The Torah was concerned that the holy cohen gadol at the holiest moment of the year would lust for a married women and pray that her husband die

As we have noted a number of times before - the baalei mussar make a point of saying that the sins of great people are minor things which are described in an exaggerated manner because they are held to a more severe standard than everyone else.

Rav Silberstein notes a case which seems to strongly go against this view and in fact fits in clearly with the statement that the greater the person - the greater is his yetzer.

The Torah (Vayikra 21:14) tells us that a cohen gadol can not marry either a widow or a divorcee. The question is why? He notes that this question was asked by the Baalei Tosfos [the only source I could find is an attribution to Rav Yehuda HaChasid but I couldn't find it in Sefer Chasidim]. The answer they give is astounding and it illustrates the power of the yetzer harah.

"Because the Cohen Gadol would mention the special name of G-d, there was a danger that he might have lust for a married women and he would use the opportunity to wish for the death of her husband. Consequently the Torah prohibited him from marrying a widow and only allowed a virgin"

These astounding words have to be fully understood. We are talking about the holy cohen gadol who was more holy than all the other Jews. He is now standing in the most holy part of the Temple at the holies part of the year - Yom Kippur. And it is specifically at the time that he is mentioning G-d's special name. Is there any situation which surpasses this holiness?

Nevertheless the Torah is concerned  that he is lusting for a married woman at such a time and such a place and that he will take advantage of his situation to use G-d's special name to kill the husband. It is incredible to see the extent of the power of the yetzer harah.

Furthermore we see something else - how great the power of prayer is. That G-d is prepared to listen to even disgusting prayer such as this - whose whole nature is to cause evil to another who is totally innocent.

The Rav Avigdor Miller zt’l Hagaddah Shel Pesach - On Divorce

pp. 38-39

Now when we say hashta avdi – this year we’re slaves, l’shana haboah bnei chorin, what are we asking for? More liberty? We get more freedom to go and ruin more lives? We want more liberty, but only to be forced to do what’s right. Liberty is when you learn Yiras Shamayim, you learn Mesilas Yeshorim, and you learn good middos. Now, the good middos force you to move into a good neighborhood, to move out of the suburbs. When you move into a good neighborhood among frum Jews, and you join a kehilla of frum Jews, you’ll be ashamed to divorce your wife. It’s people who live out in the suburbs where one in five divorce. When they would come to a good neighborhood, they think, “What will my enemies say, the people in the shul who know me are enemies of mine. They’ll laugh at me, and therefore why should I give them an opportunity to ridicule me, when getting divorced.”

And therefore the sviva rescues people from tragedies. 40 years ago people were ashamed to divorce, and they lived off their years, and they took their grandchildren to the Chupa together and they’re buried together in the cemetery and if they were zoche to Olam Haba, they would live together in the next world too. But people have liberty today, and so if she doesn’t like her husband, she says “get out of the house,” and he says “why should I get out of the house?” And she goes and gets a writ of protection, calls in the police, and drives the husband out of the house.

Now she’s all alone. Now she’s “happy,” and now she has “liberty.” Now she has ruined her life. I met a girl like that. A girl came over to me on the street, I never saw her before. She came over to me and said, “You know Rabbi Miller, 20 years ago I demanded and got a divorce. I made a very big mistake in my life,” she said. Divorce is ruination, and that’s why women didn’t have the right to divorce according to the Torah. Only men, because women are excitable and if women can give gittin, they’ll give gittin all the time. No matter why, but the facts are the men are slower, more deliberate. It’s important. What kind of life would it be if women could give a Get? “It’s slavery” she said. That slavery is good for you. You’ll live long with your husband. You won’t have tzoros, and eventually, in the end you’ll see that it was the best thing for you to be together with your husband. You’ll grow old together and when the time comes he dies, you’ll weep and collect insurance, and you’ll be a happy person.

Israeli government threatens to hold chareidi parents accountaable for failure to give children secular education

Arutz 7

The State says that if a particular suit against if goes through, it will sue hareidi parents and yeshivot in turn.

The story is that 52 ex-hareidim have submitted a lawsuit against the State of Israel for the fact that they did not learn mathematics and English in their hareidi elementary schools, thus allegedly harming their ability to find work.

The State has now submitted its defense, the bottom line of which is this: "If the suit against us is accepted, we in turn will sue the parents and the schools."

The State's defense states, "The plaintiffs studied in schools chosen by themselves and their parents, and if they believe that their studies there caused them damage, it could have been expected that they would direct their complaints towards their parents or their schools."

The State acknowledges that the level of studies in haredi schools in comparison to public schools is relatively low, but that this is due to the preferences of the haredi public.

It would seem that the suit has no basis in fact, given the top scores of haredim who take rushed courses in math and English. As reported here a number of years ago, "A class of 30 haredi men scored overwhelmingly better than the national average on a recent psychometric exam - despite, or because of, their lack of general studies schooling

In September 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that haredi high schools need not teach core secular subjects. The plaintiffs had claimed that the situation "harms the ability of haredi students to integrate in society and the work force, and thus harms their constitutional rights to dignity and freedom of occupation." The hareidi schools thus continued to receive (only) 60% of the national budgetary allocations that other schools receive.[...]

bhol

קבוצת יוצאים בשאלה תובעת פיצוי מהמדינה על שלא למדו לימוד ליבה • המדינה מאיימת בתשובה לתבוע את הוריהם 

 

המדינה תתבע הורים חרדים? פרקליטות המדינה הודיעה כי תתבע הורים של 52 יוצאים בשאלה, שהגישו לפני כחצי שנה תביעת נזיקין נגד המדינה, כך מדווח 'הארץ'.

כפי שדווח לראשונה ב'בחדרי חרדים', קבוצה של יוצאים בשאלה, תבעה את המדינה בשל הנזק שנגרם לחבריה. לטענת חברי הקבוצה, המדינה אפשרה למוסדות החינוך החרדים לא ללמד את מקצועות הליבה, דבר שלדבריהם פגע ביכולתם להשתלב בשוק העבודה.

בתגובה לכך, הודיעה המדינה, באמצעות עו"ד מירית סביון מפרקליטות מחוז ירושלים, כי במידה והתביעה תתקבל, היא תתבע את הוריהם החרדים של התובעים, וכך גם כ-90 ישיבות ובתי ספר חרדיים שבהם הם למדו, זאת משום שלטענת המדינה אין לה אחריות למצב שמתארים היוצאים בשאלה, אלא להוריהם ולישיבות בהן למד

MK reveals alleged United Nations document requiring Israel to preserve haredi educational system.

Arutz 7 

The United Nations guarantees haredi rights to an independent educational system in Israel, claims MK Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism).

In a recent interview with Merkaz Igud HaTatim, a journal distributed to haredi educators across Israel, Porush revealed what purports to be an official United Nations decision concerning cultural autonomy in Israel.

If verified, the document would be the first known official recognition by the international body of haredi rights to cultural autonomy within the Jewish state.

The decision was reportedly reached by the UN during the winter of 1947/1948, following lobbying efforts by a delegation of Agudat Yisrael representatives.

The delegation is said to have included Yaakov Rosenheim, Aharon Goodman, and Moshe Porush (Meir Porush’s grandfather) among others.

According to Porush, the document obligates “The State [of Israel] to provide proper education to Arabs and to Jews, each according to their language and traditions. The right of each community or group within a community to maintain their own educational institutions for their members in their own language shall not be violated or impinged upon, so long as they fulfill general educational requirements the state may impose.”

Couple cannot leave Israel due to ‘Gett refuser’ son

Arutz 7

A rabbinical court in Tel Aviv issued an exit deferment order against a haredi couple from the United States and confiscated their passports, claiming that they support their son's refusal to give his wife a Gett (divorce document) for many years.

The father of "divorce-refuser" Oded Gaz, a doctor of physics and a former lecturer at Bar Ilan University, was sentenced to a 30-day imprisonment after Gaz stopped appearing at Rabbinical Court hearings.

“Me and my husband are being punished for no reason,” said Gaz’s mother according to Walla! News. “Perhaps the Court is seeking to help an Agunah (Jewish woman who is "chained" to her marriage - ed.), but they are being cruel to the wrong people."

Never Too Old to Hurt From Parents’ Divorce

NY Times

The divorce rate among couples 50 and older has soared. The number of individuals who are adults when their parents divorce is climbing with it. Yet the vast majority of recent research, and subsequent counseling, for divorcing couples is focused on young children. [...]

When Krista Mischo’s parents divorced after 45 years of marriage, she sought comfort from others in her situation. “I went to a divorce care group, but it was a meeting for adults going through divorces,” said Mrs. Mischo, who lives in Wisconsin and was 43 at the time. “The only group for children of divorce I could find was for young children.”

In 2012, she decided to create a group of her own, and began writing a blog, Time for Serenity (acodtimeforserenity.blogspot.com). Continue reading the main story

 

In a short time, she said, the blog had attracted more than 20,000 readers around the world. Mrs. Mischo, who stopped writing the blog after two years, said, “I think I really exhausted every possible topic I could think of, and therapeutically I have worked through almost every aspect of this, and I don’t want this to define me.” [...]

“My father told me I wasn’t sad enough about it,” Ms. Kutner said. “He would say, ‘I just got divorced.’ And I would say to him: ‘My parents just got divorced. I don’t know what to tell you.’”

Then her mother wanted to share details of her dates. Ms. Kutner had had enough.

“I have said so many times over the past year that I felt as though I had two 50-something-year-old children,” Ms. Kutner said. “And I have totally resented it.”

Both parents want the children to understand their pain and confusion. That’s not O.K., therapists say. Parent up, they say. [...]

Worse, many adult children begin to question whether they want children of their own, or if they have the ability to maintain a healthy relationship.

“I really have no interest in the idea of getting married,” Ms. Kutner said. “If my parents could end up not staying together, to me it really indicates that we live too long, and I have found a lot of peace in that. Some people really do outgrow each other, and the relationship is as long as it is and that might not be a lifetime.” [...]

In the generaltion of Moshiach - talmidei chachomim there will be claims made against talmidei chachomim - Greenblatt-Kaminetsky Heter

It is interesting to note that criticizing talmidei chachoim is one of the signs of the time of Moshiach. On the one hand that could be understood as there will be unjustified attacks on rabbonim in the time of Moshiach. However it clearly also can be understood to mean that Moshiach will come when the masses  criticize gedolim who corrupt the halachic process and go against the Torah and as a result undermine emunas chachomim by their actions

Kesubos (112b) R. Zera said: R. Jeremiah b. Abba stated, ‘In the generation in which the son of David7 will come there will be prosecution8 against scholars’. When I repeated this statement in the presence of Samuel, he exclaimed, [There will be] test after test,9 for it is said in Scripture, And if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall again be eaten up.10

 כתובות (קיב:)  

אמר רבי זירא אמר רבי ירמיה בר אבא דור שבן דוד בא קטיגוריא בתלמידי חכמים כי אמריתה קמיה דשמואל אמר צירוף אחר צירוף שנאמר ועוד בה עשיריה ושבה והיתה לבער

Former Shomrim leader charged in federal court with bribing New York police officers.

Arutz 7

A former leader of an Orthodox volunteer security patrol in Brooklyn has been charged in federal court with bribing New York police officers to “expedite” gun permit applications for members of the Orthodox community.

Alex “Shaya” Lichtenstein was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges Monday after an officer in the New York Police Department’s License Division allegedly confessed that he and a supervisor had accepted bribes from him, according to the New York Post.

The Forward reported that Lichtenstein — who was arrested Sunday at his home in Rockland County, a heavily Orthodox region an hour north of New York City — is the former coordinator of the Borough Park-based Shomrim security patrol. Citing court papers, the Forward said that at the time of his arrest, Lichtenstein was carrying an NYPD detective’s shield bearing the word “liaison” even though he is not an official NYPD liaison. [...]

Court papers say Lichtenstein was secretly recorded last week boasting about how his police connections had enabled him to secure 150 gun licenses. He reportedly offered another police officer $6,000 per gun permit after fearing that the FBI was cracking down on the officers who had previously helped him. [....]

Yishai Schlissel convicted of murder at 2015 gay parade

Arutz 7   A Jerusalem district court found Yishai Schlissel guilty of murder on Tuesday in connection with the murder of a teenage girl in 2015.

Last July, Schlissel attacked the Jerusalem gay pride parade, stabbing seven participants. One of his victims, Shira Banki, died from her injuries three days after the attack.

Schlissel carried out the attack just three weeks after having been released from prison for a prior stabbing attack.

A father of four from the haredi town of Modi’in Illit, Schlissel had been convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for a similar attack on the 2005 Jerusalem gay pride parade. Three people were wounded in that attack.

Schlissel was released early, however, after a court reduced his sentence by two years.

During his prison sentence for the 2005 stabbing attacks, Schlissel divorced his wife.

Prep Schools Wrestle With Sex Abuse Accusations Against Teachers

NY Times

Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite New Hampshire boarding school whose prominent graduates include Daniel Webster and Mark Zuckerberg, disclosed last month that it had forced out a popular teacher in 2011 because of sexual misconduct in the 1970s and ’80s.

The school’s delayed announcement — officials said they had been protecting the victims’ privacy — brought forth allegations against other employees. And on Wednesday, Exeter announced that it had fired a second teacher who had admitted to sexual encounters with a student more than two decades ago.

The revelations at Exeter are the latest to rock the insular, privileged world of American prep schools. In the past decade, sex abuse allegations have tarnished a litany of top private schools, including Horace Mann in the Bronx, Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. Since December, more than 40 alumni of St. George’s School, an elite boarding school in Rhode Island, have reported several cases of molestation and rape, mostly in the 1970s and ’80s.

Sexual misconduct is, of course, not limited to select private schools. Educators say that it occurs with alarming frequency across all types of educational institutions. [...]

A 2004 analysis of the scant research on sex abuse estimated that 9.6 percent of students in public schools experience some form of educator sexual misconduct, ranging from offensive comments to rape, between kindergarten and 12th grade.

“Boarding schools are fertile ground for predatory behavior, mostly because you’re with the kids all the time,” said Eric MacLeish, a lawyer representing several alumni who say they were sexually abused at St. George’s.

“It is accepted that teachers will get very, very close to students as they become mentors,” he said. “They work out together, eat together, take trips together, go to Europe together with the school choir. Many live on campus and are dorm parents.”

Hawk Cramer, 48, an elementary school principal in Seattle who said he was molested by a faculty member at St. George’s when he was a student there in the early 1980s, agreed that the unfettered access to students at boarding schools can allow a pedophile to groom victims.

“You can call kids into your home, you can be alone with them, and kids think you have control over their future,” he said.

And students are loath to report the abuse, at least in real time. “Students are embarrassed and under huge pressure to perform,” Mr. Cramer said. “They don’t want anyone to think they aren’t measuring up or that they’re a victim.”[...]

“I do think a lot of schools are grappling now in a way they haven’t before with what are the best practices in terms of providing safety and enough prevention, training and education,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. [...]

He and others attributed the changes in part to liability concerns stemming from the explosive Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State in 2011. Mr. Sandusky, a coach who was convicted of abusing 10 boys over 15 years, has cost the university more than $92 million in settlement costs.

More recently, the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight,” an account of The Boston Globe’s exposé of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests and the subsequent cover-up, may be spurring a new round of reporting. [...]

Ross Greene Ph.D Why so many kids are being diagnosed today and why diagnosis can be limiting

For more information on special needs support visit KidsInTheHouse.com



For more information on special needs support visit KidsInTheHouse.com

Why Is This Matzo Different From All Other Matzos? An unintended side effect of kosher law: better tasting food

NY Times

SEVERAL years ago, at a family Seder, I tasted a matzo I actually liked. It was misshapen and lightly burned, distinguishing it from the machine-made matzo of my youth. And this one possessed something that I had never experienced with matzo: It had flavor. What can I say? Up until that moment, the best matzo of my life was not much better than the worst matzo of my life; you could taste the struggle in every bite. For the first time I ate matzo and thought, This is delicious.

In the spirit of the Four Questions, which the youngest child always asks at the Passover Seder, and which begin with: Why is this night different from all other nights? I asked myself, “Why is this matzo different from all other matzos?”

I’m a chef, so of course I was tempted to credit the baker. [...]

A visit to the bakery where the matzo was made, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, allowed me to see how this law plays out on the ground. There were roughly 40 workers, with earlocks and yarmulkes, white shirts and black pants. For each batch of matzo, from the moment the water met flour, the workers frantically mixed, rolled and baked — all within 18 minutes — guaranteeing no fermentation.

The precision was impressive. But the recipe was just a hurried mix of flour and water. Not even a kiss of salt — nothing to explain that bravura taste, apart from the grain itself.

The bakery, I learned, specialized in an elite class of matzo called “shmurah,” meaning “guarded” or “watched,” which Orthodox communities prescribe for the first night of Passover. For shmurah matzo, the guarding against chametz begins not in the bakery but in the field, with rabbis overseeing the grain from harvest through to milling. Maybe, I thought, the matzo owed its flavor to this rabbinical scrutiny.

So several months later, I drove to upstate New York to visit one of the bakery’s suppliers, Klaas Martens, a grain farmer whom, coincidentally, I’ve known for many years. It was early July, and he was waiting to harvest kosher spelt for shmurah matzo. (Spelt isn’t typical matzo material, but it is one of the five biblical grains permitted in Passover tradition.) [...]

“What was remarkable to me is that being constrained by the rules of the rabbi, it forced us to figure out how to better preserve the quality of the grain,” Klaas said. [...]

Convinced that the matzo I’d tasted must be proof not just of a higher understanding of agriculture but also of a higher understanding of deliciousness, I asked the rabbi if he believed that any of the kosher laws ended up producing better-tasting food.

“No. Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s just kosher law.” [...]

I was beginning to see how the annual shmurah harvest improved Klaas’s farming for the rest of the year. It encouraged him to diversify crops, for instance, ridding his fields of weeds and improving the soil for everything else he grew. [...]

As we started down the last row of the 30-acre field, I watched the rabbi study the spelt left to cut. At the end of this hot, grueling day, he didn’t ease into the last few minutes of the harvest. If anything, he looked closer, examining the spelt so carefully, so faithfully, he might have been reading ancient scrolls.

I can’t shake that image because of something Klaas told me many years ago: “The history of wheat in a question is ‘How do we grow this and make it easier?’ ”

We’ve been spectacularly successful. After all, wheat built Western civilization. We eat a lot of the stuff — in the United States, more than 130 pounds per person each year. Worldwide, it covers more acreage than any other crop.

The rabbi, however, was not interested in making wheat easier. And his stone-faced inspection reminded me of what that pursuit has left us with: 

chemicals, denuded wheat, depleted soils and a host of other problems with our food system.

Everyone has his own standards — for food and faith — but that image of the rabbi gave me hope that the solution for a problem centuries in the making is within reach. Call it a fifth question: Instead of making something easier, why not make it more delicious? There’s room at the table for that.

Rav Herschel Schachter to give shiur at the Epstein's shul on Sunday

=================from a year ago =================

http://www.mainlinehealth.org/wtn/Page.asp?PageID=WTN001657

(Wynnewood, PA) – Lankenau Medical Center (LMC), part of Main Line Health, recently held a dedication of its Shabbat Suite, which was attended by community members, hospital administrators, physicians and staff. Lankenau Medical Center is located within a populous Jewish community in the western suburbs where the need is great for Jewish families to be able to observe Shabbat, religious holidays and Jewish religious law while their loved ones are in the hospital. 

The suite was designed to help patients’ families adhere to specific activities that Orthodox and other observant Jews refrain from during the Sabbath, which includes driving and cooking. The suite has two sleeping rooms, each with a private bathroom, which allows family members to stay near their loved one in the hospital on the Sabbath, which starts at sundown on Friday and ends at nightfall on Saturday. The new suite also has a kosher pantry and kitchen accommodations. Both the sleeping accommodations and kosher pantry are also available during religious holidays and during other patient stays.

“The dedication of this special suite would not have been possible without the efforts of Lankenau physician leadership and our partners in the Jewish community whose coordinated efforts have created a special place for patient families to observe Shabbat while their loved ones are hospitalized,” said Phil Robinson, President, Lankenau Medical Center. “The Shabbat Suite is one example of our commitment to delivering a personalized experience to all who entrust their care here.”

The Bikur Cholim Reception Area was dedicated in memory of David E. Epstein, MD, an esteemed former Lankenau Medical Center physician who passed away in 2010. In a drive spearheaded by Rebetzin Choni Levene of Lower Merion Synagogue, where Dr. Epstein and his wife Cheryl worshipped, its members donated close to $50,000, and his family made a special gift of $25,000 in his memory. Stephen M. Gollomp, MD, Lankenau Medical Center Neurology, and his wife Randie, dedicated the Prayer Room in memory of his parents, Renee and Bernard Gollomp. Over 25 Lankenau physicians committed to gifts of $1,800 or more in support of the Shabbat Suite. [....]

(From left) Standing before the plaque in her husband’s memory, Cheryl R. Epstein, widow of Dr. David Epstein and special donor to the dedication of the Bikur Cholim Reception Area in his memory; Tamar Epstein, daughter of David and Cheryl; and Suri Rabinovici, mother of Cheryl R. Epstein.

Allen J. Frances on the overdiagnosis of mental illness Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Hetter

Published on May 11, 2012

Psychiatrist and author, Allen J. Frances, believes that mental illnesses are being over-diagnosed. In his lecture, Diagnostic Inflation: Does Everyone Have a Mental Illness?, Dr. Frances outlines why he thinks the DSM-V will lead to millions of people being mislabeled with mental disorders. His lecture was part of Mental Health Matters, an initiative of TVO in association with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.