What it is all about:The mugger & the black belt

A true chasidic tale:

My chavursa studied karate in a program run  by one of those proverbial oriental masters. He learned all the kicks and blows and  readily advanced through the ranks. One of the critical points that his teacher emphasized - besides that strict ritual of bowing and respect - was that karate is not to be used. It is to be studied and appreciated but not used against another person unless there was no choice. It was an art form and a spiritual endeavor.

One night my chavruta was walking down the dark streets of St. Louis when he was jumped from behind by a huge mugger who put a muscular arm around his throat and demanded his wallet. Having learned his lessons well he turned slightly stomped on his muggers instep, jabbed his elbow in the guys gut and twisted the surprised mugger's arm until the elbow broke. Then he ran to safety.

He was greatful that he had learned his lesson well and had handled the situation well. While it was a shame he had had to break the muggers arm - but it was purely self-defense as his master had taught.

With a feeling of self-satisfaction at his skill and his self-restraint - not only in dealing with the mugger but also his own ego - he went to his karate master to tell him  how he had successfully applied the lessons he  had been taught.

The karate master listen impassively as the events of the night before were related by his excited student. When he finished his karate master bowed slightly to him and then proceeded to give him the beating of his life. "I told you karate is not to be used unless you have no choice. If you had given the mugger your wallet he would have left you alone. This beating is because you have not learned the most elementary lesson of what karate is about.

Fighting 'Arabization' or solving housing crisis?

JPOST

On Tuesday, the National Planning Council subcommittee responsible for general planning principles recommended that the National Planning Council authorize the construction of Kasif, a new haredi city in the Negev, 10 km. west of Arad. The move was met with criticism from environmental organizations for its effect on open spaces, but also from local leaders.

Arad Mayor Gideon Bar-Lev said his municipality had opposed the initiative from the start, when it first came up for debate two-and-a-half years ago

"We think it is a huge mistake in principle and that the decision goes against the state's main planning objections of dispersing the population," he said.

Mt of Olives has website of graves

JPost

The world's oldest Jewish cemetery just went online.

A new project undertaken by the City of David archeological Park, located south of Jerusalem's Old City and at the foot of the Mount of Olives cemetery, has begun the process of identifying and documenting tombstones throughout the entirety of the Mount of Olives and uploading the data to the Web.

Tens of thousands of graves on the mount have already been mapped and incorporated into a database, in the first-ever attempt to restorethe graves and record the history of those who were buried there. Theproject includes the creation of a Web site (www.mountofolives.co.il)that aims to raise awareness of the City of David and to honor thememory of those buried in the cemetery, as well as to inform about thetours and activities available.

Tropper - Why the Rabbis were silent

5tjtimes

Rabbi Dovid Ribiat heads the Kollel Ohr Yaakov of Forshay in Monsey NY, and is regarded as a prominent Halachic authority across the US. He is also the author of several Seforim,   including the world-renowned four-volume work on the 39 Melochos of Shabbos. On January 21, 10 he graciously consented to the following interview regarding the Tropper scandal:

Interviewer: Over the past several weeks there have been a lot of questions in the media over the silence of the Rabbis in the Ultra-orthodox community re. the Tropper scandal. Why has there been no condemnation of Tropper from the Rabbis? [...]

Earthquake - Divine response to criticism of the silence of rabbis in Tropper scandal?!

A curious example of apologetics -The Earth Trembles - recently appeared in Cross-Currents. It was written by the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America - normally the epitome of cogent prose. He did slip once before by claiming that the swindler  Berny Madoff  was somehow superior to the "Hero of the Hudson" - for which he apologized.  What follows is the relevant excerpt. It is the only response of the American Chareidi establishment - that I am aware of - to the Tropper scandal.  Read his article Tidal Waves on page 5 of the Jewish Observer for a more appropriate essay.
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From a truly Jewish perspective, though, there is more that we must do in the wake of a disaster as terrible as the recent one in Haiti. We must introspect, and make changes in our behavior. The 2004 tsunami in Asia occurred during the same period of the  Jewish year’s Torah-reading cycle as the recent Haitian disaster, a  period known as “Shovavim Tat,” an acrostic of the initials of the weeks’ Torah portions. It is a time considered particularly ripe for repentance. After that cataclysm, a revered contemporary Jewish sage in Israel, Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, pointed out that the revered Gaon of Vilna identified a particularly powerful merit at this time of year in “guarding one’s speech” – avoiding the expression of ill will, slander and the like. That, Rabbi Steinman added, is a merit especially urgent “in these days, when the evil inclination puts all its energies into entrapping people in this sin… [when] it is almost impossible to find someone who hasn’t fallen into the ‘mud’.”

No prophet or wise man, only eyes and ears, are necessary to recognize that the Jewish world today is rife with “evil speech” – speaking and writing ill of others (whether the words are true, false or – so often the case – some toxic mixture of the two), and with the hatred that breeds such sins. Jewish media are filled with accusations and “scoops”; they compete gleefully to find the vilest examples of crimes to report, to do the most attention-grabbing job of reporting them, and to be the first to do so. The very week of the recent catastrophe in Haiti, a national Jewish newspaper published a comic strip featuring grotesque depictions of religious Jews and aimed at disparaging Jewish outreach to other Jews.

And another Jewish newspaper ran an editorial placing the alleged ugly sins of an individual at the feet of Jewish rabbinic leaders, simply because the presumed sinner, before he was exposed, had arranged for several respected rabbis to deliver lectures and had encouraged people to make donations to their institutions. Having thus “established” guilt by that association, the editorialist demanded that every Orthodox organization and rabbinic leader publicly condemn the alleged sinner or be smeared themselves with sin. Then he mocked rabbinic authorities as a group for, instead of issuing condemnations of sinners, rendering decisions on social and halachic matters, as if that were not precisely what rabbis are for. Those are examples of anti- Orthodox invective. But ill will and its expression, tragically, know no communal bounds – in fact, the offensive comic strip seized upon intemperate statements made by Orthodox Jews about others.

Jews can take positions. Indeed we are charged with standing up for Jewish principles. But personalizing disagreements or slandering individuals is – or should be – beyond the pale.
© 2010 AM ECHAD RESOURCES
[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]

Tefillin stopped a flight:

NYTIMES

he plane, a 50-seat regional aircraft that was less than a third full when it took off from La Guardia Airport, had been climbing through the early-morning sky for about 25 minutes. A 17-year-old passenger in a whitish sweater took out something he had carried onboard, and strapped it onto his wrist and his head.

To some people in New York, that is a relatively common sight: an observant Jew beginning the ritual of morning prayer. But to at least one person on US Airways Express Flight 3079 on Thursday — the flight attendant — it looked ominous, as if the young man were wrapping himself in cables or wires. [...]

World of Geirim - IV Seeing both sides

Growing up's Guest Post

Rav Sternbuch: Behind the Miracles

Is there still a need for EJF? - An insider's perspective (Revised)

The following is the first of a series of posts that asks why hasn't the second shoe fallen? Why hasn't EJF been closed down?

Now that Tropper has left the organization - even without the foul odor associated with the organization - it still has not produced the "universally accepted geirim" and its geirim are not uniformly high quality.  The following contends that it is a chaotic mess which sows discord and confusion and in reality has fallen significantly short of what they claim they are doing.  It is a poorly organized group that doesn't even have a manual which describes the halachic principles it follows , a program sylllabus for educating candidates or even the standards for accepting candidates or mentors.

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Mondrowitz - Israeli interview of Mark Weiss

This is a link to the Israeli Reshet Bet news discussion regarding the Israeli Supreme Court's decision not to extradite Avrohom Mondrowitz. 

The program (Hebrew) is approx. 20 minutes long and is about 1 hour and 4 minutes into the broadcast. 

 

  http://www.iba.org.il/media/?recorded=14&starting=diburim-wed

Haiti - Appeal by Aid Organizations

Zaka 


Orthodox Union's fund

International Medical Corps


There are still thousands of patients seeking treatment of which approximately 80% are in need of surgery and are running out of time - especially with the tremendous aftershocks still devastating this country. The team is treating crush injuries, trauma, substantial wound care, shock and other critical cases with the few available supplies - And they're in it for the long haul.

Haitians & Chasidim and Kiddush HaShem

NYTimes

Spring Valley Village Hall sits in a drab strip mall along with Angel Nails, the Family Dollar discount store, the Caribbean Village restaurant and other modest businesses in this Rockland County village, which has a mix of Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews, Latinos and blacks. Haitians make up roughly half the population of more than 25,000.

So in terms of demographics, there was nothing out of the ordinary in the scene at Village Hall on Tuesday, with bearded Hasidic men in their long black coats and a largely black crowd of workers and volunteers scurrying around the lobby, which was filled with boxes of medicine, cotton balls and crutches, big black suitcases and an air of incessant activity.[...]