Princeton Mishandled Sexual Misconduct and Discrimination Cases, U.S. Inquiry Finds

NY Times    A federal investigation into Princeton University’s sexual misconduct and discrimination policies has found that the university violated the law and failed to respond quickly and fairly to students’ complaints.

The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights found that Princeton had not met the standards set forth in Title IX, the 1972 statute mandating gender equality in educational settings. The finding released on Wednesday said that Princeton’s failure “to provide a prompt and equitable response” to allegations of sexual misconduct allowed, in one student’s case, “for the continuation of a hostile environment that limited and denied her access to the education opportunities at the university.”

At the beginning of September, Princeton announced significant changes to the way it would handle sexual misconduct complaints, including lowering the burden of proof they would have to meet. Those changes were intended to bring the university into compliance with federal standards. A resolution agreement that accompanied Wednesday’s finding formalizes what the Office of Civil Rights described as “ongoing and proactive efforts to enhance the effectiveness” of Princeton’s procedures. Putting those changes into effect, the finding said, “will resolve the university’s noncompliance.” [...]

High Court overules lower court ruling saying Rabbis can't overrule Doctors

Arutz 7   An Israeli couple whom the High Court ruled Wednesday took the advice of a rabbi over that of a doctor is going to have to pay all expenses for care of their paralyzed child out of pocket.

The court ruled in favor of the Meuhedet Health Fund, which refused the couple when they sought care for the child, saying that doctors had informed them that the child would be born paralyzed – and that the couple decided not to terminate the wife's pregnancy on advice of the late Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu z”tl.

According to the fund, a gynecologist who examined the woman told her on her first visit – very early in the pregnancy – that the child would be born with major health problems, and recommended she terminate the pregnancy. The couple then consulted with Rabbi Eliyahu, and decided to keep the child – who was born paralyzed, as diagnosed by the doctor.

The Health Fund refused to pay for care for the child, saying that it was not responsible because the parents did not take the advice of their doctor. The parents sued, claiming that the doctor had not sufficiently explained the dangers to the child, only the damage that could occur to the mother during her pregnancy.

A lower court ruled in favor of the parents, but the health fund appealed, and on Wednesday the High Court ruled in their favor. According to the court, it is unlikely that the doctor did not explain the dangers to the parents, and that they needed to be held responsible for rejecting the doctor's advice. [...]

Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn: New blog devoted to marriage and divorce issues

My name is Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn. I studied under Gedolim Reb Aharon Kotler, Reb Moshe Feinstein, and Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashev, all of them zt"l. Reb Elyashev zt"l gave me his name for my Gittin Beth Din. He told me he was very concerned about the problems of divorcing parents, and sometimes this results is an invalid GET, when it is coerced especially when a civil court does this. I used to put a lot of material on my brother's blog, Daas Torah (Rabbi Dr. Daniel Eidensohn from Jerusalem). I just discussed with my brother about the need for me to make a new blog totally devoted to problems with marriage and divorce, children, court, etc.

I started it today as
www.torahhalacha.blogspot.com.

If you or anyone has a question in halacha about divorce and Gittin and marriage, please contact me at the above website:

www.torahhalacha.blogspot.com

Thank you,

Dovid Eidensohn

Rethinking challenging kids-where there's a skill there's a way

Schlesinger Twins: Beth asks that you send an email to Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky

http://helpbeth.org/email-to-rabbi-moshe-kotlarsky/

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky is the director of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries and Vice-Chairman of Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Rabbi Kotlarsky travels the globe establishing Jewish centers for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, becoming known as “Judaism’s Globe Trotter”. In many countries he is the public face of Chabad, visiting heads of state and opening new Chabad centers worldwide.

Please send your letter to Rabbi Kotlarsky at rmk@kinus.com or kinus@kinus.com  - or copy the following and send it to him =============================================== SUBJECT: Rabbi Kotlarsky - your help is urgently required Dear Rabbi Kotlarsky Shlita, It is with great reluctance that the step has been taken to approach you in this way. All other avenues to raise this matter to the highest echelons in Chabad have so far been fruitless which is why you are receiving this message. I understand this is a busy time in your calendar, shortly before the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim (Kinus), when so many emissaries come to Crown Heights from all over the world. But it is precisely at this time, when such a pool of immense talent and global influence is concentrated in one place, that the biggest breakthroughs can be achieved. In July 2011, 2 year-old twins Samuel and Benjamin Schlesinger, were ripped from their mother's arms and handed to their father, Mr Michael Schlesinger, on the immediate instructions of an Austrian court ruling. Their mother, Beth Schlesinger (nee Alexander), has been awarded pitiful visiting rights and hasn't seen her children on Shabbos or Yom Tov since this time (with the exception of one Shabbos in August 2014). The courts in Vienna have behaved extremely strangely in the father's favour throughout the proceedings by discounting important facts, twisting medical reports and other evidence of bias. The response has been a global campaign backed by a Beis Din, multiple Rabbis, British Politicians and many supporters globally. See helpbeth.org An anonymous Chabad posek has stated that these children should be living under the custody of their mother on the basis of a handwritten note written by the Rebbe himself: http://helpbeth.org/schlesinger-twins-the-lubavitcher-rebbe-held-strongly-that-the-mother-should-get-custody/ In an unusual move, Rabbi Jacob Biderman, the head of Chabad in Austria, voluntarily involved himself in the court case some time ago. Unfortunately, the father still has sole custody of the twins and he regularly cancels the few visits awarded by the court to the mother. We urge the Chabad leadership and the greater Chabad movement to stand behind Rabbi Biderman and provide him with all the tools he needs to be able to contribute further to the court case such that the mother's plight is accurately presented and that the judge should revisit her custody and visitation rulings. In this way it is hoped the custody arrangement will be revised and the children can have a better childhood than the one they currently face. Chabad do wonderful work in some of the most inaccessible places on earth and we hope they continue to have resounding success as they have done over so many years. I am sure I don't speak alone when I say I would like to see this success and fantastic reputation continue, without the distraction of the case of the Schlesinger twins in Austria. For more information, please watch this short clip. Wishing you and your Shluchim every Hazlacha. Yours your name and address

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

Here is a video of Rabbi Kotlarsky speaking at this annual conference in 2012. He quotes a previous Lubavitcher Rebbe in the his address saying “no matter how engrossed we may be, in whatever it may be, we may never fail to hear the cry of a child”. We can only hope he hears the cries of Samuel and Benjamin Schlesinger in Vienna.

Visit Jewish.TV for more Jewish videos.

Russian monument to Steve Jobs taken down after Apple CEO Cook says he is gay

Washington Post

A Russian monument to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has been taken down, after Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement last week that he is gay.

The monument, which is in the shape of an oversize iPhone, was located on a university campus in St. Petersburg, one of the more liberal cities in Russia, until its removal Friday.

It was put there in 2013 under the initiative of Maxim Dolgopolov, head of the holding company ZEFS, known in English as the Western European Financial Union, which cited Cook’s revelations about his sexuality in a Bloomberg Businessweek article last Thursday as the reason the company decided to remove the statue.

“Russian legislation prohibits propaganda of homosexuality and other sexual perversions among minors,” ZEFS wrote in a statement published on the Web site of Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy. “After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was dismantled pursuant to Russian federal law on the protection of children from information that promotes the denial of traditional family values.” [...]

Spurious Correlations don't show cause and effect - examples

Tyler Vigen

International Conference on The Jewish Community Confronts Violence & Abuse

I will be giving two 15 minutes presentations at the "International Conference on the Jewish Community confronts Violence and Abuse" which takes place December 1- December 3 in Jerusalem at the Ramada Hotel. Schedule is still tentative

Monday December 1, in session 3 between 4:30-6 on "The Rabbinic Role in Confronting Abuse"  I will talk about: 

The critical role of halacha and piety in incorrectly reducing commonsense and the sensitivity to abuse and victims 

Tuesday December 2, in the session 4 between 5:30-7 on "Legal Dilemmas Involving Domestic Violence & Divorce", I will talk about:

The halachic problems of using Internet and public protests to free Agunos. The conflict between contemporary values of Get on demand and the halacha that a Get not given freely by the husband is invalid as a Get Me'usa

In Torrent of Rapes in Britain, an Uncomfortable Focus on Race and Ethnicity

NY Times ROCHDALE, England — Shabir Ahmed, a delivery driver for two takeout places, did not have to go looking for young girls. Runaways and rebelious teenagers would show up at the restaurants, often hungry and cold. He slipped them free drinks and chicken tikka masala. “Call me Daddy,” he would say.

But soon, Mr. Ahmed, a father of four, would demand payback. In a room above one of the restaurants, according to testimony and evidence in later legal proceedings against him, he would play a pornographic DVD and pass around shots of vodka. Then, on a floor mattress with crumpled blue sheets and kitchen smells wafting from below, he raped them, and later forced them into sex with co-workers and friends, too.

The girls were too scared of him to talk. And when they did, no one believed them. Once, a 15-year-old got so drunk and upset that she smashed a glass counter. Mr. Ahmed and his colleagues did not hesitate to call the police. After she was released, she was coerced into sex four or five times a week, sometimes with half a dozen men at a time, in apartments and taxis around Rochdale, a town in northwest England near Manchester. [...]

The recent revelations that at least 1,400 teenage and preteenage girls had been sexually exploited over 16 years by so-called grooming gangs in another northern English city, Rotherham, stunned the nation because of the sheer scale of the abuse. And it put an uncomfortable spotlight on issues of race, religion and ethnicity in an increasingly multicultural nation: Nearly all of the rape suspects are Pakistani men, and nearly all of the victims are white. [...]

In a country already fiercely debating issues of immigration and national identity, the cases have prompted anti-Muslim demonstrations by far-right groups and some soul-searching generally. Why do British-Pakistani men figure so prominently? Were they deliberately targeting white girls and staying away from their own community? Did police and local officials turn a blind eye for fear of being accused of racism, losing votes among immigrant groups or stoking the kinds of tensions that have unleashed periodic rioting in other British towns? [...]

A powerful culture of shame and honor surrounding premarital sex, including rape, among some Asian Muslims, may also have skewed the victim statistics. Honor and shame certainly proved an effective tool when Mr. Shabir blackmailed his Asian victim into silence during a decade of regular abuse. “You are damaged goods,” he would tell her, threatening to force her into marriage if she spoke up, Mr. Afzal recalled. Asian victims of sexual abuse are three times less likely to come forward than white victims, he said, citing Home Office data.

“They fear not just their rapists,” said Shaista Gohir, chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Network U.K. “They fear their own community and their own family: They fear honor crime, forced marriage and being shunned and ostracized for bringing shame to their family.” [...]

A natural fix for ADHD

NY Times    ATTENTION deficit hyperactivity disorder is now the most prevalent psychiatric illness of young people in America, affecting 11 percent of them at some point between the ages of 4 and 17. The rates of both diagnosis and treatment have increased so much in the past decade that you may wonder whether something that affects so many people can really be a disease.

And for a good reason. Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking — a trait that had, until relatively recently, a distinct evolutionary advantage. Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and understimulating.

To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don’t match the expectations of our contemporary culture.

From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.[...]

I think another social factor that, in part, may be driving the “epidemic” of A.D.H.D. has gone unnoticed: the increasingly stark contrast between the regimented and demanding school environment and the highly stimulating digital world, where young people spend their time outside school. Digital life, with its vivid gaming and exciting social media, is a world of immediate gratification where practically any desire or fantasy can be realized in the blink of an eye. By comparison, school would seem even duller to a novelty-seeking kid living in the early 21st century than in previous decades, and the comparatively boring school environment might accentuate students’ inattentive behavior, making their teachers more likely to see it and driving up the number of diagnoses. [...] 

Circle, Arrow, Spiral - Orthodoxy and Feminism - Reflections on an excellent book regarding

Guest post by Mrs. Rachel Eidensohn (my daughter-in-law) 

Book available at Amazon

Review sent to the author  Miriam Kosman

As a 12^th – 14^th grade teacher, I was grateful to receive a methodical work which organizes together various ideas we tend to talk about randomly on a "need to respond" basis. I am a teacher, supervisor and adviser specializing in learning disabled teens from high school years through adulthood – Including marriage.

In the course of my job, I meet "women rights" issues in various circumstances: Parental conflicts in the student's families, pre-marriage courses, haskafa lessons, Tanach lessons and last but not least – Married students contacting me for consultation.

In my view, one of the most important things I do is instilling in the students the knowledge and feeling, that being a "Doormat" is NOT one of the characteristics of a Jewish woman. You will not find me teaching students "לוותר למען השלום". It is important for me to note that I have taught techniques to do this to Mechanchos of seminary ages in mainstream frum schools – such as the סמינר החדש. With the growing divorce rate in the background, my approach is highly accepted and appreciated.

The circle, arrow and spiral paradigm are a beautiful way to present the זכר/נקבה forces, which was new to me.

The idea brought in Devorah Heshlis's "The moons lost light", is a "must" for the frum intellectually minded women in this generation. Knowing that the changing status of women is an ideal happening towards the Geula, and not a perversion in Yiddishkiet enables the Jewish women of modern times to feel "whole" and not "perverse". I first came across it in Rachel Arbos's book "מאישה לאשה·", and was looking for more sources about it ever since. B"h I will get the book. I fell deeply indebted to you for introducing it to me.

The practical ramifications of understanding the nature of man/woman relationships are one of the most notable resources in the book. For example: Understanding the problematic results of taking away the natural responsibilities of the "man of the family" – unmotivated and irresponsible "grown ups".

I found book two an artful and refreshing harmony, explaining the Mitsvos in a logically satisfying way, without the apologetic tone which is so common in explanations of this nature. It is a pleasure reading an explanation which is not based on "The women is really better then the man" paradigm.

I realize your book is intended to be a מלכתחילה viewpoint of healthy Hashkafa, and not an apology to sins of (the frum) society. Nevertheless, as an observer of various unhealthy women relevant situations, I feel the lack of a few points of interest:

1.     In page 272 it is stated that "as a community, we have the obligation to use all of our resources to alleviate their pain, within the context of halacha". This is the only place in the book which mentions the need of changes in society, within the right context of hashkafa, of course . It is important that the reader should know that in a lot of areas, the treatment of women is not a ramification of Jewish hashkafa but ramifications of shortcomings in the application of Jewish law.

2.     Presenting the changes in practical Jewish law (הלכה) in accordance to the shift towards the woman's position before חטא אדם הראשון would enrich the book.

3.     Last but not least: As a life and marriage skills teacher, I keenly feel the absence of stressing that just as any other person, it is a woman's job to make sure her needs are respected, regardless of the "other side". Of course, a smart women "presents her case" in a womanly, haskkafa accommodating way. Nevertheless, after reading your book, a reader might get the (wrong) impression that if a female is misused in any way, she should realize it is not the way of Torah to treat her like that, but aside of asking society for support she can't do anything about it. This is a harmful message.

In other words, while you do provides tools for clarifying what a Jewish woman is - nonetheless at the same time you are unfortunately conveying the negative message that women can at most change the way they understand their roles - but that they have no right to ask for changes when Jewish society fails to deal with woman in the correct Torah manner. A counter message would give the book a balance towards perfection.

Thank you for giving us a beautiful, well based foundation in Jewish thought.

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

DT's response to the book  Disclaimer I received a review copy

My reaction to the book is twofold.  My response to the book is the reaction I have to Maharal/Rav Moshe Shapiro's views in general - which form the source of most of the author's ideas. Brilliant intellectual exercises but largely irrelevant to the real world. So while I would strongly recommend the book as a source for articulating a Jewish understanding of gender roles I was very disappointed for what it didn't contain. In other words it is good for teachers and kiruv workers but is largely useless for people like myself who want an understanding - not just an explanation. For example I was hoping to see some discussion of the change in the divorce laws through the last 2000 years - with an explanation of female role vs male role. She just says that Aguna is a difficult issue.

In short while I did see the beauty behind her male/female concept, I was primarily concerned by the latter 3 points that my daughter-in-law raised. I didn't see any evidence of her ideas pushing to a goal or ideal nor the use of them to explain women in real life. The focus was "these are principles but not people." It comes across as apologetics rather than a means of adjustment of the role of women as society changes. The principles are best used to justify the status quo rather than self-actualization or creating environments for spiritual and psychological growth.

p.s. I didn't read the whole thing. I sampled the material and kept coming up with the same impression so I stopped.

Yale's poor handling of faculty sexual harrassment case

NY Times     A sexual harassment case that has been unfolding without public notice for nearly five years within the Yale School of Medicine has roiled the institution and led to new allegations that the university is insensitive to instances of harassment against women.

The case involves a former head of cardiology who professed his love to a young Italian researcher at the school and sought to intervene in her relationship with a fellow cardiologist under his supervision.

A university committee recommended that he be permanently removed from his position, but the provost reduced that penalty to an 18-month suspension.

After that decision, The New York Times obtained extensive documents related to the case and interviewed 18 faculty members who expressed anger at how it had been handled, with no public acknowledgment of wrongdoing. After The Times contacted Yale last week, the university announced that the former cardiology chief, Dr. Michael Simons, “had decided” not to return to his post.

The case involving faculty at one of the nation’s leading medical schools comes as dozens of colleges are under scrutiny by the federal government for their handling of sexual misconduct allegations against students.

Schlesinger Twins: "Justice" in Vienna

Times of Israel   [see also NY Times for background] An Austrian official’s letter is threatening to undermine the central pillar of a controversial court decision that found a Jewish journalist guilty of defrauding the government

On Sept. 9, senior state attorney Martin Windisch wrote that the government “makes no claims” against Stephan Templ, who was sentenced in April to three years in jail for cheating Austria out of half the value of a sanatorium confiscated by the Nazis from one of Templ’s relatives. In May, the Austrian Supreme Court upheld the ruling but reduced Templ’s sentence to one year.

The court found that Templ had defrauded Austria by failing in his 2006 restitution application to mention his mother’s estranged sister, who would have been entitled to half the $1.4 million his mother received when she sold the property.

Templ rejected the allegation, but when he asked government officials where he should return the money, Windisch wrote to Templ’s attorney, “The republic makes no claims against your client in connection with the conduct of your client.”

Templ’s attorney, the renowned human rights lawyer Robert Amsterdam, has petitioned prosecutors to have the case declared a mistrial.

“This statement basically voids the ruling,” Amsterdam told JTA. [...]

Does ‘Village of Secrets’ Falsify French Rescue During the Holocaust?

Tablet Magazine    The dust jacket of the upcoming American edition of Village of Secrets, a new book by British author Caroline Moorehead—recently short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the richest and most prestigious award for nonfiction in the United Kingdom—claims that the book “sets the record straight” about what happened in and around the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Nazi occupation. Village of Secrets was recently published in the U.K. and in Canada, receiving rave reviews and making appearances on best-seller lists. (It was published in the United States by HarperCollins this week.) Publishers Weekly hailed it as “deeply researched” and “the definitive account” of the rescue effort, while Kirkus Reviews has praised the author’s “knowledge of the people, the area and the history,” saying that it made the book “one of the most engrossing survival stories of World War II.” [...]

The key question has always been why. What, then, is the central truth that Moorehead claims to have uncovered? The author ends her introduction by stating that what “actually took place … is also about [sic] the fallibility of memory.” In a British radio interview recently, Moorehead boiled down her great discovery most succinctly: “The Protestants [of the Plateau] had always taken the line that they had done the saving. But in fact, so had the Catholics, so had people who weren’t religious at all.” (The notion that these Protestants trumpeted their deeds is absurd.)

Moorehead concedes, as part of her concluding statement, that the pastor of Le Chambon and his family deserve “much honor” for the rescue effort. But, she quickly adds, no more than “all the modest Catholics, Protestants, atheists and agnostics” who joined in. [...]

That there are indeed tensions on the plateau becomes obvious to anybody who visits there and discusses local history. It is certainly true that many Jews did indeed find shelter here and there throughout the small Protestant enclave. (My parents themselves rented a room in a hamlet on the outskirts of Le Chambon.) There may well have been a few atheists and agnostics too on what was then known as the Protestant mountain, and it is possible that some of them may have joined in the rescue effort—though they have not been identified as yet by Moorehead or anybody else. And yes, some Catholics in the area were also admirably active in rescue; Moorehead specifically cites just one such rescuer, Marguerite Roussel—whose existence the author happens to have learned about from the very film she attacks.

But to equate Catholic, atheist, and agnostic efforts with the role of pastor André Trocmé and the role of the other Protestant pastors of the area and the role of the French Protestant population as a whole is to deny what virtually every single Jew who went through there then would tell you: That this was fundamentally a Huguenot undertaking, centered in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, and deriving much of its initial momentum and energy from the pastors of Le Chambon, André Trocmé and Édouard Theis—and their historic call to resist through the “weapons of the spirit. [,,,]

Of course, Moorehead is entitled to disagree with me as well as with virtually all the people who experienced that time in Le Chambon. Unfortunately, she does so in a book that is riddled with mistakes and distortions ranging from the relatively trivial to the major for a book with claims to historical scholarship by an author who allegedly drew on “unprecedented access” to unspecified “newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany.” Even the photograph on the cover of the book, under the title Village of Secrets, is not of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon! The stand-in is the tiny village of Borée, miles away. [...]