Should Men Be Allowed to Father Children After They're Dead?

Time

Fertility-treatment innovations mean that all sorts of people who would not have been able to have a baby a generation ago are now able to bring life into the world. Now, some are arguing the ranks of the newly fertile should include dead people.

In Australia, a woman was granted permission last month to use her dead husband's sperm in an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) attempt to create a child. In Israel, grieving grandparents are petitioning a court to allow them to use their dead son's sperm to conceive a grandchild. And in California, a woman is due in three months with her husband's child — even though her husband died not long before she got pregnant. [...]

Why PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is now being called PTS

Time

For years, the U.S. military has referred to the constellation of anxiety, depression and anger many combat troops suffer when they return home as PTSD -- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But in recent months, senior Pentagon officials seem to have gone on a search-and-destroy mission to kill the D -- Disorder -- and now prefer to call the syndrome simply Post-Traumatic Stress.

For good or for ill, the amputation of disorder represents a change in military nomenclature worth noting.

"This is a normal reaction to a very serious set of events in their life," Lieut. General Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, said of PTSD back in 2008. Well, if it's normal, why is it called a disorder, Battleland asked him at the time. Schoomaker, a thoughtful guy, pondered the obvious question for a moment. "Maybe we're not as sensitive as we might be to communicating things like disorder and the like," he finally said. "You raise a very interesting point. I'll have to talk that over with my psychiatric colleagues to see if there's a way of using different terminology that doesn't have people stigmatized by it." [...]

The forced acceptance of Torah at Sinai was to make it irrevocable

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Maharal (Shemos 19:17): … I found in a medrash that when G d  gave the Torah He forced the Jews to accept it. Since the law of a raped woman is that she can not be forcibly divorced, consequently G d can never reject the Jews. It is important to note that the medrash is not saying that the covenant at Sinai was a form of rape. We obviously can not learn from the sinful conduct of human beings the nature of the covenant with G d. However, the medrash is teaching us that the punishment the Torah gives to a rapist is that he can never divorce the woman — and not some other punishment — because the punishment is appropriate to the deed. That is because every deed which is forced is irreversible while a voluntary deed is reversible. Thus the forced relationship with a woman is also irreversible…That is the reason that G d’s relationship with us was done in a forced manner so that it would not be reversible. Therefore even though the Jews had initially accepted the Torah willingly by saying “We will do and we will understand” — the essential relationship was one that had to be and thus it had to be forced.

Why G d waited 3 months after Egypt to give Torah to the Jews

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Ohr HaChaim (Shemos 19:1): In the third month after the redemption of the children of Israel…on that same day they came to Sinai. It is difficult to understand why G d — despite His great love for the Jews and strong desire to give them their bride the Torah —  waited until the third month after the redemption from Egypt.  If you suggest that it was because of the distance that needed to be traveled, but we saw G d miraculously shorted the distance to speed up Rifka’s marriage to Yitzchok (Bereishis Rabbah 59:11).  We would surely have expected that G d would have done the same for the Jewish people. Consequently G d gave a  justification for the delay. It  was not the result of a lack of desire of the bride but rather that the groom (the Jewish people) were not properly prepared. The Jews were not prepared for the wedding with Torah since they had spent years in a spiritually polluted land  and had absorbed its pollution. Consequently they  needed to count for a 7 week period in a manner similar to a woman before she becomes purified. The Zohar indicates that this 7 week period between Pesach and Shavuos should be viewed as 7 times the normal 7 day period of purification. Therefore when this verse says “3 months of the leaving of Egypt”, it means the delay of 3 months was because of fact that they had left Egypt [and they needed extra purification]. A proof for this understanding is that this verse states when they had almost recovered spiritually — which was the first day of the 3rd month — they immediately arrived at Sinai. …

Schism in a Hasidic Village, a Series of Attacks, and an Attempted-Murder Arrest

NYTimes

Last September, Aron Rottenberg did something radical.

Along with some friends, he began worshiping not at the grand synagogue at the center of this ultra-Orthodox Skver Hasidic community in Rockland County, but outside the village at a residence for the elderly.

Before long, a rabbinical court ruled that praying outside the synagogue was a serious violation of community rules.

Next, groups outside Mr. Rottenberg’s house smashed windows and dumped his daughter’s school desk and books on the front porch. And on May 22, an early-morning attack left Mr. Rottenberg with third-degree burns over most of his body. [...]

State to compensate sexual abuse victims?

YNET

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation stands to debate a bill put forward by MK Orly Levy (Yisrael Beiteinu) and the National Council for the Child (NCC) regarding monetary restitution to victims of sexual assault.

The bill suggests that should felons who are ordered to pay their victims default on the court's order, the State should be the one to compensate the victims. [...\

Hasidic sect takes succession war to the Internet

Haaretz

As the succession war in Haifa's Seret-Viznitz Hasidic sect heats up, one of the warring parties has resorted to the Internet as a weapon.

In recent weeks, video footage has begun circulating in emails and on the ultra-Orthodox website Behadrei Haredim that shows Rabbi Baruch Hager, grandson of the sect's current admor (rabbinic leader ), maligning key leaders of Haifa's Viznitz community to his 86-year-old grandfather and even managing to get the admor to speak out against them.

Hager's allies say the recordings are fake, and that they are being distributed by another grandson of the admor - Baruch Hager's cousin, Yisrael Shpitatz - who hopes to ensure that his father, a Neturei Karta Hasid, will inherit instead. [....]

Judge rules gay athletic club can discriminate again heterosexuals

Courthouse News Service

The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association can limit the number of heterosexuals on its teams, according to a federal judge's order, which also ushers forward claims by three bisexual men who say they were kicked out of the Gay Softball World Series because they weren't gay enough.
     The three men were playing for a San Francisco softball team in the finals when a rival team challenged their sexuality, citing the rule that limits no more that two heterosexuals per team.
     The men were "summoned to a hearing room to answer questions about their sexual interests or attractions, purportedly to determine their sexual orientation, in front of a group of more than twenty-five people, many of whom plaintiffs did not know," according to their federal complaint. The men say organizers told them: "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series."
     They filed suit against the athletic association, saying it violated Washington state's laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation and race. Two of the plaintiffs are black and one is black and Filipino. [....]

Rav Moshe Sternbuch threatened for his support of certain rabbinic organization

BCHOL

האיום: "נגיע אליך ואל אביך הראב"ד - ושם זה יסתיים"
המאבק המלוכלך בין הארגונים המתיימרים לפעול למניעת חילול קברים - עולה מדרגה • בן הגר"מ שטרנבוך זכה לאיום טלפוני מ'אתרא קדישא' עקב תמיכתו במתחרה

KikarShabbat 

הבוקר (חמישי) נחצו כל הקווים האדומים: קבוצה מכת ה"סיקריקים" התקשרה לרב חיים-עוזר שטרנבוך, בנו של ראב"ד העדה החרדית הרה"ג רבי משה שטרנבוך ואיימה עליו כי "תטפל בו, תחנך אותו ותעמיד אותו במקום" - כך נודע ל"כיכר השבת". מה הסיבה ולפיה יצא הקצף של ה"סיקריקים" על בנו של הראב"ד

Fish Worms:Conflicting Kashrus Rulings Translated

5tjt by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

So what do you do when you open up the newspaper and find two diametrically opposed Kashrus rulings and letters from leading Poskim?  The newspaper was Wednesday’s issue of the HaModiah and the two ads appear on pages D5 and D14 respectively.

We will start with D5.  D5 is a full page ad dated in the month of Iyar 5771.  It is signed by Rav Elyashiv, Rav Feivel Cohen, Rav Dovid Feinstein, and Rav Aharon Schechter.  Rav Shmuel Vosner’s name also appears on the letter, but with the remarks that he has already made his opinion known in Shaivet HaLevi 4:83.

What does the letter say?  In Hebrew and English it states (this is actually the 5TJT translation of the Hebrew section): [....]

Turning to page D14, we have a ruling issued in the name of the Orthodox Union by Rav Yisroel Belsky.  This ad is a half page long and also has the “Gilui Daas” heading.  This ad only appears in Hebrew, but is translated by the 5TJT below:

In France, a Muslim Offensive Against Evolution

Time

On a recent Friday evening, Maroua Gousa was standing behind the latticed wooden partition in the Évry mosque's section reserved for women, watching a presentation projected onto a screen below in the large prayer hall for men. Fond of exploring religious ideas and practices, the 19-year-old student is taking part in a debate with 200 other participants in this city just south of Paris.

The gathering is actually the most recent instalment of a new attack aimed at the science of evolution by Haroun Yahya, an outspoken Turkish-born Muslim advocate of creationism, who is considered widely controversial within the Islamic world.

Haroun Yahya, the pseudonym of Adnan Oktar, never presents himself in person, speaking either by video or through zealous representatives armed with grandiloquent tracts distributed for free. In France, he had already made himself known in 2007 when he attempted to introduce thousands of copies of his Atlas de la Création into French schools. His work purports to scientifically demonstrate "the frauds and dictatorship" of the evolution of the species theory. [...]