Friday, December 29, 2023
DW Partners bails out of embattled project in Hasidic Williamsburg
After a bizarre bankruptcy delayed a South Williamsburg condo project designed for Hasidic families, its lender is getting out.
DW Partners sold its $25 million loan on the luxury development at 415 Marcy Avenue. An entity connected to Cirrus Real Estate, led by former Fortress global head of real estate Anthony Tufariello, bought the loan, according to property records. PincusCo first reported the news.
The 25-unit condo project, which dates back to at least 2015, hit a snag in 2021 when DW initiated a foreclosure, alleging developer Ezra Unger defaulted on the loan.
Complicating matters, the previous property holder, local bakery owner Aron Lebovits, claimed he was the true owner and sued Unger, alleging that he took advantage of "simple people without any real education." That stalled the foreclosure.
But Lebovits couldn't post a $1.5 million bond demanded by a judge and the foreclosure resumed. Lebovits tried to file another lawsuit, but the judge dismissed it.
In January, a day before the foreclosure sale was set to occur, an unexpected bankruptcy petition stopped the proceedings. It was not by the developer, Unger, but by Lebovits.
In his filing, Lebovits claimed that Unger "systematically looted Lebovits' property using a series of fraudulent and forged documents." He also alleged the loan from DW was fraudulent.
In another unusual move, Lebovits provided granular details about who paid the legal costs for the bankruptcy filing. Various relatives of Lebovits' chipped in a few thousand dollars apiece, nearby Congregation Beis Nusen provided $5,000 and Regal Management Services contributed $15,000.
Unger did not seem to appreciate the reprieve from foreclosure. Through his attorney, he argued that Lebovits had no right to file for bankruptcy because he was not the debtor. Unger also denied Lebovits' allegations of fraud, claiming Lebovits had already been paid millions of dollars over the years.
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Wednesday, December 27, 2023
Pennsylvania’s Primary Remains on First Day of Passover. How Can Observant Jews Still Vote?
Four states originally had primaries scheduled for April 23, the first full day of Passover. But Delaware, Rhode Island and Maryland all moved their elections to different dates.
Pennsylvania is the only state with a primary still scheduled then.
Going into the fall legislative session in Harrisburg, there was optimism that the General Assembly would move the date.
"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Jewish Rep. Jared Solomon, who represents the 202nd District in Northeast Philadelphia.
"I would guess that it's something we'll address," added Jewish Rep. Ben Waxman of District 182 in Center City.
Except it wasn't something they addressed.
Democrats in the House tried to add election reforms such as increasing the amount of canvassing days for political candidates. Republicans in the Senate just tried to pass a bill that would have changed the date. Pennsylvania's Jewish governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, supported moving the primary but did not take a position on either side's proposals.
"We had a deal on Monday, and then the deal fell apart," said Jewish Rep. Abigail Salisbury, who represents the Pittsburgh-based 34th District, in November.
Now, halachically observant Jews will not be able to go to the polls on election day. But if you are one, you can still vote.
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Friday, December 22, 2023
Shtreimel of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky sold for $1.8 million
A haredi businessman has purchased the shtreimel of the late sage Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky for a whopping $1.8 million.
The businessman made the purchase at an auction house that was selling items that belonged to Rabbi Kanievsky, after bids from other prospective buyers drove up the price significantly.
The shtreimel has a deeper history, as Rabbi Kanievsky inherited it from his father-in-law Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the former leader of the Lithuanian-haredi community in Israel. Rabbi Elyashiv gave him his old shtreimel after buying a new one for himself.
Rabbi Kanievsky would wear the shtreimel while reciting the kiddush and blessing after meals on Jewish holidays.
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Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Hasidic Jewish Practices: Upholding Tradition in a Modern World
The Hasidic Jewish community has long been known for its strict adherence to religious laws and customs, which govern nearly every aspect of their lives. These practices serve to preserve their religious and cultural traditions, shaping their behavior and lifestyle. While some of these practices may differ from mainstream societal norms, they are deeply ingrained in the lives of Hasidic Jews.
One prominent restriction within the Hasidic community is intermarriage. Hasidic Jews are not allowed to marry outside of their faith, as it is vital to maintain the continuity of their religious and cultural heritage. By marrying within their community, Hasidic Jews ensure the preservation of their unique traditions for future generations.
Another aspect that differentiates Hasidic Jews from the broader population is their emphasis on religious education over secular studies. Many Hasidic communities prioritize religious education, limiting the pursuit of higher education or engagement in non-religious learning. This dedication to religious education ensures that Hasidic Jews acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to practice their faith.
Technology usage is another area where Hasidic Jews diverge from mainstream society. Many Hasidic Jews often restrict their use of technology, particularly in their homes. They believe that devices such as televisions, internet access, and smartphones can distract from their religious obligations and lead to secular influences. While some Hasidic Jews may still use the internet for essential tasks, the overarching goal is to maintain a focused and religiously centered lifestyle.
Modesty is highly valued within the Hasidic community, influencing their dress code. Both men and women follow specific guidelines for appropriate dress. Men typically wear long coats and hats, while women dress modestly by covering their hair and wearing long skirts or dresses. This emphasis on modesty reflects the community's commitment to maintaining a sense of purity and holiness in all aspects of their lives.
Observance of the Sabbath is a crucial practice within Hasidic Judaism. From Friday evening to Saturday evening, Hasidic Jews refrain from work, including household chores, driving, and using electricity. This period of rest and devotion allows them to focus on their spiritual connection with God and recharge their spiritual batteries.
While Hasidic Jews may have some restrictions, it is essential to recognize that these practices are deeply rooted in tradition and maintain a sense of identity and purpose within their community. By upholding these customs, Hasidic Jews strive to lead devout and spiritually focused lives while navigating the challenges of the modern world.
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Monday, December 18, 2023
A one-time law allowed Hasidic women to name the men they say abused them
"Do you remember him?" Nechie Fischman's friend asked her in November.
It had been nearly a decade since the 30-year-old former Orthodox Jewish woman last saw the Brooklyn doctor.
Still, she remembered him instantly.
The friend had sent her an Instagram post from a charity looking for plaintiffs to participate in a lawsuit against Dr Robert Goodman. (Dr Goodman denies the allegations in the lawsuit.)
The group would file under the recently expired New York's Adult Survivors Act, a piece of legislation allowing adult survivors of sexual abuse to file civil claims against their assailants during a one-year lookback window regardless of when the crime occurred.
But for Ms Fischman, there was a lot to consider.
Borough Park's tight-knit and conservative Orthodox Jewish community would talk. She feared people would think she was problematic for having suffered the alleged abuse and even more so for publicly discussing it so many years later.
"The good people don't speak up," Ms Fischman told The Independent.
However, at that point, she said, "I had nothing to lose."
Two days before the ASA expiration, she joined the lawsuit alongside three other women who formerly belonged to, or are currently part of, the orthodox community, Malky Wigder, Liba Kolp and a 'Jane Doe'. All of them claim that Dr Goodman sexually assaulted them while they were his patients.
In a statement through his attorney, Dr Goodman said, "I unequivocally deny all the allegations in the complaint.
"I have had tens of thousands of patient interactions over the decades and, in stark contrast to the allegations in the complaint, I have received significant praise from patients throughout my career concerning the quality of the care I provide and for my professionalism," he said.
Their experiences, according to the complaint, are similar. The women went in for routine examinations and during the visits, they say the doctor groped their breasts.
Two of the women spoke to The Independent and said they want to see the doctor held accountable for his alleged actions, which they say happened across 15 years and deeply impacted the community.
One woman, who is the Jane Doe in the suit against Dr Goodman, asked to remain anonymous because she worries about being ostracised by the orthodox community.
She hasn't even told her parents about the abuse, she said in court filings.
"In our community, being an unmarried woman who was subjected to sexual contact of any kind, even nonconsensual, is looked down upon and viewed as a source of shame and embarrassment," reads the lawsuit.
Also, publicising her name could make it very difficult for her to find an orthodox husband, she said.
"As soon as they hear there's any trauma, sexual abuse, they see it as baggage," she told The Independent, referring to the community at large. "Nobody wants that. They think it's a bad thing."
The ASA gave women from New York's fiercely private Hasidic communities a chance to speak out about sexual assault in a profound way, with women able to come forward together.
According to Asher Lovy, the director of ZA'AKAH, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness about sexual abuse in the orthodox community, at least a few dozen lawsuits have been filed by current or former members of the community against their assailants.
Three women are individually suing a different doctor in the Orthodox community who they say sexually assaulted them. In one of those complaints, a woman said that the doctor "would forcibly fondle [her] breasts under her clothes" during each of the four appointments she attended.
One plaintiff is suing the executor of an estate belonging to a man she said sexually assaulted while part of his foster family. The abuse started when she was 15 and occurred again after she turned 18, the complaint states.
Coming forward is difficult for survivors, Mr Lovy said, because community leaders are against survivors reporting assaults and are "fine with enacting consequences against those who do."
It's not uncommon for allegations to be handled internally and quietly, he added.
Jane Doe said she saw Dr Goodman twice in 2016, when the alleged abuse occurred. She's never returned to his office and avoids going down the street in her neighbourhood where it's located.
She is now fearful of male doctors and feels embarrassment and shame when she thinks about the incident.
In Ms Fischman's case, she became a patient of Dr Goodman's for about a year in 2012. She was 20 years old and had just gotten married. The doctor was recommended to her by a friend.
Before her first appointment, she recalled hearing things about him from those around her. People described him as "flirty", "touchy", and someone who "liked to hug his patients".
Even so, she didn't think twice about the remarks. She considered the behaviour to be normal for a man in his position.
Initially, it was hard to tell if something was wrong, she said.
Orthodox women do not touch men unless they are related or married to them. As a result, she said she had no framework to discern what was and was not ok.
She saw him on a routine basis, sometimes as often as twice a week for treatment regarding her chronic asthma and other medical conditions she suffered from, and found him friendly.
To schedule appointments, the doctor texted Ms Fishman through WhatsApp, court records say.
She alleges their interactions became inappropriate throughout her treatment.
He would hug her, ask about her marriage and compliment her eyes and breasts, she said.
Once, he stated that, "her husband was an idiot for not appreciating her body", according to court records. The doctor knew that her marriage had become abusive, the complaint reads.
During some appointments, he had her sit on the edge of an examination table with her legs spread open while he stood in between them. He would then place his hand on her inner thigh, she said.
In other instances, he'd grope her breasts under her shirt as he attempted to check her heartbeat, the complaint reads. Ms Fischman noted that the doctor did not use a stethoscope when this allegedly happened.
Though the apparent actions made her uncomfortable, she thought there was something wrong with her for feeling that way. She blamed herself for being ungrateful for a caring doctor.
"Only a bad person in the community gets into this," she remembers thinking.
Ms Fischman stopped seeing the doctor after getting divorced. At a certain point, she said she decided to take her life back and never made another appointment.
She didn't report the alleged abuse after it happened because she didn't want to draw more attention to herself, she said.
She left Brooklyn around 2014 and permanently moved to Florida roughly four years later.
The lawsuit gave her the ability to "speak up in a safer environment" and with other women. Finding out that she wasn't the only one who suffered the alleged abuse left her shocked, she said.
"If people knew about it, why was it still happening?" asked Ms Fischman.
The Independent called Dr Goodman's Brooklyn office on Friday and it went to an answering machine, which named him and said the office was closed.
Though she's no longer part of the orthodox community, Ms Fischman wants its leaders to change how allegations of sexual violence are handled.
Assailants should be held accountable and threats of ostracisation should be eliminated, she said.
"Victims shouldn't be scared of losing [their] entire family."
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Friday, December 15, 2023
Shock in Satmar: Hasidic couple who converted revealed as imposters
A member of the Satmar hasidic community in New York, who converted to Judaism together with his wife, recently became irreligious - and the community is now saying that he was an imposter from the beginning.
The individual, known as Yechiel Yisroel Bloyd (Bartimaeus Black), joined the community approximately five years ago.
At the time, he claimed that he had undergone conversion through well-respected rabbis, who he named. Over the years, he became part of the hasidic community in Williamsburg, and became officially part of the Satmar community.
"He baked matzahs on the day before Pesach (Passover), in the best bakery, he gave speeches in synagogues, we gave him everything he needed in order to raise a family, hasidim would go around colleting charity for him," the Satmar community described.
According to sources in the Satmar hasidic community, on Thursday it became known that throughout the past five years, the couple had led a completely secular life - which shows that they had been imposters from the very beginning.
After he was no longer religious, Bloyd announced that he intended to publish a book about his life in the Satmar community. The community, however, claims that this was his intention from the beginning: To infiltrate the community, become part of it, and publish the "findings" of his "research."
Bloyd, however, denied this claim, saying that he converted according to Jewish law and even named, again, the rabbis who converted him, and said that the lifestyle of the Satmar community was no longer appropriate for him.
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Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Democrat senator blasts 'failure' of university leaders to protect Jewish students, asks Biden admin to review
Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen is urging Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to take a "comprehensive review" of university harassment policies amid rising antisemitism on college campuses and what she called a "failure" of leadership at those institutions to protect Jewish students.
Rosen, D-Nev., penned a letter obtained by Fox News on Wednesday to Cardona to share "significant concerns" on the matter, just days after university presidents testified on Capitol Hill.
"I write with significant concerns about rising antisemitism at institutions of higher education and the failure of college and university leadership to protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination," Rosen wrote. "Jewish Americans across the country were horrified by last week's hearing in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where three leading university presidents failed to unequivocally state that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people would inherently violate their schools' respective harassment policies or codes of conduct."
"In light of this disturbing testimony, and in order to protect students from antisemitic discrimination, I urge the Department of Education to undertake a comprehensive review of college and university harassment policies and codes of conduct to ensure that they comply with federal civil rights requirements for institutions of higher education," Rosen wrote.
Rosen, citing the Dec. 5 hearing, said lawmakers posed questions regarding campus antisemitism to presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"When asked if 'calling for the genocide of Jews' would constitute bullying or harassment under Penn's code of conduct, then-president Liz Magill answered that it was a 'context-dependent decision' and that such a statement would be harassment if 'the speech turns into conduct,'" Rosen said, citing testimony from the university presidents. "The presidents of Harvard and MIT then gave similar, troubling answers to the same question."
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Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Two more Jewish hate attacks in as many days in NYC
A Jewish father of five was beaten in front of his own home as his attacker spewed antisemitic vitriol in Brooklyn on Thursday — just two days before another man was robbed of his $2,500 traditional Jewish headpiece in the borough as antisemitism continues to rise across New York City.
Joshua Merenfeld, 40, was dressed in Jewish religious garb and enjoying the first night of Hanukkah when an unknown assailant attacked him and snarled, "Dirty Jew" in the victim's front yard in Crown Heights.
"It was a real beating," Merenfeld told NBC 4, noting that he was pummeled repeatedly, knocked over and stomped on. "Definitely doesn't feel good to have this happen in your own front yard."
As he was being attacked, Merenfeld said, the assailant "used a bunch of antisemitic terminology and profanities."
Merenfeld, who now has bruises on his face from the violence, was left on the ground as the suspect snatched his phone and fled.
The masked suspect was later spotted entering the Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway subway station.
Merenfeld, who received treatment at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, said he was speaking out about the attack given the brazen nature of the assault.
"This is a dangerous person. It didn't happen at twelve o'clock at night at a back alley somewhere. This happened in front of a well-lit building on Eastern Parkway at seven in the evening," he told NBC.
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Thursday, December 07, 2023
Jewish woman denied entry into bathroom by San Francisco coffee house employees
Video is circulating social media that purportedly shows employees at a coffee house in Oakland, California, denying a Jewish woman entry into the restroom because she wanted to document anti-Israel graffiti that was written inside.
The video starts out showing three employees of Farley's Coffee East blocking a woman, who is alleged to be Jewish, from entering the restroom. As the woman records with her phone, she asks why she's not allowed in, to which one of the employees responds: "I know Israel loves taking private property and saying it's their own, but we gotta have you leave."
"You're also misgendering us, so I need you to leave," another employee tells the woman.
The woman then says that she "was a patron here and I have a right to go into the restroom,"
"And we have a right to refuse service," the man replies.
As the woman continues to protest being denied entry to the restroom, an employee of a neighboring business offers her the use of the bathroom next door, but the woman filming refuses. "No, I want to use this one. I should not be excluded and other people allowed," she says.
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Wednesday, December 06, 2023
Case adjourned for man accused in deadly machete attack on Hasidic Jews
The case of a man accused in a deadly machete attack on Hasidic Jews four years ago has been adjourned.
The attack left four people hurt and one person died months later.
Grafton Thomas was confined to a mental health facility in April after a judge found him incompetent for trial.
Thomas also faces federal charges.
He is expected back in court on January 17.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2023
NY may change how villages are formed. Would that derail Hasidic village plans?
Two bills that tighten New York's rules to form a village may pose fresh hurdles for plans by Hasidic communities in Orange and Sullivan counties if Gov. Kathy Hochul signs either this month.
Both bills would update an old law that requires little more than a petition, a population of at least 500 people and a referendum to start a village. Critics say that simple recipe makes it too easy for a group of citizens to add a layer of local government that is largely obsolete and sought mostly as a way to seize power from a town government.
The bills were approved by state lawmakers in June and are among the last pieces of legislation left for Hochul to approve or reject in the final weeks of the year.
Each would raise the bar for a new village and demand studies of how it would affect taxes, services and other factors. One change alone in both bills would disqualify the village petitions in Orange and Sullivan if applied to them: raising the minimum population to 2,000 from 500.
Both village plans are tied up in court. In Sullivan, opponents of the proposed Ateres in the towns of Thompson and Fallsburg are challenging 22 petition signatures to try to get it voided. Their suit stopped the town supervisors from scheduling a referendum after they declared the petition valid in September.
In Orange, the five-year-long quest to create the village of Seven Springs in the town of Monroe is going through another round of litigation after Supervisor Tony Cardone rejected it as flawed in September.
Neither proposed village has 2,000 or more inhabitants: Ateres had 834 and Seven Springs had 597 when the petitions were filed. The question is whether both plans would fail for that reason if their backers win in court but Hochul has signed one or both reform bills.
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Friday, December 01, 2023
Jewish tech executives met with TikTok CEO over pro-Palestinian bias concerns
A group of 40 mostly Jewish tech leaders and business executives confronted TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last month over their concerns about antisemitism and the allegedly disproportionate popularity of pro-Palestine videos on the app, according to multiple reports.
During the Zoom meeting, the executives reportedly presented an analysis of TikTok data during the Israel-Hamas war and pushed for answers on what they felt was an "unexplainable discrepancy" in content that favored Palestinians, Fortune reported.
The analysis was backed by 90 co-signers, including Tinder co-founder Sean Rad, ex-Meta chief revenue officer David Fischer and Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn, according to Bloomberg.
"For every view of pro-Israel posts, there are about 54 views of pro-Palestine posts," one of the executives, AIX Ventures partner Anthony Goldbloom, told Fortune. "If TikTok was just a mirror reflecting back what people believe, it shouldn't be a 54:1 ratio."
The executives also raised concerns about the rise of antisemitic violence and nudged TikTok to reconsider its thinking on which videos violate its guidelines.
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