51 restaurants in county cited for rats in 2017
Experts say keeping out disease-carrying critters isn’t for amateurs.
Since January, state inspectors have cited 51 Palm Beach County restaurants for evidence of rodents. Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors found just a few tell-tale droppings at some establishments, and dozens and hundreds at others. They even spotted a few dead rats.
Such evidence is a high-priority violation that requires the restaurant to close until the issue is addressed. In 2016 inspectors cited 87 Palm Beach County restaurants for rodent-related violations.
Sure, there’s a definite “ick” factor to finding out that a restaurant you like has the problem, and it’s so bad that the place was temporarily closed because of it, but should you be worried?
Worldwide, rats and mice spread more than 35 diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These diseases can be spread to humans directly, through handling of rodents, through contact with rodent feces, urine, or saliva, or through rodent bites. Diseases carried by rodents can also be spread to humans indirectly, through ticks, mites or fleas
Today, I was able to give Rabbi Bukiet $10,000 to reserve Aaron’s plot,” organizer Sam Pollack posted. “He will be buried next to his father! We hit the goal in under 24 hours! I promised everyone I wouldn’t sleep until this goal is hit! Means a lot to the family! I’m with Lauren now! If you can all see how thankful she is, would bring you all to tears!”
Lauren is Aaron Rajman’s mother. Rabbi Zalman Bukiet is director of Chabad of West Boca Raton.
“He was kind and gentle, a special person. May his memory be for a blessing,” one person wrote on the page, repeating a popular Jewish sentiment for someone who has died.
“What to say ... everytime i think of it my eyes well up w tears ... A Jewish beacon of Light and to the Jewish community has returned to Hashem,” another wrote. “Hashem” — literally “the name” — is a popular term Jews, especially Orthodox ones, use for God.
For five years, Rajman was with Imber, managing director of the Fighters Source, the South Florida-based MMA promotions outfit. Together they cared for the woman’s young son, now 9.
“He helped me raise my kid for those five years, and afterward he still played a role in his life,” Imber said Wednesday.
“I’m heartbroken. I can’t believe there would be anybody that would do this to him.”
Trailblazer in MMA
Rajman was one of only a few Orthodox Jews in the sport. “It was pretty special to watch him walk into a ring with a yarmulke on,” said a friend, who did not want his name used.
Rajman was born in New York and moved with his family to Florida as a preschooler, Imber said. She said his parents later divorced, and for the past few years, he shared a home with his mother, his mother’s aunt and his younger brother. He also has an older brother. Rajman’s father died of cancer about four years ago, according to Jonathan Lirette, a family friend in Margate.
Imber said Rajman “was always religious ever since he was a kid.”
She said that, like most MMA fighters, he had no trouble reconciling the idea of pounding people into submission one minute and sharing drinks and back slaps with them afterward.
And she said Rajman, who taught self-defense to children both in gyms and in one-on-one classes, was mindful of what he saw as the role of self-defense in the Jewish tradition.
“Jews had to fight their way for everything,” Imber said. “He definitely believed fighting in self-defense was one of the most important things people could do.”
According to his Facebook page, Rajman spent his final days — his last posting was Friday — training officers who work in Palm Beach County schools how to disarm assailants using Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed for the Israeli Defense Forces.
“I hope the training helps the kids and the officers to get home safe!” he wrote.
Anthony Medina, who works at Fighters Source, said Rajman wore his faith on his sleeve. He refused to fight on Saturdays — the prime fight day but also the Jewish Sabbath — and promoters “bent over backwards for him.”
Nice outside the ring
According to the fight website Sherdog, Rajman was a 145-pound featherweight who trained at American Top Team in Coconut Creek and had an amateur record of 8-1 and a professional record of 2-2. Another site, The Underground, also said he had an amateur record of 8-1.
In a sport teeming with aggression, Rajman always was upbeat, his peers at American Top Team in Coconut Creek recalled. Rajman had trained there for at least seven years.
“He was always smiling, never had a bad day. But as nice as he was outside the cage, he was just as tough inside it,” said Lamar Brown, a 27-yearold lightweight who trained alongside Rajman. The man brought an “incredible level of intensity to the sport,” he said.
Rajman would occasionally hit the beach or box with Brown and others from the gym.
“These are the guys you sweat with, you bleed with,” Brown said.
Delano Felipe, a featherweight at American Top Team, sparred with Rajman about a year ago, and took a damaging hit to the ear.
“When he realized what he did, he said, ‘Man, I’m sorry,’ ” Felipe recalled. “Then he hugged me. That was the kind of guy he was.”