Technology & Torah: Are Luddites good Jews?

Five Towns Jewish Times

There is a growing tendency among the Torah world to reject technology and innovation.  The rejection has reached an extremeness bordering on a Talibanesque fundamentalism, unseen throughout our history.  A good case can be made that this rejection runs counter to true Torah Judaism, and should not be subsumed under the rubric of Ailu veAilu divrei Elokim Chaim.

Before we examine and analyze it, it may be instructive to examine a well known Gemorah in Meseches Avodah Zarah (2b).  The Talmud tells us that in the future the western powers will stand before Hashem and declare that all their technological innovations were made by them for the sole purpose of enabling Klal Yisroel to learn Torah.  Hashem responds, “You are the greatest fools in the world!  You paved streets and created side streets for your own licentious purposes!  You built bathhouses for your own pleasures!” [...]

Brain differences and cultural neuroscience

Newsweek

By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.

Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions. [...]

Abuse book - "A survivor's story" [excerpt]

After much thinking I decided to write my story. After reading it, some may call it dramatic; professionals will call it traumatic but to me and others who have gone through this road will say its pure horror. I am sharing it with the world, so others may learn something and I hope it will prevent others from this horror.

I am writing this with a tremendous amount of pain. Not an hour went by in the last 20 years that I wasn’t thinking about my sexual abuse. I live a life of pain, shame, humiliation and above all a tremendous amount of guilt. I feel guilty that I caused my father and siblings so much pain while never telling them what’s going on so they can act on it and stop it. I feel very guilty that I got married to the most beautiful woman and not telling her at the time that I was abused. She is holding me strong while she is suffering a great deal. Worst of all I can never forgive myself for not running to the police. I had the power to stop my abuse. How can I ever face the other victims who were so viciously violated by my abuser? If I would only be given the right guidance by the rebbe that I told of the abuse or by the other rabbyim he told it thereafter he would have been stopped. I can forgive them for not knowing what to do. I will never forgive them for not listening. I will never forgive them for not wanting to know. I will never forgive them for not asking more questions. I understand that you don’t have to believe right away an accusation but how am I allowed to forgive him for calling me a liar and not investigating after I was sexually abused in the most horrific way possible, after I was beaten and threatened with my life all while I didn’t have a mother to cry to. I am going to sleep every single night thinking of the victims I could have prevented. I have nightmares that they will never forgive me for what I have not done to save them. So I am writing my story and hopefully it will ease a little bit of my pain hoping it will save at least one child in the future.

Here is my story:
.
My name is Pinny. I grew up in a very chasidish family in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. I was the sixth of nine children. I was always considered the happiest of the bunch, always joked around and friends with everyone. My mother always showered us with love. She was soft spoken; she was everything you can wish from a mom. My father loved us just as much, but he was very chasidish, frum and strict.

When I was 10 years old my mother fell ill to colon cancer. While she was fighting her life battle, she was always strong and taught us to be strong, never to give up. She was fighting her cancer until a month and a half before my Bar Mitzvah, when she passed away. My bar mitzvah of course was very different then others but it were the happiest day for me.

After the bar mitzvah I continued learning in the same yeshiva in Williamsburg since nursery until the age of 14, Pasach 1989. On the advice from a few good men helping our family, I was sent to Israel to yeshiva. They decided that since we have a large family and no mother it will be easier for my father and me if I am abroad in a structured environment. I was very excided going to Israel to yeshiva but after a month or so I felt very homesick. My mother passed away a year ago and here I am away from my family. I insisted on coming back home for the next zman. For the following winter zman I was placed in a yeshiva in Boro Park. It was a pretty average chasidish yeshiva. I adjusted well and made friends right away. As a matter of fact I quickly became one of the more popular kids.[rest to be published in Abuse Book]

Arab students harass Israeli Ambassador

Mrs Yitta Schwartz a.h. - had 2000 descendants

NYTimes

WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.

Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average and whose ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among Satmars, the size of Mrs. Schwartz’s family is astonishing. A round-faced woman with a high-voltage smile, she may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust — a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.

Abuse book - American Legal System - Shlomo Singer assist D.A.

This article will be divided into several parts. The first section will discuss my background in dealing with sexually violent predators (SVPs) and what I have learned from working within New Jersery’s SVP scheme. The second section will delineate some of the specific factors within the frum community which must change in order to address the current situation. Last, I will provide some basic advice for people dealing with sexual predators. After graduating from law school, I served as the law clerk to the Honorable Philip Freedman and Serena Perretti. Judges Freedman and Perretti were Superior Court judges in New Jersey; however unlike other judges they were the only judges in the state to hear cases under New Jersey’s Sexually Violent Predator Act

By way of a brief background the SVPA was enacted for the purpose of civilly committing offenders who had completed their prison terms but were still deemed to pose a significant risk of reoffending. While New Jersey has a prison specifically set up for sexual offenders, it has been proven that incarceration alone will not “cure” SVPs. Therefore, prior to an offender’s release from prison, the State has the right to petition for commitment under the SVPA. Respondents are entitled to an initial hearing, and, if committed, yearly hearings to determine whether they are still SVPs. While conducting these hearings, the State normally provides testimony of both a psychologist and a forensic psychiatrist to assist the judge in formulating his or her opinion. The doctors’ opinions are formulated based on the offender’s convictions, unreported deviant activity, and participation in therapy. The standard that must be met is that the committee must have a “mental condition that affects [his] emotional, cognitive or volitional capacity in a manner that predisposes [him] to commit acts of sexual violence.” The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that “A finding of a total lack of control is not necessary. Instead, a showing of an impaired ability to control sexually dangerous behavior will suffice….”

While I do not have statistics, it is fair to state that the State has rarely, if ever, been unsuccessful on its initial petition to have an offender committed as an SVP. This is so because the Attorney General, who prosecutes these cases for the State, controlled which cases it prosecuted. It was evident that few SVPs were ever released from their civil commitment. Moreover, those who were released were subject to community supervision for life. One of the major reasons why committees were not released was because of their unsatisfactory participation in treatment. Another issue that was routinely brought to light was committees minimizing their deviance. Observationally, it seemed somewhat oxymoronic to criticize people with diagnosed mental abnormalities for not properly participating in treatment.

Aside from the SVPA scheme, New Jersey’s Megan’s Law mandates different levels (referred to as tiering in the legal field) of registration and limitations for people convicted of sex offenses. Failure to register as required constitutes a third degree crime. Megan’s Law also requires notification of neighbors in certain instances. It is unclear what percentage of persons charged with Megan’s Law crimes plead guilty to crimes that do not require registration. Nonetheless, prosecutors who specialize in this field are usually weary of amending a charge which would require registration without the presence of extraordinary circumstances.

Based on the hundreds of hours of testimony that I witnessed, some of my personal observations from my clerkship are as follows: [...]

R' Balkany arrested for extortion

Courthousenews

NYTimes

Rabbi Milton Balkany, the director of a Brooklyn Jewish day school, was on the phone last month with a proposition for a man he had never met, the president of a giant Connecticut hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, The New York Times’s Alan Feuer reports.

The matter required tact. The rabbi, who often counsels Jewish inmates, had recently met a prisoner at the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, a prison in Orange County, N.Y., who had told him that the hedge fund had been trading on illegal information. Rabbi Balkany was calling now, the government contends, to make a deal: $4 million for two religious schools in Brooklyn — one of them his own — in exchange for the prisoner’s silence. [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Life in Prison

High price of religious defection

Spiegel

The community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel is half a million strong and growing. They live in a parallel universe cut off from the modern world in tight-knit communities where everything revolves around religion. Only a few dare to abandon this life -- and the price for doing so is high.

When she left, she left everything behind -- even her name. She no longer wanted to be known as Sarah, the name her parents had given her. She'd felt imprisoned by that name for too long; it made her feel different and subject to laws that others imposed upon her. So, she started her new life with a new name, Mayan, the Hebrew word for "source."[...]

For the times they are a-changin'

Title from Bob Dylan

In the last two days I had conversations with two people who approached me to thank me for my blog and what I am trying to do as well as how I do it. While it was nice to be complemented - neither of them are people who I would have imagined  read my blog. I never would have guessed that they shared my concerns and understanding of what is going on now in the Jewish community.

Both acknowledged that they sense a loss of direction - or even the perception that someone is in charge. That we live in very troubled times and that the scandals are not just accidents but are reflective of a deeper malaise. We need to do something different. Orthodoxy can't continue with patching up the old system - a new direction is needed.

One of them is a gevir who told me that he normally gives money to Toldos Aaron - even though he is Modern Orthodox -  because they have many hungry families who genuinely need assistance. However because of the riots he told the Rebbe that he was canceling his support. He didn't accept the excuse that these were hooligans. He told the Rebbe it was his responsiblity to deal with the hooligans. This is the second gevir I have heard this from.

He also said that while he feels it is important to give tzedaka - but he no longer gives simply because the organization is associated with gedolim or is a major organization. He said that he now uses his tzedaka money to maximize the impact on society. If there are two ways to deal with off the derech kids - he picks the one that is most  efficient and cost effective. He also supports issues that strengthen the society -  not just because someone has a need.

This is probably the most important issue. All major institutions need money. In the past the donors were flattered and given kavod - but they were told that the gedolim would decide what programs were needed and where the money was spent. There is a growing revolt against this with the donors dictating what needs to be done and simply not funding programs that are bloated and unproductive. Funding goes to innovative programs which they see are producing results.

I have been told that despite the failure of the gedolim to condemn tropper  - those organizations that were associated with him have been suffering a large drop in funding. Tropper corrupted through money - the antidote seems to be that the donors have to show the way out of this mess by redirecting and rewarding healthy projects.

Avoiding police in abuse cases: Takana vs R Elon:

JPost

Rabbi Mordechai Elon had sexual relations with male students in the past, a rabbinical forum that works to prevent sexual abuse in the national-religious sector said in a statement on Wednesday

The Takana forum held an emergency meeting Tuesday night to discuss the allegations facing Elon, following an announcement they posted Monday demanding Elon step down from all rabbinical, teaching and community responsibilities, warning he is a threat to the public.

Elon admitted to the acts during the emergency meeting, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, a member of Takana told Army Radio Wednesday, adding that the rabbi's confession is documented in the forum's protocol.[...]