Religious vs gay rights:Supreme Court takes appeal

NYTImes

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.

The group, the Christian Legal Society, says it welcomes all students to participate in its activities. But it does not allow students to become voting members or to assume leadership positions unless they affirm what the group calls orthodox Christian beliefs and disavow "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Such a lifestyle, the group says, includes "sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman."

The law school, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, part of the University of California, allows some 60 recognized student groups to use meeting space, bulletin boards and the like so long as they agree to a policy that forbids discrimination on various grounds, including religion and sexual orientation. The school withdrew recognition from the Christian group after it refused to comply with the policy.[...]

Minchas Yitzchok Shidduch for former sinner 6 139

Justice Minister:Halacha shoud be law of Israel

Haaretz

Justice Minister Ya'akov Ne'eman on Monday said he believes Halakha (Jewish law) should be the binding law in Israel, Army Radio reported.

"Step by step, we will bestow upon the citizens of Israel the laws of the Torah and we will turn Halakha into the binding law of the nation," said Ne'eman at a Jewish law convention at the Regency hotel in Jerusalem, in the presence of many rabbis and rabbinical judges. [...]

YNet Clarification of what was meant

R Moshe Shapiro addresses kiruv organizations

Matzav

Nearly 50 participants from such organizations as Arachim, Lev L'achim, Nefesh Yehudi, and Hidabroot participated in the 2-day event (December 1-3) that included an electrifying address by Hagaon Harav Moshe Schapiro. Following his one-hour address that was a call to action to intensify efforts to be "mekarev levavos," Harav Schapiro fielded questions on kiruv for nearly two hours. Menachem Lubinsky, who represented Horizons/EJF called the conference "an unprecedented show of unity amongst all the major kiruv organizations." Prior to Dr. Abdi's address, the group saw a riveting video on a woman saved from a brutal life in an Arab village by Lev L'Achim. The woman, whose child was also saved, was taken to a shelter operated by the organization and she is now well on the way towards becoming an Orthodox Jewess. Thanks to a grant from EJF, Lev L'Achim has stepped up its efforts to extricate the Jewish women from a horrific life with their Arab husbands. Dozens of women have already been rescued.[...]

The missing mothers

Kikar Shabbat

במשפחה שלנו, במקום אמא ואבא, יש אבא ואבא.

לא תמיד זה היה כך. עד לאחרונה גם אצלינו היו אבא ואמא, כמו לכל המשפחות. אבל אז הכל השתנה.

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."