When sharing runs afoul of the law

While shooting the Israeli film “Ushpizin,” Gidi Dar’s critically acclaimed fable about the power of faith, filmmakers adhered strictly to the rules of Orthodox Judaism, vetting the story with rabbis and declining to shoot on the Sabbath. But when two U.S. synagogues recently screened foreign DVDs of the movie, they ran afoul of Hollywood’s own orthodoxy: to charge admission requires permission.

Picturehouse, distributor of the film, threatened legal action in a letter to the Chabad Center of Passaic County, N.J. To educate the public, the company also placed ads in publications such as the Jewish Journal. Though the matter was settled amicably this week, the episode provided a glimpse into a clash of cultures over the issue of intellectual property rights.

Chabad joins Shas campaign

Members of the Chabad Hasidic movement will assist Shas in the upcoming elections campaign, the ultra-Orthodox party said Thursday.

Shas spokesman Roi Lachmanovitch said that the agreement between Shas and Chabad was reached through MK Amnon Cohen, who is close to billionaire and Chabad member Lev Leviev.

Lachmanovitch said Chabad members will help with field work at the Shas election headquarters, and will not be involved in a national campaign as it was in 1996, when it used the pro-Netanyahu slogan, “Bibi is good for the Jews.”

Shluchim Conference: A Time for Taking Stock

A Chasidic quip attributed to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi says, “Your neighbor’s material wellbeing is the stuff of your spiritual wellbeing.”

This idea, delivered with the familiar punch of Chabad aphoristic teachings, was directed at devout disciples of the founding father of Chabad Chasidism. Men of practiced self-denial, they lived spartan lives in pursuit of holiness. But in establishing some of the foundational values of Chabad, their teacher, Rabbi Schneur Zalman, eschewed any aspirations to the ethereal that might preclude involvement in the corporeal as it pertains to others.

Oholei Torah Alumni Reunion

Last night Oholei Torah Alumni gathered for a reunion and a Chassideshe Farbrengen. The event also was an opening ceremony for Oholei Torah’s Shnas HaChamishim.

A New Project was launched at the event, a website www.oholeitorah.com which will serve as a base to keep alumni in touch with each other and connected with Oholei Torah.

The reunion was opened with the Rebbe’s kapitol by Naftali Junik, a 5th grade student, followed by a Dvar Torah by R. Yossi Paltiel. The event was sponsored by R’ Dovid Junik in memory of his father R’Berl. Representing the family was Shlomo Junik, who told the crowd about his experiences he personally had with the Rebbe and Rebbetzin.

More pictures in the Extended Article.

New Center to Rise in New Jersey

Two hundred people celebrated the best kind of growing pains when Chabad Center of Northwest New Jersey broke ground for its new 12,000 square foot home.

Just ten years ago, Chabad moved into its home on One Torah Way, but the popularity of its preschool, classes, Hebrew school and new Hebrew high have filled its cozy synagogue and ground floor classrooms to capacity and then some. In the current space, much time is spent moving the tiny tables and knee-high chairs to the side for Hebrew school and evening Torah classes and then back again so the kids have room for blocks and play dough the next morning. “The new building will allow for the quality and quantity of our classes to be enhanced,” said Chabad representative Rabbi Asher Herson.

International Representation of World Jewry Convenes at Annual Conference

Conference organizers at Lubavitch Headquarters are expecting a record-breaking 3000 participants at this year’s International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim. That’s a marked increase from last year’s conference which topped off at around 2300, a result, says Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Vice Chairman of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch, “of the fact that so many young Lubavitch couples have joined ranks with the Shluchim since last year.”

The five-day conference begins November 24. It’s the one chance a year that Shluchim get to unwind and regenerate among fellow travelers in their life-long calling known as Shlichus. On this annual return to the hearth and home of Lubavitch, the Shluchim are treated to a content-rich program of workshops, seminars and presentations covering a wide variety of topics related to their work.

Hollywood critized for tactics against orthodox Jewish group

The city’s former code enforcement chief told federal lawyers she thought the city’s scrutiny of an orthodox Jewish group using a private home to conduct services was “excessive.”

In a Nov. 10 deposition, Jackie Gonzalez, the city’s former director of development administration and economic development, said the city’s methods left a “bad taste” in her mouth.

“We visited the Chabad on a regular basis … and it was continuous, continuous, continuous, and I felt maybe a little too continuous or excessive,” she said.

Chabad fights for religious symbols on public property

Shrewsbury and Wellesley [in Boston, MA] are two towns questioning the display of menorahs

Local Chabad rabbis are meeting resistance from town officials over displaying menorahs and holding candlelighting ceremonies on public property this Chanukah season.

Shrewsbury town selectmen originally refused a request from Rabbi Michoel Green to place a menorah in the town common. However, after a Nov. 21 meeting, the town decided to retract their refusal, although they have not given Chabad permission to display the menorah.

In Wellesley, Rabbi Moshe Bleich successfully negotiated with town officials to allow a menorah to be displayed on the town lawn for the entire holiday season under the agreement that he would rescind his request to hold a public ceremony.

Tonight: Fifty Years of Alumni

Oholei Torah reminds all its alumni, including the bochurim of last few years to join in the Alumni Reunion tonight. The program is full of surprises and special guest speakers including prominent Shluchim and askanim. The Alumni office will be launching a new project to benefit Oholei Torah Alumni at the reunion.

During the reunion a special tribute will be made in memory of Reb Michoel Teitelbaum, o”h, and the farbrengen will also be the opening for the Shnas Hachamishim celebrations in Oholei Torah Don’t miss this historic event!

No More Honking on Kingston Ave.

A few new signs went up on Kingston and President, Kingston and Union and Kingston and Eastern Pkwy. the signs read “Don’t Honk – $350 Penalty”.

Now as most of you know of the ticket blitzing that keeps on going on in our neighborhood [where crime is always at its lowest], well this is just another warning for something that they have the new ability to “catch you on” [a pretty expensive catch].

So for all you drivers, please make sure to wear your seat belts and use your phone with a hands free kit or just don’t use it, and now don’t use your horn either.

Oholei Torah Administration Responds to the Accidents

After the 2 accidents involving students from the school [one on a bike, the other was 2 walking home on Shabbos] the administration put up a peculiar note on the “Zal” billboard.

Gulag Survivor Relays What He Withstood in Defense of Judaism

Like so many other Chasidim living in the Soviet Union, Baruch Mordechai Lifshits was a target of the authorities from an early age. So, it came as no surprise when the 21-year-old, just newly engaged, found a swarm of KGB agents looking for evidence of his “subversive teachings.”

They came to his home – displaying a piece of paper indicating they had been watching the Moscow-based shochet and mohel – and barked, “Where are the Jewish books?”

As the now 89-year-old Brooklyn resident relayed to some 20 students and professors at the University of Pennsylvania on Nov. 10, the walls of his home were filled with volumes of the Talmud, commentaries on the Torah and books on halachah.

New Shluchim to Washington heights

Rabbi and Mrs. Yackov Kirschenbaum will be moving on Shlichus
to Washington Heights on the Upper West Side Manhattan.

They were appointed by the head Shliach of the West Side Rabbi Shlomo Kugal and Merkaz Le’einyanay Chinuch.

Hatzlacha Rabba!

Rapper Matisyahu – From Bible To Billboard

COULD a bearded, brim-hatted Lubavitcher from Crown Heights be one of next year’s breakout musical stars?

It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Since his live album was released last year, the buzz has been growing around Matisyahu, a 26-year-old vocalist whose music combines reggae, hip-hop and Jewish spirituality.

Bullets keep flying in my backyard

Exactly two weeks after the Daily News published my concerns about raising my son in a rough neighborhood – Crown Heights – where crime is on the rise, the front-page story was about one of my neighbors, Police Officer Wiener Philippe, getting robbed and shot on St. Johns Place by a thieving lowlife who remained at large as of yesterday afternoon. The NYPD’s command staff must now match Philippe’s bravery with concerted action.

After years of headlines touting historic declines in crime, the latest numbers in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and Prospect Heights neighborhoods paint a much less rosy picture.

In the 77th Precinct, where I live, there were 15 murders last year – way down from 1989, when 70 people were murdered, but still an unacceptable 66% increase from 1998. In the neighboring 71st, which covers lower Crown Heights, there have been 18 murders this year, an eye-popping 157% increase from last year.

Piamenta Strung out

Almost 29 years have gone by since the rock guitarist Yossi Piamenta left Israel for New York in order to work on his joint album with the legendary sax player Stan Getz. The album never happened. Instead, Piamenta found G-D and became religiously observant, married his 16-year-old cousin, raised six children and, within a few years, from his Brooklyn base, gained a reputation as the “Hasidic Hendrix,” not to say the “gefilte Garcia.”

Now he’s back in Israel – for good, he says. “I have returned permanently. My father, who is 80, called me in New York and said, `Come back to Israel, be with me a little.’ He never talked in that tone before, and I decided to come back. All my life I have played and made music and I won’t stop. Now I will play in Israel and form a band and go abroad for gigs wherever I am invited. My base from today on is Tel Aviv.”