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Jewish Organizations- YOU ARE WARNED!

I urge anyone who has been a victim,or anyone that has any information at all about abusers and their protectors, to kindly contact Mr. Pasik.

How do any of you who supposedly are working for Klal Yisroel live with yourselves? You at Tora U'mesorah...., if this happened to your child, would you not have set the world on fire to CHANGE the system? Is this child not yours?- UOJ

Comments from two people that were molested.


1-"Regarding people in power abusing woman ,children and the like: At the age of 11 on Yom kippur afternoon I was physically assaulted by a respected member of a " out of town" community -Im not getting into the details but it wasnt pretty- etc. there were actually 2 aydim and drawing of blood no hasroah but definately bordering a chayev misah offense ( yom kippur,drawing blood) to make a long story short I was an 11 yr old wild kid- even my parents werent 100% backing me up- It was that farfetched of a story and this a well respected guy- no waves etc- On the way to his house the next day I took an icepick-my father pulled up to see this, calmed me down etc and that was it I made up my mind that when Im 17-18 big and strong etc like the " older boys" then i was gonna kill him!- Fast track to 17 I still remembered and i was still pissed. I spoke to the rav who knew of this guy and apparently i was noty the only one etc.In his own words " In Europe the askanim would take these kinds of people out of the shul on R'H or Y'K when all the talleisim were over peoples head -take them to the river and DROWN them!!"At this pt I was not too religious and involved with a little shadiness and my comment to the rav was well - screw dina dimalchusa- Im gonna take him to a dark alley etc! his response- " If we were in Europe I would go with you to that dark alley" BUT were not etc etc...Take him to B'D instead- and sue him monetarily for emotional damages this way win or lose - the word gets out! Ok- Before I decided to take it public I had a talk w/ his son - a sweet lo yutzlach who begged me due to shidduchim Please not to go public telling me-" My father is an ANIMAL" - You dont even know the begining of how me and my brothers suffered - never my mother for if so i would have killed him myself!!! With this in mind I decided on a simpler course of action with the sons blessing! 5:30 in the morning on the way to give his daf yomi shiur said rabbi was confronted -alone on a deserted street with jackboots and a .44..................

I did not kill the man.He tried to run and there was a confrontation-I still remember him asking me not to use nivul peh- that was the least of his problem -I directed him to a close by wooded area - got him on his knees- I asked him if he knew vidui baal peh.. He started to beg for his life< to interject- a cpl years before this my father did actually confront him asking him to ask me for mechila-he refused and told my father the following-" If a malach wasnt watching over me that afternoon -I wouldve killed your son!" my father refused to speak with him ever again! Why he didnt do more is another issue altogether>I realized that what happened to me was not gonna change-causing him pain or not,my primary concern at that time was to prevent him from doing things like that again.To that end I calmly explained to him that I would be watching him -If it happened again there will be no questions -and if he so much should lay a hand on anybody again there would be no malach there to save him.No Beis din .No more lies. Din.Dayan.Executioner all rolled into one- He understood very clearly this was not a joke -This was about 6-7 years ago .To my knowledge he has "reformed" He has not (and i keep tabs) bothered anyone since.I see him occasionaly in shul when I go back home- Ill ask him if hes behaving himself.He just quietly nods.Would I actually carry throgh if he would...??? I hope that that is a bridge I dont ever have to cross. The rabbi who was originally consulted in my case as well as many others that he had known about told me directly-" He has a din of a Rodeph" by doing these things hes killing kids neshomas..etc.There is however a dina dimalchusa issue which is why he recommended beis din. In Closing There are many ways to go in situations like these.I personally knew kids who violently confronted rabbis who had molested them etc. and ended up in jail.Clearly that is not a viable option. In my scenario while probably not being the most mature response -I was 17 - It seems to have worked .It seems a threat of imminent death can do wonders for self control.
UOJ and others - How should the COUNTLESS kids who have been abused in one form or another over the years- many still wandering the streets of flatbush,BP, Willy etc. confront the pain?? These are not yechidim- There are A LOT of these kids out there"!!

Friday, September 23, 2005
Why Is This Child Molester Being Kept At Rasha Gamur-Margulies's personal Piggy Bank - Tora Temima

2-Posted By David

"I too was molested by Rabbi Yidi Kolko, both while a student in 7th and 8th grades in Yeshiva Torah V'daas and during those same summers whilst a camper in Camp Agudah.

I used to get rides to school in the mornings with Yidi whether in his old blue car or in his brand new brown car. At that time he lived on 56th Street between 14th & 15th Avenue, whilst I lived on 57th Street, between 15th and 16th Avenues. He was newly married at that time and his first child, a daughter, was also just born then.

Once we got to the Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway, which then was just off of Caton Road, he would park the car (either down the block from the Yeshiva, on the Ocean Parkway service road, or around the corner, I think it was East 5th Street, and ask me to come over and either sit beside him or sit on his lap. Sometimes he would move over to the passenger seat and would then sit me on his lap.

That's when he went fishing. He would insert his hands down the front of my pants and would begin to "search around" to say the least. At the same time he would pull me closer to himself, or would push himself forward againt myself, sometimes even pushing me into the stearing wheel, to the point that it hurt.

Unfortunately I didn't react or complain. The winters were cold and these rides saved on not having to walk all the way to 13th Avenue to wait for the bus (especially on Sunday mornings), you were able to leave your house later since you could always make the ride, and you saved a couple of cents, which was a lot in those days.

During one of those Sunday mornings whilst we were driving on Caton Avenue, whilst I was sitting in the front passenger seat - I almost always sat in the front passenger seat - we were involved in a terrible traffic accident where a car went through a red light and slammed into Yidi's car. B"H we all got out without a scratch.

In Camp Aguda it was the same, whether if he took me into the trees, or into his cabin, or even would take me out for a drive. FYI, during the summer of 1970 I had my bar mitzva in the camp.

I of course told my parents and tried on several times
to explain to them what I was going through, but they didn't want to believe me and my "stories", etc. My father at that time was a very well known and respected person in the Boro Park & Midwood communities and within the Yeshiva world. So I just shut up and let the molestation and perversion continue.

I also think that Yidi Kolko is a danger to the students, past and present in Yeshiva Tora Temimah and I feel that it is about time that the wall of silence be torn down.

Did I suffer as a result, probably. But I have made a life for myself and today am very happily married with 4 wonderful children".

--
Posted by David to UN-ORTHODOX JEW at 9/23/2005 01:49:51 AM

UOJ Comments

Everyone in the community is complicit with this criminal Margulies!
Lipa Margulies is an example of how a BIG crook gets away with murder (yes, murder of the soul of G-d knows how many children),while the little guy gets trampled on.
Margulies is the # 1 low-life in the Orthodox community.
He began his school with a major fraud and massive theft.He is a first class thief and a phony minuvel.His God is the almighty dollar.I know him well, HE DOES NOT HAVE A RELIGIOUS BONE IN HIS BODY!

He continues to harbor a child molester.

Every board member of this school or person of influence should hide themselves in shame!There is no wonder why the community is plagued with tragedies.You bring it on yourselves. Generations of Jewish people suffer because you really don't give a damn about anything that you feel doesn't effect you directly.I hope your kids and grandkids suffer the same fate as the above David, at the hands of a vicious child molester.You are all no better than the KING SCUMBAG of the Jewish community!

UOJ


I am not ashamed to admit that I cried myself to sleep the night that I read this post. My wife kept waking me up in middle of the night because I was screaming in my sleep.

UOJ


Comments By Elliot B. Pasik, Esq.
Long Beach, New York
efpasik@aol.com

Somebody asked me yesterday about the statute of limitations, and I addressed myself to that issue in secular court. However, in halacha, there is no statute of limitations - it doesn't exist. Indeed, at "common law", much of which is based on Torah, there is no limitation period for bringing lawsuits. That's why we call them "statutes" of limitations - these statutes of limitations are in derogation of common law.

Thus, where there are credible allegations of sex abuse against any Jew, you can bring an action in Beis Din, and the "statute of limitations" defense will not be available. And there are some trustworthy, credible batei din which exist today.

In secular court, one can, in the caption of the case, identify oneself as John or Jane Doe, and also move for relief that the file be sealed, not open to the public, where the issues may be exceptionally sensitive. I've done this. If I had a case in Beis Din like this this, I would certainly ask for the same procedure, where my client wanted it.

If a client harmed by a Jew against whom there are credible allegations of sex abuse does not have the ability to pay, certainly, I would offer some level of pro bono legal services. I certainly would not charge for an inital conference. The client would also, clearly, need as to'ayn.

Additionally, by no means should a lawsuit be ruled out, based on the failure of the organized orthodox world to enact reasonable security measures to protect the 100,000 Jewish children attending yeshivas and day schools in NYS, and the 200,000 nationwide. Not to have background checks, and a disciplinary system/registry, is simply unconscionable. As far as the background checks are concerned, in New York it is absolutely clear that the legislative route is currently the way to go. But what about the internal disciplinary system/registry - to compel the yeshiva/day school world to do this, court may be the only way to go.

Certainly, nonprofits can and have been successfully sued in the past, under a variety of legal theories. I recall a case against the Jewish National Fund, based on allegations that they were publicly seeking donations on the representation that they would support projects on the other side of the Green Line, but in fact, they were not doing that.

If you're thinking of a lawsuit against a Jewish organization based on the sex abuse problem, you can be sure I've given that some thought. The OU is primarily an organization that services synagogues, promotes religious programs to youth (NCSY), advocates legal and social positions before the Government, and obviously, is in the kashrus business. It has very little to do with yeshiva and day schools. NCYI is similar to the OU.

Torah U'mesorah is a different story. They are an umbrella group for 700 yeshivas and day schools in the United States, educating 200,000 plus Jewish children. Certainly, their individual schools, and arguably, by extension, Torah Umesorah itself, owe a "special" or "heightened" duty of care to all of the children attending those schools to provide adequate security. Those words are in quotes, because they appear in court decisions.

Some courts refer to this duty as, "in loco parentis" - an ancient Latin phrase that means, in place of the parent. When a parent, under legal compulsion, transfers physical custody of his or her child to a school, that school stands in the place of the parent, and assumes the same duty of care that a parent has toward the child. Just as a parent would not hire a convicted sex offender as a babysitter, a school should not hire a sex offender as a janitor, kitchen worker, teacher, or rebbe.

Just from publicly held lectures, I know of two cases where convicted sex offenders did assault children in our mosdos.

We also simply don't know whether there are, in fact, convicted sex offenders working in yeshivas - because nobody checks. And nobody tells us. Why? Because there's no parents organization. No oversight. No lawyers looking over somebody's shoulder, with the children's interests at stake.

To convince anybody of the extent of the problem, go onto the website of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, click onto sex offender registry, and there you will find the lowest of the low - thousands of convicted Level 3 sex offenders - those adjudicated to be at the highest risk for repeating (Level 2 is moderate, and Level 1 is low risk, and they don't get onto the public website). You can search by county, zip code or name. And if you search by zip code, type in the zip codes for Borough Park, Rockland County, and Albany, click onto the Jewish names, and then staring you in the face will be Jewish men with beards and yarmulkes - Level 3 sex offenders. And there are other jurisdictions in this country where you can do the same thing. Then consider that any of these men can apply for a job in a yeshiva or day school, not get background-checked, and get the job. I printed some of these web site photos up, and in a discussion I had with a Rosh Yeshiva on this issue, he was very attentive, and supportive, but he wasn't really moved until he saw the photos. It is astonishing.

Ah, what about UNconvicted sex offenders. That is point 2 of my two point proposal. The vast majority of sex offenders don't get arrested and convicted. This is why we need an internal mechanism, possibly under the umbrella of Torah U'mesorah, or a parents organization, for internally disciplining any yeshiva/day school employee who is violent or commits a sexual assault. The New York City Department of Education has such a system and so too does every other public school system. We have 100,000 yeshiva/day school students in New York State. We need our own system, and we don't have one. At the two May 2003 Torah Umesora and RCA Conventions, several speakers told of incidents in which rabbi-molesters move from one yeshiva to another, after credible accusations are made. We have to stop this, by developoing an internal disciplinary system, and registry. The frum organizations have not done this, so we the parents must step in.

This is exactly what the May 2005 Resolution says, which I proposed and drafted - and was totally overlooked by the Jewish media. Its on rabbis.org. First, we need background checks, and next, we need a disciplinary system and registry.

Quite frankly, this is not complicated stuff. We just have to do it. But the RCA is primarily a synagogue rabbi organization, so they can't do it, and Torah Umesorah, an educational umbrella group of 700 yeshivas, which would seem like the right address for this, has failed to act. And even if they did belatedly act, what role do the parents play? Me? You? Where is the oversight?

In my opinion, the legislative route, as I've described, is preferable to a lawsuit, but if the legislative route fails - perhaps because there may be opposition from some quarters - certainly, then, all options should be considered. Public education departments get sued all the time for these kinds of things, and certainly, we all know what has happened in terms of lawsuits against the Catholic Church. We must remember that these are our children we're talking about, not the school's not the rabbi's, our children.

All of this clearly, clearly, clearly, needs an organization, despite the comments from the sole dissenter, Anon 5:05. None of us, not me, not UOJ, not anybody, can work alone.

I would also certainly cooperate with any newspaper interested in any aspect of this story.

Anon: 5:05. I see no useful purpose in continuing a dialogue with you, because it seems like you've got your mind made up, despite my saying that there are numerous aspects and nuances to this whole story which can't be told on a Blog. There is information out there which you are simply unaware of, and which can only be related in a b'kavodik organizational setting, where there is some reasonable level of confidentiality amongst the people involved, and where there is a thoughtful, intelligent exchange of ideas among activitist people. That's why I keep repeating that a parents group is necesssary. Practically every school in America, public and private, has a parents' organizations, except - did I say this before? - the Jews.

We need oversight, we need ideas, we need activism, we need each other - one more time, these are our children we're talking about.

I'm glad to hear that UOJ has gone to the Forward, and I would certainly cooperate with any journalist interested in this story.

Lip-Shits All Over Himself

The Yated's editorial, in part.

During the past year the New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, has engaged in an effort to undermine a sacred component of Mitzvas Milah. He and his department recently stepped up their activities in this regard and issued directives and advisories aimed at planting fear in the hearts and minds of parents who are about to bring their child into the holiest covenant in Judaism.

The threat is not only against metzitzah b’peh. It is a slanderous and offensive diktat that undermines not only a specific element of Bris Milah, but assaults the entire concept of Bris Milah itself.

He claims to be “educating.” What he is actually doing is far more sinister.
Frieden clearly has overstepped his bounds. He was asked to back down from his assault on the privacy and sanctity of religious choice. But he does not relent. Last week he openly mocked a group of distinguished Rabbonim whom he called to an urgent meeting, by suggesting that they relinquish their religious authority to the Catholic Church.

An insult of this sort from a government official is reminiscent of the slurs once aimed at the Jewish community by foreign anti-Semitic governments of the past.
Indeed the lights of the nairos have glowed, but their flame must continue to illuminate the darkness. We pride ourselves on the amazing accomplishments Jews have reached throughout political and socio-economic levels. But the fact that shomrei Shabbos senators, mayors, doctors and lawyers abound in this country is not enough to guarantee that our freedom to practice our religion with all its sacred minhagim and particulars, will be upheld.

When the attack appears to equate our practices with those of tribal cults that are unsanitary and dangerous, a spear is being hurled at the heart and soul of a nation that is no stranger to hostile campaigns of this nature.

At stake is nothing less than the right to religious freedom, a lynchpin of the Constitution that we should never take for granted.

We must insist on the liberty to continue the practice of our tradition with every nuance and detail of the beautiful customs that are an integral part of the written law. It is our mesorah. It is our heritage. And our heritage is as sacred as our Torah.(You are an ignorant liar, perverter of our Torah, and an unbelievable asshole- I just thought I'd stick that in-UOJ)

Everyone concerned with these imperatives must let his voice be heard. Because when the dictates of bureaucracy begin to govern our spirituality, then our religious integrity has been compromised and walls of our tower have been breached. “ Ufortzu chomos Migdalai.” It is not long before the oil is defiled and the menorah hauled away.

Perhaps a commissioner will next mandate the use of electric menorahs because of his “concern” for our safety.


We get so comfortable here that we forget at times the message of the agalos; we lose sight of our mission and our goal. We forget that we are on a dangerous and treacherous path in golus, one that requires constant vigilance.
We need reminders so that our spirits can be lifted and we can return home. Let the image of the flames of the Chanukah menorah burn brightly in our memory so that we remember that at the end of the day, victory belongs not to those who boast of numbers, status or militarily might, but to those who battle for what is right and true.

Just as in the times of the Yevonim whose determination to uproot us from the Torah was miraculously defeated, so too, in our times, modern-day warriors who fight for the inviolate purity of Torah will be rewarded from Above with the consecration of the Beis Hamikdosh, speedily and in our day.


Jewish pornography at it's worst
UOJ

NEW ADDRESS-UNORTHODOXJEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM-ADD "S" TO JEW

Readers,
I am in communication with Mr. Pasik Esq., he is spending his own resources trying to institute various laws and programs to protect our children and vulnerable adults from sex abuse. I have done my due dilligence on this gentleman; he has an impeccable reputation in the legal as well as the Jewish community. I am urging members of our community to assist him in this noble and much needed effort.


I'm a lawyer, and I've been active in trying to do something about the problem of sex abuse in our community. In person, on the telephone, and by numerous letters and e-mails with all of the major frum organizations, I've been trying to accomplish two things:

1. Criminal background checks of all employees and volunteers working in yeshivas/day schools;

2. Torah U'mesorah having an internal registry of people who are unfit to work in our mosdos, because of a history of violence or sex abuse.

In May 2003, Torah U'Mesorah had a seminar on the problem of sex abuse, and some of the speakers said that the concept of a registry has been endorsed, but nothing has yet been done.

I got a boost in May 2005, when the RCA at its Convention passed a Resolution that I proposed and drafted, which endorses my two proposals. You can read it on their website, rabbis.org.

At this point, I've written letters to the Governor, and leaders of the Assembly and State Senate, asking for a new statute (law) that would require criminal background checks in all nonpublic schools, i.e., yeshivas, day schools. As I state in my letter, 42 out of 50 states require their public schools to perform background checks; 10 states require their nonpublic schools to do background checks; without compulsion of law, many nonpublic schools and volunteer youth groups are doing background checks, e.g., all Catholic schools, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Little League of America, etc. Only we Jews aren't doing this.

Public support for my proposal would help, and if you, or someone you know, or any other serious person reading this blog would like to invite me to speak somewhere, I am available.

Finally, I hope to form an association of yeshiva/day school parents and friends that will push this proposal, and also explore other, new ways to make our schools a better and safe place for our children. Again, all interested persons can contact me at my e-mail address below. I do have some specific ideas in my mind. I particularly need somebody with computer skills to set up a website, which will include some of my letters on this issue; and I also need lawyers who can set up a nonprofit corporation, eligible for tax deductions.

Kol tuv.

Elliot B. Pasik, Esq.
Long Beach, New York
efpasik@aol.com

The Wrong Message From The Gun For Hire Charedi Stooge

by Jonathan Rosenblum

Though the economic crisis of the chareidi community in Israel is much discussed subject, that discussion typically focuses on the threat to our yeshivos or trumpeting the percentage of children under the poverty line to demonstrate the failure of the government's social and economic program. Much less frequently discussed is the impact of poverty on our homes and families.

I know of no authoritative statistics on the number of gittin in the chareidi community, but each one of us is privy to plenty of anecdotal evidence of the rise in divorce, in particular among young couples. Prior to the Gaza withdrawal, the black humor in at least one community with a high concentration of younger couples went: "Yehudi aino m'garesh Yehudi, aval Yehudi megaresh Yehudiah -- A Jew does not expel another Jew, but a Jew does divorce a Jewess."

Economic factors are rarely the only factors behind divorce. But no one would deny that economic pressures are adding new stresses to marriage, and that many marriages are not standing up to the strain. As Chazal say, "Arguments are not found in a man's home, except as a consequece of [a lack of] grain" (Bava Metziah 59b).

One of the leaders of the generation recently asked a respected talmid chacham to undertake a kollel in a community with many young couples. He couched his request not in terms of limud HaTorah, but rather in terms of "pikuach nefesh". The gadol told him that he personally knew of 12 cases of gittin in that community in which economic pressures were a major factor.

In many of these cases, the problems begin soon after the wedding, when the husband is unable to secure a place in Kollel. The areas to which young couples are attracted by virtue of relatively lower housing costs, are also furthest removed from major population centers and good jobs. As a consequence, many young married women find themselves with little, or no, work.

Even if the husband in such a situation spends most of the day in a beis hamedrash --by no means an easy matter, if one is not a member of a kollel -- the young couple inevitably find themselves too much in one another's company. Too frequently, each feels that their spouse has somehow failed him or her, either by failing to secure a place in kollel or to find a job, and as the pressures caused by a lack of incoming income mount so do the mutual recriminations.

The economic pressures on young couples are only one aspect of the problem. Unfortunately, those pressures do not abate with time and the growth of the family. A rosh yeshiva of a yeshiva ketana recently told me that even families in which both parents work, are often unable to pay full tuition, especially if they have already married off one or two children and are heavily in debt. By that time, of course, the marriage is on a much sounder basis than for young couples but daily, grinding pressure takes its toll on the ability of even the finest people to deal with the challenges that all married couples face.

NOT UNRELATED TO THE STRESS ON MARRIAGES from a lack of money even for basic necessities is the adverse impact on children.

We would like to think that the simplicity with which we live conveys to our children a message of mesirus nefesh for Torah. And that is no doubt true in many cases.

But where there is constant discussion in the house of a lack of money or squabbling between parents over monetary matters, the children may end up receiving a message far different than that which the parents intended to convey. The message for many children in such a situation is that money is the solution to all problems and that Torah learning is the cause. And that may be true even where the parents mesirus nefesh is in fact extraordinary and a reflection of both parents' sincere desire to sacrifice for the husband's growth in Torah learning.

Someone close to one of the leaders of the generation once told me of a young boy just a few years after bar mitzvah, who came into the gadol's house and demonstratively threw down his kippah. The gadol asked him to explain his dramatic act. The boy's reply: "Everything is no, no, no. We can't afford that because Tatte learns Torah. Even when all I want is a cheap candy, the answer is still, "No, because Tatte learns." That teenager viewed Torah study as a source of deprivation, rather than of the greatest imaginable joy, with predictable consequences for his future learning and mitzvah observance.

During his years as a rav in Tzitevian, Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky was very poor. His salary was collected from the members of the town in the smallest possible coins. Reb Yaakov and his Rebbetzin possessed only one pair of galoshes between them, and he had only one shirt to wear. Yet whenever the children asked for something, Reb Yaakov was careful not to tell them that he could not afford the item in question. Instead he always explained why the item in question was not really necessary.

Better that the children should see him as a tightwad, Reb Yaakov felt, than that they should feel that their father was unable to provide for them. Not only do too many of our children lack the security of feeling that their parents are able to supply their basic needs, but they feel that they too are destined for a life of even deeper poverty.

In the end the hidden costs of rampant poverty on the quality of our marriages and our children may turn out to be even greater than the more obvious consequences of poverty.


UOJ Comments

Jonathan,

Now I know you have lost it completely. Are you suggesting that the opening of new kollelim is a matter of life and death?? Do We need MORE kollelim and more young men breeding poverty?

How confused have you become? How many kids are you willing or able to support in kollel?

Assuming the average Charedi family has only five kids and each kid has five kids, add their spouses into the equation and in no time there are 30 people added to the welfare roles.

What kind of advice is this from a Yale graduate? Either you have become a dishonest broker for the Fundies, or you have gone off the deep end.

Then you end the article with an imaginary Art Scroll story, pathetic!

Shame on you!

An Open Letter To Rabbis Moshe Tendler And Dovid Feinstein

Rabbonim,

This is the open letter I published July 20, a mere five months ago, urging Mordecai to settle this issue with the RCA. Please read it very carefully. I will direct a new letter to you at the end of the July letter to Mordecai.

(I urge readers to go back to July 20, click on the comments, and see how wrong you were for blasting me. I'm talking particularly to a few "bigshot" bloggers who have as much brains as the amoeba and apes they came from).



Wednesday, July 20, 2005
An Open Letter To Mordecai Tendler

I have no idea whether you are guilty or innocent of the many charges against you.

I do assume innocence,although the latest developments with the RCA causes me to pause.

I do not have a horse in this race.
I do not have a kugel in this oven.
I do not have a black hat on this head.

So for starters you need to know I hope you are innocent.

I did not say I hope you are" found "innocent,because the only thing you can be" found" is guilty.
You know what the score is. Either you are guilty or innocent,there is no gray area.
I do know what this fight with the RCA represents, and that makes me a nogaih b'dovor, because whatever the outcome of this matter, all streams of Orthodox Jewry will be affected.

Trying to avoid the well known cliche, I have come up with my own.

WHERE THERE IS CHOLENT,THERE IS HEARTBURN!

The above is a general rule that I learned throughout my own trials and tribulations that life offers. I sense that there is something here that does not quite meet the proverbial eye.
You have waited way too long to come out swinging. These rumors have been swirling around for years.

Why pick a fight with an adversary that you can not beat? You can NOT beat them!
They will destroy whatever is left of your reputation.
I am not saying you should not be defending yourself, but this Israeli bais din gimmick sounds and feels like camouflage and subterfuge.

I know Rabbi Shmuel Fried extremely well. He is the toain or attorney for the RCA.
A few things you must know about this guy.
HE IS THE SMARTEST AND SHREWDEST TOAIN ALIVE TODAY.
We speak often on business issues, especially when it comes to real estate.
He is unbeatable when his client is right, and never takes a case unless he is sure they are.

HE WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN ON THIS INTERCONTINENTAL BATTLE UNLESS HE IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT HE CAN WIN!


I know of your Toain Mittleman,he is out of his league.

Mordecai Tendler,

You are getting very bad advice.
Your ego will destroy you and your family.

This is my advice to you.

Give it up!

Have your respective representatives meet in private.

Let both sides come up with a pareve statement that is ambiguous.
Fried is a big mentsch,he will encourage a respectable settlement.

Mordecai,
You are in way over your head.
Your father and all your uncles will not be able to help you.
Fried will absolutely crush you!

SETTLE,SETTLE,SETTLE!

You are still the rabbi of your shul, if you proceed with this nonsense you will lose your job.
You will join Moshe Londinski from Seattle in no man's land.

I hope you don't one day have to look at this blog, wishing that you should have listened to this anonymous blogger.

The problem is people do not listen to free advice, so send a check in my name to your local Tomchei Shabbos.

GIVE IT UP!

SAVE YOUR FAMILY FROM MORE GRIEF!SETTLE BEFORE YOUR LIFE WILL BECOME UNBEARABLE.posted by Un-Orthodox Jew | 12:05 AM | 36 comments



Rabbi Moshe Tendler And Rabbi Dovid Feinstein,

You are both New York boys, so no need for warm and fuzzy language.

You messed up big-time.

Instead of sitting down with Shmuel Fried and settling this matter, you let Mordecai and your egos get in the way of reality.
I warned Mordecai that Fried was going to CRUSH him. The legal action brought by Ms. Marmelstein has Fried's fingerprints all over it. He destroyed your son without himself or the RCA going to court.

Who do you think is behind this lawsuit. Who's idea was this and who encouraged her to proceed like this out of the blue??? Who do you think is advising her?

SHMUEL FRIED!!!!

You gotta be crazy to fight with Fried. He's doing this thirty some odd years and is a genius. Your family and all the good that it once represented will be turned into fertilizer.

And Fried has just begun, He will hit you from every direction imaginable.
He will pull witnesses out of his shtreimel that you never knew existed.
Mordecai will be facing criminal charges as well by the time Fried gets done with him. He has more tactics and strategies than Shlomo Hamelech had wives and concubines.

Proceed at the peril of "you" being accomplices in destroying your own family.

Sit down with Fried and settle, he can help you with the Marmelstein lawsuit, and pull the plug on his other tactics that will hit you in the head.
Pay no attention to Mordecai, he lost it years ago and needs serious help. You should force him to resign his job at KNH before he destroys that kehilla and whatever is left of your family's reputation.

Mordecai is lying to you; SETTLE WITH FRIED, SETTLE WITH THE RCA, SETTLE WITH MARMELSTEIN, GET THIS BEHIND YOU BEFORE THIS KILLS THE BOTH OF YOU.

I'm publising the Marmelstein lawsuit for shock value only. Perhaps Mordecai hid it from you. Read it carefully, PEOPLE DO NOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP. There is more coming, it will be relentless. SETTLE, SETTLE, SETTLE.

I wish you well,
UOJ


Case Against Rabbi Mordecai Tendler - Supreme Court of the State of New York County of New York

Supreme Court of the State of New York County of New York
Filed: December 20, 2005
Index No: 05117629
Plaintiff designates New York County as the place of trial
Summons
The basis of venue is plaintiff's residence
Plaintiff resides at:
(Address removed)
County of New York

Survivors Adina Marmelstein, Plaintiff,
-against-
Kehillat New Hempstead: The Rav Aron Jofen Community Synagogue, and
Mordecai Tendler, Defendant

To the above named Defendants:
You are hearby summoned to answer the compliant in this action and to serve a copy of our answer, or, if the complaint is not served with this summons, to serve a notice of appearance, on the Plaintiff's Attorney(s) within 20 days after the service of this summons, exclusive of the day of service for within 30 days after the service is complete in this summons is not personally delivered to you within the State of New York); and in case of failure to appear or answer, judgment will be taken against you by default for the relief demanded in the complaint.

Dated: New York, New York
December 20, 2005

Yours, etc., Kramer and Dunleavy, LLP
Attorneys for Plaintiff

Lenore Kramer, Esq.
A Member of the Firm
350 Braodway, Suite 1100
New York, New York 10013
(212) 226-6662


Defendants Addresses:
Kehillat New Hempstead: The Rav Aron Jofen
720 Union Road
New Hempstead, New York 10977

Mordecai Tendler
653 Union Road
Spring Valley, New York 10977
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Page 2

Supreme Court of the State of New York County of New York

Verified Complaint
Filed December 20, 2005
Index No: 05117629

Survivors Name Adina Marmelstein, Plaintiff,
-against-
Kehillat New Hempstead: The Rav Aron Jofen Community Synagogue, and
Mordecai Tendler, Defendants.

Plaintiff, by her attorneys, KRAMMER & DUNLEAVY, LLP., complaining of the defendants, respectfully alleges, upon information and belief, as follows:

1. That at all times hereinafter mentioned, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE, was and still is a domestic not-for-profit corporation duly organized and existing pursuant to the Religious Corporation Law of the State of New York.

2. That at all times hereinafter mentioned, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE held itself open to members of the public as a place of worship, guidance and sanctuary.

3. Defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was and still is the founder and leader of defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.
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4. Upon information and belief, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was and still is an employee of defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.

5. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER had a reputation as a scholar, educator and community leader within the Orthodox community.

6. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER held himself out to the public and to the plaintiff as a counselor and advisor with an expertise in women's issues.

7. That the plaintiff (SURVIVORS NAME REMOVED) first became acquainted with defendant MORDECAI TENDLER and his work on behalf of women in 1994.

8. That beginning in 1994, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) consulted by telephone with the defendant MORDECAI TENDLER on various personal issues.

9. That beginning in 1995, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER began to actively recruit plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) to join his congregation at defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.

10. That in September, 1996, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) began attending services at defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.
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11. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER took on the role of counselor and advisor to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) and did counsel and advise her with respect to her personal, legal and financial problems.

12. At all relevant times, a relationship of confidence and trust existed between the plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) and the defendant MORDECAI TENDLER.

13. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER represented to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that she was his "favorite" and his "closest."

14. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER represented to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that he would "be there" for all of her needs.

15. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER represented to the plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that he would assist her in finding a prospective husband so that she would be able to marry and have children, as she wished.

16. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER represented himself as an advisor, a father figure and a god to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED).

17. Beginning in November, 2001, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER began a sexual relationship with plaintiff (NAMED REMOVED).
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18. That from November 2001 through May, 2005, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER had an ongoing sexual relationship with plaintiff (NAME REMOVED).

19. That prior to and throughout the duration of the aforsaid sexual relationship, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER advised plaintiff (NAME REMOVED)
that she was "close to the possiblity of finding a husband" and that she would never find a husband in her current state.

20. That prior to and throughout the duration of the aforesaid sexual relationship, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER advised plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) to permit him to have sexual intercourse with her so that her "life would open up and men would come" to her.

21. That prior to and throughout the duration of the afordsaid sexual relationship, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER advised plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that "Everything was closed" to her and that she should let him "open up her to the world."

22. At all relevant times, defendant "MORDECAI TENDLER advised plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that, if she had sexual intercourse with him, "doors would open," she would be "open up to meeting men" and she "would get married and have children."

23. That from November 2001 through May, 2005, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER had sexual relations with plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) at
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various locations, including in his rabbinical study at defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.

24. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER told plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that he "was as close to God as anyone could get."

25. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER told plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that he "talks to God all the time."

26. At all relevant times, defendant "MORDECAI TENDLER told plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that he "was the Messiah."

27. That plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was induced to engage in this physical relationship with defendant MORDECAI TENDLER as part of a course of sexual therapy which he represented would lead to her achieving her goals of marriage and children.

28. At all relevant times, defendant (MORDECAI TENDLER warned plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that, if she told anyone about the sexual therapy, he "would have her placed in a straight jacket," "have her put in the penitentiary" and/or "have her thrown in jail."

29. At all relevant times, defendant "MORDECAI TENDLER warned plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that, if she told anyone about the sexual therapy, he "would have her banned from the shul (synagogue)" and "would turn the community against her."
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30. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER advised plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) that engaging in sexual relations with him, was her "only hope" to open her up to become receptive to men.

31. At all relevant times, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) believed the words, advice and threats of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER.

32. That once plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) submitted to his course of sexual therapy, rather than assisting her to reach her goals of marriage and children, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER physically and emotionally abused plaintiff for his own sexual pleasure and gratification.


AS AND FOR A FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION FOR FRAUD

33. Plaintiff repeats and reiterates each and every allegation contained in paragraphs 1 though 32 inclusive, with the same force and effect as in specifically set forth herein at length.

34. That the aforesaid representations made by defendant MORDECAI TENDLER to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) were false and reckless.

35. That at the time he made the aforesaid representations, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER knew them to be false and reckless.

36. That defendant MORDECAI TENDLER made the aforesaid representations with the express intent to deceive plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) and induce her into a sexual relationship with him.
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37. That in knowingly making the aforesaid false and reckless representations to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED), defendant MORDECAI TENDLER took unfair advantage of his position as her counselor and advisor.

38. Plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) relied on the false and reckless misrepresentation of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER and engaged in sexual relations with him.

39. That had plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) known that the course of sexual therapy advised by defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was solely for his personal pleasure and gratification, she would not have engaged in sexual relations with him.

40. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was physically violated, had her reputation impugned, was ostracized from her synagogue and has lost her standing in the community.

41. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) has been injured and damaged in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all the lower Courts that would otherwise have jurisdiction over this action.

AS AND FOR THE SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION FOR BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY

42. Plaintiff repeats and reiterates each and every allegation contained in paragraphs 1 through 41 inclusive, with the same force wand effect as if specifically set forth herein at length.
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Page 9

43. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER occupied a position as fiduciary to the plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) as her counselor, advisor and therapist and owed her a relationship of trust and confidence.

44. That as a result of the foregoing, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER breached his fiduciary duty to plaintiff (NAME REMOVED).

45. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was physically violated, had her reputation impugned, was ostracized from her synagogue and lost her standing in the community.

46. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was caused to and has suffered and sustained severe and serious personal injuries, severe and serious conscious pain and suffering, severe and serious mental distress and anguish and attendant economic losses.

47. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) has been injured and damaged in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all lower Courts that would other wise have jurisdiction over this action.

AS AND FOR THE THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION FOR INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

48. Plaintiff repeats and reiterates each and every allegation contained in paragraph 1 through 47 inclusive, with the same force and effect as if specifically set forth herein at length.

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49. Defendant MORDECAI TENDLER encouraged his congregates at defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE, to harass, threaten and intimidate plaintiff (NAME REMOVED).

50. The congregates at defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE did harass, threaten and intimidate plaintiff (NAME REMOVED).

51. Defendant MORDECAI TENDLER engaged in a concerted scheme to embarrass, humiliate and diminish plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) in the orthodox community so as to injure her reputation and destroy her credibility.

52. Defendant MORDECAI TENDLER knew, or should have known, that his actions towards plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) in falsely inducing her into a sexual relationship, in physically violating and abusing her, in causing her to be harassed, threatened, intimidated and ostracized from the community and in intentionally injuring her reputation and standing in the community would result in serious emotional distress, pain and suffering to her.

53. In doing the actions hereinabove alleged, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER acted with willful, wanton, reckless, intentional and deliberate disregard for the likelihood that plaintiff would suffer severe emotional distress, pain and suffering as a direct and proximate result of his actions.

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54. The aforementioned wrongful conduct of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was extreme and outrageous and went beyond all bounds of civility and decency.

55. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was caused to suffer severe mental and emotional distress, pain and suffering.

56. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) has been injured and damaged in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all lower Courts that would otherwise have jurisdiction over this action.

AS AND FOR A FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION FOR NEGLIGENT INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

57. Plaintiff repeats and reiterate each and every allegation contained in paragraphs 1 through 56 inclusive, with the same force and effect as if specifically set forth herein at length.

58. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was aware that plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) trusted him, relied on him and placed her confidence in him.

58. At all relevant times, defendant MORDECAI TENDLER knew or should have known that his actions would cause her severe mental and emotional distress, pain and suffering.
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59. That as a result of defendant's actions, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was caused to suffer severe mental and emotional distress, pain and suffering.

60. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) has been injured and damaged in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all lower Courts that would otherwise have jurisdiction over this action.

AS AND FOR A FIFTH CAUSE OF ACTION FOR NEGLIGENT RETENTION

61. Plaintiff repeats and reiterates each and every allegation contained in paragraphs 1 through 60 inclusive, with the same force and effect as if specifically set forth herein at length.

62. At all relevant times, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE was aware of the aforesaid conduct and actions of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER.

63. At all relevant times, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE knew or should have known of propensity of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER for the aforesaid conduct.

64. At all relevant times, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE knew or should
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have known that defendant MORDECAI TENDLER used his rabbinical study at the synagogue to conduct his sexual therapy sessions with congregation members.

65. At all relevant times, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE knew of facts that would lead a predent party to investigate the use by defendant MORDECAI TENDLER of his rabbinical study at the synagogue.

66. At all relevant times, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE had notice of prior allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by defendant MORDECAI TENDLER.

67. That in spite of the aforesaid notice of prior allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by defendant MORDECAI TENDLER, defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE took no steps to warn or protect plaintiff and other female congregants, to adequately supervise defendant, to remove defendant from his position of authority or to make an appropriate investigation.

68. That defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE, was grossly negligent as follows: in failing to properly and adequately supervise the activities of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER; in failing to use reasonable care to correct the conduct of defendant MORDECAI TENDLER; in failing to remove defendant MORDECAI TENDLER was an employee; in failing to conduct an adequate and appropriate investigation; in
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failing to warn congregants of in failing to take the steps necessary to have prevented the fraud and assault on plaintiff; and, in further failing to exercise that degree of due care as a reasonable party under the same or similar circumstances.

69. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was physically violated, had her reputation impugned, was ostracized from her synagogue and lost her standing in the community.

70. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) was caused to and has suffered and sustained severe and serious personal injuries, severe and serious conscious pain and suffering, severe and serious mental distress and anguish and attendant economic losses.

71. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) is entitled to recover punitive damages from and against defendant KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE.

72. That as a result of the foregoing, plaintiff (NAME REMOVED) has been injured and damaged in a sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all lower Courts that would otherwise have jurisdiction over this action.

WHEREFORE, plaintiff demands judgment against defendants KEHILLAT NEW HEMPSTEAD: THE RAV ARON JOFEN COMMUNITY SYNAGOGUE and MORDECAI TENDLER for both compensatory and punitive damages in the sum which exceeds the jurisdictional limitations of all lower Courts that would.
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otherwise have jurisdiction over this action and is within the jurisdiction of this Court

Dated: New York, New York
December 20, 2005


Yours, etc.,
KRAMER & DUNLEAVY, L.L.P.
By Lenore Kramer
A Member of the Firm
Attorneys for Plaintiff
Office and Post Office Address
350 Broadway - Suite 1100
New York, New York 10013
(212) 226-6662
________________
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VERIFICATION

STATE OF NEW YORK )
:ss
COUNTY OF NEW YORK)

I, the undersigned, an attorney admitted to practice in the Courts of New York State, state that I am a member of the firm of KRAMER & DUNLEAVY, L.L.P. attorneys for the plaintiff in the within action; I have read the foregoing verified complain and know the contents thereof; the same is true to my own knowledge, except as to the matters therein stated to be alleged on information and belief, and as to those matters I believe it to be true. The reason this verification is made by me and not by plaintiff, is because the plaintiff is not now within the County where deponent maintains her offices.

The grounds of my belief as to all matters not stated upon my own knowledge are as follows:

Conversations with plaintiff and a review of the file maintained at my office on this matter.

I affirm that the foregoing statements are true, under the penalties of perjury.

Dated: New York, New York
December 20, 2005

Lenore Kramer

Famous Author Looking For Participants From New Jersey

Dear Readers,

I received this e-mail from Hella Winston, the author of the Unchosen. I read her book, no surprises, but a very interesting read.
I am in communication with the author; she assures me that she has no other agenda other than to report the various experiences of people who are struggling with, or who have left Orthodox Judaism.The identities of the people will not be revealed.
She kindly requests that you e-mail me at: a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com; I will forward them on to her.

Hello! I am writing to introduce myself, and to ask whether anyone
who posts here is from New Jersey. The reason I ask is that there is
a reporter from a New Jersey (Jewish) paper who is planning to write
a story pegged to my book, Unchosen, about the issues it raises. He
would like to speak with people who grew up strictly Orthodox
(chassidish or litvish) in New Jersey, or who live there currently.

He is interested in people's intellectual and emotional struggles,
as well as how they are treated by the larger the "community" if they
go public with their doubts and questions,leave altogether, etc.
One of the issues I have discussed with him is the way in which people
who openly question, or who "go off,"often get labeled as mentally ill, narcissistic, unable to control their lust, losers, etc.

But I don't think my thoughts are nearly as compelling
as hearing from people who have actually lived this experience.
If anyone here feels that they would like to be interviewed
for this article (the reporter has assured anonymity), I will put you in
touch with the reporter. (The Newark Star Ledger is also planning a
similar piece and is also looking for participants as well, but I
believe that will happen later in the month).

Thanks so much and I apologize in advance if anyone here feels that this post was in any way an intrusion into your privacy.

Hella Winston

Another Chag, Another Scandal -Kashruth & Money Don't Mix Well With Oil

by N. Katzin

Two weeks ago Taaman CEO Chaim Shalom told the following telltale fact: If olive oil is priced below NIS 20 per bottle it might be fake. One week later Taaman olive oil could be found on grocery store shelves for NIS 11.75. So what is the smart consumer to conclude? This anecdote typifies the state of the olive oil market in the chareidi sector during the Chanukah season. It seems the rumor mongers who started disseminating stories about supposedly fake olive oil did not imagine how high up the rumors would spiral.

The wild competition in the lucrative oil market reached its peak recently when competing dealers sent samples of each other's products to the Israeli Standards Institute for lab testing, only to find not a single brand met the institute's standards. What are we to make of these findings? Have commonly sold olive oils really been uncovered as fake? What does the kashrus seal on the bottle indicate?

The first rumors in circulation spoke of revelations that products labeled olive oil were actually not made from olives according to the Standards Institute. These vague rumors from unnamed sources effectively indicted all of the dealers selling low-priced oils. The rumors were accompanied by supposed telltale signs of fake olive oil.

Chaim Shalom of Taaman, whose oil was sold at a relatively high price, explained that the primary identification mark of fake olive oil is the price. "Every bottle sold today under NIS 20 is suspect since the oils in Spain itself are currently priced at approximately NIS 17 per bottle," he said. The same rumors suggested the chareidi consumer could also spot fake olive oil according to the shape of the bottle. These rumors were accompanied by praise for the quality of Taaman olive oil, which should be a sufficient tip- off for even the innocent reader to realize this is not exactly objective advice.

The rumors alerted the managers of chareidi grocery store chains who were astonished to discover an attempt had been made to set high price levels by disseminating vague rumors about low-priced products. They insisted olive oil sold for NIS 15-19 — and even less — was genuine.

The claims of false olive oil were reminiscent of the walnut oil affair on Erev Pesach 5765, when major shortages in olive oil jacked up prices significantly. At the time Yated Ne'eman revealed that the exclusive importer, Taaman, was accused of taking advantage of the situation to rake in large profits at the public's expense. The company's CEO denied the claims.

Discovered Fake Last Chanukah

Where did the rumors really originate? Apparently from a combination of factors.

The only bona fide fake was a product labeled "Yerushalayim Semen Zayit Katit," which HaRav Machpud's Yoreh De'ah organization announced was no longer under their kashrus supervision. But this was actually old news, for a simple test revealed it was fake even before last Chanukah.

Last year the standards institute issue a press release saying two brands of olive oil, Yerushalayim and Romis, had been found to be diluted with soy oil although they were packaged as fine pressed olive oil. Both brands were marketed for eating, not for lighting purposes, whereas the recent rumors referred to candlelighting oil.

Another brand, Menora, also lost its kashrus certification. Contrary to rumors Chug Chasam Sofer of Bnei Brak did not remove its kashrus certification because the product was not genuine olive oil.

"We discovered the oil was purchased by a party that bought the oil in barrels, bottled it and sold it to two dealers who marketed it," a Chasam Sofer spokesman told Yated Ne'eman. "We learned the bottled oil was sent to a certified lab for tests and was found to be 100 percent pure, clean olive oil. But because the oil was not under our supervision at the time of packaging we removed our kashrus certification and announced that Menora olive oil was not under our responsibility."

"Anyone who reads the wording of the announcement carefully can see this was stated very clearly, not that fake [olive oil] had been discovered but that the oil was packaged without supervision and therefore we do not take responsibility for it. The decision was made several days before we made a public announcement and certainly before the rumors about fake [olive oil] began to circulate."

The Kashrus Seal and the Reliability of the Oil

The products the rumors refer to were marketed under mehadrin kashrus. What does the kashrus seal indicate? Does the hechsher apply only to the kashrus of the product or does it include supervision over the reliability of the claims by the manufacturer or dealer?

According to the Badatz Eida Chareidis its kashrus "includes supervision to ensure the oil is 100 percent pure olive oil as the label indicates. We are very careful to avoid misleading the public in this matter, which is important in and of itself."

Through its representatives in Eretz Yisroel, Dayan Osher Yaakov Westheim's kashrus organization also confirms the olive oil under its supervision is 100 percent pure. They say Maagal Hashana Olive Oil was under their supervision "from the start of the production process to the finish, all along the way through the marketing of the product. In the middle samples were sent to certified labs and it was found to be clean olive oil."

Dr. Eliyohu Licht, a chareidi chemist and an established authority in the area of kashrus, refused to comment on any brand of olive oil, but remarked, "Every chemist checks the samples brought to him at the lab and the certification applies to these samples and not all of the products. The chemist certainly does not oversee or grant a hechsher for the products.

"I would also like to state regarding quotes that had me saying one brand of candlelighting olive oil or another is edible and the label `Semen Zayis Lema'or' is affixed because of import customs, etc.—if the manufacturer does not take responsibility the olive oil is edible nobody else will take responsibility for determining the oil is edible."


Pure Olive Oil — But Does Not Meet Standards

Dr. Eliyohu Licht explains in greater detail what tests are conducted on olive oil.

The first test is to check the fatty acid, which provides an indication of its source. Every type of oil has a different composition, which allows us to identify whether it is olive oil or a different type of oil, i.e. whether the olive oil was diluted with a different type of oil. If the additives are a substantial percentage they can be discovered at this stage.

Two other tests relate to quality: Acidity testing: olive oil contains free acids. The standard institute ascribes different terms to olive oil according to a ranking of acidity. Extra virgin cold pressed olive oil has an acidity level of up to 1 percent. Virgin olive oil has an acidity level of up to 2 percent. Regular olive oil has up to 3.3 percent.

Beyond 3.3 percent acidity, according to the standards this is inedible olive oil. Dr. Licht notes, "The public should be made aware that even if the standard sets an upper limit of 3.3 percent still this does not mean that in actuality the oil cannot be consumed. The limit is hard to determine. In any event olive oil above 3.3 percent acidity is not fake. It is pure, clean olive oil, but it is not of high enough quality in the eyes of the Standards Institute. By the way, acidity level is advancing and rising all the time [as part of the normal aging process of olive oil]."

Another test is peroxide value: oil that comes in contact with air oxidizes and goes bad over time. The standard institute has determined that within one year of bottling the peroxide level should not exceed 8. It definitely can happen that when the bottle was filled the oil has a value of 2-3 and at the end of the year it is hovering around the 8- mark.

This leads us to an interesting conclusion: olive oil should not be stored, certainly not for more than a year, for its quality diminishes over time.
( In other words, throw out the oil so you have to buy F*** NEW kosher oil next year at a higher price, GET IT??? - Who makes this shit up? UOJ)

Another test is solvent residue. Olive oil can be 100 percent clean, but pose a health hazard. Using a chemical process oil can be extracted from olive dregs after the pressing. Although the oil is clean and has a low acidity level, its quality is poor and it may contain chemical residue.

Note: This article addresses consumer, not halachic issues surrounding olive oil (except for the sidebar).

The closer Chanukah came the stiffer the competition became. Dealers sent samples of competing brands to private labs for testing and reveled in the findings: none met the standards for olive oil. But their exultant claims competing brands were "fake," were based on a lack of knowledge and understanding, for the standards institute does not have a separate set of criteria for candlelighting oil.


Did a shyster infiltrate the group of dealers involved in the import and marketing of candlelighting oil and deceive the public by diluting olive oil? This claim goes unsupported. It goes without saying that the chareidi consumer should not buy olive oil blindly but should choose the product based on the trustworthiness of the importer, manufacturer and seller, and of course "mehudar" kashrus.

Ho-Hum just another day in the world of bullshit hashgachas.
UOJ

Rabbinic Judaism Inc.

A Portable God for the World’s First Multinational Business


Sources:
Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (Phoenix Grant, 1987)
Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (Pluto Press, 1994)
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew (Harper Collins,1992)
Henry Hart Milman, The History of the Jews (Everyman, 1939)
Josephus, The Jewish War (Penguin, 1959)
Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)
Karen Armstrong, A History of Jerusalem (Harper Collins, 1999))
Jonathan N. Tubb, Canaanites (British Museum Press, 1998)
Norman Cantor, The Sacred Chain - A History of the Jews (Harper Collins, 1994)

Whatever daughter religions might spin off from old Judaism, the parent religion itself had inevitably to refashion itself for the new era. After the disaster of 135 AD, a number of Jews retreated into asceticism, banning meat and wine altogether, since sacrifice in the temple was no longer possible. Others lost themselves in mysticism, attempting to reach the ‘celestial throne’ via their imagination, the forerunners of the later ‘Kabala’.

But for all their suffering, most Jews were not ready to bastardise their traditional creed by infusing it with the dying godman mythology. The vacuum was filled by ‘Rabbinic Judaism’, the inheritor of the Pharisee tradition.

"The rabbis, a smallish group (perhaps a hundred or so in the whole Roman empire) of religious specialists descended from the Pharisees, gradually enhanced their status and developed a specifically Jewish way of arguing, which marked them off quite dramatically from both Christians and Romans." (Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods, p234)

In Palestine itself, where the Jews were now a minority, what remained of traditional Judaism turned inward. No longer could its priests use the ‘temple magic’ once used to summon divine favour, no longer could Judaism be proselytised.

The Rabbis became ‘clericalised’ – obsessed with cultic ‘rules’ as a practical substitute for the lost temple. They peopled the air itself with beneficent and malign spirits. A Jewish ‘code to live by’ - the Mitzvoth (the forerunner of ‘monastic rules’) detailed no fewer than 613 rules, governing every pious moment from waking to sleeping, to keep the Jew on the right side of an all-seeing God.

‘His rising from his bed, his manner of putting on the different articles of dress, the disposition of his fringed tallith, his phylacteries on his head and arms, his ablutions, his meals, even the calls of nature were subjected to scrupulous rules – both reminding him that he was of a peculiar race, and perpetually reducing him to ask the advice of the Wise Men, which alone could set at rest the trembling and scrupulous conscience.’ (Milman, History of the Jews, p165)

Within a few generations Judaism would be codified anew, into a portable (albeit confining) religion which could accompany and – fatally – identify this pseudo-race in their wanderings in the centuries ahead. By the close of the fifth century, the total population of Jews would be half of what it was at the beginning of the ‘Christian era’.(See, Cantor, ibid)

The Jewish people – dispersed but bonded by an exclusive faith, uniquely among ‘peoples’ – established enclaves in every major city from India to Spain, from Arabia to Britain. Capitalising upon this network of ‘safe havens’, and with a filial presence in every major resource, from African ivory to Germanic slaves, the Jews threw themselves into the commerce of the ancient world.

Jewish merchants traversed with impunity the hostile frontiers between Rome and Persia, sailed the sea lanes from the chilly rivers of Germany to the balmy seas off the Horn of Africa. The Jews became dealers in amber and fur, gold and silver, slave-traders and money-lenders.

But they were also dealers in superstition as well as produce:

‘The empire swarmed with Jewish wonder-workers, mathematicians, astrologers, or whatever other name or office they assumed or received from their trembling hearers.’
(MiIlman, History of the Jews, p158)

Levies on their new wealth paid for a programme of synagogue building, and in turn, the synagogues strengthened the bonds of the Jewish communities. Rarely assimilating into their host cultures, convinced they were especially favoured by the deity (and thus strengthened in their faith), the heady mix of piety and mercantilism rewarded the Jews with an unparalleled financial success – and an unequalled and universal opprobrium.


UOJ Comments

Sound familiar?

Kosher Electricity-What's Next?

Gedolei Yisroel Call for Reinforced Efforts to Use Kosher Electricity on Shabbos

by A. Cohen

Gedolei Yisroel including Maran HaRav Eliashiv, shlita, signed a letter of encouragement for the askonim who are making marked progress toward plans to install a Shabbos generator for the entire city of Modi'in Illit.

The letter was written by HaRav Eliashiv and his signature appears along with those of HaRav Aharon Leib Shteinman, HaRav Shmuel Halevi Wosner, HaRav Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, HaRav Nissim Karelitz, HaRav Chaim Kanievsky and HaRav Shmuel Auerbach. "It is a great mitzvah," read the letters, "to assist the activists who committed themselves to this important matter of strengthening Shabbos observance by supplying the city of Modi'in Illit with electricity on Shabbos generated without chilul Shabbos, which is an act of kiddush Sheim Shomayim."

The gedolei Yisroel who signed the letter attach great importance to kosher electricity in every place with a large concentration of chareidi residents. "It is well known how [strongly] Maran HaChazon Ish zt"l [opposed] the use of electricity generated through chilul Shabbos Kodesh. And it is kovod Shabbos for the botei knesses and streets as well to be illuminated by electricity kosher for Shabbos."

The letters ends, "And may all of those helping toward this effort be blessed with the blessings of Shabbos, which is the source of all blessing. As is stated in the Talmud Yerushalmi, `"Bircas Hashem hi sa'ashir" refers to Shabbos' (Brochos, Chap. 2, Hal. 7), "and may the merit of the tzaddik [the Chazon Ish] protect all of those assisting in this matter to be blessed with all of the blessings written in the Torah."

The letter was written at the end of Tishrei following progress in setting up the electrical plant in Modi'in Illit. Recently the plan took another major step forward when City Council Head Rabbi Yaakov Guterman met with top officials including Electricity Authority Chairman David Assos, Electric Corporation's CEO Dr. Yaakov Ratzon and the assistant directors in charge of planning the generator project. At the meeting the two sides signed an agreement on the construction of the plant.

Electric Corporation heads said they were pleased over the letter by maranan verabonon, which was presented during the course of the meeting. They pledged to work to have the Shabbos power plant in operation as soon as possible.

The Modi'in Illit project is expected to serve as an example for other places with large chareidi populations.

UOJ Comments

The Charedis' coffers are dead broke.
The organizations are corrupt from top to toe, stealing, yes stealing from the government and fraudulently raising money for people and causes that are non-existent. Who is dreaming this shit up?

Do people stay up at night thinking what other chumras we can slap on to our followers? Boasting that R' Elyashiv signed his name to this "important" cause, tells us how OUT of touch he is with the reality around him.
He is suppose to pasken for us in America, when he is clueless as to what is going on in his own backyard???

Kosher electricity is on it's way to Monsey, Boro Park and Flatbush while we are probably eating non-kosher food. I'm certain that's what the Chazon Ish had in mind.
Any more window dressing coming? Any more cover-ups of the real problems, by changing the subject?
This is sickening!

Chaval!!!

A History Of Kashrus Scandal In America

By Joseph Adler

When the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe to the United States began in the late 1880s there were about two hundred major congregations in the country, of which only about a dozen were Orthodox. Indeed, for most of the nineteenth century no Orthodox rabbi of repute had established himself in the United States. Organized Judaism remained foremost a virtual monopoly of the Reform movement, which the German-Jewish immigrants of earlier decades had brought with them to America.

Orthodox congregational life in the two decades preceding the advent of the twentieth century was at best chaotic, and lacked real leadership. Congregations created by the Orthodox immigrants were constantly springing up, only in many instances to be torn apart by factionalism within a short time. In most cases the services at these little synagogues established by the first groups of Eastern European Jewish immigrants were conducted by the most learned members of each congregation; often their learning was quite minimal. Plagued by a lack of qualified rabbis, ignorant of the problems poised by life in a secularized environment, Orthodox leadership was slow to grasp the fact that Old-World religious authoritarianism could not easily be transferred wholesale to the New-World. In the new environment with its congregational polity and voluntaristic character, the automatic leadership of the rabbinate was not accepted without question.

This situation was a far cry from Eastern Europe where the rabbi had served as a communal rather than a congregational official. With State approbation, legal matters among Jews had been left to Jewish law, and the rabbis adjudicated that law. In short, a rabbi had been envisaged not as a pastor but as a jurisconsult. In America, however, the State pre-empted virtually all matters of law. Thus, for example, a rabbi could not grant divorces, could not decide matters of inheritance and adoption, could not so much as perform marriage ceremonies without State approval.

Adding to the Orthodox rabbi's diminished power and prestige in America during this period of mass immigration, was the competition he encountered from non-ordained self-styled "reverends." Indifferent to Jewish, or even American law, many of these charlatans presided over dubious practices. They conducted questionable marriage ceremonies, and granted illicit divorces, and most profitably of all, competed in the single area of Jewish life that offered authentic rabbis a certain economic security — namely, the supervision of "kashrut" (the Jewish dietary code), especially those laws relating to ritual meat slaughter.

Scandals relating to "kashrut" were already an old story in Eastern European Jewish life, but nowhere did they flourish as extensively as in the United States, a nation lacking an officially recognized Jewish communal authority. Agonizing over this state of affairs an attempt had been made as early as 1879 to organize the Orthodox congregations of New York. The effort, however, proved abortive. Some years later, in 1886, a group of eighteen Orthodox consregations managed to successfully band together under the name Association of American Orthodox Rabbis. They agreed to import a rabbi from Europe who would be given the title "chief rabbi," and be responsible for rulings on matters of ritual and belief; raising the spiritual level of the faithful; and bringing order to the preparation and sale of kosher products.

Accordingly, the Association of American Orthodox Rabbis corresponded with the leading rabbis in Europe, and eventually settled on the choice of Jacob Joseph, a highly respected rabbinic scholar of unimpeachable piety. Rabbi Joseph had been born in Kovno (Lithuania) in 1848, and as a youth studied at the famous "yeshivah" (talmudic academy) at Volozhin under Hirsch Leib Berlin and Israel Salanter. His aptness as a student had won him the title "harif" (sharp-witted), and after ordination he served as a rabbi in various Jewish communities of the Russian Empire. Joseph's piety and scholarship was soon recognized and he was rewarded with the prominent post of "maggid" (preacher) of the great Jewish community of Vilna (Lithuania).

The Association committed itself to pay Rabbi Joseph the munificent salary of $2,500 per year, and bestowed upon him the title "chief rabbi." In July of 1888 stevedores at the port of Hoboken (New Jersey) were treated to the spectacle of some ten thousand bearded Orthodox Jews awaiting Joseph's arrival. The Lithuanian rabbi was greeted appropriately with cheers, pious chanting, and prayers of welcome.

However, from the outset the appointment of Rabbi Joseph by the Association created a furor among certain Jewish circles. Many Orthodox congregations who did not partake in the selection refused to recognize Rabbi Joseph's leadership. Reform Jewry, on the other hand, remained indifferent or hostile to the entire idea of a "chief rabbi." Jacob Joseph's appointment was particularly resented by the Anglo-Jewish press, then dominated by German Jews. Thus, the New York correspondent of Isaac Mayor Wise's American Israelite, even before Rabbi Joseph's arrival in America, expressed bemusement that a man who spoke neither German nor English, and whose vernacular was an unintelligible jargon (Yiddish) had been chosen as a fitting representative of Orthodox Judaism to the world at large. The Jewish Messenger in its editorials cautioned Rabbi Joseph to appreciate that in marriages and divorces the courts of the State must be sought for redress, and not a rabbinical court that the "chief rabbi" was known to favor.

From the start Rabbi Joseph realized that his major mandate was less to cope with marriages and divorces than to bring order to the system of "kashrut," notably the kosher meat business. It was a lucrative business and notorious for its strong-arm methods, chicanery, and squabbles. The butchers and "shochatim" (ritual slaughterers), as well as some rabbis had repeatedly been locked in disputes over the income from "kashrut": fist fights were not uncommon and disregard for Jewish law and Board of Health ordinances were rampant. Exploiting the vacuum of both secular and rabbinical authority, Jewish abattoir owners and retail butchers alike resolved the matter by engaging their own rabbis, or pseudo-rabbis to validate the ritual purity of their products. With this seal of "kashrut" the entrepreneur kept his foothold in the Jewish market and justified the higher prices derived from its religious value. The system lent itself to corruption, and it has been estimated that during this period possibly half the kosher meat sold to the Jewish public was non-kosher. Until the arrival of Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York no one had dared tamper with the highly lucrative arrangement of the abattoirs and butchers.

To facilitate Joseph's task the Association of American Orthodox Rabbis proposed a penny tax upon poultry. Every bird slaughtered in the abattoirs would be under the strict rabbinical control and supervision of Rabbi Joseph's staff, and stamped accordingly with a lead seal. It was anticipated that the penny tax and the congregational dues paid to the Association would be sufficient to cover the salaries of Rabbi Joseph and his inspectors. Instead of easing Joseph's job the lead seal became a weight which dragged the "chief rabbi" to depths of indignity and eventually led to his downfall.

To many housewives the tax smacked of price gouging. For Jewish radicals, and for most of the Yiddish press, the tax was reminiscent of the infamous "karobka," the hated levy imposed by the czarist Russian government on kosher meat. An equally bitter protest came from the ranks of the butchers and slaughterers who were convinced that inspection best which inspected least. They expressed their discontent by forming their own association with the aim of resisting outsiders from gaining control over their industry. In addition, some rabbis threatened with the loss of their income from the abattoirs and butchers, and resentful of the exalted state and salary conferred on the "chief rabbi" joined in the agitation against Joseph and the penny tax.

Opposition to the Association and to Rabbi Jacob Joseph also came from a number of Galician and Hungarian congregations who were unwilling to submit to an authority dominated by "Litwaks" (Lithuanian Jews). Instead, they decided to look for a "chief rabbi" of their own, and in 1892 settled on Rabbi Joshua Segal as their choice. What followed was a squalid competition between the two "chief rabbis", and their partisans over the supervision of "kashrut." In 1893 still another rabbi entered the fray. His name was Hayim Vidrowitz of Moscow. He managed to gather to his side a few followers from a number of Hassidic "shtiblakh" (prayer rooms), and hung out a sign reading "Chief Rabbi in America." Asked who had given him this title, Rabbi Vidrowitz replied, "the sign painter."

Rabbi Joseph, despite a small and appreciative following could not overcome the centrifugal forces in the New York Jewish community. Reduced to shame and parody his influence gradually declined. The Association of American Orthodox Rabbis soon began to renege on payments of Joseph's salary, and for all practical purposes became a mere paper organization. Eventually, the Association dissolved in an atmosphere replete with acrimony.

Rabbi Joseph left without a source of income was forced to move his family to a squalid Lower East Side tenement flat. There disillusioned and ill he suffered a series of paralyzing strokes and in 1902 at the age of fifty-four he passed away. The Yiddish newspaper Forward in an editorial on his death stressed that Rabbi Joseph had been a sacrificial offering to business-Judaism.

Even in death Jacob Joseph was not to be spared further indignities. Perhaps guilt ridden at their treatment of this gentle scholar, a crowd estimated at between fifty and one hundred thousand lined the route of Joseph's funeral cortege (July 30, 1902). As the funeral procession coiled its way through the Lower East Side enroute to the Grand Street ferry it stopped at synagogue after synagogue. Finally, turning into Grand Street the procession reached the factory of R. Hoe & Company, makers of printing presses. The Hoe establishment was a massive building occupying a solid city block. Some one thousand employees worked there, nearly all of them Irish. Animosity of the Irish toward the Jews at this time was a fact of life in New York City. Much of this hostility had its origins in Catholic religious attitudes; distrust of Jewish political radicalism; and Jewish economic competition in the marketplace. In an earlier period of American history this hostility of the Irish immigrants toward other groups whom they feared or saw as competitors had resulted in the infamous Civil War draft riots directed against the blacks of New York City.

During Rabbi Joseph's funeral as the hearse passed directly in front of the R. Hoe plant the employees on the second floor of the building began emptying buckets of water on the tightly packed mourners, then hurling bottles, screws, and blocks of wood. Enraged, a number of Jews ran into the building entrance, shouting in Yiddish, and attempting to get at the missile throwers. At that point the factory superintendent blasted the Jewish interlopers with a powerful stream of water from a fire hose, and then turned the water on the mourners in the street.

After some forty minutes the violence ebbed, and the funeral procession began to move again. Belatedly then, some two hundred policemen arrived on the scene. Led by an inspector named Kevin Cross, who allegedly ordered his men to club their brains out, the police ignoring the Irish factory workers suddenly waded into the crowd of Jewish mourners. Shouting anti-Jewish epithets, swinging their clubs vigorously the police drove the Jews back from the R. Hoe building. Heads and arms were broken, and bodies relentlessly beaten as the police joined by R. Hoe employees continued to pursue the fleeing Jews. By the time the assault had ended a half hour later over three hundred Jews required medical attention. Adding insult to injury scores of Jews were arrested and fined whereas only one R. Hoe emoloyee was detained.

This disgraceful episode which in many ways reminds one of the recent Crown Heights riots shocked the Jews of the Lower East Side. At no previous point in the life of the community had there been so free a display of Jewish anger. The Forward observed that nobody ever talked about inequality in America. Indeed, everyone tried to hide it, not only the Gentiles, but the elite of American Jewry. Continuing on, the newspaper noted that the behavior of the police, and still more the attitude of the American press, clearly proved that there was little sympathy for Jews. At this moment of shame the Forward editors bitterly commented not one English newspaper, not one Christian voice, was raised in protest.

Protest meetings followed, resolutions were passed, and Jewish delegations besieged City Hall demanding justice. Mayor Seth Low, who not long before had been elected on a reform ticket appointed an investigative commission. The ensuing hearings and commission report confirmed a widespread pattern of police anti-Semitism. Mayor Low then launched an extensive house cleaning of the police force. However within three years the reformist program abruptly ended. Unseating the mayor in the next election Tammany Hall would control City Hall for the next thirty years, and police reform was low on its list of priorities. However, not all Irish Tammany municipal sachems sanctioned the attack on the Jews during Rabbi Joseph's funeral. John Ahearn the Tammany chief eager to win Jewish support for his organization ordered his followers to break every window in the R. Hoe factory as a sign of his displeasure.

In retrospect Rabbi Jacob Joseph was a victim of changing times and a New-World setting. An Old-World rabbi, his outlook could no longer evoke credence among a rising generation of immigrant children, and an older generation eager to escape through congregational independence the bonds that had formerly tied them to a European style hierarchy.

Rabbi Urinates In Aisle, Diverts Brooklyn Flight

Associated Press-name changed to slam the asshole.


-- FBI investigators said Lipa Margulies was the unruly passenger who caused a United Airlines flight to be diverted to Ocean Parkway instead of Lakewood.

Authorities said he lit a cigarette, argued with a flight attendant, then urinated and made a kaka in the plane's aisle.

Margulies was taken off flight 1502 over the weekend and questioned by police, a spokeswoman said.

The man was "acting extremely inappropriately," the airlines said. "When you want to run a safe airline, we don't tolerate that type of activity on our aircraft."

Flight attendants noticed that Margulies appeared drunk not long after the plane left Miami. Margulies later lit a cigarette, started singing "oi es iz gut tzu zine a Yid", and allegedly began to argue with a flight attendant who asked him to put it out, she said. He said something about being so happy because he fleeced some old people out of their life savings.

He obeyed, but when the flight attendant walked away, he allegedly stood up, urinated, and took a crap on the person in row 9c.

People familiar with the alter kaker/pisher, say he can't help himself, he has been urinating and shitting on people all his life.

Why The OU-Yisroel Belsky & Star K-Moshe Heinneman Are Blasting The Shit Out Of Each Other

Kosher craze sweeping U.S.

Major food manufacturers, grocery chains compete for 9 billion dollar kosher market; analysts say market for kosher products growing at 15 percent per year

Associated Press

UOJ comments at the end of this article

When U.S. supermarket giant Albertsons hired Yaakov Yarmove more than three years ago, the company found a point man to navigate what might seem like an unlikely market for a grocery chain with stores in places like Cheyenne, Wyo., and Evanston, Ill.: kosher food.

Albertsons, one of America's largest grocery chains, has since dramatically expanded kosher aisles at hundreds of its supermarkets across the country.

The company has also launched more than two dozen kosher destination stores that include everything from bakeries to delis.

"There's a kosher awakening," said Yarmove, an observant Jew who is Albertson's corporate kosher, marketing and operations manager.

"Kosher was perceived as scary and foreign. Now it's perceived as chic. I think everybody is realizing that there is an opportunity," he added.

Bringing matzah to church

The Idaho-based Albertsons is just one of many companies around the country competing to get a lucrative slice of an approximately USD9 billion kosher industry that is growing at a rate of 15 percent a year.

Experts say the boom is being fueled by several factors, including vegetarians and younger customers looking for healthier and safer food – the same demographic that has helped the organic market take off. Plenty of these customers are not Jewish.

"When I take the matzahs to the church, they love it," said Ursula Torres, of Manhattan, who was buying 100 percent wheat matzos recently at Streit's, a Jewish landmark on New York's Lower East Side.

Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior research analyst with Mintel International Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm, recently completed a nationwide study in April that produced some surprising results about the kosher craze.


She found 55 percent of the people who buy kosher products believed the food was better for them – almost double the number in a similar study Mogelonsky conducted in 2003.

"They trust the kosher symbol like they'd trust the Good Housekeeping seal," she said.

Part of the trust, Mogelonsky said, is derived from how the animals are raised. There is a popularly-held myth that Jewish law forbids the use of antibiotics, additives, hormones or feeding animal byproducts to animals raised for kosher slaughter. But Jewish law has no such regulations.

Jewish for 'good food'
Manischewitz, one of the best-known kosher food companies in the world, is developing an advertising campaign that says their name is "Jewish for good food."

Hebrew National, a division of ConAgra Foods, has always touted that famous tagline found on its packages: "We answer to a higher authority." But over the summer, the company decided to move the "Finest Kosher Quality" seal to a more prominent spot on certain product packaging.

Lou Nieto, president of packaged meats at ConAgra, said two things are driving the double-digit growth at Hebrew National, which recently opened a new state-of-the-art kosher facility in Michigan.

"First and foremost is taste but number two is that it's 100 percent kosher beef – nothing artificial," said Nieto, who oversees the Hebrew National brand.

He added that sales were being bolstered by non-Jewish customers, who devour the company's popular hot dogs at hundreds of venues across the United Stat

To meet demand, the industry has undergone radical changes, recognizing that kosher food is more than matzo, gefilte fish and borscht.

The transformation was on display last month in New York at Kosherfest 2005, a convention that drew more than 6,100 retail and foodservice buyers, manufacturers and distributors from 36 countries.

"Anything that can be made kosher, is being made kosher," said Menachem Lubinsky, who founded Kosherfest. "Even the Chinese are going kosher."

Kosher dumpling wrappers – no problem. Asian sesame ginger noodle and Thai chili sauce? They got it. Italian kosher. It's in abundance. Penne rigate, lasagna, angel hair, and all enriched with soy protein. There is also a kosher energy drink called "Kabbalah."

And it seemed like almost everyone was selling humous, creating a war of the chick pea. If any one food is leading the kosher charge, it might be humous.

One of the biggest humous makers is Sabra Go Mediterranean, produced by Blue & White Food Products in New York.

"Today, all the hippies buy this stuff," said Nissim Ohana, who distributes Sabra products and has been selling kosher food for 20 years in the United States. "Humous has become a very hot item.

At Streit's, the venerable New York company is adapting to the changing environment, producing Mediterranean, Spelt and five-grain matzos, along with spreads like sundried tomato morsels.

"Chains carry it," said Alan Adler, director of operations at Streit's, which has been making matzos since 1925. "Our products are on the shelf year round. We are having trouble baking enough matzos."

In two decades, Ohana, an Israeli, has seen the number of Brooklyn stores purchasing his kosher food rise from 16 to more than 200.

"Five years ago, it wouldn't have sold," said Frank Widdi of Met Foodmarkets in Brooklyn. Widdi, a Palestinian, now has two separate refrigerators with humous, including one for Sabra which he gets from Ohana.

A Palestinian selling kosher humous?

"Business is business," Ohana says.



Rabbis Rule Romaine Lettuce Off Limits to Kosher Consumers

Kosher Today-New York

A cross-section of Orthodox rabbis ruled last week that “it is forbidden” to eat romaine lettuce and several other packaged vegetables, including Spring Mix and Baby Spinach, because of insect infestation. The 30 rabbis, however, noted that “this prohibition does not apply to iceberg lettuce, cabbage or greenhouse vegetables provided they are under a reliable, expert hashgacha.” According to several rabbis reached by Kosher Today, a key target of the edict published in many Jewish newspapers was Fresh Express, whose certifying rabbis have since withdrawn their certification. A spokesman for the Orthodox Union said that while the US grown romaine lettuce was off limits, it approved the romaine lettuce grown in hothouses by Alei Katif, which after having being evicted from the Gaza Strip was said to have resumed production in Israel’s Negev Desert. The letter by the rabbis singled out pre-washed romaine lettuce, romaine hearts, romaine mixes (European, Italian, Greener Selection) and Fresh Leafy Salads (such as Spring Mix and Baby Spinach).

The letter noted: “It is unfortunately our duty to inform you that insect infestation was found in most packages, regardless of the company or the supervising authority…Caterers, restaurants and stores that offer these products are guilty of offering food that is forbidden by Torah law.”

UOJ comments

The OU lead by Yisroel Belsky was on the attack. The Star-K, Moshe Heinneman's organization was permitting it.
As we can see from the numbers, "Kosher" is a multi-billion dollar business.

Moshe Heinneman was relying on a p'sak "he said" was told to him by Rabbi Aron Kotler z"l. UOJ called the Kotler & Schwartzman families and none of them knew of this psak by RAK, which would permit eating lettuce that normally had bug infestation in excess of ten percent of the time checked; providing that a particular batch of lettuce was checked and found bug free.
In other words, Heinnemann claims RAK told him you can go by a particular batch; if there is less than ten percent of bugs found, you may eat them.
The OU and gang, say you go by the type of vegetable, if generally there are bugs, you must clean them all or throw them out.

I called Heinneman and asked him the following.

1-When did RAK tell you about this p'sak?
2-How old were you at the time of the p'sak?
3-Why would you have asked this shaila, if the shaila of bugs in Romaine lettuce was on no one's radar screen in the early sixties?( thinking he had asked him in the sixties)

Moshe Heinneman is 67 years old, RAK was niftar in 1962. Assuming Heinneman asked him the shaila that "no one knows about" in 1962, that would put Heinneman at 24 years old. The problem is Heinneman said he asked RAK this shaila the year he came to Lakewood, when he was 18 years old. Counting backwards, this would be circa 1956.
Who in the world was thinking about bugs in lettuce in 1956?????
The whole bug "epidemic" is maybe ten years old!!!

The OU is losing market share to Heinneman, they seem way to eager to do him in.
Heinneman's p'sak from RAK sounds really questionable to me at best, and a friggin lie at worst.
When money is involved everything is possible.

Tell me what you think!

Brain Damage & Death An Outcome Of Fanaticism-Legal Action To Be Filed Against Mohelim And Rabbis Endorsing This Process

City Urges Halt To Ritual Practice

Unprecedented open letter says controversial circumcision technique is dangerous; haredim say they won’t heed warning.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen and Larry Cohler-Esses - UOJ loses his mind at the end of this article.


In the face of a religious court’s failure to conclude its investigation of a mohel who health officials say transmitted herpes to three babies, New York City’s health commissioner issued an unprecedented public warning Tuesday that a controversial circumcision procedure is endangering the lives of Jewish infants.

“There exists no reasonable doubt that metzitzah b’peh can and has caused neonatal herpes infection,” Dr. Thomas Frieden wrote in “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community” about a procedure routinely practiced by mohels in some sectors of the Orthodox community. “The Health Department recommends that infants being circumcised not undergo metzitzah b’peh.”

But some community leaders in sectors of the Orthodox community where the practice is common indicated they would continue to insist on the procedure as a requirement of religious law.

The letter — the Health Department’s first official warning against the procedure — follows an apparent breakdown in an agreement the department had with a Jewish religious court in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

In September, the city withdrew a lawsuit against a mohel the department concluded had transmitted the disease to three babies on whom he had performed the procedure, including one who died as a result and one who suffered brain damage. It also withdrew a court order barring him from continuing to use the technique.

In exchange, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer voluntarily agreed temporarily to stop performing metzitzah b’peh. Rabbi Fischer and his attorney dispute that the rabbi was the source of the infection. And a Jewish religious court took up the case for final resolution. But according to Frieden, the religious court, or bet din, failed to meet the Dec. 1 deadline.

“They’ve since communicated to us that it’s a complicated situation and they’re not sure when they can come back,” Frieden told The Jewish Week. “So rather than let that continue indefinitely, we felt it was important to make clear to the public our own conclusion and position.”

Rabbi David Niederman, liaison for the Williamsburg bet din, said he was “shocked” at Frieden’s reaction to the delay.

“We have set the date, and it might be a little bit later,” he said. “However, I believe that the lines of communication are open, so it’s only a phone call to ask ... when would the report be issued. We did not break down the agreement.”

The rabbinical court, he said, “is making a very thorough and broad investigation. They will not leave one stone unturned.”

But whatever the court’s ultimate conclusions about Rabbi Fischer, it will not impact the practice of metzitzah b’peh in the haredi community, said Rabbi Niederman.

“We are convinced that it’s not dangerous,” he said. “Had it been dangerous we would not be performing it, and you know that Hashem [God] would not give something to us that is dangerous.”

In metzitzah b’peh, a mohel orally sucks blood from the site of the genital cut he makes during the circumcision procedure. Not all haredi groups mandate the practice, and the Modern Orthodox-oriented Rabbinical Council of America recommends using a sterile tube and gloves to avoid direct oral-genital contact.

But several haredi sects insist Jewish religious law requires the practice. City officials said mohels from these sects may also apply the procedure outside their communities.

Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, an Orthodox umbrella group, estimates that metzitzah b’peh is performed more than 2,000 times a year in the New York City.

Two New Herpes Cases

In his Open Letter, Frieden reviews seven cases of herpes that have occurred locally, including two this year that the letter discloses publicly for the first time.

Health Department investigators have concluded all were transmitted by mohels performing metzitzah b’peh.

According to Frieden, in one of the two new cases, the infant shows evidence of severe brain damage. The case came to the Health Department’s attention in October.

Frieden said in neither case have the families been willing to identify the mohel who performed the circumcision.

“We are continuing to try to gain their cooperation,” he said.

In legal documents filed several months ago the department stated that herpes, which generally causes just blisters and cold sores in healthy older children and adults, is fatal as much as 30 percent of the time in newborns.

Frieden’s warning against the procedure comes more than a year after a cluster of three neonatal herpes cases were attributed to Rabbi Fischer.

Furthermore, The Jewish Week has learned, the warning comes a full five years after two senior pediatricians at Long Island Jewish Medical Center warned the city that metzitzah b’peh was putting the lives of Jewish infants at risk.

Dr. Philip Lanzkowsky, chief of staff of Schneider Children’s Hospital at Long Island Jewish hospital, said he and a colleague reached out to city health officials and members of Brooklyn’s haredi community about the danger in 2000. The physicians acted after determining that two cases of neonatal herpes brought to Schneider Hospital had been caused by metzitzah b’peh.

“I went to Brooklyn myself and met with rabbis and a representative of the Health Department,” said Lanzkowsky.

He said he acted without publicity at the time, explaining, “One of the things we didn’t want to happen was adverse publicity in the general media that might affect [ritual circumcision] in general. We wanted to deal with it in the local Jewish community.”

There is little doubt the city was aware of Lanzkowsky’s warning. In his open letter, Frieden cites Lanzkowsky’s investigation of the two cases, published in the March 2000 edition of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal.

Asked why he thought the city was acting now, Lanzkowsky said, “Obviously they [the community] didn’t heed the first warning.” But after the death of a child last year, “I think the Department of Health, which carries a responsibility here, could not sit quiet.”

Last year the city began to investigate the suspected link to one local mohel of three herpes cases in 2003 and 2004. As it probed the link, some sectors of the Orthodox community lobbied city officials heavily not to interfere with the practice. That effort included a meeting in August between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and prominent members of the Satmar chasidic community based in Brooklyn and Rockland County as Bloomberg was gearing up for re-election.

“We’re going to do a study to make sure that everybody is safe, and at the same time it is not the government’s business to tell people how to practice their religion,” Bloomberg said one day after the meeting.

‘They Haven’t Banned It’

Frieden issued his statement in two parts: the open letter and a flier titled “Before the Bris: How to Protect Your Infant Against Herpes Virus Infection Caused by Metzitzah B’peh.”

The latter is a one-page “fact sheet” the city intends to distribute directly to new parents at hospitals frequently used by Jewish mothers to give birth, circumventing religious authorities who maintain that metzitzah b’peh is an essential element of brit milah, or ritual circumcision.

The fact sheet introduces options that Jewish parents could have for the ritual circumcision of their new sons — information they might not receive from within sectors of the community insisting on metzitzah b’peh. The fact sheet and letter are also on the Health Department’s Web site, www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/std/std-bris.shtml.

The flier begins with the statement “circumcision has health benefits,” but goes on to explain how herpes is contracted from mohels who employ metzitzah b’peh and encourages parents to “consider other options.”

It takes aim squarely at arguments offered by some fervently Orthodox community leaders in the last few months claiming the practice is safe.

“There is no proven way to reduce the risk of metzitzah b’peh,” the flier says. “Although a mohel may use oral rinses or sip wine before metzitzah b’peh, there is no evidence that these actions reduce the spread of herpes. A mohel who takes antiviral medication may reduce the risk of spreading herpes virus during metzitzah b’peh, but there is no evidence that taking medication eliminates this risk.”

Other members of the haredi community joined Rabbi Niederman in expressing concern over the Health Department’s action.

David Zwiebel, an attorney and executive vice president of Agudath Israel, an organization that represents haredi interests, said he would have preferred the statement not be issued.

But at least “they have been true to their commitment that they would not regulate the procedure,” he said of Health Department officials. “They haven’t banned it and haven’t required some sort of informed consent, which was an idea on the table at an earlier stage.”

Zwiebel was concerned that the department’s action could harm the haredi community’s public image and serve as a “foundation on which other jurisdictions might choose to regulate the practice, or even New York City might do that at some future date.”

Haredi communities often view government agencies as interlopers meddling dangerously with their internal religious affairs. In this case the Health Department’s statement may prompt some to ask questions of their rabbis, Zwiebel said.

“The most likely reaction is that there will be a general message from many of these rabbonim to their communities whether or not — and probably not — the statement from the commissioner could impact their halachic practice,” he said.

Rabbi Levi Heber is a mohel based in Crown Heights, from the Lubavitch community, where metzitzah b’peh is considered a spiritually integral part of the brit milah ritual.

“The concept of non-Jewish authorities trying to influence certain behaviors should not be accepted by anyone,” said Rabbi Heber. “You never know where it could lead.”

Since the potential health risks of metzitzah b’peh hit the headlines, many clients have brought up concerns about it, Rabbi Heber said. “It’s something that’s been brewing.”

But parents “are sincerely interested in finding out the facts, and with a little bit of explanation they agree to it,” he said.

Rabbi Heber said he has never refrained from metzitzah b’peh because of a parental objection, but has had parents say “ ‘do what you have to do, but I’m not going to be there’ ” to see it.

Rabbi Niederman stressed the huge number of metzitzah b’peh procedures performed with no apparent ill effects.

“There have been seven cases, allegedly over a span of 15 years,” he said. “In Williamsburg alone we have close to 57,000 people. The overwhelming majority is very young, so you’re talking about 120,000 brises of metzitzah b’peh. You tell me, is it safer to give a flu shot or to do metzitzah b’peh?'

But Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a dean at Yeshiva University’s rabbinic school and a professor of biology there, as well as an expert in Jewish medical ethics with a doctorate in microbiology, has long opposed metzitzah b’peh as halachically unnecessary and medically dangerous.

In an interview this week, he said that indications of brain damage in one of the boys whose case is being cited by the Health Department should make people aware of the dangers, besides death, of herpes contracted through metzitzah b’peh.

“I’m convinced that many children have been infected and not diagnosed, and years later they are in special education in the schools and no one knows why,” Rabbi Tendler said.

Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, chief of the infectious disease department at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, and an internationally renowned expert in sexually transmitted diseases, agrees.

“Because neonatal herpes has a large variety of presentations, it’s quite likely that cases prior to this recent increased awareness were undiagnosed,” he said. “And because neonatal herpes causes encephalitis, the long-term effects of that infection will be lifelong, including neurological impairment.”

Public health policy experts, including Zenilman, say Frieden’s statement is unusually pointed.

“As these things go this is pretty strong,” said Zenilman.

The only reason the city Health Department didn’t impose an outright ban on metzitzah b’peh, he said, is because it would be nearly impossible to enforce, with most ritual circumcisions taking place in private homes and in synagogues.

Dr. John Santelli, a pediatrician and chair of the department of population and family health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said “it’s difficult when there’s a potential clash between religious values and medical information, but it’s really important that parents know, and for the commissioner to take the position that this is a dangerous practice.”

Health departments have learned from dealing with HIV-AIDS that “in public health you have to start with education, with a community and its leaders,” Santelli said. While the health commissioner has broad latitude protecting public health, in some cases amounting to police authority, officials “rarely take draconian measures because it alienates the people you want to work with.”

“The commissioner is now throwing the ball back to the Orthodox community and saying ‘how are you going to respond to this?’ ” Santelli said. “I hope we don’t have another tragedy.”


UOJ comments and loses his mind about the vile behavior of the Charedi fools.

I picked up the TOILET PAPER OF RECORD in the Jewish community and saw a full page ad about an "Urgent Kashrus Notification".This notice begins with "we have "HEARD" allegations that", and goes on to describe the transgressions of Torah law by eating Romaine Lettuce........, and any restaraunt offering this assortment of foods is "GUILTY OF OFFERING FOOD THAT IS FORBIDDEN BY TORAH LAW".

This ad was signed by; born, bred and educated in America "respected poskim", such as Yisroel Belsky, Shlomo Miller,and Yisroel Reisman. There are another twenty five clowns and mental midgets that signed this ad.

Yet these SAME three guys either visited city hall in protest or have signed endorsements for the unrestricted continuation of the metziza b'peh circumcision ritual under the guise of a "TORAH mandated practice"

The above article speaks for itself. Children have been infected by mohelim performing this practice.
They have either gotten ill, died or have been BRAIN DAMAGED by contracting herpes through this practice.
It does not make a difference if according to Niederman these kids are anyway "only a few" and therefore "BOTUL B'SHISHIM OR BOTUL B"ROV".THIS PRACTICE WILL CONTINUE!

What's wrong with you Belsky & Co? Don't you realize that the illnesses,death and brain damage caused by this "NOT" TORAH MANDATED WEENIE SUCKING, is not immediate?

The repercussions of this barbaric and age old practice which began because of the ignorance of our ancestors on the medical consequences, will be killing our children and damaging our grandchildren for generations.

Chances are that most of you will be dead and not see the tragedies caused by your criminal behavior of endorsing practices that lead to death and illness.
Shame on you for not standing up for what's right.You know better.
Even if there is a chashash (chance) that a child would be harmed you have an obligation to at the very least SUSPEND the practice.

Are all the doctors anti-semites and out to get us????

Can it not be possible that the increasing number of children needing "special education" can be related to a virus that was caused by the herpes infection?

Well, I guess you've got lettuce on your mind, and you can't prohibit lettuce and prohibit metziza at the same time.

I will hold you all responsible for any child's death or illness from today on forward. Any child that gets ill or dies, I will be setting up a fund to file a civil lawsuit against all of you, and urge the D.A. to file criminal charges against you and all your cohorts for MURDER.

I'll see you in court.

Anyone having information of any mohel doing metziza, or knowing of any child getting ill or worse, e-mail me at a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com.
All replies will be held in the strictest confidence.

There Is Nothing Dumber Than A Rabbi With A Little Knowledge

December 14, 2005
Torah: Tookie’s Execution Was A Miscarriage of Justice
Filed by Yitzchok Adlerstein @ 1:50 pm
Tookie should not have been executed.

He may have been a bad man, but he was done in by bad law.

Tookie should not have been executed by the State of California, because his conviction was based on evidence that runs afoul of decency and the laws of the Torah itself. He may have deserved to die, and there may even be poetic justice in that it was injustice that took the life of an unjust man. But his conviction was also a breach of the law – the expectations of our Torah.

Tookie was not executed because he may have contributed, directly and otherwise, to the deaths of hundreds of people. He was convicted for the deaths of four people. The jury convicted him on nothing stronger than the testimony of convicted felons, some of the worst slime known to man. Regarding three of the victims, the testimony was not even about the murder, but about Tookie bragging in jail about his having committed the murders. As I understand it, halacha is quite clear about where the evidential bar must be set in Noachide law. The single witness (to the deed, not to an incident of jailhouse braggadocio) must be observant of the Seven Noachide laws. So says the Chazon Ish. (Avodas Kochavim 69:3 s.v veha.). In Bava Kama (10:15 s.v. v’nireh d’im), he modifies this considerably, taking into account that most of the non-Jewish world is far from perfect regarding a number of the seven laws. The minimum he sets, however, is observance of laws that the majority of people do adhere to: strictures about theft and murder. Those whose testimony doomed Tookie struck out on both counts.

I reject the notion that capital punishment is inherently barbaric and inhumane. The most vocal opponents of the death penalty as completely unjustifiable are the heads of the EU. It is hard to find a more convincing argument in support of court-mandated executions.

I reject the notion that a condemned prisoner can “redeem” himself in any manner or form. The death penalty, once accepted by a given society, is a statement that there are some crimes that simply revoke a person’s license to live. It takes into account the fact that humans can and do change, and rejects that as sufficient to continue existence in the company of civilized humanity. The champions of redemption were most prominently avatars of the entertainment industry. It is hard to find a more convincing argument to reject it, than that is endorsed by the single group least endowed with education, intelligence, stability, or morality. (I specific exclude Mike Farrell, whom I know, respect, and profoundly disagree with.)

Tookie went to his execution maintaining his innocence. I am not ready to smugly declare him wrong. I don’t doubt that he was fully capable of those murders. So were his accusers; so were thousands of Crips, and thousands of Bloods, and thousands of other Angelenos.

In our rush to differ with those who claim that the death penalty is never justified (and heterodox rabbis who never lose an opportunity to proclaim to the world that Judaism stands for the polar opposite position of what the Torah says), we ought not be guilty of what we charge our opponents of doing: ignoring the Torah. The Torah does allow for taking life. It also sets standards of evidence. The evidence is there (as far as I see it) that these standards were not met.

We should not be cheering for something the Torah does not endorse.

UOJ Comments

I read this with disbelief.Since when is the American judicial system suppose to be congruous with the Torah's standard of bearing witness. Where in the world are you going to find a witness in every or any criminal case that keeps the seven Noachide laws? I'm not going to waste my time debating with a shmuck.

I've heard from many people that you're an ass-hole, they were dead wrong, you're the ass itself!

Rabbi Kaduri Taken To Hospital -UOJ Predicts He'll Be Dead Soon, And There Will Be No Moshiach Revelation

Leading Kabbalist, over 100 years-old, said to be suffering from severe flu
Meital Yasur Beit-Or


Earlier, Rabbi Kaduri was taken to the Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem after suffering from weakness. He underwent a series of medical tests, before receiving treatment.

Friends of the rabbi say he has been suffering from severe flu. "We and his family are praying for his welfare," said a friend. Rabbi Kaduri is over 100 years-old.

Kaduri started out as a modest bookbinder, and has become one of the best known Kabbalists in the country.

He was born in Iraq, and immigrated to Israel at the age of 17. He studied in a Jerusalem Yeshiva, and was a student of Jerusalem Kabbalists who worked in the capital at the start of the previous century, including Rabbi Eliyahu, father of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.

Kaduri is considered a world Kabbalah expert.

Many members of the public possess a gold or silver mascot made for them by Kaduri. He has publicly backed the Shas party, and the humble Rabbi was introduced to the party by Aryeh Deri.

In recent months, Kaduri offered a blessing to opponents of the disengagement from Gaza, but surprised many followers when he offered his support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout in April.

"If we give them a small thing and there will peace with them, we can leave Gush Katif. We can trust Sharon, he is okay. It is allowed to give up on territories in Gaza," the Rabbi told an ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

He added: "I have no faith in the Arabs but we must have a little quiet. Sharon's government isn't so bad.

Recently, rumors have circulated in the ultra-Orthodox world that that the messiah has revealed himself to Rabbi Kaduri in dreams.


UOJ Comments

I'm sorry, but in my humble opinion, these guys are frauds.He will be dead soon, and Moshiach will be nowhere to be found.
The damage these guys do to a public starving for some hope for something better than what exists, is mind shattering.
How can any sane person believe in this hocus-pocus? How many times are we going to be duped into believing something that was created by charlatans and dreamers?

Lawsuit Over Yudi Kolko, the Tora T'mima Rebbe's Nipple Fetish Resolved

Lawsuit Over Yudi Kolko, the Tora T'mima rebbe's Nipple Fetish Resolved
By The Associated Press-Edited and amended by UOJ


(AP) - Two former board members who refused to bare their breasts to a 250-pound (120-kilogram), love-language speaking rabbi named Kolko, have settled a lawsuit against the Rebbes Molester Foundation.

Avrohom Greenfield and Yaakov Applegrad claimed they were fired after they refused to expose their bosoms to the rebbe, and after reporting sanitary problems at Kolko's home in Flatbush, an upscale town in Brooklyn, New York.

The pair claimed they were threatened that if they “did not indulge Kolko's nipple fetish, their employment with the Rebbes Molester Foundation would suffer,” the lawsuit alleged.

Greenfield and Applegrad claimed that Lipa "Gelt whore" Margulies, the molester's longtime caretaker and president of the "Genaive Lifetime Foundation", pressured them to expose their breasts as a way to bond with the 60-year-old pig, and to avoid getting Kolko angry enough to blackmail Margulies.

“On one such occasion,” the lawsuit said, “Applegrad said, 'Kolko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples.”

The plaintiffs never undressed, said their attorney,"honest"Abe Konstam, from Monsey. The foundation has denied the allegations.

Lawyers for both sides refused to disclose terms of the settlement, but Deep Nose claims that one of the elements of the settlement bans Kolko from going to the mikve for life.

A second similar lawsuit filed by another employee is pending.

The Rebbes molester Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of perverted rebbes in black suits and hats. It's best known for Kolko, who has mastered a variety of more than 1,000 ways to seduce innocent kids.

WJC Probe Explores Possible ‘Slush Fund’ For Israel Singer, Bronfman's Gofer

Spitzer investigation uncovers e-mail suggesting Singer had personal account from Bronfman.

Gary Rosenblatt

Attorney General Elliott Spitzer’s investigation of the World Jewish Congress has focused of late on statements attributed to Israel Singer suggesting that the chairman of the group’s governing board had a personal $2 million “slush fund” provided to him each year by Edgar Bronfman, the WJC president.

The subject came to light recently through an e-mail written Jan. 9, 2002 by Larry Cohler-Esses, then an investigative reporter with The Daily News, to Singer, who was then secretary general, the top professional post at the WJC.

At the time Singer had offered Cohler-Esses the position of head of the North American section of the WJC, the international defense agency currently under scrutiny for alleged financial improprieties.

In the e-mail, Cohler-Esses summarized his prior meetings and conversations with Singer, and asked him a series of questions.

One of the questions: “Are there any skeletons in WJC’s closet of which I should be aware before I take this position?”

Apologizing for any possible perceived “impudence” in the nature of the questions, Cohler-Esses wrote: “As we discussed on Friday, WJC officials publicly describe their annual budget as approximately $5.5 million, but its 1999 IRS tax report lists a budget of $11.1 million on income of almost $12 million. Of this, $8.1 million is listed as going to program services; about $741,000 to administration and management; and $2.2 million to fundraising.

“When we spoke on Monday, you mentioned that Edgar [Bronfman] has established a ‘slush fund’ of about $2 million for use at your personal discretion. If you subtract this sum and the amount devoted to fundraising, that leaves about $6.9 million, or still an extra $1.4 million.”

Cohler-Esses then asked if Singer’s “personal discretion fund” explained “some of the extra money,” where the rest of the money went, and if Singer was certain the funds were handled and reported legally.

The correspondence was shared with The Jewish Week recently, but not by Cohler-Esses, who was a Jewish Week staff writer from 1993 to 2000. He was hired by The Daily News in 2000 and left the paper earlier this year. He is now editor at large at The Jewish Week.

Cohler-Esses’ copy of the correspondence was subpoenaed by the Attorney General’s Office, and he was questioned about it and his relationship with Singer for more than 90 minutes on Sept. 30. Cohler-Esses appeared before Gerald Rosenberg, head of the charities bureau, and Carolyn Ellis, chief investigator.

Cohler-Esses said he affirmed the contents of his communique, a copy of which the Attorney General’s Office already had, as accurate. He said the questioning by the investigators was “very focused,” and that they were “keenly interested” in his references to the possible discrepancy in the WJC’s tax report and the mention of the “slush fund.”

“They wanted to know what I thought Rabbi Singer meant by that term when he used it,” Cohler-Esses said, “and I told them his use of the term concerned me and I wasn’t sure whether he used it facetiously, jokingly or subconsciously.”

Cohler-Esses said he subsequently turned down the WJC job offer.

Singer, through spokesman Hank Sheinkopf (Mordecai Tendler's spokesperson), told The Jewish Week he denied receiving a letter and said there was no such fund. Singer acknowledged that he had met with Cohler-Esses about the position at the WJC, but Sheinkopf said that “no such letter exists in the WJC files, nor did Singer receive such a letter.”

Sheinkopf added that the Attorney General’s Office “has inquired about this document, and we have responded appropriately.” He would not elaborate.

Sheinkopf said “no inquiry was initiated by the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], and there was no such [slush] fund.”

Darren Dopp, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, would not comment on the specifics of the investigation, which began early this year, but said it was “moving toward conclusion.” Dopp said he expected the probe would be completed next month or, at the latest, by the end of December.

In June, sources close to the investigation said it would demand reforms in the WJC’s financial control and board oversight, for which critics of the group have called, though criminal prosecution is seen as unlikely.

The controversy over the WJC began in 2004, precipitated by the discovery of a Swiss bank account that raised questions about accountability at the venerable organization.

In recent years the WJC has been known for its success in gaining hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution funds from Swiss banks for Holocaust survivors.

The most outspoken critic of WJC practices, Isi Leibler, was ousted as senior vice president of the WJC earlier this year. Bronfman, who had pledged to step down as president after 24 years, decided to run again and was re-elected, and Stephen Herbits, a close business aide of Bronfman’s, was elected secretary general.

UOJ comments

Anytime you see Hank Sheinkopf opening his LYING FOR HIRE mouth, and secret Swiss
bank Accounts, well you know the rest of the story.......

Say It Aint So Young Israel, Please Say It Aint So!

Spitzer's Office: We Found 'Significant' Problems At Young Israel
By NATHANIEL POPPER


The office of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was riven by an investigation of an Orthodox synagogue organization, but the one thing all members of the attorney general's office agree on is that the office found "significant" problems at the synagogue organization that have not previously been disclosed publicly.

Spitzer's office began looking at the organization, the National Council of Young Israel, in 1999, when the council made a routine application to the attorney general for a new mortgage. The mortgage was for a nursing home operated by the National Council in a suburb of New York City. The inquiry, routine in the case of a refinancing application by a non-profit, soon uncovered a $6.5 million liability that the nursing home had to the New York department of health.

The investigation was passed to the attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which, prior to 2002, identified some $215,000 in illegal loans made to the organization's former president, Chaim Kaminetsky, who was also the administrator of the nursing home. Those loans, which contravened state charity law according to the attorney general's office, were paid back, some before the investigation and some afterward. In addition to the loans, the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit identified close to $5,000 in payments on behalf of Kaminetsky's relatives.

The attorney general's office also identified $130,000 in payments that went to the National Council's executive vice president, Pesach Lerner, and were not backed up with contemporaneous documentation. The National Council provided explanations to the attorney general's office for many of these payments, including $50,000 that was described as a loan to Lerner, and $25,000 described as an adjustment for sick days, according to the attorney general's office. In the end, $20,000 was not accounted for and the attorney general's office decided to hand the case over to state and federal tax authorities.

Spitzer also said that the National Council had governance problems that his office worked to correct.

A lawyer for the National Council declined to respond to specific allegations. In declining to respond, the attorney cited an earlier article written by the Forward that contained a factual error, corrected a week later, about the sale of the National Council's headquarters building in Manhattan.

"We are surprised by your new convoluted inquiries which appear to have been suggested by those with various axes to grind," wrote Kenneth Fisher, a lawyer for the National Council.

"We are proud of the work done by our professional staff, rabbis, lay board and volunteers, including the planned sales of some of our real estate interests which were approved by Attorney General Spitzer's office after extensive review of our operations and procedures, and which will enable us to continue our services to our more than 150 member congregations for many years to come."

Multiple messages left at Chaim Kaminetsky's home and office, seeking comment, were not returned. Kaminetsky left( was asked to Leave) the National Council and works today as the president of the Highland Care Center, a nursing home in Jamaica, N.Y.

Only one element of the attorney general's investigations of the National Council has previously been made public. In 2002, the National Council needed the attorney general's approval when it decided to sell its Manhattan headquarters, which also housed a member synagogue, the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue. The synagogue sued to block the sale. Some members of the attorney general's office were also opposed to allowing the sale.

The dispute was settled in August 2005, when a member of the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue agreed to buy the building and allow the synagogue to remain. As a condition for the attorney general's approval of the sale, the National Council agreed in court documents to use $4 million from the proceeds to set up a trust that cannot be dissolved until the nursing home Medicaid liability is repaid to the state.

The liability had been accrued after the nursing home was granted not-for-profit tax status in the 1980s. Medicaid payments are calculated, in part, based on tax payments, and as a result the exemption should have lowered the nursing home's reimbursement rate. According to a letter from the National Council's lawyers, the organization was told in the 1980s that the department of health would lower its reimbursement rate, but the department never did so.

The attorney general's office says that after the liability was uncovered, the state department of health began recouping the money by withholding a set amount from Medicaid payments to the National Council's nursing home. To date, the attorney general's office said that $1.5 million of the liability has been recovered.

Some members of the National Council's governing bodies have said that even after the attorney general's involvement with the National Council, governance problems have continued at the organization. A lawsuit regarding the governance of the National Council was filed earlier this year by a member of the National Council's delegate's assembly — the organization's top governing board below the board of directors. The suit, filed by Ira Sturm, whose father is a former executive vice president of the National Council, said the National Council leadership had violated the organization's constitution by not allowing for proper oversight.

The National Council's constitution mandates that the delegates assembly meet at least three times a year, approve the budget once a year and elect a president every two years. According to Sturm's lawsuit, none of these conditions have been fulfilled since the current president took over in 2000. Sturm, who belongs to a Young Israel synagogue in Woodmere, N.Y., withdrew the lawsuit earlier this year and declined to comment on it. But another member of the delegates assembly — from the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue — said that the points Sturm made about the delegates assembly were still true.

"They really should be held to a higher standard," said Victor Bellino, who was president of the Young Israel of Fifth Avenue from 2000 until earlier this year, and a member of the delegates assembly during that time.

Bellino, whose synagogue will become independent of the National Council under the deal worked out in the sale of the Manhattan property, said, "I'm glad we're getting away from them."


UOJ Comments

Chaim Kaminetzky, has a long list of questionable financial dealings going back to the 1970's.

Why the Young Israel organization has kept him on is anyone's guess.

He is the same Chaim Kaminetzky that runs the Pesach program in California, and about one thousand people trust him with a reliable "kosher for Pesach" program.
When one has questionable financial dealings, and " borrows" money from a national organization and has not yet been able to "clarify" the accounting entries, CAN WE RELY ON SUCH A PERSON FOR KASHRUTH?

I THINK NOT!!!!

The "Bigger" The Rabbi, The Bigger The Filthy Rotten Thief

Buy a rabbi

By Haaretz Editorial

UOJ comments at the end of this shameful article


This weekend's Haaretz magazine exposes a major corruption scandal that could be called the "Latvia 2 affair." Hundreds of policemen, army officers and noncommissioned officers are suspected of having received fictitious certification as rabbis from important yeshivas. This gave them salary increases of up to NIS 2,000 a month, equivalent to the increase granted to those with academic degrees. For the yeshivas, it was worthwhile due to the tuition they collected for the few hours of study each week. But the treasury annually suffered millions of shekels of damages.

This scam, which has been going on for three years already, involved senior members of the rabbinic establishment: former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, former Sephardi chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, and members of the Chief Rabbinate Council, including Haifa Chief Rabbi She'ar Yeshuv Hacohen, Be'er Sheva Chief Rabbi Yehuda Deri, and Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu.


Employers ought to encourage their workers to pursue an education in their line of business and reward them with pay increases. But in recent years, Israel has witnessed a growing phenomenon of "pseudo-education" solely for the purpose of salary increases, which turns the issue of professional education into a laughingstock and is liable to injure those who truly deserve such raises.

The Latvia affair involved people who obtained academic degrees without studying at all. Sources involved in the investigation in the current affair reported that some of those certified as rabbis were not even familiar with basic Jewish concepts. Particularly grave was the fact that policemen, including senior police officers, behaved as if the law did not apply to them.

The religious world attaches great importance to the term hillul hashem (desecration of God's name), meaning acts that are not only undesirable and even forbidden, but that sow contempt for religion. The rabbinic certification affair is a desecration of God's name on a grand scale. The Chief Rabbinate is striving to preserve its monopoly over the rabbinic establishment and prevent state recognition of Reform and Conservative rabbis. Therefore, one would have expected Chief Rabbinate Council members to demonstrate greater responsibility when certifying people as rabbis, instead of cutting off the branch on which they are sitting.

The investigation, which is being conducted by the Justice Ministry's Department for Investigating Policemen, the National Fraud Squad, and the Military Police, has been under way for three years already. Such a drawn-out process is liable to create the impression that the police have no interest in completing a probe involving the force itself.

Claims made by Chief Rabbinate officials that the police pressed to have the certificates issued to policemen quickly must be investigated. The police's deputy chief rabbi, Chief Superintendent Aharon Gotsdiner, has resigned, but the public deserves to know whether the police's chief rabbi, Ya'akov Gross, also was involved in the affair. The policemen involved in the affair are complaining about the lengthy investigation, saying it has impeded their promotions. Therefore, it is necessary to complete the probe and bring this affair to an end expeditiously.



There is absolutely no doubt that the above named "chief rabbis" knew exactly what their underlings were doing, and approved of their behavior.
This is more than just stealing, lying, forgery, cheating and fraud, this is a pure and unadulterated desecration of the process that leads one to become a LEADER of the Jewish nation.

How low can people go? At least with prostitutes they make no claim to ethical behavior. These rabbis are worse than the pimps and prostitutes that frequent the streets of Tel-Aviv. MUCH WORSE.

My anger is so deep, I find it difficult to express myself properly.Is this what Judaism has come down to; EVERYTHING IS FOR SALE? Even S'micha from the Rabbanut?

We know who the gangsters of New York and New Jersey are, we either choose to participate in their fraud or we don't.The chief rabbis of Israel are suppose to represent world Judaism with their morals and ethics.

I say the Israeli government should suspend ALL funding to the Charedi institutions and offer a reward for the information leading to the masterminds of this theft and all theft and fraud within the Charedi organizations.

UOJ


By Esti Ahronovitz and Shahar Ilan

Last Update: 11/12/2005 12:14

M.'s turn came this past August. Like 580 other policemen around the country, he knew that in the end, the Police Investigation (PI) personnel - from the unit that investigates suspected wrongdoing within the police force - would get to him, too. M., who is with the Afula police, got entangled in what the police are calling "Latvia Affair 2" (referring to the dubious degrees awarded by the local branch of the University of Latvia to senior officials?). Again there are dubious titles that translate into hefty salary boosts, but this time it's not just a matter of an academic degree. This time the police under investigation received the title of rabbi. They have become rabbicops.

"Someone on the force decided that policemen should be a little more intelligent," M. said this week. "We were sent to study Judaism and get a degree that would increase our salary by NIS 2,000 a month, gross. People went. I was one of three or four groups that studied in a beit midrash [religious school] in Beit She'an - I don't even remember what it was called. Tuition was NIS 15,000, and we had classes twice a week. We studied for two years. We did three or four external exams. In some cases our teachers were soldiers. We were supposed to study for 24 months, but after 20 months you could already get the salary hike. The diplomas were sent from National Headquarters and we received the extra pay four months before the end of the studies. My diploma says that I was ordained as a rabbi for salary purposes only."

Senior police sources confirmed this week that three parallel investigations are under way. One, by the National Unit for Fraud Investigations, is dealing with the institutions that issued the rabbinical titles; a second, by PI, is investigating the 700 or so police graduates of these studies; and the third, being conducted by Military Police Investigations, is concerned with 600 personnel from the career army, on similar suspicions. PI has so far questioned 400 of the approximately 700 rabbicops; according to sources involved in the investigation, it will continue for many more months.

The investigations have led to dozens of rabbis and religious teachers, including some of Israel's preeminent rabbis. Those who have been questioned and have given testimony included Rabbi Yitzhak Ohana, former director of the unit for examinations and ordination in the Chief Rabbinate and now the bureau chief of Rabbi Yisrael Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv; Yaacov Gross, the chief rabbi of the Israel Police, and his deputy Aharon Gottesdiener, who took early pension in the wake of the investigation; Meir Rosenthal, from the staff of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger; Yosef Eliahu, the son of former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, from the Darkei Hora'ah educational institution; Rabbi She'ar Yishuv Hacohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa and head of the Ariel network of institutions; Rabbi Benayahu Bruner, head of the Safed hesder yeshiva (combining religious studies with military service); and individuals close to the chief rabbi of Be?er Sheva, Rabbi Yehuda Deri, who organized study groups in his school, Kol Yehuda, in return for payment.

Bring money, get diploma
The case of the rabbicops was discovered by chance. In 2002, a Border Policeman was facing a disciplinary hearing on domestic violence charges. A senior officer in the disciplinary unit at police National Headquarters who went over the Border Policeman's file noticed something odd: the man's salary slip stated that he was getting an increment because he had a degree. And not just any degree, either, but a rabbinical degree. The senior officer, not understanding how a secular person could be a rabbi, sent a memo about the matter to Avi Werzberger, who was then a senior member of PI. Commander Werzberger began to look into the affair. He discovered that 580 such rabbis were listed in the Israel Police, most of them secular.

At first it sounded like a joke. The PI personnel could hardly believe their findings: hundreds of policemen, the majority holding junior posts as patrolmen, warehouse staff and even mess hall workers, many of whom did not even have 10 years of schooling, were ordained rabbis. They were serving in the north and south of the country and in Jerusalem. Werzberger ordered an intensive investigation, which is now being conducted by his successor, Commander Alex Or.

PI discovered that between 2000 and 2002, about 600 Israel Police personnel had registered to study Judaism. The studies were held in a number of institutions for fees ranging from NIS 10,000 to NIS 15,000, which each person paid out of his own pocket. At the conclusion of the studies, the policemen received a diploma signed by Rabbi Yitzhak Ohana, then a senior official in the Chief Rabbinate, stating, "Rabbi [name] studied for five years in high yeshivas and passed examinations as required. By the directive of [Sephardi] Chief Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi Doron, shalita [may he live long and happily], the above rabbi is eligible for a diploma as the possessor of high Torah education." The document adds, "This diploma does not constitute qualification for serving in the
rabbinate in practice."

When PI personnel asked how it was possible to squeeze the five years of study cited on the diploma into two years, they were told that the policemen had studied for 35 hours a week, which was the equivalent of five years of study. In practice, the rabbis who were questioned and the policemen themselves did not hide the fact that none of them had attended so many weekly classes. "At most," says a source who is involved in the investigation, "they studied four hours a week, eight hours a week, and in some cases not even that much."

Sources close to the investigation said this week that not only were most of the rabbicops secular, they also showed great ignorance about the subjects that were taught. Asked basic questions about the content of the subjects they studied, they replied that they could not remember. Some of them could not identify photographs of the city rabbis who were supposed to have examined them orally.

The police believe that the various colleges and other institutions involved raked in hundreds of thousands of shekels from the studies by the policemen and the soldiers. To illustrate, the annual revenues of the yeshiva run by Rabbi Bruner, in Safed, plummeted by NIS 179,000 in 2003. The audit issued on behalf of the Registrar of Associations states that according to the yeshiva's director general, the shortfall is due to the fact that "in 2002 the association gave a course for members of the security forces. That course was not given in 2003." This represents almost a quarter of the yeshiva's revenues from tuition for that year. Bruner and members of the yeshiva's administrative staff were questioned in the case. According to informed sources, about 80 policemen from the north and 40 career army personnel studied at the yeshiva. ("I was not involved in that program," Rabbi Bruner said this week. "We taught policemen Torah subjects in our center and they received ordination not from us, but from the Chief Rabbinate.")

The investigators have receipts for the tuition fee paid by the policemen - who covered the expense through the extra monthly salary, which also goes toward their pension. By a rough estimate, this amounts to millions of shekels from the state coffers. "It was pure commerce," a senior police officer sums up. "You brought money, and after two years you got a diploma and everyone was happy."

Sources in the State Prosecutor's Office take a grave view of the affair. Two meetings were held there in the past year, with the attendance of the ranking personnel in the department and in PI, to "formulate strategy." "It was decided to deprive the policemen of the money and the benefits, because not one of them actually studied," says a prosecution source who is involved in the investigation. "In contrast to the Latvia affair, which was extremely complicated, things in this case were straightforward. Either you attended the 35 hours of classes or you didn't. And they didn't. In practice, not one of the policemen was able to show that he did the 35 weekly hours. And anyway, these are secular people. What kind of rabbis?"

Sources in the state prosecution note that they are now preparing for a situation in which policemen who will not receive the extra salary and other rights for the studies will turn to the High Court of Justice.

Everyone wanted a slice
The whole affair started back in 1998 and was marked by struggles and intrigues among some of Israel?s leading rabbis. "This is a story
involving high emotions within the rabbinate," says Rabbi Ohana. Underlying it is the old rivalry between Shas party spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef - Rabbi Bakshi Doron is from his camp - and former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, who is considered the spiritual leader of the national-religious right in Israel.

According to Ohana, "The story started when Rabbi Bakshi Doron authorized a course for a group from the yeshiva of Rabbi David Yosef." A source in the Chief Rabbinate relates that "Yosef came with a proposal that there were policemen who wanted to take courses, that this would advance their career." Sources in Shas say that Yosef's course was coordinated with the public security minister at the time, Avigdor Kahalani, and with a few senior police personnel.

However, Rabbi Eliahu's institutions soon realized the potential and sought authorization to give their own courses. Rabbi Bakshi Doron and Rabbi Eliahu sparred over these courses - even the attorney general at the time, Elyakim Rubinstein, intervened in Eliahu's favor - and in the end the Chief Rabbinate Council authorized it, sources say.

The impression is that there was great eagerness to be involved in this. What is the interest in regard to policemen and career soldiers?
Ohana: "They made money from it. They had schools. They made money. What are you talking about?"

According to a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council, the initial demand was for the students to pass exams of the Chief Rabbinate even for the partial title. However, "afterward they started to bypass that." The legal adviser of the Chief Rabbinate at the time, attorney Menachem Yanovsky, says that there were "allegations that some of the students were secular and that the courses had become money machines."

Even though the problematic nature of the courses was clear to the Chief Rabbinate - or maybe precisely because of that - its officials are quick to impute responsibility to the Israel Police. "Who came up with the idea for the courses?" Ohana asks, and replies, "The police - the initiative came from them. Period. The police are feigning innocence here. They came to Rabbi Bakshi Doron in 1998 and said, 'Let's set up a school to train students.' The p-o-l-i-c-e. Rabbi Bakshi Doron tried to stop the plan but they pressured him and pressured him. It was imposed on the rabbinate. That is what happened. That was a time of peace, when the police had a surplus budget. Not like today, when there is a shortfall. They looked for a way to give the police a bonus. And from that, all this Latvia and all these bad troubles began. Those ills all began from that."

So what you are saying is that the police started it and now is investigating itself?
"Without a doubt, without a doubt. Incidentally, the police are investigating because PI coerced them. You have to understand - top people in the police were involved in this in one way or another, in the studies, in the schools, in the lectures .... Why did the police authorize it? Does a policeman in rabbinical studies become a better policeman? There are police documents: 'Please hurry, please speed things up.' They expected that the policemen would complete the studies within a year. They wanted everything done fast, fast - for them to complete the studies and get the titles within a year."

Why did you sign diplomas stating that they studied for five years? They studied for two years, and only a few hours a week.
"That is not the point. It's not that. That is less important. They brought documents that they would complete the studies and some of them did study for five years. That did not interest the police. It did not interest them whether they studied for a minute or an hour. It didn't interest the army, either, and there are documents about that. Everyone is now telling you half-stories, because the police are already fiddling with this for years. It is transferred from one [investigative] team to another and they are looking for where the mistake was made and where the flaw is. Everyone is now looking for others to blame. Every six months they wake up and call you and ask, 'Why was it like this? And why was it like that? And who said what?' And they go around splitting the hairs of hairs."

What did you tell the interrogators?
"I gave them the details. Why it was so and why it was like that, who did what. Because it was all documented, you know. What am I, after all? I am an official who received orders. There are hundreds of people who were involved in one way or another, and millions of witnesses. It is not something that was done in secret. After all, who was all the paperwork about the rabbinical training sent to? To the police. Let's not make people out to be all that stupid."

Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi Doron, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi: "I was against authorizing these courses. There was a majority in favor in the Chief Rabbinate Council. A committee that the council appointed set criteria according to which only a person who had been a chief rabbi could give the courses."

Oded Wiener, director general of the Chief Rabbinate: "The Chief Rabbinate holds ordination examinations for the rabbinate which are known for their quality and strictness. Anyone who does not pass them cannot serve as a rabbi." The members of the security forces, of course, did not pass the rabbinate examinations. Even though Wiener has held his post since 2000, he maintains that the events under investigation occurred before he became director general.

Ask the Chief Rabbinate
One of the best-known bodies whose staff was questioned in the rabbicops case is Darkei Hora'ah, under the aegis of Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, a former Sephardi chief rabbi. Among those questioned was his son, Rabbi Yosef Eliahu, who is in charge of the rabbinical courses of the institution and serves the head of its kolel (yeshiva for married men).

Also questioned was Rabbi Meir Rosenthal, who is described as the organization person of the institution's rabbinical training courses and is now the bureau chief of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Metzger. Rosenthal said this week that he will not comment until the investigation is concluded and emphasized that the investigation is dealing with a period before Rabbi Metzger became chief rabbi.

"The investigation has been proceeding lethargically for three years and so far has not produced anything incriminating against my clients," says attorney Zion Amir on behalf of Darkei Hora'ah. "My clients have undergone a serious and uncalled-for perversion of justice." He added, "The Darkei Hora'ah institutions held a study program that was approved by the authoritative bodies. My clients cooperated in the investigation, responded to questions and did all they were asked in order to help advance it." According to Amir, the fact that the investigation has been leaked to the newspaper has about it "the smell of a political investigation that was born against the background of the forthcoming elections."

The investigation that led to Darkei Hora'ah started in a religious school in Beit She'an where Rabbi Meir Ruyemi taught about 100 policemen. "We taught for two years according to the authorizations," Ruyemi said this week. "We are being bothered for no reason. And we also took token payments."

Did the policemen really come to study with you?
"They studied for two years. I teach in Darkei Hora'ah, I am a branch of Rabbi Eliahu's Darkei Hora'ah. All the responsible individuals are in Jerusalem. In Rabbi Eliahu's kolel. Talk to Rosenthal."

What kind of diploma did the policemen get?
"It is a diploma of two years of study. In the Chief Rabbinate it is compatible with the title of rabbi, but without ordination. The person will not be able to be a rabbi or a mashgiah [supervisor of kosher food] tomorrow. They studied for a salary increment.

"The police asked why we did not teach for five years, like in law school. They asked me why the Rabbinate wrote that they studied five years and we stated that we taught for only two years. I told them, 'Why are you asking me? Go to the Rabbinate.' Our directive was to teach the policemen for two years, and the army, too. The Rabbinate told us that the diploma is as though compatible with a rabbi who completed five years. As though."

Counting hours in the synagogue
Another well-known religious network whose staff was questioned is Ariel - Centers for Torah and Judaism. Its head is Rabbi Hacohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa, who was visited in his office by PI personnel to take testimony. The deputy rabbi of the police, Chief Superintendent Aharon Gottesdiener, was also connected with the Ariel institutions.

Gottesdiener was arrested in March 2003 on suspicion of bribe-taking; namely, that while he was a rabbi in the police Northern District he taught at Ariel and urged policemen to study at the institution. His son received a scholarship at the time, and police sources say that his daughter also worked there. Gottesdiener took early retirement from the police a year ago. People close to him said this week that when the investigation began, he realized that his career had come to an end. He was given the option of suspension until the investigation ended, or retirement; he chose the latter.

One of his confidants said this week the rabbi had shown the investigators that the students in the college studied 35 hours a week, as required. "He brought directives of the Rabbinate showing that the studies include hours of self-learning in the synagogue and he showed that the students also counted hours of learning on their own in the synagogue - exactly according to the Rabbinate directives."

Gottesdiener himself chose not to comment for this article. His lawyer, Shuki Stein, said that he will be pleased to respond to the allegations after the police investigation concludes.

Gottesdiener's boss, Aharon Gross, the police chief rabbi, has also been questioned several times by PI. It was Gross who by his signature authorized the salary increment for the policemen "rabbis." He was the one who forwarded to the payroll unit the document on which he signed that the person in question was entitled to a quasi-academic rank and to the commensurate salary. A source involved in the investigation describes Gross as the person who shut his eyes in this story.

The police spokesman stated in connection with Rabbi Gross' interrogation: "In regard to Rabbi Gross, the investigation is still ongoing in PI. No material was ever received by the police concerning Gross which would make it necessary to consider disciplinary measures against him."

Rabbi She'ar Yishuv Hacohen, who heads the Ariel network, also gave testimony. "There were no cases in which people received a degree without studying and passing a test," he said this week. Hacohen says he opened the courses in order "to help the members of the security forces." For the institutions, he says, "There was more outlay than income. We charged a low price." All the students, he says, arrived at the recommendation of an army or police chaplain and were required to participate in three classes week, and the school was strict about attendance. Some, he said, finished after one year, but it took most of them two years. All the graduates, Rabbi Cohen says, were examined by three rabbis, of whom two were chief rabbis of cities. To reach the five years cited in the diploma, he says, ?previous years of study were added on. In general we accepted people who had studied in a yeshiva or taken a course of a local rabbi."

The chief rabbi refused to sign
Yet another well-known figure in the case is Rabbi Yehuda Deri, the chief rabbi of Be'er Sheva and a brother of former Shas chairman Aryeh Deri. PI personnel visited his school, Kol Yehuda, where dozens of army and police personnel studied. Their studies were coordinated by Rabbi Ofer Ohana, who was questioned half a year ago. That investigation was launched by PI, but the material was also made available to the Military Police, as most of the students involved were from the army.

"I set up a network of Torah studies throughout the city," Rabbi Deri said this week. "Within that framework I was approached by Rabbi Ofer Ohana, who told me, 'Your honor, there is a serious group in the city who would like us to arrange Torah lessons for them so they can learn what is permitted and what is forbidden.' These are studies for which it would be appropriate to receive a diploma. I told him, 'If we have good enrollment, why not?' In the first course we had about 60 guys from the army. They studied for three years, twice a week. Serious studies, with exams. In regard to payment, I told Ohana that with me they will not pay. Anyone who wants can donate a token amount directly to the yeshiva. Maybe a third donated. After that we started more courses."

Rabbi Deri says he has not been questioned, though Rabbi Ofer Ohana was summoned for questioning six months ago. "He brought them all the personal files of the students. It seems to me that they came away with a positive impression," Rabbi Deri says.

"We said all the time that the studies are not for a degree, but purely for Judaism studies" Ofer Ohana explains. "We said we are not a college and we do not issue diplomas. We give Torah lessons. With us it is known that studies are solely for the sake of Torah."

However Boaz Tairi, who teaches in the beit midrash, has a somewhat different account. "I taught there," he says. "The class I taught was the last one that was able to get in, most of them policemen and a few soldiers. They came because they knew that until a certain date it was still possible to study Judaism for a degree. After that the army and the police no longer recognized the studies. I taught every Monday and Thursday, each lesson four hours, in the evenings. A course like that
lasted three years."

What kind of diploma did they get in the end?
"All told they received the subject of 'prohibited and permitted' and a 'yoreh yoreh' diploma after being examined and succeeding in the studies. There is a concept that a person who studies halakha [Jewish religious law] and afterward is tested on it and succeeds can teach in that subject, and that is called 'yoreh yoreh.' They were tested and succeeded."

Haaretz is in possession of a diploma that was given to a senior NCO in the Israel Defense Forces which is signed by Yitzhak Ohana and lists Rabbi Yehuda Deri as one of the examiners.

A senior IDF officer said this week that the Military Rabbinate has conveyed to the Military Police all the files of those who received a rabbinical degree for salary purposes. According to the IDF, the Military Police can investigate only those who received degrees but not the institutions that trained the rabbi-NCOs. "On that subject we are dependent on the civilian police."

Since 2000, the chief army chaplain, Brigadier General Yisrael Weiss, has refused to sign the diplomas of the graduates of the rabbinate courses. According to IDF sources, when he took over as chief chaplain he stated that he would refuse to sign, because "a rabbi is someone who serves as a rabbi and not an NCO in a workshop or in the personnel administration. They are not rabbis." It was decided in 2000, at Rabbi Weiss' initiative, that rabbinical studies would be recognized only for those who serve as army chaplains. But the implementation of this decision ran into snags. Many of those who took the courses had study authorizations from the army and the degree could not be denied to them. As a result, the decision was not implemented until March 2001.

The army set tough criteria for recognizing the rabbinical studies, insisting on three authorizations: a study authorization from the personnel unit, an authorization from the institution and a certificate from the Chief Rabbinate. Rabbi Weiss still refused to sign, even for those who met the criteria, and the head of the Personnel Directorate appointed another officer to sign in his place.

Today, according to an IDF source, the phenomenon of rabbinical studies for salary purposes "no longer exists." Nevertheless, and despite the
investigation, those who were recognized are continuing to receive the salary increment.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office stated in response: "The Military Police is conducting an investigation into the matter of the rabbinical titles. When it is concluded, the findings will be transferred to the Military Advocate General?s Office."

We were wronged
The rabbicops affair is deeply embarrassing to the Israel Police. The rabbicops themselves are especially angry. They and their colleagues say that it was clear to everyone from the outset that the studies were solely for the purpose of a salary increment. The view in PI is that the policemen involved will face only disciplinary proceedings, but in the meantime their promotion has been frozen, they are being investigated and the significant hike in their monthly pay is liable to be slashed.
"I think we have been wronged," says a policeman who works in the mess hall of a station in the north and obtained a rabbinical degree. "Our whole class in the course was interrogated."

"We are talking about hundreds of policemen who studied and now are suspected of committing a criminal offense," says the chief of a police station in the north, whose men are under investigation. "I do not say that they are guilty, heaven forbid. PI says that the policemen knew they were doing something wrong, that they knew it wasn't really a degree. My policemen are now coming to me and saying, 'No way: we were told to go twice a week for two years and that it is worth a degree.' Someone did not tell them the truth about these studies."

"Suddenly, after two years, they came to everyone who studied with the allegation that we should have studied for five years and not two," M., from the Afula station, relates. "I was summoned to an interrogation and questioned for 45 minutes. They showed me documents connected to the college in Haifa. I didn't know what they wanted from me. If I had known, I would not have invested so much money and time. During the interrogation I struck up a conversation with the interrogator. I told him, 'I am a cop and you are a cop. You know how much effort we put into the studies. You know how much a cop makes. A rookie policeman gets NIS 4,000. So what's the deal?'"

A., from the Beit She'an station, adds, "A few months ago I was summoned to a PI interrogation. Another 10 from the station were questioned with me. I can tell you one thing: whoever went to study got an authorization from the police saying it was all right. Everyone knew what it was all about, that it is a rabbinical title only for salary purposes. I have no authority when it comes to kosher food or marrying people. None of us really thought of becoming a rabbi. They came and told me that I should have studied five years for the degree. 'What five years,' I told them, ' could have studied medicine in five years.'"

The Justice Ministry response: "The investigation is now being conducted and we are unable to provide details."

Penguin of the Week Award

By David Kelsey

A UOJ Exclusive!

In conjunction with the Elders of this site, I have begun a “Penguin of the Week” Award to illuminate ignorant and destructive behavior committed by select leaders, activists, sages, and writers within the Ultra-Orthodox community.

The winner may receive the remains of a three day old shabbes leftover Gefilte fish loaf. The loaf may not be picked up before Wednesday, and a nominal donation of $1 must be “given” to the Un-Orthodox Jew blog. Unfortunately, UOJ is NOT currently able to accept food stamps, so many of our winners will not be able to receive their award. Once again, the voluntary but still mandatory $1 must be payed in cash.

Without further ado, let us go to this week’s “winner.”

And the winner is … The Orthodox Jew Blog!

Congratulations Orthodox Jew Blog!

Created “to answer the guys at the unorthodoxjew blog,” the Orthodox Jew blog bravely rebukes aspects of the Jewish community for not being frum enough, such as this eloquent apologetic from November 18th.

“Lets make this clear when we do mitzvahs we are mesaken the world that's not why we them that's not our ultimate goal.”

I said bravely, because like many in the Ultra-Orthodox world, they have accepted this mandate to fight in English without knowing English (or any single language fluently, for that matter), or bothering with those period things that the Jewish secularists use to end sentences with, attempting to emulate the goyim. Why should they? It’s Avodah Zorah or something. We all make spelling mistakes, but these guys have no shame. You know why? Because it’s l’shame Shemyaim.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that everyone, absolutely everyone, should contrast the ideas and writing abilities of UOJ blog to the OJ blog. This is as worthy an ultra-Orthodox resistor to our ideas as the Ultra-Orthodox community will produce in their worthy fight against the evil cabal of allies against the frumme yid. This evil alliance of Soneh Yisroels includes but is not limited to: The UOJ Blog, Dinosaurs, Information, the Internet, the NY Health Department, and the impure drinkers of unfiltered water.

Keep up the good fight, boys.

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This stinks to the heavens. Getting a donation is one thing, "selling" these services is disgusting.
Just another example of Judaism going into the commercial toilet.

UOJ

Will Yeshivas Avrohom Fruchthandler DBA Yeshiva Chaim Berlin Remove The Thief Englander Name Off The Yehiva K'tana Building ?

Millennium Partners to pay $121.4 million By Michael Gormley, The Associated Press

Millennium Partners will pay $121.4 million in "ill-gotten revenues," its founder Israel Englander will pay $30 million in civil penalties, and two management companies will pay $26.6 million under an agreement in a New York and federal investigation into market timing, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Thursday.

That is the first major settlement involving a hedge fund for Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission. They have been investigating similar market-timing schemes in mutual funds that benefit insiders at the expense of individual investors.


"Millennium developed multiple schemes that cost mutual fund investors tens of millions of dollars," Spitzer said. "Restitution will be made to investors who were harmed."


The complaint accused Millennium of taking ill-gotten profits of more than $100 million from 1999 to 2003, much of it from transactions structured to avoid mutual fund defenses to block market timing or to conceal Millennium's role.


"Today's action demonstrates the commission's commitment to prosecute vigorously all the wrongdoers involved in fraudulent market-timing practices, not just mutual fund managers and broker-dealers, but also the hedge funds and other entities that profited so handsomely from the fraud," said SEC Enforcement Division Director Linda Chatman Thomsen.


Market timing of mutual funds, which involves rapid in-and-out trades, is not illegal but is prohibited by many funds because it can put ordinary shareholders at a disadvantage by diluting the value of their shares. Many of the cases brought by Spitzer and the SEC have targeted mutual fund companies that allowed favored clients such as hedge funds to engage in market timing.


"Millennium is pleased to have reached a comprehensive resolution of the investigations regarding mutual fund trading in years prior to 2004," Millennium spokesman Thomas Daly said. "We agreed to these civil settlements, in which we neither admitted nor denied the various allegations, as a business decision in order to put this matter behind us and to allow us to concentrate on our investments. Today, we have stronger financials and stronger controls, including the supervision of the former general counsel of the SEC, than ever."


Millennium has $5.4 billion under management, 20% more than in 2003.


Millennium was also accused of using false addresses and renting post office boxes to avoid detection by mutual funds, Spitzer said. Employees also posed as long-term investors, allowing the company access to "subaccounts" that kept Millennium's identity secret.


Spitzer claims the company was able to camouflage as much as $19 billion in market-timing activity.


Terence Feeney, Millennium's chief operating officer, will pay $2 million, and its general counsel, Fred Stone, will pay $25,000 in penalties. Both will be banned from mutual fund trading for three years.



Israel Englander has been in trouble with the law for the last thirty years.
Avrohom Fruchthandler is in bed with this guy, and certainly is aware that the yeshiva has received money from "ill- gotten revenues."
Avrohom, do you have the balls to remove the name from your building, where kids come to learn Torah and it's values? Or money is money regardless of the source?
Tell me Avrumy, are you going to send the message to our children that as long as you give money to your yeshiva, it's ok to steal and cheat?
We're watching, you have a chance to do the right thing.
MR. FRUCHTHANDLER, TAKE DOWN THIS THIEF'S NAME FROM THE YESHIVA BUILDING TODAY!

UOJ

UOJ's Theory Of Evolution - Chassidim Direct Descendants Of ( Beaver) Animals -They Can't Let Go Of Their (Fur) Hats

By The Chairman Of The Board - R' Gross

The “Talibaner” Rebbe
Rabbi Mordechai Hager, the Vizhnitzer Rebbe of Monsey( The Guys Who Wear Their Fur Hats Backwards)

One only needs to look at the Chassidim to make a pretty accurate assumption as to the character of their leadership.

Having been raised in a purely litvishe environment, with rather oppressive institutions of “education” and prayer, I naievely assumed that Chassidim, as a general rule, were a bit more accepting of those outside their circles - more so than their litvishe counterparts. After all, they seemed “pretty cool.” Heimishe davening, various Chesed organizations, jovial expressions of love for their creator, friendly shteiblach… I apparently was wrong; as the generations progress (or rather, regress) new expressions of ugly fundamentalism rears its head…

Several months ago, “Chaim,” an acquaintance of mine, stopped off in Vizhnitz on Route 306 in Monsey, for a late Shacharis. Moments after arriving, a young man approached Chaim and asked him why he wasn’t wearing a hat. Stunned and unsure of the man’s motives, he just ignored him.

When he later related the story to me I brushed it aside insisting that it was just an isolated incident and either the man was joking or he wasn’t “100%.” In fact I found it very hard to believe that in such a Heimishe environment, someone wouldn’t go out of the way to make him – an obvious outsider - feel comfortable by offering him a siddur or a place to sit.

A few weeks later, Chaim returned to Vizhnitz forgetting about the incident. While donning his Tallit and Tefillin he was shocked to see a sign posted on a wall stating the institution’s requirement that all congregants must wear a hat and jacket! The story doesn’t end there.

A group of recent Baalei Teshuvas, attended Vizhnitz one morning for Shacharis. They were dressed casually but neatly and were obvious BTs. Moments after arriving, they were asked to leave – that’s right they were asked to leave -immediately and their efforts to protest were futile as a small mob of threatening Chasidim surrounded them. That very day, one of the men thrown out of Vizhnitz ceased being observant.

In yet another incident, a man went into Vizhnitz for Maariv and after permission from one of the Gabboim approached the Amud in an attempt to lead the Maariv service. This man was a “Chiyuv” and therefore he had reason to do so.

When the man started Maariv it was obvious to all that he had a speech impediment (the speech impediment resulted from a slight hearing impairment.) After several minutes, the davening was interrupted and the man was asked to step away from the Amud. He refused and in an instant he was physically removed from the premises. The man was in tears.

How long will we allow these pieces of garbage to claim Judaism as their own? Is it not enough that they live in a welfare society, depending on OUR tax dollars and handouts for their corrupt Mosdos and gauche displays of personal excess? Is it not enough that we (those of us who work) suffer the embarrassing results of a public display of Chasidishe animalism, when confronted by our non-observant co-workers interested in knowing why there were fistfights in Willamsburg on Yom Tov? They don’t believe us when we say that “those people are not really Jewish.” How stupid can the Chassidim be? Don’t they realize that it’s all about money and real estate – at their expense? And NO, your Rebbe doesn’t have any Ruach HaKodesh and is a mere mortal like the rest of us (and probably an Am Ha’aretz too!

I say: Be as crooked as you want but remove the beard and payos and stop humiliating the rest of us!!!





Religion is not to be "object" driven. The "hat" has become a symbol to the Charedim, as the "cross" is to Madonna.
The parallels are so very similar. As long as the symbol is displayed openly, ALL the important elements of religion and appropriate behavior become irrelevant.

We see the Puerto Ricans and the Shvartzes driving around with "Jesus" bobbing around on their rear view mirrors, especially noticeable on their getaway cars as they race away from the convenience store or bank they just robbed.

UOJ

Rosh Yeshivas Get Together To Discuss New Ways To Squeeze Americans

Roshei Yeshivos Meet to Discuss Housing Crisis Among Young Couples in Israel

by Betzalel Kahn

A number of roshei yeshivos took part in a special meeting to discuss the housing crisis among bnei Torah. The roshei yeshivos discussed the possibilities currently available to avreichim and the difficulty in bearing the costs of marrying off children.

The heads of Binyan Sholem, founded by Degel HaTorah of Jerusalem, presented an overview of various projects currently marketed to bnei Torah in chareidi towns and elsewhere.

The roshei yeshivos shared accounts of painful cases of young couples seeking advice on how to alleviate the burden on parents trying to purchase apartments for their children. The shortage of work for kollel wives was also raised on the agenda in light of the increased cost of living as well as cuts in government funding and allowances in recent years.

A decision was reached to start a committee comprised of HaRav Boruch Shmuel HaKohen Deutsch, one of the roshei yeshiva of Yeshivas Kol Torah, HaRav Dovid Cohen, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Hevron, HaRav Yigal Rosen, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Ohr Yisroel, HaRav Yehoshua Ehrenberg, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chadera, HaRav Gavriel Yosef Levy, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Be'er HaTorah, and HaRav Nachman Leibovitz, one of the roshei yeshiva of Yeshivas Mir.

HaRav Moshe Frank and Rav Menachem Blumental of Binyan Sholem spoke about the new project slated for construction in Yeruchom. HaRav Tzvi Friedland, who has led the Torah community in Yeruchom for decades, also addressed the rabbonim.

As an initial step the roshei yeshivos decided to start a unique kollel in Yeruchom immediately after Chanukah based on the precept of "Yehuda sholach lefonov."

The roshei yeshivos said only top avreichim from the Torah and yeshiva world would be selected for the kollel, which will offer excellent terms to allow them to labor and settle in "the tent of Torah" without having to worry about housing or income. The kollel will even offer periodic shiurim on a regular basis given by prominent roshei yeshivos making an extra effort to raise the banner of Torah in Yeruchom as part of the plan to help solve the housing crisis among bnei Torah.

During the meeting the rabbonim discussed the possibility of setting up a major foundation through the generosity of "yirei Shomayim contributors" from "abroad" to assist avreichim to purchase homes in the least expensive housing project available, the one in Yeruchom.

According to Binyan Sholem the roshei yeshivos will soon begin locating avreichim who will be carefully screened for the kollel in Yeruchom, calling this a first step in expanding the Torah community in the town and turning it into a large center for ruchniyus.

The Negev Region is currently slated for an impressive development boom. The government is allocating extensive resources to make the South flourish. By Chanukah, Israel Railways will reach the nearby town of Dimona and Highway 6 will reach as far as Beit Kama, bringing the Central Region much closer.

Development plans include the construction of software houses and high-tech companies, which will employ kollel wives at high salaries, tourism infrastructures including a hotel and convention hall, upgrading the artificial lake, widening roads, etc.

Following its successful bid for the construction franchise in the new part of Yeruchom, Binyan Sholem heads have decided to expand registration for the Naot Ha'irusim project.




They're coming for the YIREI SHOMAYIM CONTRIBUTORS; meaning if you don't give it up, you're just an American Shaigetz

UOJ

Second shelter for abused Haredi women opened in central Israel

By Ruth Sinai

A shelter for abused women from the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) sector was inaugurated on Wednesday in a city in central Israel. The shelter began operating several months ago, and it can host up to 50 people. Eight women and their children are currently staying there.

The shelter, second of its kind, is being funded by the International Fellowship for Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the Welfare Ministry and private donors.

The Bat Melech fund, a body designated to treat abused women in the Haredi sector, operates the shelter on behalf of the Welfare Ministry along with another establishment for the protection of abused Haredi women. The shelters offer women protection, mental and social assistance and legal counseling.

According to Welfare Ministry figures, 1,388 women sought protection in shelters in 2004, but only half of them were placed in shelters. Currently there are 1,064 children residing in shelters, a third of them under the age of three.

Girls Seminaries In Israel - A Scam By The Scum

Received this e-mail from a reader

Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:42:24 -0800
From: "Oyba Zoy"
To: a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com

Hi,
I've read your blog a few times, some of the things you have written about have really hit home. I want to share a seminary story with you. I don't know the name of the seminary, but I'm trying to find out.

A girl from my community got accepted to a real frummy place. Although her parents have very little money and a bunch of kids, if they want their daughter to get a shidduch with a learner, they have no choice but to send her to a $15,000 a year seminary. Right?

Anyway, she gets to Israel, and the first thing that happens is the head "Rabbi" takes away her passport and tells her that if she wants to leave the country, her parents better send the rest of the money immediately. Apparently. her parents could not pay the $15,000 in one shot, and thought they could pay the rest out over the course of the year. Sounds reasonable right? Wrong!

The girls father had a fit, spoke to the local rabbonim, and decided to borrow or do whatever he had to do to send the rest of the money asap. They sent the money, the girl got her passport, and she had a wonderful year in seminary learning that she's going have to work the rest of her life to support someone in kollel, or work he decides that if he wants to make some real money he had better open up a seminary and hold girls hostage. Pretty sickening isn't it?

Have a great shabbos.

Was The UOJ Blog Responsible For Alan Stadtmauer's Resignation From Yeshiva Of Flatbush?

Intelligencer-New York Magazine
Saturday the Rabbi Came Out
Or was the former head of Flatbush’s Orthodox Yeshiva inadvertently outed before he was ready?
By Shana Liebman

UOJ Comments at the end of this article


This past summer, Rabbi Alan Stadtmauer resigned abruptly as principal of the prestigious Orthodox Yeshiva of Flatbush. Officially, the reason was that he wanted to pursue another career, though the school didn’t mention the real reason he believed he couldn’t continue his current one: Stadtmauer, 42, was just coming to grips with his homosexuality, which is anathema to Orthodox teachings. So he quit.

“We don’t know of any other heads of yeshiva anywhere in the world who have come out. It is a first,” says Sandi DuBowski, whose documentary Trembling Before G-d is about the struggle to be gay and Orthodox.

Actually, it’s not clear that Stadtmauer, who’d taught at the school for ten years, intended to come out—at least not yet. In September, after the rabbi resigned, a student politely e-mailed him to ask about rumors that he was gay. Stadtmauer replied, “I appreciate your understanding about my coming out . . . ” But one close confidant of Stadtmauer’s, Rabbi Steve Greenberg (author of Wrestling With God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition), says that when Stadtmauer told the student he could share the e-mail “if your friends were wondering the same things,” he was thinking “maybe three or four friends. He didn’t want this information out like this. He told me this twice.”

Instead, the e-mail circulated widely; The Forward even covered it. And many former students felt betrayed, not because he’d been hiding his sexuality but because he implied that he was giving up, at least provisionally, on Orthodoxy: His e-mail stated, “I still believe in the Value and Truth of Torah, even if I don’t feel bound by Halacha,” the rabbinic laws. “And I may yet return to it.”

“What shocked me personally,” says alum Steven Zeitchik, a writer for Variety, “was not the gay part . . . but the fact that he left Jewish education.” Zeitchik says he still feels confused by Stadtmauer’s decision, “because the things he hid were so integral to what I was talking to him about, so elemental to how we live our lives in terms of faith.”

According to modern Orthodoxy’s interpretation of rabbinic law, homosexuality is a grave sin, so it wasn’t surprising that the response on certain blogs was more unforgiving. “I knew since day one he was a faggot,” one alum wrote on unorthodoxjew.blogspot.com. “He deserves the punishment of the worst tortures possible.”

School officials sent a letter to parents stating that Stadtmauer had recently told them he was gay but that “he had never previously discussed these issues with members of the faculty or with students.” It added, “There have been no allegations of inappropriate behavior during his tenure at the Yeshiva.”

Greenberg’s hoping all this will at least get people in the community talking about something they don’t like to even acknowledge. Flatbush grad David Cameo knows many Orthodox Jews “who officially admit it, yet decide to walk the ‘straight’ path. Some actually still choose to have a wife and
kids . . . Some remain celibate.”

Greenberg said Stadtmauer never spoke to him about his sex life, and his e-mail made no reference to his celibacy (except to say, “Given how alone I have been all my life, I just couldn’t see fighting an uphill battle just to remain lonely in the Orthodox community”). Stadtmauer isn’t making any public statements for now. Shortly after the e-mail got out, the rabbi left New York for a three-month hiatus—on the other side of the world. He spent Yom Kippur not in Brooklyn but in Bangkok.


UOJ COMMENTS

I do not know Alan Staudtmauer, and he may be a wonderful person, but my position is really clear.
Any person who WILLINGLY violates a " forbidden" precept of the Torah, should not be in a leadership position.
A rabbi in an Orthodox shul should not keep his job if he WILLFULLY violated the Shabbos, or willfully ate non-kosher food.

I feel, at the very least, that Stadtmauer falls into the category of WILLFULLY violating a behavior that the Torah forbids.
I am familiar with all the arguments, claiming that he can't help himself regarding his sexual orientation........

Firstly, I do not buy into that.
Secondly, even if that would be the case, a homosexual has no right being in a leadership position in an Orthodox School.
The same goes for rabbis, rosh yeshivas, and rebbes, if they willfully and knowingly participate, directly or by proxy in any "genaive" (fraud) from anyone or any entity, they should be forced to resign their positions or thrown out on their fat behinds, regardless of the color or length of their clothing.

Naked Man Dies In Jump From Boro Park Office Building

A UOJ Exclusive In Conjunction With The Washington Post


A naked man darted from a car into a Boro Park office building at lunchtime yesterday and then jumped to his death from the top floor, officials said.

The man double-parked in the 4800 block of 13th Av. about noon, bolted from his still-running gray 1980 Chevrolet, dashed past a crowd on the street and ran into the lobby of an office building, witnesses said.

Police were still trying to identify the man yesterday and to determine why he jumped. Witnesses also were trying to sort out what happened. The man had no apparent connection to the building, according to people who work there.

"He didn't even have shoes on," said Zalman Teitelbaum , who was working as a temporary security guard at the building until the Satmar mess gets straightened out. Sitting behind the security desk, Teitelbaum first saw the man from the waist up and thought "maybe he was a rather strange jogger. But then I stood up and saw the rest of him, and realized he was very Jewish."

The man told Teitelbaum that he was "desperate and broke," asked him for 50 cents to make a phone call and then spoke incoherently, mumbling something about not being able to support his son in-law in kollel, Teitelbaum said.

Then the man ran to an elevator. Minutes later, he emerged from a stairwell on the top floor. The fire alarm had been set off, presumably by the man, and the office doors on that floor were open as people began to file out, witnesses said.

The man pushed his way into one of the offices, where he said "excuse me" several times while charging toward a window, witnesses said. He smashed the glass and jumped through the window, falling onto a parapet between two buildings. Some local workers and shoppers saw him fall.

Boro Park firefighters and emergency medical service personnel arrived at the scene, and police quickly cordoned off the block. Women with baby carriages were visibly upset that they could not continue shopping. One woman with a hat on top of her wig lamented, "he could have waited until the stores closed."

Workers in the top floor office said they had not seen the man before and did not believe that he had ties to the offices there. They didn't hear anything he said other than "excuse me, I need money to support my son in-law in the Lakewood kollel" a witness said.

Before it became apparent what was taking place, the city's parking enforcers reacted to the abandoned car, which had badly torn seats, New Jersey plates and no sign of clothing inside other than a beat up Borsalino and a jacket with a shatnes label. They slapped a flyer on the windshield inviting people to attend a parlor meeting for the Lakewood Yeshiva.

The police met with "all" the various Bobover Rebbes and was told that the man had seven married daughters and was acting strange as of late. Recently the man was seen in shul naked except for a towel on his shoulder, screaming why they moved the mikve.

These acts of desperation have become rather common in the Orthodox Jewish community, since fathers with daughters are expected to support their sons in-law whether they have the ability or not.

Many social workers in the community have noticed a dangerous increase in mental disorders particularly by men over fifty.

We interviewed eight young men who were in the local pizza parlor, all of them noticably obese. We asked them about their reaction to the increase in mental and emotional disorders in men over fifty, particularly by the men with daughters.

We had similar reactions by all eight young men. One fellow said it was "not my fault that the poor shmuck doesn't know how to make enough money to support thirty people. Summer camps, expensive houses, cars, jewelry, Pesach in Cancun, and tuitions are a father in -law's obligation, even if he has to work three jobs, or steal from his employer". They're just a bunch of whining lazy bastards".

Another young fellow said" I am sick and tired of hearing these bullshit stories from fathers in-law. If they produce the kids, they MUST support them, period, no excuses. This fellow who was not more than twenty years old, was wearing a gold Rolex. I complimented him on his watch; he turned angry and said" he told the shadchan that I would get two Rolexes, one for daily use and one for Yom-Tov, and the SOB finked out on me; what a piece of shit father in-law I wound up with. If I would have known that, I never would have married his meeskite (extremely ugly) daughter." He said he had to leave, and drove off in a brand new Cadillac Escalade.

The reaction by the others were similar, ranging from anger to dismay about the lack of appreciation and gratefulness to God exhibited by their fathers in-law. They all felt that they could have married anyone in the world, and if their father in-law ever decided to stop giving them "serious" money they would return their daughters to them in a heartbeat, blackmail the family in order for him to give a Get, and get a father in-law who really understands what a catch they are.

Particularly interesting was how they all agreed that they never intended to ever get a job, regardless of how many fathers in-law jumped off buildings. They saw it as a dirty trick and didn't believe the guy was really dead." I find it very interesting that these shameless fathers in-law would go to any lengths to avoid their obligations to us", said the fellow who was the most obese, weighing about three hundred pounds and was not more than five foot three inches tall.

Calls to the rabbis of the Lakewood Kollel were answered by a taped recorded message.
"If you are attempting to join our prestigous institution,the only requirement is that you must be proficient in filling out lengthy government aid forms. These forms are available in all languages and can be filled out at any Lexus dealer in Boro Park or Flatbush; or available on the internet by the shgatzim uremasim (low-lifes) who have internet access.

It's "Shver" To Be A "Shver"- The Tale Of The Scumbag Son In-Law

TRUE STORY:WELCOME BACK R' GROSS
Just returned from a very important assignment in HUD country.


”Schnorrer,” has been married four years and has 3 children in diapers. (In fact, several weeks after he was first allowed to touch his tired wife, after a C-section produced child #2 , she was already pregnant with the third.)

Desperate to marry his aging 21 year old daughter, four years ago, Schnorrers’s shver (father in law) agreed to support Schnorrer in the amount of $1000 per month as long as he was in kollel. It was understood that Schnorrer will go out to work after a few years. Schnorrer is quite capable of working; he is rather quick with numbers as you will soon see.

So what is the problem? Recently, Schnorrer, having a head for figures, made a quick calculation on his way to a 10 AM shacharis, You see, he is facing a dilemma, whether or not he has to work. That calculation went as follows:

Background:

A recent job prospect offered a generous starting salary of $30,000 ( remember, absolutely no education or experience!) after several weeks of Cope training (Don’t praise the Agudah just yet, but if you must then take a few moments to do just that…)

OPTION 1

+++Shver pays him $1000 per month ($12k/annually)

+++Schnorrer schnors $700/month from mother, a professional, who was coerced into paying his Lakewood tuition she paid for him as a bochur, directly to him now (which is no longer due to the Yeshiva because of his newly attained matrimonial status, rendering him scot-free from tuition. Another instance of singles being discriminated against by the thugs who run our religion)

+ ++ Hundreds of dollars per month in the form of government handouts ranging from rent to groceries, most of which he will lose once gainfully employed.

OPTION 2

+++Go to work and earn the same amount of money.

“Why work?” he said. I’m better off not working and getting (I nearly slapped him) the same amount of money. Besides both my shver and mother are getting tremendous mitzvos for supporting me while I learn!”


This is not a unique situation. Schnorrer is not alone! Yungerleit that never held jobs and collect money in the form of WIC, HUD, etc.... are purchasing homes under their shver's name and "renting" it to themselves and having the govt pay their rent! PURE THEFT. Others invest in Lakewood real estate to become slum lords. They rent houses to families of Mexicans, polluting the very demographic they have created.
Oh, that’s right it’s the “treife newspapers” and Internet that are to blame for all the tragedies. Go ahead and justify it! “It’s “hefker” anyway, the shvartzes do it so why can’t we?” So you’re comparing yourselves to these lower forms of humanity – that’s one step in the right direction!

When will it stop? This type of “economy” cannot sustain itself. It is impossible! A generation of schnorrers is trying to breed another generation of even bigger schnorrers (these new schnorrers won’t have working parents with money.) There will be a spiritual rebellion. Many Lakewood kids are messed up already! The ones who have zero interest in learning have even less of an interest in attaining a secular education that might enable them to live a decent life. These idiots aren’t going into any decent business either (except for the occasional “mortgage guy“.)

So get ready to sit back and observe the community that will implode and self-destruct in 10-15 years (if even that long) when the well runs dry and the kids have “had it.” Prepare to watch. And laugh. Don’t say we haven't warned you!

Rabbi Naftoli Herman Neuberger Z"L - The Hesped Without The "Help" Of Moshe Sherer

M. Plaut
Shema Yisroel Network
UOJ comments at the end.

On motzei Shabbos parshas Lech Lecho a hesped for Rabbi Neuberger zt"l was held in the Friedman Beis Medrash of Yeshivas Mir.

The first speaker was HaRav Yitzchok Ezrachi. He asked why in general does a son have to say Kaddish? He answered that it is to fill the void in Kiddush Hashem that was left in the passing of his father. He noted that for someone like R' Naftoli Neuberger, who was responsible for so much Kiddush Hashem in the world, everyone has to pitch in to fill the void in Kiddush Hashem that he left behind.

The next speaker was HaRav Aharon Feldman, rosh yeshivas Ner Israel in Baltimore. He said that R' Naftoli ben R Meir was a father to widows, orphans, and to entire American communities. He said that his efforts in Iran had nothing to do with the yeshiva; all his prodigious efforts were entirely out of selfless concern about the future of Iranian Jewry which he saw had no Jewish leaders. His involvement began under the Shah, and continued under the Islamic regime that overthrew the Shah. At one point when Jews had to leave illegally through Afghanistan he had to answer the phone on Shabbos because of the dangers involved.

At a time when other yeshivas "struggled" to absorb a "handful" of Iranians, Ner Israel took in 100.

Many had serious reservations, but R' Naftoli insisted that it would be a success. And it was. Virtually the entire connection the Iranian community today in the US has to Torah is due to graduates of Ner Israel. Even today there are 70 Iranians in Ner Israel.

HaRav Feldman said that in one town there was a machlokes that could have destroyed the Yiddishkeit of the entire city. R' Naftoli flew in and spoke to the rov of the town at the airport for 20 minutes and outlined a course of action to defuse the entire affair. The rov took the advice and R' Naftoli's advice proved effective.

HaRav Aviezer Piltz, the rosh yeshiva of Tifrach, said that he had met Rabbi Neuberger some 40 years previously. He said that he had created a true Torah malchus. In contrast to the power structures of most of the world which are characterized by their riches and ostentation, a Torah malchus is typified by the statement of the Bas Kol: "Kol ho'olom kulo nizon bishvil Chanino beni, veChanino beni dai lo bekav charuvim mei'erev Shabbos le'erev Shabbos — The entire world is sustained through the merits of my son Chanino, but my son Chanino has enough with a few pounds of carobs a week" (Taanis 24b). The builders are totally uninterested in personal advancement.

He noted that Torah institutions are not built up in the same way that other institutions are built. The adonim of the Mishkon, the foundation upon which the Mishkon stood, were made from pure silver — not iron and steel such as is used in the foundations of conventional structures. Visaditich besapirim (Yeshayohu 54:11) — the foundations are precious stones. Middos and tzidkus are the proper foundations for Torah buildings.

If we see hatzlochoh in a yeshiva, especially in the America of half-a-century ago, said HaRav Piltz, it cannot be only because of its gadlus in Torah. It must also have been properly founded upon foundations of gold and silver and precious stones.

When Dovid Hamelech finished Tehillim he said, "Is there a creature that says better shiros and tishbochos than I?"

A frog came and challenged him, saying that it says greater shiros and tishbochos than Dovid Hamelech. This, HaRav Piltz explained, means all of the creatures who by their very existence are a praise of the Creator, even without saying anything: Ein omer, ve'ein devorim. Bli nishmo kolom. Nonetheless, Bechol ho'oretz yotzo kavom . . . Tehillim 19:4-5). And not only that, said the frog, I do a great mitzvoh since there is a creature in the ocean that has no food and I let him eat me.

The lesson of the frog is that such mitzvos are greater than the shiros of the frog that are in turn greater than the shiros of Dovid Hamelech.

Rav Yosef Kalman Neuberger, grandson of the niftar, said that achrayus was burning inside of his grandfather. It was a word that was always on his lips.

He said that once someone called him and said that he had a medical problem with his daughter. As soon as his grandfather got off the phone he went into action. He called doctors and asked them about the disease and about treatment. He bought a book about the disease and read it through. He called in his granddaughters to ask them about the disease. In short he threw himself into finding a way to help this man and his daughter as if it were his own daughter.

He noted that it mentions Noach three times at the beginning of parshas Noach. Chazal say that this is because he lived in three different worlds: before the Flood, the Flood itself and after the Flood. Noach brought the quality of life that he had seen in the world before the Flood, when the creation was close to its Creator, through to the world after the Flood. In a similar way, Rabbi Neuberger took the lessons and approach that he had learned from HaRav Leizer Yudel Finkel while he was at Mir yeshiva in Poland, and brought them through to America.



Mr. Plaut is a hard line Right Winger, yet he was able to publish a hesped WITHOUT "Hollywood" Sherer.

Take note that Ner Yisroel took in 100 Iranians, while "ALL THE OTHER YESHIVAS COMBINED, STRUGGLED TO TAKE IN A HANDFUL!"

Alzheimers Elya Svei, Smiling Shmuel The Fool & Gangster Lipa Margulies did not feel that the Iranians were good for their image.(and of course there was no money in it)

Hatzolos Nifashos was not "cool" then, later, of course, they took in a few token Arabs, upon pressure by the klal.
UOJ

Reform "Leader" Weighs In On Hitler, Gays & Charedim

Reform leader slams religious right-wing
By ASSOCIATED PRESS


The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them "zealots" who claim a "monopoly on God" while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler's.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, said "religious right" leaders believe "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text you cannot be a moral person."

"What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?" Yoffie told a friendly audience of about 5,000 in his keynote address during the movement's national assembly in Houston, which runs through Sunday.

Yoffie used particularly strong language to condemn conservative attitudes toward homosexuals. He said he understood that traditionalists have concluded gay marriage violates Scripture, but he said that did not justify denying legal protections to same-sex partners and their children.

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933 one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

The Union for Reform Judaism represents about 900 synagogues in North America with an estimated membership of 1.5 million people. Of the three major streams of US Judaism - Orthodox and Conservative are the others - it is the only one that sanctions gay ordination and supports civil marriage for same-gender couples.

Yoffie's lengthy speech first addressed several other issues, and his criticism of conservative religious activists came in the middle. The audience was largely sedate until Yoffie reached that topic and responded with repeated, enthusiastic applause.

Yoffie did not mention evangelical Christians directly in his speech, using the term "religious right" instead. In a separate interview, he said the phrase encompassed conservative activists of all faiths, including within the Jewish community.

Yoffie said the activists have little understanding of the liberal religious community, which he insisted also grounds its beliefs in biblical teaching. "We study religious texts day and night, but we have no direct lines to heaven and we aren't always sure that we know God's will," he said. "We bring a measure of humility to our religious belief."

Yoffie said liberals and conservatives share some concerns, such as the potential damage to children from violent or highly sexual TV shows and other popular media. But he said, overall, conservatives too narrowly define family values, making a "frozen embryo in a fertility clinic" more important than a child, and ignoring poverty and other social ills.

"When they cloak themselves in religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy," Yoffie said, urging a renewal of religious tolerance in the United States. "We need beware the zealots who want to make their religion the religion of everyone else."

One attendee, Judy Weinman of Troy, New York, said she thought Yoffie was "right on target."

"He reminded us of where we have things in common and where we're different," she said.

Yoffie also urged lawmakers to model themselves on presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who famously told a Houston clergy group on the campaign trail in 1960 that a president should not make policy based on his religion.

On other topics, Yoffie asked Reform synagogues to do more to hold onto members, who often leave after their children go to college. He also said the Reform movement, which is among the most accepting of non-Jewish spouses, should make a greater effort to invite the spouses to convert to Judaism.

The Missing Yemenite Children - Words Of The Lubavitcher Rebbe

The Missing Yemenite Children
Words of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson - The Lubavitcher Rebbe

As expected, different people reacted to this issue of stolen Jewish infants in the Land of Israel. One such reaction came from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menechem Mendel Shneerson, in his book, "Hitvaaduyot", written around 1987-88.

To quote from his writings:
"On the matter of the kidnapping of children from their parents in order to educate them not in the way of the Torah.

"It is well known what happened thirty to forty years ago during the Aliyah [immigration] of children from Yemen and Teheran [Teheran, the capital of Iran. It seems that he, too, was unaware of the many different communities from which the children were stolen] to the Holy Land.

"Small children, who came with their parents to the Holy Land, were suddenly taken away from their parents, who were given strange and unfounded reasons for this, such as the need for medical treatment, and that their children were in bad shape. These explanations continued, until the parents were told that their children had died . . . . And all this for the simple reason that they (the authorities) did not want them to be educated by their parents, who kept Torah and Mitzvot (commandments), but wanted to educate them as they wished, in a way totally devoid of any connection with their Jewish heritage! For this purpose - children were stolen from their parents!!"

What Rabbi Shneerson wrote then was based on the fact that when many religious Jewish men and women immigrated to Israel, there were people in authority that thought that religion was not what the country needed in its first days. Certain actions were taken by these authorities, such as shaving the beards of new immigrants and cutting off their side curls. Not to mention all the Torah Scrolls, Holy Books, and many other possessions taken from the Jewish immigrants back then. Although this explanation is accepted by some, others do not accept this as a possible reason for the kidnapping of children, since so many of these children were sold abroad for profit.

Rabbi Schneerson continues:
"And who was at the time one of those in charge - a Jew who puts on Tefilin (phylacteries) [Another Religious Jewish custom] and prays three times a day, and who in his private life, observes Torah and Mitzvot.

And nevertheless, not only did he not prevent this from happening, he cooperated, and was even amongst those who were in charge of the people who committed this terrible crime!"

Here, Rabbi Shneerson was referring to Rabbi Dr. Issachar Dov Bernard Bergman. When people started an outcry, as to how this could possibly have happened, for it is an act that is the complete opposite of all that is just and right, and the complete opposite of humane behavior, they were told: 'We saved them from death and gave them a new life, therefore it is as though these children belong to us . . . .'

"And not only did they behave with the children as a man would behave with his "Canaanite servant" [In other words, a slave] who "belonged" to him, but even worse. They treated the children as an object that was their own private posession, that could, if they so wished, be burnt - where in this matter, the burning was of the children's soul and not of their body, Heaven forbid. [What Rabbi Shneerson says here conflicts with reports of children that know they have been sold in this fashion, when they were children. In these reports, most of the people report that they were raised with love and care, as if they were the real children of their adopting parents].

"During that period, hundreds of small children disappeared without a trace, and until this very day, the parents do not know what was the fate of their children, and where they are today."

Rabbi Shneerson mentions hundreds of children, although the number of such occurrences is now known to be in the thousands.

"Today, after thirty to forty years, it is still possible to trace these children, for the same offices that dealt with the children then have exact lists that contain the names of all the children, where they were sent to, etc. The trouble is that noone wants to give out the lists of the names of the children!"

As for the lists of the children's names, not everyone accepts the idea that there are lists of the names of the original families of the children, as so many of them were said to be stolen without the kidnappers even caring who the original parents were. Why should they? It is also commonly believed that, considering all the forged and "confused" documents, there are no real documents. Also, there are those who believe that real documents did exist until Ami Chovav, the investigator mentioned in Part Six, "took care" of the records, as Chovav worked in the national archives, following his investigation. He was quoted in "Haaretz" as saying:

"After the Shalgi committee, all the material was in a mess. The committee finished its job, but none of the documents were catalogued in order, in the archives. The main archive manager asked me to organize all the material, of both investigation committees, in order for the archives. So I sat in the archives, and organized the material, until the order was given to hand the material over to the current (Cohen) committee".

Of course, there are also those who believe that the documents do exist, some say in a certain safe, in Jerusalem. An article in the "Makor Rishon" newspaper, written by Journalist Pini Ben-Or, describes these suspicions.

To quote the article:
"In these days, when in many countries in the world adoption of children occurs, and adoption certificates are issued, there was no way found in Israel to try and help find children that have disappeared. Even the adopted people themselves are faced with many difficulties in finding their biological parents. Today, the belief is getting stronger that thousands of children disappeared, and were stolen from their parents in the first years of the existence of the State of Israel. 'Makor Rishon', which is following the stolen children issue, has checked on the other possibility. The best kept secret in the country - the safe of Mr. George Klein.

"George Klein is the manager of the archives, belonging to the Ministry of Interior, where appear the records of all the people that are removed from the population records: People who have died, been adopted, left the country, and so on.

"From one investigation protocol of George Klein, from the 16th of September, 1997, it is seen that, in his archives, there is a safe where all the adoption records, ever since the British Mandate in Israel, are kept.

"In his questioning in front of the committee for investigating the disappearance of these children, George Klein said that only he has access to the safe, which is located in a safety room. He received the adoption orders, as well as the original personal file of the adopted child, from the bureau of the Ministry of Interior. The material is placed in the safe, and the child receives a new birth certificate, where the names of the adopting parents are found.

According to Klein, he writes the original I.D. number of the child, in the adoption book.

"After writing the details, Klein has the information updated. The original birth certificate, along with the adoption certificate, are placed in an envelope, that is filed in the safe, in the safety room.

Anyone looking in the adoption book only sees the new details of the adopted person, but adding up the new details and what is written in the envelopes that contain the old details - will reveal who the adopted person is.

"The biggest secret is in the hands and safe of George Klein. Maybe there, an answer to the issue of the missing children can be found."

Since that article was written, it has been rumored that the safe has been moved, although not everyone believes that. Again, it is commonly believed that records of which children went where do not even exist. Although, it is possible that details of a certain number of the missing children can be found there.

To return to the writings of Rabbi Shneerson:
"And the even greater trouble is - that noone gets up to speak of it!

"Lately, a few people have woken up and begun to ask for the lists of the children but unfortunately, this was but 'the sound of the tune of defeat', and nothing came of it.

"And not only this, but as always, there are those who immediately make a 'mockery' out of everything, and they made a mockery out of this request too! . . . . And we know that one should not talk with scoffers, and even not sit in their company, as king David said at the beginning of the Book of Psalms - 'Happy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked . . . . Nor sat in the seat of the scornful.' (Psalms 1:1) Our sages have already told us that a 'Cult of Scoffers' is one of the four cults that 'do not receive the Divine Presence'.

"However, this claim also has no place in the discussion. For, although it might be very hard work, nevertheless, in no situation is one allowed to despair of a Jew, and noone can take the responsibility to say that, as far as so and so is concerned, nothing can be done to bring him closer to Torah and Judaism."

Here again, it is evident that Rabbi Shneerson believed that these children were stolen to keep them away from Judaism, and Torah.

"And, in any case, as long as not everything possible is being done to correct the situation - it is as though the crime is continuously being committed! Obviously in this matter, doing Teshuvah (repentance) will not help - for Teshuvah is between man and his Master - and so above all, what must be done is to correct the injustice and the crime that was committed against both the children and their parents!

"After all this, if anyone thinks that they (the authorities), regret their past deeds, and certainly will not repeat them, God forbid, 'Trouble shall not rise up the second time' (as said in Nachum, 1:9), they are making a bitter mistake.

"Not only do they not show any remorse, and are not even trying to return the situation to its rightful state, but on the contrary - until this very day, they are repeating what they did (to the children stolen back then) with the children of Teheran [Iranian Jewish immigrants], and in a more acute way, and no one is standing up to be heard, and let the world know. And especially those who are meant to represent, so to speak, the demands of the Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Judaism - even they are sitting quietly and doing nothing at all!

"It is the holy obligation of anyone who has it in his powers to do whatever they can to prevent and to stop the stealing of children that is currently happening, and in addition, to try and correct what was done in the past.

"And those who cannot do anything, as far as this matter is concerned, should increase their activities in the field of education.

In other words, try and ensure that all Jewish children receive a Jewish education that is in the spirit of the Torah, and no effort should be spared (just as no effort is spared by those opposing the matter), for one is talking about Pikuach Nefashot (the saving of endangered lives)!

"To what can this be compared? To a man who sees a house burning - he surely will not spare any effort to try and save the people who are in the house. Not only that, but even if he is unsure if there is anyone in the house, he will knock on the blinds and the windows, etc., to check if there is anyone in the house, who can be saved. And the moral of the example is an endangered spiritual life.

"Remember: 'And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death' (Exodus, 21:16).

And his death, according to the Halachah [Jewish law, as set by the Rabbis . . . although there are many laws in Halachah, such as this, that are not enforced in these days], is by strangulation."

This is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menacham Mendel Shneerson, has written about the issue of the stolen children. Apparently, Rabbi Shneerson, as well, knew what went on. According to him and others, such things are still happening, although, as many say, on a much smaller scale.

Yechiel A. Mann,
Eshhar, Israel.

The Lawsuit Against Satmar That You Have Not Heard About

A UOJ exclusive
I literally received hundreds of e-mail asking me to republish this post. Enjoy!!

A Williamsburg man who had a panic attack when he found he was glued to a toilet seat in a Satmar restroom, has sued the two Rebbes for negligence, saying the Rebbes were too busy fighting to help him get his tuchis off the toilet.

Retired shamash and old Rebbes' left handed ass wiper, Moshe Chaim Penislover, 67, said on Thursday he was stuck in the stall with his pants down for about 20 minutes and that being only two years after the "incident" where the Rebbe shit on his head, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress, which has triggered diabetes and heart complications.

"I have these nightmares every night where I am locked in this dark room, with no windows, no doors, no fresh air, no route for escape and the Rebbe pissing all over me. I wake up in these cold sweats, feeling like drek, and soaked to the bone" the Shamash said.

Spokesmen for Satmar could not immediately be reached for comment, they were all in jail.

The Shamash said in a lawsuit filed last week in Villiamsboog, Brooklyn, near Hevesh Strit, that he thought he was having a heart attack when he realized his tuchis, one ball, and legs, were stuck to the toilet seat in the Satmar restroom that doubles up as a boxing ring, drug money laundry, and a shul.

He explained his plight to a Satmar gangster who came into the restroom but other mamzerim thought it was a hoax so he had to wait until someone else came in, to again summon help.They went back to eating herring and onions, the lawsuit complains.

The ex-Shamash is claiming unspecified damages for help with medical and psychiatric bills, for humiliation and for the diabetes he said he has developed as a result of the stress.

The Mohel, Yitzchok Fisher, was called to examine him and see if his "yatzmach" was effected by all this trauma. Fisher gave him the usual quick suck (actually not that quick), and assurred the cheering crowd that the "yatzmach" was an oldy but a goody.

"Satmar not only ignored my plight, they refused to help a Jewish asshole in distress," he said. The Shamash said he suspected the glue had been placed there as a prank by the two Rebbes seen earlier masturbating in the restroom, and now out on bail.As is well known, Rebbes are forbidden to work for a living, and have much free time "in" their hands. (pun intended)

UOJ has attempted to interview the Shamash, but was told he was locked in the New Square restroom with Hillary Clinton seeking to have his ass pardoned.

The Homosexual Slippery Slope Keeps Rolling Downhill - Another "Tragedy" In Our Midst But Now Called "Intolerance"By The Heterosexuals

Community of Intolerance
By Jay Michaelson
The Forward

The resignation last week of Rabbi David Kaye from the educational program Panim, after revelations that he had solicited a 13-year-old boy online for sex, elicited the usual expressions of shock from the Jewish community. Of course, we all should be outraged when such immoral conduct is brought to light, but those who follow the Jewish world know that Kaye is hardly the first rabbi to have engaged in it in recent years.

In 2001, for example, Rabbi Jerrold Levy was sentenced to 78 months in prison for sex crimes involving teenage boys. Indeed, a 2000 photo now circulating on the Internet features Kaye, Levy, and Israel Kestenbaum — three rabbis, one from each major denomination, who were all later found to have solicited minors for sex online. And for every one case that makes the news, those of us who work in the Jewish community hear a dozen stories: the whispers about this teacher, that rabbi, and the scandal the school tried to sweep under the rug.

Rabbinic offenders have seduced both boys and girls, but one cannot help but notice that a disproportionate number of them have targeted males. There are no reliable statistics for rabbinic sexual abuse, but government studies show that in the general population, one-third of child sex abuse victims are male, even though only 3-5% of adult men identify as homosexual. Indeed, approximately 16% of boys are sexually abused before the age of 16.

What is going on? Are there suddenly more closeted gay rabbis than there were a decade ago? Or are we, like the Catholic community, merely bringing to light what has been a dark secret for many years?

It does not appear that the problem in the Jewish world is of the same magnitude as that in the Catholic one. Perhaps, as some theorize, this is because the rabbinate, with its expectation of marriage, is less attractive to closeted gay men than the celibate priesthood. Then again, we cannot know how much abuse took place when rabbinic authority was impossible to challenge, and when incidents were quietly buried. Perhaps our scandal is just beginning.

Generally, cases like that of Kaye — who has been praised, in recent days, as a decent man and a good father to his two daughters — elicit responses like "he needs help." Surely he does; how could a well-known rabbi risk everything by sending a naked photo of himself, with his face fully visible, to someone he didn't know? Merely that Kaye's judgment was so clouded bespeaks the severity of his desperation.

Yet the question we must ask ourselves is: Where did that desperation come from? Healthy people, gay or straight, do not molest 13-year-olds. Only deeply disturbed people do — and those are precisely the sorts of people created by the deception and repression of the "closet." Moreover, according to the American Medical Association, 98% of men who sexually abuse boys report that they are heterosexual. Are these really all sick, straight men? Or are they actually, in the words Kaye used when seducing his target online, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the closet"?

Unquestionably, predators like Kaye are the ones responsible for their conduct, but they do not operate in a vacuum.

The Jewish community bears responsibility as well, for the way we perpetuate the circumstances that cause them to hate themselves, distort their sexuality into something dangerous — and, if statistics are accurate, kill themselves at the rate of 4,000 each year in the United States alone. We create "the closet," through our intolerant actions and inactions, our cruel and selective reading of Jewish law, and our endlessly proclaiming the unacceptability of a sexual orientation which is either genetically determined, or fixed so early in childhood as to be an unchangeable part of one's being. In short, we create the very monsters about whom we later profess shock.

Nor are we doing so based on religious authority. Only a minority of non-Orthodox rabbis still believe that the narrow prohibitions of Leviticus 18 extend to all the sexual behavior of gay men (and women). Yet many Jews who are quite lax about their Sabbath observance and routinely look the other way regarding intermarriage become religious fundamentalists when it comes to homosexuality. Consider your reaction to a Sabbath-breaker on the one hand — who merits the death penalty under rabbinic law — and a religious gay Jew on the other. Around whom are you more comfortable? Whom do you fully accept, and whom do you merely tolerate? And is your choice really based on religion? Or, for that matter, on reason?

The "closet" is entirely the wrong metaphor for the kind of repression which leads to acts like Kaye's. I should know — I was in the closet for 15 years, and it is a much more odious, terrible phenomenon than merely hiding in a wardrobe while you do what you oughtn't. Imagine lying to everyone you know, all the time. Imagine feeling that your heart, your way to love and relationship and sexual expression, is actually distorted, evil and broken. And imagine believing that, because of something you cannot change, God hates you.

Of course, under such circumstances, and in a world that has made clear it would reject you if it knew the truth, you would hide your sexuality — perhaps, as I did, even from yourself. Of course you would do everything you could to somehow "make yourself straight": maybe marriage, maybe seeking spiritual solace to fill an emotional gap, maybe even the thoroughly discredited, and completely ineffective, forms of "reparative therapy" being peddled within the religious community and inflicted on innocent young people every day. And of course, you would fail, because sexuality cannot be changed.

And then, without any appropriate means of expression, your sexual urges would find inappropriate ones. Personally, I never engaged in activity such as Rabbi Kaye's, and never once violated the trust of anyone, of any age. But I was hardly a healthy adult when I was in the closet. I met men for sex, not relationship. I lied about my age, my name, my background. And I rarely went on a second "date."

Today, I am happily partnered to a future rabbi, and am blessed to be in a loving, long-term relationship.

That's what "coming out" does — it enables gay people to be as healthy and loving as everyone else. But as the director of a gay and lesbian Jewish organization, I receive emails every week from men and women still struggling in the closet, from all across the ideological spectrum. Charedi adults, modern Orthodox kids, women and men — I've met them all, and while none, to my knowledge, has become a predator like Kaye, all are trapped in the same web of deception, repression and desperation. Many are like powder kegs, ready to explode. Really, what do we expect will happen to someone who fights his innermost being all his life, never has a proper outlet for his sexual expression, and lies to everyone he knows?

And then there are those open secrets. The influential rabbi who was forced into 'reparative therapy' after being accused of sexual harassment by a young male student. The youth director with a past. "Everyone" knows about these secrets, yet no one does anything — even though those of us who have been in the closet know just how dangerous it is. Indeed, one of the most important public voices on the issue of Judaism and homosexuality himself has a "record" of homosexual misconduct, both on his own part and among other members of his family. Yet we pretend that none of this matters, or that we don't know what we know, or that rabbis and communal leaders are impartial about demons they themselves are battling.

Each person is responsible for his or her own conduct.

But as long as we create the conditions that make misconduct all but inevitable, the right response to the scandal of Kaye is not "he needs help" — it's "we need help."

We need to stop demonizing what is natural, healthy and good, using selective piety to mask our fear.

We need to stop believing that what God made can be unmade through coercion or brainwashing. We need to acknowledge that the closeted-rabbi-who-everyone-knows-about may not be worthy of our trust. And we need to see that what causes scandals is not homosexuality, but its repression. Until we do these things, our exclusion and repression will continue to lead to their tragic, seemingly inexorable, results.


Jay Michaelson is director of Nehirim: A Spiritual Initiative for GLBT Jews.

What is so pathetic about the above writer is that he is attempting to sell the Gay agenda as NATURAL, and that WE, the heterosexuals ,are to blame for the behavior of the predators.I'm sorry, I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore.
Hey, you are one sick perverted, messed up SOB!!!!
UOJ

The Pink City
Yediot Achronot

Local tourism officials plan on turning Tel Aviv into the gay capital of the world; Israel Hotel Association official: Tel Aviv and gay people are a perfect fit
Danny Sadeh

Tel Aviv is known throughout the world as “The White City” due to the many Bauhaus-style structures that adorn its streets, but the city may soon be called “The Pink City,” as tourism industry heads are planning on transforming the city into the gay capital of the world, Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
“Tel Aviv and gay people are a perfect fit,” an Israel Hotel Association (IHA) official said.

The idea was born when IHA Director-General Eli Ziv visited London recently to participate in the 2005 World Travel Market exhibition.
During the exhibition Ziv met with representatives of the homo-lesbian travel industry, and discovered an audience that would travel just about anywhere for a good party, even to the Middle East.

“The gay community has amazing consumer power, and Tel Aviv has a lot to offer to this community,” Ziv explained.
“We have the beach, sun, culture and nightclubs. To our knowledge, gays are capable of hopping on a plane and traveling to the other side of the world just to participate in parties and events that are related to the gay community.”

The IHA in Tel Aviv, along with a local gay rights group, turned to European travel agents who focus on the gay community and requested they prepare vacation packages to Tel Aviv. “We are drafting plans to encourage gay tourism from Germany, England and Holland,” Ziv added. “We plan on approaching travel agents who are aware of the gay community’s needs, launch a special website for gays and advertise Tel Aviv in gay European websites as well.
Jerusalem is scheduled to host the 2006 World Pride Parade , but Ziv is already working to have it moved to Tel Aviv.
“This event could mark the grand opening for homosexual events in the city,” he said. “We need the boost."

Meanwhile, Tourism Ministry Director-General Eli Cohen said he would offer any financial assistance necessary to turn Tel Aviv into the gay capital of the world, and he is not alone: TUI, Europe’s largest tourism conglomerate, has recently decided to offer charter flights to Tel Aviv. Israeli tourism officials said they believe the decision would facilitate the travel of thousands of gays to the country. “It will be helpful to our initiative if they increase the number of flights to Tel Aviv,’ Ziv said.


Our values, and our civilization is slipping away before our eyes.
God help us, please.
UOJ

A Bigger Bastard.....Part Two-The Yemenite Children Were Sold And Kidnapped For Profit

Were the Children Sold?
by Yechiel A. Mann
Eshhar, Israel

The shocking testimony of Rabbi Avidor Ha`Cohen may show that Children from Israel were likely "exported" to the United States for adoption and sold for about $5,000 each. Herein an outstanding excerpt from The NY Times, alleging about corruption in the Israeli National Religious party, Mafdal.


On April 25th, 1996, Rabbi Avidor Ha`Cohen, testified in front of
the Cohen Committee that investigated the disappearance of the
Jewish children.

His story began with a meeting that he had in 1963 with a
New-York couple, American father and Israeli mother. They raised a
young girl, who was about ten years old then. It did not seem to
Rabbi Avidor that this child was theirs. She had beautiful, large,
dark eyes, also dark skin, quite unlike her "parents". This couple
later told Rabbi Ha`Cohen they had adopted her and that she was
likely Yemenite. Moreover, other families in New York had adopted
children from Israel.

Consequently Rabbi Ha`Cohen found out the identity of the person
who organized these adoptions. It bothered him that these children
had immigrated to Israel, but were later brought to the United
States and likely sold for adoption.

When Rabbi Ha`Cohen reached this point in his testimony, he was
asked by Hon. Judge Yehuda Cohen about the number of children
adopted in this manner. Ha`Cohen answered that he had not known
it back then. Merely he had been told, they were bringing children.
Only when he returned to Israel, he began looking into this matter,
in more detail.

Avidor further reported that he had spoken to Deborah Eliner and
others of the immigration section of the Jewish Agency. He
discovered that the Israeli institutes that dealt with adoption
did not know anything of this matter. This made him even more
curious as to what was being done. He was holding names of some
children.

Avidor then sent a memo to Minister Haim Shapira, because he was
part of the "Mizrachi", a Jewish organization devoted to
Religious Zionism, and Rabbi Dr. Yissachar Dov Bernard Bergman,
the man behind the adoption of the children in the United States.
Rabbi Bergman was one of the main people running the "Mizrachi"
organization.

Avidor found it unconscionable that an
organization devoted to Religious Zionism was working to take
Jewish children away from their homeland for profit.

Avidor never received an answer from Minister Shapira. He then decided
to call him on the phone. Shapira answered that there was much
gossip about Bergman, but he is, all in all, a good Jew. Avidor
still felt something was terribly wrong, since the adoption
institutes here in Israel didn't know a thing about Israeli
children being adopted in the United States.

He then tried getting various journalists interested in this
story and a large amount of source material was given by him to
almost every important journalist working for every newspaper in
the Israeli mainstream press and this material was in their
possession for many months. Avidor only got responses saying
that there was no public interest in these cases.

He did not give up. He continued trying to get information to
the public but nothing was published until he spoke to one
journalist, Shalom Cohen, and told him of the information he held
and how important it was to bring it to the attention of the
public. The final agreement was that the information would be
published with the names of the families indicated by initials
only.

Avidor testified that, at that point, he found out that the
cases were not uniquely connected to the Yemenite community, that
there were other Jewish children from many other countries being
abducted and sold for adoption in this fashion. The entire
matter was then published and received almost no reaction in the
Israeli media. The treatment this issue was getting really
bothered Rabbi Avidor.

It was then that he discovered that many social circles, mainly
Ashkenazi religious zionists, had a tendency to believe that
instead of growing up in a poor family with many children, it is
better for a child to grow up with a family that has more
financial stability. Rabbi Avidor also says that there are still
various religious social groups that believe this and thus
justify the crimes that were committed against the children and
their families. This is one of the "moral explanations" referred
to in a previous article in this series. Rabbi Avidor was
shocked to see religious Jews using these explanations.

The individuals who dealt with adoption here in Israel said
they do not know of such things happening and so had no written
records of these adoptions. In such a case, Rabbi Avidor claims,
there can arise a terrible problem of marriages within the family
including incest.

Rabbi Avidor learned then that it cost five thousand American
dollars to adopt a child from Israel at that time.

It is also crucial to mention that Rabbi Dr. Bergman died a few
years ago while in jail for a different crime - his fraud and
abuse in New York nursing homes that he ran. This was an issue
covered thoroughly in the United States and Israel. The New-York
Times reports:

"Bernard Bergman, the central figure in investigations into
possible fraud and abuse in New York nursing homes, has decided
to abandon his public defense of his business dealings. In
refusing to testify at televised Senate hearings last week, he
invoked his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment. His
lawyer has argued that to testify would be prejudicial if
inquiries by Federal and state prosecutors result in criminal
proceedings against Mr. Bergman. A Federal grand jury is known to
be looking into his affairs. And a state grand jury, assisted by
Special State Prosecutor Charles J. Hynes, has also been
impaneled to study alleged improprieties in the state's nursing
homes. This is not the first time Mr. Bergman has been prominent
in such inquiries. At a state hearing on nursing homes last week,
Civil Court Judge Louis I. Kaplan, who in 1960 issued a report on
city nursing-home abuses, testified that Mr. Bergman was then,
too, the major figure in the industry under investigation. He
said he presented evidence of criminal fraud in the industry to
former Mayor Wagner. No prosecutions followed and Mr. Wagner says
he doesn't recall what happened to the so-called Kaplan report.
The first indictments in the investigations of the industry have
been handed up. The owner of a Smithtown, L.I., nursing home and
an accountant were accused of swindling Medicaid out of more than
$500,000 by charging personal and improper business expenses to
the program. In Connecticut, which is also investigating its
nursing homes, a state official said at General Assembly hearings
that top state officials had financial interests in nursing homes
and used their influence to get favorable treatment for them".

It appears that the entire issue of Rabbi Dr. Issachar Dov
Bernard Bergman, and the nursing homes in New-York were a big issue
in the United States back then, and the New-York times spent much
work on getting articles about it written. Bergman was a main
figure in the Orthodox religious community in the States,as well as
President of the United States branch of the "Mizrachi" movement.
He was closely connected to the Israeli religious nationalist party
(known as the "Mafdal"), which was directly linked to the
"Mizrachi" movement.

In the early seventies the New-York Times began their investigation
into the issue of Bergman's nursing homes. They reported that the
Federal Government would grant a specified amount of money for every
elderly person in a nursing home, that Bergman, his relatives and
friends were taking huge amounts of money from these funds while the
elderly people suffered. For those of you who may remember, shortly
afterwards, many other newspapers and other media then joined the
investigation. There were those that called it "The Jewish
Watergate" and others who claimed it was simply anti-semitic
journalism. It is a pity that there were those in the Israeli
government who agreed with the latter statement. As reported by
The New-York Times:

"TEL AVIV, Dec. 29-Interior Minister Yosef Burg
dismissed today as irrelevant a request by
Representative Edward I. Koch, Democrat of New
York, that Israel refuse citizenship to Bernard
Bergman pending the outcome of a United States
Senate hearing next month on nursing homes. Mr.
Bergman is among 35 persons affiliated with
nursing homes in New York State for whom subpoenas
have been issued by Senator Frank E. Moss,
Democrat of Utah and chairman of a subcommittee of
the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

The Senate group, which issued the writes Dec. 20,
announced at that time that it was joining the
investigation of alleged large-scale fraud among
New York nursing homes that is being conducted by
the State Temporary Commission on Living Costs.
The Israeli Minister, who represents the National
Religious party in the Cabinet here, has affiliation
with Mr. Bergman through the party's parent
organization, the Orthodox world Mizrachi movement.
Mr. Bergman is the dominant figure in the Mizrachi
Religious Zionists of America. But this affiliation,
Dr. Burg emphasized, is very loose, "The Israeli
movement is absolutely independent," he said.

Mr. Bergman and his wife arrived in Jerusalem at
the end of last month, apparently after learning
that he was about to be subpoenaed to testify
about fraud involving Medicaid funds. The
Bergmans, who entered Israel as tourists, have no
resident status here, though they own a luxury
apartment in Jerusalem. They left Jerusalem in
the middle of this month and are reported to be
living with relatives in Vienna. A Bergman
relative there has said that the couple would be
back in New York, before January 7.

The press here has reported that the couple left
after having been cautioned that they would not be
protected from extradition, should the United
States request it. Dr. Burg, reached in Jerusalem
by phone, said of the request by Representative
Koch that he would make a statement in Parliament
in response to a similar request, submitted in the
form of a parliamentary question, by Shulamit Aloni.

Mrs. Aloni is a member of the opposition Civil
Rights Movement. But the question of Mr. Bergman's
citizenship, Dr. Burg said, does not arise at this
time. "No request whatsoever about this case has
come to me," he said. Mr. Koch had cabled Dr. Burg
from Washington on Friday to urge that Mr. Bergman
"not be permitted to exercise the right of return"
pending the outcome of the Senate committee inquiry.

Under Israel's Law of Return, a Jew can claim
citizenship and a right to live here. Mr. Bergman,
an ordained but non practicing rabbi, holds the
prestigious title of member of the presidium of
the World Mizrahi Movement. He was elected in
January, 1973, together with Tibor Rosenbaum, who
is involved in a multimillion- dollar banking
scandal in Europe, and Rabbi Avigdor Zipperstein
of Jerusalem. Rabbi Zipperstein resigned a few
months ago. Mr. Bergman and Dr. Rosenbaum had
been sponsored in the election by the Minister of
Religious Affairs, Yitzhak Raphael, a controversial
figure in Israel.

Mrs. Aloni said in an interview today that she had
submitted her parliamentary question about Mr.
Bergman to draw attention to her charges of
corruption in the National Religious party.
Support for Representative Koch's plea came today
from the newspaper Ma`ariv in an editorial.
'If Rabbi Bergman is innocent, if his actions as
director of a chain of old-age homes in New York
were without blemish, if he can disprove the
charges against him, let him do so before the
competent authorities,' the paper said.
'If he wishes, he can then come to settle in Israel
and will be welcomed like any Jew who decides to
come to Israel.'".
(End of quote from The NY Times.)

At one point, there was a public hearing in New York. In this
hearing, workers from Bergman's nursing homes testified about
elderly people dying of hunger, of ill ones dying of thirst, of
tired elderly people lying in their own vomit without receiving
any sort of medical care, and many others who suffered cuts and
injuries that were neglected and uncared for.

"I looked at my father, and saw he was about to die",

one witness told the committee formed to investigate the matter.
She quickly took her father to the hospital, where he died of
dehydration and infection. His entire body was covered with
bruises. A qualified nurse told the investigators how the
authorities twisted and changed her findings, after she reported
to the city health authorities about the horrifying conditions in
the home, as reported in Ha`aretz, on the 5th of September, 1997.

Ha`aretz also reported that the testimonies of the workers and
the relatives often sounded in the committee like "terrible scenes
from a sadistic horror film".

It was then discovered that Bergman's nursing homes received 1.2
million dollars from "Medicaid" for treatment of people who never
existed. It was even said, back then, that elderly people with no
family who passed away in the homes were secretly kept for long
periods of time in refrigeration, unburied, while Bergman
continued to receive money for their care.

Some of the newspapers even alleged that Bergman's homes served as a cover for the
Mafia's financial activities and when they continued to
investigate, they discovered the crimes Bergman's father committed
when he smuggled heroin inside Jewish Holy Books.

One day, in a mail office in France, a few Talmud books were accidentally
dropped from one of the mail bags, and a stream of heroin poured
out. Bergman used this incident to beg that he not be accused for
his father's crimes, cried, and made comparisons between himself
and the holy men of Judaism, but at the end was found guilty by a
jury, Ha`aretz reported.

The best way to sum up most of Bergman's life is to quote part
of a news article from the New York Times, titled "Many Roads
Lead to Bergman", by Lee Dembart:

"...In his public posture, Mr. Bergman combined a
talent for fund-raising, a friendship with
politicians and a zest for self-promotion to make
himself a respected leader in Orthodox Jewish
circles. In his business posture, Mr. Bergman used
many of those same contacts to help him turn a
$25,000 inheritance into a net worth he has
certified at $24-million, though he insists he
owns but two nursing homes...".

To back up the claims, the article also mentions that

"In 1960, the City Investigation Commissioner,
Louis I. Kaplan, linked him to a total of 18
homes, and he was estimated to be worth
$10-million", and later on in the article "When
Medicaid started in the mid-1960s, the bonanza
began. By 1973, Mr. Bergman's accountant, Samuel
Dachowitz, certified to a bank that Mr. Bergman
was worth $24-million".

The irony is that Rabbi Bergman used his "friendship with
politicians" to ensure for himself wonderful living conditions
when he was imprisoned. The one who was not imprisoned was the
person that Rabbi Avidor Ha`Cohen met, with the adopted Yemenite
child, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Tuch, who was also found to
be involved in bringing Jewish children from Israel to the United
States. It was a well-known fact within the Jewish community in
the United States that if a family wanted a child they could go
to either Bergman or Tuch and simply pay the necessary fee.

The nursing home Mafia Consisted of The Bergman, Weiss-Spinka Rebbe, Braunstein and Teitelbaum-Kirhauser Rebbe families.

The Fraud at Beth Din & Their Bias Against Women

By Craig Horowitz
New York Magazine

Chayie Sieger accused her husband of adultery and battery. Then, after a rabbinical court ruled against her, she accused the rabbis of taking bribes. Is she unstable, as her opponents allege? Or is something rotten in Borough Park?

Chayie Sieger never intended to become a rebel. In fact, for most of her life she was the ultimate conformist, someone who followed the rules and didn't make waves. She was the last person anyone who knew her could imagine doing something to rock the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. But that is exactly what she has done.

Sieger, 50, is a pleasant, soft-spoken Hasidic woman who has lived her entire life within a six-block area of Borough Park. She wears a brown wig, dresses in stylish but modest clothing, and dutifully observes all the laws and customs of her religion. She never questions the role of women in the Bobover Hasidic sect, and will even happily argue on behalf of such anachronistic practices as arranged marriage.

For seven and a half years, however, Sieger has been locked in a divorce battle so ugly, so mean-spirited, and so entangled in Jewish law and observance that it has achieved the status of urban legend in Orthodox communities from New York to Jerusalem. She's an accidental activist, who made a decision to fight only when she believed she had no other choice.

Sieger's close-quarter domestic skirmishing has escalated into a legal war that raises disturbing questions about the rights of Orthodox women, the integrity of the rabbinic courts, known as the betei din, and the ethics of a number of ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who stand accused by Sieger of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to issue her husband the religious divorce ruling he wanted.

It has also raised some questions about New York's civil courts, where her case has crawled through the system, its progress stymied by dozens of motions, appeals, judicial turnover, and endless continuances—a Hasidic version of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

Her children don't speak to her. She's a pariah in her community, with many of her former friends agreeing with a lawyer representing the rabbis that she's "the Tawana Brawley of the Orthodox community." And her husband, though still not legally divorced from Sieger, married another woman in a religious ceremony in Florida.

For years, Sieger lived what seemed to be a typical existence in Brooklyn's community of 50,000 Bobover Hasids. Daily life centered on the family and Jewish ritual. She took care of her two children, kept the house strictly kosher, prepared for the Sabbath every week, and once a month attended the mikvah—the ritual baths where a married woman purifies herself for sexual relations after her menstrual period. When she was supposed to cook, she cooked. When she was supposed to go to shul, she went.

The social schedule revolved around ritual. Someone was always celebrating a milestone: a birth, a bar mitzvah, a wedding. And the rest of the calendar was filled with religious festivals. The only thing that made Sieger a little unusual in her world was her profession. She is a contemporary businesswoman who learned the ins and outs of the nursing-home industry from her father and now operates a successful facility of her own.

But Sieger had a secret—she was trapped in a woefully unhappy marriage, suffering silently with someone she says is an unfaithful, quick-tempered, physically abusive husband. A man of obviously large appetites, Chaim Sieger weighed 325 pounds at one point (he's five foot eleven) and gambled incessantly in the stock market and at the craps tables in Atlantic City—a high-roller Hasid with a comped penthouse suite. His manic gambling was so out of control, she says, that he bankrupted them several times, forcing her—in the early eighties when her son was 11 and her daughter 9—to have to earn some money. This was when she started working for her father.

In the late eighties, she discovered that her husband owned two Upper East Side co-ops. Chaim told her he'd bought them as an investment. Chayie Sieger claims she eventually found out he used the apartments for sexual trysts: his own and those of his fellow Hasids, whom he sometimes videotaped in action. During the last six months before she left him, Chayie tapped the house phones, and she has audiotapes of his phone conversations discussing the escapades.


On one tape, Sieger can be heard playfully telling a woman—whom Chayie Sieger claims was his girlfriend at the time—how much he misses her and desperately wants to see her. He tells the woman, who apparently worked in a hotel, that he wishes he could come and see her and they could go use one of the empty rooms. Or that she could come see him, but his wife could be home at any time.

On another tape, he can be heard excitedly pushing someone to have sex with a certain woman. When the man says no, Sieger says, "What, you don't think she's attractive? C'mon, tell her to get undressed. Do it, and turn on the video."

Chayie Sieger stuck it out, she says, because she plays by the rules. Among Hasids, divorce is taboo. A breakup of a marriage would have a negative impact on the ability of the couple's children to marry well. As children of divorced parents, they would be viewed as damaged goods, far less desirable as potential partners. So she waited. But her plan was clear. As soon as the kids were married and settled, she would be gone.

Finally, on a Monday in December 1995, she moved into her father's house several doors away. Sieger knew that leaving her husband after 24 years of marriage was going to be difficult. She just had no idea how difficult. What Sieger hadn't factored in was the severity of the Bobov response. First came the shock-and-awe campaign. The day she left was the day her son and daughter stopped talking to her. She maintains that her relationship with them had always been very close. She blames their abandonment on intense pressure from their father and members of the community. "In the last 25 years, I'm only the fourth woman in Bobov to leave her husband," Sieger says. "And in each case, the woman lost her children. My children essentially went from A to Z in one day, and that's not normal. I didn't see it before, but I think that Bobov is a cult and my children need to be deprogrammed."

Along with her kids, Sieger has lost essentially everything that was important to her. She hasn't seen her grandchildren in nearly eight years (those born after 1995 she's never seen). Lifelong friends cut her off. People she has known since childhood cross the street to avoid her. Invitations to the social events that are central to life in Borough Park stopped coming. "The reaction was so gender-biased," she says. "No friends stuck by me. All of our friends became his friends."

Sieger has become an outcast in her own world. "When everything goes smoothly, there is no better place to be than in an ultra-Orthodox marriage and an ultra-Orthodox community," says novelist Naomi Ragen, an American who lives in Jerusalem and who has written three books about Orthodox women. "But when it goes bad, everyone is against the woman. No matter what goes wrong in the marriage, it is the woman who gets ganged up on and ostracized. There is no justice whatsoever."

But perhaps the most bizarre reaction was her husband's. At first, Chaim attempted to apply pressure to get her to reconsider ("He told me, `I'll give you the kids back in a minute if you come back to me,' " she says). At the same time, he employed a charm offensive. He called, he sent flowers, and whenever she agreed to talk to him, he swore that he was a changed man.

Though she was the one who walked out, according to Jewish law only the husband can grant a divorce. As a result, there is a long-standing problem in the Orthodox world with women whose marriages end but whose husbands won't give them a get, a Jewish divorce. Without a get, these women remain essentially chained to nonexistent marriages, unable to remarry an Orthodox man, while their husbands can go on and get rabbinic permission to remarry. These women are known in Hebrew as agunah, literally "chained woman."

But once Chaim Sieger realized Chayie was serious, he also had a problem. A divorce would mean they'd have to divide their assets, and this was not an attractive proposition. According to a tenet of Jewish divorce law, any assets brought to the marriage by one party leave with that person if the marriage breaks up. Anything not acquired together during the marriage is not community property. The law is the same in New York civil court as well. And in this case, the lion's share of the Siegers' substantial assets was brought to the marriage by Chayie.

Her father, a native of Poland who did time in a labor camp in Siberia during the war, managed to escape to America and in the fifties went into the nursing-home business, eventually acquiring more than seven facilities, which are now controlled by a family trust.

The bottom line for Chaim was that his wife was not likely to be in a giving mood when settlement time came. She'd already made it clear to Chaim that she was not about to let him keep the two nursing homes the family had put in his name when it was advantageous from a business standpoint to do so.

Legally, he knew he didn't have much leverage. He discussed his situation with Rabbi Jacob Meisels, a lifelong friend and yeshiva classmate, who, Chayie Sieger says, became her husband's guide through the sometimes confusing maze of Jewish law. Reconciliation was tried first. She had one marriage-counseling session, without her husband, with Rabbi Solomon Herbst.

At the same time, Chayie says, Herbst was trying to get her to sign an arbitration agreement. When both of these things failed, Chaim Sieger found another avenue to pursue—an obscure, rarely used 1,000-year-old procedure known in Hebrew as a Heter Meah Rabanim, or Decree of 100 Rabbis.

Basically, the Heter was devised to enable a husband whose wife was somehow not able or not willing ("recalcitrant") to participate in the process to obtain a divorce and remarry. According to experts on Jewish law, it was intended for use in extraordinary cases in which the wife had run away or been institutionalized or somehow incapacitated. Because it is such an extreme measure, the document requires the signatures of 100 rabbis in three different countries.

Though none of these conditions appears to have existed in the Siegers' marital dispute—and there is great controversy in the Jewish community about whether the decree should be used under any circumstances—Chaim managed to secure a Heter. The document was issued by a bet din (rabbinical court) that operates under the aegis of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, a small, right-wing organization that has achieved some notoriety for its strident, outrageous public statements about non-Orthodox Jews. But why would the court issue this document? Why would 100 rabbis sign off on it?

The most serious charge in the 27-page English translation of the Heter is that Chayie Sieger was "not fit to live with and have sexual relations with" because she failed to attend the mikvah; more precisely, she would pick fights with her husband to delay or avoid going. Short of calling her a whore, this is the worst thing you can say about an Orthodox woman. "It's ridiculous. If I can't be trusted to go to the mikvah," Sieger says, "then the food in my house probably isn't kosher either. It's like saying I'm not even Orthodox."

The Heter also charges that she was unable to care for her children because she was more interested in her career ("even though Mr. Sieger supported her with dignity"), and that she filled her house with "quarrels and embarrassment," turning it into "an insane asylum." According to the Heter, she did this by waking her husband up in the middle of the night, turning the radio on really loud, and pouring water on him while he slept.

Sieger believes that the rabbis who run this court were bribed by her husband to issue the Heter. She filed a $13 million civil suit in 1998 charging them with accepting bribes that ranged from $50,000 to as much as $215,000. She also charged them with defaming her and essentially ruining her life by leaking information contained in the Heter in Borough Park.

"All my life I've trusted rabbis, believed in them," says Sieger. "So why wouldn't people believe what's been said about me? After all, if the rabbis are saying these things, then they must be true."

Sieger believes her husband paid the rabbis to issue the Heter and its damaging accusations so he could use the document to blackmail her into giving him what he wants in the divorce settlement. In other words, he would tell her the Heter existed, then offer to have it torn up if she accepted a get on his terms. However, she chose to fight rather than give in. "Look," she says, "husbands are entitled to be greedy, vindictive, angry, or whatever. But they shouldn't have rabbis to help them act on those impulses."

For their part, Rabbis Aryeh Ralbag, Haim Kraus, Hersh Meir Ginsberg, Elimelech Zalman Lebowitz, and Solomon B. Herbst vehemently deny Sieger's charges. Well-known Washington, D.C., attorney Nathan Lewin, who has litigated many highly charged cases involving Orthodox Judaism, is handling their defense with a bare-knuckles bravado that seems to indicate a personal passion for the case. (Herbst is represented by Louis Tratner.)

"She's managed to mislead and bamboozle everybody with her stories," says Lewin, a compact man with white hair and a trim white beard, whose fees for defending the rabbis are being paid, in large part, by Chaim Sieger.

Chayie Sieger's response is succinct:

"Nat Lewin would represent a monkey, as long as it's male and has a beard."

It is clear from the legal briefs, the various motions, and the mountain of deposition transcripts that the defense position is that Chayie Sieger is making everything up. But if she is indeed lying about everything, what about the police report from the 66th Precinct that was filed when she'd gone in after she says Chaim had beaten her?

"I don't believe Chaim Sieger beat her up," says Lewin, an observant Jew who says he knows of cases where women inflict wounds on themselves. "I have seen other instances when women make false claims about what their husbands do."

While Chayie Sieger's original sin in the eyes of the Bobov community was walking out on her husband, her second, perhaps even more serious transgression was to seek relief in the secular courts.


To understand how serious an offense this is considered in Hasidic communities, you only have to know that a poster popped up all over Borough Park that said, in Hebrew, IT IS A COMMANDMENT TO KILL A MOSER (an informer, someone who tells stories outside the community). "Rabbi Daniel Frommel took me to his synagogue in Brooklyn and showed me the poster," Sieger says. "He told me I was the target for going outside the rabbinic courts." Ironically, Sieger herself agrees that Orthodox Jews should not use the secular courts. "I never would have gone outside if there had been another choice. But I was desperate, and I knew there was no chance I was going to get justice any other way."


Chayie Sieger was not quite 18 when a family friend suggested to her parents that she meet a young yeshiva student named Chaim. Perhaps, if the unofficial matchmaker was right, they would like one another. In Borough Park, where Hasidic Jews do things the same way they did them hundreds of years ago in Eastern Europe, this was the first step in arranging a marriage.

As it turned out, Sieger was quite taken with her "blind date," whom she remembers even then, when he was barely 20, as a very charming smooth talker. And so, on their third heavily chaperoned meeting at her house, they had a l'chaim: a toast to the couple's engagement. It was June, and the following March, filled with hope and expectation, the two young Hasids were married. The year was 1972. Twelve months later, they had a son, and two years after that a daughter.

But very early on in their life together, there were signs of trouble. Nine months after the wedding, when Sieger was six months pregnant, she says, a woman who worked with her husband called and said she had had an affair with him. The woman claimed she was calling because she felt guilty and because she thought it was a terrible way for a supposedly pious man to behave.

When Sieger confronted her husband with this information, she says, he didn't even flinch. He said the woman was angry because she hadn't gotten a weekly paycheck she believed she deserved and this was her way to get even. "I made excuses from the very beginning," Chayie Sieger says. "I heard what I wanted to hear and believed what I wanted to believe. It took a long time, but eventually I realized there's no fixing this guy."

Still, Sieger says, she suffered quietly, never telling anyone what was going on. Even when she finally left and her son and daughter turned on her, she would not let them hear the details of their father's secret life on the audiotapes. The only people who knew the truth, she says, were her father, her brother, and Solomon Halberstam, the Bobov grand rebbe.

In June 1996, six months after she had moved out, Sieger went to the Bobover rebbe's daughter and requested a meeting with her father. She hoped that if she told Halberstam her story, he would help her get through the difficulties in the best way possible.

And so, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon she went to a house at the corner of 48th Street and Fifteenth Avenue. The building contains both the synagogue and the rebbe's home. They sat down at the dining-room table in his modestly furnished second-floor apartment.

She asked the rebbe, who was dressed in the traditional chalat, the black silk belted robe, to talk to her husband and help her secure a get. The rebbe asked her what the problems were in her marriage and told her to speak candidly.

"I talked to him about Chaim's bizarre behavior," she says, "and explained that for a long time I thought I could change him. But after years of trying, I finally realized I couldn't. He was very sympathetic and very disappointed in Chaim. `How could I not have known?' he asked. I was surprised by how warm he was on a personal basis with a woman."

The rebbe told Chaim he should give her a get, and his daughter told Chayie she should go to see Rabbi Herbst for counseling. "In the meantime," she says, "Chaim was telling everyone nothing happened. We just had a little fight and it'll all be fine."

In the rabbinic tribunal system as it's currently practiced in America, there is no central authority—no oversight, nor any avenue for appeal. And simply refusing to show up if someone starts a proceeding is not as easy as it sounds. "If you and I have a dispute, it is very difficult for you to refuse to come to court," says Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler, professor of Talmudic law at an affiliate of Yeshiva University.

"Essentially, I have you over a barrel. If you don't come, there can be rabbinic sanctions. For example, you can be prohibited from being called up to the Torah. And there are social sanctions as well. You'll stop receiving invitations."

If you refuse to go to court, other ultra-Orthodox people may even stop doing business with you. They will assume you can't be trusted, and if there is a disagreement of some kind, they'll have no recourse because you won't appear in court.

In this case, Chaim Sieger went to a rabbinic court run by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and asked them to preside over his divorce. They agreed to take the case and sent Chayie a hazmannah, which is something between a summons and an invitation to appear.

Sieger says she was told by a knowledgeable rabbi that she would not get a fair hearing from this court. He told her to instead opt for a zabla, which is, in essence, going to arbitration. She picks a representative, the other side also picks a representative, and then the two of them pick an arbitrator to hear the case. She then notified the court of her intent to seek a zabla.

Beyond this point, however, events become impossibly murky. The rabbis' side argues that Chayie Sieger never followed through on the zabla request and that she didn't respond to the next two hazmannahs they sent. Jewish law states that if the notices are ignored, the court can then act without the participation of the delinquent party.

Chayie Sieger says that she was never given proper notification of the proceeding or sufficient time to respond.

Lewin has argued in court that Sieger's lawsuit against the rabbis should be thrown out because it violates the separation of church and state. "This whole debate is over something that only matters to religious people," he says.

"I don't care whether Mrs. Sieger wanted these rabbis to decide this matter or not. And whether she agreed to participate or not is irrelevant. The whole notion that these rabbis are three thugs off the streets who've come in and taken somebody who hasn't voluntarily gone to a rabbinic court is ludicrous."

When there have been problems with the rabbinic courts, the primary corrupting influence has been money. Some of the courts have suspect reputations, and one widely respected expert in the Jewish world told me off the record that the court in the Sieger case has "a reputation for having its hand out."


"A rabbinic court that charges money for its services is really an oxymoron," says Tendler, who talked to Chayie Sieger five years ago about getting involved in her case but ultimately did not because of time constraints. "It is actually against Jewish law for these rabbis to charge anything for their services, and yet it's gotten very expensive. They sometimes charge as much as lawyers now."

In the past, when Jews lived an insular existence and had their own institutions, these rabbinic courts received salaries that were paid by the community. There was also, as there is in Israel today, a higher authority to deal with controversial or disputed decisions. But while America is a secular state, Israel is a Jewish state, with a chief rabbi and government oversight of religious institutions.

In the case of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, the court that produced the Heter for Chaim Sieger, there are two questions at the heart of the case: Were they bribed by Chaim Sieger to produce the result he wanted, and even if they weren't, did they act properly and responsibly in accordance with Jewish law in issuing the Heter Meah Rabanim?

"A rabbinic court that knows its business would never have gotten involved in this," says Tendler, "until a civil court had acted in their divorce case. This court did not follow protocol. They jumped the gun."

Tendler says that in any marital dispute where there are complicated issues to be resolved, like a disagreement over assets, a Heter is unacceptable. "The Heter is a very extreme step that shouldn't even be considered until years and years have passed without a resolution."

Then there is the peculiar matter of the 100 signatures. Rabbi Ralbag testified that he threw them away because there was no reason to keep them. He also said he could not remember the name of a single rabbi who signed the document other than his fellow court judges.

"A Heter is so rare," Tendler says, "that any rabbi who is involved in one and does get 100 signatures would probably frame them and hang them in his living room."

During his deposition, Chaim Sieger said he never bribed any of the rabbis and paid only a relatively modest fee of $5,000 for their services. But circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise. Near the end of January 1998, about seven weeks after the Heter was issued, Chaim Sieger withdrew $945,000 from an account at Chase Manhattan Bank in cash, cashier's checks, and money orders.

When questioned about this by Chayie's lawyer, he said he couldn't remember what he did with the money. Perhaps, he blithely said, he was making interest-free loans to friends. There are, however, no records to support this.

That very same week, Rabbi Ralbag, who testified in his deposition that his annual salary is around $35,000, suddenly came into $40,000. He then invested that money in stock in an Independence Savings Bank initial public offering.

Ralbag at first offered no explanation for where the $40,000 came from. Ultimately, he said it was a gift from his parents. So far, however, he has not submitted his parents' bank statements or a gift-tax filing. The same day that Ralbag deposited his sudden windfall, Rabbi Ginsberg, whose stated salary is $11,000 a year, deposited $50,000 into an account at Independence. He has so far offered no explanation for the source of his money.

Chayie has charged that her husband transferred $500,000 to an account belonging to Rabbi Meisels. Meisels, who is not named in the lawsuit, kept $215,000 for himself and then distributed the rest, in several cases through an intermediary, to the rabbis who took care of the Heter. Chayie Sieger has copies of bank statements, canceled checks, and money transfers to back up her claims.

Rabbi Herbst, who did not sit on the rabbinic court but served as a marriage counselor to the Siegers and, when that wasn't working, introduced Chaim Sieger to Rabbi Ralbag as someone who knew about Heters, also had enormous good fortune that same fateful week as Ralbag and Ginsberg. Herbst also invested $50,000 in Independence stock.

Herbst, who testified that he makes about $25,000 a year, submitted bank records in the name of Congregation Kehal Premishlan, Inc., which he said was "his congregation," dating from 1992 to 1993. He also submitted bankbook photocopies that showed a balance hovering around $20,000 over a four-year period. Not exactly sufficient funds for his investments. Particularly given that it appears he made a second purchase of Independence stock, also in January, this time totaling $215,000.

In addition to the financial "coincidences," there was the sworn testimony of a man named Frederick Frankel who said he went to Rabbi Ralbag to discuss getting a Heter and that Ralbag told him it would cost $100,000. "He [Ralbag] told me he needed a $10,000 deposit to start the process," Frankel said, "and I asked him basically who to make the check out to, and he told me it had to be cash . . . And he said that normally the whole $100,000 is in cash, but at a minimum, 50 percent of it had to be in cash." Frankel never went any further.

In January 2002, New York State Supreme Court judge Martin Schoenfeld, ruling on Nathan Lewin's motion to have the case dismissed, found that there was more than enough evidence to take the bribery case to trial. Despite the weight of the circumstantial evidence, the defense argues that all of this adds up to nothing more than coincidence. Lewin says the Independence IPO was a very hot topic in Brooklyn's Orthodox neighborhoods and that "everyone in Borough Park was investing in it."

A large part of the defense strategy has been to depict Chayie Sieger as an unstable, manipulative shrew. Abe H. Konstam, Chaim Sieger's divorce lawyer, laughed derisively when I asked about Chayie Sieger. He referred to the "well-documented shenanigans she has perpetrated" and said all his client wants is his freedom. Then he refused to talk to me any further.

His reference to Chaim Sieger's desire to have his freedom was particularly curious. Though the Siegers' divorce case has yet to come to court in New York, Chaim is already remarried. And he has two new babies. Not long after the Heter was issued, Sieger traveled to Florida with his girlfriend and they were married by his friend Rabbi Jacob Meisels. According to copies of American Express bills that were produced during the legal wrangling, the newly married couple threw a party at the Doral in Miami that cost, for catering, flowers, music, and travel expenses, upwards of $200,000.

Why Florida? One possible explanation is the state does not recognize religious marriage ceremonies. Therefore, since Chaim and Chayie Sieger are not divorced, he could still "remarry" this way, without, presumably, being charged with bigamy. Chaim Sieger's lawyer vehemently denies that his client is remarried, though he refuses to comment further. He would not, for example, explain how it is that Sieger is living with a woman and their new babies in the middle of the intractably religious world of Borough Park, if they're not married.

Chayie Sieger's decision to take her husband and the rabbis to court was opposed by virtually everyone. Even her own daughter essentially told her to tough it out. "She said I'd put up with it for 24 years and was still in one piece, so why couldn't I just continue to put up with it?" she says.

Several days after this conversation, her daughter-in-law, a Canadian who now lives in Borough Park, came to visit. She told Sieger that if she didn't reunite with Chaim, she would leave her son and go back to Canada.

"I was shocked," Sieger says. "I told her I'd taken a lot on myself and didn't want to take it on anymore."

As Sieger tells this story about her children on a recent steamy summer morning, her eyes fill with tears. She speaks haltingly, sitting in her meticulously arranged office in the Bronx nursing home she owns.

But just when she seems about to lose it, she regains her composure and the look on her face hardens. "All my life I've played by the rules, and this is the position I end up in," she says. "No family should be destroyed the way mine has been. They have made me a wife without a husband and a mother without children. This is what's pushing me to see this through. I'm going to fight till the end."

Rabbi Naftoli Herman Neuberger Z"L , The" Light Of Israel" The Charedim Attempted To Extinguish

I will have you read the two eulogies written by the self-appointed spokesmen for Orthodox Jews. Please read them carefully, for what they DO say and for what they DO NOT DARE say.
"My eulogy" and comments will be at the end of their articles.
UOJ



Rabbi Naftoli Neuberger, zt"l, and Us
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
November 10, 2005

Rabbi Aharon Kotler once told his friend Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, "I only envy you one thing: Rabbi Neuberger." Reb Aharon was referring to Rabbi Naftoli Neuberger, Ner Israel's long-time president.

Reb Aharon's envy is easily understood. Ner Israel's 90-acre campus is the largest in the world, and serves nearly 1,000 students in the high school, beis medrash and kollel. The campus boasts over hundred housing units for the faculty, administrators, and kollel families. There is no parallel anywhere in the world. After a visit to the campus a few years ago, MK Yuval Steinitz told me that it reminded him of a yeshiva kibbutz.

All this was the result of Rabbi Neuberger's breadth of vision.

Running and raising the funds for such a large institution, with an annual budget of nearly $10 million dollars, would have been a full-time job for any man. But Rabbi Neuberger's impact extended far beyond the Ner Israel campus.

Despite his strict, uncompromising religious observance, he was a revered figure among all segments of the Baltimore Jewish community, as the extensive coverage given to his passing by the Baltimore Jewish Times and the presence at his levaya of the top leadership of the Jewish federation attests.

The Orthodox community of Baltimore is more integrated into the general communal framework than that of any major city in the United States. As a consequence, the non-Orthodox community pays greater heed to Orthodox concerns than in other cities. When it was proposed to open a suburban Jewish Community Center on Shabbos, for instance, one of the most prominent local Reform leaders wrote an impassioned letter against doing so, and the proposal was defeated. Much of the credit for this goes to Rabbi Neuberger's insistence on maintaining ties with the communal leadership, even as that leadership understood that he could not and would not ever compromise on halachah.

Nearly every person interviewed by the Baltimore Jewish Times mentioned Rabbi Neuberger's overwhelming love for his fellow Jews – as Howard Tzvi Friedman, the incoming president of AIPAC, put it, "every Jew, any kind of Jew." He never failed to respond to any request for help, and if he heard that a Jew was in danger anywhere in the world, he would move heaven and earth to help him. That concern for every Jew was the key to his influence with those far removed from his own high standards of observance.

Perhaps his greatest achievement on behalf of world Jewry was the rescue of thousands of Iranian Jews after the fall of the Shah. That rescue required international diplomatic and political connections, and Rabbi Neuberger was the initiator and one of the masterminds of the operation. Over the years, over 800 Iranian students studied at Ner Israel, providing a level of rabbinical scholarship that allowed the Iranian community to reestablish itself in America on a stronger Torah footing than in Iran.

Nor was Rabbi Neuberger's influence confined to the Jewish community. His counsel was sought by local, state and national politicians. Both the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland attended his levaya. Congressman Benjamin Cardin told the Baltimore Jewish Times, "He is truly one of the great thinkers of our community. . . . He is in a class by himself, the person you go to when you want to talk about political issues."

Senator Barbara Milkuski credited Rabbi Neuberger with having given her the initial push she needed to run for the Senate. She once related at a Ner Israel dinner how she had turned down an invitation to dine with Vice-president Al Gore that night. "I said, "Presidents come and go. I've got to go with Rabbi Neuberger."

Politicians found in his modest office at Ner Israel something they could find nowhere else: disinterested advice and the chance to escape the seemy, calculating political world for the company of a genuinely high-minded person. Two weeks before Rabbi Neuberger's passing, Maryland Governor Robert Erlich visited Rabbi Neuberger, and the latter reminded him that winter was fast approaching and that something must be done for the many poor people who would not be able to afford heating fuel.

That remark was typical of his genuine interest in making the world a better place. Rabbi Neuberger rescued the concept of tikkun olam from the Reformers, who have kidnapped it. Far from serving as an alternative to mitzvah observance, Rabbi Neuberger's public activities proclaimed tikkun olam to be the goal of a life of Torah and mitvos.

The only communal leader of the last fifty years who can be mentioned in the same breath with Rabbi Neuberger is Rabbi Moshe Sherer, zt"l, the president of Agudath Israel of America. The two were bochurim together at Ner Israel, and lifelong friends and partners. They shared an acute understanding of the political process and people, commanded the respect of a vast array of politicians and public officials out of all proportion to the votes they could deliver, and were able to convey an attitude of hating the sin not the sinner to every Jew they met, whether in a public or private context. Among their many major projects together were the Iranian rescue, creation of a national accreditation agency for yeshivos gedolos, which has brought tens of millions of dollars in federal funding into yeshiva coffers, and the preservation of the draft deferment for divinity students.

Contemplating the influence of figures like Rabbi Neuberger and Rabbi Sherer in America, those of us living in Israel cannot help but feel a certain envy. Who can imagine, for instance, a secular Israeli political leader visiting any chareidi leader to discuss issues of general national concern, except in the context of coalition negotiations? Those discussions would quickly get down to horsetrading over how much chareidi support would cost in terms of support for yeshivos. The context is hardly conducive to secular politicians going away with a heightened respect for the Torah.

The blame does not rest on our communal leaders. The structure of Israeli politics and society makes it much more unlikely that a Rabbi Sherer or a Rabbi Neuberger will emerge – e.g., the fact that much of the government financing of chareidi institutions comes only through supplemental budgets that must be renegotiated each year using political threats. In addition, the media consistently downplays the activities of chareidi politicians on matters of common concern, such as those of MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni on environmental issues.

But the fact remains that outside of a handful of geniuses of chesed, such as Rabbi Elimelech Firer and Rabbi Uri Lopoliansky, we have failed to convince our fellow Jews of our love and concern for them. We are widely perceived as concerned solely with maintaining the financial support of our communal institutions. And the truth is that if asked to demonstrate our concern with our fellow Jews many in our community would reply that our learning, and therefore larger budgets for our yeshivos, are the best protection for the entire society. Remarkably, however, that response has failed to convince our fellow Jews that we care about them as people.

Even as we mourn the passing of askanim of Rabbi Neuberger and Rabbi Sherer's international stature, it behooves us to consider how we can ensure that others emerge to replace them.



By Avi Shafran
Agudath Israel

The voice on the phone several years back could have belonged only to one of two people, and I really had no reason to imagine that Henry Kissinger would be calling me. To my greater honor, the caller was Rabbi Naftali (Herman) Neuberger, president of Baltimore's Ner Israel Rabbinical College (where I studied in the early 1970s).

Neuberger passed away at age 87 on Friday night, October 21, shortly after lighting the Sabbath candles.

He shared more with Kissinger than a deep, resonant voice and Teutonic accent. Neuberger was brilliant, a formidable negotiator who had a deep understanding of issues and people. If there were a Jewish equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, he would have been a recipient. Several times. Come to think of it, he would have been a contender, too, for the economics prize, considering his transformation of a yeshiva with a few dozen students into a thriving institution with a student body of nearly 1,000 in its high school, post-secondary yeshiva and married-student Kollel — all situated, along with faculty and Kollel housing, on a stunning, sprawling suburban campus that resembles a small, lovely city.

To be sure, the success of Ner Israel Rabbinical College is inextricable from the scholarship and reputation of its founding Rosh Yeshiva, or dean, Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman — Rabbi Neuberger's brother-in-law — and of Ruderman's illustrious successors, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg and Rabbi Yaakov Kulefsky, all of blessed memory. And Ner Israel continues to thrive under the tutelage of the renowned Rabbi Aharon Feldman, may he enjoy a long and fruitful tenure.

But yeshiva deans are educators and inspirers. Yeshivas need builders, too — visionaries who possess the savvy, and not infrequently chutzpah, to identify potential and know what is needed to realize it. That was Rabbi Neuberger. He took out a personal loan (resulting in nervous, sleepless nights) to begin the process that culminated in Baltimore's famed yeshiva. And he worked tirelessly to convince others to build alongside him.

And it wasn't only Ner Israel that he built. He built bridges among Jews and between the Jewish community and others — which helps explain the presence at his funeral of Maryland's governor and Baltimore's mayor, and the expressions of sorrow at his passing from across the Jewish spectrum as well from such non-Jewish luminaries as Cardinal William H. Keeler, the Catholic Church's top liaison to the American Jewish community, and Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat. Neuberger worked with and served as adviser to both Keeler and Mikulski. He was known as a political powerhouse, but this wasn't because of money or voting blocs; everyone simply knew he was a selfless leader whose word was as good as gold.

And Neuberger, assisted by the late president of Agudath Israel of America, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, helped build an entire community, too, moving heaven, earth and the U.S. State Department to transplant hundreds of Iranian Jews to these shores (many of whom were enrolled tuition free at Ner Israel). He was also a founder, with Sherer, of AARTS, a network of some 50 post-secondary institutions of higher Jewish learning, and served as its president for many years.

Neuberger was renowned for "being there" for individual members of the community, doing whatever he could (usually quite a bit) to help people with marriage, employment or other issues. He sought no thanks and shunned praise. In keeping with Jewish law, his burial during the week of Sukkot precluded eulogies at the funeral; he would have been pleased.

In my current life as an Agudath Israel spokesperson and media liaison, I had the occasional honor of speaking with him (as I was during that phone call). I also remember well the gracious welcome he gave me and a New York Times reporter I had in tow one spring day in 2000, when we visited Ner Israel.

After lunch and a tour of the campus, we stood outside the main study hall, where several hundred young men in pairs were animatedly arguing points or poring over texts; my guest was clearly intrigued. Neuberger and one of his five sons, Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger, a member of the yeshiva faculty, invited my guest to enter the cavernous, crowded room and engage students in conversation. "Unscripted?" I wondered to myself in public relations horror. Even the reporter hesitated, not wanting to take the students from their studies. But the senior Rabbi Neuberger insisted; he knew the yeshiva he had built.

The reporter went from one pair of students to another; at each stop, the students stood up to welcome the visitor, invited him to sit down with them and happily answered his questions. A good while later he returned, pad filled with notes, eyes with wonder at the "sincerity and idealism" he had encountered. (The resultant article confirmed the positive impact left by his conversations.) Yes, Neuberger knew his yeshiva.

The image that came to mind, though, when I heard of his passing, was one that was more than 30 years old. Walking a path near the building where he had his office, I saw his silhouette on the shade of an adjoining conference room. He was seated, swaying, likely over a volume of the Talmud, doing for whatever time he could manage at the end of a long day what he had enabled thousands of students to do for millions of hours.

May his memory be a blessing.


The True Legacy Of Rabbi Neuberger Z"L, And The Eulogy Of Charedi Judaism

By UOJ

The two above self appointed spokesmen for Orthodox Judaism would have you believe that R' Neuberger's legacy was limited to his askanus, chesed, and political savvy.
He was a man of so many accomplishments and talents, way too voluminous to attempt to delve into on a blog; Iranian Jewry, being certainly one of his greatest.

I am offended as well as all Orthodox Jews with intelligence should be. You can pick up a newspaper any day of the week and find most eulogies to include many of these attributes assigned to many people. Chessed , askanus...any Brooklyn Jew that dies, that's the buzzword at their funeral.Have you not noticed that any behaima in Boro Park, as soon as they die, they become a world famous askan and baal chessed?

The greatest offensive remark these two above guys are guilty of, is associating Neuberger's accomplishments with Moshe Sherer. Moshe Sherer was no Neuberger, what Neuberger forgot Sherer never learned. Sherer needed a podium, a camera, and a soapbox; Neuberger worked for God, and worked his greatest deeds without the spotlight or fanfare.

There was no man, rosh yeshiva or otherwise, that has so positively impacted American Orthodox Jewry in the past forty plus years as Rabbi Herman Neuberger.
I knew Rabbi Neuberger, I ate at his home and he was a guest at ours.
He was a visionary that changed the face of Orthodox American Jewry.
He knew, better than anyone in the world, that for Orthodoxy to survive in America, Yeshiva boys would have to be able to earn a living outside of the Yeshiva.
Yes, he was the number one proponent of a four letter word that ends in "K".

He made it perfectly acceptable and honorable for a Yeshiva boy to go to WORK and support his family.The entire Frum community of Baltimore was built with pride on this principle. He initiated relationships with the major universities, enabling Yeshiva boys to learn by day, and go to college in the evening. The vast majority of his talmidim are frum baalei batim who are bnei Torah and raising generations of frum children. He built a kollel as well for the talmidim that were chinuch or rabbonus bound.

The Fundamentalist Gedolim marginalized and ridiculed him. They called him all kinds of degrading names, including insulting his German heritage and associating him with the Maskilim. My father was at many a meeting where the "Gedolim" referred to Ner Yisroel as a home for the "lost generation" or for the "gur shvacher kinder"(very limited children).

Avi Shafran, a POOR student at Ner Yisroel, mocks in jest R' Neuberger's German accent. He heard it at many a meeting at Agudath Israel. Comparing him to Kissinger, is that the very best you can do? How about comparing him to Samson Rafael Hirsch, the builder of German Jewry with the ability to support their families without becoming shnorrers and welfare cheats? Your condescending and gratuitous remarks reads like something Moshe Sherer would have scripted for you.

Jonathan Rosenblum, how dare you tie in R' Neuberger's accomplishments with a "B" rated actor, Moshe Sherer? How many smiling , political back slapping photos were in Sherer's office? Is that your yardstick of accomplishment, how many millions of dollars one raises or gets from the government? Obviously, you are writing a book about Sherer, a guy you never knew, but are being fed with Agudah and Art Scroll regurgitated propaganda. I also assume, you are getting paid handsomely to participate in the Sherer charade.

I knew Sherer well, too well, he was a "fraud."
Speak to anyone who knew him before he studied politics and acting.
To put him in the same breath with Neuberger is a grievous sin and a lie. Thousands of Iranians were already freed by Rabbi Neuberger's intervention before Moshe Sherer joined the photo op.

The Ner Yisroel campus is a kiddush Hashem. It proves to all of us what can be accomplished with fierce determination, vision and emunah.To have known Rabbi Neuberger was to love him, and people willingly lined up to help him with any and all of his projects.

But his everlasting legacy for Orthodox Judaism is the pride he instilled in his talmidim and all who were in awe of his philosophy of Torah V'Avoda (my words), and would not permit the Moetzes or other moronic Black Hat guys who had NO CLUE what it would take for Judaism to survive in America, to intimidate him or disrupt his vision.

He swam against the Charedi Tsunami, and prevailed. "Everything else is commentary".

Yehi Zichro Boruch!

The Rambam's Views On Gentiles, Blacks And Other "Mute Animals"

A Few Quotes From The Greatest Jewish Philosopher Who Just Happens To Be Sephardic.


Maimonides, the greatest medieval Jewish authority on matters of religion, teaches in his Book of Knowledge that it is a duty to exterminate "with one's own hands" Jewish infidels "such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and Baitos [the founders of a Jewish sect active in the second century BC] and their pupils, may the name of the wicked rot."

In his Guide to the Perplexed "justly considered to be the greatest work of Jewish religious philosophy," Maimonides explains that "some of the Turks...and the Blacks (kushim = Africans) and the nomads in the South" are incapable of attaining the true worship of God because "their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and, according to my opinion, they are not on the level of human beings..."

Israelis unhappy, unsafe in bedroom

By TALYA HALKIN

We should really be proud of our brothers in Israel for their honesty, but feel really bad because they are so unhappy!UOJ


Israelis are among the world's most ignorant population when it comes to knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.

According to an annual sex survey conducted by the Durex condom company, 23 percent of Israelis have never heard of the most common STDs. By contrast, only 8% of those surveyed in some 50 other countries were unaware of the existence of these diseases.

The poll also suggests that Israelis are feeling generally unsatisfied with their sex lives.( I feel really bad for them )

The survey, which was published on Tuesday, was conducted by Internet, and the data was analyzed at the company's British headquarters.

The good news, according to the survey, is that "only" 7% of married Israelis admit to cheating on their partners.

Matters are much worse in Turkey - where 58% of survey participants reported instances of infidelity - and in Denmark, where 46% of those surveyed reported having sex outside of a stable relationship.

. (Shvartzes in Brooklyn, N.Y. report 100% INFIDELITY rates, in matter of fact they are not sure what FIDELITY means. I walked up to Leroy on Flatbush av. the other day and I said, "Hey bro, do you know what fidelity means?"
He said, "sure, my brother went to jail robbin one of them offices".)

The bad news, however, is that 41% of Israelis have had unprotected sex without inquiring about the partner's sexual history. (Oy Vey Is Meer)

According to Harel Braude, the product management director for Durex in Israel, the latter statistic "explains the growing percentage of Israelis who have been infected with STDs in Israel in recent years."

Also worrying, 56% of Israelis report having one-night stands, as opposed to an average of 40% in other countries.

Nevertheless, Israelis lag behind the rest of the world in their degree of sexual satisfaction. In comparison with the 44% of those surveyed in general, only 36% of Israelis reported satisfaction with their sex lives. Makes you want to cry!

Men and women differed on this matter: While 41% of Israeli men said they did not feel they had enough sex, only 21% of Israeli women felt the same way. Nevertheless, 85.5% of Israeli men reported that quality was more important than quantity. Only 4.4% of Israeli women thought that quantity was more important. ( this cracks me up)

Still, 12.8% of Israeli women consider a month to be too long a time to forgo sex, while only 23.9% are willing to wait as much as half a year.

Men, by contrast, are more impatient. Only 9% of Israeli men are willing to forgo sex for six months, and 5% believed that even a single day without sex was too much.

Despite their relatively high level of sexual discontent, Israelis consume less pornography than the international average (34% compared to 41% in other countries); only 15% of Israelis use vibrators, compare to 43% of Americans and Britons.

For those concerned about their degree of sexual experience, it may be useful to know that the average number of partners reported worldwide is nine.

Here too, gender plays an important role: Men reported an average of 10.2 partners, while women reported a 6.9 average. Israelis are slightly above the average, with a reported average of 10.6 partners.( that's for the Charedim, The seculars are known to have 100 PLUS

Overall, Israeli participants in the survey reported that the most common locations for sex outside of the bedroom was a vehicle (57%), the beach (41%) and the bathroom (39%). Twenty-two percent of Israelis also reported having sexual relations in clubs and shuls..( This Is Very Important to Know)

Exhibitionist tendencies were especially prevalent among Chassidic Americans and Canadians - 21% of whom reported they enjoyed having sex in front of their Rebbe.

Worldwide, 36% of participants in the survey reported that their favorite place for having sex was in their parents' bedroom. (PATHETIC BASTARDS)

The Future of American Orthodoxy

by Jonathan D. Sarna

In the struggle for the soul of American Jewry, the Orthodox model has triumphed," Samuel G. Freedman announced in his widely discussed volume titled Jew vs. Jew. Freedman, himself raised as a secularist, is far from alone in his analysis. In the thirty-five years that have passed since Charles Liebman, writing in the American Jewish Year Book, first pronounced Orthodoxy to be "on the upsurge" and concluded that it was "the only group which today contains within it a strength and will to live that may yet nourish all the Jewish world," Orthodoxy has emerged as the great success story of late 20th-century American Judaism. Some of its leaders proudly proclaim themselves the winners in the race to save American Judaism, and insist that non-Orthodox Jews, with their high rate of intermarriage, will have no Jewish grandchildren and no Jewish future.

History warns against triumphalistic claims of this sort.

In the post-Civil War era, Reform Jews believed that they would define American Judaism. The architect of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, called his prayer book Minhag Amerika and, given the number of synagogues that moved into the Reform camp in his day, his vision did not seem farfetched. Many in the mid-1870s believed as he did that Reform would in time become "the custom of American Jews." Of course, with mass East European Jewish immigration that did not happen and within half-a-century Reform Judaism had stagnated.

Conservative Judaism, meanwhile, became the fastest growing movement on the American Jewish scene and it too enjoyed a moment of triumphalism, especially in the immediate post-World War II era. But its success proved no more long lasting. In recent decades, its numbers have declined both absolutely and relatively.

The question now is whether Orthodoxy will follow the same trajectory.

History, of course, does not always repeat itself, but insiders in the Orthodox world know that their movement suffers from many "dilemmas and vulnerabilities."

Indeed a symposium organized by the Orthodox Union in 1998 spoke of "a sense of triumph mixed with trepidation." I want to focus on six reasons for this trepidation. Without discounting any of American Orthodoxy's obvious strengths, anyone who is seriously interested in the future of American Orthodoxy needs to confront these issues.

First of all, Orthodox Judaism in America has had trouble retaining its members.

Indeed, according to a demographic study by Sergio Della Pergola and Uzi Rebhun, published in the Orthodox flagship publication, Jewish Action, Orthodoxy loses more of its members over time than does any other Jewish religious movement.

Even among the younger and supposedly more committed Orthodox (born 1950-1970), according to the survey, Orthodoxy retained only 42 percent of those born into its fold.

To be sure, some of these losses are compensated for by gains of new followers, and Orthodox Jews also enjoy a higher birthrate than their non-Orthodox counterparts. Figures from the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey, one suspects, will show an improved rate of Orthodox retention. Notwithstanding all of these factors, however, the demographers concluded that, "overall, the size of Orthodoxy does not seem to be bound to dramatic growth."

Considering that not even 10 percent of American Jews are currently Orthodox, this represents a significant problem.

Second, Orthodoxy in America is suffering from a severe leadership crisis. The greatest of its 20th-century leaders - Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Moses Feinstein, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson - all have passed from the scene, and no worthy successors have emerged. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Rabbi Soloveitchik's son-in-law and now the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivat Har Etzion, in Israel, has recently acknowledged and bemoaned "the current dearth of first-rank gedolim [giants]" in America.

"One can think," he writes, "of no indigenous American gadol certain to be remembered with wistful awe a century hence...of no giant majestically bestriding the contemporary scene and securely moving American Orthodoxy into the future."

Perhaps for this reason, American Orthodox Jews increasingly look to Israeli rabbis and yeshivah heads for direction. When a young American Orthodox Jew speaks of "my rebbe," chances are that he is referring to someone in Israel.


One cannot but wonder, however, whether Israeli Orthodox leaders really understand the American Jewish scene well enough to exercise leadership here. Historically, at least, religious movements that cannot count on indigenous leadership to direct them have not fared well in America - at least, not for long.

Third, American Orthodoxy is experiencing a significant brain drain. It sends its best and brightest to Israel for long periods of yeshivah study, and unsurprisingly many of them never return. Even those who do come back and succeed feel a spiritual longing to return to the Holy Land, and count the days until they can do so. Thus, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, one of the most successful American Orthodox rabbis of recent decades, left his congregation in New York in order to make aliyah to Efrat. His success at building that community is remarkable, but in the meanwhile his former congregation grievously declined and American Orthodoxy lost one of its most dynamic leaders. One can think of literally dozens of similar examples: remarkable Orthodox men and women who might have transformed American Jewish religious life but preferred to cast their lot with Zion. This may be terrific from an Israeli perspective, but can a movement that sends its most illustrious sons and daughters there truly expect to triumph here?

Fourth, American Orthodoxy is deeply divided over the issue of how to confront modernity.

There is nothing new about this: Jeffrey Gurock has shown that the tension between "accommodators" and "resisters" in Orthodox life dates back to the 19th century. Parallel debates have animated many other American religious movements. Indeed, such debates have also often proved salutary: each side checks and balances the excesses of the other.

The problem is that, in the absence of broadly respected leaders, the fault lines between modern and right-wing Orthodox Jews have deepened.

In one particularly vitriolic attack, Rabbi Elya Svei, a prominent member of the right-wing Agudat Israel, characterized Yeshiva University's President Norman Lamm as "an enemy of God" - a charge that he subsequently refused to retract.

More broadly, Modern Orthodox Jews - including, recently, Senator Joseph Lieberman - have found themselves written out of Orthodoxy altogether by some right-wing critics. No wonder that Professors William B. Helmreich and Reuel Shinnar, in a recent analysis, described Modern Orthodoxy as "a movement under siege." The question, however, is not whether Modern Orthodoxy will survive - in fact, it retains thousands of adherents. The question is whether Orthodoxy itself can survive as a single movement or whether, like so many Protestant denominations that have faced similar challenges, it will ultimately polarize so far as to crack.

The fact that Orthodox Judaism, unlike its Conservative and Reform counterparts, does not have any strong institutional ties binding all of its factions together makes the danger of such a schism all the greater.

Fifth, American Orthodoxy faces sweeping challenges from contemporary feminism. Jewish Action calls this "perhaps the most explosive issue facing Orthodoxy" and wonders aloud whether it "will estrange feminists and their supporters from the rest of Orthodoxy."

In many communities, the answer would seem to be yes.

So-called "women's issues" - whether, for example, women may organize separate prayer groups on a regular basis, or dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah, or celebrate ritually the bat mitzvah of their daughters, or wear tallit and tefillin - divide Orthodox synagogues one from another in many of the major communities where Orthodox Jews live, and have divided many synagogues internally as well. Indeed, it can be argued that these issues are to contemporary Orthodoxy what debates over mixed seating and the height of the mehitzah were to an earlier generation. Those issues turned out to be defining ones for Orthodox Judaism: in time, synagogues with mixed seating had to stop calling themselves Orthodox. Will the women's issues today prove similarly divisive? The heated rhetoric on both sides hardly hints at the possibility of compromise. The question, as Orthodoxy ponders its future, is whether "the most explosive issue facing Orthodoxy" will ultimately blow up, fragmenting American Orthodoxy in the process.

Finally, American Orthodoxy is currently mired in several ugly scandals that have undermined the credibility of some of its foremost lay and professional leaders.

The mystery surrounding missing tape recordings of Rabbi Soloveitchik's lectures has already tarnished several reputations. Meanwhile, the far more serious scandal surrounding the alleged sexual misdeeds of a charismatic figure in the National Council of Synagogue Youth along with the alleged widespread cover-up that allowed him to maintain his job for years, accusations against him notwithstanding, threaten the credibility of the entire Orthodox Union. So far, the impact of these scandals has been circumscribed. The long-term damage to the movement, however, may prove more far-reaching, just as the scandals involving television evangelists did untold damage to the fortunes of Evangelical Protestantism.

Taken together, all of these "dilemmas and vulnerabilities" demonstrate that the Orthodox model has not triumphed in America. The question instead is whether Orthodoxy's unexpected rise will be followed by an equally precipitous decline.

Such cycles are familiar in religion, just as they are in economics, but they are by no means inevitable. In the end, Orthodoxy's future will actually depend upon its own actions.

Will it confront the challenges that it faces, or will it discover only in retrospect that success blinded it to the internal problems that ultimately proved its undoing?

Rabbi Kaduri – Will he bless Madonna -UOJ Says Of Course He Will

YT News
Pop star plans to have another child, wants blessing of renowned Israeli Kabbalist

Good news for Madonna fans in Israel: The Kabbalah-loving pop-icon, who calls herself “Esther” these days, may visit Israel during the upcoming Hanukah holiday, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.

One of the singer’s managers, Guy Ozery, confirmed that Madonna has expressed her wish to visit Israel again soon, following an earlier visit about a year ago.

Meanwhile, Madonna’s managers apparently contacted associates of renowned Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, including his grandson Yossi Kaduri, in an attempt to arrange a meeting between the pop singer and the rabbi.

Madonna, who is a mother of two, plans to have another child and is interested in receiving Kaduri’s blessing first.

Addressing the issue, Ozery said associates of the rabbi are looking into a possible meeting.

For the right price, paid to Kaduri's grandson Yossi,the world's most famous whore will get a blessing or some mumbo jumbo from Alzheimer Kaduri.
UOJ

Two Satmar Scumbags For The Price Of One

Satmar Slugs It Out
Choosing a rebbe turns ugly when two factions brawl.
Jonathan Mark - Associate Editor The Jewish Week


Like the sukkah being dismantled on the sidewalk in front of his Williamsburg shul, the Satmar rebbe’s family and empire are in ghoulish disarray.

Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum, 91, has been in and out of hospitals because of strokes and ailments.

“He has good days and bad days,” a relative told a confidante, but the good days retreat faster than wintry daylight.

So on the morning of Shemini Atzeret, Oct. 25, nearly 100 police in riot gear had to separate some 1,000 Satmars who were punching and choking each other, and pulling at beards, over which of the rebbe’s two sons should be the rebbe when this rebbe dies.

A Satmar group known as the Aronis — supporters of the older son, Aaron — had marched on the main Satmar shul on Rodney Street controlled by the Zalis — supporters of the younger son, Zalman.

“Mazel Toughs,” said The New York Post headline.

It’s “Satmar-Gate,” headlined the Daily News, when about 12 hours later, on Simchat Torah night, a group of 26 men presumed to be Aronis, all between the ages of 18 and 25, broke into and reportedly ransacked the congregation’s office next door to the shul.

The group reportedly broke computers, jimmied open cabinets, destroyed disks and documents, and upturned drawers before relaxing on the floor with cigarettes and whiskey. It was Simchat Torah, after all, second only to Purim as the wildest drinking night of the Jewish year. The police arrested all of them.

One Aroni told The Jewish Week it was a bum rap.

“Come on,” he said, “they were just smoking.”

Another insisted, “They were studying.”

Wolf, a more mature Aroni, explained, “The Zalis do a good job of PR. What happened was there were about 20 bolvans [translated by Yiddishist Leo Rosten as “gross, thick-headed oafs”] who go and smoke on Shabbos. Every community has its outcasts. Bolvans. Wild kids.”

Wild kids may make for a wild time when the rebbe dies.

According to Jewish communal officials, the median age of white non-Hispanics in Williamsburg is 16.8; in Kiryas Joel it’s 15.2.
When you’re talking about Satmar’s kids you’re talking about Satmar itself.

In 1984, the rebbe appointed Aaron chief rabbi of the 18,000 Satmars in Kiryas Joel. Then in 1999, the rebbe, sensing his mortality, reportedly told Aaron, “Both Williamsburg and Kiryas Joel have populations larger than any shtetl in Europe. You couldn’t possibly manage both of them. What will you do? You’ll place your son in charge of Williamsburg. You have a son. I also have [another] son. I’m asking Zalman Lieb to come back from Israel to become the rav in Brooklyn,” with its 35,000 Satmars.

Aaron acquiesced, but now he wants Williamsburg, as well.

Aside from physically slugging it out, Aronis and Zalis are locked in litigation in three state courts.

In 1952, Yetev Lev D’Satmar, the congregation that oversees official Satmar organizations, adopted by-laws that gave the rebbe almost dictatorial powers over the congregation.

“Nobody can perform his functions without his consent,” according to the by-laws. “He is the only authority in all spiritual matters. No rabbi, ritual slaughterer or teacher may be chosen without his consent. His decision is binding on every member.”

Kings County Supreme Court Justice Melvin Barasch ruled in October 2004 that those by-laws led him to determine that “Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum is invested with the ultimate authority to determine all matters effecting Satmar,” and therefore Zalman would be the Satmar rebbe of Williamsburg.

In Kiryas Joel, where Zalman does not dispute Aaron’s leadership, Aaron is less popular than might be supposed. A slate he supported in recent congregational elections won by only a 6-4 margin, an unusual amount of dissent against a rebbe.

According to an Aroni leader, there are 2,600 dues-paying Satmars in several Aroni shuls in Williamsburg.

Aaron Teitelbaum, who has an apartment in Williamsburg, decided to spend the last days of the holidays in Brooklyn. He would lead services in a huge tent that the Aronis erected in the playground of P.S. 16, not far from the shul on Rodney Street.

After the dancing with the Torahs on the night of Shmini Atzeret — chasidim dance with the Torahs on that night as well as on Simchat Torah — a chasid stood up to make the announcements.

He told the crowd that Judge Stewart Goldwasser, hearing one of the "three" Satmar lawsuits, declared that the Aronis had control of the Rodney Street shul.

In fact, Goldwasser said, “This court will not be sucked into the Brooklyn litigation,” according to this chasid.

Perhaps the Aronis misunderstood. The chasid making the announcements said to great cheers, “Tomorrow morning we daven at Rodney.”

The Aronis showed up the next morning at the Rodney Street shul, where some 5,000 Zalis were davening in numerous minyanim.

To even the odds the Aronis, numbering less then 300, arrived with “their so-called security people,” said one community official.

“They were not chasidim,” the official said. “They were people of color, and in black leather jackets. It was clear who was hitting whom.”

The Aronis were ready to rumble. Clearly visible on a videotape from a security camera turned over to the Brooklyn District Attorney were black men in baseball hats fighting alongside the black fur-hatters.

Wolf, an Aroni, said, “What happened shouldn’t have happened. It was the young ones, the hot ones. Rav Aaron didn’t agree with it. We felt, let’s do this properly. We can smell the victory, what’s the rush? Why disturb the holiday? But, as usual, the young ones do whatever they want. There was pushing and shoving. That was the end of that. We went back to the tent, had great hakafos [dancing with Torahs on Simchat Torah] with a tremendous crowd. It was a tremendous Simchas Torah.”

Life creeps back to normal after the holidays. In the first prayer hall, inside the main doors on Rodney Street, dozens of memorial candles burned in an alcove while late afternoon Minchas followed one after the other, as if in a continuous loop.

Six elderly Satmars sat at one of the many long study tables with scratched and indented wooden surfaces. On the tables and shelves, miles of black adhesive tape covered the bindings of texts and held community announcements to the walls. Some posters announced a sale of permanent press shirts. Someone left a bottle of Pert shampoo near a washroom.

Outside, boys pointed up at the window where neon light illuminated the office wrecked a few nights before. Suddenly, one of “the wild ones” grabbed an older man’s tallit bag. The old man raced after him, followed by dozens of others, each holding on to their hats, a blur in the darkness.

What just happened?

“Nothing,” said a kid. “Two people having a fight.”


These animals are NOT part of the Jewish people.

Just because they had their SHLANGS cut when they were a baby, and speak Yiddish?

THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE SHVARTZES THEY HIRED.

How come NOT ONE "RESPECTABLE" rosh yeshiva or rabbi has publicly come out against them?
BECAUSE THERE ARE NO RESPECTABLE RABBIS OR ROSH YESHIVAS ANYMORE, JUST MONEY GRUBBING, SELFISH, PATHETIC MORONS!

HOW COME NO CHEREM ON THE ENTIRE SATMAR COMMUNITY?

YOU CHICKEN SHIT RABBONIM THAT YOU ARE.SAY SOMETHING YOU SHAMELESS COWARDS!

BANNING BOOKS AND POWERLESS PEOPLE , SELLING YOUR NAMES FOR HECHSHERIM,CHECKING WOMENS' UNDERWEAR AND FIGHTING OVER ERUVIN THAT'S ALL YOU ARE GOOD FOR.
UOJ

Sanhedrin-Good For The Jews, Or Just Another Divisive Action

By Nadav Shragai

When the "new Sanhedrin" was established in Tiberias a year ago, hardly anyone took it seriously. The 71 rabbis who came to the northern city 1,660 years after the original Sanhedrin (the assembly of 71 ordained scholars that was both supreme court and legislature in Talmudic times) held its last meeting there, were welcomed by many in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sectors with smiles tinged with derision.

The declaration of the Sanhedrin's reestablishment was perceived as both a curiosity on the margins of the right and as a rebellion against halakhic conventions; as a perhaps daring step, but one that was also a warning; far-reaching, but to a large extent provocative.

The fact that the leading Torah scholars of this generation, or those who are identified as such, took no part in this pretentious venture posed many questions about the new Sanhedrin's source of power and authority. The founding rabbis, most of them fairly anonymous, did agree in writing to vacate their places in favor of rabbis who are greater Torah scholars, as soon as some are found willing to serve.


Nevertheless, the initial impression was that this was another effort by the Jewish Leadership movement within the Likud, an effort that had a Torah-oriented, halakhic-messianic slant and was striving for a revolution in the government.

The man who headed the new venture was Hillel Weiss, a professor of literature and one of the leaders of Jewish Leadership, who nearly twenty years ago reinstated another ancient practice: the traditional hakhel gathering, which took place once every seven years at the end of the Sukkot festival, the year after an agricultural Sabbatical (shmitta) year, and was attended by the king of Israel.

The first hakhel gathering organized by Weiss at the Western Wall plaza in 1987 was attended by then-president Chaim Herzog, prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar, chief rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu and many other dignitaries. It has been repeated twice since, once every seven years.

A year after its establishment, it is impossible to see the new Sanhedrin as the domain of the extreme right wing alone: at a large gathering in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood Tuesday, Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz, a well-known Talmud scholar who is much esteemed in Torah circles, both in the ultra-Orthodox world and in the national-religious sector, came forward as the president of the Sanhedrin.

Steinsaltz avoided delving into politics and spoke about gradually building up the ancient institution, which would take several generations, he said. The very fact that he is leading the new Sanhedrin can be considered a dramatic event, given the numerous efforts in the last few years to strengthen the Jewish character of the state, integrate into it elements of Hebrew law and to combat the idea of a state for all its citizens. The fact that the new Sanhedrin also includes many rabbis affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox stream, added to the fact that they are not among the best known and leading rabbis in that sector, endows the effort with another unusual dimension that distances it from being another "extreme right-wing" venture.

In its first year, the new Sanhedrin initiated a dialogue with the Ministry of Education over the Bible and Scriptures curriculum; set up a "High Council for the Sons of Noah," whose task it is to establish contact with non-Jewish communities seeking to observe the Noahide laws - the seven commandments given to the sons of Noah, or all mankind, which non-Jews are obligated to uphold according to halakha.

The Sanhedrin also discussed at length the physical location of the altar and Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount and dealt with the question of whether in our generation, Jews abroad must continue to observe the second festival day of the Diaspora, an additional day that is added to each of the three pilgrimage festivals - Sukkot, Passover and Shevuot.

The new Sanhedrin sharply attacked the disengagement plan and recently ruled that three minors who asked it for a ruling had acted properly when they refused to be tried in a court not based on Torah law.

"We hereby instruct you to continue your refusal, and the One who releases prisoners will release you from your confinement," the rabbis wrote them. In another ruling, the Sanhedrin's "Court for Matters of Nationhood and State" permitted a family from the evacuated community of Sa-Nur to accept compensation from the state for their evacuation, "even though this was an unjust law forced on the expellees."

Ordination revived

According to halakha, in order to revive the Sanhedrin, "ordination" is required, i.e., the ordination of members by others who are greater and wiser Torah scholars, to serve on the Supreme Court as necessary.

The first ordination, you may recall, was that of Joshua Bin Nun, whom Moses ordained. Other famous ordinations over the course of the generations included the "five elders": Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Eliezer Ben Shamu'a, who were ordained by Yehuda Ben Baba, between the towns of Usha and Shfaram.

Ordination ended in Israel when the yeshivas closed and the Sanhedrin stopped functioning. The last people ordained no longer placed their hands on their students' heads, because of the restrictions imposed by the Roman government.

Maimonides wrote that if all scholars in Israel agree to appoint scholars and ordain them, than these are ordained people and they may discuss matters of fines and punishment and may ordain others. However, even Maimonides did not see this as a fait accompli; he added that the matter needed to be "decided on."

In the 16th century, nearly all the Torah scholars in the land of Israel accepted the initiative of Rabbi Jacob Birav to resume ordination and reestablish the Sanhedrin. Rabbi Levy Ben Haviv, the rabbi of Jerusalem who was not informed of the plans, sabotaged the effort, and in the end Birav was forced to flee the country.

Upon the reestablishment of the state, the first minister of religion, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Maimon, attempted to renew the Sanhedrin, but the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox sabotaged the effort.

It is therefore surprising that the first ordained person in modern times, who ostensibly authorized the convening of the new Sanhedrin, was an ultra-Orthodox figure - Rabbi Dov Levanoni of Jerusalem. The members of the new Sanhedrin present a video in which Rabbi Levanoni relates how he received the first ordination to take place since the time of Rabbi Yaakov Birav, from one of the leaders of the Eidah Haredit's Beit Din Zedek religious court, Rabbi Moshe Halberstam. Levanoni ordained two other rabbis, and they ordained four more.

Since each person can only ordain two people, it took almost a year to ordain the 120 men needed for the new Sanhedrin. Most of them were present at Tuesday's gathering in Hai Taib Street synagogue in Har Nof, to mark a year since the renewal of the ancient institution.

The new Sanhedrin is recognized by a very small public, and this is its Achilles heel. Rabbi Re'em Hacohen, the head of the hesder yeshiva in Otniel, who delivered the opening address at the meeting - he is not a member of the new Sanhedrin - sketched clear halakhic parameters that indicate the problems involved. According to him, it is not possible to resume the ordination without the consent of the entire Jewish people.

"The Sanhedrin is the foundation for the presence of the Divine spirit ... and until this body has representatives from the entire nation - and at the moment it does not have representatives of the entire nation, not even representatives of the religious, Torah observant segment of the nation, then it is problematic," Hacohen said. Like other speakers at the conference, he too feels that "today there is a total division between the executive and judicial branches, and the nation and the rabbinical court system is also not free of this plague." Nevertheless, he says, "The Sanhedrin cannot replace them until it draws its power from the entire nation."

The establishment of the new Sanhedrin reflects profound unhappiness with the way the Israeli legal system is run, there were harsh remarks to that effect at the conference. Rabbi Israel Rosen, the head of the Tsomet Institute of Halakha and Technology, which provides solutions to halakhic problems using technology, attacked the sections on religion and state, minorities and the status of the Supreme Court in the draft constitution proposed by the Israel Democracy Institute, for whom the "Supreme Court has become their Sanhedrin."

"But the Sanhedrin in its existing format," acknowledges Rosen, "is not serious. Even if in principle one accepts the need to revive the Sanhedrin, it should include authoritative halakhic scholars and Torah scholars of the first order. At the moment, it seems as if they have jumped too high."

Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, spiritual advisor to the ultra-Orthodox Nahal brigade and a member of the new Sanhedrin, accepts the criticism and defines the institution as "infrastructure only." Not everyone sees eye to eye with him. Hillel Weiss, who also has become one of the ordained members, says, "The goal of the new Sanhedrin is to become a source of authority for the Jewish people, and this is contrary to the accepted position of the left that the state of Israel is the source of this authority.

"I and many of my colleagues want to be part of this state, but not at the cost of our spiritual and physical destruction. This Sanhedrin draws together all the scars and injuries and anguish from the injustice and persecution that Jews endure here from the Supreme Court and whoever follows the Supreme Court and whoever pretends to maintain the rule of law here."

Rabbi Ratzon Arussi, the rabbi of Kiryat Ono and a member of the Supreme Rabbinical Council, also feels persecuted. On Tuesday, Arussi sharply criticized the Knesset and the court. He spoke about the "clash that is gaining momentum between Torah law and state law," and despaired over "barren dialogues with the secular side that ostensibly create understandings, which have no practical value for various connections to our heritage." The court, Arussi feels, "is today obligated only to the state, but not to its Jewish identity."

Arussi suggested setting red lines for this identity and announcing that if the Knesset does not incorporate them into legislation, all the religious parties will resign. Rabbi Dov Lior, the head of the Committee of Judea and Samaria Rabbis, said things at the conference that were even more far-reaching: "A collective of evil people is not part of the quorum ... every law against the Torah is invalid. There are forces of evil seeking to harm anything related to the sanctity of Israel, and the legal system is one area where the greatest desecration of God's name is occurring.

It is hard to know how long Steinsaltz will last as president of the new Sanhedrin. At the public session held on the first anniversary of the apparent reestablishment of the ancient institution, he appeared to be fighting internal opposition. He pointed out to those present that worldwide events couldn't happen in one fell swoop.

Jerusalem wasn't built in a day

"Before the flood, Noah built the ark and prepared to enter it for 120 years," he reminded the audience. "In order to move forward and no longer be defined as `an aborted fetus,' to become serious so we can say, `a child was born to us,' we need a lot of time. The mere mention of the name Sanhedrin is not a given. It is no longer a matter of a religious council, or a council for the cats on Emek Refaim Street. It's something that has historical meaning. A basic change, not of one small system, but of fundamental systems.

"It's no wonder that these things frighten people. There are people who are concerned about what is emerging here. And where is it headed? After we have made it through this year with no catastrophes occurring, even though there were some foolish comments and chuckling, we will intensify and strengthen our activities. We will do things with an eye toward future generations, not with a stopwatch and an annual calendar. The Jewish calendar is a calendar of thousands of years. A lot of patience and a lot of work are needed. I'd be happy if in another few years these chairs are filled by scholars who are greater than us and we can say: `I kept the chairs warm for you.'"

Steinsaltz used his position as president of the Sanhedrin to protest its involvement in politics. "I'm not afraid of the Supreme Court, the police or the attorney general. A rabbi is also permitted to engage in public issues, but to do so he has to have all the appropriate material before him, whether he is dealing with the kosher status of a chicken or the disengagement.

"When there is such a disengagement plan, and I don't have enough information about it, just as there is a commandment to speak out, there is a commandment to remain silent. As a private person, I, just like every one of us, have understanding, but as a rabbi, dealing with political matters such as the disengagement is a mockery of the essence of the concept of a Sanhedrin.

"If I don't want to be a laughing-stock, then I won't express an opinion on every issue. These words of truth need to be said, so that this Sanhedrin does not become a branch of the Yesha Council (of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza) or of the Council for Peace and Security."

Rabbis Keeping Busy With Bullshit

Rabbis issue list of names Jews should not give their children

By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

A group of Israeli rabbis has put together a list of names they say
should be off-limits to Jewish children - including Ariel and Omri, the given names of Israel's prime minister and his eldest son.

Saying the name Ariel is problematic because it could beckon an angel instead, drawing down his wrath, the rabbis caution.


Omri - the name of an evil Biblical king - should be taboo because of the highly negative connotation.

And naming children after dismantled Gaza settlements, like Katif, is another bad idea, they say, because of the controversy involved. Jewish settlers, predominantly religious, unsuccessfully opposed the Gaza withdrawal this past summer.

The rabbis' list, presented on an Internet site, also offers preferred names. Rabbis said they compiled the list in response to a flood of requests from parents concerned they may accidentally give their children names that could shame them for life.

What other names raise rabbinical ire? All those that sound non-Jewish - like Donna, Barr and Shirli. So do typically male names given to girls - like Roni and Danielle- and names that include the suffix or prefix "el," which means God in Hebrew.

But parents should not run off to the Interior Ministry too hastily.

Only those names with a very negative connotation, like Omri, should be changed so as not to risk traumatizing the children.

Instead, parents can slightly alter the names to Hebraicize them. For example, Susie can change to Shoshi, which means "Rosie."

Concerned parents' questions appear on the Web site.

"When my daughter was born, we called her Roni but I was never comfortable with the name," wrote a woman named Liat. "Afterward I had a dream that it wasn't good to call her Roni. What should I do?"

"Change it," was the reply.

In Judaism, names are very important and each person's soul has a designated name, the Web site explains. The names follow people into their afterlife.

Israel's Interior Ministry has barred the names God, Hitler and Bin Laden from being registered in its population files, said Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for the Census Bureau.

Names like Ovadia, Should be changed as well to Eved l'kesef!
UOJ

Extremely Elevated Relative Risk of Paraffin Lamp Oil Exposures in Orthodox Jewish Children

A public service message from UOJ

In observance of the Sabbath and other religious holidays, many Orthodox Jews maintain a burning lamp that uses paraffin lamp oil as fuel. Unintentional pediatric exposure to paraffin lamp oil, a hydrocarbon, is typically by ingestion and carries a risk of aspiration with subsequent pneumonitis. This investigation was prompted by an apparent increase in paraffin lamp oil exposures during the Jewish Sabbath, from sunset Friday until sunset Saturday, noted by the staff of our regional poison control center.

Objective. In this investigation, we retrospectively reviewed all exposures to paraffin lamp oil occurring in our large city in children <18 years old reported to our regional poison control center between January 1, 2000, and February 1, 2003. Reports were investigated to ascertain the frequency of occurrence of paraffin lamp oil exposures on the Jewish Sabbath and Jewish religious holidays. Caregivers of involved children were surveyed by telephone to determine the exposed child’s religion and circumstances of exposure.

Results. During these 25 months, 45 cases met inclusion criteria, and all were ingestions. Orthodox Jews accounted for 32 cases (71%), 4 cases (9%) occurred in children who were not Orthodox Jews, and demographic data were unavailable in 9 cases (20%). Twenty-four cases (53%) occurred within 10 hours before or during the Jewish Sabbath or Jewish religious holidays.

The relative risk of Orthodox Jewish children to ingest paraffin lamp oil, calculated by using census data, is 374 times that of other children.


Conclusions. Public health authorities and caregivers of Orthodox Jewish children should be cognizant of this phenomenon. Educational efforts directed toward both Orthodox Jews and the general public aimed at preventing paraffin lamp oil exposures are warranted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Robert J. Hoffman, MD*, Solomon Morgenstern, MD, Robert S. Hoffman, MD and Lewis S. Nelson, MD

* Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, New York
Department of Pediatrics, Schneider Children’s Hospital, New Hyde Park, New York
New York City Department of Health Poison Control Center, New York, New York

N.Y. Times Gives Jacko's Ex-Rabbi Another Shot

Roger Friedman, FoxNews

"I am sad to say I read yesterday's story in the New York Times about Shmuley Boteach and got a little ill. Samuel Freedman, a good reporter, writer and author of interesting books, evidently was sold a bill of goods on Boteach.

His report on Shmuley's WWRL radio show with Peter Noel made it sound like Michael Jackson's onetime rabbi was on the up and up. But readers of this column know otherwise.

Back on May 23, 2001, we revealed the truth about the 'Kosher Sex' rabbi who started a bogus charity with Jackson. To this day there has no been no accounting for the money Boteach and Jackson raised for their Time for Kids/Heal the World Foundation.

Indeed, the event they held on Feb. 14, 2001, at Carnegie Hall — a symposium on children — has never turned up in tax returns. London newspapers reported that Boteach was ousted from the L'Chaim Society of Oxford University for mismanagement of funds. (He allegedly used money from the charity to maintain a lavish home. Boteach insisted it was his right to do so.) He was also reportedly banned from having a pulpit in the U.K., although during our conversation last year he denied that. The New York Times also didn't bother to look into the infamous L'Chaim Society, Boteach's New York charity. The most recent tax return available, which covers all of 2000, states that the New York edition of L'Chaim Society took in $203,185 in donations but paid out $240,164 'for administration.' There are no funds listed for 'Program Services.'

In May 2001, this column discovered quite a lot about the so-called Oxford L'Chaim Society of New York, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Oxford University in Great Britain. I wrote: 'In 1999, the British government criticized (Boteach's) L'Chaim Society of Oxford, London and Cambridge — an organization that was supposed to support and promote Jewish thinking and life on the Oxford campus — when they discovered that Shmuley (his name is Shmuel but he loves the nickname) had been dipping into the funds ... An article dated June 1, 1998, in the London Daily Telegraph clearly states: 'Ah Shmuley. The shame, the disgrace. (He's been) publicly reproached by Elkin Levy, president of the United Synagogues; forced to resign from the synagogue in Willesden where he preaches, accused of conduct unbecoming, bringing the rabbinate into disrepute.' The resignation was apparently in response to the publication of Boteach's controversial book, 'Kosher Sex,' which has been a bestseller and was excerpted in Playboy."

We Were First On The "Out Of The Closet Allan Stadtmauer Story"

Allan Stadtmauer, Scoops, MSM and Blogs (picked up from the Canonist Blog)

The Canonist laments:"A reader who claims to know a lot about what went into the decision-making for the Forward's story on Stadtmauer e-mailed me with some specific questions about my post of last night and my initial reaction to the Forward story, touching on a number of issues of news philosophy in general and how blogging affects that discussion. While, on some recent occasions I've avoided writing about these issues because I feel that a lot of the blogging vs. MSM territory has been covered — even in specific regard to Jewish and religious coverage, in posts past — the questions presented by this reader deal with some issues I've yet to address, and the reader is a person for whom I have great respect.
His questions:


1) Why did you not call Ami [Eden] and ask him about why he ran the story before you blogged about it? "The only reason for the paper to cover that story before obtaining comment is the general fear of getting scooped"- How can you write this without a qualifier such as "it would appear". Ami assumed the entire time that other newspapers would have it- he felt the Forward would do a better story, no matter what other papers had.
2) Would you have blogged about this before speaking with Stadtmauer? If yes, what is the difference? Are you a journalist or not? If you are, why the double standard?
3)Why not critique "unorthodox Jew" for publishing the e-mail, long before the Forward story?"

Hassidic rabbi suspected of officiating marriages of underage couples

By Eli Ashkenazi and Vered Levy-Barzilay, Haaretz Correspondents

Police on Monday detained for questioning a Hassidic rabbi suspected of officiating the marriages of minors.

Rabbi Shlomo Eliezer Schick, the spiritual leader of the Bratslav Hassidic movement in Yavne'el, near Lake Kinneret, is suspected of officiating the marriages of some 20 underage couples, mostly ages 12 to 16. Tiberias police began investigating the case some two and a half years ago, following complaints from the secular residents of the community.

Police detained Schick for questioning at the Ben Gurion International Airport upon his arrival from New York.

Schick denied all allegations against him and was released after the investigation, though he is currently forbidden from visiting Yavne'el.

The Bratslav community in Yavne'el has also dismissed the allegations made by police, calling them rumors concocted by the secular farmers in the community who they say have embarked on a hate campaign against them.

Followers of rabbi Schick settled in Yavne'el, a farming community, in 1986. The Hassidic residents, who are mostly newly religious, comprise just a few hundred of Yavne'el's 3,000 residents.

The Hassidic residents of the community are known as "Schickim," or devotees of rabbi Schick, who lives in New York and visits the community every few months.

Since the establishment of the Hassidic community in Yavne'el, there have been countless tense incidents between them and the veteran residents of the community.

The veteran residents have accused the Hassidim of assault, threats, arson, sabotage, vandalism, obscense language, spitting and making insulting remarks to the secular residents. The veteran residents also raised their suspicions of widespread underage marriage in an interview with Haaretz two and a half years ago.

Leading Kabbalist Urges Jews to Israel , Says More Disasters Coming- Also Woman sees Jesus In A Tree

Leading Kabbalist Urges Jews to Israel - More Disasters Coming

By Baruch Gordon


On Thursday night, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri said, "Jews must come to the land of Israel to receive our righteous Mashiach (Messiah), who has begun his influence and will reveal himself in the future."(WOWEEE!!)


It was during the meal after the 24-hour Yom Kippur fast that several followers approached the 104-year-old leading known Kabbalist Rabbi in Israel. A family member asked him about his remarks last month regarding natural disasters in the world. The Rabbi said that the disasters are directly related to the redemption process, which will culminate in the coming of the Mashiach.

The Rabbi added that in the near future, another wave of natural disasters will strike the world.(WOWEEE!)

Last week before Yom Kippur, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri's grandson, Rabbi Yosef Kaduri had a private audience with the elder Rabbi, along with an Arutz-7 journalist who is closely linked to Kaduri's court. Rabbi Yosef Kaduri said to his grandfather, "Not many Jews are coming from overseas. Why should they come? ?"( There's no bigger Asshole than this guy who drags his grandfather around to cash in on him.)

The Kabbalist answered, "Because of impending danger." Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri then added a quote from Deuteronomy 4:15: "Be extremely protective of your lives."(like it's safe in Israel)

According to Rabbi Yosef Kaduri and the Arutz-7 journalist, the Kabbalist elder referred to a known esoteric concept of a "struggle between the oceans," and said that the large oceans [Haokeanus hagadol] would strike the world. Rabbi Yosef Kaduri said that grandfather's warning includes were Jews of the Americas.( How the F*** does he know?, pathetic whore)

The elder Rabbi Kaduri told the two that on Yom Kippur he would have more things to say.(WOWEEE, can't wait)

During the afternoon Mincha prayer on Yom Kippur, the Kabbalist scholar surprised his students and fellow worshippers with secrets relating to the coming of the Mashiach. During the service, Rabbi Kaduri lowered his head and entered a deep mystical concentration which lasted uninterrupted for some 45 minutes. The Rabbi covered his eyes as though reciting the Sh'ma prayer and only his lips were seen moving.That's about the only part of his body that still moves The Alter Kaker fell asleep


Students who thought the elderly Rabbi was suffering an attack of sort tried to communicate with him, but he did not break his intense concentration for a moment, even to nod.(Dead people don't move.)

Only after some 45 minutes, the Rabbi raised his head and looked around the room at the students and worshippers who were gathered at his Nachalat Yitzhak Yeshiva, in the Bucharim neighborhood of Jerusalem. With a broad smile on his face familiar to his students when he has a revelation, he declared, "With the help of G-d, the soul of the Mashiach has attached itself to a person in Israel" GIMMEEE A BREAK [In the original Hebrew: 'Hit'abra bezrat hashem nishmat mashiach b'adam m'yisrael'].

At the conclusion of his short declaration, murmuring was heard among the congregants as the Kabbalists' words were repeated for those who could not hear. A few congregants farted as well.

Rabbi Kaduri has spoken repeatedly about the Final Redemption and referred to the calculations of the Vilna Gaon regarding the redemption, which appear in the Gaon's writings and are considered difficult to decipher.

The Vilna Gaon (1720 - 1797)
According to the writings of the Vilna Gaon, a sign of the Gog and Magog war is its breaking out on the Jewish holiday of Hoshana Rabba (the 7th day of the Sukkot holiday), just after the conclusion of the 7th or shemittah [agricultural sabbatical] year.

On September 24, 2001, Channel One Israel TV broadcast an item on what Torah and other mystics were saying in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. Speaking from the room adjacent to where Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri receives visitors, Arutz Sheva Hebrew radio showhost Yehoshua Meiri, a close confident of the Kabbalist, explained to the cameras Rabbi Kaduri's understanding of the events based on the calculations of the Vilna Gaon: "On Hashanah Rabba, the actual war of Gog and Magog will commence and will last for some seven years," said Meiri.

Precise to the minute, 13 days later on October 7th as the sun was setting and the Jewish holiday of Hoshana Rabba was ushered in, US and British forces began an aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban forces and Al-Qaida. That year was the Hoshana Rabba just after the shemitta year of 5761.

According to the calculation, a 7-year count from that Hoshana Rabba is the date of a major revelation associated with Mashiach. Those close to Rabbi Kaduri say in his name that the 5th year of this redemption process is now beginning.

They explain that the above-mentioned "attaching" of a righteous soul to a person of Israel makes the recipient a candidate for Mashiach, but not yet the actual Mashiach. This person gets an additional soul which finds expression in the adding of a letter to his name, without changing its pronunciation. The elder Rabbi Kaduri says that the letter added to this person's name is "vav" and the secret of his power is a Star of David hidden in his attire.

Before he reached the age of 13, the young Yitzhak Kaduri studied with the renowned Rabbi Yosef Chaim (the Ben Ish Chai) of Iraq. Rabbi Kaduri tells that the Ben Ish Chai blessed him that he would live to see the revelation of the Mashiach. The Ben Ish Chai passed away, and Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri immigrated to Israel soon after.


What happens when Kaduri dies and Mr. Moshiach is not here???


In a similar bullshit story!


"Image of Jesus seen on city tree"

'This is God giving us a sign,' one believer says of silver maple

Greg Livadas
Staff writer

(October 26, 2005) — Call it a cry for peace, a test of faith or a random act of nature, a tree growing on Rochester's North Clinton Avenue so far has attracted several dozen believers who say they see the image of Jesus Christ on the tree's trunk.

"I see it clearly," said Yomaira Otero of Rochester, who stood in the pouring rain Tuesday with six members of her family to see the tree. She spoke in Spanish to her relatives and pointed out the facial features, including the beard of bark she saw. "He looks like he's sleeping."

The "Jesus tree," as some are calling it, is a silver maple growing on the front lawn of the Hickey-Freeman Co. factory at 1155 N. Clinton Ave. It's a few feet from the sidewalk and behind a black metal fence.

The factory, which makes Hickey-Freeman, Bobby Jones and Burberry tailored clothing, has been at the site for 92 years. It sits in the heart of Rochester's infamous "crescent," known for high crime rates.

"It's a sign from God that there should be peace," said Maria Trinidad, who lives on Clifford Avenue. "There is a lot of crime here. People should have faith in God. This is God giving us a sign."

Her daughter, Keila Negron, 13, said she also believed it was a divine sign, but admitted she had trouble visualizing the image on the tree in the rain, which darkened the bark. She vowed to return in better weather and take pictures of the tree.

Jim Holtz, 54, of Greece, said he noticed the image Monday when he stopped in the Cash King pawn shop directly across the street from Hickey-Freeman.

"I was looking out that way as I usually do and saw that on the tree," Holtz said. "I said, 'Am I seeing things?'"

Holtz walked across the street to see whether the image had been spray-painted on. It wasn't.

"I said, 'We gotta get some pictures of this,'" he said, and he contacted the media.

Holtz doesn't know whether the image is a coincidence or a message. He says he believes in God but doesn't regularly attend church.

Karen Marshall, 43, of Rochester also stood on the sidewalk looking at the tree Tuesday. She held newspapers over her head to help keep dry as she pointed out the tree's features to her sister, Ann Manigoult, who had trouble picking out the image.

"We can't physically see Jesus, so we only have signs," Marshall said. "The only way we can know he's here is through signs. He's everywhere. You just have to have faith."

Officials from Hickey-Freeman Co., who were unavailable Tuesday to discuss the tree, so far have tolerated the cars stopping in front of their building and the groups of gawkers on the sidewalk. They aren't sure what else to do because, as the facilities manager said, "there's no protocol for this sort of thing."

Mark Day, 30, a shipping clerk at Hickey-Freeman, took a picture of the tree after seeing others standing outside the factory looking at it.

Day said he believes the tree's design is a coincidence. "I don't think it's a message because God is everywhere," he said.

Doug Mandelaro, a spokesman for Rochester's Roman Catholic Diocese, said he "wouldn't dare to comment on someone else's moment of inspiration or religious experience. Religious experience is and always has been a mystery and very personal."

DemocratandChronicle.com

Jesus in a tree, Moshiach in Israel already with a vuv attached to his name, and Kaduri will live long enough to see the Moshiach!!!

Enough already you delusional sick Moshiach whores!!!!
UOJ

Twelve new Orthodox women halachic advisers ordained

12 new women halachic advisers ordained
By MATTHEW WAGNER


Twelve new female halachic advisers, ordained in Jerusalem on Wednesday, will help mitigate inhibitions felt by religious women in need of halachic advice on the intimacies of Jewish family purity laws.

These 12 women, the fourth graduating class of halachic advisers produced by Nishmat, a college for higher Jewish learning in Bayit Vagan, are trained to answer the same questions normally directed at a male rabbi. But as women answering questions posed by women these advisers minimize the awkwardness that often accompanies exposing intimate details on, for example, menstruation to a male stranger.

Dean of Nishmat Chana Henkin said that in many cases religious women who were apprehensive about asking a rabbi about family purity laws were needlessly stringent on themselves.

"Women remain separated from their husbands needlessly," said Henkin. "There are quite a few babies in this world that probably never would have been born if our advisers had not helped make the halacha more accessible."

However, Henkin's husband, Rabbi Yehuda Henkin, who, together with Rabbi Ya'acov Warhaftig, supervises the fielding of dozens of questions via Internet and a special daily hot-line, said that the advisers are not a substitute for male halachic authority.

"We purposely call them halachic 'advisers' to emphasize their role in citing known, undisputed Jewish law. But none of the women are poskei halacha (halachic authorities). None of them make decisions on new, unprecedented issues in halacha."

He added that "very few men have enough halachic knowledge to make groundbreaking halachic decisions let alone women...But the time will come when women will have the appropriate background necessary to make innovative halachic decisions."

Although Henkin did not admit it, his willingness to accept the possibility of a female halachic authority equal to men, even in theory, is a radical idea not just in haredi circles. Even many religious Zionist rabbis would be opposed to a female rabbi deciding precedent-making questions in halacha.

Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, admittedly a conservative though widely respected religious Zionist halachic authority, announced several years ago that any man who learns Torah from a woman should be pitied.

In the meantime, rabbis Warhaftig and Henkin answer the tough questions. Chana Henkin said that six to eight questions are fielded daily on Nishmat's Internet site [www.yoatzot.org] and over the past five years about 50,000 questions have been answered on Nishmat's Golda Koschitzky Women's Halachic Hotline.

Rabbi Henkin said that during their two-year course of studies female halachic advisers cover all of the studies demanded by the Israeli Rabbinate for rabbinic ordination.

But unlike the men, the women are required to study physiology, anatomy and certain medical issues such as the effect of birth control on the body and fertility problems.

"We also require women to learn basic psychology, sexology and counseling," Rabbi Henkin said.

Henkin does not rule out the possibility that additional fields of halachic will be taught to women. "We've thought about opening a course to teach women the halachot of kashrut. But it is still in the planning stages," he said.

Ira and Charlotte Green sponsored Wednesday evening's ordination ceremony for the new advisers who will join the other 28 who have already been trained. Other major supporters of the program include Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein and Moshael, Zahava and Bethia Straus. Dr. Norman Lamm, former rector of Yeshiva University, is an academic adviser to Nishmat.

Chassidic rabbis implicated in Colombian drug trade

I will keep posting the criminal behavior that is so prevalent in the Jewish community. Let the readers decide how low the community has sunk and what to do about what has become acceptable behavior.

ERIC J. GREENBERG
N.Y. Jewish Week


Berish Grunfeld, 64, president of the Bobover yeshiva and an executive director of Bobov's New York institutions, said nothing as federal prosecutors charged him and 11 others in a conspiracy to launder millions of dollars in illegal drug profits for Colombian drug dealers through the bank accounts of the yeshiva and synagogue of Bobov. The largest Chassidic sect in Boro Park and the second largest in the state after Satmar, it has perhaps as many as 30,000 adherents.

The complaint charges that Grunfeld and Rabbi Mahir Reiss, 47, laundered tens of millions in drug money through the bank accounts of the Bobover Yeshiva, Congregation Eitz Chaim and Chaim Shel Shulem, believed to be a free-loan society and apparently located at the Bobover World Headquarters on 47th Street.

They are accused also of helping the drug dealers buy an airplane that is commonly used to transport illegal drugs.

The rabbis and others allegedly skimmed 15 percent to 18 percent of each transaction for themselves, federal officials said.

"Money launderers are indispensable partners of major drug traffic, and the cynical act of using religious institutions to conceal drug proceeds is particularly reprehensible," declared Zachary Carter, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in announcing the charges at the downtown Brooklyn courthouse Monday.

Grunfeld and Reiss, as well as Reiss' brother Abraham, who also was charged, face up to 20 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines. They each were released on a $750,000 bond. Reiss secured his bond in part by committing his $3 million residence.

Reaction to news of the arrests on the streets of Boro Park was a mix of shock and anger. One resident, asked for comment, said testily, "Look elsewhere for a story."

Others, like Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents Boro Park, downplayed the fact that those arrested were rabbis, saying, "Everyone in this community is a rabbi."

Still others stressed that the matter should be seen in personal, not communal, terms. And still others surmised that Grunfeld may not have been fully aware that the money he was allegedly being asked to launder was connected to the drug trade.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Dunst said evidence indicated that "Bernard Grunfeld knew that this was the proceeds of drug trafficking or was deliberately closing his eyes, which under the legal standard makes him criminally culpable."

It is not the first time a Chassidic sect has been linked with the billion-dollar Colombian drug cartels.

In 1994, Satmar Rabbi Abraham Low, married to the niece of the Satmar rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, was convicted for conspiring to launder drug money -- part of an international network that laundered up to $5 million a week. Other cases have involved a Brooklyn shtiebel (elementary school) and a Lower Manhattan yeshiva.

A 100-page federal complaint announced charges that the rabbis and other Orthodox Jews joined with five New York members of a Colombian drug gang to launder $1.75 million in drug profits.

The complaint said Grunfeld was brought into the operation by Reiss, president of Realex Capital on Park Avenue, and his brother Abraham, a real estate executive from the Upper West Side.

In the complaint, Reiss is referred to by other defendants as "The Rabbi," "Uncle" or "Barbas," Spanish for "beard." Abraham Reiss was known also as "Roomie."

Nine others were also indicted Tuesday, the result of a three-year federal undercover operation that employed wiretaps and other devices, authorities said.

Federal officials said the alleged Bobov-Colombian connection worked like this:

Three middlemen went from a Long Island home to Manhattan, where they would pick up the drug money from Colombian drug dealers. The three would bring the cash to a safe house, an apartment at 243 W. 75th St., to be counted. Investigators said Abraham Reiss would bring the money to Grunfeld, who would cut checks to people named on a list faxed to the Reiss brothers, according to Dunst, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case.

A key part of the scam, officials said, was the attempt to hide the bank transactions from federal authorities by keeping each check under $10,000 -- the amount that triggers automatic review by federal banking officials.

The complaint charges that Grunfeld and Israel Knobloch, who was also charged, created the structure to divide $1 million into 95 separate deposits to avoid federal scrutiny.

The New Square Gangsta' Rapper (Rebbe) And His"Shtreimel Rappers Band" Of Thieves

Anatomy Of A Pardon
How four New Square felons got their sentences commuted, and what Hillary had to do with it.

By Eric J. Greenberg
The New York Jewish Week


NEW YORK — Several weeks after her historic victory in New York's U.S. Senate race, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton attended a meeting at the White House with President Bill Clinton and the Skverer rebbe -- Rabbi David Twersky, spiritual leader of the scandal-scarred New Square chasidic sect in Rockland County.

But this was not the first meeting between New York's new junior senator and the 60-year-old grand rebbe of the 7,000-member village -- the first incorporated Jewish community in the U.S.

Clinton first campaigned there last August. That visit launched a series of events that last week culminated in a controversial last-minute clemency action on behalf of New Square by outgoing President Clinton.

His act came 10 weeks after New Square, breaking with most Orthodox communities, heartily supported Clinton's Senate campaign, delivered almost all of the village's votes for her.

The decision by President Clinton to commute the sentences of four prominent New Square men who stole tens of millions from the federal government in a phony yeshiva scheme is being criticized this week by law enforcement officials.

Questions are being raised about whether the first lady unduly capitalized on her relationship with her husband, who had the unregulated power to pardon or commute prison sentences.

New Square officials and a spokesman for Senator Clinton emphatically deny that any ``deal" was made before the election to deliver votes for her in return for the commutations of the ``New Square Four." Both say the subject was never even raised until December.

Clinton said Wednesday she played ``no role whatsoever" in the commutation. ``I had no opinion about it," she said.

But some critics don't believe it.

``Just look at the math," said a Republican operative familiar with the Senate race. ``She gets all of New Square's votes and two months later she [helps commute the sentences of] four people from the village."

The New Square commutations came among a blizzard of last-minute pardons and commutations -- many controversial -- directed by President Clinton on his last day in office. But New Square seems to be the only one connected to his wife's unprecedented race for the Senate.

New Square advocates argue the sentences were too harsh and that the convicted men did not gain personal profit from ill-gotten federal money -- a claim disputed by the federal judge during sentencing. New York law enforcement officials were irate over the New Square commutations.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White said they bypassed Justice Department procedures and did not give her office enough time to prepare arguments against them.

White's office learned of the New Square commutations on Jan 16 -- four days before the decision to pardon -- and was given a one-day deadline to reply. ``We found out about the New Square virtually at the last moment," said a law enforcement official.

In contrast to New Square, Clinton also publicly expressed concern about the Jonathan Pollard case, but no action was taken to commute Pollard's life sentence for spying on behalf of Israel (see accompanying story).

On Aug. 8, Clinton visited New Square, about 40 miles north of New York City. She visited the girls yeshiva and schmoozed with Rabbi Twersky's wife, Chana. She also had a private meeting with the rebbe.

At the time, Clinton's campaign was desperately trying to boost stagnant support for her among the state's key Jewish voters. Her opponent, former Long Island Republican Rep. Rick Lazio, seemed to be gaining momentum.

For Clinton, it was already clear that New York's Orthodox and chasidic communities would be a hard sell, as they were expressing their personal dislike for her and her positions, particularly regarding Israel. She needed to show she could win some support in Orthodox circles.

Meanwhile, New Square was coping with a series of scandals in which top village officials were going to jail or fleeing the country for swindling tens of millions of dollars in federal education, housing and small-business subsidies in a decade-long scam.

One widely publicized case included laundering money through a phony yeshiva set up in Brooklyn.

Rabbi Twersky desperately wanted to win clemency for the four noted New Square residents who on Jan. 25, 1999 were convicted of 21 charges including conspiracy, embezzlement, and wire and mail fraud. Kalmen Stern, 42, was sentenced to 78 months; David Goldstein, 54, of Brooklyn, 70 months; Jacob Elbaum 40, 57 months; and Benjamin Berger, 30 months. They were ordered to pay back millions of dollars.

(In addition, two others fled the country: New Square founders Chaim Berger, Benjamin's father, and Avraham David Friesel, son of Mayor Mattus Friesel. Chaim Berger, who fled to Israel, is awaiting extradition pending an Israeli Supreme Court hearing, while Abraham Friesel is still listed as a fugitive, authorities said.)

``The [prison sentences] were weighing heavily upon the rebbe's soul and mind," said an Orthodox leader familiar with Rabbi Twersky.(UOJ SAYS BULLSHIT, IT'S WEIGHING ON HIS POCKET)

For Clinton, the Aug. 8 meeting was a like a splash of cool water in the desert. Unlike more hostile receptions in Orthodox quarters, New Square welcomed her with warmth, participants agreed.

``The rebbetzin and Hillary got along extremely well," a Democratic campaign source recalled. ``The rebbe endorsed her."

But spokesmen for Clinton and New Square emphatically state that the issue of the four imprisoned men was not brought up then or anytime before Election Day.

``It was raised sometime after the election," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told The Jewish Week Tuesday. Asked specifically when, Wolfson said he did not know.

New Square spokesman Rabbi Mayer Schiller also vigorously assured that the issue was not brought up in August. But other Rockland County political insiders dispute their claims.

``From day one [the issue of commutation] was part and parcel of the whole thing," said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``[New Square representatives] spelled out clearly their interest in her helping those who were incarcerated."

After the August meeting, New Square officials began campaigning for Clinton, even outside the village, though Clinton's positions on such core issues as school vouchers, abortion and Israel were in opposition to New Square.

Community members drove around in cars with loudspeakers urging -- in Yiddish -- for Rockland County Orthodox residents to vote for her. A Yiddish weekly endorsed her based on lobbying from New Square.

``It's not a secret their support was based on the hope that she would look kindly towards the people that are incarcerated," said Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, a prominent Orthodox leader who lives in nearby Monsey. ``They really went out and helped her. It was an honest attempt to get votes and get support for Hillary Clinton."

On Election Day, Clinton carried New Square, 1,400 to 12. It was a glaring exception to much of the Orthodox world and New Square's chasidic neighbors, who voted overwhelmingly for Lazio.

``I would say in general that chasidic voting blocs are motivated greatly by self interest," explained Rabbi Schiller when asked about the anomaly. ``New Square tends to vote in blocs, usually based upon personal relationships developed with politicians."

Six weeks after the election, Rabbi Twersky and New Square Deputy Mayor Israel Spitzer found themselves sitting in the White House map room with President Clinton and Sen.-elect Hillary Clinton. It was the first time Rabbi Twersky had ever been in the White House, Rabbi Schiller said. (Rabbi Twersky does not grant interviews and Spitzer declined to be interviewed directly.)

During a scheduled 15-minute meeting on Dec. 22 that stretched into 45 minutes, according to New Square officials, Rabbi Twersky raised the issue of seeking mercy for the New Square four and help for fugitive Chaim Berger in Israel.

Rabbi Twersky has never publicly commented about the sins of his community members, and repeatedly turned down interviews to explain the scandal.

Spitzer related that Rabbi Twersky told the president about ``a dark cloud" over the community, referring to the prison sentences. The rabbi then presented a letter to President Clinton signed by several Jewish organizations asking for mercy.

``[Clinton] read the letter and said he would look into it," Rabbi Schiller quoted Spitzer. Rabbi Schiller said he could not provide a copy of the letter.

Asked to see any photos taken with the rabbi and the Clintons, Rabbi Schiller denied they existed. But a former White House spokesman confirmed photos were taken and sent to New Square.

Meanwhile, following the White House session, New Square hired Washington attorney Samuel Rosenthal to file the forms necessary to request presidential pardons and commutations -- actions an outgoing president traditionally takes in the last weeks of his term.

On Saturday, Clinton commuted the sentences of the New Square four. In all Clinton pardoned 140 people and commuted 36 prison sentences.


Also under attack is the pardon of Susan Rosenberg, found guilty of possession of 700 pounds of explosives and a submachine gun in a 1984 New Jersey case.

In the case of the New Square four, Clinton commuted Benjamin Berger's sentence to 24 months and the rest to 30 months. All will serve about another 18 months.

But according to a Justice Department spokeswoman, Clinton's commutation does not dismiss the court's order that they repay millions of dollars in restitution and undergo several years of supervised release. Stern still owes the government $11.2 million; Elbaum $11.1 million; Goldstein, $10.1 million; and Berger $522,977.

Experts said commutations, unlike pardons, are generally granted to shorten a sentence that is deemed too long or otherwise unfair, or to reward cooperation with the government.

White, in a statement speaking of the New York related cases, said: ``The facts of several of these cases in particular raise significant law enforcement concerns, the seriousness of the crimes is diminished, and the fact and the appearance of evenhanded justice is compromised." This apparently referred to claims by New Square that her office was overzealous and biased against the village.

But criminal justice experts said the New Square commutations sends a dangerous message about the workings of the justice system to a community that in 1996 was fined $1 million by a federal judge for contempt for refusing to comply with his order to provide evidence.

(Those Bastards set a F***** building on fire to destroy the records and then collected fire insurance to boot)

Observers also fear the commutations will have negative repercussions among New Square's non-Jewish neighbors, who believe that Orthodox Jews already receive special treatment from elected officials.

``This is not justice, this is politics," said Rockland County Sheriff James Kralik, whose office began the investigation years ago.

``This was a situation in my opinion that grew out of the election campaign of Mrs. Clinton and possibly Al Gore," he told the Rockland Journal newspaper Tuesday. ``And the community certainly showed their respect for Mrs. Clinton with their votes.''



It just makes you puke! These gangsters do not practice Judaism, they USE their filthy disguises to steal, lie, cheat, and destroy our religion. CHASSIDISM IS NOT JUDAISM. David Twersky AKA the Rebbe is the same worthless low-life scumbag as the rest of his gang of hoodlums. The people who seek him out for brachas, will have those words turned into curses. All of them will rot in Hell as they should. There is a special place in HELL for ALL the fur hat gangsters, or whatever they call themselves!
UOJ

Hasidic Village Keeps Women Out of the Driver's Seat

Steven I. Weiss
The Forward

Even as the White House presses Saudi Arabia to permit women to drive, an ultra-Orthodox community in New York has launched a campaign to reassert its ban on female motorists.

During her trip last month to Saudi Arabia, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes delivered a speech in which she stressed the Bush administration's determination to see Saudi women obtain more rights — including the right to drive.

Meanwhile, in the Hasidic village of New Square, N.Y., religious leaders recently issued a document reminding residents that "women should not sit in the front of a car." Released in July by the community's top rabbinical court, the document was aimed at shoring up several communal standards — especially those regarding women's conduct.

"It's considered not tzniusdik [modest] for a woman to be a driver, not in keeping with the out-of-public-view [attitude]," village spokesman Rabbi Mayer Schiller said. "If you can imagine in Europe, would a woman have been a coach driver, a wagon driver? It would've been completely inappropriate."

The village's religious leaders have made an exemption for an 80-year-old woman who was one of the community's original residents and hadn't known about the driving prohibition before she moved there.

New Square, a 7,000-person enclave located 40 miles north of New York City, was founded by the late Skverer rebbe Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky, a Holocaust survivor, and his followers. The village was established in 1954 and officially incorporated seven years later. It relies heavily on private charitable donations and on government-assistance programs.

In the recent document, New Square religious leaders reiterated the prohibition against girls riding bicycles; also, women are forbidden from going outside in their long housecoats, a common fashion staple in many Orthodox communities.

The rules "are nothing new," Schiller said, but "there's just a sense that for some of the young people they need to reinforce them." He added that in the village's entire history, similar comprehensive lists of communal standards have been posted "maybe five or 10 times, but probably no more than that."

"If you would poll the community... 97.5% would say, 'Yes, this is what we want,'" Schiller said.

While the rules are meant to apply to residents, clearly they're not part of the criteria for endorsing candidates for elective office. New Square's top rabbis endorsed Hillary Clinton in her successful run for the senate in 2000, and delivered all but a few votes for the former first lady.
Clinton spokeswoman Me-ah Zonah did not return repeated requests for comment.

The recent document in New Square addressed a wide range of prohibitions. One rule requires that a fence be constructed around houses that have a trampoline.

Another states that exercise groups can be formed only with the permission of a rabbinical court and that they require a mashgiach (religious inspector) to oversee them.

Some of the regulations are targeted at men, including a clause instructing male worshippers to keep their cell phones off and to refrain from talking during prayer times. But it is the rules pertaining to women — in particular, those related to driving — that bear a striking resemblance to the Saudi practices criticized by the Bush administration.

In some ways, Saudi Arabia's laws regarding women are more permissive than the religious edicts in New Square. For example, a Saudi woman is allowed to ride in the front seat of a car if the driver is her husband. While husbands and wives in Saudi Arabia are allowed to walk with each other, New Square men and women always must walk on different sides of the street. In strong contrast to Saudi Arabia, the government does not enforce the religious rules in New Square; violations do not result in any form of corporal punishment. But those who frequently violate the rules in New Square are blackballed from the community.

"I can think of just a handful of cases over the years" in which someone was expelled from New Square's religious community, Schiller said.

"I don't think any of these transgressions would get you to be expelled from the community," Schiller said. But, he added, "If a young woman was driving, that would be fairly serious."

Schiller warned against drawing any negative conclusions about New Square based on the Saudi situation. "It is a mistake to view a religious practice negatively just because another culture, aspects of which we may find troubling, also practices it," he said. At the same time, the New Square spokesman was critical of the Bush administration's efforts in the Middle East.

"American foreign policy has moved towards a messianic, crusading secularism which judges all other peoples by the standards of our own 'fashionable' elites," he said. "This monolithic utopianism inevitably yields spiritual, moral and practical disasters."


UOJ Comments
Schiller did not comment about the fire that destroyed all the financial records at New Square as the Government was investigating millions of dollars of theft.
Schiller also did not make mention of the convicted felons from New Square, close associates of the Rebbe, that were pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day in office.
New Square has become a sewer of corruption led by a smiling Howdy Doody buffoon.

Orthodox Criminals

A great e-mail from a new Frum Skeptic


A- the community has a tendency to live in self-denial and delusional
grandeur ("it doesn't happen here"), and to sweep things under the rug
when it does happen: talking about such things is taboo. (examples of
such taboos are someone who: served time; was in a clinic for
addiction, mental ilness, eating disorder, chronical problem (such as
a young person with congenital heart problems), or any
"non-conventional illness"; came out of the closet; had troubles with
the law; ran away for a while (either from home, yiddishkeit or both)
but returned and so forth - not to mention the presence of a
handicapped individual in the family, see more below). therefore,
voicing disapproval is by extension forbidden because one cannot say
loshon hora, "be motzei shem ra" (i hate the yeshivish english) or
accuse another yid of something false ("do YOU have ANY proof of it?
no? then don't accuse if you cannot prove! never mind what the new
york times says, YOU do not have proof and the press is
anti-semitic!"). simply put, it never happened - and if it did, the
person does not exist or was absolved by wither previous holiness,
denial, or some type of perceived teshivah.

B- as practical examples:
there is a head of a beis din in north america whose son is serving
time in an american prison for armed robbery - and nobody ever talks
about him, not even cousins - and there are members of his family who
even do not know that this person exists (kids who are almost
teenagers, spouses of cousins, etc.)!

There is the camp in new york state for handicapped children whose
counsellors are required to sign a legal document of non-disclosure of
names or the identity of any of the campers and their families; the
campers are taken to and from camp by hired drivers (almost always
non-jews) and whose families do not visit them, unless it is already
"public knowledge" that such handicapped individuals exist.

Although no crime is involved in the second instance, the attitude is
symptomatic of an intolerance of any deffect in those who should be
holy above all reproach - even when it is not their fault and others
could actually help them make things better for themselves and the
community (in my community, large as it is, there is no organized
group home for disabled individuals from frum families - there are
other "jewish" places, but without kosher food, etc. but the frum are
either homebound or shipped away until they die and are "found out"
only to vanish again after the shloshim when all mourning ends).


2:
A- it really depends on what his "illegal activities" were.
oftentimes, it will not diminish his respect in the eyes of the
community as a rabbi, and this rabbi will rule as he pleases in all
matters, even if it blatantly contradicts his own behavior. see #3.

B- as an example: it happened with a head of a beis din in south
america that he attempted to leave the country with a briefcase filled
with american dollars (note: u.s. federal law requires that anyone
entering or leaving the country with more than 10,000 dollars declare
it - and many other countries have similar rules; the rabbi had much
more than ten thousand dollars). stopped by the police at the airport
(during a random security check, way before 9/11) he refused to talk
about the money, saying "i am a man of g-d, and it is none of your
business what i do". long story short, he missed the flight, spent at
least one night in detention and was freed with posting of bail and
bribes to clear his record (with the bribery making it 2 wrongs, but
still making it all right). but the said rabbi is very strict in his
rulings about business honesty, and no one even talks about this
incident anymore!


3:
A- money-related offenses, especially financial fraud against the
government, is not seen as a crime by the frum community - especially
if the perpetrator/s use the money obtained to support a community
cause. the most famous case is perhaps that of zalman "jimmy" Gourary
of crown heights, who served time in federal prison for tax evasion
and fraud, but was seen in lubavitch - even by the rebbe - as a pillar
of righteousness and charity, mainly for his sponsorship of printing
of the rebbe's books and of a free mikvah right next to 770. other
cases - which happen daily and any yeshiva bochur heard of at least
one - include cheating car rental companies, long-distance providers,
insurance companies, purchase return policies (who never heard of the
"borrowed simcha outfit"?) and many other "soft" crimes (in one
instance there was even a way to obtain a driver's license without
knowing either english or how to drive, but technological changes to
the process ended that one). halacha clearly prohibits cheating
anyone, but since these involve cheating "the government, who steals
enough from us through taxes" or "the goyim", it is seen as no problem
("those companies/the government have so much money anyway!").

B- there is alwasy the "relocation" method: one commits a crime
somewhere and moves away to another community where s/he is either
unknown or out of reach of the jurisdiction of the first one. cases to
point include draft-dodgers who flee israel (too many to mention, but
nevertheless illegal aliens in the usa), people who run away from
their spouses with a lover (one such case now heads a
kashrut-supervising agency in North America), and one businessman
Fischer who pocketed money and building and land deeds from the crown
heights community council, fled to israel and avoids all cherem
provisions just by being out of the crown heights beis din
jurisdiction. the case became famous when it went to court and the
RICO act was invoked.


the bottom line:
Unfortunately, the orthodox community has created a self-perpetuating
vicious cycle of tolerance to crime and corruption, sometimes in the
name of jewish holiness ("lashon hara"), sometimes in the name of
protection of the families (e.g shidduchim, innocence of children
about crimes), but most often out of honor for some persons who do not
deserve it, safe for the position they currently hold and should lose
for their crimes.