Young Lubavitchers bolster staffs of Torah Learning Center in Kansas

In the fall of 2004, Rabbi Elchanan “Chonie” Friedman, 30-year-old son of TLC founders Rabbi Ben Zion and Esther Friedman, returned to the Kansas City area to become its director of development. He and his wife, Frumi, have four children.

This past fall, two more young (25-year-old) rabbis and their wives – Berel and Chanie Sosover and Eliezer and Devorah Leah Simmonds – moved to town to augment the staff of TLC and, simultaneously, that of the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy.

BREAKING NEWS!!! TWU REJECTS NEW CONTRACT!!!

The city’s 33,000 union transit workers, one month to the day after they stranded 7 million riders with a crippling three-day strike, voted Friday to reject their new three-year contract.

The workers, by a seven-vote margin out of more than 22,000 votes cast, opted to reject Transport Workers Union local president Roger Toussaint’s call for ratification and follow the lead of a dissident group urging rejection. The voting ended at noon Friday.

Toussaint announced the surprising vote at a Manhattan news conference.

Chabad draws Gators

Center credited with boosting Jewish activity.

Every Friday night during the fall and spring semesters, 250 Gators trade chicken wings and Miller Light for chicken soup and Manischewitz at Rabbi Berl Goldman’s house near the University of Florida.

Most of them are not religious; nor are they the geeks you’d expect to find at a rabbi’s house on a Friday night. They look more like fraternity brothers hosting a group of sorority sisters, or vice versa.

A few years ago, this scene would have been a mirage in the Jewish culture desert. Young Jews wanted little to do with Judaism. But today, they show a growing appetite for spiritual and cultural connectivity.

Suozzi tour hits the road

Surrounded by men in long, black coats and long, white beards, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi took his young campaign for governor into the heart of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community yesterday – and he didn’t forget his Hebrew.

“Good morning to everyone – Boker Tov,” Suozzi bellowed, greeting local leaders at a breakfast in Borough Park. He grinned as he repeated the salutation in Hebrew, then threw in some Yiddish for good measure.

The first day of Suozzi’s listening tour of New York State had a distinctly Jewish flavor. He spoke on a Jewish-themed radio program, attended the breakfast, visited an Orthodox school, met with Jewish editorial writers, and last night presented an award at an autism awareness dinner sponsored by a Jewish group in Manhattan.

Shomrim Apprehend Career Shoplifter

At around 2:00pm today [Thursday] Shomrim had received complaints of an alleged shoplifter going up and down Kingston Ave. at that time an alert member spotted a man carrying a large garbage bag down Crown St. towards Troy Ave. and when the Shomrim member approached he threw the bag at the member and began to run. The member put in the call for a chase on foot and immediately there were over 10 members responding and had stopped him a mere block away on Troy between Carroll & Crown!

The police were then called in, and arrived instantly, and began a search of his person and the bag that the man tried to get rid of was brought to the scene, and found 6 brand new coats in the bag and in a makeshift hidden compartment of the coat he was wearing police found a bunch of air fresheners and other assorted items!

Police then held him until witnesses that had seen him in the store where he allegedly lifted the coats from, were brought by another Shomrim member to the scene and identified him as the shoplifter. Down in the police station they locked him up and ran his name which came back with more then 20 prior arrests ranging from shoplifting to burglary!

If you see such an incident or anything else don’t hesitate to call Shomrim anytime at (718) 774-3333

More extensive pictures in the Extended Article!

Oholei Torah Pre1A Children Learn About The Rambam

In a new program for the Pre 1A grade, the children began learning about the Rambam and that he was a doctor as well as a great scholar and for the occasion Hatzalah of Crown Heights volunteered an ambulance and 2 of their members to give the kids a tour of the inside of an ambulance and during the tour they learned about the necessity of wearing seatbelts and some of the basic things Hatzalah do.

More pictures in the Extended Article!

Robbery at gunpoint in the 770 Montgomery Mikvah

This morning [Thursday] at around 5:00am one man was in the Mikvah that is located behind 770 Montgomery (between Albany & Troy) when all of a sudden 2 masked men came bursting into the Mikvah with guns in their hands demanding money form the man, he gave up his money and was not hurt.

Police arrived and took a report and posted one squad car in front of the Shul until later in the day.

A particularly disturbing fact about this incident is these gun toting robbers knew when the Mikvah opens and when to strike. This should be a cause for concern to all members of the community. So we ask of you, tonight is the Police Council Meeting please be there if not to complain, then to just show support. And another thing is if you see anyone or anything suspicious don’t hesitate to call 911 and then immediately after Shomrim at (718) 774-3333 24/7.

Orthodox Rethinking Campus Outreach

Following on the heels of Chabad-Lubavitch’s successful campus programs, other Orthodox groups are now reaching out in new ways to college students of every Jewish denomination.

Non-Hasidic, ultra-Orthodox Jews — or mitnagdim — have adopted an approach that is startlingly similar to the one presented by Chabad, the Hasidic sect whose outreach efforts have made it a growing presence at universities across America, according to Bar-Ilan University sociology professor Adam Ferziger.

In a paper that he recently presented at an academic conference at New York University, Ferziger described what students experience at campus Chabad houses: “The individual who enters is given the opportunity to interact with a knowledgeable Jew on a level that is rare in a large, established congregation…. Questioning is encouraged and the tenor of the discussions, often peppered with raucous Hasidic melodies, is motivating, but generally nonjudgmental.”

New Orleans Day School Reopens

When 26 students trickled back into Chabad-Lubavitch of New Orleans’s Torah Academy on January 5, the only thing that looked familiar was the school building and the smiling faces of their teachers. Everything else had been washed away by Hurricane Katrina.

The only Jewish day school in the New Orleans area to reopen since the devatstion, Torah Academy is still working to replace desks, textbooks, workbooks, computers, art supplies and the entire school library. “I went to get lettering for a bulletin board, but that is gone, too,” said Chabad of New Orleans representative Bluma Rivkin, who teaches at the school.

Tense Quiet in Hevron, Now the Stories Come Out

Police harassment of Jews in Hevron is not a new phenomenon. Long-time residents David Shirel and Shani Horowitz tell their harrowing stories of the past two days.

With police and army forces walking freely around buildings and onto private porches and roofs, the feeling in Hevron is that the unrest of the past few days is not yet over. “I just had a few moments of great tension,” one resident told Arutz-7 at around 5 PM today, “when a rumor went around that it’s about to happen – the police are coming to take us and throw us out. But then we heard that it wasn’t true, so we have another short respite…”

In Postville, Iowa, kosher is kosher

This article appeared in the National Geographic Magazine a few months ago, yet it still is a very good article.

“Slaughtering an animal is a bloody business,” says Sholom Rubashkin, a manager at AgriProcessors, one of the largest kosher meatpacking plants in the country. A video secretly filmed last year in Rubashkin’s plant in Postville, Iowa, by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) demonstrates just how bloody. For an animal to be considered kosher, it must be killed by a swift cut across the throat with a perfectly sharpened knife. This ritual slaughter, called shehitah, is designed to ensure that death is nearly instantaneous. But the video shows cows moving, even trying to get up after being cut. PETA says this violates humane slaughtering laws and that the plant should be prosecuted.

Rubashkin says the video, shot over seven weeks, selectively shows those few cases in which a cow, though rendered unconscious, may not look like it was killed instantly—he compares the animal’s movements to a chicken with its head cut off. As he takes me on a tour of the chicken-processing side of the slaughterhouse—the birds’ featherless bodies clicking along on an overhead conveyor belt—he says the criticism is an attack not only on his company but also on an ancient tradition. “I think PETA is after the shehitah process,” he says in a staccato Brooklyn accent that has not softened after years in the Midwest. “They’d love to make it illegal.”

Praying For Sharon… Or Not…

This picture was published in one of the major news papers in the United States with the above caption. But then you take a closer look and you can see that the “prayer book” the man is holding, is in fact a “Sichas Hashavuah”, it’s like the L’chaim in Hebrew. So, who is he praying for?

An Open Letter to the Next Prime Minister of Israel

Despite the unfortunate circumstances which precipitated your coming to lead Israel, I would like to congratulate you on your acquiring leadership of the country.

As someone who feels such a closeness to the Holy Land of Israel, I would like to tell you what I envision as the future for Israel.

As I see it, Israel is a democracy among autocracies, the small among the big, the hunted among the hunters.

I would like to see peace in the Holy Land. I don’t relish the news of the attacks, murders, and bombings. I don’t want to hear about more katyusha rockets being fired or more buses being bombed.

New credit card would aid charities in Israel

The Jewish community is being courted to get what may be the first credit card to benefit charities in Israel.

While there are hundreds of nonprofits that urge their supporters to make purchases through a Visa or MasterCard that is set up to automatically give them a payment, the focus of the charities is usually in the United States.

The new card targeted to the Jewish community across the United States — which was marketed through e-mail blasts and newspaper advertisements in Jewish publications in November — is called HAS, or Heritage Affinity Services, and was created by two Long Island businessmen.