Clergyman faces 21 years for abuse coverups

CNN   Lynn is the first high-ranking church figure charged with child endangerment for allegedly shuffling predator priests from parish to parish.

If convicted, he faces up to 21 years in prison.

Now-defrocked priest Edward Avery was due to go on trial with Brennan and Lynn, but he pleaded guilty in March after admitting to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy during the 1998-1999 school year. Avery, 69, was sentenced to two-and-a-half to five years in prison.

Nazi Victim’s Family must Return gold tablet to museum

NYTimes    A state appellate court in Brooklyn has ordered the family of a Holocaust survivor to return an ancient gold tablet to a German museum. 

The decision turns on its head the familiar scenario of Holocaust victims suing to reclaim property stolen or extorted from them by the Nazis. But in this case, according to court papers, the precious 3,200-year-old Assyrian artifact had been looted, not from the survivor, but from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, at the close of World War II. 

It is not clear how the survivor, Riven Flamenbaum, came into possession of the tablet after his liberation from Auschwitz in 1945, when he was sent to a displaced persons camp in southeastern Germany.

DA Hynes & Aguda on collision course

Jewish Journal   In an interview with the Forward, Hynes reportedly said that he was in “sharp disagreement” with the Agudah’s position, arguing that the rabbis “have no experience or expertise in sex abuse.” The Forward quoted Hynes as saying that he stressed his opposition in a telephone call with Zwiebel last week.

Zwiebel “still thinks they have a responsibility to screen,” Hynes said. “I disagree.”

Meanwhile, Hynes spokesman Jerry Schmetterer told The Jewish Week that Zwiebel “risks having the rabbi prosecuted for obstructing a law enforcement investigation.”

The shift puts Hynes’ office at odds with the haredi Orthodox community—a problem the Kol Tzedek program was supposed to solve.

In an interview last week with the New York Post, Hynes cited the insularity of Brooklyn’s haredi community and the need to protect sex-abuse victims from intimidation as the reason for not releasing the names of about 100 accused molesters from the community.

“Within days, people within this relentless community would identify the victims,” he told the Post. “Then the intimidation would start.

Rat studies, New Hope for Spine Injuries

NYTimes   Rats with a spinal cord injury that left their hind legs completely paralyzed learned to walk again on their own after an intensive training course that included electrical stimulation of the brain and the spine, scientists reported on Thursday. 

The report, published online on Thursday in the journal Science, provides a striking demonstration of what until recently few scientists thought possible: complete rehabilitation after a disabling blow to the spinal cord. After weeks of training, many of the rats could walk as well as before the injury, and some could run. 

The findings do not apply to all spinal injuries. The animals’ spinal columns were cut without being completely severed; there were still some nerve connections that extended intact through the injured area. But this is also the case for a substantial proportion — perhaps a quarter to a third — of people whose injuries are severe enough to confine them to a wheelchair.

Using unfiltered internet invalidates witness

http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/238796

אפקט הכנס ההיסטורי בקווינס? אחד מרבני מונסי שבניו יורק פסל אמש לעדות בחופה אדם המשתמש באינטרנט לא מסונן.

המדובר באב"ד סאטמר במונסי, הרב אברהם צבי וואזנר, שטען במהלך חופה שערך ובו שימש כמסדר הקידושין, כי בעקבות אמירתו של סבו לפיו משתמשי אינטרנט לא מסונן פסולים לעדות, יש לנהוג כך הלכה למעשה.

על פי הדיווח, האב"ד בירר בקרב משפחת הצדדים לגבי העדים, ומששמע כי הם מחזיקים בטלפון לא "כשרים" ובעלי אינטרנט לא מסונן, ביקש להביא עדים אחרים תחתיהם למעמד הח

Curtain falls on yy's saga

On 5/31/2012 1:21 PM,  --- wrote:

Your blog is thought provoking, and I’ve been following it for some time.  I was moved by yy’s story -- just about ready to post another comment -- and was surprised to see that the whole thing was removed.  Then I saw your tweet about “yy’s saga” which seemed to judge the author negatively, and that disturbed me.  Later I went back to the tweet and found that its content had been removed also.  I'm wondering what's going on.  Thanks.

Yes yy story was moving and well written and is a good example of a marriage collapsing. However despite posting anonymously - he did not want to be judged or criticized based on the personal details he wrote about himself - but only wanted to stimulate discussion of a general nature and in his words "get sympathy & empathy". I felt it was counterproductive for him to reveal his personal details of his life to the public as well as his judgments of his wife - and then to get irritated if readers didn't view events as he did and judged him harshly. He disagreed and got hurt and became angry with me for not taking his side - so the post was removed. My purpose in publishing was to encourage awareness and communication about an all too common problem. I felt that he was in fact benefiting from the feedback he got as well as in communicating the problem and thus it was a win-win situation. He clearly disagreed and asked that I remove his post which I did. I had written a more detailed description of events and but decided to remove it. 

Rav Wosner: Clarification of internet prohibition

BCHOL כמחחצית השעה לפני כניסת חג השבועות בארה"ב וחמשה ימים לאחר הכנס נגד 'פגעי הטכנולגיה' - נתלתה ברחבי ניו-יורק מודעה בחתימת ידו של הגר"ש וואזנר, בה הוא חוזר בו מדברים שאמר בכנס, בשידור חי מביתו בבני-ברק.

כזכור בעת הכנס, הופיע הגר"ש וואזנר בעל ה'שבט הלוי' ושידר דברים בשידור-חי לבאי הכנס. הגר"ש וואזנר התבטא כי הינו מעניק שורת הלכות שרק אם יאומצו יהיה הכנס ראוי לשמו.

בין היתר אמר הרב וואזנר, כי אסור להכניס מחשב הביתה, גם לצורכי עבודה, כי אין להיכנס לבית שיש בו אינטרנט לא מסונן. הוא הדגיש כי דבריו הינן מעיקר ההלכה והוסיף כי על מוסדות הלימוד לסלק משורותיהן ילד החשוף בביתו לאינטרנט.

בשל לחץ כבד של עסקנים ושל אחד מאדמו"רי ארה"ב, אשר התנגד לסילוק ילדים ממוסדות החינוך, חזר בו הגר"ש מפסקיו ופרסם מודעה עם פסקי הלכה מתונים יחסית.

במודעה החדשה אין איסור גמור על שימוש בבית במחשב לצורכי עבודה, ואת סילוק הילדים ממוסדות החינוך מחליפה חובה להצבת סייגים וגדרים.

Do "child safety zones" stop abuse?

NYTimes    Orange County finds itself at the enter of a new wave of laws restricting the movement of sex offenders. The county government and a dozen cities here have banned sex offenders from even setting foot in public parks, on beaches and at harbors, rendering almost half the parks in Orange County closed to them. Ten more cities are considering similar legislation. 

And Orange County is far from alone. In recent years, communities around the country have gone beyond regulating where sex offenders can live and begun banning them outright from a growing list of public places.[...]

The proliferation of such restrictions reflects the continued concerns of parents and lawmakers about potential recidivism among sex offenders. But it has also increasingly raised questions about their effectiveness, as well as their fairness. 

Opponents have dismissed “child safety zones” as unenforceable, saying they are designed to make politicians look tough on crime and drive sex offenders from the area, not make children safer.

R' Slifkin: Unsung heroes of Daf Yomi

Rabbi N. Slifkin   But who are the guests of honor at the grand Siyumim? Who performs the siyum, who makes the speeches, who gets the glory? Not the Daf Yomi participants and not even the maggidei shiurim. Instead, it's the roshei yeshivah.  [...]

With the glory being given to the exponents of Daas Torah, it provides them with a platform to use the event for the politics of Daas Torah. The last Siyum HaShas took place during the peak of the controversial ban on three of my books. One yeshivah figurehead took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the ideology of Daas Torah, and capitalized on the martyrs of the Holocaust, in whose memories the Siyum HaShas is dedicated. Rav Mattisyahu Solomon spoke about how the martyrs demand us to reject the "makeshift answers" to conflicts between the Gemara and science that are offered by the "midgets of our generation." Aside from the question of whether approaches to the Gemara offered by countless Geonim and Rishonim and Acharonim can be called "makeshift," and the question of whether the victims of the Holocaust really did die for this belief, one has to wonder why a siyum on Daf Yomi is being used to further such an agenda. It's a siyum haShas, not an Agudas Yisroel convention! 

Orthodox Jewish society is made up of many different important people and institutions. We need baalei battim and teachers and schools and lay leaders and yeshivos and roshei yeshivah and universities and academics and shuls and community rabbis and mohelim and shochtim. And there are differences of opinion about whether leadership should be held by lay leaders, community rabbis or roshei yeshivah. But Daf Yomi is not about any of those three groups. They have plenty of opportunities to receive glory, at dinners and Internet Asifas and Agudas Yisroel conventions. Daf Yomi is about the ordinary man who takes his ArtScroll Gemara on the train with him every morning on the way to work. He is the hero of the Siyum HaShas. Let's grant him his well-deserved honor!

The Digital Divide is in wasting time

NYTimes    In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families. [...]

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.  [...]

“Despite the educational potential of computers, the reality is that their use for education or meaningful content creation is minuscule compared to their use for pure entertainment,” said Vicky Rideout, author of the decade-long Kaiser study. “Instead of closing the achievement gap, they’re widening the time-wasting gap.”[...]

ORA still wants a Get Me'usa

Why "Liberal" Jews are Turning Against Israel

 Guest post: by Eliezer Abrahamson   Olive Seedlings

I recently came across an article by a Rabbi Brian Walt, titled "Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism." Rabbi Walt obviously comes from a fundamentally different religious and theological perspective than I. That being so, I usually wouldn't even bother writing about such an article. However, I believe that Rabbi Walt's article expresses views that are, amazingly enough, at conflict with my own at an even more basic level than theology (which shouldn't even be possible). The differences touch upon the most basic issues of all, the role of rationality in human life and arguably even the basic nature of reality. Moreover, I believe that the kind of thinking underlying Rabbi Walt's article is becoming increasingly common, even in (perhaps even especially in) those circles that ostensibly celebrate rationality. 

The article is a near-perfect illustration of the superficial romanticism that underlies much of what goes by the name "liberalism" nowadays, and helps explain why "liberal" Jews are increasingly finding themselves feeling like they have to chose between their identity as "liberals" and their support for Israel. By "superficial romanticism", I am referring to a worldview in which one's "feelings" have absolute moral authority. I am not addressing the various political and ideological positions commonly associated with liberalism (of any stripe), nor am I addressing the the fact that our emotions inevitably color our moral judgments. I am addressing the increasing tendency to see  superficial feelings, i.e. one's immediate gut reaction to an idea, image, or story, as having sufficient moral authority to render any further thought irrelevant. While such thinking certainly exists in all circles, my observation has been that this kind of thinking is increasingly seen in ostensibly "liberal" circles as not only respectable but as "deep" and "profound", and that much of what passes for "liberalism" today is simply advocacy for and celebration of such a worldview. [...]  click for full article Olive Seedlings

Marrying a Divorcee or Widow

Pesachim(112a): Do not cook in a pot that your fellow used for cooking. What is that referring to? – Do not marry a divorce during her first husband’s lifetime. As the Master said: A divorced man who marries a divorced woman – there are four entities present in the bed. Alternatively this advice also applies to not marrying a widow because not all fingers are equal [i.e., sex organs and she will think that sexual relations with her new husband are not as good as with the first and she will come to disparage him – Rashi].

Wife divorced against her will - status bedieved?

One of the important changes in divorce law resulted from the decree of Rabbeinu Gershom that a woman can not be divorced against her will - despite the fact that she can be divorced against her will according to Torah law. Therefore in modern times if a woman refuses to accept a get - her husband can not remarry unless he gets a Heter Meah Rabbonim which indicates that decree of Rabbeinu Gershom does not apply in his case. The HMR isn't a divorce but an allowance for bigamy. There are also questions as to whether this decree was made for a limited time- and therefore is not applicable anymore and also that it was not universally accepted.

As we have been discussing the question of what happens if the halacha is violated and the husband is forced to give a get - is this get totally invalid or only on the rabbinic level - there is a similar question regarding forcing a get on a woman. Is the Get good bedieved or is the get invalidated? This is discussed at length in the Sdei Chemed.

The significance of this question is obvious. If a husband is fed up with his wife's extortion or use of secular courts - what would happen if he simply forced her to accept a get? Or alternatively if the husband uses the threat of a forced get to extort better terms from his wife - is it a genuine threat? What if he remarried after a forced get without a Heter Meah Rabbonim? Even more more problematic - what if she remarried after receiving a forced get? Would her children be mamzerim? Would she be forced to leave that marriage?

Shulchan Aruch (E.H. 119:6): A woman can be divorced against her will. REMA: Even if he doesn't have sufficient funds to pay her kesuba or dowry - that does not prevent the divorce from working. He should divorce her and then she should take him to beis din to collect what is owed her. All of this is according to the law of the Torah. However Rabbeinu Gershom decreed that a man can not divorce his wife unless she agrees and if he does he transgresses the religious law...So even if he want to give her her kesuba - he can not divorce her today against her will. If he transgresses this prohibition of Rabbeinu Gershom in modern times and then remarries he can no longer be called a sinner