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.

Empire Has Not Seen Its Last Crash Yet

Last night [Monday] at around 8:15pm a car service was seen speeding down Empire Blvd. and all of a sudden he sounded his horn and slammed on his breaks and hit a car that had been parked. The car that was struck was having mechanical issues and was pushed off the road into a parking spot but was left sticking of into the road a little. And the driver of the car service was screaming that the car that wouldn’t start all of a sudden started to pull out!

From the force of the impact the parked car was sent flying and completed 2 360’s ending up parked facing the other direction, and the car service in the middle of the road. One thing everyone was shocked about (even the responding officers) was the fact that no one was injured.

More pictures in the Extended Article.

Copycat Shul Attack

A teenager who threatened worshippers at a synagogue in southern Russia with a broken bottle has been sentenced to five days in prison.

The unnamed man, who was convicted on Saturday, a day after he stormed the shul in Rostov-an-Don, admitted he was inspired by television reports about an attack on a Moscow synagogue last week in which eight people were stabbed.

The copycat incident has lent weight to calls from community leaders in Russia in the wake of the Moscow attack for the government to do more to combat the increase in anti-Semitism in the country.

Following the stabbing, Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar said: “We hope that law enforcement agencies and the Russian authorities will take real measures so that this will never be repeated.”

Jewish Community of Mission Viejo Celebrates 10 Years With Chabad

Creative to the hilt, it’s fitting that Chabad Jewish Center of Mission Viejo, CA, is housed in a former bank building. Transforming ennui into excitement has been Chabad’s trademark for the past ten years. Where else does the Chabad rabbi sing with a (Jewish) rock and roll band? But most striking is the reaction elicited by mention of Chabad of Mission Viejo’s 150-student strong Hebrew school.

Angela Khalil drives a half hour to bring her sons, Nathan and Ethan, to Chabad Jewish Center’s Hebrew school. “I love it. They are the best. I come all the way from Tustin because I fell in love with the program. My kids look forward to going to Hebrew school, and we have tried so many different temples,” said Khalil.

N.O. Day Schools Back In Business

Four months after Katrina, one Jewish school reopens and another decides to resume in August.
The walls have been repaired and repainted, the floor tiles replaced and last Thursday the doors at Torah Academy, a Chabad-affiliated school that incurred an estimated $750,000 in capital losses as a result of Hurricane Katrina, reopened to welcome 28 students in nursery school through eighth grade.

Administrators at Torah Academy, located in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, chose to resume classes, even though nearly half of its pre-storm student body would not be immediately returning.

Shaping the Future

Many students question the need to learn history. We can’t undo the past anyway, why waste time learning about it? The obvious answer is that through the study of history we can educate ourselves about our own country and other countries, as well as learn from past mistakes as history tends to repeat itself.

What happens, though, when history books misinform or mislead? The damage that is done when children are fed misinformation and lies is immeasurable. Yet according to two articles I read recently it seems that there are Western democracies that are feeding their students material that is clearly undermining other Western democracies.

New York Muslim Leader Backs Iranian In Saying Holocaust Is ‘Exaggerated’

The leader of a large Shiite mosque in Queens has joined the new Iranian president in disputing the Holocaust, saying the Nazi massacre of an estimated 6 million Jews during World War II “has been exaggerated.”

“The numbers which have been mentioned are too much,” the spiritual leader of the Imam Al Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Sheik Fadhel al Sahlani, told The New York Sun. Sheik al Sahlani, who said his mosque has a membership of about 3,000, said that the killing of innocent Jews during the war was “an injustice” but that the extent of Nazi persecution needed further examination. “The numbers, the reasons, we have to study more,” he said.