There’s no defending Trump’s North Korea performance

washington post

By E.J. Dionne Jr.ColumnistJune 13 at 6:40 PMEmail the author

One of the costs of the Trump era is that all opinions become suspect because, even more than usual, everything is seen through the prism of whether you are for or against the president. Consequently, criticism of President Trump is regularly assumed by his supporters to be rooted in bad faith.

The retort to any judgment against his statements or his policies typically begins with “You wouldn’t say this . . .” and ends with “if Obama (or Bush or Clinton) were doing it.”

In the interest of candor, let’s acknowledge that many of us are automatically suspicious of everything Trump says because he not only is a documented liar but also came close to copping to the fact during a news conference in Singapore.

In explaining what he’d do if he proved to be mistaken about his big bet this week on the integrity of Kim Jong Un, Trump said: “I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong.’”

Then he caught himself and added: “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”

This was our salesman-in-chief reveling in his skill at covering up and deceiving.

DOJ ARRESTS MORE THAN 2,000 ALLEGED ONLINE CHILD-SEX OFFENDERS IN COUNTRYWIDE OPERATION

newsweek

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that in a three-month nationwide operation, more than 2,300 people suspected of online child sex crimes have been arrested.

The coordinated effort, called Operation Heart Break, was conducted by Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces in all 50 states. The effort combined resources from more than 4,500 law enforcement agencies, according to the Justice Department.

The Sacramento County, California, sheriff’s office houses ICAC operations within its Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force. The department said it was “proud” to be a part of the effort.

“We conduct these investigations on a local level and work closely with our federal partners,” Sergeant Shaun Hampton, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, told Newsweek. “We work with agencies around the world to ensure the safety of our children.”

The operation targeted several elements of sexual exploitation of children online, including child pornography, enticing children online for sexual activity, sex trafficking and traveling across state and international lines to commit sexual abuse against children.

Hampton called the types of crimes the task force deals with a “tragedy,” and “extremely taxing” on the law enforcement agents who investigate them because of their difficult nature.  

Community in Conflict: Hasidic Jews & Education

Part 1: Some Americans may not realize that Hasidic Jews shun many common secular practices widely accepted across cultural and national borders, including the basics of education. For example, there are several yeshivas, or Hasidic Jewish schools, in the New York area that only teach subjects in Yiddish. Previous yeshiva students share the impact of these practices in their lives. Watch Part 2 Here: https://youtu.be/AlmVCPK_E7M

Lakewood: Senior Posek & Pediatrician Partner To Warn Parents About Sexual Abuse In Camp

yeshiva world news

In what appears to be a first, the senior Posek and senior Pediatrician of Lakewood have partnered together to warn parents about the dangers of sexual abuse for children in  summer camp.

Signs have been hung in Shuls around Lakewood with the phone number of a hotline, urging parents to call and listen to an important Shiur about summer camps, and protecting children.

HaGaon HaRav Yaakov Forscheimer, senior Posek at Lakewood’s Beis Medrash Govoah, addresses the obligation that a parent has to speak with their children before camp.

Rabbi Pesach Krohn addresses the importance of having open communication with your children.

Dr. Reuven Shanik, the leading Pediatrician in Lakewood, is one of the speakers as well as Dr. Hylton Lightman, the leading Pediatrician for the Five Towns and Far Rockaway, and Mrs. Debbie Fox, an LCSW and founder of Magen Yeladim International.

To listen to these important messages, call 641-715-3800 and enter code 424536#.

This is the second time that the Lakewood community has publicly addressed the dangers of sexual abuse and protecting children.

The first event was organized two years ago by Amudim, and was attended by well over 1000 people, including noted askanim, roshei kehillah, the poskim of Beis Medrash Govoha and with the hishtatfus and brocha of the roshei yeshiva, and ‎roshei mosdos.

It is clear that thanks to the Amudim event, this topic is now being dealt with head on, as opposed to the way it was addressed for decades. The awareness that the Amudim event generated went a long way in providing the necessary information and resources to prevent these problems from occurring, and if Chas V’shalom they do, how to properly deal with it al pi Da’as Torah.

Jesus for frum Jews

I have asked for recommendations for a teen age girl regarding Jesus

are their any kosher books available that you would recommend?

updatefrom Rav Spira

Shalom Aleikhem Ha-Rav ha-Ga'on R. Daniel Eidensohn, shlit"a,
Many thanks to Kevod Torato ha-Rav for the update today on Reb Aharon Friedman's situation. In my most recent publication at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/264957339/Sherbrooke-Street-Eruv>, I mention in footnote 30 that Ms. Epstein is still halakhically married to her first husband. Also worthy of highlight in the same essay is footnote 4, which cites an e-mail from R. Yisrael A. Knopfler disqualifying the RCA Vice-President (Northeast region) R. Michael Whitman (be-mechilat Kevod Torato) from adjudicating questions in Hilkhot Gittin. I will send Kevod Torato ha-Rav a copy of the original letter of R. Knopfler at a future date, so as to be mezakeh et ha-rabbim.
Gratefully,
Shalom C. Spira
Montreal, Canada 

update

Todah rabbah and ye'yasher kochakha, R. Eidensohn, shlit"a, for the publicizing today (23 Sivan, 5778) footnote 30 of this student's Sherbrooke Street Eruv essay. Interestingly, the very same day (23 Sivan, 5778), Ha-Ma'or  journal from Shvat-Adar 5776 was published online, which contains a letter by R. Shmuel Tsarch which seems to confirm my footnote. See here:

http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=57182&st=&pgnum=35&hilite=

I cautiously emphasize "seems to confirm," because R. Tsarch congratulates R. Landesman, despite the paradoxical fact that R. Landesman is himself (be-mechilat Kevod Torato) encouraged by the Emet Kneh pamphlet to perform teshuvah regarding the heter me'ah Rabbanim granted to R. Aryeh M. Kotler [itself mentioned in footnote 30 of my essay]. Okay, I am not here to criticize talmidei chakhamim, chas ve-chalilah. Obviously, ve-amekh kulam tzaddikim, and my only goal is to clarify the Halakhah and to perform the mitzvah of restoring shelom bayit between husband and wife, as I already wrote at http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2017/02/greenblatt-kaminetsky-heter-is-tamar.html .

Be-virkat kol tuv selah,

Shalom

Rav Shmeul's phony heter has paid off

http://www.phillykollel.com/Office%20Area/Dinner%202016-17/DN16-17%20Master%20Journal%20Combined.pdf

The Kollel would like to thank those who opened up their homes for Kollel shiurim and events during the past year. In the zechus of their hospitality and support, may their homes be blessed with health, happiness, and peace. We apologize for any omissions. Ilana Baltuch Karen Berkowitz Sara Bleier Diane Braid Galitte Den Amy Erlbaum Tamar Fleischer Stacey Goldman Gilya Hodos Susan Hullman Amanda Israel Cindy Kosloff Amy Kratchman Dana Kupfer Shelly Melman Paige Nochenson Dahlia Ocken Chava Paris Michie Pasternak Kristy Schulman Kineret Shakow Julia Strassman Lisa Stein Adina Spiller Mindy Zaslow Shayna Malka Zeffre

presumably, the Kollel would not sponsor a shiur in the home of a couple, in which the wife was also still married  to another man.  The fact that the Kollel sponsored a shiur in Adam and Tamar's home, and publicly, on the Internet, is thanking them for doing so is surely an endorsement of the annulment and remarriage.

Philadephia's Orthodox community is small and Rabbi Kamanetsky is closely associated with the Kollel.  The Kollel would not be endorsing the annulment and remarriage without Rabbi Kamenetsky's active approval.

Clinic Claims Success In Making Babies With 3 Parents' DNA

npr

In a clinic on a side street in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, doctors are doing something that, as far as is publicly known, is being done nowhere else in the world: using DNA from three different people to create babies for women who are infertile.

"If you can help these families to achieve their own babies, why it must be forbidden?" Valery Zukin, director of the Nadiya Clinic, asks as he peers over his glasses. "It is a dream to want to have a genetic connection with a baby."

I traveled to Ukraine because Zukin promised unusual access to his private fertility clinic, including the first demonstration for a U.S. journalist of how scientists create "three-parent" babies — a procedure prohibited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Zukin also arranged the first-ever interview with a mother of a 15-month-old boy who is one of the four children he says he has produced this way.

Three more of his patients are pregnant, Zukin says, including a woman from Sweden. Women from several other countries including Britain, Brazil and Israel are going through the process, he says.

Leading ethicists and genetics researchers criticize the clinic for rushing ahead to use this method for infertility. No one knows whether children produced this way will be healthy, they say. And some worry the procedure may open the door to "designer babies."

kaminetsky-Greenblatt heter gains - GROUNDBREAKING RULING IN RABBINICAL COURT FREES 23-YEAR 'CHAINED WOMAN'

jpost
dr sprerberv applies heter of kaminetsy-greenblatt
arutz7
In a groundbreaking development for divorce rights in Israel, Tzviya Gorodetsky, who has sought a divorce from her husband for 23 years, has been freed from her marriage by a private, ad hoc Orthodox rabbinical court headed by respected Orthodox rabbi and talmudist Rabbi Daniel Sperber.

The ruling could pave the way for more such women to avail themselves of private rabbinical courts, if they believe that they have no chance of ever escaping their failed marriages. It follows other attempts to bypass established religious institutions in such realms as conversion, kashrut and marriage.

Agudath Israel of America Statement on Supreme Court Ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

matzav

Agudath Israel of America today issued the following response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which involved the rights of a Christian baker who was punished by the State of Colorado for refusing on religious grounds to bake and design a wedding cake for the “marriage” of two men.

The Agudah, a national Orthodox Jewish organization, had urged the Supreme Court in its amicus curiae brief to uphold the religious rights of Mr. Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who was asked to use his creative talents to bake a cake in celebration of a same-sex marriage, an event that contravenes his sincerely held religious beliefs. While the Supreme Court’s decision requires close review, it is unfortunate that the ruling does not reach or provide clarity on the substantive question of whether Mr. Phillips and other such proprietors faced with similar conflicts will find free exercise protection within the First Amendment.

Nonetheless, the Court’s ruling is gratifying in that it emphasizes that religious freedom concerns must be given a full and deserving measure of consideration, even within the context of local and state anti-discrimination law. It affirms the principle that state agencies may not presume religious rights to be of lesser value or deserving of lesser protection, and they may in no way exhibit hostility toward sincerely held religious beliefs. We are also heartened by the fact that this posture was adopted by the Justices by a wide 7-2 margin. We are also pleased that the Court has explicitly affirmed the right of members of the clergy to be able to refuse to participate in ceremonies to which they object for religious reasons.

THE TOY THAT’S WREAKING HAVOC ON THE SOUTH

Up until recently, kites were a symbol of joy, innocence and beauty for residents of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. That was until March, when some of their neighbors across the border in Gaza began using kites as a weapon, sending dozens into their community, scorching their crops and causing serious damage to their agriculture.

“For us, the kite is very symbolic,” Kfar Aza resident Ayelet Shachar-Epstein told The Jerusalem Post over coffee just outside the kibbutz on Monday. She explained that every Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year), “when the weather is beautiful and there are strong winds coming from the west, we have a kite event. Each family builds their own kites, we put them up in the air and it’s one of the most beautiful occasions... of peace and appreciation of life. It’s a community event – we have a very strong community.”

Saying Kaddish for Hamas

arutz\On May 16, about 50 Jewish activists gathered in London’s Parliament Square and, in a public display of phoney grief, davened Kaddish.

This gathering was less about a genuine empathy for dead Palestinians. It was more an exhibition of Jew hatred for the Jewish state.

How do we know that? Well, these people proved they are not equal opportunity grievers. They did not gather to mourn the 1242 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists since the year 2000. Instead, they collected together to publicly show their support for Palestinian terror. Of course, these useful idiots would protest vehemently at such a suggestion but what other conclusion can we reach when it was announced, from the Palestinian side, that at least 53 of the 58 rioters shot by IDF soldiers were, in fact, either members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

So, in mid-May, we had the spectacle of Jews meeting in the heart of British democracy to pray for the souls of those that were prevented by Jewish soldiers from slaughtering Jews

An American 13-Year-Old, Pregnant and Married to Her Rapist

ny times

Dawn Tyree was 11 years old when a family friend began to molest her. A bit more than a year later, she became pregnant from these rapes, and her parents found out what had been going on. But they didn’t go to the police; instead, they found another solution.“It was decided for me that I would marry him,” Tyree recalled.

So Tyree, then 13, was married to her rapist, then age 32. She became one of the thousands of underage American girls who are married each year, often sacrificing their futures to reduce embarrassment to their parents. Statutory rape is thus sanctioned by the state as marriage, and the abuser ends up not in handcuffs but showered with wedding gifts.

Our State Department protests child marriage in Africa and Asia (worldwide, a girl 14 or younger is married every 11 seconds, according to Save the Children), but every state in America allowed child marriages. That has finally changed. Last month Delaware became the first state to ban all child marriages, without exception.

Rav Shlomo Fisher - Maharal's explanations are not part of Mesorah but he created them

otzar forum