Federal prosecutors are charging seven men with stealing millions of dollars in federal funds intended for Orthodox yeshivas in Rockland County, New York. The alleged scheme was to bilk a federal subsidy program called E-Rate, which is meant to pay for internet services for schools and libraries, by billing the program for services that were…
In April of 2016, I wrote about my disillusionment with the country’s fascination and exuberance for Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. As an ex-Orthodox Jew, I believed the secular world and American ideals I yearned for as a child would never drown to the subterranean levels we witnessed during the 2016 campaign. But after…
If you walk into Monsey’s Evergreen kosher supermarket, somewhere among the extensive schnitzel varieties and Shabbos candy treats, you’ll see a single children’s book for sale. Zai Gezunt! is the Yiddish translation of Artscroll’s Let’s Stay Safe, written by Bracha Goetz and illustrated by Tova Leff, a picture book that talks about children’s safety of…
As a teenager, Joey Diangello, a self-described survivor of child sex abuse, left the insular Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, where he’d grown up and plunged into the world of heavy metal music. There, Diangello, who wore mascara and heavy metal T-shirts and sported long, black hair, found some measure of comfort in…
Aaron Fink likes to tell an anecdote about his oldest son: When Eliyahu Fink was in grade school, he discovered an error in ‘The Little Midrash Says,’ a children’s book about weekly Torah portions. The precocious child sent a handwritten letter to the author, asking him why he apparently confused the dates on which God…
Last week 63-year-old Shimon Pepper returned the book “While Six Million Died,” to the Fall River, Mass. library — a remarkable 42 years late. But for Pepper, his trip to his hometown was about more than an old book. He came to rescue Torah scrolls and pay homage to a dying Jewish community. Three years…
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…
The real estate developer who helped prosecutors crack a wide-ranging corruption case involving six prominent New York politicians is reportedly a key Orthodox power broker in an upstate Jewish community. Moses Stern, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community in upstate Monsey, was the central figure in the FBI sting that led to the April…
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