Legal system has failed Sam Kellner - who helped convict Lebovits

Jewish Week     While it would seem a good bet that Sam Kellner’s dizzying, three-year legal odyssey may finally come to an end this week with a dismissal of his criminal case, the chasidic abuse whistleblower is not holding his breath. It’s easy to understand why. The way things have been going, there probably isn’t a bookie in Vegas who would take any action on that wager.

“The former trial prosecutors twice wanted to dismiss my case and were overruled. And now we have a new [Brooklyn] district attorney in office [Kenneth Thompson], and he is taking almost six weeks to review it. And so I am still an indicted person. How do you like it?,” Kellner, 52, asks matter of factly, before tallying up how many judges, prosecutors and district attorneys have presided over his case — four, five and two respectively, with a new judge expected this week. (At a hearing scheduled for Friday, prosecutors are expected to let the judge know whether they are moving to dismiss the case or will take it to trial.)

“I must be a very dangerous guy,” he adds, his sense of the absurd fully in tact.

Dangerous indeed. In 2011, a year after helping the district attorney convict a serial chasidic child molester named Baruch Lebovits, whose alleged victims include Kellner’s own son, Kellner found himself under arrest. He was charged with having several years earlier paid one young man to falsely testify in a grand jury that he was abused by Lebovits, and with sending emissaries to attempt to extort the Lebovits family for hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a promise he could persuade the witnesses against him to drop their charges.

The state’s convoluted case against Kellner, originally brought by then District Attorney Charles Hynes, was shaky from the start; it was based solely on “evidence” brought directly to the DA’s Rackets Division by members of the well-connected Lebovits family, their supporters and paid agents, all seemingly in the service of getting Lebovits’ conviction overturned.

The case took a blow last summer, when the man who accused Kellner of paying him to fabricate his charges contradicted his initial story in interviews with prosecutors — admitting, among other things, that Lebovits “could have molested” him and that he never received money from Kellner. The flip-flop destroyed his credibility and led the trial prosecutors to make their first recommendation that the case be dismissed.

Kellner’s prosecutors could have been spared this embarrassment had they consulted with their colleagues in the Sex Crimes Unit before seeking his indictment. Those prosecutors had strong evidence to suggest this young man was most probably a genuine Lebovits victim who was intimidated out of testifying against him at trial, and later manipulated into accusing Kellner; for reasons that remain mysterious, they failed to do so.

But by the time this witness imploded, Kellner’s case had become tangled up in a hotly contested DA’s race among longtime incumbent Hynes and two challengers, Abe George and Thompson, and its adjudication took a back seat to politics. And so his prosecution continued, surviving a second attempt at dismissal after Hynes lost the election to Thompson; at that time, Hynes’ controversial deputy, Michael Vecchione, himself awash in misconduct allegations, demoted the trial prosecutors rather than accept their recommendation that the case be dropped. (It is worth noting that Lebovits’ trial attorney, Arthur Aidala, has close ties to both Vecchione and Hynes).

The saga of Kellner’s case, and all that preceded his arrest, encompasses both a narrative of positive change within the chasidic community and a cautionary tale.

Unlike so many chasidic parents who discover their children have been sexually abused but remain too fearful to act, Kellner wasted no time in seeking protection and redress for his son. And he did so according to the rules of his community by first consulting with rabbis. When they deemed the situation beyond their ability to address, he received a rare dispensation to go to the police. [...]

Internalization of Values :The bigger the extrinsic sacrifice the smaller the emotional commitment

Allan Katz  [...]  The Telze Rabbi – Rav Elya Meier Bloch has a deeper explanation. He says there are 2 elements involved in bringing the sacrifice and offering – the monetary expense involved in bringing the offering and the emotional and spiritual effort involved in offering and dedicating one's soul to becoming one with God. The wealthy person feels emotionally   uplifted   because he has spent a lot of money on spirituality and that leaves little space for real work of dedicating one's soul. The poor man feels that his meal offering of flour does not count for much so all he has to give is his soul. It seems that the ' external ' elements of the offering  get in the way or make it more difficult for a person to focus on what God really wants – for man to dedicate his soul to Him , and in so doing reconnect with God and atone for his sins.  Rav Elya Meier Bloch is saying that the bigger the extrinsic / monetary sacrifice, the smaller the emotional commitment and investment.  Instead of reinforcing the spiritual and internal part of a person, the external and physical element undermines the internal and spiritual.

S.D.T – Self  Determination theory of human motivation shows how extrinsic motivation can often get in the way of intrinsic motivation, internalization and commitment to values. We know that one should not reprimand a kid using anger in order to show how serious the offence was, as the only message the kid comes away is you are angry - you have an anger problem – and that gets in the way of a kid reflecting on what he did. The focus is on the parent or teacher.  The same goes for punishment – instead of it reinforcing the severity of the offence and encouraging the kid to feel sorry for what he did and empathize with a kid he hurt, he now feels sorry for himself. The focus is no longer on what he did, but on the punishment, how unfair the adult is and his mistake of getting caught. 

 

Bribes and threats can be very effective at getting ' behaviors ' but not at helping kids internalize and make a commitment to values. An experiment tested this with kindergarten kids. 2 groups were told by their teacher not to play with toys while she was out of the room. One group's compliance was   reinforced   with   a   threat of punishment.  Both groups did not play with the toys when the teacher was not in the room.  However, the kids who did not get the threat of punishment internalized much better the teacher's disapproval of them playing with the toys than the kids who received a threat of punishment. Interventions may be effective, but we need to ask – effective at what ?[...]

A prenup undermines a marriage before it has even begun

Spectator by Melanie McDonagh

A friend of mine, quite a distinguished lawyer, takes the view that marriage ceased to make sense after no-fault divorces came in. What, he says sternly, is the point of a contract when there’s no sanction if you break it? Well, quite.

But if no-fault divorce pretty well invalidates marriage after the event, prenups do quite a good job of undermining it beforehand. The point of marriage is that it’s meant to be a lifetime affair – the hint being in the ‘til death do us part’ bit – and the point of prenups is that they make provision for the thing ending before it even gets underway. You’re putting your assets out of the reach of the spouse before you’ve got round to endowing her with all your worldly goods, if the Anglican service is your bag. [...]

So far as the case against it goes, I can’t myself improve on the remarks of the Bishop of Shrewsbury last week,[...]

‘Our society would be proposing to couples seeking marriage that they prepare their own divorce settlement before making the life-long promises of marriage. 
‘It is a legal provision which would surely empty the words of the marriage promise “for better for worse… to love and to cherish till death do we part” of all meaning.

‘Pre-nuptial agreements would render these promises provisional by the legal preparations which anticipate divorce.

‘We must ask ourselves, what message does this send to couples considering marriage? What message does this send to the young at a moment when the institution of marriage stands at such a historically, low ebb.’

Mass Hareidi Rally ‘Like a Purim Play’

Arutz 7   Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party is pushing for hareidi men to be required to enlist in the IDF, “is the best thing that has ever happened to the hareidi community,” MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) declared Sunday in a post to his Facebook page.

Feiglin has previously criticized Lapid over his insistence that hareidi men join the army. He clarified that he still believes Lapid is wrong.

“As I wrote here before, [hareidi MK] Yisrael Eichler did more for Israel’s security than Yair Lapid… Some other time, I’ll prove that Yisrael Eichler is better for Israel’s economy than Yair Lapid, too,” he wrote.

“But still, Yair Lapid is the best thing that has happened to the hareidi community,” he wrote.

“Because even though the whole story of ‘equal burden of service’ is the spin of the century, Lapid is right about one very important thing. The hareidi way of life in Israel must change,” he declared.

Specifically, he continued, the lifestyle which sees many hareidi men study Torah full-time for many years. “There’s no such thing as everyone being able to learn Torah all day, just because you put them in black clothes,” he argued. “80-90% of people cannot sit and learn all day.”

“That means that if you force them to sit there, their potential is wasted, and they rot,” he warned. [...]

Hareidi protest a ‘Purim shpiel’
Feiglin also spoke about the major hareidi protest planned for Sunday. The protest just emphasizes how “everyone involved is saying and doing the opposite of what they really think,” he said.

“The last thing that Lapid wants is for hareidi men to flood the army. But the system of ‘screw them over’ and win votes is working wonderfully for him,” he charged.

“The last thing the army wants is the hareidi community – the military is already carrying the weight of the roughly 50% of soldiers who aren’t needed,” he argued. “More enlisted soldiers, with special needs regarding kosher food and gender segregation – who needs it? But the Chief of Staff will never say that publicly.”[...]

“Just like a real Purim ball,” he wrote. “Each person arrives with a mask that is the inverse of reality.”

Schlesinger Twins: Manchester Beis Din supports Beth's campaign

update - 2nd page of above letter  Help Beth - Manchester Beth Din Letter

Whilst, as stated above, our influence on the judicial system in Austria is extremely limited, we do feel however that there needs to be a wakeup call to the Jewish Community in Vienna who have abandoned Beth and shattered her expectations of what a community ought to provide for those experiencing difficulties. I knew Beth prior to her marriage and know that her hopes and desires were to set up a Torah true Jewish home. The fact that this was not possible with Dr Schlesinger is hard enough for her to bear, but the fact that she equally hoped to be a staunch member of an Orthodox community and now feels totally bereft and lacking any meaningful support, is something which she finds even more concerning.

It is the sincere hope of Manchester Beth Din that the community will see Beth for what she is, a true heroine and devoted mother, who could bring so much happiness to her children and ensure their proper development. The community is asked to support her in every conceivable way and to ensure that the obvious miscarriage of justice is rectified at the earliest opportunity thereby enabling her to relate properly and meaningfully with her children.

Yours sincerely

Y Brodie

REGISTRAR

Schlesinger Twins: An aspect of the debate between Rabbi Kennard and Rabbi Schochet

Guest Post:

There is currently a debate taking place from opposite sides of the globe between Rabbi Kennard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kennard ), the Principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne, Australia, and Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzchak_Schochet ), Rabbi of the Mill Hill Synagogue in London.

The discussion started when Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence announced his returning to London thereby leaving his post at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, the largest of its kind and one of the biggest shuls in Australia. Rabbi Kennard wrote a piece in the Australian Jewish News encouraging the decision-makers the Great Synagogue to consider non-Chabad Modern Orthodox Rabbis for this position.

Rabbi Schochet took it upon himself to respond to this article and wrote how Chabad Rabbis take on their community "akin to marriage": http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=28949

This prompted Rabbi Kennard to respond with his article titled "Chabad is not the only way" and noted the silence from every Chabad Rabbi around the world with regard to the "custody case in a European city where the Chabad director insists on remaining neutral in a conflict that pits good against evil" (The Schlesinger twins in Vienna).

Rabbi Schochet in turn responded with an accusation of misinterpreting the facts, which Rabbi Kennard denies and provides the sources. It is interesting to note that Rabbi Schochet omitted to refer to the aforementioned custody case.< The debate has reached a standstill in that Rabbi Schochet has refused to contribute to the AJN because he accuses them of bias ( http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=29128 ), yet I have tried to comment on the colive debate but have been moderated. Looking at the one-sided nature of the comments on both of those articles, it looks like many other people have been moderated on colive too.< I encourage Daas Torah to bring this discussion to the fore and for everyone to read both sides of this discussion at:

https://www.facebook.com/RabbiJamesKennard

http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=28949

http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=29128

I believe the Daas Torah blog to be totally unbiased in its moderation of comments and look forward to reading people's thoughts.

Pursuing goyim with possible Jewish ancestors Michael Freund

JPost   It behooves Israel to take notice of this and to consider making its own historic gestures, particularly to the Bnei Anusim, the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were compelled to convert to Catholicism in the 14th and 15th centuries.

At great risk to themselves and their families, many of the Bnei Anusim continued to practice Judaism covertly despite the Inquisition, carefully passing down their hidden identity from one generation to the next. Their descendants can be found in every corner of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, and their numbers are estimated to be in the millions.

At Shavei Israel, the organization I chair, we have seen a huge increase in recent years in the number of Bnei Anusim looking to reaffirm or reclaim their Jewish identity, in places as far afield as northern Portugal, Chile, El Salvador, Sicily and Colombia.

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, in a recent speech in Ashdod, took note of this phenomenon, correctly arguing that it is time for the State of Israel to “ease the way for their return.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The Bnei Anusim are our brethren and, through no fault of their own, their ancestors were torn away from us under duress. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to strengthen the bonds between us and bring back to the Jewish people as many of them as possible.

Steps should be taken to address the myriad bureaucratic and religious issues that stand in their way so that the door of return for the Bnei Anusim can finally swing open.

After all, if Spain, which cast their ancestors out, is seeking ways to reconcile with the descendants of Iberian Jewry, then isn’t it time for Israel to do the same?

A proposal for childless couples who want children named after them and for kadish to be said after 120 years

The following was sent to me as a serious proposal by someone I know. It is clearly acceptable according to halacha as well as the spiritual and psychological dimensions. Being childless is a very difficult situation to live with in our community, but the lack of children to carry on one's name as well as to say kaddish is at least as distressing.

 

People are constantly looking for chessed opportunities while others are preoccupied with the shidduch crisis. I believe I have an idea which is ,as they say,a win/win situation that can address both issues simultaneously. 

Unfortunately there are people ,especially those who have devoted their lives to chinuch,who are simply overwhelmed by the costs of marrying off their children. This is particularly stressful (if not worse) for those who live in Israel and must deal with the reality of funding an apartment. While one may criticize the system  it is not a changin’ and one muust do what they need to do. As they say in Yiddish A Breira Hust Du (do you have a choice? 

I propose that a creative soul might want to search for couples who unfortunately  do not have children (and are of the age that probably won’t) but who have the means to help parents who lack the means. In return the young couple will name some of their children after the magnanimous benefactors and will see that Kaddish is recited after their 120.

I believe this is an example of a 360 degree chessed for all involved. 

Would love to hear some thoughts on this and hearty souls willing to shadchan such a partnership.

Montessori Schools infiltrate Jewish education

NY Times   In the boys’ classroom at Lamplighters Yeshivah in the Hasidic Jewish stronghold of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Montessori number-counting boards and decimal beads share space with Hebrew-learning materials. A colorful timeline on the wall shows two strands of world history in parallel: secular on the left, Jewish on the right. A photo of the grand rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement hangs above a list of tasks that children perform individually: make a fractions poster, practice cursive, learn about the moon’s phases.

Into the classroom on a recent morning came Rivkah Schack, one of the school’s principals, holding a tool whose form, if not its content, would be familiar to any Montessori teacher: a small nomenclature booklet in which the students were to write words from the Bible by hand and illustrate them. In secular Montessori, the booklets might be used to teach botanical terms; here, they were for Hebrew.

“Not to mix our metaphors, but that’s our holy grail,” said Ami Petter-Lipstein, the director of the Jewish Montessori Society, based in Highland Park, N.J., as Ms. Schack gathered a few pupils around her on the rug for a group Hebrew lesson.

For an educational movement trying to use a century-old pedagogical method developed by an Italian Catholic, Maria Montessori, to teach Jewish tenets, mixing metaphors is the point. Arguing that the traditional Jewish day-school model they grew up with is outmoded and too clannish for 21st-century Judaism, a new generation of parents and educators are flocking to Montessori preschools and elementary schools that combine secular studies with Torah and Hebrew lessons.

Daniel Septimus, who attended a modern Orthodox school but now identifies as a traditional egalitarian Jew, said the schools he had attended were “purposely insular.”

“We knew there was a big, wide world out there where people did different things, but it was kind of scary, and we were supposed to have limited contact with it,” he said.

His son Lev, 3, attends Luria Academy in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a Montessori school that proudly advertises the religious diversity of its students. “I think this is just more realistic,” Mr. Septimus said. “Ultimately, our kids are going to live in diverse and multicultural communities.”

In Brooklyn, whose more than 600,000 Jews include secular Jews in brownstone Brooklyn and Hasidic Jews in Borough Park and Williamsburg, four Montessori schools have opened in the last decade. Each is tailored to a different group: one is for Hasidic girls in Borough Park, another for Hasidic boys in Midwood; Lamplighters’ students are mainly Chabad-Lubavitchers, while Luria’s students range from secular to Hasidic. [...]

Meeting in Lakewood regarding the Torah Approach to Marriage

WHAT? Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn, a Talmid of Gedolim HaGaon Amiti HaRav Aharon Kotler zt”l, Posek HaDor HaGaon HaRav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, and Posek HaDor HaGaon HaRav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l, will speak to a group of men about marriage.

The crisis of divorce and broken families will also be addressed. Rabbi Eidensohn will also present his program of Shalom Bayis Beth Dins, which could greatly reduce the number of broken marriages, agunoth, and coerced Gittin. This program has already been approved by leading Poskim in Gittin and experts in family law.

WHEN? Thursday, March 6, 2014 @ 2:10 PM.

WHERE? Lakewood Township Municipal Building, 231 3^rd Street, Second Floor Room C. Parking available at Municipal Parking Lot.

COST – No cost.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
One who seeks solutions for the above.

WHAT WILL BE TAUGHT? What marriage or KIDDUSHIN means and why we must not destroy it. How a Shalom Bayis Beth Din can improve and save marriages. The halochos of coercing a GET when the husband refuses to give a GET. Why the vast majority of coerced Gittin are invalid.

You may call Rabbi Eidensohn at 1-845-578-19171-845-578-1917

 HaGadol HaGaon HaRav Moshe Feinstein zt”l wrote in his haskomo for Rabbi Eidensohn’s first sefer in halacha, “The Rav HaGaon is already known to me for many years as one who delves deeply to clarify complex halochos.” YB”L HaGadol HaGaon HaRav Shmuel HaLevi Wosner of Bnei Braq wrote in his haskomo, “A Talmid Chochom deserves very much credit. Words of truth are recognized, and words proceed from the heart and are written lishmo.”

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Men also suffer from Sexism

Atlantic    Can men be victims of sexism? 

An NPR Morning Edition report this week suggests strongly that the answer is "yes." As Jennifer Ludden reports, after divorce men can face burdensome alimony payments even in situations where their ex-wives are capable of working and earning a substantial income. Even in cases where temporary alimony makes sense—as when a spouse has quit a job to raise the children—it's hard to understand the need for lifetime alimony payments, given women's current levels of workforce participation. As one alimony-paying ex-husband says, "The theory behind this was fine back in the '50s, when everybody was a housewife and stayed home." But today, it looks like an antiquated perpetuation of retrograde gender roles—a perpetuation which, disproportionately, harms men.

This isn't the only case in which men can suffer from gender discrimination. David Benatar, in his 2012 monograph The Second Sexism discusses a whole range of other ways in which men as men are disadvantaged. Men, for example, receive custody of children in only about 10 percent of divorce cases in the United States. Men also, as Benatar writes, are subject to "a long history of social and legal pressure...to fight in war" —pressures which women do not generally experience in the same way. Along the same lines, physical violence against men is often minimized or seen as normal. Benatar refers to the history of corporal punishment, which has much more often been inflicted on boys than girls. Society's scandalous tolerance of rape in prison seems like it is also related to a general indifference to, or even amusement at, sexual violence committed against men. [...]

Shorshei HaYam- Beriat Olam and Sod Elokut by Rav Yaakov Hillel

 Shorshei HaYam- Beriat Olam and Sod Elokut