In July 2009, after studying with Rabbi Elie Weinstock from Ramaz School, Trump converted from Catholicism to Judaism,[11][12] , and took the name Yael.[13] The beth din that converted her included Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. On October 25, 2009 she married Jared Kushner, owner of The New York Observer,[14][15] in front of 500 guests at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. [Wikipedia]
By Yechiel Sever - Deiah V'Dibur News - 2008:
Following an agreement signed by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) to set up a network of regional botei din in cooperation with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Eternal Jewish Family (EJF), headed by HaRav Leib Tropper which works extensively to uphold proper conversion practices around the world based on consultations with gedolei Yisroel, is warning against certain Chief Rabbinate officials who are offering support and recognition for modern rabbis who do not operate in accordance with halacha and is urging the Chief Rabbinate to announce publicly that it will not back these rabbis. According to reports in the foreign press the list of rabbis approved for these botei din includes individuals whose kehillas hold minyanim for women.
Recently officials at the Chief Rabbinate have recognized a number of new rabbis outside of Israel, some of whom are upstanding dayanim. But there are also a number of modern rabbinical organizations whose dayanim do not operate in accordance with halacha and Jewish hashkofoh, and their actions are liable to create major breaches in Kerem Beis Yisroel.
EJF has voiced its strong support for steps the Chief Rabbinate has taken to strengthen conversion abroad by cooperating with the organization, but at the same time EJF is warning not to submit to pressure of any kind, and to ensure that conversions are performed only by dayanim who have yiras Shomayim and are qualified to uphold the halacha passed down through the generations — especially in the area of conversion, a matter held dear by Torah-true Judaism.
The organization also notes the importance of distinguishing between rabbonim, who may be very capable of heading a kehilloh, but they are not dayanim who have specialized training and experience — including shimush — needed to sit on the bench of an orderly, permanent beis din. Without this training and experience they should under no circumstances be authorized to serve as dayanim in conversion courts. Proper conversion courts require an av beis din widely recognized as an expert and two other dayanim worthy of the title.
Recently, with the encouragement of EJF, 13 botei din have been set up around the US to hear cases related to all areas of Jewish law, including conversion. All these botei din include a well-known av beis din.
EJF welcomes the RCA's initiative to transfer the authority to perform conversions from individual rabbonim to fixed, regional botei din, but at the same time calls on the organization to ensure that the sitting rabbonim are properly trained to serve as dayanim.
In a related matter, EJF wishes to clarify that information regarding the agreement reached between the Chief Rabbinate and the RCA is being distorted in reports in the general press due to the efforts of several people who have ulterior motives.
Chief Rabbi Amar has told Rav Tropper that the Chief Rabbinate has only approved seven regional RCA botei din and not 15 as has been widely reported in the press. Also Chief Rabbi Amar has said that rabbis whose kehillas have prayer groups for women will not be approved as dayanim.
In a conference call among Rav Nochum Eisenstein, chairman of the Vaad HaRabbonim Haolami LeInyonei Giyur founded by HaRav Chaim Kreiswirth zt"l, Rabbi Peretz of the Chief Rabbi's Office, and a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, this message was clearly conveyed. Nonetheless, the Jerusalem Post refused to print a correct of the incorrect information in their previous articles, saying that it was not "interesting" to their readers.
Ivanka Trump: Officially Jewish and engaged; membership has its privileges.
By Allison Hoffman | 1:05 pm Jul 17, 2009 - Tablet Magazine
It’s been a big week for Ivanka Trump, the lovely heiress/socialite/real-estate developer. First, she became a Jew! Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, earlier this week formally certified the conversion of the daughter of real estate mogul Donald Trump (himself raised Protestant, by way of the positive-thinking pastor Rev. Norman Vincent Peale). Oh, and then Ivanka went and got engaged, to her boyfriend, New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, for whom she converted in the first place. Mazel tov to both.
The Forward:
....On October 25,2009, The New York Times announced the marriage of Jared Kushner, whose family name graces a New Jersey Orthodox Jewish day school, to Ivanka Trump, glamorous daughter of business tycoon and ubiquitous public personality Donald Trump. This unlikely union seemed so unremarkable that it didn’t even merit the “Vows” spotlight the Times frequently reserves for couples from divergent or unique backgrounds. Instead, the Times announcement straightforwardly noted: “Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is to officiate,” leaving it for those who read between the lines to understand that Ivanka had undergone a traditional religious conversion to Judaism prior to the Orthodox nuptials.........
Is Ivanka Trump Jewish?
In: Judaism [Edit categories]
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She may have converted but most conversations done these days are for the sake of marriage, and no REAL conversion panel [like in Orthodox] will allow one to convert for this reason alone. One must have had a genuine feeling of being a Jew as well as living the full Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. Conservative and Reform conversations are not authentic and do not actually make you Jewish.
No, she is NOT Jewish.
Look for the (Triple K) KKK hashgacha on every authentic UOJ psak. Accept no substitutes! KOSHER - from corruption. KOSHER - from bribes. KOSHER from mattress gelt.
Rely only on the KKK. Our yarmulkes are black!
RCA GEIRUS STANDARD AND POLICIES:
http://www.judaismconversion.org/GPS_Policies_and_Procedures.html
"a. Where the Conversion is Primarily for the sake of Marriage
i. Where marriage to a particular Jewish partner is a major incentive to a prospective conversion, there is an increased possibility that the geirus may come with less than the complete commitment necessary for a conversion that would be in keeping with the standards we are trying to set for the regional Batei Din. Nonetheless, experience also shows that such a motivation can result in converts of the highest caliber. Conversion for the sake of marriage therefore requires the Beit Din to constantly reevaluate if the candidate and future partner are likely to subscribe to the requisite beliefs and practices. The Beit Din must be convinced that if the potential spouse were to disappear from the candidate’s life, his or her commitment to the Jewish faith and people would not waver. These factors inevitably prolong the process and make examination of the prospective convert more intense. Indeed, should the couple mention a proposed wedding date as a deadline or goal, the Beit Din should respond that the process will take significantly longer than that......"
c. Requirements of Other People in a Candidate’s Life
i. When a candidate is previously intermarried or is converting for the sake of an individual Jew (as per above), the spouse’s observance level and attitudes must be consistent with the present and future Torah observance of the candidate and not be a source of conflict or opposition to the convert’s adopting a halachic lifestyle. The Beit Din should also consider whether other significant individuals in the candidate’s life such as parents, or any existing minor children, will have an impact on the success or failure of the process and the aftermath of conversion.
שולחן ערוך יורה דעה הלכות גרים סימן רסח סעיף יב
אפי' נודע שבשביל דבר הוא מתגייר, הואיל ומל וטבל יצא מכלל העובדי כוכבים, וחוששים לו עד שתתברר צדקתו
155 comments:
So Ivanka meets Jared, who is no longer observant, and the Rabbis consider it likely she will live a halachic lifestyle? Moreover, how observant could the Kushners really have been considering that Jared's lowlife father was capable of doing something so shocking and despicable to his own sister. Chuckie Kushner apparently worships the dollar more than God.
Surely the Donald does as well so Ivanka and Jared are the products of these jokers. First of all, I predict the marriage won't last five years, and that Ivanka does not become observant. I don't think I am going out on a limb on this one.
It has become painfully more obvious that what was our parents and grandparents Judaism has withered away. Halls of shame have been erected and social gatherings have become the normative Shabbos. We post election posters on the walls of the Beis Medresh and tear down reminders to give maos chittim. We hear of threats to our children's education because of technology. We watch as the 800lb imbecile smashes a laptop in the way an American Tourister is tested. Over and over again we drink from the same fetid waters and believe that the results will be different. We have become insane by choice. Each day I say Kaddish, not for the kedoshim, not for a parent, but for the most profound loss of this generation - seichel. We've buried our true defining nature and differentiation between ourselves and animals. We tear at the unassailable and bring out proclaimations against anonymous technology. A cell phone with or without internet access is not the reason you're spouse is holed up in the basement. If he weren't watching the internet, he would be watching something else. His addiction is not caused by the internet or by alcohol or by cigarettes. Alcohol, cigarettes, internet, sex, and other things are symptoms and conveyences for addictions. Addiction is a physical and chemical imbalance that is exaceberated by external stimulus. There are alcholics that wouldn't know it because they don't drink and diabetics who don't know it because they don't get tested - are they any less sick?
It's about time to stop attacking the "things" of addiction and attack the boredom, the lack of self esteem, the dismissive spouses and friends, the pedantic lunatic ravings that drive people to seek out artificial and unsubstantive diversions. This is the egel hazahav of this generation - no leader to get up and say, you can't learn a blatt gemorah, okay, then you can learn chumash and Rashi and be as worthy as the blatt Yid. To say, you work - that's commendable as you can support yourself and be self-sufficient, perhaps help others. You have issues you find hard to deal with, then let me help you find ways of dealing with them, without drugs or other diversions. No leader to deal, realistically, with an illiterate population that has adopted a welfare state of mind.
Ivanka Trump is not to be chastised for being duped regarding her religious standing. She's not to blame, cash sold her soul. She may be in limbo or not Jewish, but she's no less Jewish, in my eyes, then those who saunter into shul and turn it into a social hall gathering. In fact, her relationship and grasp of her connection to HaKodesh Boruch Hu may be less phony than most. It is the death of seichel and the lack of true committment to Judaism that is withering away at our intrinsic connection to HKBH. We'd rather have the calf of gold especially at $1000+ per ounce.
That the RCA remained silent about this, while they "chastised" Lookstein about attending a service for the newly elected Obama in a church, and put Avi Weiss on their knee for a spanking because he "ordained" rabbas or maharats, or rabbis' assistants, or Torah decisors, or non color-blind kesem arbiters....is so beyond the pale -- yet Hershel Schechter, the showpiece of the RCA, can participate in this conversion circus with a deafening silence, casts a pall on the RCA that can't be reversed with a press release.
Hershel Schechter -- I've got one word for your conduct -- pitiful!
Let's assume this "kidushin" lasts and there are kids from this marriage (they both presently are totally non-observant)...and the kids wind up in Ramaz...I hope a Schechter grandchild winds up marrying this "Jewish" product of the RCA!
FYI Re: Malkile Kotler BAIS DIN
2 of the 3 members of the MONSEY bais din that arranged the heter mai'ah rabanan for the me'again Malkiel mama's boy Kotler are well known on this blog.
THEY ARE:
1. HEINEMAN FROM BALTIMORE, THE MOLESTER WHITEWASHER (THEY FLEW HIM IN BECAUSE THE RASCAL HAD EXPERIENCE WITH THIS TYPE OF TREACHERY)
2. MALINOWITZ FROM RBS AND ARTSCROLL INFAMY.
I HEAR MALINOWITZ CONTINUES TO PROTECT CHILD MOLESTERS IN RBS.
Agunos and child victims. What are with these "Rabbis".
Are they nivi'ay habaal or Nivi'ai Hashem?
Reb UOJ, what is the diagnosis for these 2 individuals?
uoj go look at ivanka trups twitter account she posts on shabbos so much much 4 looksteins conversion
genuk with the malkiel crap.
anyone with a bit of seichel knows that the heter was well deserved.
his wife refused A) to move to lakewood so he could become lakewoods ry & B) when offered a get she reportedly said "ich vill as er zul darfen zitzen shiva oif mir"(!)
there's enough to talk about him without calling him a bigamist...
Voices of Dignity
http://thejewishstar.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/new-tactic-in-war-on-sexual-abuse/
http://www.voicesofdignity.org/
No, what's really sad here is that sincere people who are perfectly happy to observe HALACHA and do so even without "papers" but will not adopt CHUMRAS and aren't stinking rich have the door slammed in their faces, while rich people like the Trumps get whatever papers they need. It's sickening.
I'm happy to see that survivors are becoming activists; I'd rather see everyone under one group like the JBAC or SFJ -- in large numbers there is strength.
One organization should be inclusive of all different backgrounds and histories; let's please set all egos aside and work [hard] for the common cause - which is ridding our communities from sexual predators.
uoj check this out this is tropperhttp://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/Detail?which=case&docketNumber=2010KN017894&countyId=23&docketId=3636895&docketDseq=1&defendantName=Alpert,+David&court=Kings+Criminal+Court&courtType=L&recordType=C&recordNum=18103331s new mechutan
What's with bringing Rav Shachter into this? Since when is he the Av Bais Din of the RCA?
Get some facts straight.
Schechter is the Av Beis Din for the RCA l'inyanei geirus!
....And Schechter was the second of the three "dayanim" on this particular "conversion" - Hard to believe - right? For me too!
Recently there were 2 suicides of young people in the frum community but it's been covered up real well. One of them was a frum girl in her 20s from Monsey.
Rabbi Michael Broyde of Young Israel Toco Hills-Atlanta is head of the RCA beis din.
He conducts sham conversions too. I have it on good information that he couldn't care less if the Jewish man is sleeping with his non-jewish girlfriend conversion candidate. The only thing Broyde will do is force them to get separate apts for appearances even though he knows they are still sleeping together.
Rabbi Broyde's wife does not cover her hair. If all this becomes widespread knowledge, his publisher Gil Student will have some crisis management to attend to. Someone told me that Gil is already in the doghouse with the UOJ crowd.
Itchie Meyer,
Are you serious that Jared is not frum at all anymore?
Lloyd Grove interviewed Jared a year & a half ago for Portfolio Magazine indicating he was modern orthodox.
Jared must have a very liberal definition of "modern orthodox".
... plz use another photo!!!!
The Kushner family name graces two NJ religious schools. The Rosh Yeshiva of the one in Elizabeth, however, did not attend the wedding, only the sheva brachot
Ms. Trump's photo was taken just weeks before the RCA/Schechter bestowed her with the status of Jewess.
I apologize for offending anyone's sensitivities [it was difficult for me to post it] but it is indicative of the lifestyle she lived just prior to her "conversion", and the non-observant lifestyle she now flaunts.
I am truly saddened by this post, but if I won't say it, who will?
uoj you are 100 percent right for posting it people have to know thetruth about what a sham there rabbonim are
An AgriStar "sales specialist" named Feivish Waxman is going around to every store in NY from his base at the Rubashkin warehouse on First Ave in Brooklyn. Unless something has dramatically changed overnight, he is lying to the stores to get his products on the shelves. He says that the Rubashkins are not working there anymore (they are in fact running the place for Hershey Friedman) and that the shochtim have been switched (Friedman is in fact suing Weissmandl in goyishe court that he should sent his shochtim back).
Let me see if I can work something out with Ivanka. She's got something that I need, ahem ahem, and I've got something that she needs. I'll tell my pal Nochum Eisenstein not possel her gerus lemafraya.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/americas/15juarez.html?hp
Gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers shot an American consulate worker and her husband to death in the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juárez over the weekend, leaving their newborn baby wailing in the back seat of their car, the authorities said Sunday. They also killed the husband of another consular employee and wounded his two young children.
The shootings appeared to be the first deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when nearly 50 people were killed around the country in drug-gang violence, including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began arriving for spring break.
The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related violence was growing untenable, American officials said.
WASHINGTON — In his first full day at the White House almost 14 months ago, President Obama declared openness and transparency to be touchstones of his administration, and he ordered federal agencies to make it easier for the public to get information on the workings of government.
But a new report released Sunday by a private research group, the National Security Archive, suggests that the results of Mr. Obama’s push for transparency have been slow and erratic.
The report found that despite Mr. Obama’s directive for agencies to take “affirmative steps” to make more information public through the Freedom of Information Act, many agencies do not appear to have made any concrete changes. It also found little indication that most federal agencies were releasing information any more frequently or rejecting public requests for information any less often.
Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, which is affiliated with George Washington University, said that in making good on Mr. Obama’s pledge to operate the most transparent administration in history, “agencies are talking the talk, but few are yet walking the walk.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/nyregion/15storm.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
In Teaneck, N.J., two men walking home from religious services at a local synagogue were killed Saturday evening by a large oak tree. Neighbors said the two men, Ovadia Mussaffi and Lawrence Krause, both had young children. The tree fell from Mr. Krause’s yard.
Etti Schaap, 54, who lives across the street, said she heard “a very loud thud” just before 7 p.m. on Saturday. She rushed out to find her next-door neighbor uninjured in his car, which had been damaged by the tree. He told her that he had been backing out of his driveway when the tree came down.
“He saw two people next to him, and then he didn’t see them anymore,” she said. “If they had left five seconds before or five seconds later, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Thank you Mr. Obama -- we are well on our way to becoming a banana republic!
WASHINGTON (AP) China trims holdings of U.S. Treasury securities for third month as U.S. federal deficit soars.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3862588,00.html
Nachman Stal, who fled to Britain after being accused of sodomizing a youth of 14 years, was sentenced Sunday to 13 years behind bars.
Stal, who was extradited to Israel in July last year, received 12 years' imprisonment for sexual offenses and an additional year for evading justice. Tel Aviv District Court also criticized rabbis who had come to Stal's defense.
The legal proceedings began a decade ago, when Stal was accused of indecent acts with a youth he had given a lift to as part of his job. According to the indictment, Stal touched the youth a number of times, and during one particular trip he stopped the vehicle near a bench, in a quiet place, and despite the youth's protests, sodomized him.
He then gave the youth NSI 200 ($50) and instructed him not to tell anyone. The youth finally told the rabbi of the school where he was studying. With support from this rabbi, he then submitted a complaint against Stal with the police.
In 2000, the accused fled Israel to Belgium, and the indictment was cancelled. A new indictment was submitted in 2005 when Stal returned to Israel, and one year later he again fled, this time to Britain.
The judges, headed by Judge George Kara, severely criticized the witnesses for the defense, including the wife and father of the accused, head of London's South Tottenham Jewish community Rabbi Michael Biberfeld, and Rabbi Yosef Krauser, who supervises the yeshivas in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood.
The four witnesses praised Stal during the trial. "There was no problem with him," the London rabbi said. "His actions were completely normal." Krauser added, "I pity his wife and nine children. They say he regrets his acts and he must be helped."
Stal's father said his son was a wonderful person, though he had noticed a decline in his son's behavior since 1990. His father and the defense team claimed that Stal had suffered from a brain tumor in 1997 which had affected his face and limbs.
The court noted that "all the witnesses saw the accused and his family as victims. They also tried to describe the accused as repentant. Why did none of the witnesses refer to the plaintiff, the only real victim? It would be expected of respected rabbis to say something, even if only a word, about the criminal actions of the accused. Why should they expect pity from the court when they don't have any pity for the victim?"
The court also queried whether those same rabbis were supposed to ignore the danger to the public posed by the accused. "Is an offense against someone from outside their community not considered an offense?"
Shmarya has been suppressing this story until now that the Agudah is advocating for Blacks.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/agudath-israel-stands-with-bi-partisan-senate-coalition-and-dc-parents-in-favor-of-opportunity-scholarship-program-87490097.html
Agudath Israel of America, a grassroots advocacy and social service organization representing Orthodox Jews across the nation, joins with other groups in calling upon the U.S. Senate to reauthorize the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). OSP is currently the only federally funded voucher system in the country.
Agudath Israel advocates on behalf of 250,000 children in private religious schools across the U.S. Since none of these schools operate within the District, these students -- and their families -- are ineligible to benefit from the program.
OSP faces extinction unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allows a vote on a measure to continue it. The measure is supported by a bipartisan coalition led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and endorsed by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and John Ensign (R- Nev.)
"We support the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program because we think every family should have the right and the resources to make decisions about the best way to educate their children. Even though the students and schools we represent aren't affected by this program, it's important that we join with the families and students who are benefiting and who strongly want this program to continue. Achieving educational excellence for all children means finding better ways to invest the billions spent on education, and greater parental involvement, through vouchers, have been shown to be an effective reform tool," says Rabbi Abba Cohen, Director, Agudath Israel Washington Office.
The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences found the program has greatly improved the academic achievement of participating students, ensured their safety while at school, and maintained strong support among District residents. To date the program has helped 3,300 low-income, primarily African American and Latino students gain access to private schools in D.C.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/what-happens-if-americas-credit-rating-is-downgraded/
Moody’s, the ratings agency, warned today that the United States’s top-notch credit rating, currently Aaa, is “substantially closer” to being downgraded.
What exactly would a lower credit rating mean for the country?
A credit rating downgrade would affect more than American pride. The bigger risk would be to the country’s ability to keep borrowing money, and therefore to keep spending more money than it takes in from tax revenue.
A credit rating lets lenders and investors know how likely a borrower can pay back a loan. A sterling credit rating — which the United States currently has — means there is nothing for lenders to worry about. They can expect to get 100 percent of their money back, just as the borrower promised. A lower credit rating, however, indicates that the borrower might eventually default.
A higher risk of default means that lenders will demand higher interest rates before they lend any more money. Those higher interest rates make it more expensive to borrow, thereby ballooning the country’s debt and forcing the government to find spending cuts or revenue increases elsewhere.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but imagine if you were heavily indebted and seem to be at risk of declaring bankruptcy. Banks are not going to want to lend you money to help you pay your bills, so you get stuck borrowing at extremely high interest rates from a payday lender or a pawn broker.
But that strategy isn’t sustainable, since it means your debt keeps getting bigger and bigger. Eventually you have to bring in more money by working another job, or you might have to cut spending on necessities like groceries and heat. Your reputation among lenders has forced you to change your lifestyle.
A golden retriever swallowed a three-carat diamond inside a Rockville, Md., jewelry store, taking a $20,000 bite out of the business' inventory.
The dog-eat-gem story dates to late January, when the owners of Robert Bernard Jewelry were examining the big rock brought in by a diamond dealer.
Co-owner George Kaufman, as he usually did, brought his dog Soli to the store with him.
The diamond was accidentally dropped to the store floor, with Soli sucking down the pricey snack before Kaufman or partner Robert Rosin could react.
"You saw Soli go for the diamond - gobbled it up," Rosin told WJLA-TV. "Tried to pull it out of his mouth, couldn't get it. Gone."
Once the initial panic passed, the owners brought Soli to a veterinarian - who advised them to let nature take it course.
Three days later, the dog and the owners were relieved when the diamond reappeared during Soli's daily walk.
"It was a happy ending to say the least," Kaufmann told the television station.
The Obama admin. has decided to throw us under the bus. Building 1600 units in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem is not the issue, but rather played up by the far left and seized upon by Obama as a convenient diversion/crisis. Regrettably the Only one who is really benefitting from this foolish diversion is the real danger, Iran...
Moodys and Standard & Poors were de facto co-conspirators with Goldman/Lehman/AIG/Chase/Morgan Stanley....on the financial meltdown.
They all were Triple AAA until the collapse!
60 Minutes...ran an interesting segment last evening...confirming what I knew since 2006.
Obama makes the Agudah look really good!
STRONGSVILLE, Ohio (AP) Obama tries to reassure seniors, says health care plan will make Medicare stronger.
It's looking more & more that Rabbi Schonfeld's eisik with Streit's was just bravado and flexing muscle and nothing to do with kashrus.
There are Queens Vaad stores this year selling Streit's that have been 100% confirmed as old stock. Surely, Queens Vaad mashgichim doing the most cursory of inspections could detect this if they wanted to when some of the packages are so old that they still have the hashgocho of R' Aron Soloveitchik who was niftar in 2001.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DCGOA_RlajQ/S56HguzoKGI/AAAAAAAAE3A/ppYmEg3yIS8/s1600-h/obama+metziah.jpg
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/a-move-to-protect-low-wage-workers/
A coalition of labor unions, immigrant advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations in New York announced their support on Friday for newly introduced legislation that would greatly increase penalties against employers that violate minimum-wage and overtime laws.
Supporters of the bill, known as the Wage Theft Prevention and Responsible Employer Protection Act, say that wage violations are all too common because penalties for such violations are small under New York law and because employers that break the law face little likelihood of getting caught.
The legislation — introduced in the State Senate and State Assembly — would subject employers that fail to pay, for instance, $10,000 in legally required overtime to having to pay twice that amount in damages. That would be above and beyond the $10,000 in back wages that current law already requires such employers to pay.
“Wage theft is rampant in New York,” said Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group for low-wage workers. “This bill will turn around the perverse economic incentives that currently encourage wage theft.”
The bill has been introduced in the State Senate and State Assembly.
I think we have to assume that Rav Schechter was duped into doing this gerus without knowing all the facts. Rabbi Lookstein already has a track record with these things so we don't have to give him any benefit of doubt.
As far as revoking it now, that is very tricky in halacha and even if it clear cut, he would be opening himself up to lawsuits.
Look up the court case of Nathan Rothschild of Monsey, the school board President accused of embezzlement and fraud.
Should make for very interesting reading. $34.7 million ain't hay for Monsey.
I think we have to assume that Rav Schechter was duped into doing this gerus without knowing all the facts....
*
Really - then what right did he have to sit on the panel with regular interviews required of the candidate.
One call to Weinstock from Ramaz - he would have verified that Trump STOPPED going to classes when Kushner and her split over their 2 year long dating escapades.
Ivanka's skimpy outfit is nothing.
A rov here who is not affiliated with the Vaad spoke publicly last year against going to kiddush on Shabbos at certain Queens Vaad shuls. The rabbis of those shuls say nothing when women show up wearing low cuts that expose much more than Ivanka ever did. The rov said it ossur d'Oyrayseh to see it and that he will no longer step foot in those shuls. He said he is still danning lekaf zchus that the women did not come to davening like that, that they are probably women who just came directly from home to eat. I would say to him, al tehee tzaddik harbei to give them so much kaf zchus.
She may have stopped classes but could have restarted when she got back together with Jared.
I did hear from Upper East Side people that she was hanging out and davening at KJ during phase 2.
Have you spoken to Rav Schechter to see if he has some explanation that you haven't thought of? I mean, this is someone who supported your efforts against child molesters.
I'm getting his "take" via e-mail -- It feels like he hired Shafran and Schick to e-mail me.
His conduct in this affair is disgraceful - a good man doing a very bad thing!
Another nail in the coffin for the Rabbinate!
Oh man! Who blew my cover?
Monsey's Rothschild is in charge of the $ for the Jewish Burial Society and a host of other charities!!
Supreme Court is hearing his case now for setting up dummy corporations and paying himself. He also handles the $ for his Shul.
NYS will most likely look into his being President of the school board since he has check writing priviledges. Could be awful news for the schools.
They claim on the blogs that this David Alpert arrested 9 days ago is Leib Tropper's mechutan. I looked up online to get the details at the NYS site.
Brooklyn Criminal Court Case # 2010KN017894
Charge Detail
L 120.14 01 Misdemeanor, 1 count, Not an arrest charge, Arraignment charge
Description Menacing 2nd - Weapon
L 240.26 01 iolation, 1 count, Not an arrest charge, Arraignment charge
Description Harassment 2nd- Phy Contact
L 120.00 01 Misdemeanor, 1 count, Not an arrest charge, Arraignment charge
Description Aslt W/int Causes Phys Injury
L 145.00 01 Misdemeanor, 1 count, Not an arrest charge, Arraignment charge
Description Crm Mis:intnt Dmge Prprty
L 110-120.05 01
**TOP CHARGE** Felony, 1 count, Not an arrest charge, Arraignment charge
Description Attempted Aslt W/int Caus Serious Ph Inj
FOR ALL OF YOU THAT THINK THAT HERSHEL SHLECHTER IS INNOCENT READ THIS: http://rabbiniccorruptionatrcc.blogspot.com/
The Beis Din in Monsey met Sunday morning for two hours about the Tropper scandal, and said that "[Rabbi Yisroel Dovid] Schlesinger is an accomplice to all of Tropper's sins AND adulteries."
Rabbi Schlesinger is trying to persuade rabbis not to sign against Tropper. He is desperate to make sure that Tropper returns to power.
He is currently twisting the arms of the rabbis with threats and promises. He told Rabbi Breslauer, who is elderly and is recovering from a stroke that if he "signs against Leib Tropper, that he will not live out the rest of the year".
He has spoken to people who support the yeshivas of Rabbi Moshe Green, Rabbi Chaim Flohr, and Rabbi Kokis, who are some of the signatories and persuaded them to stop giving funds.
The public in Monsey are shocked at how far Rabbi Schlesinger is going in order to shield Tropper and to reinstate him in his full capacity as head of the yeshiva and even of the EJF.
Rabbi Kokis, of Ohr Semeach, has been quoted saying that Rabbi Schlesinger has been "blinded into a senseless mission to safeguard Tropper", and is bringing all kinds of erroneous claims that the rabbis did not keep the agreement with Tropper by leaking the documents onto the internet, and therefore, he claims, Tropper be given back all of his powers within the Jewish community, does not have to leave Monsey and may associate with all past, current and future students of the yeshiva.
Rabbi Schlesinger has consistently ignored claims that Tropper abused his power for his sexual gains with both female and male students, used his political pull to destroy the good names of his enemies, and embezzle money from various institutions, public and private.
The fact that Rabbi Schlesinger has gone to these extremes to cover up for Leib Tropper, with full knowledge of his crimes should be examined. In my research, I have found evidence that Rabbi Schlesinger is personally accepting money from Leib Tropper through his organizations. Current and former staff members of the Kol Yaakov yeshiva and Horizons have reported seeing copies of checks signed by Leib Tropper made out to Rabbi Schlesinger's synagogue.
Schlesinger is not a poor man. money is not the only motivation.
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-super-thief-s-story-to-air-on-cnbc-1.676238
Scranton super thief's story to air on CNBC
BY JOE MCDONALD • Scranton Times Tribune
In other words he was fressing chometz and sleeping with a shiksa zoynah.
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21387024
In 1996, when he was serving time in a halfway house for mail fraud in New York, Mr. Weiss conned a judge into letting him out to spend the sacred Jewish Passover holiday with his wife and five children. With his strict four-day pass in hand, Mr. Weiss then climbed into Donald Trump's Air Trump helicopter
with a 23-year-old tart for a gambling fling at Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, where he was "comped" in a $700-a-night suite and he dropped $100,000.
these satmar hungarian and rumanian type chevra may not actually be jews at all you know...
there was a movement of non jewish peasants to pretend to be jews way back in the 1800's in romania, hungary because the jews were better off.
in fact there was a town called 'zibenbarg' which was made up of several villages that joined the jewish people, but not through conversion...
the jews that dont act like jews and dont look semitic, who throw rocks at other jews and speak against israel mostly descend from people who came from this area.
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100312/FREE/100319964
Real estate developer Shaya Boymelgreen's Web site proclaims his finance business is “built on a solid foundation.” He might wish to revisit that statement after federal regulators seized LibertyPointe Bank, an institution that he helped start and served as chairman.
LibertyPointe late Thursday became the first New York City bank to fail in 11 years. For Mr. Boymelgreen, it was just the latest turn of the screw.
In January, he was evicted from his corporate headquarters in Brooklyn after the landlord said Mr. Boymelgreen stopped paying rent. Several of his real estate projects are stalled, and he faces a flood of lawsuits alleging everything from failure to repay loans to fraud and negligence, as well as breach of contract related to the construction and sale of two condominium projects.
It's a painful turn in fortune for the Israeli immigrant who made a big splash during the housing mania by converting lower Manhattan office towers into condominiums. His conversions include 20 Pine St., 23 Wall St. and 15 Broad St. He and a partner also bought properties in Miami and Las Vegas.
Mr. Boymelgreen branched into banking in 2005, starting LibertyPointe with a partner named Meyer Eichler, the founder a Coney Island Avenue bookstore that bills itself as the world's largest Judaica store. The idea was the bank would serve Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish population.
“Money is begging us to come out,” Mr. Eichler told The Brooklyn Paper at the time. A person who answered the phone at his bookstore Friday said Mr. Eichler wasn't available to comment. Mr. Boymelgreen didn't return a call seeking comment.
A call to LibertyPointe's chief executive, Merton Corn, wasn't immediately returned.
I am not sure what is shayachus of how she dressed up BEFORE her conversion, even if she ate pork the day before her conversion it should not be an issue, there is no prohibition for gentiles on they way they dress.
BEFORE the conversion matters very much.
They must be mechalel Shabbos but can only do it once per Shabbos.
What they wear & eat shows that they are maskim to conform.
Many batei din send spies to see how the women are dressed at work before the tevilah.
Hanavon, are you sure those shmucks are not from Mamarosh, where the stupidest people on Earth come from?
I am very angry at the Star-K who Pinny Lipschutz sees fit to distribute their Kashrus Kurrents newsletter with the Yated.
Many years ago I called them about coffee machines in hotel rooms. No matter how much I argued that people could use them for treif food, they said it is not mistaver since as far as they are concerned, only heimishe Yidden would think to do that.
I made the mistake of listening to them against my feelings but after a couple of episodes, I stopped because I just had a bad feeling about it.
Lo and behold, the Star K tells us this month to no longer use the macines because goyim could use them to cook, even though they still argue it is not mistaver. I told this over to some gerim who tell me it is well known that goyim looking to economize use hotel coffee machines to boil treifena hotdogs.
We also used to listen to rabbonim out there who say you can buy cut fruit at any modern supermarket, until one day we ate some that tasted like the knife had just cut spicy Italian salami. When asking around, we heard that R' Yisroel Reisman told his shul not to trust the knives in supermarkets. We told this to one rov who is mattir but he refuses to change his mind based on our incident and still tells everyone to eat the fruit.
If you go to Rav Harry's Emet v Emunah site and search for "Yael Trump" you will find a post he made on this very subject and a very spirited discussion in the comments section. I argued that the fact that she didn't change her clothing style prior to her official conversion certainly indicated that she was not serious in any actual faith or commitment concerning Judaism religiously, and I still believe that.
I hesitate, however, to proclaim her "not Jewish" because she doesn't dress particularly differently from most of the women born Jewish in this country and they are still considered Jews, just Jews who are sinning. There can't be two sets of laws, one for the Jewish RACE and one for the Jewish RELIGION. They are one and the same, and therefore she is a Jew who is sinning, not a non-Jew.
Ahavah:
While your argument is logically correct, it is incorrect according to Jewish law.
When a person is born Jewish, there is nothing they can do to change their status, nothing.
When a person "converts" to Judaism, the standards and laws are meant to discourage the potential convert.
Moreso, when a person is converting to be able to marry a Jewish person, a legitimate bais din must be extra stringent in monitoring that person's commitment to Judaism.
It is clear, that if not for Jared's family insistence that Trump convert, she would not have.
Now a bais din can choose to delude themselves, which the RCA certainly did in this case... but there is a halachic concept throughout the Talmud called "reiusa l'mafrea, how a person acts after the fact, is indicative what her/his true intentions were at the time of the "commitment".
And there is another halachic concept called "toch k'dei dibbur" which actually was adopted in American law, especially in California, where one has 72 hours to change their mind on any contract - and it works for either party to the contract.
Where one immediately after their conversion vows violates the basic precepts of Judaism, it is certainly indicative that her intentions were to get married to Kushner and not to embrace the Jewish values that she mouthed to the Court. They married in October 2009 -- in November she was photographed in a non-kosher eatery 45 minutes from her home on Shabbos...any beis din worthy of respect would withdraw the Conversion contract based on the fraud perpetrated on this bais din.
Jared is Jewish by birth only, he has not kept any of the most basic laws of Judaism for at least a decade.
If the RCA had any credibilty whatsoever, they would revoke her "Jewish" status -- before there are kids involved!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqusTuV9i9Y&feature=player_embedded#
joy behar asks if ivankas conversion means donald now needs to get circumbsized.
Mr Navon--I heard the same thing in Uman from chasidim about many Jews that were originally in uman during the times of the USSR. I had thought that it was not true at first because the general type of people coming to Uman were always complaing about everything in Russia. But then one chasid explained to me in great length that actually when the Chasidim started coming to uman in teh 1990's there were a few people that did real research into the origin of the Jews in Uman and in fact it turned out that just like you said a lot were not Jewish at all but had made themselves out to be Jewish because Jews were better off. --But I never saw or heard about that research myself.
Chazkelovitch told me his father and grandfather had a tradition to be able to tell which Jews were descended from the kazars.
On a personal note I always felt something very not Jewish about the fanatical elements among the frum. I knew some really great roshei yeshivot and from everything that I can tell the real roshei yeshivot and tzadikm always had a kind of eidelkeit. –(and I mean frum charidi roshei yeshivot)—they always had a element of reason and common sense and humanity which I find highly lacking in most roshei yeshivot and rabanaim today.
does anyone know about the frum girl who overdosed in monsey recently?
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20103150321
Postville plant supervisors still on the lam
BY TONY LEYS • Des Moines Register
Israeli officials say they would be glad to hand over two former Iowa meatpacking supervisors - if U.S. officials could determine where in Israel the men are hiding to avoid felony charges.
The men, Hosam Amara, 45, and Zeev Levi, 51, are former chicken-line supervisors at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville.
They allegedly fled to Israel shortly after a massive immigration raid at the plant in May 2008. They both face federal felony charges of conspiring to harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain and conspiring to obtain false immigration papers for the workers.
Prosecutors have said they had clues about where Amara went. During legal proceedings against Sholom Rubashkin, Agriprocessors' former top executive, they alleged that he gave Amara $4,000 for plane tickets shortly after the 2008 raid "and told him it would be better if he just left and forgot about what happened at Agriprocessors." Prosecutors indicated law officers had monitored phone calls Amara made from Israel to people in Iowa.
Authorities also indicated they know where Levi went. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has a "Most Wanted" poster on its Web site saying he had been living in Nahariya, a small city on the Mediterranean coast in northern Israel.
Paul Rael, a lay minister at St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville, expressed skepticism about federal officials' efforts to find the fugitives. "They're not even trying," he said.
Rael said people in town have told him their children are communicating via Facebook with the children of Levi and Amara in Israel. If the Postville kids can find the two families, he said, surely investigators could find them, too.
ColLive.com
A Ta’anis Shaos - Fast Day will be held on Monday, 29 Adar, Erev Rosh Chodesh Nissan in the merit of Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin.
As we stand on the threshold of the Month of Geulah, join us as we storm the heavens for the immediate release of Reb Sholom Mordechai HaLevi Ben Rivka.
We will be Davening for his Geulah and Fasting a Ta’anis Shaos on Monday, 29 Adar, Erev Rosh Chodesh Nissan.
May Hashem accept our fasting and hear our collective Tefillos, as He did on Erev Rosh Chodesh Shvat during Reb Sholom Mordechai’s pre-trial bail considerations.
A motion has recently been filed with the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
Let’s ‘File a motion’ with the True Judge.
Join Us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/business/16debt.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
March 15, 2010
Junk Bond Avalanche Looms for Credit Markets
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.
Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.
With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.
The United States government alone will need to borrow nearly $2 trillion in 2012, to bridge the projected budget deficit for that year and to refinance existing debt.
UOJ is using Kolko as an excuse. He hates Margo because he is prejudice against fat people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/16essa.html
For Obese People, Prejudice in Plain Sight
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/secretive-catholic-order-founded-by-accused-pedophile-under-fire/19398262
International Probe Targets Secretive Catholic Group
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/prison-mobile-phone-debate-jammed-up-in-the-system/
On paper, it’s a no-brainer: Prisoners have mobile phones they are using to run gangs, call friends, and intimidate witnesses. Tech companies have the equipment to jam the phones by flooding the airwaves, and prisons want to use them. But the 1930s law setting up the nation’s telecommunications bureaucracy makes such jamming illegal.
That drives Howard Melamed, the CEO of CellAntenna, crazy. Witnesses are dying and gangs are flourishing because Congress has yet to put the Safe Prison’s Act bill on President Obama’s desk, Melamed argues. His company, which mostly sells tech to expand cell coverage inside buildings, also does some business in jammers. And over the last seven years, he’s become one of the most public faces of the campaign to rid prisons of rogue cell phones.
“Criminals behind bars are doing what they do best which is break the law,” Melamed said. “People are being killed by criminals using cell phones in prisons to arrange hits on witnesses.”
It’s not an insignificant problem. Mobile phones make their way into prisons by visitors smuggling them in — in whole or in part — or from prison employees who can make thousands of dollars per cell phone. Since cell phones aren’t explicitly considered contraband under federal law, there’s not much punishment for employees who sneak them in. California found more than 4,000 phones in 2009, while the feds found close to 2,000 in their prisons and work camps. In a recent case in Maryland, a number of employees were indicted after the DEA wiretapped a jailed gang leader, catching him complaining about having to settle for salmon and shrimp, instead of lobster, to go with his champagne.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589387,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r4:c0.000000:b0:z5
A California car wash owner says he’s rather amused after two Internal Revenue Service agents visited his business to demand he pay a debt – of four cents.
"I come to work, and my manager says, you're not going to believe this. A couple of IRS agents just came in here demanding payment for back taxes," Aaron Zeff told Fox 40 KTXL Sacramento. "I looked at the letter and I couldn't believe what I saw. The number was astonishing. Four cents."
But with late fees on those pennies and penalties dating back to 2006, Zeff says the taxman now wants to collect a total $202.35, the TV station reported.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/reader-questions-on-church-sex-abuse-scandal/?hp
Laurie Goodstein, The Times’s national religion correspondent, and Nicholas Kulish, the paper’s Berlin bureau chief, will answer questions about the church’s role in covering up any abuse and how the latest scandal may be different from the sexual abuse cases that rocked the American church over the past decade.
Readers can submit their questions in the comments field below. The reporters’ responses will be posted later here on The Lede.
Does Shmarya think about consequences?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/research/16haza.html
One in six Americans aged 14 to 49 are infected with genital herpes, making the virus — herpes simplex 2 — one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Research shows that people with genital herpes are two to three times as likely to acquire H.I.V. as those without herpes, said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., director of the agency’s division for preventing sexually transmitted diseases. “And herpes can also make H.I.V.-infected individuals more likely to transmit H.I.V. to others,” he added.
The latest figures, derived from the C.D.C.’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 2005-8, found striking disparities in infection rates, with women infected at almost twice the rate of men, and blacks three times as likely to be infected as whites.
### Black women have the highest rates of infection, with almost half infected. ###
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/sports/golf/17tiger.html?hp
Tiger Woods Says He Will Return for Masters
By LARRY DORMAN
28 minutes ago
///
Leib Tropper Says He Will Retake control of Kol Yaakov & EJF
By LEIBY DORFMAN
28 minutes ago
http://chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=17997
So now Pinny Lipschutz's "pidyon shvuyim" gelt is enriching Nat Lewin who is filing frivolous Rubashkin appeals to the US Supreme Court.
The only way RHS was "duped" on this one is if he wanted to be "duped". I am sure he knows who the Trumps are, he certainly knows about the Kushner family's fine midos, and he unquestionably knows what R' Haskel "the rascal" stands for. A very sad state of affairs all the way around.
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/03/15/mortgage-fraud-declines-but-remains-virulent/
One of the benefits of the housing bust is that mortgage fraud is on the wane.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/50659/Op-Ed-The-End-Of-Our-Innocence.html
Which Moishe Pinter wrote this piece of garbage? Leib's son?
It would be very funny if so. Eckstein & Pinter would be using each other. Pinter is attacking Rabbi Yair Hoffman, the 5 Towns Jewish Times and Matzav.com who are Eckstein's competition.
When Eckstein used to run the Mirrer yeshiva blog, he attacked Leib Pinter all the time.
InnovationGeo LLC has a series of local apps called under the Are You Safe brand. These apps, priced at 99 cents, tell you what sorts of crimes and how many of them have occurred near where you happen to be at the moment. As you move from an area deemed relatively safe into one with more crime, the app’s meter shifts from green to red.
“We’ve created a Geiger counter for crime,” says Benjamin Mokotoff, who helped create the app for InnovationGeo. (No stats are available yet on how many people are mugged while staring at crime stats on their iPhones in sinister neighborhoods.)
So far, that Are You Safe apps are available for only a few cities: Washington, Atlanta, Sacramento, Indianapolis and Milwaukee. But the company is trying to add more cities. One obstacle, Mr. Mokotoff says, is that many cities refuse to release information on crime broken down by address.
Other apps, such as Offender Locator and StaySafe, show you whether any registered sex offenders live nearby.
http://www.lohud.com/article/20100312/NEWS03/3120376/-1/newsfront/Ex-partners-file-multimillion-dollar-lawsuit-vs.-E.-Ramapo-school-board-chief
Nathan Rothschild has denied accusations by the two former partners that he committed fraud, broke contracts and used other means to cheat them out of money and not repay loans.
The lawsuit — filed in July 2009 by Elliot Kahan and Daryl Hagler of Ramapo — seeks a minimum $34.7 million judgment against Rothschild, his wife, Toba, and company employee Kathryn Mazzella.
The lawsuit centers on investments and agreements involving North American Product Development that the three men formed in January 2007. The marketing firm provided promotional items, such as mugs or T-shirts with a client's name and logo.
Rothschild's lawyer, Phillip Murphy of New City, said the legal action lacks merit and is aimed at ruining Rothschild's reputation and costing him his school board seat.
"This is a frivolous lawsuit brought by vicious individuals whose sole motivation is to destroy the reputation of Mr. Rothschild within the Orthodox Jewish community," Murphy said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/science/16archeo.html
I'll have to tell Shmarya about this because he loves phallic jokes. He hasn't had a good one since that cartoon he made about Berel Lazar's beard.
Dear UOJ,
I agree in principle with your analysis - when you look at issues larger than clothes. I think several Rabbis have made a good argument that the purpose of wearing modest clothing is to not attract attention to yourself. If you are dressing in an outlandish manner in regards to the community you are in, then you are attracting attention to yourself. I have an entire issue of JOFA that discusses the subject in depth - it's interesting if you haven't read it. There's also some interesting online reprints of articles...etc. Of course, there are Rabbis who argue persuasively that there is no such thing as retroactively canceling a conversion - I'm sure you've read those, too. I lean toward the opinion that retroactively canceling conversions on grounds of not practicing chumras is an innovation, not historically authentic Judaism.
But if she's out to eat and spending money on Shabbat, that's a whole other story. It's clear and obvious heresy - on THOSE grounds I would declare her to be insincere in her conversion and therefore not Jewish. The Torah doesn't specifically mention styles of clothing because they change over time. Transacting business in a restaurant and making the employees server you is a non-negotiable no-no, I would agree.
Still friends?
Still friends?
*
Certainly, I expect my friends to disagree with me here and there -- as long as you/they don't get carried away :-)
Without being disagreeable, the clothing issue itself can vary between a Torah-forbidden law (as in showing your nakedness - to enticement to sin - to create a stumbling block...) to wearing pants (which is a latter-day rabbinic injunction of not to wear clothing of the opposite sex).
Having said that -- there are degrees and circumstances that would actually require a bais din to annul a particular conversion.
When there are no children, for example, and a person's actions are so blatantly in violation of the Torah - and done publicly - as to bring shame to Judaism - Bais Din is required to annul that conversion publicly!
Revoking a conversion for a Rabbinical injunction is indeed questionable -- but a woman dressing in a way where it is clear that she has not embraced the basic tznius required of a bas Yisroel -- then you examine all her other conduct in view of her flagrant violation publicly - as to denigrate the tenets of Orthodox Judaism -- as in Shabbos, non-kosher, mikva...and a conversion based strictly to be able to marry a Jew...well that adds up to plain fraud on the Rabbinate and all of Israel!
Bais Din is required to sanctify the name of Hashem by expunging this person from the Nation of Israel!
I don't think we basically disagree. I argued on Rav Harry's post that it was ridiculous to suggest she couldn't afford more modest clothing - tunics that come down and completely conceal the front and rear end area, elbow length sleeves, etc. Certainly she could keep some of her pretty things simply by layering her clothes with matching longer sleeves and shirts with collars instead of plunging necklines. A person of more modest means might need to replace their clothing week by week - but this certainly doesn't apply to her. She could go out and buy a whole new wardrobe any day of the week - maybe every day of the week.
There are portraits of Jewish women throughout European history of middle class and wealthy wives and mothers - they dressed in the prevailing social style of their day. I'm not arguing that she should strive to look like a peasant woman, am ha'aretz or shtetle refugee (that look only became "fashionable" recently in Jewish history - certainly middle class and wealthy women never before ASPIRED to look that way until the stringencies took hold). Closer to modern times there are tintypes and photographs - same thing. Their clothes were reasonably fashionable for their age (and headcoverings were generally not fashionable for women in society). Even as recently as the early 20th century photos and portraits show "orthodox" Jewish women who were basically indistinguishable from the fashions around them - my point is that Ivanka can dress stylishly and still be modest if she wanted to.
My question is what community is she part of? How do the women of that shul dress? Was that her expectation? Did the Rabbi who converted chastize her for her clothing before she converted? Did he say nothing and did she therefore presume her clothes were acceptable? Or is she out of line with the women of the community where she converted? Nobody seems to be clear on that, as far as I can tell. To know her intention I think these questions need to be answered. And her intention is what counts, apparently, when deciding whether her conversion is authentic or not. It appears to me that due to the extra $pecial consideration$, the Rabbis may not have required her to buy new clothes or made an issue of it or perhaps even discussed it at all. If they had discussed it, it hardly seems likely she would have flouted them so blatantly. But if it wa$ di$cu$$ed, that's another matter. In short, I think these are important question. Don't you?
I think many people miss the facts, most conversion these days are for marriage sake, those who are not are mostly unstable people on path from New Age to Raelism.
The guys who want to convert their shiksas are usually Reform or unaffiliated who wants their children to be accepted by all Jews. They actually do not need the orthodox conversion they want it as extra insurance because they can always go to the Conservative and Reform.
Most of these guys are never going to adopt Meah Shearim lifestyle, the beis din who convert them can hope that they will keep basic Shabbos, Basic Kashrut and Basic Taharas hamishpocha (ask your rabbi what that means).
The issue is how much you can save because if those people would not convert Orthodox they will probably will lost to the Jewish people. The beis din should weight if being partly observant and dressing in non tznius clothes or eating cold salads in non kosher restuarnr is worth people are getting lost to the Jewish nation.
Tropper who is corrupted just as he is ignorant thought that the people he converted will just become part of his followers like his weirdo talmidim and the unstable girls who marry them.
He was very upset that one of them refused to be controlled by him and
wore pants, so he revoked her and her child conversion.
(or maybe he revoked her conversion because she refused to have sex with him and his wife)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-dubai-investigation14-2010mar14,0,4201999,full.story
“Dubai police are very good at piecing together crimes,” analyst Karasik said. “I’ve seen it before when you had robberies or murders occur and you’ll forget about the story and then six months later the guys are arrested via Interpol, brought back here and then they disappear into the system.”
Although Mabhouh’s assassins managed to enter the country, kill him and get out without getting caught, the case has generated what most analysts consider unwelcome fallout for Israel, which most suspect of being behind the attack.
Authorities are now reexamining the death of Faisal Husseini, a charismatic Palestinian leader who died in his Kuwait hotel room in 2001.
“Now we know their tradecraft,” said Alani. “We know how they operate.”
If Mossad agents were behind the attack, the operation blew the identities of 27 agents; it takes up to five years to train each agent.
“They’ll never be able to go outside of Israel again, even with disguises,” Karasik said. “Biometrics means all of the contours of your face are on file.”
Cold salad in a treif restaurant (and some supposedly kosher ones) is worse than eating pork.
Each bug is 5 lavin.
Dressings and oils are problematic and can be taaruvas basar bechalav.
"Chasan Sofer talmid" is a disgusting person.
And his post should be deleted because I think the posuk he quotes is meant to be a raunchy play on words with Ivanka's anatomy.
....and BTW, Lookstein instructed her to cover up for her wedding!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanka_Trump
As of one minute ago -- her photo that she put on Wiki, is still there. That makes it almost 9 months that she was deemed a Jew by the RCA.
One would think that Ms. Trump was taught the basic laws of tznius - to publicly have herself half-naked is an affront to any thinking Orthodox Jewish person's sensitivities, and casts a black stigma on the RCA's ability to do the right thing, under, I'm certain very difficult circumstances.
Ms. Trump may not know about the damage she's doing to the entire Gerus process (post Tropper especially, and Reuvein Feinstein...), but who can forgive the RCA --- and Hershel Schechter to officially be part of the three rabbi panel that signed off on her "conversion"!?
The menuval Tropper destroyed and caused aggravation to so many converts.
It's reported he had a conversion revoked because the woman wore pants. Everyone sites this as an extreme example of his behavior.
But, from you are saying here perhaps that would be the correct thing to do. No one mentions the woman's name and for all we know she was dressed very unfitting for an Orthodox Jewish woman.
I am far from being expert on these halachos, but the idea of revoking anyone's conversion (beyond your 72 hour scenario, maybe) is disturbing to me.
I've seen big names being quoted from the previous generation who said that bidieved (after the fact) the conversion should remain.
Your arugment seems to come down against Rabbi Druckman in Israel, who is trying to work within the reality on the ground of hundreds of theousands of Russians coming to Israel after Communism killed Judaism for 70 years (and lines of yichus were often not kept).
I find it offputting to be spying on Ivanka Trump. From what most of the comment section says, people are speculating without knowing anything -- just from what they read in the tabloids or blogs.
Maybe she sincerely is doing what she can to be shomer shabbos. Time will tell. But we cannot continue this witch-hunt of revoking conversions -- months or years later.
The issue is not Ms. Trump, it is the RCA and Hershel Schechter that have stepped over the line and must be held accountable.
It only gets worse for them if the marriage does not make it.(I say that without wishing the Kushners or Trumps any harm whatsoever)
One more comment/question: Does one have control over the Wikipedia page in ones name?
I thought it is outside contributors who compose these pages.
It is possible that she had no input in it.
Perhaps i'm being too naive, but i know plenty of shomer shabbos men and women who are not careful about all areas and go to the beach or dress in ways which would not be acceptable for the high standards being talked about here.
Notice how Andy tries to whitewash Druckman as some baal rachmonus working with "reality on the ground".
Communism was bad, but your guilt trip just doesn't cut it in halacha.
You said yourself you are no expert in halacha. UOJ has finished Shas a few times and knows the poskim and teshuvos on the matter.
UOJ is not saying anything different that what Rav Sternbuch's spokesman, Rabbi Dr. Eidensohn has been saying.
So I suggest you sit back and let the experts handle this.
This sounds like a parody from R' both versions, but it's true!
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3862242,00.html
Ice cream has been around, in one form or another, for thousands of years. But a huge frenzy was stirred with the arrival of a kosher ice-cream shop in Jerusalem last week, according to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
“More than 6,000 people gathered outside the ice cream store, waiting for a free sample for six hours, from Friday morning until just before Shabbat. Yeshiva students, rabbis, women and children began crowding outside the store at 6am, waiting for its doors to open,” said the newspaper.
“Such a long queue? For ice cream?”, pondered a secular man passing the crowd, quoted by Yedioth Ahronoth. And he had a point: while ice cream may have a long history, it is not known to be an early morning treat. Very few queue for it at 6am.
Yet despite this apparent healthy demand, it would be premature to expect hundreds of Baskin Robbins outlets to open up shop in Israel. The opening of a single kosher ice cream shop may have proved a hit, but many international franchises face opposition when looking to launch operations in Israel. In the early 2000s, for example, several high-profile franchises went bankrupt.
http://www.app.com/article/20100313/NEWS/3070312/Lawyer-Larry-Loigman-seen-as-protector--pain
I'm the lawyer that Yudel Shain uses to get under the skin of Lakewood township.
There is a modern ortho rabbi who walks around clutching some book in English from Haskell's father Rabbi Joseph Lookstein and quotes from it like it's Igros Moshe or something.
The caterer Pruzansky has been telling people that at his hotel between the end of the Seder and 2 am - when it is ossur to eat - the nosh in the tea room is completely cleared out by fressers hoarding it in their rooms and it has to be replenished.
There is that dumb Dominican giyores Aliza who married a modern orthodox guy. You have probably seen her shooting off her big mouth all over the blogs or writing nonsense that Gary Rosenblatt sees fit to publish.
She is in a fight with the giyores blogging as Michaltastik who is featured by Rabbi Eidensohn because Michaltastik advocates against converting for love. Aliza Jewminicana as she calls herself is vehemently defending Ivanka.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/hollywoodjew/item/ivanka_trumps_big_fat_jewish_wedding_20091026/
Here is my definition of Ivanka "covering up" for the wedding. A short sleeve dress that is otherwise see-through.
But it's ok because Boog's friend from the NYS Assembly, Shelly Silver, was there and approved of it.
http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/who/article/-/6406255/ivanka-trumps-reception-no-2/
Without getting into details, UOJ and the more learned readers will know why Jared & Ivanka probably should not have had sheva brachos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/asia/04brother.html?scp=1&sq=obama%20brother&st=cse
Barack Obama's Jewish Half-Brother
On Nov. 4, the New York Times and the Associated Press ran similar articles on the background of President Obama's half-brother, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, 43. Neither I, nor the rest of the world, knew much about this fellow because, as the articles report, he avoided the press until now. Obama describes meeting his half-brother in his memoir, Dreams From My Father.
Ndesandjo is the son of an American white Jewish woman who was married to President Obama's father, Kenyan Barack Obama Sr., after Obama Sr. split with President Obama's white, American, non-Jewish mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.
Mark's American Jewish mother is identified as Ruth Nidesand Ndesandjo. Her maiden name is reported to be Nidesand. After her divorce from Barack Obama Sr., she married a Tanzanian man whose last name was Ndesandjo. She took his last name, as did Mark and his brother, David.
Ndesandjo has just written a novel, From Nairobi to Shenzen, closely based on his life. It's about the son of a white American Jewish woman and a black African man who falls in love in China.
There is nothing in the articles about Mark being raised in any faith. He does indicate that his Lithuanian-born maternal grandmother was a great mentor to him when he left Kenya to study in the States. His mother, Ruth, still resides in Kenya.
Nu UOJ,
When are you going to continue posting about the history of YTV from the mid-1950's until the late 1960's ??
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
FALL RIVER, Mass. — A former Massachusetts dentist is accused of placing paper clips instead of stainless steel posts inside the teeth of root canal patients while billing Medicaid for the more expensive parts.
The state attorney general announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted former Fall River dentist Michael Clair last week. The charges include assault and battery, larceny, submitting false claims to Medicaid and illegally prescribing drugs.
Prosecutors say Clair was suspended by Medicaid in 2002. He allegedly hired other dentists for his clinic and filed claims under their numbers between August 2003 and June 2005. He's also accused of illegally prescribing drugs to staffers who returned medications to him.
Clair is to be arraigned April 8. He now lives in Maryland. A telephone listing could not be found for him, and it was unclear if he has an attorney.
Michal tastik is a nudnik yenta who likes to complain about other converts, brag that her conversion is better than other converts and criticize other Orthodox lifestyle.
She complanied on Daat Torah that Aliza dropped her as a facebook friend
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html
A crucial aspect of the final health reform bills is that they take early steps toward trying to distinguish between care that makes people healthier and care that does not. These steps, along with some Medicare cuts, are the reason that many economists think the bills will reduce the deficit. The bills will also make it easier for Medicare to make further changes in the future.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-03-16/news/new-york-s-ten-worst-landlords/
Landlord: Moishe Indig
A rabbi and developer in Williamsburg's Satmar community, Indig is a board member of the powerful organization UJCare, is a strong Bloomberg supporter, has built a well-known synagogue on Hooper St, and acts as a Hasidic spokesman in the mainstream press.
Since Indig took control of 684 Flushing Ave years ago, it has been severely neglected and improperly subdivided. In 2006, a court appointed an administrator to oversee the building. Indig regained control the following year, when he took out a $1.2 million mortgage. But the building has further deteriorated.
Tenant Cruz Barreto, fearing that the rats currently crowded in the basement will invade his apartment: "I'm sleeping with the lights and the TV on—in case I need to get up and run."
With 132 violations at last count for a small walk-up, 684 Flushing, in the E. Williamsburg–Bushwick industrial region, is right up there on the city's worst-violations list. Forty-five violations are immediately hazardous and include a chronically broken boiler and gas pipes, as well as water leaks that result in the kinds of floods that cause ceilings to collapse.
4D is ridden with bedbugs and mice, and the wood floors sag dangerously. A woman and her children live in a first-floor apartment that's missing a kitchen ceiling; it collapsed in a flood months ago.
The building has abandoned apartments—their doors are boarded up with plywood and sprayed with graffiti. Two of those apartments belonged to residents who fled because they couldn't stand deathly cold. Like everyone in the building, they kept their oven doors open and the gas on in the winter—if there was gas. "We haven't been able to cook for months," says Leo Smith, a 55-year-old carpenter.
Michael Juliano, a musician who lives on the third floor, pleaded with the landlord last year to put a padlock on the basement to stop crack addicts from spending nights there. Management ignored him, so Juliano put his own lock on the door. The basement still smells like piss and is littered with cracked light bulbs, torn-apart furniture, and bits of plywood. Rodents have made fist-size holes in the walls and floor. The basement has been full of rats since at least 2008, when the city started slapping the landlord with rodent violations that remain open. "Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong," Juliano says.
In February, a water pipe broke and Barreto's apartment was flooded.
Indig admits the building has been neglected. He blames "family issues," including a fatal illness in the building manager's family and says he has recently changed his manager team.
By July 2007, Indig had stacked up 195 violations. The city sued, and in December 2008, a housing court demanded that the violations be taken care of immediately and that Indig pay the city $100,000 for repairs. Neither Indig nor his lawyers showed up in court to dispute the city. Indig didn't do the repairs or pay the city a dime, and his bill grew by $20,000. Since the Voice talked with Indig however, the landlord has paid the city about $90,000.
Mitigating factors: In early February, for the first time in three years, the building's heat came on.
With the water leaks, broken gas pipes, sagging floors, plus mice, bedbugs and rats, tenants say there's no reason to pay rent-they've been withholding it since 2008. They are putting the money in escrow. Meanwhile, Indig is suing the tenants to get them to pay. On February 16, a housing court judge again ordered Indig's company to fix the violations.
11:43 pm is an anti-Semitic comment.
Why does he have to be Jewish, especially when Clair is a WASP name?
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100221/NEWS/100229993/-1/SITEMAP
Orange promises more sewer service for Kiryas Joel
go to yutorah.org and listen to R. Shachter shiurim on hilchos gerus.
He says that to be accepted as a ger, the candidate must accept mitzvos as they are observed and at the level they are observer by religious jews in that specific community. If a ger is involved in things that are considered acceptable by the members of her community, that doesn't invalidate the gerus.
Anyone have a paid subscription that can post this article?
https://home.crainsnewyork.com/clickshare/authenticateUserSubscription.do?CSProduct=newyorkbusiness-insider&CSAuthReq=1:573379234293538:AID|IDAID=20100317/INS/100319913|ID=:3C87C905BB2F1D6B22EEBB8B9FFA5F67&AID=20100317/INS/100319913&title=Paterson%20yeshiva%20proposal%20appears%20DOA&ID=&CSTargetURL=http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/login%3FAssignSessionID%3D573379234293538%26AID%3D20100317/INS/100319913
Paterson yeshiva proposal appears DOA
Times Herald-Record
Posted: March 17, 2010 - 2:00 AM
LIVINGSTON MANOR — A Wall Street mogul who swooped into this northern Sullivan county hamlet and over the years bought most of the buildings on Main Street has seen his empire crumble.
Former currency trader Andrew Krieger failed last week to buy back four Main Street buildings in Livingston Manor that were put up for auction in a foreclosure with Wachovia Bank.
Krieger is also in danger of losing three other buildings on Main, which have been placed into receivership on behalf of Provident Bank.
The Broadway Bank of Chicago also is foreclosing on several hundred acres primarily owned by Krieger that were intended for a sprawling resort around the hamlet in the towns of Callicoon and Rockland.
The banks claim that Krieger, his wife, Valerie, and associated companies and individuals, owe roughly $12 million, court records say.
On Feb. 12, the four Wachovia properties were put up for sale on the county courthouse steps in Monticello. A representative for Krieger made the only bid. Krieger paid the 10 percent holding fee, but couldn't close on the sale within the 30 day deadline on Friday, court-appointed Referee Alexandra Bourne said. Those properties will now be re-advertised and sold at auction.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/03/16/1011136/at-jofa-conference-passion-shifts-to-womens-leadership
Listen to "Rabbi" Sara Hurwitz speak this week at the Feminist conference on the embedded YouTube clip.
Besides her shteller at Avi Weiss's shul she is also the head of "Yeshiva" Maharat for women and says that her talmidim are getting "semicha" but that she will not use the word in case the Agudah & RCA make problems for her.
She says she has an agreement with Hillel to place her graduates as campus "rabbis".
This woman is completely delusional as is clear from what she says.
Why did YU recently allow her to speak to the student body?
Michaltastik is not a nudnik.
She has a lot of legitimate complaints about boors in the frum community who are violating many issurei Torah in treating converts like garbage. It's not like Rabbi Eidensohn just allows anyone to guest post on his site.
She is a little outspoken about improper converts but she is 100% right. She earned her conversion while people with ulterior motives and or money get a free ride.
Aliza Hausman is a moron and no one except fringe publications give her the time of day. She made her grand entry on the public scene by acting like a Shmarya junior that modern orthodox Jews are all "racist" against Hispanics and has since moved on to other drivel like how she still celebrates Kratzmach with her birth family.
Yossi Neiman from Perfect Locksmith, formerly in the Ave I Shoprite plaza, has everyone suing him for the millions of dollars he stole. When collection agents come after him he puts on his phony nice guy demeanor and tells them to pursue a former employee who he tells them is the "real" owner.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/world/europe/18pope.html?hp
BROOKLYN — As hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse surface in YTT, President Willy Wiesner said Wednesday that he hoped a forthcoming letter denying the scandal would help keep children enrolled.
The Brooklyn DA's office announced Tuesday that it would open a sexual-abuse phone line on March 30. The line would be for victims to get railroaded and dead-ended.
Marvin Schick, General of his armchair, told Zev Brenner's Radio show that he was surprised by the number of cases that had come to light, and that they were unlikely to have occurred. “This abscess called blogs must be dried out.”
///
ROME — As hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse surface in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday that he hoped a forthcoming letter dealing with one part of the scandal in Ireland would help “repentance, healing and renewal.”
The German Bishops Conference announced Tuesday that it would open a sexual-abuse phone line on March 30. The line would be for victims and professionals, but also for abusers.
Bishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg told Bavarian Radio on Tuesday that he was surprised by the number of cases that had come to light, and that the matter had to be dealt with openly and directly. “It’s bitter and it’s hard, but it absolutely has to be worked through,” he said. “This abscess must be opened and dried out so that it can heal.”
UOJ is the exception. Hasomeach bechelko.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/nyregion/18sewage.html?hpw
Stagnant Pay Upsets New York Sewage Workers
ALBANY — A senior aide to Gov. David A. Paterson failed to respond to a subpoena from a state ethics commission requiring him to testify about his role in obtaining World Series tickets last year from the Yankees for Mr. Paterson and others who attended a game with the governor, the commission’s chairman said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The aide, David W. Johnson, was ordered to testify before the Commission on Public Integrity in a subpoena given to a Paterson administration lawyer on Feb. 24, one week before the commission issued a report finding that Mr. Paterson had violated state ethics laws by accepting the tickets and had lied under oath when he told the commission that he had intended to pay for them.
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b71f69e201310facb358970c-popup
What a mess! Here is a psak beis din from Badatz Shevet Mishor in Monroe. A bochur was mazmin Spinker yeshiva menahel Berel Ashkenazi for witness tampering in a goyishe criminal court case. Ashkenazi is the guy who tried to defend convicted pedophile Boruch Lebovits during last week's trial when the prosecutor laughed him off the stand as someone under investigation for crimes himself.
The beis din is assering the bochur IN WRITING from telling the police that Ashkenazi is tampering with his eidus. This is ILLEGAL. Are they crazy to write such a thing?
Is the Pinchos Rabinowitz on this beis din the same guy who sat on Tropper's beis din in Monsey for suspicious EJF gerus? It is claimed that it is the same guy.
Was Rav Sternbuch not shown the airport scanner images and poskened they are not prust or assur?
All of the sudden, the Agudah and OU are so frum?
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/17/393618/full-body-scans-at-airports-might.html
In a letter to Congress, Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish umbrella group, called the full-body imaging "offensive, demeaning and far short of acceptable norms of modesty" within Judaism and other faiths.
It said the devices should be used only on passengers who fail metal detectors.
Rabbi Steven Weil, CEO of the Orthodox Union, said the scanners violate Jewish laws on modesty.
http://chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=18009
Reb Chaim Brisker supported Machazikei Hadas - a union of Eastern European Charedim and the forerunner of the Agudah - but in 1912, when the Agudah was formed in Katowice, Reb Chaim raised 18 objections to its constitution
Paterson yeshiva proposal appears DOA
Crain's
A proposal by Gov. Paterson to expand tuition grants to religious institutions such as yeshivas won't survive the budget process, Albany insiders say.
The proposal, included in the governor's executive budget, had been pushed by Jewish leaders in the village of Kiryas Joel in Monroe, N.Y. They hosted fundraisers for Paterson and for Senate Democratic leader John Sampson, pouring nearly $100,000 into the governor's war chest on Jan. 10 and giving at least $32,000 to Mr. Sampson on Dec. 21. The donations were first noted in the Times-Herald Record of Hudson Valley, which reported total contributions of $142,200 to Paterson and $45,000 to Sampson.
Less than two weeks after the Paterson fundraiser, the governor included a provision in his 2010-11 executive budget providing $12.8 million to “extend Tuition Assistance Program award eligibility to students in certain religious studies programs.” Another $18.3 million was put in for the following year. At the same time, the governor proposed cutting TAP by $50 million.
A Division of the Budget spokesman says that the proposal was meant to address “an inequality in the current system” and to bring state standards in line with federal ones. Students at religious schools are, for example, eligible for federal Pell grants.
But Albany sources say the TAP extension is a transparent handout to a special interest that lined the governor's coffers. Since Paterson is no longer running, they say, he's unlikely to insist upon the proposal.
“With all the forces pushing and pulling him in this budget, I don't see it surviving—especially when it was put out there as a politically expedient proposal by a governor who's now a lame duck,” a Senate Democratic insider says.
Without the governor putting his weight behind the proposal, it's unlikely Sampson will expend political capital on it, either, says an Albany lobbyist who works with the Jewish community.
“Without Paterson, Sampson's out there alone, having taken money from a community for a policy he will never be able to deliver,” the lobbyist says. Sampson declined to comment.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/03/torah_rescuer_should_be_held_accountable.html
Torah 'rescuer' should be held accountable
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft, Professor of law
In an attempt to buttress the tarnished credibility of Rabbi Menachem Youlus, the Washington, DC , area Torah scribe who boasts that he has "rescued" over 1,000 Holocaust-era Torah scrolls, Save a Torah, Inc., Youlus's 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt organization, has now issued a report by two allegedly "independent" scribes to the effect that the Torahs Youlus peddled to different congregations were more than 70 years old and had been "written in Poland or other parts of Eastern Europe."
As if that has ever been the issue.
Youlus, you may recall, represented that two of his Torah scrolls had supposedly been buried in a so-called "Gestapo body bag," whatever that is, in a mass grave on a pig farm in western Ukraine; he said that he had discovered another one under the floorboards of a barracks in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany; and he professed to have dug up yet another in what had been the cemetery of Oswiecim, the Polish town adjacent to the Auschwitz death camp, and that he had miraculously reunited this last scroll with four missing parchment panels that Jews from Oswiecim had taken into the camp and had entrusted for safekeeping to a Jewish-born priest who remained in Oswiecim after the war and eventually sold them to Youlus.
Since the publication earlier this year of a meticulously detailed Washington Post Magazine exposé in which Martha Wexler and Jeff Lunden questioned Youlus's veracity, Youlus has not come forward with a single document or a single witness to substantiate any of his claims.
Moreover, some facts are simply not in dispute: There is no historical evidence whatsoever of the Nazis, who regularly burned and desecrated Torah scrolls, ever burying any sacred Jewish religious artifacts in mass-graves alongside murdered Jews. Youlus actually peddled the two "mass-grave" Torah scrolls to five separate congregations. He could not possibly have found any Torah scrolls in Bergen-Belsen since British troops burned that camp's barracks to the ground in May of 1945 to contain a typhus epidemic. And there is no record of anyone even remotely fitting the description of the priest in Youlus's bizarre Auschwitz Torah story ever having lived in or near the town of Oswiecim .
Why and how anyone could still defend Youlus is beyond me. His misrepresentations not only play straight into the hands of Holocaust deniers, but he has raised thousands of dollars under false pretenses from people who trusted him, including idealistic teenagers who were conned into donating significant portions of their bar and bat mitzvah gifts to Save a Torah.
Any exploitation of the Holocaust for crass commercial purposes is appalling. Creating false Holocaust histories for Torah scrolls is despicable.
Youlus's shadowy activities should be thoroughly investigated. Where did he get his Torah scrolls, and from whom? Were they stolen, and if so, to whom do they belong?
This Rav Schlesinger from Monsey who is covering up for Tropper is being accused on the blogs of pushing Moish Finkel's mashgiach back into hashgochos, covering up for KYO restaurant, covering up for Kreitman the shatnez checker & covering up for the Korn's bakery scandal at Pathmark Monsey.
ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigerian state-run broadcaster says Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has dissolved Cabinet.
Pinchus Rabinovitz is a dayan for hire, the contractor dayan, he would do whatever you pay him to do.
Tropper was a big client of him.
Was Rav Sternbuch not shown the airport scanner images and poskened they are not prust or assur?
All of the sudden, the Agudah and OU are so frum?
Yes, there were eating from Tropper’s hand while Rav Sternbuch was the only oe who had the beitzim to stand up against him.
Michal tastik also complain about the shiduchim she is being offered that there are not up to her standards and then wonder why those she agree to go out with are not interested in following up with her.
Maybe if she would complain less more guys would be willing to date her.
mr. kreitman from shatnez center is as honest a man as you will ever meet.
while some may disagree with him on his halachic positions and requirements inspecting clothing, he is a straight shooter and says and does exactly what he believes is halachicly correct.
additionally he is more than happy to explain his positions (at length and in detail) to anyone willing to listen.
to lump him together with scum like tropper and finkle is just plain wrong and irresponsible.
March 17, 2010
CHUR, Switzerland (AP) — An eastern Swiss diocese says a priest has resigned after admitting to sexually abusing children in the 1970s.
The Chur diocese says it approached the priest after being contacted by a victim Monday.
It said the priest also acknowledged abuses in parts of neighboring Austria and Germany that belong to the same diocese, and has reported himself to local police.
The statement Wednesday didn't specify how many cases of abuse were involved.
The Swiss Bishops Conference says there have been 60 alleged victims of abuse by Catholic priests in Switzerland in the last 15 years.
The admission comes amid numerous reports of abuse by Catholic clergy or church employees in Europe.
What kind of times do we live in that the Catholic Church is on higher morality level than Agudah
Malach Hamovies and EJ,
B'li Neder after Pesach, I intend to continue with various posts that you have been asking about.
I keep trying to balance what I write, with the effect it could have on an already severely traumatized Orthodox Jewish populace.
UOJ was created to tear away at the rot, expose the metasticized cancer, so that we can identify where it is and eliminate it -- so the "patient" lives!
Trump condo-hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach faces foreclosure
March 16, 2010|By Doreen Hemlock,
Sun Sentinel
The unfinished Trump International Hotel & Tower on Fort Lauderdale beach is facing foreclosure, after developers defaulted on a $139 million loan on the long-awaited condo-hotel project.
The new mortgage holder filed for foreclosure against the developers, SB Associates LLC. The suit also names more than 80 people who put deposits on condos, but never received the units or refunds, and now seek liens on the high-rise that was to include 298 condos.
Attorneys involved with the case said it will take at least six months to resolve the foreclosure, because so many parties are named and courts are backlogged with foreclosure lawsuits.
Upper East Side, are you one of the losers who Michal refused to date?
I have been involved in helping some gerim who have been trampled on by those who are an embarrassment to Klal Yisroel. There are some completely normal women with advanced degrees who yenta shadchanim try to set up with the biggest baalei chisaron. And they are pretty rude when these gerim turn down their inappropriate suggestions.
IVANKA TRUMP IS NOT A JEW! Her "conversion" was one of the most fraudulent I have ever seen. Ivanka isn't kosher and doesn't dress tznius. She was photogrpahed showing most of her cleavage a few weeks after she was "converted." Ivanka tweets on the Sabbath and never writes about the observing the Jewish holidays. It's time for Ivanka's phony "conversion" to be revoked!
Michal is a true geniune convert who has every right to be angry at frauds like Ivanka. Aliza is a mentally unstable Ivanka ass-kisser. It seems that the only reason Alzia "converted is to marry a rich Jewish boy. No wonder she always defends Ivanka.
Ombudsman,
Some geirim and BT are just too much, too unstable and too weird and I do not think we gain anything by accepting them. Ivanka on the other side can greatly improve the current gene pool.
Michal Tastic reminds me those creazy BT who think that to say Amen bechol chocho means to scream in the middle of the shul and scaring old people. Or one who take literally that when you say shma you have to say it that you can hear what you pronounce but they say it so laud so nobody else can concentrate.
Some BT like Jonathan Rosenblum actually make life worst for everybody else by covering up for molestrs who molest FFB, BT and converts.
If Michal got a new job she would not start her first day at work sending emails to everybody complaining about her co-workers she should not do the same to her new community.
Too bad the rabbis who converted her did not teach her derech eretz , maybe her conversion should be revoked .
Lkavod Moreynu,
UOJ,
You once alluded to the pain it causes you to reveal the shocking secrets of American Jewry.
I hate to play shrink, but is that perhaps not the real reason it is so hard to do?
As for the choyleh, only the truth can set us free.
We will survive. Am Yisroel Chai.
If you have been able to survive with the secret all to yourself, kal vachomer all of us can give you and eachother chizuk and deal with the trauma together....
And of course the kool aid drinkers will just deny it anyway...
Bydidus,
Asher
UOJ...I was suprised to see your note addressed to me and Malach Hamovies. As much as I am interested in the period and looking forward to your narrative, you are correct that there is a limit to how much reality we can all take. If the de-idealization of revered figures happens too quickly, nothing good follows.
While we are on the topic of disappointment I would like to hear your thoughts on the R. Motti Elon affair and the emotional respones of Rabbi Lichtenstein and Rav Druckman. This is a real tragedy in the RZ world with some in denial and many,many very upset.
The following video gives you a sense why this charismatic man became so embedded in the hearts of so many fine young people. The emotional bonding & the aspiration to ruchniyus are both striking, and become apparent over the course of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otoja2PgBmw
Any thoughts?
This is the story with Kreitman.
R' Yudel Shain was the first one shreying that the guy is being machshil the gantz Monsey in shatnez because he doesn't know what he's looking at & removing.
There were meetings with rabbonim in Monsey, several of whom decided to cover it up. Even R' Mottel Orbach who did a good job going up against Tendler, gave difficult conditions, saying that R' Yudel has to place a huge sum of money in escrow that he will forfeit if an independent lab doesn't have the same findings.
Rabbi Sayagh from Lakewood went to Queens to present the anti-Kreitman case to several yeshivishe & chassidishe rabbonim there who are not part of the local Vaad. They agreed with Rabbi Sayagh, including the one weirdo who later denied he was even at the meeting.
A mumche from Eretz Yisroel examined items "checked" by Kreitman and agrees with R' Yudel.
I hate to play shrink, but is that perhaps not the real reason it is so hard to do?
*
Y'did R' Asher,
"You are good!"
(Robert Deniro to Billy Crystal - Analyze This or That)
You go first - what say you? (NO BILL PLEASE)
EJ:
I will view the Youtube clip - thanks - I know precious little about the Elon case.
Donald Trump is one of the worst people you could ever do business with. He is the biggest shnorrer, ausnutzer and nudnik.
He tries to get everything for free but doesn't give away anything himself for less than full price.
If he "agrees" to be billed for something, he is the biggest deadbeat around.
He once conned someone at my company (when I wasn't around to object) to give him free furnishings for his Apprentice TV show. His line was that we would make money off the free advertising. There were plenty of people who called because our stuff was on the show and noted by NBC in the show credits, but they were a bunch of groupies who don't have any money and just wasted our time to satisfy their curiousity or neurosis.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/morethodoxy/item/_39100316/
Here is that apikores and putz Yosef Kanefsky who used to be assistant rabbi in HIR under Avi Weiss taking to the newspapers to attack the RCA.
Mr. Upper East Side is exactly part of the problem that Rav Eidensohn invited Michal to blog about.
Smearing BTs is motzee shem ra & onoas devorim. Smearing gerei tzedek is all that plus dozens more issurim.
Ivanka is a plus for the gene pool but the rest not? What is this guy smoking?
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=books&article=525
celebrated Slovenian gay writer Boris Pinter
http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Raw-sewage-at-Danbury-Airport-frustrates-business-393674.php
A "bubbling crude" of sewage on a Danbury Airport tarmac is causing a lot of frustration for at least two local businesses.
The problem, according to Drew Brown, of Conanicut Aviation, has existed for years and has gotten progressively worse. It is not clear who is responsible for addressing the situation.
"In the last two years the bubbling crude of sewage has been getting worse and worse," said Brown, flight department manager of the aviation company. "It's embarrassing when we have departing passengers who are met with the smell of raw sewage."
Lazlo Pinter, the city's deputy corporation counsel, said he issued an opinion some time ago that it is the company's responsibility to maintain the system.
the point i am making about mr. kreitman is that he is not corrupt but an honest and decent human being.
r' yudel or whoever may have an issue with his method of checking, but the man is honest to a fault and stands behind his work. (no corruption just a disagreement related to halacha)
if he doesn't check enough for your standards don't use him,but to lump him together with live breathing scum is wrong.
FROM THE INTERIM GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK:
Dear New Yorkers,
I have made clear throughout the fiscal crisis that despite our financial difficulties, New York will not shirk from the most fundamental of government obligations – the protection of its citizenry and of its communities. With that in mind, I would like to inform you of an important new initiative I signed and enacted into law that will enable you to automatically receive an alert when a moderate or high-risk sex offender moves into an area of interest to you or your family, NY-ALERT.
Through this new service, you can be notified by e-mail, text message, fax or telephone when a sex offender moves into or out of your community, or even when an offender relocates within a certain radius (from a quarter mile to 25 miles) of your home.
Here’s how it works: As part of the NY-ALERT system, through which 5.8 million New Yorkers receive alerts on everything from natural disasters to traffic congestion. Now, you have an option to sign up for sex offender alerts. After registering at http://www.ny.gov/governor/ and choosing various options, such as how you want to be notified and your regions of interest, you will receive sex offender relocation notices whenever a Level 2 (moderate risk) or Level 3 (high risk) sex offender listed on the public Sex Offender Registry moves into or out of your designated community of concern. If you do not have access to a computer, you can also subscribe to this important system by calling 1-888-697-6972 Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
In addition to signing NY-ALERT into law, I have enacted several significant measures to protect New York’s children and families including signing a law (E-STOP) that requires sex offenders to submit their internet information, including e-mail addresses and screen names to the Sex Offender registry; enacting one of the toughest DWI laws in the country, the Child Passenger Protection Act (also known as Leandra’s Law); and signed into law legislation ending the practice of allowing the State’s most violent felons to receive credit for prior sentences, and thereby become eligible for parole far earlier than intended.
Together with the NY-ALERT legislation sponsors, Senator Jeff Klein and Assembly Member Rory Lancman, we will further enhance New York’s efforts at protecting our children and families. I hope that you and your neighbors will take advantage of this important, new service.
Best,
David A. Paterson
Governor of New York State
B'li Neder after Pesach, I intend to continue with various posts that you have been asking about.
I keep trying to balance what I write, with the effect it could have on an already severely traumatized Orthodox Jewish populace.
UOJ was created to tear away at the rot, expose the metasticized cancer, so that we can identify where it is and eliminate it -- so the "patient" lives!
I can't wait. Thanks !!
What you will reveal is very important especially to the tens of thousands of talmidim that went through that era.
I recently mentioned to someone that if YTV wouldn't have been embroiled in machlokas, they would be bigger then Lakewood is today. And they would have branches in every major city in the US.
The Kollel concept would not be in effect as much as it is today.
And yeshivas (led by YTV) wouldn't be so peasant minded.
In his time, Reb Yaakov Emden views was accepted because he owned a printing press. And he was able to get out his views faster and quicker and to a wider range of people then anyone else.
He had no problems blowing out a so-called "Gadol" in his time by calling him a shabbatean.
UOJ,
You have a huge "printing press". And it's your responsibility (like R' Yaakov Emden) to reveal the truth. This is your Tafkid. Don't blow it !!
A special education teacher at Jersey City's Ferris High School was arrested today on charges he masturbated in front of a 15-year-old boy in a school bathroom yesterday during the school day, officials said.
"If this occurred on school premises, it certainly is a very disturbing act," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said of the allegation against Peter Riquelme, 41, of Brooklyn.
Riquelme was summoned to the Jersey Board of Education's central office today and arrested on the charges of aggravated criminal sexual contact, child abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct, DeFazio said.
"The allegation is that this happened in a bathroom that required a key to open and the teacher opened it for the student to use and then followed him in and engaged in the sexual act on himself in the presence of the juvenile," DeFazio said.
The boy left the bathroom and shortly afterward told one of his teachers about the incident, DeFazio said.
This morning a judge signed a warrant for Riquelme's arrest after the investigation by Jersey City police, the state Division of Youth and Family Services, and the Special Victim's Unit of the prosecutor's office, DeFazio said.
The official misconduct charge alone carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison upon conviction.
At a hearing in Superior Court, Riquelme's bail was set at $75,000 cash or bond. The judge also barred him from unsupervised contact with children other than his own. It's not clear if he posted bail.
School officials said Riquelme will now report to Central Office at Claremont and West Side avenues pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.
He was hired in March 2007, has tenure and is paid $51,000 a year, said district spokeswoman Paula Christen.
Riquelme is not charged with touching the boy, but rather with having sexual contact with himself in the presence of the minor. It's not clear if the victim was a special education student.
From Frum Satire (with some editing)
Can this happen one day ??
Rabbis ban air:
Orthodox Rabbis may ban air, because of the bacteria and bugs contained within it. It sounds crazy, but in a report released by ultra orthodox Rabbis in Lakewood, they clearly state that breathing in air is assur and that we as a people need to take drastic steps to prevent fellow Yidden from succumbing to the evil inclination and breathing in bugs. According to the Torah, eating bugs is considered an abomination, akin to cheating on your taxes and having sex with another man, and these Rabbis have finally admitted that breathing should not be allowed.
Of course, these Rabbis do realize that it is nearly impossible not to breathe, although there are stories of great Lithuanian Rabbis who were able to hold their breath for long periods of time in order not to consume any bugs, as the generations become removed from great torah centers in Lithuania, we lose our ability to hold our breath for as long as gedolim like Shimon Shkop and Chaim Volozhin could, even Rav Ahron had to come up for air once in a while, but he never consumed any bugs chas v’shalom.
In order to prevent the consumption of bugs through breathing, several ideas have been pushed forth, including genetic engineering Jewish noses to be even larger than they already are, gas masks and kosher bottled air, the third being the most realistic since it has already been done with water.
We will keep you updated as this story develops.
ALBANY — The exodus of top aides from the Paterson administration continued on Wednesday when Marissa Shorenstein, the governor’s press secretary and acting chief spokeswoman, resigned and, like other departing senior advisers, implicitly raised questions about the administration’s conduct.
Ms. Shorenstein became the fifth top state official to resign in the wake of a scandal over the Paterson administration’s handling of a domestic violence episode. And echoing the words of her former boss when he quit two weeks ago, Ms. Shorenstein suggested that the administration had misled her about the facts of the case.
The scandals have fueled a wave of calls for Mr. Paterson to resign, something he has said he is not contemplating. On Wednesday, he had some choice words for a top lawmaker who has raised the possibility of his resignation: Kirsten E. Gillibrand, whom Mr. Paterson appointed to the Senate last year.
Ms. Gillibrand said Mr. Paterson should step down if the investigation shows the governor’s administration improperly intervened in the domestic violence episode.
During an interview with Don Imus on the Fox Business Network, Mr. Paterson was asked whether Ms. Gillibrand had thrown him “under the bus.”
Mr. Paterson said: “Whenever you get in a jam, there are people that will throw you under the bus. They just don’t expect you to get out from under the bus, and when you do, they should be forewarned.”
Asked if he had spoken with Ms. Gillibrand lately, Mr. Paterson said, “It’s hard to talk to anyone when you are under the bus.”
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