A Shtetl Divided

by Matthew Shaer

Messianic vigilantes, brawling Hasidim, and the battle for Jewish Brooklyn

In the 1860s, when the architect Frederick Law Olmsted arrived in Crow Hill, he found a wasteland of balding farms and graying shale, pimpled by shantytowns and pools of pig excrement. The squalor alarmed Olmsted, and together with his partner, Calvert Vaux, he obtained a commission from the city to design Eastern Parkway, a wide, tree-lined boulevard that eventually connected the brownstones of Park Slope to the tenements of Brownsville and brought a semblance of modernity to the neighborhoods in between.

Jewish émigrés from Russia and Europe were among the first to settle the hills surrounding this new thoroughfare. For the most part wealthy, they built spacious brick mansions and beveled limestone row houses on the cross streets off Kingston Avenue, which runs north to Bedford-Stuyvesant and south to Flatbush. Crow Hill was soon rechristened Crown Heights, an appropriately regal name for a neighborhood of immigrant strivers. In his memoir A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin, who was raised in Brownsville, dubbed the residents of 1930s Crown Heights “alrightniks”— middle-class Jews who had managed to do “‘all right’ in the New World.”

The history of New York City includes hundreds of such small-scale real estate sagas—colonizations and recolonizations, incursions and retreats, the exodus and return. Inevitably then, in the years after World War II, the alrightniks began to lose their grip on the neighborhood. The enclave might have remained intact—if diminished—had it not been for the passage, in 1965, of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act, which eliminated nationality quotas and introduced a wave of immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

In Crown Heights, the bulk of the new arrivals were West Indian. “Every jackman buying a swell house in ditchy Crown Heights,” Paule Marshall wrote in her novel Brown Girl, Brownstones, which depicted Caribbean immigrant life in Brooklyn. Soon, roti shops and Creole seafood restaurants had sprouted up alongside the kosher delis; talk in the park turned from baseball to cricket. Crown Heights became the seat of the Brooklyn West Indian Carnival, the largest ethnic festival in New York City. The alrightniks took their cue. Many decamped for upper Manhattan, others for bedroom communities in New Jersey and Connecticut.

And yet the Jewish presence in the neighborhood by no means vanished. Many apartment complexes and synagogues remained in the hands of the Lubavitchers, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect. Like all Hasidim—“pious ones” in Hebrew—Lubavitchers adhere strictly to traditional Jewish law. Their lives are circumscribed by prayer, study, familial obligation, and a deep commitment to their Rebbe, or grand rabbi, who is considered closer to God than are other mortal men. In 1969, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, commanded his Hasidim to i ght for their foothold in Crown Heights, quoting from Deuteronomy: “Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that all may go well with you and that you may be able to possess the good land that the Lord your God promised on oath to your fathers, and that all your enemies may be driven out before you.”

Lubavitchers could no longer dominate all of Crown Heights—they were vastly outnumbered by West Indians and African Americans—so they adopted a policy of demographic consolidation. Between 1970 and the early 1990s, Lubavitch leadership worked to control the sixteen-squareblock area directly adjacent to Kingston Avenue, the high street of the Hasidic settlement.

According to one survey taken in 1987, more than 60 percent of black homeowners in Crown Heights had been approached with unsolicited offers from potential buyers, most of them Hasids. Community leaders complained that the Lubavitchers received an iniquitous amount of government funding (a charge refuted by several contemporary reports, including an analysis published in the New York Times) and preferential treatment from the i re and police departments and municipal services. “Sometimes I feel like we are living in an apartheid state where a tiny minority is controlling our state,” an African-American woman complained to the Times in 1987. This resentment culminated in the race riots of 1991, which pitted the Lubavitchers against the black community and left several people dead.

Still, as anthropologist Henry Goldschmidt has noted, even after the riots wound down, many in Crown Heights were split on whether the political clout of the Hasidim represented “an attack on their neighborhood’s black majority, a model of community empowerment to emulate, or both.” The Lubavitchers had built a world within a world, and it was a world to respect, even if grudgingly.

A Hasid could shop for kosher food, purchase a fedora and black suit, pray at shul, and visit his Rebbe, without walking more than half a mile. They had diners, museums, bookstores, yeshivas, and hotels for the thousands of pilgrims who came to Crown Heights to visit Schneerson’s court. A volunteer Jewish ambulance corps, Hatzalach, was pressed into service. There was a beis din—a Jewish court—to adjudicate community matters, including divorces and monetary disputes.

In 1992, Schneerson suffered a stroke, and he died two years later in his Crown Heights home. He was ninety-two. With previous successions, a new Rebbe was appointed quickly to avoid infighting or even the disintegration of an entire movement. But a new Rebbe has never been named. The reason is primarily eschatological: even before Schneerson’s death, a sizable segment of the Lubavitch community had come to believe that their Rebbe was the Messiah.

Technically, all Lubavitchers are messianists, in that they believe that a messianic age is imminent and that it can be ushered in with piety, prayer, and the fuli llment of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, identii ed in Holy Scripture. But after Schneerson’s death the Lubavitch community broke along messianist lines. The Meshicists, as they are known in Crown Heights, announced that it was their duty to spread the word of the Messiah’s arrival. (Schneerson’s physical death is not necessarily a hindrance to his messianic duties: the soul of a Tzadik, a righteous man, is said to remain close to his body for years.) Other Lubavitchers did not necessarily deny that Schneerson could be the Messiah; they just worried that if the Meshicists came to dominate the Lubavitch movement, it might scare away prospective converts.

The messianist debate, combined with the lack of a Rebbe, has wreaked havoc among the Lubavitch. The word one hears most often these days on Kingston Avenue is “vacuum.” There is a vacuum of leadership at the main Lubavitch shul on 770 Eastern Parkway, and a vacuum of leadership on the Jewish Community Council, which helps run the neighborhood. Although they are loath to admit it publicly, many Lubavitchers believe that the kingdom built by their late Rebbe is in danger of falling apart.

***

One manifestation of this turmoil is the feud between the Shmira and the Shomrim, two Lubavitch anticrime patrols established locally to help protect “the good land” of Jewish Crown Heights, and perhaps even drive out a few enemies. The Hasidic community has a long history of civilian anticrime efforts. There are Shomrim almost everywhere large concentrations of Hasidim are found: in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in Stamford Hill in London, in Melbourne. The Shomrim (Hebrew for “guards”) functions a little like an auxiliary police force. Its members—all volunteers—fix tires, help direct traffic, and escort elderly residents to and from the bus stop. They are also routinely involved in more athletic endeavors, like chasing down purse snatchers or breaking up street fights. They do not have the power to make arrests, but they can hold a suspect until the real police arrive.

The Shomrim see themselves as natural successors to groups like the Bielski partisans, a Jewish militia that fought the Nazis in German-occupied Poland. In most cases, they are a helpful presence. In Williamsburg and Flatbush the Shomrim are often credited by the police with helping to reduce incidents of petty crime. This was once the case in Crown Heights too. No longer.

The problems began in 1999, when the Crown Heights Shomrim split in two. The details are disputed, but one faction, which has retained the name Shomrim, claimed that the other faction, which patrols as the Shmira, hadbeen a party to a bank robbery. The Shmira, meanwhile, sought to cast the robbery as a failed putsch on the part of the Shomrim. The groups now maintain dispatch centers on opposite sides of Crown Heights. In Schneerson’s day, the leaders of both patrols would have been yanked into an audience with the Rebbe and commanded to make nice. Because there is no longer any central Lubavitch authority, the feud has grown.

One damp day in November 2009, I took the subway to the Brooklyn Supreme Courthouse, where six members of the Crown Heights Shomrim were on trial for gang assault. Proceedings were scheduled to commence at 10:00 a.m., but by 10:30 the judge had not yet appeared, and I found a seat at the back of the gallery, next to a young Hasidic attorney named Isaac Tamir. Around us, the Lubavitchers in attendance chattered anxiously—the men worrying the fringes of their ritual undergarments and the women clutching Gucci handbags and working the touchscreens of their BlackBerries.

“You know, I’m always looking for reporters to cover my cases,” Tamir whispered to me. “Maybe we can work something out.” He was wearing a stained tie knotted loosely around his neck; his suit looked a size too big. He said he’d once worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, and I asked him whether he thought the jury would understand the complexities of the Shomrim case.

“They don’t have to understand everything,” he said. “They just have to understand what the whole thing is really about.”

“What is it really about?”

“The feud, of course.” He opened his blue eyes wide. I had shown my ignorance. “Without the feud, there wouldn’t have been the brawl. Without the feud, the Shomrim would never have been charged. The feud is the reason six Jewish boys are on trial.”

Two years earlier, Shomrim dispatch had received a call about a disturbance at the yeshiva dormitory at 749 Eastern Parkway. Witnesses later reported seeing six Shomrim punch, strangle, and kick their way through a crowd of rabbinical students. The Shomrim claimed to have been ambushed. A video recorded by one of the students seemed to back this up: on the tape, the Shomrim are trapped, hemmed in on all sides by a mass of black hats and coats.

Had it not been for the efforts of a Lubavitch lawyer named Levi Huebner, the police probably would have been content to issue a few desk-appearance tickets for misdemeanor assault. But Huebner, who is himself a member of the Crown Heights Shmira, had relentlessly pushed the city to go after the Shomrim; he was also pursuing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit on behalf of the rabbinical students. A source at the D.A.’s office told me that Huebner was providing essential aid to the prosecution—translating for the victims, producing witnesses, identifying Shomrim. Without Huebner, there would be no trial. I asked Tamir whether people were angry with Huebner. “Why?” he said. I suggested that, historically, internal Jewish disputes had been settled by Jewish courts. He shrugged. “It’s not like that anymore. People go to secular courts all the time.”

That was essentially true— Lubavitchers, like all Americans, have become ever more litigious in recent years—but I later learned that many people were furious at Huebner. They believed that because he is aligned with the messianist camp in Crown Heights, Huebner had both religious and political reasons to go after the Shomrim, a group composed mostly of moderate, non-messianist Lubavitchers.

“What will happen to the Shomrim?” I asked Tamir. He didn’t know. “I have to go visit a client.” He pressed a business card emblazoned with his head shot into my hand. “Call me,” he said.

***

Among the witnesses that day was Yaakov Shatz, a young rabbinical student who bore a striking resemblance to a hobbit. He had small, bright eyes, a tangled mess of brown hair, and rounded features, and couldn’t have been much more than five and a half feet tall. Shatz was an alleged victim in the assault, and on cross-examination, one of the six defense attorneys, Israel Fried, attempted to get him to admit to the ideological divide between the rabbinical students and the Shomrim.

The majority of the residents at 749, as it is known locally, are Israeli Hasids, who come to Crown Heights to earn their rabbinical ordinations. For two years, these bochurim (“boys” in Hebrew) maintain a cloistered existence, shuttling between the dormitory andthe basement shul on the other side of Eastern Parkway. They are considered especially zealous among Lubavitchers. The bochurim wear yellow pins emblazoned with the motto of the Meshicist movement—long live our master, our teacher, and our rabbi, king messiah, for ever and ever—and often dance through the main Lubavitch shul waving a big yellow flag. “The Meshicist bochurim—they are not like us,” a Lubavitch acquaintance once told me. “They are more like Arabs than Jews. Like the Taliban. They will destroy us.”

If Fried could get Shatz to discuss community politics on the stand, he could show that the Shomrim may have been ambushed because of their religious beliefs. Shatz grunted and smirked and did his best not to answer questions directly. The six defendants sat at the front of the courtroom, scowling in unison at Shatz. “Get on with it,” someone whispered from the gallery, and the Shomrim guffawed. The pace of the testimony was glacial. Because Shatz spoke only Yiddish and Hebrew, an octogenarian translator had been summoned, but the translator employed a decidedly antique English—he insisted on referring to the students as “lads”—and Fried again and again had to ask for clarii cations. At noon, Shatz finally stepped down, and the judge, the Honorable Albert Tomei, called a two-hour recess for lunch.

I followed the crowd through the double doors and out into the waiting room, where a group of Hasidim were working through their afternoon prayers. The davening was efficient, mechanical: knees bent, precise rotations of the legs, arms, feet; then the slow, heavy thrum of the words. In the corner of the room, one of the defendants, Benjamin Lifshitz, was standing with his parents and his attorney. I knew Lifshitz casually but had not yet met his family, so I walked over and introduced myself. He was wearing a blue pin-striped suit, a pair of expensive glasses, and a felt yarmulke. He put his hand on my back. I shook hands with his father, Yossi.

“What did you think?” Yossi asked.

“Oh, you know . . .”

“What a joke that was.” He laughed jubilantly.

“You didn’t find Shatz convincing?”

“Let me tell you something,” said Yossi, who is tall and shaped like a large matryoshka doll. “I go to China sometimes for business and the girls there are taught to say, ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ But they can’t go beyond that phrase. That’s because they’ve been taught to say their lines but not to understand what they’re saying. Shatz has the same problem. There’s no way the jury is going to buy it.”

As it turned out, Yossi Lifshitz was right. In November, Tomei dismissed the gang-assault charges, and on December 9, after weeks of testimony, the jury found i ve of the six Shomrim not guilty of all charges. Only Gedalia “Gadi” Hershkop, a burly, black-haired giant, and the co-coordinator of the Crown Heights Shomrim, was convicted, of misdemeanor assault.

***

Levi Huebner lives with his family in an apartment on a heavily rutted side street just off New York Avenue. A couple of months after the trial, Huebner invited me to spend Shabbos (Sabbath) eve with his wife and several of his children. This Shabbos was of special significance for the women of Crown Heights—it was the anniversary of the death of the Rebbe’s beloved wife, Chaya Schneerson—and driving down Eastern Parkway, I saw gaggles of young Lubavitch women singing and skipping hand in hand through the purple dusk.

Huebner met me at the door of his apartment. His wiry hair was long andunkempt, and when I leaned in to shake his hand I smelled the mulchy tang of sweat. The women were in the living room lighting the Shabbos candles, and Huebner showed me to a long leather couch and presented me with a glass of whiskey. The drink was strong; after a few sips, I, too, was sweating. Huebner watched me with interest, separating the strands of his tangled silver beard with his non-drinking hand. He began to recite his biography. Before he got into the lawyering business, he had dealt in precious gems. He changed professions, he said, because there was no longer any cash to be made in diamonds. He was raised in Berkeley, California, by his stepfather, an artist and a professor at the University of California, and his mother, a poet. Several of his childhood friends became drug addicts, and he indicated that he had himself dabbled as a younger man. (“LSD is a nasty drug,” he told me.) He often visited Oakland—“the Harlem of Northern California”—and had taken to carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket. I asked him whether he’d had occasion to use it. “I don’t talk about that,” he said.

Huebner and I were set to leave for temple at 5:30 p.m. with his youngest son, Josef. Before we headed out into the cold, Huebner checked the weight of my jacket—to make sure I wouldn’t freeze to death—and i nding the material wanting, asked me if I wanted to borrow a scarf. Six teenage girls milled around the living room, all friends of Huebner’s daughter. Later that night, after services, I would watch the girls work their way through two six-packs of Smirnoff Ice; one got so drunk she fell off her chair and landed on the ground with a tinny crash, her dress twisting up toward her waist.

We left for 770 Eastern Parkway— headquarters of the international Lubavitcher movement—in two waves: first the women, who would be confined to the glassed-off enclosure on the second l oor of the shul, and then the men. On the walk over, I asked Huebner what would happen if he ran into Lifshitz and the other Shomrim boys from the trial. “I’d ignore them if it happened,” he said, “but they wouldn’t dare show up there.” Although 770 remains an important location for the entire Lubavitch community, the first floor—the official shul area, where the Rebbe once addressed his Hasidim— now belongs mostly to local messianists and the Israeli bochurim. The Shomrim would be more likely to worship at other, smaller shuls scattered around the outskirts of Crown Heights.

It quickly became apparent that I was something of a trophy to Huebner. “This is Matthew Shaer from Boston, Massachusetts,” Huebner said to each person we met on the street, my cue to nod, shake hands, and say, “Good Shabbos.” Crossing President Street, we ran into Rabbi Krinsky, the leader of the anti-messianist camp. He looked Huebner up and down and nodded, and then went quietly on his way.

Unlike a traditional service, Friday night services at 770 are a kind of do-it-yourself exercise. Hundreds of Lubavitchers flood onto the main floor and jostle elbow to elbow for a place to daven. I followed Huebner through the crowd, watching the faces of the other Hasidim as we approached. Most kept their eyes on their books. After the services had concluded, Huebner introduced me to a group of Shmira who had set themselves up near the door of the shul. Yanky Prager, one of the leaders of the patrol, was there with his sons, and he greeted me warmly. Two younger members were less open; one pointedly asked me what I was looking for.

“Just here for a visit,” I said.

“I’ll bet,” he sneered.

During the ceremony, both messianists and anti-messianists mingled and prayed together, but once the davening ended, the l oor was l ooded with Israeli bochurim, who often spend hours singing, occasionally in the direction of the chair where the Rebbe once sat. Several older Lubavitchers cleared the area at the west end of the hall, and the bochurim began dancing in a sort of conga line. I made the mistake of getting too close to this impromptu danceoff, and one of the kids wrapped me in a bear hug and picked me up off the ground. He pressed his head against me; his hair brushed across my face like a damp mop.

“I love you,” he said in halting English. I worked myself out of the embrace and asked a very amused Huebner whether he would mind taking me upstairs. We walked up a narrow staircase and emerged into a harshly lit corridor. The ground l oor of the shul once served as the offices of the Rebbe, and several of his former aides—all non-messianists—were chatting quietly among themselves.

“Huebner,” one of them said. “What are you doing up here?”

A rabbi we passed hesitated before reluctantly shaking Huebner’s hand; he pretended not to see me. Others stopped when Huebner passed, whispering under their breath in Yiddish or shaking their heads almost imperceptibly. Some of the contempt was directed at me as Huebner’s guest. I kept my eyes trained on the ground, and when it became obvious we were no longer really welcome in the corridor, I said to Huebner in a loud voice that I was hungry.

“Let’s go eat,” he said. He must have felt my discomfort. On the way back to the house, he was mostly quiet. When we got closer to his home, he turned to me and said, “You know, it’s easy to be a Meshicist in Crown Heights. It takes character to be a Meshicist out there in the world.”

***

A month later, I spent an afternoon walking Crown Heights with Benjamin Lifshitz. It was a blustery day, halfway through a snowstorm that would eventually blanket Brooklyn with a foot of snow, and Lifshitz was wearing a black coat and an NYPD ski cap pulled low over his eyebrows. For the Shomrim and the Shmira, blizzards are a blessing and a curse: crime is down, because criminals are usually too cold to do much of anything, but cars are always getting stuck, batteries always dying. Lifshitz’s walkie-talkie spluttered with blasts of chatter from other Shomrim, who were arrayed throughout Jewish Crown Heights, some on foot, others in enclosed three wheeled motorized scooters equipped with racks of red and white lights.

All Shomrim keep in touch via radios, which are issued when a member joins the group, along with an I.D. number and, in most cases, a uniform. Lifshitz, who is short and reedy, with soft brown eyes, would not tell me how many men are in the Shomrim—this wasn’t the sort of information he wanted available to the NYPD—but generally the ranks number between thirty and forty. I asked him whether I could see the official Shomrim command post, which is housed in a thirty-foot van parked at a repair shop called Everything Automotive, and Lifshitz agreed. We trudged down Albany Avenue toward the tenement houses of northern Flatbush. The sidewalks in this part of town open up in long, gray expanses, punctuated by vacant lots and burned-out old apartment buildings. In the distance looms the graying bulk of Kings County Hospital, where the bochurim had been taken after their confrontation with the Shomrim.

We crossed Lefferts Boulevard and walked two blocks down East New York Avenue, stopping at the bright blue door of Everything Automotive. Lifshitz rapped once on the window, and when no one answered we stepped into the cab of the Shomrim Mobile Command Post to get warm. The Shomrim purchased the van a few years ago at a police auction; they had once owned an even larger vehicle, but it was too difficult to maneuver on the narrow backstreets of Crown Heights. The new Command Post is filled with spare uniforms and radios, first-aid kits, and maps of Crown Heights, for use in grid searches. Lifshitz was showing me one of the maps when there was a loud banging at the door. Outside stood Aron Hershkop, the owner of Everything Automotive, his Shomrim radio hanging off the back of his utility belt.

“Man,” he smiled. “I saw someone digging around in the van—I was about to come and beat the shit out of them.”

I had met Hershkop several times before, and had found him gruff and standoffish, but today he looked pleased to see me. He had yanked the hood of his sweatshirt up against the cold; his pants were stained with streaks of grease. Hershkop owns several properties in Crown Heights, as well as working in the garage, where, in his spare time, he maintains the fleet of Shomrim cabs. A few years ago, the Crown Heights Shomrim drove mostly used NYPD squad cars, which they painted white and covered with Shomrim decals.

But as the feud between the Shomrim and the Shmira intensified—and the police began monitoring the Shomrim more closely—the Shomrim gave up their cars and took to patrolling only in the scooters, which Lifshitz says look less threatening. “There’s less of a chance someone is going to mistake us for the cops,” he told me. At last count, the Shomrim owned seven three wheelers in various states of repair.

Hershkop asked us to wait for a moment, and when he returned he had a book in his hand, a family history: a grandfather who had survived forced labor in Samarkand; a great grandfather beaten to death for trying to protect another Jew in the soup line of a different camp. Hershkop said he’d wanted to give the book to David Steingard, one of the two assistant district attorneys who had prosecuted the Shomrim Six, but his lawyer had advised him against it. I told him I’d love to read the book.

“Really?” He looked skeptical.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll bring it back in a couple of weeks.”

“Fast reader,” Lifshitz said, and pulled out his BlackBerry. “My mother,” he said, and began chattering in Yiddish. It turned out that Huebner had just served Lifshitz with another lawsuit, this time for the false imprisonment of a bochur. “What does he get out of a lawsuit,” he said. “My pants? I have nothing left.” He and Hershkop stood for a moment in silence. “It’s not over yet,” Hershkop said in Yiddish, and I watched him walk back through the doors of the garage, over which hung a large plush Incredible Hulk, its bright green faded to buttery pea soup under the snow.

***

The oldest yeshiva dormitory in Crown Heights sits on a quarter-acre slab of rumpled concrete at 749 Eastern Parkway, not far from the corner of Kingston Avenue. It is an ugly building, four stories high and chapped gray-white by the sun. One day in January I trekked out to the dormitory, and, finding the front door unlocked, I slipped into its airless lobby. I was there to look for Yaakov Shatz, the student who had testified against the Shomrim in Brooklyn Supreme Court. A friend had told me Shatz was leaving town, and now that he wouldn’t have to worry about censure from the community, I hoped he might be in a talkative mood.

On the second-floor landing, I heard the opening chords of “Heartbreak Hotel” plucked out on a badly tuned electric guitar. I followed the music to a black metal door. There was a great rustling and a peal of feedback, and the door opened, revealing a short, sweaty Hasid, his white dress shirt unbuttoned to his chest, his yarmulke hanging precipitously off a shock of brown hair. “Schneur Malka,” he said, extending a meaty paw and shaking my hand vigorously, as if he’d been waiting for me.

Malka’s room was low-slung, fetid, and damp. There must have been fifty pictures of the Rebbe in that tiny room—the Rebbe as a young bachelor, the Rebbe as a middle-aged man, the Rebbe after his stroke, on the verge of death. I asked Malka whether he had ever met Schneerson in person.

“Once,” he said, and clasped his hands to his heart.

“Do you believe he is the Messiah?” He smiled.

“Most people believe he is dead,” I said.

“What do they know of dead? He is not dead.”

“Then where is he?”

He shrugged. “Come,” he said. “We will look for Yaakov, okay?”

On the third floor, we were stopped by a knot of half-dressed bochurim, who spilled out of a room giggling and shrieking. As I got closer, I saw that one of the boys was carrying a shovel with a half-dead gray rat on it, its eyes flickering dully. Rats and mice are a huge problem in 749, and because Lubavitch leadership doesn’t provide extermination services, the residents are forced to do the hunting themselves. Whack! One of the kids had dropped the rat onto the ground and was using the blade of the shovel to cut its neck. A tiny splatter of blood burst forth, and the boys cheered.

Malka took me upstairs to a room on the fourth floor that had been charred from floor to ceiling; on the west wall was a blossom of black soot, where a fire had started. Apparently, a year before, a boy had decided to cook some food but then had been called down the hallway to daven, and had forgotten to switch off his George Foreman Grill. When he got back, the wallpaper was ablaze. Miraculously, the fire had not spread, though now the room was useless. A tattered plastic sheet covered the window frame, and Malka wrapped his arms around his shoulders to keep warm. “Look,” he said, and behind me I saw the only decoration that had survived the fire: a framed picture of the Rebbe— coated in soot and smoke stains—that the bochurim had not dared move.

Yaakov Shatz, it turned out, lived one l oor down from the burned-out room; his roommate had been part of the mouse-hunting party. But when we got downstairs, Shatz was gone. His roommate said that he had been summoned to a warehouse on Albany Avenue to make matzos for the high holidays. “You like matzos?” Malka asked me.

Outside, the air was cold and sharp, full of the heaviness that comes before a major storm. We walked down Eastern Parkway, under oaks stripped bare by the wind, and turned south on Kingston. Malka threaded his i ngers through mine and began to run. He ran like a squat, bowlegged bull, his chin tucked toward his chest. “I just made realization,” he shouted. “Matzos factory is closing!”

We arrived at the factory moments before the last batch of dough entered the oven. I usually like the earthy smell of matzos, but as I followed Malka through a crowd of bochurim, the aroma became thick and cloying, like the scent of rotten fruit. At a long wooden table, more than a dozen Russian women, their heads wrapped in brightly colored scarves, were pounding out circles of dough, each about twelve inches in diameter. There was no ventilation in the warehouse, no i re alarm, no natural light. Smoke collected in gauzy strands under the ceiling. Like many commercial operations in the neighborhood, this factory operated in a gray area; it wasn’t illegal, exactly, but then again, there was no signage out front, and Malka asked me not to specify the address, for fear the place might be shut down.

Shatz was in the back room, stripped to his shirtsleeves, helping a frail, gnomish man named Isaac shovel batches of bread into a roaring brick oven. Malka gave a short introduction in Yiddish, and although I didn’t understand most of what Malka said, I nodded sagely.

“You want to know about the fight,” Shatz said.

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Outside,” he said. We sat down on the curb to talk. “It was bad thing,” Shatz began. I fished for a pen and paper in my bag. “No, no,” he said. “I want to tell story in Hebrew. You find me translator. And then meet me here. Okay?” It took me two days to i nd someone willing to accompany me to the matzo factory, and by the time I got back to Albany Avenue, Shatz had left Brooklyn, traveling i rst to Israel, where he would visit his family, and then to India, where he would serve as a Lubavitch emissary. I never saw him again.

***

In early February, Gadi Hershkop was sentenced to three years of probation and a year of anger- management classes for his role in the assault at 749. In the days soon after, I called Hershkop and Lifshitz repeatedly, but they wouldn’t answer. Eventually I got sick of hearing the same voicemail greeting, and I took the subway out to Everything Automotive. I found Hershkop lying on his back on the floor of the garage, soaked in brake fluid, which was dripping off the undercarriage of a van and onto his shirt.

He was in a foul mood. A few days earlier he’d been approached by a private detective. The detective had apparently once worked for the Gotti family and came highly recommended; for $10,000, he promised to deliver a lengthy report on the forces within the Lubavitch community conspiring to bring down the Shomrim. Hershkop told me he had not yet decided whether to hire the detective. He certainly had the money— money, he said, was never the problem—but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take on anything new. He already felt overwhelmed by the strain of fending off attacks from Huebner and the rest of the Shmira.

Just as the courtroom is one front in the war between the Shmira and the Shomrim, so too is 311, New York City’s municipal-services hotline. By dialing 311, residents can notify the city about oil leaks or trash-strewn streets, or inquire about parking bans or snow emergencies. But 311 can also be used as a weapon. Hershkop says he has been plagued with calls from city inspectors, who have been—anonymously, of course—notified about possible labor breaches at his New York Avenue shop. A couple of years back, he told me, he was approached by two FBI agents. The men were nattily dressed but clumsy. “You know how you can see a cop coming from a mile away?” Hershkop asked, laughing. “It was like that. Something about the haircut. These two jokers walked up to me, flipped open their wallets, and said they were investigating me for some sort of payroll problem. I said, ‘Hey, investigate away.’ ” There was no investigation.

Hershkop also claimed that his shop is being surveilled by undercover NYPD units. On one of the days I visited the shop, I’d noticed a white van at the corner of Albany Avenue, its engine kicking puffs of gray smoke into the winter air. Two men sat inside, their feet resting on the dashboard. According to Hershkop, these men had approached him at lunchtime, offering to sell him a bunch of cheap mattresses from Sleepy’s, a major New York chain. “We can sell these things to you at a major discount,” one of the men said. “Straight off the back of the boat.” Hershkop knew that as soon as he handed over the cash he’d be cuffed and arrested for black marketeering. “So I just told them to go away.”

The end of the trial had not in any way ended the feud. The Shmira were enraged that none of the Shomrim had been jailed, and Hershkop told me that he expected things to get worse. “They’ve threatened me, they’ve threatened my wife, they’ve threatened my kids, they’ve gone after everyone I love,” he said. “They’re animals.”

Days earlier, he had attended a birthday celebration for a neighbor’s son. “Halfway through the party,” he said, “I see this kid jeering at me, pointing at me, calling me all sorts of names.” Hershkop later found out that the boy was the son of Yanky Prager, one of the Shmira leaders.

I asked Hershkop why, if he knew that the Shmira were behind the phone harassment, the FBI agents, the undercover cops, the threats against his family, he didn’t just head to Shmira HQ and start cracking heads? Men have done worse to one another for less.

Hershkop’s wife was on the phone ordering station-wagon parts, and she nodded at me warily. “You ask why I don’t fight back physically,” Hershkop said. “First of all, I don’t fight like that because that’s exactly what they want—to see me in jail. But I also don’t fight like that because the Shomrim is known here as a group that does good, and we’ve got to keep doing good.”

Hershkop pointed to one of the walls of his shop, which was festooned with photographs of the Shomrim in happier days. There was a picture of Hershkop at a picnic, one of the Shomrim assisting at an accident scene, and a posed portrait of the Shomrim with Mayor Bloomberg. Next to these was a shot of Hershkop and his toddler son, who was dressed in a blue Shomrim jacket.

Frances FitzGerald, in her book Cities on a Hill, noted that American ethnic enclaves function as “single organisms or personalities,” with unified “kinship systems, customs, and rituals.” The Jews of Crown Heights had for many years benefited from such a biological construction. Consolidation made it possible for the Lubavitchers to survive in the Crown Heights of the Sixties and Seventies. Consolidation kept them here, protected them, fostered and preserved their community, allowed it to thrive. Yet consolidation had also ensured that the wounds inflicted on each other by the Shmira and Shomrim will never heal. Aron Hershkop and Levi Huebner live four blocks apart. In a community with its own rules and laws, where their world is the only world and the life beyond these streets leads inevitably to destruction, there is no opportunity for a peaceful resolution. All that’s left is to fight.

53 Comments

  • Beware of the press!

    Where is this garbage going to be posted? This has to be one of the most biased scrawls I’ve ever read, & in my professional capacity I’ve read many.

    Matthew Shaer’s contempt for us oozes from every word. His descriptions of us & his disdain for our ways disgust me. This is not journalism: it’s a crusade to depict us as elitist snobs, uncouth thugs, dirty & ugly. Talk about sterotyping! He could have been responsible for the written equivalent of the 1930’s political cartoons depicting Jews as moneygrubbing, hooked-nose, filthy vermin who use the blood of Xtian children to bake matzos! I was actually expecting to read that when I reached the matzo-baking part!

    Perhaps the worst example of bias is when he talks about the riots “which left several people dead.” What, he doesn’t feel it necessary to mention Yankel Rosenbaum HY”D? He thinks his murder is equatable to a tragic traffic accident? Yet another example of pandering.

    The only part that made me smile was his description of all things Huebner. Still, as a Lubavitcher who lives here, to see even one on the fringe as Huebner obviously is portrayed as an uncouth peasant isn’t what I want to read. But the drunken female teen, if true, was interesting. Nice, aidel behavior at Huebner’s Shabbos table, isn’t it? Maybe Huebner will now sue Mr. Shaer for defamation of character & libel. That’s another court case I’d be interested in!

    It’s a sickening piece of yellow journalism. Mr. Shaer is not a positive example of the 5th estate; I hope he doesn’t plan on trying to win any award for this load of trash.

  • Disgusting article

    Aside from the obvious bias Matthew Shaer displays, his writing aint that great. He tries to make it like he analyzed some great news story. His headlines are overstatments and fabricated to make it appear that some complex issue is taking place, when really, his writing is just nonsenese words constructed together to try to sound like some artsy/intellectual writer….
    C’mon, fueds are universal. People fight.

  • elki

    Much to my dismay, I read this article in a friend’s Harper magazine. I was so appalled that I couldn’t even formulate an organized letter to the editor about how insulting it was.
    Not just the stories themselves but describing stains on a chassid’s clothing and a girl being so drunk Friday night that she passed out and her skirt was hiked up to her waist.
    The story was an awful indictment of CH and Lubavitch.
    I wondered where this “writer” got his information about the infighting in CH.
    I was even more chagrined to wonder if a large part of this is based on truth — that’s even worse than the writer’s inflammatory article.
    Now I ask why publicize this on CHI? Nachas, bushah, or rage?

  • baloney

    Hmmmm. Maybe the reason this person was ignored & “dissed” by people here is because of the company he keeps. Mosrim, sleazy lawyers & general no-goodniks don’t make mainstream Chassidim who are noted for welcoming all Jews into the fold feel comfortable. So when Shaer walks to 770 with such folk, what does he expect? To be warmly greeted & welcomed into normal, functioning, Chassidishe homes? Yeah, right. Just look at the creeps we have living here, some of whom he chooses to hangs with. Not exactly upstanding & moral citizens, are they?

    So he takes his revenge & like the slimeball he is, he does a hatchet job on all of us. I personally don’t care: he turns on his buddies as well, slime obviously sticks to itself. At least he despises us all equally!

  • Just A Thought

    Wow… the author paints a pretty dark picture. While I’m sure there will be people cursing out the author as an anti-semite and a soneh Lubavitch, please keep in mind that if he could see it that way, others can, too. Maybe it’s time to stop talking about change, unity, and ahavas yisroel, and finally do something about it.

  • Enough is Enough

    Ad Massai Enough fighting, all this fighting reminds me of Kamtza and Bar Kamtzah. We all want Moshiach, all the messira needs to come to an end.

  • a bad taste in my mouth

    What kind of home does Heubner have that he allows young girls to drink and get drunk? This is a lawyer? Feh. Move back to California, we dont need your type here.

  • antimesira

    to baloney comment #1:

    The guy [Matthew Shaer] reported on what he saw and what his impression was and is, sadly this is what he saw, sadly this is what every reporter sees.

    The truth hurts and it’s understandable that your hurting.
    Sticking your heads in the ground pretending that this [Huebner – shmira – Mesira] is not happening, is not going to make the problem go away.

    The reporter [Matt] was trying to get a feel of everybody.
    I am glad that he hung out with Huebner, as I’m glad that he was able to show all of us who this thug [Huebner] really is [for those of us who don’t know yet].

    All in all I think this is a great artical. The Chillul Hashem was already done in the court room last year for over six weeks [and the two years before that and the many Messiras before that and lets not for get the over 200 311 calls that shmira member Yitzchok Shuchat and others from Shmira have made on Shomrim].

    The $144 Million dollar lawsuit by shmira mesira ran by lawyer Paul Huebner is very much still active [just by the way].

  • We Dug Out Own Grave

    I want to head off a part of this discussion and point out that this massive Chillul Hashem and Chillul Lubavitch has been perpetrated by the evil ones that made the Shomrim go on trial, u’Beroshom Paul Hitler Huebner Yemach Shemo. As it is clear as day he was the one who spearheaded this campaign (at the behest of his instigators; Yanky Prager and Yossi Stern), and they are the SOLE responsible ones for this Chillul Hashem.

    Shame on Corporate Chabad, and every other Lubavitcher that did not cry to the heavens over this cruel injustice, and to those who say ‘I didn’t know’, shame on you trifold, it was your responsibility to know and it was your responsibility to spit Hitler Huebner in the face when you saw him in the street.

    This article highlights a glaring imbalance in this sham of a community.

    Shomrim, an organization dedicated to good and decency were put through what Jews in concentration camps were put through, and there are those among you who have the gall and the audacity to compare the two organizations, when you can clearly see, from an outsiders point of view, as to what is really going on here.

    The real crime here is that after Zaki Tamir made such statements to a reporter, justifying messira, was elected to lead this community. Well I guess with messira becoming common practice its only deserving that we get a man who supports messira to lead us.

    Paul Levi Hitler Hubenr Yemach Shemo makes himself sound like a modern-day gangster, with his whiskey, his LSD, and his gun in his pocket…. They wouldn’t dear come in here he says… and yet this community still feeds his family from our gemachs, his kids still go to our schools, his sons sell drugs from the backyard of his home. Vein Potzeh Peh UmTzafzef.

    We deserve this hell we live in, and we certainly don’t deserve people like Gadi Hershkop and his group of volunteers watching over us.

  • WIS

    Stop taking Jews to court, stop the Mesiras and there wont be dirty laundry and Chillus Hashem.

    Shomrim didn’t go to 320 Jay Street to spend six weeks on trial facing 15+ years jail time, because they wanted too, that was one thing they didn’t volunteer to do.

    If you sat quite then (as fresh blood was being spilled), sit quite now!

    Because we know how much you really care.

  • Is this what chabad have to offer?

    Crown Heights today is lawless
    A person comes from outside and can say. what we see every day. in his word:
    .” The Jews of Crown Heights had for many years benefited from such a biological construction. Consolidation made it possible for the Lubavitchers to survive in the Crown Heights of the Sixties and Seventies. Consolidation kept them here, protected them, fostered and preserved their community, allowed it to thrive. Yet consolidation had also ensured that the wounds inflicted on each other by the Shmira and Shomrim will never heal.
    Yes friends and neighbors rabbis are fighting people are fighting and we all forget that this community was once one community.
    Yet the liar in lieu of Vaad Hakohol go on hate blog and spread more hate. In the last 3 years we didn’t see one Vaad Hakaohol trying to bring the people of Crown Heights together.
    Even worse we see zaki instigate more violence. Shame on this man in lieu of a vaad.

  • To comment 15

    It is a known Halacha that “Mosser mutar L’Mossro”. Huebner may be a low life POS, but calling him Yemach Shemo is going a bit far. If you’re that pissed at Huebner, dig up some dirt and put him in jail instead of resorting to name calling. Please let’s not over-dramatize this. I don’t care what he’s done to you or your relatives but Yemach Shemo we reserve for the likes of Hitler and Ahmedinijad.

  • Despite all Odds

    It seems to me that Shomrim is like Israel – a small piece of land that everyone wants to rule over and all think it doesn’t have the right to exist, yet they continue to live on despite all odds! Go Shomrim! Continue doing your work LeShem Shamayim and Hashem will protect you and us!

  • Tamir is an oisvorf

    After reading this, I have lost all respect for Tamir. He must go. He is an oisvorf who does not share our values and has no business representing us.

  • no. 15 is right on the mark

    I don’t know who Paul Huebner is or what he looks like. but I do think that there should be some better accountability in this community. Our leaders need to be stronger and take a stand even when it may be a challenge to do so.

    The gmara says that when you have rachmonus on an achzor, you end up having achzoriyus to a rachmon. Hashem Yishmreinu mikol tzora vtzuka. umaskil al davar yimtza toiv.

  • Zaki Tamir, ichhhh

    It seems like Zaki Tamir forgot to offer the author popcorn because it appeared he was at court to see a show now to support the shomrim’s fight against messira. We have a pro messira vaad hakol. Mazel tov.

    I guess Yossi Hackner should start engaging in Messira as well if he wants to have good PR on Col. If you get Binyomin Lifshitz and his 5 colleagues behind bars, you will win an award from Col. I’m sure the Soffers would love to have Huebner as a client of their PR firm as well, not just Chanina, so if anyone can pony up $20,000 as a donation for Huebner, you will start seeing frequent puff pieces of Huebner on col, and if you criticize Huebner in the comments, they will censor them all out because Col really sticks up for their clients.

    COLlies!

  • Born & Bred in CH

    What’s the common thread running through the entire article?

    “Dirty” and “Crown Heights”

    Whoever invited this reporter to Crown Heights, should make a Cheshbon Hanefesh if the benefits of portraying their nemesis as dirty and thuggish, outweigh the harm caused to themselves as Crown Heightsers, because the common person doesn’t know that X is the dirty one, and Y is the clean one. They see us all this way!

  • WWTRD?

    To comment 25:

    The article started on its own when the reporter walked in to the trial of the Shomrim Six, and the entire beginning point of the article was the Trial of the Shomrim Six. If the Shomrim Six were never put on trial (through vicious messira etc.) this article would have never happened, and the resulting Chilul Hashem and Chilul Lubavtich would have never ensued, as well the dirty portrayal of you and I.

    So my question to you is; what did you do to prevent this article from happening? [Vis-a-vis what did you do to prevent the Shomrim Six from being put on trial?]

  • Ugh, what a crock....

    Rife with inaccuracies from beginning to end;demographic info,lubavitch practice and lifestyle, etc.- a veritable fable.Where was this published?

  • Blame it all on Testosterone

    Testosterone is the bane of mans existence.

    What would life in CH or anywhere else be like if woman were in charge?

    No wars and reasonable cooperation among countries and communities would be the reality. Establishing man in charge from Adam and Eve to this very day is why this country and world is crumbling under the weight of chest pounding males unwilling to compromise and unable to get along with each other.
    The fighting testosterone filled hunters and warriors of ancient times are alive and well today killing or society in uncountable ways.

    Wars, fights, murders and violence among nations, and religions from the beginning of time are the result of testosterone enraged males trying to prove they are the best and in the right.

  • Shame on him.............

    So now, not only do we know Heubner from the outside we also know some of his doings from the inside. Young teenage girls can now find solace in Heubner’s house by getting drunk. What next are we going to find out that’s happening in his house. This is a member of the BAR mind you.

  • Milhouse

    #28, what fantasy world do you live in? Since when are women more peaceful than men? Not in this world. In this world women are more warlike than men, because they don’t have to go fight. Throughout history queens have been more belligerent than kings, from Boadicea and Elizabeth through Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi.

  • Milhouse

    #18, the Frierdiger Rebbe wrote yimach shmo on Mendelsohn. Are you going to challenge that too?!

  • Bracha

    Found it amusing and biased but informative… never knew the history of how Crown Heights was built… the “author never met a person he couldn’t say something mean about” was my thought

    It’s not hard being yourself outside of Crown Heights when you have been raised a certain way and believe what you believe but despite the politics it’s easier and more fun being yourself in Crown Heights..
    Take it for what it was… a hatchet job with some good lines 770 Friday Night “do it yourself” funny but true…

    He’s a writer writing negatively yet seems to have the smallest affection still for Crown Heights… would venture to say I bet he wishes the Rebbe was still giving out dollars… that way he could have written on that too

  • annarchist

    Tamir – the guy is a sad story for a true representative of the community. Again time to remember who he is – the brother – in -law of the lioshna rebbe. Next time do a better job of vetting out your elected representatives. what CH got in turn was a guy who obviously supports messira and is anti halacha, way to go Mr. Tamir.

    On another note anyone who thinks this is biased is dreaming. It is a true and exact picture as to what is taking place in CH today. Its a sick place. time to stop the pathetic behavior and grow up.

  • Funny

    It’s funny how people are like he’s biased and doing a hatchet job BUT what he says about this guy or that guy that I dont like is true.

  • those bashing Tamir

    He is trying to make all of us look bad so why do you believe the way he described his interaction with Zaki, also, what did tamir say that was so wrong?

  • antimesira

    “Please let’s not over-dramatize this. I don’t care what he’s done to you or your relatives but Yemach Shemo we reserve for the likes of Hitler and Ahmedinijad.”

    Wait a minute:
    Didn’t Hitler Ym“s want to kill Jews for no reason other then pure hate?

    Doesn’t Ahmedinijad Ym”s want to kill Jews for no reason other then pure hate?

    Doesn’t Paul Huebner and associates [Chanina Sperlin, Mendle Hendel and Co.], want to take out Shomrim at all cost for no reason other then pure hate?

    Gadi Hershkop:
    A Fellow Jew, A father of five, a husband, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor, a beloved bus driver and a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail…Is that not a death sentence?

    Chaim Hershkop:
    A Fellow Jew, A father of two, a husband, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor, a beloved bus driver and a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail as a result of this blood libel……Is that not a death sentence?

    Yehuda Hershkop:
    A Fellow Jew, A father of two, a husband, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor, a beloved EMT and a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail as a result of this blood libel……Is that not a death sentence?

    Nossy Slater:
    A Fellow Jew, wants to be a father and husband one day, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor,a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail as a result of this blood libel……Is that not a death sentence?

    Benyamin Lifpshits:
    A Fellow Jew, wants to be a father and husband one day, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor,a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail as a result of this blood libel……Is that not a death sentence?

    Zalman Pinson:
    A Fellow Jew, wants to be a father and husband one day, a son, an uncle, a friend, a neighbor,a volunteer in the community, spending 15+ years in Jail as a result of this blood libel……Is that not a death sentence?

    Let’s not forget that every member of the above families had to go through this vicious blood libel as their own. A guilty sentence would effect all of them as well. The wifes, the children, the fathers, the mothers, the neighbors and friends, a guilty verdict would effect all of you one way or the other.

    So YES!!! Paul Huebner and all his friends who orchestrated and even those who justfied and excused this MESIRA…all of you…YM”S!

  • Millhouse

    I’m commenter #18. I was not aware of that. Nevertheless, I am sure that commenter #15 is not on the same level as the Frierdike Rebbe. As such, s/he has no business saying about a fellow yid Yemach Shemo. Like I said before, dig up some dirt, masser him, and have him sit.

  • Miriam

    One thing I’m sure. This is absolutely not what the Rebbe wanted from us. We have to start thinking about H”S will a little more and less about ourselves.

  • L.A MOM

    why would chi publish comment #18 with it’s curse words? didn’t the article make us look bad enough in that one area alone.obviously the writer of the article had some nasty agenda and he seems to see hobbits and other mythical creatures where ever ever he goes..why would anyone drag the goyishe press into our internal problems? this is just dumb and immature.

  • Yold

    Mr Anarchist:
    The food from Oneg Shabbes is glatt kosher mit alle hiddurim but the meshaleyach isn’t good enough for you.A little hypocrisy?

  • Chabad

    what i lern from this is that CHJCC are mosrim that was eli poltrack who started this mesira and chanina who faciliated that with thiere friends like Dov heikind and Paul hubner did the dirty work now we went to election and voted for HOPE new guys will bring Sholom and Ahavas Yisroel and what we got A kaker zaki same hate munger going on hate blogs to bash jews with his friend Yingi the beast. and the ex shaliach Eli Cohen.
    in six monthes they did nothing for Crown Heights and taking payoffs from Building owners and giving them the program money.
    time to IMPEACH Zaki

  • What did Zaki do wrong?

    He came to the trial to support the Shomrim Six, he explained to the reporter that the reason these Jews were on trial is because of messira, than he had to leave to see a client.

    Of course the Mr. share tried making Zaki look a bit sleazy, the goal of the article was to portray us all in the worst light possible.

  • Lincoln Continental -97

    Thank you Hershkop (don’t know your first name) from Shomrim for coming twice this week to give me a boost. Shomrim are the best!

  • What Zaki said Wrong was..

    He made it sound that we go to court on a regular basis. Even if true, which I would dispute, is not something you spew to a reporter.

  • Odd

    I understand that a lot of people were actually very kind and hospitable to the writer of this article yet he fails to mention any of it. The negative exposure of our community seems to be his only agenda.

  • elieli

    Chabad Lubavitch has completely forgotten the mitzva concerning courts, laws, respect parents, you name it.

  • reader

    lubavitchers were pitted against the blacks???? um wasnt it the blacks who were pitted against the lubavitchers??? article needs spell check!!!

  • Zaki can go daven in Liozna

    Zaki’s dumb comment about the courts was unacceptable and shows who he is – someone who has no respect for halacha himself and who of course makes a living from the courts and therefore wants to encourage his level of behavior.

  • interestedparty

    The writer is not trying to make you look bad but make you look what you are. Reality stinks doesn’t it?

  • meir rhodes

    one lesson learned from this; don’t speak to the press. i know it’s tempting to air your views with a chance to be heard ,but the repoter has an agenda. it’s very important to find out what that agenda is.

  • Please Consider...

    When being a good person and being a good Jew are mutually exclusive, something is very, very wrong.