The latest:
- The Forward’s Larry Cohlers-Esses provides some colorful insights into the Syrian Jewish community: "Talk of the federal indictment is everywhere, at the Casino Beach Club abutting the Jersey shore, where many gather to play cards and swim in the football field-sized pool; in the large homes where large extended families gather for meals in a summer ritual; and in restaurants, shopping malls and on Web sites. Not surprisingly for a community that reveres its rabbis as few others, there were declarations of solidarity." Cohlers-Esses also explains how Solomon Dwek’s choice of targets could end up boosting the community’s Ashkenazi-style black hat faction.
- In The New York Jewish Week, Adam Dichter reports that the Syrian Jewish community is working to control the fallout: "Community sources told The Jewish Week that some of the accused were under pressure from lay leaders to immediately resign from their pulpits. In an internal statement obtained by The Jewish Week on Tuesday, a group of religious and lay leaders urged members to unambiguously denounce the alleged conduct as a betrayal of their values."
- JTA’s Eric Fingerhut reported Tuesday on efforts in other segments of the Orthodox community to make sure that institutions are staying on the right side of the law: "At a Chabad-Lubavitch regional conference over the weekend in northern Virginia, several of the Chasidic movement’s senior rabbis stressed the importance of obeying the law, according to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch. … In New York, a leader of Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group bringing together several Chasidic and non-Chasidic communities, helped organize a meeting to stress the same theme."
- Robert Wiener of The New Jersey Jewish News reports that some of the accused are adopting the blame-Dwek defense: "Attorneys for several rabbis facing money-laundering charges in the widespread New Jersey corruption case are insisting their clients are innocent victims of manipulation by Solomon Dwek, a real estate developer looking to minimize his own legal problems by assisting investigators."
- The leading association of Modern Orthodox rabbis issues a statement of support for the Syrian Jewish community.
- The Heeb kidney.
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