News
News Roundup: 10/27/11
[Plus Update: Woman judged guilty of witchcraft by rabbinical court...]
Credit: Scott Ableman
Charedim never engage in violent crimes. Except, of course, when they do. Avraham Hirshman, who is said to be a member of the famed gang of Jerusalem thugs, the “Sikirikim,” was savagely beaten by a another group of equally despicable thugs, a group of Gerer Chasidim. We’re having some trouble deciphering the conflict, but from what we can make out, it has something to do with a kolel in Mea Shearim’s Batei Varsha neighborhood, blasphemy against the Gerer rebbe, and other grievous but hazily specified offenses. Thousands of Charedim came out to protest the internecine violence.
Jacob Marmurstein, the head of Private Tranportation Corp., which runs the now-infamous B110 route between Williamsburg and Borough Park, promises to have signs posted on the buses informing passengers that discrimination will not be tolerated. Which brings to mind the signs we used to see in our yeshiva dining rooms stating that our school does not discriminate based on “race, religion, or sex.” Which always made us wonder whether Chrissy, the cute Puerto Rican girl from down the block, might one day join us in our gemara class. (As it happens, Chrissy never showed up.)
In other news involving the aforementioned Sikrikim, members of the group appear to be curiously offended by one rather pedestrian habit: eating ice cream. According to Beliefnet.com, “The ultra-orthodox Sikrikim say that they are disgusted by people licking ice cream in public — and that such behavior promotes promiscuity, much like dancing.”
While outrage has been ongoing over sex-segregated buses in the U.S., a group of Israelis has tried to battle sex-segregation in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Meah Shearim. Around 40 members of the group Free Israel, consisting of both men and women, attempted to march down Mea Shearim Street to protest the illegally sex-segregated Charedi thoroughfare. The Charedim were having none of it and attacked marchers and their police escorts with stones, bottles and other projectiles.
It’s a cold war all over again, with Russia now pitted against a different kind of superpower: Chabad. In a bizarre diplomatic scuffle, a Russian sailing ship, scheduled to dock near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, cancelled its plans and was rerouted to Mexico. The Russians feared that the U.S. would seize the ship at the behest of Chabad, which has been battling the Russian governemnt over the so-called Schneerson Library, a collection of more than 62,000 books and documents assembled by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement over two centuries and is now being held at the Moscow State Library.
The Jewish Political Action Committe, a representative of which seems to be spamming the Unpious comments lately, has been warning members of the Hasidic community of its growing concerns about gay marriage. Apparently, JPAC thinks that because gay marriage is now legal, gay people will be prowling Hasidic mikvas for marriage partners.
Former chief rabbi Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau told a bunch of Israeli high school students that intermarriage “play(s) into the hands of the Nazis.” As we all know, Hitler gave a free pass and a piece of chocolate cake to any Jew married to a gentile.
[UPDATE -- Just in:] A rabbinical court ruled that a woman accused of witchcraft was indeed a witch. The woman denied it but she failed a polygraph test. The court then ordered her ketuba amount reduced. The court did, however, exonerate her on the charge of not cooking for her husband, as the latter had committed adultery.
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News Roundups appear every Thursday (or when our News Roundup writer gets around to it, whichever comes first). Send news tips to unpious.editor@gmail.com.
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when did the gay people stop hanging out in the mikvahs?
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I recall my yeshivah’s policy…”Yeshiva [...] admits Orthodox Jewish boys without regard to race, creed or national origin.”
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Ben Sorer — Precisely!
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Is it my imagination, or is one of the uniting factors of the various Chassidic groups a broad and assumed disregard for the rule of law? I mean, no exceptions to the rock-and-turd-throwing even for police??
And am I the only one who has never heard a prayer for the welfare of the government in a Chassidic shul?
My rav from back in my goya-limbo days was arrested for embezzlement, a few years after he hung his Chabad shingle near the local university. He stated that he only did it because he assumed he was helping people in need. The problem with that is, this was no ordinary cash-in-the-hand tzedakah; it involved tens of thousands of dollars, and there was no indication the funds ever reached the needy.
Maybe he was an exception. Then again, maybe not? I bet the former chasids-from-birth among you could give me an idea.
By the way: does anyone know that chimpanzees fling turds at intruders, too (both simian and human)?
They also eat their own babies if there’s nothing else around, but I don’t think there’s a connection here…
Regarding the dangers of gay marriage and the mikvah: How come this never happens on the women’s side? I’m insulted…
Oh- I forgot, we don’t use the mikvah until we’re married. In that case, I should be grateful…
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will segration on the bus ever end? this reporter doesnt think so… http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203554104577002202406931764.html?KEYWORDS=rosa+park
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Attention all frum yidden
Attention all frum yidden
CALL or EMail all New York media demanding they look into the illegal all girls Public school in East Harlem. Why are they allowed to run an illegal all girls public school supported by city funding and Jew are harassed for a bus that its passengers choose to sit apart from the opposite sex. Why is there a double standard between Harlem and Borough park. Let’s stand up for Justice. Flyers will soon follow with all media numbers calling for investigative reporting of the all-girls public school in Harlem. Organized by Jpac. Jewish political Action committee.
jpacnyc.blogspot.com
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/770770
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Mr. JPAC, enough with the free advertising and self-promotion. Our comments sections are for discussions, not for repeatedly posting info about your organization and promoting your agenda. Thank you.
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@shulem was thinkin same thing but since Im not the editor didnt wanna get involved. SO annoying.
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@Shulem
@Lissa
Personally, I’m enjoying some of the rhetoric, such as, “CALL or EMail all New York media demanding they look into the illegal all girls Public school in East Harlem.”
There’s so much I like about that particular sentence that I don’t know where to begin.
There’s something wonderful about a person’s bandying about a term like “all New York media” as if it were a knowable, definable quantity.
Does the term include, for example, the New York Review of Books and the New York Amsterdam News?
How ’bout all the glossies in the Conde Nast building?
Are we to demand that Vogue take a hard-hitting look at this “illegal all-girls public school in East Harlem”?
Or is this an outrage best covered by Women’s Wear Daily?
There’s also a lot of enjoyment to be found in the use of “demand” in this particular context, since it assumes that “all New York media” are exquisitely sensitive to “demands” issued by the anonymous public, specifically to those “demands” calling for some sort of investigation of an allegedly “illegal” all-girls public school in, of all places, East Harlem.
(A reasonable person can’t but wonder about the legality of all-girls schools in, say, Newark, Jersey City, or even, G-d forbid, Weekapaug. Who’s keeping tabs on them???)
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@Der Bik — LOL.
There really is something endearing about someone so buffoonish. Except that underneath it there’s something about his ranting that’s really sinister. And at some point — after all the laughs — it becomes kind of annoying, I think.
Maybe we should set aside one page devoted to JPAC’s comments, where he can post drivel to his heart’s content, and the rest of us can drop by for occasional amusement.
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zev brenner addresses this issue on his radio show
http://talklinecommunications.com/broadcasts/?p=episode&name=2011-10-30_talkline_sun_1030_willy_bus_controversy.mp3
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