No bail for fugitive rabbi Eliezar Berland caught admitting to rape, plotting murder

Times of Israel

The Jerusalem Magistrate Court on Thursday ordered that a recently repatriated fugitive rabbi, who was caught on video apparently admitting to raping a woman and plotting murder, will remain in police custody until the legal proceedings against him are over.

After spending three years on the run, Rabbi Eliezer Berland was extradited from South Africa to Israel where he was arrested last month and charged with several counts of sexual assault.

At the Thursday hearing, the court said Berland posed a flight risk, and expressed concern the 79-year-old rabbi might attempt to evade or obstruct justice.[...]

Days after his July 19 return and subsequent arrest in Israel, Channel 2 aired footage of Berland from 2012 in which he admitted to raping one of his female followers.

“She was raped from start to finish,” Berland can be heard saying in the footage. “Afterwards she thought it was permissible… the first time I raped her.”

According to the TV channel, the incriminating recordings were made four years ago by two of Berland’s followers. They were told to burn all the tapes and other potentially incriminating material “in case the police do not cooperate.”

But some of the tapes survived, and were handed over to police last month. In another tape, Berland can be heard instructing one of his followers to place a bomb under the bed of an unnamed person — to send them to heaven.

Earlier this week, Channel 2 aired more incriminating footage of the rabbi, in which he admits to ordering a string of arson attacks almost two decades ago. In the video believed to be recorded five years ago, Berland proudly says he sent his son to torch bus stops all over Israel to protest the “immodestly” dressed women featured in ads.

Berland has denied all of the allegations against him, and in interviews, his attorneys have claimed the voice on the recordings is not Berland’s. [...]

Va'eschanan; Hashem Does Not Use Words Randomly by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

Guest post by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak

When Hakadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe Rabbeinu to go up and look out over to Eretz Yisroel, the order of the directions he is instructed to look at seems very random...

First west, then up north...then south, and finally east??

Where do we find such an order? And why was this used here??

For questions and comments please email us salmahshleima@gmail.com 

https://youtu.be/a4Gnqdp-iXQ

Ben Ish Chai: Does a wife have to listen to her husband if he orders her to bray like a donkey?

Ben Ish Chai (Torah Lishma 319): Question: Is a wife obligated to listen to her husband when he orders her to do ridiculous things? For example, does she have to listen when her husband demands with threats that she should ride on a broomstick in the courtyard like little children do or to bray like a donkey or bark like dog? She refused because of embarrassment. Does she in fact have an obligation to listen to her husband even for foolish things because a woman is obligated to honor her husband and to do what he wants because that is his happiness? Or do we say that she has no obligation to listen to foolish demands? Answer: She is not required to listen to him when he says foolish things. It says in Kesubos (71b) that if a man takes an oath that his wife must fill up a bucket 10 times with water and empty it in the garbage dump – he is required to divorce her and give her the kesuba because doing so makes her look like she is crazy. So also in our case. Doing these foolish things makes her look like she is crazy and she is not obligated to listen to him in these things.

Forgiveness, Acceptance 25 Years After Crown Heights Riots

NBC News

Twenty-five years ago, riots erupted in Crown Heights after Jewish driver accidentally hit and killed Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old African American child. Jewish scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed by black teens in retaliation. Today, the families of Cato and Rosenbaum continue to meet and set an example of forgiveness and acceptance.

Poster warning against rings that capture and abuse chareidi children in Jerusalem and other places - and undermine their Yiddishkeit

Chinuch Atzmai: The Untold Story of How Rav Aharon Kotler, Irving Bunim, Stephen Klein, and Zev Wolfson gathered with Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik to save 26,000 children in Israel

1956 An Unprecedented Gathering in Support of Torah: The Untold Story from Kolrom Multimedia on Vimeo.

Beth Din Will Face $100M Suit by Barry Freundel Mikveh-Peep Victims

CBS News

A $100 million lawsuit was filed after a D.C. rabbi and former Towson University professor secretly recorded dozens of naked women in a Jewish ritual bath. Lawyers aren’t only going after the rabbi, WJZ’s Ava-joye Burnett reports.

The lawsuit against Rabbi Barry Freundel and four institutions he worked for topped a staggering $100 million. The rabbi secretly recorded dozens of naked women in a ritual bath known as a mikvah.

“He was really calculating for a really long time, and I really do believe he was a sociopath and is a sociopath,” one victim said.

Lawyer Sanford Heisler said: “We will ask a D.C. jury to hold all defendants liable and impose punitive damages in order to send a strong message that even institutions draped in the cloak of spirituality won’t escape punishment when they violate their legal obligations.”

Forward

The Beth Din of America has been added to the list of defendants in a $100 million class action suit against Rabbi Barry Freundel, the prominent Washington, D.C., spiritual leader who was convicted of secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s ritual bath, and several Jewish institutions.

On Tuesday, the attorneys representing the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., that included the rabbinical court, according to a news release on behalf of the Sanford Heisler and Chaikin Sherman Cammarata Siegel law firms.

The suit, which was filed originally in December 2014, also names as defendants Freundel’s former synagogue, Kesher Israel; the Rabbinical Council of America, the main professional association for modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States; and the National Capital Mikvah, the ritual bath Freundel used to spy on his victims. [...]

Is this the promised landslide? - More than 120 Republicans tell RNC to cut off funds to Donald Trump

CBS News

A letter that urges the Republican National Committee to cut off funds to Donald Trump has collected more than 120 signatures from current and former elected officials, according to the final version obtained by CBS News.

The letter, which will be delivered to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Tuesday, includes two sitting members of Congress and 27 former RNC staffers, among many others.

"Given the catastrophic impact that Donald Trump's losing presidential campaign will have on down-ballot Senate and House races, we urge you to immediately suspend all discretionary RNC support for Trump and focus the entirety of the RNC's available resources on preserving the GOP's congressional majorities," says the letter, whose draft CBS reported on last week when there were already 70 signatures.

It adds that Trump's chances of winning in November are "evaporating by the day." [...]

"We believe that Donald Trump's divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide, and only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck," the letter says.

The group added that every dollar the RNC spends on Trump's campaign "is a dollar of donor money wasted on the losing effort of a candidate who has actively undermined the GOP at every turn." [...]

Americans Don’t Trust Hillary. But Why?

NY Times

A Clinton with a trust problem. We’ve seen that before. It was 1992, and doubts about Bill Clinton’s integrity, stoked by his marital infidelities and avoidance of the Vietnam War, were the biggest threat to his presidential campaign. Stanley Greenberg, a top Democratic campaign strategist, devised a secret plan to turn around the candidate’s reputation for dishonesty.

In the latest episode of The Run-Up, we talked to Mr. Greenberg about how Mr. Clinton pulled it off, and what lessons it holds for his wife, Hillary, whose image problems as a truth-shader today are even greater than her husband’s were in the 1990s, surveys show. As of the latest New York Times poll, 67 percent of registered voters have doubts about her trustworthiness. [...]

The Sanhedria Murchevet Witchhunt - a defense for what has happened

One of the important figures in the Sanhedria Murchevet sex abuse scandal is Dr. Joy Silberg - a therapist in Baltimore who is viewed as a major expert on child abuse. I have exchanged a number of emails with her and she is working on a public statement concerning this matter. What is important to know is her view that while there might not be satanic abuse rings in Jerusalem - there is significant abuse and that there is a kernal of truth to the allegations of abuse.

In particular she suggested that I read Ross Cheit's book "The Witch-Hunt Narrative" which provides a detailed, scholarly and controversial - revisionist view of the sex abuse hysteria in America. 

This I assume will be the basis of the defense for the three charged with promoting a campaign against what they claimed is satanic sex abuse rings linked to the Church. I just purchased the book - it is very heavy reading. In the meantime here is a review of the book. Here is a rebuttal 
http://ncrj.org/resources-2/response-to-ross-cheit/the-witch-hunt-narrative-rebuttal/

Cheit isn't denying that innocent people went to jail - his thesis is that not all the cases were a result of witch-hunt hysteria but that there were many cases of genuine abuse and that because of the present mistaken belief that it was largely charges brought during hysteria - the pendulumn has swung the other way and children are not automatically believed as they once were.

Cheit is not a psychologist but is a  professor of political science and public policy at Brown University

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

Daily Beast

How the ‘Witch Hunt’ Myth Undermined American Justice

Innocent people persecuted by a legal system out of control? In The Witch-Hunt Narrative, Ross E. Cheit argues the media and courts have gone too far in dismissing evidence of abuse.

[...]

In 1996, Philip Jenkins, then a history professor at Pennsylvania State University, argued in Pedophiles and Priests that the earlier coverage of clergy abuse was a “putative” crisis, one “constructed” by the media and church critics.

In 2002, a Boston Globe investigation of such cases ignited a chain reaction in many newsrooms about a deeply rooted culture of churchmen concealing abusers that the Vatican ignored. The “putative crisis” resembled a construction of its author. Jenkins had written entirely from secondary literature—no interviews or excavation of legal documents. He has since become a $400-an-hour expert witness for the church in lawsuits filed by abuse victims, according to his own testimony.

Jenkins drew a parallel between the Salem witch trials and the 1984 acquittal of two defendants in a Minnesota day-care-center case in which charges against 23 other people were also dropped after a botched investigation. But the lead defendant was convicted, and spent years in prison, as Ross E. Cheit notes in The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children. This 508-page book examines media coverage of prosecutions of abuse at day-care centers in the 1980s and ’90s.

A professor of political science and public policy at Brown University, Cheit has 68 pages of footnotes, with an array of legal citations; though the narrative is sometimes plodding, and at times redundant, Cheit mounts a rigorous argument that the witch-hunt—innocent people persecuted by a legal system out of control—is a concocted myth.

Cheit is no stranger to litigation, having sued the San Francisco Boys Choir in 1994 for “rampant sexual abuse of boys, including me,” he writes, “fighting successfully to keep from having the entire matter sealed and insisting on a public apology to settle the suit.” He writes, too, that he does volunteer work with sex offenders in a Rhode Island prison.

Cheit’s careful, probing approach is counter-cultural to an age when information moves at amazing speed with fewer guarantees of accuracy than in newsrooms of yesteryear. Legal proceedings are about process; so is The Witch-Hunt Narrative. Cheit wants us to make sense of the forest and the trees.

The case that spawned the media notion of a witch hunt was the McMartin Preschool, where allegations in 1983 fell within the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles District Attorney. As initial evaluations of children were underway, parents contacted a TV reporter. “The DA’s office was caught unprepared when the media spotlight hit them on Feb. 2, 1984,” writes Cheit, “suggest[ing] there was widespread sexual abuse at the McMartin Preschool and the government was dragging its feet.”

Cheit explores the difficulty child-care specialists faced in determining what happened; videotaped screenings morphed into forensic interviews, and became something they were never intended to be: evidence in court. A “runaway train” grand jury indicted seven people including Virginia McMartin, the wheelchair-bound grandmother for whom the school was named. Much of the suspicion centered on her grandson, Ray Buckey, who spent five years in jail during the longest and perhaps most costly preliminary proceeding of a criminal case in California history. Charges against five people were dropped. Buckey and his sister stood trial.

McMartin became its own media narrative. 60 Minutes did an exposé of the legal malfunctions, all but exonerating the defendants; Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw won a Pulitzer for attacking his own paper’s coverage. Cheit’s painstaking account of the chaotic pretrial saga ends with a jury acquittal of Buckey and his sister on a host of charges. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on 12 charges against Buckey. He was retried, again acquitted, though not unanimously.

“The McMartin case began as a morality play about the failure to protect children,” he writes. “It ended as a morality play about the failure to protect civil liberties…[and] the complete negation of the evidence of abuse.” That critical distinction is a leitmotif through the book. Society craves black-and-white narratives where good triumphs, criminals go down. It is much harder to accept the gray area of resolutions—as in the O.J.Simpson case, when a man widely assumed to be guilty was acquitted in a circus-like courtroom.

Cheit criticizes journalist Debbie Nathan for her phrase “junior McMartins” in describing “a nationwide rash of similar cases.” Nathan published a 1995 book with defense attorney Michael Snedeker, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of an American Witch Hunt. Cheit concedes that charges in some cases should not have been filed, but debunks a key source of Nathan’s reporting: a list of 36 cases cited in a 1988 Memphis Commercial Appeal series called “Justice Abused: A 1980s Witch-Hunt.”

“What kind of witch-hunt or ‘justice denied’ results in no charges whatsoever?” he writes. “Sixteen of the cases never got to the stage of a trial; charges were dropped in some cases and they were never brought in others. One-third of the cases resulted in a conviction, seemingly undercutting the claim of ‘justice abused.’ “ [...]

Inside the Failing Mission to Tame Donald Trump’s Tongue

NY Times

Donald J. Trump was in a state of shock: He had just fired his campaign manager and was watching the man discuss his dismissal at length on CNN. The rattled candidate’s advisers and family seized the moment for an intervention.

Joined by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, a cluster of Mr. Trump’s confidants pleaded with him to make that day — June 20 — a turning point.

He would have to stick to a teleprompter and end his freestyle digressions and insults, like his repeated attacks on a Hispanic federal judge. Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey argued that Mr. Trump had an effective message, if only he would deliver it. For now, the campaign’s polling showed, too many voters described him in two words: “unqualified” and “racist.”

Mr. Trump bowed to his team’s entreaties, according to four people with detailed knowledge of the meeting, who described it on the condition of anonymity. It was time, he agreed, to get on track.

Nearly two months later, the effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then, clashing with a Gold Star family, making comments that have been seen as inciting violence and linking his political opponents to terrorism.

Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.

In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.

He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.

But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign, many of whom insisted on anonymity to avoid clashing with him, they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering. [...]

People around Mr. Trump and his operation say they are not ready to abandon hope of a turnaround. But he is in a dire predicament, Republicans say, because he is profoundly uncomfortable in the role of a typical general election candidate, disoriented by the crosscurrents he must now navigate and still relying impulsively on a pugilistic formula that guided him to the nomination.

His advisers are still convinced of the basic potency of a sales pitch about economic growth and a shake-up in Washington, and they aspire to compete in as many as 21 states, despite Mr. Trump’s perilous standing in the four states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — likely to decide the election.[...]

Even before Mr. Trump’s most recent spate of incendiary comments, Republicans who dealt with him after the primaries came away alarmed by his obvious unease as the de facto party leader. After a meeting in late May between Mr. Trump and Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential victories, Mr. Rove told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics, including how to map out a schedule and use data to reach voters.[...]

Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he is nearly out of time to right his campaign. On Tuesday, hours before his explosive comment about “Second Amendment people” taking action if Mrs. Clinton is elected, his brain trust reassembled again at Trump Tower in a reprise of their stern meeting in June.

They again urged Mr. Trump to adjust his tone and comportment. The top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, gave an unvarnished assessment, warning that Mr. Trump’s numbers would only move in one direction, absent a major change.

Mr. Trump, people briefed on the meeting said, digested the advice and responded receptively.

It was time, he agreed, to get on track.

New rabbinical law limits exorbitant prenuptial agreements

Arutz 7   The Jerusalem District Rabbinical Court issued a new ruling this morning (Monday) that limits the compensation that a husband owes his wife in the event of divorce, Channel 10 reported.

In Jewish wedding ceremonies performed according to traditional Jewish law, the groom signs a marriage contract (called a "Ketuba") in which he stipulates a certain amount that he owes to his wife in the event they divorce. If the husband had written a very large amount on the contract and he finds himself in a divorce, then, he can be in serious financial hot water.

The new law apparently comes as the result of a case that came to the Rabbinical Court, in which a woman demanded the exorbitant sum of 555,555 shekels as divorce compensation, since this is the number the husband had written on the marriage contract.

According to Channel 10, the husband in this case had demanded a divorce from his wife after she developed a sickness. The wife then countered that she had fallen sick due to her husband's infidelity, and would only agree to a divorce if the amount in the marriage contract was paid in full. The husband wouldn't agree to the full amount, claiming that he had written such a large amount initially for the sake of "honor and to ward off the evil eye." (the number '5' is indicative of the Hamsa, a Middle Eastern cultural symbol that is said to ward off the evil eye.)

In the end, although one judge on the Rabbinical Court actually ruled that the husband ought to pay the full amount in the contract, the other two established the majority (binding) ruling, ordering the man to pay 120,000 shekels.