“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” Rav Kook z"l

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

HaRav Yaakov Busel Rosh Yeshiva of Edison Passes Away

 


We regret to inform you of the Petira of Hagaon HaRav Yaakov Busel ZATZAL, the longtime Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef of Edison NJ.

Rav Busel was the son of an Alter Mirrer, and was born in Shanghai as the Mirrer Yeshiva was fleeing the Nazis. After his family settled in East New York, Brooklyn, the Rosh Yeshiva learned in Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway as a young Bochur, and then went to learn in Lakewood’s BMG until he became the Rosh Yeshiva of Edison for around 40 years.

His first wife Rebbitzen Rasia A”H (who was Niftar in 1998), was a daughter of the Telsher Rosh Yeshiva, Hagaon HaRav Boruch Sorotzkin ZATZAL.

The Rosh Yeshiva leaves behind a wife (Rebbitzen Esther) and large Mishpacha of Talmidei Chachomim and incredible Marbitzei Torah – all spread out in many different Mosdos Hatorah in America.

The Rosh Yeshiva was battling an illness for the past year, and contracted COVID-19 just before Rosh Hashanah. Tefilos were recited in Batei Midrashim around the world, and a name was added as a Zecus. Unfortunately, he was Niftar on Tuesday morning.

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Remembering Reb Shlomo Carlebach on His 26th Yurzeit

 



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Trump Parade in DIN's Hometown of Bet Shemesh

 

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Dog Walks 62 miles Back Home Alone

 

A faithful family dog in China has gone on a tireless quest to try find her home after her owners left the pet with a friend to be looked after temporarily.

The one-year-old golden retriever, named Ping An or 'safe and sound', was markedly thin and injured with bleeding paws after walking over 62 miles alone for 14 days.

The limping canine was spotted outside an office building by a group of workers who rescued the animal and tracked down her owners, a state-owned newspaper reported.

The family living in eastern China's Qidong city asked a friend to look after their golden retriever after being occupied with renovating their home in June, according to Jianghai Evening News.

They then drove over two hours to drop off Ping An at the friend's house in Nantong which was over 100 kilometres (62 miles) away.

But nearly four months later, the family was devastated to find out that their beloved pet had run away from their friend's house and gone missing.

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Thug sucker-punches boy, 12, sitting on a curb and knocks him unconscious on East 13th Street in Brooklyn

 

A 12-year-old boy who could be seen simply sitting on a curb in Brooklyn as he waited for a friend was sucker-punched in a brutal and random assault that was all caught on surveillance camera. 

The disturbing incident happened in Coney Island on October 14 at around 3pm.

The youngster was waiting for a friend when out of nowhere a man walks up to him and unleashed his fist. 

The man calmly walked up to the boy before tapping him on the shoulder and punching him squarely in the face. 

The force of the punch caused the boy to immediately lose consciousness. 

He ended up suffering fractures to bones in his face along with significant bleeding and bruising. 

Paramedics were soon on the scene and took the victim to Coney Island hospital in stable condition for treatment. 

Meanwhile, the man calmly walked away and proceeded to cross the road at the corner of East 13th Street and Avenue T.

The NYPD are hoping that the newly-released footage will lead to the arrest of the person responsible.   

When the attack took place in the middle of the afternoon there were several cars in the vicinity passing by close to where the assault occurred so it is hoped that someone might have seen something.  

The individual being sought over incident is described as a male, 20-30 years in age.

Police say the boy is expected to recover. 

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

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Psychiatrist featured on CNN Praises Hitler in Tweet Attacking Trump

 

Outspoken psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee raised eyebrows on Monday when she criticized President Trump by complimenting Adolf Hitler in a series of Twitter posts. 

 Lee, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine’s Law and Psychiatry Division, has previously diagnosed Trump with various psychological ailments from afar but outdid herself with a bizarre attempt at a history lesson in an effort to compare the incumbent Republican to the ruthless Nazi dictator. 

 "Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler," Lee began. "At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more of himself to gain the respect of his followers. Even with the same pathology, there are varying degrees of competence." 

 Lee, who has appeared on CNN and MSNBC, later deleted the tweet amid backlash but stopped short of offering an apology. 

 "Okay, I have taken it down, since it has upset so many people and was not provoking thought but the opposite," she wrote. "Of note, my statement was about how little Donald Trump believes he needs to do to retain his followership, NOT to minimize Adolf Hitler’s atrocities. "If we cannot look at parallels in history and learn from them, we are truly poised to repeat it," 
Lee went on. "I say so in heartbreak for the 11+ million lives lost, not in their minimization (currently, we are looking at 7 billion at risk, without exaggeration if we soberly thought of it)." She later clarified, "The main point, in case unclear: someone who has dangerous mental pathology and is more competent, even if not fully competent, CAN commit greater evil. I would have said from this that Hitler is WORSE, not better, as some seem to have oddly concluded." 

Last year, Lee participated in a CNN panel that made headlines when her fellow psychiatrist, Dr. Allen Frances, claimed that Trump was responsible for more deaths than Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, without receiving any pushback from "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter. 
 Stelter later blamed technical difficulties for not hearing Frances' remarks in full after the segment was criticized online.
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This May Be Very Well Be Your New President

 

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The "Shvartzah" Cantor from 100 years ago rediscovered thanks to rare recording


 More Recordings after the break .......

The Moorish Zionist Temple, Harlem, NY, 1929 (James Van Der Zee/The Folklore Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection)


Early 1920s newspaper ads for the blockbuster New York Yiddish stage shows Dos Khupe Kleyd (The Wedding Dress) and Yente Telebende (Loquacious Battle‐Ax), featured a Black artist among the spotlighted performers. This was Thomas LaRue, a Yiddish-speaking singer widely known in the interwar period as der schvartzer khazan (The Black Cantor).

Although long-forgotten now, LaRue (who sometimes used the surname Jones) was among the favorites of Yiddish theater and cantorial music. Reportedly raised in Newark, New Jersey, by a single mother who was drawn to Judaism, he even drew interest from beyond the US.

LaRue was booked for more than one European tour in the 1930s, but audiences and critics in Jewish communities in Poland and Germany were somewhat more skeptical than the Americans. Although many were impressed with The Black Cantor — who sometimes added the Yiddish first name Toyve to his billing — others doubted his Jewish bona fides. One Warsaw newspaper published a cartoon of a Black man dressed as a cantor with an upside down prayer book on the podium in front of him, insinuating that LaRue was a scam.

But LaRue was the real thing, according to musicologist Henry Sapoznik, who recently spoke with The Times of Israel about the little-known history of Black cantors. Sapoznik related that LaRue was hardly the only Black cantor or Yiddish theater performers of that era. There were at least a dozen, including one woman.

The proof of LaRue’s cantorial and Yiddish singing chops rests with what can be heard on a recently rediscovered 78 RPM record that he made in 1923. So far, it is the only known early 20th century recording of an African-American singing cantorial music.

An avid discographer, Sapoznik had been searching for this record for 45 years, and finally located it this past July. Ironically, Sapoznik recovered the disc at the sound archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, which he himself founded and directed from 1982 to 1995.

“From time to time I would put out calls to my network asking if anyone had seen the record, but I would never get any answers. At a certain point I thought, ‘This is crazy. I’m not going to ever find it,'” an amazed Sapoznik told The Times of Israel in a video interview from his home in New York.

Sapoznik’s prolonged quest for this particular recording led to the exciting discovery of other forgotten Black cantors who were on the lecture-concert circuit in the Jewish world and were more or less contemporaries of LaRue.

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Yisroel Stul Gerer "terrorist" Arrested in Ashdod

 

 

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If Joe Biden is Dragged over the Finish Line, Democrats will Quickly Drop Him or Impeach Him

 There’s an extremely mean and (consequently) extremely funny video, “Weekend at Biden’s,” in which the propped-up, lifeless form of Joe Biden gets dragged out of his basement and pulled from event to event by two young woke activists.

“How long do we have to keep this up?” one asks the other, exhausted. “November 3,” says the other.

Relax, young woke-tivists: You carried Joe to Nov. 3, and according to most pollsters, a thundering victory awaits you. If Biden concludes his inaugural address with the memorable words, “Now can I go back to my basement and watch ‘Matlock’?” everyone around him will be happy to oblige.

Biden has been envisioning this day since he was a boy, but no one is under any illusions that this election boils down to much more than the question of which candidate is Donald Trump and which one is not. Biden is not “Hope and Change II: Electric Boogaloo,” he’s simply Generic Democrat. Generic Democrat has been beating Trump in the polls for nearly two years, and even this Geriatric Generic Democrat may therefore prevail.

For the media establishment that spent the last year and a half resolutely ignoring Biden’s long history of lying, bad judgment and allowing close relatives to sell his name to questionable foreign entities, not to mention his creeptastic behavior around women and little girls, President Biden presents a couple of problems.

One: Biden was a senator starting when Nixon was still president and is well-liked by that institution. It’s said that Biden is even pals with Mitch McConnell, and though the press can forgive Uncle Joe’s history of being palsy-walsy with fellow Democrat and onetime Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan Robert Byrd, it can’t abide the idea of Biden working with a guy who shepherded Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court.

The minute Biden starts to signal that he has any interest whatsoever in finding common ground with Senate Republicans (especially if the GOP should be reduced to even a large minority of, say, 49 seats), the media will stop acting like his white-glove concierge service and more like spoiled Oberlin students presenting lists of demands to the befuddled old president.

Two: No matter what Biden does to steer the country to the left, the media will be daydreaming about how Kamala Harris would lean so much harder on the tiller. Suddenly, Biden’s brain freezes and mangled sentences will no longer be innocent “gaffes” but signs of incipient dementia. Doesn’t the 25th Amendment call for the president’s removal if he can’t cut it anymore? Maybe Biden, having achieved his life’s goal, should quickly step down for everyone’s sake, the media will suggest. Maybe The Washington Post will even decide the Biden family buckraking is actually worth looking into — and that it’s impeachable.

Biden may be elected president Tuesday, but if so it won’t be long before the self-described “transition candidate” gets told he needs to transition his way to a nice, comfy facility in Boca Raton.

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