Gentle chinuch - with horses

NYTimes

When the soulful cowboy philosopher Buck Brannaman talks, people — and horses — listen. The aw-shucks star and one of the two-legged attractions in the documentary “Buck,” Mr. Brannaman is a former trick rope performer who, after a childhood of pain, became something of a shaman and an inspiration for the novel and movie “The Horse Whisperer.” He doesn’t just talk to the animals; he also transforms snorting, bucking horses into companions who follow his lead without a tether and even join him in a graceful meadow duet. [....]

If there’s nothing essentially remarkable about Buck Brannaman’s bad childhood, there is something exceptional about how he transcended it. After knocking around in his early 20s, he had his mind blown while watching a clinic with Ray Hunt and his teacher, Tom Dorrance, modern pioneers in a gentle training method — a philosophy, really — that’s called, perhaps paradoxically (as PETA might insist), natural horsemanship. Smitten by what he saw, Mr. Brannaman embraced these methods, became a disciple of the men and of Mr. Dorrance’s brother, Bill, and went on to spread the word. It’s a measure of the passion this approach inspires that in the book “The Greatest Horse Stories Ever Told,” one observer rhapsodizes: “Tom Dorrance is Yoda, Ray Hunt is Obi-Wan Kenobi and Buck Brannaman is Luke Skywalker!”

Having a gay orientation & religious identity: Living the Good Lie

NYTimes

Denis Flanigan isn’t hiding anything. A 42-year-old psychotherapist in Houston, he has a straightforward manner that meshes nicely with his no-nonsense buzz cut and neatly clipped goatee. Unlike many mental-health professionals, Flanigan puts personal items on display in his office, including a photo of his partner, who is attractive, and male. For his patients’ amusement he has on hand an S-and-M Barbie as well as a Tickle Me Freud doll. (“It’s so, so . . . wrong,” Flanigan told me, in a tone that signaled he believed it was exactly right.) Flanigan’s no-secrets policy extends to his Web site, where he writes that he “has frequently been asked to speak on the gay and lesbian experience and mental health, transgender concerns and body-modification issues.” A member of the American Psychological Association, Flanigan has also served as Mr. Prime Choice Texas, winning a contest “designed for men 40 years or older who represent the masculine aesthetic embraced by the leather/Levi/uniform/fetish community.” In his own words, he identifies as a “militant homosexual.”

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that when potential clients come to Flanigan’s office to discuss their sexual orientation — in particular whether they should reveal their homosexuality to friends, family or employers — his first response is to ask, in a neutral tone, “Why do you want to do that?” Flanigan has a 20-year history of gay activism behind him, so you might expect that his primary goal would be to help gay clients discover and cultivate their most authentic selves. As Jonathan Ned Katz wrote in “Gay American History” in 1976, “Therapists who do not help their homosexual patients to fully explore the possibility of homosexuality as a legitimate option have not helped to expand those individuals’ freedom.” [...]

In New Square where the arson attack occurred, the rebbe's word is law

New Jersey Jewish Standard

For years, this leafy chasidic village about an hour north of New York City has been a shtetl-like haven where residents could live their strictly Orthodox lifestyle far from the temptations and bustle of the nation’s largest city.

Out of view of all but very few, life in this community of some 7,000 Skverer chasidim has revolved around its spiritual leader, the Skverer rebbe, David Twersky.

In the wake of a recent arson attack that left a dissident New Square resident in the hospital with third-degree burns over more than half his body — and thrust this community into the harsh glare of media and police investigators — the question is whether the centrality of the rebbe to community life has created an atmosphere of dangerous coercion.

“We cannot encourage theocratic rule,” said Michael Sussman, the civil rights attorney representing the burn victim, Aron Rottenberg. “Yet by tolerating these communities, we’re doing that.” [....]

Schools: Conflict over the nature of homework

NYTimes


After Donna Cushlanis’s son kept bursting into tears midway through his second-grade math problems, which one night took over an hour, she told him not to do all of his homework.

“How many times do you have to add seven plus two?” Ms. Cushlanis, 46, said. “I have no problem with doing homework, but that put us both over the edge. I got to the point that this is enough.”

Ms. Cushlanis, a secretary for the Galloway school district, complained to her boss, Annette C. Giaquinto, the superintendent. It turned out that the district, which serves 3,500 kindergarten through eighth-grade students, was already re-evaluating its homework practices. The school board will vote this summer on a proposal to limit weeknight homework to 10 minutes for each year of school — 20 minutes for second graders, and so forth — and ban assignments on weekends, holidays and school vacations. [...]

Bizarre collaboration with the Zionists to save the pashkevils

Haaretz

Yoel Krois decided in recent months to take a temporary break from the holy wars he ordinarily wages as the unofficial "sheriff" of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim, in Jerusalem. The battles against men and women walking together on Mea She'arim's sidewalks, against bus company Egged, against the Gay Pride Parade and against the Haredi politicians who sit in the infidels' Knesset - all of these can evidently wait, because Krois, a member of the extremist religious faction Eda Haredit, has a burning mission that keeps him glued to his storage room for days and nights: uploading his personal archive of 20,000 pashkevils, or street posters, to the digital collection of the National Library of Israel.

The cooperation between the radical anti-Zionist activist and the national-academic institution is hardly self-evident, nor is the fact that the pashkevil - the medium of communication that has shaped the face of streets in Jerusalem for more than a century - will take its place in the national library's collection, at an investment of NIS 100,000. On top of this, the individual who served as middleman between Krois and the library is considered a bitter enemy of the Eda: Shuka Dorfman, the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority. [...]

Why the rabbis are hated

YNET

Reports that the salary of city rabbis will be raised to up to NIS 29,000 (roughly $8,500) per month prompted thousands of angry reactions. Several rabbis were genuinely wondering about the source of what they characterized as the “hatred” towards them. After all, they serve the public faithfully.
 
Hence, I will attempt here to present the arguments against the Rabbinate as reflected by the responses to the recent pay raise.

Firstly, the Rabbinate has become the “military wing” of the haredi community. Through it, the haredim abuse the rest of the population. Through the Rabbinate they force Israel’s citizens to get married, divorce, convert and set their clocks the haredi way. And as we know, depriving human beings of freedom provokes fury. Hence, one needs great chutzpa to force people to behave in ways they don’t wish to adopt.[...]

 

Jewish Agency to decide on Orthodox conversions for aliya

JPost

The Interior Ministry has decided that the Jewish Agency will act as the arbitrator for Jewish communities abroad for recognizing Orthodox converts wishing to make aliya, while leaving the Chief Rabbinate as a potential consultant for the “isolated cases” in which questions regarding the converting rabbis arise.

In recent months, there has been a growing phenomenon of aliya requests by Orthodox converts from North America being rejected by the Interior Ministry. According to law, a person who undergoes a conversion in a recognized Jewish community abroad is eligible for aliya.

Despite a High Court decision several years ago, the Interior Ministry didn’t formulate an official policy on how to recognize a Jewish community, and operated on the basis of an internal memo drafted by its legal department in 2008, which determined that the ministry should consult with the head of the relevant religious community in Israel. [...]

Science of Evil: Evil understood as lack of empathy

NYTimes

“The Science of Evil,” by Simon Baron-Cohen, seems likely to antagonize the victims of evil, the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder, at least a few of the dozens of researchers whose work he cites — not to mention critics of his views on evolutionary psychology or of his claims about the neurobiology of the sexes. “The Science of Evil” proposes a simple but persuasive hypothesis for a new way to think about evil.

“My main goal is to understand human cruelty, replacing the unscientific term ‘evil’ with the scientific term ‘empathy,’ ” he writes at the beginning of the book, which might be seen as expanding on the views on empathy expressed in his 1997 book, “Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind” (Bradford). Evil, he notes, has heretofore been defined in religious terms (with the concept differing in the major world religions), as a psychiatric condition (psychopathology) or, as he puts it, in “frustratingly circular” terms: “He did x because he is truly evil”). [...]

Dissidents leaders from Kiryas Yoel file lawsuit demanding villiage be dissolved

Times Herald Record

Dissident leaders from Kiryas Joel filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing the Satmar Hasidic community’s majority faction of abusing its control over municipal affairs and demanding the 34-year-old village be dissolved.

The 59-page complaint catalogs grievances dating back a decade and depicts a religious faction exercising uncontested power in the secular realm. The case, brought by Goshen attorney Michael Sussman, calls Kiryas Joel a “theocracy” that violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion.

“Religion is wonderful,” Sussman said at a press conference in his office Monday, seated beside Joseph Waldman, a plaintiff and longtime dissident leader. “But it cannot dominate the state. And that is what is happening in Kiryas Joel.” [...]

Arson attack victim files $18 million suit against Chasidic rabbi & assailant

JTA

The family of a man badly burned in an alleged arson attack filed a lawsuit against the grand rabbi of the Chasidic village of New Square, N.Y., accusing him of directing and condoning a campaign of harassment against them.

The suit, filed Monday in New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Aron Rottenberg and his family, lists two defendants: Shaul Spitzer, 18, the alleged arsonist; and David Twesky, the rebbe of the Skverer Chasidic sect. It urges the court to level an $18 million judgement agaisnt each of the two defendants.[...]

New Square arson victim to file lawsuit challenging grand rebbe's power

LoHud

The lawyer for Aron Rottenberg, the New Square man seriously burned in an arson attack on his home, said this afternoon that he will file a lawsuit tomorrow contending that New Square's grand rebbe is responsible for a campaign of intimidation against Rottenberg that sparked the attack.

Lawyer Michael Sussman said that Rottenberg is committed to breaking Grand Rebbe David Twersky's hold on power over everything that happens in the ultra-insular Hasidic village.

"That control, if it is going to be exerted as it has been, has to end," Sussman said. [...]