Ex-CTLawyer

I lived and worked there in the late 70s (based in Yeoville neighborhood of JoBurg). It had a vibrant Litvish community with Kollel then.
The country fell apart after the ANC took power and whites fled in droves.

I have been back a number of times, last in 2019, not much to attract young families. Those who can find suitable economic situations abroad, leave. Not just Jews, but whites in general.

@Syag
“Reb E – i don’t know why you and CTL keep saying that. ”
I haven’t said anything in this thread and it has been quite a while since I posted an opinion about the ACA.
For Mrs, CTL and Myself the ACA was wonderful (now we both are Medicare age and donlt use it). At age 60 she had a $2million medical expense and our prior commercial policy with the c=same carrier as our exchange issued policy capped at $1 Million. She also had preexisting conditions which would have disqualified her from renewing our prior policy (we got a letter informing us of it).
And yes the ACA policy bought through the CT Healthcare Exchange saved us lots of money.

BUT>>>>>>>>>>>the exchange and policies are not the same in all states, nor are costs or out of pockets. The last year we had an exchange issued plan the maximum family out of pocket was $6700 per year, not the $14,000 a CR reader posted. Different policy, different state and different year (Mrs. CTL went off Exchange policy in early 2021).

All of that said, I am disappointed in the ACA, the courts gutted its teeth when they did away with the financial penalty for not buying insurance. We need all the healthy young people in the pool to lower overall costs.
We had an exchange policy from the year they started until Mrs, CTL turned 65 in 2021. We didn’t have a single one of our doctors, hospitals, pharmacies or other providers who were not in the plan, so we didn’t have to change any providers. CT is a small state, no city has more than two hospitals so they all take all insurance written in the state. In big cities with dozens of hospitals there may be some who don’t take exchange plans and can still survive financially.

I can only speak from my experience, I can’t offer an opinion on current plans in the various states. That said, I would love to see a single payer national health plan to cover all Americans. I am willing to pay higher taxes to make it happen. I am a capitalist who believes in social programs for the greater good.

I have posted this in the past:
I don’t wear black suits on a daily basis, I wear extremely dark blue or gray. When I first became an attorney and went into court in a Black Yeshivish suit, white shirt and non-descript tie, a friendly older judge asked to see me in chambers. He pointed to his black robe and said that the only one wearing black in the courtroom should be the judge, it is a sign of respect to wear another dark color.
Although, I don’t appear on court most days, I never know when I might have to be there on a few minutes notice, so for decades I dress every day in a dark non-black suit.

My sons grew up seeing what I wear and they wore similar garb. They attended the same yeshivah in Brooklyn that I, my brothers, my father and uncles attended. Some wore Midnight Blue suits as I do, others felt the pressure to wear the ‘cheap black suits’ worn by most of the young men in order to fit in. The one thing that never happened was the Rosh Yeshiva telling any of us we had to wear a black suit.

Edited

That said, the majority of my Shabbos suits in the past 59 years have been black

@CTRebbe
You do not know which small town in Fairfield County I live in. But, the crime rate is extremely low, mostly car theft, etc in the area closest to the nearby ‘big’ city.
It is not a ‘bedroom’ town on the rail line to NYC for commuters, it wasn’t developed as a suburban but was a small colonial town, settled in the times before we were a nation.
It doesn’t have filth, in fact a few times a year civic groups organize for a tidy up day, and clean up any debris along roadways, parks, etc.

I know Waterbury and have for more than 6o years. My father had businesses there, so did I. I still own commercial property there. I would not send a teenager to live there. Boys leave the dorm and explore, even if it is going to the corner store for a soda.
None of my comments have any reflection on the quality of the Yeshiva.

I ask you this, since you are so gung ho on Waterbury……why the move and development in the rural farming community of Durham, when buildings were available so cheap in Waterbury? Some people didn’t want their youngsters living in the city.

Lastly, how long have you had an association with Waterbury??????????
I remember when it had a Jewish Center (that went bust and had to be sold to Post University) (I paid for a room there), had 3 Synagogues on or right off Cooke St, had a thriving Day school, kosher butcher and bakery. Do you remember any of this.
All the small mill towns along RT 8 had Jewish communities and synagogues that started out at orthodox in the late 1800s….Naugatuck, Torrington, Derby, Waterbury. Between the death of northern manufacturing, downtown shopping districts, white flight the Jews abandoned these places and a group of frum Jews saw an opportunity to grab housing and shul buildings for next to nothing and leave NYC for a different life.
In New Haven, where I was born and grew up, Catholic churches have closed with white flight and lack of funds. Chabad which had previously taken over the failed Young Israel, spent many millions buying the large St Brendan’s RCC and it’s school building for a new Yeshiva complex and dormitory. But for safety, the boys live within a fenced, protected ghetto abutting a neighborhood full of crime,

@lakewhut
putting words in my mouth I did not utter, again

I did not say I would not support the Yeshiva in Waterbury, I have written yearly checks since its inception. I said I would not send a boy to live in Waterbury, a city I consider and know to be filthy and dangerous.
I never mentioned politics in the 1960s. I said my family had been in business in Waterbury since 1958. My father opened his first store there in 1958 and eventually had 3. I owned and operated a garment factory there in the 80s and still own commercial property there.
Just last week I was there to appear in Family Court session of the Superior Court.

For 100 years Waterbury has been known for hills, mills and dirty necks….the mills closed down after the Arab Oil Embargo of the early 70s, but the hills and dirty necks remain. The local Jews abandoned Waterbury in white flight and the Yeshiva picked up their buildings for a song as well as a bargain political deal for the former UCONN Waterbury campus. Maybe to a Jew in Crown Heights or Bed Stuy Waterbury (the city, not the Yeshiva) isn’t that bad, but to suburbanites it is horrific.

@yserbius123

Mesira is not an issue. Non-profits, political polls, organizations, candidates and any company you have ever done business with are exempt from the No Call List provisions of the law.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
90% of the true SPAM calls are being placed from outside the USA, they use false caller ID numbers that are computer generated and our government has no enforcement powers.
Today I created a conference call and let the car warranty guy talk to the fake Social Security enforcement agent.

Hardest to get into???????????????????
For whom?

The son and grandson of alumni of the Yeshiva
The son or grandson of a businessman making a multimillion dollar donation?
The son of parents who can pay full tuition, room and board?
A scholarship applicant?
A BT?

There is no set answer and no level playing field.

I believe that the Arab world will put extreme pressure (and pay money) to the Arab party to withdraw from the coalition. It is in the Arab world’s best interests to have Israel without a government that can rule.

@Avik
You are correct about Ohio Nat’l Guard, not quite a senior moment, but I had been working on a trust for a client’s family in Illinois and had typed it so many times, it just flowed.
We went to the Service, not the cemetery.

Property Tax is local, not federal. so your stretch doesn’t apply. A yard or tag sale at a home is not at a place of public accommodation with licenses from Health Department, Sales tax permit, etc.

As I said, we didn’t live in the city and the funeral service was my sole interaction with Lindsay, so I pass no judgment on his prowess as mayor. Splitting ballots used to be more common in the past.

Our Town Council is subject to minority party representation rules. We have 7 districts, each represented by 3 Council members. A party may only run 2 candidates and win only two seats maximum. So if I vote for two Ds, I then vote for one of the two Rs on the ballot. In our district, this year, I detest one of the Rs and will vote for the other, who I merely dislike

@AviK
My parents left NYC in 1952. My grandparents were alive and living in NYC during the Lindsay administration and supported him, not so my aunt who lived in Queens during the snow removal debacle. He was mayor during the time that all northern US cities were falling apart; post Civil Rights Act, White Flight, Race Riots and departure of manufacturing for the cheaper sunbelt states.

I had only one personal interaction with him, back in 1970. He was seated in the row with my grandmother (Lindsay was next to her), mother and myself at the funeral of Jeffery Miller (my 3rd cousin who was murdered by the Illinois National Guard at Kent State). he was most solicitous and when my grandmother began to faint he had his staff remove her to his limo to rest and revive. My grandmother had traveled by public transit to the funeral (we had come from CT) and Lindsay had her transported home by a city detective in his vehicle.

@AviK
Restaurants are places of public accommodation, which is why they are subject to the civil rights laws. Even if not one morsel of food crossed state lines. They operate with licenses from health department and subject to inspection.

@always
Why did my family move to America?
I would have to break down 4 branches as I grew up hearing the stories from older generations.

My Mother’s father’s grandfather was a cigar maker in southern Germany (Hoc Deutsch) running his own factory. He was made a large offer by an American manufacturer to come to Upstate NY in 1868 and run their cigar factory. They moved the entire family with 2nd class passage, bought them a house in the upstate city and paid him a large salary and 10% ownership in the factory. My grandfather moved to NYC to get a medical degree and stayed.
My Mother’s Mother’s grandparents arrived in NYC from Frankfurt in 1869. The head of the family had been an attorney in Germany handling financial matters and he was brought over by a group of the ‘Our Crowd’ bankers (of the Goldman, Sachs ilk) to handle legal and financial issues concerning transactions and bond issues sold in Germany and Middle Europe. My grandmother was born in 1900 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, where German was the neighborhood language.

My Litvak Paternal Grandmother’s family started arriving in 1872, some traveling via England with a stay there of months or years. They were clothing or dry goods merchants and sought economic opportunities not available in the pale. Over a period of 10 years, the Great-great-grandparents, 9 children, 9 spouses and about 30 children arrived in Manhattan. By 1886 they were in Brooklyn and small towns throughout the northeast running the general or dry goods store. My Paternal grandmother was born 1896 in a small New England town where her uncle’s family ran the local department store until the 1960s. Her father, having only daughters moved them to Brooklyn about 1915 to find husbands, leaving the store to his brothers and nephews.
My Litvak Paternal father’s family was last to arrive in 1878. Some cousins had moved to Chicago about 10 years earlier and left horse raising for the leather clothing and accessories business (because of the great meat processing business in Chicago, lots of cheap hides were available with great train transportation to ship finished goods). They brought my great Grandparents and their children to NY to set up a clothing manufacturing business, to add cloth items to the family line. My grandfather, was the youngest child and born in Manhattan about 1894. they had been making a fair living in the Pale, but did not like the chances of the sons being forced into the Czar’s army. The cousins in Chicago arranged the US immigration visas and passage by ship from Bremerhaven.

None of the stories told spoke of leaving Europe because of anti-Semitism, and the Litvak side left before the 1880s pogroms hit their village (which is now in Belarus).

To the best of my knowledge all the assorted extended family in these 4 branches had made it to the USA or England before WWI. My paternal Grandfather was a corporal in the US Army in WWI.

@AviK
You defeated your own argument when you wrote that the government can create public forums on the internet. If the Government creates the forum, it is Government action and the First Amendment applies.
Back in the early days of the internet, when we paid to belong/use the bulletin boards such as Compuserve, AOL, etc. The Interstate Commerce Clause might have applied. BUT, when there is no fee for Facebook, Instagram or Twitter it would be a far stretch to call participation Interstate Commerce.
There are thousands of FB groups that are geographically local in scope. I am the admin or moderator of a number of them that require proof of local residency to join and/or participate. No Interstate Commerce there. My Democratic Town Committee has a private FB group. Only members of the DTC, who must be registered voters in the Town can see the group and participate, again nothing Interstate about it.

@always
I did not ask him how he planned to vote.
That said your supposition about Jews and Democrats is inaccurate. When we were growing up the Republican Party of the northeast was liberal, and may Jews voted for people such as Nelson Rockefeller, Kenneth Keating, John V. Lindsay. Lowell Weicker, etc.

@AviK
The Picture ID should be currently valid.
In CT Drivers Licenses are issued every 6 years.
College or High School IDs are issued yearly
Most Employee IDs are updated every few years

@Reb Eliezer
The affidavit requires a lot of personal info that is verified with records in the Registrar’s office
Full Legal Name
Date and place of Birth
Address
Phone
Social Security Number.

Remember CT is a small state. Our town has only about 26,000 registered voters and 7 polling places. With 3 checkers from each party on duty at all times, plus two moderators, two asst, Registrars of Voters, two ballot clerks and two clerks working the tabulating machine the chances are near 100% that at least one of the poll workers will know any voter who shows up.
I’ve worked the same polling location for 15 years, I probably know 60% of the voters who come in.
I won’t know new arrivals in town or the 18 year olds voting the first time, but chances are they will be known.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Quick story….
My father always went to NYC by train on Tuesdays and then voted on his way home from the train station, back in 1974 (before we had an ID requirement and drivers licenses didn’t have pictures), I was a poll worker. At 7:45PM a man walked in gave his address as his own and then my father’s name. I yelled out Challenge and asked the Moderator to have the man arrested. The moderator said how do you know? I said, that is not my father, whose name and address were given to get a ballot.
Three minutes later my father walked in to vote. The policeman asked for his ID, then cuffed the first man and led him away.

@RebEliezer
‘currently we vote through signature recognition’

WHOA…hold your horses. Each state sets their own rules.
We do NOT use signature recognition in CT. Speaking as an asst. Registrar of Voters who works as a supervisor at the polls on Election Day: In CT voters are asked to present a picture ID, but not required, they can refuse and sign an affidavit that they are registered to vote and then vote. Their ballots are held separately and not put through the tabulating machine at the polling location. They are placed in a bag, which is sealed by the moderator and sent to Town Hall. The affidavit is verified and if acceptable the vote tabulated with absentee ballots.
The checkers at the poll look at the picture ID and the person presenting it and see if it looks like the same person. They do NOT look at signatures. The voter does not sign anything at the polls and the signature from the voter registration form is not available to be checked.
At this point we have many senior citizens voting who registered more than 60 years ago. Their signatures may be quite different from when the registered.
I registered 49 years ago and my signature is not even close to what is was when I was 18. The Town Clerk was not required to retain original registrations all these years. The last twenty years’ applications have been digitized in our town.

Please avoid the word WE when you have no idea if what you post is universal,

@AviK
The First Amendment applies to GOVERNMENT ACTION. It has nothing to do with big tech or other private concerns.
A private concern has the right to decide who it allows to post or not.
If the government ordered a private concern to allow an individual to post, that would be a great threat to Democracy

Way back when most TV and radio (in the USA) was broadcast over the ‘public airways’ and the FCC ordered equal time provisions for opposing viewpoints. That could NOT be extended to cable, satellite or internet platforms. It has since been dropped for broadcast networks, who claimed it was an unfair burden since most of the competition wasn’t subject to the same requirements

@Mesivta bachur

The late Yekke….is dead
No live Yekke worthy of the name is ever late.

We were brought up with the attitude that if you are not 20 minutes early you are late. BUT you arrive exactly on time.
10am appointment, you are parked outside the place and at 9:58 you exit the car, adjust your clothing, make sure you have everything you need and walk to the door. You ring the bell (or of a business location you enter exactly at 10am…NOT 9:59, NOT 10:01, but 10:00am.

This comes from my Yekke mother.
Just as Chicken soup is made with dill
Yiddish never spoken in the house…..it was used/learned for business, but as OMA called it a gutter language it remained outside.
BTW>>>>>before someone chimes in with what the Germans did to Jews who were so comfortable in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, our family left Germany for America in the 1860s. Our Litvish family were latecomers, arriving at Castle Garden (Battery Park) in 1872.

My mother’s side was Yekke, my father’s Litvak.
Opa and Oma were quite unhappy that my mother married a peasant from the east (even though both my parents were third generation in America.
My Opa was one of three brothers, but all fathered only daughters. My mother’s sister did marry a Yekke. He had one son and that son’s three male children (now in their 30s follow the Yekke ways.

Opa bought me a Talis for my Bar Mitzvah. I wore it when I went to his shul in NY, but not in my Zaidy’s shul in Brooklyn. Mt father has asked the Rav in our shul in New Haven and was told that I should war it when in shul with my Opa to honor his tradition.

the demise of the kehilla in Washington Heights has been a sharp blow to the Yekke Community. When I was a teen and twenty something their were loads of Yekkes in the Rockaways. My Opa and Oma had a summer place there, wintering in the city.

Reb Eliezer

There is NO law that separates religion and state in the USA.
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

This means Congress may not pass a law establishing an official religion of the USA.. We have no ‘Church of the USA’ while there is a ‘Church of England’ and the English Monarch it titular head of the Church.
Government meetings, sessions of Congress are free to open with prayers. In 1962 The Supreme Court ruled that there could be no school prayer. The members of Congress are adults (although they may not act that way, while young schoolchildren are impressionable and subject to indoctrination, and peer and teacher pressure.

The second clause says that Congress may not interfere with the practice of religion. This is what allows minorities such as Jews to observe and practice our religion in the USA.

Personally, I believe the second clause is far more important than the first. I could care less if there was an official Church of the USA id inhabitants could not be required to belong or adhere to the religion and no tax dollars spent on its buildings and operations….as long as Congress could not interfere with the practice of other religion.

The term Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution, but was used by Thomas Jefferson to explain the operation of the two clauses of the First Amendment referring to religion.

Rabbi………………….
There never was a President Regan
I detested him, but he deserves to have his name spelled correctly: REAGAN

His trickle down voodoo economics was the start of the destruction of the American middle class.

Now we know why they are “self” funding

Who is setting up the Kiddush…………….
Male members of the shul?
Female members of the shul?
Paid employees of the shul?
The caterer’s staff?

It makes a difference.