Indian Restaurant Drops State Kosher Supervision Over Rabbis’ Vegetable Demands
An Indian restaurant in the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem is reportedly the latest in a long line of food businesses which have dropped kosher supervision after facing what they say are “impossible demands” made by the state Rabbinate’s kosher supervisors.
Ynet reports that an Indian restaurant in the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem is reportedly the latest in a long line of food businesses which have dropped kosher supervision after facing what they say are “impossible demands” made by the haredi-controlled state Rabbinate’s kosher supervisors.
Ichikidana dropped its kosher certification after Shmuel Zamelman, Machane Yehuda’s new kashrut supervisor, reportedly began forcing restaurants in the market to buy their vegetables from specific stores.
Lehava Silman Herman, who owns Ichikidana, told Ynet that having a kashrut certificate just wasn’t worth the trouble.
“We are a vegan restaurant,” Silman Herman said, “so the kashrut is irrelevant, but we decided to cooperate with the Rabbinate because of religious Jews. After [Zamelman] arrived and decided that we must only buy in certain stores, I decided that I would not cooperate any longer.”
But the Rabbinate claims the change in the market’s long standing practice is actually no change at all.
“Every restaurant which receives a kosher certification must take leaves and vegetables [i.e., leafy vegetables and non-leafy vegetables] from a supervised place only. This has been a Rabbinate order for the past 30 years. The Rabbinate does not profit from this arrangement.”
There can be several kashrut issues with vegetables, primarily related to bug infestation and tithes.
Censorship: YouTube Pulls Video Of Chabadnik Beating Child
YouTube/Google again shows that it cannot be trusted. A security camera video from the Western Wall in Jerusalem showing a French Chabad-Lubavitch hasid brutally beating his daughter, made public in Israel and which has NO copyright, has been removed by YouTube for “violating” its “terms of service.”
YouTube is at it again, censoring a perfectly legitimate video that happens to make an organization some of its censors allegedly affiliate with look bad.
I posted on the video here at 12:46 am this morning, embedding the YouTube video that had been posted there a few hours earlier.
I also asked a reader to rip a copy of the video for me, because I was positive Chabad would have it censored within a few hours, because Google has a history of banning sites from its AdWords program that post legitimate news stories that are embarrassing for Chabad, and of deleting YouTube videos that do the same.
Shortly after that reader ripped the video, I went to bed.
I woke up to a phone call from another reader telling me the original video had been yanked by YouTube.
[Update 3:10 pm CDT – The reader who updated the video to YouTube and Vimeo for me just told me that the adults only warning and the requirement to prove your age before viewing the video is more Google censorship. Thereader did not restrict his upload in any way.]
YouTube’s excuse for this censorship will be that the video is violent.
There is no blood and the 12-year-old girl – while shaken and upset – is still walking and functioning normally after after the beating, and the man is seen being detained by bystanders and then being arrested by police.
The video was aired by Israel’s Channel 2 – which identifies it as security camera video – and has circulated widely in Israel since it aired late yesterday. It has no copyright.
It was uploaded to YouTube by an Israeli, and it’s description in Hebrew is as follows:
עבריין ‘חרדי’ (צרפתי) מכה את בתו בת ה-12 בברוטליות, בכותל המערבי לעיני עוברים ושבים, וסיכן את חייה,
אנשים כאלה צריך לסרס!!!
This video is no more violent than news video shown across the US every day on broadcast TV – and which is often posted on YouTube, as well.
YouTube’s real reason for removing this video is the same, I think, as it was when it removed IDF videos taken during Operation Cast Lead and released by the IDF to dispel lies told about it by Hamas, or videos right wing pundit Michelle Maklkin made.
Google wasn’t enforcing its policy – it was censoring someone or some organization or, in these cases, some country it’s censors doesn’t like and some pundit its censors don’t like, because none of these videos came even remotely close to violating any of YouTube’s terms of service.
YouTube’s censors clearly dislike Israel’s government and army, and that dislike prompts their actions.
YouTube’s censors clearly dislike Michelle Malkin’s opinions (as do I), and that dislike prompts their actions.
In our case today, the video puts one group of people in very bad light – Chabad. Because on this video you see a Chabad hasid beating his 12-year-old daughter for no apparent reason, and in a way that is far more severe than the law would allow.
It is child abuse.
The security camera video of the incident serves two purposes beyond news – it puts this man’s community, friends and relatives on notice, making it far easier for police and child welfare to protect the child, the man’s other children, and his spouse and, secondly, it educates the haredi community about child abuse.
But YouTube cares nothing about that.
Hundreds of girls could be beaten just like this every day. YouTube’s censors would cluck and moan about the damage done to children by brutal men.
But the moment a video of an incident hits YouTube and makes one of the censor’s pet organizations or pet causes look bad, the video is pulled, censored.
What does that mean?
It means the girls’ voices are censored.
It means the removal of the best tool these tiny victims have to protect themselves and others.
And it is a dream come true for the men who beat, rape and abuse, a present to them of infinate value from Google, Inc.
This disgusting behavior permeates through all of Google, which behaves exactly the same way with its AdWords program and DoubleClick, and with every other service it offers – except, it claims, with search.
When the US Department of Justice serves Google’s founders and its CEO with subpoenas, when they become personally liable for their company’s unethical, illegal actions, perhaps this politically minded censorship will stop.
Until then, when you see Sergey Brin in a coffee house or on the street, don’t view him as a Silicon Valley rock star.
View Brin, Schmidt, and Page and the rest of Google’s board for what they really are: the people who leads the public book burning of some classic of literature that, nonetheless, offends them.
In fact, here’s a list of the members of Google’s board.
Make sure to let them know that you don’t appreciate Google’s censorship, that you have asked your Congressperson and Senators to ask the Department of Justice to investigate Google.
Larry Page, Google Inc.
Eric E. Schmidt, Google Inc.
Sergey Brin, Google Inc.
L. John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
John L. Hennessy, Stanford University
Ann Mather
Paul S. Otellini, Intel Corporation
K. Ram Shriram, Sherpalo Ventures
Shirley M. Tilghman, Princeton University
Thankfully, Israeli police arrested the man, determined that he has French citizenship, and deported him. They also notified French police and Interpol.
But the crime was committed in Israel and Israel chose to deport rather than prosecute the criminal.
That means he is probably free now in France, and able to beat his children oand his wife whenever the urge strikes, unless child welfare in France has stepped in strongly – but that does not appear to be the case.
That’s where you come in.
Show this video to every Chabad rabbi you know, especially if you are in France. Make sure that they understand that you care about this girl and that you want them to take steps inside the community to help protect her, her siblings and he mother.
If you know this man, do even more. Show the video to his parents and siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles.
Show it to the TV stations in his hometown and to the newspapers.
Make sure that he is exposed.
A man like this cannot live in a household with children, because the children will never be safe if he does.
Exposing him can make his removal from the household possible.
Here’s the video, ripped at my request by an FM reader, and reposted on YouTube. If this is also censored by Google then you will have an even stronger case that Google should to be broken up:
And here’s the same video, ripped and reposted by the same FM reader on Vimeo:
The Age of Blasphemy 