From Koogle to Yideotube, efforts to provide a kosher Internet

LA Times

Reporting from Bnei Berek, Israel — From a drab office in this ultra-Orthodox Jewish stronghold, three devout young women hunch over computers and surf the Internet — looking for pornography, celebrity gossip and a laundry list of other items banned by their rabbis.

It's odd work for this trio, dressed modestly and wearing wigs in keeping with their beliefs. But it's their job at Israel's first ultra-Orthodox Internet provider, Nativ, as it tries to launch a product that could transform the traditionally sheltered community: kosher Internet.

Because racy images of women are the most common offensive content found, the company decided it would be less objectionable to hire women to scour the Internet so ultra-Orthodox customers can surf without worry. [...]

In a Sliver of Indonesia, Public Embrace of Judaism

NYTimes  hat tip to Joseph

MANADO, Indonesia — A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government. Flags of Israel can be spotted on motorcycle taxi stands, one near a six-year-old synagogue that has received a face-lift, including a ceiling with a large Star of David, paid for by local officials.

Long known as a Christian stronghold and more recently as home to evangelical and charismatic Christian groups, this area on the fringes of northern Indonesia has become the unlikely setting for increasingly public displays of pro-Jewish sentiments as some people have embraced the faith of their Dutch Jewish ancestors. With the local governments’ blessing, they are carving out a small space for themselves in the sometimes strangely shifting religious landscape of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.

The trend comes as extremist Islamic groups have grown bolder in assailing Christian and other religious minorities elsewhere in Indonesia, with the central government, fearful of offending Muslim groups, doing little to prevent the attacks. Last November, extremists protesting the 2008-9 war in Gaza shut down what had been the most prominent remnant of Indonesia’s historic but little-known Jewish community, a century-old synagogue in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city.[...]

Information from Neturi Karta broke Chareidi fraud ring

YNET

[...] "The investigation shows that dozens of organizations were founded and transferred fake names to the Education Ministry in order to illegally receive funds," a police official said.

The police began to covertly monitor the illegal activity a few months ago, when members of the Neturei Karta sect found out their names were being used to receive stipends from the State, and informed law enforcement officials. [...]

Students in Chareidi schools pray for supreme court to allow segregated buses

YNET

    

הבוקר: ילדי החרדים מתפללים למען קווי המהדרין

במוסדות החינוך החרדיים הקדישו זמן מיוחד לתפילה למען הצלחה בדיון בבג"ץ בעניין ההפרדה באוטובוסים. דובר ועדת הרבנים שפרסמה מודעה המבקשת את התפילה: "פסיקה נגד הקווים תגרום לקיפוח הציבור החרדי"

Rav Eliashiv strongly condemns those who defraud the Israeli government

YNET

    

הרב אלישיב: דין רודף למעורבים בפרשת ההונאה

בהתבטאות נדירה בחריפותה יצא מנהיג הזרם הליטאי נגד המעורבים בפרשת הונאת המיליונים בכוללים. למרות השימוש במושג ההלכתי החמור, אין הכוונה להתיר את דמם של העצורים

מנהיג הציבור החרדי-ליטאי, הרב יוסף שלום אלישיב, התבטא הערב (יום א') בחריפות נגד העצורים בפרשת ההונאה בכוללים באזור ירושלים, ואמר כי אם החשדות נגדם נכונים – חל עליהם דין רודף.

 הוא הסביר כי העצורים החרדים גרמו במעשיהם לחילול השם, שעלול להתנקם ביהדות החרדית בארץ ובעולם - ויש להתייחס אליהם בחומרה.

Dr. Asher Lipner in Child & Domestic Abuse Volume I

p 135

Impact of sexual abuse on victims’ feelings about religion

It has been reported by rabbis and organization directors that specialize in working with the teens-at-risk population as well as researchers, that sexual abuse has been identified as a leading cause of the “off the derech” syndrome.  I have heard estimates from several rabbis of between 50 to 80 percent of at risk teens in the Orthodox community have been sexually traumatized.
 
A child’s development of a relationship with G-d is influenced directly and indirectly through both conscious and unconscious feelings about his or her relationship with adult caregivers, aespecially parents.   When a child has been abused or neglected by an adult or authority figure who is trusted, his or her ability to have faith in all authority figures can be shaken, including with the ultimate Authority of G-d.  When a rabbi or religious teacher is the one who abuses, it may feel like G-d himself sanctioned the sexual trauma.

Often there are feelings of anger, resentment and suspicion regarding anything religious.  Furthermore, as we will describe further on, religious teachings have often been used by the community to neglect and abandon victims of abuse.  Whether it is the resistance and refusal to confront the abuser (which would protect the victims) due to concerns of “lashon harah” “mesirah,” or “mevayesh b’rabim,” or unrealistic standards of proof, like requiring two kosher witnesses, etc., or failure to provide children with information about sexuality with which to protect themselves due to “modesty,” or the denial of the prevalence of the problem in the Jewish community due to concerns of “Chillul Hashem,” the survivors of abuse often feel that Orthodox society is set up to hurt them and to perpetuate the abuse of children. [...]

American fantasy:Peace in Middle East

NYTimes

...The answer has a number of levels, but the most important is this: The United States believes that if it can end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its fraught relationship with the Muslim world will greatly improve, thereby allowing America to accomplish much that is currently eluding it in places like Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention easing its role as the prime guarantor of Israel’s own security.  ...

Many Israelis dismiss this as a form of magical thinking.

“Let’s play a mind game,” suggested Mark Heller, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Let’s assume that you’ve resolved the conflict or that Israel has disappeared or that Israel and the United States are now enemies. Will the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq suddenly start making love? Will the Sunnis, Shiites and Christians in Lebanon get together? Will it end the oppression of Christians in Egypt? Will it raise the status of women or put an end to the use of violence as a political weapon in the Muslim world? It’s a total illusion.” [...]

New post-divorce family model:The unblended family

NYTimes

BEGIN with one formerly married couple and an amicable divorce. (Don’t snort, it happens.) Add children, maybe two or three. Give each former spouse a new partner. Perhaps the new partners have children, too. Add them. Oh, and the new partners’ exes. Factor in an equitable (say, nearly 50-50) physical custody arrangement for all the parties.

What do you have? For many couples, it’s a complex data set in search of an equally complex algorithm to tame it. Do they move in together, mixing developing teenagers like snarling cats in a bag? Or are they risk-averse, maintaining separate households and seeing one another on the odd weekend?

Or perhaps they are fortunate enough to establish some sort of contiguous living arrangement, like the members of the Curtis-Hetfield-Petrini household, who have as irresistible a scenario as anyone could devise. [...]

Brains are different today:Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

NYTimes

 On the eve of a pivotal academic year in Vishal Singh’s life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk: book or computer?

By all rights, Vishal, a bright 17-year-old, should already have finished the book, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” his summer reading assignment. But he has managed 43 pages in two months.

He typically favors Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos. That is the case this August afternoon. Bypassing Vonnegut, he clicks over to YouTube, meaning that tomorrow he will enter his senior year of high school hoping to see an improvement in his grades, but without having completed his only summer homework. [...]

Government legalizes molesting - for sake of security

NYTimes

n the three weeks since the Transportation Security Administration began more aggressive pat-downs of passengers at airport security checkpoints, traveler complaints have poured in.

Some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters. [...]

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. [...]