Lev Tahor: Haaretz's view of controversial group

Haaretz

Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans is trying to get me to repent and become religious. To this end, for the past four months he has been spending hours with me on the phone from Canada. He believes I have a good Jewish soul that somehow got lost, and insists he can, and must, show it the way back. I disagree with him about the soul, the Jewish thing and the path, but do find many other interesting subjects to discuss with him.

Rabbi Helbrans is a bit disappointed that I haven’t become religious yet, but he’s not giving up. He keeps trying at every opportunity. He maintains that discussion of God should not be relegated to the realm of fate, but rather that it is an absolute and provable truth. Therefore, before he would consent to be interviewed, he insisted that I devote 10 hours to listening to him present his proofs. Helbrans declared that if I came to him with an honest desire to explore the truth, I would no longer be able to deny God and his Torah, as given to the Jewish people at Sinai. [....]

'Anonymous' takes down 40+ pedophiles sites

Time

Anonymous has turned its attentions from corporations to pedophiles with the news that the hacktivist group has taken down multiple child pornography sites, including one of the largest known, with account details of its 1589 users being posted online as evidence.

The incident was just part of something Anonymous is calling “Operation Darknet,” a move by the group to eliminate child pornography on the Tor network. Tor, which was originally developed as a way of protecting government communications by the U.S. Navy, now describes itself as “a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet.” But the privacy and anonymity it offers has been abused by child pornographers, something that Anonymous aims to correct with its new campaign.

Benizri's lying to parole board prompts calls for reform of system

Haaretz

The Israel Prison Service plans to test a treatment program for prisoners convicted of political corruption, according to the head of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority, the statutory body that helps set standards for prisoner releases.

The PRA requested that such a program be instituted following the statements made by former Shas minister Shlomo Benizri after his early release from prison last week.

Benizri had expressed remorse to a parole board for the bribery, breach of trust, conspiracy and obstruction of justice he committed while labor and social affairs minister, and was thus marked for early release after serving only two-and-a-half years of his four-year sentence. Immediately after his release, however, he retracted his statement of regret and proclaimed that he'd been framed and was innocent.

Update: Baby’s Death Renews Debate Over a Circumcision Ritual

NYTimes 

Updating this post

Prosecutors are investigating the death of a newborn boy who died in September after contracting herpes through a controversial practice of ritual circumcision, reviving a debate in New York over safety and religious freedom. 

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, confirmed on Wednesday that the investigation was continuing, but declined to comment further. 

The cause of death of the 2-week-old boy, who died at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn on Sept. 28, was Type 1 herpes, caused by “ritual circumcision with oral suction,” according to the medical examiner’s office.[...]

Rav Kook: Connection of Purim & Amalek to Geirus

  PURIM61.htm 

Rav Kook then quoted the Talmudic statement in Sanhedrin 99b that Timna wanted to marry into the family of Abraham but was not accepted. In the end, she became the concubine of Esau's eldest son. "Better to be a maidservant to this people," Timna reasoned, "than a princess of another people." As punishment for rejecting Timna, the Jewish people were cursed with the eternal enmity of Timna's son - Amalek.

This of course is the connection to the story of Purim, for Haman, the enemy of the Jews, was a descendant of Amalek. Haman's hatred of the Jews and his decree to destroy them in fact originated in the failure to convert his great-grandmother Timna. But this error was redressed in the time of Mordechai and Esther, when "Many of the peoples of the land became Jews" (Esther 8:17).

Moldova votes to require castration for pedophiles

USA Today

 Foreigners convicted of sexually abusing children in Moldova will be mandatorily castrated, according to new legislation introduced Tuesday.

Parliament approved the law by a majority after lawmakers said the impoverished nation was attracting pedophiles from the West. It will become effective July 1.

The new law states foreign and Moldovan nationals found guilty of pedophilia will be chemically castrated, while courts will rule separately on those found guilty of rape.

The move was immediately criticized by the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights group, which said chemical castration should involve consent, and offenders should be properly informed about procedure while the law should have been preceded by a public debate. [...]

NYTimes looks at Shabbos Elevators

NYTimes

From sundown on Friday until the sun sets on Saturday, many observant Jews refrain from certain activities, including pushing elevator buttons, following a restriction that comes from a prohibition against creating sparks and fires. So in some buildings, elevators are programmed to stop automatically on every floor during the Sabbath. That way, observant Jews can hop right in and, eventually, get where they are going. 

These systems, long a fixture in hospitals as well, can be lifesavers for older people and those with disabilities, and they allow the observant to live on floors that are too high to hoof it. But they also slow down elevator traffic. A lot. [...]

More reliably, said Rabbi Weinstock, an associate rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, many doormen know where the observant people live and will push the appropriate button for them. But it is not acceptable, he said, to walk up to the doormen on a Saturday morning and ask them to do so. (Some rabbis also do not consider Shabbos elevators to be acceptable .) 

Latest chumra for Parshas Zachor & Megila

"These are for the benefit of the public - it is proper to clean one's ears prior to hearing Parshos Zachor"

Aide to top Republican refuses to divorce wife

Aharon Friedman seruv

Cross Currents by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

Tamar Epstein is an agunah with an impressive list of rabbinic supporters. Her ex, Aharon Friedman, has exhausted all his legal options, both in beis din and in secular court. The divorce has been granted, but Friedman is unhappy with the way he has been treated, and is denying his ex-wife a get, trying to leverage terms more to his liking.

Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky is one of the signatories to a shtar seruv against Friedman. Rav Yisrael Belsky, who at one point was counted in Friedman’s camp, has turned against him. R[av] Hershel Schachter has taken a personal role in applying public shame pressure against Friedman. While it is always possible to empathize with both sides in a dispute, at some point the law must speak. After a person has been given every opportunity to be heard in legal proceedings, any assistance given to the losing party is nothing less than a stab at the process of law itself. We are well past that point in the case of Aharon Friedman.

You can help by simply signing a petition, and urging your friends to do the same.

=====================
update:
my  brother Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn wrote:

I told Mr. Friedman not to give a GET because of coercion and humiliation, as such as GET is invalid, and the wife could not remarry anyway. On my website  http://www.getamarriage.com/ I have the sources from the Rashbo, Bais Yosef, Radvaz, Shach and Chazon Ish that it is forbidden to produce a GET by humiliation and that such a GET is invalid. I wanted to talk to the Epstein side but Ora and others on her side refused. They want to win with terror, even if in halacha the new children would be mamzerim.

I discussed coerced Gittin with posek HaDor Rab Yosef Shalom Elyashev shlit"o and he told me that any Beth Din that cuts corners to produce a GET for an "Aguinah" that he takes away from them the status of a Beth Din.

see also  Daas torah blog postings

See also the article by Rabbi Tzvi Gartner for a full discussion of a forced get.

 the article by Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz dealing with the New York Get bill.

the article by Rabbi Gedaliah Dov Schwartz  dealing with the New York Get bill

Israeli court recognizes lesbian couple as 2 mothers of child

YNet

The Ramat Gan Family Court has ruled in favor of a lesbian couple, recognizing both women as their child's mothers on Sunday, setting a legal precedent.

The couple received permission from the Health Ministry in 2006 to undergo a medical procedure, in which one of the women's egg was extracted, fertilized with donated sperm and implanted in the second woman's womb. But when their son was born, the Health Ministry allowed only the woman who gave birth to register as the boy's mom, requiring her partner to undergo an adoption process....

It appears, however, that the precedent might not have the anticipated impact due to the fact that the Health Ministry has outlawed the transfer of eggs from one woman to another in 2011.

The liberal dilemma: Will boycotting hummus bring world peace?

NYTimes

Collectivism, of course, makes a fetish of process. That is probably the most benign way to interpret what has recently been going on at the co-op, the largest in the country, owned and operated by its 16,000 members. For a few years now, a small contingent has been debating whether the organization should join the global movement known as BDS, which calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it returns all Arab land occupied in 1967. 

Every other week, the co-op’s newspaper is consumed not only by epic, impassioned, sometimes-vitriolic letters about the issue, but also letters about how to talk about the issue, about how to think about the Middle East and about the appropriateness of these kinds of debates in a place that above all exists to purvey the right kind of clementine. There are letters about the kinds of typographical errors made in these letters. At the co-op’s next monthly meeting, on March 27, a vote will be conducted to decide whether a bigger vote, among all co-op members, ought to be conducted, authorizing a boycott of Israeli products.

50 year feud betwen Belz & Satmar finally ends

Haaretz

On February 21, the Supreme Court struck down the so-called Tal Law, under which ultra-Orthodox men studying at yeshivas were granted a draft exemption. Concurrently, an equally auspicious event, from the viewpoint of the Haredi community, was held. This one was a surprise meeting between the two leaders of the ultra-Orthodox courts from Belz and Machnovka. 

The meeting was the result of conciliatory efforts between the Belzer Rebbe and the Satmar Rebbe - the latest episode in a soap opera that has riveted hundreds of thousands of Haredim around the world since last January. The protagonists are the Belzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokach, and his brother-in-law, the head of the Satmar sect, Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum. They lead two of the largest Hasidic courts in the world, they are both 64, and they are both married to daughters of Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the head of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty and a wholesale producer of daughters for Hasidic courts (a third daughter is also married to a rebbe ). The two sisters, Sarah Rokach and Sasha Teitelbaum, played a key bridging role.

Baby allegedly dies from metzitza - major discussion & sources

Gothamist

A two-week old infant died last fall in a Brooklyn hospital from herpes contracted from a religious circumcision. According to the Daily News, the unidentified infant died last September at Maimonides Hospital—the cause of death was listed as “disseminated herpes simplex virus Type 1, complicating ritual circumcision with oral suction.” The case sounds eerily similar to that of Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, a Rockland County mohel who was found to have given three babies herpes through the ritual. Fisher specialized in the ultra-Orthodox ritual known as metzizah b’ peh, in which a rabbi or mohel removes blood from the wound with his mouth. One of those three babies infected with herpes by Fisher died, and the city Health Department filed a restraining order stopping Fisher from performing the procedure. But the city ultimately caved and handed the matter over onto a Jewish religious court

Metzitzah B’peh Controversy: The View from Israel By By Mordechai Halperin, Translated from the Hebrew by Yocheve - Jewish Action - OU.ORG

Metzitzah B’peh Controversy: Rabbinic Polemics and Applying the Lessons of History By N. Daniel Korobkin - Jewish Action - OU.ORG

http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/765633/Rabbi_Aryeh_Lebowitz/Ten_Minute_Halacha_-_Metzitzah_B%27Peh#

Shlomo Pappenheim silenced after being beaten

kikarhashabat

לפני שבועיים ימים, בליל שבת, נזרק שמואל חיים פפנהיים מבית המדרש של חסידות 'תולדות אהרון' בבית שמש, הבוקר, הוא מפרסם מכתב התנצלות ושב לזרועות החסידות.

הזעם בחסידות 'תולדות אהרון' כלפי פפנהיים הגיע לשיא בשל ראיון שהעניק לאחד מכלי התקשורת הכלליים, בו ייחסו לו התבטאויות שונות, שלטענתו כלל לא נאמרו על-ידו.

בעקבות התקרית האלימה, פעלו רבות בני משפחת פפנהיים בקרב קהילת 'תולדות אהרון', בכדי לאפשר את שובו של שמואל חיים לחיק הקהילה.