthodox website, www.ladaat.net, chose Thursday to digitally erase the image of Winograd Commission member, Professor Ruth Gavison, from their coverage of the commission’s report.
What is seemingly a simple Photoshop function translates into a very thorny dilemma for the haredi print and internet media.
On the one hand ultra-Orthodox papers and websites strive to cover all newsworthy events in the best manner possible. On the other hand, the haredi media is still considerably wary of publishing women’s photographs, even when the women in question play central and prominent roles in newsworthy events.
The ultra-Orthodox press, bound by strict laws regarding modesty which demand that women be obscured to the greatest extent possible, prefers as a general rule to refrain from carrying images of females.
Spiritual committees, comprised of rabbis who regularly monitor haredi sites and newspapers, generally dictate what will appear and what will not be shown in the haredi press, and, more often then not, they tend to bar the publication of such photographs.
MK Limor Livnat, who formerly served as education minister, received treatment similar to Gavison in the ultra-Orthodox press when her face was digitally blotted out from a photo taken at a cabinet meeting.
Photos of most women, and even young girls, are handled similarly. If they are published at all, that is
In an interview with Ynet, Ladaat.net site manager Yechiel Levy explained that the site “caters to an audience which is highly sensitive regarding content”, and that he must respect their wishes. He noted that the decision to blur or remove photos from the site has nothing to do with the prominence or respectability of women such as Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, or Professor Gavison
The Ladaat website, explained Levy, is currently operated by ultra-Orthodox internet providers 'Rimon' and 'Nativ' which use stringent content filters to remove inappropriate content, such as photographs of women.
“Even if the woman in question is modestly and appropriately dressed, as soon as a woman’s photo appears on our site they’ll pull the plug on us, said Levy. “Our very existence as a haredi website is contingent upon our maintaining a very strict, exacting moral code that we cannot deviate from.”
http://www.vosizneias.com/2008/01/winnipeg-canada-kosher-cover-up-with-ou.html
I know of a Rabbi who worked for the OU who after giving the OU written notice that he would not be able to visit a particular pretzel factory in PA continued getting annoying calls from the OU and their Hechsher symbol remained on the label for a FEW YEARS after the Rabbi gave notice.
Should I also tell you that if u were to go into a very well known pizza shop in Manhattan the owner will tell u that he keeps a chasidishe hechsher ONLY because he knows it will draw the chasidishe crowd,, but that the Chasidishe rov who puts his name to that pizza shop comes in once a month to pick up his check AND THATS IT! NO MASHGICHIM ARE THERE and that chasidishe rov has one of the best names,, and in this case he is 100% relying on the OU or the OK, I dont remember which one of the regular hashgochas he has.
ruboi kekuloi of charadishe hechsherim that put on stickers rely on the hechsher already there without puting in their own mashgichim - just charging more money to the consumer (i once received a large shipment of twizlers with a roll of stickers to put on myself)
Today, is the world of "Oooops" "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." and Hashgachas giving companies another chance ....
MIRSAS IS DEAD!
I firmly believe there is no longer a valid concept of Mirsas.
Also, Yotzei V'Nichnas only has a chance under the following conditions:
The people in the plant are honest and never try to put things over on the mashgiach.
The Mashgiach has no fixed schedule, but really shows up very frequently with no notice at all.
The Mashgiach can simply walk right into the plant, and not have to pass an office which can buzz the forman to warn "The Rabbi's coming"
But all that aside, even with a mashgiach temidi, which I urge to be the only way, there are still problems.
Many plants and kitchens are way too large and/or busy to have only one Mashgiach. I worked in one place where we had four, and it still was not enough. I quit because I believed we were failing to keep up to standards, and they refused to give me more mashgichim.
(a year later there was a scandal there. They still refuse to admit that it was the number of mashgichim at fault)
Way too many Kulahs are used today. There are accidents, and phone calls to the Rav HaMachshir usually finds a heter. I have often come under fire because I dumped an entire lot of product into the dumpster or down a drain before calling the Rav HaMachshir because I knew his heter, which was very shvach.
(Never had this problem with the Volove or Nirbartur)
Another problem is Bishul Yisroel vs Bishul Akum.
There are many ovens today which have no pilot light at all.
The Mashgiach MUST turn on the oven each time the door is closed!!!
Most require only that the Mashgiach turn on the oven only once, when the plant opens in the AM. This is DEAD WRONG.
These ovens get cold in the three to four minutes it takes to empty all the cooked food pans from the oven and reload uncooked pans. Now you have uncooked food placed into a cold oven. The door is closed, the oven is turned back on. If the chef is a goy, this is PURE BISHUL AKUM.
Some weaker ones have ruled that the light bulb inside the oven stays on, and that it provides heat that contributes to the cooking. So, as long as the Mashgiach turned the oven on in the AM, it is not bishul akum.... WRONG
The halacha is based upon adding fuel to the fire to make the fire hotter. The light bulb is not related to the cooking fire.
Also, the light bulbs are so insulated, that is it really doubtful if it contributes any heat.
I always tried my best to be there every time I heard the sound of the oven beeping, so I could close the door. But most mashgichim don't bother. Even I found I missed it sometimes.
Also, EVEN if the light bulb did contribute heat, and EVEN if it is fine to have heat source which is not part of the fire .... still this is KOSHER FOR ASHKENAZIM ONLY! Sepharadim to not accept this heter at all!
So, the packages need to be marked, "Kosher for Ashkenazim ONLY!"
Most products today are like this, but not marked. This is not fair to the Sepharadim who are not knowledgeable. They rely on the hashgach and are being betrayed.
That is an area where the Volove and Nirbatur are better than the OU. You can rely on their Bishul to not be Bishul Akum.
Now, I will give the OU credit, that they, and the Kof K have strong rules on veggies and bugs. IF the Mashgiach follows their rules, they are the most reliable in that category. But ... how many mashgichim really follow the OU rules when washing lettuce? no comment.
I know it takes me a minimum of 90 minutes to wash ONE Case of lettuce.... Iceberg or Romaine
How many mashgichim give the boss two or three cases in that time because "He needs it" ....
It is backwards Mirsas.
The Mashgichim are afraid of the boss.
So... be careful what and where you eat.
Well, I must say that it happened a few times when I worked for companies that had the OU, or Kof K and they wanted to add Chassidishe Hashgacha.
The Nirbatur and the Vollover did insist on getting rid of some of the heterim, and increase the level of hashgacha.
It was always a pleasure working with them, as they back up a mashgiach, and do not override him when he says something can't be properly supervised as the company wants to set things up.
They have definitely made things better at places where I worked.
Though the OU and Kof K, with the right local Rav HaMachshir and Mashgiach can also be excellent.... If you have no problem eating Bishul Akum
They have this wild heter that says anything that will be put into a can does not need to be bishul Yisroel. They say canned food is not oileh al shulchan milochim.
I disagree.
I believe if the particular food item would be eaten by a king, it needs to be Bishul Yisroel. Putting it in a can does not take away the halacha.
Also, they are MUCH to lenient when it comes to Yotzei V'Nichnas.
I worked for one place where the Volleve came in to add his hashgacha, and insisted that the Mashgichim have the keys, open in the am, stay all day, and lock the doors at night. Much better than it was before he came. He did not just rubber stamp.
He also DID change ingredients, limiting the source of frozen broccoli to only two sources.
He really enforced the changing of uniforms each time an employee would go from the milchig kitchen to the fleishig.
Also, he did not allow Pareve soup to be made in the same area as the Fleishig soup. (the OU had been fine with that) The problem (and he was dead right) was that when the kettles are close, and no wall or gate separating them, the chef can and will take the fleishig paddle out of one, and walk over to stir the pareve one. I argued this with the OU for 2 years. In came the Volove, and the problem disappeared. He had the pareve kettles moved to the other side of the kitchen, and a fence built around them.
The chef walking into the pareve section, needed to change aprons and wash his hands. The OU was too lenient on that one too.
In my area the OK is poor, due to their local rav hamacshir.
I worked in one area, where the rov hamachshir was the same man for all of the major hashgachas. Well, he utilized the heterim and KeHulas of all of them! He brought OU heterim to the Kof K kitchens and vice versa. The Chassidish hashgachas who came in did not want to take the jobs. They said, correctly, that it was "too loose" ...
So, NO, they do not automatically rubber stamp things. Not to my experience.
Yes, there are some chassidishe hashgachas who are not that good, and do rubber stamp. But there are the good ones who don't. There was nothing I could teach the Volover or the Nirbartur. They both are really on top of things. I miss working with them. They do not have anything here where I am living now. The Local Rav HaMachshir here, used by the OU is semi worthless. I will not eat anything that comes from the kitchens his mashgichim supervise.
I finally refused jobs working under him. I could not do it and feel right.
There is a chumrah that I am makpid on to just eat a large amounts of foods so that each item you eat will be botul b'shishim in your stomach.
Agudah Fresser, that's my chumrah. You should say it over bishmee.
Moshe Faskowitz is helping distribute the sefer written by his mechutan Efraim Bryks.
When is Paysach Krohn going to give it a plug in an upcoming work with Fartscroll?
We're all one big happy family. Just ask my good pal Belsky for a haskamma.
http://www.yeshivishnews.com/2007/12/30/idt-suing-touro-college/
IDT Corp. has accused Touro University, the nation’s largest Jewish university, of failing to pay the Newark-based telecommunications company $38
million from the sale of a joint venture.
A suit filed by IDT in U.S. District Court in Newark claims the company is owed 20 percent of the $190 million the university’s parent received in the sale of
its Internet-based venture, TUI, in October.
The suit, claims IDT helped put an online venture together for Touro College, the university’s parent company, at the suggestion of founder Bernard Lander.
Howard Jonas, the telecom company’s founder, agreed, in return for 20 percent of the venture, and Lander accepted the deal, the suit says.
Yet Touro College has refused to pay IDT any proceeds from the sale, the suit says.
The suit accuses Touro College, Touro University, TUI and Summit Partners of breach of contract and demands that Summit pay IDT 20 percent of the amount Summit paid for TUI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WniQcJz2NA
They have to do something about the kumzitz on Motzaei Shabbos at the convention.
This putz with the violin just doesn't cut it.
http://www.fruitguyfans.com/
Quit complainin'. Here's a very hartzigge moment from the Motzaei Shabbos kumzitz at the last Agudah Fresser Convention when we were serenaded by the Agudah Brief / Fruit of the Loom ensemble.
After everything finishes loading, click on it to play the video.
I agree with Abish. I chapped a sach hanoah from the Fruit of the Loom zemiros. It gave me a za chizuk that I feel a naya hislahavus every time I put on my gatchkas.
Who is Vicki Polin? Rabbi Belsky was overheard telling someone on Shabbos "Vicki Polin is the lowest of the lowest zonah's that walk the earth. She must be stopped". Anyone what this is about?
Canada has dollar coins called "Loonies" named after the loon bird pictured on one side. Crazy people are called loons since the bird makes a crazy sounding call.
The Agudah has requested that Canada withdraw the dollar coins from circulation. You see, the coins are gold colored, which Avi Shafran confuses with Chanukkah gelt and the poor guy is chewing on them and injuring himself trying to get to the chocolate.
Ah...more words of wisdom from Fraud Belsky! Tell him to give it to me in writing...so I may add it to the Greenwald hazmana.
Vicli Polin runs the Awareness Center and was recently involved with a film on abuse. Belsky has said publicly that he hates her guts. Just ask anyone from Torah Vodaath, they all know about Vicki Polin, since Yisroel Adolf Belsky has been ranting with anger and speaking in public at the Yeshiva against her for weeks. He has been cursing her and calling her and her family all types of horrible stuff. Adolf Belsky insists that he will get her web site removed from the internet forever. He has also been speaking out againt UOJ, but insists that Vicki Polin is the most dangerous terrorist that walks the earth.
Martin Landau once said, “When I first became an actor, there were two young actors in New York: Marlon Brando and Steven Hill. A lot of people said that Steven would have been the one, not Marlon. He was legendary. Nuts, volatile, mad, and his work was exciting.” One of these men went on to revolutionize acting and win two Oscars. What happened to Hill? Orthodox Judaism! Deciding he needed to devote himself to his faith, he chose to honor the Sabbath by not working from sunset on Friday to sunset Saturday (believe it or not, some producers felt this could be inconvenient for a production). He finally achieved a taste of success playing D.A. Adam Schiff on Law & Order only to have his happy days of bantering with A.D.A. McCoy come to an end when he was replaced by Nora Lewin (screw you, Dianne Wiest!). That said, he was awesome in Yentl. (Photo by Ron Galella/WireImage.com)
I think it's time Vicky Polin started a new section on Awareness Center for enablers. Margulies and Belsky win the lifetime achievement award.
Ohel is spreading it's tentacles and has opened a new branch in town.
I don't get it. You mean Belsky just gets up at the bimah and starts ripping Vicky or changes the subject when being magid shiur on shnayim ochazin betallis?
I suppose when Vicky is on a roll against his good friends Kolko and Brenner that anything is possible.
Belsky asked Sholom Rubashkin if he can put anti-Vicky ads on the sides of the trucks. Rubashkin wants $10,000 per truck so Belsky is trying to get his pal, the rich convicted felon Fuchs to cough up the fee.
That Fruit of the Loom video from Abish Brodt is hilarious. If he hadn't specified it was from the kumzitz, I would have thought it was the major keynote address.
On Shabbos Adolf Belsky was at a kiddush after davening and at his his table he shamelessly began speaking against Vicki Polin refering to her in a most disgusting and degrading manner. There was eventually a large crowd that gathered around to hear Adolf Belsky going mad crazy attacking Vicki Polin and her web site. He was also attacking Rabbi Yossef Blau Shlita the Mashgiach Ruchni of Yeshiva University. Adolf Belsky said he intends to publicize on line against Rabbi Blau and his son and show what motivates him. Adolf Belsky sounded like a lunatic from an insane assylum but mainly kept hitting at Vicki Polin as being the worst person around. The Torah Vodaath bachurim that were present at the kiddush said they found him boring since they have heard this same ranting at the yeshiva numerous times already. It seems Belsky is involved all day and night speaking out against Vicki Polin.
past comment was corrected as you seem to want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_Priestly
Surely Margulies & Belsky will decline the Enabler award out of a sense of humbleness.
The question has been raised here more than once as to what role if any Rabbi Rafael Butler played in the Lanner cover up. Someone blasted him and pointed out his head was on the OU chopping block. Someone else quoted an unnamed RCA rabbi that Butler was duped by Lanner's psychopathic personality.
The latest I'm hearing is that Butler himself tells people that he "asked shaylos" for everything he did. So who did he ask? And how do you apply the Nuremburg defense of "just vollowing orders"?
So I guess those Fruit of the Loom costumes are rebbishe tish chalatts?
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doc/html/how/get_to_rikers_island.shtml
Tuvya Chaim Neuhoff figured out a way how to beat the congestion toll in Manhattan on the way to his Catskills bungalow. He will take mass transit to visit some pals this summer at the prison. Colmer has already checked in, soon to be joined by Kolko & Margo. You see, Rikers is the shortest path across the water to dry land. He'll take the plunge and get into his car parked in the South Bronx.
I spoke to a rosh yeshiva who tells me he would b etzem come out against the OU befarhesya, that they are a bunch of corrupt shakronim but he is afraid they will paint a target on him and proceed to mow him down. He explains that they are raking in $100 million per year and will not stand for anyone challenging them. He points out this is 3 times in the past year now that they have lied to the public. He knows they lied about Le Marais because he was one of the independent rabbonim that Isaac Bitton came to with the evidence. He knows they are lying about Rubashkin because of personal guarantees made to him by someone at the top of the OU command that he later learned was pure lies. He knows they are lying about Winnipeg gefilte fish for reasons I cannot say without possibly identifying him.
I kid you not that he told me he wishes UOJ could do something about it.
Why would Belsky curse out Vicky Polin's family? Vicky has had nothing to do with them for years except when she tried to sue them.
Anon @12:08AM,
I quoted the Ramban and Ramban word for word and you're still not satisfied. Next time you post, please leave your hebrew name and your mother's name so that we can all daven for your refuah sheleimah.
Adolf Belsky said he intends to publicize on line against Rabbi Blau and his son ...
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That would be the menuval Belsky's last stand!
I kid you not that he told me he wishes UOJ could do something about it.
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I'm working on it!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106778
Times are bleak for the U.S. consumer. The average household owes 20 percent more than it makes each year. The personal savings rate is in negative territory. Record numbers of Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, and millions more are struggling to keep up with their monthly bills and obligations. And the nation's economy isn't in much better shape. The Treasury Department has estimated that, with the added costs of the economic stimulus plan passed by the House of Representatives this week in an effort to avoid a recession, the federal deficit could rise to as much as $400 billion this year.
I spoke to a rosh kollel, a very big talmid chochom, on Shabbos who is disgusted with the OU. The last straw is that an OU insider, who would probably be fired for talking to him, told him the Winnipeg mashgiach was fired.
The rosh kollel is resigned to possibly eating treif since even KAJ & Hisachdus cannot function without OU ingredients but he will not touch anything that a pirsum erupted about. This means he will not eat gefilte fish anymore unless it is from a local store that grinds fresh fish on the spot.
He's also aghast by the way that the Agudah lobbied the Federal government to leave Rubashkin "shechita" alone.
Whose kiddush was Belsky at?
Then again if the Blaus cough up some protection money, me and Belsky will leave them alone.
UOJ calls this a shakedown, but we prefer to call it a mutually beneficial business agreement.
He's also aghast by the way that the Agudah lobbied the Federal government to leave Rubashkin "shechita" alone.
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Good morning Mr. Rosh Kollel - huge talmud chochom! Where have you been hiding?
It must really annoy Belsky that Vicky Polin is not frum, so he cannot use his regular gangster channels to get her.
What percentage of YTV is the kind of brainless putz like Neuhoff who eats up every word of Belsky's pro-molester crap? Does Belsky actually have a choir to preach to when he has these outbursts?
The vast majority hate him and want him out.
http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5642219&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
Tenants of the Shalom Organization on Thursday protested their landlord's allegedly abusive and vicious behavior.
During a rally on the Upper West Side, the tenants called on the Manhattan District Attorney's office to prosecute.
The protest was in front of 244 West 72nd Street. One of that building's tenants said management threw away all his possessions and euthanized his four cats. This, he said, happened one week before he was set to move out.
The tenant also said he paid his rent.
The Shalom Organization owns 130 buildings across New York City.
http://newsinlakewood.blogspot.com/2007/11/kosher-phone-launched-in-lakewood.html
A project which has already seen widespread success in Israel, has now moved on to Lakewood, New Jersey. The 'Kosher Phone' otherwise known in Israel as a 'Cellphone Meushar' is enabled only for voice, while the text messaging and other data features widely seen on cellphones today are disabled. The pilot project in Israel, which was widely endorsed by the leading Rabbi's there, now sees other Orthodox Jewish communities picking up on the success which saw all the major cellphone companies in Israel selling these special phones, including Orange, Cellcom, and Pelephone. The plan here in Lakewood is endorsed by the Mashgiach of Beth Medrash Govoha and is available at Beepers Plus on Clifton Ave. in Lakewood. The Orthodox Jewish community generally shuns needless outside influences which can have ill effects spiritually, and therefore an idea was sought out how to have cellphones, which are needed in today's day and age, but without the negative consequences.
Posted by A World Without Yeshivaworld
joe said...
what hechsher does it have
yudel shain said...
STAR-K
Anonymous said...
Who are they fooling? Everyone in BMG has a cellphone alreasy, you think they're going to cancel their current plans just for this idea??!!!
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12&SecId=12&AId=57829&ATypeId=1
The rabbinical judges had no idea how to deal with the woman standing in front of them. Dressed from head to toe in a cloak, and a veil which covered her entire face — including her eyes — she looked like a resident of Kabul.
But this was an Orthodox Jewish woman from Jerusalem in 2005.
Asked several times to remove the veil, she refused, saying only, through her lawyer: “I only reveal my face to my husband, for reasons of modesty.”
The rabbis granted her husband’s request for a divorce, against her will, and handed him custody of their 10 children. They concluded that the woman, who had to be guided from court by her hand, suffered from a “serious mental disturbance”.
If so, it is one afflicting an increasing number of women. In the past few months, reports have emerged of more than 100 Orthodox Israelis who have taken to wearing a Muslim-style burka, in the belief this will bring about redemption. They can be seen in Orthodox areas of Tiberias, Safed and even Jerusalem, and are mostly followers of Rabbanit Bruria Keren, a mother of 10 from Ramat Beit Shemesh.
According to the newspaper Ha’aretz, she rarely leaves her home and speaks only for four hours a week to offer “alternative therapy” to her followers.
Some wear more than 10 layers of clothing, including dark socks, with the ends cut off, over their hands. They never wear heels, lest the noise attracts attention.
How are we to understand this behaviour?
The women see themselves as motivated only by piety. As one of them told Ha’aretz: “The entirety of a woman is considered ervah,” or a naked part of the body which must be covered up, “even one’s wrist. A man who isn’t your husband must not see it.”
But halachah makes no such judgment, and the lengths to which these women are going to fulfil this fictional expectation are so extreme that they cannot be categorised as just one more stringency. These women are not just covering up another inch, another body part; they are not just nudging the laws of modesty a little bit further.
By donning the burka, they are making themselves invisible, effectively non-persons. Modesty, for them, is not participation in the world, while de-emphasising their physicality — as it is in halachah — but complete self-effacement, to the point of self-obliteration. They have no faces. Some have no voices. A few have no existence outside the home.
Some bloggers have cited parallels to eating disorders. Both anorexics and the burka women are denying their bodies in order to make them “disappear”. Both are reacting to unattainable cultural ideals, be they size-zero thinness or increasingly stringent standards of modesty in the Charedi world, by taking them to an obsessive extreme. And anorexia is often understood to be a desperate way for women to assert control over at least one aspect of their lives. Surely, wearing a burka or vowing silence can be construed similarly.
So how did we reach a situation where a group of women believes that this sick behaviour is actually a Jewish ideal? On the face of it, they are behaving in opposition to the norms of Orthodox society. The rabbinical divorce court was clearly repulsed by the concept of the frum burka — or the “frumka”, as bloggers are mischievously calling it. No rabbis publicly condone it. Several women quoted by Ha’aretz complained they were harassed and rejected by their peers.
And yet, the “frumka” is the logical extension of two clear trends in the frum world.
Firstly, standards of modesty are becoming increasingly stringent and require increasing effort to follow. A CD recording by a top rabbi from Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, reportedly asks women not to swing their arms while they walk and not to allow their daughters to wear colourful banana-clips in their hair. Women know that if they wear skin-coloured stockings, they must include a seam so it is clear they are not bare-legged. Schoolgirls do not wear shiny shoes that could “reflect their underwear”.
Paradoxically, the Orthodox world’s attempt to create a generation in which physicality is minimised has resulted in a generation obsessed with looks, clothes and sex.
Secondly, tznius, or modesty, has long moved from being about modest clothing to being about keeping women, and images of women, away from men.
Open a Charedi newspaper, and there are either no images of women, or they are blacked out. In the past few years, several women have been beaten up in Jerusalem because they would not move to the back of the bus in Charedi neighbourhoods; a top rabbi in Bnai Brak asked women to leave before the end of shul so they did not mingle with men following davening; that same town has a street with separate sides for men and women; separate shopping hours are not unknown.
Just last week, a sheitel shop in New York was boycotted for refusing to remove headshots of women wearing wigs from its window.
But since when is looking at women’s faces forbidden? It’s not.
The fact is that, in the Orthodox world today, women are already being pushed out of the public sphere. The rabbis may not understand the Pandora’s Box they have opened, but the jump from the Brooklyn sheitel store to the burka-wearers in Israel is not that great.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJ44bYhiJPTA&refer=home
New York Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo's attempt to bail out bond insurers is ``coming too late in the game'' to stave off ratings downgrades, CreditSights Inc. analysts said in a report.
It's the same attitude here with sex crimes which is why Bryks, Nussbaum, the Bobovers and others were never charged.
http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/62913-are-canadian-regulators-ignoring-fraud
Are Canadian Regulators Ignoring Fraud?
posted on: February 04, 2008
http://bespokeinvest.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/01/businessweek_3.png
I wonder if yeshivos would start mass expulsions of kids whose parents lose their homes and pants and can't pay tuition.
http://web.mscc.huji.ac.il/law/segel/gavison/index.html
Hello, I am with the Winograd Commission but the Charedi newspapers refuse to publish my picture as seen above. Chaim Berlin is really lucky that I'm not a shaytel model.
I bet that there will be mortgage fraud in reverse. Parents can find some shmucky putz mortgage broker / appraiser to conconct bogus financial documents to get them off the hook with the tuition committee.
http://mominisrael.blogspot.com/
Ma'ariv has an interview with Rabbanit Keren, the woman who has 'inspired' dozens of haredi women to wear veils and burkas.
What does this self-styled holy woman believe? How does she live her life?
What did Ma'ariv find? Well…
…According to A Mother In Israel, this:
She doesn't speak to men at all, and rarely to women; during the day she abides by a speech fast and prays.…
Her "small" daughter easily follows her unspoken instructions.…
The children of the veiled women have an important role. Some women "vitru" (have given up on) eyeholes in their veils, and their small children guide them in the streets. [My father is blind. Guiding blind people is not easy to do, even for adults.…
During her talk, she promises the women who have not yet "taken the step" (of wearing veils) many blessings and the merit of taking part in bringing the Messiah, if they will adopt this stringency.
I'll link to more of the translation / summary when A Mother In Israel posts it.
UPDATE 1: The Rabbanit does veils and burkas the way Rabbi Chaim Pinchas ["No penetration, No abuse]" Scheinberg does arba kanfot (tallit katans):
I knocked on her door to attend her weekly talk. The living room was empty and on the side stood a big pile of clothes:
Ten thick skirts, seven long capes, six scarves tied in front of the head and three more in the back. And over all a shawl-- several thin veils, falling from the top of her head to her ankles, fluttering over a face covered by a crocheted cloth veil. Inside this pile sat the Rabbanit, bent by her load of wrappings, reading chapters of prayers
UPDATE 2: A Mother In Israel has more of the article translated. A choice bit:
The reporter describes how Keren's followers congratulate a woman who put on a veil a week ago. The woman tells how her husband doesn't approve, the neighbors point and a Haredi man, who turned out to be her small son's rebbe, shouted and threw fruit at her. Her son, who was with her, started to cry.
The rabbanit is upset that someone would waste food, but proclaims that "insults are a gift."
Sounds like instructions from a Hare Krishna leader to his new recruits.
UPDATE 3: And now more, this the Rebbetzin's 'rationale' for the burka:
The holy matriarchs and the women of Jerusalem covered their bodies and hid their faces. Even in the Torah it says that Tamar didn't see Judah's face because she was covered. [This is based on a Midrash, brought down by Rashi, that Tamar covered her face during the period she lived in Judah's house. Is this entire movement is based on one midrash?] The Torah doesn't change. The body must be covered so that no one will see her shape. Because the face and figure of a woman can cause men to sin. The more layers of clothes, the more a woman's modesty is esteemed.
According to this nut bar, Jewish women from about the time of the First Temple onward behaved incorrectly. The did not wear the burka. Only someone ignorant of history could fall for this crap.
UPDATE 4 – A follower's story:
Miriam, 32, mother of six, is a Breslover baalat teshuva (returnee to observant Judaism) and a follower of Rabbanit Bruria Keren. She wears 5 skirts, two capes, seven scarves, and a veil angled to cover one eye. She uses the other eye to see in front of her, because she is disgusted by the idea of using her children as guide dogs.…
At one stage she had doubts, so the Rabbanit sent another student to fetch her. Miriam told the rabbanit that she felt like a "Fatima." The Rabbanit said, "Why does it matter? There is your will, and there is God's will. And God's will is what counts, not yours."
The rabbanit told Miriam how in the beginning she was humiliated by policemen who "scattered her bags and stopped traffic" [presumably they suspected her of being a terrorist]. Ready to give up, she got home she opened a holy book to a page that read, "One rises in holiness and does not descend."…
in Ramat Beit Shemesh, many women dress this way so Miriam does not get too many comments.…
So far, no one has posted an English language translation of the entire Ma'ariv article.
It has come to our attention that Ner Israel Rabbinical College administration may be plotting an action "Purimfest-5768". This March, Baltimore Jewish community members who have spoken against NIRC and its gay-shielding policies may receive poisoned Purim food packages (shalachmanot). If you receive a Purim gift from an unidentified source or from someone at NIRC, DO NOT EAT IT! If you develop any symptoms of poisoning within the first two weeks after Purim, immediately contact your local Poison Control Center (1-800-222-1222).
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