Times of Israel
A formerly ultra-Orthodox woman, who was found dead in her car on Sunday after apparently taking her own life days earlier, had written a short autobiography describing the rigors of living within the Gur Hasidic sect and the pain she felt when her daughters cut ties with her over her choice to give up religion.
Eight years ago Weinstein, who had seven daughters, chose to leave the ultra-Orthodox fold, in which she had grown up and which had seen her married at 17.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Trump campaign falsely claims that State Department gave $55.2 million to Laureate Education after hiring Bill Clinton
The Trump campaign sent out a series of email and Twitter responses during Hillary Clinton’s speech attacking his business record, and among them was this claim that came to our attention. As usual, the Trump campaign did not respond to our request for supporting information. During his speech the next day attacking Clinton’s record as secretary of state, Trump repeated the charge that Clinton treated the State Department as her “personal hedge fund” with no evidence to back it up, either.
This talking point traces back to information from Peter Schweizer’s book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” In one chapter, in discussing Bill Clinton’s role with Laureate Education, Inc., Schweizer describes a “Clinton blur” between the activities of Bill Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. But critics, including Schweizer, have not been able to prove quid pro quo.
The short answer here is: Laureate Education Inc. did not receive $55.2 million in grants from the State Department while Bill Clinton was being paid by the company. This talking point actually conflates two organizations that are independent of each other, and is worth unraveling for our readers. So we explored it.[...]
Why do some blame rape victims while others blame the rapist?- Why do some people shoot the messenger and protect the transgressor?
The following article offers an interesting explanation of why there are diverse reactions in a wide ranger of situations in labeling who the good guy is and who is the bad guy. Why are some rape victims supported and others are harshly attacked for causing problems for the rapist. Likewise - why do someone people attack the messenger when it is pointed out that some rabbis and even gedolim have committed significant crimes and others view it as a acting according to what halacha and thus G-d wants? The authors argue that it depends largely on whether the prime value is group unity or the focus on the well being of the individual
IF you are mugged on a midnight stroll through the park, some people will feel compassion for you, while others will admonish you for being there in the first place. If you are raped by an acquaintance after getting drunk at a party, some will be moved by your misfortune, while others will ask why you put yourself in such a situation.
What determines whether someone feels sympathy or scorn for the victim of a crime? Is it a function of political affiliation? Of gender? Of the nature of the crime?
In a recent series of studies, we found that the critical factor lies in a particular set of moral values. Our findings, published on Thursday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, show that the more strongly you privilege loyalty, obedience and purity — as opposed to values such as care and fairness — the more likely you are to blame the victim.
These two sets of values have been the object of much scholarly attention. Psychologists have found that when it comes to morality, some people privilege promoting the care of others and preventing unfair behaviors. These are “individualizing values,” as they can apply to any individual. Other people privilege loyalty, obedience and purity. These are “binding values,” as they promote the cohesion of your particular group or clan.
Binding and individualizing values are not mutually exclusive, and people have varying degrees of both. But psychologists have discovered that the extent to which you favor one relative to the other predicts various things about you. For example, the more strongly you identify with individualizing values, the more likely you are to be politically progressive; the more strongly you identify with binding values, the more likely you are to be politically conservative.
Our animating insight was that these two clusters of values entail different conceptions of victims. Proponents of individualizing values tend to see a dyad of victim and perpetrator (a victim is hurt, a perpetrator does the hurting). Proponents of binding values, however, may see behaviors as immoral even when there is no obvious victim — for example, the “impure” act of premarital sex or the “disloyal” act of flag burning — and may even feel that doing the right thing sometimes requires hurting others (as with honor killings, to pick an extreme example). So we hypothesized that support for binding values would correlate with a greater tendency to blame victims. [...]
Consistent with our previous findings, the more participants endorsed binding values, the more blame they assigned to victims and the less blame they assigned to perpetrators. But we also found that focusing their attention on the perpetrator led to reduced ratings of victim blame, victim responsibility and references to victims’ actions, whereas a focus on victims led to greater victim blaming. This was surprising: You might assume that focusing on victims elicits more sympathy for them, but our results suggest that it may have the opposite effect.
Victim blaming appears to be deep-seated, rooted in core moral values, but also somewhat malleable, susceptible to subtle changes in language. For those looking to increase sympathy for victims, a practical first step may be to change how we talk: Focusing less on victims and more on perpetrators — “Why did he think he had license to rape?” rather than “Imagine what she must be going through” — may be a more effective way of serving justice.
Cameras are being put in Jerusalem mikvehs to stop abuse: Increasing transparency at what price?
Kikar HaShabbat
בשל החשש מאירועי תקיפות אכזריות של ילדים ונערים בחדרי המקוואות בירושלים, החליטו במשמרת הצניעות להתקין מצלמות אבטחה במספר מקוואות בעיר.
את הצילומים של מצלמות האבטחה יכולים לראות שלושה רבנים בלבד וזאת תחת מעטה כבד של אבטחה.
על פי הדיווח ב'ידיעות ירושלים', מצלמות האבטחה הותקנו בסמוך לבורות הטבילה, המקלחות וחדרי ההלבשה והסאונה.
המקווה הראשון והמפורסם בעיר בו הותקנו מצלמות האבטחה הוא מקווה 'שומרי החומות'. מי שרשאים לצפות בצילומים הם שלושה רבנים שצריכים להתכנס יחד במקרה שהוגשה תלונה על פגיעה בילד. השלושה יצטרכו להיכנס אל המערכת באמצעות 'טביעת אצבע'.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate
Observer Suddenly things were aligning perfectly for Hillary Clinton in her quest for the presidency. After months of embarrassing inability to vanquish Senator Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old socialist who represents a state with just two-tenths of a percent of the American population, she wrapped up her party’s nomination for the White House. The Democratic convention in Philadelphia next month will be a formality, no matter how loudly Bernie Bros stomp their feet.
To cap that triumph last week, President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee for 2016. While this, too, was a formality, since Mr. Obama was eventually going to endorse her—no matter how much bad blood lingers between them from the 2008 race—it was satisfying to her supporters, if perhaps overdue.
The president’s praising assessment of Clinton, including “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” should go a long way toward unifying their party as she faces her Republican opponent, presumably Donald Trump, this autumn.
Obama’s praise was salve on the wounds Clinton recently suffered at the hands of the State Department over EmailGate. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Inspector General at Foggy Bottom can be fairly termed scathing and, as I assessed in this column, it leaves no doubt that Hillary Clinton systematically dodged a raft of laws and regulations on the keeping of Federal records and the handling of classified information.
Worse, the IG report leaves no doubt that Clinton has lied profligately about EmailGate from the moment the scandal broke over a year ago. Since the State Department, which Clinton headed during President Obama’s first term, cannot plausibly be painted as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Team Clinton sees lurking behind every piece of bad press, this report caused real damage to Hillary’s presidential campaign.
True to form, she began punching back herself and through surrogates. Their main talking point—that EmailGate remains a nothing-burger, a figment of the overheated FoxNews imagination more than a bona fide story—continues to be peddled daily. As she confidently said to the cameras last week, there’s “zero chance” she will be indicted over EmailGate, no matter what the FBI finds in its still-active investigation of the matter.
For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, “nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified.” This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clinton’s “unclassified” private email. [...]
To make matters worse for Hillary, it recently emerged that at least one of the emails she handed over to investigators under subpoena in fact did contain classified information that was marked as such. The April 2012 email chain discusses an impending phone call with Malawi’s new president. The important part is an email from Monica Hanley, an aide, to Clinton, including the “call sheet” for the secretary. In layman’s terms, this was a note for Secretary Clinton telling her what she needed to discuss during her scheduled phone conversation with a foreign head of state.[...]
In reality, nobody goes to jail for mishandling classified information at the Confidential level. However, the Hanley email proves that Hillary’s staff was emailing her classified information in unclassified channels, that it was marked classified, and that it was transiting Clinton’s personal email server. It’s difficult to believe that a mere aide like Monica Hanley decided to break the law like this, as she surely knew she was, on her own initiative.[...]
Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover. This was hardly news, in fact I broke the same story four months ago in this column. However, the AP account adds detail to what Clinton and her staff did, actions that placed the lives of CIA clandestine personnel at risk. It also may be a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a 1982 law that featured prominently in the mid-aughts scandal surrounding CIA officer Valerie Plame, which so captivated the mainstream media. More recently, former CIA officer John Kiriakou spent two years in Federal prison for violating this law.
To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like “CIA” and “drone” in these “unclassified” emails, engaging in a practice that spies term “talking around” an issue.[....]
How the FBI can look at all this and not recommend prosecution of someone for something in EmailGate strains the imagination. Yet President Obama has clearly signaled that it’s all no big deal. Director James Comey has a tough job before him when he takes the FBI’s official recommendations regarding EmailGate to Attorney General Lynch for action, probably sometime this summer. Since Comey is now under a cloud over the FBI’s embarrassing mishandling of Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadist mass murderer, perhaps his resignation over that matter would be welcome in the White House, which then could find a new director more willing to bend to Obama’s wishes.
Make no mistake, there are more than a few senior intelligence officials in Washington, DC, who are livid about Hillary Clinton’s willful disregard of clearly defined laws on the handling of classified information. Her misconduct endangered sensitive intelligence programs—and lives. Even if Comey is a sacrificial lamb here, there are high-ranking spies who are perfectly willing to leak the sordid details of EmailGate to the media if the president pulls a Dick Nixon and tries to subvert our Constitution to protect himself and his designated successor.[...]
Trump: The braggart with the ducktail who would be president
Chicago Tribune by Garrison Keillor
It is the most famous ducktail in America today, the hairdo of wayward youth of a bygone era, and it's astonishing to imagine it under the spotlight in Cleveland, being cheered by Republican dignitaries. The class hood, the bully and braggart, the guy revving his pink Chevy to make the pipes rumble, presiding over the student council. This is the C-minus guy who sat behind you in history and poked you with his pencil and smirked when you asked him to stop. That smirk is now on every front page in America. It is not what anybody — left, right or center — looks for in a president. There's no philosophy here, just an attitude.
He is a little old for a ducktail. By the age of 70, most ducks have moved on, but not Donald Trump. He is apparently still fond of the sidewalls and the duck's ass in back and he is proud as can be of his great feat, the first punk candidate to get this close to the White House. He says the country is run by a bunch of clowns and that he is going to make things great again and beat up on the outsiders who are coming into our neighborhood. His followers don't necessarily believe that — what they love about him is what kids loved about Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, the fact that he horrifies the powers that be and when you are pro-duck you are giving the finger to Congress, the press, clergy, lawyers, teachers, cake-eaters, big muckety-mucks, VIPs, all those people who think they're better than you — you have the power to scare the pants off them, and that's what this candidate does better than anybody else.
After the worst mass shooting in modern American history on Sunday, 50 persons dead in Orlando, the bodies still being carted from the building, the faces of horror-stricken cops and EMTs on TV, the gentleman issued a statement on Twitter thanking his followers for their congratulations, that the tragedy showed that he had been "right" in calling for America to get "tough."
Anyone else would have expressed sorrow. The gentleman expressed what was in his heart, which was personal pride.
We had a dozen or so ducktails in my high school class and they were all about looks. The hooded eyes, the sculpted swoop of the hair, the curled lip. They emulated Elvis but only the look, not the talent. Their sole ambition was to make an impression, to slouch gracefully and exhale in an artful manner. In the natural course of things, they struggled after graduation. Some tried law enforcement for the prestige of it, others became barflies. If they were drafted, the Army got them shaped up in a month or two. Eventually, they all calmed down, got hitched up to a mortgage, worried about their blood pressure, lost the chippiness, let their hair down. But if his dad was rich and if he was born before you were, then the ducktail could inherit enough wealth to be practically impervious to public opinion. This has happened in New York City. A man who could never be elected city comptroller is running for president. [...]
Joeseph Hirt confesses he is an imposter and lied for years claiming to have been in Auschwitz
CBS News A 91-year-old Pennsylvania man who has for years lectured to school groups and others about what he said were his experiences at Auschwitz now says he was never a prisoner at the German death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Joseph Hirt, of Adamstown, made the admission in a letter to LNP newspaper Wednesday. He said he used poor judgment and faulty reasoning in trying to tell the story of those affected by the Nazis.
"I am writing today to apologize publicly for harm caused to anyone because of my inserting myself into the descriptions of life in Auschwitz," Hirt wrote. "I was not a prisoner there. I did not intend to lessen or overshadow the events which truly happened there by falsely claiming to have been personally involved."
Hirt's admission came weeks after his story of escaping from Auschwitz was questioned by Andrew Reid, a history teacher in Turin, New York. Reid and several students attended an April presentation by Hirt and the educator concluded that many of the speaker's claims didn't add up.[...]
In his letter, Hirt recounted a visit he made to Auschwitz several years after World War II and said he was determined "at that moment to prevent the loss of the truth" about life and death at the concentration camp.
He said he was wrong to lie to discuss the "the important truth of the suffering and death of so many" at the hands of the Nazis. Hirt said he was wrong and asked for forgiveness.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Senior Breslav rabbis protest sefer defending the alleged sexual misconduct of Eliezar Berland. It claims that tzadikim can violate the Torah
Kikar HaShabbat
על רקע חשיפת "כיכר השבת" כי משפיעים ורבנים בחסידות ברסלב החלו להתבטא באופן חריף נגד הספרים "אמונת חכמים כהלכתה" ו"הכתב מבין האילנות" שכתבו חתנו ותלמידיו של הרב אליעזר ברלנד, היום (שישי) יוצאים גדולי הרבנים בברסלב נגד הספר ומכנים אותם "דברי כפירה ומינות". הספרים עוררו סערה לאחר שכללו תוכן שניתן היה לראות בו הצדקה למעשים המיוחסים לרב ברלנד.
במכתב שהגיע לידי "כיכר השבת" עליו חתומים הרב יעקב מאיר שכטר, הרב שמואל משה קרמר, הרב נתן ליברמנטש, הרב שמעון שפירא והרב אליעזר מרדכי קניג, מחשובי רבני ברסלב, נכתב: "נזדעזנו לראות כבלע את הקודש בדברי הבל ורעות רוח שנכתבו בספר "אמונת חכמים כהלכתה" ובספר "הכתב שבין האילנות", שכביכול יש היתר לצדיקים לעבור על דברי תורה ואפילו על איסורים שהם ב"יהרג ואל יעבור"רח"ל מהאי דעתא שבשתא".
Will smart phones and tablets make your kids dumb and hyperactive?
Jessica’s tiny fingers dart around the iPad, swiping through photos to get to a particularly entertaining video: a 12-second clip of her dancing clumsily to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. The 18-month-old taps “play” and emits a squeal of delight.
After watching the video twice, she navigates back to the home screen and opens up the YouTube app to watch an episode of the colourful animation Billy Bam Bam. Halfway through, she moves onto a Yo Gabba Gabba! game, which involves anthropomorphized fruits making their way into a character’s belly.
When Jessica’s mom, Sandy, tries to take away the iPad, there’s a tantrum that threatens to go nuclear: wobbly lip, tears, hands balled into fists and a high-pitched wail. “She does this a lot,” says Sandy. “She seems to prefer the iPad to everything else. Sometimes it’s the only thing that will keep her quiet,” she adds, frantically waving a pink fluffy unicorn in an attempt to appease her daughter.
Like many parents, she’s worried about her child’s obsession with screens. She wants to know which activities are best, and how much time spent on screens is too much. [...]
The concern among some experts is that these devices, if used in particular ways, could be changing children’s brains for the worse—potentially affecting their attention, motor control, language skills and eyesight, especially in under-fives, for whom so much brain development is taking place.[...]
Few technologies, however, have invaded our lives—and those of our children—as stealthily as the mobile computer, most commonly the smartphone or tablet. These devices are the right size for little hands to handle them, and the touchscreens easy for tiny fingers to manipulate. Plus there’s so much you can do on these devices: watch videos, play games, draw pictures and talk to relatives thousands of miles away.[...]
There’s little clarity around the consequences of long-term use of such devices. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has erred on the side of caution, recommending absolutely no screen time for children under the age of two, and a two-hour daily limit for those older. These restrictions simply don’t tally with how many people are integrating these devices into their children’s lives, nor do they reflect the fact that some interactions with screens might actually be beneficial.
“If your child is under two and is exposed to a screen it’s not going to be toxic to their brain: they won’t be turned into idiots,” says Michael Rich, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an AAP member. “But there are potential downsides…and parents need to make a series of risk–benefit analyses.” The AAP is now in the process of revising its guidelines, and they are due to be published in late 2016. [...]
Having a video or TV on when a child is doing something else can distract them from play and learning, negatively affecting their development. Hours of background TV has also been found to reduce child–parent interaction, which has an adverse impact on language development. This displacement is a big concern: If kids are left with screen-based babysitters then they are not interacting with caregivers and the physical world. There are only so many hours in a day, and the time spent with screens comes at the expense of other, potentially better, activities.[....]
Many apps are designed to be stimulus-driven, with exciting audiovisual rewards for completing tasks. Christakis refers to this as the “I did it!” response, which triggers the reward pathway in the brain. “The delight a child gets from touching a screen and making something happen is both edifying and potentially addictive,” he says.
Because of this, tablets and smartphones make for excellent pacifiers, particularly on long plane journeys and in restaurants. “The device itself is seen as a pleasurable source of comfort and parents play into that,” says Christakis.
“It’s pretty common,” says Jenny Radesky, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan. “It becomes the go-to, easiest tool the parent is using.” Although helpful in the short term, it’s important for young children to be able to develop internal mechanisms of self-regulation, whether that’s learning without constant rewards or being able to sit patiently without constant digital stimulation.
Christakis says that, anecdotally, he and others are starting to see younger and younger patients using these devices compulsively. “We know there’s such a thing as problematic Internet use in older children and adolescents, and it stands to reason that the same would happen with infants,” he says. And he’s doing research to find out more about this.[...]
In California, Maria Liu heads up the Myopia Control Clinic at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry. She’s seen a sharp increase in young children with myopia (shortsightedness). “It’s increasing at an alarming rate worldwide and a well-accepted contributing factor is the early introduction of handheld devices to kids.” [...]
The other problematic aspect of screens is that they have been shown to disrupt sleep. The blue light emitted by the super-sharp displays can interfere with our natural bodily rhythms, preventing melatonin, an important sleep hormone, from being released. This in turn can lead to sleep impairments in adults and children alike. Sandy says that if Jessica uses the tablet before bed she gets “noticeably riled up”. So, she says, they try to use books instead. This issue is why the latest version of Apple’s software for iPads and iPhones comes with “Night Shift”, which automatically swaps the blueish light for a warmer hue before bedtime. [...]
Even if apps are found to have educational value, toddlers still learn better from experiences in the real world than they do from equivalent two-dimensional representations on screen. Studies in the U.S. have shown that when dealing with visual–spatial problems, such as finding hidden objects or solving puzzles, toddlers (under around 30 months) perform much better when the problem is presented in real life rather than onscreen.[...]
Instead of banning devices, we should be demanding better apps built on solid research. For children aged between three and five, it’s entirely possible that a well-designed app can help improve vocabulary and basic math skills. “My youngest is speech-delayed, and the videos he watches have definitely helped him learn new words,” says Lisa, a mother of four- and six-year-old sons who have been using mobile technology since they were 18 months old.[...]
All of the pediatricians, child development and education specialists I spoke to agreed that, for children under 30 months, there is no substitute for human interaction. So why not develop apps that act as mediators between infant and caregiver? BedTime Math is one example. The app delivers engaging math story problems for parents and their children. It is one of the few tools that have been shown to make kids smarter; children who used the app even just once a week for a year improved their math by more than a control group did. The impact was particularly strong for children whose parents were anxious about math.
With so much focus on what children are doing, it’s easy for parents to forget about their own screen use. “Tech is designed to really suck you in,” says Radesky, “and digital products are there to promote maximal engagement. It makes it hard to disengage, and leads to a lot of bleed-over into the family routine.”[...]
“The extent to which parents are tied up with these devices in ways that disrupt the interactions with the child has potential for a far bigger impact,” says Heather Kirkorian, who heads up the Cognitive Development & Media Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If I’m on the floor with a child but checking my phone every five minutes, what message does that send?” How much parents play with and talk to their kids is a very powerful predictor of how the kids will develop, she adds.
Radesky has studied the use of mobile phones and tablets at mealtimes by giving mother–child pairs a food-testing exercise. She found that mothers who used devices during the exercise started 20 percent fewer verbal and 39 percent fewer nonverbal interactions with their children. During a separate observation of 55 caregivers eating with one child or more, she saw that phones became a source of tension in the family. Parents would be looking at their emails while the children would be making excited bids for their attention.
“You would see parents losing it and raising their voices because it’s extremely irritating to be focusing on something and have a child escalate their requests for attention,” she explains, adding that some parents would do things like shove their child’s hand away. Restricting the use of devices at critical family moments such as mealtimes and before bed can help reduce these frictions and encourage more face-to-face conversations.
Infants are wired to look at parents’ faces to try to understand their world, and if those faces are blank and unresponsive—as they often are when absorbed in a device—it can be extremely disconcerting for the children. Radesky cites the “still face experiment”, which was devised by developmental psychologist Ed Tronick in the 1970s. In it, a mother is asked to interact with her child in a normal way before putting on a blank expression and not giving them any visual social feedback. As the video shows, the child becomes increasingly distressed as she tries to capture her mother’s attention.[...]
“As a mum, I put my 18-month-old in front of an HBO baby poetry video,” says Radesky. “It’s cute and calm and I can wash the dishes or do something that’s a reset for me. That’s a benefit, but it’s something parents need to be very honest about. The video is not educating my 18-month-old. It’s a break for me as a parent.”
Friday, June 24, 2016
The Novominsker Rebbe issues a serious call for action to deal with child abuse
Yated The Novominsker Rebbe, Rav Yaakov Perlow, issued a call for action in response to the festering scourge of child abuse and molestation. As a result of his seminal address at the recent Torah Umesorah convention, several groundbreaking initiatives have been launched to ensure that our children are safe at all times.
Torah Umesorah is preparing to train hundreds of principals, rabbeim and mechanchos across the country. This training will provide them with tools not only to prevent instances of child abuse and molestation from occurring within their schools, but also to recognize symptoms among students indicating that they may have been molested outside the school setting. (Statistics show that perpetrators are rarely strangers; generally, they are people the child knows and trusts.) The training program is slated to begin this fall.
In addition, a training program for thousands of summer-camp counselors is now being rolled out. The program, endorsed by Rav Elya Brudny, rosh yeshiva, Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, will consist of short, animated video lessons, followed by quizzes. The quizzes will enable camp directors to ascertain that all counselors understand the dos and don’ts of relating to and protecting their charges, and that they are able to identify warning signs and respond appropriately. The counselor training program, endorsed also by Dr. David Pelcowitz and Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, will make summer camp the special, cherished experience that it should be. As Rabbi Perlow stated at the convention, “We must ensure that predators are not able to disturb our children; we have no sympathy for the perpetrators.”
These and other initiatives will generate increased awareness of the problem and greater sensitivity to warning symptoms, and will likely result in more people contacting trusted community organizations that specialize in addressing child abuse and molestation. “We are deeply sympathetic to the victims,” Rabbi Perlow said at the convention. Gedolei Yisroel are making this issue the highest priority.
“Our staff are already reporting a sharp increase in calls from community members looking for guidance and assistance,” said Rabbi Zvi Gluck, director of Amudim Community Resources. “We are now in the process of setting up a crisis line. The days of looking away, pretending that these problems don’t exist, or pushing them to the side, are behind us; we have to take a strong, positive stance to protect and empower our children.”
To assist victims of abuse and molestation, a group of concerned donors established a fund to subsidize trauma therapy. The fund, named ASAP, is currently assisting 250 victims, with new applications arriving daily.
With one out of every five children in our community likely to be victimized, this serious threat to our families has the potential to destroy generations. More initiatives are on the way, as the Torah community unites to combat this intolerable situation.
Meir Pogrow: Gedolim directed the English Yated to publish the warning from Beis Din - baruch Hashem for progress!
A Bais Din of leading rabbonim, gathered information, heard from credible witnesses, and determined that Meir Pogrow (of Beit Shemesh – and the US) has inflicted serious damage on numerous women who fell under his influence.
We are obligated to publicly warn women not to have any interaction at all with him and to distance themselves from his presentations, talks, classes in person or over the internet.
We advise men as well to cut off any connection with him, for our Rabbis have warned: “Do not associate with an evil person.”
Rabbi Yitzchok Berkowitz
Rabbi Gershon Bess
Rabbi Elimelech Kornfeld
Rabbi Chaim Zev Malinowitz
Rabbi Mordechai Wilig
For a copy of the p’sak write: al@maaneh.org
This notice is published at the request of gedolei yisroel.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Meir Pogrow: Charismatic teachers: This is a wakeup call about who should teach and how
Times of Israel by Shayna Goldberg [see also post by Paul Shaviv - his full article on "Charismatic personality and sexual abuse" is a chapter in my book Child and Domestic Abuse Volume I ]
Another scandal. Another rabbi/educator accused of all kinds of outrageous, inappropriate behavior with female students. This time it is severe enough that rabbis who live across the world, in Israel, New York and Los Angeles, and who span the Modern Orthodox-Chareidi-Chasiddishe spectrum, have come together to sign a letter warning the public to stay away. This time the person involved is thought to have performed hundreds (!) of indecent acts and to have ruined countless lives.
And yet with all the talking, I feel that the real issue is not being spoken about at all. And therefore, despite my deep reluctance to write publicly about any person or place, I want to tell another part of this story.
I knew this rabbi. Eighteen years ago, I came to Israel for the year to study Torah in a seminary where he taught. He lived on campus with his young family in the apartment right beneath mine. From the first time I met him, my overwhelming gut instinct was to stay away. There was something creepy about the way he knew all of our SAT scores by heart, even before we arrived. The way he knew exactly who was registered for an Ivy League college. The way he pursued and initiated chavrutot (study sessions) with very specific girls. Never the weak ones. Only the “best and the brightest.” It felt like a kind of game for him. A challenge. Could he crack the toughest ones? Break them down and then rebuild them? By some, it was considered flattering if he chose you. And there were girls who were hurt and devastated because they didn’t make the cut.
Once he forged that connection, he was manipulative, he played mind games, and he fostered dependence and hero worship. He was sarcastic, biting, and cynical, and he used his sharp mind and his Torah knowledge in cunning ways. He was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He knew Torah by heart, and, of course, his way of looking at things was always “right.” You could never really challenge his read or his understanding because he was held up by everyone as the ultimate talmid chacham (scholar). He had mastered Torah. And he was only 27.
I stayed far away, and yet the experience of coming into even limited contact with him was incredibly painful. There were a couple of times that he threw out such nasty lines to me that I was left crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. And then there were the difficult feelings of confusion and abandonment that arise when you try to raise concerns with friends and teachers and, instead of taking you seriously, they make you doubt yourself.
This is the real issue that has plagued my mind for so long. The fact that this man was never, ever fit to be an educator. The fact that knowing all the Torah in the world does not on its own make you trustworthy enough to be given a classroom’s worth of young, impressionable souls. The fact that long before anyone suspected inappropriate sexual behavior, it was glaringly clear that this person employed all kinds of unhealthy teaching methods in order to cultivate relationships with students. And the fact that no one but a few innocent teenage girls seemed to notice.
And so I want to talk about it. I want to talk about teachers who use fear and guilt frequently and indiscriminately in order to motivate and inspire. Teachers who deliberately try to alienate their students from everything they come from — their parents, families, homes, previous schools, communities, shuls, and even shul rabbis. Teachers who break students down so that they can recreate them in their own images. Teachers who cultivate groupies and are dependent on their students for self-esteem. Teachers who lack real relationships with their own peers because they are “so devoted” to their students. Teachers who teach students not to trust themselves, not to rely on their instincts, and not to listen to their inner voices.
Unfortunately, teachers like this are not uncommon, and we don’t talk enough about the damage that they do. About the fact that the rapid growth and change that they foster usually doesn’t last or, if it does, comes at a heavy price. About the fact that their students, years later, often find themselves empty and lost. About the guilty feelings that can stay with a person forever. About the relationships that are ruined in the process. And about the dependence that has been formed.
We don’t talk about it because, in the moment, the picture is so rosy. The teacher is charismatic, “his” classes are well attended, “she” is so devoted to her students, and the growth seems so exciting and real.[...]
People like this are facilitated by an educational culture that celebrates and rewards brilliant and charismatic figures, despite the fact that they are often highly problematic and leave silent trails of ruin in the shadows of their successes.
As a community, we can be aware of this and do a lot to change it. Our schools, administrators, and lay leaders can think, and think again, about our educational goals and about the healthy ways in which to help our students reach them. And, in the event that there are staff members whose behavior is wholly inconsistent with our conclusions, then it’s time that we put our children’s well-being first.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
What happens when you contact Jewish Community Watch to report abuse? Part I
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Initially when someone contacts JCW it is usually through the website or central email address. These messages go directly to the director of victims services (a clinical social worker), who then assigns them to the proper staff member. Obviously depending on the nature of the inquiry, the process that follows varies.
If the individual is looking for therapeutic support or referral, peer support, a support group, therapeutic funding assistance, etc, they are assigned a case manager (a certified mental health professional) who will accompany them throughout their process, and connect them to whatever is needed. They will be connected to local resources and/or whatever virtual help can be helpful. (While most of JCW's clients are in the US, Canada, and Israel, we also have provided services to individuals in South America, Australia, UK, Asia, and Africa.)
Someone with a specific question regarding legal proceedings (within the US) of any kind is sent to our in-house attorney.
If someone is looking to report their abuse, they are sent to the director of the investigative department (a social worker with a degree in criminology). If the case is to be reported to the authorities, the survivor (or whoever is doing the reporting) will be assisted through the process by one of the investigative associates and/or the attorney, depending on what is needed. They will work together with law enforcement (police, FBI, US marshals, etc) as the case proceeds.
If the report cannot be sent to law enforcement (most commonly because the statute of limitations have expired) and there is concern that the alleged abuser still poses a serious risk to the community, JCW may proceed with a private investigation. This would involve the investigative team, the attorney, the PI, and then the investigative committee.
The process and policies around JCW's exposure of information about convicted and alleged offenders is outlined in detail on the website, link below.
Obviously certain questions might be forwarded to the CEO or a board member, whether halachic, legal, or otherwise. A list of most (a few may have come on since last updated) board members and staff can also be found on the website.
As far as the process of filing a report to the police in Israel-
In Israel, children under the age of 14 are not allowed to be questioned by police officers, only specific social workers trained in forensic interviewing techniques. So when a report is filed regarding a child being abused, the child is then brought in to a center (Mercaz lhaganat hayeled) to meet with a social worker. There is a center in each district in Israel, I believe 6 in all.
(As a parent, I believe that it is important to note that I have been to two such centers, and have found them to be warm, comfortable, and inviting. Real effort was made to design these centers in a way that would seriously minimize the level of possible secondary trauma. They are beautifully decorated, have gardens, many toys and art supplies, and every staff member I met was lovely. With that being said, I do believe that the single most important factor in how a child handles being questioned in the mercaz hagana is their parents reaction to it. While the law seriously discourages discussing the details of the abuse with the child before being questioned, because this can taint the testimony, I have found that in situations where parents are calm, reassuring, and encouraging that although this might be awkward and a little confusing, the child is brave and doing a big mitzva by telling the truth, the children come away feeling empowered and validated.)
The child's interview is videotaped. There is a one sided mirror, so if necessary a police officer and/or prosecutor can stand on the other side and call a phone inside with any questions that they have as the interview is going on. If the case proceeds to trial, the videotape is presented as evidence, and the social worker testifies on the child's behalf; children in Israel do NOT testify in court.
The center also has a doctor on staff who can perform a forensic medical exam if it needed. There is a plainclothes police officer usually present, who can take the parents statement while the child is meeting with the social worker. If the police officer is not present that day for any reason or if the testimony is lengthy, sometimes they will have the parents go to the police station on a different day to give their statement.
In certain situations the social worker will be sent to the child's school instead of having the child brought in to the center. This is standard in a situation, where for example, one parent has reported that the child is being abused by the other parent. In order to protect the non-offending parent, they give them plausible deniability and don't require them to actively bring the child into the center. Here, the reactions of the school staff who are made aware of the situation are critical. I have heard from children that meeting with the social worker was fine, but the looks on the faces of their teacher/principal/yoetzet when they pulled them out of class terrified them.
Adolescents age 14 until 18 are interviewed by a choker noar, a police officer with special training. It's wise to set up an appointment when bringing in a child in this age group, since not every station always has a choker noar on site.
Children in this age group may testify in court if the case proceeds to trial, but the case is under total gag order; all details of the case cannot be publicized, and the court room is sealed (dlatot sgurot).
An adult survivor can give their statement to any police officer, though in practice I have watched concerted effort and sensitivity in making sure victims are interviewed by officers of their preferred gender. Before bringing an adult survivor in to give a statement I always remind them that a police officer is not a social worker or friend; their job is simply to get the truthful story in its entirety. I remind them not to go in expecting tremendous warmth or support, that's not what this is about. When the officers are warm and supportive (which I can thankfully say they often are) it is a "bonus".
Once any report is filed, the individual reporting should be given a slip of paper (ishur hagashat tluna). It's very important to keep this!! Many throw it out, not realizing it will be useful or necessary for them as time goes on. That paper has the file number, and should also have information to be able to access their case status on the government website.
Unfortunately, the police and social services in Israel are very, very overworked. One of the unfortunate byproducts of this is frequent difficulty in getting updates about the progress of the case. Many people feel like they are sent home and then left for weeks with no word about what's going on. You may need to call (and they are notoriously difficult to reach) and keep checking the website. This is where assistance from an advocate can be very helpful, but ultimately there is not much anyone can do to change the fact that there is usually a lot of waiting involved.
As far as how the case progresses- they will bring the accused in for an interrogation, they will collect whatever other evidence and speak to other victims or witnesses. If they feel it is necessary (ie they're not coming up with enough evidence) they may ask the victim (not a young child) to have a face-to-face confrontation with the alleged abuser. Obviously the police watch this whole meeting and it is taped. The hope is that in being forced to face his (often now-adult victim) the alleged abuser will be flustered into confessing the truth of what happened.
At that point, the case is handed over to the prosecutors office (praklitut). They will decide whether or not there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. If there is not, the victim will be sent a letter stating that the file has been closed (usually the reason being insufficient evidence). If there is enough to proceed, the prosecutor will start building their case.
Unfortunately, having cases closed in Israel due to insufficient evidence is very, very common. The laws here and the rights of the accused (zchuyot haneesham) are very strong, and the prosecution will only go to trial if they are very confident that it is an extremely solid case. I don't have the exact current statistics on hand, but for one interested the studies done by the Haifa university are worth looking up. They do indicate that the majority of cases are closed before going to trial.
However, it's important to remember that even if a case is closed due to insufficient evidence, if another victim comes forward in the future or more evidence is found, the case could still proceed then.
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