Jaded Jewish travel writer's first visit to Jerusalem

 NYTimes

As a traveler, I am not a particularly choosy person. I will go pretty much anywhere, anytime. Wander on horseback into the mountains of Kyrgyzstan? Why not? Spend the night in a sketchy Burmese border town? Sure! Eat my way through Bridgeport, Conn.? Loved it. Once, I even spent four consecutive Sunday nights in Geneva — in midwinter — an ordeal to which no rational adventurer would willingly submit. 

In fact, of all the world’s roughly 200 nations, there was only one — besides Afghanistan and Iraq (which my wife has deemed too dangerous) — that I had absolutely zero interest in ever visiting: Israel. 

This surprised friends and mildly annoyed my parents, who had visited quite happily. As a Jew, especially one who travels constantly, I was expected at least to have the Jewish state on my radar, if not to be planning a pilgrimage in the very near future. Tel Aviv, they’d say, has wonderful food![...]

Family claimed rabbi told them not to call police "since incest rape happens in many families"

YNET

The State Prosecutor's Office has filed an indictment this week against two brothers who molested their younger sister, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

The abuse continued for years after a rabbi advised the  parents against involving to the police, saying that such incidents "happen in many families."[...]

Ami magazine acknowledges poor judgment in their nazification of the White House

Jewish Week

The editor of Ami Magazine acknowledged today that the front page of this week’s issue depicting the White House draped in Nazi flags with Nazi storm troopers marching in front “may have been a poor choice.”

Should a baseball hall of fame writer who is an alleged child abuser keep his award?

Time magazine

It was fairly common that when I went to eat at Villa Gallace restaurant during spring training in Clearwater, Fla., I would run into Bill Conlin, the baseball columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Long before I joined the Philadelphia Phillies as a player with a team he covered very closely, I would know his work, his name. He spared no one from his wide-ranging critiques. Luckily, I was exempted from his harshest words in part because I happened to be his late wife’s favorite player.

So when I heard about the allegations against him — that he molested a group of young girls and a boy (including his niece who came forward over the holidays) — I was certainly appalled and caught off guard. A controversy is now brewing about whether his award for journalistic excellence given to him by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011 should be revoked and Conlin stripped of his place in Cooperstown. Character matters, it is argued, and I agree. Yet as it pertains to the award, it isn’t that simple.

The leadership vacuum facing ultra-Orthodox Jewry

Haaretz

On the top floor of a Jerusalem hospital lays a very old man. He is slowly dying, but he won't be left in peace. A small circle of courtiers around him continue to issue in his name edicts and rulings, ensure that his signature still appears on letters and when his medical situation improves temporarily, they will remove him from hospital and seat him in his chair at the synagogue, where everyone can see him. The hospital staff grumbles that all this just prolongs the old man's agony, but there is nothing they can do as the retinue controls all the old man's moves. 

Only a tiny handful of relatives and trustees are allowed to talk with him, and they jealously guard his real mental situation while everyone is told that he is fully lucid and talking with his family and doctors, praying and studying as normal. 

This is how the great rabbis die nowadays. These were the circumstances of the last years of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as the Chabadniks fought over him, manhandling him to the window of his study so he could wave to the crowds on Eastern Parkway, steadily deifying him as he descended into his last coma. His body died in 1994, at the age of 92, but many of his followers still believe he is with us.

The Kavod Of A Bas Yisrael

Five Towns Jewish Times

“i tried looking into her, but i dunno anybody that knows her or what she looks like . . . i’ll leave her name in the pile and may pursue it later if i find more info. thanks, Ploni.”

What you have just read is a genuine e‑mail received by a shadchan after forwarding a resumé to a young man. The e‑mail reflects what is wrong with some of the underlying attitudes that are prevalent in our community—at least among our young men. This e‑mail, of course, is not atypical or unique. It reveals an outlook, a mindset that is rampant in a world that has lost perspective and direction.

The resumé described a brilliant girl imbued with genuine chesed—a girl that the shadchan knew well. No matter. The young man will leave her name in the pile, which he may or may not pursue in the future. Why? Because in his cursory and superficial investigation, he couldn’t find anyone who knew her or what she looks like.

The young man’s thought process? We can only extrapolate. “Sorry. Gave her a chance. Let’s move on. Plenty of fish in the sea for me.”

Jewish chivalry, it seems, is not just dead, it is dead, buried, and so completely obliterated that we shall be lucky if it ever rises again.[...]

Legal fight to allow single women to use mikveh

Haaretz

Plia Oryah, a 19-year-old Modi'in native, is among several parties to a December 29 petition asking Israel's Supreme Court to compel Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, Religious Services Minister Yaakov Margi, and the Office of the Chief Rabbinate to reverse official directives to municipal and regional ritual bath operators. The directives explicitly deny access to women who are single, divorced or widowed. 

"These are public facilities," charges Oryah, who said she considers herself to be Orthodox. "It's their job to operate and maintain the facilities, not to decide who can use them."

RJJ takes Kars4Kids Charity to secular court in tuition dispute after going to beis din

Forward

An Orthodox Jewish charity known for its omnipresent radio jingles is embroiled in a federal lawsuit over $300,000 in scholarships that were allegedly promised to Jewish day school students.

Eda Haredit denounces state ‘oppression’

JPost

The ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit (Badatz) organization published a harsh letter this week condemning the government and police for waging a war against “those who fear God,” and against “modesty and holiness.”

The letter, which appeared on posters in haredi (ultra- Orthodox) Jerusalem neighborhoods on Monday night, was written in the name of Rabbi Tuviah Weiss, the head of the Eda Haredit rabbinical court, and his deputy Rabbi Moshe Shternboch.

New Daas Torah & Child & Domestic abuse books - to be available in Jerusalem

Depending upon the speed of shipment from America to Israel - the 2nd edition of Daas Torah as well as the 3 volumes of Child and Domestic Abuse will be available in Jerusalem book stores some time soon.

They should also be available in Brooklyn this week

Knesset members express outrage regarding disgraceful handling of Nachlot abuse case

 JPost

Knesset members from the Committee for the Rights of the Child expressed their outrage on Tuesday that a year-and- a-half after the largest pedophilia case in Jerusalem was uncovered, many of the suspects were still at large and coming into daily contact with their victims.

The committee held a special discussion about the pedophilia case that rocked a small, insular Jerusalem neighborhood this past year: More than a dozen perpetrators abused at least 100 children, starting as early as 2006.

Five men in their 40s and 50s were arrested in September, but police are still investigating additional claims of abuse.

“This scandal rocked our very foundations,” said MK Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism), who initiated the discussion.

At least 9 suspects allegedly abused more than 70 children in Nachlot

JPost

Police arrested three more men on Sunday morning in what they are calling Jerusalem’s largest-ever pedophilia case, with at least nine men suspected of abusing around 70 children in the Nahlaot neighborhood.

Police do not believe the suspects operated in an organized ring but rather that they knew of one another and sometimes carried out the abuse in pairs. More arrests are expected.

Ponivezh Rosh Yeshiva: We Deserve This

Arutz Sheva

The Ponivezh Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein related to the media incitement against the Hareidim and said that in the face of such incitement, the Hareidim should realize it is a message from G-d. The only response can be the eradication of baseless hatred, and repentance.

Chareidi fanatics throw fish oil on rebbe's daughters in Mea Shearim - because they wear sheitels

Kikar HaShabbat

מאה שערים: קיצונים שפכו שמן דגים על נשים חרדיות שחבשו פאה

אולי עכשיו כולם יבינו שבעיית הקיצוניים - מפריעה יותר לחרדים מהחילונים? בנותיו של אדמו"ר ידוע עברו במאה שערים כשהם חובשות פאה, אך למספר נטורי קרתא קיצוניים זה לא התאים. אלה החליטו לשפוך על בנותיו של האדמו"ר שמן דגים, ולהזיק להם ולבגדיהם. החסידים לא נשארו חייבים. במוצאי-שבת הם הגיעו לדירה והשחיתו את השלטים ואף ביצעו סדר בדירת הקיצונים האלימים