A Brooklyn rabbi will be sent to prison for stealing nearly $5 million in funds earmarked for children in special education programs, the AP reported. Samuel Hiller was one of four defendants indicted in 2014 for funneling $12.4 million away from a child development center into home improvement projects and other ultra-Orthodox institutions around the…
(JTA) — A New York judge has issued a temporary restraining order to block the demolition of a century-old Brooklyn synagogue to make way for an apartment building. The order came after 17 members of the Chevra Anshei Lubavitch synagogue in the Borough Park neighborhood said they did not know about the deal by two…
Editor’s Note: Joshua Z. Weinstein’s film “Menashe” is now playing at the Angelika Theater in New York. Earlier this year, Simi Horwitz interviewed the film’s cast and director. Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein, 33, who dubs himself a humanist filmmaker, says he never wanted to make a Jewish movie, but rather one that explores the interplay…
Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein, 33, who dubs himself a humanist filmmaker, says he never wanted to make a Jewish movie, but rather one that explores the interplay (maybe the clash) between faith and modernity. It’s almost — but not quite — incidental that his characters are Yiddish-speaking Hasidim, members of the most austere sects living…
Two hours before half the liberal Jews in Brooklyn were set to turn up at a local synagogue to learn how to resist President Trump, things were feeling a bit precarious at the offices of the city councilman who was organizing the whole thing. “Did you hear anything?” Rachel Goodman asked. Goodman is chief of…
A state law blocking New York City’s effort to charge a nickel apiece for plastic bags at grocery stores is a victory for Brooklyn’s powerful Orthodox community — where large families might mean an outsized burden. The law, signed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Tuesday night, bars the city from enforcing its own law,…
The war between Brooklyn’s kosher grocery stores and the Orthodox Jewish press is over, for now. After a tense day of conflict Wednesday between the grocery stores in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn and 20 publishers of Orthodox magazines and newspapers, the two sides have agreed to a de-escalation, the Forward has learned. More…
There’s a war in Orthodox Brooklyn this week between the booming Orthodox media industry and the local kosher grocery stores that sell their papers. Grocery store owners in Boro Park are refusing to sell the publications of twenty Orthodox publishers that will not meet the grocers’ demands for deep cuts to newspaper wholesale prices. On…
