Gay Marriage approved by Conservative Jews - point of no return

Forward    The Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets halakhic policy for the Conservative movement, has voted unanimously to provide the approximately 1,600 Conservative rabbis with guidelines on performing same-sex marriages. 

The move is an official sanction of the ceremonies by the movement. 

The CJLS approved the documents Thursday by a 13-0 vote with one abstaining ballot. For years, the Conservative movement has debated how to approach same-sex unions. Traditionalists often opposed such relationships while urging respect as progressives -- particularly some rabbinical students -- pushed for full equality.

Clergyman faces 21 years for abuse coverups

CNN   Lynn is the first high-ranking church figure charged with child endangerment for allegedly shuffling predator priests from parish to parish.

If convicted, he faces up to 21 years in prison.

Now-defrocked priest Edward Avery was due to go on trial with Brennan and Lynn, but he pleaded guilty in March after admitting to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy during the 1998-1999 school year. Avery, 69, was sentenced to two-and-a-half to five years in prison.

Nazi Victim’s Family must Return gold tablet to museum

NYTimes    A state appellate court in Brooklyn has ordered the family of a Holocaust survivor to return an ancient gold tablet to a German museum. 

The decision turns on its head the familiar scenario of Holocaust victims suing to reclaim property stolen or extorted from them by the Nazis. But in this case, according to court papers, the precious 3,200-year-old Assyrian artifact had been looted, not from the survivor, but from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, at the close of World War II. 

It is not clear how the survivor, Riven Flamenbaum, came into possession of the tablet after his liberation from Auschwitz in 1945, when he was sent to a displaced persons camp in southeastern Germany.

DA Hynes & Aguda on collision course

Jewish Journal   In an interview with the Forward, Hynes reportedly said that he was in “sharp disagreement” with the Agudah’s position, arguing that the rabbis “have no experience or expertise in sex abuse.” The Forward quoted Hynes as saying that he stressed his opposition in a telephone call with Zwiebel last week.

Zwiebel “still thinks they have a responsibility to screen,” Hynes said. “I disagree.”

Meanwhile, Hynes spokesman Jerry Schmetterer told The Jewish Week that Zwiebel “risks having the rabbi prosecuted for obstructing a law enforcement investigation.”

The shift puts Hynes’ office at odds with the haredi Orthodox community—a problem the Kol Tzedek program was supposed to solve.

In an interview last week with the New York Post, Hynes cited the insularity of Brooklyn’s haredi community and the need to protect sex-abuse victims from intimidation as the reason for not releasing the names of about 100 accused molesters from the community.

“Within days, people within this relentless community would identify the victims,” he told the Post. “Then the intimidation would start.

Rat studies, New Hope for Spine Injuries

NYTimes   Rats with a spinal cord injury that left their hind legs completely paralyzed learned to walk again on their own after an intensive training course that included electrical stimulation of the brain and the spine, scientists reported on Thursday. 

The report, published online on Thursday in the journal Science, provides a striking demonstration of what until recently few scientists thought possible: complete rehabilitation after a disabling blow to the spinal cord. After weeks of training, many of the rats could walk as well as before the injury, and some could run. 

The findings do not apply to all spinal injuries. The animals’ spinal columns were cut without being completely severed; there were still some nerve connections that extended intact through the injured area. But this is also the case for a substantial proportion — perhaps a quarter to a third — of people whose injuries are severe enough to confine them to a wheelchair.

Using unfiltered internet invalidates witness

http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/238796

אפקט הכנס ההיסטורי בקווינס? אחד מרבני מונסי שבניו יורק פסל אמש לעדות בחופה אדם המשתמש באינטרנט לא מסונן.

המדובר באב"ד סאטמר במונסי, הרב אברהם צבי וואזנר, שטען במהלך חופה שערך ובו שימש כמסדר הקידושין, כי בעקבות אמירתו של סבו לפיו משתמשי אינטרנט לא מסונן פסולים לעדות, יש לנהוג כך הלכה למעשה.

על פי הדיווח, האב"ד בירר בקרב משפחת הצדדים לגבי העדים, ומששמע כי הם מחזיקים בטלפון לא "כשרים" ובעלי אינטרנט לא מסונן, ביקש להביא עדים אחרים תחתיהם למעמד הח

Curtain falls on yy's saga

On 5/31/2012 1:21 PM,  --- wrote:

Your blog is thought provoking, and I’ve been following it for some time.  I was moved by yy’s story -- just about ready to post another comment -- and was surprised to see that the whole thing was removed.  Then I saw your tweet about “yy’s saga” which seemed to judge the author negatively, and that disturbed me.  Later I went back to the tweet and found that its content had been removed also.  I'm wondering what's going on.  Thanks.

Yes yy story was moving and well written and is a good example of a marriage collapsing. However despite posting anonymously - he did not want to be judged or criticized based on the personal details he wrote about himself - but only wanted to stimulate discussion of a general nature and in his words "get sympathy & empathy". I felt it was counterproductive for him to reveal his personal details of his life to the public as well as his judgments of his wife - and then to get irritated if readers didn't view events as he did and judged him harshly. He disagreed and got hurt and became angry with me for not taking his side - so the post was removed. My purpose in publishing was to encourage awareness and communication about an all too common problem. I felt that he was in fact benefiting from the feedback he got as well as in communicating the problem and thus it was a win-win situation. He clearly disagreed and asked that I remove his post which I did. I had written a more detailed description of events and but decided to remove it. 

Rav Wosner: Clarification of internet prohibition

BCHOL כמחחצית השעה לפני כניסת חג השבועות בארה"ב וחמשה ימים לאחר הכנס נגד 'פגעי הטכנולגיה' - נתלתה ברחבי ניו-יורק מודעה בחתימת ידו של הגר"ש וואזנר, בה הוא חוזר בו מדברים שאמר בכנס, בשידור חי מביתו בבני-ברק.

כזכור בעת הכנס, הופיע הגר"ש וואזנר בעל ה'שבט הלוי' ושידר דברים בשידור-חי לבאי הכנס. הגר"ש וואזנר התבטא כי הינו מעניק שורת הלכות שרק אם יאומצו יהיה הכנס ראוי לשמו.

בין היתר אמר הרב וואזנר, כי אסור להכניס מחשב הביתה, גם לצורכי עבודה, כי אין להיכנס לבית שיש בו אינטרנט לא מסונן. הוא הדגיש כי דבריו הינן מעיקר ההלכה והוסיף כי על מוסדות הלימוד לסלק משורותיהן ילד החשוף בביתו לאינטרנט.

בשל לחץ כבד של עסקנים ושל אחד מאדמו"רי ארה"ב, אשר התנגד לסילוק ילדים ממוסדות החינוך, חזר בו הגר"ש מפסקיו ופרסם מודעה עם פסקי הלכה מתונים יחסית.

במודעה החדשה אין איסור גמור על שימוש בבית במחשב לצורכי עבודה, ואת סילוק הילדים ממוסדות החינוך מחליפה חובה להצבת סייגים וגדרים.

Do "child safety zones" stop abuse?

NYTimes    Orange County finds itself at the enter of a new wave of laws restricting the movement of sex offenders. The county government and a dozen cities here have banned sex offenders from even setting foot in public parks, on beaches and at harbors, rendering almost half the parks in Orange County closed to them. Ten more cities are considering similar legislation. 

And Orange County is far from alone. In recent years, communities around the country have gone beyond regulating where sex offenders can live and begun banning them outright from a growing list of public places.[...]

The proliferation of such restrictions reflects the continued concerns of parents and lawmakers about potential recidivism among sex offenders. But it has also increasingly raised questions about their effectiveness, as well as their fairness. 

Opponents have dismissed “child safety zones” as unenforceable, saying they are designed to make politicians look tough on crime and drive sex offenders from the area, not make children safer.

R' Slifkin: Unsung heroes of Daf Yomi

Rabbi N. Slifkin   But who are the guests of honor at the grand Siyumim? Who performs the siyum, who makes the speeches, who gets the glory? Not the Daf Yomi participants and not even the maggidei shiurim. Instead, it's the roshei yeshivah.  [...]

With the glory being given to the exponents of Daas Torah, it provides them with a platform to use the event for the politics of Daas Torah. The last Siyum HaShas took place during the peak of the controversial ban on three of my books. One yeshivah figurehead took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the ideology of Daas Torah, and capitalized on the martyrs of the Holocaust, in whose memories the Siyum HaShas is dedicated. Rav Mattisyahu Solomon spoke about how the martyrs demand us to reject the "makeshift answers" to conflicts between the Gemara and science that are offered by the "midgets of our generation." Aside from the question of whether approaches to the Gemara offered by countless Geonim and Rishonim and Acharonim can be called "makeshift," and the question of whether the victims of the Holocaust really did die for this belief, one has to wonder why a siyum on Daf Yomi is being used to further such an agenda. It's a siyum haShas, not an Agudas Yisroel convention! 

Orthodox Jewish society is made up of many different important people and institutions. We need baalei battim and teachers and schools and lay leaders and yeshivos and roshei yeshivah and universities and academics and shuls and community rabbis and mohelim and shochtim. And there are differences of opinion about whether leadership should be held by lay leaders, community rabbis or roshei yeshivah. But Daf Yomi is not about any of those three groups. They have plenty of opportunities to receive glory, at dinners and Internet Asifas and Agudas Yisroel conventions. Daf Yomi is about the ordinary man who takes his ArtScroll Gemara on the train with him every morning on the way to work. He is the hero of the Siyum HaShas. Let's grant him his well-deserved honor!

The Digital Divide is in wasting time

NYTimes    In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families. [...]

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.  [...]

“Despite the educational potential of computers, the reality is that their use for education or meaningful content creation is minuscule compared to their use for pure entertainment,” said Vicky Rideout, author of the decade-long Kaiser study. “Instead of closing the achievement gap, they’re widening the time-wasting gap.”[...]