Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Friday, December 7, 2018
מסיבת חנוכה בבית החולים הדסה הר-הצופים
מערך המתנדבים בשבתות ובחגים ערך הערב מסיבת חנוכה חגיגית בבית החולים הדסה הר- הצופים בהשתתפות רבנים ואישי ציבור,
גדולי הזמר שימחו והרקידו את המשתתפים
בבית החולים הדסה הר-הצופים שבפאתי שכונותיה הצפוניות של ירושלים, התקיימה הערב ליל נר חמישי דחנוכה, מסיבת חנוכה מפוארת בהשתתפות החולים ובני משפחותיהם וצוות המתנדבים.
שימחו גדולי הזמר החסידי, אמן הקלידים הרשי סגל, והזמרים: אלי מילר, קובי ברומר, אלי הרצליך, יונתן רזאל,ומשה גודמן.
כיבדו את המעמד בהשתתפותם רבנים ואישי ציבור, ח"כ הרב מיכאל מלכיאלי, סגן ראש עיריית ירושלים הרב אברהם בצלאל, חבר מועצת עיריית ירושלים הרב משה גורא, הרה"ג ר' חיים אהרן יוספי שליט"א, הרה"ג ר' אליהו א
יעזר שלנגר שליט"א ועוד
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Australian sisters trace accused abuser’s steps to West Bank town where she fled
times of israel.
Residents of Haredi settlement of Emmanuel only vaguely familiar with, and not particularly disturbed by, allegations against former Melbourne girls’ school principal Malka Leifer
Do Children Get a Subpar Education in Yeshivas? New York Says It Will Finally Find Out
nytimes.
In parts of New York City, there are students who can barely read and write in English and have not been taught that dinosaurs once roamed Earth or that the Civil War occurred.
That is the claim made by a group of graduates from ultra-Orthodox Jewish private schools called yeshivas, and they say that startling situation has been commonplace for decades.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Israel wakes up to the needs of ex-Haredim
tabletmag
Leaving the ultra-Orthodox community is nothing new in Israel. Everyone, secular or religious, knows someone who used to be on, but is now “off the derech.” But the phenomenon hasn’t been well studied. Most of what we know comes from individual stories of people making the difficult transition from the insular Haredi world to mainstream Israeli society.
Monday, December 3, 2018
Don’t kill the Haredi education revolution
Don’t kill the Haredi education revolution
Posted By David M. Weinberg On In Featured Articles,Haredim,Religion and State in Israel | No Comments
Published in The Jerusalem Post [1] and Israel Hayom [2], November 30, 2018.
Over the past seven years, the Israeli government wisely has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in higher education study opportunities for haredi men and women, including gender-separate college programs – and it’s working! It would be disastrous if the Supreme Court shuts these down. This would kill the slow but measurable and exciting movement of haredim into the workforce – which is crucial for the Israeli economy and the future of our society.
A landmine has been laid against the overall positive momentum in integration of haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) students in higher education. The threat comes from a group of extremist professors who have petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel (in its capacity as “Bagatz,” the High Court of Justice) with a demand to terminate all government funding for gender-separate haredi college programs.
The so-called “liberal” professors argue that the separation into genders in academia harms women’s equality in the workplace (because female instructors are not selected to teach haredi male classes). They also warn that such segregation, which they call a “distortion,” could become a precedent for other areas, from the army to the job market. And on top of that, they plaint that gender separation is an affront to the “fundamentals” of higher education, such as “openness and pluralism.”
This week, unsurprisingly, Haaretz backed the radical professors in a lead editorial.
It is imperative that the High Court reject this dangerous suit. It would be outrageous and calamitous if the High Court shuts down gender-separate college and university programs.
Over the past seven years, the Israeli government wisely has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in higher education study opportunities for haredi men and women – and it’s working! The number of haredi students in college has jumped by more than 80 percent over this period, to 11,000 each year. And the number of haredi men in the workforce has risen from 40 to 50 percent over the past decade.
(The employment rate for men is 81 percent in the non-haredi public. The target set by the government for the inclusion of haredi men in the labor force is 63% by 2020).
In parallel, there seems to be an increasing majority sentiment within Israeli haredi society that embraces higher education and superior employment. Surveys suggest that more than 80 percent of haredi parents want their high schools to teach secular subjects alongside religious ones.
The reasons for this are clear. Sixty percent of this country’s one million haredim (plural for haredi) live under the poverty line, and 60 percent are under 20 years of age. Most haredim don’t have a higher education and therefore aren’t qualified for more advanced professions; and thus even those that are employed, work mainly in menial or service jobs, or in low-paying religious professions (scribes, rabbis, teachers).
This situation is crippling for haredi society, and disastrous over the long term for Israel, both economically and in terms of the character of our society.
Which is why Israel’s most urgent agenda with its haredi population is not propelling them to the front lines against Hezbollah, but pulling them out of the unemployment benefits lineup. Not busing them to Tel Hashomer, but enticing them into higher education and high-tech work.
In my assessment, it is indisputable that the overwhelming majority of haredim won’t go to study in mixed-gender classrooms and at mixed-gender campuses. The mixing of the sexes is too far a stretch for the very conservative and still quite insular haredi society, which has a hard-enough time approaching academic studies in the first place.
Thus, the militant axing of gender-separate programs would willy-nilly lead to the exclusion of most haredi men and women from institutions of higher studies. And this would kill the slow but measurable and exciting movement of haredim into the workforce – which, again, is crucial for the Israeli economy and the future of our society.
The inevitable conclusion: For all the problematics involved, at this time gender-separate classes and campuses for haredi students are an absolute and reasonable necessity. It is no exaggeration to say that the country’s future depends on it.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED that the Council for Higher Education (CHE) and its parent-body Ministry of Education are funding gender-separate study programs for haredi students at the undergraduate level only and not in all fields. Which is a way of saying that the CHE is making reasonable distinctions and setting limits – which dismisses the concerns expressed about a slippery slope in supporting “segregation.”
The same goes for the workplace. While some very big businesses in Israel have female-only departments mainly for haredi women, the vast majority of haredim graduating college in computers, engineering, accounting, law and business are working in general, mixed-gender environments. There is no “creeping gender segregation” overwhelming Israel as a result of haredi higher education study tracks.
The zealous professor’s petition is also dishonest on substantive grounds. After all, have they never heard of gender separate colleges, mainly for women, in that bastion of liberalism and democracy called the United States? Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley, for example. Why isn’t this considered discrimination against men, or an “affront to the fundamentals of higher education, such as openness and pluralism” over there?
And if we shut down gender separate colleges, why not shutter gender separate high schools too? Or gender separate synagogues, for that matter…
ALAS, I STRONGLY SUSPECT that the aggressive opposition to gender-separate study programs for haredi students stems from deeper, darker and illiberal place. The professors and journalists behind this are, I think, frightened by the prospect of haredi integration in Israeli life and economy.
Of course, this is what they have demanded for decades – that the haredi community get educated and go to work (and serve in the military) – but now that it is beginning to happen, they’ve changed their minds.
It’s too overwhelming for them, because lo and behold it seems that haredi people can become engineers and even academics without abandoning haredi values and a conservative lifestyle; and this threatens the ultra-progressive and post-modern paradigm that dominates elite Israeli society.
So better to leave haredim wallowing in poverty and in their medieval ghettos than help them step out into the modern world – the “liberal” professors seem to be saying. Or, let us force them to abandon their haredi mores all-together as the price for entering the hallowed hallways of Israeli academia.
This is an enormously shortsighted and even fanatic mindset.
Let’s remember that the haredi world, for all its shortcomings and eccentricities, is admirable in important ways: It models modesty, emphasizes family values, prioritizes spiritual aspirations, and accents charitable works. It is less afflicted by the crime, drugs, booze, pornography, sleaze and slavish devotion to imbecility (the hallmark of most TV shows and movies) characteristic of much of modern secular society.
And therefore I expect that haredi families will yet retain their core values of religious excellence alongside other wholesome values even as they go to college and work. This should not be feared, but rather welcomed, by broader Israeli society.
In fact, I pray for greater integration of haredi society on the high end of the Israeli workforce in a way that strengthens, not damages, the conservative values dear to haredi society. My hope is for a healthy process of haredi integration and maturation that will simultaneously preserve and improve haredi society, and perhaps offer new pathways of navigating modernity to Israeli society writ large.
All this might be possible, if the High Court makes the right decision: To affirm the government’s wise investment in educational study tracks for haredim, including gender-separate programs.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Monday, November 26, 2018
The Kindertransport and Bubby Pollak Z"L
This Monday is the Shloshim of our dear Bubby, Rivkah Chaya [Schick] Pollak Z"L.
The following is an essay written by one of her granddaughters, about her escape from Vienna Austria and Hitler Yimach Shemo, to safety in England.
Biographical note: Bubby arrived in America towards the end of the war and reunited with her parents in Williamsburg. She immediately joined the family "business" tending guest at Schick's Restaurant. She married Rabbi Pinchas Shalom Pollak Zatzal, and together they moved to Boro Park. For the last three years she lived in Lakewood at the home of her son, Reb Yaakov Gershon Pollak Shlita.
this was supposed to be published but I couldn't do it while in New York
My
father’s paternal grandmother, Mrs. Kitty Pollak, escaped from German occupied
Austria to England, in a rescue effort known as the Kindertransport. In recent
years, this grandmother moved to our town of Lakewood New Jersey, giving us the
opportunity to visit her often. As my relationship with Bubby Pollak grew, the
manner and effort by which she was saved has begun to interest me greatly and
inspired me to research this aspect of my history.
Nearly ten thousand children escaped
Hitler’s Europe on a rescue effort known as the ‘’Kindertransport’’, which
means ‘’children’s transport’’ in the German language. These children were a
tiny fraction of the millions of Jews that were trapped on the European
continent facing Hitler yimach shemo with nowhere to run. The United States, England and all free
countries greatly minimized and restricted their borders. In addition, the
British Mandate made immigration to Eretz Yisroel -known then as Palestine –
very difficult. The lack of countries of refuge would turn out to be one of the
greatest factors that contributed to the churban Europe. After immense
pressure, the British parliament allowed unaccompanied minors to enter Britain.
The rescue effort that ensued became known as the Kindertransport.
One young British rabbi, Rabbi Dr.
Solomon Schonfeld, was the only one to take advantage of the Kindertransport to
save orthodox children. Rabbi Solomon was the son of rabbi Avigdor Schonfeld
who was a community rabbi as well as the founder of two Jewish schools. After
his father’s untimely death in 1930 when Solomon was barely 20 years old, the
rabbinic leadership fell on young Solomon’s shoulders.
In 1938, at the tender age of twenty-six
years old, young rabbi Solomon Schonfeld was not going to sit by idly as fellow
Yidden were being murdered by the Nazi’s Yimach Shemom. After hearing about the
horrors of “Kristallnacht”, Schonefeld resolved to do whatever he can to save
lives. When the Kindertransport began, Shonfeld focused all his attention on Hatzalah
efforts. He contacted communal leaders and Askanim in Austria, gathered the
information, and pursued the necessary paperwork to secure the rescue of four
hundred children.
The urgency and extreme seriousness by
which this young Rabbi pursued his holy mission was unfortunately not shared by
his fellow British countrymen, Jew and gentile alike. After presenting his plan
to the board of his own shul, they agreed to host a mere ten children. “Thanks,
but no thanks”, Schonfeld replied, realizing that he would have to take on this
undertaking alone if he wanted a significant number of children to be saved.
Frantically, Schonefeld fought this constant
uphill battle with minimal outside help. In addition, in preparing the mounds
of necessary paperwork, Schonefeld found himself at the mercy of British
bureaucrats that worked at their own pace and were out of their office by five.
Rav Solomon wouldn’t hear of from this. In one instance, he pleaded with a
civil servant that loves are at stake and persuaded him to stay until midnight!
Schonefeld arranged for two shifts of
two hundred children each to leave Vienna, Austria via train on the second and
third nights of Chanukah, 1938. These children were all below the age of seventeen
and were bidding farewell to their parents without knowing what the future had
in store. On the platform was a tragic scene of pitiful children and aching
parents saying goodbye to each other for what they thought might be the last
time. Most of these children never saw their parents again.
On the train, these children were placed
in small compartments where they spent the three-day journey. Upon reaching
Holland, a free country, shouts of joy could be heard throughout the train.
Even at their tender age, these children understood that their sacrifice was
likely saving them from certain death. In Holland, these children were placed
in a camp where they recuperated from the long journey. Upon waking up that
afternoon, these children heard Chanakah licht and boarded a ship that crossed
the English Channel into England.
Once they arrived in England, the children saw
a tall broad figure waiting at the dock. The man introduced himself to the
terrified children as “Rabbi Schoenfeld”. He then proceeded to place every
child into a taxi to take them to London where they would spend their first few
days. After seeing the last of “his children” being driven comfortably by
gentile drivers, the Rabbi himself walked by foot from the port, as that day
was Shabbos Kodesh.
Shonefeld cleared out his two schools
to make sleeping quarters for his beloved children. After filling every square
inch with cots, he was still forty beds short. To solve this problem, Solomon
emptied out his own house. When he met with an official from the Home office to
prove the temporary shelter to house the youngsters, the officer said, “The housing
is fine, but where will you, Dr. Shonefeld, sleep?” Rabbi Shonefeld escorted
him to the attic where his own cot was located.
Along with providing shelter, Dr.
Shonefeld also made sure the children had schooling, clothing, food and most
importantly, love. Many children still remember Rabbi Shonefild’s kindness. For
example, one night, Rabbi Shonefeld heard sobbing coming from a girl’s bed.
After learning that she was crying from homesickness, the very busy Rav
Shonefeld tood he little orphan for an exciting ride in his convertible. He
also made sure that the teenage girls had new clothing for Yom Tov. Throughout their
stay in England, the children knew that if they needed anything, they could go
to “The Rav” as they called him, and they will be helped.
When Britain joined the war and the
Germans began their merciless bombing campaign against London, Shonefeld’s
whole schools was evacuated to the countryside in a town called Shefford. He
arranged for all the children to either be adopted or placed in a hostel. Their
every need and comfort were constantly on Rav Shonefeld’s mind, from the
beginning till the end of that terrible war.
After the war, many of the children later
found out that their parents perished along with their families and neighbors.
They now knew with certainty that had they not left Europe during Chanukah
seven years earlier, they too would have perished with the 6 million. With the
utter annihilation of Jewish Europe, they no longer had a country or city they
could called home. Some of them married and settled in England, with the
majority emigrating to Eretz Yisroel and America.
Shonefeld maintained a connection with
many of the children he rescued. All “his children” recognized that it was his
selfless devotion that save their lives from certain death. Shonefeld’s
successful rescue efforts to the hundreds of children, are more accurately measured
by the hundreds of thousands of descendants alive today, thanks entirely to
him. To the great dismay of “Rav Shonefeld’s children”, they were never
successful in bringing greater attention to this story and giving Rabbi Doctor
Shlomo Shonefeld Zichrono Livrachah the befitting honor and Kavod he so greatly
deserves.
All humans are descended from just TWO people and a catastrophic event almost wiped out ALL species 100,000 years ago, scientists claim
dailymail
All modern humans descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, scientists say.
Scientists surveyed the genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals - including humans - from 100,000 different species and deduced that we sprang from a single pair of adults after a catastrophic event almost wiped out the human race.
These bar codes, or snippets of DNA that reside outside the nuclei of living cells, suggest that it's not just people who came from a single pair of beings, but nine out of every 10 animal species, too
Leading Rabbi Deals Big Blow To Agunah Court
jewishweek.timesofisrael
In its first year, the New York-based International Beit Din (IBD), headed by Rabbi Simcha Krauss, a widely respected rabbi here and in Israel, has resolved nearly 20 cases of agunot, chained women, freeing them from their loveless marriages.
In doing so, it has incurred the condemnation of some leading rabbinic authorities, most notably, and recently, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a leading rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school, who last month penned a public letter of protest dismissing the court’s collective rulings and pronouncing Rabbi Krauss unfit to make complex decisions regarding agunot.
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