Sen. Lieberman:Likely Moslem terrorist act

Crisis in Israel -United States relations

Haaretz

Relations between Israel and the United States are in crisis. This is the conclusion that stems from the difficulty in arranging a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama.

The White House wanted Netanyahu to sweat before being granted an audience with the president, and wanted everyone to see him perspire.

The delays in finding a time to meet, and pushing it to a late hour - after the news programs on Israeli television - make Netanyahu look as if Obama threw him a bone. In such circumstances, it is no longer important what will be said at the meeting, and the extent to which there will be an attempt to present it as an achievement. The prime minister of Israel was humiliated before all.[...]

Cellphone converted into medical microscope

NYTIMES

MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

"We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases," said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices. He has formed a company, Microskia, to commercialize the technology. [...]

Justice: Harvard Prof Sandel #6

Wife abuse at the Shabbos table

YNet

Charedim

ח קורמן, מי שעומד בראש ארגון חרדי המטפל באלימות במשפחה, טוען כי
במגזר החרדי יש נשים מוכות - לא פחות משאר המגזרים בארץ. הוא סבור ששולחן
השבת משמש כאמצעי השפלה בידי הבעל המתעלל, ומסכם: "היום הנשים החרדיות כבר לא לבד"

Proving you are a Jew

NYTIMES

One day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fiancé to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove — before a rabbinic court, no less — that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she.

Sharon is a small woman in her late 30s with shoulder-length brown hair. For privacy’s sake, she prefers to be identified by only her first name. She grew up on a kibbutz when kids were still raised in communal children’s houses. She has two brothers who served in Israeli combat units. She loved the green and quiet of the kibbutz but was bored, and after her own military service she moved to the big city, which is the standard kibbutz story. Now she is a Tel Aviv professional with a master’s degree, a job with a major H.M.O. and a partner — when this story starts, a fiancé — who is “in computers.”

This stereotypical biography did not help her any more at the rabbinate than the line on her birth certificate listing her nationality as Jewish. Proving you are Jewish to Israel’s state rabbinate can be difficult, it turns out, especially if you came to Israel from the United States — or, as in Sharon’s case, if your mother did.[...]

Conversion confusion in Israel

YNET

Many converts wishing to get married face objections by chief city rabbis, religious councils who refuse to register them, claiming they 'do not observe mitzvot' [...]

R' Leib Tropper & Modern Orthodox/ R' Slifkin

This is not an endorsement of R' Slifkin's views. I am simply posting it as a summary of how this saga is playing out from a non-chareidi point of view. It is not as R' Tropper likes to say that I have a personal vendeta against him or his absurd claim that I have manipulated the Bedatz and Rav Sternbuch to attack him in order to defend R' Slifkin. There is a more fundamental question being addressed here, why is it necessary - in the pursuit of universally accepted conversions - to create major divisions amongst the segments of the Orthodox Jewish socieity?

R' Slifkin

One problem, which unites such disparate forces as the Badatz of Jerusalem and the Roshei Yeshivah of YU against EJF, is the charge that EJF encourages proselytization. This has been discussed at great length by R. Daniel Eidensohn on his blog Daas Torah. [...]

Irwin Katsof's campaign against gossip

Words Can Heal is a national campaign to eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level. Words Can Heal has captured the imagination and commitment of an unprecedented coalition. Our board includes top governmental leadership, Wall Street’s most influential CEO’s, America’s leading clergy, Hollywood celebrities and community leaders of every stripe.

Life sentences for juveniles

Newsweek

Iraq doesn't do it. North Korea considers it a cruel form of punishment. But in the United States sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without the possibility of parole is legal.

But on November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up two cases involving juvenile offenders in Florida who claim their life sentences for rape and robbery violate the cruel-and-unusual-punishment clauses of the Constitution.

There are about 2,500 juveniles (ranging in age from 13 to 17) currently sentenced to life in prison in the United States. No other country in the world currently has adolescents serving this sentence, reports the Frank C. Newman International Human Rights Law Clinic. [...]

Rav Sternbuch:Loving kindness of Avrohom