White Institute Conference on abuse: "Thank you to Survivors For Justice"

Dr. Asher Lipner wrote:

Dear Friends and Fellow Advocates,

Last week I sent out thank you's to several people who participated and contributed to making the conference on sexual abuse in the Orthodox community at the William Alanson White Institute a historic success.

It seems I have saved the best for last.  "Acharon Acharon Chaviv". Often times the people who are behind the scenes and who initiate and catalyze change in the community are overlooked for the efforts they have made.  Aside from the importance of "hakaras hatov" gratitude, it is also very important for us to acknowledge how change comes about so that we can learn from it, emulate it and carry on its message.

Survivors for Justice is an organization that has helped publicize the stories of many survivors who are now leading advocates, by cultivating an excellent relationship with the media.  SFJ has been front and center in speaking out each and every time that there is a story in the press about another abuse case.  (This is something the RCA and the OU have promised to do, and is clearly their job, but as the saying goes "B'makom She'ayn Ish..."  When you want something done you got to do it yourself).  They ran an amazing and powerful radio advertisement campaign to encourage Jewish parents to report their children's abuse directly to the police.  (You can still hear the ads on their website).

One of the survivors who was involved at the time with SFJ, Joel Engleman, who had connections to the William Alanson White Institute, reached out to them for help in educating the community and in providing clinical services.  The Institute was very interested in learning more about our community and in offering us their expertise. They asked SFJ to introduce them to a psychotherapist who worked in the Orthodox community, and I had the great honor and privilege of being invited to meet with the Sex Abuse Services team of therapists in the very same building that housed the conference to present a case.  This was in February of 2010.   Since my first presentation focused so much on explaining the cultural environment in which I work, I was invited back a second time to present the case I had prepared, in more depth, and to receive free supervision.  I obviously learned more than I taught, but the collegial dialogue was refreshingly welcoming and respectful.  There I met Dr. Julie  Marcuse, the director of the program, and Dr. Richard Gartner, who literally "wrote the book" on treating survivors,  and many other expert clinicians who expressed great interest in our community and the efforts to solve the sex abuse problem.

Shortly afterwards, SFJ hired Dr. Alison Feit from WAW, Sex Abuse Services, to give a "Master's Class" to clinicians and others working with. It was an eight week course with intense discussion, readings, and excellent lectures. SFJ paid for the entire thing including dinner each week, and worked with me to reach out by invitation only (no advertising) to key people who were felt to be "players" in the community.  I am proud of the fact that I "made the shidduch between" (introduced) Rabbi Eidensohn and Dr. Feit, and the Rabbi later invited Ali to participate with a chapter in his book. Other members of the class were Robin "Raizy" Sadowsky, LCSW, Rabbi Blau, Chaikie Travis, LCSW, Bassie Rosenblatt, LCSW, Shloimie Ehrlich who works with teens at risk in Monsey, Yitzchak Schonefeld from "Cholent", Michael Jenkins, LCSW from Footsteps, Sondra Kotzen, LCSW, from Sephardic Bikur Cholim, and others not from our community. It was a wonderful mix of backgrounds and experiences, and everyone benefited greatly.

Because SFJ is unique, among other ways, in its lack of self-promotion, all of us need to be aware of the pivotal role it has played in standing up for the rights of survivors, and in educating the community.  So thank you Survivors for Justice, for all you have done, for all you continue to do.   I look forward to working with you on many more projects.

To find out more, please visit them at WWW.SFJNY.ORG and show them support.

Asher

Rav Moshe Feinstein at Yeshiva Shor Yoshuv

This was my sole personal encounter with Rav Moshe Feinstein. I took
this picture at Yeshiva Shor Yoshuv when he came for a bris

National-religious rabbi slams blind obedience to rabbis

YNET

Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau has called on the national-religious public to reduce its dependence on rabbis and become "free". According to Lau, the blind obedience which has infiltrated the Zionist-religious society in recent years is an inappropriate phenomenon stemming from a "paralysis of fear".

Threat of violence keeps police out of Jerusalem Haredi neighborhood

Haaretz

Police are reluctant to enter the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea She'arim because of residents' violence, a police spokesman said during a recent court hearing over the remand of a neighborhood resident.

A police official said in court Thursday that the reason the police had not arrested a wanted man for more than a month, despite knowing where in Mea She'arim he was, was that every time they go into the neighborhood police property is damaged and they do not want unnecessary confrontations. [....]

Kupat HaIr wants tzedaka store near Rav Chaim Kanievsky

bhol
מלחמת הנדל(נ)יסטים: חנות צדקה בבית הגר"ח?
דירת הגר"ג נדל זצ"ל - שכנו של הגר"ח קנייבסקי - עמדה שוממה • אחד מבניו השכיר חדר ל'קופת העיר' • למרות התנגדות המשפחה - העבודות נמשכות • ומה אומר הגר"ח?

Italian seismologists face manslaughter for not predicting earthquake

CBS

No one can predict earthquakes. But six seismologists and a government official are being tried for manslaughter in the deaths of more than 300 people in the 2009 tremblor in L'Aquila, Italy. The city's public prosecutor says the scientists downplayed the possibility of a quake to an extent that townsfolk did not take precautions that could have saved their lives. A judge has just set the trial to begin on September 20.

The case, which was brought in 2010, hinges on the statements of Bernardo De Bernardinis of Italy's Civil Protection Agency at a press conference a week before the quake. His agency had asked the scientists to convene and discuss whether the increasing seismic activity in the area might indicate a risk of a major quake.

At the subsequent press conference, De Bernardinis, who is being tried along with the scientists, told the crowd, “The scientific community tells me there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favorable.” (via Nature News) People say that as a result of this reassurance, they didn't leave their homes or take other precautions against the quake struck. [....]

Krauthammer: What Obama did to Israel

Washington Post

Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel’s security and diplomatic needs.

It’s on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President George W. Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.

For 2 1 / 2 years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” [...]

Agudath Israel Affirms Abuse Cases Go First To Rabbi

Forward           (hat tip Baruch Pelta)

One of America’s leading ultra-Orthodox groups has reaffirmed that its followers must consult a rabbi before going to law enforcement authorities with suspicions of sexual abuse committed by community members.

The admonitions, from speakers at a conference sponsored by Agudath Israel of America, came even though a recent rabbinic edict permits reporting such crimes to secular authorities. A New Jersey district attorney with many Orthodox constituents said the advice given at the conference could be a violation of state law, though that view wasn’t shared by the district attorney for Brooklyn, where many other Orthodox Jews live.

At the daylong “Halacha Conference for Professionals,” held in Brooklyn on May 15, speakers elaborated on a recent ruling by Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, one of ultra-Orthodoxy’s foremost authorities on Jewish religious law, or Halacha. Elyashiv recently decreed that Jews with reasonable suspicions that a case of sexual abuse has occurred are permitted to go to secular law enforcement authorities, notwithstanding traditional religious prohibitions against mesirah, or informing on fellow Jews.

But at a panel discussion titled “Molestation Issues and Reporting: Current Halachic Thinking,” the panel’s leader, Rabbi Shlomo Gottesman, cautioned that Elyashiv never explained what constitutes “reasonable suspicion.” To establish this, Gottesman said, a person should consult a rabbi “who has experience in these issues” before going to secular authorities.

Orthodox Jew asks: Does acknowledging being out of touch with reality help or hinder us?

One of the participants at the White Conference on abuse made the effort to contact me to clarify a number of points I made at the Conference. One of the comments she made struck me as a very cogent expression of what many Orthodox Jews think or act as if they hold such a view. I wasn't sure how to respond.

Lastly, it was repeatedly stated that we, orthodox Jewry, are out of touch with reality. Though this may be true (examples cited were scrutinizing others during the matchmaking process and being involved in irrelevant details such as tablecloths) does it actively help us? Does acknowledging this provide any practical benefit? Might it deflect us from properly addressing these problems and allow us to accept the situation as it is? It seems that it might simply dismiss the problem. Is it possible to clarify what benefit this sort of statement brings?

Rabbi's follower clashes with New Square burn victim's family

LOHUD

Early in the news conference, a six-year New Square resident, Shulem Sofer, began screaming that Sussman was lying. He yelled out that Rottenberg broke the community's rules and that it was justifiable to try to burn down Rottenberg's home, but not to injure the man.

"The rabbi never said to do fire to people," Sofer screamed in a high-pitched voice. "It's anti-Semitism. It's anti-New Square."

Sussman countered that people in the United States are free to pray where they want, but Sofer said he followed the grand rebbe's rules.

"I am from Jew land," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd. [....]

White Conference in the Press: Rabbis finally break silence on sex abuse

London Jewish Chronicle

The groundbreaking event took place at the William Alanson White Institute, a top psychoanalytic training and treatment centre, on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

The rabbis explained the halachic view of sexual abuse, mental health experts explained its psychological consequences, while survivors described lives traumatised by guilt, shame and betrayal.

Dr Alison Feit, director of the Jewish Centre for Trauma and Recovery, told the 120 members of the audience: "For too long family and communal concerns have been prioritised over the needs of the victims. [...]