News Roundup – Tue. 2/16

Ladies, make sure to get your teeth straightened before you get married. Your ability to do so afterwards has now been severely limited. “After a thorough study of halachic material on the subject,” Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv ruled that braces on a woman’s teeth constitute a chatzitza, or partition, that would invalidate her immersion in the mikvah after her menstrual cycle. On the bright side, Orthodontists and dentists in Israel now have a niche market for removing braces. Some even offer a special deal for kolel wives. That’s the spirit, people. Win win?

Borough Park businessman Menachem Ellowich, 53, feels cheated. He signed over a $100,000 check to Rabbi Elazar Abuchatzeira, a kabbalist from Beersheba, Israel, for a promise that his barren daughter would conceive a child. His daughter never conceived, and now he’s hurting. “He ruined my life,” says Ellowich. We feel for you, bro. But maybe you should’ve gone first for a second opinion.

Rabbis in Monsey have un-wussied. A conference of notable rabbis forced Leib Tropper to offer an unprecedented statement of withdrawal from his various positions of leadership, and to leave Monsey with his tail between his legs, the 5 Towns Jewish Star reports. While it may smell vaguely of the mafia-esque behavior that ultra-Orthodox rabbis are so noted for, at least they’re applying it consistently.

Dude, where’s your apron? That’s gonna be the new question to those who dare enter the sauna at the Zupnik mikvah in Jerusalem in their birthday suits. The Vaad L’tohar Hamachneh, or Committee for the Camp’s Purity, has threatened to close down the sauna after they received reports that some were entering it in the buff. What’s worse, some people were getting nude massages, some even outside the sauna itself. (Heavens!) We might be partial to nude massages ourselves, except we don’t imagine they have those cute Korean girls at Zupnik. So thanks, but no thanks, we’ll keep our “aprons” on.

“I said an ambulance, you schmuck!” “Oh, I thought you said my bank account. My bad.” Benny Rogosnitzky, 36, the cantor at the Park East Synagogue on the UES, took a $132,500 check form his mother-in-law, Holocaust survivor Klara Ringel, intended for an ambulance in the family’s name for Magen David Edom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, and pocketed it. Rogosnitzky forwarded the check to a charity run by Rabbi Saul Kassin, who took a $10,000 cut and gave the rest back in a series of checks to Rogosnitzky’s organization, Cantor’s World, and to various members of his family. Rabbi Kassin’s charity was at the center of an indictment last year for a massive money-laundering scheme. Rogosnitzky’s marriage to his wife Chana has become fractured over increasing suspicions of missing money. Says Andre Moessel, spokesperson for Rogosnitzky: “Smearing a good man with lies is no way to bring resolution to a matrimonial issue.” A perfect, grammatically correct sentence.

The mumps outbreak shows no sign of stopping. And it all started with one teenager from England who attended a Chasidic summer camp in the Catskills last year. I always thought there was something off with our brethren across the pond. Very plump cheeks, and all. But let’s not be hatin’ on our British bretheren; we have it on good authority that a number of them are avid readers, writers, and supporters of Unpious. We love you, guys, mumps and all.

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News Roundups appear twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Send news tips to unpious.editor@gmail.com.

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Tags: Benny Rogosnitzky, chatzitza, Elazar Abuchatzeira, England, fraud, Leib Tropper, massages, mikveh, Monsey, mumps, rabbis, Saul Kassin, summer camps, vigilantes, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Zupnik mikveh