Dear UOJ readers:
UOJ has kindly permitted me to post here in order to seek corroborating testimony on a rebbe I had in grade school. He taught my fourth and sixth grade classes in 1972-73 and 1974-75, respectively. He taught at a Modern Orthodox yeshiva in Monsey, NY from at least the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Although the school was (and is) Modern Orthodox and pro-Israel, the teacher in question was (and is) chassidish. He was in his early 30s when he taught me; he is now 67 or 68. I don't know if he has continued to teach, or to have contact with children, since leaving the yeshiva.
As a child, I was repeatedly sexually abused, but denied it even to myself. (This is called "dissociation.") After years of difficulty, I finally entered therapy, and within two weeks, the grief, anger, and pain of that time came flooding back. Memories, at first fragmentary and confused, came back, too. I know that relying on "recovered memories" is controversial. I don't like the phrase, myself. Nevertheless, in the words of an experienced researcher and therapist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, "Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition. The existence of this condition is beyond dispute.... At least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall." This is a conservative estimate based on published research (see http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/).
After more than two years of therapy, I am 90% sure that this rebbe is responsible for repeated, deliberately humiliating, sadistic sexual abuse. This belief is not based on scenarios of abuse suggested to me, nor leading questions asked of me, by anyone. The memories are mine alone. But as long as that 10% doubt remains, I will not act without corroborating testimony. UOJ told me that he is "aware" of this man, and that "his name has come up in confidential inquiries." He further told me that "When there are three people willing to put their name (confidentially) on an accusation, I investigate the matter fully... If I were to receive two more people on [this man] with names (never to be divulged by me), I would contact [him] and [the then-principal of the school] directly."
I believe I have given enough information for any former student of this man to recognize him. If you know of any specific incidents of sexual abuse he committed, I urge you to contact me at: sarasminion@yahoo.com. I trust UOJ's promise never to divulge your name, and I add my promise to his. If even a fraction of the things I remember are true, this man needs to be stopped! I also have evidence that the then-principal of the school (now principal emeritus) knows of allegations against this rebbe, and is covering them up. If this is true, then for the sake of children's safety, he needs to be told that the cat is already out of the bag, and that he must act accordingly.
Thank you so much,
A Survivor
EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
166 comments:
http://www.accuweather.com/
Well, you might think the climate is right because of the great weather in NY this Shabbos, ober fort those ferocious Santa Ana winds were really kicking up a storm on the West Coast.
At Rubashkin, the only thing that’s transparent is the hypocrisy!
Leib Tropper is telling his crowd about this terrible, terrible person out there who calls himself UOJ or the UnOrthodox Jew.
AP: Sexual misconduct plagues US schools By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writers
35 minutes ago
The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss.
That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn't end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.
When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 — 40 years after that first little girl came forward — it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.
Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children.
Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.
An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.
There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.
Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.
And no one — not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments — has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.
Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators — the very definition of breach of trust.
The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.
The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.
Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.
Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.
"From my own experience — this could get me in trouble — I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."
One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.
Jennah Bramow, one of Lindsey's accusers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wonders why there isn't more outrage.
"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing that they're going to be safe," says Bramow, now 20. While other victims accepted settlement deals and signed confidentiality agreements, she sued her city's schools for failing to protect her and others from Lindsey — and won. Only then was Lindsey's teaching license finally revoked.
As an 8-year-old elementary-school student, Bramow told how Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."
"How did you know it was his pee-pee?" an interviewer at St. Luke's Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids asked Jennah in a videotape, taken in 1995.
"'Cause I felt something?" said Jennah, then a fidgety girl with long, dark hair.
"How did it feel?" the investigator asked.
"Bumpy," Jennah replied. She drew a picture that showed how Lindsey made her touch him on the zipper area of his pants.
Lindsey, now 68, refused multiple requests for an interview. "It never occurs to you people that some people don't want their past opened back up," he said when an AP reporter approached him at his home outside Cedar Rapids and asked questions.
That past, according to evidence presented in the Bramow's civil case, included accusations from students and parents along with reprimands from principals that were filed away, explained away and ultimately ignored until 1995, when accusations from Bramow and two other girls forced his early retirement. Even then, he kept his teaching license until the Bramows took the case public and filed a complaint with the state.
Like Lindsey, the perpetrators that the AP found are everyday educators — teachers, school psychologists, principals and superintendents among them. They're often popular and recognized for excellence and, in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male. While some abused students in school, others were cited for sexual misconduct after hours that didn't necessarily involve a kid from their classes, such as viewing or distributing child pornography.
They include:
• Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal in East St. Louis, Ill. DNA evidence in a civil case determined that he impregnated a 14-year-old student. Never charged criminally, his license was suspended in 2003. He has ignored an order to surrender it permanently.
• Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher in Polk County, N.C. His bosses warned him not to meet with female students behind closed doors. They put a glass window in his office door, but Landrum papered over it. Police later found pornography and condoms in his office and alleged that he was about to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.
• Rebecca A. Boicelli, a former teacher in Redwood City, Calif. She conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student then went on maternity leave in 2004 while police investigated. She was hired to teach in a nearby school district; board members said police hadn't told them about the investigation.
The overwhelming majority of cases the AP examined involved teachers in public schools. Private school teachers rarely turn up because many are not required to have a teaching license and, even when they have one, disciplinary actions are typically handled within the school.
Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account.
"Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.
Kathy Buzad of the AFT said that "if there's one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that's one too many."
The United States has grown more sympathetic to victims of sex abuse over recent decades, particularly when it comes to young people. Laws that protect children from abusers bear the names of young victims. Police have made pursuing Internet predators a priority. People convicted of abuse typically face tough sentences and registry as sex offenders.
Even so, sexually abusive teachers continue to take advantage, and there are several reasons why.
For one, many Americans deny the problem, and even treat the abuse with misplaced fascination. Popular media reports trumpet relationships between attractive female teachers and male students.
"It's dealt with in a salacious manner with late-night comedians saying 'What 14-year-old boy wouldn't want to have sex with his teacher?' It trivializes the whole issue," says Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration at Kansas State University who has written a book aimed at helping school districts identify and deal with sexual misconduct.
"In other cases, it's reported as if this is some deviant who crawled into the school district — 'and now that they're gone, everything's OK.' But it's much more prevalent than people would think."
The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse. It starts in school hallways, where fellow teachers look away or feel powerless to help. School administrators make behind-the-scenes deals to avoid lawsuits and other trouble. And in state capitals and Congress, lawmakers shy from tough state punishments or any cohesive national policy for fear of disparaging a vital profession.
That only enables rogue teachers, and puts kids who aren't likely to be believed in a tough spot.
In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed. One girl in Mansfield, Ohio, complained about a sexual assault by teacher Donald Coots and got expelled. It was only when a second girl, years later, brought a similar complaint against the same teacher that he was punished.
And that second girl also was ostracized by the school community and ultimately left town.
Unless there's a videotape of a teacher involved with a child, everyone wants to believe the authority figure, says Wayne Promisel, a retired Virginia detective who has investigated many sex abuse cases.
He and others who track the problem reiterated one point repeatedly during the AP investigation: Very few abusers get caught.
They point to several academic studies estimating that only about one in 10 victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to someone who can do something about it.
Teachers, administrators and even parents frequently don't, or won't, recognize the signs that a crime is taking place.
"They can't see what's in front of their face. Not unlike a kid in an alcoholic family, who'll say 'My family is great,'" says McGrath, the California lawyer and investigator who now trains entire school systems how to recognize what she calls the unmistakable "red flags" of misconduct.
In Hamburg, Pa., in 2002, those "red flags" should have been clear. A student skipped classes every day to spend time with one teacher. He gave her gifts and rides in his car. She sat on his lap. The bond ran so deep that the student got chastised repeatedly — even suspended once for being late and absent so often. But there were no questions for the teacher.
Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.
"Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me," says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother's kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. "I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything."
He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit — a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug.
She was sure she was in love.
By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.
Mansfield finally got caught by the girl's mother, and his own words convicted him. At his criminal trial in 2004, Heather read his e-mails and instant messages aloud, from declarations of true love to explicit references to past sex. He's serving up to 31 years in state prison.
The growing use of e-mails and text messages is leaving a trail that investigators and prosecutors can use to prove an intimate relationship when other evidence is hard to find.
Even then, many in the community find it difficult to accept that a predator is in their midst. When these cases break, defendants often portray the students as seducers or false accusers. However, every investigator questioned said that is largely a misconception.
"I've been involved in several hundred investigations," says Martin Bates, an assistant superintendent in a Salt Lake City school district. "I think I've seen that just a couple of times ... where a teacher is being pursued by a student."
Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.
"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames — "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."
Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.
School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.
In the Iowa case, Lindsey agreed to leave without fighting when his bosses kept the reason for his departure confidential. The decades' worth of allegations against him would have stayed secret, if not for Bramow.
Across the country, such deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.
While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP — Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret.
Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.
And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.
Elsewhere, there have been fitful steps toward catching errant teachers that may be having some effect. The AP found the number of state actions against sexually abusive teachers rose steadily, to a high of 649 in 2005.
More states now require background checks on teachers, fingerprinting and mandatory reporting of abuse, though there are still loopholes and a lack of coordination among districts and states.
U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the last 20 years on civil rights and sex discrimination have opened schools up to potentially huge financial punishments for abuses, which has driven some schools to act.
And the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps a list of educators who've been punished for any reason, but only shares the names among state agencies.
The uncoordinated system that's developed means some teachers still fall through the cracks. Aaron M. Brevik is a case in point.
Brevik was a teacher at an elementary school in Warren, Mich., until he was accused of using a camera hidden in a gym bag to secretly film boys in locker rooms and showers. He also faced charges that he recorded himself molesting a boy while the child slept.
Found guilty of criminal sexual conduct, Brevik is now serving a five- to 20-year prison sentence and lost his Michigan license in 2005.
What Michigan officials apparently didn't know when they hired him was that Brevik's teaching license in Minnesota had been permanently suspended in 2001 after he allegedly invited two male minors to stay with him in a hotel room. He was principal of an elementary school in southeastern Minnesota at the time.
"I tell you what, they never go away. They just blend a little better," says Steve Janosko, a prosecutor in Ocean County, N.J., who handled the case of a former high school teacher and football coach, Nicholas J. Arminio.
Arminio surrendered his New Jersey teaching license in 1994 after two female students separately accused him of inappropriate touching. The state of Maryland didn't know that when he applied for teaching credentials and took a job at a high school in Baltimore County. He eventually resigned and lost that license, too.
Even so, until this month, he was coaching football at another Baltimore County high school in a job that does not require a teaching license. After the AP started asking questions, he was fired.
Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.
In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield's arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a "slut" to her face. A teacher called her a "vixen." Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.
Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.
So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.
"I didn't have my childhood," says Kline, who's back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. "He had me so matured at so young.
"I remember going from little baby dolls to just being an adult."
The courts dealt her a final insult. A federal judge dismissed her civil suit against the school, saying administrators had no obligation to protect her from a predatory teacher since officials were unaware of the abuse, despite what the court called widespread "unsubstantiated rumors" in the school. The family is appealing.
In Iowa, the state Supreme Court made the opposite ruling in the Bramow case, deciding she and her parents could sue the Cedar Rapids schools for failing to stop Lindsey.
Bramow, now a young mother who waits tables for a living, won a $20,000 judgment. But Lindsey was never criminally charged due to what the former county prosecutor deemed insufficient evidence.
Arthur Sensor, the former superintendent in Oelwein, Iowa, who vividly recalls pressuring Lindsey to quit on Feb. 18, 1964, regrets that he didn't do more to stop him back then.
Now, he says, he'd call the police.
"He promised me he wouldn't do it again — that he had learned. And he was a young man, a beginning teacher, had a young wife, a young child," Sensor, now 86 years old, said during testimony at the Bramows' civil trial.
"I wanted to believe him, and I did."
Many friends and readers sent in the above AP article, thanks for caring!
http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/October2007/19/c6259.html
Sexual assault on campus - Exposing the truth
MONTREAL, Oct. 19 /CNW Telbec/ - Statistics Canada 2006 reports that
4 out of 5 female undergraduates on Canadian campuses are victims of violence in a dating relationship. Even more shocking is the fact that 60% of college
age males say they would commit sexual assault if they were certain of not being caught.
In light of such alarming statistics Jewish Women International of Canada is proud to sponsor the conference SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS-EXPOSING THE
TRUTH, to be held Sunday November 4 & Monday November 5, 2007 at the Delta Centre-Ville Hotel, Montreal, Quebec.
This conference, focusing on sexual assault awareness, education and prevention is designed to help define the different types of sexual assault,
support victims of sexual assault, examine the existing communication tools and evaluate the current treatment of sexual assault by local institutions.
Experts and Professionals from across Canada are meeting in Montreal to share knowledge from a wide variety of experiences, share best practices, report on research findings and successful programs as well as collaborating on strategies for the future.
For further information: or accreditation: Penny Krowitz, 1-866
333-5942
uoj, are we talking about a modern ortho school in monsey called hi rock?
re anon. of 10:17
LT is best off being very very very quiet....I know of what I speak.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7DC1F38F93AA35750C0A966958260
The Brooklyn District Attorney is investigating claims that dozens of children were sexually molested at a now-closed unlicensed day-care center in Brooklyn last year, according to participants in the case.
The Brooklyn District Attorney is investigating claims that dozens of children were sexually molested at a now-closed unlicensed day-care center in Brooklyn last year, according to participants in the case.
A spokesman for District Attorney Charles J. Hynes refused to confirm or deny that an investigation was under way, but Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat, said he and more than 70 parents of children who had attended the school met with Mr. Hynes on Feb. 6 to discuss what they contended was slow progress in the investigation.
The operator of the school was Mordechai (Morton) Ehrman, participants in the case said. He ran the school, known as the Simcha Play Group, at his home at 1444 East Fifth Street in the Midwood section. Working with him were his wife, Tova, several of his 10 children and an undetermined number of hired teachers, participants in the case said.
Mr. Ehrman's lawyer, his cousin, David Stern, said that four complaints by parents about the Ehrmans had been investigated by the Special Services for Children Division of the Human Resources Department. He said the files had been closed earlier this year for lack of evidence.
'No One Gives a Damn'
He said that the Ehrmans had been intimidated, threatened and harassed since the allegations first surfaced last year, and that they had received no help from the city. ''No one gives a damn,'' he said.
The controversy, which was reported yesterday in New York Newsday and The Daily News, has prompted several angry encounters between the Ehrmans and parents, participants in the case said. Several weeks ago, Mr. Ehrman went to court to answer charges of harassment brought by one father, Sam Antar. The case was postponed.
No charges have been filed against Mr. Ehrman or anyone in his family, but Mr. Hikind said he understood that evidence was being heard in the case.
Reached by telephone in Israel, where he is vacationing, Mr. Hikind said parents first began coming to him last fall. ''Some of them didn't even want to tell me their names,'' he said.
Dozens of Children Questioned
Mr. Hikind said dozens of children had been question by assistant district attorneys since the investigation began.
All the families involved are Orthodox Jews, Mr. Hikind said, and some had been cautioned by their rabbis not to make their complaints public because they might embarrass the Jewish community. The Ehrmans are Orthodox Jews, too, and advertised their day-care center as a school for Orthodox Jewish children.
Mr. Hikind said the controversy began when a mother went to her rabbi complaining that her 3-year-old daughter had been molested at the school. Mr. Hikind said some rabbis in the neighborhood encourged parents to press charges against the Ehrmans. ''Some rabbis even urged them from the pulpit,'' he said.
Mr. Stern said Mr. Ehrman first heard the accusations when he was summoned before a Beth Din, a traditional rabbinical tribunal. ''They demanded that he sign away his right to deal with children for the rest of his life,'' Mr. Stern said.
Accusations of Rape and Fondling
Mr. Ehrman refused and called Mr. Stern, a former assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, who said he called the District Attorney's office and demanded an investigation. ''I sent the District Attorney the names of all the children in the school and all the children in the summer program,'' he said.
Mr. Ehrman later demanded another rabbinical court so he could present his side of the controversy. ''They met three weeks ago, but not since,'' Mr. Stern said.
According to Mr. Hikind, the charges against the Ehrmans include sexual abuses ranging from fondling to rape. ''There are some things I can't bring myself to discuss, even on the telephone,'' the Assemblyman said.
Mr. Stern said anonymous phone calls about the controversy had cost Mr. Ehrman and one of his daughters the jobs they had taken after they closed the school.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303521,00.html
At the King Middle School in Portland, Maine, medical workers are allowed to give the girls as young as 11 birth control pills without their parents knowing about it.
The school board in Portland voted 7-2 to make that happen. The rationale is that some kids will have sex and the school must try to reduce pregnancies. Also, parents must sign a waiver allowing their children to receive medical care at the school.
However, that medical care is kept secret from the parents, in the birth control area.
Now giving sixth grade girls the pill is dumb. It doesn't protect them from disease and tacitly says that sex at that young age is understandable.
This is foolish, ridiculous, and irresponsible. But in the secular progressive world. The SP doctrine is to quote, "empower children" and downgrade parental authority because some parents are bad.
Right now seven states: Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and New Hampshire have no parental notification laws concerning abortion. That means that if young girls in those states get pregnant, Planned Parenthood can set up the abortion and parents will never know.
The SPs love that. Like Vermont, Maine is a state where many Woodstock generation people have congregated and they are very active. A Portland newspaper today is supporting needles of drug addicts and a political cartoon in the paper promotes more rights for convicted sexual offender, both SP cornerstones.
http://www.smartmoney.com/invisiblehand/index.cfm?story=20070927
Meanwhile, the overbuilt housing sector faces its biggest storm since Dust Bowl days. Perhaps $200 billion in U.S. mortgage losses and God-knows-how-much of God-knows-what-else is still looking to land on someone's balance sheet. The mortgage industry is functioning just well enough to sustain a deeply depressed market. And the number of empty houses new and used keeps going up despite the slump in residential construction and the increasingly desperate discounting.
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=80248-stevia-sweetener-natural
10/2/2007 - A recent warning letter sent by FDA has again brought the 'natural' sweetener stevia into the spotlight ...
The agency sent a written request to natural and organic foods firm Hain Celestial Group, asking it to immediately re-label its Celestial Zingers To Go tea and drink mixes, which contain the sweetener.
According to FDA, the products were "adulterated", as they were conventional food items marketed as dietary supplements, in an attempt to sidestep current regulations prohibiting the use of stevia in food but permitting it in dietary supplements.
In its letter to Hain Celestial Group, FDA noted that it has received petitions and inquiries in the past related to the use of stevia or stevia extracts in food, but that "data and information necessary to support the safe use have been lacking".
"In fact, literature reports have raised safety concerns about the use of stevia, including concerns about control of blood sugar, and the effects of reproductive, cardiovascular and renal systems," it wrote.
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1037365
Marvel Entertainment Group yesterday stopped new shipments from China of its Curious George products after test results from an environmental health group found a doll testing at 10 times the federal government limit for lead.
But Marvel doesn’t plan to pull the toy line based on the 2006 Curious George movie off shelves until it does its own testing, said company spokesman David Collins
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN1827916020071018
Russia, the top export market for U.S. chicken and an important buyer of pork, has banned imports of poultry and pork from 30 U.S. facilities, USDA and meat industry sources said on Thursday.
The action followed Russia's inspections of the facilities this summer. The reasons for many of bans were not given, USDA and industry sources said, and the facilities were not identified.
"This is based on the audits that the Russians did," Toby Moore, spokesman for the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, said of the poultry bans.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/16/MNT0SQDJV.DTL&tsp=1
A nationwide toxic toy ban likely to follow state lead
Tom Chorneau, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
(10-16) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- One day after California became the first state in the nation to ban toys containing toxic plastic softeners, supporters of the measure announced plans Monday to help at least nine other states - and perhaps even Congress - enact similar laws.
The movement to ban phthalates began in San Francisco last year when the city's Board of Supervisors imposed the nation's first restrictions on consumer products that contain the chemical compounds, which have been linked to hormone problems in laboratory animals.
On Sunday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state law, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2009.
Lawmakers in Texas, Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, Maine, Connecticut and New York are expected to introduce similar legislation in the coming months, according to environmental and breast cancer groups that sponsored the California measure.
Widely used in a variety of consumer products, phthalates are a family of chemicals most often used as a softener of plastic. Some critics say the chemicals can make up as much as half of the material used to make plastic toys and are also used to make baby teethers.
Researchers say regular contact with phthalates - chewing on plastic toys containing the chemicals, for example - may cause hormonal damage in young children and increase the chances of serious illness later in life.
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/612152,CST-NWS-CHINA20.article#
Trader Joe's just says no to China
October 20, 2007
BY STEPHANIE ZIMMERMANN Consumer Reporter szimmermann@suntimes.com
Trader Joe's, the hip, wholesome food store with 15 locations in the Chicago area, said Friday it will phase out foods imported from China
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Keep reading the 500+ pages of violations.
Food contaminated with blood, dirt, rust particles, bone dust, metal shavings, pieces of rotting wood and hair.
Turkey meat left unrefridgerated for 8 hours straight.
EMPLOYEES CAUGHT SPITTING. (They most love their wonderful bosses the Rubashkins)
WORKERS CAUGHT URINATING in corners of rooms with food present probably because of STUFFED TOILETS OVERFLOWING WITH HUMAN FECES.
No hot water, no cold water, no soap dispensers, broken sinks.
Soiled towels cluttering up the stairwell
Balls of feces in food preparation areas as big a 3 inches in diameter, as well as rusty paint chips, broken walls & shelves, mold & mildew.
Child psychologist arrested for kiddie porn freed on bail
BY KERRY BURKE and MICHAEL WHITE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, October 20th 2007, 4:00 AM
Dr. James Bonczek ----The child psychologist arrested after cops found a cache of child pornography in his Manhattan apartment was freed Friday on $3,500 bail, according to court records.
But Dr. James Bonczek's neighbors in Stuyvesant Town said he hasn't been seen since he was hauled off in handcuffs at 9 a.m. Thursday.
"He's a sick man. Parents trusted him. His practice was with children, mostly boys. Everybody trusted him," fumed 32-year-old Lisa Rodriguez, an ex-neighbor.
Bonczek graduated from a Columbia University graduate school in 1980 and is a child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapist, according to an online biography found on Psychology Today. He is quoted in the biography as saying, "Most of my patients are children or families with behavioral problems."
Rabbi Tropper, who is also the founder and rosh yeshiva of Kol Yakov, a Monsey-based haredi ba'al teshuva yeshiva, is a controversial figure.
Rabbi Tropper has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics to lure potential converts from intermarried families. In one southern city, Rabbi Tropper promised potential converts that a mikva would be built and a shul opened – no one would need to move to Monsey or another Orthodox enclave. But, when the time for conversion neared, no mikva existed and no synagogue functioned. The promised rabbi Tropper was to send had not arrived. Then, Rabbi Tropper dropped a bombshell. These potential converts, all serious, all had studied for more than a year, would have to move from the southern United States to Monsey, New York – or their conversions were off.
Rabbi Tropper told me these converts confused his hopes with promises. But in email correspondence shared with me, Rabbi Tropper admits in part to misleading these poor people.
Further, there are cities with mikvas, Modern Orthodox congregations and YU-trained rabbis relatively close to where these people live. They could drive for an hour and a half and spend Shabbat and holidays with families there until a congregation can open in their home town. Rabbi Tropper did not propose that option. (In their home town, by the way, there are other such Tropper-involved families facing similar decisions, and where one or two observant Jews live. Some of those potential converts have been said to be fearful that Tropper will cut them off, too, if they speak out about his dishonesty.)
The husband of this family is in his 50s. He has years vested at his job with a pension due on retirement. He will lose all that if he moves, along with facing the problem of finding a new job at that age. Rabbi Tropper made many cloud-like promises – this friend in Monsey will find something for you or that man who works for the city will take care of you – but nothing concrete, and the family was unwilling to trust a man who had already lied to them.
Rabbi Tropper summarily threw the eldest son of this family out of his yeshiva, leaving him broke with no way to get to the airport and back home. He claimed the boy was not serious about his learning yet the boy's teachers had given the family nothing but praise – until the day they refused to move to Monsey. This teenager had to borrow money to get home.
Tropper had promised the family the boy would be able to get his GED at Kol Yakov, and he urged them to withdraw the child from public school and send him to Monsey and Tropper's yeshiva. But Tropper made no arrangements for that GED. It did not matter, however, because the boy was ineligible for a GED under NY law because he was too young. He lost a year, and had to regroup and restructure his life, all because Rabbi Leib Tropper cannot tell the truth.
These people spent thousands of dollars on new kitchen appliances and dishes, kept strictly kosher and did whatever Rabbi Tropper demanded. They appeared on Tropper's EJF website praising the organization and were used by Tropper as examples of his "successful" approach. This material was apparently shown to Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sefardic chief rabbi, and to other Israeli haredi leaders who later moved to block acceptance of all Rabbinical Council of America (Modern Orthodox) conversions. Now this family is "lost" to "Yiddishkeit" because of Tropper's failings.
(By the way, I, along with David Kelsey, pitched this story to a major Jewish newspaper last year. The paper, familiar with this blog, would not assign the story to me because I'm too close to the issue and too outspoken. But they were not aware of Kelsey's blog, and were willing to assign it to him. Or, if we wanted, we could do it as an op-ed. I was game for that; Kelsey was not. In the end, we turned it down hoping the paper would relent. It did not. No one else has the story, so, as far as I know, this is the first place this has appeared.)
And, sadly, that is still true. The only place Rabbi Tropper's bait-and-switch tactics have been reported is here on FailedMessiah.com. But that, I hope, will soon change. In the meantime, we can watch the RCA give in to haredi demands.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/915215.html
5 Haredi men beat woman who refused to move to back of bus
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
Five assailants believed to be Ultra-Orthodox Jews assaulted a woman and an Israel Defense Forces soldier Sunday for sitting next to each other on a bus bound for Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem.
The incident began when the five men asked the religious woman to move to the back of the bus to prevent males and females from sitting together in public. When she refused, they beat her and the male soldier who sat next to her.
Police forces that arrived at the scene to arrest the men were attacked by dozens of ultra-Orthodox men who punctured the tires of their vehicles, allowing the assailants to escape. No one was hurt in the incident.
The ultra-Orthodox community in Beit Shemesh has been at odds with Egged over their demands that the bus company operates so-called "kosher" lines where woman and men are seated seperately.
In 2006 dozens of Haredi protestors took to the streets, hurling stones and eggs to demonstrate against the bus company. In one incident, a bus driver who was attacked fired his handgun in the air to fend off his assailants.
From Theyeshivaworld.com:
Flatbush Shomrim has just contacted Yeshivaworld with the following important message & warning to the community. Two incidents were reported to Shomrim of a man who touched women inappropriately in the heart of Flatbush (East 28 & Ave L) this past Shabbos afternoon. The description of the man they are looking for is: Frum-looking, 5 foot 6, medium build, short red beard, in his mid 20’s and wearing a black hat and dark suit.
NYPD detectives have been notified, and reports have been filed.
Shomrim believe that he is a local, neighborhood man - and are asking for the public’s assistance in catching this man.
If you have any information which can assist in this mans apprehension, or are past victim of this man - please call Shomrim’s non-emergency number at 718-338-9453.
If you see this man stalking a woman, or have just been victimized by this man, please call Shomrim’s 24hr emergency number at 718-338-9797.
Many times victims are afraid to come forward - but Shomrim is urging any victims to come forward immediately to prevent this man from committing this crime again.
All calls will be kept in strict confidence!!
NYC Councilman Indicted
NEW YORK -- Lawyers for a city councilman facing rape and assault charges say prosecutors asked improper questions that biased a grand jury against him.
Dennis Gallagher's lawyers filed papers Friday asking a judge to throw out the charges. Gallagher has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in his Queens office, hours after they met in a bar.
One of his lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, says a prosecutor was ``just trying to embarrass'' Gallagher and ``undermine his integrity'' by asking him about his family and his council post during the grand jury proceedings. Brafman says those subjects shouldn't have been raised because they weren't relevant to the alleged crime.
A spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney's office says prosecutors can't comment because they haven't seen the legal filing.
The councilman, a married father of two, has acknowledged an encounter with his accuser but says it was consensual.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/09/winston-churchill-truth-is.html
Hi Rabbi,
Because of your blog, I along with some of my friends are trying to be more careful in what we put in our mouths. We are in brooklyn. What meat & poultry brands do you recommend. Also I sometimes need to buy bet yosef because I have sephardic guests, can you recommend someplace? Much appreciated. Keep up the good work.
I must say I was bit skeptical about your accusations against agri as they do have the hashgocho of the OU & KAJ who are.... I met last week with a shochet who I know personally to be a yarei shomayim, he's been to AGRI & saw them in action & he told me it's a disaster. He said he even questioned some of the shochtim there & they admitted that they themselves won't eat the meat that they shechted by AGRI. I am no longer skeptical.
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Dolovich_Gary.html
Case of Gary Philip Dolovich, Attorney
(AKA: Gary Dolovich)
Former Executive Director of Manitoba Kosher
Winnipeg, Canada
2001 Kosher Supervision Guide
http://www.kashrusmagazine.com/ksg/inter/can_eng.html
Manitoba Kosher ("MBK"), C306-123 Doncaster Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba,
MB R3N2B2. (204) 487-9571; Fax: (204) 477-7405. Gary Dolovich, Executive Director; Vaad: Rabbi A. Altein, Rabbi Y. Benamou, Rabbi M. Stern
Integrated Child Exploitation Unit
Winnipeg Police Service - July 20, 2006
http://www.winnipeg.ca/police/press/2006/07jul/2006_07_20.stm
Gary Philip DOLOVICH, 39 years of Winnipeg has been charged with Importing/ Distributing Child Pornography X 17. He has been detained in custody.
Porn charges laid
Legal researcher hired by province accused
By PAUL TURENNE, POLICE REPORTER
Winnipeg Sun (Winnipeg, Canada)
July 21, 2006
http://winnipegsun.com/News/Winnipeg/2006/07/21/1695252-sun.html
A man hired by the province to research the law now finds himself fighting it.
Gary Philip Dolovich, 39, has been charged with 17 counts of distributing child pornography over the Internet.
The man, a lawyer on unpaid leave from his job as a legal researcher at the provincial Court of Appeal, was arrested Tuesday at Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ont., as he got off a plane from England.
He was escorted back to Winnipeg by police officers Wednesday, then released on his own recognizance.
Police accuse Dolovich of distributing child porn through the Internet on 17 different occasions between May and September 2005. Police would not say to whom he was allegedly distributing it or where he allegedly got it from.
Const. Blair Good, a spokesman for Winnipeg police, said cops began to investigate the man after receiving a tip from a national police body that deals with child exploitation.
On Feb. 11, police seized several computers and hardware "from addresses known to" Dolovich, said Good.
Police would not specify where the computers were seized from. Jeff Schnoor, assistant deputy minister of courts for Manitoba Justice, said it doesn't appear any government computers were involved or that Dolovich was accessing child porn at work.
Following the February seizure, Dolovich was charged with one count each of possessing and accessing child porn. He was then released from custody with the conditions he not access the Internet, not possess any porn and avoid being alone with anyone under 18 years of age without the written permission of Child and Family Services.
PUT ON UNPAID LEAVE
Dolovich was put on unpaid leave from his job two days after the seizures, said Schnoor.
Martin Glazer, Dolovich's lawyer, said his client then went to visit family in England.
Meanwhile, police in Winnipeg combed through the seized computers and discovered what they claim is evidence Dolovich had distributed child porn on several occasions.
A Canada-wide warrant was issued for his arrest, and Dolovich was nabbed Tuesday as he returned to the country.
Glazer said his client had a return ticket to Winnipeg and was changing planes in Toronto. He doesn't understand why police didn't arrest him here.
Dolovich has again been released from custody on the condition he not leave Winnipeg. He also surrendered his Canadian and Israeli passports, since police now consider him a flight risk.
Winnipeg lawyer accused of distributing child porn
By Mike McIntyre and Kevin Rollason (www.mikeoncrime.com, kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca)
Winnipeg Free Press (Winnipeg, Canada)
July 21, 2006
He was released on bail once again with several conditions including turning over his Canadian and Israeli passports, not having unsupervised contact with children and staying off the Internet. He must also remain in Winnipeg and not travel.
Dolovich is in the midst of divorce proceedings with his wife of eight years and is the father of two children, aged 7 and 1, according to court documents. The divorce proceedings have been ongoing since 2002.
Lawyer Marty Minuk has been retained by the province as a special independent Crown prosecutor to avoid any potential conflict of interest.
Defence lawyer Martin Glazer said yesterday Dolovich is presumed innocent and criticized police for releasing his client's name. He also questioned the logic of paying for two officers to fly to Toronto to arrest him.
"He always intended to come back to Winnipeg. We consider this a waste of taxpayers' money," said Glazer.
Glazer said he doesn't believe there will be any allegations his client was sending child pornography through his work at the Law Courts.
Winnipeg police spokesman Const. Blair Good said yesterday that police began their investigation in September 2005 after getting a tip that a man was "having conversations with several persons over the Internet and allegedly trading hundreds of child pornography images." A forensic examination of the computers allegedly found that between May and September 2005, child pornography images were imported and distributed on 17 different occasions, said Good.
Det. Sgt. Richard Lemire of the Manitoba Integrated Child Exploitation Unit said the 17 charges represent hundreds of pornographic images of children.
Dolovich was called to the bar in 1991 and worked briefly with the provincial government in its constitutional law branch, according to the Law Society of Manitoba.
Dolovich first began working as a researcher with the Court of Appeal in 1995 but left three years later. He returned for a brief stint in 2001 and then again in 2004.
Dolovich's employment with the Appeal Court was terminated weeks after his first arrest this year.
Teacher sex abuse scars family, town By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer
35 minutes ago
BERWYN, Ill. - They've learned to watch their older daughter for any sign that something's wrong. She cuts her long, blond hair and dyes it jet black. And they worry. Her father picks up a book she's been reading, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and skims it for clues.
He notices a highlighted passage: "You forget some things, don't you," it reads. "Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."
Her parents can relate. There's a lot they'd like to forget, too — especially since the day nearly three years ago when their then 15-year-old daughter told them her elementary school band teacher had molested her and other girls.
The teacher, Robert Sperlik Jr., pleaded guilty last year to sexual abuse and kidnapping of more than 20 girls, some as young as 9. Among other things, he told prosecutors that he put rags in the girls' mouths, taped them shut and also bound their hands and feet with duct tape and rope for his own sexual stimulation. According to court documents, he rubbed their inner thighs and shoulders and forced them to sit, while bound, in closets and school storage rooms. At least one girl told prosecutors that when Sperlik stood behind her, she could feel his erect penis on her back.
He pretended it was a game, gave the girls candy and told them not to tell.
And for a long time, none of them did.
A seven-month Associated Press investigation found stories like these are all too common. AP reporters in every state and the District of Columbia identified 2,570 teachers who were punished for sexual misconduct from 2001 to 2005 alone, for actions that ranged from fondling to viewing child pornography to rape.
Though experts who deal with sexual abuse say victims tell the truth more often than not, the ordeal is often worsened when the community around them is drawn in, and people take sides. Often, victims and their families face uncooperative administrators, disbelieving neighbors and an agonizing legal journey.
This family in Berwyn, a suburb west of Chicago, understands the emotional toll.
"It's a silent epidemic is what it is," the girl's father says. "People are protecting people who aren't worth protecting. I hope our daughters will have that instilled in them, too — that you report what you know."
The couple, a telecommunications technician and a stay-at-home mom, spoke on the condition that they and their daughter not be identified, so she can try to move on from the nightmare that began in the late 1990s.
They want to share their story to encourage anyone being abused by an educator to come forward. They also hope school officials will do more to get abusive teachers out of classrooms.
"I thought my children were safest in school," the girl's mother says. She shakes her head. As a child, she went to Pershing Elementary, the same school her two daughters attended and one of several in Berwyn, where Sperlik taught band for 18 years.
"I don't trust anybody now."
Her daughter was a fourth-grader when Sperlik began teaching her how to play the clarinet.
She liked him. He said nice things about her and played funny games during class, including letting them draw lips on duct tape and put it on their mouths.
Eventually, though, she and two of her friends started to feel uncomfortable with what they described as increasingly creepy behavior.
After attending a school seminar about inappropriate touching in 2001, they took a piece of paper and wrote a note to the woman who spoke to them.
He "rubs our leg sometimes, rubs our back to feel for a bra," the girl, then age 11, wrote for herself and her friends.
"He comments (to) me about my hair and how nice it looks when it's down, comments to (another female student) on how she dresses and that she should be a model."
They asked the woman not to say anything and, if she did, not to mention their names.
"We are afraid to tell our parents," the girl wrote in the note, which eventually made its way to Karen Grindle, the principal at Pershing.
The girls thought it was enough to flag an adult's attention without having to be too explicit.
Grindle, according to court documents, spoke to the children individually and to some of their parents, though she didn't show the letter to the parents. She told them that their daughters felt uncomfortable with the band teacher — that she had spoken to Sperlik, that he explained that he was only correcting their posture and tapping them on the knee to help them keep a beat.
The parents felt reassured.
"She told me she had my daughter's self-interest at heart. That made me feel good," the mom says.
Later in court, however, the girls claimed they had privately told Grindle that Sperlik touched them in their groin area. Grindle insisted that never happened.
Given her findings, she made no report to police or child protective services. She did, however, tell Sperlik not to touch his students for any reason.
Grindle, who was later cleared of criminal charges for not reporting Sperlik, did not respond to a request for an interview. Nor did Sperlik, by way of his attorney.
William Jordan, the district's superintendent at the time of the abuse, said he could not comment, citing the victims' civil suit against him, other school officials and Sperlik.
"It's important to look at what the school failed to do," says Mark Loevy-Reyes, a Chicago attorney who represents some of the families, including the one profiled in this story. He claims that Sperlik's behavior came to the attention of school officials on various occasions.
"I think it's easy for school districts to turn a blind eye to it, unless they know they can be held accountable."
In 2001, when the parents initially asked their daughter to tell them what happened, she didn't want to talk about it. So they stopped asking.
The daughter never planned to bring it up again. But four years later, she overheard a conversation her mom was having with her younger sister, an eighth-grader whose neighbor friend had been dancing provocatively in front of adults.
Her mother explained that it wasn't appropriate. And when the younger daughter protested the lecture, her older sister had to say something.
"You know what, you need to listen to Mom because of what happened to me with that weirdo band teacher," the elder daughter said, opening the door to her long-kept secret.
It was the first time her mother heard anything about duct tape.
"What did you say? What do you mean? How did he tape you?" her stunned mother asked, grabbing a kitchen chair and cellophane tape so her daughter could show her.
Her daughter started sobbing and the mother stopped, realizing how much the questions were upsetting her.
"This is not your fault," her mom said, tears streaming down her face, too. "I never knew. I didn't know."
When the girl's father came home and heard the story, he immediately went to the police, even though it was late.
"At that moment, as a father — as a man — I needed to go to the proper authorities," he says, his face reddening as he remembers that cold night in January 2005. "I couldn't sleep through the night without taking matters into my own hands."
Their daughter gave police the names of the two other girls, whom police interviewed separately. Eventually, other young women came forward, some saying that they hadn't realized what Sperlik was doing was sexual until they were older.
Many in the community didn't want to believe it.
To them, Sperlik was an awkward, but generally well-liked bachelor and accomplished drummer who related to his students better than other adults.
"I've always known Bob's a little socially inept," says Michelle Nafziger, a mother who went to high school with Sperlik. Her five children also had him for band.
Her daughter was among a group of high school musicians that Sperlik hand-picked for a jazz group called Take 10, which practiced at his home. None of them were among his accusers.
Nafziger remembers how Sperlik had a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" poster hanging in his home. He also took part in what she thought were harmless band pranks, including duct taping students and taking photos of it.
"He was like a big child," Nafziger says.
After he accepted a 20-year prison sentence in a plea deal, she said Sperlik wrote a letter to some of his older, former students — a few of whom visited him behind bars.
Sperlik told them he still did not think he was guilty, Nafziger said. But he apologized to them.
"He's obviously disturbed. Now I could see that these weren't innocent (duct) taping things. I could see that he was getting sexual gratification out of that, which is terrible and should not have been allowed," she says.
"But I don't know. It left us all feeling really weird."
Dominic Tarullo, a parent whose four children had Sperlik for band, suspects Berwyn's history of political corruption somehow played a role in getting Sperlik to accept a plea deal without a fight.
"I know him as a real honest, good guy," says Tarullo, who speculates that Sperlik wanted to save his elderly parents the embarrassment of a trial. "I just cannot imagine that he was abusing kids."
He's not the only one. Immediately after news of Sperlik's arrest hit in January 2005, people began questioning the girls' motives: Why didn't they come forward sooner? Were they really telling the truth?
Some think their parents simply want money from a lawsuit.
The latter accusation is perhaps the most hurtful.
"How dare you?" says the mother of the first family to step forward. "Why would I put my children in harm's way — throw them in front of a bus? Come on!"
It was almost too much for the girl, who never anticipated such harsh public scrutiny.
For a time, she was cutting herself on her arms and ankles, a ritual that is often associated with victims of sexual abuse. Her parents also had her admitted to a psychiatric hospital after she took sleeping pills last year. She was upset that Sperlik hadn't gotten more prison time.
"I just can't take it anymore," she wrote in a note to her parents.
After she came home, they found a counselor who specializes in sexual abuse.
It's been helping, they say. And lately, their daughter has been more angry than depressed, showing some fight.
In the spring, she graduated from a private high school. Now, she has started college in central Illinois and a new chapter away from her troubles in Berwyn.
She's also let her hair grow out and no longer dyes it black.
For the first time in a long time, her parents are hopeful, though nagging guilt and anger persist.
Her mother still has dreams about going to the school to confront the principal about why she didn't do more.
Her father thinks about the day his daughter marries and has kids of her own — how he'll have to resist the urge to park outside her house to watch over them.
"Our kids were like babies still. That's what makes it so hard because they were so innocent," he says.
He rubs his face, as his eyes well up.
"All these kids — I feel sorry for all of them, not just my own.
"We're not the only ones suffering in this. There's a lot of people suffering in this."
From an upcoming CNN "Planet In Peril"...........
There should be a ban on anything from China that could be ingested...
--------------------
In a segment from China, Gupta reports that, partly thanks to economic boom and a surging population, China can claim 16 of the world's 20 most air-polluted cities.
More than half of that vast country's rivers are severely polluted, he adds. He interviews the young widow of a farmer who died of colon cancer at age 30, just one of many cases in a community dubbed a "cancer village." No wonder. The local river used for drinking and irrigation is polluted with carcinogens from nearby iron-ore mining operations that have gone on for decades.
On the Rabbi's Knee
"What’s certain is that much of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish leadership still refuses to acknowledge that sexual abuse is even a problem. Efforts to persuade Orthodox organizations like Agudath Israel and Torah Umesorah (the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools) to develop a sex-offender registry have so far been all but ignored. Even Henna White, the Lubavitcher community liaison to Hynes’s Project Eden, has complained that she can’t get into the yeshivas to be heard on the subject of abuse. “In New York, we’re going into the girls’ schools,” White said at a conference in January. “Unfortunately, we’re not going into the boys’ schools, and not for lack of trying. Our right-wing yeshivas do not want us there, and there are many people who have tried. The feeling is that this is not a conversation they want to open up.”
On The Rabbis Knee.....
"On February 2, UOJ paid for a bulk mailing to Orthodox homes in Borough Park, Flatbush, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights that might be too observant to have access to the Internet. The mailing accused Kolko of molestation and Margulies of a cover-up and even included their phone numbers. That’s when UOJ says he started receiving threats—“We’re gonna get your family” and “We know who you are.” (Many of these e-mails have been forwarded to Herman.) People accused him of betraying his community and having an ax to grind against Kolko and Margulies. The Jewish Press ran an editorial blasting the mailing. A rival blog called End UOJ was created. But the most shocking responses came from those who believed that accusing Kolko of abuse—true or not—was worse than the abuse itself. “Certainly speaking evil of somebody, truth or otherwise, establishes the most severe of all wrongdoings,” one pseudonymous comment on UOJ reads—“far, far worse then [sic] ‘child sexual abuse,’ and the punishment far more severe.” The post goes on to claim that having sex with a child is punishable by 39 lashings “at the most,” whereas lashon hara is punishable by leprosy—“a far worse penalty.”
***********************************"Now that there’s a lawsuit, UOJ feels vindicated. “Molestation is rampant,” he says. “It’s not a one-in-a-million case. There’s at least one in every school. And I’m going to go after them one at a time.”
**********************************
A secular studies teacher in a yeshiva showed minors a slide show from a nude beach that he went to.
Is this illegal? If so, is it considered a sexual crime against children?
The yeshiva covered it up.
Now that there's a lawsuit, UOJ feels vindicated. "Molestation is rampant, he says. It's not a one-in-a-million case. There's at least one in every school. And I'm going to go after them one at a time".
Get on your UOJ caps and go to the Ohel concert
http://www.vaadhakohol.com/files/ZikneiHachassidim2PDF.pdf
Did UOJ instigate all these Lubavitcher rabbonim to write this public letter accusing us of corruption?
Scroll down to see the translation in English.
Warning to men in Boro Park: Ohel Family Services has in the last few years been getting many government grants. One of them was for the purpose of opening a domestic violence center. In order to justify the money they receive Ohel must ensnare woman to come for counseling under the pretense that they are being abused. Ohel hires social workers and counselors and makes a nice fee off this. Once they sink their claws into the woman they don’t let go very easy because this is a major profit center for them. It can evolve into profit from divorce counseling, children counseling and the list goes on.
Here are the signs to look for if you suspect that your wife is getting involved with Ohel.
Modus operendi: The counselor will first try to get the woman to get her own cell phone so she can contact her discreetly. The counselor has the woman call Ohel at 718 851 6300 and leave a message for the counselor. The counselor will then call back with the appointment time probably when the husband is at work so he wont find out that they are sucking in his wife. Ohel will not come up on the caller id. The caller id will come up as 646718. If you see that your wife has called 718 851 6300 and then has a call back of 718646 you will know that she is in touch with Ohel and you better take action before its to late. Ohel will give her articles, books and lists of items to convince her that she is being abused. You will then hear her use words and talk in ways that she was not familiar with before. Watch out for these signs. Warning your wife could be involved with Joan Hertz of Ohel Domestic Violence.
This is being published for the benefit of the Jewish Community by Ohel Insider. I hope to post more information about Ohel and names of its counselors in the future. Anyone else that has information should also share it for the benefit of the community. This is a major scandal ready to break open. The Rabanim are unfortunately all quit about this. Some are paid fat salaries by Ohel to condone what they do.
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Page 67.
Rubashkin employees caught by the Feds picking up chickens that fell on the filthy floor, just sending them out to your dinner table without cleaning them off.
Page 69.
Feds catch Rubashkin grinding meat on a rusty plate, leaving the meat full of rust pieces.
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Someone complained a little while ago on R' Yudel's blog, reposted here, that he bought Rubashkin chicken franks that were full of feathers. A couple of know-it-all readers butted in and said they were skeptical.
Here on page 70, the federal inspector writes he caught Rubashkin with ground chicken that was full of feathers as large as an inch & half long. He immediately had the production halted.
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Maybe he had to use all the toilet paper. Violation on page 74 for no toilet paper in Agri bathrooms.
I'm just trying to find a limud zchus.
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Inspectors find the dirt, blood & big pieces of schmaltz basically everywhere: stairs, ladders and even the keyboards of the computers.
Rubashkin was also using the same filthy gloves over & over every day.
And they find the food preparation area contaminated with chemicals.
Then the violation on page 91 sounds like it was a ground up metal plumba in the meat.
Child rapist Ephraim Bryks also used to give a "hashgocho" in Winnepeg, Manitoba, when he was there.
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Sholom, Heshy & Dovid Rubashkin probably all had diarrhea after eating the ground beef. It says on page 93 that the Feds ordered a lab test that came back positive as e-Coli.
I'm starting to have second thoughts about taking free meat from Rubashkin. Kashrus is one thing, but this is really gross.
I finally met some of Leib Tropper's BTs. The ones I met at least are not the wacko demons that they are being protrayed as on Shmarya's blog.
If you want to bash Tropper because of the bad stuff he did with his friend Pinter and is accused of doing against gerim that is one thing, but I don't see why every BT that passed through Kol Yaakov is being painted as a monster.
"no toilet paper in Agri bathrooms."
Rubashkin doesn't understand the cardinal rule.
If you have to eat, you can eat out.
If you have to sleep, you can sleep on the floor.
But when you gotta "go", you gotta go!
The feild commander of my 6 man swat team just confirmed spotting avroham mondrowitz walking on rechov geulah with his wife at approx. 3 pm monday the 22nd of oct.
Here are some facts you need to know about how the agri-farmers raise their chickens and animals.
The feed these animals eat are laced with antibiotics in attempt to keep the animals healthy enough to make it to market. So you are being fed, in your daily diet..if you eat meat...with antibiotics.
At some point, you will become resistant to antibiotics to assist your immune system in fighting off disease.
What we are presently seeing is thousands of new strains of bacteria in humans that DO NOT respond to antibiotics!
I have become a vegetarian of sorts years ago for kashruth and health reasons; something I believe everyone must consider. Or at the very least, limit your meat and chicken consumption to Shabbos!
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Page 94 - even when Rubashkin bothers to clean up, he leaves the food out while industrial strength poison is being shpritzed around.
Page 98 - packing chickens in dirty cardboard.
Page 105 - cutting boards & machinery are always filthy.
Page 111 - Rubashkin version of playing bumper cars is when workers drive their filthy pallet lifts right into hanging sides of beef and keep going.
The problem with the antibiotics is an environmental one. Bacteria strains become resistant and attack people who don't eat the meat also.
There has been a movement recently to not rely on any institutional shechita. You can pick your own shochet to shecht for you at a Willy B shlachthoyz. I assume you can also get the cow from an organic farm with no antibiotics. You'd better be equipped with a very large freezer.
LVF, What r they waiting for? Authorization to shoot or they cant get a clear shot? Let me know if they need a "delegation" of sharpshooters from these parts. Can they please get us a more recent photo of the rosho?
"A secular studies teacher in a yeshiva showed minors a slide show from a nude beach that he went to."
It is illegal to show pornography to minors and a teacher would have an extra sense of fiduciary duty.
Are there any lawyers here who know if a nude beach is somehow not classified as pornography?
In any case, how does the yeshiva save face when they are supposed to upholding Torah principles?
Bacteria strains become resistant and attack people who don't eat the meat also.
Certainly, not nearly as much, and the bacteria is not as stubborn as the strains found in meat eaters.
hou can mondrowiz walk with his wife in geula if gerrer cant walk with wifes at all? and did he f--k boys thru a sheet only? or he got a special waiver from olefski?
I don't know what all this criticism is about. When I visited Postville, Rubashkin gave me my own roll of the softest, plushest Charmin toilet paper.
It was a mechaya!
Dear UOJ:
My name is Michael Lesher, and I hope you've seen the recent spate of articles about my campaign to revive the case against Avrohom Mondrowitz. (New York Post, July 25; Village Voice, July 25; now the front page of Forward, July 28). I will be happy to forward to you any of these articles if you haven't yet seen them -- or you can get from the my web site, www.MichaelLesher.com, by going to the bottom of the "Press and Presentations" page and clicking on the relevant links.
I'm a ba'al t'shuva, a writer by preference and experience, also a lawyer, and (as you can see from the site) I've been devoting my legal efforts primarily to help abused children and parents who try to protect them -- but are getting a raw deal from the courts and/or the child welfare system. I'm co-author of From Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts -- and What Can Be Done about It (University Press of New England, 2005). I've written several articles and columns on child sex abuse, including child sex abuse in the Orthodox community. For the last eight years, I've made the Mondrowitz case one of my obsessions; I spent over two years fighting FOIA battles to get government documents that proved the Brooklyn D.A. had quietly allowed the case to wither, I've tried to get to the bottom of Mondrowitz's claims to have rabbinic support, I've even corresponded briefly with him. Now, after years of efforts during which I felt alone, I've been approached by four Mondrowitz victims in a few weeks, and I've been trying to use their voices -- and what I know -- to build a public outcry to ignite this case.
Why? First, because I suspect Mondrowitz may have abused as many as hundreds of children (who are now grown), most of them within the Orthodox community. Bringing him to justice could -- to the extent justice ever does -- heal a very large number of private wounds.
But I also believe it could heal public ones, for rarely has there been so heinous a case that suffered from so much PROVABLE mishandling on the part of the secular authorities. If they can be prodded into reopening the Mondrowitz case -- and I believe this is possible -- the truth that will emerge, I hope, is the story of a social and political crime. A crime all the uglier, I might add, because carried out against large numbers of a community's most helpless members -- in the name of the community.
I realize I'm writing a lot, and you probably have little time for this sort of thing. I write to you because I want to ask your help. I see that you've started a thread based on the recent Voice article. As a result of that article, Victim #4 has just called me. I am working for all such people free of charge for the sole objective of trying to bring this case to such brightly-lit, band-playing, rip-roaring public attention that no one, either in the Orthodox community or in public life in New York City, will be able to ignore it.
Could you let your bloggers know about me, let them know how eager I am to hear from more Mondrowitz victims, and make my contact information available to all? I can be emailed at mlesher@att.net, or through my web site (which I invite everyone to see to learn about me), MichaelLesher.com.
I know that there are many other abuse cases. But this is one of the unusual cases in my experiences (I've researched the case against Shlomo Hafner in great detail and know about some others, too) in which the existing legal criminal process (the man has been indicted, and as a fugitive could be tried at any time), the proven facts, the number of highly credible victims, and the stated (if disingenuous) position of the Brooklyn D.A. all make a prosecution possible. And if a prosecution really happens, I feel strongly that much more than a conviction against one man is likely. The trial and its accompanying publicity would likely bring to light a long history of inaction -- or active suppression of evidence -- on the part of important community "leaders." And that, I think, is where our interests likely intersect most decisively.
I apologize for the length of this note. Please let me know what you think. I'm new to blogging, but from what I've seen of your aims and your batting record, I'd like to be working with your aid.
Michael Lesher, Esq.
mlesher@att.net
>(973) 470-0212
Only if using a double barrel. 2 stones for 1 feigele here.
uoj, do we have authorization to shoot the bastard in his beitzim?
---------------
I'd rather you have them cut off and brought to me. Shmarya, R' Yudel, and all of us will then meet in Pottsville and grind them up with the other free meat given to Belsky with a new hazmana summonsing Kolko and Margulies to partake in the seudas mitzva!
vie da hell ken de dayli newz git a hold fun monderovitsis fone numberrr and call der bum, and ve dont hav it? UOJ voz is mit dayne chevre? zei shluffin? zex swat chevre und kiener ken nisht layzin a fone book?
Oy, a bruch!
loooong live metseetze bipe!
http://agri.unionactive.com/docs/All%20NRs.pdf
Page 114 - Rubashkin warned of severe consequences after refusing to cooperate with inspectors.
Page 115 - Rubashkin caught using a room covered in dust that is open to the outdoors with the door missing. Inspectors shut down the room.
Page 117 - Rubashkin truck driver caught unloading a truck full of sheep by tossing the animals down a cement chute like a bulvan.
y don't i get an invite too belskies meal. olefski wont share a slice of bread with me.
sincerly, vrum modche liezerovich
http://www.daashakohol.com/archives/176#comment-8343
CHK HIPOCRISY Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:49 am
For those few fools out there who buy only chk bread, (probably no more than 5 idiots),I have news for you.
Mrs. Ozdoba was seen buying 5 loaves of soya bread for her husband (Rabbi Ozdoba is a known to be into alternative health stuff), and had no problem buying it with kaj hechsher instead of CHK.
The standard they have, is do as I say, not as I do.
ok folks. we have been challenged. the first 1 to get mondrowitzs phone # posted gets a vip invite to the belski/rubashkin gala event. Its gonne bee 1 hot affair. colmer + kolko will be a belli dancin.
New York - Jewish Captain Guides USS Truman Aircraft Carrier.
New York - Capt. Herman "Herm" Shelanski, a native of Wynnewood, Pa., is a 27-year Navy veteran who has risen from a young aviator piloting E-2 Hawkeyes to being the commanding officer of one of the Navy's elite weapon systems.
The Truman is a Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier whose air wing of more than 80 tactical and support aircraft - including squadrons of the latest F-18 Hornets and Super-Hornet jets - can project America's strength around the world.
Shelanski, who is married and the father of two teenagers, took command of the Truman in the spring. Put to sea In the Atlantic Ocean in September, some 200 miles from its home port of Norfolk, Va., the Truman will sail to the Persian Gulf, where its aircraft and pilots will be flying missions providing support for US troops fighting in Iraq.
Shelanski's role is to be, as he put it, "mayor of the city" - of a floating airport that's home to more than 5,000 sailors and aviators. The Truman, as long as the Empire State Building is tall, is a vessel whose maze-like compartments below decks can take sailors weeks to find their way around.
Shelanski is the grandson of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants to the United States who settled in Philadelphia in the early 20th century.
Asked what would prompt the son of a prominent doctor, who was a bar mitzvah at Har Zion Temple and a graduate of Lower Merion High School in the 1970s to join the Navy, Shelanski answers simply: "I always wanted to serve my country. And a lot of that has do to with being Jewish."
Who said we are lazy bums? here you have A.M.Leizerowitz's home number (02-500-1890) cell (052-761-7425) now you aint gonna find that in no phone book.
u vin mister svat team! but lyk ve said u kent lien if ur lyf depend un it! liezerovitz=monderuvitz? ai dont denk so. u dont get de prize yet, mein kind. go tzrik do de phone boog or tzee de ershter klasz! i hope du bist nisht de von who reads de mapis for de svat team, or dey vill be lost!
liezerovitz=monderuvitz?
an a for effort and a z- for accuracy. sorry dude.
I know the whole story with the nudist beach because I was at Ner Yisroel Toronto when it happened.
Rabbi Aaron Levine who it's said threw boys down stairwells in his explosive rages, went to the rosh yeshiva who is no longer living and "fired" the teacher. It was a farce as he was rehired shortly afterwards, with the lame excuse that they couldn't find anyone else. Unstated translation: no one else that takes the peanuts we pay.
The oddball non-Jewish principal Dr. Kelly went along with the charade too.
The teacher, Mr. Hordienko ymach shemo, is an ethnic Ukranian who is very active in his community. Some older bochurim told me he had a history of constantly trying to whitewash Nazi collaboration to them by claiming it's a myth. Of course his propaganda had nothing to do with the course material either. One boy who spoke up to refute his lies was punished with bad grades and Hordienko tried getting him kicked out of the course.
A yeshiva upholding Torah principles indeed.
http://www.daashakohol.com/archives/176#comment-8352
FREE MEAT? Why not? Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 pm
The Rubashkin truck, is seen, every week dropping off meat ("gifts"?) at the Rav Hamachir’s (Rabbi Osdaba from CHK) home, every time, they make their regular delivery to all the butcher stores…..so what do you expect?
(The Rubashkin truck driver may be on the same route as Belsky's house)
http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071019/NEWS/71019029/1006/NEWS
Agriprocessors suit faces critical test
By David DeWitte
The Gazette
Friday August 17, 2001
State Department reissues advisory against Israel travel
From Our Wire Sevices
In a related development, the U.S. Navy has denied reports that it will
soon resume naval visits to Haifa, saying it plans to keep its sailors
out of the country due to the escalating Middle East tensions.
The U.S. Sixth Fleet has stayed away from Haifa since October, shortly
after the current intifada broke out, and following the U.S.S. Cole
suicide-bomber attack in Yemen. Not only have U.S. naval personnel been
kept from Israel, but also other neighboring units such as the
Multi-National Force and Observers in the Sinai.
The Haifa Bay economy has suffered somewhat from the end to port visits
by the tens of thousands of U.S. sailors on leave.
There were reports last week that the Americans had decided to renew
the visits. These were denied by U.S. officials in Tel Aviv and at the
Sixth Fleet's headquarters in Italy.
"There is no change in our current policy. We have not been making
calls into Haifa, because we have read there is a high level of violence
and our forward deployed forces operate there," said Cmdr. Bob Ross, head
of public relations for the Sixth Fleet.
Speaking before Sunday's suicide bombing in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat
Motzkin, Ross said the decision was not based on any concrete threat
that US personnel may be targeted.
"We are just wanting to keep our sailors out of the proximity," Ross
said. "We hold the initiative on these things and we are exercising this
right."
Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, however, say there has never
been a change in policy and attribute the absence of US naval vessels
in Haifa since October to "scheduling conflicts."
Both the embassy and the Sixth Fleet said U.S. naval vessels will again
call on Haifa in the future, but gave no date.
"I would expect that one day we will return. It is only a question of
when," Ross said.
-----------------------------------
There is no more a question of "when", as soon as we receive autherization from uoj, we send in the seals, the swat team cant handle it alone anymore, and called in for reinforcment, saying they are to tied up just following all these american creeps that escaped to israel.
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/AbusesNerIsrael.html
Case of List of Abuses at Ner Israel - Toronto, Canada
Student Rabbi expelled for 'causing unrest'
Toronto Star (Canada), Sat., May 31, 1969 p.6
An American student has been expelled from Ner Israel Yeshiva College on Finch Ave. for allegedly causing unrest among studentd at the associated Ner Israel high School on the same campus.
Faculty president Rabbi J. S. Weinberg said Joseph Markin, 22, a visiting student was "out permanently" for "deliberately provoking younger students into feeling that injustices had been done before discussing the matter with me."
Markin studying to become a rabbi, said he was accused of instigating a protest demonstration last wednesday. He said he knew about the protest but did not suggest it or take part.
Rabbi Weinberg denied that there had been a demonstration, but said some people had tried to cause trouble. A mimeographed list of "abuses" by Rabbi Weinberg, including staff changes, was circulated at the high school and the college.
The rabbi said a high school student had been "interrogated against his will." He said he was taking disciplinary action against those responsible.
(NAME REMOVED), 16, a high school student, said he was assaulted by two college students seeking names of those behind the protest.
(NAME REMOVED) said he and 14 other students were suspended for a day on Wednesday morning to prevent them from holding the protest. Rabbi Weinberg said 15 students were suspended for oversleeping and missing morning prayers.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/10/21/2007-10-21_betrayal_and_murder-1.html
This article seems to say that the lowlife Dr. Friedgood from Great Neck is modern orthodox.
Michael Lesher, Esq.
Mr Lesher do you have information on Ohel Family Services and their victims?
Do you have information to implicate them?
I heard people are looking to contact me & find out why Moishe Finkel was not charged with a Class E Felony for kosher meat fraud.
http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/DA/default.htm
1 south main street, suite 500 • new city, n.y. 10956
(845) 638-5001 (office) • (845) 638-5298 (fax)
office hours - 9:00 am to 5:30 pm monday to friday
Belsky with probably defend Ohel & make it personal because his mother worked at the Bais Ezra division.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsky
Belsky (Russian: Бельский , pl. Бельские), also spelled Bielski, was the name of two long-extinct princely families of Muscovite Russia. One of them was a Rurikid family from the House of Yaroslavl; another (and by far the more celebrated) was of Gediminid stock. What follows below is an account of the latter. After the extinction of Princes Belsky, there appeared a third family, of lowly origin, represented by Malyuta Skuratov and Bogdan Belsky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gediminid
The Gediminids (Lithuanian: Gediminaičiai, singular: Gediminaitis) were a dynasty of monarchs of the medieval Lithuania that reigned from the 14th to the 16th century. They were rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which realm chiefly meant that of Lithuanians and Ruthenians, this area being at least half-Slavic. One branch of this dynasty, known as the family of Jagiellons, reigned also in Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. (maybe that's the connection to Margo).
I know Moish Finkel for a long time.
He is an honorable man.
R' Yudel says he is not familiar with the details:
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post.html#c3731176837901806121
Anonymous said...
Does R' Yudel know the story that R' Moishe Weissman, Rosh Kollel of Avreichei Brisk in Flatbush had with Rubashkin?
I heard he found a major problem in chicken that he bought years ago and took Rubashkin to a din Torah.
If so, please relate the details to the oylam.
That story in 1969 was part of a larger picture that forced Rav Weinberg to retreat to Baltimore and disown the Toronto yeshiva that was never again a branch of the main NIRC.
I've seen Levine fly into a rage. He turns red as a beet and starts shrieking in his squeaky high pitch voice.
Someone still at the yeshiva has been accused of being a molester but not by a credible source. Someone who became irreligious is shouting about it to the media but he can't even spell or pronounce the name correctly and he is unaware that the alleged perp later went to the Toronto yeshiva from elsewhere. Even Vicky who gives this guy a platform hasn't figured it out.
How are the Belskys & Pams mechutonim?
There was a bad habit that bochurim had in the yeshiva here to "slice" the tuchess of someone bent over for a drink at the water fountain. This is done with a quick slicing motion that just grazes the target tuchess. Touching someone's rear end is considered to be sexual assault in some jurisdictions. Someone once did it to the rosh yeshiva R' Mottel without realizing it was him. The rosh yeshiva kindly announced that he is giving the slicer 20 seconds to escape before he lifts up his head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Markin
Joseph Markin who had the run in with Rabbi Weinberg, went on to become a sucessful lawyer and a politician.
http://archives.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/HTMLTemplate?tf=QAD/view.html&query=markin&r=7&c=1&s=2&p=2&n=30&error_code=0&k2DocKey=/opt/GIS/archives/factiva/19860409/glob9814166386.html@factiva
He's also the founder of Le Karem Winery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Markin
His brother Murray Markin was also a politician who stayed in public office for two years after this disgrace that he created:
"Markin was arrested on December 9, 1982 after agreeing to sell $3,000 worth of cocaine to an undercover police officer. In July 1984, he was found guilty of trafficking cocaine and sentenced to fifteen months in prison. The presiding judge determined that Markin had advertised himself to the officer as a major player in the cocaine business, but found that there was no solid evidence to back up this claim. Markin was working for a Jewish community organization for disadvantaged children at the time of his conviction, and his fall was a surprise to many in the community.[7]"
Saturday, October 20, 2007
An open letter from a former Yeshivah boy about his personal experiences with Rebbe abuse and brutality
NOTE:
The opinions in this letter do not reflect those of the blog administration, nor does the blog administration vouch for the accuracy of any of the facts stated in this letter. This letter is the sole opinion and personal account of its author.
I had Rokeach in Chasan Sofer. He "taught" the 6th grade when I had him and was as brutal as one of the posters said he was. There was this kid in my class named, Yaakov D'Vorkas (spelling?), who threw a spitball in class. Rokeach's face turned a deep red. He went over to the kid, and threw him against some lockers we had in the room and began kicking him as hard as he could. I remember the kid was curled up in a fetal position while he took this beating. As he was doing this, Rokeach kept saying in Yiddish, which I will paraphrase, "you are not allowed to throw spitballs in my class." He said this over and over. I am still haunted by this. I just dreamt about it the other day actually. (hell, I was lucky. my poor brothers went to the Viener Yeshiva and had Rabbi Gold in the 4th grade. This guy, who had a terrible speech defect, would slap the kids silly. It later turned out he and his wife were running a heimeshe brothel on the side and i remember hearing something about drugs.)
I wish I could say this was the only time I was exposed to violence, neglect, or sexual abuse, but it wasn't. There myriad times this happened.
I went to Yeshiva Torah Temimah too. Kolko was there, Margo was there, etc. Margo is a fat, money grubbing blowhard. Everyone in the yeshiva knew that and we all mocked him openly. I had a friend in high school who was wearing a yarmulke that apparently too small by Margo's standards so he snatched it off my friend's head and threw it to the ground. I thought that was a wonderful way to instill a deep love of the religion for one.
I could go on and on about the sexual abuse that was covered up, the violence that was perpetrated against us, the neglect (especially in Camp Adas Yereim - Meir Birnhack was there - wow was he brutal. There was a junior counselor there one year when i had Levi Kranz as a counselor who sprayed deodorant in my bunkmate's eyes because he had used some curse word and wouldn't apologize. Camp Na'arim was only slightly better. I cant remember the owner's name but he was another fat moneygrubber who had a violent temper. You definitely made sure to steer clear of him. I went to Yeshiva Darchei Moshe in flatbush, off of ocean parkway and Ave M I think. I had a rabbi there, mind you I was 18 at the time who had a real fondness for me and would constantly attempt to grope me. I left pretty soon after that.), and the sheer stupidity of the people running these yeshivas, camps, etc, but I wont.
Suffice it to say, I am not frum. I wouldn’t eat kosher food if i was starving to death, I have a visceral reaction to anything relating to Orthodox Judaism and if I had kids I would never let them near a yeshiva of any sort - orthodox, reform, conservative, whatever.
If you care about your sons and daughters, you won’t either.
Good luck.
Z-dog
Is Levi Kranz that fat guy from Lakewood who got divorced?
There was this kid in my class named, Yaakov D'Vorkas (spelling?), who threw a spitball in class.
--------
I was there when it happened. The truth is that he never even through the spitballs. The spitballs were lined up on his desk and the kid next to him, scared that he was going to be hit by the spitballs, complained to the Rebbe.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/10/target_must_you_brand_everythi.html
Wow, there is a whole Website devoted to stopping developer Shaya Boymelgreen from running amok here and elsewhere in Brooklyn. And frankly, it's way more user-friendly than Atlantic Yards Report, the doyen of such sites. [Shaya Is Coming]
http://www.shayaiscoming.org/
This is the correct e-mail address for Attorney Michael Lesher:
MichaelLesher@optonline.net
Please contact Michael with any bona fide information you have on Ohel...or for any legal needs that he may be able to assist you with.
Ohel is free...personal legal work, you need to pay for --- freeloaders!
Michael is not associated with the commenter der mashgiach...and does not post under a pseudonym.
Michael Lesher should probe the domestic violence unit at Ohel and the social workers there
Michael's parnassa is legal work -as in lawyer. If you have information for him, get in touch with him directly and give him what you got. He does not have the time to go looking for the "afikomen!" Come on guys...
June 28, 2006
RUBASHKIN HIT WITH FEDERAL ANTITRUST SUBPOENA – "CRIMINAL COLLUSION" INVESTIGATED
Larry Cohler-Esses of the Jewish Week reports AgriProcessors and other unnamed glatt kosher meat providers have been hit with federal anti-trust subpoenas. The justice Department is investigating apparent price-fixing. The Jewish Week notes this appears to be part of a criminal investigation:
A law enforcement official who specializes in antitrust cases termed the fact that a federal grand jury had issued the subpoenas “very significant.” The official would speak only on the basis of anonymity because he thought his office could end up involved in the case.
“That means it’s a criminal investigation,” he explained. “Price fixing, bid rigging and market allocation are the kinds of practices that are traditionally pursued criminally. … It sounds like they are investigating collusion within the industry.”
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Web site defines price fixing as “an agreement among competitors to raise, fix or otherwise maintain the price at which their goods are sold.” Market allocation, another practice that may be relevant to this grand jury probe, consists of “agreements in which competitors divide markets among themselves. In such schemes, competing firms allocate specific customers or types of customers, products or territories among themselves.”
One industry insider, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said the unique certification process involved in producing kosher meats made the industry particularly vulnerable to potentially illegal market allocation.
“There is an unwritten agreement not to traipse on each other’s hekshers,” he explained, referring to the rabbinic kosher certifiers who give their stamp of approval to the ritual processes by which meat must be slaughtered under religious law.
The power of custom and sectarian loyalty to particular kosher certifiers among various Jewish religious groups means “if you have a certain heksher, you have a lock on a certain part of the market geographically and religiously,” this insider said. Lubavitch and Satmar chasidim, for example, have separate certifiers to which they are each exclusively loyal. The meat companies, understanding this, effectively divide up the market by agreeing not to use each other’s certifiers, the source explained.
In one case, said the industry insider, a company that recruited a different kosher certifier to come in and oversee its production process was excoriated by the rest of the industry.
Look for this probe to expand (if it already has not) to include kosher food distributors and other kosher food producers. It also seems the Justice Department may be about to look at the records of major kosher certifiers, including those who certify Rubashkin. This may include their tax exempt status and compliance with related tax law. More on this shortly.
[Hat tip: JWB.]
(06/28/2006)Big Kosher Suppliers Hit With Antitrust Subpoenas
Federal grand jury looking into possible criminal collusion at AgriProcessors, other firms.
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
The world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse and several other major kosher meat suppliers have been served with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation, The Jewish Week has learned.
AgriProcessors of Postville, Iowa, received its subpoena from a federal grand jury several weeks ago. At least two other kosher meat suppliers have also received subpoenas in connection with the probe, according to Washington, D.C., attorney Nathan Lewin, who represents the Iowa slaughterhouse.
“AgriProcessors is in the process of cooperating with the investigation,” said Lewin in a written statement he issued after inquiries from The Jewish Week. “It has been told that neither the corporation nor any corporate officer or employee is presently a target of the investigation.”
It could not be confirmed by press time which other firms had received the federal subpoenas, which were for documents and not for testimony. Two firms considered to be AgriProcessors’ major rivals as beef suppliers — Alle, also known as Meal Mart, and International Glatt Kosher, also known as Globex — failed to return repeated calls to their offices seeking information.
Globex executive Sholom Chaimowitz also failed to return a call to his home after his wife said she would relay to him a reporter’s question about whether the company had been subpoenaed. Like AgriProcessors, the two firms produce both beef and poultry.
Empire Kosher Poultry, the country’s largest kosher poultry producer, declined to state whether it had received a subpoena. But in a statement, company spokesman Barry Rosenbaum said, “Empire Kosher’s current ownership and management have never engaged in any sort of price fixing with competitors and is not aware of any such actions on the part of previous ownership.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to identify any of the companies subpoenaed or to comment on the probe.
In a follow-up interview, Lewin declined to say whether AgriProcessors was currently a “subject” of the investigation — a lesser form of scrutiny than being a “target.”
A target of a grand jury investigation, as prosecutors use the term, is someone against whom a prosecutor believes he has probable cause to bring criminal charges. A subject is someone who “falls within the scope of an investigation,” according to Michael Feldberg, an expert in antitrust law.
A law enforcement official who specializes in antitrust cases termed the fact that a federal grand jury had issued the subpoenas “very significant.” The official would speak only on the basis of anonymity because he thought his office could end up involved in the case.
“That means it’s a criminal investigation,” he explained. “Price fixing, bid rigging and market allocation are the kinds of practices that are traditionally pursued criminally. … It sounds like they are investigating collusion within the industry.”
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Web site defines price fixing as “an agreement among competitors to raise, fix or otherwise maintain the price at which their goods are sold.” Market allocation, another practice that may be relevant to this grand jury probe, consists of “agreements in which competitors divide markets among themselves. In such schemes, competing firms allocate specific customers or types of customers, products or territories among themselves.”
One industry insider, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said the unique certification process involved in producing kosher meats made the industry particularly vulnerable to potentially illegal market allocation.
“There is an unwritten agreement not to traipse on each other’s hekshers,” he explained, referring to the rabbinic kosher certifiers who give their stamp of approval to the ritual processes by which meat must be slaughtered under religious law.
The power of custom and sectarian loyalty to particular kosher certifiers among various Jewish religious groups means “if you have a certain heksher, you have a lock on a certain part of the market geographically and religiously,” this insider said. Lubavitch and Satmar chasidim, for example, have separate certifiers to which they are each exclusively loyal. The meat companies, understanding this, effectively divide up the market by agreeing not to use each other’s certifiers, the source explained.
In one case, said the industry insider, a company that recruited a different kosher certifier to come in and oversee its production process was excoriated by the rest of the industry. “They said, ‘You slept with my wife,’” this source said the company was told by others using that certifier.
In some ways, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Web site describes similar kinds of generic conditions in which illegal collusion is prone to take place.
“Collusion is more likely to occur if there are few sellers,” it states. “The fewer the number of sellers, the easier it is for them to get together and agree on prices, bids, customers or territories.”
It adds: “The probability of collusion increases if other products cannot easily be substituted for the product in question, or if there are restrictive specifications for the product being produced. … Collusion is more likely if the competitors know each other well through social connections, trade associations, legitimate business contacts or shifting employment from one company to another.”
The Web site also emphasizes that such cases of collusion are often very difficult to prove.
Multiple sources within the industry told The Jewish Week that the Justice Department’s probe appeared to begin seven to nine months ago, when several companies were contacted and questioned on a non-subpoena basis. “They wanted to know about communications we might have had with other companies,” said an official from one of the firms contacted. “Who we talked to and what we talked about.”
AgriProcessors, Alle, Globex and Empire Poultry are among the firms said to have been contacted then.
For AgriProcessors, owned by the Rubashkin family, a prominent family within the Lubavitch chasidic community, the subpoena and probe are but the latest in a train of challenges.
In 2004, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency joined a civil suit against the firm, alleging it had violated the Clean Water Act by dumping water with high salt concentrations into public reservoirs. AgriProcessors settled the suit this year, agreeing to facilitate a 30 percent reduction in the salt emissions.
I'm sure UOJ disagrees with Shmarya's attack on Judge Mukasey as "corrupt". He never would have written this if Mukasey was not Jewish.
A Brooklyn businessman with a felonious past has a series of suspicious fires in his clothing factory. He collects $9 million dollars in various insurance payouts before an alert fire inspector cracks the case. The Feds put the Businessman on trial but the evidence is overwhelming and the businessman is convicted. At sentencing, the businessman tells the judge, “I am here because I am a Jew.” The enraged US Attorney responded, “The reason he is here is because he is a thief, because he is an arsonist, and because he is a money launderer.”
The fires endangered fire fighters and almost killed one of them.
Still, various big name Jewish leaders wrote the judge asking for leniency in sentencing. One, Ehud Olmert, then Israel's Vice Premier, wrote on official Israeli government stationary ans asked the judge to show, ""mercy, compassion, and understanding."
Another less well-known but still influential man also made a plea for leniency. But this man was at the time a sitting Federal judge. Constrained by law from expressing his desires about a case he was not judging unless asked by the presiding judge, the man made his wishes clear by having the businessman's attorneys tell the judge in open court that this sitting Federal judge would be happy to express his opinion for leniency if the presiding judge would only ask him.
The Brooklyn businessman is Satmar hasid "Naftuli" Nat Schlesinger.
The sitting Federal judge who went to bat for him?
Michael Mukasey, the Orthodox Jew President Bush has nominated for Attorney General.
If I were Moshe or Sholom Rubashkin, say, or Aaron Rubashkin and the other Sholom Rubashkin or any of the other targets of the Justice Department's investigation into price fixing in the kosher meat business, I'd be very happy to have Mukasey as AG. Other than a complete Bush crony, Mukasey is the best Rubashkin could have hoped for.
Should Mukasey be confirmed as Attorney General? I don't think so.
To be clear, it should be noted that one minor question of judgment should not automatically disqualify a person from holding higher office and Mukasey did nothing illegal here.
Still, the idea that a convicted arsonist and fraudster would get an endorsement of sorts from a sitting federal judge, and said arsonist and judge are both Orthodox Jews, creates the appearance of favoritism. At a time when the Department of Justice has further cases pending against high profile Orthodox Jews, this particular appearance of favoritism is, I think, unacceptable. It is corrosive at a time when public trust in the impartiality of the Department of Justice has already been dramatically weakened. I think this is both bad for America and bad for Jews.
Nonetheless, Mukasey will be confirmed, adding what can be seen as more corruption to an already corrupt and inept administration.
It just figures that a bunch of fresser shnorrers contacted Lesher looking for something free.
These are the same losers that are lined up at the Pesach hotel front desk trying to mooch everything from extra pillow chocolates to free Xbox game consoles.
They also come up with every half baked excuse in the world of why they were gypped and they shouldn't have to pay for the room.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380626856&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
US wants extradition of prominent Ger hassid accused of sodomy
By MATTHEW WAGNER
The Brooklyn District Attorney's office has requested the extradition of Avrohom Mondrowitz, a resident of Jerusalem and a prominent member of the Ger Hassidic sect, on child molestation charges dating back over two decades involving four boys aged 11 to 16.
The extradition request was made in January, according to Brooklyn District Attorney's Office spokesman Jerry Schmetterer. "We know that the US Department of Justice and the State Department have begun the extradition process," said Schmetterer. "It is also our understanding that the Israeli Justice Ministry has been contacted as well."
The Justice Ministry declined to comment.
Mondrowitz, who was contacted by telephone by The Jerusalem Post, hung up as soon as the reporter identified himself.
However, a prominent member of the Ger community in Jerusalem defended Mondrowitz.
"There are people who are trying to disparage Mondrowitz's name," said the source.
"Mondrowitz is a very intelligent, talented man and so are all of his children. His father is highly respected in the community. I can't believe these stories are true.
The source said Mondrowitz was in the computer business.
Mondrowitz worked for a short period at the Jerusalem College of Technology as a fund-raiser and at the Jerusalem College of Engineering as a lecturer.
The Post has also learned that Dep.-Cmdr. Avi Aviv of the National Fraud Squad's Cyber Crimes Division is conducting an investigation against Mondrowitz.
Mondrowitz, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 and later moved with his family to Chicago, arrived in Brooklyn in the late 1970s and presented himself to Orthodox educational institutions as a rabbi and clinical psychologist.
He provided psychological treatment to children from the mixed Jewish-Italian Borough Park neighborhood where he lived. He also opened a yeshiva for children with behavioral problems.
Four children, all from Italian families and all neighbors of Mondrowitz, complained of sexual abuse perpetrated by Mondrowitz. Jewish victims also eventually testified against him, but only after the statute of limitations had expired.
In 1985, a New York State court charged Mondrowitz with eight counts of child abuse in the first degree, endangering the welfare of a child and five counts of sodomy in the first degree.
Mondrowitz and his family fled to Jerusalem after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
At the time of the indictment, sodomy of boys was not an extraditable crime, since it was not defined as rape under Israeli law. In 1988, the Knesset changed that law, apparently opening the way for Mondrowitz's extradition.
The Brooklyn DA's office said Mondrowitz could not be extradited until this year, when the Knesset approved a law removing the impediments to retroactively applying the 1988 law.
But Michael Lesher, an attorney representing six men who say they were molested by Mondrowitz in the early 1980s but who were not included in the original indictment, said the extradition was delayed due to officials, especially Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, dragging their feet.
Lesher claims that Hynes balked due to heavy pressure to drop the case from the Orthodox community in Brooklyn, which supported Mondrowitz despite the fact that Israel's Edah Haredit Rabbinic Court issued a ruling in 1988 in which unnamed "insidious acts" committed by Mondrowitz were mentioned, and warning him to stay away from children.
"Hynes was elected in 1989 with strong Orthodox support," Lesher said in an e-mailed message. "He appointed a virtually all-Orthodox Jewish Advisory Council after being elected, and he reversed the policy of his predecessor, Elizabeth Holtzman, and did not press for Mondrowitz's return to face trial.
In September 1993, Hynes instructed the federal government to close its file on Mondrowitz and said he would not pursue the case while Mondrowitz remained in Israel.
Lesher said he was "elated" to see the district attorney finally moving to extradite Mondrowitz. "All my clients hope that Mondrowitz will at last be brought to justice."
In response to Lesher's claims, Schmetterer said extradition was impossible until the Knesset acted this year.
But in past news reports on delays, Hynes's office was quoted as providing a different explanation. Sources were cited saying that despite the changes in Israeli law, the extradition request could not be made retroactively.
AWARENESS IS GOOD!
--------------------
HOW MANY CALORIES DO CHILDREN NEED?
Based on age and activity level:
Sedentary Ages Girl Boy
2-3 1,000 1,000
4-8 1,200 1,400
9-13 1,600 1,800
14-18 1,800 2,200
Moderately active Ages Girl Boy
2-3 1,000-1,400 1,000-1,400
4-8 1,400-1,600 1,400-1,600
9-13 1,600-2,000 1,800-2,200
14-18 2,000 2,400-2,800
Active Ages Girl Boy
2-3 1,000-1,400 1,000-1,400
4-8 1,400-1,800 1,600-2,000
9-13 1,800-2,200 2,000-2,600
14-18 2,400 2,800-3,200
Source: Dietary Guidelines for Americans
Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — Simple substitutions at meals and easy changes to recipes can dramatically cut the number of calories children consume.
And kids won't compensate for the lower-calorie foods by eating more later in the day, according to a study presented here Monday at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society, an organization of weight-loss professionals.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University fed 26 children, ages 3-5, at a child-care center breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks two days a week for two weeks. Children took home their dinner and evening snacks.
The same two-day menu was served each week, but one week the calories were lowered by reducing fat and sugar and increasing fruits and vegetables.
Some changes: serving 1%, not whole milk; fruit in juice instead of in syrup; pasta with lower-fat dairy products and adding pureed vegetables; adding five times more strawberries to a yogurt parfait; making blueberry muffins with more fruit and less oil.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Researchers | Pennsylvania State University
Researchers measured how much the children ate and found that when they were served the lower-calorie foods, they consumed about 400 fewer calories over two days.
"People tend to eat the same weight of food from day to day, and that's what these kids did," says Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State. One goal was to see if children compensated for the lower calories by eating more later in the day or the following day, and they didn't do either, she says.
The children seemed to like the taste of the foods even when they were lower in fat and sugar, she says
For parents with overweight children, this study shows that making substitutions can have a huge impact on calorie intake, says Penn State researcher Kathleen Leahy. The research was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
A previous study by these researchers found that preschool children who were served two different types of macaroni and cheese ate about 70 fewer calories with the lower-fat recipe. And they said they liked both dishes equally well.
I'm sure UOJ disagrees with Shmarya's attack on Judge Mukasey as "corrupt".
-------------
Michael Mukasey erred and was ill-advised, IMO, by associating his good name with Nat Shlesinger. Shlesinger is a vile person!
Hon. Michael Mukasey is a man that I trust...and I trust almost noone!
"Mondrowitz is a very intelligent, talented man and so are all of his children. His father is highly respected in the community. I can't believe these stories are true."
Does all of his children include the drug addicted bum or the one caught....? I have proven 1 statement false and can do the same with all those defensive statements. But why bother! I'll just ask this of the "prominent member of the Ger community in Jerusalem" defending the sicko: Why have so many jes and non jews decided to pick on this guy? Besides, if he were so nice why was his hand all over in my pants for over an hour? I was NOT in any need of an enema! Thats the blind gerrer mentality. Defend the guilty even while obvious that they are going to take ger down with them.
Avrohom Mondrowitz is an honorable man!
The Ger Rebbe ( Moshiach's buddy) is a criminal. Sorry LVF and my Ger friends...He is the reason Mondrowitz is free...and sad to say, I have my doubts whether we'll ever see Mondrowitz on U.S. soil. Prove me wrong Charlie Hynes!
Please! Please prove me wrong!
This story proves R' Chaim's nevuah that the Agudah will one day be run by anything but Torah gedolim.
They just do whatever they want even when the Edah Charedis issues a psak against Mondrowitz.
Hey Effy Waxman, you fool. Are you going to treat us to another kvetch-fest where you get up to shrey to the convention fressers about the evils of UOJ?
Did I do anything wrong that u are stressing that I am not Michael Lesher? Indeed I am not. Just wondering why that statement was necessary.
"UOJ" - "The Un-Orthodox Jew" said...
The Ger Rebbe ( Moshiach's buddy) is a criminal. Sorry LVF and my Ger friends...He is the reason Mondrowitz is free...and sad to say, I have my doubts whether we'll ever see Mondrowitz on U.S. soil. Prove me wrong Charlie Hynes!
Please! Please prove me wrong!
11:37 PM, October 22, 2007
SAY IT AINT SO, UOJ! SAY IT AINT SO!!! If this effort fails somebody will have hell to pay for it. Are the 6 SWATs still lost for lack of reading skills?
(WHAT A GREAT PIECE OF COVERAGE IN THE JERUSALEM POST)
However, a prominent member of the Ger community in Jerusalem defended Mondrowitz.
"There are people who are trying to disparage Mondrowitz's name," said the source.
-----------------------------------
You f**king gerer shmuck! go shtip shiras, not so you can see the rebbi, only so you can say I was in the first or second shira, homos what you are, a chassidus that its whole kium is to boast to all I am not like you we are all about yiddeshkeit and shmiras habris, and then you shtip into the crowd that standing around the rebbi so farshtupt that a can of sardines has more room in it, why dont you instead of denying the the charges against mondrowitz go shtup your wife a little more often, hey! its a mitzva for crying out loud, so that she dosnt get desperate and look around for a new set of balls, and while your at it ask elya pisher the gerer rosh kolel in boro park if you can shtup for once w/o a hole in the sheet after all you did defend mondrowitz and deserve a 1 time pass, you putz!
Mashgiach...no, nothing. I wanted to be certain that people do not get the opinion that Mr. Lesher is out to promote himself.
BTW...where did you get that e-mail? You can e-mail me the answer...but I know that I did not release that e-mail.
1. Michael Lesher is not the self promoting type. You did the right think in clarifying that.
2. I hate to contradict you, but I just copy and pasted it from an old post you made a while ago right here on this site. Goes back about a years time from now.
3. You've been a great voice of the meek and those hurting. To quote the great Jono: "Don't ever change" - and may I add - ONLY FOR THE BETTER AND FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF MANKIND. Man is falible and it is a great man that can recognize that.
Mashgiach,
Yes...you're correct. An awful lot has gone on since then.
Thanks for your kind words.
I don't give heat or hot water. I'm such a cheap bastard that even my own kids scream that they are freezing. When my tenants retaliate, I cry to everyone in shul that I'm a victim who was so good to them.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nyharr185419235oct18,0,3756384.story
Landlords who repeatedly deny basic services to their tenants could be hauled into Housing Court and fined up to $5,000 for harassment under a new law proposed by the City Council yesterday.
http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1193033767249010.xml&coll=3
Monday, October 22, 2007
BY JOSH MARGOLIN
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Two union officials yesterday petitioned the Communications Workers of America to remove state-worker labor leader Carla Katz from the presidency of Local 1034 on charges of misconduct and misuse of union funds.
In a four-page document e-mailed to CWA's headquarters in Washington and its regional office in Manhattan, Local 1034 Vice Presidents Jonathan Berg and Linda Kukor allege that Katz - Gov. Jon Corzine's ex-girlfriend - has engaged in "an ongoing pattern of misconduct and violations
http://www.assetprotectionbook.com/new_york.htm
New York Asset Protection Overview a.k.a. self-preservation from UOJ
New York provides a ridiculously small homestead exemption, does not give annuities any meaningful protection, and makes it hard to protect life insurance. So, if you are going to live in New York, you will need lots of asset protection planning especially if UOJ is on your tail!
The New York homestead exemption is limited up to $10,000 for a single person.
I hope Twerski can get Shelly Silver to up the amount.
http://www.assetprotectionbook.com/NY_Cadle-Avrohom_2003.htm
Cadle Co. v. Avrohom Newhouse,
2003.C02.0001006 (2d Cir. 09/12/2003)
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
No. 02-9373
September 12, 2003
The defendant-appellant challenges the District Court's grant of summary judgment holding him liable under two provisions of the New York Debtor-Creditor Law that prohibit fraudulent conveyances, D.C.L. §§ 273, 276 (McKinney 2002).
Section 276 prohibits "actual fraud," providing that "[e]very conveyance made and every obligation incurred with actual intent... to hinder, delay, or defraud either present or future creditors... is fraudulent as to both present and future creditors." D.C.L. § 276.
The facts of this case establish that there was a conveyance of $1,008,631.14 from defendant Mrs. Miriam Newhouse to her son, defendant-appellant Avrohom Newhouse
First, no consideration was offered by Avrohom Newhouse for the transfer of funds, and the funds came from his mother, a close relative who was indisputably insolvent. Moreover, as the District Court observed, there is no dispute that the "circumstances of the transfer were highly unusual," Cadle Company, 2002 WL 1888716, at *7, involving a one-day trip from New York to Chicago and a wire transfer into a newly created bank account in the defendant's name. Finally, Mrs. Newhouse retained control over the funds after conveying them to her son by means of a power of attorney to withdraw funds from the bank account. See id. at *5, *7 (applying RTC Mortgage Trust, 171 F. Supp. 2d at 201). Given these strong indicators of fraudulent intent, the District Court correctly concluded that a reasonable jury could only find that this conveyance was made with"actual intent" to "hinder, delay or defraud" creditors
I suspect that Israel will charge Mondrowitz for lesser crimes than child rape and will, after a long legal process, convict and jail him, housing him in a yeshiva-prison, refusing to release him for extradition until his sentence in Israel is fully served. He will have weekend furloughs and conjugal visits and time off for family celebrations and lifecycle events. He will learn Torah most of the day and eat glatt kosher mehadrin food.
Mondrowitz is now 60 years old. By the time the legal wrangling is finished and his Israeli "jail time" served, he will be nearing 70. By then, the Brooklyn DA will have forgotten about Avrohom Mondrowitz, who will anyway then be an old man.
You get the picture.
http://chaptzem.blogspot.com/2006/09/your-most-interesting-kashrus-story.html
THERE IS A MORTGAGE BROKER FROM WILLIAMSBURG HIS NAME IS SHMUELI (SAM) JACOBY WHO FINANCED THE WHOLE OPERATION OF MOSHE FINKEL AND THE TEAM HE WORKED WITH TO BUY TREIF MEAT AND RESELL IT TO OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS, THE RABBONIM ARE ALL BUSY WITH THAT MENUVAL WHO RAPED A GIRL IN HIS OFFICE LAST YEAR AND WAS ARRESTED THE CASE IS PENDING AGAINST HIM, NOW HE IS INVOLVED WITH THIS STORY,
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:49 PM
IS THIS JACOBY THE SON OF MENDEL JACOBY FROM WILLIAMSBURG WHO WAS THROWN OUT OF GODINGER SILVER FOR STEALING 1 MILLION AS A BOOKEEPER?
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:51 PM
YES, thats the Jacoby which is really Jacobowitz his mothers name is Shaindy and his father is Mendel who davens at the polish shtiebel on Ross Street.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:53 PM
to anon above about this Jacoby guy, last year when the story came out of him raping that girl in his office, the rabbanim in williamsburg convened a beis din where witnesses came forward and told the panel of the Menuvales of this shmiel Jacoby it was terrible to hear that a yungerman from us should do such horrible things, the rabbanim didn't want to release a public kol korah because of the sensitivity of this case but it is still ongoing.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:59 PM
We better get the agudah fressers to an emergency meeting, the production of this toilet will cause very unpredictable weather and climate change.
-----------------------------------
Back-seat toilet to end mishaps in traffic jams - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071023/lf_nm_life/car_toilet_dc_1
http://bp3.blogger.com/_PxepB5WL1N0/Rx3D4iKKgqI/AAAAAAAAADg/zdglHSpKCeM/s1600-h/Mondrowitz_Avrohom-2007.jpg
Vicky / Jewish Survivor posted this picture of Mondrowitz. Is it a mistake? I don't see any yarmulka.
http://chaptzem.blogspot.com/2006/09/your-most-interesting-kashrus-story.html
THERE IS A MORTGAGE BROKER FROM WILLIAMSBURG HIS NAME IS SHMUELI (SAM) JACOBY WHO FINANCED THE WHOLE OPERATION OF MOSHE FINKEL AND THE TEAM HE WORKED WITH TO BUY TREIF MEAT AND RESELL IT TO OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS, THE RABBONIM ARE ALL BUSY WITH THAT MENUVAL WHO RAPED A GIRL IN HIS OFFICE LAST YEAR AND WAS ARRESTED THE CASE IS PENDING AGAINST HIM, NOW HE IS INVOLVED WITH THIS STORY,
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:49 PM
IS THIS JACOBY THE SON OF MENDEL JACOBY FROM WILLIAMSBURG WHO WAS THROWN OUT OF GODINGER SILVER FOR STEALING 1 MILLION AS A BOOKEEPER?
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:51 PM
YES, thats the Jacoby which is really Jacobowitz his mothers name is Shaindy and his father is Mendel who davens at the polish shtiebel on Ross Street.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:53 PM
to anon above about this Jacoby guy, last year when the story came out of him raping that girl in his office, the rabbanim in williamsburg convened a beis din where witnesses came forward and told the panel of the Menuvales of this shmiel Jacoby it was terrible to hear that a yungerman from us should do such horrible things, the rabbanim didn't want to release a public kol korah because of the sensitivity of this case but it is still ongoing.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : September 11, 2006 5:59 PM
http://bp1.blogger.com/_cktCgO7QYZg/Rxyy_BKvLSI/AAAAAAAAAsU/EvH2GlK_OiY/s1600-h/brndM01A1256.jpg
Jacob Perlow should have put this up in 1970 about Yudi Kolko's old Plymouth. He has no excuse since Yudi lived in Boro Park at the time.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/10/adulteration-of-your-food-why-now.html
How adulteration has grown and matured along with food chemsitry
E. C. WILHELMSEN, Alliance of Technical Professionals
Milpitas, CA
Human greed has prompted most food adulteration.
Examples include corn syrup in honey, hydrolyzed inulin in apple juice, grapefruit juice in orange juice, and other food oils in olive oil. These substitutions are all easy to detect with modern methods. Sadly, one can only wonder about what types of deceptions are still defeating the screening methods.
Authenticity of dairy products has been a longstanding issue within the dairy industry.
Advancement in dairy chemistry and technology enables us to make “custom made” dairy products; unfortunately these advancements also give way to varied and complicated types of exploitation of the products that is at times difficult to detect. Milk is an expensive raw material. As a result it is most appealing choice when trying to manipulate its composition and to replace it by other dairy and non-dairy products that are less expensive.
http://www.24dash.com/localgovernment/28267.htm
Restaurant fined £5,000 for selling counterfeit spirits
The restaurant disguised cheap
vodka as Smirnoff.
(Some vodkas are milchig or treif. This could wind up being another big headache for hashgocho on restaurants & caterers)
http://chaptzem.blogspot.com/2007/10/open-letter-from-former-yeshivah-boy.html#comments
I went to Yeshiva Toras Emes where we had a first grade Rebbe named Ritterman who delighted in refusing to allow us to go to the bathroom and forced kids to make in their pants.We had Silbermans who drank from his thermos all day(I suspect there was more to the thermos) and got redder throughout the day and was very verbally abusive. We had Ausfressor who wouldnt let kids go to the office when they were sick and made kids stand up for hours when they put their head down( it turns out I had 105.8 fever that night).We had Joe Klein in The Mir the abusive principal that whacked you so hard for forgetting your hat that your face swelled up.We had a candy machine owner in the Mir that abused kids in return for candy up at his candy storage room near the roof.The bottom line is all these things went on in our day and you should never think people are making stuff up!!
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : October 21, 2007 12:33 PM
How about the scumbag ehrentrau in mir yeshiva who would delight in putting kids in garbage cans beating the living daylights out of kids who he did not like throwing his blue balls at your head and hitting you with his pointer and then lying in his british accent im still waiting to meet you one day so you can explain . i think he got sexual gratification from abuse. it a samm wonder im still religous but with loving parents and support anything is possible. but all know the abuse in mir yeshiva ketana now i understand it got alot better.
to the letter writer be strong brother
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : October 21, 2007 1:28 PM
At Breuers', there was Rabbi Lowenthal who smacked one cheek and pinched the other cheek at the same time. Then there was old Mr. Wolf, who would throw you on the floor and then stump on you. Last but not least, there was Rabbi Kreiger, who died last week, who walked around with a stick and got enjoyment hitting you with his stick. In the comments section of another site last week, they said what a great person he was. All this was approved by Jacob Breuer.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : October 21, 2007 5:43 PM
Yeah, and there was Wisiltsky from Torah Vodaas who would beat the crap out of 1st graders and abusive 'older bochur' Chaitovsky the sexual abuser....
Comment Credit ---This article posted by Anonymous : October 21, 2007 6:36 PM
Back to YTV. Fink was known to use very "rough handed" tactics without investigating all the facts. Still he is a fine Jew despite his faults. However, wilner, may he rot in hell, mamesh single handedly turned kids off the derech. He publicly humiliated kids countless times. He openly hit on the slut mothers (i don't wonder how their kids got into yeshiva) when they dropped their kids off in the morn. I could write a whole book about this clown. It's unfortunate that R'Shechter (or whatever his name is) from chaim berlin stood behind wilner in Bais Din. Ilost all respect for him. I also lost faith in the entire rabbinic establishment. Not in rabbis- just the establishment. The board is virtually powerless in YTV against the Rabbis. Thats why i decided that i will not give money to that yeshiva until the hanhalla is overhauled.
As a whole YTV is a decent Yeshiva; just a few horror stories from back in the day.
Comment Credit ---This article posted by A Frum Yid : October 21, 2007 11:49 PM
Deerpark 's donated road salt is tainted with chicken waste
By Ashley Kelly
Times Herald-Record
October 23, 2007
Deerpark — First, lead is found in Town Hall, causing an emergency shutdown. Then, formaldehyde is discovered in a temporary trailer that was going to be used for town offices. Now, chicken waste has tainted some of the town's highway salt.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is investigating the donation of salt containing the chicken parts by a kosher chicken-processing plant for road use, town officials said.
The chicken is usually separated from the salt through a screening process before it is donated, Highway Superintendant Ed Hughson said. At least one of the loads of salt that was delivered to the town contained chicken fat, said Hughson, who said he didn't know about the problem until the DEC contacted him a few weeks ago. There were 10 to 12 loads of salt delivered to the town, Hughson said.
In May or June, Hughson said he was approached by a man from a Monroe company who offered the free kosher salt. The company was acting as a delivery agent for a chicken-processing plant. Hughson said he didn't know the name of the plant.
"If they were giving it to us, why not take it?" said Hughson, who has worked for the highway department for 20 years. "I would never do anything malicious."
DEC spokeswoman Wendy Rosenbach said an anonymous caller notified the agency about the contaminated salt about three weeks ago. Rosenbach would not release the name of the chicken-processing company because of the ongoing investigation. The potential health risks haven't been determined, she said.
"It's more of a fact that something that's supposed to be waste was not disposed of properly and shouldn't be used on the roads," Rosenbach said. The DEC is testing a sample of the salt.
Supervisor Mark House said the Town Board had never approved the salt donation.
Hughson said with the proper permits, kosher salt can be used for municipal use because it normally contains no contaminants. Hughson planned to mix the salt with sand to spread on the road.
The chicken-contaminated salt is the latest stroke of bad luck to fall upon the town. On Oct. 9, the Town Hall complex was shut down because of levels of lead oxide. Next, the town was given a formaldehyde-contaminated FEMA trailer to use as temporary offices. The trailer was repossessed, and the Orange County Sheriff's Office provided a mobile unit instead. On Wednesday, a handful of town employees had to be evacuated from the police department building because of a gas leak.
House says the first question he asks himself lately is: "OK, what's next?"
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lisnak1024,0,4903510.story
Ha! And Boog thinks Louima had it bad.
This school mentioned on the blog as i-rock is known today as ASHAR. Can't say they make a good case for coed schooling. However, it might be the better of 2 evils. Dunno.
Your name not much better.
LVF = leizerovits vill feigelech
http://bp1.blogger.com/_cktCgO7QYZg/RxFz9hXEfpI/AAAAAAAAArQ/4MYXs1SeAk0/s1600-h/brndM01A1240.jpg
A Monsey man, Zev Ballen, who falsely presented himself as a licensed psychologist, and was ordered by New York State to stop doing so, is now giving hypnosis classes to train people how to hypnotize themselves and others.
Check out the ad. Who are the "rabbonim"?
New Book on Sexual Violence In Jewish Communities - Stories Needed
Author/Editor - Vicki Polin
Over the last few years I have been working on a book addressing sexual violence in Jewish communities around the globe. I'm finally at the place that I am looking for Jewish survivors stories about healing, what worked and what didn't.
Due to the fact that my work has focused more in the orthodox world over the last 7 years, there is more of a slant in that direction, yet the book is about sexual violence in movements of Judaism and also includes Jewish survivors who are unaffiliated.
The article should include experiences dealing with your community, rabbis and family members. Stories should be no longer then 2-3 pages long.
If you are interested in sending your story, send an e-mail stating you want your story to be considered for the book along with you piece.
Once your story has been selected and you agree to the editing I will send you a release granting permission for your article to be included in the book. I will need to know your real name for my files, yet you can use a pseudonym as the author of your story for the book.
Please understand that it may not be possible to include all stories and that your story may be edited. There are eight types of articles I am looking for, they are:
1. Jewish survivors of incest
2. Jewish survivors of child sexual abuse (by offenders outside the home)
3. Jewish survivors of clergy sexual abuse (as an adult or child)
4. Jewish survivors of a sexual assault as an adult
5. Jewish survivors who became pregnant as a result of being sexually victimized.
6. Parents of survivors
7. Spouses and or family members of sex offenders
8. Rabbis who have worked with survivors of sexual violence
Sincerely,
Vicki Polin, MA, NCC, LCPC, ATR-BC
P.O. Box 65273
Baltimore, MD 21209
vickipolin@ aol.com
Vicki Polin is the founder and executive director of The Awareness Center, which is the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault
Looking For Personal Stories of Jewish Survivors From Baltimore For New Documentary
I'm pleased to inform you that another documentary on sexual abuse in the Jewish community is being created. If you know any Jewish survivors who have a Baltimore connection please share the following information. Danae Elon is an Israeli filmmaker who is creating a film about sexual abuse in the orthodox community. I am aware that many survivors who grew up Orthodox may no longer be practicing, Ms. Danae is still interested in what you have to say.
Before deciding to go public with your story please download the following article and read it:
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Disclosing, Confronting or Going Public About Surviving Sexual Violence
Please read Ms. Elon's message which is below.
Sincerely,
Vicki Polin MA, NCC, LCPC, ATR-BC
The Awareness Center, Inc.
(The Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault)
P.O. Box 65273, Baltimore, MD 21209
443-857-5560
__________________________________
Danae Elon - Looking For Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
In a message dated 10/22/07 1:00:52 PM
My name is Danae Elon, I am a documentary filmmaker that is making a film about sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community in Baltimore.
I am looking for people who would be willing to share their stories with me, either on camera or in complete anonymity. My work as a documentary filmmaker is serious, thorough and profound. I hope we can establish a mutual relationship of trust and friendship to bring to the communities attention something of such importance, and with thus make a difference in the lives of people.
Please contact me I need your help.
Sincerely
Danae Elon
917-328-8336
danae @ qifilm.com
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--teachersexabuse-n1020oct20,0,2236433,print.story
Hofstra University Professor Charol Shakeshaft said her national survey on teacher-student sex cases shows as many as 9 in 10 cases may go unreported.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.
The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the "America's Favorite Cities" survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News.
For unattractiveness, Philadelphia just beat out Washington DC and Dallas/Fort Worth for the bottom spot. Miami and San Diego are home to the most attractive people, the poll found.
"The relative attractiveness of its residents is only a minuscule factor in evaluating a city's merit."
Philadelphians' self-esteem has been undermined by national surveys showing they are among the fattest people in the United States. The American Obesity Association ranked the city in the top 10 for overweight people every year between 2000 and 2005.
They might be able to get criminal records hidden but I don't think they can destroy them.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--teachersexabuse-p1020oct20,0,4202515,print.story
Parents can seek records of teachers in sex cases
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
11:17 AM EDT, October 20, 2007
ALBANY, N.Y.
Want to know if any teachers in your local public school were found to have had sex with students?
A request under the state Freedom of Information Law should do it.
This is terrible! I love picking things out of people's garbage in Flatbush to take home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/nyregion/15recycle.html
By THOMAS J. LUECK
It was a case of good news, bad news for Luis Bosque as he parked in front of an Upper East Side apartment building earlier this month, looked over an assortment of trash that had been put out for recycling and loaded a steel bed frame inside his battered white van.
The bad news was Lt. David Lois, a Department of Sanitation police officer who is part of an aggressive crackdown on what some officials have called recyclable rustling. Lieutenant Lois was observing Mr. Bosque from an unmarked patrol car.
But the good news for Mr. Bosque was that it happened just before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed into law a bill that greatly increased penalties for people who are caught using vehicles to steal metal, paper or other recyclable material that is left at a curb. Instead of the $100 ticket he received from Lieutenant Lois, Mr. Bosque could now be fined at least $2,000 and could have his van impounded.
Mr. Bosque was spotted as he pulled over in his van, which bore Pennsylvania license plates. When he opened the back doors — now only a few feet away and in full view of the officers — it was obvious that the bed frame would not be his only cargo.
The van was packed with metal — a hot water tank, a stove and pipes. It was enough for Lieutenant Lois to act.
Weintraub, my wife stopped me from doing the same thing. She got scared after the ladies around Ave N who went to your wife's illegal aerobics business in your basement were grossed out by the filth & bugs that might be coming from the "metzios" you schlepp home.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2007/10/its_not_theft_its_reallocation.html
Here's Councilman Simcha Felder explaining how his recent liberation of an abandoned filing cabinet from City Hall, which is now being put to good use in his district office, wasn't theft but rather the constructive reallocation of a taxpayer-financed resource that was being wrongfully neglected.
He also confesses to being a big fan of garbage picking, which he calls "one of the best things about living in the city," but said (off-camera, sadly) he's no longer allowed to bring his curbside finds home as his wife is concerned about their provenance (and potential insect infestation).
Felder has become known as something of a garbage afficianado, proposing a number of sanitation-related bills, including the nuisance flyer ban and limiting the hours in which residents can be ticketed for having litter on their property.
http://www.jewishtimes.com/scripts/edition.pl?now=5/25/1999&SubSectionID=48&ID=2368
A dispute between a Kansas City, Mo., meat company and a New York kashrut certification organization has caught Baltimore's Star-K in the middle.
The issues between the company and Debrecin/Vaad Mishmeres L'Mishmeres of Brooklyn, N.Y., wound up in the mailboxes of many in the Baltimore Orthodox community.
Late last month, almost every Orthodox family in Baltimore listed in the "Eruv List" — a directory for local Orthodox families and businesses — received a 41-page pamphlet from a group called the Committee for the Elevation of Kashrut Standards in New York City, attacking the kosher standards of Star-K, a kosher supervisory organization, and the ethics of its rabbinic administrator, Rabbi Moshe Heinemann.
The pamphlet originated from the same Brooklyn address as an affiliate of International Glatt Kosher (IGK), one of the largest kosher meat purveyors in North America, and the same address as Mishmeres.
"This has become all-consuming, aggravating," said Dr. Avrom Pollak, president of Star-K. "More than anything else, as a close colleague of Rabbi Heinemann, to see what he has been through is quite distressing."
Rabbi Heinemann, spiritual leader of Agudath Israel of Baltimore in Upper Park Heights, said, "I'm not happy about it, but I can live with it. I believe most of the people in the local community know me. I've been here 38 years, and most people trust me."
Star-K has held meetings throughout the Orthodox community to explain the situation and has posted relevant documents on its www.Star-K.com Web site. Dr. Pollak also appeared on the Sunday evening "Torah Talk" show on "Shalom USA," a local Jewish radio program.
An official of IGK — who agreed to be interviewed only if his name was not used — denied having anything to do with the pamphlet, although he defended its contents.
IGK is owned by the second generation of the Chaimowitz family in New York.
The slaughterhouse at the center of the dispute is owned by a firm called PM Beef Group of Kansas City in Windom, in southwestern Minnesota. PM Beef is owned by PM Holdings, a privately owned corporation in Richmond, Va. PM is owned by non-Jews, one of the issues in the dispute.
PM sells both kosher and non-kosher beef. The kosher portion was sold only through IGK.
The Orthodox Union and Mishmeres/Debrecin, owned by the Debreciner Rav, Rabbi Shlomo Stern, performed kosher supervision under Rabbi Eliezar Yacob (Lazar Jacob). The Debreciners are Chasidim who originated in Hungary.
The certifiers supplied a team of schochtim, or slaughterers, and mashgichim, the men who do the inspection to make the meat glatt kosher and certify the process.
Under the typical arrangement at an abattoir, meat that cannot be certified as kosher — cut from the vast majority of the steers slaughtered at the plant — is sold as non-kosher to regular markets.
Two-and-a-half years ago, PM decided it would also like to be able to sell kosher meat from the plant, and invited Star-K to set up a system.
"Our motivation for wanting to do this certification was that PM was in the case-ready business, fresh meats that would be now available to kosher consumers," said Dr. Pollak. "We were particularly interested in the fact they had good distribution in supermarket chains, areas where there were no kosher butchers and it would be an opportunity to sell kosher meats to people that don't otherwise have access.
"Their original request was that we provide our own crew two days a week when they were not slaughtering for IGK."
At that point, Dr. Pollak admitted, Star-K made a serious mistake. Fearing that the presence of another rabbinic crew would create tensions at the plant, Star-K persuaded PM to let Star-K negotiate an agreement with Mishmeres/Debrecin to handle the certification for its meat as well. Star-K would inspect regularly to make sure standards were observed, but the crew already in place would handle all the work. As is customary, the certifiers paid the expenses.
At first, meat from Star-K was kept separate from IGK's meat, but eventually all the product was pooled together: same meat, same standards, different certification. Some went out as IGK, some as Zalman's, Star-K's certified brand. This lasted for about two years.
PM, meanwhile, acquired a distributor named Levitts in Montreal, and Levitts began selling Zalman's meat in New York in competition with IGK.
It was at that point that the deal at Windom collapsed.
Just before Passover this year, PM demanded that Rabbi Jacob, the former head of the Mishmeres team, leave the plant. He had hired a team of mostly Israeli inspectors, some of whom apparently lacked proper documentation. In a letter to Yanky Chaimowitz, president of IGK, PM president Jay P. "Chip" Au Werter said there also were tax and pay issues and threats of violence from Rabbi Jacob toward individuals associated with the business. Mr. AuWerter also wrote that Rabbi Jacob had been spreading rumors about a failure of standards in Zalman's products. He believed, he wrote, that the rumors emanated from Debrecin.
According to Dr. Pollak, Rabbi Jacob was spreading the rumors even though he was being paid to certify the meat, and it was the same meat being sold by IGK.
Rabbi Jacob, an Israeli, is considered one of the great experts in kashrut but speaks poor English. He allegedly also treated the non-Jewish owners of the plant in a disrespectful manner. The pamphlet and the conversation with the IGK official was littered with the pejorative goy as both noun and pronoun. When the tension got to be too much at the plant, PM removed him.
Mr. AuWerter assured Mr. Chaim-owitz that the issue had nothing to do with rabbinical practices at the plant. He wrote that the company wanted the highest level of rabbinic supervision available and did not want to endanger that supervision.
He outlined in a letter what he wanted in a team head and wrote that Rabbi Jacob did not even minimally satisfy these characteristics. That was why he was thrown out of the plant. A copy of the letter also went to OU.
(The OU, which has played a passive role in the dispute despite the fact its seal goes on the packaging, had no supervision of Rabbi Jacob. The OU did not respond to a request for an interview.)
Instead of just replacing Rabbi Jacob, IGK pulled out altogether.
On Friday, March 26, the Debrecin/Mishmeres team slaughtered cattle and then went home for Shabbat. The workers did not show up after the Sabbath to process the meat. They also missed a slaughter of hundreds of cattle after Passover. Rabbi Jacob claimed they refused to work because of the failure of Star-K to meet kashrut standards. Dr. Pollak said it was a walkout.
Star-K moved in its own team to continue the work as it was permitted to do under the contract.
The IGK official said the real motive was to get rid of IGK and Debrecin, and since the company could not charge the certification crew with lapsed kashrut standards, they used the excuse of making it a personnel dispute with Rabbi Jacob.
He said Star-K was considered insignificant in the kashrut industry without a meat product, and this was the organization's way of getting into meat.
Rabbi Jacob apparently then went to work in the rabbinic court system, obtaining an ikul, an injunction, against Star-K to prevent it from bringing in its own supervisors, even though the contract clearly stated that it could. In one case, he even formed his own court, a violation of Jewish law. He even got a declaration from Rabbi Yona Metzger, chief Ashkenazic rabbi of Israel, forbidding Star-K slaughterers from entering the plant while the Debrecin crew was out. He also went around the country getting other battei din, or rabbinic courts, to denounce the activity. It is traditional for one court to send its findings to other courts so the rulings can be universally enforced.
The injunction was issued before any summons was sent, before the Debrecin-Mishmeres team walked out and before any hearings were called. The IGK official said he knew it was going to happen, hence the appeal to rabbinic courts.
Dr. Pollak points out that he and Rabbi Heinemann are willing to present their case to any rabbinic court. Based on their assertion, most battei din have retracted their injunctions, he said.
Meanwhile, the assault against Star-K continued.
Part of the offensive was the pamphlet mailed to Baltimore residents. The anonymous author made serious accusations against the large, 50-year-old certification institution and against Rabbi Heinemann, considered one of the most respected figures in the city's large Orthodox community.
The authorship of the pamphlet was attributed to the Committee for the Elevation of Kashrut Standards. According to Rabbi Yaakov Menken of Torah.org, an expert on the Web, the address given, (www.kashrutstandards. com) was assigned by a Web domain company to Globex Kosher Foods at the same address as IGK on First Avenue, off the Queens Expressway in Brooklyn. The New York State Department of State lists Abraham Chaimowitz as the owner of Globex. Rabbi Jacob appears to maintain an office there. The receptionist said he was in Israel when the Baltimore Jewish Times called.
Among the charges: that it is against Jewish law for a company owned by a non-Jew to sell kosher meat. A Jew must be the sole owner.
Empire Poultry, the largest kosher poultry company in the world and certified by OU, is owned by a private investment firm that is not majority Jewish-owned; Hebrew National, perhaps the best-known kosher food purveyor, which is certified by Triangle K, is owned by ConAgra, a public company trading on the New York Stock Exchange; and Sara Lee Meat Group owns Best's Kosher Foods, locally certified in Chicago. Having a non-Jewish owner is the norm in both the United States and Europe. Neither Hebrew National or Best are glatt kosher but the difference has nothing to do with the ownership.
The IGK official said these firms do not own their own abattoirs but contract out the slaughter. Nonetheless, the slaughterhouses are not Jewish-owned.
Dr. Pollak said that it is impossible to have a Jewish-owned plant without producing a serious conflict of interest: The yield for glatt kosher cows is between 25-35 percent (65-75 percent of the cows are rejected and of those accepted, only the forequarters are used, Dr. Pollak said), so the economic pressure to increase the yield would threaten to overwhelm the glatt kosher standards.
The IGK official said the opposite is the case. The pamphlet also charges that it is illegal to give a hechsher, a certification of kosher food, to a non-Jew. Dr. Pollak pointed out that the hechsher goes to the product, not the person.
The IGK official said that is not true, and that every rabbi knows that.
But an independent expert in kashrut contacted by the Baltimore Jewish Times said Dr. Pollak is correct, that it is the product or an institution that is certified.
The pamphlet also mentions a ruling in 1934 from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most influential Orthodox rabbis of the 20th century, saying it is illegal for a plant to produce both kosher and non-kosher meat, but the ruling, quoted in the pamphlet, specifically mentions smokehouses, not slaughterhouses. PM does not smoke its meat at that plant.
As a reaction to the apparent conflicts of interest between IGK and Debrecin, the Vaad HaKashrut of Flatbush in Brooklyn has decertified IGK meat while continuing to endorse Star-K's Zalman's brand. The certification organization in the Washington area, however, will no longer accept Zalman's, but that is part of a long-standing dispute between the two agencies.
Rabbi Heinemann said he has nothing to do with the business end. "I am satisfied that the meat coming out of that plant is 100 percent kosher," he said.
Dr. Pollak said that while support in the Baltimore area has been unstinting, he was appalled that the Orthodox community does not condemn such practices as the pamphlet and the campaign against Star-K and Rabbi Heinemann.
"It speaks poorly of the kosher certification organizations," he said. "More than anything else, to show such utter disregard and disrespect to a noted scholar and posek [authority] as Rabbi Heinemann has no precedent."
"the story that R' Moishe Weissman, Rosh Kollel of Avreichei Brisk in Flatbush had with Rubashkin"
I remember hearing something about it. I think he says he found some kind of organ still intact inside that kosher chickens are not allowed to have.
Gershon Weintraub's brother, the alter bochur Zev Weintraub, got into some kind of altercation outside the Ave M train station next to Mountain Fruit.
SOme crazy woman started screaming & kicked him in the nuts. Responding officers handcuffed & put Weintraub in the cruiser but later released him.
Heclaims he's suing the NYPD for false arrest.
Did UOJ have anything to do with the Heinemann mailing to everyone in Town?
:o)
UOJ instigated this because he doesn't like me.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=18353
2007-10-19
Museum of Tolerance faces fight with neighbors over expansion plans
http://www.flatbushlife.com/site/tab4.cfm?newsid=18933927&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552850&rfi=6
Rep. Anthony Weiner last week touted his work in helping 12 Brooklyn non-profit and religious institutions get federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants.
Institutions that qualified for the grant program were eligible to receive up to $100,000.
The average award for grant winners this year is approximately $90,000, and the funds are expected to be delivered within the next 60 days, according to a Weiner press release.
Other borough institutions getting the award include Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, Mikvah Taharah of Congregation Yetev Lev in Williamsburg, Magen David Yeshiva in Bensonhurst and Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, Inc. in Crown Heights.
Additional recipients of the money included the Shorefront YM-YWHA of Brighton-Manhattan Beach, the Brighton & Manhattan Beach Yeshiva, Mikdash Melech of Borough Park, Metropolitan Jewish Health Systems in Bay Ridge, Yeshiva Ohel Moshe in Bensonhurst, and the Yeshiva of Manhattan Beach.
Interestingly, the Yeshiva of Manhattan Beach is located on the fourth floor of Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, 60 West Avenue, which as a separate non-profit entity didn’t receive any money.
Neither Rubin Margules, president of the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, nor Jerry Greenwald, president of the Yeshiva of Manhattan Beach, returned calls for comment as to what makes the fourth floor of the building a “high risk” terrorist target and not the rest of the building.
Greenwald also publishes the Jewish Press.
UOJ should stop "lighting fires" under people. There has to be an easier way to get rid of Aron & Sholom Tendler and the RCC.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/23/wildfire.ca/index.html
Raging wildfires have destroyed 1,300 homes across Southern California and, pushed by fierce Santa Ana winds, threaten 72,000 others, California fire officials reported Tuesday.
Fears grew north of Los Angeles that the winds may fan three wildfires into one monster blaze, with too few resources available to fight it.
More than 56,000 homes are threatened by the three fires.
Evacuees joined hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in shelters, schools and stadiums Tuesday as fires pushed into new areas.
"It will not end ... until it reaches the ocean or the winds turn around," San Diego Fire battalion chief Bruce Cartelli said.
At least 16 wildfires have scorched about 425 square miles from north of Los Angeles to southeast of San Diego since the weekend.
The largest disruption of life and property came to the south, where San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts said Tuesday about 1,000 homes have been destroyed.
More than 300,000 people fled their homes in San Diego County, where five of 23 emergency shelters reached capacity Monday evening. Others took shelter with friends or relatives.
The U.S. Navy ordered sailors out of barracks and onto ships to make room for evacuees.
A half-million people may be forced from their homes by the fires, Matt Bettenhausen, director of the California Office of Homeland Security, said.
In an e-mail to CNN, Jonathan Gallen, a doctor in Poway, described how the fires quickly closed in on his neighborhood Monday.
"My pool was completely black with soot. Like the 'Creature From the Black Lagoon' was about to walk out of there," Gallen wrote. "The soot was falling so heavily that it blocked out the sun. There was a smoke cloud above our home that seemed to stretch for miles. This was bad."
Reporter Larry Himmel of KFMB-TV in San Diego showed viewers the destruction of his home in the Forest Ranch area.
"You can see my hose right here valiantly trying to do something," Himmel said as flames dwarfed a trickle of water.
National Guard troops were posted at Qualcomm Stadium, home to the NFL's San Diego Chargers, as it became a temporary home to 10,000 fire evacuees.
I wonder if Topps was buying from Rubashkin's (officially) treif output.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/business/23meat.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
October 23, 2007
Many Red Flags Preceded a Recall of Hamburger
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and ANDREW MARTIN
ELIZABETH, N.J. — Over the summer, as Americans fired up their grills, the Topps Meat factory here scrambled to produce thousands of frozen hamburger patties for Wal-Mart and other customers, putting intense pressure on workers.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380607384&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
One source called it "ironic" that the Zalmen supporters are claiming to protect the late rebbe's will, "on the ground the Aaron camp is made up of people who were devoted to Moses Teitelbaum throughout his leadership, and the Zalmen camp is made up of those who opposed Moses to begin with."
The dispute dates back to the death of Joel Teitelbaum in 1979. He had no sons, and when he died a dispute arose over who would succeed him. The board elected Joel's nephew Moses as heir, against the wishes of some members who thought Joel was irreplaceable. Today, those dissident members make up the Zalmen camp.
In addition to Williamsburg and Kiryas Joel, where Satmar have traditionally dominated, Borough Park has become the latest playing field for the brotherly rivalry. Most of the institutions belong to the Aaron faction, but recently Zalmen has tried to strengthen his hold.
The competition is visible even on the streets, where a few weeks ago Zalmen opened a rival butcher down the block from his brother's.
Since the split, Aaron has been at the forefront of kashrut, setting up KJ poultry, a very strict kosher poultry slaughtering house in Kiryas Joel, the Aaron stronghold.
The opening of a Zalmen butcher is seen not only as a tit-for-tat, but as an attempt to bear greater influence on kashrut standards, no small thing in the haredi world. Kashrut has often been a place where rabbis assert their authority, each showing himself to be more strict than the next.
I'm very impressed that UOJ has become a vegetarian of sorts!
A prominent Rov told me that its time to clean house at Ohel. The original founders of Ohel created the place to take care of orphans. The present administration has turned Ohel into a money making machine by making it a supermarket to cater to anyone that was abused or has problems. After 9 11 Ohel realized that they can get grants to help people and fill their coffers. Ohels sole purpose is to inflate their caseload by getting as many people signed up for services as possible. The victims have reported that they in turn get mediocre services and some times it takes so long to fill in the paper work they only get to see someone fro a few minutes. The Rov has had a lot of experience with Ohel and helping the people Ohel destroyed because of their incompetence. The Rov knows that they hire unqualified people without experience because they are the only ones that will work for such low salaries.
Does someone have a copy of the Heinemann mailing for UOJ to post?
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s18&SecId=18&AId=56088&ATypeId=1
Tragedy of the ‘nice’ liar who had to go to jail
19/10/2007
By Dana Gloger
A Strictly Orthodox father of eight has been jailed for three months for intending to pervert the course of justice.
On six separate occasions last year, Benzion Leibowitz, 38, a mini-cab driver from Stamford Hill, North London, was caught speeding. However, each time he falsely nominated a friend, Simcha Kraushar, living in the United States, as the driver.
Leibowitz was charged after a
police investigation. He pleaded guilty in August.
At Snaresbrook Crown Court last Thursday, Jonathan Goldberg QC urged Judge Judith Hughes to hand Leibowitz a sentence of unpaid work, or a suspended prison sentence.
He explained that his client was a Satmar Charedi Jew, from what he described as “a remarkably closed community” who “are like the Amish in the USA”.
Mr Goldberg said: “Because he is cloistered from the outside world, he saw this as something very minor. When he was told this was an imprisonable offence, he was terrified.”
“At this time in his life he was also under great stress. His wife was pregnant and they had been told that there was a high risk of a Down’s syndrome baby,” he added.
Several testimonials from people in the Charedi community, as well as from Leibowitz’s employer, were read to the court. Many of them said that he often drove people in the community for free, especially those who were elderly or disabled.
“The picture painted by all the reports is that he is a nice man but naïve and immature. But he lived for others,” Mr Goldberg said.
The judge called it a “tragic case” and said that although she had taken into account the fact that Leibowitz pleaded guilty at the first opportunity, and was a man of good character who had helped his community, she could not avoid giving him a custodial sentence.
“These matters are so serious and over a persistent series of times.
“I regret that I can’t avoid a prison [sentence],” she said.
She did not disqualify him from driving, but endorsed his licence with three penalty points, so he could resume his driving work upon his release from prison. Leibowitz sat in the dock during sentencing, reading from the Book of Lamentations.
Mr Goldberg tried several times in vain to persuade Judge Hughes to suspend the sentence, but she refused, insisting that an immediate prison sentence was “inevitable”.
http://www.ejpress.org/article/21118
BUDAPEST(AFP)---A Hungarian far-right group recalling the country’s pro-Nazi regime during World War II, inducted 600 new members Sunday in a military-style ceremony amid protests from the government and Jewish groups.
Members of Magyar Garda, or Hungarian Guard, attended the event in Heroes’ Square in Budapest wearing white shirts and black uniforms emblazoned with red and white stripes, a flag associated since World War II with Hungary’s Nazi-allied Arrow Cross regime.
Some 2,000 people attended the ceremony.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380633849&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Keren Hashvi'is operates from Agudath Israel of America's Manhattan offices.
The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=5&id=16156
Why is Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz kissing up to Pinter shutef & co-defendant Ron Hershco?
Sad Tale of Rabbi Menachem Seidenfeld from Monsey has left a new comment on your post "How's The Torah Umesorah Sex - Offender Registry G...":
Congresswoman Berkley of Nevada is accused of helping cover up for a molester Chazan at Chabad Las Vegas.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/nightmare-in-boomtown_Printer_Friendly.html
Mark Seidenfeld was just another American cashing in on the post-Soviet boom. Then one bad deal in Kazakhstan sent his life into a spiral of extortion, siberian prison, and frontier justice. A cautionary tale.
From: Issue 120 | November 2007 | Page 114 | By: Jonathan Green
As he watched the wind-scarred steppe of eastern Siberia scroll by the car, Mark Seidenfeld couldn't resist cracking a grin. Last night's vodka was still coursing through him, swirling with the high of yet another triumph. Newly appointed as the director of mergers and acquisitions for Golden Telecom, a U.S. firm based in Moscow, he had been sent along with two colleagues to Blagoveshchensk, a river port city of 200,000 on the Russian-Chinese border, to investigate a $2 million telecom outfit and see if it was worth buying. It was a perfunctory trip with a modest return, assuming the deal went through at all. But while in town, Seidenfeld had discovered two other companies that might be worth scooping up, and now he was looking at a possible $15 million deal. That morning, Seidenfeld had sat braced against the subzero cold in his sheepskin jacket and chatted with the town's deputy mayor. He was heading home to Moscow to relay the good news to his bosses. And soon he would be back in the cozy apartment he shared with his Russian fiancée, Natiya, who is 11 years his junior; in two weeks, they'd go on a lavish vacation in Spain. It was December 7, 2005. Life was good.
As he checked in for the flight to Moscow, though, something was wrong. The woman behind the counter eyed him suspiciously. Then a Russian police official in a sky-blue greatcoat and a massive Soviet-era cap stepped up and led him away to a room behind the check-in desk where a plainclothes detective sat waiting. Within hours, Seidenfeld was locked in a tiny, unheated cell in a detention center just across the Amur River from China. That night, terrified, he shivered under a coarse blanket as the temperature outside dropped to minus-20. At 5-foot-8, with a slight paunch from too many client dinners, he was a soft target for the thugs who surrounded him. His cockiness evaporated.
Eidut Hashem Ne'emana.
SAY NO TO PRODUCTS FROM CHINA!
----------------------------
Our view on consumer protection: Unsafe products overwhelm emaciated safety agency Tue Oct 23, 12:22 AM - USA TODAY
In the spring of 2005, a baby was strangled by a defective crib in California, and a Texas woman collapsed after she used a can of spraysealant to treat kitchen and bathroom tile.
What links the cases is not just dangerous products and companies that did not move to quickly recall them, but the tragically ineffective response of the government agency responsible for actingwhen companies do not: the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Begun in 1973 in a wave of consumer protectionism, the commission is overwhelmed and understaffed. It investigates barely 10%-15% of the reports it gets of product-related deaths and injuries. Its staff has shrunk to about 400, from a peak of 978 in 1980. The huge recalls of lead-tainted toys from China this year revealed that the agency's primary full-time, small-parts toy tester is a guy named Bob.
There's plenty of blame to go around for CPSC's deterioration. A succession of presidents and Congresses, hostile to the burden the commission can place on business, have limited its power and budget. The results can be tragic.
Stories like these have propelled CPSC into the headlines and subjected it to harsh criticism. In some cases, the commission has been troublingly ineffectual, seemingly without the will or aggressiveness it would take to be a truly effective watchdog.
In other cases, CPSC's overburdened staff has doggedly pursued dangerous products and demanded recalls that have saved lives. Its website is full of product warnings and recall notices that range from toys and bicycles to appliances and hot tubs.
Yet the agency has nowhere close to the resources or authority it needs to monitor the more than 15,000 categories of products that come increasingly from countries such as China, with little or no notion of U.S. consumer protection norms.
Importers, not an army of government inspectors, should bear primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of these products. But because many U.S. companies have done a bad job of monitoring their overseas suppliers, and companies too often drag their feet before reporting problems, a vibrant CPSC is essential.
Congress, which had a major hand in whittling the CPSC down to its current shrunken state and curbing its powers, has belatedly recognized the problems and proposed more money and tougher laws. It's about time.
Until this White House, or the next one, puts consumer protection above business friendliness, the list of horror stories is likely to grow.
If I knew then what I know now, it's possible that I would be inclined to act accordingly.
I never thought I'd say this, but the more I see and understand about how stupid, myopic, and clueless the Orthodox establishment is, the more I want to vomit.
Without question, the Internet has brought much of this light.
It's also possible that the idiocy that goes on today (i.e., kollel entitlement, out-of-control chareidim in Israel, delusional welfare-dependent chassidim, jackass "gedolim" making the most preposterous statements, same jackass "gedolim" targeting the pettiest inanities to ban, blanket rabbinic and parental support of unrealistic marriage expectation by unworthy, uneducated boobs, the train-wreck adherence to a certain rabbi in israel, the astonishing shortsightedness of those who perpetuate an unrealistic, counterintuitive method of dating for marriage, a total lack of ahavas yisroel by rabbinic leadership, corrupt batei dinim, the crass commercialism of yiddishkeit, chumros being presented as halacha, the promulgation of ridiculous segulos, wealth worship by yeshivas and mosdos, godol worship and dogmatic insistence of rabbinic infallibility, proliferation of outrageously redundant non-profits, so-called "gedolim" WHORING their so-called "gadlus" to promote rip-off tzedaka organizations, halcyonic paeans to undeserving sperm lottery winners, should I keep going?) didn't happen years ago.
But whatever it is, we don't have a youth-crisis. We have a godol-crisis.
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071003/NEWS01/710030321/1010/NEWS01
People wanted by local law-enforcement agencies and Big Bend Crime Stoppers will be featured here on a daily basis. If you know how to locate one of these people, call the Crime Stoppers hot line at (888) 876-TIPS.
Michael Scherman, 22, 5-foot-7, 145 pounds. Has tattoos on his arms and neck. Wanted on a charge of violation of probation (felony theft).
" "gedolim" WHORING their so-called "gadlus" to promote rip-off tzedaka organizations"
I hope you're not referring to Oorah, my son's organization.
"corrupt batei dinim, the crass commercialism of yiddishkeit, chumros being presented as halacha, the promulgation of ridiculous segulos, wealth worship by yeshivas and mosdos, godol worship and dogmatic insistence of rabbinic infallibility"
UOJ talmid muvhok, identify yourself!
Hey Belsky, old buddy old pal. Is that you running the ad in this week's Jewish Fress:
"Leading gadol for hire. Have hazmonna pad. Will travel."
How does Mondrowitz still have a pulse if he molested so many Italianos?
I'm suprised that being Shea Fishman's replacement, UOJ hasn't paid much attention to me.
Besides serving as chief flunky at Torah Umesorah, I give the parsha shiur after Shabbos kiddush at the Vorhand yeshiva & shul on West 91st on the Upper West Side.
http://www.heichalmoshe.org/history.htm
Heschal Moshe Shul, located on the upper West Side of Manhattan boasts a rich tradition of yiddishkite and continues to attract Jews from all parts of the globe with its gracious hospitality and thirst for Torah. Rabbi Lev Lvi Vorhand of blessed memory founded Heichal Moshe in _____ and passed his legacy onto his son Rabbi Moshe Vorhand Shlita in ____ who has overseen the shul’s growth and maintained the tradition established by his father.
Before the war, Rabbi Vorhand was Chief Rabbi of Czechoslovakia and played a large role in arranging illegal transport of 1500 Jews to Palestine on the onset of the Holocaust in 1939. After being liberated from a concentration camp near the end of the war, he again became a great force of movement for displaced European Jews and set out to rescue refugees by arranging for their passports to safe residency.
Although the position of Chief Rabbi of Australia was offered to him, Rabbe Vorhand decided to settle his family in the United States and founded Heschal Moshe Congregation on West 91 Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yeshiva Ketana in Manhattan and HASC for special children was to follow as a strong Bais Yaakov School, which provided essential education for students no matter what their financial situation was. Rabbi Vorhand also ran the Rabbonim Aid Society and helped organize the first Gemach on the West Side and The Oneg Shabbos Group which assists families by providing Shabbos meals.
Heschel Moshe, now under the leadership of the Rav’s son Rabbi Moshe Vorhand Shlita, is proud of three strong daily Minyans, DafYomi, Torah and Halacha classes, as well as a Mikvah on site. In addition to his rabbinical responsibilities, Rabbi Moshe Vorhand Shlita has established himself as an accomplished author of numerous seforim. The Vorhand Shul has gracefully grown into a welcoming place of worship with a very diverse group of Jews. The all-encompassing sense of warmth is a prevalent tribute to the Vorhand family and continues to lead Heschal Moshe into the future with strength.
These Rabbis provide clarity for those in their communities who would give lip service to the "kids at risk" while harboring a lowlife, scumbag like Monsterwitz.
He is the orthodox's worst Rabbi and there are plenty to choose from.
And just to prove that I'm not just being gratuitously nasty ... Who do you think promotes these ills? Is the the gedolim? You think they don't? Well, if they're so allpowerful and infallible, why can't they see what is as plain as day to 13 year olds?
Why can't the so-called gedolim, who have so much to say about every red herring they can find say nothing when "crisis" after "crisis" appear short of "we must pray," and "shame on those untznius women" or any other cynical red herring they can dredge up.
I read something so nerve wracking in the Jewish Star today. On simchas torah, some drunken idiot puked all over the bais medrash in shor yoshov. But that's not the story. The kid was determined to be seriously alcohol poisoned by a doctor in the room and hatzoloh was called.
Hatzoloh arrived and began treating the drunk kid. Then the drunk patient kicked one of the volunteers in the head and the police had to be called. When things calmed down, they prepared to transport the nearly comatose patient to the hospital. Suddenly the drunk's friends began to argue with medics telling them the kid was fine and didn't need to go to the hospital; They loudly acused the volunteers of kidnapping their drunken retard friend and were generally antagonistic and disrespectful.
Hatzolah took the kid to the hospital, where the drunken dope's parents were waiting and they gave the volunteers a mouthful, completely diesregarding any aspect of what happened other that they disagred with hatzolah's decision to take the kid to the ER.
OK ... still with me? The whole shebang I just described was the content of an article in the Jewish star last week. The focus of the article was mostly on the vile behavior of the jeering friends, the ingratitude of the parents, and the general lack of regard for the sacrifices of hatzolah volunteers, with a healthy mention of the drunk.
Well, this week i open the paper to see that some jackass local rabi took the time to write an eloquent letter expressing how disturbed he was that the article spent so much time highlighting one person's drunken antics, when instead the article should have been focused on the beautiful hakafos that people spent all day away fromtheir families to participate in.
Is this rabi an f--ing retard? He's distrubed that the article wasn't abour hakafos? He's disturbed?
Why isn;t disturbed at the jaw dropping disrespect of a bunch of shiftless, useless, overindulged schmucks with nothing better to do than stand around making comments and second guessing medical personnel treating a stupid person who drank himself stupider.
Why isn;t he distrubed that there wasn't an outpouring of rage that a group of boys stood around watching as a hatzolah volunteer was kicked in the head and didn't have the sense to keep their mouths shut?
Where are there "leaders"? Why aren't they walking the streets in sackcloths and ashes on their heads lamenting the state of our coming generations, instead of posing with pushkas like homeless supermodels to shill some bullshit charity created to glom more money for a shiftless useless generation of bearded coatracks?
You don't blame them? Let us know when you decide to wake up. and let's just hope we're all still here when that happens.
When a group of individuals know their universe of followers look to them with unyielding admiration, they have a responsibility to act in a manner that reflects leadership and integrity.
The leadership that rules pan-charedism is increasingly idealistic and unrealistic. Their action indicate that they are dangerously out of touch with the They make snap decisions based on inaccurate information and refuse to take responsibility when such mistakes result in with far-reaching negative consequences.
They do nothing to combat dangerous trends that originate from the purely materialistic interest to look frummer, and self-gratifying selfishness to feel frummer.
These leaders perpetuate, at best, by ignoring, at worst, by encouraging, unhealthy social behaviors to the point where great harm comes to many Jews, while they, as leaders, make no effort whatsoever to repudiate the behavior, or remediate their mistakes.
The At-Risk Crisis, the Shidduch Crisis, the Parnassah Crisis, the soon-to-be-coined Apathy Crisis -- every one of these is a direct result of someone with influence having been being asleep at the wheel.
Even worse, the very fact that these are termed “crisis,” -- a term traditionally used to describe random, unforeseen and unprovoked calamities -- hints a cynical means of distancing oneself from blame and absolving the leadership of personal responsibility.
Incidentally, laying the blame on the klal to learn more, daven harder, castigate untznius women, etc. etc. is hardly taking responsibility. It’s pawning off the responsibility for leadership on others. It’s a way of saying, “What do you expect when this is what we have to work with here? When you guys pull your weight, we’ll get moving.”
It’s disgraceful behavior and believe me, it trickles down from the top. I learned that when you see someone drowning, you close the gemarah and dive in to help. They do anything but.
Furthermore, by saying nothing as the oylam just builds bigger, fancier, more marble-clad yeshivas and shuls, and nodding as the mainstream does little more than blow hot air paeans to the majesty of Torah learning that they champion, as the back-pat themselves in eternal self-congratulating over having “sown the seeds” of a generation that has more torah learning than ever before -- the leaders of right wing Orthodox are steering this ship into for one hell of an iceberg.
UOJ, I SURRENDER !!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/us/24calif.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
October 24, 2007
California Fires Out of Control as 500,000 Flee
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 23 — Punishing winds and unstable thermal conditions — married with strained firefighting resources — stymied efforts Tuesday to contain wildfires burning for a third day across Southern California.
Officials were left worried that the fires could march toward more populated areas along the Pacific Ocean.
By late Tuesday, the fires had consumed well over 1,000 homes and commercial structures, with the authorities reporting that 68,500 homes remained threatened. At least 500,000 people were estimated to have evacuated and thousands more had been ordered to move, making the evacuation effort roughly half the size of that from the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina.
The authorities said firefighters were overwhelmed as new blazes sparked and existing ones thrashed in new directions, impeding efforts to focus energy and resources. By midday, a new fire began in San Diego County even as fires elsewhere became partially contained.
President Bush, responding to entreaties from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a state of emergency in California, paving the way for federal disaster aid to arrive, and said he would survey the state personally on Thursday.
Federal and local fire teams from Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming joined the fight, and the governor called up 1,500 National Guard members.
Mexican firefighters from the border cities of Tijuana and Tecate crossed into the United States on Sunday to help fight the fires, but they scrambled home Monday when fires broke out south of the border.
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB7325CDA7C29A2&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
A court in Haifa, Israel, on Sunday sentenced David Goldner, 41, to three years in prison after he confessed to desecrating more than 300 Jewish graves in hopes that Arabs would be blamed. The spray-painting of the Jewish gravestones with anti-Israeli slogans received widespread publicity, coming just after the discovery of the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, France, on May 10. Also charged in the Haifa incident was Gershon Tannenbaum, 32, who also confessed.
His sentencing has been put off pending A psychiatric examination. ...
Published on May 28, 1990, Page 16A, San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Shalom Tendler overlooked the most important part of the NY Times article:
"A survey conducted by the California Farm Bureau Federation found that avocado and citrus groves, nurseries, vineyards, rangeland, and other farm and ranch operations were possibly damaged"
A food shortage is a Fresser's biggest nightmare!
Where's that useless forecaster boob Shea Fishman. We're all shmaltzing on the West Coast and could use some relief.
Nu, any rain in sight or will the winds abate?
My wife went to a sheitel macher last week and heard that rumor has that one of the roshei yeshiva in the ger mesivta has illicit strains in recent genealogical history. I'm not going to proceed with the rumored details I just want to know if this refers to a current rabbi or those recently departed from that twink whore house?
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/21C9E707BAF641388625737D00590109?OpenDocument
Sex offender tries to castrate self
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10/23/2007
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- A convicted sex offender tried to castrate himself with a fillet knife, apparently after having an urge to offend again, according to a police report.
The 59-year-old man removed one of his testicles Sunday night and flushed it down the toilet. The other testicle was severely injured.
The man, who was not identified in the police report, called a friend for help and police and paramedics found him bleeding profusely when they arrived. Police said he was expected to survive.
The man told police he was feeling the urge to touch and hurt children, the (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported Tuesday, and wasn't trying to kill himself but was trying to stop that urge.
Police said his sex offense occurred in 1984. He was required to register as a sex offender after that but was not required to register now.
Spokesman Sgt. Pat Ross said Tuesday the department was not releasing information on the incident because no crime was committed.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article2728812.ece
Italian consumer groups organised a pasta boycott last month in a protest over prices.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/10/is-all-matzo-meal-yoshon-no.html#c72556164308467287
Yudel Shain said...
I don't think that the Monsey Tester ever knew Shatnez testing, hence there was never a Chazokah.
By the way, When Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky OB"M heard that the Monsey Treetop tester decided not to abide by the "teh'kiaas-kaf" that he gave to Mr. Rosenberger, he stated you can't rely on him for Shatnez testing.
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