Monday, October 31, 2022
Lee Zeldin, grandson of an Orthodox rabbi, gains traction in New York’s Hasidic neighborhoods
New Yorkers will make history on Election Day, either electing the state's first woman or first Jewish Republican governor. The Democratic incumbent, Kathy Hochul, and GOP challenger, Lee Zeldin, are both counting on strong voter turnout. In a state with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, each hopes their outreach to New York's 1.9 million Jews will give them an edge in a race that's become far more competitive than expected according to recent polls.
"Everything is working the right way," Zeldin, 42, said in a recent interview. He's come from behind in dramatic fashion before. When he first ran for Congress in 2014, Zeldin in the final days of the campaign pulled ahead of his opponent, six-term Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop, after trailing him by 10 points. He ended up winning by 10 points, becoming the sole Jewish Republican member of Congress at the time.
"We are feeling very good," he said about his current race.
Zeldin's longshot bid has been bolstered in recent weeks by surging worry about the economy and crime — Republicans tend to fare better with voters on those issues. But he has at the same time seen his star rise with the Orthodox, an influential voting bloc that helped reelect former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014 and overwhelmingly supported Hochul in the Democratic primaries earlier this year.
The Orthodox traditionally vote for Republican candidates in national elections, but their leaders have strategically backed Democratic incumbents locally in places where they are much more likely to win. Yet the continuing rise in antisemitic violence, which targets Orthodox Jews — who are most visibly Jewish — in particular, and the debate over the state's new measure to strengthen oversight of secular studies at yeshivas, has thrown the group's support for Hochul in doubt.
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Thursday, October 27, 2022
Biden offers New York rabbi ‘open door’ to boost Sean Patrick Maloney’s re-election bid: report
In the latest sign of trouble for the Democratic Party in the midterm elections, President Biden called a prominent Hudson Valley rabbi to urge that he back the re-election of embattled Democrat incumbent Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.
Maloney, who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a pal of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is locked in what has turned into a toss-up race with Republican challenger Mike Lawler, a state assemblyman.
"You will have an open door to my administration," Biden reportedly told Rabbi David Twersky in the 15-minute phone call, according to Rocklanddaily.com and confirmed by Jacob Kornbluh of the Forward.
Twersky is the chief rabbi for the Hasidic sect in New Square located in the 17th Congressional District.
"You don't have the President of the United States call someone for support unless you're in trouble in a political campaign. Sean Patrick Maloney and the Democrats are in real trouble in that part of the state," said veteran political strategist Hank Sheinkopf.
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Stranger punches Hasidic teen in possible hate crime in NYC
A Hasidic teenager walking in Brooklyn was punched in the head in an unprovoked attack from a stranger on a bicycle, police said Tuesday.
The 18-year-old victim was wearing traditional Orthodox clothing and cops are investigating the attack as a possible anti-Semitic hate crime.
The youth was walking near Penn St. and Lee Ave. in Williamsburg when the assailant rode up on a bicycle and punched him in the back of the head without warning around 1:35 a.m. Saturday, according to police.
The blow knocked the victim's religious hat and yarmulke to the ground, but he did not need medical attention.
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Monday, October 24, 2022
LA White Supremacists Hang Banner Saying ‘Kanye Is Right about the Jews’ Over a Highway
Oren Segal, VP of the ADL Center on Extremism, on Sunday tweeted an image of white supremacists giving a Nazi salute on a highway overpass, standing over a banner that reads "Kanye Is Right about the Jews."
What's Kanye right about? A few days ago, we reported that Ben Shapiro said the recent wave of antisemitic rants by Kanye West—who now goes by "Ye"—resemble Nazi propaganda (Ben Shapiro Says Kanye West is Spouting Antisemitism that Resembles Nazi Propaganda). Shapiro was responding to West's latest remarks—in which the rapper told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo that a "Jewish underground media mafia" is targeting him. Shapiro said that West is spouting "Der Stürmer-type antisemitism, and that is about as ugly as it gets, and nobody should be defending that."
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Friday, October 21, 2022
Jewish Groups Condemn Hitler Truck at Berkeley
Local Jewish groups and students at the University of California, Berkeley have come out against a political advocacy group for driving two trucks with images of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler near the school's campus.
One truck sent by the group JewBelong included a message about the Holocaust that read "we're just 75 years since the gas chambers," while another, which was sent by the group Accuracy in Media, showed images of Hitler with the text, "All in favor of banning Jews, raise your right hand," and the included the claim "Berkeley Bans Jews."
The group's president, Adam Guillette, said in an interview with J. The Jewish News of Northern California the trucks were sent to protest antisemitism following controversy over some student groups at the school barring Zionist speakers.
Multiple students and groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Berkeley Hillel, criticized the truck with images of Hitler after it appeared near the school.
"We know some of you may have seen a truck driving around campus this morning with a disturbing image prominently displayed," Berkeley Hillel wrote on Instagram, adding it "rejects antisemitism of any kind, and in all its forms. We also reject subjecting Jewish students to additional fear and trauma."
"The addition of more antisemitism, like using Hitler imagery to score cheap rhetoric points, only trivializes the memories of the six million," tweeted the ADL's San Francisco branch.
The city's Jewish Community Relations Council, which has criticized the Berkeley student groups' ban on Zionist speakers as antisemitic, said in a statement Guillette's "talk of 'Jew-free zones' is factually inaccurate and not productive," and described the stunt as "unwelcome and unhelpful."
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Thursday, October 20, 2022
Kanye Apologizes for Saying He Was Going "Death Con 3" On Jewish People
Kanye recently sat down with Piers Morgan, who asked him about the controversy surrounding his anti-Semitic tweets.
Morgan started off asking Kanye, "My question for you is: Do you now regret saying 'death con 3 on Jewish people'? Are you sorry you said that? Do you think it matters?" Kanye then replied, "No! Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Absolutely not." Morgan shot back, telling Kanye, "You should be."
From there, Morgan told Kanye that his comments are "as racist as anything you say you've been through and any pain you've experienced." This led to Kanye laughing at the host, who then told him, "It's the same thing! Racism is racism. And you know that, I think. Don't you?"
Kanye replied to Morgan, stating, "Yeah, obviously. That's why I said it." Kanye also stated that he was "fighting fire with fire" with his comments, and he went on to issue an apology.
Kanye stated, "I will say I'm sorry for the people that I hurt with the 'death con'—the confusion that I caused. I feel like I caused hurt and confusion and I'm sorry for the families that had nothing to do with the trauma that I had been through. And that I used my platform where you say 'hurt people hurt people'—and I was hurt."
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Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Jews 'own banks, they own the media' says model Carmen Ortega
American model and fashion designer Carmen Ortega Baljian spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory on her Instagram page of 2.5 million followers last week.
"They own banks, they own the media, and in our politics heavy. Who's awake yet?" she wrote.
She also shared a tweet by Candace Owens to her Instagram story, writing: "Who runs the banks? How many more times will I be right about these people?"
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Thursday, October 06, 2022
Satmar businessman Joel Klein: ‘Hasidim are living the American dream’
After The New York Times published an investigative piece on the poor academic performance of Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students, much of the Jewish press responded with nuanced outrage. One finely reasoned analysis came from Eli Spitzer, a British Hasidic educator, who conceded in Tikvah, a weekly podcast, that the Times' article was true "in terms of what the investigation found," but who took the reporters to task for not explaining why they wrote that the yeshivos were "failing by design." Spitzer asked, "What is that design?" The Times, he said, didn't answer this "most important question."
Except for story interviews I've done with individual Hasidim over the years, I've had virtually no personal contact with them. I wanted to hear how at least one member of this community responded to Eli Spitzer's question. I asked Joel Klein, a Satmar Hasidic business coach and serial entrepreneur based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to contemplate the role his yeshiva studies played in his educational, intellectual and business life. He speaks here in his own voice.
I'm not a statistics man and I can't comment on the investigation by The New York Times that attempts to quantify my community's educational system. Frankly, I don't count on the "paper of record" to properly reflect the world I have lived in for 43 years. The focus in Kiryas Joel, Orange County, where I grew up, is on Torah, talmudical studies and halacha. I readily concede we have a specific value system that is often at odds with the values of the secular world.
The fact is, I always had a passion to help people. Despite excelling in Torah and halachic studies, and despite receiving smicha (rabbinic certification), I hoped one day to get involved with askunes, or volunteer work.
After the birth of my second child, and even while I continued my studies in the koylel (institute for advanced study of Talmud and rabbinic literature), I began volunteering for an organization to support cancer survivors. A close family friend, who had established the organization, asked my wife and me to help develop a marketing strategy. Back then, my writing skills were primarily in Yiddish or loshn koydesh (a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic used in prayer books and holy texts). They were ideal for the organization's target audience. The sensitivity I felt for my community's needs was also an asset. My wife and I helped bring the organization's message across to potential donors. We were thrilled when we raised thousands of dollars, all of which went to the families of cancer patients.
The time came to parlay my marketing and writing skills into a parnuse, a way of earning a living. It was the beginning of the dot-com economy and I thought of establishing an online store. E-commerce was a novel concept at the time. I said to myself, "My family friend also has a payroll company. He could be a great customer." I met with him and asked if he would buy my laser-printed checks. He shlepped me off to the side and said, "Yoeli (my Yiddish name), you're not opening a laser check-printing business. You're opening a marketing company." He explained very few people had the insight into marketing the way I did.
So I opened a marketing office. One day a heimishe guy, a fellow Hasid, a very successful business owner, walked in. He needed help with a marketing project for a trade show. We sat for an hour and I said, "Okay, I'll come up with a strategy and send you a proposal."
"Joel, how much do I owe you for today's meeting?" he asked me.
I had never considered charging for an initial consultation. I wondered, "Is my time so valuable that people should pay me $500 an hour?" But since he asked me, I took the audacity and I told him, "It's $500 an hour." He wrote a check right away for $1,500. He said, "That's for this meeting, one with my marketing team, and one with my sales team. I'll pay more as we move forward."
I work with this man to this very day. He still doesn't know he was my first paying consulting client.
People began coming to me. I no longer hesitated about charging a consultation fee. And I started writing a series of business articles for the Satmar Yiddish weekly Der Blatt. For a couple of years I also had a column called, "Ikh Vil Matsliakh Zahn, Ober Vi Azoy?" ("I Want to Be Successful, But How?") My motto was, "Empowering Jewish entrepreneurs," and I got invited to do a monthly business podcast for "Kol Mevaser," a Yiddish news hotline for the Hasidic community.
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Monday, October 03, 2022
Joe Biden claims to be part of the Puerto Rican and Jewish communities
