CLICK ON LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/failed-leadership-caused-the-financial-crisis?PageNr=1
"1. They should be authentic leaders, focused on serving their [clients] and all the institution's constituents, rather than [charismatic] leaders seeking money, fame, and power for themselves.
2. They should place the interests of their institutions and society as a whole above their own interests.
3. They should have the integrity to tell the whole truth, admit their mistakes, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Authentic leadership is not about being perfect. It is having the courage to admit when you're wrong and to get on with solving problems, rather than covering them up.
4. They need to adapt quickly to new realities, changing themselves as well as their institutions, rather than going into denial when things don't go as intended.
5. They need the resilience to bounce back after devastating losses. Resilience enables leaders to restore trust by empowering people to create new solutions that build great institutions for the future."
While all the sentiments are good and all the erstwhile points are valid, this crisis isn't a crisis of leadership. This crisis isn't a crisis. It's the fifth column finally crumbling; the fifth column represented by the cult of personality. We have shot ourselves in the head so many times that we clamor for leadership. We can't stomach concretized plans that burden our minds and destablize our wanton fantasies. We live for a fantasy world. We want the knight to come through the forest and save the kingdom. Cervantes would find our tales greater than those of Don Quixote and more quixotic than any chivalaric tomes. We fantasize. We douse our reality with smoke screens of white teeth backed rhetoric more bare than the Emperor's new clothes. We haven't just tossed the baby out with the bath water, we've gleefully tossed the baby out with the bath water.
ReplyDeleteWhether you have 5 ordinances or 10 commandments you still need to find people of standing willing to relate to them and relate them to what they do. Action speaks louder than words. We want action, not for ourselves to take action, but we want someone to do it. We need mercenaries, such as the Hessians of the Revolutionary War, to make a feast of smiting the ragged rebels of the colonies and bringing in line as it happened (it did, didn't it?). Or the mercenaries of Rome, who helped vanquish a dying empire.
We have seen the enemy and it is us, saith Pogo the wise. 5 rules of hubris do not matter - throw out the cult of personality, make the media accountable for making editorials into news (or bedevid into lechatilah), blast the lack of concrete proposals with numbers in them (even if you wind up being wrong, you can tell where you started going wrong).
Lambasting leadership, as we do, when there is no leadership works in the favor of the same vacuous nomads awaiting their 15 minutes of fame and 2 years of photo ops. We aren't in a no-win situation if we can just change the rules.
We start at the local level, judgeships for example, are chosen by political clubs, not the electorate. Look at a ballot and how is it that the same names are under each political party? We don't allow those things to happen in Uganda, why in New York or Chicago, or Los Angeles? This is the yesod of civilization, justice, and we allow career politicians to manipulate it. A travesty - a real treason Mr. Perry. It's a start.
Raw Sewage Found In Yeshiva Dorm
ReplyDeleteA haredi yeshiva is fined for having raw sewage inside and outside its dormitory.
The Journal News reports:
Congregation and Kollel Noam Elimelech Litzensk Inc., operator and Congregation Litzensk Inc., owner, Congregation Litzensk Dormitory, 100 South Central Ave., Clarkstown, were fined $1,650 for housing code violations. Inspectors said that raw sewage was found both inside and outside the dormitory.
Failed Shmarya found out I exposed him in the blogosphere after he quickly erased his slanderous attack on Empire Kosher Poultry, probably after being contacted by Empire's attorneys. So he put it back up - wiped clean of accusations - while making excuses that he had "temporarily" taken it down because he "decided to do more fact checking". If you believe that ...
ReplyDeleteIn the no less than two newer versions, he mostly asks loaded questions that although he is being obnoxious, it does not put him at risk of a lawsuit. The questions are pretty inane, like demanding to know if Empire posted safety notices in Spanish, not just English. Perhaps Shmarya should dig under his mattress for some of the travel "expenses" he shnorred under false pretenses from the public to attend the Rubashkin trial where he was a conspicuous no-show and mosey on down to Mifflintown to see for himself. What he's now doing is actually a veiled and laughable attempt to insinuate Empire and the JTA reporter are guilty of anti-Hispanic racism for only focusing on other non-Jewish employees like the Amish. Shmarya never fails to get a high octane boost of Liberalism every morning with his Wheaties.
Has anyone complained yet to Heeb Magazine about Shmarya getting free advertising at their expense? Shmarya's friend David Kelsey, who is some kind of rebbishe aynickel who went off the derech, has been hired to write for Heeb. Instead of Heeb getting their money's worth, the lazy bum has been importing Shmarya's anti-frum diatribes.
http://www.5tjt.com/local-news/11495-anti-orthodox-what-anti-orthodox
ReplyDeleteAvi Shafran has a long winded piece here that is mostly his same old boring drivel.
Two points to call him on.
He attacks Hella Winston's reporting on the Kletzky murder because she quotes anonymous sources about Shomrim. He demands that Jewish Week not allow her to report on Charedi affairs to begin with but goes further that they certainly have no right to publish anything from anonymous sources. Get a life, Avi. All the major newspapers do it. The NY Times' Judith Miller even went to jail for contempt of court to protect an anonymous source.
Shafran is "disturbed" that with all the "top notch" Charedi columnists out there, the Jewish Week doesn't syndicate any of them. Gee Avi, that wouldn't be a sales pitch for your own column to bring you an extra royalty? Would it? You also forgot that Jewish Week disguises paid op-eds from Marvin Schick as editorials. Or maybe you didn't forget as the Agudah is the #1 suspect of who is paying for those pieces to shill for them. Pieces that are full of twisted logic and distortions because Gary Rosenblatt can be bought for the right price too. What other columnists do you want? Jonathan Rosenbloom who lies to cover up for pedophile enablers among the rabbonus in Ramat Beit Shemesh? Convicted felon and plagiarist Gershon Tannenbaum? Debbie Maimon who should try just once to write an article without first taking steroids? Aryeh Ginzberg who gets paid to attack tremendous talmidei chochomim who refuses to sign papers condoning Rubashkin's criminal acts?
It's true that Hella Winston has a problem with frum Jews but so does Marci Hamilton yet Shafran has never demanded she be barred from writing for the NY Law Journal and other publications. And Shafran has especially never demanded that Dr. T.C. Neuhoff who works for haymishe organizations, take down his vicious attack blog against advocates for child victims.
When will Shafran learn that he and his fellow hucksters do not represent the majority of Charedi Jews who are tired of the corruption and cover ups?
OU Executive VP Rabbi Steven Weil is making an official visit this coming Shabbos to the Hampton Synagogue in the Hamptons playground of the rich and famous.
ReplyDeleteWhy is this a huge problem? Never mind that the mara d'asra Rabbi Marc Schneier is so far to the left and does not practice conventional orthodoxy that he should have never been given membership in the OU's RCA to begin with, but the OU started the process last summer to kick Schneier out of the RCA for being caught on video committing adultery, pictures of which were published in major newspapers. After a couple of months, the spineless and cover up inclined OU leadership let the story die without taking action.
Weil's shiur, interestingly enough, is on the topic of the seraifas hatalmud in 1200s Paris, France. The OU may has well burn the Talmud themselves if they are covering up for Schneier. Schneier's own father, the senior rabbi of the Park East shul in NYC does not speak to his son.
This just in from the Roto Rooter Guy!
ReplyDeleteAnother way to look at the Debt Ceiling!
Let's say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your home, and you have sewage up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do……raise the ceilings, or pump out the s@#x?
Your choice.
Go Roto Rooter!
(This has been a non-paid advertisement)
'Escalation caused by lack of Torah studies'
ReplyDeleteLithuanian Orthodox rabbis link summer vacation in yeshivot to terror offensive on Egypt border, rocket attacks in southern Israel
Ari Galahar • Ynet
Senior Lithuanian Orthodox rabbis have responded to the recent escalation in southern Israel, calling on the public to engage in Torah studies.
The religious leaders share the same opinion on the reason for the events: The drop in Torah studies during the "Bein Hazmanim" period – the summer vacation in Orthodox yeshivot which began on Tisha B'Av.
After hearing about the terror offensive near Eilat, the ongoing rocket attacks on southern Israel and the death of nine Israelis since Thursday, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva, said that "we are being struck by these disasters because of our sins. We lack the privilege of the Torah, which defends and saves us."
'Torah studies to bring calmer period'
A synagogue in a haredi neighborhood in Ashdod was hit by a rocket Friday. Rabbi Edelstein called on his yeshiva students to increase their Torah studies and pray for the people of Israel.
"The lack of Torah studies among yeshiva students is especially felt on these days, the period of 'Bein Hazmanim'. We, the children of the Torah, who do not pick the tools of war, are each committed to increase our Torah studies, and will be protected by God as a result."
Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, one of the most prominent Lithuanian Orthodox leaders, said in response to the recent events that "the 'Bein Hazmanim' days are a dangerous period as people don't study Torah. Torah studies will lead to a calmer situation."
According to the rabbi's associates, before "Bein Hazmanim" Shteinman said that "we must pray that no disasters take place during 'Bein Hazmanim,'" adding that he feared "dangers may come" due to the lack of Torah studies throughout this period.
NEW YORK -- A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who is supposed to represent the public, has provoked criticism that she has a conflict of interest as she defends Wall Street against the state's top law enforcer.
ReplyDeleteKathryn Wylde, deputy chair of the New York Fed's board, challenged state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's opposition to a proposed $8.5 billion settlement between Bank of America and a group of investors -- leaping to the defense of the financial industry -- according to remarks quoted Monday in The New York Times.
Wylde's day job is president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit that is funded by dues from its partner companies, which include the very banks involved in the talks to settle claims over hundreds of billions of dollars in soured home loans. Her apparent sympathy toward big banks compromises Wylde's ability to represent the public as a director of a bank regulator, said research analyst Christopher Whalen, who, along with analyst Barry Ritholtz, called for Wylde to resign.
"I'm just appalled," said Whalen, who is managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics. "She is a public director of a Federal Reserve Bank, and she's not supposed to behave this way. She is not an advocate for the industry."
"If she wants to be an advocate for the big banks," he continued, "then she ought to step down."
Excuse me but that is an anti-frum paper reporting. How do you know exactly which wording Rav Edelstein and Rav Shteinman used? Even as reported it doesn't sound radically different than what Chazal and the seforim say. Maybe the more exact wording was if they learn harder it will provide a higher degree of shmira.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with a Manhig b'Yisroel advising the klal on issues of common sense and safety precautions.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, is this something that requires great lomdus to figure out to the average yossi?
Washington D.C. hit with 5.6 earthquake. Not enough learning Torah in America.....And I'm not even a mekubel or a gadol.
ReplyDeleteAlso for anti-Israeli policies --- Anti-Semitin in the KKK - Sharpton was going to visit a shul ---- Obama on vacation at Martha, while the olam is suffering in the Catskils...etc.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering where the earthquake was. On Long Island my 2nd floor level was slightly shaking. I was on the phone with someone in Flatbush who had to hang up because things were shaking much more violently at their location.
ReplyDeleteShea Fishman said it was centered in Virginia and felt all along the East Coast.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he got this one right?
In his book “Ambition,” Joseph Epstein points out that a large percentage of tax fraud is reported by the business associates and “friends” of the offenders.
ReplyDeleteI knew Fishman should never have been on the payroll as a natural disaster consultant. He made some dumb remark that it's not the right climate to earthquake-proof City buildings.
ReplyDeleteBuildings throughout major metropolitan centers in the northeast were evacuated after the quake, and tremors were felt as far north as Bath, Maine, which is more Northerly than parts of Canada.
Rumbles were reported on Twitter from places as far-flung as Martha’s Vineyard, Pittsburgh and even Milwaukee.
In downtown Manhattan, police officers ordered the evacuation of New York’s City’s Hall a few minutes before 2 p.m., sending Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his staff scurrying out of the building.
CBC Canada reporting that buildings in Sudbury, Ontario, were evacuated. Sudbury is 240 miles north of Toronto and 760 miles north of the Virginia epicenter.
ReplyDeletePROVO, Utah -- The father of the renowned piano group The 5 Browns was sentenced Thursday to serve at least 10 years in prison on charges that he sexually abused his three daughters when they were children.
ReplyDeleteKeith S. Brown, 55, pleaded guilty in February to one felony count of sodomy of a child and two felony counts of sexual abuse of a child.
Judge David Mortensen sentenced Brown to 10 years to life on the first count, and 15 years to life for each of the others. The sentences will run concurrently, but Brown will have to serve at least 10 years under the plea agreement.
"I do believe, sir, that you are a pedophile, and I do believe that you are a danger to society," Mortensen said before handing down the sentence.
Brown's three daughters Desirae, 32, Deondra, 30, and Melody, 26, and two sons make up The 5 Browns, whose albums have topped the classical music charts.
After the hearing, defense attorney Steven (ben Ephraim?) Shapiro said Brown is remorseful and had expressed his apologies to the court, his family and the community in a letter to the judge rather than speaking in open court.
Three days after prosecutors filed the charges, a car Brown was driving plunged 300 feet over a cliff in Salt Lake City's Little Cottonwood Canyon. Brown and Lisa Brown, 54, the mother of the group members, were hospitalized after the Valentine's Day crash that left the Porsche mangled and unrecognizable.
What does UOJ know, that's why he needs an expert meteorologist and seismologist like me! The earthquake was actually 5.9, not 5.6.
ReplyDeleteI just got off the phone with the French Bastard from Le Marais:
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had just started speaking at a press conference about the sensational Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case when the building started shaking. The event was interrupted as people fled outside.
I'm on a roll!
ReplyDeleteIrene weakens to Category 1 hurricane as it lashes Turks and Caicos, likely to regain strength.
UOJ:
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it bother you, even just a little bit, when people, Gedolim they may be, say that they know te reason calamities befall the world? Rabbi Ovadya Yosef reportedly blamed the carmel fires earlier this year on Shmiras Enayim or something like that. He may be a great scholar, a big Talmud Chochom; but how would he know?
Its not a new phenomenon. Rabbis, idiots, and others have been giving reasons for the holocaust, probably starting a day after the camps were evacuated.
OUJ, why should they be allowed to 'play God'?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/rabbi_charged_as_perv_rGDJPI3sj16s3Kfyswrf4K
ReplyDeleteNechemya Weberman, the head of the Williamsburg Vaad Hatznius of all things, and part of the ex-Torah Vodaas Malochim clan, was arrested for raping a girl. Since this article was published, a former Satmar yeshiva bochur has also gone public that Weberman molested him.
His great grandfather Moishe Weberman is also Belsky's great grandfather, the shver of Rabbi Wilhelm from Torah Vodaas. One of the Willy Malochim Webermans is running a small hashgocho that certifies a handful or less of companies.
His uncle is Rabbi Pinchos Weberman who runs the MKI hashgocho in Florida and on cruise ships. It has been rumored on blogs that Pinchos Weberman who is also a Federal ATF chaplain has been trying to pull strings to keep his nephew out of jail. Pinchos Weberman used to run a fishy gerus beis din with Leib Tropper. His eidim is a Cuban ger with very unusual hashkofos who is the rov of a shul in Yonkers that is questionable if it's orthodox.
Weberman's relatives and associates have been criminally intimidating his victims, their families and supporters. This includes taking pictures of any heimishe Yidden from the victims' side who come to court appearances and posting the pictures on a listserv. These people are then recognized and start getting harassed.
Did you fellows not learn in yeshiva that the Tanach and Chazal give reasons why certain calamities happen? Rav Schach for instance did not usually go into particulars but he often said from the Rambam that when the kav of unspecified aveiros fills to the brim chas vesholom, it invites retribution. The Brisker dayan in Lita took a different position on the Holocaust than other gedolim who gave a reason. He would not comment because he said it is not possible to know in a tzeit of hester ponim. That doesn't mean things can't be discerned when it doesn't rise to that level.
ReplyDeleteHey Q:
ReplyDeleteThey aren't playing God at all. Maggids of yore went from town to town arousing people to do teshuvah by wresting them from their comfort zone. One way to do that is to pick a calamity. The idea is to give people a better reason to turn to God.
You can say that doing so is heinous, picking on calamity to drive people to teshuvah. People don't do teshuvah if they don't perceive a calamity, personal or public. Disasters are b'derech hatevah (part of the natural order). Hashem can and will change the natural order to send a message. Today's earthquake off of the East Coast was a harrowing 15-20 seconds, if you've never been in a earthquake. People were pouring out of buildings in Manhattan and I too went quickly for the street. Was I moved to do something? Yes I was, to thank God for his wonders. Did others stop and think about their actions, even for a second or two? Some most likely did. Emphasizing disaster when talking about God has been a mode of operation for a long time. If we would pay more attention to God when all was well, maybe the phenomenon of blaming castrophe on the spiritual level of Yidden would lessen.
a calamity ids montreal yeshiva gedola has a serial groper as a principal
ReplyDeletetzvi schmeltzer who was fired from the kolel in north miami beach and before that was removed from yeshiva elementary high school by rabbi zwieg under a non disclosure settlement that wouldn disclose why he was fired and rabbi zwieg refuses to discuss the reasons except to say he should not be with children is going to be in yeshiva gedola of montreal
the fox in the chicken coop
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/3347
ReplyDeleteThe OU's Dokter Rabbiner Ari Greenspan, in an interview with Arutz Sheva, makes an eyepopping statement that altz aid echod ne'eman be'issurim, you can track down any 100 year old women who remembers eating, as a little girl, a species we don't have mesorah for and that allows you to reinstate the mesorah.
Greenspan is also behind an elk shechita in Montana. It is a machlokes if elk is a kosher species.
Who gave semicha to Greenspan? He sounds like the OU-RCA shvantz in Chicago, "Rabbi" Asher Lopatin, who has publicly said that his days in YU makes him a Brisker talmid. He goes on to misapply Brisker chumros on pikuach nefesh to allow completely unnecessary chilul Shabbos. (He also gives kibudim in his shul to a close friend of Obama who is married to a shiksa and allows their children into his day school. He says it's none of his business if the chaya's wife is Jewish or not)
Greenspan is a contributor to Mishpacha Magazine which figures high on the eyepopper scale.
Interviewer "Dovid" Willner as he calls himself even though he talks like a "Daveed", is a former director of OU's NCSY. He informs Dokter Rabbiner Greenspan that he decided to be poretz geder a few years ago to start eating "kitniyot" at home for Pesach because he feels that Klal Yisroel has no right to adhere to "chumrot" if it causes people not to eat together.
http://www.foundationstone.org/
When Willner is not hocking a tchynik on the radio he is busy with this monstrosity together with someone who claims to be a musmach of Rav Ruderman.
http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2011/08/21/a-survivor-speaks-out/
ReplyDeleteUOJ may not be aware that abuse survivor Pinny Taub has done an about face and is now being controlled with puppet strings by Avi Shafran to attack Agudah critics.
You sometimes see a radical about face in politics. Republicans like David Brock suddenly become flaming Liberals which is why they will be mocked in perpetuity by the Wall Street Journal. But after being traumatized by a molester, who knows what it could have done to to the poor soul's mind. The poskim don't equate molestion with retzicha for nothing.
Rav Doniel Eidensohn is upset by Taub's behavior:
"It is news when a survivor who has courageously told his story - he contributed a chapter to my book - suddenly turns and uncritically defends those attitude and action contributed to his problem.
This problematic piece is similar to the praise Bracha Goetz wrote recently regarding the Aguda.
The question is why he is suddenly dumping all critics of the Aguda together - which would include me as well as many others he has worked with in his advocacy work.
As Shanks has cogently presented, Pinny does not seem to understand the Aguda's position. It is also strange that Pinny is tarring all those who are criticizing the Aguda in very unflattering terms and attributing base motivation to all of them. As one of Pinny's admirers for his courage in speaking out against the inaction and coverups of the establishment, I am truly saddened that he has taken the extreme and unhelpful position in the present essay.
As one of the the Aguda's critics - on my blog Daas Torah - I assume he intends to include me in the group of those he is denouncing. As someone who has published several seforim dealing with the topic [Child & Domestic Abuse in 3 volumes]-including one which Pinny Taub contributed a chapter - I strongly urge him to reconsider his defamation of all critics. This issue needs rational discourse - not automatic slander of those who disagree with a particular rabbinic organization."
August 17, 2011
ReplyDelete(JTA) -- An American group of Holocaust survivors slammed the fashion house Chanel for rejecting a new biography's claim that its founder, Coco Chanel, was a Nazi spy.
Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, said in a statement that his organization was "shocked" by the charges in "Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War," by Hal Vaughan, and "the blithe and unsupported rejection of these charges by the Chanel fashion house."
The book builds on past evidence to describe the secret life of Chanel, a fashion icon, as a "fierce" anti-Semite recruited by the Abwehr military intelligence organization, as well as the lover of Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, described as a "Nazi master spy." The book gives her agent number as F-7124 and code-name as "Westminister," after the duke with whom she had another affair.
The Chanel group in a statement denied the allegations beyond that "she had a relationship with a German aristocrat during the war" and "Clearly it wasn't the best period to have a love story with a German." It further denied that she was anti-Semitic based on her friendship with Jews and business ties with the Rothschild family.
Steinberg said that "The documents on Ms. Chanel's past are too serious and historically important to be cavalierly dismissed by the fashion house without any effort to confirm their veracity through objective research." An investigation, he added, "is the least that can be done for the sake of historical truth and the memory of Nazi victims."
Modern orthodox rabbi and high ranking US Army chaplain Mitchell Ackerson is defending molester Rabbi Jacob Max who was convicted of groping an adult but spent decades fondling girls in his shul.
ReplyDeletePutz!
http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/local_news/rabbi_jacob_max_dies_leaves_mixed_legacy/26216
“Jack was a very loyal friend, but he was also an enigma wrapped in a mystery,” says Rabbi Mitchell S. Ackerson, director of pastoral care and chaplaincy at Sinai Hospital.
“In many ways he was a simple guy, and in many ways he was a complicated guy. But his goal in life was to keep people in general Jewish. That’s why he was so flexible. He felt he did what he had to do, and people either loved him or hated him. But all of my dealings with Jack were positive. We got along well, even when we disagreed.”
In the wake of Rabbi Max’s passing, Rabbi Ackerson recommended a spirit of non-judgmentalism. “Yes, he’ll have a mixed legacy. There’s no way around that,” he says. “Time will tell who’s right. But in many ways, he will be missed. He was always a gracious, friendly, warm person. He tried his best, and was a devoted husband and a wonderful uncle. It was always fun to talk to him, and he did a lot of good in the work he did.”
Q:
ReplyDeleteSefer Devorim is a treasure trove of using previous disasters as a preventative against future ones. Tochacha to be effective can't be taken with a spoonful of sugar.
After 120 years, providing we can withstand watching our own aveiros paraded before us, we can ask Hashem why things happened. In the world of truth, the naked truth will be crystal clear.