Which Shul Will Be The First To Get The Coveted ‘Peulat Sachir’ Hecsher For Kosher Ethics?

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

If the Modern Orthodox rabbis in Pico-Robertson enforce this code of ethical business conduct on their congregants, YICC and Beth Jacob will lose most of their machers. These guys work hard. They’re tough. They don’t always worry about ethical niceties when they do business. The businessmen with the big bucks go to YICC and Beth Jacob while the nicer, less-affluent types go to Bnai  David.

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Pacific Jewish Center Hires A New Rabbi

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Eliyahu Fink will be a part-time rabbi.

He’s also going to law school.

He says: "I am excited to join the Pacific Jewish Center as your Rabbi. Over the next few weeks I would like to get to know as many of you as I possibly can. This week would be a great opportunity to come to Shul on the Beach and learn about some of my ideas and for me to hear your ideas for the direction of our community. In the weekly Torah Reading we are learning about the origins of the Universe and the origins of the Jewish people. The Book of Genesis is the perfect time to make a new beginning in our community. So even if you have not been in the Shul in a little while – come this week and try us again for the first time."

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Which Ethnic Group Is The Most Likely To Go To The Bathroom While On The Phone With You?

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

I say Italians. Many of them don’t even bother to disguise it. If a Jew does this, he’ll at least try to disguise it.

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Right-wing tubbies stump for Minnesota Republicans

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

Report:

Clockwise from upper left: Prager, Hewitt, Medved, Coleman, Bachmann, Paulsen

Clockwise from upper left: Prager, Hewitt, Medved, Paulsen, Bachmann, Coleman

The so-called “Three Tenors” of talk radio — conservatives Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager — spoke before a crowd of 3,000…

Prager, mentioning “Minnesota Nice,” hailed Coleman and joked about the Star Tribune’s endorsement of the senator: The Strib endorsing Coleman is “like Pravda endorsing Eisenhower,” he said.

Bachmann took the mic briefly, thanking the audience, mainly listeners to the AM station The Patriot, “for watching my back this last week” — during national blowback over her comments that she fears Barack Obama and others in Congress hold “anti-American views.”

Prager, who calls Bachmann a “wonderful, wonderful extraordinary human being,” addressed the brouhaha by telling how he would’ve dealt with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews — by asking Matthews if he believes there are “American values” in the first place; if Matthews agrees, then “logic 1.1″ dictates that some people must hold anti-American values.

He added that both parties once upheld the “American value system” — the Democrats in the era of Kennedy and Truman — but the “Sixties Generation, the radicals, have taken over one of our two parties. They must be stopped!” People who “vote blue,” he added, “don’t know they’re voting radical.”

No fan of the Enlightenment, Prager added, “Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value.”

Prager’s most fiery rhetoric was against Obama’s message of change. “The left has built up a caricature of the United States over the last six years … a grand edifice of lies about America — about how pernicious it is … how fascistic it is. … [The left] believes ‘Bush lied, people died.’ These are all untruths. … Bush did not lie. This must be said over and over and over. … They may have been mistaken, but they didn’t lie.”

Watch Prager’s presentation:

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Ivanka Trump Converting To Judaism

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

Thank you Ivanka! You’re going to help our gene pool.

From Jossip:

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are finally getting married! Well, once Ivanka converts over to Judaism, which is standard practice for becoming a big name in the media world. Kushner owns the Observer and Ivanka is a Trump, so this wedding should be featured prominently in the Sunday Fashion & Style section of The New York Times.

But not if their Rabbi has anything to say about it.

As we reported in 2001, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun on East 85th led his flock to boycott the Times over "biased and unfair coverage" of Israel and the Mideast, and got 1,000 subscribers to bail.

I remember hearing Rabbi Steven Weil of Beth Jacob lambasting the Los Angeles Times as a "filthy rag" in 2001. That’s ludicrous. Like the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, it’s a gentle newspaper with a generally high ethical standard.

I’ve been examining dozens of photos of Ivanka to try to tease out her religious beliefs. It seems that tzniut is not among said beliefs. But perhaps I need to see more to make a definite psak.

Has Ivanka had plastic surgery or is she just naturally gorgeous?

Darrah Ford emails:

She has had plastic surgery.  The implants are obvious.  One is higher than the other.

She’s the tamer version of Paris Hilton.  Sex, shopping, and parties.  She claims she "works" but she works for her father.   She is vice president of real estate development at the Trump Organization.    She turns 27 tomorrow.  Now what 27-year-old WOMAN gets a job as VP working for Donald Trump or for any billionaire?  Even if Donald Trump was sleeping with a random 27-year-old, no way would she ever be named VP of any of his companies.  She might end up as the assistant to his secretary.

And when does VP Ivanka ever work?  She always out partying, traveling the world, and shopping.  Doesn’t seem to be enough time to actually have a real job, now does it.  She got her job because of her father, she got into college because of her father, she got her apartment because of her father, and she got on the tv show "The Apprentice" because of her father.    I read there was a lot of tension on set of that show because the people who actually work for a living didn’t appreciate a trust-fund brat telling them how to run things and shelling out business advice from someone who got a job from her father.

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Thousands Of Converts To Judaism In A Jam

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

Report:

JERUSALEM — Raised without religion in Maryland, Shannon sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel.

In a rigorous conversion process, she studied religious law for a year, took a Hebrew name and changed her wardrobe to long skirts and sleeves as dictated by Orthodox Jewish custom. Finally, a panel of rabbis pronounced her Jewish.

But five years later, she and some 40,000 like her have suddenly had their conversions annulled by Israel’s Rabbinical High Court. The court says the rabbi who heads a government authority set up to oversee conversions is too liberal in approving them.

The issue, now headed to Israel’s Supreme Court, has exposed an intensifying power struggle inside Israel’s religious establishment over the age-old question of "who is a Jew." It also threatens to deepen the wedge between Israel and American Jews, who largely follow more liberal schools of Judaism.

While 34-year-old Shannon’s Israeli citizenship isn’t in jeopardy, the ruling diminishes her religious rights. Many rabbis will no longer oversee basic Jewish rituals for her, such as getting married or receiving a Jewish burial. If she has children, they might not be considered Jewish.

"I’m very worried. I probably will not be able to get married in Israel," she said. "God forbid, if I die, will I be allowed a Jewish burial?"

Shannon was the woman’s given name in the small Maryland farm town where she grew up. She asked to withhold her surname and Hebrew first name for fear of antagonizing the rabbis who hold her fate in their hands. Other converts interviewed by The Associated Press made the same request.

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Not By The Sword

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

I loved this book.

Report:

Rabbi Michael Weisser will never forget a chilling phone call he received just after he and his family moved into their new home in Lincoln, Nebraska. "You will be sorry you ever moved into 5810 Randolph Street, Jew boy," said a voice on the telephone before abruptly hanging up. Two days later, they received a manila packet with hate literature in the mail, and a note: "The KKK is watching you." The anonymous calls and notes were from Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Nebraska— a man the FBI considered armed and dangerous. He had waged a campaign of terror in Lincoln for years.

Astonishingly, Weisser undertook a campaign of his own in which he reached out to Larry Trapp with kindness and ended up turning Trapp’s life around. Eventually, Trapp renounced all ties with the KKK and converted to Judaism. The Weissers grew so close to Trapp that when he was diagnosed as terminally ill, they took him into their home and cared for him until his death. That was in the 1990s. A book, Not by the Sword, tells the story of their relationship and Trapp’s transformation in response to the Weissers’ kindness.

Rabbi Weisser recently moved from Nebraska to become the spiritual leader of the Free Synagogue of Flushing. "We consider ourselves very fortunate that a person with his impressive background and credentials—a nationally-known leader—would come to lead our synagogue in Queens," Florence Boyar, president of the Free Synagogue, said. Boyar, who has been affiliated with the synagogue for decades, is looking to Weisser to revitalize the synagogue to make it a dynamic force to promote culture and understanding in the Flushing community.

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‘He Doesn’t Want To Edit Your Blog’

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

A friend tells me: "He just wanted to give you a condition he knew you couldn’t accept. If you said, yeah, fine, edit my blog, he’d commit suicide on the spot. People get tired of dealing with you. You have put yourself in an untenable position. You collect the community’s bad news. People give it to you because they know you’ll take it. But what you do is not accepted by the Jewish tradition. The Torah says, You shall not go about as a talebearer."

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‘Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia’

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

The author of this forthcoming book, Kenny Gallo, is somebody I’ve known since the summer of 2001.

I learned a lot about the mafia from him and in turn I shared with a lot of stuff about Judaism. He’s been working towards conversion.

In 2006, Kenny publicly predicted that I would end up dead at the hands of organized crime because of my reporting.

From wikipedia:

 

Kenny "Kenji" Gallo (born 1968) is a former director and producer of pornographic films and B movies, a convicted racketeer associated with the Los Angeles crime family and New York City’s Colombo crime family, and a high-ranking mafia informant against such mafioso as alleged Lucchese crime family capo John Baudanza and alleged Colombo crime family heir apparent Theodore "Teddy" Persico, Jr.. Today, Gallo is the owner and operator of Hollywood Mafia website and the accompanying Hollywood Mafia Blog.

Gallo was an adult film and B-movie director and producer from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. He was the director of at least 29 recorded adult film titles.[1] He was also the producer of the B movies Babewatch 3 and Babewatch 4. While a filmmaker, Gallo met and married adult entertainment star Tabitha Stevens[2]; their short-lived marriage included a Jerry Springer Show episode titled "I’m Married to a Porn Star!" They divorced in 1997.

According to published author and pornography gossip columnist Luke Ford, Gallo was a one of the biggest cocaine smugglers and gangsters in the Los Angeles area in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[3] Gallo eventually became connected with the Milano crime family under capo Vincent "Jimmy" Caci, with whom he was arrested in 1998 by the FBI in connection with the Las Vegas Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act cases "Operation Thin Crust" and "Operation Button Down." In the early 2000s, Gallo moved to New York City and joined the Colombo crime family under soldier Edward Garaofalo and eventually caporegime Theodore Persico, Jr. In 2004, Gallo became a government witness against Persico and the Colombo family; court documents show that Gallo frequently wore a wire and recorded conversations with Persico. Gallo has also claimed responsibility for the arrest of Lucchese crime family capo John Baudanza and Colombo soldier Craig Marino. Gallo has published personal photos from his time with both in Jerry Capeci’s This Week in Gangland column and on his own blog.

Following the death of convicted hitman Charles Harrelson, Gallo was interviewed and identified as a "convicted Mafia associate" and friend of Harrelson’s in the Sunday 2007 issue of The Sunday Times..[4]

From the Times of London, April 8, 2007:

THE bloody family secrets of Woody Harrelson, the Hollywood actor, are to be revealed in a prison memoir written by his father, a professional hitman.

Charles “Chuck” Harrelson, who died in a Colorado maximum security jail last month, left a bundle of papers to his three sons with a plea to clear him of murdering a judge. But he admits in the memoir that he was involved in dozens of killings stretching back to the early 1960s.

…Harrelson even boasted — probably to impress potential employers — that he had shot President John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. He claimed to have been one of three men dressed as tramps on the grassy knoll close to the Kennedy cavalcade and said that Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin, was too far away from the president to get a clear shot.

Chuck Harrelson revealed his literary ambitions to Kenny Gallo, a convicted mafia “associate” in the FBI witness protection programme. “He wrote to me saying he was writing the book that exposed all the lies written about him over the years,” Gallo said.

He denied that Harrelson had killed 50 people: “He may have been involved in that many killings, maybe driving the car or something, but he only carried out maybe six killings himself.”

America no longer produced assassins like Harrelson, he added. “Today, you want someone killed, you call in a Russian or an Israeli. I don’t know how Woody feels about his father, but Harrelson was probably the last of a killing breed.”

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The World Is Not Black And White

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Luke Ford

Rabbi Ari Kahn writes about this week’s Torah portion:

How appropriate that the symbol of God’s covenant with Noach, and through him with all of humanity, is the many-colored rainbow: The world is not black and white, it is multi-colored, and each color melts into the next. Good is merged with Evil, and Evil with Good. The very existence of the world in the aftermath of the deluge is a testament to the Merciful God, and the symbol of His covenant is a spectacular mosaic of color. Even when the world seems foreboding, dark and evil, we must learn from God and not from Noach or Yona: We must look more carefully and learn to distinguish between the elements of the mixture. Good may be found amongst the evil, and things that don’t look completely good are not necessarily completely bad. That is the lesson taught by the raven.

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