News Roundup – Tuesday, 1/19

The Leib Tropper story simply won’t go away, and Tablet Magazine has a piece outlining the whole sordid business of Tropper’s “Cadillac Conversions” along with some of his other shady enterprises. Why do I care about all this? I don’t. But readers keep sending me links to the stories, so apparently some people still find it interesting. I, for one, wish Tropper would just go hide under a rock, which he adamantly refuses to do.

Ugh, another story about Abraham Mondrowitz. Apparently, he’s been “counseling” teenagers even after his indictment for multiple counts of sexual molestation. It begs the question: who would entrust their child to an alleged sexual molester for “counseling”? One Benyamin Rosenstein, it seems, who just happens to be the father of Jerusalem City Councilman Shlomo Rosenstein, a member of the United Torah Judaism party. Can someone give me some real news?

The Jews are heading back to the desert. Or at least some Charedi ones. A new city is being built in the Negev exclusively for the ultra-Orthodox community, which will house up to 50,000 residents. Prepare for new mehadrin bus madness.

Some streams of ultra-Orthodox Jews have always been suspect in their anti-Zionism. Well, now it’s official. The Sefardi Shas party has become the first ultra-Orthodox group to join the World Zionist Organization. Politics trumps all principles. But we knew that already.

Is the music on your iPod kosher? It may not be if it has any guitar and saxophone and uses percussion more than sparingly. I ain’t kiddin’ you. A new certification is available to guide consumers on the music that “will enhance one’s connection to the Ribono Shel Olam.” How exactly guitar and saxopohone impede such a “connection” is still unclear, but we’re sure some rabbi somewhere has it all figured out.