Abuse: Senior Baltimore rabbi

Women tell of abuse by rabbi

Baltimore Sun (Hat Tip) -Joel Katz

For more than half a century, Rabbi Jacob A. Max was a dominant figure in Baltimore's Jewish community, founder of one of its most important synagogues, an influential leader who officiated at countless cycle-of-life rituals of the faith. A man, it seemed from afar, above reproach. • But Max's reputation disintegrated earlier this year after he was convicted of sexually molesting a woman half his age in a Reisterstown funeral home.

It marked the only time a woman had sought a legal remedy against the rabbi, even though murmurs had long rippled through Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation that his behavior toward some of the females in his flock was anything but appropriate.

The hushed accusations of Max's penchant for groping and fondling - which some women say he accompanied with a smirk and an excuse about his being a "bad rabbi" - appear to have been tolerated without inquiry for decades because of his standing and authority in the tightly knit religious community. Girls who complained to their mothers about his conduct say they were ignored.

On April 13, three days before his 85th birthday, Max was found guilty of second-degree assault and a fourth-degree sex offense after a brief bench trial in Baltimore County District Court. Max, who has been married for 25 years, was sentenced to a suspended one-year prison term and one year of unsupervised probation. He will not appeal, his lawyer said. [...]

Eternal Jewish Family's updated web site

Aes Int

Eternal Jewish Family Aids Universally Recognized Conversion with Enhanced Web Site

To accomplish their mission of education, the Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) has significantly updated the web site at www.eternaljewishfamily.org. This includes adding the Eternal Jewish Family e-News with regular updates on developments within the organization and geirus (conversion to Judaism). It is part of the first phase of a new comprehensive Web site that will be a comprehensive guide to universally accepted conversions in intermarriage.

Eternal Jewish Family

With the next phase, the site will become a resource center for rabbonim and others involved in geirus. It will also include highlights of previous conferences and seminars, articles, a listing of Botei Din affiliated 00004000 with EJF, and will highlight news relating to Eternal Jewish Family. [...]

Passaic Conference on Abuse - audio file?

Somebody [who asked not to be publicized] just sent me a link to download the audio of the recent conference regarding child abuse

Hashgocha Protis - reconcilation with Chazal

Guest Post

Hi,

I followed your post and comments on hashgacha pratis the other day (http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2009/09/g-d-reason-for-abuse-and-rape.html). This is a subject that I've been coming back to from various perspectives for nearly thirty years, so your post got me thinking once again. This time around, I'm having trouble with those rishonim and acharonim who are presented as believing in a virtually random, unguided fate for most people. For instance, you quote R' Dessler:

...all non-Jews and most Jews—except for some exception—they are without a doubt under the control of natural laws… This is no different than the animals whose Providence is not for the individual but only for the species—because it as a species they fulfill G-d’s will.

How would this fit the gemara in Brachos

כשם שמברכים על הטוב כך מברכים על הרעה?

Isn't the bracha an acknowledgement that all the good and bad things that happen to us are orchestrated directly by G-d. One look in Shulchan Aruch will tell us that this halacha relates equally to all Jews.

And how about

בארבעה פרקים העולם נידון בפסח על התבואה בעצרת על פירות האילן בר"ה כל באי
עולם עוברין לפניו כבני מרון?

According to the Ramban in Shar Hagemul this wasn't necessary a judgment over life and death, but over the general quality of life in the coming year – and it covered all strata of human life, not just tzadikim. I would imagine it would require a great deal of hashgacha to engineer precisely the good and bad events for each individual...

It's one thing to see a machlokus rishonim or acharonim, but who can argue with an explicit chazal? Perhaps there are other forces at play in the world besides hashgacha...maybe something like the “bracha” discussed by the Chofetz Chaim in Ahavas Chesed.

With best regards,

Boruch Clinton

Rav Sternbuch: Simcha of Succos

D43 Wednesday 093009 Divrei Hisorerus

Justice - Harvard Prof Michael Sandel #1

Quest for logical certainty in mathematics

NYTimes

Well, this is unexpected — a comic book about the quest for logical certainty in mathematics. The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler.

Improbable material for comic-book treatment? Not really. The principals in this intellectual drama are superheroes of a sort. They go up against a powerful nemesis, who might be called Dark Antinomy. Each is haunted by an inner demon, the Specter of Madness. Their quest has a tragic arc, not unlike that of Superman or Donald Duck.

So, at least, the creators of “Logicomix” would have us believe. First published last year in Greece (where it became a surprise best seller), the comic book — er, graphic novel? — is the brainchild of Apostolos Doxiadis, previously the author of a not-bad mathematical fiction called “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture.” For expert assistance on logic, Doxiadis called on his friend Christos Papadimitriou, a professor of computer science at Berkeley and the author of a novel about Alan Turing. The art was done by Alecos Papadatos (drawings) and Annie Di Donna (color).[...]

Incest - Interview with Marilyn Van Debur

Unfortunately this is not a theoretical issue only relevant to non-Jews. Having talked with people dealing with child abuse in the frum community - they view this as a troublesome reality. One which is harder to aknowledge because there is infinitely more shame involved than normal abuse. One rav told me of a case where he authorized going to the police - but the community activists drove the family out of the country. BTW people involved in incest don't look or act any different than the rest of us.

Guest Post

Here's an interesting interview from 5mos ago with Marilyn Van Debur, 72-yr-old former Miss America turned incest awareness activist. Said she rec'd 8,000 letters from across the country after she, in 1984, went public with her story. Now if that # reflects just those who took the action of writing in, and no doubt responding in cases similar to hers (father-daughter), imagine the greater scope that that implies for the phenomenon generally!

Part 2 of the interview offers more of a look into her father's pathology.

She's the author of an autobiography _Miss America By Day_, which--if you're not already familiar with it--seems to have resonated with other survivors and helped people in relationships with survivors: See here the Amazon comments (never read it myself, but she's quite articulate in the above interview)-

Found it referenced in the Comments posted to the Morris-Rosenblum-Lesher-Rosenblum back&forth. (The comments section on the last two parts of that actually seems to be where the action is.)

Conflicts & tensions of the formerly religious

Haaretz

One cold night in Jerusalem about two years ago, I fell into a deep sleep. After what seemed like just a few minutes, I woke up. Terrified. In the twilight between slumber and wakefulness, a hand was placed over my closed eyes in an unmistakable gesture. It happened in an instant, but that recollection of the specific gesture that accompanies the recitation of "Shema Yisrael" - of four fingers covering one eye and the thumb covering the other, like a roof - shook me up. After all, the last time I said the prayer before going to sleep was over 25 years ago.

I have since forgotten most of the text, except, of course, for its impressive beginning: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is your God the Lord is one," which I would probably be able to recite even if I lost my memory.

In the darkness, after the confusion had passed, I tried to understand the significance of this message, risen from the depths of my consciousness. It was not a pleasant memory or a kind of childhood nostalgia, but rather reflected distress I had felt in the past, provoked by the fear that I had fallen asleep without saying the "Shema." I wondered what else remained there, deep inside the drawer of the life experiences of the child with the long, pinned-back braid that I used to be. Through the curtain that had lifted momentarily, I discovered the traces of fear that had been an inseparable part of my religious life. Fear that was constantly inculcated in the pure souls of the girls at the Bais Yaakov seminary in Tel Aviv where I studied - and in me as well. [...]

Abuse in Beit Shemesh - Jonathan Rosenblum

There is a very important discussion on the David Morris's Tzedek Tzedek blog concerning child abuse

Jonathan Rosenblum was severely criticized by Michael Leshier for in an earlier article in the Jerusalem Post and this is his defense - comments to it are especially interesting.

I am not taking sides but will just note that the people involved are all sincere and articulate. Nonetheless there are children who have been harmed

Harvard online class in morality

NYTimes

Many of the 14,000 or so students who have taken Harvard's wildly popular course "Justice" with Michael J. Sandel over the years have heard the rumor that their professor has a television avatar: Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson's soulless ghoul of a boss at Springfield's nuclear power plant.

The joke, of course, is that Mr. Sandel — who at one time or another taught several future writers for Fox's "Simpsons" and shares a receding hairline with the evil-minded cartoon character — is the anti-Burns, a moral philosopher who has devoted his life to pondering what is the right thing to do.

Now Mr. Sandal gets to play himself on television, not to mention online, as Harvard and public television stations across the country allow viewers to sit in on his classroom discussions about Wall Street bonuses and Aristotle, same-sex marriage and Kant, for the next 12 weeks. [,,,]

Justice - Michael Sandel