"Taliban mother" released after 4 years in jail

YNET  After four years behind bars, a Beit Shemesh resident known as "Taliban mom" was released from prison on Sunday. The woman was convicted in 2009 of aggravated assault and abuse of a minor for continually abusing six of her 12 children for 25 years.

The woman's husband was also convicted of abuse and failure to report the abuse to the authorities, and was sentenced to six months in prison.

The mother, who was nicknamed "Taliban mom" on account of her refusal to reveal her face during her trial, was originally charged with abusing all 12 of her children.

The final indictment included multiple counts of abuse against only six of the the children, both due to some of the cases falling under the statute of limitations, and the fact that several of the children refused to testify.

Frozen (potential) grandchildren - latest trend

 NYTimes   The technology to freeze a woman’s delicate eggs to be used later, when the eggs being released by her ovaries may no longer be viable, has improved sharply over the past decade. There currently is no single source of data on the number of women who are choosing to freeze their eggs, but doctors in the United States say the practice is slowly growing. 

The procedure remains expensive, generally costing between $8,000 and $18,000. And because it offers no guarantees and is still considered experimental by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a professional association, it can seem to some like an extravagant gamble. 

But it is a gamble that many would-be grandparents are willing to take with their daughters, even if it means navigating a potentially uncomfortable conversation.[...]

Even Ms. West’s mother, an international environmental and human rights lawyer, whom Ms. West described as “very career oriented” and “not the type to nag,” could not resist a joke after hearing how many of her daughter’s eggs had been successfully frozen. “I have 26 grandbabies!” she exclaimed.

 See this article  Psychology Today: How eggs are different from frozen waffles

Hi-tech exec - charged with online child abuse

YNet  A 41-year-old high-tech executive has been charged with a line of serious sexual offences involving minors on Sunday. A 44-page indictment filed with the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court lists 33 counts based on the testimonies of female and male teenagers. The prosecution noted there is evidence for dozens of additional acts.

In one of the cases described in the indictment, the defendant solicited a 13-year-old boy to perform indecent acts and acts of sodomy on his 11-year-old sister.

Posing as sexually experienced teenage girl, the defendant victimized dozens of teenagers and convinced them to perform indecent acts as well as acts of rape and sodomy on camera on various online chat rooms.  [...]

Fight over Yated - Rav S. Auerbach's side

kikarhashabat

פרשת המחלוקת בבטאון יתד נאמן ממשיכה להסעיר את הציבור החרדי: שעה קלה לפני כניסת השבת הגיע הרב שמואל אריה לוין, מרבני ארגנטינה ומתלמידי מרן הרב שך זצ"ל, אל ביתו של הגר"ש אויערבך בירושלים שם זעק מרה כנגד ההשתלטות על העיתון

לדבריו, הוא זכה להיות בביתו של הרב שך בשעה שהכריז על הקמת העיתון, בכדי שיהיה שופר ראוי להפצת ההשקפה הטהורה ולהילחם את מלחמות היהדות הנאמנה.

"

לאחר שהוקם העיתון", אמר הרב לוין, "הרב שך בכה בפניי שאינו יכול לנוח ולהיות בשלווה כל זמן שרוצים להרוס את עיתון יתד נאמן

[....]

"ועכשיו", המשיך הרב לזעוק, "כואב הלב שהגיע "בעל בית" מניו יורק ומבקש להשתלט על העיתון בגלל שיש לו כסף".

$28 million award in religious abuse case

ABC News    A Northern California jury has awarded $28 million in damages to a woman who said the Jehovah's Witnesses allowed an adult member of a Fremont church to molest her when she was a child in the mid-1990s.

Alameda County jurors awarded $7 million in compensatory damages on Wednesday and another $21 million in punitive damages on Thursday to Candace Conti, her attorney, Rick Simons said.

"This is the largest jury verdict for a single victim in a religious child abuse case in the country," Simons told The Associated Press.

A Talmud chachom shouldn't serve his son?!

Kiddushin( 31b): R. Jacob b. Abbahu asked Abaye: ‘I, for instance, for whom my father pours out a cup [of wine] and my mother mixes it on my returning from the school, what am I to do’? — ‘Accept it from your mother,’ he replied: ‘but not from your father; for since he is a scholar, he may feel affronted.’

This is the halacha in Shulchan Aruch (Y.D. 240:25)

Thus that the halacha is that a father can serve his son a drink - but not if the father is a talmid chachom because it is against the mitzva to honor his father. Is this a din only for a son or it applies to every talmid chachom? Why will the father be upset if his son accepts? Why should the father even offer it if it in fact will cause him to be upset if his offer is accepted? Why wasn't Avraham upset at serving what he though were idol worshipers and in fact he is held up as a role model of chesed?

Perfectionism - On the Level

Rav Simcha Bunim Cohen honors July 4th

Last year the Lakewood Scoop  reported that the shul of Rav Cohen in Lakewood displayed an American Flag on the front of the shul to honor July 4th. It reported that displays of patriotism were strongly encouraged by Rav Avidgod Miller who was Rav Cohen's grandfather in law.

It also contained the following from Halacha for Today

Question: Displaying the American flag, is that considered a gentile ideal?

Answer by HaRav Avigdor Miller Zatzal:

Let me tell you something, Fifty years ago I wouldn’t have spoken about that. I have been speaking more than fifty years in public; I didn’t speak about American flags. We don’t need it. Who needs American flags? It wasn’t necessary. Today I say, if you want to do it, I say Yasher Koach. Do you know why? Because all the Reshaim are trampling on the flag, and they’re trying to desecrate America. You know why? Not because they’re good goyim, because they are Reshaim Gemurim; the liberals are trying to ruin everything. And when that wicked Supreme Court permitted burning an American flag, and saying you cannot make a law against it, it was a desecration of America

After all, America is a good country. We came from countries where we were persecuted, and this country gave us all the rights. I say we should kiss the ground of America. I was in Europe for some time; I went to study in the Yeshiva. I came back and I saw this was a blessed country; it’s a gift from Hashem to us. Shouldn’t we appreciate it? And therefore I say a Jew should hang out the flag. Yes; today yes. I won’t say you’re a sinner if you don’t, but I think it’s a good thing to hang out the flag today. It’s not a contradiction, not a contradiction by any means.

We hang out the flag from this Shul on the Fourth of July.

Is Yosef Kolko supported by Rav Simcha Bunim Cohen?

The new appeal ad for Yosef Kolko contains two changes from the previous appeal ad

- 1) A citation from the Rambam and 2) the use of Rav Simcha Bunim's shul as a conduit for donations. The Rambam (Hilchos Rotzeach1: 14-16) is not obviously not applicable because it applies to a victim not the perpetrator! However the involvement of Cong. Ateres Yeshaya is  disturbing.

For background information see Jewish Week Hella Winston- Parallel Justice System

Clergy fight change to statute of limitations

NYTimes   While the first criminal trial of a Roman Catholic church official accused of covering up child sexual abuse has drawn national attention to Philadelphia, the church has been quietly engaged in equally consequential battles over abuse, not in courtrooms but in state legislatures around the country.

The fights concern proposals to loosen statutes of limitations, which impose deadlines on when victims can bring civil suits or prosecutors can press charges. These time limits, set state by state, have held down the number of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against all kinds of people accused of child abuse — not just clergy members, but also teachers, youth counselors and family members accused of incest.

Victims and their advocates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York are pushing legislators to lengthen the limits or abolish them altogether, and to open temporary “windows” during which victims can file lawsuits no matter how long after the alleged abuse occurred.

The Catholic Church has successfully beaten back such proposals in many states, arguing that it is difficult to get reliable evidence when decades have passed and that the changes seem more aimed at bankrupting the church than easing the pain of victims.

Rav Steinman ends bullying of Yated Ne'eman

The reign of bullying by the Hebrew Yated Ne'eman comes to an end as Rav Steinman took control by having R' Shimmy Glick buy the newspaper and fire the staff.

kikarhashabat

במשך עשרות שנים, הצליח עיתון אחד, מגזרי, להלך אימים על רבותיו, ולא רק: מישהו מכיר רב, ראש-ישיבה, או אדמו"ר מפורסם שלא חטף אי-פעם "עקיצה" מהיומון "יתד נאמן"? האם למישהו השם "יתד נאמן" משדר משהו חיובי בכלל?  

עורכי העיתון החצופים הצליחו פעם אחר פעם, בשחצנות שאין לה אח ורע בעולם החרדי, ללעוג לרבותיהם, לרבנים מפורסמים ולאדמו"רים שכל חייהם הוקדשו לפעילות חסד וקדושה ברחבי הארץ והעולם

אלה שיחקו בתוארים של רבנים, השפילו ורוממו, והכל על-פי מצב הרוח באותו הבוקר.

לפני כשבועיים, בצעד היסטורי, הצליח מרן ראש-הישיבה הגראי"ל שטיינמן להחזיר את המושכות לגדולי ישראל. ההמשך היה אמש, כפי שדווח בהרחבה ב'כיכר השבת': גורמים שונים, מההנהלה הישנה של העיתון, ניסו בכל דרך למנוע את פרסום המכתב של מרן הגר"ח קנייבסקי

[...]

נסיים בציטוט ממכתבו של הרב קנייבסקי, המתפרסם היום ב"יתד": "והנה חובה לכל לציית לכל מוצא פיו של מרן שליט"א והזהרו בגחלתן, ובזה מקיימים מ"ע ועשית ככל אשר יורוך, וכל העוזרים והמסייעים בהנהלת העיתון החדשה בראשות הר"ר שמעון גליק שליט"א יתברכו בכל טוב סלה. חיים קניבסקי"..

.

אהרל'ה יקטר רושף אש: אתרא קדישא - טרוריסטים

kikarhashabat

אהרל'ה יקטר, איש הועד למניעת חילול קברים ויריבם המר של אנשי אתרא קדישא, הואשם השבוע בחילול שבת לאחר שהתראיין לתחקיר ששודר בערוץ 2, בליל שבת.

כעת, הוא משיב מלחמה שערה. בראיון לתוכנית טוקר FM ברדיו גלי ישראל עם מנחם טוקר, תוקף יקטר: "אתרא קדישא חופרים קברים. הם עושים הפגנה ביפו, מביאים את גדולי ישראל ובאותו זמן - 500 מטרים משם חופרים יותר קברים. הם עושים טרור לכולם, הם עושים חילול השם, זורקים אבנים בשבת ויש שם כלי תקשורת שמצלמים אותם.

"הם חופרים קברים, עושים את כל העברות שבתורה. אני לא מדבר על כספים שהם חייבים לאנשים ולא משלמים".

Bar Ilan conference on Orthodox wife abuse

YNET אלימות במשפחה היא מכת מדינה שאינה מבחינה בין מגזרים ואוכלוסיות, אך בכל זאת, עד לאחרונה לא בוצע מעולם מחקר על שכיחות התופעה במגזר החרדי. בכך נותר הבית החרדי סגור ומסוגר, גם אם מאחורי הדלת התרחשו מחזות מסמרי שיער

YNet English   Domestic violence is a national epidemic that does not differentiate between sectors of the population, and yet, until recently no study has been conducted to examine the frequency of the phenomenon within the haredi sector.

Dr. Mally Schori-Biton, a criminologist and couples' therapist from Ariel University Center conducted a pioneer research that aimed to distinguish the phenomenon's unique characteristics within the religious and haredi sectors, while addressing a subject that was considered taboo for many years – violence against women.

The research will be presented during a conference in Bar Ilan University on June 20, which will host the top therapists in the haredi sector. 

The dangers of new technology e.g., the Printing Press

The Atlantic   Near the end of the conference, Rabbi Jacob Schacter of Yeshiva University -- who had taught many of the men in the room and was affectionately called "Rebbe" -- led a session offering some Jewish reflections on the age of the internet. Though the men gathered for this conference were modern Orthodox, not the Haredim whom the media usually call "ultra-Orthodox," I immediately thought of the recent ultra-Orthodox rally in New York that focused on the dangers of the Internet. But Rabbi Schacter pursued these issues in a surprising and, to me, enlightening way. 

Professor Fishbane and I had prepared some brief handouts to guide the participants in our sessions, but Rabbi Schacter had a rather more ambitious plan. After recommending Clay Shirky's recent books Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus -- he was speaking my language then -- he plopped before each of us a three-ring binder filled with photocopies of passages from a wide variety of rabbinical texts, most of them dealing with the proper preparation of a divorce decree, known as a get. (Anyone who has seen the movie A Serious Man will be familiar with the complexities of the get.) 

This seemed a strange way to proceed, but I soon saw the sense of it, because traditionally a get had to be written by a sofer (scribe) according to a very strict protocol -- and with the rise of the printing press in the sixteenth century, debates ensued among rabbis about whether a printed get could ever be legitimate. This led in turn to a fascinatingly complex debate, chiefly focused on the Taz, a name that refers both to a book (the Turel Zahav) and its author (David HaLevi Segal, a seventeenth-century Polish rabbi). The Taz is itself a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, written a century earlier in Safed by Rabbi Yosef Karo.