R' Bechhofer: Get M'eusa - all questions answered

I will be giving a shiur on Shavuos night, 3:30 am, at Blueberry Hill shul in Monsey http://ohaivyisroel.net/ on the topic of persuading vs. compelling gittin. I will, of course, address all the "issues" raised on this blog. You are all invited to attend!

If there is sufficient interest (email me), then I can give the shiur over again after Yom Tov as a conference call.

KT, GS,
YGB

Regulations to stop Prison Rape

NYTimes    [[ This is especially a problem for jailed child molesters - who are targeted as punishment. ]]

The Justice Department on Thursday issued the first comprehensive federal rules aimed at “zero tolerance” for sexual assaults against inmates in prisons, jails and other houses of detention. 

The regulations, issued after years of discussions among officials and prisoner advocacy groups, address a problem that a new government study finds may afflict one out of every 10 prisoners, more than twice as many as suggested by an earlier survey.

Having Aharon fired: Passive pressure of R' Tam?!

Guest post: The measures taken by ORA and Tamar's other supporters against Aharon are far more than passive, and started well over a year before any beis din order against Aharon of any sort.  For example, Tamar and hers supporters, such as ORA, are attempting to have Aharon fired (and have been doing so for more than a year before any beis din order against Aharon of any sort).

(This is not to mention the effective threats to his life.) To demand Aharon's boss insist that Aharon give a get is to demand Aharon's firing if he doesn't give a get. And the publicity campaign is clearly intended to make Aharon fear for his job should he not give a get. (See below for just a small sample.) ORA took these actions despite the position of Rabbi Schachter (ORA's posek) that pressure on a spouse can only "be done with a legitimate beis din."

;http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/739308/Rabbi_Hershel_Schachter/Options_for_Helping_Agunot# at 40:00.  

Note also that the parties mutually agreed to bring the case to the Baltimore Beis Din, which held several hearings with both parties participating, and the Beis Din never ruled that a get must be given. Tamar and her supporters have not explained how the child's best interests would be served by Aharon's losing his job.  But then again, for Tamar and her supporters, the best interests of the child have always been secondary at best (or subsumed by the principle that whatever Tamar is convinced will make Tamar happy is necessarily inthe best interests of the child). Why Tamar and her advocates think that Aharon would be more likely to give a get if he were to be fired from his job is mysterious – but those attacking Aharon are mostly interested in making ideological points, getting their names into the newspapers, and fundraising, (some are attacking Aharon to avoid themselves being attacked, while others do so to satisfy the Epsteins), and care little, if at all, as to whether Tamar actually receives a get.

Why some are demanding that a non-Jewish government and its officials intervene in religious disputes within the Jewish community is even more mysterious - and disregards the tragedies such practice has brought upon the Jewish People through the ages.

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ORA essentially threatened Aharon in September 2010 that if Aharon did not do what ORA demanded, ORA would (amongst other things) attempt to have him fired, specifically noting that their campaign against Aharon would be picked up by the newspapers that cover Congress

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The demonstration against Aharon in December 2010 was aimed, at least in part, in having him fired.  For example, there is a poster denouncing Aharon's boss in a Washington Jewish Week picture of the rally.  http://washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=14039
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=203305
The plight of an ‘aguna’ reaches Capitol Hill  ==============================================
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuel-herzfeld/dave-camp-has-the-right-to-fire-aharon-friedman_b_1388471.html
Dave Camp: You Have the Right to Fire Aharon Friedman 
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On Dec. 20, [2010,] Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Washington, who supports Ms. Epstein, wrote to [Aharon's boss], accusing Mr. Friedman of “psychological terrorism.” Rabbi Herzfeld urged [Aharon's boss] to “tell Aharon to give the get immediately,” and warned that “it is appropriate to also rally in the vicinity of Aharon’s work place.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/us/04divorce.html

Woman beaten for alleged child abuse

Ynet   Two men were charged on Thursday with assaulting a 70-year-old woman due to what they believed was her involvement in a pedophile ring that operated in a Jerusalem neighborhood, Ynet reported. 

The men, who also suspected that the woman was lecturing children on Christianity, were charged at the capital's district court with aggravated assault, aggravated breaking and entering, conspiring to commit a crime and issuing threats.

According to the indictment, 22-year-old Moshe Schleider and another man, whose identity has yet to be cleared for publication, suspected that the woman and others were sexually assaulting minors in tunnels located beneath her home. 

Yeshiva is an artificial institution - Rav Hutner

This is part of Rav Hutner's talk on why the yeshiva system was instituted. It is the last chapter in the Pachad Yitzhok for Shavuos. I hope to eventually translate it as it is an important chidush.  Basic idea is that the yeshiva system is comparable to the use of incubators. It works but is a not ideal - the true Torah system is for the father to teach his son. Click here for Translation

Chinuch Rav Hutner Pachad Yitzchok Shavuous

20 yr Marriage annuled for invalid witnesses

Jewish Press   Looking for a creative solution, Rabbi Abergel asked the court staff to obtain the couple’s ketubahh and summoned the witnesses who had signed it at the wedding. The Rabbi questioned them at length and discovered that they are “Eaters of treif food and do not observe Shabbat and the commandments.”

In an unprecedented move, Rabbi Abergel decided to annul the marriage of M. and her runaway husband, on the grounds that the witnesses who signed the ketubah were legally improper. This means that M. and her husband had never really married, and so there is no need for a get to permit M. to marry now. The rabbinic court judges adopted the decision, as did the Jerusalem High Beit Din, which is the final arbiter in religious Jewish cases, just below Israel’s Supreme Court.

Man killed for complaining about noise

YNet   The State Prosecutor's Office has decided to charge an 18-year-old Beersheba resident with murder over the stabbing of Gadi Vichman on Thursday. The State had considered an indictment on manslaughter charges but eventually decided on murder.

"It can't be murder. The indictment shows that the victim rammed into him first," Eden Ohayon's attorney said. "I am shocked that the prosecution decided to bring this charge against my client. We expected manslaughter," Rotem Tobul said.

Brooklyn DA responds to attack by Ed Koch

NYTimes    The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, on Wednesday defended his record in the face of criticism over his handling of accusations of child sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.  

In an op-ed article in The Daily News, Mr. Hynes wrote that it was absurd “to suggest that we cover up, downplay or in any way ‘give a break’ to sex offenders in the Orthodox Jewish community.” 

Mr. Hynes also had a pointed e-mail exchange with former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who questioned the district attorney’s policies in a blog post in The Huffington Post. 

Both men were reacting to an article in The New York Times last week that examined Mr. Hynes’s record in these cases and his relationships with influential rabbis in Brooklyn’s growing ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Rally to defend accused child rapist

Fox News

Aleppo Codex - who stole it?

Boston Globe  Friedman’s dogged journalistic curiosity forces him to re-examine every aspect of that shiny heroic narrative. His inquiry yielded “The Aleppo Codex,’’ a thrilling, step-by-step quest to discover what really happened to Judaism’s most important book: who rescued it from the synagogue, how it came to be held by Israel’s Ben-Zvi Institute, and why nearly half of its pages were missing by the time it got there. With the help of a motley crew of Codex enthusiasts, Friedman goes up against a campaign of silence so effective that it is only slightly cracking 50 years later, when all of the major players are dead.

What is all this silence protecting? Nothing less than parts of the founding mythology of the state of Israel. Many of the book’s most astute and well-earned revelations are also its biggest surprises, and it would be unfair to reveal them here. But I will allow myself one spoiler: There was a protracted court battle for ownership of the Codex, between the Israeli state and the Aleppo refugees. In Friedman’s deft characterization: “Ben-Zvi and his comrades had willed a Jewish state into being against impossible odds, almost against the very logic of human events; they had glared at history and watched it bend to their will.” In their eyes, the diaspora Jewish communities had been in exile, and Israel, as the homeland of all Jews, was the rightful heir to their treasures. “The Aleppo Jews, on the other hand, had not subsumed themselves into the Zionist project and its version of history . . . [they] saw the Crown as the symbol of a place almost none of them had ever considered to be exile.’’

Bash victim to support accused child molester

New York Daily News    Yiddish signs posted in Williamsburg asking for contributions for accused child molester Nechemya Weberman.

Posters promoting an upcoming fund-raiser for a rabbi charged with sexually abusing a teenage girl blanketed Jewish shopping strips in Williamsburg Monday - sparking a campaign protesting the charity bash.

Signs supporting Nechemya Weberman, 53, - written in Hebrew and Yiddish mix - promote a Wednesday gathering at the Continental Caterers dining hall at 75 Rutledge Street.

“It is very painful,” said the victim’s mother about the street ads up on poles on Bedford and Lee Avenues. “The community has taken his side.”

At least two styles of posters were spotted. The more cartoonish set shows a missile falling onto a crowd of Orthodox Jewish men announcing a danger hitting the neighborhood.

The ads explain Weberman’s innocence by bashing the victim’s story and questioning why she decided talk to the police.

BatMelech criticizes my approval of discrimination

[guest post] This was a comment on another post - Psak Choosing vs Avoiding error  which clearly crystallizes the divide between us. 


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Batmelech  May 16, 2012 11:08 AM wrote:

I think that the blog author is not aware what discrimination means.

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?

N.Y. Sun: Defends rabbis as police gatekeepers

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.

Harassment of victim in Kolko case

Jewish Week    She and her husband, parents of a now 13-year-old boy who they allege was sexually molested by his Brooklyn yeshiva teacher, were doing the unthinkable in the borough’s ultra-Orthodox community: bucking a system stacked heavily against them and pursuing a civil lawsuit against the Flatbush school that employed the teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko.

The system was pushing back, with a vengeance.

A prominent Brooklyn rabbi and Yaakov Applegrad, an administrator at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, the school parents were suing, asked the parents to a meeting — without their lawyer. After pleading with the couple to drop the suit, Applegrad and the rabbi turned up the heat and played the card they hoped would resonate powerfully with religious Jews: they compared the parents to Nazis for attempting to “bankrupt” the yeshiva. The Nazis, they said, destroyed the yeshiva in Europe built before the war by the father of Rabbi Lipa Margulies, Torah Temimah’s founder and dean. Now, the two suggested, the parents were doing the same with their lawsuit. (It is not clear that Rabbi Margulies’ father actually had a yeshiva in Europe).