Friends and relatives of Reb Avrohom Yeshaya Schtroks, OMB, have set up a website – zichronshayaschtroks.com – where people can share their personal memories, as well as contribute to a fund set up to help the family financially through this difficult time. One of Reb Yeshaya’s students in the Morristown cheder, Schneur Zalman Wilansky from Elizabeth, NJ, relates the following:
Some time last night, the windows to this Beis Rivka School bus were smashed. The bus is kept in the Crown St. parking lot which is protected by razor tipped fence and and locked gates. The only way to get into the parking lot is through the school itself, so it’s likely that the vandals were some rowdy children from the community who were attending an event in the school hall.
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.
Last Monday, at around 5:00 PM, a drunk driver hit two parked cars on Ocean Parkway; he then exited his vehicle and tried to flee. Flatbush Shomrim were on the scene and chased him down, but were unable to to hold on to him. Eventually, the Police arrived and together the man was tackled and placed under arrest.
A Jewish man walking down Albany Avenue today witnesses the attempted mugging of a Hispanic woman by an African-American man near the corner of Crown Street. While the woman held steadfastly to her possessions, he ran over to help, causing the perpetrator to flee.
An African-American man in his late 40s was shot point blank in the head in the lobby of an apartment building on the corner of Empire Blvd. and Nostrand Ave. He died on the spot.
A fascinating relationship between the Rebbe and Rabbi Yosef Leizerson, the Chairman of Chinuch Atzmai (the independent religious education system in Israel), was just discovered in a recent interview for JEM’s My Encounter with the Rebbe project.
On April 18, 2012, Yisrael Hirsch, a leader of the extremist faction of Neturei Karta spoke at a function to honor Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Israel Islamic Association and an outspoken enemy of Israel, one who has been imprisoned in the past for his pro-Hamas activities. Hirsch repeatedly refers to Jerusalem as ‘Al-Quds, and to G-d as ‘Allah;’ He calls for the liberation of Palestine from the hands of the ‘Zionists,’ and yells at the end of his speech ‘Allah Akbar’ three times.
Tuesday, Beis Iyar, there was a Siyum of Seder Zeraim, the first of the Six Orders of the Mishnah, at Chabad of South Broward in Hallandale Beach, FL. Seder Zeraim deals primarily with Agricultural Laws. Guest speaker was Rabbi Chaim Itche Drizin, who also led the Farbrengen.
On Monday night Chassidim in Montreal, Canada gathered in the central Chabad Shul to celebrate the birthday of the Rebbe Maharash. The hall was filled with Chassidic song and words of inspiration until the early hours of the morning.
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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