The Chabad Moshiah and the Rebbi’s Grave

25 years after his death, crowds flock to Chabad rebbe’s grave

 

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s quiet in the middle of the day on the streets of this residential neighborhood in New York City’s borough of Queens — except for the steady stream of visitors coming in and out of one particular small converted house next to a cemetery.

The men and women, young and old, have made their way from around the city, the country and the world to this unassuming site, the burial place of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to pay their respects to the leader of Judaism’s Chabad-Lubavitch movement who died 25 years ago.

While visitors come year-round, the crowds grow tremendously around the anniversary of his passing, which according to the Hebrew calendar falls this year on July 6, with people sometimes waiting a few hours to spend even a couple of moments at his mausoleum, where they pray and leave notes.

While visitors come year-round, the crowds grow tremendously around the anniversary of his passing, which according to the Hebrew calendar falls this year on July 6, with people sometimes waiting a few hours to spend even a couple of moments at his mausoleum, where they pray and leave notes.

“If you’re coming here, you’re coming here for the real deal,” said Rivky Greenberg, 19, of Anchorage, Alaska, who timed her summer travel plans to coincide with visiting around the anniversary.

Greenberg, raised in Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement, has come to the site several times in her life for the connection to the rabbi that it gives her.

“It’s not a tourist site,” she said. “It’s very rare that people will come and not feel something.”

Schneerson led Chabad-Lubavitch for more than four decades as the seventh rebbe, or spiritual leader, following the death of his father-in-law, whom he is buried next to at the Montefiore Cemetery in Cambria Heights in eastern Queens. His wife’s and mother-in-law’s graves are a short distance away.

In those years, he was one of the most influential global leaders in Judaism, reinvigorating a small community that had been devastated by the Holocaust and pushing for all Jews to become more deeply connected to their faith and do more good in their everyday lives. He sent Chabad representatives to live all over the world.

The 25th anniversary of his passing has been widely noted, especially on Israeli social media, which is filled with tributes from politicians and commentators.

Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of Israel’s Knesset who spent three years in Soviet prison in the 1980s before immigrating to Israel, said he “was a model of love for Israel and instilled in the Jewish nation a belief in its eternal values that protected us for thousands of years and will protect us forever.”

Following Schneerson’s death, a member of the community bought the home next to the cemetery, assuming it would become well visited, which it has been. Chabad-Lubavitch representatives estimate there are now about 400,000 visitors a year, with about 50,000 in the period surrounding the anniversary. The majority are Jewish, both Lubavitchers and not.

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A Gimmel Tammuz Campaign… Do You Really Want to Know – Be Careful Where You Donate Your Money

“And when they say to you, “Inquire of the necromancers and those who divine by Jidoa bone, who chirp and who mutter.” “Does not this people inquire of its God? For the living, shall we inquire of the dead?” 

Isaiah, 8:19′

Gimmel Tammuz Awareness Campaign Sweeps Jewish Media

A campaign bringing awareness to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the upcoming auspicious day of Gimmel Tammuz has been sweeping the Jewish world this week.

The grassroots effort was spearheaded by a bochur Menachem Benchemon, and the Rebbe’s message was seen by tens of thousands around the world.

“Chazal teach us that the day of a tzadik’s yahrtzeit is a most auspicious day, a יום סגולה ועת רצון, to connect with the tzadik, granting us the potential to elicit berochos and yeshuos min hashomayim in the zechus of the tzadik,” the article reads.

The article also gives suggested ways to mark the Yartzeit of a tzadik, including learning a teaching of the Rebbe, reaching out to a fellow Jew in Chesed and Ahavas Yisroel, and davening at the Rebbe’s Ohel in close proximity to the day of his Yartzeit.

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Chabad Lubavitch and Drug Money – Cash for Jews Fearing Holocaust -“Shoah Gelt”

The Recent Connection Between Drug Money and the Chabad-Lubavitch

Dear Readers:

For the past couple of years we have been given reports by insiders from within the Lubavitch community that the organization is receiving at least some portion of its funding from drug money. In other words, from couriers who are involved in the drug trade. We have never been provided any real details and have not wanted to address these contentions as a result.

The following article would lead one to believe that the reports we have received may not be far from the truth. Obviously, however, this is speculation. We leave you to your own devices in reading and interpreting the article from the Toronto Sun. We find the whole thing, in light of the reports we have received and some recent articles, somewhat perplexing.

LM

 

MANDEL: Drug money courier claimed cash was for Jews fearing Holocaust

You have to give him credit for a novel — if unsuccessful — defence.

Mark Zirkind isn’t your regular sort of criminal — he’s an ultra Orthodox Jew of the Hasidic Lubavitch movement, someone you’d expect to see in a yeshiva, and not under arrest after police seized $1,136,555 from his rental car.

On Feb. 23, 2014, Zirkind flew from Montreal to Toronto on a one-way ticket and rented a car. Police watched him meet up with a drug trafficking suspect they had under surveillance in the Yorkdale mall parking lot and receive a red-and-white duffle bag.

Later that night, as Zirkind was travelling east along Hwy. 401 back toward Montreal, he was stopped by the OPP for speeding. Following a search of his car, he was arrested for possession of property obtained by crime.

Police found over $1 million in cash in a number of bags, including $250,170 in the red-and-white duffle. The bags, the money, and several surfaces in the car, including the glove compartment, driver’s control surfaces, back seat and trunk, tested positive for cocaine.

According to the agreed statement of facts, the money in the Yorkdale duffle bag did come from cocaine trafficking. But Zirkind insisted he didn’t know at the time that he was transporting proceeds of crime.

Here’s where the novel defence comes in: He claimed he was a courier of “Shoah Gelt” — Shoah is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and gelt is the Yiddish term for money. At his trial, Zirkind testified that he’d been approached by a stranger named “Avrum Reish” to move money to safekeeping in Montreal for Jews in Europe or Asia worried about a second Holocaust.

He told the court he was honoured to do so, “describing the task as a great ‘mitzvah’ or commandment from God.”

Zirkind testified that he drove the money from Toronto to Montreal on three or four prior occasions and never flew because he feared the cash would be discovered or lost. He said the people who handed over the money didn’t appear to be Jewish while those who received it in Montreal seemed to be orthodox Jews.

There were a number of reasons to be skeptical about his fanciful story.

The agreed statement of facts said Zirkind’s average declared annual income was $34,912. But between 2009 and February 2014, he’d made over $2 million in payments to his various credit cards.

Under cross-examination, Zirkind admitted he’d never asked how the money he was transporting came into Canada or where it ended up. He also claimed not to have a way of contacting Avrum and hadn’t heard from him since his arrest.

Superior Court Justice Todd Ducharme didn’t believe a word of it.

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Lubavitcher Chassidic Dr. Conversion Therapy Lawsuit – Is He Treating to Heal or Shaming Into Trauma- The Nature of His Practice and Religion

 

Lubavitcher Chassid Sues New York Over Conversion Therapy Ban

In a society where privacy is at a premium, unpopular views are shouted down in public venues, and the most personal facts of people’s lives are casually revealed on social media, the therapist’s office has been one of the last bastions of safe speech. Psychotherapy patients can converse with their chosen counselors without fear of exposure, shaming, or outside interference.

That has been changing, and a recent New York City law currently being challenged in federal court goes further than ever in dictating the parameters of private therapy sessions. The unsubtly titled “Counseling Censorship Law” prohibits mental health counselors from helping individuals with homosexual feelings or gender identity issues work to overcome them.

Unlike so-called “conversion therapy” bans in other jurisdictions – to date, 18 states and more than 50 cities and counties have enacted them – New York’s law applies not only to minors but to patients of all ages. It also carries stiff financial penalties for practitioners.

One of those practitioners, Brooklyn psychotherapist Dr. Dovid Schwartz, an Orthodox Jew and a member of the Crown Heights Lubavitch community, has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleging that the law violates his and his patients’ rights to free speech and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. The plaintiff also assails the law’s vagueness in failing to define subjective terms like “identity exploration and development” and “change,” which makes him vulnerable to prosecution.

The city’s ban, says Roger Brooks, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) which is litigating the action, “intrudes into the privacy of a counselor’s office to censor an entirely voluntary and very personal conversation between an adult and the counselor or psychotherapist he has chosen.”

The lawsuit – like the plaintiff, his patients, and the therapy they pursue – is animated by principles of faith, specifically Torah laws and values. “[T]his case is not just about whether a menorah can go up in a public square,” says lead local counsel Barry Black, of Nelson Madden Black LLP, who is working together with ADF. “It involves the essence and core of religious practice.”

Virtually all of Schwartz’s patients are Orthodox, including many fellow Chabad adherents. A small subset of them seek his help, either initially or in the course of ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment, to deal with unwanted feelings of “same-sex attraction.” (That is the term of choice favored by Schwartz and many in the religious world, revealing a far less rigid view of human sexuality than the terminology used by the defendant and the culture at large.)

In his affidavit, Schwartz asserts that he “does not attempt to increase opposite-sex attraction or change same-sex attraction in patients who do not desire his assistance in that direction,” and “never promises that these goals will be achieved.” He further notes that some of his patients have succeeded in reducing or eliminating their unwanted attractions, while some have not or have chosen not to continue the process.

Moreover, the lawsuit stresses that the plaintiff’s counseling sessions with his patients consist solely of talking and no other interventions. This is significant because reports from New York City’s Commission on Civil Rights relied on by the City Council and cited by the defendant refer repeatedly to the fact that conversion therapy, known by its critics as SOCE (sexual orientation change efforts), has in the past been associated with electro-shock treatment, castration, and other painful practices designed to dissociate individuals from their impulses. One of the key questions the court must decide is whether talk therapy alone is a form of speech – and thus constitutionally protected – or commercial conduct, which is subject to regulation.

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The Subjugation of Jewish Women in Crown Heights – Chabad – An Election Open Only to Men, and US Law?

Crown Heights Jewish Women Should Be Able To Vote In CH Jewish Elections-But They Aren’t – OPINION

By Andrea Karshan, a Jewish woman currently living in Crown Heights

In Chabad Crown Heights, the Jewish community is holding elections, and women aren’t allowed to vote.

Elections are being held in June in Chabad Crown Heights for the Vaad Hakohol and the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council for the first time in 8 years. The Vaad Hakohol is a religious organization in Crown Heights that deals with Kashrut. And the Crown Heights Community Council is a secular organization in Crown Heights that is partly government funded. The Crown Heights Community Council deals with food assistance, housing, medical insurance, community relations, and other things.

When I found out about this election, I was excited. And I thought to myself how can I get involved. But then I was told that women aren’t allowed to vote. I am a woman who lives alone. So my household will be not be spoken for in the election. The leaders of these organizations don’t just serve the men in the community. They serve the women too. Women should be able to vote also. We should have a voice in choosing the people who represent us in the community. In general elections, whether it be for city council, president or any other political position, Jewish women in Chabad Crown Heights are encouraged to vote, especially for candidates who local Chabad community leaders have endorsed. So forbidding Jewish women to vote in Crown Heights only applies to this election.

This policy of women not voting in these elections completely excludes unmarried, divorced and widowed women from the voting process. As for married women and women living with their fathers, the assumption is that everyone in the household would vote the same way. But perhaps the wife and husband or father and daughter would vote differently. Therefore, they should have their voice when it comes to voting. Any Jewish resident of Crown Heights over the age of 18 male or female should have a vote.

After hearing that women cannot vote in the upcoming Vaad Hakohol and Crown Heights Community Council elections, I went to talk to someone at the Crown Heights Community Council about it. One thing he told me was that the Crown Heights Rabbonim believed that based on Jewish history that only men voted, Jewish law was that women could not vote in this type of election. I replied to him what if we based American law on American history that only white men had rights and blacks and women didn’t? He couldn’t answer me. The Torah may be timeless. But these policies are definitely outdated.

The representative from the Crown Heights Community also told me that women voting policies were voted on by the community (men and women, and I believe that’s the only time that women voted) following a lawsuit in the 1990s. And the community voted that men only should vote. But the CrownHeights Rabbonim before the vote advised the community to vote that only men should vote.

I think as long as the Rabbonim are advising people to think this way about women voting in these elections, it is hard for people to publicly go against the Rabbonim. But I think privately many Lubavitchers in Crown Heights are for women voting in these elections.

Refuah Shlema to Rabbi Notik and His Wife, Injured in Nairobi Attack – But Why Was there so Much Worth Stealing?

Dear Reader:

We wish only the best for the Rabbi and his wife and the care of their three young children. We cannot imagine the extent of the brutality required to do what was done to them. As such we apologize in advance for what will appear to be quite callous on our parts.

But why would there be tens of thousands of dollars in computer equipment and jewelry in a Chabad house, any Chabad house, nonetheless one in Nairobi?

We cannot question the value of the religious items as those would be expected. But computer equipment? It would be quite interesting to know what was on the servers and/or hard drives of the computers that were taken.

Something about this story raises red flags and the value of the items stolen is not lost on our notice.

To a speedy recovery for this family and the others present who are likely suffering also.

Rabbi’s wife ‘hospitalised’ after violent robbery at Chabad couple’s Kenya home

A violent robbery at the Chabad House in Nairobi has left the female Chabad emissary to the Kenyan capital hospitalised and her husband lightly injured, Israeli media said.

Chaya Notik was said to have required surgery after being beaten by men who entered the building described as the local Chabad house early on Wednesday morning.

They are said to have stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of computers, phones, passports, jewellery and religious items.

 

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The Shmeckel Grows With the Bank Account – Father and Son Cohen, Viagra and Phony Charities – PAY ATTENTION BEFORE YOU DONATE!!!!

Dear Readers:

We have said it before and we will say it again: Watch the charities to which you donate your hard earned money. The mitzvah you think you are performing may not be a mitzvah at all but a way to make the private bank accounts of some very unsavory Haredim grow.

DO NOT DONATE TO CHABAD UK! It is an organization allegedly unaffiliated with the Chabad Organization, if the associated article is to be believed. It is apparently a scam, a sham, an organization funded by illegal drug sales and unaccountable for its finances and its money. In addition, it is allegedly not affiliated with Chabad so if it is your plan to donate to Chabad, make sure you have the correct affiliated entity.

Charedi father and son accused of laundering millions through illegal sale of Viagra

 

A Charedi father and son pair laundered millions of pounds from the illegal sale of Viagra and other prescription medications through Jewish charities, a court has heard.

Edward Cohen, 67, and his 38-year-old son, David Cohen, are accused of funnelling “huge sums of money” through an international network of firms, bank accounts and currency exchanges.

Investigators claim £10.2 million of a total income of £18.7 million between 2012 and 2014 can be identified as laundered money, Southwark Crown Court heard.

The pair’s trial, expected to last 12 weeks, began last Monday.

David Cohen, of Ashbourne Avenue, in Temple Fortune, denies supplying false or misleading information to the Charity Commission, becoming concerned in criminal property, acquiring criminal property and theft.

Edward Cohen, of Paget Road, Stamford Hill, denies supplying false or misleading information to the Charity Commission, two counts of becoming concerned in criminal property, acquiring criminal property and theft.

Police officers raided the community of Chabad UK – which is an entirely separate charity from Chabad Lubavitch UK, and not part of the official Chabad movement – on Oldhill Street, in Stamford Hill, in September 2014.

As well as seizing electronics owned by the defendants, prosecutor James Dawes QC said they found “thousands of pages” of documents allegedly linking the charity to the sale of medication to customers in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland.

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