Yosef Kolko, a former Jewish educator from New Jersey, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. Kolko, who was sentenced late Thursday in Ocean County Superior Court in New Jersey, pleaded guilty in May to multiple sexual crimes. A former counselor at an Orthodox summer camp, Kolko admitted to performing oral…
Two Orthodox rabbis and two others were arrested for allegedly kidnapping and beating men in order to force them to grant their wives religious Jewish divorces. The men were arrested Wednesday night in a monthlong sting operation in which a female FBI agent posed as an Orthodox woman trying to get a religious divorce, or…
A former counselor at a summer camp run by a yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J., wants to withdraw his guilty plea on charges of sexually abusing a male camper. Yosef Kolko, 39, pleaded guilty in May, on the third day of his trial, to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and child endangerment…
A Federal Communications Commission commissioner has proposed sweeping reforms to the E-Rate program, a school and library technology subsidy that was the subject of two Forward exposes this year. The proposed changes to the program, announced by Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai at the American Enterprise Institute on July 16, would entirely reshape how the…
A former yeshiva teacher in the Orthodox town of Lakewood, N.J., Yeshiva teacher today admitted sexually abusing a boy after two more victims of his came forward to accuse him, authorities told the Asbury Park Press. Yosef Kolko pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and child endangerment, and was…
A federally backed program subsidizing Internet access for low-income students has committed more money to schools in the heavily Orthodox Jewish town of Lakewood, N.J. in recent years than to schools in any other municipality in the entire state. Yet after several years of participating in the E-Rate subsidy program, Lakewood’s schools report having far…
Shortly after being sworn in for his first term in January, Lakewood’s mayor, Albert Akerman, visited “Tent City,” an encampment of about 100 homeless people living in a densely wooded area of township land — a rare slice of open space in the fastest-growing municipality in New Jersey. Akerman, an Orthodox Jew originally from the…
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward fellow Seth Berkman to discuss his story about a tent city in Lakewood, New Jersey a town with a large, dominant Orthodox community. Then, Naomi Zeveloff drops by to discuss her story about a professor whose professional relationship with a student devolved…
הערט אַן אַרטיקל וועגן אַ באַליבטער מעשׂה פֿון אַ באָבע מיט די אייניקלעך און אַ צווייטן אַרטיקל וועגן חסידישע מעשׂיות.
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