Ynet reports:
An Israeli diplomat was arrested Friday in the American city of Atlanta on suspicion of computer related offences linked to pornography and the sexual exploitation of children.
Captain Steve Morris, of the Columbia District Police in Georgia, told Ynet that the arrestee was a worker in the Israeli Consulate. He was arrested upon leaving his [...]
This week’s Forward has a response written by the head of OU Kosher, Rabbi Menachem Genack, to Marc Shapiro’s piece criticizing the OU’s move to more stringent kosher standards, specifically to glatt-only meat. Rabbi Genack, also a YU rosh yeshiva, is both disingenuous and dishonest in his response. Here’s why.
Rabbi Genack writes:
Discerning kosher consumers began [...]
Ha’aretz reports:
A woman and her daughter petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court Monday to recognize a suit they were filing against Elite-Strauss and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate as a class action. The two, residents of Givat Shmuel, keep kosher.
The grounds for the suit are a claim that some of the company’s products – including [...]
A nursing home resident, a woman of about 90, went to the State Fair today with her daughter. She saw just-born calves and sheep, and an array of farm animals, all up close for the first time. This woman belonged for most of her adult life to a Conservative synagogue, one that has, for [...]
Rabbi Eli Monsour asks an important question. From DailyHalacha.com:
Many Rishonim (Medieval sages) raised the question of why the Rabbis did not ordain the recitation of a Beracha over the Mitzva of Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick), as they did for other Mitzvot. …
The Rashba (Rabbi Shlomo Ben Aderet, Spain, 1235-1310) answers this question by establishing [...]
A scandal? Nope. Under qualified? No. A bad guy? No. What, then, you ask? This:
… Ultimately, the choice of presidential candidate will indicate where Kadima and Olmert are headed. If they still go for Lau, it means that they still think the realignment plan [evacuating settlements] has a chance. If they switch to Rubinstein, it [...]
A reader writes:
Businessman Herman Oberlander is very rich – it is said he is worth over $200 million. Herman – known in the yiddishe velt as Mechel – is Rosh HaKahal [head of the community, president] of the Pupa chasidic sect based in Williamsburg. His son Gedalia Oberlander of Monsey is a Lubavitcher who runs [...]
The father of the first rebbe of Chabad was an opponent of the hasidic movement and of his son, the Alter Rebbe (Ba’al HaTanya). From Assaf’s new book, courtesy of Tzemach Atlas:
R. Yekusiel Yehuda Greenvald wrote a book about Toldos Chasidus in Hungary published in 1921. This story evidently is confirmed (embellished) in Chabad sources [...]
Tzemach Atlas has a review of Assaf’s new (Hebrew) book on hasidim, which contains a chapter detailing the conversion to Christianity of the Ba’al HaTanya’s son Moshe:
…Assaf concludes the chapter by unceremoniously taking apart what was said or written about this parsha by Rayatz. Alas Assaf admits that because there is no archival evidence about [...]
A nursing home I often visit is located across from the State Fairgrounds. One of the fair’s outdoor concert venues is actually directly across the street from the nursing home. Sunday night, as I left the nursing home, I heard this:
If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his [...]
Gershon Tannenbaum, senior staff and executive member of Igud HaRabbonim, with hat.
Why would members of a faith community, in this case haredim, ultra-Orthodox Jews, resort to crime? In posing this question, I understand the number of criminals in the haredi world is less than the number of non-criminals. But I also realize that many prominent [...]
I sometimes shop in a grocery store that has a program to aid various charities and schools. You deposit your receipt in a box labeled with the name of the particular charity, and a percentage of your purchase is donated to that charity. Now the question:
In effect, a donor is confronted with 10 simultaneous requests [...]
[Left] Shaya Boymelgreen with Chabad’s Rabbi Binyomin Klein and Sefardic chief rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar at Colel Chabad’s dinner honoring Rubashkin. [Right] Lev Leviev with Chabad’s ‘chief rabbi of Russia’ Berel Lazar.
Chabad’s major donor Lev Leviev and his American development partner* Shaya Boymelgreen seem to have learned their business practices from Aaron Rubashkin. BrooklynPapers.com [...]
Israel 21c reports:
…For these students in their twenties, Tech-Careers, set up by [Asher] Elias* and an American business partner three years ago, is more than a technical school – it is a direct pathway into a middle class Israeli lifestyle that they never could have imagined…
The goal of the year-long intensive program … is to [...]
