Dangerous, Reckless, Dumb & Stupid - The Level of Ignorance is Astounding! Zwiebel Pleads His Case To The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene - Why Not Just Check In?

UNVACCINATED DEATHS 13X HIGHER - UNVACCINATED ILLNESS 5X HIGHER

Jackie Mason Dead - Ephraim Wachsman Lives - Saturday Night Live At The Agudah Convention...

 

 

Before Wachsman got into his car to attend this event, he probably was not aware that more than 20,000 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the first half of 2021. The estimated number was 18.4% higher than the first half of last year, prompting Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to call the increase an unacceptable crisis.

That percentage increase was the biggest six-month increase since the department began recording fatal crash data since 1975.

The department, which includes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, announced that it will develop a national strategy for steps to save lives on the roads.

 I remember when a certain Jewish sect banned the telephone from their homes, then the radio ban kicked in. Who can forget the Jewish homes with customized made to order built in furniture to camouflage TVs in their closets? Then came the ban of visual aids for children learning the aleph bet. Along came Torah Tapes, rabbis were besides themselves "this is not learning"!

Who can forget the fit Rabbi Elya Svei had when the Talmud was being translated into English?

Does Ephraim Wachsman travel on an airplane? Anyone there dressed inappropriately? How about walking on the street?

A few years ago he soiled his diapers at a gathering banning the Internet, who at this comedy show in New Jersey does not have the Internet at home and at work?

What percentage of the Agudah crowd is not labeled officially obese - were there any restrictions on the amount of food gorged at this diabetes gathering?

The problem is not technology or information, the ABUSE of technology and misinformation in the Jewish community is! If there is no basic comprehension of right and wrong, where Consumerism uber alles is the mantra in all Jewish communities, you get generational ignorance & indifference passed along from parent to child.

The Agudah claimed to sign on to banning the use of smartphones, and those giants of thought will be coming up with ways to eliminate their use.

Here are a few simple suggestions to the esteemed rabbis:

1 - Nobody can be a member of the Agudah who has a smartphone (and their families included)

2 - Nobody can be a member of the board of directors if they have a smartphone.

3 - Nobody can attend any Agudah or Torah gathering of any kind if they have a smartphone.

 4 - Nobody can be on the board of any yeshiva if they have a smartphone.

5 - THE AGUDAH AND ALL YESHIVAS WILL ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO TAKE ANY DONATIONS FROM ANY PERSON OR FAMILY WHO HAVE SMARTPHONES & WILL REFUSE TO NAME ANY BUILDING AFTER ANYONE WHO HAD A SMARTPHONE WHEN HE OR SHE WAS ALIVE! 

(CERTAIN EXCEPTIONS CAN BE MADE TO WEALTHY PEOPLE WHO HAVE CHILDREN OUT OF WEDLOCK IF THE AMOUNT DONATED IS $5 MILLION PLUS, AFTER ALL WE STILL NEED TO SET AN EXAMPLE FOR OUR CHILDREN THAT ANY LOWLIFE WITH MONEY CAN GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING, TORAH VALUES BE DAMNED!)

Looking for an Ephraim Wachsman performance at a theater near me.

 

  אפרים ווקסמן גדול הטפשים

הוא מכהן כראש ישיבה ולא כרב ולכן אולי לא שמע מרבנים מומחים כי אחד הדברים החשובים ביותר אצל כל מי שמכהן בתפקיד של רב הוא להשתדל הרבה בחלק החמישי ועוד יותר מארבעה חלקי שולחן ערוך. ומדוע? מפני שלעיתים חושבים שעושים כל כך נכון ולא קולטים כי הם גורמים להשחתה ולמעשים שאנשים לא היו עושים בלעדיו

שמעתי את דבריו של אפרים ווקסמן ממונסי בועידת אגודת ישראל ולא האמנתי שמי שאחרים מכנים אותו חכם כמה טיפש הוא. הוא הזכיר לי סיפור עם יהודי שנכשל וחטא והגיע לרב וביקש לשוב בתשובה. הרב ניסה והשתדל לדעת במה חטא, ושאל את החוטא האם חטא עם פלונית וציין את שמה, והחוטא השיב לא. המשיך הרב ושאל האם חטא עם אשה אחרת שנקב בשמה וגם כאן אמר החוטא כי לא. הרב שראה שאינו יכול להוציא ממנו עם מי חטא אמר לו, אם אינך אומר לי עם מי חטאת אין תשובה

קם היהודי ממקומו ואמר לרב, תשובה לא אשיג כאן אבל שתי כתובות חדשים קיבלתי. בדיוק כך זה היה בנאומו של הרב ווקסמן. לא אעשה כאן את מה שהוא עשה ולא אציין במה מדובר. הרב ווקסמן צעק וצווח הייתכן כי ענין מסויים חדר לבתי הציבור החרדי היתכן? אני מעולם לא שמעתי על הענין הזה ועוד הרבה אחרים אמרו לי כי עד שהוא זעק בועידת אגודת ישראל במה מדובר הם לא ידעו שקיים דבר כזה. ומי במוצאי שבת ואחרים ששמעו מהוידאו ביום ראשון הורידו את הענין לטלפון שלהם ומעתה הוא שירת את השטן עם עוד מאות ומי יודע אם לא אלפים החלו להשתמש בעניין ההוא בגללו

אחד הדברים החשובים לדעת - כך זה היה עם הרבה דברים בעבר - שישנם עשרות אלפים שכלל אינם יודעים מן העניינים הללו וברגע שנואמים נאום שכזה הם משרתים את אותה חברה בשירות ששווה מיליונים ואינם קולטים כי הם בעצם עושים הרבה יותר טוב לשטן מאשר לענין עצמו, הוא לא משיג עשירית ממה שהוא מקלקל

כן, צריכים לפעול ולעשות שדברים כאלו לא יהיו  בבתי ישראל, אבל צריך לעבוד חכם ולא בדרשות מן הסוג הזה שמקלקל הרבה יותר מאשר מתקן

 

Once, after grabbing her and asking, “Do you love me?,” she refused to respond. The rabbi punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, according to the lawsuit.

 

Orthodox Union, youth group sued over past handling of sex abuse

 

4 women allege OU, NCSY knowingly allowed Rabbi Baruch Lanner’s sexual and violent behavior against them when they were teens despite numerous, long-standing complaints against him

A flyer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Sexual Offender registry lists Baruch Lanner’s status as “Subject to Registration.

 

New York Jewish Week via JTA — More than two decades after publication of allegations that Rabbi Baruch Lanner abused teens in his charge for more than 30 years, four of his victims are seeking their day in court.

The four women, now middle-aged and older, filed a lawsuit Monday with the Superior Court of New Jersey in Middlesex County against Lanner, the Orthodox Union (OU) and the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), the OU’s youth arm, where Lanner was a top official.

It is believed to be the first such legal action taken against the Orthodox organizations as a result of the scandal involving Lanner, 72, who was forced to resign days after The Jewish Week published in 2000 an investigation that detailed charges against him by more than a dozen former NCSY members.

The revelations emboldened other accusers, and in 2002 Lanner was convicted of sexually abusing two teenage girls who were students in the 1990s at the Hillel Yeshiva High School in Deal, New Jersey, where he had been principal in between stints at NCSY. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, served nearly three years and was released on parole in early 2008.

The lawsuit focuses only on his time at NCSY, according to Boz Tchividjian, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs. He said it alleges that the two prominent Orthodox organizations knowingly allowed the rabbi’s predatory behavior at its youth group to continue despite numerous, long-standing complaints that he sexually, physically and emotionally abused girls and boys in his role as NCSY’s director of regions.

The suit was filed under recent changes in New Jersey law that allowed for a two-year “lookback” window during which sexual abuse victims could come forward and sue their abusers and their enablers. That deadline is November 30, prompting the four women to file their lawsuit now. Previously, a statute of limitations in New Jersey had inhibited any civil suits against the Orthodox organizations that employed Lanner.

“Our clients are going to finally hold Baruch Lanner accountable for his deplorable and abusive conduct, and the Orthodox Union accountable for giving a known offender decades of access to vulnerable children who he terrorized and victimized,” said Tchividjian. “By filing this lawsuit, these bold women are reclaiming the power that was taken from them by a perpetrator and the organization that employed him and empowered him.”

Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Brian Kent, of the law firm Laffey, Bucci & Kent in Philadelphia, said participants might still be added to the lawsuit if they come forward by the deadline Tuesday.

Asked to respond to the women’s accusations in the days before the suit was filed, a spokesperson for the OU told The Jewish Week: “The OU is not aware of any impending lawsuit and therefore cannot comment.”

A lawsuit alleges that the Orthodox Union, located on Lower Broadway in Manhattan (above) knowingly allowed a rabbi’s predatory behavior to continue at its youth group decades ago

 

Among the charges in the lawsuit, according to Tchividjian, are that the OU and NCSY were negligent in failing to protect children — that instead they protected themselves by ignoring or dismissing complaints about Lanner’s “willful, malicious and wanton” actions for decades.

Even by 2000, when the Lanner story came to light, the statute of limitations had long passed for those complainants, preventing them from taking legal action. The article received national and international attention and was cited as “a watershed in the way the Orthodox community addresses sexual abuse,” according to the Baltimore Jewish Times.

But the women bringing the lawsuit are among those who believe the problem persists, and that despite impressive written policies and standards, systemic cultural change is still required at the OU and NCSY as well as other Orthodox institutions.

“What’s needed is for organizations to protect their members, not just protect their organizations,” said Jessie (not her real name), one of the four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in an interview with The Jewish Week.

(The four women are not named in the lawsuit, their attorneys said, and in response to their request for privacy, they are not named here. The pseudonyms are for the purposes of this article.)

“For now, the culture is to do what is technically defensible,” Jessie said, “rather than what is the right thing to do for all members.”

She noted that while the Reform and Conservative movements are in the midst of major internal reckonings on sexual misbehavior and moral accountability concerning their clergy, and making the information public, the Orthodox community leadership has not announced any such action.

Jessie also said that neither she nor the other Lanner victims she knows were ever approached by the OU or NCSY to apologize or offer assistance after their experiences became known through The Jewish Week report in 2000.

This week, two of the four women who brought the lawsuit spoke with The Jewish Week. They each recalled their separate traumatic experiences with Lanner, dealing with his aggressive sexual behavior and violent temper when they were teens in the 1970s — much of it detailed in the Jewish Week article and in the current lawsuit. And the women explained why they chose to take legal action now.

Jessie was 16 when she became involved with NCSY in 1974. One weekend she attended a Shabbaton in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Lanner had arranged for her to sleep at a home next door to the home where he was staying, she said.

At night, when no one was around, “he tried to kiss and caress me.” When she pushed him away and threatened to tell a rabbi’s wife about his behavior, “he put his hands around my neck and began strangling me. Only when he saw that I was losing consciousness did he stop. And he walked away without a word.”

Jessie said she told no one at the time because she realized it was futile to do so. There was “a sense of conspiracy of enablers and a sexualized atmosphere” at Lanner-led NCSY events, she said, with the rabbi engaged in “explicit sexual kidding, talk of body parts,” commenting on girls’ figures, and similar behavior. The male advisors, mostly college students, “observed all of this and understood that it was ok to cross boundaries, to touch girls.”

But the excitement of being part of a close-knit social and religious group led by a charismatic rabbi kept Jessie and other youngsters actively involved in NCSY.

The following year, when Lanner chose Jessie to be regional president of NCSY, she agreed on the condition that he not molest her. If he tried, she told him, she would report him to Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, the founding director of NCSY.

In response, Lanner “laughed at me,” she recalled, “and said, ‘they all know about me,” including Stolper. In the 2000 article, Stolper acknowledged there were several complaints from young women many years previously about improper behavior by Lanner, but said he found no real substance to the charges.

Attempts to reach both Lanner and Stolper for this article were unsuccessful.

During her time as president, Jessie said she “witnessed Lanner prey on multiple 14 and 15-year-old girls,” according to the lawsuit.

She told The Jewish Week “it was inconceivable” that the leadership of the organization did not know of Lanner’s behavior.

For me it closed the door for religion

Nancy (not her real name) was 15 in 1974 when she took part in NCSY’s annual summer program in Israel at Lanner’s urging. At one point during the tour, Lanner called her into his room and questioned her loyalty to him, threatening to send her home or transfer her to another tour group, she said. When she began to cry, the rabbi told her she could prove her loyalty by kissing him on the cheek. She did, and he told her she could stay.

He paired her with another girl, Sarah (not her real name) as roommates. Nancy witnessed how Sarah would be called away by Lanner in the evenings to meet with him. “Then my turn came,” Nancy said, “the touching and kissing.” This went on at least a dozen times, according to Nancy.

Once, after grabbing her and asking, “Do you love me?,” she refused to respond. The rabbi punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, according to the lawsuit.

Over time, the two girls confided in each other, sharing details of Lanner’s similar pattern of behavior.

At one point, they both claimed to be ill so they wouldn’t have to go to Eilat with Lanner and the group.

On a visit to Bayit V’Gan, Nancy met with an American rabbi and told him what was happening. “He seemed shocked and genuinely sympathetic,” she said, but nothing came of it.

Toward the end of the trip, she approached Stolper, who was visiting for the weekend. “When I told him that Rabbi Lanner was acting inappropriately with me, he said, ‘I’m sure you misunderstood him.’ And then he asked me, “But are you having a good time” on the trip?

“He didn’t seem at all surprised by the allegations,” Nancy said.

The experiences of the other two women were similar to those of Jessie and Nancy, as described in the lawsuit, according to their attorneys.

Susan (not her real name) was 13 years old when she became involved with NCSY. She was “groomed” by Lanner for months, made to feel noticed and special before he began to kiss, touch and grope her when they were alone. This occurred more than 20 times over the next two and a half years.

On an NCSY summer program in Israel, Susan found the courage to say “no” to the rabbi’s advances. He became angry and punched her in the chest. She told no one, fearful that Lanner would send her home.

During the next school year, while riding in a car together, Lanner attempted to pull over to an isolated area and sexually assault Susan.

When she told an NCSY advisor, a young rabbi, he referred her to a higher-up in the organization who, according to Susan, told her: “I inherited the monster. I didn’t create him.”

No action was taken to report Lanner’s behavior then or many other times when Susan told rabbis of the OU, and other rabbis, of being sexually abused by Lanner.

Laura (not her real name) was 12 when she was active in NCSY. She recalled that Lanner insisted on driving her home one Saturday night from a Shabbaton. He pulled over to a deserted parking lot, she said, told her to take off her shirt and tried to kiss her.

“For me, it closed the door for religion,” she stated. “I feel that he took advantage of an innocent soul and you can never get that innocence back.”

The two women who spoke to The Jewish Week in recent days emphasized that their primary motive for filing a lawsuit almost a half-century after some of these painful incidents was not for financial gain or revenge. And that it was a difficult decision to wade into a legal battle against two large, prominent Orthodox institutions.

“It always bothered me that the OU was never really accountable,” Nancy said. “I do want my day in court because I want to see real change. I wouldn’t mind people seeing that a few women can change the way things are.”

Jessie echoed the sentiment, asserting that she wants “to see the culture change around sexual safety in Orthodox institutions.

“No real guilt was admitted. There was no true reckoning. The process of teshuva means acknowledging one’s mistakes, facing the hard truth.”

She said she was “delighted to see” that NCSY released a new Conduct, Policy and Behavioral Standards Manual as of September 17, which includes guidelines on reporting, “grooming behavior,” “boundary violations” and “inappropriate behavior with minors.”  “Whether it was because they knew a lawsuit was coming or just a coincidence, it’s a very positive move,” she said.

Jessie added that she hoped the lawsuit will be “an important catalyst.”

Mostly, she holds out the hope that when it comes to safety for all, the actions of the OU and NCSY will be “grounded in Jewish ethics and sources — not because someone is watching these organizations or suing them but because it is what God and our religion demands of us.”

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-union-youth-group-sued-over-past-handling-of-sex-abuse-cases/

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