No Comfort for Nechama

Nineteen-year-old Nechama Rothberger was driving a car in Brooklyn when it collided with a moped driven by Tian Sheng Lin, who was making a delivery for the Chinese restaurant where he was employed. Mr. Lin was critically injured when he was thrown from his moped, and has been declared brain-dead by the medical experts. Ms. Rothberger, it seems, was texting on her cell phone at the time. Mr. Lin's family has retained David Sobiloff as counsel.

Ms. Rothberger now stands charged with some misdemeanor offenses in connection with the incident, but, in the event that Mr. Lin succumbs to his injuries, one can easily imagine a scenario where the charges are upgraded to manslaughter. Lee Kimmel, Esq. has apparently been retained to defend Ms. Rothberger on the criminal charges. It is not yet clear which attorney will go to bat for Ms. Rothberger and/or her family (if the car was owned by her parents) in the civil lawsuit that Sobiloff will no doubt institute.

Sobiloff's job, of course, is to squeeze as much money as possible out of the Rothbergers, with as little delay as possible. Kimmel's job is to minimize Nechama's criminal liability. And whichever attorney is retained to defend in the civil suit will be tasked with financial damage control. Because I am not involved in either the civil or criminal case, I can sit on the sidelines and make some comments, in no particular order:


1. First and foremost, my primary sympathies lie with the victim and his family.

2. Having posited Comment No. 1, I will note that some very strident comments are now being made regarding Nechama Rothberger. Based upon conversations this past holiday with people who have some familiarity with the Rothberger family, Nechama is, to be sure, a slightly sympathetic defendant. She is not an evil person. She does not seem to be pretentious or arrogant. She apparently is a good young lady who made a very, very stupid decision that has wrecked the lives of two families. As the father of a child not all that much older than she, I can easily identify with her parents.

3. More along these lines, note that the photo of her in the New York Post, as she leaves the precinct station after her mother posted the bail, depicts her wearing a "Kids of Courage" sweatshirt, which she presumably was wearing at the time of her arrest. Kids of Courage is a benevolent organization that helps very sick children. She apparently has some sort of connection with the organization, perhaps as a volunteer.

4. There should be some criminal consequences for Nechama. The upper limit was set earlier this month by the Brooklyn DA's office, when then NYPD officer Andrew Kelly, who, while driving under the influence, fatally struck a pedestrian, pleaded guilty to Vehicular Manslaughter in the Second Degree. Kelly gets 90 days in prison plus 5 years probation. Kimmel, unless he is also brain-dead, will no doubt argue his client should be held to a lesser standard than Kelly, who, as a NYPD officer, should have known far, far better.

5. Every dollar expended in Nechama's criminal defense is out of the picture when the civil suit comes along. The more serious the criminal consequences which are visited upon Nechama, the lesser her earning power in the workforce will be. A good word from Mr. Lin's family might convince the Brooklyn DA's office to go for a plea bargain involving probation without jail time, so that she can go forward, complete her education, and go earn some bucks to pay the Lin family.

6. Were Lin and his family legally in the country? Was Lin authorized to be employed? This should not affect the criminal aspects of the matter, but it might be relevant in the amount of damages the Rothberger family gets slapped with.

7. Ditto for whether Lin was wearing a helmet.

8. Ditto for whether Lin has properly discharged his income tax obligations.


This is a very tragic matter for all concerned. Two families have been devastated. Nechama -- whose name is derived from the Hebrew word for "comfort" -- has given everything but comfort on account of her lack of thoughtfulness.

Dubai's Securities and Security

The posting of 15 December 2009 discusses how that technology known as text messaging is causing great consternation to various rabbis, who continually attempt to ban it amongst their followers (and have even resorted to litigation to try to limit the scourge of the cell phone text message). Well, it seems that in the 19 February 2010 edition of Yated Ne'eman, a newspaper by and for the more insular religious Jewish communities, Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg mentions in his regular column on page 14 that he himself actually received a text message. Having duly noted the foregoing, I now segue over to the notion that modern communications technology is now being used to protect the Jewish people and to strike at those who would destroy us.


The story of the 19 January 2010 death of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai under highly suspicious circumstances is now making the rounds. The smart money says that the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, was behind it. It has created an international scandal for all sorts of reasons. I have no specific "privileged information" on any particulars; I only know what I read in the media. Accordingly, my comments, which follow (in no particular order), are of necessity mostly conjecture and speculation. Time will tell how close to or far from the mark they are:

1. For those who have time to watch, videos released by the Dubai police are, in sequential order, here, here and here (they total nearly a half hour viewing time). The use of cell phones and other modern communications is passim.

2. I will not get into the morality of such cloak-and-dagger operations, other than to say that such activities are a tangled and dirty business of which I have not had any part, and have no intention of playing any part in the future. Those who would criticize Israel for Mossad's activities of this sort are, of course, free to do so, but I insist that they hold all other countries to the same standard as the one they impose upon Israel.


3. Espionage as a patriotic act was glorified in the 1960's and early 1970's by the TV sitcom "Get Smart" (which was a spoof of "The Man From Uncle" sitcom, which in turn was a spoof of Ian Fleming's "James Bond" books-cum-movies). There was also the "Mission Impossible" drama series. More realistic in a sense, however, was the TV show "The Prisoner" which starred Patrick McGoohan. Having previously served as a spy (as documented in the prior TV show "Secret Agent"), McGoohan's character resigns from the spy agency, and is imprisoned. The plot of each episode is that The Prisoner refuses to divulge why he quit.

What little I do know about the espionage business is that once you get involved in it, you can never quit. Your handlers will continue to demand that you produce, else you be outed and turned in to the authorities. Without going into details, I know of certain people who had to look over their shoulders every minute of the day because of their past involvements in espionage. It is not a life I would choose for myself.


4. Assuming that the Dubai operation was indeed Mossad's work, the much-needed objective of eliminating Mahmoud al Mabhouh was certainly achieved. Nevertheless, it seems that Mossad underestimated the degree of sophistication of Dubai's security infrastructure. There are certainly evidence leads to be followed from the videos, which surely will complicate matters for the Mossad agents and operatives who in any way participated.


5. The smart money says that some Fatah people helped in the operation. This is probably true, but I think that the Mossad also had operatives on the staff of one or more of the hotels involved.

6. The UK and Ireland are obviously hopping up and down mad and angry about this, given the use of passport information from the respective countries. All else being equal, UK and Ireland have to follow the leads and exact some sort of diplomatic recompense from Israel. All is not equal, however, and this aspect of the game may well be completely changed if Israel were to somehow produce (A) some individual wanted by the law enforcement or espionage organizations in UK and/or Ireland; or (B) some information which, if made public, would cause significant personal and professional embarrassment to a high-ranking UK and/or Ireland government official. I would bet upon the latter, but would not discount the former.

7. Given Dubai's precarious financial position, this is the least of that city-state's worries. I also take this opportunity to note the irony of Dubai's poor condition of financial solvency and possible default on certain major debt instruments backed by its government. Dubai, you will recall, is one of the few places in the world that still has the institution of debtors' prison.

8. Meanwhile, Britain and the other civilized countries continue to vilify and condemn Israel, even as they express great relief that a particularly dangerous terrorist has been removed from the world.

Texts and Subtexts

For the record, tonight is the Fifth Night of Chanukah. My prior post, which was done the Third Night of Chanukah, did not even mention Chanukah. This is not in any way a derogation of the holiday, nor an indication that my family and I are sitting out the holiday. But this Blog was not established as a "me, too" vehicle. Like most of the Jewish community, we have found the holiday quite enjoyable this year, as usual. I have nothing to add to Debbie Schlussel's take on it, other than to say that my menorah (or, more properly, Chanukiyah) collection pales in comparison to Debbie's.

And, of course, to wish all a Happy Chanukah!!

Anent to this post, there are arrangements in Israel called Hesder Yeshiva arrangements, whereby yeshiva students alternate between learning for a few months and serving in the Israeli army for a few months. Yes, there are more than a few of the so-called "Charedi" Jews who actually serve in the military; moreover, they tend, like our Maccabee forebears, to be very effective and valiant as soldiers.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, who heads the Har Bracha Yeshiva, stepped across the line. Rabbi Melamed advocated that his students refuse to carry out such Israeli Army orders as would expel Jews from the areas where, for political reasons, a housing freeze has been decreed. Melamed's yeshiva has been terminated from the hesder program, and now, the Rabbi is a hero amongst the more religiously observant communities.

To dispense with some collateral issues:

(A) The notion of civil disobedience by Israel's soldiers is certainly disturbing, for it imperils the chain of command discipline so vital to the success of the military forces that defend the land against vicious and sworn enemies. On the other hand, I believe, along with Rabbi Melamed, that NO portion of the Land of Israel, G-d's gift to the Jewish people, should, under any circumstances, be made Judenrein. There is a trade-off to be made here, the valuation and calculation of which I shall do, if at all, in some future endeavor.

(B) Many of the Hesder Yeshiva students are Americans. For various individual reasons, the Israeli Army is more appropriate for some people than the U.S. Army. No nation has ever been entirely comfortable with its citizens or subjects serving in other nations' armed forces (unless such service also happens to serve the sovereign interest, such as when Landgraf Frederick of Hesse-Cassel rented out his Hessian soldiers to England during the Revolutionary War). But those who defend Israel also defend America, and indeed, Israel takes much of the flak that otherwise would hit American land and people.


But I digress. The intended observation of this posting is that, notwithstanding the enmity and antipathy in many rabbinical circles towards modern communications technology in general and towards text messaging in particular (see here, here and here), text messaging technologies were used more than sparsely to announce, and draw the welcoming crowd for, Rabbi Melamed's recent visit to Bat Yam.