Rabbi accused of bribing witness to testify against Baruch Liebovitz

NBC

A Brooklyn rabbi is under arrest and facing charges of bribery and witness tampering for allegedly paying an individual to accuse another rabbi of sexual abuse.

Sources tell NBC New York that Samuel Kellner was arrested Tuesday night. The Brooklyn district attorney has scheduled a news conference but has declined comment ahead of the announcement.

Kellner is accused of paying a witness to say he was abused by Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, who was sentenced a year ago to 32 years in prison after he was convicted of child molestation. [...]

JBAC protests against conference on "Molestation Issues"

Sunday, May 15, 2011, Jewish Board of Advocates for Children will
protest at the Brooklyn Marriott, while Aguda Rabbis Chaim Dovid Zwiebel
and Shlomo Gottesman are publicly speaking to 500 orthodox professionals
on, "Molestation Issues and Reporting: Halachic and Legal Overview." The
source of the problem will pontificate about the problem. What a cruel
farce and hoax! There will be no experienced prosecutor, lawyer,
therapist, child advocate, nor recognized rabbi-posek who will speak.
The cover-up and obfuscation continue. And so will the protest. Its an
outrage.

Rabbis Sound an Alarm Over Eating Disorders

NYTimes

n the large and growing Orthodox Jewish communities around New York and elsewhere, rabbinic leaders are sounding an alarm about an unexpected problem: a wave of anorexia and other eating disorders among teenage girls.

While no one knows whether such disorders are more prevalent among Orthodox Jews than in society at large, they may be more baffling to outsiders. Orthodox women are famously expected to dress modestly, yet matchmakers feel no qualms in asking about a prospective bride’s dress size — and her mother’s — and the preferred answer is 0 to 4, extra small.

Rabbis say the problem is especially hard to treat because of the shame that has long surrounded mental illness among Orthodox Jews.

“There is an amazing stigma attached to eating disorders — this is the real problem,” said Rabbi Saul Zucker, educational director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, or O.U., the organization that issues the all-important kashrut stamp for food. “But hiding it is not going to make it go away. If we don’t confront it, it’s going to get worse.”  [...]

Rabbi indicted for sexual assault

YNET

An indictment was filed Tuesday by the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office against a well-known rabbi accused of sodomizing and performing an indecent act on his friend's wife who was seeking his professional counseling.

According to the indictment, the defendant, a counselor for young couples and a rabbi at a girls seminary, was approached early last month by a haredi couple - his student and good friend and his wife - for counseling on family matters. [...]

Call Police: Don't call your rabbi when faced with immediate possible life threatening situations

the Shul Bomber was recently captured by the FBI. The person who discovered him and was aware that he was the bombing suspect - first called his rabbi to see whether it was permitted. This is sheer idiocy. When there is even a suspected life threatening situation you must call the police immediately!


ABC News

"Today, I happened to be on the Jewish website 'Vos Iz Neias,'" the rabbi added. "I saw the facial features, although he shaved off part of his beard. First thing I did was call my local rabbi to see if I could report him. He said, 'If he is a danger to society, you have to report him.' I called the FBI in Santa Monica. They asked me to call the Cleveland Heights police. They came to synagogue, and he was sitting right in the back."

Non-chareidi rabbis also invalidate conversions

JPost

The dispute over the degree of leniency that Jewish law affords the conversion process is not one of halachic stringency, but one of nationalistic ideology, a prominent national religious educator said Monday.

“The State Conversion Authority has also annulled conversions,” said Rabbi Neria Gutel, speaking at a conference on religious educational attitudes toward Israeli non-Jews at the Rehovot campus of Orot Teachers’ College, which he heads. “The question of whether to annul a conversion is not one that divides national religious and haredi rabbis.”

Gutel focused his address on the estimated 320,000 Israelis who made aliya under the Law of Return, but are not Jewish according to Halacha. National religious rabbis and lawmakers are seeking ways to help these people – who speak Hebrew, serve in the IDF and consider themselves Israeli in every way – to undergo conversion according to Jewish law. [...]

Errors of rabbinic authority are potentially harmful

from my sefer Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Derashos HaRan (#11): … Since we believe that all which the Torah prohibits is inherently harmful and creates a harmful impact on our souls – even though we don’t know the reason. According to this accepted view, even if all the sages mistakenly believed that something that was impure was actually pure – this agreement doesn’t change anything and it still remains harmful to us and its actual harmful nature continues despite the mistaken understanding of the sages that it is pure. It is equivalent to the agreement of doctors that a medicine has no effect when it is in fact a strong drug. There is no question that there is absolutely no significant change in the nature of the medicine that results from the mistaken agreement of the doctors. In the same way if the Torah prohibits something because it is harmful, the agreement of sages that it is permitted doesn’t change its intrinsic nature – except by some miracle. … [Thus we see that when the Sanhedrin errs and causes people to violate that which the Torah prohibited – they are causing harm.] However it is inconceivable that a person should be harmed by following the ruling of the Sanhedrin even if he eats something which is prohibited because they said it is permitted. The answer is that the soul greatly benefits when a person listens to the Sages since it is the action most beloved by G d… This benefit removes the harm which would naturally result to the soul because of the eating something prohibited. Something similar happens physically when a person eats something which is harmful. If he eats it with the understanding that this food is good for him – his thoughts act on the food and remove the harmful effects – unless the harm is  very strong. It is the same thing when a person follows the commands of the Sanhedrin and perceives something that is objectively prohibited as being permitted. When he follows their directives, that obedience itself will remove all harm that he would normally be subject to because of the natural consequences of eating something which is harmful. That is why the Torah commanded to follow the directives of the Sanhedrin and not deviate either right or left [whether they are correct or not].