When you think you’re eating kosher, but you’re not

by Howard Feldman printed in the Times of Israel!

A few hours before the festival of Purim began, the Johannesburg Jewish world was turned upside down. An urgent notification from the Beth Din (South Africa’s singular kashrut body) announced that the oldest and probably largest kosher caterer, Stan and Pete, had had its certification withdrawn. Food already purchased could not be used but we didn’t need to “kasher” our homes.

I love good food. And I love gorgeous restaurants and beautiful wine and the ambiance and décor of establishments that make my heart smile. I have also been kosher all my life, which meant that on many occasions, I would need to fight an internal war in order to not transgress Jewish dietary laws.

Mostly I won.

But not easily.

Which makes the kashrut explosion in Johannesburg all the more difficult for me to swallow. Because it would seem while I have been struggling to stay on the right side of the kashrut divide, I have naively most likely been happily eating treif at smachot (catered events).

News about Stan and Pete spread through social media and many wondered out loud if this was not perhaps an inappropriate — and not funny — “Purim schpiel.” But it wasn’t. The owner of Stan and Pete confirmed on Facebook that the issue was real and that he was working with the Beth Din to resolve the issue. He thanked the community for the years of loyalty.

Which of course fueled speculation even more.

On Friday, the Beth Din issued a formal and detailed announcement that more than 20 non-kosher chickens were found in the kitchen of the kosher caterer. From the look of it, it certainly seems that there was a deliberate attempt to obfuscate, and to date no reasonable explanation has been provided by the caterer.

The fallout has been massive. So popular is Stan and Pete that it is unlikely that any Jew in Johannesburg has not eaten its food. And without knowing what else was compromised and how long this has been going on, it is unlikely that South African Jews will ever have any clarity as to how many times they failed to eat kosher.

Actress Amber Tamblyn says ‘Hasidic man’ tried to run her over in Williamsburg

Actress Amber Tamblyn claims a “Hasidic man” tried to run her and her baby over in Brooklyn.

The accusation, made in a tweet asking if there were any witnesses to Sunday’s incident, led to some angry responses against Tamblyn and condemnations of the Hasidic community.

“If anyone in Brooklyn near the intersection of Washington Ave and Atlantic Ave just saw a Hasidic man in a grey van try to hit a woman and her baby in a stroller as she crossed a crosswalk, honking and touching the stroller with the car’s bumper, please DM me. That woman was me,” Tamblyn, who was unhurt, tweeted Sunday morning.

Amber Tamblyn

✔@ambertamblyn

If anyone in Brooklyn near the intersection of Washington Ave and Atlantic Ave just saw a Hasidic man in a grey van try to hit a woman and her baby in a stroller as she crossed a crosswalk, honking and touching the stroller with the car’s bumper, please DM me. That woman was me.

2:24 PM - Mar 4, 2018

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“Thank you everyone for your kind words of support today. We are fine. But this is not the first time a man from the Hasidic community in NYC has attempted to harm me or other women I know. Any woman riding a bike through South Williamsburg can attest. I hope this guy is caught,” she also tweeted.

Tamblyn described herself as “shaken” but “okay” after the incident, in response to followers who asked how she was doing.

Amber Tamblyn

✔@ambertamblyn

Thank you everyone for your kind words of support today. We are fine. But this is not the first time a man from the Hasidic community in NYC has attempted to harm me or other women I know. Any woman riding a bike through South Williamsburg can attest. I hope this guy is caught.

7:52 PM - Mar 4, 2018

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Some Twitter followers accused her of being anti-Semitic and stereotyping Hasidic Jews.“What kind of anti-semitic BS is this?” tweeted Mordechai Lightstone, the social media manager for Chabad.org. “It’s awful for any pedestrian, let alone a mother, to be threatened by an aggressive driver … But bad drivers are bad drivers. I’m sorry but this is an incredibly troubling generalization.”

Others criticized the Hasidic community.

“They really don’t follow our laws or really care. It’s scary,” one of Tamblyn’s followers wrote.

Tamblyn responded to the criticism of her tweets as being anti-Semitic by pointing out that she is married to a Jewish man, comedian David Cross. Tamblyn starred in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and “127 Hours” and had a recurring role in the CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” Her father, dancer and actor Russ Tamblyn, starred in “West Side Story” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

Amber Tamblyn

✔@ambertamblyn

I’ll say this once. To anyone suggesting I’m anti-Semitic for identifying a man as Hasidic who hit my daughter’s stroller in a crosswalk with a car then rolled his window down, wagged his finger and told me “Watch where you’re going”: I will not be bullied or intimidated by you.

11:39 AM - Mar 5, 2018

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Fake Chareidie Walks With Lapid to Fool People in His Campaign for Prime Minister

In the above photo, we see Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid with a chareidi person who appears close to him. They were photographed at a Tel Aviv train station Sunday morning 17 Adar as they were promoting the party’s ‘share the burden’ campaign.

According to a Bichadrei Chareidim report, the ‘chareidi’ at Lapid’s side during the campaign against chareidim is not truly chareidi, but a boxer of Russian origin who lives in Netanya.

Some of the little nuances that tipped people off include he was wearing a black tee-shirt under his white shirt and his yarmulke appeared to be the type one might wear when in the process of becoming a baal teshuvah, as well as the clip, which is not worn by chareidim. Lapid wished to show he has a chareidi supporting him, at his side, but the façade was revealed.

The ‘chareidi’ male is Dave Mandelstam, and his Facebook page shows him numerous times at Lapid’s side, but in many of the photos, we see he is not religious, yet alone chareidi.

BINGO! Supermarket In Boro Park Now Selling Shtreimels For $499 Will this be the End of the $2,500.00 rip Off Shtreimals?

Some folks love Bingo, and some hate it.

Those who love it enjoy paying super low prices on their groceries, while those who hate it appear to be many local store-owners who have been severely impacted.

The massive 70,000 square foot store, located at 60th Street and 13th Avenue since November 2016, is huge and spacious, and targets the price conscious and the bulk buyers, especially the many large families in the area and beyond.

But soon after opening, Bingo began expanding into fields other then groceries. They sold Lulavim and Esrogim, they had a live Chicken center for Kapparos, they sold menorah accessories for Chanukah, and now – they are selling SHTREILMELS!

Not only have they branched into all these new fields, but when doing them, they have undercut any business that had been selling those items, effectively transforming the industries.

It appears that the Shtreimel operation is no different – as the price for a Shtreimel is $499. A cheap (“Raigen Shtreimel / Rain Shtreimel) costs around $1400, and a decent Shtreimel can cost anywhere from $2,500 to a whopping $5,500.

Effigy of Charedi IDF soldier hung in Jerusalem

מאה שערים תליית בובה בדמוי חייל חרדי

A Charedi IDF soldier was hung in Effigy on Friday in 

Jerusalem's Chaim  Ozer Street

Police called to the scene removed the effigy

The Charedi effigy was Friday's second: Earlier the same morning, Israel Police officers removed an effigy of an IDF soldier hung in the city's Meah Shearim neighborhood. That effigy was found to be coated in a flammable substance, and police expect that it would have been burned later on

Just prior to the second incident MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said, "Again in Jerusalem's Meah Shearim neighborhood, a doll dressed as an IDF soldier was hung as if it were the wicked Haman

"The Israeli government cannot keep quiet in the face of the draft evasions and the incitement against IDF soldiers. The Charedi leadership must condemn these trends publicly

Burning Israeli Flag in Brooklyn on Purim

שריפת דגל המדינה בפורים

The Mamzer talking on the video is shouting"look how one part of Israel is getting destroyed"

Then the Satmar filth shouts "wow, watch how 

"the entire State is getting burned and destroyed

Chag Purim Samaich

Amshinover Ruled that people can go to Auerbach's Funeral But shouldn't stay for the Eulogies

Amshinover Rebbe

The Amshinover Rebbe Shlitah paskened to those who asked if they could attend R' Auerbach's funeral, that they could go to the funeral of R' Auerbach but that they must  leave before the eulogies.  

Presumably because the attendees shouldn't contaminate their holy ears with blatant lies and exaggerated praise ....of someone he couldn't respect!

The Amshinover and Rav Shmuel were chavrusies many years ago.

Chareidim Support Poland in their anti-Holocaust Fight!

Poland recently introduced a bill that prohibits any citizen from saying that Poland was complicit in the murder of Polish Jews during the Holocaust!

They want to write out Polish atrocities against the Jews by their own citizens from their history books!

Every single Jew knows that the Poles were worse than the Nazis themselves, and the Nazis built most of the death camps in Poland, knowing that the Poles wouldn't object!

Thousands of books have been written by Holocaust Scholars including Lucy Davidowitz, confirming what we all know..

So here come a bunch of demented Chareidie scum, to the Polish Consulate in Israel, to support the murderers....

How low have we sunk ...... How low????

Frum Lawyer Kami Barker Charges Blue Cross-Blue Shield with 1 Billion Dollar Fraud

Kami Barker

Socked with more than a quarter-million dollars in medical bills despite having full health coverage, a city lawyer decided to take action — and discovered that two of New York’s biggest insurance providers may have scammed roughly $1 billion out of taxpayers, a newly unsealed lawsuit charges.

Kami Barker brought the whistleblower case against Empire Blue Cross-Blue Shield and its partner Emblem Health under the state’s False Claims Act, which provides incentives to citizens who expose fraud — offering up to 30 percent of any payout.

The 37-year-old Emory Law grad says she was shocked when the insurers stuck her with a roughly $260,000 bill for medical expenses tied to four hospitalizations between February 2012 and November 2013.

Barker, then an attorney for the city Law Department, visited in-network hospitals while battling trigeminal neuralgia, a chronic pain condition that led to recurring septic infections. The illness was unrelated to her disability. She’s been in a wheelchair since age 11.

When Empire — which covers 600,000 city employees, retirees and their families — left her holding the bag for such a huge cut of the total $1.26 million in care, she became suspicious.

“So my room and board was paid for but my doctors were not, my surgical procedures were not, and my medicine was not,” Barker told The Post on Tuesday. “That’s how I ended up getting footed with all these bills.”

After some digging with the help of attorney Steve Cohen she discovered the insurer “deliberately exaggerated the benefits available under the plan, while understating the uncovered costs that must be paid by members,” her suit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan says.

For example, a summary of Barker’s plan said that if she chose in-network hospitals she “will save money.”

What the material didn’t disclose was that many of the doctors working within those hospitals were out-of-network.

Of Barker’s total $1.26 million in claims, Empire and Emblem only paid the hospitals and doctors a combined $625,000.