Guidelines issued to register converts for marriage

Deah vDibur hat tip to RaP

The Chief Rabbinate has issued a set of concrete guidelines to rabbonim on the issue of registering engaged couples in cases where a questionable conversion certificate is presented. Released for the first time, the directives instruct the rov handling the marriage registration to transfer the case to the regional Rabbinate beis din to clarify whether the convert genuinely undertook Torah and mitzvas at the time of the conversion.[...]

Mila procedure blamed for infections

Jerusalem Post

The long-time practice by Israeli ritual circumcisers (mohelim) of using gauze for as long as 26 hours to stop penile bleeding is responsible for the significantly higher rate of urinary tract infections (UTIs) within a few weeks of the Jewish ritual.

According to pediatricians and infectious diseases experts at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital, by adopting a different, yet simple medical technique for stanching the bleeding, many UTIs can be prevented. Drs. Ori Toker, Shepard Schwartz, Gershom Segal, Nadia Godovitch, Yechiel Schlesinger and David Raveh published their findings in the May issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal (IMAJ), along with an editorial by Dr. Jacob Amir, a pediatrician at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva.

Fish worms: Rav Eliashiv rules leniently on herring only

5 Towns Jewish Times

In a series of meetings with Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Karp and  others, both on Tuesday and today, Thursday, Rav Elyashiv Shlita issued two rulings:  He firmly reaffirmed the prohibition of consuming all fish species that have the Anisakis water nematode (worm) and he also ruled, however, that herring are permitted lechatchila.

According to both Rabbi Karp and others present, Rav Elyashiv stressed that the Anisakis is forbidden because of the clear evidence that it’s origin is clearly from outside of the flesh of the fish and are thus considered Sheretz HaMayim.  Other worms that develop inside the flesh of the fish are permitted, however, and fall under the rubric of the Talmudic dispensation of “Minei Gavli” (See tractate Chullin 67b).

The permissive ruling on the herring, according to Rabbi Karp was based up, at least, two factors:[...]

Belgian nurses kill patients (euthanasia) without request or consent

Vancouver Sun

Almost half of deaths by euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not explicitly requested their lives to be ended by a doctor, a study has suggested.

A fifth of nurses interviewed by researchers admitted that they had been involved in the euthanasia of a patient based on the "assumption" they would want to die. Nearly half of the nurses - 120 of 248 - admitted they had taken part in "terminations without request or consent".

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002. It accounts for two per cent of all deaths annually. The law states that patient consent must be given and that doctors must carry out the procedure. But the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that the rules are routinely flouted and shows how doctors often delegate the administering of fatal drugs to nurses.[...]

Abuse by psychiatrists - drugging pre-school children

Metrowest Daily News

In 2001, Harry Markopolos repeatedly warned the authorities about Bernie Madoff. No one listened. Only a serious downturn in the economy led to Madoff's downfall. It's not a Ponzi scheme, but once again, no one is listening and the red flags are everywhere. This time the victims are our very young, innocent children in the millions. Today, children as young as 2, are being prescribed powerful anti-psychotic medications. Side effects include tics, drooling, and incessant eating. Some children have gained up to 100 pounds and often progress to becoming diabetic.

Virtually nothing is known about the long-term impact of these medications. And no one seems to care. Certainly not the drug companies pushing these drugs, nor the doctors who have been coerced by the pharmaceutical industry and panicking parents alike into prescribing them. The increase in the use of anti-psychotics is directly tied to the rising incidence of one particular diagnosis, bipolar disorder. Experts estimate that the number of kids with this diagnosis is now more than one million and rising, making it more common than autism and diabetes combined. To treat it, doctors are administering medications that have yet to be approved for children. Mothers are legally medicating their two-year-olds with Risperdal to quiet their tantrums, Trileptal to stabilize their moods, and Clonidine to help them sleep.

This is not the old story about ADD or ADHD and the use of Ritalin or other approved drugs in use since the 1970's. This is not about helping the child who fidgets and can't concentrate in their elementary school classroom. This is about tens of thousands of energetic, outgoing, healthy, and normal 3- and 4-year-olds who just won't sit still in Mommy and Me. It is those children who have now been diagnosed with a new and controversial diagnosis - Childhood Bipolar Disorder.

On Sept. 4, 2007, The New York Times stated that studies in the 1970s and 80s concluded bipolar disorder was rare in children, but between 1994 to 2003, there was an astounding 40-fold increase in the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder.[...]

Ashkenazim and Sefardim share many genes

New York Times

Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives.

That is the conclusion of two new genetic surveys, the first to use genome-wide scanning devices to compare many Jewish communities around the world.

A major surprise from both surveys is the genetic closeness of the two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. The Ashkenazim thrived in Northern and Eastern Europe until their devastation by the Hitler regime, and now live mostly in the United States and Israel. The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 and moved to the Ottoman Empire, North Africa and the Netherlands.

The two genome surveys extend earlier studies based just on the Y chromosome, the genetic element carried by all men. They refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People” that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times.[...]

Rav Sternbuch Preparing for Moshiach

Rabbi Meisels research on fish worms

This material was presented at the recent OU meeting
Rabbi Meisels Fish worms research

Rav Belsky's Tshuva on fish worms

Rav Belskys Teshuva About Worms in Fish

Mental price of internet & cell phones

New York Times

When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he was writing.[...]

Reuters crops out knives from "peace activists"

Little Green Footballs

Another Cropped Reuters Photo Deletes Another Knife - And a Pool of Blood
One picture cropped to remove a knife might be explained as incompetence or a simple mistake. But now we have two pictures from the “peace activists” that were cropped by someone at Reuters to remove knives in the hands of the activists, as they attempted to take soldiers hostage. More...

Did Reuters Crop a Photo to Remove a Peace Activist's Weapon?
That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it. More...

Chasam Sofer & Self-Estem Problems

This attempt to understand Rashi is the earliest mention of problems caused by self-esteem that I have found. It is a quote ascribed to him by one of his students and published in Toras Moshe by his grandson. The relevant phrase is "If a person values himself more than he really is or the opposite, in the eyes of other people people he will be valued less then he actually is"

Egypt to strip men married to Israelis of citizenship

Yahoo News hat tip to RaP

A Cairo court on Saturday upheld a ruling to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women of their citizenship in a case that has highlighted national sentiment towards Israel.

Judge Mohammed al-Husseini, sitting on the Supreme Administrative Court, said the interior ministry must ask the cabinet to take the necessary steps to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, of their citizenship.

The court said that each case should be considered separately, in a ruling that cannot be appealed.

The ruling reflects Egyptian sentiment towards Israel, more than 30 years after Egypt signed an unpopular peace deal with the Jewish state.[...]

Chasam Sofer - First reference to self-esteem problem?

Toras Moshe (Bamidbar 13:33)