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Zalman Zirkind, a Chassidic Jew, is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court, in New York, for having pleaded guilty to laundering drug money. He faces a possible 11 to 14 years in jail.
As reported by The New York Jewish Week (January 15, 2021) his supporters “have submitted letters testifying to his character and asking for a lenient sentence”.
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A billboard by YAFFED in front of a yeshiva, asking parents to think about their sons secular education. Schools in the ultra-Orthodox community are virtually all segregated by sex. (Courtesy)
JTA Advocates for improving secular studies in Hasidic yeshivas are getting an assist from an unlikely place: the federal case of a Hasidic man who has pleaded guilty to laundering drug money.
Zalman Zirkind of Montreal, but currently on house arrest in Brooklyn, is due to be sentenced Friday in US District Court in New York. Last summer he pleaded guilty to charges that carry a possible sentence of 11 to 14 years in prison.
(JTA) Advocates for improving secular studies in Hasidic yeshivas are getting an assist from an unlikely place: the federal case of a Hasidic man who has pleaded guilty to laundering drug money.
Zalman Zirkind of Montreal, but currently on house arrest in Brooklyn, is due to be sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in New York. Last summer he pleaded guilty to charges that carry a possible sentence of 11 to 14 years in prison.
Supporters of Zirkind, also known as Zalmund, have submitted letters testifying to his character and asking for a lenient sentence.
Among the 24 letters submitted to the judge in the case was one from Abraham Boyarsky, a math professor at Concordia University in Montreal who said he has known Zirkind’s family for 40 years and understands why Zirkind turned to crime.
“I believe Zalman is a victim of an education system that I battled fiercely for decades,” one man wrote in a bid to shorten a Hasidic defendant's sentence.