Friday, October 22, 2021
Beit Shemesh Chareidie Woman Stabbed to Death by Her 27 year-old son
Tamar Stern was 52 years old and a mother of 9, initial reports from the media indicate that the son, Shimon Stern, had mental issues and just yesterday was begging his neighbors for cigarettes and told them that his mother refuses to let him buy cigarettes.
Dr Robert Bierenbaum Threw His wife out of an Airplane in 1985
 |
| Robert Bierenbaum said he strangled his wife, Gail Katz, in 1985 in a fit of rage because he was “immature.” |
A former Manhattan plastic surgeon convicted in his missing wife’s murder has fessed up to tossing her body from a private plane into the Atlantic Ocean, more than three decades later.
Dr. Robert Bierenbaum, a trained pilot serving 20 years to life in prison, admitted to the crime at a parole hearing for the first time since his wife, Gail Katz, 29, vanished in 1985, ABC News’ “20/20” reported.
“I went flying. I opened the door and then took her body out of the airplane over the ocean,” Bierenbaum told the parole board in December 2020, according to a newly obtained transcript.
Bierenbaum told the board that he strangled her in a fit of rage because he was “immature” and “didn’t understand how to deal with his anger,” the outlet reported.
“I wanted her to stop yelling at me, and I attacked her,” he said.
Though Katz’s body has never been found, Bierenbaum was found guilty of her murder in 2000.
Prosecutors were able to secure the conviction based on circumstantial evidence, presenting a theory of what happened to Katz identical to the doctor’s confession.
“I was like, ‘Holy s—, are you kidding me?’” one of the prosecutors, Dan Bibb, told the outlet of the admission.
“I was stunned because I always thought that that day would never come, that he would own up, take responsibility for having killed his wife.”
Bierenbaum was denied parole. His next hearing before the board is set for November.
Katz’s family has found little solace in the bombshell confession.
“This is exactly the same man that I knew 35 years ago,” Katz’s sister, Alayne Katz, told ABC News. “He hasn’t changed … he is incapable of a shred of remorse.”
She added, “My sister’s body has never been found … Gail doesn’t rest anywhere.”
Anti-Zionist Lev Tahor Cult Members Exposed as Really Praising Israel
A video has come to light of two Lev Tahor members praising the state of Israel, a stark departure from their usual vehement anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric and quite risky since they currently are engaging in efforts to reach Israel’s archenemy Iran.
Uriel Goldman, who is now in the Kurdistan area along with two other cult members, is seen in the video praising Israel for its behavior during its recent war with Gaza and in previous operations, when the Israeli army does everything it can to avoid harming civilians.
The Zoom video was recorded shortly after Operation Guardian of the Walls, which took place in May.
‘Sleeper cell’ of evangelical Christians posing as Orthodox rabbi who Peformed Giyur, Taharos, Gittin
 |
| Transformed: Michael Isaacson recently and years ago ( |
A father and son practicing as Orthodox rabbis in America have been accused by anti-missionary investigators of being secret evangelical Christians.
The claims over Michael and Calev Isaacson — who have changed their family name from Dawson — would cause disastrous halachic problems for the Jewish community if true.
Sacred rituals performed by the two men include writing holy scrolls, washing the dead, and conducting weddings, divorces and even conversions.
Investigators allege neither man is Jewish, making any rituals in which they took part invalid.
They are suspected of being a “sleeper cell” of evangelical Christians who may ultimately attempt to make aliyah and embed themselves within Israeli society.
The Isaacsons have been accepted and welcomed in a number of Orthodox Jewish communities in locations across the US.
Extensive research has uncovered no evidence of traceable Jewish heritage or any official conversion by members of the Isaacson family.
An investigation by the JC has revealed that Michael Dawson grew up in a Lutheran home and he and his wife were married in a Lutheran wedding.
An aunt of Michael Isaacson was shocked to hear about his professed Jewish identity, telling the JC she found his claims over his background “bizarre”.
There is no evidence that the Isaacsons are attempting to convert Jews to Christianity, but when confronted over their true faith they have refused to renounce their belief in Jesus.
The Isaacsons currently reside in Phoenix, Arizona. The family was based in Texas between 2014 and 2016, when Michael Isaacson worked as a supervisor in the Houston Kashrut Association.
They have also lived as Orthodox Jews in Portland, Oregon and Milwaukee.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Vaccinated tourists to be allowed into Israel starting November 1
srael will begin allowing tourists who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus into the country starting November 1, the Prime Minister's Office announced Thursday.
Tourists will be allowed from all countries except 'red' countries and countries which are seeing an outbreak of the new AY4.2 variant.
Six cases of the AY4.2 variant have been discovered in Israel so far.
The first case to have been discovered in Israel was that of an eleven-year-old boy who had recently returned from Moldova and was already in quarantine when his test came back positive.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett held a consultation with senior government and ministry figures on ways to combat the spread of the new mutation. The Prime Minister stressed that developments must be closely monitored and acted upon quickly.
Bennett ordered that each case of the new strain in Israel be focused upon with an increased epidemiological investigation. It was also decided to contact countries in which the variant exists, in order to clarify and share information.
Park East Synagogue pushes out Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt the assistant rabbi, sparking protest
Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, fired its popular assistant rabbi after the longtime head rabbi rebuffed a congregant-led push to “revitalize the synagogue.”
Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, 34, had been working for the synagogue for a decade and was known for his outreach to Russian-speaking families. He began at Park East as a rabbinic intern and congregants told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that many hoped he would lead the synagogue one day.
But his tenure there abruptly ended with an email from Senior Rabbi Arthur Schneier that went out to community members on Monday. Schneier wrote, “Assistant Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt is no longer employed by our Synagogue,” but did not elaborate on the decision.
Israeli Court Exonerates Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz for Calling Yona Weinberg a Convicted Pedophile "an Armed Terrorist"
Five years after being sued for libel for warning Har Nof parents on social media to consider a convicted sex offender in their neighborhood as dangerous as “a terrorist with a machete,” a Monsey rabbi has been found not liable for his tweet.
 |
| Yona Weinberg the "Armed Terrorist" |
Jerusalem Magistrate Court Justice Michal Hirschfeld’s verdict was issued in September and made public on October 19th, blocking Yona Weinberg’s "chuzpedike" demand that Rabbi Yakov Horowitz pay him 200,000 NIS for defamation.
In her decision, Hirschfeld said that Rabbi Horowitz had acted in good faith and that his warning was truthful, her verdict including an implicit criticism of Israel’s lack of a public sex offender registration and failure to monitor immigrants who are convicted sex offenders.
“The law of return is being terribly abused,” Rabbi Horowitz said “These people come in emboldened that they evaded justice and they just disappear. Nobody in Israel knows who they are or what they have done.”
Rabbi Horowitz, a long time child safety advocate, said that Americans typically don’t understand the dangers child molesters pose in Israel.
“In Monsey, Flatbush or other neighborhoods, when someone moves in people take notice, but in place like Har Nof, there are large buildings with people constantly moving in and out and it is much easier to be anonymous,” said Rabbi Horowitz.
Equally important is the fact that children in Israel frequently play outside without supervision and that people feel that they are in a safe place and often let their guard down.
Weinberg spent 13 months in prison in 2009 for sexually abusing two boys who were coming to him for bar mitzvah lessons. As a level three sex offender, Weinberg was considered to be a high repeat offense risk as well as a public safety threat, and police discovered that he had fled to Israel in 2014 after going to his Brooklyn home to arrest him for sexually assaulting an 11 year old boy. Ten days after news broke in January 2015 that Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson’s slow reaction to charges against Weinberg had given him an opportunity to leave the country, Rabbi Horowitz tweeted “Har Nof residents Convicted sex offender Yona Weinberg is LEVEL 3!! Treat him as a terrorist with a machete.”
Weinberg filed his defamation suit nine months later. Rabbi Horowitz said that he never once considered backing down, even with Weinberg’s lawyer accusing him of inciting violence against his client.
“I looked him in the eye and asked him if he ever buried a child who committed suicide and told him ‘I shoveled dirt on the graves of children who had killed themselves so don’t tell me who is a terrorist with a machete,’” said Rabbi Horowitz. “Yona Weinberg posed an existential life-threatening danger to children and I told the judge that if she wanted to punish me for saying that, she could.”
Rabbi Horowitz also recalled a Har Nof community leader telling him that he had contacted someone in Brooklyn about Weinberg and was told that the accusations of sexual abuse were “just a story.”
“I asked him, what if I’m right, and he answered that that they were keeping an eye on him,” said Rabbi Horowitz. “I asked him if he would just keep an eye on a terrorist with a machete, and that became the warning that I tweeted.”
Hirschfeld did order Rabbi Horowitz to pay Weinberg 3,000 NIS for statements he made categorizing him as a fugitive and alleging that he was giving children non-kosher candy.
Rabbi Horowitz was also instructed to pay Weinberg an additional 3,000 NIS to cover expenses and half of his court costs. Despite those relatively minor penalties, Hirschfeld made it clear that she felt that Rabbi Horowitz’s tweet had been intended to protect children from harm, writing in her decision that it came “out of an honest concern for the public’s safety,” and noting that Jewish sex offenders were free to become Israeli citizens and live their lives without any restrictions imposed on them.
Rabbi Horowitz described Hirschfeld’s verdict as “an incredible victory for children.” With the defamation suit now behind him, he is continuing his campaign to create a sex offender registry in Israel and hopes that parents will use news about his defamation case to open a discussion with their children about the dangers of sexual predators in an effort to keep them safe from harm.
Brian Laundrie's body found?
The “probability is strong” that the human remains found in a Florida park on Wednesday belong to Brian Laundrie, a representative for the family said Wednesday night.
Laundrie family attorney Steven Bertolino made the shocking statement in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, but added “we are going to wait for the forensic results to come in to verify that.”
A backpack and a notebook belonging to Laundrie were also discovered in the park Wednesday on the same day Laundrie’s parents, Chris and Roberta, showed up to help search for their fugitive son.
Bertolino told Cuomo that the findings were made near a bridge that connects the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park and adjoining Carlton Reserve.
“This is the very area of the park that we initially informed law enforcement on, I believe it was Sept. 17, that Brian would be most likely in the preserve in this particular area,” the lawyer said.
“It was quite near the entrance,” the lawyer said, “About 30 minutes in.”
The parents filed a missing persons report on Sept. 17 after Brian apparently failed to return home after going for a hike in the park.
The FBI explained at a Wednesday press conference that the area where the remains and items were found had “up until recently been underwater.”
Brian, 23 has been the subject of a massive police and FBI manhunt since he went missing and was named a “person of interest” in the murder of his 22-year-old girlfriend Gabby Petito.
Petito’s remains were found on Sept. 19 in a Wyoming park and her death was later ruled a homicide by strangulation.
Laundrie’s parents left their North Port home about 7:15 a.m. Wednesday for the park.
Bertolino told Cuomo that he reached out to North Port police on Tuesday night to give them a heads up that the parents intended to help search the next morning.
The Laundries later discovered a white bag and another object after making their way through a thicket.
They could be seen putting the object into the bag and handing it over to an officer, Fox News reported.
The couple could be seen making and receiving phone calls before being joined by the officer, who patted Chris on the shoulder.
Bertolino said Wednesday night that Brian’s parents are “heartbroken” over Wednesday’s developments.
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Police Arrest 3 More Suspects From Berland’s Shuvu Banim In Jerusalem Murder Cases
 |
| Nissin Shitrit, z’l, 17, disappeared from his home in Sanhedria Murchevet in 1986 and is believed to have been murdered. |
Israel Police on Tuesday morning arrested three additional suspects of alleged involvement in two murders that occurred in Jerusalem over 30 years ago.
The suspects are all in their 60s – two are residents of Jerusalem and one is a resident of Haifa.
The suspects are or were members of the Shuvu Banim kehilla and include the son of a former Israeli minister and the husband of the woman who admitted her role in one of the crimes.
The woman’s attorney said that her client was a victim of the Shuvu Banim cult and she is cooperating with the police.
The court extended the detainment of the three suspects arrested on Sunday for another eight days.
Shuvu Banim is led by Rabbi Eliezer Berland who was convicted in 2016 after admitting to two counts of indecent acts and one “assault.” In June, he was convicted on charges of fraud, exploitation, attempted intimidation, tax offenses and money laundering.
"Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg are Horrible People" Says Meghan McCain
When Meghan McCain suddenly left The View, one TV critic hailed her turn as “a highly effective heel, a love-to-hate reality villain.” But Meghan McCain’s forthcoming audio memoir Bad Republican insists her liberal partners on the show were the villains. Howard Kurtz at Fox News revealed some of the details of her “scorching response.”
Under the Taliban, Afgan families in debt are selling off their children
Desperate to feed her family, Saleha, a housecleaner here in western Afghanistan, has incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she sees out is to hand over her 3-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money. The debt is $550.
Saleha, a 40-year-old mother of six who goes by one name, earns 70 cents a day cleaning homes in a wealthier neighborhood of Herat. Her much older husband doesn’t have any work. Such is the starkness of deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis that is worsening fast after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, prompting the U.S. to freeze $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets and causing a halt in most foreign aid.
A reporter spoke to the lender to who Saleha owes the money. He admits that he made an offer a few weeks ago to cancel her debt if she hands over her daughter to be “married” to one of his sons when she reaches puberty. Until that time, the daughter will do domestic work around the house. In the phone interview, the lender made no bones about the arrangement. “I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” said Mr. Khalid Ahmad, reached by phone in Badghis. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.”
Let that sink in for a moment. “So there is no option but taking the daughter.” Something that struck me when I was reading this horrifying story was the realization that our failure in Afghanistan didn’t only come with the botched evacuation. (Though that was a massive failure also.) We were never going to “remake” the country into some democratic bastion of freedom because we never really changed the culture of that nation, aside from perhaps among some of the younger women in urban areas. After twenty years of western influence, it took a matter of weeks before the locals (and we’re not even talking about the Taliban here) were back to treating females as literal property. This lender clearly has no qualms about buying that toddler – another human being – and forcing her into a life of servitude until she becomes the closeted sex slave of one of his sons… when she reaches puberty.
In other words, when she’s somewhere between eight and fourteen years old. And that assumes there are enough scraps of food in the home to keep her alive until then.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
At least 14 Iranian officers killed in Damascus bus blast ???
According to additional reports from Syrian and Lebanese outlets, the casualties were Iranian officers. At this stage, no organization has claimed responsibility.
Two explosive devices reportedly went off as the bus was on the Hafez al-Assad bridge, the report said, adding a third device was defused by an army engineering unit.
The attack was the deadliest in Damascus in years, and a rare event since government forces captured suburbs formerly held by insurgents in Syria's decade-long conflict.
Syrian state TV showed footage of the charred bus in central Damascus, saying the blasts occurred while people were heading to work and school.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred at a main bus transfer point under a bridge, where vehicles converge and head out to different neighborhoods of the capital.
"It is a cowardly act," Damascus police commander Maj. Gen. Hussein Jumaa told state TV, adding that a police force had cordoned off the area immediately and made sure there were no more bombs. He urged people to inform authorities about any suspicious object they see.
Such attacks in Damascus have been rare in recent years after government forces captured suburbs that were once held by Sunni Islamist insurgents.
Personal letters by the 'Chazon Ish' Donated to National Library of Israel
The "Hazon Ish" (Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, 1878-1953) is considered to be one of the most influential rabbis of the 20th century. The letters reveal a very personal side to the revered spiritual leader.
In one example relating to Yehuda's decision to join the army and enroll in secular studies, Karelitz responded: "I am rich with love for others, particularly toward you, a young person armed with talents and with an understanding heart. … But when I saw the sudden change in you recently … I had to wait and process my great pain."
Born in what is now Belarus, in 1933 Karelitz moved to what was then British Mandatory Palestine with the help of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi there and a formative figure in the modern religious Zionist movement.
Countless visitors flocked to Karelitz's humble home in Bnei Brak during the last two decades of his life, from simple devout Jews to the leaders of the secular Zionist movement, including Israeli founding father and first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, despite the fact that Karelitz was an opponent of Zionism.
A teacher and expert in Jewish law, he left an enduring mark on ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought and culture.
The letters have been donated to the National Library by Yehuda's widow, Hassia, and their children: Rachel Yehuda, Talli Yehuda Rosenbaum and Gil Yehuda.
A free online event celebrating the arrival of the collection will be held on Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. Israel time/1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, moderated by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda's daughter, Professor Rachel Yehuda, vice chair of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Reprinted from JNS.org.
Yom Kippur Machzor Sells for 8.3 Million Dollars
A medieval Jewish prayer book sold for $8.3 million at the Sotheby's auction house Tuesday, fetching the highest price ever paid for a Hebrew manuscript.
Known as the Luzzatto mahzor, the rare book is named after its former owner, a 19th century scholar, theologian, poet, and book collector by the name of Samuel David Luzzatto. It originated in Germany's Bavaria region in the late 13th or early 14th century. Over the years, the prayer book traveled to Italy and France.
In 1870, it was purchased by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a Jewish cultural institution in France. Despite concerns the book would go into private hands, the institute said the move was necessary, citing financial debt.
Written by a scribe by the name of Abraham, the book includes several ancient versions of prayers that have since disappeared from Ashkenazi tradition. Its lavish illustrations and embellishments showcase the community's wealth.
The winning bid reportedly went to an anonymous American buyer.
Asked by Israel Hayom why Israel's National Library did not purchase the ancient text, a spokesperson said, "The National Library regularly examines existing sales in Israel and overseas and weighs each case individually." The spokesperson noted "the price for acquiring the mahzor is very high, and requires the enlistment of the state and donors to assist in such an acquisition."
Is this Yeshivishe Derech..... ?
Will they accomplish anything screaming like a bunch of uncivilized baboons?
The Mysterious "Mr Shoshani" Probably the Greatest "Talmud Chacham" from the Previous Generation
Who was he? What was his real name? He was known to Harav Kook and known to R' Yoel Teitelbaum who mentions him in a letter that was recently auctioned, he calls him "Hillel Perlman"? Why was he so mysterious? He knew the entire Torah including the Talmud and the Zohar by heart.
The National Library of Israel (NLI) has received and has now opened public access to singularly significant archival materials from "Mr. Shushani" (also known as "Monsieur Chouchani"), a mysterious and brilliant man who served as the personal and perhaps most influential teacher to a number of significant 20th century Jewish cultural and intellectual figures, including Elie Wiesel.
Shushani had an extraordinary photographic memory, and was reportedly able to recall and cite the entire Hebrew Bible, Talmud and many other Jewish texts from memory, while also mastering various fields of mathematics, physics, modern philosophy and different languages. The disheveled figure attracted students who were captivated by his unexpected charisma. Many of them saw him as one of the most influential figures in their intellectual development.
The notebooks are full of thoughts and musings, concrete ideas in the realms of Jewish thought and other fields, memory exercises, mathematical formulas and more. Extremely difficult to decipher, a handful of scholars have been given access to some of the writings in recent years and they will now be open to the general public for the first time. Scholars believe that the notebooks will reveal some potentially groundbreaking ideas and teachings related to Jewish thought and texts.
Shushani zealously guarded his true identity and few details about his personal life are known today, more than fifty years after his death. Born in the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century, throughout his life he traveled as a vagabond around the world: in Europe, Mandatory Palestine and later Israel, the United States, Uruguay and other countries. During his travels he left a tremendous impression on his numerous students.
Though his real name remains a mystery, a number of modern scholars believe it was probably Hillel Perlman. Among his students were Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel; philosopher Emmanuel Levinas; and Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, former chair of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who donated Shushani's materials to NLI.
As a teacher, Shushani provoked unrest in his students, attacked them with difficult questions and sometimes even verbally assaulted them for their lack of understanding. However, he encouraged them to improve and progress, and especially to think in unexpected ways. Legendary spiritual and intellectual figure Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who knew him in his youth, described Shushani as "one of the most excellent young people... sharp, knowledgeable, complete and multi-minded."
One of Shushani's greatest admirers was the writer Eli Wiesel, who wrote of him: "He had mastered some thirty ancient and modern languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. His French was pure, his English perfect, and his Yiddish harmonized with the accent of whatever person he was speaking with. The Vedas and the Zohar he could recite by heart. A wandering Jew, he felt at home in every culture."
Mr. Shushani died on January 26, 1968 in Uruguay. Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, one of Israel's leading intellectuals, was his student at the time of his death. According to Prof. Rosenberg, "the world is divided into those who knew him, and those who did not."
According to Dr. Yoel Finkelman, curator of the NLI's Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection, "There is no more suitable place for Mr. Shushani's archive than at the National Library, whose role is to preserve and make available to the public the intellectual and cultural treasures of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. We consider it of paramount importance to bring to the public's attention the story of one of the most mysterious and influential figures in twentieth-century Jewish thought."
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)