Friday, June 16, 2023 / כ״ז סיון תשפ״ג ערב שבת פרשת שלח
candle lighting 8:10 pm
shkiah/sunset 8:28 pm
Mevorchim chodesh Tamuz Rosh chodesh is Monday & Tuesday
weather today Cloudy skies early then heavy thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. Chance of rain 70%. Friday night chance of Thunderstorms
Shabbos day 79° Sunshine and clouds mixed. Slight chance of a rain shower.
- 1:30 pm Severe thunderstorm warnings issued for Ocean county HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail. warning until 2:15 pm
- 1:00pm Tornado warning Take shelter in place or per instructions for Ocean County
The National Weather Service in Mount Holly NJ has issued a Tornado Warning for... Northwestern Ocean County in southern New Jersey until 1:30pm
- Mega Millions Jackpot for tonight $281 Million
Power Ball Jackpot tomorrow night $366 Million
-Free scoops of Mehadrin ice cream today at Gourmet Glatt Madison location 12:00pm - 4:00 pm
-Yartzeit today of Rav Chaim Stein zatzal and Reb Dovid Trenk ZTL.
- Putin: I have many Jewish friends since childhood “My Jewish friends tell me that Zelensky is not Jewish - he is a shame for the Jewish people”
- Satmar Rebbe Reb Zalman Leib will spend shabbos in Lakewood at the Satmar Kehilla in Rockwell off Cross street. all tefillos and tish will take place at the new Bais Medrash in the development.
- Car accidents and injuries continue to sky rocket ion Lakewoods roads. Last night there were several serious accidents along the New hampshire Ave corridor sending people to the hospital and backing up traffic for 45 minutes
- Head of Kedasia kashrus in London Rav Michoel Sharf will be speaking in Lakewood shabbos afternoon at Bais Medrash Chasam Sofer 490 Manetta at 7:15 pm
- Tomahawk steakhouse announces new lunch parve menu
- Adirei Hatorah podcast review HERE
- Catskills bus from Lakewood will begin next Sunday June 25
- Rabbi Steven Pruzansky on the current events A simple protest - because, pride lobby, the Torah is not changing In the Orthodox coddling of LGBT in its ranks, the emperor has no clothes! He is not wearing alternative garb, he is distorting Torah!
Increasingly, Orthodox Jews are being compelled (in truth, many go quite willingly) to participate in charade weddings, complete with “clergy,” rings, blessings, a chuppah, and, of course, the broken glass. All this in the guise of “maintaining the friendship, rallying around the family, trying to keep the child in the fold” that he or she has already left – and in the process, they betray what is most dear to them and trample on the integrity of the Torah.
It is all one big game of pretend, in which no one is allowed to state the quiet part aloud: the emperor has no clothes! It is not that he is wearing alternative garb. Do we ponder the ramifications of celebrating a sham wedding that defiles the very concept of marriage and family?
Do we even take a moment to consider that a four-year-old girl who thinks she is a boy needs her parents to take her to a competent mental health professional – not a surgeon? It is hard to imagine a greater act of child abuse to which children – teens and younger – are being subjected, and all in the name of the golden calf of compassion. More HERE
Ad in Vivaser: Satmar Rebbe Reb Zalman Leib Teitelbaum shlita spending shabbos in Lakewood
You are all focused not on the biggest problem, one that has the potential to make Lakewood into a ghost town for residents. Jersey City just lost its school funding case yesterday. See: http://arthur2240.ipage.com/documents/JCBOE%20v.%20NJ%20Order%20granting%20Summary%20Judgment.pdf
ReplyDeleteI have been saying for years that the legislature will force us to raise taxes by removing the 2% tax and impose a payroll tax like they did in Jersey City. They are forking out now $93 million a year out of the state budget expecting Lakewood taxpayers to pay back. There is no question that is down the pike and has nothing to do with my litigation.
Here is a quote from Judge Lougy in the Jersey City case: "In July 2018, the State of New Jersey approved the payroll tax, L. 2018, c. 68, which permits municipalities with a population over 200,000 to impose an employer payroll tax and requires any municipality that has a median household income of $55,000 or more to deposit those payroll tax revenues into a trust fund to be used solely for school purposes." He also notes that the 2% tax increase cap was removed. If that happens in Lakewood then the state monitors will have the power to raise taxes on their own without the BOE. And they will remain in the district by statute until all the money is paid back.
Now we are safe because our median income is $53,000. But they will change that for Lakewood. Who in the legislature, besides our delegation, would not put an end to the what even the executive branch judge who heard the case called a "Ponzi scheme?" This money is coming out the state budget and if they get us to pay, NJ being a home-rule state dominated by local interests and bosses without any big city newspapers, television stations, and dwarfed between NYC and Philadelphia, without a sense of common statewide cause since its founding as a colony, legislators would love to divert that money to their own constituencies rather than be concerned about state's vital interest in educating Lakewood's kids.
Our litigation is in a good position because I filed in 2014 (when we were taxing above our local fair share). So, despite the State's bottomless bag of tricks, delays, and smokescreens (courtesy bussing, law tax rate of any large city, which is false), we were able to get to a real court by 2023 (being fecetious) and get the T & E ruling ultimately giving the judicial branch jurisdiction to order a fix to the formula before the State has a chance to create the falsehood that the taxpayers are to blame. (Ultimately it will be the NJ Supreme Court that does the job.)
So the take from Jersey City case is that there are four important distinctions between Lakewood and Jersey City.
1) We already got the T & E ruling so the burden of proof shifts to the state.
2) Even if we taxed at our full local fair share, which we are currently $50 short (Jersey City is $200 million short), we would still be short $40 million for T & E and growing.
3) Jersey City already had its tax increase cap removed years ago before it got to court.
4) Lakewood does not have the capacity to tax more. Education costs the average Lakewood taxpayer 30% to 40% of their personal income. It is like a municipal overburden on warp drive. This is a point I have made since 2014, that we cannot afford to pay more.
Aaron Lang
Now we are safe because our median income is $53,000. But they will change that for Lakewood. "They" won't have to make any changes. The way inflation is going the median income will be over $55,000 in a year or two anyway.
DeleteYes. But we are still less than 200,000. At any rate, we are not going to let that happen. Prof. T., and Mr. Wyns, who happened to be the expert witness in the Jersey City case, are dedicated to making sure that the state forgives the debt, and one of the suggested remedies is to decrease our local fair share. If they don't, let's say they raise our adequacy budget by $100 million to $220 million. That will not come out to be an extra $100 million in state aid because they will subtract the $160 million of our current local share even if we do not actually tax that high. That would mean only an extra $60 million. Still, bringing in $60 million a year is not bad for someone at the bottom of the corporate ladder getting paid $70,000! I'm done complaining as if I am a victim because the BOE boss and superintendent control my position and parnansa, took away all my stipends, demoted me, etc. (to think that a yid would do such a thing), keeps me at the bottom of the corporate ladder, when I don't need them at all, am doing the job by myself (of course with the help of Prof. T. and Mr. Wyns) and beat them in court every time they start up with me. I'm going against the full might and power of a wealthy American state, whose governor cannot afford to lose the Lakewood case as the SFRA is his legacy, and I should worry about a kleinekeit such as my parnasa (or my kleine parnasa) controled by Class A junior leaguers, nay, peewee leaguers? What should future generations say, "He was a victim" or "He was leader?" Anyway, as long as people bring me law cases, I don't need the district to pay the bills. If the district splurges the money when it comes it, then good riddance. And who knows, maybe at that time they will get rid of the avaricious boss that everyones is so chicken of and hand me the reins to build, and make the district into an engine of efficiency, a powerhouse bringing opportunity for children and young adults, and prosperity and growth for all the people of, and commerce in, Lakewood. (Dream, dream, dream).
Delete
ReplyDeleteThat brings me to another point after seeing the blog before this. I will use the word "scared" loosely, but I personally know what is going on.
It is so messed up working for Lakewood school district. Its boss scared of me. The mosdos are scared of him. The Vaad is scared of the mosdos. The politicians are scared of the Vaad. We are lead by a bunch of scaredy-cats. Anywhere else in America where there is a good cause, some faction will take advantage of it, win votes, and take power. In Lakewood all factions intertwined frustrating common good.
That is the only way I can explain how everyone supports the cause, including all the above mentioned except the first, the "boss" of the district, but are still powerless to either coalesce around the cause to challenge him and too integrated with one another to disrupt their interdependence and galvanize the support of the ultimate arbiters of power in this so well balanced system of accountably called the American form of government, designed by the most enlightened and wisest generation of Gentile man, perhaps its greatest assembly of wisdom ever, men of uncanny understanding of history and human nature, who gave us the gift of government that has so successfully balanced freedom with order, the goal of every good constitution.
That should be your concern. What the Township committee does will be unimportant 100 years from now. The way the BOE and its superintendent are appointed, based on their submissiveness, particularly at this moment in history that will determine the future survival of Lakewood as an affordable home to the multitude, is of exponentially greater concern.
The reality of what I am referring to as cowardice, a man has to take a stand in politics for the good of the community, the reality is the reluctance of stepping on one another's turf. The Vaad supports me (I praise this despite my theoretical disagreement with them over the decades for telling people who to vote for, I guess that is how it is done in the kehilla, but understand that I think differently coming from corporate America, all my fathers' friends and my friend's fathers were executives,VPs and presidents in the largest oil companies and chemical companies), and the Vaad has real leadership, particularly since they seek da'as Torah in the Roshei Yeshiva, but cannot get involved in BOE matters because that is the turf of the Igud. The old BOE when I filed and asked them to join me, warned me against stepping on their turf. The Igud, a loose coalition with poor leadership, is dominated by the district lawyer-boss and won't step on his turf. The new BOE, which is so unmanly powerless, will not step onto anyone's turf. They are just for show. The oilam's lobbyist in Trenton does not want to step on the turf of legislators they have connected with, so they do not like that I am forcing the issue in the courts. This turf business is like West Side Story without the Shakespearian part and the desperate, little, puny, despicable gangs willingness (without any chance to get out of slum life) to the cross the stupid lines of turf. Either because everyone so scared of what happens if everyone does not speak with one voice, and there can be no exception even when the bottom line is at stake, even when someone steps up to the plate for the welfare of the kids and taxpayers, the voters, thwarting any kind of accountability, and checks and balances, so necessary for a large city, the America ideal of corporate efficiency, competition, innovation, profit (it is too intangible to see the long-term prosperity) that is so familiar to everyone where I came from. That is what I mean because all our leaders, factions and groups are too fraidy cat and feeble to take a chance of upsetting the balance of small town power.
DeleteWe are Litvashe Bnai Torah, it is if zero I interest if the Satmar Rebbe or any Rebbe come to Lakewood. The Grah put a cherrm on the chassidic cult around 200 years ago!!
ReplyDeleteWhy do you assume only Litvaks read this site? The cherem of the gra is not applicable to today's chasidim as per every gadol including R Chaim Vlozhin, his talmidim and later the chofetz chaim.
DeleteIt is less black & white than this
DeleteThis toeva marriage is seeping in to our community if we don't wake up it will be too late when it becomes accept
ReplyDeleteIt is not seeping into our community.
DeleteYou are correct, it is already deeply entrenched in our community. You can blame the Rabbis Horowitz's and Jacobson's as well as the Dr's that all encouraged us to embrace the kids who were leading alternative lifestyles.
DeleteFrightening.And many just shrug
DeleteFor Covid they were able to stand up.
Better if they would throw off their yarmulkes and sheitels
This other lifestyle marriage which took place earlier this week was a busha to the Frum community. I think that we should bring this marriage up to the Rabbonim so maybe they can possibly make a machah .
DeleteSerious question - where have Rabbi's Horowitz and Jacobson supported this marriage or anything like it? If you can provide a link, that would be helpful. If they've done so, that needs to be exposed.
DeleteHorowitz is defending their choice and criticizing those who speak out as hate speech. It's a shame that Agudah promotes him he's no Rabbi
ReplyDeleteHe's modern Orthodox with a srugi under his shtreimel no-one falls for him as he now is pandering the woke mob on Instagram
DeleteLink please? If this is the case, we need to expose it far and wide.
DeleteFollow his Instagram account he gave a bunch of live videos about having empathy for the lgbt since he believes they were born that way. But we must follow the Torah even though we don't understand it. He spoke against the ones making a machaah calling it hate speech and distanced himself from the women who spoke out on her podcast
Deletehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-jewish-marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a/id1614568206?i=1000617103839
You can blame whoever you want, but they fact is these people who are going woke- are caused because they were ignored and finally get their attention they craved. If they got the attention from their parents- Rebbeim, friends etc, they wouldn't need to fall to issue in doriasa to get their negative attention.
DeleteLook around, materialism has seeped into our society at every level. Tznius has fallen. Go look for yourself. It's only about time for other areas of kedusah to unfortunately fall. It's only if we are strong and give chizuk to those who need it. An dues, to that guy or girl who sits next to you in shul, by the minyan factory or wherever they are.
Say hello. Be nice. And they won't need to be woke.
Even if so,that is sick.
DeleteBar Kamtza suffered worse ,so he was entitled to destroy yerushalayim
Are you another therapist ?
Well put .
DeleteMany serial murderers,those poor broken little things, have even better excuses.
The issue is not their entitlement. The issue is, what should we do about it?
DeleteBar Kamtza was wrong, but Chazal blamed the person who pushed him to it. Think about that.
We refuse to fall for that Croc.
DeleteMost of these types live charmed lives. By and large way better than yours. Very few are suffering in any way. The single thing they are suffering from if anything is being bored. And for that they are willing to wreck billions of lives, upend the planet upside down, and damage the chance for a better world.
(Similarly, a leading feminist after years of turning the whole globe upside down and claiming how much they suffered half admitted once in an interview the only issue they really had was far more prosaic boredom
But then they promptly continued smashing the planet claiming how much they suffer
chazal did not blame anyone. i don't think you've actually seen the gemara. go take a look at what how rav miller explains the story.
DeleteOh no ?!
DeleteThey blame EVERYONE.Includind R Zechariah Ben Avkulos
Stop fudging with your cop-outs
A must listen; Reb Shimon Russell on Parenting. https://youtu.be/0ykfi7rVnks
ReplyDeleteNot sure why anyone would take his advice when all his kids went of the direction. I take advice from those whose kids became gedolim. His methods are hogwash. His stated purpose is to make the kids "healthy" and they can choose not to be frum. For that I don't need him.
DeleteHe was thrown out of his chinuch jobs and has the school taken away from him thr only ppl who listen to him are the left MO who think he's a chasidishe that is open minded. His true colors have shown even aguda no longer support him
DeleteI think all of his kids came back and are frum. I know one son and he has a beautiful frum family.
Deletehttps://www.rt.com/russia/578141-russia-ark-normalcy-westerners/
ReplyDeleteKudos to R. Pruzansky for an important piece.
ReplyDeleteThe MO are seriously mixed up in that area. Marc Penner, dean of RIETS, the rabbinical school at YU, has a toeivah'nik son, who had a toeivah "wedding", R"L, on Shabbos, and is a JTS graduated cantor. Marc claims he found a way to get along with him, and made an organization to steer others in the same direction. Instead of disowning an evil child, Marc embraces him, and counsels others to do so too, laughing all the way to the bank.
David Bashevkin, a professor at YU and director of education at NCSY of the OU, promotes Marc, and his organization.
When will RIETS and OU clean house, and get rid of those very confused misleaders?
When you violate the basic hierarchy pinnacles of Judaism it is a terrific farce to allow them to be called orthodox or anything similar.
DeleteOr let's call ourselves something else
MO bared exists anymore .
The better part are similar to us ,decent, just a bit modernishe & professional
& little slower to come round to things
While the rest likely majority are virtually Conservadox &/or Reformative
I've never heard of any Gadol B'Torah in the past thirty years recommending disowning children who are doing aveiros but aren't actively fighting against the frum world. I highly doubt Rabbi Penner who you falsely accuse of laughing all the way to the bank when in reality he isn't making a dime off his organization is lying when he claimed that no Rav from any community who he discussed it with discouraged him from making it.
DeleteEhh,If a child is parading around their celebrations can there be a bigger form nowadays of "against the frum world"
DeleteMake as big bad racket & cause as many Others to suffer as capable
DeleteIf seeking to fill the existential empty void
..till next envelope push
Don't be concerned as there are enough who offer apologetics for & to you
Rabbi Gershon Ribner who certainly isn't MO or woke had a Q&A posted right here on hefkervelt about what to answer a daughter who had been a tzadikis until 18 and now OTD and married to a goy if she asks "Do you wish I would have died at 18?" His answer is straight along the lines Rabbi Penner or Shimon Russel would tell someone in that situation to say. And for the same reasons.
DeleteWhat in principle is different between some in the MO world "There is no hetter for their behavior but we have compassion for people engaged in toeva behavior" and some in the Yeshivish (and even more so in chasidish) world saying the same thing about people who are guilty of fraud, embezzlement and massive chilul hashem? Why in principal is attendance at a toevah wedding so much worse than going to a party celebrating some guy who is terribly guilty of gezel and chilul hashem when he gets out of jail that even some Roshey Yeshiva have attended?
DeleteBecause even if a guy stole no one is celebrating what he did , on the other hand a toeva wedding is celebrating the sin.
DeleteI can't imagine any Gadol 'Torah from like Rav Moshe or Rav Yaakov attending or approving of a party celebrating some ganev and mechalal shem shomyim getting out of jail. As a famous talmid of Rav Ahron Kotler put it “Thirty years ago when someone got out of jail he asked me if he can bentch gomel privately he was so embarrassed to call attention to it . Today people make public parties that get put online to celebrate their homecoming because there is so little embarrassment and disapproval for their aveiros.”
Delete
DeleteChagiga 5
States
clearly arayos are
Chamuros compared with
geneiva being less
Besides the other massive differences
between
They should be stepped on.
DeleteNow they push the envelope that much further
June 18, 2023 at 9:17 AM And the gemora in Bava Basra (88B) says that the punishments who deal in false measurements is worse than the punishments for those who are guilty of Arayos . There is no teshuva for chilul Hashem. As I expected the answer and distinction between accepting those who are engaged in gezel and those who are engaged in teova really boils down to a personal sense of which is worse and which should be tolerated
DeleteSheker.Your whataboutism is nefariously predictable.
Delete& Your taste predilection is the insinuation of the nachash hakadmonis
Poretz Geder is for Arayos which never is applied even to terrible crookedness
Chullin 92 explicitly is 'marriage' deviancy
AnonymousJune 18, 2023 at 10:18 AM Can you please explain your comment and point in simple unemotional terms that even I can understand?
DeleteMr. Cohen, why is your comment at 10:18 not signed with your name?
DeleteAnonymousJune 18, 2023 at 8:06 AM Very few Litvish Roshey Yeshiva or Rabbonim would attend a party for someone getting out of jail when they believe the person is guilty today either.
DeleteTo Horowitz and his ilk who accuse those who call out their disgusting sins of HATE? That is a diversionary tactic. Being disgusted by filth is not related to hatred at all. Just as one who doesn’t eat feces is not accused of “hatred”.
ReplyDeleteDovid Hamelech relates that he hates so many things
Delete
ReplyDeleteA Cry to Klal Yisrael: Are We Still the Am HaTorah - or Is K’Maaseh Eretz Mitzrayim the ‘New Normal?’
I shudder to think of the results that cannot be long in coming,
Is this what it felt like to live in the times of Yeshaya HaNavi and Yirmiyahu HaNavi, as Klal Yisrael were on a collision course with the churban, but nothing could shake them awake?
We exist now in a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, there are yeshivos full of Torah learning as never before, the numbers greater than in perhaps 2,000 years, Baruch Hashem.
On the other hand, though, we now see a decay so deep, so vast, it can hardly be fathomed.
We see men who practice mz, not in secret shame, but proudly, who call themselves Orthodox, and are still accepted in the community. If a man whose lifestyle is an issur Kareis writes a letter in a Sefer Torah, is the Sefer Torah pasul?
Does this Pasuk -still exist in everyone’s Sifrei Torah?
וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁכַּב אֶת זָכָר מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תּוֹעֵבָה עָשׂוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם מוֹת יוּמָתוּ דְּמֵיהֶם ב
Could the Torah have been more clear ? Yet it has become fashionable to ignore this !
This is how the Times of Israel described MR
Anyone who(delete censor)
But the news could easily have come as more of a surprise for one swath of Rosenfeld’s core audience: Orthodox Jews from communities like the one where he grew up, where LGBTQ inclusion remains an unfamiliar and often frowned-upon frontier. Rosenfeld has delivered his signature blend of highly informed Jewish comedy, which often digs into the technical details of Jewish law, on kosher Passover cruises; at benefits for Orthodox organizations including yeshivas, Young Israel chapters and Hatzalah, the Orthodox ambulance service; and on the annual Chabad-Lubavitch movement telethon. But until recently, his routine has contained little whiff of his personal life — in fact, some of his jokes suggested to his fans that he had.
Every society that acted thus, either destroyed themselves or were destroyed. They aren’t here any more.
ReplyDeleteWhere are we heading?
Our Yiddishkeit is so shiny on the outside, but for so many, it is simply cultural. A frum country club. A means of gaining respect
We can - and MUST - speak up and push back against the very purposeful infiltration of to’eiva and hedonistic culture. The more pushback there is, the more refusal to go along with this, the less inroads they can make.If you ever wondered what you would have done had you lived in the era of the Eigel, or of Matisyahu, or King Achav, now you have the chance to find out
Following is the p’sak I was told in regards to the two-girl “couple
The rule of ישראל אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא is only applicable to חטאים, not to a מומר. So they are now Kofrim Gemurim which means they are NOT Jewish anymore.
This degree of flaunting elevates their sins from the level of רשעות to the level of מומרות. Their publicizing it and celebrating it is nothing less than שמד.
Which means they are not part of our Nation anymore, just like the Reform and we have NO Chiyuv ערבות on them. No more responsibility to help them in their time of need. They are not רעך & they are no longer Ame'sacha.