As Gimmel Tammuz once again approaches, it’s appropriate to reflect on the past eighteen years and analyze the effect that the Rebbe’s passing has had on his Chassidim, and how we have dealt with the situation overall.
As the summer is nearly upon us in its official capacity, we soon will mark the legal-age since the infamous 1991 Crown Heights riot.
It happens often. The phone rings. It is an unfamiliar number. My eyebrows narrow, my forehead wrinkles and my memory goes for a jog trying to decipher any previous connection with the digits on the screen. I press the green button and say in a polite voice, “Hello?”
I have been getting many texts and emails asking me to weigh in on the latest New York Times article entitled, ‘Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own,’ regarding the reports of horrific abuse cases that have gone ignored or have been swept under the rug by religious leaders in the Orthodox Jewish community.
There is an old American saying: “Getting Old is Mandatory, Growing Up is Optional.” This morning I discovered that the option of growing up was not approved by the local Beis Din: as I walked past the Badatz offices, I saw what looked like a Meah Shearim wall after a torrential rain. But it wasn’t an act of G-d, it was an act of babies masquerading as Rabbis.
Everyone is saying that there is a shidduch crisis going on these days, but in my experience there is really only a Shadchan crisis.
It’s your worst nightmare. It forces sleepless nights upon you. It’s called: “The Concussion.” While its prevalent nature varies with each sport, this so-called “epidemic” is endemic in many athletic activities.
It is an event that unfortunately, has been in the blogosphere headlines, not for its potentially lofty message but rather for the sideshows and distractions surrounding it. The latest of these diversions we can call “The Third Wave.”
Most people in our community consider it chassidish to make a L’chaim at various occasions. Whether it’s an engagement, wedding, bris, yortzeit, farbrengen or gathering of any type – it’s an occasion to have a drink.
The practice of “faith healing” carries obvious dangers, such as discouraging those who need conventional medical help from seeking it. When the “healer” charges for it, the obvious worry is financial exploitation of the vulnerable and naïve.
I’ve known my good friend and former neighbor on the Lower East Side of New York Baruch Herzfeld for many years. I’ve learned to respect his perception of what’s in and what’s out, and so this morning when I went to mine the web and found his comment on Facebook on the upcoming “Antinet” – the mass gathering of Orthodox Jews at Citi Field for the purpose of banning the Internet – I decided to a.) take it seriously, and, b.) share it with you.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the world’s most famous criminal defense lawyers, wrote the following op-ed in the prestigious National Law Journal together with his colleague Ronald Rotunda explaining why Sholom Rubashkin deserves to have his appeal heard before the United States Supreme Court. Dershowitz says an overzealous Department of Justice and a judge who was essentially on prosecution team lead to Rubashkin’s 27-year sentence in Federal prison:
It’s 3:30, the bell rings. All the children in the hall are running to get out. It’s the end of the school year and summer holidays are about to begin. Waiting outside, all the children are eager to get home. One boy is waiting quietly for his father to pick him up. Slowly, all his friends leave. A strange man approaches the young boy, “Hey Shmulli! Your father is stuck at work, so he asked me to pick you up.”
In today’s day and age we live with lots of easy access to explicit information. Magazine covers are displayed all over the supermarkets, showing every type of immoral act. The internet is infested with immorality and depravity. With all these environmental hazards, do you think this has no effect on your child? In today’s world it is almost impossible to shield our children from all this shmutz. Putting a paper bag over their heads just won’t work.
Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, who has been representing New York’s 11th district – which includes Crown Heights – for the past 8 years, seems to have some communist sympathies.
I was 18 when 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared in 1979, and like everyone else who lived in New York at the time, I find myself consumed with the details of the news accounts of the search for his missing body nearly 33 years later.
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This Shabbos a close Satmar friend of my husband and I was in Crown Heights for a visit and went to 770 for Kabolas Shabbos. While in the bathroom, he realized he had left his wallet in his pocket and immediately shook it out of his pants, hiding it behind a bottle of bleach.
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