Complaints are mounting about a deluge of traffic tickets state troopers have written while patrolling Kiryas Joel to quell the latest conflicts between its feuding factions.Several hundred citations have been issued since the disturbances began on Jan. Read More »
Chaptzem Blog! 
Costa Rica elects Jewish VP
A Jewish former banker was elected the vice president of Costa Rica.Luis Lieberman will become vice president after Costa Rican voters on Sunday elected Laura Chinchilla as the Central American country’s first female president by a wide margin.Lieberman’s parents immigrated to Costa Rica from Poland before World War II. Read More »
Joe Lazar At The Belzer M’lava Malka
On Motzai Shabbos, Saturday, February 6th, 2010, Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, Vice President of Agudath Israel, stood before and overflow crowd at the Belzer M’lava Malka, and told the people of the importance of registering to vote, and the urgency of actually going out to vote on March 23rd. Read More »
A Rare Blend, Pro Football and Hasidic Judaism
After practice one late-summer day in 1986, Alan Veingrad strode into the Green Bay Packers’ locker room, feeling both spent and satisfied.An undrafted player from an obscure college, he had made the team and then some. On the next Sunday, opening day of the N.F.L. season, he would be starting at offensive tackle.In his locker, Mr. Read More »
Mumps cases still rising in Rockland
More than 300 people in Rockland have been diagnosed with the mumps as a cluster that started last summer in an upstate camp for Jewish boys and turned into the largest outbreak nationwide in years continues, health officials said.A total of 303 cases have been diagnosed in Rockland, Commissioner of Health Joan Facelle said. Read More »
Trial starts in Hasid ’scam’
A man goes on trial in Brooklyn federal court today, accused of scamming families in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community in an alleged $18 million mortgage swindle.Eliyahu Ezagui conned Crown Heights families into believing that he was creating an exclusive Jewish community in two East New York buildings, prosecutors charge. Read More »
Rose Plaza’s thorns pricking ‘Burg leaders
Two sides of a Hasidic religious schism traded words in a public hearing Wednesday morning as the City Planning Commission heard testimony over whether a controversial development project, known as Rose Plaza, should be built on the Williamsburg waterfront. Read More »
Informant cross-examined in NJ corruption bust
The government’s key witness is being cross-examined in the first trial in New Jersey’s largest corruption bust.Attorney Brian Neary was questioning Solomon Dwek on Monday about his religious convictions as a member of an Orthodox Jewish sect.Neary represents suspended Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Read More »
Yale Shliach Confronts Goldstone
Rabbi Shmully Hecht, advisor to Eliezer, the Jewish society at Yale University, confronted Goldstone last week when he delivered an address on campus. Read More »
The “Hasidic Hendrix” Will Celebrate Jimi
Israeli guitarist Yosi Piamenta has long been known as the “Hasidic Hendrix” for his fiery style on the instrument (and because alliteration is just plain fun). Piamenta first came to America in 1976 and spent over three decades in the country. Read More »
On witness stand, Dwek tells of a life of crime
As Solomon Dwek matter-of-factly recounted his life of crime for a federal jury he said his first crooked act came in a Riverdale, N.Y., religious school.As a teenager about to graduate from the school for Orthodox Jews, Dwek suddenly was informed that he had failed math and would not receive his diploma.But there was a way out, Dwek testified. Read More »
Where the Women Wait, an Unwritten Code Is Revised
For years, every morning, the sight has been the same at Marcy and Division Avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: a crowd of women gathered on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass amid the din of traffic. They are day laborers looking not for construction work, but for work cleaning houses of Hasidic residents.There were originally maybe 40 or 50. Read More »
Is Lab-Grown Meat Kosher
When I first read about lab-grown meat, the first question that popped into my head was, “Is that kosher?” It’s not that I’m Jewish, it’s that the idea of being told what you can and can’t eat by God kind of fascinates me. Read More »
In Boro Park, A Battle Between Old- and New-Style Politics
To all outside appearances, Assembly Member Dov Hikind had been something of a mench for his former chief of staff, David Greenfield.When Greenfield had gone to Albany to lobby elected officials, he had lunched in Hikind’s office. Read More »
Stein leaves Ramapo Town Board for judgeship; Withers replaces him
Former Rockland Legislator Patrick Withers became the town’s newest councilman Wednesday night after David Stein resigned to become a judge.The changes resulted from Sam Colman’s retirement as a judge in December.Colman, a former county legislator and state assemblyman, will help the town establish a youth court. Read More »
Orthodox woman to get title of ‘rabbah’
An Orthodox clergywoman will now be known as “rabbah” rather than an acronym that had been created on her behalf. Read More »
abbis urge AG to free Hasidic Jew pending sentencing on multiple counts of fraud
Some of the nation’s leading Orthodox rabbis have urged Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene on humanitarian grounds in the case of a Hasidic Jew convicted on multiple counts of fraud, arguing he should be free pending sentencing. Read More »
Hasidim vs. Biker Controversy Continues
When the New York Post first wrote about the fight over a bike lane through the Hasidic stronghold of Williamsburg, Brooklyn back in 2008, it portrayed the debate as one over community mores: the conservative, black-clad Hasidim upset over the skimpy clothing of the hipster bikers that would be the lane’s primary users. Read More »
Police diversity still a good idea
One police officer’s messy resignation and troubled tenure shouldn’t deter Ramapo from efforts to increase diversity and bridge a cultural divide in the town. Those lofty goals must endure.Baile Glauber, who grew up in Ramapo’s Satmar Hasidic community and maintains Orthodox Jewish traditions, joined the Ramapo Police Department in 2008. Read More »
Hasidim v. Hipsters: The Great Williamsburg Bike Lane Debate is Tonight!
This is the ultimate fight: Tonight’s debate at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg between the hipsters and the Hasidim about the Bedford Avenue bike lane.You know the background: The Hasids, mostly Satmars, don’t want to see half-naked goyim pedaling their bikes. Read More »
Shomer Shabbos Shammos Moshe Metzger demonstrates how to put on tefillin
From The Daily News Read More »
Orthodox cop who faced likely firing quits
Ramapo’s first Orthodox Jewish policewoman resigned Thursday with a $190,000 payout and the town paying her $285,000 in legal fees after a short but stormy tenure that included her bosses taking away her gun and badge in December. Read More »
Orthodox Group Calls for Better Training, Greater Understanding after Plane Diversion
Agudath Israel of America, a national organization representing Orthodox Jews in the United States, today issued the following statement regarding the diversion of a flight because of a misunderstanding of Jewish prayer protocols: Today a U.S. Read More »
Ramapo neighbors come together in crisis
Eastern Ramapo’s Haitian-American and Orthodox Jewish communities often function within different hemispheres. Now, the crisis in Haiti has brought these neighbors together to send help across the Western Hemisphere.These new ties have the potential to foster understanding and breed cooperation at home as well. Read More »
What about George?
George Kramer sat hunched on his stool behind the counter of the small hardware store on Coney Island Avenue, gazing out the window at the passing traffic.Toward the back of the store, beyond Kramer’s field of vision, Isaac Abraham was rifling through a cabinet. Read More »
Tefillin Cause Unexpected Landing at PHL
Philadelphia police, the FBI, the FAA and other government agencies were investigating a situation aboard a plane that made a surprise landing at Philadelphia International Airport. Read More »
Sullivan elections board removes challenged voters from rolls
The Sullivan County Board of Elections has removed 151 people from the rolls in the Town of Bethel, siding with a group that challenged predominantly Hasidic residents who registered last summer.Seasonal residents commenced a petition drive in Bethel after a dispute over the construction of a shul on Schultz Road. Read More »