[Chaptzem Blog!] 2/28/2007 08:52:00 PM

Verizon Wireless steps up to the plate in Adirondack park cell tower story

Link to news story



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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/28/2007 08:52:00 PM

[Chaptzem Blog!] Gold-medal skater embraces her jewish roots

The Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul, 29, skated across a plastic ice runway in the lobby of a posh condominium near Wall Street. She wore a Hasidic fur hat and a jacket made from black and white prayer shawls while holding a prayer book. For a moment, she posed playfully before the audience, looked into the Hebrew pages and skated backstage.

As klezmer music played in the background, sylphs pranced down the runway in designer Levi Okunov's orange and teal lace garments. More than 500 people watched, many standing in the back or sitting on the floor, as Baiul returned to the runway, wearing a sequined wedding dress and performing her signature number from "Swan Lake."

 

Baiul's routine wasn't as graceful as when the then unknown 16-year-old Ukrainian seized the Olympic gold medal from the favored Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. The balletic style of the blue-eyed blonde that had so awed judges back then is stiffer 13 years later, although Baiul is still lithe.

 

But for Baiul, this exhibition carried a deep spiritual significance. The show was a celebration of her recently discovered Jewish roots.

 

"The show was a way of connecting to my heritage, and it was a tremendous success," Baiul said. "I already heard that people were upset that I wore the strimal" — the traditional hat —" but I wanted to do it because Levi said, 'Oksana, it's meaningful.'"

 

The performance was the brainchild of Okunov, Baiul's close friend and religious mentor, a 21-year-old aspiring fashion designer from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and the son of a Lubavitch rabbi. Baiul affectionately calls the younger Okunov "my rabbi" for the guidance he has provided in Orthodox Judaism and mysticism.

 

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/feb/28/goldmedal_skater_embraces_her_jewish_roots/?neapolitan

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/28/2007 10:49:00 AM

[Chaptzem Blog!] 2/28/2007 08:53:00 AM

Lipa Schmeltzer on the derech

Lipa Schmeltzer, or should I say HaRav Schmeltzer, moved to Monsey and opened a Shul in the basement of his home. The hip-hop Hasidic obviously outgrew New Square and his Rebbe and now wants to be one himself. Lipa, who is known for his unique rhyming talent and for his brush with the law, is also in the midst of writing a Sefer Torah for his Shul. I wonder who will perform at the Hachnusas Sefer Torah.

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/28/2007 08:53:00 AM

[Chaptzem Blog!] 2/27/2007 09:01:00 PM

Board 12 hearing today on new Shul and catering hall

Board 12 held a hearing today at 6:00 pm about the proposed opening of a new Shul and catering hall on 54th Street and 12th Avenue. Mayer Unsdorfer, self-proclaimed Brizhaner Rebbe, is looking to expand his basement Shteeble into a full-blown Rabbisteve type business. Unsdorfer, formerly the Klausenburger administrator, purchased a house just a couple of doors down from his current residence to serve as his headquarters. The proposed Shul will have a large Beis Medrash, a Mikvah, a catering hall and NO parking lot. Unsdorfer had his children make phone calls to the area residents to show up at the hearing and lend support to his endeavor.

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/27/2007 09:01:00 PM

[Chaptzem Blog!] 2/23/2007 09:28:00 AM

GOV GETS AN EARFUL ON CELL PHONE ABSENCE TRAGEDY FROM ORTHODOX BLOGGERS

Orthodox Jews are responding in big numbers to bloggers' calls to ring up Gov. Spitzer's office and demand better cellphone service on a remote upstate highway where a Brooklyn man died last month after he was unable to call for help.

A Spitzer spokesman said yesterday the office has gotten a "substantial" number of calls about cell service on the stretch of Interstate 87 known as the Northway, where Alfred Langner, 63, died of hypothermia after a car accident Jan. 25.

Langner, an Orthodox Jew, and his wife were trapped in their car for 24 hours because they could not use their cellphone to call for help.

An organizer of an Orthodox news and discussion Web site said he believes more than 1,000 people will have called Spitzer by today.

But Adirondack Park Agency officials say the cell-tower shortage is really a matter of phone-company economics.

The agency in 2002 approved 33 cell towers on the Northway stretch, but the projects are considered unprofitable, spokesman Keith McKeever said.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02232007/news/regionalnews/gov_gets_an_earful_on_tragedy_regionalnews_bill_sanderson.htm

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/23/2007 09:28:00 AM

[Chaptzem Blog!] Rabbi's widow, U.S. synagogue dispute ownership of Torah scr...

A rabbi's widow is at odds with a synagogue over who her late husband's Torahs rightly belong to.

 

Rabbi Norman Pauker lent Beth Midrash Mishkan Israel four Torah scrolls after his own North Hollywood synagogue closed in 1994.

 

His widow, Rita Pauker, has been asking for the return of the scrolls since his death in 2002, but Rabbi Samuel Ohana insists that what was at first a loan to his neighboring Sherman Oaks synagogue later became a gift.

 

"He called me in front of his wife and he said, 'Rabbi I cannot bear having these Torahs gathering dust in my garage," Ohana said. "Take them, please.'"

 

According to a handwritten contract between the two rabbis that has Ohana's signature at the bottom, the Torahs were to be borrowed for two years.

 

Ohana said that contract was for insurance purposes, and that Pauker asked him to take the scrolls permanently five years later, an assertion Pauker's widow disputes. She accused Ohana's orthodox synagogue of "praying on stolen Torahs."

 

"He is operating on a lie. It's all a lie," Pauker said. "He is disrespecting everything Jewish."

The Torah, a set of ancient Hebrew writings also known as the Five Books of Moses, is the central document of Judaism and serves as the center of Jewish religious ceremonies. A formal written scroll like the kind in dispute is known as a "Sefer Torah."

 

Pauker said she doesn't want to sue for the Torahs because Jewish law forbids bringing disputes over religious items to secular court. But if she goes before a rabbinical court or "beis din" she fears she will be asked to compromise.

 

"The truth is the beis din probably is going to split the baby," said Jeffrey Bohner, an attorney representing Pauker who attended her husband's synagogue and once studied under Ohana. "Rabbi Ohana has no claim to these, and Rita has all claim. So it is unfair for Rita to settle for half."

 

Torah scrolls can take as long as a year to ink, must be destroyed when damaged and are generally worth several thousand dollars (euros). Lending the scrolls is a common Mitzvah, or good deed, for those who own them.

 

Ohana said he would return the Torahs if he could be assured Pauker would give them to another synagogue and not sell them.

Pauker said she wants to give them to her nephews, who are rabbis in Florida and New York.

 

http://www.cjp.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=208845

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/21/2007 12:41:00 PM

[Chaptzem Blog!] 2/20/2007 09:04:00 PM

Israeli chief rabbi issues fur edict

Jews must not wear fur skinned from live animals, Israel's chief rabbi said in a religious ruling on Tuesday.

'All Jews are obliged to prevent the horrible phenomenon of cruelty to animals and be a 'light onto nations' by refusing to use products that originate from acts which cause such suffering,' Rabbi Yona Metzger said.

Animal rights campaigners in Israel and abroad say that animals are skinned alive at fur farms in China.

Metzger issued the edict in response to an appeal by an Israeli legislator who looked into the reports of animal cruelty in China at the request of a constituent.
The ruling stopped short of banning the use of fur from animals skinned after they were slaughtered.

Mati Korinio of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, which oversees fur imports, said much of the fur sold in the Jewish state did not originate in China.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070220-0627-israel-fur.htm

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Posted By Chaptzem to Chaptzem Blog! at 2/20/2007 09:04:00 PM