Abuse - badge of honor or shame?

I just received the following letter with permission to post it. It raises a very important question - how to react to the shame of abuse. While the solution offered by Rav Oshry is to use abuse as a badge of honor - I really find it hard to belief that the women involved would accept it as such. I also don't see most abuse victims being proud of their degradation - at least not as far as publicizing it. They obviously can take pride in the fact that they are able to function in spite of it and perhaps have a highly developed sense of empathy with others because of it. Obvious Yerachmiel Lopin disagrees. I would like some feedback from others. This is not a theoretical question. I also posted  Rav Oshry's tshuva.

Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,

I would like to request that you post a responsum of great relevance to the problem of molesting.

I am referring to the tshuvah of R. Oshry about eshes ish and removing a tattoo for a couple rejoined after the holocaust. She had been impressed into prostitution in a concentration camp and had a tattoo “a whore of Hitler’s Armies.” As I remember it (having read it in English over 2 decades ago) the psak was to treat her as a woman who cried out based on the assumption that ‘no Jewish daughter would have willingly consorted with those who were murdering her Jewish brothers and sisters.’

He forbade the removal of the tattoo for the usual reasons regarding needless injury to a body but offered words of chizuk about the tattoo which touched me and may touch many who were abused in our communities. The words escape me but they may have been along the lines “wear it with pride as a sign that we triumphed over those reshoim.’ I think we now have thousands of Jews who also need to know they can proclaim the triumph of their survival in spite of the reshoim who molested them.

The alternative is silence motivated by shame. The shame leads to suicides, substance abuse and many other problems. In truth the shame should fall only on their abusers. The victims should feel free to speak to their abuse if it helps them heal.

If you would post this wise and powerful psak with an English translation it might help give yad v’shem to those who were violated. Implicitly they did cry out and no one listened.

Feel free to post my request, or to name me or just to leave me out of this. But I hope you will give serious consideration to this request.

Yerachmiel Lopin
FrumFollies.wordpress.com

Marriage for Down's syndrome couple

JPost

Nearly 2,000 years ago the Talmud recognized that finding a partner for a happy marriage is a miraculous feat. "To match couples together is as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea," it tells us.

For young adults with disabilities, even splitting a sea does not capture the difficulties they must overcome in order to marry. One determined couple tackled them bravely.

Shalom is unaware that he is a trailblazer. This, he says, is just "the fulfillment of a dream of mine." When asked for how long has he wanted to marry, he responds, "From age zero."

Swiss backlash against Moslems

Aljazeera

Rav Eliashiv:Rabbinic authority/Transcript

link to video bchol.com

Orthodox end silence on sex abuse

APP.Com

The boy was raped before he could take his weekly mikvah. Pinned from behind in the bathhouse where Orthodox Jews purify themselves with rain water, the 7-year-old never saw his attacker.

Now 29, Joseph Diangello no longer wears a yarmulke. He plays the drums and sports tattoos of heavy metal bands. He changed his name to one that sounds less Jewish. On Sept. 26, he stood in a synagogue for the first time in years, he said, before a sea of bearded men in black hats and women in customary wigs. For a brief moment, there was a sense of pride for the heritage he left behind.

"This is the first time I'm validated in the Orthodox community," he said into the microphone, according to an audio recording of the event posted on a Jewish blog site.[...]

Rav Eliashiv:His rabbinic authority & power

This link to Bhol.co.il is a video of Rav Eliashiv which has been of great interest in the chareidi world. It shows certain rabbis trying to explain to Rav Eliashiv what his authority and power is and his response to these assertions.

Battle heats up regarding "conversions"

Yated

The Knesset Immigration and Absorption Committee held a pitched debate following the refusal of the chief rabbis of several cities and marriage registrars to list the marriage of non-Jews who underwent fictitious conversions. Knesset members who took part in the meeting, the legal advisor for the Chief Rabbinate and a Justice Ministry representative announced that they would work to dismiss the rabbis and registrars and file charges against them....

According to Vaad Haolami LeInyonei Giyur [R' Nochum Eisenstein], "Just as government authorities are required to prevent fraud and deception, so too authorized rabbinical authorities are required to check conversion certificates to ensure they meet halachic requirements. If they find a conversion certificate was issued after a conversion candidate falsely declared he is prepared to accept Torah and mitzvas as required by halacha, the law stipulates that the conversion must be annulled ex post facto and the authorized authorities must enforce it just like any other fraudulent act. Therefore a committee of prominent dayonim should be formed to annul any conversion found to have been performed through deception."

9th of Kislev as a special time???

The following announcement was widely distributed. Does anyone know what this means. Even though they claim this happens every 7 years I have never heard of it before. See Bluke Kikar Shabbat
Text of Bris Menucha - first column   

Be'er Mayim Chaim
Foundation Stone

This coming Thursday (November 26th) the 9th of Kislev is a very special time where the gates of tefilot are wide open and Hashem is hearing, accepting and answering our prayers! Like the Ramban wrote: "the 9th year on the 9th month at the 9th hour of the day is a time of happiness and grants from Hashem". and you should know, adds the Chesed L'avraham, "this time is very appropriate for success and is a pipe to bring upon ourselves abundance and redemption."

This very special moment only comes around once every 7 years so we must get ready for it and take advantage of the opportunity granted to us from Hashem. Therefore it is important we take the time to pray and ask Hashem for all we need and desire in a clear and detailed way. In order to do so, we must prepare ourselves and put on paper what is the most important to us so that we can ask it clearly on this very special moment.

Abuse by Catholic Church in Dublin covered up

Fox News

The Roman Catholic Church in Dublin covered up decades of child abuse committed by priests because bishops wanted to protect the church's reputation at the expense of victims, an expert commission reported Thursday after a three-year probe into previously secret church records.

Abuse victims said they welcomed publication of the probe into the mishandling of 1975-2004 child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics. But they said government and church leaders still had far to go to compensate for past wrongs.

The government said the investigation "shows clearly that a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust was visited on helpless and innocent children in the archdiocese."[...]

Rav Sternbuch: Guidance of the Avos

Beis din can't violate right to counsel

Law.com

A Brooklyn judge has thrown out a rabbinical court's arbitration award, finding that the court's refusal to allow the claimant to select his own counsel violated New York law, notwithstanding the fact that the claimant participated in the proceeding without objection.

The decision constitutes the first time a New York court has addressed in a written opinion the issue of whether an arbitration panel can require that attorneys appearing before them must receive their approval.

It is also a rare reversal of an arbitration award, in which even mistakes of fact and misapplications of the law are insufficient grounds for reversal.

Here, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Martin Schneier ruled that the rabbinical tribunal's disqualification without explanation of plaintiff Joseph Kahan's attorney, coupled with the panel's insistence on designating Kahan's counsel, violated the CPLR's arbitration procedural requirements. [...]

http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2009/2009_29465.htm