Guma Aguiar & R' Tropper

Horizons

It all started with a phone call. Last Erev Pesach the Kol Yaakov Torah Center received word that the Sefer Torah the yeshiva had been borrowing for a number of years had to be returned to its owners. Yehuda Dovid Kaplan, staying with the Rosh Yeshiva for Yom Tov, offered to donate a new Sefer Torah as a replacement. Yehuda Dovid and his uncle, Mr. Thomas Kaplan, generous supporters of Kol Yaakov and its outreach division, Horizons, decided to dedicate this sefer to the memory of their mother and grandmother, Mrs. Lillian Jean Kaplan, A”H.

Within a few weeks a new sefer was procured with the assistance of sofer Rabbi Melech Michaels, an alumnus of Kol Yaakov, and a Hachnosas Sefer Torah was quickly planned. Rabbi and Mrs. Yehoshua Krohn graciously offered their home on Meadow Lane for the K’sivas Ha’osios. Talmidim, Rebbeim, alumni and supporters of Kol Yaakov gathered to complete the sefer on the Sunday before Shavuos. The yeshiva was honored by the participation in the k’sivas ha’osios of Ha- Gaon HaRav Reuven Feinstein, Rosh HaYeshiva of Tiferes Yerushalayim, Staten Island and HaGaon HaRav Shmuel Faivelson Rosh HaYeshiva of Bais Medrash L’Torah in Monsey, shlit”a. With Rabbi Yehuda Tropper, the Rosh Yeshiva’s father, completing the last of the osios, the Sefer Torah was exuberantly escorted to the Kol Yaakov Torah Center along Saddle River Road and on to West Maple Avenue. Though the noonday sun was out in force the participants escorted the sefer accompanied by unwavering dancing and singing to music provided from the back of a pick-up truck by Nochi and Yosef Krohn.

After the Sefer Torah was brought to its new home, the over 100 assembled guests, sat down to a seudas mitzvah and were inspired by the amazing story as told by Yehuda Dovid Kaplan. Also known as Guma Aguiar, Yehuda Dovid, though born a Jew, was raised as an Evangelical Christian. Through the dedicated teaching and inspiration of Rabbi Tropper and Kol Yaakov, Yehuda Dovid has since returned to the path of yiddishkeit and has made a stunning transformation in recent months. Part of his desire in dedicating a new Sefer Torah for the yeshiva was as a means of reaching out to his estranged family who were still practicing Christians. This endeavor surpassed his greatest expectations: In the span of the few shorts weeks between Pesach, when the Sefer Torah was purchased, and the week of Shavuos, when the sefer was completed (and paralleling the sefira period, when we mark the ascent of our forebears from the 49 Sha'arei Tum'ah of Mitzrayim to the spiritual heights of Har Sinai), Yehuda Dovid’s family had ceased practicing Christianity and had begun their return to their true heritage.

Moshiach & immorality I

Bereishis Rabbah (51:8): There is not a man in the world – Lot’s daughters thought that the whole population had been destroyed as it was from the Flood. Let us keep alive the seed of our father.Shmuel said that they didn’t say they wanted a child from their father but rather they wanted to preserve the seed of their father. Thus they were referring to the seed that comes from a different source i.e., they wanted to preserve a child who would be born from their descendants - Moshiach… There are dots on the word “she left” – which alludes to the fact that Lot did not know when she lay down but he did know when she left. …R’ Yehuda ben Shimon said that the wine was a sign of the Messianic Era as it states in Yoel 4:18): And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down sweet wine.

Yashar (upright) vs Tzadik (righteous)

Malbim (Mishlei 11:3): There is a distinction between yesharim (uprightness) and tzadikim (righteous). The yashar is one who naturally goes on the upright path – whether it is in religious thought or matters of understanding. That is because the majority of issues concerning yashar involve understanding (binah) or moral traits and deeds that are rooted in wisdom (chochma). Therefore when it comes to matters of wisdom (chochma) the yashar is distinguished from the tzadik in that the yashar naturally has the inclination in his heart to do good because of the uprightness which is implanted in him. In contrast the tzadik's conduct is based upon having learnt what righteous behavior is and constantly practicing it until the tzadik conquers his baser drives and trains himself to do the opposite of his nature. The yashar is simply expressing his nature. Furthermore the yashar is not concerned with the letter of the law but is concerned with the spirit of the law - until he conducts himself beyond that which the law actually requires…. Therefore in order to go in the good path it is needed that 1) his path is yashar and 2) that he is aided in going in that path. … Thus one who is not yashar, his path is not yashara and he needs help from Above to straighten his path. Even though the yashar conducts himself in the manner of uprightness because of his inner nature, nevertheless his physical needs sometimes cause him to deviate from that path. But if he has the additional aspect of temimus (purity) he will be totally consistent in his conduct of uprightness and not deviate from it because of physical needs….

Hikind objects to Aguda's views on abuse

VINS Assemblyman Hikind

New York - On behalf of the countless sexual abuse victims – those whose stories of personal anguish still resonate with me, and those who still have yet to come forward – I respectfully urge you to reconsider your position regarding the statute of limitations bill containing a window provision which is currently before the Legislature.

I assure you it is not the intention of this legislation to bankrupt or otherwise jeopardize “vital communal institutions,” for we all recognize that the existence of yeshivas and the continuity of the Jewish future are irrefutably tied. Indeed, I believe it is our very commitment to providing our children with a solid Jewish education which has sustained us as a people for generations.

Tragically, however, many of our children, our most precious resource, have been sexually violated in a variety of contexts, and for numerous years, these victims were left without any remedy. Their pursuit of justice has, until now, been filled with endless days of shame, silence, and frustration. We are all guilty of not doing more to alleviate their suffering. You have stated that you have, “no objection to legislation designed to give victims of abuse greater recourse against perpetrators." In this regard, we are of the same heart and mindset.

While your concerns are valid, I implore you to reassess your decision about this bill, to take a closer look, and work toward achieving a satisfactory and equitable compromise on the one year window provision. There are potential alternatives to the bill in its present form which may be more amenable to you. Creating a cap on a litigant’s financial award or on the contingency fees collected by attorneys are just two possibilities which may prove viable.

Achieving justice for the victims need not come about as a result of the financial demise of our greatest institutions. But neither can we forsake those who have already sacrificed far too much.

Holocaust - describing the undescribable

NYTimes

JERUSALEM — In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death.

Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.

That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, crosschecking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site. [...]

Baalei Teshuva - a reality check

LazerA (guest post) - a comment to "Killing with self-righteous criticism - Tznius & p...":

mekubal said... "I am left to wonder why the FFB world feels the need to so often blame the ills of Chareidi society on the BT. ... It is attitudes like this that leave me astounded that the BT movement rolls on as well as it does.

"Obviously, there are many different kinds of people who become frum for many different reasons. Baalei teshuva are people who, assuming they were well-adjusted individuals to begin with, have chosen to uproot their lives for the sake of Hashem. As such, they are, broadly speaking, a very positive influence in the frum world. At the same time, this not mean that they arrive without any negative baggage, and this reality should be recognized by both the baalei teshuva themselves and the broader community. There clearly are problems that are more common among baalei teshuva than the general community. This, of course, does not justify any kind of broad discriminatory attitudes or practices. We should treat people as individuals, not as members of a category.

mekubal said further... It also leaves me to think that those involved in kiruv are heinous criminals. They are cons selling an illusion. For if we are honest with the potential BT ... then I doubt that so many would be sold on the program...

As a child of parents from non-religious backgrounds, and a person who has worked "professionally" in kiruv, I have to disagree with this assessment.

First of all, while there certainly is discrimination against baalei teshuva (and their children) it simply isn't as bad as mekubal is describing. Under normal circumstances, the children of baalei teshuva are accepted in frum schools, though perhaps not always the exact school that the parents desired (this happens to many frum parents as well). Baalei teshuva can have difficulty getting married (as do any number of frum singles as well) for a wide range of issues. Honestly, in many cases they are best off marrying other baalei teshuva. Their children may have some difficulty, but unless they fall into the common trap of seeking a "prestige" shidduch, they will almost always find a fine frum young man or woman to marry. (Frankly, those families that are most likely to have a strong bias against baalei teshuva are, in any event, very unlikely to provide an appropriate shidduch for a baal teshuva or his children.)

Secondly, the idea that sincere baalei teshuva would not have accepted the truth of the Torah and their obligation to follow the mitzvos if they had been aware of the social difficulties that they would face in the frum community shows a deep disregard for the sincerity and sacrifices that baalei teshuva are making. These are serious people! They aren't "joining" because they like the social scene; they are "returning" to Hashem because they are convinced that this is their moral duty.

Finally, I can't speak for other kiruv "professionals", but when I have worked with families in the process of becoming observant, I have always been careful to be sure that they went into religious observance with their eyes open, aware of the various social issues they would face. My concern was to properly prepare them for the difficulties they would face and to advise them on steps they can take to mitigate, to some degree, some of these difficulties.

Michoel said... "Baalei T'shuvah tend to ... timidity and lack of independent thought and action.

"People who choose to move away from the societal norm and become religious Jews are clearly capable of independent thought and action. At the same time, baalei teshuva are late-comers to Judaism and, by necessity, need to receive a greater degree of guidance than a person who was raised in a frum household and received a Torah education from childhood (at least initially). This does not indicate an inherent tendency towards timidity or lack of independence.

Life after false imprisonment

CBS News

At 51, Beverly Monroe was practically central casting for an accomplished middle class mom:

"I had a great life, absolutely great life," she said. "I had a super job, career. I had my own home. I was financially secure. My daughter Katie had just finished law school, my youngest daughter Shannon was a senior at William and Mary. My son was living with me and going to college.

"Things could not have been better."

"And then this happens," Cobiella said.

"Yes."

In March of 1992 Monroe found her longtime companion Roger de la Burde dead in his Virginia home, a bullet in his head, a pistol by his side.

By all appearances, it was a suicide. But the police told Beverly Monroe she was suspected of murder …
.
"I had no experience, no thought of ever being accused of anything," she told Cobiella. "I mean, it's incomprehensible."

It was equally incomprehensible to Beverly's daughter. But, as a young lawyer beginning a new job, Kate Monroe also knew that "incomprehensible" did not make her mother's conviction impossible.

"I think I understood immediately when Mom was charged that she could be convicted," Kate said. "And I understood when then she was convicted that she might never come home."

It turns out she was half-right. In October of 1992, a jury believed not her mother but the prosecutor. Beverly Monroe was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

"I was convicted on not only no evidence, but just sheer speculation," Beverly said.

Lawyer Kate Monroe quit her job and spent the next six years searching for proof of her mother's innocence.

She found it in 1999. Prosecutors, she discovered, had withheld evidence showing that the likely cause of Roger de la Burde's death was suicide, not murder.

Seven years after her conviction, Beverly Monroe was released.[...]

Treating abuse - Neve Michael Home

YNEt

Some 180 children and youth at risk reside at the Neve Michael Children's Home after they have been removed from their own homes. Here they face the daily challenge of coping, and getting over traumas and years of abuse [...]

Marriage - definition

Shulchan Aruch(E.H. 26:1): A woman is not considered married unless there is a proper Kiddushin. However if the man has intercourse with her in the manner of fornication and not for the sake of marriage – it is nothing. Even if he has intercourse with her for the sake of marriage – but it is a secret – she is not considered married even if she has an exclusive relationship with him. Not only are they not married but we force him to send her from his home. Rema The reason is that she will definitely be embarrassed to go to mikva and therefore he will have intercourse with her when she is a nidah. However if he sets aside a woman and she goes to mikve then some people say that she is permitted to him and this is called pilegesh (concubine) which is mentioned in the Torah (Ravad). Others (Rambam, Rosh and Tur) say that this is prohibited and the punishment is lashes because of the Torah prohibition (Devarim 23:18) of not having a prostitute (kadesha).

Important women - perception or reality?

Igros Moshe(O.C. 5:20): …The Beis Yosef brings the Ri in the name of Tosfos that all of our women are important and therefore need to recline at the Seder. (The Bach raises the question according to the view of Rashbam that women don’t recline because the fear of their husbands is supposed to be upon them – and it follow therefore that also important women need to have the fear of their husbands? However I don’t understand his question. Was it really the will and the command of the Sages that the fear of her hsuband exist even for those things which aren’t relevant to him and even when it nullifies a mitzva? Furthermore it is not good that the husband be so fussy about this wife. We see that for many hundreds of years that husband have not been concerned about requiring this as we see in the Beis Yosef who brings the Ri in the name of Tosfos – and he states that all of our women are important and need to recline at the Seder. Also the Mordechai brings this view. In addition it can’t be understood that all these women objectively became important - so that the husband needs to honor them even according to the rules of secular society. Obviously it was because the husbands came to recognize over time that they have no reason to feel superior to their wives. And similarly the wives recognized the great need that the men have for them. The small amount of genuinely important woman that have been found in all ages were those that the husband perceived their superiority – just as they had need for their husbands. They recognized that even their husbands knew this)

Obama's "Rabbi"

NYTimes

Rabbi Capers Funnye celebrated Martin Luther King Day this year in New York City at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a mainstream Reform congregation, in the company of about 700 fellow Jews — many of them black. The organizers of the event had reached out to four of New York’s Black Jewish synagogues in the hope of promoting Jewish diversity, and they weren’t disappointed. African-American Jews, largely from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, many of whom had never been in a predominantly white synagogue, made up about a quarter of the audience. Most of the visiting women wore traditional African garb; the men stood out because, though it was a secular occasion, most kept their heads covered. But even with your eyes closed you could tell who was who: the black Jews and the white Jews clapped to the music on different beats.

Funnye, the chief rabbi of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, one of the largest black synagogues in America, was a featured speaker that night. The overflowing audience came out in a snowstorm to hear his thoughts about two men: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. King is Funnye’s hero. Obama, whose inauguration was to take place the following day in Washington, is family — the man who married Funnye’s cousin Michelle.

A compact, serious-looking man in his late 50s, Funnye (pronounced fu-NAY) wore a dark business suit and a large gray knit skullcap. He sat expressionless, collecting his thoughts, as Joshua Nelson and his Kosher Gospel Band steamed through their sanctified rendition of the Hebrew hymn “Adon Olam.” Nelson, a black Jew, was raised in two Jewish worlds — a white Reform temple in New Jersey and a Black Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn — and he borrows from both. The first time the Rev. Al Sharpton heard a recording of Nelson’s “Adon Olam,” he said, “I can hear that’s Mahalia Jackson, but what language is she singing in?” [...]