John Allen Muhammad: By the Numbers:

The personal "chemistry" between me and the man who was my 10th and 12th Grade Math teacher was often dysfunctional, due to our differing backgrounds, viewpoints and personal values (and, dare I say, my own less than optimal attitude). Nevertheless, I did learn much Math -- and more -- under his tutelage, and look back upon him as one of my better secondary school mentors (and almost all of the teachers I had in Junior and Senior High School were quite good). In fact, I have been known on more than one occasion to utilize some of his classroom humor in teaching my own students.

One of the stories Ms S told us dealt with the sailor sitting at the end of a bench, with a young and beautiful woman at the other end. The sailor moves to the middle of the bench, that is, half-way towards the woman. He then moves to a point three-quarters of the way down the bench, that is, half-way along the remaining space now separating him from the woman. He then moves half-way, and half of that half-way, and so on. Will the sailor ever get all the way to the woman at the other end of the bench?

The answer is not, he will never exactly reach the woman. He will, however, come close enough for all practical purposes!

The statistics now to be cited are not necessarily exact, but, for the purposes of this analysis, they are close enough for all practical purposes:

The African-American population of the United States now stands at about 45 million, or about 14% of the population. Approximately 5% of them are now incarcerated in a Federal, State or local prison.

Which brings us to John Allen Muhammad.

According to Muhammad's boy toy and collaborator, Lee Boyd Malvo, Muhammad convinced Malvo that "violence was the only way to correct perceived injustices to African-Americans."

I count 2 African-Americans among the 10 murder victims of John Allen Muhammad. That's 20%. Okay, so if the African-Americans are indeed 14% of the population, then one would expect 1 or 2 out of a sample of 10. The best that can be said is that Muhammad did no less of an injustice to African-Americans than whatever force or institution it was that he was crusading against.

As for incarceration, well now there is another Black person incarcerated. His name is Lee Boyd Malvo. He killed 10 people (including 2 African-Americans) and the cost of it was the (hopefully) permanent incarceration of another Black person.

Whatever dysfunctions the American establishment has perpetuated upon the Black people, John Allen Muhammad has, proportionally speaking, performed far worse!

Odds & Ends: Assuming Responsibility

The items in this posting all relate, directly or indirectly, to the issue of accepting responsibility for one's actions.


1. The Fort Hood Massacre:

According to a news brief I heard on the car radio en route home from shul this evening, friends and relatives of the shooter in the Fort Hood massacre (whose name will not be set forth in this posting) seem to be insinuating that the cause of his murderous rampage was that he had long been subjected to being taunted and discriminated against on account of his religion.

Hold it right there, buster!! I have been one of a single-digit minority of Jewish kids in a junior high school, and was taunted accordingly. I have worked for a civilian US Government activity where discrimination against Jewish people was blatantly practiced by people in top managerial positions. I have lost jobs under circumstances where anti-Semitism clearly played a role. Applying to the theory the friends and relatives of this murderer-traitor (remember the definition of "treason" in the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3), I and lots of other Jewish people should now be indiscriminately shooting up people in their places of employment. But we don't see Jewish people doing these things! I'm not buying into the excuse!



2. Resigning from the Bar:

In New York (and other states), there are two types cases where attorneys resign from the Bar. Firstly, there is the attorney who has moved out of state, has no plans to further practice in New York, and who really would rather not pay the biennial registration fee (currently $350, and likely to increase in the future).

But the term "resigning from the bar," as used in the parlance of legal circles, usually has a more negative connotation. What it amounts to is disbarment on consent, whereby the attorney saves the judicial system (and the taxpayers) the trouble of attending to the administrative matter of striking the attorney's name from the roll of attorneys in good standing to practice before the courts in the State. Attorneys who do so are accorded ever so slightly more favorable treatment when they apply for reinstatement (a minimum of 7 years later), for they then are better postured to say that they accepted responsibility for their transgressions.

But in order for such a resignation to be accepted, the resignor must acknowledge in writing, among other things, that they could not successfully defend themselves against the misconduct charges pending against them.

Howard L. Blau wants things both ways. He wants "to resign gracefully and with the dignity that should be allowed to a lawyer who spent almost 40 years of his life performing thousands of hours of pro bono work as an attorney," yet he refuses to acknowledge that there are charges pending against him which he cannot successfully negate. The Court has not accepted his resignation, but has disbarred him. But, given the fact that Blau has already practiced law while under suspension, it is entirely possible that he will once again practice law without the benefits and perquisites of admission to the Bar.



3. Vincent has Returned:

A year ago, spoiled trust fund brat Shea Rosen, with four car crashes and three traffic tickets under his belt, pills in his socks, and cannibis on his breath (I cannot make any statements regarding ethanol in his bloodstream because he refused to take the breathalyzer test), ran down two joggers, killing one and severely injuring the other. Not an exemplar of accepting responsibility for one's actions.

Yesterday, Vincent Saunders, the surviving jogger, ran and completed the 6-mile route in memory of his girlfriend and jogging companion, Amanda Malloy. [This was reported in Newsday, 7 November 2009, p. A8, but last week Newsday switched its website to a (mostly) pay for access, and raised the newsstand price of its print edition. It is not clear whether this will increase Newsday's profitability.].

Vincent had been on my personal list of people whose welfare I pray for. Just a few weeks ago, one of the people on the list, the mother of a good friend of mine (the friend also happened to be one of the single-digit minority of Jewish kids in my junior high school, as noted above) passed away, and so, I had to remove her name from the list. It is very heartening to be able to remove someone from the list because they have recovered, and not because they have passed on. Vincent Saunders is now off the list. Keep on running, Vincent!

[As for the defendant, Shea Rosen, his next court date is now 30 November 2009. Excellent, excellent chance that Vincent will be also walking into that courtroom.].

Imprudent Prude, or Incompetent Employee?

I'm back, after 3 weeks that have included an unusually heavy workload, religious holidays, and personal/household concerns.

This posting will comment on some ongoing litigation to which I have no direct personal or professional connection. Susan Seybert, whose employment was terminated by The International Group, Inc., has filed suit against her erstwhile employer for sexual harassment.

Let me state, out front, that sexual harassment in the workplace should not be tolerated. When I held a supervisory position in that great U.S. Government bureaucracy, I was personally compelled on a number of occasions to deal with the issue. I had to deal with one of my subordinates being stalked by some nutjob who worked upstairs. And, in the absence of both a co-equal supervisor of mine and our mutual Division Chief, it fell into my hands to most strongly admonish on of my co-equal's guys who persisted in making unwanted comments of a sexual nature to one of his co-workers (who later, by way of advancement in grade, transferred over to report to me). My personal experience confirms that sexual harassment in the workplace is deleterious to morale and productivity, and therefore avails no advantage to America's economy.

But in our litigious society, unhappy former employees (and their attorneys) are quick and loud with their cries of discrimination and sexual harassment in the lawsuits that seem to inevitably follow an employee's involuntary separation. And no one group has any monopoly on such litigation tactics. It thus falls upon the judicial system to sort out the meritorious claims of discrimination and sexual harassment from those that are baseless, frivolous and/or irrelevant, but asserted in attempted retaliation.

A sexual harassment claimant must prove in court that he or she (yes, men can be and have been sexually harassed) (A) was actually offended by the alleged conduct; and (B) a reasonable person in a similar situation would be offended by such conduct.

While Ms. Seybert was employed by The International Group, she used her company computer, on company time, to exchange with company employees some e-mails containing humorous prose and illustrations of a sexual nature. And so, over the objections of Ms. Seybert's attorney, Judge Pratter of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has ruled that those e-mails may be presented as evidence at trial because they would be relevant to determining both the subjective and the objective standards of just how offended Ms. Seybert was and/or should have been offended by the conduct of which she now complains.

I know nothing about the case other than what I read in Judge Pratter's opinion. But, having litigated discrimination cases, I am calling it as follows:

Firstly, there is the distinct possibility that the parties will reach a settlement before the actual trial (or, if trial begins, before the jury returns a verdict). Most employment discrimination cases do settle (and sexual harassment is a species of employment discrimination).

Secondly, if the ex-employer does not have totally clean hands, and Ms. Seybert has evidence of this, then this might induce the ex-employer to settle. See "Firstly" above. If Ms. Seybert was wise, she kept documentary evidence of her ex-employer's foibles, and she began to keep such documentary evidence back when the employer-employee relationship was a positive one. The first day on the job is not too early to start keeping such evidence. In an employment discrimination case I handled, my client's discrimination claims were not all that clear cut, but the ex-employer moved over to settlement mode when its attorneys became aware of the documents my client had kept over the years. Though not direct evidence of my client's claims, they could have been worked into the evidence, and they would have been quite embarrassing to show to a judge or to a jury. Had my client not inserted certain dubious statements on his resume, the settlement amount likely would have been significantly higher.

[Packrat that I am, I still have, after 30 years, some documents that a former employer of mine would not want to see on the front page of any newspaper. I could probably shitcan them by now, but they contain evidence that is germane to my ex-supervisor's tendencies towards veracity (or, rather, the lack thereof). After 30 years, my ex-employer has been acquired by a Fortune 500 company and my ex-supervisor is out of there more than 20 years. But I, along with so many of his ex-subordinates from his various workplaces, while too involved with our own lives to waste our breaths even to tell the man to go to hell, would not want to be caught shorthanded in the unlikely event that the opportunity for revenge would ever arise.].

Thirdly, given the facts of the case, particularly the evidence Ms. Seybert allowed to accumulate on the hard disk of the company computer she was using, I am not too sure that Ms. Seybert was all that wise.

Ms. Seybert would have the courts and the world believe that she is a prude. Genuine prudes can be tolerable, and can even be pleasant company (my wife's sister and brother-in-law come immediately to mind in the latter regard). What I and so many other people absolutely detest is prudishness of convenience. And Ms. Seybert's trafficking of off-color humored e-mails suggest that she is a prude when it is convenient for her to be a prude, and goes along with humor of a sexual nature when that is convenient. The way I call it, she was probably fired for job competence reasons.

Limudei Kodesh and Limudei Chol

Limudei Kodesh and Limudei Chol


One of the big issues in Jewish education is the balance of, and relationship between, Limudei Kodesh and Limudei Chol (literal Hebrew for "Holy Studies" and "Mundane Studies"). Limudei Kodesh refers to education in religious subjects such as Torah, Talmud, the writings of great commentators such as Rashi or Maimonides or the Vilna Gaon, and the like. Limudei Chol refers to the secular subjects such as Math, Social Studies, Science, English, et cetera.

Rule of thumb: The more insular the outlook of the administration of the school, the less the emphasis on limudei chol and the greater the emphasis on limudei kodesh. And many institutions have gotten increasingly insular over the years. Carrying things ad extremum, is that students are graduating many of these institutions with little or no knowledge or skills in the areas where skills and knowledge are required to secure adequate gainful employment, or even socialize out on the street.

This is not just an empty exercise in reductio ad absurdum. In the case of Pinches O. v. Florence F., N.Y.L.J., 12 January 2004, p. 20, col. 1 (Family Ct. Kings Co.), aff'd 15 A.D.3d 664, 789 N.Y.S.2d 912 (2d Dept. 2005), the Court found that graduates of the Satmar school system, with virtually no exception, require remedial education in order to be able to go to college.


The way things are in many insular Jewish educational institutions in America: Limudei chol gets to hold onto the running board while limudei kodesh rides inside the limousine (or, in many instances, the old jalopy clunker). The limudei chol teachers are paid last (and many of these yeshivas are behind in paying the limudei kodesh teachers and rabbis), and, worse yet, the children are given the distinct message, implicit or implicit, that limudei chol teachers are only there because the law requires them to be, but they should not be paid much mind by the students.

Read some of the comments to the postings on theyeshivaworld.com or vosizneias.com, and you will see the piss-poor English grammar and spelling skills of some of these products of the insular religious Jewish community's yeshivas.

Quite frankly, I do understand (but do not agree with) the insular community's rationale for the emphasis on limudei kodesh to the gross subordination of limudei chol. My wife's uncle is a rabbi in Bnei Brak. One of the times we spent Shabbat with them, we discussed these issues. Uncle's logic is that if his sons are going to be spending their lives learning and teaching Torah, then they would not need to learn advanced level science, or any mathematics beyond the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; and if his daughters were going to be hausfrauen whose primary function was to raise the children, then their limudei chol needs were similarly limited. [It is noted that Uncle married a daughter of one of the more moneyed families of the insular religious Jewish community, so he was able to marry off his 13 children and get them all apartments. Whether the family fortune can go on to support the next generation remains to be seen, but the well has already run dry in many other formerly affluent religious Jewish families.].

Also, there is concern, which I share, of the negative influences inherent in studying secular subjects.

A little more than a year ago [28 September 2008], this Blog posted some discussion regarding one Mordechai Samet, a product of the insular religious system who didn't perform so admirably, and who now resides, at taxpayer expense, in the Federal Correctional Institution at Otisville, NY. The long and short of it is that Samet blames everyone but himself for his predicament, and does not acknowledge the wrongfulness of the panoply of fraud, racketeering and money laundering activities for which he was sentenced.

Samet can be compared and contrasted to his junior sidekick, Chaim Hollender, who received a lesser sentence along with Samet. Hollender is now out after 7 years, and apparently, is well on his way to becoming an exemplar of successful rehabilitation. Hollender, it seems, has gotten active with a group known as Lasurim, which reaches out to incarcerated Jews, and which brings speakers to religious high schools in order to inform the adolescents of the wisdom of not making the same mistakes Hollender made. If indeed Hollender prevents just one person from embarking upon a career of fraud or other illegalities, then his rehabilitation has been a success, and each additional person saved is pure profit to society.

There is an article in the latest issue (October 2009) of Kashrus Magazine, which I have just read. In an article co-authored by Hollender, he states:

"There are people who have very little education in some areas. They think that if they need money that it is okay to write something that's not exactly true. They simply don't understand that this can put them into a very serious position."

As incredible as this statement might sound upon the first hearing, I can believe it. Being familiar with a number of people from several of the insular communities, I can see how their disconnect from society at large can eventually lead to a disconnect between right and wrong (though I shall defer to the psychologists and sociologists to explain the exact mechanics of the process).

But now, I have some questions for my wife's uncle, which I hope to ask him next time we meet.

A. If indeed Limudei Kodesh is so positive and wholesome, how does that account for more than just one black-hat religious Jew from going off the derech and disconnecting from the various Torah injunctions to be fair and honest and to fear G-d?

B. If Limudei Kodesh alone cannot ensure honesty, and if, as Mr. Hollender implies, the lack of knowledge of the real world impels religious Jews to commit crimes and other acts of dishonesty, do the children, then, need limudei chol as well as limudei kodesh?

C. If indeed the children need limudei chol, then shouldn't the yeshivas stop breaking down the limudei chol wagon and start letting making clear -- in word and in deed -- that the limudei chol courses and teachers are important?


In a few hours, the Festival of Sukkot will begin. As with last year's holiday, we will be hosting our friend "He" as a houseguest, and will have other guests as well.

Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Sameach!

Yom Kippur 5770

I haven't posted the past 10 days, what with the pressures and deadlines and the holidays and the other standard excuses.


There were some proposed postings under contemplation, but I had some reservations as to whether they should be posted. As matters developed, it is better that they were not posted, at least during the past 10 days. One or more of those postings may or may not go up (with relevant updates and redactions, of course) at some point in the future, but for now, I shall hold my fire. Some things just aren't meant to be made public too early.

Tonight is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, for the year 5770 of the Hebrew Calendar. I am carbo-loading for the fast, attending to some other holiday preparations for Sukkot, doing some legal research, grading a few papers, and working on possible rendezvous with professional colleagues, and also a cousin's club reunion on my wife's side of the family.


To all who sincerely seek my forgiveness as Yom Kippur approaches, I give you my mechilah, and likewise, I ask all I may have wronged during the past year for mechilah.


Everyone, have an easy fast, and may you be sealed in the G-d's book for a good, happy, healthy and prosperous year!

First Person Plural

The great ideal is that we Jewish people take responsibility for our own; not only in helping the needy among us, but some sort of responsibility for the actions of our fellow Jews. Though not fully achieved 100% of the time, this standard has sustained us through adversities of the past and present, and will ultimately redeem us in the future. Though everything, of course, depends upon G-d Almighty, we Jews are all connected to one another, and when one of us hurts, all of us feel the pain.

[Just for the record, being Jewish is not me and my wife's sole, nor even necessarily our primary, criterion for selecting providers of goods or services. Our insurance agent, lawn mowing service, plumber, electrician -- none of these are Jewish. They have served us well, so we are loyal customers and clients. My wife and I have seen too many people get into too much trouble by automatically taking their business to a lantsman. We are equal opportunity employers. But I digress.].

This concept of "Am Echad," that the Jewish people are one nation, has its obvious benefits. My wife and I each travel out of town from time to time for professional and business reasons, and we are often aided by Jewish people in the out-of-town locations. And, over the centuries, the assistance by fellow Jews has often made the difference between life and death.

The downside is that we also have to account for the transgressions of our coreligionists. Much of the liturgy of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, when we seek G‑d's forgiveness and repent from our sins, is couched in the first person plural. "Avinu Malkeinu Chatanu L'fanecha" (Our Father, Our King, We have sinned before you). "Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazlanu …" (We have become guilty, we have betrayed, we have robbed ….).

When we go through the confessional prayers, we do NOT say "Mallayev murdered, Madoff swindled, Spitzer shtupped a hooker, Garson took bribes and Yagman cheated on his taxes." It is "WE murdered, WE swindled, WE shtupped hookers, WE took bribes and WE cheated on our taxes." It is, of course, physically impossible for a single individual to commit every one of the enumerated sins. And a goodly number of the transgressors are prosecuted, civilly and criminally, by other members of the Jewish community. But G-d -- and the nations of the world -- judge us not only as individuals, but as a group. We, as a community, are called upon to take an interest in the personal rectitude of all of our members.

And so, I shall now comment on two of our transgressors, and some of the broader implications.

First, there is Yochanan Levitansky, the New Haven man who swindled 1,077 Ebay customers to the tune of $237,257 by taking their money and not delivering the goods. He will be doing 6 - 12 months, and paying some restitution. Levitansky's attorney, public defender Sarah Merriam, argued in the sentencing memorandum that "As a young man who had been raised with the idea that he would one day become a rabbi, Yochi Levitansky was ill-prepared for the challenges of running a business on his own." Merriam further argued that Levitansky's fraud was mitigated by the fact that Ebay's insurance covered it. Hold it right there, buster!! Don't insurance companies have the Constitutional right to equal protection under the law?

[I don't know whether these really were Levitansky's own rationalizations, or whether Ms. Merriam came up with them in order to discharge her duty to zealously assert her client's interests. If it was the latter, then I can hardly blame Ms. Merriam. Sometimes, defense attorneys, civil and criminal, get stuck with piss poor clients who have little in the way of positive attributes. I myself have had such clients in years past, and was duty- bound to assert whatever arguments might lessen the negative consequences, even at the risk of ridicule by the plaintiff's attorney, judge and/or jury. I now can be more selective of whom I take on as a client. And Levitansky did get significantly less than the legal maximum, so Ms. Merriam certainly cannot be accused of being an ineffective counsel.].

Then, there is Yitty Shteierman, a Monsey, NY woman who stands accused of using a fake deed to a house she doesn't even own as collateral for two separate loans totaling $270,000, in two separate transactions. My rabbi has, of late, been talking about giving people the benefit of the doubt. Ms. Shteierman has yet to be convicted of a crime. She is legally presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. So I will give Yitty Shteierman the benefit of the doubt, however, I shall, pending further developments in the case, refrain from entering into any business transactions with her (unless, of course, my own rabbi sees fit to do so).

I shall not now dwell upon the shortsightedness involved in the commission of crimes such as the the foregoing accused/admitted ones, where the acts necessary to commit such crimes produces a reliable paper and/or electronic trail of damning evidence.

The intrusive social pressures in the insular communities in which Mr. Levitansky and Ms. Steierman dwell are notorious. Schools will reject or expel students because their fathers wear blue shirts instead of white, or their mothers wear the wrong style wigs to cover their hair, or if their homes have Internet access or a t‑e‑l‑e‑v‑i‑s­‑i‑o‑n. In arranging marriages for their children, parents will reject a match based upon the color tablecloth the prospective spouse's mother uses for the Shabbat table. And, notwithstanding the nonhereditary nature of conditions such as Down's Syndrome, some parents of such children will go to all lengths to hide the fact that there is a Down's Syndrome child in the family, lest it ruin their other children's chances for a shidduch (marriage arrangement). [N.B. This latter assertion has actually been confirmed by a reliable source -- a parent in an insular "black hat" community in Israel who has disregarded all advice to keep her own Down's Syndrome daughter in the closet (and many who would hide their Down's Syndrome child from the world do literally keep such children out on the enclosed terrace to their apartment, which effectively is in fact a closet.).

So what needs to happen? WE need to start taking a dimmer view of fraud. WE need to shun and ostracize those who commit "white collar" fraud-type crimes as much as WE shun and ostracize the children of the man who wears a blue shirt, or the person who watches television or surfs the Internet, or the siblings of Down's Syndrome children. Because if such crimes are less socially acceptable in OUR insular society, then they will, no doubt, occur with significantly less frequency.

Yes, the Rabbis have their work cut out for them in sending out the message, but, in the final accounting, WE cannot leave it all to the Rabbis. It is all up to US!

The Court's Gatekeepers

New York's has had an interesting and diverse history. Its first European discovery was by an Italian in the service of the French, and there was subsequent colonization under alternating Dutch and British flags before it joined in with American independence. The opening of the Erie Canal made New York City a robust commercial center where economic promise induced many people to immigrate. Among the new immigrants was a significant contingent of Irish, who provided rich fodder for the Tammany Hall political organization. Other groups likewise participated in the political landscape of New York City, and made their contributions. Artifacts from this history, foul and fair, are still very much a part of New York and its culture and government.

New York's legal system is a product of these historical events and trends. Specifically, New York has one of the most intricately developed set of procedural rules for legal practice in the courts. As one whose livelihood depends upon the ability to navigate within the Byzantine structure of the courts, I can attest that the courthouse clerks wield a tremendous amount of power. The corps of court clerks need regulation and oversight as much as any other bureaucracy, else they would quickly spin out of control and into tyranny.

An exemplar of how petty, picayune and penny-ass some court clerks can be is the case of Joseph E. Gehring, Jr., Esq., an attorney who attempted, just two days before the statute of limitations was to blow, to file an affidavit of judgment confession, a common means to secure and collect a debt.

The Clerk of the Court refused to accept the paper for filing because it was a copy and not an original.

It must be understood that Section 2101(e) of New York's Civil Practice Law and Rules ("CPLR") specifically provides that "Except where otherwise specifically prescribed, copies, rather than originals, of all papers, including orders, affidavits and exhibits may be served or filed." And, as recently updated, CPLR Section 2102(c) provides that "a clerk shall not refuse to accept for filing any paper presented for that purpose except where specifically directed to do so by statute or rules promulgated by the chief administrator of the courts, or order of the court."

Gehring sued Norman Goodman, the New York County Clerk and Clerk of the County Supreme Court (in New York, each county has its own Supreme Court, another anomaly of the New York legal system). And Judge Braun ordered Goodman and his subordinates to comply with the law and accept the copy of the affidavit for filing.

I have dealt with clerks in several courts, and can say from my own experiences that the clerks in the New York County Supreme Court are, with some exceptions to be sure, more arrogant than the clerks of the United States Supreme Court. Goodman has been there since 1969, and I have had to deal with his subalterns on numerous occasions. They run hot and cold, but stories of insolence by Goodman's boys and girls abound. Goodman has been implicitly or explicitly chastised by a judge on a number of occasions. This time he had it coming to him.

Where court clerks can make up the rules as they go along, they can also play favorites. And when the court clerks play favorites, the court system is no longer impartial.

RIP, EMK

Been traveling, been in court, been busy.


Teddy Kennedy: Even during my liberal past, I never really, really got all excited about Ted Kennedy. I have long believed that he, and the others of his clan, were and are people of privilege who have tended to abuse their privileges. Having said this, and without in any way denying his big time major league character flaws, there are things that must be said in Edward Moore Kennedy's favor.

Specifically, even though he was the son of a virulent anti-semite, Ted Kennedy exhibited kindness and compassion towards Jews (and, for that matter, Israel) during his lifetime. He did use his privilege to save the life of at least one person, a refusnik from the former Soviet Union, who today is a productive and contributing American. And Ted Kennedy was pro-Israel because he understood Arab terrorism (having lost a brother to the bullet of an Arab terrorist).

For this, I am grateful to Ted Kennedy, and hope that these matters are taken into account by the One who ultimately judges him.

Again, this is my personal viewpoint. I do not and cannot in any way purport to speak for the late Mary Jo Kopechne or her family.

Yahrzeit Boards

With few exceptions, every synagogue has one or more memorial plaque boards, (or "Yahrzeit Board," to use the Yiddish terminology) where the names of the departed are engrossed. They come in diverse styles, but typically, one donor underwrites the big board, which is then filled in with individual bronze plaques bearing the name and date of death of the deceased. Usually (but not always), there are light bulbs which are illuminated on the anniversary of the death, and also on holidays such as Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. In America, this information is typically in both English and Hebrew.

They are usually purchased by a family member, anyone with the funds and inclination can provide a plaque; in my own congregation, a few of us chipped in for a plaque for an upstanding community member who had suffered severe business reversals resulting in the loss of his home, and whose widow, we knew, could not afford the memorial recognition befitting her husband.

Even the reprobates among us are given the due respect of a memorial plaque, not so much to honor them as to signify the sanctity of life. I'm sure that the commissioning of the infamous gangster and snitch Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel 's memorial plaque for the Bialystoker Synagogue's yahrzeit board did not diminish in the least the posthumous punishment no doubt now being inflicted upon Bugsy, which he so rightfully deserves.

A synagogue's yahrzeit board often gives great insight into the character of the congregation. Which is why I often go out of my way to read each and every name on the board when I am in a synagogue that is not my own.

Today, for example, my wife and I were guests at a wedding held at a synagogue. So as not to go bonkers from the din of the dancing and music, I got up and walked around, and when I entered the main sanctuary, I read all of the names on the several yahrzeit boards there. This particular congregation has amongst its membership a large number of people who survived the Holocaust of Nazi Germany (and now, children and grandchildren thereof), and indeed, their founding rabbi himself was a survivor. This is reflected in the memorial plaques. For one thing, there is a whole wall in memory of the Holocaust, not unique but neither is it particularly common. And some of the individual bronze plaques on the yahrzeit board are for Holocaust victims. There is more than one plaque with multiple names, memorializing a family that was killed by the Nazis. One plaque, in fact, has four or five names and, in Hebrew, states that the date of their death and place of burial are unknown, and therefore, Yom Kippur, the holiest date of the year, will be celebrated as their yahrzeit day (my wife's grandfather did similar with his parents, whom he was unable to convince to leave what is now Moldova, and who disappeared during the war).

But the congregation also has a number of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and this is also reflected on the yahrzeit board. In such regard, I saw a familiar name amongst the brass plaques. I saw a plaque with the name "Eugene Marshalik," who, you will recall, was a New York City Auxiliary Police Officer (and immigrant from the former Soviet Union) who died in the line of duty on 14 March 2007. And so, the demographic shift from Holocaust survivors to immigrants from the former Soviet Union is apparent on the synagogue's yahrzeit board.

Bad Deal for the Yeshiva

As mentioned in several prior postings, the Agudath Israel of America has allowed itself to become entangled in fiascos that deviate from, and are, in many respects, contrary to its noble mission to facilitate and bolster the quality of life for religious Jewish observance and education in America. The new Executive Vice President, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, apparently has been tasked to redirect the organization. Some of the toochases he will need to kick belong to some very prominent rabbis.

As synopsized in the posting of 15 July 2009, Agudath Israel had, over the years, fallen into the denial trap with respect to various types of abuses within the religious Jewish community. Prior to the modern information technologies, a newspaper editor really could control the flow of information (and, for that matter, a leader such as a rabbi wielded even greater control over information before newspapers became the norm in the community). Accordingly, it was in many respects appropriate policy to restrain word of an occasional from going out to "the street" while the rabbis and community leaders worked to help the victim.

Add to this the fact that the religious community prided itself that certain behaviors contrary to the Torah were in fact rare within the community. Under such circumstances, it was more convenient to deny that the misbehaviors occurred than to confront the misbehaviors and the misbehavers. In fact, it was -- and still is -- a community taboo to even mention such misbehaviors by name.

And so, the Agudath Israel now finds itself ensnared in its past policies of denying that certain occurrences within the insular religious community occurred.

Addressing the problems of sexual abuses by the clergy, New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey introduced Assembly Bill 2596, the Child Victims Act, which would extend the statute of limitations to bring civil suit against, inter alia, educational institutions, for sexual abuse of children.

The Markey Bill presented a double whammy for Agudath Israel. For one thing, it brought home the uncomfortable fact that sexual abuse of children by clergy in the religious schools is not the exclusive province of the Catholic Church. Of more practical concern, however, was the fear that some financially strapped yeshivas might now be subject to existence-ending litigation on account of past wrongs by long departed employees. And so, the Agudath Israel issued a policy statement against the Markey Bill. [Given the oft-expressed attitude that sexual abuse by the clergy is a Catholic problem and we, the Rabbis, are not as depraved as some of the Catholic clergy, it is more than a little bit ironic that Agudath Israel is now working with the Catholic Church in opposing the Markey Bill.].

In short, the combination of s-e-x-u-a-l i-m-p-r-o-p-r-i-e-t-y and m-o-n-e-y have tripped up the Agudath Israel.

With its opposition of the Markey Bill, the AI has now postured itself as a champion of financial stability for yeshivas and other religious Jewish institutions. Which is why AI and Rabbi Zwiebel have just been thrown a real screwball pitch.

The recent mass arrests in Newark, which ensnared several rabbis, are more than just an embarrassment to the Agudath Israel (and indeed, this Jew is quite disgusted and embarrassed by them). The Newark arrests all resulted from the various songs sung by one Solomon Dwek, the Rabbi's son who, being under investigation for some significant bank fraud, chose to deliver up some more fish to the FBI in order to posture himself for some merciful treatment. Solomon Drek is, quite appropriately, scorned and reviled in the Jewish community for squealing on his fellow Jews (and, I suspect, will find few if any admirers among the gentiles).

But Dwek's problems, which started from his construction business being whipsawed in a bad econonomy, have also landed him in Bankruptcy Court. And now, the Trustee of Dwek's bankruptcy estate is now suing Dwek's father's yeshiva, the Deal Yeshiva, claiming that about $13 million of Dwek's ill-gotten gains traversed through the Deal Yeshiva's bank accounts. The Yeshiva is reportedly behind in the payment of salaries to its rank-and-file employees.

Now, if Agudath Israel of America is so staunch an advocate of financial security for yeshivas, how is it going to handle this one? What say you, Rabbi Zwiebel?

Publisher's Pitfalls, Part 2

As alluded to in the 26 July 2009 posting, my personal access to the publication Yated Ne'eman is not firsthand, and, because the publication does not have a website as such, there is almost always a time delay between the time the paper hits the streets and the time I get to read it. I now have the 31 July 2009 edition physically in my hand.

The aforementioned 26 July posting speculated as to how Yated Ne'eman would handle the story of the big bust in New Jersey, which stung certain rabbis, and expressed a confidence that Yated would handle the story quite well in light of the various attending issues, probable repercussions, and operative dynamics.

How did Yated Ne'eman handle the story in the 31 July edition? With pieces that essentially said that not enough information is known, and therefore, we should not jump to conclusions. This might seem, at first blush, to be a cop-out, but one of the articles details some recent events, including but not limited to President Barack Hussein Obama's recent loose cannon uninformed comments regarding a certain arrest in Massachusetts, events where people jumped to conclusions without having sufficient information.

All in all, I would say that my confidence in Yated Ne'eman's handling of the Big Newark Bust story was not misplaced.

But, out on the other Coast in Los Angeles, there was an actual guilty plea by the Spinka Rebbe in another tax evasion and money laundering scandal. The "other side of the story" is no longer missing to any significant extent. What is Yated Ne'eman's take on that one?

I haven't yet read the 7 August edition of Yated Ne'eman, but they now have their work cut out for them on this matter. And, given Yated's coverage of the Newark case, there is every reason to expect Yated to pull a passing grade on this latest development in the Spinka case.

One thing that works in Yated's favor is that Rabbi Weisz, the Spinka Rebbe, has already made public acknowledgment that he has erred, and seems to be accepting responsibility for his wrongdoing. In addition to making the story easier to report, this also makes it easier for the Judge to accord the Rebbe a modicum of mercy in the sentence, which is to be imposed this coming November.

Will the Agudath Israel go Cyber?

The previous posting included the comment:

"(E) Personal sentiment: It would not surprise me in the least if, within the next few months or years, the Agudath Israel of America erects a website. I leave it to those in the pari-mutuel profession to assign particular odds to particular time frames."



Some further discussion of this and related matters occurred during Shabbat, so I will now expand upon it. I also have gotten hold of a generally-addressed missive dated 11 June 2009 from Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, the Executive VP of Agudath Israel, regarding the its Jewish Observer magazine. The letter includes the following passage:

" [G]iven the harsh economic realities of our times, and the proliferation in recent years of a number of other worthy publications that cater to the Torah community, we believe the time has arrived to do some fresh thinking about The Jewish Observer -- its format, its content, its role in serving the community today."


The letter goes on to say that publication will be suspended for a few months while the Jewish Observer gets reinvented, and beseeching the loyal readership's patience and understanding.

Fair enough!


If you have spent Shabbat in Bnei Brak in Israel, you will know that among the first matters to be attended to after Havdalah is the announcements, over the loudspeakers, of the names of those who passed away during Shabbat (statistically speaking, at least one can be expected on any given Shabbat). Such a method of communication suffices quite well for Bnei Brak, and might conceivably suffice for neighborhoods such as Borough Park or Crown Heights. Agudath Israel's symposium last Tuesday drew from a wider area than the individual neighborhood in which it was held. In other words, the bullhorn announcement method that works so well in Bnei Brak would not have sufficed to get the word out in time. And, I am informed, the Agudath Israel did use e-mail to publicize its symposium, and did make sure that certain websites got word of it as well.


Historically, the rabbis have always received technological innovations with great suspicion. This is not to say that the rabbis did not understand the technical aspects of the innovations, nor that the rabbis didn't use the innovations. But the rabbis, quite appropriately, have always been concerned about the effects of the technological innovations upon society in general, and the Jewish community in particular. The printing press, for example, caused much consternation among the rabbis when it first came out, but the rabbis eventually embraced it, but not without placing caveats and restrictions upon its use. To this day, books written on religious subjects often have one or more rabbi's imprimatur letter in the prefatory material.

Reading between the lines in Rabbi Zwiebel's letter, the Jewish Observer is now suffering from competition from the Internet. AI and its affiliate rabbis have pronounced many restrictions upon the use of the Internet, and indeed, have branded it as evil. And now, having made such pronouncements, they will have to find a way to use the Internet's positive attributes while avoiding its negative attributes to whatever extent is possible.

Also, there are some conflicts within the AI itself. Specifically, there are conflicts of style and philosophy between the Chassidic and the other religiously observant. And while the factions usually tend to manage their differences quite well, there had been a certain degree of pandering to the Chassidic faction by the others over the years.

And now, AI is a troubled organization that needs redirection to its core values and purposes. On account of the misbehaviors of some individuals from amongst its constituent groups, AI has, in many respects, morphed from an organization advocating statutes and administrative rules which are friendly to the observance of Jewish rituals and the safety and well-being of religious Jews, to an organization that scrambles to cover up the indiscretions of its wayward brats, and/or implore the prosecutors and judiciary for leniency towards the same. Zwiebel understands that the organization he leads has been distracted, and must refocus on its core values.

My rhetorical question: If the Agudath Israel of America can hastily convene a seminar on a few days notice, why does it need a few months to think about what it is going to do with its Jewish Observer publication? Fundraising may well be part of it, but I strongly suspect that it may have more to do with convincing the anti-Internet factions of the need to redirect the organization's public affairs agenda, including, perhaps, the necessity for an Agudath Israel website.

A Session for Confession

The 15 July 2009 posting regarding the Spinka scandal and the Agudath Israel stated:


"The Agudath Israel needs to take corrective discipline with its misbehaving bratty children, instead of trying to convince the principal to not suspend the kids each time they misbehave. It should position itself as a proponent of compliance with tax laws instead of as a cover-upper of tax cheats, and as a proponent of zero tolerance for sexual abusers instead of a cover-upper of sexual abuse. This will take some practical leadership."


Perhaps the Agudath Israel is coming through. In a hurried response to the mass arrests in New Jersey (which only exacerbate the AI's increasingly embarassing public image), the AI convened a hastily-planned symposium (for men only, but that's a whole separate issue). The speakers at the symposium included none other than Naftali Tzvi Weisz, the Grand Rabbi of Spinka, who spoke some very contrite words. The speakers also included high-profile criminal defense attorney Benjamin Brafman, who said many of the things I have been saying for years. The videos of the event are very, very interesting, and can be viewed here if you have the time and inclination.


My take on it:

(A) Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel recently assumed the post of Executive Vice President of the Agudath Israel of America. He is a lawyer, and understands many of the legal nuances involved far better than mere rabbis.

(B) The Spinka Rebbe, having signed the tentative plea agreement, now has to do all sorts of contritional acts. Moreover, the plea agreement is a "package deal" contingent upon, inter alia, "a case disposition agreement executed by representatives of Spinka and all of its constituent organizations." The Rebbe's reference in his discourse to various watchdog-type committees is probably a reference to the terms and conditions of such case disposition agreements.

(C) In one of the videos, (approx. 2:00), Ben Brafman tells a semi-humorous story wherein he attended a minyan (English translation: A group of at least 10 Jewish men convened for prayer service) to say Kaddish for his father, and the guy selected to lead was his former client. Understand that Ben Brafman's clients are all criminal defendants. This, no doubt, made many of the AI hierarchy people in attendance wince.

(D) This symposium would have been unimaginable a year ago. But now, AA seems to be moving rapidly out of denial mode and is confronting problems which, only a short while ago, it would never admit existed. With the Jersey arrests making the headlines, the AI hierarchy now is beginning to realize that it can no longer go about delivering the morality lecture when so many members of so many of its affiliated groups are not behaving in a moral manner. Expect more events and missives with the new "obey the laws" message!

(E) Personal sentiment: It would not surprise me in the least if, within the next few months or years, the Agudath Israel of America erects a website. I leave it to those in the pari-mutuel profession to assign particular odds to particular time frames.

Tisha B'Av 5769

Today's date per the Hebrew calendar is 9 Av 5769. The 9th day of Av (Tisha B'Av in Hebrew) commemorates the destruction of both the First Temple and the Second Temple in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Other calamities, large and small, have occurred to the Jewish people on the 9th of Av. Accordingly, it is a very sad day. I have been fasting since last evening, and will not break the fast until after sunset tonight.

From the 1st day of the month of Av, it has been no meat or wine (except Shabbat). The no wine part does not particularly affect me, inasmuch as my preferred beverage is beer, which IS permissible, and which I usually have with dinner unless I plan to drive somewhere afterward. As much as I like to eat meat, the no meat part has not particularly been difficult for me. I do well with fish or yogurt (and, when I travel to locales without much in the way of kosher restaurants, subsist quite well with such foods).

For a while I was going beyond vegetarian and into vegan (to oversimplify, the difference between a vegetarian and a vegan is that vegans don't eat fish or animal products such as milk, while some vegetarians do). For the first time in a number of years, I actually cooked some tempeh (though I ended up with a slight agita afterwards) and, all told, did without even the yogurt or eggs for a few days (N.B. I usually put tofu into my salad at least 6 days out of 7 anyway). The tempeh, tofu, nuts, fruits, and TVP and veggies did me fine. Polly over at Veggywood would be proud of me.

[Yes, I know that Polly leans quite far towards the Left. But at least she understands that veganism and vegetarianism are not for everyone, and does not attempt to impose her views on the matter upon the rest of us. And while she thinks that PETA is basically a good organization, she does admit that they wax extreme from time to time. It is reassuring that there are some rational animal rights activists out there. Having encountered plenty of spoiled rotten, irresponsible, narcissistic, far far leftist and irrational brats from Beverly Hills, Hollywood, The Hamptons, Westchester, the Main Line, Greenwich, Monte Carlo and other locales where the glitterati dwell and propagate, oblivious to the realities of the world, I have to respect Polly for her sincerity and for her grasp of reality. If her Weltanschauung differs from mine, then so be it. Maybe the next time she's back East we can do lunch or dinner at a kosher vegan dining establishment (and no, I'm not trying to score -- Twenty-something years ago I serendipitously scored with a woman, and the two of us are still playing that one out, big time, through thick and thin.).].

I, of course, did not schedule any professional activity for today. Not good to work on an empty stomach, especially when others, such as clients, depend upon your sound functioning. And, of course, my disposition is not at its best, so I have avoided major encounters with others (which is just as well, because one is not really supposed to greet others on Tisha B'Av). But who was I kidding when I thought that I might get some productive paperwork done today? It's almost 7:00 PM and I have accomplished precious little, except for a few much-need additional hours of sleep.

Oh, well! Maybe that's the way it should be. After all, I should be bothered by the destruction of the Holy Temple, and the Holy City of Jerusalem. I am adversely affected by the memory of the Holy City's destruction, then my heart aches over it. And those who mourn the destruction of the Holy City of Jerusalem will, one day, rejoice when it is rebuilt.

A Publisher's Pitfalls

As this post is being written, a big scandal is unfolding regarding some New Jersey politicians, and also some rabbis. I shall not comment extensively on it at this time, other than to note that (A) the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty; (B) if indeed the defendants participated in the bad acts as charged, then I vehemently disapprove of such acts; (C) if indeed the defendants are found guilty or plead guilty, then there will and should be significant consequences visited upon them; and (D) even if the defendants are eventually exonerated (as I do hope will happen), the arrests and indictments are a signal to the religious Jewish community that it must go beyond damage control, and change what have become popular notions as to what is and is not acceptable behavior.

In prior posts, including the one from 5 April 2009, this blog has had occasion to mention a publication known as Yated Ne'eman. [Actually, there are two such publications, one in Israel and one based in Monsey, New York. They formerly were connected; now they are divorced but still sleeping together.]. Yated Ne'eman presents some cogent viewpoints not found in other media. In any given week, several people read Yated Ne'eman before I get hold of a copy, and I now have read the 17 July 2009 edition.

As mentioned in the prior post, Yated Ne'eman has what they would like to think is a strict policy against publishing photographs of women. Again, this is a decision I respect, given the social values of the niche of Yated's primary market, the insular religious Jewish community. Nevertheless, I now note an ironic, and, I find, comical malfunction of this strict policy. The front page of the 17 July 2009 edition carries a photo captioned "The Senate Judicary [sic] Committee is holding hearings this week for the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. See Page 90." The photo was procured from Getty Images.

Any other publication would feature a photograph of the nominee, Sonia "SoSo" Sotomayor. But because Judge Sotomayor is a woman, Yated did not place her photograph on its front page. Instead, the photo features the Judiciary Committee itself, and a whole group of photographers with their lenses trained ahead to a spot behind the photographer, where Judge Sotomayor is obviously seated. So instead of a photograph of Sonia, there is a photograph of photographers photographing Sonia, so that Sonia is totally out of the photograph.

This is amusing enough. But if one looks at the very left side of the photo on the front page of Yated Ne'eman, it seems that one of the photographers in the press pool is a w-o-m-a-n, whose lens is directed towards the Committee. We see the side view of her head, but her face is mostly obscured by her straight long black hair. But the woman's entire arm, up to the shoulder, is exposed by clothing which, in the social groups that typically read Yated Ne'eman, is deemed immodest, provocative, and even whore-like. Given Yated's penchant for not showing a woman's face, and given the mindset of Yated's core readership, the depiction of a woman's arm above the elbow -- on the Front Page of Yated Ne'eman, just below the top banner -- is nothing short of a hilarious irony!

The 24 July edition of Yated has obviously been published. I have not yet seen it, but eagerly await its arrival in my hands to see if there is any mention of reader criticism of the Sotomayor photo without Sotomayor.

The Sonia photograph without Sonia will now be among the least of Yated Ne'eman's consternations. Yated now has to report the Jersey scandal to a readership that has a well-ingrained reflex for defending their own (as do I), and a distaste for negative comments about their own, as well as an aversion to the public airing of internal controversies. The mere mention of the scandal will touch many sore spots of Yated's readership, and non-mention of the scandal would severely impair Yated's credibility.

But, given Yated Ne'eman's past stances in other matters of controversy in the insular religious Jewish community, I do expect Yated to meet the challenge quite well. We shall see!

Katz Chasing the Robins

Today's story in the New York tabloids: Robin Katz, a 25-year-old investment advisor at Chase Bank, now stands accused of tapping a client's private account to the` tune of $110 K through the medium of a duplicate ATM card, which was found on her person upon her arrest.

The New York Post story is here, (Front Page in print edition), an AP apparatchik's version is here, and Newsday's take is here.


My commentary, in no particular order:

1. Robin's MySpace self-description reportedly is "rocket scientist by day, party fool by night." If indeed she were a rocket scientist, she would have filched the money by some means less tracable than an ATM card. ATM machines commonly are monitored with video surveillance, which only corroborates the electronic money trail.

2. The New York Post, being the sensationalist tabloid it is, now presents Robin as a sexual commodity. All else being equal, this would bother me. All else is not equal, however, because Robin herself apparently accentuates her own sexual aspects on her public pages such as MySpace and Facebook. Which wouldn't be quite so bad if she were not facing criminal trial. She is definitely NOT a sympathy-evoking defendant.

3. Robin apparently left New York in May for a purported family emergency in California, yet the ATM withdrawals persisted from June 2008 through June 2009. If Robin really were apprehensive about being caught, maybe she should have ceased and desisted.

4. According to the Newsday story, "A [Chase] spokesman declined comment Tuesday, refusing to say whether Katz was still employed there, or how long she had worked for the company." I am not a public relations expert, but would think that if Robin no longer worked at Chase, then Chase should be most anxious to have the world know that fact. Methinks that some sort of employer-employee relationship persisted at least until Robin's arrest. This makes Chase look like a even more of a smacked toochas, at a time when the entire banking industry already has poop smeared all over its face. Moreover, the unnamed Chase customer was probably signed on with JP Morgan Chase Private Banking services. Not good for the bank's public image or public confidence!

5. Robin exhibits many hallmarks of a spoiled trust fund kid. Smith College, family in California, working in the banking industry, rich and riotous lifestyle, et cetera.


6. Once the Madoff case broke, Rocket Scientist Robin should have recognized it as a signal that society's patience for financial crimes is being sorely tested. She should have ceased and desisted immediately. What caused her to continue? Was it just plain arrogance, or was there some sort of substance abuse and dependency lurking in the background? How much of that money got sucked up her nose?


7. There will be tax consequences for Robin if she failed to report her filched income on her tax returns. My advice to Robin: File an Amended 2008 return NOW; that way you MAYBE can avoid at least some of the penalties.

8. As the father of a college student, and as one who interfaces with the business world, I cannot help but be concerned about my son's Internet persona. There are consequences for what one does or does not post on their Facebook or MySpace pages, and, if truth be told, my wife and I have had occasion to deliver an admonishment to our son in that regard (not terribly serious, but not totally with our zone of confort). Robin's case will, if anything, heighten public awareness regarding Facebook and MySpace and similar cyberscrapbooks. And if I were advising an employer (or, rather, when I advise employers, for one of my clients has been talking about launching a business venture that will require paid help over and above his wife, daughter and mother-in-law), I would have them take a look at Facebook and MySpace, et cetera, when checking out prospective employees. What you do on your own time is your private business -- until you make your private business public.

A Spanking for Spinka

The Agudath Israel of America is an advocacy organization for the more religiously observant Jewish groups. It presents and asserts many issues and viewpoints I consider to be necessary. I am grateful that it exists, and am not above sending it a modest monetary donation from time to time.

It therefore pains me to say that the Agudath Israel is a troubled organization. It is not a bad organization, but it is troubled because some of its past statements and suboptimal judgment calls are now coming back to haunt it. [N.B. I have similar sentiments regarding the Republican Party, for analogous reasons.].

This Blog's posting on 21 December 2007 commented on a tax fraud indictment case in Los Angeles, a case that involves the Spinka institutions. My very reliable sources now inform me that the Naftali Tzvi Weisz, the Grand Rabbi of Spinka, has signed a plea agreement whereby he will plead guilty to a felony conspirary charge and face up to 5 years imprisonment. The plea agreement is "wired," that is, the agreement is contingent upon the entry into of plea agreements by Rabbi Weisz's codefendants, and disposition agreements by the various Spinka institutions. My sources tell me that understandings have, for the most part, been reached regarding the codefendants' pleas, but that the disposition agreements with the corporate parties are still not in the zone of agreement.

The Spinka Chassidic community is one of the Agudath Israel's constituencies. The Spinka tax fraud case implicates, and may well exacerbate, the Agudath Israel's troubles. Please bear with me on this analysis:

Some time last April, apparently after Pesach, the Agudath Israel issued a statement (jointly with Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools) regarding sexual abuse in religious Jewish institutions. The long and short of the statement is that the two organizations (A) " fully acknowledge the horror of child sexual abuse and the devastating long-term scars it all too often creates;" but (B) are concerned that legislation currently under consideration in Albany (if indeed anything at all is being done in Albany) might be so overly broad as to saddle educational institutions with "potentially crippling financial liability" for long past indiscretions by individuals who are dead, retired, or otherwise long gone from such educational institutions. Within the four corners of the policy statement document, I am 100% with Agudath Israel.

But the AI-TU joint statement was not written on a fresh klaf. At Agudath Israel's 2006 national convention, a speech was made by Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon wherein it was effectively admitted that many in the Agudath Israel leadership have swept under the rug the matter of sexual molestation in Yeshivas, in deference to the feelings of the families of the accused (and, in come cases, proven) molesters. Others have, and not without foundation, accused Agudath Israel of indecisiveness and stalling on the matter.

Before sexual abuse issue became THE big sore matter with Agudath Israel, there were some charges, again not without foundation, that the rabbis of Agudath Israel were wont to encourage abused wives to give in to their abusive husbands' monetary demands and not make a public issue of it. Indeed, in an article published in the Jewish Observer, the Agudath Israel's (almost) monthly magazine (as I recall, some time between 2000 and 2002 or thenabout), there was an effective denial that the problem was exacerbated by the various rabbis' entreaties to the abused wives to surrender to their husbands' monetary demands in exchange for the divorce.

And so, the Agudath Israel now has a public relations problem with its constituencies. Its failure to admit its shortcomings and lapses leaves many of its constituents (and former constituents) very skeptical.

Getting back to the Joint Statement, if one takes it at its face value (which I in fact do), a cardinal concern of the Agudath Israel is to maintain the viability of the religious Jewish day schools. This is also a concern of mine, and a cause to which much of my family's tzedaka (charity) allocations are directed. The way I read the Spinka situation, there is a serious question as to whether the Spinka educational institutions involved in the indictment can continue to financially survive if they agree to the settlements I would expect the government to demand, and/or the tax assessments the IRS is likely to have made and/or be in the process of making. Which puts the Agudath Israel right back on Square One!

The Agudath Israel needs to take corrective discipline with its misbehaving bratty children, instead of trying to convince the principal to not suspend the kids each time they misbehave. It should position itself as a proponent of compliance with tax laws instead of as a cover-upper of tax cheats, and as a proponent of zero tolerance for sexual abusers instead of a cover-upper of sexual abuse. This will take some practical leadership.

.

I personally believe that Agudath Israel is capable of such leadership if they make the necessary changes in their policies and procedures (and, perhaps, personnel). For the sake of the future of American Jewry, I hope that I am correct on this score!

A Wise Decision?

I'm back!

No more pencils, no more books, no more students' dirty looks!!

The grades have just been submitted, and, now that I am no longer teaching until the Fall semester, all of the things that have gone neglected to one extent or another can now be given my attention. Like my sleep! I'm all burnt out from the Summer Session semester, so I'll need a day or two to recover.

Don't get me wrong! I did enjoy teaching the courses I taught. But, like all summer session courses at all universities, this was very intense for student and professor alike.

My brief social commentary for this posting deals with one Clive Campbell -- or rather, The Other Clive Campbell.

There are two reasonably respectable Clive Campbells in the world, namely, the New Zealander soccer player, and the Bronx DJ known as "Kool Herc" who is credited with establishing Hip Hop music in America. [Okay, so I'm not a big fan of Hip Hop music (nor of the Bronx, for that matter), but Kool Herc did work hard and pay his dues and succeed after he came to America from his native Jamaica, so he is in that sense a positive living example of America's greatness.].

Then there is this Other Clive Campbell, who is sullying the names of the DJ and the footballer, is a self-described Brooklyn community activist (sound like Barack Hussein Obama's resume) who has a group called "Da Black Defense League." I shall not link this posting to this man or his group; suffice it to say that the man and his website are everything one would expect and more.

Specifically, Campbell filed a pro se lawsuit against Barclay's Bank and others. The lawsuit smacks of extortion. Justice Arthur Schack, of the Kings County Supreme Court, has dismissed Campbell's lawsuit. It is a long read, but Justice Schack described the Complaint as a "rambling, disjointed, almost 30 page essay dealing with, inter alia: the history of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade; the injustices suffered by African slaves and their descendants; the alleged connection of BARCLAYS to the slave trade; and, the alleged violation by all defendants of international, federal and state laws, including the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States Declaration of Independence, and the United States and New York State Constitutions."

You can read the case of Campbell v. Barclay's Bank if you really, really want to. I shall not now detail all of the inconsistencies and nonsequiturs and irrationalities in the complaint. Bottom line: Justice Schack dismissed the complaint for failure to state a cause of action upon which relief can be granted.

The social commentary imponderable: How would that Wise Latina, Judge Sonia "So-So" Sotomayor, have ruled on the case had it been before her bench?

Ernesto and Irv

Still teaching, but not quite as sleep-deficient.


Ernesto Lecuona (1895 - 1963) was, by most estimations, Cuba's greatest musician ever. He was a composer, pianist, band leader, and a founder of the Havana Symphony Orchestra. Finding the Castro regime in Cuba intolerable, Lecuona moved to Tampa in 1960. If you have not been informed about Ernesto Lecuona, you can bring yourself up to speed here, here and here.

Lecuona's untimely death on 29 November 1963 did not receive the attention it merited because the news media of the world was still working on the grist from the death just a week earlier of another significant figure in Cuba's history -- President John F. Kennedy.


History repeats itself! My friends in Philadelphia have informed me that noted radio personality Irv Homer passed away on 26 June 2009. I had a number of occasions to listen to Irv's show, and I held him in high regard for his sincerity, and his willingness to call things as he saw them, come what may. Irv Homer was able to see the broader issues of things.

Irv Homer was a staunch proponent of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, and was openly critical of the intrusive excesses of government, whether the FCC or the IRS.

And, having lost a young child of his own to disease, Irv Homer was an active and avid supporter of the Sunshine Foundation, a charity that grants wishes to very sick children. [Parenthetic note: The Sunshine Foundation's sponsorship of gatherings of children afflicted with progeria, a rare disease that manifests itself as rapid aging, enabled the efficient and reliable collection of blood samples which greatly advanced the medical research towards treatment and cure.].

Hopefully, Irv Homer will eventually be recognized as the broadcast industry's moral compass he was. But, like Ernesto Lecuona before him, Irv Homer must, in death, take second-line billing the media's other anointed idols of lesser worth than himself -- In Irv's case, he is a few pages after Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett.

Rest in Peace, Irv Homer (and also Ernesto Lecuona)!

Frustrated Professor

I have been quite sleep-deficient of late. I'm out the door at 5:30 AM to teach my morning class, and then I have an evening class that ends about 9 PM. Fortunately, none of the people with whom I share an office are teaching during this summer session, so I am usually able to take a little nap during the early afternoon.

Some of my students are really on the ball, but today, two of them rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe the sleep deficiency is catching up with me and making me edgy.

The first one asked if she could just turn in the written case briefing (this is an undergraduate Law course) without having to give an oral presentation, because she is uncomfortable giving an oral presentation to the class. Note that (A) students may give the oral presentations from their seats (almost all do) instead of standing up before the class; and (B) another student in the class, who has a speech impediment, has been quite avid in delivering her oral presentations. I didn't want to get into a pissing contest over it, so I told her it would be okay. Believe me, even if I were to give her a 100% on the assignment based upon the written submission alone (rather unlikely), she is in no danger of becoming class valedictorian.

The other one (who is usually quite attentive and studious) misunderstood an assignment. The assignment entailed finding official documents issued by a particular governmental office. The specification for the documents was that they be no more than 6 months old. The four documents this student presented were between 6 and 18 months old. After I returned the assignment -- she got gigged for the older-than-specified documents -- she came to me and told me that she misunderstood because of the language barrier (English is not her native language). I told her that my own grandparents, whose formal educations did not surpass the equivalent of the sixth grade, also had a language barrier, but that they overcame it. Fortunately, I suppressed the urge to tell her "Welcome to America -- Now Go Learn English!!!" She's essentially a very personable woman, but this time she really got on my nerves. Probably the lack of sleep is getting to me.

Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy teaching the courses I do. But summer session courses are very draining for student and professor alike.
I dread tomorrow. I fear that tonight will be one of little or no sleep. And because we are rapidly approaching the end of the first summer session, the students are very, very likely to have 11th hour questions for me. I hope that they do not interrupt my nap tomorrow afternoon.

Color Us Angry

During the past few weeks, various incidents of local, national and/or international proportions have implicated the topic of Black-Jewish relationships. I do not now purport to try to solve the strained relations between the two communities, and indeed, the observations set forth in this post will (at least in the short run) likely cause some degree of discomfort on either or both sides. Just for the record, however, let my disapproval of certain straight-up racist comments that have emanated from certain quarters be noted.

And now, to stir up the hornet's nets, I will suggest that within the Jewish community there is a significant amount of anger towards the Black community. It is an anger which neither side is comfortable acknowledging; indeed, many if not most in the Jewish community are oblivious to their own anger in this regard. Consider the following:

A. Jews stood with the Blacks in the Civil Rights Marches of the 1950's and 1960's. Some even gave their lives in the fight against racial segregation in America. The incident near Philadelphia, Mississippi on 21 June 1964 is a case in point. Three civil rights workers disappeared, and their bodies were later recovered from an earthen dam. The three were James Chaney (Black), Michael Schwerner (Jewish) and Andrew Goodman (Jewish). The incident cost the Jewish community more -- both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of its membership -- than the Black community. After we did so much to end the legalized discrimination against the Blacks, they have turned upon us and support our enemies.


B. In the 1950's and 1960's, Israel sent its best and brightest to aid the developing African nations, and took the best and brightest of these developing African nations in to its colleges and universities for training. Every one of these African nations sided with the Arabs to vote against Israel!

C. We see and hear Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and all of these others spouting off their anti-Jewish garbage. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that thousands of Blacks fawn over these bigots, day and night, savoring and cheering their every word.

D. We are subjected to Black speakers who deliver venomous anti-Jewish speeches on the various college campuses, and whose speaking engagements are planned, organized and sponsored by the various Black student organizations on campus.

E. And, of course, there are the bad experiences in locales such as East New York, Mattapan, Parkside, Lawndale, Dexter-Linwood, Mt. Airy, Forest Park and other once-vibrant Jewish neighborhoods where the Blacks moved in, displaced the Jews, and made life dangerous for those Jews who remained.


In short, the Black community has too often showed gross ingratitude towards the Jewish community.


So if some Jewish youth, with the assistance of a few beers, spout off some racist anti-Black comments, then by all means condemn those racist comments (just as the anti-Jewish comments by Blacks, intoxicated or otherwise, ought be roundly condemned). But understand that the Jewish community has some real and valid gripes against the Black community in America and elsewhere, on account of the ingratitude we have been receiving.


Postscript: Some white supremacist nutjob killed Stephen T. Johns, an African-American security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Officer Johns was, by all accounts, a very worthy man. The American Jewish Committee has set up a fund to help Johns's family.

There is no denying the nagging notion of the possibility that Johns's son might one day follow Black community precedent and turn against the Jewish people. But if I don't do at least something for Officer Johns's young son, then I will be no better than the Blacks who have ungratefully turned against the Jews.

And so, notwithstanding my reservations over the whole thing (including reservations about the American Jewish Committee itself), I have joined what surely will be many in the Jewish community, and have cut a check to the AJC to be used to help Officer Johns's family.

Making Simplification More Complex

I really shouldn't be posting now, because I have lots and lots of work to be completed in less than 24 hours. Most (but not all) of it is related to the courses I now am teaching. This is the Summer Session, which squeezes what normally be about 4 or 5 months of classes into a period of less than 4 weeks. So now, I am grading the assignments that were submitted last week (and I also need to get working on the Midterm Exams so that they can go to the copy shop and get back in time to be administered next week).

Summer Session, then, is intense and stressful for the students. And for the Instructor (that's me!), the intense stress is multiplied by the number of students enrolled.

I need to take a break from it all, so I'll do this posting.

The assignments I am now grading are topic selections for the Term Paper -- a "pre-Term Paper" if you will -- that run about 2 or 3 pages. One of the students has submitted a "pre-Term Paper" which concludes with the following paragraph:


"The proposed Term Paper would address a call for action, so that new administrative agencies can be appropriated to the right health care programs. These health care programs would require more administrative agencies to help acquire the flow of rules and regulations that will ensure no illegal activities will take place. More so, the need of administrative agencies is there to provide a fundamental way for everyone to get the care they need in a capitalistic society."


Okay, I do not deny that am highly opinionated, nor am I reticent to express my unpopular opinions to my classes. But I do take pains to not impose my personal opinions upon my students.

How, then, can I grade this assignment without injecting my personal and political views? The problem with health care in America is that it is so complex, and that any health care provider must interact with not only the insurance companies, but with many governmental agencies. This complexity cannot help but add to the price of health care.

I'm not so sure I understand how the creation of new governmental agencies will simplify health care, let alone reduce its cost.

So what should I write as my critique to this student's assignment?

'Tis a puzzlement!

I think I shall stop here, go to bed, and after I wake up in the morning, take another look at this student's submission.

Good night!

Spy v. Spy?

Our Shavuot holiday was inspiring but largely uneventful. Having experienced many nights of less than optimal sleep over the past two months, the sleep achieved during the holiday, though hardly the best I have ever known, was quite welcome. With my schedule for the coming month, there is little reason to expect a significant number of really good sleep nights for that period.

The news story that inspired this posting is the sentencing of admitted spy Ben-Ami Kadish, who was fined but avoided jail time. Judge Pauley wonders, as do I, why it took Uncle Sam 23 years to bring charges. Assistant U.S. Attorney Iris Lan would have Judge Pauley believe that it took the FBI that long "to put all the pieces together." But His Honor didn't buy it, and neither do I.

The case is notable mostly because the Israeli information handler dealt with by Kadish was the same one who handled Jonathan Pollard.


My comments, in no particular order:

A. Yes, Israel does spy on the United States. And the United States similarly spies on Israel.

B. Knowing what I know about military procedures relating to classified information, and about human nature in general, there is only a small, limited set of circumstances under which one might conceivably be involved in espionage on a one- or two-shot basis. Because once you begin, your handler and/or some party associated with your handler thereafter owns you, and you must keep on playing the game. I don't like having to answer to anyone, so I have always taken pains to stay far from anything resembling espionage.



C. One of the conditions of that aforementioned small, limited set of circumstances is that the temporary spy must accept no money or other commodities of value for his or her services. Quite curiously, the "facts" as agreed to by Kadish and the U.S. Attorney specifically provide that Kadish neither requested nor received anything of value for his services.

D. Yet, according to the criminal Complaint, Kadish remained in telephone and e-mail contact with his handler up until the FBI began questioning Kadish in 2008.

E. Jonathan Pollard, beyond all doubt, was provided with cash and other goods and perquisites for his efforts. It certainly was far, far more than his out-of-pocket cab fare, telephone calls and photocopy expenses.

F. More to the point, there were, and are, persistent rumors that Pollard had customers other than Israel. If this is true, then it would go very far towards explaining why the U.S. government dealt with Pollard in a manner as harsh as it did, and why Israel has been less than enthusiastic about pressuring the United States for Pollard's release.


G. When Kadish began providing documents in 1979 or before, there still was this entity known as the Soviet Union. At the time, the conflict between Israel and the Arabs was a proxy war between the USA and the Soviet Union, during which Israel used American weaponry against the Soviet weaponry used by the Arab states. More importantly, Israel, on its own and in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense, made modifications and improvements to the American weapons, to the benefit of both Israel and the United States.

H. As Judge Pauley surely suspects, there is much, much more to the Kadish story than the government is disclosing. And the obvious use of the bringing of charges in 2008, after 23 years, as a lever to pressure Israel, does not account for the whole story. I, for one, do not have sufficient information to do anything more than engage in speculative guessing as to what these other factors might be.

I. Judge Pauley inquired of Kadish's attorney as to Kadish's source of livelihood. The only answer given was that Kadish had some investments. Might there be a tax angle to this all? As a tax attorney, I can think of all sorts of taxation issues.

Inspiration or Plagiarism?

Because the courses I teach are designated as "Writing-Intensive," the Term Paper requirement is unavoidable, for both student and professor.

So, having assigned the Term Papers, I now have about a week remaining to grade them before the grade submissions deadline arrives. [Actually, it is less than a week because our great holiday of Shavuot, commemorating our receipt of G-d's Torah at Mount Sinai, will soon be upon us.]. This, therefore, will be my project for today and tomorrow (and possibly Wednesday).

The premise of Western Civilization is that we are part of a great continuum, whereby all we have is derived from those who preceded us, and, likewise, what we do will be the basis of those who will follow us. For this reason, proper scholarship dictates that the intellectual ideas and precedents we apply be acknowledged and cited. Indeed, the law review article of mine that was published a few weeks ago cites sources going back to King Hammurabi.

It is a bit of a stretch to expect law review level scholarship from undergraduate level students. Nevertheless, I do require my students to give proper citation in their Term Papers, and citational errors are viewed with greater concern than some misapplications of the spelling and grammar conventions which greatly alarmed the battleaxes who were my junior and senior high school English teachers.

Of course, I take a very strident attitude to the outright plagiarism involved in purchased term papers. These are the ones where a sentence placed in the Google search engine hits some verbatim documents. I had graded all of four Term Papers and found yet another Internet term paper vendor (whose name will not be noted in this posting, lest the site be given free advertising).

Sometimes you just know when a Term Paper is not kosher. A few years ago, I read a sentence which used the word "bulwark." The word did not strike me as one typical of the vocabulary of today's undergraduate students in America, so I googled just a 4-word fragment from the sentence and immediately found verbatim term papers on 3 different Internet sites.

Approximately one-third of my students do not speak English as their first language. It has come to the point where spelling and grammatical errors are encouraging signs because such butchering of the English language indicates that the work is the students' own. A perfectly-written Term Paper by one who was not drilled with the English spelling and grammar in the manner typical for my Baby Boomer generation in America is a waving red flag.

And, of course, I spot-check the actual citations. Some of them are ill-written, but at least I can find them. Some of the citations cite secondary and tertiary sources when they should be citing primary sources (e.g., the cited article from the New York Times discusses IRS Notice 2008-83, when the student should go to the IRS website and access Notice 2008-83 directly).

Some of the students just string together direct quotations from their sources. I can't gig them for plagiarism because they cite the sources from which the quotes were derived. It isn't very creative writing, but at least it is honest writing.


Query: Just where is that fuzzy demarcation of where inspiration ends and plagiarism begins? Does stringing together a bunch of quotes constitute a creative inspiration? Does changing a few words here and there in the quotation constitute a new work?

Along such lines, listen to the popular Neapolitan song "O Sole Mio" and compare it with Elvis Presley's "It's Now or Never."

Was "O Sole Mio" inspiration for Elvis, or did Elvis plagiarize the melody?

Orts & Ephemeris

Lots of things are going on now, so I am not postured to do any deep intellectual blogging -- at least for the next 24 hours. The following items and events have occurred, are occurring or are slated to occur:


A. A new law review article of mine has been published. Another article in a different law review is in its final editing stage and is slated for publication shortly. And a third article, not nearly as research-heavy as the two just mentioned, has been accepted for publication in a legal periodical, and is slated to appear within the next 2 months.


B. I have a court date tomorrow, and need to prep for that.


C. I have just completed administering my Final Exams. Well, almost. A greater than usual number of students didn't show up for the exams. Most of them contacted me in advance with their situations, and for these I have made or will make accommodation. Those who did not contact me in advance (and indeed, have yet to contact me) will receive a big, fat "zero" for their final exam grade. And they will go to the Department Chair and whine. But my Department Chair has almost always backed me up on this type of thing, and I would expect him to do likewise. After all, the syllabus handouts, distributed to everyone on the first day of class, explicitly lay down the rules about the need to contact the professor in advance if any accommodations are to be made for missed exams.

[This is a cultural value I picked up from my days with the Internal Revenue Service. Untimely tax returns are penalized, and extensions (at least the first one) are granted for the asking if requested before the due date. A similar world order is imposed upon my students.].

I think that the flu epidemic is playing at least some sort of role behind the higher numbers of absentees. But the rules are uneffected: Apprise the professor in advance that you are missing the exam, and reasonable accommodation can usually be made. Don't come to me after the next semester begins, as a few have been known to do, and for the first time tell me how sick you were! How long do you think you would last if you pulled that shtick with your gainful employment?

In any event, I am now grading the exams. I am going blazooey, so posting this is my much-needed break.


D. Speaking of Final Exams, our son has completed his, and is now moving his chattel goods from the dorms and back home. There goes the privacy my wife and I had enjoyed. Awshucks!!


E. Notwithstanding item D above, our son will be away with friends this coming Shabbat. Not to feel lonely, though. We have four houseguests slated to come over and visit, including our fatso friend, referred to as "He" in prior postings (here and here and here and here). As for the dining dynamic described more fully here, we will sort of be evenly matched: 3 fatsos and 3 non-fatsos (though the excessive adipose tissue on one of the guests counted in the "fatso" column has only been acquired relatively recently). We're looking forward to it.

Benedict's Travels & Travails

As Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Israel was approaching, I became attuned to some of the controversies that came up within the Jewish community. For various reasons, I decided at the time to sit this one out. But this evening I found myself participating in a very charged conversation with several acquaintances, and realized that the whole matter has been obsessing me, whether I admitted it or not. I need to vent!

And so, I will, of sorts, weigh in with this posting. There is no expectation that this posting will win or lose me any friends or enemies, nor change anyone's viewpoints, nor resolve any of the controversies. And I make no pretensions whatsoever of being neutral or objective. What I do purport to do is to identify some of the complicating issues that serve to make the controversies complex if not intractable.

First and foremost, the Pope's constituency is not the Jewish people. The Pope's constituency is the Catholic Church and its adherents (and the Catholic Church is in no way a monolith). It is unrealistic to expect the Pope to be a champion of the Jewish agenda (if such indeed is susceptible to definition).

The very establishment of the State of Israel had theological repercussions within the Catholic Church. A people whom the Church had always viewed as accursed Untermenschen had achieved statehood. It was -- and still is -- theologically simpler for the Church if the Jewish people would simply be eliminated. But there was a practical side, because the Church's holy sites in the Holy Land stood a better chance under a regime of the Jews than under a regime of the Muslim Arabs.

There is no denying that Jewish people have long suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church. We are not just talking the Crusades and the Inquisition, but it goes all the way down to the personal in the present day. Specifically, many if not most Jewish people in America have had negative childhood experiences of one kind or another involving kids from Catholic schools. From my conversations with many, many other Jewish people, I have concluded that I lucked out in this regard, for while my own negative experiences with the Catholic school kids were not particularly remarkable (and in fact I had many positive childhood experiences with Catholic schoolboys), many other Jewish kids of my generation were not so fortunate.

[Disclosure: My higher education includes a degree from an institution run by an order of the Catholic Church. Never for even a fleeting moment did I ever regret the decision to attend that fine school.]

And just as the Catholic Church has its history with the Jewish people, it has caused no less offense towards the Muslims.

And, in addition to the Jews and the Muslims, there are significant elements of the Eastern Church who are present in the area, who also have historical gripes with the Catholic Church (and with one another).

Any visit to the region by any pope, therefore, inherently presses against lots of sore spots. Accordingly, the Pope has had to tread very carefully during his visit. And there were bound to be instances when whatever he would or would not say would be offensive to either Jews or Muslims (or, perhaps, both). He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't.

Take, for example, the Pope's visit to the Kotel (Western Wall) in the Holy City of Jerusalem: For various political and practical reasons, the Kotel is, administratively and legally speaking, a synagogue. Benedict's visit to the Western Wall had been scheduled for Lag B'Omer, a day of significance on the Jewish calendar. The security people in the Israeli government, who, for the most part, do not place a high priority upon religious observance, had made a decision to exclude the public from the Kotel during Benedict's visit. This, of course, was like stirring up a hornet's nest (and, for the record, I firmly believe that Jewish people should never be precluded from praying at the Kotel -- We've been kept away from there for too, too long).

Okay, so they modified the plans in a manner to provide for the Pope's security without making the Wall judenrein. But then the Rabbi of the Kotel declared that Benedict shouldn't have his crucifix exposed when he visited the Kotel.

In a perfect world, I would agree with the Rabbi. But this is not a perfect world, and the last time I was in Israel, on one of the occasions I visited the Kotel I saw some Filipino Catholic priests whose crucifixes were visible. Nobody seemed to be upset (they were, after all, Catholic priests). But then, again, the paparazzi weren't there at the time to record anyone making a big affair of it.

And, speaking of removing religious symbols, the Vatican had requested that Jewish symbols be removed from the ambulance that would be part of the Pope's entourage.

It is clear, then, that there was no way of avoiding controversy when the Pope visited the Holy Land.

Another factor that is playing into the mix: Benedict XVI, before he became Benedict XVI, was Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He is the first German pope in nearly half a millenium. And Israel's relationship with Germany is a very complex and paradoxical one. While there remains, since the founding of the State of Israel, an expressed revulsion to Germany and all things German, the fact is that Israel is a country created in the image of Germany. German architecture (Bauhaus and post-Bauhaus), German engineered infrastructure, and, before the Japanese and Korean automobiles came, the cars, trucks and busses were German.

Much is being made over the fact that Joseph Alois Ratzinger served in the Hitlerjugend and the Wehrmacht. My take on it: Just as Israel has compulsory military service (with some exceptions for religious individuals, but that's a whole other can of worms), so, too, did Nazi Germany. The young Ratzinger actually deserted the Wehrmacht, the German army. This shows that he either (A) was a coward; or (B) had principles. I never met the man, but nobody, not even his detractors, characterize him as a coward.

In any event, the fact that he is German is a further complication to the controversies. It is quite possible (read "highly probable") that a double standard is being applied to Benedict XVI because of his German background.

And so, whatever your take may be on the controversies anent to Benedict's visit to the Holy Land, understand that controversy was unavoidable.

The Wal-Mart Bargain

The 20 November 2008 Wal-Mart stampede in Valley Stream, New York has, of course, kept the legal profession quite occupied. Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice has reached a settlement agreement with Wal-Mart.

Thus far, I give Ms. Rice high marks on the deal. The public is getting much more from Wal-mart than would be possible under a successful criminal prosecution. Wal-Mart is increasing its safety policies and procedures, thereby raising the bar for all such retailers. Victims of the stampede can, if they so choose, be compensated without resorting to the courts.

It's a good deal, BUT …

The program is only as good as its gatekeepers. Specifically, Ms. Rice's office has placed ads such as the one in the 9 May 2009 Newsday (page A 38), addressing "Anyone Present at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart Store on November 29, 2008, between 2:30 - 6:00 A.M."

Query: How many of those who will respond to the advertisement were, in fact, actually at Wal-Mart at the time? And how many of those who were will exaggerate their losses?

Observation: To get a claimant's affidavit, DA's website provides that one can "Download PDF English" or "Descarga PDF Español."

Query: How many of those who will be claimants, bona fide and otherwise, should not have been in America in the first place, let alone at the Wal-Mart?

The New York Bailout Rules

New York, notorious as one of the most overbloated and wasteful bureaucracies, has been getting things right of late.

Firstly, we had that "photo-op flight" of Air Force One over the Statue of Liberty, which threw a significant percentage of the people in Lower Manhattan into panic, and caused the financial markets to take a little plunge. The White House looks like a smacked toochas with Louis Caldera proffering an official tail-between-the-legs apology, and our senior Senator, Chuck Schumer, vehemently and appropriately denounced the lamebrained secrecy tactics of the White House Military Office. This time, it wasn't Schumer who was the putzhead!


And then, there is Walter E. Carver. Mr. Carver's financial misfortunes drove him to seek public assistance, which he received for approximately two and one-half years, from September 1997 to March 2000. The terms of his public assistance required him to w-o-r-k at subsidized employment. After receiving the bailout from the New York taxpayers (myself among them), Mr. Carver got back onto his feet, and his financial luck markedly improved.

In fact, he hit a $10,000 prize in the New York Lottery.

And so, pursuant to New York's Social Services Law § 131-R, the State of New York claimed one-half of that $10,000 lottery prize as reimbursement for the public assistance provided to Mr. Carver.

Walter E. Carver brought a lawsuit against New York, claiming that the reimbursement requirement effectively brought his pay, for the w-o-r-k he did, below the minimum wage. Judge Schneier, of the Kings County Supreme Court, banged his gavel on his bench, and sent Carver right out of the courthouse. Three weeks earlier and three blocks away, Judge Sifton, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, did similar with Carver in his Federal Class Action suite on the same issues. That case is reported at 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27496. Thus far, Carver is a double loser (as is his attorney, Richard D. Lamborn, Esq.).

Carver's legal misadventures might not be complete. The wages he received, and the entire $10,000 lottery prize, are considered income for Federal and New York State taxation purposes. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if Carver gets Lamborn to tilt at the IRS windmill as well.

Meanwhile, New York would do well to (A) better enforce its policy of reclaiming lottery winnings from public assistance bailout recipients; (B) publicize the fact that such is done, so as to take much of the glamour attraction from that welfare magnet that is New York City; and (C) legislate similar statutes to facilitate the reclamation of lottery winnings from current and former prison inmates.

A Time to Sleep, a Time to be Alert

Michelle Malkin and Amanda Terkel, who, to say the least, do not view the world from the same perspective, are among the many who have been making a big deal about Barack Hussein Obama's economic advisor, Larry Summers, falling asleep at a meeting with the credit card executives.

Quite frankly, I have no real problem with it. My biases are colored by the fact that I am afflicted with a sleep disorder, which acts up from time to time (and I am now amidst one of those periods where sleep tends to be evasive).

While insomnia and dyssomnia are certainly problems, the greater problem is the public's attitude towards people who suffer from such afflictions. It is, as far as I am concerned, nothing less than discrimination based upon a physical condition.

As a solo practitioner, I am fortunate to be able to, when necessary, take a nap during the day, in my office, without jeopardizing my livelihood. Likewise, if it doesn't interfere with my class schedule, I can sleep in my office at the University (and indeed, a little 25-minute nap makes me eager and raring and ready to go in front of the classroom).

But things weren't always that way. In a former position with Uncle Sam, I had this one supervisor who made a big deal of my dozing off. At the time the IRS picked me up, I had already consulted an attorney and was gearing up to file a discrimination complaint with the EEOC. My transfer to the IRS made life much simpler for me, my supervisor, my supervisor's supervisor (without whose harassment, my own supervisor might have been mostly off my case), and the U.S. Government in general. [N.B. Aside from that one issue, I did get along quite well with my supervisor, and do speak well of her -- which made me very reluctant to take the step of initiating a complaint. But, as mentioned, the IRS mooted the issue by hiring me away from the government agency where I worked.].

A psychiatrist with whom I am casually acquainted socially believes that a disproportionate number of job failures, marriage failures, and juvenile delinquency have inadequate sleep in their etiology. Looking back on some of my prior relationships, I must agree with him.

The insomnia suffered by Charles Dickens has left its mark in many of his works. The "fat and red-faced boy in a state of somnolency" from The Pickwick Papers, and Sydney Carton's line "It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known" from Tale of Two Cities -- only someone tormented with insomnia could have written these lines.

As for Larry Summers: (A) He is probably much more dangerous if he makes his decisions while sleep deficient; and (B) as long as he is sleeping, he cannot implement his economic policies -- policies which I generally oppose.

So get off from Larry Summers's case, and let him sleep!

There are, of course, certain positions where one needs to remain awake. For example, security forces on ships sailing off the African coast, who protect the ships from pirates. In this incident with the MSC Melody , the security forces on the Italian cruise liner were certainly awake and alert.

What is interesting is that (A) the cruise company had hired Israeli security personel; (B) who wielded and used firearms. Ths MSC Melody then was bound for the Jordanian port of Aqaba, which is directly across the border from the Israeli port of Eilat.

Surely the Jordanian authorities knew, officially or otherwise, of the Israeli presence on the ship that was scheduled to dock in its port. This tells us something about unofficial international cooperation against the terrorists!

Sewer Service

After nearly a week, I now have internet access again. We had technical problems last Monday, and with the last two days of Passover on Wednesday & Thursday, coupled with some big time ineptitude on the part of the Best Buy and its Geek Squad, we were unable to get back up until this afternoon (Sunday). No thanks to the Geek Squad or Best Buy; we called in a local who, after several attempts (and one return of a new router to Staples), did in fact get us up and running. Tomorrow, my wife will cancel the Geek Squad appointment that had been set for this coming Wednesday (more than a week after the first call!), because their services are now unnecessary.

It has been very challenging to exist for a week without internet access (though 3 of those days, the last 2 days of Pesach and Shabbat, would not have been internet access days for us anyway). Almost as challenging as the 6 + days without internet access have been the 8 days of Passover without beer (but we did have an enjoyable holiday, and the Carmel 777 Brandy and Jelinek Slivovitz. sufficed quite well).


The big story now in LawyerLand is that a process serving company, American Legal Process, together with its president, has just been charged with various offenses in connection with falsified evidence of service. If these charges are proven (and there seems to be some rather strong and damning evidence in the AG's pocket to substantiate them), then many people had default judgments taken against them because they were never served with the papers.

This will have to play out in the courts. ALP's attorney, Corey Winograd, is, of course, zealously defending his client and insisting that ALP and its president, William Singler, did nothing wrong. This, of course, is what a defense attorney should be doing.

[Disclosure: A few years back, I had a case with Corey Winograd, and have no reason to impute his client's scumbag attributes to Corey personally.].

This subversion of the judicial system is a very disturbing matter. The process servers who falsify their affidavits and other documentation are no less a threat to American freedom than the terrorists and pirates.

And while I applaud Andy Cuomo, the New York Attorney General, for his proactive interest in the matter, the potential for political payback cannot be ignored.

I note that in Binghamton, some volunteer lawyers have taken on the task of aiding families of the victims of the recent shooting spree there. Reading between the lines, much of their work will effectively be aid to illegal aliens. These illegal alien enablers are being organized by the New York State Bar Association, an organization in which I allowed my membership to lapse quite a few years ago, a decision I do not regret.

My question: Will the NYSBA round up a cadre of volunteer attorneys to help out the real Americans and legally present aliens who were victimized by American Legal Process?

Season of Freedom

Just came off of two days of Passover, followed by my usual Sabbath observance, which equals three days of being incommunicado from the world beyond my own little community. We did have good time, but there were no guests this year for various reasons (which was just as well, because my wife got hit by some virus and was largely out of commission after the first Seder).

My wife's moonbat Cousin Shira, mentioned briefly in last year's post, is in no financial condition to do out-of-town traveling, and so, she wasn't with us this year either. I'm somewhat disappointed. For one thing, I miss the interesting politically-charged conversations we get into. Our son was with us this year, and, having spent the prior year in Israel and witnessed a few incidents firsthand, he has come back with some rather staunch political views regarding what must be done to ensure the security of Jews in the Holy City of Jerusalem. He would have made some interesting addititions to the conversation. Moreover, I would rather that Cousin Shira spend the Seder with us than with the leftward-leaning crowd in her hometown. But I digress.


Much has been written regarding the "Passover Seder" hosted by Barack Hussein Obama, including the disgusting sugary praise from the various ecumaniacs and leftist-leaning self-appointed Jewish spokespeople. My own sentiments of the are largely compatible with those expressed by Debbie Schlussel (though Debbie is a bit too conciliatory for my tastes towards Obama's nominally Jewish sycophants).

One issue not mentioned in Debbie Schlussel's posting (and certainly taboo among the politically correct crowd) is the comparison between the way we the Jewish people deal with our own past enslavement on one hand, and the way the b-l-a-c-k people deal with theirs.

G-d heard our cries, and liberated us from Pharoah's bondage. That meant that we had to take on the responsibilities of a free people. Because so many of us had been conditioned from birth into the slavery mentality, a new generation had to be raised with a mentality of responsibility. And so, we wandered in the desert for 40 years. After those 40 years, we were ready to assume the responsibilities of a free people. We acknowledge our past enslavement and indeed, tell our children about it. We do not whine about how the Egyptians enslaved us, and we do not use it as an excuse for personal or national failure!
In short, we have dealt with our prior condition of servitude, and have gotten ourselves beyond it!

Compare and contrast that with the b-l-a-c-k community in America, who, after more than One Hundred and Forty years, in many cases still whine about enslavement (never mind that some of the slaveholders were also b-l-a-c-k), still cite their previous condition of servitude as an excuse for personal and group underachievement and failure, and still have not taught responsibility to the next generation.

I wish all who would take up the burdens of freedom a Happy Passover (and, to my friends who celebrate Easter, "A te, la Buona Pasqua.").

Portraying the Wrong Picture

The news story now making the rounds (as in here and here and here) is about how certain newspapers in Israel photoshopped the women out of the news photo of the new Israeli Cabinet.

The fact is that in some religious circles, portraying a woman in a photograph is considered immodest. The newspapers at issue here are published by and for such segments of the population, therefore, they do not publish photographs which portray women. In fact, some have been known to insist that all photographs of people, even of males, are prohibited.

This posting shall not now get into the issues of whether pixelating or airbrushing out the women out from the group photo is or is not more journalistically ethical than rearranging the positions of the entire group so as to exclude the women, or whether it would or would not be better to not publish the photo at all.

What this post WILL address is the implication, in news stories such as the one at issue, that those Jewish people who eschew photographs of women are somehow "more religious" than those who do not.

Imprimis, I detest the use of the term "ultraorthodox" to describe any Jewish person. The use of the "U" word serves only to fragment the Jewish people, and to subject those of us who adhere to the Torah commandments to ridicule.

There are many groups of religious Jews who, for many generations, chose to stay isolated to one extent or another from society at large. Even when contact and communication could not be avoided, such groups have retained costume and custom which differs from the general norm. They are, in a word, insular. They have always been around, but in today's world of rapid transportation and communication, these groups now are noticed by more and more people who, even twenty years ago, would have been oblivious to their existence. Many of their practices are based more upon group traditions than upon any mandate from the Torah.

I have no particular quarrel with such groups; indeed, I regularly interact with many to one extent or another. And I read several publications whose intended readership is such groups [N.B. The Israeli "Yated Ne'eman" mentioned in the story officially split from the American publication of the same title a number of years ago; let us say that they now are divorced but they still sleep together.]. Such newspapers -- and their readerships -- have the right to decide which photographs will or will not be published in their pages.

As for my religious observance, I daven (pray) three times each day, keep the Sabbath and the dietary laws, and, in a few days, will observe the Passover. For the record, I personally have no religious issues with photographs of women who are decently clad. And, not that it really, really matters, but I wear a kippah and my wife covers her hair with a wig or a snood. Those who happen to wear the black hats but who are sex offenders, tax cheats, womanizers, or even ordinary murderers may well be more insular than I am, but they are not more religious!

Do not confuse insularity with religiousity!

Earth Hour on My Own Time

It is now Earth Hour 2009, and we have just turned on the lights in our house. Most of the lights in our house HAVE, in fact, been shut off for the past 25 hours on account of our religious Sabbath. No dishwashers have been running, nor the washing machine nor the dryer. But with the conclusion of Shabbat, I recited Havdalah and we are now back to the regular days of the week. I have just turned on several lights in the house, and have switched on my computer, and am now composing this posting.

Understand that I was environmentally concerned long before many of the environitwits who are now pushing Earth Hour. Our family was one of the first to get on with the recycling of paper, glass and metal (and indeed, long before the familiar curbside recycling, my grandfather was a scrap metal dealer, that class of people who were the original metal recyclers).

I was composting the vegetable wastes from my kitchen long before many of the environitwits were even born. Where I live, there is an ordinance that prohibits the storage of waste on one's property. A number of years ago, one of my neighbors, Frau Himmler, reported me for having the compost pile, and I received a citation under that code provision (I don't know what she was complaining about; every year she has her landscapers literally spread bovine feces all over her lawn). I moved the compost pile to another corner of my yard and haven't heard anything further.

And, significantly, our household electricity usage is below the neighborhood average.

But amongst the environitwits who are aboard the Earth Hour bandwagon are some hard core enviroterrorists.

A few queries regarding the EarthHourlings:

* How much energy was expended in publicizing and promoting Earth Hour? How many of them jetted around the nation or the world in the promotional activity?

* How many of them recycle their cans, bottles and papers?

* How many of them require supercool air conditioning in the summer?

* In short, how many of them who are talking the talk are walking the walk?


Yes, we do need to cut down our national energy usage. But having someone who has no idea of my household energy needs dictate to me what I must do with my household energy usage is a far, far scarier notion than dependency on foreign energy resources. Because ours is not a welfare recipient household, the family budget seems to be the best determinant of our energy usage.

An ATM for the ATMs

One principle for which I developed great appreciation when I was with the Internal Revenue Service is the notion that any time money changes hands, information also is transferred. The information might be something as simple as the date and time on the receipt from the cash register, or it could be a whole series of legal documents, or anything in between the two extremes. Without going into the nitty gritty details at this time, suffice it to say that during my stint with the IRS, many a seemingly mundane document or scrap of paper or account entry led me to a past money transfer of more significant proportions. In fact, even after I handed back my badge and went into private practice, those skills I learned from my IRS days served me well, and continue to do so.


Just as information can lead one to money, so, too, can money be part of the trail to information. More to the point, money itself can constitute information, and therefore, evidence. In a city the size of New York, then, it is natural and logical that the police will have frequent occasion to take cash and currency as evidence of a crime. Thus, there are a number of rubberstamps which imprint legends such as "NYPD Evidence" and the like.

As the law enforcement people can surely confirm, police departments and prosecutors take great pains to document the chain of custody for their evidence, and to impose security measures to ensure that the evidence presented at trial is the same, untampered evidence that was found during the investigation. Even the IRS people do likewise; one rule was that we would never remove a staple from a tax return document without documenting when, how and why we did it -- so that there would be no issue over whether the tax return document presented by the IRS as evidence was the same tax return filed by the taxpayer.

So what does the NYPD do with its money evidence when the evidence is no longer needed? It had been exchanging it for regular cash with Chase Bank, with the understanding that Chase would, through the appropriate Federal Reserve channels, have the "NYPD Evidence" cash destroyed, along with other retired currency.

Well, it turns out that within about a month's time, two Chase ATMs, each in a geographically distant (by NYC Metropolitan Area standards) neighborhood, were reported to have dispensed some of that NYPD Evidence cash to ATM customers. The two ATM customers were quite credible: A retired FDNY dispatcher and a retired NYPD cop.

Seems that Chase, in addition to its Federal bailout, has now found another source of funding.

Chase spokespeople say that Chase is investigating. I say that the IRS should also be investigating! Someone ought to be chasing Chase!

Andy Cuomo's Little List

I have never particularly been gung-ho for ex-New York Governor Mario Cuomo, nor for his son, ex-Kennedy in-law and now New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Having said this, it now must be acknowledged that Andy Cuomo is the public official who, perhaps, is coming through this AIG executive bonus brouhaha looking the best, and on that particular score, he has my full applause and admiration.

His 17 March 2009 letter to Congressman Barney Frank, excepts of which have been quoted in the media, is very telling, and is available at Andy's own official website here.

There is little I can say that has not already been stated by Andy Cuomo. I will observe, however, the following:


A. As this post is being written, Edward Liddy, AIG's Chair & CEO who was installed in his position by the US Government, is now being grilled by the House Financial Services subcommittee.

B. Everyone who is anyone in Washington is now expressing outrage, shock and revulsion at the bonuses. This, of course, is in response to the popular sentiment; many of them were the very ones who set up the current AIG bailout scenario in the first place.

C. Operationally speaking, the simplest resolution to this political problem would be for all of the recipients of the AIG bonus bonanza to simply return their bonuses (or, as a face-saving ploy, be allowed to retain, say, $100,000).

D. Recall that during the recent move to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton's seat in the Senate, Andy Cuomo effectively stepped aside so as to avoid a mudslinging contest with his ex-cousin-by-marriage Caroline Kennedy. There is little doubt that Andy has higher political ambitions, but he wisely recognized that a better opportunity is likely to present itself in the future, and that he can build upon his public good will by kicking butt in his current position as NY AG.


One thing Andy can do in order to motivate the AIG bonus boys to return their remuneration is to announce that he is furnishing the list of them to the Internal Revenue Service and to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, for whatever actions the respective taxation authorities deem appropriate.

Unlike Treasury Secretary Tim "Tax Cheat" Geithner, Andrew Cuomo still has the moral authority (or at least the appearance thereof) to play that card.

Don't be Ecstatic!

The posting of 30 April 2008 highlighted the propensity of many residents of the more insular religious Jewish communities to trust those who dress like themselves. This phenomenon is, of course, hardly unique to the religious Jewish community; other close-knit ethnic communities have been stung by swindles by those ostensibly of their own kind.

Such also seems to have been the dynamics of the case involving the three yeshiva boys from Bnei Brak who were arrested when they entered Japan with lots and lots Ecstacy pills in their baggage. They claimed that they didn't know that the antiques they had been asked to deliver were in fact receptacles for the contraband.

I do not know the three young men, and therefore, don't really know how to call that one. It is, however, entirely possible that they were in fact duped by someone whom they blindly trusted. Indeed, recent arrests by the Israeli police of two alleged accomplices tends to corroborate the young mens' story.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shafran, who recently testified as a character witness on behalf of the young men, is now appealing for financial aid for their criminal defense. His appeal is being carried out through an organization called American Friends of Kupat Ha'Ir, in insert fliers in various Jewish newspapers. AFKH (and indeed, Kupat Ha'Ir itself in Israel) is in the more insular corner of the religious Jewish community; they do not seem to have an Internet presence, and many of the rabbis behind it have been known to take very insular stances on various issues. I myself am somewhat skeptical of AFKH, but this is a function of my general skepticism towards anything and everything; if truth be told, I do occasionally contribute money to AFKH (and, when in Israel, to KH itself). But I do respect Rabbi Shafran, and give much credence to his report of the situation for the young men in Japan.

When I walked the streets of Bnei Brak, as I have done on more than a few occasions, I was given "that look" because I wear a leather kippah and not the black fedora hat or fur shtreimel which is de rigueur for men of the insular religious Jewish groups. When I walked unaccompanied by my wife's uncle or cousins, who do wear the black fedoras, the suspecting stares were all the more frequent and intense. Many in Bnei Brak do not have computers in their homes (and few have t-e-l-e-v-i-s-i-o-n-s). Having seen Bnei Brak with my own two eyes, I can be persuaded to believe that the young men were in fact clueless and naive enough to trust the guy with the black hat, and thus go on their ill-fated trip to Japan.

[Please do not get me wrong. I have enjoyed my visits to my wife's relatives in Bnei Brak, and did in fact meet a fair number of friendly people on its streets. I fully expect to revisit the city at such time as I return to Israel.].

My analysis of the situation in Japan: On one hand, individual rights do not play the overarching role in Japanese culture as they do in the American legal system. On the other hand, the Japanese are bigger on deterrence than we in America are (and the low crime rate in Japan is one result of this). Even if the young yeshiva men are in fact innocent, the Japanese legal system is more prone to view them as exemplars for a lesson in deterrence than to be in any hurry to set them free. And Japanese prisons are not summer vacation resorts as the prisons of America are.

Accordingly, these young men are likely to be sitting in prison in Japan for a while. Their best hope will include a good dose of quiet diplomacy from Israel. This has a number of complications. For one thing, many (read "all") of the insular Jewish social groups are at odds with the secular aspects of the Israeli government. As an example, my wife's relatives will not refer to the big international airport in Lod as "Ben Gurion Airport" because they do not wish to glorify the late Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, an ardent secularist. So now, the rabbinical leaders are now in a position of having to appeal to the same governmental offices which receive large dollops of opprobrium from the ranks of the rabbis' followers (if not the rabbis themselves on occasion). This means that the three yeshiva boys may be a bargaining chip (though likely a very small one) in the current political negotiations to form a government in Israel.

The troublesome bargaining chips, however, are the aforementioned two older guys who were arrested as suspected accomplices of the three. Jewish law and tradition has some very, very strong taboos about turning in a Jew to the non-Jewish authorities. But many respected rabbis have approved of the punishment by secular authorities of Jews who are in fact guilty of serious crimes, especially where innocent Jews have been their victims. The well respected Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky reportedly green-lighted some Jewish U.S. customs agents who asked about the propriety of hunting down a ring of Jewish smugglers, for example.

The prospect of trading three small and possibly innocent fishes for two bigger fishes (Suspect Bentzion Miller does, after all, resemble a whale) might play well to the appropriate crowd in Tokyo. If indeed there is ironclad evidence to link the two to a smuggling ring, then Japan gets to avoid world criticism over the conditions to which it is now subjecting its three current defendants, they get to punish a wrongdoer, and they would still be able to send out a stern cautionary message of deterrence to the world.

The way I'm calling it, the great rabbinical authorities in Israel and elsewhere are now occupied with the pros and cons of whether Bentzion Miller and/or Yisroel Eisenbach ought be traded for the three guys in Japan.

As for me, I have already placed in the envelope a modest remittance to "Kupat Ha'Ir - Pidyon Shevuyim" and addressed it to 4415 14th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11219.

If these three young men are in fact innocent and were in fact unaware of the nefarious motives their dispatchers, then I wish to see them released soon. And if, in fact, the two others arrested in Israel did send unsuspecting and innocent boys as mules to Japan, then they ought not be walking free.

Odds & Ends:

1. Timoshenko Update: This continuing saga of the killing of NYPD Detective Russel Timoshenko was commented about in Blog postings of 16 November 2008, and two on 15 July 2007 (here and here). Dexter Bostic, the gunman who actually fired the bullets at Timoshenko, was sentenced to life without parole on the murder conviction and some consecutive sentences for the attempted murder and weapons violations. Bostic's accomplice, Robert Ellis, was convicted on the weapons charge, and got the 15 year maximum. Accomplice Lee Woods got a mistrial; his retrial has started.

Bostic is still whining about the injustice of the system. The only thing that is missing is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton complaining about how the system is biased against b-l-a-c-k people. But I really didn't expect them to show up. After all, the judge who heard the case and imposed the sentence, Hon. Plummer Lott, is also an African-American.


2. Yesterday I went to a Continuing Legal Education seminar, in order to fulfill my CLE requirements for my license to practice law. As with any other CLE course, price and timing were my primary factors in the selection. It could have been any topic, but in this case the topic related to diversity in the workplace. I fully expected all of the usual leftist liberal crap about affirmative action, and I expected a full deck of race cards to be played out.

Surprise! Diversity in the workplace was touted by most of the panelists as being the economically optimal choice (as opposed to the good progressive liberal thing to do). This is the message I have been delivering to my students for many, many years. And one African-American attorney came out point blank and stated that new associates in a law firm will not succeed if they carry around an attitude of entitlement! Much welcome evidence that Fat Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the rest of them do not necessarily represent the views of the African-American community at large.


3. Speaking of Fat Al, he's now making a big stink about a cartoon that appeared in the New York Post. I personally don't see what is so racist about it. Comparing Barack Hussein Obama to a chimpanzee? Hey, they did it to George W. Bush! I don't have the time or the inclination, but someone ought to go through all of the cartoons that have appeared in the Amsterdam News, the NYC newspaper whose target audience is the b-l-a-c-k community. If the Amsterdam News is held to the same standard to which Sharpton and the NAACP now seek to hold the N.Y. Post, then I would have no objection!

Going Ape over Travis the Chimpanzee

The Travis the Chimpanzee story is making the rounds around the world and on the Internet.

Whether Sandra Herold, the late chimp's owner, will be criminally charged, is a question I will leave to the local Connecticut State Attorney's office to answer. Whether or not Ms. Herold's relationship with her pet ape did or did not get a fair report in the media, and/or whether it included sexual penetration, has yet to be proven one way or the other, and I book no bets either way. There almost certainly will be a lawsuit; where it will settle depends upon diverse factors, including but not limited to the extent of Herold's liability insurance coverage, and her equity in her own home and business.

I leave it to the psychiatrists (or, perhaps, the mechanics) to confirm my suspicions that Herold, and/or the victim, Charla Nash, were working with a few sockets missing from their wrench sets.

While the news media busies itself with such questions, this Blog will pose the following three:


A. Where does the ACLU stand on the apparent disregard of Travis the Chimp's civil rights by the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department?

B. Where does PETA stand on the treatment of Travis the Chimp?

C. Where do the staunch opponents of capital punishment stand on execution of Travis the Chimp?

Religion of Arson

The big wildfires in Australia suggest some factoid dots to connect:

On 7 September 2008, Josh Gordon reported in The Age that "Australia has been singled out as a target for 'forest jihad' by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror."

This is nothing new. During the 1980's and 1990's (and even later), the Muslims were setting fires to forests in Israel.

More to the point, the Land of Israel has only been verdant with vegetation when it has been in the hands of Jews. It was a largely wasteland when it was in the hands of Muslims.

And during the height of the Roman Empire, before Muhammad and Islam, North Africa's littoral plain on the Mediterranean Sea produced and exported grain and other agricultural produce to Rome.



Something to think about! Is the so-called "Religion of Peace" really the Religion of Arson? It certainly is not the Religion of Sound Agricultural Practices.

A Gold Star Mother Scorned

Now that Barack Hussein Obama has derailed the trial of the terrorist suspects who bombed the U.S.S. Cole, the mother of one of the victims is having second thoughts about having voted for Obama.

Gold Star Mother Diane McDaniels, whose son, Seaman James Roderick McDaniels, was killed in the bombing, has refused to meet with Barack Hussein, and now regrets voting for him.

My compassions go out for Ms. McDaniels. The derailment of the trial must surely be taking its toll on her and her family. She has already paid a steep price to the terrorists.

I will now post, in writing, that which many have been hinting at, but which is just too politically incorrect to say.

Ms. McDaniels is an African-American (as, of course, was her son).

Might she, perchance, have voted for Barack Hussein Obama on account of his race? Might she have judged him by the color of his skin instead of the content of his character?

I in no way gloat at Ms. McDaniels's predicament. In my younger years, I, too, voted for a candidate because he was a lantsman, overlooking some serious character traits which surfaced to severely disappoint and demoralize me.

I truly empathize with Diane McDaniels. And, no less, I respect her for her willingness to admit a mistake.

May she and her family -- and other proud Americans too -- soon see justice done to the memory of James Roderick McDaniels and the other U.S.S. Cole victims!

Rest in Peace, Rabbi Weinberg

A year and a day ago, this Blog implored all to work and pray for the recovery of Rabbi Noach Weinberg. The Rabbi, as mentioned in that post, is one of my personal heroes.

Today, with sadness and regret, I now report that Rabbi Weinberg passed away this morning in Jerusalem. I was privileged to have met him, and to have spoken with him; he has done many positive things for me and my family, and indeed, for the entire world. Many positive projects and ventures, benefiting Jews and non-Jews alike, have Rabbi Weinberg's latent fingerprints on them.

Over 5 years ago, when I was in Israel for a short stay, serious concerns regarding Rabbi Weinberg's health were being whispered by individuals known by me to be cognizant of the Rabbi's situation. That he survived this long is a testament to the grace of G-d, and to the Rabbi's strength and determination.

Rabbi Weinberg will be sorely missed by those who knew him, but the works and projects he founded will continue to move forward and onward.

Rest in Peace, Rabbi Weinberg! May your memory be for a blessing!

Need Some Sleep

Nothing earth-shattering to blog about.

Most of this past week I have been sleep-deficient, due in no small part to that virus bug I picked up. I believe that I have mostly shaken it, but it seems that my wife is now coming down with something. In any event, I woke up tired at about 10:45 this morning, but was able, for the first time in more than a week, to get in a good workout run.

Yesterday, I did get in a relatively good Shabbat nap. I fell asleep on the couch, and my wife said that I was really, really out of it. Maybe I won't be so sleep-deficient this coming week.

The sleep deficiency and virus wouldn't have been so bad, except that it was the first week of the semester, so I had to go in and teach. Whatever voice I may have brought into the classroom with me was totally shot by the time I got out. Fortunately, my assistant department chair gave me a ride, so I didn't have to drive.

As with any semester, I have already spotted some students who are on the ball, and some students who are totally clueless. So many have no conception of what it means to write a term paper -- those students had better get a clue real quickly or they will take a nosedive in the courses I teach! This is college-level work! In my day, I had a real battleaxe of a junior high school English teacher who taught all of us how to write term papers. Has our elementary and secondary educational system been dumbed down THAT much? [Apparently it has.].

Fortunately, there seem to be students who are well-postured and directed towards success. One of them happens to have an on-campus job as a student assistant in my own department. She approached me as I came in the second day of my classes, so I explained a few things to her. She is a transfer from one of the 2-year community colleges, where the courseload for Business Law is not as intense. She'll have to work hard, but I think that she will give it a go.

I am not a big Stupor Bowl fan. Understand that I have nothing against athletics per se (and in fact pulled a varsity letter while in high school). But the Super Bowl is not about athletic performance; it is about keeping the masses entertained and occupied, and about softening their brains so that they can be controlled by Big Brother! The teams are subsidized with lots of taxpayer money. The best thing that I can do is just not watch it! So I didn't!

The best football game I ever watched was two junior high school squads in an unofficial non-league scrimmage game. Their hearts were really into it, there was no TV audience to please (with the accompanying commercial advertisers), and they all accomplished something. Many of the players from that game have now gone onward to achievement in their respective life fields; they are role models, unlike the vast majority of the big league professional athletes of today. But I digress.

During the Stupor Bowl, I was not sitting in front of the big lobotomy screen. What I did was to begin to get my paperwork in order to do my income tax returns. I am now missing two receipts from charitable donees, so the appropriate reminder faxes and e-mails were sent, and need a few more pieces of documentation. But I knocked off lots of the organizing of papers. I am looking to get my tax returns finished sometime during February or early March.

I hope to get some good quality sleep tonight, because I have some interesting lectures and demonstrations planned for my classes this week.

Missed the Coronation

I was out of town for a few days. I basically had a good and productive time, though not without several hassles and frustrations. There was a rendezvous with some Obamatron relatives of mine who, notwithstanding their status as such, were quite pleasurable company. Above all, I was nowhere near Washington, and therefore avoided all of the hasslements of being in that city for Obama's big coronation event. [And, BTW, the situation could easily have turned disastrous with all of the crowds in the tunnel in Washington.]

One acquaintance of the family, whose husband is connected, went to Washington, cleared the security, and got a good seat at the coronation. Not everyone was so lucky (if getting to watch the coronation festivities can be called luck), and indeed, many Obamaniacs got screwed by the poor planning of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. And they all still worship the very urinal where Obama pisses!

The meeting I attended (the primary impetus for the excursion) was quite good as far as such meetings go. A former business partner of mine came down with a very bad cold, so I scrubbed the get-together with him. But I caught what he describes as the same bug anyway, so now I'm trying to shake it before I start teaching in a few days.

I also got together with my brother, visited with some friends, did a little sightseeing and returned home a day earlier than planned.

It is now 2 AM, I am now mostly caught up on my correspondence, and now, after this posting, will try to get some sleep because there are several things on the agenda for later today.

Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose!

Today's news of Flight 1549 is now all over the Internet. The plane lost its engines shortly after take-off from LaGuardia, and landed in the Hudson River. All passengers and crew were rescued, thanks to the flight's accomplished and valiant pilot, and, of course, to the FDNY and the other boats that made the emergency response.

I join all in expressing gratitude for the miraculous rescue.

It seems that the cause of the engine failure was bird ingestion. Specifically, a flock of Branta canadensis, commonly known as Canada Geese, crossed paths with the aircraft.

The Canada Geese are protected birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The problem is that most of the Branta canadensis in the New York area are no longer migratory, but have, for many generations, lived all of their lives here.

And, quite frankly, their numbers are too great for the health of the human population. There is, for example, a flock that congregates at the Courthouse of the New York Supreme Court of Nassau County, and they leave lots of their droppings there. And, within the past 10 years, a flock has taken up residence near the local school, pooping all over the soccer field.

I am not a sport hunter, and those who are would know more about this than I, but one needs all kinds of Federal and State licenses and permits to hunt Branta Canadensis.


According to a New York Daily News sidebar article to the Flight 1549 story,

" For years, Port Authority officials have tangled with animal activists about efforts to cut down the number of geese that live on Rikers Island near LaGuardia. Back in 2004, more than 400 geese were killed. By 2006, the number netted and gassed had dropped to 165. Animal activists have fought the effort, urging officials to find non-lethal methods to manage the population."

Rikers Island, for the untraveled and unread, is a land mass in the East River where the City of New York has located its major prison facilities. Amidst the current great budget deficit, why not use the Rikers Island flock of Branta canadensis to feed the inmates? Surely the culinary-minded can come up with some Canada Goose recipes.

Trial By Jury

I was in court today, only this time it was to discharge my jury duty obligation. Since 1996, there have been no automatic exemptions from jury duty, which I think is a good thing. Everyone should be able to serve.

Inconveniences to my law practice and teaching notwithstanding (I don't go back to teaching for another 2 weeks anyway), I considered myself ready, willing and able to serve on a jury panel. I had been given a month's notice, and was able to arrange my law practice schedule accordingly.

This was the third time in my life I reported for jury duty (not counting some of the telephone standby years where I never actually had to show up). The first time, when I was in law school, all cases settled and they sent everyone home early. The second time, I knew one of the attorneys at voir dire, so we exchanged the pleasantries and I was sent back to the Central Jury room, where, about 2 hours later, everyone was sent home.

This time, the telephone message posted Friday evening (a few minutes before Shabbat) told me that a range of juror numbers in which mine fell was to show up today. I planned my schedule accordingly.

They now have an orientation video narrated by Ed Bradley from "60 Minutes," which showed a few clips from the old Perry Mason TV series I enjoyed when I was growing up. Bradley explains that these were overdramatizations of the real thing. But I liked them anyway. Much of the video consisted of various people, obscure and famous, telling us all how great the jury system is (which was the main purpose of this "orientation"). And then, the HDTV monitor in the Central Jury room shifted to the CNN News (the big story today, of course, was Bernie the Goniff Madoff). Interestingly, there were several commercials for law firms. I wonder what the implications of this would be if one of those law firms were actually involved in one of the cases heard by a jury that day.

They finally called us, so a Court Officer escorted us to the courtroom on the 5th floor (I walked the stairs, and beat most of the people taking the elevators). Looking at the judge's calendar outside the courtroom, I realized that this was a criminal case.

One of the jurors was an Assistant DA (who also seemed to know the defense attorney), so she was immediately excused. After some general discussion of the case by the Judge (criminal misdemeanor leaving the scene of an accident case, trial scheduled 2 - 5 PM, estimated trial time 5 days), His Honor asked if anyone would be unable to serve. Several people came forward (child care, self-employed tradesman, etc.), most of whom were excused.

Then the first 15 jurors on the list, myself included, were called up for individual voir dire. His Honor asked the usual questions, such as whether we were able to decide the case objectively; whether, if the evidence were sufficient, we could vote to convict without regard to the sentence to be imposed; whether we were willing to consider all of the evidence; whether we could attach no significance to the fact that the defendant doesn't testify if she so elects; et cetera.

Then came the question of whether we would be able to apply the law as instructed by the judge. So I raised my hand and said, in substance, the following:

"Your Honor, I have been admitted to the bar for more than 20 years. My practice does not entail criminal law, so I don't have too many preconceived notions as to what the law is here. However, Your Honor, in what I believe to be the unlikely event that Your Honor were to give a legal instruction that differed from my understanding of what the law is, then, Your Honor, I would have significant problems with that!"

One of the Court Officers seemed to suppress a grin, while His Honor took a second or two to compose himself. The Judge then asked me (and not without a tinge of anger) "Are you saying that you would not apply the law as I instruct you if you disagree with me?"

"Your Honor," I replied, "I stress that I consider such an eventuality quite unlikely. But if Your Honor's instruction as to the law in New York were, perchance, to differ from my understanding of it, then I at least would want to know the legal authority, and look up the legal citation, for such an instruction. On account of my training and experience."

I could almost detect little wisps of smoke emerging from His Honor's ears. He called the ADA and Defense Counsel to the bench, and, after about 10 seconds, glared at me and said, "You are excused!"

I can empathize with His Honor. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. On one hand, he had asked, nay, put us all under oath, to be honest and candid. I was honest and candid. And judges are not infallible; indeed, on any given business day, a trial judge who misapplied the law is overturned by an appellate tribunal in the State of New York. If he were to chew me out, then none of the other prospective jurors would have been honest and candid.

[Also playing into the equation, I suspect, was the fact that I have been admitted to the bar about 9 years longer than His Honor (and, apparently, longer than either the ADA or the defense attorney). I have had 9 more years than His Honor has had to develop an understanding of the law.]

On the other hand, if he were to excuse me (which he did), then wouldn't such a precedent effectively serve to reinstate the automatic exclusion of attorneys from jury duty (remember, the other attorney in the jury pool had been excused, right before everyone's eyes, just a few minutes earlier)?

Note that if the Judge did not wish to make a wholesale practice of excusing attorneys, I did give His Honor an out. I stated and restated that I considered the odds of a conflict between His Honor's instructions and my understanding of the law to be rather long. His Honor could, with the agreement of counsel, gone ahead with me anyway. And, His Honor could have seated me, and instructed me to pass him a note if my understanding of the law differed from his instructions, so that he could apprise me of the legal authority for his instructions.

And, perhaps, there may have been the fear of a kingpin juror (though my personality is definitely not that of a kingpin juror).

And so, I am not subject to jury summons for another 6 years.

While it's good to get my schedule back, I'm a little bit disappointed. A major part of me does want the experience of serving on a jury panel.

We'll see what happens when I get called up the next time.


Ironic Postscript: En route back home from the courthouse, I stopped at a nursing rehab facility to visit a member of our congregation who incurred a nasty foot fracture. Other than his depressed mood, he's doing fine medically. And he is a retired physician (with a daughter who has been admitted to the bar a few years longer than I have been). It kind of made his day that there he was, doctor in the patient's bed, was being visited by a lawyer who sat in the jury box.

Susan Atkins (Part 2)

The 13 June 2008 posting on this Blog was about Susan Atkins, one of Charlie Manson's girls, and California's most senior woman inmate. You will recall that Ms. Atkins sought compassionate release because she had been diagnosed with terminal illness (and that previous March had, according to the medical pundits, three months remaining). The folks on the California Parole Board, in their wisdom, denied the compassionate release for the brutal mutilatrix-murderess.

Well, it is already more than a week into 2009, and Susie Q still hasn't clocked out.

My compliments and plaudits to the able medical staff at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, for the fine care they have thus far rendered. Who says that the government doctors don't know how to practice medicine?

No Tip for This Waiter

The story in Newsday (to which I unhappily subscribe because it is (maybe) a half-step better the New York Times, the only other viable daily rag on Long Island now that the New York Sun has folded) is "Waiter Serves Fear at Wedding" by Matthew Chayes, Newsday, 10 January 2009, p. A13.

The first paragraph is as follows:

"A waiter at a Jewish wedding who is considering converting to Islam interrupted the celebration's final prayers with recorded Arabic chants of "God is great," sparking fear among the 700 guests of a terrorist attack, Nassau police said Friday."

And now Thomas H. Spreer, Esq., Stephen Buttafuoco's lawyer, trained in the art of criminal defense, is calling the felony aggravated harassment charge "heavy-handed."

My first impulse is to agree with Mr. Spreer. Buttafuoco claims, and not without credibility, that he wasn't aware that the sound bite would be piped over the PA system throughout the building. Seems like a sophomoric prank by a 23-year-old of teenage maturity. It's kind of picayune and penny-ass.

But the deeper I read, the more convinced I am that the DA is coddling Buttafuoco a bit too much. Specifically, (1) Buttafuoco admits that he was trying to privately disrespect Judaism; and (2) Buttafuoco is now curious about converting to Islam.

Those of you from Denmark might correct me if I am mistaken, but it is my understanding that according to Islamic teachings, Muslims are required to kill those who insult Islam.

But this is America, where there should be no religious favoritism. Accordingly, Buttafuoco should be charged not merely with a felony, but with a capital offense!

Unfortunately, even wanton premeditating cop-killers are not subject to capital punishment in New York, thanks to the sob sisters on the New York Court of Appeals.

Probably the most realistic scenario is that Buttafuoco will exhibit enough contrition (or at least appear sufficiently contrite) to do a plea deal for no jail time. And if the hosts of the wedding (and/or the bride and groom) are so inclined, they might file a purely civil lawsuit against Buttafuoco and sue the beitzim off of him.

What's in a Name? [Part 2]

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction and sentence of William Bullock, Jr. under the Armed Career Criminal Act. The case is United States v. Bullock, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 25355, and, for the moment at least, is posted on the Internet here and here.

Essentially, Bullock, a three-time felony conviction loser, was found to be in possession of 8 rounds of ammunition. His conviction mandates, per 18 U.S.C. Section 924(e), a minimum 15-year sentence. The pertinent quote from Judge Jacobs's opinion is as follows:

"Bullock argues that there was insufficient evidence to establish his constructive possession of the ammunition found in the bedroom dresser drawer and that the government proved no more than that Bullock and his fiancee shared the bedroom and that Bullock had access to the dresser.

Bullock understates the quantum of evidence, which included: (1) that correspondence addressed to Bullock was found in the drawer with the ammunition; (2) that the ammunition was
discovered in a drawer with men's underwear in a dresser with only men's clothing; and (3) that $1,543 cash was found in the drawer, including $30 of pre-recorded buy money given to Bullock a few days earlier. Given this evidence, a 'rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.'"

So what's in a name? Bullock's defense attorney was Bryan E. Rounds, Esq., of the Kingston, NY law firm of Rounds & Rounds. Should the name of one's attorney matter? Theoretically, it shouldn't. But I cannot help but wonder whether the fact that an attorney named Rounds was defending a client accused of possessing rounds of ammunition made some sort of subconscious impact upon the jury.

This isn't the only criminal case where the defense attorney's name might have dropped some subliminal suggestions to the jury. In State v. Smith, 1980 Ohio App. LEXIS 10946 (OhioApp. 1980), the defendant was convicted of felonious assault with firearm. His defense attorney was named Michael T. Gunner.

And the defendant in United States v. Schlesinger, 390 F. Supp. 2d 274, the defendant was convicted of arson. Nat Schlesinger's defense attorney was Douglas T. Burns, Esq.

As for the famous Miranda v. Arizona case, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), where Ernesto Miranda's conviction on a rape charge was vacated (but he was convicted at subsequent retrial), one of the attorneys on the amicus brief (effectively arguing against Ernesto Miranda) was the Attorney General of Wyoming, John F. Raper, AG of Wyoming. 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

And then, there is the matter of Straight v. Dykes , 418 S.E.2d 65, 1992 Ga. LEXIS 354 (Ga. 1992), affirming, without published opinion, some sort of civil dispute.

Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye

Three years ago this past summer, the Israeli government forcefully removed all of the Jews from Gaza. A Judenrein Gaza, the theory went, would go a long way towards placating the Arabs there and induce them to make peace with Israel.

Almost every day since, the Hamas terrorists have launched rockets from Gaza into Israel with impunity. Moreover, most of the rockets are specifically aimed not at military targets, but at civilian communities.

For reasons having to do more with Israeli partisan politics than any principles of integrity, the government of Israel has finally, at long last, done what virtually every other government elsewhere on the planet would have done after three days -- Responded with military force!

So now, I just got an e-mail from the UJA-Federation of New York, copying its website posting, entitled "UJA-Federation Response to Israel Crisis." For the uninitiated, the United Jewish Appeal - Federation is the charitable fundraising apparatus of the so-called "Jewish Establishment." I call it the "Judenrat," for it tends to pander to the leftward-leaning elements of the Jewish population by effectively apologizing for staunch adherence to Torah values and Jewish strength. Needless to say, I am not and have never been one of their regular contributors. Liberals, as many of you have surely realized, are hung up on victimhood and guilt, and become most apologetic whenever they escape victimhood and become successful.

The NY UJA-Federation, from time to time, sponsors seminars which qualify for Mandatory Continuing Legal Education credits, of which I and other New York attorneys must rack up twelve per year in order to retain good standing to practice law. The costs of the UJA-Federation seminars, on a per-credit-hour basis, is typically very competitive, and so, as a result of my attendance at one such event a number of years back, I am on the Judenrat's e-mail and snail mail lists (though, in all fairness to UJA-Federation, they are not nearly so obnoxious in their use of these lists as are many other organizations).

But I digress. The first 4 paragraphs of the E-mail I just received read as follows:

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"The government of Israel has initiated military efforts to bring peace to its southern area and the border with Gaza.

These efforts were undertaken after the inhabitants of Sderot and neighboring communities endured months of missile barrages emanating from the Gaza Strip. And it ought to be noted, those missiles were launched after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, providing the Palestinians with the opportunity to live side-by-side in peace with Israel.

The results — whhat we are reading about and viewing on TV today — are tragic foor all people in the region.

The Israeli government concluded there is no alternative but to undertake an effort to end the rocket attacks and violence, so the people of Israel's south can live in peace. We mourn the loss of innocent life on both sides of the border, and we join with all people of good will in hoping that these efforts are successful in ending the threat and reality of missiles hitting civilian communities."

=================

The e-mail/web posting appears over the signatures of John M. Shapiro, UJA-Federation President; Jerry W. Levin, Chair of the Board; and John S. Ruskay, Executive VP and CEO. The e-mail, in fact, is from Ruskay.

I am old enough to remember who John Ruskay is. Back in the 1970's and the 1980's, John Ruskay, son of a successful garment industrialist, was active in supporting the so-called "Peace Now" movement in Israel, which advocated a withdrawal from Gaza and Judea and Samaria.

In full-page advertisements that appeared in the New York Times on 20 January 1988, p. B6 and 26 January 1988, p. A22, Ruskay was among the Peace Now signatories who advocated "against the occupation, for territorial compromise." Ruskay was a signatory to a full-page ad with a similar message that appeared in the New York Times on 16 March 1988, p. B2.

Well, Israel DID withdraw from Gaza, and look what is now happening! Israel got itself into its current jam by pursuing the very policies advocated by Ruskay 20 and 30 years ago!

So now, I get this e-mail from John Ruskay, incredulous at the perfidy of the Arabs after Israel showed its good faith (read "stupidity") by withdrawing from Gaza, and beseeching me to make a donation to help alleviate the suffering!

The basic fault is the fallacious presumption that the Arabs are capable of negotiating in good faith with the Jews. This is clearly not the case. Nor can the Arabs be trusted by anyone else! Leftists cannot recognize that there is such thing as evil people. Hamas hates the Jews and wants to kill us! Period! End of Statement. The only thing they understand is strength and force turned against them!

As for Ruskay, he differs hardly one iota from the arsonist who rushes to the conflagration he himself ignited, urinates into the flames, while proclaiming to the world that he is helping to extinguish the fire!

Keystone Cops are Out of Ammunition

My holiday is now Chanukah. To all who are celebrating it, I wish a Happy Chanukah. And to all of my friends who are now celebrating Christmas, you all have a merry one!


I have long questioned the wisdom of the various gun buy-back programs which are periodically conducted by prosecutors and law enforcement authorities. The entrepreneurial types among the gangs can finance their operations and lifestyles by stealing guns, and then selling them to the DA for $200 a piece, no questions asked.

Nassau County (NY) DA Kathleen Rice claimed that her recent anonymous weapons buy-back was a success.

The eastern boundary of Nassau County, NY, dividing it from Suffolk County, was once (with slight variations) the international boundary between the Dutch New Netherlands and the British New England. Kathleen Rice's successful program in Nassau County can be compared and contrasted with the gun buy-back program across the border in Suffolk County.

The first five paragraphs of the article "Gun-Buyback Glitch" by Ann Givens in Newsday, 24 December 2008, p. A8 [Denoted in Newsday's Internet edition here as "Suffolk Runs out of Cash for Gun Buybacks"] say it all:


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Mark DeAngelis heard that Suffolk County was giving people $200 gift cards to turn in illegal handguns last weekend, so he looked behind a rafter in a warehouse he rents and found a revolver he stashed there 20 years ago, he said.

He called Suffolk's Third Precinct in Bay Shore, confirmed that they were still doing the program and then drove there and turned over the gun, he said.

But after he handed the gun to the officer, he said he got bad news: There was no money left.

"He basically said, 'You just gave me an illegal handgun. We're out of money. Do you have a problem with that?' " said DeAngelis, 43, of Patchogue, who said he bought the gun to get it out of the hands of a man he considered dangerous.

"He said he would give me a receipt if I went in the back and showed him some ID," DeAngelis said. "I just walked out. I thought the whole point was that the program was supposed to be anonymous."
===========

As explained by Lt. Bob Donohue of the SCPD Community Outreach Bureau, the bottom line is "If they hand us an illegal handgun and we have no money, we can't give back the gun."

And so, Suffolk County's anonymous illegal gun buy-back program is neither a buy-back program, nor anonymous. And the bait-and-switch tactics conceivably might not even be legal!

Accordingly, Suffolk County residents who wish to voluntarily relinquish their firearms are best advised to cross what formerly was the international border, and sell their guns to Nassau County.