Israeli Court Invalidates a Military Exemption

NYTimes

The Israeli Supreme Court has invalidated a law that exempted from military service ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies, adding a new urgency to the government’s negotiations with religious parties over a more equitable distribution of the burdens of citizenship. 

The 6-to-3 decision, handed down late Tuesday, declared the so-called Tal Law unconstitutional at a time of growing tension in Israel over the place of the ultra-Orthodox. The law, in effect since 2002, granted exemptions to tens of thousands of religious academy students. It was widely viewed as a failure, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already said it would not be renewed when it expired this summer.  

Still, the ruling will now force the government’s hand to come up with a new way forward, one that will be strongly resisted by religious party coalition members. 

Departing Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, writing for the court majority, said the law had failed to live up to its aim of increasing the number of ultra-Orthodox in the army. Using data presented by the army, the decision noted that last year fewer than 1,300 ultra-Orthodox youths enlisted out of a pool of 8,500, a rate of 15 percent. Among the rest of the Jewish population, the enlistment rate is 75 percent.

The terrorism of Off the Derech children in Bnei Brak

 In response to RaP's comment:

There are organization dealing with this. In fact when I was in Boro Park this past year - at least once a week an appeal was made for such organizations in the shul of Rav Menashe Klein where I davened every day. They were specifically for chassidic youth.

Workers in these programs in American told me that 70-80 per cent of the members of these programs have been abused.

There are programs here in Israel also. I remember once - several years ago - a rav who runs one of these organizations made an appeal in Rav Sternbuch's shul and noted that the Chazon Ish said that it is not necessarily the nebach but in fact it was the brightest and best adjusted who went off the Derech.

I also once was visiting Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach with a friend of mine whose father was a very prominent rosh yeshiva in America - but he had become a Breslavor chasid. When Rav Shlomo Zalman heard the name of his father he literally jumped out of his seat. I later asked my friend why he had reacted that way. He said, of the yeshiva class of Rav Shlomo Zalman at Eitz Chaim - most of his classmates when off the derech.  It upset him to see that I had not followed in my father's path - not that he had a problem with Breslov itsef. 

Finally Rav Menachem Porush's son - who is involved in politics and social action - once mentioned at a conference on the subject the following.

"It is not that we have more drop outs than in previous years. The issue is that in previous years the drop out left the community - 'he went to visit his aunt in California.' However today the drop outs are kept in the yeshivos and beis yaakov's and where they are a corrosive element to the others students."

A friend of mine noted that Meah Sharim has retained basically the same number of apartments for a hundred years - despite the fact that they have always had large families. He said this was primarily due to the children going off the derech in large numbers and leaving the community.

So yes there are families who kick out there children when they go off the derech- but there are also many who try to keep them in - sending them to special yeshivos to try to help them. Har Nof itself has a number of seminaries and yeshivos which deal specifically with this problem.

BTW Rabbi Greenwald - as well as his sons are recognized experts in dealing with this problem in the Chareidi world and their services are definitely being used.

High Court rules 'Tal Law' for yeshiva student deferrals - can't be extended

JPost

n a majority ruling of six justices against three, the High Court determined that the law, whose full title is the 'Deferral of Service for Yeshiva Students for whom Torah is their Profession Law' is not constitutional, and therefore the Knesset cannot extend it in its present form when it expires on August 1st. The law was originally passed as a temporary law requiring renewal every five years.

Principal suspected of sexually assaulting students

YNet

Former student in haredi establishment accuses principal of indecent acts, says others assaulted too. Police suspect senior haredi leaders tried to keep affair under wraps

Placebo works as well as anti-depressants for mild depression

Ben Gurion U Conference on Children: "There is not a day in which there is not a report of sexual abuse in the chareidi community"

 YNET

מנהל השירות הפסיכולוגי־חינוכי במודיעין עילית, ישי שליף, אמר כי למד עם השנים שיש צורך להתמודד עם הבעיה של פגיעה מינית במגזר החרדי. לדבריו, בגיבויו של הרב יוסף שלום אלישיב התקבלה פסיקה לגבי הצורך בדיווח בנושא, בעקבותיה "אין יום שעובר ללא דיווח".

מנהלת מרכז "בלבנו" לטיפול בילדים ונוער שנפגעו מינית, בת שבע שיינין, הוסיפה כי החברה החרדית נבדלת מרצון, מה שמייצר סיכון גדול יותר לילד החרדי. "הילד החרדי לומד מגיל אפס לציית, בלי לשאול למה. ילדים לא ייספרו על דברים רעים מחשש ללשון הרע".

שיינין הוסיפה ואמרה כי קיים הבדל בין ילדים בעלי תשובה לילדים חרדים, בכמות הדיווחים, לטובת בעלי התשובה, להם קל יותר לדווח.

מנהלת מרכז הסיוע לנשים דתיות, דבי גרוס, חשפה כי בשנה שעברה הופעלו כ־2,000 סדנאות לילדים חרדים בגילאי שלוש עד 18 בנושא מניעת פגיעות מיניות.

Rav Zilberstein - cautions & restrictions of psychotherapy involving male therapists & female clients

Jnd 
Translation posted here

פסק הלכה עליו חתם הגאון רבי יצחק זילברשטיין שליט"א, ואליו הצטרפו מרנן גדולי ישראל וחשובי הרבנים והדיינים שליט"א, קובע לראשונה, סייגים ברורים ומחייבים בכל הנוגע לטיפולים פסיכולוגיים, וכי "מוטלת חובה על המנהל להשגיח על הפרדה" בין מטפל ומטופל מהמין השני, "ואם אי אפשר צריך להיוועץ עם רב בית החולים מה לעשות בכל מקרה ומקרה".

Atheists seeking the benefits of religion

A Jewish hockey player - whose family suffered from Nazis - plays for Germany -

New York Times

A hockey jersey hung in each player’s locker. It bore Germany’s national colors, black trimmed in red and gold. The front was emblazoned with an eagle above the word Deutschland. This would be Evan Kaufmann’s first time wearing the jersey. He removed it from the hanger and turned it around to see his family name spelled in capital letters. 

He would recall feeling a tingle of excitement. He felt something else, too, emotions that crisscrossed like the laces of his skates. He was proud to wear the jersey but also solemn about what history had done to the name on the back. His great-grandfather starved to death by the Nazis. His great-grandmother herded to extermination on a train to Auschwitz. His grandfather shuttled between ghettos and concentration camps, surviving somehow, finding a displaced sister after the war, pushing her from a hospital in a wheelbarrow after her lower left leg was amputated because of frostbite. 

On Feb. 10, Kaufmann finished dressing and skated onto the ice at a tournament in Belarus. With his initial shift, he became one of the few Jews to represent Germany in elite international sports since World War II, the first in ice hockey since the 1930s and perhaps the most visible to have had family members murdered in the Holocaust, according to sports historians and Jewish officials.

A Palestinian’s trial & military justice - is there an alternative?

NYTimes

A year ago, Islam Dar Ayyoub was a sociable ninth grader and a good student, according to his father, Saleh, a Palestinian laborer in this small village near Ramallah. 

Then, one night in January 2011, about 20 Israeli soldiers surrounded the dilapidated Dar Ayyoub home and pounded vigorously on the door. Islam, who was 14 at the time, said he thought they had come for his older brother. Instead, they had come for him. He was blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a jeep. 

From that moment, Islam’s childhood was over. Catapulted into the Israeli military justice system, an arm of Israel’s 44-year-old occupation of the West Bank, Islam became embroiled in a legal process as challenging and perplexing as the world in which he has grown up. The young man was interrogated and pressed to inform on his relatives, neighbors and friends.[...]

Alleged Australian child molesters David Kramer & Zev Sero - now in America

Forward

A child sex abuse scandal in Australia’s Jewish community has spilled into America, as a pending extradition, arrests in Australia and a slew of cover-up allegations put that community’s response to molestation under scrutiny.

Australian police are seeking to extradite convicted child molester David Kramer, currently in jail in Farmington, Mo., on suspicion of having abused children at a Chabad school in Melbourne during the 1990s. [...]

Waks, 35, who has been the catalyst for revelations about the Melbourne abuse scandal, told the Forward he was molested by Velvel Serebryanski, son of a prominent Chabad rabbi, at two Melbourne synagogues during the late 1980s.

Serebryanski, who goes by the name Zev Sero in New York, did not deny the allegations when a Forward reporter asked him about them at his Brooklyn home. [...]

Psychiatry debates whether the pain of loss is really depression

Los Angles Times

The pain of losing a loved one can be a searing, gut-wrenching hurt and a long-lasting blow to a person's mood, concentration and ability to function. But is grief the same as depression?

That's a lively debate right now, as the psychiatric profession considers a key change in the forthcoming rewrite of its diagnostic "Bible." That proposed modification -- one of many -- would allow mental health providers to label the psychic pain of bereavement a mood disorder and act quickly to treat it, in some cases, with medication. With the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's fifth edition set for completion by the end of this year, the editors of the British journal The Lancet have come out in strong opposition to the new language, calling grief a natural and healthy response to loss, not a pathological state.

"Grief is not an illness. It is more usefully thought of as part of being human, and a normal response to the death of a loved one," writes the editor of The Lancet. "Most people who experience the death of someone  they love do not need treatment by a psychiatrist or indeed by any doctor. For those who are grieving, doctors would do better to offer time, compassion, remembrance, and empathy, than pills."

Companies find that regular down time from internet increases productivity

Time

Some employers, however, are now attempting to flip the “off” switch. Companies from Atos, the French information technology services giant, to Deutsche Telekom to Google have recently adopted measures that force workers toward a better work-life balance, with scheduled breaks from the Internet and constant connectivity. Just last month, Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest automaker, pledged to deactivate emails on German staff BlackBerries during non-office hours. In a bid to combat employee burnout, staff at Volkswagen will be limited to only receiving emails on their devices from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they leave for the day, and will be in blackout mode the rest of the time.

“Employers are recognizing that it is helpful for employees to have boundaries,” says Stewart Friedman, a Wharton practice professor of management. “The challenges of distraction in the digital world are massive…. The big issue is attention. In this digital age — which has really only just begun — we are starting the process of learning how to create useful boundaries that allow us to pay attention to the things that matter, when they matter.”

These new policies signal that while corporations care about the psychological well-being of their workers, they are not totally altruistic. Evidence suggests that regular downtime leads to greater productivity. And although our addiction to digital devices is powerful — there is a reason, after all, that the BlackBerry is known as a “crackberry” — and we need some help breaking bad habits, it is not completely the responsibility of employers.

Queens public school teacher charged with sexually abusing boys

New York Times

 A computer teacher with a history of inappropriately touching children was arrested Thursday on charges of sexually abusing two boys at a Queens elementary school, the authorities said.

A spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney said the teacher, Wilbert Cortez, 49, touched the genitals and the buttocks of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old over their clothes in his classroom at Public School 174 in Rego Park on at least two occasions during the 2010-11 school year. [...]