Rav Sternbuch: Making of an Apikores

Rav Sternbuch: Brazilian anusim & mamzerus

Rav Ovadiah Yosef's view on abuse

NPR Abuse scandal plagues Chasidic Jews in Brooklyn

NPR

Gene therapy success in eye disease

Wall Street Journal

A small but provocative study showed that a form of gene therapy significantly improved the vision of patients left legally blind by a rare genetic eye disease. The benefit was especially striking among children.

Researchers said the findings amount to an important advance toward medicine's ambitious but generally unrealized dream of replacing disease-causing mutant or missing genes with normal DNA to treat and cure debilitating illnesses. [...]

Obama attacks Fox to stop growing criticism

Wall Street Journal

Blogger Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News. He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook." Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice: [...]


NYTimes

Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Midtown Manhattan steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

Mr. Ailes, who had reached out to Mr. Axelrod to address rising tensions between the network and the White House, told him that Fox’s reporters were fair, if tough, and should be considered separate from the Fox commentators who were skewering President Obama nightly, according to people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy.[...]

Falashmura:Never ending Ethiopian immigrantion

Haaretz

The menu in the kitchen at the Falashmura transit camp in Gondar, northern Ethiopia, is written in English, even though none of the camp's residents or kitchen workers speak that language. In any event, says Ori Konforti, the menu is not there for the benefit of the diners. It is for the guests, Jews from around the world whose contributions finance the camp's operations. In his book "Tzionut Hafuh al Hafuh" (Zionism Upended, recently published in Hebrew by the Zionist Library), Konforti writes: "There are no intact tables there, no sink and no running water. Everything seems to the Western visitor derelict and dirty. Clearly it is all designed to generate empathy and contributions."

Konforti, who until last year was the Jewish Agency's representative in Ethiopia, says that American-Jewish groups wish to keep the immigration of the Falashmura going in order to generate more contributions from supporters who want to be involved in tikkun olam ("repairing the world" activities), enhance the bringing together of Jews from around the world and improve their own relations with the black community in the United States. Israel, he says, became entangled in commitments to the Falashmura, a group with an almost infinite potential for immigration, due to pressure by nongovernmental organizations and politicians, especially from the Shas party. [...]

Christian donor will reveal chareidi recipients

Jpost

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, chairman of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, said Thursday that his organization was compiling a list for publication of haredi institutions that receive its donations.

The move comes after Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, considered the most respected and influential halachic authority among Ashkenazi haredi Jews, signed a declaration saying that receiving money from Eckstein's organization was "close to idolatry."[...]

Michael Freund starts Chinese immigration

Arutz Sheva

(IsraelNN.com) For the first time, a group of seven descendants of the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China has moved to Israel.The new arrivals, who were brought here by the Shavei Israel organization, arrived at Ben-Gurion airport late Tuesday night. [...]

Billionaire to fight charges in Florida

Haaretz

Guma Aguiar said this week the court deal he had worked out last month to rid himself of two misdemeanor charges was off. The American-Israeli multimillionaire added that with the help of Alan Dershowitz - who is part of his legal team - he would sue the police officers who he says physically abused him after arresting him in June.

In July, Aguiar had pleaded not guilty and threatened to sue the Broward County Sheriff's Office located in southern Florida for the alleged abuse.

On September 17, Aguiar's lawyers entered a "no contest" plea, which means he neither accepts nor denies guilt for the two charges, possession of cannabis and drug paraphernalia. According to the deal, Aguiar has to pay $536 in court costs and attend a three-hour drug abuse education course.[...]

'Basement rapist' :Mistake of giving a molester a second chance

JPost

A Tel Aviv court on Thursday indicted a 29-year-old Givat Shmuel resident on charges of attempting to sexually assault a minor, kidnapping and false imprisonment. The alleged incident occurred only six months after the suspect was released from prison after serving 10 years on previous child sex crimes convictions.[...]

Justice - Harvard Prof Michael Sandel #4

EJF & Rav Reuven Feinstein (video)

Daas Torah - Interview with Prof Lawrence Kaplan

Seforim Blog

Baruch Pelta: I guess my first question has to be if you changed your position since writing your famous essay on Daas Torah [1] and also, has Daas Torah evolved as a conception since then? [...]