Thursday, May 31, 2012

Using unfiltered internet invalidates witness

http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/238796

אפקט הכנס ההיסטורי בקווינס? אחד מרבני מונסי שבניו יורק פסל אמש לעדות בחופה אדם המשתמש באינטרנט לא מסונן.
המדובר באב"ד סאטמר במונסי, הרב אברהם צבי וואזנר, שטען במהלך חופה שערך ובו שימש כמסדר הקידושין, כי בעקבות אמירתו של סבו לפיו משתמשי אינטרנט לא מסונן פסולים לעדות, יש לנהוג כך הלכה למעשה.
על פי הדיווח, האב"ד בירר בקרב משפחת הצדדים לגבי העדים, ומששמע כי הם מחזיקים בטלפון לא "כשרים" ובעלי אינטרנט לא מסונן, ביקש להביא עדים אחרים תחתיהם למעמד הח

Curtain falls on yy's saga

On 5/31/2012 1:21 PM,  --- wrote:
Your blog is thought provoking, and I’ve been following it for some time.  I was moved by yy’s story -- just about ready to post another comment -- and was surprised to see that the whole thing was removed.  Then I saw your tweet about “yy’s saga” which seemed to judge the author negatively, and that disturbed me.  Later I went back to the tweet and found that its content had been removed also.  I'm wondering what's going on.  Thanks.
Yes yy story was moving and well written and is a good example of a marriage collapsing. However despite posting anonymously - he did not want to be judged or criticized based on the personal details he wrote about himself - but only wanted to stimulate discussion of a general nature and in his words "get sympathy & empathy". I felt it was counterproductive for him to reveal his personal details of his life to the public as well as his judgments of his wife - and then to get irritated if readers didn't view events as he did and judged him harshly. He disagreed and got hurt and became angry with me for not taking his side - so the post was removed. My purpose in publishing was to encourage awareness and communication about an all too common problem. I felt that he was in fact benefiting from the feedback he got as well as in communicating the problem and thus it was a win-win situation. He clearly disagreed and asked that I remove his post which I did. I had written a more detailed description of events and but decided to remove it. 

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Rav Wosner: Clarification of internet prohibition

BCHOL כמחחצית השעה לפני כניסת חג השבועות בארה"ב וחמשה ימים לאחר הכנס נגד 'פגעי הטכנולגיה' - נתלתה ברחבי ניו-יורק מודעה בחתימת ידו של הגר"ש וואזנר, בה הוא חוזר בו מדברים שאמר בכנס, בשידור חי מביתו בבני-ברק.

כזכור בעת הכנס, הופיע הגר"ש וואזנר בעל ה'שבט הלוי' ושידר דברים בשידור-חי לבאי הכנס. הגר"ש וואזנר התבטא כי הינו מעניק שורת הלכות שרק אם יאומצו יהיה הכנס ראוי לשמו.

בין היתר אמר הרב וואזנר, כי אסור להכניס מחשב הביתה, גם לצורכי עבודה, כי אין להיכנס לבית שיש בו אינטרנט לא מסונן. הוא הדגיש כי דבריו הינן מעיקר ההלכה והוסיף כי על מוסדות הלימוד לסלק משורותיהן ילד החשוף בביתו לאינטרנט.

בשל לחץ כבד של עסקנים ושל אחד מאדמו"רי ארה"ב, אשר התנגד לסילוק ילדים ממוסדות החינוך, חזר בו הגר"ש מפסקיו ופרסם מודעה עם פסקי הלכה מתונים יחסית.

במודעה החדשה אין איסור גמור על שימוש בבית במחשב לצורכי עבודה, ואת סילוק הילדים ממוסדות החינוך מחליפה חובה להצבת סייגים וגדרים.

Do "child safety zones" stop abuse?

NYTimes    Orange County finds itself at the enter of a new wave of laws restricting the movement of sex offenders. The county government and a dozen cities here have banned sex offenders from even setting foot in public parks, on beaches and at harbors, rendering almost half the parks in Orange County closed to them. Ten more cities are considering similar legislation. 

And Orange County is far from alone. In recent years, communities around the country have gone beyond regulating where sex offenders can live and begun banning them outright from a growing list of public places.[...]

The proliferation of such restrictions reflects the continued concerns of parents and lawmakers about potential recidivism among sex offenders. But it has also increasingly raised questions about their effectiveness, as well as their fairness. 

Opponents have dismissed “child safety zones” as unenforceable, saying they are designed to make politicians look tough on crime and drive sex offenders from the area, not make children safer.

R' Slifkin: Unsung heroes of Daf Yomi

Rabbi N. Slifkin   But who are the guests of honor at the grand Siyumim? Who performs the siyum, who makes the speeches, who gets the glory? Not the Daf Yomi participants and not even the maggidei shiurim. Instead, it's the roshei yeshivah.  [...]

With the glory being given to the exponents of Daas Torah, it provides them with a platform to use the event for the politics of Daas Torah. The last Siyum HaShas took place during the peak of the controversial ban on three of my books. One yeshivah figurehead took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the ideology of Daas Torah, and capitalized on the martyrs of the Holocaust, in whose memories the Siyum HaShas is dedicated. Rav Mattisyahu Solomon spoke about how the martyrs demand us to reject the "makeshift answers" to conflicts between the Gemara and science that are offered by the "midgets of our generation." Aside from the question of whether approaches to the Gemara offered by countless Geonim and Rishonim and Acharonim can be called "makeshift," and the question of whether the victims of the Holocaust really did die for this belief, one has to wonder why a siyum on Daf Yomi is being used to further such an agenda. It's a siyum haShas, not an Agudas Yisroel convention! 

Orthodox Jewish society is made up of many different important people and institutions. We need baalei battim and teachers and schools and lay leaders and yeshivos and roshei yeshivah and universities and academics and shuls and community rabbis and mohelim and shochtim. And there are differences of opinion about whether leadership should be held by lay leaders, community rabbis or roshei yeshivah. But Daf Yomi is not about any of those three groups. They have plenty of opportunities to receive glory, at dinners and Internet Asifas and Agudas Yisroel conventions. Daf Yomi is about the ordinary man who takes his ArtScroll Gemara on the train with him every morning on the way to work. He is the hero of the Siyum HaShas. Let's grant him his well-deserved honor!

The Digital Divide is in wasting time

NYTimes    In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families. [...]

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.  [...]

“Despite the educational potential of computers, the reality is that their use for education or meaningful content creation is minuscule compared to their use for pure entertainment,” said Vicky Rideout, author of the decade-long Kaiser study. “Instead of closing the achievement gap, they’re widening the time-wasting gap.”[...]

ORA still wants a Get Me'usa

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Why "Liberal" Jews are Turning Against Israel

 Guest post: by Eliezer Abrahamson   Olive Seedlings

I recently came across an article by a Rabbi Brian Walt, titled "Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism." Rabbi Walt obviously comes from a fundamentally different religious and theological perspective than I. That being so, I usually wouldn't even bother writing about such an article. However, I believe that Rabbi Walt's article expresses views that are, amazingly enough, at conflict with my own at an even more basic level than theology (which shouldn't even be possible). The differences touch upon the most basic issues of all, the role of rationality in human life and arguably even the basic nature of reality. Moreover, I believe that the kind of thinking underlying Rabbi Walt's article is becoming increasingly common, even in (perhaps even especially in) those circles that ostensibly celebrate rationality. 

The article is a near-perfect illustration of the superficial romanticism that underlies much of what goes by the name "liberalism" nowadays, and helps explain why "liberal" Jews are increasingly finding themselves feeling like they have to chose between their identity as "liberals" and their support for Israel. By "superficial romanticism", I am referring to a worldview in which one's "feelings" have absolute moral authority. I am not addressing the various political and ideological positions commonly associated with liberalism (of any stripe), nor am I addressing the the fact that our emotions inevitably color our moral judgments. I am addressing the increasing tendency to see  superficial feelings, i.e. one's immediate gut reaction to an idea, image, or story, as having sufficient moral authority to render any further thought irrelevant. While such thinking certainly exists in all circles, my observation has been that this kind of thinking is increasingly seen in ostensibly "liberal" circles as not only respectable but as "deep" and "profound", and that much of what passes for "liberalism" today is simply advocacy for and celebration of such a worldview. [...]  click for full article Olive Seedlings

Marrying a Divorcee or Widow


Pesachim(112a): Do not cook in a pot that your fellow used for cooking. What is that referring to? – Do not marry a divorce during her first husband’s lifetime. As the Master said: A divorced man who marries a divorced woman – there are four entities present in the bed. Alternatively this advice also applies to not marrying a widow because not all fingers are equal [i.e., sex organs and she will think that sexual relations with her new husband are not as good as with the first and she will come to disparage him – Rashi].

Wife divorced against her will - status bedieved?

One of the important changes in divorce law resulted from the decree of Rabbeinu Gershom that a woman can not be divorced against her will - despite the fact that she can be divorced against her will according to Torah law. Therefore in modern times if a woman refuses to accept a get - her husband can not remarry unless he gets a Heter Meah Rabbonim which indicates that decree of Rabbeinu Gershom does not apply in his case. The HMR isn't a divorce but an allowance for bigamy. There are also questions as to whether this decree was made for a limited time- and therefore is not applicable anymore and also that it was not universally accepted.

As we have been discussing the question of what happens if the halacha is violated and the husband is forced to give a get - is this get totally invalid or only on the rabbinic level - there is a similar question regarding forcing a get on a woman. Is the Get good bedieved or is the get invalidated? This is discussed at length in the Sdei Chemed.

The significance of this question is obvious. If a husband is fed up with his wife's extortion or use of secular courts - what would happen if he simply forced her to accept a get? Or alternatively if the husband uses the threat of a forced get to extort better terms from his wife - is it a genuine threat? What if he remarried after a forced get without a Heter Meah Rabbonim? Even more more problematic - what if she remarried after receiving a forced get? Would her children be mamzerim? Would she be forced to leave that marriage?

Shulchan Aruch (E.H. 119:6): A woman can be divorced against her will. REMA: Even if he doesn't have sufficient funds to pay her kesuba or dowry - that does not prevent the divorce from working. He should divorce her and then she should take him to beis din to collect what is owed her. All of this is according to the law of the Torah. However Rabbeinu Gershom decreed that a man can not divorce his wife unless she agrees and if he does he transgresses the religious law...So even if he want to give her her kesuba - he can not divorce her today against her will. If he transgresses this prohibition of Rabbeinu Gershom in modern times and then remarries he can no longer be called a sinner

Monday, May 28, 2012

Rav Kook: Yeshiva as hospital - women aren't sick

Rav Kook expands on his views on the difference between men and women - that he stated regarding voting rights - regarding Torah learning and yeshiva. click here. He asserts that textual learning is only needed by men who have been contaminated by the outside culture. The cure is a constant dose of text based study. He likens the yeshiva to a hospital where this cure is applied. Women on the other hand have been sheltered in the home from the outside culture and are not contaminated. In addition because they have extra binah - they don't need textual studies as an antidote as men do. In fact textual studies are harmful to their spirituality. He cites the Rambam who notes that teaching women the Oral Torah is teaching them immorality. The following excerpt is from Dr. Avinoam Rozenak's on Rav Kook (pages 251-252) This letter which had never before been published was written by Rav Kook to his son and his older daughter Freida Chana (20th of Shevat 5667). The translation is entirely mine including the parenthetical notes of Dr. Rosenak.
The fundamental distinction, my precious daughter, between the soul of woman and the soul of man is only in relation to the necessity of intellectual study. Book are not in themselves natural sustenance for the spirit of man. [...] In fact the best of books [...] are only medicine to cure a man who has been sick for years. [In contrast]  the healthy inner emotions which are produced from a pure nature by means of a chinuch (training) which is not destructive – are all that is needed to instruct a man as to that which is sufficient. [Cultural education, book learning and intellectualism are all consequences of sin and degradation – A Rosenak]

Man today has become seriously degraded and his actions are perverted and life in general is debased. [The ills of the material culture have struck man and therefore it is difficult for him to conduct his life properly and therefore he seeks] doctors and cures that are produced from studies of books. [In fact we have descended] to the unfortunate condition that we are forced to imprison our beloved children who are still fresh with the dew of their childhood – for many hours every day in the school room and to bind them to books and to text. This is comparable to requiring a sick person to be hospitalized and confined to bed in a hospital room. The child  is carefully detained with strict supervision in order to provide him with the cure of study.

G‑d acted justly with the world in that He gave women a greater measure of understanding (binah) than He gave men. This is manifest in the fact that her basic intuitions are much deeper than a man. This is so even though they don’t seem to be from how they are expressed.[A woman exists in a different plane of realןtiy than a man. She has no need for the artificial framework of study and intellectual striving which supports the man A. Rosenak]. There is no absolutely no benefit for the woman of valor to be involved in the workings of the world leaders and kings or their cruel wars – which also add many chapters in books. [Involvement in this world of man can only lead to her destruction and degradation A. Rosenak] And it in no small measure injects in their lives the filth of murder and hatred of others that causes the light of life to be darkened. That is why the woman of valor is exempt from this catastrophe. She was created to look after the running of her house and to offer aid to the poor and indigent as well as to make sure her household was properly taken care of. [...] These tasks she fulfills are beautiful and pleasant and sweet smelling to those with understanding as well as inherently holy - and they are natural and wholesome in every aspect.

[In this idealized image, a woman could theoretically develop her full potential without any formal education at all. However with the degradation of the generations a woman has increasing needs for formal education. Nevertheless it is prohibited for a woman to exchange her world for that of a man A. Rosenak]. G‑d forbid for a refined Jewish girl who is destined to be a true woman of valor and even more so to be a daughter of Israel. [...] to exchange her living world for the artificial world of books and her wholesome food for medicinal chemicals The catastrophe of Europe which also imprisoned its daughters in a prison known as school [...] was the cause of producing generations of women who were weak in spirituality.

[These circumstances are the cause that women] have forgotten their true value. [Her parents for various reasons] seek only book learning in a fixed framework and to have her bound to a school room – to a hospital. And it is equivalent to teaching her what Chazal describe as immorality (tiflos). [Just as there is a chasm between Jews and the nations of the world there is also a significant difference between women and men. In these two cases, the distinction is inherent. Not everything in the nations of the world is positive. However in the end, the world must act in according with the Torah. Everything depends on the degree of connection that Jews have to their sources in the Torah and their implementation in the land of Israel. A. Rosenak]

Friday, May 25, 2012

D.A. Hynes creates Task Force & warns Rabbis


Under the suggestion of former Mayor Ed Koch, Hynes is putting together a task force Friday to address witness intimidation issues in sex crime cases in the communities. However, Hynes warned the task force will come up against the challenges of this insular community.

“When someone is intimidated to the point where they will not proceed with a criminal case, it’s always almost unlikely that they’ll ever help us with an intimidation case,” Hynes said.

Hynes also backed away from the tacit support he had given to the demand by Hasidic leaders that allegations of sexual abuse first be reported to a rabbi, warning a major rabbinical leader of possible consequences.

“What you’re doing is putting rabbis at risk, because one or more of them are going to make the mistake of committing a crime by intimidating witnesses and they could end up in handcuffs,” Hynes said.

R' Horowitz: Why abuse victims protest

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz    About five years ago, as awareness in our community about the matter of child abuse began to rise, many of the long-suffering victims began to hope against hope that things would finally change. People would finally "get it" they believed, and they would once again feel welcome and nurtured instead of being treated as pariahs who ruined the sterling reputations of their abusers. Who knows, they might even get their Level 2 security back again. 

Then they pick up a charedi publication one weekend and see a picture of a group of distinguished rabbis visiting a monster in a Virginia jail cell, who was serving a 31-year prison sentence for raping his daughter in three continents over a period of many years. More than 10 survivors contacted me as soon as that picture ran in the paper. "How could they do that to us?" they asked me. "Don't they know that supporting the perpetrator they are stabbing us in the heart?" they cried. Well, they are. They really are. 

And what in the world should survivors in our community think when they see a huge fundraiser for someone accused of molesting a child? Many of them viewed the very public nature of this effort as clear warning of what is in store for anyone who might dare report a predator to the authorities.
For many of the survivors, though, the final straw was the Internet Asifa. Why were they so upset? Let me count the ways for them. 

To begin with, the kids in the street know the truth -- that the Internet is a firecracker compared to the atom bomb of abuse as far as going off the derech is concerned. Just ask any of them -- or any of the adults in our community who work with the at-risk teen population, what the main reason is for children leaving Yiddishkeit.

Moreover, many of these kids credit the connectivity of the Internet for finally raising awareness of abuse in our community, and as we all know, there is more than a kernel of truth there. "Why are the people running the Asifa blaming the Internet for causing children to go off the derech and saying nothing about the matter of child safety?" they wonder. 

Bottom line, there are hundreds and hundreds of abuse victims and survivors who were once part of our kehilos. Some left completely while others exist on the fringes – misunderstood, marginalized, and hurting.

Final Notification to Stan

If you don't want your posts censored - please learn to spell the names of others - especially rabbis - even if you disagree violently with them!
 
Ditto for the issue of cutesy insults and ad hominem arguments. I am interested in comments that cogently provide information and criticism.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Baby allegedly stolen & sold to prominent family

BHOL פרשת אימוץ של תינוק המוחזק בידי משפחה הנחשבת מהיותר מכובדות בעולם החרדי, הפך נושא לדיון נוקב בקרב בתי הדין של פוסקי הדור.

הטענה היא, כי האימוץ נעשה תוך כדי מרמה ושלא בהתאם לחוק. גדולי הפוסקים סבורים שאין
למחזיקים שום מעמד הלכתי בהחזקתם. נוסף על כך זומנו המאמצים לדין תורה בכמה בתי דין, אך לא הופיעו

בעקבות כך, נתקבל היתר לפנות לערכאות, דבר שנמצא בהליכי הכנה.

לפי חוות דעת של משפטנים בכירים ומומחים בתחום, יש חשש כי נעברו עבירות על חוקים בינלאומיים שקשורים לאימוץ, ויתכן שגופים משטרתיים בינלאומיים יגלו עניין בפרשה

DA wants Rabbis to be mandated reporters

NYTimes   The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said Wednesday that he would push for state legislation to add rabbis and other religious leaders to the list of professionals required to report allegations of sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities.

The move comes as Mr. Hynes, the city’s longest-serving district attorney, has come under intense scrutiny for his handling of sexual abuse cases in the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. A recent article in The New York Times showed that Mr. Hynes did not object when Agudath Israel of America, an organization representing various Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox factions, told him last summer that it was instructing adherent Jews to get permission from a rabbi before reporting allegations of sexual abuse to the authorities. 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Aguda forced to eat its words "No conflict with mandatory reporting"

Forward     An Orthodox parent whose child tells him he’s been sexually abused may not take that child’s claim to the police without first getting religious sanction from a specially trained rabbi, the head of America’s leading ultra-Orthodox umbrella group has told the Forward.

But one year after acknowledging that no such registry of trained rabbis exists, Rabbi David Zwiebel said that his group has now dropped the idea of developing one.

One of the main reasons, said Zwiebel, was a warning from Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes — issued only a few days earlier — that rabbis who prevent families from going to police could be arrested.

“If they [rabbis] don’t give the right advice, they can be in trouble,” said Zwiebel. “Why would you want to create some sort of a list that would make them more vulnerable?”

Zwiebel, who is the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, said that despite the absence of such a registry, his group would staunchly resist increased public pressure to lift its requirement that parents obtain rabbinic permission.

“We’re not going to compromise our essence and our integrity because we are nervous about a relationship that may be damaged with a government leader,” he said.

Aguna: Wife of R' Yosef Dov Meyerson

A chassidic woman talks about sex

XOJane     4. We have been happily shagging for millennia. Jews never had the concept of "original sin."
Judaism is the original sex-positive culture. What? You heard me right. Y'all need "sex-positive Third wave feminism" to help you feel like having sex is OK. Jews bypassed the whole Christian idea that all sex, even in marriage, is a sin. And Protestant asceticism just never happened for us.

G-d likes it when a married Jewish couple has sex. Jews never got a message that sex is dirty. We think sex is good. It is so good that having it is actually a commandment. No, we cannot shag "anything that moves." No, we can't sleep around or have sex outside of marriage. But once you're married, sex is totally cool and awesome and G-d likes it.

I don't know who made up the dumb story about having sex through a sheet, but let's bury that old chestnut now. Having sex through a sheet is actually prohibited by Torah and we are commanded explicitly by G-d to get totally naked to shag. Just in case you're wondering.
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See Rabbi E Fink's critique

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Sabo gets 20 years for molesting kids

NY Daily News    Judge Vincent DelGuidice sentenced Michael Sabo on Monday to 20 years to life for sexually abusing two young children and said, "There should be peace in your heart that this person will never ever be able to harm another child."

A BROOKLYN JUDGE urged members of the tightly guarded Orthodox Jewish community to report sex abuse as he sentenced a man who preyed on their children to 20 years to life in prison.

“There is a duty for all adults to protect our children,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent Del Giudice said Monday. “And the only way they can be protected is if they cooperate with law enforcement.”

The warning came at the sentencing of Michael Sabo, 38, who confessed to sexually abusing two young children. Sabo’s case exemplified the difficulties prosecutors face in getting abuse victims in the close-knit Jewish community to come forward.

Sabo’s crimes came to light after a rabbi was presented with an incriminating photo of a tied-up boy. It took two years to track down the boy’s family, who then contacted prosecutors.[...]

Internet: Pedophile harrassed hundreds

YNET       A 40-year-old high-tech executive from central Israel was arrested on suspicion of sexually harassing hundreds of young children aged 10-13 online over the past four years.

The suspect, who is known to the police as a pedophile, confessed to the acts during an interrogation, and claimed that he has a problem that must be treated. Pedophilic material was also uncovered on his computer.

 The suspect, a father of three, allegedly built up a network of false identities, entered social chat rooms and pretended to be a young girl in order to connect with young children.

During his conversation with the underage children, the suspect convinced them to send him photos of themselves naked and perform indecent acts. The police further suspect that the 40-year-old man convinced the children to have virtual sex with him.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Rav Kook: Dangers of women voting

Rav Kook (Page 58 in Judge Elon’s Status of Women): The psychological reason for having women vote and for publicly calling voting by the name of “the right of women” is a consequence of the lowly state of women in the general population in these countries. If the condition of their families were truly tranquil and decent as we find in most of our families – then we would not have the women themselves, nor the academics or ethical authorities or idealists be trying to achieve what they call the “rights of voting for women.” It is something which in fact is likely to ruin the quality of family life.  And this destruction of family life must of necessity lead to great destruction in the quality of communities as well as society in general. It is only because of the despair and psychological bitterness that results from the coarse conduct of men that secular family life has been ruined. Thus the secular society decided to try to improve the situation by means of giving more power to the community and to try with this to elevate the broken ruins of the family unit. But they have shown no concern for the negative side-effects and consequences from such a change since they already have so much breakdown in the family unit for other reasons. However, we in contrast have not descended to their lowly existence and we don’t wish to see our sisters in this degraded state. The home for us is even now a bastion of holiness.  G‑d forbid that we should degrade the brilliant light that exists in the life of our sisters and to create the possibility of embittering their lives by means of exposing them to the conflicting views and bitter disputes that are connected with the elections and the political issues concerning the nature of the country.

Internet Asifa - New York Times

NYTimes    It was an incongruous sight for a baseball stadium: tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, all dressed in black suits and white shirts, filing through the gates of Citi Field on Sunday, wearing not blue-and-orange Mets caps but tall, big-brim black hats. 

More than 40,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews were expected to attend — a sellout in a season where the average attendance at a Mets game has been barely half that. The organizers had to rent Arthur Ashe Stadium nearby, which has 20,000 seats, to accommodate all the interested ticket buyers. 

For an event billed as taking aim at the Internet, signs of the digital age seemed to pop up everywhere.

Surprising truth about what motivates us

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Importance of Internet Asifa - Judy Brown, Hush

This is why the Internet Asifa is important for K’lal Yisroel: because a wholesome lie is better than any broken truth; because denial must be protected at all costs; because ignorance is sacred in a world whose existence depends on it.

And this is why it is important that we be there on Sunday: because we hold the broken truth, the one we experienced firsthand when our rebbis, teachers, and leaders ripped their own lie piece by piece, life by life, in front of our eyes, and then intimidated, threatened, brutalized and suppressed any victim or witness who dared speak out, warning that they would destroy us and our broken truth if we did not accept their lie.

The Internet is an enormous threat to the ultra-orthodox world for the same reason it is a threat in Syria , Iran and Russia; a population that is aware is a population difficult to control. They say that they must fight the Internet for it brings moral decay. What they do not say, even to themselves, is that they must fight the Internet so they can conceal moral decay. That the only thing they fear more than the outside corruption the Internet brought inside, is the inside corruption the Internet has revealed to the outside.

The Internet is terrifying to the rabbanim perhaps because of porn, perhaps because it exposes youth to foreign ideas, but even more importantly, because it enables open dialogue and an honesty they cannot afford if they are to survive as a community, the community they insist they are; pure, innocent, and above their own frailties. And if a few children must be sacrificed for this wholesome lie, then so be it. It is better than any broken truth.

In the last few years, the Internet has served as a crucial tool for victims of sexual abuse. It is through blogs and online discussions that many victims first realized they are not alone, that this is a communal problem. The silence that has kept victims in such utter isolation, unable to connect with others, has been broken by the anonymity and connectivity of the Internet. It was there victims could finally speak honestly without fear. It was there they could hear of so many similar experiences, and reach out to other victims. The Internet played a large role in tapping at the wall of denial, and for the communal authorities this was a dangerous thing.

Denial is a terrible thing to lose. We know. For many victims it takes years to face their own traumas, to break away from the security and warmth of a well taught lie. But no one knows like we do that it is never technology that corrupts man, but man that corrupts technology. Because decades beforethere was Internet or computers, there was sexual molestation and the worst forms of moral decay. We were there when it happened, when men who did not have access to the Internet turned into beasts, groping, fondling, and raping boys and girls half their size and strength, then terrorizing them into silence.

Tomorrow we will stand outside Citifield with our cardboard signs. There will be thousands of orthodox men walking past us. Some will look quickly away, some will laugh in pity, some will wish they were standing with us. We’ll stand for the first time as a united voice, in public, telling them that we are no longer afraid; that we, who have seen the darkest parts of their world, will never be silenced again; that we will make as big a ‘Chillul Hashem’ as we need to, and for as long as we need to, because there are basic morals and there are cultural traditions and for too long the ultra-orthodox world has confused one for the other.

The Citifield rally is so important to the community because it is another form of denial, another excuse they can point to. It allows them to avoid confronting the most dangerous enemy of all: themselves. The Internet does not molest, only people do; they always have. But if they can just persist on blaming internal problems on evil outside forces they can continue to remain blind to what they refuse to see: themselves. And that is why we will be there tomorrow, because this is the broken truth.
-Judy Brown, Hush

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Forced Get - with beating in New York - false report

 [[update]NYPost
The Queens man who claimed he was beaten and robbed by his estranged father-in-law and several other men was arrested today for falsifying a police report, The Post has learned.

Robert Klein was collared at 1:50 a.m. after investigators discovered his Blackberry cell phone was never stolen in the May 12 attack as he had alleged, police sources said.
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NY Post   An Orthodox Jewish man from Queens allegedly tied up and beat his estranged son-in-law — and then forced him to recite the words for a rabbi-sanctioned divorce known as a “get.”

“There were four guys in black ski masks. They pulled me, and they started beating me,” said Robert Klein, 25, of Brooklyn. He said they also took his cellphone and credit card.

“They tied my hands and feet. blindfolded me, beat me and made me repeat, ‘I want to give a get, and I’m doing so willingly and freely,’ ” said Klein, who is in a bitter divorce battle with wife Reva in Queens Supreme Court. The couple split after 10 months of marriage

Rabbinical coverup in Austrailan abuse cases

Haaretz   Cyprys, 44, appeared at Melbourne Magistrates Court last week, contesting 53 charges of gross indecency toward minors, including six counts of rape allegedly committed between 1982 and 1991. There are at least 12 alleged victims, including two who now live in America.

Court documents state they were assaulted at various locations, including Cyprys' van, Yeshivah College, Gan Yisrael youth camps and ritual baths.

In a dramatic week in court, testimonies were made public about the alleged role of New York-born Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, the spiritual leader of Melbourne's Yeshivah College and head of the Chabad movement in the city, who died in 2008.[...]

Rabbi Avrohom Glick, Yeshivah College principal between 1986 and 2007, changed his testimony under oath last week to say that Rabbi Groner had told him on two occasions the names of individuals who were allegedly molested.

Friday, May 18, 2012

R' Bechhofer: Get M'eusa - all questions answered

I will be giving a shiur on Shavuos night, 3:30 am, at Blueberry Hill shul in Monsey http://ohaivyisroel.net/ on the topic of persuading vs. compelling gittin. I will, of course, address all the "issues" raised on this blog. You are all invited to attend!

If there is sufficient interest (email me), then I can give the shiur over again after Yom Tov as a conference call.

KT, GS,
YGB

Regulations to stop Prison Rape

NYTimes    [[ This is especially a problem for jailed child molesters - who are targeted as punishment. ]]

The Justice Department on Thursday issued the first comprehensive federal rules aimed at “zero tolerance” for sexual assaults against inmates in prisons, jails and other houses of detention. 

The regulations, issued after years of discussions among officials and prisoner advocacy groups, address a problem that a new government study finds may afflict one out of every 10 prisoners, more than twice as many as suggested by an earlier survey.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Having Aharon fired: Passive pressure of R' Tam?!

Guest post: The measures taken by ORA and Tamar's other supporters against Aharon are far more than passive, and started well over a year before any beis din order against Aharon of any sort.  For example, Tamar and hers supporters, such as ORA, are attempting to have Aharon fired (and have been doing so for more than a year before any beis din order against Aharon of any sort).

(This is not to mention the effective threats to his life.) To demand Aharon's boss insist that Aharon give a get is to demand Aharon's firing if he doesn't give a get. And the publicity campaign is clearly intended to make Aharon fear for his job should he not give a get. (See below for just a small sample.) ORA took these actions despite the position of Rabbi Schachter (ORA's posek) that pressure on a spouse can only "be done with a legitimate beis din."

Note also that the parties mutually agreed to bring the case to the Baltimore Beis Din, which held several hearings with both parties participating, and the Beis Din never ruled that a get must be given. Tamar and her supporters have not explained how the child's best interests would be served by Aharon's losing his job.  But then again, for Tamar and her supporters, the best interests of the child have always been secondary at best (or subsumed by the principle that whatever Tamar is convinced will make Tamar happy is necessarily inthe best interests of the child). Why Tamar and her advocates think that Aharon would be more likely to give a get if he were to be fired from his job is mysterious – but those attacking Aharon are mostly interested in making ideological points, getting their names into the newspapers, and fundraising, (some are attacking Aharon to avoid themselves being attacked, while others do so to satisfy the Epsteins), and care little, if at all, as to whether Tamar actually receives a get.

Why some are demanding that a non-Jewish government and its officials intervene in religious disputes within the Jewish community is even more mysterious - and disregards the tragedies such practice has brought upon the Jewish People through the ages.
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ORA essentially threatened Aharon in September 2010 that if Aharon did not do what ORA demanded, ORA would (amongst other things) attempt to have him fired, specifically noting that their campaign against Aharon would be picked up by the newspapers that cover Congress
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The demonstration against Aharon in December 2010 was aimed, at least in part, in having him fired.  For example, there is a poster denouncing Aharon's boss in a Washington Jewish Week picture of the rally.  http://washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=14039
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=203305
The plight of an ‘aguna’ reaches Capitol Hill  ==============================================
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuel-herzfeld/dave-camp-has-the-right-to-fire-aharon-friedman_b_1388471.html
Dave Camp: You Have the Right to Fire Aharon Friedman 

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On Dec. 20, [2010,] Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Washington, who supports Ms. Epstein, wrote to [Aharon's boss], accusing Mr. Friedman of “psychological terrorism.” Rabbi Herzfeld urged [Aharon's boss] to “tell Aharon to give the get immediately,” and warned that “it is appropriate to also rally in the vicinity of Aharon’s work place.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/04divorce.html

Woman beaten for alleged child abuse

Ynet   Two men were charged on Thursday with assaulting a 70-year-old woman due to what they believed was her involvement in a pedophile ring that operated in a Jerusalem neighborhood, Ynet reported. 

The men, who also suspected that the woman was lecturing children on Christianity, were charged at the capital's district court with aggravated assault, aggravated breaking and entering, conspiring to commit a crime and issuing threats.

According to the indictment, 22-year-old Moshe Schleider and another man, whose identity has yet to be cleared for publication, suspected that the woman and others were sexually assaulting minors in tunnels located beneath her home. 

Yeshiva is an artificial institution - Rav Hutner

This is part of Rav Hutner's talk on why the yeshiva system was instituted. It is the last chapter in the Pachad Yitzhok for Shavuos. I hope to eventually translate it as it is an important chidush.  Basic idea is that the yeshiva system is comparable to the use of incubators. It works but is a not ideal - the true Torah system is for the father to teach his son. Click here for Translation
Chinuch Rav Hutner Pachad Yitzchok Shavuous

20 yr Marriage annuled for invalid witnesses

Jewish Press   Looking for a creative solution, Rabbi Abergel asked the court staff to obtain the couple’s ketubahh and summoned the witnesses who had signed it at the wedding. The Rabbi questioned them at length and discovered that they are “Eaters of treif food and do not observe Shabbat and the commandments.”

In an unprecedented move, Rabbi Abergel decided to annul the marriage of M. and her runaway husband, on the grounds that the witnesses who signed the ketubah were legally improper. This means that M. and her husband had never really married, and so there is no need for a get to permit M. to marry now. The rabbinic court judges adopted the decision, as did the Jerusalem High Beit Din, which is the final arbiter in religious Jewish cases, just below Israel’s Supreme Court.

Man killed for complaining about noise

YNet   The State Prosecutor's Office has decided to charge an 18-year-old Beersheba resident with murder over the stabbing of Gadi Vichman on Thursday. The State had considered an indictment on manslaughter charges but eventually decided on murder.

"It can't be murder. The indictment shows that the victim rammed into him first," Eden Ohayon's attorney said. "I am shocked that the prosecution decided to bring this charge against my client. We expected manslaughter," Rotem Tobul said.

Brooklyn DA responds to attack by Ed Koch

NYTimes    The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, on Wednesday defended his record in the face of criticism over his handling of accusations of child sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.  

In an op-ed article in The Daily News, Mr. Hynes wrote that it was absurd “to suggest that we cover up, downplay or in any way ‘give a break’ to sex offenders in the Orthodox Jewish community.” 

Mr. Hynes also had a pointed e-mail exchange with former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who questioned the district attorney’s policies in a blog post in The Huffington Post. 

Both men were reacting to an article in The New York Times last week that examined Mr. Hynes’s record in these cases and his relationships with influential rabbis in Brooklyn’s growing ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Rally to defend accused child rapist

Fox News

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Aleppo Codex - who stole it?

Boston Globe  Friedman’s dogged journalistic curiosity forces him to re-examine every aspect of that shiny heroic narrative. His inquiry yielded “The Aleppo Codex,’’ a thrilling, step-by-step quest to discover what really happened to Judaism’s most important book: who rescued it from the synagogue, how it came to be held by Israel’s Ben-Zvi Institute, and why nearly half of its pages were missing by the time it got there. With the help of a motley crew of Codex enthusiasts, Friedman goes up against a campaign of silence so effective that it is only slightly cracking 50 years later, when all of the major players are dead.

What is all this silence protecting? Nothing less than parts of the founding mythology of the state of Israel. Many of the book’s most astute and well-earned revelations are also its biggest surprises, and it would be unfair to reveal them here. But I will allow myself one spoiler: There was a protracted court battle for ownership of the Codex, between the Israeli state and the Aleppo refugees. In Friedman’s deft characterization: “Ben-Zvi and his comrades had willed a Jewish state into being against impossible odds, almost against the very logic of human events; they had glared at history and watched it bend to their will.” In their eyes, the diaspora Jewish communities had been in exile, and Israel, as the homeland of all Jews, was the rightful heir to their treasures. “The Aleppo Jews, on the other hand, had not subsumed themselves into the Zionist project and its version of history . . . [they] saw the Crown as the symbol of a place almost none of them had ever considered to be exile.’’

Bash victim to support accused child molester

New York Daily News    Yiddish signs posted in Williamsburg asking for contributions for accused child molester Nechemya Weberman.

Posters promoting an upcoming fund-raiser for a rabbi charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl blanketed Jewish shopping strips in Williamsburg Monday - sparking a campaign protesting the charity bash.

Signs supporting Nechemya Weberman, 53, - written in Hebrew and Yiddish mix - promote a Wednesday gathering at the Continental Caterers dining hall at 75 Rutledge Street.

“It is very painful,” said the victim’s mother about the street ads up on poles on Bedford and Lee Avenues. “The community has taken his side.”

At least two styles of posters were spotted. The more cartoonish set shows a missile falling onto a crowd of Orthodox Jewish men announcing a danger hitting the neighborhood.

The ads explain Weberman’s innocence by bashing the victim’s story and questioning why she decided talk to the police.

BatMelech criticizes my approval of discrimination


[guest post] This was a comment on another post - Psak Choosing vs Avoiding error  which clearly crystallizes the divide between us. 


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Batmelech  May 16, 2012 11:08 AM wrote:
I think that the blog author is not aware what discrimination means.

Discrimination is when a majority systematically excludes a minority, thereby keeping the minority from participating in the life of the society.

Your screening factors are a typical example of discrimination: As long as the shidduch candidates with divorced parents etc are a minority, it is very easy for the majority to forgo them and keep them from participating in majority culture. Of course, it could be that some majority candidates do not find their best bashert (who has divorced parents and was excluded by "screening", but only the second best (whose parents did not divorce and seemed acceptable). However, this is not a drama, he can live with second best instead of best.

For the excluded minority it is a drama, because they will be systematically rejected for facts that have nothing to do with their person.

You studied psychology, so I suppose it is important to you that Jews not be excluded from the University system as they often were in Europe.

So why do you want to do to your fellow Jew something you would not accept if a non-jew were to do it to you?

N.Y. Sun: Defends rabbis as police gatekeepers

NY Sun  According to the New York Times, the rabbi told the D.A. of the Aguda’s policy that members of the community first consult with a rabbi before going to the secular authorities. The D.A., according to the account in the Times, told the Aguda’s president that he “wouldn’t interfere with someone’s decision to consult with his or her rabbi about allegations of sexual abuse.” But, the Times continued, the district attorney also told the Aguda’s president that he “would expect that these allegations of criminal conduct be reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.”

This seems to have driven the Times nearly to distraction. It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as reckoning that the religious duty first to consult a rabbi “outranks,” as the Times paraphrased the rabbi, “even New York’s mandatory reporting law.” It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as saying: “The rabbis’ consensus is go to a rabbi, because of the stringency of the matter on both sides of the equation, both the Jewish legal implications and because you can destroy a person’s life with a false report.” The Times reports the sentiment was taken issue with by the leading Democratic candidates for mayor.

“Our first concern is with victims of crime, especially potential victims of child abuse, and the first call should be to the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, was quoted by the Times as saying. What the Times quoted the mayor’s spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, as saying, is “Any abuse allegations,” the mayor said through a spokesman, “should be brought to law enforcement, who are trained to assess their accuracy and act appropriately.”

This strikes us as a conceit. The notion that secular authorities are wiser, or better trained, than religious authorities looks hubristic against the millennia of case law that line the walls of the great rabbinic studies. Within the Jewish communities, if not in City Hall, the rabbis are regarded with enormous respect. No doubt that rabbis can make mistakes. But so can the secular courts and caseworkers. Let us just say that if allegations of assault by Jerry Sandusky of Penn State on a boy in a shower had been reported to a rabbi, his alleged years of predation would have been cut far shorter than they were.

The Times seems obsessed with the idea that rabbis — and by extension, other clergy — might have a role here. But we don’t know any religious authority — least of all Rabbi Zweibel, himself a lawyer and a veteran of one of the city’s most distinguished law firms — who is suggesting that any Jewish person or anyone else commit misprision of felony,* which is failing to report a crime. Our impression is that the rabbis would dispute the power of the law of misprision to prohibit their right to exercise freely the rabbinical authority that is so basic to the Jewish religion. That right is protected under the same amendment to the Constitution — the First — that protects newspapers like the Times and Mayor Bloomberg’s own private news service from investigating felonious behavior that hasn’t yet been reported to the police.

Harassment of victim in Kolko case

Jewish Week    She and her husband, parents of a now 13-year-old boy who they allege was sexually molested by his Brooklyn yeshiva teacher, were doing the unthinkable in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox community: bucking a system stacked heavily against them and pursuing a civil lawsuit against the Flatbush school that employed the teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko.

The system was pushing back, with a vengeance.

A prominent Brooklyn rabbi and Yaakov Applegrad, an administrator at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, the school parents were suing, asked the parents to a meeting — without their lawyer. After pleading with the couple to drop the suit, Applegrad and the rabbi turned up the heat and played the card they hoped would resonate powerfully with religious Jews: they compared the parents to Nazis for attempting to “bankrupt” the yeshiva. The Nazis, they said, destroyed the yeshiva in Europe built before the war by the father of Rabbi Lipa Margulies, Torah Temimah’s founder and dean. Now, the two suggested, the parents were doing the same with their lawsuit. (It is not clear that Rabbi Margulies’ father actually had a yeshiva in Europe).