History - The Funeral Controversy

Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know)

From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)

by Avraham Broide
(Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)

When is a corpse not a corpse? When it's still alive of course!

Determining the moment of death is a subject that has many doctors and rabbis at loggerheads. Doctors are anxious to push forward the moment of death in order to save lives with transplants, while rabbis argue that there is no point killing Peter in order to save Paul.

There was once a time when the rabbis fought a very different battle. During the 18th Century, many people thought it barbaric to bury a person too soon, as who knows, perhaps he was still alive. They preferred to wait for only certain determinant of death, physical decomposition, which generally begins after three days.

Rabbis, on the other hand, wanted to bury people before nightfall, due to the Torah's command regarding a criminal whose body was hanged up as a warning (Devarim 21:23), "Do not leave his body overnight on the gallows, for you shall certainly bury him on that day." As the Shulchan Aruch" (Yoreh Dei'ah 357:1) rules, "It is forbidden to leave the dead [unburied] overnight unless it was for his honor, to bring him a coffin and shrouds."

During 5532/1772 things came to a head when the Mecklenburg Province of Germany outlawed prompt burial and legislated that three days must pass beforehand. When German rabbis raised a protest, Moses Mendelssohn was called on to intercede and he promptly found sources that seemed to support the government measure.

For example, a mishnah in Masseches Semachos relates how someone recovered from a death like coma and lived for another 25 years. Because of this, the mishnah says, people buried their dead in catacombs, instead of burying them underground, so that they could visit them for several days afterwards and ascertain their death status. If the corpse yelled or tapped on the walls of his stone coffin, there was still a chance to yank him out. Practically speaking, Mendelssohn had a point, as it is not unheard of for people to suddenly wake up and find themselves in a morgue.

One example of such pseudo-death may be Alexander's passing in 3439/323 BCE, when his body reportedly remained fresh several days afterwards. Some medical men theorize that he may have been suffering from a paralyzing disease.

The Yaavetz rejected Mendelssohn's proofs. Regarding the fear that Jews who determine death as the moment a person ceases breathing might determine someone as dead when he is really alive, the Yaavetz insisted that Moshe Rabeinu received this criteria of death at Sinai or that it is revealed in the verse, Kol asher ruach chayim be'apo (Whatever has the breath of life in its nose), from where the rabbis derive that before digging someone out of a ruin on Shabbos, we check whether he is breathing or not.

As for Mendelssohn's proof from masseches Semachos, the Yaavetz writes that such things happen so rarely that we need not be concerned about them on a practical basis. It is as rare, he says, as the case of Choni Ha'eme'agel who slept for seventy years!

This controversy led to one of the first formal move of Jews away from Jewish custom and law.

When the Berlin Chevra Kaddisha refused to succumb to the Maskilim's demands, some Maskilim, including Mendolssohn's son, Josef, opened up their own burial organization called the "Gesellschaft der Freunde" ("Society of Friends") in Berlin, with branches in Breslau and Konigsberg, which delayed burying the dead and eventually adopted many other non-Jewish funeral customs as well.

Mesirah & reporting abuse / Why is it a problem?

Guest Post: Raffi wrote:

Do you happen to have an article - or simply some marei mekomos or something - on the topic of mesirah?  I'm working on a domestic violence unit this year, and it's come up.  I  can't imagine that perpetrators of physical or sexual abuse are to be protected under this halacha, but I'd like to have some  actual mekoros to back me up.

...  I'm just getting my feet wet in the sugya since having started to work on a domestic violence unit.  Actually, I'm still confused by the whole principle.  I read through סימן שפח and it seems like we're talking about handing over someone's money (or body) to be confiscated (or beaten) by goyim (or nasty Jewish people).  How does that get carried over to not reporting someone who is physically beating his wife, sexually abusing his children, etc.? I would /never /have assumed that these people are covered by such a law.  And even though it says "אפילו רשע" - we're not talking about some generally bad guy whom you might want to hand over to the local goyim because he's a jerk - we're talking about someone who is not only in violation of laws that are nearly universal, we're talking about someone who is posing a serious threat to other people, including children, whether or not there is a danger of death.  A man who chains his child to his bed (perhaps for years) or rapes his kids regularly or terrorizes his wife may not have any intent of killing them, but he destroys them mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.  Can we really say that that's not a good enough reason to stop the abuse because you'd have to give this guy up to the authorities (who, while not a bunch of saints, are not thugs and warlords either)?

Sorry, that got a little out of hand there.  It's a touchy topic. The basic question I'm asking is, how do we get from the laws of mesirah to not reporting dangerous criminal activity?  Maybe I just haven't seen it inside, or maybe I'm just not getting it.

However, none of this justifies the attitude that it's best to just keep these things quiet, for garbage reasons like shidduchim, family reputation, shonda, etc.  According to what you said so far, there's no reason not to approach the local rebbeim and let them know that there's an abusive situation somewhere. And there's no reason for rebbeim to shy away or to assert (as I just heard last week) that "I can't dirty my hands with this."  Where does this come from?  And how did it get blamed on halacha???

Thanks very much,

Child Abuse - Hikind subpoenaed

Jewish Week reports

State Assembly member Dov Hikind was subpoenaed Monday to provide testimony and files he has compiled about rabbis and yeshiva employees who have allegedly sexually abused children under their charge, and rabbinic leaders who may have protected the abusers.[...]
========================
NYTimes reports:

Since last year, when Assemblyman Dov Hikind invited his radio show listeners to discuss an explosive topic — sexual abuse of children in the Orthodox Jewish community — he says he has collected more than 1,000 complaints and the names of 60 accused sexual predators.

He has kept those stories under lock and key in his Brooklyn office, he says, because the people who said they were victims had sworn him to secrecy, fearful of becoming outcasts in a community where perceived troublemakers risk losing employment, housing and even marriage prospects.

But a prominent lawyer representing a half dozen former yeshiva students who say in a civil lawsuit that they were sexually abused by a teacher in Borough Park, Brooklyn, had Mr. Hikind served with a subpoena this week, demanding that he surrender those files.

Mr. Hikind has refused. “I will go to jail for 10 years first,” he said on Wednesday.[...]

“I’ve been shocked and overwhelmed at the magnitude of the problem,” said Mr. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew and a Democrat who represents the predominantly Orthodox community of Borough Park.

The victims have come to his office in a steady stream to tell their stories, he said. “Abusive teachers and rabbis in the schools,” he said. “Pedophiles on the streets. Incest in the home.”

Michael G. Dowd, the lawyer who had Mr. Hikind served with the subpoena, has been a leading advocate for plaintiffs who say they were abused by Roman Catholic priests. He represents six men who say they were abused by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a teacher at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Brooklyn. Rabbi Kolko, who was charged with sexual abuse in 2006, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and has left the school.

Mr. Dowd’s subpoena demands that the assemblyman turn over not just complaints that Mr. Hikind may have received against Rabbi Kolko, but “any and all reports of sexual abuse at any yeshiva and/or by any rabbi or employee of a yeshiva in New York City.” Mr. Dowd said they were crucial to proving his clients’ contention that sexual abuse was commonplace and routinely covered up by administrators in yeshivas.

He described Mr. Hikind’s refusal as “misguided.” While he said that he planned to have the subpoena enforced, he also said that he understood the reluctance to cross the powers that be in the Orthodox community. “The lead rabbis have the kind of power to shut people up that the Catholic Church had 50, 60 years ago,” he said.

Mr. Hikind said that every complaint he received was in complete confidence, with the understanding that “under no circumstances would their names be known in the community.”

“There is no way in the world, when people have come to me and spilled their hearts out to me, and shared the most intimate and private things with me, hoping I will do something to address the larger, overall issue, that I would ever betray their trust,” he said.[...]

Mr. Hikind said that of all the people who said they had been victims, “99 percent would not go to the police under any circumstances — that is just the reality.”

But Joel Engelman, 23, who grew up in the Orthodox community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and who helped found a group of victims called Survivors for Justice, said that while “well-intentioned,” Mr. Hikind had a classic misunderstanding about sexual predators that is embedded in insular communities like the Catholic priesthood or the Orthodox world. “The community cannot police itself,” he said. “This has been shown again and again.”

In his own case, Mr. Engelman said, a complaint he brought to the attention of administrators at the United Talmudical Academy against a teacher who sexually violated him when he was 8 years old led to the teacher’s brief suspension and subsequent reinstatement. Mr. Engelman has since brought a civil suit against the teacher and the school.

Prof. Marci Hamilton, a visiting professor at the Yeshiva University School of Law and an expert in sexual abuse by religious leaders, said Mr. Hikind’s refusal to turn over the names of alleged predators, if not his entire case file, was “outrageous.”

She said that Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, “should already have convened a grand jury” to investigate.

Jerry Schmetterer, Mr. Hynes’s spokesman, said, “If someone has information about a sex crime, he or she should bring that information to our sex crimes unit, and we will investigate what needs to be investigated.”

Secular Education & dropouts/ R Yakov Horowtiz

In strong contrast to Rav Dessler's approach

R' Yakov Horowitz writes:

It is certainly reasonable for one to make the case that due to the rapidly eroding moral culture in the world around us, it is necessary and prudent to safeguard our children from its negative effects. But it is one thing to shield your children from the Internet or television,and entirely another to raise them lacking the rudimentary skills to earn a living. Many point to individuals who became fabulously wealthy without a command of their native language. But they are just that.Individuals. The brutal reality is that most people who are poorly educated struggle mightily to earn a living and support their families– and this applies even or especially to those who plan on entering chinuch or rabbonus. Expecting to strike it rich with limited education is analogous to a 15-year-old dribbling a basketball and dreaming of playing in the National Basketball Association. A few make it while the others. . .well, . . . they don’t.

A close friend of mine owns a business in an area with a large charedi population and is always looking to provide avrechim with jobs.His ‘entrance exam’ is rather simple. He gives prospective applicants a pad and paper and asks them to write two paragraphs in English expressing the reasons they would like to land a job in his company,and then to turn on a computer and type those lines. His thinking is that if an applicant cannot perform those two tasks, they are useless to him in his business. Suffice it to say that this would probably be my last column in Mishpacha if I shared with you the percentage of applicants he turns away because they cannot do that.

In more than twenty-five years of dealing with at-risk teens I have not noticed a lower drop-out rate among kids who are raised in more sheltered environments. In fact, my experience leads me to support the observation made by my colleague Reb Yonasan Rosenblum, in a number of columns in these pages over the past few years, that out-of-town children have a lower drop-out rate than those who are raised in very sheltered communities.

What is indisputably a colossal risk factor, for marital discord and kids abandoning Yiddishkeit, is poverty. With that in mind, it is my strong and growing feeling, that not educating your children nowadays, and overly sheltering them from acquiring basic general studies skills, dramatically raises the risk factor that your grandchildren will be raised in stressful, unhappy homes – and more vulnerable to all the negative influences we wish to shield them from.

====================================

Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l wrote:

שו"ת אגרות משה יורה דעה חלק ג סימן פא

יסוד ישיבות תיכוניות ביוראפ /באירופה/ בע"ה ער"ח כסלו תשל"ח נוא יארק מע"כ מנהלי הקהילה,,, שלמכון יסגא לעלם.

הנה בדבר ענין יסוד ישיבות שנקראים תיכונים, היינו שלומדים שם עם התלמידים גם למודי חול במדינות יוראפ, שידוע שיש מקומות ואופנים שהוא מוכרח מצד מצב החינוך שאי אפשר בלא זה מאיזה טעם שיהיה, אם מצד ההורים אם מצד התלמידים שאם לא יהיו למודי חול תחת השגחת יראי השי"ת וראשי הישיבה איזה זמן קצר, ילכו לגמרי לבתי ספר המדינה אשר הוא כהסרה לגמרי מעם ה' ומתורתנו הקדושה, ואם ילמדו במוסד ישיבה תיכונית תחת השגחת ראשי הישיבה ויראי השי"ת ורק זמן קצר אחרי למוד שעות הרבה ביום בלמוד התורה ילמדו למודי חול, יהיו בני תורה ויראי השי"ת. ויש מקומות שאין שום צורך בזה אשר ודאי אסור ליסד שם ישיבות תיכונים, ואפילו אם יש צורך לאיזה תלמידים מועטים אין ליסד. ולכן אין בידנו מרחוק המקום להורות בדבר הזה החמור מאד כדיני נפשות, ורק מרא דאתרא יודע להחליט בזה הוראתו, וגם המרא דאתרא שיודע מצב המקום והוא ראוי להורות בזה מצד גדלותו בתורה וגדלותו ביראת ה' טהורה, יש לו להתחשב עם מקומות הסמוכים שאין צריכים לזה שלא יסמכו על היתר מקום זה ויהיה הקלקול יותר מהתיקון.
הכו"ח למען האמת ולמען כבוד התורה ולמען השלום,
משה פיינשטיין.

Barkat - Next Jerusalem mayor

Haaretz reports:

Secular candidate Nir Barkat declared victory over his Haredi rival Meir Porush in the Jerusalem mayoral election early Wednesday, in a race that again exposed the deep divide between religious and secular Israelis.

With all polling stations reporting in the capital, Barkat won 52 percent of the vote versus 43 percent for Porush. Russian billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak ran a distant third with just 3.6 percent.

In his victory speech, Barkat declared himself the mayor of all Jerusalemites, pledging to work for those who had voted for him as well as those who had voted for other candidates. He added that he would be working for both religious and secular, as well as Jewish and Arab residents of the city.

"I'm aware of the depth of the challenge and the complexity of the mission. Now is the time to work together for the good of the city," Barkat, a technology investor and former paratroops officer, told his supporters.

The race in Jerusalem was one of many that captivated the country as Israelis around the country flocked to the polls for Tuesday's municipal elections, with Arab and ultra-Orthodox voter turnout exceeding expectations.

Kosher meat shortage II

YNet reports:

A recent criminal affair threatens to cause a great shortage in kosher meat in the United States, as Agriprocessors, the country's number one kosher meat provider filed for bankruptcy last week and is expected to shut down.

The Iowa-based slaughterhouse, which have been run by a family of Lubavitch hassidism for many years, was raided last month by immigration police, who allege the owners 80-year-old Aaron Rubashkin, and his son Sholom (49) were personally involved in the large scale forgery of identification cards for hundreds of illegal workers in the factory.

The company provides some 60% of American Jews' kosher meat and in many small communities is the sole meat provider.

An investigation revealed that the Rubashkins employed over 400 illegal immigrants from Guatemala, and a production line manager at the factory told detectives that he received cash from Rubashkin that he distributed among a few dozen workers to purchase their fake IDs.

It was also revealed that the Rubashkins illegally employed minors in abusive conditions including excessive hours and poor wages. The under-age workers were allegedly exposed to dangerous chemicals and were required to operate dangerous machinery without the proper protection.[...]

The Agriprocessors affair has not only left American Jews with a damaged image, but could also pose a threat to many isolated Jewish communities that depended solely on the factory for their kosher meat, and will now have to do without.

Rabbis across the United States warned that if the factory closes, hundreds of thousands of traditional Jews will be left without a meat supply.

The state of Iowa has already given the company a $10 million fine for illegally employing under-age workers, and barring any last minute changes, the factory will go bankrupt and shut down.

If Sholom Rubashkin is convicted of the line of offenses he has been charged with, he is expected to spend up to 22 years in prison.

Ashkenazic - What is it?

Guest Post: Avi Grossman

R' Eidensohn,

Shalom. I am familiar with the ruling of prominent rabbanim from the past generations that Ashkenazic Jews should continue using havara Ashkenazis for ritual uses. I have long been confused by one issue: what defines what is Ashkenazic? Indeed, I spent a year davening at one of the largest Chasidic shuls in Yerushalayim, and they, like other synagogues, had a notice from the hanhala that shlichei tzibbur were required to use Ashkenazis, but mine sounds a lot different theirs. Better yet, laafukei mai? How would they define an un-Ashkenazic dialect?

On a similar note, an American rav who has been here for thirty years told me that R' Schach ruled that the vowel holam should davka be pronounced with a yud sound at the end, even though there are gantza rayas from the baalei mesora and dikduk, foremost of whom being the GRA, that holam is supposed to be pronounced like the long O sound, like in English, and even though that is a common Ashkenazic practice in England and America and among Yekkies. Is this true? Common Ashkenazic practise is to often accent the wrong syllable of a word. (me-NO-ra instead of me-no-RA). Would R' Schach similarly rule that Ashkenazim should continue accenting the wrong syllables even if they know better.

Thank you for your time.

Avi

Mormons baptize dead Jews

Fox News reported:

Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must "implement a mechanism to undo what you have done."

"Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable," said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

"We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion," Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. "We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough."

Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that "the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion."

In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims.Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.

"We don't think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its doctrines," Wickman said. "If our work for the dead is properly understood ... it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It's merely a freewill offering."

Michel's decision to unilaterally end discussion of the issue through a news conference leaves the church uncertain about how to proceed, Wickman said.

Baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.

Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.

Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized, though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were murdered specifically because of their religion.

Michel suggested that posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims play into the hands of Holocaust deniers.

"They tell me, that my parents' Jewishness has not been altered but... 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?" Michel said Monday.

Wickman said the practice in no way impinges upon a person's "Jewishness, or their ethnicity, or their background."

Under the agreement with the Holocaust group, Mormons could enter the names of only those Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related. The church also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its massive genealogical database.

Church spokesman Otterson said the church kept its part of the agreement by removing more than 260,000 names from the genealogical index.

But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by an independent Salt Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.

The researcher, Helen Radkey, who has done contract work for the Holocaust group, said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from camp and government records are being dumped into the database. She said she has seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate baptisms had been conducted for Holocaust victims as recently as July.

Wickman said lists of names have been entered into the database by as mall number of well-meaning members who were acting "outside of policy." He said that church monitors have identified and removed42,000 names from the database on their own, and that the church welcomes research from others.[...]

Obama's advisors met with Hamas

Haaretz reported:
The Arab daily Al-Hayat on Tuesday quoted a senior Hamas official as saying that United States President-elect Barack Obama's advisors met with members of the Palestinian militant group before the U.S. presidential election.

Ahmed Yusuf, a political advisor to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, reportedly told the London-based paper that, "The connection was made via email and after that we met with them in Gaza."Al-Hayat reported that Yusuf also said the relations were maintained after Obama's electoral victory last Tuesday. He said the president-elect's advisors requested that the relations be kept secret so as not to aid his rival, Senator John McCain.During Obama's campaign, he pledged that his administration would only hold talk with Hamas if it renounced terrorism, recognized Israel's right to exist, and abided by past agreements.

On Saturday, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal told Sky News that he is willing to hold talks with Obama, and that he is challenging the newly elected leader to follow through on past statements indicating a willingness to sit down with America's chief adversaries on the world stage.

Rodef II - because of pikuach nefesh?/ Reb Chaim

Reb Chaim Brisker (Hilchos Rotzeach 1:9):

חדושי הגר"ח הלוי (הלכות רוצח ושמירת נפש א:ט): וביאור דעת הרמב"ם בזה נראה, דהנה יסוד דין הריגת הרודף הלא הוא מדין הצלת הנרדף, ועיקרו הוא שנפש הרודף נדחה מפני פקוח נפשו של הנרדף, וכדתניא בסנהדרין דף ע"ד [ע"א] ריב"ש אומר רודף שהיה רודף אחר חברו להרגו ויכול להצילו באחד מאבריו ולא הציל נהרג עליו, הרי דכל ההריגה של רודף היא רק להציל את הנרדף, אלא דהלא בכל מקום אין דוחין נפש מפני נפש והכא ברודף הוי גזירת הכתוב דנפשו נדחה, והרי זהו הלאו שכתב הרמב"ם שלא לחוס על נפש הרודף, ר"ל דלא נדון בזה לומר שאין דוחין נפש מפני נפש, אלא כך הוא הגזירת הכתוב שנפש הרודף נדחה:
אלא דאכתי יש להסתפק, אם כל הגזירת הכתוב דרודף הוא רק בעצמו של הרודף שידחה בפני פקוח נפשו של הנרדף, אבל עיקר ההצלה של הנרדף היא משום דין פקוח נפש של כל התורה כולה, או דנימא דגם עיקר ההצלה של הנרדף היא מהך גזירת הכתוב של רודף, והוא דין הצלה בפני עצמו של נרדף, מלבד דין פקוח נפש של כל התורה, וצ"ע:
ונראה דכן הוא כאופן השני שכתבנו, דהרי בסוגיא שם מבואר דילפינן דין רודף מקרא דשופך דם האדם באדם דמו ישפך, הרי דיש דין זה גם בבני נח, דפרשה זו הלא נאמרה לנח, וכן הוא להדיא בסנהדרין דף נ"ז [ע"ב] דחשיב להך דיכול להציל באחד מאבריו בכיוצא בזה דנכרי בנכרי כמו ישראל, וכן הוא ברמב"ם בפ"ט מהל' מלכים עיי"ש, הרי להדיא דאם אינו יכול להציל באחד מאבריו מצילין אותו בנפשו של רודף גם בבני נח, והרי לא מצינו דין פקוח נפש בבן נח, אלא ודאי דהוי גזירת הכתוב בפני עצמו להציל הנרדף בנפשו של רודף, ואין זה שייך לפקוח נפש דכל התורה כולה, ושייך זה גם בבן נח, דהוא בכלל דינין:
והלא יסוד הך דינא של רודף אחר חבירו להרגו ילפינן לה בסנהדרין דף ע"ג [ע"א] מעריות ומקרא דאין מושיע לה, מה שאין זה שייך כלל לדין פקוח נפש של כל התורה כולה, אלא ודאי דהוי דין בפני עצמו, דין הצלה של נרדף, אם להריגה אם לעריות

Child Abuse - Prevention, Detection & Recovery

Dr. Susan Schulman, a Jewish pediatrician in Brooklyn, recommends that parents discuss with their children in an age-appropriate fashion:

• The area that is covered by your bathing suit is your private area. Sometimes when you are little your teacher may help you in the bathroom. That is okay. Other than that, you are not allowed to touch someone else and no one is allowed to touch you in the area covered by your bathing suit. You are not allowed to show anyone and no one is allowed to show you. If anyone does this you can say: "No! My mommy doesn't let me!" Go away from that person and tell your mommy what happened.
• If someone is touching you, hurting you, or making you feel bad, tell me about and I will stop it.
• Your mommy and daddy love you. We will always love you. Nothing you will do will ever take that love away from you. We want to hear about things that happen in school -- all the good things and even the bad things that happen.
• If you have done a bad thing, we may not like what you did, but we will always love you.
• If anyone hurts or scares you, you should come and tell mommy or daddy. They might tell you that something terrible will happen if you tell your mommy, but you must still tell us. We are grownups and we will protect you. I will give you the biggest hug if you tell me about it.

Older children and teenagers need the same reassurance. Tell the child that you are there for him/her, and that you always want to hear about their experiences - good and bad. Tell your child you will always love him.

The larger the family, the more important it is that you give a few minutes a day of eye contact and keep the channel of communication open. Ask, "How was your day?" Even if he doesn't say much, this communicates that you are interested and available when the need arises.

This line of talk should be gently reinforced periodically with the child. There are many milestones where these conversations can occur naturally, e.g. entering preschool, a new school, send off every year to camp, a weekend getaway.

Since the majority of children are molested by people they know - relative, neighbor, sports coach, teacher, bus driver -- you need to discuss trust in older people and role models. This one person did something bad. Place an emphasis on all the other people who are good, loving and kind.

Speak to your children about exercising care not to be caught in a situation alone. Young people should walk in groups, particularly at night.

It is human nature to shy away from discussing sexual issues with our children when they're young adults, let alone when they may be 10 or 15 years old. Yet this is what we need to discuss.

Detection

There are various warning signs and red flags to look for in your child who may have been victimized.

Dr. Schulman lists five behavior changes that may indicate the child is being subjected to abuse:

1. The child may seem unusually interested in the private areas of the other people's bodies.
2. The child may draw pictures of hidden body parts.
3. The child may show signs of stress such as sleep problems, appetite changes, behavior changes, tantrums, restart bed-wetting, fears and irritability.
4. The child may become unusually afraid or unusually attached to an adult in his life.
5. The child might give verbal hints or even describe the abuse to the parent.

If your child exhibits a serious problem that appears to be new, you can consider sexual abuse a possible factor without getting alarmed or overreacting. In seeking out professional help for treatment, go to a mental health professional and ask about his or her specialized training in this area.

Recovery

Research regarding the role of religious beliefs in helping victims deal with the impact of abuse repeatedly finds that religion can play a crucial protective role in helping victims find meaning and support, even in the face of cynicism and betrayal. On the other hand, many religious individuals who are victimized by a member of their community experience the additional trauma of feeling abandoned by a religion that they were taught stands against abuse. It is therefore not surprising that a percentage of alienated and rebellious adolescents who "drop out" of active religious observance have a history of being molested.

Identification and treatment can be highly successful as children and adolescents have remarkable resilience. The majority of victims, with proper support, can emerge from the experience strong and healthy.

If we believe that our child is a victim of, molestation and talking is the very first step, what should you talk about? You should emphasize the following to your son or daughter:

• We, your mother and father, love you.
• You did absolutely nothing wrong.
• Your body is yours, let's discuss how to protect it in the future, no one can touch your body in any way without your permission.
• Your body is good, it's not dirty. Someone else who is not good did something that he wasn't supposed to.
• He was wrong for doing this.
• You were not in the wrong because this happened.

And what about the perpetrator? Pedophiles need to be pushed to seek professional treatment, pushed out of circumstances where they can be in regular contact with children, pushed into supervised and controlled environments, or pushed into the criminal justice system.