Abuse: Cyberbullying:5 Essential Parenting Tips

Time

Cyberbullying is back in the news, most recently because of a so-called "smut list" published online that targeted 100 teenage girls, some as young as 14, for being promiscuous. So Healthland asked two bullying experts — Elizabeth Englander, author of Understanding Violence, and Jonathan Singer at the Temple University School of Social Work — for tips for helping parents teach kids to avoid, cope with and understand the harm of digital abuse:

Make sure your kids know cyberbullying is wrong. Many kids don't understand that when they write down and disseminate feelings of frustration, jealousy or anger toward others online, it can quickly escalate into problems in the real world. They also tend to think that what happens digitally "doesn't count" and that digital abuse doesn't hurt, especially since parents usually focus on their kids' behavior in person.

Lawsuit:Magnets defeat push button locks

NYTimes

Yeshai M. Kutoff was house-proud, having bought a home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, for his family of five. And as an Orthodox Jew, he bought push-button locks for the doors — an accommodation for the Sabbath, when many of the devout do not carry keys.

When a neighbor told him that the locks he had bought could be opened by a powerful magnet costing about $30, Mr. Kutoff was perturbed. “It does bother me that other people could easily figure it out,” he said. Mr. Kutoff did not buy a magnet to see for himself. “It doesn’t interest me to know how to break into my own lock,” he said.

If this were a problem with security software instead of errant bits of steel, a company could send out a patch. If this was someplace other than the United States in the 21st century, Mr. Kutoff might have called a locksmith. But because it is the United States in the 21st century, lawyers are involved.

Jesuits Settle Sex Abuse Claims For $166 Million

NRP

In one of the largest settlements in the Catholic church's sweeping sex abuse scandal, an order of priests agreed Friday to pay $166.1 million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were abused at the order's schools around the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement between more than 450 victims and the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus also calls for a written apology to the victims and disclosure of documents to them, including their personal medical records.

"It's a day of reckoning and justice," said Clarita Vargas, who said she and her two sisters were abused by the head of St. Mary's Mission and School, a former Jesuit-run Indian boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation near Omak, Wash., in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The abuse began when they were as young as 6 or 7, she said. "My spirit was wounded, and this makes it feel better." [...]

Brain-Damaged Mom Granted Visitation Rights With Triplets

Fox News

A judge issued a tentative written order Friday allowing a woman so badly brain damaged by medical errors during childbirth that she can no longer walk, talk or eat temporary visitation with her 4-year-old triplets.

Superior Court Judge Frederick C. Shaller issued the ruling after a two-week court hearing over the parental rights of Abbie Dorn, a 34-year-old who is being cared for by her parents at their Myrtle Beach, S.C., home. The order will stand until a trial date is set in the case, said Dorn's attorney, Lisa Helfend Meyer.

Dorn's parents, who are suing for permanent visitation, want the children to visit for two weeks every summer and a week in the fall and spring, but an attorney for Dorn's ex-husband argued during a hearing earlier this week that their mother was so badly injured giving birth that she is no longer capable of being a parent. [...]

Jews were given Torah because of their arrogance

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Maharsha (Nedarim 20a): The fear of Him should be on your faces – this is shyness – … This is one of the inherent qualities of Jews and it is a desirable personality trait for a person to be shy but in regards to the nature of learning our Sages (Avos 2:5) say that a shy person can’t learn. However we note in Beitza (25b) that the Torah was given to Jews because they are inherently arrogant. We can explain both these gemora. The Torah was in fact given because of two reasons. Since Jews are inherently arrogant they are natural students because they are not ashamed to ask question. Secondly it was given to them because the Torah diminishes arrogance as it says that fear of G d should be on their faces which is shyness.

Abuse: Israeli court convicts 4 who didn't try to help lynch victim

YNET

IDF soldier Or Levy and three young Arab-Israeli men were convicted Wednesday for neglecting to prevent a crime during the brutal killing of Leonard (Arik) Karp in August 2009, describe by some as outright lynching.

The defendants, Fadi Jaber, Fuad Musa, Mahmud Ades and Levy, were convicted for standing by and not doing anything while their friends attacked and killed Karp. [...]

Terror bombing: Live broadcast from Yerushalayim

YNET

Not believing in free-will reduces moral behavior

NYTimes

“Free will guides people’s choices toward being more moral and better performers,” Dr. Vohs said. “It’s adaptive for societies and individuals to hold a belief in free will, as it helps people adhere to cultural codes of conduct that portend healthy, wealthy and happy life outcomes.”

Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated

NYTimes

WE all enjoy speculating about which Arab regime will be toppled next, but maybe we should  be looking closer to home. High unemployment? Check. Out-of-touch elites? Check. Frustrated young people? As a 24-year-old American, I can testify that this rich democracy has plenty of those too.

About one-fourth of Egyptian workers under 25 are unemployed, a statistic that is often cited as a reason for the revolution there. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January an official unemployment rate of 21 percent for workers ages 16 to 24. [...]

Mullah in Debate of Tradition vs. Modern Schooling

NYTimes

On opposite sides of a dusty road, thousands of Muslim students in this remote farming town are preparing for very different futures. On one side, inside a traditional Islamic seminary, teenage boys in skullcaps are studying ancient texts to become imams. On the other, students are hunched before computers in college classrooms, learning to become doctors, pharmacists and engineers.

The distance between them is about 50 feet, but it could be five centuries. In the middle is a bearded Muslim cleric, Mullah Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi, who has spent the past decade bridging the divide between traditional and modern education for Muslims. From his main campuses here in Akkalkuwa, he has built a network of religious schools, hospitals and colleges with more than 150,000 students across the country, and earned a reputation among India’s Muslim clerics as a reformer. [...]

Maureen Dowd: Avenging Altar Boy

NYTimes

It’s understandable if the former altar boy at St. Carthage in West Philly needs to light a votive. The 44-year-old Catholic, who still attends Mass with his family at the same church, now called St. Cyprian, is the first U.S. prosecutor to charge a church official for a sickeningly commonplace sin: Endangering children whom the Roman Catholic Church was supposed to protect by shuffling pedophile priests to different parishes where they could find fresh prey.

Reform converts more acceptable to Israel than Orthodox ones

Haaretz

According to a High Court decision, the civil registry must grant Reform and Conservative converts to Judaism the status of new Jewish immigrants, but paradoxically, the court determined that the Israeli rabbinate would retain jurisdiction over conversions conducted by Orthodox rabbis in the Diaspora.

At the meeting, Horowitz pointed out the irony: The Orthodox rabbinate is thus actually pushing prospective immigrants to opt for Conservative or Reform conversions instead. [....]

Dry Bones: Obama & the Itamar Massacre

Tradition - not Talmudic derivation- is source of halachos

Doros Rishonim (4:13): The Rambam’s words which are focused on the general principles of the nature of Tradition and the interpretation of the verses (drashos) indicate that the drashos and the format of the drashos as well as the given and take of the gemora regarding the drashos don’t constitute proof that the halacha under discussion is a Torah halacha. The proof whether a halacha is a Torah halacha can only be determined within the context of the discussion in the gemora. If analysis indicates that it is a Torah law then we conclude that the tradition is that this a Torah law. However if the analysis shows us that this is a rabbinic law then we can not conclude the contrary  from the fact that the gemora is describing it as being learnt from a drasha of Torah verse. That is because the Tradition is foundation of everything. Therefore in this case the drasha and limud is only serving as an asmachta (memory device). Thus the status of a halacha as being from the Torah is not determined by how it is seems to be derived - but rather that is what our Tradition says. Thus if  our Tradition says a halacha is rabbinic – it is rabbinic even though there are many interpretations from Torah verse. The form of apparent deriviation does not add or subtract from the status established by Tradition that it is rabbinic.

Doros Rishonim (Chapter 11): Concerning all the dershos, they are only to provide support for a halacha which is known by Tradition and the derasha is simply to show that there is nothing which is not alluded to by the Torah. They are also used to support a halacha which has been decided from concepts found in the Mishna or from a Tradition transmitted by their teachers or because of logical reasoning based on the concepts of the Torah [but the derasha is not the source of the halacha].