News Roundup: 9/22/11

Leib Glanz

Leib Glanz made headlines in 2009, when he resigned as city jail chaplain after being accused of allowing one frum inmate to host a lavish bar mitzvah in jail and allowing others to have sex with female inmates.  Now the Satmar uber-macher is in the news again, this time charged with stealing more than $200,000 in Section 8. “The largest individual case of tenant fraud [the city] had ever investigated,” the NYTimes notes. The Grey Lady doesn’t understand that the shocker here isn’t the fraud – but the fact that Glanz got fingered. Given the ubiquitous Section 8 scams in the frum community, some are murmuring mesira brought Glanz down.

Reviewing the elections in the 9^th Congressional District, the difference between mainstream Jewish politics and Charedi politics is starting to dawn on analysts: for mainstream Jews, it’s all about Israel. For Charedim, it’s all about sex.

Jean Paul Gaultier gushes that “rabbis with their traditional clothes” are “fabulous and beautiful.” We’ve got a couple of dog-eared gartlech and bekeshes we might be persuaded to trade for a haute couture corset dress with conical bra.

Rebbe worship and puritanism in the frum community certainly bears enough echoes of another breakaway Jewish group that it’s logical enough to us that iTunes is classifying Avraham Fried under its “Christian & Gospel” section.

A shtreimel thief was foiled when the hat maker he was trying to sell it to noticed the owner’s name and phone number printed inside the lining of the hat.

CNN tells us that professional boxer Yuri Foreman is training to become a Rabbi. Wikipidia tells us that Foreman’s rebbe is a bit of a megalomaniac.

Texan artist Franco Mondini-Ruiz has a new exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, including a piece called “Hasidic Juice.” The title brings to mind many images, but in actuality it’s a painting of a Jewish boy floating in a glass of Orange Juice. No word on whether it’s of the Tropicana or New Square variety.