Rabbi Norman Lamm, former Yeshiva U president, dies at 92

Rabbi Norman Lamm, noted Modern Orthodox rabbi, author and communal leader, passed away Sunday at the age of 92. 

The president emeritus of Yeshiva University had just lost his wife to COVID-19 a month earlier. 

Rabbi Lamm was the third President of Yeshiva University, serving from 1976 until 2013, and is credited with helping to save it from falling into bankruptcy. 

Rabbi Lamm got his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik at Yeshiva University's rabbinical school, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, in 1951. 

In 1952, he was appointed rabbi of New York's Congregation Beth Israel, where he served for six years before becoming assistant rabbi at the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1958. 

In 1959, he was promoted to the Jewish Center's rabbi, a position he held until 1976.

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IKEA Opens in Beit Shemesh ....and the Haftorah of Parshas Naso

So guys ....

Listen to this .....

This Shabbos in Israel we "leined" Parshas Naso ....

We only have one day Shevuois, and Shabbos was no longer YomTov....

I want to point out how great Israel is .....and that everything that happens in this historic land is connected to Tanach...

even the opening of IKEA!

IKEA opened up this week ... Parshas Naso...

in a little town in Beit Shemesh called Eshtaol ....

the town Eshtaol is near the city of Zorah......

The haftorah of Parshas Naso talks about Shimshon who lived in Beit Shemesh. In fact, Shimshon and his father Monoach are buried here in Beit Shemesh!

When Shimshon was born, Hashem blessed him .....

But where? In which city?

Read the very last two lines of the haftorah!

'ותלד האשה בן ותקרא את שמו שמשון, ויגדל הנער ויברכהו ה'

ותחל רוח ה' לפעמו במחנה דן בין צרעה ובין אשתאל

"The woman gave birth to a son, and she called him Shimshon, the lad grew and Hashem blessed him.

The spirit of Hashem began to resound in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol."

By the way Dan ben Yaakov is also buried here in Beit Shemesh..

Swedish furniture and interior design giant IKEA opened its fifth store in Israel in the town of Eshtaol near Beit Shemesh, daily financial newspaper Globes reported on Sunday.

IKEA already operates stores in Netanya, Rishon Lezion, Kiryat Ata (near Haifa), and Be'er Sheva. A space reserved for kitchens has been installed at the Tel Aviv port.

The company has invested NIS 390 million (USD110 million) in the new establishment, which opened despite allegedly committing numerous construction violations.

The Jerusalem District Appeal Committee last week dismissed claims about construction-related offenses since the opening of the branch would create hundreds of jobs, crucial at the time when Israel's unemployment is the highest in history due to the coronavirus crisis.

The new IKEA covers more than 25,000 square meters, with 39 rooms displaying 8,000 products on sale. The new store has 380 employees, including management, customer service, cashiers, logistics, and warehouse staff, along with catering staff.

The outdoor parking lot has nearly 900 parking spaces.

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Mrs. Maisel spent the summer there. Now the whole place can be yours for just $6M.

This upstate New York resort’s lake, bowling alleys and cabins were the setting for Mrs. Maisel’s Catskills summer retreat.

Now it can be yours for a mere $6 million.

The Scott’s Family Resort in Deposit, which has been operating for 150 years, is on the market. The owners had announced in a January Facebook post that they were forced to close “due to circumstances beyond our control.”

The resort had become too expensive to keep up, according to The Journal News website lohud.com, but the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to operate this summer.

“This whole coronavirus thing has brought everything to a screeching halt,” Patty Scott Holdrege, a daughter of the current owners, told llohud. “I’m sad – this is all I’ve ever done.”

The resort had been in operation since 1869 but faced declining business in recent years. The property was put up for sale in 2018 but managed to stave off closure after the episodes of the “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” aired.

The creators of the Emmy-winning Amazon Prime comedy chose the Scott’s Family resort for its buildings, which had remained relatively unchanged in its decor since the 1940s and ’50s. It was the perfect setting for the show’s second season, when Midge Maisel’s family relocates to the mountains for some fresh air and family fun.

The episodes evoked an era in which thousands of Jewish New Yorkers would stream out of the city for weeks every summer, many to resorts in the Catskills Mountains where all of the patrons were Jewish. The resort area, nicknamed the Borscht Belt for the beet soup eaten by Russian Jews, gave rise to comedians like Jerry Lewis and were immortalized in the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.”

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"Don't Tell Ima", a book about domestic abuse in the Jewish family

The at-first-glance seemingly innocuous title of this book by Lisa Barness (Don't Tell Ima, Jewishselfpublishing) gave me the impression that it is about child rearing, perhaps about how to gain children's trust so they are not afraid to admit the truth and about teaching them to be honest.  After all, the phrase is most often used by children when asking other siblings not to "tell on" them to mother after they do something they shouldn't.

The dilemmas children face in this regard are real - sometimes a child's not revealing the name of whoever did something wrong can lead to continued criminality, sometimes it can mean the child will be punished for someone else's misdemeanors, and there are times where it is a noble thing to do – except that none of the above is the subject of this book and the writer is using a fictitious name.

This book is a story in which the children involved could have been maimed for life.

That is because, unfortunately, the person instructing them not to tell Ima is an adult – at least legally – and is the children's narcissistic, control freak, two-timing and dissembling, "model" of a religious father. Trust, honesty, possible negative consequences on their lives never even enter his mind.

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Satmar Bnei Brak Erupts in Civil War As Police Are Called On Shevuois

The Ahronim in Bnei Brak aren't only fighting against the Zionists, they fight against themselves as well...

As we reported previously, The Ahronim in Bnei Brak, who follow R' Aron Teitelbaum are in a civil war ... which is threatening the entire Satmar Bnei Brak Kehilah...

This Friday, when frum Jews around the world were busy celebrating "Kabalos Ha"torah", and talking about "achdus" the Bnei Brak Ahroinim were beating the hell out of each other....

I'm not even sure what happened exactly, it seems someone from Harav Meizel's (the rav of Satmar Bnei Brak) opposition ran to the Aron Koidish to make sure that his own people would get the "kibudim" which led to a fist fight during Shachris ... 
I guess it happened before "akdomois!" 

Police were called and two of the mispallilim were arrested.
 I don't know exactly what they serve in Israeli jails on Shevuois but my guess is that this year they weren't going to get to eat cheese kreplich! ....

אחד המתפללים סיפר ל'כיכר השבת' כי "הרקע לבלגן הוא הרצון של כמה מאנשיו של ראש הישיבה לגשת לפתיחת ארון הקודש, דבר שאליו התנגדו בהנהלת המוסדות, ככל הנראה מתוך רצון לחלק את הכיבודים לאנשיהם בלבד, מה שעורר התנגדות עזה מצד אנשיו של ראש הישיבה, ואף לאלימות פיזית של ממש שנעצרה רק לאחר התערבות המשטרה, שנאלצה לעצור 2 מתפללים שהיו שותפים למעשה האלימות".

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Trump cuts ties with WHO

US President Donald Trump on Friday said he was severing ties with the World Health Organization, signaling the end of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the UN agency as the deadly coronavirus pandemic rages on.

As Europe speeded along the path to reopening after months of crippling lockdowns, Trump’s move is likely to spark dismay, especially in other parts of the world where the outbreak has yet to reach its peak.

Russia recorded a record number of deaths on Friday and several nations in Latin America are bracing for difficult weeks ahead, especially Brazil, where the toll has soared.

Last month, Trump suspended funding to the WHO, accusing it of not doing enough to curb the initial spread of the novel coronavirus and being too lenient with China, where the global outbreak began late last year.

On Friday, he made that decision permanent — a dire one for the UN agency’s finances as the United States is by far its biggest contributor, having given $400 million last year.

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization,” Trump told reporters.

The Republican leader said the US would be redirecting funds previously allocated to the WHO “to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs.”

“The world needs answers from China on the virus. We must have transparency,” Trump said.

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AMERICA PLUNGES INTO CRISIS ......

A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake.
 Protests — most of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans.

America’s persistent political dysfunction were laid bare this week, as the coronavirus death toll hit a tragic new milestone. 

 Together, the events present a grim tableau of a nation in crisis — one seared by violence against its citizens, plagued by a deadly disease that remains uncontained and rattled by a devastating blow to its economy.

“The threads of our civic life could start unraveling, because everybody’s living in a tinderbox,” said historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley. 

In the days after a 46-year-old black man died in the custody of Minneapolis police in an incident caught on video, demonstrators took to the streets. In that city, a police precinct was breached and set ablaze, along with other businesses. In Colorado, shots were fired near the statehouse. At a protest in Louisville, seven people were shot.

Authorities announced charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter against the officer in the Minneapolis case Friday — which observers saw as a development that might quell some of the immediate unrest.

The protests that erupted in Minnesota spread to places like Columbus, Phoenix, Denver and Louisville, which recently experienced a controversial police killing when officers serving a warrant shot and killed a 26-year-old EMT inside her home. More demonstrations broke out Friday evening across the country, including in the District.

“I was amazed watching people who were out,” said Raoul Cunningham, head of the NAACP branch in Louisville. “To me, it made clear that we’re at a period of time like we’ve never faced before.”

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12,000 New York Nursing Home Residents Killed by Covid-19..... Should Cuomo Be Charged for Murder?

Patricia Castillo remembers when the Newfane Rehab and Health Care Center, where her mother lived, notified her that a patient had just been admitted from a nearby Niagara County hospital with COVID-19.

Jill Sawyer, whose father lived at the same nursing home, remembers getting notified, too. “It was just a death sentence,” said Sawyer. The virus raced through Newfane, killing Castillo’s mother and Sawyer’s father and 24 other residents.

“My father was only 70 years old,” Sawyer sighs, and he was still “shuffling around and calling me 20 times a day.” Now, she says the phone doesn’t ring and she misses that.

COVID-19 has killed at least 11,000 to 12,000 nursing-home and assisted-living residents in New York, nearly double what the state admits to. And as the deaths mount, so have the lies and cover-ups.

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Alte Raskin ..Bais Rivka teacher gives birth during pandemic, still finds time for students ..

Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus crisis and Bais Rivkah teacher Alte Raskin was in the thick of it all — while caring for her newborn son.

Raskin, 27, a member of the Hasidic sect of Chabad, was expecting a lengthy maternity leave in an empty house with her three girls in school. But when she gave birth on March 18, just as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to sweep New York, she knew that wouldn’t be possible.

She took six short weeks off while another teacher taught her seventh-grade students and at first, she was nervous to get back to work.

“It’s a whole new thing, I just had a baby, I don’t have so much energy to put into trying to figure out a whole new module of learning and teaching,” Raskin said of the work.

“The first few days were totally overwhelming. I was like, ‘What am I doing? I maybe should just not go back this year. Maybe this is just not a good idea.’ I have kids, my kids are [doing] online school. They need people all day to troubleshoot them and run around. Plus, I’m postpartum, right, I’m exhausted I could barely move.”

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Chag Shevuois Samaich

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Going To Cost Alot More To Go To Lakewood.....Major Toll Hikes Approved On New Jersey Turnpike & Garden State Parkway

It is going to cost a LOT more to travel on two of New Jersey’s tolled highways later this year. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority commissioners voted on Wednesday unanimously to raise tolls this September, NorthJersey.com reports as per WPST.

Tolls will increase on the New Jersey Turnpike by staggering 36%, and on the Garden State Parkway fares will be raised by 27%, officials say. The hikes will pay for a $24 billion in projects on both roadways.

So here’s the breakdown of the increases:

• On the turnpike, passenger cars currently cost $13.85 to drive from Exit 1 to Exit 18W. That will increase to staggering $18.85 under the new rates.
• The parkway increases will mean that most toll booths will increase from $1.50 to $1.90. The Toms River toll will rise from 75 cents to 95 cents.
• Tolls collected at the on-ramps and off-ramps of the Garden State Parkway, which currently cost between 50 cents and $1.50, will increase to a range of 60 cents to $1.90.

The new toll rates will go into effect on September 13, unless they are vetoed by Governor Murphy.

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Watch Nutty Mika Brzezinski Say it's The Media's "Job To Control What You Think"

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Zera Shimshon ... Parshat Nasso

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Just hours after NYC crackdown, Boro-Park businesses are packed again

The crackdown didn’t even last a day!

Just hours after City Hall sent in the Sheriff’s Office, at least four Borough Park stores exposed by The Post for operating in violation of emergency coronavirus orders were back open — and, again, packed with maskless customers.

“Maybe it’s illegal to open it, but you have to understand, these stores are living things,” said Chaim Fogel, who stood outside of Tip Top, a crowded clothing store on 13th Avenue. “The economy is a living thing. If you see you’re going to die if you don’t do something, you do it, because what’s the alternative?”

Fogel conceded the shop needed to do a better job of managing the crowds and forcing people to wear masks.

The shop was one of at least four a reporter spotted Wednesday afternoon doing brisk business while staff and most customers failed to take protective measures, like maintaining social distancing and wearing masks.

The roster of open 13th Avenue storefronts also included party supply retailer ‘Party Shop,’ kids clothier ‘Pastel’ and womenswear shop ‘Miller’s Family Wear.’

Nor did the crackdown on businesses appear to deter large groups from gathering on the avenue or encourage those out to wear masks, which remained virtually unseen when The Post returned to the street after the crackdown.

Only one shop identified in the initial story, Toys4U, appeared to have heeded the knuckle rap from officials and sharply limited access to customers.

The toy store has remained open during the pandemic by getting into the bike repair business, one of the categories of work deemed essential by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order.

“We’re a bike shop. A bike shop is allowed to be open. We’re not looking for a fight with the city,” owner Joseph Itzkowitz said Wednesday. “At least let us be open. We have to make a living.”

That’s a different tack for the retailer, which Post reporters spotted packed with customers buying toys and other non-essential goods on Monday and Tuesday.

City, state and federal health officials say that observing social distancing measures and wearing masks is essential to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 21,000 people in New York City alone.

Borough Park has been hit particularly hard.

City Health Department data shows that more than 200 people who live in the 11219 zip code have died from the pandemic and the area is suffering from one of the highest rates of COVID-19 cases in Brooklyn.

Outraged city officials promised they would be back to shut the businesses down again when The Post contacted them about the reopenings.

“This behavior is absolutely unacceptable and we will be taking further enforcement action,” said City Hall spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie.

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Mamaliga Is Just Right—for Shavuot

DIN: I have to admit that my father z"l made this on motzei Shabbos but we children wouldn't touch it ... he didn't use shallots, spinach ...or the cheeses 
so when I found this recipe, I wanted to share it.

Mamaliga, the national dish of Romania, has long been beloved by all Romanians—including Jews. Aaron Lebedeff’s famous Yiddish song “Roumania, Roumania” specifically mentions the dish. Evidently, when a Jewish Romanian met someone who he or she thought was Jewish, they would say in Yiddish, “Es mamaliga licht in punem,” meaning: When you eat mamaliga, it shows in your face.

This porridge, made from cornmeal, is often served with sour cream, diced raw onions, and feta cheese. Dairy restaurants, like Ratner’s in New York, served it, especially at the forthcoming holiday of Shavuot.

The late Judith Tihany, whom I knew as a fabulous Romanian Israeli cook and the mother of the restaurant architect Adam Tihany, made a yummy mamaliga layered with spinach, ricotta cheese, and shallots. Adam and I pieced the recipe together—him from memory, me from trying it out. Although I’m not Romanian, I love mamaliga and so does my whole family: It’s a perfect dish for Shavuot.

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Mamaliga

1. Saute the shallots in 2 tablespoons of the butter. Add the spinach little by little on top 

and saute until withered but still bright green. Set aside.

1. Pour 5 cups of water into a heavy saucepan and bring to a rapid boil. Add salt and then 

sprinkle on the cornmeal very slowly, stirring constantly with a long wooden spoon. Then reduce the heat to medium and continue stirring until the cornmeal is very thick and firm, about 15 minutes. When the cornmeal forms a ball and no longer sticks to the side of the pan but comes away cleanly from the side, spoon one third of it into a 9 by 9 casserole. Cover with the spinach, then melt the remaining butter and pour over the spinach.

1.  Cover with another layer of the polenta, then spoon on the feta and the ricotta cheese.
2. Cover with the remaining polenta, smoothing down. You can serve as is or refrigerate

 until ready to serve.

3. When ready to serve preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake about 20 minutes or until warm. Then serve with sour cream or yogurt on the side.

Yield: about 6 servings.

Mamaliga

6

shallots, diced

1/2

stick plus 2 tablespoons salted butter

10

ounces fresh spinach

1

teaspoon salt

3 1/2

cups coarse yellow cornmeal

1

cup feta cheese, broken into small pieces

1

cup ricotta cheese

1

cup sour cream or yogurt

Rush Limbaugh Says : Just waking up is a blessing'

Radio host Rush Limbaugh, who is battling advanced lung cancer, says the latest wave of treatment is leaving him "virtually worthless" and that "just waking up is a blessing."

"There have been many cycles, but this is the third wave, and this current wave, I have to tell you, is kicking my a**," Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Tuesday, his first on-air appearance since Thursday.

"For the last seven days, I have been virtually worthless, virtually useless. I haven't left the house. I haven't done much of anything except just try to rest and relax."

The 69-year-old talk-show star noted he was well aware such harmful effects might occur.

"Nothing is happening that was not told me to me," he explained.

"It's the cost. It's the price that you pay if you make the decision to go ahead and do treatment to try to prolong your life. I'm doing extremely well, all things considered, the fact that I'm even here today.

"Every day, I wake up and the first thing I do is thank God that I did," Limbaugh chuckled. "Just waking up is a blessing."

"I know many of you are praying daily and nightly. I happen to believe that they work. I believe that they are sustaining me, and I pray for the energy to be able to do this. But I have to be ... Folks, I have to be honest. I do not have the energy that I used to have."

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