tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post116973282913184872..comments2024-03-27T15:07:31.495-04:00Comments on <b><center>Unorthodox-Jew </center></b> <br><small>A Critical View of Orthodox Judaism</small>: Another Naked Man Dies In Jump From Borough Park Office BuildingPaul Mendlowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05887774341136059873noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-29662013340349501272018-03-01T09:53:58.800-05:002018-03-01T09:53:58.800-05:00As Chesterton observed, "A man is angry at a ...As Chesterton observed, "A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true."<br /><br />Who gets angry over this one should be very telling.<br /><br />פורים שמחProfessor Ryeskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927577382273914724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-64866430756768765892018-03-01T06:58:43.764-05:002018-03-01T06:58:43.764-05:00This has got to be parody. If true, it is tragic.This has got to be parody. If true, it is tragic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-57124620257170826782009-02-05T21:38:00.000-05:002009-02-05T21:38:00.000-05:00Had I not tears in my eyes from the private and pu...Had I not tears in my eyes from the private and public stories that I've heard and witnessed regarding shidduchim I would be rolling on the floor laughing until drowning in tears. The mirror reveals a sad bunch of underachieving wannabes who attempt to squeeze out the last vestiges of honor for themselves. I wanted a very simple life. A job. A wife that was attentive, kind and welcoming. Children who would respect tradition and recognize the authority of the Father in Heaven and at home. I wanted a truly observant Jewish life. Not Orthodox. Observant. I am in tears. My family is no more. I'm alone. It is my fault, they say. I wasn't doing enough. I didn't find a job or didn't get a better one. I was too harsh. I was too soft. I disciplined inconsistently. I didn't rip off my wife's clothes for 14 days in a row. I have no words to describe my co-religionists who demand the rewards of this world and who believe they are entitled to the rewards in this and the next world. Who entitled them? Hashem? He entitled no one. You have to bust your butt to get to the head of the line. And there is no guarantee that the head of the line is your place. You just have to strive to get there. You don't get to be the first amongst equals - it doesn't shtim.<BR/>I don't want sympathy I will come out on the other end of this leg of the journey a stronger and better person. It may work out yet. Life is not reel, it's real. Your friends may be lying to you to cover up their own issues, count on it. To be continued on the next UOJ post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-44371218022309849692009-02-04T23:30:00.000-05:002009-02-04T23:30:00.000-05:00In this finstere golus some candles still burn.Riv...In this finstere golus some candles still burn.<BR/><BR/>Rivky Holzberg's Shlichus Lives On<BR/><BR/>Submitted by Dena Gottlieb of Modiin Ilit, Israel<BR/>Sometime during the shiva for Rivky Holtzberg Hy"d, a young woman came into the Rosenberg home. She told Mrs. Rosenberg that she had something for her, and handed her a small package. Curious, Mrs. Rosenberg opened it and gasped. Inside was Rivky's diamond ring and one of her nicer Shabbos dresses.<BR/>"How did you get these?"<BR/>The young woman gently told Rivky's mother, "Let me tell you my story."<BR/>"I had been traveling in India. Somehow I ran afoul of the law and ended up in an Indian jail. You cannot begin to imagine what an awful, horrible, primitive place it was... The only redeeming factor is that the jails there are quite disorganized, and those who are in charge are corrupt. Somehow I managed to escape.<BR/>"The first place I ran to was, of course, the Chabad House. Everyone knew that that's where you went when you needed help. Rivky welcomed me, fed me, and told me that it was vital that I get out of the country. I knew that - but I was very afraid. What if they would check me, check my passport? Then Rivky gave me one of her Shabbat dresses and her diamond ring. 'If you look very dignified, a well-dressed married woman with a ring on her finger, they won't look too closely at you. They will leave you alone. A woman with a diamond ring is in a different class. She's a respectable woman. She's not a criminal, someone who has escaped from jail. They won't bother you.'<BR/>"I took the dress and the ring and as you can see, I got out safely. And now I have come to give you Rivky's dress and her ring that she lent to me."<BR/>Rivky's mother took the possessions of her beloved daughter. Then she told the young woman, "I recently saw Rivky and noticed that she wasn't wearing her ring. When I asked her about it, she told me 'zeh b'shlichut.' It's on shlichus."Arthurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17405098837405331655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-2659919429299276492009-02-04T17:51:00.000-05:002009-02-04T17:51:00.000-05:00http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/200...http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/02/fbi_searches_ho.html<BR/><BR/>FBI agents and State Police investigators today searched a Cambridge apartment that is the long-time home of a leading suspect in the unsolved 1982 deaths of seven people from cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area.<BR/><BR/>But authorities declined to say whether the search of the apartment belonging to James W. Lewis, 62, of 170 Gore St., was linked to the killings that remain one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in the last generation.<BR/><BR/>"All I can tell you is we have conducted a search on Gore Street in Cambridge, and it's connected to an ongoing criminal investigation," said Gail Marcinkiewicz, an FBI spokeswoman.<BR/><BR/>She later confirmed that authorities also searched a storage facility in Cambridge but declined to say where or why. "We don't talk about what we're looking for in searches," she said<BR/><BR/>Lewis has lived at The Pavilion apartment complex since around 1995, when he was freed from federal prison after serving more than 12 years for trying to extort $1 million from the painkiller's manufacturers.<BR/><BR/>The seven victims of cyanide-tainted Extra-Strength Tylenol died after taking capsules that had been purchased from drug stores and groceries in the Chicago area. The killer was never identified.<BR/><BR/>Lewis, an out-of-work accountant, was widely described as a prime suspect at the time, but was never charged with the deaths. He has lived in the Gore Street apartment with his wife, Leann Lewis, since he left prison.<BR/><BR/>He was sentenced to prison in June 1983 for demanding $1 million from Johnson & Johnson, parent of Tylenol maufacturer McNeil Consumer Products Co., "to stop the killing." Johnson & Johnson was his wife's former employer.<BR/><BR/>In 2004, Lewis was arrested on charges of rape, kidnapping and other offenses for an attack on a woman in the apartment. But prosecutors dropped the charges the day the trial was to start in July 2007 -- after he had been jailed for three years -- after the victim refused to testify, according to the district attorney's office.<BR/><BR/>Several neighbors said Lewis is known around the building as "The Tylenol Man" and described him as a tall, thin man who jogged often and had a computer programming business They said he often carried a suitcase and recently lost a lot of weight.<BR/><BR/>"A completely unremarkable-looking man" was how a neighbor, Colleen Bryant, described him. "He probably seems perfectly normal, but everybody knows who he is."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-19918555629128177842009-02-04T17:24:00.000-05:002009-02-04T17:24:00.000-05:00On February 2, the Commission filed a complaint in...On February 2, the Commission filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that Forest Resources Management Corp. (Forest), Chaim Justman (Justman), William J. Reilly (Reilly), and Pinchus Gold (Gold) defrauded investors, and reaped approximately $800,000 in unlawful profits by fraudulently procuring unlegended, purportedly free-trading shares of Forest stock, and then selling these shares to the investing public after Forest's false and misleading material misrepresentations and omissions about its business operations artificially increased demand for that stock. The Commission alleges that Forest is and was a public shell company that at all relevant times had no income or assets. <BR/><BR/>The Commission further alleges that Justman, Reilly and Gold sold more than a million shares of the improperly unlegended shares to the investing public, after Forest, Justman, and Reilly began issuing a series of false statements to the investing public regarding Forest's assets and commercial prospects. For example, Forest, through Justman and Reilly, misrepresented in a filing with the Commission and in press releases that Forest, based on a share exchange agreement that it had purportedly entered into with a company called Opus Management Group, Ltd., held valuable timber properties in Central and South America. These statements were false because Forest had not entered into any signed agreement with Opus, and because Opus had not direct or indirect ownership of timber properties. <BR/><BR/>Reilly is a New York City attorney living in Boca Raton, Florida. Justman and Gold both live in Brooklyn, New York.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-72698729836932881782009-02-04T14:41:00.000-05:002009-02-04T14:41:00.000-05:00Outrageously funny, thanks I needed that badly tod...Outrageously funny, thanks I needed that badly today.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-6112015811526906632009-02-04T13:46:00.000-05:002009-02-04T13:46:00.000-05:00A decent Parnasah is so important for Shalom Bayis...A decent Parnasah is so important for Shalom Bayis (see Bava Metziah 59a).<BR/><BR/>Currently, so many Yeshiva Bochurim assume that the correct thing is for them to learn in Kollel indefinitely, without planning toward becoming the primary breadwinner of their future families. When they are simply unable to manage, and their Shalom Bayis is falling apart, they ask a Sheilah as to whether they are permitted to leave Kollel.<BR/><BR/>My dear brothers, please listen to someone who cares: this is not the way it’s supposed to be. Because the Kesubah requires the husband to support the family, which is the Derech HaOlam, the Sheilah should be asked the other way around. That is, Bochurim should be asking an impartial Rav for guidance as to whether and how they should be preparing to support their future families. The Sheilah should be whether it is appropriate for them to defer their Kesubah obligation (assuming their wife consents) and, if so, for how long.<BR/><BR/>Most Rabbanim are well-aware of the need for the husband to support the family. Many Roshei Yeshiva are aware of it too. It seems, however, that when anyone says anything that implies that most people (or even some people) should not be learning full-time, they are attacked by so-called kanaim (zealots). My assumption is that the kanaim themselves have a decent source of Parnasah, otherwise they would be too busy struggling to engage in acts of “zealotry.”Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-78341355336949518562009-02-04T13:10:00.000-05:002009-02-04T13:10:00.000-05:00Record 19 Million Empty Homes Wednesday, February ...Record 19 Million Empty Homes <BR/><BR/>Wednesday, February 4, 2009 9:52 AM<BR/><BR/>By: Greg Brown <BR/><BR/>The number of empty homes — for sale or rent — has hit a record 19 million, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. <BR/><BR/><BR/>As foreclosures mount and banks seize properties, the number of them sitting empty rose by 6.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007. The number of homes for sale rose to 2.9 percent of all homes, the highest since the agency began tracking data in 1956. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Home ownership, meanwhile, has fallen to 67.5 percent, a low not seen since the housing boom began in early 2001. <BR/><BR/><BR/>All this has prompted politicians to recast the stimulus bill working its way through Congress as a home rescue bill as much as a jobs bill. Republicans in the Senate want tax breaks for buyers and up to $300 billion in new mortgage subsidies, while Democrats seek to rewrite existing contracts and provide up to $100 billion in direct aid to stop foreclosures. <BR/><BR/><BR/>“Most people recognize that housing itself is at the root of the current economic downturn,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times. <BR/><BR/><BR/>“We should fix this problem before we fix anything else.” <BR/><BR/><BR/>It could get worse before Congress can act. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Already, one in five home sales were due to a foreclosure in 2008, according to real estate Web site Zillow. Another 11 percent were short sales, where the bank voluntarily gives up principal in order to move the property to a buyer. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Up to one-third of borrowers who see a decline of 20 percent or more will eventually abandon their homes, predicts real estate expert Norm Miller at the University of San Diego. <BR/><BR/><BR/>We're already there. The latest S&P/Case-Shiller housing price index shows prices fell 18.2 percent in the year ending in November, the latest report available. The 10-city index declined 19.1 percent. <BR/><BR/><BR/>"When you're underwater and prices continue to fall, you tend to walk," Miller told Bloomberg News. <BR/><BR/><BR/>"It's a downward spiral that's tough to stop because it feeds on itself. Foreclosures encourage other foreclosures and falling prices discourage buying.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-48730040601538253142009-02-04T12:17:00.000-05:002009-02-04T12:17:00.000-05:00I am against molestation through networking websit...I am against molestation through networking websites of any kind.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-90775170887496742202009-02-04T11:35:00.000-05:002009-02-04T11:35:00.000-05:00http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/technology/inter...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/technology/internet/04myspace.html<BR/><BR/>February 4, 2009<BR/><BR/>MySpace Turns Over 90,000 Names of Registered Sex Offenders <BR/><BR/>By JENNA WORTHAM<BR/><BR/>MySpace provided two state attorneys general the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders it had banned from its site in response to a subpoena. <BR/><BR/>The figure is 40,000 more than the amount previously acknowledged by MySpace, according to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who along with Attorney General Roy Cooper of North Carolina are among officials pressing social networking sites to adopt more stringent safety measures. <BR/><BR/>“Almost 100,000 convicted sex offenders mixing with children on MySpace — shown by our subpoena — is absolutely appalling and totally unacceptable,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement. “For every one of them, there may be hundreds of others using false names and ages.”<BR/><BR/>Last year, MySpace, owned by News Corporation, and Facebook.com agreed to set security standards after the Web sites were criticized for not doing enough to protect minors from sexual predators lurking on social networking sites. <BR/><BR/>Facebook, a privately held company based in Palo Alto, Calif., said the company was still working with Mr. Blumenthal to respond to a similar subpoena. <BR/><BR/>The disclosure renews the debate of whether social networking sites are a haven for sex offenders. “This is just the tip of the iceberg on MySpace,” said John A. Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle, a company that supplies identity and age verification technologies for companies like the New York State Lottery, breweries and film studios. “These are just the convicted sex offenders” who used their real names. <BR/><BR/>MySpace’s disclosure follows a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a panel created by 49 attorneys general, that said the issue is overblown. It concluded the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, was far more serious than sexual solicitation of minors by adults online. <BR/><BR/>Mr. Phillips, who served as a member of that task force, has been critical of the report. Ernest Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said the figure was “disturbing” but that there is no way to know how large the presence of online predators really is.<BR/><BR/>“We don’t know if that’s 80 percent of the population targeting kids on the Internet or 1 percent,” Mr. Allen said. <BR/><BR/>He commended MySpace for removing convicted sex offenders from its site. “This clearly reinforces the fact that there are a significant number of people who seek access to kids online,” Mr. Allen said. <BR/><BR/>Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, said the company had spent the last two years purging problem members from its site.<BR/><BR/>“The reality is there are 700,000-plus sex offenders living in the streets of America,” Mr. Nigam said. “What we did was build cutting-edge technology to figure out where they might be living on the Internet and remove them from our site.” <BR/><BR/>MySpace reported that its community grows 10 percent year over year but has also reported a 36 percent drop in the number of registered sex offenders trying to create profiles.<BR/><BR/>John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, the company that makes the software MySpace uses to find the sex offenders, said that Facebook had become a haven for convicted offenders blocked from creating accounts on MySpace. Mr. Cardillo, who has approached Facebook about using his technology, said he could find 8,000 offenders on Facebook. <BR/><BR/>Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said that Mr. Cardillo’s figures were inflated. He also said the company actively monitors its Web site and users for suspicious activities.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-37151990539747610712009-02-04T10:23:00.000-05:002009-02-04T10:23:00.000-05:00naked jumpers are all honorable peoplenaked jumpers are all honorable peopleAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-26642962225677506812009-02-04T00:42:00.000-05:002009-02-04T00:42:00.000-05:00We are in full agreement with your above sentiment...We are in full agreement with your above sentiments. <BR/><BR/>We have seen the most vile pieces of garbage exploiting their affiliation with a kollel, in order to advance their personal agendas. We have witnessed a former kollel fellow supported by the community, criminally pursue innocent members of the community for no apparent reason.<BR/><BR/>We have seen enough!<BR/><BR/>Kollelim and mosdos must enact the following measures to prevent ruining their reputations:<BR/><BR/>1] No kollel should allow a yungerman into their institution unless his middos are sterling.<BR/><BR/>2] Kollel should reassess yearly the return on investment from each kollel yungerman. Community members input should be paramount, especially when they pay the bils.<BR/><BR/>3] As soon as a yungerman veers off the path of sterling middos he is to be terminated. Derech eretz kadmah la Torah was said for a reason. A menuval masmid, is foremost a menuval, and can't be tolerated.<BR/><BR/>4] Kollels should remove the status of a former kollel fellow who acts like a menuval, and becomes a menace to society. The reputation of the kollel becomes tarnished as a result of their behaviors, and should not be tolerated. <BR/><BR/>A kollel should be an asset to a community. When a kollel yungerman and/or kollel alumni declares themself A SPECIAL ASSET and harms society, the kollel bacomes a community LIABILITY.<BR/><BR/>In the current economic environment, funds for community liabilities will stop flowing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-3264819373131819682009-02-03T23:43:00.000-05:002009-02-03T23:43:00.000-05:00Still Nervous by Jonathan Rosenblum President Oba...Still Nervous<BR/> by Jonathan Rosenblum <BR/>President Obama is now safely sworn in. Even the few curmudgeons left who have not been completely won over by the new president felt a surge of pride in their country as they watched a black man take the oath of office. That could not have happened in any of the European countries that view themselves as America’s moral betters. <BR/><BR/>The new president had an impressive two months between the election and the swearing-in, during which period he succeeded in winning over half those who voted for his opponent. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthamer’s assessment of Obama, after his cool in the face of the financial meltdown, has been more than borne out. Krauthamer updated Harry Hopkins description of FDR as “a second-rate mind with a first-rate temperament,” calling Obama “a first-rate mind, with a first-rate temperament.”<BR/><BR/>If anybody has been disappointed with America’s new president in the months since the election, it has been his left-wing supporters. His cabinet appointments were mainstream in the extreme. He delivered his major economic policy speech at George Mason University, the last bastion of free market economics, supped with conservative columnists at the house of George Will, and reached out generously to his defeated opponent John McCain. He even told a television interviewer that there was a great deal of wisdom in former vice-president Dick Cheney’s advice he should first understand the bases for the Bush administration’s national security policies before seeking to dismantle them. <BR/><BR/>President Obama’s Inaugural Address was filled with bones for the conservatives: He described the wealth producing power of free markets, warned terrorists around the world that “we will defeat you,” acknowledged the determinative role of individuals, not just government, in the improvement of society, and mentioned G-d frequently. <BR/><BR/>Clearly, then, the hysterical pre-election portrait of Obama as the acolyte of ex-Weatherman terrorist William Ayers has proven comically overblown. And yet I remain concerned about the new president’s likely approach to Israel. <BR/><BR/>Those concerns are not based on anything that President Obama has done or said. His quoted comments on Hamas missile attacks on Israeli towns were eminently sensible: If someone were shooting at my daughters, he said, I would do everything in my power to stop them. That commonsense, human response was notably absent from much commentary on the war. <BR/><BR/>No, my concerns about the Obama presidency derive primarily from his membership in the class of graduates of elite Ivy League universities. Much has been made by The New York Times about all the degrees from elite institutions Obama’s staff possess. And that scares me. <BR/><BR/>Those fears are pretty much summed up in the statement of the new presidential envoy to the Middle East, former Senator George Mitchell. “There is no conflict without an end.” That remark captures a common mistake of brainy folks: the assumption that they have the answers to all the world’s problems. In 1996, Professor Robert Lucas, an Nobel laureate from the University of Chicago, boasted that economists now possess the tools to end the threat of worldwide depression forever, a claim that appears less well-founded by the day. <BR/><BR/>The belief that to every problem there is a solution is not just naive but dangerous when applied to Middle East peacemaking. It is predicated on the assumption that peacemaking is no different than negotiating a union contract. Both sides are jostling over the size of their piece of the pie. <BR/><BR/>But there are things that many people care about much more a larger slice of some material pie, and one of them is religion. That is something that smart technocrats commonly miss. Because religion plays no part in their own lives they fail to grasp its importance to others. <BR/><BR/>The repeated Western request that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist is an example of that failure. Hamas would have to stop being Hamas, and renounce its religious belief that Israel exists on Moslem holy land, in order to recognize Israel’s right to exist.<BR/><BR/>Peace between the Palestinians and Israelis does not depend the renunciation of this or that demand. It depends on the transformation of an entire culture of hate that has only intensified in the years since the handshake on the White House lawn. To attempt to suggest or impose “solutions,” without first changing the human material reflects a detachment from reality. Even the Northern Ireland peace negotiations, in which Senator Mitchell played a major role, were only possible because of the emergence of a Protestant leader, David Trimble, eager to put aside old hatreds, and a radical change in the attitudes in the leadership of the IRA on the Catholic side.<BR/><BR/>Only those who believe in souls can appreciate the difficulty of changing cultures. But souls are not the province of those who think they can devise a solution to every problem. If man were nothing but a rationally calculating homo economicus, could most disputes be settled around a negotiating table with skillful slicing of the pie. But he is not.<BR/><BR/>The scary noises coming from Washington D.C. derive from a misplaced confidence that a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is close at hand. Practically President Obama’s first act in office was to appoint Senator Mitchell as his Middle East envoy. It is unlikely that the new president would have given such high priority to the Middle East unless he thought that he could show some achievements. <BR/><BR/>That confidence is heard in the oft-repeated phrase “the general contours of the final solution have long been known to all the parties,” as if a solution can exist apart from the societies upon which it will be imposed. In fact, the basis for an enduring peace is farther away than it was during the last phase of activist American peacemaking, under President Clinton. Gaza and the West Bank are today functionally independent, which vastly complicates everything. More importantly, Israelis have learned both in southern Lebanon and Gaza that every territorial withdrawal only makes them more vulnerable. <BR/><BR/>As an older friend always tells me, “The longer I live the more I find that brains are greatly overrated.” Recognition of that fact may be the beginning of wisdom in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it is wisdom that is only likely to come slowly, if at all, to the smart fellows of the new administration.Arthurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17405098837405331655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-62765140192705577402009-02-03T23:04:00.000-05:002009-02-03T23:04:00.000-05:00Geeez... must be a slow news day out there.Geeez... must be a slow news day out there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1170102906799709082007-01-29T15:35:00.000-05:002007-01-29T15:35:00.000-05:00ok Mr Carville, so you're in politics- wow, no cor...ok Mr Carville, so you're in politics- wow, no corruption there I'm sure -<BR/>Oh & if someone doesn't g-d forbid know that MR JAMES CARVILLE! "shlita"! is in politics! that also warrants them to be called stupid?!?! after all politics as I mentioned earlier of course doesn't have any corruption.- uhum,- whith all due respect, Mister Carville Politician, if you're wasting time anyways, you won't be board if you'd campaign against corruption in politics- you'd be surprised- there's lots of work there.<BR/><BR/>p.s I'm no apologist-Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1170101274018513052007-01-29T15:07:00.000-05:002007-01-29T15:07:00.000-05:00TO: Yisroel Grossman Jan 26, 1:53 pmYou said "ok E...TO: Yisroel Grossman Jan 26, 1:53 pm<BR/><BR/>You said "ok Einstein so lets say the whole world doesn't learn in Kollel, how do you make sure they act ethically in business?"<BR/><BR/>Are you for real?? You think the only place that teaches people ethics in business is Kollel? I'm not sure if your question is serious or not but in case it is...<BR/>what about yiras shamayim? Ever heard of a g-d fearing jew that's not in Kollel? well I've got news for you- IT"S POSSIBLE!<BR/>It's found in 3 words: THE HOME, THE HOME, THE HOME!<BR/><BR/>remember also I'm not saying and I don't think OUJ is saying either, to abolish Kollel. Kollel is for yichidum, certain individuals that are entirely commited and devoted to it, not having it both ways- ask OUJ what REAL kollel is all about- maybe he can explain it better- can you UOJ?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1170032533947808292007-01-28T20:02:00.000-05:002007-01-28T20:02:00.000-05:00To: An outsider (Anonymous poster)Wednesday, Janu...To: An outsider (Anonymous poster)<BR/><BR/>Wednesday, January 17, 2007<BR/>Show me the money<BR/><BR/>From an article that appeared a few days ago on Ynet:<BR/><BR/>How much would you pay for a groom?<BR/><BR/>The ultra-Orthodox world is in uproar, this time it’s not because of gays: Parents of unmarried young women are refusing to pay for fancy apartments, five-star weddings in order to get a groom from prestigious yeshiva.<BR/>Chaim Levinson<BR/>Published: 01.14.07, 20:19<BR/><BR/>...A daughter’s wedding should be one of the happiest events in a parent’s life, but it’s become a nightmare because sought-after grooms are demanding that the bride’s parents buy the couple an apartment, and preferably in a desirable location. “It’s a known thing in our community that you have to give the whole package to get a good groom, that is, to pay for the entire wedding and buy an apartment and furniture," Says A. “My two older daughters have husbands from good yeshivas, and each of them got two thirds of an apartment from me. "I spent my entire savings on that, I took a second mortgage and loans. Now I need to buy at least half an apartment for my third daughter, and I have no money. My daughter wanted a God-fearing guy, not a guy who works (as opposed to studying fulltime in yeshiva). That’s a problem. How will I pay back more loans? And what will remain for my younger daughters?”<BR/><BR/>...Among the Lithuanians the price is based on how smart and how good a student the groom is. Among the Hassidim, the price is based on the groom’s family’s prestige. When families started going bankrupt there was an outcry against the heads of yeshivas and the grooms who make excessive demands.<BR/><BR/>...In order to finance all of this, parents take out many loans and insane mortgages. The loans have to be paid back, and the interest is high, so the parents make use of free loan societies. But even they have to be paid back, so the parents take more loans from other free loan societies. Another solution is to go to the U.S. or Britain and ask for money from wealthy Jews. Before the wedding the terms of the match are negotiated. The ultra-Orthodox Bakehillah newspaper, which writes a lot on this issue, has published the price list for a groom. For a prodigy in a prestigious yeshiva such as Kol Torah or Hevron in Jerusalem, Or Yisrael in Petach Tikvah or Bet Matityahu in Bnei Brak, you have to pay for the whole package.<BR/><BR/>...“Sometimes you have several offers, and the money the family offers is definitely a significant factor in the decision because then you can sit in yeshiva and study the way you ought to,” says D., a student in a prestigious Jerusalem yeshiva. It’s a market thing, supply and demand. Of course you have to pay for a high-quality groom. At our yeshiva we’re the elite, and people are prepared to pay a lot for a groom.”<BR/>Why do the bride’s parents have to take a loan in order to pay for your apartment?<BR/>“It’s painful to see parents taking loans, but in order to sit and study in a yeshiva you need funding. You can’t buy an apartment on a yeshiva student’s salary. That’s why the parents need to take money. It’s a wheel that can’t be stopped.”<BR/><BR/>*******************************************<BR/>My comments:<BR/><BR/>If you thought arranged marriages and dowries went out with the dark ages, you're wrong. The practice is still alive and well in the cheredi communities, and it's still barbaric and ridiculous.<BR/><BR/>It also explains the extremely high incidence of wife and child abuse, because these young men have no real love or attachment to their wives or offspring - it's clear from the above quote that these young men have been brainwashed by their cult to only value sitting in yeshiva all day. They have no concept of any responsibility to support their family, or even take their family's needs into any sort of consideration. Their world is selfish and lazy, and entirely ego-centered. The consequences of their actions on others means nothing to them. Their inflated sense of entitlement and superiority is dangerous and they have an entirely unreal and imaginary idea of how the world really works.<BR/><BR/>The question is whether or not this wheel can, in fact, be stopped - and it can. It is clear that this needs to be a grass roots rebellion, however, since the article goes on to describe how the rosh yeshivas actually command the young men to keep doing this irresponsible practice because it increases the prestige of them and their yeshivas. It makes it appear that all their students are wealthy and successful - when they're not. It's false advertising. The rabbis want it to look to outsiders that God has blessed them and their students for wasting their lives sitting on their rear-ends doing nothing to contribute to the community's economy or their own family's welfare. This practice makes it appear that they are living the way God wants them to and has taken care of all their needs.<BR/><BR/>But God has done no such thing. God has not endorsed or approved their actions, and their facade of success comes from extortion, plain and simple. This cancer eats at the young men and their marriages, because nothing based on lies and deceit has a foundation that can be built upon. When their marriages and financial situations fail to meet their unrealistic expectations, their egos and inflated sense of entitlement drives them to turn to violence, or to adultery, drugs, porn, and whatever other diversion from their miserable, unfulfilled lives they can find.<BR/><BR/>One father above I think now realizes the error of his ways when he taught his daughters that men with market-rate employment and careers were not the types of husbands that they should aspire to wed. But it's too late, of course. Now if he withdraws support for yeshiva-student grooms for his other daughters, he will be accused of falling from the faith and spreading "un-orthodox" heresy. It's a trap from which he now cannot extricate himself without a major upheaval of his life and community. And if he tries, the result will be ostracization, threats, and even violence against him and his family, because the rabbis brook no dissent or competing ideas. The fact that the parents cannot afford this medieval and barbaric custom of buying a marriage for their daughters does not matter. The Rabbis benefit from the money these poor parents are having to fork over, so there's no chance they will willingly give it up.<BR/><BR/>So the only way this is going to stop is when parents tell their daughters matter-of-factly the economic realities of life, and stop spreading the lie that God approves of and blesses a man who refuses to support his family. The only way this is going to stop is when parents start insisting on young men with a job for their daughters. The only way this is going to stop is when the orthodox society realizes it is the duty of both sets of parents to equally support young families, and not just the bride's side of the family. And if the grooms and their parents will not conform to these requirements, then let them remain unmarried.<BR/><BR/>And last but not least, how rich your parents are is not, and has never been, the basis of a successful marriage relationship. That comes only from mutual respect and trust, which grows to love when consideration and devotion are demonstrated by both parties. Without this real and enduring basis for a relationship, a marriage will never, ever be fulfilling. And when a man gleefully impoverishes his bride's family and gives no consideration whatsoever to his wife and children's welfare and support, no one is ever going to respect him, especially not his wife - even if he ends up being the greatest scholar of his generation, which frankly, I don't see any real danger of that coming from modern yeshivas.<BR/><BR/>As long as the cheredi worship money more than God's commandments (which Pirkei Avos clearly shows being for a man to learn a trade and earn a living) then the yeshiva culture is not just flawed but perverted and disgusting. Godly marriages cannot happen in this culture. If you want God's blessing on your life, you will never find it here, class. This culture is sick beyond repair.<BR/><BR/>Labels: abuse, judaism, marriage, orthodox, weddingAhavahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12795309173195607578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1170011076834622682007-01-28T14:04:00.000-05:002007-01-28T14:04:00.000-05:00You should send those cases to Vicki Polin at The ...You should send those cases to Vicki Polin at The Awareness Center. I'm sure she'll add them to their site.<BR/>vickipolin@aol.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169996642748199242007-01-28T10:04:00.000-05:002007-01-28T10:04:00.000-05:00There is a yeshiva ketana & a few shuls in Yonkers...There is a yeshiva ketana & a few shuls in Yonkers that borders Riverdale to the south & Scarsdale to the east.<BR/><BR/>http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/cgi/internet/nsor/fortecgi?serviceName=WebNSOR&templateName=detail.htm&requestingHandler=WebNSORDetailHandler&ID=272820953<BR/><BR/>BERNSTEIN <BR/>First Name: JACOB Height: 5'08" <BR/>Middle Name: Weight: 180 <BR/>DOB: Jan 31, 1947 Hair: Brown <BR/>Sex: Male Eyes: Hazel <BR/>Risk Level: 3 Corr. Lens: <BR/> Photo Date: Oct 18, 2006 <BR/><BR/> Reported Address: 407 SAW MILL RIVER RD<BR/> <BR/>City: YONKERS <BR/><BR/>Male, 12 Years<BR/>Female, 7 Years<BR/><BR/>Offense Description:<BR/> Attempted, MoreThanOnce Deviate Sexual IntercourseAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169995913699944352007-01-28T09:51:00.000-05:002007-01-28T09:51:00.000-05:00"A convicted sex offender who has been living on t..."A convicted sex offender who has been living on the street in the Monroe area"<BR/><BR/>Monroe is not Kiryas Yoel. There is a small Litvishe kehilla there that's a 20-30 minute drive away. Rabbi Laskin, formerly of Woodbourne is the rov. I think they are mostly baal teshuva types. I speculate that Goodman may have played on them for chesed which would explain what he was doing there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169995514318583352007-01-28T09:45:00.000-05:002007-01-28T09:45:00.000-05:00The State registry has this guy living in Staten I...The State registry has this guy living in Staten Island (Richmond County) but when you click on his listing there's no information. He may have moved out of state.<BR/><BR/>http://archive.recordonline.com/archive/2005/07/27/brf994.htm<BR/><BR/>A convicted sex offender who has been living on the street in the Monroe area for the past month has been charged with neglecting to report his whereabouts to state authorities, Village of Monroe police said yesterday.<BR/> Avrohom Goodman, 37, was arrested about 11:30 a.m. Monday and charged with failing to register as a sex offender, a misdemeanor. He was arraigned before Town Justice Jack Rosenthal and sent to the Orange County jail in lieu of $500 cash or $1,500 bail bond.<BR/> Goodman was accused of sexually abusing 6- and 7-year-old children in Brooklyn in 1997, police investigators said. Two years later, he was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and sentenced to 1½ to three years in prison, according to police.<BR/> Goodman has been classified a Level 2 sex offender, meaning he poses a moderate risk of committing another sex offense. State law requires he register annually as a sex offender for 10 years and notify authorities whenever he changes addresses. His last known address was on 47th Street in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, police said.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169995354497578922007-01-28T09:42:00.000-05:002007-01-28T09:42:00.000-05:00Read about Rabbi Alan J. Horowitz being on America...Read about Rabbi Alan J. Horowitz being on America's Most wanted:<BR/><BR/>http://jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com/2007/01/rabbi-and-child-psychiatristrabbi-alan.htmlJewish Survivorshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08608058381076713962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169994010876912152007-01-28T09:20:00.000-05:002007-01-28T09:20:00.000-05:00For all these creeps, search the website by zipcod...For all these creeps, search the website by zipcode, county or name to see their pictures<BR/><BR/>http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/cgi/internet/nsor/fortecgi?serviceName=WebNSOR&templateName=detail.htm&requestingHandler=WebNSORDetailHandler&ID=55405969<BR/><BR/> ROSEN <BR/>First Name: SHIMON Height: 5'06" <BR/>Middle Name: Weight: 125 <BR/>DOB: Apr 29, 1969 Hair: Brown <BR/>Sex: Male Eyes: Green <BR/>Risk Level: 3 Corr. Lens: YES <BR/> Photo Taken Prior to: Apr 17, 1996 <BR/><BR/> Reported Address: 4 LEON DR<BR/> <BR/>City: MONSEY <BR/><BR/>Sex Offender Type <BR/>Designation: Lifetime Registration <BR/><BR/>Male, 12 Years<BR/>Male, 7 Years<BR/><BR/>Sodomy-2nd Degree<BR/><BR/>Vehicles: <BR/>Lic. Plate No. State Vehicle Year Make/Model Color <BR/>Y745WU NY 1988 Ford Escort Black <BR/><BR/>Special Conditions: PSYCHIATRIC THERAPY.<BR/><BR/>Offense Description:<BR/> Actual Deviate Sexual Intercourse<BR/>Relationship to victim: StrangerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21519732.post-1169993765126043962007-01-28T09:16:00.000-05:002007-01-28T09:16:00.000-05:00If it's the same Borchardt from "Derech Agav", tha...If it's the same Borchardt from "Derech Agav", that yeshiva is a branch of Torah Ohr. They're Scheinberg's boys. Both yeshivos are very strange. They have this weird shita that everything has to be dumbed down in case no one understands the shiur. The beis medrash shiruim range in depth from 5th or 6th grade to 12th grade level. Torah Ohr also runs a third remedial yeshiva in Israel that's even more dumbed down than that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com