99% of all kosher wine is kosher for Passover. I'm Orthodox, and I've never had Manischewitz in my life.
The community didn't sue. An organization that claims to be the mouthpiece for one sub-segment of the broader group lumped together by the outside world as "the ultra-Orthodox community" sued.
It is absurd for the infecting mohel's name to not be released. In communities where members are typically socialized to be wary and suspicious of modern medicine, pointing to a link between the offending mohel and the infected child could be very instrumental in leading those who take part in the practice (which is hardly a "rite", as it is an unnecessary part of a separate mitzvah, founded in ancient medical practices not part of Torah she'baal peh) to realize the connection between infected mohelim and passing things on to babies.
As someone who would be described by others as a part of the "chareidi community", I personally feel no need to condemn Kamenetsky. While a certain subset of members of the chareidi community that organize around the Philadelphia yeshiva may be influenced by him, I cannot name one person within my segment of the chareidi community who would even be aware that Kamenetsky has come out with any opinion regarding vaccinations. You give him much more credit than he deserves. The article itself cites a much more universal chareidi rav, Rav Auerbach, who held the opposite position of Kamenetsky. In my experience, as I have stated before in comments on other similar articles, is that anti-vaccination opinions within the chareidi community have zero to do with rabbinic opinions, and everything to do with the sociology of a community attempting to define itself as intellectually and scientifically superior to the outside world. Articles and opinion pieces that appear in both the Yiddish and English language periodicals in my segment of the community are generally written by women who believe in the "holistic" medicine practiced by their great-great grandmothers in Carpathian outposts, not by anyone who would even consider bringing the notion of daas Torah into the discussion.
Halacha (Jewish law) does not see "maleness" and "femaleness" as unchangeable. Rav Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg, zt"l, a very chareidi or ultra-Orthodox rabbi, and the foremost authority on medical questions as they relate to Jewish law, gives the legal opinion in his treatise "Tzitz Eliezer" that when one has the external trappings of their gender changed (genitals removed/changed, breast growth, etc.), that they are their new gender according to Jewish law. The change is so strong, and so complete, that it is considered the "death" of the previous person, and as such any previous marriage is nullified as if the former person had died. A transgender person also, according to Rav Waldenberg, makes new brachot (blessings) each morning that recognize and affirm the new identity.
Most certainly true. My ancestors in New Orleans in the antebellum period were much more successful and welcomed than their relatives living in Philadelphia and New York.
Mizrahi, as the author states quite clearly. Sephardic Jews are those whose ancestors lived on the Iberian Peninsula in Spain and Portugal, then fleeing during the Inquisition to northern European locations, as well as places in North Africa, Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. The Jews who are descended from those refugees are Sephardim; Jews who were already living in the Middle East (as well as those living in Middle Eastern places where Sephardic refugees did not go) are termed "Mizrahi".
As much as I think he is a conspiracy nut, I must say that John Loftus has been telling this story for years in his books and articles.
You didn't have to go to Israel to write about this. We have it right here in America.
I've worn a kippah and Chasidishe garb on the streets in Scotland and never encountered a problem. I've found the country to be incredibly welcoming and friendly.
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Contraption