From ManhattanDA.org: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., joined Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Richard Eaton, Simon Wiesenthal Center Senior Researcher, today to release the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 2014 Report on Digital Terrorism and Hate. The annual report details websites, online forums, and social media users that use the internet to promulgate hateful ideologies and promote terrorism. The report collected information from websites around the world.
“Never before in history has it been so easy to spread hateful and dangerous ideologies throughout the world in an instant,” said District Attorney Vance. “The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s report serves as a reminder of the persistence of those who persecute groups of individuals and spread hate across borders, particularly targeting our youth for recruitment. Prosecutors in my Office’s Hate Crimes Unit will continue to aggressively prosecute hate crimes and work closely with the Wiesenthal Center to teach tolerance. I am very proud of our ongoing partnership.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center lauds DA Vance’s leadership in combating all forms of digital hate and terrorism. Our 2014 report confirms a shocking rise in the use of social networking by extremists for recruitment and to denigrate ‘the enemy.’ Twitter and other social networking companies must do more to help stop this dangerous trend. We look forward to continuing our partnership with DA Vance’s office.”
Included in the report on Digital Terrorism and Hate are examples of social media and websites targeting Jews, Muslims, and other religious communities, as well as sites that provide instructions for carrying out terror attacks. One such site mentioned in a previous report, Al-Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine, was used by Jose Pimentel, a lone-wolf terrorist convicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for attempting to build a pipe bomb that he intended to use to target servicemen and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Another terrorist convicted by District Attorney Vance, Ahmed Ferhani, was sentenced last year in New York State Supreme Court to a decade in prison for trying to obtain explosives and munitions with the intent to kill Jewish people in New York Synagogues.
In May 2010, District Attorney Vance formed the Manhattan District Attorney’s Hate Crimes Unit to strengthen the Office’s investigation and prosecution of hate and bias crimes. The Unit collaborates with the NYPD and community organizations to develop strategies that seek to prevent bias-motivated crimes, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
Since the creation of the Hate Crimes Unit, the Office has had eight eligible defendants who had been charged with hate crimes successfully complete a unique Restorative Justice program that the DA’s Office launched in conjunction with the Museum of Tolerance New York, a Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum. Each session at the Museum included a tour of the Museum’s exhibits, interactive workshops, videos, guided discussions, and special instruction by Museum educators to explore issues of prejudice and tolerance. The Museum reports back to the District Attorney’s Office about the defendant’s participation.
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In November 1947, the United Nations voted to endorse the creation of the Jewish State. Today, some say that Israel should give up its unique Jewish character in order pursue peace. As President, would you continue America’s historic support of Israel as a democratic Jewish State?
Racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and homophobia, fuelled in part by religious demagoguery and manipulation of the Internet, are a reality both here and abroad. What specific steps would your administration take to combat this rising scourge?
How would your administration deal with the immigration issue?
Tragically, the threat of genocide remains a fact of life in 2008. As President of the United States, would you ever consider
sending American troops to Darfur or other areas suffering humanitarian crises?
It is now seven years since 9/11. Are you committed to continue the war on terrorism? What would your administration do to hunt
down the top Al-Qaeda leadership?
This gives a good taste of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s political agenda. It wants Israel to retain its strongly Jewish character. It wants censorship of hate speech. It wants America to intervene abroad to alleviate suffering. It wants massive non-white immigration into the West.
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This pro-migrant site writes: After being named one of the nine scariest parties to be elected to the European parliament by Huffington Post, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the global Jewish human rights organization that challenges anti-Semitism, issued a statement where it names the Perussuomalaiset (PS) as one of ten parties it will monitor closely for spreading xenophobia, nativist nationalism, anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-Semitism.
Placing the PS in the political company of France’s National Front, the neo-Nazi and far-right NPD of Germany, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Jobbik of Hungary, shouldn’t come to a surprise. What is, however, surprising how uncritically the Finnish media has treated the PS, especially when it comes to its anti-immigration and anti-Islam views.
Concerned by the rise of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on in early May EU Vice President Catherine Ashton to condemn the entry of “hatemongers into the European Parliament, launch an investigation into their source of funding” and “urge the parliamentary faction blocs to ostracize them.”
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Max Blumenthal, a journalist of the left who opposes all ethno-nationalisms including the Israel expression, writes:
AlterNet has learned that an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have forbidden US assistance, training and weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was kept out of the final bill by the Republican-led House Rules Committee. Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment was intended to help tamp down on violent confrontations between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists. (Full text of the amendment embedded at the end of this article).
A USA Today/Pew poll conducted in April while the NDAA was being debated found that Americans opposed by more than 2 to 1 providing the Ukrainian government with arms or other forms of military assistance.
If passed, Conyers’ amendment would have explicitly barred those found to have offered “praise or glorification of Nazism or its collaborators, including through the use of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or other similar symbols” from receiving any form of support from the US Department of Defense.
The amendment was presented by congressional staffers to lobbyists from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, two of the country’s largest established Jewish pressure groups. Despite their stated mission to combat anti-Semitism and violent extremism, the ADL and Wiesenthal Center refused to support Jeffries and Conyers’ proposal.
According to Democratic sources in Congress, staffers from the ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center rejected the amendment on the grounds that right-wing Ukrainian parties like Svoboda with documented records of racist extremism had “moderated their rhetoric.” An ADL lobbyist insisted that “the focus should be on Russia,” while the Wiesenthal Center pointed to meetings between far-right political leaders in Ukraine and the Israeli embassy as evidence that groups like Svoboda and Right Sector had shed their extremism.
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From Mondoweiss in 2010: Why does the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) have nothing to say about the rabbinical edict circulating in Israel—currently signed by more than four dozen rabbis—forbidding the sale or rental of homes to non-Jews?
Or, why has the Center not applauded the dissenting view of Israel’s leading Haredi rabbi, Aaron Leib Steinman, who said, “there are things that should not be done; what if there would be a similar call in Berlin against renting properties to Jews? Where is the public conscience?”
Israel is lurching toward ever-more extreme expressions of religious-nationalism, electing leaders who publicly profess anti-Arab and anti-immigrant views—and legislate accordingly. Israelis increasingly favor gagging their own country’s human rights organizations, journalists, and activists. This swelling anti-democratic impulse is directed toward non-Jews—whose status is necessarily ambiguous in the “Jewish state”—but even toward some who self-identify as Jews.
Meanwhile, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is in “business-as-usual” mode, issuing stern rebukes to those it deems anti-Semites—i.e., those who criticize Israeli policy and advocate equality for all who inhabit the borderless space of Israel/Palestine.
Last week, SWC Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper took the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to task in an over-the-top op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. A sharp correction to Rabbis Hier and Cooper came in a statement issued by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA), which noted that “this is not the first time [SWC rabbis] have wrongly accused Christian traditions that are committed to overcoming injustice in the Holy Land of demonizing the Jewish people.”
So, while ignoring the fact that many of Israel’s religious and secular leaders are fomenting rabid, tribal attitudes, what does the Simon Wiesenthal Center deem worth of attention in its quest for “tolerance”? A visit to the organization’s website lists their current preoccupations:
• Slamming UNESCO for its declaration that the “Haram al-Ibrahim/the Cave of the Patriarchs and Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel’s Tomb” are “an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories” and “that any unilateral action by the Israeli authorities is to be considered a violation of international law.” Despite the location of these sites in Hebron/Al Khalil, deep within the Palestinian occupied territories, the Simon Wiesenthal Center characterizes UNESCO’s statement as a move to “steal from the Jewish people one of its most sacred religious sites.” [No mention on the Center’s site of Israel’s state-sponsored stealing from the Palestinian people in establishing settlements for half a million Israelis on occupied and expropriated Palestinian land, in Hebron and elsewhere, in violation of international law.]
• Calling on the Japanese discount retail chain, Don Quixote, to remove a “Nazi” uniform adult costume from its stores throughout Japan and Hawaii.
• Slamming as “anti-Semitic scapegoating” an event in Dublin, Ireland, featuring David Cronin, author of a new book titled Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation.
Meanwhile, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is moving ahead on the planning phase of a “Museum of Tolerance” in Jerusalem, incredibly situated atop a Muslim cemetery. The project, a “partnership with the Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli government,” has been condemned by numerous entities, including an Israeli Jewish-Muslim initiative, Americans for Peace Now, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and, of course, descendents of the Palestinians buried there.
In its scorched-earth campaign to deflect appropriate criticism of Israeli policy by smearing advocates of equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, the Simon Wiesenthal Center fails abjectly in key elements of its stated agenda: to “promote human rights and dignity” and “confront bigotry and racism.” It’s a patent double standard: the Wiesenthal Center’s misguided notion of what it means to “stand with Israel” trumps universal human rights regardless of religion and ethnicity.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has amassed a substantial track-record of self-righteous finger-pointing. It’s time to point the finger back.
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* Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long — how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish leaders invoking its memory to muster support for Israel and to come out on top in a sordid competition over what group had suffered most; politicians using it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments. Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem “not so bad”? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, there is no museum of American slavery?
* In the first decades following World War II, Americans rarely discussed the Holocaust. Now, remembering the Holocaust has become a fundamental part of Jewish identity; gentiles, too, view the Holocaust as a touchstone of moral solemnity. In The Holocaust and American Life, Peter Novick asks why, and his answers are both sensible and shocking. He explains the immediate postwar silence about the Holocaust by reviewing the basics of cold war politics: just after the liberation of the concentration camps, Americans were called upon to sympathize with “gallant Berliners” who resisted the Soviets and built a wall against Communism–an “enormous shift from one set of alignments to another,” Novick notes. Novick then leads readers through the series of events that brought the Holocaust to the forefront of American consciousness–the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Six-Day War, the Carter administration’s Israel policy, and the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Among Novick’s most controversial ideas is his assertion that American Jews spoke softly of the Holocaust at first because they didn’t want to be seen as victims; later, Jews decided that victim status would work in their best political interest. Or, as Novick puts it, “Jews were intent on permanent possession of the gold medal in the Victimization Olympics.” The Holocaust in American Life is as carefully researched and argued as it is polemical and probing. Novick does not suffer Holocaust deniers lightly, and he is empathic toward victims and survivors, but he has no tolerance for false sentiment. One wishes that more people would ask, as Novick does, what kind of a country would spend millions of dollars on a museum honoring European Jewish Holocaust victims instead of a monument to its own shameful history of black slavery.
* Why has the Holocaust, five decades after its conclusion, remained such a burning issue in the consciousness of Americans, both Jews and Gentiles? After all, most historical events fade from memory with the passage of time and the deaths of those who directly experienced the events. Yet, despite the occurrence of more recent and certainly quite horrific mass atrocities, from Cambodia to Rowanda, the Holocaust continues to play a central role in American public discourse. In this unsettling and fascinating work, Novick, a Jew and a professor of history at the University of Chicago, examines how a variety of domestic and foreign events have moved Holocaust consciousness to the center of American life and kept it there. The author unhesitatingly probes touchy subjects, including the role of Holocaust consciousness in cold war politics, the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, and even the supposed “obsession” of American Jews (few of whom are Holocaust survivors) with the Holocaust. This is an important work that is bound to irritate, even outrage, many readers.
* This is one of the most intellectually stimulating books I have ever encountered. While few people with probably agree with everything the author has to say, he has written a thoughtful, thoroughly researched examination of how the idea of the Holocaust–and popular thinking about that tragedy among both Jewish and Gentile Americans–has evolved over the 60 years since the outbreak of World War II. He also has the courage to challenge conventional thinking as well as the beliefs of generally revered leaders like David Ben Gurion and Elie Wiesel.
The book does an excellent job of linking popular thinking about the Holocaust with concurrent historical trends and developments, including the more intense American focus on the Pacific as opposed to the European theatre for much of the war, the lack of appreciation during and immediately after the war for the immensity of the Jewish genocide, the emergence of the Cold War (together with the “discovery” of common totalitarian threads between Nazism and Stalinism), the “rehabilitation” of Germany after Stalin took over Eastern Europe, changing views about “victimization” in American popular culture, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and Hannah Arendt’s controversial analysis of it, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, as well as the decline in American anti-semitism in general at the same time that radical black activists were employing anti-Jewish rhetoric.
One of the most important contributions of the book is its discussion of the alleged “uniqueness” of the Holocaust, which the author shows to be both historically inaccurate and dangerous in leading down the slippery slope where any other more recent catastrophes and disasters are minimized in comparison. Rich with example and documentation–the footnotes and endnotes should be read, too–the book is one I expect to return to in the future. Broad in its scope and well-written, it is generally quite persuasive in the arguments it advances.
* Professor Novick has written a superb critique of the extent to which an preoccupation with the Holocaust dominates American-Jewish organizational agendas and priorities, along with a rigorous historical account of how we got here. This is really a book which should be read by all Jews who care at all about the activities of those organizations that purport to speak for the American Jewish community–and indeed, by all Jews who are concerned about American Jewish culture and society.
I’m afraid that Jew haters will find a certain amount here that will be useful to their cause.
A determination not to write anything that might potentially provide ammunition to Jew haters would only lead to a paralysis that prevented one from writing anything about Jews. Rest assured that Novick, a secularist Jew and University of Chicago historian, is the farthest thing one could imagine from a Holocaust denier. He quite properly dismisses them as “a tiny band of cranks, kooks, and misfits”. Historians do not need to concern themselves with refuting Holocaust deniers any more than they would need to concern themselves with refuting Civil War deniers, slavery deniers, Roman Empire deniers, or flat-earthers.
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Director, Program Development, Museum of Tolerance
This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”
I’m an immigrant—a white one from Canada. When I tell this to people in California they find it interesting or quaint. With that kind of reaction it’s easy for me to discuss my native land: the cold, the healthcare system, or a favorite singer that Americans have never heard of. I have the privilege to discuss this aspect of my identity freely. The racialized tenor of immigration debates gives me a pass.
Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the country with a high number of immigrants, and a higher number of undocumented immigrants than other areas. Biased and dehumanizing messages in the media about migration are heard by immigrant and non-immigrant children loud and clear. Many children do not know the full story of their status and most do not fully understand the political layers of the contemporary debates. Yet they are keenly aware of legal barriers and that it is not a safe topic for them or their families. They do not talk about immigration as freely as I do.
As part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience National Dialogues on Immigration project the Museum of Tolerance wanted to be part of a better conversation on immigration that helps to normalize and contextualize immigration for children. We created a new program aligned with 4th and 5th grade history curriculum based around the museum’s interactive Finding Our Families Finding Ourselves exhibit. The goal is to support classroom discussions on immigration applying an anti-bias approach. The program had to attend to the diverse experiences children have of immigration while challenging them to think critically about the subject. I will share a few of my reflections on the process of program development through the lenses of ethics, equity, and empathy.
The program begins with icebreakers, anonymous voting, and prediction activities to set the context and invite participation. The students then explore the exhibit which features sets and dioramas depicting a turn of the century immigrant experience, with artifacts loaned from the Ellis Island Museum in New York. Following this ‘journey,’ students enter beautifully designed rooms each one showcasing the personal story of a noted American, including: poet, best-selling author, historian and educator Dr. Maya Angelou; award-winning actor, comedian and director Billy Crystal; multiple Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Carlos Santana; and National League MVP and former Manager of the four-time World Series Champions, the New York Yankees, Joe Torre. Their individual stories illuminate the history of migration that shaped their lives and the family members who inspired them. The program ends with art activities for self and group reflection.
Before students meet the celebrities in the exhibit, they encounter some more in the introductory anonymous voting activity. Students view the photos of a series of young pop stars and actors from their favorite movies to guess which one is an immigrant. They are surprised to learn that some of their favorite stars are immigrants. The discussion on young celebrities (and their varied immigration statuses) and older ones help connect past and present and explore the many reasons why people migrate. Later in the exhibit, the historical sets open up conversations on the differences between immigration then and now, underlining that immigration is a perennial aspect of the human condition and always will be.
The initial thinking about the celebrity stories was that they offered a compelling opportunity for students to reflect on the windows and mirrors to their own lives. It seemed a safe enough way to talk about immigration. It is for some, not all. In “Our Roots, Our Future” published by California Tomorrow, teachers working with diverse youths were provided a Tool for Self Reflection. Drawing on that tool the following questions come to mind for museum educators to ask themselves as they discuss the topic of immigration with children and youths:
• Do I know how the children identify culturally or which national origin is most comfortable to them?
• Do I know what parents want for children to know and discuss about immigration?
• Do I know if the youths are feeling any pressures that may contribute to anxiety over telling their family’s immigration story or cultural background?
Classroom educators have the chance to learn this over time and hopefully do. At museums, we typically don’t know these answers. We have learned from students (and their heartbreaking body language when a subject is too close to home) that no icebreaker or fancy exhibit will erase anxieties over immigration status and somehow make this a safe topic when it’s not. We resolved never to ask students the seemingly innocent question: “Is anyone here an immigrant?” Other people’s stories, in this case the celebrities, became a key focus.
Proceeding with caution cannot mean silencing the conversation. Equity based education requires that we not only make room for difficult conversations of contemporary significance but that we boldly advance alternative messages and realities. In this program, we built into the interpretation plan the overturning of specific ‘myths’ or assumptions that students often have. The exhibit presents opportunities to rethink these assumptions without naming them overtly. The point is not to plant them if they aren’t already there but rather to subvert them if they are. The assumptions the program addressed include:
1) Immigrants are less than or not ‘real’ Americans;
2) Immigrants take jobs from Americans;
3) The majority of immigrants in US are Mexican;
4) Latinos are mostly undocumented.
(Maureen Costello’s article “The Human Face of Immigration” and the related hand-out “10 Myths about Immigration” are important resources.)
Most importantly, the program strives to model appropriate language for positive conversations. Facilitators are mindful about using inclusive and expansive language such as referring to immigrants as “new Americans” and “neighbors” and point out the problems inherent in terms like “illegal aliens.” The subject is reframed for students in terms of family histories, opportunities, economic growth, fairness, and contributions.
We can make the experience about ‘just the facts’- even correct, assumption-reversing facts, to stay away from personal revelations. But my privilege comes to mind again. As a White lady from Canada with a green card I have the privilege to make immigration an academic discussion and can safely make bold activist assertions. But the fears and anxieties over documents and deportations, as well as the stories of triumph, are extremely personal for many.
The authority to interpret history means that museums have the ethical responsibility to humanize the people whose stories they tell. Immigrants are more than statistics, maps, and “workers” (as the textbooks emphasize so well). They are people with families, hopes, regrets, hardships, accomplishments, and senses of humor. The children and youths wading into these stories have their own stories too.
Although many students don’t recognize the older celebrities showcased, that’s okay! Their rich stories of journeys, love, longing, fame and success are suitably dramatic, and embody both the particular and universal. Through the Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves exhibit, students realize that that there is no single story and there are many ways to think about what an immigrant looks like and acts like. Through the celebrity dramatizations children receive permission and affirmation to delight in those stories and in their diverse identities.
Strangely, the Museum of Tolerance and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have no such program in Israel dedicated at weakening the core Jewish majority while empowering the Arab minority. They seem to seek the opposite for the goyim that they seek for themselves. For Gentiles, they should have multi-culturalism while we Jews get to enjoy cohesion.
From the New York Daily News: A Louisiana teen said she has to relearn to smile after her top lip was nearly ripped from her face while wearing a bikini in an attack by catcallers.
After a day of swimming, Jessica Byrnes-Laird, 18, sat in a car in her bathing suit outside a Shreveport convenience store Sunday night.
A group of men began harassing her as her boyfriend was in the store, the couple said. When her beau came outside, he and the men fought, KTSB reported.
As the boyfriend broke away from the scuffle, one of the four men threw a brass pipe through the open passenger door window, striking Byrnes-Laird right in the mouth, she said.
“I looked down and saw my teeth in my hand and I immediately gushed blood,” she told NBC 6.
Between 10 and 12 teeth were knocked out of her mouth, which is completely stitched up, her grandpa Earl Byrnes told the Daily News.
“Right now, she’s real sore and can’t eat or nothing,” he said.
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Friend: Hollywood Reporter had an article last year about how Gulf royals and Chinese now account for something like 60% of consumer spending in BH, where the dept. stores hire Mandarin speakers (with no shortage of those in SW L.A. County of course). It had a great quote from some local realtor/restaurateur/hype artist: “The Saudis I know complain now about how many other Saudis there are in town.”
…Jimmy Delshad, former mayor of Beverly Hills, says his friends are asking: “Who the hell do they think they are, coming here and behaving like that?”
But Delshad, who emigrated in 1959 from Iran, is also quick to point out that these incidents are anomalies and that the strength of his city’s economy increasingly relies on the largesse of these elite Arab visitors.
They’re certainly spending with abandon — renting lavish beach pads for $100,000 a month and buying furnished penthouse condos along the Wilshire Corridor for their children at UCLA and USC, according to real estate brokers.
“Many Middle Easterners are low profile,” said Jeff Hyland, an agent who works with wealthy clients. “The ones we’re hearing about are the royals who splash the flash and have the Lamborghinis.”
Visitors from the Middle East — particularly Saudi Arabia — have long boosted the bottom lines of luxury boutiques and hotels in Beverly Hills, said Julie Wagner, chief executive of the city’s Conference and Visitors Bureau. In recent years, Beverly Hills has also seen tremendous growth in tourists from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, who find Arabic-speaking staff members to serve them in upscale shops.
Emirates and Etihad airlines have direct flights to Los Angeles from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and Qatar Airways plans to begin service in January.
Middle Easterners, Wagner said, spend the most on Beverly Hills-area hotels among international travelers, and they are second to Chinese visitors in retail spending. Muslim women in head scarves dine in large numbers at the high-end Ivy restaurant and Urth Caffe, two popular people-watching spots.
The Peninsula Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard is one of many opulent hotels offering amenities such as prayer rugs, arrows pointing toward Mecca and pillowcases monogrammed in Arabic. “We have had repeat guests that have come to visit us year after year,” said Offer Nissenbaum, the hotel’s managing director.
I ran into a Jew from Minnesota. “How are the Somalis?” I asked him. “Lots of opportunities to make money,” he replied, “with building Section Eight housing, social work, etc.”
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"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
