Eleven states sue Obama administration over bathroom guidance for transgender students

Washington Post

Eleven states and state officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Obama administration over federal guidance directing schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and other facilities that match their gender identities.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, states that the guidance “has no basis in law” and could cause “seismic changes in the operations of the nation’s school districts.”

State officials have hinted they might file a legal challenge since the Obama administration released a letter earlier this month from the Justice Department and the Education Department that the federal agencies said was in response to questions from schools around the country.

“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement when the letter was released. “This guidance gives administrators, teachers, and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies.” [...]

This lawsuit — which bears the names of nine states as well as a governor and another state’s education department — is the first filed in response to the administration’s letter. Although some politicians, parents, elected officials and school districts embraced the directive, others aggressively argued against it and said the administration was overstepping its authority.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) almost immediately said his state would fight the letter because President Obama is “not a king.” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, accused Obama of trying to “bully Texas schools into allowing men to have open access to girls in bathrooms” and vowed a legal fight. [...]

Bnei Brak mashgiach accused of molesting students - has left Israel

kikar haShabbat

משגיח מישיבה חרדית מוכרת נעלם מהארץ לאחר טענות נגדו על פגיעה בבחורים. אחד מהם, מדבר לראשונה בשיחה עם "כיכר השבת": "אמרו לי 'אם המשגיח עושה משהו כנראה שהוא יודע'" (חרדים)

חרדית מוכרת ממרכז הארץ, נמלט מהארץ בימים האחרונים לאחר סדרה של טענות למעשים חמורים כלפי תלמידים במוסד. בשיחה כואבת עם "כיכר השבת", מדבר לראשונה אחד מבוגרי הישיבה, שלטענתו נפגע על ידי אותו משגיח.

י' (שם בדוי), מעלה טענות קשות ביותר נגד המשגיח הנמלט ונגד הישיבה בה למד במשך שנים. לדבריו, המשגיח פגע בו לפני מספר שנים בצורה קשה וחמורה בעת שלמד בישיבה. לטענתו, הוא סיפר על הדברים לחבריו, ואז הופתע לגלות כי ישנם בחורים נוספים שנתקלו במעשים דומים מצד המשגיח המדובר.

י' מספר כי התבייש לפנות לראש הישיבה ולספר לו על המקרה, אולם חבריו ששמעו על מה שעולל לכאורה המשגיח, פנו לראש הישיבה. לדברי י', ראש הישיבה השיב כי "אם המשגיח עושה משהו כנראה שהוא יודע מה לעשות, זה בסדר".

לאחר תגובתו של ראש הישיבה, י' החל לאסוף עדויות נוספות מתלמידים שלכאורה נפגעו מהמשגיח. לדבריו, הגיעו לידיו עדויות מוצקות על עוד שמונה בחורים לכל הפחות, שלמדו יחד עמו בישיבה ונפגעו לטענתם על ידי המשגיח. "חלק ניצלו לאחר שהתנגדו, אחרים נפגעו באופן קשה ביותר" אומר י'.

[...]

Why 'Crooked Hillary' is likely to stick

The Week

Donald Trump has a knack for nicknames. Low-energy Jeb caught something of Jeb's entitled aura. "Little Marco" got at something truly juvenile and naive about Marco Rubio. And "Lyin' Ted" was an effective way of branding Ted Cruz's dishonesty. Lately, Donald's been trying new nicknames for Hillary Clinton, but he seems to like his original "Crooked Hillary" best.

And his first instinct is best. The Clinton Foundation and other associated concerns really are a kind of globalist grift.

Funded by the rich, the foundation allows the Clintons to travel around the world and to network with other high net worth individuals. It even pays the salaries of Clinton friends and other flunkies. And where does the money come from? Bill Clinton would often raise it from people who had direct financial interests at play in the U.S. State Department when Hillary was there. One such deal resulted in a Russian company, Uranium One, obtaining control over one-fifth of the world's uranium production.

As Peter Schweizer's book Clinton Cash details, Hillary's loyalty could be well-bought. Consider the financial interests of Mohammed al-Amoudi, who committed $20 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2007. Al-Amoudi profits from the Mohammed International Development Research and Organization Companies, which could have been harmed by U.S. policy changes in Ethiopia, particularly if the U.S. government scrutinized Ethiopia closely for human rights violations, as required by U.S. rules on foreign aid. Clinton dutifully gave a waiver to Ethiopia during her time as secretary of state. Bill Clinton would praise Ethiopia's leaders as a new guard for the continent, even if their rule included extra-judicial killing and plunder.

There are dozens of other sordid little tales, like that of Claudio Osorio, currently in federal prison for fraud. The Clintons, to whom he donated generously, helped his firm InnoVida obtain a $10 million loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. More evidence of financial corruption may be coming now that Charles Ortel, who uncovered wrongdoing at General Electric, is examining the Clinton Foundation's disclosures. He's already describing their work as "charity fraud."

There's also the matter of Hillary's speaking fees. In just the two years between leaving the Obama administration and launching her bid for the presidency, she made nearly $22 million from speeches. Right after her service to Obama, Hillary Clinton began giving one to two speeches a month at around $225,000 or more per speech. Who wanted to hear Hillary speak? Lots of financial services companies, including Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Fidelity Investments. Goldman Sachs even hired her to speak in South Carolina in June of 2013, and then again in New York and Arizona that October. Her clients included major investors in government projects, like TD Bank, which had major investments in the Keystone Pipeline. [...]

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

How corporate America bought Hillary Clinton for $21M

NY Post

“Follow the money.” That telling phrase, which has come to summarize the Watergate scandal, has been a part of the lexicon since 1976. It’s shorthand for political corruption: At what point do “contributions” become bribes, “constituent services” turn into quid pro quos and “charities” become slush funds?

Ronald Reagan was severely criticized in 1989 when, after he left office, he was paid $2 million for a couple of speeches in Japan. “The founding fathers would have been stunned that an occupant of the highest office in this land turned it into bucks,” sniffed a Columbia professor.

So what would Washington and Jefferson make of Hillary Rodham Clinton? Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in “speaking fees,” not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, “Hard Choices.”

Throw in the additional $26,630,000 her ex-president husband hoovered up in personal-appearance “honoraria,” and the nation can breathe a collective sigh of relief that the former first couple — who, according to Hillary, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001 with some of the furniture in tow — can finally make ends meet.[...]

As “Clinton Cash,” a new documentary based on Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book, shows in excruciating, irrefutable detail, it’s always “pay to play” with the Clintons, whether personally or via their family racket, the Clinton Foundation (which includes the Clinton Global Initiative). They’ve sucked up vast sums of “contributions” from some of the most unsavory folks on the planet, including Nigerian dictators and Kazakhstani despots.

But it’s their parlaying of “public service” by two career “civil servants” into personal enrichment that’s shameless.

Bill Clinton’s speaking fees skyrocketed just days after Hillary’s nomination as secretary of state in 2009. Corporations, such as TD Bank, that had never paid a dime to hear him speak suddenly bellied up to the bar, waving fistfuls of cash. Coincidentally, TD Bank was the largest investor in the Keystone XL pipeline, which needed approval from the new secretary of state. Hillary dodged and weaved and Obama later nixed it — but the Clintons kept the cash. It makes sense to make friends with the woman who might just be the next president. But what does that say about what the office has become? [...]

Terrorist or pedophile? This start-up says it can out secrets by analyzing faces

Washington Post

An Israeli start-up says it can take one look at a person’s face and realize character traits that are undetectable to the human eye.

Faception said it’s already signed a contract with a homeland security agency to help identify terrorists. The company said its technology also can be used to identify everything from great poker players to extroverts, pedophiles, geniuses and white collar-criminals.

“We understand the human much better than other humans understand each other,” said Faception chief executive Shai Gilboa. “Our personality is determined by our DNA and reflected in our face. It’s a kind of signal.”

Faception has built 15 different classifiers, which Gilboa said evaluate with 80 percent accuracy certain traits. The start-up is pushing forward, seeing tremendous power in a machine’s ability to analyze images.

Yet experts caution there are ethical questions and profound limits to the effectiveness of technology such as this.

“Can I predict that you’re an ax murderer by looking at your face and therefore should I arrest you?” said Pedro Domingos, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington and author of “The Master Algorithm.” “You can see how this would be controversial.” [...]

Faception recently showed off its technology at a poker tournament organized by a start-up that shares investors with Faception. Gilboa said that Faception predicted before the tournament that four players out of the 50 amateurs would be the best. When the dust settled two of those four were among the event’s three finalists. To make its prediction Faception analyzed photos of the 50 players against a Faception database of professional poker players. [...]

Part 2 of "Hell, hope and healing" - There is hope for survivors to heal Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea

National Catholic Reporter

In the first article of this series [2]First Article   I discussed the commonality and damage of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including clergy sexual abuse. Here, I focus on the hope that most  trauma survivors can heal because of inherent or learned resilience and/or through access to healing resources.

*Resilience*

Since the 1980s, when child abuse and domestic violence emerged from society's skeleton closet, researchers and clinicians have rightly prioritized the tremendous wounds caused by adverse childhood experiences. Recently, however, researchers also have concluded that while about two-thirds of trauma survivors will experience at least some negative outcomes after trauma, almost another third will emerge into adults who seem not to have been deeply affected by earlier traumas.

Even more exciting are indications that resilience can be learned or expanded to moderate the long-term impact of traumatic stress on the body, mind and spirit.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of threat." Resilience researchers like Dennis Charney and Steven Southwick have investigated the genetic, biological, social and spiritual factors contributing to resilience. They and others have identified a number of factors that appear to endow an individual with resilience:

- Above average intelligence.

- An internal locus of control. A sense that the individual can determine his/her own fate, even when trauma occurs.

- An optimistic cognitive style. Resilient individuals tend to be able to find the silver lining in even the darkest, most thunderous clouds. They are able to imagine a time when life will be better.

- A close, safe relationship with at least one adult not involved in the trauma. This is an area in which abusive priests were often the most despicable and damaging. Children known by predator priests to be in difficult home situations, or kids who came to the priests for advice or comfort about other traumas, were often selected as victims. Instead of responding to an already hurting young person with kindness and mercy, abusing clergy too often became another trauma for the child or teen.

- A consistent faith and/or cultural traditions that provided hope and a steady belief system. Once again, we see the travesty of priests whose sexual violations robbed victims of a faith-based building block of resilience to life's challenges.

- A good sense of humor, even when life is tough.

It is important to note that all researchers point to sexual abuse while young as a particularly pernicious ACE that results in multiple times the risk of trauma-related challenges than other ACEs do. Early sexual trauma also is likely to correlate with the most serious symptomatology.

Further, resilience researcher Emmy Werner maintains that even the most resilient person has a breaking point. The trauma survivor's breaking point may be lower than for those not coping with past ACEs and the sexual abuse survivor's breaking point is likely to be lower still.

At the same time, the research and my 30 years of working clinically with sexual abuse survivors convince me that healing is possible even when wounds from sexual abuse are deep and suppurating. Part of trauma-focused psychotherapy, in fact, is increasing resilience, also known as strengthening ego functioning. [...]

Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Who doesn't belong in this picture? Shameful!

It is a tragedy when gedolim make mistakes - especially serious ones. It is an even bigger tragedy when they refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and make amends as the Torah requires. But worst of all when is they are being held as paragons of virtue - when they clearly aren't. Please note the topics to be discussed and please note the hypocrisy.

Child abuse and [no] Rabbinic Coverup

As a sign of significant improvement in rabbinic dealings with child abuse, I received a letter from a child abuse advocate which states:

Subject: Ultra-Orthodox leadership group in Israel defends senior colleague

Outrageously - but unsurprisingly - a senior ultra Orthodox leadership group in Israel has today issued a public statement in support of their colleague, Rabbi M[****]., who has been indicted for a 'series of rapes carried against a number of female relatives over the course of several years

--------------------------------------------------
Shortly after I received a follow up letter

Dear colleagues,

 I have recently heard from [****] that after further research, it has been determined that the letter is bogus.

[The letter was removed from the Facebook page of the advocate.]

In fact in this case of the Jerusalem mashgiach - I have heard that the rabbonim have fully cooperated with the police - there was no cover up. The knee-jerk reaction of the above advocate needs to be tempered with the reality that awareness of the problem of abuse and how to properly handle it - has been penetrating the world of rabbis. So while there is still clearly room for improvement - it is time to acknowledge that things have changed and are getting better.

It would be nice for the advocates to at least acknowledge this change - instead of merely silently removing bogus letters from their Facebook accounts.

Transgender Regret Is Real Even If The Media Tell You Otherwise

Update: An example of Transgender regret
Daily Mail

'There isn't enough NHS psychiatric evaluation': Says the man who had £10,000 sex change to become a woman and now wants it reversed 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update: An opposing view: Myths About Transition Regrets
Huffington Post

Recently there has been a spate of blog posts raising the specter of transgender people regretting transitioning. They cite their two favorite studies, without actually looking at what the actual studies said, and drag out some old anecdotes. In short, they try to muddy the waters the way climate-change deniers or creationists do by throwing up a cloud of chaff and hoping no one will look any closer. And then there’s the fact that the authors of these blog posts also think that same-sex marriage will abolish all marriage.
==========================
The Federalist

They don’t want you to know: regret 20 percent, attempted suicides 41 percent, mental illness 60-90 percent among transgendered population.

When Carol Costello, CNN reporter, interviewed me in June on the subject of Olympian, trans-Jenner, she couldn’t help beginning with a false narrative that only 2 percent regret of transgender have regrets. That is, the media’s propensity to fluff over the regret statistics.

Early in the interview, she made the statement, “We have researched… and we found a recent Swedish study that found only 2.2 percent of transgenders, male and female, suffered from sex change regret.”

Costello is a bright reporter. That it is why it was so puzzling she would use her interview of me to misinform her audience, unless the intent was to diminish and dismiss reports of sex change regret among the transgender population. Costello used only one study to reach a conclusion on the frequency of regret. She or her staff did not look at the wealth of other studies that suggest sex change regret is quite common. One such study commissioned by The Guardian of the UK in 2004 reviewed 100 studies and reported that a whopping 20 percent (one fifth) of transgenders regret changing genders, ten times more than CNN’s Costello reported.

The review of 100 studies also revealed that many transgenders remained severely distressed and even suicidal after the gender change operation. Suicide and regret remain the dark side of transgender life.

The media cover-up of regret and suicides isn’t a new phenomenon; it was in play 36 years ago. In 1979 Dr. Charles Ihlenfeld, who worked alongside the famous Dr. Harry Benjamin for six years administering hormone therapy to some 500 transgenders, spoke to an audience in New York about his experience: “There is too much unhappiness among people who have had the surgery. Too many of them end as suicides.”

The media was unwilling to report the unhappiness then, and ever since has downplayed any results that would raise the alarm about poor outcomes. Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Thirty-six years of the insanity of ignoring poor outcomes and hoping they will go away is long enough.[...]

Transgender regret is not rare

The study commissioned by The Guardian of the UK in 2004 reviewed 100 studies and found 20 percent regret. Consider the findings of a 2011 Swedish study (not the study Ms. Costello used) published seven years after the 2004 UK review. It looked at mortality and morbidity after gender reassignment surgery and found that people who changed genders had a higher risk of suicide.[...]

My life story and the stories of those who contact me speak of regret over transitioning. Often, the stories include attempted suicide or suicide ideation.

I was a 4 year old trans-kid who grew up with gender confusion and underwent gender reassignment surgery at age 42. I lived for 8 years as a so-called trans-female named Laura Jensen. But no matter how feminine I appeared, like all transgenders, I was just a man in a dress. I was unhappy, regretful of having transitioned and I attempted suicide. Gender surgery is not effective treatment for depression, anxiety or mental disorders.

Astonishing evidence of other illness

According to several studies, the majority of transgenders have co-existing disorders that need to be treated. This helps to explain why regret and suicide are prevalent among transgenders. The following studies provide irrefutable evidence that transgenders overwhelmingly suffer from a variety of mental disorders. Neither CNN nor Carol Costello will report studies such as these. [...]

In all the rhetoric about gender change success you cannot find one sound bite from any media source that acknowledges that even one transgender suffers from a serious mental illness, much less reporting the 90 percent like Case Western Reserve University found, or the 61 percent that the survey of Dutch psychiatrists reported. The numbers are astonishingly high, yet no media reports it.[...]

believe that true compassion is shown by raising factual issues, based on scientific research, and having the best minds follow the evidence to provide the best care for this segment of our society that is suffering. Packaging the issue in the wrapper of political correctness or withholding the negative findings is not compassion. Political correctness hinders research and treatment of the medical conditions and muzzles a media that’s willing to participate in a false narrative. Who’s the loser? The transgender who regrets transitioning.

The White House plays politics with a vulnerable part of our population to score points with the LGBT but the risks of regret, suicide and untreated mental issues remain for the transgender population.

Why sex abuse charges against a Toronto teacher took 20 years to reach court

The Globe and Mail    The Service Ontario office on Lawrence Avenue West is the most public of places: public in its stream of passersby and public in the sense that it’s a conduit, bland and efficient, to the government.

That is where Joe Schacter sat down at a computer terminal in December and began looking at child pornography, police say.

Mr. Schacter reportedly appeared surprised when people were alarmed enough by the photos, allegedly of little boys in bathing suits, that they called police. The 55-year-old, a retired teacher at two private Orthodox Jewish schools, was arrested and charged.

That news, reported in local media, ended a 20-year internal battle for Adam, a North York man. He picked up his phone and asked to speak to a police detective. Joe Schacter, he said, had coached him into performing sex acts for three years of his childhood.

Adam was in his 40s and he says in every year of his adult life he had talked himself out of making that call. “‘I should go to the cops,’” he would say to himself. “‘I should go to the cops. I should go to the cops.’”

Then, always, came a second thought: “You could destroy your life. You could destroy your kids.”

Adam’s allegation that Mr. Schacter was a sexual predator was not new to police and certainly not to many in Toronto’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail and interviews with community members, Mr. Schacter has been accused multiple times over a 23-year period of sexually assaulting little boys. In the early nineties, criminal charges were laid, then withdrawn. A decade later, after more allegations, the Ontario College of Teachers ordered a disciplinary hearing. It was canceled and Mr. Schacter continued to teach until he retired in 2013.

There’s no documentation about why the cases were dropped, but in the close-knit community, it was understood that the children had recanted, their families unwilling to proceed.[...]

Chareidi boy who threw stones at fire fighters- goes to fire station to apologize

A worrying trend has started of chareidi boys who think fire fighters are legitimate targets for stone throwing. This case ended well with a written apology and a personal visit to the fire station with his father to ask for forgiveness - which was granted.

kikar HaShabbat

ילד חרדי שנמנה על זורקי האבנים והסלעים על כוחות הכיבוי בשריפה ליד העיר מודיעין עילית, הגיע היום (חמישי) לתחנת הכיבוי במתתיהו יחד עם אביו, והתנצלו על הפגיעה בלוחמי האש.

"לכבוד הכבאים שלום, אני מתנצל ומבקש סליחה על זה שזרקתי אבנים, האמת שלא התכוונתי לזרוק עליכם ובאמת זרקתי רחוק ממכם, ולא שמתי לב שזה מפריע לכם". הילד הוסיף: "חשבתי על זה ואני מצטער מאוד ומבקש סליחתכם".

מדוברות כיבוי האש נמסר כי "היום בשעות אחה"צ הגיעו אב ובנו לתחנת הכיבוי במתתיהו כשבפיהם התנצלות ומכתב לאור המקרה האחרון שהתרחש במודיעין עילית כאשר מספר נערים התגודדו והשליכו אבנים ואף דרדרו סלעים לעבר צוותי הכיבוי והמתנדבים שפעלו לכיבוי הדליקה".

Well known yeshiva mashgiach charged with sexually abusing relatives - he told them he was doing special spiritual activities

Arutz 7    Rape case shocks Jerusalem haredi community

Jerusalem prosecutors filed an indictment against a rabbi who served as a mashgiach at a yeshiva in the city, for a series of rapes carried against a number of female relatives over the course of several years.

The accused began his horrific campaign of abuse when his first victim was just six years old, and continued abusing her and other female relatives by various means of coercion and manipulation.

According to the indictment, the regarded his young victims as mere playthings to satisfy his perverted lusts, and took advantage of their naivete and vulnerability to gain total emotional control over them.

The indictment describes how he abused his position of respect within the community, and the fact that he had supported the immediate family of his primary victim (known as "A.") financially in the past.

He had attempted to justify his actions by perversely claiming they were not only permitted under Jewish law, but mandated. In some cases he even went as far as to claim his acts of abuse served to "purify" his victims spiritually and atone for sins their souls committed in "past lives", or to cure them of physical ailments.

In one particularly extreme incident relayed in the indictment, the accused secretly recorded leading haredi Rabbi Chaim Kaniyevsky issuing a halakhic ruling on a totally unrelated subject, then played it back to the accused and claimed the rabbi was in fact endorsing the abuser's actions, in order to persuade her against speaking out.

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

http://www.kikar.co.il/199564.html

Kikar HaShabbat

כתב אישום חמור הוגש נגד משגיח בישיבה בירושלים בגין שורת עבירות חמורות שביצע במשך שנים בבנות משפחתו מאז שהיו ילדות • "הפך את הנפגעות לכלי לסיפוק יצריו ותאוותיו" (חדשות, חרדים)

כתב אישום חמור הוגש היום (חמישי) אל בית המשפט המחוזי בעיר נגד רב ומשגיח בישיבה בעיר, בגין עבירות קשות של התעללות ותקיפות אכזריות במשך שנים בבנות משפחתו מאז היו ילדות קטנות.

יצוין כי מנזה מספר שנים שהחשוד אינו משמש כמשגיח בישיבה ועסק שם בעבודה אחרת. כתב האישום הוגש על ידי פרקליטות מחוז ירושלים, באמצעות עו"ד ארז פדן ועו"ד מרים בן גל.

על פי כתב האישום מעשיו של הנאשם ,שהינו דמות רוחנית מוכרת, החלו בהיותה של אחת המתלוננות כבת 6 ונמשכו במשך שנים ארוכות גם בבנות משפחה נוספות, תוך שימוש במצגי מרמה ומניפולציות מסוגים שונים.

הנאשם טען על פי כתב האישום באוזני הילדות כי המעשים מותרים על פי 

Kikar HaShabbat - discussion of his "spiritual" development abuse technique

Kikar HaShabbat - his shiurim are removed from Kol HaLashon

Burning the Torah for Lag B'Omer

Update: I noticed today that the saplings had in fact not been broken and taken for burning - perhaps the boys took their "avodah" elsewhere after I objected. If so then the claim that this was just a case of "boys will be boys" is obviously wrong.
==========================

As soon as Pesach is over, it is common to see groups of young boys – roaming the neighborhood looking for flammable material to add to their personal bonfire. It is truly amazing to see the cooperative efforts to drag heavy boards or tree branches a number blocks to where they construct the structure for their "medura".

While it would be nice to say they are budding kabbalists for whom the Rashbi is a major inspiration in their life or that they have parents who tremble when they study the Zohar – that is not really what is happening. The issue is more akin to the excitement of avoda zara and the once a year opportunity to be allowed to make a really big fire using material that they have exerted tremendous energy and ingenuity to gather.

On my way from shul today I witnesss the sight of trees moving very strangely. When I got closer I saw a group of about 10 eight year old yeshiva boys trying to break down a series of ten foot saplings that were growing by the fence that enclosed the grounds of an apartment building. I went over and told them to stop it – which they did. They were genuinely puzzled and asked what the problem was.

I asked them who gave them permission to destroy living trees. Is this your building? Did your parents tell you that you could do this? When they realized what was bothering me they called out enthusiastically in unison, "It's for Lag B'Omer!"

I said why are the laws of stealing or damaging public property being ignored?

Again they answered cheerful in unison, "It's for Lag B'Omer". Obviously they felt sorry that I couldn't comprehend such an elementary fact. But they respectfully and patiently answering the irrelevant questions of someone who simply didn't get it.

At that point I just left. They could not conceive that anything could stand in the way of a proper bonfire. It didn't matter that these young saplings would grow to be shade trees in a few years that would give pleasure on hot summer days. It didn't matter that the green saplings would probably not burn. It didn't matter that they hadn't consulted with the residents of the apartment building to see if it was o.k. All that mattered to them was that the saplings were made of wood and that their bonfire required wood. All that mattered was the exciting challenge of finding out how to bend and break these young trees relying entirely on their childish strength and youthful enthusiasm. Once a year they knew they could break anything that might be flammable without regard to whom it belonged to or what damage they were causing.

The Torah is being burned to celebrate Lag b'Omer.