Halacha versus Middos:Understanding Eliezer's process of identifying Yitzhok's future wife

I have been spending a lot of time trying to understanding the distinction between halacha and middos.  Dr. Benny Brown's article  has been very helpful.

With this context I noticed what seems to be a discrepancy between the Torah description of G-d's designating or chosing Rivka as Yitzchok's future wife - and Rashi's explanation that she was fit to be because of her midos.  [Of course this is also tied up with the issue of whether Eliezer was praying for G-d's assistance or whether he was using prohibited divination.]

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The language of the Torah is that the woman who gives water to Eliezer and his camels it הֹכַחְתָּ; which means to prove, to appoint, to admonish, to instruct, chose, selected, indicated. All of which indicates something similar to psak - there is one correct answer. Thus there is no inherent relationship between the process Eliezer chose and the results. This is why Chullin 95b says that Eliezer was using Divination to find a wife for Yitzchok. An omen which is not after the form pronounced by Eliezer, Abraham's servant, or by Jonathan the son of Saul, is not considered a divination

Bereishis (24:14) says  And let it come to pass, that the girl to whom I shall say, Let down your water jar, I beg you, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give your camels drink also; let the same be she whom you have appointed (or designated) for your servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that You have shown kindness to my master.

ספר בראשית פרק כד

(יד) וְהָיָה הַנַּעֲרָ אֲשֶׁר אֹמַר אֵלֶיהָ הַטִּי נָא כַדֵּךְ וְאֶשְׁתֶּה וְאָמְרָה שְׁתֵה וְגַם גְּמַלֶּיךָ אַשְׁקֶה אֹתָהּ הֹכַחְתָּ לְעַבְדְּךָ לְיִצְחָק וּבָהּ אֵדַע כִּי עָשִׂיתָ חֶסֶד עִם אֲדֹנִי:
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In contrast Rashi says [Rav Chavell's translation ] . HER THOU HAST APPOINTED FOR THY SERVANT, EVEN FOR ISAAC. Rashi comments: "She is fit for him since she is charitable and worthy of admission into the house of Abraham."

According to Rashi the process is inherently related to the results. She has to show the proper midos of chesed and kindness. Rashi uses a different term "fitting" or "appropriate". then the Torah and he asserts that the Torah is saying that if she passes this test of midos it will show that G-d will approve of her.

רש"י על בראשית פרק כד פסוק יד
(יד) אותה הוכחת - ראויה היא לו שתהא גומלת חסדים וכדאי ליכנס בביתו של אברהם ולשון הוכחת ביררת אפרוביש"ט בלע"ז (דו האסט בעשיעדען):

In sum, Torah expresses that the test or sign that Eliezer is using will determine the woman that G-d has already designated for Yitzhok. There is only one correct answer. On the other hand Rashi is clearly saying that the critical concern is that she have the midos (values) that make her fitting for Yitzchok and therefore he will test her middos. Even if she passes the midos test it is a necessary but not sufficient condition to be Yitzhok's wife. There are many women who can pass the test. She also has to be from Avraham's family and he hopes that G-d will help out by having a family member take and pass the test. Thus Rashi is best understood as praying for assistance from G-d in a process which is rational and task related. It is is not divination at all.

Only 1/8 of reported sexual offenses lead to indictments

YNET    Only one in eight sex crime cases made it to court in 2013, according to a report from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel which will be presented to the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality on Monday. 

According to the report, which is based on data from the state prosecution, 5,238 sex crime cases were handled by the prosecution last year. Out of that, only in 594 cases indictments were filed. In most cases, 71.4 percent, the cases were closed due to the lack of evidence.  [...]

The statistics showed that only 15 percent of cases that reached crisis centers were reported to the police. Seventy-eight percent involved offenses against women, and 13 percent involved male victims. [...]

A village where people with severe dementia live happy lives

The Guardian   Dementia is widely acknowledged to be one of the most pressing problems facing health and social care systems. A report published this year by the World Health Organisation predicted that a continually ageing population in the developed world would mean the number of people with the condition was likely to double, to more than 65 million, by 2030, and treble 20 years later. [...]

Over the past few months, experts from around the world – Germany, the US, Australia, soon Britain – have been flocking to the unassuming small Dutch town of Weesp, half an hour south-east of Amsterdam, to see how one pioneering institution is dealing with that challenge. Hogewey, where Jo Verhoeff lives, has developed an innovative, humane and apparently affordable way of caring for people with dementia.

"What happened," says Isabel van Zuthem, Hogewey's information officer, sitting at a cafe table on the home's wide and welcoming piazza, an ornamental fountain playing behind her, "is that back in 1992, when this was still a traditional nursing home for people with dementia – you know: six storeys, anonymous wards, locked doors, crowded dayrooms, non-stop TV, central kitchen, nurses in white coats, heavy medication – two of the staff who worked here unexpectedly lost their mothers.

"Each said to the other: Well, at least it happened quickly, and they didn't end up here; this place is so horrible. Then they realised what they'd just said, and started to think: what kind of home would we like for a relative with dementia? Where might we want to live, maybe, one day? How would we like our life to be; what would we hope to experience?" [...]

The answer turns out to be this smart, low, brick-built complex, completed in early 2010. A compact, self-contained model village on a four-acre site on the outskirts of town, half of it is open space: wide boulevards, cosy side-streets, squares, sheltered courtyards, well-tended gardens with ponds, reeds and a profusion of wild flowers. The rest is neat, two-storey, brick-built houses, as well as a cafe, restaurant, theatre, minimarket and hairdressing salon. [...]

Difficulty in defining/protecting against rape and sexual abuse in college

NY Times     by Jed Rubenfeld is a professor of criminal law at Yale Law School

OUR strategy for dealing with rape on college campuses has failed abysmally. Female students are raped in appalling numbers, and their rapists almost invariably go free. Forced by the federal government, colleges have now gotten into the business of conducting rape trials, but they are not competent to handle this job. They are simultaneously failing to punish rapists adequately and branding students sexual assailants when no sexual assault occurred.

We have to transform our approach to campus rape to get at the root problems, which the new college processes ignore and arguably even exacerbate.

How many rapes occur on our campuses is disputed. The best, most carefully controlled study was conducted for the Department of Justice in 2007; it found that about one in 10 undergraduate women had been raped at college.

But because of low arrest and conviction rates, lack of confidentiality, and fear they won’t be believed, only a minuscule percentage of college women who are raped — perhaps only 5 percent or less — report the assault to the police. Research suggests that more than 90 percent of campus rapes are committed by a relatively small percentage of college men — possibly as few as 4 percent — who rape repeatedly, averaging six victims each. Yet these serial rapists overwhelmingly remain at large, escaping serious punishment.[...]

At Columbia University and Barnard College, more than 20 students have filed complaints against the school for mishandling and rejecting their sexual assault claims. But at Vassar College, Duke University, The University of Michigan and elsewhere, male students who claim innocence have sued because they were found guilty. Mistaken findings of guilt are a real possibility because the federal government is forcing schools to use a lowered evidentiary standard — the “more likely than not” standard, which is much less exacting than criminal law’s “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement — at their rape trials. At Harvard, 28 law professors recently condemned the university’s new sexual assault procedures for lacking “the most basic elements of fairness and due process” and for being “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused.” [...]

Consider the illogical message many schools are sending their students about drinking and having sex: that intercourse with someone “under the influence” of alcohol is always rape. Typical is this warning on a joint Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith website: “Agreement given while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs is not considered consent”; “if you have not consented to sexual intercourse, it is rape.”[...]

According to an idealized concept of sexual autonomy, which has substantial traction on college campuses today, sex is truly and freely chosen only when an individual unambiguously desires it under conditions free of coercive pressures, intoxication and power imbalances. In the most extreme version of this view, many acts of seemingly consensual sex are actually rape. Catherine A. MacKinnon took this position in 1983 when she argued that rape and ordinary sexual intercourse were “difficult to distinguish” under conditions of “male dominance.” [...]

Under this definition, a person who voluntarily gets undressed, gets into bed and has sex with someone, without clearly communicating either yes or no, can later say — correctly — that he or she was raped. This is not a law school hypothetical. The unambiguous consent standard requires this conclusion. [...]

High Court orders annulment of cherem issued by Elad rabbinic court

Jerusalem Post    The High Court of Justice issued a court order demanding that a private rabbinical court in the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad explain why they issued a writ of social exclusion, which is illegal, against a woman who filed a law suit in a civil court instead of a rabbinic one.[...]

The writ was issued by the Central Rabbinical Court of Justice of Elad for Property against the woman, referred to as H.K. to protect her identity, because she filed a complaint with a civil court against a neighbor who was illegally building a porch above her apartment.

In 2013, the attorney-general issued a directive allowing for the criminal prosecution of anyone involved in imposing such decrees.

On Wednesday, the High Court made an injunction against the defendants asking them to explain why the court should not declare that they had acted in contravention of the law in issuing and publicizing the social exclusion order. [...]

The defendants have to submit their response to the High Court by December 31.

“According to the best of our knowledge, Rabbi Malka’s name did not appear on the writ, although this does not negate the responsibility that it [the writ] was issued in the name of the rabbinical court which is run by Rabbi Malka,” the Chief Rabbinate has said regarding the case.

“Rabbi Malka wished to clarify that his position in terms of Jewish law is that writs of social exclusion should not be used at all, and he will investigate how and why his directives were violated.” 

How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology

Scientific American     A hotly anticipated press conference was held by National Geographic magazine in Washington DC on 15 October 1999. With much fanfare, they announced the discovery of a new feathered fossil from China that was a chimera with a fascinating mix of characters. A team of paleontologists, enthusiastic amateurs and editorial staff were behind the naming and description of the species, dubbed Archaeoraptor liaoningensis. It was to be unveiled in the November issue of the magazine. [....]

The team behind the announcement had no idea on that fateful October day, but within just a few months Archaeoraptor liaoningensis would be revealed as one of the biggest fossil hoaxes in history, and the chance discovery of another fossil by Chinese Professor Xu Xing was the key to uncovering the deception. Archaeoraptor was soon dubbed the ‘Piltdown bird’ and the ‘Piltdown chicken’ by the press, in reference to the biggest fossil hoax of all time, in which faked remains of putative early hominids were dug up from Piltdown in England in 1912. For National Geographic – a bastion of publishing usually beyond reproach – this embarrassment would be one of the greatest blunders in its 125-year history. 

The problem of faked fossils in China is serious and growing. It is exacerbated by the fact that most of the fossils are pulled from the ground by desperately poor farmers and then sold on to dealers and museums rather than being found by paleontologists on fossil digs, which is how specimens are discovered in most other parts of the world.
Liaoning, an impoverished and heavily industrialized province of northeastern China, has been a center for paleontological activity since the early 1990s, when many early bird fossils were found there. When Sinosauropyteryx – the first known feathered dinosaur – was discovered there in 1996, it spurred a fossil hunting gold rush the likes of which had never been seen before.[...]

Another much more serious problem, however, is posed by forged, faked and manipulated specimens – such as National Geographic’s Archaeoraptor – which are becoming increasingly common. Farmers who dig for fossils do so to supplement their meagre incomes and are well aware that complete and spectacular specimens are worth far more than the fragmentary remains. Some don’t even realize they are faking specimens and combine pieces of different fossils found at the same locale. In the most extreme cases, this manipulation is intentional, involving fossils found at disparate locations. It sounds crude, but even the experts have to look carefully to detect the trickery when master forgers have been at work. [...]

Subsequent detailed CT scans by Rowe ultimately revealed that Archaeoraptor was glued together from 88 different pieces of a number of different fossils. Significantly, two of those were species unknown to science, making the specimens important in their own right. The tail was from Microraptor, then the smallest dinosaur ever discovered (see chapter 7), while the front half was a primitive bird that subsequently named Yanornis in a 2002 Nature paper entitled ‘Archaeoraptor’s better half’.

Luis Chiappe says it’s puzzling how the description of Archaeoraptor ended up in print in National Geographic, as ‘the red flag for that one should have been raised long before it got to that point’. With hindsight it seemed obvious that the animal was a chimera of bird and dinosaur features, he says, but it was put together with great skill. [...]

China’s new fossil industry has appeared in the blink of an eye and its paleontological community is still finding its feet, but if Chinese authorities and museums are going to maintain their credibility, they will have to tackle the problem of faked fossils and the trafficking of fossils overseas. A remarkable series of finds has given us a window into a weird and unexpected world, but the trade in faked, manipulated and illegally obtained fossils has tainted what are otherwise spectacular collections.

Electrical Scalp Device Can Slow Progression of Deadly Brain Tumors

NY Times    An electrical device glued to the scalp can slow cancer growth and prolong survival in people with the deadliest type of brain tumor, researchers reported on Saturday.

The device is not a cure and, on average, adds only a few months of life when used along with the standard regimen of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Some doctors have questioned its usefulness. But scientists conducting a new study said the device was the first therapy in a decade to extend life in people with glioblastomas, brain tumors in which median survival is 15 months even with the best treatment. [....]

Patients who wore the device fared better than those who did not: Their median survival was 19.6 months, compared with 16.6 months in those on standard treatment alone. Among those with the device, 43 percent survived two years, compared with 29 percent among those receiving only standard therapy.

“It was a surprise, and better than we would have expected,” Dr. Stupp said in an interview. [...]

Maureen Piekanski, 59, a glioblastoma patient and study participant from Throop, Pa., learned about the device from her daughter, a nurse, who had combed the Internet for glioblastoma studies. [...]

She has been wearing the device since August 2011 — more than three years. Her tumor is gone, and the disease has not returned. She has M.R.I. scans every two months.[...]

15 Are Charged With Defrauding Banks and Other Lenders of $20 Million

F.B.I. Press release

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and George Venizelos, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and Carl E. DuBois, the Sheriff of Orange County, today announced the unsealing of an Indictment (the “Indictment”) charging 15 defendants, including 14 defendants with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud in connection with mortgages and other loans secured by properties in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Monroe in Orange County, New York. The defendants include several related members of a family, the Rubins, as well as a real estate attorney and a real estate appraiser.

NY Times     Many of the defendants were on Medicaid and were receiving food stamps. One couple even claimed they were homeless.

Yet, according to the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they secured 25 mortgage loans totaling $20 million for residential properties in Brooklyn, Harlem and Monroe, N.Y., by vastly overstating their income, net worth and the amounts in their bank accounts. A majority of the loans, the authorities said, went into default and were never repaid.

Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, on Thursday charged 15 men and women, 12 of them members of an extended family, with defrauding banks and other lending institutions out of the $20 million over a period of 10 years by lying about their assets and debts. Among banks said to have been defrauded were Bank of America and Credit Suisse First Boston.

“They played the part of prince or pauper, depending on what scam was being perpetrated,” Mr. Bharara said at a news conference at the federal courthouse here. “People claimed to be millionaires when it suited them and claimed to be homeless when it suited them better.”[...]

A central figure in the scheme, the indictment said, was Irving Rubin, 58, of Brooklyn, who, it said, considered himself a real estate developer. Also indicted were his wife, Desiree, 57; his sons Yehuda, 29, of Monroe, and Joel, 33, of Brooklyn; and his brothers Abraham, 51, Jacob, 41, and Samuel, 59, all of Brooklyn. [...]

One of the $1 million bails was for Abraham Rubin, who the judge noted had served a four-month sentence for trying to bribe a “victim witness” with $500,000 in an unrelated investigation — the case against Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist in Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidic community. Mr. Weberman was found guilty of sexually abusing a young client starting when she was 12. [...]

Fraud in government programs in New York is not excusable but it is not unusual see the following

DNA Information

 An internationally known pianist hid records of his $1 million Hamptons home to swindle the federal government out of thousands of dollars in housing subsidies to pay for a TriBeCa apartment, DNAinfo has learned.

Antonio Fermin, who has performed at Carnegie Hall and worked as a piano teacher, was arrested and pleaded guilty last Thurs., April 5, to illegally receiving $17,815 in Section 8 housing funds from July 2004 to September 2009, after failing to disclose he owned a three-bedroom, 2,700-square-foot hideaway on wooded Ranch Court in Sagaponack, court records showed.

 New York Times 2012

An influential Brooklyn rabbi and onetime chaplain in New York City’s jails who drew notoriety several years ago for arranging a lavish jailhouse bar mitzvah for an inmate’s son pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making false statements in connection with a federal housing fraud scheme.

NY Post

A longtime welfare fraud investigator for city government was fired after pleading guilty to committing housing fraud against the federal government, The Post has learned.

Anti-fraud prober Sylvia Battle-Black, a 17-year veteran of the Human Resources Administration, admitted lying about her income to obtain $62,376 in government-subsidized housing benefits from 2006 to 2011, prosecutors said.

Incredibly, Black for six years didn’t disclose on her applications for Section 8 housing that she was employed as a HRA fraud investigator since 1996. 

NY Sun

A New York City teacher was arrested yesterday and faces charges that she stole almost $40,000 in illegal housing subsidies.

Monique Ellis, 39, is a special education teacher at P.S. 180 in Brooklyn. According to the city's Department of Investigation, she lied about her annual income between 2003 and 2007, allowing her to steal $39,968 from the New York City Housing Development Corp.

Sobering lessons learned by veteran teacher after 2 days shadowing students

Grant Wiggins  The following account comes from a veteran HS teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results of our student surveys. 

I have made a terrible mistake.

I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for understanding. Most of it!

This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the school this year. My job is to work with teachers and admins. to improve student learning outcomes.

As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10^th grade student on one day and to do the same for a 12^th grade student on another day. My task was to do everything the student was supposed to do: if there was lecture or notes on the board, I copied them as fast I could into my notebook. If there was a Chemistry lab, I did it with my host student. If there was a test, I took it (I passed the Spanish one, but I am certain I failed the business one).

Key Takeaway #1
Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting. [....]

Key Takeaway #2
High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.[...]

Key takeaway #3
You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. [....] 

click the above link for the full article - it is worth reading.Read the followup comments also

Lynching Survivor Thanks Israeli Arab who rescued him

Arutz 7     Moshe German, 47, who survived a lynching attempt on the Taibe bridge Sunday night, met the man who saved him from the mob on Monday, in a heartwarming gesture of gratitude. 

Majdi Baloum, 37, pulled Moshe from his vehicle after an Arab mob began pelting it with rocks, eventually setting it alight. 

Moshe, who recounted his experience in previous interviews to the media, related that he had been hiding under his seat; if Baloum had not pulled him from the vehicle, he likely would have died in the blaze. 

Moshe revisited Taibe, meeting Baloum at the Hydraulic Institute where he works, to thank him.

"You don't understand how moving this is," German told Yediot Aharonot. "I went here via the same road where I was almost killed yesterday. I saw the remains of my car, now just ashes. Images of what happened just flash in front of me all the time. They threw rocks at me, concrete blocks and fireworks. I was terrified." 

"I thought about my wife, Eina, and my sons Roey (16) and Eitan, who is two and-a-half," he continued. "I thought my family would lose me." 

"I tried to hide in my Toyota, but the crowd continued to attack me, and in a moment [Baloum] came up to me yelling, 'come, come!'. I tried to figure out who is calling me, and you pulled me out of your car and into your Jeep. You saved me," Moshe recounted. "I found it hard to comprehend what is happening, but I realized that you were afraid for my life. Even though they threw blocks at your Jeep, you just went faster." 

"Did you understand that you were saving my life?" he asked. [...]

בית דין חרדי באולטימטום למקובל המתחזה: תפרוש מעולם הקבלה או שההקלטה תפורסם

Rotter Forum
Comments on Shtieble report these rumors as untrue. People claim Rabbi Zilberstein denying any such court decision. 

ליאור עמרן

פורסם נובמבר 11, 2014 ב 10:15 AM

היה חשוב לי לשתף
התקשרתי לבית הדין של הרב זילברשיין בחולון, והם שאלו את הרב זילברשיין ואמרו שכבוד הרב לא הוציא פסק שכזה מעולם נגד החלבן, ושהדברים שנאמרו בשמו הם שקר וכזב.
הטלפון של בית הדין של הרב זילברשיין הוא
03-5015809
על כן האמירה הבאה באתר היא מזוייפת:
הפוסק החרדי הרב יצחק זילברשטיין נכנס לעובי הקורה בשבוע האחרון, בית הדין החרדי התכנס והחליט האיש חייב להיות מוקא מהציבור החרדי :”ובערת הרע מקרבך”

Consequently I have removed the item until this is clarified.
==================================================================

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Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg: Helping kids kick the pain and fear out of cancer

Editor's note: Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg has been named a 2014 Top 10 CNN Hero. Voting for CNN Hero of the Year continues through Sunday, Nov. 16). All of this year's Top 10 CNN Heroes will be honored during CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" -- Sunday, December 7 (8pm ET) on the global networks on CNN.

For 12 years, Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg worked at a camp for children battling cancer.

He often witnessed the pain and discomfort many of them endured while undergoing medical procedures.

"It's really indescribable, what it's like ... to watch a child go through so much pain," said Goldberg, who served as the director of Camp Simcha in New York. "The child looks at you for help and then you end up having to hold them down."

One day, he tried to soothe a young camper who was screaming in pain during treatment. Goldberg, a black belt in Choi Kwang-Do, offered to teach the 5-year-old boy some of the craft.

"In martial arts, you learn that pain is a message that you don't have to listen to," he said. "That lesson is so unbelievably effective."

Goldberg taught the boy some breathing techniques. When the nurse removed the needle after chemotherapy, he said the boy had hardly noticed.

Goldberg realized he was on to something.

"When we are able to breathe through pain and imagine the pain lowering," he said, "the brain has an amazing capacity to put us into a different place."

In 1999, Goldberg founded Kids Kicking Cancer. The program provides free martial arts classes focused on breathing techniques and meditation for children battling serious illnesses. [...]

Complaints against R Barry Freundel were silenced by the label of lashon harah

Washington Post   [....]    About 2000, divisions at Kesher over the rabbi’s behavior became more severe. Some complaints were fairly mundane — that his style was too brusque and that he wasn’t making pastoral visits. A few people alleged that Freundel was diverting money donated for the synagogue to his effort to build a mikvah. Epstein, a past synagogue president, recalled that the conflict was resolved after the board appointed a committee to decide how to spend the money.

At one point, there were enough people bad-mouthing Freundel that some board members drafted a document calling for an end to criticism of the rabbi. The document uses the term “lashon hara,” meaning slanderous, negative talk, which is considered sinful in Judaism.

“We propose to bind ourselves and invite others to do the same . . . to cease to participate in any Lashon Hara, to stop listening to insinuations and attacks, to disassociate ourselves from them, and finally to respond forcefully in opposition to Lashon Hara” against the rabbi, the document stated.

“The majority of the congregation supported him, and the continued sniping was not consistent with the mores of the congregation,” said Epstein, who drafted the letter. People’s criticisms over the years “had no foresight approximating anything like what has happened.”[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.torahhalacha.blogspot.com

Thank you,

Dovid Eidensohn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Washington Post

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

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

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

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

Spurious Correlations don't show cause and effect - examples

Tyler Vigen

International Conference on The Jewish Community Confronts Violence & Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A natural fix for ADHD

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

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

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

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

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