There is empty, concrete land  sitting there doing nothing in front of city hall.

There is a campaign going on now to get the mayor to plant a vegetable garden there, please sign the petition and help make this happen.

http://www.PeoplesGardenNYC.org

I read this in an issue of Beis Moshiach (Hebrew). I misplaced that edition so can't relay the date. (Translation, mine.)

"Before I went back to Israel my father's business partner Charlie (Yechezkel Roth) came to bid me farewell. A Jew who was one of the first students of Tomechi Temimim, which the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe had established in America; this person had descended from the path of Torah over the years, and our talk continued until I told him about my studies in Yoga and suddenly I found myself opening up to him the concerns of my heart. I told him with great vivaciousness of the Torah of Yoga which I learnt and on the ways of meditation. All my attempts to tell him of the exaltedness of Yoga he contradicted and in place explained that in Judaism there was the concept of meditation and that it is featured in the book, the Tanya."

"I didn’t pay heed to his words and I received them in a mixed manner. I was then a young bochur, and listening to what an older person was telling you, I shed with, 'the world is for the young.'"

"Towards the end of our discussion, I told him that I dream of going to India, to study where Yoga was founded. At this point, he lost his composure and screamed "instead of going to India, where there many diseases, it would be better for you if you went to Kfar Chabad."

The article goes on to say that Bentzion Cohen went to study at University in Israel and, at the suggestion of Charlie Roth, visited his friend, the mashpia, Zushe Posner.

When Shlomo Chaim Kesselman went into yechidus and mentioned Bentzion Cohen’s resolution to think chassidus before davening, the Rebbe stood up and exclaimed, "Bentzion Cohen thinks chassidus before davenimg?! Shlomo Chaim would repeat this story at many farbrengens.

Bentzion Cohen resides in Kfar Chabad with his wife and children.

you can't make this stuff up
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/us/05religion.html?_r=1&em

Shmarya writes, 

Choshen Mishpat 163:1-3 gives a town's beit din the right to tax all residents to meet communal needs.Included in those communal needs are defensive fortifications, mikva(s), synagogue(s), and salaries for rabbis, teachers, and doctors.In other words, the community is specifically given the power to tax everyone to pay for healthcare.In the same way, halakha (Jewish law) forbids living in a town without a doctor.While this isn't the same thing as mandating socialized medicine, it does clearly establish a communal responsibility for healthcare, and halakha's mandate is far more in consonance with President Obama's vision for healthcare than it is with the Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh Republican version or, ironically, the Senator Joseph Lieberman version.

I read this in an issue of Beis Moshiach (Hebrew). I misplaced that edition so can't relay the date. (Translation, mine)

"

Before I went back to Israel my father's business partner Charlie (Yechezkel Roth) came to bid me farewell. A Jew who was one of the first students of Tomechi Temimim, which the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe had established in America; this person had descended from the path of Torah over the years, and our talk continued until I told him about my studies in Yoga. Our talk continued and suddenly I found myself opening up to him the concerns of my heart. I told him with great vivaciousness of the torah of Yoga which I learnt and on the ways of meditation. All my attempts to tell him of the exaltedness of Yoga he contradicted and in place explained that in Judaism there was the concept of meditation and that it is featured in the book, the Tanya".

I didn’t pay heed to his words and I received them in a mixed manner. I was then a young bochur, and listening to what an older person was telling you, I shed with, ""the world is for the young"…

Towards the end of our discussion, I told him that I dream of going to India, to study where yoga was founded. At this point, he lost his composure and screamed "instead of going to India, where there many diseases, it would be better for you if you went to Kfar Chabad"

The article goes on to say that Bentzion Cohen went to study at University in Israel and went, at the suggestion of charlie roth, to visit his friend, the mashpia, Zushe Posner.

When Shlomo Chaim Kesselman went into yechidus and asked for bentzion Cohen’s resolution to think chassidus before davening, the rebbe stood up and exclaimed, "bentzion cohen meditates on chassidus before davenimg?! shlomo chaim would repeat this story at many farbrengens.

Bentzion Cohen resides in Kfar Chabad with his wife and children.

CAMPMEETING 2009

"Shining the Light of the Gospel To and From the Nations of the World."

This event is planned to start at 7:00 pm on Oct 5, 2009 at Streaming LIVE from Isreal!

A non-Jewish friend of mine doing graduate work at Princeton just sent this to me

 Subject: Invitation to Sefer Hasidim celebration

 

Please forward this message to the faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students in your department:

 

On Monday, October 12, at 4:30 pm, we will celebrate the inauguration of the new Sefer Hasidim website.

 

Sefer Hasidim ("Book of the Pious") is one of our most important sources for the religion, history, and culture of medieval German Jewry. This Hebrew book originated between the late 12th and early 13th centuries in the Rhineland. Thereafter, it circulated widely, influencing the distinctive religious practices and Hebrew literary style of Jews in Ashkenaz but also shaping the discourse about Jewish ethics in medieval Europe and beyond.  For the historian, Sefer Hasidim offers a treasure trove of information about the daily lives of medieval Jews under Christian rule. Particularly significant are its detailed descriptions of the encounters between Jews and Christians. Although written in the wake of the Crusades, Sefer Hasidim attests to a surprising range of contacts between Jews and Christians, spanning the continuum from their common participation in a shared cultural context to their interpersonal interactions, both polemical and routine. In effect, this book preserves a poignant snapshot of a pivotal stage in the history of Jewish-Christian relations in Europe.

Despite the significance of this source for modern scholars and its popularity among medieval Jews, there is has been no edition that integrates all of the available Hebrew manuscripts. This task proves particularly crucial insofar as Sefer Hasidim circulated in multiple versions, which varied in shape, scope, and content. Thus, in 2003, a large-scale textual project was initiated and organized to be pursued at Princeton University. After the images of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts were acquired, undergraduate students engaged in the process of transcribing the manuscripts from medieval Hebrew into a modern database. All the transcriptions were reviewed and corrected, and further preparations were made for the issue of the Sefer Hasidim database. Finally, the Microsoft Word documents were converted into a digitalized interactive web database, a major technological advance for scholarly study and interaction. The Princeton University Sefer Hasidim Database (PUSHD) is now free and available to all who go to the website (registration required).

To celebrate the inauguration of the new web site and the research done to make it possible, we will be having a reception at 4:30 pm on Monday, October 12, in the Lounge of the Department of Religion, room 140, 1879 Hall.  As part of the celebration, we will have demonstrations of how the web site operates.  Please join us.

 

www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bal-md.co.rabbi04oct04,0,6337775.story

baltimoresun.com

Women tell of abuse by rabbi

Long silence broken with accounts of mistreatment by synogogue's founder

By Nick Madigan | nick.madigan@baltsun.com

October 4, 2009

---

For more than half a century, Rabbi Jacob A. Max was a dominant figure in Baltimore's Jewish community, founder of one of its most important synagogues, an influential leader who officiated at countless cycle-of-life rituals of the faith. A man, it seemed from afar, above reproach. • But Max's reputation disintegrated earlier this year after he was convicted of sexually molesting a woman half his age in a Reisterstown funeral home.

It marked the only time a woman had sought a legal remedy against the rabbi, even though murmurs had long rippled through Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation that his behavior toward some of the females in his flock was anything but appropriate.

The hushed accusations of Max's penchant for groping and fondling - which some women say he accompanied with a smirk and an excuse about his being a "bad rabbi" - appear to have been tolerated without inquiry for decades because of his standing and authority in the tightly knit religious community. Girls who complained to their mothers about his conduct say they were ignored.

On April 13, three days before his 85th birthday, Max was found guilty of second-degree assault and a fourth-degree sex offense after a brief bench trial in Baltimore County District Court. Max, who has been married for 25 years, was sentenced to a suspended one-year prison term and one year of unsupervised probation. He will not appeal, his lawyer said.

News of the conviction prompted five other women to share with The Baltimore Sun their own allegations of improper advances by the rabbi. Three contacted a reporter and the remaining two were referred by others. The women said news of the conviction impelled them to come forward because they believe their charges about Max's behavior deserve to be disclosed, no matter how long ago the events occurred.

hat tip to vicki polin

BREAKING: Judge Lashes Out At Orthodox Community In Sex-Abuse Case; Says It Protects Abusers, Not Victims

by Hella Winston
 Jewish Week - October 2, 2009

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a16886/News/New_York.html

At the sentencing Tuesday of a bar mitzvah tutor and social worker convicted of sexually molesting two boys in Brooklyn, a New York State Supreme Court Judge lashed out at the offender's Orthodox community for "a communal attitude that seems to impose greater opprobrium on the victims than the perpetrator."

With his stinging critique, Judge Guston Reichbach placed himself at the center of a fierce debate in the Orthodox community over how best to police the problem of pedophilia.

Speaking from the bench the day after Yom Kippur at the sentencing of Yona Weinberg, who received a 13-month jail term, Judge Reichbach said he found it "troubling" that the community "seeks to blame, indeed punish victims who seek justice from the … civil society," according to a

court transcript. He went on to add that the Orthodox community's religious courts are "inappropriate" and "incapable" of dealing with criminal matters.Making his comments before a courtroom packed with supporters of the 31-year-old Weinberg - among them, according to his defense attorney, school principals, two rabbis and civic leaders - the judge spoke of receiving more than 90 letters attesting to Weinberg's character and innocence. None of the letters, the judge noted, "displays any concern or any sympathy or even any acknowledgement for these young victims which, frankly, I find shameful."

Indeed, Judge Reichbach referred to one letter in particular, written by a Mrs. Mandel and expressing sadness "that Weinberg's love of humankind has turned against him," to be "the height of chutzpah." (it continues)

hat tip to vicki polin

somebody left a big fat likutei moron in my apt. and i plan to wipe my ass with it.