Dr. Oren - Historical perspectives/ America & Israel

A fascinating discussion of the intimate relation between America from Colonial times until the present by the recently appointed Israeli ambassador to America

Death throes of Conservative & Reform?

Jerusaelm Post

It is a precipitous moment for Jewish religious leadership in the US.While the problems are primarily financial, their impact appears to threaten the future of American Judaism.

Reform and Conservative seminaries - the institutions charged with providing the overwhelming majority of affiliated American Jews with their religious and educational leadership - face budget cuts so severe that their missions may be imperiled. The congregational arms of their movements also are in grave financial straits, and American rabbis generally face a shortage of jobs.

No doubt there are very smart people thinking about what this portends.

Those people, however, do not seem to be riding the Jewish information superhighway. Many of the stories about the rabbinate that interest American Jewish newspapers are not about the future of American Judaism. Instead, they concern whether "transgender" and intermarried Jews can be admitted to rabbinical schools, and see it as a sign of acceptance, or perhaps maturity, among the streams that a lesbian this month becomes president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.

The idea seems to be that there are various groups pounding on the seminaries' gates: First the question was ordaining women, then gays and lesbians. Now that those groups can enter the non-Orthodox ordination programs, other groups have formed at the gate: the intermarried and transgender (women living as men, men as women, with or without surgical gender changes).

However interesting or irksome these issues are to most American Jews, these "who can be a rabbi" stories are irrelevant to the future of Jewish life.[...]

Hand of 21 week old fetus

Fox News

Israeli self-defense is illegal

JPost editorial

What a busy time it's been for those who exploit international law to gang up on Israel. Let us count the ways.

Starting with yesterday's UN report compiled by Ian Martin on that incident during Operation Cast Lead at the UNRWA compound in Jabaliya, the one that generated mendacious headlines like "Israeli shelling kills dozens at UN school in Gaza."

In fact, no one sheltering at the school was killed - but about a dozen Palestinians nearby (including gunmen) were when Israel retaliated to Hamas's shelling. While Martin pointedly refused to incorporate the IDF's side in drafting his report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised his cover note to the Security Council will provide some of the missing details and extenuating circumstances.

Don't go confusing Martin with Richard Goldstone's commission, which will be also be investigating the Gaza war. And don't confuse Goldstone with Richard A. Falk's "investigation" for the UN's Human Rights Council.

All this is in addition to the routine "docketing" of Israel at the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, partly instigated by Israel-based advocacy groups, some of which receive funding from the New Israel Fund and foreign powers. The committee's chair is Claudio Grossman, a Chilean national whose connection to the NIF figures is no secret.

If that wasn't enough, there is the Spanish legal system's persecution of top Israeli officials for the 2002 operation that liquidated Salah Shehadeh. Tragically, 14 civilians also lost their lives. But unintended civilian deaths in warfare are not unheard of. Shehadeh supervised dozens of terrorist attacks, killing or wounding hundreds of Israelis. The "universal jurisdiction" claimed by Spain and other countries - even where neither the "perpetrator" nor the "victim" has anything to do with them - verily turns the law into an ass.

Let's not forget the Durban II farce starring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or that it was ostensibly organized as a UN-sponsored "anti-racism" conference.

Finally, there's the unrelenting abuse of international law at every single UN body - except the essentially defunct Trusteeship Council.

WHY this obscenely inordinate investment of time, money and personnel in bashing us?[...]

Abuse - provide evidence without testifying

Star Ledger

Children who previously talked about a sexual abuse incident but are too frightened to testify in court can still provide evidence in a trial, the [New Jersey] state's highest court unanimously ruled today.

The justices' decision upholds a jail sentence for a Long Branch man convicted of sexually assaulting a three-year-old girl.

Matt Rainey who wrote today's decision which ruled that children who previously talked about a sexual abuse incident but are too frightened to testify in court can still provide evidence in a trial.

Immediately after Terry Coder had abused her in his basement in 2001, the girl -- whose name is protected by the court -- told her mother.

"Mommy, he touched me," she said, according to court documents.

Even though the girl could not remember that Coder had abused her when she took the stand a year later, the court counted what she had told her mother as evidence against Coder.

Johanna Barba Jones, a deputy attorney general, said she was "very happy" with the decision.

"This is a way of expressing wrongs done to children who cannot express themselves ... luckily this little girl was able to use gestures and through very limited language could communicate that to her mom," said Jones. "It's clear to moms that they can share that with police and they will not go unaddressed."[...]

Self-Righteousness & Behavior - Abuse

NYTimes

Most people are adamant: They would never do it. Ever. Never deliberately inflict pain on another person, just to obtain information. Ever artificially inflate the value of some financial product, just to take advantage of others’ ignorance. Certainly never, ever become a deadbeat and accept a government bailout.

They speak only for themselves, of course. As for others, well, turn on the news: shady bankers, savage interrogators and deadbeats are everywhere.

“I remember thinking that I was just better than other people, that I would never compromise my principles,” said Jordan LaBouff, 25, a graduate student in Texas, recalling a public standoff that he and other students had with university administrators several years ago.

“Well, they gave me this award — the administration did — and I’d sworn I would never take anything from them. But of course there I was, up on stage accepting it.

In recent years, social psychologists have begun to study what they call the holier-than-thou effect. They have long known that people tend to be overly optimistic about their own abilities and fortunes — to overestimate their standing in class, their discipline, their sincerity.

But this self-inflating bias may be even stronger when it comes to moral judgment, and it can greatly influence how people judge others’ actions, and ultimately their own. Culture, religious belief and experience all help shape a person’s sense of moral standing in relation to others, psychologists say, and new research is helping to clarify when such feelings of superiority are helpful and when they are self-defeating.

“The message in this work is not that you should rid yourself of moral indignation; sometimes that’s appropriate,” said David Dunning, a social psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “But the point is that many types of behavior are driven far more by the situation than by the force of personality. What someone else did in that situation is a very strong warning about what you yourself would do.” [...]

Abuse - Ohel's view of Markey bill

Ohel

A PROPOSED STRATEGY TO REFORMS IN SEXUAL ABUSE LEGISLATION
By David Mandel, CEO of OHEL

KEY POINTS

● OHEL see’s importance in both Lopez and Markey Bills and suggests a possible compromise.

● OHEL is not in agreement with some of the positions taken by certain organizations who oppose “the window” provision.

● While OHEL suggests a one year amnesty, we believe a one year window should be instituted thereafter.

● OHEL suggests a one year amnesty from civil claims with required risk assessment, treatment and some form of probation and monitoring. Certainly no amnesty from any criminal proceedings.

Abuse - Rape & indifference

NYTimes

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference.[...]

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

Conversion - ecumenical panel discussion

Jewish Week

Each of the rabbis — Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — on a panel probing the Who is a Jew controversy claimed that his or her movement’s policy on conversion standards was consistent with tradition. Yet they also acknowledged that the divide among them was deep.

Two of the panelists, one Orthodox and one Reform, at last Thursday evening’s community forum, sponsored by The Jewish Week and the JCC in Manhattan, expressed concern that if compromises were not made soon, the strand that holds American Jewish religious life together may be frayed beyond repair.

Rabbi Robert Levine of the Reform Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan warned the full house of 250 people at the JCC: “We’re coming very close to the level of sinat chinam” [hatred among Jews] that brought about the destruction of the Temple. “Many Orthodox rabbis won’t walk into my shul, and that pains me,” he said, noting that the level of trust among rabbis of different denominations has deteriorated in recent years.

“The key issues here are trust and urgency,” agreed Seth Farber, who received his rabbinic ordination at Yeshiva University and is founder and director of an Israeli organization called ITIM: The Jewish Life Information Center, which helps Israelis navigate the bureaucracy of the Chief Rabbinate on matters of personal status, including marriage, divorce, conversion and burial.

Rabbi Farber cited the writings of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a prominent Orthodox rosh yeshiva in Israel, as suggesting that Orthodox authorities are paying too high a price by adhering to strict standards in defining Jewish status if their position threatens Jewish unity.

Staking a claim that Conservative Judaism meets traditional standards on conversion, Rabbi Judith Hauptman, professor of Talmud and rabbinic culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary, cited Talmudic passages regarding how one should treat a potential convert. She said each requirement is met by Conservative religious courts.

Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox), trod lightly on specifics in questioning whether non-Orthodox rabbis demand that a convert live a fully observant life.

He said that adherence to the mitzvot of the Torah has sustained Jewish life over the centuries and will continue to do so. Trust is important, he said, but added that it is equally important to be truthful, asserting that the Orthodox community has best weathered the storms of assimilation and intermarriage by maintaining halachic standards.

The most serious dispute among the panelists was between the two Orthodox rabbis, with Rabbi Farber charging that Rabbi Herring’s RCA has made conversion more strict and difficult in the last two years, through an agreement the group reached with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

“Admit you’re changing the standards,” he said to Rabbi Herring noting: “The new RCA standards exclude a significant number of Orthodox converts who could have converted five or 10 years ago.”

Rabbi Herring insisted that it was “a canard, false and untrue to say that RCA standards are more severe” than in the past. He said the group’s guidelines in the early 1990s were more strict, and that what the RCA has done now is take the existing guidelines and standardize them so as to increase conversions. He said there were more conversions in the last year and a half (150) than any previous 18-month period, and that another 200 conversions “are in the pipeline.” [...]

Torah study & commonsense

Vayikra Rabbah(1:15): A rotting animal carcass is better then a talmid chachom lacking in da'as i.e., commonsense and social sensitivity. We can learn the importance of derech eretz from Moshe Rabbeinu who was the epitome of all wisdom and the supreme prophet, who led the Jews out of Egypt, performed many miracles in Egypt and the awesome splitting of the sea, went up to heaven and brought back the Torah, was involved in the construction of the mishkan. Nevertheless he did not enter into the inner sanctuary of the mishkan until G‑d invited him in".

Yofe To'ar(Vayikra Rabbah 1:15): The term da'as is referring to social sensitivity. Therefore the medrash tells us that a disgustingcarcass is better them someone lacking social skills who is despised and rejected by other people. In addition such a talmid chachom degrades the Torah. While the stench of a rotting animal can be avoided by not coming near it, a person without social sensitivities goes everywhere even though he is not wanted Consequently it is impossible to escape from him and he is an unpleasant burden….

Memorial Day - a story

YNET

Harriet Levin isn't one of those people who will preoccupy herself asking why it happened to her, rather than to someone else. She's not someone who will try to apportion blame, or blame herself for allowing him to go to the army despite her gut feeling that something bad would happen.

Harriet Levin doesn't ask herself "what if" it hadn't happened. Harriet Levin believes in destiny. Her son's destiny was to die in a war for Israel and become part of this country.

"Mikey did what I always wanted to do and never did. He made aliyah to Israel and enlisted in the IDF," she said. "I always dreamed of doing more for my country, of coming and volunteering.

"After all, it's the easiest thing live in a big, beautiful house in the United States and to write a check for a pro-Israeli organization every once in a while," she explained. "I wanted to give a lot more, but I didn't think I'd give so much, that I'd give my son." [...]

Marriage - even for a few days?

Ben Yohoyada(Yoma 18b): When Rav visited the town of Darshis he would announce: Who wants to be my wife for a day? G‑d forbid to have doubts about these great scholars of Israel to say that they have such tremendous lust for intercourse. G‑d forbid to think that they are not able to live without a woman for a few days – something that even the crudest person is able to tolerate – and surely such holy people as these who sanctify themselves from excesses. Furthermore if it were true that these men had such uncontrollable desires – G‑d forbid – why weren’t they concerned about their own reputations and especially since they even announced it? Who would do such a public announcement? Furthermore what is the reason that this was written in the Talmud? It can’t be to debase these scholars G‑d forbid! If it were to learn the halacha – there was no need to mention their names. Please pay careful attention to the explanation that justifies their actions. That is there are times when there is a bad practice in various places that the men do no get married until after they are 30 or 40 years old. This practice is found today in Kurdistan and also in places in Europe. In the time of Rav and R’ Nachman this was the practice of Darshis and Shekuntziv. Therefore when these rabbis went to these places they would rebuke the people not to wait later than 20 to get married. But since this problem was well established in these places and many of the ignorant masses erred in these matters – the rabbis made announcements concerning themselves in order to draw attention to this in the most dramatic way. When the masses saw that the rabbis viewed marriage so important even for a few days it became apparent that this was surely true of themselves. They said that if these rabbis who are involved in Torah study day and night and they are holy people and they are also married – nevertheless they are concerned with seminal emissions and thus don’t want to remain without a woman even a short time then surely we who are unmarried with much stronger lusts – it is best we got married and not delay anymore to remain without a wife because of the issur of wasted seed….

Abuse - Beating children/ Igros Moshe

Igros Moshe(E.H. 4:68): You and your wife have such great stress from raising your children that you beat them. However it is obvious to everyone that there is absolutely no beneficial purpose in beating them – in fact it makes raising them much more difficult. Therefore it is an irrational behavior caused by nerves and because of this you cannot handle the stress and you do this crazy behavior of viciously beating your small children without any rationale. You are fully aware that you are transgressing a Torah prohibition every time you hit them because it is clearly not justified educationally. Furthermore these beating from rage are without any limit and are just an attempt to dominate them. It is also possibly dangerous because you don’t avoid hitting them on places of the body which are very dangerous to the child. Consequently I give you have permission to use birth control …for two years…This permission also is granted because of the danger to the mother. It is obvious that she is sick with nerves and all this is very stressful to her. Therefore the difficulty of raising children is possibly dangerous not only to the children but also to her life.

Abuse - Opposition to window of Markey Bill

Jewish Star

The Jewish social service organization Ohel has decided it will oppose legislation that would allow victims of childhood sexual abuse currently beyond the statute of limitations to bring their cases to court. Agudath Israel of America and Torah Umesorah, its affiliated educational arm have announced their opposition to the open-window provision under consideration in Albany.

Ohel CEO David Mandel declined to confirm Ohel’s position, which was described to The Jewish Star by a source close to the organization.

“It is simply not a matter of a yes or no issue of supporting the Markey bill or the Lopez bill as one can be supportive of major portions of legislation without supporting it in its entirety, and at the same time remain true to their convictions,” Mandel said.

Mandel was referring to legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Marge Markey (D-Queens) that would extend the civil statute of limitations by five years as well as open a year-long window to bring civil cases that currently are beyond the statute. A competing bill sponsored by Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn) would extend the civil statute of limitations by two years but does not include the yearlong window.

In a statement released Tuesday, Agudath Israel of America and Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, indicated that they would “have no objection to legislation designed to give victims of abuse greater recourse against perpetrators.”

However, Agudah and Torah Umesorah “vigorously oppose” legislation that would do away with the statute of limitations, even temporarily for a year, since that “could subject schools and other vital institutions to ancient claims and capricious litigation, and place their very existence in severe jeopardy.”

Agudah acknowledges a conflict of interest related to a lawsuit against Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Brooklyn, and Yehuda Kolko, a longtime rebbe there. The suit lists an Agudah-owned summer camp for boys, Camp Agudah, Inc., as a defendant. The suit was filed in Brooklyn Federal Court in 2006. It alleges that Kolko molested David Framowitz, identified in the suit as John Doe No. 1, while he attended Camp Agudah in the summer between his seventh and eighth grade years. [...]