Prof. Neusner returns to Reform Judaism

Forward

Once upon a time, there was a young man, a third-generation American who was raised in a classical Reform temple, who in the Reform manner celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah and who was confirmed in the Reform rite. He was inspired by his temple's rabbi to himself become a Reform rabbi. He held national office in the National Federation of Temple Youth, and he was admitted to the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College.

Then, on the very day this young man was supposed to begin studies at Hebrew Union College, he instead entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the intellectual citadel of Conservative Judaism. He agreed to give up the lobster dinners, the veal parmigiana and the BLT sandwiches that he had loved, and even to quit smoking on the Sabbath, as admission to JTS demanded.

The decision was not the result of a dramatic change of convictions. He simply thought he would get a better Jewish education at JTS than at HUC. To that goal everything else was secondary. Six years later, he was ordained by JTS as a Conservative rabbi.[...]

R' Metzger deviates from chareidi view on converts

Haaretz

In an unusual departure from the ultra-Orthodox stance, Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi has declared that anyone holding a conversion certificate issued by the State of Israel can register to be married in his place of residence. Yona Metzger's declaration, contained in a letter to the Knesset's Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, comes on the heels of converts' complaints that local rabbis were refusing to recognize them as Jews according to Jewish law and to register them for marriage.

In recent weeks, the organization ITIM (The Jewish Life Information Center), which represents conversion candidates in their dealings with the authorities, prepared to file a petition to the High Court of Justice on the matter.

In response to the complaints, Rabbi Metzger said that in instances in which rabbis refuse to register converts to be married, he would "authorize a substitute marriage registrar that would carry out what the law requires."
 
This is the latest development in a controversy which surfaced about a year and a half ago, after ultra-Orthodox rabbis in official positions announced there was no validity under Jewish law regarding conversions performed through religious conversion courts. Rabbi Avraham Sherman, for example, who is a judge on the Rabbinical High Court, ruled that thousands of conversions performed by the special religious conversion court (under official state sponsorship) were invalid.[...]

Pharmacy is not kosher enough for Bnei Brak

JPost

You cannot please all of the people all of the time, especially when dealing with the religious sensibilities of the residents of Bnei Brak, a town with the nation's highest population density, little crime and some of the most zealously Orthodox Jews in the world.

That is what New-Pharm, a drugstore chain owned by Rami Shavit, discovered this weekend.

On Saturday night, dozens of Bnei Brak residents converged on the store, which opened six months ago, and demanded that it close its doors due to the negative influence the store's cosmetics and perfume departments might have on the town's young people.[...]

Rabbi attacked in Tzfat:Request for information

Dear Dr. Eidensohn,

I was reading R' Feldman's new book and he writes that a rabbi was attacked in Tzfat and the attacker only got fined $200. This would've happened in 1998 or, more likely, 1999. I was wondering if you know anything about said incident and if not, could you please put this up as a blog post so your informed readers may possibly inform me what the matziv was (I've searched and searched on Google to no avail)

Sincerely,
Baruch Pelta
=============
Moshe wrote:

The Rabbi was the chief rabbi of Tzefas Rabbi Levi Bistritzky. The attacker was Meir Baranes who later on ran over Rabbi Bistritzky causing him severe injuries from which he never fully recovered till he was Niftar. I attached a pic from this link http://chabad-il.org/sh/601-700/sh696.htm. See also http://www.shturem.net/index.php?mod=print&section=news&id=2796 <http://www.shturem.net/index.php?mod=print&section=news&id=2796>.

Selling kidneys is immoral but blood is o.k.

NYTimes

WHEN the tips her husband earned as a waiter began dwindling a year ago, Esmeralda Delgado decided to help support her family.

Twice a week, Ms. Delgado, the mother of three young girls, walks across the bridge from Piedras Negras, Mexico, where she lives, to Eagle Pass and enters a building just two blocks from the border.

Inside, for about an hour, Ms. Delgado lies hooked to a machine that extracts plasma, the liquid part of the blood, from a vein in her arm. The $60 a week she is paid almost equals her husband's earnings.[...]

Avrech - sentenced to 6 years for cocaine

Chareidim

ההימור והמשחק בחומרים מסוכנים עלה לאברך ביוקר. הפרשה שנחשפה ב"חרדים" הגיעה לסיומה, שש שנות מאסר נגזרו על האברך מביתר שנתפס בחשד להברחת סמים

Mere coincidence or divine truth?

JPost

A niggling curiosity about colors started the whole thing. "For many years, I found myself idly wondering if the name value of colors mentioned in the Bible had any relationship to their wave frequency," says Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Professor Haim Shore.

"In the scheme of things, that's an outrageous suggestion - why would anyone think that the Hebrew name for colors mentioned in the Bible - red, green, yellow - would bear any relationship to the wave frequency of the color itself?" he asks. "Finally, just for fun, I checked it out. When I saw the results, I was stunned. It was a heck of a coincidence, but the two were linearly related."

Chareidi man refuses to let woman sit next to him

The following chillul HaShem & boorish behavior is totally unacceptable. If the man didn't want to sit next to a woman he should have gotten up.

YNet

Haredi man delays bus after refusing to sit next to woman

Bus from Kiryat Gat to Kiryat Malachi forced to wait at station for long time when passenger refuses to have a woman sit next to him, shoving her with his elbow. Man refuses to switch seats, despite other available ones

"I sat on the bus line from Kiryat Gat to Kiryat Malachi next to a young haredi man. He started elbowing me and shoving me. He also swore at me and warned me not to sit next to him," 66-year-old Evelyn Assal related Sunday, describing her experience boarding a bus on her way to a funeral

Baruch Dayan Emes:Bostoner Rebbe of Har Nof zt"l

Just returned from the levaya which was very short since the Rebbe gave orders not to give hespedim.

My contact with the Bostoner Rebbe goes way back to 1965 when I spent Shabbos with him on several occasions. Aside from davening at the Boston Beis Medrash in Jerusalem when I first moved to Har Nof, I spent 5 years there  while I was working on Yad Yisroel. In my time there I noticed a strange thing. While the normal procedure is to give  attention and encouragement to those who devote time and energy to help the shul, and to give not so much to outsiders or those not involved in the shul - Boston was different. The Rebbe had all the time in the world for complete strangers who were just curious about Yiddishkeit or even for frum people who were passing by. On the other hand those who devoted a lot of time and energy to help the community or even old timers in the community were almost ignored. I asked the Bostoner Rebbe's son - Rav Maier - about this phenomenon. He answered simply that the Bostoner Rebbe gives time to people according to what they personally need - not what they would like and not what would be most useful for the community.

He illustrated this was a chassidic story. The Lelover Rebbe's son was very sick and was in fact  dying. He had high fever and the doctors had given up hope. The Rebbe called together all the chassidim and they prayed and said tehillim - in between sobs and tears. After hours went by the son's fever broke and he was clearly out of danger. The chassidim started to dance and shout for joy at the miracle. Suddenly one of the chassidim noticed that the Rebbe was still crying. He went to the rebbe, "Rebbe a miracle has happened, your son is out of danger." But the rebbe kept crying. The other chassidim came over and tried to convince the rebbe that the danger was over but he ignored them. Finally the Rebbe spoke, "I am not crying for my son. I know he is out of danger. I am crying for myself -  because I just realized I love my son more than other people."

Rav Steinman condemns mixed seminars for conversions

An interesting example of error or perhaps deliberate censorship. Mishpacha Hebrew News of this week - on page 22 - carried an article titled in part, "Rav Steinman strongly against mixed seminars for conversion". There was no mention at all in the article of the subject. Anyone know what Rav Steinman was criticizing?

Found the entire article in Moreshet on the internet which contained the missing paragraph

הרבנים דחו בתוקף את הניסיונות של גופים זרים לערוך גיורים וסמינרים מעורבים למיועדים לגיור באירופה. מנכ"ל הועידה, הרב אבא דונר גילה כי נועד לפני כמה ימים, לקראת כינוס הועדה המתמדת במוסקבה, עם מרן הגאון רבי אהרן לייב שטיינמן שהביע את התנגדותו הנחרצת לעריכת הסמינרים הללו. הרבנים החליטו כי לא ישתפו פעולה עם אותם גופים בכל בתי הדין באירופה

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Brain of famous amnesiac dissected

CNN

Henry Molaison, known as H.M. in scientific literature, was perhaps the most famous patient in all of brain science in the 20th century.

"My daddy's family came from the South and moved North, they came from Thibodaux Louisiana, and moved north," Molaison would say. "My mother's family came from the North and moved South." Within 15 minutes he might repeat this exact statement twice more, unable to remember that he'd already said it. Scientists studied him for most of his adult life.

This week, researchers are dissecting his brain to figure out exactly which structures contributed to his amnesia, which he suffered for more than 50 years.[...]

Abuse: Single witness testifying?

Pesachim (113b): There are three types of people that G‑d loves, the one who does not get angry, the one who does not become drunk, and the one who does not insist on his full rights. There are three types of people that G‑d hates, the one says the opposite of what he thinks, the one who has testimony for someone and yet doesn’t testify for him and the one who sees something unseemly in another person and testifies against him as a single witness. For example, It once happened that Toviah sinned and Zigud came alone and testified against him before R’ Papa and R. Papa punished Zigud. Zigud said, “Toviah sinned and yet Zigud is punished?” Rav Papa replied, “Yes Zigud is to be punished because it says in Devarim (19:15), The truth of a matter is not to be established by a single witness. Therefore the only consequence of your testifying as a single witness is that you are slandering Toviah [since no legal action can be done with only a single witness].”  Even though as a single witness to another’s sinful behavior you can’t testify against him – but you are allowed to hate him [Rashi]. … But how is it permitted to hate him since Vayikra (19:17) says, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart?” If there are witnesses that he had sinned then everyone hates him – so why say that this person is allowed to hate him? Therefore the case must be that he alone had seen the person sinning and there were not two witnesses. R’ Nachman said that it is not only allowed to hate him but it is a mitzva… Rav Acha asked Rav Ashi, What about telling his teacher that he should hate him? Rav Ashi answered that if his teacher believes his words as if he were two witnesses than he should tell his teacher but if not he is not allowed to tell him.

Rav Sternbuch:Redemption through Prayer

Abuse - Testimony only to prevent future attacks

Shulchan Aruch(C.M. 28:1): Whoever knows testimony regarding another person and he is fit to testify and the other person would benefit the other person – he is obligated to testify if he is requested to testify by the court. It doesn’t matter whether there is another witness that will testify with him or not. However if he refuses to testify he is exempt from human punishment but he is liable to heavenly punishment. Rema: A single witness should not testify except regarding monetary issues which will bring about taking an oath or concerning something which is prohibited and it will cause the person to stop sinning. But if the person has already done the sin he should not testify because then it is simply motzi shem rah (slander). It is prohibited for a person to testify about something he doesn’t know directly even though the information was told to him by someone he knows does not lie. Even if someone asks him to stand next to a single witness and not to say anything in order that the one who owes him money will think that he has two witnesses and therefore confess – he should not listen to such a request.