New Chabad Representatives To Mumbai

Chabad News hat tip Rabbi Oliver

Rabbi Chanoch and Leah Gechtman are the newly named Chabad representatives to Mumbai. Before details of their appointment were made public, they shared a candid conversation with Baila Olidort, Editor-in-Chief of Lubavitch.com/Lubavitch News Service, about their decision to accept this appointment. [...]

Rav Dessler - Point of Free-Will Michtav M'Eliayahu (1:113)

Michtav M’Eliyahu(1:113):Point of free‑will- When two peoples are fighting each other their war is at their point of contact. Whatever is behind the army of one side – it is totally under their control and there is no opponent at all. Similarly whatever is behind the second army is entirely under the control of the second nation. If one side defeats the other side and pushes them farther back – then the renewed battle takes place where the armies now meet each other. However at the former point of confrontation – there is no longer battle taking place because it is now under one sides control. Therefore in reality there is only one front but potentially the entire area of the two countries can be the place of battle. The same thing can be said about free‑will. Everyone has free‑will – which is the point of meeting of his truth with the imagined truth – the outcome of falsehood. However most of his deeds are not at a place where truth and falsehood meet each other at all. For example there is much truth that man is educated to do and it would never occur to him to do the opposite. Similarly there are is much evil and lies which he is not aware that it is not fitting to do. Free‑will is only applicable at the point of contact between the armies of the yetzer hatov and the yetzer harah. Many people are constantly transgressing the laws of lashon harah because of habit and it never occurs to them that this is bad behavior. At the same time these people have no temptation to transgress Shabbos or not to pray or to ignore tzitzis or tefilin and other such things. That is because they have been educated and habituated in Shabbos, tefilin, tzitzis and other such things to such a degree that the yetzer harah has no chance of influencing them. However this point of free‑will does not stand constantly at one place. That is because if a person choses good a person goes up in level. Therefore by chosing good – those places that were previously under the influence of the yetzer harah – now come under the domain of the yetzer hatov. Those good deeds will now be done without any war or free‑will choice at all. This is what is meant by “mitzva causing mitzva”. Similarly the reverse is true. If he chooses bad, it pushes the yetzer hatov away from its place. Then when he continues to do bad, it will be done without free‑will choice because the yetzer tov had no presence in that place. This is what is meant in Avos (4:2) that “sin causes sin” and also “If a person does a sin and repeats it it because like it was permitted” (Yoma 86b).

R Eric Yoffie: Legacy to Reform Judaism

Haaretz

In announcing that he will retire from the presidency of the Union for Reform Judaism in two years, Rabbi Eric Yoffie said that he aimed to give the URJ “ample time” to search for his successor. It’s a good thing, too.

That search will require careful thought. Given the longevity of those tasked with leading the Reform movement’s congregational arm — Yoffie will have been in the job 16 years when he steps down, while his two predecessors, Maurice Eisendrath and Alexander Schindler, served for 31 years and 23 years respectively — the choice seems likely to define Reform Judaism’s priorities and direction for a generation to come.

During their tenures, Eisendrath and Schindler focused on growing Reform Judaism, which today is America’s largest Jewish religious movement. They developed initiatives dealing with social action and religious outreach, and served as spokesmen for liberal Judaism around the world.

Yoffie, by contrast, has worked to turn Reform Judaism inward, urging its rank and file to focus on enriching their spiritual lives and expanding their knowledge of Judaism. “At this critical juncture in Jewish history,” he declared at his 1996 installation, “it is study of Torah, and prayer, and encouraging the mitzvot of home and family life that come before anything else.”

Yoav Laloum - filed suit against Emmanuel school system

Haaretz

Even someone who has been involved in as many struggles and conflicts as Yoav Laloum, the fearless fighter against discrimination in the ultra-Orthodox community, could not have foreseen the storm that erupted in the Haredi world this week. Nothing prepared Laloum for the huge protests that came in the wake of the High Court of Justice's ruling ordering the incarceration of parents of Ashkenazi girls in the Orthodox settlement of Immanuel if they continued discriminating against the Mizrahi girls in the Bais Yaakov school in the town. The demonstrations in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak were backed by the Haredi rabbinical establishment, and were accompanied by marches of support for the parents who are going to jail.

What hurt him most of all was the declaration of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who condemned the petition submitted to the court, and in effect aligned himself with the Ashkenazi rabbis. "Shas has abandoned me," said Laloum last night, who is now in hiding, after receiving death threats and being told by the police to leave his Jerusalem home. "In effect it has abandoned the Sephardi community. It should have waged this battle over discrimination, but they're also afraid." Later he said that "Rabbi Ovadia's statement is actually directed at me." [...]

Chilonim sometimes agree with Chareidim

If even Gideon Levi agrees, maybe there is hope!

http://www.kikarhashabat.co.il/%D7%92%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%A5.html

Rabbi Karp defends prohibition against worms

mlhv''l has left a new comment on your post "Rav Belsky's Tshuva on fish worms":

http://www.zshare.net/download/772379500849b299/


5 minutes in it starts, 6 minutes Rabbi Karp really loses his cool...
 ===============
complete recording

http://www.zshare.net/download/77334876f573e4c3/


Complete audio. Rabbi, how about you give some editorial feedback on this? 

10 years since the Lanner expose - what has happened?

Jewish Times Gary Rosenblatt hat tip Jersey Girl

The tenth anniversary of the public exposure in these pages of the “Lanner scandal” provides an opportunity to reflect on, and appreciate, how much has changed for the better in the last decade in responding to rabbinic sexual abuse.

With it all, though, communal vigilance is still vital because the problem remains, as do the impulses to overlook or cover up allegations of wrongdoing in high places. And there are voices in the community calling for putting ethical standards in place in synagogues, schools and camps.

What follows is a recap of the story; a look at the impact of the affair on the institutions directly affected, as well as on American Orthodoxy and the larger Jewish society; and a personal note on what it has been like to be the focus of both praise and condemnation from one’s own community.[...]

Israel's Vital Security Needs JCPA Conference

5Towns Jewish Times

Four minutes. It takes four minutes for the average male to get dressed. Four minutes is all it takes to make popcorn in the microwave. Four minutes is also how long it would take for a Palestinian jet to fly over Israel and fire upon Israeli homes. On Wednesday, June 2, a conference was held in the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem. The topic of this conference was "Israel’s Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace."

Dr. Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., began the conference with a welcome and an introduction explaining Israel’s need to have peace and stability.[...]

Massive demonstrations Thursday over Emanuel ruling

YNET

"It will be the mother of all protests," Knesset Member Menachem Eliezer Moses (United Torah Judaism) declared Wednesday referring to a haredi demonstration in Jerusalem's Yirmiyahu Bridge scheduled for Thursday.

MK Moses spoke in the Knesset plenum during a debate concerning the uproar caused by the High Court of Justice ruling on racial segregation in an all girls' school in Emanuel. The ultra-Orthodox MKs stressed they would not uphold verdicts which contradict their rabbis' rulings.

On Tuesday the High Court ruled that Ashkenazi parents who will fail to adhere to a previous ruling and not send their children to the Beit Yaakov school together with the Sephardic students will be jailed for a period of two weeks for contempt of the court. [...]

Lubavitcher Rebbe:R Chaim Rapoport's Review of biography

Seforim Blog

The Afterlife of Scholarship: A Critical Exploration of Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman’s Presentation of the Rebbe’s Life

Two Books for the Price of One
‘The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson’ by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman (Princeton University Press, 2010), 382 pages.

This book is comprised of two studies. Firstly, we have a sociological study of the Lubavitch ‘mission establishment’ (shlichus); a layman’s guide to the now global phenomenon of shluchim,[1], shluchos and their Chabad Houses – at least as they have become consolidated over the last two or three decades. The authors describe the dedication of these emissaries; their ambitions, achievements and the (messianic) ethos that spurs them to work tirelessly with the aim of drawing the hearts of all Jewish People closer to their Father in Heaven. [...]

The scandal - Obama and the BP oil disaster

Rolling Stone

On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. "They have the technical expertise to plug the hole," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. "It is their responsibility." The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. "If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?" a reporter asked. "No," Gibbs replied.

Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. "In case you were wondering who's responsible," Obama told the nation, "I take responsibility." Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. "There wasn't sufficient urgency," the president said. "Absolutely I take responsibility for that." He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: "I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios." He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. "The buck," he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, "stops with me."[...]

Challenges are good or to be avoided?

One of the major changes that I have seen in our society is the increased structuring of the community to minimize spiritual and intellectual challenges and threats. The following gemora seems to indicate that avoiding or going after challenges is a dispute amongst Amoraim.

Avoda Zara(17a): R. Hanina and R. Jonathan were walking on the road and came to a parting of ways, one of which led by the door of a place of idol-worship and the other led by a harlots’ place. Said the one to the other: Let us go [through the one leading] by the place of idolatry he inclination for which has been abolished.1 The other however said: Let us go [through that leading] by the harlots’ place and defy our inclination and have our reward. As they approached the place they saw the harlots withdraw2 at their presence. Said the one to the other: Whence didst thou know this?3 The other, in reply, quoted, She shall watch over thee, mezimmah [against lewdness], discernment shall guard thee.4

On the other hand the following gemora seems to be saying no one should seek out challenges.

 Sanhedrnin (107a):      Rab Judah said in Rab's name: One should never [intentionally] bring himself to the test, since David king of Israel did so, and fell. He said unto Him, ‘Sovereign of the Universe! Why do we say [in prayer] "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," but not the God of David?’ He replied, ‘They were tried by me, but thou wast not.’ Then, replied he, ‘Sovereign of the Universe, examine and try me’ — as it is written, Examine me, O Lord, and try me.2 He answered ‘I will test thee, and yet grant thee a special privilege;3 for I did not inform them [of the nature of their trial beforehand], yet, I inform thee that I will try thee in a matter of adultery.’ Straightway, And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed etc.4 R. Johanan said: He changed his night couch to a day couch,5 but he forgot the halachah: there is a small organ in man which satisfies him in his hunger but makes him hunger when satisfied.

Any sources which discuss this issue would be appreciated.

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.