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$1.00 WWW.5TJT.COM VOL. 8 NO. 47 14 AV 5768 ibj,tu ,arp AUGUST 15, 2008 INSIDE FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK MAYORAL HOPEFULS MEET Navigational Issues B Y LARRY GORDON Hannah Reich Berman 26 MindBiz Esther Mann, LMSW 28 The Debate Goes On Dollars And Sense While newspapers and taken issue with in the pro- Steven Genack 54 other media outlets are duction plant over the last few forums for discussion and months. Even though a great The Hock Of The Rock debate, one would like to deal of what happened there Eli Shapiro 57 think that these forums could has not been thoroughly adju- possibly, as time goes by, dicated, that does not seem to Jewish Partisans effectuate some change and stand in the way of observers Marissa Brostoff 60 improvement. from a distance chiming in Consider the ongoing situa- with their opinions about tion at the Rubashkin family’s what happened and what Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, a prospective candidate for New Agriprocessors company in should or should not be done. York City’s mayoralty next term, and Rabbi Meir Porush, a member of the Postville, Iowa, and the labor Knesset seeking to be Jerusalem’s next mayor, met in New York on Wednesday practices the authorities have Continued on Page 6 at Tavern on the Green. See Story, Page 24 TO RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE HEARD IN THE BAGEL STORE BY RABBI YAIR and Agudath Israel of America Summer Singles HOFFMAN at the Brooklyn home of the Vaad chairman, Barry Hertz. BY LARRY GORDON I’ve been contemplating A gift for Shaare Zedek The invasion of Georgia by Reporters for the Yated Jewish singles: summertime is See Page 31 Russian forces sent by Prime Ne’eman, the Five Towns Of all the subjects covered the season of singles. Or at Minister Vladimir Putin this Jewish Times, and Hamodia in this space, perhaps not least it used to be, before sin- past weekend is, of course, were present at the meeting. enough has been said about gles season was called off. directly affecting the Jewish The situation was evaluated the state of Jewish singles. It Today there is no longer a sin- community. The activities of by those who attended the seems that, aside from the gles season—or maybe singles Lubavitch shlichim have been meeting, who heard a report subject of Israel, you, the season is all year round. As adversely affected, as well as from Rabbi Ariel Levin, the reader, like to read about sin- you know, the state of frum those of other kiruv organi- official Chief Rabbi of gles—or the shidduch scene Jewish singles is pretty sad. Of zations. An emergency meet- Georgia, who has left Tbilisi, or “parshah” or whatever you course, if you are a young ing was called on Monday the capital of Georgia. enjoy calling it—more than Jewish man or woman who evening by the Vaad anything else. LeHatzolas Nidchei Yisroel Continued on Page 16 And here’s another reason Continued on Page 4 Avigdor’s Helping Hand. See Page 45 Breakfast Of Champions New Mosque WELCOME Planned In (PART III) Hewlett Our Aliyah Chronicle, Part 90 BY SHMUEL KATZ BY 5TJT STAFF For those of you who have A hearing has been sched- wondered where I have been uled for Thursday at 2:00 these past few weeks, I had a p.m. by the Town of ten-day business trip to the Hempstead to hear a request U.S. and had written—but P h o t o for permission to convert a not gotten the articles in by B Jewish Music Night y I r a house on Peninsula Boule- deadline time. Some of the T h o in Cedarhurst Park. m a s vard in Hewlett to an Islamic following is a bit old, but… C r See Page 70 e a t i mosque. The house is locat- Somehow, we have made o n s ed at 437 Hamilton Avenue, the Nefesh B’Nefesh welcom- CANDLE LIGHTING Above, at the Priority-1 Legislative Breakfast on Wednesday, August 13, which is at the corner of ing ceremony for new olim an Congressman Steve Israel (D-LI) was presented with the National Leadership August 15 – 7:34 PM Award by Rabbi Yitchok Knobel (at left) of Yeshiva Gedolah of the Five Peninsula and Hewlett, a annual event for us. As new August 22 – 7:23 PM Towns and Rabbi Shaya Cohen of Priority-1. See More Photos, Page 69 Continued on Page 10 Continued on Page 20 s”xc 2 August 15, 2008 5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES 5 TOWNS JEWISH TIMES August 15, 2008 3 HEARD IN THE BAGEL STORE of the last 30 or so years, has long lost on which, as the Talmud recounts, the idea of making Shabbos Nachamu into Continued from Front Cover its true meaning. Sometimes it seems young ladies of Talmudic times would the premier annual singles event was that an entire generation of Jewish dress in white; they would go out into derived. The Gemara further teaches recently got married or is engaged, young people think that “nachamu” the forests or the woods (or wherever us that on this day, all the women then you might not understand what in really means “singles,” and that they hung out in those days) with the would borrow clothes from one anoth- the world I am talking about. “Shabbos Nachamu” means “singles express hope of being noticed by the er for a variety of reasons. First and Everything is great; things have never weekend.” young men in town. foremost, young ladies of greater been better. Right? stature and standing would borrow But if you are one of the 5,000 or clothing from those of seemingly less- so frum young ladies or young men er pedigree. The objective seems to between the ages of 24 and 28 who is have been to promote some type of single and lives in the New York area, Obviously we can’t in the snap of equality among the women, so that then you know exactly what I am they should not be judged by the men referring to. And with each passing exclusively based on the clothing they year, this group gets large numbers of a finger dredge up the Pioneer could afford. new recruits, essentially because the While this practice apparently was system by which these young people Country Club or Grossingers. sustainable in Talmudic times as an are supposed to be married off annual event, it does not seem to have involves a terrible—and, unfortu- successfully endured up to present nately, largely corrupted—process. times. Today, if young ladies were But it wasn’t always like that. It used encouraged to dress up and go out into to be that summertime was the natu- What really happened is that as it The Talmud, at the end of Taanis, public places to be noticed by yeshiva ral setting in which boys and girls comes in the aftermath of the Three states: “On the 15th of Av…the maid- boys, we might have a major scandal met, fell in love, got engaged, and Weeks period of mourning and its ens of Israel would go out and dance in on our hands. Our rabbis would con- then married. extensive variety of social and other the vineyards. A tanna taught: demn this kind of behavior as border- The thing that really struck this restrictions, Shabbos Nachamu has Whoever lacked a wife would turn ing on the promiscuous. Populations chord with me is Shabbos Nachamu, become a breakout Shabbos of sorts. there to find one.” So this just might in our seminaries and other institu- which, as a result of the singles scene In addition, the 15th of Av is the day be the place from which the original tions of learning would experience a major shift. The only crisis that might be alleviated is the one where there are 5,000 women and men in critically single condition, with dimmed hopes for the future. So what am I suggesting? Obviously we can’t in the snap of a finger dredge up the Pioneer Country Club or Grossingers, which hosted Orthodox singles summer after sum- mer for about two decades. Countless shidduchim resulted from those weekends, which were largely con- ducted in an amiable and civilized atmosphere. It is only the advent of the so-called shidduch scene that has led to the dissipation and disappear- ance of these types of weekends. Today, young men and women who attend one of these weekends may be branded as something other than a desirable shidduch candidate. The shidduch system, for those who don’t know, works something like this: A third party—sometimes independent, though usually not— thinks of bringing two people togeth- er for a date, a meeting, a whatnot. This person calls or speaks to the young man’s parents about young lady X, filling him in on an array of details about the young lady and her family and friends. Ideally, up to this point the young lady does not even know that someone out there is dis- cussing and analyzing her. Once filled in with what has become affec- tionately known as “information,” the young man or his parents have to decide whether he is interested—not in pursuing a relationship, but just in going out on the non-committal first date. Rendering a decision of this preliminary magnitude can sometimes take weeks. The reason is that intelligence information is being gathered and analyzed, which is a very time-con- suming task—especially for people with no professional intelligence training.

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