THE UOJ ARCHIVES JANUARY 2008:
Background - Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., Case No.04cv268 - was tried in a bench trial from September 26, 2005 to November 4, 2005 before Judge John E. Jones III. On December 20, 2005 Judge Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision, ruling that the Dover mandate was unconstitutional, and barring intelligent design from being taught in Pennsylvania's Middle District public school science classrooms. He used the phrase " breathtaking inanity" to describe the position of the board of Dover - getting the school involved in this "legal maelstrom".
Judge John E. Jones was appointed to the federal bench by President George Bush in 2002. He is a devout Christian and a Conservative, politically. He was nobody's fool, he knew the damage "religion" can cause - taught by the wrong people, in the wrong setting, for the wrong reasons.
His ruling in summary: Religion has no place in a science classroom!
As an opinionated Orthodox Jew (in case you did not know that), I must believe his decision was a prudent one. Which deity were we going to teach the children about? Inevitably, not the God we believe in. With 90% of the country claiming to be of a Christian denomination, and 80% claiming to believe in the Christian deity, what chance did the Jewish children have in learning about the God of the Jews...the God that led us out of Egypt, with the intent of us becoming the light on to the nations?
"Breathtaking inanity" indeed! ID is not a science, it is a belief system, that the Muslims, for example, want to capitalize on - to kill every man, woman and child that refuses to believe in Allah!
Oh - what damage "religion" - used as a tool of exploitation - can do!
So when "religious" groups or organizations, infiltrate the political arena, we must be very suspicious of their agenda!
ALL RELIGIOUS GROUPS!
We must clinically and critically examine, what exactly are they trying to accomplish? What's good for the goose, is not necessarily good for the gander.
The epic battle that we are experiencing today in the Orthodox Jewish world, is NOT an ideological or theoretical battle. They - would have you believe that. It is clearly about - the falsehoods and damage that rabbis are able to wreak on the masses - if they go unchecked. Not all rabbis, no sirree, but many...even most!
This is not about us believing in the authority of the Torah or the Chazal.
We do or we must!!!
This is about our value system placed in the hands of charlatans, fraudsters, and perverters of the Torah! We can not - should not - must not - believe that because there is no explicit Halacha banning penetration of a child's anus by an adult, therefore it is somehow acceptable in our society!
Certainly - not worrisome enough - to ban that " non-penetrator" from our yeshivas!? And certainly not troubling enough - to keep that "non-penetrator" away from our children!?
My God - the breathtaking inanity - the unmitigated gall - that every single Orthodox Jewish organization did not take out full page ads in the Sunday New York Times - disassociating themselves from the lunatic rabbi, Pinchos Scheinberg, that ruled.....
"PENETRATION OF A CHILD'S ANUS IS THE ONLY CRITERIA IN DEEMING A PERSON A CHILD MOLESTER"!
And what about the fact that Yeshiva Torah Temimah, Lipa Margulies & Yehuda Kolko - under the advisement of the charlatan of our generation - Yisroel Belsky - were instructed not to go to bais din? Does that count for anything? Does it?
What possibly could the motives be - to lobby the state legislature against background checks of every individual in private schools? What on earth can the motives be when rabbis instruct victims of child-rape not to go to the police? What kind of human being could that person or group be? Can they be spokespeople for our religion? Are these hucksters deserving to represent us...speak for us...lobby for our benefit...represent Orthodox Jews and the Torah to the world? They make Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart look like saints!
This battle is for the sanity and minds of Orthodox Jews! This is a battle against the scheming evildoers that have somehow claimed our Judaism as their private dynasty. To enrich themselves, to grasp whatever power that they can get their grubby hands on, whatever money they can squeeze out of Washington, or local government, for their personal agenda!
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" are the immortal words of Carl Sagan. Is there any evidence that these rabbis care about our children enough - to seriously tackle the sex-abuse issue in our communities? Of course not! It's a charade! Was there any statement at all that the "penetration" psak was an error? Anything? Of course not!
What then are their claims to represent me, you, my children, your children and my community? Because they claim Torah knowledge? So what? Therefore what? Have they demonstrated the capacity to understand simple right and wrong? If our children's safety is up for sale, what else is there for us to trust their judgment on?
Look at the "legal maelstrom" they brought on us across continents!
Can there be anything more perverted than their stand now - against bloggers? What's next? Your freedom? Are you ready to throw that away? Freedom to know what's going on in your childrens' schools - about the people you pay blood-money to - to educate your child? Freedom to know that you are a victim of a fraud called gedolim? So what if it's ugly to see in print!?
IT IS UGLY!!!
It's horrifying to think that anyone can trust these very people - where only a few months ago, Shmuel Kaminetzky urged the victims' parents of Stefan Colmer - NOT TO GO TO THE POLICE!
My God...how insane have we become...that we can't protect our children in any legal way we deem fit without their permission. In other Brooklyn communities, these guys would be "swimming with the fishes".
Don't let anyone ever tell you that you need to stop thinking! Don't dare let anyone dictate to you what you may or may not do to protect your families. If a thief breaks in to the sanctity of your home, and threatens your children and family, do away with them in any fashion you deem appropriate! No rabbinical dispensation needed! If blood is splattered all over the place - so be it! Who says it has to be pretty?
Religion in the hands of hustlers and frauds is dangerous! When lashon hara or mesira takes a front seat over your child's welfare...WATCH OUT! The blogosphere is the new media; raw, unfiltered, and not for the faint of heart. You want cute stories, don't come here. You want the down & dirty, the way I feel in my heart, the pain I experience - about what happened to my Judaism...read my blog. If not...get lost. Nobody forces you to read UOJ.
The blogosphere was able to break the backs of the criminals that endangered every single Jewish child in a yeshiva! That's good enough reason to thank God for the Internet! I do not need any other reason, nor permission from self-professed "scholars". Lives saved! People's lives given a new hope and sense of justice; good enough for me!
Watch out for the people that want to foist their perverted belief system on you.
Religion in the hands of very evil people, can destroy skyscrapers with airplanes!
R'UOJ, you can put this peice alongside the roto rooter peice, in a file labeled my "Masterpeices", it's hurtfull, yet so true, and thats scary,
ReplyDeleteCazak! keep it up, your doing great, "Happy Newyear"
"Was there any statement at all that the "penetration" psak was an error? Anything?"
ReplyDeleteRabbi Dratch wrote a teshuva culling from poskim that clearly refute the lies that allegedly come from Rabbi Scheinberg.
http://bp2.blogger.com/_PWsyVBvNUGU/R2nIFVqGshI/AAAAAAAAAoE/Q5ot9YOhGsY/S185/yisroel+belsky.jpg
ReplyDeleteUOJ is still bitching about me?
http://cbs2.com/local/Orthodox.Jew.Spinka.2.620728.html
ReplyDeleteRabbi, 5 Others Plead Not Guilty To Tax Fraud
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The leader of an Orthodox Jewish sect and five other men accused of tax fraud and money laundering pleaded not guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
Brooklyn, N.Y., resident Naftali Tzi Weisz, the 59-year-old Grand Rabbi of Spinka, was indicted by a federal grand jury Dec. 18 for allegedly taking part in a scheme that cheated the Internal Revenue Service out of at least $33 million in donations to Spinka charities.
Spinka is the name of a Hasidic sect within Orthodox Judaism. The group is named for the European town along the border of Romania and Hungary where it originated.
The six men were accompanied in court by their attorneys and about five supporters at this morning's hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Rosenberg.
Their trial is scheduled for Feb. 12.
According to the indictment, donors to Spinka charities were paid illegal kickbacks, refunding up to 95 percent of the donations, which were laundered through the Israel-based Mizrahi Bank and businesses in downtown Los Angeles' jewelry district.
The donors then claimed a tax deduction on the full amount, prosecutors said.
Weisz is currently free on $2 million bond.
Other named defendants are Gabbai Moshe Zigelman, 60, also of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Joseph Roth, 66, of Tel Aviv, Israel; Yaacov Zeivald, 43, of Valley Village; Los Angeles residents Alan Jay Friedman, 43, and Yosef Nachum Naiman, 55; as well as five Spinka charities.
All six men face lengthy terms in federal prison if convicted on all charges.
Zigelman and the other defendants are free on bond except for Roth, an assistant manager at Mizrahi Bank, who remains in custody. On Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Tillman granted Roth $1.9 million bond, but stayed his decision so prosecutors could appeal it to another judge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel O'Brien said Friday that there is a significant risk that Roth will flee to Israel, which has a law forbidding the extradition of its citizens.
Chief Rabbi of the UK Sir Jonathan Sacks once said, “Religion is like a flame, if used properly it warms; if misused it can destroy.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2007/12/31/s1b_losehome_1231.html
ReplyDeleteWhat a story.
In an indication of how dramatically the market has turned in some cities, this week one of Phoenix's largest real estate brokerages, Re/Max 2000, closed its 13 offices, citing poor sales and a difficult economy.
ReplyDeleteBravo.
ReplyDeleteIvy Zelman, chief executive of Zelman & Associates, a housing research firm in New York, was skeptical of the figures in general, saying the big picture is much worse.
ReplyDelete"The data is masking the grim reality of today's housing market woes," she said, noting that the government's sales figures do not take into account contract cancellations. A number of builders have reported that buyers are backing out of sales contracts at high rates.
"Home prices are down from the peak, from 10 to 15 percent on average with many of the former hotbed markets down as much as 25 to 35 percent from the peak," she said.
By J.W. ELPHINSTONE
ReplyDeleteThe Associated Press
Thursday, December 27, 2007; 1:48 PM
NEW YORK -- The upside to a housing slump is cheaper homes. But many prospective buyers don't see bargains yet, especially as stricter lending standards qualify only the cream of the credit crop.
Don't forget this is "Club Fed" with only 70 inmates.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080101/NEWS/71231021
Inmate sent to hospital after stabbing in Otisville
By Ashley Kelly
January 01, 2008
Otisville - One inmate was transported to the hospital Sunday after a stabbing at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville.
Two male inmates got into a brawl around 2 p.m. Sunday. The injury was not life-threatening, according to spokeswoman Marty Licon.
Michal Lando, Jerusalem Post correspondent , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 31, 2007
ReplyDeleteWhen one of the two warring factions of the Satmar Hassidim was looking to advertise its annual commemoration of the late Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum's escape from the Nazis, it decided to hire a pro.
It is after dark when Dave Porter, a burly 38-year-old Irish American with a tuft of blond hair, pulls away from his home in Bergenfield, New Jersey, after dinner with his wife and daughter. Their house, just a kilometer from where Porter grew up in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, is just far enough from his father to keep a healthy distance, and many miles from where he spends his nights.
While most people prepare for sleep, Porter's work is about to begin. He joins the city's late-night veterans - 24-hour deli clerks, prostitutes, panhandlers and police - with whom he cohabits in the shadows of the city.
For a gentle man, who is delighted to spend the daylight hours at the mercy of his two-year-old daughter, his nighttime occupation, plastering the city with the latest ads and dodging the police, comes as a surprise even to him. "I never thought I would be doing this," says Porter, a former pharmaceutical company employee who has come to love the freedom of the street. "I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants."
His first stop is a Bronx warehouse, where he loads his silver pick-up truck with three tubs of a biodegradable paste and a stack of posters, before making his way to Brooklyn, where he works through the early morning hours placing posters for movies, concerts, the newest gadgets and various causes on wooden barricades and sidewalk scaffolding at construction sites.
Most are up and gone with the blink of an eye, washed away by the rain, and replaced with others hawking iPods, soft drinks, albums, cheap vacations.
Long a part of the American landscape, the street posters carry a certain mystique. From the early days in the 1800s when merchants used walls and fences to notify passersby that their establishments up the road sold horse blankets, rheumatism pills and the like, sniping, or "wild posting" as it is known in the trade, has never been entirely above ground. The posters have been called an urban eyesore by some, and art by others. The men who put them up have been similarly eyed with suspicion. Some cops close their eyes, others fine them or throw them in jail. But to most, they remain invisible.
THE FIRST LARGE American outdoor poster is generally attributed to Jared Bell, who printed 50-square-foot posters for a circus in 1835. In 1850, exterior advertising was first used on street railways. By the 1870s close to 300 small sign-painting and bill-posting companies existed.
In 1900, a standardized billboard structure was created and ushered in a boom in national billboard campaigns. Confident that the same ad was easily transposable from Connecticut to Kansas, big advertisers like Palmolive, Kellogg and Coca-Cola began mass-producing billboards for the national market.
By 1912, standardized outdoor service was at the disposal of national advertisers in nearly every major urban center.
Though "wild posting" began as a cheap alternative to more mainstream advertising, today clients include high-profile companies like Sony, Nissan and Gap. The recent campaign by Apple featuring a silhouette listening to an iPod was the latest sign that wild posting is no longer just an underground alternative. The poster campaign, which reverberated throughout New York City, served as the cornerstone of the iPod campaign.
High-profile companies use ad agencies who assume responsibility for the risks involved.
"Hanging out on the streets of the West Village, the posters were always shrouded in mystery," Porter recalls, while driving through Brooklyn with a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth."I never saw anyone put them up." Now Porter is doing just that.
He has seen late-night robberies; been inches from a shooting; knows the ins and outs of panhandlers' routines; seen people get hit by cars and the "drunkest fools fall down."
"We're kind of part of the street; we see everything," he says.
IT'S A WEDNESDAY night and an early winter chill hangs over New York. Porter, dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans, a wool hat and worn-out loafers, keeps close tabs on the weather from his car radio - the slightest variation can put a kink in his night. If it falls below minus 7ºC, the antifreeze in the winter paste won't hold and the posters will fall.
He drives around with an unlikely tool: a map of the Williamsburg eruv, the line that separates the haredi residents from the non-Jews in this divided neighborhood. The map, a recent addition, has helped Porter navigate the cultural divide. Broadway runs down the middle. "Mainstream posters go on one side of the avenue, religious posters on the other," he explains.
In the summer of 2006 Porter's business took an interesting turn. Returning home late one night in June, Alexander Rapaport, who runs a haredi marketing firm, spotted Porter on the side of the road spreading glue on a fresh piece of plywood. He had seen his work on the streets of Williamsburg and saw in outdoor advertising the potential to fill a need in the haredi world in which advertising was limited to sect-driven newspapers. Posters offered a way to communicate across the divide, and Rapaport jumped at the opportunity.
On his nights off from his regular job, Porter began working the other side of the avenue. And before he knew it, he was working almost as much for clients in haredi Brooklyn as for his regular job. "At a certain point I could have just about quit my job and worked only for the Orthodox," he says.
When he first began, crowds of religious men would gather on the street to read the posters. "There was so much text, almost a book's worth," says Porter, who was used to posters that were flashier and not as text-heavy.
Differences in the ads north and south of Broadway reflect two sets of neighbors who couldn't be more at odds.
At the corner of Lee Avenue and Division Avenue, the posters are solemn and without graven images. Written mostly in Yiddish, they announce the annual Satmar fund-raiser that commemorates the day Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum escaped the Nazis. Two sons, vying to become the next grand rebbe, have split the sect in two and for the second year in a row have held separate celebrations.
Only a few blocks away, another plywood wall stands in stark contrast. Fluorescent colors advertising a new soft drink, Rambo the movie, the latest Chris Rock album, vie for pedestrian attention.
But Porter rarely pays attention. "A poster is a poster. This poster says 'NY Piers,' otherwise I wouldn't have known which side is up or down," he says as he pastes the Yiddish Satmar ads on a piece of plywood.
"It's been great to get to know a different culture," says Porter, who has learned about Shabbat, the Jewish holidays, mezuzot and the strict rules of modesty.
In a few instances, he learned the hard way. Soon after posting racy posters of Jennifer Lopez on sites that fell within the Williamsburg eruv, Porter noticed they had been scratched out or torn down. Someone finally explained that such images were forbidden among religious Jews.
"They get offended, so now I keep those posters north of Broadway," he says.
But sometimes the offended cross the border. "There is a man with blue paint, I have yet to meet," says Porter, who found a recent campaign for Mary J Blige that features the singer baring her long slender legs, covered in splotches of blue paint.
BUT TONIGHT, with 500 Satmar posters left to go and 48 hours till Shabbat, he runs into a different kind of trouble. A double run-in with the same policeman forces him to quit halfway through the job. "I've always had this rule - don't ever let a cop see you twice, then he has every right to get pissed."
Keeping a low profile is part of the job. Technically construction site ads are illegal according to the New York City law. Still companies that engage in outdoor advertising often have agreements with construction site owners. They get permission, and sometimes rent space. The business is lucrative and many companies are willing to risk the penalties.
Experts estimate that illegal ads can bring in $40,000 to $50,000 a month. Moreover, the city has no power to remove them, and enforcement is inconsistent.
"If there are enough complaints to the police, they will crack down," says Porter. "It's like they say, shit rolls down hill."
Porter carries permission slips obtained from owners in the dashboard of his car. But police don't always accept them as valid proof, and Porter doesn't entirely mind. He has a vested interest in keeping the work somewhat illegal.
"The reason it pays well is the chance that on a wrong night you go to jail," says Porter, who spent one night in prison (and "passed" on the baloney sandwich). "The more it becomes legal, the more reason to pay less because there is less risk involved."
Since September Porter has been back to his regular routine. He has had little opportunity to work south of Broadway.
Eliezer Wise, also known as Lazer, a 23-year-old upstart who moved to Brooklyn from Israel, has nearly priced Porter out. At first the two rivals butted heads. Porter felt Lazer had encroached on his territory. But he quickly gave up. "For the price he is charging, I told clients they had to give him a try," he says. "I think we offer a different level of service, but sometimes if you just want to get the word out, you have to go with the lower price."
Porter is known to use a stronger glue that can survive the rain for a longer time, and his work is so precise, with each edge carefully placed, it looks almost machine made.
In Israel, religious neighborhoods are so tightly packed with posters the haredim joke that if it weren't for the thick layers, the walls of the buildings would fall down.
Having spent four years postering in Israel, Lazer arrived on the Brooklyn scene with a few advantages. He was religious and cheap.
"Putting up posters is the only way to advertise for frum people," he says. "The newspapers people buy on Friday and throw them out Sunday, but with me they get two weeks on a wall, so people see it."
His Brooklyn-based company, Ad Now Advertising, does about 10 campaigns a week. "Dave had his customers, and I had mine; he just didn't have enough because no one could afford it," Wise says.
Though most of his former clients now hire Wise, Porter still holds out hope that eventually they will return to him. "I don't want to step on his toes too much. I believe it's the best way to do business," he says. "He's using a lot of my old clients, but I think eventually they will want a higher level of service. I am hoping I can carve a niche."
The recent Satmar campaign, the first religious campaign he has done since his competitor moved to town, came at a good time, and Porter was happy to make the extra cash. "The holidays are coming up so it works out well, because I will need to buy a lot of presents."
Last update - 00:52 02/01/2008
ReplyDeleteNews / Haredi teacher sentenced to 23 years for assaulting minors
By Haaretz Staff and Channel 10
Haaretz.com/Channel 10 news roundup for January 1, 2008.
ReplyDeleteIn this edition:
A man who sexually assaulted minors at an ultra-Orthodox school is sentenced to 23 years in prison.
UOJ,
ReplyDeleteHow did you miss the BIG story???
SOmething happened with Rubashkin and KAJ-Breuer's.
Rubashkin put out a suspicious sounding press release (probably written by that whore Lubinsky) that they thank Khal Adas Yeshurun for their relationship but are now switching to Rav Weissmandel from Nitra.
I heard from a member of the washington heights community (aka KAJ) that their leader Rabbi Gelley made an announcement last shabbos after mincha that the KAJ is giving Rubashkin until april to get their act together or their dropping their supervision. (as a side note, KAJ hasn't actually been doing any supervising at all for months rather relying on the OU & accepting payment for their endorsement). It seem like rubashkin preempted them & fired them first to save face.
This is actually great news. A lot of people were only fressing Rubashkin while being somech on Breuer's and will now stop doing so. They will now be saved from eating treif.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis is sick! Are there still yiddesha people eating rubashkin nevilos??
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14814/
ReplyDelete"Food is the last connection some people have to Judaism," insisted Rabbi Yaacov Horowitz. And this gentleman, employed by the Orthodox Union and the expert in charge of all operations at Manischewitz, should know.
Interesting:
ReplyDelete--------------
Happy Introvert Day
By Diane Cameron - CSM
Wed Jan 2, 3:00 AM ET
Guilderland, N.Y. - Ahh, Jan. 2. The day that introverts get to breathe a sigh of relief. We can come out of hiding; it's safe to answer the phone, and to stop pretending we're under the weather. Hip Hip Hooray! The holidays are over.
Yes, from mid-December through New Year's Day, those of us with an introverted nature live in a state of perpetual dread. The weeks of office parties, neighborhood potlucks, and open houses drain all our energy. But today we can relax; we made it through.
I speak from experience. My name is Diane, and I am an introvert. It surprises most people because I'm outgoing and friendly and, in fact, very far from shy, but I prefer one person and one conversation at a time.
I fought this for years, always trying to be someone else. I made myself go to parties; I tried to fix what I thought was "wrong" with me. It didn't help that other people would press, "But you're so good with people," as if being introverted meant living on the dark side. But I finally got it.
This is also one of the blessings of maturity, a wisdom that brings a "What you see is what you get" self-acceptance, or perhaps for introverts it's, "Who you don't see is what you get." It is a great relief to stop trying to be who you're not.
But it's no wonder that we introverts are sometimes defensive. Up to 75 percent of the population is considered extroverted, so we're outnumbered three-to-one. American culture tends to reward extroversion, while being disdainful and suspicious of reflection and solitude. I've learned to spot my like-minded peers, though. We're the folks walking toward a festive house saying, "How long do we have to stay?" Or we're the ones in the center of the room assessing others' interactions, and slowly backing toward the door.
Introverts crave meaning, so party chitchat feels like sandpaper to our psyche.
Here's what introverts are not: We're not afraid, and we're not shy. Introversion has little to do with fear or reticence. We're just focused, and we prefer one-on-one because we like to listen and we want to follow an idea all the way through to another interesting idea. That's why small talk annoys us. So does pretending to be happy or excited or anything that we're not.
We saw that play out in the 2004 presidential campaign. Most introverts knew immediately what that campaign-killing screech of Howard Dean was all about. It was the consequence of an introvert trying to act extroverted. I'm sure he attempted that exuberance based on the advice of media consultants: "Dean should be more outgoing, more charismatic." Well, ya know what? Dean wasn't any of those things.
I do think that many of our better presidents have been introverts: Abraham Lincoln, John Adams – both father and son. If they really were introverts, it makes their rise to the presidency all the more remarkable, because introverts are constantly swimming against the tide.
Introverted children are pressured to "speak up" and "make friends" – or told they're not leaders.
Introverted adults are hounded to "be more outgoing" and tortured with invitations that begin, "Why don't we all..." No thanks, we don't want to do anything that involves "we" and "all"; we prefer to visit you, just you, and not a dozen other people.
The 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, "The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room." Introverts do.
So let's make Jan. 2nd "Happy Introvert Day." We'll be quiet and happy. As a bonus, January's weather is on our side.
You say it might snow? Oh darn, I guess I'll have to stay home.
• Diane Cameron is a freelance writer living in Guilderland, N.Y.
The Sixth Sense is a weekly column by Menachem Lubinsky, Editor-in Chief of KosherToday, co-producer of Kosherfest and President of Lubicom Marketing Consulting.
ReplyDeleteLast item on the page:
http://www.koshertoday.com/portal/news.asp#menachem
Sixth Sense
The Safety of the World's Food Supply
By Menachem Lubinsky... U.S. consumers of imported food and ingredients could not have been pleased by the recent expose in The New York Times about the badly polluted waters in China, a country that supplies many ingredients and food products. In this specific expose, the culprit was fish, but earlier reports broadened the target to food ingredients, many of which reach the U.S. market. While on the surface the safety of the world's food supply may not appear to be a kosher issue, kashrus agencies are not turning a blind eye to the problem. Numerous articles have appeared in kashrus publications about the problem, particularly imported foods from Asia. Some of the organizations say that they raise the red flag whenever they are aware that conditions may be damaging to the health of consumers. As opposed to strong oversight of food produced in the U.S., many foreign governments pay only lip service to the safety of foods produced in their country.
The oddity is that after these reports appeared, not one Jewish source voiced their concern about the safety of food from abroad, not from the rabbis who espouse the idea of eco-kosher and not from publications that are forever jumping on any tidbit of information that may cast aspersions on the safety of kosher foods produced in this country. In the U.S., the USDA and other agencies closely monitor conditions at food plants, particularly slaughterhouses like Agriprocessors, which are constantly under scrutiny by those seeking to discredit kosher slaughter. The news from abroad should give pause and serve as an occasion to be grateful for our government's tough standards in food safety. Together with the high standards of kashrus of our kosher supervising agencies, it should give consumers the ultimate comfort that what they are eating is not damaging to their health.
Margo will be able to frasska them without getting in trouble with the police.
ReplyDeleteProgrammed for love
Author sees hard-wired sex in the future - and apparently it's all good - especially if you like robots
By FRITZ LANHAM
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
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Love + Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships
By David Levy
Harper, 334 pp. $24.95.
If you're younger than 35, you'll probably live long enough to put David Levy's prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we'll be creating robots so lifelike, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we'll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good.
Levy lays out his vision of a Brave New Carnal World in Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, which, despite its extended riffs on sex toys through the ages, is a snigger-free book. Levy's no Al Goldstein. Rather he's a 62-year-old British chess master turned artificial-intelligence expert persuaded that robot sex can brighten the lives of many, many unhappy people. "Great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7,'' he writes on the final page of the book. What's not to like?
"Chess'' and "sex'' aren't words that normally share the same sentence, but in Levy's case, the one led to the other. A keen chessman since boyhood, by the time he got to St. Andrews University he played at the international level. At the university he got interested in computers and the challenge of programming machines to play chess. Eventually he earned international recognition for his work on chess-playing computers and natural-language software, and in the mid '90s headed a team that won the Loebner Prize, widely regarded as the world championship of conversational software. Today he owns a firm that develops electronic hand-held brain games.
Designing computers that talk like humans naturally led to the larger question of how humans interact with robots, which are nothing more than computers with arms and legs and a head. The Japanese have taken the lead in developing "partner robots,'' machines that, for example, might do household tasks for elderly people. But if you could invent a robot that serves cocktails, could you not invent a robot that would make a superior bedmate?
It sounds like a mighty tall order. A machine with skin that feels like ours? With our physical dexterity? And, most important, with a mind like ours - imperfectly rational, sometimes emotionally intelligent, sometimes emotionally dumb?
"I think it's a reasonable assumption,'' Levy said in a telephone interview from his home in London. He lays out his case in a voice that's calm, rational, almost flat, more geeky than goatish.
"If one looks at the advances in technology in the last, say, 40 or 50 years, they've been immense, and the more we learn about the science and the technology, the quicker it will be to discover even more within that science."
Smart money never bets against technological advances, but it helps if you stack the deck. "The automaton simulates man when man has been defined in an automaton's way," literary critic Hugh Kenner wrote. Is that what Levy does?
"I take a pragmatic point of view," he said, "partly because in my original field, computer chess, that was how the problem was solved." Not by making machines that thought like chess masters but by making machines that beat chess masters. Similarly, Levy thinks, robots need only "simulate" human intelligence and emotions "to the point that they are absolutely convincing." If you can't tell whether the thing is man or machine, what difference does it make? You'll treat it as if it were alive. The rest is philosophical hairsplitting.
So who will avail themselves of 21st-century sexbots?
Sad cases, for one, people so physically unattractive or anti-social or isolated or emotionally crippled that they have trouble finding human romance. People who love their computers more than their fellows. Hey, they're out there already.
"They're lonely; they're miserable," Levy said. "I think society will be a much better place when they have an alternative that satisfies them without doing any harm to other people."
Add in those who have a satisfying sexual relationship but are simply curious and somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent of the population will experience man-machine mating at least occasionally, Levy predicts.
He respects the fact that plenty of people, out of moral or religious conviction, will contemplate this with horror.
"But by and large," he said, "it will be very good for society, very beneficial, and I think that will be the majority view within a relatively short space of time."
Sexbots may put prostitutes out of business, he notes.
Near the end of the book Levy alludes to a set of vexing questions. If robots become utterly humanlike, must we not treat them as more than machines? So if you marry a robot, can it inherit your estate? If you catch it boffing the mail carrier, can you toss it out with heavy trash? If your robot pops your neighbor in the mouth, who does your neighbor sue?
Levy admits he doesn't know the answers.
"There are lot of questions here that need a great deal of discussion and consideration from people who are much wiser than I am in the field of ethics, philosophy and law. Clearly the law makers and the lawyers are going to have a field day debating these issues."
He expects the impetus for creating sexbots to come from the sex-toy industry rather than, say, MIT. Already a Japanese sex-doll manufacturer has announced plans to market a doll with electronics in it, and Levy has read that Japanese companies are working to produce sex robots for people living in outlying fishing villages.
"I think the Japanese are probably working on this more than one would realize from the little that's been published so far," he said.
Levy has been amazed at the publicity the Love and Sex With Robots has generated since its release last month. He's done a dozen radio interviews and a TV interview. Howard Stern raved about the book. So far, no hate mail.
Would Levy himself have sex with a robot? He doesn't have to ponder the question.
"If there was a robot of the sort I describe in the book, I would certainly want to experience using it for sex, and I wouldn't regard it as anything untoward," he said. "I would do it out of curiosity. Not that I have a need for a new sex partner. I'm happily married."
And the wife would be OK with this?
"Yes, yes, and if she wanted to try one I wouldn't have a problem with that. I would regard it as genuine scientific curiosity."
fritz.lanham@chron.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/culturalfoodnewyork/2035699540/
ReplyDeleteRubashkin's - Kosherfest Exhibitor
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Ma'ariv reports:
ReplyDeleteבית דין רבני לגיור סירב לגייר חבדניק משיחיסט
בית דין רבני סירב לגייר בחור שעלה מרוסיה, ולמד לאחרונה בישיבה חב"דית משיחיסטית. הבחור נפסל ככל הנראה, בשל בעיות באמונתו בעיקרי היהדות, שכן הוא מאמין כי הרבי מלובביץ' חי וכי הוא המלך המשיח
דפדף ביהדות
אבישי בן חיים
26/12/2007 12:37
A beit din for conversions has refused to convert a messianist adherent of Chabad. Apparently, the rabbinical judges found no fault in his religious comportment, however, they rejected him on account of problems in his beliefs in fundamentals of Jewish faith, as he comes from a yeshiva in which it is believed that the Lubavitcher rebbe, who passed away in 1994, is still alive and is the King Messiah.
The person in question is a young man in his 20s who immigrated to Israel from Russia more than 10 years ago, and recently has been learning in a meshichist Chabad yeshiva.
According to the young man, his maternal grandmother was indeed Jewish, nevertheless, he went to learn in an institute for conversion to Judaism, completed his studies there successfully, and was brought before a beit din for conversion.
People involved in the conversion proceedings who were involved in his tutelage severely attacked the composition of the beit din's judges, and claimed that the matter has caused a severe crisis in the young man's class.
"This is simply a disaster. He is the first from the class who has made it to the level of converting. The other students said 'If they aren’t converting him, then who will they convert?' If they don’t agree to convert a real yeshiva bocher like him, what will Svetlana the shop clerk think, who sits alongside him in class?!' How can we say that we encourage conversions? Why did the dayyanim even bring up the subject of the Rebbe and Moshiach with him?" Another one [translator's comment—I guess one of the teachers] added…
"There are dayyanim who are bored and they want a topic for a speech or an essay—'The Status of the ger who came from Chabad' And all on the back of this poor guy."
In the conversion institute they said, the beit din was composed of rabbinical judges from the Religious Zionist stream, and they conferred with four rabbis, two of whom who are among the most prominent the Religious Zionist movement, and those two told them that they should not convert the young man. The two others, who had a more haredi orientation, decreed that they should convert the young man.
"An atypical situation has arisen, where, in this instance, Religious Zionist dayyanim are more stringent than haredi dayyanim" one of the people from the Conversion Institute accused…and "now that they have conferred with their rabbis, they want to entangle Rabbi Amar with Chabad." This last comment refers to the fact that the case is supposed to come to the Chief Sepharadi Rabbi Shlomo Amar's desk in order for him to cast the deciding vote in the matter.
The text coverage in Haaretz.
ReplyDeleteLast update - 02:49 02/01/2008
Religious teacher jailed for 23 years for sexually assaulting 10 of his students
By Ofra Edelman
A 30-year-old Psalms instructor from Jaffa was sentenced yesterday to 23 years in prison for sexually assaulting 10 children aged 8 to 13 who were under his care. He must also pay compensation totaling NIS 100,000.
The Tel Aviv District Court also handed down a two-year suspended sentence for sodomy and indecent acts.
"People like this need to be kept away from society, and for a long time, so that they don't, God forbid, harm the helpless again," the court said.
It said the instructor exploited his position to carry out the "ugly, despicable, contemptible, grave" acts against helpless children "who were forced to be humiliated, to experience serious degradation and to keep their secret from their parents."
The court rejected the instructor's request for a gag order banning publication of his name, but ordered a three-day delay in publication to allow for an appeal.
The judges rejected the defense attorney's request for a reduced sentence, saying that his lack of a criminal record and his contrition for his actions were not sufficient to cut his jail time. The defense attorney also said his client was suffering from suicidal thoughts and had attempted to kill himself while in custody.
All the same, the court did not hand down the maximum 25-year sentence, as the prosecution had requested. It said it hoped to leave a glimmer of light that could "constitute motivation to receive treatment in jail and provide hope for his rehabilitation."
The court said it recognized the effect the offenses could have on the victims, saying that although it received reports of only two victims requiring psychological treatment, it does not need expert opinions to know that the children have been severely damaged.
MICHAL LANDO, Jerusalem Post correspondent , THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 30, 2007
ReplyDeleteA few days before New Year's, the racks at several haredi loungewear and hostess gown stores were still full of winter "Shabbos robes," elegant but practical velour robes worn by haredi women at home. Women were browsing, but they weren't buying.
Most years, the secular new year comes and goes without the haredim noticing, as they are already months into the Jewish new year. But this year, a group of haredi women are waiting impatiently.
Come January 1, the 29 retailers across the US and Canada that sell loungewear and hostess gowns are slated to begin a coordinated sale, months after the usual sale time. The legality of such an agreement, however, is questionable under US antitrust laws, which forbid businesses to collude to keep prices high.
A growing concern over the survival of this niche market led a group of retailers and manufacturers this summer to form the Loungewear and Hostess Gown Council, which synchronized sale dates and markup prices. Sales are scheduled to be held on January 1 and on July 4, 2008, and the markup price for shabbos robes increased from 50 percent to 65% above wholesale.
"We, as a robe business - unlike any other business - have something very unique to give the religious customer," said Beverly Luchfeld, president of Raza Designs, one of the most popular manufacturers of shabbos robes. "Most of the other merchandise can be found in Walmart, Macy's, etc., but we cater to the needs of this unique customer and should therefore be able to profit."
The robes, an essential part of most haredi women's wardrobes, are typically bought twice a year - before Succot and Pessah. They are designed to be elegant enough to honor Shabbat and holidays, but comfortable enough for women to wear even while working in the kitchen.
"They look like an evening gown, but fit like a jumpsuit," said Luchfeld, who also manufactures weekday robes, modest Christian clothing and Muslim garb "reflective of an era past."
"You can wear them all day, sweat and entertain in them, and even sleep in them," Luchfeld said.
The robes date back to the "old world," where they were called "pondele." Though similar robes were worn by secular women through the mid-20th century, secular fashion became increasingly less formal, and hostess gowns became a thing of the past. But for haredi women, the shabbos robe has never gone out of fashion.
Every year, women wait for the robes - which range in price from $150-$250, depending on the style - to go on sale. But this year, they have had to wait several months longer than usual. Winter has already chilled the city to the bone, and the women are getting impatient.
"They haven't bought that much before the sale, and they come in very angry that [the robes] are not on sale," said Luchfeld.
Typically stores begin their sales at the end of the Jewish holidays in time for the new season, when warm-weather robes are replaced with winter ones. And women have become accustomed to buying only on sale.
"I never buy at regular price, I wait for the sales," said Borough Park resident Tobi, who stocks up for the next season a year in advance. "I don't believe in paying these prices."
But for many years, the stores have been struggling to make ends meet, said Luchfeld.
"I've seen the business go downhill, and I told them [retailers] it's a real shame, because this is a unique product," said Luchfeld. "You can't get it at Nordstrom."
But many retailers are losing money on shabbos robes, said Luchfeld. "It's become a hobby, and you can't stay alive."
In order to increase sales, stores would price each other out by competing to go on sale first.
To avoid competition and ensure profitability, the retailers and manufacturers agreed in an August meeting to stave off sales until January 1, allowing them more time to sell at full price and avoid competition.
"We were all running on each other's throats," said Leah of Borough Park's Lingerie Shop.
In addition, the group agreed to increase the markup on the garments gradually to "secure a healthy margin." A 65% markup was initiated for the 2007 holiday season. Next Pessah, they plan to increase the markup again by a percentage still to be determined.
But US antitrust laws call into question the legality of such an agreement. According to the Sherman Act, the principle antitrust law, every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade is unlawful.
"That law has developed to mean unreasonable restraint of trade is unlawful," said Saul Morgenstern, chair of the antitrust group at New York's Kaye Scholer law firm. "The court will go through hoops to measure whether the agreement is good for competition or bad."
Price-fixing is usually considered "per se" unlawful, said Morgenstern. "If all sellers of a particular good get together and say, 'Competition is not helping us, we have to raise prices,' it looks pretty bad."
Jewish law allows price-setting by associations of manufacturers and suppliers, but says such price-fixing must be approved by a communal authority, according to an article on MyJewishLearning.com by Prof. Nahum Rakover.
A far-reaching opinion on consumer protection can be found in the writings of Rabbi Menahem Ha-me'iri, the 13th-century Provencal Talmud commentator. Ha-me'iri holds that artisans do not have the authority to stipulate prices, even with the approval of a distinguished man, since such practices cause a loss to the townspeople: "It appears to me that the members of a particular trade are not permitted to set prices for their work without permission of the townspeople, since the townspeople would otherwise be forced to take an unfair loss" (Bet Ha-behira on Bava Batra 9a).
Luchfeld says the Shabbos robe sellers are trying to create a "healthy, diverse market that respects a full retail markup."
"Antitrust laws refer to a retail outlet that tries to take over the market and destroy the competition," said Luchfeld. "We are all-inclusive and are working together to encourage diversity, competition, and survival of an industry."
A similar effort by robe sellers to band together failed five years ago. "Some broke the sale, hoping to beat everyone else," said Luchfeld.
But this year, everyone has kept to the agreement. "They saw the writing on the wall: If they didn't take a stand, they wouldn't have business."
Earlier this year, ads announcing the sales and a list of participating stores were placed in Hamodia and Der Yid, two haredi newspapers. And signs are currently posted in the windows of all the retailers, notifying customers of the agreement.
"It might be that some stores will lose out, and others will succeed," said Luchfeld. "They will have to find ways to bring people in."
Three weeks ago, the council held an "emergency meeting" to do just that. Luchfeld wrote an e-mail urging retailers to attend: "We have succeeded in avoiding a 'Sale Mode of Business,' but we are not succeeding in attracting traffic to the store."
The letter urged store owners to come ready with ideas to stimulate traffic "without breaking our 'Sale Policy.'"
"If we break any form of sale, we will lose the customers' confidence, and we will never be able to regain credibility again," wrote Luchfeld.
Luchfeld also encouraged retailers to poll their youngest customers. "Are Shabbos robes, as they are now fashioned, still in vogue? What are the young kallot [brides] looking for?" wrote Luchfeld. "We have to understand the shifts in fashions, and the public's response to fashion."
Some new trends are already noticeable. In the last few years, the weekday robes, which are shorter and less elegant and cost roughly $70, have begun to be replaced.
"Lately, women have started wearing t-shirts and skirts at home," said Tobi. "I can be dressed well in t-shirt and skirt for $30, which are easily replaceable, instead of wearing housecoats, which I find ridiculous."
But no one expects the Shabbos robe to be replaced. It is simply a matter of how to make businesses and customers see eye-to-eye.
"I don't think it's a dying phenomenon, we just have to retrain the customer," said Luchfeld, "If we could afford to close doors for a few seasons, the customers would come begging for their Shabbos robes."
People are farentfering that there are a lot of politics in Ger with not everyone listening to the Rebbe. They say that while some rabbonim in the Chassidus are protecting Mondro, they do not believe the Rebbe alein is and will not until UOJ provides more details.
ReplyDeleteHe's been promoting his Marxist racial equality theories again this week.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1198517271538&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Ben Harris / jta , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 2, 2008
Kolko had a new assistant DA named Jaus assigned to his case in December.
ReplyDeleteMutterperl had an uneventful court appearance on Dec. 18th and is due back on Jan. 15th.
ReplyDeleteKolko is due back on Feb. 4th for the criminal case.
Kings Civil Supreme Index Number: 012762/2007 Upstate RJI Number:
ReplyDeleteCase Name: RUEDA,RODOLFO vs. KOLLEL BNEI YESHIVAS
Case Type: Other Torts Negligence
Track: Standard
Disposition Date:
Date NOI Due: NOI Filed: Disposition Deadline:
Calendar Number: RJI Filed: 08/27/2007
Jury Status:
Justice Name: LAURA LEE JACOBSON (PT.21)
Attorney/Firm For Plaintiff: KUHARSKI,LEVITZ & GIOVINAZZO, Attorney Type: Attorney Of Record Status: Active
7 DEY STREET, 14TH FLOOR
NEW YORK, NY 10007
212-228-1331
Attorney/Firm For Defendant:
STAHL & ZELMANOVITZ Attorney Type: Attorney Of Record Status: Active
747 THIRD AVE- SUTE 33B
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10017
212 826-6422
My good friend Mendel Epstein is in State Supreme Court today for that case where he's being accused of acting like a thug & gangster.
ReplyDeleteKings Civil Supreme
Index Number: 028197/2007
Case Name: GLATZER,ROSE D. vs. EPSTEIN,RABBI MENDEL
I have confirmed beyond any doubt whatsoever - that the gangster - in - chief at Ger is -$$$$ -directly involved in attempting to prevent Mondrowitz from being extradited! I'm told that he may very well be successful!
ReplyDeleteNo details will be provided! My criteria is three reliable people independently informing me and confirming the data! In this instance - there are many more than three!
Someone posting on VIN who claims to be a mashgiach says he has personally received, when working as a mashgiach, many cases of chickens from Rubashkin with nothing but a label, and not a single tag on a single chicken inside. He also complains that Rubashkin is using 5,000 to 6,000 volt Cattle prods! And keeping the shochtim away from home for months at a time.
ReplyDeleteHe signs off: "Are Yehuda Shain, and Rov Wikler and Me, and all who are complaining and all the rest ALL CRAZY? Do we all have ulterior motives?"
If you want to rip Rubashkin, lets start with the fact that they leave SO MUCH FAT on the chicken! Its mamesh disgusting which is why I buy more expensive chicken (about 10-15 cents more per pound) and I save money b/c I dont cut off all that shmaltz!
ReplyDeleteOne of my best friend's fathers is a prominent Satmar Shochet, and wanted to teach me. I am too much of a "softie" to shecht, though, and did not pursue it too long.
ReplyDeleteSome of the first things he taught me were, "Do not EVER work for any shecht house that rushes you and makes you shecht too many gassos in one day. 40 or 50 a day is a LOT."
He gave many reasons:
1) He said, "if you are a mensch, you realize these are baalei chaim. Even though we are elevating them, they are not having fun. They do feel pain, and we must not make believe that is not so. When you take the life of a baal chaim, you loose a little tiny bit of yourself. Your need time in between each shechita to 'recover', daven/meditate a minute, and understand the animal's pain in leaving this world. If you fail to do this, you will become a robot, losing your very menshlechkeit or humanity. You will then not have the proper feelings and kindness towards others, including your own family. So, never let them rush you.
Also, if you allow this to happen, you will become that robot whose shechita should be questioned, because if you loose your humanity, you should not be trusted as a shochet anymore."
2) Make sure the Beheima has time to pass away before anything is done to it to give it further tzar. This sometimes is only 30 seconds, but sometimes can take 3 minutes or more. If the shecht house is unwilling to wait those 3 minutes, walk out and quit.... and never eat their shechita.
3) Take the minute and check the simonim YOURSELF alongside the mashgiach. This "checks and balances" system insures kashrush. If you shecht and walk away that second, not returning until the next animal is ready, it is very tempting for the mashgiach to be concerned with the percentages of treifos, and call something kosher that is questionable. But if you both look at it together, you are being each other's checker, and it helps fight the temptation to please the shecht house. This is especially true on a bad day when you may have just had 3 triefos in a row. Everyone wants to make the next one kosher. But if you are looking together, you will be ready to admit it is 4 in a row. One day you may have zero trifas, the next day you may have 10 in a row! It happens, don't be afraid of it. If the shecht house, in any way makes you feel bad about your percentages, quit immediately. First, you are working for Hashem, second for the shecht house.
He took me to watch a few times. Though I am really too much of a softie to do it, I watched, and I can tell you, he, and they, DO practice that they preach. The animal is allowed to expire before being moved! Sometimes it was more than 3 minutes.
You never saw a shechted animal stumbling about in obvious horrific pain, while a Mexican was trying to tie a chain to a rear leg and yank it up into the air as they do at some poor shecht houses.
The mashgiach is there watching the shechita, not 20 feet away.
The animals do not see each other get shechted.
The "Next up" does not enter the area, until the one shechted has expired, and been removed.
The Shochet returns to his place between shechitas, and checks his chalaf, slowly and carefully.
So, there are houses that do it right.
And... by the way, many PETA members are JEWISH and not anti semites. Just because a group is against cruelty does not make them antisemites.
Maybe if all shecht houses would do what I wrote above, we would not have trouble with PETA. Oh, I know there would always be SOME trouble, for some PETA folks are rather fanatic and really don't want any animals killed, but they would not see the cruelty they are seeing now.
You COULD have kashrus without cruelty. There is no excuse for it. I would happily pay more for kosher shechita that is not cruel. and I do.
For that one who wrould rather be a vegitarian than eat a certain Shechita, I agree with you. I now live out of the NY area, and sometimes do not have the shechita I prefer (Alle / Satmar) available. My house rule, which my Rebbetzin understands, I would rather serve Peanut Butter and Jelly for Shabbos, even to orchim, before using meat that was not killed the way I described above.
And, yes, if my kelim were in contact with meat from a certain shect house whose work I do not approve of, I will kasher my keilim.
Also, guys, when there is so much smoke, there must be a bit of fire; no?
Kashrus, shmashrus. Let's get to the important points.
ReplyDeleteA good salami should have a little zest to its flavor and some spring to its texture. Rubashkin’s 12-ounce all-beef salami has neither. The texture is mushy and the flavor is mediocre.
In a recent episode, RUBASHKIN sent out a bais yosef order
ReplyDeletethat had only 1 piece marked AGRI style bais yosef, it was
sent back by the Mashgiach for a replacement order of all
bais yosef. RUBASHKIN sent the replacement order, all
marked & labeled as bais yosef. The Mashgiach refused it
‘cause he put secret “markings” on the previous order, and
discovered that Rubashkin sent them the same identical
order again “relabeled”
bais yosef “AGRI style”.
Rubashkin’s so called bais yosef meat is a consumer bluff!
It is a common RUBASHKIN practice to ship meat &
poultry without the required “chosmos”. When calls are made
to complain & question it, they say dayan Kohn will look into
it, but you may use it. “There really is NO heter!”
Because of all the negative feedback against Rubashkin, they are writing lies on blogs that the only people posting that they don't eat Rubashkin are Yudel Shain and his two or three gullible and retarded followers.
ReplyDeleteA FRAUD
ReplyDelete"Together with the high standards of kashrus of our kosher supervising agencies, it should give consumers the ultimate comfort that what they are eating is not damaging to their health."
Maybe someone can explain to Lubinsky some basic health concepts that are lacking at Rubashkin like e-coli bacteria festering in hotdogs that the govt forced them to recall and cases of suspected Bovine Spongiform Encepalepathy, known as Mad Cow Disease, that Rubashkin pushed into production after being warned to isolate it by a Federal USDA inspector.
I am no fan of Rabbi Dovid Cohen but someone has been posting lies about him all over the internet. I think we should should only bash him if something is true.
ReplyDeleteIt appears as though these comments are written by several people living all over Northern NJ, but it's probably the same guy.
He says that Rabbi Cohen gave a shiur in Bergenfield that tax evasion is mutter. Two fellows on Wall St, a banker and a lawyer, spent considerable time investigating this, asking their friends and family from Bergenfield, Teaneck and Engelwood. The strange thing is that no one knows anything about it.
The same guy is also circulating a false version of events that took place with Rabbi Cohen, Rebbitzen Soloveitchik and David Hartman. Professor Marc Shapiro recently published what really happened. While Hartman did attack Cohen and drag him out of the lecture, it is not for the reason being circulated. The real version of events has David Hartman looking like the bulvan.
It doesn't take a genius to figure it out on your own but I can confirm from very well placed sources that the Rubashkin-Breuer's divorce was not an amicable one.
ReplyDeleteThere is something even bigger developing right now. The Crown Heights Vaad CHK may be on their way out too. There are huge implications here. Rabbi Osdaba has served as Moishe Rubashkin's puppet. There are two Osdaba boys at Sholom Rubashkin's Agriprocessors and a third at Moishe Rubashkin's CHJCC who can all kiss their jobs goodbye. The Rubashkins will then even throw the father off the Vaad like what they did to Rav Schwey.
http://www.nbcaugusta.com/news/local/9625437.html
ReplyDeleteThe Aiken County Sheriff is calling it the worst case of child abuse he's ever seen!
Investigators say Kip and Dana Smith used a hand-held cattle prod to shock two-children!
"This is disturbing, way over the line. This is just unacceptable," Aiken County Sheriff Michael Hunt said.
4,500 volts, delivered investigator say to a 12 and 14-year-old.
"You could take a cattle prod and make a grown cow or bull do what you want it to do," Sheriff Hunt said.
But investigators say it wasn't livestock Kip and Dana Smith were using the 4,500 volts on, instead two young boys.
The Tractor Supply store on Whiskey Road in Aiken is where investigators say the pair bought the cattle prod from.
"I've never seen anything like that in 26-years of law enforcement," Sheriff Hunt said.
Deputies arrested the pair Thursday and charged them with neglect and cruelty to children.
There is no question that losing the KAJ endorsement, and the termination of their licensing agreement will irreparably damage Rubashkin, I think to the point of bankruptcy, iy"h. It's amazing the positive spin that hired shill and spinmeister Lubinsky is trying to force on us. He writes that this was a "marketing decision" and raves about the qualifications of MM Weissmandl. Meanwhile, judging from the majority of the comments on VIN, the majority of the diehard Rubashkin fressers are looking elsewhere now since they were relying on the (nonexistent) KAJ supervision.
ReplyDeleteWhat kashrut has evolved into in the 21st century is mindboggling. It is all about "marketing decisions", licensing agreements and endorsements, rather than about hashgacha, halacha and honesty(that's a word that we haven't come across in a while). I had predicted a while back on this blog that KAJ will pull out first in order to save what's left of their reputation as a somehwhat reliable agency. The one person who has been vindicated is Rav Yudel Shain, who has been maligned and villified by the Rubashkin supporters and other kashrut fraudsters.
http://www.kashrut.com/Alerts/Rubashkin2.tif
ReplyDeleteThese Yekkishe rabbis must be liars. How dare they opine about what I should fill my stomach with?
If UOJ has the paid version of Apple software, he can save that letter from KAJ to publicize. It catches Rubashkin red-handed as a LIAR
ReplyDeleteLet's see what kind of spin the OU puts on the Rubashkin fiasco to save face.
ReplyDeleteIs Eckstein going to post some disingenious letter from Belsky?
Let's see all these big mouth rabbis apologize to R' Yudel Shain for being motzee shem ra on him.
ReplyDeleteAin lecha vindication gedolah mizu.
UOJ - 4 - GEDOLIM - 0.
ReplyDeleteOh this is a positive and great development for Rubashkin. Our models are projecting that sales will shoot up 1045% as a result of this. Blah, blah, blah ...
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that Vos Iz Neas is so Pravda-ish. He won't allow posts that tell the truth about Rubashkin.
ReplyDeleteR' Yudel and R' Steve are the kashrus experts. Please get me a copy of the KAJ letter, so I may download it and post it. I do not have Apple software, paid or unpaid.
ReplyDeleteUOJ can download the regular Apple Quicktime for free to at least read the letter.
ReplyDeleteI am deliberating if I will splurge on the paid version or wait for the blogs to post another format to distribute to everyone I know.
ALERT:
ReplyDeleteI'm being informed that the "grand thief of Spinka" is attempting to cut a deal with the Feds by "maasering" or informing on hundreds of people that have used his laundromat!
If you are one of them and want to speak to the media with guaranteed anonymity, contact me:
a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com
You must contact and retain a criminal defense attorney or you will lose your freedom!
He can change his name to the Finka rebbe.
ReplyDeleteOh brother am I ever going to look like a fool now. I just started allowing Rubashkin this week for the first time. Now all this dreck hits the fan.
ReplyDeleteShocking:
ReplyDeletePriest charged with lying about mob ties
By PETER JACKSON, Associated Press Writer
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A Roman Catholic priest was arrested on perjury charges Wednesday, accused of lying about his relationship with a mobster in testimony to a grand jury investigating a casino owner's possible ties to organized crime.
The Rev. Joseph Sica was arrested outside his home in Scranton. He is an adviser to Mount Airy Casino Resort owner Louis DeNaples, who is the subject of the grand jury investigation.
Yes, the mafiosos and the galach are good friends of ours.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/branding-brand-development/976035-1.html
Mount Airy Lodge has not only changed its name to Mount Airy Resort, it's also attempting to change its tarnished image from the bankrupt resort of last spring into a modern miracle of increased revenues, reduced costs and improved operating efficiency through the use of a turnkey hotel management plan.
But in the long run, will Mount Airy be able to shake that albatross phrase "Sold at Sheriff's?
Moreover, in keeping with a long-time Mount Airy tradition, the resort has "signed $1.2 million in contracts for Passover groups next April," said Maris Brenner, the resort's director of marketing and sales.
...We bloggers take the same position about our own work. When we point out that the Orthodox Judaism we treasure has allowed itself to become a decrepit sect that often ignores its own heritage, we too, are acting l'shem shamayim. When we point out that Avi's agudah has, at times, defended Rabbis at the expense of children, we too, are acting l'shem shamayim. Sure, we're ruder than Avi, and some of us dabble in kfirah, which is not to everyone's taste, but the bloggers who worry Avi aren't heretics and skeptics. When Avi inveighs it is almost always against the sort of blogger who says the Orthodox Jewish Emperor is naked. His enemies aren't the apostates, but the bloggers who recognize the Agudah sponsored obfuscations and fear-mongering as the work of someone who is worried that a system from which he has profited is beginning to crumble.
ReplyDeleteA proof perhaps can be found in the remedy Avi advocates. Someone with confidence in his position would call the bets, and let his cards speak. If he's right he'll win. If he's wrong he'll lose. Instead, Avi is attempting to subvert the game -- and would someone holding a winning hand attempt to flip-over the table? Avi never answers blogger claims and arguments. He'd rather tell everyone to ignore us. Would he do that if he had any faith in his position? More to the point, if we really were as ridiculous and beneath comment as he says we are, why is he continuing to call attention to us with one anti-blog polemic after another?
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/01/02/rubashkin2_22.jpg
ReplyDeleteShmarya splurged for the premium software and posted the KAJ letter.
http://askshifra.blogspot.com/2006/09/jewish-debt.html
ReplyDeleteI work full time, my husband works full time.
We live modestly, in a small house in an expensive town.
We have two children in Yeshiva day school.
We make too much money to recieve a scholarship but not enough to pay tution without skimping on most everything else.
We are in at least some credit card debt about 50% of the time.
We have no "help" around the house.
I iron all my husband's shirts myself and get my hair cut at supercuts 3-4 times a year.
We eat out (someplace cheap- pizza or similar) about twice a month.
I spend a fortune in groceries.
Our vacations consist of day trips and visiting relatives.
We have almost no savings.
I don't buy lottery tickets.
I have no plans to retire um... ever...
But I'm OK. Things are stable and we have everything we need and even a few extras like guitar lessons for Bas-Shifra, cell phones and a cable modem.
Mr. & Mrs. Scharf were the first to post the KAJ letter on their website. Very smart of them to use Quicktime format so that most everyone is forced to link to them.
ReplyDeleteUOJ should post pictures of all the shysters involved like Sholom & Moishe Rubashkin as well as Menachem Lubinsky. These guys are raping souls of adults and children alike with maacholos asuros.
ReplyDeletehttp://askshifra.blogspot.com/2006/09/jewish-debt.html#c115877847206766381
ReplyDeleteThis is something I wonder about quite often. I live in an affluent neighborhood, though I am not affluent. I am a small business owner and work insane hours just to keep my business afloat. (I frequently sleep under my desk due to very late night projects). If my wife didn't also work, there would be no way we could afford to live. No way.
I do own a house, but the only way I was able to buy a house to begin with is because my father in law gave us money toward the downpayment. We were lucky to first buy in the late 1990's before the price of houses went through the roof (pardon the pun).
Because I'm neurotic, we have a cleaning lady/housekeeper/ in our home several days a week and I lease a new car every two or three years. We pay dearly for my narishkeit: the car is my insanity because when I was younger, my parent's used cars would often break down on the highway. These experiences of stomach churning anxiety manifested themselves into intense fear every time my family went on a long road trip. I promised myself I would never allow my children to experience that truama. We have the cleaning lady because my wife and both work and we're not very organized with cleaning, laundry, dishes, et al. Yet, despite my own culpability in this area, I'm a neat freak. So to preserve Shalom Bayis, I insist on having help.
We spend over 20K a year on yeshiva tuition and I'm usually behind on my payments. Coming up with the mortgage is difficult some months, too. Last year, my business hit a very tough spot and I had to endure 8 a.m. calls for some time from creditors. I've also had my credit cards suspended a few times due to non-payment. A few months ago, my EZ Pass was confiscated at a bringe due to a lack of funds caused by a suspended credit card.
The only vacations I ever took was to mount airy lodge and three days to florida in the late 1990s. Anything since has been amusement parks or local day trips. My mental sanity luxuries aside, we live a fairly modest life that includes quite a bit of debt above the mortgage that we've accumulated over the years.
I often wonder why it has to be like this. My per household earning puts our family in a rather high earning category according to national averages. Yet, we have so little to show. It can make you go mad. On the other hand, I'm the head of of a delightfully laid back, blessedly happy family, with beautiful funny kids, and our health to be thankful for (kinahora). Even with the crushing debt, that's not too shabby.
Hey Gornish, you pathetic oaf!
ReplyDeleteYudel is now reporting just how low you have sunk. You not only started taking Rubashkin's Weissmandel stuff, but you are going to be taking the even shvacher "Aaron's Best" label.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/confused-or-convinced.html#c7175168081948134005
ReplyDeleteI asked her about this quote from Rubashkin spokesperson Mike Thomas:
"Dr. Grandin has been to AgriProcessors before; she consulted with AgriProcessors shortly after the plant opened in 1989.
We had been asking her to consult with us again for a number of years, and three months ago we were finally able to settle on a date."
"That's not true!" Dr. Grandin said forcefully. "That's ridiculous!" Dr. Grandin said
OH! so Rubashkins are old liars.
The typical Rubashkin Fresser who wants to continue stuffing his face with treif is coming up with the following excuses:
ReplyDeletea) KAJ was influenced by a new administrator who wants to prove himself.
b) The KAJ letter only says the relationship will expire in many months. If it was treif, they would have dumped them immediately.
c) Ok, Rubashkin lied, but can you blame him for spinning things? It's his company after all.
d) Prove Lubinsky is lying.
e) Ok, you proved Lubinsky is lying but he's a paid marketing consultant, so that's his job.
-------------------
GET A LIFE!
Places like Goldberg's grocery on 18th Ave. repackage most meats from bulk flanks and repack chickens from large cases. If you believe that Rubashkin may be tarfus you can't buy anything from that meat department as they use the same knives and machinery/equipment for all brands. And the inhouse deli as well as glatt a la carte use the butcher's stock.
ReplyDeleteRubashkin Fressers will have plenty more excuses. They are also farentfering tonight that KAJ hashgocho is "very expensive".
ReplyDeleteNot everyone is Ms. Frugality or the The Personal Finance Whiz. God knows they don't teach these skills in yeshiva, although Home Ec used to be a staple of public education. This social contract we all bound ourselves into sucks. Why the hell should anyone have to contort themselves into a financial pretzel just because it's expected to send kids to yeshiva? And then be made to feel like a schnorring criminal when you can't make it work. The yeshivas created this desperation about sending kids to private schools and then they get all touchy when parents can't afford to pay.
ReplyDeleteWhy should an attorney -- who makes $125,000 a year and wants his wife to stay at home so the kids can see their mother, after all, they're never going to see their father who works from 8 to 9 every day -- have to beg a tuition committee for a break on the tuition he pays for his 5 (at least) kids (orthodox jews need to have a lot of kids, too...isn't that the expected norm?)? And god forbid you make less. If you dare expect your children to recieve a religious education, then you'd better get used to eating baked beans and tuna, scratch that, frozen flounder, for dinner every night. If not, how dare you ask for a tuition break.
Give me a break! Why should hardworking, sincere, and relatively affluent people be made to feel like garbage just because the expected norms of the religous community have ZERO bearing on the reality of any other normal human being?
In the frum world, the poverty line starts at 100K salary.
ReplyDeleteWe think so after considering tuition for yeshivas.
I live in one of the expensive Jewish suburbs and make a very nice living for my age. My wife is in grad school and we have a part time babysitter and 1 kid in nursery. I think that the problem is 2 fold and it has evolved into itself, on the one hand people are living well above their means. On the other hand there is no other way to do it in our community. Tuitions are out of control, however the schools expenses are up as well, good teachers aren't cheap and I know very few decent mechanchim driving aroung in Lexus'. The cost of meat is a sin- and clearly leads to sin as well. I thank g-d have managable debt at this point however I fear that by the time I have 4 kids in Yeshiva it is going to cost me over half my take home pay just to cover the tuition and other hidden fees such as building fund and scrip (a this point in the community in which I live it would cost roughly $52,000 to send 4 kids to elementary school). The long term solution to most of our problems would be a tution fund, It is working in Chicago. If we can find a way to control the tuition costs our entire cost of living would come down.
ReplyDeleteI know many families with both financial and other problems in fact financial stresses are one of the leading causes of marital problems.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Kenneth Brander of YU relayed his experiences as a
ReplyDeletecommunal rav who was confronted by congregants lamenting that they just cannot afford to have more
children.
So $200k and thrifty habits does it in the 5 towns for a 4 child family. Now we know why the Lakewood population is exploding.
ReplyDeleteThe lawyers in the big firms (entry salary = $150k, partners > $1 million) aren't posting, and my bet is they aren't tithing either.
While a tuition bill of $40k is a disaster for those earning less than $150k, it is Pesach vacation chump change for many, at least in 1 of the 5 towns. For investment bankers it is only small portion of their 'chanukah' bonus.
Here's my perspective. I'm below the poverty level, as in making $18000 a year, before taxes. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to afford mezuzot for the five doors in my apartment that need them. I get kosher meat when I can, otherwise I don't keep meat around. I usually don't give tzedakah because I'm spending what I make on making ends meet.
ReplyDeleteWe are a family of 7 with 5 kids in yeshivas. Our income is around 100k with both of us working. (As BTs, we both have graduate degrees.) We bought our (smallest in the neighborhood) house at a great time after saving for years. We barely squeeze by and only afford camps and simchas because of help from family. Our meals are basic, the kids dress in gorgeous hand-me-downs and clothes from Walmart/Target type places, the van is used, I mow the lawn. My question: How does everyone else afford the designer clothing, SUVs, vacations, restaurants, house renovations, new furniture???
ReplyDeleteAnother option that people should consider is GETTING OUT OF THE NY AREA.
ReplyDeleteThere are many smaller communities around the country where housing is MUCH more affordable, and tuition is often similarly reduced.
Here in Milwaukee, we have school choice, which is a program that pays money to the yeshiva for students of families below a certain income. Arguably this program was not set up with Jewish kids in mind, and the Governor is working to close whatever loopholes allow Jews to benefit from my tax dollars, but right now it is a big help.
Of course, it is an entitlement, and as such it is a double-edged sword, because it basically disincentivises people from becoming financially successful.
(Basically-"why should I earn more money, I'll lose my school choice and pay it all out in tuition")
Besides the much lower cost of living "out of town" - (really, not even Baltimore!) you can relax and you don't need to impress anyone. You do your own thing. It's great! These places do exist. I'm from out of town and we temporarily in NY. Its nutty how you can spend so much just to look and live like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteAnother point - I work in a Yeshiva Day School office. I rarely get paid on time. I can attest that the business office pinches pennies - they are really frugal. The school has fundraisers throughout the year. Most of the Rebbeim have other jobs. It is a constant challenge to attract qualified General Studies teachers with their budget. They are not extremely generous with their scholarships. However, the biggest problem is that people who have agreed to pay full and can, do not. (Many have other priorities. And the Mercedes they are driving is their brother's...)
Thank God, my kid gets reduced tuition because I'm an employee, because even though we live very simply, paying full tuition would probably put us in debt.
Our belief is that God takes care of our needs, as long as they are real honest needs. We really feel the hand of God taking care of us.
I can't believe no one commented on the torture of going through the "tuition committee" financial aid process! It's the most hurtful, embarrassing, anti-torahdik experience you could go through. No matter what you say,they don't believe you and assume you are just a schnorrer.Then they give you some obscene offer, like $1000 off your $40,000 bill!
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad that I only had three kids, and that in only a few more years I will be done. It's Queens college for all of them. We don't believe in debt, either for Yeshiva or undergraduate school.
By the way my husband and I are both well educated professionals, but we've gone through lay offs and other hardships. If I were a young couple just starting out, I would have no choice but to send the kids to public school. I would pick my community based on that, and just hope that NCSY and Kiruv camps can do the job. Public school kids get a lot of inexpensive opportunities for religious experiences that are funded by wealthy donors, and so are very reasonable.
This is in response to "set the record straight".
ReplyDeleteThe stories on the internet about David Cohen are true. Why don't you print the names of the two people who supposedly looked into this and I can put them in touch with some of the 100 witnesses? Why don't you ask the Rabbonim in the neighborhood who are very well aware of this and were outraged at David Cohen? Why don't you ask the many Roshei Yeshiva at YU who are aware of what happened and told people to avoid David Cohen because he distorts the halacha? Why don't you ask the local Jewish newspapers who nearly did an expose on David Cohen and his radical views? Why don't you ask the heads of the RCA about this -- they are very well aware of it. The fact is that numerous Rabbonim have been telling people that David Cohen's positions put him outside the pale of Orthodoxy.
As to the story about the Rav, how did Marc Shapiro's description of the story differ from the way the stroy has been described elsewhere on the internet? Everyone agrees that David Cohen heckled the Rav and was physically removed from the room.
"Places like Goldberg's grocery on 18th Ave"
ReplyDeleteUnless it's Meal Mart, Satmar fleish gesheft or a special kind of place, they ALL have at least a Rubashkin item or two that is metamey kelim.
This includes the hypocrites at Glatt Mart who tell people we don't carry Rubashkin because it's "low quality" and then sneak it into the cooked foods at the take out counter.
Thankfully, a lot of Fressers will stop buying Rubashkin if there's no KAJ. The downside is that Alle and others cannot even meet current demand, so the rip off prices for kosher meat will go up even more.
ReplyDeleteUOJ has requested this be on the agenda of the next Fed meeting.
Even though I find it very odd that so many North Jerseyites among the modern Orthodox do not know anything about Dovid Cohen's supposed outrages there, I will try to conduct my own investigation.
ReplyDeleteThe original version posted here about Cohen & Hartman was presenting Cohen as being mevazeh the Rav. Professor Shapiro explains that Cohen was protesting a perceived slight against the kavod of the Chazon Ish. Shapiro admits that from publicly available information at the time, Cohen had good reason to feel the way he did. After the incident with Hartman acting like a dance club bouncer, new information emerged that what was said about the Chazon Ish was correct and not even demeaning.
Have 6 kids, lived in NJ, had annual gross of 200K, gave 10% after-tax to tzdeka, lived in a gigundus house with 15K property tax, 7K utilities, 3k landscaping, Let's not forget the 40K in TUITION.
ReplyDeleteFound that whatever was left disappeared into a black hole. Annual grocery bill was 25K. Spent easily 10K per year on clothing.
We got caught in the cycle of doing what every one else was doing because you figure that's the way that it's supposed to be done.
Like everyone else, we were working like beasts-of-burden to support this life style. At the end of each day, there wasn't an ounce of energy left to do anything. Felt like the life force was being sucked from my body.
Then, one day I saw that I was headed for an involuntary career change (restructuring, downsizing, whatever you want to call it).
I asked myself: How will I ever manage to feed the beast that we created?
Decided that it was time for a drastic life-style change.
Decided to sell the farm, pack up the bags and move everyone to Israel.
Bought the NJ house for 350K. Sold it for 700K.
Found a handyman special in a nice Anglo neighborhood here for 200K. Put 100K renovations into it. Put the balance of 200K in the bank, and now we have NO mortgage.
Arnona (property tax) is about $1500 per year. Utilities run $3000 per year because we like our air conditioning and heating. Own just one large family vehicle.
School costs including extra tutoring are under $10K.
We have the best health care system on the planet here and the supplemental upgrade policy costs $600 per year.
We have a small garden and now I cut the grass myself.
Now we spend just a few hundreds of dollars per year on clothing.
My grocery bill is down to the $15K/yr range, and yes, we do eat meat and we do a lot of entertaining on Shabbos.
We tossed the TV and that's $50/month in savings right there.
Cell phones are cheap here too, we have 8 phones (one for every member of the family) on an Orange family plan and my monthly bill is under $100. Can't do that in the US of A (as far as I know).
It's amazing how in 3 short years, we've been de-programmed of that certain kind of Orthodox-Jewish-American mentality that we once had.
Gone are the times when the kids all got new clothes and shoes for Pesach and Rosh Hashana.
Gone is the notion that we will have to spend $30K per year per kid to give our kids "proper" college educations.
You know what? Our kids are getting great educations here, and they will find good work and professions, and they will be able to build families, and they will never feel that they lack anything.
Why? Because it's all in the mind. What you think you need versus what you really need.
We are working hard since we moved here 3 years ago. That hasn't changed.
What has changed is that from the time I say Modeh Ani in the AM until I say Shema at bedtime, I feel like I am actually LIVING MY LIFE.
I am no longer a slave to a job, a house, the shopping mall and school tuitions.
I am free, free at last!
And I think that the scenery is a lot nicer here too. And, not to rub it in too much, but I can daven at the Kotel whenever I like.
Thanks for listening and come and visit us soon!
I have renamed my children. I have decided to call my oldest "Porsche", as in: "that's the one whom I put through yeshivah instead of buying a Porsche".
ReplyDeleteThe next is named "yearly vacations", as in "that's the one I put through school instead of taking yearly vacations". They are followed by "Condo in Miami", "Flat over looking the Kotel", "swiss chalet", "Rolex", and "Yacht". We are thinking of naming the next child "Early retirement". :-)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/01/AR2008010101303.html
ReplyDelete'House Lust' Hits Home
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 2, 2008; A13
Down the block from my home, workmen are finishing a new house. It replaces a bungalow that had measured about 1,500 square feet. The new home has a covered front porch, two fireplaces and a finished basement. It comes in at just under 5,700 square feet. What is it with Americans and their homes?
Everyone knows the direct causes of the present housing collapse: low interest rates, lax mortgage lending, rampant speculation. But the larger force lies in Americans' devotion to homeownership. It explains why government officials, politicians and journalists (including this one) overlooked abuses in "subprime" lending. The homeownership rate was approaching 70 percent in 2005, up from 64 percent in 1990. Great. A good cause shielded bad practices. The same complacency lulled ordinary Americans into paying ever-rising home prices. Something so embedded in the national psyche must be okay.
"House lust" is what Dan McGinn calls it in his book by the same title. McGinn documents -- sympathetically, for he dotes on his own home -- our housing excesses, starting with supersizing. In Sweden, Britain and Italy, new homes average under 1,000 square feet. By 2005, the average newly built U.S. home measured 2,434 square feet, and there were many that were double, triple or quadruple that. After World War II, the first mass Levittown suburbs offered 750-square-foot homes.
"We're not selling shelter," says the president of Toll Brothers, a builder of upscale homes. "We're selling extreme-ego, look-at-me types of homes." In 2000, Toll Brothers' most popular home was 3,200 square feet; by 2005, it had grown 50 percent, to 4,800 square feet. These "McMansions" often feature marble floors, sweeping staircases, vaulted ceilings, family rooms, studies, home entertainment centers and more bedrooms than people.
Homes are a common currency of status. As McGinn notes, many jobs in an advanced economy are highly technical and specialized. "I could tell you more about (my job)," a woman informed him at a dinner party, "but you won't understand it, and it's not that interesting." By contrast, a home announces that, whatever the obscurities of your work, you've succeeded. There's a frantic competition to match or exceed friends, co-workers and (yes) parents.
Some house lust is fairly harmless. Several Web sites ( http://www.zillow.com, http://www.realtor.com) provide estimated prices for homes. People can indulge their nosiness about their neighbors', friends', co-workers' or relatives' finances.
Although house prices recently exploded, they have increased only slightly faster than inflation since the 1890s, concluded a study by Yale economist Robert Shiller. The recent sharp run-up may imply years of price declines or meager increases. "Buying a bigger house isn't an investment," warned Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements. It's "a lifestyle choice -- and it comes with a brutally large price tag." Not only are mortgage payments higher; so are costs for utilities, furniture and repairs.
Flatbushrenegadge-
ReplyDeleteYour comment is funny, but underscores my comment from earlier. If,to educate your children, you gave up a Porsche, vacations, a flat by the kotel, etc, then you are one INCREDIBLY wealthy man. Most people in the world can't even dream of such wealth, whether they are paying for private school or not. It's just hard to feel sorry for someone because, too bad, he had to give up things that most people live very nicely without.
In the spirit of "humor" I'll dedicate some names for children of families I know:
ReplyDelete1. "Thrift Shop"-the extend of frugality that some families have been forced into. One family I know even bought their daughter's Bat Mitzvah dress at the thrift store because they have a $70,000 tuition bill. Why bother working when this is your reward for busting your rear? Of course, the kids are teased incessantly, which adds insult to injury.
2. "Humiliation"-the experience of begging for a discount in tuition in from of the tuition committee, or begging for money from family.
3. "Devastation"-the experience of being offered $100 off your tuition bill that already had four zeros on it.
4. "Grandparents"-this family was driving a car so out of shape that the parents stepped in to buy something safer. "Grandparents" and "Humiliation" are twins, connected at the hip. Now the school expects the grandparents to pay for tuition, since they picked up the tab for a safer vehicle.
5. "Arguments"-These families are so on edge about how to juggle paying their bills and keeping a step ahead of the creditors that shalom bayit is a concept of the past.
Unfortunately, I believe there will be tons of people that will just be priced out of a full day school Jewish education at the rate things are going at currently. I know a good handful of families that have turned to homeschooling. I have to wonder if they are only getting out of the market early, or if others will be following suite soon.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do when a Yeshiva refuses to refund money paid for services not rendered? I had registered my son for a NY suburban Yeshiva, and elected to have tuition paid through an ACH debit from my checking account. One week before school we decided to enroll him in another Yeshiva and notified the school. The first tuition payment to Yeshiva #1 was taken and we asked for it to be refunded. It is now five weeks later, and the school's administrator does not return telephone calls and we have no idea if we will get a refund.
ReplyDeleteIn the inerim I have already paid Yeshiva #2 and really need the money back.
I know if I owed them money they would hound me to death. I have been very nice about the whole process but my patience is wearing thin.
Have UOJ & Jeff Herman looked into parents suing Margo (and any other idiot yeshiva who allowed molesters on staff) to get a tuition refund?
ReplyDeletewhy dont you move to communities like north mioami beach
ReplyDeletethe schools tuition are manageable
you can buy a four bedroom house between 280 to 350 that is nice
there is all the kosher stores you need
6 shuls
chassidish to litvish to modern orthodox
and if you sell your million dollar home you can by a house for 350 to 400k and place whats left in an acct to cover tuition
plus the warm weather and a nice group of people
dovid cohen is a disgrace to the rabbinate
ReplyDeletesimply put there a so many instances that he has failed the jewish community it is a shame that aguda and ohel even talk toi him let alone consult with him
once again the fact remains our leadership fails the jewish community again
Urgent !!! Urgent !!! Urgent !!!
ReplyDeleteUoj,shmarya,steve, how come we cant get ahold of a letter that people in the know claim is out there, with a psak halacha from rav shlomo zalman aurbach zt"l, that anyone who can help mondrowitz with evading prison/extradition is obligated to do so.
please can somone confirm of such a letter and if yes can we get a copy posted here for all to see, there is no doubt in my mind that these jihadist chareidim will do anything it takes as soon as mondrowitz is out on bail/house arrest to make sure he vanishes in some yeshuv in israel were they will never find him, if there is such a psak.
The whole basis of the rav harashi shel gur, rav meir zilberstein for willing to help mondrowitz is b/c of this so called psak that he claims he has.
Anyone with contacts in israel should try to get ahold of this letter, and post it here, it is very very important.
So let me understand this:
ReplyDeleteIf anal penetration according to scheinberg is no cause then why the hell did Louima make such a stink?
After all it was done by New York's Finest! A Mitzvah!
So if the Molestas Gur headed by the Gur Rabbi is working overtime to free Mondro and succeeds what does this mean for sol werdiger?
ReplyDeleteBoogy,
ReplyDeleteThey take Werdiger's few dollars and laugh at him as soon as he turns his back.
Sol is a putz...he's the only one that didn't find out yet!
LVF,
ReplyDeleteDon't get so worked up about a letter. We expected no less...and probably more coming from the gedolei alzheimers/nursing home chevra.
Joe Lieberman says no ambition to be Vice President with McCain
ReplyDeleteBy Reuters
Tags: Joe Lieberman, John McCain
Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, ruled out a bipartisan White House bid on Wednesday, saying he has no ambition to be vice president if John McCain, whom he has endorsed, wins the Republican candidacy.
Joe;
ReplyDeleteYou doth protest too much.
If offered you'd grab it in a NY minute.
Imagine: Cholent on Shabbos in the White House! Priceless!
Lawsuit against Scheinerman:
ReplyDeleteAnything to do with the Construction accident few weeks ago at his new Shul on P and E. 24th?
Why is Avi Shafran so frightened of blogs? In his latest, long-winded diatribe he compares them to crime-ridden neighborhoods, and suggests blog-authors are little better than the mentally-deranged street-corner prophets you see on soap-boxes in public parks. Ok, fine: so why the blatant panic? This most recent warning against blogs runs more than 500 words -- and this is hardly the first time R' Shafran has sounded the alarm. Strange, no? I can't recall ever seeing a famous writer publish a warning, let alone a series of warnings, against listening to schizophrenics. If bloggers really were the lunatics Avi says we are, why isn't he trusting the readers to recognize this on their own?
ReplyDeleteSo it says here that Avi is lying. Not about hating blogs, of course, but the anti-blog arguments he offers are surely bogus. Take loshon hara for example. Avi insists blogs are evil because they drip with character assassination, but if loshon hara was quite the bane Avi says, I don't think he'd appear on a blog (Cross Currents) that makes almost a weekly habit of slandering left-leaning and irreligious Jews. Nor would I expect Avi to let himself become quite so unreasonable when the subject turns to Eric Yoffee and the reform movement if he was the sort of honest defender of pure speech he portrays himself to be. In fact, his anti-blog articles themselves consist of lashan hara - about bloggers!
Stop PSYCHOPAHT!!! RABBIS!!!! Molestings!!!!
ReplyDeleteRape!!!!
MURDER!!!!
WHAT I am a VOICE IN THE DARKNESS, a speaker for the millions and billions molested. I know everyone who has ever BEEN MOLESTED!!! IF YOU HAS EVER BEEN MOLESTED I PROBABLY KNOW ABOUT IT. But you should tell me anyway. I am in charge of all molesting.
In 3 months since I been blogging I uncovered huge amounts of molestings everything in yeshivas and other yeshivas and more yeshivas. Scandals are GOINGS ON AND BEING COVERED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEONE MUST SPEAK OUT!!!! I AM SOMEONE.!!! I AM ME. I AM UNORTHODOX UNMEDICATED ORTHODOX JEW.
I have seen many molestings. I maked this blog to speak out and protest against molestings. All molesterings in so-called """""FRUM""""" (KRUM!!!!!) WORLD ALL FEAR ME. They tremble to their socks at me. (Buy my -T-Shirt, 40 percent of 4 percent of proceeds sales goes to molesting. Support me. Buy T-SHIR!!!!T)
In West Winconsins VAAD, thousands been molested. Jewish Press lie and say there is no West Wiconsins, I ASK THEM THEN WHO WAS MOLESTED???? HOW LONG WILL YOU COVER UOJ THE MOLESTINGS THAT IS GOING ON INSIDE YOUR VERY EYES. I have speoken to thousands of millions of children scarred by lives for molestings. MOLESTINGS DRIVES ME CRZY!!!
I ask you how much longer!!! Their institutions must be thrownd out and buried under lawsuits. I am in contact with many lawyers. Some with degrees. I have scratches everywhere. Hives. I am scratching itching for justice. I smell justice IN MY SLEEP.
SOON!!!!
avi meant me?
ReplyDeleteUnMedicated Orthodox Jew
EVERYONE LIES!!!!!
MANY PEOPLES IS PRAISING ME!!!
CHILD MOLESTERS RABBI OF THE WEEK!!!!
Stop PSYCHOPAHT!!! RABBIS!!!! Molestings!!!!
NEWS!!!!
UnMedicated Orthodox Jew
YOu are EITher with UNMEdicated Ortodox Jew or against me! I aM SICk and TIRed of all the Molestingse! and must STOP by all! the RabbIS who is MolestingsE them! Truths will be uncovered! Lies will be untold! I will ExpoSE EVERYONE!! No one Can STOP ME!!!!!
EVERYONE LIES!!!!!
I HAVE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK!!!!!
I seen many things. I see n terrible horrible crimes all covered up. LOOK IN ANY BASEMENT IN BORO PARK YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. LIES!!!! LIES!!!! LIES!!!!
All the clowns!!! the clowns in their SHTREIMELS!!! they know what i am TALKING!!! about!!! all th coverups in their hevres!!! Tell me about YANKEL WHO CAME DOWN WITH HERPES. He said it was TB!!! I KNOW IT WAS HERPES BECAUSE YOU DON'T TAKE ANTIBIOTICS FOR TB!!! Where did he get it. I BET HE WAS MOLESTED!!!
I AM PRINTING MORE NAMES OF RABBIS I HAVE RECCIEVED CONFIDENTALLY!!! BECAuse theire is fear. But DO NOT FEAR ME unless you molEST!!! THEN I will wreak vennngance on you!!! I HAVE BLOG!!! I EXPOSE THINGS!!! Enough already with all the ltyings and thei lyings liars!!! I have blog!!!
Rabbi Smhuel X. Winston of Willmore Blvd, Queens, New Hampshire - Thousands of crimes. Too many to sPELL
Rabbi Gershon Gringers of Belle Harbor, California - MOLESTED SOMEONE!! MAYBE ME!!!
I HAVE THOUSANDS MORE NAMES TO REVEAL AND I HAVE BLOG!!!! SEe me soon!
MANY PEOPLES IS PRAISING ME!!!
EVERY DAYS I GET MILLIONS OF COmments!!!!! SOME REAL!!!!
They praise me for great work I do!!! I bing millions of rabbis to justice!!! I am a crusaders against molestings!!! Crusders always my roll models!! I dont do it for money (BUY MY T-SHIRTS!!!! BUY MY T-SHIRTS!!!) I DO it to keep Rabbis who is molestings off the streety. I have POWER!!! the ANIMALS in SHTREIMELS who molest know that UNMEDICATED ORTHODOX JEW is breathing down their necks.
I bring justice to molesters!!! by molesting them!!! with my blog!!! they molest for perversions!!! I blogmolest for justice!!!
Peoples is right to praise me!!! I am singlehanded crusadering for juctist against SMELLY Rabbis. No one one stood up to Agudah BEFORE ME!!! KOLKO, I EAT YOUR!!!! THIS IS JUSTICE!!!
I AM MAKING ULTIMAYTUMS to all Rabbis. Retire now or I will expose you. I am on exposing roll!!! I have photos and videos and names. I HAVE BLOG!!! FEAR MY BLOG!!!
Retire now or face my anonymous wrath!!!
CHILD MOLESTERS RABBI OF THE WEEK!!!!
EACH WEEK, i Unmedicated UN-ORTHODOX JEW will nominate one filthy ANIMAL RABBIS WHO IS MOLESTINGSE CHILDRENS TO BE THE child molesSTER RABBI of THE week!!!
TREMBLE!!! BUY MY T-SHIRTS!!! I an acceptings any and all hearsay madeup information whatever about rabbis who may be molested you or someone or someone you heard. I don't care Send me names!!! I MAKE THEM PAY!!! I HAVE BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am reportING TRUTH!!!
First now is Rabbi Wendelr Meyerson of Boca Raton, Cleverland
Rabbi Wendel Meyerson was the masgiah at the local VETERIONARY SCHOOL WHERE i been told he molested many horses. I AM EXPOSING HIM!!!! I WILL EXPOSE HIM AND EVERYONE!! UOJ !!!
On BHEALF of every swee innocent child who has been molested, i UNMEDICATED ORTHODOX JEW WILL WREak justice!!! I KNOW NTHINGS!!!
I won't stop1! I can't stop!! I have a Dog!!! Is this DAAAT TORAH??? SOMEONE TELL ME?? i CALLENGE YOU!!!
(DON'T EVEN BOTHER posting comments!!! Comments are closed you filthy animals)
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a1616/News/New_York.html
ReplyDeleteby Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
After serving nearly three years for sexually assaulting two teenage girls in his charge in the mid-1990s, Rabbi Baruch Lanner, the former yeshiva principal and a longtime leader of the Orthodox Union’s National Conference of Synagogue Youth, is scheduled to be released from a New Jersey state prison next week, The Jewish Week has learned.
The rabbi, 58, was sentenced to up to seven years and has been in custody at Southwoods State Prison in Bridgeton for 35 months, following his conviction for criminal sexual contact.
The charges leading to his arrest and imprisonment came from two former students who attended Hillel High School in Deal, N.J. where Rabbi Lanner was principal.
He was tried and convicted in 2002, then released after less than a week in jail pending an appeal. He was returned to serve his sentence on Feb. 10, 2005, after his conviction was upheld, and will now be released “to parole supervision for the balance of his sentence,” according to Neal Buccino, public information officer for the New Jersey State Parole Board.
Allegations that the rabbi had sexually and psychologically abused scores of teenagers in NCSY had been made over a 30-year period, but no action was taken until his behavior was first reported in The Jewish Week in June 2000.
The rabbi was terminated the day after the article was published, and the OU commissioned an extensive study that found “profound errors of judgment” among the leadership of the organization and called for sweeping reforms.
Major personnel changes were made at the OU, and stricter policies regarding parental supervision of and involvement in youth activities at NCSY were put in place.
The Orthodox Union declined to comment on Rabbi Lanner’s impending release.
But Richard Joel, who chaired the independent OU investigation when he was head of international Hillel and is now president of Yeshiva University, noted that “the system of justice has worked, he [Rabbi Lanner] has served his time, and I hope he gets on with his life — in another field — and builds something with it because he is a very bright man.
“This whole matter is not just about Baruch Lanner,” he continued, “and it has made our community more aware, more vigilant,” and made people recognize that “the responsibility for the welfare of our children rests with each of us.”
The parents of the younger of the two girls who brought charges against Rabbi Lanner and testified in his trial, and whose names were not made public to protect their privacy, told The Jewish Week: “We hope that what happened will serve to educate the community. These situations must be dealt with forthrightly and not be swept aside,” they said.
Elie Hiller, who worked with Rabbi Lanner for four years at NCSY and later testified against him at a bet din in 1989, said he and others who have been following the case for years “knew this day was coming,” when the rabbi would be released.
“I expect some of the victims will have a bit of anxiety, but I hope they realize that his release does not change the fact that he has a criminal record and remains on the Megan’s Law list,” which makes public the names of sex offenders in New Jersey and requires them to register their whereabouts with authorities.
Hiller said he hopes those who were abused by Rabbi Lanner “are at a place in their lives where they are making their lives whole and that they won’t feel intimidated. At the very least,” he said, “people will now be reminded that he has been in jail and that the brave ones who spoke out had a real effect” on Jewish communal life.
Hiller added that he is hopeful that Rabbi Lanner will not be given another position, here or in Israel, that would put him in contact with young people.
Rosenblatt's report makes it seem as if the OU cleaned house of all those who supported, enabled and covered for Rabbi Baruch Lanner. Yet I have been told by an OU insider close to the cleanup process instituted after Rabbi Lanner's misdeeds were made public that most of Rabbi Lanner's enablers are still working for the OU and no real housecleaning has taken place.
ReplyDeleteThe untold story here is exactly that – the dozens of current OU employees who allegedly knew of Rabbi Lanner's misdeeds but failed to act to protect the children under the OU's care.
Let's hope the story is told soon and that those who enabled Rabbi Baruch Lanner are removed from public Jewish life.
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s29&SecId=29&AId=57165&ATypeId=1
ReplyDeleteKosher disgrace
28/12/2007
Over the past decade, the community has benefited from a remarkable rise in the number of kosher restaurants in the UK, and particularly in our capital. So it is disappointing to discover that the standards of hygiene in all too many of these establishments are disgracefully low. A JC investigation this week has revealed that half of kosher restaurants, delis and bakeries inspected by local authorities are rated “very poor” or “poor” — including some of our most trendy hang-outs. And only two restaurants — out of 59 — are given top marks. Kosher consumers deserve better, and it is, first and foremost, up to the proprietors of these restaurants to recognise that compromising on the safety of their customers is unacceptable, and take immediate action. But it is also a job for our kashrut authorities. Since 1991, the London Beth Din has only given certificates to premises that are inspected every year by a qualified environmental health and safety consultant. They must get even tougher on the restaurants they inspect, all year round. Most importantly, it is up to you, the consumers, to make it clear to restaurant-owners that your patronage cannot be taken for granted — and there is a price to be paid, quite literally, for dirty premises.
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s18&SecId=18&AId=57124&ATypeId=1
Kosher restaurants fail food-safety test
28/12/2007
Barry Toberman
Many kosher restaurants, delis and bakeries visited by local-authority inspectors are receiving “very poor” and “poor” ratings for food safety.
A JC investigation of 59 establishments assessed over the last two years found that 30 received either zero- or one-star ratings. Just two were graded five-star and another two four-star.
The ratings are based on a national Food Standards Agency system. A no-star grading suggests “little or no appreciation of food-safety legislation”. One star equates to “a poor level of compliance”.
Kashrut representatives variously expressed surprise and disappointment at the findings, but maintained that hygiene standards were high within the kosher market. However, licensees were not required to inform them of the results of council food safety inspections.
A United Synagogue spokesperson told the JC on Monday: “We take the matter of health and safety very seriously. All of our [London Beth Din] licensees are inspected by a qualified environmental-health and hygiene consultant and meet appropriate standards. We request written confirmation of this at the annual licensing session and the licence will not be renewed without it.” In addition, its shomrim had to pass a food hygiene course.
Although premises are asked to display the ratings certificate following a local-authority inspection, there is no legal obligation. Councils and consumer groups suggest that where none is on show, concerned customers should ask to view the certificate.
UOJ must be thrilled that I was a speaker at the OU's West Coast Fresser Convention.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1198517289934&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
ReplyDeleteStudents allegedly performed gynecological exams on unconscious patients
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
On Tuesday evening, a chanukas ha’bayis was held in Boro Park in honor of the new Sanz-Klausenberger Beis Medrash, 1611 46th St. The gathering was addressed by R' Dovid Olevski, Rosh Yeshivas Ger; Rav Yitzchok Dov Berger from Manchester; and Rav Eliyahu Yitzchok Brisk, Tashnader Rov.
ReplyDeleteOn Friday December 21, 2007 all routes going towards Lakewood N.J. were extremely backed up. There were dozens of frum families stranded on the roads and it became apparent that many would not make it to their destinations before Shabbos. Hosts were urged to call guests on the road and tell them to try and make it to Deal, N.J. – where people there would put up stranded families for Shabbos.
ReplyDeleteThose stuck in traffic closer to Lakewood were advised that the State Police would pick them up and take them to their Lakewood destinations.
The cause of the traffic was an accident involving a car that crashed into a utility pole at Mile Marker 101.7 southbound on the Garden State Parkway. Combined with heavy seasonal holiday weekend traffic, the Garden State Parkway, as well as Routes 33 and 66, were clogged with traffic and impassable during the critical Erev Shabbos travel time causing havoc to observant travelers.
One such case involved a kollel couple returning from the hospital where they had gone earlier in the morning after the husband broke his leg. His wife, who is seven months pregnant, was in the car as well. They left their car at Mile Marker 108 South on the Garden State Parkway, and were picked up by a Lakewood Hatzoloh ambulance.
Hatzoloh had an ambulance, being driven by one of their non-Jewish associates, pick up stranded people all along Interstate 195 and the Garden State Parkway. There also was a 15-passenger van looking for and picking up stranded travelers.
Rabbi Yisroel Schenkolevsky, the Lakewood Police Chaplain, Lakewood Hatzoloh members, Lakewood Chaverim members, and many community leaders were instrumental in helping people stranded along the highways.
Two-dozen families spent Shabbos in Deal, prompting one commentator to say, “The Deal community is a marvelous example of hachnassas orchim. Imagine opening up your home to numerous strangers a few minutes before Shabbos, sharing whatever food you had ready – with no time to cook more – and sharing living space for the whole of Shabbos! An amazing kehillah! They will surely be richly rewarded from Heaven Above!”
Among those affected by the traffic jam was Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, Skolya Rebbe. The Rebbe is the grandson of Rabbi Dovid Yitzchok Isaac Rabinowitz, zt”l (1898-1979), Skolya Rebbe and author of Tzemach Dovid; son of Rabbi Boruch Pinchas Rabinowitz, zt”l (1874-1920), Skolya Rebbe and author of Imrei Boruch; son of Rabbi Eliezer Chaim Rabinowitz, zt”l (d. 1916), Skolya Rebbe who first visited the United States in 1890 and is considered the first chassidishe rebbe to set foot in America.
The Rebbe and his family left Boro Park early Friday afternoon and while on route to their destination, the Skolya Rebbe’s driver was contacted and diverted to Deal. Adam and Raquel Kanefsky hosted the Rebbe and his family.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/01/after_taco_bell_rodents_take_o.html
ReplyDeleteWilliamsburg: Who was the horny, heavy-set Hasidic guy trying to solicit dog-walking non-prostitutes the other night on Montrose and Leonard? [Newyorkshitty]
—Tim Murphy
http://www.newyorkshitty.com/?p=3005
ReplyDeleteGoys Don’t Want To Have Fun
It was a Wednesday night and I was walking my dog at 11:00. This is NOT a particularly spooky time of night around here, what with all the hipsters and families. True, a few years ago my cell phone was stolen out of my hand in broad daylight, but that was by bored preteens in the summer, and it was entirely non-violent in nature. I no longer try to text people and walk the dog at the same time, nor do I wear girlie sandals to walk the dog anymore.
On this particular fateful night, I looked dumpy because I’m walking my dog and don’t give a shit. Jeans, messy hair, no makeup, big winter coat, e.g; I don’t look like a hooker in any way, shape, or form. I notice a heavyset Hasid standing alone on the corner of Montrose and Leonard next to the softball diamond. There is a park right next to said softball diamond, with swing sets, jungle gyms, benches, picnic tables, and a restroom which I have never investigated. I have often seen fathers bring their kids out here at 11:00 at night. There are often other dog walkers about. Tonight, no one else is out at this precise moment, although a number of cars passed. There are many street lights on.
I hesitate, then go ahead and let the dog lead me across the street so I am within earshot of Hasid. I know he can’t touch me anyway. I am now 3 feet away. This was when Hasid asks me for the time. I say I don’t know and show him I have no watch.
Hasid: Oh ok. Um, you wanna have fun?
Me: No.
Hasid: No, you don’t want to have fun?
Me: NO.
Hasid: Oh, ok. (hesitates, then quickly) You know where I can get some fun?
Me (shrugging): There is a bar up Montrose a few blocks.
Hasid: Oh. I can find some fun there?
Me (corralling dog): Maybe.
This is when my dog suddenly looks up from sniffing other dogs’ pee. He notices my potential suitor and takes two steps towards him. Hasid lurches back in reflexive terror. Dog, who thinks everyone must be his friend, looks at Hasid, perplexed. I begin to lead dog away from the scene of potential fun, averting my gaze. Just before I’m out of appropriate communication distance, me makes his final offer:
Not even for money, you don’t want to have fun?
Me: NO.
I begin to lead dog briskly away, head still down. I am not frightened in the least. I am somewhat amused, but would like to end the conversation nonetheless. The Hasid stands a moment alone, puts his head down and then hurries back across Broadway with the urgency one usually has to get out of a cold, driving rain or perhaps as though pursued by invisible harpies. This is the exact opposite direction from the bar I told him about. I continue to walk my dog, chuckling to myself from time to time. I see occasional passersby. The dog is once again lost in checking his peemail, oblivious to the recent affront to his owner’s honor.
I dunno, this is pretty damn funny, but not as funny as the guy who was taking a piss on a tree right out in the open and shouting after me “God bless you, Mommy!” What do you think?
bitchcakes Says:
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
What a creep! What is it with the Hasids in Greenpoint - seriously?! One tried to get me in his minivan (after following me several blocks!) and another told me I had “nice titties” when I wasn’t even wearing anything revealing (for once!).
mark elliot Says:
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
A little while ago, I went to the Pencil Factory in Greenpoint and saw a young Hasid man standing on the corner nervously looking around. Later that night I was walking home, around the n.14th and Wythe area, and about a block ahead of me saw a young Hasid man (maybe the same one, maybe not) standing on the corner. When he saw me coming, he immediately bolted in the opposite direction.
My thought was that there must be some kind of Hasid cruising/drug scene that I had never even though about before. While making no excuses for the inherent fucked-upedness and inexcusability of men of any ethnicity harassing women on the street, I bet it’s awfully confusing for these guys growing up in such a closed society who want to explore outside of it but probably have limited knowledge of the acceptable norms and probably can’t indulge in things such as sex or drugs without fear of being shunned from their society.
Again, not making excuses, a creep’s a creep, but it’s interesting to think about.
I heard Hillary Clinton is furious at UOJ for fixing her 3rd place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
ReplyDeleteMamash bizyonos.
Dear Readers,
ReplyDeleteI have been asked by Rabbi Yosef Wikler of Kashrus Magazine & Yeshiva Birkas Reuven to solicit information.
He has been investigating the rumors flying around the internet about Rubashkin.
He contacted Rav Weissmandel who basically said:
- the Internet is filled with lies and is assur.
- he only backs what he certifies at the store level if there is repacking.
- he certifies only a few stores -- not Rubashkin in Boro Park (he says they have KAJ hashgacha in BP.) [Goldberg's is under Babad.]
- he claims the man with the stickers is the mashgiach
Rabbi Wikler is asking that anyone with >>> serious information only <<< about possible fraud by anyone connected to Rubashkin or otherwise mishandling Rubashkin products - email:
info@kashrusmagazine.com
letters@kashrusmagazine.com
Office phone: 718-336-8544
Tizku lemitzvos.
Shlome Zalman Aurbach either wrote that psak for Mondrowitz at the point when he was 90% brain dead (when also assering crockpots for shabbos chulent) or it was another Mondrowitz forgery like those diplomas from US univesities he has been selling for a living. That phoney degree he had hanging on his staircase wall was where he was just starting. G-d knows also what he was developing in his home dark room............
ReplyDeleteImportance of teaching evolution noted By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer
ReplyDeleteFri Jan 4,
WASHINGTON - Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.
The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.
The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution views.
"Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.
Evolution is a continuing topic of debate in some states. Florida officials are considering revisions in state science standards that would add the word "evolution" to the standards. The state Board of Education plans to vote on the guidelines next month.
In Texas, the state's director of science curriculum, Chris Comer, maintains she was forced to resign recently due to evolution politics. Comer said she came under pressure after forwarding an e-mail that her superiors felt made the agency appear to be biased against the instruction of intelligent design, an alternative to evolution favored by some religious conservatives.
Intelligent design holds that the universe's order and complexity are so great that evolution cannot explain it.
The Texas State Board of Education is expected to begin a review of the state science curriculum soon.
Josh Rosenau, a spokesman for the California-based National Center for Science Education, which supports the teaching of evolution, said the new report is important because the debate over evolution in school is not going away.
Casey Luskin, program officer for the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that supports teaching students about the criticism of evolution, was critical of the document.
"Students should learn about the evidence for and against evolution," he said.
The Institute of Medicine is part of the National Academy of Sciences, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks on Friday opened sharply lower after the government reported the jobless rate jumped up to 5% in December, signaling broader troubles for the economy.
ReplyDeleteNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of Americans filing for consumer bankruptcy increased by nearly 40 percent in 2007, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about the extent of Lanner's crimes, but I tried to warn people about him back when I was in high school. They didn't listen - citing loshon hara, making excuses for him, talking about the good he did, etc.
ReplyDeleteLanner was indeed charismatic. That's why I joined NCSY, despite the fact I was already davening in an Orthodox shul and attending an MO high school, both by my own choice. It's his charisma that makes him dangerous. He encouraged a cult of personality, both in NCSY and at the school. He always had an adoring entourage. At the school, they would joking sing: "Lanner, Lanner, keil rachum v'chanan," to the tune of slichot. Maybe it's not avodah zarah 'cause it's clearly a joke, but it was creepy. So was the big grin he would have on his face when they sang it. (This is not secondhand. I actually heard & saw this!) I didn't know about the sexual stuff, except for the fact that he was known to knee kids in the nuts for minor religious infractions, such as frum kids who know better not wearing tzitziyot. I witnessed that, too.
I told a school consuler about all this. She was horrified but knew she was powerless to do anything, due to Lanner's standing in the school. She said he ran NCSY like a cult (I can verify that too, by describing in detail the emotional manipulation and propaganda he used during shabbatonim, which would take too much time and space). Other adults thought I was emotional, was exagerating, or admitted they literally did not want to hear it. I wasn't the only one trying to Paul Revere about these things. But I was treated more like a Cassandra than a Revere.
Some would still justify, saying he saved souls. True, but many kids, both FFB and BT were turned off to Orthodoxy by him as well. I don't know what the ratio is of saved ones to turned off ones, but I suspect it's at least a wash. I know it put a lot of doubts in my mind; doubts I have not gotten over 30 years later...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The National Academy of Sciences on Thursday issued a spirited defense of evolution as the bedrock principle of modern biology, arguing that it, not creationism, must be taught in public school science classes.
ReplyDeleteThe academy, which operates under a mandate from Congress to advise the government on science and technology matters, issued the report at a time when the theory of evolution, first offered in the 19th century, faces renewed attack by some religious conservatives.
Creationism, based on the explanation offered in the Bible, and the related idea of "intelligent design" are not science and, as such, should not be taught in public school science classrooms, according to the report.
"We seem to have continuing challenges to the teaching of evolution in schools. That's something that doesn't seem to go away," Barbara Schaal, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis and vice president of National Academy of Sciences, said in a telephone interview.
"We need a citizenry that's trained in real science."
Evolution is a theory explaining change in living organisms over the eons due to genetic mutations. For example, it holds that humans evolved from earlier forms of apes.
The report stated that the idea of evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. "Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future," said the report.
But teaching creationist ideas in science classes confuses students about what constitutes science and what does not, according to the report's authors.
The report was released by the academy and the Institute of Medicine, which advises policymakers on medical issues. It updates academy publications issued in 1984 and 1999. It was written by a committee headed by University of California-Irvine biology professor Francisco Ayala.
"Biological evolution is one of the most important ideas of modern science. Evolution is supported by abundant evidence from many different fields of scientific investigation. It underlies the modern biological sciences, including the biomedical sciences, and has applications in many other scientific and engineering disciplines," the report stated.
The authors highlighted developments in evolutionary biology, citing its importance in understanding emerging infectious diseases. They noted the discovery, published in 2006, of the remains of a Tiktaalik, a creature described as an evolutionary link between fish and the first vertebrate animals that walked out of water onto land 375 million years ago.
President George W. Bush said in 2005 American students should be instructed about "intelligent design" alongside evolution as competing theories. "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said.
Advocates of "intelligent design" contend that some biological structures are so complex they could not have appeared merely through natural processes.
A judge in Dover, Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that the teaching of intelligent design violated the U.S. Constitution, which requires a separation of church and state, because it is based on religious conviction, not science.
A 2006 Gallup poll showed that almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
The implication a few posts back is that UOJ favors the Darwinian theory of Evolution over mayseh Breishis.
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON (AP) -- Late payments on a cluster of consumer loans, including those for autos, home improvement and certain home equity loans, climbed in the summer to their highest point since the country's last recession in 2001.
ReplyDeleteThe American Bankers Association reported Thursday that the delinquency rate on a composite of consumer loans increased to 2.44 percent in the July-to-September quarter. That was up sharply from 2.27 percent in the previous quarter and was the highest late-payment rate since the second quarter of 2001, when the economy was suffering through a recession.
Simply stated:
ReplyDeleteAfter years of research, I am of the firm belief that evolution and maaseh b'reshis are reconcilable and not contradictory.
"The economy is getting hit by some body blows. The big question is whether the economy can withstand it or will it take a fall," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics
ReplyDeleteLast night ich hub gekoift a package of repackaged shmekky looking chicken cutlets, becasue we were short for shabbos and 7 mile market was the only open store. Cleaned 2 lbs of drek fat on the puny pieces then found 1/2 plumba tossed in underneath with the Aarons label. The earlier post came to mind.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm getting tired of being ripped off on "heimshe" Cholov yismael. Paying premium for products that are sub-par. I'm seriously considering going off CY and donating the monthly savings to tzedakah instead. What's a bigger mitzvah - supporting the rip-off artists by buying "heimshe" or supporting charitable instituions?
Rubashkin is as good as treif. You are better off eating peanut butter sandwiches.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't get meat from NY, see if the Lubabs in Detroit get meat from Montreal and order through them.
UOJ, surely there are certain elements that are compatible, but don't tell me you believe that you descend from apes?
ReplyDeleteTalmid:
ReplyDeleteAl regel achas, it would be impossible to delve deeply in to. I spent years seriously researching this topic, and I am personally satisfied that conceptually, evolution is compatible with maaseh b'reishis.
For starters, read Slifkin.
In 1989 a beit din confirmed charges that Lanner assaulted boys and acted in inappropriate sexual ways to girls. The beit din sealed the findings and its members (with possible exception of R. Blau) stood by mute while Lanner continued for another 11 years. The OU leadership knew of allegations before the beit din, knew of the beit din findings and knew of further allegations after the beit din yet did nothing to stop Lanner.
ReplyDeleteOnly when it was exposed in the press did something get done.
According th Mendy Ganchrow the OU executives wanted to close ranks and fought him on the outside commission he appointed. Ganchrow says he was ultimately foced out of the OU over this and much of the OU leadership that covered for Lanner remains.
http://news.independent.co.uk/education/education_news/article3307584.ece
ReplyDeleteMillionaire jailed in fraud scandal leads school fundraising mission
By Andy McSmith
Published: 04 January 2008
Gerald Ronson, the entrepreneur who brought self-service petrol stations to the UK and was caught up in the infamous Guinness fraud scandal, is leading a £10m fundraising drive for a new Jewish secondary school in north London.
The Jewish Community Secondary School (JCoSS), which is expected to open in September 2010, will be the first in the UK to give equal recognition to all children of Jewish parents, including the children of mixed marriages. It will teach Judaism as part of the national curriculum, but also promises to encourage its pupils to be "outward looking".
Ben Rich, a spokesman for JCoSS, said: "The object is to create quite a different sort of faith-based school. Parents like faith-based schools because of the discipline and moral ethos, but there are obvious, understandable concerns about faith-based schools. We expect to be oversubscribed."
Mr Ronson has written to potential donors promoting the idea that the school could draw "lost" Jews back to the Jewish community. He said: "By focusing on excellence, JCoSS will lead parents who want to send their children to a first-rate school to rediscover their Jewish roots. What better way to reach out to those who might otherwise be lost to Judaism?"
The school has planning permission, and has attracted £36m in government grants. The remainder of the estimated £50m is to be raised privately. There will be 1,310 places. More than 1,000 parents have registered an interest already.
Mr Ronson, 68, is a self-made multimillionaire who left school at 15 to join the family's furniture business. In 1966, he opened a string of self-service petrol stations selling their own brand. He named his company, Heron, after his father, Henry E Ronson. In 1968, he sold his 30 Heron stations to Shell, and moved into property dealing. By the 1980s, Heron International was one of the UK's largest companies. The business almost collapsed with debts of £2.4bn but, on his release from jail, Mr Ronson rebuilt it with the backing of Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and others.
But his name will always be associated with the Guinness share dealing scandal, when the company secretly propped up its own share price while it was negotiating to take over the drinks company Distillers. In 1986, an inquiry into the deal resulted in jail sentences for four businessmen, including Mr Ronson, who was fined £5m and served half of a one-year prison term. The court was told that companies in the Heron group were promised £5m if the takeover deal was secured, in return for which Mr Ronson bought £25m-worth of Guinness shares at a sensitive time in negotiations.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119941290597566781.html
ReplyDeleteBy PEG BRICKLEY
January 4, 2008; Page C2
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp.'s plan to destroy 490,000 hard-copy mortgage files has drawn fire from federal bankruptcy monitors, who say it could hurt homeowners' ability to sue the failed lender.
The company, once one of the country's largest mortgage lenders, says it can no longer afford the $45,000-per-month rental on warehouse space to preserve paper files. Its bid for court permission to destroy the files has been criticized by Kelly Beaudin Stapleton, the U.S. Trustee monitoring the case.
Destruction of the paper files could create trouble for American Home borrowers, compromising their ability to file lawsuits against the Melville, N.Y., company, Ms. Stapleton said in papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. American Home, which collapsed into bankruptcy in August, is selling its assets and going out of business.
"Homeowners may have claims against [American Home] and/or third parties stemming from the origination of their mortgage loans," Ms. Stapleton said in court papers filed last week. "These homeowners may need access to the original copy of the loan file to prove their claim."
Why?
ReplyDeleteIs KAJ waiting until April 18th to pull their Goodbye Rooby Tuesday Hasgocho?
If you're gonna do it, do it with one swift cut and let the M-asses know with publics ads in all of the papers.
Don't let this animal dangle by the his dingle for 3 months. You're in or you're out with your Supervision.
You didn't like it when actual Schechitahs were (are) performed this way.
Set the example with your Actions, KAJ!
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_7880249?source=most_viewed
ReplyDeleteA Waterbury police captain has been suspended for 30 days without pay for trying to track down his daughter's alleged abusive boyfriend.
Police say Capt. Michael Edwards took it upon himself to search for the man who allegedly assaulted his daughter in September.
Officials say Edwards never threatened or assaulted anyone and didn't misuse his police powers. However, department rules prohibit an officer from being involved in a criminal investigation involving family members.
Police say 22-year-old Christopher Umstead eluded police for two days, but did eventually turn himself in and has pleaded innocent.
There may be several conspiracy theories that could pan out with KAJ but I think one consideration is that everyone is afraid of a collapse of the kosher meat marketplace, which would happen if Rubashkin had no time to transition.
ReplyDeleteVarious hashgochos are already reexamining their acceptance of Rubashkin now that KAJ adherents in the fressing public are getting worried.
Get ready for price increases, as if it's already not a rip off to buy glatt kosher meat.
I respectfully invite Rabbi Blau to respond to "cynic". I have no first-hand knowledge of the Lanner tragedy.
ReplyDeleteUOJ correctly pointed out after the Shevach-Finkel scandal broke that there is no way that most tongues in the kosher marketplace are in fact kosher.
ReplyDeleteLo and behold hashgochos then finally woke up & stopped the fraudulent sources, causing the the retail price of tongue on Ave J to shoot up from $20 a pound to $30 a pound.
That was a 50% increase even though Rubashkin was still part of the "kosher" equation.
Rubashkin is larger than all other suppliers combined. Imagine what will happen with all meat & poultry prices when some major hashgochos blacklist them, as they are considering doing after the KAJ debacle.
Actually, I've been telling people that cared, for some 20 years, that it was totally out of the realm of possibilty, that the tongues could be kosher.
ReplyDeleteIt struck me in the 80's, after attending some 50 events in the month of June, where just about everywhere, tongue was served.
Remember...there's only one tongue per cow!
I hope the OU and others don't get some phoney psak from Belsky now to stand by Rubashkin no matter what, just like they are driven by financial considerations with cholov treifa.
ReplyDeleteThe entire non-cholov Yisroel dairy industry would collapse if Belsky admits treif milk is a problem. The hashgochos would also get sued over contract issues.
The hashgochos are also probably terrified of being perceived as the bad guys if there's a dire shortage of meat.
Hey Genack, if you can't take the heat, then get out of the kitchen and your executive office suite.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/confused-or-convinced.html
ReplyDeleteWhat was the wake-up alarm at KAJ?
It took them so long to decide to leave. WHERE IS THE OCTOBER LETTER?
Who's Lying? KAJ, Rubashkin, Weismandel, etc? Time to hear from Rabbi Zishe Blech (Rabbi Weismandel's PR man) Who covers up for Rabbi Weismandel (from the consumer uncovering his faults in kashrus.)
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/confused-or-convinced.html#c6586051450645649006
ReplyDeleteRubashkin Semi-Free Zone said...
Brach's in Lawrence claims not to use any Rubashkin in the fresh meats / butcher and take out sections.
Surprisingly, the 5 Towns Vaad's R' Yosef Eisen does allow Rubashkin and Brach's does sell the blister packed Rubashkin deli. I was still suspicious because others with the same set up have been sneaking what little Rubashkin they have into the cooked foods. The mashgiach here insists they do not and will not do this.
I only have knowledge of this Brach's location. I have no idea what they are doing at the Kew Gardens Hills location.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/confused-or-convinced.html#c1146174073963517970
ReplyDeleteChange of Venue said...
Mauzone under the Queens and/or 5 Towns Vaad has sold their commercial / packaged food division in Woodside, Queens to new owners. Therefore, the Mauzone items that you see in supermarkets like the bottled chicken soup are now under the Star-K.
Previously, the chicken soup was not made with Rubashkin. Is it now Rubashkin under the Star-K? Does the Star-K make them filter the water for copepods?
The new Mauzone is going national to supermarkets & stores all over the country. They somehow got the weird idea that Star-K has the kind of stellar reputation that will improve their chances.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/01/confused-or-convinced.html#c6953695280904952922
ReplyDelete"There's a Sucker Born Every Minute" said...
Evidently, Rubashkin believes that sucker is you.
He seems to have instructed his distributors to tell customers that ALL complaints against the company - including about kashrus shortcomings - are manufactured by the "evil" union.
When I speak up in different places, I get this speech as if it's been memorized. Some places are also prominently displaying the letter full of LIES that Sholom Rubashkin wrote (mistomme with Lubinsky's help) about a month ago. They are only redoubling their efforts now that KAJ is giving them the boot.
Chochom from the Ma Nishtana said...
This is a true story. A supervising rabbi at a store carrying Rubashkin upon being informed for the first time that Breuer's is abandoning ship:
"Oh, they (Rubashkin) must have done something very, very bad!"
Kein yirbu said...
A major Rubashkin distributor tells me he basically has enough between all the health & kashrus related problems, the KAJ bail out being the last straw. He is now looking to replace Agri.
Anonymous said...
Someone claiming to be a "kosher meat veteran" writes on a blog that Rubashkin puts tremendous pressure on his bodkim to super-produce and if he's not satisfied, they are fired. He is trying to farentfer how Rubashkin has such a high kosher to treif ratio.
Any truth to this?
Anonymous said...
Rubashkin is in major trouble. Hashgochos are starting to reevaluate their rubber stamp approval as they are worried about their constituents who only want KAJ or who in a pinch would also consider Nirbatur / Satmar shechita.
This also means trouble for everyone with rising meat prices as the competition already can't fill all their orders.
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14894/
ReplyDeleteRabbi Moshe D. Tendler, who holds a doctorate in microbiology from Columbia University and three professorships at Yeshiva University, agreed that the number of Jewish students specifically entering the medical profession itself is down, perhaps because that field is not offering the financial rewards it once did.
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2282
ReplyDeleteLeftist Israeli to Rice: Israel is 'a failed state' - rape her
By Stan Goodenough
Dec 28, 2007
Only a settlement imposed by the United States can save Israel, which is politically a "failed state," according to the chief editor of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's most influential left wing newspapers.
Israel National News and The Jerusalem Post Friday reported that David Landau admitted to conveying this message to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a confidential briefing she gave while visiting Israel last September.
Landau allegedly used obscene imagery in his conversation with Rice, telling her the Israeli government wanted to be "raped" by the United States, and saying he would be sexually gratified if this actually happened.
The British-born yeshiva-educated journalists confirmed the statements in a telephone conversation with the Jewish Week.
"I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped — I did use that word — by the US, and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous US intervention in the affairs of the Middle East," he said.
Makor Rishon quoted him as also telling Rice "that it had always been my wet dream to see this [US 'rape' of Israel] happen."
Rice’s response had been "fantastic [in that she was] completely unfazed" by his crass remarks, Landau claimed. He said that, after the dinner a number of the attending professors had congratulated him for "articulat[ing] what many Israelis feel.
Many of Israel's leftists are self-hating Jews, often described by others as "the worst antisemites."
While not the largest circulation Hebrew-language daily, Ha'aretz is regarded as the paper that most influences the country's "elites." Its reporters frequently attack their own country and defend "Palestinian" terrorists, adding impetus to the deeply-entrenched bias of the international press, and pushing Israel's leaders along the road to surrendering Jewish land to the Arabs.
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 2, 2008
ReplyDeleteThe Committee for the Appointment of Rabbinic Judges will discuss on Thursday whether or not Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger is fit to become the president of the High Rabbinic Court in April.
Presently, Metzger stands at the head of the Chief Rabbinate's Council, which is responsible for kashrut supervision, marriage registration and other religious services, while Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar is the president of the high rabbinic court.
The position of president of the high rabbinic court, who is responsible for settling the most difficult contemporary cases of Jewish law involving divorces, torts and conversions, is considered particularly intricate and demanding.
In contrast, the head of the Chief Rabbinate's Council deals with issues that are more commonly encountered by a community rabbi.
It is customary that the two chief rabbis rotate at mid-term. In April, Metzger and Amar will be halfway through their 10-year stint and are supposed to switch functions.
However, Metzger's fitness for the job of High Court president has been called into question by Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz.
Over a year ago, criminal charges of bribery against Metzger were dropped for lack of evidence.
Nevertheless, in a caustic 30-page report, Mazuz criticized Metzger moral and ethical behavior. The attorney-general concluded that, while Metzger was cleared of criminal charges, he should step down from the Chief Rabbinate post.
But Metzger appealed to the Supreme Court, demanding that it force Mazuz to strike from his report the recommendation the chief rabbi resign. Metzger won the case.
The court and the attorney-general requested that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann look into the matter. Friedmann decided that it was proper for the entire committee for the appointment of rabbinic judges to provide Metzger with a hearing.
Metzger is not expected to appear Thursday before the committee. Rather, his attorney David Liba'i will represent him.
Attorney Sharon Shinhav, a member of the committee, said it was "very unfortunate" that Metzger was not planning to appear.
"Based on documentation of the investigations and interrogations that I have read, serious questions arise about his attempts to cover up his misdeeds and put the blame on others," said Shinhav. "Metzger's behavior is questionable and he is not giving us a chance to get the answers."
The nine-member committee for the appointment of rabbinic judges is made up of two rabbinic judges, two Shas MKs, an opposition MK, two lawyers, the chief sephardi rabbi, and the justice minister.
In a related development, Ne'emanei Torah Ve'avodah, a moderate Orthodox activist organization, sent a letter to the justice minister asking him to disqualify the two judges and Amar from voting on Metzger's appointment as president of the High Rabbinic Court.
The organization claimed that these three had a conflict of interests since all of them already had working relations with Metzger.
Hadar Lifshitz, a member of the organization, said that Metzger lacked the halachic authority needed to be the president of the High Rabbinic Court, which deals with the toughest divorce cases.
"Metzger simply lacks the needed rabbinic clout to deal with heavy halachic issues such as agunot, while Amar has it," said Lifshitz. "Appointing Metzger would also hurt the credibility of the rabbinic courts."
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a1611/News/New_York.html
ReplyDeleteThe messianist fervor currently dominates the atmosphere at 770, with a large banner proclaiming “Yechi ... Melech HaMoshiach LeOlam VaEd,” calling the rebbe the “King Messiah Forever and Ever,” with the slogan also embroidered on the curtain covering the Torah scroll ark, and chanted during many prayer services.
With the court victory, 770’s owners could now remove the banner and discourage the singing of “Yechi.” The decision also says the owners could also arrest gabboyim for trespassing but Rabbi Shmotkin declined to say anything specific about their plans.
There has been periodic physical and frequent verbal violence between the messianists and those who they feel are detracting from the rebbe’s image as the King Messiah by disagreeing.
Some predict violence if the messianist faction is ejected.
Rudofsky said, “I certainly hope there won’t be any violence and also hope Agudas and Merkos will respect the fervor and beliefs of the people who worship there.
“If people are provoked, I guess you can provoke anybody to the point where they don’t do what they should do and would do under normal circumstances,” said Rudofsky. “If they’re provoked enough I don’t want to speculate what will happen. I don’t want to sound like I’m condoning it, because I’m not.”
One Chabad emissary says that in recent months the bellicosity has waned, however.
In November 2006, just after the annual banquet of over 3,000 emissaries, Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie wrote an article posted on Lubavitch Web sites.
A contingent of the emissaries went to 770 for fellowship and words of Torah. But their farbrengen was disrupted by angry young men, “a group that has made violence and terror their symbol,” and who threw benches, prayerbooks and fists at the gathered emissaries, wrote Rabbi Eliezrie in his article, “The Tragedy in 770.” One shaliach had his leg broken, he wrote.
The young men at issue are collectively known as the “Tzfatim,” because most studied in a Lubavitch yeshiva in the northern Israeli city Safed, or Tzfat in Hebrew. Too young to have known the rebbe when he was well, the young men come to the yeshiva at 770 to study.
“Are any of us proud of 770 today? Or do we cringe with distaste when we walk in and see how craziness has become dominant,” wrote Rabbi Eliezrie, a veteran shaliach, in Yorba Linda, Calif.
Ofer Braunstein, a Lubavitch resident of Crown Heights, said, “It’s mostly bochurim [unmarried young men] from Safed, but it’s also old hasidim” who are violent (like Moishe Rubashkin), he said. “They fight mamish [truly] physically. I saw it many times,” he told The Jewish Week in an interview outside 770 on Sunday night.
The lawsuit that brought the conflict to a head started three years ago, when at 4 a.m. on Nov. 3, 2004, several young men wrenched off from the synagogue’s exterior wall a plaque next to the cornerstone placed by the Lubavitcher rebbe, which referred to him with a Hebrew honorific used after the name of someone deceased.
They tried to replace it with their own plaque with an Aramaic term used after the name of a living sage.
Several people tried to stop them, blows were thrown, the police called and Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of Merkos, got a restraining order against them. The following month, Agudas and Merkos filed the civil court case against three named young men and 30 “John Does.” Congregation Lubavitch Inc. soon joined the lawsuit as defendants.
"Remember...there's only one tongue per cow!"
ReplyDeleteExcept at Rubashkin, where we speak in tongues!
Friday, January 4, 2008, WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court will decide if a child rapist can be executed.
ReplyDelete"Give me a break! Why should hardworking, sincere, and relatively affluent people be made to feel like garbage just because the expected norms of the religous community have ZERO bearing on the reality of any other normal human being?
ReplyDelete12:37 AM, January 03, 2008"
Because we, speaking generally here, have decided that being "accepted" by this or that Rabbi is MORE IMPORTANT to them than their own financial well-being and even their kid's future.
Yeshiva Tuition said...
ReplyDelete"Unfortunately, I believe there will be tons of people that will just be priced out of a full day school Jewish education at the rate things are going at currently. I know a good handful of families that have turned to homeschooling. I have to wonder if they are only getting out of the market early, or if others will be following suite soon.
10:15 AM, January 03, 2008"
It's absolutely inevitable. Tuition is killing people. The Rabbis, however, will not give up control of your kids without a fight, rest assured.
old stuffer said...
ReplyDeleteShlome Zalman Aurbach either wrote that psak for Mondrowitz at the point when he was 90% brain dead (when also assering crockpots for shabbos chulent) or it was another Mondrowitz forgery like those diplomas from US univesities he has been selling for a living. That phoney degree he had hanging on his staircase wall was where he was just starting. G-d knows also what he was developing in his home dark room............
7:58 AM, January 04, 2008
UOJ, y the f--=k should we have to sit by while ger inc. covers for this most prolific of all child rapists? Are we gonna let this guy get away after all the time and effort of so many of your deputies. I say u show some testosterone and leadership and head butt these gerer homos in jerusalem. tell that whole sect of friggin cultists to take mondro and that other molester and get the whole bunch of these gerer girlymen rabbonim and the entire sect off to some screwy arab country where the can screw boyz as part of the religion without fear of the UOJ gang!
Anybody have info on a Rabbi Daniel Cohen who was a rebbi in Peer Hatorah of Lakewood under R Hertzka which closed up some years ago. He now has his own high school. A friend recently confided in me that R cohen used to molest him for years. I have asked other students of his and many have told me that he used to talk to boys privately about masturbation and such. Any solid info to go on??
ReplyDeleteR' Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, ZTV"L, was the ONLY respected orthodox rabbi who was outspokenly anti religious legislation. He said that to implement religious dictations in the lawmaking processes of a state or country. He was pro the separation of Church and state.
ReplyDeleteAnd - not only for America, but for Israel, where the charedim have been rioting for decades about the lack of religious in the Knesset and Israeli Government.
Chaval Al De'ovdin - Alas, what has been lost, and cannot be replaced.
Is that the Doniel Cohen who learned in Beis Hatalmud for many years?
ReplyDeleteOr at least some of Cohen brothers learned in Beis Hatalmud. The father is a rebbe in Chasan Sofer.
ReplyDeleteThe Queens Vaad and their affiliates have long been bedfellows $$ of ultra-pro-gay-"marriage" politician David Weprin, whose claim to be "orthodox" falls flat on it's face. Lately they have been sending their stooge around, Asher Taub, who happens to have a law degree, to smear the anti-Toayvah Republican Bob Turner who is running against Weprin for the 9th district Congressional seat.
ReplyDeleteTaub did something that can only be described as disgusting. He lied in a newspaper editorial that he was with the Turner campaign. Taub was not with the campaign and is himself backing away now from saying it. Taub went on to dishonestly undermine Mr. Turner on several fronts and is back in this week's edition of 5 Towns Jewish Times with more garbage. That newspaper of course are zoynas for whoever sends ad dollars their way. I would also be willing to bet that "interests" reached publisher Larry Gordon at home before he changed overnight from a Turner supporter to a Weprin $upporter, which is completely unethical in journalism.
5 Towns Jewish Times keeps running one hysterically pro-Weprin piece after another. They ran not one but two pieces on the same autism foundation that Weprin steered taxpayer money to. That is just resurrecting alter nayess from many years ago. What has Weprin done for anyone lately? As a matter of fact, one rov in Queens says that Conservative & Reform Jewish politicians in Queens have given him much more help than David Weprin who has done close to nothing for his kehillah if not nothing at all.
Taub is lying that Turner does not campaign in frum areas. I personally saw Turner campaigning by the oylam in the Catskills.
Taub is lying that no frum Jews are in the Turner campaign. I personally called the campaign office and a frum Jew came to the phone to speak to me. He was brief and had to call me back because he was going into a meeting with top level campaign officials. He was not a poser as I made sure to engage him in frum shprach.
Taub is trying to spin the Ed Koch endorsement of Turner as a personal vendetta against the Weprin family which is ridiculous. While a lot of people did not like Weprin's father because he was a vicious politician, Ed Koch made clear long ago that Obama stabbed Yidden in the back and he will do everything to defeat both Obama and his political allies which is exactly where Weprin stands.
Taub is lying that not a single rov has endorsed Turner. While rabbonim mostly cannot give official endorsements to anyone because of legal restrictions for non-profits, all kinds of rabbonim & gedolim say by every election to vote for a right leaning candidate who is not pro-gay.
Taub is smearing Turner as a racist and anti-Semite for living in an Irish neighborhood like Breezy Point. Taub first lied that no Jews live there. After angry Jewish residents there came out in public to criticize Taub, he has switched to saying that no FRUM Jews live there. Why would frum Jews live in a completely Irish neighborhood where many of the houses are fishing shack size and not appropriate for frum families? Taub goes further that no Blacks, Hispanics or Indians live there and are especially secluded by the gate. Breezy Point started in the 1800s as an Irish settlement so it's not like it's a big draw for those groups. I guess Taub will now have to disassociate himself from several groups of frum Jews. Chassidishe residents of Brooklyn buildings with gates around them that are entirely Jewish. 5 Towns gated communities like Sutton Park & Harborview that do not have a single resident who is Black, Hispanic or Indian. The alter Mirrer rov in Sutton Park, Rav Naiman ztl, who died last year at 101 and the rov in Harborview, Rav Kalish, who makes a siyum on Shas once a year must be racists who Taub cannot associate with.
Taub is a backstabbing double agent who is making a chilul Hashem
http://www.lauferlaw.com/jacob.php
ReplyDeleteBesides Franklyn Snitow of the OU, the Skverer Rebbe has also hired attorney Jacob Laufer of Shomrim Patrol who defends pedophiles like Avrohom Reichman.
The Skverer is being sued for being mashpiah on his hoiz bochur Shaul Spitzer who tried to murder residents of New Square who don't agree with the Rebbe's policies.
In 3rd grade Lubavitch (Ocean Parkway), 1971, the Rebbi -- Rabbi Weingarten (a non-Lubab from Vienna) -- tried to barter a good grade for a 'kiss'. Anyone else have this kind of experience or worse?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stillmanfriedman.com/sitecontent.cfm?pageid=9&itemid=11112
ReplyDeleteI hope UOJ doesn't find out that the lawyer representing the Skverer hoiz bochur, Shaul Spitzer, is John B. Harris. That would be bizyonos for the Anti-Defamation League of which Harris is Vice Chair of the NY region.
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=tirVQewp3WtBZJ41IWF4Ag==&system=prod
ReplyDeleteThe Rebbe is claiming free speech rights for himself in court. That's funny considering how anyone who speaks against him is driven out of New Square.
That's an important point. Laufer is a lawyer who belongs to Shomrim. Maybe he helps them conceal the list of pedophiles Shomrim caught from the NYPD.
ReplyDeletePe'er Hatorah Lakewood
ReplyDeleteWhich Hertzka is that? Eli (pronounced Ailee) Hertzka who thinks he's hot stuff because he married a Fruchthandler?
As someone who knows the Taub family from Kew Gardens, Queens. I stood by silently in the last election knowing there was no way that Asher Taub would be elected to Congress, although I did not expect him to lose so miserably in the landslide against him. The Agudah may not always have the best motivations but believe me, they knew something about Taub being a joke when they completely ignored him to endorse a Black candidate. I will not stand by silently anymore while Taub recklessly plows around to give frum Jews a bad name. Taub's eccentric family never fit in at Rav Ashkenazy's shul. You had to be there to see it. It's possible that he wanted to join the Turner campaign but they didn't want anything to do with a loser like him. It's called sour grapes if he then tries to paint Turner as a Jew hater. You're not fooling anyone Asher.
ReplyDeleteis that the same cohen family? the oldest son of rav cohen from chasan sofer is the major posek & artscroll mechaber r' simcha bunim cohen
ReplyDeleteYou should see the angry clamoring at women's groups from Queens Vaad modern orthodox shuls where the roiv is demanding to have women rabbis. The Queens Vaad always sticks a wet finger in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing. They don't want to get their wealthy modern baal habatim upset which is why there is no real kashrus standard and why they will tolerate more & more of the feminist meshugassin. At the same time they don't want the haymishe crowd to know what they are doing so in a brilliant PR move they sent a yeshivishe maniac around to pretend they are doing the exact opposite.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.haaretz.com/weekend/anglo-file/israel-affecting-growing-liberalism-among-orthodox-u-s-jews-says-sociologist-1.379496
19.08.11
Israeli institutions are playing a role in a tendency among some American Orthodox Jews to slide back to the left, according to the same scholar who 13 years ago observed a tendency among American Orthodox Jews to become religiously more stringent.
The assumed slide to the left can be witnessed in areas such as women’s equality in Orthodox synagogues, U.S.-Israeli sociologist Chaim Waxman told Anglo File this month.
“It’s clearly a minority phenomenon, but it’s a phenomenon that’s grown. Some of this was unheard of as recently as 10 years ago.”
In 1998, Waxman, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, published “The Haredization of American Orthodox Jewry,” an article suggesting it was “inevitable that Orthodoxy in modern society will adopt a stance of greater isolation and especially of ritualistic stringency.”
Others made similar observations, most notably sociologist Samuel Heilman, who in 2006 published “Sliding to the Right,” a book dedicated to the topic.
This summer, Waxman co-authored an article titled “Sliding to the Left?” Based on 50 interviews with “knowledgeable observers,” Waxman & Yehuda Turetsky argue the Orthodox community “is much more heterogeneous” than originally believed. Some developments indicate a “significant ritualistic departure not only from Haredi norms & values but from traditional Jewish religious behavior as well,” they write.
“There appears to have been a shift in the staunch opposition to anything but the traditional ‘Torah from Sinai’ belief.” Waxman told Anglo File, “There is significant movement to the left, and it manifests itself most prominently in women’s issues, theologically & organizationally.”
Israeli programs play a role in this change, according to Waxman. “In Jerusalem, Orthodox programs such as Matan, Michlelet Lindenbaum, and Nishmat, where significant numbers of American Orthodox women study, have had a significant impact on the levels of intensive & extensive Jewish education for Orthodox women,” he wrote.
Shira Hadasha, an Orthodox feminist congregation in Jerusalem − where men & women sit separately but women read from the Torah & lead parts of the service − “serves as a model for some in the U.S. who want to have egalitarian minyanim,” he said.
There are also more “rabbot” − female spiritual leaders of congregations, he added. “Along with that comes a desire for equal status within communities. Whereas it was almost unheard of 50 years ago for a woman to be president of an Orthodox synagogue, today it’s not unheard of,” he said.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/08/21/r2.7m-fraud-shakes-king-david-schools
ReplyDeleteAn employee of the King David Schools' Foundation is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday after being arrested in connection with fraud involving R2.7-million, the foundation has revealed.
Rabbi Craig Kacev, director of the South African Board of Jewish Education and a member of the foundation's board of trustees, would not identify the suspect, but said the staffer was due back in court for a bail hearing.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Tshisikhawe Ndou confirmed that Natalie Sher appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court last Tuesday on a fraud charge. She was remanded in custody pending a bail application on Tuesday.
It is unclear how the fraud was carried out.
The chairman of the board of trustees, Adrian Gore, said auditing firm Pricewaterhouse-Coopers was commissioned to conduct a detailed probe.
UOJ's kind of rabbi
ReplyDeletehttp://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/vatican-engages-jewish-critic-new-home-ex-anglicans
Italian Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, 62, is the Chief Rabbi of Rome. He’s also a medical doctor and head of the radiology department at Rome’s San Giovanni hospital. Di Segni is well known in the Vatican; in the past, he’s contested the legacy of Pope Pius XII, refused to attend Vatican events featuring Jewish converts for fear of sanctioning proselytism, and rejected attempts to compare criticism of the church on sex abuse to anti-Semitism.
MONTREAL — The trial of a Montreal man accused of defrauding at least a dozen Orthodox Jews in a Ponzi scheme has been set to begin Oct. 3.
ReplyDeletePerry Newman, 51, faces 9 charges of fraud, theft & forgery. Between 1996 & 2010, he swindled between $10 & $12 million from between 12 to 15 people who believed he was investing their money legitimately, said lawyer Neil Stein, who represents the victims.
Newman has not entered a plea. He was released after his arrest by Montreal police on a promise to appear in court at a later date.
The largest amount – $5 million – was lost by Edith Olanoff of Israel, who made the first complaint to police. All of the other victims live in New York, and two of them are out between $300,000 to $400,000 each, Stein said.
Newman presented himself as a financial adviser & had a company, Dover Financial, that was registered in the Caribbean country of Turks & Caicos.
Stein said Newman sent out bogus statements to his clients about how their investments were doing using the forged letterhead of FC Stone, a legitimate brokerage firm in the United States.
“He never invested one dime of his so-called clients’ money,” Stein said.
Stein said Newman preyed on observant Jews, with whom he claimed to identify. The accused settled in Montreal in the mid-1990s from his native England, where, he has made known, he had attended a religious educational institution.
Newman, who lived in a fine home in Hampstead, attended services at a Côte St. Luc synagogue.
Through bankruptcy trustees RSM Richter, Stein has launched civil proceedings against Newman’s wife, Sarah Stern-Newman, and the couple’s 3 sons to recover $1.5 million they received through Dover. No criminal charges have been laid against them.
Newman himself is now bankrupt, following proceedings against him last year.
A document submitted to the court by the trustee alleges Newman used his “Jewish Orthodox roots to convince investors of his honesty, his high level of ethical standards, and his financial capacity.”
http://theantitzemach.blogspot.com/2010/12/stayed-in-hungary-for-now-part-v.html
ReplyDeleteThere were two Rabbi Cohens giving a shiur in Mattersdorf's Yeshiva Chasan Sofer. R' Simcha Bunim may not be a brother of the Cohens from Beis Hatalmud according to a comment on Hirshel Tzig's blog.
Doniel Cohen's yeshiva in Lakewood is Shaarei Orah. Tzvi Yoel Dessler is also rosh yeshiva there. Yosef Rothschild is also part of the hanhala.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/sale_rakes_in_old_money_rpf6QT8rlXdvXyMp0jq9UP
ReplyDeleteThe oldest-running nursing home on the Lower East Side is shutting its doors for good as residents protest a pricey property deal struck by one of its board members.
95 seniors are getting the boot from the Bialystoker Center - a kosher nursing, including a 107 year old woman from the neighborhood.
She & others like Mildred Mondshein, 88, and Annie Green, 85, have to find nursing homes elsewhere.
But the demise of the Bialystoker Center has been a boon for one of its board members - real estate magnate Ira Meister picked up a 4 story commercial building owned by the nursing home last year in a no-bid insider deal.
Meister is the chairman of the Bialystoker board that's charged with keeping the senior center financially sound. But that didn't stop him from buying the commercial property at 232 East Broadway for $1.5 million in an all-cash deal that never was up for bid on the open market.
The insider sale infuriated Bialystoker residents, family members & staffers, who only learned of it last month after being told the home is shutting & the Bialystoker building, at 228 East Broadway, is going up for sale.
The Bialystoker board said Meister's purchase was made as a last-ditch effort to help save the nonprofit nursing home, which is $8.5 million in debt and hemorrhaging $100,000 a month, according to board spokeswoman Virginia Lam.
Meister plans to move his private company - Matthew Adam Properties in Midtown - to the Lower East Side.
That news doesn't sit well with the seniors being forced to leave.
The residents are also miffed no local politicians spoke up for the fabled Jewish institution, built in 1928 & later a haven for Holocaust survivors.
"I think all the politicians have forgotten us - they only remember us when it's time to vote," said Mondshein.
I wasn't aware of the eviction case involving Belsky's matzah bakery until seeing it here. I was talking last week with an attorney outside the district courthouse who was involved. He said he's obviously precluded from commenting but you should have seen him roll his eyes over both Belsky and the shyster landlord who was later implicated in a massive fraud.
ReplyDeleteThe rav hamachshir of the Bialystoker nursing home is the Yenshever Rov, Rabbi "Leonard" Blank. The OU likes to advertise that they provide him with mashgiach training and although he prefers to be called Leonard, they call him Yehuda for promotional purposes. The Yensheve shul was used & abused for the filming of a disgusting Hollywood movie that was full of Chassidishe menoafim and zenus directed by an anti-frum Israeli bent on making the orthodox look bad. The shul advertises that it conducts tours for a fee for movie buffs who want to see where the movie was filmed.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=233141
ReplyDeleteDefending participation in the latest flotilla to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, Gabriel Schivone, a university student, stressed in a Haaretz piece he's one of a growing number of American Jews seeking to disassociate from Israel.
There's however a large factual wrinkle with Schivone – he falsified his Jewish identity.
In a letter to Haaretz, Valerie Saturen, a peace activist & acquaintance of Schivone, noted, “In his editorial about Gaza, Schivone presented himself as a Jew. I must point out this is not true, but created to generate credibility, shield himself from accusations of anti-Semitism & resonate with a target audience.
“Gabriel's not Jewish, whether in terms of ancestry, belief or culture. He never identified as a Jew until it became useful in advancing his agenda. Asked why he did this, he explained he has a distant Jewish relative & ‘you use what you have.’”
Schivone’s hoax was first analyzed on CAMERA, a US watchdog that tracks anti-Israel bias in the press. Yishai Goldflam wrote, “Schivone emphasizes Jewish identity no less than 8 times & repeatedly emphasizes influence of his identity on his anti-Israel activity.
Saturen suggests anti-Israel activists place a premium on participation of Jews in their activities. Flotilla organizers seemingly scored big – a Jewish participant writing in Israeli media to boot. Claims of anti-Semitism are thus defused.”
Responding to Saturen, Schivone wrote, “Not only is it sorely inaccurate & frankly abusive to deny one their identity & humanity, it's a distraction from the main purpose of public discussion initiated in the first place, to highlight – in order to resist – brutalization of Palestinians & ongoing destruction of Palestinian life under occupation by Israel, fully enabled by the US.”
Schivone defines himself as a “Chicano Jew.” When asked if he converted or if his parents / grandparents are Jewish, Schivone told the Post “I'm a person of color. Chicano means Mexican heritage & ancestry, with cultural ties to Mexico & preceding indigenous lands, and with national ties to the US. I also retain Jewish heritage & ancestry from parts of my family.
My Jewishness is relevant on narrow issues such as Israel’s claim it's his state, a false & racist doctrine; far more importantly my Jewishness is irrelevant on broader issues, such as US support & participation in Israeli crimes against Palestinians.”
Schivone is a member of “Jewish Voice for Peace” on the campus of University of Arizona - Tucson.
Schivone’s fake identity recalls Edith Lutz. Lutz, a former school teacher, claimed to have converted to Judaism & proceeded to use invented Jewish credentials to garner enormous attention in the media to publicize her voyage to violate Israel’s blockade of Gaza aboard the Irene catamaran during last year’s flotilla.
German papers & widely viewed TV program ARD-Magazin Monitor, which featured Lutz as representative of Jews from Germany, devoted extensive coverage. (Until dogged reporting of journalist Henryk Broder exposed Lutz as a fraud, prompting Broder to comment “Lutz is definitely a Jew, like a pork chop is kosher.”)
ARD declined to concede its journalistic verification was flawed. The message of Jews against Israel spread across Germany.
Prof Al Rosenfeld, Director of Institute for Study of Contemporary anti-Semitism @ Indiana University, told the Post “Israel defamers & delegitimizers include misguided, manipulative, malevolent Jews & other Jews of bad faith. With Schivone, we now see phony Jews added to this notorious disreputable bunch.”
Parody
ReplyDeleteDefending his participation in the latest effort to protect molesters, Leopold Margulies, a bus driver and "rosh hayeshiva", stressed in a Ponim Chadoshos piece he's one of a growing number of Jews seeking to disassociate from JBAC.
There's however a large factual wrinkle with Margulies – he falsified his Jewish identity.
In a letter to Ponim Chadoshos editor Chaim Shaulson, Moish Finkel, a kashrus activist & acquaintance of Margulies through his mechutan Yankel Appelgrad, noted, “In his editorial about molesters, Margulies presented himself as a Jew. I must point out this is not true, but created to generate credibility, shield himself from accusations of anti-Rachmonius & resonate with a heimishe audience.
“Leopold's not Jewish, whether in terms of ancestry, belief or culture. He never identified as a Jew until it became useful in advancing his money making agenda. Asked why he did this, he explained he has a distant Jewish relative & ‘you use what you have.’”
Margo’s hoax was first analyzed on UOJ, a watchdog that tracks pro-molester bias: “Margo emphasizes heimishe yichus no less than 8 times & repeatedly emphasizes influence of his identity on his anti-JBAC activity.
Finkel suggests pro-molester activists place a premium on participation of rabbonim in their activities. Agudah Fresser Convention organizers seemingly scored big – a Satmar chossid like Margo who led Tehillim leinen from the bimah. Claims of modernishkeit are thus defused.”
Responding to Finkel, Margo wrote, “Not only is it sorely inaccurate & frankly abusive to deny one their identity & humanity, it's a distraction from the main purpose of public discussion initiated in the first place, to highlight – in order to resist – brutalization of molesters & ongoing destruction of YTT under occupation by trial lawyers & their $20 million lawsuits, fully enabled by UOJ.”
Margulies defines himself as an “Heimishe Yid.” When asked if Kuzari ancestors of Hungarians / Romanians converted & are Jewish, Margulies told the Ponim Chadoshos “I'm a meyuchess. Heimishe means Hungarian heritage & ancestry, with cultural ties to Asiatic Russia & preceding indigenous lands, and with ties to the Agudah. I also retain Jewish heritage & ancestry from parts of my family.
Margulies is a member of “Bungalow Putzes for Peace” on the campus of YTT - Brooklyn.
Prof Hella Winston of Queens College told Ponim Chadoshos that “victim defamers & delegitimizers include misguided, manipulative, malevolent Jews & other Jews of bad faith. With Margo, we now see phony Jews added to this notorious disreputable bunch.”