News Roundup – Thurs. 6/9/11

Zoltan Hirsch, a Chasidic double amputee from Boro Park, has filed 87 federal claims in the last year against businesses that are not accommodating enough for his disabled status. The businesses he’s selected to sue include non-kosher restaurants and a strip club, and critics question his acts that seem to have nothing to do with ensuring accessibility and everything to do with turning a quick buck while ruining a small business. It’s kind of a head scratcher that Hirsch hasn’t sued any of the restaurants or businesses in his own neighborhood. Who knew Boro Park was the gold standard in ADA compliance?

The seventeenth anniversary of the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson will be commemorated this Sunday, June 12^th. Still no word on the exact date of his second coming. Sympathetic Christians caution patience.

Ten thousand charedi yeshiva students have defrauded the Israeli government of NIS 4.5 million, money suppose to pay for scholarships for classes they never took. Bubkes, their American coreligionists snort. Bubkes.

Ika Yisraeli, an Israeli baal tshuva, has opened an art gallery in Jerusalem, which he calls “the only Haredi gallery in Israel, in the world, in history.” Yisraeli is a strange species of cultural vanguard: he doesn’t visit other galleries or museums because of the art work displayed, the mixing of the sexes, and his general distaste for contemporary art, and his unusual gallery is struggling to survive. This cultural expert educates his interviewer from Ha’aretz on another potential client for the gallery, a strange sub-group that might be of interest to our readers: “Fringe youth… Do you know what fringe youth is? Haredi youth who have left the path, who hang out in the streets, punks. We’ve got them, too.”