New York Post: Non-Jews enforce Segregation of Women by Attire at the Yeshiva of Flatbush

The NY Post reports that the Yeshiva of Flatbush has hired non-Jews to enforce the segregation of women through attire regulations.

Not surprising. Within synagogues in nearly all Orthodox Jewish communities women are segregated from men. They are instructed to sit behind a curtain or divider. In many arenas of Orthodox society women are told to dress modestly and cover up their arms and legs.

To me it seems clear that a modesty dress code is another form of the segregation of women from the presence of men.

It’s reasonable to say that these rules and the patrols to enforce them are about segregation based on gender, the denial of equal rights to women and discrimination against women.

You may ask then, Aren’t all of those practices unacceptable in our modern Western societies?

Yes sir. Yes ma’am. They are unacceptable. Segregation of any kind is evil. We need to desegregate our Yeshivas.

The picture to the right above shows Alabama Governor George Wallace blocking the desegregation of the University of Alabama in 1963 - 51 years ago.

Morality police patrol for exposed flesh at NYC school 

‘WE CAN’T JUST WALK IN THE HALLS BECAUSE EVERYONE’S LOOKING AT US AND JUDGING US EVERY SECOND FOR OUR CLOTHING. OBVIOUSLY, IT’S DEGRADING.’
- senior Melissa Duchan

By Andrea Hay

Melissa Duchan says the dress code at Yeshiva of Flatbush is way over the top.

The morality police aren’t just patrolling Iran or the Islamic State — they’re standing watch at a school in Brooklyn.

Female students at ­Yeshiva of Flatbush are outraged that two monitors were hired this school year to patrol hallways for exposed collarbones and calves.

The modesty crackdown comes as the school enforces a new, stricter dress code, including longer skirts.

“We’re walking in and we’re being scrutinized every morning,” said 16-year-old senior Melissa Duchan. “We can’t just walk in the halls because everyone’s looking at us and judging us every second for our clothing. Obviously, it’s degrading.”

Can a Woman's Magical Powers Remove the Evel (Kneivel) Eye?

I found this funny ad in the Five Towns Jewish newspaper. Had to comment on whether there is such a thing as the Evel Kneivel eye.

Rebbetzin Aidel Miller claims she can remove the Evel Eye because she is "blessed with tremendous siyata d'shmaya" - with the help of heaven.

Let's see. Who was "Evel" Knievel? He was an American daredevil, painter, entertainer, and international icon," according to Wikipedia. Why of course. Since he was a dare-devil he must have been involved with the Evel Eye!

If the Evel Eye is like the Evil Eye (ʿáyin hā-ráʿ עַיִן הָרַע‎) then it is bound up with the magical idea that there exists a "malevolent look that many cultures believe able to cause injury or misfortune for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike."

The notion behind the typo-hilarious ad is that rabbis and other holy men and women can banish evil forces and demons through the use of their special powers based in knowledge of the secrets of the Torah, the Talmud and the Kabbalah, with the help of G-d.

You might ask, how can we take anything in Talmud seriously if it promotes the idea that there are evil forces of envy and many other invisible demons at work in world? Aren't those magical ideas just ancient superstitions that we no longer take seriously? And if we dismiss such notions, don't we need to dismiss the whole body of religious literature that contains those bad ideas?

That is a good question that Dear Rabbi may have to answer in his next column.

WNYC Reporter Robert Lewis Maybe Isn't Incompetent and Unprofessional After All

WNYC News ran a report, "The Orthodox Nonprofit That Maybe Isn't Corrupt After All" on Thursday, January 23, 2014 by Robert Lewis, reporter. The report had little new information about an organization that was criticized anonymously in the Moreland Commission investigation into public corruption.

Relief Resources, a Borough Park mental health service was accused of taking public money and providing no services. It turns out that they do provide services. The services may not be efficient - but I have a hard time seeing the service as a corrupt entity.

"Corrupt" is a weasely word to begin with. A more specific term like illegal would be better - if indeed there was any illegal activity connected with Relief Resources. And there is not.

And so here we go. Robert Lewis titles his story in the most weaselly way I have seen in a long time: "The Orthodox Nonprofit That Maybe Isn't Corrupt After All." Throw in gratuitously that they are Orthodox - but omit that it is a mental health service. That's not impressive. Then add the word "Maybe" - aren't there rules in journalism preventing the use of weasel words in title? "Maybe Isn't Corrupt" - shouldn't that be "appears to be honest."

I'd say the title of the article ought to be, "Brooklyn Mental Health Service Unfairly Accused of Corruption Turns Out to be Legitimate."

(UPDATE 10 PM: WNYC HAS CHANGED THE HEADLINE. IT NOW READS, "Do-Nothing Nonprofit" Actually Does Stuff. MY PROPOSED HEADLINE IS BETTER. "DOES STUFF" IS NOT A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTIC DESCRIPTION. BUT HEY AT LEAST THEY SORTA LISTENED.)

Maybe the Moreland Commission and Governor Cuomo aren't corrupt either. They surely aren't doing a good job going after real corruption. So hmm, I wonder if we should look into the Moreland Commission and find out who told them where to look for corruption - and who told them where NOT to look for corruption. (Were the exact words, "Go get me an Orthodox rabbi. That lately makes good headlines.")

I'm going with the conclusion that journalist Robert Lewis writes weasely poorly researched stories and I am still not sure that maybe he isn't incompetent and unprofessional.



(Hat tip to my special source.)

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Google Glass Joins Caribbean Islanders with Orthodox Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights Brooklyn

Google Glass will change the nature of communications in many ways. Here is an early example.

From the Daily News:

Brooklyn filmmakers (Mendy Seldowitz, Celso White, Ben Millstein and Hannah Roodman) are using Google Glass technology to document long-standing tensions in Crown Heights. Project 2x1 is using the new technology to show what life is like for Caribbean Islanders and Hasidic Jews

Four Brooklyn filmmakers are seeing Crown Heights through rose-colored Google Glass. They employed the newfangled technology to tease out longstanding tensions between the neighborhood’s primary inhabitants.

The four 20-somethings behind Project 2x1 used the camera-equipped glasses to show what life is like for the Caribbean islanders and Orthodox Hasidic Jews who live there.

The mission: “To bring two distinct communities together to form one united neighborhood,” said Hannah Roodman, the project’s director and producer.

The product: A short film that depicts scenes from everyday life — including scenes in a barbershop, a synagogue and the annual West Indian Day Parade — most filmed with a small camera attached to different faces.

Read more

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The Cool B-and-G Sukkah at Beth Elohim in Park Slope

The Brooklyn Paper reported in 2011 on a cool sukkah in Park Slope, Brooklyn,

"...when the annual harvest festival begins on Wednesday night, the Garfield Place temple will do its outdoor praying in a sleek, modern shelter created by the award-winning architecture firm B-an-G Studio...more..."

Hat tip to Barak for sending this.

Video: Silly Chabad Beard Outreach in Williamsburg

No clue what this silly stuff is all about. Hat tip to Yitz.

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Passover Shabbat Bris for baby Zev Zahavy

We welcomed Barak and Miriam's son, Elana and Maya's Brother, Shaiel, Yair, Gavi and Eitan's cousin, Yitz and Julie's nephew, our grandson Zev Mendel Zahavy, at his Passover Shabbat Bris today in Brooklyn, where he was named after my father Zev of blessed memory, who passed away 11 months ago.

Is Times' Columnist David Brooks Jewish?

First off, is David Brooks Jewish? Yes, David Brooks is a Jew.

Okay then. Midday today there were over 400 comments on David Brooks' Times op-ed praising Orthodox Judaism. Many of those comments on the Times' web site were not quite as laudatory of the kosher lifestyle.

Brooks toured a Kosher supermarket in Brooklyn with a modern Orthodox rabbi and then waxed quite eloquent about the virtues of Orthodox life.

For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.

The laws, in this view, make for a decent society. They give structure to everyday life. They infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance. They build community. They regulate desires. They moderate religious zeal, making religion an everyday practical reality.

The laws are gradually internalized through a system of lifelong study, argument and practice. The external laws may seem, at first, like an imposition, but then they become welcome and finally seem like a person’s natural way of being....

Is David Brooks Orthodox? No, Brooks identifies as a Conservative Jew, "in the political and religious sense,” according to a report in 2011 in the Jewish Week:

Helfgot and Perlman Take Brooklyn by Storm

Israel-born American violinist Itzhak Perlman, performed tonight with Manhattan’s Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It was the new arena’s first Jewish event.

In November, 2006 we interviewed Helfgot for the Jewish Standard prior to his concert at the Metropolitan Opera House...

Internationally renowned Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot will perform “Helfgot Sings Cantorial Classics,” the first solo cantorial concert at the New York Metropolitan Opera on Sunday, December 3. At press time the event has nearly sold out the 4400 seating capacity of the Opera House. Dr. Mordechai Sobol arranged the music for the orchestra and choir. The orchestra will include members of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Matthew Lazar with Cantor Daniel Gildar on the piano. The choir will be coordinated by Cantor Azi Schwartz. The invocation prior to the concert will be offered by the chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau.

Dov Hikind's Purim Blackface Draws Outrage

We don't see anything wrong with wearing an afro wig on Purim. In fact we did it this year (with a kippah clipped to it) and walked around giving generous "peace" signs and got no criticism.

Hardly any mention of an afro wig in the New Yorker or in the other media that is critical of Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

Mostly it's the blackface part of his Purim costume that raised people's hackles.

...The revelation that Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, had hosted a Purim party while wearing a costume intended to represent an African-American basketball player was first made by the New York Observer, which published a photograph of Hikind wearing an orange jersey, a nimbus of black wig, and sunglasses, with his face darkened with cosmetics. The image first appeared on the Facebook page of Hikind’s son, Yoni...Read more.

Hey Dov, give us a call. We'll explain all this to you. What you aren't calling? OK here is what you need to say, "I get it; I am sorry; I did a stupid insensitive thing; I won't do it again."

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Is air kosher?

No, according to rabbis in Israel and Brooklyn, air is no longer kosher.

Air contains microscopic organisms that neither chew the cud nor have split hooves.

Kosher true Jews are now required to wear rabbinical approved gas masks when they wish to breathe.

Happy Purim.

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Are mannequins kosher?

From The New York Times we found a Purim article published just a bit early: 

Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads: "Shadowy committees have threatened shop owners over mannequins they don't like, and reportedly have invaded homes to seize computer equipment."

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

Some men are sexually aroused by mannequins! Definitely not kosher!

Ha ha ha, how funny is this!?

DNAinfo.com Exposes Worst Scandal of the Brooklyn Yeshivas - Lack of Education for Boys

They tell us who they are, "DNAinfo.com is New York's leading hyper-local news source, covering New York City's neighborhoods. We deliver up-to-the-minute reports on entertainment, education, politics, crime, sports, and dining. Our award-winning journalists find the stories — big or small — that matter most to New Yorkers."

And in a series of reports by Sonja Sharp they expose the biggest scandal of all at Brooklyn's Yeshivas:

1. English is Absent and Math Doesn't Count at Brooklyn's Biggest Yeshivas 
2. Barred From Talmud Studies, Girls Get English and Math at Brooklyn Yeshivas

Sonja quotes our friend Zalman Alpert, 

In Orthodox Judaism, men are religiously required to study the Torah, and only they are believed to have the intellectual and spiritual capacity to parse the Talmud. Put simply, Jewish boys are too important to be bothered with frivolous concepts like geometry and grammar, experts on the communities said.

“For a young Jewish teenager, it’s a waste of time because he’s supposed to be studying Talmud, Bible, Jewish codes,” said Zalman Alpert, a librarian at Yeshiva University and an expert on Brooklyn's Orthodox communities.

“No matter which Orthodox community you’re talking about, the girls end up getting a better education in secular studies.”

New Yorker: Guns in Israel and Gefilte Fish in Brooklyn

New Yorker sometimes is our favorite Jewish magazine. The editors unintentionally juxtapose two articles of interest in the 2012 holiday issue:

A JEWISH GEFILTE CHRISTMAS Posted by Anna Altman

...This year, I appended the Jewish holiday rites with a visit to the kitchen of the Gefilteria, a recently launched food company specializing in old-world Jewish foods. Started by three twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, the Gefilteria sells gefilte fish with a pink layer of salmon gefilte topping each dun-colored loaf; jars of two types of horseradish, spicy-carrot and sweet-beet; and glass bottles of beet kvass, a probiotic fermented beverage. An Ashkenazi Jew, I was familiar with the idea of these items, but only in degraded factory form...

“A PROGRAM LIKE THEY HAVE IN ISRAEL” Posted by Hendrik Hertzberg, which we find worth reproducing:

According to Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association is demanding “a program like they have in Israel.” On “Meet the Press,” LaPierre, the C.E.O. of the N.R.A., said, “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.”

Oh, really?

A piece in Ynetnews.com, the English-language Web site of Yedioth Ahronoth (“Daily News”), Israel’s largest-selling newspaper, explains why Israeli officials were upset by LaPierre’s comments:

The statements were quickly proven to be false. Israeli guards were not placed in schools to tackle mass shootings. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Daily News that the situation in Israel was “fundamentally different” from that in the United States.

“We didn’t have a series of school shootings, and they had nothing to do with the issue at hand in the United States. We had to deal with terrorism,” said Palmor.

“There is no comparison between maniacs with psychological problems opening fire at random to kill innocent people and trained terrorists trying to murder Israeli children,” said Reuven Berko, a retired Israeli Army colonel and senior police officer.

He further remarked that restrictions on gun ownership in Israel have been tightened in recent years, not relaxed.

“Israeli citizens are not allowed to carry guns unless they are serving in the army or working in security-related jobs that require them to use a weapon,” he said.

Tightening restrictions on gun ownership. Not letting people run around carrying guns unless it is in the public interest to have them do so. Now there’s “a program like they have in Israel.”

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Shouting in Shul About the Prayer for the State of Israel

Originally posted 10/30/05...

There was a shouting match this past Shabbat morning at the 8:30 minyan at the Bnai Yeshurun synagogue in Teaneck. The Gabbai added the single word sheteheh to the Prayer for the State of Israel. That meant he said that we prayed that the Lord protect Israel and that the State will be the first flowering of our redemption -- instead of praying that the Lord protect it because it is the beginning of our redemption.

The policy at CBY officially is to add that will be qualifier. The 9:00 minyan always does. The 8:30 has not -- based on a "don't ask, don't tell" understanding. But then recently the Rabbi got wind of this unfortunate laxity. He scolded the Gabbai and insisted that the policy of qualifying the prayer be rigidly enforced. The resultant shouting match followed.

Times: More whining from Auslander about Jews and a Nice Story about Kosher Toys

An awful fictional column in the NY Times magazine by Shalom Auslander, poorly written and utterly obnoxious: Grabbing Life by the Horns by SHALOM AUSLANDER

Traveling abroad with a group of Orthodox friends, a son finds that, alas, his mother knows best.

Offset to the above, a charming news story, well written with real content: A Store Where Toys Must Be Kosher by JOSEPH BERGER.

At Double Play Toys, which serves Orthodox Jewish families, figures that promote TV-watching or violence run against the store’s code.

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Times: It is OK for Women to Sit in the Back of the Brooklyn Jewish Bus

We just continue to wonder why women sit in the back of the B110 bus in Brooklyn.

If we ran the world, the women would always sit in the front.


Bus Operator Denies Discriminating Against Women

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

 

"A bus company that transports primarily Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish passengers between Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn has denied that it discriminates against female passengers by compelling them to sit at the rear of the bus..."

"God's Favorite Prayers" where women sit in the front of the shul

Segregation of Jewish Women on the B110 Bus in Brooklyn

We find the segregation of Jewish women on the B110 bus in Brooklyn, reported by the Times, to be utterly unacceptable and a violation of human decency and of the precepts of the Torah.

New Album from Andy Statman - Old Brooklyn

Our friend Andy Statman has a new album, Old Brooklyn, that features special guests, BÉLA FLECK RICKY SKAGGS PAUL SHAFFER BYRON BERLINE LEW SOLOFF JON SHOLLE and others. Andy makes some great music. Hat tip to Blog in Dm.

Order on Amazon, October 24.

Is Brooklyn Literary?

Yes, Brooklyn is a literary mecca, as explained in a new book by Even Hughes, reviewed in the Times.

LITERARY BROOKLYN - The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life

By Evan Hughes

337 pages. Henry Holt & Company. $17.

Excerpt: 'Literary Brooklyn' (pdf)

by Patricia Wall/The New York Times

...For generations — long before it became fashionable — Brooklyn has taken in writers fleeing from Manhattan’s steep rents and steeper pretensions. In the first sentence of “Sophie’s Choice” (1979), William Styron’s narrator, Stingo, turns out his pockets and says, “In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.” 

It’s been a refuge too for those who simply needed some quiet, a place that had human scale and dirt under its fingernails. “Young men were writing manifestos in the higher magazines of Manhattan,” Thomas Wolfe said in the 1930s about his years in the borough, “but the weather of man’s life, the substance and structure of the world in which he lives, was soaking in on me in those years in Brooklyn.” 

As anyone who has paid attention to the Book Review, Styles and Dining sections of The New York Times is aware, things have changed in Brooklyn. Over the past decade or two it has filled with heat-seeking young writers, editors, artists and chefs, so much so that it’s become the butt of unfair but funny anti-hipster tirades. The novelist Colson Whitehead was compelled to cool the warm jets in 2008 by writing a witty essay in The Times titled: “I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It.”

 

What American writers have sought and found in underdog Brooklyn across the centuries, from Walt Whitman and Marianne Moore through Norman Mailer and Jonathan Lethem, is the subject of “Literary Brooklyn,” Evan Hughes’s intelligent but poky first book. He traces how Brooklyn has grown to become fully, as its borough president, Marty Markowitz, puts it, “New York’s Left Bank.” 

Mr. Hughes is a young journalist and critic — he’s written for good magazines and book sections...more...