NY Sun According to the New York Times, the rabbi told the D.A. of the Aguda’s policy that members of the community first consult with a rabbi before going to the secular authorities. The D.A., according to the account in the Times, told the Aguda’s president that he “wouldn’t interfere with someone’s decision to consult with his or her rabbi about allegations of sexual abuse.” But, the Times continued, the district attorney also told the Aguda’s president that he “would expect that these allegations of criminal conduct be reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.”
This seems to have driven the Times nearly to distraction. It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as reckoning that the religious duty first to consult a rabbi “outranks,” as the Times paraphrased the rabbi, “even New York’s mandatory reporting law.” It quotes Rabbi Zwiebel as saying: “The rabbis’ consensus is go to a rabbi, because of the stringency of the matter on both sides of the equation, both the Jewish legal implications and because you can destroy a person’s life with a false report.” The Times reports the sentiment was taken issue with by the leading Democratic candidates for mayor.
“Our first concern is with victims of crime, especially potential victims of child abuse, and the first call should be to the appropriate law enforcement authorities,” Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, was quoted by the Times as saying. What the Times quoted the mayor’s spokesman, Marc LaVorgna, as saying, is “Any abuse allegations,” the mayor said through a spokesman, “should be brought to law enforcement, who are trained to assess their accuracy and act appropriately.”
This strikes us as a conceit. The notion that secular authorities are wiser, or better trained, than religious authorities looks hubristic against the millennia of case law that line the walls of the great rabbinic studies. Within the Jewish communities, if not in City Hall, the rabbis are regarded with enormous respect. No doubt that rabbis can make mistakes. But so can the secular courts and caseworkers. Let us just say that if allegations of assault by Jerry Sandusky of Penn State on a boy in a shower had been reported to a rabbi, his alleged years of predation would have been cut far shorter than they were.
The Times seems obsessed with the idea that rabbis — and by extension, other clergy — might have a role here. But we don’t know any religious authority — least of all Rabbi Zweibel, himself a lawyer and a veteran of one of the city’s most distinguished law firms — who is suggesting that any Jewish person or anyone else commit misprision of felony,* which is failing to report a crime. Our impression is that the rabbis would dispute the power of the law of misprision to prohibit their right to exercise freely the rabbinical authority that is so basic to the Jewish religion. That right is protected under the same amendment to the Constitution — the First — that protects newspapers like the Times and Mayor Bloomberg’s own private news service from investigating felonious behavior that hasn’t yet been reported to the police.
Discrimination is when a majority systematically excludes a minority, thereby keeping the minority from participating in the life of the society.
Your screening factors are a typical example of discrimination: As long as the shidduch candidates with divorced parents etc are a minority, it is very easy for the majority to forgo them and keep them from participating in majority culture. Of course, it could be that some majority candidates do not find their best bashert (who has divorced parents and was excluded by "screening", but only the second best (whose parents did not divorce and seemed acceptable). However, this is not a drama, he can live with second best instead of best.
For the excluded minority it is a drama, because they will be systematically rejected for facts that have nothing to do with their person.
You studied psychology, so I suppose it is important to you that Jews not be excluded from the University system as they often were in Europe.
So why do you want to do to your fellow Jew something you would not accept if a non-jew were to do it to you?