Is It ‘Anti-Orthodox’ To Seek A Safer Community?

Jewish Week By Gary Rosenblatt editor & publisher

It is sad, if not maddening, when this newspaper is labeled “anti-Orthodox” for its reporting on scandals and other disturbing incidents in a segment of the community whose culture places a high value on policing itself.

Such accusations are not new, but they have ratcheted up significantly in recent days following the tragic death of young Leiby Kletzky of Borough Park, and The Jewish Week’s report and Editorial (July 22 issue) calling into question the role of the much-respected community watchdog group, Shomrim, in terms of its procedures and relations with law enforcement authorities.

The headline last week of an Orthodox magazine, Ami, used the word “slander” in referring to our reporting on Shomrim. Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, wrote in Ami, where he is editor at large, that The Jewish Week “seems bent on viewing and portraying the charedi community with” a “jaundiced eye.”

Marvin Schick, an expert in the field of Jewish education who writes a paid-for column in The Jewish Week, goes further in his criticism, proclaiming in a blog that “Orthodoxy-bashing is alive and well” at The Jewish Week, which he said has reached a new low in offering up “a vile exercise in group libel.”

Eishes Chayil Author, 'Hush': Shattering a Traumatic Silence

 Huffington Post

When I was a little girl, I never spoke with strangers. Strangers would hurt us. Strangers were capable of great evil.

In the ultra-Orthodox world of Borough Park, friend and stranger were simple words to define. A friend was anyone who looked like us, religious Jews who wore traditional Orthodox garb, had beards and covered their heads with large black kippas. A stranger was anyone who did not. You could never confuse the two. Most importantly, strangers did not fear God.

The garb made the world a clear and safe place and taught us everything we needed to know about right and wrong. If you wore the garb you were right, if you did not you were wrong. As children, we always knew how lucky we were to be living in the insular world of Borough Park. In Borough Park, we could trust everyone. In Borough Park children could not be hurt.

Orthodox Jews were good; they were trustworthy and moral above all. If such a man offered you a ride home, you could always hop in and go. If such a man gave you a drink, you knew it was safe.

It was a good world, if only an illusion. It was a warm and secure place for a child to grow, except when it wasn't. Because in a world where trust was so total, so blind, it was that much easier to get hurt.

Three weeks ago, in Borough Park, 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky walked home from day camp. He got lost. He asked a man for directions. The man seemed safe. He wore a kippa. He did not wear jeans. One day later, the police found Leiby's feet in the man's freezer; his body was somewhere else.[,,,]

Feedback, causality & G-d

I am working on the issue of feedback. I can not find any Jewish sources regarding feedback - to pick a reference and modify behavior or processes or efforts to maximize the referent. This is a fundamental Western idea - but not Jewish. It seems that the official Jewish view is that human effort does not cause success but only provides merit which justifies G-d making you successful. This issue  cuts across a wide range of issues from child abuse, education, parnossa etc etc.

I also can't find where and when this idea developed in the Western World.

Any and all help in this area would be appreciated. I also don't see that there is any difference between chareidi, Modern Orthodox and Hirschian theology regarding this issue.

Chovas HaLevavos (4:4) Even when you are fully aware that effort is worthless without G‑d’s decree, nevertheless you must act like the farmer who plows, removes the thorns, seeds and waters his field if there is no rain. At the same time he trusts that G‑d will make it fertile, guard it from calamity, make a bountiful crop and bless it. In other words he knows that it is wrong to leave the field unworked and unsown even though he has full faith that G‑d could decree that the land produce a crop even without planting beforehand. Similarly workers, merchants and laborers are commanded to earn a living in their occupation even though they have full trust in G‑d to provide them with sustenance. They make this effort despite the fact they accept that everything is totally in His hands and according to His wishes and that in fact He has promised them a livelihood. They understand that He will provide this sustenance anyway He wants. Since everything is in G‑d’s hands you shouldn’t think that one profession is more likely to provide a livelihood than another. Similarly you shouldn’t take pride in what seems to be professional success or even to make special efforts to achieve success. Total involvement in a job serves merely to weaken trust in G‑d because the effort is in fact not the cause of success. Instead of depending totally on your efforts you should be grateful to G‑d for providing sustenance for you after your efforts and that your efforts were not in vain

Among Conservative Rabbis, a Wide Disagreement Over Same-Sex Marriage

NY Times

But at another Conservative congregation, Temple Israel Center in White Plains, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, 60, the synagogue’s leader, performed a Jewish ceremony a year ago for two young gay men who had been civilly married in Connecticut. On Saturday, the first anniversary of the wedding, the men were called up for an aliyah, a blessing they said over the Torah, and their parents sponsored the celebratory kiddush, the postworship meal for congregants. 

“It’s not controversial in the congregation,” said Rabbi Tucker, a former dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement’s fountainhead. “Over a period of years we have reached a consensus and people supported my position.” 

The two rabbis’ contrasting viewpoints are reflective of the wide disagreement within Conservative Judaism on an issue that continues to roil many of its synagogues even after passage of laws in New York and five other states that legalize same-sex marriage.

Monsey man charged with sexually abusing child

3 retarded Jerusalem men accused of seducing children after school

Walla

המשטרה עצרה שלושה חרדים על סף הפיגור השכלי, בחשד שביצעו מעשי סדום בכ-30 ילדים בגילאי 5-10 בירושלים. על פי החשד, את חלק מהמעשים הם ביצעו יחדיו. מעצרם הוארך בשלושה ימים

Maariv

תגיות: חרדים, מעשי סדום

פרסום ראשון: משטרת מחוז ירושלים עצרה אתמול שלושה אנשים בני 44, 67, ו-46 מהעדה החרדית, בחשד לביצוע מעשי סדום ומעשי התעללות בעשרות ילדים בגילאי 5-10 בשכונה חרדית בעיר

לפי חשד המשטרה, השלושה נהגו לפתות את הילדים בסוכריות ובחלק מהמקרים אף נהגו לבצע אורגיות עם הילדים. במשטרה חושדים כי בחלק מהמקרים נהג אחד החשודים לתפוס את איברי מינם של הילדים באמצעות צבת ופטיש.

השלושה נהגו לפתותם לאחר שאלו חזרו מתלמוד תורה. כאשר אספו שלושה או ארבעה ילדים יחד, הם נהגו להכניסם לביתם ולבצע את זממם. החשודים הובאו לחקירה בתחנת המשטרה במגרש הרוסים, אך בחקירתם הכחישו את המיוחס להם.

Pix11 Child Abuse in Orthodox Community

Downs Syndrome: Treat with drugs or abortion or accept them as is?

NYTimes

[....]“This was a disorder for which it was believed there was no hope, no treatment, and people thought, Why waste your time?” says Craig C. Garner, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and co-director of the Center for Research and Treatment of Down Syndrome at Stanford University. “The last 10 years have seen a revolution in neuroscience, so that we now realize that the brain is amazingly plastic, very flexible, and systems can be repaired.” 

But the effects of that revolution on Down research may yet be cut short. A competing set of scientists are on the cusp of achieving an entirely different kind of medical response to Down syndrome: rather than treat it, they promise to prevent it. They have developed noninvasive, prenatal blood tests which would allow for routine testing for Down syndrome in the first trimester of a pregnancy, raising the specter that many more parents would terminate an affected pregnancy. Some predict that one of the new tests could be available to the public within the year.[...]

Not all parents of children with Down syndrome embrace Costa’s vision of a medical treatment targeting intelligence. In a recent survey conducted in Canada, parents were asked what they would do if there was a “cure” for their child’s Down syndrome. A surprising 27 percent said they would definitely not use it, and another 32 percent said they were unsure.  [...]

A follower of Baba Elazar zt"l, “Nobody had so much in body & spirit & such discipline in serving God"

JPost

The sudden and traumatic demise of Rabbi Elazar Abuhatzeira, who was stabbed to death overnight Thursday in his Beersheba yeshiva, has left thousands of his followers mourning and perplexed.

What made Abuhatzeira, known as the Baba Elazar, so special to the scores of people from all walks of life who sought his blessing and advice?

“He had intuition, or the holy spirit; he had something going on. I attributed it to his family lineage, and his holy lifestyle,” said Chaim Cohen, an educator from Jerusalem.

Abuhatzeira was a scion to a famous Moroccan rabbinic dynasty. His grandfather was Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, the Baba Sali, believed by his followers to work miracles.

As for the lifestyle, Cohen said that Abuhatzeira trained himself to suffice with only two hours of sleep a night, with short naps during the day. That way, he could spend the whole day studying Torah and helping people. He also covered himself, and never looked at women. He would fast the entire month of Elul, and was a great Torah scholar.

“Nobody who had so much in body and spirit had such discipline in serving God, that’s why he had the gifts he had,” said Cohen, “which he used to help people.” [...]

The chareidi man behind the Anti-Shariah Movement

NYTimes

Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law.

The representative, a former fighter pilot named Rick Womick, said he had been studying the Koran. He declared that Shariah, the Islamic code that guides Muslim beliefs and actions, is not just an expression of faith but a political and legal system that seeks world domination. “Folks,” Mr. Womick, 53, said with a sudden pause, “this is not what I call ‘Do unto others what you’d have them do unto you.’ ”

Similar warnings are being issued across the country as Republican presidential candidates, elected officials and activists mobilize against what they describe as the menace of Islamic law in the United States.

Since last year, more than two dozen states have considered measures to restrict judges from consulting Shariah, or foreign and religious laws more generally. The statutes have been enacted in three states so far. [...]

Chareidi Internet cafe opens in Israel

YNet

The ultra-Orthodox city of Modiin Illit has got its own Internet café for the very first time. The café, an initiative of haredi businessman Yehuda Weisfish, was opened after he received rabbinical approval.
 
The new experimental store is called "Gilad Net" and is strictly kosher. For the haredi public this is a real revolution, as the Internet has been considered abominable by rabbis for years.

Every passing day, Weisfish says, proves that progress cannot be made without the worldwide computer network. "We are becoming a small global village, and one can no longer do with just faxes and telephones."

Every passing day, Weisfish says, proves that progress cannot be made without the worldwide computer network. "We are becoming a small global village, and one can no longer do with just faxes and telephones." [...]

Crisis in medical care: Hundreds of doctors rally at Knesset

YNet

Hundreds of doctors, medical residents and interns from hospitals around the country marched Sunday from Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center to the Whol Rose Park near the Knesset, where they held a mass rally demanding "to save the collapsing health system."

During the rally, Israeli Medical Association Chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who also serves as the health minister – to intervene.

Finance Minister: Growing calls for reform could lead to 'anarchy' in Israel

          Haaretz

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz hit back on Sunday at the growing national protests over the rising cost of living, saying some reforms being demanded might lead to economic crises like those besetting parts of Europe and the United States.

The warnings followed marches by some 150,000 demonstrators, the resignation of a top treasury official and questions from leading commentators over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ability to ride out a revolt by the middle class.

"We see the talk about the debt crisis in Europe. We are even hearing talk of a possible default in the United States,"Steinitz said. "My supreme duty is to ensure we do not reach this situation in the State of Israel."

He rejected calls for the authorities to curb industry leaders who are often accused of artificially inflating the price of consumer goods through cartels tolerated by Netanyahu and his predecessors.

Shocking discovery! Psychology doesn't always help & sometimes makes it worse

 NYTimes

Some given treatment undoubtedly benefited, researchers say, but others became annoyed or more upset. At least one commentator referred to therapists’ response as “trauma tourism.”

“We did a case study in New York and couldn’t really tell if people had been helped by the providers — but the providers felt great about it,” said Patricia Watson, a co-author of one of the articles and associate director of the terrorism and disaster programs at the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “It makes sense; we know that altruism makes people feel better.”

But researchers later discovered that the standard approach at the time, in which the therapist urges a distressed person to talk through the experience and emotions, backfires for many people. They plunge even deeper into anxiety and depression when forced to relive the mayhem.

Crisis response teams now take a much less intense approach called psychological first aid, teaching basic coping skills and having victims recount experiences only if it seems helpful. [...]