Todros Grynhaus - alleged sex offender - arrested in Israel after fleeing England

Jewish Chronicle   An international hunt has ended for a suspected British sex offender who fled to Israel to avoid trial for alleged crimes against children, when the man was arrested in Jerusalem after two weeks on the run.

Todros Grynhaus, from Salford, is thought to have escaped from the UK on false documents after being arrested and charged with historic sexual and indecent assault against three minors.

He was given strict bail conditions by the UK courts to surrender his passport and was forbidden to travel abroad, but Israeli police confirmed the 48-year-old was apprehended by its officers last Thursday (February 28)).

Divorce Tragedies - Letter to Jewish Press

Jewish Press   In a Feb. 15 op-ed column titled “An Agunah Day Message,” the author asks what a young girl caught in an unresolved divorce situation will eventually think and feel about her father and grandmother. I think the answers to that question are clear.

The first rule of good parenting is not to fight when the children are present and certainly not to blame each other in front of the kids. The same is true for separated or divorced parents. If mother and father and assorted grandparents follow that principle and do not drag their children or the public into their personal disagreement, the child will know that there are two sides to every story.

On the other hand, if one or both parents decide to drag their child into their fight, the child will, at a young age, presumably take the view of only one side – the side that decided to attack the spouse; the side that had more regular custody and time to propagandize.

As the child grows up, she will, as the op-ed article indicates, eventually search the Internet. Most likely in the short run she will unfortunately continue to disrespect the parent who has been badmouthed. But as the growing child further searches online she will then begin to see that who is right is not determined by which side has more Internet hits, more blog entries, or yells louder. She will realize that when a divorce is messy or a get not given, it is typically because the two sides cannot come to an agreement, whether over division of property, alimony, child support, child custody or visitation rights.

If the grown child delves further into the issue of Jewish divorce, she’ll find more. She’ll find that many Orthodox Jewish men and women run to civil court in divorce (and many other) cases, when they should be going to beis din. She’ll also find that the beis din system is often broken, with litigants searching for a friendly judge; with rabbis signing decrees without hearing from both sides; with rabbis who are friendly with one of the litigants; with rabbis who are afraid to oppose their colleagues; and with money often doing the talking.

If this grown child explores still further, she’ll find that many Orthodox rabbis hold that, with very rare exceptions, a women does not have the right, halachically, to initiate a divorce action. She’ll learn that many rabbis believe a women cannot just end a marriage because she is “unhappy.” If she enters the word agunah in a search engine and really studies the results, she’ll see that the term is vastly overused, and that a real agunah is a woman whose husband is missing. She’ll find that certain activists use the term the way pro-abortion advocates use the term “free to choose” – because it sounds better. She will also find that Agunah Day was established in 1990 by the International Coalition for Agunah Rights, not by a panel of gedolim. [...]

R Chaim Halpern under partial house arrest

BHOL

רשת הלפרין' בלונדון: המשטרה האריכה את תנאי השחרור של הגאון רבי חיים הלפרין - ראש קהילת 'דברי חיים', אחיו הרב דוד הלפרין - ראש קהילה בשכונת הנדן, ושני העסקנים, גבריאל אסט - מראשי ארגון 'השומרים' בגולדרס גרין, ואלכסנדר שטרום.

הארבעה נעצרו לפני שבועיים בחשד למעורבות בפרשה המסעירה את הרחוב החרדי מזה חצי שנה. הגאון רבי חיים הלפרין, בנו של הגאון רבי אלחנן הלפרין - גדול רבני אנגליה - נחשד בפגיעה בנשים שהגיעו אליו לייעוץ בענייני שלום-בית. שלושת העצורים האחרים חשודים בשיבוש הליכי משפט.

[...]
המשטרה הודיעה לרב הלפרין כי נאסר עליו לצאת מביתו מהשעה 22:00 בלילה ועד ל-6 בבוקר. בנוסף, יהיה עליו להתייצב בתחנת המשטרה חמש פעמים בשבוע, כדי לוודא שאין בכוונתו להימלט מהחקירה.
[...]
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Jailed "Get Refuser" Shay Cohen - escapes from Beis Din

YNet  A Holon resident jailed for "get refusal" since 2007 escaped on Wednesday from the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court during a debate regarding a possible divorce agreement.

The man, 40-year-old Shay Cohen, apparently climbed out of a bathroom window on the second floor and ran off. Police are currently searching for him with the aid of a helicopter. [...]

Israel's Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger, sitting on the rabbinical judges panel, urged Cohen to turn himself in. "We've reached agreements after six years of suffering for your wife. Your way to freedom is short, turn yourself in and we'll find solutions," Metzger said. [...]

Cohen and his wife have been separated for more than 12 years.

Haredim dealing better with abuse: R' Cohen - Director of Prisoner rehabiliation

JPost   Despite the prevalence of these stories, Rabbi Avinoam Cohen, the director of the Welfare and Social Services Ministry’s Torah-Observant Prisoner Rehabilitation Program, believes the haredi community is doing a better job of dealing with the issue of pedophilia.

“Slowly they’re starting to understand, there’s a type of movement,” said Cohen, who deals with around 60 ultra- Orthodox prisoners at a time who have agreed to go through a personalized rehabilitation process. “It’s not like it was five or eight years ago. They’re not going to leave their children with someone like this [who is known to have a problem], or they will go to the police.”

“The victims [of sexual abuse] caused this movement,” he said. “They feel it in their bones that it’s getting better. The awareness has increased because of the publicity about the incidents, and the children who are failing out of school and no one understands why.”

Cohen works to implement successful rehabilitation programs for pedophiles to ensure they don’t re-offend, a difficult struggle given the large numbers of unsupervised children in haredi neighborhoods.[...]

But a trusted adult or parent ignoring a child who says they were sexually abused, or, as in T.’s case, trying to convince him it didn’t happen, “is worse than the original abuse,” the rabbi continued.

That attitude, at least among the less extremist haredi communities, is changing. Cohen spares no words in his anger over rabbis who allow known sex offenders to move to another community, rather than deal with police.

“They need to put rabbis who don’t go to police in prison,” he said. “I can think of at least 20 religious commandments that they’re breaking.”

Another remaining challenge is dealing with convicted offenders who have served jail time and then return to the community. Even if they don’t return to their own community, they will still likely be in a neighborhood with many children.

Russia is an obscenely corrupt society: Killing the messenger

Time Magazine   For the first time in Russia’s history, a dead man has been placed in the dock, and it will not be easy for the court to parse all of the cryptic corollaries of that lurid fact. How, for instance, is the defense attorney supposed to consult with his client? A Ouija board? Some kind of voodoo mediation? And what about the issue of habeas corpus — literally, “show me the body” — the bedrock principle of common law that requires the accused to be brought before a judge? Are we to expect an exhumation? “It is a self-evident absurdity,” says William Browder, Magnitsky’s former employer and now his co-defendant in the case. “There’s no way in the world that a lawyer can represent him.” But with a trial as steeped as this one in Russian politics, nothing should seem too far-fetched.

The saga that led to Magnitsky’s death — and subsequently his trial — began in 2009, when Browder hired the young tax attorney to keep the books of Hermitage Capital, Browder’s investment fund in Moscow. While digging into the some of the fund’s corporate documents, which Russian police had seized during a raid, Magnitsky uncovered the largest known tax fraud in Russian history. A gang of detectives, tax inspectors and other bureaucrats had allegedly used the fund’s corporate seals and documents to file for a tax refund worth $230 million. Following the paper trail, Magnitsky found that this refund — also the largest in Russian history — had been rubber-stamped at a Moscow tax office in just one day. After that, the money vanished into various offshore accounts. Magnitsky immediately blew the whistle, even offering to give testimony against the officials in court, including agents of the FSB secret police, which Vladimir Putin led before becoming Russia’s President in 2000.

But instead of investigating his claims, which were backed by a paper trail, police placed Magnitsky under arrest and charged him with tax fraud. In his prison cell, he kept a diary documenting life in pre-trial detention — with rats, hunger, flooded and freezing cells — and without the medical treatment he needed. Transferred repeatedly from cell to cell, Magnitsky developed acute pancreatitis, which doctors refused to treat. In November 2009, Magnitsky died in excruciating pain at Moscow’s Butyrka prison. According to the Kremlin’s own human rights council, which later investigated the case, he was also badly beaten shortly before he died.

To this day, all of the officials Magnitsky incriminated, as well as those involved in his alleged torture and death, remain free. Nearly all of them have either kept their jobs or been promoted. So Browder, his former boss, began to seek justice in western capitals, a campaign TIME reported on here. The greatest success of that effort was the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which passed with a huge bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate last year. It prohibits corrupt Russian officials from holding U.S. visas, bank accounts or property, and it starts with the group implicated in Magnitsky’s death.

Real world diplomacy: Basketball player meets N Korean dictator

Weiss-Dodelson case: Rejection of Rosh Yeshivas letter

Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

/2 Phyllis Terrace/Monsey, NY 10952

 phone 1-845-578-1917

21 Adar 5773

A  signed letter from major Rosh Yeshivas has been issued attacking Rabbi Avrohom Mayer Weiss for not giving his wife, a Dodelson, a GET. The letter declares three things: One, that the Siruv given the husband by Beth Din Machon LiHorah requires everyone to treat him as if he was in Cherem. Two, everyone should pressure him with public humiliations and by taking away his livelihood to force him to give his wife a GET.

All three things are completely wrong. Let us begin with the Siruv issued by Beth Din Machon LiHorah. Yes, they issued a Siruv and claimed that he did not respond to their demand that he go to a Beth Din to settle his issues with his wife. But there is another Beth Din, that of Rav Gestetner  in Monsey, that has issued a Bitul Siruv, claiming that the husband acted in a proper way and did accept the obligation to go to a Beth Din. The family claims that it has over twenty pages of proof [click here to view them]  in writing that they did accept the demand by Machon LiHorah to enter the Beth Din process to resolve the issues with his wife.  So the issue must be resolved by a third Beth Din, impartial and fearless and not the cousin of the wife as in this letter.

Number two,  is the mistaken demand made by the Rosh Yeshivas that everyone publicly humiliate him.  Humiliating a husband so that he is coerced to give a GET makes an invalid GET. This is taught in the Rashbo VII:414, Radvaz II:118, Bet  Yose 154 DH kosuve,  and Chazon Ish 108:12. If the humiliation is very strong, such as the kind of humiliations demanded by the Rosh Yeshivas, Rabbeinu Yona considers it worse than murder (Shaarei Teshuva 139). See Brochose 23Aa Talmid Chochom  was humiliated in public and committed suicide.  Surely  severe humiliation creates an invalid GET.

The same is true of the demand by the Rosh Yeshivas that people take away the parnoso of the husband. This is fiscal coercion that renders a GET invalid.  See Choshen Mishpot 205:7 Ramo, Gro and others based on the sugya of Pardiso in Bovo Basro; Michtov MaEliyohu Simon 19.

Anyone who signed this document is not educated in the laws of Gittin or Choshen Mishpot. The fact that Rosh Yeshivas sign together with a cousin of one side and pasken as if they are the Beth Din  even though they were accepted by only one side and did not hear the side of the husband shows they are ignorant of the most basic laws of Beth Din.

The Beth Din of HaGaon  Rav Nissim Karelitz  shlit”o in Bnei Braq has recently issued a letter stating that anyone who humiliates a husband or damages his income to force a GET has produced an invalid GET.

The  letter from the Rosh Yeshivas in utter defiance of the most basic laws of Choshen Mishpot and Even Hoezer is wrong and is a disgrace.  For shame.

Shalom,

Dovid Eidensohn

Musmach liRosh Beth Din of Gittin by Posek HaDor HaGadole Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt”l

Netanyahu & the Charedim in the crosshairs & at the crossroads

Guest post by RaP

Why is it taking so long for all the political parties in Israel to agree to come together and form a government for the good of the people?

Many people are puzzled by this great question, that after four weeks of trying and dealing with such intelligent party leaders, yet PM Netanyahu cannot form a coalition government. He has just received a two-week extension after four weeks of trying.

One would think that with the threat of Iran going more nuclear by the day; Syria in civil war spasms; Hamas and Hezbollah primed like vipers to strike Israel with rockets; Egypt dominated by the new Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated regime; hostile Arabs; rebellious Palestinians; 300,000+ gentiles from the former USSR who have no Jewish identity; porous borders to patrol; poverty; housing shortages; educational challenges in a high tech world; economic threats; worries about what America and Europe could do to harm Israel; and much more, that the Israeli political leadership would come together quickly and face the threats seriously and efficiently.

But no, that is not what they are doing. Firstly there are two new actors on the political stage who have never held any office before with large parties behind them: TV showman Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid (19 seats) and businessman Naftali Bennett of Bayit Yehudi (12 seats), who are acting according to their own agenda of essentially creating a situation that could destroy Netanyahu once and for all, which is precisely their goal.

Secondly, Lapid and Bennett, using the best propaganda techniques of yore, are portraying the Charedim (with 18 seats) as "parasites" who are not doing their share. The "solution" according to them is to throw all young Charedim into the army! Sergeants and corporals and drill masters will then "fix" the Charedim and make them into "good soldiers" who will serve the state and not the yeshivas and bais yaakovs.

Who made up such stuff?

Obviously it's people who know nothing about Jewish history, that for 2,000 years it was precisely "Yavneh and its Sages" that saved the Jewish people and overcame all wars and armies. What Israel needs is more of "Yavneh and its Sages" and not of the army and its sergeants!

From it earliest days, the Likud (31 seats) was put into power by the balance of power votes of the Charedi parties. Netanyahu always crafted coalitions with Charedi parties. But the alliance of Lapid and Bennett is determined to stop that and hence destroy Netanyahu's ability to hook up with his natural allies and function politically. But more than that, Lapid and Bennett want to neuter Netanyahu completely. Lapid has never held office, a year ago no one took him seriously as a politician, but he now openly declared he "will be" prime minister of Israel in "eighteen months"! He wants Netanyahu's job without ever run anything but his TV studio. Bennett worked for Netanyahu, then became a CEO of a high tech company that he sold for $150 million so he figures he can be "CEO of Israel" and he is now fighting to turn the tables on his old boss. There is no love lost between any of them, so how can there be a "cabinet" between them?

The one refrain that is heard over and over again from Lapid and Bennett is that they want to conscript the Charedim, as if that is the greatest goal any human can aspire to. Not even the Labor party (18 seats) wants to conscript Charedim!

If Lapid and Bennett have done one thing it is to unite the Charedim like never before. For the first time the two leadership Moetzes of both the Degel HaTorah and Agudas Yisroel met together. Chasidim and Litvaks are now 100% united to fight their common adversaries. Add to this that the Sefardim under Shas are as tightly united with Yahadut HaTorah (UTJ) as the UTJ is internally united within itself, all due thanks to the outside threats from Lapid and Bennett. Thank you Yair and Naftali for accomplishing achdus in the Olam haTorah! Yidden are praying harder to HKB"H because of you!

Most seriously, the threats to drag Charedi boys into the army has become an obsession that is going nowhere. It is becoming a frenzy that is heating up the "lynch mob" mentality among the Chilonim. Are they going to put 50,000 bochurim in jails? If so, why not put 500,000 Mamas and Tatas and brothers and sisters of the Charedim into "detention camps" for harboring "deserters" just like the British put potential olim in such camps in Cyprus for having the chutzpa to want to come to Israel?

Imagine a bochur is 18 or 19 and he is learning quietly like a masmid, not bothering anyone, just shtaiging in Torah and Yiras Shomayim and suddenly he is informed that if he, or she because they want girls to serve to, does not show up to "register" for the army he/she is subject to "arrest" and "imprisonment" thereby becoming "criminals"! This is truly the "mida of Sedom" whereby innocent people are deemed "guilty" while genuine pimps, perverts, prostitutes and perps roam the streets of Israel freely because they have previously "served" in the army! How crazy is that!

The last time Jews faced a massive threat of conscription like this was under the Czars of Russia that for hundreds of years subjected Jews and other citizens to long army service that eventually contributed to a massive overthrow and revolution, and we know how that ended for the Czars and their nobles and their army.

One thing about Netanyahu, like him or not, all the years, he has always come out creating an alliance with the Charedi parties and even though he growls at Charedim from time to time, he has never outright bitten or smitten them outright. Not so the new forces of Lapid and his so-called Yesh Atid ("Ein Atid" would be more apt) and Bennett and his so-called Bayit Yehudi (Rav Ovadia Yosef called it a "Bayit Shel Goyim") who want to destroy Netanyahu, who scheme to thereby stop Netanyahu's ability to ally himself with the Charedim and thereby destroy his main zechusim, and in their delusional fantasy CH"V destroy the world of Torah learning.

Even among the Likud, there are those, like former General Moshe Yaalon who warns that there must not be sudden harsh acts to conscript Charedim. If anything, one must allow for a "evolutionary" process and try to accommodate the needs of Charedim to make it comfortable for VOLUNTEERS to join. In any case, no normal person wants forced conscripts to "defend" anything! In fact, there are many in Israel who assert that Israel is at the point where it could do away with the draft for everyone and switch to an all-volunteer professional army, with citizens receiving some basic self-defense training. But this you never hear about, unless you read the news very closely.

Great Rachamei Shamayim is needed, it is an Eis Tzara LiYisrael !!

Chareidi Thought Police - "adaptation" is a dangerous word

The following indignant letter was published by Binah (Between) Magazine (February 25). Not sure which was worse - the letter demanding the avoidance of the word "adaptation" because it implies Evolution chas v'shalom - or the apologetic tone of the editor promising to be more careful in the future. 

Dear Binah Between,

I was surprised and disappointed when I read the following sentence, found in issue 317's Binah Between, regarding tropical rainforests, "lt's pretty shady down here, so plants adapt by growing long leaves to snatch whatever sunlight filters through..." Using the word "adapt'' in this manner connotes a concept contrary to that of ma'aseh bereishis, when all plant life was fashioned in the precise form necessary to support optimal existence by the Borei Olom Himself.

I think that I represent the majority, if not all, of your varied readership when I kindly request that you take more care to present our children with reading material which will benefit not only their minds, but their neshamos as well.

Thank you !
Sora Rivkah Daina
Modiin lllit, lsrael

Editors response:

Dear Mrs. Daina,
Of course during ma'aseh bereishis everything was created for optimal existence; the word adapt in this instance is merely indicating that during ma'aseh bereishis, the plant was created in a way that it would be able to adapt to whatever sunlight it was exposed to, at different times. There was no intention of minimizing Hashem's Creations, chas v'sholom.

We will be more careful with our wording in the future.

========================

Update: The fact is that biological adaptation is an accepted fact in the gemora

Shabbos (31a):Our Rabbis taught: A man should always be gentle like Hillel, and not impatient like Shammai. It once happened that two men made a wager with each other, saying, He who goes and makes Hillel angry shall receive four hundred zuz. Said one, ‘I will go and incense him.’ That day was the Sabbath eve, and Hillel was washing his head. He went, passed by the door of his house, and called out, ‘Is Hillel here, is Hillel here?’ Thereupon he robed and went out to him, saying, ‘My son, what do you require?’ ‘I have a question to ask,’ said he. ‘Ask, my son,’ he prompted. Thereupon he asked: ‘Why are the heads of the Babylonians round? ‘My son, you have asked a great question,’ replied he: ‘because they have no skillful midwives.’ He departed, tarried a while, returned, and called out, ‘Is Hillel here; is Hillel here?’ He robed and went out to him, saying, ‘My son, what do you require?’ ‘I have a question to ask,’ said he. ‘Ask, my son,’ he prompted. Thereupon he asked: ‘Why are the eyes of the Palmyreans bleared?’ ‘My son, you have asked a great question, replied he: ‘because they live in sandy places.’ He departed, tarried a while, returned, and called out, ‘Is Hillel here; is Hillel here?’ He robed and went out to him, saying, ‘My son, what do you require?’ ‘I have a question to ask,’ said he. ‘Ask, my son,’ he prompted. He asked, ‘Why are the feet of the Africans [negroes] wide?’ ‘My son, you have asked a great question,’ said he; ‘because they live in watery marshes.’ ‘I have many questions to ask,’ said he, ‘but fear that you may become angry.’ Thereupon he robed, sat before him and said, ‘Ask all the questions you have to ask,’ ‘Are you the Hillel who is called the nasi of Israel?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘If that is you,’ he retorted, may there not be many like you in Israel. ‘ ‘ Why, my son?’ queried he. ‘Because I have lost four hundred zuz through you,’ complained he. ‘Be careful of your moods,’ he answered. ‘Hillel is worth it that you should lose four hundred zuz and yet another four hundred zuz through him, yet Hillel shall not lose his temper.’

Nursing home refuses to do CPR on sick residents

Plague of 30 million Locusts hits Egypt

YNet   A plague of locusts descended Saturday on agricultural farms in Giza and on Cairo. Egyptian Agricultural Minister Salah Abad Almoman said the swarm is comprised of an estimated 30 million insects and was causing great damage.  n Cairo, residents burned tires to create a black fog to keep the locusts from settling in the city. Swarms were also reported to have reached Egypt's Red Sea city of Zafarana, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Cairo, and then the Upper Egyptian city of Qena where locusts appeared in at least three major villages.

Boro Park: Man attempts to grab 10 year old girl

NY Post   A man was arrested for trying to lure a 10-year-old girl into his car in Brooklyn, cops said today.

Chaim Fried, 53, had parked his car at the corner of East Second Street and 18 Avenue in Borough Park at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday when he grabbed the girl's arm and told her, "Come with me!" sources said.

The girl pushed him off and broke free.

He tried the same trick on Friday morning at the same location. But this time, police were waiting and put him under arrest.

Fried was charged yesterday with attempted kidnapping, attempted unlawful imprisonment and reckless endangerment of a child.

Family of judge suspected of child abuse says accusations a lie

YNet    The family of the judge accused of alleged child abuse commented on the allegations for the first time Saturday, saying that the accusations were "a lie."

In a statement released by the family's media advisor, they said: "We were shocked to see and hear that someone has pronounced the judge's verdict without having a shred of information on the case and while leaning on warped, harmful and inaccurate information."  

They stressed that the judge was never ordered to undergo counseling or treatment for violence, that Social Services never visited his home and that he sought counseling on his own accord.

The judge's media advisor claimed in his statement that "His children are presently supporting him and want what is best for him," and that since the children have been under joint custody, "They have never refused to visit their father's home. The opposite is true. The children want and asked to go to their father's home even more than what was stipulated as the visitation hours, and so it was."

Last week and nearly three years after the complaint in the matter was filed,  Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein ruled that the police investigate the suspected judge. The decision was made following a long delay and solely as a result of public criticism. [...]