Oral vs Written:Without writing there is no logic, or philosophy or mathematics

I am presently reading The Information by James Gleick . It is an astounding series of revelations about the nature of information and the significance of how it is available for what its meaning and how it is thought about. This is obviously of significance for the distinction of Oral and Written Torah. It perhaps also answers the question of why the gemora was not written in the form of the Mishna Torah. etc etc

chapter 2

"Logic might be imagined to exist independent of writing - syllogisms can be spoken as well as written - but it did not. Speech is too fleeting to allow for analysis. Logic descended from the written word, in Greece as well as India and China, where it developed independently. Logic turns the act of abstraction into a tool for determining what is true and what is false: truth can be discovered in words alone, apart from conceret experience. Logic takes its form in chains: sequences whose members connect one to another. Conclusions follow from premises. These require a degree of constancy. They have no power unless people can examine and evaluate them. In contrasst an oral narrative proceeds by accretion, the words passing y in a line of parde past the viewing stand, briefly present and then gone, interacting with one another via memory and association...".

Should childhood sibling sexual abuse be revealed to one's wife?

The following letter was forwarded to me by the recipient with permission to publish without identifying information.

Dear Rabbi

When I was a young child I was molested by an older brother over a  protracted period of time.  He was only a young teenager at the time  and therefore I do not harbor any resentment or bad-feelings toward  him now.  In fact, our relationship is very good.  I am now a happy  father and husband learning in kollel. The molestation affected and  continues to affect my life in many ways.  I recieved therapy when I  was a bochur, and have recently gone for a tune up over the last few  months because I was dealing with depression and other unwanted  feelings.  My wife knows about that I was victimized as a child and I  have been very open with her about many of the issues I have faced.  However, I never told her that it was done by an older brother.  However, there are times where I feel that her knowing that  information would be helpful in her ability to understand my  occasional difficult times.  I am very wary to tell her because  although she is very level-headed and understanding, I do not want her  to have negative feelings towards my brother.  It could be that if she  sees my lack of negativity, she would follow suit.  It is also a  lashon harah shayla whether it is permitted to tell her.

 Thank you.

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

My response to this letter is as follows

If he wants to maintain a positive relationship with his brother he should not tell his wife. However he in fact had no obligation to forgive his brother and even if he did forgive him - his wife doesn't have to forgive him for what he did to her husband.

If he feels that there is a need for his wife to fully understand the horrors of what he experienced - then he has every right to tell her as long as he accepts that she will have negative feelings to his brother. It is not likely that these will be eliminated by his positive attitude towards his brother.

However it is likely that his need for periodic tuneup indicates that he has not actually forgiven his brother and that he remains strongly conflicted over the matter. Adding his wife into the mixture is likely to make the situation worse - but might ultimately lead to a better resolution of the problem with a proper therapist.

The issue thus is the relative importance of his need for his wife to fully understand him versus the desire to have a positive relationship with his brother. It is not likely that he can have both. In addition there is the question of maintaining the status quo versus a more complete resolution of the matter. There is no "correct" answer to this question. The lashon harah question is subordinate to the above and does not exist as an independent issue.

Rosh (55.9) No one's view - not even Rashi's - is automatically accepted

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Rosh (55.9): You wrote that because of the perfection of the distinguished scholar Rabbi Yaakov ben Shushon no one would think to question his views and reject his explanation. That is not a reason for not disagreeing with an authority. Who is greater than Rashi who illuminated our eyes in the darkness of exile with his commentaries and yet his own descendants Rabbeinu Tam and Ri disagreed with him concerning many issues and rejected his words. That is because it is the Torah of truth and we submit to no man because of his status and authority. And this that you said he was perfected in reasoning or language – it doesn’t matter because Yiftach in his generation is like Shmuel in his (Rosh HaShanna 25b)… Furthermore the Gaonim (Seder Tanaym and Amoraim #25) have said that from Abaye and Rava the halacha follows the more recent authority – not the previous ones…

High medical costs:Surgeons get kickbacks for spinal fusion surgery

Wall Street Journal

A Portland, Ore., neurosurgeon who performed multiple spinal fusions on the same patients lost his operating privileges at the hospital where he did many of his surgeries and is under investigation by the Oregon Medical Board.

The latest developments came as new information emerged about the medical-device distributorship that supplies Dr. Makker with spinal implants. The distributor, Omega Solutions of Fresno, Calif., sometimes pays surgeons to use its products, according to a document reviewed by the Journal that Omega recently sent to surgeons it sought to recruit.

The document says that the company enters into partnerships with surgeons who agree to use its products and pays them "dividends" based on the number of surgeries they perform. Critics say such arrangements are controversial because they can skew medical decision-making.

The document details the cash payments made to one of Omega's partners, an unnamed spine surgeon in Los Angeles. From Jan. 1, 2009, to May 19, 2010, the surgeon received a total of $519,674.35 based on his use of Omega implants in two to three surgeries a week, the document says.

Rabbi accused of bribing witness to testify against Baruch Liebovitz

NBC

A Brooklyn rabbi is under arrest and facing charges of bribery and witness tampering for allegedly paying an individual to accuse another rabbi of sexual abuse.

Sources tell NBC New York that Samuel Kellner was arrested Tuesday night. The Brooklyn district attorney has scheduled a news conference but has declined comment ahead of the announcement.

Kellner is accused of paying a witness to say he was abused by Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, who was sentenced a year ago to 32 years in prison after he was convicted of child molestation. [...]

JBAC protests against conference on "Molestation Issues"

Sunday, May 15, 2011, Jewish Board of Advocates for Children will
protest at the Brooklyn Marriott, while Aguda Rabbis Chaim Dovid Zwiebel
and Shlomo Gottesman are publicly speaking to 500 orthodox professionals
on, "Molestation Issues and Reporting: Halachic and Legal Overview." The
source of the problem will pontificate about the problem. What a cruel
farce and hoax! There will be no experienced prosecutor, lawyer,
therapist, child advocate, nor recognized rabbi-posek who will speak.
The cover-up and obfuscation continue. And so will the protest. Its an
outrage.

Rabbis Sound an Alarm Over Eating Disorders

NYTimes

n the large and growing Orthodox Jewish communities around New York and elsewhere, rabbinic leaders are sounding an alarm about an unexpected problem: a wave of anorexia and other eating disorders among teenage girls.

While no one knows whether such disorders are more prevalent among Orthodox Jews than in society at large, they may be more baffling to outsiders. Orthodox women are famously expected to dress modestly, yet matchmakers feel no qualms in asking about a prospective bride’s dress size — and her mother’s — and the preferred answer is 0 to 4, extra small.

Rabbis say the problem is especially hard to treat because of the shame that has long surrounded mental illness among Orthodox Jews.

“There is an amazing stigma attached to eating disorders — this is the real problem,” said Rabbi Saul Zucker, educational director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, or O.U., the organization that issues the all-important kashrut stamp for food. “But hiding it is not going to make it go away. If we don’t confront it, it’s going to get worse.”  [...]

Rabbi indicted for sexual assault

YNET

An indictment was filed Tuesday by the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office against a well-known rabbi accused of sodomizing and performing an indecent act on his friend's wife who was seeking his professional counseling.

According to the indictment, the defendant, a counselor for young couples and a rabbi at a girls seminary, was approached early last month by a haredi couple - his student and good friend and his wife - for counseling on family matters. [...]

Call Police: Don't call your rabbi when faced with immediate possible life threatening situations

the Shul Bomber was recently captured by the FBI. The person who discovered him and was aware that he was the bombing suspect - first called his rabbi to see whether it was permitted. This is sheer idiocy. When there is even a suspected life threatening situation you must call the police immediately!


ABC News

"Today, I happened to be on the Jewish website 'Vos Iz Neias,'" the rabbi added. "I saw the facial features, although he shaved off part of his beard. First thing I did was call my local rabbi to see if I could report him. He said, 'If he is a danger to society, you have to report him.' I called the FBI in Santa Monica. They asked me to call the Cleveland Heights police. They came to synagogue, and he was sitting right in the back."

Non-chareidi rabbis also invalidate conversions

JPost

The dispute over the degree of leniency that Jewish law affords the conversion process is not one of halachic stringency, but one of nationalistic ideology, a prominent national religious educator said Monday.

“The State Conversion Authority has also annulled conversions,” said Rabbi Neria Gutel, speaking at a conference on religious educational attitudes toward Israeli non-Jews at the Rehovot campus of Orot Teachers’ College, which he heads. “The question of whether to annul a conversion is not one that divides national religious and haredi rabbis.”

Gutel focused his address on the estimated 320,000 Israelis who made aliya under the Law of Return, but are not Jewish according to Halacha. National religious rabbis and lawmakers are seeking ways to help these people – who speak Hebrew, serve in the IDF and consider themselves Israeli in every way – to undergo conversion according to Jewish law. [...]

Errors of rabbinic authority are potentially harmful

from my sefer Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Derashos HaRan (#11): … Since we believe that all which the Torah prohibits is inherently harmful and creates a harmful impact on our souls – even though we don’t know the reason. According to this accepted view, even if all the sages mistakenly believed that something that was impure was actually pure – this agreement doesn’t change anything and it still remains harmful to us and its actual harmful nature continues despite the mistaken understanding of the sages that it is pure. It is equivalent to the agreement of doctors that a medicine has no effect when it is in fact a strong drug. There is no question that there is absolutely no significant change in the nature of the medicine that results from the mistaken agreement of the doctors. In the same way if the Torah prohibits something because it is harmful, the agreement of sages that it is permitted doesn’t change its intrinsic nature – except by some miracle. … [Thus we see that when the Sanhedrin errs and causes people to violate that which the Torah prohibited – they are causing harm.] However it is inconceivable that a person should be harmed by following the ruling of the Sanhedrin even if he eats something which is prohibited because they said it is permitted. The answer is that the soul greatly benefits when a person listens to the Sages since it is the action most beloved by G d… This benefit removes the harm which would naturally result to the soul because of the eating something prohibited. Something similar happens physically when a person eats something which is harmful. If he eats it with the understanding that this food is good for him – his thoughts act on the food and remove the harmful effects – unless the harm is  very strong. It is the same thing when a person follows the commands of the Sanhedrin and perceives something that is objectively prohibited as being permitted. When he follows their directives, that obedience itself will remove all harm that he would normally be subject to because of the natural consequences of eating something which is harmful. That is why the Torah commanded to follow the directives of the Sanhedrin and not deviate either right or left [whether they are correct or not].