The Sanhedria Murchevet Witchhunt - a defense for what has happened

One of the important figures in the Sanhedria Murchevet sex abuse scandal is Dr. Joy Silberg - a therapist in Baltimore who is viewed as a major expert on child abuse. I have exchanged a number of emails with her and she is working on a public statement concerning this matter. What is important to know is her view that while there might not be satanic abuse rings in Jerusalem - there is significant abuse and that there is a kernal of truth to the allegations of abuse.

In particular she suggested that I read Ross Cheit's book "The Witch-Hunt Narrative" which provides a detailed, scholarly and controversial - revisionist view of the sex abuse hysteria in America. 

This I assume will be the basis of the defense for the three charged with promoting a campaign against what they claimed is satanic sex abuse rings linked to the Church. I just purchased the book - it is very heavy reading. In the meantime here is a review of the book. Here is a rebuttal 
http://ncrj.org/resources-2/response-to-ross-cheit/the-witch-hunt-narrative-rebuttal/

Cheit isn't denying that innocent people went to jail - his thesis is that not all the cases were a result of witch-hunt hysteria but that there were many cases of genuine abuse and that because of the present mistaken belief that it was largely charges brought during hysteria - the pendulumn has swung the other way and children are not automatically believed as they once were.

Cheit is not a psychologist but is a  professor of political science and public policy at Brown University

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Daily Beast

How the ‘Witch Hunt’ Myth Undermined American Justice

Innocent people persecuted by a legal system out of control? In The Witch-Hunt Narrative, Ross E. Cheit argues the media and courts have gone too far in dismissing evidence of abuse.

[...]

In 1996, Philip Jenkins, then a history professor at Pennsylvania State University, argued in Pedophiles and Priests that the earlier coverage of clergy abuse was a “putative” crisis, one “constructed” by the media and church critics.

In 2002, a Boston Globe investigation of such cases ignited a chain reaction in many newsrooms about a deeply rooted culture of churchmen concealing abusers that the Vatican ignored. The “putative crisis” resembled a construction of its author. Jenkins had written entirely from secondary literature—no interviews or excavation of legal documents. He has since become a $400-an-hour expert witness for the church in lawsuits filed by abuse victims, according to his own testimony.

Jenkins drew a parallel between the Salem witch trials and the 1984 acquittal of two defendants in a Minnesota day-care-center case in which charges against 23 other people were also dropped after a botched investigation. But the lead defendant was convicted, and spent years in prison, as Ross E. Cheit notes in The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children. This 508-page book examines media coverage of prosecutions of abuse at day-care centers in the 1980s and ’90s.

A professor of political science and public policy at Brown University, Cheit has 68 pages of footnotes, with an array of legal citations; though the narrative is sometimes plodding, and at times redundant, Cheit mounts a rigorous argument that the witch-hunt—innocent people persecuted by a legal system out of control—is a concocted myth.

Cheit is no stranger to litigation, having sued the San Francisco Boys Choir in 1994 for “rampant sexual abuse of boys, including me,” he writes, “fighting successfully to keep from having the entire matter sealed and insisting on a public apology to settle the suit.” He writes, too, that he does volunteer work with sex offenders in a Rhode Island prison.

Cheit’s careful, probing approach is counter-cultural to an age when information moves at amazing speed with fewer guarantees of accuracy than in newsrooms of yesteryear. Legal proceedings are about process; so is The Witch-Hunt Narrative. Cheit wants us to make sense of the forest and the trees.

The case that spawned the media notion of a witch hunt was the McMartin Preschool, where allegations in 1983 fell within the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles District Attorney. As initial evaluations of children were underway, parents contacted a TV reporter. “The DA’s office was caught unprepared when the media spotlight hit them on Feb. 2, 1984,” writes Cheit, “suggest[ing] there was widespread sexual abuse at the McMartin Preschool and the government was dragging its feet.”

Cheit explores the difficulty child-care specialists faced in determining what happened; videotaped screenings morphed into forensic interviews, and became something they were never intended to be: evidence in court. A “runaway train” grand jury indicted seven people including Virginia McMartin, the wheelchair-bound grandmother for whom the school was named. Much of the suspicion centered on her grandson, Ray Buckey, who spent five years in jail during the longest and perhaps most costly preliminary proceeding of a criminal case in California history. Charges against five people were dropped. Buckey and his sister stood trial.

McMartin became its own media narrative. 60 Minutes did an exposé of the legal malfunctions, all but exonerating the defendants; Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw won a Pulitzer for attacking his own paper’s coverage. Cheit’s painstaking account of the chaotic pretrial saga ends with a jury acquittal of Buckey and his sister on a host of charges. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on 12 charges against Buckey. He was retried, again acquitted, though not unanimously.

“The McMartin case began as a morality play about the failure to protect children,” he writes. “It ended as a morality play about the failure to protect civil liberties…[and] the complete negation of the evidence of abuse.” That critical distinction is a leitmotif through the book. Society craves black-and-white narratives where good triumphs, criminals go down. It is much harder to accept the gray area of resolutions—as in the O.J.Simpson case, when a man widely assumed to be guilty was acquitted in a circus-like courtroom.

Cheit criticizes journalist Debbie Nathan for her phrase “junior McMartins” in describing “a nationwide rash of similar cases.” Nathan published a 1995 book with defense attorney Michael Snedeker, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of an American Witch Hunt. Cheit concedes that charges in some cases should not have been filed, but debunks a key source of Nathan’s reporting: a list of 36 cases cited in a 1988 Memphis Commercial Appeal series called “Justice Abused: A 1980s Witch-Hunt.”

“What kind of witch-hunt or ‘justice denied’ results in no charges whatsoever?” he writes. “Sixteen of the cases never got to the stage of a trial; charges were dropped in some cases and they were never brought in others. One-third of the cases resulted in a conviction, seemingly undercutting the claim of ‘justice abused.’ “ [...]

Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump’s Tongue

NY Times

Donald J. Trump was in a state of shock: He had just fired his campaign manager and was watching the man discuss his dismissal at length on CNN. The rattled candidate’s advisers and family seized the moment for an intervention.

Joined by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, a cluster of Mr. Trump’s confidants pleaded with him to make that day — June 20 — a turning point.

He would have to stick to a teleprompter and end his freestyle digressions and insults, like his repeated attacks on a Hispanic federal judge. Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey argued that Mr. Trump had an effective message, if only he would deliver it. For now, the campaign’s polling showed, too many voters described him in two words: “unqualified” and “racist.”

Mr. Trump bowed to his team’s entreaties, according to four people with detailed knowledge of the meeting, who described it on the condition of anonymity. It was time, he agreed, to get on track.

Nearly two months later, the effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then, clashing with a Gold Star family, making comments that have been seen as inciting violence and linking his political opponents to terrorism.

Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.

In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.

He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.

But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign, many of whom insisted on anonymity to avoid clashing with him, they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering. [...]

People around Mr. Trump and his operation say they are not ready to abandon hope of a turnaround. But he is in a dire predicament, Republicans say, because he is profoundly uncomfortable in the role of a typical general election candidate, disoriented by the crosscurrents he must now navigate and still relying impulsively on a pugilistic formula that guided him to the nomination.

His advisers are still convinced of the basic potency of a sales pitch about economic growth and a shake-up in Washington, and they aspire to compete in as many as 21 states, despite Mr. Trump’s perilous standing in the four states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — likely to decide the election.[...]

Even before Mr. Trump’s most recent spate of incendiary comments, Republicans who dealt with him after the primaries came away alarmed by his obvious unease as the de facto party leader. After a meeting in late May between Mr. Trump and Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential victories, Mr. Rove told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics, including how to map out a schedule and use data to reach voters.[...]

Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he is nearly out of time to right his campaign. On Tuesday, hours before his explosive comment about “Second Amendment people” taking action if Mrs. Clinton is elected, his brain trust reassembled again at Trump Tower in a reprise of their stern meeting in June.

They again urged Mr. Trump to adjust his tone and comportment. The top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, gave an unvarnished assessment, warning that Mr. Trump’s numbers would only move in one direction, absent a major change.

Mr. Trump, people briefed on the meeting said, digested the advice and responded receptively.

It was time, he agreed, to get on track.

New rabbinical law limits exorbitant prenuptial agreements

Arutz 7   The Jerusalem District Rabbinical Court issued a new ruling this morning (Monday) that limits the compensation that a husband owes his wife in the event of divorce, Channel 10 reported.

In Jewish wedding ceremonies performed according to traditional Jewish law, the groom signs a marriage contract (called a "Ketuba") in which he stipulates a certain amount that he owes to his wife in the event they divorce. If the husband had written a very large amount on the contract and he finds himself in a divorce, then, he can be in serious financial hot water.

The new law apparently comes as the result of a case that came to the Rabbinical Court, in which a woman demanded the exorbitant sum of 555,555 shekels as divorce compensation, since this is the number the husband had written on the marriage contract.

According to Channel 10, the husband in this case had demanded a divorce from his wife after she developed a sickness. The wife then countered that she had fallen sick due to her husband's infidelity, and would only agree to a divorce if the amount in the marriage contract was paid in full. The husband wouldn't agree to the full amount, claiming that he had written such a large amount initially for the sake of "honor and to ward off the evil eye." (the number '5' is indicative of the Hamsa, a Middle Eastern cultural symbol that is said to ward off the evil eye.)

In the end, although one judge on the Rabbinical Court actually ruled that the husband ought to pay the full amount in the contract, the other two established the majority (binding) ruling, ordering the man to pay 120,000 shekels.

Women who asked for restraining orders - 99% failed lie detector tests

Arutz 7

Family court judge Assaf Zagury said Thursday that “in 99 percent of the polygraph tests to which I sent the two sides in requests for restraining orders, the woman turned out to be lying”.

Judge Zagury is the Deputy President for Family Matters in the Northern District Magistrates’ Court, which is based in Nazareth.

He spoke at a conference dedicated to false complaints within the family, which took place Thursday at the Carlton Hotel in Tel Aviv.

Zagury was replying to a question by Attorney Moran Samon, Head of the Committee for False Complaints in the Bar Association.

He said that there is real difficulty in assessing the truth of complaints regarding domestic abuse, because the deliberations tend to be very short in time and are based on “a balance of probabilities.”

The phenomenon of false complaints “creates an unprecedented workload on the system,” he added, “because it precludes the discussion of the other matters that need to be discussed.”

Also speaking at the conference, Judge Nahshon Fisher, Family Court Judge in the Rishon Letzion Family Court, argued that “not every complaint that is not true is necessarily a false complaint.”

“Sometimes,” he explained, “you find that you are dealing with a complaint that is not true and a different interpretation of events by one of the sides. A false complaint, in my view, is one in which besides the harmful statements, there is malicious intent.”[...]

Haredi father who blocked son’s divorce given prison sentence

Arutz7

A haredi man who urged his son to withhold a divorce from his wife must serve time in prison, after he lost his appeal to Israel’s highest rabbinical court.

The High Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem on Monday reaffirmed the father’s 30-day prison sentence, which is precedent-setting in that it punishes a third party to a divorce dispute, the news site NRG reported.

The father, whose name was not published, was the driving force behind his son’s refusal for years to grant his disabled wife a divorce, according to an independent investigation of the case carried out by the Regional Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv before it sentenced the father in March.

In Israel, marital issues are under the jurisdiction of religious tribunals that act as family courts.[...]

The case reviewed Monday in Jerusalem involved a haredi couple who married 19 years ago and who lived in the United States with their two children. The wife was rendered disabled a decade ago after suffering a severe stroke when she was in Israel for a visit with her husband and children. The husband returned to the United States; his wife remained in Israel with their children. He has consistently refused her requests to be divorced, allegedly because of his father’s objection.

An injunction preventing the father from leaving Israel was issued earlier this year, when the father was in that country on a family visit. He is currently in Israel and the injunction will remain in force pending a final decision on his case, according to the news site Walla.

The court also ordered the father to pay $23,600, half of which will go to the chained wife. [...]

Tisha B'av; Why We Long To Bring Karbanos by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

Guest post by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

WITH A VERY INSPIRING AND TRUE STORY AS OUR METAPHOR, we attempt to understand and appreciate the great loss and sorrow that Jews the world over have always felt over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and the cessation of the Karbanos...

https://youtu.be/aXTmK7gRUdg

For questions or comments, please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com

Science and Occam's Razor: The Tyranny of Simple Explanations

the Atlantic

The history of science has been distorted by a longstanding conviction that correct theories about nature are always the most elegant ones.

Imagine you’re a scientist with a set of results that are equally well predicted by two different theories. Which theory do you choose?

This, it’s often said, is just where you need a hypothetical tool fashioned by the 14th-century English Franciscan friar William of Ockham, one of the most important thinkers of the Middle Ages. Called Ochkam’s razor (more commonly spelled Occam’s razor), it advises you to seek the more economical solution: In layman’s terms, the simplest explanation is usually the best one.

Occam’s razor is often stated as an injunction not to make more assumptions than you absolutely need. What William actually wrote (in his Summa Logicae, 1323) is close enough, and has a pleasing economy of its own: “It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.”

Isaac Newton more or less restated Ockham’s idea as the first rule of philosophical reasoning in his great work Principia Mathematica (1687): “We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” In other words, keep your theories and hypotheses as simple as they can be while still accounting for the observed facts.

This sounds like good sense: Why make things more complicated than they need be? You gain nothing by complicating an explanation without some corresponding increase in its explanatory power. That’s why most scientific theories are intentional simplifications: They ignore some effects not because they don’t happen, but because they’re thought to have a negligible effect on the outcome. Applied this way, simplicity is a practical virtue, allowing a clearer view of what’s most important in a phenomenon.

But Occam’s razor is often fetishized and misapplied as a guiding beacon for scientific enquiry. It is invoked in the same spirit as that attested by Newton, who went on to claim that “Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain, when less will serve.” Here the implication is that the simplest theory isn’t just more convenient, but gets closer to how nature really works; in other words, it’s more probably the correct one.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe that. But it’s what Francis Crick was driving at when he warned that Occam’s razor (which he equated with advocating “simplicity and elegance”) might not be well suited to biology, where things can get very messy. While it’s true that “simple, elegant” theories have sometimes turned out to be wrong (a classical example being Alfred Kempe’s flawed 1879 proof of the “four-color theorem” in mathematics), it’s also true that simpler but less accurate theories can be more useful than complicated ones for clarifying the bare bones of an explanation. There’s no easy equation between simplicity and truth, and Crick’s caution about Occam’s razor just perpetuates misconceptions about its meaning and value.

The worst misuses, however, fixate on the idea that the razor can adjudicate between rival theories. I have found no single instance where it has served this purpose to settle a scientific debate. Worse still, the history of science is often distorted in attempts to argue that it has. [...]

We’re So Confused: The Problems With Scientific Food and Exercise Studies

NY Times

Nearly everything you have been told about the food you eat and the exercise you do and their effects on your health should be met with a raised eyebrow.

Dozens of studies are publicized every week. But those studies hardly slake people’s thirst for answers to questions about how to eat or how much to exercise. Does exercise help you maintain your memory? What kind? Walking? Intense exercise? Does eating carbohydrates make you fat? Can you prevent breast cancer by exercising when you are young? Do vegetables protect you from heart disease?

The problem is one of signal to noise. You can’t discern the signal — a lower risk of dementia, or a longer life, or less obesity, or less cancer — because the noise, the enormous uncertainty in the measurement of such things as how much you exercise or what exactly you eat, is overwhelming. The signal is often weak, meaning if there is an effect of lifestyle it is minuscule, nothing like the link between smoking and lung cancer, for example.

And there is no gold standard of measurement, nothing that everyone agrees on and uses to measure aspects of lifestyle.

The result is a large body of studies whose conclusions are not reproducible. “We don’t know how to measure diet or exercise,” said Dr. Barnett Kramer, director of the National Cancer Institute’s division of disease prevention.

His division is working on ways to sort out inconsistencies in research used to generate health advice, hoping to improve what has become a real mess: “You can ask people how many times a week or how many times a month they eat bread or berries or ask them to keep a diary of what they ate in the last 24 hours.” But, he said, it should be no surprise that people misremember or give researchers an answer they think makes them sound good.

“I can’t remember what meals I ate a week ago,” Dr. Kramer said. “Now ask me what meals I had as an adolescent, or how much I exercised.”

David Allison, director of the nutrition obesity research center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says the same problems plague obesity research, with only two things known with certainty. All other things being equal, if you eat more calories, you will gain weight. And all other things being equal, if you exercise enough, you will lose a small amount of weight.

Adding to the confusion is a cacophony of poorly designed research, the tendency for different researchers studying the same effect to use different measurements and report outcomes differently, and researchers’ tendency to selectively report positive or “interesting” results.

The result is what Dr. Kramer calls whipsaw literature. “One week drinking coffee is good for you, and the next week it is lethal,” he says.

The situation is so bad that what gets published tends to be what the scientists believe ahead of time, says Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and of health research and policy at Stanford University’s medical school. “There are so many nutrients and so many diets,” he said. “So many outcomes — heart disease, cancer, stroke. What kind of data do you collect? A follow-up at two months, six months, two years, 10 years? You end up having millions of choices.”

And the scientists get to pick the one they want. “I can get you any result you want in any observational data set,” he said.[...]

Then there are the seemingly contradictory but well-done studies. One large federal study found that — contrary to all assumptions — diet and weight loss did not prevent heart attacks and strokes in people with Type 2 diabetes. Another large federal study found that people at risk for Type 2 diabetes could stave it off by losing a modest amount of weight and exercising.[...]

Some medical experts say the problems with lifestyle studies are so overwhelming — and the chance of finding anything reproducible and meaningful so small — that it might be best to just give up on those questions altogether.

“They may not be worth studying,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad, a cancer researcher at Oregon Health and Science University. “People want certainty, but, boy, we have no good answers.”

As for Dr. Kramer, he has not given up on rigorous research. What is needed at the point, he says, is a little more humility among researchers in interpreting and reporting the implications of their own evidence.

Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Tisha B'Av - The consequence of the Destruction of the Temple

Sotah (49a-b): R. ELIEZER THE GREAT SAYS: FROM THE DAY THE TEMPLE WAS DESTROYED, THE SAGES BECAME OF LOWER QUALITY AND BEGAN TO BE LIKE SCHOOL-TEACHERS, SCHOOL-TEACHERS LIKE SYNAGOGUE-ATTENDANTS, SYNAGOGUE-ATTENDANTS LIKE COMMON PEOPLE, AND THE COMMON PEOPLE BECAME MORE AND MORE DEBASED; AND THERE WAS NONE TO ASK, NONE TO INQUIRE. UPON WHOM IS IT FOR US TO RELY? UPON OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MESSIAH1 INSOLENCE WILL INCREASE AND HONOUR DWINDLE;2 THE VINE WILL YIELD ITS FRUIT [ABUNDANTLY] BUT WINE WILL BE DEAR;3 THE GOVERNMENT WILL TURN TO HERESY4 AND THERE WILL BE NONE [TO OFFER THEM] REPROOF; THE YESHIVAS WILL BE USED FOR IMMORALITY; GALILEE WILL BE DESTROYED, GABLAN5 DESOLATED, AND THE DWELLERS ON THE FRONTIER WILL GO ABOUT [BEGGING] FROM PLACE TO PLACE WITHOUT ANYONE TO TAKE PITY ON THEM; THE WISDOM OF THE LEARNED WILL DEGENERATE, FEARERS OF SIN WILL BE DESPISED, AND THE TRUTH WILL BE LACKING; YOUTHS WILL PUT OLD MEN TO SHAME, THE OLD WILL STAND UP IN THE PRESENCE OF THE YOUNG, A SON WILL REVILE HIS FATHER, A DAUGHTER WILL RISE AGAINST HER MOTHER, A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW, AND A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD;7 THE FACE OF THE GENERATION WILL BE LIKE THE FACE OF A DOG, A SON WILL NOT FEEL ASHAMED BEFORE HIS FATHER. SO UPON WHOM IS IT FOR US TO RELY? UPON OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN.

Trump touts childcare programs, but they're for guests, not employees

CBS News

When Donald Trump vowed this week to make child care more accessible and affordable, it was just the second time during his White House campaign that he's talked about an issue that affects millions of working Americans with young children.

The first came months ago in Iowa, when the eventual Republican nominee touted his own record as a business owner during a candidate Q&A, telling voters he provided on-site child-care service for his employees.

There is no evidence, however, that any such programs exist.

The billionaire real estate mogul, who previously voiced his opposition to government-funded universal pre-K programs, said in Newton, Iowa, in November 2015 that he had visited many companies that offered workers on-site child-care centers - and added that he offered such programs himself.

"You know, it's not expensive for a company to do it. You need one person or two people, and you need some blocks, and you need some swings and some toys," Trump said. "It's not an expensive thing, and I do it all over. And I get great people because of it. Because it's a problem with a lot of other companies."

Trump pointed specifically to two programs: "They call 'em Trump Kids. Another one calls it Trumpeteers, if you can believe it. I have 'em. I actually have 'em, because I have a lot of different businesses."

Trump went on to describe "a room that's a quarter of the size of this. And they have all sorts of - you know, it's beautiful - they have a lot of children there, and we take care of them. And the parent when they leave the job - usually in my case it's clubs or hotels - when they leave the job, they pick up their child and their child is totally safe."

"They even come in during the day during lunch to see their child. It really works out well," he said.

But the two programs Trump cited - "Trump Kids" and "Trumpeteers" - are programs catering to patrons of Trump's hotels and golf club. They are not for Trump's employees, according to staff at Trump's hotels and clubs across the country.

"Trump Kids" is described on the Trump Hotel Collection website as "a special travel program designed to help make your next family vacation a big hit." Its offerings include "kid-friendly amenities like kiddie cocktails, coloring books and no-tear bath amenities."

"The Trumpeteer Program" is described on the website of Trump National Golf Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, as "a program created specifically for our youngest members, ages three to twelve, which offers daily and evening child care, monthly newsletters and weekly events!"

When asked about on-site child care, employees at Trump's hotels and clubs across the country expressed confusion and explained the two programs are for guests and members only.

"No, there's no child care," said Maria Jaramillo, 36, a housekeeper at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, where workers have been pushing Trump to sign a union contract.[...]

Devarim; Eretz Yisroel Could Have Been A Lot Larger

Guest post by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

Moshe Rabbeinu tells us to leave Har Sinai, and head straight for Eretz Yisroel, and settle in הר אמורי ואל כל שכניו.. which Rashi explains to mean עמון ומואב והר שעיר....

The obvious problem is, that we are forbidden to conquer those lands.... 

The answer that many give, is that before the "Meraglim" we would have been permitted to take those lands too. This answer needs a lot of explanation, and is also contradicted by Rashi himself in Parshas Beshalach....

[Note: One of the questions we discussed in another Shiur, but answered it differently.]

https://youtu.be/8ikc0hZhe44

For questions and comments please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com

Donald Trump Calls Obama ‘Founder of ISIS’ and Says It Honors Him

NY Times   A day after remarks that appeared to suggest that gun rights advocates harm Hillary Clinton, Donald J. Trump sprayed his fire at President Obama on Wednesday, accusing him of creating the Islamic State and saying the terrorist group “honors” him.

“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,” Mr. Trump told a raucous and rowdy crowd in Florida on Wednesday night. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS.” He added, “I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.” During an extended riff on the crisis in Crimea, Mr. Trump added extra emphasis on the president’s full name, saying that it occurred “during the administration of Barack Hussein Obama.”

Mr. Trump’s statement was an escalation in his recent criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the terror threat, as he had previously accused only Mrs. Clinton of having a “founding” role in the terror group. His suggestion that the president was honored by ISIS recalled an earlier controversy when Mr. Trump seemingly implied that the president had some connection to the terrorist massacre of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“He doesn’t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands,” Mr. Trump told Fox News in June. And the use of the president’s middle name recalled Mr. Trump’s questioning of Mr. Obama’s faith during his crusade several years ago to prove that Mr. Obama, who is Christian, was not born in the United States.

Mr. Trump also found himself in an awkward camera framing immediately after criticizing the Clinton campaign for the appearance of Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of the Pulse gunman, at Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event this week. “Wasn’t it terrible when the father of the animal that killed these wonderful people in Orlando was sitting with a big smile on his face right behind Hillary Clinton?” Mr. Trump said.

Yet sitting behind Mr. Trump was Mark Foley, a former Republican congressman who resigned after being confronted with sexually explicit messages he had sent to underage congressional pages. Mr. Trump seemed not to be aware of the disgraced former congressman’s presence as he tried to cast doubt on the Clinton campaign’s account that it had not known who Mr. Mateen was. “When you get those seats, you sort of know the campaign,” Mr. Trump said.[...]

An Alternative Form of Mental Health Care Gains a Foothold

NY Times  Some of the voices inside Caroline White’s head have been a lifelong comfort, as protective as a favorite aunt. It was the others — “you’re nothing, they’re out to get you, to kill you” — that led her down a rabbit hole of failed treatments and over a decade of hospitalizations, therapy and medications, all aimed at silencing those internal threats.

At a support group here for so-called voice-hearers, however, she tried something radically different. She allowed other members of the group to address the voice, directly:

What is it you want?

“After I thought about it, I realized that the voice valued my safety, wanted me to be respected and better supported by others,” said Ms. White, 34, who, since that session in late 2014, has become a leader in a growing alliance of such groups, called the Hearing Voices Network, or HVN.

At a time when Congress is debating measures to extend the reach of mainstream psychiatry — particularly to the severely psychotic, who often end up in prison or homeless — an alternative kind of mental health care is taking root that is very much anti-mainstream. It is largely nonmedical, focused on holistic recovery rather than symptom treatment, and increasingly accessible through an assortment of in-home services, residential centers and groups like the voices network Ms. White turned to, in which members help one another understand each voice, as a metaphor, rather than try to extinguish it.

For the first time in this country, experts say, psychiatry’s critics are mounting a sustained, broadly based effort to provide people with practical options, rather than solely alleging abuses like overmedication and involuntary restraint.

“The reason these programs are proliferating now is society’s shameful neglect of the severely ill, which creates a vacuum of great need,” said Dr. Allen Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University.

Dr. Chris Gordon, who directs a program with an approach to treating psychosis called Open Dialogue at Advocates in Worcester, Mass., calls the alternative approaches a “collaborative pathway to recovery and a paradigm shift in care.” The Open Dialogue approach involves a team of mental health specialists who visit homes and discuss the crisis with the affected person — without resorting to diagnostic labels or medication, at least in the beginning.

Some psychiatrists are wary, they say, given that medication can be life-changing for many people with mental problems, and rigorous research on these alternatives is scarce.[....]

I was told by one psychiatrist at age 13 or 14 that if I didn’t take the meds, my brain would become more and more damaged,” said Ms. White, who began hearing voices in grade school. “Of course I believed it. And I became hopeless, because the drugs just made me feel worse.”

On a recent Tuesday, Ms. White and seven others who hear voices gathered at the Holyoke Center of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, which hosts weekly 90-minute hearing voices groups, to talk about what happens in those sessions. The group meetings themselves, guided by a person who hears voices, sometimes accompanied by a therapist, are open to family members but closed to the news media.

The culture is explicitly nonpsychiatric: No one uses the word “patient” or refers to the sessions as “treatment.” [...]

Most of the people in the room had extensive experience being treated in the mainstream system. “I was told I was a ticking time bomb, that I’d never finish college, never have a job, never have kids, and always be on psychiatric medication,” said Sarah, a student at Mount Holyoke who for years has heard a voice — a child, crying — and in college started having suicidal thoughts. She was given diagnoses of borderline personality disorder and put on medications that had severe side effects. She asked that her last name not be used, to preserve her privacy.

In the group, other members prompted her to listen to the child’s cries, to ask whose they were, and why the crying? Those questions led, over a period of weeks, to a recollection of a frightening experience in her childhood, and an effort to soothe the child. This altered her relationship with the voice, she said, and sometimes the child now laughs, whispers, even sings.

“That is the way it works here,” said Sarah, who is set to graduate from college with honors. “In the group, everyone’s experience is real, and they make suggestions based on what has worked for them.”

Like many of the other alternative models of care, Hearing Voices Network is not explicitly anti-medication. Many people who regularly attend have prescriptions, but many have reduced dosages.[...]

Rabbinic ordination or Talmudic Studies qualify for municipal jobs that demand college degrees

Times of Israel

New government regulations will enable Israelis with only a religious education to be considered for jobs offered by municipal governments even if the job requirements demand an academic degree.

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri spearheaded the change, calling it a “revolution” in employment prospects for ultra-Orthodox men that would allow them to better integrate into key positions in local authorities, Haaretz reported Monday.

However, critics reportedly said the move diminished the value of an academic education and the range of skills that it endows, and would create an opening for inappropriate appointments. [...]

The new guidelines would apply to anyone who holds rabbinical ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, or a certificate testifying that he studied for at least six years starting from age 18 in a yeshiva and has passed three tests set by the Chief Rabbinate. In effect, the change applies only to men.[...]

Experts at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think-tank, lamented the development.

Gilad Malach, head of the institute’s Haredi program and developer of a master plan for ultra-Orthodox employment, criticized the move for not taking into consideration the breadth of skills that academic education provides but that do not feature in religious studies, the report said.

“Rabbinical ordination or study… for six years doesn’t include the writing of academic papers, knowledge of English, or the study of statistics,” Malach noted. “If there are specific positions in local authorities that don’t require these skills, then an academic degree wouldn’t have been required for them” in the first place.

Republican foreign policy officials sign anti-Trump letter

CBS NEWS

Dozens of former Republican national security officials have signed a letter on Monday saying a Donald Trump presidency would "put at risk our country's national security and well-being."

"None of us will vote for Donald Trump," the letter, which was published Monday by the New York Times, says. The authors then go on to characterize the billionaire as unfit for the Oval Office, saying he lacks the moral authority, judgement and foreign policy expertise.

"Unlike previous Presidents who had limited experience in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself," the letter said. "He continues to display an alarming ignorance of basic facts of contemporary international politics."

The letter features the signatures of many former George W. Bush cabinet members and policy advisors, including former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, former intelligence chief John Negroponte and former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge. [...]

"A President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation," the letter said. "In our judgement, Mr. Trump has none of these critical qualities. He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously."[...]

Mendel Epstein's July 2016 appeal for bail - based on health reasons - denied

  Mendel Epstein Bail Denial July 2016

Jerusalem therapist charged with raping 3 sisters who came for treatment

Times of Israel

A neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) therapist pleaded innocent Sunday to charges that he raped three sisters and committed other sexual offenses with them.

Alon Shamir, 50, was arrested two weeks ago and was indicted Sunday in the Jerusalem District Court. He was remanded in custody based on the prosecution’s claim that he may obstruct proceedings if freed.

The indictment alleged that Shamir was very close to the sisters’ family before and during the period of the alleged abuse.

Shamir’s alleged acts were only revealed in 2015 when the sisters spoke with each other about their experiences.[...]

Shamir was accused of multiple counts of indecent assault, rape, having sexual relations with a client and other charges.

“The indictment itself raises many questions and issues,” Shamir’s lawyer, Shiran Golbary, said in a statement. “This is an innocent man and we are certain that after we have read and gone through the appropriate material matters will become clear.”
[...]

YNET

טיפול בלובי המלון וברכב: המטפל מואשם באונס אחיות

אלון שמיר, מטפל ירושלמי בדמיון מודרך, היה חבר של הורים לשלוש בנות והתבקש על-ידם לסייע בטיפול רגשי ורוחני. הטיפול הפך לסיוט: שמיר מואשם כי ניצל את חולשתן של השלוש, אחת מהן קטינה, כדי לבצע את זממו

כתב אישום הוגש הבוקר (א') לבית המשפט המחוזי בירושלים נגד אלון שמיר בן 50 מירושלים בגין עבירות של אינוס, אינוס במרמה, קיום יחסי מין בין מטפל למטופל, בעילה אסורה בהסכמה ומעשים מגונים, בשלוש אחיות. אחת המתלוננות הייתה קטינה בעת ביצוע המעשים.

על פי כתב האישום, שמיר שימש מטפל נפשי משנת 2006, ובשנת 2013 למד לטפל בשיטת NLP שמתבססת על טיפול

 בדמיון מודרך. משפחתו של שמיר ומשפחת האחיות היו מצויות בקשר טוב. להורים שלוש בנות, והם נהגו להתייעץ עם שמיר כדי לפתור קשיים במשפחה.

בכתב אישום נטען כי אב המשפחה פנה בשנת 2006 לשמיר כדי שיסייע לבתו, ג', בטיפול רגשי לאור קשייה להשתלב בתחום החברתי. במשך ארבע שנים טיפל בה שמיר בסדרת פגישות. את הפגישות ערך לה בין היתר בבתי קפה, בלובי של בתי מלון, במכוניתו ובביתו.

בתחילת הטיפול הגדיר שמיר את בעייתה של ג' בעיה של "משיכה מינית". במהלך המפגשים הוא היה מנווט את השיחה סביב אותה "בעיה" ונושאים רגשיים נוספים. הוא הראה לג' סרטי פורנו תוך שהוא מסביר לה לגבי תוכנם של הסרטים. אז, כך לפי כתב האישום, הוא ניצל את המצב וביצע בה עבירות מין חמורות, כולל אונס. האירועים נמשכו עד שהתחתנה.

I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton.

NY Times

During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties — three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush’s side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.

No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.

Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument.

I also saw the secretary’s commitment to our nation’s security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision of all — whether to put young American women and men in harm’s way.

Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.

I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, “Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner.”

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.

These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

Harry Maryles condemns alleged blockbusting in Lakewood area - while he acknowledges he doesn't know if it actually happened

Guest post. I reread Harry's post twice as well as the many comments to make sure it was a bad as the guest post described. It was. Why should Harry accept allegations of Chareidi blockbusting in the Lakewood area as true - when he acknowledges he doesn't have any evidence and knows very little about Lakewood?! Because it might be true?! This is "when did you stop beating your wife" logic translated as "why did chareidim start blockbusting?"  And even the allegations he relied upon are not necessarily illegal or inappropriate - and do not constitute blockbusting.

==============================================

There's a new controversy brewing with bloggerwho presents himself as honest and righteous, but is also seen as having a long history of shooting from the hip, without bothering to ascertain the facts before criticizing and slandering people. He was taken to task this week for a recent article of his. At this point, to me, the details of the article are not the relevant part. What is relevant is that this blogger clearly stated that he does not know the facts and that he has not researched the claims that were made. However, not only did this not stop him from publicly lambasting a community; he brazenly insists that he was correct in his criticisms of that community, even though he got the facts all wrong.

Besides for not apologizing for slander, Rabbi Harry Maryles went to Matzav.com to defend his slander.  After making some sarcastic comments, he stated as follows:

"But I felt that as an Orthodox rabbi, I should speak out about what this community has been accused of". 

By speaking out, he does not mean defending this community against vicious slander. That is something that he reserved for the likes of Rabbi Michael Broyde. By speaking out, he means that somehow it is the responsibility of "an Orthodox rabbi" to further false accusations and slander. 

In a comment on the article, a reader challenged him: 

A rabbi has the responsibility to research the facts before he ever shoots from his hips. Not researching the facts is highly unethical and, of course, a true chilul Hashem. What you are doing is furthering distrust of [rabbis like you]. Now, whenever a ... rabbi as yourself makes a claim, it is highly suspect. 

Those of us who follow the Daas Torah blog may remember a similar episode from this past January. Again, I feel that the subject is not what is relevant to this discussion. What is relevant is that the blogger came on here and declared: 

You won't be publishing this, but I'm going to tell you anyway since you will in fact be reading it before you delete it.

It is not your view about the halachic issues involved here that is in question. You may in fact be right. .... In doing this in such a public manner, you have lost your Chezkas Kashrus among so many of your former supporters

[As an aside, as a follower of this blog I have observed that Rabbi Eidensohn is very liberal in allowing different viewpoints to be expressed. The only exception, where I have seen Rabbi Eidensohn remove or refuse comments are when there is clear abusive language, or when people keep on repeating the same things over and over. Particularly when they are not true.] 

I guess that Rabbi Maryles is selective about who may be criticized publicly. This reminds me of a famous line from George Orwell in Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Rabbi Eidensohn's response was on mark, which never received a substantive response.

Conceding that I might be correct regarding the facts leaves you in a rather difficult situation when you claim to condemn me for besmirching chashuva rabbonim. If my facts are correct they deserve to be publicly condemned! ....

Harry you apparently didn't bother reading the letters written by a wide range of gedolim that I published on this blog. As you unfortunately have done with other issues you don't bother ascertaining the facts before you pontificate. And you respond on an emotional level rather than as an adult with concern for the truth.

On January 5th, at 4:32 PM the blogger responded:

You're right. I didn't read every single post you wrote on this subject. But I read enough to know that you condemned these Rabbonim Chashuvim many times. 

If they deserve to be publicly condemned, Why haven't I seen R' Sternbuch's condemnation. Not his disagreement. His condemnation the Philadelphia Rosh HaYeshiva. 

If he did and I missed it, show me his letter now and I will apologize to you.

Rabbi Eidenson immediately responded: 

Harry your lack of basic integrity is astounding. You are acknowledging you don't know the material or what has been going on - and yet you start blasting away and then afterwards say you are sorry? You are simply another Joe McCarthy and have no sense of shame.
You might want to read the letter from ... and ... Read the other letters which condemn the joint efforts of ....
So please cut out your nonsense of "Why haven't I seen R' Sternbuch" ..... but you in your gaaveh induced visions "know" better than everybody else in the world.
Harry - you are the one who has to bring proof that what I have done is wrong. Your approach of hanging the accused with a lynch mob based on meditating on your navel and then saying well I will apologize if I made a mistake - is simply rishus. You are a chasid shoteh!
I have letters from many of the gedolim in the world who have condemned the actions of ..... You need to publicly apologize to them for your nasty ignorant comments.

Although all the letters are readily available on the sidebar of this blog, Rabbi Marles has still not apologized, nor has he removed his slanderous post. Apparently, some seven months later, he has still not read the letters and properly investigated the matter. Either that, or truth is simply not one of the requirements that he has for his blog.

I would like Rabbi Maryles to explain his position briefly. At what point will you stop your slander? 

He also used obvious falsehoods in the past. A judge's ruling was publicly available. However, Rabbi Maryles decided to quote the now defunct Failed Messiah blog in order to slander this community. Again, he did not read the material. In an effort to justify himself he declared:

Now, I’m sure many reading this will discount the report because they do not trust the source (to say the least). But I am inclined to believe it. Because even though it serves his alleged purposes of bashing the religious world, there is no way Mr. Rosenberg’s blog could continue to credible to even his biggest supporters if he were caught in an outright lie.

Again, why not just read it. It would be quicker than the time it took him to compose his long blog post. In reality, the judge did not say anything of the like. Additionally, Mr. Rosenberg had a reputation of being dishonest. In fact, what was it that brought him to sell off his blog? An ethical person would personally investigate the facts before slandering.

Interestingly, Rabbi Maryles outright denied doing this on Matzav.com. A simple Google search proved otherwise.

I feel that it is high time for the impugned masses of Torah Jews to declare that the emperor has no clothes, and lacks any intellectual honesty.

I think that it is time for the Modern Orthodox world to hire an ethical Literary Ethical Ombudsman - similar to the one that works for the New York Times and similar publications - to review Rabbi Maryles' articles before he posts them. It would also be proper for him to seek out a competent Modern Orthodox therapist to help him understand why he abandoned his integrity when it comes to Torah Jews.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Jew

Child molester sues N.Y. Rabbi Yakov Horowitz over tweets

USA Today  A child molester who moved from New York to Israel as he was being sought on a new misdemeanor assault charge turned to the Israeli court system to quiet a New York rabbi intent on spreading the word about his crimes. 

Yona Weinberg, who spent roughly a year in jail for sexually abusing two boys in Brooklyn, lost his bid Tuesday in an Israeli court for an order of protection against Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, dean of Yeshiva Darchei Noam here.

Horowitz had been visiting Jerusalem to teach a child-safety class in Weinberg’s neighborhood. The order would have prevented the rabbi from lecturing there because the community center where he was teaching is within a third of a mile of Weinberg’s home.

The bid for the protection order followed Weinberg’s filing a defamation lawsuit against the rabbi, who put out tweets warning Weinberg’s neighbors in Israel of his presence. The lawsuit is pending.

Horowitz said he won’t be intimidated by Weinberg, who used his position as a bar mitzvah tutor to gain access to his 12- and 13-year-old victims. He also sees the fight as part of a larger effort to thwart others from exposing sex offenders and warning potential victims.

The Israeli legal maneuverings are key to this tactic, he said.

“If you care about the personal safety of children, these lawsuits should trouble you deeply,” Horowitz wrote on his blog. “For, make no mistake, if these outrageous lawsuits are permitted to continue, fewer and fewer people will be posting warnings when convicted sex offenders move near you or those you love.”

Horowitz has spent 13 years advocating for child sex-abuse victims in the Orthodox Jewish community and has written several books on child safety and parenting.

“I think this is a test case,” he said. “I am not giving up.”

Just hours after having to appear in court in Jerusalem, Horowitz taught his child-safety class to 200 people. Weinberg unsuccessfully argued that Horowitz would incite community violence against him and his family, the rabbi said. [...]