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Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Over 50 shot in NYC shootings over July 4th weekend


 More than 50 people were shot — at least seven of them fatally — during a bloody outbreak of gun violence in the Big Apple over the Fourth of July weekend.


The victims cut across a wide spectrum of New Yorkers — from a pair of former college rugby players wounded while sitting in a cab in Midtown to a beloved 62-year-old Bronx neighborhood “grandfather” who was gunned down by stray bullets.

In all, 51 people were shot in 36 separate incidents since Friday, a huge jump from the 32 people shot in 27 shootings over the holiday weekend last year, NYPD statistics show.

Twenty-one of this year’s holiday weekend victims were shot on Monday’s 246th birthday of American independence, including John Edwards, who was known in his Belmont neighborhood as the “Grandfather of the Block.” By comparison, there were 13 people shot on July 4, 2021.

Consumed with Jew Hatred Ben & Jerry’s Sues Parent Company Unilever Over Sale Of Israeli Business

 

 Ben & Jerry’s is not letting go of its West Bank pullout goal without a fight — with its parent company.

The iconic ice cream brand has filed a lawsuit against Unilever over its decision last week to sell the Israeli arm of the business to Israel-based franchise, American Quality Products, Ltd., which will continue to sell Ben & Jerry’s in the West Bank.

Ben & Jerry’s says that Unilever’s decision was made without the brand’s board’s consent, and wrote in a statement on Tuesday that stopping the sale is necessary to protect “the social integrity that the ice cream brand has spent decades building.” The lawsuit will aim to block the sale.

After publicly critiquing the Unilever move last week, the Ben & Jerry’s board voted on Friday to file the suit, the New York Post reported.

“It’s a done deal,” American Quality Products, Ltd. owner Avi Zinger wrote in response. “Unilever chose the morally correct, socially just and principled path when it ensured that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream would always continue to be produced and sold in Israel and the West Bank.”

The Ben & Jerry’s board, which has a history of social justice advocacy, made the decision to stop selling its products in what they call “Occupied Palestinian Territory” following Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas in May 2021. Unilever originally stated that it had little power over decisions made by Ben & Jerry’s board, which makes its recent decision to sell a surprise.

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Disparaging the State of Israel is a shortcoming that seemingly justifies remaining in the Diaspora today

 

Translation of major points of a televised lecture given by Rabbi Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Tsfat, in which he emphasizes the importance of declaring the praises of Eretz Yisrael in rectifying the Sin of the Spies who spoke disparagingly about the Cherished Land, a shortcoming still prevalent today. 

HaRav Yosef Caro explains that Moshe sent the Spies to tour the Land of Israel in order that they return full of its praises and thus ignite a passionate yearning for the Land throughout the Nation. This loving fire in their hearts for the Promised Land would then burn away all impurity remaining from the sin of the Golden Calf, making them worthy of entering and conquering the exalted Holy Land.

In the book, “Eim HaBanim Semeicha,” HaRav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal teaches that just as the Spies went from tent to tent, spreading negative propaganda about the Land of Israel, so we must follow their example - in order to rectify their transgression, we have to do the counteraction of going house to house, shul to shul, community to community, speaking in praise of the Land to inspire Jews to yearn to dwell there.

Islamic scholar calls homosexuality 'filth that should be trampled'

Gafni Invites "Gedoilei Yisrael" to his daughter's Wedding



 When I say "gedoilei Yisrael" I mean the "gedoilei Yisrael" of the Zionist government, like MK Michaeli, the extreme leftist who is the Minister of Transport. She is on a campaign to have public transportation on Shabbos all over Israel. But that doesn't mean anything to Moshe Gafni, the leader of Charaidie party United Torah Judaism .

 I said this many times the Chareidie Parties don't care about Chillul Shabbas and don't give a hoot about girls in the army, it's all about the $$$! 

They only talk about Chillul Shabbos to get the vote, once elected they do nothing.

Below see a video of Michaeli having a great time at the wedding. 


Here is another lady Gafni invited MK Silman, she was the one who started the toppling of Bennett!

I  guess this tzaddik likes the ladies!

Well the rest of the jealous Chareidim didn't like this one bit.


Michaeli, who was filmed dancing hand-in-hand with the bride, Tamar Brecher, drew particular outrage from the Haredi public.

“For what reason is the partition put up if the women’s dancing is recorded and shared for the eyes of hundreds of thousands of men online?” prominent Haredi journalist Aryeh Erlich asked. “What happened to the value of modesty among the Haredi public?”

Fellow Haredi journalist Yishai Cohen added: “What message does Gafni send by inviting Michaeli as his guest of honor? Apparently, UTJ is suffering from battered woman syndrome.”

Haredi lawmakers also suggested that Gafni may have to pay a political price for inviting Michaeli.

“No one among us is going to talk to him today,” one unnamed UTJ official told Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister publication.

“The damage [Gafni] has done to UTJ is huge,” the unnamed official added. “If he goes home, it will only benefit everyone. He has been getting on people’s nerves anyway lately.”

Coming to Gafni’s defense was UTJ MK Yitzhak Pindros, who said: “Yes, we invite political colleagues to happy occasions and we don’t call security if they, God forbid, start dancing.”

But Pindros also said that the Haredi public “will never forget and never forgive Michaeli… even if she joins the coalition [with Netanyahu] and even if she quits politics altogether.”

Over the past year, Michaeli has strongly advocated for public transportation on Shabbat, which Haredi parties strongly oppose. After failing to introduce reforms that would allow buses to operate on Shabbat, Michaeli has recently tried to promote a reform that would allow local authorities to operate taxi services on the Jewish day of rest.

Ketubah of Moe Howard from Three Stooges auctioned for $21,889



The Jewish marriage certificate of Moe Howard, the leader of the Three Stooges comedy group, fetched over $20,000 at an auction this week in Los Angeles.

Howard, whose real name was Moses Horwitz, in 1925 tied the knot in Brooklyn with Helen Schonburger, a cousin of magician Harry Houdini. She was later a scriptwriter for the Three Stooges after he briefly retired in 1926 at her urging when she became pregnant.

The marriage certificate, known as a ketubah, was sold for a final bid of $21,889.

According to a press release, Nate D. Sanders Auctions also sold a weathervane used on the couple’s home that Schonburger made for $24,079.

Additionally, it sold a pair of items that belonged to Howard’s younger brother Jerome Lester Horwitz, known by his stage name Curly Howard, who was also a member of the comedy group.

A 18 karat ring that he owned went for $10,456, while a deed he signed with the name “Jerome Horowitz” picked up $12,353.

The Three Stooges first rose to fame in the early 20th century with their short films, many of which included Hebrew or Yiddish terms in an ode to their Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

Sicko Murders 2 Jews among others in Illinois

 

Sicko

A Jewish victim of Monday’s shooting in Highland Park has been identified.



The victim was identified as Jacki Sundheim, a lifelong member of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois.

A 22-year-old man identified as a person of interest in a shooting during an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago that killed at least six people, wounded at least 30 and sent hundreds of people fleeing was taken into custody Monday evening following an hourslong manhunt, police said.

Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said Monday evening that a police officer briefly chased Robert E. Crimo III as he drove about five miles north of where the shooting occurred before the man pulled over and was taken into custody.

The July 4 shooting was just the latest to shatter the rituals of American life. Schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have all become killing grounds in recent months. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find cause to celebrate its founding and the bonds that still hold it together.

“It is devastating that a celebration of America was ripped apart by our uniquely American plague,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a news conference.

“I’m furious because it does not have to be this way… while we celebrate the Fourth of July just once a year, mass shootings have become a weekly — yes, weekly — American tradition.”




Monday, July 4, 2022

Suspect in disappearance of Moishe Kleinerman released

 

Police on Monday released the man who was arrested about a week ago on suspicion of involvement in the disappearance of Moishe Kleinerman 100 days ago. In a police statement issued with the arrest, a sweeping restraining order was imposed on the details of the suspect and the reason why he was arrested.

Moishe Kleinerman's parents, Giti and Shmuel, commented on the release of the detainee and said: "We expect and demand that the police continue to work for the return of our son home and act using all the professional tools available to them for that purpose."

"For 100 days Moishe has not been home and unfortunately there is still no significant thread which could lead to good news. Today we asked the Minister of Defense to do everything in his power to assist the police and allow the relevant units to act to find him. We thank the people of Israel and the media who support us in these days and wish that they continue to pray with us for the return home of our dear son," the worried parents added.

Prof. David Weiss Halivni – An intellectual and religious tribute

 

by Rabbi Ethan Tucker 

R. Prof. David Weiss Halivni has passed away, and the tributes and memories have been pouring in. I first heard about R. Halivni, זכרונו לברכה, from my father, יבדל לחיים ארוכים, who was his student in the 1970s at the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was not able as a child to understand much about what his contributions were, but it was clear that he was a giant of learning, capable of holding in his mind what most people cannot keep track of even with books open in front of them.

When I was in graduate school, pursuing a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, I finally got to take a class with Prof. Halivni (cross-registered at Columbia, where he taught). If you have read the tributes to him offered so far, they are all true: a mind that consistently beat the CD-ROM searches — see Barry Wimpfheimer’s reflections — a desire to engage with every student who would engage with his theories, and an insatiable love of the Talmud. [He liked to emphasize that learning anchored in the Rishonim (medieval commentators) was *not* the same as actually learning something new about the Talmud itself.]

I did not have a lot of personal contact with him, though I did get some time with him in the context of that class, including private time with him in his office. I can’t speak to him as a person better than others who knew him much better and had relationships with him that spanned years.

But I feel called to share some of my sense of deeply significant aspects of his learning, research and teaching, and how they have influenced me and the beit midrash in which I spend my time. This is all surely מקצת שבחו של האדם, but I hope these categories of contribution can help highlight some of what this unique individual has contributed to the world of Talmud Torah and study of the Talmud that will long outlast his earthly sojourn.

שינויי דחיקי לא משנינן לך – Sometimes, the Questions Are Better Than the Answers

Anyone who has learned talmudic commentators knows that most of them mainly structurally consist of questions and difficulties raised with the talmudic text, followed by answers meant to address these concerns. When you first learn to learn a Tosafot, you are trained to find the question, understand it precisely, find the answer, and feel the circle completed in resolution. You might see competing answers — sometimes in the very same text! — but the destination is the resolution, which claims to capture what the Talmud itself had in mind and why the apparent difficulty is just a mirage when viewed from the right angle, up close.

Prof. Halivni really pioneered the notion that the questions raised by the Rishonim and Aharonim (medieval and modern talmudic commentators) were really the most important part of their work. Search the footnotes in Mekorot Umesorot for these medieval and modern giants and you will find that it is mostly their questions that are cited, even as their proposed answers are passed over. Prof. Halivni’s great insight — and I think his most dramatic contribution to modern Talmud scholarship — was that these master readers of the text were always right when they spotted a difficulty. Something was wrong; something didn’t make sense. But their answers might have been limited based on assumptions of talmudic omniscience (more on this below), or an assumed lack of historical development, or the (religiously critical) need to reach religiously coherent conclusions, which are not always identical with the best historical explanations.

This split between question and answer is nothing short of revolutionary and has the remarkable effect of elevating these commentators to the place of glory they deserve while also leaving room for future readers and scholars to contribute their own possible answers by opening up other axes of interpretive possibility. With Prof. Halivni as your guide, you were not really learning the Rashba, you were learning how to learn like the Rashba. This is a central piece of my own learning and my pedagogy. And I believe it to be a critical element of creating pious, faithful readers of the text in the modern world who nonetheless have something to contribute of their own to this transgenerational conversation.

ברייתא לא שמיע ליה – Not Everyone Knew Everything

Perhaps one of the widest misconceptions about the Talmud — held subliminally even by many who study it in depth! — is that it is the project of a group of Sages, sitting in a study hall, with all the sources available to them, playing out logic-based discussions around a set of questions. This could almost not be more wrong, on every level. This is not the place to detail all the aspects of Talmud scholarship that have helped us sharpen a more accurate picture, but I want to pick out one aspect that was a major contribution offered by Prof. Halivni. Simply put, his repeated assertion — emphasized again and again throughout Mekorot Umesorot — is that not everyone knew everything. Individual sages may or may not have known what other sages said. Baraitot — texts assigned to the time of the Mishnah, but not appearing in that canonical text — may or may not have been studied by all the sages who took up the topic under discussion. In other words, the serious student of Talmud cannot assume that what we have at the end of the talmudic discussion is what any given sage in the Talmud himself would have had access to. This, Prof. Halivni argued, was true even if the final redactional level of the Talmud itself, which may or may not have been aware of other talmudic passages or of the full scope of the traditions under discussion. Much of Mekorot Umesorot is about viewing the Talmud as being some version of a game of “broken telephone,” where what emerges at the end may be the best sense the editors could make of the limited information they had.

Whether or not one accepted all of his hypotheses, Prof. Halivni’s work opened up the reader to a more precise reading of each and every level of the talmudic text. Many others have and continue to offer focused studies on the “layers” present in the talmudic text, layers that represent the contributions of subsequent generations to an unfolding anthology of rulings and discussions over centuries. Prof. Halivni, took this genre to a scope few others reached (R. Yosef Dünner being one possible exception), offering his analysis on the lion’s share of the Talmud and truly showing how to ask these questions consistently across all sorts of sugyot, spanning all talmudic topics. Recognizing that not everyone knew everything allows for an expansiveness of thought and interpretation, allows more voices to be heard at full volume, allows us to hear those voices individually before we synthesize them with others. This has created a much richer and more curious culture of Talmud Torah that is hard to imagine being without once you have seen and experienced it.

מה שתלמיד ותיק עתיד להורות לפני רבו כבר נאמר למשה בסיני – Intellectual and Spiritual Continuity with the Past

Prof. Halivni modeled what it looked like to engage critical and historical questions as an organic outgrowth of the traditional learning of the beit midrash. Though he spent time teaching in a secular university context, his classes even there felt like shiurim in Gemara. The pages of his magnum opus — Mekorot Umesorot — are filled with quotations from the Rishonim and Aharonim and his entire bearing and demeanor was that of a yeshiva student. For him, asking the questions he did about the historical development of text was not a break with the past, but simply the necessary corollary to loving the text so much that you just had to understand it to its fullest, whatever tools would enable you to do so.

This was part of what was so magnetic about him as a scholarly and rabbinic figure to many people. He offered — more by modeling than by saying — a picture of what it could look like to engage modern questions without being in a state of rupture and disjuncture from one’s past. Models of that have always been personally important to me, and they continue to be critical for anyone who deeply longs to be part of an unbroken covenant without quashing questions that feel central for understanding our texts and our contemporary world. Prof. Halivni wasn’t really a “modern Jew” in the sense of projecting some sense of a new project that would need to reject aspects of the “old world” in order for Judaism to cohere in the contemporary moment. I aspire to that sense of continuity in my own religious life and try to bring it to my own students when we learn together. I am grateful to him for being one important model of the viability of that path.

אבות העולם לא עמדו על דבריהם – Never Be Afraid to Try Out New Ideas

It was essentially a kind of perpetual betting pool in academic Talmud circles to try to guess what radically new theory of the Talmud’s formation would appear in the introduction of the next volume of Mekorot Umesorot. Prof. Halivni changed his mind many, many times! The date of the Talmud’s formation swung wildly by hundreds of years, initially cast as a “side hustle” by the named talmudic sages themselves and eventually as the work of a much later period in time, extending into what we often think of as the post-talmudic period.

Put aside one’s opinions on these matters themselves. The humility, the lack of any need to stick to one’s guns, the pure search for sense and truth modeled here, are remarkable. It is so tempting as a scholar to come up with a theory and, like a Ptolemaic astronomer, to accrue epicycles upon epicycles just to keep one’s theory defensible and fundamentally unchanged. Mekorot Umesorot went through a Copernican revolution with each new volume. This model feels like it is slipping away from us in so many ways. You can either embrace a post-truth nihilism and just say new and inconsistent things all the time as you wish, or you can live a life haunted by digital breadcrumbs that will lead readers to a different and inconsistent version of your past, undermining you in the present. Beyond the world of scholarship, Prof. Halivni’s model is one for both writers and readers to aspire to: we are all working on a host of difficult questions and it might take us a lifetime or more to get to satisfactory answers. Mekorot Umesorot showed what a life so lived looked like, and its generous readers recognize this as its strength. In many ways, he embodied his own methodology: the questions he raised were the essential piece, with the answers he offered just possible pathways forward. Whether or not the conclusions he arrived at are the best way to read a sugya — my informal survey of the data tells me that Prof. Halivini usually does not win the day among academics in his conclusions — the attempts are truly the colossi on which all of us of lesser stature stand.

אין התורה נקנית אלא בחבורה – A Sense of Group Purpose

As I mentioned earlier, there have been others who have explored the Talmud’s “layers” and who have drawn attention to the threads from across time and space that were woven into a single tapestry. Since the medieval period, commentators have drawn attention to the parts of the Talmud that can (and should) be ascribed to a later editorial voice, as opposed to the Amoraim, the named figures of the post-Mishnaic period. But Prof. Halivni took these earlier references to redactional difference and creativity and gave this group of people a name: the Stammaim. Growing out of the term “Stam,” the anonymous editorial voice of the Talmud already referenced in medieval commentaries, the term “Stammaim” makes this part of the Talmud come alive, and gives a sense of a group of people working on a project together, a project of consequence and of generational scale. To be sure, his motivation here was simply to explain the text. But I don’t want to overlook the impact of seeing redactional phenomena as work by a group of people. This simple shift in nomenclature also carried/carries with it the sense that real people in real time were helping to shape תורה שבעל פה, to ensure that the Oral Tradition would be carried on to future generations and to pursue an almost frenzied project of understanding everything that had come before them. I dare say that the term “Stammaim” itself sort of transforms the identity of the redactors of the Talmud from clerks tying up lose ends to another great stage in the development and transmission of the Oral Law, alongside the Tannaim, Amoraim, Geonim and Rishonim. This brings the formation of the Talmud into this broader context and offers the learner and the reader an extended hand to join that redactional voice in understanding this incredible corpus. Prof. Halivini exuded that feeling in all of his teaching, like he was a latter-day partner in this enterprise. I seek out that feeling wherever and whenever I am able to access it, and I am grateful to him for being such a model in that regard.

דור דור דורשיו, דור דור וחכמיו – The Religious Gifts of Appreciating Historical Development

I want to close with perhaps the most basic element of R. Halivni’s methodology, already alluded to above, which I think may have the most profound religious consequences. The Talmud was a creation that formed over time, made up of the voices of many generations. The traditions therein represented the wisdom of many sages in many times and places, and later traditions built on earlier ones but also each contributed their own unique elements to the discussion. R. Halivni’s historical lens was focused on all corners of the Talmud and he used that lens to discover lost opinions as well as to explain discontinuities and difficulties in the text. But training this historical lens on the Talmud also had/has important effects on the broader discourse of תורה שבעל פה (whether he intended this or not).

On Sanhedrin 38b, Reish Lakish says that the first human being was show all the teachers and sages of each and every generation. This is one of the first hints we get of there being religious value to understanding each generation’s contribution on its own terms. Even if we are meant, like אדם הראשון, to take it all in as a unified picture, God chooses to share this information while keeping the generational strata intact and distinct.

It is easy to fall into a conventional pattern wherein the Talmud is a bunch of complicated discussions that conclude somewhere, leaving us with a “talmudic take” on the matter, with some ambiguities that then need to be resolved. And then a period of halakhic “change” or “reinterpretation” begins in the medieval period, a product in part of social pressures and a loss of what the Talmud really “meant to say.” But when you are keenly aware of the historical layers of the Talmud at every step, you begin to see things very differently. The Talmud is then part and parcel of a process of preservation, interpretation and development that has never stopped. There is a dynamism to the entire discourse from the Mishnah through the Mishnah Berurah. What we have, throughout, are sages in different times and places doing their best to hold on to the Torah, to follow it, to interpret it, and to apply it to their generation. This is not a process of “change,” it is just what Torah has always been. Rava does his best to understand R. Yohanan and may read the latter’s words through a set of assumptions that he holds because of his Babylonian context. The Stammaim read Rava in light of other traditions and perhaps other sugyot they have encountered, and new meaning may emerge. And post-talmudic commentators pick up this work, sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, channeling in their own debates the divergent strands of thought and practice embedded in the Talmud to which they were non-negotiably accountable.

This more consistent picture of the Oral Tradition is, in my view, critical for shaping the kinds of teachers of Torah we need today. We need readers and leaders who can see themselves as protagonists in this conversation, who can find inspiration from each generation’s unique contribution, even as our goal as religious Jews is to pull those strata into a unified whole. And this returns us to the opening point: doing this in a way that feels utterly continuous with the past as opposed to in rupture with it. I am not sure whether R. Halivni would recognize this impact of his work, but it is descriptively true for me: this appreciation for the teachers of each generation and their struggles brings me much more deeply into the conversation of Torah and helps me find my own voice within it.

* * *

I am proud to teach in a Beit Midrash where these unique contributions of R. Prof. Halivni continue to reverberate. I pray that his spirit and his legacy will guide the learning and leadership of many for generations to come.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rabbi Ethan Tucker is Rosh Yeshiva at Hadar. Rabbi Tucker was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and earned a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Harvard College. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, he was a co-founder of Kehilat Hadar and has served as a trustee of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and The Ramaz School. He is the author, along with R. Micha'el Rosenberg, of Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law.

Now that Reb Chaim is gone Rabbanim look to Annul his Psaks and Start with Banning Canabis

 Below is the Kol Korah signed by the "gedoilim" banning canabis, and below that see a video of Reb Chaim z"l smelling canabis. Below that is a psak from R' Zilberman, son-in-law of R' Chaim ruling that it is 100% permitted.


 A Kol Koreh has been released by multiple Charedi Rabbanim in Israel, banning medical marijuana in many situations.

The letter was published by two prominent Charedi Batei Din, the Bais Din of Rav Nissim Karelitz and Rav Shmuel Vosner.

In addition, it was signed by multiple other Israeli Rabbanim.

Here is a translation of the text:

Daas Torah Regarding Medical Cannabis

Because in recent times, there is a contingent of doctors who prescribe ‘medical marijuana’, including for mild illnesses, despite the fact that it is considered “samim” (a potent drug).

The Gedolei Yisrael have already paskened that using plants which are known as drugs is a Torah violation, regardless of the strength of the ingredients, whether light or heavy. Every type [of these drugs] is prohibited. Even using it occasionally, even one time, is completely prohibited. Using these drugs brings people to engage in more stringent sins of the Torah, and causes a person to lose his mind and abandon his Creator. In the end, it destroys one’s soul, Hashem yishm’renu.

Therefore we proclaim that even when doctors give patients “medical marijuana”, one is not permitted by halacha to take these drugs, unless it is at a minimum a safek pikuach nefesh (a possible life and death matter). One [who is in this situation] must ask a shaila from Rabbanim who have semicha from our communities, and not chalilah rely on doctors, because we are dealing with a Torah transgression.

Certainly, anyone who sells or deals [these drugs] to healthy people, is violating severe Torah prohibitions, and is considered “Machtiei Rabbim”.



Tammuz 3, the Rebbe's yahrzeit is just behind us, but his wisdom lights our way forward.


by Sivan Rahav-Meir
1. What's the most beautiful story you know about the Lubavitcher Rebbe? I was asked to answer this question when being interviewed this week in connection to the 28th anniversary of the Rebbe's passing, which was observed two days ago on the 3rd of Tammuz. It took some time for me to choose but I believe that the following story is the most beautiful one that I know.

Rabbi Moshe Feller, chief Chabad emissary to Minnesota, was asked to write an article for a newspaper on Judaism, Torah, and hassidism. He tried to explain in the article what Torah does for another person and wrote that when a person faints and loses consciousness, it is said you must get close to their ear and shout their name in order for them to wake up.

In the same way, he wrote, when a person is far from their Judaism, far from their identity and themselves, we need to shout their name and that they are a Jew in order for them to be reminded of who they are and wake up.

Rabbi Feller sent the article to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for his approval. Only one word was changed but with great significance. The Rebbe crossed out "shout" and wrote above it "whisper." Not to shout into the other's ear, but to whisper into it.

How do we awaken those who are spiritually unconscious, how do we address those who are cut off from their roots? The man who influenced millions recommends that we change our approach.

Don't shout at them that they are not okay, don't roar at them with your beliefs, but rather whisper. You are about to enter a delicate place -- the soul. Don't approach them with brutality. Approach them with confidence but also with love, with determination but with tenderness too.

It would appear that this approach could benefit us all, in every area of life.

Big Tzaddik Blows His Nose with Pages of a Siddur at a Bar Mitzvah at the Kotel

 

This was a huge Chillul Hasehm and this snot blower is going straight to hell!
Yes, I know that a Sefer Torah written by apikorsim should be burned, and their siddurim burned as well, but "burning" is one thing and blowing your nose with a page that had "Yud Kei Vuv Kei" printed on it, is a totally other thing!
I wonder how many teenage boys that attended this bar-mitzvah will now want to be frum?
I'll bet that this Bar-Mitzvah boy will eventually serve in the IDF protecting this vile disgusting creature and his family.
I have relatives who are serious learners in Bais Medrish and I know 100% that they would never do anything close to this. 
These acts will not only not bring anyone closer to Yiddishkeit, but will further distance those who need our love and understanding. 
I pity this "Snot" guy's kalleh! 


Dozens of ultra-Orthodox extremists disrupted three bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies at the egalitarian plaza of the Western Wall on Thursday morning, shouting over the services, calling the worshipers “Nazis,” “Christians” and “animals,” blowing whistles and ripping up prayer books, according to eyewitnesses.

“It was all really, really ugly,” said Laura Ben-David, who was hired by one of the families to photograph the bar mitzvah.

In one case, a young ultra-Orthodox man was filmed ripping a page out of a prayer book, or siddur, and then wiping his nose with it while smirking. This was a particularly disrespectful act as books with God’s name in them, like the siddur, are meant treated with the utmost respect in the Jewish tradition, which even requires that they be buried when no longer in use instead of being thrown out or recycled.

“How can a nation of Jews allow a reality in which people fear for their security when they are just trying to pray in their own way in a plaza that was specifically designated for this type of prayer?” wrote the Masorti Movement, Israel’s equivalent to the American Conservative movement, in a tweet.

Rabbi Arie Hasit, who officiated one of the 

Another "chushever" Rav a Serial Molester Bites the Dust

 




by Frumfollies

I witnessed a miracle today. You know how hard it is to get the New York State bureaucracy to move, let alone move quickly. This is especially true on a weekend, and even more so on the Sunday of a July 4th Weekend.

Yet in less than a day after the rasha, serial child rapist Rabbi Baruch (Mordechai) Lebovits, died over shabbos, the NYS sex offender registry make a records change for him. They removed his listing as someone convicted of 8 felony counts of deviate sexual intercourse with a minor. The listing which I screenshot at noon today was gone by 3 pm.

So people, don’t ever accuse our askanim of being lazy or ineffective. Just understand that they are all in on protecting molesters, just not working for survivors.

For the sake of posterity, I am posting the screenshot here and saving it on the Internet Archive.

I have many other posts about Baruch Lebovits dating back over 12 years HERE. Inconveniently this website will display them in reverse chronological order.

US energy producers roast Biden over gas prices tweet they suggest written by WH ‘intern’

 

The U.S. Oil & Gas Association took a hit at President Biden after he tweeted on Saturday that “companies running gas stations” should simply “bring down the price you are charging at the pump,” telling him that he should “please make sure the WH intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester.”

“Working on it Mr. President. In the meantime – have a Happy 4th and please make sure the WH intern who posted this tweet registers for Econ 101 for the fall semester…,” the tweeted. 

On Sunday, Biden tweeted that “companies running gas stations” should take note that “this is a time of war and global peril.”

Askanim & Rabbanim "Make the Pig Kosher" by Endorsing the pro-abortion, pro-perverted Hochul

 

Both feuding Satmar Brothers and most of all Chareidie "gedoilim" are endorsing this "klavta" ....$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Below see the "kapos" fighting about her! 

A Twitter showdown took place between several vocal members of the Charedi community.

The debate focused on whether frum Jews should be concerned about Governor Kathy Hochul, after her campaign stalled on repeated interview requests from the frum media, and ultimately failed to deliver.

Mishpacha editor Yochanon Donn rebuked the Hochul campaign for essentially ignoring the Charedi media. In response, Mordy Getz sharply rebuked Mr. Donn and his publication. He accused them of “shortsightedness” and said they “choose partisanship over truth”.

He also said Mr. Donn’s publication “incites the passions of impressionable and uneducated youth to further tweet in the same manner you do.”

And Mr. Getz claimed they “actively push away those who seek to be understanding of us while embracing people with views antagonistic to our minority community.”

Even Jake Turx got into the conversation, in defense of the Charedi media.

It all began last week when, after congratulating the Governor on her primary victory, Mr. Donn blasted her campaign.

He tweeted: “Very disturbing that her campaign promised interviews with at least 3 frum media – Mishpacha, Hamodia and Ami – and it never materialized. Aside for Cuomo, no other candidate has refused to talk to our community thru its media. Me, as well as journalists from the others, have sent repeated requests for a sit-down with the governor. They weren’t ignored, just slow-walked until it was too late. The fact Gov. Hochul won the overwhelming majority of the Orthodox vote makes it more urgent that we be heard.”

Sunday, July 3, 2022

Satmar & Neturei Karta Are Not the Only Ones Wishing Israel Away

A Palestinian man takes a police sign off a wall at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, following clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem’s Old City April 15, 2022. 

Arabs decided not to use the prediction of the Va"yoel Moshe, that predicted in 1956 and then again in 1967 that the State would disappear in 20 years, which would mean that it would have disappeared in 1976 or 1987, because those dates came and went and the State actually got stronger. They decided to use the Koran instead.
 
A disparate group of Islamist clerics has been busily predicting that the State of Israel will disappear in 2022, citing the Koran for support.

The prediction has been circulating in earnest since March, when Muslims around the world marked the holy month of Ramadan. According to an article on the pro-Hamas MEMO website by Mohammad Makram Balawi, a Palestinian writer living in Istanbul, the belief that Israel will be removed from the map at some point this year “is widely spread by some Muslim religious scholars, Palestinian and non-Palestinian.”

Balawi mentioned two clerics in this regard. One of them, Sheikh Bassam Jarrar, preaches at a mosque on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. The sheikh is apparently “97%” certain that Israel will vanish in 2022 due to calculations based on an ancient numerical system that assigns number values to the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet.

Saturday, July 2, 2022

Chinese Reaction to Eating Heimishe Food at Gottlieb's

 


‘Con artist’ Julia Haart allegedly paid to meet her Italian billionaire ex

 

Julia Haart likes to say that she’s self-made.

But the star of the Netflix hit “My Unorthodox Life” allegedly created a persona to ensnare her estranged husband, Italian billionaire Silvio Scaglia — and insiders are now revealing the lengths that she went to meet him and marry him, including indirectly paying for an introduction in 2015.

Multiple sources told The Post that Haart, 51, presented herself as a successful and wealthy fashion entrepreneur while, in reality, her first business was losing money.

Documents seen by The Post show that Haart agreed to pay an acquaintance to be introduced to Louis Pong, one of Scaglia’s best friends and a co-investor in Elite World Group, Scaglia’s fashion company that includes brands such as La Perla.