"Stone them to Death" says R' Chaim Kanievsky about those who vote for the opposition in elections

At the meeting, Rav Shlomo Kanievsky, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Kiryas Melech, spoke on behalf of his father,

Maran Rav Chaim [leading haredi Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky], and said,

 “B’reshus Moronon Verabonon [with the permission of the rabbis], I am not worthy to stand before the great roshei yeshivos [yeshiva deans], but a shliach [messenger] must carry out his mission. These remarks will be a bit harsh, but I will share what I heard.

“I asked [my father] what I should say here. My father told me: 

‘Tell them that it is written in the Gemara [Talmud] that those who demean the greatest leaders of the generation have no portion in Olam haba [the world to come; the afterlife].’”

Rav Shlomo added that his father, with uncharacteristic sharpness, said, “Hamevazeh gedolei hador chayov sekilah - Those who denigrate the gedolei hador [leading rabbis of the generation] are deserving of stoning.”

When Rav Shlomo asked his father about the fact that this is not written explicitly anywhere in Chazal [rabbinic sources], 

Rav Chaim replied that “we are talking about chillul Sheim Shomayim [desecration of the name of heaven, i.e., desecrating God's name] and this is worse than one who desecrates the Shabbos [Sabbath; willfully and knowingly desecrating Sabbath law is punished with stoning under halakha, Jewish law – although that punishment cannot be carried out without the Jerusalem Temple rebuilt, the entire Jewish court system functioning, and several other requirements met, which is why it hasn't been done in centuries], even though it is not written explicitly.”

“When I asked him,” added Rav Shlomo, “that they will say that they have different gedolim [great rabbis {they follow}], he said to me, ‘You can say that I saw how the Chazon Ish [Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, a great haredi rabbinic leader who passed away in 1953; Karelitz was the elder Kanievsky's father-in-law] accompanied him to the door. There is no more to say and it is not respectful to say more.” [This appears to refer to Karelitz walking the much younger Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman to the door of Karelitz's house after speaking with him inside for some time. This was done by Karelitz as a show of respect for Shteinman, who is now, 60 or more years later, the supreme non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi rabbinic leader.]

Ad kan devorov hakedoshim. [Until here are the words of the holy ones.]

This is essentially saying that any Ashkenazi haredi who votes for Ashkenazi haredi rebel leader Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach's candidates is deserves to be stoned to death.

Epstein tortured me, says Abraham Rubin

Abraham Rubin, left, says Rabbi Mendel Epstein, right, and another rabbi beat him and stun-gunned his genitals.

The rabbis accused of pocketing piles of cash to kidnap and torture Orthodox husbands on behalf of divorce-seeking wives targeted a Brooklyn man in 1996, he claimed in a lawsuit.

Abraham Rubin said that Rabbi Mendel Epstein and Rabbi Martin Wolmark had him forced him into a van outside his synagogue before beating him and stun-gunning his genitals.

He was left bloody and half-naked on the side of the road — all to force him to agree to a religious divorce, or “get,” from his wife, he claimed in the suit.

Rubin’s 1997 lawsuit was dropped by both parties in 2000, and a Brooklyn DA probe was halted because “the victim could not identify any of his assailants,” said a spokeswoman for DA Charles Hynes.

“We were so upset that we couldn’t prosecute,” said one law enforcement source. “They did it in a place that was very dark and they were all wearing masks,” the source said.

“We wanted Epstein, but we just couldn’t prove it,” the source said. “It was all in a world we couldn’t get deep inside.”

Rubin’s allegations put Epstein and Wolmark on investigators’ radar, and on Friday he applauded the arrests.

“We are very, very grateful to the Creator that finally this happened,” Rubin said in a statement given to The Post.

“These imposters, these so-called rabbis, are a disgrace to our community,” Rubin said. “The masks have finally been taken off their faces.”

The two rabbis remain locked up in New Jersey after a federal sting caught them agreeing to take $50,000 from an agent posing as a “get”-seeking Orthodox wife.

In exchange, the rabbis promised to lure the agent’s “husband” into a warehouse and torture him into agreeing to the split, the feds said.

“We take an electric cattle prod… You put it in certain parts of his body,” Epstein was secretly recorded promising, the feds’ complaint alleged.

Borough Park-based social worker Elya Amsel, 60 — who still remembers visiting the battered Rubin at Maimonedes Hospital — said the arrests, “will raise the eyebrows of the whole gentile world.

“The Italians are nothing compared to what went on here with the Jews.”

Rabbi Wolmark of Shaarei Torah in FBI Custody, Rabbi Mendel Epstein, rabbi Yaakov Goldstein in custody,

Two rabbis and two other men allegedly conspired to kidnap and use cattle prods, among other methods, to force Orthodox Jewish men into divorcing their wives, authorities said.

Rabbis Mendel Epstein and Martin Wolmark as well as Ariel Potash and a fourth individual known as Rabbi Yaakov Goldstein were arrested after the FBI raided several locations overnight, including Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in Suffern, a home in Brooklyn and at least one other location in New Jersey.
 

Potash and Yaakov are accused of being “tough guys” who kidnapped and beat up the recalcitrant husbands of distraught wives seeking a divorce, authorities said.
 

Epstein and Wolmark allegedly charged the wives and their families thousands of dollars to obtain the religious divorce and arranged the beatings, according to the criminal complaint.

According to Jewish law, in order to get a religious divorce a husband must provide his wife with a document known as a “get,” the complaint said.

Only a husband can initiate divorce by issuing the “get,” but a wife has the right to sue for divorce in rabbinical court, court papers said.
 

According to the criminal complaint, an undercover FBI agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish wife who was seeking a divorce from her unwilling husband. A second undercover agent posed as her brother.
 

In August, the undercover agents called Wolmark saying they were “desperate for a religious divorce and were willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain a divorce,” the complaint said.
 

“There are a couple of ways to do that,” Wolmark allegedly said in a recorded phone conversation. “You have to, we have to, convene a special beth din and see if there are grounds to, to, to coerce him on the ‘get.’”
 

Wolmark said the process “could be very costly” and requires “special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through the end,” the complaint said.
 

“In other words, you need to get him to New York where someone either can harass him or nail him. Plain and simple,” he said, according to the complaint.
 

Wolmark then linked up the undercovers with Epstein, who met him at his house in New Jersey about a week later — a meeting that was recorded, the papers said.

During the meeting, Epstein talked about “kidnapping, beating and torturing husbands in order to force a divorce,” court papers said.

“Basically what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the ‘get,’”

 

He said they would use “tough guys” who utilize “electric cattle prods, karate, handcuffs and place plastic bags over the heads of husbands,” the complaint said.
 

According to the complaint, Epstein said if a cattle prod “can get a bull that weighs five tons to move, you put in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know.”

Epstein said he commits a kidnapping every year to year and half, authorities said.
 

He said it would cost $10,000 to pay for the rabbis on the rabbinical court to approve the kidnapping and an additional $50,000 to $60,000 to pay for the “tough guys,” authorities said.
 

Epstein told the undercovers that Wolmark officiates during the kidnapping and that his son was one of the so-called “tough guys” who “uses his karate skills” on the victims, court papers said.
 

They allegedly arranged to meet in Rockland County in October to begin the process of authorizing the use of violence to obtain a forced “get.”
 

In subsequent phone conversations, the undercover agent posing as the brother suggested he could lure the female undercover’s husband to New Jersey, the complaint said.
 

Epstein eventually proposed that the husband be brought to a warehouse in Middlesex County, where Yaakov and Epstein were later seen by FBI surveillance teams scoping out the location, prosecutors said.
 

On Oct. 2, the undercover female agent met with Wolmark, Epstein, Potash and Yaakov to get approval for the use of force, authorities said.
 

Potash said that he “does whatever the rabbis tell him” while Yaakov wrote everything down, court papers said.
 

After the meeting, Epstein confirmed the plan and authorized the use of force to obtain the “get” and $20,000 was wire transferred by one of the undercover agents to Epstein, authorities said.
 

Law enforcement sources said Epstein’s scheme has been going on for as long as 20 years, WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman reported.
 

Ten more people have also been taken into custody in connection with this case

meeting, Epstein talked about “kidnapping, beating and torturing husbands in order to force a divorce,” court papers said.

“Basically what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the ‘get,’” Epstein allegedly said

FBI raids Monsey yeshiva, Shaarei Torah, in divorce-gang probe, Rabbi Mendel Epstein arrested.

Rabbi Mendel Epstein (before his arrest)

The FBI descended late Wednesday on Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in connection with an investigation into a gang that pressured men into giving their wives religious divorces, a law enforcement source told The Journal News.

The FBI told Ramapo police to follow them to the yeshiva on Carlton Road about 9 p.m. Authorities remained at the scene until early Thursday morning, when several agents were seen leaving the building, loading equipment into several unmarked cars with New Jersey license plates.

The source said arrests were made in Rockland as well as New Jersey.

An FBI spokesman in the New York City office said actions in connection to the investigation were also ongoing in Brooklyn.

The spokesman would only say that searches were being conducted in connection with an “ongoing investigation.” He could not confirm whether arrests had been made and referred all calls to the agency’s Newark, N.J. office. Officials there could not be reached for comment.

Agents could be seen inside the school's lobby area and at various points outside the building. Students in the yeshiva’s parking lot said the school is for high school children. Several said they were inside when the raid began, but were forced to remain outside during the bulk of the law enforcement action.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe on Wednesday said he was aware of the raid, but referred all questions to the FBI. Ramapo police also would not field 
questions concerning the matter.

It was reported that Rabbi Mendel Epstein of Brooklyn was arrested in Flatbush.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's Funeral Largest In Israel’s History

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (4th R) and President Shimon Peres (2nd R) stand near the body of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-religious Shas political party, before his funeral in Jerusalem 

The capital came to a veritable standstill Monday evening as at least 800,000 men, women and children from across the nation descended upon Jerusalem to mourn the death earlier in the day of Shas spiritual leader, and former chief rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, in the largest funeral in the nation’s history.

Police helicopters hovered above the city and Light Rail trains reached maximum capacity due to multiple road closings, as hundreds of thousands rushed to attend the 6 pm funeral at the Sanhedria Cemetery.

According to Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, hundreds of officers were deployed throughout the city to ensure order.

Meanwhile, dozens of chartered buses that were able to navigate the numerous street closings – as well as sections of Highway 1 – were parked, some haphazardly, around Ammunition Hill’s sidewalks and parking lots.

Teenager Alon Meiri traveled on one of the buses from Netanya with 50 other men to attend the funeral.

“He’s my rabbi, my teacher,” said Meiri of Yosef, as dozens of men prayed next to his bus in a parking lot. “He knew the Halacha better than anyone and knew things on a scale that no one else does. If you asked him a question he would answer immediately and give you the sources.”

Meiri added that he believes Yosef is irreplaceable.

“It will be impossible to fill his shoes,” he said. “This is a huge loss for us.”

Ron Rafaeli, of Ashdod, also expressed sorrow as he and thousands of others hurriedly walked to the site of the funeral.

“Our greatest rabbi has left us,” he said.

Asked what made Yosef such an exceptional leader, Rafaeli cited Yosef’s unusual connection with the common man.

“He was great because he spoke in the peoples’ language and never acted like he was above them,” he replied. “He acted like he was of them.”

Indeed, Yigal Masika, who traveled from outside of Netanya, said that although Yosef was among the most erudite rabbis in the world, he was still “the rabbi of everybody.”

“He was the greatest rabbi of his generation – a great leader and one of the last holy men of Israel,” said Masika. “He loved all the Jewish people, no matter who they were, and united Jews and rabbis from across the world.”

Masika added, “No one comes close to his knowledge.”

Michael Simantor said he traveled with his young son from Ma’aleh Adumim to attend the funeral.

“He was the greatest rabbi in Israel,” he said. “In his body and mind he was a living Torah. He designed the way we live here today as Jews.”

Noting the gravity of the funeral, Simantor said he told his son that he will never forget the day’s phenomenon.

“I said that one day he will tell his son and grandson that he took part in this significant event,” he said.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat issued a statement mourning the loss of Yosef.

“Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was a part of the Jerusalem landscape for many decades,” Barkat wrote. “He was a spiritual leader, a respected scholar, an influential author and a halachic authority for hundreds of thousands of people in Israel and around the world.”

He continued, “Jerusalem mourns with all of Israel and sends condolences to Rabbi Yosef’s family.”

Barkat added that the Jerusalem Municipality will coordinate an official commemoration of Yosef’s legacy in the coming months.

Monsey "chazir", Moishe Turner on the prowl again

A 59-year-old Monsey man faces a court hearing on charges that could put him in jail for violating his probationary sentence for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.

The violations include Moishe Turner attending the same wedding as the boy , failing to find suitable full-time work, and not informing his probation officer of a car he was driving, according to the Rockland District Attorney’s Office.

The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15 before state Supreme Court Justice William Kelly at the Rockland Courthouse in New City.

Turner’s lawyer, Kenneth Gribetz, countered Turner was invited to the wedding and didn’t know the boy would be there, and the event was held in a school closed for summer recess and used as a catering hall.
Gribetz said synagogues commonly use religious schools as catering halls for weddings and other social events during the summer recess months. The wedding Turner was invited to was at 10 p.m. July 25 at a closed school in Kaser, Gribetz said. The young boy had not been invited, he said.
“He didn’t know the child would be attending,” Gribetz said. “They didn’t speak with each other and they didn’t have any contact. ”

Gribetz said Turner works as a job inventory clerk for a business in Hillburn. Turner is charged with second-degree criminal contempt for violating an order of protection by being within 500 feet of the young man and for being on school grounds.

Prosecutor Jennifer Parietti said Turner could get a jail sentence if state Supreme Court Justice William Kelly finds him guilty of the violations after the hearing and incarceration is warranted.
Paretti said six months in jail is possible because that sentence would maintain Turner’s 10-years probation. The lengthy probation is erased with a state prison sentence or more than six months in jail, she said.
Turner pleaded guilty Jan. 18 to second-degree criminal sex act, a charge that could have brought seven years in prison. He admitted having anal and oral sex with the boy on seven occasions during July 2011.
Parietti offered the plea agreement and told Kelly in court that the family didn't want the boy testifying in open court.
Kelly sentenced Turner to 10 years probation and then held a short hearing and classified Turner as a Level 2 sex offender, a designation stating there’s a moderate chance of repeating the crime.

Chaveirim of Rockland County welcomes a child molester

The convicted child molester “Dym” was released from jail 

 and Chaverim of Rockland just sent out this text.

"The Kabolas Ponim for our Chaver, Unit 29 will take place 6 Laura La. Wesley. Tom. Night 8p-10p @ our gracious host unit 4s' home. Pls contact 44 or 64 re: $."

Deb Tambor's final moments

Motie (Abe) Weiss and Deborah (Deb) Tambor, a young couple in love living in Bridgeton, N.J,, had a beautiful tradition: Each morning at 9 a.m., Tambor would make a cup of coffee and bring it to his workplace, an auto-repair shop.

Last week Friday, Tambor, 33, did not show up. At first, Weiss thought she had decided to sleep in a little later than usual. But when she didn’t answer her phone all morning, he grew concerned and rushed home. He ran frantically from room to room and found her lying sprawled on the floor of their bedroom, next to two empty bottles of pills and a half-empty bottle of alcohol, Weiss said in an interview with the Forverts. He immediately dialed 911, but when the ambulance arrived, it was too late.

Sgt. Adam Grossman of the New Jersey State Police said there was no cause of death determined yet for Tambor and an investigation was ongoing. He said Tambor’s body found at 2:36 p.m. on Sept. 27 in her home on Woodruff Road in Upper Deerfield Township.

COURTESY OF ABE WEISS

Deb Tambor and Abe (Motie) Weiss

The death of Deb Tambor sparked an outpouring of sympathy on Facebook and social media from Jews who, like Weiss and Tambor, were raised in various Hasidic communities but are now no longer religious.

A divorced mother of two, Tambor grew up in the Hasidic community of New Square, N.Y. She suffered terribly after losing custody of her three children. Her family claimed that her depression was the reason she lost custody of the children, but close friends blamed her lack of religious observance.

Her own father testified against her in the custody battle, some of her close friends said. Both her father and her ex-husband’s new wife besmirched Tambor to the point where her own children did not want to see her anymore.

“She really hated her father,” Weiss said.

On the evening of Sept. 29, about 40 of Tambor’s friends gathered outside the funeral home in New Square, waiting to hear where and when the funeral would take place.

They stood for hours in the cold, but no one from the funeral home or the community informed them that the family had quietly arranged to have her funeral the next day in West Babylon, on Long Island. When Weiss learned of this detail Monday morning, it was already too late to get there in time for the funeral —and that angered him terribly.

“The last thing Deb would have wanted is for her father to bury her, “ Weiss said. But he praised Tambor’s brothers, who were sympathetic to him after their sister’s death.

“They actually came to pick me up from Monsey [N.Y.] and take me to New Square to the van where her coffin was held. They even thanked me for making her happy,” he said.

Many others who knew Tambor well also commented on how happy she seemed over the past few months, which is why her suicide was so shocking to everyone.
“Just two weeks ago she told me that she wanted to marry me and have more children,” Weiss said in a trembling voice.

She was happiest when helping other individuals who left or who were looking to leave their Hasidic communities, Weiss said. And indeed, since her death, many of her friends, both in real life and on social media, expressed similar sentiments of how she helped them in their time of need.

Sruli, a 22-year-old former Hasid from New Square who did not give his last name, said Tambor befriended him after they met at the Rockland branch of Footsteps, an organization of people who have left ultra-Orthodox communities.

“She was the first one to take me to the theater to see my first film and to WalMart to buy non-Hasidic clothing,” said Sruli said. “When I had questions, she was there to answer, and not once did she make me feel like she was doing me a favor.”

“She treated me like a mother would her son,” he said.

With reporting by Anne Cohen

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/184942/how-deb-tambors-life-ended-and-started-firestorm/?p=all#ixzz2glBC7rjY

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/184942/how-deb-tambors-life-ended-and-started-firestorm/?p=all#ixzz2glB2U8uJ

Deb Tambor's Private Funeral,buried without any friends

Deb Tambor as a Chassidic wife on the left, and when she left

The boyfriend and 40 additional former ultra-Orthodox friends of an ex-Hasidic woman, who is believed to have committed suicide after being denied access to her children by the Skver Hasidic community, claim they were harassed and given repeated erroneous reports regarding her funeral arrangements after they showed up in New Square to pay their final respects. 

FORWARD.com  reports that Deb Tambor is believed to have committed suicide on September 27 at the home of her boyfriend Abe Weiss in Bridgeton, NJ as a result of her depression that began after she left New Square’s Skver Hasidic community. 

Tambor left the sect four years ago after divorcing her husband and being disavowed by her family for claiming she was sexually molested as a child by a member of the tight knit community. Recognizing her depression, Tambor sought psychiatric help, after which her family actively conspired with community members to prevent her from having contact with her young children. 

Tambor’s boyfriend, Abe Weiss, said, “Her depression started when she decided to leave the community and was threatened with losing her kids. Her biggest issue was that no one cared for her, everyone blew off all her issues.”

 Weiss and the 40 other ex-Hasidic members arrived in New Square around 4 p.m. Sunday for Tambor’s scheduled funeral at the New Square funeral home located in a cul-de-sac at the bottom of Roosevelt Avenue. Weiss and friends reported that within minutes of their arrival a Skver Hasid would slowly drive past them every few minutes. Weiss said that once they arrived, contacts inside the Skver community began texting them conflicting stories about when Tambor’s funeral would begin.

 First it was an hour, then “before dark”, after night fell, then at “midnight.” At around 9 p.m. an uncle of Tambor’s came and told the group he would “have them all handcuffed,” shortly after which police arrived, and after accessing the situation, told Weiss and friends they were welcome to stay and had a right to be there. 

Finally, at 4 a.m., Weiss and friends formed a circle in front of the funeral home and lit candles and had a moment of silence before dispersing. 

Within minutes of leaving Weiss was contacted by one of Tambor’s brothers via text who offered to take him to view Tambor’s body. Weiss was transported by two brothers to remote street outside New Square’s town line where a minivan containing Tambor’s coffin sat parked. Weiss was not allowed to lift the coffin’s lid or view Tambor’s face.

 At 10 a.m the following morning the same brother texted Weiss, telling him that his sister’s funeral was taking place at that very moment in a West Babylon, Long Island cemetery. Weiss said, “It was nice what they did. It would have been nicer if they’d let me come the funeral.” 

New Square community members say Tambor’s family chose to have her buried elsewhere due to the shame she had brought on her family and the community. “Who wants to be buried next to this lady? said Menashe Lustig, a New Square resident. “It’s very difficult to know where to put her. I hear they called up the rabbinic in Israel and they told them the decision that she be burred elsewhere. The family is ashamed. They’re very ashamed.”

Deb Tambor rejected by New Square in life, accepts her in death

OTD Deb Tambor a young lady that left the New Square Community, took her life this Shabbos and will haver her funeral in New Square tonight.
OTD bloggers are rallying around her, blaming her family for her death at 33. Apparently, Deb was involved in a bitter child custody battle with her chassidic ex husband. Bloggers say that her entire family and support network turned on her because she was no longer frum. Her children were poisoned against her and her own father testified against her at a child custody hearing.

Just recently, Yoeli Spielman, a young man who was shunned by his chassidic community, also reportedly committed suicide right after Yom Kippur.

School Guard that chased Monsey Jews off the sidewalk on Yom Tov, "reassigned"

Dr. Klein

Dr. Klein, Superintendent of the East Ramapo school district had a meeting at the New Hempstead Elemantry School on Brick Church Road, and immediately reassigned the Anti-Semitic School guard that shooed frum taxpayers from walking on the sidewalk adjacent to the school.
Chag Sameach

Jews chased off sidewalks in New Hempstead!

Frum Jews walking on Brick Church Road, on the sidewalk adjacent to The New Hempstead Elementary School, were harassed and chased off the sidewalk by School personnel on Yom Tov.
Mind you, these people that were chased are the very same people paying property taxes that support the school.

Mr. Weismandl, the President of East Ramapo left a detailed message to Dr. Klein, the school superintendent informing him of this disturbing development!

Updated 9/22 at 10:27pm
Dr Klein in an email to Nat Losman, President of KNH, responded "This is unacceptable and I will investigate"

We ask the people who heard the command to get off the sidewalk to please identify themselves so that we can forward this information to Dr. Klein.

Ami Magazine defends the Crazy Radical "Asra Kadisha" Head Extortionist Dovid Schmidel

 Anti-Israel Ami Editor, Yitzchok Frankfurter, defends the Radical fanatical organization, called Asra Kadisha, in this weeks issue.

Everyone living in Israel knows that this group is a  compilation of a bunch of Hooligans and Extortionists, that can be bribed and bought for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
What they do, they learned from Al Sharpton; they extort money from developers, threatening them that if they don't cough up the shekels they will protest the development site and claim that the site is a former Jewish cemetery.

 They just started a campaign that will require all developers  to get a "Hechsher" from these mafia bastards in order to build!
 This  "hechsher" will provide income to these parasites so they will never have to work.
This past month they cursed the great Posek Hador Rav Shternbuch Shlitah because he was fed up with their hooliganism and ordered the developers to continue to build in Beit Shemesh!

The fanatic Yitzchok Frankfurter 

Yitzchok Frankfurter, who rewrote Satmar history, now attempts to re-write the history of the gangsters of Asra Kadisha!

ראב"ד 'העדה החרדית' הגאון רבי משה שטרנבוך תוקף בחריפות את ארגון "אתרא קדישא", שמארגן הפגנות סתמיות ומיותרות נגד חילולי קברים כביכול, ואף רומז כי אנשי הארגון שיקרו את מרן הגר"ש וואזנר וגרמו להוצאת נפטרים יהודים ממנוחתם. המכתב המלא (חדשות, חרדים

Frum Boro-Park Girl Marries a Muslim and Lives a Life of Hell: Her Story

Phyllis Chesler with her Muslim husband

Phyllis Chesler, 72, is a feminist scholar and a professor emerita of psychology and women’s studies at City University of New York. In her 14th book, “An American Bride in Kabul” (Palgrave Macmillan) out early next month, she shares for the first time the story of the five months she spent, as a young bride, held prisoner in a Afghan household. 

Naive and in love, I married a man from Kabul — only to discover the horrible life of a fundamentalist Muslim wife.

I once lived in a harem in Afghanistan.
I did not enter the kingdom as a diplomat, soldier, teacher, journalist or foreign aid worker. I came as a young Jewish bride of the son of one of the country’s wealthiest men. I was held in a type of captivity — but it’s not as if I had been kidnapped.
I walked into it of my own free will.

It is 1959. I am only 18 when my prince — a dark, older, handsome, westernized foreigner who had traveled abroad from his native home in Afghanistan — bedazzles me.
We meet at Bard College, where he is studying economics and politics and I am studying literature on scholarship.
Abdul-Kareem is the son of one of the founders of the modern banking system in Afghanistan. He wears designers sunglasses and bespoke suits and when he visits New York City, he stays at the Plaza.
He is also Muslim.
I am Jewish, raised in an Orthodox home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the daughter of Polish immigrants. My dad worked door-to-door selling soda and seltzer.
But none of this matters. We don’t talk about religion. Instead, we stay up all night discussing film, opera and theater. We are bohemians.
We date for two years. Then, when I express my desire to travel, he asks me to marry him.
“There is no other way for us to travel together in the Muslim world,” he says.
Like a complete heartsick fool, I agree.
My parents are outraged and hysterical. They warn me that no good will come of this union. Little did I know then how right they would be. We marry in a civil ceremony in Poughkeepsie with no family present.
For our honeymoon, we travel around Europe with a plan to stop off in Kabul to meet his family. I did not know that this would be our final destination.
When we land, 30 relatives await our arrival. Among them, not one but three mothers-in-law. I am too shocked to speak, too shocked to question what these three women might mean for my future.
I learn that my real mother-in-law, Abdul-Kareem’s biological mother, is only my father-in-law’s first wife. Her name is Bebugul.
There are bear hugs and kisses all around. The family is warm and inviting — I try to forget about my husband’s glaring omission.
But before the caravan of black Mercedes-Benzes can leave, an airport official demands that I turn over my American passport.
I refuse.
Everyone stops. Both the official and my husband assure me that this is a mere formality. It will soon be returned to me, so I reluctantly relinquish it.
I will never see my passport again.
That means — I would soon learn — that I would not be able to leave Afghanistan at will. I am now subject to the laws and custom of Afghanistan, and as a Afghan woman, that means hardly any rights at all.
My husband’s father owns a compound comprised of numerous two-story European-style houses where the various families sleep with patios, expensive Afghan wool carpeting, indoor gardens, and verandas.
I am only 20, and I am now a member of this household, which consists of one patriarch, three wives, 21 children (who range in age from infancy to their 30s), two grandchildren, at least one son-in-law, one daughter-in-law and an unknown number of servants and relatives.
This is my new home. My prison. My harem.

The author’s Afghan passport, given to her after her American passport was taken. It did not allow her to escape.

Our arrival is celebrated with a feast of unending and delicious dishes. Because of my foreign stomach, the foods — kebabs, rice dishes, yogurts, nuts — are baked with Crisco instead of ghee, an evil-smelling, rancid, clarified butter that is loved by locals but wreaks havoc on a non-native’s stomach. The smell of ghee alone can make you throw up if you’re unused to it.
Abdul-Kareem comes alive during the celebration. He speaks Dari (even though I cannot) and leaves me with the other women.
I am unprepared for my first-ever Muslim prayer service. Suddenly, all the men drop to the floor on all fours, prostrating themselves. I had never seen Abdul-Kareem pray before.
When I awake the next morning, my husband is gone. I am completely alone. And I will spend every morning and afternoon that follows alone with my mother-in-law and female relatives.
As the excitement over our arrival wears off, so does my special treatment. The household meals are now only made with ghee. I can’t eat any of it. Secretly I stow away canned goods that I indulge on in the brief moments that I’m left alone.
Two weeks into my confinement and I have only left the compound twice — both times with a calvary of people guarding and watching.
I am bored, so bored.
One day, I decide to sunbathe on the private terrace that adjoins my bedroom. I don a pink bikini covered in purple polka dots. Then I hear a loud commotion that sounds like men yelling at each other.
“What are you doing? You have managed to upset all of Kabul,” my husband says.
He explains that a group of workmen a quarter-mile away caught sight of a “naked woman” and could not concentrate on work. A delegation had descended upon our house to demand that all women, especially I, be properly dressed.
I start laughing.
“Please, please just come in and put something on,” he says. “Rumors spread here quickly. By tonight, they’ll be telling their friends we are running a brothel.”
I do as I’m told.

Author Phyllis Chesler in 1959, the year she was whisked away to Afghanistan.

Later I write in my diary: “I have no freedom at all. No opportunity to meet anyone or go anywhere. His family watches me suspiciously. Am I getting paranoid?”
In fact, I have reason to be paranoid.
I discover that mother-in-law has instructed the servants to stop boiling my drinking water. Because the sewage system consists of open irrigation ditches that are used as public bathrooms and for drinking water, I contract dysentery.
Perhaps she thinks I am already “Afghan enough” to withstand any and all germs. Perhaps she wants me dead.
She then begins her conversion campaign. She gives me prayer rugs and prayer beads and urges me to convert to Islam.
If I don’t, I think, will she continue her campaign to sicken and kill me?
The next day she barges into my room with a servant and confiscates my precious hoard of canned goods.
“Our food isn’t good enough for her — she eats from cans,” she says.
I am her captive, her prisoner; she, my jailer, might treat me more decently if I find ways to please her. This is difficult for me to write about but I did it. I repeat the words: “There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed was his prophet.”
I am now a Muslim — at least in my mother-in-law’s eyes — but that still isn’t enough for her. When she is angry at me, she spits at me. She calls me “Yahud” or “Jew.” When I complain to my husband, he dismisses me as being dramatic.
I must escape.
Looking both ways, I walk out feeling like a criminal. I board a bus and notice that all the other women are at the back of the bus wearing burqas. I am horrified, slightly hysterical.
Meanwhile, all eyes are on me. I am without even a head scarf or a coat. In this country, a naked face is almost the same as fully bared breasts. I am lost and dizzy with fear. My husband is informed of my escape, and he finds me and brings me home.
But the desire to flee still nags at me.
“I have been here for three months and have been allowed out only five or six times,” I write in my diary. “Is this imprisonment meant to tame me, break me, teach me to accept my fate as an Afghan woman? I want to go home.”
Abdul-Kareem is fed up with my unhappiness. “He has begun to hit me,” I write. “Had I known something like this could ever happen, had I known that we would have to live with his mother and brothers, I would never have come here.”
I attempt a second escape to the American embassy. But once I arrive, I’m escorted away. Without a US passport, I no longer have any rights as an American.
I try twice more to escape — one with a return to the American embassy and another with the help of a friendly German expat. But before I can set any plans in action, I fall deathly ill.
My temperature climbs to 105 degrees, but I receive no sympathy from my family. After days of struggling — and falling into a coma—a local doctor is called. He diagnoses me with hepatitis, explaining there’s nothing more he can do.
This is my lowest point. I fear that if I die here I will be buried in a Muslim cemetery, forever forgotten.
I continue to fight for my survival and beg to see an American doctor. My family agrees, but only if I am closely guarded.
The doctor, however, manages to get me alone for a brief moment and tells me that I must return to the States for treatment. Then he orders a nurse to give me fluids. The next thing I remember is someone tugging at my IV line.
It’s my mother-in-law.
I call out and am rescued by a sister-in-law, who sits with me through the night. I tell my husband about his mother’s attempt on my life. He dismisses it.
But he now realizes that if I survive this disease, I will leave him. So he contrives a way to make me stay.
That night, a he climbs into my bed when I am feverish and sick and forces himself on me. I’m too weak to fight back. He is trying to impregnate me because if I am carrying his child, I will not be allowed to leave.
Slowly, I recover. But I have missed two periods.
I have to get out and it has to be now. I have only one card left to play: the royal card. I must appeal to my father-in-law, who alone has the power to return to me to my home. I send word through a servant that I would like to see him.
He arrives and almost immediately says: “I think it will be best if you leave with our approval on an Afghan passport, which I have obtained for you. You have been granted a six-month visa for reasons of health.”
He must have decided that he did not want a sick — or dead — American daughter-in-law who was trying to flee on his hands. Perhaps he never wanted a Jewish American daughter-in-law at all.
He already has the passport in hand: #17384. I have it still.
I feel saved; I feel graced. My husband grows incensed and begins to hit me and call me names. But I stand my ground. Even when I board the first plane out, he still believes that as a dutiful wife I will one day return to him.
When the plane takes off, I am filled with more fierce joy than my body can contain. And when I finally land on American soil, I literally kiss the ground.
I suffer a painful miscarriage shortly after my return. My body made that decision for me. I rush past any anguish, return to college, find a job and apply to graduate school. Two years after returning, I get my marriage to Abdul-Kareem annulled.
I’ve never told this story in detail before, but felt that I must now. Because I hear some westerners preach the tortured cultural relativism that excuses the mistreatment of women in the name of Islam. Because I see the burqa on the streets of Paris and New York and feel that Afghanistan has followed me back to America.
I call myself a feminist — but not just any feminist. My kind of feminism was forged in the fires of Afghanistan. There I received an education — an expensive, almost deadly one — but a valuable one, too.
I understand firsthand how deep-seated the hatred of women is in that culture. I see how endemic indigenous barbarism and cruelty is and unlike many other intellectuals and feminists, I don’t try to romanticize or rationalize it.
I got out, and I will never return.

Adapted with permission from “An American Bride in Kabul” (Palgrave MacMillan) by Phyllis Chesler, out Oct. 1. The name of her husband and his family have been changeed

Crazy Israeli Rabbis Block "Abuse Crisis Hotlines" on the Kosher Phones!

by Sandy Eller

Pointing the finger of blame squarely at rabbinical authorities, Israeli cellular providers admit that access to mental health and sexual abuse hotlines are blocked on kosher phones.

According to reports on Israeli news service Ynet, which conducted an investigation into the blocked kosher phone numbers, the only service provider which allowed kosher phone users access to the mental health hotline, 1201, was Orange.  No cellular providers gave kosher phone users the ability to access either 1202 or 1203, the sexual abuse hotlines for women and men, respectively.

Legislation passed by the Knesset last year mandated that calls to the above hotlines would be free calls which would not appear on user’s statements in attempt to provide an extra layer of discretion, but also allowed the Rabbinical Communications Commission the ability to have input into the cellular communications system. 
Representatives at two major cellular providers told Ynet that the decision to block the numbers came directly from the Rabbinical Communications Commission.  However, according to one representative, the Ministry of Communications is equally at fault for giving the Rabbinical Communications Commission the authority to block the hotlines.

According to the Ministry of Communications, there are four numbers that have been set aside for emergency use:  100, 101, 102 and 104, and that there is currently no law that mandates having sexual abuse and mental health hotlines on cellular devices.

One chareidi kosher phone user who tried to call a mental health hotline on his cell phone said it was obvious that the decision to restrict access to the emergency number came from the rabbinic board.

“An act of this magnitude should generate huge public protest,” said the user.  “It makes no sense that as a citizen, I should be denied the ability to get help when I am in distress.”

“What is next?” added a friend of the user.  “Tomorrow they will tell me that I can’t call Magen David Adom, I can only call the chareidi Hatzolah?  There is a reason why these emergency lines exist and it is unacceptable that the Israeli government is playing a part in blocking access to these numbers.”

David Koren, the CEO of ERAN, Israel’s Emergency Hotline for Emotional First Aid, told Ynet that he was aware of the problem and blamed the Rabbinical Communication Commission for the blockage.

“For now what we can do is give people an alternate phone number for ERAN, which may not offer as many services as the hotline, but will at least provide some level of service,” said Koren.

Calls from chareidim to ERAN are not rare, according to Koren.

“While we have not asked the Rabbinical Communications Commission to remove the block, we would be happy to work with them so that we can continue to offer services to the chareidi community,” noted Koren.
A group of representatives from sexual abuse hotlines and crisis centers were shocked to discover that their numbers had been blocked, insisting that by law, emergency hotline numbers for abuse victims must be accessible as free numbers from all phones.  Citing the greater sensitivity needed when dealing with chareidi abuse victims and their increased reluctance to ask for help, they insisted that there is a dire need for abuse hotlines in the chareidi community.

Separate abuse crisis centers were created for chareidi men and women in 1993, allowing molestation victims in the religious community to come forward and receive support and advice.  Those centers can be accessed from any phone and are 02-673-0002 for women and 02-532-8000 for men.

Asra Kedisha gangsters flood Monsey Streets with despicable flyers again..

This Asra Kedisha group that protest ALL construction sites in Israel to shake down developers, have started an all out war against the sainted Rav Shernbuch who ruled that it was permitted to build in Bait Shemesh, and that it was never a Jewish cemetery.

The truth is that ALL of Israel is a cemetery, because it has thousands of years of Jewish history, and it was always in the cross hairs of foreign countries that constantly murdered and pillaged the inhabitants.

 But the Rabbis, the Tanaim and Amoriem and Geonim and even the Rishonim never prohibited any building in any part of Israel unless it was "Muchzak" as a Jewish cemetery.

The Asra Kedisha Gangsters protest all development sites except in Bnei Brak (Where they would get their behinds bashed in)and only stop when they are paid off.. just like Al Sharpton here in the USA.

 What happened in the last two weeks was that they were paid but not enough, so they stopped for two weeks, and today these bastards started again... So there you got the whole story....
Chag Samaich