News Roundup – Monday, 1/18
The Chabad rabbi of Newport Beach California, Rabbi Reuven Mintz, believes that the estate of Joey Bishop, former member of the “Rat Pack,” rightfully belongs to Chabad. The girlfriend claims otherwise. The California Supreme Court decided this is one fight they don’t want to get involved in.
Who knew that Rabbi Aron Leib Steinman, a sage who lives in a one-bedroom B’nei Brak apartment, would have something worth stealing? Well, apparently some enterprising burglars did. Turns out the spartan-existence-leading Rabbi had $50,000 in cash, and hundreds of thousands more in checks that were entrusted in his care for charity distribution. And the burglars took off with the whole lot.
If Chasidim aren’t dong much for relief efforts in Haiti, at least some other Yiddish-speaking (or singing) folks are. The New Yiddish Rep and the Workmen’s Circle are sponsoring a concert at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on Jan. 28th. For those wondering, I have no inside info, but I don’t imagine Lipa Schmeltzer will be there. Then again, Lipa has done stranger things.
When Rabbi Shlomo Riskin said that he has a personal fascination with Jesus, preferring to think of him as “Rabbi Jesus,” I thought finally someone is reclaiming Jesus as one of our own, for the nice Jewish boy that he surely was. As it turns out, Riskin had to retract (partly due to outrage voiced on Yeshivah World News, that bastion of Lakewood-esque clear-headed thinking). It is now claimed that the message was “mauled” through “careless editing,” yada, yada, yada. Way to go in cowering to the rightward fundamentalist worldview – members of which were demanding that Riskin ”be stripped of his clergy status at once, and banned from his community.”
Some people are concerned that expanded activities on Saturdays at a local athletics field will disrupt the “Shabbat experience” of the area’s Orthodox residents. Funny thing is, when I grew up I passed many a schoolyard on Shabbos where kids were playing baseball, and – being the wide-eyed and curious Chasidic kid that I was – it only seemed to enhance my Oneg Shabbos, not lessen it. I guess people in Merion City, PA aren’t as wide-eyed for a baseball game as I was when I was ten.
Call me cynical, but somehow the ZAKA team singing ‘Haveinu Shalom Aleichem’ and taking a break for Friday night services during relief efforts in Haiti doesn’t get me all teary-eyed – as seems to be happening to some others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a sentimentalist as the next guy. But the scenes of carnage we’ve been witnessing can hardly be dampened by a few Israeli patriotic songs. And while we’re on the subject – I’m not particularly moved by photos of Israeli soldiers davening Shachris beside their tank in war-torn Gaza either. Just had to say it.
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