Sunday, February 16, 2014

Do you have to be Jewish to be a feminist?

Daily Texan    A disproportionately high number of Jewish women influenced the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Daniel Horowitz, an American studies professor from Smith College. [Horowitz, D. (1996). Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor union radicalism and feminism in cold war America. American Quarterly, 48(1), 1-42. PDF here.]

“There aren’t many prominent feminist writers of note in that period who weren’t Jewish,” Horowitz said. [...]

According to Horowitz, Friedan did not write about Jewish culture in “The Feminine Mystique,” but instead focused the book on the struggle of middle class white women. Horowitz listed several other Jewish women who were a part of the feminist movement but never wrote about American Jews.

“They come out of a cosmopolitan universalist tradition in which the notion of womanhood or protestor is more important than the notion of Jewishness,” Horowitz said.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Kerry, Halachic Israel, and Safety by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

5 Towns Jewish Times   In the past few months, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has occupied entire floors of hotels in Jerusalem. In early March, Mr Kerry is expected to present a copy of the so-called framework agreement to Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits Washington to both visit President Barack Obama and address the AIPAC conference of AIPAC.

The document will propose a peace deal along pre-1967 borders but with land swaps that take account of “demographic changes” on the ground. The document will attempt to influence the Netanyahu government to give up many different areas of Eretz Yisrael. It is therefore be an opportune time to review the halachos of what constitutes Eretz Yisrael. It must be stressed that this discussion does not chalilah condone the giving up of parts of Israel. It is merely a discussion of the status of its various parts.
TWO TYPES OF LAND

Although the verse in Bereishis (17:8) tells us that Hashem told Avraham, “And I shall give you and your descendants after you…the entire Land of Canaan as an inheritance forever,” one can divide up Eretz Yisrael into two different types of land:

A. Lands that were captured by our ancestors who arose out of Egypt but were not recaptured by our ancestors who rose out of Babylonia during the time of Ezra; and

B. Lands that were also recaptured by our ancestors who rose out of Babylonia.

For our purposes, we will heretofore designate these two areas as “area A” and “area B.” [...]

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Zephaniah & Manny Waks: Paying the price for speaking against abuse

The Australian  See also Complexity of child abuse: Manny Wak's brother TO outsiders, Zephaniah Waks blends in with other bearded orthodox Jewish men dressed in black on the footpaths of the East St Kilda neighbourhood where he has dwelt for almost three decades. 
 
But to insiders who live, work, gossip and pray here, his presence reminds them of things they’d rather forget. He is a stone in their shoe: uncomfortable, irritating, difficult to extract. For the past two years he has been singled out for the kind of shunning that others not as stubborn or as flinty or as sure of their stand would sooner flee than endure.

He prays on the Sabbath. He walks to the synagogue. He studies the Torah. He observes the rituals of the Chabad. Why has this solid pillar of his community become persona non grata? Waks believes his so-called sin was supporting his eldest son Manny, 37, who went to the media in July 2011 with allegations he was sexually abused as a teenager at the Yeshivah Centre, where school and synagogue squat in the heartland of this tight-knit group of worshippers.

The fears that choke child-abuse victims in every community cast an even darker shadow in orthodox circles, where dirty laundry is typically dealt with in-house. The archaic concept of Mesirah - the prohibition on reporting another Jew’s wrongdoing to non-Jewish authorities - still exerts a powerful hold. Zephaniah began to feel a bristling towards him from the first Sabbath after his son’s disclosures. That Saturday in the synagogue the most senior spiritual leader, Rabbi Zvi Telsner, delivered a stern sermon from the pulpit. “Who gave you permission to talk to anyone? Which rabbi gave you permission?” he thundered, without mentioning any names. Zephaniah and his wife Chaya walked out in a spontaneous protest with six others. Rabbi Telsner insists his remarks were not directed at any individual. “It’s like calling someone fat,” he tells me. “If you think you’re fat that’s up to you.” He had dismissed as “absolute rubbish” any suggestion he sought to discourage witnesses from stepping forward.

Slowly and surely, during the weeks and months that followed, the Waks began to detect slights and snubs in personal and religious forums, making life increasingly fraught. Zephaniah has been denied religious blessings routinely dispensed to others. Men who have accompanied him to religious studies for years now cut him dead. Intimate friends no longer share their table or invite him to family celebrations. Whispering campaigns besmirch him as a “dobber” or “moser” and anonymous bloggers have defamed him.

Never mind the thousands outside the orthodox community who cheer his son’s courage, their gratitude warming him too. These sentiments only serve to make the silences that engulf him even frostier. “If you get ostracised so that you have to leave your community, your whole world disappears,” says Zephaniah, 63, throwing up his hands. “Where are you going to go?” The Waks’ modest family home sits across the street from the Yeshivah Centre’s sprawl of brick buildings fortified by high metal fences and security patrols. [...]

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Proposal for new prenuptial agreement by Rabbi Shalom Spira

Recently received the following letter and proposal for a new prenuptial agreement from Rabbi Shalom Spira with permission to post it here for evaluation by readers. This does not constitute an endorsement. update Click link for background information
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Be-chasdei Ha-Kadosh Barukh Hu, Yishtabach Shemo

Shalom Aleikhem Ha-Rav Ha-Ga'on Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn, shlit"a, Yevarekh Ha-Shem Cheilo, ve-Yezakenu be-Me'or Torato,

I would like to thank the Rav for the marvelous insights on hilkhot gittin that the Rav has publicized over the past few years, insights that have raised the level of Torah appreciation and harmony within Klal Yisrael, thus constituting a sparkling Kiddush Ha-Shem. The merit of the public will stand to the eternal credit of the Rav.
I have recently completed (Barukh Ha-Shem) a prenuptial agreement proposal which I believe is valid according to the consensus of poskim, and which can potentially avert all future agunah situations for ladies who are not yet married. [I cannot help the ladies who are already married; they are trapped, as the Retzono shel Makom (Yishtabach Shemo) demands, and as explained by the Rav's brother Ha-Rav Ha-Ga'on R. Dovid Eidensohn, shlit"a, at http://www.scribd.com/doc/202377527/Rabbi-Safran-Broken-Marriage-Must-Divorce-rebuttal ) Since the words of the Rav's brother were inspiration in the composition of my essay, I credit him (among others) on the final page of my essay, and I am presently sending the link of my essay to the Rav for him to enjoy: 

Complexity of child abuse: Manny Wak's brother's version

update: posted the entire Facebook article
The following appeared on the  Facebook page of Avi Yemini (Manny Waks brother) and it illustrates the complexity of ascertaining the truth.  I am not taking sides. There is obviously a lot that has gone in the family. I have discussed the Facebook posting with his father Zephaniah Waks - with whom I have a good relationship. He disagrees strongly with many of the statements his son has made but he said that it will not serve any useful purpose to publicly reply and discuss the accusations. See - Paying the price for speaking out against abuse

Avi Yemini (Manny Waks brother) writes: 
Enough, no more silence.

This is my personal opinion about the Waks family’s compromised involvement in the child sexual abuse campaign, led by my brother Manny Waks and backed by my father Zephaniah Waks. I am sharing it here in a facebook post in response to the constant attempts to silence me whenever I express an opinion which does not promote or support Manny or the Waks family. Just because somebody is fighting a worthy cause, does not give them free reign to say and do whatever they want while silencing anyone who doesn’t support them. Just because I was born in the Waks family, doesn’t mean I am going to keep pretending what a big happy family we are. < I feel extremely motivated and free to share it now as my father boycotted my wedding and my mother cynically cancelled my Shabbat Chatan behind my back because I refused to apologize for expressing an opinion which does not support Manny. It’s sad to me that it took them attempting to ruin our simcha with their toxic energy to realize this, but it is clear to me now that their sudden and random request to reconcile with us (after years of estrangement) nearly 18 months ago, was purely motivated by a fear of what I would say publicly about their involvement with the campaign against child sexual abuse. 

This is just the first thing I have to get off my chest. Enough, no more silence. I supported Manny in the beginning when he went public about being sexually abused, because I felt strongly that someone going public with something as serious as sexual abuse would need as much support as he could get and I obviously believe in people speaking out about what they’ve experienced in an attempt to help others. I still absolutely support the cause itself, of course. However over the past year and a half I have found it very difficult to continue to support the path Manny is taking in regards to campaigning against child sexual abuse.

This is not and has never been acceptable to my parents. All my life my family has operated on a “you’re either with us or you are against us” approach. I experienced this as a young teen when I didn’t want to be religious. In our family that was not acceptable and myself and many of my brothers were given ultimatums that we had to either tow the line (ie. Be ultra orthodox Lubavitch) or get out. I spent my teenage years in foster care, on the street, in friend’s homes, addicted to heroin, drugs and generally wasting my life until I finally got myself into rehab and joined the army. I spoke of this experience in May 2012 at Mizrachi when I was asked to give a speech about my upbringing and the role it played in turning me away from the religion, as the topic for the evening was “Off the Derech”.

I believe it was this speech which motivated my parents to fake reconciliation with me. Since then, it’s been increasingly clear that the only thing that matters to them is keeping me from expressing my opinions about Manny.

Over the past 18 months my relationship with my parents has been filled with demands to apologize to Manny and as a result we were banned from coming to their house if Manny was going to be there because he refused to be in the same room as us e.g. last Pesach we were meant to go for the first night seder and got told at the last minute not to come because Manny was going. It has been filled with constant obsessive discussion about which community member my father says is accused of child abuse, while sitting at the Shabbat table. My father even asked me about hiring bodyguards so that he could continue to go to shul and act like he felt scared to go there without security.

When my parents recently announced their move to Israel, I was accused of forwarding the email onto someone they didn’t want reading it (I still don’t know which sibling forwarded it) and later discovered it was because it contradicted their big, two page spread in the newspaper that came out that weekend, claiming, among other things, to have been ex-communicated when really, it was all financial and something they have been planning to do for years – my mother told me how her plan was always to move as soon as my youngest sister finished school, which she did in 2013.

When I responded to my younger brother’s brave facebook post condemning the way Manny leaked (he calls it “facilitated” in his blog post) a prominent rabbi’s name to the media in connection to allegations of child sexual abuse with this comment:

“Good on you for saying what many of us are thinking. It must have taken alot of courage to write it, and I for one really appreciate it.

I have thought for a while now that the direction this campaign has gone is disgraceful. The Glick thing just seems to be the final episode in a very sad story.

The saddest thing is that future victims have had their stories hijacked by self serving people and their so called organisations.”

This was enough for my father to boycott my wedding and what pisses me off is not that he didn’t come, but that a father could use their own son’s simcha to try to manipulate them into supporting their dodgy campaign.

As much as that speech scared them into “keeping their enemies close” they’ve obviously forgotten all the other things I know and they’ve obviously not thought their tactics through very carefully. The big issue I have with my father’s involvement in this campaign against child sexual abuse, is that ours was a home full of physical child abuse. My father used to beat all the boys with a belt as punishment. I remember lining up one day to receive the belt after a whole group of us (there are 11 boys in the family) were caught climbing on the mikveh roof. I was the smallest in that group and the last in line, it was terrifying watching my older brothers scream while wondering what would happen to me. I was also the one he eventually broke the belt on and then he stopped using it but there has always been a culture of intimidation and manipulation - emotional, psychological, mental and physical, in our home.

I think it’s disgusting that someone who clearly has his own violent tendencies can go around condemning other abusers – all child abuse ought to be brought to light and the perpetrators brought to justice, even if it isn’t sexual. I might be the only one from the family who will ever have the guts to say it out loud, but no matter how they present themselves in the documentary about the family, Zephaniah isn’t someone whose judgement of others on the matter of protecting children from abuse is one to trust.

I think that initially his intentions were good - when the first newspaper spread was sprung on him in 2011 by Manny, he probably wanted to support my brother out of the terrible guilt he must have felt over not taking proper responsibility when not one, but THREE of my brothers were sexually abused and he did not go to the police. In fact, in a conversation we had, he justified it, explaining that it was the climate at the time (sounding very similar to the explanations from Yeshivah itself), I didn’t understand what it was like for him, there was no way he could report it and besides where would he send the children, it was the only Chabad school in Melbourne. Justifications aside – he was one of the ones who put pressure on the school to send the perpetrator away, so instead of condemning everyone else I think he should be apologizing himself.

I think he raised us in an environment where we learnt some pretty messed up messages. Some of the boys got molested at school, most turned to drugs to some degree and at some point, many got kicked out of home and all were vulnerable as a result of his shocking parenting tactics. His pursuit of sex offenders now is just a misguided attempt to deflect blame away from himself.

Manny is far too damaged himself to be a stable leader, especially not for victims of abuse. I think it’s disturbing that when confronted by one of our sisters, Manny denied that anyone was ever hit in our home. While he joked about being “touched” in personal conversations between us before portraying himself as a victim became his profession, I don’t think that either making light of sexual abuse OR turning it into a sensationalist media campaign is the right thing to do.

My mother literally said to me just months ago “If you don’t have something to say that promotes or supports Manny, don’t say it at all. Better to be quiet”. I refuse to do that about such an important issue. I refuse to just join the crowd in congratulating and thanking him when I have serious doubts about his motives and think that more people should be thinking more deeply about his motives and the ethics of his conduct. He has been after a leadership position for his entire life and starting Tzedek finally gave him that position. Just because they are one of the only Jewish (not the first) organizations to offer support to victims, doesn’t mean they should be blindly supported without being held to the same standards of accountability and transparency that anyone who is paid to lead an organization should be held to.

This is my opinion. I wont be silent about it.

From now on, whenever anyone congratulates me on how wonderful my parents are, because they saw the doco, or they had a Shabbat meal with them, or they are simply impressed by how many children they brought into the world, instead of smiling awkwardly I will tell them my truth about what I experienced in their home.

From now on whenever anyone congratulates me on how fantastic Manny is, I will continue to express my concerns that his motives aren’t as pure as he would have us believe and to express my opinion that he is not the right sort of person to lead this cause.

From now on, whenever anyone wants to use “enough, no more silence!” as their tagline, they’re going to remember that it also applies to them and they can no longer bully their critics into keeping their mouths shut.

I’m sharing this opinion because the issue of child abuse is too important to blindly allow, as a community, any self-serving individual to hi-jack the stories of future victims to suit themselves. I don’t gain anything from writing this, I wont ever gain a cent from talking about child abuse, I just have the satisfaction that those who tried to silence me did not succeed in preventing me from speaking my truth and that anyone who reads this has an opportunity to see things from my perspective and use it to make up their own minds.

If you don’t like the fact that I posted this – too bad, this is my facebook wall, this is my opinion and you don’t have to read it.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Khula:Wife initiated divorce option for Muslims

Daily News Egypt   [ See also The Hindu]

Khula is wife-initiated divorce under Islamic law, enshrined in Egyptian law by article 20 for law 1/2000 in the family statues laws. To receive khula, a woman must renounce any financial compensation and return her dowry. It can leave many women in financial dire straits, but given divorce through a civil court can take over seven years, it is the only option for many who are severely abused and just need to get out.

Control, drug addiction, infidelity, mistreatment of children, unchecked mental disorders, physical violence, desertion, and lack of affection or attention are some of the reasons given for filing for divorce.

However, women filing for khula in Egypt predominantly have only one reason: abuse, often in connection with drug abuse and poverty. Isis Mahmoud, head of the technical secretariat department of the standing committees at the National Council for Women (NCW), said most women only file for khula if compelled.“We all thought that the issuance of khula law would result in khula suits raining all over the Family Court, but that was not the case”, he said. If a woman files a khula suit, it clearly indicates that an unbearable situation is forcing her to do so.

Khula is expensive and lawyers’ fees are out of the reach of many women in need of divorce. Many organizations and associations provide free-of-charge advocacy services, such as the ADEW and NCW. John Shenouda, an information systems official at the Ombudsman office at NCW, said the council received 258 khula complaints from 2011 to 2012.[...]

Ibrahim said that filing a standard divorce lawsuit procedure takes years until a final ruling is announced. From the initial litigation proceedings of filing the lawsuit, it can take up to two years before the court announces a ruling. If the judge’s ruling is in favour of divorce, the opponent may appeal, which can take another two years for the appeal to be announced.[...]

The legal procedures for khula, in contrast, take up to six months, or nine months if the couple has children. A woman willing to file a khula case needs to file for mediation first. The mediation offices, located at the Family Court, attempt to reconcile the married couple before referring the case to the court. The office assigns a psychological, social and a legal specialist to conduct these mediation sessions. [...]

Rav Herschel Schacter: Women and Tefillin - Objections

Just received the following from a reliable source.

Weiss Dodelson: Rav Shlomo Miller's letter to Rav Malkiel Kotler retracting his support for Dodelson

In the campaign against the Weiss and Feinstein family conducted by the Dodelson's and their allies - there were other victims. One of them was Rav Shlomo Miller who feels that Clall Yisroel was harmed by the Dodelson campaign. The following letter written by Rav Shlomo Miller was sent to me by a talmid of one of his major talmidim for publication to make the public aware of Rav Miller's strong feelings against the Dodelson's campaign which he describes as a “milchemes hadas.” I am not sure the Weiss's are aware of this letter.

The background to this letter is that during the last summer while Rabbi Greenwald was in the midst of his efforts to mediate a settlement, Rav Malkiel Kotler pressured Rav Shlomo Miller for a letter stating that there is a siruv, and a letter from major rabbonim demanding that R. Avrohom Meir Weiss give a Get. The letter that Rav Malkiel Kotler received from Rav Shlomo Miller, solely on the basis of Rav Kotler's presentation of facts, was used in turn to convince a number of Lakewood poskim to sign a letter against R. Avrohom Meir. On January 24, 2014, after an independent investigation of the facts, Rav Shlomo Miller faxed this letter of public retraction of support to a talmid to hand deliver to Rav Malkiel Kotler.

The letter was sent to me -  by a talmid of a major talmid of Rav Miller who approved its publication - with the following additional information. This letter should be read together with that of Rav Kaminetsky
==============================
The attached letter by Rav Shlomo Miller was written and delivered to R’ Malkiel Kotler over a week before the Weiss-Dodelson get was issued.
I discussed the background of the letter with my Rebbi, who is a talmid of Rav Shlomo, and he explained the following:
In the letter, Rav Miller makes it clear that he had initially supported the Dodelson’s based on the signatures on the “Kol Korei.” However, after doing his own investigation into the history of the case and reviewing the documentation, he withdrew his support. In fact, he told numerous people who spoke with him that they may not help or support the Dodelsons, and that – this is a direct quote – “She [Gital] is a rodef.”
This letter followed a week or so after Rav Miller spoke with R’ Malkiel and explained to him that the public efforts being undertaken to promote his cousin’s cause were no less than a “milchemes hadas.”
 My Rebbi thinks that people need to understand that this letter was not written by Rav Miller on the spur of the moment, but after careful consideration.

Friday, February 7, 2014

More Men in Prime Working Ages Don't Have Jobs

Wall Street Journal   Mark Riley was 53 years old when he lost a job as a grant writer for an Arkansas community college. "I was stunned," he said. "It happened on my daughter's 11th birthday." His boss blamed state budget cuts.

That was almost three years ago and he still hasn't found steady work. Mr. Riley, whose unemployment benefits ran out 14 months ago, says his long and fruitless search is proof employers won't hire men out of work too long.

"We're poor, but we're not broke," Mr. Riley said. "We still have property. We have cars. We have some assets, we just can't liquidate them." 

Mr. Riley's frustration is widely shared. More than one in six men ages 25 to 54, prime working years, don't have jobs—a total of 10.4 million. Some are looking for jobs; many aren't. Some had jobs that went overseas or were lost to technology. Some refuse to uproot for work because they are tied down by family needs or tethered to homes worth less than the mortgage. Some rely on government benefits. Others depend on working spouses.

Having so many men out of work is partly a symptom of a U.S. economy slow to recover from the worst recession in 75 years. It is also a chronic condition that shows how technology and globalization are transforming jobs faster than many workers can adapt, economists say.

The trend has been building for decades, according to government data. In the early 1970s, just 6% of American men ages 25 to 54 were without jobs. By late 2007, it was 13%. In 2009, during the worst of the recession, nearly 20% didn't have jobs. [...]

Schlesinger twins: British Parliament 14th January 2014 – Highlights and Discussion

 
On the 14th January 2014, British MPs sat in the House of Commons to discuss the custody case of the Schlesinger Twins in Vienna. Multiple MPs criticised the way the Austrian Courts have handled proceedings and the rulings made by various judges including Judge Susanne Göttlicher who was the judge in the lower court awarding the father 100% custody.

MPs openly called the courts “kafkaesque” whilst another MP claimed “corruption” was the driver behind the judge’s decisions.

There were also questions raised about the involvement of high court judge Konstanze Thau, who has no legal standing in this case, yet was in regular communication with Judge Susanne Göttlicher.

The clip below shows the main points raised during the debate although the full 40 minute film is included at the bottom of this page.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky's letter to the Dodelsons saying his previous letter was not criticizing them

The most recent letter addressed to the Dodleson family of erev rosh chodesh Shevat Tav Shin Ayin "daleth says that ,
... I would like to convey to you in a clear language that, I am not coming to condemn you on what you did along the whole time of this painful saga. I am aware that you did get help and support for what you have done along that time, myself amongst them. It is clear that you have done what you did according to Daas Torah...
Which is a clarification of this letter  Daas Torah Blog posting 
Update: See letter from Rav Shlomo Miller



In the letter addressed at the prior date of E.S. Chanuka of Nov-19-'13,
... it was brought to my attention that the public smear campaign against the Weiss family continues with my support. It is not supported by me and the campaign should cease and desist. It is unacceptable. R' S.K.