To Serve or Not to Serve – the IDF, Haredim one Enlisted Now Do not Want to Be Associated With Enlistment…

A photo of Rabbi Elisha Levi, an ultra-Orthodox who fought in the Six Day War, is shown in a Yisrael Beytenu campaign ad calling on ultra-Orthodox to enlist. (Screenshot: Twitter)

Liberman pulls clip calling for Haredi enlistment but featuring Six Day War vet

Granddaughter of Rabbi Elisha Levi outraged to see a photo of him illustrating Yisrael Beytenu campaign spot; ultra-Orthodox MK blasts ‘incitement’

Avigdor Liberman was forced Friday to remove a campaign ad by his Yisrael Beytenu party calling on ultra-Orthodox Israelis to enlist to the military, after coming under fire for including footage of a rabbi who had fought in the Six Day War in 1967.

Yisrael Beytenu has been focusing its campaign on criticizing the ultra-Orthodox community and presenting his party as right-wing and secular, after a disagreement over a law regulating the drafting of seminary students into the IDF prevented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a coalition in the wake of the April elections. This led to another round of Israeli elections scheduled for September 17.

In the campaign spot published Friday morning, various photos of ultra-Orthodox men are seen with slogans such as: “We’re not demanding that you enlist to [elite commando unit] Sayeret Matkal, only that you enlist,” and “We’re not demanding that you work extra hours, only that you work.”

However, Facebook user Michaela Levi was outraged when she recognized one of the people in the clip as her grandfather Rabbi Elisha Levi, who served in the IDF in the 1960s and took part in the Six Day War against invading Arab armies.

“How ugly can this election cycle be?” she asked in a post. “This morning I saw the video Avigdor Liberman published. Probably without thinking too much about the people behind the photos, he allowed himself to drag my grandfather’s name through the mud… How do you allow yourselves to generalize like this?!

“My grandfather, who served and fought in the Six Day War, worked all his life in education and dedicated every free moment he had to volunteer work, and thousands of graduates of kindergartens and schools around Jerusalem can testify to that,” Levi added.

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The Haredization of a Once Extraordinary City in Israel, Safed

As ultra-Orthodox move in, the face of tourism changes in Safed

While a visit to the northern city of Safed has remained a vacation mainstay for many Orthodox Jews, its increasingly religious character has significantly changed how the average Israeli views it as a potential tourism destination, according to a report in Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

Safed has featured a distinctly religious character for hundreds of years, serving as a center of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah since the 16th century. This atmosphere did not deter Israelis from across the political spectrum from visiting, however, and by the 1980s the city boasted some 22 hotels.

That number is now down to four, with many of those that have closed down having been converted to religious institutions affiliated with Chabad and other ultra-Orthodox movements.

However, such figures can also be misleading, given both the large crowds of visitors present in the city during vacation season and the prevalence of available rental apartments.

College Scandal Tied to Massive Medicare Fraud Case and the Key Worldwide Foundation – Esformes and Singer

FBI found clues to college admissions scandal years earlier in massive Medicare fraud case

Federal authorities were combing through the finances and phone records of a Miami businessman suspected of Medicare fraud when they came across a curious name: Rick Singer.

Philip Esformes, who was accused of farming out patients from his nursing homes to steal millions in bogus insurance claims, had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to a foundation Singer controlled. And in text messages discovered on Esformes’ phone, the men discussed how one of Esformes’ sons had performed on his college entrance exams.

Only years later would authorities learn what Esformes had paid Singer to do: Slip his daughter into USC as a fake soccer player and fix his youngest son’s college entrance exam, according to statements a prosecutor made in court and sources familiar with the case.

Singer has said he struck similar deals with dozens more parents, an admission that has roiled higher education and implicated elites from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the Newport coast.

But in 2016, when agents seized the iPhone Esformes used to text Singer and obtained their messages, Singer was a peripheral, if curious, player in an enormous healthcare fraud investigation. The Esformes case marks the first time Singer is known to have crossed the radar of law enforcement.

Singer would run his admissions scam undisturbed until another team of investigators, working in Boston on an altogether different case, caught a second glimpse of his operation in 2018 and unraveled it.

Andrew Lelling, the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts, unveiled that investigation in March. Fifty people were charged, including dozens of parents and coaches at such elite schools as Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and USC, who were accused of selling spots that their schools reserved for recruited athletes.

Esformes has not been charged in the college admissions case. Convicted in April of paying and receiving kickbacks in connection with a federal healthcare program and other crimes, he faces decades in prison when a judge sentences him in September. His attorneys declined to comment.

Spokespeople for federal prosecutors in Boston and Miami declined to comment.

It is unclear how much federal authorities uncovered of Esformes’ dealings with Singer while investigating his case. But at his trial in March, a fraud expert used by the government to make sense of his finances testified that Esformes had made $400,000 in payments over several years to Singer’s foundation. At least some of the money was traced to Medicaid and Medicare funds, the expert testified.

Singer has since admitted that his Key Worldwide Foundation was little more than a sham used to launder money from clients and parcel out bribes to coaches, test proctors and bagmen.

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Nursing Homes and the Utterly Senseless Lack of Oversight, States Need to Ask about Other State Businesses [VIDEO]

The Accomplishments of 26 Students, the First to Graduate Yeshiva University with an Associates of Science in Management

Jacob Finkelstein speaks with Dr. Paul Russo (left) about the program while his grandmother Barbara Vogel and father Stephen Finkelstein listen.

History Made by First Graduating Class

Twenty-six Students Earn the Katz School’s Associate Degree

Even though the skies were overcast, the Sky Café radiated warmth and pride as friends, family and staff gathered on July 18, 2019, to honor the first graduating class of the Associate of Science in Management at the Katz School of Science and Health.

Dr. Paul Russo, dean of the Katz School, reflected the enthusiasm and deep satisfaction in the room when he said that “over the last two years, I have had the good fortune to be surrounded by these enterprising students—the young men and women who built YU’s associate program. They are smart and hardworking and bring to life the best of Yeshiva University. In addition to a full load of academic and Jewish studies courses, they integrated into campus life and found time for community service.”

The AS in Management is a full-time, residential program completed over two full years, including two fall semesters, two spring semesters, and two mandatory summer semesters. This first cohort of 26 students started in Fall 2017, and their achievements two years later are quite impressive: over 75 percent of them maintained a cumulative grade point average above 3.0; 19 students plan to transfer to Yeshiva University bachelor’s programs, while five students will attend bachelor’s programs outside the University.

This cohort was also active outside the class. Several student leaders founded the Katz Undergraduate Student Government (KUSG) and held their first elections and hosted their first on-campus event in Spring 2019. Eight men and two women played on the YU basketball, baseball, soccer and volleyball teams.

Students also availed themselves of the opportunities to speak with key entrepreneurs as well as cultural, business and government leaders in places like the New York Federal Reserve, Hudson Yards, Saks Fifth Avenue and The Jewish Museum as well as with judges in their chambers.

More important than their educational and cultural achievements, however, was the personal transformation the program brought to each of them. Jacob Finkelstein, who is vice president of KUSG, said it well: “This program made us all better people, and I am ready for the ride. It will be incredible.”

Kyle Harris agreed. Surrounded by his mother, Joanne, and his rabbi, Rabbi Avi Utler, both of whom flew in from Las Vegas to be at this ceremony, Harris spoke with emotion about how completing this program “made me feel accomplished and ready to move forward with my life.” He plans on pursuing his studies in education and history, with the goal of becoming a teacher of American history.

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If State Funds are Funding Yeshivas then They Should be Held to Same or Similar Standards of Secular Education

Skwere Congregation Declares Bankruptcy in the Eastern District, $10M -$50M in Assets and Liabilities

Skwere Congregation with a Number of DBA’s and $10M-$50M in Assets and Liabilities Files for Chapter 11 Protection – For the Second Time..

 

Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Cong. Khal Chasidei Skwere, which does business under the names Tomer Devora School, Yeshiva Bais Yitzchok, Skwere Mosdos, Mesivta Bais Yitchok, Camp Skwere and Camp Bnos Skwere, filed for chapter 11 protection today in the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York. The company reports $10 million to $50 million in both assets and liabilities. The debtor is represented by Backenroth Frankel & Krinsky in New York. The case number is 19-44540. The case has yet to be assigned to a judge.

 

The debtor’s list of largest unsecured creditors includes Wexal Investors, which holds a $3.7 million claim that is subject to a $1 million collateral deduction or setoff. The majority of the remaining unsecured claims are held by individuals.

 

The company previously filed for chapter 11 relief in the Eastern District of New York on July 20, 2011 (case no. 1-11-46263 (CEC)).