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אתמול התקיים הדיון במעצר עד תום ההליכים של מונדרוביץ בפני כבוד השופט רביד
בבית המשפט המחוזי בירושלים.
השופט שמע את טיעוני הצדדים ודחה את המשך הדיון כדי לאפשר לבא כוחו של
מונדרוביץ להציג ערבים שיהיו מקובלים על בית המשפט. פרקליטות המדינה (המחלקה
הבינלאומית) התנגדנה לכל חלופת מעצר. מונדרוביץ עדיין במעצר עד מתן החלטה
אחרת.
מצ"ב פרוטוקול הדיון.
בברכה,
מירב חביב
ע. דובר משרד המשפטים
טל: 0506-216665
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On the one year anniversary of one of my favorites, from Still Wonderin', and just happens to coincide with the new "idiot" article, by idiots and for idiots, in The Jewish Observer!
The Jewish Observer is Jewish pornography, it should not be found in any Jewish home! It is poisonous and harmful to you and your family's intellectual health and well-being, and is an absolute distortion of Torah values - as our Chazal intended for the Jewish nation! The greatest Orthodox Jewish minds of our generation have disengaged themselves from this pathetic Agudath Israel organization, and it's demented world-view. Boycott this offensive magazine and this taliban-like organization, that will destroy you and your family with their outrageous lies ,distortions and mind-numbing ideologies!
They - and their policies - are the cancerous disease in the Jewish world today, not - the people reporting the ugly news and criminal behavior that is planned right on their premises. From protecting rabbi-child-rapists - and the criminal rabbis that enable and harbor them, to disguising evidence of disease -- infecting babies at their bris - by herpes-laden mouths of rabbis that perform circumcisions -- to consorting with the Catholic Church to attempt to prevent police inteference in private schools to protect our children from these rabid sub-human sex maniacs and their criminal clergy enablers! They deserve the contempt and scorn heaped on them, and more - than I know how to do! What they are attempting to conceal is their failed policies and horrendous criminal actions that have brought authentic Orthodox Judaism to it's knees! This is NOT the Judaism that our grandfathers died for! No self-respecting Jew should be part of this fraud!
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Agudah to UOJ: Welcome Back
It appears that the Agudah, with their pathetic grasping at straws of controversy to appear relevant, has resurrected UOJ -- the Patron Saint of children -- who are sexually abused by religious figures and those who harbor them. UOJ, after being 'outed' this spring by some self-appointed thugs who believe themselves to be defenders of Torah and Gedolim, slipped into the background - by choice, with a farewell post just before Rosh Hashanah. Sadly, it appeared as though UOJ would relegated to asterisk status in Jewish history, despite his valiant and timely attacks on a viciously apathetic status quo that preferred the spiritual murder of Jewish children over decisive action.
And all was quiet as rosh yeshivas, executive directors, and some yeshivishe egomaniacs in the sleepy slum of Waterbury, CT - rejoiced at the miraculous bullet dodging they had just witnessed. Evidently, the 'humiliation' weapon -- a thin reference to ruined shidduchim and tainted yichus -- had succeeded in preserving the perversity of ultra-orthodox apathy.
But something was afoot. Deep within the bowels of 42 Broadway, across some shiny overpriced conference table, the "Wizards of Was" realized that their destiny lay in murdering the mandate bearer: blogs. Ironically, if they would actually read the blogs instead of dismissing them as the tools of Satan, they would have been able to resurrect themselves and actively contribute to the betterment and solidification of American Orthodoxy. Instead, they took the short way out.
"Let's bash blogs," the Daas Torahniks declared. "We must create a new enemy, now that the Nazis are gone, Jewish bus drivers can wear yarmulkas to work without fear, we've given up on "at-risk" kids (poorly trained mentors are the answer....right?), and we've selected our guest of honor for this year's dinner..." The obvious answer was blogs.
The dispensers of Daas Torah, concerned with the impact blogs were having on their destructive hegemony and possible ramifications that would have on future fundraising seconded the motion. "Blogs are bad," they bellowed. "We must rid our homes and neighborhoods of blogs." Then they returned to worrying about why the frummest girls schools produce graduates who ignore tznius, despite 14 years of subversive inculcation, and how to close the Pandora's box of frummer-than-thou- kashrus which has inexplicably led to America's most religious neighborhood to eat traife meat for half a decade.
Blogs are bad! Blogs are bad! Yeah, let's stick it to that UnOrthodox fellow - UOJ!
Who is he anyway to blame us for child molestation? We TOLD people that separate seating weddings would solve everything. And as long as they don't listen in the Five Towns, we can't be held responsible for what happens to little boys in Brooklyn."
So the convention program, with a half dozen cutsie teaser ads were drafted and everyone was happy. "Blogs are bad!," said the Agudah big shots. "When we're done with them, we'll be able to ridicule molestation victims with impunity in the Jewish Week." The Daas Torah dispensers cried, "Blogs are bad!. And now, we can get back to banning intangible objects, like books and sheitels, which we can burn, and actual people whom we can besmirch, excommunicate and threaten. It was so much easier in the good old days."
But they didn't count on themselves making the same mistake as they have made time and time again; life moves fast. People forget. They are busy. If things go away, they are forgotten. It's the same reason why sexual molestation victims fade away. If people forget, their pain is buried, for they themselves to choke on, alone. But when old news gets dredged up. When books that appear objectionable are given attention, or banned, they take on a life of their own. When forgotten blogs are given main stage forums at major fundraising events....they return to life.
And so, UOJ, in all his glory has been vindicated and resurrected, unlike the Agudah, which is as pathetic and irrelevant as it has been for the past decade, UOJ has attracted a well-written, logical counterpart:
http://rabbimatisyahusalomon.blogspot.com
which features a several thousand word letter detailing the vast and grievous gaps in communal leadership and compassion by our so-called gedolim.
The progeny of UOJ also provides an lucid timeline of events that led up to UOJ and more importantly the serious lack of judgment, comprising, and leadership of the dispensers of Daas Torah. And, incidentally, offers a nod to the one straight shooter of our generation, Rabbi Avigdor Miller, who told certain askanim, to, so to speak -- damn the torpedoes and blow this mother sky high. (I paraphrased a bit).
So, to the chagrin of every frummie on the dark hatted side of the color spectrum, UOJ is back. Ironically, the very intention of the Agudah, to declare their moral victory over bloggers and reclaim their relevance has instead tossed the moral imperative to bloggers such as UOJ. Blogs are more relevant and necessary than ever before.
As for UOJ, he sounds more mature (excuse meeee!), and as always -- is dead on correct about the travesty that has been perpetrated over 40 years of inaction, intimidation, and malicious ineptitude.
Welcome back UOJ. Klal Yisroel needs you!
140 comments:
FREE SCREENING of the Film NARROW BRIDGE:
Confronting Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community
Seating is Limited - Reservations Required!
There are two opportunities coming up to catch the controversial, acclaimed film "Narrow Bridge", which has been making waves in the Orthodox Jewish community. it is the first film of its kind to break the silence on the issue of sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community. The film will be shown in Washington, DC on December 18, 2007, 6:00 PM at the Cleveland Park Library and in Baltimore on January 2, 2008 at Pikesville Library at 6:00 PM.
In the near future dates for screenings in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will be published
Following the film there will be a panel of experts in the field of sexual abuse to answer questions.
These events are sponsored by The Awareness Center, Inc., (the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault) www.theawarenesscenter.org.
For more information call: 443-857-5560 or send an e-mail to vickipolin @ aol.com.
Seats are going fast so make a reservation today!
December 18th - Washington, DC Panel will include:
(Cleveland Park Library, 6:00 PM)
• Vicki Polin, MA, NCC, LCPC - Founder and Executive Director, The Awareness Center, Inc.
• Nicole Jalazo, MSW, LCSW - Childhelp USA, Experienced working with survivors, including sexually reactive children.
• Murray Levin, JD - Photographer, Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse, and Advocate for Legislative Changes.
• Bob Russell - Legislative Coordinator, SNAP-MD (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)
• Rachel Steamer, JD - Attorney who specializes in representing survivors of child sexual abuse.
January 2nd - Baltimore Panel will include:
(Pikesville Library, 6:00 PM)
• Mesa Leventhal Baker, MD - Medical Director, Baltimore Child Abuse Center
• Murray Levin, JD - Photographer, Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse, and Advocate for legislative changes.
• Vicki Polin, MA, NCC, LCPC - Executive Director, The Awareness Center, Inc.
• Bob Russell - Legislative Coordinator, SNAP-MD (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)
• Joyanna Silberg, PhD - Coordinator of Trauma Disorder Services for Children at Sheppard Pratt Hospital.
Panel Members Bio:
Mesa Leventhal Baker, MD
Dr. Baker is on the advisory board of The Awareness Center. She has been board certified in pediatrics since 1991 and a Fellow of the AAPsince 1994. She has held Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatric posts with the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda and the John A. Burns School of Medicine in Honolulu. She is currently an Associate Professor in Pediatrics with the University of Maryland and a Special Consultant in Child Abuse to Sinai Hospital.
After working in private pediatrics and forensic pediatrics part-time for a year, Dr. Baker became the Medical Director of the Baltimore Child Abuse Center in 1998.For the past 6 years at the Baltimore Child Abuse Center, Dr. Baker has seen 600-700 children per year, to reach a total of well over 3000 forensic sexual abuse exams.
Nicole Jalazo, MSW, LCSW - Childhelp USA, Experienced working with survivors, including sexually reactive children. Nicole's full bio will be posted soon.
Murray Levin, JD
Murray Levin is a well known photographer in the Baltimore Jewish community. He is also a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. After 52 years, Mr. Levin finally had the courage to share his story with the Baltimore Jewish Times article, "Baltimore Confronts Sexual Abuse in Rabbinate". Since going public Murray has testified at the Senate committee hearing in Annapolis, Maryland and also at the hearing at the Executive Office of the Mayor - Council of the District of Columbia, for the Childhood Sexual Abuse Prevention Amendment Act 2007. Murray also attended the media event at Cardozo Law School in September, 2007.
Vicki Polin, MA, LCPC, NCC, ATR-BC
Vicki Polin is the founder and executive director of The Awareness Center. Vicki is a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC), Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) in the state of Illinois and is a Board Certified Art Therapist.
In the past Vicki has qualified as an expert witness and provided testimony in juvenile court on cases related to childhood sexual abuse and neglect. She has presented educational and experiential seminars to community groups, universities, and at professional conferences on both a local and national level. Vicki served as a board member of several different not-for-profit organizations, which included VOICES in Action, Inc and Alternative Behavior Treatment Centers: For Juvenile Sex Offenders and Sexually Reactive Youth). Vicki also served on the planning committee of Jewish Women International (JWI) 2nd International Conference on Domestic Abuse.
Bob Russell
Bob Russell is the Legislative Coordinator of SNAP-MD (Survivors Network of Abusive Priests). Bob first disclosed publicly that he was molested by a Catholic priest as a child in July, 2001. To his credit, Mr. Russell became the force behind his school publicly apologizing for allowing the victimization to occur and also disclosing their role in covering up the sex crimes. Bob also made sure that his school contacted every student that attended between the years of 1969-1973, in an effort to find other survivors.
Bob's activism continues to this very day by coordinating the legislative movement in Maryland to abolish the statute of limitations or granting "windows legislation" regarding the civil laws that govern child sexual abuse.
Joyanna Silberg, Ph.D.
Dr. Silberg is the Coordinator of Trauma Disorder Services for Children at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and past president for the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. In addition to her role as a clinician, Dr. Silberg is an Associate Editor for The Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Trauma Practice.
Dr. Silberg is the recipient of the Walter P. Klopfer Award, 1992, for outstanding research contribution and the Cornelia Wilbur Award, 1997, for clinical excellence. She is the co-editor of the book Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors (Haworth Press, 2002). She has presented at 100s of professional conferences and conducts training workshops around the world on the treatment of traumatized and dissociative children. She has authored approximately 20 professional articles and book chapters.
Rachel Steamer, JD, Esq.
Rachel Steamer is a lawyer who specializes in representing survivors of sexual abuse. Notably, as an associate at the law firm of Ross & Rubino, LLP, Rachel was involved in litigating more than 100 cases in coordinated proceedings against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and Diocese of San Diego. A graduate of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (Yeshiva University) in New York City, Rachel acted as chief research assistant to noted First Amendment scholar Professor Marci A. Hamilton, with whom she co-authored The Religious Origins of Disestablishment Principles, 81 N.D. L. Rev. 1755 (2006). Rachel is admitted to practice law in New York.
http://exposemolesters.blogspot.com/2007/12/no-one-knows-names-there-are-men.html#c2115374605422680086
exposemolesters said...
Yehudah Nussbaum is still working in the YOB building, 1200 Ocean Parkway, as the resource room rebbe. Meaning, weaker kids are sent to Nussbaum for private one on one tutoring.
And yes, Shlomo Mandel still refers boys over for tutoring to his good child molesting buddy, Yehudah Nussbaum. The tutoring takes place at Nussbaums house, and sometimes Nussbaum travels to them.
Nussbaum also checks Shatnez in his basement where many children are left alone with him.
Yehudah Nussbaum
1854 47th St
Brooklyn, NY 11204-1235
(718) 851-2622
YOB AND SHLOMO MANDEL ARE PATHOLOGICAL LIARS. IN THE SUMMER OF 2006 THEY PROMISED THAT YEHUDAH NUSSBAUM WILL NO LONGER BE WORKING AT THE YOB PREMISES, NOR WILL HE BE PERMITTED TO WORK WITH CHILDREN IN ANY FASHION. THEY LIED THINKING WE WOULDN'T FIND OUT. THEY PROMISED A LOT OF OTHER THINGS TOO, ONLY TO RENEGE ON THEIR WORDS LATER FOR FEAR THEY WILL INCRIMINATE THEMSELVES. "Our lawyers won't let us admit to anything."
Shlomo Mandel; When some teacher in your girls school was abusing kids and locking them up in closets; parents were outraged. That teacher was eventually fired because you and your father couldn't take the negative publicity at the time. You have a history of violence yourself. You're a spineless, gutless, weasel. You never fooled me with your fake cries and wicked behavior.
YOB is making their 100th Anniversary Dinner on Sunday, March 9th, 2008.
Call, Fax, or write these hoodlums, these loathsome, deplorable mental midgets, and express your outrage at their sexual abuse cover-up and denials:
Administrative Office and Girls Division: 1470 Ocean Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Tel: 718 376-3775
Fax: 718 376-4280
Boys Division: 1200 Ocean Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Tel: 718 252-9500
Fax: 718 252-1883
UOJ is king and will always be king in my book. His critics can never take away the fact that UOJ saves lives.
There are many other worthy bloggers, commentators, yidden, and people working behind the scenes - who are also very deserving of a round of applause and a standing ovation for their commitment and dedication to saving lives. May the Ribono Shel Olam ravish upon them all that is good!
December 10, 2007
http://exposemolesters.blogspot.com/2007/12/no-one-knows-names-there-are-men.html#c2855989212989852908
Anonymous said...
My family used to live in Har Nof. I recall when people were frozen with fear that their children will become the next victim. I also recall the deadly silence, or a wave of the hand, when people tried to talk about it. The whole thing was surreal. I don't know if there were any new developments, but I thought this was some useful information to share.
December 10, 2007
Op-Ed Jewish Press:
Learning Our Lesson
As a lawyer representing many alleged victims of Avrohom Mondrowitz, and a sociologist who has raised awareness about this case for 20 years, we commend you for your editorial on this indicted child abuser’s recent arrest in Israel after evading justice for over two decades (“Justice Delayed – and Possibly Denied,” Nov. 23). As you say, the case proves the need for a “more honest approach to the very real problem of pedophilia and abuse in the Orthodox community,” including “unhesitating resort to secular law-enforcement authorities.”
You are also correct in deploring the fact that Mondrowitz “was indicted in 1984 only in connection with the charges made by the parents of non-Jewish children.”
But to blame the Jewish victims’ parents for their “apparent disinclination to come forward” is not really fair. Those parents did not act of their own accord. Our extensive information indicates that there were rabbis who were aware of at least dozens of Orthodox Jewish Mondrowitz victims when the official charges were being assembled. Rather than helping the victims’ families to seek justice against the man whose alleged crimes had so devastated a community, these rabbis either took no action or actively discouraged the families from taking part in the law enforcement process against Mondrowitz. When he fled to Israel, they again counseled silence, leaving the victims and their advocates to pursue the case without any support from their spiritual leaders.
If we are to learn from the Mondrowitz case, we must learn a different rabbinic approach to child sexual abuse. Otherwise, we will share the responsibility for the victimization of children whose need for justice is thwarted by the rabbis they trust.
Michael Lesher, Esq.
Amy Neustein, Ph.D.
(Via E-Mail)
First at the Conservative boarding high school in North Carolina, so-called Rabbi David Stein had sex with a boy there and was arrested.
Now Haaretz reported Monday on another scandal there:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/932728.html
Maurice "Chico" Sabbah - a very wealthy Jew, the legitimacy of whose businesses has often been questioned - has invested more than $100 million in the boarding school. A resident of Greensboro, Sabbah passed away several months ago at the age of 77. He never agreed to give interviews, on the grounds that "I really don't consider myself newsworthy." A suit that was filed against the academy, on the grounds that it received dubious funding, was settled in 2005 in a settlement whose details have not been disclosed. In any case, Sabbah's monumental contribution is evident at every turn - in the extravagant building designed by Aaron Green, a protege of architect Frank Lloyd Wright; the state-of-the-art laboratories; "green" heating system; the laptop per child; oval-shaped tables designed for the 12-student classrooms, and display screens that answer to the touch of a finger. Every electronic gadget that money can buy exists in this institution. You can plug your iPod into the wall of the exercise rooms. It is impossible not to be impressed by the investment in this place.
The tuition is high. Four years cost some $100,000 per student. In any case, nearly 70 percent of the students do not pay full tuition.
But there was one other individual who was a key player. He too was Charedi. His name was Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. He headed a major Yeshiva in New York and founded Torah Umesorah. That institution has built and spread the day school movement all over this country. I truly believe that these two individuals are the most responsible for creating the Torah world of today and its products are mostly Charedi. It will be from those ranks that Judaism will be perpetuated.
But as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, it isn't all a bed of roses. As vital as the leadership of Charedi leaders like Rav Aharon Kotler and Reb Shraga Feival were to the existence of the Torah world as we know it today, it has evolved into something I don't believe its founders ever intended with a resultant great many problems.
UOJ, if you have solid information that he shouldn't be around children, you should pressure the Williamsburg lab which is Nussbaum's parent organization.
I'm not sure which is the main Williamsburg lab, there are two listed:
Williamsburg
Fishel Zeigerman
(718) 388-4221
Williamsburg
Menachem Herzog (Office)
(718) 782-6961
These 3 labs in Flatbush & Lakewood have a lot of clout in Shaatnez and could tell people to stay away from him:
Lakewood
Yoel Schocket
(732) 905-2628
Lakewood
Yossef Sayagh
(732) 364-7056
Flatbush
Aharon Dreebin
(718) 382-5689
It is so sad and yet so predictable that the Jewish Observer allows drivel like this in its pages. They shiver and are outraged by scorn heaped on Gedolei Yisroel when they are guilty of it themselves. Can anyone ever forget the shameful bio they did on Rav Soloveitchik? Can anyone underestimate the hurt that was generated to his family and thousands of his Talmidim? Thats OK?! Whats the matter with these people?!
It was reported on blogs last year that Yehuda Nussbaum is in charge of locking up at a shul on his block. Khal Marom or something like that.
Since we obviously don't want to support the Agudah by buying the Observer, can someone with a complimentary copy provide the text?
Is Yehuda Nussbaum related to Heshy Nussbaum?
One might think that he is only speaking about certain blogs who are unquestioningly being Mevazeh (disparaging) Gedolim and Talmidei Chachamim. I might have agreed with him then. I have in fact been very critical of such tactics even in cases where there were good results. One can be critical and effective without being disparaging.
It might be hard to neutralize Nussbaum. He is the only one providing shaatnez checking at late hours. He goes past midnight in the summer months when he is at Lakewood Minyan instead of at home.
Of course Nussbaum works late hours. Somebody has to check prison jumpsuits for shaatnes.
I get the impression that Yehuda Nussbaum is hard up for money. Even before he lost his regular job at YOB, he started renting the other room in his basement to some black people. I was shocked when I saw who is living there.
Honesty demands recognition that UOJ was successful beyond anyone's imagination - because of the unbearable scorn heaped on the rabbis, both molestors and enablers. And besides all the attention on this issue turned out to be true including the coverups for decades. Who cares if they don't like it. Lives for these corrupt rabbis will never be the same. I for one can't get enough of what UOJ says; it's brutal honesty at it's most caustic, and forever changed the Jewish rabbinical landscape.
Yudel Shain indicated last year that he won't warn the public to stay away from Nussbaum until it reaches the level of kala delo pasik a la Kolko.
How many alleged victims are out there besides the author of the ExposeMolesters blog?
It looks like the stain of tolerating child sex abuse in its midst has penetrated deeper into the consciousness of the Aguda leadership - whoever that is - than anybody ever thought. They are now reflexively lashing out, without examining the roots of the blog phenomenon.
The roots are these: In September 2005, a man named David wrote his true story of child sex abuse on the UOJ blog. He told the world he was molested by Kolko at Torah Temimah in the 1980s, he complained about it, and nobody did a thing. Over the next few months, word got around about the post, lawyers started getting involved, UOJ made media contacts, and in May 2006, New York published its expose about Kolko and Torah Temimah. Other sex predators were identified on the UOJ blog and elsewhere, the coverups were written about for all the world to see, and there are now multiple indictments, civil suits, and even extraditions from Israel. All of this is on Aguda's watch. Even worse, they've been talking about the child sex abuse problem for years at various conferences and forums, but doing almost nothing of a practical nature to stop it.
The existence of Aguda's blog problem is owed to the fact that Aguda failed in its job to either protect the children attending its yeshivas, and when abuse has occurred, failed to secure some small measure of justice for the victims.
The blogs are a democratic phenomenon, and Torah does have democratic elements. Corrupt and inefficient rabbis and community leaders need to be fired from their jobs. A great roar of Jewish democracy, and even kedusha can be heard on the blogs. Our people can stomach a lot, but child sex abuse? No.
So what does Aguda do? They give us an article two months ago in the which the author gives us the sage advice that parents should watch their children. Duh. Two months later, still another Aguda issur is issued, for blogs.
No systematic change. No promise of cooperation with secular, legal authorities. No cheshbon hanefesh for the mistakes of the past. All we get is classic Aguda.
The additional truth is that the Aguda constituency is changing. They look Aguda, they think MO. They've gone to college, they read newsppaers, they own computers, and they've lost respect for rabbinic leadership. This is a sea change, and Aguda can print a dozen more reactionary anti-blog articles, and it underground earthquake will not reverse itself.
This is good news for the MOs and the TIDE people. Our challenge is to pick up where Aguda has left off, and start bringing efficiency and honest to the yeshiva and day school world.
A must read to all people that are interested in the truth!
http://rabbimatisyahusalomon.blogspot.com
Shmarya..at his best:
"Certainly, there is no moral or halakhic question here. Jewish law mandates that you stop that murderer. A child abuser is not much different from a murderer. He destroys the lives of children, robs them of joy and happiness, and haunts them for their entire lives.
Yet these parents did just that. They allowed Mondrowitz and Kolko and others to rape their way through Brooklyn and justified this by the idea that they needed to protect their other children, not from the child rapists, mind you, but from less choice shidducim.
Yes, leading haredi rabbis made terrible decisions. They broke the law, they protected child rapists in order to save themselves and their institutions from legal jeopardy. They sold their souls to the devil, so to speak, and condemned other people's children to a lifetime of unimaginable suffering.
These rabbis need to be outed, publicly shamed, sued civilly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law".
Yudel Shain indicated last year that he won't warn the public to stay away from Nussbaum until it reaches the level of kala delo pasik a la Kolko.
--------------
R' Yudel, an adam choshuv, is making a grievous error. If anyone knows his e-mail address, please advise.
This attitude has got us here.
kashrusy@aol.com
Interesting question if Heshy & Yehuda are related.
I dunno but even if not there is still a Toronto connection. I believe that Yehuda Nussbaum is an eidim by R' Gedalya Felder ztl, one of the true and unknown gedolim of the last dor.
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2007/12/if-at-first-you.html#comment-93053578
Shmarya claims that Matis Weinberg lives 3 blocks away from Aish Jerusalem and that Aish students frequent his home.
I think UOJ should look into this. With all the mud that Shmarya is slinging at Noach Weinberg this week, this is the worst detail he brought up.
Just like I would NOT post any pornographic material on my site - I will NOT dignify "The Jewish Observer" article by tainting my site with the Agudah's pornography!
Well, UOJ does make an exception when it comes to pictures of porn actors.
Every shmuck from the Agudah is on his side bar.
New Survey From The OU!
We are conducting a survey, and your response would be appreciated. We want to know what products you would like to see become kosher. For your time, you will be entered to win a valuable gift certificate.
Click here for details:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=51ArQ1StQOwB0ugFfAkRMg_3d_3d
Thanks for your participation!
Dear Orthodox Union,
We would like to see restaurants that are truly kosher. Not shmucky places with anti-Semitic French bastards playing around with treif that you then try to cover up.
Here is one letter to the editor the JO won't publish:
^ ^ ^
Dear Editor,
It is important to machshiv Daas Torah, and drink with thirst the holy insights of our great Torah luminaries. However, you apparently don’t understand people. Even the Heimishe Oilam wants to see that the statements of Daas Torah, were made with a full disclosure of all facets of the issues analyzed.
At the 2006 Torah Umesorah convention, immediately following the revelations about the abuse issue was published in NYTimes magazine, one of the speakers, a big Talmid Chacham admonished Rebbeim to not stoop to the level of their students by playing ball with them; he felt it was a bizayon for those who teach Torah is Pasht Nisht. Trips are bittul Torah, maybe once a year, but just to be yoitze…..Yet Agudah’s Project YES who actually deals with the children of Klal Yisroel railed against this approach. The reason was that they are working with children on a PRACTICAL level, while Daas Torah was yelling lofty goals on a theoretical level.
When the Scottenstein Shas was published, R’ Elya Svei talked to Rav Shach, who announced it is Assur to have it in ones house. R’ Mordechai Gifter called Rav Shach and explained the level of American Jewry back in the late 1980’s, and told him of Artscroll’s contribution to Judaica….. Rav Schach after learning this information said that R’Gifter understands the Jews in America and the Schottenstein Shas could be used. Again on a theoretical level a ban was the correct thing, but on a PRACTICAL level Daas Torah adjusted the expectations accordingly.
When Kashrus organizations simply rely on the ne’emanus of the frum looking owner, and don’t check up on the product based on this lomdus. The kashrus organizations and their Daas Torah base their activities on a theoretical level of ne’emanus…. However, on a PRACTICAL level everyone alive in September 2006 was able to see the faulty judgments made. What caused the tide to turn, and the blinders to be removed? Not Yiras Shomayim by the kosher organizations. It was the blogs, where people banded together to declare Ad Kan.
When terrible atrocities were discovered taking place to our children, Daas Torah admittedly swept the problem under the rug. The consequences of this idea are already being seen. The long-term impact of this will be felt for many years down the road. On a theoretical level, Daas Torah might have been correct to sweep it away for the short-term… But on a PRACTICAL level, the issue must be dealt with head-on, aggressively and honestly. The rug would have remained covered until the blogs brought the secret that thousands of Heimishe Neshomas kept inside, to the front burner.
The blog owners are simply stating the PRACTICAL side of the equation, in an effort to allow that side to be heard too. As Rav Sholom Kamenetzky says so eloquently, when a question is being asked to Daas Torah, and one side is favored over the other because the other side of the equation was not given due consideration it is like a Din Torah. No one likes to accept a psak of any Din Torah surely not one they weren’t given the proper consideration..
All bloggers ask is for their side to be heard, and their insights factored into the equation too. By Agudah putting up a person with an alias bashing the close to 70% of the Yeshivishe world for being involved in blogging, and then talk about Daas Torah was an unwise thing to do. By complaining about victims freedom of expression that interferes with Daas Torah’s ability to sweep things away, makes as much sense as suing Johnson & Johnson for having a BandAid fall off. Both were sure to happen.
Sincerely,
We would like to see chalavi products that are truly kosher. NOT with some half baked excuse from Belsky that milk from treif cows is kosher because no one knows how to calculate shishim.
WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate by one-quarter of a percentage point Tuesday, trying to keep the country out of recession.
The reduction in the federal funds rate to 4.25 percent marked the third rate cut in the past three months. Fed officials signaled that further cuts were possible if a severe downturn in housing and a crisis in mortgage lending get worse.
Commercial banks were expected to quickly match the latest reduction by trimming their prime lending rate, which would reduce this benchmark rate for millions of consumer and business loans to 7.25 percent.
The Fed started cutting rates in September with a bolder-than-expected half-point move and then reduced the funds rate by a quarter-point at its Oct. 31 meeting. The central bank was trying to make sure that a severe slump in housing, spreading mortgage defaults and financial market turbulence which hit with force in August did not derail the economy.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues began their final meeting of 2007 behind closed doors Tuesday morning. Wall Street investors traded cautiously as they awaited the announcement.
In its October announcement, the Fed indicated that its two rate cuts might well be all that would be needed to make sure the country was not pushed into a recession.
But that view has undergone a dramatic about-face in the six weeks since that time, reflecting worsening conditions in financial markets and continued sharp declines in housing as lenders tighten standards in response to rising mortgage defaults.
Many analysts believe the current quarter and the early part of next year will represent the period of maximum danger for a possible recession.
"I think a full blown recession can be avoided but just barely," said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors. He predicted that the Fed will follow up its expected December rate cut with three more reductions at its first three meetings of 2008.
For all of 2008, a forecasting panel of the Securities Industry and Financial Market Markets Association said Monday it believed overall economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, would come in at an anemic 2.1 percent as housing construction and sales continue to fall for most of the year. That would be the weakest GDP growth in six years.
"UOJ" - "The Un-Orthodox Jew" said...
I believe the Fed will lower interest rates (fed funds - overnight lending rate which affects consumers directly) by 25 basis points (not 50)on Tuesday. This is like putting a band-aid on Avi Shafran's brain!
The inflation factor will begin to kick in to high gear.
6:28 AM, December 09, 2007
Holiday shopping hits the skids
Mall traffic drops dramatically in the final run-up to Christmas, and chain stores see only modest sales increase.
By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com senior writer
December 11 2007: 1:30 PM EST
Unless retailers get a late-season surge, the 2007 holiday shopping season may disappoint.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- After getting off to a fast start last month, holiday sales at some of the nation's largest retailers have slowed to an excruciatingly slow pace and mall traffic has dropped dramatically.
The results, coming two weeks before Christmas, jeopardize an already weak holiday sales period.
Shmarya says that if no one believes Matis Weinberg is currently involved with his family's operation at Aish HaTorah Jerusalem, we can confirm it with UOJ.
So what does the Molester-Neutralizer-in-Chief say?
The OU is already being very generous before taking the survey. Look at all the neveilos that they turn a blind eye and let Rubashkin switch to kosher labels.
Willie Sutton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(June 30, 1901 - November 2, 1980) was a prolific U.S. bank robber. For his talent at executing robberies in disguises, he gained two nicknames, "Willie the Actor" and "Slick Willie."
Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
.............
Why does Willie rob banks?
"That's where the money is...and I go there often."
Why does Matis Weinberg hang around yeshivas?
That's where the kids are!
UOJ threatened Shlomo Mandel on Jan. 31st 2007 that he is "playing with fire"
I thought no one gets chances like that to shape up after Margo?
...And he goes there often...as they all do!
UOJ threatened Shlomo Mandel on Jan. 31st 2007 that he is "playing with fire"
I thought no one gets chances like that to shape up after Margo?
---------
In the zechus of his hailege tata zt"l!
shloma mandel (AKA The Prick), threw me the fungoo out of his craphole of a yeshiva when i was in 8th grade.
Why?
cuz i chewed G-U-M.
That's right. Chewing gum.
I was tossed for chewing gum, but in the next classroom - nussbaum was feeling up some innocent kids shmeckel.
i mean, how sick is that?
what skanky dumbfuc*s!
and this is the exact reason why I am no longer really frum.
peace
Fressers - go veggie - It could save your life! At least don't fress meats!
-------------
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who eat a lot of red meat and processed meats have a higher risk of several types of cancer, including lung cancer and colorectal cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The work is the first big study to show a link between meat and lung cancer. It also shows that people who eat a lot of meat have a higher risk of liver and esophageal cancer and that men raise their risk of pancreatic cancer by eating red meat.
"A decrease in the consumption of red and processed meat could reduce the incidence of cancer at multiple sites," Dr. Amanda Cross and colleagues at the U.S. National Cancer Institute wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.
The researchers studied 500,000 people aged 50 to 71 who took part in a diet and health study done in conjunction with the AARP, formerly the American Association for Retired Persons.
After eight years, 53,396 cases of cancer were diagnosed.
"Statistically significant elevated risks (ranging from 20 percent to 60 percent) were evident for esophageal, colorectal, liver, and lung cancer, comparing individuals in the highest with those in the lowest quintile of red meat intake," the researchers wrote.
The people in the top 20 percent of eating processed meat had a 20 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer -- mostly rectal cancer -- and a 16 percent higher risk for lung cancer.
"Furthermore, red meat intake was associated with an elevated risk for cancers of the esophagus and liver," the researchers wrote.
These differences held even when smoking was accounted for.
"Red meat intake was not associated with gastric or bladder cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, or melanoma," added the researchers, whose study is freely available on the Internet at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document& doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040325.
Red meat was defined as all types of beef, pork and lamb. Processed meat included bacon, red meat sausage, poultry sausage, luncheon meats, cold cuts, ham and most types of hot dogs including turkey dogs.
Meats can cause cancer by several routes, the researchers noted. "For example, they are both sources of saturated fat and iron, which have independently been associated with carcinogenesis," the researchers wrote.
Meat is also a source of several chemicals known to cause DNA mutations, including N-nitroso compounds (NOCs), heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
Jeanine Genkinger of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Anita Koushik of the University of Montreal said the findings fit in with other research.
"Meat consumption in relation to cancer risk has been reported in over a hundred epidemiological studies from many countries with diverse diets," they wrote in a commentary.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Eric Beech)
and this is the exact reason why I am no longer really frum.
peace
--------------
Your post causes me great pain.
Yehuda nussbaum is an honorable man
Presumption of Guilt? said...
Yudel Shain indicated last year that he won't warn the public to stay away from Nussbaum until it reaches the level of kala delo pasik a la Kolko.
How many alleged victims are out there besides the author of the ExposeMolesters blog?
12:37 AM, December 11, 2007
---
Yudel Shain is flat out WRONG on this one. To start asking how many victims there were is indicative of the very same mentality that has allowed child molesters to thrive and flourish at what they do. Let me ask a question - Theoretically speaking - Is one victim not enough? That one innocent child that had his innocence stolen away from him by some pedophile, is that not enough? How many victims do you want that would satisfy you? 2, 3, 7, 10, 25? This attitude is just disgusting and wrong.
Now I know for a fact 100% that there were much more than one victim. I personally know many of them. They don't go around with signs stating they were victimized by Nussbaum. They don't go around telling everybody that they are survivors of sexual abuse. One of them who I'm especially close to - did try to inform the Rabbi's - Not once, not twice, but several times. You know what they did? NOTHING! ZERO! KLUM!
The facts as you know them are not all out on the table yet. There is much details which cannot be revealed to the public at this time in order to protect the John Doe's identities.
I also personally know Lipa Brenner's victim. Should we say this victim doesn't count; because it's only one? Rabbi Lipa Brenner is now a convicted sex offender.
One can write a book of horrors of everything that happened at YOB. I experienced the misery firsthand. The person who was kicked out for chewing gum - I'm so sorry for what you went through. I got jerked around for it too. I got punished for going to get Pizza. Yankel Mandel once stormed into the 8th grade (Rabbi Peachy's) class) during English and whacked the kid sitting in the back so hard across the face. Why? because he turned off the lights in the room. Yankel Mandel is the same asshole that pulled boys pants down in front of everybody. I didn't have Shlomea Mandel thank goodness, but I did witness him beat the living daylights out of the boys for the smallest infractions. From not collecting enough money for the new and now current building to watching television or going to the movies. Or anything he wanted to harass you for.
Yehuda Nussbaum was my rebbe in 5th grade. He would assault me and my classmates with his fists and hands. He would delight in making us suffer. He would like take the ruler and tease you with small whacks leading up to crazy painful ones.
He made me very uncomfortable as he would always try to grab me or another student and then rub his beard and body all over me. It was really weird. I was only 10 or 11 at the time; but I do remember his hands running all over my body feeling me up in places he shouldn't have. He even accused me of defecating in my pants and wanted to check if I did. I said I didn't make anything in my pants and didn't let him.
His favorite time to feel some kid up would be during chummash reading. He would caress and feel his way around. Again, I never thought much about it, other then this Rabbi is really making me feel very uncomfortable.
Nussbaum had this really crazy thing about using every centimeter of the sandpaper towels for blowing your nose. He showed us his sandpaper which was wet on ever angle of both sides. He also would get angry if you knew the first name of a Rebbe and said it out loud. God I can go on and on. I would never send my child to yob. I would never ever recommend it to anyone else.
How do I ask UOJ a question on this blog, I am curious about a certain scandal occuring between the Rabbinical Council of California and Kehilla Kashrus, why has he not selected to explore this?
The YOB girls school is the least fun in town. They don't go on trips and little pranks get girls suspended for 2 weeks or expelled.
Fire away here...or e-mail:
a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com
Very funny with Nussbaum and the shnott on the sandpaper paper towels.
Remember until the 1980s when places still used the cloth dispensers that got laundered instead of paper? One cheap jerk who owned a pizza shop saw my brother rotate the towel to a new, clean section to dry his hands. The cheapskate wanted him to wipe his hands on the dirty part to save himself a few cents, so he told my brother not to use the clean part. My father yelled at the karge creep that it's dirty & black and to shut his mouth.
I think that Unforgiven and Yudel Shain are both right.
Yudel Shain does not know the stories first hand. He just heard that one blog called ExposeMolesters was making a bilbul against Nussbaum. For Yudel Shain, that is not enough information to start runnning tire tracks over Nussbaum in public.
I'm sure that if Yudel was given credible information he would change his mind.
http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/local_news/yisroel_shapiro_arrested/
“Mr. Shapiro has been arrested and charged,” said Tammy Griffin-Lawman of the City’s State’s Attorney’s office.
Mr. Shapiro, the son of the late Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro, himself the center of a Jewish Times investigation of alleged sexual molestation, is a resident of Olympia Avenue in Baltimore City.
An original complaint was filed with the City State’s Attorney’s office alleging Mr. Shapiro, currently an employee of a local kosher butcher shop, of past molestations. In the Baltimore City Police Department complaint, one of the alleged victims, stated: “Yisroel Shapiro would shuckle or rock back and forth holding me against himself and leaning (chanting Torah) out loud while he was feeling me up and touching me.”
At another point, the victim reported, “I could feel his erection under me. I would try to get off of his lap, but he’d hold me very tightly. I must have been doing something wrong. I thought it was my fault. It was very confusing for me as a child. I just wanted to learn.”
“I’m ecstatic,” said one of his victims, who asked to remain anonymous at this time. “Last night ( Tuesday) I had to pick out his photo in a photo line up. They wrote up the warrant and went and picked him up.”
Mr. Shapiro will face a bail review, according to Ms. Griffin-Lawman, and the case will then make its way through district or circuit court.
Mr. Shapiro had hinted to one of his victims that he had been abused as a “young child” himself, and that he had received therapy.
In terms of his alleged crimes, Mr. Shapiro said to the victim, “I can tell you I was not fully aware that I was doing something wrong.”
Fraudster Leib Tropper spotted in Portland, Maine!
----------------------
Study finds Maine has highest intermarriage rate in U.S.
By Anthony Weiss, The Forward
Tags: intermarriage, Maine, Jewish
In Portland, Maine, even the editor of the local Jewish newspaper was born to intermarried parents, and when she got around to marrying, it was not to a Jew.
Given her own experience, Elizabeth Margolis-Pineo, editor of The Voice, was not surprised by a new demographic study that found Portland and its environs to have the highest intermarriage rate in the country.
According to the study, which was funded in part by an intermarried couple, 61% of couples in married Jewish households are interfaith. This is the highest rate of any North American Jewish community measured in the past 15 years.
Advertisement
"There are kids in the [Jewish] preschool named 'Piscapo' and 'Isajar,'" Margolis-Pineo said. "Unless you're an idiot, you realize that there's a lot of intermarriage."
it SEEMS that UOJ is letting Mandel off the hook. WIth the TT case, he sent the letters out which shook up the entire community yet with YOB he talks and talks but nothing. IS there real evidence?
By the way, UOJ says that he is giving Mandel extra time and chances because of his father who was a Tzadik.
1. SO what? IF Shlomo Mandel is guilty and still sends kids to Nussbaum, why not blow him out of the water?
2. According to Expose Molesters blog, Shlomo's father knew about this as well - I do not know if this has been verified - perhaps the author of Expose Molesters would care to verify this.
There is plenty of evidence, otherwise it would not be here. Every case is different, although they appear the same.
I struggle daily with my role as judge, jury and executioner!
Let me start by saying that I too was given the beating of my life for chewing gum by shlomo mandel.
I was also given a beating by yankel mandel for going around the corner during recess to buy pizza on Avenue M.
I was also given a beating my the old rabbi mandel's brother. He was the guy that claimed he was fixing everything in that crap-hole of a school. Never forget the smell of his breath as he clobbered me. reeked like bad onions and garlic.
His reason for hitting me was because i touched a screwdriver in his tool box!!
I mean.....big deal!!
Nussbaum is in the next room touching everyone's screwdrivers in their tool boxes!
Whats the big deal?
I was also beaten up by rabbi raider (english principal). That was for laughing during class.
I also was verbally abused by Rabbi peachy in 8th grade, rabbi kirschenbaum in 7th and god knows what else.
In a nut-shell, i left YOB after 8th grade, and went straight to pot, which led to cocaine, and pain killers.
I was living with a non-jewish girlfriend for 3 years.
I have since gone through rehab, went to baal teshuva yeshiva in israel, and working.
Thanks to YOB - i am scarred for life, and can still not read or do simple math problems.
If i ever would see shlomo mandel, i would knock him fucking (yes that's what I wrote f-u-c-k-i-n-g) teeth out.
I wasted years of my life doing all types of drugs because of this shit.
Please don't tell me that "I was a bad boy" etc etc etc.
I remember clearly the day school was over after 8th grade for the year. I remember saying "never again". I will never go back to a yeshiva again.
screw this frum stuff.
This is what I wqs placed here on this world for? to get the shit beat out of me from every rebbe and teacher?
I swear to god, if any rebbe in the world is reading this. I am making it my business and goal in life to hunt down any rebe who lays a fucking finger on a precious kid again - i will drag your ass into the street and beat you bloody.
i will have your asses arrested, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
shame on these jerk-off's
UOJ, hope to see you take mandel down.
the sooner, the beter.
Class of '90 / A.A.
**********BREAKING NEWS**********
SHLOMO MANDEL IS PLANNING TO OPEN A YOB SCHOOL IN LAKEWOOD NEXT YEAR!!
THIS IS CREDIBLE, FACTUAL INFORMATION!!!
WE MUST STOP THIS!!
.....I struggle daily with my role as judge, jury and executioner!
A role I never wanted, don't want, and would immediately turn it over to an honest rav or rosh yeshiva. (almost an oxymoron)
Please...step up and take this role away from me...please!
Can we get an update on mondrowitzs hearing today.
LVF,
I had someone in court that I'm waiting to hear back from.
By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
Published: December 12, 2007
AS the credit crisis sweeps wildly through Wall Street, major investment banks face a grim truth about their already-slumping profits: the worst is yet to come.
UOJ, quick question.
If the Jewish Observer is porn (which by the way, I totally agree); then how do you allow pictures of porn stars such as matt soloman, and shlomo mandel to grace your homepage?
EDITED!
Please respond.
What's the budding scandal between the RCC and Scheinerman's Kehilla Kashrus?
Yeshiva Teacher Accused of Molesting Students. Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2000
"Police three weeks ago launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse by a teacher at Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav yeshiva 14 years ago ... In mid-December, police were alerted to accusations by three men - now in their late 20s - who studied at the yeshiva in their teenage years and said they were sexually molested by the man. Police then began investigations into other men who reportedly were also sexually abused, but did not come forward ... The head of the yeshiva, former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Avraham Shapira, was alerted to the complaints several months ago in an anonymous letter and soon after in an anonymous phone call ... Senior National Religious Party figures, meanwhile, reacted to reports that Shapira attempted to silence those who made the allegations of sexual misconduct ... This is not the first time that Shapira has been suspected of trying to prevent a police inquiry into the improprieties of yeshiva teachers. Last year, he received a warning letter from Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein after he was said to have tried to cover up the illegal sexual behavior of Ze'ev Kopolevitch, formerly head of Jerusalem's Netiv Meir Yeshiva, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison."
Arrest of Ex-Employee Sparks Concern. compcocity.com [originally from Edmonton Jewish Life], [Undated, 1990s]
"A former employee of Calgary Jewish Community Council has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual assault and sexual interference with a child under 14 years of age. David Webber, 35, was arrested on February 22. On that date, police executed a search warrant on his apartment. In the search, they seized a large number of Polaroid photographs of nude boys aged 10 to 14 and written materials. Several children have already been interviewed and are alleged to be victims of sexual assault ... Before moving to Calgary, Webber was youth director of the Beth Israel Synagogue in Edmonton. In 1990, he was charged with sexual assault in Edmonton, but the charges were subsequently dismissed."
Synagogue Sexton Guilty of Pedophilia. Haaretz [Israel], June 22, 2001
"A garbage truck driver with a part-time job as a synagogue sexton in a town in the center of the country was convicted yesterday by a Jerusalem District Court for sexually assaulting children who went to synagogue to pray with him ... At least three children were involved, with one, the 13-year-old, being the son of another synagogue official. That boy was so disturbed by the sexual abuse that he took up drugs, and the sexton then exploited that knowledge to blackmail the youth into more sexual intercourse. The other two children were subject to his fondling, often on the back porch of the synagogue during prayers, in exchange for sweets."
Rabbi Jailed. Instructor at Cheder Menachem Grade School Accused of Molesting Boys, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 14, 2001
"A rabbi accused of molesting three boys at a Chabad elementary school was arrested Dec. 3 and remained at the L.A. Men's Central Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail as The Journal went to press. Rabbi Mordechai Yomtov's arrest on 10 felony counts of committing lewd acts with children came following an investigation by the LAPD after three boys, ages 8 to 10, reported last month that Yomtov was keeping each of them alone in the classroom and molesting them while the other children were at recess. Yomtov, 36, an Australian-born rabbi with a wife and four children, pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court is set for Dec. 17. Yomtov has taught 8- to 10-year-olds for six years at Cheder Menachem, a school with 220 boys, kindergarten through eighth grade, on Melrose Avenue in the Beverly Boulevard-La Brea Avenue neighborhood. The school issued a written statement following the arrest: 'Due to the sensitivity of the issues involved and to protect the privacy of our students, parents, teachers and staff, the school will be making no public comment.' The statement went on, 'We request that our privacy be respected. The school is cooperating fully with all applicable authorities.'"
Scout 'Perv' Might Go Free, New York Post, December 19, 2001
"The accused pedophile scoutmaster of the Upper East Side's Boy Scout Troop 666 will seek a no-jail deal today - and the young sodomy victim's anguished family is furious. 'He is a wolf of the worst kind under that sheep's clothing,' the victim's mother said of the since-fired scoutmaster - married Upper East Sider Jerrold Schwartz, 42. 'Anything less than the maximum sentence would be unfair to my son,' the mother - whose name is being kept confidential - said in a Dec. 13 letter to the judge, who will consider a possible plea deal today in Manhattan Supreme Court. Prosecutors say a total of five credible victims have accused Schwartz - who also ran a Colorado-based youth travel company - of turning Troop 666 into Boy Scout hell through a pattern of winning kids' trust, tempting them with overnight ski and camping trips - and then molesting them. 'I say 10 minutes in a room with me - that's a fair sentence,' one of these alleged victims, a now 30-year-old Queens man, angrily responded when informed of the negotiations yesterday. But Schwartz is only charged with sodomizing one boy - a total of 36 times - because the statute of limitations has run out on the other cases. That boy is now 20 years old. He's in in-house rehab for cocaine addiction and alcoholism, his parents wrote the judge. He bathes compulsively 'because he feels so dirty,' they said. He also has nightly nightmares, and self-mutilates."
Synagogue Cantor Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charges, Newsday, February 20, 2002
"The longtime cantor at one of the nation's largest and most prominent Reform synagogues was arrested in New York on Wednesday on charges that he sexually abused a nephew, a prosecutor said. Howard Nevison, 61, of Congregation Emanu-El, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, was arrested at his apartment, said Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. Police in Lower Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, charged Nevison with sexually assaulting the boy on three occasions between 1993 and 1997 while the boy was 3 to 7 years old. 'Like anyone else, we in law enforcement tend to believe that religious figures are beyond reproach. You want to make very sure before you go accusing one,' Castor said. Police have known about the allegations since about 1998 but did not pursue charges until the victim, who was undergoing therapy, was ready to confront the uncle, Castor said. 'He had terrorized the child to the point that, in the judgment of his parents, his therapists and our investigators, he was too traumatized to go forward,' Castor said."
In 2 Communities, Concern Over the Arrest of a Cantor, New York Times, February 22, 2002
"The proper, prosperous residents of the Upper East Side of Manhattan and of the Main Line Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion Township stood united yesterday in sheer disbelief over the same sordid tale - a synagogue cantor accused of molesting his prepubescent nephew. The lawyers, investment bankers, politicians and other prominent members of Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan struggled to square their image of the cantor, Howard Nevison, the golden-voiced tenor who led them in prayer for 23 years, with the Lower Merion police's description of him as a violent sexual abuser of a child. The imposing temple at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, said to be the largest synagogue in the world, is home to one of the nation's most prominent reform congregations. It counts among its members the new mayor of New York, the Manhattan district attorney and familiar names from the media and the arts."
Song of Sorrow, New York, April 15, 2002
"Joel's parents were as baffled as they were horrified. Almost a year would pass before they'd come to understand the source of his demons, a year in which their curly-haired boy was frequently suicidal and obviously terrified. In therapy over the subsequent months, he slowly started revealing the torments he'd endured at the hands of his own family. He'd been sexually abused by his uncle Larry (his father's older brother, who confessed in 1999 and is currently in prison), and also by Larry's adult son Stewart, who pleaded guilty and served a year before being released on parole. Finally, the boy charged, he was sexually abused by his uncle Howie (his father's oldest brother, fourteen years Henry's senior). Uncle Howie is better known to New Yorkers as Cantor Howard Nevison, part of the rabbinical hierarchy at Congregation Emanu-El, the city's most prominent Reform Jewish synagogue, for 23 years.
In the early-morning hours of February 20, police arrested him in his Upper West Side home. On April 17, a preliminary hearing will determine whether there is enough evidence for the case to go to trial. He is contesting the charges. 'Howard Nevison is innocent, and we are confident he will be exonerated,' says his attorney, Ralph Jacobs. These accusations are very different from the suddenly ubiquitous stories of priests molesting parishioners. This is strictly a family affair ... .
But for Nevison, the blow had been coming for years; the cantor first learned he was a suspect not long after Joel's parents initially approached the police in 1998. Linda Fairstein, former longtime chief of the New York district attorney's sex-crimes-prosecution unit, says she's "stunned" that it took so long to file charges against the cantor. "I've never heard of that," she says. "It's quite extraordinary that people who already gained the trust of a child for the prosecution of relatives couldn't then also elicit his consent in prosecuting another one at the time."
Why the delay? Joel, according to the Pennsylvania district attorney bringing the charges, was too afraid to testify against the cantor, allegedly the most terrifying of the three men accused of molesting him. In the affidavit of probable cause that resulted in Howard Nevison's arrest, the boy describes him as 'a big man with a mean, powerful voice and frightening glare,' who threatened to kill him if he spoke up ... Some parents were outraged to learn that the temple leadership had known since 1998 about an investigation of the Nevison family yet continued allowing the cantor to meet with boys and girls preparing for their bar mitzvahs."
A Cry for Help that Went Unheeded. philly.com, April 6, 2000
"Prosecutors say the Kensington man repeatedly raped and sodomized two girls whom his wife was baby-sitting at their rowhouse. He allegedly employed a plastic baseball bat on one occasion. But the ugliness of the details is not all that makes the case stand out. Philadelphia police were called in four years ago, when the attacks allegedly began. One of the girls, then 8, described the assaults in graphic detail. But the sex-crimes unit closed the case after a cursory investigation. Investigators did not interview the man, Samuel Cohen, or inform child-welfare authorities of the allegations against him, The Inquirer has learned. Cohen continued assaulting one of the girls, then 7, for five more months, police now say. One of the assaults was so brutal that the child was taken to a hospital with vaginal injuries, records show."
Man Sentenced to at Least 45 Years in Child Sex Cases. Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 4, 2000
"A 41-year-old man with a prior felony conviction for child molestation was sentenced Monday to a minimum of 45 years in prison. In March, Russell D. Cohen pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual assault with a minor under 14, sexual assault with a minor under 16, and use of a minor in producing pornography. Incidents involving about 10 victims were combined into the three charges. Cohen was arrested in August and accused of forcing two boys into sex acts. Authorities said Cohen met young boys by employing them to distribute fliers throughout the Las Vegas Valley and then took them to his home, where they were sexually abused. Shortly after news of Cohen's arrest was circulated in the Las Vegas media, police received a videotape in the mail that showed a man engaging in sex acts with several male juveniles. In October, additional charges were filed against Cohen in connection with the videotape."
Lanner Indicted on Sex Abuse Charges. Jewish Week, March 16, 2000
"Nine months after The Jewish Week reported on allegations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner had abused teenagers in his charge for three decades, a Monmouth County, N.J., grand jury indicted him Wednesday on six criminal charges. The rabbi faces two counts each of aggravated criminal sexual conduct, criminal sexual conduct and endangering the welfare of a child. The crimes are second-, third- and fourth-degree offenses. A second-degree offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison ... The first woman, now 19, alleged that Rabbi Lanner sexually abused her almost daily in his office at the yeshiva when she was a 14-year-old ninth-grader there in 1995 and 1996."
The Awareness Center, [List of over 30 rabbi and other Jewish clergy child molesters, etc.]
"Mass Molestation Cases Not Including Clergy Case of Ohel Counselor - Simcha Adler, NY Case of School Counselor - Eugene Loub Aronin, TX Case of School Teacher - Lawrence Cohen, NJ Case of School Principal - David B. Harrington, Rockville, MD Case of Jewish Big Brother Volunteer - Eric Hindin, Newton, MA Case of Judge Ronald Kline, CA Case of the Kosher Butcher in Chicago Case of the New York Society for the Deaf's Home Case of the Rogers Park JCC, Chicago Illinois Case of Teacher/Track Coach - Adam Theodore Rubin, MD Case of Cantor Michael Segelstein, Las Vegas, NV Case of Teacher - Georges Schteinberg, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Israeli vice-consul Aryeh Scher - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Case of Camp Counselor - David Schwartz, Culver City, CA Case of Scoutmaster - Jerrold Schwartz, NY Case of Tel Aviv Arts School, Tel Aviv, Israel Case of Mashgiach (Kashrut Supervisor) David Douglas Webber, Canada Clergy Abuse Case of Rabbi Lewis Brenner Case of Rabbi Ephraim Bryks Case of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Case of Rabbi Sidney Goldenberg Case of Cantor Joel Gordon Case of Rabbi Israel Grunwald Case of The State of Israel Vs.Sex Offender Case of Rabbi Tzvi Flaum Case of Yehudah Friedlander Case of the Rabbi at Hillel Torah, Chicago, IL Case of Rabbi Steven Jacobs Case of Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement Case of Rabbi Steven Kaplan Case of Rabbi Robert Kirschner Case of Rabbi/Rosh Yeshiva Ze'ev Kopolevitch Case of Rabbi Baruch Lanner Case of Rabbi Jerrold M. Levy Case of Rabbi Pinchas Lew Case of Rabbi Richard Marcovitz Case of Rabbi Juda Mintz Case of Rabbi/Psychologist - Avrohom Mondrowitz Case of Cantor Howard Nevison Case of Rabbi Fred Neulander Case of Rabbi Michael Ozair Case of Rabbi Charles Shalman Case of Rabbi/Yeshiva Teacher Ze'ev Sultanovitch Case of Rabbi David Weinberger Case of Rabbi Yaakov Weiner Case of Rabbi Mordechai Willig (Accused of cover-up in the case of Baruch Lanner) Case of Cantor Phillip Wittlin Case of Rabbi Mordechai Yomtov Case of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman Case of Rabbi Max Zucker"
Father charged with abusing, raping his children and wife, by David Ratner, Haaretz (Israel), February 19, 2003
"A 62-year-old Haifa man was charged yesterday with physically and mentally abusing his children and wife for many years. He is also suspected of raping two of his daughters ... In 1984, the indictment says, he married a woman who had two daughters, aged 12 and 8. He is accused of raping his elder stepdaughter for the first time when she was 17 and then throwing her out of the house naked. He continued raping her until she turned 21, threatening to tell that she was sleeping with him if she resisted. He stopped raping and abusing her only when she married, at the age of 23. He started raping his younger stepdaughter when she was 15, in addition to beating her and screaming at her. He is alleged to have raped her several times more between 1991 and 1993. When she joined the army, he humiliated her and threw her out. She never returned to the family home. The man is also charged with beating his wife in 2000 so badly that she required medical treatment. In addition, he abused his wife for years with humiliating acts and insults at every opportunity. The couple had three more daughters, born in 1986, 1987 and 1990. The man is also charged with abusing the young girls. He used to scream at the older one and insult her until she started getting anxiety attacks. He insisted on watching her dress against her will and stroke her behind against her explicit wishes. He used to masturbate in front of the second daughter and abuse her in similar ways, and is also suspected of brutally beating the youngest child."
Bnei Brak resident gets nine years for sexual abuse, Ha'aretz (Israel), January 22, 2003
"Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday sentenced a 29-year-old Bnei Brak resident to nine years in prison and two years' probation for sexually harassing and assaulting six ultra-Orthodox youths between the ages of 14 and 16 over a period of years. Avraham Asher was also accused of 'offering' one of the youths to two of his friends, who also abused him. The two, Yossi Mozas and Yosef Garus, both 29, from Bnei Brak, were given much lighter sentences ... The court heard that Asher and his friends harassed the youths in bus shelters and at ritual baths in Bnei Brak. Asher also assaulted the youths in showers and once visited a yeshiva in Jerusalem, where one of the teenagers studied."
Prosecutor faces child sex charges, Palm Beach Post, January 22, 2003
"With his Mickey Mouse lapel pin replete with an American flag, prosecutor Ira Karmelin cut a squeaky-clean image in the Palm Beach County Courthouse. But on Tuesday the image was of the top assistant state attorney handcuffed outside the courthouse and carted off to jail to face child sex charges. Karmelin, 38, is accused of soliciting a woman, whom he believed was a 13-year-old girl, on the Internet and performing lewd acts in front of her via a camera attached to his computer. The prosecutor -- who also is a former sheriff's deputy -- is charged with two third-degree felonies, each punishable by up to five years in prison. He is the first prosecutor under Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer arrested on a felony charge. He was suspended without pay indefinitely and could lose his law license ... Karmelin talked openly about his wish to become a judge. Many of his colleagues, as well as defense attorneys, described Karmelin as Krischer's favorite bulldog prosecutor. Just last week, Krischer recommended Karmelin to be an assistant attorney general ... Orange County Sheriff's Office Detective Tom Harrison, who came to West Palm Beach to make the arrest, discovered Karmelin was a prosecutor when making background checks on the screen name. 'When I learned that he was in fact an assistant state attorney, after picking my chin off the floor and restarting my heart... I knew he was not above anybody else,' Harrison said."
Critics Charge Rabbinic Court Covered Up Lanner Abuse, [Jewish] Forward, January 31, 2003
"Nineteen critics of convicted sex offender and former Orthodox Union youth leader Rabbi Baruch Lanner have signed a letter excoriating a respected rabbi, saying that he withheld for more than a decade a 1989 rabbinical court ruling that found Lanner guilty of abuse. The January 24 letter accuses Rabbi Mordechai Willig, a highly regarded spiritual leader at Yeshiva University's rabbinical seminary, of sharing the rabbinical court's findings against Lanner only with select individuals who apparently 'did nothing to remove him from children.' It also accuses Willig of pressuring one of Lanner's accusers, Elie Hiller, to write a letter of apology. According to the letter, Willig, who in 1989 led the New Jersey-based rabbinical court, or beit din, fed the public perception that Lanner was innocent while Lanner continued to have contact with children. Signed mostly by alleged Lanner victims and their families, the letter comes after a meeting earlier this month in which attendees say Willig stated, for perhaps the first time in so public a forum, that Lanner was found guilty of some of the charges brought against him in 1989. 'Rabbi Willig prioritized the reputation of a rabbinic colleague a colleague who he knew was abusing kids ahead of the safety of children,' says the letter ...
And in a separate development, famed Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz has been serving as a consultant to Lanner's defense team, according to Dershowitz's brother Nathan. Nathan Dershowitz is one of Lanner's full-time attorneys. Lanner is appealing his July conviction that he sexually abused two teenage girls while he was their principal during the 1990s at Hillel Yeshiva high school in Ocean Township, N.J. ...
A report prepared in 2000 by a special commission appointed to investigate the O.U.'s role in the Lanner affair stated that Lanner sexually abused women and teenage girls and physically abused boys and girls while he was a leader for decades at the O.U.'s National Conference of Synagogue Youth. The report also cited the failure of members of the O.U. and NCSY leadership to take effective action, allowing Lanner's conduct to 'continue unchecked for many years.'"
Rabbi's Odyssey Reflects Struggle on Sexual Abuse. Jews Begin to Confront Silence That Hid Clergy's Misdeeds,
by Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, February 2, 2003; Page A17
"During his 30-year career, Sidney I. Goldenberg taught math in the New York schools, served as cantor at two synagogues on Long Island and became the rabbi of a Jewish congregation in California. He was a respected teacher, a man of learning -- and a child molester. Before he was convicted and sent to prison in 1997 for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl during bat mitzvah lessons, there had been numerous complaints against him. But each time allegations arose, he moved to a new community, leaving a trail of whispers and shattered lives. Prosecutors, alleged victims and their families say Goldenberg was able to move from job to job because of a wall of silence and shame around sexual abuse in the Jewish community -- a wall that some believe is finally coming down, thanks to the scandal over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. 'In the past it was covered up, just like in the Catholic Church,' said Vicki Polin, an art therapist in Baltimore who is forming an association of Jewish survivors of childhood sexual abuse. 'Survivors' stories were discounted. They were told they were lying. Their parents would go to the proper authorities within the Jewish community and nothing was done' ...'I don't think pedophilia has a religion,' said Na'ama Yehuda, a speech pathologist in New York who is co-founder, with Polin, of the Awareness Center, an organization for Jewish survivors of childhood trauma. The center's Web site (www.theawarenesscenter.org) lists more than 30 Jewish officials who have been accused of child sexual abuse. They include the late Shlomo Carlebach, a renowned Hasidic rabbi; Baruch Lanner, an Orthodox rabbi who was convicted last year of molesting two teenage girls; and Jerrold Levy, a Reform rabbi imprisoned for sex crimes involving teenage boys ... 'In the Catholic Church, the issue was the cover-up by the church hierarchy. Here, it's the community, not the hierarchy. It's the whole community not wanting to admit trouble in our midst,' said Yosef Blau, an Orthodox rabbi at New York's Yeshiva University who counsels victims of sexual abuse."
Child Molester Sent to Treatment Center,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, February 7, 2003
"David Schwartz, a counselor for preschool boys at an Orthodox music and arts camp, was sentenced to one year in residential treatment and five years' probation for molesting a 4-year-old boy in his care at summer camp. A six-year prison sentence was suspended. The Jan. 21 sentencing at the Airport Courthouse came after Schwartz, the 36-year-old father of young children, accepted a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to one felony count of committing lewd acts with a child. (A plea of no contest in a criminal court is the equivalent of guilty, but if victims decide to sue Schwartz, they cannot use the criminal plea against him, according to the district attorney's office.) Schwartz will have to register as a sex offender for life, undergo at least two years of sex offender therapy and is prohibited from being alone with minor children, including his own, for the period of probation ... While all the boys in the group told stories that indicated they had been molested and tormented, only two were able to tell their stories coherently and consistently enough to be considered admissible in court. Three parents spoke with The Jewish Journal, telling of the long-lasting pain Schwartz has inflicted on their families. Parents said their children spoke of being touched and hurt, and watching Schwartz make 'white pee-pee.' Testimony and physical evidence on at least one boy indicated that he was sodomized. Schwartz is alleged to have brought a bird into class and cut off its head in front of the children, telling them that if they told anyone about what happened, he would do the same to them and their parents... When Schwartz was first arrested, many in the Orthodox community - those who knew him and those who didn't - asserted the innocence of Schwartz, who was a counselor at Camp Ruach for two years and taught middle school social studies at Yeshivat Yavneh in Hancock Park. Several rabbis who knew him privately expressed disbelief that he could have perpetrated such acts. At a hearing soon after his arrest, at which his bail was reduced from $1 million to $300,000, Schwartz's supporters heckled the parents of the victims, accusing them of harming another Jew. But as details of the boys' stories came out, support waned."
L.A. program offers help after arrest of rabbi for pedophilia, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (from Jewish Week), February 26, 2003
"In the wake of the arrest last week of Rabbi Israel Kestenbaum in a police Internet sex sting operation, the director of a Los Angeles-based residential treatment program for Jews with addictive and behavioral disorders believes a similar program is needed here and has offered to assist. 'If we can share what we have learned in our 16 years of existence, we would be glad to help,' said Harriet Rossetto, director of Beit T'Shuvah, believed to be the country's only residential program for Jewish adults. Rossetto said three of the 110 Jews in her program are rabbis there for sexual addiction. She is convinced that their cases, as well as the arrests in recent years of rabbis accused of sex crimes, are 'just the tip of the iceberg' ... The call for a treatment program for rabbis comes after a string of much-publicized cases involving Jewish clergy charged with sexual abuse of minors. They include Rabbi Baruch Lanner, who last June was sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually abusing two girls when he was principal of a New Jersey yeshiva in the 1990s. Rabbi Lanner is free pending an appeal. Also, Cantor Howard Nevison of Temple Emanu-el in Manhattan was charged last spring with sexually abusing his young nephew. That trial has not begun. Rabbi Kestenbaum's arrest is not the first involving a rabbi accused of using the Internet to lure minors. In December 2001, Rabbi Jerald Levy, 58, of Boca Raton, Fla., was sentenced to six years in federal prison for downloading child pornography and luring teenage boys to meet him for sex ... In the aftermath of two highly publicized child abuse cases involving a rabbi teaching at a day school and a kosher butcher, the Chicago Rabbinical Council a number of years ago established a special bet din, or rabbinical court, to address allegations of sexual abuse of children."
Runaway teen was sex slave for three years, Haaretz (Israel), March 31, 2003
"A 34-year-old Eilat resident was charged today in a Be'er Sheva court of sexually abusing an underage teenager from Belarus over the past three years. According to the indictment, Sergei Mayatski 'imported' the youth from Minsk, in Belarus, after he met him in a public park during a visit to the city in September 1999. Following a number of meetings with the youngster, who was 13 at the time, Mayatski met his parents and convinced them to allow him to bring their son to Israel. It is unclear whether the parents were aware of Mayatski's intentions.
Two weeks later, the teenager was sent to Israel, where a friend of Mayatski received him at the airport as his own departure was delayed for two weeks because of a problem with his entry visa into Israel. The friend took the teen to his home in Ashdod, and according to the youth's testimony, also sexually abused him.
Upon his arrival to Israel, in November 1999, Mayatski collected the youth from Ashdod, took him to Eilat, and presented him as his son. However, during these years, Mayatski systematically sodomized him. The sexual abuse was revealed nine days ago following a complaint filed by Mayatski at the police that the youth had disappeared. When the teenager was located, he was questioned and said that he left home because he was tired of serving as Mayatski's sex slave."
[Sexual assault statistics from the Jewish homeland: "The Light unto the World."]
Aid centers: Most sexual assault victims in 2002 were minors; one-third were under 12,
by Ruth Sinai, Haaretz (Israel), April 8, 2003
"More than 2,300 girls and boys under the age of 12 were victims of sexual assault in the past year, constituting 30 percent of the new cases reported to the sexual assault aid centers. Almost 26 percent of the victims were 13 to 18 years old ... Forty percent of the sexual assaults were carried out in the victim's home. 'The home, of all places, which should be a safe, protective and supporting place, is where many of the horrors take place,' states the report. About half of the victims refrained from going to the police. The most prevalent attack - 26 percent of the new calls - was rape, including gang rape. About 16 percent of the callers complained about incest by fathers (6.5 percent), brothers (2.6 percent) or other relatives. Some 14 percent complained of indecent acts. About 30 percent of the 110 gang rape victims who called the Tel Aviv aid center were men. Out of 519 calls reporting non-gang rape to this center, 25 percent were men. Some 20 percent of the victims of indecent acts reported in Tel Aviv were men. 'The sexual assault of boys, male youths and men is a hushed-up crime, which is almost completely absent from discourse in Israeli society,' the report states. 'It does not occur to the victims that anyone would listen to their ordeal.' The centers operate a hotline and support groups, and accompany the victims during the criminal procedures ... According to the report, the largest group of victims - constituting 19 percent - were attacked by family relatives, 4.2 percent were attacked by a spouse, and 14 percent by a friend or acquaintance. Only 12 percent of the assaults were perpetrated by a complete stranger."
A report in the Baltimore Jewish Times in February 2000 gives an account of a custody dispute in Italy. Moshe and Tali Dulberg (sometimes "Dolberg"), Israeli citizens living in Genoa, were divorced. Custody of the couple's two girls was initially given to the mother, Tali. In 1996, Tali was converted to Orthodox Judaism and remarried. Moshe brought suit for custody of the daughters, asserting that Tali, as an Orthodox Jew, was now unfit to care for the girls. The court awarded custody to the father. When arguing the case, Moshe presented to the court the findings of two psychologists. The Baltimore Jewish Times states of the psychologists:
They charged Orthodox Judaism views "exploitation and cruelty to minors as legitimate … and perverted behavior as normal." They compared Orthodox parents to drug addicts in their inability to serve as a "loving source of affection" for their children.
Why do you guys blame everything on my boss Moishe Scheinerman?
Teichman in Los Angeles also calls himself Kehilla Kashrus.
Massage scandal sinks S.I. educator
(Staten Island, New York)
BY ETHAN ROUEN and CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Wednesday, December 12th 2007, 4:00 AM
An assistant principal received numerous massages from a 12-year-old student, then offered to pay for the girl's private school tuition as hush money, school investigators said Tuesday.
Lawrence Siegel, 56, accepted rubdowns from the child inside his office at Intermediate School 72 on Staten Island, the special schools investigator said in a report.
The situation grew even more bizarre when investigators started asking questions in June, and the child's mother began secretly taping conversations with Siegel in an effort to blackmail him, according to the report by Schools Investigator Richard Condon.
On one of the tapes, Siegel tells the girl over the phone that "somebody squealed on us." He asks her to stick up for him, saying, "If you do this for me, I will take care of you for life," according to the report. He ended the call by saying, "I love you. Let me talk to Mommy."
Siegel, who earned more than $100,000 a year, retired from the New Springville school during the investigation in August. Tuesday, the report was referred to the Staten Island district attorney's office, which will decide if charges should be filed.
The 34-year veteran educator declined comment when reached outside his Morganville, N.J., home.
The probe began after another parent called 311 about the massages. Siegel called the student on June 6 and convinced her to defend him, the report said.
Over the following weeks, the girl's mom met several times with Siegel, asking him to pay $120,000 for tuition to Staten Island Academy. She once even put a recorder under her blouse to tape their conversations, the report said
The student eventually told investigators she began skipping class to hang out in Siegel's office, where he sometimes asked her to massage his shoulders. She said there was no other contact and his door was usually open, the report said.
Siegel maintained his innocence to investigators but acknowledged he used "poor judgment" when he asked the girl to lie because he "panicked."
___________________________________
I'm so terrified of UOJ that I made sure this guy got sent back too!
http://www.eyeoutforyou.com/news/local/12099896.html
Doctor Fled To Israel in 1989 - Sentenced to 12 years for rape
Doctor sentenced to 12 years for rape
CBS Eyewitness News
December 3, 2007
WATCH VIDEO Video High
A Bakersfield doctor convicted of raping two of his female patients almost two decades ago will be spending 12 years behind bars.
Doctor Kenneth Frank, 57, was convicted in 1989 for raping two Bakersfield women, but he fled to Israel before he could be sentenced.
Monday he was sentenced for two separate counts of raping of a drugged victim. For each count, Frank was sentenced to six years in state prison.
The defense attorney also requested a new trial for Dr. Frank which was denied by the judge.
Possibly, the information we provide here, will spark an investigation into the wide-open child pornography web sites on the Internet with headquarters in Florida that are run by a network of pedophiles with connections to Israel. These web sites, operating with impunity, are essentially feeding the sexually sick and murderous desires of people like Joseph Smith who was just arrested in Sarasota, Florida for the kidnaping and murder of 11 year old Carlie Brucia.
The disturbing information exposed here was primarily obtained from two sources. The first source was personal communications with Congresswoman Gladys Lange Highland of Venezuela by our staff writer Miroslava Flores concerning an article first published in "La Jornada" of Mexico City involving the "child sex trade" of South and Central American children to Israeli and USA pedophiles. The second source is Bruce Harris who is the Regional Director of Casa Alianza in Latin America. Casa Alianza (Covenant House) is an organization that defends children’s rights in Latin America and which has been in the forefront of exposing the Israeli/USA network of pedophiles, many in high places of society.
Venezuelan Congresswoman Gladys Lange Highland was the first person that exposed the Florida based "kiddy porn" web sites that have existed for many years in the open and that appear to operate with the protection of powerful elements within high levels of US society. In an interview with "La Reforma" newspaper of Mexico City, Congresswoman Gladys Lange Highland pointed out a series of child pornography web sites operated by two Jews with ties to Israel who go by the names of Jeff Libman and Marc Greenburg. These two Jewish pedophiles operate their "kiddy porn" business under Florida's corporate laws through a business entity named WEBE WEB Corporation. The corporation changes its address often. Presently they give their address as P.O. Box 480027, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33348. Before this they were using 7020 S.W. 22nd Court, Suite D, Davie, Fl 33317 as their address. WEBE WEB Corporation operates about 13 "kiddy porn" websites in the open that exhibit photographs, which are changed often, of underage girls as young as 7-year olds are among hundreds that appear on the web sites operated by WEBE WEB Corporation of Florida. WEBE WEB Corporation also owns hard core adult Internet domain names. Two of these are everysextoy.com and homefromschool.com.
The operators of these websites are making money by selling even more explicit photographs and videos of the underage age girls to pedophiles and by charging for access to other portions of their websites. This "selling of innocence" to perverted pedophiles is done in the open and, as far as we know, no one is doing anything about it. There is presently no moral outrage concerning this exploitation of children here in the USA. How many more Carlie Brucias, Samantha Runnions and Polly Klaases must there be before the country begins to clean up and seriously "STOP" the many causes of child sexual murder. One reason may be that the media as well as law enforcement are "paralyzed" to act because these pornographers are Jews and have ties to Israel. There may be a fear of being labeled antisemitic. We just do not know.
It is not known whether the parents of the above children in the photographs are involved in the exploitation. It may be that the parents themselves are not aware that these photographs are being exhibited, for pay, to pedophiles on the Internet or it may be that the children are essentially just sex slaves. No ones knows because law enforcement nor the mainstream media, as far as we know, have investigated or reported on these "kiddy porn" web sites that eventually lead people like Joseph Smith to act out their perverted sexual fantasies.
Another excellent source of information for the writing of this editorial was Mr. Bruce Harris of Canada. As the Regional Director of Casa Alianza of Latin America, Mr. Harris has been in the front lines of the battle against sexual predators of South and Central American children.
On November 28, 2003 our publication sent out a news bulletin titled "Jewish ring involved in kidnapping and trafficking Latino children" in which we reported information from Bruce Harris that an Israeli citizen who managed a Costa Rica sham adoption agency was under INTERPOL investigation for child kidnapping and murder. Rolf Salomon Levy Berger, also known as Rafael Leyva or Rafael Levy, founded the bogus International Adoption Resources Foundation in Costa Rica to trade in children. This same agency has offices in Boca Raton, Florida, where Levy is the “international coordinator”. Levy, who resides in Miami Beach, Florida, also faces a Colombian arrest warrant for illegal actions between the year 2000 and 2002. In the INTERPOL report, he also is accused of the theft of babies. Many of these kidnapped children are perhaps later reared in secret locations in Florida to be utilized in profitable "sex businesses" such as for the web sites that are run by WEBE WEB Corporation.
One of the most horrific reports from Mr. Bruce Harris was that of "snuff videos" of Costa Rican children in the possession of yet another Jew from Florida. On June 14th, 2003, Mr. Harris reported that an American Jew by the name of David Sussman, age 42, had been arrested after landing in Chile on a flight from Costa Rica. According to the sex crimes division of the Chilean police, one of the tapes was a "snuff" video containing sadistic acts on children. The subject also carried US$ 12,000 in undeclared funds plus nine other "kiddy porn" videos in his luggage. Chilean police deported David Sussman to Panama where has was supposed to be turned over to Florida authorities for prosecution. Nothing was ever heard again on the outcome of any prosection by the State of Florida and no mainstream newspaper or other news service ever reported on the incident. This is one reason our publication believes that these child pornographers are being protected by high level and powerful elements within the state of Florida.
We ask, what is the connection between Jeff Libman, Marc Greenburg, Rolf Salomon Levy Berger and David Sussman, all from the state of Florida? All of course are involved in criminal activity involving children, but are all members of the same network? How about Joseph Smith, also of Florida, who a few days ago kidnapped 11-year old Carlie Brucia and than murdered her. Joseph Smith was part of the Florida "sex underground" who had been arrested numerous times for possession of illicit drugs. He was living with three local strippers. Did someone pay him to kidnap Carlie Brucia? Did someone like David Sussman, with a lot of money, pay him in order to produce a "snuff video"? A horrible thought but a very likely possibility. Until the profits are taken out from the "sale of innocence", there will be incentives for the Libmans, Greenburgs, Levys and Sussmans of this world to continue perverting and exploiting children; children not just in South and Central America but here in your front yards as well.
__________________
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/kyo-restaurant-in-monsey.html
"If you know how the Hashgoch was acting like a Mafia, please tell us."
Kehilla Kashrus (also known as Killer Kashrus) in Brooklyn is a prime example. They go into a store under the Vaad of Flatbush and tell them that they must be under their hechsher, also. Otherwise they will tell everyone that the Kashrus is not acceptable to them.
Look at all the restraunts that have dual hechsherim in Flatbush...
The only one that refused to knuckle under their pressure was Glatt Mart on Avenue M.
Anonymous said...
The Udvari Ruv shook down Paskesz & Sabra Salads for a big fee when they decided to drop him. The bum was taken to a din Torah after Sabra wouldn't give in to the blackmail and signs went up all over Boro Park being motzee shem ra on them. But they couldn't prove that he had the signs put up.
Anonymous said...
The COR in Toronto acts like mafia in my opinion. When Dayan Sofer started the Adas hechsher, they were too scared to start up with Reichmann but they went after KSA with a vengeance when they opened a Canadian office. They sent out public letters that hinted the KSA is no good which is not true. Now they threaten any COR establishment that carries even a single product under KSA hashgocho, even if it's cookies in a sealed container for resale.
"Every case is different, although they appear the same."
So how exactly is Shlomo Mandel different than Margo?
Maybe Mandel didn't steal from YTV to start YOB, but what about being an enabler and slapping up little victims?
I think UOJ means that they do not have the victims to come forward.
Either that or he had a personal score to settle against Margo. He went after him with such gusto yet is showing much reserve with Mandel.
It has allof us wondering' what the hell is going on.
Remember how with MArgo/Kolko it was the ten makos, the letters, etc. THat was effective as it shook up the COMMUNITY and has everyone talking. From there, it picked up steam. Yet, with some of these other cases, UOJ seems to be taking it easy...
2. According to Expose Molesters blog, Shlomo's father knew about this as well - I do not know if this has been verified - perhaps the author of Expose Molesters would care to verify this.
---
I was in touch with the author.
Indeed Manis Mandel the so called Tzadik knew all along. Not only did he know; but he was a huge factor in the cover up. Manis was smart when he got rid of Chaim Krause who was abusing women and even parents who came down to PTA. However, his sechel didn't last very long. Chaim Krause got a job teaching girls in Bais Yakov afterwards so go figure.
Manis played a pivotal role in destroying Jewish lives. I shudder at the pain victims of above had to endure. All the Mandels at YOB should be brought to justice for their crimes.
YOB in lakewood? I really hope not. Please say it ain't so!
copy @ paste for more info about manis and YOB
http://exposemolesters.blogspot.com/2007/07/rabbi-menachem-manis-mandel-atrocities.html
The RCC is trying to put Teichman's Kehilla Kashrus out of business by spreading lies that Teichman is not as kosher as they are. The RCC is run by a bunch of power hungry crooked so called rabbi's. It bothers them that a single Rabbi is more reliable then all of them put together.
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Webber_David.html
He was arrested in Edmonton, Alberta for molesting a boy. He was then fired as youth director of the modern orthodox OU affiliate Beth Israel shul. The case was later dropped because the homeless boy was unclear about exactly how his baytzim were touched.
Webber then moved to Calgary, Alberta where he davened at another modern ortho OU affiliate, House of Jacob-Mikveh Israel and worked as mashgiach for the Calgary Vaad Hakashrus.
Webber was arrested again when it was learned he had molested hundreds of children over the years. He is a free man today after spending only 6 years in prison. The feckless Canadian govt said they let him get off easy to spare the victims from "humiliation" of testifying. This is even though the court was told that Webber is unrepentant.
http://www.milah.net/
Rabbi Moshe Shulman, a mohel, allowed Webber to keep davening at his Calgary shul when the molestation came to light. Shulman eventually kicked him out when he found out Webber was still sneaking into NCSY events and touching children.
Shulman was later rabbi of Shaarei Shamayim in Toronto, which claims to be orthodox despite their Shabbos microphone and very low unkosher mechitzah.
Shulman is currently the rabbi of Young Israel of St Louis, Missouri.
Could Shulman be a talmid of Mondrowitz? He is a graduate of the Jerusalem College of Technology where Mondrowitz taught.
Rabbi Allen Saks paid to bail David Webber out of jail.
Saks was originally principal of the Rabbi David Silver Yeshiva in Harrisburg, PA. Later getting to know Webber when he was principal of Akiva Academy in Canada.
http://www.hillel-nmb.org/Welcome/welcome.htm
Saks, a YU talmid, is currently assistant principal of Hillel in North Miami Beach.
"Killer Kashrus"
Great line!
Avenue J fake plumbas, anyone?
Applying Jim Crow laws to Israel: An Open Letter to Secretary Rice
By Reuven Koret December 2, 2007
Madame Secretary,
Allow me to introduce myself. I am an American-born Israeli, and since my early childhood I have been sympathetic to the civil rights movement in the US, and human rights movement around the world. My mother was a civil rights activist, a marcher in the Washington demonstrations of the 1960's, just as she marched for the rights of beleaguered Jews in the USSR to gain their freedom. Among my proudest personal accomplishments has been the co-founding, with black and Jewish colleagues at Harvard University , of the pre-eminent website for Africans and African-descent people, now called AOL Black Voices.
I therefore have been interested to read of your attempts to connect the civil rights movement and the Israeli-Arab conflict. Most recently, you were quoted as telling, in a closed-door meeting at Annapolis , a story from your childhood in Birmingham , using it to show what you thought was empathy for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. You said you did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective, but you did so anyway, recalling the time when a local church was bombed by white racists, killing four girls, including your classmate.
'Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church,' you said.
But then you went on to say, that, as a black child in the South, you were told that you could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, you also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians. 'I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian,' she said. 'I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.'
'There is pain on both sides,' Rice concluded. 'This has gone on too long.'
Well, we can agree on that, Madame Secretary. But the more I thought about your attempt at a historical parallel, the more it disturbed me. I am writing tell you that you are wrong about much else, and what you trying to do to fix this will lead to results opposite of what you intend.
Dr. Rice, you are wrong about how most Israelis feel. You keep saying that the vast majority of Israelis support leaving most if not all of Judea and Samaria and handing it over to the Palestinians. But poll after poll shows that is simply not true. Most Israelis are pragmatic and we (sometimes) learn from experience. We saw what happened when we withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza , and we are not willing to repeat that mistake and allow Jerusalem , Tel Aviv, Haifa, and our airport to become a target for Palestinian rockets.
You are wrong, too, when you think that all we care about is security. These days we worry less about being bombed, because of the security measures our government took, over Palestinian objections. Those same checkpoints you complain about, and the security barrier that we built which so many others complain about, keep bombers and drive-by shooters out.
But even if security weren't an issue, you need to understand that when you speak about Judea and Samaria, you speak about the Jewish People's heartland, not some foreign country. The Bible you read is filled with those places because that is where our faith was formed, that is where our history was lived for many more centuries than the United States has been in existence. And Jerusalem -- above all, the Old City and the Temple Mount at its center -- has been the spiritual core of our existence since the time of David and Solomon.
For centuries, the Jews were denied even the right to pray at our holiest sites near and on the Temple Mount . There and at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and in many other places throughout Judea and Samaria, the Arabs cruelly allowed us get close, but never to touch, never to enter the place itself.
That didn't change even in 1948 when we earned our own nation by defeating 6 attacking Arab armies and the local Arab population. But that victory was only partial: we lost the Old City of Jerusalem, Hebron and Gush Etzion, each loss accompanied by massacres by the Arabs.
They burned down our synagogues: 17 out of 18 in the Old City of Jerusalem alone after the Jordanians took control in 1948. The other one they couldn't find because a decent Arab hid it.
Secretary Rice, I am going to be blunt, in the fashion you are known to be. Because you are doing business with the worst racists and anti-Semites in the world, and their bigotry is turning you into a racist and an anti-Semite, and an advocate for racist and anti-semitic policies.
It's not like the world doesn't know who the Saudis are, and what they stand for. Jews can't even visit, for God's sake, and blacks are as close to slavery there as in most countries, except of course most of the other Arab non-democracies you invited to your little gathering. You know that, I assume, but you choose to ignore it.
What stunned me was when I read today that you gave in to the demands of the Saudis and agreed that the Israeli delegation would not be allowed to enter the same door as the representatives of the Arab states. The Israelis had to enter through the service entrance. The Israeli delegation agreed not to be photographed in the same pictures as the Saudis and other Arabs lest Muslims be embarrassed by appearing in the same photograph. God forbid that the two religions should mix! And this Saudi nonsense about no handshakes with Israelis. Doesn't this offend you in the least? Can't you use your bully pulpit to deal with it?
Shame on you, Secretary Rice. How could you allow this to go down? How could you tolerate this kind of bigotry? If that's not a modern resurrection of Jim Crow laws, then what is? How dare you! And then to lecture Israel about the morality of its checkpoints?
Let me put it in the bluntest terms I can think of, but no less true for being blunt: in the eyes of the Arabs, Israel is the nigger of the Middle East: not because of our borders but because of being the Jewish State and, to make matters worse, beating the Muslims in every war.
For surviving in a sea of Muslim , we have been constantly insulted, humiliated, discriminated against. We are -- because we are Jews, representing the Jewish State -- treated as less than human or, as the they continually remind us, 'a race of pigs and monkeys.'
As such, Madame Secretary, we have no faith in the possibility of a peace treaty in a year or even in ten years, maybe not in a hundred. Why? Because the Arabs, the Muslims in general, and the Palestinians in particular, are educating their people, their youth, to hate us, to dehumanize us, to demonize us, to deny our basic rights. The Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the militant wings of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah, defined all as terror groups by your State Department -- these are the local version of the Ku Klux Klan you remember from your childhood, with one crucial difference: they don't just want to keep us down. They want to make us dead.
Theirs is not a non-violent civil rights struggle, but a nationalist struggle to exterminate the people of Israel from the Land of Israel, primarily by violent means and, when necessary, political means using well-meaning people like you.
I need not tell you that our fears are not without justification, with Muslims the world over, and some non-Muslims as well trying to foment the idea of a world without Israel , without a Jewish state.
And, sadly, you have to some extent thrown your lot in with them, by morally equating them and us, by saying that we are equally guilty of terror and incitement as the Palestinians, who invented terrorism and incite against us in their mosques, media and government statements.
The joint understanding you worked so hard to achieve in Annapolis starts wrong, when it refers to the Palestine Liberation Organization as one of the two parties. It's called that because it intends, has always intended, to liberate Palestine , all of Palestine , including all of what is Israel , expelling or exterminating all of the Jews who live here.
The PLO has never, despite all the conferences and word play, retracted that desire. They continue to pursue their Plan of Stages to replace Israel with Palestine . They want a Jew-Free state of Palestinian and an Israel they will not recognize as Jewish, which they hope gradually turn into an Arab majority, by virtue of a higher birthrate and whatever 'right of return' they can negotiate. You did not insist that the Palestinian recognize Israel as the Jewish Homeland, even though President Bush does. You are encouraging them to believe they can have Palestine, and also destroy Israel from within.
And the joint understanding is wrong in its very end, when it sets up the United States as judge of who is and who is not implementing the 'road map.'
Secretary Rice, neither you nor your bosses, have the right to judge us, nor do our leaders have the right to let you to do so. You are acting in ways that show us that you are not an honest broker, nor someone who knows very much about our region, and certainly not our country. Only the people of Israel can decide what is in the interests of the people of Israel .
You are aligning yourself with the world's most racist and anti-semitic autocracies. And if your actions in Annapolis, and in your subsequent maneuver at the UN, are any guide, you are learning from them and following their orders like they were your slavers. You are applying Jim Crow laws to Israel . That should as shameful and humiliating for you as it is for us.
I am sure that, at some level, you know that what I am saying is true, that the Saudis and their ilk are odious, arrogant racists, who look down at you at least as much as they look down at us.
One day you will recognize that the Arab despots, and the US interests they grease, are your masters, exploiting you as a willing slave to do their dirty work, a dhimmi to hew their wood and carry their water. And the job they expect is for you to make Israel , the Mideast nigger, the dirty Jew of the world, pay -- pay so dearly and castrate itself to such an extent that it will not be able to defend itself when the killing attack begins.
We Israelis -- most of us -- know that. We shall overcome the Arabs, and the Persians, and we shall overcome you and your masters, if you insist on forcing us into a situation of existential vulnerability.
We have no desire to rule over another people, but neither do we intend to allow that people or their cousins to destroy the Jewish homeland and exterminate Jewish history, which is their clearly and continuously expressed intention. We want to be free of them, in a way that does not allow them threaten us, or undermine us, or kill us.
May that day come soon.
Respectfully,
Reuven Koret
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Thursday as doubts grew about a plan by global central banks to unfreeze credit markets and data showed a higher-than-expected rise in wholesale inflation last month.
UOJ,
Yudel Shain has gotten around this week to crapping on Moishe Londinski and his crappy hashgocho.
You wrote in 2005 that Londinski was fired from his shul rabbi position after he asked a baal teshuva woman to go to mikva and have sex with him as a frum ritual.
I seem to rememeber a 2nd scandal with Londinski that was not sex related.
Do you know the link to any public information on this bum?
He now lives in Lakewood from where he continues to direct his Seattle based supervision service.
Please tell R' Yudel that if he wants to facilitate the geulah, her should say over b'shem umro!
I warned Shlomo Mandel this was coming.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ahqotYcelZLc&refer=us
Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- New York City began receiving a blast of wintry weather today, with snow falling and forecast to reach as much as 3 inches (8 centimeters), while a major nor'easter may plow through the region this weekend.
A heavy-snow warning is in effect over portions of northeast Pennsylvania and the New York metropolitan area until 7 p.m. local time. As much as 10 inches of snow is expected over New York state's Southern Tier, Finger Lakes and Western Catskills regions, according to the National Weather Service.
``There's going to be a mixture of everything this afternoon,'' Bernie Rayno of AccuWeather.com said. ``The precipitation will end in Manhattan by 8 p.m.; however, slippery travel will linger until about midnight.''
A weather system in the Ohio Valley is expected to strengthen into a major nor'easter across the region by Dec. 16, forecasters said. More than a foot (0.3 meter) of snow may accompany that storm.
Weekend Nor'easter
``We will feel the biggest impact of the nor'easter on Saturday night,'' Smith said.
Today's wintry weather blew in from the nation's Midwest, where ice and freezing rain blanketed power lines and roads, leading to the deaths of 33 people, according to the Associated Press. In Oklahoma, more than 350,000 homes and businesses are still without power today, according to the state's Department of Emergency Management.
Thank you Reuven Koret, for writting such a beutifull and true letter.
Do you know if Dr.rice received the letter or was it just posted in some blog somewhere in the blogsphere?
The Mondrowitz hearing was continued (adjourned)...he's trying to get the court to agree to let him out on bail!
More later!
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/gelbsteins-bakery-lakewood-nj.html
GELBSTEIN'S BAKERY and Restaurant aka Greunenbaum's bakery in Lakewood, NJ has lost the kashrus certification of Reb M.B Klein-Lakewood Satmar Dayan, due to using unapproved ingredients.
Yudel Shain said...
He should have pulled it a while ago, the owner gave the Satmar Dayan a hard time about everything all along.
Anonymous said...
When I was in yeshiva, BMG stopped getting the cakes & pies for Shabbos from Gelbstein. They were tired of being ripped off. Even though they had to pay instead of getting a donation, Gelbstein's would anyway stick us with undesirable leftovers. They sent over unpopular, hard to sell items like prune & poppy pies.
I stopped eating there bichlal because the workers in the back looked like homeless street urchins that, putting it mildly, were not the picture of health.
Yudel Shain said...
It should have been pulled when it was in Washington Heights under KAJ.
He always bullyied the kashrus certifiers & their Rabonim. Wake up & smell the coffee, this is not news it's history.
check it out, if anyone will talk
Anonymous said...
Is there a problem with the main Gruenebaum's in Washington Hts?
Agav, the Gruenebaum's branch in Riverdale near the Yonkers border closed this past summer. It came as a big shock & disappointment to the oylam there who don't have many choices.
Oh UOJ, please don't blame me. I couldn't have anything to do with Mondrowitz stalling because I've been busy with the Steins from Toronto with our chassuna & sheva brochos.
Told ya so!
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c352_a1287/News/Briefs.html
Climate Change Puts Mideast At Risk
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a1368/News/National.html
As the controversy over destroyed CIA tapes of prisoner interrogations rages in Washington, leaders of the American Jewish Committee have stepped into the controversy over “waterboarding,” an interrogation technique the group says is essentially the same as tortures used during the Spanish Inquisition.
On Monday the AJC board of governors approved a statement that waterboarding “is unquestionably torture” and is “clearly illegal” under international law.
The article does not let on that Broyde is actually much more in bed with YCT. Neither does Gil Student since he sells Broyde's books.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a1421/News/New_York.html
Rabbi Michael Broyde, a prominent pulpit rabbi in Atlanta and a dayan, or decisor, on the RCA’s Beth Din of America, wrote a public letter several years ago questioning Chovevei Torah’s "inter-denominational interactions within Judaism," as well as its "interfaith cooperation" and views on working with gays and lesbians.
He declined to be interviewed for this article. But a year and a half ago, when Rabbi Broyde, a founder of Atlanta’s Torah Mitzion Kollel, needed to hire a rosh kollel to lead the institution, his choice was Rabbi Zev Farber, who was ordained by Chovevei Torah.
UOJ - tizku l'mitzvos for all your work. Do we know that Vicki Polin is legit. She posts names of people who have been accused of improprieties, not even neccessarily charged.
Vicki Polin does wonderful work.
We have different criteria for posting people's names as a headliner. In other words...I'm very liberal in the comments section..and don't necessarily verify the accuracy of the accusations unless they're outrageous. We have just about, NO reliable batei din, so the comments section gives strength to people that need validation that they're not crazy.
In the headline section of UOJ, I'm dead certain the accusations are accurate and would stand up in a court of law!
The internet isn't supposed to exist. How could it stand up in a court of law?
I am now in college, however, not to many years back; I attended Yeshiva of Brooklyn - for elementary school. The evil monster that was the school principal at the time was jack mandel: known child abuser and destroyer of countless children. Not too long after I left the school I had heard that the high school closed down, and his older brother who ran the high school threw him out and took over.... I had not heard about this evil man for a while till now, when, I opened up the torah times and lo and behold on p. 156 I find: that jack mandel is giving a talk on special ed. and at the bottom of the page not surprisingly I notice that the agudah is involved.
This evil man locked me up for an entire day in a room on the forth floor in the yob building. I was the youngest, shortest, and weakest kid in my class, and this man would would torture me for information regarding other kids wrongdoings.
To make a long story short, I am outraged by this scheduled talk and want it cancelled immediately.
What's this? The Agudah has a talk scheduled and I wasn't invited?
The Seattle Vaad verifies the allegations against Londinski, and then some.
Rabbi Aaron Levine, best known for throwing boys down the stairs at Ner Yisroel Toronto, used to play with the minds of young, vulnerable "Freshies" in grade 9. He would call them into his dreaded office, threaten them they will be suspended or the like unless they squeal on other bochurim. Who needs waterboarding? The achzar brought them to tears and made them talk.
One of the rebbeim outraged by Levine's despicable behavior, consulted with a major posek on what to do. The rebbe started instructing boys al pee a psak of Rav Moshe Feinstein that they are to lie to Levine and pretend they don't know anything.
What else did Londinski do?
What about Gershon Weiss in MTJ Staten Island?
He is like a cult leader with a large following of obedient little space cadets. He probably has more snitches reporting to him per capita than the Stasi secret police did in East Germany.
Gershon Weiss is not to be confused with Moishe Meir Weiss, my rov at the Agudah of Staten Island.
It's always good when bochurim don't take any crap and rise up to defend themselves.
Yehuda Pollock once charged at a bochur in the dorm. He got the surprise of his life when a 15 year old kid grabbed him and tossed him across the room. He was actually scared and started threatening this kid he will get Abba Gorelick and Elisha Dorfman to expell him.
How did Londinski dupe a woman into having sex with him if she is a highly educated Phd?
Perhaps UOJ can fill us in.
There is no "toelet" getting in to the gutter on the Londinski matter.
If there is a serious inquiry made to the Seattle Vaad, I expect that they would respond honestly and in a forthright manner.
I believe R' Yudel has done his homework on this matter as it relates to a person's ne'emanut, yirat Shomayim, and integrity; that is absolutely required in kashrus and rabbonus. (as should be in every yid)
Perhaps contact him as well.
According to some people that are in the know, the police came down to YOB in the beginning of the year. They were investigating a case of child abuse by one of their Rebbeim. Has anyone heard anything about this?
Why is Londinski any different than the Tendlers who UOJ and even rabbonim warn people to keep their wives and daughters away from?
It's besides the fact that if he is not fit to be a rabbi, he should be forced out of the hashgocho business.
http://jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com/2007/12/update-case-of-rabbi-yisroel-shapiro.html
Bond was posted the day after Yisroel Shapiro was arrested by Yisroel Shapiro's wife and one of his brother's . Rumors are the Bail was set at $175,000
Connection: SURETY COMPANY
The Preliminary Hearing for alleged child molester, Yisroel Shapiro (son of Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro) will be:
Date: January 3, 2008
Time: 8:30 AM
Trial Location:
5800 Wabash Ave., Room 6
Baltimore, MD 21215-3330
When he was forced out of Ner by the new rosh yeshiva, his wife's powerful Nussbaum family got him the menahel job for even younger kids at Eitz Chaim. I wonder how his pattern of abuse played out over there.
I think he's retired now.
There was "chemistry" between Londinski and that woman.
Maryland Senator Jim Brochin Will Be On The Panel Discussion After Screening of "Narrow Bridge". That is sponsored by The Awareness Center.
There are only a few seats left for the Baltimore screening of the controversial, acclaimed film "Narrow Bridge", which has been making waves in the Orthodox Jewish community. it is the first film of its kind to break the silence on the issue of sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community. The film will be shown at the Pikesville Library on January 2, 2008 at 6:00 PM. Reservations are required. Call 443-857-5560 or email vickipolin@aol.com
There are still several seats available for the showing of "Narrow Bridge" in Washington DC on December 18th (this coming Tuesday). Following the film will be a panel discussion.
The event will take place at the Cleveland Park Library at 6:00 PM. Reservations are required.
To reserve a seat contact The Awareness Center at 443-857-5560 or email vickipolin@aol.com
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3481423,00.html
Teens assault haredi boy, call him 'Jewish dog'
Four teens severely beat 12-year-old boy in southern community, steal his money and urinate on him. Police suspect anti-Semitic motives involved
Adva Cohen
A 12-year-old ultra-Orthodox boy from a small southern community was severely assaulted this week by four teens from the town, who also stole his Hanukkah gelt and urinated on him.
Police are investigating anti-Semitic motives in the crime, and say that the four teens had been involved in similar incidents in the past.
The incident began Sunday evening, when the boy was making his way to a Torah class in his yeshiva. Suddenly, four teens, ages 13-17, approached him, pushed him to the ground and started beating him.
"You are a Jewish dog, give us the money," they yelled, while kicking the young boy, punching him and slapping him. They then searched his pockets, and took the NIS 60 he received from his grandfather as a gift for Hanukkah.
"I tried to resist, I tried fighting them, but they were stronger than me," the boy later told his father.
Before they left him lying on the pavement, bruised and aching, one of his abusers unzipped his pants and peed on the horrified boy, much to the other teens' amusement.
Once the abuse was over and his assailants gone, the boy ran home. When his father found out what had happened, he took his son with him and they returned to the scene of the attack, where the father questioned some eyewitnesses about the incident, and then managed to lead the police to their area of residence.
The four were arrested on the same day.
The investigating officer at the Dimona police, First Sergeant Major Eran Cohen, said that two of the teens confessed to the assault, while the other two are denying any involvement in the crime.
A police investigation reveled that the assailants are all immigrants from the former Soviet Union who had already been involved in similar attacks against haredi individuals, apparently for anti-Semitic reasons. The four will likely be indicted for abuse.
50 years ago in RJJ we used to call londinsy "lumpy"
You can figure out why.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the odds the U.S. will fall into a recession are "clearly rising" and he believes economic growth is "getting close to stall speed."
Greenspan, who ran the central bank for 18 1/2 years, until early 2006, offered his views on the economy in an interview on NPR News' Morning Edition that will air on Friday. Excerpts of the interview were released on Thursday.
A severe slump in the housing market, a stubborn credit crisis and turbulence on Wall Street are endangering the country's economic health. Growth in the current October through December period is expected to have slowed to a feeble pace of just 1.5 percent, or less.
Economists, including Greenspan, have warned that the chances of a recession are growing.
Asked whether the economy will tip into a recession -- something that has not happened since 2001 -- Greenspan said, "It's too soon to say, but the odds are clearly rising."
He said he felt this way because of the slowing pace of growth. "We are getting close to stall speed," he said. "We are far more vulnerable at levels where growth is so slow than we would be otherwise," he added. "Indeed, it's like someone who has an immune system that's not working very well is subject to all sorts of diseases and the economy at this level of growth is subject to all sorts of shocks."
Greenspan's remarks come just days after the Federal Reserve, under Chairman Ben Bernanke, sliced a key interest rate for a third time this year to prevent the housing and credit troubles from sinking the economy.
The situation poses the biggest challenge yet to Bernanke since succeeding Greenspan in February 2006.
Some analysts have questioned whether Bernanke waited too long to cut the Fed's key rate and whether he has acted aggressively enough to soothe the economy's woes. The Fed initially dropped its key rate in September, the first reduction in four years. That was followed up by additional rate cuts in late October and then again on Tuesday.
Greenspan again rejected criticism that his policy actions helped to feed a housing boom that eventually went bust. Critics say Greenspan held interest rates too low for too long after the 2001 recession.
To have prevented such euphoria in housing that fed a bubble in prices, Greenspan said the Fed would have had to jack up interest rates so high that it would have damaged the economy. "That would have broken the back of the economy, and brought the housing boom down," Greenspan said.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/12/10/qc-yeshivagrowop1210.html
A Montreal daycare was closed Monday because of flooding caused by a marijuana-growing operation.
The Yeshiva Gedola daycare on Pratt Street in Outremont was forced to close on the weekend because of a leaky pipe originating from the floor above, where the illegal grow-op was uncovered.
Montreal firefighters discovered the grow-op on Saturday when they were called to the building to investigate the leak.
The second-floor commercial space was crammed with more than 1,500 mature marijuana plants.
Officials at the non-profit daycare said they had no idea what kind of business their upstairs neighbours were running and never smelled the telltale skunky odor that often accompanies grow operations.
Water damage was minimal and the daycare was able to open its doors on Monday.
The problem with this site is that it really just scrapes the surface with the high-profile cases we all know already.
Habad is a whole world of abuse and the latest is Cunin of California, yes Rabbi Cunin the guy who invented the term habad house-a serial kiddy fiddler
Do you understand the religious mind?
Toyrah comes first. One sits shiva for the child that intermarries, one can't be suspect gedolim that cause children to run from our religion! You say z'chus avos. What kind of rosh was HaRav Mandel if no one told him what was going on? But again children are expendable, you can always make more. There is only one Torah and Daas Torah so just like the emperor with no clothes, we have to sacrifice ourselves and our children for the continuation of a phantom. With all the speak out there-- was there a time when the Jews for an extended period of time were treated well by G-d? Are we always judged by our madraygah and therefore could always do better and therefore just put on a facade?
ECONOMIC REPORT
Consumer inflation accelerates in Nov.
Headline CPI up 0.8%, core rate up 0.3%
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
Last update: 8:30 a.m. EST Dec. 14
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Consumer prices rose 0.8% in November, led by higher prices for gasoline, the Labor Department reported Friday. This is the fastest pace of consumer inflation in more than two years.
But energy wasn't the entire story. Prices of apparel, drugs, and airline fares also spiked.
As a result, core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.3%, the biggest gain since January.
The figures raise concern that inflationary pressures are increasing, and could limit the room for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to counter the expected economic slowing over the next few quarters.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures signaled a weaker market open on Friday after a higher-than-expected consumer prices report raised concern that simmering inflation may hamper further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
The Consumer Price Index jumped by 0.8 percent last month, the sharpest increase in more than two years and above the 0.6 percent gain economists were expecting. Stripping out food and energy prices, the core CPI advanced 0.3 percent, the most since January.
The Producer Price Index, a measure of wholesale inflation, caught Wall Street by surprise on Thursday, climbing at its fastest pace in 34 years.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/kyo-restaurant-in-monsey.html
Yudel Shain said...
Per Reb Zuche Blech, he doesn't allow non-shmurah matzo in his hotels.
Anonymous said...
Unless there was a recent policy change, will the real R' Zushe Blech please stand up.
I called him two years ago about a Long Island resort under Glatt Boys that he was machshir. He didn't offer much information but was forced to admit when asked that it's non-shmurah. He started farentfering that "even Breuers & Badatz" give hashgocho on it. When he saw I wasn't interested, he had two suggestions:
A. he recommended other hotels of his on the Jersey Shore & Upstate that are shmurah.
B. he suggested reaching out to the caterer to ask if they would consider switching to shmurah.
Being naive, I called Glatt Boys who said they would absolutely not even provide shmurah to yechidim. They invited guests to bring their own. WHen I pointed out I have a problem with matzah meal in cooked food, etc, they explained that even the "yeshivish" crowd from the 5 Towns doesn't have a problem with that.
Yudel Shain said...
From Rabbi Blech;
Yudel,
Thanks for the correction, but it is not quite accurate. I do allow the use of non-shmurah Matzah - but it must be 18 minute matzoh. This is exactly the same policy as the B'dtatz Eida Ha'Chareidis in their Pesach certification.
Anonymous said...
R' Yudel,
Should I burst out laughing? If Matzah is patchkeed around with for more than 18 minutes, doesn't it become chometz gomur?
Maybe Rabbi Blech means to exclude chometz nukshe like egg matzah where the chimutz begins but is then stopped.
How is this any different than most other hotels?
I assume the Badatz and others only allow non-shmurah matzah figuring that many not frum people may come on to chometz if they are forced to buy the very expensive shmurah only.
Agav, the Vilna Gaon holds we are choshesh that non-shmurah is chometz gomur since just a little moisture when you're not watching is all it takes.
Anonymous said...
Isn't Zishe Blech the point man at Rubashkin for Rav Weissmandel?
I wonder how many labels can get switched between treif & kosher in 18 minutes?
Anonymous said...
I think Rabbi Zushe Blech sounds pretty slippery here when asked about the Pesach hotels. I am afraid that other hashgochos perceived to be "heimish" might also not be forthcoming about lower than expected standards.
I'll leave it to R' Yudel to keep them on their toes.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/gelbsteins-bakery-lakewood-nj.html
Yudel Shain said...
You are right Rabbi Blech is Rabbi Weismandel's point man, will do practically anything to cover him.
By the Way Rabbi Weismandel did the snake-charmers-act to finish off Rabbi Gissinger at KYO-a snake is a snake (PERHAPS ? Rabbi Blech had to come into the picture for R' Weismandel without knowing THE PLAN).
Rabbi Weismandel & other Rabonim that worked so called on behalf of Rabbi Gissinger, actually all took part in the hatchet scheme-all because they had some other goal in mind THE COMMON ENEMY. So they were willing to sacrifice him for the common goal....
It's an outrage that KAJ keeps taking money from Rubashkin after that corrupt family banned their own Dayan, Rav Chaim Kohn, from stepping foot in their meat plants. It's obvious Rubashkin is trying to hide his fraud from one of the biggest experts in halacha. Breuer's goes along with it so they can keep getting shtupped with greenback.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/gelbsteins-bakery-lakewood-nj.html
Ungarischer said...
While we are at it, let's explain that the owner of Gruenebaum caused the original rift in KAJ-Monsey and the din Torah with the Holy Rabbi Zimmerman (who had the backing of the heiliger Maachil Traifos who is giving tzedakah for his treif-fed customers in the Holy Land). And the main branch is not in Washnigton Heights, there everything is closed except a small outlet on 186th street. The whole KAJ is a bit of a scam, almost every part of the kehila has closed down in Washington Heights, closed down the girls high school, moved the boys high school to Yonkers, and gradually closing everything down while just cashing checks from Rubashkin!
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/13/mitchell.report.pdf
UOJ instructed me to leave no stone unturned.
There was at least one Frankel's veib so far arrested for fraud & embezzlement.
http://www.browardtimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=829&Itemid=98
Perhaps it’s me, but it seems that more women are being arrested and charged with committing crimes. Most of their alleged crimes are financial in nature and involve some kind of fraud. Are we in the midst of a female-engineered crime wave, or is it just normal greed and a sign of the times?
Not only is that poor, lost soul being snake charmed by Leib Tropper but his wife and children will never be accepted as Jewish from the Eternal Jewish Fraud now that the Bet Din of Jerusalem and others have woken up to Tropper's SCAM.
Listen pal, if Tropper gets away with his money-driven fraud, there will be no disincentive to marry a non-Jew. Hence the problem why Tropper's FRAUD is a no-go.
One of the reasons why Tropper was initially getting away with his fraud is because he charges a flat fee for the conversion. The catch is that he has indirect ways to profit through EJF.
It's a shame that Joe Izrael took down the shiur from Rabbi Bloch that picks apart what Tropper is doing.
I will speak to my good friend Leib Tropper. Maybe he should stick to helping me destroy the lives of people who publish books.
My dear friend above,
How much is Tropper charging you for this phony conversion that will not be accepted by any Orthodox Jewish court around the globe? Your children will never be recognized as Jews by any Orthodox Jewish community.
When you discover that Tropper is a low-life con-man, contact me, I'll have the best legal representation available to you at no charge.
I know I'll be hearing from you.
God bless the naive, weak and vulnerable...and may He protect you from thieves and charlatans.
The defense being put out by Team Tropper is that Rav Bloch and the others criticizing him seem to indiscriminately criticize often as a flavor of the month kind of thing.
They point out that Rav Bloch also attacked R' Chaim Kohn. I don't know what was said but there were many critics of rav Kohn while he was supporting Rubashkin. After Rubashkin stabbed Rav Kohn in the back, R' Chaim learned his lesson the hard way and you no longer hear criticism of Rav Kohn.
"After Rubashkin stabbed Rav Kohn in the back, R' Chaim learned his lesson the hard way"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
My brothers Sholom & Heshy in Iowa are into the Night of the Long Knives kind of thing.
http://mosherubashkinhitsjews.blogspot.com/
When I take on my enemies in Crown Heights, I prefer my bare hands to punch and slap them silly.
I did not have sex with "that woman", Monica Lewinsky.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/gelbsteins-bakery-lakewood-nj.html#c7941681413307117433
Anonymous said...
R' Yudel and readers,
There is an obscure sefer Chazal called Midrash Aseres Hadibros that recounts the story of a Tanna, Rebbi Shaul. He left learning to go into gesheft. When he saw aylu gonvim, veaylu chomsim veaylu chotfim he became very disillusioned and went back to beis medrash.
I live in a place where most of the meat purveyors are dishonest. They employ different petty tricks to cheat and steal from customers. Most of them are also Rubashkin distributors. At one of the two where Alle is available, I had a series of funny stories with the baal habos where I was dan lekaf zechus. He refuses to institute any kind of system where you know what you are paying for. You have to trust him. I figured out a way to test if he is being honest and determined he stole $20 from me last week. The last place left does not steal as far as I know but they are always in trouble with the Health Dept for rodents and other unsanitary conditions.
$20 is peanuts. He could make a killing by sourcing treif chickens in Puerto Rico.
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2007/12/ejf-smear-campaign.html
Thursday, December 13, 2007
EJF smear campaign
When Rav Sternbuch warned me that my involvement in trying to clarify the halachic basis of EJF would lead to "attempts to get me" - I told him I didn't understand his concern. Unfortunately now I do. Recently someone asked me about how to deal with problematic geirus associated with certain Orthodox rabbis. I suggested contacting EJF for advice. Which they did and mentioned that I had recommended their contacting EJF. Bizarrely, however, the person received the following comments regarding myself - totally gratuitous insults as well as a grossly incorrect distortion of the Abarbanel's words. I am deleting the name of the member of EJF who responded. Furthermore the comment was entirely irrevelant to the matter being discussed. Following it is my response which I sent to EJF.
EJF wrote:
Hi, Dr. Eidensohn in his Book Titled 'Daas Torah' writes in the introduction that he gathered Different opinions Re: various Topics. He continues to write that Rav Eliyashuv , shlita Told him only To quote accepted opinions. He writes that he could not decide which ones are and which ones aren't so he brings all. Well.... in his Chapter on conversion He brings the opinion of the Abarbanel ....A Giant ....but not an Accepted Halachic opinion, That It is sufficient for a non Jew to Believe in the Thirteen Principals 'Even though he doesn't know anything from the entire Torah. It is sufficient to achieve spiritual Perfection Etc... Therfore when a NON JEW decides to CONVERT and Wants to learn torah to obtain the World to come,It is ONLY neccesary to to teach him these 13 Principals Etc..'.(See Pg 70 of above book) Maybe those Rabbi's in Florida accept the Ababarnel's Position as an accepted opinion Like Rabbi Eidenson does? Is that possible? I think Dr Eidensohn is a very Accomplished person and I'm sure He can help. I actually enjoy reading his book.
---------------
I responded to EJF with the following:
Unfortunately Rabbi "X" severely misunderstands the Abarbanel and the Rambam - whose status as a mainstream authority doesn't need my support. Furthermore I do not have a chapter on conversion in Daas Torah. The chapter which cited the Abarbanel was dealing with Principles of Faith [for a Jew] - below are the three entries included under the subheading of "Converts to Judaism must accept principles". The Rambam asserts in his commentary to Sanhedrin that if one accepts the 13 principles he will have the World to Come. The Abarbanel wrote a defense of the Rambam's 13 principles in a sefer Rosh Amana. The Abarbanel is not saying that one does not have to accept the 613 mitzvos - chas veshalom - as Rabbi "X" asserts. He is saying that since a Jew only needs acceptance of these principles to get Olam HaBah it is important that converts also be taught these principles. Therefore as converts with the acceptance of these principles he will get Olam HaBah - even if he is not a talmid chochom. Similarly a Jew who is ignorant of Torah - but accepts these principles will get Olam HaBah.
Read the rest at the above URL.
Including this reader comment:
Anonymous said...
Where do you think that term "Kosher Nostra" comes from??
You interfered with a very lucrative geirus business (not to mention the duck confit, pastries, fine wines and 5 star accommodations), now you are a marked man. They will trash you and trash you thoroughly. Be prepared for a barrage of vicious lies that will know no limit.
And also do not be shocked if you receive physical threats either, we have. Watch your back and take care of your family.The Kosher Nostra knows no limit and halacha has no place in the Rabbi "business".
Meanwhile, May Hashem Bless you with every possible Bracha for all you have done and are doing on behalf of Klal Yisrael. In the end, it is Hashem who runs the world and it is from Hashem that you will receive your brachot and your rewards.
Keep the faith.
THIS IS WAAAAAR !!!!
UOJ should bring out his heavy weapons and take care of Tropper once and for all !!!!
Fact:
One bais din after another are refusing EJF proposed candidates for conversion.
In fact, the " bamboozled converts" are now being refused entrance in to the majority of the study programs by recognized mentors.
Tropper--your gig is up!
Anyone hurt or scammed by Tropper, contact me.
I see Tropper is no slouch. I thought he would need a couple of pointers from me but he's doing fine on his own.
Moish, you have a sick sense of humor. Here, you were doch a shutif with Pinter from Stamford Hill importing Gruenenbaum cakes for Pesach under KAJ. Shmuck Pinter sold it to the whole community as non-gebrochts. You knew damn well that it was full of matzo meal allowed by Yekkes. You simply couldn’t care less about other people’s standards. Once you lost your sensitivities to people’s beliefs, you were able to sell the Tarfus to the klal.
Next wintry blast 'much more powerful'
Updated 39m ago
seems like Tropper really got UOJ pissed.
I can't remember the last time I agreed entirely with Krugman. He's got it unequivocally right !
-----------
By PAUL KRUGMAN - NEW YORK TIMES
Published: December 14, 2007
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced plans to lend $40 billion to banks. By my count, it’s the fourth high-profile attempt to rescue the financial system since things started falling apart about five months ago. Maybe this one will do the trick, but I wouldn’t count on it.
In past financial crises — the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia’s default in 1998 — the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic isn’t working.
Why not? Because the problem with the markets isn’t just a lack of liquidity — there’s also a fundamental problem of solvency.
Let me explain the difference with a hypothetical example.
Suppose that there’s a nasty rumor about the First Bank of Pottersville: people say that the bank made a huge loan to the president’s brother-in-law, who squandered the money on a failed business venture.
Even if the rumor is false, it can break the bank. If everyone, believing that the bank is about to go bust, demands their money out at the same time, the bank would have to raise cash by selling off assets at fire-sale prices — and it may indeed go bust even though it didn’t really make that bum loan.
And because loss of confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, even depositors who don’t believe the rumor would join in the bank run, trying to get their money out while they can.
But the Fed can come to the rescue. If the rumor is false, the bank has enough assets to cover its debts; all it lacks is liquidity — the ability to raise cash on short notice. And the Fed can solve that problem by giving the bank a temporary loan, tiding it over until things calm down.
Matters are very different, however, if the rumor is true: the bank really did make a big bad loan. Then the problem isn’t how to restore confidence; it’s how to deal with the fact that the bank is really, truly insolvent, that is, busted.
My story about a basically sound bank beset by a crisis of confidence, which can be rescued with a temporary loan from the Fed, is more or less what happened to the financial system as a whole in 1998. Russia’s default led to the collapse of the giant hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, and for a few weeks there was panic in the markets.
But when all was said and done, not that much money had been lost; a temporary expansion of credit by the Fed gave everyone time to regain their nerve, and the crisis soon passed.
In August, the Fed tried again to do what it did in 1998, and at first it seemed to work. But then the crisis of confidence came back, worse than ever. And the reason is that this time the financial system — both banks and, probably even more important, nonbank financial institutions — made a lot of loans that are likely to go very, very bad.
It’s easy to get lost in the details of subprime mortgages, resets, collateralized debt obligations, and so on. But there are two important facts that may give you a sense of just how big the problem is.
First, we had an enormous housing bubble in the middle of this decade. To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels.
Second, there was a tremendous amount of borrowing into the bubble, as new home buyers purchased houses with little or no money down, and as people who already owned houses refinanced their mortgages as a way of converting rising home prices into cash.
As home prices come back down to earth, many of these borrowers will find themselves with negative equity — owing more than their houses are worth. Negative equity, in turn, often leads to foreclosures and big losses for lenders.
And the numbers are huge. The financial blog Calculated Risk, using data from First American CoreLogic, estimates that if home prices fall 20 percent there will be 13.7 million homeowners with negative equity. If prices fall 30 percent, that number would rise to more than 20 million.
That translates into a lot of losses, and explains why liquidity has dried up. What’s going on in the markets isn’t an irrational panic. It’s a wholly rational panic, because there’s a lot of bad debt out there, and you don’t know how much of that bad debt is held by the guy who wants to borrow your money.
How will it all end? Markets won’t start functioning normally until investors are reasonably sure that they know where the bodies — I mean, the bad debts — are buried. And that probably won’t happen until house prices have finished falling and financial institutions have come clean about all their losses. All of this will probably take years.
Meanwhile, anyone who expects the Fed or anyone else to come up with a plan that makes this financial crisis just go away will be sorely disappointed.
Aaron levine used to throw kids down the stairs at Ner Yisrel in Toronto. I never knew this until I saw it here. 1 other thing is that in Eitz Chaim in Toronto (should really be called eitz maves)- ANY kid that does not get A's , or in any way deviates from the "norm" the parents are threatened that they must take their kid for a psych eval, or they will be thrown out of the school . I know beause my son was 1 of those 100's of kids over the years.
"You People" will hear two "giant sucking sounds going all the way to Mexico".
That would be the deflating of Leib Tropper's stomach when UOJ is finished with him and the housing price bubble.
NY Daily News:
US: Family suing Chiquita bananas for $7.8 billion
Relatives of nearly 400 murdered or tortured Colombians slammed banana importer Chiquita Brands International with a $7.8 billion suit Wednesday accusing the U.S.-based firm of funding terrorists.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, notes Chiquita recently pleaded guilty to criminal charges of making payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC, between 1997 and 2004.
"While Chiquita paid a fine to the United States government of $25 million, none of that money went to any of the victims," lawyer Jonathan Reiter said.
"Chiquita has admitted to making payments to the AUC and now it should be held accountable by the families of people who were murdered by this organization."
Source: thedailygreen.com
Publication date: 12/12/2007
Is Apple Juice Imported From China Safe?
Washington and New York are the top two apple producing states in the country, but even their prodigious orchards don't compare to the production from China, which now supplies 40% of the apple juice consumed in the United States.
No tainted apple juice has been discovered, though a number of foods and products from China have turned up contaminated this year, and American apple growers have long warned that China doesn't adhere to the same safety and environmental standards that the U.S. producers do. That's traditionally been an economic argument: It's tough to compete in a free market if the rules of production differ from one nation to another. But, now, it's emerging as a health concern.
The Food and Drug Administration has strict rules for juice safety, according to the Dallas Morning News, but the FDA has also proved unable to keep up with the monitoring of other imported food and drugs, leaving some doubt in the minds of many consumers.
The entrance of China into the American market in the past 10 years has been a huge worry for another reason dear to the hearts of the green legion: It's tough competing with cheap apples and juice from China, and that puts yet another stress on local farms. The juice market, particularly, hurt many growers because they lost the ability to sell apples that looked less-than perfect. (Consumers in grocery stores rarely choose blemished apples, even if they taste just as good.) In 2001, for instance, growers in New York's Hudson Valley lost most of their crop to freak hail storms, but they had trouble selling the damaged apples because the juice market was saturated with concentrate from China.
While it may seem as American as apple pie, much of the apple juice filling those juice boxes and jugs on U.S. grocery shelves comes from China. Over the past 10 years, China, which produces up to 65% of the world's apples, has become the top supplier of concentrate used in apple juice sold in the U.S., contributing more than 40 percent of the juice consumed here, compared with 22% from domestically produced apples, according to the U.S. Apple Association trade group.
American consumers, especially those with young children, have been drinking juice from Chinese concentrate for years. The amount of apple juice concentrate pouring in from China skyrocketed from only 4.5 million gallons in 1996 to 249.54 million gallons in 2005 – 55 times as much – according to figures from the Apple Association. Last year, the U.S. imported 225.54 million gallons from that country.
In August, blogger S. Neil Vineberg, who runs a public relations firm in West Hampton, N.Y., took his thoughts about Tropicana's use of Chinese juice into cyberspace, launching an e-dialogue with like-minded consumers. Mr. Vineberg said he wrote to Tropicana asking them to discontinue the use of Chinese apple juice concentrate and "suggested ... consumers might stage a boycott of Tropicana products."
His blog has generated dozens of postings, but there has been no boycott, and Tropicana remains one of the top-selling brands.
Now, there is no longer enough U.S.-made juice available to supply American bottlers, even if tomorrow they decided to forgo Chinese shipments.
There are U.S. juices and ciders without foreign concentrate – but determining the contents in a brand of juice can be challenging. Since a 1986 court case, federal law has required U.S. companies that add only water to foreign concentrate to list the concentrate's country of origin. But, for example, the printed labels on bottles of Tree Top apple juice, marketed by Tree Top Inc., in Selah, Wash., boasts of "fruit we've grown ourselves", and "sharing the pure taste of our Washington orchards."
In less-obvious type, on the plastic bottle, is the phrase "Conc from USA China." A spokeswoman for Tree Top declined to comment, and company executives did not respond to e-mailed requests for information. Likewise, apple juice labels from Motts LLP, part of Plano-based Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages, speak of "our apples" that are "hand-picked ... putting little between the orchards and you, the way you trust us to." A careful observer might also see "Conc. From USA, China and Argentina" stamped on the side of the plastic bottle.
The country of origin information is "inkjeted on the bottle because we can change it more quickly when the countries of origin change," said spokesman Greg Artkop, explaining why it is not printed on the label.
He also noted that the company uses a mixture of foreign concentrates and "millions of cases of apples each year from U.S. apple producers." There is no requirement for where on the package the information must be placed, only that it be legible and in English. That can lead to a "Where's Waldo?"-type search – contributing to some consumers' frustration. "I think it's an important issue and at least consumers should be informed," said Mr. Vineberg. "And then they can make their own personal choices."
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