Rubashkin Affair:The Wheels of Justice

Five Towns Jewish Times Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Ahmed Ghailani, transferred from Guantanamo Bay, was convicted this week of conspiracy to blow up government buildings in the al-Qaida attacks on two U.S. embassies in 1998.  He was acquitted on more than 280 other charges, primarily because much of the available evidence was not allowed to be presented. He will receive a sentence of 20 years in jail.

Sholom Rubashkin is now serving a 27 year sentence given to him by Judge Linda Reade for crimes associated with his running a kosher meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa.

There is such a thing as justice and there is such a thing as law.  At times the two concepts meet.  At times they do not. [...]

Dr. Asher Lipner in Child & Domestic Abuse Volume I

page 143

Importance of disclosing abuse

While there are understandable reasons for the withholding of disclosure of abuse, it usually exacerbates the difficulty of the trauma both because silence can allow the abuse to occur repeatedly, and because it does not allow for the emotional wounds to heal.  

Loneliness, abandonment and neglect are feelings that a victim of abuse often has about others in his or her environment who did not intervene to rescue them from their abuse.  Children are often more angry at the non offending parent for not protecting them then at the one who actually perpetrated the abuse.  Partially, this is because they expect more from the “healthier parent” and partially because it feels and sometimes is safer for them to focus their angry and hurt feelings at the parent who is more likely to care and to react positively and not punish them.  Victims of rabbinic abuse or abuse by a teacher, often have more anger at the organization for protecting and enabling their molester and abandoning the protection of the students.

This reaction is not uncommon in other survivors of interpersonal violence as well.  An off duty policeman who was savagely assaulted by a gang on a subway and suffered permanent neurological damage, told me that in his nightmares and flashbacks the only thing he remembers seeing at the time of the attack are the twenty or so people who were watching and did not come to his assistance.  Many Holocaust survivors report feeling more distressed by the apparent lack of concern about them by the whole world than by almost any other aspect of their trauma.  This is why in clinical work it is important to view all sexual abuse as involving three parties: the abuser, the abused and the bystander.    Trauma in general has come to be viewed by psychologists as a phenomenon that cannot be fully described and understood in and of itself, but needs to be seen as an experience that takes place in a social context that both creates the environment in which it occurs as well as the environment in which the survivor continues to live. [...]

Epilepsy’s Big, Fat Miracle: Food as medicine

NYTimes

Once every three or four months my son, Sam, grabs a cookie or a piece of candy and, wide-eyed, holds it inches from his mouth, ready to devour it. He knows he's not allowed to eat these things, but like any 9-year-old, he hopes that somehow, this once, my wife, Evelyn, or I will make an exception.

We never make exceptions when it comes to Sam and food, though, which means that when temptation takes hold of Sam and he is denied, things can get pretty hairy. Confronted with a gingerbread house at a friend's party last December, he went scorched earth, grabbing parts of the structure and smashing it to bits. Reason rarely works. Usually one of us has to pry the food out of his hands. Sometimes he ends up in tears. [...]

Dispute Over Dead Sea Scrolls Leads to a Jail Sentence

NYTimes

A man convicted of impersonating a New York University scholar in a debate over the Dead Sea Scrolls was sentenced on Thursday to six months in jail and five years’ probation.

The man, Raphael Haim Golb, was taken from a courtroom in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in handcuffs, after which one of his lawyers headed to the appellate division to ask that he be allowed to remain free pending appeal.[...]

One who makes a sincere mistaken interpretations of Torah - is not a heretic

Radvaz (4:187): A reason for not punishing preachers who distort the meaning of verses or medrashim is that their mistaken interpretations are the result of their faulty study of the texts. They are no worse than those who err concerning one of the fundamental principles of faith because of their misunderstanding of texts and yet are not considered heretics. For example, we find that the great man Hillel II erred in one of the principles of faith when he said Moshiach was not coming because of the events in the time of Chezkiyahu. Nevertheless, this error did not make him a heretic — G﷓d forbid. If he had been a heretic, how could the Talmud quote him? It is clear that since his improper statement was the result of sincere study, it was considered as inadvertent and thus he was not a heretic.

Should Sex Abuse Justify a Vigilante Attack?

Time Magazine

It is a dark story with an even darker twist: William Lynch, 44, was arrested last month for going into a northern California nursing home, luring an elderly priest into the lobby and beating him bloody. Lynch insists that when he was 7 years old the priest, Jerold Lindner, 65, had sexually molested him.

After Lynch was arrested, the blogosphere lit up with messages of support — and protests that he was being charged for a beating that many regarded as well-deserved payback. When Lynch was arraigned in a courtroom in San Jose, Calif., last week on suspicion of assault, his backers marched with signs attacking the Catholic Church's handling of sexual abuse in its ranks and proclaiming "Free Willy."

Lynch has vowed to fight the assault charge against him and to make Lindner — who has denied abusing him or anyone else — the issue. "Somebody needs to be a face for this abuse, and I'm prepared to put myself on the line," he told the Associated Press. [...]

"My father is Li Gang": China’s Censors Misfire in Abuse of Power Case:

NYTimes

 One night in late October, a college student named Chen Xiaofeng was in-line skating with a friend on the grounds of Hebei University in central China. They were gliding past the campus grocery when a Volkswagen sedan raced down a narrow lane and struck them head-on.

The impact sent Ms. Chen flying and broke the other woman's leg. The 22-year-old driver, who was intoxicated, tried to speed away. Security guards intercepted him, but he was undeterred. He warned them: "My father is Li Gang!"

Learning from a heretic is prohibited - even though R' Meir did it

Shach (Yoreh Deah 246:8): … Chagiga (15b) states that the reason why R’ Meir learned Torah from a heretic — despite the requirement that a teacher be like an angel — is because that prohibition applies only to those who will be influenced by the teacher. R’ Meir and others who are capable of withstanding the influence are in fact permitted to learn from a heretic… The question is why didn’t the Rambam note this distinction that the gemora makes between adult and child—between those mature enough not to be influenced and those who might be influenced? It is possible that the Rambam agrees with Tosfos (Chagiga 15b) who notes that in Moed Koton (17a) R’ Yehuda excommunicated a certain scholar because he had a bad reputation. Tosfos explains that the reason that no differentiation was made by R’ Yehuda is that he felt all the students would be influenced. Thus, we see that even in Talmudic times the older students were considered as susceptible to bad influence and had to be protected. So surely, in our days, everyone is considered as susceptible to bad influence and thus the distinction of the gemora is not relevant for actual Halacha. An alternative explanation is that most poskim do not accept this distinction because it was only held by R’ Meir and not the majority of our Sages.

When beis din arbitrates a deal which secular laws says is illegal

Haaretz

Had they not been so greedy, the ultra-Orthodox real estate developers Aharon Eisenberg and Avraham Tzeinwirt could quite possibly have been benefiting today - one from a large sum of money promised in return for withdrawing his bid on a parcel of land at the last minute, the other from the building he could have constructed on that land for a sizable profit. The parcel in question, located in downtown Jerusalem, was sold by the Jewish Agency.

But Tzeinwirt, the winner of the tender, reneged on the shady deal he'd signed with Eisenberg and refused to pay him the sum he'd promised in return for the latter's withdrawal from the tender.

Throughout the three years that have elapsed since then, the two men have continued to fight over the money. They first applied for arbitration to an ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court (known in Hebrew as a "Badatz" ), which ruled that Tzeinwirt had to pay. But Tzeinwirt refused and in an unusual step applied to the Tel Aviv District Court, which then reversed the arbitration ruling. Now the entire deal is liable to be canceled. [...]

Lying for Peace - The Halachic Caveats

Five Towns Jewish Times - Rabbi Yair Hoffman

“Of course, I did my homework, Mom..”

“No, honey, that donut wrapper belonged to a co-worker to whom I gave a ride.”

“Yes, I will go on the treadmill this afternoon as soon as I come home while you are shopping.”

“No, dear, that dress does not make you look fat.”

We have all heard the expression before – mutar leshanos mipnei HaShalom – one is permitted to, well, “change” or obscure the truth in order to maintain the peace.  And lately, it seems that we hear it more and more.

A number of questions arise about this concept.  Is it still something that we should avoid doing – or is it possibly a Mitzvah?  Is it an across the board heter?  Do people have complete carte blanche in these areas?  Or are there, perhaps, some caveats? [...]

Bison vs. Bear goes viral:Changing role of public media

KTVQ

BILLINGS - It is the little story that just won't quit. It's the number one story of all time on this very website. Millions of people have seen these pictures-and that number is still growing.  It has reached well into all 50 states and has been shared in 136 countries. And to think, it kind of all started right here. Fifteen days ago, we first reported on a picture that caught our eye on Facebook. Once we uncovered the details behind the story, a tidal wave of sorts ensued. It's now known as "bison versus bear".