8 dead from false rumor of Koran desecration

Times on line

Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.

The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. "They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses," Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. "We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action," Mr Masih said.

Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians. [...]

Blaming marriage problems as excuse for failure

NYTimes

LET'S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You're still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other's eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.

Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You're the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You've done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: "I don't love you anymore. I'm not sure I ever did. I'm moving out. The kids will understand. They'll want me to be happy."

But wait. This isn't the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It's a story about hearing your husband say "I don't love you anymore" and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.[...]

Tax fraud schemes steal millions

Haaretz JPost YNet NYTimes

The police arrested a number of Israelis and Americans who allegedly defrauded U.S. tax authorities, Army Radio reported on Monday.

The suspects are alleged to have masterminded a scheme whereby they fraudulently obtained tax refunds totaling tens of millions of dollars which were then transferred to various bank accounts in Israel.

A hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, where the suspects will be arraigned.

The affair follows a similar case last month in which 11 Israelis were arrested for allegedly swindling elderly Americans out of more than $25 million in a telemarketing sting.

Prosecutors sought court approval to extradite the 11 people who are wanted in the United States.

Criminal indictments unsealed in a district court in Manhattan last month accuse 12 people of phoning victims in the United States and falsely telling them they had won an international lottery.[...]

Burial Societies - consequences of their demise

NYTimes

Someone was buried in Florence Marmor's grave, and it was not Florence Marmor.

When Mrs. Marmor visited her deceased husband's cemetery plot in Flushing, Queens, one afternoon, she found that someone had been freshly buried in the spot next to his, where she had planned to rest someday. No one could tell her why.

Strange and wrenching discoveries like that have sprung up repeatedly in Jewish communities over the past few decades as families have discovered that the cemetery properties where they expected to be buried among spouses, children and parents are caught in a legal knot that no one can untangle.

The reason: the Jewish burial societies that sold the gravesites no longer have administrators. Founded by the immigrant ancestors of the people caught in this bind, the societies, in effect, have died. [...]

Bipolar disorder:Surviving mental illness

Aish.com

[....]My strong desire to be "just another high-school girl" and not considered "crazy" was intensified by my mortification toward the end of the previous year, when I had my first encounter with a psychiatric ward. Mental disorders manifest themselves through the particular characteristics of the culture in which the person has developed. Having grown up in a religious neighborhood, my obsession took on a seemingly harmless, and perhaps even admirable, desire to become more religious. So my general, all-encompassing anxiety and sense of helplessness, and my compulsive desire to regain control, were directed onto the one area of my life where I felt control was possible. I wanted to do every mitzvah and keep every detail of Jewish law in the most exacting way. I wanted God to be pleased with me and thought the way to accomplish this was to make my observance of each mitzvah increasingly more complicated and difficult.I didn't simply kiss each mezuzah I saw; I kissed it many times, each time reciting an additional prayer.[....]

OCD and Orthodox ritual

Jerusalem Post

Ritual complements ethics in Jewish law, but Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy seem in recent years to have put greater stress on ritual and on praising those who observe it pedantically. Thus it may be difficult to distinguish a simply devout person who is meticulous in his observances from one who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

While experts say OCD is not more common among observant Jews than in any other group, when the observant do suffer from OCD, the symptoms usually relate to ritual observance, causing them to carry out practices compulsively in prayer, ritual hand washing, milk/meat separation, family purity or personal hygiene.

In 2001, psychiatrists Prof. David Greenberg and Prof. Eliezer Witztum of Jerusalem's Herzog Hospital wrote their pathfinding volume Sanity & Sanctity: Mental Health Work Among the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, published by Yale University Press, that devoted a few chapters to OCD in this community. But it was an academic volume and not a guide to the treatment of OCD.

Now Dr. Avigdor (Victor) Bonchek (drbonchek@013.net), a long-time Jerusalem psychologist and ordained Orthodox rabbi, has written a $30 book called Religious Compulsions and Fears: A Guide to Treatment. Released by Feldheim Publishers (www.feldheim.com) in Jerusalem, it is prefaced with a note of approval by Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a hassidic scholar and well-known psychiatrist living in New Jersey who specializes in treating substance abuse. His name on the cover alone is enough to encourage many observant Jews to read it. Twersky writes that in his 45 yeas as a psychiatrist, he has noted a "marked increase" in the prevalence of OCD. "It is unclear whether this is due to a greater awareness of the condition or an actual increase in its incidence."

Twersky notes that OCD is known among professionals as "the doubting disease" because its sufferers "cannot be sure of anything. [Someone] may have washed his hands many times or spent hours in the shower, but still doesn't feel clean. He may have repeated a word in davening [praying] many times, but may feel it has not been pronounced correctly... An OCD sufferer may take on absurd and totally unnecessary precautions to avoid mixing milk and meat... In short, he is tortured by persistent doubt."[...]

Gays blame Chareidim for attacks

YNet

Shas condemns attack on gay center Haredi faction issues statement saying 'murder contradicts the way of Torah.' Shas MK says gay community's accusations against party following incident are 'a blood libel' [...]

Supporters of conversion of descendants of anusim - are guided by emotion not halacha

The following is an example of the "rational arguments" that I have received from a number of people who don't understand elementary halacha and feel that anyone who feels they have Jewish anscestors - male or female - or has suffered because they think they are Jewish should be treated as a Jew. These people are obviously sincere - but Judaism is not Christianty - and you can't ignore halacha.

Shimon Ortiz has left a new comment on your post "RaP: Proselytization in Latin America":

Rabbi you are a racist and you should not be a Rabbi. Actually you need to take conversion classes yourself and learn what is like to suffer discrimination because of your love for the Torah. Rabbi did you forget that the Jewish soul never dies! Did you forget the spanish inquisition or are you just jealous that the Sphardim are rising up in large numbers again. Well Rabbi everything does come from above and if that is Hashem's desire to bring back all of the lost (but not lost in the eyes of Hashem) Jews than it will happen no matter how much hate you try to spread. Rabbi did you forget what ahavas Yisroel means?. Like i said earlier i think that you need to take conversion classes.

$100 million bonus - should it be paid?

NYTimes

In a few weeks, the Treasury Department's czar of executive pay will have to answer this $100 million question: Should Andrew J. Hall get his bonus?

Mr. Hall, the 58-year-old head of Phibro, a small commodities trading firm in Westport, Conn., is due for a nine-figure payday, his cut of profits from a characteristically aggressive year of bets in the oil market.

There is little doubt that Mr. Hall is owed the money under his contract. The problem is that his contract is with Citigroup, which was saved with roughly $45 billion in taxpayer aid.

Corporate pay has become a live grenade in the aftermath of the largest series of corporate bailouts in American history. In March, when the American International Group, rescued at vast taxpayer expense, was to give out $165 million in bonuses, Congress moved to constrain the payouts, and protesters showed up at the homes of several executives.

As it happens, one can see some of those homes from Mr. Hall's front lawn in Southport, not far from his office. But his case is more complex. Mr. Hall, raised in Britain and known for titanium nerves and a collection of pricey art, is the standout performer at an operation that has netted Citigroup about $2 billion over the last five years. If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will.

The added wrinkle is that Mr. Hall works in a corner of the trading world that appears headed for its own infamy. Regulators are pushing to curb the role of traders like Mr. Hall, whose speculation in the energy markets may have played a major role in the recent gyrations of oil prices.

That suggests that last summer, drivers paid more at the pump, at least in part, because of people like Andrew J. Hall. How do you hand $100 million to a guy who may have profited because gas hit $4 a gallon? [....]

Understanding the Spinka scandal

I think the following makes too much of too little - but it is useful to understanding the context of recent scandals. The Rebbe pleaded guilty last week. In addition he spoke at the recent Aguda conference where he publically admitted his guilt and suggested honest alternatives.

Forward - Allan Nalder

The Hasidic Rebbe, or "Grand Rabbi," is no ordinary Jewish spiritual leader. Unlike rabbis in other denominations, from Reform to the fervently Orthodox, the Rebbe in Hasidic communities is much more than a teacher, adjudicator of Jewish law and community leader. He is nothing less than a conduit between his followers and the Heavens; a man believed by the faithful to be immaculately holy, endowed with a direct line to God Himself and thereby blessed with supernatural powers that include miracle-healing, divination and the magical granting of every imaginable human need, from bequeathing children to the clinically barren to endowing wealth to the chronically impecunious. A classic Hasidic adage assures that it is within the Rebbe's power to bestow believers with "offspring, long-life and sustenance."

And speaking of “sustenance,” at least one contemporary Hasidic Rebbe is allegedly also blessed with the power to grant sophisticated money-laundering and tax-evasion services to his supporters. When the Grand Rabbi of the Boro Park clan of the Spinka Hasidic dynasty, 59-year-old Naftali Zvi Weisz — or as he is reverently known to his followers, “His Honored Holiness our Master, Teacher and Rabbi of Spinka, Shlita” — was busted by federal agents in Los Angeles on December 19, along with his gabbai, or personal assistant, Rabbi Moshe Zigelman, and four co-conspirators, on charges of having defrauded the American government of almost $35 million, the Hasidic world entered into paroxysms of shock, dismay and anger. The mood of this deeply insular ultra-Orthodox community only darkened further as copies of the 45-page federal indictment detailing no fewer than 37 criminal charges against the Rebbe and his cohorts, as well as the juicy FBI transcripts richly documenting the surveillance methods employed to uncover the Spinker Rebbe’s elaborate schemes, hit the Internet.

But the lion’s share of the Hasidic community’s anger was directed not at the alleged crimes of their Rebbe, but rather at the FBI’s informant. Referred to in FBI documents only as “RK,” the informant cut an immunity deal with the government years ago and was the key figure in blowing the whistle on the Rebbe’s alleged scam. The New York Yiddish weeklies published under Hasidic auspices, as well as numerous comments on a variety of Hasidic Web sites, all cried foul — demanding a community-wide inquest to unmask and root out the “evil spy and informer” who betrayed and defamed the Holy Spinker Rebbe, Shlita. [...]

Polish government forces Jews to accept convert

Time Magazine Monday, Mar. 28, 1932

Jewry does not seek converts. It even discourages those few non-Jews who seek to join. Nevertheless, as sometimes happens, Jewry was petitioned in Warsaw by a Roman Catholic named Antoni-Stefan Raczynski. The Warsaw Rabbinate refused the application, was backed by the Minister of Education who cited a Tsarist ukase of 1905 granting religious liberty save to native Christians who wished to adopt non-Christian faiths. But Pan (Mr.) Raczynski appealed his case to the Supreme Administrative Tribunal at Warsaw, which three weeks ago reversed the previous decisions. Let the Rabbinate admit Pan Raczynski. The Tsarist ukase, said the Tribunal, meant "Greek Orthodox" when it said "Christian." Hence any Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist or whatnot might become a Jew if he wished.

Last week The American Jewish World viewed the conversion of Pan Raczynski as a "strange case." It said: "For centuries it was considered [by civil authorities] a crime for Jews to accept a Christian convert. At certain periods in history, it constituted a capital crime. Now we have a decision of a Supreme Tribunal whose members are probably all Catholics, denying to the Rabbinate the legal right to refuse a Catholic conversion to Judaism. Verily, the world does change!"[...]

Eternal Jewish Family - Phoenix 2007

Jewish News of Phoenix online Jonathan Rosenblum - speaker at Phoenix
EJF Phoenix 2007

US Consulate in Jerusalem - Palestinian territory?!

Rap sent the following

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027079.php
Jihad Watch: "US Consulate in Jerusalem website assumes Jerusalem is Palestinian, says nothing about Israel"

Wash Post crticizes Obama's policy on Israel

Wash Post

ONE OF THE MORE striking results of the Obama administration's first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel. The new administration has pushed a reset button with Russia and sent new ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela; it has offered olive branches to Cuba and Burma. But for nearly three months it has been locked in a public confrontation with Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank. To a less visible extent, the two governments also have differed over policy toward Iran.

This week a parade of senior U.S. officials has been visiting Jerusalem to tackle the issues: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell, national security adviser James L. Jones and senior aide Dennis Ross. But the tensions persist, and public opinion is following: The Pew Global Attitudes Project reported last week that Israel was the only country among 25 surveyed where the public's image of the United States was getting worse rather than better.

In part the trouble was unavoidable: Taking office with a commitment to pursuing Middle East peace, Mr. Obama faced a new, right-wing Israeli government whose prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to accept the goal of Palestinian statehood. In part it was tactical: By making plain his disagreements with Mr. Netanyahu on statehood and Jewish settlements, Mr. Obama hoped to force an Israeli retreat while building credibility with Arab governments -- two advances that he arguably needs to set the stage for a serious peace process.

But the administration also is guilty of missteps. Rather than pocketing Mr. Netanyahu's initial concessions -- he gave a speech on Palestinian statehood and suggested parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations -- Mr. Obama chose to insist on an absolutist demand for a settlement "freeze." Palestinian and Arab leaders who had accepted previous compromises immediately hardened their positions; they also balked at delivering the "confidence-building" concessions to Israel that the administration seeks. Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu. And Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, which were active during the Bush administration's final year, have yet to resume.[...]