Schlesinger Twins: Debate in House of Commons?

Jewish Telegraph   Graham Stringer MP is to ask Foreign Office minister David Liddington to make representations to Austria about the case of Manchester tug-of-love mother Beth Alexander.

He will also seek a debate in parliament when the Commons returns in January. Mother of four-year-old twins, Beth, who is estranged from her Viennese husband, has access to the children for only six hours a week and on alternate Sundays.

Now, a leading Australian educationist has joined in the calls to right the injustice many feel she has suffered at the hands of the Austrian courts. Rabbi James Kennard, who was head of Manchester's King David High School Yavneh, has hit out at Vienna Chabad which forbids Beth to see her children at their kindergarten, or even to be kept abreast of their progress - or lack of it, as she insists.[...]

Why secular Israeli's don't care about Chareidi poverty

NY Times   In mid-December, a report by the National Insurance Institute and the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel’s poverty rate was shamefully high: 23.5 percent. It found that one-fifth of families — and one-fifth of retirees — in Israel are officially poor, as well as one-third of children.

Israel’s income gap is one of the highest in the world (following Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States). Israel, as O.E.C.D. reports have already indicated more than once, somehow manages to be a “start-up nation,” with high economic growth; yet, at the same time, it remains a backward nation with many extremely poor families. [...]

Israelis already know the numbers, and most have already formed opinions on this topic. Many middle-class Israelis are convinced that the poor themselves are at fault — and unless they do something about it, there’s not much that the state can do for them. 

Two segments of Israel’s population stand out as the poorest of the poor: “ultra-Orthodox Jews” and “Muslim-Arabs.” Unemployment rates for ultra-Orthodox Jews (mostly ultra-Orthodox men) and Arabs (mostly Arab women) are very high. So are birth rates. The result: 59 percent of the ultra-Orthodox (also known as Haredim) are poor. Similarly, 58 percent of Arab Israelis are poor. Other groups with notably high rates of poverty are the elderly and new immigrants — but the numbers for these two groups are much lower, 23 percent and 17 percent, respectively.[...]

For middle-class Israelis to care, the message from the state should be quite different — one that could be called compassionate cruelty. The state should be telling its citizens: We don’t much care if the poor-by-choice get even poorer and get even less from the state. We don’t much care about poverty rates that take everybody into account without much consideration of personal and communal decisions and their consequences. But we will ensure that those willing to work and pay their dues are properly assisted, and the government will make sure that they are the only ones to be raised above poverty level on the government’s dime

הח"כ החרדי שגרם ליהודי אנגליה להזיל דמעה

Maariv

חבר הכנסת הדהים השבוע את יהודי הממלכה כשעמד בלבוש חרדי על בימת כנס 'לימוד' ונשא דברים בעד ברית הזוגיות, אוטובוסים בשבת ולימודי ליבה. "סוף-סוף מישהו שבא לאחד", הגיבו בקהל, "זו ישראל שכולנו רוצים להאמין בה

כשמאות מיהודי בריטניה נכנסו לאולם ההרצאות באוניברסיטת ווריק שבעיר קובנטרי הם היו פסימיים. הם באו לשמוע הרצאה של "חבר הכנסת החרדי ממפלגת יש עתיד", הרב דב ליפמן, וכבר הכינו את השאלות הנוקבות על נושאי דת ומדינה, גיור, 'נשות הכותל', ברית הזוגיות ועוד. אך שום דבר לא הכין אותם לכך שליפמן יסכים איתם בכל אחד מהנושאים, ויותר מכך - יגרום להם להתרגש ואפילו להזיל דמעה כשדיבר על נושאי דת ומדינה אקטואליים ברוח שהייתה שונה מאוד ממה שהמאזינים ציפו לו.  

ליפמן דיבר על כל הנושאים הבוערים בישראל, והציג עמדה מורכבת ומתקדמת בענייני דת ומדינה ובנושאים שבין דתיים לחילונים. כשדיבר על ברית הזוגיות השיב להומוסקסואל שישב בקהל ש"התורה מתייחסת למעשה בחומרה, אך היא אינה אומרת שצריך להתנהג לאנשים כאלה בצורה לא נאותה"; כשתמך בהפעלת תחבורה ציבורית בשבת אמר ח"כ ליפמן שהוא רגיל לכך שיש תחבורת ציבורית בשבת, ו"זה לא מפריע לי ברמה האישית"; על לימודי הליבה הוא אמר ש"אם בארה"ב גדולי הרבנים החרדים מעודדים לימודים של מתמטיקה ואנגלית - למה לא בישראל?"

במהלך הנאום הצדיק ליפמן את זכותן של נשים להתפלל בכותל, הסביר את הבעיה הגדולה של השתלטות החרדים על שכונות עירו, בית-שמש, וסיפר על חוויית העלייה המרגשת שלו. "אני אמנם אופטימי מאוד, אבל לא נאיבי", אמר ליפמן כשנשאל אם טרם למד את חוקי המשחק בכנסת ישראל. עם תום נאומו עמדו הנוכחים בקהל על רגליהם ומחאו כפיים במשך דקות ארוכות.  

BOO-AH ! Letting go of a dead marriage

A response to a commenter on MH's post about divorce-impasse by Faithful

I would like to relate to a commenter named "M", who wrote, on December 26, on MH's post:

The bottom line here is that we must fight DIVORCE itself. We must stop the divorce racket. We must stop divorce-on-demand. We must encourage and push and even pressure couples to remain married and not divorce.

Many many many Gedolim and even sociologists have said divorce is far far too easy and far far too frequent. Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l said many times that 99% of divorces in the Orthodox community were avoidable and should not have happened.

My perspective is very fresh and very real, having been dragged into the Israeli state divorce courts, kicking and screaming, over the last three years, with the claim that I can't grant my wife of over 25 years a unilateral divorce if she refuses to first go to counseling with me about it. Now, for the first time, just this week, my wife has agreed to consider the counseling. 

The surrealism of how "the system" was intent on ramming a divorce down my throat reached its zenith about a month ago, when I went to visit the great, virtually mythic sage of Bnei Brak – HaRav Chaiim Kanievsky. I'm not in the camp of those who revere his every word and gesture, but I have a neighbor who is, in a quite sober way, and offered to take me to him for a quick question and answer on my tortured topic. He offered to write it up for me in Hebrew and to present to him as a brief note, in order to respect the Rav's proverbial penchant for curt.

So we did. His note basically said: "this avreich has had a long and blessed marriage, with successful chareidi kids, bli ayin ha'ra, but now his wife suddenly wants out. She even turned to a notorious modern orthodox feminist organization to help her heap wild claims against him in the state rabbinical court. He wants advice."

We get to his apartment on motzei Shabbos and are amazed to easily walk in to see him. He's hunched over his shtender, of course, learning. Note is presented, he asks a tiny clarification: Am I a Cohen? I say no. Not whatsoever. He frowns and makes a wave of dismissal. "So what do you need this for? Let her go."

I'm taken aback. I respond under my breath, and my neighbor will repeat it loud enough so he can hear it, that I'm worried about the integrity of my family, about my reputation, about the fact that someone so close to me is waging a smear campaign against me in court, with the help of some quasi-religious ideologues. And last but not least – I still feel love for her.

He frowns some more and tells me to daven. Then says the clincher: "BOO-AH"! 

Whoa. It felt like a bad joke, with a razor blade. My neighbor urges us to leave, and while on the way out explains: Its short for "Bracha v'Hatzlocho!" 

B-oo-ah.

Ok. Gottit. But it really didn't feel ok. So I let it sink in, eventually realizing how symbolic it was. It's actually riveting in its clarity. The message: "I couldn't give a damn! You shouldn't either."

Truly mind-boggling to get such a message from a "Gadol". But there it was. "Why hold on to a woman who doesn't want you? Why not just let her go already. Boo-ah!"

To be sure, many far from Gadolim say it too. I heard divorce court judge say: "it doesn't matter if she's right, and it doesn't matter if you feel your life and that of the children will be seriously diminished if the marriage is dismantled the way she wants. If she wants out, you’re ABUSING HER to stand in her way!!"

Now let's get this clear. I'm not trying to knock Gadolim, chv"sh, and I certainly am not trying to belittle the idea that there are times to move on past a dying marriage. But I am devastated to realize that men within our holiest communities are being warned, on one extreme, that if their wife might feel that she is fed up with him – run after her and say: "here dear, please take this Get, with my blessing." 

On the other extreme –"Booh-ah". Spit on the marriage, and move on. 

Now, my friends – this is the rub. While I agree with the claim that women have the right to end an unhappy marriage, and men certainly have the right to sneer back, that's only if that's ALL she's seeking. Unfortunately, many women are claiming much more. They are using hyper sensitivities over how halacha makes them unfairly vulnerable, in order to demonize their man. For women with deep wounds in relation to the men of their childhood – that feels reeeel good. The Kabbalists call it klippa. 

Klippa, literally peel, is an energy which obstructs our capacity to deal with the "fruit" of a spiritual challenge. In our case, this klippa of divorce-on-demand mania deflects genuine problem solving intentions into dog-eat-dog legalities. Like when your formally very good friends and rabbonim, who once fully supported your pursuit of Sholom Bayis, start whispering: "why do you need this hassle?" 

My response, over and over again, is: "Because it's a MITZVAH. Sholom Bayis is in fact a MAJOR Mitzvah. Then there's the possibility, like in our case, that a marriage b'kedusha has an established positive track record which screams against the ethic that when the going gets rough – escape! How about the profound ingratitude to our Creator it is to chuck out such a blessing like a marriage without serious examination of the issues that led to its breakdown? Last but not least - I believe that divorcing with all the slander and demonization that my wife wants would cause irreparable damage to the kids and quite possibly our future generations."

They all hear. But eventually they sigh and say: "But is it really worth the hassle?"

And I know, deep inside, in their religious conscience, that they agree with my position. Some even admire it. It's just that in their outer, more "realistic" side, they can't resist the klippa of saying…                     BOO-AH.

My Experience with the Doubtful Mamzer by Rav Dovid Eidensohn

   Doubtful Mamzer 

Pa. court reverses church official's landmark conviction for sexual abuse

USA Today     A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.

In dismissing the landmark criminal case, a three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecutors' arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, supervised the welfare of any particular child.

Lynn, 62, is serving a three- to six-year prison sentence after his child-endangerment conviction last year. His lawyers will try to get him released as early as Thursday from the state prison in Waymart.

Prosecutors had argued at trial that Lynn reassigned predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese's secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. [...]

Making raped teens relive trauma is therapeutic

AP       [JAMA article]  It almost sounds sadistic - making rape victims as young as 13 relive their harrowing assault over and over again. But a new study shows it works surprisingly well at eliminating their psychological distress.

The results are the first evidence that the same kind of "exposure" therapy that helps combat veterans haunted by flashbacks and nightmares also works for traumatized sexually abused teens with similar symptoms, the study authors and other experts said.

After exposure therapy, 83 percent no longer had a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. They fared much better than girls who got only supportive counseling - 54 percent in that group no longer had PTSD after treatment.

Girls who got exposure therapy also had much better scores on measures of depression and daily functioning than girls who got conventional counseling [...]

Dr. Helmreich's interviews with various Roshei Yeshiva

   Interviews With Roshei Yeshiva

Allan Katz - summary - the differences between conditional and unconditional parenting

Guest post from Allan Katz

I posted a summary- chart on the differences between conditional and unconditional parenting -  ( short !!)

I think it is relevant to the parenting discussion. I don't mind parents or mechanchin choosing different educational or discipline styles  that focus on different things - compliance or autonomy/ intrinsic motivation. But not to confuse the goals or the parenting philosophy involved 

Here is a chart  summarizing the differences between conditional and unconditional parenting

http://tinyurl.com/p43lhnn

Differences between Conditional and Unconditional Parenting

Conditional Parenting

Focus                                                    Behavior

View  of  Human  nature                     Negative

View of Parental Love                         A privilege to be earned

Strategies                                            ''  Doing to ''  - control via rewards , punishments etc

Unconditional Parenting

Focus                                                  Whole child ( including reasons, thoughts, feelings )

View of Human nature                       Positive or balanced

View of Parental love                         A gift

Strategies                                            ''  Working with '' (  collaborative problem solving )

Conditional Parenting or Typical View of Difficult Children:

 Guiding Philosophy: “Children do well if they want to”.

  Explanation: Children’s difficult behavior is attention-seeking or aimed at coercing adults into “giving in”.

 Goal of treatment: Induce children to comply with adult directives.

  Tools of treatment: Use of reward and punishment programs to give children incentive to improve behavior.

 Emphasis: Reactive focus on management of problematic behavior after it has occurred.

Unconditional Parenting -Dr. Greene,Ablon  Collaborative Problem Solving Approach  View:

  Guiding Philosophy: “Children do well if they can”.

  Explanation: Children’s difficult behavior is the byproduct of a learning disability in the domains of flexibility, adaptability, and frustration tolerance.

  Goal of treatment: Teach children lacking cognitive and emotional skills.

  Tools of Treatment: Teach children and adults how to work towards mutually satisfactory solutions to problems underlying difficult behavior.

  Emphasis: Proactive focus on solving and preventing problems before they occur.

Erosion of trust is the root of all Divorce impasses.

guest post by  MH

I am a man who for the past year has been personally enveloped in a contentious disputed divorce initiated by my wife. In recent weeks I have met and spoken to several men who for one reason or another are refusing to give their wives a religious divorce, effectively creating a religious equivalent to, self-directed and self- imposed civil contempt.

What I personally learned early on in the divorce process is that when a woman today asks for a divorce, what they are really trying to accomplish is to divorce from the husband not only themselves but their children, property and future earnings. In the secular courts a man has no voice, with a few lies and twisted truths a woman can easily accomplish her divorce, effectively reducing the man to visitor status (often supervised) in his children's life and financial ruins.

The question begs how the situation erodes to the point where a husband refuses to give his wife a religious divorce?

The answer can be summed up into three words “erosion of trust”.

Jewish law dictates that a man does not have to give his wife a divorce just because she demands it, this is a power and property given to man by G-d and no one has the right to question G-d. If we chose to be religious then we chose to abide by G-d’s laws period!

There are situations where a legitimate Beis-Din can try to coerce a man to grant his wife a divorce but it seems legitimate Rabannim are scarce, the laws regarding those situations are very strict and the correct lawful coercion methods are very limited and mostly ineffective.

A common theme among all the men I have spoken to whom are in this (Agunah \ civil contempt) stalemate situation, have all with their own words and stories described to me a similar process. They were all forced unwillingly to travel a path in the gender biased secular courts that systematically and effectively destroyed them personally whilst simultaneously eroding any and all trust in their wives to the point where they can no longer trust them at all. Just like the civilized world has learned that we cannot negotiate with terrorists, trusting their wives has  become impossible much akin to terrorists.

The secular courts open door policy to all women especially to the orthodox women that they see as repressed, creates a state where once trust has evaporated a man has almost no other alternative other than to use the one G-d gave him.

The deeper a man proceeds into the bowls of the corrupt, skewed and gender biased secular courts, the more the trust erosion proceeds uninhibited. There is a point during this process that I have termed uncivil-divorce critical mass, once that point is reached there seems to be almost no way to return and trust has probably gone for good.

Without trust negotiations are futile. Without trust there is no point in arguing because without trust the wife is viewed as a terrorist and therefore any and all attempts to negotiate is futile. If a woman has tasted the sweet waters of the secular divorce court very little can be done to stop her from returning even after mutually agreed settlement's.

The solution to all these divorce stalemates on both sides of the sexes is to prevent the erosion of trust before it can even begin and in the cases that it has already occurred to try and fix the trust breach before attempting to negotiate or mediate a settlement.

To Correct or Not to Correct by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

5 Towns Jewish Times

“Er Zogt!”

“No he didn’t.  I was listening!”

“Whaddya talking about?  It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.  Why are constantly butting your nose into..”

Most of us have heard this conversation countless times in Shuls across the country.  The conversation deals with the Shabbos morning reading of the Torah and addresses the issue of whether it is necessary to correct the reader of the Torah or not.  

The Shulchan Aruch (Orech Chaim 142:1) writes, “If he read and erred, we make him go back.”  The Ramah adds the qualification that it is only if it changes the meaning of the matter.  If there is no change in meaning, however, we do not make the correction.

What is an example of changing the meaning?  If the error was changing Yaaseh to Ye=awe-she, or vice versa, we do correct it. [...]

If it is a Shabbos morning and it is a Bar Mitzvah bochur who is reading, the shul should make every effort that on the Gabbaiim in the front standing next to the Bar Mitzvah bochur should be correcting.  Young men are usually quite embarrassed when they are the recipients of corrections.

So what should we do during the weekday? The issue, of course, should be presented to the Rav of each respective Minyan.  However, here are some suggested guidelines: If the reader is a person who will not be embarrassed, and he is not just saying this but really means it, then he should be corrected in order to fulfill the latter part of the Biur halacha.  If there is any question whatsoever, however, then we should not do so.  If there are not ten verses otherwise, then we should make the correction. 

Rav Chaim Kanievsky allegedly invalidates all witnesses to marriage and divorce - who have an iPhone

Kikar haShabbat  update by a reader - "He also said that if the Hashaka in a Mikva was done by someone with a smart phone - he is posul for the job. Not clear if the Mikva is Pasul. This would apparently create many many Bnei Nida. I dont know if the tevila was done by someone with an iPhone, if the Tevila works. and what about a Mohel? Mashgiach Kashrut (they all have)"

פסק הלכה שמיוחס למרן שר התורה הגאון רבי חיים קנייבסקי, קובע כי משתמשי מכשירי אייפון פסולים לעדות נישואין וגירושין. "אם היה עד, אפילו בדיעבד, צריך לקדש או לתת גט עוד פעם" כתב יו"ר הוועד לטוהר התקשורת ששמע את הפסק מפיו של הרב קנייבסקי. האם אלפי נישואין וגירושין לא תקפים הלכתית?

דרמה הלכתית: פסק הלכה חדש שיוצא ממעונו של מרן שר התורה רבי חיים קנייבסקי, קובע כי יתכן ואלפי עמך בית ישראל שנישאו והתגרשו דרך הרבנות אינם נשואיםגרושים על פי ההלכה. הסיבה? חלקם של אנשי המועצות הדתיות מחזיקים במכשיר האייפון.

במכתב שהוציא הרב אהרון פיינהנדלר - יו"ר "הוועדה לטוהר התקשורת" והגיע לידי 'כיכר השבת', הוא מצטט את הגר"ח קנייבסקי שאמר כי: "כל מי שיש לו אייפון, אינטרנט פרוץ וכדומה פסול לעדות קידושין וגירושין, אם הנ"ל היה עד, אפילו בדיעבד, צריך לקדש אותו או לתת גט עוד פעם".

הגר"ח קנייבסקי הוסיף ואמר - לדברי הרב פיינהנדלר, כי "מי שעושה הכשרה (השקה) למקווה של טבילת נשים, וכן האישה המטבילה, פסולים לתפקיד שלהם אם הם מחזיקים במכשירים הנ"ל".

יצויין, כי חלק ניכר מאנשי המועצות הדתיות שלא בהכרח משתייכים לזרם החרדי השמרני, מחזיקים במכשירי אייפון או באינטרנט שאינו מסונן. כמו כן, בחתונות רבות, ובמיוחד במגזר שאינו חרדי, האנשים שמתכבדים בעדות עשויים להחזיק ברשותם טלפון חכם, לפי דברי הגר"ח קנייבסקי אותם מביא הוועד לטוהר התקשורת, הקידושין (או הגירושין) אינם תקפים.

Rabbi Feinhandler in action