Lakewood, New Jersey rabbis face prison in kidnapping conspiracy conviction
By Carolyn Yeager
RABBI MENDEL EPSTEIN, ALONG WITH RABBIS JAY GOLDSTEIN AND BINYAMIN STIMLER, this week lost their appeal in which they argued they were engaged in their religious practice when they plotted to kidnap and torture their Jewish client's husband. From the Washington Post's July 19 story:
The holy man’s words were blunt, the subtlety and pretext all peeled off. “What we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give you the get,” Rabbi Mendel Epstein told his two visitors.
“We take an electric cattle prod,” the bearded man continued later in the conversation on Aug. 14, 2013, according to court documents. “If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move … You put it on certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know.”



ON SUNDAY, JULY 2, I SPENT ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF WITH
A PROPOSED LAW THAT IS BEING FULLY SUPPORTED BY PRIME MINISTER BINYAMIN NETANYAHU (who said a month ago he would get it passed within 60 days) seeks to add to the Basic Law of Israel the words “the nation state of the Jewish people.” Israel has no constitution by direct vote of its people, but, like Germany, uses a Basic Law as an equivalent.

