News Roundup – Thur. 5/13

[News & Media]

Another incident of Charedim in Mea Shearim getting angry about something or other and turning the streets into a war zone. This time it’s over the arrest of a Charedi organizer of violent protests in the past. We sympathize with the Charedim for having few other outlets for aggression. (What’s a few garbage bins on fire, and shattered windows of a police cruiser when there’s so much at stake… like, the continued arrest of a violent criminal?) But Shahar Ilan takes issue with the Mea Shearim Charedim, claiming there’s “no reason” for unrestrained violence. No reason?! Is he kidding?

Noa Roz prayed that morning with her talis and tefilin the way she does every morning. But this morning, after finishing her prayers and heading to the bus station to work, she encountered a Charedi man staring at her left arm. She still had the familiar strap-marks, known to every Charedi man who wears tefilin regularly. “Are those from tefilin?” the Charedi man asked angrily. When she said “Yes,” he grabbed her arm violently and began kicking her. When a passerby intervened he let her go, but continued to shout at her: “Woman! Profanity! Sacrilege!” For wearing tefilin.

A Catholic priest in Queens claimed that the media is “controlled by Jews,” and it is they who are to blame for highlighting the Catholic priest child molestation incidents. Rev. Vytautas Volertas told a Lithuanian-language newspaper: “Have you ever seen an article in The New York Times about a criminal rabbi? No? And you won’t see one.” For real.

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court, was a brainy self-assured twelve-year-old girl, when she challenged the Orthodox rabbi of her synagogue: she wanted a Bat Mitzvah celebration, complete with reading from the Torah in the main sanctuary. It was in 1973 at Lincoln Square Synagogue, and the rabbi was a young Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. According to Riskin, Kagan did not get her way and did not read from the Torah. She got a celebration on Friday night instead, and read from the Book of Ruth.

He speaks Yiddish, moved in Orthodox real estate circles, and has been charged in a massive mortgage fraud scheme. Sound familiar enough? Except this time it’s John Star, a Nigerian national who learned Yiddish from his adoptive parents in Switzerland, and is now on the lam after jumping bail.

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