Halacha: Murder & autopsies -

Bartley Kulp wrote:

Does anybody have any comment on the Geula resident who was murdered Motzei Shabbat and was taken for autopsy sparking more riots?

What is the halacha regarding murder and autopsies(or should I ask what are the various opinions)?

Rabbi Fink Mayanot Yeshiva


JPOST
Ya'acov Klein, 22, lay unconscious in intensive care at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center Monday afternoon with a punctured liver after he was run over by two police trucks during what is being called by veteran haredi activists the most violent street clash in Jerusalem's history.

Though his prone body was pale and frail, the result of many years spent indoors in the pursuit of Torah knowledge, Klein is being touted by the haredi community as a fearless holy warrior.

Klein on Sunday night tried unsuccessfully, but with surprising heroism and selfless ardor, to prevent police from removing the body of a 50-year-old homicide victim to take it for an autopsy. [...]

Shari Anderson - Israel's richest woman - says she sees future

Washington Post

But the biggest jolt comes from the woman in the executive chair: Arison -- billionaire ($2.7 by Forbes's most recent estimate), perhaps the richest woman in the Middle East, a major force in Israeli philanthropy -- claims that she can see the future.

This is much bigger than a parlor trick. In her new book published this summer in Israel, the 51-year-old Miami native says she felt the Indonesian tsunami sweeping over the land two months before it happened and sensed Hurricane Katrina pummeling New Orleans. In an interview, Arison says she also "saw the writing on the wall" before the global economic crash. Reading about Arison's extrasensory perception makes you ache for a heads-up, maybe a blog entry or a tweet or a phone call to Brownie or Greenspan or somebody who might have helped.

Arison explains that she has finally dropped the fear that has held her back from doing more about what she has perceived. Armed with the insight gained through work with Florida-based psychiatrist Brian Weiss, a proponent of regression therapy and the exploration of (take your pick) deep memories or past lives, she says she is ready to go public with her visions and bring together her spiritual and business goals.

"Dr. Weiss told me during these meetings that one day I will have a significant role in world peace, but at that time I did not know what he was talking about and I could not cope with the idea," Arison writes in "Birth: When the Material and Spiritual Come Together," published in Hebrew as a hybrid memoir, corporate vision statement and collection of speeches. A possible English edition is in negotiation, according to an Arison representative.[...]

Ethiopian crisis - halacha not racism

There are a number of conflicting versions of this story circulating. But so far it would seem that there is a major halachic problem - not racisim. Furthermore these are Falash Mura who had converted to Christianity in Ethiopia, not the Beta Yisroel See also Tzitz Eliezer

JPost is reporting that Rav Ovadiya Yosef is demanding that the students be accepted.

Shas spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef threatened Monday to fire any school principal from Shas's school system who refused to receive Ethiopian students.

In parallel, Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar announced that it was forbidden to send Ethiopian students to the secular school system.

"If I was brought into this world only to help the Ethiopians that is enough for me", said Yosef on Monday morning during a meeting with Amar in his home in Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood, according to Amar's spokesman.

Amar's spokesman said that the chief rabbi ruled that it was forbidden to integrate the Ethiopians in secular state schools because many were Falashmura who were still in the process of converting to Judaism. [...]

However

Haaretz reports That Chief Rabbi Amar - says that they can't be accepted because of unnamed halachic reasons

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar said Monday that Ethiopian students could not be accepted into religious schools in Petah Tikva because of "halakhic reasons." [...]

Torah law is used as long as society functions properly/Igros Moshe

Igros Moshe(C.M. 2:68): … The Torah reserves capital punishment for those sins which are very serious such as murder, kidnapping, sexually prohibited relations and idolatry. The perpetrator in these cases is unrestrained and is capable of doing whatever disgusting and cruel acts in the world that are in his heart that he thinks are for his benefit. However the death penalty is not administered out of hatred to evildoers or fear for the welfare of society because Bava Metzia (83b) tells us that G‑d will punish transgressors. That in fact is the halacha as poskened by the Rambam (Hilchos Chovel u’Mazik 8:9) as well as all other poskim. So on the one hand the purpose of capital punishment is to let people know the severity of these prohibitions so that they will not transgress them. On the other hand the laws of capital punishment emphasize the importance of each soul and other concerns. Therefore we are commanded that only the Sanhedrin with proper semicha can judge these cases. Only the greatest people in Torah scholarship and other knowledge receives this semicha. In addition to their knowledge they also need to have perfected their character and be very humble as well as G‑d fearing people. They also need to hate money and love the truth as well as wonderful people who are beloved by all…They don’t have any imperfections or bad reputations and they are very merciful. That is why very old people are not appointed judges because they have forgotten the stress of raising children. Also people without children are not appointed because they lack mercy to some degree and they will be too angry at those who have committed sins. Even these great and good people cannot judge unless they constitute a Sanhedrin of 23 people. However it is not enough there are 23 such people to make a Sanhedrin. They also need to have before them 3 rows of very great Torah scholars who are not yet great enough to be part of the Sanhedrin – but are almost great enough. This is to protect the Sanhedrin from making a mistake in judgment. That is because when these three rows of scholars think that the Sanhedrin is mistaken in their ruling of innocence they will protest and will not listen at all to their words. Another safeguard against making a mistake is that they do not convict based on circumstantial evidence – no matter how convincing. They only convict a person based on two valid witnesses who have not the slightest bias in the matter... Furthermore the witnesses are warned concerning the severity of the sin of false testimony as well as the seriousness of the sin of murder so that they are very afraid of mistakenly convicting or mistakenly declaring the suspected murderer innocent. Even with all of this the witnesses also have to warn the person against murder and the suspected murderer has to acknowledge the warning by saying that even though he is aware of the seriousness off the crime he is still doing it. As a consequence of all these safeguards, only once in many years would someone be convicted of murder. In addition it was impossible to judge capital cases unless the Temple existed and that the Sanhedrin of 71 of the greatest scholars was in session on the Temple Mount. In fact capital cases were not judged even in those countries where the king gave the Jews permission to judge their own people according to the law of the Torah. As a consequence of these two factors there were almost no Jewish murderers because of the awareness of the severity of the prohibition of murder and because they were educated by means of the Torah and the punishments of the Torah to understand the seriousness of the crime. They were not simply afraid of punishment in the sense of getting caught but were afraid of the crime itself. However this use of the Torah system to run society was only when the crime of murder was not common but was simply the result of someone’s great lust or some quarrel concerning money or honor. But when people killed simply because it was viewed as an insignificant thing and the murderer was simply a callous and cruel person or similarly if there was a great deal of murders and wickedness – then a different system of law was utilized that was concerned with the pragmatic question of stopping killing and the goal became saving the society

Chareidi parking lot protests

See also YNET JPOST

When will haredi protests in Jerusalem end?

Police refer to violent weekend in capital as 'a step up,' mayor and haredim holding steadfastly to their opinion in regards to opening of parking lot, but expert says there is a chance for calm after High Holidays

The haredi community's protests over the opening of a parking lot in Jerusalem on Shabbat continued this weekend, and as things look now, there is no end in sight. The past two days were particularly violent – a young ultra-Orthodox man was run over by a car, six policemen were lightly injured and about 16 demonstrators were arrested.

Haredi sources have vowed to "continue the protests until Nir Barkat capitulates and closes the parking lot," but one of the Jerusalem mayor's associates told Ynet on Saturday night that "the parking lot will remain open, and violence will definitely not change this."[...]

Fear of Chareidi takeover

For context, please note that this video originally appeared on July 19, 2009 on Israel TV Channel 1 & JPost.com

Artzeinu - A blog about Eretz Yisrael 1

This is a guest posting.

Web 2.0, The Aliyah Revolution, and Nefesh B'Nefesh

"I told her we were planning on making Aliyah. do you know what she answered? She said, "Oh, people still do that?"..... Fast forward one whole year. Four hundred people just made aliyah with an organization [NBN] that didn't exist one year ago. People who never would have thought of making aliyah are sudden thinking about it. And many people are really doing it." Laura Ben-David, An Aliyah Journal

I truly believe that there is an Aliyah Revolution going on in today's times. I think it started with Nefesh B'Nefesh and was bolstered by Blogs (like the Aliyah Blog) that show that is possible to live and be happy in Israel and other organizations that provide information about making aliyah (like Kehillot Tehilla).

When I first lived in Eretz Yisroel in 2000, only 9 years ago, none of these resources existed. And when I left in 2003, I still felt that there were few resources for the person wishing to live his life in Israel. It was hard to find out about careers, resources, communities, etc. Now, that has all changed. [...]

Rule #1: Avoid displeasing Muslims

JPost

The publicly funded Multicultural Center's (Werkstatt der Kulturen) decision to remove educational panels of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, who was an ally of Adolf Hitler, from a planned exhibit, sparked outrage on Thursday among a district mayor, the curator of the exhibit, and the Berlin Jewish community.

The curator, Karl Rössler, told The Jerusalem Post that it is a "scandal" that the director of the Werkstatt, Philippa Ebéné, sought to censor the exhibit.

"One must, of course, name that al-Husseini, a SS functionary, participated in the Holocaust," said Rössler. [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Elul - getting a fresh start

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Anti-Obamacare ad rejected by ABC & NBC

Fox News Bloomberg News - Cardiolgists and Oncologists fight medicare cuts

Questions from a cohen with a non-Jewish girl friend

I received permission to post the following from a young American Jew with some difficult questions.

Hello Rabbi,

I am a Kohen seeking answers to important questions. Any advice or wisdom you can bestow upon a very concerned soul who is yearning for answers would be immeasurably appreciated. About my background: I was losely raised in a Conservative setting, and at this point, I am cautiously interested in becoming more observant. I did not first go to Israel until three years ago. This was my first exposure to Orthodox Judaism and the significance of my status as a Kohen. Unfortunately, and this is the basis for my letter, I think that I have contracted the herpes virus. I want to learn if there are any halachic implications when one contracts such a virus, and if so, what those implications are.

For example, am I no longer a Kohen? If I have a son in the future, can I still pass on my Kohen status? Can I still have Kidushin with a Jewish woman? Practically speaking, how will dating work for me in the Orthodox world should I decide to turn Frum?

My circumstances also present other complicated issues. Unfortunately, I was not raised in a strong Jewish setting, and as such, the notion of only dating Jews was not instilled in me. Consequently, I have been dating a non-Jew for several years. I am in love with my girlfriend. However, based on my exposure to Judaism, I have become "in love" with Judaism, and thus, I am considering breaking off the relationship. Yet if as a result of contracting the virus I am Halachikally barred from marrying or having Jewish children, then what is the point of breaking up? Moreover, even if I am not Halachikally barred from marrying, as a practical matter, how will I find a Jewish woman that will marry me me with my condition?

Thank you for your time.