This week, the Brooklyn district attorney confirmed that prosecutors are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a two-week old infant who died last fall in Brooklyn after he contracted herpes from a religious circumcision at Maimonides Medical Center. Now, rabbis are worried that the investigation may send mohels who perform the metzitzah b’peh ritual into back alley circumcisions: “The worst thing that could happen is if the authorities regulate this practice, then it could go underground,” Rabbi David Zwiebel, the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, told the Times. more ›

Last year, a globe-trotting Torah rescuer who called himself the "Jewish Indiana Jones" was accused of being a fraud. And now, Baltimore bookshop owner Menachem Youlus has admitted that he is indeed a fraud: “Between 2004 and 2010, I falsely represented that I had personally obtained vintage Torah scrolls — in particular ways, in particular locations — in Europe and Israel,” he said in court yesterday. “I know what I did was wrong, and I deeply regret my conduct.” And he isn't even the real Jewish Indiana Jones! more ›

A 65-year-old man has filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against his former Jewish organization employers, alleging his supervisor micromanaged how, where, and when he prayed. Marshall Garvin, an observant Jew from Riverdale, says that when he complained to Na’amat USA President Elizabeth Raider about supervisor Susan Schwartz, he was swiftly dismissed. “No person of any religion should have to go through this. It’s unconscionable for a religious Jewish woman to behave this way,” Garvin told the Daily News. more ›

The NYPD Hate Crime Unit is investigating swastikas discovered scrawled inside an elevator in a Williamsburg apartment building. CBS reports that the swastikas were found inside an elevator at 70 Ross Street in Williamsburg. According to the Post, the same building was targeted earlier this month, when a swastika was etched into the button control panel of an elevator. more ›

All this time, we thought Harrison Ford was the Jewish Indiana Jones—but it turns out that Menachem Youlus, who has been going around the world rescuing lost Torahs, has dubbed himself the "Jewish Indiana Jones." But now he's been accused of giving a bad name to Jewish Indiana Jones's everywhere. more ›

Cops headed to a Mill Basin synagogue in order to find a Hasidic Jew accused of "pouring beer on a newlywed neighbor, calling her an 'Arab terrorist' and pummeling her husband," according to the Daily News. Simchon Schwartz, 46, who was apparently hiding in the synagogue and tried to resist arrest, even kicked out a police cruiser window! more ›

A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? Suing Facebook for a billion dollars. Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg are being sued for more than $1 billion over a controversial page that called for a "Third Palestinian Intifada". It's the perfect storm of Jews, Muslims, Facebook, and complicated lawsuits! more ›

Once a Jew-hating note scribbler, always a Jew-hating note scribbler it seems: Demetrios Apolonides was arrested by police yesterday on a hate crime charge of aggravated harassment for writing threatening, anti-Jewish notes on torn up vouchers and dropping them around Long Island. This isn't the first time Apolonides has done this dance though: it took the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force 16 months to catch him earlier this year for a similar crime. more ›

A building can be the target of a hate crime, not just a person, or so ruled an appelate court in the case of man who threw Molotov Cocktails at a Bronx synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur. Thirty-year-old Palestinian-American Mazin Assi is currently serving 5 to 15 for the crime he committed in 2000, with three other men. His lawyer said he should have been convicted only of attempted arson, but a judge decided the stricter charges apply. "It is self-evident that, although the target of the defendant's criminal conduct was a building, the true victims were the individuals of Jewish faith who were members of the synagogue,'' Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote in a ruling that "broadens the hate crimes act," according to the New York Law Journal. more ›

The Borough Park rabbi/travel agent accused in hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse was convicted yesterday of molesting a 16-year-old student. Baruch Lebovits could be sentenced to 32 years in jail, after being found guilty on eight counts. "I understand that there are a significant number of Jewish holidays coming up,” said the judge. “And I am sorry." The young victim testified that in 2004 Lebovits offered to let him drive his car, then unzipped his fly and performed oral sex on him. Among the rabbi’s other alleged victims is a young Hasidic man who committed suicide on his honeymoon, by jumping from the seventh story of a hotel. more ›

Chevra Mehadrin, a small group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis, recently announced a ban on lox, claiming a parasite that attaches itself to salmon makes it non-kosher. The Orthodox Union says the bagel topping is safe, despite sometimes carrying a worm called anisakis. "The issue has been resolved in Jewish law for hundreds of years already," Rabbi Moshe Elefant told the Post, dismissing the upstate rabbis’ suggestion. But kosher or not, are New Yorkers really spreading worms on their bagels? more ›

An actress claims a manager at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse attacked and berated her for refusing to sleep with a bartender—and police covered up the incident to "maintain goodwill" between the NYPD and the eatery. Jennifer Sachs, 38, says a patron and a drunken manager at the 49th Street restaurant called her a "f---ing Jew" when she refused the barkeep's proposition. When police arrived, she claims they arrested her on false charges of assault and disorderly conduct so they could keep getting cheap food and drinks. more ›

A New York Hasidic woman passed away last month leaving behind 15 children, over 200 grandchildren and enough great-grandchildren to bring her total number of living family members to around 2,000. Yitta Schwartz—who lived to the old age of 93 outlasting her husband by 34 years—was productive even among her community of Satmar Hasidic Jews for whom having kids is a tribute to God. So much so that she spent much of her time attending various events—brises, first haircuts, bar mitzvahs, etc., reports the Times. “She would appear like the Prophet Elijah,” said her eldest living daughter who is 64. “Everybody was fighting over her!” more ›

One of Borough Park's Yeshiva school buses struck and killed a young Orthodox boy today, after he slipped and fell on an icy patch of pavement. Different sources have reported his age to be either 4 or 7, but according to one witness he was tiny. "The child was so small," said Rocco Botta, who who was working on a construction site nearby. "The person who hit him may have thought it was snow and just kept going." more ›

Prosecutors claim that Eliyahu Ezagui is a thief who took $2.6 million from condominium buyers and more than $10 million from banks, but the Brooklyn developer says he was G-d sent. According to his lawyer, Ezagui received "a blessing" from deceased Rabbi Schneerson before committing his subprime mortgage fraud. "It was a mitzvah to him, a Hebrew word that means a good deed and an obligation," said the defense lawyer in her opening statement. more ›

The airline that diverted a flight when a Jewish passenger started praying said it was forced to treat the incident as a bomb scare because the teen didn't clearly explain why he had strapped his tefillin — two small black boxes worn by Orthodox Jews during weekday morning prayers — to his head and arm. According to Chautauqua Airlines, which was operating the US Airways Flight from LaGuardia to Kentucky, "[w]hen our crew tried to discuss the issue with the passenger, they did not receive a clear response." more ›

Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which commemorates the day that God forgave the Jewish people for the sin of the Golden Calf. And besides fasting and abstinence and using the JewBerry, this year there's a hot new way to atone, via iPhone! The mobile-app "Send a Prayer" costs 99 cents and lets users type personal prayers into their phones, which are printed out by a rabbi in Jerusalem and placed in the Western Wall. 10,000 prayers have been sent so far, with 10 percent from the NYC area. Chabad's Meir Simcha Kogan tells the Post the app is definitely kosher: "Everything in this world was created for a divine purpose." Wait, even AT&T? more ›

Today, Jewish worshippers around the world are participating in events marking the "Blessing of the Sun." As Julie Wiener explains in the Wall Street Journal, "According to Talmudic calculations, every 28 years the sun is in the exact position it occupied at the time of Creation. As it happens, that moment falls on Wednesday, April 8, of this year, at sunrise -- just hours before Passover begins. There is a brief blessing for the occasion, too. It is called Birchat Hachamah, Hebrew for 'blessing of the sun.'" more ›

An unidentified man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines at JFK before it took off last night because he wouldn’t sit down and stop praying. A San Francisco author named Ori Brafman, who was on the flight, told WNBC the Orthodox Jewish man ignored instructions from flight attendants to remain in his seat. During the minutes before take off, he walked to the back of the plane to pray, and when he continued to defy attendants' orders, they summoned airport security. more ›