Man sentenced to 9 years for killing alleged abuser

CBS News

(CBS/KPIX) A judge showed no mercy Tuesday in sentencing 32-year old Aaron Vargas to nine years in prison, for murdering the man he claimed sexually molested him as a child.

According to CBS affiliate KPIX, Vargas testified that 63-year-old Darrell McNeill sexually abused him when he was 11 and continued to pursue him into adulthood. Vargas shot McNeill in February 2009 with a Civil War-style pistol and watched him take his last breath while the victim's wife, Elizabeth McNeill, stood nearby.[...]

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Rubashkin to get 27 years

AP

DES MOINES, Iowa — A former vice president of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse will be sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $27 million restitution for his conviction on financial fraud charges, a federal judge said Monday.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade released the memorandum outlining the sentence she will hand down for Sholom Rubashkin during the former Agriprocessor's Inc. manager on Tuesday in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

A jury found Rubashkin guilty last fall on 86 federal financial fraud charges. Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence. Rubashkin's attorney, Guy Cook, said the sentence is longer than necessary and plans to appeal.[...]

Rabbinical Court drops Emmanuel case after Laloum snub

Jpost

The likelihood of a breakthrough in the Emmanuel case seemed meager on Monday afternoon as negotiations fell through for an agreement between the Hassidic parents and a foundation that strives for equality between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in the haredi school system.

Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks, with the Rabbinical Court that had called for integration canceling a hearing on the matter after Yoav Laloum, the man who originally sued the school, failed to drop his case with the High Court as he was asked to do.[...]

Additional abuse charges against Baruch Lebovitz

Daily News

New sex abuse allegations - at least one stretching back more than a decade - are surfacing against a once-respected Brooklyn rabbi recently convicted of molesting a teen.

A 29-year-old Borough Park man went to cops last week saying that Rabbi Baruch Lebovits fondled him in a ritual bath, known as a mikvah, when he was just a teen.

Several more men have reached out to police to share stories of sexual abuse at the hands of Lebovits, sources said.

"What he is charged with is the tip of the iceberg," said one law enforcement source.[...]

Social Reading: Reading is to combat loneliness:

New York Times

“THE point of books is to combat loneliness,” David Foster Wallace observes near the beginning of “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” David Lipsky’s recently published, book-length interview with him.

If you happen to be reading the book on the Kindle from Amazon, Mr. Wallace’s observation has an extra emphasis: a dotted underline running below the phrase. Not because Mr. Wallace or Mr. Lipsky felt that the point was worth stressing, but because a dozen or so other readers have highlighted the passage on their Kindles, making it one of the more “popular” passages in the book.

Amazon calls this new feature “popular highlights.” It may sound innocuous enough, but it augurs even bigger changes to come. [...]

Chazon Ish on fish worms

Could someone explain what the Chazon Ish is talking about? In
particular the last line.

Aging & sickness vs medical treatment:Stopping pacemaker

NYTImes

One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak Connecticut sunlight. Her white hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, and her voice was low. “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off,” she said, using my father’s first name. I nodded, and my heart knocked. [...]

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.[...]