Familiarity With The Festival Grows

Kenneth Alan Spector’s mother’s medical bills were such a puzzle that when the insurance company’s telephone rep read the record she could not help but sigh, “Oy vey.”

Spector, a new congregant at Chabad of Northridge heard her classic Jewish groan and replied, “Chag Sameach!” After a beat, the rep returned the happy holiday greeting. As the two chatted about the Jewish New Year, Spector asked if the rep had fulfilled the Sukkot observance of waving the four plant species: palm, myrtle, willow and citron, known as lulav and etrog. When he got a negative reply, Spector – who bought his first lulav and etrog set this year – explained the practice and its message of Jewish unity.

excerpt from todays Daily News

The crowd was thick around Bloomberg yesterday as he walked the streets of Crown Heights and picked up the endorsement of the Crown Heights Political Action Committee.

There may have been one person he wished wasn’t in the crowd: Rabbi Moshe Rubashkin of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council.

Rubashkin, who served time in prison for passing more than $300,000 in bad checks, didn’t speak at the endorsement event but was recognized by Chanina Sperlin, chairman of the Crown Heights PAC, as “my colleague.”

Bloomberg campaign aides noted Rubashkin is not a member of the Crown Heights Political Action Committee and had no official involvement in the event.

Chabad Recognized By UCM

Eight years after arriving at Columbia, Chabad has finally been recognized as an official campus group.

Chabad, an organization led by Hasidic Jews, has unofficially been a part of campus for years but was just granted recognition under United Campus Ministries as Columbia’s newest Jewish organization, after first applying in 2003.

“Everything is a process and this wasn’t going to happen overnight,” said Rabbi Yonah Blum, who runs Chabad out of his 110th street apartment. “It took a while but sometimes that is how life works. Not everything is simple and immediate.”

Magazine accused of anti-Jewish dual-loyalty slur

As scholars prepare to mark the 100th anniversary of the antisemitic ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ a US magazine has published a Protocols-style “dual loyalty” slur against Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., one of the most prominent Jews in early twentieth-century American politics, alleges an institute that focuses on America’s response to the Holocaust.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine has printed an article in its November 2005 issue that the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies claims blames Morgenthau and Zionism for prolonging World War I. The Wyman Institute is located on the campus of Gratz College, and includes the Institute’s advisory committee includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, Members of Congress, and other luminaries.

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_THE LULAV

This is a blog post from a Jewish guy that lives in park slope and his experience with “Lubavitchers” (trying to do Mivtzoim). Good Reading.

Yesterday, I found myself irritated by the Lubavitch men on Seventh Avenue. Walking home at 6 p.m., I was asked at least five times by different groups of men: “Are you Jewish?” Each time I said “No” and they seemed to believe me. Maybe it’s the blonde hair. Surprisingly, they didn’t seem to flinch at all when I said: “No.”

As a kid in a secular Jewish family, I loved the idea of Sukkot. I knew what it was even though my Jewish education was somewhat spotty. Building a Sukkah, a make-shift structure, out of branches, leaves, shrubs, and straw seemed so cool. Who wouldn’t want to create a beautiful little playhouse in the courtyard of our apartment building or in Riverside Park.

In Park Slope, Sukkot means that there’s a rather impressive Sukkah at Chai Tots on the corner of Prospect Park West and Third Street and the men from an extremely evangelical wing of hasidic Judaism, the Lubavitch sect, are out in droves in their dark suits trying to pursuade Jews to shake the lulav.

Houses of worship stay open

Leaders keep routines, but watch weather.

Excerpt:

Chabad of South Broward is planning its Simhat Torah dinner-dance for 7 p.m. Tuesday, although Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus may shift gears if the hurricane comes this way.

“In Jewish law, when something is doubtful and something is definite, you stay with the definite,” said the Hallandale Beach rabbi, who founded the first Chabad Lubavitch center in Broward and Palm Beach counties. “Simhat Torah is a definite. You can’t cancel a holiday.”

Beyond that, he said, his Chabad of South Broward is following normal storm-time practice: calling on the elderly, delivering food and supplies, seeing who may need to be moved. But Tennenhaus isn’t planning for the worst.

It’s a wilderness out there, Sam; take shelter for the day

Sometime around 8 o’clock this morning, rabbis Yossi Lipsker, Alti Bukiet, and Asher Bronstein will drive up to the foot of the Sam Adams statue at Faneuil Hall and start building a sukkah.

Constructing a sukkah — a temporary dwelling — during the Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot is a biblical commandment that Jews have been observing since the Exodus. And, while sukkahs have long been fixtures in synagogue courtyards and in congregants’ backyards, this is a first for Faneuil Hall.

”We feel that the motif and the theme of the sukkah resonates beautifully with the birthplace of freedom in America,” says Lipsker, who along with Bukiet and Bronstein, set up an educational center last year at 10 Milk St. to teach Torah, Talmud, and Judaism in general.

Ferrer unveils property tax cut plan

Fernando Ferrer wants to one-up the mayor on property tax relief.

The Democratic mayoral nominee went to the easternmost corner of Queens yesterday to unveil a proposal to reduce property taxes for most homeowners in the city.

Criticizing Mayor Michael Bloomberg for raising property taxes several years ago, Ferrer announced announced at the Little Neck event that he would cut the tax value of all homes under $800,000.

Big Esrog Small Esrog

Dare to compare, literally. Crown Heights’s largest Esrog next to the smallest Esrog.

Who is the “Special Guest” tonight?

As you all know that tonight is the last night of Simchas Bais Hashuaiva with music, and the organizers of the event have a “special guest” for us tonight. I’ve heard rumors that it may be Matisyahu.

I wanted to know if any of you know or think you know who it is. Post your opinion/guess in the comments.

“Strange Bedfellows” – Part 1

There is a famous saying about politics “Politics makes strange bedfellows”, of course I’m hoping that people won’t take the above sentence in it’s literal sense – to avoid some serious halachic and moralistic complications.

Many pleasantly surprising alliances are taking place at these times; people who once fought neck-to-neck are now aligning themselves to destroy a common evil.

Do you remember the “Dollars” scene? Who were the main actors in that episode? The answers may be quite surprising. Normal, sensible, and truth-seeking people have finally come to ends with their senses and have awakened to a terrible by-product which was only recently created by themselves.

Mayor Bloomberg Visits Again

Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Crown Heights once more after visiting just a few days ago. And was greeted by Assemblyman Dov Hikind and Baalie Batim including Rosh Hakohol Moshe Rubashkin, Chanina Sperlin, Shaya Boimelgreen, Meyer Eichler and Chaplin Col. Yakov Goldstein.

After a brief tour of Kingston Ave. the mayor held a form of a press conference in front of the Jewish Children’s Museum, asking for our vote in the upcoming election.

Abandoned chickens saved from death

They just dont let up.

Their name is their fate – broilers. And, but for the efforts of a local animal sanctuary, 200 or so abandoned Brooklyn broilers were saved from a fate worse than deep-frying during the weekend.

Animal rescue officials believe a dozen crowded crates of starving chickens discovered Sunday in an empty Coney Island lot were unused leftovers that had been scheduled for slaughter as part of an unusual religious ceremony.

The atonement ceremony, called “kapparot,” is practiced in some ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sects on the eve of Yom Kippur. The ceremony requires a man or woman to wave a chicken over his or her head three times while reciting a prayer. The chicken is then slaughtered and given to the poor.