I just read this article and I am fuming.

First read the article about and then continue on. This is regarding the “attack” by a member of Shmira on a Black man, Andrew Charles, a few weeks ago. Even since that one isolated incident there have been 5 more attacks on Jewish victims in this community. Not to mention the 35 plus over the last two years.

It’s unbelievable what is happening here. We’ve been under constant attack here for at least 30 years, and in the last 2-3 years the attacks have gone up dramatically. In the Summer we have at least 1 attack per week. If you go to CrownHeights.info you will see at least 35 instances over the last 24 months. Yet this one attack, which is very questionable to the extent of its severity has somehow become a watershed moment in DA Charles Hynes’s career.

Something about two Jewish guys fighting with a black guy that makes him want to teach us Jews a lesson. It’s mind boggling. The way he describes this attack is just out of this world. At worse I would call this a skirmish, read this description of the “beating.”

Hynes alleges that the men who attacked Charles on Empire Boulevard at first stared him down, then attacked him with mace. When Charles ran, one of the attackers made a phone call to other assailants, who then appeared in a sport-utility vehicle. One of them got out of the vehicle and struck Charles with a club or bat, according to Hynes.

I get stared down every time I walk to shul! So these guys “stared down” Andrew Charles and then went straight from that to mace, calling someone in a car, meanwhile enough time has passed that Andrew Charles is STILL THERE! (Even though he was supposedly “running away.”) Then the driver of the SUV comes, gets out and hits Mr. Charles. Its preposterous to assume based on all my years living here that Mr. Charles did not do anything back.

Even if the Jewish guys did stare him down, I’m sure Mr. Charles stared them back, with his friend (who always gets left out of this story for some reason when they explain it) and then he remained silent? He didn’t say anything anti semitic? He didn’t curse the guys back? He didn’t threaten to get his friends also? He didn’t attempt to defend himself? He didn’t say anything about “this is our neighborhood!” , no, nothing? he just stood there, get stared down, cursed at, maced and then beaten? All while running away with his friend.

Mr. Hynes, you should be ashamed of yourself! I don’t care what the facts are regarding this specific case. Even if the worse case scenario is true, it’s still not half as bad as the worse crimes committed against the Frum community in Crown Heights. We have had kids heads bashed in so bad they needed staples, legs and arms broken, teeth broken (5!), we have had an unsolved murder (Mr. Klein), we’ve had so many examples that Mr. Hynes should be mortified based on his outrage over this once incident.

Most of all I just feel helpless. Helpless in my own home. We’re attacked and nothing is done, no one comes to our rescue, and to make it worse when the attackers get attacked it reaches the highest levels of law enforcement in this city.

I was quite upset to see this story on one of my favorite blogs.

A small glatt kosher restaurant in New York City’s East Village ran a contest where people submitted names for the new restaurant. According to the official rules (all 33 words of it), the $3,000 “will be given to the first person who entered the name we will choose.” Eric writes in to note that they’ve announced their new name—Kosher Village—but they haven’t announced any winner. To make things more suspicious, they also registered the domain name “koshervillagenyc.com” on April 12th, over two weeks before the contest ended this past Monday the 28th. Eric adds that “the in-store sign for Kosher Village was put up this weekend, also before the contest deadline.” So was there ever a $3k prize, or was the entire contest a scam to drum up publicity and collect email addresses?

Needless to say I’d like to hear a response from the restaurant owners. If anyone knows the owner(s) of the new “Kosher Village” restaurant in NYC, please try to find out.

I’m no genius, but I think it’s about time the FBI or some government agency starting dealing with the amazing increase in hate crimes. It’s almost becoming, if not daily, a weekly occurrence somewhere that a Jewish shul, school, cemetery or home is vandalized in some fashion. Story here.

A little while ago a television film crew from Japan followed Mendy Pellin around for a report on Frum Jews in the media. Apparently Mendy is a big hit in Japan. Well, the report aired and you can watch it here. But if you want to understand what they are saying then you might need to brush up on your Japanese!

Orthodox NY Rapper Preaches Love.

Buy the album here.

For those of you wondering, The Shtus Blog isn’t dead. I try to remember to post there more often, but I don’t always get the chance. I just posted a pair of funny BK commercials I’ve been dying over. Yes, very very treif food, but very very funny ads.

There are lots of individual thoughts floating around in my head and many have to do with today’s new Orthodox wing. We’ve really got to make up a good universally accepted term for them. There is already such a thing as Ultra Orthodox, so what are these Ban happy, Kol Koreh seeking, joyless Jews called? I feel like its a sickness that is spreading quicker and quicker. It’s affecting more and more people and even more frightening is that a lot of the most vitriolic and angry are young couples.

If you go to any random Yeshiva World blog posting the newest “crisis” or the newest ban you’ll see what I mean. Those posts get so many outrageous reactions, and they can’t all be 50 year old rebel rousers. There are a lot of young, newly married couples who consider all these bans and kol korehs torah moshe m’sinai.

I’m not saying it’s all young people, but I am saying that this sickness, as I call it, is becoming equally prevalent in the younger communities of Lakewood and Boro Park as well. Lots of people writing letters to the editors or angrily emailing bloggers, or bringing these topics to the attention of the Askonim who then approach the gedolim are young men and women in thier 20’s, 30’s.

Just look at the recent changing of the Shabbos bell in Boro Park. In Israel, in the frum communities apparently they changed the Shabbos bell because there were so many Kassam attacks, that they needed a different thing for Shabbos so people wouldn’t think its was a rocket attack. So they changed it to this depressing ultra frummie Shabbos is coming music. It’s not that its a bad song, it’s just so depressing and representative of how that community thinks of Yiddishkeit.

So just because the Chareidi in Israel did it, of course months later is has to be adopted by the Chareidi in New York. So now that depressing music is what welcomes the Shabbos Queen week after week in Boro Park. Thank G-d I live in Crown Heights, where the bell still rings. Love the Shabbos siren or not, its loud and I always felt it was good.

We should never be happy, we should always hate ourselves for not being good enough. It seems that they want us to be depressed all the time. That is not the Orthodox Judaism that I believe in. Sometimes I truly feel bad for friends of mine who aren’t Chabad. There is so much joy what we do, and I’m not saying Chabad is king of all sects, I’m not saying that at all, I promise. I’m just saying that I think Chabad is becoming one of the last sects of Frum Chareidi Judaism that still embraces Joy in the servitude of Hashem.

So, in the end, my post didn’t have much to do with it’s title. I intended to write about that scandal at the Uncle Moishy concert, and I still will. This was supposed to be an intro to talk about that, but the intro became a whole post for itself.

I think over Sefirah I’ll be discussing this a lot. It’s something we need to talk about. The Jewish Blogosphere may be the only place where this discussion is really happening.

I’ve got nothing. I mean I have a few different things I’d like to write about but I don’t have the time or energy right now. I’m still recovering from Pesach and I have way too much work to be on the blog. I’ll be back to my regular blog schedule very soon. 

EMBARRASSMENT

I implore you to do whatever you can do to help Rabbi Katz rebuild his Shul. Chabad of Miami Beach is just the latest Jewish institution to be attacked across the globe. The rise of anti semitic attacks is genuinely terrifying. What’s different in this case is that we are not dealing with a rock through a window or a painted swastika on the front door. In this case anti semites (Arabs are believed to be the prime suspects) burned down the entire Shul. Not only did they burn down the Shul but they took careful care and time to rip apart all the Seforim and the Sefer Torah. 

Please, do whatever you can to give to this Shul to help them start, literally, from the ground. Here is their website, donate whatever you can, even if its a few dollars. If every one of my readers donated as little $5 dollars that would be $2500 dollars. I’m a big talker, I Kvetch on my little corner of the J-blogosphere, and most often there is little else I/we can do but moan and sigh. Here we have a clear opportunity to fight back against the Sonei Yisroel. 

Let’s him them rebuild. You can donate by clicking here. 

My wife mentioned this to me and I honestly thought she was joking. It wasn’t until Chaptzem posted it that I realized it was real. Up until this year those plain flavored Pesach cookies you gave your two year old when they kvetched were called Lady Fingers. (wiki) (example)

As of this year it looks like the main companies that make it switched the name to either just “Fingers” or “Baby Fingers”, or “L Fingers”, amazing. I guess too many men were overloading from Tumedike thoughts from saying “Lady” fingers.

If you combine this brilliant move with the loophole they found to allow Lipa to sing in public again they could rename the Ladies Room at Simcha Halls to “Not Mens Room.”

This is all becoming a huge joke. Todays Frum world is becoming a joke, and thats actually pretty serious.

If you look back through history you will see a very strong pattern of Crown Heights cops only getting aggressive when someone attacks one of their own. Two years ago a man was murdered in Crown Heights because he chose to take his garbage out at 2 AM. A runaway bullet in a now dangerous community at night. Till today the cops have no leads and will probably never solve the crime.

Sure, murders don’t happen every night, b’h, but muggings or harassments? That statistic is growing at an alarming rate. Take the case of Derrick Nelson, he has been in and out of jail a dozen times and has broken into over 20 cars. The cops are powerless to keep him locked up. In fact every time he gets out it takes an aggressive campaign by Shomrim to catch him and beg a cop to rearrest him.

The increase in attempted muggings and harassments makes every Jewish member of this community think twice about leaving their homes after dark. Can you imagine what that must feel like? We don’t roam the streets in gangs, looking for fights. But we are getting angry and while that doesn’t justify whatever did happen last week between those two bochurim and the two black men, it does provide further proof that this community is reaching a boiling point.

The members of this community do not believe in the cops. They do nothing and even when they catch criminals they either let them go or make excuses for why they can’t be arrested.

When do cops take anything seriously? When one of their own is attacked. Last year when two cops were shot and one was killed they turned Crown Heights and all the surrounding areas upside down. Do you think they got their men? They sure did! Within a week they caught all three men connected to that crime. Not bad, huh? It must feel good to do actual police work.

Then last weeks “attack” on a black teen in Crown Heights? All of a sudden the cops remembered how to do their jobs. I wonder what could be inspiring them to work so hard, I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the teens father is a cop!

Last weeks attack brought over aggressive acts of violence by police including knocking down the door to the suspects home Erev Yom Tov like the KGB, in front of the mother and a 9 year old child. Then the suspects brother was arrested when he asked if the cops had a warrant, which they didn’t.

But two incidents of Yom Tov in local parks show that when its not one of their own cops don’t do anything. I don’t have to show you the list of attacks that result in lazy police work. Go search the crime section of CrownHeights.Info, it’ll keep you busy for the next 4 days.

No time to chat right now, been a great, but super long 3 days. It’s nice to see the world is still moving along, politics as usual, sports, news all still happening. I have 562 email messages (thats combined business and personal) so that will be fun to sort through. I’ve got some interesting observations coming up, mostly about bad Chazanim and Hagadahs that still don’t quite cut it.

For now let me leave you with this e-mail I got over Yom Tov.

Dear Chaim,

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.1 score out of (10) in the Society/Religion & Spirituality category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement!

http://www.blogged.com/directory/society/religion-and-spirituality

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style.

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.1 score.

That’s it folks, this is what we’ve been preparing for over a month. This is not a drill, the three day yom tov is about to begin. Although it’s not really a three day yom tov. It’s a Shabbos and then the normal two day (chutz l’aretz) Chag. I hope everyone enjoys their Pesach and is able to reach new spiritual heights.

Wherever they may be, whether on in Miami or near the Kosel in Yerushalayim or at a out here in little ‘ol in Brooklyn. It is, what you make it to be. May we all be blessed that before the Sedarim even begin, Moshiach will come and we can all be in Eretz Yisroel.

Since everyone is always down on hotels, here is a little spirituality from the heart of hotel land. South Florida, ’s Rabbi Sholom Lispker.