Friday, August 28, 2015
Thursday, August 27, 2015
The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths
Nearly
half a century ago, in what passed as outrage in pre-Internet times,
people across the country became incensed by the latest edition of Time
magazine. In place of the familiar portrait of a world leader — Indira
Gandhi, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ho Chi Minh — the cover of the April 8, 1966, issue was emblazoned with three red words against a stark black background: “Is God Dead?”
Thousands
of people sent letters of protest to Time and to their local
newspapers. Ministers denounced the magazine in their sermons.
The
subject of the fury — a sprawling, 6,000-word essay of the kind Time
was known for — was not, as many assumed, a denunciation of religion.
Drawing on a panoply of philosophers and theologians, Time’s religion
editor calmly considered how society was adapting to the diminishing
role of religion in an age of secularization, urbanism and, especially,
stunning advances in science.
With astronauts walking in space, and polio and other infectious diseases
seemingly on the way to oblivion, it was natural to assume that people
would increasingly stop believing things just because they had always
believed them. Faith would steadily give way to the scientific method as
humanity converged on an ever better understanding of what was real.
Almost
50 years later, that dream seems to be coming apart. Some of the
opposition is on familiar grounds: The creationist battle against
evolution remains fierce, and more sophisticated than ever. But it’s not
just organized religions that are insisting on their own alternate
truths. On one front after another, the hard-won consensus of science is
also expected to accommodate personal beliefs, religious or otherwise,
about the safety of vaccines, G.M.O. crops, fluoridation or cellphone
radio waves, along with the validity of global climate change.
Like creationists with their “intelligent design,”
the followers of these causes come armed with their own personal
science, assembled through Internet searches that inevitably turn up the
contortions of special interest groups. In an attempt to dilute the
wisdom of the crowd, Google recently tweaked its algorithm so that
searching for “vaccination” or “fluoridation,” for example, brings
vetted medical information to the top of the results.
But presenting people with the best available science doesn’t seem to change many minds. In a kind of psychological immune response,
they reject ideas they consider harmful. A study published this month
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that it
is more effective to appeal to anti-vaxxers through their emotions, with stories and pictures of children sick with measles, the mumps or rubella — a reminder that subjective feelings are still trusted over scientific expertise.[...]
Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed - 50% of published studies are possibly junk
The past several years have been bruising ones for the credibility of the social sciences. A star social psychologist was caught fabricating data, leading to more than 50 retracted papers. A top journal published a study supporting the existence of ESP. The journal Science pulled a political science paper on the effect of gay canvassers on voters’ behavior – also because of concerns about fake data.
A University of Virginia psychologist decided in 2011 to find out
whether such suspect science was a widespread problem. He and his team
recruited more than 250 researchers, identified 100 studies that had
each been published in one of three leading journals in 2008, and
rigorously redid the experiments in close collaboration with the
original authors.
The
results are now in: More than 60 of the studies did not hold up. They
include findings that were circulated at the time — that a strong
skepticism of free will increases the likelihood of cheating; that physical distances could subconsciously influence people’s sense of personal closeness; that attached women are more attracted to single men when highly fertile than when less so.
The new analysis, called the Reproducibility Project
and posted Thursday by Science, found no evidence of fraud or that any
original study was definitively false. Rather, it concluded that the
evidence for most published findings was not nearly as strong as
originally claimed.
“Less
than half — even lower than I thought,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a
director of Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, who
once estimated that about half of published results across medicine were
inflated or wrong. Dr. Ioannidis said the problem was hardly confined
to psychology and could be worse in other fields, including cell
biology, economics, neuroscience, clinical medicine, and animal research
Canadian Man Dubbed 'Jewish Schindler' for Saving Yazidi Sex Slaves From ISIS
A Canadian businessman is being dubbed the “Jewish Schindler” after paying for the release of Yazidi and Christian slaves held by Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Steve Maman has rescued 128 girls and women through the organisation he founded, Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI).
CYCI uses intermediaries to negotiate with Islamic State captors and pays between $1000 - $3000 for the release of each slave. According to the organization’s website, girls and women are then returned to their families or sent to a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Syria.
Islamic State is estimated to have taken 2,700 women and girls captive, torturing them and using them as sex slaves. Amnesty International claims Yazidi and Christian girls as young as 12 are being held.
Montreal-based Maman says his Jewish tradition motivated him to take action and establish CYCI in January this year.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.673270
Steve Maman has rescued 128 girls and women through the organisation he founded, Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI).
CYCI uses intermediaries to negotiate with Islamic State captors and pays between $1000 - $3000 for the release of each slave. According to the organization’s website, girls and women are then returned to their families or sent to a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Syria.
Islamic State is estimated to have taken 2,700 women and girls captive, torturing them and using them as sex slaves. Amnesty International claims Yazidi and Christian girls as young as 12 are being held.
Montreal-based Maman says his Jewish tradition motivated him to take action and establish CYCI in January this year.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.673270
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Rav Dovid Eidensohn Tel Conf #17 - Your Kesubo – Is it Kosher? August 26 Wed 9:30 PM
Call 605-562-3130 enter code 411161#
Your Kesubo – is it kosher? Why not? Probably, some reliable person supervised the Kesubo writing at your wedding. Torah scholars were present. So, what is the problem? We list below three problems. One is Reb Moshe Feinstein’s ruling that in large cities some kesubose may be invalid. And today most people are probably in such cities, certainly those in New York City. Another problem is that our Kesubose don’t really assure a woman that she will be paid. And the Talmud considers this an invalid Kesubo, and the marriage is considered Zenuse. This is even if the Kesubo is a proper legal document but the wife is not sure of that. Surely if there are real problems in making her sure of herself with the Kesubo. The third problem is that the Kesubo is read publicly, and some information in it may be hugely humiliating. Rabbeinu Yona considers such a humiliation to be worse than murder.
Ultra-Orthodox In Israel: Keeping Cool While Keeping Customs
In the hot sun of a Jerusalem afternoon, kids wait for a fountain to turn on.
When water spouts into the air, 9-year-old Tzipora Baranas jumps right in. She's wearing black tights, a black, below-the-knee skirt and a long-sleeved black shirt.
"It's fun when the water spritzes up in my face," she says.
She is Orthodox Jewish and her outfit is in deference to religious modesty. She says she's not hot at all, despite the temperature hitting the 90s and the dark clothes covering all but her face and hands.
Of course, she is dripping wet at the moment.
Nearby, in the shade, an Orthodox mother, Rinat Kuperman, says it's good that the city has a place where kids can get wet without having to wear a swimsuit in public.
"They understand that people like us want to be happy in the summer and still keep ourselves like we want," she says. "Covered and refreshed."
Her family swims only in pools with times separated by gender, in keeping with their religious custom of covering their bodies when away from home and in the presence of members of the opposite sex. Kuperman isn't dressed all in black, but her skirt brushes her ankles. She wears a long-sleeved blouse over a T-shirt and has wrapped a colorful scarf over her hair.
Most Israelis are secular, and this record-breaking summer heat means plenty of shorts and skimpy tops on the beaches and streets. Choices for modest dress — including those that keep people covered up even in the summer heat — draw on religious rules, community norms and personal beliefs.[...]
Monday, August 24, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Jared Fogle has no easy road to recovery, sex addiction experts say
Indystar Identifying those with pedophilic or sex addiction, as well as victims of sexual abuse, can be challenging
Bill Cosby. Josh Duggar. Dennis Hastert. And now Jared Fogle.
In the past few months, allegations surrounding these men and sexual activity with minors, male and female, have surfaced in headline after headline. In the latest, Indiana’s own Fogle just agreed to plead guilty to charges that include having sex with teenagers and distributing pornography involving children as young as 6 years old.[...]
Researchers delving into the personality characteristics of those who
engage in online deviate behavior, of which child pornography is one
type, know that you can rarely predict offenders.
There is no one type of person that engages in child pornography, no
one profile,” said Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, an assistant professor in
the department of computer and information technology at Purdue
University who studies this area. “It’s because the behavior itself is
very dynamic and complex.”
Some people will download child
pornography but never try to contact a minor for a sexual encounter, she
said. Others might network, share information and reach out to
children. Now researchers have noted another category — those who
contact minors online but have no intention of ever meeting them in
person.[...]
Although people who do jail time for viewing child pornography have low
recidivism rates, the same is not true for those who contact their
victims, Seigfried-Spellar said. [...]
“You cannot be cured of this,” she said. “It is like any other
addiction. You can learn how to manage it ... but you have to work on
this every day of your life when you have this compulsion.”
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Protest against incompetence of International Beit Din for Agunos
Update: Psakim of the Beis Din has been added as well as the link to their webpage where these psakim came from - International Beit Din - psakim

Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Rav Dovid Eidensohn Tel Conf #16 – Prenups Force a Husband to Divorce His Wife Wed 9:30 PM Aug 19
Call 605-562-3130 code 411161#
Prenups are documents a husband signs at his wedding, empowering the wife to leave the house at any time and force the husband to give her a GET. The husband, from the time that the wife leaves the house, must pay his wife a large sum of money regularly, a sum designed to overwhelm his ability to pay and to force him to give her a GET. The Modern Orthodox world is working hard to force every husband to sign a prenup. When that happens, may truly Orthodox people marry children born from Modern Orthodox women who got divorces because of prenups, or not? And what happens if Orthodox husbands sign a prenup and there is a GET? That is our discussion here.
Shoftim 75 - What happened to the Policeman? by Allan Katz
Guest post by Allan Katz
שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעך' ' The parasha of Shoftim opens with the commandment to appoint for yourselves judges and police officers in all your cities. In our daily prayers we ask God to 'restore our judges as in the earliest times and counselors at first ' - השיבה שופטינו כבראשונה ויועצינו כבתחלה. The obvious question is what happened to the policemen, why don't we pray for the restoration of a police force. There is a need for police especially in the light that religious courts are said to have ' no teeth ' and lack authority, something that has been a feature of the religious legal system for centuries. (Something to wonder about).In education, likewise there are many religious educators who long for the days where punishments were ' effective ' tools in educating kids in Torah. Nevertheless, we pray for judges and counselors who can guide and inspire us to follow and keep God's Torah and not for policemen who will enforce God's law.
A legal system in a country and the state of law, order and morality are not only dependent on judges and policemen but on the moral standing of the population. In our verse above, God also calls on all individuals, on an individual level to be their own personal judges and policemen who reflect, make personal judgments on how to act and monitor their own behavior. In fact, the breakdown of law and order in many countries has more to do with the lack of moral standing of its population than government instruments for maintaining law and order. The Mishnah Pirkei Avos 3:2 ' Rabbi Chanina the deputy [High] Priest said: Pray for the welfare of the government (lit., monarchy), for if not for its fear, a person would swallow his fellow live." seems to be not quite relevant for a time when there is no longer any fear for governments. We pray that we should be intrinsically motivated to be people who follow the Torah because it is the right thing to do and we appreciate God's Torah values and the Divine intelligence. In the same way, we want our kids not to hit or speak badly to other kids because of what will happen to them, but because they are people who love others and don't hit or hurt the feelings of others.
We pray that not only should the religious courts replace secular courts but more important we should relate to religious courts from a true religious perspective. R' Isaac Sher explains that if we go to a religious court – beit din with intention to defend our rights and property we have transformed a beit din into a secular court. We go to beit din to seek guidance, to know how God wants us to act in this situation and resolve the conflict. The status of religious courts depends on our attitude and appreciation of their religious roles in our lives.
Collaborating and finding mutual satisfying solutions or making compromises with or without the help of the religious courts is fundamental in dealing with disputes and resolving conflict. Again 'mishpat= justice ' is something very much personal and intrinsic to the individual and less dependent on the external legal system.
To sum up: It seems that the Torah wants the locus of control to be intrinsic to people and that we educate people to be their own judges, self – assess and monitor their behavior , have an appreciation of the religious value of the courts of law and be able to settle disputes in a collaborative problem solving way.
When it comes to our children we do the opposite. The locus of control is outside the child. The educational system – both academic and socio-moral is driven by parents and teachers using extrinsic motivators such as grades, moving to the next level, consequences, punishments, rewards and encouragement in the form of positive reinforcement and praise. When it comes to behavior, kids ask what will I get, or what will be done to me if I behave in a certain way and not what type of person do I want to be, is this an expression of my Torah values,reflect on the consequences of my behavior, not for me, but for others in the community, classroom and family? One of the things I look for in 'frum' – religious education and parenting is what happens when kids screw up. Is the talk about compliance and the tools of control that can get compliance or is it helping the child to see the consequences of his actions on others, come up with a better plan that addresses his concerns in an appropriate way and engaging in an autonomous way in the moral act of restitution , reparation and making amends ? In other words - do Teshuvah-repent.
When it comes to learning, the questions kids ask is if this will be on the test, what grade did I get, am I in the top ten in the class, how can I get the best grade with the minimal effort etc, instead of connecting and developing a love for learning, making meaning of what is being learned, seeing the actual value and relevance of the learning and asking questions. John Dewey said education is not a preparation for life, but life itself, or closer to home Torah is our life.
In order to place the locus of control with the child and move away from extrinsic controls and motivators we should take note of the words of the educator Jerome Bruner. Kids should be helped to focus on what they are doing and not on how they are doing. So it is important that kids do not experience success or failure as rewards or punishment but as information. Our feedback is important but it should be neutral and non-evaluative so kids can reflect on what they are doing and internalize the underlying values which will help them become self-determined Torah personalities.
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