Rav Ovadia Yosef & changes to greater stringency in tznius

This picture of Rav Ovadia Yosef and his family was recently published on YNET. The article is not written in a respectful manner. This post is to defend Rav Yosef against the claims of the article. The claim is made that Rav Yosef's wife is not dressed according to the laws of modesty. I just want to point out that there is no question that the standards of tznius have changed to be much more machmir. But her hair covering is halachically correct according to the Chasam Sofer and Rav Moshe Feinstein - and obviously according to Rav Yosef. It is interesting to note that in Rabbi Falk's book on Modesty he claims that this tshuva of Rav Moshe was only meant for the particular individual who asked the question. A reading of the Igros indicates that that is not so even though he has a letter from Rav Dovid Feinstein supporting him. The dress is also according to the acceptable standards of modesty of those times. Thus this is clearly an example of shifting standards of halacha but the bottom line is that she fullfilled the halacha and standards of those days - even though such is not be acceptable today. It also is not possible to rely on this to ignore todays standards.

See my discussion of this issue on Avodah 11:29 
[note that the book on Modesty was written by Rabbi Falk & not Rabbi Wagschall]
There is also an important  comment by Rav Yehuda Henkin on this issue in Avodah 11:31

Rav Ovadia Yosef dedicates shiur to recovery of Rav Eliashiv

YNET

שני המנהיגים כיהנו זה לצד זה כחברים בבית הדין הרבני הגדול לערעורים במשך כעשור - בשנות ה-60 וה-70, אך עם השנים נתגלעו ביניהם מחלוקות הלכתיות, השקפתיות ופוליטיות רבות, ובמקרים קיצוניים אף נרשמו כמה עימותים פומביים ומתוקשרים ביניהם, האחרון – לפני כשנה, סביב אישור גיורי צה"ל, מאבק שהסתיים בפשרה. עם זאת, ועל אף המחלוקות - הם רוחשים כבוד והערכה זה לזה.

"זקוק לרחמי שמים מרובים"

בתוך כך מוסיף להיות קשה מאוד מצבו של הרב אלישיב, שעדיין מורדם ומונשם במחלקה לטיפול נמרץ לב ב"שערי צדק", לאחר שחש ברגע בתחילת השבוע, ופונה בניידת טיפול נמרץ לבית החולים. בדיקת רופאים העלתה הבוקר כי הוא בהכרה, אך הערב התברר כי הרב סובל גם מחום גוף גבוה ומזיהום בדם, ובצוות הרפואי מתקשים לגלות סימני אופטימיות לגבי האפשרות שיצליחו לנקז את המים מריאותיו.

Internal battle within Eida Chareidis with Sikrikim

BHOL 

In spite of the fact that Rav Weiss, the head of the Eida Chareidis,issued instructions that the community should prayer for the recovery of Rav Eliashiv - it was not publicized. It was determined that a group of Sikrikim extremists within the Eida blocked the publication of the announcement.... However in the Yated Neeman it was publicized this morning that Rav Weiss and Rav Sternbuch and the other members of the Bedatz instructed that prayers be said for Rav Eliashiv and prayers were also said in their own beis medrash....

הגאב"ד הורה להתפלל עבור הגרי"ש

מתברר שיש סיבה מדוע ה'עדה החרדית', אינה מפרסמת קריאה להתפלל עבור הגרי"ש: קבוצת הסיקריקים הקיצונית, מונעת זאת.

ביום שישי האחרון, ביקש גאב"ד 'העדה' הגרי"ט וייס מהנהלת 'העדה החרדית', כי ינסחו מכתב המורה להתפלל על הגרי"ש.

עיתון 'המבשר' אף הגדיל לעשות, ופרסם הבוקר כי אכן יצא לאור, קריאה מעין זו מבד"צ 'העדה החרדית', להתפלל עבור הגרי"ש.

אך מתברר כי המכתב לא פורסם. הגאב"ד התקשר להנהלת 'העדה' לברר מדוע המכתב לא פורסם ונענה כי "בישיבת הנהלה הוחלט כי לא מתאים שיפורסם כזה מכתב".

ל'בחדרי חרדים' נודע כי קבוצת סיקריקים היושבים בהנהלת 'העדה החרדית', היא שהחליטה להמרות את פי הגאב"ד ולא להוציא את המכתב.

מנגד העיתון 'יתד נאמן', פרסם הבוקר שהגאב"ד, הגרי"ט וייס, הראב"ד, הגר"מ שטרנבוך וחברי הבד"ץ הורו להתפלל על הגרי"ש, ואף ערכו תפילות בבית מדרשם בשבת האחרונה.

הערב (א') השמיע הגר"מ שטרנבוך דברים בכנס של 'העדה', שעסק בין היתר במאבק נגד תוכנית הליב"ה, ואמר: "הגרי"ש היה גדול הלוחמים בדורינו בנושא זה". הגר"מ שטרנבוך אף הוסיף, כי "מרן מאור חיינו במצב קשה, ובזכות שנתחזק בזה יבריא במהרה".

Problem of physical & sexual violence against Arab women in Israel

Haaretz 

[see also YNet Crime in Arab sector has turned it into Wild West]

Reports of physical and sexual violence against Arab women were up 20 percent in 2011 over the previous year, the Center to Help Victims of Sexual and Physical Abuse said over the weekend. Some 45 percent of the women calling the center's hot line said it was the first time they had told anyone that they had been abused. [...]

Figures from the Public Security Ministry to be presented Monday show that in 2011, Arabs were involved in 76 percent of the murders committed and in 70 percent of the attempted murders. They were also involved in 38 percent of the aggravated assaults.

According to the Knesset Research and Information Center, in 2009, 126 people were murdered in Israel, of whom 61 were Arabs - 48 percent. This is significantly higher than their percentage of the population, which is 20 percent.

Oprah Winfrey interviewed on Jewish.TV

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Israeli Psychological Association legitimizes conversion therapy but doesn't recommend it

YNet

Rabbis, therapists and religious homosexuals have welcomed conclusions published by the Israeli Psychological Association on "conversion therapy", defining the document as "good news".

According to the religious leaders, the important thing is the fact that the committee believes a patient should be presented with the existing knowledge, which warns against reparative therapy, but that the possibility to change a person's sexual orientation should not be ruled out completely.

Rabbi Berel Wein: Why Haredim Have An Image Problem With Most Israelis

Jewish Press

[hat tip RaP]

The most dreaded status in Israeli society is to be considered a frier – a sucker, a boob, stupid and unable to withstand being taken advantage of.

The current backlash in Israeli society against haredim is not merely a matter of theology or of vastly different societal values, different dress and customs. That would prove insufficient to provoke the over the top reaction that has emerged over the past several weeks against haredim generally because of the abominable behavior of some haredim – with, unfortunately, the tacit approval of many other haredim.

The underlying motive for all this haredi bashing is that Israelis – religious, traditional, secular and haredi light – are tired and disgusted of being friers. They have had it with a large and growing section of the Israeli population that they feels is being supported by the general public while contributing next to nothing to the general good and welfare of society.

It is useless to protest that the study and observance of Torah and the continuity of Eastern European or Sephardic traditions is somehow the guarantee of the continued existence of the state of Israel. [...]

What is the Halacha about the separation of sexes?

JPost

The issue of the “exclusion of women” (hadarat nashim) in public spheres has greatly engaged Israeli society over the last several months. Unfortunately, under this big headline, numerous phenomena have been included. There is a big difference, from the perspectives of both Halacha and democracy, between allowing religious soldiers to excuse themselves from recreational concerts by women singers, to forcing non-religious women to sit in the back of an Egged bus or beating them for entering a certain neighborhood in immodest dress.

Clearly, however, many of the phenomena are deplorable, and require redress on three levels: (1) rectifying the massive desecration of God’s reputation (Hillul Hashem) created by extremists like the Sikarikim group and their neighbors who fail to condemn their actions; (2) creating greater understanding on the relationship between Halacha, democracy, and tolerance; and (3) clarifying the halachic sources related to these matters, the latter of which will be the focus of this essay.

An orgy of hatred by liberal secular Jews against the chareidim

YNet

In recent days I’ve been quarreling with all my friends. They are good people, these friends – liberal, tolerant, moderate and sensitive to any injustice. These are people that in our complex reality were never confused between good and bad. This is why I love them, among other things. I’d like to think that we are cut from the same cloth. That’s why I’m so amazed to see how uncaring and hateful they become when a group of people known as the haredim comes up for discussion.

My liberal friends propose various steps against the haredim and religious: A cadet who cannot bear female singing will not be an officer in the IDF, said one friend. As simple as that (“as simple as that” or “at once” are words that always accompany discussions about the haredim.) A segregated bus shall be stopped! The driver and bus operators should be sent to jail. A yeshiva that will not teach the core curriculum shall be closed at once! We shall not allow primitive ignoramuses to be raised here, and at our expense no less. A neighborhood that features separate sidewalks for women shall immediately lose its municipal services! They can go ahead and choke in their own garbage.[...]

French parents teach politeness & patience - Americans don't

Wall Street Journal

      [see also Time Why American kids are brats]

[...] But for all its problems, France is the perfect foil for the current problems in American parenting. Middle-class French parents (I didn't follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me. They are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.

Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves. [...]

One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.) [...]

Renegade kano'im - Denounced by Toldos Aaron Rebbe, shlita

 This post from July 2008 is still relevant today

No, Israel Isn’t Turning into an Iran-Style Theocracy

New Republic Prof. Gil Troy

In the popular media, in both Israel and abroad, images of rock-throwing, gender-segregating, yellow-star-wearing extremists obscure these good works—and a more accurate picture. Noah Efron, a Bar Ilan University philosopher and historian, has explored the ingrained prejudice and popular revulsion against haredim. “The Jewish fight against ultra-Orthodoxy is part of a long-running struggle about what legitimately counts as Jewish,” Professor Efron says. “The modern forms of Judaism have so won the day that this need to continue fighting the battle seems neurotic.” Nevertheless, emphasizing the bad behavior of haredi Jews—who epitomize the stereotypical Jew—makes modern Jews and non-Jews feel better, less judged, suggesting that “these ostensibly superior Jews are actually inferior,” Efron says. “We continually prove our own probity to ourselves by proving the depravity of those people.”

More broadly, these stories provoke secular Westerners’ condescension toward religious people. Reading many of the American and European blogs about the haredi tensions this winter, Efron has been “stunned” by “the depths of the hatred and the crassness of the arguments. The attacks reflect a toxic mix of old style anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Zionism, with a new style modern anti-anything-that-is-not-secular-liberal-and-Western added.”

Why the secular Israeli fears a chareidi majority

Cross-currents by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

Capital punishment is not the issue. Two other issues are far more important in addressing concerns that Israel could become Talibanized. The first is that not everyone listens to Moshe Grylak – or his gemara. You can argue that the community should not be held responsible for the escapades of kano’im and Sikrikim – but they aren’t doing a very good job holding them in check either – or even speaking out against them. Why wouldn’t a chiloni Israel look at their activities with concern that as the Chareidi community grows, there will be more on these zealots, who will become even more brazen in time?

 More important is the gemara that Rabbi Grylak does not quote: Rosh Hashanah 6, and elsewhere, which establishes the authority of the Jewish court to compel people to perform mitzvos. The plain meaning of the text is that people who are reluctant to perform mitzvos can be compelled through grievous bodily force to obey the law. Couple this with the authority of beis din to act le-afrushei me-issura/ to distance a potential sinner from his ability to sin, and you have a license for batei din to compel full observance of the Torah, both affirmative and proscriptive obligations. No witnesses, no forewarning, none of Rabbi Grylak’s niceties that calmed his secular friends. Why should they not anticipate groups of people jumping out of vans, forcing tefillin and tzitzis on their bodies, and bulldozing their soccer stadiums?

For members of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Gur sect, sex is a sin

Haaretz

According to Dr. Benjamin Brown, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, criticism of the regulations laid down by the late Rabbi Israel Alter (also known as the Beis Yisroel ), who led Gur from 1948 to 1977, goes back as far as the 1960s. Among the critics was Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (1899-1985 ), known as the Steipler. Kanievsy was the brother-in-law of the world-renowned rabbinical authority Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (the "Hazon Ish," who lived 1878-1953 ) and the father of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of the leading rabbinical authorities in Bnei Brak today.

The Steipler wrote that one should not necessarily act according to the sect's strict regulations, which he said mainly cause suffering to women. To this day his views are studied in instruction sessions for bridegrooms in the Lithuanian (non-Hasidic ) ultra-Orthodox community, who are encouraged not to refrain from sexual relations. Among other things, the Steipler wrote: "It is known that a woman's main hope in her world is to have a husband who loves her ... but heaven forfend that he observe the measure of prishut, whereby he hurts his wife."