Ultra-Orthodox Jews Hide Child Sex Abuses

ORA: "Passive Pressure" of Rabbeinu Tam?! - Uncle's home

Stupidity is not a disability

Mayor criticizes DA for Rabbi abuse-gatekeepers

NYTimes   Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday sharply criticized the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, over his handling of child sexual abuse cases among the borough’s large ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Mr. Bloomberg said through a spokesman that he “completely disagrees” with Mr. Hynes’s decision to not object to the position of an influential ultra-Orthodox advocacy group on reporting allegations of child sexual abuse. The group announced last year that adherent Jews must obtain permission from a rabbi before reporting such allegations to district attorneys or the police.

Being a parent to a sex offender

CNN   Christine Smith will never forget the moment she watched her 21-year-old son being led out of a Florida courtroom in handcuffs.

"This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening," she recalls thinking at the time. "Take me instead."

She sobbed because there was nothing she could do. Matthew, the second of her three children, was going to prison after pleading guilty to 10 counts of possession of child pornography. A judge in Duval County sentenced him in April 2010 to 18 months in state prison and one year of probation, with the requirement that he register as a sex offender.

What's the "Torah" in "Torah miSinai"?

Guest post: by Rabbi Raffi Bilek a social worker and rabbi living in Passaic, NJ. who wrote a chapter in my Child &Domestic Abuse Vol 1

I am writing a chapter about Orthodox Judaism in a book that will be read primarily by non-Jews.  Right at the beginning I wanted to put down "Torah miSinai" as one of its defining characteristics.  Then I realized I had to define what "Torah" means in this context, since it is not merely referring to the Chumash or the Tanach, which is probably what most people would assume (if they have any familiarity with the word "Torah" in the first place). THEN I realized that defining it here is not such an easy task at all!  Torah can also refer to the entire corpus of Jewish law and thinking - but that can't be said to have been given over at Sinai.  And it also doesn't seem correct to say that Torah miSinai is referring to whatever portion of the written Torah was actually handed down at that time.  So what is it?

R' Eidensohn was gracious enough to let me turn it over to the klal to see what others think. It's an interesting question, at any rate.

[update] I put a number of translations of the classic seforim in the comments section that deal with the issue. They are part of a future volume of Daas Torah which discusses the nature of Torah and the Revelation at Sinai

Does ORA want halacha changed?

*Do ORA and its supporters believe that halacha should be changed so that a get can be given or received with the consent of only one spouse?* [guest post]

Asked whether rabbis could just agree to permit a religious divorce without the man's consent, [Rabbi Shmuel] Herzfeld said, "It's very complicated."

...

He [ORA’s Rabbi Jeremy Stern] said the Jewish community certainly has started to discuss whether a rabbi should be able to officiate a divorce without one party's permission -- but said the community "is not at a point right now where they're willing to fundamentally change how Jewish marriage

and divorce works."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/29/congressman-facing-pressure-from-jewish-groups-on-advisers-religious-divorce/#ixzz1uYp26Mpq

==================

Rachel Levmore’s May 11 op-ed, “Should the Government ‘Get’ Involved,” raises a multitude of questions.

Let me address just two points. Levmore errs in stating that the proposed Maryland “barriers to remarriage” law would have protected Tamar Epstein from becoming an agunah. Epstein filed for the civil divorce and has done all she can to remove barriers to her ex-husband Aharon Friedman’s remarriage. Thus even if Maryland had passed the proposed law, Epstein would rightly have been awarded the civil divorce she sought but remained an agunah. [Rabbi Jeremy Stern has repeatedly and falsely claimed (although not on ORA's website) that it was Friedman who filed for divorce.] Maryland’s proposed “barriers to remarriage” law, similar to the first New York State “Get Law,” only helps if the husband is the plaintiff in the civil divorce suit. In 99% of agunah cases, the wife, not the husband, is the plaintiff. The second NYS Get law, which allows the judge to give the agunah a larger financial award, has some teeth, but the Maryland law was not patterned on this second law.

Levmore also states that Aharon Friedman, exercising his constitutional right, has turned Epstein into an agunah, but it is the Orthodox rabbinate’s refusal to embrace available halachic remedies to the agunah problem and the communtiy that keeps these rabbis in leadership positions and adheres to their decrees who have turned Epstein into an agunah. Susan Aranoff Director, Agunah International  http://forward.com/articles/156105/getting-a-get/#ixzz1uYpX92cp

Abuse:Falsely arrested & smeared

NYTimes    “Cops Nab the Grope Sicko,” the headline in The Daily News announced, and The New York Post described him as the “dapper fiend.” The Web site Jezebel posted an article about his arrest that drew lacerating comments on how Mr. Vanderwoude was possessed of a sense of entitlement that went with his job in private finance.

But Karl Vanderwoude wasn’t on 67th Street when one of the attacks took place; he was at his desk, sending e-mails, and seen on video opening a door for lunch deliveries. He wasn’t behind City Hall another time, but out to dinner with two people in Greenwich Village, and they had receipts from the cab and restaurant to back it up. 

All charges were dropped this week, and prosecutors announced that Mr. Vanderwoude could not have been the attacker. “The Police Department agrees,” Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said Thursday.

This was the criminal justice equivalent of a plane crashing, brought down in a publicity hurricane. Wrong man arrested and smeared; right man still out there. Could it have been prevented?

Chareidi Abuse: D.A. has different rules

NYTimes    Marci A. Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, blamed Mr. Hynes for not speaking out against the ultra-Orthodox position that mandates that allegations must be first reported to rabbis. The position potentially flouts a state law that requires teachers, social workers and others to report allegations of sexual abuse immediately to the authorities.

She said Mr. Hynes was essentially allowing rabbis to act as gatekeepers. 

“That’s exactly what the Catholic Church did, what the Latter-day Saints did, what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did,” said Ms. Hamilton, author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children.”

 

Victims’ rights groups say Mr. Hynes has also failed to take a strong stand against rabbis and institutions that have covered up abuse, and has not brought charges recently against community members who have sometimes pressed victims’ families not to testify. 

Ms. White, his liaison to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, said the district attorney had few options, in part because some victims declined to implicate those who threatened them, fearful that if they did, they would face even more pressure. 

“I always feel so bad for those parents, because you watch the shock on their face when they find out that their child has been abused, and then they get all of the pressure,” Ms. White said.

Head of massive prostitution ring gets 18 years in prison

YNET   "We've yet to see a case that compares in its severity to Rami Saban's activity," Tel Aviv District Court Judge Khaled Kabub said Thursday before sentencing the head of a massive human-trafficking ring to 18 years and seven months in prison.

Justice Kaboub called the operation “one of the most complex and extensive human-trafficking affairs to be uncovered in recent years, if not ever."

According to the indictment, the defendants smuggled hundreds of women into Israel through the border with Egypt. They used a network which located hundreds of young women in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Uzbekistan.

Judge M. Elon: Harchakos are passive sanctions

Justice Menachem Elon (Status of Women page 349): The parameters of the harchokos of Rabbeinu Tam are accurately described by Ariel Rozen-Tzvi: “The sanction of harchokos - whose source is in the teshuvos of Rabbeinu Tam – is separation, distancing and withholding. In other words, they are passive activities involving not doing something (shev v’ahl ta’aseh). In contrast kefiya (force) and also nidoi (shunning) require active steps. According to Rabbeinu Tam the harchokos are not considered force. Rabbeinu Tam chose an indirect path in circumstances where beis din preferred to avoid force. The harchokos are a withholding of the benefits of society. It is directed to the actions of the community and not the husband. Many other poskim followed in the footsteps of Rabbeinu Tam. However there were other poskim who viewed the haricots as also a type of force and therefore they should only be applied when force is permitted.”