Kosher Food: Hot Vending Machines!

I was in Monsey for the holiday weekend. After entering a nearby 7-11 I couldn't believe my eyes.There standing in front of me was a kosher hot vending machine, incredible! There were two of them one for meat the other dairy. You could buy hot dogs or mozzarella sticks. 7-11 was even offering a free big gulp with every purchase. I think you will be seeing more of these "hot-nosh vending machines" around especially in places were kosher food is hard to come by such as airports etc. The NYT has the scoop on this new kosher revolution.

NYT: Syrian Empire: SY's

The NYT has an interesting article that discusses both the wealth and culture of the Syrian Jewish community. Part of the article speaks of the clash between ashkenazim and the Syrian community.I was unaware that they were once described as Arabische Yidden — Arab Jews. It also talks about the edict in 1935 that disallowed the Syrians to marry converts. I was always surprised to learn that although wealthy, the Persian sefardic community does not really mingle with the Syrians.

Attorney Gen. Nails 2 Orthodox Jews for Medicaid Fraud!

The NYT has the story on a huge chillul hashem to hit the stands. Two orthodox Jews plead guilty to stealing more than $12 million dollars from medicaid. They owned a Brooklyn firm whose job was to place home health care aides.

The two men, Nachem Singer, 43, and Ervin Rubenstein, 43, both of Brooklyn, ran their agency, Immediate Home Care, from 1994 to 2006, according to Mr. Cuomo’s office. The company employed at least 2,000 home health aides, including a dozen who were convicted last week of working with phony certifications.According to the attorney general, the men hired home aides with inadequate training or fraudulent certification and provided them to agencies that in some cases billed Medicaid for work that was never done.Home health aides — who provide a variety of services, from administering medication to catheter care — are required to receive at least 75 hours of training, including 16 hours of practical training with a registered nurse, and to complete a written test in English.But Immediate Home Care recruited aides from a number of state-certified schools from which home health aide certificates could be purchased with little or no training, the attorney general said. Those included two New York City-based schools — Smalls Training and Counseling School and On Time Home Care Agency — whose owners pleaded guilty earlier this year to supplying hundreds of home health care aides with false certificates.

Jerusalem: Becoming an Arab City?

The NYT has a very distressing article about Jerusalem: more and more Jews are leaving the Holy City. There are more Jews leaving the city than coming in, the report claims.

In a 1967 census taken shortly after the war, the population of Jerusalem was 74 percent Jewish and 26 percent Arab. Today, the city is 66 percent Jewish and 34 percent Arab, with the gap narrowing by about 1 percentage point a year, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Jerusalem’s Jewish population is still growing despite the out-migration, but only by a little over 1 percent a year — not enough to match the annual 3 percent increase among Arabs.

One of the issue the article points to is that Jerusalem is too extreme religiously for most secular Israeli's. As more religious Jews move in, more secular Jews are moving out.