Aleppo Codex - who stole it?

Boston Globe  Friedman’s dogged journalistic curiosity forces him to re-examine every aspect of that shiny heroic narrative. His inquiry yielded “The Aleppo Codex,’’ a thrilling, step-by-step quest to discover what really happened to Judaism’s most important book: who rescued it from the synagogue, how it came to be held by Israel’s Ben-Zvi Institute, and why nearly half of its pages were missing by the time it got there. With the help of a motley crew of Codex enthusiasts, Friedman goes up against a campaign of silence so effective that it is only slightly cracking 50 years later, when all of the major players are dead.

What is all this silence protecting? Nothing less than parts of the founding mythology of the state of Israel. Many of the book’s most astute and well-earned revelations are also its biggest surprises, and it would be unfair to reveal them here. But I will allow myself one spoiler: There was a protracted court battle for ownership of the Codex, between the Israeli state and the Aleppo refugees. In Friedman’s deft characterization: “Ben-Zvi and his comrades had willed a Jewish state into being against impossible odds, almost against the very logic of human events; they had glared at history and watched it bend to their will.” In their eyes, the diaspora Jewish communities had been in exile, and Israel, as the homeland of all Jews, was the rightful heir to their treasures. “The Aleppo Jews, on the other hand, had not subsumed themselves into the Zionist project and its version of history . . . [they] saw the Crown as the symbol of a place almost none of them had ever considered to be exile.’’

Bash victim to support accused child molester

New York Daily News    Yiddish signs posted in Williamsburg asking for contributions for accused child molester Nechemya Weberman.

Posters promoting an upcoming fund-raiser for a rabbi charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl blanketed Jewish shopping strips in Williamsburg Monday - sparking a campaign protesting the charity bash.

Signs supporting Nechemya Weberman, 53, - written in Hebrew and Yiddish mix - promote a Wednesday gathering at the Continental Caterers dining hall at 75 Rutledge Street.

“It is very painful,” said the victim’s mother about the street ads up on poles on Bedford and Lee Avenues. “The community has taken his side.”

At least two styles of posters were spotted. The more cartoonish set shows a missile falling onto a crowd of Orthodox Jewish men announcing a danger hitting the neighborhood.

The ads explain Weberman’s innocence by bashing the victim’s story and questioning why she decided talk to the police.

BatMelech criticizes my approval of discrimination

[guest post] This was a comment on another post - Psak Choosing vs Avoiding error  which clearly crystallizes the divide between us. 


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Batmelech  May 16, 2012 11:08 AM wrote:

I think that the blog author is not aware what discrimination means.

Discrimination is when a majority systematically excludes a minority, thereby keeping the minority from participating in the life of the society.

Your screening factors are a typical example of discrimination: As long as the shidduch candidates with divorced parents etc are a minority, it is very easy for the majority to forgo them and keep them from participating in majority culture. Of course, it could be that some majority candidates do not find their best bashert (who has divorced parents and was excluded by "screening", but only the second best (whose parents did not divorce and seemed acceptable). However, this is not a drama, he can live with second best instead of best.

For the excluded minority it is a drama, because they will be systematically rejected for facts that have nothing to do with their person.

You studied psychology, so I suppose it is important to you that Jews not be excluded from the University system as they often were in Europe.

So why do you want to do to your fellow Jew something you would not accept if a non-jew were to do it to you?

N.Y. Sun: Defends rabbis as police gatekeepers

NY Sun  According to the New York Times, the rabbi told the D.A. of the Aguda’s policy that members of the community first consult with a rabbi before going to the secular authorities. The D.A., according to the account in the Times, told the Aguda’s president that he “wouldn’t interfere with someone’s decision to consult with his or her rabbi about allegations of sexual abuse.” But, the Times continued, the district attorney also told the Aguda’s president that he “would expect that these allegations of criminal conduct be reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.”

This seems to have driven the Times nearly to distraction. It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as reckoning that the religious duty first to consult a rabbi “outranks,” as the Times paraphrased the rabbi, “even New York’s mandatory reporting law.” It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as saying: “The rabbis’ consensus is go to a rabbi, because of the stringency of the matter on both sides of the equation, both the Jewish legal implications and because you can destroy a person’s life with a false report.” The Times reports the sentiment was taken issue with by the leading Democratic candidates for mayor.

“Our first concern is with victims of crime, especially potential victims of child abuse, and the first call should be to the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, was quoted by the Times as saying. What the Times quoted the mayor’s spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, as saying, is “Any abuse allegations,” the mayor said through a spokesman, “should be brought to law enforcement, who are trained to assess their accuracy and act appropriately.”

This strikes us as a conceit. The notion that secular authorities are wiser, or better trained, than religious authorities looks hubristic against the millennia of case law that line the walls of the great rabbinic studies. Within the Jewish communities, if not in City Hall, the rabbis are regarded with enormous respect. No doubt that rabbis can make mistakes. But so can the secular courts and caseworkers. Let us just say that if allegations of assault by Jerry Sandusky of Penn State on a boy in a shower had been reported to a rabbi, his alleged years of predation would have been cut far shorter than they were.

The Times seems obsessed with the idea that rabbis — and by extension, other clergy — might have a role here. But we don’t know any religious authority — least of all Rabbi Zweibel, himself a lawyer and a veteran of one of the city’s most distinguished law firms — who is suggesting that any Jewish person or anyone else commit misprision of felony,* which is failing to report a crime. Our impression is that the rabbis would dispute the power of the law of misprision to prohibit their right to exercise freely the rabbinical authority that is so basic to the Jewish religion. That right is protected under the same amendment to the Constitution — the First — that protects newspapers like the Times and Mayor Bloomberg’s own private news service from investigating felonious behavior that hasn’t yet been reported to the police.

Harassment of victim in Kolko case

Jewish Week    She and her husband, parents of a now 13-year-old boy who they allege was sexually molested by his Brooklyn yeshiva teacher, were doing the unthinkable in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox community: bucking a system stacked heavily against them and pursuing a civil lawsuit against the Flatbush school that employed the teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko.

The system was pushing back, with a vengeance.

A prominent Brooklyn rabbi and Yaakov Applegrad, an administrator at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, the school parents were suing, asked the parents to a meeting — without their lawyer. After pleading with the couple to drop the suit, Applegrad and the rabbi turned up the heat and played the card they hoped would resonate powerfully with religious Jews: they compared the parents to Nazis for attempting to “bankrupt” the yeshiva. The Nazis, they said, destroyed the yeshiva in Europe built before the war by the father of Rabbi Lipa Margulies, Torah Temimah’s founder and dean. Now, the two suggested, the parents were doing the same with their lawsuit. (It is not clear that Rabbi Margulies’ father actually had a yeshiva in Europe).

Chareidi Sex Abuse Counselors being trained

JPost

A course launched last month to train haredi (ultra- Orthodox) male counselors how to work with sexually abused children in their community indicates a new willingness to address an issue that was once considered taboo.

The course, which is being run by the Jerusalem-based Haruv Institute for some 20 male social workers, therapists and psychologists from the haredi world, teaches participants how to work with ultra- Orthodox children who struggle to speak out about what has happened to them because of the Jewish tenet of lashon hara (the prohibition against speaking badly about others), unconditional respect for their elders and lack of appropriate vocabulary.

“The whole approach to this is different for haredim than for secular people,” said Tali Shlomi, director of Knowledge, Technology and Resources at Haruv, which was established four years ago to provide professionals with the training and tools to deal with sexual abuse and neglect.

R' Bechhofer: Using Secular Courts & Demanding a Get

Guest post: Yitzy Hillel  see also Rav Sternbuch (4:301) moredes who went to court & now wants get

Rabbi Bechhofer Shlitta has publicly come out with tremendous chiddushim in matters of Gitten based on pure svaras and no sources. Everyone must agree that he is a lamdan and can hold his own in svaras, but he can't seem to produce actual sources especially any achronim that hold like him. He has also publicly been m'lamed zchus on woman who run to secular court in order to gain child custody and monetary settlements even if this is against halacha. Check out his blog to see his own words:(RYGB)

Contrast Rabbi Bechhofers approach with the approach of these 70 Rabbonim:http://www.mishpattsedek.com/Docs/KOLKOREH-ERKAOT-70GADOLIM-SEALS.pdf) Look especially at warning Vuv,(6), Zayin (7),ches (8), and tes (9)to see the obvious disagreement between being malemud zchus and demanding teshuva and getting out of secular court or no help at all. I think this is the biggest underlining problem in these cases. Should Rabbonim be malamud zchus on men or woman who sin or should Rabbonim tell them to repent and no GET until repentance and getting out of secular court and having the case tried in beis din (even after the secular courts have awarded one side)? Is it immoral for a Beis din to tell the husband to deposit a GET on condition that the woman drops the secular court case. The above Rabbonim seem not to think this is immoral. However, from the view of Modern Orthodox Rabbonim these Beis Dins are considered criminals. The Modern Orthodox say the case has had a "fair judgement" and now the man must give an unconditional GET or because of chillul hashem the man must give a GET, etc. This seems to be the biggest underlining debate in my eyes. In the end, this blog has hosted a debate about forced gitten in contemporary times, and I am waiting to see in writing from great Rabbis whether or not the actions of the ORA are considered potential problems of forced gitten or not. (L'kavod Rabbi Dr. Eidonsohn: you claimed at the beginning of the debate that you planned on getting in writing the opinions of great Rabbis. Are you attempting to fulfill this statement?) However, one thing is for certain, and that is that running to secular court and demanding an unconditional GET at the same time is certainly not acceptable according to most Rabbonim outside the world of Modern Orthodoxy.

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[Update regarding his chiddush the following was posted today

 DT wrote:

Rabbi Bechhofer: Please clarify your view. You noted that Rambam(Hilchos Gerushin 2:20) says that a beis din that errs or a beis din of hedyotos that force a get shelo kadin - the get is posul derabbonin. You made the diyuk that therefore if it is not beis din but individuals who force a get shelo kadin it is kosher. Obviously the Rambam was not referring to passive social withdrawal since that is not considered to be kefiya according to the poskim. It can only be dealing with issues such as financial or physical forces - and yet you said from the diyuk that vigilante justice can't posul the get.

Now you are stating that vigilanted justice can in fact produce a get me'usa? So what is your true position.

Rabbi Bechhofer wrote: "Three types of vigilante justice do produce get me'useh. These are specified by the Poskim: Violence, monetary sanctions and niddui. There is no precedent to ban any other form of persuasion, and the Harchokos in fact encourage other forms of persuasion. No one here has brought any definitive legitimate proof that demonstrations, petitions, and ostracism create a situation of get me'useh."

You can't have it both ways. The above statement contradicts the diyuk you made from the Rambam. If you always intended the above then you don't need a diyuk in the Rambam to permit someone not to speak to another person. However the case of the mother in law who yells at her son in law to give a get or the case of the father in law who takes his son in laws money to force him to give a get - you said were valid pressure when not done through beis din. You rejected the Lechem Mishna that rejected your diyuk.

Rabbi Bechhofer replied:

It is not a retraction. I believe that my pshat in the Rambam is emes. Nevertheless, since it is clear that many Gedolei HaPoskim either do not accept my pshat, or do not rule like the Rambam, I go on to clarify that my position stands independently of the Rambam, the distinction being that according to the Rambam any form of persuasion not initiated by BD would be valid, while the consensus of the Poskim (which I, of course, accept) is to exclude three forms of persuasion as kinds of Kefi'ah no matter how they are initiated. I believe this is pashut k'bei'ah b'kutcha.

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

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Hide Child Sex Abuses

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

Stupidity is not a disability