13 Jews and 5 Goats Arrested For Trying To Bring Korban Pesach

 

Thirteen Jews, activists of the "Returning to the Temple Mount" movement who tried to offer a Passover sacrifice in what they call the "Passover Sacrifice Operation", were arrested by the police in Jerusalem.

Five goats were seized by the police and confiscated, and two activists received an administrative removal order signed by Homefront Command Major Rafi Milo.

All the detainees were released under restrictive conditions. The district court canceled the restrictions imposed earlier this week on Raphael Morris, the chairman of the movement.

The movement offered this statement: "A big thank you to all the dedicated activists who came to Jerusalem today intending to offer the Passover sacrifice, especially to the Honenu organization and attorney Nati Rom for the legal assistance provided to all the detainees."

Yesterday, against the background of reports and intentions to offer a Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount, Rabbi of the Western Wall Shmuel Rabinovitch prohibited the bringing of animals to the Mughrabi Gate. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation prevented the entry of animals into the area in accordance with regulations governing the holy places.

It was reported that "the Western Wall Heritage Foundation operates according to the instructions of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, which for generations has opposed any act of this kind, and under the authority of the Western Wall Rabbi, has been preventing such actions for years, and will continue to do so this year as well."

On Monday, the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, sharply criticized those who went up to the Temple Mount and those who call to go up there. "According to the Halacha, there is a strict and absolute prohibition to go up to the Temple Mount. The dangerous calls to go up to the Temple Mount on the eve of Passover, in particular, and in general, are irresponsible and contrary to Halacha. No man or woman should trample the Halacha by going up to the Mount," said Rabbi Yosef.

The rabbi also said: "The seal with a prayer for a complete redemption and hope that our prayer will be accepted and we will be healed and we will be able to eat there from the sacrifices and from the Passovers, happy in the building of your city and happy in your work.

Chag Samaiach

 

18 Year Old Arrested in Miriam Sussman Death in Monsey Hit & Run ...Released

 

An 18-year-old Hudson Valley resident has been charged with leaving the scene of a crash last year that left another woman dead.

The Rockland County teen, from Monsey, was charged on Monday, April 3, said Lt. Michael Gannon, with the Ramapo Police.

Her name was not released due to her age at the time of the incident, making her eligible for youthful offender status, Gannon said.

The crash took place in Rockland County around 12:45 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 28, on West Carlton Road in Ramapo, Gannon said.

Gannon said officers responded to the area after 52-year-old Miriam Sussman of Monsey was found dead in a wooded area adjacent to the roadway.

Sussman had been reported missing on Monday, Nov. 29, causing police to search for Sussman, reported ABC 7.

An investigation found the woman was struck and killed by a vehicle. The vehicle left the scene, Gannon said.

Following her arrest, the teen was arraigned and released without bail. 

For Chareidim it's ok to work Side by Side With the Ladies in a Matza Bakery

Malka Leifer Reportedly Molested Her Students In Bnei Brak Before She Went to Australia and then again after she Fled Back to Israel

by Ittay Flescher

A prayer of thanks – that was my first reaction to the guilty verdict of Malka Leifer. It’s a sex-abuse case I've followed for over 13 years years as a former teacher at Melbourne's Adass Israel School, then as a member of the city's Jewish community and a friend of the victims, and later as a journalist in Israel with Plus61J Media.

 I still remember the shock when journalists Ashley Browne and Naomi Levin broke the story in 2008, writing in The Australian Jewish News that Leifer had fled to Israel in the middle of the night with the help of the school's leaders. 

I remember how many people criticized the brave victims who came forward and the journalists who told the women's stories; they were charged with sinat hinam and lashon hara – baseless hatred and slander.

 I remember the civil court case in 2015 where the Supreme Court of the state of Victoria ordered the school to pay more than 1.1 million Australian dollars ($740,000), with Leifer having to pay AU$150,000, one of the largest sex abuse payouts in Australian history.

 I remember the concerns that many people raised – that talking about this story would stoke antisemitism and harm the Jewish community's reputation, or damage Australia-Israel ties.

 In 2018, as I entered the courtroom on Jerusalem's Saladin Street for the first hearing in the Leifer case that I attended, I was struck by the fact that the only ultra-Orthodox Jews there were family and supporters of Leifer's campaign to avoid justice in Australia. Some were holding mezuzahs or reciting Psalms, while others were holding texts with writings from the kabbala. 

Leifer's sister would often hold an image of Reb Shaya'la of Kerestir up toward the judge, as this Hungarian rabbi who died a century ago was believed to possess the power to heal the sick and comfort the afflicted.

Heshy Goldstein Host of "Failed Pesach" Struggles to Answer to What Happened in an Interview with Zev Brenner

 

Zev Brenner 

It is yet another Pesach Program fiasco, that could be called, “The Pesach Program that Wasn’t.”   This time, it was the Pesach program scheduled to take place at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City.  It didn’t happen.  

Here is the transcript from the Zev Brenner show.

Zev Brenner: 

I’m Zev Brenner. Heshy Goldstein joined us. I think it’s been a long time since he’s been on the program. He runs Aryeh Hospitality. They’ve been running weekends throughout the year and they were scheduled to run a Pesach program in Atlantic City, the Claridge Hotel for just a couple days ago. He sent out an email directly saying that the program’s been canceled due to fraud and he’s here to explain exactly what’s going on. Thank you for joining us, Heshy. I thank you Doni Schwartz of Passover Listings. To anything Pesach, you can check out Passover Listing for helping to putting together the segment. So, thank you for joining us.

Heshy Goldstein:

Hello. Reb Zev, how are you?

Zev Brenner:

Good, thank G-d. So, you’ve been running Pesach program running proper throughout the year. You were going to be running a big Pesach program for Atlantic City. So, what happened a couple days ago?

What was the biggest mistake a company has ever made?

 

United Airlines not paying $1200 to Dave Carroll might be their worst decision ever.

After boarding a United Airlines flight, musician Dave Carroll got himself seated. He heard another passenger exclaiming that the baggage handlers were literally throwing the guitars.

After arriving at his destination, he opened the case to inspect his $3500 guitar and found broken and ruined which was beyond repairs.

Dave went through hell to try and get United to pay for their sins. After nine months of struggle he agreed to settle for $1200 flight voucher but later was informed by the airline that he wouldn't get it as he missed his 24 hours of reporting window at the time of his initial complaint.

However, this wasn't the case. He informed several airline executives when he was at the airport but everyone just ignored him.

He finally decided to make a music video about his horrible experience with United and called it 'United Breaks Guitars'.

The music video went viral and the airline gave his money but the damage to their reputation was already done.

And if you think that United only lost their reputation and not any big money than hear me out. 

The song gathered enough bad PR for the company that their stock was reduced by 10% costing the shareholders $180 million and this happened only within four days after the song was launched. 

With that money United could have bought Dave more than 51000 guitars. 

Trump Is Actually The Second GOP Presidential Candidate Indicted By Local Democrats

 

The indictment of Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Thursday sent shockwaves around the country. 

Trump’s defenders — and even some legal experts — haven’t been shy about describing the prosecution of Trump as politically motivated. While the specific indictment has yet to be revealed, Bragg appears likely to charge Trump with felony “falsifying of business records” pertaining to a Federal Election Commission violation relating to buying the silence of pornographer Stormy Daniels, who alleged the two had an affair.

 Bragg is further employing a dubious and novel legal theory to charge Trump because the statute of limitations on this crime has expired.

Daniels would later publicly deny she had an affair with Trump and that she had been paid hush money to stop talking about it. Her personal lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who was a driving force in bringing the allegations against Trump, would later end up in prison for tax fraud and stealing from clients, including Daniels. 

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Five Facts for its 80th anniversary

 

April 19 is the 80th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Here are five stunning facts about the revolt that most histories of the Holocaust hardly ever include.

1. Mordechai Anielewicz was not the sole leader of the ghetto fighters.

After the naming of the Yad Mordechai kibbutz, with its physically stunning Memorial to Mordechai Anielewicz, and the heroic story of its defenders in the 1948 War of Independence battle fought there, the name Anielewicz became forever cemented in the public’s mind as the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. However, Anielewicz led only one of the two main armed resistance organizations in the ghetto. Anielewicz led the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization). The other organization was the ZZW (Jewish Military Union), and its frontline commander was Paweł Frenkel (also spelled Frenkiel). The ZZW’s chairman was psychiatrist and neurologist Dr. David Wdowinski, who survived the war and testified against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Two years later, he published a short, personal account about the uprising called And We Are Not Saved (1963). Both the ZOB and ZZW are best described as Zionist organizations, and the majority of their leaderships and fighters came from Zionist youth movements.

2. The fighters only had bricks, Molotov cocktails and a few pistols with which to launch their revolt. On Jan. 18, 1943, the first armed Jewish resistance action in the ghetto by an organized force occurred. It is believed that this first round of fighting was conducted by the young Zionists with pistols and improvised explosive devices such as homemade grenades. Many reports claim that for the first-time resistance fighters were able to take rifles from the Nazis they killed. Whether or not that is true, what is known is that the ZZW was able to obtain machine guns and other rifles from both criminal sources and from contacts in the Polish resistance Home Army (the AK).
3. Some Jewish fighters in the ghetto falsely considered other Jewish fighters to be fascists.The ZOB was organized and led by members of leftist Zionist youth organizations and connected to the kibbutz movements. Many of these Zionists looked to David Ben-Gurion as the Zionist movement’s leader and considered their right-leaning political opposition, led later by Menachem Begin and inspired by the Betar organization’s founder Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), to be fascists. This false accusation of fascism is practically 100 years old now and was able to be weaponized for political purposes due to several factors, among them Betar’s practice of paramilitary training, as well as military dress and other militaristic trappings. What is more, Jabotinsky’s followers honored him with admiration and esteem unseen on the Zionist left. Finally, Jabotinsky’s embrace of capitalism gave the Jewish left another reason to oppose him and his organizations.
4. 4. The uprising never really ended.

   While many accounts of the revolt in the ghetto report that the uprising ended with the destruction of the main ZOB command bunker at Mila 18 on May 8, 1943, the truth is that fighters in the ghetto continued to strike at Nazis well into 1944. That address was used as the title of the novel by Leon Uris, which may be entertaining but strayed far from the true narrative. In 1979, Dan Kurzman’s popular book The Bravest Battle: The 28 Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was published, and it solidified in the minds of many that the uprising lasted less than a month in total. Ghetto fighters who hid in other bunkers beneath the rubble carried out sporadic armed attacks on Nazis until the Warsaw Uprising began in August 1944. Hundreds of Nazis were killed by ghetto fighters in all.

   5. The two major Jewish resistance groups only agreed on a strategy right before the Nazi attack.

   It was just hours before the Passover seder, and both the ZZW and the ZOB knew that it was urgent that they agreed to coordinate their efforts. Hitler’s birthday was April 20, and a final deportation action was scheduled to be completed before that date.

   A more balanced look at the history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising can be found in the 2011 book Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto by Moshe Arens, a former Israeli defense minister who was a senior Betar leader in the United States in his younger years. Both that and the Wdowinski volume will leave you inspired and awed by the courage of the young Zionists who chose to fight the Nazis against all odds.

Moshe Phillips

http://phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com

Moshe Phillips (moshephillips@gmail.com) is a commentator on Jewish affairs and was first published in The Jewish Press in 2009. He was a U.S. delegate to the 38th World Zionist Congress in 2020 and a board member of the American Zionist Movement from 2018 until 2021. The views expressed are his own.

Major Pesach Program Goes Belly Up right Before Pesach but it Was "Non-Gebroktz"& Offered Hand "Shmurah Matzos"

 

A Pesach getaway program scheduled to take place at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, has dissolved into disaster due to what the director of the Pesach program described as a “huge financial scam.”

People who signed up for the Pesach program, which had been slated to run from April 4-14 and featured a full roster of singers and personalities, were notified Wednesday of an “unfortunate and unprecedented situation.”

“While the program was moving along nicely, while our dedicated team was working tirelessly to make it a true success, we were hit with a huge financial scam, and we are not sure at this point if we can continue,” a message from Aryeh Hospitality said.

“We are trying to find an alternative option,” the message continued. “Should we be successful at it, we will notify you immediately.”

It wasn’t clear what the scam alluded to was, though unconfirmed rumors have been spreading like wildfire across social media.