"Miriam Engel" is to be found at Instagram.
Whoever she really is I do not know but "she" is an AI creation but with a twist.
The creator obviously is from within the Satmar (or closely related) court of Hassidim, uses largely Yiddish and deals with very Haredi/Jewish subjects and themes.
And does so in sometimes an outrageous but good-hearted and humorous manner.
Here is one of here more 'shocking' series, with her on a motorcycle and the results of the wind:
@NYCMayor
Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic. When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus
My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.
We have lost so many these last two months + I understand the instinct to gather to mourn. But large gatherings will only lead to more deaths + more families in mourning. We will not allow this. I have instructed the NYPD to have one standard for this whole city: zero tolerance.
Select instances of noncompliance in Haredi communities, while certainly real, are given outsized attention in news media and internet discourse, creating a sensationalist public discourse that falsely suggests that Haredim, as a homogenous bloc, refuse to practice social distancing. The scapegoating of Haredim is increasing
If you watch the video, you will see a person barking orders. He is concerned that the people in the street aren’t wearing masks. In all likelihood, his concern is probably more based on the continuing negative publicity that this Hasidic funeral will generate from the media!
We strongly denounce the vicious attacks against the Mayor, particularly those accusing him of anti-Semitism. The close relationship between Mr. De Blasio and our community go back close to two decades, during which time we have come to know, respect and appreciate his understanding and sensitivity to the unique needs of our community. We consider him a dear friend and pray for his success.
it is especially dangerous to single out the Jewish community in a city that is experiencing a substantial rise in violent anti-Semitism.The Department of Justice should not hesitate to closely monitor New York City to ensure that the mayor’s rhetoric does not translate into constitutional violations
reached out to a number of Jewish community leaders in the last few days to clarify his tweet. He added: “I regret that I used words in the wrong way — in terms of giving the wrong impression, but I don’t regret sounding the alarm.”Was the attack on de Blasio an attempt to cover for what has been described as a gross failure of leadership by Jews from all types of communities?
"Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the fear of it, man would swallow his fellow alive."
De Blasio repeatedly failed to act on a surge of antisemitic attacks in NYC, and sought to dismiss them as the work of the right and the fault of Donald J. Trump.De Blasio announced he had mixed feelings about the Trump Executive Order on campus antisemitism, because protecting Jews from campus antisemitism allegedly infringes on free speech rights.De Blasio’s own subordinates attacked De Blasio’s repeated attempts to whitewash African American antisemitism on the grounds that ALL antisemitism is right-wing.
Threatening to arrest “the Jewish community” for violation of social distancing by a minority faction, cast a further shadow that validated Jew-hatred and a backlash of antisemitic violence and response in America’s largest city. This is unacceptable and the Mayor needs to step down from his office as he is “unfit to serve” as the leader of a city that is home to the one million-plus Jewish community he was set in place to serve. “Rounding up” the Jewish community for arrest in the public forum speaks of a time we must never allow to re-emerge.
Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, one of the heads of the Ponovezh yeshiva in Bnei Brak, gave a Torah class in which he explained why he believes most of those infected with coronavirus in Israel were from the haredi community._____________________
"We need to understand something - in Israel and around the world, there are haredim who died of this plague more than anyone else," Kikar Hashabbat quoted Rabbi Edelstein as saying. "The Chazon Ish (Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz - ed.) said that when people sin, it's by accident. A haredi who sins is doing it on purpose. Judgement is harsher for haredim."
The mass protest was called for by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the Grand Rabbi Of the Satmar Chasidim, who took part in the demonstration, and by other Rabbinic Rabbis.
“Life is Judaism’s most precious commodity; its preservation and the prevention of bloodshed are its more central tenet. When life is in jeopardy all commandments that guide Jewish life must be set aside in order to preserve human life. My heart therefore aches over the endless loss of innocent life just to hold on to lands inhabited by one’s enemies. I therefore deeply respect and support you and pray that divine providence guides your every move.
“Some Israeli politicians resist relinquishing any part of the holy land claiming religious prohibitions. This is wholly fallacious! In fact, after the destruction of Israel in 69 CE, Jews were commanded to await divine redemption and prohibited from conquering the land. To this day Jews yearn and pray for the divinely inspired return to Jerusalem… The modern State of Israel stands in contravention of the Almighty’s prohibition. Its effort to cloak itself in religion as a means of continuing the contravention of the Almighty is laughable if it weren’t so sad.”
...Rabbi Glanz, who resigned last week as a part-time city chaplain after it was revealed he had arranged a lavish six-hour bar mitzvah party in a New York City jail for the son of a prisoner.
To the uninitiated, Rabbi Glanz’s ability to pull off such an outlandish event may seem wondrous. Certainly, concern over how the celebration came to be authorized, as it was by top Correction Department officials, has resulted in multiple investigations.
But interviews and city records show that Rabbi Glanz has a long history of access and influence, of seeking favors and performing them, and of acting as a liaison between the insular world of the Satmars and elected officials.
For two decades, he has been something of a Satmar master of ceremonies, arranging official tours of the community, based in Williamsburg, translating Yiddish for political leaders, charming mayors and their aides with gifts, then soliciting money and support for his sect’s priorities.
A rumpled 51-year-old who often juggles cellphones and has favored a sport utility vehicle equipped with lights and sirens...
...allied with a less powerful Satmar faction, but one that retains power.
That power was evident in the spring of 2008 at the meeting with the new state police superintendent, recorded by the Yeshiva World News Web site, when Senator Adams asked the Satmar to back Governor Paterson.
The family of Aryeh Leibish Teitelboim, one of six people killed when the Chabad House in Mumbai was attacked by Islamist militants last week, has rejected Israel's offer to hold an official memorial ceremony for him along with the other Jewish and Israeli fatalities.
"The murder victim was educated in the ways of Satmar, which opposes the State of Israel," one of Teitelboim's relatives told Haaretz. "How can he turn into a symbol of the State of Israel? The family is very concerned about what will happen here at the ceremony. They are angry about the whole matter, it is a very sensitive issue."
An upstate rabbi barricaded himself inside his home early yesterday after FBI agents came to arrest him for allegedly sexually abusing his daughter. The feds had to break down two doors to collar Israel Weingarten, 58, who was hiding in his bedroom, a prosecutor said in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Weingarten is charged with sexually abusing the victim starting in 1990 when she was 9 years old, and the molestation continued until she was 18.
...Weingarten [is] living...in the Satmar community of Kiryas Joel in Monroe, Orange County. The prosecutor said the kids have been "brainwashed" to believe what he wants them to believe about the abuse of their sister.
Defense attorney Kenneth Gribtez said the allegations are "stale," dating back 11 years, and stem from a bitter divorce between Weingarten and his wife...
The prosecution's court papers accused Weingarten of trying to kidnap the victim in England and assaulting a rabbi and his wife, who were protecting her.
Gribetz asked the judge to free Weingarten without bail or on a personal security bond, arguing his client "had no reason to flee."
Azrack said she was disturbed not only by the nature of the allegations but by Weingarten's behavior when the FBI came to his home. She said she believed he may be a danger to his own relatives.
"I'm not inclined to release him under any circumstances," the judge said. "I question how rational he is and whether he is willing to obey orders of the court."
His daughter began attending a school in Manchester England in 1996 with the help of some community members, which gave her some protection from her father.
However, during the summer of 1997 Weingarten brought his daughter alone to New York for a few weeks and then to Belgium for a month, without any other family members present.
“The abuse the victim suffered while alone with her father in Belgium was the worst she endured,” state court documents...
...In 1999 the daughter refused to leave England to return home during the holidays, and Weingarten attempted to kidnap her from a family which was trying to protect her. During the attempted kidnapping Weingarten forced his way into the home of the head rabbi of the school and assaulted the rabbi and his wife.
Afterwards the daughter fully broke from her family and from the Sat Mar community. She reported her father’s abuse to the FBI in 2003.
...this was Orange County, and the victims — a husband and wife who are members of the Hasidic sect known as Satmars — said they were being harassed by those in their own insular world here.
The woman, Toby Greenberg, told the police that the root of the harassment was her decision to deviate slightly from the culture of modesty that defines and reinforces this Orthodox Jewish enclave of bewigged women in long-sleeved shirts and ankle-length skirts and bearded men in black hats and long black coats.
According to the police, Mrs. Greenberg said she was singled out because she chose to wear denim skirts, long, natural-looking wigs made of human hair, and stockings without a visible seam — traditionally worn because they show that women’s legs are not bare.
The incidents offered a rare glimpse into the strict social dynamics that govern life in this village of 20,000 people, an hour from Manhattan and not far from West Point. It is a place where television and the Internet are forbidden and women do not drive, restrictions intended to provide a haven from the temptations of the outside world.
...“If we find they have a TV or a married woman won’t wear a wig, we will invite them to speak with us and try to convince them it’s unacceptable, or next year we will not accept their children into the school system,” said David Ekstein, the vice president of the village’s leading congregation, Yetev Lev, and one of eight men who make up the committee, hand-picked by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the town’s spiritual leader.
...the New York State Police started to investigate the case of Mrs. Greenberg, the 25-year-old mother of a young daughter, and her husband, Yoel, who accused the vaad hatznius of orchestrating the harassment. According to the police, leaflets calling the couple immoral and threatening them with expulsion were scattered in the streets and delivered to their home.
In September, the tires of their Chevrolet Impala were slashed and the warning “Get out, defiled person” was slathered in Yiddish in white paint on a window of their Mazda CX-7. That was when Mrs. Greenberg approached the authorities — a rare move in a community that is loath to attract attention from secular law enforcement.
...“People are hot-blooded. They see her on the street and have asked her nicely to stop wearing tight-fitted clothing, but she wouldn’t listen,” said a woman working at Kiryas Joel Shoes, who identified herself only as Sarah. “If she had behaved as she does inside the four walls of her house, it would have been fine, but on the street is different. She turned it into a dirty public thing.”
And although Sarah, a mother of 11 children, did not condone any efforts to drive the Greenbergs from the community, she said: “They’re not after you if you go off a little bit. You really have to do something to bring shame.”
After two months of fruitless inquiries, the police closed the investigation last month. “Pick any ethnic group and people are suspicious at times,” said Sgt. Warner Hein of the State Police. “They don’t want to be seen as cooperating, even at the expense of tragedies in their own community.”
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