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Samuel Willenberg, the last survivor of Nazi Germany's Treblinka death camp in Poland, has died in Israel aged 93.
Only one of 67 people known to have survived the camp, he escaped by clambering over bodies piled up by a fence as the Nazis shot prisoners during a mass break-out.
In 2013, he returned to the site to mark 70 years since his escape.
About 870,000 people died in the gas chambers at Treblinka - more than anywhere else except Auschwitz.
Mr Willenberg urged the world never to forget Treblinka.
Image copyright AP 
Image copyright Getty Images In October 1942, aged 19, he was among 6,000 Jews from the Opatow ghetto who arrived by train at the camp.
They were told they were at a transit camp and had to undress and shower before being sent onward. In reality, the shower rooms were gas chambers.
But because he was a bricklayer he was assigned to manual labour duties and escaped an early death. His job was to sort through the belongings of the people sent to the gas chambers.
After the war Mr Willenberg - whose two sisters were killed at the camp - moved to Israel and became a surveyor.
"I live two lives, one is here and now and the other is what happened there,'' he said. `"It never leaves me. It stays in my head. It goes with me always."
Most of Treblinka's guards were never prosecuted for their part in the crimes there.
Treblinka's commandant, Franz Stangl, was sentenced to life imprisonment in October 1970 following his trial in the west German city of Duesseldorf.
Today nothing remains of the extermination camp apart from the ashes of the mostly Jewish men, women and children murdered there.
Courtesy BBC
The anti-Israel boycott movement just suffered serious setbacks in two key world capitals.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government last week issued a policy notice that public authorities face “severe penalties” if they boycott Israeli goods.
Officially, the order protects all World Trade Organization members. In reality, it’s all about Israel. It declares such boycotts unacceptable unless the British government has itself instituted formal legal sanctions or trade restrictions.
In recent years, the Scottish government and town councils in Birmingham and Leicester have ordered or encouraged their suppliers to cease business with Israel.
The opposition Labor Party denounced Cameron’s move as an “attack on democracy.” But Canada saw bipartisan support for Monday’s vote on a resolution rejecting the goals of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party endorsed the motion introduced by the Conservatives, with Foreign Minister Stephane Dion vowing to “fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.” It
seems Trudeau means to keep his campaign promise to continue the solidly pro-Israel stance of the man he defeated, Steven Harper.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has always been a one-sided exercise in thuggish intimidation, targeting liberal, democratic Israel even as it ignores such genuinely oppressive
regimes as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
As Dion said: “The world will win nothing for boycotting Israel but depriving itself of the talents of its inventiveness.”
COURTESY NY POST
Yael Weissman, the widow of Tuvia Yanai Weissman who was murdered on Thursday in a terror attack by two 14-year-old Arab terrorists at the Rami Levy supermarket in Sha'ar Binyamin, spoke with Arutz Sheva about her ordeal.
Yael described her long relationship with her late husband, “He was my best friend since the ninth grade. We spend our youth together and grew up together. He always put others before him, he was generous through and through … right from the start, even from such a young age.”
She added that other’s viewed Yanai with the same kind image, saying, "I always knew I could trust him no matter what, even now I hear people say how they miss him, how he always knew the right words to say in every situation. Just his presence and the look in his eyes was enough to encourage everyone around him… he knew how to be silly and make others happy.”
Describing his love for Israel and his devotion to helping others, the bereaved widow noted that “The county was always so impwidow asks if armortant to him, he always knew he was meant to work in security and to help others.”
Yael discussed her dedication to focus her energy on raising their four-month-old baby daughter, Neta. “Even though I am a widow, I am first and foremost a mother.”
“It is because of Neta that I have the strength to wake up in the morning and get out of bed and continue. If it wasn’t for her, I would not have the power like I do now,” said Yael.
“Yanai would not want this to break us,” said Yael in regards to the ongoing terror. “He always said that we will continue with our routine – if we go shopping, we go together. We go to town, we go together. We cannot lock ourselves in our homes, that’s not a life worth living.”
Yael emphasized that she is not authorized to discuss what the army does, but said that Yanai was very frustrated that he had to go on regular leave without his weapon.
“He told me he did not feel complete without a weapon every time he left the house. I think that if a soldier requests to take his weapon with him on leave he should at least be allowed to protect himself and others. After all, soldiers protect us.”
I saw my ex-husband in court last week. It was the first time I had seen him in longer than I could remember; the exact date lost in an 8-inch-thick legal file of court proceedings that is currently lying on my desk. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I have seen him since I started that file four years ago.
Up until just a few days ago, I literally could not find my ex-husband.
But before he disappeared four years ago, I was a married, stay-at-home mom of a 3-year-old daughter and 7-month-old son. Then overnight my world turned upside down when my husband said he was going to the store and simply never returned.
Not only was my marriage over, but he left me with two very young children in a position where I was unable to instantaneously support us.
Quitting his job and leaving his work vehicle (his only car) in the parking lot of his employer, he turned off his phone, moved out of town, and became untraceable. His actions were not just an exaggerated statement that he no longer wanted our marriage, but it was a heartbreaking declaration that he also no longer wanted our kids.
And I’ve heard it all; the judgments that people love to throw my way. “Didn’t you see this coming,” and “what did you do to make him leave?” Or “this is why you never should not have been a stay-at-home mom without your own career,” and my favorite, “you had kids with him, you did this to yourself.”
Except that really, none of that matters. The fact is that I had two children, in a marriage where my husband made it abundantly clear that he wanted me to get pregnant, and then half of the people that it took to create those kids walked away.
Thankfully, one half stayed.
Despite our circumstances, I still want what’s best for my kids, so I wasted no time in trying to pull a life together for the remaining three of us. Unlike their father, I couldn’t ignore the kids’ heartache, and the last thing I wanted to do was add to their suffering with unmet necessities and hunger, which was at times a reality for us.
So thank goodness the kid’s father was legally required to financially provide for us by paying spousal support and child support!
Except how do you get money from someone that you can’t find?
You can’t. I didn’t.
Emergency motions were filed, temporary support orders were put in place, but at the end of the day all I had was a piece of paper stating that I should be getting money that I had no idea how to actually obtain. I was thrust face first into the reality that real life isn’t like TV, where the court system will hunt your ex down and make him pay, and kind hearted detectives are so worried about your children that they will put in overtime to track down your child’s deadbeat father and throw him in jail with the rest of the nation’s criminals.
No, I learned that real life is aggravatingly slow, exceedingly clerical, and unbelievably flooded with many parents who are in the same situation as mine.
Unfortunately, I’m no special snowflake. In the U.S., only 42 percent of custodial parents(the parent with physical custody of their children) are paid the full amount of child support that they are owed, leaving more than $21 billion in unpaid support that is owed to single parents like me. When you look at those astronomical amounts that our court systems are trying to deal with, it’s easy to understand why many single parents just become another number on a list and a file on a desk.
Throughout the entirety of my divorce process, my ex showed up to only one court date. It was the day he signed over all of our material possessions to me, saying he wanted absolutely nothing from his old life. When the judge asked him if he wanted visitation with his kids, he added insult to injury by stating that “those kids just aren’t worth my time.”
The judge divorced us.
The judge did however, order my now ex-husband — who was claiming that he was unemployed and could not pay support — to begin what was called a “job diary.” My ex was supposed to apply for two jobs a day, make a record of it, and bring the record to my attorney’s office on a regular basis in order to prove that he was attempting to financially support his unwanted, but still very much existing, children.
It didn’t surprise me though when he walked out of court that day and failed to ever show up to my attorney’s office with his job diary.
A year and a half after he left us, I still had not received even as much as a quarter from my ex-husband. On the phone with the child support office while pleading my case, I heard my caseworker sigh as she explained “you’re just going to have to think of this as a long term savings account. At some point he will be old enough to collect social security, and at that point the state will garnish his payments and send them to you.”
I was not OK with that.
It wasn’t even money that I was after per say, but rather the necessities that the money could buy. My ex left me in a bad situation and getting out of it has proven to be financially difficult. We live below the poverty line, and I need things for the kids now, but Target won’t take an “I owe you” and collect my payment in 16 years.
The caseworker’s answer was not good enough for me, but unfortunately there wasn’t much I could do about it. As far as I knew, my ex was working under the table somewhere. When the child support department checked his social security number, it reflected no activity that would trace him to a job, an apartment rental, a car payment, or even a credit card. Months dragged on as I watched notices being sent to my house stating that the child support department had suspended his hunting and fishing license, as well as his firearm ownership card. I got a letter stating that if he didn’t start paying, they would suspend his driver’s license. Eventually a letter came that they had suspended his driver’s license.
But none of that mattered to me, because what I needed was money and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting. And the irony of it all is that in order to get money, you need money. Slapping down the last of the money I had from selling many of my possessions, I paid my attorney to take my case back to court again in the hopes that I could speed along the process.
We went to court, a warrant was issued for my ex’s arrest, and then the waiting process began for someone to stumble across him, or for the police to randomly pull him over. A process that did nothing except shatter any stigmas I believed of how easy it is to have your ex thrown in jail for nonpayment of child support.
The jail was ready for him, but not if they couldn’t find him, and with real crime on the police dockets, my ex wasn’t anyone that they were actually looking for.
Months later I found out that he was working a part time job across town. Why his social security number hadn’t been flagged in the system, I don’t know, but when I called the police begging them to go pick him up, I was told that they didn’t have time. After calling every day for a week, I broke down into tears, and thankfully, the cop who had answered my call related to the struggling parent I was, and saw me as more than just a file on her desk.
My ex was picked up that afternoon, taken to jail, and mere hours later he bailed out with the entire amount of his back due support. He had the money all along, he just didn’t want any of it to go to his children.
Unfortunately, he didn’t change his ways, and did not continue to keep current on his support obligations. When the amount he owed our family once again reached a staggering amount, I took him back to court again. Having been served at his place of employment, he did show up to court, only to threaten “if you throw me in jail, I’ll get fired, and then you won’t get any money out of me,” which was it was enough to cause my attorney to remind me of how the law works. The law will send parents to jail for nonpayment, and their only way to get out before serving up to 12 months in some states is to pay the full amount of what they owe.
Looking at my ex and heeding my attorney’s words that my ex probably would lose his job, and might not get another one, I begrudgingly signed an agreement that would allow him to repay the debts he owed over the course of the next five years, via a garnishment from his paycheck.
I left the courthouse that day fuming: “I can’t believe that I just let him finance his kids.”
I didn’t like it, but I had made the best decision that I could in a situation with no great answer, and it turned out to be the wrong one. My ex quit his job, there was no support to be garnished, and he fell off the grid again.
I’ve gone to multiple court dates since then to try and get what my children are owed, but my ex never shows up and I leave with pieces of paper that just add to the clutter on an overwhelmed caseworker’s desk.
But then last week my ex surprised me and showed up to a court date for his continued nonpayment. Our case is set for hearing next month, but that doesn’t mean that I will be getting child support, or that I ever will.
With the largest percentage of our population’s poverty-stricken families comprised of single parents owed unpaid child support who can’t seem to catch up enough to get ahead, I fear that I may be stuck in this cycle forever. I want to give up, to stop chasing him down, but I have kids who need more than what I can provide them alone. I don’t like living below the poverty line, and I didn’t get into this situation by myself, but the burden of fixing it falls solely on me. My kids and I deserve better than what my ex is doing to us, but as I’ve come to learn, our situation is not something I can easily change.
“Just get child support” people say.
If only they knew.
A princess from the Islamic country of Bahrain chose to receive life-saving treatment in Israel – and as a result, years later, Deputy Minister for Regional Cooperation Ayoub Kara has now been invited to pay a diplomatic visit to the kingdom.
Kara, a Likud MK of the Druze community, told Arutz Sheva Tuesday that he cannot name the princess, nor when she came to Israel. However, other sources stated it occurred in Haifa's Rambam Hospital in 2010. He said that no other Bahraini princess had ever been treated in Israel.
Knesset members from the Likud and Jewish Home lambasted the Civil Administration over its refusal to upgrade Israel’s cellular infrastructure in Judea and Samaria during a boisterous committee hearing on Monday.
Citing the serious security threats facing Israelis in the area, the MKs demanded the Civil Administration implement planned expansions of the cellular network in the area.“Just half a year ago there was a terrible car accident in Wadi Harmeya and [people’s] ability to call for help was held up because of the lack of reception,” noted MK Motti Yogev (Jewish Home), who chaired the committee meeting.
Likud MK Mickey Zohar blasted the Civil Administration’s behavior as a form of discrimination. “There’s no difference between Jews in Judea-Samaria and those in the rest of the country. That’s the government’s policy."
Zohar threatened to use his position on the Knesset’s Finance Committee to hold funding for the Civil Administration’s other projects, should it continue in its refusal to upgrade the cellular infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.
Fellow Likud MK Oren Hazan noted the difficulties and dangers the frequent lack of cellular network access created for residents of Judea and Samaria like himself.
When the MK’s car broke down on Sunday, for instance, on the way to his home in the town of Ariel in Samaria, he was unable to call for assistance and was forced to take the risk of using an Arab tow truck. “You could have woken up this morning with a Knesset Member held hostage in Ramallah.”
It should be noted that Arab residents of Judea and Samaria and Israelis in the region primarily use different service providers, leaving Jews reliant on Israeli providers like Cellcom and Orange. Jews are thus disproportionately impacted by the lack of Israeli infrastructure in the area.
READ MORE
Minister seeks punishment for use of phrase ‘Polish death camp’
Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has decided to ban wording associating Poland with death camps built on the country’s territory by the Nazis, seeking to end the irresponsible use of the phrase “Polish death camp” once and for all.Poland’s officials have long considered it insulting that their country is often mentioned in references to World War II death camps that were built and largely operated by the Nazis on Polish territory.
Read moreNow the minister wants to introduce laws officially punishing those who use such misleading phrases, Reuters reported on Saturday. The project has already been presented to Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who reportedly reacted to it positively.
“This will be a project that meets the expectations of Poles, who are blasphemed in the world, in Europe, even in Germany, that they are the Holocaust perpetrators, that in Poland there were Polish concentration camps, Polish gas chambers,” the news agency reported Ziobro as telling Polish RMF radio.
“Enough with this lie. There has to be responsibility,” the minister added.
Concentration camps built by the Nazis outside of Germany are almost never referred to as “Polish” in Poland, but the phrase “Polish death camps” is still widely used in publications outside of the country.
(AFP) Israel's Ehud Olmert on Monday becomes the country's first ex-prime minister to sit behind bars as he begins a 19-month prison term for separate counts of bribery and obstruction of justice.
The 70-year-old will report to Maasiyahu prison in the central Israeli town of Ramle, where former Israeli president Moshe Katsav is also serving a seven-year prison term for rape and sexual harassment.
The Israeli Prisons Service says that Olmert will be admitted to the prison's special block 10, "which is intended to house prisoners who for various reasons cannot be placed with the general prison population."
At least five people, including children, were killed and 11 were injured when bus 402 from Jerusalem to Bnei Brak collided with a truck on Highway 1 on Sunday evening.A spokesman for the Egged bus company said the bus, which left Jerusalem for Bnei Brak at 5:40pm, apparently hit a truck that was standing on the road margins.
Destruction caused to the bus"The bus collided with a truck transporting marble plates, which was parked on the side of the road. A part of the bus got ripped in two. People were thrown into the air while the bus was moving," said ZAKA spokesman Motti Burkchin.
The truck that was on the side of the road (Photo: Uri Davis, United Hatzalah)Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated nine of the injured to the Assaf HaRofeh Medical Center, the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. Among them is one in critical condition, one in serious condition, three in moderate condition and three lightly injured. In addition, three lightly injured people were evacuated to the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.
Scene of the accidentBus 402 is a "Mehadrin line" used by ultra-Orthodox Jews to travel between Jerusalem and Bnei Brak.
The accident caused heavy traffic in the area, with the westbound lane being closed between the Latrun Interchange and the Anava Interchange, and around the Sha'ar HaGai Interchange.
I had a much longer post I was moments away from publishing when my computer crashed and I lost it, so I'll make this do-over post more concise.
I've been working on a deal that would allow me to work on anti-poverty issues and today, after about a year of trying, that deal came to fruition. That means I'll be leaving FailedMessiah.com, the website I founded almost 12 years ago.
So let me thank all of you who read, commented and debated here, those of you who agreed with me and even those of you who did not, and those of you who sent me stories, tips and pashkvils.
[FailedMessiah is not closing down. More details on its future will be posted Thursday.]
I'd like to encourage all of you to work to stop child sex abuse and to work to stop those who enable it or cover it up. I'd also like to encourage you to do what you can to bring some light to the haredi world which is, sadly, still shrouded in some intense darkness. No kid should go to 13 years of school and leave without a valid high school diploma, proficiency in the language of the country, and extensive knowledge of math, science, history and civics, even if their religious community's elders claim it is their religious right to deprive them of this much-needed education. Please continue to fight for those kids.
I'd also like to ask you work to equalize and humanize the US Sentencing Guidelines. With very few exceptions, nonviolent criminals should not be incarcerated for decades. Prison should not primarily be a place of punishment. Instead, it should be a place where combined with loss of freedom, inmates also get good regular mental health care and are trained in skills (or given education) that can earn them gainful employment on release. In the long run, it is far cheaper for society to work help inmates than it is to punish them. It is also far better for society because the recidivism rate for inmates who are well treated rather than abandoned and abused is lower. That means fewer victims and fewer losses for all of us.
Similarly, just as the seller of crack cocaine should not be treated more harshly than the seller of powder cocaine, poor criminals should not be treated more harshly than rich criminals. Criminals who are true sociopaths should be treated as such, but the justice and penal systems should not through their dysfunction take average criminals and push them right to the edge of sociopathy. Sadly, as it now stands, both often do so.
The Jewish community should, I believe, work for these reforms, not just for its own criminals like Agriprocessors’ Sholom Rubashkin, but for all of America’s criminals, save the most dangerous and evil. Arguably, it was Rubashkin supporters’ refusal to be, for want of a better term, ecumenical during their battle to get Rubashkin – who I believe was guilty as sin – a lighter sentence that drove many good people away from them.
Since I’ve mentioned him, Rubashkin presided over abuse of poor undocumented workers and of animals, crimes I would argue are far greater than the financial fraud charges he was convicted of.
I believe the federal government should have prosecuted Rubashkin for these crimes after it won conviction on 86 counts of financial fraud. It did not do so in part because trials cost lots of money and eat up lots of time, and the return for doing so was, in the government’s eyes, too minimal.
As the US Sentencing Guidelines are now constructed, all that abuse and mistreatment might have added a only a few months, maybe a year or two, to Rubashkin’s 27-year sentence. So why spend the money and the time?
In fact, the government only charged and considered prosecuting the immigration crimes linked to Rubashkin. The abuse of those undocumented workers and the abuse of the animals were issues that really were not on the government’s radar.
So when Rubashkin wanted those immigration charges severed from the financial fraud charges and tried separately, the government agreed. And then it prosecuted the financial charges because they were the most serious and carried the larges penalties. And when it won conviction of all 86 of them, it declined to prosecute Rubashkin on anything else. After all, why waste the money and the time?
The answer, of course, is that human life and animal lives matter, perhaps not equally or in exactly the same ways, but both matter far more than dollars. Yet the government’s decision taught the opposite lesson.
So Rubashkin sits in prison, serving a much-too-long 27-year sentence (25 years for the fraud charges – exactly at the middle of draconian the US Sentencing Guidelines – and 2 years for perjury). The lesson taught is don’t steal from rich people and banks, and through association don’t employ undocumented workers because you could get caught and punished for something worse.
The lesson really should have been different: do not exploit poor workers, do not abuse animals (in the name of religion or otherwise), care about all life and protect it. But it wasn’t. It was a national teaching moment lost.
Lastly, I’d like to say a word about the current religious freedom situation in Israel and the general tenor of the government.
Let me start by saying that, agree with his politics or not, Menachem Begin was generally a mentch, a surprising down to earth person who truly cared about people. I don’t think that same statement can honestly be made about Benjamin Netanyahu and it certainly cannot be made about many of the other political leaders in the coalition government, including its haredim. As a person who spent close to three decades as a person of the right, one of the things that drove me away – perhaps the thing that most drove me away – is that lack of mentchlikeit.
My criticism comes out of that and from the clear empirical evidence that Israel is no longer led by a a government or by leaders who cherish truth. I saw this first when Yitzhak Shamir led Israel in the 1980s, but I brushed it off. My ideology – or, I should say, Chabad’s theology and Rabbi Meir Kahane’s ideology – were more important. I could look the other way while Shamir parsed and lied if those untruths protected Israel. But I was wrong to do so then and I refuse to make the same mistake today.
For Israel to truly thrive, it needs to separate religion and state. There should not be a state-funded chief rabbinate or a mandate that citizens marry and divorce through any officially sanctioned religious outlet. If a couple wants a religious marriage ceremony, let them hire whatever clergy is meaningful to them. If a Jew wants to marry a non-Jew, it should not be the job of a state apparatus to stop the couple from marrying. If a couple wants a totally secular ceremony, let a justice of the piece do the honors. Schools that teach Israel’s core curriculum should be funded by the state. Schools which refuse to do so should not.
Religion should ply its wares through good example and honest reasoning, not through state-supported coercion and deceit.
Netanyahu is willing to inflict coercive religion on Israelis in exchange for power, just as he is willing to abandon haredi children to substandard schools as long as their parents vote for parties which support him. Indeed, he’s even willing to allow most haredim to avoid the draft in perpetuity as long as those haredi votes stay with him. Secular Israelis disproportionately bear the burden of Israel’s defense and its economy while Netanyahu laughs all the way to the prime minister’s office, and this must stop. Perhaps one day soon it will. We can only hope.
I don’t approach this as a Reform Jew or as a Conservative Jew or as a Reconstructionist or Renewal Jew. I approach this now as a proud secular Jew, as a post-religions Jew who has far greater affinity for Baruch Spinoza or Theodore Herzl than for any rabbi or religious leader.
I want to thank the people at Diversified Holdings for their professionalism during these last months. They’ve promised to guard your confidentiality as I did, at least with regard to whatever you posted before this. (I hope they’ll post some type of privacy policy in the next day or two so you’ll know what they intend to do from here on out. Diversified’s people should begin regular posting soon, as well, probably by early Thursday.)
As for me, I’ll keep you posted on my anti-poverty work and other issues I’m working on or interested in if you follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/Shmarya) and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/shmarya).
And with that, I thank you all again. This blog and its people have become like a second family to me. I will miss it and miss you all more than you will ever know.
[FailedMessiah is not closing down. More details on its future will be posted Thursday.]
Israel’s haredi Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush told the Knesset plenum today that Women of the Wall should be “thrown to the dogs."
"…I believe the time has come where serious consideration needs to be given by the broader Jewish community and government as to whether it is appropriate for [Chabad] Yeshivah to continue under its current administration and in its current form. It is easy to forget amid all this chaos that victims are still hurting and seeking justice by way of holding to account those trustees who remain in power, and that the safety of children within the school is paramount. I concur with another [Chabad] Yeshivah victim who recently said publicly that he does not believe that safety can be guaranteed in the environment that currently exists. I would urge the community to give serious consideration to forcing the trustees to hand the [Chabad] Yeshivah Centre over to capable and independent trustees who can administer the Centre professionally until such time as the community has developed the appropriate structures to have it back. Ultimately it’s the safety and wellbeing of our children – past and present – that we are dealing with. And this must always come first."
Did you believe Chabad's frequent claims to the press that each official Chabad center is a truly independent franchise? A new letter written to Chabad trustees in Melbourne, Australia by Chabad's organizational head Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky and the 1973 memo from his predecessor included with it should dispel that notion. But perhaps more importantly, the new Krinsky letter refers to the ongoing Chabad child sex abuse scandal in Melbourne this way: "We also acknowledge the severe difficulties you [Chabad trustees] have been going through for over a year and the aggravation and turmoil that have engulfed the entire Chabad community of Melbourne." There is not one word of consolation for the victims of the child sex abuse and not one word or regret for how the original complaints of child sex abuse were handled.
“It’s a pity it took so long for the legal authorities to recognize that blessings, holy water or charms are a product like any other product or service, and the money that’s gotten for them – even if it’s given officially as a ‘contribution’ – should be liable for tax, like any other income.”
Continue reading "Rabbis, Rebbes, Kabbalists And Wonder-Workers Will Now Have To Pay Taxes" »
Exactly 140 years ago today, the first installment of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, the world’s first great philo-semitic novel was published – by a lapsed Christian who had more in common with Baruch Spinoza than she did with any priest, vicar or rabbi.
Continue reading "Today in History: The First Philo-Semitic Novel Is Published " »
An investigation by the Israel Police fraud squad has found that 14 out of 15 real estate acquisitions made by a pro-Jewish-settler land acquisition company were forged.
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Ha'aretz: Jewish Bloggers To Gather In Jerusalem
The Village Voice: The Fall Of The House Of Rubashkin
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GAWKER: 5WPR Flacks Get So Freaking Busted Impersonating People Online
GAWKER: 5WPR Busted For Even More Blog Fraud; Uses Apology As Slimy Sales Pitch Opportunity
Jerusalem Post: Agriprocessors' PR company faces allegations of identity theft
The Forward: Flacks for Kosher Slaughterhouse Accused of Impersonating Company's Critics Online
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JTA: PR firm accused of impersonating rabbi
GAWKER: 5WPR Scares Holy Man With Sock Puppet, Blames Intern
JTA Traces Fake Rabbi Morris Allen Comment To Agriprocessors Spokesman's Home
JTA: Agriprocessors' PR firm accused of impersonating rabbi
Ha'aretz: Jewish blogger tackles perceived shortcomings of Orthodox Judaism
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GAWKER: Scheme To Blame Intern For PR Fraud Unravels
GAWKER: Sad Flacks Secretly Edit Their Boss's Own Wikipedia Page
NY Jewish Week: A P.R. Nightmare
Mpls StarTribune: PR firm's meat plant messages misleading
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ASBURY PARK PRESS: Dwek Faces Shunning, If Not Death
New Vilna Review: Is There An Orthodox War Against Modern Orthodoxy?
Talkline Radio Network Interview: Rabbinic responses to Ethiopian Jewry.
Jewcy: Most Wanted: The Big, Bad Butchers and Bullies of Agriprocessors
