Podcasts about Crown Heights

My interview with Randi starts at 25 mins Stand Up is a daily podcast that I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more RANDI WEINGARTEN is president of the 1.8 million-member AFT, which represents teachers; paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state and federal government employees; and early childhood educators. The AFT is dedicated to the belief that every person in America deserves the freedom to thrive, fueled by opportunity, justice and a voice in our democracy. This freedom is achieved through an economy that works for all, including the ability to form a union; great public schools and affordable higher education; healthcare as a right; retirement security; the right to vote and civil rights; a vibrant democracy; and safe, welcoming and healthy environments and communities. The AFT and its members advance these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through members' work—we care, fight, show up and vote. Prior to her election as AFT president in 2008, Weingarten served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2, representing approximately 200,000 educators in the New York City public school system, as well as home child care providers and other workers in health, law and education. Weingarten is the recipient of many commendations; she was included in Washingtonian's 2021 Washington's Most Influential People, City & State New York's 2021 New York City Labor Power 100, and Washington Life's 2018 Power 100 list of prominent leaders, and in 2017 received the Roosevelt Institute's FDR Distinguished Public Service Award. In 2013, the New York Observer named Weingarten one of the most influential New Yorkers of the past 25 years. Weingarten has led the AFT's efforts to strengthen public education for all children and to address the crisis in the teaching profession caused by deep disinvestment and the deprofessionalization of teaching. Through the AFT's Fund Our Future campaign, AFT members and leaders throughout the country are fighting for adequate investment in public education. Parents and many others have joined the AFT's efforts to end the overuse and misuse of standardized tests, and to fix—not close—struggling schools, something Weingarten has advocated since her involvement in the creation of New York City's Chancellor's District, which dramatically improved achievement in what had been some of the city's lowest-performing schools. Weingarten has launched major efforts to place real education reform high on the nation's and her union's agendas. She created the AFT Innovation Fund, a groundbreaking initiative to support sustainable, innovative and collaborative education reform projects developed by members and their local unions. At Weingarten's direction, the AFT developed a model to transform teacher evaluations from a way of simply rating teachers to a tool for continuous improvement and feedback. This model is used to align tenure and due process, so that tenure serves as a guarantee of fairness, not of a job for life. Weingarten led an AFT committee that called for all prospective teachers to meet a high entry standard—as in medicine or law—so that they're prepared from the day they enter the classroom. Weingarten oversaw the development of the AFT's Quality Education Agenda, which advocates for reforms grounded in evidence, equity, scalability and sustainability. She promotes what she calls “solution-driven unionism”—an approach to collective bargaining and collective action that unites the interests of union members and those they serve in the pursuit of solutions that benefit students, schools and communities. Under Weingarten's leadership, the AFT continues to grow and expand its voice as a union of professionals. Nationwide, the AFT is the second-largest union of nurses and other health professionals and the largest higher education union, representing 230,000 higher education faculty, professional staff and graduate employees. Weingarten helped source millions of dollars of personal protective equipment for nurses and health professionals experiencing shortages as they served on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. Weingarten is an advocate for a New Deal for Higher Education, a campaign calling for substantial federal investment in higher education that would prioritize teaching, research and student supports; provide sustainable careers with professional voice for all faculty and staff; allow all students to attend regardless of ability to pay; create academic environments free of racism and other forms of bigotry; and cancel student debt. The AFT provides our members tools and information they can use to manage their federal student loan debt, including having that debt forgiven, while advocating for solutions to the escalating cost of higher education, predatory loan practices, and terrible loan servicing that is holding people back. The AFT and a broad array of parent and community partners across the country have collaborated on events to advance a community- and educator-driven agenda for public school reform. Weingarten spearheaded the development of Share My Lesson, the United States' largest free collection of lesson plans, classroom activities, and teaching strategies and resources created by educators, for educators—all at no cost. The AFT has a long-standing partnership with First Book, which has provided 5 million free and reduced-price books to children. Weingarten and the AFT were asked to lead a partnership to transform McDowell County, W.Va., one of the poorest counties in the United States. The AFT has assembled more than 100 partners not only to improve the quality of education provided to children in the county, but to focus on jobs, transportation, recreation, housing, healthcare and social services. Weingarten believes the rural way of life is worth fighting for, and the AFT's experience in McDowell County informs the work Weingarten is advancing to help rural communities thrive—through education, healthcare and economic opportunities. The AFT supports the strategic establishment of 25,000 community schools where students and families can access tailored health services and social services in one place, and marginalized communities can have access to services and support. Weingarten views this goal as especially vital to help children, families and communities recover from the wide-ranging impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recession. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, the AFT worked with scientists and health professionals to develop a blueprint for reopening schools. The AFT continues to advocate for the funding and necessary testing and safety protocols to ensure in-person learning is safe.  During the Trump administration, Weingarten led the AFT's efforts to oppose Trump and Betsy DeVos' fervent attempts to defund and destabilize public education and to stand up to the administration's racist policies and attacks on facts and democracy. In 2012-13, Weingarten served on an education reform commission convened by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which made a series of recommendations to improve teaching and learning. She was appointed to the Equity and Excellence Commission, a federal advisory committee chartered by Congress to examine and make recommendations concerning the disparities in educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap. For 10 years, while president of the UFT, Weingarten chaired New York City's Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella organization for the city's 100-plus public sector unions, including those representing higher education and other public service employees. As chair of the MLC, she coordinated labor negotiations and bargaining for benefits on behalf of the MLC unions' 365,000 members. From 1986 to 1998, Weingarten served as counsel to UFT President Sandra Feldman, taking a lead role in contract negotiations and enforcement, and in lawsuits in which the union fought for adequate school funding and building conditions. A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues. Elected as the local union's assistant secretary in 1995 and as treasurer two years later, she became UFT president after Feldman became president of the AFT. Weingarten was elected to her first full term as UFT president in 1998 and was re-elected three times. Weingarten's column “What Matters Most” appears in the New York Times' Sunday Review the third Sunday of each month. You can follow her on Twitter at @rweingarten (Twitter.com/rweingarten) and on Facebook (Facebook.com/randi.weingarten.9). Weingarten holds degrees from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cardozo School of Law. She worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1983 to 1986. She is an active member of the Democratic National Committee and numerous professional, civic and philanthropic organizations. Born in 1957 and raised in Rockland County, N.Y., Weingarten now resides in the Inwood neighborhood of New York City. Join us Monday's and Thursday's at 8EST for our Bi-Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete Coe Buy Ava's Art  Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing

In April, Israel's Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir toured the United States in his first-ever trip to the country as a government official. Many Jewish groups refused to meet with Ben-Gvir, a follower of Meir Kahane whose extremism stands out even in an Israeli political scene awash in anti-Palestinian racism. But Ben-Gvir was welcomed by Chabad rabbis at Yale in New Haven, in South Florida, as well as at 770 Eastern Parkway, the Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The latter appearance sparked protests outside 770, which were met with violence by Chabadniks. In particular, a mob chanting “Death to Arabs” chased a female passerby for several blocks, kicking, spitting, and throwing objects at her. Other videos showed Chabadniks lighting a keffiyeh on fire, shoving and kicking members of the Hasidic anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta, and bloodying a female protester (herself a Jewish Israeli). To discuss Chabad's alignment with Ben-Gvir, its long-standing antipathy to leftist movements, and its uneasy relations within Crown Heights, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel spoke with Jewish studies scholars Shaul Magid and Hadas Binyamini. They discuss Chabad's historic anti-Zionism, the quasi-Zionist cultural shifts that have solidified after October 7th, and the tensions the movement is currently navigating between its outreach orientation and its increasingly exclusionary politics.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Texts Mentioned and Further Resources:The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, David Berger“Israel's Class War Conservatives,” Joshua Leifer, Jewish Currents “The three-decade saga that led to the Crown Heights tunnels,” Chananya Groner, The Guardian“The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin,” Ben Schreckinger, PoliticoLetter to Hitler from the German Free Association for the Interests of Orthodox Jewry, 1933“Lubavitcher Hassidim Oppose Public Demonstrations on Behalf of Soviet Jews,” JTA“The New Heimish Populism,” Joshua Leifer, Jewish CurrentsRace and Reli­gion Among the Cho­sen...

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod --------- Investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet joins us to talk about Ben Gvir's visit to Crown Heights, the messy world of Betar USA, Kahanist organizations, and a little bit of gossip from the right-wing-fringe freak show.

Rabbi Velvel Lipskier grew up in Crown Heights and lives in North Miami Beach where he works in plumbing and construction.In this episode, we discuss how the "voice" of Chassidus can be translated in different cultures and how it can change depending on what we pay attention to.We also discuss some of Velvel's memories from the famous Tishrei of 1992.____Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate____This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani.Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by.Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community.For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldisagarden____Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.comConnect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

When Prospect Park was first opened to the public in the late 1860s, the City of Brooklyn was proud to claim a landmark as beautiful and as peaceful as New York's Central Park. But the superstar landscape designers — Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — weren't finished.This park came with two grand pleasure drives, wide boulevards that emanated from the north and south ends of the park. Eastern Parkway, the first parkway in the United States, is the home of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its leafy pedestrian malls running through the neighborhood of Crown Heights. But it's Ocean Parkway that is the most unusual today, an almost six-mile stretch which takes drivers, bikers, runners and (at one point) horse riders all the way to Coney Island, at a time when people were just beginning to appreciate the beach's calming and restorative values.Due to its wide, straight surface, Ocean Parkway even became an active speedway for fast horses. When bicycles became all the rage in the late 1880s, they also took to the parkway and avid cyclists eventually got their first bike lane in 1894 — the first in the United States.FEATURING: A tale of two cemeteries — one that was demolished to make way for one parkway, and another which apparently (given its ‘no vacancy' status) thrives next to another.  Get your tickets for the Bowery Boys Evening Cruise of New York Harbor by visiting Like Minds TravelVisit the website for more information about other Bowery Boys episodes

Rabbi Chaim Shaul Bruk is the shliach in Bozeman, Montana where he and his wife Chavie are now marking 18 years.In this episode, he recalls his growing up in Crown Heights, both the wonderful childhood memories and the tense years of the early nineties.He also shares how a devastating infertility diagnosis in their first years of shlichus changed how he looked at the world, at G-d and at other chassidim he doesn't agree with.____Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate____This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani.Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by.Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community.For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldi...____Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.comConnect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

The All Local Morning for Monday, April 28 2025

Mayer Prager grew up in the Crown Heights of the 1960's, surrounded by the exodus of the non-Lubavitch Jewish community, the energy of the Lubavitch community that stayed, and of course, the Rebbe.In this episode, we discuss what it was like to grow up in that milieu, his special relationship with R' Yoel Kahan, and his perspective on the direction of the Lubavitch community as someone who sees things from both the inside and the outside.____Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate____This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani.Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by.Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community.For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldi...____Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.comConnect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

We kick things off discussing the controversial Coachella performance by Knee Cap, and Sharon Osbourne's interesting response to it. We revisit the synagogue in Crown Heights with the tunnels that's back in the news. Plus, the most annoying men's rights reggae artist in the world and the most unique set of Australian twins get spotlighted. Watch the episode on Youtube for free. Join our Patreon and get two bonus episodes each month, and other behind-the-scenes goodies. More info here.Follow us on: Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and our Discord Chat. Also don't forget about our Spotify playlist. We also have merch if you're into that kind of sharing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mr. David Shabat lives today in Boynton Beach, Florida, but as a young boy from Washington, DC he was sent to study in the Lubavitch school of Bedford and Dean in Crown Heights, where he would go on to spend close to ten years in and about the Lubavitch community and the court of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.One of the listeners to the podcast is David's grandson and suggested I meet up with him.In this episode, David shares his memories for the first time from his years spent in that school, what it was like to be an American boy living in the heart the Lubavitch community, the Rebbe and chassidim that he remembers, and what has stayed with him decades later.____Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate____This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani.Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by.Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community.For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldi...____Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.comConnect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

Luigi Mangione now faces the death penalty - after he was indicted for murder by a federal grand Jury… After a street confrontation in Crown Heights, call for calm to ease racial tensions… The Kool-Aid Man Challenge has hit homes on Staten Island full 606 Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:53:50 +0000 dApVKPqnTJ5X9VnwMUV0wXfsHLii8Ge2 news 1010 WINS ALL LOCAL news Luigi Mangione now faces the death penalty - after he was indicted for murder by a federal grand Jury… After a street confrontation in Crown Heights, call for calm to ease racial tensions… The Kool-Aid Man Challenge has hit homes on Staten Island The podcast is hyper-focused on local news, issues and events in the New York City area. This podcast's purpose is to give New Yorkers New York news about their neighborhoods and shine a light on the issues happening in their backyard. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc.

Today's guest is Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He spent two years as a police officer in Baltimore. I asked him to come on and talk about his new book, Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. It's one of my favorite books I've read this year (and it was one of my three book recommendations on Ezra Klein's show last week).Peter spoke with hundreds of police officers and NYC officials to understand and describe exactly how the city's leaders in the early 1990s managed to drive down crime so successfully.We discussed:* How bad did things get in the 1970s?* Why did processing an arrest take so long?* What did Bill Bratton and other key leaders do differently?* How did police get rid of the squeegee men?I've included my reading list at the bottom of this piece. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits.Subscribe for one new interview a week.Peter, how would you describe yourself?I would say I'm a criminologist: my background is sociology, but I am not in the sociology department. I'm not so big on theory, and sociology has a lot of theory. I was a grad student at Harvard in sociology and worked as a police officer [in Baltimore] and that became my dissertation and first book, Cop in the Hood. I've somewhat banked my career on those 20 months in the police department.Not a lot of sociologists spend a couple of years working a police beat.It's generally frowned upon, both for methodological reasons and issues of bias. But there is also an ideological opposition in a lot of academia to policing. It's seen as going to the dark side and something to be condemned, not understood.Sociologists said crime can't go down unless we fix society first. It's caused by poverty, racism, unemployment, and social and economic factors — they're called the root causes. But they don't seem to have a great impact on crime, as important as they are. When I'm in grad school, murders dropped 30-40% in New York City. At the same time, Mayor Giuliani is slashing social spending, and poverty is increasing. The whole academic field is just wrong. I thought it an interesting field to get into.We're going to talk about your new book, which is called Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. I had a blast reading it. Tell me about the process of writing it.A lot of this is oral history, basically. But supposedly people don't like buying books that are called oral histories. It is told entirely from the perspective of police officers who were on the job at the time. I would not pretend I talked to everyone, because there were 30,000+ cops around, but I spoke to many cops and to all the major players involved in the 1990s crime drop in New York City.I was born in the ‘90s, and I had no idea about a crazy statistic you cite: 25% of the entire national crime decline was attributable to New York City's crime decline.In one year, yeah. One of the things people say to diminish the role of policing is that the crime drop happened everywhere — and it did end up happening almost everywhere. But I think that is partly because what happened in New York City was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't that complicated. It was very easy to propagate, and people came to New York to find out what was going on. You could see results, literally in a matter of months.It happened first in New York City. Really, it happened first in the subways and that's interesting, because if crime goes down in the subways [which, at the time, fell under the separate New York City Transit Police] and not in the rest of the city, you say, “What is going on in the subways that is unique?” It was the exact same strategies and leadership that later transformed the NYPD [New York Police Department].Set the scene: What was the state of crime and disorder in New York in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s?Long story short, it was bad. Crime in New York was a big problem from the late ‘60s up to the mid ‘90s, and the ‘70s is when the people who became the leaders started their careers. So these were defining moments. The city was almost bankrupt in 1975 and laid off 5,000 cops; 3,000 for a long period of time. That was arguably the nadir. It scarred the police department and the city.Eventually, the city got its finances in order and came to the realization that “we've got a big crime problem too.” That crime problem really came to a head with crack cocaine. Robberies peaked in New York City in 1980. There were above 100,000 robberies in 1981, and those are just reported robberies. A lot of people get robbed and just say, “It's not worth it to report,” or, “I'm going to work,” or, “Cops aren't going to do anything.” The number of robberies and car thefts was amazingly high. The trauma, the impact on the city and on urban space, and people's perception of fear, all comes from that. If you're afraid of crime, it's high up on the hierarchy of needs.To some extent, those lessons have been lost or forgotten. Last year there were 16,600 [robberies], which is a huge increase from a few years ago, but we're still talking an 85% reduction compared to the worst years. It supposedly wasn't possible. What I wanted to get into in Back from the Brink was the actual mechanisms of the crime drop. I did about fifty formal interviews and hundreds of informal interviews building the story. By and large, people were telling the same story.In 1975, the city almost goes bankrupt. It's cutting costs everywhere, and it lays off more than 5,000 cops, about 20% of the force, in one day. There's not a new police academy class until 1979, four years later. Talk to me about where the NYPD was at that time.They were retrenched, and the cops were demoralized because “This is how the city treats us?” The actual process of laying off the cops itself was just brutal: they went to work, and were told once they got to work that they were no longer cops. “Give me your badge, give me your gun."The city also was dealing with crime, disorder, and racial unrest. The police department was worried about corruption, which was a legacy of the Knapp Commission [which investigated NYPD corruption] and [Frank] Serpico [a whistleblowing officer]. It's an old police adage, that if you don't work, you can't get in trouble. That became very much the standard way of doing things. Keep your head low, stay out of trouble, and you'll collect your paycheck and go home.You talk about the blackout in 1977, when much of the city lost power and you have widespread looting and arson. 13,000 off-duty cops get called in during the emergency, and only about 5,000 show up, which is a remarkable sign of the state of morale.The person in my book who's talking about that is Louis Anemone. He showed up because his neighbor and friend and partner was there, and he's got to help him. It was very much an in-the-foxholes experience. I contrast that with the more recent blackout, in which the city went and had a big block party instead. That is reflective of the change that happened in the city.In the mid-80s you get the crack cocaine epidemic. Talk to me about how police respond.From a political perspective, that era coincided with David Dinkins as [New York City's first black] mayor. He was universally disliked, to put it mildly, by white and black police officers alike. He was seen as hands off. He was elected in part to improve racial relations in New York City, to mitigate racial strife, but in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, there were riots, and racial relations got worse. He failed at the level he was supposed to be good at. Crime and quality of life were the major issues in that election.Dinkins's approach to the violence is centered around what they called “community policing.” Will you describe how Dinkins and political leaders in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s thought about policing?This is under Ben Ward, the [NYPD] Commissioner at the time. The mayor appoints the police commissioner — and the buck does stop with the mayor — but the mayor is not actively involved in day-to-day operations. That part does go down to the police department.Community policing was seen as an attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. The real goal was to lessen racial strife and unrest between black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) communities and the NYPD. Going back to the ‘60s, New York had been rocked by continued unrest in neighborhoods like Central Harlem, East New York, and Bushwick. Community policing was seen as saying that police are partly to blame, and we want to improve relations. Some of it was an attempt to get the community more involved in crime fighting.It's tough. It involves a certain rosy view of the community, but that part of the community isn't causing the problems. It avoids the fact there are people who are actively criming and are willing to hurt people who get in their way. Community policing doesn't really address the active criminal element, that is a small part of any community, including high-crime communities.Arrests increased drastically during this era, more than in the ‘90s with broken windows policing. If the idea is to have fewer arrests, it didn't happen in the ‘80s. Some good came out of it, because it did encourage cops to be a bit more active and cops are incentivized by overtime. Arrests were so incredibly time-consuming, which kind of defeated the purpose of community policing. If you made an arrest in that era, there was a good chance you might spend literally 24 hours processing the arrest.Will you describe what goes into that 24 hours?From my experience policing in Baltimore, I knew arrests were time-consuming and paperwork redundant, but I could process a simple arrest in an hour or two. Even a complicated one that involved juveniles and guns and drugs, we're talking six to eight hours.In the ‘80s, Bob Davin, [in the] Transit Police, would say they'd make an arrest, process at the local precinct, search him in front of a desk officer, print him, and then they would have to get a radio car off patrol to drive you down to central booking at 100 Centre Street [New York City Criminal Court]. Then they would fingerprint him. They didn't have the live scan fingerprints machine, it was all ink. It had to be faxed up to Albany and the FBI to see if it hit on any warrant federally and for positive identification of the person. Sometimes it took 12 hours to have the prints come back and the perp would be remanded until that time. Then you'd have to wait for the prosecutor to get their act together and to review all the paperwork. You couldn't consider bail unless the prints came back either positive or negative and then you would have that initial arraignment and the cop could then go home. There are a lot of moving parts, and they moved at a glacial pace.The system often doesn't work 24/7. A lot of this has changed, but some of it was having to wait until 9 am for people to show up to go to work, because it's not a single system. The courts, the jails, and policing all march to their own drummer, and that created a level of inefficiency.So much of the nitty-gritty of what cops actually do is boring, behind-the-scenes stuff: How do we speed up the paperwork? Can we group prisoners together? Can we do some of this at the police station instead of taking it downtown? Is all of this necessary? Can we cooperate with the various prosecutors? There are five different prosecutors in New York City, one for each borough.There's not a great incentive to streamline this. Cops enjoyed the overtime. That's one of the reasons they would make arrests. So during this time, if a cop makes an arrest for drug dealing, that cop is gone and no cop was there to replace him. If it's a minor arrest, there's a good chance in the long run charges will be dropped anyway. And you're taking cops off the street. In that sense, it's lose-lose. But, you have to think, “What's the alternative?”Bob Davin is a fascinating guy. There's a famous picture from 1981 by Martha Cooper of two cops on a subway train. It's graffitied up and they're in their leather jackets and look like cops from the ‘70s. Martha Cooper graciously gave me permission to use the picture, but she said, "You have to indemnify me because I don't have a release form. I don't know who the cops are." I said, "Martha, I do know who the cop is, because he's in my book and he loves the picture.” Bob Davin is the cop on the right.Davin says that things started to get more efficient. They had hub sites in the late ‘80s or ‘90s, so precincts in the north of Manhattan could bring their prisoners there, and you wouldn't have to take a car out of service to go back to Central Booking and deal with traffic. They started collecting prisoners and bringing them en masse on a small school bus, and that would cut into overtime. Then moving to electronic scan fingerprints drastically saves time waiting for those to come back.These improvements were made, but some of them involve collective bargaining with unions, to limit overtime and arrests that are made for the pure purpose of overtime. You want cops making arrests for the right reason and not simply to make money. But boy, there was a lot of money made in arrests.In 1991, you have the infamous Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. Racial tensions kick off. It's a nightmare for the mayor, there's this sense that he has lost control. The following year, you have this infamous police protest at City Hall where it becomes clear the relationship between the cops and the mayor has totally evaporated. How does all that play into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani?It was unintentional, but a lot of the blame for Crown Heights falls on the police department. The part of the story that is better known is that there was a procession for a Hasidic rabbi that was led by a police car. He would go to his wife's grave, and he got a little three-car motorcade. At some point, the police look at this and go "Why are we doing this? We're going to change it." The man who made the deal said ‘I"m retiring in a couple weeks, can we just leave it till then? Because I gave him my word." They're like, "Alright, whatever."This motor car procession is then involved in a car crash, and a young child named Gavin Cato is killed, and another girl is severely injured. The volunteer, Jewish-run ambulance shows up and decides they don't have the equipment: they call for a professional city ambulance. Once that ambulance is on the way, they take the mildly-injured Jewish people to the hospital. The rumor starts that the Jewish ambulance abandoned the black children to die.This isn't the first incident. There's long been strife over property and who the landlord is. But this was the spark that set off riots. A young Jewish man was randomly attacked on the street and was killed.As an aside, he also shouldn't have died, but at the hospital they missed internal bleeding.Meanwhile, the police department has no real leadership at the time. One chief is going to retire, another is on vacation, a third doesn't know what he's doing, and basically everyone is afraid to do anything. So police do nothing. They pull back, and you have three days of very anti-Semitic riots. Crowds chanting "Kill the Jews" and marching on the Lubavitch Hasidic Headquarters. Al Sharpton shows up. The riots are blamed on Dinkins, which is partly fair, but a lot of that's on the NYPD. Finally, the mayor and the police commissioner go to see what's going on and they get attacked. It's the only time in New York City history that there's ever been an emergency call from the police commissioner's car. People are throwing rocks at it.It took three days to realise this, but that's when they say “We have to do something here,” and they gather a group of officers who later become many of Bratton's main chiefs at the time [Bill Bratton was Commissioner of the NYPD from 1994-1996, under Giuliani]: Mike Julian, Louis Anemone, Ray Kelly, and [John] Timoney. They end the unrest in a day. They allow people to march, they get the police department to set rules. It still goes on for a bit, but no one gets hurt after that, and that's it.It was a huge, national story at the time, but a lot of the details were not covered. Reporters were taken from their car and beaten and stripped. The significance was downplayed at the time, especially by the New York Times, I would say.That's followed by the Washington Heights riots, which is a different story. A drug dealer was shot and killed by cops. There were rumors, which were proven to be false, that he was executed and unarmed. Then there were three days of rioting there. It wasn't quite as severe, but 53 cops were hurt, 120 stores were set on fire, and Mayor Dinkins paid for the victim's family to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. The police perspective again was, “You're picking the wrong side here.”Then there's the so-called Police Riot at City Hall. Nominally, it was about the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and setting up an accountability mechanism to control cops. But really it was just an anti-Dinkins protest. It was drunken and unruly. The cops stormed the steps of City Hall. I have the account of one of the cops who was on the top of those steps looking at this mob of cops storming to him, and he's getting worried he's going to be killed in a crush. There were racist chants from off-duty cops in the crowd. It did not reflect well on police officers. But it showed this hatred of David Dinkins, who was seen as siding with criminals and being anti-police. The irony is that Dinkins is the one who ends up hiring all the cops that Giuliani gets credit for.In the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program?Yes. That was because a white tourist, Brian Watkins, was killed in a subway station protecting his parents who were getting robbed. That led to the famous headline [in the New York Post] of “Dave, do something! Crime-ravaged city cries out for help.” He, with City Council President Peter Vallone, Sr., drafted and pushed through this massive hiring of police officers, “Safe Streets, Safe City.”The hiring wasn't fast-tracked. It might be because Dinkins's people didn't really want more cops. But it was a Dinkins push that got a massive hiring of cops. When the first huge class of police officers graduated, Bill Bratton was there and not David Dinkins.Some interviewees in your book talk about how there's physically not enough room in the police academies at this time, so they have to run classes 24/7. You cycle cohorts in and out of the same classroom, because there are too many new cops for the facilities.You have thousands of cops going through it at once. Everyone describes it as quite a chaotic scene. But it would have been hard to do what the NYPD did without those cops. Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under Dinkins at the end [from 1992 to 1994] before he became police commissioner for 12 years under Bloomberg [from 2002 to 2013] probably could have done something with those cops too, but he never had the chance, because the mayoral leadership at the time was much more limiting in what they wanted cops to do.Crime starts declining slowly in the first few years of the ‘90s under Dinkins, and then in ‘93 Giuliani wins a squeaker of a mayoral election against Dinkins.One of the major issues was the then-notorious “squeegee men” of New York City. These were guys who would go to cars stopped at bridges and tunnel entrances and would rub a squeegee over the windshield asking for money. It was unpleasant, intimidating, and unwanted, and it was seen as one of those things that were just inevitable. Like graffiti on the subway in the ‘80s. Nothing we can do about it because these poor people don't have jobs or housing or whatever.The irony is that Bratton and Giuliani were happy to take credit for that, and it was an issue in the mayoral campaign, but it was solved under David Dinkins and Ray Kelly and Mike Julian with the help of George Kelling [who, with James Wilson, came up with broken windows theory]. But they never got credit for it. One wonders if, had they done that just a few months earlier, it would have shifted the entire campaign and we'd have a different course of history in New York City.It's a great example of a couple of things that several people in your book talk about. One is that disorder is often caused by a very small set of individuals. There's only like 70 squeegee men, yet everybody sees them, because they're posted up at the main tunnel and bridge entrances to Manhattan. And getting them off the streets solves the problem entirely.Another emphasis in the book is how perceptions of crime are central. You quote Jack Maple, the father of Compstat, as saying, “A murder on the subway counts as a multiple murder up on the street, because everybody feels like that's their subway.” The particular locations of crimes really affect public perception.Absolutely. Perception is reality for a lot of these things, because most people aren't victimized by crime. But when people perceive that no one is in control they feel less safe. It's not that this perception is false, it just might not be directly related to an actual criminal act.The other thing I try to show is that it's not just saying, “We've got to get rid of squeegee men. How do you do it?” They had tried before, but this is why you need smart cops and good leadership, because it's a problem-solving technique, and the way to get rid of graffiti is different to the way you get rid of squeegee men.This book is in opposition to those who just say, “We can't police our way out of this problem.” No, we can. We can't police our way out of every problem. But if you define the problem as, we don't want people at intersections with squeegees, of course we can police our way out of the problem, using legal constitutional tools. You need the political will. And then the hard work starts, because you have to figure out how to actually do it.Will you describe how they tackle the squeegee men problem?Mike Julian was behind it. They hired George Kelling, who's known for broken windows. They said, “These people are here to make money. So to just go there and make a few arrests isn't going to solve the problem.” First of all, he had to figure out what legal authority [to use], and he used Traffic Reg 44 [which prohibits pedestrians from soliciting vehicle occupants]. He talked to Norm Siegel of the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] about this, who did not want this crackdown to happen. But Norman said, “Okay, this is the law, I can't fight that one. You're doing it legally. It's all in the books.” And So that took away that opposition.But the relentless part of it is key. First they filmed people. Then, when it came to enforcement, they warned people. Then they cited people, and anybody that was left they arrested. They did not have to arrest many people, because the key is they did this every four hours. It was that that changed behavior, because even a simple arrest isn't going to necessarily deter someone if it's a productive way to make money. But being out there every four hours for a couple of weeks or months was enough to get people to do something else. What that something else is, we still don't know, but we solved the squeegee problem.So in 93, Giuliani is elected by something like 50,000 votes overall. Just as an aside, in Prince of the City, Fred Siegel describes something I had no idea about. There's a Puerto Rican Democratic Councilman who flips and supports Giuliani. Mayor Eric Adams, who at the time was the head of a nonprofit for black men in law enforcement, calls him a race traitor for doing that and for being married to a white woman. There was a remarkable level of racial vitriol in that race that I totally missed.10 years ago when I started this, I asked if I could interview then-Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, and he said yes, and the interview kept getting rescheduled, and I said, “Eh, I don't need him.” It's a regret of mine. I should have pursued that, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.Giuliani is elected, and he campaigns very explicitly on a reducing crime and disorder platform. And he hires Bill Bratton. Tell me about Bratton coming on board as NYPD commissioner.Bratton grew up in Boston, was a police officer there, became head of the New York City Transit Police when that was a separate police department. Right before he becomes NYPD Commissioner, he's back in Boston, as the Chief of Police there, and there is a movement among certain people to get Bratton the NYC job. They succeed in that, and Bratton is a very confident man. He very much took a broken windows approach and said, “We are going to focus on crime.” He has a right-hand man by the name of Jack Maple who he knows from the Transit Police. Maple is just a lieutenant in transit, and Bratton makes him the de facto number two man in the police department.Jack Maple passed away in 2001 and I didn't know what I was going to do, because it's hard to interview a man who's no longer alive. Chris Mitchell co-wrote Jack Maple's autobiography called Crime Fighter and he graciously gave me all the micro-cassettes of the original interviews he conducted with Maple around 1998. Everyone has a Jack Maple story. He's probably the most important character in Back from the Brink.Jack Maple comes in, no one really knows who he is, no one respects him because he was just a lieutenant in Transit. He goes around and asks a basic question — this is 1994 — he says, “How many people were shot in New York City in 1993?” And nobody knows. That is the state of crime-fighting in New York City before this era. There might have been 7,000 people shot in New York City in 1990 and we just don't know, even to this day.One citation from your book: in 1993, an average of 16 people were shot every day. Which is just remarkable.And remember, shootings have been declining for two or three years before that! But nobody knew, because they weren't keeping track of shootings, because it's not one of the FBI Uniform Crime Report [which tracks crime data nationally] index crimes. But wouldn't you be curious? It took Jack Maple to be curious, so he made people count, and it was findable, but you had to go through every aggravated assault and see if a gun was involved. You had to go through every murder from the previous year and see if it was a shooting. He did this. So we only have shooting data in New York City going back to 1993. It's just a simple process of caring.The super-short version of Back from the Brink is it was a change in mission statement: “We're going to care about crime.” Because they hadn't before. They cared about corruption, racial unrest, brutality, and scandal. They cared about the clearance rate for robbery a bit. You were supposed to make three arrests for every ten robberies. It didn't matter so much that you were stopping a pattern or arresting the right person, as long as you had three arrests for every ten reported crimes, that was fine.This is a story about people who cared. They're from this city — Bratton wasn't, but most of the rest are. They understood the trauma of violence and the fact that people with families were afraid to go outside, and nobody in the power structure seemed to care. So they made the NYPD care about this. Suddenly, the mid-level police executives, the precinct commanders, had to care. and the meetings weren't about keeping overtime down, instead they were about ”What are you doing to stop this shooting?”Tell listeners a little bit more about Jack Maple, because he's a remarkable character, and folks may not know what a kook he was.I think he was a little less kooky than he liked to present. His public persona was wearing a snazzy cat and spats and dressing like a fictional cartoon detective from his own mind, but he's a working-class guy from Queens who becomes a transit cop.When Bratton takes over, he writes a letter up the chain of command saying this is what we should do. Bratton read it and said, “This guy is smart.” Listening to 80 hours of Jack Maple, everyone correctly says he was a smart guy, but he had a very working-class demeanor and took to the elite lifestyle. He loved hanging out and getting fancy drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He was the idea man of the NYPD. Everyone has a Jack Maple imitation. “You're talking to the Jackster,” he'd say. He had smart people working under him who were supportive of this. But it was very much trying to figure out as they went along, because the city doesn't stop nor does it sleep.He was a bulls***er, but he's the one who came up with the basic outline of the strategy of crime reduction in New York City. He famously wrote it on a napkin at Elaine's, and it said, “First, we need to gather accurate and timely intelligence.” And that was, in essence, CompStat. “Then, we need to deploy our cops to where they need to be.” That was a big thing. He found out that cops weren't working: specialized units weren't working weekends and nights when the actual crime was happening. They had their excuses, but basically they wanted a cushy schedule. He changed that. Then, of course, you have to figure out what you're doing, what the effective tactics are. Then, constant follow up and assessment.You can't give up. You can't say “Problem solved.” A lot of people say it wasn't so much if your plan didn't work, you just needed a Plan B. It was the idea that throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What are you going to do?” that became notoriously unacceptable under Chief Anemone's stern demeanor at CompStat. These were not pleasant meetings. Those are the meetings that both propagated policies that work and held officers accountable. There was some humiliation going on, so CompStat was feared.Lots of folks hear CompStat and think about better tracking of crime locations and incidents. But as you flesh out, the meat on the bones of CompStat was this relentless follow-up. You'd have these weekly meetings early in the morning with all the precinct heads. There were relentless asks from the bosses, “What's going on in your district or in your precinct? Can you explain why this is happening? What are you doing to get these numbers down?” And follow-ups the following week or month. It was constant.CompStat is often thought of as high-tech computer stuff. It wasn't. There was nothing that couldn't have been done with old overhead projectors. It's just that no one had done it before. Billy Gorta says it's a glorified accountability system at a time when nobody knew anything about computers. Everyone now has access to crime maps on a computer. It was about actually gathering accurate, timely data.Bratton was very concerned that these numbers had to be right. It was getting everyone in the same room and saying, “This is what our focus is going to be now.” And getting people to care about crime victims, especially when those crime victims might be unsympathetic because of their demeanor, criminal activity, or a long arrest record. “We're going to care about every shooting, we're going to care about every murder.”Part of it was cracking down on illegal guns. There were hundreds of tactics. The federal prosecutors also played a key role. It was getting this cooperation. Once it started working and Giuliani made it a major part of claiming success as mayor, suddenly everyone wanted to be part of this, and you had other city agencies trying to figure it out. So it was a very positive feedback loop, once it was seen as a success.When Bratton came on the job, he said, “I'm going to bring down crime 15%.” No police commissioner had ever said that before. In the history of policing before 1994, no police commissioner ever promised a double-digit reduction in crime or even talked about it. People said “That's crazy.” It was done, and then year after year. That's the type of confidence that they had. They were surprised it worked as well as it did, but they all had the sense that there's a new captain on this ship, and we're trying new things. It was an age of ideas and experiment.And it was a very short time.That's the other thing that surprised me. Giuliani fired Bratton in the middle of ‘96.It's remarkable. Bratton comes in ‘94, and August 1994 is where you see crime drop off a cliff. You have this massive beginning of the reduction that continues.That inflection point is important for historical knowledge. I don't address alternatives that other people have proposed [to explain the fall in crime] — For example, the reduction in lead [in gasoline, paint, and water pipes] or legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade [proposed by Stephen Dubner].Reasonable people can differ. Back from the Brink focuses on the police part of the equation. Today, almost nobody, except for a few academics, says that police had nothing to do with the crime drop. That August inflection is key, because there is nothing in a lagged time analysis going back 20 years that is going to say that is the magic month where things happened. Yet if you look at what happened in CompStat, that's the month they started getting individual officer data, and noticing that most cops made zero arrests, and said, “Let's get them in the game as well.” And that seemed to be the key; that's when crime fell off the table. The meetings started in April, I believe, but August is really when the massive crime drop began.To your point about the confidence that crime could be driven down double digits year over year, there's a great quote you have from Jack Maple, where he says to a fellow cop, “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As long as we have absolute control, we can absolutely drive this number into the floor.”One detail I enjoyed was that Jack Maple, when he was a transit cop, would camp out under a big refrigerator box with little holes cut out for eyes and sit on the subway platform waiting for crooks.For people who are interested in Jack Maple, it is worth reading his autobiography, Crime Fighter. Mike Daly wrote New York's Finest, which uses the same tapes that I had access to, and he is much more focused on that. He's actually the godfather of Jack Maple's son, who is currently a New York City police officer. But Maple and co were confident, and it turned out they were right.As well as having changes in tactics and approach and accountability across the NYPD, you also have a series of specific location cleanups. You have a specific initiative focused on the Port Authority, which is a cesspool at the time, an initiative in Times Square, the Bryant Park cleanup, and then Giuliani also focuses on organized crime on the Fulton Fish Market, and this open-air market in Harlem.I was struck that there was both this general accountability push in the NYPD through CompStat, and a relentless focus on cleaning up individual places that were hubs of disorder.I'm not certain the crime drop would have happened without reclamation of public spaces and business improvement districts. Bryant Park's a fascinating story because Dan Biederman, who heads the Corporation, said, “People just thought it was like a lost cause, this park can't be saved. The city is in a spiral of decline.” He uses Jane Jacobs' “eyes on the street” theory and then George Kelling and James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory. The park has money — not city money, but from local property owners — and it reopens in 1991 to great acclaim and is still a fabulous place to be. It showed for the first time that public space was worth saving and could be saved. New York City at the time needed that lesson. It's interesting that today, Bryant Park has no permanent police presence and less crime. Back in the ‘80s, Bryant Park had an active police presence and a lot more crime.The first class I ever taught when I started at John Jay College in 2004, I was talking about broken windows. A student in the class named Jeff Marshall, who is in my book, told me about Operation Alternatives at the Port Authority. He had been a Port Authority police officer at the time, and I had not heard of this. People are just unaware of this part of history. It very much has lessons for today, because in policing often there's nothing new under the sun. It's just repackaged, dusted off, and done again. The issue was, how do we make the Port Authority safe for passengers? How do we both help and get rid of people living in the bus terminal? It's a semi-public space, so it makes it difficult. There was a social services element about it, that was Operational Alternatives. A lot of people took advantage of that and got help. But the flip side was, you don't have to take services, but you can't stay here.I interviewed the manager of the bus terminal. He was so proud of what he did. He's a bureaucrat, a high-ranking one, but a port authority manager. He came from the George Washington Bridge, which he loved. And he wonders, what the hell am I going to do with this bus terminal? But the Port Authority cared, because they're a huge organization and that's the only thing with their name on it — They also control JFK Airport and bridges and tunnels and all the airports, but people call the bus terminal Port Authority.They gave him almost unlimited money and power and said, “Fix it please, do what you've got to do,” and he did. It was environmental design, giving police overtime so they'd be part of this, a big part of it was having a social service element so it wasn't just kicking people out with nowhere to go.Some of it was also setting up rules. This also helped Bratton in the subway, because this happened at the same time. The court ruled that you can enforce certain rules in the semi-public spaces. It was not clear until this moment whether it was constitutional or not. To be specific, you have a constitutional right to beg on the street, but you do not have a constitutional right to beg on the subway. That came down to a court decision. Had that not happened, I don't know if in the long run the crime drop would have happened.That court decision comes down to the specific point that it's not a free-speech right on the subway to panhandle, because people can't leave, because you've got them trapped in that space.You can't cross the street to get away from it. But it also recognized that it wasn't pure begging, that there was a gray area between aggressive begging and extortion and robbery.You note that in the early 1990s, one-third of subway commuters said they consciously avoided certain stations because of safety, and two thirds felt coerced to give money by aggressive panhandling.The folks in your book talk a lot about the 80/20 rule applying all over the place. That something like 20% of the people you catch are committing 80% of the crimes.There's a similar dynamic that you talk about on the subways, both in the book and in your commentary over the past couple years about disorder in New York. You say approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness are at risk for street homelessness, and these people cycle through the cities, streets, subways, jails, and hospitals.What lessons from the ‘90s can be applied today for both helping those people and stopping them being a threat to others?Before the ‘80s and Reagan budget cuts there had been a psychiatric system that could help people. That largely got defunded. [Deinstitutionalization began in New York State earlier, in the 1960s.] We did not solve the problem of mental health or homelessness in the ‘90s, but we solved the problem of behavior. George Kelling [of broken windows theory] emphasized this repeatedly, and people would ignore it. We are not criminalizing homelessness or poverty. We're focusing on behavior that we are trying to change. People who willfully ignore that distinction almost assume that poor people are naturally disorderly or criminal, or that all homeless people are twitching and threatening other people. Even people with mental illness can behave in a public space.Times have changed a bit. I think there are different drugs now that make things arguably a bit worse. I am not a mental health expert, but we do need more involuntary commitment, not just for our sake, but for theirs, people who need help. I pass people daily, often the same person, basically decomposing on a subway stop in the cold. They are offered help by social services, and they say no. They should not be allowed to make that choice because they're literally dying on the street in front of us. Basic humanity demands that we be a little more aggressive in forcing people who are not making rational decisions, because now you have to be an imminent threat to yourself or others. That standard does need to change. But there also need to be mental health beds available for people in this condition.I don't know what the solution is to homelessness or mental health. But I do know the solution to public disorder on the subway and that's, regardless of your mental state or housing status, enforcing legal, constitutional rules, policing behavior. It does not involve locking everybody up. It involves drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's amazing how much people will comply with those rules.That presents the idea that someone's in charge, it's not a free-for-all. You get that virtuous loop, which New York had achieved in 2014–2016, when crime was at an all-time low in the city. Then the politicians decided public order wasn't worth preserving anymore. These are political choices.I had a similar version of this conversation with a friend who was shocked that there were zero murders on the subway in 2017 and that that number was stable: you had one or two a year for several years in the mid-2010s.It was five or fewer a year from 1997 to 2019, and often one or two. Then you have zero in 2017. There were [ten in 2022]. It coincides perfectly with an order from [Mayor] de Blasio's office and the homeless czar [Director of Homeless Services Steven] Banks [which] told police to stop enforcing subway rules against loitering. The subways became — once again — a de facto homeless shelter. Getting rule-violating homeless people out of the subway in the late ‘80s was such a difficult and major accomplishment at the time, and to be fair it's not as bad as it was.The alternative was that homeless outreach was supposed to offer people services. When they decline, which 95% of people do, you're to leave them be. I would argue again, I don't think that's a more humane stance to take. But it's not just about them, it's about subway riders.There's one story that I think was relevant for you to tell. You were attacked this fall on a subway platform by a guy threatening to kill you. It turns out he's had a number of run-ins with the criminal justice system. Can you tell us where that guy is now?I believe he's in prison now. The only reason I know who it is is because I said, one day I'm going to see his picture in the New York Post because he's going to hurt somebody. Am I 100 percent certain it's Michael Blount who attacked me? No, but I'm willing to call him out by name because I believe it is. He was out of prison for raping a child, and he slashed his ex-girlfriend and pushed her on the subway tracks. And then was on the lam for a while. I look at him and the shape of his face, his height, age, build, complexion, and I go, that's got to be him.I wasn't hurt, but he gave me a sucker punch trying to knock me out and then chased me a bit threatening to kill me, and I believe he wanted to. It's the only time I ever was confronted by a person who I really believe wanted to kill me, and this includes policing in the Eastern District in Baltimore. It was an attempted misdemeanor assault in the long run. But I knew it wasn't about me. It was him. I assume he's going to stay in prison longer for what he did to his ex-girlfriend. But I never thought it would happen to me. I was lucky the punch didn't connect.Peter Moskos's new book is Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.My reading listEssays:Johnny Hirschauer's reporting, including “A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis',“ “Return to the Roots,” and “The Last Institutions.” “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. ​“It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem,” Charles Lehman.Books:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy.​Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, Fred Siegel.​ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos.​Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones.​Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

A very unique episode with a very spiritual prologue about a store in Brooklyn with Sole Free host, Harlan Friedman. From the Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights, Brooklyn to the celebrity world of Hollywood, Bellissimo Custom Hats is like no other custom hat store... Join co-founder Levi Chayo and Harlan as they chat about hats and their shared culture. #mensstyle #hasidic #jewish #sneakers #solefree #trending #inspiration #creator #brooklyn #crownheights #nyc #culture #tefillin #art #music #hiphop #fedora #hats EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Harlan Friedman and ​⁠Donna DrakePRODUCER/EDITOR: Robin C. AdamsFollow Harlan on Instagram: @theofficialharlanFollow Bellissimo Hats on Instagram: @bellissimohatsFollow Levi on Instagram: @levichayo_bellissimofor more on Harlan Friedman and Sole Free go to www.solefreeradio.com

Send us a textSpecial thanks to Women of Iron Unite for making this episode possible. Founded on October 10th amid the pain of Operation Iron Sword, three courageous women from Crown Heights united to protect Eretz Yisroel by inspiring prayer, unity, and tznius within our community. Organized by Sarale Blau, Rivky Perl, and Ruthie Sperlin, their initiative continues to empower women to take small steps toward growth and holiness even in challenging times.Modesty (tznius) is one of the most sensitive, often misunderstood topics in the Jewish world. It's not just about clothing—it's about identity, confidence, dignity, and connection to something deeper. In this thought-provoking episode of From the Inside Out, we sit down with two incredible guests: Rivky Slonim, a powerhouse in Jewish education, and Joyce Azria, former fashion executive turned modesty advocate. Together, we unravel the layers of tznius—why it's challenging, what it truly means beyond fabric and rules, and how it can be a source of empowerment rather than restriction.Joyce shares her journey from the high-fashion world to embracing modesty, revealing the unexpected luxury and confidence it brings. Rivka offers profound insights on what tznius really is (hint: it's NOT just about covering up) and how it's deeply tied to self-respect, spirituality, and personal growth. We also explore topics like navigating modesty in professional spaces, finding joy in mitzvos even when they feel hard, and how to inspire the next generation without force or judgment.Rivkah Slonim is the Associate Director at the Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University. An internationally known teacher, lecturer, and activist, she travels widely, addressing the intersection of traditional Jewish observance and contemporary life, with a special focus on Jewish women in Jewish law and life. Slonim is the editor of Total Immersion: A Mikvah Anthology and Bread and Fire; Jewish Women find God in the Everyday. Slonim and her husband are the grateful and proud parents of nine children. You can find more from Rivky Slonim here: https://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/1328/jewish/Rivkah-Slonim.htmJoyce Azria is a fashion and wellness entrepreneur, formerly the Creative Director of BCBGeneration and founder of Avec Les Filles and Amazon's ROHB. Daughter of the late Max Azria, she grew up in “fashion royalty,” but her journey from Chanel to Shabbat reshaped her approach—shifting from creating value-driven brands to leading with her values as an Orthodox Jewish woman. Now co-founder of The Healer's Collection, Joyce shares her passion, spirituality, and rich experiences to inspire audiences nationwide. She lives in Miami, Florida, with her children. You can find Joyce at her website here: https://www.joyceazria.com/COMMUNITYJoin the Community! Connect with us on socials to discuss Episode 101, share insights, and continue the conversations you want to have:

The Rebbe reviews a report on Beis Rivkah in Crown Heights, offering guidance on language use, proper tefillah structure, blessings, and instilling derech eretz in students. He emphasizes the Previous Rebbe's dedication to authentic Jewish education and encourages the recipient to strengthen his influence on students and their families. https://www.torahrecordings.com/rebbe/004_igros_kodesh/adar/914

This is the All Local 4PM update for Friday, February 14, 2025.

 Listen to why I thought THE PENGUIN TV series on Max was more of a mafia-gangster drama than a live-action superhero show. Stick around for what I rated it and why. Topics Discussed01:33 The Penguin as a gangster series08:13 Who is Oswald Cobb?15:07 Gotham City as a character19:07 Sophia Falcone Gigante23:46 Easter eggs and a Goodreads ratingShow us some love with a text!Support the show*Note: some links to book recs are affiliate links. This means I receive a small commission when you buy. This does not affect the price you pay.#booktube #movietubeStay in touch with Nerdy Romantics Podcast Get Show notes at https://nerdyromanticspodcast.com Get a FREE romance eBook when you subscribe to my newsletter Be a part of our nerdy romantics community Follow me for show behind the scenes Instagram Facebook TikTok Tell someone about the show!

In this episode of In Search of More, host Eli Nash sits down with Rivkah Slonim, co-author of Holy Intimacy, to explore her formative years in Crown Heights during Chabad's "Golden Age" and its lasting impact on American Jewish identity. Their conversation weaves through the complexities of Jewish teachings, community outreach, and the historical challenges faced by Chabad, while also delving into modern issues of intimacy and sexuality. Slonim discusses the importance of open dialogue about sensitive topics—ranging from marriage and conversion to the stigma of pornography addiction and the emotional toll on women—advocating for transparency, self-compassion, and genuine communication as vital tools for healing and deeper spiritual connection. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rivkah's Books: Holy Intimacy: The Heart and Soul of Jewish Marriage | https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Intimacy-Heart-Jewish-Marriage/dp/1958542113 Total Immersion: A Mikvah Anthology | https://www.amazon.com/Total-Immersion-Anthology-Rivkah-Slonim/dp/9657108683 Bread and Fire: Jewish Women Find God in the Everyday | https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Fire-Jewish-Women-Everyday/dp/9655240029 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Eli Website | https://bit.ly/eliyahunash Instagram | https://bit.ly/eliyahu_nash Facebook | http://bit.ly/3h3rFSr YouTube | https://youtube.com/@insearchofmore ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe to the In Search of More Podcast: www.youtube.com/@InSearchOfMore?sub_confirmation=1 For booking inquiries, email: booking@insearchofmorepodcast.com Join Our WhatsApp: https://wa.me/message/PBH5QDJQNQ5LJ1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow us on social media Facebook | http://bit.ly/3jr9eYT Instagram | http://bit.ly/3JsvU5I TikTok | http://bit.ly/3XZ60Lo Twitter | http://bit.ly/3XNgxsR

What everyone agreed on: Two cars collided. One, driven by a Hasidic Jew, veered off the road and critically injured two Black children, one of whom ultimately died. A crowd formed. Police arrived.What no one agreed on: Anything else.In the summer of 1991, Crown Heights, NY exploded into three days of violence fed by rumors and competing narratives formed from incomplete facts. In the chaos, some saw anti-Black police bias. Others saw violent anti-Semitism. But playwright Anna Deavere Smith heard the honest voices of a divided national narrative. Join us for this remarkable play that features the real words of more than 20 people, interviewed immediately after the events, speaking honestly, the way we do in private. Let's listen.Run time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermissionContent Warning: Fires In The Mirror catalogs reflections of the Crown Heights Riots, a racially-charged conflict that engulfed the New York neighborhood in 1991. This play contains strong language and references to racism, slavery, lynching, antisemitism, sexual violence, and the Holocaust.Phyllis Johnson (all roles) works in Theater, Film, TV, & Voice Over. Nominated for two NY Innovative Theatre Awards, Phyllis understudied A Naked Girl on the Appian Way/Doug Hughes, Director (Broadway). Recent TV projects include Zero Day (Netflix) starring Robert DeNiro, Equalizer (NBC), Uncoupled (Netflix), Law & Order: Season 22 (NBC), Blue Bloods (CBS), and Pose (FX). Phyllis is a voice actor and has leant her voice to 400+ film/TV episodes including Oscar winners and favorites such as Black Swan, American Gangster, and The Devil Wears Prada. She executive produced the award-winning film I'm Through with White Girls. Phyllis is a graduate of the David Geffen Yale School of Drama where she won the Fox Family Foundation Grant and The Oliver Thorndike Prize. FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://brtstage.org/shows/fires-in-the-mirror/

Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ Rabbi Shmuly Metzger is a shliach in Manhattan, where he runs Chabad Sutton in the Midtown district. A couple miles away is the famous Lubavitch neighborhood of Crown Heights, where Shmuly grew up in both its mythological and concrete past. In this episode, we discuss his childhood in the presence of the Rebbe but also the tensions on the Crown Heights streets, how the street level and heavenly narratives diverged but also someone worked together. We also discuss the challenge of holding on to an ever changing past where memories are fluid, and how those memories continue to shape us even as we shape them. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldisagarden ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

This is your morning All Local update on December 30, 2024.

Rabbi Elisha Pearl grew up in Flatbush and has spent the last few years studying in the Judean hills, which is where he wrote his groundbreaking book, "Make Peace," which explores the Rebbe's strategic vision for lasting peace in Israel. We were going to discuss the book, but ended up talking about how he found himself it writing it in the first place, how as a young Lubavitch boy his parents moved away from Crown Heights to Flatbush and enrolled him in Yeshivas Chaim Berlin, setting him on a trajectory of being a Lubavitcher individual studying outside the Lubavitch system, including Yeshiva University and various Dati Leumi yeshivos in Israel. We discussed the vantage point afforded to someone who sees things from both the inside and the outside, the challenges that come with it, and what he sees now in what he describes as the "religious revival" taking place in Chabad. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.yuvlamedia.com/thisworldisagarden ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

A new documentary from Palladium Pictures and The Wall Street Journal examines how Britain's permanent bureaucracy—nicknamed “The Blob”—played a pivotal role in ending Liz Truss' brief tenure in late 2022 as prime minister. Through interviews with Truss and other key players, director Michael Pack, a former CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, reveals how unelected technocrats and civil servants—Britain's equivalent of the American deep state—pushed back against her economic reforms, ultimately leading to her resignation after just 44 days in office. Pack spoke with The Daily Signal about the growing power of Britain's administrative state—and lessons President-elect Donald Trump should glean from the episode as he assumes power in the United States. "The Blob is a lot stronger than you think," Pack told The Daily Signal. "A lot of people on the Republican side seem to be pretty confident that they'll be able to radically reform the departments and organizations that they're nominated to head. But I think the Liz Truss story suggests 'the Blob' has a lot of power to fight back." Watch the full documentary: https://youtu.be/c3q9gGhRrjA This is Pack's second documentary with The Wall Street Journal. His first film of the series, "'Get the Jew': The Crown Heights Riot Revisited," debuted in October. It tells the story of the America's worst antisemitic riot, which took place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. "The idea of the series was to cover events or things that happened in the past that were either misreported, ignored, or just sent down the memory hole," Pack explained. Pack's most notable film, "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," tells the remarkable story of the legendary U.S. Supreme Court justice. With his latest documentary, Pack hopes to educate Americans about the fights facing the incoming Trump administration as it seeks to reform Washington. From his time at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Pack has firsthand experience with America's version of "the Blob." "In my own little world, I did see what it was like to face the administrative state," Pack said of his seven months as CEO. "Most of us, myself included, tend to think of the administrative state as an American problem, and the Liz Truss documentary makes clear that it is a problem of the West," he added. "These bureaucrats are the same in London, Paris, New York, D.C. They go to the same colleges, they're taught the same ideas." Watch the full documentary below. Learn more about Palladium Pictures' incubator fellowship for America's future storytellers: https://palladiumpictures.com/incubator/ The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://www.dailysignal.com/

Dr. Wendy Ward is an anesthesiologist, a coach, and the founder of Mpower Productions—a business built on helping others recognize their own power and potential. Her journey started on Doctor’s Row in Crown Heights, surrounded by the influence of community leaders and a family dedicated to service. From there, Dr. Ward's path took her through college basketball courts, medical training, and, ultimately, the creation of a platform for empowerment. Mpower Productions is what Dr. Ward calls “CPR for empowerment,” focusing on stress management, resilience, and unlocking the unique strengths in each of us. Today - I sit down with Dr. Ward to learn more about her experiences breaking barriers as a Black female doctor, how she mixes science with spirituality to connect with clients of all ages, and her vision for a global empowerment mission. https://epicenter-nyc.com/how-a-doctor-forged-multiple-paths-to-heal-and-mpower-others/ https://mpowerproductions.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the morning All Local for December 6, 2024.

In this special Thanksgiving episode of Only Business, we're asking the big question: What are you feeding your business? Just like a holiday meal, your business thrives on the right combination of ingredients—each one playing a vital role in its success. We'll dive into:• The Turkey: Your core product or service—the foundation of your business.• The Sides: Essential supporting elements like marketing (the mashed potatoes), sales (the mac and cheese that must be handled by someone you trust), customer service (the stuffing), team morale (the green beans), and operations (the gravy that ties it all together).• The Dessert: The customer experience—the sweet, lasting impression that keeps people coming back.• The Empty Calories: The time-wasting activities and low-value strategies you need to cut out. This episode will help you evaluate what you're serving up in your business and ensure every “dish” works together to leave your customers and team satisfied. Tune in for actionable insights, fresh perspectives, and a little food for thought as you plan for growth. Happy Thanksgiving!

A current wave of antisemitism in the US is renewing the relevance of events in our past. Michael Pack talks about his 23 minute film about the worst antisemitic riot in American history. It happened in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in 1991. Documentary includes interview with Al Sharpton on his role. Watch the short documentary here for free. Order Sharyl's new national bestseller: “⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the $cience⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.” Subscribe to my two podcasts: “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast” and “Full Measure After Hours.” Leave a review, subscribe and share with your friends! Support independent journalism by visiting the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sharyl Attkisson store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SharylAttkisson.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.FullMeasure.news⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for original reporting.  Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.

A current wave of antisemitism in the US is renewing the relevance of events in our past. Michael Pack talks about his 23 minute film about the worst antisemitic riot in American history. It happened in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in 1991. Documentary includes interview with Al Sharpton on his role. Watch the short documentary here for free. Order Sharyl's new national bestseller: “⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the $cience⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.” Subscribe to my two podcasts: “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast” and “Full Measure After Hours.” Leave a review, subscribe and share with your friends! Support independent journalism by visiting the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sharyl Attkisson store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SharylAttkisson.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.FullMeasure.news⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for original reporting.  Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.

Brush fires and poor air quality continue across the tri-state area...Suspect in custody after attempted kidnapping in Crown Heights, Brooklyn full 263 Sun, 10 Nov 2024 14:41:36 +0000 ErneauaQQX2xrAcx5Mrqnm9qu9jb7f9c news 1010 WINS ALL LOCAL news Brush fires and poor air quality continue across the tri-state area...Suspect in custody after attempted kidnapping in Crown Heights, Brooklyn The podcast is hyper-focused on local news, issues and events in the New York City area. This podcast's purpose is to give New Yorkers New York news about their neighborhoods and shine a light on the issues happening in their backyard. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News

Joyce talks about Mike Waltz and Rudy Giuliani, the media and the political class going after anyone affiliated with Donald Trump, the election, freedom being chipped away, Secretary of defense to send more help to Israel. CBS editing interviews with conservatives and more.Michael Pack from Platinum Pictures calls in to talk about anti-sigmatism and a series of short films about Crown Heights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joyce talks about Mike Waltz and Rudy Giuliani, the media and the political class going after anyone affiliated with Donald Trump, the election, freedom being chipped away, Secretary of defense to send more help to Israel. CBS editing interviews with conservatives and more. Michael Pack from Platinum Pictures calls in to talk about anti-sigmatism and a series of short films about Crown Heights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What You Need to Know is in these final four weeks, get out the vote every way that you can. We may not like the systems, but we have to use them to beat the left. Democrats are in full swing to “fortify” the 2024 election, Politico (the internal news source of the Washington Swamp Elites) is already saying so! We have to swamp the polls, swamp early voting, swamp mail in voting for Donald Trump and every race all the way down the ballot.  Michael Pack, CEO of Palladium Pictures (formerly President of Manifold Productions), talks about his new documentary "Get the Jew: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited” [watch for free on WSJ opinions]. This film sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. Plus, a brief revisit of Michael's work on his documentary “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”  Timothy Hale, January 6 patriot and representative for the Patriot Freedom Project, gives an update on J6 cases and weaponization of the DOJ. They continue to arrest people - even all these years later! And yet there are also victories as the erroneous 1512 obstruction charges are dropped in many cases. We are watching a huge realignment of big voices in American politics, and the shift is a blow to the current regime. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the night of July 15, 2008, 22-year-old Moustapha Oumaria was shot and killed while hanging out with three friends outside his Crown Heights, NY home. The three friends described the shooter as a black male wearing a white t-shirt and dark pants. When shown a photographic lineup, they identified Arvell Marshall as the shooter. But police had in their possession video surveillance footage that clearly showed that someone else was responsible for the murder. Nevertheless, Arvell was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. To learn more and get involved, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-arvel-marshall-rebuild-his-lifehttps://lavaforgood.com/podcast/473-jason-flom-with-robbie-roberson/https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/205-jason-flom-with-james-davis-update/Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rich welcomes All-American swimmer Riley Gaines, as we observe Real Women's Day. Next, Jason Ho, chief technology officer at Teklium, looks into how deeply the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated America. Later, a preview of the new film "Get The Jew: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited," from Michael Pack, president and CEO of Palladium Pictures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Newt talks with filmmaker Michael Pack about his new documentary, "Get the Jew: The Crown Heights Riot Revisited,” which examines the 1991 Crown Heights riot in New York City, the worst antisemitic riot in American history. The riot was triggered by a car accident involving a Hasidic Jewish driver and a black child, leading to violent attacks on the Jewish community. The documentary, part of the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Doc series, explores the historical context of Crown Heights, the racial tensions, and the media's portrayal of the events. Newt and Michael discuss the political and social implications of the riot, the role of the media, and the ongoing issue of antisemitism. Watch the film here: https://www.youtube.com/@WSJopinionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Gigot speaks with documentary filmmaker Michael Pack and journalist Elliot Kaufman about the new Wall Street Journal Opinion film, "'Get the Jew": The Crown Heights Riot Revisited.' The story of the worst antisemitic riot in U.S. history echoes today amid incidents of antisemitism on university campuses and in U.S. cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We discuss various topics, including reliving a day from one's life, finding out the truth about unresolved situations, what one would do in their final hour, learning new skills like flying a plane, living in Israel for a year, and meaningful experiences like attending Yom Kippur services with the Rebbe in Crown Heights. We touch on themes of spirituality, overcoming fears, and cherishing meaningful moments.

AL SHARPTON'S HISTORY OF STOKING ANTISEMITISM And boy am I happy that my guest today did a documentary for the Wall Street Journal on Al Sharpton's long history of anti-Semitism and the havoc he created in Crown Heights many years ago. I'm talking to filmmaker Michael Pack about "Get the Jew": The Crown Heights Riot, which you can watch for free here.

what was it like celebrating Rosh Hashanah in Crown Heights during the 70's?

Rabbi Jeff Wohlgelernter, fondly known as Rabbi Wogi, joins us on this special edition of the Jewish Inspiration Podcast to share his remarkable life story. From his early years in Crown Heights and Long Island to his transformative journey through Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, and ultimately Israel (Eretz Yisrael), Rabbi Wogi's path is one of dedication, resilience, and profound spiritual growth. Listen as he recounts his impactful years at Yeshiva Mishkan HaTorah, his unexpected extended stay in Australia, and his significant contributions to Jewish outreach, including guiding the career of Rabbi Mordechai Becher.Journey with us as we discuss the monumental efforts of philanthropist Zev Wolfson in building Jewish communities and the intricate challenges of integrating Jewish traditions like Shabbos and kosher in less resourceful areas. Rabbi Wogi passionately emphasizes continuous Torah study and shares compelling anecdotes about his spiritual awakening and commitment to serving Hashem. Uncover the essence of Shabbos as a celebration of recognition of God as the Creator and the importance of fostering a community built on acceptance and unity.In this engaging episode, we also tackle contemporary issues such as the impact of smartphones on yeshiva students, the significance of Holocaust remembrance, and the cyclical nature of Jewish exile. Rabbi Wogi offers a heartfelt reflection on Jewish identity, the global perspective on Jewish people, and a hopeful vision for a future where we all gather in a rebuilt Jerusalem. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that intertwines historical insights, spiritual teachings, and a profound message of hope and resilience.Special Mazal Tov to Rabbi Yaakov & Elky Wohlgelernter on the Bar Mitzvah of your son Dovid and thank you for giving us the privilege to interview your father, Rabbi Wogi Sr., during his visit in Houston, Texas for the Bar Mitzvah!!Recorded in The Torchwood Center - Levin Family Studios (B) in Houston, Texas on September 24, 2024.Released as Podcast on September 29, 2024_____________DONATE to TORCH: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!_____________SUBSCRIBE and LISTEN to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Prayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at https://www.TORCHpodcasts.com_____________EMAIL your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Please visit www.torchweb.org to see a full listing of our outreach and educational resources available in the Greater Houston area!  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Rabbi Jeff Wohlgelernter, fondly known as Rabbi Wogi, joins us on this special edition of the Jewish Inspiration Podcast to share his remarkable life story. From his early years in Crown Heights and Long Island to his transformative journey through Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, and ultimately Israel (Eretz Yisrael), Rabbi Wogi's path is one of dedication, resilience, and profound spiritual growth. Listen as he recounts his impactful years at Yeshiva Mishkan HaTorah, his unexpected extended stay in Australia, and his significant contributions to Jewish outreach, including guiding the career of Rabbi Mordechai Becher.Journey with us as we discuss the monumental efforts of philanthropist Zev Wolfson in building Jewish communities and the intricate challenges of integrating Jewish traditions like Shabbos and kosher in less resourceful areas. Rabbi Wogi passionately emphasizes continuous Torah study and shares compelling anecdotes about his spiritual awakening and commitment to serving Hashem. Uncover the essence of Shabbos as a celebration of recognition of God as the Creator and the importance of fostering a community built on acceptance and unity.In this engaging episode, we also tackle contemporary issues such as the impact of smartphones on yeshiva students, the significance of Holocaust remembrance, and the cyclical nature of Jewish exile. Rabbi Wogi offers a heartfelt reflection on Jewish identity, the global perspective on Jewish people, and a hopeful vision for a future where we all gather in a rebuilt Jerusalem. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that intertwines historical insights, spiritual teachings, and a profound message of hope and resilience.Special Mazal Tov to Rabbi Yaakov & Elky Wohlgelernter on the Bar Mitzvah of your son Dovid and thank you for giving us the privilege to interview your father, Rabbi Wogi Sr., during his visit in Houston, Texas for the Bar Mitzvah!!Recorded in The Torchwood Center - Levin Family Studios (B) in Houston, Texas on September 24, 2024.Released as Podcast on September 29, 2024_____________DONATE to TORCH: Please consider supporting the podcasts by making a donation to help fund our Jewish outreach and educational efforts at https://www.torchweb.org/support.php. Thank you!_____________SUBSCRIBE and LISTEN to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Prayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at https://www.TORCHpodcasts.com_____________EMAIL your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Please visit www.torchweb.org to see a full listing of our outreach and educational resources available in the Greater Houston area!  ★ Support this podcast ★

Rabbi Yosef Katzman grew up and lives in Crown Heights, where for many years he hosted the "Cable to Jewish Life" television show. In this episode, Rabbi Katzman reflects on different pivot points through the years and how these relate to the community's changing attitude towards asking questions. He also reflects on Rosh Hashana "back in the day" and where this leaves us going into this new year. ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

Michal shares how to have a great Tishrei in Crown Heights.

Rabbi Naftali Silberberg grew up on shlichus in Detroit and today lives in Crown Heights where he is the co-director of curriculum for JLI and host of the Let's Talk Tanya podcast. In this episode, we trace Naftali's years in yeshiva that took him to Oholei Torah in the late 80s and then to Kfar Chabad, where he discovers a life long love - almost despite the yeshiva - for the study of Tanya. We discuss what makes the narrative of Tanya so unusual and how a thoughtful study of the Torah Shebichsav of Chassidus makes it more, not less, relevant for our own day and age. Presented in honor of 18 Elul - the birthday of the Baal Shem Tov and the Baal HaTanya. ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

Rabbi Michoel Seligson is a teacher and author who lives in Crown Heights. He is also the son of Dr. Avrohom Abba Seligson, a"h, who was known as the Rebbe's doctor. In this episode, Rabbi Seligson shares his father's amazing story of becoming a doctor as a frum Jew in pre-war Europe, his escape to Shanghai and the role he played in saving the Jewish refugees over the course of the war, and his eventual arrival to Brooklyn where he developed a close, private and miraculous bond with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. We discuss his father's unique style of being a both a chossid and a doctor, where amongst many others things he showed a true example of what it means to be a "rofeh yedid." ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

Rabbi Levi Avtzon grew up in Crown Heights and lives today in Johannesburg, South Africa where he is a rabbi at the Linksfield Synagogue. In this episode we continue the conversation in recent episodes about the tension between the soft and demanding voices in our community. We discuss the changing narratives in the Lubavitch community and how past demand for conformity has now given way to a therapeutic mindset, and we debate whether or not this change is in fact a true change at all. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

MyLife Chassidus Applied: Where YOUR questions are answered Donate now: https://mylife500.com For recording visit the archive page or your favorite podcast carrier. Rabbi Jacobson will discuss the following topics: Will war in Israel ever end? 01:34 • How should we react to the latest events in Northern Israel and Lebanon? 08:27 • What can we do? 09:30 • Did the prophets predict today's war? 11:14 What does the transition from Av to Elul teach us today? 17:24 • How do these months empower us to turn challenges into opportunities and growth? 17:37 • Where do we see today the transformation of darkness to light? • Is a known adversary during the riots in Crown Heights in 1991 now supporting Israel? How do we bring light and truth into a world full of lies? • How do we overcome the appalling lies being propagated today? How can we not be disheartened and depressed by it all? • What can we do to advance the truth? • Does light automatically dispel all types of darkness, including the darkness of a “black hole” for example? • What are ways to find faith, healing and strength? • Can we lie to protect ourselves? • How can people so blatantly lie about the Jews stealing Israel from the Arabs? What is the difference between faith and imagination? • How can we turn the dream of Moshiach into a reality? What do we learn from Parshas Re'eh? • What is the significance of Re'eh – to see? • What is the opposite of blessing called a gift? • What is the deeper meaning of the ceremony that took place on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal? • Why must an idolatrous city be destroyed? Does that apply today? Chof Av – 80 years • What can we learn from Reb Levi Yitzchak about our times? • Please share a relevant Torah from the Baal Ha'hilula Reader's comments • Do you use a different Hebrew dialectic?

Happy Monday! Emma speaks with Andrew Chow, technology correspondent at Time Magazine, to discuss his recent book Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire. First, Emma runs through updates on Israel stirring up conflict with Hezbollah, stalling ceasefire discussions, the ongoing slaughter of defenseless Gazans, polio in Gaza, Ukraine's offensive, the Trump campaign, the RFK campaign, Biden's few path-to-citizenship policies, killer cop corruption, and Uber's business malpractice, before watching RFK announce the TENTATIVE suspending of his campaign and his endorsement of Donald Trump, and listening to his sister dissect what the “real” Robert Kennedy would think about it. Andrew Chow then joins, diving right into a background on the roots of Bitcoin and the crypto movement as an honest attempt to provide a decentralized alternative financial rail that removed the industry of exploitative and extractionist middlemen that pushed the global economy into crisis in 2008, exploring both the democratizing and shadier ends of Bitcoin's early uses, playing a central role in both providing revolutionary movements alternative funding mechanisms and facilitating criminal exchange, all on a global scale. After expanding on some of the misleading claims about Bitcoin's criminal uses, Chow begins to wade into the great build and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire, walking through how his Wall Street roots and effective altruist ideology led him to see the realm of crypto as a volatile market in a power vacuum, ripe to be taken advantage of, resulting in FTX taking off as an unregulated crypto exchange that all went through the bank account of one, financially reckless individual, with zero checks or balances whatsoever. Chow then dives into the particular role political donations played in SBF's reckless spending, before slowly walking through the crypto collapse that SBF made so inevitable, and the complete erosion of the faith that its once-idealist community had in it, exploring its rebirth over the ongoing election as hedge fund-backed bipartisan lobby pleading for legitimacy at the feet of US political and financial institutions. Emma wraps up the free half with some coverage of Elizabeth Warren's direct call-out of the Harris campaign's (and Biden Administration's) refusal to abide by domestic (or international) rule of law when it comes to arming Israel. And in the Fun Half: Emma parses through AOC's discussion with Chi Ossé about Democrats' stance on Palestine and Gaza, Dorian from Crown Heights tackles the genuine red flags in Bill Maher's recent behavior, and Donald Trump's newest ad goes all-in on Israel. Tim Walz stirs Tucker Carlson's emotions, deep down in his gut, a caller unpacks the rat-fucking role of RFK, and JD Vance can't catch a damn break over this whole “hating single women” thing. The MR Team also tackles some updates to the RealPage lawsuit and the Trump campaign's obsessive refusal to downplay Harris' momentum, plus, your calls and IMs! Follow Andrew on Twitter here: https://x.com/andrewrchow Check out Andrew's book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cryptomania/Andrew-R-Chow/9781668038161 Check out the LIMITED EDITION Vergogna shirt on the MR shop!: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/collections/all-items/products/the-majority-report-vergogna-t-shirt Check out Tony Y, who designed the Vergogna shirt's website!: https://linktr.ee/tonyyanick AND! Check out Anne from Portland's website for HER Vergogna t-shirt! 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The city plans to build a skate park in Mount Prospect Park, which is across the street from its larger neighbor, Prospect Park, and adjacent to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and some residents are unhappy about the proposal. Hayley Gorenberg, founder of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, explains why her group is opposed to the skate park. Then, New York City Councilmember Crystal Hudson (District 35: Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant) shares why she is supportive of the city's plan to build a skate park in Mount Prospect Park.

Episode Sponsor: Bikur Cholim of Crown Heights. To Make a Donation or to get involved,  please visit: https://bikurcholimch.org/Episode Guest: Amanda SpiroAmanda Spiro is a cancer survivor who travels the world sharing her story of Divine Providence and coming back to Judaism. Focusing on the power of positivity in the face of challenge, she feels charged with the mission to help in the fight against cancer and offers her tried and tested regimen of physical and spiritual tools to individuals and groups. Amanda is also a certified kallah teacher and mikve attendant. For more information see @amandaspiroshares or AmandaSpiro.comFor more information see @amandaspiroshares @amandadawnspiro and AmandaSpiro.com