Michale Fruend:Columbus of hidden "Jews"

YNET

He wanders Amazon jungles, travels to Chinese villages, searches Spain for Marranos, and sees India’s Bnei Menashe as his life's mission. Michael Freund has an obsession: Discovering remote Jews [...]

'Chastity Squad' member sent to prison for store attack

YNET

A member of Jerusalem's so-called "Chastity Squad" who attacked a store owner and drove away his customers – is going to jail, The Jerusalem District Court decided Tuesday. Judge Nava Ben-Or sentenced Shmuel Weisfish, 24, to two years in prison following his conviction for several charges of violence against the owner of an electronics store in the ultra-religious Geula neighborhood in Jerusalem. [...]

Alien Hand Syndrome sees woman attacked by her own hand

BBC

An operation to control her epilepsy left Karen Byrne with no control of her left hand

Imagine being attacked by one of your own hands, which repeatedly tries to slap and punch you. Or you go into a shop and when you try to turn right, one of your legs decides it wants to go left, leaving you walking round in circles.

Last summer I met 55-year-old Karen Byrne in New Jersey, who suffers from Alien Hand Syndrome.

Her left hand, and occasionally her left leg, behaves as if it were under the control of an alien intelligence.

Post mortem mila:A Young Life Passes, and a Ritual of Birth Begins

NYTimes

My hands trembled as I grasped the tiny sleeve of skin with my forceps and separated it from his pale, still penis. He lay weirdly motionless on a utility table, which I had draped with a slate-blue operating-room towel.

A few feet away, his young parents sat quietly wrapped in each other’s arms. Several family members and friends stood silently around the periphery of the small hospital room, whose gray-green walls enveloped us dispassionately.

The pregnancy had been uneventful. A month before the due date I had received a familiar, reluctant, yet eager call about arranging a bris, the ritual Jewish circumcision performed on the eighth day of life. The expectant parents promised to call back after delivery to confirm the date and time so they could order the deli platters. [...]

Self-control - secret to success: Confirmation of the classic marshmellow study

Time Magazine

Self-control may be the secret to success, according to a persuasive new study that followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32: children who showed early signs of self-mastery were not only less likely to have developed addictions or committed a crime by adulthood, but were also healthier and wealthier than their more impulsive peers.

Problems surfacing in adolescence, such as becoming a smoker or getting pregnant, accounted for about half of the bad outcomes associated with low self-control in childhood. Kids who scored low on such measures — for instance, becoming easily frustrated, lacking persistence in reaching goals or performing tasks, or having difficulty waiting their turn in line — were roughly three times more likely to wind up as poor, addicted, single parents or to have multiple health problems as adults, compared with children who behaved more conscientiously as early as age 3. [...]

Incredible!!!! Tropper's arrival in Israel - greeted with great honor by rabbis

BCHOL

הקול, קול יעקב • התוועדו עם הרב לאחר תקופה ארוכה, הגיע הרב ליב טרופר לארץ • הוא קיבל חיזוק מגדולי ישראל והתוועד עם עשרות תלמידי ישיבת 'קול יעקב' • דיווח ותמונות

עשרות איש נועדו במוצאי שבת שירה בבית-המדרש בשכונת הבוכרים בירושלים עם מייסד ישיבת 'קול יעקב' במונסי, הרב ליב טרופר מניו-יורק.

קשה להאמין כי כל המשתתפים באירוע, בני תורה ברמ"ח איבריהם, חזרו בתשובה. אחד היה רופא, השני ספורטאי - וכן הלאה. כולם היו רחוקים מתורה ומצוות. עד שהגיעו לישיבת 'קול יעקב', שם ניצת בהם הניצוץ היהודי . 

Michael Freund: "Bring The Bnei Menashe Home To Israel

Jewish Press

Several time zones away, in the farthest reaches of northeastern India, live thousands of men and women longing to rejoin the Jewish people.[...]

 
In 2005, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar, formally recognized the Bnei Menashe as "descendants of Israel" and encouraged their return to Israel and the Jewish people.
 
Over the past decade, more than 1,700 members of the community have made aliyah to Israel thanks to Shavei Israel, the organization I chair.
 
All have undergone formal conversion by the Chief Rabbinate to remove any doubts regarding their personal status and have been granted Israeli citizenship.
 
But another 7,232 remain in India, anxiously awaiting their chance to make aliyah. The time has come to put an end to their waiting.[...]
 

Tiger Moms: Is Tough Parenting Really the Answer?

Time Magazine

t was the "Little White Donkey" incident that pushed many readers over the edge. That's the name of the piano tune that Amy Chua, Yale law professor and self-described "tiger mother," forced her 7-year-old daughter Lulu to practice for hours on end — "right through dinner into the night," with no breaks for water or even the bathroom, until at last Lulu learned to play the piece.

For other readers, it was Chua calling her older daughter Sophia "garbage" after the girl behaved disrespectfully — the same thing Chua had been called as a child by her strict Chinese father. (See a TIME Q&A with Amy Chua.)

And, oh, yes, for some readers it was the card that young Lulu made for her mother's birthday. "I don't want this," Chua announced, adding that she expected to receive a drawing that Lulu had "put some thought and effort into." Throwing the card back at her daughter, she told her, "I deserve better than this. So I reject this."

Child & Domestic Abuse book to be sold at Eichler's Flatbush

In a few days Eichler's of Flatbush will be the first seforim store to be selling my book. It will still be available from Amazon.

phone number 718 258 763 or 888 342 4537 to check for availablity

address is Coney Island Avenue between Avenue J and Avenue K.

Why a U.N. Resolution on Israel Leaves Obama Facing a Dilemma

Time

It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week's people-power rebellion in Tunisia has only made Washington's effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia will have given the autocratic leaders of countries such as Egypt and Jordan more reason to fear their own people. For those regimes, symbolically challenging unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a low-cost gesture that will play well on the restive street.

Going ahead with the resolution, discussed Wednesday at the Security Council, demanding an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is, of course, a vote of no-confidence in U.S. peacemaking efforts. And it creates an immediate headache for the Obama Administration, over whether to invoke the U.S. veto — as Washington has traditionally done on Council resolutions critical of Israel. The twist this time: the substance of the current resolution largely echoes the Administration's own stated positions

Child abuse book: Interview with Dr. Asher Lipner - psychologist

The following are comments that are part of a recent interview of Dr. Asher Lipner - a prominent psychotherapist dealing with sexual abuse . The rest of the interview was published in the public media. Dr. Lipner sent them to me with permission to publish them here.

What do are your thoughts on R. Daniel Eidensohn's book on child abuse? 

 For full disclosure, let me say I played a role in the book's publication both by writing a chapter and by editing parts of the book.  It is an incredible labor of love put together by a man who truly cares about the Jewish people.  It examines the issues of domestic violence and child abuse from so many angles with sophistication, depth and compassion.  It is Torah scholarship at its best, as Rabbi Eidensohn is able to bring complex Torah ideas down to simple utilizable tools to be used to protect women and children. 

 What are some of his conclusions?

That there is a mitzvah to confront abuse in order to protect others, and that each one of us has this obligation.  That sex crimes need to be reported to the police without any halachic concern about the misconstrued concept of Mesira that does not apply.  That more open discussion must take place in the community with less concern about "immodest speech" in discussing the problem, and more concern with the grossly immodest behavior the problem represents.  That obsessive concern about stigma and shidduchim has wreaked havoc on the emotional, physical and spiritual well-being of generations of our children and needs to stop.  And perhaps most importantly, that where there is a communal will there is a way stop this problem and protect our children.

 How do you differ on issues with him?

 We do not differ significantly in what we believe the community needs to do.  We differ only in our roles.  Reb Daniel is blessed with a close personal relationship with some of the biggest rabbis in Israel, and he works tirelessly to create a dialogue between them and mental health professionals and lawyers to address the issue.  He does this by acting with the highest level of sensitivity to the cultural, societal and even political realities that working together with the Charedi leadership requires.

 I am just a simple Jew who works “in the trenches” day to day with survivors of abuse and their families, helping them repair their broken lives. My methodology of advocating for them is often not as sensitive to the communal norms and regular “business as usual”.  Sometimes I need to help the survivors scream out their pain in any way they can, even if it offends the community’s sensitivity.  Being that there is an alarmingly high suicide rate among survivors of sexual trauma, in some cases this "do whatever it takes to get people to listen" approach has been necessary in order to literally save lives.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: Organ donor cards are not incompatible with Jewish law

British Guardian

You reported that I have issued an edict that "organ donation and the carrying of donor cards are incompatible with Jewish law" (Doctors criticise chief rabbi's edict against donor cards, 12 January). That is not so.

Wherever we can save life, we should. That is a longstanding and fundamental proposition of Judaism, and it means that we favour organ donations. Our clarification of the Jewish law on this subject should not "reduce the number of donations" or "put lives at risk".

At the heart of Judaism is the principle of the sanctity of life, which flows directly from the proposition in the first chapter of the Bible that we are all in the image and likeness of God. The secular counterpart is Kant's principle that we should treat others as ends in themselves, not as means to an end. This generates moral consequences, including the duty to honour life and the duty to save life. Usually these two principles coincide, but sometimes they conflict.[...]

Appeals court: Yisroel Weingarten improperly convicted of one count of incest - but upheld remaining abuse charges

NYPost

A perverted Hasidic rabbi who sexually abused his daughter throughout her adolescence could get 10 years knocked off his sentence under terms of an appeals court decision this morning.

Israel Weingarten was improperly convicted on one count involving incest that occurred during a trip from Belgium to Israel, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled.

The unanimous decree says that citizens can't be found guilty in America for crimes committed overseas unless there's a "territorial nexus to the United States."

The three-judge panel upheld other convictions covering abuse that took place during travel from Brooklyn to Belgium, and from Israel to Brooklyn.[...]

The smoking gun: Vatican Warned Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse

NYTimes

 A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.

The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than give that power to civil authorities. [...]