Thousands Turn Out To Honor Reichmann As A Giant In Business And A Paragon Of Religious Observance

 Over 1000 people came to pay their respects on Motzei Shabbos to Paul Reichmann, a man whose visions of greatness were evident not only in the field of real estate, but in the realm of yiddishkeit as well. Reichmann, known to many as Moshe, passed away Friday afternoon in Toronto, just weeks after his 83rd birthday.

Reichmann’s death garnered massive media attention, with full page articles on his life in the Canadian newspapers as well as write ups in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, The Boston Globe and The Financial Post.

The levaya was held at the Bais Yaakov elementary school in Toronto, with several nearby streets closed off to accommodate the overflow crowd. In true Reichmann style, there was no media coverage of the event and in the words of one funeral goer, “it was understood that no one would bring a camera. That was standard for the Reichmanns.”

Among the maspidim were R’ Shlomo Miller, Rosh Kollel of the Toronto Kollel, which was founded by Reichmann, R’ Nachman Adler, Rov of Imrei Noam, R’ Yaakov Hirschman, rosh kollel of the Toronto Kollel, R’ Mendel Brodsky, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Gedola Zichron Shmayahu and Reichmann’s sons and sons in law R’ Yisroel Yoel Muller, R’ Shmuli Hauer, R’ Henoch Brachfeld, who flew in for the levaya while in the middle of Sheva Brachos for his own son, Berry Reichmann and Chesky Reichmann.

The Funeral procession for Toronto real estate mogul Paul Reichmann arrives at the Bais Yaakov Girls School in Toronto on Saturday October 26, 2013.(Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/VINnews.com)

Both R’ Hirschman and R’ Brodsky excused themselves for speaking in English, noting that while Reichmann would have preferred their words be delivered in Yiddish, they wanted those assembled to understand the divrei hesped.

R’ Hirschman related that for Reichmann, it wasn’t how much money he gave, it was how he gave it, always trying to minimize any discomfort an individual might feel in taking tzedaka.

One particular motzei Shabbos R’ Hirschman recalled walking into the Reichmann house and encountering not one, but two people who left the house within moments of each other, each carrying a check for $250,000.

According to R’ Hirschman, Reichmann had at one point taken a chavrusa and started learning in kollel, an effort that quickly fizzled. Asked why he stopped coming to kollel Reichmann replied that while he was in yeshiva learning, there were people coming to his house seeking donations and it was unacceptable to him that he wasn’t home to give tzedaka when people clearly needed his help.

Berry Reichmann spoke about how despite his father’s tremendous financial success, he was a real father to his children, who was always there for them and recalled Shabbos meals that were laden with zemiros, divrei Torah and no talk of business at all.

AP FILE - Then Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, left, and Paul Reichmann, who died Friday, look at a model of the proposed Canary Wharf in London.

Berry Reichmann also told of how after the collapse of Olympia & York, he had a meeting with his father where they went through a list of some 40 yeshivos that had to be cut from the Reichmanns’ financial rolls but when it came to yeshivos in Toronto, the elder Reichmann refused to eliminate a single one from the list of institutions that he supported. Asking his father why these yeshivos were being kept on, despite the staggering losses, Berry Reichmann was told, “if you lose your money and you have kids, do you cut them off?”

The only one of the Reichmann children who was still living at home when the Reichmann’s financial empire crumpled in 1992, Chesky Reichmann, related his memories of his father’s reactions that first Motzei Shabbos, when despite the financial losses, people still lined up in the hopes of receiving some kind of assistance. The elder Reichmann explained to his callers that due to serious financial setbacks, the check would be smaller than usual and when the evening was over, Chesky Reichmann noted that his father was smiling broadly. Reichmann told his son that he was grateful to have had the opportunity to accept callers into the house, even if it meant distributing lesser amounts than usual.

Reichmann is survived by his wife Lea and five children Chaya, Libby, Goldie, Berry and Chesky and numerous grandchildren. Burial will take place on Har Hamenuchos.

Oct. 27, 2013, Posters in Israel announcing the passing of Mosihe Reichman

The fifth of the six Reichmann children, Reichmann gained a reputation as the most gifted and dominant member in a family full of talent and ambition. Together with his brothers, Reichmann was also responsible for investing billions of dollars of the family fortune, not in properties that would turn a financial profit, but in something with a much greater return: yeshivos and charitable institutions around the world. The phrase “their word is their bond” became synonymous with the Reichmann name in the business world, giving the brothers, including Paul Reichmann, the opportunity to make a kiddush Hashem on a global level.

“R’ Moshe Reichmann was that rarest of tzaddikim, setting a princely example for all of Klal Yisroel,” Rav Aron Kotler, CEO of Lakewood’s Bais Medrash Govoha, told VIN News. “On the occasions when I was fortunate to meet him, he would invariably be sitting in a study overflowing with Seforim, at a table piled with Gemaros and Shulchan Aruch, with his mind immersed in Torah. He set the highest standards in business and in defining Kavod Hatorah for our entire generation.”

As described in Anthony Bianco’s 1996 biography, “The Reichmanns”, it was the Reichmann family’s staunch adherence to their yiddishkeit as well as the modest way that they conducted themselves, despite their wealth, that made a strong impression on others.

“The Reichmanns were held in the greatest respect in the Jewish community from A to Z,” Rabbi Gunther Plaut, of Canada’s largest Reform congregation, Holy Blossom Temple. “People were impressed that they were strict about their observance and public about their observance yet so private in the way they led their lives.”

Paul Reichmann and his siblings were all raised in an environment that included both strict religious observance and wealth. Reichmann’s father, Samuel, was a successful businessman, and his mother Renee was renowned for both her intellect and her incredible passion for helping others, most notably for her wartime efforts to aid Jews during World War II.

AP FILE - Then Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, left, and Paul Reichmann at the job site in 1989 of Olympia & York's vast Canary Wharf project in London.

Reichmann’s education began at the Malzgasse Talmud Torah in Vienna, and when the family moved to Tangier to escape the Nazi regime, Reichmann and his brothers were enrolled in the local Alliance Israelite yeshiva. Unhappy with the education provided there, Reichmann’s mother transferred her payos-wearing sons to the French run Lycee Regnault, a secular school attended by the children of many diplomats. The Reichmann boys were forced to remove their yarmulkas in school but were exempted from attending classes on Shabbos.

Unable to leave Tangier to study in yeshiva because he did not have a valid passport, Reichmann dropped out of the Lycee Regnault just short of his graduation at age 16, choosing instead to delve into the realms of Gemara with a cousin who had emigrated to Tangier from Hungary. Reichmann was finally able to leave Tangier in 1947, just before his 17th birthday, when his parents were able to obtain a student visa for him to England and a transit visa to Belgium, enabling Reichmann to attend Rabbi Josef Grunwald’s yeshiva in Antwerp. Without the proper residency papers, Reichmann was only able to stay in Belgium for several months after which he returned to England to study in yeshiva and during that time, he began tutoring young Moroccan students on periodic trips back to Tangier.

Reichmann earned his semicha in Gateshead in 1949, never once using the title of “Rabbi” and choosing to keep his actual semicha in a drawer. He transferred to Ponovezh in 1950 and during that time he was asked to help recruit students from Morocco to the yeshiva, an assignment he eagerly accepted.

FILE - (L-R) Dr. David Moskovits,President Endowment for Democracy in Eastern Europe, George Soros, Moshe (Paul) Reichman Nov. 1993. This Historic photo taken at a private meeting in connection with the gala to benefit the Endowment for Democracy Dinner established by Dr. David Moskovits that honored George Soros who was at that time partners with Paul Reichmann whose brother Albert Reichmann chaired the Endowment, sponsors of the Masaros Avos School in Budapest, an initiative of the Skulener Rebbe Shlita. (Photo credit: The Friedlander Group)

Reichmann contemplated entering the kollel program in Gateshead in 1952 but was told that doing so would necessitate a commitment of several years, effectively putting a stop to his efforts educating Moroccan youth, something he was unwilling to do. Instead, Reichmann went back to Israel, this time to study at the Mir under its rosh yeshiva, R’ Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz. Ten months later, Reichmann received a telegram from R’ Avraham Kalmanowitz of the Vaad Hatzalah, urging him to return to Morocco and in 1953 Reichmann relocated to Casablanca in order to work as the unpaid educational director of Otzar Hatorah, an American sponsored group that ran over four dozen Moroccan schools.

Reichmann married his wife, Lea Feldman, in the Swiss municipality of Montreux in 1955 and the two traveled together in Morocco on behalf of Otzar Hatorah for one year, also dabbling in the shirt trade. Much to the relief of his parents, who expected their son to go into the family business as a way of supporting his family, Reichmann left Casablanca in 1956, but told others that his time in Casablanca was time well spent and was quoted in the 1990’s as saying, “Even 40 years later if you ask what was my greatest achievement, I would say it wasn’t anything to do with business: it was the work I did in Casablanca.”

Urged by his brother Ralph to come to Toronto to join him in the building materials business, Reichmann and his wife traveled to New York via London, where Reichmann made contacts in the steel business, hoping to become the North American representative for companies that exported building materials.

Not finding New York to their liking, the Reichmanns moved to Montreal, eventually settling in Toronto. Reichmann first began doing business in building materials as Olympia Steel and later, together with his brother Ralph, bought out his brother Louis’ company Olympia Floor and Wall Tile.

The Reichmanns purchased their five bedroom home in the Glenwood section of North York in 1966, soon joined in the area by brothers Albert and Ralph, as well as their parents. One year later the family was instrumental in building a new Bais Yaakov in the area, merging two existing local schools, eventually adding a high school and a teachers college for young women.

Reichmann also founded the Mesivta Yesodei Hatorah in the 1980’s for his own son Henry, when he felt his son wasn’t being sufficiently challenged at his current yeshiva.

As the Reichmann family business Olympia & York enjoyed tremendous prosperity, their generosity, particularly towards religious institutions, was legendary. It is estimated that in the 1970’s they distributed $3 to $5 million annually to needy individuals by the hundreds, particularly Moroccan immigrants, as well as Orthodox institutions.

While the Reichmanns supported many schools in Canada and the United States, much of their tzedaka found its way to schools in Israel and France and as a matter of principle, they contributed to every Orthodox school that asked for a donation. They were also known to dispense business advice, countersign for mortgages and business loans and mediated occasional disputes. Their charity was so widespread that it is said that after the collapse of their Olympia & York empire in 1992 there was a significant increase in the number of people from the North York area who were added to the welfare rolls.

The Funeral procession for Toronto real estate mogul Paul Reichmann arrives at the Bais Yaakov Girls School in Toronto on Saturday October 26, 2013.(Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/VINnews.com)

One of the few Ashkenazic families to champion the cause of Sephardic education, Reichmann felt strongly that supporting Sephardic schools was an extension of his earlier work in Morocco. Many of the rabbonim now running these schools were his former colleagues at Otzar Hatorah or his proteges at Gateshead and Reichmann gave generously of both his time and his money. Reichmann was also responsible for setting up dozens of schools for Sephardic girls in Israel and encouraged others to donate generously to the cause of furthering religious education for the Sephardic community.

By 1977 Olympia & York was heavily involved in real estate and having made significant contributions to the Canadian market, Reichmann set his sights on New York City, which was in difficult financial straits. His purchase of eight skyscrapers from the Uris Building Corporation was later called by some “the deal of the century” and Meyer S. Frucher, a top appointee of then Governor Mario Cuomo had words of high praise for Reichmann’s latest acquisition.

“There have been two great deals in the history of New York. The first was when the Dutch bought this land of Manhattan. The second was when the Canadians bought the island again.”

While Olympia & York endured both extreme highs and lows, Reichmann earned a reputation for honesty and integrity that is rarely seen in the business world. His unique ability to balance both extreme wealth with an equally extreme dedication to his religious observance earned him the respect of many greats, both in the world of business and the world of Torah.

While Reichmann will be long remembered for his incredible business acumen and his staggering generosity. he left behind a legacy in the business world that has boundless benefits for Jews worldwide, according to one acquaintance.

“Reichmann raised the spirits of every frum Jew in business. I was able to walk around conducting business openly as a Jew, with my head held high as I knew that Paul Reichmann was featured in newspapers all over the world as an honest businessman. Until Reichmann, many in the world had no idea that frum Jews can be observant, be shomer Shabbos and still conduct real estate transactions of epic proportions. There is no doubt that Reichmann made a major positive impact in the world for the many Jews who conduct business today.”

"Holy" Chassidic Mosdos of Monsey will back St. Lawrence for Town Supervisor because he will let the children be in buildings without fire codes

All Chassidic Mosdos are looking to back St. Lawrence, as Town Supervisor, who is being investigated by the FBI. 

St. Lawrence surrounded by Chassidishe Tuches Lekers

This is causing a massive Chillul Hashem; when gentiles see how the Jews who stood at Har Sinai listening to the words of G-D say "LO SIGNOV,"  will back an individual who is probably going to be indicted at any time now. They don't care if this sets a bad example for our "tinokes shel bais rabbon." They dont care that the innocent children are in buildings that are fire traps as long as St. Lawrence lets them "do what they want." 

If the Mosdos actually back St. Lawrence, the probabilities are that the Anti- Semitic Preserve Ramapo party will get in. 

For the Mosdos its all about the $$$$$$$$! What a massive "Chillul Hashem"!
Shame on you, Vishnitz, New Square, Satmar, Pupa, Vien etc... Shame on You!

Paul (Moshe) Reichmann, Considered To Be One Of The World's Richest Passes Away

Real estate developer Paul Reichmann (arm only visible) holding up photo of himself (credit-Steve Behal) with 1 Canada Square, the centerpiece of the 71-acre Canary Wharf development, in bkgrd.  (Photo by Suzanne Opton//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Canadian businessman, activist and philanthropist Paul (Moshe) Reichmann passed away this morning in Toronto at the age of 83.

Mr. Reichmann had been in poor health and wheelchair bound for the past several years.

Born to Samuel and Rene Reichmann in Vienna, Reichmann was the son of a successful Hungarian egg merchant.  The Reichmann family narrowly escaped Nazi occupation, leaving Austria for Hungary on the day it was annexed by the Germans.  Traveling first from Hungary to France, the Reichmanns finally settled in Tangier, where the senior Reichmann became a prosperous currency trader. 

According to a New York Times article reporting on Anthony Bianco’s book, “The Reichmanns:  Family, Faith, Fortune and the Empire of Olympia & York”, Reichmann’s mother sent thousands of packages of food to Auschwitz inmates and was responsible for having visas issued to several thousand Jews in Budapest.

After World War II, Reichmann studied in several yeshivos including Gateshead and the Mir in Jerusalem, leaving to become the educational director of Morocco’s Ozar Hatorah in 1953 at the request of Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz.  Reichmann was instrumental in overhauling the curriculum of the school which served 1000 students and upgrading its staff.  Reichmann also traveled all across the country creating additional schools for thousands of Jewish children in Morocco.

Reichmann’s married his wife Lea Feldman in 1953 and made his first foray into the business world that same year when he began selling shirts.  The couple left Morocco in 1956 and traveled to New York, eventually settling in Toronto, soon to be joined by other family members.

In 1964, Reichmann and his three brothers founded their legendary property development firm Olympia and York, which built major financial complexes including the World Financial Center in New York and First Canadian Place in Toronto.

The Reichmanns were well known for their integrity and despite their financial success, they lived relatively modestly and never apologized for their religious observances, wearing yarmulkas openly and shutting down their construction sites on Shabbos and Jewish holidays.

Reichmann was once quoted as having told a relative, “What multiplied my initial success by a factor of a hundred had nothing to do with my own efforts.  It was Hashem’s will that I was successful on such a scale.”

While Reichmann was forced to resign from Olympia and York after it went bankrupt in 1992 he successfully rebuilt a portion of his empire.  Reichmann announced his retirement in 2005 at age 75 and just eighteen months later reversed his decision, setting up a $4 billion fund and new offices in Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Together with his brothers, Reichmann had a reputation for his generosity, donating hundreds of millions to yeshivos in Israel, Canada and the United States.  While Reichmann was known for living relatively simply, he had a passion for collecting rare and valuable seforim.

Brooklyn, residence David Moscovits, who founded the Masores Avos American Endowment School, an institution that was funded substantially by the Reichmann family, had an extremely close relationship with Reichmann and remembered him warmly.

“If anyone would like to see an example of Torah, avoda and kiddush Hashem, this is what R’ Moshe was,” Dr. Moscovits told VIN news.  “His eidelkeit, his neimus, his respect for another human being was indescribable.  When it came to ahavas Hashem, avodas Hashem, he never stopped.”

The Funeral is said to take place this Motzi Shabbos 9:00 PM EST, in Toronto at Bais Yaakov Girls school - 15 Saranac st.

Frum man allegedly molests child on Monsey Trails Bus UPDATED

Today at 12:30pm Friday, Erev Shabbos a child was molested on the Monsey trails bus coming from Brooklyn to Monsey. A witness on the bus called 911 while child was still on the bus and told police what happened.

Ramapo Police waited for the bus and arrested the Haredi man.

UPDATE! A haredi man allegedly molested a child on a Monsey Trails bus travelling from Brooklyn to Monsey early Friday afternoon. Police were called but refused to arrest the man or do anything to further the case, allegedly because the bus had crossed into Bergen County, New Jersey and the abuse apparently took place on the Jersey side of the border. As you can see from the above video, the Ramapo police officer who responded refused to identify himself, eventually giving only what appeared to be his badge number – #476 – after persistent requests. In most police departments, an officer like this would be suspended and probably fired. Neither is likely to happen in Ramapo, where haredi powerbrokers call the shots.

Rav Shmuel Auerbach's party "Bnei Torah" win seats,

There is an atmosphere of simcha for the followers of HaGaon HaRav Shmuel Auerbach Shlita for the Bnei Torah enjoys a measure of success in the municipal elections.
It appears that Bnei Torah has earned representation in the Modi’in Illit, Bnei Brak and Yerushalayim City Councils.
In the Yerushalayim race Bnei Torah received 7,377 votes and Chaim Epstein will be a member of the city council. There are already rumors that Epstein will be appointed a deputy mayor and receive a quality portfolio – payback from Mayor Barkat to the chareidim for supporting his opponent.
In Modi’in Illit, Bnei Torah’s Zach list earned over 2,000 votes and it appears it will have at least two representatives around the city council table.
In Bnei Brak Bnei Torah’s Eitz list earned 4,780 votes and representatives Ruchamkin and Malachi will be on the city council.
It seems that the push from Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Shteinman didn't work.

R' Shteinman physically attacked by Chareidie

Bnei Brak - The most senior figure in the haredi world, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, 99, was attacked early Wednesday morning by a haredi man who broke into his home. The rabbi was only very lightly injured in the incident.

The intruder, a 28-year-old Modi’in Illit resident, broke into Shteinman’s apartment in Bnei Brak at around 5 am. He grabbed the rabbi by his clothes, shook him and yelled at him before being restrained by associates of Shteinman, who were studying with him at the time.

The man was arrested by police officers called to the scene.

According to the police, witnesses heard the man say he was “hearing voices” telling him to go to Shteinman’s house.

Haredi website Kikar Hashabat reported that witnesses claimed the attacker said he had supported Bnei Torah, a rebel haredi political faction, and would “take revenge.”

The police did not corroborate this report. But a police spokesman said that the intruder would be taken for psychiatric evaluation.

A close aide of Shteinman’s told The Jerusalem Post that the rabbi had been examined by a doctor at his home, and, other than a bruise on his chest, was unharmed.

Tensions have been running extremely high in the haredi community in recent months, owing to the unprecedented political split between the mainstream non-hassidic sector, led by Shteinman and the Degel HaTorah party, and the Bnei Torah party led by Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, aged 82.

Both sides had been trading insults and rabbinical denunciations in the run-up to the local elections in Israel, which were held Tuesday. A death threat was also posted on a vehicle belonging to Auerbach earlier this week.

UPDATE!

HaGaon HaRav Aaron Yehuda Leib Shteinman Shlita was in the midst of giving a shiur in his home. The avreich got up and began yelling at Rav Shteinman to “change your hashkafa and return to the correct derech.” There are conflicting reports if the assailant succeeded in slapping and/or punching the gadol hador before being subdued, but it is reported the rosh yeshiva stated he is not feeling well and his physician was summoned.

 by Taboola

Reporting Sexual Abuse is not "Mesira"

R' Aharon Leib Shteinman's supporters threaten the life of R' Shmuel Auerbach

Rav Shmuel Auerbach

On the eve of the Tuesday’s municipal elections in Jerusalem, a threatening note was found on the car of Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach telling him to “Close down your party, or your blood will be on your head.”

ARUTZ SHEVA 7 (http://bit.ly/14lhyYN) reports that the threat is possibly the latest escalation in a battle for power within the Lithuanian haredi community following the death of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv in July of 2012.

Following Elyashiv’s death, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman assumed the leadership role in the community, but Auerbach and his supporters still insist that Auerbach is best suited to lead the Lithuanian Ashkenazic haredi community.

Hence, Auerbach is backing a new party, the Bnei Torah party, in the upcoming elections against the mainstream Degel Hatorah, which carries the endorsement of Rabbi Shteinman.

Further, Auerbach has endorsed Nir Barkat for Mayor of Jreusalem over Rabbi Shteinman’s choice, Moshe Lion.

Last week, Shteinman accused Auerbach and his supporters of undermining “The age-old authority of Judaism’s sages,” while insisting that haredis have an “obligation to vote for Degel Hatorah, which is the party that has received the approval of the rabbis and the Torah sages.”

The unfortunate experience of teaching English in a Yeshiva

The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Larry N. Mayer grew up in the Bronx, NY. His first book, “Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland” was published by Syracuse University Press in 2002. He has worked with at-risk high school students for over fifteen years, and wrote about his experiences for the Boston Phoenix in 2000. His short story, ‘Love for Miss Dottie,’ was selected for publication by Mary Gaitskill, in the “Best New American Voices 2009” anthology. This essay is based on his experiences as a secular English teacher in an Orthodox School. The second and final installment will be published next week.

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Though he led his own Orthodox congregation several blocks away, Rabbi Berman was in charge of the yeshiva’s secular education program. A youngish man with an expressive face and a brown beard, he seemed to be moonlighting as principal — a way to earn extra money and perhaps satisfy a lesser passion for teaching. He smiled easily and was shy in a scholarly way. Upon meeting at our interview, he turned away from me, pumped his fist like a little boy, and whispered to himself, “Yes! Yes!” I could see him smiling. I was Jewish, I had 20 years of experience teaching English in high schools and at the college level, and I had even written and published a book on Jewish identity in Poland, which I’d brought to our meeting and placed on his desk. Only now does it occur to me that he never looked at it. During my tenure at the school, he would be a good boss in that he rarely interfered. Yet he gave me fair warning: Regular high school subjects for these Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), he said, “didn’t count” in the bigger scheme of things. Non-religious subjects were a time to unwind, sleep or break down the walls of the old Victorian house. The yeshiva bokherim, as they are called, studied Talmud and Torah all day, getting up at 7 a.m. and not finishing till 9 p.m. The hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., when they studied literature, history, science and math, were considered down time.

These kids were going to be a handful, yet I imagined I could handle anything. Because of my wife’s academic career, we had relocated several times as a family and I was used to taking unusual teaching jobs. I started as a high school English teacher in the crack-infested South Bronx of the early 1990s, moved my way around the country to a school in a juvenile detention home in Ohio, to several at-risk high schools in inner city Boston, and finally to teaching Holocaust studies and creative writing to mostly apathetic college students in the Pacific Northwest. I was up for this latest challenge. How hard could it be?

On my first day, I walked uncertainly up the steps of the front doorway. In the small vestibule, deep-brimmed round black hats were resting on shelves and brown-covered prayer books were piled carelessly. A sickly-sweet smell pervaded the building. I peeked into a central room; several boys were praying, others studying. I had asked Rabbi Berman if I needed to wear a hat or a yarmulke out of respect, and he’d told me to wear what was comfortable, so I wore a nice button down shirt and my best suit pants. I was ambivalent. On the one hand I felt reassured by the familiar Jewishness of the setting, but on the other I felt a sense of alienation, distrust and unease. Though I strongly identified as Jewish, I was hardly religious, and I had formed my own opinions about the crazy Haredim in Israel — for instance, those who were making world headlines by forbidding women to sit in the front of buses, and spitting on young girls in short-sleeved blouses.

I quickly got a feel for the three-story building. There were no paper towels in the bathroom; the toilet seat jiggled. A leaning mattress blocked the hallway to the semi-kitchen.

“A class in session,” the rabbi told me. “We use every part of the building.” My ninth grade class was to meet in the basement cafeteria. We would work among the rodent traps and their unmistakable blue pellets of poison. The room smelled of institutionalized food, large pots of barley soup, and cleaning products. I immediately wondered whether or not these teenage boys wanted to be here at all. The black hats and pants. The white shirts. The lack of girls. The shabby facilities. The main office looked like a converted storage closet, where the other rabbi, who was the head of the Yeshiva — Rabbi Alter — maintained his desk of clutter. A photocopy machine from around the age of the bicentennial sat crookedly on a pile of papers. The first thing I said to him was, “I thought you’d be older.” He resembled a Grateful Deadhead in a suit; he nodded and murmured, smiling. He looked to be hiding in his little hovel, slouching low in his chair, with a phone crooked against his shoulder, and Chinese food leftovers skulking among the ruins on his desktop. In the same room, the “secular” rabbi — Rabbi Berman — handed me his black binders of old lesson plans, covered in what looked like flakes of dandruff and dried yogurt.

“No Shakespeare,” Rabbi B told me. “Too much talk about love. The only love they need to know about is in the Torah.” To his credit, I did get the impression that he was rolling his eyes at that idea.

“What about poetry?” I asked. “Can we read poems?”

“You can try, but poetry is either love or death. And last year the students complained that all the poems they read were about death.” So death, as I understood it, was played out. And the other option — the love option — was out. And we couldn’t read novels because students were not supposed to have work outside the classroom. The real day was for learning Torah.

“You can also do grammar with them,” he said. “It’s good to do grammar.”

I had four Moishes in my first class of 10th-graders, but no one would tell me his correct name until Rabbi B came in. The senior class had three Yehudas. And the freshmen had two Shlomos — the good one, and the bad one. In the end, I found it easier to call them by their last names, even though it felt old-fashioned and a bit disrespectful: “Sit down, Foxman. Take a seat, open your notebook.”

Before class I had seen several of them outside playing basketball at a neglected looking hoop. The court was overgrown with weeds and scattered trash, yet they played with all the fervor of normal teenage boys, though it looked harder to run and jump in their formal outfits.

In front of me, I saw a palette of white shirts and pale, pimply faces. A few had payes, or side locks, like little old men without the beards. One boy told me that from a religious standpoint only sideburns were required, but he kept his hanging curls for what I rephrase here as “extra credit” from God. Was I Jewish, they all wanted to know? More importantly, “Is your mother Jewish? Is your wife? If not, you must be stupid.” I sang what I could remember of the Haftarah from my bar mitzvah, and they were pleased. They argued over which parsha — the weekly Torah portion — it was from. It was almost cute. And in some sad way I felt as if I belonged.

Rabbi B had wanted to be sure I could pronounce the guttural “ch” sound, instead of the American “k” sound. So before class he’d prepped me. I did it properly — gave it that extra phlegm in the throat sound — which pleased him also. It’s very important to pronounce their names correctly, he told me. They get a big kick out of your making a mistake — easy to do because of the constant confusion of whether their names were Hebrew or Yiddish, or some form of Judaicized English. For example, was it Levi like a levee in the Mississippi River, or Levi, like a pair of jeans? Or Levi, which rhymes with “Navy”? When I came to the name Reicher, I made sure to gutturalize the “ch” but of course they all laughed because in this case it was pronounced “Riker,” like the prison island. In the end, though, what mattered most was that my mother was Jewish.

•

The first story I assigned was “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, about an entire town stoning one of its own to death. The boys didn’t see any parallels between themselves and the characters in this horror story who are also bound by rituals and traditions.

“Crazy story,” they said. “Why are you making us read this?” I told them the author’s husband was Jewish. It’s true. I was reaching for a connection. I also wondered why the rabbi himself had given me this story to teach in the first place.

It was amazing how united they were. How they worked together like a pack.

“Yes, you have to break them up, figure out who the leaders are,” Rabbi B told me. Because there were four Moishes in one class, I started to call all 12 of them Moishe and worried that this might be construed as anti-Semitic. My father’s name is Moishe, I told them. It’s also true. They liked that.

After two days, part of me began to wonder if this wasn’t a school for kids with behavioral problems. One student, whose name sounded like “Sirloin,” prayed the entire time I tried to talk. I checked out the school’s rating online. One angry teacher had posted anonymously on the site, and said, among other things, that the school was “sadly lacking in resource [with] no clear behavioral policy in place.”

But what were they doing that most high school boys didn’t do? Were they really any worse? Well, for one thing, many had a smugness about them, and gave the impression that I must have been a loser for teaching at their school. Later, I would encounter the word kefira, a derogatory term for any person or thing believed to be in denial of God, sort of like treyf, or non-kosher. Was I kefira? Had I told them too much when I confessed my wife wasn’t Jewish? What was I trying to accomplish? Despite their exclusionary pride, it was nice having them ask me so many questions, as if they were genuinely interested and concerned for my well-being. As a Jewish soul who had lost his way, I think to them I was hardcore kefira.

The ninth-graders were a little better. They were new to the school, unsure of what to expect and what was expected. We read a short story by Langston Hughes, “Thank You, Ma’am,” about a young teenage boy who learns a lesson about trust and respect when he fails in his attempt to steal a woman’s purse. I asked them to take turns reading out loud. The story’s characters speak in dialect — the African-American vernacular of the 1950s. One boy read it with a thick, bassy, Southern-inflected drawl. I told him he was bordering on racism. He responded that he was from Baltimore and that’s the way “they” talk. I should stop being so sensitive, he said, because in his city “they” were the ones who “do all the stealing.”

“Realism, Mr. Mayer, not racism.” What could I say? Political correctness, I soon detected, was also clearly kefira.

•

After a few days I thought things had gotten better, or perhaps I’d become used to them. At the end of the day, I talked to the frustrated history teacher who said he worked here only because he’d been laid off and was looking for a full-time job. He was not Jewish and therefore seemed to feel much more detached about the job. He planned on leaving, and when he did, they could all go to hell.

But I’d actually gotten a little excited about teaching the 12th-graders. Yes, all seniors in high school are a bit “checked out,” but at least they tended to be more mature. Something physical happens to most students between 10th and 11th grade, and so by the time they are seniors, their brains are ready to reach a formative stage of adulthood.

We read a personal essay by the Native American writer, Sherman Alexie. It was called “Superman and Me,” and it was about how he learned to read from comic books; more importantly, it was about how the world expected him, as a Spokane Indian, to fail, and how he would go on to counter that expectation and succeed. The seniors hated it. They counted how many times Alexie used the word “I” in the story.

“He’s arrogant,” they said. “He’s self-centered. He only says, ‘I, I, I.’” I wasn’t sure if they were just trying to disrupt my lesson or if they were truly offended by Alexie’s brazen writing style. I asked them to summarize the story for me. That’s all — a basic writing skill. Write a summary. No opinions, I told them, just what he said.

“First be objective,” I told them. “Then you can respond with a more subjective approach.” They were not stupid, but they didn’t know what either of those words meant.

After class, I wondered if their objection to Alexie’s overuse of the word “I” could be construed as a reflection of something positive about the values of Jewish culture. Perhaps they were just bound by what was best for the group and not the individual. I vowed to judge less harshly.

•

I heard a loud crash before I entered the street-level room. The venetian blinds were on the floor; someone had smashed the broken panel out of the floor level window.

“The window has been broken all year,” one of the boys claimed. “It just got more broken when we opened it.” I called Rabbi B and told him I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it was clear to me that the boys took great pleasure in the fact that the pane now had a gash in it, and that there were shards of glass on the floor in the back of the room. Rabbi B was angry, but they were clearly not afraid of him. They mimicked his speech when he walked out. After all, he was not the “real rabbi.” The real one whom they feared, Rabbi A, did not concern himself with the mundane details of secular studies, and was only called from his office when all hell broke loose. So far, I’d never seen him except when I went to his office to make photocopies, one at a time.

During these visits to the inner sanctum, I learned how insignificant secular studies were. The antiquated photocopy machine ran out of toner the first week I was there and it took weeks to replace it. The rabbi waved my concerns away. A friend of mine experienced in working with the Haredi community explained that the schools themselves were not truly committed to secular studies, and offered non-religious classes only as a means to secure funding from the state.

Back in the 10th grade classroom, I broached “The Lottery” again, prompting little constructive discussion, and lots of random shouting. I took some of the blame for this. After all, in an attempt to be casual, I didn’t insist that they raise their hands.

“We killed our English teachers last year, several of them,” one student joked. “We buried one in the basement dining hall. You can see that huge lump below the floorboards.” One moon-faced kid with braces and a Russian accent said, “I will shoot you, mister.”

“Emotionally,” I countered. “I’m afraid you will kill me: emotionally.”

The ninth-graders in the meantime were beginning to come out of their shells. The two Shlomos, who had been “the good one” and “the bad one,” were now both the bad ones: the evil Shlomo brothers. One student complained to me that one of the Shlomos wouldn’t let him sit next to him in the back row.

“So sit somewhere else,” I told him. I turned around to write something on the whiteboard. I heard a screeching desk and felt the vibrating floorboards, and turned around to see Shlomo (yesterday’s “good one”) holding Shlomo (“the bad one”) by the shoulders, trying to shake him to the ground. I broke their clinch and walked them upstairs to Rabbi B. Later, he came down with both boys and said in a practiced, teacherly tone that he had never witnessed violent behavior in the school before.

“We use words,” he reminded them.

•

On the Wednesday of the third week, I called Rabbi B to tell him I wasn’t coming in, and for that matter, I didn’t want to come back: I quit. I’d never had a group this bad, not in the South Bronx, not in the Ohio detention home.

“We’ll work on this together,” he told me. “You need to pick out the leaders, and then things will calm down.” But I couldn’t come back. I told him that these were the wildest and most unpleasant kids I’d ever met. Recalcitrant, obnoxious teenagers are cliché. But these guys were unique. Maybe it was their lack of respect, which seemed to come with a broader blessing or sanction. You knew they didn’t act this way with Rabbi A.

“But we are counting on you. We hired you. We ignored other people because we thought you’d be a great teacher,” Rabbi B said.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll come back tomorrow, but today I can’t make it. If you let me stay home today, I’ll give it another chance.”

Thursday morning when I returned, the students actually seemed less threatening, and more friendly. Maybe they’d missed me? On the Tuesday before my truancy, they had been making fun of me because my shirt was inside out. Because I had dallied for so long before leaving for school on Tuesday, I had left the house with my shirt inside out and hadn’t noticed.

News got around the school pretty fast. Kids were fingering my collar to get a better look. Even the 11th-graders — the only group I didn’t teach — were recruited to come and see. In a mood of retaliation, I told one of the kids to look at his own shmattes before examining me. Dirty rags? He looked shocked. Was I calling his tsitsis shmattes? Fearing that I might have insulted his religious garments, and might lose my job in a shameful manner, I quickly said, “You wear the same white shirt and black pants everyday, and you laugh at me.”

But the pack mentality of the attack stayed with me. And perhaps also it was the chutzpah of their disrespect. They knew me barely three weeks. And yet there they were, surrounding me, checking the label of my shirt, and teasing me without any regard for my humanity. Where was the compassion?

At the start of the next week, we were getting ready to read “Dusk,” a story by Saki. It’s a tale about a con artist who gets money from someone in a park by pretending to have lost a bar of soap. The story is filled with subtle ironies and many references to dusk and blindness. If this group wanted to learn, there would have been plenty to extract from it. They took turns reading aloud — a boy named Avraham decided to read it with an Italian accent. Please, I implored them, let’s read the story aloud, seriously.

“But we read it already,” they said. “It’s about a guy who gets money from another guy after he finds a bar of soap. There’s nothing else to say.”

I silently countered them by handing out a sheet with some questions about the story, to which they needed to write the answers. One of the four Moishes said, “Why do we have to write the answers just because you can’t control us?”

The commotion level was up again. Whom would I report to Rabbi B today? Sirloin was praying as usual. Another student was studying Torah. One of the Moishes — the smart one — had his chemistry textbook open and was balancing equations. Still another was going in and out of the room so many times that I asked him if he had a bladder problem. And each time he repeated, “I’m very smart, Mr. Mayer, I just don’t work to my fullest potential.” Foxman as always was in the center seat in the back, with a big grin on his pimply face. It was hard to catch him doing anything specific — other than giggling, screaming, mocking me or fiddling with the cords on the blinds. This time he had it around his neck as if he were going to hang himself. It was a thought.

•

By my fourth week, nothing had gotten any better. The ninth-graders down in the basement were wilder than ever, and the late September temperature was hotter. For some reason, the cellar fan didn’t work, and the kids continued to whine about the unbearable heat. But I was afraid to open the rear door because I’d discovered that the backyard of the school, lined with trash cans, was a haven for rats. After class, during one five-minute break, I witnessed the 11th-graders, for sport, stoning one of these rats to death. And though I felt sorry for the poor little thing, I was disappointed that it wasn’t my monstrous 10th-graders doing the killing. Had that been the case, I could have referred them back to the stoning in “The Lottery,” and made some kind of analogy.

Tiring of the beat-up old literature textbook we were using, I asked Rabbi B if I could teach Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” It appeared to be the perfect solution — it told the story of a 14-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy, whose faith is challenged while surviving Auschwitz. Rabbi B was quick to reject the idea. “There are some pretty obvious reasons why it isn’t a good book to do,” he said. Of course, I should have known — Wiesel questions his faith. Although I didn’t think Rabbi B considered the book itself bad, he did think it would be unacceptable for this specific group. Literature wasn’t supposed to touch them too closely or prompt questions no one wanted asked — or answered. All truths were ultimately in the Torah, and anything that threatened this concept seemed to be forbidden.

Around Halloween, we had gotten used to each other, more or less. I’d come to understand that keeping the classes in order was not really my job. The science teacher screamed at them. Fed up with their racism, the history teacher walked out of class once and didn’t return till the next day. The rabbis didn’t seem to care as long as no one was killing anyone else. So rather than encourage discussions, which became unruly and chaotic, we would read aloud. (Accents be damned!) Then I would assign them written questions, and a final essay in each unit. In some pedagogically compromised way, it worked. They were very good at doing rote work. They liked questions with clear answers in the text.

When things got boring, I pulled out an old trick, which was to talk like Donald Duck. It put them in a kind of childlike trance, as they would repeat over and over, “Again, Mr. Mayer. Do Donald Duck again.” I spent part of one class teaching them the fine art of Donald Duck talk, which comes from vibrating the back lower gums of the mouth against the inside of the cheek.

“Remember, there’s no throat involved,” I reminded them. “It’s all in the cheek.”

Other times I would burst into children’s playground handclap songs that my fourth grade daughters had taught me the night before: “Happy llama, sad llama, mentally disturbed llama, super llama, drama llama, big fat mama llama, crazy llama, don’t forget barack o’llama.” They called me crazy, they laughed at me and with me, but it didn’t feel threatening. At the mention of girls, their faces would either grow blank and pale, or sick with disgust. Most of the time they liked to change the subject. But my own daughters sang in a children’s chorus and I wanted the boys to know that for the upcoming holiday concert, the girls were singing a Yiddish melody.

One Moishe said, “You mean, they sing 10 goyish songs, and then they learn one Jewish one?”

“What’s the difference?” said another one of the Moishes. “His daughters aren’t Jewish anyway.”

“I have a recording of them singing on my iPhone, listen.” “Please, Mr. Mayer, don’t play it, we can’t listen to girls singing.”

“Wait,” said the other one. “How old are your daughters?”

“Nine, almost 10.”

“Forget it, Mr. Mayer, forget it. They are too old.”

“Too old?” I laughed. “Too old for what?”

“A woman’s voice could be arousing, it’s not allowed.” “Arousing?” I screamed. “Nine-year-old girls!”

But the boys never tired of testing my Jewishness.

The seniors, who were good at avoiding work, decided one week that we would start each class with my reading a portion of the Torah. It was like studying for my bar mitzvah all over again. They hovered around my desk, and while I read they pointed to the words and helped me translate. They offered me snacks, and when I was able to say the correct blessing they applauded me.

“You’re a good Jew — see!” they would say. One of them took his high-crowned black hat from the closet and put it on my head.

“Now, Mr. Mayer, you’re looking good.”

“Yossi, give him your jacket, drape it across his shoulders.” With my iPhone they took photographs. I scolded them jokingly with a politically correct phrase I had seen circulating on Facebook, meant to chastise people who dressed up in stereotypical ethnic garb.

“Guys,” I said, “We’re a culture, not a costume.” They laughed: “We’re both!”

By November, I was worn down from carrying that heavy, torn textbook from class to class. I got Rabbi B’s permission to teach the play “Death of a Salesman” to both grades and he let me bowdlerize the text. It’s the story of a father and two sons, a dysfunctional family, and the failure of the American dream.

What could possibly go wrong?

The second and final part of this article will run in next week’s Forward.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/185691/the-misadventures-of-a-secular-english-teacher-in/?p=all#ixzz2iPVQtgoR

R' Chaim Kanievsky supporter slaps lady in the face for having a poster of the opposition

A woman was shocked when she received a slap across the face for supporting an opposition political party.

The incident began in the Israeli city of Modi’in Illit, on Wednesday night, when a yeshiva student entered a home in order to take down a political campaign poster of an opposition party.

A young woman, who gave birth several days ago, was alone in the house.

The woman, who rushed to the first floor of the home after hearing some noise, was shocked to see a strange yeshiva student tearing down the political campaign poster.

"Sorry, this is my house," the woman told the student.

That is when the student slapped the woman across the face. The student also said that she deserved it because of her support for an opposition political party.

As we reported earlier, a senior rabbi of Bnei Brak, Israel, has ordered his followers to stone to death any person, who votes for one of the new opposition parties in the upcoming Israeli municipal elections, according to a report in the Haredi World.

Several leading rabbis in the city of Bnei Brak, met at the home of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in order to discuss what action to take against those who support one of the new opposition parties running in the upcoming local Israeli elections.

Rabbi Kanievsky instructed the rabbis to immediately stop paying the salaries of those supporting opposition parties, and they should be ordered to leave the yeshiva.

The rabbi went on to say that those who support opposition parties should not be studying Torah at all, and they should not be allowed in a yeshiva or synagogue.

“This supporting opposition parties will not live in the afterlife because they are brazen sinners,” Kanievsky said.

“Those who vote or support any opposition party are publicly desecrating God’s name, harm the Torah, and desecrate Shabbat. They should all be stoned to death,” Kanievsky also said.

"The Yeshiva World News Blog refuses to print Kolko and Epstein/Wolmark Stories

Reading The Yeshiva World News Blog, you would never know that a Lakewood Rebbe was running around town raping innocent little children.

If you were reading The Yeshiva World News, you would never know that there are respected rabbonim out there, torturing people with cattle prods!

Do not make a mistake and think that they do not want to print "Loshon Hara" because the blog is loaded with Loshon Hara. 

Just my thoughts on the agenda of these hypocrites.