Updated February 26, 2009
Dear Friends:
On Sunday March 1, 11:00 A.M. at the Borough Park Y, 4912 14th Avenue, our office will be hosting a solidarity rally for individuals affected by abuse in our community. The rally has no agenda other than this; for our community to show support to our fellow brothers and sisters who have been affected by abuse.
There will be distinguished rabbis and professionals speaking to give chizuk to those in attendance, and Tehilim will be recited for victims and their families. By joining this event we will be giving tremendous chizuk to those who have been victimized, and we will be making an enormous kiddush Hashem by showing our public support for them.
As Jews, we have a responsibility to empathize and show support to our fellow Jews in distress. Please join us on Sunday so we can fulfill this responsibility.
Thank you,
Dov Hikind - Member of Assembly - State of New York
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This day of chizuk and saying Tehillim publicly for the victims and families that have been devastated by clergy sex-abuse, and all forms of child-abuse, was unfathomable a mere two years ago. I proposed it to various people -- they said the community was not ready!
It is incumbent upon every Jewish parent, victim of abuse, and all Jews of good will to attend this Yom Chizuk. This abominable crime of child sex-abuse must be eradicated from our communities.
UOJ
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
71 comments:
Speak to the pizza shops you buy from and demand to know which cheese they are using. And ask the yeshivos which cheese they are serving to your children.
NY State officials are currently trying to track down where all the other contaminated cheese has gone.
Ahava brands include Morning Select, Slim U, Golan, Best Mooo, New Square, Ateret, Le Makabi, Montburg & Kahal.
Baruch Hashem for Rav Kotler, zt’l and Rav Wachtfogel zt’l who had the vision for, and implemented, so many out-of-town community kollelim, thus helping the growth of those communities.
Baruch Hashem for the leadership of Agudas Yisroel for putting regional offices around the country and advocating for the needs of frum communities on the local and state level in such “far-flung” places as California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, and Maryland, thus helping their growth.
Baruch Hashem for the Gerrer rebbe, who told his community that newly marrieds cannot live in Yerushalayim, thus causing the growth of smaller palces throughout Eretz Yisroel.
Baruch Hashem for our gedolim of today who have high-caliber students as rabbeim in out-of-town mosdos around the country and tell them to stay where they are and not to grab at the many New York Metropolitan opportunities that comes their way.
The gedolim understand their talmidim, and they would not “exile” someone out of town if that talmid couldn’t handle it. Those who are out of town due to the encouragement, request, or requirement of their rebbes are where they are for the betterment of that community, and with it, k’lal yisroel as a whole.
I am told that 70% of frum Jews in the U.S. live in the New York metro area, but that doesn’t mean New York should have a monopoly on everything. There are many people who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not move to Flatbush or Boro Park or Monsey or Lakewood, or even Far Rockaway. They need the support of the community kollelim and the Aguda branch offices. Additionally, there are people who come from non-frum homes or not-that-frum homes who have grown in ruchnius because of a dynamic rav in their out-of town community, and I can’t help but believe that when that rav leaves for New York (or elsewhere), those people are put in extreme danger of backsliding.
I am not lubavitch, and I have problems with some of what they do, but they also do many good things. One of their methodologies that I agree with involves something I was discussing once with a chabad shaliach to a certain small town. Not an exact quote, but he said that non-chabad rabbis are concerned with their career. They start in a shul in a small town and move their way up to a medium size town, and then to a large city, and b’ezras hashem, eventually to New York, Ir HaKodesh. Not so with Chabad. They send someone to a community and their job is that community. They build relationships and yiddeshkeit in that community, and their growth is that city’s growth, and not their desire to move on to a better kehilla.
Last week, when I read that Rabbi Lieff, shlita, from Minneapolis was taking a position in New York, I was floored. I am a “B.T.” from out of town (not Minneapolis) and far be it from me to understand how difficult it is to be a “F.F.B” from New York, who went to yeshiva in New York, with family and chaverim in New York, who is “stuck” being a rav in an out of town community. I do not know him personally, but having heard Rav Lieff speak, and having talked to people from Minneapolis on whom he has had an impact, it is clear to me that he is an adam gadol, and his leaving Minneapolis is an extreme detriment to that community. My understanding is that his rebbe, Rav Birnbaum z’tl, had told him he should stay in Minneapolis. Unfortunately for k’lal yisroel as a whole, and Minneapolis specifically, Rav Birnbaum is no longer with us.
The message that I get from this, and that any out-of-towner should get, is the importance of our gedolim! Look what they are able to maintain when they are here, and look what we lose when they are gone! Everyone should please put their efforts into davening for health and arichus yamim for all our gedolim, because when the next one is niftar, who know which out of town community will lose out, and who can estimate how that will effect yiddeshkeit as a whole and the cheshbonos in shamayim.
A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by firms controlled by Texas financier Allen Stanford, charged by regulators with an $8 billion fraud, the Wall Street Journal said.
The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity, and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund, the paper said.
Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president's son, Hunter, and Joe Biden's brother, James, according to the paper.
WASHINGTON – Sen. Roland Burris refused to resign on Tuesday, rebuffing a call from the Senate's No. 2 Democrat who made it clear that the embattled Illinois lawmaker has little hope next year of winning the seat vacated by President Barack Obama. "I told him that under the circumstances, I would resign," fellow Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin told reporters after an hour-long meeting with Burris. "He said, 'I'm not going to resign.'"
"I can't force him," Durbin added.
To the Above comment titled "Boruch Hashem for Gedolim"
You bring up good points, but it is wrong to discuss someone's private decision. How do you know why he's moving? Maybe there is a personal family reason. Maybe there is a VERY good eason, a reason that would make you cry for him if you would only know.....
Don't judge.......
Even if you THINK you know, you don't really know.......
It's amazing how people judge without knowing specifics.
http://ohryisroel.org/pdf/SurvivingTheRecessionMarch12009.pdf
Zweibel, Krohn, Brafman, etc
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/proposals-to-fight-bedbugs-include-mattress-regulations/
In an attempt to combat bedbugs, members of the City Council have proposed various pieces of legislation, including the regulation of the sale and disposal of mattresses. One proposal would require that every mattress be sold with a container marked “Used Mattress — For Disposal Only,” which would be used when the mattress is being discarded. Another would prohibit the sale of reconditioned mattresses entirely. In addition, there are more broad-based proposals, including efforts to establish a task force and a training program for exterminating bedbugs in the city.
The Agudath Israel of America has been lobbying City Hall to include 2 provisions in any legislation regarding vantzen. They seek an exemption for any mattress used to hide cash and that bedbugs weighing over 500 lbs who reside on Ocean Pkwy should be spared extermination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/arts/music/25cohe.html?hp
Only the NY Times would champion a weirdo like me. I keep shabbos & wear a black hat while indulging in Buddhist avodah zarah.
Does Belsky know about this?
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Funny stuff!
http://jewishadvocates.org/resources/Pasik.pdf
POSITION PAPER TO THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE ADVOCATING CHILD PROTECTION LAWS FOR NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS
Is it true that you're teaming up with shmarya/shoteh so people should support him as if he's a kollell yungerman?
http://online.barrons.com/article_print/SB123517384563737163.html
Monday, February 23, 2009
BARRON'S COVER
Manhattan's luxury real-estate market is rotting, as Wall Street layoffs and tight credit squeeze demand. Why prices could slip another 30%.
Reports have circulated that the owner of the 409-unit building, Boymelgreen Developers, may unload 80 apartments for just $652 per square foot, about half the current asking prices. Shvo, 36 and perfectly coiffed, acknowledged the existence of "20-25 offers from bottom fishers," some as low as $600 per square foot. But the offers didn't seem to concern him. "The developer," he sniffed, "isn't interested."
Not yet. First came Miami, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Now Manhattan's high-end housing market is cratering. With Wall Street firms stepping up layoffs, and money for big-ticket mortgages drying up quickly, prices for new york apartments and townhouses of $5 million or more have been falling and may well drop by another 30% before finally bottoming out. That could help turn the Big Apple into the ugliest housing market in America.
I would like to state for the record that Shmarya is a coward and a fraud.
He says he will not delete posts from anyone including the IslamoFascist anti-Semite Joachim Martillo from Boston yet he has deleted my posts and blocked me from commenting without warning today after I uncovered a registered charity that he is running. When I and another reader questioned whether his shnorring from the public was associated with this IRS exempt entity, he did not take very well to it. I even found the 990s online showing all the declared finances which must have further unnerved him. The irony in all this is that he is or was accepting vehicle donations as well when he has railed endlessly against Oorah in that area.
Shmarya's shnorring appeal carries the unrefined headline of: "Give Money, Help Me, Get Free Gifts"
Why doesn't the 50 year old bochur put on a suit and get some job interviews instead of constantly shnorring from the public so he can continue to blog in his pajamas from his mother's basement? It's one thing if he just exposes corruption but he uses it as a cynical tool to convince people to leave frumkeit and most of his rants are complete stretches or outright lies.
UOJ, I was wondering if that was really you on Shmarya's blog.
You had pledged a while ago to never again post anywhere but here after you had been impersonated several times.
And the offer of free UOJ caps? Did you stock up on them before Ronnie ran off with everyone's money?
I would also be surprised if you are encouraging someone to not work but to take handouts when he is able-bodied.
Obama Gaffe: America Didn't Invent Automobile
AFP – President Obama's speech to Congress last night might have emphasized urgency over historical accuracy when he stated, "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
Many inventors contributed to the rise of the car in modern-day life. But the U.S. Library of Congress credits German inventor Karl Benz with creating the first true automobile that ran on an internal combustion engine.
Benz came out with his patented car around 1885, or about the same time when fellow Germans Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach produced a four-wheeled automobile with a four-stroke engine. The names of these inventors live on in modern car companies such as Daimler AG and its Mercedes-Benz division.
By contrast, U.S. automotive pioneer Henry Ford did not start rolling out his mass-produced Model T cars until 1908. His claim to fame lies in popularizing automobiles as a common form of transportation, according to the Henry Ford Museum. Pedestrians and bikers may not thank him as much.
Shmarya even shnorrs addresses from friends & relatives for his charity, the "Shaarei Dayah Foundation". Like this one:
Stuart's Beauty Supply Co
1411 Eleanor Ave
St Paul, MN 55116
612-698-1081
Harold Rosenberg
Archie:
You are correct -- I do not post on other blogs because others have impersonated me. I did make a one time exception in that one post on Shmarya's blog.
While Shmarya and I have differing opinions on many topics; he is my Jewish brother -- and I believe his blog has served a vital purpose, especially calling attention to the dire straits of our supposed kashruth industry.
So, that's one way of me saying thank you to him for his expose of the fraudulent kashruth industry, and the frauds at the OU who have been at the helm of this fraud.
In addition, he says he needs help -- I am able to help him by the grace of Hashem -- he is no different than any other person that I would gladly help if they truly need it.
I have a cap supplier ready to produce UOJ caps for every donor to Shmarya - of $180.
I could not get my own money back or UOJ caps from Schreiber - I had to file a claim with the credit card company.
Now that's one guy I would never assist again - He used my name and free advertising globally to fleece people!
For shame!
Ok UOJ, so we won't ask for direct assistance. But would you mind bailing out the auto industry?
Shmarya is very sensitive about his address information. He's afraid some hot headed Lubavitchers might want to look him up.
The UOJ caps are back in circulation? I hope we don't get anymore surprise entrances at the Agudah Fresser Convention!
I am against UOJ caps of any kind!
Ronnie Schreiber is an honorable schlepper.
ALBANY - The deficit-closing bill passed by the state Legislature earlier this week will cut four times as much from nursing homes and home-care programs as the state estimated, potentially leading to thousands of layoffs, the head of a nursing-home association said Friday.
http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2009/0211/world/034.html
Pelosi remarks anger Agudah
Agudath Israel of America asked U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to repudiate her statement that funding birth control reduces government costs.
"Viewing the funding of birth control as a fit and proper means of stimulating the economy—and by extension children as essentially burdens on the treasury—should be beneath a public servant, much less someone of your accomplishment and influence," Agudah executive vice president David Zwiebel wrote in a letter to Pelosi (DCA). "From our perspective, every human life is inherently precious, and carries with it the potential for greatness and holiness."
Zwiebel was responding to an interview Pelosi gave to "ABC News This Week" in which the House of Representatives speaker defended the inclusion of funds for family planning services in the $825-million economic recovery package proposed by Democrats.
"Well, the family planning services reduce cost," she said. "The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now, and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those—one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception— will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/local_news/remembering_rabbi_joseph_baumgarten/10579
Rabbi Dr. Joseph M. Baumgarten, among the prominent Baltimore rabbinic leaders and a leading professor of Baltimore Hebrew University, ascended High and entered Eternity, on 7 Kislev 5769 – Dec. 4, 2008. His passing left a deep void in the Baltimore Jewish Community
In the life of Rabbi Baumgarten there were three role models Horav Hatzadik Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendolovitz, Menahel/Dean of Yeshiva Tora Vada’ath Ve’hamesivta, alma mater of Rabbi Baumgarten; the world famous Gaon Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman founding Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, where he was a post graduate fellow for three years; and the inimitable Gaon Rabbi Avrohom Yitzchok Kook, first Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land, whose Talmudic and Torah philosophic teachings he studied.
Noticeable among those attending to offer the “kovod ho-achoron” (final respect) to the Nifter included: Rabbi Benjamin Hauer, “mechutan” (in-law relative), a leading Rabbi in Canada for more than half a century (he now resides in Israel); representatives of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, the renowned Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Aharon Feldman; Rabbi Beryl Weisbord, “Menahel Ruchani” (spiritual dean), Rabbi Sheftl Meir Neuberger, President/Menahel, Rabbi Shraga Neuberger, Rosh HaYeshiva; Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim-Talmudical Academy of Baltimore Executive President, Rabbi Yehudah Lefkovitz; Rabbi Moshe Heinemann, Rabbinic Administrator of Vaad Hakashrus, Rabbi of Agudath Israel and “Posek” (Halachic Decisor); Beis HaMidrash uMesivta d’Baltimore Rosh HaYeshiva, Rabbi Tzvi Dov Slanger; Yeshiva Kochov Yitzchok-Torah Institute Dean Emeritus, Rabbi Velvel Rosen, and Executive Director, Rabbi Yisroel Reznitsky; Bais Yaakov School for Girls Honorary President, Rabbi Ari Neuberger, and Principal, Rabbi Yecheskel Zweig, Principal; Rabbi M. Mendel Poliakoff, “Zikan hoRabbonim” (The Dean of the Baltimore Rabbinate); Rabbi Shlomo Porter, Dean of Etz Chaim Institute; Rabbi Tzvi Goode, Dean of Yesoday HaTorah; Rabbi Jacob A. Max, founding Rabbi of Liberty Jewish Center, a prominent member of the Baltimore Rabbinate for more than 50 years, and a Rabbinic colleague of Rabbi Baumgarten in the 1950s. There were many more distinguished Rabbis and colleagues in attendance, too numerous to mention in this article.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a14919/News/New_York.html
I'm very happy that Obama is increasing Pell grant funding for yeshivos.
If the caps are available again then they should be put up for sale here.
Your loyal readers deserve them more than the Lefties trying to get Shmarya's coffee mugs with a picture of Obama on them.
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=3873
Rav Moshe Weitman, zichrono livrachah, the leader of Torah Academy for Girls (TAG) for over four decades
Rav Moshe Weitman attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and was taken in under the wing of Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. Reb Shraga Feivel instilled in him a sense of mission to K’lal Yisrael which remained with him until his last breath.
As Rabbi Weitman’s son, Rabbi Meyer Weitman, mentioned at the levayah, Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz introduced the idea of "capitalism" in chinuch. If one teaches one class full of students, one has an impact upon them, but that is all. If, however, one hires a number of teachers and they teach others, then a much more significant impact can be made. The idea took form in Rabbi Weitman’s mind. To further this goal, he attended the Aish Dos Kollel, a special kollel designed to teach avreichim the fundamentals of chinuch. From there Rav Moshe went to Beis Midrash Elyon and studied under Rav Reuven Grozovsky, zt’l.
Imbued with the feeling of serving the spiritual needs of K’lal Yisrael, Rav Weitman studied the laws and practices of b’ris milah, shechitah, and numerous other skills that he could put to use for K’lal Yisrael. He was a mohel par excellence, and other mohalim marveled at his skill.His love and care for K’lal Yisrael was sincere and genuine. During the war years, Reb Moshe took time to pack and send packages for the Vaad Hatzolah and for Agudas Yisrael, working closely with Mike Tress of the Agudah. These packages went to destitute refugees and Holocaust survivors.In the world of chinuch, Rav Weitman worked very closely with Rabbi Joseph Kaminetsky. He started a day school in Montreal and soon developed a reputation as a master pedagogue.
Israeli princes were cut down
By BRENDA SASSOON-ROSMARIN
On March 6, 2008 - a year ago in the Hebrew calendar - Avraham David Moses was one of eight yeshiva students murdered as they sat in the Mercaz Harav library learning Torah. Alaa Abu Dhein, 26, from the Arab neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber in eastern Jerusalem, entered the yeshiva armed with an AK-47 just as preparations were under way for a celebration marking the new Hebrew month of Adar.
Hearing gunfire, some students mistook the sound for fireworks.
Entering the library, the terrorist opened fire, splattering blood and books everywhere, instantly killing five of the eight students destined to die that evening. One of them was Avraham David Moses, 16. His mother, Rivkah Moriah, had started life thousands of miles and worlds away, in a loving New England Christian home, and her story links communities of Palestinians, Christian Americans and Orthodox Jews.
IN 2002, AN ARAB village near Efrat began to pay the price for refusing to attack its Jewish neighbors at the behest of its Palestinian brethren. The Jews of Efrat had been kind and decent to these Arabs, who now refused to engage in shooting and rock throwing at the cars traveling in and out of Efrat.
When the government erected protective barriers along the roads, many Arab villages were cut off from supply routes used to transport everyday essentials, and now had to rely on their greater community for delivery of basic necessities.
But the community refused to supply this particular village, because the inhabitants had not participated in the terrorism against their Jewish neighbors.
The victims of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack. Avraham David Moses (16), Ro'i Roth (18), Neria Cohen (15), Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar (16) Yochai Lifshitz (18), Segev Peniel Avihail (15), Yehonadav Haim Hirschfeld (19), Doron Meherete (26).
Efrat resident Rabbi David Moriah became aware that the neighboring villagers were suffering from malnutrition. Gathering volunteers, he prepared and personally delivered food packages to the stranded village. In so doing he developed a rapport with "Abdul," a Palestinian who had often traveled to Efrat seeking work as a handyman and a collector of used clothing.
When the recently divorced rabbi and father of six mentioned that he was moving to a new apartment, Abdul offered to help him. He also wanted to introduce the rabbi to a nice Jewish woman. The rabbi needed a wife.
BACK IN EFRAT, Rivkah Moses, a recently divorced mother of two, was also packing. She had come to Israel in 1989 as Martha Webb, a 21-year-old Quaker from rural New Hampshire seeking guidance on her path to Jewish conversion. She had become intrigued by Judaism after joining a Sabbath get-together on her campus at Oberlin College, just outside Cleveland, Ohio.
"I went for the community aspect" she recalls. She found that, among other things, "the Jewish rituals sanctifying the mundane really spoke to me."
The experience led her to seek lessons toward conversion with the campus rabbi, and then to switch gears. She opted out of her plan to spend an academic year studying Japanese in Kyoto and instead decided to attend the Machon Pardes school in Israel.
Once fully committed to becoming a Jew, Martha realized that conversion was easier in the US than in Israel. She returned to Cleveland to work with her rabbi, and there met and fell in love with a Jewish man who was just discovering his roots, which included the fact that he was a kohen, a descendent of Jewish priests.
Deeply in love, the couple traveled to Israel to seek the advice of a matrimonial expert, who sadly pointed out that Jewish law precluded any marriage between a convert and a kohen. The disappointing break up of her first love was a sacrifice for Judaism which would prove to be minuscule by comparison to the future sacrifice in the life of Martha Webb.
Now living with her sons in Efrat as Rivkah Moses, she was picking up the pieces of her life, post-divorce. She had gone through a grueling process in which she had to satisfy a beit din that her commitment to Judaism was unwavering.
"The judges kept asking me if I intended to continue the observant Jewish lifestyle." The custody of her two boys hung in the balance. "They never asked my husband that question. They just didn't trust that my conversion was for real." She finally managed to convince the court of the sincerity of her conversion, and the couple was awarded joint custody of their two children.
Just before her move to a smaller apartment, the local Palestinian used clothing collector came by for his regular pick up. She knew Abdul to be a kind and well-intentioned fellow from the nearby Arab village.
"Where is your husband?" He asked as he looked around, "Who is helping you move?"
"I have no husband" she replied. "I am divorced."
"Let me help you move" was Abdul's reply, "and I want to introduce you to a nice man. I can't believe that such a wonderful woman has no husband!"
The Palestinian used clothing collector had just become the matchmaker for two Orthodox Jews.
AVRAHAM DAVID MOSES'S appearance belied his nature. The fresh-faced blond-haired teenager was known for total devotion to his studies, almost to the exclusion of all other activities. He would keep his bright blue eyes on his books even while preparing salad. His intense immersion in Torah had shaped his character and moral stance to such a degree that his own mom was taken aback by his ability to control his temper, avoiding the occasional outbursts and episodes of rebellion most would expect from a teenager.
"He had the ability to respectfully and gracefully disengage from a tense conversation. He just blew my mind," she said. "Shouldn't that level of maturity have come from me, as the parent?"
Rivkah credits Yeshivat Yerushalayim L'tze'irim with helping shape his fine character. "Yashlatz," originally founded in 1964, is one of the leading national-religious yeshiva high schools, and shares a campus with Mercaz Harav. The schools aim to inculcate students with a love of Torah and commitment to the Land. Many alumni have gone on to be IDF officers, rabbis and Jewish leaders.
Rivkah feels that the boys killed were among the top students, and would have gone on to be leaders had they not been murdered in cold blood.
The shooting of innocent yeshiva boys shocked and saddened people from all walks of life. The boys' funeral was broadcast without interruption on TV.
A Zaka man in the Merkaz Harav library works next to an automatic rifle and spent ammunition that was used by the Palestinian terrorist in the terror attack.
Photo: AP
Striking to Rivkah was the outpouring of sympathy and support following the tragedy.
"The reaction of Diaspora Jewry and secular Jews in Israel made us feel like they were with us, even if they didn't identify with our way of life. Everybody cared." Following the massacre, hundreds of people from all over the country and abroad visited the families of the slain boys. Among them were Jews from every spectrum as well as Arabs and Christian peacemakers. Many had crossed paths with Rivkah and her husband in their outreach efforts through the years.
And there with his wife, stood Abdul, the Palestinian used clothing collector who had paired David and Rivkah Moriah. His eyes full of tears, Abdul apologized and expressed his shock and embarrassment that such an act of terror had come from his people.
PERHAPS IF A PALESTINIAN like Abdul had never touched their lives, the couple would not stand by their belief that even now, the hope for peace still exists.
Rabbi David Moriah says he and his wife have not given up on Jewish/Arab relations, though he fears there are fewer and fewer members of Palestinian society to work with.
The victims of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack. Top row: Avraham David Moses (16), Ro'i Roth (18), Neria Cohen (15), Yonatan Yitzhak Eldar (16); Bottom row: Yochai Lifshitz (18), Segev Peniel Avihail (15), Yehonadav Haim Hirschfeld (19), Doron Meherete (26).
Photo: Courtesy
"It concerns me how violent the Arabs are within their own society. In Gaza, it is now legal to murder those who carry on negotiations with Israelis." But he also recognizes that there are many non-violent, well-intentioned Arabs. "We are still friends with Arabs, and we know there is a way to move forward. One must understand that it is a complex situation and everything you do can have an effect on future generations."
David feels that only with justice can Israel move forward in dealings with its Arab citizens and neighbors. No bad deed should go unpunished. "We must hate evil and show justice to those who perpetrate evil," he says, "while making every effort towards coexistence."
Rivkah surprises the Christians she meets with her easy familiarity with their customs and terms, when she explains to them that she used to be a Christian. The formerly Quaker rebbetzin who teaches Orthodox brides the fundamentals of family purity is unwavering when asked if she has any regrets about aligning herself with the fate of the Jewish people and the lifestyle in which it placed her son.
"Who he was, and who he pushed himself to become - he wouldn't have been if I hadn't been in the system."
Rather than undermine her faith, Rivkah felt reinforced by all that transpired and all that she would go on to learn of her son's life and the lives of the other slain students. Though each lost boy was unique and special, beloved by the other students and teachers at the school, Rivkah remains confident that her son's school will go on to cultivate future leaders.
The thoughts and prayers of those close to the boys have recently been published in a book entitled Princes among Men (Feldheim, 2009).
The writer lives in New York and is co-producer of the documentary film Blood and Tears: The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Rivkah Moriah notes that anyone wishing to make a contribution to a scholarship fund in Avraham David's memory can do so at www.yashlatz.com
Sent in by a dear friend - The USA is in very serious trouble!
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NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
Feb. 25, 2009
Obama will propose $634 billion in tax increases on upper-income
taxpayers and cuts to government health spending to fund health reform over 10 years, a senior administration official said Wednesday. The proposed tax change would limit the deductions available to people in the highest income tax brackets.
The spending cuts are aimed not just at raising money for the new
program, which aims to get health coverage to all Americans, but also at curbing health-care spending overall. The cuts would affect a range of interests, including managed care companies, prescription drug manufacturers and hospitals.
http://online.wsj.com/home-page?mod=djemalertNEWS
UOJ;
You underestimate the Bamster.
The Bim-Bam is not clueless. Premeditated, purposeful, with malice aforethought towards the destruction of the USA. Spend this country into oblivion.
WAKE UP! AMERICA!
The Bim-Bam Identity.
I uncovered a registered charity that he is running. When I and another reader questioned whether his shnorring from the public was associated with this IRS exempt entity, he did not take very well to it. I even found the 990s online showing all the declared finances which must have further unnerved him. The irony in all this is that he is or was accepting vehicle donations as well when he has railed endlessly against Oorah in that area.
Uncovered?
I have publicly raised money for that charity, including using my blog to do so, and you have publicly criticized me (on my blog, no less, where for years I've allowed you to attack me)for "schnorring" for it in the past.
We helped get a kidney transplant for a Jew in need and did many other smaller things.
What you did – as you so often do – is smear.
Anyone clicking on the paypal donation button for my blog fundraiser quickly sees there is no connection to that nonprofit.
There is no offer of a tax deduction or mention of nonprofit status there or on my blog.
What you did is reprehensible.
Are you banned?
If you are going to continue to behave this way, you are.
And lest you try to present yourself as righteous, let me also point out that many FailedMessiah readers over the past year or two have asked to have you banned.
I refused to do so, even though you used my blog as a daily platform to spew hate and also to attack me.
And, when a couple commenters tried to smear you, I told them to stop. When they did not, I banned them.
I stood up for you because what they were doing to you was vile.
You repaid that kindness by doing something as vile to Jews who only want to help people in need.
On a completely different note, let me take this opportunity to thank UOJ for his kind and generous offer. It is very much appreciated.
After listening to Obama's address to Congress last night I have concluded that the NEXT & BEST bill that Congress needs to pass should award Obama his NATIONAL HOLIDAY, A GOLDEN PARACHUTE (very small) and send him back to Chicago. It should be done BOLDLY, SWIFTLY, AGGRESSIVELY, and IMMEDIATELY before the next spending spree comes up for vote. After hearing him LIE -TIME -AFTER TIME - AFTER TIME about "PORK & EARMARKS" and his desire to keep spending, clearly he is not the "ONE AND ONLY" qualified to handle Americas economic crisis. And to those who still believe that, you need to send Obama your mortgage statements, utility bills, health care bills, student loans, credit card bills and any other bills you have and let him spend you "OUT OF DEBT" and when you become homeless and on the street then it's time to ask for your "CHANGE". I also question why Obama and his economic team (consisting of the "BEST ECONOMIC MINDS" in the world) would turn over the oversight of an 787 BILLION DOLLAR package to Joe Biden? Watch your back Joe you have just become the "FALL GUY" when all this spending doesn't work and completely ruins us for future generations. And one more point of FACT, everytime Obama opens his mouth the market DROPS. Can somebody shut him up? There isn't that much left in the market.
http://auditor.iowa.gov/specials/PostvilleSpecial.pdf
Iowa's Auditor of State discovered that Rubashkin's manager Chaim Abrahams, Rubashkin's friend Aron Goldsmith, the former Mayor of Postville and scandal-plagued City manager Gary Simmons who was fired for "funny money" stuff, flew to Washington DC at taxpayer expense. They refuse to tell State investigators what the purpose of their trip was. I wonder if this was to coordinate with the OU & Agudah who convinced the Agriculture Secretary to turn a blind eye to shady Rubashkin shechita practices violating Federal laws.
Among other misappropriations, Simmons was "buying" twice the amount of chemicals needed to treat Agri wasteflow, in what is suspected as a kickback scheme with the manufacturer. Simmons refuses to answer ANY questions and his current employer has also just terminated him which is under appeal.
Simmons also spent close to $1200 of taxpayer money to fly to NY and stay at a 5 star hotel to honor Aron Rubashkin at the Colel Chabad dinner.
I think we have to set a new threshhold for rich people. $50,000 in income is a good starting place. It's time rich people starting paying their share!
Ho hum.
While it's true that Shmarya's registered charity dabbled in different activities like the kidney transplant and his obsession with Falashas, there has been all kinds of money moving through there as shown by filings going back to 2002 and I along with another reader were wondering what is going on.
All I did was question if his personal shnorring was being run through the charity and posted links so that people could see Shmarya's disclosures to the IRS. What is Shmarya afraid of if he deleted what I linked and then banned me? Blogger Yossi Izrael is actually very interested in this topic now that it has come to light and plans a major expose and investigation of the financial figures.
I criticize Shmarya quite often in response to his exaggerations and outright smears of pretty much any orthodox Jew to the right of Blu Greenburg going back thousands of years and more recently his attacks on the Torah itself which is something new even for him. And at every turn he implores the readers in subtle and not so subtle ways to join him in his misery. His misery consists of disillusionment with Lubavitch which therefore leads him to convince the world that Yiddishkeit is a bad thing that must be abandoned.
In any case, here is Shmarya who tries to portray kollel yungerleit as parasites feeding on public money. So what does he do? He sits around in his underwear trying to attack and smear anyone with a velvet yarmulka and even most with a kipa sruga and asks for handouts to enable him to do it.
You be the judge of what is improper and hypocritical. And I think we are much better off taking our queues from people like UOJ & R' Yudel Shain who want to fix the problems with those distorting Yiddishkeit instead of those who want to burn the whole system down to the ground.
WASHINGTON (AP) Obama promises $2 trillion in spending cuts in efforts to bring US deficit under control.
*
Now here's a guy who definitely worked in Rubashkin's Meth lab and got paid with Crack!
I will add that Shmarya views me as much more of a threat than his other critics. He can laugh off the Chabad trolls and other semi-literate haymishe opponents who hang out at Failed Messiah but he gets unnerved when someone is able to properly articulate that he is a fraud. This is also the reason why his die-hard supporters gang up to attack and pick apart mainly my posts.
For the record, SHmarya's definition of "racism" includes my opposition to the militant homosexual agenda in this country and ANY other comment that can viewed as politically incorrect by Liberals.
It was very brave of Shmarya to highlight an attack on me in yellow in his lead post seeking to shnorr funds before blocking my posts so that I could not defend myself.
While it's true that Shmarya did tell 3 posters to stop making up lies about whoever is behind my anonymous online personality, I'm not sure what he means that they were "banned".
Granted, one fould mouthed nutjob (who claimed to to have semicha from both R' Moishe & the Brisker Rov) did disappear. But "Anony" who called me a "pedophile" was allowed to stay as was "WoolSilkCotton" who accused me of frequenting "porno shops in Lakewood".
In the meantime, I have been banned while an inarticulate Lubavitcher who was also posting on Shmarya's IRS filings was not.
Rabbi Avi Shafran The Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America, said of the Chizuk Event the following:
"While I’m not fully apprised of the details of the event, any gathering that sensitively and responsibly offers chizuk to those who are suffering is a more than deserving endeavor" said Rabbi Shafran. "And if it serves to, without inappropriate finger-pointing and conspiracy-theorizing, raise awareness of a threat to our children and promote the effective addressing of a terrible societal problem, all the more so."
Web Of Rubashkin Companies Faces Scrutiny, Possible Dissolution
How many ways can you spell Agriprocessors?
Agriprocessors and other Rubashkin companies file to avoid dissolution
By Lynda Waddington
The Rubashkin family has filed paperwork with the state to stop possible administrative dissolutions of at least five corporate entities it owns, including the beleaguered Agriprocessors plant in Postville.
Agriprocessors TowerAt least four others, however, are operating without a registering agent on file with the state and have been notified of pending state action.
Iowa law requires corporations to continually maintain a registering agent — a person in the state who is available to receive service of process on behalf of the company and who files required reports with the state.
The Iowa secretary of state has the authority to begin dissolution proceedings for any company that has operated for 60 days without such an agent. The proceedings begin with a warning letter, explaining that administrative dissolution will occur if the situation is not rectified within another 60 days.
According to documents filed with the state, Jay Eaton, an attorney with the Iowa-based Nymaster, Good, West, Hansell & O’Brien law firm, had served as the registering agent for eight companies with Rubashkin ties since February 2007. The companies are:
* Agriprocessors, Inc.
* Cottonballs, LLC
* Gemach Mamash Now Corporation
* Nevel Properties Corporation
* Amereeka Properties, LLC
* Lagoon Technology LLC
* Kosher Community Grocery, Inc.
* Best Value Distributors, Inc.
* Best Value Food Products, LLC
Eaton, who resigned as registering agent for the companies on Nov. 5, 2008, declined comment when contacted by Iowa Independent Tuesday morning, saying he did not feel it was appropriate to discuss client matters with the media.
Two months earlier, however, Eaton and Patrick White, another attorney with Nyemaster Goode, requested and were granted permission from the federal court to withdraw as counsel for Agriprocessors. Their written request to the court cited non-payment.
According to a spokesman in the secretary of state’s office, letters indicating the office’s intent to dissolve the companies were sent in early January.
Yesterday, Feb. 23, the office was notified that Charles Kelly, an attorney in Postville, would serve as registering agent for five of the companies — Agriprocessors, Amereeka Properties, Gemach Mamash, Lagoon Technology and Kosher Community Grocery.
As of today, the office had not received notification about who, if anyone, was serving as registering agent for the family’s other four companies: Cottonballs, Nevel Properties, Best Value Distributors or Best Value Food Products.
The companies have roughly two weeks to name a new registering agent or the secretary of state has the authority to dissolve the companies. A business dissolved by the secretary of state, according to the Iowa Code, continues to exist, but the only business it is allowed to conduct is what is necessary for liquidation. Companies can be reinstated by the state if the problems that led to the dissolution are rectified.
Prior to Eaton serving as registering agent for Agriprocessors, the company was administratively dissolved twice for not filing required reports with the state, once in 1994 and again in 2004. Both times the business was reinstated. The company, now the subject of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, lists its officers as Aaron, Hesky (sic) and Sholom Rubashkin on state documents.
Many of the companies tied to the Rubashkin family have similar corporate officers and/or use the same address as their principal place of business. For instance, Cottonballs, a poultry firm founded in late 2004, maintains the physical address of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville as its principal office. Cottonballs was also mentioned by a creditor in the Agriprocessors bankruptcy case.
Nevel Properties, in addition to filing with the plant’s physical address, lists its officers as Sholom Rubashkin (president and treasurer) and Tzvi (Heshy) Rubashkin (secretary). Allamakee County public records show Nevel Properties as the deed holder on 85 real estate interests in Postville.
Amereeka, which initially filed with the state on July 18, 2006, also lists the plant’s physical address as its principal place of business. The company is listed as the contract holder on eight Postville real estate interests and as the deed holder on two others, according to county records. All the properties were purchased from Ro-Ka Acres, Inc., a company founded in 1989 by Postville elementary school guidance counselor Ron Wahls, on July 1, 2006.
Gemach Mamash, founded in 1996, has Sholom and Tzvi (Heshy) listed as officers. Because of Jewish laws that prohibit charging interest on a loan to a fellow Jew, gemach are funds set up in Jewish communities to provide a source for interest-free loans. The fact that the Jewish religion encourages the lending of money but prohibits the charging of interest to fellow believers was a subject of interest in Sholom Rubashkin’s recent motion to have federal criminal charges against him dismissed.
Lagoon Technology was formed in April 2005 and uses the physical plant address as its home office. Given information in Postville City Council minutes and a state auditor’s special investigation report, Lagoon Technology was likely set up to provide reimbursements to the city in connection with agreed upon maintenance of the waste lagoons.
State filings for Kosher Community Grocery show the company was set up in May 2005, and list officers as Sholom Rubashkin (president and secretary) and Tzvi Rubashkin (president and treasurer). The two are also listed as officers for Best Value Distributors, formed in 2001. Best Value Food Products, also formed in 2001, also lists the same home office as Agriprocessors and the other companies.
At least three additional companies with ties to the Rubashkin family and registered in Iowa were not affected by registering agent resignation. Agri-Food Distributors, Inc., founded in 1994, Postville Rabbinical Academy, founded in 2000, and Best Value, Inc., founded in 2001, have not had their active status with the state interrupted. Sholom and Tzvi (Heshy) Rubashkin are listed as officers for all companies. Aaron Rubashkin is listed as president of Agri-Food Distributors, and, in the case of Best Value, Inc., a Joseph Rubashkin of Postville and a Guttel (sic) Goldman of Miami are also officers.
Goldman, a daughter of Agriprocessors founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, was listed along with Sholom, Heshy and Yossi Rubashkin as officers in the Florida-based company Shemesh, Inc., founded in 1999 as a distribution center for Agriprocessors kosher meat products. After failing to file mandated reports with the state in 2005, the company was administratively dissolved. When it was reinstated in 2007, only Sholom Rubashkin was listed as a company officer. Although a 2008 annual report filed with Florida in August 2008 also shows Sholom Rubashkin as the only officer of the company, an amended report, filed in December, removes Sholom from the company and names Goldman as the sole officer.
THE HYPOCRITES AND SPINMEISTERS HAVE SPOKEN:
In a statement released to VIN News by David Mandel, CEO of OHEL.
“OHEL welcomes all efforts that help in promoting awareness and abuse prevention within the community. Assemblyman Dov Hikind has been a champion of many important causes in our community, and this day of chizuk lends support to a vital concern we all share in protecting children.
OHEL stands on the front line in addressing sexual abuse and all forms of abuse in the community. OHEL provides a myriad of services from counseling for victim survivors and their families, the treatment of perpetrators, community-wide awareness forums and professional training seminars. “
Rabbi Avi Shafran The Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America, said of the Chizuk Event the following:
"While I’m not fully apprised of the details of the event, any gathering that sensitively and responsibly offers chizuk to those who are suffering is a more than deserving endeavor" said Rabbi Shafran. "And if it serves to, without inappropriate finger-pointing and conspiracy-theorizing, raise awareness of a threat to our children and promote the effective addressing of a terrible societal problem, all the more so."
SHAFRAN, YOU'RE THE ONE THAT HAS BEEN FINGERPOINTING AND CONSPIRACY THEORIZING. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO HAS PUBLICLY DENIED THAT THERE WAS A PROBLEM AND YOU DESCRIBED ALL THE VICTIMS' ALLEGATIONS AS "TAWDRY TALES" AND "ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE". NOW HE REFERS TO IT AS A "TERRIBLE SOCIETAL PROBLEM" (IT'S THE SOCIETY, IT'S NOT OUR FAULT). MANDEL AND SHAFRAN, WE DON'T NEED YOUR ENDORSEMENTS, NOR YOUR DENIALS.
You never said one word in sympathy for the victims of Kolko, Margo and other predators.
How dare you talk about being mechazek them when you're nothing but a cynical achzar!
February 19, 2009
A Letter From Ima
By Rivkah Moriah
My Dearest Avraham David,
Avraham David (left), learning with a friend by cell-phone light on a class trip.With your permission, I want to say something to you about love. Every parent of a teenager is afraid of making a fedicha regarding their child, especially in front of the child’s friends, but I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to say. You have such amazing friends, and they love you so much. I’m sure they’ll understand. They themselves told us stories about you that left me speechless. I feel such profound gratitude for having been your mother. I still am your mother, but it’s different, now. Sometimes I feel like you’re the parent now – I look up to you both spiritually and literally.
I keep mulling over the stories in my head, over and over, and I find myself thinking about you as a baby, as a child, and somehow try to make sense of the young man you became and the tzaddik’s death Hashem chose for you.
I try to make sense, and I keep coming back to a need to express what it was like knowing you as a child, what it was like to be your mother. I want to say it like it is, and if you were ever “difficult” it’s davka the hardest classes we learn the most from.
There are other things I learned from you just by watching you. One of them is what it looks like, tachlis, when someone truly guards his tongue from speaking lashon hara, and his ears from hearing it. Perhaps I will learn to emulate what felt like I was feigning. Another is your unflinching kibud em which left me reeling, thinking, “That’s not how a discussion with a teenager is supposed to end,” then pulling myself up by my bootstraps to copycat your gadlut, although twenty-four years your senior and reasonably mature by most standards. Seeing your tremendous kibud av influenced my ability to view certain stumbling blocks with humility.
I learned from your willingness to help when it was needed, even when it prevented Torah learning. You explained to me that in the case of some mitzvoth, including some forms of chessed, someone who had not yet acquired all of yesodot haTorah should defer the mitzvah to someone who had, whenever possible, but you never, not even once, used this principle to avoid helping.
There was a Sunday morning not long before your death that you were at your father’s house. You were after shacharit and were preparing to go back to Yashlatz. I called you and told you I was having a very hard time and asked if you could help get the little kids out to gan. You paused, because you never spoke without thinking first, and then said you’d be right over. Together we got Noam and Chai out to gan with more love and patience than I could have mustered by myself that morning. Irony of ironies, that experience of your noseh b’ol was so imprinted on me that there are now days that, in my grief, I need help with the little ones, and from the recesses of my heart that know love but not facts, the thought comes to my mind, “I could call Avraham David, Yashlatz is not far and Avraham David will help if I really need it…”
There are things that I have learned from you in my role as mother. You were a crying baby – there were times, even, that you were inconsolable. Someone who came during the shivah told me it is typical of great souls to have trouble adjusting to this world. Maybe. Maybe I didn’t burp you well enough. Maybe it’s all the same, in parallel worlds. The nights you cried inconsolably while I was desperate to sleep, I walked you up and down the hall with you on my shoulder, sometimes crying myself, praying aloud in song that Hashem should help you where I couldn’t, hoping the movement and song would soothe you, hoping the prayer would help us both. Most of us can’t be Choni haMa’agel, and I learned in those moments what prayer really is – although we ask for something in particular, we are really turning ourselves over to the will of Hashem with the knowledge that He will do what is right in His eyes and will take care of us no matter what, in the way He wills for us.
I learned as your mother how to set priorities. With a baby in my arms, time to “do things” became much scarcer, and in the moments I had, I learned to do what was truly most important first, learning that superficial measures of importance were no longer relevant criteria.
I learned about protectiveness, kana’ut, as it were, discovering a mother bear inside that was willing to crush anything that threatened my cub, and I learned that true protectiveness is not about my own ego or vision, but based on the needs of that which one would protect.
Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from you as a mother is about letting go. This has happened in steps, each of which built on the previous one. There is an inclination to want to posses that which one loves, as if ownership is the ultimate expression of one’s love. As a divorced parent, I was forced to come to terms with the fact that you and your brother are not property in a way that most parents don’t have to face so explicitly: although I possess relationships with each of you, I don’t possess you yourselves. In love, “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li.” Li and not sheli.
I raised children who had two homes, only one of which was mine, and my inclination was to designate them “home” and “Aba’s house.” This I realized would be alienating for you and disrupt your and your brother’s need to be at home in both places, so I let go of the desire to call my home “home” and we made up new names. One became “The Ima House,” the other “The Aba House.”
Especially when you and Elisha Dan were very little, the stretches you were with your father were very hard for me. I wanted to mope and I wanted to call you all the time to let you know how much I missed you, but this was my need and not yours. I knew that your need was to feel like you could relax and belong wherever you were at the time, with no guilt or responsibility for what the other parent felt. I reminded myself that, though I missed you when you were at the Aba house, you were getting your needs met appropriately, and I needn’t worry about you, so I worried only insofar as I had to meet my own needs. I chose to use this time to focus on parnassa and on friendships which would address my need for companionship and would give me an outlet for giving and receiving love.
There was more letting go when, in eighth grade, you told me that you wanted a high school with a dormitory. I wanted to reject this out of hand, because I knew I would see you much less, but deep in my heart I realized immediately that, after seven years of joint custody, you deserved the stability of living in the same place every day. I had never heard of Yashlatz, but it turned out to be a perfect fit for you, and I gradually came to realize that my days of cozy mothering, and even of regular conversations, were behind us. I let go of this with difficulty, but had a vision for the future that your bride and children would one day bring an element of that back, in its own time.
Then came the ultimate letting go. In one evening, through gradual understanding through which I already knew by the time someone told me, I had to let go of you completely, along with all my dreams of your future, your bride, and your children. I was not ready for this, as I was not ready for any of the steps of letting go when they first came, but sitting in the blazing sun in the courtyard of Mercaz at your funeral, the funeral of my beloved firstborn who was only sixteen-years-old, it dawned on me that everything up until now was basic training for the letting go I had to do now. Hashem graced me with the knowledge that you had gone to the Ultimate Aba House, and though I missed you terribly, you would be taken care of more perfectly than you ever had been in this world.
Please be a melitz tov, our advocate that we should draw close to Hashem in these moments, for your whole life, unto and including your death, was and is a Kiddush Hashem.
Thank you for being my son. I love you.
Ima
P.S. I want to thank Hashem, again, for letting me be your mother. There is no gift greater than the privilege of motherhood. I thank Him, too, for all the precious neshamot He spared, both those who were in the library and escaped with their lives, and those who were not quite so close, but whose presence I can no longer take for granted. Each and every one is a tremendous nechama, comfort, for me.
I thank Hashem, too, for the extraordinary people who have comforted us in our grief. You have been truly noseh b’ol (carrying the burden).
Rivkah Moriah is a wife, mother, mikve lady, speaker and writer. She grew up in New Hampshire, studied at Oberlin College, and underwent Orthodox conversion in Cleveland. She moved to Israel 19 years ago.
This edited excerpt is reprinted with permission from a memorial volume produced by the senior class of Yashlatz that is available in Ivrit entitled Shemonah Nisichei Adam (Sifriyat Bet-El, 2008), as well as the recently published English edition entitled Princes among Men (Feldheim, 2009). The book contains a collection of impressions, recollections and divrei Torah written by family members, friends and teachers of the eight boys. For ordering information please call Yaakov on 646-810-8743, email memorialbook@yashlatz.com, or purchase online. More details about the book can be found at http://www.yashlatz.com/book.html
Obama and the Liberal Congress pulled it off. They finally managed to violate the Constitution and give the District of Columbia a voting seat. They've been trying forever to further empower the Blacks (who make up over 80% of the district) on the national level.
Shame on Joe Lieberman for encouraging it! Don't tell me he's also a sleeper cell (besides LOOKING farshloffin all the time).
Roughly half of Americans earning $250,000 are small-business owners, and the proposed increase will stifle the troubled economy
“Obama’s being so generous at the lower-income level that making $200,000 is going to be like falling off a cliff,” said Dustin Stamper, an analyst in the National Tax Office at Grant Thornton LLP. “Say what you want about the Bush tax cuts favoring the rich, but this is just becoming punitive.”
From The Rev Wrights Chickens comin' home to roost Dept:
These 'chickens', enablers, obfuscators, feckless a--holes,and Tinaf-Tinofsim; Mandel, Shafran, Agudah, Zweibel, et al, have raised their (middle) finger up to the wind and see that it's starting to blow against them. So what to do about the new awareness and brewing mini-revolution? Strut your (false) Tzidkus by Co-opting it, joining it, and supporting it publicly.
Hey Tinofsim! If you really want to show the broken molested souls and their parents that you're serious, put your balls where your mouth is and pressure Charlie (Where's My Black Yarmulke) Hynes to extradite Pervo Mondro.
Until then Mandel, you and your chevrah bend over and grab your ankles.
Joe (Jellyfish) Lieberman is a disgrace.
"Independent" my foot. Right after McCain lost Joe ran back to democratic party and promised Harry (This War is Lost) Reid and Nancy (Facelift) Pelosi that he would forever behave and be a good (Mamma's)boy.
His facial expression doesn't look like far-shloffen, more like from chronic hemmorhoids.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=330306913609&Category=126
Any cavemen out there looking to buy a new home?
Ah didn't inhale.
US to yield marijuana jurisdiction to states
San Francisco Chronicle - 7 hours ago
(02-26) 20:00 PST San Francisco -- US Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries
Hey Shmarya, you coward & fraud.
You are still blocking my comments.
Another reader made the point I wanted to this morning, that Shmarya is trying to mock Rabbi J. Immanuel Schochet by lying by omission about his resume and mischaracterizing the polytechnical institute with tens of thousands of students he teaches at as a "small vocational school".
You can always count on Shmarya to at least lie by omission if not outright lie.
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government ratcheted up its effort to save Citigroup Inc., agreeing to a third rescue attempt that will cut existing shareholders’ stake in the company by 74 percent. The stock fell as much as 37 percent.
Yankel velvel katz from kollel yad chaim mordechai in beachwood ohio is inviting (Rabbi) avremel schorr to speak to the men and his rebbitzin to the women about chinuch habanim .
This must be stopped once and for all . This man is a total liar , lies to rabbanim and is a known thug who hides behind his chassidish levush .
Call yankel vevel katz and let him know how you feel about this shrr habor. he is a total disgrace to yiddishkiet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/us/politics/28web-banks.html
WASHINGTON — Declaring the decline in its insurance fund to be an emergency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board is scheduled to vote this morning to impose an historic one-time $15 billion increase in insurance fees that will be collected from the nation’s banks.
When combined with a longer term fee increase that will also be voted on Friday, the new fees would mean that banks must pony up $27 billion to replenish the insurance fund this year, compared with $3 billion last year, a jump that is certain to draw protests.
F.D.I.C. officials said Friday morning that such a drastic step was necessary because the insurance fund — with the surging number of bank failures in the last year — has dropped below a legally mandated minimum.
The agency, which insures deposits at 8,300 banks, now estimates it will lose $80 billion from 2008 to 2013 as a result of bank failures, double the losses estimated in the fall.
Already this year, 14 banks have failed, compared with 25 last year and 3 in 2007. The F.D.I.C. announced Thursday that 252 banks are on a special watch list of problem institutions, leading banking industry analysts to predict there will be at least 100 bank failures this year.
abe (right hook) schorr was kicked out of a few yeshivas for using a "hands-on" pedagogic approach to Chinuch Habanim.
More suited to be a Club Bouncer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/realestate/01walk.html
THE real estate market in Manhattan has become so unnerving to buyers that some are forfeiting six-figure deposits rather than close on deals they have made.
At 304 Spring Street, a sleek condominium building in SoHo with stunning Hudson River views, the buyer for the duplex penthouse recently decided he would not go through with the deal and walked away from a $780,000 deposit.
At 1120 Park Avenue, a classic prewar co-op filled with multimillion-dollar apartments, it appears that a buyer forfeited a deposit of as much as $1.1 million.
Real estate agents representing buyers of at least three other multimillion-dollar properties also report clients who knowingly left deposits of more than $1 million or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.
In each case, the buyers had signed their contracts before the financial meltdown last fall, but decided in recent months that because values in the luxury real estate market have dropped 20 to 40 percent, it no longer made sense to go through with their deals.
Great job by Joel Engelman and WPIX nailing Reichman. The more exposure that this case and others get, the sooner these predators will be out of the classrooms and behind bars. Unfortunately, the Satmar and some of the other Chassidic leadership are too busy to address the Reichman issue or the issue of child molesters. They are too busy sigining on to a new ban against Lipa Schmeltzer. The difference between Lipa and Reichman is that when Lipa performs in front of children, he brings them joy and happiness, while when Reichman performs despicable acts upon them, he brings them only sorrow and depression. The rabbis have chosen sorrow, depression, and suicide over joy and happiness for our youth. The fact that Reichman is still teaching and Lipa is banned says it all.
UOJ,
You can add these 60 banners to your Hall of Shame:
http://bhol.co.il/news_read.asp?id=8535&cat_id=11
Normann, vu ruft men a cave mann?
Did anyone notice Avi Shafran's pathetic comment on the Dov Hikind rally?
"As long as there is no finger pointing", he will allow it? Who the fuck does he think he is? And who the fuck does he think the fingers are going to be pointed at, by the way. Like Shakespear said, "me thinks the lady doth protest too much." Idiot.
And no "consipracy theories". Like the theory that Aguda's moetzes has been covering up abuse by Kolko, Eiseman, matis Weinberg, Colmer, etc. for decades in an attempt to protect their image and not our children?
Moetzes resign!!!!
"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."
Abraham Lincoln
Let Hikind and his band of whiners come to Ramat Bet Shemesh to protest my protection of Akiva Kagan and we will have our holy goons give them some rocks and ecrement that they will not soon forhet.
"You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."
SHMARYA, GET A JOB!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/28/limbaugh.speech.cpac/
(CNN) -- Rush Limbaugh brought a cheering crowd to its feet several times Saturday in Washington as he called on fellow conservatives to take back the country in the keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Obama's rude shock to six-figure earners
What everyone's overlooking in the new budget: a stealth tax on people making more than $250,000.
Shawn Tully, editor at large
Last Updated: February 27, 2009
NEW YORK (Fortune Magazine) -- During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama tempered his pledge to substantially raise taxes for high earners with an important proviso: He'd simply restore rates to their levels during the Clinton Administration. The implication was that families in the upper brackets would see their total tax bite go back to the levels of the 1990s, but no higher.
Now, it sure looks like Obama is reneging on that promise. The burden will indeed go far higher than in the Clinton years via a technicality -- one that will come as a rude shock even to the taxpayers already braced for a soaking.
The group that's hit hardest are the taxpayers I call the HENRYs, for "High Earners Not Rich Yet." The HENRYs are families who make between $250,000 and $500,000 a year. I wrote about the HENRYs in a Nov. 17 Fortune cover story, "Who Pays for the Bailout?" They're among America's most productive, hard-working citizens: our doctors, attorneys, architects, and entrepreneurs, the owners and builders of cleaning companies, delis and security franchises. (Read the original HENRY story here.)
Though President Obama brands them as rich, they're usually far from it. "Rich" means personal wealth, or net worth, not income. These HENRYs are already strapped by a combination of high income taxes, soaring property tax levies, and college savings for the kids. Their chance of accumulating the couple of million dollars needed to qualify as rich were virtually nil even before Obama took the stage.
Now, their prospects are dimmer than ever, courtesy of a new, laser-like proposal specially designed to zap the HENRYs. Most of the 5 million or so HENRYs are trapped in the notorious parallel tax system, the AMT, or Alternative Minimum Tax. In fact, the AMT might be dubbed "the HENRYs' tax," since it's targeted to skip the middle class, but aimed straight at the $250,000-to $500,000 crowd. All taxpayers are required to calculate their liability two ways, under the regular tax system and under the AMT, and pay the higher amount.
The AMT was originally designed to prevent high earners from pocketing outsized benefits from big deductions, and the HENRYs have plenty of those deductions, especially state and local income taxes, and property taxes. Put simply, if the taxpayer has loads of deductions, they'll have to pay a lot more under the AMT than the regular tax system. That's why everyone who pays it hates the AMT.
The AMT, however, allows two principal forms of deductions, those for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Guess what? Under his new plan, Obama is radically reducing the breaks that high-earners get from precisely those two tax breaks.
Here's how the HENRYs will get hammered. Say a family earns $300,000 a year, and pays $50,000 a year in mortgage interest; the family also contributes $5,000 to Boy Scouts, Red Cross and other charities. Under the AMT's top effective tax rate of 35%, they benefit from savings of $19,250 on those deductions.
But under Obama's new plan, the share of that $55,000 that HENRYs can deduct is no longer 35%. It's capped at 28%. Hence, their tax bill rises by almost $4,000. That's a jump in their marginal tax rate, the crucial share of an extra dollar of income they get to keep, from 35% to over 37%.
The limitation on deductions is scheduled to take effect in 2011, the same year Obama plans to raise tax rates back to their levels in the Clinton Administration. Amazingly, many HENRYs thought they wouldn't suffer much from the higher rates, since they were already paying more in the AMT than they would even under the new tax regime. Now, they're no longer protected. Their taxes will rise sharply, courtesy of this laser-like strike aimed straight at their wallets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/us/01sin.html?hp
In his 11 years in the Washington Legislature, Representative Mark Miloscia says he has supported all manner of methods to fill the state’s coffers, including increasing fees on property owners to help the homeless and taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, most of which, he said, passed “without a peep.”
And so it was last month that Mr. Miloscia, a Democrat, decided he might try to “find a new tax source” — pornography.
The response, however, was a turn-off.
“People came down on me like a ton of bricks,” said Mr. Miloscia, who proposed an 18.5 percent sales tax on items like sex toys and adult magazines. “I didn’t quite understand. Apparently porn is right up there with Mom and apple pie.”
Dov Hikind finishing up an hour on abuse. listen online search for dov hikind radio on google.
Yankel velvel katz from kollel yad chaim mordechai in beachwood ohio is inviting (Rabbi) avremel schorr to speak to the men and his rebbitzin to the women about chinuch habanim .
This must be stopped once and for all . This man is a total liar , lies to rabbanim and is a known thug who hides behind his chassidish levush .
Call yankel vevel katz and let him know how you feel about this shrr habor. he is a total disgrace to yiddishkiet.
CEDAR-GREEN COMMUNITY KOLLEL Aka Kollel yad chaim mordechai:/Yacov v. katz
2573 LARCHMONT ROAD, BEACHWOOD, OHIO 44122
216-360-9153 / 216-559-0638
And the tax wasn't even for Penthouse Magazine. It was for UOJ's blog!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/01rockefeller.html
March 1, 2009
Legislation to Overhaul Rockefeller Drug Laws Moves Ahead Swiftly
By JEREMY W. PETERS
On a fall afternoon in 2002, the New York City police broke up a protest in front of Gov. George E. Pataki’s office in Midtown Manhattan and hauled a dozen demonstrators away.
The protesters were demanding that Mr. Pataki repeal the state’s 30-year-old drug sentencing laws, widely regarded as the nation’s most unforgiving. One of those placed in plastic handcuffs and carted off to a police station was a state senator named David A. Paterson.
Now, with Mr. Paterson in the governor’s mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.
The Assembly is expected to pass legislation on Tuesday that would once again give judges the discretion to send those found guilty of having smaller amounts of illegal drugs to substance-abuse treatment instead of prison and allow thousands of inmates convicted of nonviolent drug offenses to apply to have their sentences reduced or commuted.
Meanwhile, the governor’s office is preparing legislation that it plans to present to Senate leaders on Monday that would also give judges discretion in sentencing, according to a senior administration official involved in drafting the bills. But for now, the governor is not taking a position on whether sentences should be reduced for some prisoners.
For its part, the Senate is expected to take up legislation in the coming weeks that would also be aimed at strengthening judges’ roles in sentencing.
“Returning discretion to judges is really the heart of where we want to go,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman who represents Queens and has led efforts to overturn the statutes, known as the Rockefeller drug laws because Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller made them a centerpiece of his agenda.
“When we take away those mandatory minimums and restore judicial discretion, that’s when you can say Rockefeller is no longer there,” Mr. Aubry said.
The State Legislature has already eliminated the stiffest provisions of the laws, doing away in 2004 with life sentences for drug crimes and reducing other penalties for the most serious offenses.
But now Democratic leaders see an opportunity to take aim at the judicial underpinnings of the laws by untying the hands of judges, who are often bound to mandatory minimum sentences even for less serious drug crimes.
As lawmakers debate changing the drug laws in the weeks ahead, restoring judicial discretion will be one of the thorniest issues in the discussions. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, said he thinks any plan that does not give judges authority to send drug offenders to treatment is doomed to fail.
“I think any bill that doesn’t provide that diversion option is really not something that’s significant reform, plain and simple,” Mr. Silver said in an interview. “There is nothing else at this point that would be meaningful in terms of reform.”
But the idea of restoring full judicial discretion is troubling to many prosecutors, who in a vast majority of drug crimes must give consent before a suspect is ordered to a treatment program.
“The district attorney’s input would be taken out of the equation,” said Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City. “When I look at cases, I want to have the discretion as gatekeeper, to make sure that somebody I put back out in the community is not going to pose a public safety threat. A district attorney has a much clearer picture of a community’s concerns.”
But under the plans favored by the governor, the Assembly and the Senate, prosecutors would lose that veto power.
Senate Republicans, who hold 30 out of the 62 seats in the chamber and could block a bill that they deem too lenient by recruiting just one Democrat, are concerned about any drug laws that would allow offenders to use treatment as a get-out-of-jail-free option.
“We can give judges more latitude, but we have to make sure there’s someplace for drug felons to go, and that they don’t just walk out,” said Senator Dale Volker, who represents a district outside Buffalo and who led the Senate committee that oversaw the changes to the Rockefeller laws in 2004.
“There are a lot of questions to be answered,” Mr. Volker said. “How will these people stay in treatment? Will they just end up back on the street?”
The lack of what those involved in criminal justice considered successful treatment programs led Rockefeller to seek life sentences for the most serious drug offenses. Though Rockefeller initially helped build one of the most extensive state treatment programs in the nation, he became exasperated as drug felons slipped through the cracks and New York’s drug epidemic only grew worse.
“By 1973, Rocky was disgusted and frustrated,” said Pamala Griset, an associate professor of criminal justice and legal studies at the University of Central Florida. “So what he proposed was a 180-degree turnaround from the rehabilitative sentencing structure he first favored.”
Beyond undoing the last of the Rockefeller-era laws, those supporting the reforms being shaped in Albany say, New York should establish a treatment program that serves as a national model different from the one the state created 35 years ago, when the laws became the impetus for a nationwide movement toward extended mandatory drug sentences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/fashion/01private.html?8dpc=&pagewanted=print
Jason Ross, a modern Orthodox Jew from Cedarhurst, N.Y., has sent his two children to a school where they learn secular and religious subjects, follow a religious calendar and keep kosher. But Mr. Ross, a pharmaceutical salesman, was laid off earlier this month. He is now thinking about the unthinkable: public school.
“I graduated from a yeshiva,” he said. “So did my wife. But it would be $28,000 for two kids this year.” His voice trailed off. “Sometimes I joke with the kids: ‘The bus will come a little later in the morning, you’ll be home by two, and you won’t have as much homework. It will be good!’ ”
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