Obama gambles our future

Newsweek

[...] The Obama budgets flirt with deferred distress, though we can't know what form it might take or when it might occur. Present gain comes with the risk of future pain. As the present economic crisis shows, imprudent policies ultimately backfire, even if the reversal's timing and nature are unpredictable.

The wonder is that these issues have been so ignored. Imagine hypothetically that a President McCain had submitted a budget plan identical to Obama's. There would almost certainly have been a loud outcry: "McCain's Mortgaging Our Future." Obama should be held to no less exacting a standard.

Wife abuse vs spousal abuse/RaP

Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,

I noticed that in your latest "mission statement" you state:

"...At the present time I am writing a source book dealing with the issue of child and wife abuse."

What about husbands, are they never abused? I would like to offer a suggestion and some reasons for it and I hope that you can act on it. Firstly, I would like to point out to you a blatant error on your part based on simple pure Torah hashkofa. And that is, that when HKB"H created Chava FROM Adam, the Torah says that she is to be an "ezer kenegdo" and as you know the chazal teach as reported by Rashi "ezer kenegdo" means that if the man/husband is zocheh she/the wife is an "ezer" and if not she will be "kenegdo". Thus, from this yesod we learn that there is a symbiotic interplay between a man/husband's zechusim and the woman/wife he gets, and that the woman is perfectly capable of being the cause of the downfall of a man/husband....

Secondly, another key lesson is from the events of the chet of Adam HaRishon, that it was Chava who brought about his downfall, after she was seduced (and raped) by the nachash, and in turn she and all womankind was cursed by HKB"H to be subservient to her husband as the posuk says "v'el isheich teshukoseich vehu yimshol bach".

The Torah says that the correct order is for the man/husband to rule his family and for the wife/woman to follow (of course, we know that the Torah then elevates women as in all the examples of the Imahos) but Torah Judaism does not subscribe to modern women's liberation and its various pro-women egalitarian agendas simply because it is not needed in a true Torah society and you should not, even inadvertently, be feeding into that current of advocating only for women/wives when it is a two way street and both men/husbands and women/wives need to be reminded EQUALLY how to respect each other and not abuse each other and to be respectful spouses.

Thirdly, you seem to be falling into the politically correct trap of only speaking out as an advocate for females/wives, when men/husbands need advocates as much as their female counterparts, just that men differ from women biologically as you know, so the focus is different. While women lack men's physical strength they are nevertheless fully capable of inflicting damaging and irreparable harm and pain on men in other emotional, mental and social ways.

Finally, as a psychologist you should be fully aware of the various non-verbal and sub-conscious ways that ALL women operate in all spheres and that when it comes to couples counseling the given principle, no matter what the present issues may seem to be between a couple, is that it is ALWAYS assumed to be 50-50 and in any problem between any couple the key is to accurately identify/diagnose and successfully cure (if possible) the source of the friction that the couple is creating between them as it never comes from the man/husband alone or vice versa. The couple is one unit and they are each other's spouses

Examples of husband and male abuse by women/wives in Orthodox and Haredi society can come in various ways, such as:1) Following outside society's immorality and slipping into infidelity and cheating on their husbands and hence producing mamzerim and the husbands who are fooled into thinking that a child is theirs when its not.

2) Siding with an outside person to "triangulate" against the husband, by aligning with interfering parents, nosy and busybody therapists, rebbetzins, rosh yeshivas or mashpi'im and friends who may be advising the woman to confront her husband and seek a divorce or alimony as weapons.

3) Ganging up with the children against the father and undermining his role as the "rosh hamishpocha" with devastating results for the father's ability to discipline his children and leading to his loss of self-esteem as a father and provider and maybe causing the father to lash out against his children when he is really trying to get at his wife but is afraid of her. This continues even after divorce where child custody is made difficult by the mother's (the ex-wife) actions alone and in demanding hefty divorce settlements in "gold-digger" style!

4) Cases of physical abuse also abound where women/wives react physically with either temper
tantrums, screaming, breaking objects and even hitting the children and the husband, all of which does happen and is recorded

5) Extreme cases where women attack their husbands violently, such as the "Lorena Bobbit case" (not Jewish I admit, but it is a threat) where she castrated her husband while he slept, or the recent case of a Jewish Bucharin woman in NYC jailed for life because she had hired a hit man to kill her husband over a child custody dispute and he did. There are many cases where it is the mothers who are abusing the children as well as abusing their husbands all in one stream of action.

Therefore I hope I have made my point and I strongly suggest that you remove the word "wife abuse" and replace it with "spouse abuse" or "spousal abuse" that shows your neutrality in the matter and that in your research and source book you will also include the subject of how husbands can be and are abused by their wives, often in collusion with an outside person against the husband resulting in husband abuse that leads to troubled relationships, broken marriages, divorces, transgression of Halacha and even criminal acts and proceedings where the wife/woman is the guilty party and the husband/man is the innocent victim.
======================================
DT:
Thanks for your comments. Originally I was planning on doing spousal abuse as well as bullying of children etc. The issue came down to the fact that there is a lot of solid material in halachic sources for physical and sexual abuse - but very little dealing with the issue of psychological abuse which is more typical for husbands. There are cases of husband's being beaten - but it is not the typical case.

Beis Din ordered to justify annuled conversions

JPost followup of JPost

The High Court of Justice on Monday issued a suspended injunction to the Rabbinic Court ordering it to explain within 90 days why it nullified the conversions made by special courts headed by former National Conversion Authority chief Rabbi Haim Druckman and how it the authority to do so.

The ruling came in response to a petition filed jointly by the Center for Justice for Women, other organizations and two women whose conversions were invalidated.

In addition, the High Court extended the temporary injunction so that the appellants - whose Judaism was cast into doubt by the Rabbinic Court - could be removed from its list of people forbidden from marrying until a ruling is made on the matter.

The petitioners asked the High Court to obligate the country's rabbinic courts to recognize every conversion registered by the National Conversion Authority and by the Interior Ministry, and to instruct the rabbinic registry office to marry all converts who appear before them without raising doubts about their conversions or declaring them as forbidden for marriage.

The call to cancel the conversions was made by Dayan (religious court judge) Avraham Attia, a member of the Ashdod District Rabbinical Court, and was upheld in a ruling by Dayan Avraham Sherman of the Supreme Rabbinical Court in February 2008.

The ruling stemmed from a specific case in which the Ashdod court retroactively annulled a woman's conversion that was performed by Druckman 17 years ago.

The decision to annul the conversion was made after it became known that she never adhered to Orthodox Jewish practice after her conversion. As a result, the Jewish status of the woman's four children was annulled.[...]

Rav Shlomo Aviner - Reporting child abuse

Torat HaRav Aviner - #17 May 2009

We unfortunately see a phenomenon of unbridled parental child-beating, and there are also cases of parents or other relatives raping boys or girls. This heinous phenomenon exists in the same percentages amongst the religious as amongst the secular.[Couldn't find any statistics to support his assertion that there is greater incidence amongst religious and a number of psychologists who work with abuse said they never saw any data supporting this claim and so I deleted it] but it gets reported only when matters get too far out of hand, or it comes to light by itself, and by then many more cases crop up.

And why don’t people report it? “It constitutes forbidden gossip… It might destroy the lives of the abuser… it’s unsavory to report it… it will bring calamity on the abuser and his family…” Obviously, all this is wrong. This is the sort of report that one can and must make. After all, the child is small, and who will protect him? It’s one thing if abuse happens outside of a family. One can hope that perhaps the family will stop it and protect the child, but if it occurs within the family, the child has no one to save him. Therefore, whoever knows about it has to report it. Obviously, first one has to talk with the parents, or with the teacher if he is the abuser. If they stop and go for treatment, all the better. If not, however, one is required to report to the welfare department or the police. Some among the Chareidim argue that one is forbidden to report abuse in accordance with the Jewish law that one is forbidden to be a “mosser”, i.e., a person who “betrays a Jew to the non-Jewish courts”, which, by analogy, they apply to the courts of the State of Israel. Yet that is wrong as well, because the child’s life is at stake. The author of the book “Nishmat Avraham”, Rabbi Dr. A. Avraham, relates that he asked the illustrious rabbis of our generation, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg and Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv about this, and all of them said that it is a mitzvah to report the abuse, and the person who does so is no “mosser.”

Quite the contrary, the parents or family members or the teacher who commits the abuse, whether physical or sexual, is to be categorized as a “rodef,” an attacker, and one who reports a “rodef” is not to be classed as a “moser." Those same rabbis rule that even if, as a result, the child will be removed from his family and placed into a secular institution or adopted by secular parents, or – in cases abroad – even if he is placed in an institution of non-Jews – this is a matter of life and death. We must certainly strive to have the child not undergo such placement, but even if there is a chance it will happen, as noted, this is a matter of life and death (Nishmat Adam, Vol. 4, page 207). [...]

EJF promotes conversion for intermarried

Recipients and Publicity commentary on latest developments with EJF "Eternal Jewish Family - R' Tropper's blog":

EJF promotes conference with Kiruv organizations, while its theme is "Converting Intermarried Couples", yet is set to promote the toughest approach to conversion itself, as EJF and Rabbi Tropper are forced to issue an official public apology and explanation to the RCA over another conversion incident. Firstly the apology:

(1) EJF and Rabbi Tropper have issued the following on the official EJF website:

"EJF Updates 05/11/2009

EJF Clarifies Stand on RCA Geyrus

A media report that appeared to challenge the validity of a geyrus performed by a rabbi affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) was not authorized by EJF. The report made it appear as if EJF was critical of the geyrus, when in fact EJF was never privy to the circumstances behind the giyur. While questions were raised about the procedure that led up to the giyur, EJF at no time ruled on the status of the conversion. It likewise never authorized anyone affiliated with the organization to address the giyur in the media. EJF International apologizes for any misunderstanding, particularly in a case where the Rosh Bais Din who performed the conversion is a true Talmid Chacham. In commenting on the giyur, Rabbi Leib Tropper noted, “Our standards that are based on the halachic rulings of past and present gedolei yisroel are well known and not subject to compromise. Both EJF and RCA agree that any differences should be aired between rabbinic leaders of both organizations and not in the media.” [to finish reading click on this link and read comments]

Mussar becomes Life Coaching

YNet reports:

Beginning next school year, students at the Orot Aviv yeshiva in Tel Aviv will be offered personal life coaching sessions to help them "better connect with their Torah studies."

The lessons will be offered by the yeshiva's rabbis, who are currently undergoing training.

Rabbi Mishael Cohen, head of the Orot Aviv Yeshiva, stresses that the personal coaching project is aimed at providing the students with the "necessary tools to study Torah and work on his character

According to the yeshiva, in this era of television and the internet the students are finding it difficult to concentrate and relate to the texts, and are therefore in need of professional assistance. Rabbi Ettinger of the Orot Aviv yeshiva says the lessons will be based on "Jewish books that deal with morality, such as Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Just)." [...]

Blog readership - worldwide - including Arabs

I was recently checking the blog statistics and I noticed an interesting change concerning the location of readers.

Besides getting readers from the United States and Canada,  I have regulars from Brazil and South America - aside from a certain Brazilan billionaire. There are many readers from London as well as Germany and even Shanghai and India. There are a few from Italy and Romania. However  I also notice that there are Arab readers from Jordan and Oman who seemed fascinated by an old post from Jersey Girl - Should Jews hate Arabs?

Rav Sternbuch, shlita - 600,000 leaders

Abuse: Difficult issues / Case of Colmer

Jewish Week

A married Jew with peyos and a black hat, Stefan Colmer used to spend hours, according to reports, reading the Talmud in the main study hall of the Mirrer Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. While there, he also befriended some boys in and around the yeshiva and, on occasion, invited a few of them to his nearby home.

And, according to a source close to the case, Colmer allegedly sexually abused several of them — in addition to other young boys from the “general neighborhood” near the yeshiva, a law enforcement source believes.

Colmer, 32, who moved to Israel in early 2007, weeks before any of his alleged victims approached the police, was extradited to Brooklyn in January 2008 and is now being held at Rikers Island, awaiting trial on charges that he sodomized two teenage boys, both 13 at the time, on numerous occasions. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted on all charges.

What isn’t in the criminal charges against Colmer is that, according to numerous sources familiar with the facts, several years before allegedly abusing the two victims named in the May 2007 indictment he was treated in the sex-offender program of a prominent Jewish agency — only to leave of his own volition before his treatment was completed.

Yet, until his arrest in June 2007, Colmer had never been reported by anyone to the police — not by his alleged victims, their parents or community members who knew of allegations against him — a fact confirmed by a law enforcement source who notes that, until 2007, Colmer had a “clean record.”

Further, because Colmer was never reported to the police and thus came to the agency, Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services, without a mandate from the court, when he dropped out of its offender program around 2002, according to friends, Ohel was not required to report him to the authorities for non-compliance. For the same reason, his activities were not monitored and his name did not appear on any public registries designed to alert the public to those who might pose a danger to children.

The Colmer case and the way it was apparently handled illuminates a controversial debate raging in the Orthodox community in the wake of the cases of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Avrohom Mondrowitz and others: whether suspected cases of child sexual abuse should be dealt with “internally” — even if only initially — by rabbis or professionals within the Orthodox community, or whether they should be handed directly over to law enforcement for investigation.

No one interviewed for this story suggested that Ohel did anything illegal by apparently not reporting Colmer to the authorities after he dropped out of treatment. Indeed, laws about confidentiality that govern the doctor-patient relationship limit what a psychologist can divulge about his patient. Nonetheless, there are those who believe that in a case like Colmer’s, reporting would not have constituted a breach of doctor-patient privilege.

Treating someone who has not been mandated by the courts is “a complex and dangerous situation,” said Dr. Michael Salamon, a New York-based psychologist who has had experience in this area. “As I learned it, and teach it to others [you are permitted] to report if there is any reasonable cause to suspect that this person is a danger to himself or others. If I were a supervisor in a case [where someone who was not mandated for treatment dropped out] I would insist on calling the state hotline [of Child Protective Services] for guidance.”

Given this, Colmer’s case raises several thorny questions: Should Ohel have agreed to treat Colmer, knowing that he had never been reported to the police? Is there a will on the part of the community and its institutions to reform reporting policies and practices to plug what appears to be a gaping hole in the reporting system, one that leaves children unprotected from men like Colmer? And, most pressing of all, who, in the end, should bear responsibility for what happened to the two innocent 13-year-old alleged victims of Colmer, whose lives will likely never be the same? [...]

Meir Briskman - refuses to divorce wife

This item is from a year ago - unfortunately he hasn't been caught yet because he clearly has misguided figures who are providing him with support.

YNET reports: Rabbinical Court shuns divorce refuser.

Panel of judges, rabbis issue ads condemning Jerusalem resident for refusing to grant his wife divorce for five years, asking public to refrain from allowing him to join any congregation, associating with him, or granting him lodging. In an unprecedented move, the High Rabbinical Court on Sunday called on the observant public to shun a resident of Jerusalem who has been refusing to grant his wife a divorce for five years.

The man, Israel Meir Briskman, fled the country despite a hold-departure order filed against him, and is presumed to be residing in the United States. In ads published in Israel and abroad, a panel of rabbinical court judges calls out to the public to refrain from allowing Briskman to join a congregation or from associating with him for business or pleasure.

The judges also ask that the public refuse him any lodging, with or without pay, including patient visitation rights."The High Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem calls on the Israeli communities and the judges and rabbis of Israel wherever they may be to implement these rules of alienation and refuse the 'divorce refuser' Israel Meir Briskman any financial, physical, or legal aid until he carries out his sentence and grants his wife an unconditional, immediate divorce," the judges stated in the ad.

Briskman has been known to employ any and all tactics in order to evade the pending divorce. After the court granted his wife custody of their children, he announced that he would not allow for the divorce until he receives custody of his son. Later he made claims to property his wife's father was said to have promised the couple.

Briskman's sentence prevents him from receiving "permission by one hundred rabbis" to wed another woman, as the sentence to grant his wife a divorce has been forced upon him by the court. The court also sentenced Briskman to a prison term of up to one year, or until he grants the divorce.

If you know the whereabouts or other information regarding Yisrael Meir Briskman, please contact the Directorate of the Israeli Rabbinical Courts immediately:Tel: +972 – 2 – 6582823 Tel/Voicemail: +972 – 2- 6582833Fax: +972 – 2-6515499 Email: Panatz@rbc.gov.il

Psychologist sues over false charges

NY Daily News

An Upper East Side psychologist is suing the city for $5 million, saying a false claim that he had a hidden camera in his office bathroom nearly destroyed his career.

"They say it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 20 minutes to destroy it," said Dr. Robert Reiner, an often-quoted expert on virtual reality therapy for phobias, who has appeared on "The Tyra Banks Show," MTV and NBC.

"This has been a nightmare," he said, after filing a notice of claim in Manhattan Supreme Court

Reiner was arrested on March 26, after a patient on his third visit spotted a camera in the bathroom light bulb in Reiner's E. 90th St. office and called cops.

The Manhattan district attorney's office found a camera hidden in a light bulb, but it did not work and was not hooked up to a monitoring device, court records show.

Reiner, 56, who runs a practice of nearly two dozen counselors, was cleared of all charges on May 1. But, he said, the attention from his arrest has had a "tremendous effect" on his business and family.

His chief of staff has quit. His latest book release was delayed. His patients are canceling. His kids are mocked at school.

And his boss at New York University Medical Center, where he has worked for more than 25 years, wrote him a letter, demanding an explanation.

Reiner said he used the bulb/camera to monitor his five children near the trampoline and pool at their Westchester County home. He said he brought it to work because he needed the code number on the camera to order a new one.

A contractor working in the office at night as part of an office expansion project told investigators he could not find a bulb when the light blew out in the bathroom, so he screwed in the broken one he found on Reiner's desk.

Reiner's lawyer, Neil Wollerstein, said his client's office was full of patients when officers stormed in with guns out to confiscate the practice's computers, including patients' confidential records. [...]