Treasury bailout - Paulson's failure

Chron.com reports: Similar comments from Time / Wall Street Journal / Newsweek

Henry Paulson became Treasury secretary 28 months ago, when he was at the top of the financial world: Wall Street’s best-paid chief executive officer,capping his career with a high-profile sojourn in public service.

Today, two months before he leaves office, some say Paulson is a reduced figure, damaged by the financial-market meltdown that happened on his watch and by the government’s struggles to respond to it.

Like many others who have served in President George W. Bush’s administration — among them former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Treasury chief Paul O’Neill — Paulson, 62, will leave office casting a smaller shadow than when he arrived.

“Paulson’s credibility has certainly been substantially diminished,” said Peter Wallison, who was general counsel at the Treasury under former President Ronald Reagan and is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “There has been a lot of shifting back and forth and he clearly hasn’t thought through much of these policies. He has lost a lot of confidence from the market from all of this.”

The latest blow was his announcement last week that the Treasury is abandoning his plan to buy devalued mortgage assets — the one he unveiled dramatically just eight weeks ago, and defended against congressional and market skeptics.

“This is a flip-flop, but on the other hand, when they first proposed the thing,they didn’t really know what they were doing,” said Bill Fleckenstein,president of Fleckenstein Capital in Seattle and author of the book Greenspan’s Bubbles. Paulson has pushed some “cockamamie schemes,” he said. “So one has to ask, does he have any clue?”

“This is not something he’s going to be proud to put on his résumé,” said James Cox,a law professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., who has testified on securities regulation before Congress and served on legal advisory panels for the New York Stock Exchange and National Association of Securities Dealers. “It does tarnish Paulson’s image, because it shows that a lot of political capital was spent on something that most of us thought was not a good idea to begin with.”

Only history will render a final verdict on Paulson’s handling of this year’s cascading economic crises. But he surely couldn’t have wanted to spend his final days in office this way: spearheading the massive government intervention in the banking, insurance and mortgage industries;fielding requests to bail out automakers and even heating-oil retailers.

“He’s ended up really in kind of a hair-on-fire thing,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. “Particularly in his position, of somebody who was going to be a government official for a very short time and then ride off into the sunset, it’s been very different from what he had in mind.”

The Treasury chief last week said he had no regrets over reversing his plans for the bailout program. “I will never apologize for changing a strategy or an approach if the facts change,” Paulson said at a press briefing.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, he said “the original plan was a good plan. What changed was our understanding of the magnitude of the problem.”[...]

Economy & Boro Park

JPost reports:

Medium box. I need a large! I have my children to feed, please - please can I have a large box?

Sorry. Medium box.

That's how it went on a recent Thursday night at the TomcheShabbos food pantry in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood, one of theseveral that provide weekly baskets of strictly kosher food to 500needy haredi families.

Jeno Herschkowits, who has run the pantry since 1975, sayssupplicants have gotten noticeably edgier in recent months, as peoplewho were narrowly avoiding ruin before this fall's stock market crashfind themselves slipping over the brink, now that the American consumereconomy has ground to a near halt.

"People are desperate; they get aggressive," he said. "And there are more people, but less money."

Evidence of pain is everywhere, from deep discounts at chainstores - as much as 60 percent off fall merchandise, that began weeksbefore the traditional Thanksgiving sales - to empty restaurants andupticks in late-night subway ridership by those who might previouslyhave splurged on cabs. But in New York's haredi neighborhoods, wheremost families subsist on a single income, the strain shows up in weeklydebates over "small," "medium" or "large."

A WEEK ago, New York exploded with euphoria after the historiclandslide election of Barack Obama to the presidency on promises ofbringing change, and hope, to America. Now, his transition team isalready racing to craft plans for his first weeks in office, among thema $175 billion stimulus package that would include extendedunemployment benefits and food assistance.

But inauguration is still 68 days away, and in the meantime,financial markets are continuing their downward spiral, with Bushadministration officials taking steps to make bailout money availableto credit-card and student-loan companies, in hopes of keeping cashflowing into consumers' wallets. Investors have responded to theapparent uncertainty over how to spend the $700 billion in bailoutfunds, driving the Dow Jones industrial average down another 400 pointson Wednesday alone.

That, in turn, threatens to empty state coffers of much-neededtax revenue next year. New York State officials are already bickeringover a proposed $5 billion in education and health-care cuts to close ayawning budget deficit, stoking concerns that food-stamp programs mightbe next on the chopping block.

Private charities say that if that happens, they will beill-prepared to make up the difference, because donations have driedup, and fund-raisers are working overtime just to get donors to satisfytheir current pledges, let alone worry about those to come next year.

"We lost one donor who used to give us $400 a week," saidAlexander Rapaport, whose Masbia kosher soup kitchen provides about 160meals a day, prepared by a caterer at a local school. He said he hastaken out advertising on local radio stations citing this week's Torahportion - on Sodom and Gomorrah - to inspire donations.

While Masbia qualifies for some government grant programs, theorganization's strict observance of kosher standards means he can'tmake use of many restaurant or overstock giveaways available for thosefollowing more relaxed codes.

Pantries that follow looser restrictions said they had seen aspike in requests from non-Jews, along with more Jews asking for help.One, the Oneg Shabbos pantry - run by Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch andhis wife, Pe'er - has installed a fence along the sidewalk to protectbags of carrots and potatoes waiting to be packed in with containers ofSabra-brand feta cheese and other goodies for people who wait in a linesnaking up the block.

"We're seeing families who never in their lives thought they would have to ask for food," Pe'er Deutsch told The Jerusalem Post."The thing about us is that we pack it into boxes, and it looks likegroceries - people know they can come here and the kids never have toknow."

LEADERS OF haredi organizations understand the irony of theirconstituents - most of whom backed Republican presidential candidateJohn McCain - waiting for a rescue from the incoming Obamaadministration.

"Our man always wins," said Rabbi Avi Shafran of Agudath Israelof America, winking. He said his organization, which has a staffertaking calls for assistance from the newly jobless or helpless, hasalways been able to work with both political parties, even if "peopleon the ground" disagree with one side or the other.

So, he said, there is hope. But with the first cold snap, the clock is already ticking.

Online tv show for religious kids

Haaretz reports:

When Asi and Tuvia, two yeshiva students at Machon Meir in Jerusalem, finish their Torah studies for the day, they head upstairs to a small TV studio above the yeshiva to produce what has become a major hit among religious children.

What started as a small online TV experiment a few years ago has become a household name for religious Zionist families, many of which don't have televisions.

Asi and Tuvia don't have the intentions or the capabilities to compete with Israel's national children's television station. But their online show has garnered enough affection to have received the nickname "The Rabbi's Pajamas," a play on the name of a wildly popular secular TV show called "The Pajamas".

Chareidi disunity - Jerusalem

JPost reports:

A sense of gloom hung over Mea She'arim on Wednesday afternoon, as the sting of haredi Jerusalem mayoral hopeful Meir Porush's loss to the secular Nir Barkat was still being digested.

The hustling buzz of haredim on their way to the polling stations on Tuesday was gone, and the quiet, subdued manner that often characterizes this modest enclave returned.

Whereas Tuesday's excitement gave way to an abundance of locals willing to talk to the press - an anomaly here - Wednesday saw a rescinding of that relationship and a withdrawn, disenchanted community with very little to say.

"I'm not involved in politics," was a common answer from shopkeepers and yeshiva students, even though the majority of the neighborhood - the same one that had worked diligently to promote its candidate across the city - had been not only involved in the election, but engrossed in it.

"I don't pay attention to those things," others said, as the now obsolete posters of a cartoon Porush blew in the wind from apartment balconies above.

Near the entrance to the Geula neighborhood, a fruit vendor who gave his name as Ilan tried to break it down.

"It's quiet here today," he said. "It's the quiet after the boom. Porush's loss is a big blow, and everyone here is still traumatized."

Ilan added that word on the street was focusing on the Ger Hassidim, who came out against Porush due to internal strife and, in some cases, purportedly campaigned on behalf of Barkat.

"I think most of the blame is going toward the Ger," Ilan said. "Porush made a deal with the Satmar [Hassidim], so the Ger went against Porush. What happened in the end? Porush lost, and we have a mayor of Jerusalem who doesn't keep Shabbat." He grimaced a bit at the thought.

"Still, it doesn't matter. What we need to realize, all of the Orthodox Jews in this city, is that we have to be unified. We split up into our groups, with our fights, and look what we got. He gave us a bill to pay," Ilan said, pointing at the sky.

Outside a nearby bookstore, a haredi man named Eli also aired his grievances.

"We suffered from two problems," he said. "The national religious and our own people who didn't go out and vote. We as a group have to realize that if we're not together, then we're weak. But am I worried about Barkat?" he smiled. "Nir Barkat has to realize that now he needs us more than we need him."

Still, Eli said he put most of the blame on the national religious, many of whom supported Barkat.

"I don't understand how they could vote for him," Eli said. "It just doesn't make sense."

Across town in Kiryat Moshe, however, the national religious crowd made itself clear.

"We don't approve of the haredim, and they don't approve of us," said Yehoshua, who learns at an area yeshiva. "I voted Barkat, not because of what I think he'll do for the city, but because I was afraid of what Porush would do. We don't dress like them for a reason, and I'm afraid [Porush] would have dealt with us badly."

Still, others said they had supported Porush, and now they were awaiting the consequences of a Barkat victory.

"The kippa sruga [national religious] who voted for Barkat are the biggest suckers," said Dudu, as he served food at a sandwich shop nearby. "They go to the army, they work and pay taxes, and look what the government does to them - just look at Gush Katif."

Dudu explained that by voting in Barkat, the national religious were, he felt, overlooking their own religious obligations.

"He's going to allow the Gay Pride Parade to come here, to Jerusalem, the holiest city to Jews," Dudu said of Barkat.

But Ya'acov, Dudu's coworker, chimed in, "I think everyone is out for their own pocket. It doesn't matter whom you vote for - this one, that one, in the end they're all the same."

Treasury bailout is a fraud! II

Michelle Malkin reports:     See also Treasury bailout is fraud I

Senators to Paulson: You Lied, TARP died

Three GOP Senators have sent Treasury Secretary Hank “Never mind” Paulson a “joint letter of concern.” I’ll have more on this abominable subject in my syndicated column tomorrow.

Joint Letter of Concern to Secretary Paulson After His Announcement to the Change Intent of the Troubled Asset Relief Program

November 13, 2008

Dear Secretary Paulson:

We are writing to express our deep concern over your announcement this morning that the Department of the Treasury will halt all plans to purchase trouble mortgage assets through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). We are concerned that the program has been fundamentally changed from its original intent and worry that continued changes may erode the structures of accountability put in to protect taxpayers.

When legislation authorizing the TARP was first proposed to members of Congress in mid-September, its primary component was a program to allow the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase “toxic” mortgage assets from financial institutions. The primary reason for this course of action, we were told, was to assist the market in discovering the price of these assets and to return liquidity to the financial markets.

At a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee on September 23, 2008, you made the following comments on the urgent necessity of a troubled asset purchase program:

We have proposed a program to remove troubled assets from the system. This troubled asset relief program has to be properly designed for immediate implementation and be sufficiently large to have maximum impact and restore market confidence. It must also protect the taxpayer to the maximum extent possible, and include provisions that ensure transparency and oversight while also ensuring the program can be implemented quickly and run effectively.

This troubled asset purchase program on its own is the single most effective thing we can do to help homeowners, the American people and stimulate our economy.

Although the legislation was passed on October 3, the program was never implemented and now has been officially abandoned in favor of alternative plans after little more than a month. Such a rapid reversal raises questions about the TARP’s original design as well as the propriety of future plans.

Congress never intended for the TARP to be a blank check that could be spent with unlimited discretion. To ensure proper boundaries are in place to protect the taxpayer, we hope and expect that congressional approval will be sought by the administration before further changes are made.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., U.S. Senator Richard Burr, U.S. Senator David Vitter

Self Esteem Movement is destructive

Yahoo News reports See also Baumeister et al & Barbara Kay

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Today's American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they'll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows.

They're also much more likely to claim they are "A" students with high IQs -- even though other research shows that today's students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s.

The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the "self-esteem" movement popular among today's parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study's co-author said.

"What this shows is that confidence has crossed over into overconfidence," said Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

She believes that decades of relentless, uncritical boosterism by parents and school systems may be producing a generation of kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world.

"High school students' responses have crossed over into a really unrealistic realm, with three-fourths of them expecting performance that's effectively in the top 20 percent," Twenge said.

For the study, she and co-researcher W. Keith Campbell, of the University of Georgia, pored over data from the Monitoring the Future study, a large national survey of thousands of U.S. high school students conducted periodically over the past three decades.

The researchers compared the answers kids gave in 1975 and 2006 to 13 questions centered on students' "self-views." These questions solicited students' opinions on such things as how smart they thought they were, or how likely they were to be successful as adults.

"When we look at the responses of the students in the '70s, they are certainly confident that they are going to perform well, but their responses are more modest, a little more realistic" than teens in 2006, Twenge said.

For example, in 1975, less than 37 percent of teens thought they'd be "very good" spouses, compared to more than 56 percent of those surveyed in 2006. Likewise, the number of students who thought they'd become "very good" parents rose from less than 36 percent in 1975 to more than 54 percent in 2006. And almost two-thirds of teens in 2006 thought they'd be exemplary workers, compared to about half of those polled in 1975.

As for self-reported academic achievement, twice as many students in 2006 than in 1976 said they earned an "A" average in high school -- 15.6 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the report found.

Compared to their counterparts from the '70s, today's youth also tended to rate themselves as more intelligent and were more likely to say they were "completely satisfied" with themselves.

There was one exception -- measures of "self-competency" (i.e., agreeing with statements such as, "I am able to do things as well as most other people") did not rise between 1976 and 2006. According to Twenge, that may mean that young people continue to feel great self-worth even as they remain unsure of their competence in specific tasks.

Twenge stressed that youthful confidence isn't necessarily bad. "Young people have always had some degree of starry-eyed optimism, and that's probably a good thing," she said. "And setting goals for yourself is a good thing. It's just when those goals are wildly unrealistic, then that can cause trouble for everyone."

For example, young people entering the workforce may score well in job interviews if they exude self-confidence, she said, but that can quickly sour if a new employer doesn't provide them with the perks or promotions they feel they deserve. "They don't set the right goals for themselves, because they are overconfident -- and that's when it blows up in their face," Twenge said.

The blame for all this may lie with well-intentioned adults, she suggested.

"These kids didn't raise themselves, they got these ideas from somewhere," Twenge said. With Mom and Dad handing out endless praise, kids today readily believe they are somehow superior, she said. And teachers aren't blameless, either: According to Twenge, research shows that high school teachers now give out an "A" grade more easily than their counterparts did in the 1970s, even though today's high school students report doing less homework than students from that era.

Not everyone interpreted the new findings in the same way, however. Jennifer Crocker is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and a longtime researcher in self-esteem. She said that by selecting data from 1975 and 2006, Twenge and Campbell have only presented two moments in time and have not shown evidence of any decades-long trend.

And based on available academic data, today's young Americans might be right to be more self-confident, Crocker argued.

"The fact is that we are all getting smarter -- IQ is going up quite dramatically over this same period of time," Crocker noted. "Students may believe that they are getting trained better than they used to, that they are learning skills that they didn't use to have. So, maybe their predictions aren't unreasonable."

But Twenge, who is the author of a book on young people's self-views called Generation Me, isn't convinced. In fact, she believes that today's parents may be sending another crop of young Americans down the same path.

"I have a 2-year-old daughter," she said. "I see the parenting of kids around her age, and I haven't seen this changing. Look around -- about a fourth of the clothing available to her says 'Little Princess' on it."

Mesirah & reporting abuse / Why is it a problem?

Guest Post: Raffi wrote:

Do you happen to have an article - or simply some marei mekomos or something - on the topic of mesirah?  I'm working on a domestic violence unit this year, and it's come up.  I  can't imagine that perpetrators of physical or sexual abuse are to be protected under this halacha, but I'd like to have some  actual mekoros to back me up.

...  I'm just getting my feet wet in the sugya since having started to work on a domestic violence unit.  Actually, I'm still confused by the whole principle.  I read through סימן שפח and it seems like we're talking about handing over someone's money (or body) to be confiscated (or beaten) by goyim (or nasty Jewish people).  How does that get carried over to not reporting someone who is physically beating his wife, sexually abusing his children, etc.? I would /never /have assumed that these people are covered by such a law.  And even though it says "אפילו רשע" - we're not talking about some generally bad guy whom you might want to hand over to the local goyim because he's a jerk - we're talking about someone who is not only in violation of laws that are nearly universal, we're talking about someone who is posing a serious threat to other people, including children, whether or not there is a danger of death.  A man who chains his child to his bed (perhaps for years) or rapes his kids regularly or terrorizes his wife may not have any intent of killing them, but he destroys them mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.  Can we really say that that's not a good enough reason to stop the abuse because you'd have to give this guy up to the authorities (who, while not a bunch of saints, are not thugs and warlords either)?

Sorry, that got a little out of hand there.  It's a touchy topic. The basic question I'm asking is, how do we get from the laws of mesirah to not reporting dangerous criminal activity?  Maybe I just haven't seen it inside, or maybe I'm just not getting it.

However, none of this justifies the attitude that it's best to just keep these things quiet, for garbage reasons like shidduchim, family reputation, shonda, etc.  According to what you said so far, there's no reason not to approach the local rebbeim and let them know that there's an abusive situation somewhere. And there's no reason for rebbeim to shy away or to assert (as I just heard last week) that "I can't dirty my hands with this."  Where does this come from?  And how did it get blamed on halacha???

Thanks very much,

Child Abuse - Hikind subpoenaed

Jewish Week reports

State Assembly member Dov Hikind was subpoenaed Monday to provide testimony and files he has compiled about rabbis and yeshiva employees who have allegedly sexually abused children under their charge, and rabbinic leaders who may have protected the abusers.[...]
========================
NYTimes reports:

Since last year, when Assemblyman Dov Hikind invited his radio show listeners to discuss an explosive topic — sexual abuse of children in the Orthodox Jewish community — he says he has collected more than 1,000 complaints and the names of 60 accused sexual predators.

He has kept those stories under lock and key in his Brooklyn office, he says, because the people who said they were victims had sworn him to secrecy, fearful of becoming outcasts in a community where perceived troublemakers risk losing employment, housing and even marriage prospects.

But a prominent lawyer representing a half dozen former yeshiva students who say in a civil lawsuit that they were sexually abused by a teacher in Borough Park, Brooklyn, had Mr. Hikind served with a subpoena this week, demanding that he surrender those files.

Mr. Hikind has refused. “I will go to jail for 10 years first,” he said on Wednesday.[...]

“I’ve been shocked and overwhelmed at the magnitude of the problem,” said Mr. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew and a Democrat who represents the predominantly Orthodox community of Borough Park.

The victims have come to his office in a steady stream to tell their stories, he said. “Abusive teachers and rabbis in the schools,” he said. “Pedophiles on the streets. Incest in the home.”

Michael G. Dowd, the lawyer who had Mr. Hikind served with the subpoena, has been a leading advocate for plaintiffs who say they were abused by Roman Catholic priests. He represents six men who say they were abused by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a teacher at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Brooklyn. Rabbi Kolko, who was charged with sexual abuse in 2006, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and has left the school.

Mr. Dowd’s subpoena demands that the assemblyman turn over not just complaints that Mr. Hikind may have received against Rabbi Kolko, but “any and all reports of sexual abuse at any yeshiva and/or by any rabbi or employee of a yeshiva in New York City.” Mr. Dowd said they were crucial to proving his clients’ contention that sexual abuse was commonplace and routinely covered up by administrators in yeshivas.

He described Mr. Hikind’s refusal as “misguided.” While he said that he planned to have the subpoena enforced, he also said that he understood the reluctance to cross the powers that be in the Orthodox community. “The lead rabbis have the kind of power to shut people up that the Catholic Church had 50, 60 years ago,” he said.

Mr. Hikind said that every complaint he received was in complete confidence, with the understanding that “under no circumstances would their names be known in the community.”

“There is no way in the world, when people have come to me and spilled their hearts out to me, and shared the most intimate and private things with me, hoping I will do something to address the larger, overall issue, that I would ever betray their trust,” he said.[...]

Mr. Hikind said that of all the people who said they had been victims, “99 percent would not go to the police under any circumstances — that is just the reality.”

But Joel Engelman, 23, who grew up in the Orthodox community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and who helped found a group of victims called Survivors for Justice, said that while “well-intentioned,” Mr. Hikind had a classic misunderstanding about sexual predators that is embedded in insular communities like the Catholic priesthood or the Orthodox world. “The community cannot police itself,” he said. “This has been shown again and again.”

In his own case, Mr. Engelman said, a complaint he brought to the attention of administrators at the United Talmudical Academy against a teacher who sexually violated him when he was 8 years old led to the teacher’s brief suspension and subsequent reinstatement. Mr. Engelman has since brought a civil suit against the teacher and the school.

Prof. Marci Hamilton, a visiting professor at the Yeshiva University School of Law and an expert in sexual abuse by religious leaders, said Mr. Hikind’s refusal to turn over the names of alleged predators, if not his entire case file, was “outrageous.”

She said that Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, “should already have convened a grand jury” to investigate.

Jerry Schmetterer, Mr. Hynes’s spokesman, said, “If someone has information about a sex crime, he or she should bring that information to our sex crimes unit, and we will investigate what needs to be investigated.”

Secular Education & dropouts/ R Yakov Horowtiz

In strong contrast to Rav Dessler's approach

R' Yakov Horowitz writes:

It is certainly reasonable for one to make the case that due to the rapidly eroding moral culture in the world around us, it is necessary and prudent to safeguard our children from its negative effects. But it is one thing to shield your children from the Internet or television,and entirely another to raise them lacking the rudimentary skills to earn a living. Many point to individuals who became fabulously wealthy without a command of their native language. But they are just that.Individuals. The brutal reality is that most people who are poorly educated struggle mightily to earn a living and support their families– and this applies even or especially to those who plan on entering chinuch or rabbonus. Expecting to strike it rich with limited education is analogous to a 15-year-old dribbling a basketball and dreaming of playing in the National Basketball Association. A few make it while the others. . .well, . . . they don’t.

A close friend of mine owns a business in an area with a large charedi population and is always looking to provide avrechim with jobs.His ‘entrance exam’ is rather simple. He gives prospective applicants a pad and paper and asks them to write two paragraphs in English expressing the reasons they would like to land a job in his company,and then to turn on a computer and type those lines. His thinking is that if an applicant cannot perform those two tasks, they are useless to him in his business. Suffice it to say that this would probably be my last column in Mishpacha if I shared with you the percentage of applicants he turns away because they cannot do that.

In more than twenty-five years of dealing with at-risk teens I have not noticed a lower drop-out rate among kids who are raised in more sheltered environments. In fact, my experience leads me to support the observation made by my colleague Reb Yonasan Rosenblum, in a number of columns in these pages over the past few years, that out-of-town children have a lower drop-out rate than those who are raised in very sheltered communities.

What is indisputably a colossal risk factor, for marital discord and kids abandoning Yiddishkeit, is poverty. With that in mind, it is my strong and growing feeling, that not educating your children nowadays, and overly sheltering them from acquiring basic general studies skills, dramatically raises the risk factor that your grandchildren will be raised in stressful, unhappy homes – and more vulnerable to all the negative influences we wish to shield them from.

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

Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l wrote:

שו"ת אגרות משה יורה דעה חלק ג סימן פא

יסוד ישיבות תיכוניות ביוראפ /באירופה/ בע"ה ער"ח כסלו תשל"ח נוא יארק מע"כ מנהלי הקהילה,,, שלמכון יסגא לעלם.

הנה בדבר ענין יסוד ישיבות שנקראים תיכונים, היינו שלומדים שם עם התלמידים גם למודי חול במדינות יוראפ, שידוע שיש מקומות ואופנים שהוא מוכרח מצד מצב החינוך שאי אפשר בלא זה מאיזה טעם שיהיה, אם מצד ההורים אם מצד התלמידים שאם לא יהיו למודי חול תחת השגחת יראי השי"ת וראשי הישיבה איזה זמן קצר, ילכו לגמרי לבתי ספר המדינה אשר הוא כהסרה לגמרי מעם ה' ומתורתנו הקדושה, ואם ילמדו במוסד ישיבה תיכונית תחת השגחת ראשי הישיבה ויראי השי"ת ורק זמן קצר אחרי למוד שעות הרבה ביום בלמוד התורה ילמדו למודי חול, יהיו בני תורה ויראי השי"ת. ויש מקומות שאין שום צורך בזה אשר ודאי אסור ליסד שם ישיבות תיכונים, ואפילו אם יש צורך לאיזה תלמידים מועטים אין ליסד. ולכן אין בידנו מרחוק המקום להורות בדבר הזה החמור מאד כדיני נפשות, ורק מרא דאתרא יודע להחליט בזה הוראתו, וגם המרא דאתרא שיודע מצב המקום והוא ראוי להורות בזה מצד גדלותו בתורה וגדלותו ביראת ה' טהורה, יש לו להתחשב עם מקומות הסמוכים שאין צריכים לזה שלא יסמכו על היתר מקום זה ויהיה הקלקול יותר מהתיקון.
הכו"ח למען האמת ולמען כבוד התורה ולמען השלום,
משה פיינשטיין.

Barkat - Next Jerusalem mayor

Haaretz reports:

Secular candidate Nir Barkat declared victory over his Haredi rival Meir Porush in the Jerusalem mayoral election early Wednesday, in a race that again exposed the deep divide between religious and secular Israelis.

With all polling stations reporting in the capital, Barkat won 52 percent of the vote versus 43 percent for Porush. Russian billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak ran a distant third with just 3.6 percent.

In his victory speech, Barkat declared himself the mayor of all Jerusalemites, pledging to work for those who had voted for him as well as those who had voted for other candidates. He added that he would be working for both religious and secular, as well as Jewish and Arab residents of the city.

"I'm aware of the depth of the challenge and the complexity of the mission. Now is the time to work together for the good of the city," Barkat, a technology investor and former paratroops officer, told his supporters.

The race in Jerusalem was one of many that captivated the country as Israelis around the country flocked to the polls for Tuesday's municipal elections, with Arab and ultra-Orthodox voter turnout exceeding expectations.

Kosher meat shortage II

YNet reports:

A recent criminal affair threatens to cause a great shortage in kosher meat in the United States, as Agriprocessors, the country's number one kosher meat provider filed for bankruptcy last week and is expected to shut down.

The Iowa-based slaughterhouse, which have been run by a family of Lubavitch hassidism for many years, was raided last month by immigration police, who allege the owners 80-year-old Aaron Rubashkin, and his son Sholom (49) were personally involved in the large scale forgery of identification cards for hundreds of illegal workers in the factory.

The company provides some 60% of American Jews' kosher meat and in many small communities is the sole meat provider.

An investigation revealed that the Rubashkins employed over 400 illegal immigrants from Guatemala, and a production line manager at the factory told detectives that he received cash from Rubashkin that he distributed among a few dozen workers to purchase their fake IDs.

It was also revealed that the Rubashkins illegally employed minors in abusive conditions including excessive hours and poor wages. The under-age workers were allegedly exposed to dangerous chemicals and were required to operate dangerous machinery without the proper protection.[...]

The Agriprocessors affair has not only left American Jews with a damaged image, but could also pose a threat to many isolated Jewish communities that depended solely on the factory for their kosher meat, and will now have to do without.

Rabbis across the United States warned that if the factory closes, hundreds of thousands of traditional Jews will be left without a meat supply.

The state of Iowa has already given the company a $10 million fine for illegally employing under-age workers, and barring any last minute changes, the factory will go bankrupt and shut down.

If Sholom Rubashkin is convicted of the line of offenses he has been charged with, he is expected to spend up to 22 years in prison.

Ashkenazic - What is it?

Guest Post: Avi Grossman

R' Eidensohn,

Shalom. I am familiar with the ruling of prominent rabbanim from the past generations that Ashkenazic Jews should continue using havara Ashkenazis for ritual uses. I have long been confused by one issue: what defines what is Ashkenazic? Indeed, I spent a year davening at one of the largest Chasidic shuls in Yerushalayim, and they, like other synagogues, had a notice from the hanhala that shlichei tzibbur were required to use Ashkenazis, but mine sounds a lot different theirs. Better yet, laafukei mai? How would they define an un-Ashkenazic dialect?

On a similar note, an American rav who has been here for thirty years told me that R' Schach ruled that the vowel holam should davka be pronounced with a yud sound at the end, even though there are gantza rayas from the baalei mesora and dikduk, foremost of whom being the GRA, that holam is supposed to be pronounced like the long O sound, like in English, and even though that is a common Ashkenazic practice in England and America and among Yekkies. Is this true? Common Ashkenazic practise is to often accent the wrong syllable of a word. (me-NO-ra instead of me-no-RA). Would R' Schach similarly rule that Ashkenazim should continue accenting the wrong syllables even if they know better.

Thank you for your time.

Avi

Mormons baptize dead Jews

Fox News reported:

Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."

"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion," Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."

Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion."

In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims.Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.

"We don't think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its doctrines," Wickman said. "If our work for the dead is properly understood ... it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It's merely a freewill offering."

Michel's decision to unilaterally end discussion of the issue through a news conference leaves the church uncertain about how to proceed, Wickman said.

Baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.

Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.

Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized, though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were murdered specifically because of their religion.

Michel suggested that posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims play into the hands of Holocaust deniers.

"They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but... 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?" Michel said Monday.

Wickman said the practice in no way impinges upon a person's "Jewishness, or their ethnicity, or their background."

Under the agreement with the Holocaust group, Mormons could enter the names of only those Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related. The church also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its massive genealogical database.

Church spokesman Otterson said the church kept its part of the agreement by removing more than 260,000 names from the genealogical index.

But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by an independent Salt Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.

The researcher, Helen Radkey, who has done contract work for the Holocaust group, said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from camp and government records are being dumped into the database. She said she has seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate baptisms had been conducted for Holocaust victims as recently as July.

Wickman said lists of names have been entered into the database by as mall number of well-meaning members who were acting "outside of policy." He said that church monitors have identified and removed42,000 names from the database on their own, and that the church welcomes research from others.[...]

Obama's advisors met with Hamas

Haaretz reported:
The Arab daily Al-Hayat on Tuesday quoted a senior Hamas official as saying that United States President-elect Barack Obama's advisors met with members of the Palestinian militant group before the U.S. presidential election.

Ahmed Yusuf, a political advisor to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, reportedly told the London-based paper that, "The connection was made via email and after that we met with them in Gaza."Al-Hayat reported that Yusuf also said the relations were maintained after Obama's electoral victory last Tuesday. He said the president-elect's advisors requested that the relations be kept secret so as not to aid his rival, Senator John McCain.During Obama's campaign, he pledged that his administration would only hold talk with Hamas if it renounced terrorism, recognized Israel's right to exist, and abided by past agreements.

On Saturday, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal told Sky News that he is willing to hold talks with Obama, and that he is challenging the newly elected leader to follow through on past statements indicating a willingness to sit down with America's chief adversaries on the world stage.