By Tropper is Troubled:
Documents from the UOJ Archives:
The signed letter from Monsey that was kvetched out by Tropper on February 15th, in point 3, names Rabbi Aaron Schechter of yeshiva Chaim Berlin as one of three recommended names that Tropper would like to see -- NOT to rebuke Tropper -- but to "help" appoint a new rosh yeshiva for his totally ruined (by him) Kol Yaakov outfit. The other two names are Wachtfogel and Wolpin who carry no power in Agudath Israel of America's vaunted Moetzes, simply because it is Aaron Schechter who wields all the power at Agudah with the help of real estate manipulator/loan shark Abe Fruchthandler, who is also Chaim Berlin's chief honcho money man.
Now, why would Tropper want to bring in Aaron Schechter? The answer is actually very simple, as has been explained a few times in depth to those who have been reading the Tropper is Troubled chronicles for the past number of months: Aaron Schechter is the one big shot rabbi who IRRATIONALLY LOVES TROPPER and put Tropper on his feet, helped him build his hole in the wall yeshiva and stood by him when Tropper was divorcing his first wife while cavorting with his future second wife, and all the while Schechter also knew all about Tropper's fatal attractions and weakness for womanizing, and much worse yet, Schechter -- did NOT stop Tropper -- he rather emboldened him and built him up, and now look what's happened.
But all that Tropper did wrong was always forgiven and overlooked by Schechter because Tropper was able to furnish Schechter with something he prized more than gold, a nucleus of submissive disciples trained by Tropper who came to Chaim Berlin and served as "role models" for the more lively Brooklyn talmidim after Schechter had purged them and threw many of them out together with his own yeshiva's mashgiach ruchani, Rav Shlomo Carlebach (The singer's cousin by the same name). SCHECHTER LOVES THE KOL YAAKOV MODEL OF ZOMBIE TALMIDIM and now he is going to try to do life support for the yeshiva (Kol Yaakov) he loves so much in his own twisted and demented way!
Without rehashing all the details again,(see the UOJ documents below), Rav Carlebach went to multiple batei din, including that of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Satmar to present his claims but Schechter and Fruchthandler REFUSED to appear, and in turn they have since then been in contempt of several batei din, making them into mesarvim ledin and lo tzayis dino, that puts them into automatic cherem. It was also a huge Chillul Hashem and in many ways it was probably the incubator for Tropper's Chillul Hashem, as Rav Carlebach warned the Agudath's Zwiebel in writing then that a Chillul Hashem does not go away, it incubates like a cancer and comes back to haunt its perpetrators.
And indeed now, finally, it is no surprise that the chief perpetrator of the Chillul Hashem 30 years ago (who now has cancer), who threw his own yeshivas glorious mashgiach into the gutter and traded him in for the likes of servile (to Schechter) Tropper and his zombie lobotomized talmidim, instead, now rears his head like a primal python and agrees to have his name put on paper as the "big Agudath Israel puff daddy" -- NOT to denounce Tropper and his misdeeds -- but save the guttersnipe Tropper who Tropper invokes as the one to appoint a future "rosh yeshiva" for Kol Yaakov (it won't last much longer, they will be closing very soon, no one wants to go to a place run by a publicly unmasked and now certified menuval shebemenuvalim).
Note that Aaron Schechter, the 85 year old mechutzaf and menuvel in his own right, -- and still active bully, throws in his gauntlet -- NOT to reprimand Tropper -- but allowing his name to appear on paper for "rabbi" Leib Tropper (it's typed that way), as Schechter the original lo tzayis dino the scorner of batei din and creator of Chillul Hashem comes -- NOT to punish Tropper -- but to give his moral support and public name to Tropper the shiksa [now Tropper's Jewess] gang-banger with his own WIFE, the menuval shebemenuvalim and creator of a global Chillul Hashem, that grows not just like a festering cancer but like a mushroom cloud destroying all in its wake.
Beware, Schechter (and Fruchthandler) of Chaim Berlin cometh, tell them to go home to Brooklyn, where they can keep an eye on sheitel stores and enjoy Michael Hersh, the unapologetic crazed BT disciple of Schechter and kidnapper of Isaac Hersh - sitting next to him. Schechter must be told to stay away and keep out of the global mess he helped to create by inflating and keeping alive the Tropper monster.
THE LOW-LIVES AGUDATH ISRAEL DELEGATES ARE COMING TO MONSEY --- NO GOOD CAN COME FROM THESE ACHZORIM!
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE DOCUMENTS FROM THE UOJ ARCHIVES:
RABBI MOSHE FEINSTEIN'S LETTER SUMMONING AARON SCHECHTER & ABE FRUCHTHANDLER TO BAIS DIN:
158 comments:
This Shechter character seems to be the root of MUCH evil!
Malinowitz is going for the kill on David Morris, UOJ...you must help!
http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/
So he's "gone" huh?
Funny how with all the hard scrubbing of the kol yaakov yeshiva's website mr. Leib Tropper's name still appears. If they took all that time and effort to take out Tropper's name, one can only conclude that the information about one of kol yaakov's "Programs" its "Maimonides Retreat" (indeed the RAMBAM would not just retreat he would run like heck from this immoral garbage dump) is intentional:
http://www.kolyaakovtorahcenter.org/retreat/index.htm: " "Shmuess" — Between Man and His Fellow R’ Leib Tropper’s passion for the importance of character development is contagious, and the centrality of "being a mensch" to the Torah worldview is his leitmotif. His delivery, which blends a lucid and jargon-free elucidation of traditional sources with his expansive reading in modern psychology and philosophy, has captivated the minds and hearts of three generations of American youth."
This has been mentioned before, but what does it mean that after "all mention" of Tropper has been removed from the kol yaakov site, it STILL mentions him!
And with Tropper REALLY gone, is this claim still true, on their "Summer Horizons" page?: http://www.kolyaakovtorahcenter.org/slf/index.htm: "Kol Yaakov has been educating and inspiring young Jewish men for over a quarter-century. The Yeshiva’s educational philosophy, a product of its close relationship with the great R’ Yaakov Kaminetsky zt”l, [???] is that Jewish learning is the gateway to a full and robust Jewish life..." OR, this bit "'ALL WORK AND NO PLAY'... Even yeshiva students need a break! Periodic excursions give you a chance to experience New York and the Monsey community. Potential activities include: *Bike tour through lower Manhattan
*Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island..."
Could now also truthfully read:
*Play rape the drema blond shiksa of your dreams/choice (just get her to "want" to "convert" with our affiliated EJF outfit.)
OR:
*Join a fun threesome with your girlfriend/wife, we provide the extra girl/boy, all expenses paid.
OR:
*Special time allotted for phone sex with the gal of your dreams, free cell phones provided.
The possibilities are endless in this freedom-of-information post-Tropper free love era at the kol yaakov center of fun and games!
They should just all go home, shutter up the place, put paper bags over their heads and hang their heads in shame. It's doubtful that Yom Kippur could help eradicate what went on behind closed doors in this foul epicenter of one of the worst Chillul Hashems in the modern Torah world!
And this is who Aron Shechter comes to defend.
What a messy blog war in RBSA today.
In the end no one wins..but Malinowitz will sprinkle some more fairy dust on his kehilla and return himself to their graces.
It's a sad day to be a religious Jew
I recall meeting Shlechter approx. 30 years ago when I was a young teen and thinking that he's BAD news.
Rabbi Milton Balkany is an honorable blackmailer and extortionist.
After vat my son vent tru by upening his mout, vy vould my son-in-law be aza oiberchuchem to give an interview on a Motzei Shabbos right efter being arrested. No von tinks he is credible after shouting over Zev Brenner and tzeiling rebbishe maiselech. Demulst instead of redding tzum zach he hakt a chaineck und sounded less credible. Until then he had sympitty from the Vus Is Neyas crowd, now everyvon tinks he is a kruuk.
Nu, Reb UOJ vus zust dear? Who can talk sents into his head? I don't tink det The Yated readers vill habben more sympitty on our femily mit vat my son-in-law just did to himself. Vu kenst helfen??
Scam Costs Bd. of Ed. 6M: Probe. New York Daily News, April 16, 1999
"A Brooklyn rabbi stole $6 million from the Board of Education by putting 81 no-show employees on the board payroll in a 20-year scam that benefited his religious school, Special Schools Investigator Ed Stancik charged yesterday.
Rabbi Hertz Frankel — principal of the 4,000-student Beth Rachel all-girls school in Williamsburg — pleaded guilty last Friday to a felony charge to commit mail fraud. Stancik charged that Frankel scammed $4.3 million in salaries and $1.9 million in medical benefits for no-show employees over two decades. Most of the money went to the religious school, Stancik said. He said about half the cash is still missing.
At least 83 women got board paychecks, kicked back the money to Frankel and used the medical benefits, 'but never set foot in a public school,' Stancik said."
"I can't believe it. A rabbi stole my money. A rabbi stole my money."
-- comments of prominent Jewish American mobster Joseph "Doc" Stacher, arrested over the years for "atrocious assault and battery, robbery, burglary, larceny, bootlegging, hijacking and murder," then an Israeli citizen after being deported from America in 1965.
These comments were made upon winning a lawsuit after being swindled by Rabbi Menachem Porush of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel Party.
Robert Rockaway,
But -- He Was Good to His Mother. The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters, Gefen, Jerusalem, 1993, p. 116-117
"Four years ago, Jewish banks in the Jewish state conspired in what has become known as Israel's bank shares scandal. Of the four banks, one was owned by Histradut [Israel's labor federation], one by the Jewish Agency, and one by Mizrachi. Last year, a New York yeshiva that was the seat for a grand rabbi was involved in a money-laundering scheme for area businesses. Some of them were reported to be illegal. Two officials of the school wer indicted and convicted. This year a prominent Wall Street figure and a lay leader of the New York Jewish community pleaded guilty to insider trading violations on what is said to be a massive scale. Several others have since been indicted -- and most so far are Jewish. And then there are the various corruptions plaguing New York: public officials betraying the public trust by lining their own pockets -- and, or so it would seem, almost all of them Jewish."
Jewish Week,
5-15-87, p. 25
"The scant attention [popular author Irving Howe] paid to Jewish crime in World of Our Fathers, his magisterial study of the [Manhattan Jewish] Lower East side is a good example of the amnesia American Jews show about this part of their history."
Charles Silberman,
A Certain People. American Jews and Their Lives Today, Summit Books, NY, 1985
Chassidic Rabbis Implicated in Colombia Drug Raid.
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, June 20, 1997
"[Rabbi Bernard 'Beirish'] Grunfeld, 64, president of the Bobover yeshiva and an executive director of Bobov's New York institutions, said nothing as federal prosecutors charged him and 11 others in a conspiracy to launder millions of dollars in illegal drug profits for Colombian drug dealers through the bank accounts of the yeshiva and synagogue of Bobov. The largest Chassidic sect in Boro Park and the second largest in the state after Satmar, it has perhaps as many as 30,000 adherents. The complaint charges that Grunfeld and Rabbi Mahir Reiss, 47, laundered tens of millions in drug money through the bank accounts of the Bobover Yeshiva, Congregation Eitz Chaim and Chaim Shel Shulem, believed to be a free-loan society and apparently located at the Bobover World Headquarters on 47th Street. They are accused also of helping the drug dealers buy an airplane that is commonly used to transport illegal drugs. The rabbis and others allegedly skimmed 15 percent to 18 percent of each transaction for themselves, federal officials said."
Anguish of Victim Who Took Drug Rabbi's RX,
New York Post, August 12, 2001
"For three long years, Jean Brigleb saw top-flight specialists, took the prescription pregnancy drugs Pergonal and Metrodin and followed every instruction to the letter - and still didn't get pregnant. What the former West Village woman did get was vomit-inducing nausea and head-splitting migraines. She only recently found out why. Rabbi Moshe Millstein of Borough Park, who was sentenced last week to four years in prison, had sold $4.1 million worth of contaminated drugs to pharmacies throughout the city and the nation in a monstrous scheme to get rich quick ... Last week, an angry federal judge told Millstein, 'You might as well have been selling cocaine or crack - at least those folks knew what they were getting,' before imposing the prison sentence. Federal prosecutor Ken Breen said at trial that Millstein smuggled the drugs from overseas and had them repackaged as FDA-approved medicines. 'He's a lying, manipulative criminal,' Breen charged. No one knows exactly how many victims there are because investigators couldn't track them all down."
Jail Deal for Rabbis in Holcaust Scam. New York Post, August 10, 2001
"A Brooklyn federal judge reluctantly agreed to a plea deal yesterday in which two Brooklyn rabbis - one a former adviser to then-Mayor Ed Koch - will serve 33 months in prison for swindling hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for Holocaust survivors. Noting the 'wanton fraud and venality' of rabbis stealing from Holocaust victims, U.S. District judge Raymond Dearie said he 'might think twice about buying into this agreement,' but said he'd been swayed by the two rabbis' apparent lifelong service to the Hasidic communities in Brooklyn ... Rabbis Jacob Bronner, 51 - who served for 12 years as Koch's unpaid adviser - and Rabbi Efroim Stein, 55, controlled the non-profit Project Social Care. The group received a $2.5 million grant in 1995 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to create a counseling program 'tailored to meet the needs of elderly Holocaust survivors,' helping them 'deal directly with the Holocaust experience.' The rabbis then paid grant money to the Council of Jewish Organizations of Borough Park in a deal in which the council kicked back the cash to businesses controlled by Bronner and Stein. Several COJO officials were convicted of fraud in the late 1990s. The pair also paid for nonexistent goods and services from companies that also kicked the money back to the rabbis. Funds were also paid to several of Stein's relatives for nonexistent training; that money was then funneled into a Stein-controlled synagogue. Dozens of letters of support detailing the rabbis' charity work in Borough Park were submitted to the court, and a crowd of Hasidim turned out to voice their support."
A Sentence Without Ending. San Francisco Weekly, January 17, 2001
"Bentzion Pil, the so-called 'used-car rabbi,' was sentenced to nine months in a halfway house for a minor sort of money laundering. One of his lawyers, Michael Stepanian, argued that home detention would be more appropriate for the rabbi than a halfway house. His reasons were pious: An Orthodox Jew has certain needs, like kosher meals or not riding in a car on the Sabbath; conducting shul, or prayers and study, would be more convenient for Pil if he lived at home; and as a resident of a halfway house, the rabbi would not be allowed to "solicit any funds for his ministry ... Soliciting funds -- about $25 million worth, most of which has disappeared -- is why Pil was in court to begin with ... Pil's sentencing was the final step in a long and drawn-out legal case that had charged the rabbi with fraud in collecting and distributing millions of dollars in charitable donations -- but which has left unanswered the question of whatever happened to the money (see 'From Russia With Sleaze,' Postscript, May 31, 2000)."
Shameful Display in Paradise.
Jewish Week, February 16, 2001
"President Clinton was a good friend of the Jews, but many of his last-minute pardons were simply outrageous. Among the most indefensible were those granted to Jews, but scarcely a voice of Jewish protest has been heard. Instead, our community and its leaders have remained silent in some cases and actually supported the pardons in others. The result is that we have undermined our community’s moral fabric, jeopardized our political standing, disillusioned our youth and compromised the sacred values of our tradition.
In short, the moral stain of this sordid affair has begun to engulf us. The president pardoned four chasidim from the Skverer sect in New Square, N.Y., convicted of robbing the government of $11 million by setting up a fictitious yeshiva to receive federal student aid money. Chasidic leaders and lawyers for the men, with no apparent irony, have justified the commutations on the grounds that many other yeshivas were doing the same thing and that the funds were channeled back into their community rather than being used for personal gain.
For Jews, this is not simply another case of fraud and embezzlement. This is a case of religious people inventing an imaginary Torah institution to steal from the government, using the funds for other activities of their religious community and then defending their actions on the grounds that the money did not go directly into their own pocket. Throughout there is an implication that in some way all of this is religiously acceptable. Of course it is not.
Their actions are nothing short of a chilul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. Jews who break the law in God’s name and turn Torah into an instrument of thievery are bringing Judaism into disrepute. However, with the honorable exception of the Orthodox Union’s David Luchins, I cannot find a single example of a religious leader who has spoken out publicly against their reasoning."
Canadian Rabbi Sentenced for Drug Smuggling,
Canadian Jewish News, February 10, 2000
"Rabbi Eli Gottesman, 74, was sentenced to six months of home detention for smuggling drugs and other contraband into an upstate New York prison where he worked as a chaplain. Rabbi Gottesman, who divided his time for 15 years between his home in Montreal and his chaplaincy work among Jewish inmates in jails in the Adirondacks, was also placed on probation for two years and ordered to perform 500 hours of community work in New York state by U.S. Federal Judge Thomas McAvoy. Rabbi Gottesman was arrested at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ray Brook, N.Y., in October 1998 for attempting to bring cocaine and marijuana into the prison. The drugs were concealed in balloons in a shampoo bottle, as well as in three watches and some jewelry."
3d New Square Convict Freed,
The Journal News [New York], January 18, 2002
"Three of the four New Square men whose sentences were reduced by then-President Clinton have been released from federal prison after their shortened terms ended. The fourth man whose sentence was shortened by Clinton in January 2001 is scheduled to be released in March. 'Obviously, we are very happy these three men are back home with their families,' said Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a spokesman for the New Square Hasidic Jewish community in Ramapo ... Released from prison since December were Kalmen Stern, Benjamin Berger and David Goldstein. Jacob Elbaum is scheduled for release in March, since he began serving his prison sentence two months after the other men because his wife was pregnant ... In 1999, a U.S. District Court jury convicted the four men of conspiracy, fraud, embezzlement and other charges. The men were found guilty of conspiring to steal tens of millions of dollars from the late 1970s into the early 1990s from government antipoverty grants, loans and subsidies. They also created phony schools and educational programs with phantom students to get federal money ... President Clinton, on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2001, ignored recommendations of federal prosecutors and commuted the sentences of Goldstein, Stern and Elbaum to about 2 1/2 years in prison. He shortened Berger's term to two years. Once released, each man still must pay 10 percent of their gross monthly income toward repaying $11.6 million stolen from the government through a phony school in Brooklyn. Clinton's sentence commutations were among several of his last-day pardons investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the FBI. Investigators were looking into whether Clinton shortened the men's sentences in exchange for New Square's overwhelming vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the November 2000 Senate race."
Elifant Denies Fleeing Over Itri Yeshiva Scandal,
Jerusalem Post, July 8, 1999
"Rabbi Mordechai Elifant appeared before the Jerusalem District Court yesterday and denied he had run away from Israel after police began investigating allegations last month that his former partner, Rabbi Chaim Weiss, had stolen millions of dollars from his Itri Yeshiva and its subsidiary institutions. 'The papers say I ran away,' he told reporters after a hearing on his request to suspend an arbitration decision involving a lawsuit against him and eight other people and institutions. 'All I did was to save two girls and to bring back money for the yeshiva. I can prove this.' Elifant refused to say explicitly that former Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri was involved in the alleged scandal. 'I don't have clear proof of Deri's involvement and I don't publicize my intuitions,' he said. Elifant said he refused to talk to police before leaving for Italy after his accusations against Weiss were published in the press, because 'I am a religious man. Before I talk to police I have to do two things - talk to my lawyer and talk to [former head of the Lithuanian haredi community] Rabbi Shach.' Last month, Ha'aretz published details from an affidavit which Elifant attached to the request heard yesterday. In the affidavit, he claimed that during the 1990s, while he was sick and incapacitated, Weiss seized control of the Itri institutions and stole millions of dollars."
Rabbi vs. Rabbi,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, March 22, 2002
"Last Monday night, shots were fired into the front window of the Living Judaism Center (LJC) in Marina del Rey and into a car belonging to center board member Harris Toibb. Toibb is a major supporter of LJC, which is involved in a public legal battle for control of the property at 2929 Washington Blvd. in Marina del Rey, currently occupied by LJC and formally known as Chabad of the Marina. The struggle has pitted two charismatic leaders against each other, and brings into question the right to dissemination of Chabad Torah teachings in Los Angeles. At press time there was an active effort within the Chabad community to bring both parties to a mutually agreed beit din (rabbinical court), which will bring a resolution between the sides. If both parties agree to go to the rabbinical court, all civil litigation will be revoked. The skirmish between Rabbi Shmulik Naparstek of the LJC and Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin of Chabad of California has been percolating for some years. The trouble began in October 2000 when Barron’s magazine published the article 'Unholy Gains: When stock promoters cross paths with religious charities, investors had best be on guard,' in which Naparstek admitted that he received a gift of stock from Australian financier Joseph Gutnick. (No charges were ever filed against Naparstek, and he denies any wrongdoing.) For the next year, Cunin and Naparstek traded letters over the matter, and in January, Cunin fired Naparstek. Naparstek then filed for control over the synagogue, and on March 4, Cunin’s legal team filed a counter-complaint in the Los Angeles Superior Court accusing the Chabad of the Marina of ties to 'an alleged international stock manipulation scheme.'"
State Police Rabbi Dropped in Corruption Probe,
Newsday, May 13, 2002
"A prominent rabbi on the state police payroll and his wife fraudulently charged the state more than $25,000 in travel and lodging expenses, according to the state inspector general's office. Rabbi Edgar Gluck of Brooklyn was dropped from the state police payroll when the report was issued, state police spokesman Sgt. Glenn Miner said Monday. Gluck served as a special assistant and later consultant to the state police since 1984, making $40,000 a year, according to a report Monday in the New York Sun. The findings have been referred to the state attorney general's office for further investigation. The behavior could constitute a felony, according to the inspector general's report. The investigation began when Gluck's wife, Frieda Gluck, stayed in her Brooklyn home even after her $68,000-a-year state job as an assistant secretary was relocated to Albany. Since 1998, she proceeded to charge mileage in her Lexus and other cars as well as hotel expenses while she and her husband stayed in hotels and later in their Albany apartment, according to the state report. Some of their fraudulent filings sought redundant reimbursement for expenses by the couple on the same trip, in the same car and in the same hotel, the report stated."
Ramat Bait Shemesh, the contemporary S'dom whose religoius leaders advocate support for the same crimes committed in ancient S'dom has only been protected from the fate of S'dom becasue of the asarah tzadikim in RBS who fight the perversions of the so called haredi community in RBS which mirrors the style of life led by the people if ancient S'dom.
Perhaps of husbands and wives were allowed to go together to the pizza shops (and other such sinful places) the so called of that modern day S'dom would not focus so much on molesting children.
RBS is a city where when you are "lovaish shichorim", you can do anything that your perverted mind and heart desires.
The so called haredi rabbis must bear the responsibility for not only allowing this type of activity, but for preserving it as well.
They want to be charedim who would never do these to'aivos, nevertheless subject their children to this dangerous atmosphere. They are zovai'ach their children to the avodah zorah of their own egos and to the avodah zara of their so called rabbinical figures who make them feel that in spite of their own modern tendencies, they can consider themselves as charedim. C'sillim bachoshech yahalaicu, they will be rejected by all sides.
During the civil war, there was a soldier who was scared if he wore a grey uniform, the blues would shoot him (Union) and if he wore a Blue uniform, the Greys (Confederate) soldiers would shoot him. He chose to ear a blue shirt and grey pants. He was shot by a blue bullet in his pants and a grey bullet in his shirt. The wannabees of RBS who destroy their children b/c of some imagined fulfillment of a frustrated dream wear blue shirts and black pants. They will recieve bullets from bith the tziyonim and the charedim.
Of course, molestation and other acts of S'dom, are not something that the charesim have a monopoly on as recent events have demonstrated. However, where the dati leumi Rabbanim and Rosh Hayeshivos have taken action against these ma'aseh S'dom, the so called charedi so called rabbis in RBS have, in the spirit of ziknay S'dom, continue to protect the molesters and enable them to continue hurting another generation of Jewish children. Asidim litain es hadin. Not only for what they are doing now (and what they are not doing now), but also for the lifestyle of the children of their congregants will lead in the future and for the problems they'll r"l have for years to come.
The Rogotchover Gaon distiguishes between a regular issur and an issur hanimshach, an avairah which continues. The actions and inaction of those who identify themselves as the haredim of RBS is not just a singular act of abomination, but it is perpetual and continuous acts of abomination which will continue to haunt them not only in this world, but also in thew world to come.
Of course, molestation and other acts of S'dom, are not something that the charesim have a monopoly on as recent events have demonstrated. However, where the dati leumi Rabbanim and Rosh Hayeshivos have taken action against these ma'aseh S'dom, the so called charedi so called rabbis in RBS have, in the spirit of ziknay S'dom, continue to protect the molesters and enable them to continue hurting another generation of Jewish children. Asidim litain es hadin. Not only for what they are doing now (and what they are not doing now), but also for the lifestyle of the children of their congregants will lead in the future and for the problems they'll r"l have for years to come.
The Rogotchover Gaon distiguishes between a regular issur and an issur hanimshach, an avairah which continues. The actions and inaction of those who identify themselves as the haredim of RBS is not just a singular act of abomination, but it is perpetual and continuous acts of abomination which will continue to haunt them not only in this world, but also in thew world to come.
If I remember correctly, Rabbi Gottesman from Montreal was a chaplain in Upstate NY prisons and was duped into delivering the contraband to a prisoner, not knowing it was inside something else.
I'm sorry to say that it seems that the long arm of Malinowitz and his Artscroll patrons can silence even a lion such as UOJ.
It was shown last year that this man takes his wrath out on child protectors and tzedaka organizations and does so with pride.
I guess that if UOJ won't stand up to him then no one will.
What a sorry state of affairs.
Another day, another registry we have to make sure never gets off the ground.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/us/22abuse.html?hp
California may soon place animal abusers on the same level as sex offenders by listing them in an online registry, complete with their home addresses and places of employment.
Tiger Woods is better than Leib Tropper because he never cheated at his golf
Tiger, spoke publicly about his failings on Friday. Before you read his comments keep in mind Leib Tropper’s statement.
Events of recent weeks have caused Rabbi Tropper great anguish, in particular given his recognition that the high standard of ethics in the Jewish community is one of its most treasured principles. He wishes to express his regret for the turmoil caused by his departure from the Eternal Jewish Family organization and for what has appeared to be conduct not within our significant laws of modesty.
Notice how “events…have caused Rabbi Tropper great anguish” as if the “events” spontaneously generated themselves and have nothing to do with Tropper. His regret is not for immodest conduct. He “regrets” things that “appear to be conduct that is not within our significant laws of modesty.” What a weasel!
Now in contrast consider Tiger Woods’ statement.
I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior… I have a lot to atone for. . . . .I am the only person to blame. . . . . . I knew my actions were wrong. But I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt I was entitled. I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me. I brought this shame on myself. It is up to me to start living a life of integrity.
The cynics will claim Tiger said these things to appease his advertising sponsors who in turn are currying favor with the buying public. If so, it speaks better for all of them than the frum world which demands less from a rosh yeshiva than the non-Jewish world demands of a golf player.
Even at this late date, the Monsey bet din was willing to settle for Tropper agreeing to leave town and admitting his conduct was not totally befitting a Jewish leader. In return for that they agreed not to publish a much more powerful kol koreh whose text was nevertheless leaked.
In spite of the harm Tropper caused people all over the world the bet din stayed narrowly focused on Monsey and ignored his continuing control of Horizons, his kiruv organization. and all his assets. But they got the thing they were most worried about. Tropper agreed not to sue or harass them.
Not only is Tiger Woods better than Tropper but Woods’ corporate sponsors had more backbone and higher standards than the Monsey bet din.
(Satire)
In a surprising development in the unfolding Tropper affair, Leib blamed his misconduct on alcoholism.
I finally understood the sources of my conduct which might appear to be improper. I was moved by seeing Hagaon Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky’s drashah about Purim and the follow up by Rabbi Twerski about the need to limit oneself to a little more than one glass of wine. Until now I was foolishly drinking 2-3 glasses of wine with lunch. The wine and the heavy meat meals lulled me and misled me. I have now joined a 12 step group recommended by Rabbi Twerski. I intend to accomplish complete tshuvah through my new organization, Eternal Jewish Tshuvah. In the meantime I ask the rabbonim of Monsey to patiently extend my time in town for the few years necessary for me to complete my tshuvah. I thank the butcher Reb Finkel for his support in my struggle and I look forward to his rehabilitation. I believe his new enterprise will also take wing in Monsey.
Leib Tropper’s excuses and advocacy of Purim moderation were vigorously derided by an unexpected coalition that brought together the modern orthodox and Lubavitch with the slogan Free SMR. It turns out the modern orthodox supporters are men’s clubs who thought SMR refers to the Single Malt Refreshment typical of their kiddush clubs. The Chabadniks of course consider the freedom of Rubashkin a major cause. They believe strongly in the holiness of vodka for Chabadniks. They are now in the process of filing a suit claiming that Rubashkin is being deprived of his religious freedom because he cannot get vodka in jail.
There are rumors that Agudath Israel is divided between supporters of Reb Shmuel who oppose heavy drinking and those who feel Agudah can do a lot of fundraising for the pro-Rubashkin lawsuit, taking of course their usual cut. David Zweibel is rumored to feel that this argument can be used publicly without provoking any backlash by insisting that they can fight for this religious right for anyone, Jewish or not, as long as they belong to a chassidic group whose minhagim require vodka. He insists there is no connnection to large donations Agudah is getting from Seagrams.
Someone in Monsey pointed out that Emes Lane is a short distance from Leib Tropper’s Kol Yaakov Torah Center on W. Maple Ave, but it dead ends before it reaches Kol Yaakov.
(Satire)
I am grateful to Rabbi Feinstein who took time out from his busy schedule to answer my questions during a phone interview
YL : Many people are surprised that you have not publicly criticized Rabbi Tropper
RF: Why should I? He has plenty of other critics?
YL: You are the Chair of the EJF Halachic Committee?
RF: What does that have to do with Tropper? He resigned as Director of EJF?
YL: But he has been accused of improper behavior and exploiting a potential giyores and of promoting conversion among spouses of Jews who were themselves not frum?
RF: First, you have no proof. Second, he did tshuvah. Third, he resigned. Fourth, when a talmud chochum sins in the night we assume his tshuvah was accepted by the morning. Fifth, I promised I would pay more attention to halachic nuances from now on. Sixth, the criticism is only coming from modern orthodox Jews, the eidah chareidis, sfardim, and a few dozen others. Seventh, I owe him hakaros hatov for millions of favors he has done for my yeshiva. Eighth, there will be an investigation that will be done quietly and with dignity by those who are best qualified to be fair to him.
YL: Many are saying that the proposed investigation will be a whitewash because those who are involved are nogeiah b’davar because they took money from Leib Tropper.
RF: How do you have the chutzpah to accuse gedolim who with great mesiras nefesh seek out our funding; how do you have the chutzpah to accuse them of being nogeiah b’davar? I would never show favoritism to someone who contributed to me just because he contributed to me. Don’t you understand that sometimes the best person to paskin is the one who knows the person best? I can assure you that all of us involved in this matter will be completely impartial.
YL: Will you serve on the halachic committee of his new organization Eternal Jewish Tshuvah?
RF: That is something I am not prepared to answer right now. Are they a fund raising or a fund distributing organization?
YL: Thank you for your time and have a good shabbos.
RF: Kul Toov
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“Sex offenders do not wear an "Ugly Mask". They Wear A Shield of Trust.”
The Awareness Center has been in touch with friends of Rabbi Leib Tropper. Most of whom are in both a state of shock and denial. Just as in most other cases, they can not believe that someone they have known and trusted would be accused of such a horrendous crime.
Alleged and convicted sex offenders often have good friends and come from wonderful, respected families. We can not forget that those who perpetrate sex crimes use these people as part of their defense. Offenders are often described as being loving, kind and charming. It's exactly these traits that make it possible for them to lure in their potential victims.
It is important to remember those who perpetrate sex crimes are sons or daughters, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and or cousins of people who love and care for them. We all must do what we can to comfort the family members of the offender. When the allegations become public it can feel as if there has been a death in the family and those closest go into a period of mourning. What is more important is that each of us reach out and do everything we can to help heal those who have been sexually victimized -- especially those who step forward and make police reports in hopes of stopping an alleged offender from creating another victim.
According to statistics adult women are more likely to be victims of clergy sexual abuse than children. This is just one of many cases in which a member of the clergy uses their authority to lure in unsuspecting victims. If you or anyone else was sexually victimized and are looking for help, please feel free to contact The Awareness Center, we can help you find help and healing. You are not alone, you are not to blame and you deserve to have your day in court, if that is what you wish to pursue.
It saddens me to say that this case is very similar to that of Ephraim Bryks, Marc Gafni, Mordecai Tendler, Hershy Worch and a slew of other rabbis who lured in unsuspecting adult women for their own personal gain.
The more I think about the scandals of Rabbi Elon this past week, and Rabbi Tropper a short while ago, the more I believe that the Jewish world makes two mistakes:
1. We have a very low bar for entering leadership
Many people have desires which go unfulfilled because they lack opportunity. Admired leaders, whether overseers of conversion processes or heads of yeshivot and seminaries, have that opportunity on a daily basis. We should be doing more to vet people before putting them in those positions of opportunity.
I’ve actually believed this for a long time, ever since I was put in charge of various things at a pretty young age. A leader, a Gadol, someone we will trust with our institutions as well as our hopes, cannot be a work in progress other than in his own humble mind.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that we hunger for leaders. We look at generations past and see their great figures, we look at the recent ones, like Rav Moshe Feinstein, and we long for their kind. And so we look to people who have yet to prove themselves, and we make them leaders. But Rav Moshe, to use him as an example, was a long time in the making, decades before he was recognized as a leader.
A leader should spend decades proving himself before the nation turns to him with that level of respect and trust. In learning, in chesed, in publishing, in apprenticing, a potential leader must prove himself before we place the Jewish world, and our trust, in his hands a la וגם בך יאמינו לעולם (Shemot 19:9).
2. On adultery, we overstate Yosef’s greatness
The Torah portrays Yosef passing the test of Potiphar’s wife (Bereishit 39) with little hyperbole. Yosef went to work, she approached him, Yosef ran away. Gittin 57a also notes that Yosef's deed was a one-time event; righteous, certainly, but not truly heroic.
We, on the other hand, play it up as an incredible deed, this refusal to commit adultery with the wife of his employer.
I wonder whether this hyperbole doesn’t provide a subtle heter (permission) for adulterers: “Well, Yosef was a great tzaddik, and that’s why he didn’t stumble; I’m not Yosef, it’s not the greatest problem if I stumble once or twice.”
I know you could (and perhaps should) argue the point, but I’m just wondering about it.
A:
If you mean the ex chairman of EJF, he still watches his wife having sex with his mistress.
The Rabbi Leib Tropper tapes
A prominent Orthodox rabbi has been caught on tape discussing his apparent love affair with a shiksa he was converting to Judaism — whom he allegedly also pushed to have sex with his friends.
The Strange Case of the Nephew of the Board Chair of the 92nd Street Y
Thomas Kaplan is the chair of the 92nd Street Y's board of directors. He is devoted to gaining control of the Orthodox conversion process and saving panthers. His 32-year-old nephew Guma has gone crazy, and he's tangled up in it.
It's a super-complicated story, but what you need to know is this: Kaplan and his 32-year-old, multimillinaire Israeli nephew, Gumo Aguiar, had been funding the efforts of a shady ultra-Orthodox rabbi named Leib Tropper as he attempted to gain control of the Orthodox conversion process. Except Tropper's plans were derailed when a tape was discovered showing him trying to "sexually coerce" (yeah, we don't know what that means either. Rape? BJs?) a prospective convert. Aguiar is a former evangelical Christian who moved to Israel in 2007 with his wife and three children; his relationship with Kaplan is now strained over the little matter of $2.55 billion in proceeds from the sale of a natural-gas venture, and he had taken to leaving threatening voicemails for Kaplan and trying to gain custody of his kids. Because of his erratic behavior, Aguiar's family had him committed to a mental hospital. Anyway, give this Tablet Magazine chronicle a read. Super rich Jews! Rabbis! Sexual coercion! Mental hospitals! It's all there.
[Pic: Guma Aguiar, right, posing with Texas Governor Rick Perry (!?!?!?!?) in Jerusalem, via AP]
While it is certainly true that the Jewish community is not alone when it comes to political controversy, the profound loss of Torah values in our generation has been matched by the brazen conduct of those who deign to speak as guardians of those values. The loss of Torah values in the Jewish world is often related to religious hypocrisy and political wheeling and dealing.
The recent controversy of Rabbi Leib Tropper touches on many of the aspects of Jewish scandal that currently plague our communities.
Tropper is a big shot in the Jewish Conversion industry. He has made a great splash against more moderate approaches to Conversion and has sought to enforce a rigid Ultra-Orthodox understanding of the matter.
His ongoing battle to assert Ultra-Orthodox hegemony over Conversions has been supported by some very powerful Jews just as it has been rejected by others who would like to have the Conversion system streamlined and made more liberal.
According to the tenets of Jewish law, as discussed in Zvi Zohar and Avi Sagi’s critically important study Transforming Identity (my previously-published review essay on this book will be forwarded in a separate e-mail), Conversion is a relatively simply matter that has been made complicated by the stringencies of Ashkenazi Orthodoxy. In the end, much of the controversy engendered by individuals like Tropper is political in nature and reflects the ongoing attempt of the Ultra-Orthodox to control all aspects of Jewish identity, in both Israel and the Diaspora.
So the revelations that we present in this special newsletter of
Tropper’s sexual misconduct are not simply tied to the Conversion issue. As the articles we have chosen indicate, Tropper has been running a Jewish scam in which many prominent Jewish leaders have been implicated.
Articles by Yair Ettinger and Michael Orbach lay out the story
for us.
The next few articles first appeared in the Jewish publication Tablet magazine. Alison Hoffman provides us with an in-depth examination of the Tropper scandal and the various players involved in it. She shows a world of crony corruption that involves a number of mainstream figures and organizations in the American and Israeli Jewish communities.
Marisa Brostoff looks at the importance of Tropper’s project for the ongoing problem of Jewish identity and the politics of “Who is a Jew?”
But perhaps the most shocking article in the Tablet series is the transcription of phone conversations between Tropper and the woman who he was helping to convert to Judaism. The tapes contain shocking details of religious hypocrisy and are truly stomach-churning.
We end the special newsletter with three articles about figures and institutions involved with Tropper. Please pay careful attention to the Sephardic connections to the individuals mentioned in these stories.
The very week that Tablet ran its series of Tropper articles saw an innocuous story in the New York Times on one of Tropper’s well-connected friends, Thomas Kaplan. Kaplan and his extended family seem to be knee-deep in the Tropper business and have used their money and influence to assist Tropper’s organization. In Kaplan’s extended family is Guma Aguiar, the eccentric and unstable owner of a major Israeli soccer team, Beitar Jerusalem.
The newsletter closes with my article on the 92nd Street Y, a major New York Jewish institution which has been extremely unkind to
Sephardim and to Arab Muslims.
In the end, the Tropper story contains many of the noxious elements of Jewish power run amuck. It shows the arrogance of that power and the ways in which connections are made among the various players in the Jewish world. These connections permit people like Tropper to do as they please, thus enabling misconduct and immorality.
It is a sad and cautionary tale that we would do well to pay
attention to.
David Shasha
Chutzpah Award Winner: Leib Tropper formerly of Eternal Jewish Family, Presently of Eternal Jewish Tshuvah
12/25/2009
Leib Tropper issued the following lame statement of apology which appeared in Vosizneias.
Rabbi Leib Tropper’s response to recent allegations has been delayed until now in deference to his legal counsel.
Events of recent weeks have caused Rabbi Tropper great anguish, in particular given his recognition that the high standard of ethics in the Jewish community is one of its most treasured principles.
He wishes to express his regret for the turmoil caused by his departure from the Eternal Jewish Family organization and for what has appeared to be conduct not within our significant laws of modesty. Rabbi Tropper now looks forward to a return to both his studies and time with his loving family, as well as to personal introspection. He thanks those outside his closest circle of friends for respecting his privacy.
I have written elsewhere about Rabbi Tropper’s new organization Eternal Jewish Tshuvah. I underestimated his diligence. He has already shown us how EJT operates. Note a few of the new principals and minhagim that will have to be added to our existing hilchot tshuvah (rules of repentance).
1. No tshuvah without legal counsel. I can just see Judah saying about Tamar “Sorry she got burnt as a zonah, but my response was delayed in deference to legal counsel”.
2. Focus on events, not acts. Translation: what I do is not the problem, just the response when I get caught
3. Focus on appearances not acts. Thus he writes “what has appeared to be conduct not within our…laws of modesty. As the pundits all say, thank G-d he didn’t get caught shaking a woman’s hand
4. Blame the folks that catch you. Thus Leib “regrets the turmoil caused by his departure.”
As much as I loathe him, I would have given him a little credit if he had said:
I regret my misconduct that broke many of our most significant laws including those pertaining to lewd conduct, extorting favors, oppressing converts, misusing people in the process of converting, in this and many other instances.
I admit I regularly behaved hypocritically and misused my control of funds to sway others to support me. Accordingly I am stepping down from all positions which involve my having control of funds and influence over those seeking to enter Judaism or strengthen their attachment to Judaism.
In the coming days I will initiate a process of repentance by fully confessing all my misdeeds to all affected individuals and groups, including the Jewish public. I will make every effort to repair the damage though I realize that some of the damage I caused will never be repairable.
I will abstain from any position in the future where my inclinations, habits and manipulative abilities create a great risk of further sinning. I believe that G-d the true judge of intentions and actions will accept my sincere repentance at the moment of my death, because this is a cardinal tenet of Judaism when one sincerely repents. But even Yom Kippur cannot provide atonement for sins against other humans unless one has done complete repair of the damage, which unfortunately will never be possible in my case.
Nevertheless as part of my effort to undo and repair what I can, I will expose all my confederates in crime while protecting the identities of my victims. I will clarify to the public the manipulative means I used so others can better spot them in others and resist them. I will fully reveal the ways in which I influenced prominent rabbis to make bad decisions. I will shower praise by name on those who resisted my bribes and threats. They were righteous and I am a sinner.
I will follow in the steps of the great Maimonides who signed his letters describing himself as a sinner for living in Egypt. Accordingly I will henceforth sign all my letters “Leib Tropper, a Sinner in Israel who has violated many of our cardinal commandments who is striving to rectify his sins.” I have rewritten my will to have the burial society subject my body to the degradations associated with the sins I have committed as a further effort to attain full atonement after my death.
But enough of my wishful thinking. Leib Topper, the founder of EJT, Eternal Jewish Tshuvah instead will continue his career of fakery by faking tshuvah. If any Jewish leaders start telling you that he has done tshuvah, you will know that they are either fools, ignorant of the Jewish requirements of sincere repentance, or confederates of Leib.
In the meantime, I can say with confidence he has earned his Chutzpah Award.
From: Yeshiva World News'
Synopsis:
There is a store located at 1632 Coney Island Avenue – directly across from Yeshiva Chaim Berlin – which sells Shaitels (wigs for women).
In the front window of the store, there are four, large, inappropriate, photos of women – with the point being that it should attract a persons attention and look.
When approached nicely by the Yungerleit to remove the photos, the owner answered that “this is not Bnei Brak”.
I don’t want to further delve into this mans other excuses, and answers which were all filled with Chutzpah, but I am requesting that until the Pritzus photos are removed from the store windows, no one from our community should enter this store.
Filled with shame, and embarrassment that I needed to write this letter – but felt it was necessary due to Kavod Hatorah,
Rav Aaron M. Schecter, Rosh Yeshiva Chaim Berlin.
(87 comments)
Jewish family sues Jamaican reform school for troubled teens
BY Kirsten Danis
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Tuesday, March 25th 2008
A battle has erupted in the Orthodox Jewish community over a Brooklyn teenager sent by his prominent family to a behavior boot camp accused of terrifying abuse.
Isaac Hersh, 16, has been trapped since last summer at Tranquility Bay, a reform school on the island of Jamaica with a soothing name - and harsh discipline, according to the lawyer hired to try to get him out.
"It's a modern-day concentration camp," said Maryland lawyer Joshua Ambush.
Isaac's estranged parents sent him to the boot camp last year after luring him back to Brooklyn from his new home in Texas, court papers claim.
Isaac's twin brother, Sol, is panicked he's next to go.
"He's very worried about his brother. He's very worried about himself, too," said a friend of the family who asked to remain anonymous.
Tranquility Bay offers the promise of turning bad boys into focused achievers, but the walled-off camp with barred windows has been called a nightmare.
Children have been beaten, forced to eat their vomit and made to stand in painful contortions for hours, according to a separate suit filed in Utah by former students against private boot camps, including Tranquility Bay.
The case has so riled up members of the normally insular Orthodox community that several are taking the rare step of publicizing Isaac's situation.
One one side is Isaac's informal Texas foster family, who are also Orthodox, and their supporters, who prompted a nonprofit to file suit in Washington last week on Isaac's behalf.
They claim he was lured to Brooklyn with the promise of a job, handcuffed and thrown into a van that took him to the boot camp as he cried and begged to be released, the suit says.
On the other side are the teen's father, Michael Hersh - CEO of Brooklyn's huge Orthodox volunteer ambulance service, Hatzalah - and his wife, Miriam.
"Hatzalah will carefully monitor these proceedings, taking into account the seriousness of the allegations," the organization said in a statement.
The couple has a prominent supporter in Rabbi Aaron Schecter, head of Brooklyn's tight-knit Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, according to the suit.
It is unclear what prompted the parents to send Isaac to another country. Michael Hersh did not return a call for comment.
They had a troubled relationship for years, according to the suit.
Isaac, one of eight children, was sent to schools in Virginia and Long Island before the family moved to Israel in 2002, where the parents were accused of abusing Isaac, the suit says.
From there, the boys went to live with families in Texas, although the parents never lost custody.
"They're healthy, good, normal teenage boys," said the family friend.
Updated, 11:14 a.m. | Police officers in the Bronx burst in on a man who was beating his 61-year-old mother with a frying pan Sunday night and fatally shot him, the police said.
Guys, I love being quoted. About 7 of the last 15 posts were wholly lifted from my blog, FrumFollies.wordpress.com. But how's about saying why the article is funny or insightful and directing them to the link.
A small group of us create content. We don't get paid. But I at least want the traffic to arrive at my site.
Thanks,
Yerachmiel Lopin
PS. If you go to my site you can search for your favorite menuval by name, or you can use the category drop down list for categories such as corruption, sex abuse, satire, etc. You can also subscribe by RSS or by email.
I endorse the above UNPAID advertisement:-))
UOJ,
lifeinisrael has closed the post from "anon" (aka CZ Malinowitz).
Malinowitz has done a good job of not only flaunting the law and endangering children but causing havoc in trying to silence David Morris and Lema'an Achai.
He leaves a trail of hate and disgust.
But alas he will prevail as it seems that no one wishes to battle this man out of his ivory tower.
They protested the Ma'ar but I didn't know what that was so I didn't object.
Then they came for the mikve but I'm not a woman so I couldn't care less
They came against David Morris but I don't realy know him so I didn't stand up.
Then they attacked Lema'an Achai but I said I give to Kupa so I didn't protest.
Then my child was abused and alas there was no one left to stand up for us.
Then my child was abused and alas there was no one left to stand up for us.
*
Some cases are simpler and quicker than others; I can assure you that Malinowitz is in my crosshairs - as I told him he'd be!
Chazak,
UOJ
Rabbis admit to cooked books in lunch case
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, May 13th 2008, 11:16 PM
Mordecai Sorcher, 51, and his brother, Sroya, 47, face up to a year in prison for inflating the number of students eligible for free breakfast and lunch. The rabbis allegedly fed some students warmed-up leftovers donated from a local deli while pocketing government funds that were supposed to be used to buy nutritious food.
"Claims were submitted for breakfasts and lunches which we didn't take care of properly," Sroya Sorcher admitted in Brooklyn Federal Court.
A witness also saw boxes of government-issued food being loaded into an auto by a relative of the Sorchers.
The rabbis agreed to pay the government $75,000 in restitution under the plea deal. Mordecai Sorcher's lawyer had argued that his client was selectively prosecuted because he ran a parochial school.
Now that Agudah has set a precedence in the Grossman debacle, that murder of a substance abuser is not called REAL murder. What if one of the skunk drunk UNDERAGE TWEENS in Chaim Berlin Purim Orgy murders the holy Aron Shechter the Jamaican concentration camp recruiter? NYPD Go to CHAIM BERLIN ON CONEY ISLAND AVENUE THIS SUNDAY NIGHT and see for yourself how Agudah encouraged SUBSTANCE ABUSE and UNDERAGE DRINKING party is going. Yes the drinking is SANCTIONED AND ENCOURAGED by 'Rabbi' Aron Shechter. Agudath Israel should lose their non profit status for ENCOURAGING HARRASSMENT AND THREATS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS AND THE VICTIMS FAMILY in the Martin Grossman affair.
IF ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER WOULD FINALLY REEL IN THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATION DBA 'AGUDATH ISRAEL OF AMERICA' HE WILL BE A NATIONAL HERO OVERNIGHT. STRIP THEIR NOT FOR PROFIT STATUS THEY ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN HAMAS.
UOJ, take down the above post of 7:56. He calls for (or at least insinuates) murder of Rabbi Schechter
"Yerachmiel Lopin said...Guys, I love being quoted. About 7 of the last 15 posts were wholly lifted from my blog, FrumFollies.wordpress.com. But how's about saying why the article is funny or insightful and directing them to the link."
Hi guy, looks like if you click on every one of the NAMES IN BLUE of each of the posts you cite, they all DO link back to each relevant post on your blog or to wherever they come from from. Just search a little harder next time, no one wants to "steal" you good ideas!
Happy Purim!
http://www.wlwt.com/news/22600154/detail.html
Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704454304575081391789004352.html
A mere three days before President Obama's supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint thatDemocrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don't want anyway.
Ah, the glory of "progressive" governance and democratic consent.
"The President's Proposal," as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone.
The coercive flavor that animates this exercise is best captured in the section that purports to accept the Senate's "grandfather clause" allowing people who like their current health plan to keep it. Except that "The President's Proposal adds certain consumer protections to these 'grandfathered' plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans . . . prohibits . . . mandates . . . requires . . . the President's Proposal adds new protections that prohibit . . . ban . . . and prohibit . . . The President's Proposal requires . . ." After all of these dictates, no "grandfathered" plan will exist.
The Administration also claims to have discarded the House's 5.4-percentage-point surtax on joint-filers earning more than $1 million a year, but it sneaks it back in by expanding the Senate's expansion of the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to joint income about $250,000. The White House would now apply that tax for the first time to income from "interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents," details to come.
***
The larger political message of this new proposal is that Mr. Obama and Democrats have no intention of compromising on an incremental reform, or of listening to Republican, or any other, ideas on health care. They want what they want, and they're going to play by Chicago Rules and try to dragoon it into law on a narrow partisan vote via Congressional rules that have never been used for such a major change in national policy. If you want to know why Democratic Washington is "ungovernable," this is it.
http://www.yournabe.com/articles/2010/02/19/brooklyn/courier-yn_brooklyn_front_page-ecksteinhsk.txt
You would have thought her situation would have tugged at his heartstrings, but, incredibly, it was a Boro Park landlord who evicted an elderly Holocaust survivor from her Bensonhurst apartment while she waited for repairs to be made so she could go home.
Moshe “Morris” Piller — who operates out of offices at 1274 49th Street — served the notice of eviction on 92-year-old Eta Eckstein while Eckstein was in a rehabilitation facility, looking forward to returning to her 8750 Bay Parkway home, said Eckstein’s grandson, Idan Eckstein.
The bathroom ceiling had fallen in, Eckstein explained, delaying his grandmother’s reinstatement in the apartment she has occupied for over 40 years while the landlord, “Took three months to do a shoddy repair job.” His grandmother had spent about 18 months at the rehab facility after a fall, but Eckstein’s father had dutifully paid the rent, as he has for the past 20 years, he said.
Because the apartment is rent-controlled, it is only about $600 a month, Eckstein said. The lease had recently been renewed, he added, and the landlord had even cashed the January rent check.
“She was going to move back in but it wasn’t livable,” Eckstein recalled. When they learned of the eviction, he added, “We were just lining up for her to move back in.”
Not that Piller bothered to notify the Ecksteins of what he had done. His father only found out the situation when he arrived at the apartment to collect the mail – which he does every two weeks, said Eckstein – and saw “a familiar looking refrigerator” in the building’s lobby.
When he went up to the apartment, Eckstein continued, his father found an eviction notice dated January 27th on the door.
Even worse, said Eckstein, while his father was looking at the eviction notice, a child living in a nearby apartment had come over to him and told him that the woman who lived in the apartment had died. “They told another neighbor that she had passed away,” Eckstein reported. “That was very upsetting to my dad.”
The shocks kept coming. When he spoke to the super, Eckstein’s father learned that his mother’s possessions had been brought down to the building’s basement and put in a space that, Eckstein said, was, “Not 100 percent secure, where people supposed live.”
In addition, said Eckstein, some of his grandmother’s things had been “thrown out the window,” and could be seen lying on the ground, within a fenced-in area adjacent to the building.
“She was a Holocaust survivor,” stressed Eckstein. “All the things she managed to keep are either on the floor of the basement or thrown out the window. She managed to save these things. For someone to do that is horrible. These are family heirlooms, things she wanted to pass down.”
With a court date scheduled for Monday, Eckstein said he is certain that his grandmother will get her apartment back. “He is playing games with people’s lives,” Eckstein said of the landlord.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13hello.html?pagewanted=print
They have become collateral victims in a vicious fight that is equal parts old Brooklyn and 21st-century real estate, a battle among a 34-year-old developer, his mentor from Borough Park and a two wealthy Austrian investors.
The developer, Eli Karp, is being sued by the others, who accuse him of stealing money from the project and selling apartments without permission. Mr. Karp has fired back, saying that they were simply unhappy with the prices and the pace of sales, and were angry because he would not agree to let the properties fall into foreclosure so that they could buy them for “below-market prices,” according to an affidavit.
The case has traveled from the Manhattan courts through a rabbinical court and now to the Brooklyn courts. The fight has grown so contentious that a judge, Justice Charles E. Ramos of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, reprimanded both sides, saying, “You’re constantly jumping all over each other, and you have clients that will bury their heads in the sand and let these properties go up in smoke.”
The roots of the dispute go back to Borough Park, where Mr. Karp said he took a keen interest in a neighbor, the “big shot” businessman Solomon Obstfeld, who works at a financial advisory firm on Central Park South. He tutored Mr. Obstfeld’s son and marveled at his chauffeured cars, his collection of watches worth more than $100,000 apiece and his tales about his business battles.
He said that Mr. Obstfeld, who is now 54, was not just a role model. “He was my best friend,” Mr. Karp said while seated in an overstuffed office chair in one of his completed buildings on Pacific Street. “I looked up to him.”
In 2004, Mr. Karp pitched his plans to turn a beleaguered block into a condo community. Mr. Obstfeld agreed to invest $5 million, Mr. Karp said. And when Mr. Karp expanded his plans, he said, Mr. Obstfeld ultimately provided $30 million to construct a collection of 10 buildings, most of them spread over three blocks in Prospect Heights. Sprinkled among the buildings would be communal amenities including a business lounge, rooms for private parties, a gym and a 50-foot-long lap pool, with residents of every building having access to all of them. (A building several blocks away has separate amenities.)
In the summer of 2005, Mr. Karp said, he received an e-mail message from an Austrian businessman named Leon Lewkowicz, who identified himself as a major investor and said he wanted to visit the project. That December, Mr. Karp said, he received another e-mail message, from a man named James Schlaff, who said that he also was an investor and that he wanted to visit from Austria to review the financials. Mr. Karp said that he had not known of their involvement before the e-mail messages, but that Mr. Obstfeld confirmed they were involved.
Dr. Lewkowicz and Mr. Schlaff are strangers in Brooklyn, but are well known in Austria. Dr. Lewkowicz has been associated in news reports with one of that country’s largest banks, though his lawyer in New York says that he has never been an employee there. Mr. Schlaff has been known as a wealthy casino owner who was investigated, along with his brother Martin Schlaff, several years ago over accusations that they had made illegal payments to the family of Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli prime minister. They have not been charged. Martin Schlaff also attracted attention in 2008 for paying one of the world’s largest divorce settlements, reportedly 190 million euros.
part 2
Mr. Karp’s investors grew concerned about the project’s future in late 2008 because Mr. Karp had not “accurately projected his costs” and “grossly exceeded his budget.” The investors accused Mr. Karp of “stealing at least $170,000” from the project and continuing to sell apartments without their consent, even though their original agreement said that he needed their approval. In July 2009, they said in court papers, they changed the operating agreements so that Mr. Karp no longer had authority to act on their behalf. Any contracts or agreements after that, they said, were done “without the authority of the owner.”
Mr. Karp replied in an affidavit that his investors wanted him to “default on the loans and the buildings will go into foreclosure.” That way, he said, they could buy them on the cheap. “If this occurs,” he said, “not only would I be ruined as a developer as no bank, for the foreseeable future, would lend me a nickel.”
Mr. Karp said in a court affidavit that in August, a beth din, or rabbinical court, ruled that he could continue to sell the apartments, with any money left over after loan payments deposited in escrow.
Mr. Obstfeld and the investors are pressing their case in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Because they claim that Mr. Karp did not have the authority to make the sales, they have named some would-be residents, and several who have moved in, as defendants in an attempt to cancel or overturn sales.
Some had hoped that Mr. Karp’s lawyer, Alan Lebensfeld, would help to resolve the case. But on Monday morning, Mr. Lebensfeld sent a message to the buyers saying that he was no longer Mr. Karp’s counsel because he had not been able to pay his legal bills.
By late Monday afternoon, buyers said that they had started receiving calls from the investors’ lawyers about whether they would stay in the deal.
In the meantime, some buyers still want to move in. “This is not an investment for us,” said Ms. Daniels, who has a contract on a $618,000 duplex. “This is our first home as a family.”
“I’m sorry they’re losing money for what they thought they would get five years ago,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean they have to kick families out on the street.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/02/04/2010-02-04_two_thugs_held_after_250000_raid_at_home_of_willoughbys_camera_store_owner.html
Two goons have been arrested for terrorizing the children of the owner of Willoughby's Camera during a home invasion and stealing the family's Ferrari.
Derrick Diaz and and Jason Cuebas allegedly made off with $5,000 in cash and $250,000 worth of jewelry, electronics and sports memorabilia from the Midwood, Brooklyn, home of Joseph Douek before making their getaway in the sports car.
Cops chased the duo, who abandoned the black Ferrari on McDonald Ave.
Cuebas cut himself during the heist and investigators used the blood to make a match with his DNA, which had been collected during previous arrests, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Federal agents nabbed Cuebas on Tuesday night and he agreed to let them listen in when he called Diaz.
"Diaz laughed at how Cuebas had become nauseated when Diaz drove the [Ferrari] at a high rate of speed," Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Mark Manko said in the complaint.
Diaz was busted early yesterday at his home in New Jersey. Both defendants were held without bail. A third member of robbery crew is still being sought.
Douek's children, ages 12 and 17, were locked in the bathroom by the thugs, who were armed with screwdrivers.
Douek, who owns the legendary camera store on Fifth Ave, was not home.
Toyota faces US criminal probe
Reuters - 1 hour ago
In 1989, Goldberg plead guilty in federal court in California and Illinois to three counts of wire and mail fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The accusations he admitted to include his participation as the engineer of a phony bond and investment scheme, which netted his Wall Street investment firm nearly $11 million in illegal fees. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison
Known as Abba Dabba Doo in the financial world, a leader at two national ex-gay organizations, is a con man and ex-con who defrauded the poor with bond schemes:
"The leader of JONAH, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, Arthur Abba Goldberg, is now also serving as President of his Jersey City shul. He was sent to federal prison 20 years ago for a conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. Additionally, Goldberg is presently the Executive Secretary of NARTH - the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. The group hopes to heal "unwanted" homosexuality through therapeutic care. One more group he supervises is PATH - Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality - a coalition of religious, ministerial, and ex-gay groups promoting non-gay alternatives to homosexual lifestyles. He is their President. Goldberg, who reinvented himself in 2000 as the founder of JONAH, was found guilty in 1989 of numerous felonies in multiple jurisdictions. The charges ranged from federal mail and wire fraud to conspiracy counts as a result of a bogus bond writing scheme.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9307
YU "Gay" Panel: A Trojan Horse
by Arthur Goldberg
Leib Pinter's mechutan Herzl Kranz from Silver Springs is a personal friend of Rev. Moon, leader of the Moonies aka Unification Church
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2010/lr21421.htm
The Commission's complaint alleges Kay Services and its sole owner and officer, Marcia Sladich, orchestrated a Ponzi scheme raising more than $10 million from at least 1,000 victims, many of whom were members of the Family Federation for World Peace, formerly known as the Unification Church. Sladich falsely told investors that their money would be invested in domestic and international real estate that would generate substantial returns and promised them a 50-100% guaranteed return on their investment in one year. She also promised investors additional payments for every investor they referred. Contrary to Sladich's representations, Kay Services had no revenue-generating business or assets. Instead of investing in real estate, Sladich used investor money: (1) to pay Kay Services' obligations to existing investors; (2) to pay Sladich's personal expenses; and (3) to purchase real property and other assets for Sladich and her relatives.
David Shulman, the former head of municipal securities and fixed income at Swiss banking giant UBS, has agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle allegations that he engaged in insider trading of auction-rate securities, The New York Times reported. According to government prosecutors, the Times said, Shulman possessed material nonpublic information when he sold $1.45 million worth of auction-rate securities just before the market for such risky securities came to a virtual standstill two years ago. At the time, the newspaper noted, Shulman ranked as the highest-ranking executive overseeing auction-rate securities for the entire bank. David Aufhauser, a former Treasury Department lawyer who went on to serve as general counsel for UBS, inked a $6.5 million to settle similar charges 16 months ago, the newspaper added.
Gerald Horn, an ophthalmologist who operates Chicago-area eye clinics for LCA-Vision (Nasdaq: LCAV), has been accused pocketing $1.4 million in illicit profits by trading options for LCA stock based on inside information. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Horn used internal reports documenting LCA’s surgical activities to determine whether the company would meet earnings expectations and then placed bets on the company’s stock accordingly. “Because Horn had material nonpublic information about LCA, Horn never lost money on any of his multiple trades in LCA options, despite his complete lack of prior experience in options trading,” the SEC states. Moreover, “Horn was able, with great precision and agility, to switch his trades between calls and puts, predicting that LCA’s earnings would either beat or miss its targets – and thus that the price of LCA stock would either rise or fall – and remarkably made the correct decision every time.” The SEC claims that Horn provided the agency with “numerous false explanations” for his well-timed trades and is now seeking full disgorgement, plus financial penalties, from the eye surgeon.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/fls/PressReleases/100209-02.html
Donald Platten, of Boca Raton, Fla., was sentenced today by Judge Donald Middlebrooks in West Palm Beach, Florida to 262 months in prison, to be followed by 3 years’ of supervised release for securities fraud, mortgage fraud, and tax fraud, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced. The Court will schedule a hearing within the next 90 days to determine the amount of restitution owed to the victims.
In August 2009, Platten was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, six counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and impeding the internal revenue laws. Platten was acquitted of eight additional counts of securities fraud.
According to the indictment and evidence introduced at trial, Platten was the president of Harvard Learning Centers Inc., a Florida corporation also located in Boca Raton. Harvard Learning changed its name several times and claimed to be involved in several different business ventures. From 2004 to 2007, Platten caused Harvard Learning to issue more than $1 million in stock to his wife, his sister, Judith Massaro, his ex-sister-in-law, and his limousine driver, Eli Goldshor, supposedly as repayment of promissory notes, even though Platten knew that the promissory notes were fraudulent and the company did not owe these individuals the money reflected on the promissory notes. Goldshor, the limousine driver, kicked back most of the proceeds from the sale of the stock to Platten and for Platten’s benefit. In this manner, Platten caused Harvard Learning to issue stock to repay his own obligations and to enrich himself, his relatives and others. Platten also caused a subsidiary of Harvard Learning to pay the personal expenses of himself, his wife, his mother, his sister, and his teenage son.
According to the indictment and evidence introduced at trial, Platten failed to file corporate federal tax returns for Harvard Learning for the years 2004 through 2007 and failed to file his personal federal tax returns for the years 2004 and 2005. For the year 2006, Platten failed to report on his personal tax return the income that he received as a result of Harvard Learning's stock issuances and payment of his personal expenses.
According to the indictment and evidence introduced at trial, Platten caused Goldshor to purchase a house and obtain a mortgage by providing false information about his income and assets in order to conceal Platten's ownership of the house in Boca Raton. The day after he purchased the house, Platten caused Goldshor to execute a quit claim deed transferring his interest in the property to Platten's wife.
Two individuals who testified for the government in the trial of Platten in August 2009 had pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to their misconduct. Eli Goldshor, Platten’s former limousine driver, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and willfully failing to file tax returns. In September 2009, Goldshor was sentenced by Judge William Zloch in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to 18 months in prison for his role in the offense.
I cannot emphasize enough the disappointment I have with our alleged "gedolim" for not speaking about the Leib Tropper fiasco. Even if I give them every last benefit of the doubt that they were not "bought off" by Leib Tropper and don't have much to hide, then for no other reason they should speak out in order to stop the "loshon hora" being spread. So best case scenario that they have nothing to hide, then they are showing their total lack of regard for the importance of shmiras halashon by allowing this to go on and on and on. Therefore, I declare that either way they have failed us.
Edward Stein, a former Long Island investment adviser who managed the Gemini hedge fund, has been sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he operated a long-running Ponzi scheme, Dow Jones reported. According to government authorities, Dow Jones said, Stein raised more than $55 million from investors – who lost most of that sum – through a scam that began in 1998 and finally ended more than a decade later in 2009. Ordered to pay $46.4 million in restitution, Dow Jones noted, Stein will spend the next 14 years behind bars or under supervised release as punishment for his crimes.
http://matzav.com/committee-advertising-cosmetician-services-is-assur
The latest crazy chumroh, established in Modiin Ilit, is that women cannot advertise their cosmetician services.
It seems that seeing an ad for eyebrow shaping is a big turn on for some men and advertising such services is considered not tznua. [modest]
How can women drum up business without being allowed to advertise? It is a shame because so many wives of avreichim [kollel students who do not work], a very popular profession in Modiin Ilit, are cosmeticians, and this will be another blow to them, as tzniyus committees continue finding ways to limit the earning opportunities for women under the guise of tzniyus.
A magazine printed a picture of a sheitel head (those heads made out of foam) in a magazine. A woman called up to complain saying her husband can be turned on by a sheitel head. They agreed to not print images of sheitel heads again (to their credit they also told her that her husband should see a therapist). They should have told her that he should not not be reading their magazine if that is the case.
Itchie Mayer:
What's the problem? The Asher Yatzer gedoiiilim said that they got a "few dollars" for their lectures...is there any reason you don't take them at their word?
Patricia Cohen, the former wife of SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen, recently hired Gaytri Kachroo – the attorney who represented whistleblower Harry Markopolos in his actions against Bernard Madoff – to handle the civil racketeering case she has filed against her ex-husband, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Goldberg was called Abba Dabba Doo before R' Abba Gorelick?
Even though the OU is rolling in millions of dollars in profit, many of their expenses are underwritten by the Beren Foundation of Lakewood.
the ou recently settled an age discriminartion suit and a sex harrasment case for a large sum of money with the caveat that it remain secret
Could you kindly give us some more details on these latest OU scandals?
Thanks
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7034933.ece
February 21, 2010
Meir Dagan: the mastermind behind Mossad’s secret war
http://www.vosizneias.com/49777/2010/02/21/new-york-rabbi-yair-hoffman-to-appear-on-dov-hikind-radio-show-to-defend-position
After the op-ed he wrote for VIN, here is the audio of R. Yair Hoffman speaking on the Martin Grossman saga on the Dov Hikind show.
He's makdim with showering praise on attorney Zweibel and the Moetzes, that he agrees with them on everything except this. A smart move since he would be blacklisted otherwise or worse.
He cites the Noda Bihudah that murderers must be killed otherwise murders will become a hefkerus.
He says that rabbonim were misled with biased information from Grossman's lawyers overstating the case in favor of their client.
He argues there are so many other causes of pikuach nefesh we should get together to fight for first before Grossman - causes that are 100% justified and not "ekeldik" where someone beat a woman to death and burned her body.
This case created tremendous aivah since:
A. Goyim see frum Jews advocate for the death penalty except when it is one of their own
B. Killing of women and police officers generates a lot of moral outrage among the public
R. Hoffman mentioned how numerous meshugoyim had attacked and harassed not only Gov. Crist but also the family of the murdered officer.
At this point, Dov Hikind's behavior was more than I could stomach. He vociferously protested that there are no such thing as meshugoyim in the frum community, (pandering for obvious reasons) especially not among his radio show audience. He got his assistant Charnie to chime in seconding his motion. Why won't many be surprised what a politician does here for votes and ad dollars?
Dr. Katz from the 5 Towns speaks up at this point saying that there has never been a jury who acquitted someone purposely murdering a woman police officer and opines that trying to save Grossman's life goes against dina demalchusa.
We get some comic relief with Dov Hikind mistakenly referring to Shafran as "Dr." Avi Shafran.
Part II
Yiddish newspaper journalist Yossi Gestetner comes on at this point and makes several points defending Grossman that cannot be backed up factually. R. Hoffman has an easy job shlogging him up. Some of Gestetner's arguments are really ridiculous and R. Hoffman puts him in his place.
R. Hoffman suggests that some of the behavior surrounding this case is being kafuy tov against this medina shel chesed.
R. Hoffman spoke to the experts who tested Grossman's IQ. The expert who said he had a 77 IQ was hired by the defense and admitted it's his job to make Grossman more defendable. There was another evaluation with a higher IQ that Grossman defenders have covered up. R. Hoffman agreed with the Gov.'s argument that Grossman's behavior to cover up the murder is not indicative of a low IQ.
The Chabad Rabbi Kurinsky who was at the execution comes on and one of his "best" arguments is that Grossman was "possibly" mentally ill at the time of the murder. Which professional made that assessment? The guy sounded very upbeat as if he was extolling some tremendous public kiddush Hashem. Kurinsky offered that he was mechuyev to act for Grossman al pi the Lubavitcher Rebbe's tzavaah.
R. Hoffman cites the Chacham Tzvi that of course every criminal prisoner wants to do teshuva but lav davka that we should make him a hero of the Klal or even let him off the hook.
"Michoel" calls in to attack R. Hoffman for going against the daas Torah of attorney Chaim Dovid Zweibel. This is not a joke as he only named Zweibel and no rabbonim.
A Lakewood caller calls to attack R. Hoffman for going against daas Torah of rabbonim and - I kid you not - the Pope. R. Hoffman answers that he consulted rabbonim who are daas Torah and they agree with him.
A Boro Park caller attacks Dov Hikind for letting R. Hoffman speak.
A Monsey caller attacks R. Hoffman as someone who has no business speaking on the topic.
R. Hoffman opines that the Agudah may have changed their minds if they knew more facts.
R. Hoffman cites the Taz & Bach that we hand over criminals to the umos in cases where the crimes are much less.
The final caller is outraged that the same effort was not made to free Shalom Rubashkin. Unfortunately, R. Hoffman who is generally on the correct side of issues, agrees with this caller. Note that R. Hoffman is an OU employee who cannot go against every OU position and an employee of the 5 Towns Jewish Times who are from the staunchest Rubashkin supporters and has himself gone to shocking lengths to defend Rubashkin which in my view is a stirah to what he argues in the Grossman case.
Part One:
Objection to main post: Please. Tropper's yeshiva had maybe 20 students at most at one time. How many do you think ended up at Chaim Berlin? The reality is the beit din system has been broken for many years. Schechter is an example of that. But none of this proves anything with regard to Tropper.
Response: Had you been INSIDE Chaim Berlin, and been trained to see and analyze such things, you would know differently. When it comes to the internal nexus and deep bonds BETWEEN Shechter and Tropper the issues are not about bais din at all, because modern rosh yeshivas scorn batei din in any case since they think they are "superior" halachic creatures.
The real glue that binds Shechter and Tropper is that they had common needs as roshei yeshiva. Shechter was a senior one busy with his own vision of a Stalinist model, and there were few like the upstart Tropper (who could learn like a talmid chochem, according to Shechter) who could help him find a way to implement it.
Remember, getting a yeshiva to "grow" the way a rosh yeshiva would want it to grow, is a unique challenge of SOCIAL ENGINEERING that outsiders cannot relate to, because the yeshiva world and its inner machinations is hidden and insular from the public eye.
Tropper came as a young fanatical frum punk with the balls (in Shechter's eyes) to go for the gold and get hold of BT disciples and make them into subservient talmidim who could hold their own in learning. Tropper would be forgiven all his vices by Shechter if he could just keep that up. This is something that Shechter gets orgasmic about and he will pay any price to get hold of it and control it. So the issue of batei din is peripheral to what transpires between Shechter and Tropper internally between each other, as a needy master "rosh yeshiva" and "gadol" wannabe and his cruel protégé with egomaniacal aspirations and delusions of grandeur and an unbridled libido powered by vesuvian testosterone levels.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s when Shechter took over Chaim Berlin there were not more that about 100 to 120 post-high school students in it. When Shechter kicked out at least 20 "college guys" as well as the more enlightened and independent minded mashgiach of his own yeshiva he create a catastrophic crisis for himself and his yeshiva. His name and his yeshiva's became mud. Chaim Berlin is still despised by the Lakewood crowd, altho not by its rosh yeshiva Malkiel Kotler whom Shechter helped get a heter meah rabbanim to remarry a Chaim Berliner's daughter, new talmidim refused to join, the only way they eventually filled the place up was from kids, may of alumni and hanhalla-faculty members coming up through the high school-mesivta ranks over the decades, and for a long stretch the place was half empty.
Even those talmidim in the late 1970s and early 1980s who remained were mostly college-going (to Brooklyn College) and wore colored modern clothing that Shechter hated. Shechter could only rely on a handful of his own die-hard talmidim (not more than about 30 of them) who, by their snotty elitism, were not in touch with the 100 or so other guys who were wavering in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Shechter was molding the place in his image, taking it away from his master's, Rav Hutner's totally open approach, relative to Shechter.
Enter Tropper at just the right time in the late 1970s and early 1980s he meets up with Shechter, bows to him, and starts to send a constant ongoing NUCLEUS of just the types of "talmidim" Shechter dreams of: Robotic, unquestioning, "not talking" loshen hora or during learning seder, totally subservient with their will and free choice surgically removed by Tropper and now planted among the regular Brooklyn college-going crowd in the Chaim Berlin bais medrash. Of course Tropper and his supplied cronies were not the only factors then, but we are talking about the subject of the Tropper-Shechter relationship right now, so that is the focus.
Part Two: Response/continued
Shechter did plenty of his own screaming and bullying to whip the place into shape HIS WAY that had nothing to do with Tropper, but Tropper's boys, or the "kol yaakov talmidim" as they were labeled were a known bunch and played their role serving Shechter's needs INSIDE THE YESHIVA HE WAS SHAPING to the hilt and obviously few were fully conscious then of what Shechter and Tropper were REALLY doing then either. It is a little complex perhaps, but not all that much more than a good jig-saw puzzle.
For the next 25 years there were always around a NUCLEUS of about 5 of these guys inside the Chaim Berlin yeshiva AND THEY STOOD OUT, as 5 guys amidst 100 would if you mixed with everyone day in and day out for YEARS. They sat there like zombies. In private conversations, if they chatted at all, they expressed their hate of the "tuma" of college. No sense of humor, just looking idolizingly at Shechter. This had a direct albeit subtle effect on everyone that cannot be minimized.
That is a basis of Shechter's relationship with Tropper and vice versa.
Tropper also served as Shechter emmissary to the world of kiruv on many fronts and served as a spy for Shechter keeping him up to date with what was happening in the field.
Until the newly-minted billionaires Tom Kaplan and Guma Aguiar got involved, Shechter and Fruchthandler were involved in propping up Tropper and giving him money. They viewed Tropper as a loyal camp follower while he never regarded himself as Chaim Berliner which he wasn't.
One needs to see this in terms of how complex cults function. They value loyalty and subservience to the "supreme leader" and to themselves as paramount and certainly the ability to generate that kind of thing like Tropper could. He HELPED them jump-start a generation by bringing in the "YEAST-like" elements that helped their own brew inside Chaim Berlin ferment and rise into what it has become today with 30 years under Shechter's tyrannical rule.
The proverbial "shift to the right" is now a fait accompli and Shechter can easily dump Tropper if he needs to and laugh all the way to his grave on Har Menuchos or Har Hazeisim.
Shechter and Tropper don't care about any Bais Din. They have both spent a lifetime ignoring and crapping on batei din and any pesakim like serial gangsters. What they care about is their own stock in power trade, the rosh yeshiva business, that they partnered in so well for decades.
In recent years, with the arrival of Tom Kaplan and Guma Aguiar, Shechter even started getting some monetary payback, BUT in the case of Shechter and Tropper it's still not what the crux of their mutual self-protecting love-fest is about, that is how to create an ultra-Charedi Litvishe rosh yeshiva surrounded by fawning, unthinking automaton disciples not much different to Stalinism, Scientology, Lyndon LaRouche groupies, the Ayatollahs or the Moonies.
What Rabbi Yair Hoffman said was "assur, yet necessary"!
Is Michael Hersh originally a Kol Yaakov boy?
http://www.nytimes.com/
BREAKING NEWS
3:03 PM ET
Toyota Executive Says Recall Might ‘Not Totally’ Solve Accelerator Problems
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David Mandel: Kolko's office in YTT should be fitted with a window
Kol Hakavod!
I am assuming that you played a part in getting Amram Bendahan fired from his position as Youth Director at Bnai Sephardim in FL.
Bendahan, is wanted on an open GA arrest warrant for felonious child abuse. The supporting court documents which were provided to each member of the Board of the Synagogue stated that Bendahan sexually molested his then six year old son.
Two additional, now adult victims of Bendahan were identified in Toronto where he was a youth director until 2001.
Nevertheless, the shul kept Bendahan on as youth director since October when this all came out after two mothers witnessed Bendahan and a teenager alternatively fondling and beating an 8 year old boy in a closet.
The Hollywood Police dept. could not investigate the case because the victim's parents would not sign a complaint (after they were threatened by the Board members of the synagogue).
It appears as though Bendahan was finally fired last week.
I keep my promises, and don't talk about most everything I do.... or how I do it!
Chazak Florida
UOJ
UOJ n"y,
Now that you have outed yourself and there is no danger in being revealed by releasing documents from your family archive, could you release the letter you said you have about R' Elchonon?
We would like to know what you do and possibly put to bed all the attacks on you out there over the R' Elchonon issue.
There was big discussion in the Moroccan community that some guy who calls himself UOJ was all over the Amram Bendahan story.
There is no question that the synagogue felt pressure from this and that whoever covered up in Toronto is not sleeping as easy.
I think that it is important for everyone to know that UOJ makes a difference!!!
I called one of the Rabbis in FL, a friend of mine who told me tonight, that:
1. despite the irrefutable evidence of the GA arrest warrant and court documents which each of the Board members had,
2. despite the fact that two mothers told Board members that they saw Bendahan and a teenager with the child,
3. despite the fact that other community members told the Board members that there had been similar accusations in Toronto, and this was verified by the Chaplain of JFS.
4.despite the fact that NCSY had recently fired Bendahan under a cloud of accusations,
5.despite the fact that Jewish Boy Scouts had also fired Bendahan under a cloud of accusations and
6.despite the fact that there had also been suspicions at the Young Israel where Bendahan has previously worked......
STILL B'nai Sephardim in Hollywood kept Bendahan as their youth director, even giving private Bar Mitzvah lessons and having Shabbatons in his home while his wife and children were out of town for FIVE MONTHS after the two mothers reported seeing him with the boys.
Then, suddenly seemingly out of the blue, last week the Board members of Bnai Sephardim miraculously changed their minds and Bendahan is no longer working with children!
Several Rabbis in the community had gone to the Bnai Sephardim Board and begged them to stop allowing Bendahan access to the children of our community and yet, the Board members only became more and more adamant in their defense of Bendahan, even hiring an attorney to pursue the husband of one of the mothers who reported to the police what she had seen.
UOJ makes a difference in the lives of Jewish children.
UOJ fights for the innocent victims of child molesters and WINS!!!
He who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the world.
Kazak u'Baruch!
Another day another Jewish business owner arrested!!
DAVID COHEN of Mystique in New York City was arrested for paying workers $5.25 an hour, cheating on overtime pay despite demanding 66 hour work weeks, threatening a witness, among other charges. He faces close to 368 years in prison plus 1.5 million dollars in back pay and civil fines.
Keep up the Pidyon Shevuyim campaigns. The halachos of Pidyon Shevuyim are more widely known than the halachos of Shabbos, Kashrus, and Lashon Harah!!
But, at Agudath Israel of America's headquarters, Zweibel and Company think all is hunky dorey in LaLaLand. Maybe old man Spinka wasn't the best role model to lecture about business ethics. Hopefully they don't hire Dr. Kevorkian to lecture about medical ethics!!
Anon of 11:11,
We know that UOJ is a champion we just wish his long arm could extend to Ramat Bet Shemesh where we suffer with the arrogance of the protectors and enablers.
Not only do they get away with their flagrant flaunting of the law they punish the protectors of children like Lema'an Achai and David Morris.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a18009/News/New_York.html
When asked if he thought the level of illegal behavior among Orthodox Jews was of a proportion similar to other groups. Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, said it was hard to say without sociological data.
A Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday indicted former WABC-TV/Channel 7 sportscaster Marvell Scott on charges that he raped a 14-year-old prostitute at his apartment in 2008.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said Scott faces charges of rape, patronizing a prostitute and child endangerment.
It was whirlwind day for Scott, who turns 37 next week. Tuesday morning Scott surrendered at the D.A.’s office. Later, appearing before a judge, Scott pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say Scott met with a man near Times Square on June 5, 2008. He paid the man, and brought two girls, ages 14 and 16, to his West 47th Street apartment.
Scott had sex with the 14-year-old girl in his bedroom, according to court documents, while the 16-year-old was also in the room.
Scott, a physician, abruptly left his weekend sports gig at WABC in April 2009 citing an extended vacation. He never returned.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2010/02/23/cohen_clothing/
NEW YORK — David Cohen, the owner of seven popular clothing stores in New York City, has been arrested for allegedly failing to pay his employees proper legal wages, falsifying tax and business records, and trying to impede the Attorney General’s investigation into the matter.
The Attorney General seeks to recover more than $1.5 million in unpaid wages and damages.
Both criminal and civil actions were filed Tuesday against Cohen by the Attorney General. Cohen’s stores include Mystique Boutique (547 Broadway, 324 Fifth Ave., and 412 Broadway); Madness Boutique (305 Canal St.); Exstaza (491 Broadway); and Amsterdam (454 Broadway and 365-367 Canal St).
“In this case, workers were not only ripped off but were also intimidated to make sure they stayed quiet,” said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
Asaf Cohen, a manager and relative of David Cohen, is also charged in the civil case.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/21/us.naacp.leadership/?iref=polticker
The new chairwoman for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the oldest civil rights groups in the nation, said Sunday she'll work to bring a new generation into the organization.
Roslyn Brock, a health care executive and former NAACP vice chair, was selected to fill the seat left by Julian Bond, a civil rights leader who has held the post since 1998. Brock, 44, is the youngest person to ever serve in the position.
"I want to get the word out that the NAACP is alive and well, and that we are a multi-cultural, multi-racial organization," Brock said on CNN's "Sunday Morning."
In his speech on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, President Obama said "the pain of discrimination is still felt in America" among African-Americans, Latinos and Muslim Americans.
Why does he have to go inside to relieve himself?
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/bathroom-rule-rankles-vendors/
More than 20 street vendors gathered outside the headquarters of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday to protest a policy that bans vendors from leaving their carts, even for bathroom breaks.
Mohammed Shirajul Islam, foreground, a street vendor whose permit was confiscated after he took too long to relieve himself, spoke at a protest outside the city’s health department on Tuesday.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/brooklyn-borough-chief-is-deposed-in-bias-suit/
Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, was deposed on Friday at his offices in the most significant moment in a lawsuit filed in 2007 by a top former aide. Mr. Markowitz’s former chief of staff, Gregory D. Atkins, was also deposed in the case. He testified on Tuesday.
The case involves Regina Weiss, who served as Mr. Markowitz’s communications director in 2005 and 2006. Ms. Weiss is alleging that Mr. Atkins — with Mr. Markowitz’s tacit blessing — subjected her to gender and age discrimination. And despite good reviews from Mr. Markowitz, the lawsuit alleges, Ms. Weiss, now 52, was forced to resign in early 2006 because of what she perceived as Mr. Atkins’s persistent denigration of her work and his clear bias toward male employees.
The lawsuit, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, also alleges that Mr. Markowitz improperly asked his employees to work on his 2005 re-election campaign and ignored “inappropriate sexual activity” by Mr. Atkins with three other employees.
The accusation of a blurring of the lines between city work and campaign activity is particularly noteworthy for Mr. Markowitz, given that he recently admitted that he used his chief of staff, Carlo A. Scissura, as his private lawyer to purchase a $1.45 million house in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood.
UOJ
can you please let people know who were the rabbis that did not help you try to get rid of this guy in florida and which rBBIS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS HELPED THE CASE
that way we can be assured of who are the real community leaders
can you also assist in getting seigel removed from the kolel in nmb
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/02/24/us/politics/politics-us-usa-economy-obama.html
Brooklyn (Reuters) - Lipa Margulies launched a vigorous defense of his economic agenda on Wednesday, rejecting critics who call his policies "greed" and insisting he aims to boost YTT competitiveness in Brisk.
Speaking to the Agudah Fresser Roundtable, Margulies called for support of his administration's efforts to overhaul tuition regulation and create profit.
Margo's remarks were set against a backdrop of unease in the Hungarian community about his budget policies as well as his legislative drive for molesters.
"Contrary to the claims of my critics, I am an ardent believer in free chulent on Thursday nights," Margulies said in prepared remarks.
Margulies said his efforts to fight climate change were not aimed at thwarting Shea Fishman.
"We have arrived at a juncture where reasonable efforts to raise tuition, or make basic deposits in our bank account, are too often greeted with cries of 'megalomaniac' or even 'goniv'," Margulies said.
Margulies and his fellow enablers are determined to hide as many assets as possible before UOJ takes over the building.
Funny stuff :-)
NCSY Sent Public School Students to Rabbi Tropper’s Yeshiva
December 22, 2009
Rabbi Tropper allegedly blackmailed prospective converts to provide sexual services to himself and others in return for facilitating the conversion process.
NCSY boasted as recently as 2005 of sending public school students to Rabbi Tropper’s yeshiva, Kol Yaakov.
I am quite sure that if we ask NCSY (and this was already true a few months ago) if they are sending students to Kol Yaakov, they will say they haven’t done so in “a long time.”
But the problem is, we don’t know where in the ultra-Orthodox and haredi world NCSY sends public school students. They have no transparency. Rabbi Burg and NCSY boast of their (newly established) right-wing Modern Orthodox options for public school grads, and they submerge their black-hat recruitment practices.
Who do NCSY send to Kol Yaakov, a baal teshuvah yeshiva? Public school teenagers. All guided by their “cultural” clubs.
The club’s electricity alone drew many of us to Torah-true Judaism. Club members put tefillin on fellow class-mates who had never worn them before,shared fears and advice with each other regarding growing in religious observance, held Sunday barbecues and took motzei Shabbat excursions to the American Museum of Natural History.We shared in Leo’s pidyon haben (which took place during a club meeting with fellow club member Yosef HaCohen Katz) and taught our non-Jewish class-mates about Yom HaShoah by passing out yellow Magen Davids marked with the word “Jude,” all the while growing closer to each other and to Judaism. Many club members ended upturning down the finest universities in the nation, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Boston University, Brandeis, New York University and other esteemed institutions of higher learning in order to engage in some genuine“higher learning.” Some of us went to study at Ohr Somayach or Kol Yaakov in Monsey, New York.
In light of Tropper’s recent scandal, it is dubious NCSY/JSU will be recruiting our public school teens to Kol Yaakov anytime soon. But they will continue to send our teens to other haredi pits of misery instead of college.
The Jewish community needs to demand that NCSY/JSU come clean about exactly where they are sending our teens. Otherwise, NCSY/JSU will continue their slippery evasions, “it depends on the specific needs of the student,” blah, blah, blah, whenever we press them as to where exactly in black hat world they are sending them.
NCSY continues to resist transparency.
Update: Rabbi Burg reiterated that NCSY has not sent students to Kol Yaakov to the best of his knowledge since he took the reigns of power. I do not dispute this. But the fact remains, they certainly had in the past, they continue to send our teens to other haredi institutions today, and we need to know where exactly NCSY is sending our teens.
Rabbi Burg told The Kvetcher that he is “open to setting up some type of list of recommended schools.”
Let’s see if that happens, and what it looks like.
NCSY Yarchei Kallah 2006: Rabbi Aharon Schechter
Rabbi Aharon Schechter, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, participates in a thoughtful teen Q&A with teens at the 2006 NCSY National Yarchei Kallah. Recorded on December 28, 2006.
YWN: Rav Ahron Schecter Spending Shabbos In Dallas Texas
October 26, 2007
Rav Ahron Schecter Shlita – Rosh Yeshivas Chaim Berlin – along with other Rabbonim are spending Shabbos in Dallas Texas for the opening of a new Frum Shul. (No further information was available to Yeshivaworld on this news item.)
Two short YouTube clips:
Part One of Rav Aharon Schechter on Rabbi Slifkin and creation "Rav Aharon Schechter of Yeshivah Chaim Berlin was invited to Bnei Yeshurun in Teaneck on March 5th, 2006, along with Rav Aharon Feldman and Rav Mattisyahu Solomon. Here is an extract concerning..." (9 minutes)
Part Two of Rav Aharon Schechter on Creation and Rabbi Slifkin (4 minutes) "Rav Aharon Schechter of Yeshivah Chaim Berlin was invited to Bnei Yeshurun in Teaneck on March 5th, 2006, along with Rav Aharon Feldman and Rav Mattisyahu Solomon. Here is an extract.."
The real deal talks were probably about what to do about the Tropper swine sex scandal and how they should cover it up and would not deal with it. Schechter was there to give them "lessons" in covering up for immoral swines such as Tropper!
Matzav: Rav Aharon Schechter Recovers From Swine Flu, Traveled to EY At Behest Of Rav Shteinman
Tuesday July 21, 2009
Rav Aharon Schechter, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, who returned this morning to the United States from Eretz Yisroel, recently recovered from a case of the H1N1 swine flu virus, Matzav.com has learned.
Rav Schechter, a member of the of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Agudath Israel of America, had been feeling unwell when word came of the important meeting to be held in Yerushalayim this week for Chinuch Atzmai.
Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman sent Rav Schechter a personal note stating that it would give him a “nachas ruach” if Rav Schechter undertook the trip to Eretz Yisroel to participate in the meeting. Family and others tried to dissuade Rav Schechter from undertaking the trip, but prodded by Rav Shteinman’s request, and comforted that Rav Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, the Lakewood rosh yeshiva, would be on the plane to assist him, Rav Schechter decided to make the trip. He arrived in Eretz Yisroel yesterday morning on a flight that also included Chacham Yosef Harari-Raful, rosh hayeshiva of Yeshiva Ateret Torah.
Upon arrival in Eretz Yisroel, Rav Schechter was greeted by two busloads of former Yeshiva Chaim Berlin talmidim who traveled to the airport to greet the rosh yeshiva. Rav Mordechai Karelitz of Chinuch Atzmai greeted Rav Schechter as well. It was arranged for Rav Schechter to be taken right into the country without having to travel through the terminal.
Following the closed-door meeting with the gedolim, Rav Schechter, despite being weak and tired, expressed the tremendous inspiration that he got from the gathering, saying that he was nisragesh.
The meeting was closed to all members of the press, all photographers, and even askanim of Chinuch Atzmai.
At 1:30 p.m. yesterday, Rav Schechter, together with Rav Kotler, visited the Kosel Hamaarovi.
Later, at 7:30 p.m., Rav Kotler delivered a shiur at Yeshiva Orchos Torah on Rechov Hashomer in Bnei Brak, Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman’s yeshiva.
Rav Schechter took a midnight flight back to the United States and arrived at Newark Airport early this morning.
The rosh yeshiva will be resting at his home to completely overcome the effects of the swine flu virus from which he has suffered.
A little known fact is that the disgraced and perfidious Shia Fishman, formerly of Torah Umesorah, was a famous graduate of yeshiva Chaim Berlin and a lifelong devout and blind disciple of his rosh yeshiva Yitzchok Hutner who passed away in 1980. After that Fishman continued to take orders and counsel for all matters from Hutner's successor Aaron Schechter while he allowed Torah Umesorah to be taken over Abe Fruchthandler in effect making Torah Umesorah a subsidiary of Agudath Israel where Shechter and Fruchthandler had also established their total control and dominance.
While under Schechter's thumb until his last days on the job, Shia Fishman was instructed by Schechter to admit Nate Noson Segal, a two bit rabbi from Stane Island and also a devout disciple of Aaron Schechter who has been a lifelong underling of Abe Fruchthandler all his life.
When Fishman was finally forced to resign from Torah Umesoraha for his mishandling of confidential formation from sexually abused children during the Kolko expose and scandal, he had already been forced to groom Nate Segal by command of Schechter and Fruchthandler thereby continuing and extending Schechter's and Fruchthandlers deep manipulation and domination of Torah Umesorah, especially now under its new powerless director David Njowitz with their offices a few blocks down the road from Chaim Berlin's with both now on Coney Island Avenue.
Schechter's and Fruchthandler's over-running and undermining of Torah Umesorah is now complete.
While Tropper's fall grace and self-immolation has dealt a sever blow to Schechter's and Fruchtahnadler's efforts to control the conversion market through EJF and its Israeli affiliates, they have succeeded in taking control of "chinuch" through Torah Umesorah, of "klal work" through Agudas Yisroel, of shulls through Pesach Chometz Lerner at the NCYI and a strong influnce at the OU, and within the "kiruv" world with many at Ohr Somayach and even Aish HaTorah taking guidance from Schechter and Fruchthandler.
The Tropper scandal has revealed the dangers of such corrupt dictatorial monopolistic hegemony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/25hummer.html?hp
DETROIT — Hummer, the brand of big sport-utility vehicles that became synonymous with the term “gas guzzler,” is being shut down after a deal to sell it to a Chinese manufacturer fell apart, General Motors said Wednesday.
Filed at 4:01 p.m. ET
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- An employee at SeaWorld Orlando has died after being attacked by a killer whale.
Orange County Fire Rescue spokesman John Mulhall says paramedics were called Wednesday afternoon to the Shamu Stadium at the theme park where they found a worker who could not be revived.
Park guest Victoria Biniak told WKMG-TV that the trainer had just finished explaining to the audience the show they were about to see.
Biniak told the station the whale suddenly came up from the water, grabbed the trainer around the waist and ''thrashed her all around'' to the point the trainer's shoe fell off.
The guests were evacuated and the park was closed.
From FL-
Rabbi Yonah Lunger from Chesed of Florida and Chaplain of Jewish Family Service of Miami Dade County spent many tireless days and nights trying to protect our children from Amram Bendahan.
Rabbi Lunger also Bendahan's victims and tried to get the shul to fire Bendahan based upon both the arrest warrant from GA and the testimony of the mothers who witnessed Bendahan with the boys.
On the other hand:
Mrs. Miller who is the principal of the Ben Gamla school was also called and informed of the accusations against Bendahan and of the open arrest warrant. She wa asked to please refer the boys who were Bendahan's victims to the school psychologist or other social services.
Mrs. Miller told the caller to "mind his own business" and hung up.
The Hollywood School district was then informed and they said that Mrs. Miller acted in an unlawful way and that they would investigate the situation.
Rabbi Neal Turk wrote and hand delivered a letter to the Board members of Bnai Sephardim in defense of Bendahan. Rabbi Turk tried to discredit one of the mothers who witnessed Bendahan molesting the child by saying that she and her husband were in a "questionable" marriage.
The Chief Sephardic Rabbi wrote a letter (which was provided to the Beis Din in Israel currently investigating Rabbi Turk) saying that the Rabbi Turk's allegations were not true and that the marriage between the witness and her husband is 100% kosher and pure.
Rabbi Turk was recently fired from his position as Rabbi of Beth Israel synagogue in Miami Beach.
A different Bais Din in Israel has been investigating Rabbi Turk for knowingly giving honors to a Kohen married to a Gentile and giving a funeral eulogy for the mother of the Gentile wife of the same Kohen who incidentally was one of his big donors (the woman was buried in a Catholic cemetery, Rabbi Turk could not say he did not know).
Rabbi Neal Turk is the Av Beis Din L'Giyur for Miami which has facilitated a number of conversions for EJF/ Leib Tropper.
I do not know if Rabbi Turk was paid by Tropper, but I have been told that both Rabbi Ely Smith and Rabbi Schmeltzer who sit on Rabbi Turk's Beis Din were paid by Tropper/EJF.
I was told that Rabbi Edward Davis of the Young Israel did act behind the scenes. Rabbi Davis was provided copies of the arrest warrant and court documents at the same time as the Board members of Bnai Sephardim were.
The Rabbi of the 2900 Stirling Road shul (Rabbi Elon) also spoke to the Board members of Bnai Sephardim who would not listen.
That is everything I know.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61J0NJ20100224
Inmate named in extortion bid of hedge fund SAC
Legal sources identified Hayim Regensberg, 44, as the inmate whom Balkany said he had spoken to about SAC. Regensberg was convicted last year of defrauding about a dozen people in a three-year long Ponzi scheme.
He is now serving an eight-year sentence at the Otisville prison located in the Catskill Mountains that is known to have many observant Jewish inmates.
It is unclear whether Balkany and Regensberg, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing in this case, ever met, sources said. Regensberg's wife did not return several phone messages.
Regensberg's attorney Robert Baum, who defended the investment manager and is working on his appeal, declined to comment on the Balkany case.
Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, declined to comment.
A spokesman for SAC Capital also declined to comment.
But Balkany's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, described his client's actions as being fueled more by "bad judgment" not criminal intent.
"I do not believe Rabbi Balkany's intention was criminal," said Brafman. "I think there is a difference between using bad judgment and acting with criminal intent. This is a case of very bad judgment."
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=903423&category=OPINION
By RABBI HANOCH HECHT AND THE REV. ANTHONY EVANS
First published in print: Monday, February 22, 2010
The Child Victims Act is once again under consideration in the state Senate, with the Codes Committee likely voting on it this week. We and our fellow believers urge our elected representatives to pass it as quickly as possible to protect New York's children.
New York's proposed window is the most modest yet to be considered in the United States. Unlike the California and Delaware acts, New York sets an age cap on victims, so those over age 53 will not be able to bring a claim. This was in part a response to the Catholic Conference's objection that the bill was too open-ended. With that amendment, their concerns have been fairly met. The New York bill also applies to all institutions, not just religious entities, so no one can claim it is biased against any organization or group.
Religious organizations actually will be better off in the long run if the Child Victims Act is passed. We want to know the truth: who among us is suffering, who is culpable, and whether our institutions need to change our own policies to protect children. The secrets New York law has permitted to fester need sunshine today. Our beliefs demand passage of the Child Victims Act.
Rabbi Hanoch Hecht is special projects manager for the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education and principal of Sixminuterabbi.com. The Rev. Anthony Evans is president of the National Black Church Initiative.
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S1406586.shtml?cat=566
A Rochester man is accused of sexually abusing a young girl inside a Jewish temple in Irondequoit.
Orlando Colon is charged with first degree sexual abuse.
We obtained a copy of his statements to police.
Colon admitted he sexually abused one girl at Temple Beth David.
He is not Jewish, but he said he went to the temple to find God, because, “Jesus was a Rabbi.”
Police say it turned criminal after the service was over.
The president of the temple, Martin Presberg, said, “Temple Beth David is a very welcoming community and what we want to do is we want to use that welcoming stance that we have to everyone and use it to enhance our security.”
Police say after the service Saturday morning, at around noon, Colon was downstairs trying to sexually abuse at least one nine-year-old girl. It was the first time Colon was ever in the temple.
Presberg said, “So while everyone is welcome to come, we’ll be paying a little bit closer attention to people who aren’t necessarily part of the community.”
Presberg talked about enhanced security at the temple. He said the downstairs area, where they have a school, is now off limits. He also said temple members will man certain doorways. He said it’s just a matter of heightened awareness. Their guard was down, and he said it’s not going to happen again.
Presberg said, “If we’re paying attention to people because we want them to feel at home, we’ll be paying attention to them as well and observe if something unusual or inappropriate starts to happen.”
Kristina Karle, Assistant District Attorney and the prosecutor in the case, said, “Am I surprised of where this is alleged to have occurred? Not really.”
“We see when there are allegations of child sexual abuse that oftentimes people will go to where children are at. We’ve seen it with daycare centers, churches, schools,” Karle said.
The most disturbing part of this case might be Colon’s statement to police. He told them he went to the temple “trying to find God.” He said he was “hallucinating,” and at one point, thought he saw the “doors of Heaven.”
He said he “did expose myself” and admitted he committed “lewd sexual acts.”
Karle said, “When you read it in his statement that was given to the police, there are things in there that are alarming and concerning.”
Colon’s statements to police are some of the strangest stuff you’ve ever heard.
As far as we can tell, Orlando Colon has never been convicted of a sex crime before. He got probation for a misdemeanor drug charge in 2005.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1148261.html
The attorney for a self-declared rabbi indicted for abusing several young children was charged himself yesterday with obstructing court proceedings and harassing witnesses slated to testify against him.
Suspect Elior Chen, who was extradited from Brazil last year, allegedly used knives, hammers and other instruments to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit in 2008.
According to the charge sheet presented yesterday, Chen's attorney Ariel Atari in 2008 visited a woman who later gave evidence in Chen's trial and he sought to influence her testimony, although it was illegal for him to have any contact with a prosecution witness.
In March 2009, after being charged with abusing her own children, the woman accepted a plea bargain in which she would serve a limited sentence on condition that she would testify against Chen and other suspects.
Atari allegedly told her that he had evidence contrary to her testimony and that having seen her son's medical file, the boy's physical injuries could be interpreted as the result of an accident.
The charge sheet said Atari sought to convince the woman that she had been confused and emotionally fragile when she told others
By Alan Zibel
Associated Press
Posted: 02/24/2010 09:19:43 AM PST
WASHINGTON — Freddie Mac lost almost $26 billion last year, ominous news for taxpayers, who are footing the bill to rescue the mortgage finance company and its sibling, Fannie Mae.
In the final three months of last year, Freddie Mac posted a loss of $7.8 billion, or $2.39 a share. Freddie Mac, which has lost almost $80 billion since the housing crisis started in 2007, is bracing for more pain. The McLean, Va., company said a record 4 percent of its borrowers are at least three months behind on their payments and facing foreclosure.
Its chief executive, Charles Haldeman, warned Wednesday of a "potential large wave of foreclosures" still to come.
This is a major problem for the federal government, which seized control of Freddie and Fannie in September 2008. The two companies have already siphoned $111 billion from the government to stay afloat. That number is expected to hit $188 billion by fall 2011.
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/02/murray_huberfeld_and_solomon_dweck.php
And there is at least one man who comes up in the sagas of both Rothstein and Dwek: hedge fund man Murray Huberfeld of New York.
Huberfeld was subpoeanaed for a deposition and records regarding his dealings with Dwek in a civil case, and Huberfeld's New York hedge fund, Centurion Credit, reportedly loaned Rothstein's top money source and close associate George Levin at least $20 million that was put into the scheme, according to Hedge Fund Alert. I have a call into Levin's P.R. camp for answers on how he came to tap Huberfeld's seemingly endless money pump.
It's not known what involvement Huberfeld had with Dwek, but he's definitely a guy with a knack for finding shady deals. Huberfeld has been the subject of numerous SEC complaints, and in 1993, he and partner David Bodner pleaded guilty in federal court to
possessing false I.D.s while taking government exams. Back in 1996, Huberfeld was hit by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case involving fraud and unregistered stock. In that case, which involved Huberfeld's firm Broad Capital, Huberfeld was ordered to cease and desist from violating trading rules again (don't you love how white-collar crooks are often punished by the government with the equivalent of "well, don't do it again"?) and forced to disgorge more than $400,000 in profits and interest made from the deals. In 1998, the SEC hit Huberfeld and Broad with more of the same. More recently, he ran into a snag with the FDIC.
A quick aside: That this guy is still operating at a high level -- Centurion alone is said to manage $400 million -- is in my view a great testament to the weak regulation of deviant financial activities in the United States.
I left a call with Huberfeld at Centurion and will update with his information when he returns the call. But what is truly astonishing about the man isn't that he survived in business but that he's done so without scrutiny from the New York press and at the same time is touted as a major Jewish leader. Perhaps the lack of public scrutiny is one reason that former President George W. Bush had no qualms naming Huberfeld a member of his honorary delegation to Israel. In 2005, Huberfeld held court with the pope as a member of a delegation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. He's also, not surprisingly, a regular in the New York charity circuit.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/print/business_fraud_scandals_devastate_las_iranian_jews_20100216/
February 16, 2010
Frayed Trust
Business fraud scandals devastate L.A.’s Iranian Jews.
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2010/02/rothstein-emails.html
A court filing in a civil suit brought by investors of Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein includes a batch of e-mails that show how the Fort Lauderdale lawyer's firm came to an abrupt end last November, according to reports in The Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post.
The e-mails also reveal how another disgraced lawyer--Menachem "Melly" Lifshitz--had a role in expediting the unraveling of Rothstein's $1.2 billion fraud. Rothstein pleaded guilty last week to orchestrating a scheme that brought down his 70-lawyer firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler (RRA). Several investor groups have already filed suit against Rothstein, RRA, and other entities that held investors' money.
E-mails disclosed as part of a civil suit filed by William Scherer III, a name partner at Florida's Conrad & Scherer, show several late October communiqués between Rothstein and a Miami financial adviser named Michael Szafranski. A recurring topic of discussion in those e-mails is Lifshitz, a former name partner at New York plaintiffs firm Bernstein Liebhard.
Lifshitz negotiated more than $200 million in securities settlements alone during his time with the firm, and the ex-securities and consumer class action litigator is a well-known contributor to Democratic political campaigns and Jewish charities. But he's also a tax cheat.
According to sibling publication the New York Law Journal, Lifshitz pleaded guilty in November 2008 to a felony charge of falsifying his 2005 income tax return and agreed to pay $4.75 million in back taxes and interest. He didn't receive any jail time in return for the tax payment and guilty plea, but agreed to resign from the state bar. (Bernstein Liebhard was not implicated in any wrongdoing.)
Although he was not able to practice law, Lifshitz still wielded serious legal clout. According to a series of e-mails between Szafranski and Rothstein, Lifshitz was representing an entity called ABS Capital Funding that Szafranski had recruited to invest in confidential employment discrimination settlements. (The settlements were fictitious and formed the foundation of Rothstein's Ponzi scheme.)
In late October, ABS was demanding a $30 million payment. Rothstein had already flown to Morocco in a panic after telling his business associates that he was heading to London to recruit new investors. Seeing things starting to go south, Szafranski pleaded with Rothstein via e-mail to return and straighten out the tenuous financial situation. Szafranki seemed particularly spooked by Lifshitz's involvement.
"I don't wanna pressure u but if melly does what his partners want him to do then there [are] bigger prbs," Szafranski wrote to Rothstein in an e-mail. "Plz call him."
Another missive from Szafranski to Rothstein urges the Fort Lauderdale lawyer to release the funds requested by ABS investors because they "will destroy me if I lose them $$, [I'm] begging you."
Szafranski then asked Rothstein for a loan in order to make scheduled payments to investors. When Rothstein promised he would make the payments, which never materialized, Szafranski wrote Rothstein in an e-mail: "Where are you? I am so worried. I want u back here...Tell me u closed ur deal and ur coming back today."
In one of the final e-mails between Szafranski and Rothstein included in the civil court filing, Lifshitz's ferocious reputation reared its head once again.
"I have spoken to melly. He is planning on meeting with florida counsel on Sunday and going into court on Monday morning," Szafranski wrote Rothstein. "[Lifshitz] will be going after you, the firm. Everything. I was not able to dissuade him...Please make this happen or we are all done."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3852252,00.html
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=4&id=33699
Schwartz requested a beach party funeral with strippers, and to have his body dumped into the ocean clad in scuba gear.
http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2010/02/22/how-convenient-new-obamacare-plan-too-vague-to-score/?cxntfid=blogs_kyle_wingfield
How convenient: New ObamaCare plan too vague to score
February 22, 2010, by Kyle Wingfield
President Obama plans to hold a “bipartisan” health-care summit Thursday, and today the White House rolled out a new health proposal for the occasion. The administration says the compromise between the House and Senate bills will cost $950 billion over 10 years but will somehow reduce the deficit by $100 billion over that time and by $1 trillion in its second decade.
That’s right: a $1 trillion deficit reduction over 10 years, a 10-fold increase from the first 10 years.
Want to know what the scorers at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office think? Too bad — the White House delivered its plan so late, and with so few specifics, that CBO says it won’t be able to evaluate the new scheme by Thursday.
Aw, shucks. What an unfortunate coincidence! And if you believe that, I’ve got a no-deductible, no-premium, no-co-pay insurance plan I’d like to sell you.
The White House cooked up this summit as a last chance to take back the political high ground from Republicans on health care, after months of negative public reaction to Democrats’ various proposals. The fact that the president wants Republican input only on ways to tweak his plan around the edges, nothing more, is sign enough that he merely seeks the appearance of having listened to the GOP before he proceeds to shove his plan down Congress’s, and Americans’, collective throats. A serious discussion could wait until the new plan has at least the CBO’s stamp of approval, much less reviews by other third parties.
But maybe this will backfire: If Republicans needed a reason not to get caught up in Thursday’s trap summit, they could find it in the futility of discussing a plan with nothing more rigorous than an Obama “trust me” behind it.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/mensch-next-door-charged-with-ponzi-scheming/article1466665/
On the night of March 25, however, the calm was disrupted by a terrifying sound: gunfire. At 613 St. Germain Ave., dentist David Meisels and his family awoke to find their glass front door shattered, its wooden frame pockmarked by bullets. On a nearby lawn, police discovered a gun – a warning, neighbours later speculated, from the Israeli Mafia.
The violence likely was not aimed at the dentist. It was intended instead for his brother-in-law, Tzvi Erez, a 42-year-old former printer who lived around the corner. The bankruptcy of Mr. Erez's Toronto company, E Graphix, exposed a $27-million Ponzi scheme that would lead to his arrest and to charges of seven counts of fraud, on which he is now awaiting trial. A series of threats had forced him, his wife and three children underground – where he remains – and those responsible for the gunshots evidently believed he was using his sister's place as a safe house.
It emerged that Mr. Erez was secretly a heavy gambler, taking covert trips to casinos and playing high-stakes poker online under an alias. Indeed, he previously had been charged with fraud for writing fraudulent cheques to several Ontario casinos.
For many of his 76 creditors, some of whom face financial ruin, the revelations about Mr. Erez's gambling habit left a host of unanswered questions: Was their money really gone? Could Mr. Erez have used online casinos as a vehicle to conceal it? And how did he manage to deceive them for so long? “Six weeks before all this happened, he was dancing with his baby at his mother-in-law's retirement party,” says Sheldon Esbin, a close friend of Mr. Erez's father-in-law who loaned him money because of their family connection. “To look at him, so happy, you would think that everything was fine. But nothing was fine.”
The police eventually posted an officer outside his sister's house, and later charged a creditor, Gad Elmaleh, with seven counts of threatening death and one count of criminal harassment (he was released after paying a $500 surety and is not a suspect in the shooting). The following day, an e-mail from Mr. Manis informed creditors that, “for the safety of his family, Tzvi Erez has gone into protection until further notice.”
http://www.whitepages.ca/search/FindPerson?firstname_begins_with=1&firstname=gad&name=elmaleh&where=ontario
Gad Elmaleh
Toronto, ON
Magen David Sephardic Congregation, President
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/mensch-next-door-charged-with-ponzi-scheming/article1466665/#comments
Canadians have a reputation in Israel of being wimps and easy suckers. In my industry the police undertook a project called "operation seniors" where they found 200-300 Israelis were rotating through the GTA (greater Toronto area) ripping off seniors. The whole thing was about as nasty as people could get. They sold them bogus insurance and home improvements and investments.... anything !!!! It's hard to believe individuals can sink this low. In a fair world it's time to run a large claymore through these creeps.
http://www.dnainfo.com/20100224/midtown-west-hells-kitchen/police-arrest-third-man-staged-diamond-district-heist
Police have arrested a third man in connection with a $4 million Diamond District jewelry store heist allegedly staged by the shop owners in an elaborate insurance fraud.
Edward Fried, 56, of Brooklyn, was arrested on charges of grand larceny and insurance fraud, police said. It was not immediately clear what role Fried played in the robbery.
Fried is the latest person to be charged in the New Year’s Eve 2008 robbery at Dialite Imports on W. 46th Street. Shop owner Atul Shah allegedly hired a pair of thieves to dress as Hasidic Jews, complete with fake beards, and knock over his store in a brazen daytime heist.
Shah and co-owner Mahaveer Kankariya, both of New Jersey, were charged with grand larceny, insurance fraud and falsifying business records, police said.
The robbery immediately aroused police suspicions because owners were allegedly six months late in rent and more than $1 million in debt, sources told the Daily News.
Is this the Gerald Gartner who learned in MTJ?
Gerald Gartner – 53, a CPA, residing in Lawrence and the Chief Financial Officer for AHRC-NYC Foundation, a fund-raising and grant entity, located in Manhattan, failed to file tax returns for years 2005-08. He is charged with violating the Tax Law for Repeated Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns, a Class E felony, and Criminal Tax Fraud in the third degree for failing to file his personal income tax for 2008 as a Class D felony. During that time he earned $1,505,818.00 and failed to pay $68,986.00 in income taxes. If found guilty, Gartner faces up to seven years in State Prison.
Sye Gross - 35, of Brooklyn, was charged with one count of Repeated Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns, a class E, one count of Criminal Tax Fraud in the Third Degree, a class D felony, and two counts of Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns, a misdemeanor. Gross is the owner of a printing company in Waymart, Pa. He failed to file tax returns for the years 2005-08. During this period he earned $596,000 and failed to pay $46,098 in state income taxes. If convicted, Gross faces up to seven years in state prison.
Israel Zand - 59, of Flushing, the president of Comprehensive Health Care Associates. He is charged with four class E felonies and six misdemeanor counts of Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns from 2002-08. During that time, Zand earned $402,022 and he failed to pay $37,962 in state income taxes. If convicted, Zand faces up to four years in state prison.
Kew Gardens Hills - you are hitting close to home with your 9:46 posting. Where did you hear this? thanks.
http://www.tax.state.ny.us/press/2010/sweep020210.htm
Who wants to know?
Leonard Kornfeld, 70, a tax preparer from Far Rockaway, failed to file tax returns for a period of seven years. He is charged with Repeated Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns, a class E felony, for years 2002 through 2007. He is also charged with felony Criminal Tax Fraud in the Fourth Degree for failing to file his tax return in 2008. During that time he earned $630,894 and failed to pay $36,583 in New York State income taxes. If found guilty, Kornfeld faces up to four years in state prison.
Adam Kolodny, 47, and his wife, Adrienne Kolodny, 47, of 3 School House Lane, Lake Success, were charged with one felony count of Repeated Failure to File Personal Income Tax returns, a class E felony. Adam Kolodny is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Village of Lake Success and is currently the Director of Finance at MITEQ Inc. in Hauppauge. The couple failed to file returns for the years 2002 through 2006 during which they had income of over $2 million and failed to pay approximately $82,000 in New York State income taxes. If convicted, they each face up to four years in state prison. They will return to Nassau County First District Court on April 29.
I have a new posting about the modern orthodox launching and winning the war against chumras. Yep, satire. It gets triggered by a ban on lox and sushi.
http://frumfollies.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/true-torah-movement/
Have a freylich Purim.
My favorite line in my new post is:
Roshei yeshiva are not allowed to encourage a young man to believe he has the potential to become a rosh yeshiva when it is patently clear that the young man doesn’t have a Golem’s chance in Prague of making it out of the attic and into the beit midrash because he has the charifas of a butter knife the hasmadah of a bored civil servant, the memory retention of a leaky cistern, and the capacity for oker harim of a toy bulldozer.
http://wp.me/pFbfD-fc
Rabbi " Nate " Segal has a long and sordid history of Philandering, and attempting to seduce, he hits on all woman who come to him for counseling !
Check it out
Found out the hard way
Menuval
A plaque supposedly just went up in Chaim Berlin in honor of Aaron Schechter from Talmidei Kol Yaakov and an inside source claims that Schechter is writing a pro-Tropper letter.
Can anyone confirm this?
Is Leonard any relation to Joe Kornfeld from Toiv's shul?
That's rich. A tax preparer that purposely doesn't file his own taxes.
"Anonymous said...
Rabbi " Nate " Segal has a long and sordid history of Philandering, and attempting to seduce, he hits on all woman who come to him for counseling !
Check it out
Found out the hard way
Menuval"
As hard as this may seem to fathom is that Aaron Schechter absolutely LOVES Nate Segal 1000 MORE than he loves Tropper!!!
Nate Segal kisses Schechter's and Fruchthandler's tuches a 1000 times a week, that must be the reason !!!
Nate Segal got "a head" in life ONLY because Aaron Schechter shoved him into Torah Umesorah train "under" and then to replace disgraced Shia Fishman and sent him a yeshiva on Staten Island headed by the rejected Schnuer Kotler son-in-law Gershon Ribner a weird and crazed individual in his own right (with a genius IQ, so he cares that he's a whacko and weirdo, right?)
Nate Segal is the biggest tuches- licker and chanferer worthy of the best Kappo. But these are the qualities Schechter values and that is how he "builds Torah" in America, mafia and Hugh Hefner style.
Well, at least the curtain has been ripped away from Tropper to reveal the predatory monster and sexual pervert he is.
Another one of Schechter's blind disciples with well-known accusations of molestation of girly underlings always surrounding him is Ephraim Lazerson of Miami's Bais Yaakov.
Tropper and Nate Segal and Ephraim Lazerson are all birds of one feather. Perverted teens from the 1960s free love culture who were near to being or were already off the derech themselves, got pulled into Aaron Schechter's orbit kissed his tuches and licked it 1000 times weekly and in turn he backed them up: For Tropper in kiruv (a field he was never cut out for as a FFB mixed up kannoi kid), for Nate Segal in chinuch (nebech to the mechanchim who have to put up with his drawling self-loving rants) and setting up kollelim even though he has no teaching experience or credentials he talks away at Torah Umesorah conventions simply because Schechter wants him to, and Ephraim Lazerson in chinuch habbanos (kitzling girls and famously taking in itching troubled ones like rebellious Fruchthandler grandkids)in Miami who can get away with molestation because Schechter supports him.
By the way, Tropper, Segal and Lazerson have also all played major parts for over three decades in helping Schechter raise huge sums of money. Schechter comes across as dour and hateful and screams at people like a dictator, while his trio of sexual perverts are classical seducers and con men of the first order.
That's how Yiddishkiet dies in America!
Ronnie Schreiber spokesman said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/business/25hummer.html?hp
DETROIT — Hummer, the brand of big sport-utility vehicles that became synonymous with the term “gas guzzler,” is being shut down after a deal to sell it to a Chinese manufacturer fell apart, General Motors said Wednesday.
That's kind of mundane news (and also stale news because GM has since announced that there are now two new bids for the rights to the Hummer brand). I usually pick the lesser traveled journalistic path when I write about cars and the car biz. Though I did recently manage to finally make it onto a press fleet list and start getting test cars to drive.
Life can be okay when they drop off a brand new, loaded car, all gassed up and ready to go, every couple of weeks. For the Chicago show, Bridgestone made a nice Mazda 6 S Grand Touring available for me to drive to and from the show and also put me up in the Sheraton for a couple of nights. Too bad all they had at the press party at Buddy Guy's Legends club was bbq pork sandwiches. You can read my review of the Mazda over at The Truth About Cars.
http://
I lived in NMB and took in two frum foster daughters, both originally from Brooklyn.
I enrolled them in Rabbi Laizerson's BY and he molested both of them.
My husband and I went to my husband's Rosh Yeshiva who told us not to report it because it would only ruin these already damaged girls.
We listened. I do not know if this was the right decision or not.
One of the girls stayed in BY but we taught her the laws of yichud more thoroughly. She had no further problems with Laizerson.
BY withheld her diploma for no good reason however so there was absolutely no benefit in her returning to the school to finish up her senior year.
B'H she is happily married with children today.
The other girl, we took out of BY and homeschooled. She went seriously OTD for a few years but today is doing much better. B"H.
My own daughters were still young at that time. Needless to say, we did not put them in BY.
New PR blitz to burnish the Tropper supporting Schechter's image was launched on February 18, 2010 by Mordy Mehlman of CITICOM paid PR stooge for Agududist ventures just a notch below Menachem Lubinsky's LUBICOM (the official PR machine of the ruined Tropper/EJF fiasco) (COMmunists all).
It's a FREE new mini-YATED type community paper called "FLATBUSH JEWISH TIMES" that also lists a website www.flatbushjewishjournal.com (inactive so far it's only been registered on February 17th, 2010) with two issues out so far and both already show what they will do: Publish glossy photos of Aaron Schechter of Chaim Berlin with other "approved" co-consiprators, in edition two there are photos of the two O/Ashers from the Mirrer Yeshiva in Flatbush: Osher Kalmanowitz and Asher Berenbaum.
The way the whole thing is set up all of a sudden in the middle of the Tropper scandal and Schechter being drawn into it, it's a great curveball from team Schechter-Fruchthandler because it is impossible to imagine who in this day and age and in this shot economy would sponsor a new FREE community paper when there are already so many like the YATED, Modia, Jewish Press, Mishpacha that sell and other free ones that are sent out all over, but this one coming from Mordy Mehlman must have the backing of people like Fruchthandler and would only come from an ORDER by someone higher up and the only such manipulative suspect can only be Aaron Schechter because he knows full well that his image is right now taking a big beating and he needs to furnish and furbish it up!
So Mordy Mehlman gets hired to do the job! The first issue had 3 "letters to the editor" when there is no editor even listed. One of the letters attacks Flatbush pizza stores, yup they're now going after pizza stores since the shaitel stores proved to be easy soft targets. Here is what a "concerned reader writes" (how did she know there was a paper to write to?):
"Flatbush is falling - Is this the Chinuch of our generation?
I am writing this letter with much frustration. Every Friday when I pick up my kids from Yeshiva, I see all the pizza shops full! It looks like the beginning of a weekend, not the coming of Shabbos! How do parents allow this? Why did it became [sic] normal to go to eat out at pizza shops on Erev Shabbos? We should train our kids to prepare for Shabbos early and to welcome Shabbos serenely, not by hanging around the neighborhood. Maybe then our kids will feel a love for Shabbos instead of counting down until it ends so they can go for pizza and ice cream on Motzei Shabbos.
Sincerely,
Frustrated in Flatbush"
I kid thee not!
In the second edition of this brilliant "journal" lekovod Purim of February 25, 2010, the "letters to the editor" are nowhere to be found, maybe because there is no editor, just a few illiterate hacks typing what Mordy, Fruchty and Schechter ORDER them to write and some folks must have been outraged that an Mordy Mehlman the upstart out of nowhere with a stupid shmatte, that should rightly be called "Flatbush Charedi Kol Koreh" (how can stupoid littel pare claim it is speaking for ALL of JEWISH Flatbush is incomprehnsible!) and is suddenly giving "hadracha" as if it was the "gadol hador" itself!
More to come about this stuff...
Citcom for Shechter, you wrote: "they're now going after pizza stores since the shaitel stores proved to be easy soft targets"
Maybe they are worried about finding Indian avodah zoreh hairs in the pizza. More likely they are trying to do a makeover.
Well, the 3rd edition of toady Mordy Mehlman's "Flatbush Jewish Journal" aka "Flatbush Charedi Fatwas" makes its chazaka and now good old Mordy speaks from his perch with "A Message to Flatbush" so what happened to the "Publisher's Message" from "Mordy Mehlman, Publisher" of the first two issues by the way? Now he talks directly to Flatbush and it's not just a message from a publisher.
No sign on Aaron Schechter pics in this edition, but they're still hammering away at a pet Schechter peeve: The popular Chalav Yisroel subversive pizza stores that are evidently worse than Tropper or Kolko two hot topics that people in Faltbush would like some enswers to why Flatbush gedolim can't get around to speaking out against.
Here is what a "concerned reader" writes about the dire threat of pizza stores in Flatbush and how to keep your kids away from them: (See next):
Flatbush Jewish Journal, Thursday, March 4th, 2010. Letters to the Editor (who IS the "editor" by the way? It has not been revealed to the mortals of Flatbush yet!)
Email letters to editor@flatbushjewishjournal.com
(The following is not a joke it is the verbatim copy of the first letter to the editor in this edition):
"Minhag Erev Shabbos Pizza
In response to the kids at risk because of saying "no" to being too strict so what's wrong with hanging out Erev Shabbos Kodesh in a pizza store. That's correct; we can't bring up our children with No - so show them the beauty of Shabbos. If we, the parents, are role models that we anticipate Shabbos with preparation for the most distinguished guest - they'll want to partciptate. My bochur sets the table every Friday. He enjoys it - I never asked him to, he has no desire of even stepping into a pizza store. He prepares pizza at home for the others. He folds some of the laundry even though I have help. Sending them off to the pizza store is an easy way out - I don't have to give them attention - out of sight, is out of mind. After reading your letter our family decided to say Tehilim Mechulak on Erev Shabbos, Shabbos is synonymous to the next world - to eternity. Let's prepare for it - Erev Shabbos is the temporary habitat - Mi Shetorach B'erev shabbos yochal B'shabbos. Let's think how did our grandparents prepare for Shabbos?
Anonymous"
And so chelm comes to Flatbush with the help of Mordy's Citicom circus! Even if its not written by Mordy, how on earth could he let such silliness creep into his stupid shmatte?
FM reports:
Tropper Still In Charge?
If this insider report is accurate, it appears he is.
A Monsey insider writes:
tropper has told all of the mispallelim and donors to the yeshiva that he is still in charge, and will be reclaiming his seat as the rosh yeshiva very soon.
he told rabbi dovid stefansky that he will take the yeshiva down with him if he cannot regain his position, and is telling 'his' bucherim to leave the yeshiva and go to chaim berlin until he is reinstated.
he refuses to live up to any of the things in the documents that he's signed, including moving out of monsey, because he says that the fact that it was leaked on the internet makes them null and void.
he has seized moneys in various bank accounts for his own personal use, even though the money belonged to a non profit org., and the yeshiva now has literally nothing.
he is still having the bucherim come to his house for shabbos, and other times, although i dont know precisely what he's doing with them...there was testimony in the beis din that he had forced a former student of the yeshiva into sex on at least one occasion.
this is all being done with the help of rabbi schlesinger of monsey, who seems to be unquestioningly on troppers side.
Comments:
Monsey Jew: well, it just so happens that I live in Monsey, and I know that many of these things are true. for example, rabbi honig and felix adler both were told this. i also know that a few bucherim have recently left the yeshiva to go to chaim berlin, which hasn't happened for many years. i know that he blames the rabbunim on rabbi ribyat's beis din for the leaking of the documents on the internet, and did say he doesn't have to follow such people. i know that r' moshe raice, who's a trustee and manahal is now suing tropper in court for the money.
Rockland Civil Supreme
Index Number: 002357/2010
Case Name: KOL YAAKOV TORAH CENTER,INC. vs. TROPPER, LEIB
Case Type: Other ("Not One Of The Above")
Track: Expedited
RJI Filed: 03/05/2010
Justice Name: WILLIAM A. KELLY
Attorney/Firm For Plaintiff:
MARVIN L. SCHWARTZ Attorney
Type: Attorney Of Record Atty.
Status: Active
9 BALANCHINE COURT
MONSEY,NY 10952
845 425-1832
Relief Sought:
Temporary Restraining Order
The kick is that Tropper is cousin of both Shlomo Carlebach but Tropper hate the mashgiach but loves the singer (who has his own checked past!).
Schechter and Tropper go back many years to the first Tropper scandal in the 80’s , I am sure Chaim Berlin bochurim would have nothing to do with the weirdo transplants from Monsey. I do not think they can learn in the same level.
Who is paying for the weirdoes from Kol Yaakov who are now in Chaim Berlin ?
In any case Tropper keeps Horizons Bais Achiezer INC which is the parent organization of Kol Yaakov so if it does not fund Kol Yaakov the place (I would not kol that chirbe a yeshiva) will fold down as it should
rabbi schlesinger is supporting this guy zalman silber, who was acquitted on charges he forced his wife to have sex with a ramapo police officer. maybe he has a skeletal closet himself?
you know that aharon schechter was told about all of the brooklyn child molesters in the 1980's and purposely did NOTHING. he really should be investigated for having knowledge of criminal acts and obstruction of justice. if only someone would call the FBI....
rabbi schlesinger is supporting this guy zalman silber
HA-HA..
Silber is the guy referred in the Tropper tapes in The Satmar Guy...
Aron Shlechter makes the other Moetzes members look like Talmidei Chachomim and Tzaddikim.
UOJ, has R' Dovid Feinstien ever condemned Aharon Shechter for his disgusting behavior toward Carlebach and Reb Moshe Feinstien ZT'l?
He should be obligated to do so.
Neturei Karta might be crazy but they can recognize that Turner is the better candidate for Israel.
http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/09/12/on-eve-of-election-to-replace-weiner-turner-has-a-certain-confidence-and-optimism/
Meanwhile, Neturei Karta, a small group of dissident ultra-Orthodox Jews that opposes the existence of the State of Israel, has launched a radio ad on behalf of Turner’s opponent, Democrat David Weprin. They’re seizing the opportunity to attack pro-Israel members of both parties who are supporting Turner.
R' Dovid Feinstein's personality does lend itself to doing anything that gets people upset. R' Dovid is very friendly in public to R' Aron Schechter. I was surprised though that R' Dovid did issue a letter that R' Moishe's cherem was not taken off when Fruchthandler was going around lying that it was. When R' Dovid found out about Michael Hersh having his son tortured he wouldn't get involved. He had R' Zelig come down hard on Chaim Berlin.
Queens Vaad crony Shimi Pelman whose companies keep getting cited by NY State for fraud and abused patients at his nursing homes. Maybe's he's afraid Bob Turner will come down hard on corruption. He was one of the cronies with 5 Towns Jewish Times publisher Larry Gordon who had Asher Taub get down on his knees to shmear Weprin's bagel one morning for breakfast.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/is-new-yorks-tight-special-house-race-a-referendum-on-obama/
Shimi Pelman, an Orthodox Jewish supporter of Weprin’s, said he would never vote for Obama solely on the Israel issue. However, he sees Turner as a “Johnny Come Lately” on the issue and thinks Weprin will be able to convince the White House to change its position. He acknowledged that many of his friends and neighbors feel differently and in these last hours before they go to the polls he’s trying to convince them.
“If we lose David Weprin, we lose a powerful voice. The president is more likely to listen to someone in his own party,” Pelman said. “I recognize and listen to my friends and relatives more than my enemies and David (Weprin) has been a proven friend to Israel.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276968/ny-9-bellwether-race-michael-m-rosen
National Review says that Weprin is finished because Turner needs 30% of Democrats to cross party lines and he is polling at more that 30%. They also say it is the first time in the history of the Rockaway peninsula that all the lawn signs are for the Republican.
The article adds that the sizable shomer Shabbos population in Belle Harbor is upset that the Weprin campaign disturbed their Shabbos by "relentlessly" calling their phones and having people come to their doors. Is Weprin so out to lunch that he didn't think of this? Or is it because Weprin follows the pattern of so many members of left wing modern orthodox Queens Vaad shuls. These people are not orthodox but out of various conveniences become members in orthodox shuls. Weprin was a Conservative Jew his whole life attending Conservative temple. All the Conservative temples in his neighborhood closed except for one where the average age is something like 90, so he started going to an orthodox shul where he doesn't daven anyway, he just yaps away after rolling in at krias Hatorah time.
what new has been revealed about tropper or chaim berlin that this has been reposted? wasnt he supposed to leave monsey? any boots on the ground with info?
http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2011/09/13/there-must-be-a-reasonable-explanation/
... some curious omissions from the Obama administration. Obama omitted any Israeli city from an enumeration of cities victimized by terrorism in his much touted Berlin speech as a candidate in 2008. (Amman did make it so it cannot be that candidate Obama had placed an embargo on mention of the Middle East.) Perhaps he shrewdly estimated that his European audience would likely be more sympathetic to the perpetrators than the victims of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
And recently, the administration’s talking points on the upcoming tenth anniversary of 9/11 did not recall any Israeli city when praising the resilience of “individuals, families and communities… whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or Belfast, Mumbai or Manila, or Lahore or London.” I guess they could not think of another city whose name begins with the same first letter as Sderot or Jerusalem.
Grainom,
You must have missed the news that Tropper pulled a fast one and came up with excuses for staying in Monsey because of the beis din supposedly violating their agreement with him. Tropper went on to pilfer Kol Yaakov's bank accounts which pushed even R' Reuvein Feinstein to issue a letter condemning him.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/13/jewish-voters-tell-david-weprin-where-to-shove-his-yarmulke/?print=1
The Democrats originally thought they were doing themselves a favor by nominating Weprin, himself an Orthodox Jew. There were jitters about the Jewish vote, so in a classic case of blind Left-wing ethnocentrism, the Democrats cynically slapped Weprin on the ballot to ensure they could use his Judaism as a hedge against a threat from a non-Jewish Republican candidate. Instead, Weprin’s clumsy attempts to play up his Orthodox identity contributed to the implosion of his campaign. Yes, he talked about his Jewishness & always wore a yarmulke when speaking to Orthodox audiences, but he also voted to legalize gay marriage. In fact, he not only voted for gay marriage, he gave a speech on the floor of the state assembly in which he claimed that his religion supported his vote.
This sent many in the Orthodox community through the roof & compelled Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind to break ranks & back Turner. It’s one thing to vote for gay marriage; it’s quite another to try to use Orthodox Judaism to back it up. That’s like putting tefillin on a pig & then telling your rabbi it’s kosher.
Any Democrat would have had a hard time explaining that vote in this district, but the fact that such a person is now asking for voters to accept him as the “Orthodox Jewish candidate” is an outright slap in the face to the Orthodox Jewish community.
At the end of the day, Orthodox voters told Weprin exactly where he could shove his yarmulke. They decided, en masse, that it’s not enough for a candidate to simply be an Orthodox Jew. Rather, they demanded that their leaders vote according to Orthodox Jewish values. Weprin offered platitudes about growing up Jewish, keeping Shabbos & eating Kosher — frankly that’s all he offered. On the other hand, Turner may be Catholic, but his values are in line with Orthodox Jewish values.
This is actually not a surprising development. The Jewish vote has been slipping out of the Democrats’ grasp for a while now, and it’s worth noting that New York’s 9th District is one of the few districts in the entire country that gave more votes to Kerry in 2004 than it gave to Obama in 2008.
The 9th may be a very odd electorate, but it serves a valuable function as the one place in the country where the Jewish vote is big enough to swing elections. The Left has been losing support in this small but crucial community for years, and with this election, the situation appears to have finally boiled over. Jews of all stripes are furious with the president over his attitude toward Israel, and those who are Orthodox have lost patience with the Democrats’ radical social policies. Tuesday night will be the shot heard round the Jewish world — and I have little doubt that the situation will be further inflamed by anti-Semitic rants from the talking heads at MSNBC as they realize what just occurred.
The Latino newspaper El Diario is full of funny diarrhio today. They very matter of factly mention that maybe 40% of Hispanics in the 9th district are in the country legally and registered to vote. (You can bet the real percentage is much lower).
They insist their oylam must vote for Weprin but not before they bash him for completely ignoring his Hispanic constituents.
http://www.queenscourier.com/content/articles/2011/09/13/news/top_stories/doc4e6a6af5534aa108564693.jpg
I think with this style of moustache Weprin looks a lot like you know who.
You are not going to believe what Weprin said in the speech where this picture was taken this week. He was being meshabeyach the menuvol Anthony Weiner as if that is going to help get him elected.
Time Magazine:
“Weprin is a weak candidate,” says Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at New York City’s Baruch College. “He came into this unprepared. He didn’t know his facts. And he’s not just dull; he’s anti-charismatic. When he comes into contact with charisma, they’re mutually annihilated.”
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