Female circus volunteer removed by Chareidi protest

Haaretz

A female audience member who was invited to participate in a circus performance in Modi'in on Sunday was removed from the stage after a religiously observant viewer complained.

Rafi Vitis, an acrobat and host of "The Shambuki Show," at the city's Anabe Park, consented to the request of an ultra-Orthodox woman who found the participation of women offensive. He invited a male volunteer to replace the teenage girl, but was forced to suspend the show for a few minutes because other members of the hundreds-strong audience objected to the switch.

Fraud allegations against Hazon Yeshaya charity

JPost

The Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court ruled on Wednesday to extend the remand of a senior employee of the Hazon Yeshaya charity for a further seven days, following his arrest on suspicion of widespread misuse of funds. Police arrested four members of the charity last week. A strict gag order prevents publication of their names. Judge Michael Karshen said the suspect, who is currently in hospital and did not appear in court, was suspected of aggravated fraud, money laundering, falsifying corporate documents and forgery, but that police had dropped an additional suspicion of extortion.

In extending the suspect’s remand until April 18, Karshen said Hazon Yeshaya had received substantial donations totaling tens of millions of shekels for food distribution to the poor and for Holocaust survivors but police suspect a significant portion of those funds were not used for their stated purpose.

Rav Y. Belsky: Objections of Rav S. Miller & Rav A. Schechter

These are documents relating to a dispute a number of years ago. I am not chas v'shalom setting myself up as a judge in this case - but the gedolim were clearly very upset with what Rav Belsky- he should have a refuah shleima -  was doing in the case. As anyone who has met Rav Belsky - he is a very impressive talmid chachom - both in terms of his knowledge of  Torah and his readiness to act forcefully for what he thinks is correct. He also has managed to upset others over the years by his independence.  I happened to have had a meeting with Rav Belsky at this time and he noted that there were wall posters all over Jerusalem signed by Rav Eliashiv but he told me that in reality Rav Eliashiv agreed with him. There is also disagreement as to whether Rav Belsky was merely trying to frighten the husband into giving a get or that he was willing to issue a heter to remarry based on these ideas. The major concern with gittin and permitting a woman to remarry is that the get and the ability to remarry should be generally accepted by gedolim. Anytime a rav is involved in these areas and is viewed as doing things unacceptable especially when he does them repeatedly -  is something to be concerned about.

Rav Besky vs Rav Miller and Rav Schecter 20120411104504

Minchas Yitzchok: Going to court invalidates Get

A woman received a get on the condition that she would not go to secular court. She then violated the agreement and went to secular court. The Minchas Yitzchok said if she doesn't withdraw her claims from court her get is invalid. This teshuva has not been published in the sefer Minchas Yitzchok.

Minchas Yitzchak Invalidating a Get After Returning to Court-1

Oprah: Hasidic Jews - part 2

Oprah: Hasidic Jews - part 1

YU Conference: Rav Schacter, ORA & Tamar

Islam: Women in a permissive society

Time Magazine

New information in the Shaima Alawadi murder case in El Cajon, Calif., suggests that the family was cracking over a forced marriage for daughter Fatima, 17, and that Alawadi herself was preparing to divorce her husband. If female freedom turns out to be at the heart of the murder, it will highlight not so much the intolerance of Muslim immigrants by Americans, but the cultural restrictions on women in those communities and what happens when those restrictions clash with the relatively permissive rules of Western society.

Alawadi was beaten to death with a tire iron inside her home in El Cajon (home to 40,000 Iraqis) last month. For weeks the case has been regarded as a possible hate crime because someone left a note beside her unconscious body that read, “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.” But Alawadi, 32, belonged to a culture in which families choose husbands for their daughters at a young age, and the daughters have no say in it. She was married by the age of 15. She had produced five children with her husband Kassim Alhimidi, who moved his family to the U.S. 17 years ago. Police executing search warrants on the family’s house, cars and phones found documents in Alawadi’s car indicating she was planning to get divorced. According to the New York Times, a family friend told police that Alawadi wanted to leave her husband and move to Texas. Her sister, however, denied that.

Islam in Britain: A horror movie

Widow with dementia gave $600,000 to Kabbalah Centre charity

LATImes

Susan Strong Davis, an 87-year-old widow, spends the day inside her Palos Verdes Estates home, tended round-the-clock by nurse's aides. For company, relatives say, she has her dog, the television and, on increasingly rare occasions, memories of the glamorous socialite's life she once lived.

"She definitely has some sort of dementia," said Viki Brushwood, a niece who visited from Texas in December. "I don't know if it's Alzheimer's or what. She is somebody who is not making decisions anymore."

But decisions involving large amounts of money are being made in Davis' name. In recent years, she has borrowed millions to build a four-bedroom house in Beverly Hills featuring three fireplaces and a pool, according to property records, court filings and interviews. She has also given at least $600,000 to a charity to which relatives say she has no ties and which is run by the controversial Kabbalah Centre, the Westside spiritual organization now under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.

Beit Shemesh:Urban planning for chareidi cities

Haaretz

The city of Beit Shemesh lies some 20 kilometers west of Jerusalem. Established in the early 1950s, it was just another depressed development town with a population of 20,000, when work on a master plan for its expansion, which called for the absorption of 130,000 additional residents, began, in the summer of 1990. That a large and unified block of land, most of it under state control, was available south of the existing town, and the central location of Beit Shemesh between Jerusalem and the coastal plain, were key factors in the government's decision to plan and build what is now called Ramat Beit Shemesh. Since that time, the city's population has soared: Today it stands at some 80,000. Once a backwater, today a boomtown. [...]

The special requirements of the Haredi community pose significant problems for town planners. Their high birth rate and great number of subgroups, as well as the fact that boys and girls attend separate schools, results in an inflated number of educational institutions, which are an immense burden to finance, build and maintain. In Beit Shemesh today, no less than 70 percent of all schoolchildren are ultra-Orthodox. To avoid halakhic problems regarding Sabbath elevators, building heights are often restricted to not more than four stories, limiting urban densities.

Igros Moshe: Law requiring Get if civil divorce

This teshuva seems to make it impossible to justify publicly embarrassing a person solely for the purpose of giving a get - especially when he can not escape from the embarrassment by moving to a different neighborhood or community.

Igros Moshe( E.H. 4:106): This that there is an effort being made to pass a law in the state legislature that whenever a Jew becomes divorced in a secular court he is also obligated to give his wife a valid get in beis din – this is definitely a very major accomplishment. Such a law does not constitute an illegal coerced get (get me’usa) because of the involvement of non‑Jews. That is because the husband has the free will not to divorce his wife according to the secular law. It is only because he wants to obtain a secular divorce in order to be exempt from the financial obligations of his wife and that he will be able to legally marry another woman – and the secular government will not give it to him unless he has given a valid get to his first wife. Therefore he is giving the get of his own free‑will. This is exactly equivalent to one who doesn’t want to give his wife a get but when they give him thousands of shekel – suddenly he becomes willing to give it. This is not considered coerced (me’usa) since he has the free will to decide whether desire for the money is more important to him than the desire not to give the get. This is not considered coerced (me’usa) since he has the free will to decide whether the money is more important to him then giving a get. It is a daily occurrence amongst the Jewish people that a husband is given this choice.

The coercion which invalidates a get is when he is beaten or imprisoned or given some other affliction in order that she be given the get. Such cases are considered that he is being forced to give the get – only then is it in invalid. Similarly even in the case of financial pressure in a case where the government obligates him to pay as a punishment for not giving the get is considered as a get given with financial coercion because he doesn’t want to lose the money. An additional case is if someone takes a large sum of money from the husband and refuses to return it unless he gives a divorce – is also considered to be illegal coercion. [See the Shulcahn Aruch E.H. 134.4 in the Rema and Pischei Teshuva (E.H. 134.11)] In contrast if the husband is given money to motivate him to want to give the get – it is obvious that this is not considered coercion and it is a daily occurrence. So this concern for obtaining a benefit is exactly the same thing as giving a get in order to obtain a civil divorce. Even if he is imprisoned for a different matter and the wife has someone who is willing to intervene to obtain his freedom on the condition that he give her a get – this is not considered that he was coerced to give a get. That is because the cause of his suffering was not caused by his not giving a get – but because of an unrelated matter. The giving of the get only provides a remedy for removing the suffering. Therefore a get given to stop suffering from an unrelated matter is considered to be total free-will. This is quite simple and logical. This is a valid get even in a situation where he has no obligation to divorce her.