Lashon Harah - revisited: Daas Torah on Lashon HaRah

[See  Balancing terror of lashon harah]
Having spent much time on the issue of abuse, one of the main difficulties in dealing with abuse is the fear of lashon harah. It is right up there with the fear of mesira. In our days it is believed that the Chofetz Chaim compiled the Shulchan Aruch on lashon harah and that there is nothing more to discuss because he simply nailed down every issue and halacha. In other words, it is believed that if you want to understand the issur of lashon harah all you need to do is master the sefer Chofetz Chaim without going back to the original sources.

In fact, the Chofetz Chaim did more than simply compile halachos - he made major decision and interpretations which in fact involve significant disputes amongst poskim. Consequently there are not only legitimate alternative psakim dealing with many issues but there are even alternative definitions of what constitutes lashon harah and rechilus.

The issue of lashon harah is not simply a theoretical issue such are the study of korbonos - there are major differences in action which result if you use the alternative views that were rejected by the Chofetz Chaim.

Of course many people assume that one can not disagree with the Chofetz Chaim. When I compiled my index to the Mishna Berura and wanted to write an introduction regarding the nature of the Mishna Berura, Rav Sternbuch advised me against it. He said even though in previous years there was no [problem] disputing the Mishna Berura or even acknowledge that it wasn't entirely written by him, but  "in our times the Mishna Berura has become kodesh kedashim." However just as there was no official canonization of the Mishna Berura there was no canonization of the sefer Chofetz Chaim.

Because of my concern getting a viable balance between the concern for lashon harah with that of a functioning society, I have decided to write a Daas Torah volume on the sources and issues on Lashon HaRah.  A clear expression of the need to balance the concern for lashon harah with the needs of a viable society is expressed in the following Pischei Tshuva.

Pischei Tshuva(O.C. 156): I want to note here that while all the books of mussar are greatly concerned about the sin of lashon harah, I am greatly concerned about the opposite problem. I want to protest about the even greater and more common sin of refraining from speaking negatively when it is necessary to save someone from being harmed. For example if you saw a person waiting in ambush to kill someone or breaking into someone’s house or store at night. Is it conceivable that you would refrain from notifying the intended victim to protect himself from the assailant - because of the prohibition of speaking lashon harah?  By not saying anything you commit the unbearable sin of transgressing the prohibition of Vayikra (19:16): Do not speak lashon harah [but] do not stand idly by when the blood of your fellow man is threatened? By not speaking up, you violate the mitzva of returning that which is lost to its owner Devarim (22:2). Now if you can understand the obvious necessity of speaking up in these cases then what is the difference between a robber breaking into someone’s house or store or seeing that his servants are secretly stealing from him or that his partner is deceiving him in their business or that another person is cheating him in commerce or that he is lending money to someone that you know doesn’t repay? How is this different from stopping a proposed marriage to someone you know is a wicked person who would be a horrible husband. Saving a person from these situations is clearly included in the command (Devarim 22:2) to return to the person himself or his money. From where do we get the mistaken idea that in the case of murder, I will speak up but that it is prohibited to say anything in other situations where someone is being harmed? The general principle is that these are matters which depend upon the speaker’s motivation. If the informant’s intent in relating these matters is entirely to cause harm that is lashon harah. However if his intent is to bring about benefit to the other person and to save him and to protect him – then it is a great mitzva. In my opinion this is the underlying intent of the Yerushalmi which the Magen Avraham brings which says that it is permitted to speak lashon harah about people who cause disputes. … It is obvious that even concerning those who cause disputes it is not permitted to speak lashon harah gratuitously about them in all matters. It is only permitted for those things directly related to the particular dispute. It is only permitted concerning that which they are trying to harm others. In such a case it is permitted to reveal degrading things about them in order to save others. … Unfortunately I have seen many times where someone witnesses another person trying to cause harm to someone – and he suppresses the information and says, “Why should I get involved in a matter which isn’t my business…However one needs to be very careful about these and similar matters. Our Sages have said – when the permissibility depends on motivation - it says, “And you should be afraid of your G‑d.”

Hoshana Rabbah, Shmini Atzeres, and Simchas Torah by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Five Towns Jewish Times  

HOSHANA RABBAH    Hoshanah Rabbah is a very holy and special day. It means the “great salvation” and is celebrated on the seventh day of Sukkos. The judgment which was written on Rosh Hashanah and sealed on Yom Kippur is handed down on this day.

The Yalkut Shimoni explains that it is on the 21^st of the month because Hashem’s Name of “I shall be” is equivalent to this in Gematria.

The davening for Shacharis is like Shabbos morning and the baal tefillah wears a kittel. We circle the bimah seven times on Hoshana Rabbah; during the regular days of Sukkos we circle the bimah only once. We also take a bundle of aravos and hit them on the ground until the leaves fall off.

There is also a custom to stay up all night on Hoshana Rabbah and study Torah.  Chassidim have the custom to read from Sefer Dvarim on the night of Hoshana Rabbah.  This is done without a bracha.  There is a debate between Rav Elyashiv and Dayan Yitzchok Weiss (Minchas Yitzchak VIII #84) as to whether someone from Minhag Ashkenaz may participate in this unique nighttime Torah reading. 

SHEMINI ATZERES

Shemini Atzeres is the culmination of Elul, the Yamim Nora’im, and Sukkos, times and holidays where we have developed an intense closeness with Hashem. But Shemini Atzeres is actually a new and independent Yom Tov, where Hashem says to us, “Stop. Don’t go. Stay with Me one last day.” This is the explanation of the word “Atzeres — stop.” [...]

SIMCHAS TORAH

While in Eretz Yisrael Simchas Torah and Shmini Atzeres are celebrated on the same day, in chutz laAretz Simchas Torah is on the second day of Yom Tov. The completion of the cycle of Torah reading is celebrated. [...]

Alleged English pedophile - escaped to Israel: Law of Return trumps International Law

YNET     Does the Law of Return trump international law? This question will have to be ruled on by the High Court of Justice, following an attempt by an ultra-Orthodox Jew from England, who was convicted of sexual abuse of children, to find asylum in Israel.

The man has been detained already for over a half year. In a rare instance, the Interior Ministry decided not to grant him standing under the Law of Return, due to the heavy suspicions against him in the UK.


Now the issue comes before the High Court, which is expected to rule soon, in an unusual case – is it possible to grant standing under the Law of Return to a Jew accused of pedophilia who has fled his home country in order to escape prosecution?

An indictment was filed gainst T., 48, for indecent assault on a minor. After charges were announced, T. fled to Israel together with his family. But when he landed, he was arrested for using a fake passport.

The Immigration Authority refused to grant him standing under the Law of Return due to the charges against him in the UK, and even sought to deport him back to his homeland.[...]

New Brooklyn Messianic center set to missionize Orthodox neighbors

Times of Israel  As Sukkot arrived in Flatbush Wednesday, the many ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood were completing their temporary dwellings and preparing to welcome their physical –- and metaphysical — guests, in the best festival tradition.

But during the week-long holiday, another guest was set to appear in the neighborhood: A multi-million dollar Messianic Jewish center will open its doors to target members of the religious community. 

The Chosen People Ministries has been putting the final touches on a new seminary in the heart of this highly Jewish section of Brooklyn. The price tag for the building, the former Yablokoff Kingsway Memorial Chapel at 1978 Coney Island Avenue, was $2.1 million, and some additional $900,000 has been spent on renovating it.

The prominent missionary organization, which describes itself as “Messianic Jewish,” has long operated in what might initially seem to be hostile environments. Encouraging Jews to accept the Gospel, the organization has opened summer camps in Israel and a guest house targeting young Israeli backpackers in South America. According to anti-missionary activists, members of the ministry sometimes even don traditional Jewish garb like yarmulkes and ritual fringes before going out on recruiting missions.

Neighborhood anti-missionary activists have called in nationally prominent experts to figure out how to confront the Chosen People Ministries’ flagship Brooklyn Messianic Center and the Charles Feinberg Center for Messianic Jewish Studies in their neighborhood. [...]

Was Sex With Children Ever Okay?

Time Magazine  In an interview with TIME this week, biologist Richard Dawkins talks about being molested as a child, which he says was not a particularly big deal. “What’s happened now is that society has developed a horror of it, and rightly so. But I do think it’s important to not be too judgmental of past ages by the standards of ourselves,” he says. “You have to look at history through contemporary eyes rather than through today’s eyes.” [...]

Dawkins was molested by a master at his primary school while he watched a squash match. True to his scientific bent, he describes it pretty clinically in his book An Appetite for Wonder: “He did no more than have a little feel, but it was extremely disagreeable (the cremasteric reflex is not painful, but in a skin-crawling creepy way it is almost worse than painful) as well as embarrassing.”

After it was over, young Dawkins ran off to tell his friends. Many of them had had the same unfortunate experience. In his telling, it seems to have been more or less regarded as bad luck, rather like having been bowled for a duck (having scored no runs) in cricket. “I don’t think he did any of us lasting damage,” he notes.

But Dawkins has not put that last hypothesis through rigorous scientific testing. The studies on any child-adult sexual contact are pretty clear, whether it is so- called “consensual” or not. It can be toxic for the child. There are thousands of sexual abuse survivors who struggle with what happened to them decades after the event.

Dawkins seems to be suggesting that in making a huge deal of sex offenses against minors that happened long ago, we may be overreacting.  And perhaps making things worse for the victims. Indeed, Geimer has claimed that the media victimized her by constantly invading her privacy every time Polanski popped back into the news.

Certainly, things have changed since the Pill first unshackled sex and pregnancy and folks threw sexual caution to the winds. What had once been regarded as an unfortunate moral failing—a penchant for young children—is now universally seen as predatory and dangerous to others. But the degree of damage sexual abuse causes may have less to do with the public attitude towards it, as Dawkins seems to suggest, and more to do with the personality, life experience and relative health of the abused. Whenever humans are wounded they heal differently, even if the injuries appears similar. Some need rest, others exercise; some respond better to therapy, while others benefit from something more invasive. [...]

How Iran Uses Terror Threats To Successfully Deter U.S. Military Action

Tablet Magazine   President Barack Obama thinks that the deal with Russia over Syria’s chemical weapons was possible only because of his credible threat of force. The way he sees it, Iran’s gotten the message, too. As the president told George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria], to think we won’t strike Iran.”

However, the essential feature of a credible threat of force is to have previously employed actual force against the adversary you’re threatening. Shortly before Obama announced he would seek congressional authorization for the use of military force against Syria, the White House briefed House and Senate staffers on the possible ramifications of U.S. action. Perhaps unintentionally, the briefings seemed only to have dampened congressional appetite for attacking Iran’s man in Damascus. “They showed them Iran retaliation scenarios,” a senior official at a Washington, D.C.-based pro-Israel organization told me. “They highlighted the fact that Hezbollah has a global reach. The staffers left those briefings with the blood drained from their faces.”

Iran and its allies have proven their willingness to use force against America—as witnessed by the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut; the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut; the 1998 bombing of Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia; and Iran’s war against American troops in Iraq, which lasted until Obama’s 2011 withdrawal.[...]


It is easy to frame some of Iran’s recent terror plots as evidence that they are the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. For every operation that, say, kills five Israeli tourists in a Bulgarian resort town, there are a dozen botched plots, like the operation in Thailand where an Iranian agent blew off his own legs with a hand grenade.

But from another perspective, it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of Iranian projects come up empty, like the plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, which might also have killed hundreds of Americans in the nation’s capital if it had succeeded. Taken together, what these operations show is an obvious, and alarming, inclination to employ violence against America—even in the absence of any direct American military action against Iran. Carried out by second-string operatives, yet backed by arms of the Iranian government and the global terror infrastructure it has put in place, these attempts are generally interpreted by policymakers as warning shots—a reminder of what will happen if America really gets the Iranians mad.[...]

The Jacksonville Florida Tragedy and Halacha by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Five Towns Jewish Times   The recent incident this past Yom Kippur involving a woman in Jacksonville, Florida who was killed while crossing an intersection with dangerously fast cars was very tragic indeed.  It not only left the sixteen year old daughter who was with her with life-threatening injuries, it left her orphaned r”l. This young lady had lost her father many years earlier.

The tragedy, however, brings up a halachic question.  In an area where the traffic light poses a danger in crossing because it is timed for too short a time to cross safely, would it be permitted to ask a gentile to press the button? [...]

When this author presented the case to permit asking a gentile to press the crosswalk button to some leading Poskim, the Poskim agreed to the underlying rationale.  They also agreed that the leniency can be promulgated in their name.  The Poskim were Rav Moshe Heinemann Shlita from Baltimore and Rav Shmuel Fuerst Shlita from Chicago. [...]

California and it's unions protect pedophile teachers

National Review    [California decided] to exempt government agencies, including public schools, from a new measure intended to enable civil measures against organizations that harbor pedophiles.

In 2014, California will open a litigation “window” allowing victims of sex abuse to file lawsuits against the employers of those who abused them, on the theory that those employers are in some instances partly culpable for the abuse, which is indeed the case. The “window” is needed because, in many sex-abuse cases, the statute of limitations for civil actions runs out before victims come forward. Perversely, the law exposes only the employers; the abusers themselves remain immune to litigation. [...]

And it does not stop with litigation windows. In 2012, the Assembly considered a bill making it easier to fire teachers who sexually abuse students. Consider for a second that word “easier” — should anything be easier than simply firing somebody who molests children? The bill was written in response to the case of a Los Angeles elementary-school teacher who was fired after being accused of sexually abusing his students, and who challenged his firing. Rather than act in accord with the horrifying details of the case, the school district paid the teacher $40,000 to drop his appeal. That’s small change compared with the $30 million settlement the district is paying to the teacher’s alleged victims as a result of the case, or, for that matter, compared with the $23 million bail requirement that is keeping teacher Mark Berndt behind bars as he awaits trial on 23 felony counts of gruesome sexual abuse.

Against that background, making it easier to fire teachers facing credible accusations of sexual abuse seems like a pretty straightforward proposition. But the California Teachers Association and other unions presented a united front against a bill passed by the state senate, and it died in the Assembly. [...] But if it comes down to the interests of a unionized government employee vs. those of a nonunionized sex-crime victim, look for the union label.

Whistle blower reveals head of Met Council has been skimming money

NY Times  A few months ago, an anonymous letter was sent to the board of directors of one of the city’s most venerable nonprofit institutions, the Metropolitan New York Council on Jewish Poverty. 

The writer, who claimed to be a former employee of the charity’s insurance broker, said money was being skimmed from payments that the charity made for health insurance. The allegation was strikingly similar to one made in a letter sent two years earlier. Nothing amiss was found then, but this time a new chief financial officer made a startling discovery. 

The charity’s chief executive, William E. Rapfogel, had been conspiring with someone at the insurance brokerage, Century Coverage Corporation, to pad the charity’s insurance payments by several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to a person briefed on the investigation.[...]

The account of the letter is the first time it has been clear that the scandal came to light from an anonymous whistle-blower, not through any audit or government oversight. It is the latest example of the remarkable lack of oversight, both of nonprofit groups that receive grants of taxpayer money and the politicians who award those grants without competitive bidding. That process has been at the center of successful criminal prosecutions of several city politicians in recent years.  [...]

At last! A kosher smartphone with rabbinic approval

 

When teachers openly support a child molesting colleague

Fox News   Enrollment appears to be nosediving in a Michigan school district where several teachers publicly supported a former colleague who admitted having sex with a middle school student.

The student body count in the West Branch-Rose City district, in northeast Michigan is down unofficially some 87 students following a tumultuous summer in which angry parents blasted seven teachers for writing letters in support of former teacher Neal Erickson. The letters urged a judge to be lenient in sentencing Erickson, who admitted to sexual misconduct with an underage, male student from 2006 to 2009. When the school board declined to take action against the teachers, many parents vowed to pull their kids out of the public schools, which have a total enrollment of just over 2,000. [...]

Erickson, 38, was originally investigated last October once allegations that he sexually molested the then 14-year-old boy surfaced and was eventually arrested in December 2012. Erickson pleaded guilty May 8, and asked for a lenient sentence, citing "stress" and financial hardship for his family.[...]

But on July 10, the judge brushed the letters aside and handed down a sentence of 15 to 30 years in prison. And he had strong words for Erickson's colleagues.

“I’m appalled and ashamed that the community could rally around, in this case, you,” Circuit Court Judge Michael Baumgartner said towards Erickson during his sentencing. “What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher.”

Reporting on mayoral primaries distorts Jewish tradition

NY Times   While the Democratic field remained unsettled, Mr. Lhota was moving on Thursday to reach out to potential supporters. In the morning, he visited the Queens burial site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was the revered leader of Lubavitch Hasidim. 

Flanked by rabbis, one of whom addressed him as “Mr. Mayor,” Mr. Lhota asked for, and received, a gift of honey cake, following a Jewish tradition associated with the Lubavitcher rebbe, as Rabbi Schneerson was known. 

Mr. Lhota, wearing a black skullcap, brought a note to the rebbe’s grave site, tore it and cast it onto a pile of other torn notes, in accordance with another Jewish custom. 

Asked whether his note was about the election, he said only, “It’s all about the future of New York City.” 

Simon Sinek : "It is not what you do but why you do it"

A critical contribution to social understanding. He presents the thesis that behavior is best driven by focus on why we doing things rather than what we do. Related to child abuse - it is not enough to create laws to punish abuse and provide rules to avoid situations where abuse can occur. It is not enough to get people to report abuse. It is important that everyone understand that abusing others causes pain - and we need to value not hurting others.

Is Emotional Intelligence critical for academic success as well as success in life?

NY Times [...] Wade’s approach — used schoolwide at Garfield Elementary, in Oakland, Calif. — is part of a strategy known as social-emotional learning, which is based on the idea that emotional skills are crucial to academic performance. 

“Something we now know, from doing dozens of studies, is that emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn,” Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale University, told a crowd of educators at a conference last June. “They affect our attention and our memory. If you’re very anxious about something, or agitated, how well can you focus on what’s being taught?” 

Once a small corner of education theory, S.E.L. has gained traction in recent years, driven in part by concerns over school violence, bullying and teen suicide. But while prevention programs tend to focus on a single problem, the goal of social-emotional learning is grander: to instill a deep psychological intelligence that will help children regulate their emotions. 

For children, Brackett notes, school is an emotional caldron: a constant stream of academic and social challenges that can generate feelings ranging from loneliness to euphoria. Educators and parents have long assumed that a child’s ability to cope with such stresses is either innate — a matter of temperament — or else acquired “along the way,” in the rough and tumble of ordinary interaction. But in practice, Brackett says, many children never develop those crucial skills. “It’s like saying that a child doesn’t need to study English because she talks with her parents at home,” Brackett told me last spring. “Emotional skills are the same. A teacher might say, ‘Calm down!’ — but how exactly do you calm down when you’re feeling anxious? Where do you learn the skills to manage those feelings?” 

A growing number of educators and psychologists now believe that the answer to that question is in school. George Lucas’s Edutopia foundation has lobbied for the teaching of social and emotional skills for the past decade; the State of Illinois passed a bill in 2003 making “social and emotional learning” a part of school curriculums. Thousands of schools now use one of the several dozen programs, including Brackett’s own, that have been approved as “evidence-based” by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit. All told, there are now tens of thousands of emotional-literacy programs running in cities nationwide. 

The theory that kids need to learn to manage their emotions in order to reach their potential grew out of the research of a pair of psychology professors — John Mayer, at the University of New Hampshire, and Peter Salovey, at Yale. In the 1980s, Mayer and Salovey became curious about the ways in which emotions communicate information, and why some people seem more able to take advantage of those messages than others. While outlining the set of skills that defined this “emotional intelligence,” Salovey realized that it might be even more influential than he had originally suspected, affecting everything from problem solving to job satisfaction: “It was like, this is predictive!” 

In the years since, a number of studies have supported this view. So-called noncognitive skills — attributes like self-restraint, persistence and self-awareness — might actually be better predictors of a person’s life trajectory than standard academic measures. A 2011 study using data collected on 17,000 British infants followed over 50 years found that a child’s level of mental well-being correlated strongly with future success. Similar studies have found that kids who develop these skills are not only more likely to do well at work but also to have longer marriages and to suffer less from depression and anxiety. Some evidence even shows that they will be physically healthier.