Wednesday, November 24, 2021
The Making of Satmar Williamsburg
THERE IS A LONGSTANDING ASSOCIATION between Jews and cities, including both positive connotations (Jews at home in the shtetl and the shuk) and negative stereotypes (Jews as "rootless cosmopolitans," per the Stalinist slur). Jewish texts are full of treatises on the city and its discontents. The unique complications of urban religious life are even discussed in the Babylonian Talmud, which instructs us that for Jews, it is "difficult to live in big cities." Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper's fascinating new book, A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg, explains how one Haredi sect has tried to overcome those difficulties and make a home in a contested corner of the biggest city in the United States.
"Goyim can live wherever they want," a Hasidic mortgage broker told Deutsch and Casper, perhaps referring to everyone besides Haredi Jews. "But we yidn [Jews] must live together in the same place. We cannot just move." There are numerous demands to take into account when establishing a Haredi home base, some of which blend beautifully with urban norms but many of which are difficult to secure in a dense and diverse environment like New York City. Haredi life essentially requires mixed-use zoning and development, with housing, kosher shops, and community facilities—shuls, yeshivas, mikvas, and so on—concentrated together. Because they cannot drive or ride on Shabbos and many other holidays, the members of an observant community must live together in close proximity. But religious rules also make low-rise architecture preferable to high-rise living, which requires the provision of a rabbinically-approved Shabbos elevator that stops on every floor on holy days. Homes—even small apartments—need two sinks in the kitchen, two beds in the master bedroom, plenty of room for kids, cabinets to store four sets of dishes, and, ideally, outdoor space with an unobstructed view of the stars. Preexisting fruit trees cannot be removed to clear space for new construction.
A Fortress in Brooklyn shows how one such place was built. The book tells the story of how Hasidic Williamsburg came to be, and how it has survived the challenges that have beset the city more broadly, from the deindustrialization and fiscal crisis of the 1970s to the real estate boom and gentrification of the 1990s and onward. As Deutsch and Casper show in their survey of the period from roughly 1945 to 2020, Satmars in Williamsburg have maintained their foothold in the city in dramatically different ways at different times. In the 1960s and '70s, they actively embraced their place in the mid-century welfare state and fought in particular for new public housing construction in the neighborhood. While they sought to occupy a significant portion of this housing—including, at times, large apartments on lower floors—their efforts to secure their place in the city propelled a mode of development that also produced decommodified housing for their largely Puerto Rican and African American neighbors. Later, from the 1990s onward, segments of Satmar Williamsburg entered the booming real estate business, a move that would polarize the community and threaten many of its members' ability to keep living within the "fortress" of their neighborhood. To resolve this crisis, the Satmar Hasidim expanded geographically, reducing internal pressures but stoking anger over displacement among communities of color in the surrounding area.
A Fortress in Brooklyn highlights Hasidic agency in urban change. While those with only a passing knowledge of Hasidic life might look at the community's most visible markers—the sheitels, the shtreimels, the commitment to religious orthodoxy—and mistake Satmar Hasidim for habitual preservationists or apolitical isolationists, Deutsch and Casper make the opposite case, persuasively presenting Hasidic New Yorkers as active and organized participants in the social production of urban space. The book shows what happens when a community seeks, and to a large degree achieves, spatially bounded self-determination in a city where it remains a tiny minority.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Hasidic Pop Singer Yossi Rodal Performs Concert at Annual Menorah Lighting in Coral Springs
Chanukah celebrations in Coral Springs kick off with a menorah lighting and community concert on Monday, November 29, at the Art Walk.
Hasidic pop singer Yossi Rodal will play guitar and sing traditional Chanukah songs and his original tracks. Originally from Italy, he moved to California to create programs for Jewish teens. The singer-songwriter is also a rabbi at Carlsbad North, CA.
Chaya Mushka Yaras, Chabad of Coral Springs co-director, said the community hadn't had a Chanukah concert in a few years.
"It is an outdoor event to make everyone comfortable. We will be giving out fresh donuts and holographic dreidel glasses. Come ready to dance and have a good time." she said.
Organizers expect to have around 300 spectators and hope the event will be an excellent way to start the Chanukah celebrations.
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Monday, November 22, 2021
NYPD Search for Assailant Who Ripped Kippah From Jewish Man’s Head in Manhattan Street
Police in New York City are searching for a man who ripped a kippah off the head of an unsuspecting passerby before subjecting his victim to an antisemitic insult.
The NYPD Hate Crimes Unit reported that the incident took place on Thursday afternoon in downtown Manhattan. The 34-year-old victim was at the junction of Broadway and West 3rd Street when the assailant tore his kippah off his head. When the victim demanded the return of his kippah, the assailant threw it back accompanied by an antisemitic insult.
A photograph of the alleged assailant showed an African-American male clad entirely in black and wearing dark sunglasses. Police confirmed that neither the assailant nor the victim were known to each other prior to the incident.
Among those who condemned the attack was the outgoing Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.
"Just absolutely infuriating. Get the message: if you commit an act of antisemitism in our city you will face the consequences," de Blasio tweeted alongside an image of the suspect. "If you have any information on this disgusting act, contact the NYPD immediately."
According to the NYPD's Hate Crimes Unit, there have been 144 antisemitic acts recorded during 2021, amid rising hate crime targeting minorities in the city, particularly the Asian-American community.
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Friday, November 19, 2021
Judge rules in favor of Hasidic families in busing dispute with Washingtonville schools
Hasidic families in Blooming Grove won a court victory on Thursday when a judge ruled that Washingtonville School District must bus their children to their religious schools on days when they are open but the public schools are closed.
State Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch of Albany ruled that the district had failed to meet its transportation obligation under state law by providing busing to nonpublic school students only on days when its own schools were open.
Lynch also went further by invalidating the state guidelines Washingtonville followed in refusing to provide transportation when its schools were closed. That decision could affect transportation practices or future court cases in other districts with large numbers of children attending religious schools.
The ruling resulted from a lawsuit filed in July by the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove, a group representing several hundred Hasidic families who have moved to the village of South Blooming Grove and nearby in recent years. The group's leaders had demanded busing to Hasidic schools in and around the neighboring village of Kiryas Joel on 20 days this school year when Washingtonville is closed.
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Thursday, November 18, 2021
World Jewish Congress condemns antisemitic online attacks on Bulgarian Jewish leader
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) condemns in the strongest possible terms a spate of recent antisemitic attacks in the Bulgarian media on the head of the Bulgarian Jewish community that falsely accuse him of criminal wrongdoing, the WJC said on November 18.
The WJC said that Associate Professor Alexander Oscar, the president of the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria "Shalom", is a widely respected physician and the recipient of numerous awards who has spearheaded welfare programmes that benefit all members of Bulgarian society.
"Through his many civil society engagements, he has consistently fought against all forms of hate speech and discrimination and worked to protect democracy," the WJC said.
"Despite the fact that both Dr. Oscar and the hospital that employs him have unambiguously repudiated the false and pernicious accusations made against Dr. Oscar, these accusations, which also involve conspiracy theories involving the entire Jewish community, have been perpetuated by certain media outlets in Bulgaria and then via the internet by ordinary citizens as well as nationalist groups."
The WJC said that it was appalled by the recklessness of these media outlets in allowing themselves to be used to spread blatantly antisemitic falsehoods that target not just Dr. Oscar but the Bulgarian Jewish community as a whole.
The WJC called on Bulgarian authorities to protect all members of the local Jewish community from such antisemitic manifestations.
The organisation said that it was also informing the European Commission Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism about these incidents and asking for additional protection from EU institutions for Jewish communities that find themselves increasingly under threat.
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Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Rabbi aims to boost Jewish community in Saudi Arabia
Yaakov Herzog says he feels right at home in the Kingdom and plans to move there permanently
With his traditional Hasidic Jewish garb, Rabbi Yaakov Herzog stands out on the streets of the Saudi city of Riyadh.
On Tuesday, he visited the i24NEWS studios at the Port of Jaffa for an interview, saying that as an Orthodox Jewish American he feels right at home in the Arab kingdom and in fact intends to move there permanently.
While the rabbi didn't directly respond to a question about the potential of Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, Herzog had high praise for the country that serves as the center of the Muslim world.
"They are adopting many more modern concepts over the years, but with that being said they also are protecting and cherishing their heritage and rich history," the rabbi said, noting that Saudi Arabia is one of the safest countries in the world.
"We respect the Kingdom. We respect their very rich heritage and their history," Herzog continued.
There is no native Jewish community in Saudi Arabia, but in recent years the Kingdom has seen an influx of Jews visiting for tourism or for business.
Herzog's interest in Saudi Arabia began when he discovered the Kingdom's $500 billion project to build the city of the future.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is pushing ahead with preparations to construct NEOM — a megacity in the desert with no cars or roads and net zero carbon emissions housing more than a million people.
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Monday, November 15, 2021
What’s nu? Monthly concerts in Boston showcase Jewish music created during the pandemic
Clarinetist Nat Seelen noticed a trend among his colleagues in the Boston Jewish music world: They all had a lot of new music they'd written during the pandemic, but concert bookings and tours had not returned to their pre-COVID levels.
So Seelen is trying to reconnect musicians with audiences with the launch of the monthly Boston Festival of New Jewish Music, for which he serves as artistic director. This series of free concerts takes place at The Boston Synagogue in the West End, once Boston's most vibrant Jewish neighborhood.
"It used to be that a festival would be about bringing people from New York or Berlin or Tel Aviv to Boston," says Seelen, while taking a break from practicing and changing his 1-year-old's diapers in his Newton home. "But we have Boston musicians who tour to all of those places. And right now, since folks aren't touring a lot, the idea is to have them all play here and show what they've been working on."
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Friday, November 12, 2021
Meet the Jewish Founder of the World’s Only Bobblehead Museum, and His Chanukah Bobbles
A crochet museum in Joshua Tree, California features countless crochet animals that appear in airport ads worldwide. The National Mustard Museum in Wisconsin was founded by a Jewish condiment aficionado.
In February 2019, another niche museum opened around 90 miles east of the mustard mecca: the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Milwaukee.
Co-founded by Phil Sklar, a Jewish Illinois native, and his friend Brad Novak, the institution is the world's only museum dedicated to bobbleheads. Its collection holds 7,000 unique bobbleheads, including some manufactured by Sklar and Novak.
Bobbleheads date back to the late 1700s, Sklar explained in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. A famous painting of Queen Charlotte — a replica of which hangs in the bobblehead museum — shows two figurines behind the monarch, with heads that bobble.
Fast forward to 2021, when the museum has unveiled its first-ever Chanukah items: a Bobble Menorah that features nine bobbling "flames" (sans real fire, of course) and comes in three color patterns, and a Bobble Dreidel on a gelt-shaped base.
"Having the candles with the flame bobbling and the dreidel on a spring, we thought was pretty unique," said Sklar. "It was something that was tasteful and that people would enjoy displaying on Chanukah, or with their Judaica collection."
We spoke to Sklar about how a unique collection turned into a one-of-a-kind museum, how he uses bobbleheads for a good cause and, of course, which famous Jews have their own bobbleheads.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
JTA: With any collection like this, the first question has to be: How did you get into bobbleheads?
Sklar: My dad collected baseball cards, and he got me into collecting when I was growing up. Brad was working for a minor league baseball team in the early 2000s, and they gave away a bobblehead for the first time in 2003. We decided the bobblehead was sort of cool, and the [Milwaukee] Brewers and Bucks and local soccer and hockey teams were giving out bobbleheads. So we started to circle the bobblehead dates on the calendar, since we were already going to several games a year anyway as big sports fans. The collection sort of grew from that.
How did this interest turn into the world's only bobblehead museum?
The collection grew out of traveling. We went on a journey to try to go to all the Major League Baseball stadiums, and as we traveled we'd go to different museums in local places. Several times we'd either go to the stores in the area of the stadium, or antique malls, and just pick up some bobbleheads from the area to bring back.
Before we knew it, we were doing some buying, trading and selling on eBay, in our free time. Then in 2013 we set out to produce a bobblehead for the first time, of a friend of ours who was a manager for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sports teams, and also a Special Olympian. We thought it would be a cool way to honor him. During that process we realized there was a need in the market, an opportunity to produce bobbleheads — people or things that otherwise haven't had bobbleheads produced — and market them.
At the time, our collection was numbering in the 3,000 range. I don't even know how we got that many. We were running out of room for them. It's a lot easier to store 3,000 baseball cards — you can get one box and store them. But 3,000 bobbleheads take up a lot more room. We started brainstorming, and realized, hey, there's no museum in the world dedicated to bobbleheads. There's museums dedicated to mustard and spam, and a bunch of other random things. So we started to do market research on the museum side, and in November 2014 was when we announced the idea for the museum.
Tell me about the collection. How many bobbleheads do you have now, and what are some of the highlights?
We have 7,000 unique bobbleheads on display in the museum. The collection itself is now numbering in the 10,000-11,000 range. We're getting in new bobbleheads pretty much daily. There are teams sending them in, organizations, people across the country. It's really everything from sports to pop culture, politics, music, movies, TV, comics. Really anything and everything that can be turned into a bobblehead, including the menorah and the dreidel.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Shabbos candles, Chanukah flames, and the light of a Jewish woman
In Hebrew there is a saying that "M'at min ha'ohr docheh harbay min ha'choshech," a small bit of light dispels a great deal of darkness. Anyone who has experienced a blackout in the middle of night knows this is true: The light of one small candle makes a big difference when it is completely dark. On an emotional level this idea is true is well. A little bit of light, a flash of brightness, can bring a great deal of clarity in the darkest of times.
Every Friday, 52 weeks a year, women around the world welcome in the Shabbat with a little bit of light. A flame is kindled, candles are lit, a blessing and prayer are whispered, and suddenly it is no longer Friday. It is now Shabbat, a day of connecting with oneself, with family, and with G-d. Using light to welcome in the Shabbat actually makes a whole lot of sense. All week we are busy running and doing. We spend so much time taking care of physical needs. Shabbat's job is to remind us why we are here. What is the purpose of all this busyness? What is the purpose of my existence? All week we are human doings; on Shabbat we can be human beings. Shabbat is welcomed with light because Shabbat is the day that gives clarity to the rest of our week. The flames of Shabbat illuminate our neshamas, souls, and remind us of the purpose of it all.
Chanukah is also welcomed in with light. For 8 nights we celebrate by lighting the menorah, adding more light each additional night. Just like Shabbat candles, the light of the menorah also brings clarity. The times of the Chanukah miracle were very dark for Jews. Basic mitzvah observance was outlawed and there was a pervasive spiritual low. When the miracle of the menorah occurred in the Temple the Jews were filled with clarity that things would turn around and be okay again. To this day we celebrate that clarity on Chanukah with light, recognizing that although Jews are spread all over the world, and we are missing the connection and spirituality we had as a unified nation, no matter what a Jew is still connected to the light of the Torah and of G-d.
We all know how women are connected to Shabbat candles. The custom for thousands of years has been for the woman of the home to light the flames that bring in Shabbat. What is less known is the connection that women have to the lights of the menorah. The Torah tells us that for the first half hour that the menorah is lit, women should not do work. Sit down on the couch, play a game of dreidel, relax and let someone else serve dinner. Enjoy the light of the menorah for a few minutes. And here's my favorite part: after telling women not to work for the first half hour, the next words in the Torah are, "v'ein l'hakel" – take this seriously! Don't pretend you're too busy! This is your time!
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Tuesday, November 09, 2021
Photographer Captures ‘Taboo’ Portrait Series of Hasidic Jews
Photographer Justin Bettman recently finished a portrait series that focuses on the Hasidic Jews in New York, an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism that generally keeps to itself socially and is rarely photographed by those outside of its community.
Hasidic Jews are known for their religious and social conservatism and general social seclusion. Those in New York often live in their tightly-knit communities and outside of work environments, generally keep to themselves. According to Bettman, who grew up in what he describes as a reform Jewish household in Northern California, the initial perception of the Hasidic community when he moved to New York was that it almost looked and felt like a completely separate religion.
Even with the stark differences that he perceived, Bettman was curious more about what he and the Hasidic community had in common.
"In this portrait series, I wanted to bridge the gap between the reform Jewish community I grew up in and the Hasidic Jewish community that I lived adjacent to in New York," he says.
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Monday, November 08, 2021
Hasidic rapper comes to Winter Park
Nosson Zand is an American musician, specializing in Jewish Hasidic-style rap of his own innovation. Although his upbringing in Massachusetts was non-religious, he adopted the Hasidic way of life later on. He's released two EPs in 2008 and 2017. His album "Believers" was released in 2013, along with seven singles ranging between 2006 and 2020.
His music emphasizes positive and uplifting messages. In light of his upcoming Chanukah concert in Winter Park, he sat with The Sandspur to discuss his style of music, creative process, accomplishments, and goals.
What led you to incorporate the Hasidic way of life with your music?
I was making music long before I became more involved in the kind of Hasidic tradition and Jewish observance. I started realizing even before I got observant […] if and when I have kids […] I'm not going to feel comfortable playing 97 percent of this music for [them] in the future. So I think that kind of set the tone moving forward.
When I became observant, I was informed about a particular teaching from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the leader of Chabad. That teaching basically said that anyone who becomes more observant later on in life shouldn't divorce themselves from their previous lifestyle entirely. Meaning, basically, to start using your talents for a good and positive and spiritual purpose to uplift the world around you.
How do these teachings help you reach your audience?
I wouldn't have met Matsiyahu, the formerly Hasidic Reggae artist […] [or toured] with him all across the country […], if I had not tapped into this more kind of Jewish experience. There are people who spread terrible messages and are quite "successful" at doing so. I do believe that the more someone does the right thing spiritually, the more they have in life. And that doesn't necessarily translate to success on the billboard charts. But I think we can redefine success and what it means to have a successful life—a meaningful and purposeful life. […] I think on one level success could be measured monetarily and how many units are sold. But I think there's a deeper aspect to success that is measured along more spiritual lines.
What is your creative process in writing music?
Typically, I'm most inspired by listening to a particular instrumental composition. […] I think for some reason I've always found it more inspirational to just find the piece of music and start writing to that.
How has COVID-19 impacted your career?
Ever since I had my first child—and now I have a second child—I've been focusing more on my family, and also I got a masters degree in clinical social work. I'm a therapist. […] [with] a focus on addiction and recovery. I think even if COVID had never existed, I would have still been focusing more these days on that day job even though music is still the love of my life.
Where are you headed with your music career?
I would still like to record and put out a bunch of music, but I've witnessed firsthand how trickey it can be to balance a spiritual existence and a family life with life on the road as a touring musician.
I'm not a hundred percent sure that it's possible to properly be there for one's family and to be a touring musician. I've become more and more skeptical. And when I say touring musician, I mean someone who's out there three months at a time and on the road. Especially when your performing in places like the House of Blues or very secular venues, as opposed to a more Jewish audience, which I've never strictly catered to.
My music has always been for everyone. And that's part of my goal which is to reach where your typical positive or powerful Jewish music experience would not typically reach. I wouldn't define my music as typically Jewish in any sense, aside from the moral and mystical infusion that I've been fortunate enough to give.
What is the accomplishment you're most proud of in your musical career?
Still being a practicing Hasidic Jew despite all the challenges that being an entertainer […] entails or involves. […] And being able to have a positive impact on people in a way that's not corny. But I do think it's important to use my skill set to try to leave the world in a better condition than if my music had never been around.
In a more practical sense, I would say just having been fortunate to have traveled the globe doing concerts, which is what I love to be able to do, and staying true to my values. I think it's very important for music to be honest, and vulnerable, and real, and touch on real topics, on painful topics, challenges, and overcoming them. I think it's very important to be honest and authentic regarding the subject matter one's music touches on. I'm also pleased that that's the road that I've taken—that I can touch on topics that might make other people uncomfortable. Those kinds of things, I think are quite an accomplishment as well.
What do you hope to achieve from your upcoming concert in Winter Park?
Hopefully, I inspire the community with my music that I worked very hard on. I put my blood, sweat and tears into it. And put my soul into it. And my goal, I would say, is to inspire the crowd and the listeners and in turn myself.
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Thursday, November 04, 2021
Patriot Hills Golf Course deal is off the table after Stony Point ballot defeat
After voters narrowly rejected selling the town golf course to a local developer, Supervisor Jim Monaghan said Wednesday he believes any deal is off the table and blamed false fears of high-density housing for scaring off support.
Residents voted down the town board-supported sale of Patriot Hills Golf Course and 26 former Letchworth Village acres on Tuesday by 118 votes — 2,265 to 2,147, according to unofficial Board of Elections results. Monaghan said the uncounted write-ins and absentee ballots are unlikely to change the outcome.
Monaghan said he spoke with the developer, Raja Amar, and Amar told him he and his partners are not interested at this point in renegotiating or leasing the property from the town.
"I believe we lost a great opportunity to revitalize the Letchworth property and golf course," Monaghan said.
Monaghan said people believed the false claims the property could be used for high-density housing — linked to Hasidic Jewish builders. He said the property is not zoned for high-density housing and Amar had no intentions of reselling the land.
"How do you change that perception?" he said. "People didn't vote against a new community center or other amenities and property improvements."
Democrat supervisor candidate Michael Diederich, who opposed the sales conditions but lost to Monaghan Tuesday, said people "instinctively knew selling to Raj on his terms was a bad deal, thus the 'no' vote."
Diederich argued the property could be flipped to developers seeking high-density housing, raising the specter of Hasidic Jewish builders controlling the land and potentially the town government. He's been critical of Hasidic Jewish development.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Police say they cracked 1980s murder linked to Hasidic cult
Police on Wednesday were searching for the remains of a teenage boy who disappeared in the 1980s, saying at a court hearing for suspects in the case that investigators know who killed Nissim Shitrit.
The developments provided confirmation that 17-year-old Shitrit's disappearance was being treated as a murder. The case is tied to Hasidic cult leader Rabbi Eliezer Berland, a convicted sex offender and scammer who has also been arrested in connection with the teenager's death.
The searches for Shitrit's remains were reportedly being carried out around Jerusalem on Wednesday.
At the remand hearing for two suspects in the case, a police representative told the court that investigators know who participated in the abduction of Shitrit and who committed the homicide, apparently on February 2, 1986, three days before the teenager was eventually reported as missing.
One of the suspects was remanded for a further eight days and the other, a woman, was released to house arrest.
At the hearing, police said the male suspect was directly involved in the kidnapping and murder and that there is evidence that implicates him.
The female suspect was jointly interrogated with other suspects in the case to compare their accounts, and she has admitted to acting on behalf of Berland to lure Shitrit to a location, police told the court. The woman also told investigators she had spoken with Shitrit on the day he disappeared.
A number of people have been detained recently over Shitrit's death and the unsolved murder of 41-year-old Avi Edri in the 1990s. A gag order restricts many details of the investigation including naming the suspects, many of whom are said to be in their 60s and 70s.
The suspects are tied to the Shuvu Bonim ultra-Orthodox sect run by Berland.
On Tuesday, Berland, 83, who is already in prison on a fraud conviction, was remanded in custody for nine days to allow his continued interrogation in connection with the decades-old homicide cases.
Judge Elad Lang said of Berland that "there was reasonable suspicion that he committed offenses. He implicated himself and provided a detailed version of events."
During his questioning, Berland came face-to-face with Shitrit's brother, Meir, according to Hebrew media reports.
Meir Shitrit asked the rabbi if he should begin the traditional Jewish mourning rituals, including the week-long shiva and saying Kaddish, a prayer that mourners recite for the deceased. Mourning rituals are not begun until a person's death is confirmed.
Berland reportedly responded, "You can sit shiva and say Kaddish, I am sorry I didn't tell you 35 years ago," the Kan public broadcaster reported.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2021
Father and son posing as Jewish Orthodox rabbis exposed as evangelical Christians
Michael and Calev Isaacson have performed sacred Jewish rituals including marriages and written holy scrolls and conversions for about 12 years. But the father-son duo who currently reside in Phoenix, Arizona, allegedly aren't even Jewish.
That's according to an investigation conducted by Beyneynu, a group combatting missionary influence in Israel, who believe the men changed their family name from Dawson to Isaacson.
The group has alleged that neither man is Jewish, making the rituals they have taken part in invalid. An additional investigation by the Jewish Chronicle found that the father, Michael, grew up in a Lutheran home, and was married in 1995 in a Lutheran church in Michigan.
They would later obtain a Jewish marriage certificate in 2013 from a Rabbi Rich in Dallas, having told him they became religious after their non-Jewish marriage.
Rabbi Rich has since told investigators he was unaware of their true background and would 'readily renounce his signature'.
Marlene Gruenfelder, Michael's 65-year-old aunt, said that he had been raised Lutheran, confirming 'No, my family is not Jewish'.
The aunt also denied claims made by Michael that his maternal side had Jewish roots, and that they spoke Swedish, not Yiddish like he claimed.
Similar claims made by Michael's wife Summer were also squashed by investigators, who found a genealogical report showing a string of Baptisms and Christian marriages in her family.
Yet the father and son, donning the last name Isaacson, have been accepted and welcomed in several Orthodox Jewish communities spanning several states including Texas, Oregon, Wisconsin and now Arizona.
Investigators with Beyneynu claim the family would relocate when confronted by suspicious rabbis or members of the community in fear that they would be found out.
Rabbis told the Chronicle they fear the family are Messianic Jews, who live as Orthodox Jews but maintain a belief that Jesus is the Messiah. Members of this group want to convert Jews to Christianity in the belief that will bring about the second coming.
Neither investigation concluded that the family has attempted to convert Jews to Christianity. In emails viewed by the Chronicle, the family also said they do 'reject missionary tactics and do not support any person or organization who seeks to target or convert Jews away from the Jewish faith, heritage and birthright'.
The family was not able to be reached for comment.
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Monday, November 01, 2021
People, homes vanish due to 2020 census’s new privacy method
The three-bedroom colonial-style house where Jessica Stephenson has lived in Milwaukee for the past six years bustles with activity on any given weekday, filled with the chattering of children in the day care center she runs out of her home.
The U.S. Census Bureau says no one lives there.
"They should come and see it for themselves," Ms. Stephenson said.
From her majority-Black neighborhood in Wisconsin to a community of Hasidic Jews in New York's Catskill Mountains to a park outside Tampa, Fla., a method used by the Census Bureau for the first time to protect confidentiality in the 2020 census has made people and occupied homes vanish — at least on paper — when they actually exist in the real world.
It's not a magic trick but rather a new statistical method the bureau is using called differential privacy, which involves the intentional addition of errors to data to obscure the identity of any given participant.
Bureau officials say it's necessary to protect privacy in a time of increasingly sophisticated data mining, as technological innovations magnify the threat of people being "re-identified" through the use of powerful computers to match census information with other public databases. By law, census answers are supposed to be confidential.
But some city officials and demographers think it veers too far from reality — and could cause errors in the data used for drawing political districts and distributing federal funds.
At least one analysis suggests that differential privacy could penalize minority communities by undercounting areas that are racially and ethnically mixed. Harvard University researchers found that the method made it more difficult to create political districts of equal population and could result in fewer majority-minority districts.
The Census Bureau, for its part, argues that the data is every bit as good as in past censuses and that the low-level inaccuracies don't present a large-scale problem.
What's certain is that the method can produce weird, contradictory and false results at the smallest geographic levels, such as neighborhood blocks.
For example, the official 2020 census results say 54 people live in Ms. Stephenson's census block in midtown Milwaukee, but also that there are no occupied homes. In reality almost two dozen houses occupy the car-lined streets, some dating back more than a century. Forty-eight of the residents living in the block are Black, according to the census, though it's difficult to know for sure, given the whimsy of differential privacy.
In another case, the census lists no people living in the Flatwoods Conservation Park outside Tampa, even though it says there is a home occupied by people. According to Hillsborough County spokesman Todd Pratt, two county employees live there while maintaining security for the park.
And in an enclave of Hasidic Jews located in Kiamesha Lake, N.Y., 81 people are recorded as residents, but the census officially says there are no occupied homes. Sullivan County property records show almost a dozen homes whose residents have ties to the Vizhnitzer Hasidic community.
The unreliable data has created headaches for city managers and planners of small communities who worry that it may not be valid for decision-making. Eric Guthrie, a senior demographer at the Minnesota State Demographic Center, said he has been contacted by a half-dozen city managers from around the state who were concerned about potential impacts to state and federal funding.
"I explain to them there's not a method for correcting it, that it's not an error in the traditional sense," Mr. Guthrie said. "The bug is there by design."
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