Syracuse fires basketball coach over sexual abuse accusations

Birth coaches (doulas) halachic differential between Chassidic & Litvishe poskim

One of the important considerations in dealing with women's concern about modesty in child birth is the question of pikuach nefesh. While everyone seems to hold that child birth is pikuach nefesh - there is no consensus on what is permitted. Rav Moshe Feinstein permits her husband to go to the hospital with her on Shabbos as well as to travel to a more distant hospital - to avoid upsetting her.

In regard to birth couches (doulas) the Chassidic poskim allow a woman to call her coach on Shabbos and for the coach to take a cab to the hospital to assist and also for the coach to wear a beeper. In other words Chassidic poskim treat birth coaches as they would members of hatzola. It would follow from this fact that the Chassidic poskim should be more willing to permit female emts for child birth than a Litvishe posek. At this point I am only providing conjecture. But it would be ironic if the Chassidic poskim are more sensitive and concerned with female concerns.

Hatzola & Chassidic women concerned for tznius

AP      SEE previous post -  http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2011/10/hatzola-protecting-women-from.html

Most Orthodox Jewish women avoid touching men except direct relatives. They don't sit next to men on buses or even at weddings. They have separate swimming hours at indoor pools. But for an emergency birth, Orthodox Jewish women will usually turn to the all-male volunteer ambulance corps known as Hatzolah.

Now a group of women in one of the country's largest Orthodox Jewish communities is proposing to join up with Hatzolah as emergency medical technicians to respond in cases of labor or gynecological emergencies.

The proposal for a women's division has stirred up criticism within Orthodox Jewish circles, with one well-known blog editorializing that it amounts to a "new radical feminist agenda." And when a prominent elected local official, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, spoke about it on his weekly radio show, he was criticized for even bringing the subject up.

Rachel Freier, a Hasidic attorney who is representing the women in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, said there is a need for emergency services that adhere to the community's customs of modesty, calling for the sexes to avoid physical contact unless they are related.

"It has nothing to do with feminism," Freier said. "It has to do with the dignity of women and their modesty."

Loving a suicidal, psychotic spouse

New York Times

Two years ago, when Giulia and I were 27 and in our third year of marriage, she suffered a psychotic break. She had no history of mental illness preceding the abrupt arrival of delusions and paranoia. It was a bewildering decline that snowballed from typical work stress to mild depression to sleeplessness to voices speaking to her in the night. [...]

Giulia has since gotten better. She no longer takes the medicine. We don’t live in a “Yes” or “No” existence anymore. We now live with bills and iPhones and deadlines.  [....]

BUT I do miss how much we talked about life and love that year. It seemed like all we ever talked about. In one sense we have never communicated less in our relationship and never been in such different mental spaces, yet in another sense we were closer emotionally than we have ever been and more deeply connected. Her mental illness cast such a strange web of paradoxes into our life together. 

Nowadays we bicker about things like doing the dishes.[...]

For Some, Psychiatric Trouble May Start in Thyroid

New York Times

In patients with depression, anxiety and other psychiatric problems, doctors often find abnormal blood levels of thyroid hormone. Treating the problem, they have found, can lead to improvements in mood, memory and cognition. 

Now researchers are exploring a somewhat controversial link between minor, or subclinical, thyroid problems and some patients’ psychiatric difficulties. After reviewing the literature on subclinical hypothyroidism and mood, Dr. Russell Joffe, a psychiatrist at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, and colleagues recently concluded that treating the condition, which affects about 2 percent of Americans, could alleviate some patients’ psychiatric symptoms and might even prevent future cognitive decline.

Battle for Apartments in Mea Shearim between Gur & Neteurei Karta

Sikrikim member Yosef Hazan arrested in Jerusalem

Jerusalem Post

Yosef Meir Hazan, a member of the Sikrikim (Sicarii) extremist ultra-Orthodox group, was arrested this week in the capital’s Geula neighborhood as part of a special operation by the Jerusalem Police.

According to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, Hazan was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of causing public disturbances, damaging property and assaulting a police officer attempting to arrest him