Not at the Agudah Convention - Be Back Soon

 

What Would Shmuel & Aaron See in a Covid ICU ? ----- They would see patients, young and old, gasping for air, wracked with pain that scorches the chest. He would see patients pleading for a first dose of the vaccine, even though at that point it would be too late to help them recover. He would see patients in cramped emergency wings, traditionally meant for quick triage, sometimes stuck there for 24 hours because there are not enough beds in intensive care units. He might see death in the E.R. Or, more common, funeral home workers carting coffins out of the I.C.U.

 

 

 

What Aaron Rodgers & Shmuel Kamenetzky Should See: Covid Suffering in a Wisconsin E.R.

 

The Rabbi & The Quarterback - Dumb & Dumber!

An emergency room doctor laments the Green Bay Packers quarterback’s missed opportunity to promote vaccines instead of dispute them.

It is perhaps all too easy to bash Aaron Rodgers, the latest star athlete & cholent for brains rabbi to show them suffering from a God complex, hovering above the fray, more than willing to spew medical quackery and virus all over us mere mortals.

Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback, is one of the greats when it comes to controlling football games and throwing arcing spirals for highlights-reel touchdowns. But that gridiron genius was undercut when it came out last week that he had not only tested positive for the coronavirus but had also warped the truth about whether he was vaccinated.

“If the vaccine is so great,” Rodgers said in an interview with a radio host who is a friend of his, “how come people are still getting Covid and spreading Covid and unfortunately dying from Covid?”

Apparently, Rodgers missed the memo that while they are not foolproof, the vaccines are close to 90 percent effective and by far the best tools we have to beat back this plague.

Rodgers has been spewing other falsehoods about the virus and its treatments. So maybe he should spend time with Dr. Kyle Martin. He’s the medical director of emergency services at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis., and he also works at two hospitals in rural parts of the state.

“We’re still very much in a crisis,” Dr. Martin, a self-described N.F.L. superfan, said when we spoke this week. “People are still dying in large numbers. And our health system, it’s stressed to the max.”

Covid-19 burns hot in Wisconsin, where it is now primarily a disease of the unvaccinated, many who clearly take their cues from celebrities like Rodgers.

After a period of decline, case numbers are spiraling up, and with them, visits to emergency rooms and stays in intensive care. If the typical cycle continues, deaths will rise in a state that is currently losing about 19 people per day to the virus.

“Rodgers is an icon here in our state,” Dr. Martin said. To have him questioning the vaccine and sow vaccine doubt “undercuts what we’re trying to do as a health care system. It’s just tragic.”

What would the quarterback see?

“He would see how Covid is now not just in urban centers — it’s ravaging rural Wisconsin,” the doctor said.

Rodgers would see patients, young and old, gasping for air, wracked with pain that scorches the chest. He would see patients pleading for a first dose of the vaccine, even though at that point it would be too late to help them recover.

He would see patients in cramped emergency wings, traditionally meant for quick triage, sometimes stuck there for 24 hours because there are not enough beds in intensive care units.

He might see death in the E.R. Or, more common, funeral home workers carting coffins out of the I.C.U.

He might get a taste of how the doubters of science-based medicine have poisoned the well. Remember last year, when frontline workers were heroes? These days, according to one Wisconsin health official I spoke with this week, anti-vaxxers have been known to show up in front of hospitals, spewing venom at doctors and nurses heading in to do the work of saving patients.

Dr. Martin told the story of a father who barricaded himself and his critically ill child in a hospital room, shouting that Covid was a hoax made up by doctors. “You are not taking my daughter,” the father said after a transfer was recommended. According to Dr. Martin, the father demanded a promise to send the child to a hospital that does not require masks. Of course, there is no such hospital. It took a team of police officers and sheriff’s deputies to calm the situation, Dr. Martin said, and to help the girl get the care she needed.

In Rodgers’s latest interview — well, more like a staged appearance with questions spoon-fed by the host, Pat McAfee, a former N.F.L. punter — he trotted out a half-baked apology and claimed to take full responsibility for what he had said the week before. He also said he stood by his position on vaccines.

It’s not clear he truly understands the ripple-effect damage caused by a sports star of his magnitude sowing doubt. Physicians are the ones dealing with this calamity in real-time, and a lot of their work these days centers on convincing the reluctant that there’s one tool available to help curb the mass spread of Covid — the vaccine.

“If I can establish a rapport, I might be able to get some science, some actual facts in front of the patient,” Dr. Martin said. “But Aaron Rodgers is someone everybody knows, and he’s someone whose views are listened to. So now when I’m in front of that reluctant patient, they have these conflicting things that they’ve heard. And that’s not making this any easier.”

Is it possible to have sympathy for Rodgers and other athletes suggesting doubt about the vaccines? (Thinking of you, Kyrie Irving.) Well, sure. For all their fame, they are like the rest of us, trying to make sense of a horrific situation. Everyone is doing this while facing tsunamis of information.

We are all susceptible to being duped.

So, yes, for all the damage their vaccine-doubting views can bring, we can also spare some compassion — at least a touch, while also holding feet to the fire and expecting sports stars to think of more than themselves during the worst pandemic in a century. With fame and the sway it brings comes that responsibility.

Dr. Martin agrees.

“I’m more than willing to give him a tour of an emergency room, talk to him, and answer his questions,” he told me. Hopefully, Rodgers would listen, even though the doctor is a Minnesota Vikings fan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/sports/football/aaron-rodgers-vaccine-covid.html

One woman said Walder began grooming her when she was sent to him for treatment at age 12, some 20 years ago, slowly moving from compliments to sexual acts. After she got her first period at 13, Walder told her this needed to be celebrated, and had sex with her at a hotel in Ramat Gan...

 

Celebrated Haredi children’s author accused of sexually abusing teen girls

 

Newspaper investigation brings three cases in which educator Chaim Walder allegedly took advantage of young women; Walder says claims ‘amount to a blood libel’

Chaim Walder in 2011 

 

Well-known Haredi children’s author Chaim Walder has been accused of taking sexual advantage of a number of teen girls. Walder, known as an educator and therapist in the community, allegedly used his popularity and status to commit the acts.

In an investigative report by the Haaretz newspaper published Friday, three women accused Walder, 52, of sexual abuse — two of them detailing incidents they said happened when they were minors. Walder has denied the allegations.

One woman said Walder began grooming her when she was sent to him for treatment at age 12, some 20 years ago, slowly moving from compliments to sexual acts. After she got her first period at 13, Walder told her this needed to be celebrated, and had sex with her at a hotel in Ramat Gan. She said she was traumatized and cried afterward.

Sexual encounters continued on a weekly basis, the woman said, sometimes several times a week. 

Though she was repulsed by him and only waited for sexual encounters to end, his status and his conversations with her, in which he treated her like an adult, kept her around him. She finally cut of ties around age 16. Several associates of the woman confirmed to Haaretz that she had revealed the details to them in the past.

Another woman told the paper that Walder began using her when she was 15, also some two decades ago, and had sex with her on multiple occasions. A third said he abused his position as her therapist when she came to him in her twenties to have sexual relations. She later filed a police complaint, but the case was closed by prosecutors who cited lack of evidence.

Walder’s attorneys said he denies the accusations “with disgust.”

They said the claims were “false accusations rooted in bold lies that amount to a blood libel” and “are unworthy of a response as they have no connection to reality.”

They further asserted that Walder was being targeted for his work to help children who have suffered from violence and abuse, and “as a result, some people have come together to harm him.”

They also said that their client had undergone a lie detector test in which he denied the accusations and was found to be truthful.

The claims against Walder follow a precipitous fall from grace for another lauded Haredi figure, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who attempted suicide in March following numerous allegations of rape and sexual assault. Meshi-Zahav, who founded the ZAKA emergency service and who was known for various social activities, left a note in which he denied the accusations.

Meshi-Zahav remains hospitalized in a coma since his attempt to take his own life.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/celebrated-haredi-childrens-author-accused-of-sexually-abusing-teen-girls/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-11-14&utm_medium=email

On Stupid...

 

Kahana’s other reforms include the privatization of kashrut supervision, which he argues will benefit ultra-Orthodox kashrut authorities, since food manufacturers will seek out the most stringent supervision in order to ensure that their products are deemed kosher enough for all.

 

An Orthodox minister and his hypocritical ultra-Orthodox critics

 

Matan Kahana’s reforms would bring ultra-Orthodox men into the workforce earlier, remake kashrut, bolster conversion – all according to halacha. Haredi leaders should be delighted

 

Minister of Religious Services Matan Kahana

Ultra-Orthodox leaders, emphatically including politicians, should be rushing to embrace Israel’s new minister for religious services.

A Shabbat-observant, kashrut-keeping, thoroughly Orthodox Jew, Matan Kahana’s core mission, as he set out in an interview published Tuesday in The Times of Israel, is to bolster Israel’s Jewish identity, which he argues has been diluted over the decades.

Kahana speaks with forlorn longing for the early years of the state, for example, when shops and places of entertainment were closed on Shabbat; while he stresses that it is none of his business what Israelis do inside their homes on their day of rest, he argues that the Sabbath in the Jewish state should have a palpably different character, in tune with the only Judaism he considers authentic: halachic Judaism.

Specifically as regards the interests of the ultra-Orthodox community, his appointment portends a stream of beneficial reforms. Most importantly, he and his government are moving to lower the age at which ultra-Orthodox males who have avoided IDF service in order to study Torah full-time can enter the workforce, initially to 21. As things stand, that number is 24, and 24-year-old ultra-Orthodox men tend to be married with children, which means it is hard for them to then get the kind of education that enables them to secure reasonably paid and fulfilling work, condemning many of them to lives of relative poverty.

Kahana and the government acknowledge that this reform may not be fair to non-ultra-Orthodox Israelis, who carry the burden of military service. But they argue credibly that it is wise — that, in time, ultra-Orthodox men entering the workforce at a younger age, and appreciating the benefits, will encourage their younger siblings and their sons to consider both military service and studying a core curriculum, en route to a better life workwise and economically.

The process Kahana has in mind eschews coercion; it also relies on creating IDF frameworks in which ultra-Orthodox recruits can serve without compromising their lifestyle.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men clash with police officers during a protest against the arrest of a young man who failed to comply with an IDF draft order, in Jerusalem on January 26, 2020

 

Kahana’s other reforms include the privatization of kashrut supervision, which he argues will benefit ultra-Orthodox kashrut authorities, since food manufacturers will seek out the most stringent supervision in order to ensure that their products are deemed kosher enough for all.

He also wants to encourage a more welcoming approach to would-be converts to Judaism who are sincere about wanting to join the Jewish people — helping the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are Jewish enough to live here under the terms of the Law of Return but who are not halachically Jewish, his key point being that this new encouragement must not come at the expense of stringent observance of the halacha.

He is no advocate of Reform and Conservative Judaism, seeing no significantly enhanced role in Israel for the non-Orthodox streams, but neither is he adversarial – encouraging both aliyah and the thriving of Diaspora Jewry, and backing the revival of the so-called Western Wall compromise

A veritable Orthodox revolutionary, Kahana has a great more on his agenda, which is why we ran our interview with him at such length.

He is no advocate of Reform and Conservative Judaism, seeing no significantly enhanced role in Israel for the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. But neither is he adversarial, encouraging both aliyah and the thriving of Diaspora Jewry, and backing the revival of the so-called Western Wall compromise, which would formalize the pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Wall and provide an official role in its oversight to leaders of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism.

Rather, he avowedly regards Orthodox Judaism as the rightly dominant approach to the faith in the public sphere of the Jewish state. Again, nothing but good news for the ultra-Orthodox community.

And yet, far from being embraced, Matan Kahana is routinely denounced by ultra-Orthodox politicians, who have found themselves atypically consigned to the opposition benches after so many years expertly utilizing their balance-of-power status between the right-wing and left-wing blocs to determine the nature of Jewish life in the Israeli public sphere.

The members of United Torah Judaism and Shas have spent the past months, as the new coalition took shape and then took office, attempting to depict Kahana, along with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and their wildly diverse coalition government, as constituting a grave threat to Jewish life in Israel, by which they mean their vision of Orthodox Jewish life.

 GANG OF THIEVES - UTJ leader Moshe Gafni (left), Shas leader Aryeh Deri and (standing) UTJ MK Yaakov Litzman hold a press conference at the Knesset, June 8, 2021, denouncing Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett and his “change government” colleagues

 

In fact, the revolution Kahana is seeking to advance faithfully reflects the interests of authentic Orthodox Judaism. Notably, it upholds centuries of Orthodox rabbinical wisdom highlighting the imperative for adherents of the faith to provide financially for their families — that is, to work for a living — and to find time alongside that work for Torah study, with the best and the brightest, but only the best and the brightest, subsidized by the rest of the community to be able to study full-time.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders know all about these rabbinical teachings. The problem is that if their community indeed enters the workforce more fully, it will not need ultra-Orthodox politicians, and the rabbinical leaders behind them, to leverage particular financial and social benefits from the government on their behalf; theirs will no longer be a widely impoverished constituency.

It will also be a community more effectively finding its place in the wider mosaic of Israeli society. The ultra-Orthodox rabbis will lose some of their grip, and the ultra-Orthodox politicians, no longer leveraging for their captive electorate, will be redundant.

No wonder they are doing everything they can to denounce Kahana, Bennett et al as Reform Jews who, in the words of some ultra-Orthodox MKs, should take off their kippot. Kahana, like it or not, is anything but a Reform Jew. He is, rather, reclaiming Orthodoxy, in the political arena, from the self-interested hypocrites who, at the expense of their devout community, have for decades skewed some of its traditions, rights and responsibilities in the Jewish state.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/an-orthodox-minister-and-his-hypocritical-ultra-orthodox-critics/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-11-11&utm_medium=email

$haul Alter Does $htreimel!

 COSTUME CHANGE ---- ANYTHING FOR A FEW DOLLARS!

 

Chabad To Muslim - "Are You Jewish?" Muslim "YES" - Chabad - "OY, DO WE HAVE A SHIDDUCH FOR YOU" - In addition, the woman learned that Eliyah was affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch of Texas for approximately six to seven years.

CHABAD SHLIACH WALKING MUSLIM TO THE CHUPPAH

 

Bklyn Jewish Woman Shocked to Learn that Husband is a Lebanese Muslim; Hid True Identity

The husband, who goes by the name Eliyah Hawila, according to his Twitter page has presented himself as a strictly observant Jew, speaking fluent Hebrew, and fraudulently claiming to have both Sephardic and Ashkenazic antecedents.

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 13, Hawila’s real name is Ali Hassan and sources close to the woman’s family have said that his passport indicates that he is from Lebanon.

The sources revealed that subsequent to marrying the man a few weeks ago, the woman became suspicious because his command of the Arabic language was too perfect. When the woman’s brothers went to his home to further investigate this matter, it was then that they discovered his Lebanese passport with the name Ali Hassan in it.

The case has been reported to the FBI and now fearing for her life, the woman is currently living in a safe house.

The woman in question who has chosen to remain anonymous for obvious reasons had known that her intended was from Lebanon when they were dating but because he appeared to be a devoutly Orthodox Jew in practice, she never doubted that he was halachically Jewish. Eliyah told the woman that he was estranged from his family and the story he offered her sounded quite convincing. The fact that he spoke Hebrew fluently also helped to buttress his spurious claims.

In addition, the woman learned that Eliyah was affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch of Texas for approximately six to seven years.

The report also indicated that Eliyah learned Hebrew and seriously engaged in Torah learning during the time he spent in Texas with Chabad. After he has mastered his Hebrew language skills and projected the image of someone who was immersed in Torah did he marry this woman.

A senior member of the Chabad community in the US told the publication Be’Chadrei Chareidim that “Chabad did not convert this Shiite Lebanese imposter and did not perform the wedding or get involved in any way in the identity of the man.”

The member added: “This is an unfortunate case of a confused youth who struck up a virtual relationship with a member of the Syrian Jewish community who was mortified to discover after her marriage that he was not Jewish. A Chabad rabbi in Texas was asked by the officiating rabbi to walk the groom to the Chupah since he did not have any close relatives in the US.”

Information has also emerged that Eliyah had shown the woman a family tree of his antecedents, but soon thereafter it was revealed that his alleged genealogical background was replete with multiple inaccuracies.  As shocking as it may sound, Eliyah also recorded on his family tree that one of his ancestors was notorious Jewish mobster, Meyer Lansky and provided names of other prominent Ashkenazic Jews. None of his findings could be verified by reliable sources.

If things weren’t bizarre enough, Eliyah also professed to be an employee for the National Security Agency (NSA) and displayed a supposed “letter” from his contemporaries at the NSA which stated that they congratulated him and his bride on their wedding.

When the wedding day arrived, Eliyah’s family were absent from the proceedings and he provided his bride and her family with cogent reasons as to why they chose not to attend.

Now that the FBI is involved in the case and seeking leads and information about Eliyah and his affiliations, the United States Department of Homeland Security has been briefed and is investigating if Eliyah is in the US illegally or whether he has a visa. Also brought in to this case is the Israeli Consulate General who has launched a probe of this man.

On the religious end, it has reported that in addition to the various governmental agencies who are looking into this matter, prominent Rabbonim and community organizations are investigating if in fact the man claiming to be a Jew has a Jewish mother or not.

Eliyah Hawila’s Twitter page

The report indicated that the woman will remain in the safe house she is in until a confirmation is made on her husband’s true identity.

While residing in Texas and spending significant amounts of time with the Chabad chapter at Texas A&M University, the rabbi who heads the group issued the following statement earlier today, which appeared on the YWN web site.

The Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center at Texas A&M is open to all Jewish faculty and students to explore Judaism.

In 2018 a student presenting himself as Eliyah Haliwa began visiting Chabad along with other local campus Jewish institutions (including serving as president at one of them). He would occasionally attend Shabbat meals at Chabad, and infrequently attended the services or Torah classes.

Last year he met a woman from N.Y. on a Jewish dating website.

He falsely presented himself to her as observant. When asked by the woman and her family, I informed them that his conduct did not reflect that of a fully observant Jew.

The fundamental responsibility of the officiating rabbi at a wedding, the mesader kiddushin, is to determine the Jewish status [birur hayahadut] of the couple and ensure that they are both Jewish, single and allowed to marry each other in accordance with Jewish law.

Accordingly, when Rabbi Ezra Zafrani, a respected Syrian rabbi in Lakewood, N.J., asked me if Eliyah was Jewish, I explicitly informed him that I did not know and that whoever was officiating would need to do a proper birur and would need to independently confirm his Jewish status.

The wedding itself was officiated by Rabbi Zafrani’s son, Rabbi David Zafrani. As my wife and I were in New York for other reasons, Rabbi David Zafrani, who was officiating in place of his father, and his wife, asked us to join the wedding. As the groom had no family attending, at the request of the coup                     le and the Zafranis, we walked him down the aisle and I signed the ketubah, which had been drafted by Rabbi Ezra Zafrani. We were not officiating and our involvement was predicated on the understanding that, as supervising rabbis, Ezra and David Zafrani had done their due diligence to confirm the groom’s Jewish status.

In the ensuing weeks, it has come to light that the bride was aware that Eliyah was using a false name, information he concealed from others, when she learned of his Muslim name. We were clearly misled about his identity. Our hearts go out to this woman, her family and everyone else deceived by this individual here in Texas and in New York and New Jersey.

Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff

 

https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/11/bklyn-sephardic-woman-shocked-to-learn-that-husband-is-a-lebanese-muslim-hid-true-identity/

When Chassidic Judaism Becomes Nothing More Than Money, Real Estate & Power!

 

 "Following the 2019 split in Gur, the leadership of the mainstream community began enacting severe sanctions against the breakaway families with children being harassed out of their schools and yeshivas, people fired from their jobs and a variety of other measures taken against those who joined Shaul Alter’s new community."

 

Breakaway hassidic leader greeted joyfully in US

 

Rabbi Shaul Alter broke away from the mainstream Gur community in 2019 and is now establishing institutions for his new hassidic community.

Rabbi Shaul Alter, head of a breakaway faction in the Gerrer hassidic community, at a celebration last week

 

The head of a breakaway faction of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Gur hassidic community has been greeted rapturously in America, where he is currently visiting, with thousands lining the streets to greet him and participate in celebrations about his visit.

 

In a dramatic sequence of events in 2019, Rabbi Shaul Alter, first cousin of the Gur hassidic dynasty’s Grand Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, split away from the main Gur community following years of tension between the two, with some 300 families in Israel following him at the time.

 

The split was striking because of Gur’s status as the largest, wealthiest and most influential hassidic community in Israel. As one of the largest hassidic movements in the world, the schism dealt a serious blow to its prestige.

 

The new community, which calls itself Ger Torah, now numbers some 500 families, with another 300 in the US, while the mainstream Gur community in Israel is thought to number as many as 100,000 people.

 

Alter is currently on a trip to the US where he has been visiting members of the Gur community who have split from the mainstream sect and joined his new one.

 

He has also met with hassidic grand rabbis in America who are friendly toward him, and has been fundraising for the planned Jerusalem headquarters of the new Gur community.

 

Since leaving last Tuesday, Alter has met with some of the most senior Gerrer officials in the US and visited some of its most established institutions that have switched allegiance from the mainstream grouping in Israel to Ger Torah. (Versus Ger NOT Torah)

 

The climax of Alter’s visit was a tisch (joyous Hassidic celebration with the rebbe) after Shabbat ended this past Saturday attended by an estimated 15,000 people in Borough Park, New York, in an enormous marquee setup for the rabbi’s visit.

 

Thousands of hassidim lined the street for Alter as he left the location after the event.

 

Shaul Alter also visited a yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey, and gave a Torah lesson reportedly attended by hundreds of people.

 

Earlier this year, Shaul Alter’s new community conducted a wildly successful fundraising campaign which garnered some NIS 50 million, of which NIS 40m. has been spent on the purchase of land for the new sect’s headquarters on Jeremiah Street in Jerusalem.

 

One of the main goals of Alter’s trip to the US was to raise the necessary funds to finance the actual construction of the building.

 

The headquarters, planned to be eight floors, will house the new community’s central synagogue, study hall and its other institutions such as schools and yeshivas.

 

Following the 2019 split in Gur, the leadership of the mainstream community began enacting severe sanctions against the breakaway families with children being harassed out of their schools and yeshivas, people fired from their jobs and a variety of other measures taken against those who joined Shaul Alter’s new community.

 

Although some of the families who left returned to the central Gur community because of these reprisals, Ger Torah has grown over the last two years as families have grown confident that they would be able to find a home in the new community.

 

Alter’s success in raising money for the new headquarters and institutions is critical for the future of his young community since hassidic life revolves around community institutions and events, as well as schools and yeshivas for its children, without which such a community has little viability.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/breakaway-hassidic-leader-greeted-joyfully-in-us-684389?_ga=2.200211116.369480656.1636311589-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NSO+s+Pegasus+spyware+used+to+hack+Palestinian+activists++phones&utm_campaign=November+8%2C+2021+Nightr&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

A Fraudulent & Worthless Hashgacha/Kosher Certificate --- Becomes More Worthless!

 

Kashrut ‘revolution’ legislation passes into law

 

The legislation abolishes the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate over kashrut supervision.

Kashrut certificate in Jerusalem, July 21, 2021. 

 

 

Dramatic reforms to the provision of kashrut services have passed into law after the Budget Arrangements Law was passed in the Knesset on Thursday.

 

The legislation will likely have a historic impact on the provision of kashrut supervision, and influence further changes to other religious services in the future.

 

The legislation, advanced by Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana, will abolish the monopoly of the Chief Rabbinate over kashrut supervision and open the market to competition by allowing independent kashrut authorities to legally provide supervision services.

 

The kashrut services provided by the Chief Rabbinate and its local branches has for years suffered from numerous forms of corruption and has been castigated by state bodies and NGOs for failing to provide an adequate service.

 

Under the new law, the Chief Rabbinate will establish two levels of kashrut standards, basic and stringent, and a body within the Rabbinate will be tasked with ensuring the independent authorities comply with those standards.

 

 

 

 

THE BUILDING of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in Jerusalem

 

 

To ensure the establishment of independent kashrut authorities will not be thwarted by the Chief Rabbinate through overly stringent standards, a panel of three rabbis with specific qualifications will be able to, if they so wish, establish a separate set of standards.

 

This provision in particular will mean that the Rabbinate will no longer have exclusive control over the provision of kashrut in the country.

 

One other major reform in the law allows the independent authorities to give kashrut authorization for food products from abroad, something that could reduce costs for imported food.

 

The law will go into effect on January 1, 2023.

 

But on January 1, 2022, the current geographical districts in which only local rabbinate branches can operate will be abolished, meaning a chief municipal or regional rabbi anywhere in Israel could provide supervision anywhere else.

 

This is a boon for the kashrut service run by the moderate religious-Zionist Tzohar organization, which already operates a kashrut supervision service, through loopholes from earlier laws.

 

Although until now, Tzohar and any other independent kashrut authority could not legally issue kashrut certificates for restaurants and food businesses stating that they are kosher in writing; the abolition of the geographic districts will mean that such certificates will be legal.

 

This step will immediately boost competition in kashrut supervision before the full law takes effect.

 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/kashrut-revolution-legislation-passes-into-law-684012?_ga=2.83215254.1420500749.1636044940-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel++will+do+what+it+needs+to++against+a+nuclear+Iran&utm_campaign=November+4%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

25 years later, man sues bar mitzvah tutor, synagogue and day school for abuse

Nearly 25 years after his bar mitzvah tutor pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct, a 40-year-old New Jersey native has sued the former tutor as well as the synagogue and day school that employed him.

The tutor, Akiva Roth, pleaded guilty in 1997 to four counts of lewdness, and lost his jobs at the East Brunswick Jewish Center, the former Solomon Schechter School of Essex and Union counties and Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. But the plaintiff in the lawsuit and two other former students of Roth who were interviewed over the past month contend that the three institutions failed to properly inform their communities of the situation, allowing Roth to continue teaching in other Jewish organizations for years.

 

Akiva Roth was a bar mitzvah tutor convicted of four counts of lewdness in 1997.

The three men, two of whom were speaking publicly about their experiences for the first time, said Roth’s behavior — which included masturbating in front of middle-school boys and near-incessant talk of pornography and penises — was an open secret at the synagogue, school and camp in the mid 1990s. He was sentenced to 10 years probation for his sexual behavior in front of four boys in one of their homes. But the men said that the criminal investigation at the time was too narrow, and expressed outrage that the Conservative movement has yet to be held fully accountable for its handling of the situation.

“I’ve frankly been kind of disgusted and my parents have been disgusted for years that the investigation never went past the four kids,” said Scott Schonfeld, a former Ramah camper and student at East Brunswick and Schechter — now known as Golda Och Academy — who alleges that Roth was sexually inappropriate towards him.

Schonfeld, now 40 and living in California, said he had never been contacted about Roth’s lewd behavior by detectives or administrators at the camp, synagogue or school. “You’re literally the first person ever to ask me about it,” he recently told the Forward.

Roth, meanwhile, worked at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Drew University’s Hillel and Yeshiva University before the Forward reported on the misconduct in 2013.

The lawsuit and other accusations come as the Conservative movement, like other parts of the Jewish community, are undergoing a reckoning over past handling of sexual and other misconduct.

Four years after the Harvey Weinstein scandal launched the #MeToo movement, the Rabbinical Assembly last month made public its list of expelled or suspended rabbis for the first time. The Assembly announced in April a plan to revise its code of conduct, while the Reform movement’s seminary, rabbinical organization and synagogue network have all hired separate law firms to independently investigate allegations of harassment and the institutions’ policies to prevent it.

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The fresh allegations against Roth join a steady trickle of recent stories about sexual misconduct with Jewish youth. Rabbi Jordan Soffer, now head of a Jewish day school in Sharon, Mass., in August alleged that an employee of United Synagogue Youth sexually abused him at a convention when Soffer was 15, but continued to work in the Conservative movement for years. Two victims of the same USY staffer filed lawsuits against the youth group this summer, and the CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism quickly announced it would implement new safety procedures and investigate how the organization handles complaints.

After being informed of the lawsuit and other material about Roth gathered by the Forward, Camp Ramah said it had hired the law firm Jackson Lewis to conduct an investigation.

“While these allegations relate to conduct 25 years ago, we take this new information very seriously and are committed to discovering the truth of what may have occurred,” Camp Ramah said in a statement. “We owe it to the individuals directly involved and to our community.”

The camp also said its current employees are trained to respect boundaries and recognize predatory behavior, and that its child-safety policies were recently audited — at Ramah’s request — by Sacred Spaces, a Jewish abuse-prevention organization.

“Then, as now, we stand with all victims of sexual misconduct and recognize the courage it takes for them to come forward,” the statement said.

Roth, who was fired by Yeshiva University after the Forward’s 2013 articles, says on his LinkedIn profile that he now works as a Hebrew translator. He did not respond to requests for comment made by phone and through Facebook, where he has posted mini-sermons, including one in which he describes Moses as “canceled.”

“He doesn’t get to see the promised land,” Roth noted. “So in one way he was canceled. In another way it teaches an important lesson. In cancel culture, there has to be a happy medium between canceling the entirety of what a person has done just based on one foible or one negative quality.”

‘It wasn’t hidden at all’

Akiva Roth grew up in the Conservative movement — his father, Rabbi Joel Roth, was an influential leader in the Rabbinical Assembly and a professor of Jewish law at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Roth majored in Jewish studies and political science at Rutgers University and graduated in 1994, according to his LinkedIn profile.

So when the East Brunswick Jewish Center’s population swelled in the early 1990s, the younger Roth was an easy hire to help Cantor Jonas Rosen, a Holocaust survivor and beloved pillar of the community, train the bnai mitzvah candidates. Roth, who is now about 50, also taught at what was then Schechter; and worked at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires until the criminal investigation.

Yishai Cohen, now a 38-year-old who lives in Florida, was one of the four boys whose testimony that Roth had masturbated in front of them led to his guilty plea. He said in a recent interview that the four attended Camp Ramah together and that he also witnessed Roth masturbate in front of an entire bunk of boys who were in middle school.

“Everyone knew Akiva was just a pervert,” Cohen said. “That was just known among the boys. That’s why it was so bizarre. It wasn’t hidden at all.”

Schonfeld said he once saw Roth’s exposed penis in a bunk with other boys, and that Roth would openly talk about penises and masturbation.

The plaintiff said his abuse went further.

“He ultimately led me into a bathroom,” the plaintiff said in the interview. “Inside of the East Brunswick Jewish Center, not very far from the classroom where he taught me. And proceeded to unzip his pants in front of a standup urinal and masturbate in full sight of me, while encouraging me to join him and participate.

“I saw him ejaculate,” the plaintiff continued. “I was 12 years old.”

The first page of a lawsuit filed by an anonymous plaintiff, now an adult, against his bar mitzvah tutor, a synagogue and a day school for alleged abuse when he was a child

 

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The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey’s Middlesex County Superior Court last week, accuses Schechter — now Golda Och Academy — and the East Brunswick Jewish Center of negligence for failing to oversee Roth and protect their young students. The plaintiff has also sued Roth personally, alleging sexual abuse and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit seeks damages and attorney’s fees but does not specify how much.

“I just thought he was one sick bastard,” the plaintiff said. “Unfortunately it took me half a lifetime to realize that that’s sex abuse.”

‘I never talked about it’

In the summer of 1996, Cohen said, one of his friends confided in his brother about what Roth was doing. The brother told their parents, and from there things moved quickly. Cohen recalled being interviewed by an investigator with the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, and then hearing that Roth had been arrested and lost his job at the synagogue, school and camp. But all three institutions chose to handle the problem quietly.

Schonfeld and the plaintiff each said that Ramah, Schechter and the East Brunswick Jewish Center all failed to inform parents of Roth’s arrest or the reason his employment with them ended. Schonfeld attended all three institutions, but said his parents only learned of Roth’s misconduct years later from the father of one of the boys in the 1996 criminal case.

Rabbi Paul Resnick, Ramah’s executive director in 1996, said he contacted child protective services as soon as he heard about the allegations, which focused on Roth’s conduct at a private home. Ramah did not, at the time, investigate whether any misconduct took place at camp, Resnick said.

“Because these allegations were not yet fully substantiated, we did not believe it was appropriate to share the news with our entire camp community,” Resnick emailed in response to the Forward’s questions. “Importantly, I did not want an internal investigation to interfere with the state investigation.”

Schonfeld said in the interview that as a student at Schechter, he occasionally carpooled with the son of East Brunswick Jewish Center’s Rabbi Chaim Rogoff. After the first day of school in 1996, Schonfeld recalled, when they arrived at the Rogoff’s home, Roth was there.

He said the rabbi and the tutor told him that Roth was no longer working at Schechter because of inappropriate behavior involving other boys. But instead of offering support or asking whether he had any problems with Roth, Schonfeld said, “I do distinctly remember that Chaim Rogoff swore me to secrecy.”

“Meaning: do not tell your parents, you cannot tell your parents,” Schonfeld recalled. “I complied. I never talked about it. He scared me, and it worked.”

Rogoff, who left the East Brunswick Jewish Center more than a decade ago, did not respond to a request for comment.

Charlotte Abramson, the principal of Schechter’s middle school at the time, wrote in an email that she could not recall details about how the school handled the case. Roth never worked for the school again after his arrest, she said.

“I have no knowledge of that nor any recollection of what the school’s official response may have been at the time,” Abramson said. “I do know that a major priority and obligation of the educational institution was — and is — to assure and protect the safety and welfare of the students and the institution.”

The current leadership of what is now Golda Och Academy, a non-denominational day school in West Orange, N.J., said in a statement that there is no record of communication with parents about Roth’s case, and that the school would notify the community and reach out to support victims if similar allegations arose today.

“We feel deep compassion for the people victimized by Mr. Roth,” the statement said. “Any violation of the teacher-student relationship is unacceptable. That Mr. Roth broke the trust of students and their parents while preparing them to become responsible members of the Jewish community is especially reprehensible.”

Golda Och, like Ramah, said it now trains staff to recognize and report signs of sexual abuse. “We are committed to creating a safe and supportive environment for our entire community,” the school said in the statement. “Our policy includes following all state-mandated background checks, reference checking, and regular training for faculty and staff on preventing, recognizing, and reporting signs of sexual abuse.”

The East Brunswick Jewish Center said it would not comment due to the pending litigation.

‘The effect on me has been tremendous’

Schonfeld and the man now suing under the name John Doe both said separately that they were never contacted by law enforcement during or after the investigation that led to Roth’s 1996 arrest. The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said it could not locate any records of Roth’s criminal case and declined to comment further. Middlesex County Superior Court also did not find any records, and did not respond to questions about whether the case was sealed.

The plaintiff in the suit said he still struggles with the emotional impact of Roth’s actions: “The effect on me has been tremendous.”

He said it took him a long time to realize he needed to take action to make clear that Roth’s offenses went beyond what he pleaded guilty to in 1997 — and to hold Roth’s former employers accountable. When the Forward reported in 2013 that Yeshiva University had hired Roth as a lecturer despite his criminal record of abusing boys, that, he said, helped to motivate him.

“This was a long-coming development for me,” the plaintiff said. “I think it probably really began in earnest in 2013, when I realized that he had abused so many children and that the truth had not been told.

“At that point I knew I was going to do it, and it was a matter of developing the personal courage and fortitude to be able to get to this moment.”

https://forward.com/news/477521/lawsuit-sexual-abuse-akiva-roth-bar-mitzvah-tutor-synagogue-day-school/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3130732

I Did The Math -- At Least 1 in 3 Chabadniks Under The Age Of 40, Are Not Halachically Jewish! (50% or more of Intermarriage Rates among the Reform, Conservative & Unafilliated)

 

 Pew Research Center:

"While many Hasidic groups are growing primarily through procreation, Chabad, focused as it is on outreach, appears to be picking up a significant chunk of the Jews who have disaffiliated from the Reform or Conservative movements or who have never had much of an institutional affiliation to begin with. In its recent survey, Pew estimated that among Chabad participants, 24% are Orthodox, while 26% are Reform, 27% are Conservative, and 16% don’t identify with any particular branch of Judaism."

 

Chabad bet on more than $137 million in real estate during COVID

 

A Chicago church was bought by a Chabad emissary couple and will be converted into a synagogue and preschool.

A RUSTIC sign expresses a heartfelt welcome to the Chabad House in Utah

Facing declining membership, a mainline Protestant congregation in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood listed its historic church complex for sale in the summer of last year. Church leaders were told it would take at least a year to complete the deal. But within days, an attractive offer came in, and a few months later the building’s $2.85 million sale closed. 

 

The buyers were a pair of Chabad emissaries who had been serving Jews in the North Side neighborhood from their rented apartment since 2015. By converting the church complex, the Hasidic couple, Rabbi Dovid Kotlarsky and his wife Devorah Leah, could now realize their dream of expanding Chabad’s footprint and establishing a synagogue and preschool.

 

According to Chabad.org, key to making the purchase was a $2 million donation from Chicago tax attorney Jaques Aaron Preis, who heads the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Preis was quoted as praising Chabad’s “authenticity” and welcoming attitude.

 

The real estate transaction in Lakeview — a hub of Jewish life in Chicago, where large Reform, Conservative and Orthodox synagogues have long operated from stately buildings — represents just one of dozens of investments by Chabad in new buildings or in renovating and expanding existing properties. 

 

In some regards, Chabad seems like an anomaly in the Jewish world. Many non-Orthodox Jewish institutions are unsure about what the future holds for their physical spaces after a year and a half of largely digital engagement — and after decades of declining synagogue membership for Judaism’s largest American denominations. Chabad, meanwhile, whose strictly Orthodox emissaries seek followers from across the range of Jewish beliefs and practices, appears to be confident about its capacity to attract large numbers of people to its centers.  

 

 

The expansive interior of the Chicago Loop Synagogue includes its famous stained-glass window. Synagogue leadership hopes to turn the congregation, which has fallen on hard times, into a showcase for similar congregation windows

The movement has embarked on at least $137 million in real estate projects since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to numbers compiled by Chabad.org and reviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

 

In Greenwich, Connecticut, the local Chabad paid $20 million to take over the site of a Jewish day school that closed last year. In Durham, North Carolina, a $3 million renovation of a historic inn — supported in part by Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Duke University law professor who is married to U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin — was dedicated last week. And the Chabad at the University of Illinois is spending more than $7 million to own and renovate a massive Tudor-style fraternity house.

 

Because the thousands of Chabad emissaries around the world fundraise independently, Chabad’s news and public relations arm had to collect the data by gathering media reports and by carrying out an informal survey, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson. 

 

The survey turned up a number of capital projects that have not yet been publicly announced, including some purchases that are underway now. Seligson said the true extent of Chabad’s recent real estate expansion is likely much larger than the $137 million figure indicates.

 

But he said he wanted to release the information he had in conjunction with the 38th annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, which takes place this week in-person in and around Brooklyn, New York. as well as virtually. 

 

“We were doing an exploration of Chabad’s impact and growth to examine the effectiveness of various programs through this difficult time of the pandemic,” he said. “These numbers came into sharp focus as we looked at the level of engagement and our institutional and infrastructure growth.”

 

Seligson also pointed out that during the pandemic, Chabad minted 250 new emissary couples who went out to serve existing Chabad centers or establish new ones.

 

Even before the pandemic growth spurt, Chabad had already engaged some 37% of American Jewish adults in activities, according to recent survey data from the Pew Research Center. 

 

Over the past 20 years, the number of Chabad synagogues in the United States has nearly tripled, reaching 1,036 in 2020, according to a tally by Joel Kotkin, a Chapman University professor who studies demographic trends, and independent researcher Edward Heyman. Over that same period, the overall number of synagogues declined by 29%. 

 

“While their secular counterparts are shrinking, the Hasidim and other more traditionally observant Jewish communities in America are experiencing a surge of growth,” Kotkin and Heyman wrote in a Tablet magazine article analyzing their data. 

 

While many Hasidic groups are growing primarily through procreation, Chabad, focused as it is on outreach, appears to be picking up a significant chunk of the Jews who have disaffiliated from the Reform or Conservative movements or who have never had much of an institutional affiliation to begin with. In its recent survey, Pew estimated that among Chabad participants, 24% are Orthodox, while 26% are Reform, 27% are Conservative, and 16% don’t identify with any particular branch of Judaism.

 

“In the present the core social needs of the Jewish world are filled by two kinds of organizations: One is Chabad, which is expanding rapidly and offers a full gamut of services,” Kotkin and Heyman wrote. (The other kind of organization is the local Jewish federation and its affiliated Jewish community centers.)

 

As Chabad proliferates, it is finding among the Jews it serves many willing donors. Sometimes, individual contributors like the Preisses in Chicago play an outsized role, but their gift was accompanied by $500,000 in small donations, according to Chabad.org.

 

In comments to Chabad.org, the Preisses explained why they gave to Chabad. “They focus on each mitzvah without criticizing. They’re so welcoming,” said Jacques Preis, who was raised Reform. “It’s not a diluted Judaism,” said Evelyn, his wife.

 

“Much of the funding for these campaigns is raised locally from people whose lives are personally enriched by Chabad in their community,” Seligson said. “They represent people from large donors to large numbers of small donors like college students who are committed to supporting Jewish life and programs that inspire them with whatever they can based on their means.”

 

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/chabad-bet-on-more-than-137-million-in-real-estate-during-covid-683317?_ga=2.129860229.826187403.1635417108-1229034299.1617710680&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NASA%2C+Israelis+reveal+in-depth+measurement+of+Jupiter+s+red+spot&utm_campaign=October+28%2C+2021+Night&vgo_ee=Jn367jKILnpErXAAhCpdDovy7T5YEJ8ohjC9vauJg30%3D

He Has My Vote For The Most Ignorant, Low-Class & Vile Rebbe of Bnei Brak, Possibly All Of Israel! Pathetic & Disgraceful!!! What happens if someone is broke and has no money to put in his plate? האדמור ר' ישראל מויזניץ מקבל אנשים עם קערת כסף.

 Grubba Ying - Scam Artist -  Vishnitz Shnorrer - No Problem Shaming People Who Do Not Have The Ability To Put Money In His Plate! FEH!

 

But The Beat Goes On....Jailed rabbi Berland arrested in connection with murders linked to Hasidic cult

 

Jailed rabbi Berland arrested in connection with murders linked to Hasidic cult

 

Convicted sex offender currently serving time for fraud; he is detained in prison over alleged link to decades-old murder of man and suspected murder of missing teen

 

 

 Eliezer Berland shrouds himself with his talit (prayer shawl) at the Magistrates Court in Jerusalem, as he is put on trial for sexual assault charges

 

Jailed sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland was arrested Monday in connection with decades-old homicide cases linked to his extremist ultra-Orthodox sect, according to multiple Hebrew-language reports.

Berland entered prison last week after he was convicted of fraud in June, in a plea deal that saw him sentenced to 18 months.

He was arrested and questioned at the Nitzan Prison in Ramle.

His wife, Tehillah Berland, was later also detained by police for questioning in Jerusalem.

The rabbi, who has not been formally identified by authorities as the individual arrested on Monday, becomes the 11th person detained recently over the suspected murder of a teenage boy and the unsolved murder of a man in the 1980s and 1990s.

Most details of the investigation are under a gag order that is in place until the end of the year.

The investigation into the disappearance and suspected murder of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit and the murder of 41-year-old Avi Edri is tied to the Shuvu Bonim sect, run by Berland.

 

Nissim Shitrit (L) and Avi Edri in undated photos 

 

One of those arrested earlier this month was the husband of a woman who has told police she was forced by sect members to lure one of the victims to a specific location. An attorney for the woman has said that her client was a victim of the extremist sect, and is cooperating with police in order to see justice done.

Another suspect is reportedly the son of a former senior government minister.

Police have previously said that some of those arrested were questioned over allegations of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy to commit a crime. Not all are suspected of direct involvement in the killings.

Shitrit was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986. In a documentary released by Kan in 2020, one of Berland’s former disciples said that the religious police murdered the boy, dismembered him and buried his body in Eshtaol Forest near Beit Shemesh. His remains were never found and the case was never solved.

Edri was found beaten to death in Ramot Forest in the north of Jerusalem in 1990.

The cult-like Shuvu Bonim offshoot of the Bratslav Hasidic sect has had repeated run-ins with the law, including attacking witnesses.

Police guard followers of Rabbi Eliezer Berland waiting for his arrival at the Nitzan Prison in Ramle, on October 28, 2021

 

Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he had sexually assaulted several female followers. After evading arrest for three years and slipping through various countries, Berland returned to Israel and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016, on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal that included seven months of time served. He was freed just five months later, in part due to his ill health.

Berland was arrested for fraud in February 2020, after hundreds of people filed police complaints saying that he had sold prayers and pills to desperate members of his community, promised families of individuals with disabilities that their loved ones would be able to walk, and told families of convicted felons that their relatives would be freed from prison.

The 18-month sentence he is currently serving was set to include the year he spent in jail before being released to house arrest in February of this year.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/jailed-rabbi-berland-arrested-in-connection-with-murders-linked-to-hasidic-cult/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2021-11-01&utm_medium=email