CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE:
***UPDATED -- NEW PHOTOS!***
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Rabbi Red (Kolko) Isaacson - President Yedei Eisav
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Chairman of the board - Lippy (The Child-Slapper) Margulies
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Anonymous Friends Of UOJ!
Finally, our Orthodox Jewish leadership is formally publicizing its hugely successful organization to assist “frum” child molesters!
Yedei Esav provides the following services to our community:
Psak from Gedolim to intimidate victims so they dare not report crimes to the police.
Rabbinic connections to police community liaisons to destroy evidence and close cases.
Positions available in chinuch to provide really easy access.
We train molesters in how to build stellar reputations in Torah and chesed so that nobody would ever think that you also molest.
Assistance in having the children of your accusers thrown out from any and all yeshivas.
Referrals to OHEL's sex offender "treatment" program, set up to cover for you to avoid angry people going to the authorities.
We can convene a “Bais Din” against anyone who publicizes the "false" claims of “motzi shem ra“.
In keeping with our mission, we will continue to promote "sweeping the problem under the carpet" at Agudah Conventions, as a way of encouraging better compliance with “Daas Torah“.
If you need to run to Israel, we will help you avoid police arrest, and will fight your extradition wholeheartedly.
Ready made statements of our concern for victims of abuse to give the impression that we care about them more than about the real victims, the molesters, R"L.
Ample funding for really "chashuva" families, for needed bribes of all kinds.
Political alliances with District Attorneys' offices in a growing number of cities to lobby prosecutors to "go easy" on hard working, tax paying (well, some of them actually do) citizens who "slipped through our fingers".
Custom made "monitoring programs," like on yeshivah campuses, where long time serial molesters can be retired and watched without ever needing to have their crimes, or, uh, the "so called" danger they present to others publicized.
Automatic cherem put on any blog or newspaper that identifies any of us molesters.
We will work mightily to continue to keep the psak of Rav Elyashiv, the Gadol Hador, saying that people should go to the authorities with proof about child molesters, out of the public's knowledge, as it would upset the entire aim of Yedei Esav.
Our motto is; "The voice is the voice of Yakov (he talks frum) but the hands are the hands of Esau (no explanation necessary)"
Testimonials from satisfied clients:
Rabbi K: "If not for Yedei Esav, I would now be rotting in jail. Not only did I "walk", but I am now relocated, as if in a witness protection program, to Lakewood, where I am free to pursue another teaching job and prey on children in shul. Thank you, Yedei Esav!"
Rabbi E: "It is mamash a life-saver. The chesed of Yedei Esav is incredible. I even get to daven on the mizrach vant, am still on the Aguda's Vaad for Russian boys (some of my all time favorites, they are so geshmack) and Rabbi F continues to give haskamas to my "parenting" books."
Rabbis Shalom and Aaron (Victoria's not so secret models) Tendler - RCC members:
*** Rabbi Avrohom Union Rosh Gangster Cover-Upper ***
*** Los Angeles, California***
"Mee K'amcha Yisroel! While in other communities they prosecute people for having sexual relations with teenage girls and oh so many adulterous relationships, B"H the Jewish people have come up with an approach that allows the child-rapists free reign. We were kept in chinuch and rabbanus for years, until we finally decided ON OUR OWN to retire. Rabbi Union Rosh criminal Putz of the RCC made certain we were kept around teenage girls and kept "counseling" women only -- without their husbands. When young women came to the RCC with their "lies", Rabbi Union threatened to destroy them and their families. That's what we Tendlers call a Gadol! High-Five Rabbi Union! You should just see the faces of our victims when me and my uncle pass them on the street, and they know we have Yedei Esav supporting us. HA!"
Rabbi M: “If not for Yedei Esav, where would I be? I don’t even want to think about it. First they got me out of the country for 25 years so I could escape justice. Then when Jewish victims have the chutzpah to try to get me extradited, Yedei Esav comes to the rescue. I have more supporters in the frum community than Jonathan Pollard, but hey, how many little boys did he teach about the ‘mitzvah‘?”
Rabbi L: "I know what you will say. That I did have to get fired from my job and go to jail. But only for three years and now I'm out. Today I am a free man, and have help from many rabbis in convincing people that I was wrongfully accused. I hope to be back in a position of working with teenagers, at which I have been so successful, in a short time, IY"H, and all thanks to Yedei Esav.”
Rabbi R: “It doesn't matter if you are chassidish or litvish or modern orthodox, Kol Hamatzil Nefesh Achas B'yisroel, K'eelu Hitzil Kol Haoloam Kulo.“
The S family: "Our father, Rabbi S, Z"TL and our brother, Yibadel, Rabbi S, Shlita, molested dozens of innocent Bar Mitzvah boys. We felt so guilty and ashamed that we were going to apologize for it, R"L. But thanks to the awesome support of Yedei Esav, we were spared this embarrassment. They begged and threatened the press not to publish anything. When the Jewish Times did it anyway against Daas Torah, we had them blacklisted by Rabbi H, and a boycott by frum advertisers was organized. Thank you Yedei Esav!!!!"
Chief of Police of Lakewood NJ police department: "Thanks to Yedei Esav, our job in the police department here is much easier. We are the only city in America that can boast a zero arrest rate for sexual crimes against children. Yedei Esav has made it clear that they speak for the community here who want to allow child molesters full access to children. "
Ploni Almoni (name withheld upon request): "I have molested kids for years. Nobody seemed to care or complain. I think most of the kids liked it. Just in case, I told them not to tell or else they would be in trouble with their yeshivas, and that Hashem would punish them. But for some sick reason there were those parents who found out and complained. I was PETRIFIED. I thought I would be brought up on charges and sent to jail. But thanks to the rabbis of Yedei Esav, the parents were convinced not to go to the police. I ended up in front of a "Bais Din" convened for just this purpose. What a joke! When I pleaded, based on the good works I've done for the community, and my big mishpacha who need shidduchim, the "Bais Din" was incredibly understanding. They told me I should stop, but did not even make me go for an expert ATSA evaluation - or even a lie detector test - which is so basic - and they made incredible efforts that the whole thing would be in Reb S’s words "swept under the carpet.” Baruch Hashem. I promised to do "t'shuvah" and leave town and I now live in a new city where I am currently "grooming" several kids from baal tshuvah homes. For SURE nobody is going to care about them! What a mechaya. Thanks Yedei Esav!"
Cardinal Mahoney of the Los Angeles Diocese: "Yedei Esav is truly an inspiration. The Jewish people are our "older brothers", and like us, they protect their own. We may have more molesters in our priesthood than you do in your rabbinate. But your passion for cover-up is something we can only aspire to. The devotion and dedication you show to the child rapists and sexual abusers of innocent children truly sets the standard for us in practicing our religion. If only Yedei Esav was around ten years ago, maybe we could have used your techniques for bullying and intimidating victims to protect ourselves even more, and we would not now be paying over three BILLION dollars in settlements. Please, everyone of all faiths, support this noble organization in any way you can."
For help with protection, and to join this vital organization, please contact any of the rabbis of the "Vaad L'Hatzalas ROYDFEY Yisroel."
International Headquarters, Lakewood, NJ.
WE WILL NEVER, CHAS V'SHALOM, ALLOW OUR CHILDREN'S SAFETY ISSUES TO INTERFERE WITH THE PROTECTION OF “BNEI TORAH” WHO HAPPEN TO BE MOLESTERS!
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Trip to Albany Advocating for Child Victims Act -- March 11th!
Buses will leave at the following locations:
Avenue J & Coney Island Avenue
Flatbush, Brooklyn:
7:00am
82 Lee Avenue
Williamsburg, Brooklyn:
7:30am
Please RSVP at: sfjalbanytrip@gmail.com
(Depending on where you are coming from, we may be able to pick you up)
83 comments:
In a landmark moment for Jewish unity, the Rabbinic Committee for the Sanctity of Public Transit has welcomed the Meretz-sponsored initiative legalizing same sex ("Mehadrin") marriage in Israel.
"Male-female marriage remains the greatest threat to tzniut on public
buses," explained a Committee spokesman. "Married couples sitting together violate the strict gender separation on the mehadrin buses.
Furthermore, conventional marriage tends to produce children, creating difficult dilemmas. Is it appropriate for a young boy to sit with his mother in the women's section of the bus, or for a young girl to ch"v sit with her father in the front? Once we have abolished the stumbling block of mixed gender families, entire buses can now be designated male-only or female-only."
In fact, Mehadrin Marriage has the potential to completely revolutionize tzniut in Eretz Yisrael. Community leaders are now working to establish entire Mehadrin neighbourhoods and even towns, where young Mehadrin couples can purchase apartments in exclusively male or female jurisdictions.
Opposite gender weddings, as well, have always presented an especially
thorny problem in the Torah world, as men and women tend to interact under the chuppah. With Mehadrin Marriage, the strict separation practiced at the se'udah can be extended to the marriage ceremony itself.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Rabbinic Committee is now seeking to extend its cooperation with Meretz to adapt the "Two States for Two Peoples" doctrine to create one state for female people and another for male people.
Poskim are currently debating whether the existing concrete separation barrier can serve as a halachically valid mechitza between the two states, or whether it will need to be made higher and thicker.
A compromise has also been reached on the formerly explosive topic of the Pride Parade. This year, two separate Mehadrin Marches will be held: a women's parade through a female neighbourhood, and a men's parade through a male neighbourhood.
The only requirement necessary to join Yedei Esav is to grow a beard and wear a hat or shtreimel.
This will not only give you full semicha as a rabbi, but will gain you acceptance in the exclusive club. Membership in this club entitles you to commit any type of crime, whether it's white collar or blue collar, whether it's child rape or molestation, inside or outside of clothing, with or without penetration, steal, defraud, abuse and violate all the secular and religious laws. Membership gives you automatic defenders in the press by the likes of the inimitable Avi Shafran, who will write favorable articles for you, complete with brilliant analogies to smelly poets. Membership gives you unlimited access to Pidyon Shvuyim funds should someone moser you and you become temporarily incarcerated. Membership gives you the full backing of the Establishment rabbis who will ex-communicate any individual that speaks up against you. Not even AAA Plus membership has this many perks and privileges.
Yedei Esav Board of Directors:
President: Lipa Margolis
Secretary: Pinny Lipshutz
Treasurers: Yonasan Tendler
Leib Pinter (retired)
Spokesperson: Avi Shafran
CEO: David Mandel
Moish Helman
Steven Mostovsky, Esq.
Chaim Dovid Zweibel, Esq.
Yisroel Shenkelevsky
Micky Rottenberg
Malcolm Gantchrow
Marvin Shick
Rabbi Shmueli Tendler
Rabbi Shalom Tendler
Aron Twerski, Ph.D.
Clinical Advisory Board:
Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, PhD
Dr. David Pelcovitz, Ph.D.
Dr. Aviva Weisbord, Ph.D.
Shimon Russel, LCSW
Rabbi A.J. Twerski, MD
Rabbinic Board of the Vaaad LaHatzolas Roydfey Yisroel:
Nosi:
Rabbi Yaakov Perlow (Novominsker Rebbe)
Vaad:
Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky,
Rabbi Dovid Cohen,
Rabbi Ahron Feldman,
Rabbi A.C. Levine,
Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon,
Rabbi Alter (Gerrer Rebbe),
The Munkatcher Rebbe,
Rabbi Osher Birnbaum and
Rabbi Eliezer Ginsburg,
Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer and
Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger,
Rabbi Yisroel Belsky
The Kosover Rebbe
Honorary founding members:
Rabbi Herman Neuberger, Z"TL
Rabbi Moshe Sherrer, Z"TL
You gotta hand it to Yedei Esav - they did a really great job with me. Well, maybe too good. The rabbis helped me out so well for decades. When I had to leave Baltimore, they told the rabbi in Savannah to keep me away form kids. Yeah, right! Thing is, I got so self-confident and fearless, I even tried to set up a hot date with what I thought were some boys on Craig's list. Turned out to be an FBI sting, and now I'm in the clinker for years. I hope to soon be out and back in the "family business." But I can't blame Yedei Esav for what happened to me. No, you really gotta hand it to them. They're the best protectors a pedophile could find. Keep up your great work, fellas! There's more and more of us out there now, preying, thanks to all your success stories!
Chavez Urges Obama to Turn to Socialism
Updated 2 Hours Ago
Fox News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/06/politics/politico/main4849452.shtml
Reid, Pelosi Swearing Match Over Omnibus
Heated, Profane Exchanges Took Place Between Democrats After Spending Bill Didn't Reach 60 Votes In Senate
Psrdon my ignorance, but whose photo (the old perverted looking coot in the funny hat, not the young guy) is pictured in this article? I'm afraid that I don't keep up on the idolatry of knowing who the "gedol'im" are or what they look like....
Freddy, you don't know thats my fagin mug?
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/03/08/peanut_inspections_georgia_salmonella.html
Peanut inspection system filled with holes
By ALAN JUDD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Georgia’s food inspectors had rules for butchering alligators. They had procedures for the proper handling of “feral swine.”
But only since last month has the inspectors’ manual told them specifically how to ensure the safe processing of a more everyday fare: peanuts.
The agriculture agency defends the work of its 60 “sanitarians,” the inspectors who oversee 16,000 Georgia food processors, warehouses, groceries and bakeries. Few, however, have backgrounds in food safety, or in any other science. Of the 11 inspectors assigned to peanut factories, just one holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, two in biology. Others majored in such subjects as child development, history and anthropology.
The inspectors often spend no more than one to two hours examining the sprawling peanut plants, checking for compliance with 54 general rules for safe food processing.
When they find violations, inspectors frequently fail to document whether plants correct the deficiencies. Since 2006, the AJC’s review found, inspectors have cited peanut plants for 152 violations of food safety standards. But they failed to record how — or whether — 99 of those infractions were resolved, leaving both the public and other regulators in the dark.
The absence of such notations, Agriculture Department officials said, should imply corrections occurred.
In any event, the department has imposed no fines or other penalties against the peanut plants in the three years for which the agency maintains records. Even persistent failures to keep equipment sanitary or to protect food processing areas from rodents and other pests kindled little sense of urgency in the hundreds of pages of inspection reports reviewed by the AJC.
In October 2006, for example, an inspector cited GFA Peanut Co. in Cordele for gaps in doors where rodents could enter a peanut storage area. The inspector did not return to the plant until seven months later. That day, his report said he had discussed a “mice issue” with the plant manager, who “agreed to notify me of a plan of action ASAP.” But later reports mentioned neither the rodent problem nor a solution.
At the Lance Inc. plant in Columbus, another inspector spotted live cockroaches in November 2007, the fourth time in a month. After watching an employee kill the insects, the inspector wrote that the violation was “corrected on site.”
In February 2008, yet another inspector cited eight food safety violations at John B. Sanfilippo & Son Inc. in Bainbridge. Paper towels and cardboard were substituting for gaskets in nut-grinding machines. Exposed insulation hung from the ceiling of a peanut shelling area. Food scraps and water were accumulating in broken tiles on the plant floor. The inspector returned to the plant in August and again this January and reported that the floor had not been replaced. In February, she cited the floor problem yet again. As of last week, the state still has not penalized the plant.
Donna Adams last inspected Peanut Corp. on Oct. 23. No one had made the connection at the time, but by then, federal authorities say, hundreds of people in more than 40 states already were ill from the plant’s contaminated products.
After a one-hour, 40-minute inspection, Adams cited Peanut Corp. for two violations: mildew and dust on the ceiling of a peanut butter storeroom and a “black buildup” on shipping containers.
Her report, however, drew no link between the unsanitary conditions and the possibility of bacterial contamination. Nor did it mention the plant’s inspection history – 30 other violations since January 2006.
Adams gave Peanut Corp. 13 days to clean up the mildew. But she never documented whether the plant corrected the violation — or whether she returned to check.
Adams, 48, of Albany is one of the Agriculture Department’s most experienced inspectors, with more than 20 years on the job.
“She expends extra effort to insure firms are adhering to health and food sanitation regulations,” Adams’ supervisor wrote in a 2007 evaluation. “She consistently maintains an excellent working relationship with firm personnel.”
Like most others who inspect peanut plants, Adams came to the job with no background in food safety.
She graduated from Auburn University in 1982 with a degree in family and child development. On a state employment application in 1985, she listed her work history: restaurant hostess, intern at Auburn, assistant head teller at an Albany bank.
Another inspector who visited Peanut Corp., Chad Beard, 48, of Ashburn, earned a degree in anthropology from Georgia Southern University in 1985. Before joining state government, he held several low-skilled jobs, such as laborer, guitar instructor, greenhouse worker and service station attendant (and Rubashkin truck driver?).
“You can get a wide variety of degrees” and qualify to become a food inspector, said Oscar Garrison, Georgia’s assistant agriculture commissioner for consumer protection.
But the starting salary is about $26,000.
“That’s the reason,” Garrison said, “we can’t get a microbiologist or a chemistry major or those sorts of things.”
BY THE NUMBERS
27 Peanut processing plants in Georgia
5 Plants that manufacture peanut butter
184 State inspections of peanut processors since 2006
114 Number of inspections completed in two hours or less
152 Citations for violations of food safety rules
99 Violations for which corrections were not documented
Source: Georgia Department of Agriculture
March 7, 2009
NY Times
A Hometown Bank Heeds a Call to Serve Its Islamic Clients
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Until a stranger without an appointment showed up one day in late 2001, Stephen L. Ranzini was feeling rather pleased with himself. University Bank here, which he led as president, had just won a national award for community service. The honor attested to Mr. Ranzini’s success in working with local black ministers and a nonprofit agency to increase home-ownership in African-American neighborhoods.
Then, disturbing the aura of satisfaction, a well-dressed man arrived and insisted on seeing the president. “If your bank is so outstanding for community service,” the visitor said, as Mr. Ranzini recently recalled, “how come you’re not servicing my community?”
What community, the banker asked, would that be?
“I’m a Muslim,” the man responded.
Mr. Ranzini started to explain that University Bank already had plenty of Muslim customers, hardly a surprise in a college town in the area of southeast Michigan with the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States.
That answer did not satisfy the visitor. Those Muslims, he said, were paying or earning interest.
“So what?” Mr. Ranzini said. Wasn’t interest sort of the whole point of what banks did?
Over the next 10 minutes, Mr. Ranzini, a Roman Catholic executive who had grown up in the vanilla suburbs of New Jersey, started an education that would ultimately transform an otherwise conventional hometown bank into a national leader in the growing specialty of Islamic finance. This year, the bank won an award from the American Bankers Association largely for its service to Muslim clients.
University Bank now has an entire subsidiary devoted to financial products that comply with Muslim religious law, or Shariah. It has done nearly $80 million in Islamically approvable “mortgage-alternative” financing for residential and commercial real estate in 15 states.
This past week, while the stock market plunged to its lowest point in a dozen years and close-to-home General Motors teetered near bankruptcy, University Bank recorded one of its best periods ever. It completed 11 home sales, more than twice the weekly average, to observant Muslim customers, and pushed four more closings into next week.
“I never thought I’d be involved in Islamic banking because I’d never even heard of it,” Mr. Ranzini, 43, said in an interview. “And it’s been a stretch to learn it, succeed at it and make it work. But you feel best about the things that were hardest to do.”
To distill and simplify some complicated theological and financial concepts, the basis of Islamic finance is Shariah’s forbidding of “riba,” which can be variously translated as usury or interest. Mortgage alternatives, which are the most popular financial product for Islamic consumers in the United States, essentially add what would have been the monthly interest into the purchase price of a home.
In one variation, the bank actually buys the house at a qualified customer’s direction, and then sells it to that customer through monthly installments modeled on the payments of a 30-year mortgage. In two other common methods, the customer either acquires the home from the bank on a lease-to-own arrangement or purchases the home in partnership with the bank and gradually buys out the bank’s share.
University Bank’s boomlet forms only part of a national trend. Institutions like Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential in Reston, Va., also offer mortgage alternatives. The Amana Funds, based in Bellingham, Wash., has several mutual funds operating on Islamic principles.
For the past decade, Dow Jones has computed a stock index for Shariah-compliant companies. The law schools at Harvard, Fordham and the University of California, Berkeley, have held academic conferences on Islamic finance.
“It’s part of this religious revival, this return to roots, you see taking place not only in Islam but in many faiths,” said Isam Salah, an expert in Islamic financing at the international law firm King & Spalding. “And as people began to see the feasibility of Islamic financing, you had smart bankers saying: ‘There are seven million Muslims in the U.S. There’s a niche market no one is serving, and I can do it.’ ”
In Mr. Ranzini’s case in Ann Arbor, the decision to enter Islamic banking meant all sorts of challenges.
On the religious side, he needed to appoint a board of Shariah scholars to certify the mortgage alternatives as “halal,” or religiously permissible. On the secular flank, he put months into persuading both state banking officials and his own board of the new products’ legitimacy.
One of the bank’s vice presidents, Amjad Quadri, now has responsibility for marketing the Shariah-compliant products, speaking at mosques and meeting imams, and overseeing satellite sales offices in New Jersey and Virginia. The visibility of University Bank in Islamic financing has brought it, among other things, pillorying by Rush Limbaugh.
For customers like Abdul El-Sayed, though, the bank was literally a godsend.
A medical student and Rhodes scholar, Mr. El-Sayed bought a $123,000 condominium in Ann Arbor with a mortgage-alternative arrangement. A generation earlier, Mr. El-Sayed’s father had had no choice under Shariah but to save up until he could buy a home with cash.
“Ultimately, the question is,” Mr. El-Sayed, 24, said in an interview, “when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation.”
The sense of religious and communal obligation has its fiduciary advantages to Mr. Ranzini. Besides carefully vetting prospective home-buyers, and besides having a well-educated, professional clientele among American Muslims, he has customers for whom default would be almost sinful. Indeed, there have been only a handful of failures among University Bank’s observant Muslim clients.
“In my heart, I’m doing this because it’s the command of my creator,” said Fariz Huzair, 51, who recently bought a home for his family in Canton, Mich. “You have a standard you’re supposed to live up to.
What a difference 8 years make in media reporting!
Recently:
Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boards his
Helicopter and leaves for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not
about me. Today is a historical day for our nation and people."
Eight years ago:
Outgoing President Bill Clinton schedules two separate
radio addresses to the nation, and organizes a public farewell
speech/rally in downtown Washington D.C. scheduled to directly
conflict with incoming President Bush's inauguration ceremony.
Recently:
President Bush leaves office without issuing a single
Presidential pardon, only granting a commutation of
sentence to two former border patrol agents convicted of
shooting a convicted drug smuggler. He does not grant any type
of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide,
ally, or business partner.
Eight years ago:
President Clinton issues 140 pardons and several commutations of
sentence on his final day in office. Included in these are:
billionaire financier, convicted tax evader, and leading Democratic
campaign contributor Marc Rich; Whitewater scandal figure Susan
McDougal; Congressional Post Office Scandal figure and former
Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; convicted bank fraud, sexual
assault and child porn perpetrator and former Democratic Congressman
Melvin Reynolds; and convicted drug felon Roger Clinton, the
President's half-brother.
Recently:
The Bush daughters leave gift baskets in the White House
bedrooms for the Obama daughters, containing flowers,
candy, stuffed animals, DVD's and CD's, and heartfelt notes of
encouragement and advice for the young girls on how to prepare for
their new lives in the White House.
Eight years ago
Clinton and Gore staffers rip computer wires and electrical
outlets from the White House walls, stuff piles of notebook
papers into the White House toilets, systematically remove the
letter "W" from every computer key-pad in the entire White House,
and damage several thousand dollars worth of furniture in the
White House master bedroom.
Headlines On This Date 4 Years Ago:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops
Die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic
times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million inauguration party,
Ordinary Americans get the shaft"
Headlines Today:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $170 million"
"Obama Spends $170 million on inauguration; America
Needs A Big Party"
"Everyman Obama shows America how to celebrate"
Kinda funny, huh?
THE financial crisis grows weirder by the day. When philosophical conservatives like Alan Greenspan start talking about nationalizing banks, you know you’ve passed into some kind of parallel universe. Why are so many people entertaining an idea that sounds vaguely Marxian?
Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09bribery.html?pagewanted=print
Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption that was honed during decades of Communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.
Alarm is growing in Brussels that Romania and other recent entrants to the European Union are undermining the bloc’s rule of law. The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, published a damning report last month criticizing Romania for backtracking on judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. And Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog, ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union last year, behind neighboring Bulgaria.
Those who have faced corruption allegations in recent years have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anticorruption investigators.
Romanians say it is the everyday graft and bribery that blights their lives, and nowhere are the abuses more glaring than in the socialized health care system.
Interviews with doctors, patients and ethicists suggest that the culture of bribery has infected every level of the system, sometimes leaving patients desperate.
The issue of health care corruption gained national attention in January when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him from room to room trying to get a doctor to treat him, said in an interview that she believed he had been refused care “because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe.” The hospital "said" Mr. Constantinescu had not seemed an emergency case.
A 2005 study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, patients typically pay bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family’s monthly income, the study showed.
Some doctors say that the bribery culture is so endemic that when they refuse bribes, some patients become distraught and mistakenly conclude it is a sign that their illnesses are incurable.
Doctors and patients say the bribery follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from $127 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to more than $6,370 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Web sites.
Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International’s Romanian branch, said public hospitals routinely exchanged “supplementary payment” lists to ensure that they had the same rates.
Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and antibribery advocate, recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to a hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he finally received treatment, but only after paying the doctor an extra $510.
Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, said that when he was a young doctor, a senior physician forbade him to talk with patients for three months. She explained that by spending more time with patients than she was, and appearing more caring, he was putting a dent in her bribery earnings.
Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of a medical school in Bucharest, said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest’s Medical School “since the teachers were taking bribes themselves.”
Dr. Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out. He said that the college had the power to revoke the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe but added that few patients were willing to identify their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other doctors.
The Ministry of Health has taken some steps to try to change the culture of bribery. It recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed with calls. Hospitals here are plastered with antibribery posters.
“The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients,” she said. “It has got to be stopped.”
Twice in the last month, the White House has chastised CNBC’s personalities, first after the reporter Rick Santelli energetically expressed his opposition to Mr. Obama’s housing plans on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. CNBC eagerly promoted the segment and conservatives seized on it, holding “tea party” protests across the country.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, dismissed Mr. Santelli’s arguments and mockingly offered him a "decaffeinated" cup of coffee. Later, the Liberal “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer clashed with Mr. Santelli over the assertion that Mr. Gibbs had threatened the reporter.
CNBC came up at Mr. Gibbs’s briefing again last week after Mr. Jim Cramer accused Mr. Obama of causing “the greatest wealth destruction I have seen by a president.” Mr. Gibbs said that “if you turn on a certain program, it’s geared to a very small audience, no offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC.”
Mr. Cramer, who calls himself a lifelong Democrat, said last week that the administration’s agenda was “destroying the life savings of millions of Americans.” One week earlier Mr. Kudlow declared that Mr. Obama was “declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private equity and venture capital funds.” (Larry Kudlow, a conservative economist who is considering a run for the United States Senate, is the co-host of an 11 a.m. news hour.)
Those investors and businessmen, of course, are CNBC’s core audience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/politics/10signing.html?hp
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Calling into question the legitimacy of all the signing statements that former President George W. Bush used to challenge new laws, President Obama on Monday ordered executive officials to consult with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. before relying on any of them to bypass a statute.
But Mr. Obama also signaled that he intends to use signing statements himself if Congress sends him legislation that has provisions *he* decides are unconstitutional.
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/senators-have-beef-with-cow-tax/?hp
Antipathy toward a “cow tax” is apparently bipartisan.
Last Thursday Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, joined with Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York to introduce a bill that would ban the idea of a tax on cows’ methane emissions from burps and flatulence.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Last December, ranchers around the country reacted with outrage to the notion that the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama might tax methane emissions in efforts to slow global warming. In fact, the E.P.A. had made no specific proposal, but farm bureaus nonetheless tallied the potential losses from greenhouse gas regulations: $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle, and $20 per hog.
Brilliant analysis.There is sadly too much truth about 'Yad Esav.'
Haleetaini na min hayeled hayeled hazeh.
Can It Happen Here?
It already is. The Bim-Bam Identity.
__________________________________
March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson gave us the War on Poverty. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs. Now that we have seen President Barack Obama’s first-year legislative agenda, we know what kind of a war he intends to wage.
It is no wonder that markets are imploding around us. Obama is giving us the War on Business.
Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a “Manchurian Candidate” to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue?
He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.
Another diabolical idea would be to significantly increase taxes on whatever firms are still standing. That would require subterfuge, since increasing tax rates would be too obvious. Our Manchurian Candidate would have plenty of sophisticated ideas on changing the rules to get more revenue without increasing rates, such as auctioning off “permits.”
These steps would create near-term distress. If our Manchurian Candidate leader really wanted to knock the country down for good, he would have to provide insurance against any long-run recovery.
There are two steps to accomplish that.
Discourage Innovation
First, one way the economy might finally take off is for some entrepreneur to invent an amazing new product that launches something on the scale of the dot-com boom. If you want to destroy an economy, you have to persuade those innovators not even to try.
Second, you need to initiate entitlement programs that are difficult to change once enacted. These programs should transfer assets away from productive areas of the economy as efficiently as possible. Ideally, the government will have no choice but to increase taxes sharply in the future to pay for new entitlements.
A leader who pulled off all that might be able to finish off the country.
Let’s see how Obama’s plan compares with our nightmare scenario.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so slow to act that even liberal economist and commentator Paul Krugman is criticizing the administration for “dithering.” It has gotten so bad that the Intrade prediction market now has a future on whether Geithner is gone by year’s end. It currently puts the chance of that at about 20 percent.
No More Deferral
On the tax hike, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget quite ominously signaled that he intends to end or significantly amend the U.S. practice of allowing U.S. multinationals to defer U.S. taxes on income that they earn abroad.
Currently, the U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax on Earth. U.S. firms can compete in Europe by opening a subsidiary in a low-tax country and locating the profits there. Since the high U.S. tax applies only when the money is mailed home, and firms can let the money sit abroad for as long as they want, the big disadvantage of the high rate is muted significantly.
End that deferral opportunity and U.S. firms will no longer be able to compete, given their huge tax disadvantage. With foreign tax rates so low now, it is even possible that the end of deferral could lead to the extinction of the U.S. corporation.
If any firms are to remain, they will be festooned with massive carbon-permit expenses because of Obama’s new cap-and- trade program.
Importing Drugs
Obama’s attack on intellectual property is evident in his aggressive stance against U.S. pharmaceutical companies in the budget. He would force drug companies to pay higher “rebate” fees to Medicaid, and he included wording that suggests Americans will soon be able to import drugs from foreign countries. The stock prices of drug companies, predictably, tanked when his budget plan was released.
Obama will allow cheap and potentially counterfeit substitutes into the country and will set the U.S. price for drugs equal to the lowest price that any foreign government is able to coerce from our drugmakers.
Given this, why would anyone invest money in a risky new cancer trial, or bother inventing some other new thing that the government could expropriate as soon as it decides to?
Finally, Obama has set aside $634 billion to establish a health-reform reserve fund, a major first step in creating a universal health-care system. If you want to have health care for everyone, you have to give it to many people for free. Once we start doing that, we will never stop, at least until the government runs out of money.
It’s clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate.
(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org
Last Updated: March 9, 2009 00:01 EDT
Hey guys, thanks to Yedei Esav, I was able to do my own daughter, among othersand I was still made principal here in the Baltimore Cheder! The Baltimoron victims were no match for the maneuvering and intimidation tactics of Y.E. You da man!
After Rav Shach, paskened that I should never be allowed near a chinuch position, since I was having too good a time with the boys in Neve, if you know what I mean, I thought my career was finished. But thanks to Yedei Esav, I am now comfortably rehabilitated working for Migdal Ohr of Rabbi Yitzchak Grossman, one of the foremost kiruv organiztaions in the world. I like kiruv. Yummy!
Raboysay, my grandfather Rav Ruderman had to sign a shtar, saying I had no chelek in his yeshivah. This was due to pressure from reports from California that Reb Elya Svei and R.S. Kaminetsky had heard. So I was sent packing to Israel, where my uncle Noach, A"H, protected me and covered for my you know what. B"H he did not cover the bochurim's you know whats, hahaha. And Yedie Esav did the truly incredible feat of getting me another teaching shtella complete with access to young bochurim, just my type. If not for Rabbi Blau, I would still be there now. But I have full faith that Y.E. will find me another opportunity. Maybe in Aish now that Uncle Noach is gone. Thanks Yedie Esav for all you do, this Bud's for you!
Yedei Esav is an honorable moysad hatoyrah.
Being a Baaal Tshuvah myself, I had no idea that there was even this organization. I am now in the slammer awaiting trial. But I still have total confidence in the only molestation organiztion endorsed by Gedolei Yisroel that they will get me off. Either they will put pressur on Chuky Hines, or they will simply go after the poor Russian kids who had the nerve to complain about a little sex. By the way, my connection to Oorah helps me out too, cause Rabbi Mintz will not allow any of the parents information about contacting the police. Did you ever notice by the way that our Oorah camp Boyzone has the number 1800-866-BOYS? Its where you get them nice and young. And can you imagine the fun I had as lifeguard there? I can't wait to get back into their swimsuits, I mean my swimsuit. You know what I mean. Thanks Yedie Esav.
They tried to make me a party to honor MY work with high school boys! UOJ ruined it, but Yedie Esav did send me off to Israel with the honor and respect due a prolific sex abuser like myself. How many principals do YOU know who can claim to have given oral sex to dozens of kids? DOZENS! No shit! They had to close the dorimtory of Ger Yeshivah, for Chrissake, because the boys were doing what the shrinks call "reenacting their trauma" with eachother. Yedei Esav! Yedei Esav! Yedei Esav! Yeah!
I never molested anyone, so I can't claim FULL membership in this worthy cause. But I can attest to the mesiras nefesh and chessed that Yedei Esav has shown in helping both our Yeshivah cover for so many cases of alumni and teachers (Bryks, Mattis, Eiseman, Aron Tendler, and so many more) Ner Yisroel is one of the most successful establishments in producing the future Gedolim of molestation in Klal Yisroel. And we owe it all to Yedei Esav. May you be zocheh to cause the emotional, and spiritual destruction of many, many more innocent Jewish children.
Our father would be smiling down at the incredible hatzlacha of Yedie Esav, which serves a cause so close to his heart. We will always do our part. Yehivah Lane is now becoming an official monitoring zone, where, like Reb Ahron Feldman has said, we as rabbis can do a much better job of evaluating and monitoring sexual predators than any "goyishe" police force. We are currently accepting applications for molesters from all over to come and live near our children so that we can monitor them. If you have a long history of abusing like Rabbi Eiseman, we will even pay you a pension, but it all depends on the number of victims, and the length of time you were allowed to teach and present a mortal danger to bochurim. We fully support Yedei Esav, because we are just as yeshivish as anyone else even though we allow college. That is for another discussion.
The tactics used by Yedei Esav to confuse the sophisticated oylam public here in Baltimore (LOL)are cutting edge political manuevering. Tzvi Howard Freidman helped us with the idea. We sent out this public letter saying that hundreds and thousands of kids have been molested and their lives ruined due to OUR negligence as rabbis. We said from now on we will do things different, and encourage people to go to the police and even PUBLICIZE the molester's name sometimes.
This letter threw everyone off totally, and NOBODY down here is intelligent to realize that in the last 3 years since the letter there has not been a SINGLE case reported to the police by the rabbis, and certainly not a single case publicized. Which, if you think like a Baltimoron, proves that the letter was actually enough to solve the problem stopping all molesters from molesting! :-) Aren't we smart! And now we, join Yedie Esav in saying to the molesters: We are with you in your pain and will NEVER abandon you. Hatzlacha and a Freilichin Purim.
How come I wasn't listed on the clinical advisory board. I DID get my Ph.D. now, so have plenty of clinical training I bring to bear in protecting molesters and moysdos like Torah Tmimah. I want on to Yedie Esav. Please? UOJ can you maybe use some pull?
Thanks to Yedie Esav, we have a steady stream of stories of sexual abuse of children by rabbis, and the coverups that they entail. Eventually we are confident that if they keep it up, WE will win a Pulitzer Prize
The bochurim now are calling me Rabbi Ass-man! But it just doesn't matter. Yedei Esav, baby. None of my victims would DARE give Phil Jacobs their whole story and all the details of the cover up.
As Rabbi Yissochor Frand has been known to say, if someone did that "His name would be mud!"
Did you see the clever way the yeshivah responded to the allegations about me in Phil's article? They used the VICTIMS as the reason they can't say the truth. What a load! As if the vicims would really care if their stories were told without the yeshivah having to use their names!
I want to personally thank the wonderful beautiful delightful, delectable poetic and inspirational project of ultimate G-dly importance called Yedei Esav.
And thank you to all the parents of students in Baltimore for not reading that Rasha UOJ, not believing the Rasha Phil Jacobs, and cotinuing to send your kids like sheep to the slaughter (or more like sheep to the Arab farmer) and your hard earned money to NIRC - Neuberger's Institute for Rape of Children.
You guys are wonderful. Almost as clueless and pathetic as the parents of Torah Tmimah who trust their children's safety to good ol' boy Lipa Margolis, President of our Board! A bunch of Hungarian idiots who worry more about getting their kids into Brisk then about keeping them safe from molestation. My friends in the Baltimore police force are saying that "Jewish parents are worse than Catholics. They protect their rabbis over their own children." B"H, B"H. We truly live in Ikvesa D'mesheecha. Here in the U.S of A. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!
I would drone on and on, like I do in my shmuessen and my "parenting books" that the heimishe Oylam eats up like I eat up boys, but speaking of boys, it's Purim and there are drunk yeshiva guys all over Yeshivah Lane. I'm like a kid in a candy store! Frelichin to all, Kol Haposhet Yad, man, Kol haposhet Yad!
You never publish my comments and so I stopped looking at your blog for a while. But I decided today to give you another chance.
I approve of what you are doing but you are missing something very important--there is a spiritual side of things.. and sometimes it is real--
It might even come through Gemara or from being in Israel or from prayer in nature (like Rebbi Nachman said). It might be from a church for Christians and meditation for Hindus--but it is real.
What you are attacking all the time is really two seperate things.
First fraud--i.e. people that pretend to have something spiritual but don't.
The next thing you attack is people that have tasted a bit of the spiritual but got caught in the kelipot that surround the holiness.
In both cases I approve of what you do. But you should still for your own sake and others try to regain a bit of spirituality.
"But I decided today to give you another chance."
*
You don't know how much that means to me!
When Paul Newman died, they said how great he was but they failed to mention he considered himself Jewish (born half-Jewish). When the woman (Helen Suzman) who helped Nelson Mandela died last week, they said how great she was but they failed to mention she was Jewish.
When Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Martha Stewart, Randy Cunningham, Gov Edwards, Conrad Black, Senator Keating, Gov Ryan, and Gov Begolovich messed up, no one told me what religion or denomination they were -- because they were not Jewish.
When Ivan Boesky or Andrew Fastow or Bernie Madoff committed fraud, almost every article mentioned they were Jewish.
This reminds me of a famous Einstein quote:
In 1921, Albert Einstein presented a paper on his then-infant Theory of Relativity at the Sorbonne, the prestigious French university.
"If I am proved correct," he said, "the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew."
The Mystery of Hate
by Yair Lapid
Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of
dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not
including the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of Lake
Karon in 1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The
helicopter took him and until this day I do not know whether he is
dead or survived.. All this, and one cannot figure it out.
And its not only what happened but all that did not happen - hospitals
that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that
were never paved, the three years that were taken from millions of
teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the above, we
still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of where it
all started:
Why do they hate us so much?
I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with
us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives.
Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious
that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here.
We all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a
personal way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that
will stain the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that
could at least be understood, even if no sane person is willing to
accept the means that are used to run it by.
It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla,
along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his
visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has
never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he
has no reason to fight?
Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map
(especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city centre
and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and
Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the
peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push
their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a
pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to
finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own
country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In
Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to
their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much
in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they
get the energy to hate?
This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true
that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their
choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to
the Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we
occupy them so much?
There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be
angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the
colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the
Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the
British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We
did not even try, so how come we are the enemy?
And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then
where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that
were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a
school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern
surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why
do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?
Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism
taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something
about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone
wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little
country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others.
We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller
territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no
minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most
of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from
anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we
established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which
no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there
were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place
where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them
from anyone.
However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible.
Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of
Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act for the vanishing of
Israel"' as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we
don't even ask why.
Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as they
wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them.. We do not have a common
border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are willing
to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial boycott, to
hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of their economy
and all that for the right to passionately hate us.
I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to
them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main
problem of the Muslim world"? more than a billion people living in the
Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from
hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to
Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are
the main problem? How exactly are we in their way?
I refuse to accept the argument that claims "that is just the way they
are". They said it about us so many times that we have learned to
accept this expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret
that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the
quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already
retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland
exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters.
We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - "it's the Iranian
influence", or "Syria is stirring behind the scenes" - but it is just
too easy explanation. Because what about them?
What about their thoughts? What about their hopes, loves, ambitions
and their dreams? What about their children? When they send their
children to die, does it seem enough for them to say that it was all
worth while just because they hate us so much?
The megillah has been read, the hamantashen eaten, the Pesach destinations reserved, and Purim will soon be a distant memory.
Let us remember a pivotal aspect of the Megillah:
Mordechai Hatzaddik warned the Jews to not attend the party of Achashveirosh. Mordechai was ridiculed, mocked, and insulted by the know-it-alls. They blamed him for causing a Chillul Hashem by not attending, He will cause political damage, and He has no ne'emanus. They went to spite Mordechai, and suffered dearly.
In our generation we have fearless leaders who choose to focus on the tzaros of the klal. Molestation, abuse, at-risk teens, and mental health issues resulting therein. These leaders are treated worse than the perpetrators themselves. These are the Mordechai's, warning people it is the actions of the individual NOT his dress that makes the man. They warn us to not fall for a bearded person, simply because of his "rabbi" title, or black hat. The actions make the person.
These Mordechai's perform this community service for FREE. They truly see the children as the "first priority", with no need for fancy organizational parties. A child in need, is far more valuable than a juicy piece of chicken. Kosher parties in a kashered treif restaurant, while it is a guiltfree pleasure is Glatt Traif. Seudos Mitzvah and tzeddakah organizations made to create division, not Achdus are Seudas Achashveirosh. It makes no difference who is "mesader kiddushin" or guest Rabbinic speaker, it is Glatt Traif.
Those who choose to attend the Seudas Achashveirosh, pay a steep price in the long run.
V'Dai Lechakimah B'Remizah.
May Achdus prevail in our community. Shalom B'Cheilech Shalvah B'Arminosaich.
First of all, who is T.R. from Lakewood?
And what is the "chicago yungerman" story, referred to by the second comment on this post?
A COMMENT REGARDING THE WINGARTEN VERDICT, by someone who hopes to see Mondrowitz sit it out a long time together with all pedophiles and sex molesters.
Put aside the fact that the Torah (clearly, most of those writing here are unfamiliar with the word, however, its a reference to the LAW authored by HASHEM and given to the Jewish people on Har Sinai) does not recognize testimony of a daughter and son against their father. The same goes for testimony by a wife against a husband.
Did the feds ever once, during all the years they prepared this case, interview his six children that remained under his custody? NO!
If the father was a perverted sex molester as his estranged oldest daughter alleged, surely the father would have been doing the same to his three other daughters that remained under his exclusive custody for nearly five years? Yet, those three daughters and his three sons under his custody all vehemently deny any such claim.
The prosecutor said yesterday that the other children were "brainwashed" by their father. Baloney! How could she know to say that without having ever spoken to them or having had them examined by a forensic psychologist. As already stated, even the feds during their investigation did not interview those six children. If the investigator was seeking the truth, and presumably concerned with their safety, why were those other children not questioned?
The same question applies at the Grand Jury; why were the other six children kept out of the Grand jury and never questioned?
This case is born out of a filthy custody battle. In the background is a very wicked estranged wife with a sexually unstable oldest daughter and very perverted oldest son. These three evils shamelessly banded together to destroy the lives of their religiously stable siblings and father. Is it difficult in this country to find anti-Semitic individuals willing to help with the libeling of religious Jews? And just which side of the family did they say was "brainwashed"? Oh yes, only the religious side. As to the oldest irreligious sexually unstable daughter and perverted son, surely its not a possibility that they were "brainwashed"? It's not a possibility that they were out only seeking to libel their religious father.
After the initial arrest, the judge ruled that Mr. Weingarten was a flight risk - give me a break. Mr. Weingarten was not allowed by the judge to be free on bail, even with an electronic ankle bracelet- even while his passport and the passports of his six children under his custody were held by the FBI. Accordingly, Weingarten was denied the right to properly prepare his defense. He could not personally raise money for proper legal counsel. He was not able to choose his own lawyers. Instead, he had to take the counsel that was shoved in his face. Those lawyers were never willing to hear his side of the story, or at minimum they did not get along well in an attorney-client relationship. Whether right or wrong, Weingarten did not trust them.
While those lawyers represented him, important evidence in the defense of Mr. Weingarten was not properly and timely presented to the court. Therefore it was not acceptable at trial because it was considered "late". There were tape recordings of the mother and daughter planning against the father with lies, discussing how to libel him, which were never admitted as evidence at trial. The list goes on and on. Is that a definition of “justice”?
When the other two daughters of Weingarten –the religious ones- got up to testify everything they said that showed the truth was objected to, and the judge stopped their testimony after a few sentences. You cannot even blame the jury for their verdict because they were kept in the dark as to all the true facts.
Consider the above, which is just a tip of the iceberg of the injustices that went on in this case, when you rule against a man that the Torah considers to be b'chezkas kashrus and without even a "rayach shel chshad”. Those who have written against an innocent man who was the victim of nothing more than a "legal lyching" have much Teshuva to do.
You mamash could not make this stuff up. Was it Shorr himself who wrote the previous comment?
The fact he "only" molested one daughter proves his innocence? O.J. Simpson only murdered one woman, so he must be innocent, right?
The forces of evil are out there all around us. People have told me that Shor, although he screwed up with Lipa, is really good when it comes to child abuse. Yeah, he's going to become the next president of Yedei Esav. Wonderful.
Is there no way to shut this man up? He is like the Al Sharpton of our community.
Could we get someone to say he's a roydef and give somebody like Yigal Amir ideas????
I am surprised that you left some very important personalities out of the Yedei Eisav group.
The Ramat Bet Shemesh Branch!
Where is Rabbi Taksha of Torat Eliyahu?
What about Rav Elismell Kornfeld..champion of the downtrodden molester?
What about Rav Chaim Maliciounitz
who defends and enables molesters in RBS?
Okay, follow me here while I blow a gaping hole in this alphabet soup of rabbis:
Moshe Green has zero experience in rendering halachic rulings. He never was a dayan or posek. A baal darshin and rosh yeshiva at most. When approached by Mrs. Weingarten's new prospective husband who is a well known Chassidishe rebbe in Monsey(they marry IY"H this month) Moshe Green confessed to never having heard the victim's side of the story. Furthermore, Moshe Green refused to meet with Mrs. Weingarten or her children, in clear violation of rendering a psak without hearing from both sides. And again, by no ones stretch of imagination is Moshe Green an authority on halacha l'meisa. With no smicha and never having been a rov it is amazing that his opinion in this matter is even mentioned.
Schorr brothers Inc. are likewise the furthest from having ever practiced as rabbonim or dayanim. One is a mashgiach in Ohr Someach the other a Ram in Vishnitz. With a multigenerational history of erratic and often dangerous behavior these yeshiva rebbes are irrelevant in regard to a halachic matter. Stick to harassing Lipa please.
A C Bl.... don't know who this refers to and no one by that initial has stated an official opinion on the matter.
The Satmar affiliated names mentioned (Hal... etc.) are stating party lines IF they are backing him. Just know that R' Aron Teitelbaum of KJ and his Satmar sect are totaly supportive of Mrs. Weingarten and her actions in saving her children from the murderous father.
Schneibalg has refrained from getting involved and is NOT supporting the menuval.
Geldtzaler is the biggest joke. Everyone knows what he pulled on the poor woman the first time around. The guy has the nerve to even get involved when he is clearly partial in this matter. He claims Mrs. Weingarten owes him 5000 dollars and is in this for revenge.
As for Schlesenger, let the record state that Harav Flohr has stated many times that Weingarten is as guilty as hell and a MITZVA to put away forever but that he cant work against his mechutan Schlesinger.
Keep in mind that had the rosh yeshivas and some corrupt dayanim done a competent job and treated this issue based on halacha and not cowardice, ignorance and politics we would never have seen this taken to the point it is now. The chillul hashem rests squarely on the dudes who sacrificed the lives of these poor children to defend an incesuous pig like Weingarten.
UOJ, when r the photos of the gerrer mesifta going up?
Weingarten DID indeed molest more then one of his daughters......and a brother of his.........and a handfull of students........and.....some others just for variety......
And we have reason to suspect why none of his children want to marry.
Yudi is still an unrepentant piece of shit...
Spotted Yudi in Flatbush this morning-we need to install some kind of early warning system so that I know to watch the little ones more carefully-he acts like nothing ever happened and he is still this righteous and upstanding Jew. Yudi, do you ever worry about the day you will have to give a din v'cheshban in the Bais Din Shel Maalah? You realize there are no crooked Dayanim there...you are gonna get it big time.
Hey, all you jerks that meet him in the streets of Flatbush and greet him like a old buddy and hero...you are all pieces of shit too...you have to shun this guy or he will keep coming back. Question: would you still trust him with your kids or grand kids?
Reply to #274 Hide Quote
abisel sechel 15 rabonim in Monsey Says:Says:
“ Partial list of rabonim in Monsey that have clearly stated that this case against Y M is msirah.
R’ M gr”/ R’ A C bl”/ R’ C Y Hal”/ R’ R Sch”/R’ S F Shn”/R’ Y Y eisen”/ R’ Y S sch”/ R’ M M weism”/ R’ B I wet”/R’ Y hag”/ R’ M ros”/R’ Y tou”/R Y D schl”/ R’ Y lei”/ R’ D geld”.
The above list of 15 rabonium is from Monsey doesn’t include other rabonim that I have heard from people that they support Y M, however since I was not able to verify it was not included in the list. Hope to post an updated list.
In the mean time none of the mothers supporters have been able to post any names of the hundreds of rabonim besides R’ Y go” & R’ B wos” WHY????
As much as we would like to think that the Torah would prevent these evil things from happening, it won't. These people are interested in power, control and whatever lusts they have. They may dress it up in frumkeit, but they are not interested in the actual religion. There will be people like this in any group, and we can't stop it by improving schools, or being kinder or giving Tzedakah.
A Torah Jew needs to ask him/herself each moment:
Am I really sure that this is what Hashem wants of me?
Is there a better way?
Is my behavior creating a kiddush hashem... even among my own family, or is it causing chas v'sholom the opposite... even among strangers?
If you hurt a child, you will have to go back to that child when he/she is an adult to ask mechila.
If you damage that child's ability to relate to hakadosh boruch hu....
You deserve to and will burn for it.
What we can do, however, is protect the innocent. When we see things and suspect things, we must bring it to the attention of people who can do something about it. That may be a community leader, or it may be the police. And we need to discuss these things with our children and try to raise them to be thinking individuals.
Let those who pursue others rot in jail in misery and pain. The lives of the victims are hell. Let these demons experience first hand what they put the victims through. Every rabbi who had the power to stop things but did nothing, should be treated no different than the rodef they protected.
Rabbis admit failure, apologize to the victims and resign. The noose is getting tighter.
Hi UOJ,
I am a secular Jew living in Australia. Although completely secular myself, my recent ancestors were Hasidim in central Europe. I went through an orthodox phase and left after a few years when it dawned on me what a den of paedophilia, corruption and abuse that world was-and that was the tiny Habad community here in Melbourne.
There was a rabbi here who impregnated his own daughter, who was raped by her grandfather as well-a ‘Talmid Chochem’ with ‘Rebbisher yichus’-homosexuality rampant in Cheder, wife bashing ……..the lot.
Rabbi Kolko is merely the tip of a massive iceberg. I have come to the conclusion that it is Judaism itself that is the problem: and hence no way of fixing it.
Not that I am saying Christians are any better. And not that the Reform and Conservative movements are much better. My son goes to one of the only reform Jewish schools in the world-the other day the head of Jewish studies was handcuffed and led away in a massive pedophilia sting -“No one in the school could have ever known-just no one” I was assured by the mother who is head of the committee-as naïve as some of these frum wives.
When I told my brother the story he replied ‘oh yeh we knew about him years ago-taking kids on his boat’.
One day you will realise that your name and shame ranting will achieve nothing at all-I suspect you know that already. One day you might realise that a line runs through Kolko, Bernie Madoff and the Zionist fraudsters ( I know you probably are Zionist , one day you might realise that they too have done the ‘Margulies’ on you and that whole story is not what it seems).
Reality is anti-Semitism has allowed us to be manipulated by our leadership. I have no doubt that vast masses of Muslims and even Christians hate us and would kill us at any opportunity-it doesn’t mean we have to put our wellbeing in the hands of sociopaths.
There is a silent majority of good Jews out there-perhaps it’s time to start a new religion and free ourselves from rabbinic Judaism and in fact Judaism completely – The rabbis who wrote the Talmud were a bunch of bitter psychopaths and created a religion where like a bad porn where ‘every one gets screwed’.
Its time young Jews liberate themselves completely from this vile culture-and the holocaust doesn’t make it right.
Mike
Mike,
Your diatribe is one of antagonistic hellenism replete with the apologetic nuances of disenfranchised Judaism. Sadly your understanding of both the tenets of Judaism and today's hellenists coincide in a Satanic dance of let's rip things apart because we know better. You don't. You won't. Each society has a percentage of impaired individuals who ingrate themselves into areas of responsibility and trust. They abuse that trust forming the foundations of depravity. The enablers, the ones who timidly hide behind mesirah and such, can't bring themselves to face reality. It's a double edged sword, reality. On one hand what if questions lead to grave doubt regarding doing something. On the other hand doing nothing leads to graves being filled with innocent neshomas deserving of protection. This is not a vile culture. Not everyone is living life as though they were starring in a movie. There are many who have their feet on the ground and won't turn their back on reality.
Just as with Madoff, if it sounds to good to be true... As parents and as primary educators it is our shameful disinterest in our own children that allows predators to engage in these acts. A child with trust in his parents will allow a parent into any of his troubles. You have to talk to your kids. They aren't just fodder for Shabbos to break up the meal with Rebbi's Torah page. Ask your kid how his day was and what did he do. Ask what Rebbi did in class? (Goes for Morahs too, by the way). Look for homework. Look at the sheets brought home.
Are there some practical don'ts: Don't let your child go on a sleepover to Rebbi, no matter how many kids Rebbi has in the house. Don't look the other way when your child's friend seems to be acting unnaturally (he's your kid too.) Write a note to the menahel if your child is touched in any manner. Ask what is the school's policy.
Dos: Do talk to your child. Do let your child know that you are on his side and that you don't automatically take the Rebbi's side. Do let your child know that it hurts you when you are shut out of his life. Do get to know your child's friends and talk to them about school and your child, such friendly banter can be an eye opener. Do praise your child when he shows you his work. Do encourage your child to draw, even if it isn't Rembrandt, it tells you something.
Mike, get with the real Judaism and not these abberrations. Hashem keeps notes on these people and their just reward is waiting for them.
Rav Doniel "Geltgrubber" "ShoichadNemmer" Geldtzahler from the Mechoin LeHoiroah Monkey Court in Monsey's pesakim are only worth the signature written on the check received. While under the influence of "hakoras Hatov" paskened in the din Torah of Finkel vs. Hatzlocha Grocery (May '06) that Finkel must be allowed to continue selling his meat from dubious origin until Sukkos. He said it's assur for the Green family to "ma'aser" to Rabbi Breslauer about their concerns. Hakessef Ya'aneh Es Hakal.
By turning what used to be the reportedly only honest Bais Din in America into a bribes for psak industry he should be tossed into a jail cell with the mamzer he took the bribes from. Then we listen to Rav Solomon to watch what comes out of our mouths, while letting Finkel's grusha off the hook Scott Free. Let Rav Geltgrubber pay for the losses incurred.
Borcuh,
Despite all of your wise do's and don'ts, sounding like an expert, your need to deride someone who was traumatized both by his ancestors' experience and what he has seen is rampant in our community shows that you are dealing with things by still keeping your head firmly planted in the sand.
I don't know what Chazal's role was in all of this, because they lived a long long time ago and the major document they passed on to us seems ok to me. (Or else I would not be frum).
But to lack the integrity and the honesty to say that Mike C. is totally right about the way WE are practicing Judaism, is sheer madness. He is aboslutely correct that much of the crime and debauchery is being done by those in charge of passing on our mesora. That our Torah has been desecrated and bastardized and made to be a lauging stock among the nations.
When we have Orthodox leaders joining hands with the same sick Catholic Church that turned a blind eye to the wanton murder of one million of our children and currently is awarding a holocaust denier, in order to stop victims of child sexual abuse from getting justice, there is something very broken in our "organized religion". For those who will use the old "its just a lunatice fringe" line, BS! Where are the establishments writing letters to denounce this unholy allinace?
The Agudas Yisroel's Moetzes Gedolim says it needs a couple of weeks to decide if it is on the side of the Sexual Predator Priests, or the Jewish chidren who would like to stop rabbis from molesting and yeshivas from covering up. It takes two weeks?
It did not take anywhere near two weeks to decide which side of the issue they were on when Rubashkin was indicted. To protect accused felons they move very, very quickly, to protect Jewish children not so quickly, if at all. We still await anxiously to see how far our leaders have sunk if they come out with anything short of a strong statement of support for changing the immoral statute of limitations laws. Prospects are dim, however if their lack of participation in Dov HIkind's rally is any sign.
Zweibel showed up to represent them. The Gedolim could not be bothered to attend in person. And, adding insult to injury to the victims, he MADE IT A POINT TO TELL DOV TO ANOUNCE THAT HE WAS ONLY THERE AS AN OBSERVER! I for one, as a survivor of rabbinic abuse would much rather he have stayed home rather than to silently watch and observe as Jews came to offer me support and apologies. Seeing his face there smug and satisfied that the Gedolim have all our our best interests in mind, let alone answers to any real life problems, was sickening to most of us.
Some felt that it was better than staying home but not by much.
Mike C. is right on the money that we need a total turn around. But as Yanie Horowitz writes we don't need to give up New Coke for Pepsi, we just need to go back to Coke Classic.
I agree. Charles Heinz is the most corrupt DA I have known in history.
The rumor is Reb Zelig Epstein is very sick.
Does anyone know what's wrong?
Any updates?
Is Rabbi Green mishpacha with the Green family of Toronto?
Or are they mishpacha of Pinny Green of Gvul Yaavetz fame?
It's for a shidduch, please give any info available.
When the family came to Monsey, his chasidim involved many askonim and rabonim to help this “unfortunate tzadik”, Y.M. Weingarten YM”S who nebach “has this terrible witch as a wife, who every now and then goes crazy and becomes so wild that the only way to conroll her, is to tie her up for about 24 hour until the mishugaas passes.” (these are all things he told people, so when they hear that he ties up his wife they wouldn’t be shocked).
In addition he told all the rabonim that she comes from a very terrible family, her parents are very low people etc. etc. These same things he told to his students in his yeshiva in Antwerp. while at that time she was busy all day cooking and cleaning for the boys WITHOUT ANY HELP. Remember, his oldest son also was a student there, and his friends told him what his father is saying about his mother.
Most rabonim tried to help him in his “miserable lot”, how could they have known the truth. But b"h as time slowly passed they started to see the truth. BUT, & here is a big "but". Srool moishe's best friend Elyukim Shlezinger from London did whatever he could to make sure nobody goes against him.
ElYakeem Schlezinger personally came to R' Chaim Shia Halberstam and told him that Weingarten is the biggest tzaddik in the world so he should help him. And help he did, he spoke to R' Moshe Green (who bt"w is not a ruv at all he is a chusheva rosh yeshiva, but no moreh Horoah or Dayan. And neither is elyukim) and these two formed his support.
When the mother came to r' Chaim Shia Halberstam he turned her away, without even even hearing a word from her, a blatant violation of halacha. The same goes for the other non-rav, r' Moshe Green. It should at this point be evident why some were receiving signals that the torah need not be upheld K’Halacha. These people were showing that shooting from the hip precedes din torah v’halacha.
R' Menachem Meir Weissmandel told me, that he knows srool moishe very well from some 20 years ago. He already was a shaigetz and menuvel back then, and therefore he stayed out of this whole thing when Weingarten came to Monsey and everybody still believed him.
R' Chaim Flohr told me that he remembers srool moishe as an older bochur in Monsey, and he already then molested children and he fled Monsey because of that. But, he added, i can’t do anything, because r' elyokim (shlezinger) is my mechuten, and he will call me and make kollos on me, ich hub nisht kain koiach tzu dem.
But R' Yisroel Hager, R' Chaim Leibish Rottenberg, R' Cheskel Gold, R' Benzion Wosner, all experienced moreh Horoah and Dayanim here in Monsey, were actively involved in this matter all along and knowing all the details AND THE IREFUTABLE EVIDENCE solidly opposed Weingarten and attempted to stop his hurting of the children by removing his unsupervised access to them. And I might add, they had to endure threats and other things of this sort from the likes of Srul Simcha Schoor and other unsavory individuals. (which I also had).
Now, these last 4 rabbonim were involved at the time, and as time passed R' Hager was not anymore involved that much, but the other three were.
Before they were with her, when they were still siding with him, and the story came to the CPS child (un)protective services, and to the court for the first time, she was about to get full custody, but then therabbis told her to retract from court. Being the ehrlicher yiddene that she is SHE DID JUST AS SHE WAS TOLD, and at a very hefty price……..the loss of her children.
Now, she did not want to leave the house, for the sake of the children. She did it only after the rabbonim forced her to, because they saw no future for her there. Now listen to this. She continued to cook daily meals for the whole family, including for srool Moishe. This went on for a few months. She only stopped when the landlord called her several times and begged her to stop because that dog was throwing the food out in the garbage every day.
When the story finally came to a din torah, he was able to manipulate everybody until we found his match, the toain R’ Shmuel Fried. At the first or second session, srool moishe freaked out and started yelling: “I am making here a shvua d'oraisa, that as long as Shmuel Fried is toain I will not sit at this din torah, and he stormed out of the room.
The bais din said they can't be matir the shvua, so meanwhile he got himself out of the din torah. A few days later when she went to visit 1 of the girls at the bnai yoil school system in Kiryas Yoel (KJ), they tried to arrest her for wanting to kill the girl (I know all this sounds crazy, well, it is, & it’s true).
Then Srool Moishe Weingarten officialy gave in a claim in court against her that she choked the girl trying to kill her. When the rabbonim in Monsey heard that, they said enough is enough, and they told her to give in a counter claim. When she did, suddenly we started getting messages from all over, how come your rabbonim are matir mesira. I was back then at an asifas rabbonim in r' rottenbergs house. r' moshe green came and hollered that this has to get out of court right away, but the rabbis told him that since srool moishe massered first it’s not going anywhere.
He yelled at the rabbis and they yelled back at him. R' Cheskel Gold was very very sharp, he really gave it to him.
They all moved back to Monsey (after living for a few months in KJ) because he wanted to be here where he had Yankee Hurwitz from COC helping him thru his back door connections with the local politicians, courts and CPS, and she wanted to be near her children.
That said, she still got joint custody, but never actually saw the children, because the dog instigated them against their own mother.
Now 1 day early winter of '07, the FBI came to Monsey and started to investigate. They called me that they want to come over, when they did, they told me that they already were in Antwerp, Manchester, Beth Shemesh, Jerusalem, Brooklyn and who knows where else. They knew everything about him.
When they contacted the mother, she went to ask a shaila what to do. Now of course she wouldn’t ask R' Green or R' Halberstam. She asked the rabbis who were willing to at least listen to her, R' Cheskel Gold, R' Chaim Leibish Rottenberg, R' Benzion Wosner, and they told her: “Since you saw what he did, and there is good reason to believe he is still doing it to the other girls, you have a chiyuv to do whatever you can to save your children.”
And she did. Period.
Boruch, Just think back a couple of years ago, who believed what UOJ was saying? Without the Internet and his hishtadlus, nobody would have done a damn thing. Nobody is sorry, they're sorry they got caught.
Orthodox Judaism as it's practiced today is no better than any fringe missionary cult.
http://www.walletpop.com/article/_a/bbdp/maytag-recalls-16-million-refrigerators/376805
I don't know what R' Moishe Green's yeshiva is like currently but 20 years ago it was for guys that had mild learning disabilities. One of these guys wound up in Lakewood somehow because of pull. He couldn't get chavrusos or make anything of himself so at 25 years old he weaseled his way into the BMG office of Mashgiach Kotton (emphasis on Kotton mit a Kapital K) and started running around with the master keys, barging into rooms and barking orders at bochurim 6 months younger than him. He caused a lot of problems, constantly snitching to the hanhala and even trying to frame people he didn't like. He did have the occasional supporter who didn't bother to hear the other sides of the stories like Butch Epstein's older brother or Yankel Pollock types who wanted to settle a score with someone, but for the most part, no one took him seriously and he eventually became persona non grata among the yungerleit in Beis Eliyohu. After he was caught red handed doing something really bad, the roshei yeshiva took the keys away from him, demoting him to work study.
R' Zelig, zol er zein gezunt biz a hundert un tzvantzig, is not only getting on in years as one of the oldest alter Mirrers but he has been afflicted for a long time with a heart condition that has required extensive surgery at different intervals.
We need R' Zelig who for all practical purposes is the meyaetz hador and the preeminent gadol in America. From an era lost when you look at some of the frauds running around with langa rekels.
Anonymous 2:17 and 9:02.
I disagree. I may have been misunderstood. These abominations are aberrations when compared to the thousands of observant Jews who strive to do what Hashem wants of them. Don't believe that I'm defending any of these cretins. I'm not for besmirching the rest of us who do our best to live in a manner that Hashem wants. Chazal could say an eth from the Torah and an entire yeshiva, based on the context of the discussion, would know what possuk it was. We have inmates running the asylum based on their not wanting to lose their self-importance.
What's this mean? Our observance is a personal matter between ourselves and Hashem. We need to be very cognizant of this. It is our choice to qualify an ignoramus and turn him into a gadol based on his yichus. I choose not to do that. I don't look upon observant Jews as a cult. I look upon Rabbis as being akin to priests of an era where it was best to keep the people in an aura of superstition and ignorance. Our best method for trasmitting the mesorah is through the home. Our home has been hijacked because our harbotzos HaTorah is made through the Reader's Digest and not through breaking our heads. That isn't a blame as much as it is a comment on what we pursue and what we find important. I'm appalled. I came to Yiddishkeit; I wasn't born into it. I had to break my head and gnash my teeth to understand a Chumash with Rashi. I wasn't given a teitch sheet. When I arrived I sought out Rebbeim who would challenge and dispel preconceptions about observant Jews. I had Rebbeim who didn't follow along with the crowd. They respected Rav Yaacov and revered him. They respected Reb Yoilish and Reb Moshe. They learned everyone's seforim and culled the best ideas and practices. Phonies, they knew a few too many, even then. Organizations that caved under pressure both political and financial were around then too. We don't have a cult. We have disengaged ourselves from the fight required to be an observant Jew. Inmates shouldn't be in charge of the asylum. But as long as there are askanim who are enablers and who are hero worshippers instead of thinkers and anshe maaseh - that's what we get. People pick their battles and are weary of fighting all battles. Hashem has a sense of humor, he gives idiots a little money or a good family and they become important. What else can He do? They can't delve into the depths of horaah. They're relieved when the next Artscroll book comes out so they can sound like a chochom. We've created Talmidei Dreck because we don't insist on traditional scholarship and traditional shimush. The way we practice Judaism, again, is a personal matter. The way we choose leaders is an abysmal mess. What's the formula to return to classic Coke? Don't know that there is a magic formula or a seminal event on the horizon (Moshiach notwithstanding). I do believe that each one of us, practicing a Judaism that speaks to Hashem and not to the idolatrous rote of Judaism, will prevail over the inmates in the long run. I believe that the internet and UOJ and other like him will have all of us become more discerning and more scrutinizing. Will it be perfect? Not now. Will it be better, when we want to make it better. I know that the observant Jews I know want it better. They don't belive that they need to remove their shoes when walking on the same ground as the Yichus Rov or Rosh Yeshiva or the wealthy ashcan. If that's being part of a cult - beats me why you wouldn't want to join.
New York, NY - Comedian Jackie Mason used what some say is a racial epithet in describing President Barack Obama during his act Thursday night, infuriating at least several people in the crowd.
During a performance at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in NYC, Mason referred to Obama as a “schwartza” — some say it’s equivalent to the “N” word — others say it’s just part of the Yiddish culture and a literal translation of the word “Black.” We’re told one person walked out fuming, “He’s more offensive to the Jews than Madoff tonight.”
TMZ spoke with Mason by phone, and he was outraged at the criticism, saying, “I’m not going to defend myself. Chris Rock has told a lot more jokes about whites than I have against Blacks. What about the demeaning words Blacks say about Jews?”
Mason added, “If it’s a racist society, the white people are the ones being persecuted because they have to defend themselves.”
Mason called people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson “professional racists.” Mason added, “I’m an old Jew. I was raised in a Jewish family where ’schwartza’ was used. It’s not a demeaning word and I’m not going to defend myself.”
And there was this parting shot: “I’m more talented than Oprah Winfrey and look at how much she makes. I can’t even make a living.”
The Leiters are mishpocho with the Balkany-Rubashkin clan.
http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/index.php/200903101453/Mumbai-victim-s-sister-brother-in-law-to-reopen-terror-stricken-Chabad-House.html
Mumbai victim’s sister, brother-in-law to reopen terror-stricken Chabad House
Written by Bonnie Paltsev
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
TORONTO – Three months after her older sister Rivkah Holzberg was gunned down and murdered by terrorists, Sara Leiter and her husband Rabbi Yaacov Leiter are making last-minute preparations to leave their home in Safed, Israel, for Mumbai, India.
The only thing holding them up is a visa from India, which they expect to receive soon.
The passion to make a difference is nothing new to Rabbi Leiter. Throughout the years, he has been active as a Chabad emissary in Thailand, Venice, Milan and Postville, Iowa.
His most recent post was at Ascent of Safed, a hostel for visitors that seek to learn more about all aspects of Judaism. Ascent hosted some 35,000 guests last year, a mixture of native Israelis and visiting foreigners.
Bonnie Paltsev oversees the Jewish Tribune’s production department. She is also Rabbi Leiter’s aunt.
Here's a Left wing orgy of the NY Times and a freak Berkeley professor bitching that al Qaeda got roughed up for information while they are trying to kill as many people as they can.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15danner.html?pagewanted=print
March 15, 2009
Tales From Torture’s Dark World
By MARK DANNER
To Mike in Australia:
A lot of us have been where you are. Email me at miss_ahavah_gayle@yahoo.com and we can share horror stories - but more to the point, you don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Don't let a bunch of schmucks ruin your faith in God. God hates these people just as much as you do.
Federal prosecutors filed a notice in federal court Sunday evening declaring its intent to seek the forfeiture of a wide swath of property owned by Bernard L. Madoff and his wife, Ruth.
Listed in the two-page notice are the Madoffs’ homes in Manhattan, Montauk, N.Y., Palm Beach, Fla. and the Antibes in France. Prosecutors are also seeking their interests in Cohmad Securities, a securities firm under investigation by the state of Massachusetts, and a Wachovia bank account in Ruth Madoff’s name holding more than $17 million.
Other items sought by prosecutors include yachts, all bearing names ending in “Bull”; four cars; silverware; and a Steinway piano.
Yet another CNBC personality, the normally mild-mannered Charlie Gasparino has attacked Obama and rightly so.
Gasparino says his kashya on the Obama Administration is who is the biggest midget in the room.
First, Santelli, then Cramer, now Gasparino. The White House has been firing back with all kinds of childish insults. These guys should watch their backs. Liberal Democrats are very vengeful. There were various outspoken personalities during the Clinton regime, including Bob Grant, who had the IRS siced on them.
A person who is a rodef (pursuer) who's activities make him a menace to society. This includes one who hires, recruits someone else to commit the criminal activity is considered a rodef. The Torah permits and encourages self defense against a criminal like this. In our generation the most appropriate response to a rodef is contacting the police, and pressing charges. There is no chiyuv to take him to Bais Din, the protection of the individual in harms way is more important than the esthetic pleasure of the rodef.
Does anyone know who the 2 lawyers representing me are as noted on the State website?
D. Epstein & "Gottlieb"
"his kashya on the Obama Administration is who is the biggest midget in the room"
For the record, I am not part of the Obama Administration.
Guantanamo inmates no longer "enemy combatants"
Reuters - Mar 14, 2009
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration stopped calling Guantanamo inmates "enemy combatants" on Friday
Cuomo Demands Details on Bonuses From AIG, Says He Will Investigate
FOXNews - 41 minutes ago
PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO CALL THESE ASSEMBLYMEN AND ASK THEM TO SUPPORT THE MARKY BILL, #A2596 "THE CHILD VICTIMS ACT". PHONE CALLS ARE A LOT MORE EFFECTIVE THAN E-MAILS. LET'S BURN UP THOSE PHONE LINES!
Assembly Codes committee:
Chair " Joseph R. Lentol Legislative Office Bldg. 632
Albany, NY 12248
LentolJ@ assembly.state.ny.us
518-455-4477
Members:
Tom Alfano
LOB 404 (518)455-4627
AlfanoT@assembly.state.ny.us
George Amedore
LOB 426 518-455-5197
AmedoreG@ assembly.state.ny.us
Philip Boyle
LOB Room 402 518-455-4611
BoyleP@ assembly.state.ny.us
James F. Brennan
LOB 842 518-455-5377
BrennaJ@ assembly.state.ny.us
Vivian E. Cook LOB 331 518-455-4203
CookV@ assembly.state.ny.us
Steven Cymbrowitz
LOB 538 518-455-5214
CymbroS@assembly.state.ny.us
Charles D. Lavine
LOB 441 518-455-5456
LavineC@ assembly.state.ny.us
Daniel J. O'Donnell
LOB 819 518-455-5603
OdonnellD@ assembly.state.ny.us
N. Nick Perry
LOB 704 518-455-4166
PerryN@ assembly.state.ny.us
J. Gary Pretlow
LOB 845 518-455-5291
PretloJ@ assembly.state.ny.us
Robin Schimminger
LOB 847 518-455-4767
SchimmR@ assembly.state.ny.us
Dede Scozzafava
LOB 329 518-455-5797
ScozzaD@ assembly.state.ny.us
Michele R. Titus
LOB 741 518-455-5668
TitusM@ assembly.state.ny.us
David R. Townsend, Jr.
LOB 458 518-455-5334
TownseD@ assembly.state.ny.us
Helene E. Weinstein
LOB 831 518-455-5462
WeinstH@ assembly.state.ny.us
Mark Weprin
LOB 626 518-455-5806
WeprinM@ assembly.state.ny.us
Keith L.T. Wright
LOB 844 518-455-4793
WrightK@ assembly.state.ny.us
Kenneth Zebrowski
LOB 631 518-455-5735
ZebrowskiK@ assembly.state.ny.us
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WASHINGTON — The mortgage industry, applying far more scrutiny after a tidal wave of defaults, reported a record number of mortgage fraud incidents last year, with Rhode Island making its first appearance as the nation's top fraud hot spot.
The following dear friends of the Catholic Church belong in the Askanim wing of UOJ's Hall of Shame:
Sephardic Community Federation
Charles M. Mamiye - Secretary
Sam A. Sutton - President
Haim Dabah - Co-Chairman
Ronald Tawil - Co-Chairman
David Greenfield - Executive Director
Trustees:
David Hidary
Michael Hidary
Joseph Jerome
Isaac M. Sutton
Sol Waba
Joey D. Tawil
Jack Cayre
Eli Greenberg
I think the solution to the weingarten mess is to raise 5000 dollars to give to geldtsieler so he has no bone to pick with the poor mother.
There is NO Weingarten mess. The wife did the right thing, and no one should give a hoot what Dayan Shochad Geltzhaler has to say. Bribe tainted dayanus is as perverted as a Roman Kohen Gadol. No word out of his mouth, or of the Mechon LeHoraah can be relied upon until he is removed.
Every Bais Din and dayan must have thorough audits, to determine relationships with, and financial aid from those involved in dinei Torah. Justice is not for sale. Otherwise, Torah is for sale too.
Either dayanim and batei din undergo thorough, rigorous audits, OR NO ONE SHOULD GO TO BAIS DIN.
If you pay me enough money I'll let tarfus into restaurants, and keep them open for six months after knowing the owner is a fake, phony and fraud. I've done it for Finkel before.
Ich bin ah groiseh dayan in a choooooshive bais din. Far a dayan GELT is der ershta zach. GELT is geshreibt in mein nummen.
"Gedolim" advising the Chinese!
*
China's milk victims complain of intimidation
Associated Press Writer Anita Chang
BEIJING – Families whose children fell ill from tainted milk have come under pressure to drop compensation lawsuits, victims' advocates said Tuesday, showing the government's lingering uneasiness over one of China's worst contamination scandals.
Local officials were calling and visiting at least a half-dozen families, urging them to drop their cases against the dairies and accept a government-sanctioned compensation plan giving 2,000 yuan ($290) to most victims, said Zhao Lianhai, the father of a child sickened by the milk.
At least one family has decided to back out of their lawsuit, said Zhao, who has rallied other families through a Web site he created.
"One parent told me, 'I'm more than 30 years old but I've never before seen the county and village officials. Everyone in the family is really scared,'" said Lu Jun, an AIDS activist who has been working with families of tainted milk victims in central China's Henan province.
Infant formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine was blamed for killing at least six babies and sickening nearly 300,000 across China in the scandal that began in September.
Unscrupulous middlemen are accused of adding melamine, which is high in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to fool quality tests for protein content. When ingested, melamine can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.
The scandal rocked the country, culminating in a law enacted in recent weeks that consolidates hundreds of disparate regulations covering the country's 500,000 food processing companies.
The accusations that local officials are trying to intimidate victim's families come despite this month's announcement by the executive vice president of China's highest court, Shen Deyong, that parents who rejected the government's compensation plan were welcome to file lawsuits against the dairies.
It was not clear why local officials would try to stop the families after Shen's announcement. But different levels of government in China often disagree on how to handle matters, and local officials may see lawsuits as a threat to their authority with the potential to upset stability in their community.
More than 600 families have demanded higher compensation than the government plan offers — one-time payouts using money from dairies named in the scandal. Families that take the money can't sue for more unless they can prove they were forced to agree to the compensation plan, lawyers have said.
Wang Zhenping, whose 1 1/2-year-old son became ill after drinking contaminated infant formula, said he has received four phone calls from health bureau officials in Henan's Zhoukou city in the last two weeks. They also have visited his mother's house twice.
"The last time they called me, I told them to call my lawyer," he said, planning to continue his legal fight against Sanlu, the dairy at the center of the crisis.
Phones at the Zhoukou city health bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.
Lawyers representing the victims' families have also run into obstacles in recent days.
Li Jinglin, an attorney who was representing parents of children sickened by Shengyuan brand infant formula, said the Beijing city justice bureau called his law firm last Friday and told his superiors he should not be working on the case. Li said he withdrew from the case but hoped another lawyer could take his spot.
A coalition of lawyers working to sue the 22 dairies named in the scandal is focused primarily on getting at least one case involving the key dairy Sanlu to be accepted by a court in the northern city of Shijiazhuang.
"We just want the courts to accept at least one case as an example," lawyer Lin Zheng said.
http://jewsinprison.org/
Does anyone know if Leib Pinter has reported to any prison yet?
http://hotdocs.usitc.gov/docs/pubs/701_731/pub3669.pdf
I was wondering exactly who massered to the Feds about kosher chicken coming from Canada at reasonable prices as has been reported.
This document says a joint complaint was filed by Rubashkin, Empire & Vineland who conspired together to keep prices high.
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/17/1003779/ou-not-opposed-to-statute-of-limitations-expansion-in-ny
By Eric Fingerhut · March 17, 2009
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The Orthodox Union is not opposed to a New York State bill that would expand the statute of limitations on sexual abuse claims.
In a statement, the group said it "generally supports the expansion of the statute of limitations to enable victims of sexual abuse to pursue legal claims" and is "not opposed to this legislation."
The Catholic Church, which could be subject to a wave of lawsuits due to the change, is opposed to the Legislature's bill.
With recent reports of alleged sexual abuse by rabbis in some New York Orthodox communities, the legislation could have ramifications in the Jewish world as well. The New York Times reported last week that some Chasidic and Sephardic leaders in Brooklyn have been lobbying against the bill. Agudath Israel of America, a fervently Orthodox group, says it is still studying the issue.
The legislation would allow anyone claiming they were sexually abused as children a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations from the date of the bill's enactment -- meaning they could file a civil suit no matter when the alleged abuse occurred. After that one year, the statute of limitations for civil suits would be extended to 10 years after an alleged victim turns 18 from five years.
There are amai haarertz (ignorent people) posing as talmidai chachamim(scholars).
I believe the there are rational absolute truths in Torah, Talmud, Rambam, and Rebbi Nachman.
true Talmedai chachamim and many secular Jews are holy and great. The problem we have in Klal Israel have is with rabbis that are frauds.
Artscroll finally removed Pinter's books from their website, but they continue advertising eight of child molester Moshe Eisemann's works.
fifa was live 2018
"Fifa Live 2018"
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