If You Tickle Us...

Bonei Olam (Builders of the Universe) is a charity that provides financial assistance to infertile couples. It is an international charity headquartered in New York with all the fundraising gimmickry we have become accustomed to in these types of chareidi organisations. Garish brochures, hair-raising stories, hysterical calls by the ‘ gedoilim’ accompanied by every sentimental cliché decency and common sense should have prevented them from including. Intended to tug at potential donors’ heart, and purse, strings they usually induce severe bouts of nausea if not outright disgust. The organisations tend to tell you everything there is to know about themselves except for that delicate thing called money. Generally, funds are raised to be spent immediately as we don’t really do long term. Featuring a supposed orphan with mock tears crying for the bread your money will supposedly buy is far more effective than telling you how your donation might cure malaria or cancer ten years hence.Giv...

LuckBatPoet (H/T Ze Hayom ) “Not only Sultan but also father, grammar-school teacher, gymnasium professor etc.” The above photo is of Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach (1851-1926), the third Belzer Rebbe, taking a stroll in Marienbad, now known as Mariánské Lázně in the Czech Republic. A spa town in the historic region of Bohemia, it was popular in the 19th century with ‘many celebrities and top European rulers’ visiting to enjoy the curative springs. Chasidic ‘royalty’ who know a good thing or two about material comforts were not far behind and many Chasidic, and non-Chasidic, rabbis frequented the spas during the summer months in the 1920s and ‘30s. LuckyBatPoet has a set of photographs, Marienbad People , which includes barons and grafs and gives a flavour of the high society that descended upon the town in its golden era. Included in the set is a number of photos of rabbis, amongst them the Gerer Rebbe , Reb Elchonon Wasserman , Rav Dushinsky , the Viznitzer Rebbe and others....

Stamford Hill is notorious for its lack of kosher eateries and has probably the fewest kosher restaurants or coffee shops per capita anywhere in the Semitic world. The first complaint you hear from visitors from abroad is that there is nowhere to sit down and eat. Don't start naming some greasy spoons which serve up a fare compared to which conventional junk food looks like a gourmet feast . Never mind too the several decent and half-decent bakeries (Indigs in Oldhill Street being the king by far) which don't offer any seating. If you wish to rest your tired limbs round here you can, if you belong to the male species, pop into any number of shuls where free or vended coffee is available all day, but forget about a bite in pleasant surrounding, with pleasant food and, dare I say, pleasant waiting staff. The reasons are manifold. We are a conservative community and the vast majority especially of the middle aged to older generation prefer nothing better than their wife's ...

See also Occupied territory at Springfield Synagogue

I was going to write with a background to this but time’s in short supply. Battle has however been joined in the other post so I’ll move the messages over here and let them continue but please folk keep it civil.

For translation see below If you like following Anglo-Jewish politics, and no one will blame you if you don’t, you will know the politics of making a big tent for anything. A bit like I’m a Celebrity except that it goes, I’m a Reform Get Me Into There . The right wing of the US responds, We’re (pseudo) Charedim and get ya the hell outa here because you’re as welcome as Berlusconi at a Bat Mitzvah party. At this point the Jewish miLlionares Club (aka JLC) will see it as their duty to intervene with their own version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or, rather, who wants a share of our millions. No 50/50 lifelines but an edict to phone-a-‘friend’ or else. Naturally, the Board of Deputies follows suit and, and, come on, wake up there at the back. If you’ve followed this far you’ll have heard of the Big Tent events which basically gather together similarly minded pro-Israelis who spend a Sunday bemoaning boycotts and deligtimisation of which we are supposedly the hub. After a few c...