Thursday February 16 News Updates Lakewood

 Weather: 65° Cloudy skies with periods of light rain later in the day. High near 65F. Chance of rain 80%.

- Final day of Shovavim, this shabbosbis parshas shekalim and mevorchim Chodesh Adar rosh chodesh is Tuesday & Wednesday 

- News reports Another Jewish Person Shot Leaving Shul in Los Angeles  a dat after another Jewish victim was shot. the victim was shot while leaving a Shul in the area of S. Bedford and Pico Boulevard.

- Continued tefilos for Rav Moshe Hillel Ben Mindel Hirsch shlita the Slabodka R"Y. Rav Dov Landau called for everyone to daven that the treatments should be successful.

- Lakewood Township Committee virtual meeting today Feb 16 at 5:30 pm watch livestream Here see Agenda Here. Prior to the meeting there will he 2 added special meetings. One for board of health which is the same members. The second is a special meeting for the LIC that seeks three (3) proposed amendments to the State Plan Policy Map which will change zoning on those properties. One of them is to allow the 300 ton waste transfer station at the current DPW. Another to add a parcel on Airport rd to the lic industrial park. See that agenda Here. The regular scheduled agenda includes several street vacations. A ordnance to prohibit parking at all times along the north side of East Kennedy Boulevard from the prolonged curb line of Somerset Avenue and East Kennedy Boulevard and extending in an easterly direction to Milano Drive. Comments may be made live  or

via email up until 11:30 am on the day of the meeting at 

premeetingcomments@lakewoodnj.gov or during the meeting via 

comments@lakewoodnj.gov

Please include your name and address for 

the record.

- NJ Globe reports: A hugely influential member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood is exploring a run for State Assembly in the 30th district as a Democrat against Republican incumbents Sean Kean (R-Wall) and Ned Thomson (R-Wall). Avi Schnall,  the director of the New Jersey office of Agudath Israel of America and a staunch advocate for non-public school students, is preparing to take a leave of absence from his post in advance of the March 27 filing deadline to see if he can flip an Ocean/Monmouth legislative district that has been solidly Republican since its origin in 1991.There are 26,5551 more Republicans than Democrats in the 30th district – a 39%-19% edge, with 41% of the voters unaffiliated with either party – but the ability of the Orthodox community in Lakewood, Howell and Wall to split their ticket creates an interesting opportunity for Democrats. More

- Parachute ride at 6 flags great adventure will be removed from the park, "As we plan for future growth, we sometimes identify rides that have reached the end of their useful life and retiring these rides makes way for future new thrills for our guests."

A new scientific review suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID-19. 

The review, titled "Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses," was led by 12 researchers from esteemed universities around the world.

Published by Cochrane Library, the review dug into the findings of 78 randomized controlled trials to determine whether "physical interventions" — including face masks and hand-washing — lessened the spread of respiratory viruses. Fox

High school issue explained:  submitted via comments 

When houses were going for 500,000 why are we in bidding wars to give the goyim a million ? Why don't all buyers band together and say enough is enough and we won't give in to this price gouging and only pay a fair price ? In reality that's is what should be. But people don't think about the klal . They need a house so they say ,I'll pay whatever it takes to have a house and it's not my problem if that raises the prices way above what they should be .

Same here . This school put out the noise that this year there will be a big shortage of slots . They hyped that up and got parents very nervous . Then they gave parents a 24 hour ultimatum. Either take our offer or risk your daughter being on the street. The parents didn't even have the chance of getting interviews or answers from other schools but they went into panic mode . The other schools are all disgusted by this one school and asked the parents not to cave in and so are the elementary school principals . but nobody was willing to tell parents to risk having their daughter with no slot. So the elementary school principals put tremendous pressure on the other schools to give answers quickly even before the interviews and some schools caved to the pressure and also started demanding answers from parents and then some sent out acceptance letters . So the system totally broke . Once there is panic in the streets , unless you have a tight kehila structure like by Chasidim , you can't prevent parents from taking care of their kids or buyers taking care of their housing needs.in both cases ,it destroys our society one in ruchniyos and one in gashmius but panic creates bad things.

As far as the Vaad , the only thing the Vaad had going for it in past years was a certain level of trust between the schools and a certain level of the machanchos of each school caring about the big picture of trying as best as they could to help all the girls. It wasn't a perfect system but with all its faults ,it worked for the most part. Nobody had to give answers until the interviews were done and all acceptance letters went out at a mutually agreed upon date . Now that this school has destroyed the trust between the schools , there will be no cooperation because every school just assumes that this school will just do what it wants and the system is over . It will actually be much worse than the mesivtas going forward because of the tight space and other reasons.

As far asthe Vaad I don't think it was an ultimatum. It was simply throwing up their hands and stating a fact that they no longer had the schools cooperating with each other ,because the other schools felt very wronged and taken advantage of by this action and without cooperation the Vaad hs no power and its like the mesivta system.

In short you are technically right. I'm theory if all patents would have told that school that we will not give in to intimidation and terror tactics and they all banded together and said that ,then this woukd not have happened. But the same can be said fir the housing prices . When sellers started raising prices because of the crazy bidding wars ,if all buyers woukd have banded together and said we are not going to pay raise insane orices ,then Lakewood woukd stillbe affordable for Bnai Torah. But since there are always those that don't think about the ramifications to the klal, we have panic in school acceptances and housing prices . Same concept.