Yeah, where you been?

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

It is sad that Yoseph Robinson had to die so tragically (his killer is now in custody) before the world (according to the NY Times) would take notice of Jews of color. Yes, duh, there are black (Orthodox) Jews. There's actually a heck of a lot of them!

Jew of color powerhouses Yitz "Y-Love" Jordan and Shais "MaNishtana" Rison are featured prominently in the NY Times in an article called "Being Black and Jewish, And Seeing No Contradiction".

Yoseph Robinson's Funeral

Yoseph Robinson Fund

Yoseph is survived by his parents; his children, Chelsea, Chae, Cordell and Chana and his girlfriend Lahava Shneor and a multitude of friends who will miss him dearly.

Please watch this fascinating video and more from Yoseph Robinson's YouTube page:



Blogger MaNishtana will be collecting funds this week in order to donate Yom Kippur machzors to the Flatbush Park Jewish Center in Yoseph Robinson's name. If you knew him you'd know the high level of respect he gave his seforim, so this would only be a fitting and appropriate way to honor his memory. The price is $20/book. Anyone interested please contact me at manishtanablog@gmail.com.

Yoseph's funeral will take place this Monday night in Boro Park. According to the Daily News, it will be held at Shomrei Hadas Chapel, 3803 14th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11218-3609. The number of the funeral home is (718) 436-8700. Please call 718-796-4730 for further details.

More updated news on Yoseph Robinson and his brutal death:

"Clerk Dies A Hero" (NY Post)

"Yoseph Robinson's life was remarkable journey from petty criminal to observant Jew" (NY Daily News)

"'I would look at him and say, 'Yoseph, how can you be black and be Jewish?' a grieving pal, Joane Tomas, 25, said. 'And Yoseph would just look at me with this big smile and say, 'It's not about color, it's about faith.'"

"New York Loses One of Its Most Interesting Dudes" (NY Magazine)

"Up From The Streets, Then Gunned Down" (NY Times)

"That a robber had felled a man who spoke of turning away from violence struck Ms. Wallace as particularly painful. 'It was a coward’s act,' she said. 'He took away such a bright light. It was unnecessary. He took the most precious thing that was in that store.'"

"Death of a Hip Hop Jew" (MyJewishLearning.com)

"NY Police offer reward for killer of Jamaican Jew" (Jamaica Observer)

"Police Search for Gunman in Botched Liquor Store Robbery" (NY Times/City Room)

"A long journey ends in gunfire: remembering Yoseph Robinson" (Jewish Star)

"Robinson was a popular fixture in the Brooklyn Jewish community and after his death hundreds gathered by the liquor store. Shais Rison, another close friend of Robinson’s, who blogs under the name MaNishtana, received the news while he was on the train. Usually, he along with Shneor, spent Thursday evening with Robinson in the store. This past Thursday, he had missed their usual get-together.

'I was hoping it was the worst practical joke in the world,' he said when he was told about the news. 'I didn’t believe it. We lost one of our brightest lights last night, as people, as Jews, as Jews of color.'

'I don’t see how Hashem could take such a beautiful neshoma away from us,' Akedah Fulcher, another friend wondered. 'He was a proud person, he made being multicultural and Jewish fun. [The media] keeps on focusing on him being a convert, I would rather them focus on the fact that he was a Jew. His cultural background enhanced his Jewish identity. He could have contributed so much…. Hashem gives and Hashem takes.'"

"Remarkable Journey of Hero Clerk Yoseph Robinson O"H's Life; Police Offer 12,000 Reward" (Voz Iz Neias?)

"'On Facebook, Robinson wrote that to resist the pull of his old life he only had to see his tzitzis, a fringed garment worn by observant Jewish men, and 'a smile spreads across my face.'"

"Yoseph Robinson, Former Hip-Hop Exec Turned Orthodox Jew, Murdered in Robbery" (BV Black Spin)

"Yoseph Robinson girlfriend says shooting 'like a horror movie,'; NYPD offers $12K for crime tips" (NY Daily News)

"Former Hip-Hop Exec and Orthodox Jew Fatally Shot in Robbery" (Gothamist)

"Hip-hop artist turned Orthodox Jew murdered in Brooklyn" (JTA)

Ki Tavoh

It begins as a misunderstanding, then, an argument follows. The argument becomes a confrontation and by week’s end, a former friend is now counted a foe.

The chasm is daunting—the feud—seemingly, irreparable. Days go by, months perhaps, even years.

But in the heart, there is some regret. There is a seed of doubt, a specter of apology, but the past holds us. In the parched earth of anger, there is no place for it to grow.

In this week’s Parashah, Ki Tavoh, there is an extraordinary commandment. “You shall not see the donkey of your brother or his ox fallen on the road and hide yourself from them; but you shall surely stand them up, with him.” (Deuteronomy 22.4)

Every so often, a door opens, a way out of hostility and bitterness. My enemy’s donkey, laden with a thousand slights, lays fallen on the road. Naturally, one hesitates. It seems better to hide, to pretend not to see. ‘Why should I trouble myself, for one who has caused me such grief?’But buried in your enemy's heart, though laden with hurt, there also contains a seed of regret.

So you walk over, and together, with your enemy, you unload the beast of burden.

It is so rare to be given such an opportunity. If it comes, don’t let it go to waste.

By Rabbi Yehuda (not Aliza) Hausman

Baruch Dayan Emet

Yoseph Robinson, a 35-year-old Jamaican former hip-hop record exec who converted to Orthodox Judaism, was killed last night during a robbery at the Flatbush kosher-wine store where he worked, police and witnesses said.

Readmore: "Brooklyn liquor-store slaying"

Yoseph, we kept saying we were going to meet to discuss your memoir but we never did get together. We were never in the same place at the right time. You will be dearly missed by all your friends and loved ones and everyone whose live you touched.

"JAMAICAN HIP-HOPPER TURNED ORTHODOX JEW: A CANDID TALK WITH YOSEPH ROBINSON"

New Yeshiva Bochurs on the Block: From Kaifeng, China to Yeshiva in Israel!

I'd heard this story before and even posted a You Tube video, which put me in tears, of watching the descendants of Kaifeng Jews arrive for the first time in Israel.

But what all the previous stories seemed to forget, this new story in The Forward, "Israel’s Keenest Yeshiva Students Catching Up With China’s Kaifeng Jewish Community" focuses on. It puts names and stories to the faces of the students. As a fan aptly put it, "In other words, they reported about human beings, not soulless avatars."

Black Haitian Jewish Convert Loses Custody of Child After Conversion

Blogger MaNishtana is getting serious and asking people to sign a petition to help a black Haitian Jewish convert who has been treatly unjustly by child services both Jewish and non-Jewish and has lost custody of her son ("Let's Sign This and Get Something Done") it would seem because of her conversion to Judaism.

A fact: Anyone can call child services anonymously on a parent and make their life miserable. I had a relative who called child services regularly on someone she disliked to make her life impossible and get her child removed from the home. The child was repeatedly taken away and then put back in her mother's custody when it was discovered the anonymous tips were unfounded. Sadly, I have called child services myself but never had the luck of getting a social worker who actually did anything to ameliorate the situation.

This is the kind of story you will have to tell yourself isn't true because if you believed it, you'd realize just how screwed up ACS (the Administration of Childrens' Services) and the foster care system truly are in New York City and you wouldn't be able to live with yourself...or sleep at night knowing that this is what happens.

Unfortunately, as I have had personal experience with ACS (and a half-sister who went through the foster care system), I can tell you that this story MaNishtana has chosen to publish is not a tall tale or an uncommon one.

I had to fight for three years to get custody of my sister and every court date, I sat with parents and children who could tell you stories that would give you nightmares. I fought for three years as my 14-year-old sister inched closer and closer to her 18th birthday:

1. even after a court psychiatrist had proven my mother mentally unfit and I had proven that I was working two jobs to support us both (at only age 21)

2. even after ACS couldn't spell any of our names right or get any information correct about us in their reports, they said they thought my sister should remain in my mother's custody because we hadn't proven that she was unfit or physically abusive though they had done very little to investigate our situation.

3. even after an ACS social worker gave my mother my home phone number (but luckily not my address, too!) after ignoring my careful explanations that I had had to get several restraining orders--"orders of protection"--against my mother since running away from home at 17 because she had threatened to kill me and stalked me for numerous years after. I had to disconnect the phone and the answering machine because my sister would sob and shake every time she heard my mother's voice on the machine. I started having recurring nightmares too (I had them for years after running away and receiving graphic death threats from my mother) after hearing my mother's voice.

3. even though we provided ACS with a 13-page document (size 10 font) that listed all the encounters my sisters and I could remember collectively of the neglect and outright emotional, mental and physical abuse we had experienced in our mother's hands.

4. even though my (normally deadbeat) father who shared custody wrote a letter sent via Fedex to ACS that said my mother was unfit and I should be given custody (yeah, don't ask me where he was the first 17 years of my life!).

4. even though plenty of friends and family were willing to testify to knowing about the abuse and my mother's mental state (yeah, don't ask me where they were while I was living in fear for 17 years of my life!).

5. and an ACS social worker told my 14-year-old sister that family was family and if my mother felt she had to keep beating us that was okay and my sister didn't have it as bad as he had in Africa

6. even though my sister threatened to kill herself if returned to my mother's home (and she had told ACS and the court of her first suicide attempt at age 10 which occurred right after I ran away from home at 17 and my mother threatened to kill all my siblings--not the first time she had threatened to kill them. My mother had also told my siblings to pack their bags because she told them that if she didn't kill them, she would throw them away in the garbage with all their things).

7. even though it was proven by the aforementioned court psychiatrist that my mother couldn't tell right from wrong.

After hearing about my story from my bosses at CosmoGIRL! magazine, Dateline NBC wanted to do a story about me kidnapping my sister and fighting for custody of her. I had to decline because if I was told by my pro-bono lawyers that it would seem like I had kidnapped my sister for the publicity and "money" even though Dateline NBC was not offering to pay me but only hoped to highlight the ills of ACS.

And during the three year custody battle, even though I went to the welfare office in person, my mother continued to receive welfare checks for the two sisters I had kidnapped and for years, my sisters went without healthcare and I had to take them to free clinics because my mother refused to turn over their Medicaid cards.

Years later, when young Alejandra Sanchez was beaten to death with a mop handle by her mother, I pitched a story ("The Wrong Side of a Mop Handle") about how I too had been beaten with a mop handle by my own mother and only by the grace of G-d had happened to survive to escape and come back to help my sisters (but not my youngest sister which to this day ACS has been left in my mother's custody), a prominent NYC paper said it wanted to print the story but was scared of the legal repercussions even after I faxed them copies of court documents that backed up everything I had written.

Now if this blog post combined with MaNishtana's blog post doesn't spur you to action to AT LEAST sign this petition then I don't know what will.

A friend who read MaNishtana's blog quickly wrote back, "This is unbelievable. It can't be true." I nearly cried. I wish it was with disbelief. I wrote back: "But how could anyone who knows the intimate details of what me and my sister went through doubt yet another equally horrifying story?" Because every single day, people choose to put their heads in the sand willfully while they stand idly by as children all over the world are beaten, raped and tortured and robbed of their childhoods, of their innocence. I know this because I have lived it.

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION!

Imagining the day they come to take your Judaism away

Not a big fan of Shalom Auslander but I couldn't put down his latest piece in Tablet Magazine, "Up in Smoke: Imagining the day they come to take your Judaism away".

It was like a train wreck I couldn't look away from. I'm still processing what I read.

Whenever I talk to people about what has been going on the last couple of years in the world of Orthodox conversion and what has been going on in Israel with even born Jews having trouble proving their Jewishness to the satisfaction of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, I am always struck by how little people know about the situation. Don't these people read the Jerusalem Post? Jewish Week? The Jewish Journal? Any Jewish news? How could they have missed all the conversion scandals of the past few years?

Well, honestly, I think it's easy to ignore what's been going on unless it directly affects you. Most of us live in our own bubbles. Even if we read or watch the news every day, we often read only the stuff that applies to us. I realize, disheartened, that unless it's you or your children or grandchildren potentially or currently being denied the privilege of getting married in Israel, of making aliyah to Israel, of converting to Judaism, then it's easy to stay in that bubble, never come out and not to worry daily about a future where your Judaism can be taken away from you or become so perverted, you almost wish it had.

But I am impressed and awestruck by what I see in many recent articles about the now infamous Israeli conversion bill. There has been so much, too much, miscommunication over this bill. I won't even get into all the confusing details, which are easily Google-able. The facts are besides the point of this post.

What I see that impresses me is that it's not just converts anymore who are writing about their stories and how the current conversion climate will affect them, their children and grandchildren. I see also people who are lucky enough to have been born Jewish coming to the defense of converts and potential converts worldwide.

I see these people who are lucky enough to have been born Jewish repeat over and over again that what affects converts ultimately affects the entire Jewish people, not just converts and their immediate family because the entire Jewish people IS a family. What happens to one Jew affects all Jews. It is a quick step from making the everyday lives of converts and potential converts miserable to making the lives of every Jew (born Jewish or not) miserable and making anyone and everyone's Judaism suspect.

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

The Chief Rabbi of Israel responds to all the fuss over the conversion bill. (NY Times)

Fan Mail

Dear Fans:

I am really thankful to all of you who have sent such wonderful fan letters my way. I am so glad that you've found the blog interesting, entertaining and even educational!

Unfortunately, there have been so many letters lately that answering them, in my current health condition, has become overwhelming and impossible. I promise that although, I am unable to currently respond to each email individually, I read every single one.

If you are contacting me about conversion and need an immediate response, please consider joining my online Orthodox conversion support group (a direct link here). You will automatically receive a questionnaire you must fill out before your membership is approved.If you're not converting Orthodox, I can recommend other online groups.

If you are looking for a referral to a local rabbi or synagogue, please send a BRIEF email with the following information:

1. full name (first and last)

2. age

3. where you are living currently (city, state)

4. information about your previous/current interactions with Judaism (including books you've read, rabbis you've already connected to, if family members are Jewish, events and classes you've attended, etc).

Many of your questions may be answered just by reading through old posts or links that I have posted on the left-hand side of this blog. Please take a look at my portfolio and bio, which includes many articles about my own personal conversion story.

Thank you!!!

P.S. By the way, I do not respond to hate mail so don't even bother.

Back by popular demand

On Shabbos, someone tried to sing "Happy Birthday" and someone else switched to the Hebrew version and last but not least, the Spanish version: Feliz Cumpleaños! But none of those were right. Where were my great-grandmother Abuela and my grandmother who I still call Mami there to sing this for me?

Here is the song my family sings along with "Happy Birthday" or rather "Feliz Cumpleaños." It's called "Estas son las Mañanitas."

Las Mañanitas Lyrics:

Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David,
Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti,
Despierta, mi bien, despierta, mira que ya amaneció,
Ya los pajarillos cantan, la luna ya se metió.

Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte,
Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte,
Ya viene amaneciendo, ya la luz del día nos dio,
Levántate de mañana, mira que ya amaneció.

Translation:

This is the morning song that King David sang
Because today is your saint's day we're singing it for you
Wake up, my dear, wake up, look it is already dawn
The birds are already singing and the moon has set

How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you
We all came with joy and pleasure to congratulate you
The morning is coming now, the sun is giving us its light
Get up in the morning, look it is already dawn

I'm 30!

Yesterday, I turned 30 years old. Thanks to the fan who donated $25. She didn't even know it was my birthday but it was the perfect present! Of course, now that I'm 30, I will be telling people I'm 25. Until I'm 40.

Anyway, now that I am 30, I look back on how far I've come (and how far I hope to go), I don't even know what to say. If at 13, the first time I had decided to convert, you would have told me that I was going to end up a rabbi's wife, I would have said, "What's a rabbi?"

Funny how these things turn out, huh? Not only am I married to a rabbi but I think I have more rabbis on my speed-dial than most people I know. Most of my dear friends are rabbis and their wives.

G-d willing, I will have the opportunity to use this to the advantage of all the converts and newly observant Jews who email me on a day-to-day basis looking for support on their newfound journey.