Thursday, May 7, 2009

Dr. Oren - Historical perspectives/ America & Israel


A fascinating discussion of the intimate relation between America from Colonial times until the present by the recently appointed Israeli ambassador to America

Death throes of Conservative & Reform?


Jerusaelm Post

It is a precipitous moment for Jewish religious leadership in the US.While the problems are primarily financial, their impact appears to threaten the future of American Judaism.

Reform and Conservative seminaries - the institutions charged with providing the overwhelming majority of affiliated American Jews with their religious and educational leadership - face budget cuts so severe that their missions may be imperiled. The congregational arms of their movements also are in grave financial straits, and American rabbis generally face a shortage of jobs.

No doubt there are very smart people thinking about what this portends.

Those people, however, do not seem to be riding the Jewish information superhighway. Many of the stories about the rabbinate that interest American Jewish newspapers are not about the future of American Judaism. Instead, they concern whether "transgender" and intermarried Jews can be admitted to rabbinical schools, and see it as a sign of acceptance, or perhaps maturity, among the streams that a lesbian this month becomes president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.

The idea seems to be that there are various groups pounding on the seminaries' gates: First the question was ordaining women, then gays and lesbians. Now that those groups can enter the non-Orthodox ordination programs, other groups have formed at the gate: the intermarried and transgender (women living as men, men as women, with or without surgical gender changes).

However interesting or irksome these issues are to most American Jews, these "who can be a rabbi" stories are irrelevant to the future of Jewish life.[...]

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Hand of 21 week old fetus

Fox News

Israeli self-defense is illegal


JPost editorial

What a busy time it's been for those who exploit international law to gang up on Israel. Let us count the ways.

Starting with yesterday's UN report compiled by Ian Martin on that incident during Operation Cast Lead at the UNRWA compound in Jabaliya, the one that generated mendacious headlines like "Israeli shelling kills dozens at UN school in Gaza."

In fact, no one sheltering at the school was killed - but about a dozen Palestinians nearby (including gunmen) were when Israel retaliated to Hamas's shelling. While Martin pointedly refused to incorporate the IDF's side in drafting his report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised his cover note to the Security Council will provide some of the missing details and extenuating circumstances.

Don't go confusing Martin with Richard Goldstone's commission, which will be also be investigating the Gaza war. And don't confuse Goldstone with Richard A. Falk's "investigation" for the UN's Human Rights Council.

All this is in addition to the routine "docketing" of Israel at the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, partly instigated by Israel-based advocacy groups, some of which receive funding from the New Israel Fund and foreign powers. The committee's chair is Claudio Grossman, a Chilean national whose connection to the NIF figures is no secret.

If that wasn't enough, there is the Spanish legal system's persecution of top Israeli officials for the 2002 operation that liquidated Salah Shehadeh. Tragically, 14 civilians also lost their lives. But unintended civilian deaths in warfare are not unheard of. Shehadeh supervised dozens of terrorist attacks, killing or wounding hundreds of Israelis. The "universal jurisdiction" claimed by Spain and other countries - even where neither the "perpetrator" nor the "victim" has anything to do with them - verily turns the law into an ass.

Let's not forget the Durban II farce starring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or that it was ostensibly organized as a UN-sponsored "anti-racism" conference.

Finally, there's the unrelenting abuse of international law at every single UN body - except the essentially defunct Trusteeship Council.

WHY this obscenely inordinate investment of time, money and personnel in bashing us?[...]

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Abuse - provide evidence without testifying


Star Ledger

Children who previously talked about a sexual abuse incident but are too frightened to testify in court can still provide evidence in a trial, the [New Jersey] state's highest court unanimously ruled today.

The justices' decision upholds a jail sentence for a Long Branch man convicted of sexually assaulting a three-year-old girl.

Matt Rainey who wrote today's decision which ruled that children who previously talked about a sexual abuse incident but are too frightened to testify in court can still provide evidence in a trial.

Immediately after Terry Coder had abused her in his basement in 2001, the girl -- whose name is protected by the court -- told her mother.

"Mommy, he touched me," she said, according to court documents.

Even though the girl could not remember that Coder had abused her when she took the stand a year later, the court counted what she had told her mother as evidence against Coder.

Johanna Barba Jones, a deputy attorney general, said she was "very happy" with the decision.

"This is a way of expressing wrongs done to children who cannot express themselves ... luckily this little girl was able to use gestures and through very limited language could communicate that to her mom," said Jones. "It's clear to moms that they can share that with police and they will not go unaddressed."[...]

Self-Righteousness & Behavior - Abuse


NYTimes

Most people are adamant: They would never do it. Ever. Never deliberately inflict pain on another person, just to obtain information. Ever artificially inflate the value of some financial product, just to take advantage of others’ ignorance. Certainly never, ever become a deadbeat and accept a government bailout.

They speak only for themselves, of course. As for others, well, turn on the news: shady bankers, savage interrogators and deadbeats are everywhere.

“I remember thinking that I was just better than other people, that I would never compromise my principles,” said Jordan LaBouff, 25, a graduate student in Texas, recalling a public standoff that he and other students had with university administrators several years ago.

“Well, they gave me this award — the administration did — and I’d sworn I would never take anything from them. But of course there I was, up on stage accepting it.

In recent years, social psychologists have begun to study what they call the holier-than-thou effect. They have long known that people tend to be overly optimistic about their own abilities and fortunes — to overestimate their standing in class, their discipline, their sincerity.

But this self-inflating bias may be even stronger when it comes to moral judgment, and it can greatly influence how people judge others’ actions, and ultimately their own. Culture, religious belief and experience all help shape a person’s sense of moral standing in relation to others, psychologists say, and new research is helping to clarify when such feelings of superiority are helpful and when they are self-defeating.

“The message in this work is not that you should rid yourself of moral indignation; sometimes that’s appropriate,” said David Dunning, a social psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “But the point is that many types of behavior are driven far more by the situation than by the force of personality. What someone else did in that situation is a very strong warning about what you yourself would do.” [...]

Friday, May 1, 2009

Abuse - Ohel's view of Markey bill


Ohel

A PROPOSED STRATEGY TO REFORMS IN SEXUAL ABUSE LEGISLATION
By David Mandel, CEO of OHEL

KEY POINTS

● OHEL see’s importance in both Lopez and Markey Bills and suggests a possible compromise.

● OHEL is not in agreement with some of the positions taken by certain organizations who oppose “the window” provision.

● While OHEL suggests a one year amnesty, we believe a one year window should be instituted thereafter.

● OHEL suggests a one year amnesty from civil claims with required risk assessment, treatment and some form of probation and monitoring. Certainly no amnesty from any criminal proceedings.

Abuse - Rape & indifference

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference.[...]

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Conversion - ecumenical panel discussion


Jewish Week

Each of the rabbis — Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — on a panel probing the Who is a Jew controversy claimed that his or her movement’s policy on conversion standards was consistent with tradition. Yet they also acknowledged that the divide among them was deep.

Two of the panelists, one Orthodox and one Reform, at last Thursday evening’s community forum, sponsored by The Jewish Week and the JCC in Manhattan, expressed concern that if compromises were not made soon, the strand that holds American Jewish religious life together may be frayed beyond repair.

Rabbi Robert Levine of the Reform Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan warned the full house of 250 people at the JCC: “We’re coming very close to the level of sinat chinam” [hatred among Jews] that brought about the destruction of the Temple. “Many Orthodox rabbis won’t walk into my shul, and that pains me,” he said, noting that the level of trust among rabbis of different denominations has deteriorated in recent years.

“The key issues here are trust and urgency,” agreed Seth Farber, who received his rabbinic ordination at Yeshiva University and is founder and director of an Israeli organization called ITIM: The Jewish Life Information Center, which helps Israelis navigate the bureaucracy of the Chief Rabbinate on matters of personal status, including marriage, divorce, conversion and burial.

Rabbi Farber cited the writings of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, a prominent Orthodox rosh yeshiva in Israel, as suggesting that Orthodox authorities are paying too high a price by adhering to strict standards in defining Jewish status if their position threatens Jewish unity.

Staking a claim that Conservative Judaism meets traditional standards on conversion, Rabbi Judith Hauptman, professor of Talmud and rabbinic culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary, cited Talmudic passages regarding how one should treat a potential convert. She said each requirement is met by Conservative religious courts.

Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox), trod lightly on specifics in questioning whether non-Orthodox rabbis demand that a convert live a fully observant life.

He said that adherence to the mitzvot of the Torah has sustained Jewish life over the centuries and will continue to do so. Trust is important, he said, but added that it is equally important to be truthful, asserting that the Orthodox community has best weathered the storms of assimilation and intermarriage by maintaining halachic standards.

The most serious dispute among the panelists was between the two Orthodox rabbis, with Rabbi Farber charging that Rabbi Herring’s RCA has made conversion more strict and difficult in the last two years, through an agreement the group reached with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

“Admit you’re changing the standards,” he said to Rabbi Herring noting: “The new RCA standards exclude a significant number of Orthodox converts who could have converted five or 10 years ago.”

Rabbi Herring insisted that it was “a canard, false and untrue to say that RCA standards are more severe” than in the past. He said the group’s guidelines in the early 1990s were more strict, and that what the RCA has done now is take the existing guidelines and standardize them so as to increase conversions. He said there were more conversions in the last year and a half (150) than any previous 18-month period, and that another 200 conversions “are in the pipeline.” [...]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Torah study & commonsense


Vayikra Rabbah(1:15): A rotting animal carcass is better then a talmid chachom lacking in da'as i.e., commonsense and social sensitivity. We can learn the importance of derech eretz from Moshe Rabbeinu who was the epitome of all wisdom and the supreme prophet, who led the Jews out of Egypt, performed many miracles in Egypt and the awesome splitting of the sea, went up to heaven and brought back the Torah, was involved in the construction of the mishkan. Nevertheless he did not enter into the inner sanctuary of the mishkan until G‑d invited him in".

Yofe To'ar(Vayikra Rabbah 1:15): The term da'as is referring to social sensitivity. Therefore the medrash tells us that a disgustingcarcass is better them someone lacking social skills who is despised and rejected by other people. In addition such a talmid chachom degrades the Torah. While the stench of a rotting animal can be avoided by not coming near it, a person without social sensitivities goes everywhere even though he is not wanted Consequently it is impossible to escape from him and he is an unpleasant burden….

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Memorial Day - a story


YNET

Harriet Levin isn't one of those people who will preoccupy herself asking why it happened to her, rather than to someone else. She's not someone who will try to apportion blame, or blame herself for allowing him to go to the army despite her gut feeling that something bad would happen.

Harriet Levin doesn't ask herself "what if" it hadn't happened. Harriet Levin believes in destiny. Her son's destiny was to die in a war for Israel and become part of this country.

"Mikey did what I always wanted to do and never did. He made aliyah to Israel and enlisted in the IDF," she said. "I always dreamed of doing more for my country, of coming and volunteering.

"After all, it's the easiest thing live in a big, beautiful house in the United States and to write a check for a pro-Israeli organization every once in a while," she explained. "I wanted to give a lot more, but I didn't think I'd give so much, that I'd give my son." [...]