Mashgichim going crazy because Rav Kanievsky said Bugs in Orange Juice are OK

Mashgichim are always on the lookout for more and more kashrus issues!
Why?
Because as long as there are issues, there will be Parnassah for them..

Years ago, I had a close friend that worked in the catering business and related to me horror stories. 

He explained, for example, that most appetizers at weddings are salads....
So when Gush Katif closed down, he had to start watching out for bugs in the lettuce! 

He couldn't buy bodek, since his average wedding had 400 people.... that would amount to a fortune!..
So he bought Romaine on the market and washed them and some erlicher guy would go over most of the batch as proscribed by the Shulchan Aruch.

The Heimishe Hashgacha Company that he employed smelled $$$$$$$$$, so they ruled that the Shulchan Aruch means nothing and the Catering company needs a mashgiach to look over each and every lettuce...
So you can just imagine the scene on the day of the wedding, having 10 to 15 kollel guys now looking over the lettuce.. and now had to charge extra for this Chumrah that the client didn't want!

Then this particular Hashgacha decided that the Vodka "Grey Goose" was no good, even though its on the Star K and O U Lists... 
So this friend now had to fight with the customer, because the customer couldn't understand , " why he was disallowing the vodka, when its on the kosher list and the Caterer wasn't even  supplying the product. So even though he had nothing to do with Liquor, the customer couldn't put "Grey Goose" on the tables and couldn't give him a proper explanation. 

The came the grape situation... did you know that grapes have insects? Well, nobody knows that... and even the grapes don't know that...but the Baal hamachsher who needed to feed his 10 fledglings he must have known that, and now required that a Mashgiach wash each and every grape and inspect them!

The blueberry situation came next, with the Mashgiach telling him that only a mashgiach could wash and inspect each and every blueberry,
since the Kollel guys were experts in "blueberry insects"
Now my friend couldn't use strawberries, blueberries, grapes and couldn't have the customer bring his own kosher Grey Goose...because it wasn't worth hiring all these guys to inspect each and every single fruit and it wasn't worth fighting with the Baal Hamachsher over the Vodka!

The Truth is that Grapes and Blueberries have a Chazaka that it doesn't have insects ...and therefore does not require inspection and especially doesn't require 'expert' inspection.... 

So what happened?
I'll tell you what happened...... it's a secret so don't spread it around...
According to the Shulchan Aruch, you do not have to inspect each and every Romaine leaf...
anyone that tells you that is a LIAR!

The Shulchan Aruch requires that you check "roiv"
For example if you buy a box of Romaine at Costco which contains 5 bags, those 5 bags become one batch. 
You open the first bag at random and inspect  100 leaves and if there are no insects in those 100 leaves the entire bag is Kosher with no further inspection needed from that bag. 
The other 4 bags just require you to take a little bunch from each bag and inspect..

Now if you inspected the first 100 leaves and found an insect, you are required to begin to count again 100 insect free leaves. Also if you found an insect in the other 4 bags from the bunch that you took out, you have to begin counting from that bag 100 insect free leaves!

Now Bodek and Positive do the same thing, but they won't tell you that....
 These companies have tremendous $$$$$$ at stake, so they pressure the Hashgacha Companies to discourage the "oilim goilim" from buying  Romaine and Iceberg lettuce , to promote their own interests!
Bodek and Positive also are under Hashgacha, and its in the interest of the Bodek and Positive Mashgichim to push Bodek and Positive products!
So, Yes, its all a money thing..

Lately there were rumors that there are insects in Tropicana Orange Juice! What I don't understand is that New Square Orange Juice is Tropicana, why wasn't there a problem with New Square Orange Juice?

So now a guy from the 5 Towns Jewish Times went to Israel to meet Rav Kanievsky with a recorder to establish and clarify once and for all the story with the OJ!

Mr. Larry Gordon, owner of the Five Towns Jewish Times, visited Rav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita on Sunday afternoon at a little bit before 4:00 PM and presented him with a number of Halachic shailos from the United States. These shailos were written in Hebrew and Rav Chaim read them himself and then responded. His responses were videotaped.

In a previous article regarding Tropicana orange juice, I (rabbi Yair Hoffman) had presented 4 factors in which Poskim might either forbid or permit the orange juice, even though scale bugs are being consistently found in each cup of the juice.

The fourth factor dealt with whether there is an obligation to remove an item that cannot be identified as a bug to the naked eye of a trained expert within the mixture—even though he may be able to identify it as a bug were it not in a mixture.

Below, we reproduce the first question that was posed and Rav Chaim’s response. 

Rav Chaim said that the Tropicana juice would be permitted.

1. יש חוקרים בחו”ל שמצאו במין אחד של מיץ תפוזים תולעים (בשם סקייל באגז). ורק מוציאים את התולעים עם מגדלת לאחר שסיננו את המיץ עם בד דק דק. ואי אפשר לראות את התולעים בתוך ה”בד הסינון” בלא המגדלת. ולוקחים את התולעת על ידי מחט ומניחים אותו על נייר. ועכשיו שאין התולעת בתוך המיץ – אפשר למומחה לראותו בעינים אף בלי מגדלת מה שלא היה אפשר לפני-כן. ובכל כוס וכוס התולעים האלו נמצאים. האם זה נחשב למוחזק בתולעים? האם יש חיוב לסננן את המיץ לפני ששותים אותו?

There are investigators in USA that found scale bugs in orange juice. They only find the bugs with a jeweler’s loupe magnifying glass after they strain it with a very thin cloth. It is not possible to see the bugs in the cloth without the magnifier. They take the bug with a needle and place it on a piece of paper. Now that the bug is no longer in the juice an expert can see it – even with his eyes – something not possible beforehand. In each and every cup these bugs are found. Is this considered muchzak b’tolayim? Is there an obligation to filter the juice before one drinks it?

לא צריך לחשוש.

A Talmid Chochom that was present when the question was posed explained that it was on account of the fourth factor that Rav Chaim ruled in this manner.

Al Sharpton Can Teach Kollel Guys How To Make a living!

Al Sharpton goes to a Corporation and tells them, if you don't pay me I'll call your company "racist"!
I think that Kollel guys could basically use the same tactic,..... Go to the nearest grocery and tell them if you don't give us money, we will tell the Heimishe Oilem that you guys don't support Kollilim and will start  a boycott!

I think Sharpton is smarter than all of us..
read the following!

Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?

Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.

For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.

Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked e-mails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyber attack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un.

Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev,” The Post reported.

No payments to NAN have been announced, but Sharptoon and Pascal agreed to form a “working group” to focus on racial bias in Hollywood.

Sony exec Amy Pascal scrambles away like a mouse after a meeting with Sharpton.

Sharpton notably did not publicly assert his support for Pascal after the meeting — what observers say seems like a typical Sharpton “shakedown” in the making. Pay him in cash or power, critics say, and you buy his support or silence.

“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.

And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.

“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”

Horse in the race

One example of Sharpton’s playbook has emerged in tax filings and a state inspector general’s report.

In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network.

The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.

Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.

Sharpton has said that most of the Plainfield contribution went to pay King’s salary.

King’s company, the Movement Group, was paid $243,586 by NAN in 2008, tax records show.

Harold Levy, a former New York City schools chancellor who was a managing director at Plainfield at the time, has denied the contribution was made to curry favor with Sharpton or anyone else. But a year later, as the battle for the racino license heated up, NAN raked in another $100,000 from representatives of the AEG consortium, which was the successor company to Capital Play.

One AEG member e-mailed another in 2009 saying, “Sharpton lobbied [then-Gov. David Paterson] hard over the weekend on our behalf,” according to the state inspector general’s 2010 report on the corrupt racino licensing process.

In order to discredit SL Green, one of the rival bidders whose plan included a Hard Rock Hotel, an AEG executive sent another e-mail outlining tactics to conscript local leaders to its cause.

“We are going to need it, and we are going to need . . . Sharpton to piss on hard rock,” according to the undated e-mail cited in the IG’s report.

Sharpton denied he lobbied on behalf of AEG.

The donations, meanwhile, came at an opportune time for Sharpton, as NAN was deep in debt to the IRS in 2008. It owed $1.3 million in unpaid federal, state and city payroll taxes including interest and penalties.

AEG viewed its payments to Sharpton as more of an insurance policy so he wouldn’t scuttle its chances by criticizing the group, said a source familiar with the racino controversy.

Cost of doing business

Sharpton raised $1 million for NAN at his 60th birthday bash in October, with donations rolling in from unions and a corporate roster of contributors including AT&T, McDonald’s, Verizon and Walmart.

Companies have long gotten in line to pay Sharpton. Macy’s and Pfizer have forked over thousands to NAN, as have General Motors, American Honda and Chrysler.

NAN had repeatedly and without success asked GM for donations for six years beginning in August 2000, a GM spokesman told The Post. Then, in 2006, Sharpton threatened a boycott of GM over the planned closing of an African-American-owned dealership in The Bronx. He picketed outside GM’s Fifth Avenue headquarters. GM wrote checks to NAN for $5,000 in 2007 and another $5,000 in 2008.

Sharpton targeted American Honda in 2003 for not hiring enough African-Americans in management positions.

“We support those that support us,” Sharpton wrote to the company. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”

Two months later, car-company leaders met with Sharpton, and Honda began to sponsor NAN’s events. The protests stopped.

Sharpton landed a gig as a $25,000-a-year adviser to Pepsi after he threatened a consumer boycott of the soda company in 1998, saying its ads did not portray African-Americans. He held the position until 2007

As for Sony, Sharpton denied that his meeting with Pascal resulted in a donation to NAN.

Misaskim Prepares Thousands Of Hot Coffees, 32 Mobile Bathrooms With Running Water For Cops At Slain Officer’s Funeral

Two Bochrim Injured, One Critically, After Vehicle Overturns On Garden State Parkway

The Car that the Bochrim traveled in 

Two brothers were injured, one critically, when the vehicle they were riding in overturned on the Garden State Parkway‎ Sunday morning.

The Bochrim, ages 16 and 23, we’re traveling into Lakewood for a family Bris, when they lost control of the vehicle at approximately mile post 95. 

The vehicle crashed into a pole, and overturned.

Emergency personnel were needed to extricate the Bochrim from the severely-damaged vehicle, sources say.

Please take a moment to be Mispallel for Reuven ben Raizel (16), and Yisroel ben Raizel.They were transported to the Jersey Shore Medical Center. The 16-year-old, who was the passenger, is listed in critical condition R”L.

Maran HaRav Shteinman On The Importance of Voting in the Elections ...and doesn't care about the "irrelevant Satmar Shitah"

Rav Shteinman Voting in Elections

A Yeshiva Bochur studying in Eretz Yisrael from abroad asked Maran HaGaon HaRav Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman Shlita if he should file for citizenship to permit him to vote in the upcoming national elections. 

According to the Kikar Shabbos report, the gadol hador responded “yes”, that he should become a citizen to permit him to vote and “merit fulfilling the mitzvah”.

In the last elections a chosson asked the gadol hador if he should vote since his chupah was taking place on Election Day and voting would present somewhat of a difficulty. He too was instructed to vote.

DIN

Nu is Rav Shteinman an apikores? Is Rav Shteinman a meen? 

according to the book "Al Hagilah V'al hatmirah" he is!

You see how asinine the Satmar Shitah is? 
You see how nutty and crazy this Shitah is?

‘HOW TO STAB A JEW’ VIDEO BECOMES A BIG HIT ON PALESTINIAN SOCIAL MEDIA

A video being widely circulated in Palestinian social media networks teaches jihadists how to stab a Jewish person in a manner that ensures their speedy death.

The video is reportedly being circulated by a group calling themselves the “resisters of occupation in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem,” according to a Jewish Press report.

The video shows two men, a “teacher” and a “victim”, dressed in a Keffiyeh headscarf–garb which was popularized by the first Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. The teacher then demonstrates how to casually walk up to someone and stab them in an efficient and deadly manner.

The demonstration emphasizes that in order to inflict maximum damage, the knife should be twisted after stabbing the Jewish person.

The video comes as 2014 has seen an exponential increase in Arab stabbing attacks against Israeli Jews.

In November, two Palestinian terrorists stabbed to death four Rabbis who were praying peacefully in their Jerusalem synagogue. The Palestinians, who were armed with axes, left an additional eight wounded in the jihadi onslaught. Hamas, the terror group which controls the Gaza Strip, supported the jihadist’s actions. A Hamas spokesman threatened at the time, “There will be more revolution in Jerusalem, and more uprising.”

Palestinian media entities have created other platforms to call for aggression against Jews.

In October, a video game was released called “The Liberation of Palestine,” which encouraged gamers to “liberate Palestine” through any means necessary. The game preferred users to choose armed resistance over diplomacy. A developer of the game said regarding the controversial tactic: “The language of weapons is the most effective with the Israelis.”

The Jewish Daily Forward, a self-hating Jewish Publication

We read that “the Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem.” Well I want to play quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.

I have as much right to this as they have to that, but they keep on wanting. There never was a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem or West Jerusalem.

There never was a Palestinian state anywhere.  Period.

End of story. If only that were so.

Who were their kings? Who were their prophets throughout the Holy Land for some 3,800 years? 

We can name thousands. It’s in the books. Can they name one?

But they keep on wanting. They want and they want and they want and the news media keeps wanting it for them.

Like crybabies who want the other child’s shiny toy, they want what is not theirs, a thing that never belonged to them. So they go crying to Mommy, in the form of the European Union, or they throw a tantrum for help from their uncles at the United Nations.

Always, though, they can count on the news media to share their unfounded grievances, entitlements and justifications.

This then becomes a grand scheme that I have termed the Media Jihad at length hereon these pages.

At the moment we are dealing specifically with a Media Jihad taking place at the Jewish Daily Forward, a leftist newspaper that has been post-Zionist from even before there were Zionists. 

The website Israelly cool alerts us to what the coverage was like at The Forward attending to a particularly awful terrorist attack in Israel.

A gorgeous 11-year-old became the latest victim of Islamist savagery. Her name is Ayala Shapira. She was set on fire in the most cowardly act imaginable.

Ayala was riding in the car with her father when the Arabs pounced on her with firebombs. 

Yes (as in Scriptures) they choose the defenseless.

As we prayed and continue to pray for Ayala’s speedy and complete recovery, The Forward ran with Reuters, so forget tears and compassion and an understanding heart. Forget a moment to pause and reflect. Instead they used the incident to rush their politics, always to the most extreme detriment of the Jewish State.

The Israellycool website provides a more rounded account of how The Forward ran the story courtesy of Reuters. 

But I choose to focus on two passages, this first:

 “The [Israeli] military did not say whether the victims of the attack were settlers, who are bitterly resented by many Palestinians.”

Really? 

So if the victims were settlers, implies The Forward, it’s okay. It’s open season. Jews are fair game. 

Moreover, this sort of gutter journalism does not trouble itself from separating fact from opinion, as in “bitterly resented by many Palestinians.”

Who asked for the editorial -- and can it be that the “bitter resentment” more accurately expresses the view of Reuters and The Forward?

Sounds like it when we read what comes next:

“Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.”

Notice each word dipped in poison – “occupied” and “captured” and the most reliable phrasing of all, “Palestinians WANT.”

Yes they want and if Israel is reluctant to give them what they want the news media is always ready to be of service.

I should have seen this coming. But I have not been following The Forward. I had to Google it up and then found something and someone I did know.

Jane Eisner is The Forward’s editor-in-chief. It all came back as I remembered her years at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Along with cartoonist Tony Auth, she managed to infuriate and turn away thousands of fair-minded readers with her toxic anti-Israel rants.

It is one thing to be left-wing. It is yet another thing to be anti-Zionist. But it is something else to be entirely ridiculous, point made by Eisner’s Forward.

Thanks. 

Now, once again, we know where to go if we want news that is twisted, slanted, biased and laughable.

By Jack Engelhard who writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the inside-the-newsroom tell-all thriller, The Bathsheba Deadline. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website:www.jackengelhard.com

Rabbonim of Shas Reject Aryeh Deri’s Resignation Request: DRAMA CONTINUES!

Deri's resignation letter

And so the drama continues, with the holy Sfardi Rabbis asking the jailbird Deri to stay on and continue leading the Shas party!

Insane!

The Moetzet Chachmei Hatorah of Shas has rejected a request by party chairman Aryeh Deri that he be permitted to resign as chairman of the party. 

The rejection was agreed at a late-night meeting, following the receipt of a letter from Deri in which he asked to be relieved of the leadership.

Deri’s request was the latest bombshell in a long-running feud between Deri and former party leader Eli Yishai. It followed the release on Sunday of recordings of statements by Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l.

Haaretz reports that in his letter, Deri wrote: “The pain that pierced my heart yesterday was worse than that when [Rav Yosef] died… I decided to come before [the council] to return the responsibility that you entrusted to me.”

Yishai left the party two weeks ago to found a new party, Ha’am Itanu.

Deri responded to the tapes on Sunday by saying that Yishai was trampling Rav Yosef’s honor “for his petty personal interests … he betrayed the trust the rav placed in him,” Haaretz reported.

It is speculated that Deri offered his resignation, hoping that they would reject his offer and that they will ask him to stay on, which he hopes will bolster his standing as a result.

Boo Hoo Sob Sob: Shas Leader Aryeh Deri Submits his Resignation

In response to the damaging video released by Channel 2 News on Sunday 6 Teves, Shas leader Aryeh Deri on Monday evening submitted his resignation.

The letter is viewed by many as a publicity stunt with Deri hoping to receive a unanimous vote of confidence from faction members and the Moetzas Gedolei Yisrael of the party to continue in his position.

IDF Finally Kill Palestinian Throwing Rocks At Cars

Israeli soldiers carry the body of  the Palestinian Stone thrower  Imam Jamil Dweikat to a Palestinian Ambulance near the city of Shchem

 Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian who had been hurling rocks at cars on a highway in Shomron  on Monday, a military spokeswoman said.

She said troops shouted at a group of Palestinians throwing stones on a main road near Palestinian villages and Jewish settlements to halt and then fired warning shots.

“Once they didn’t comply they (the soldiers) responded to the threat with direct fire, wounding one of the attackers,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the army had opened an investigation into the incident.

The Palestinian was treated at the scene but died of his wounds, the spokeswoman said. He was not immediately identified.

Violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has surged in the past few months. Attacks by Palestinians have claimed 11 Israeli lives, and 16 Palestinians, including several of the assailants, have been killed.