Friedman-Epstein: Get war continues

Washington Jewish Week   A huge photo of Aharon Friedman, the Silver Spring resident who has become famous for his adament refusal to give his former wife a get, was posted in the Wheaton metro station earlier this week.

The photograph of his face is accompanied with the message, which is written in all capital letters, "AHARON FRIEDMAN GIVE A GET NOW!"

The advertisement is sponsored by ORA, Organization for the Resolution of Agunot. It was paid for by a sponsor and out of the organization's operating budget, noted Rabbi Jeremy Stern, executive director at ORA.

Kidneys discarded - why the waste?

NY Times  Last year, 4,720 people died while waiting for kidney transplants in the United States. And yet, as in each of the last five years, more than 2,600 kidneys were recovered from deceased donors and then discarded without being transplanted, government data show. 

Those organs typically wound up in a research laboratory or medical waste incinerator.

In many instances, organs that seemed promising for transplant based on the age and health of the donor were discovered to have problems that made them not viable.

But many experts agree that a significant number of discarded kidneys — perhaps even half, some believe — could be transplanted if the system for allocating them better matched the right organ to the right recipient in the right amount of time. [...]

There are no such obstacles in Europe. And in 1999, seven countries, including Germany, began matching kidneys from donors 65 and older to recipients in the same age bracket. Those kidneys were allocated close to home to shorten cold time, and biopsies were used sparingly.

The number of older kidney donors has more than tripled, and discard rates are less than a third of that in the United States, said Dr. Ulrich Frei, a German nephrologist who has compared the two systems. Studies have found no significant difference in survival rates for older patients in Europe and the United States, he said.

Off the Derech:Importance of Parents

Guest post by Shlomo Silber
See also Dr. Sorotzkin's article of Role of Parents in Off the Derech kids  Link to this document on Scribd

Gladwell:How child molesters get away with it

New Yorker   [...] When monsters roam free, we assume that people in positions of authority ought to be able to catch them if only they did their jobs. But that might be wishful thinking. A pedophile, van Dam’s story of Mr. Clay reminds us, is someone adept not just at preying on children but at confusing, deceiving, and charming the adults responsible for those children—which is something to keep in mind in the case of the scandal at Penn State and the conviction, earlier this year, of the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on child-molestation charges. [...]

One of the most remarkable and disturbing descriptions of the grooming process comes from a twenty-two-page autobiography (published as a chapter in a book about pedophilia) by a convicted pedophile named Donald Silva. After graduating from medical school, Silva met a family with a nine-year-old named Eric. He first sexually molested Eric on a ski trip that the two of them took together. But that came only a year after he befriended the family, patiently insinuating himself into the good graces of Eric’s parents. At one point, Eric’s mother ordered an end to the “friendship,” because she thought Silva’s friends had been smoking pot in her son’s presence. But Silva had so won over her husband that, he writes, “this beautiful man found it in his heart to forgive me after I assured him that such a thing would not happen again.” Silva describes an unforgettable night that he and Eric spent together after they were “reunited”. [...]

This is standard child-molester tradecraft. The successful pedophile does not select his targets arbitrarily. He culls them from a larger pool, testing and probing until he finds the most vulnerable. Clay, for example, first put himself in a place with easy access to children—an elementary school. Then he worked his way through his class. He began by simply asking boys if they wanted to stay after school. “Those who could not do so without parental permission were screened out,” van Dam writes. Children with vigilant parents are too risky. Those who remained were then caressed on the back, first over the shirt and then, if there was no objection from the child, under the shirt. “The child’s response was evaluated by waiting to see what was reported to the parents,” she goes on. “Parents inquiring about this behavior were told by Mr. Clay that he had simply been checking their child for signs of chicken pox. Those children were not targeted further.” The rest were “selected for more contact,” gradually moving below the belt and then to the genitals.

The child molester’s key strategy is one of escalation, desensitizing the target with an ever-expanding touch. In interviews and autobiographies, pedophiles describe their escalation techniques like fly fishermen comparing lures. Consider the child molester van Dam calls Cook.[...]

Hypocrisy:The murder of pro-Palestinian activist Arrigoni

Tablet Magazine On Monday, a Hamas military court convicted four men in the kidnapping and murder of pro-Palestinian activist Vittorio Arrigoni. If your allergies were flaring up at all yesterday, then you might have blinked and missed the coverage of the trial, it was buried in a 150-word capsule on page 8 of the New York Times. The outcome was reported elsewhere, but with similar economy.[...]

The news of the Arrigoni verdict threw the end of last month’s case against the Israel Defense Forces in the death of ISM activist Rachel Corrie into sharp relief. The verdict in the Corrie trial–which exonerated the IDF of wrongdoing–was front page news across the world, garnering some 950 words of initial reportage on A1 of the Times, as well as a number of follow ups and opinion pieces in media outlets around the globe. Outrage ran wild. 

So why the relative silence for Arrigoni, who, unlike Corrie, was obviously and brutally murdered? Where are the off-Broadway plays and poems and paintings? There are some clear factors stunting the media uproar–Arrigoni wasn’t American and the timing of his death–but none of these make the circumstances of his death–now confirmed by a Hamas court of all adjudicators–any less outrageous

Leading up to and following the Corrie verdict, the ISM website devoted several entries to the case, drawing attention to the news coverage, highlighting the perceived injustice of the trial, and again accusing the IDF of cold-blooded murder. In the days before and after the verdict in the Arrigoni case, there hasn’t been anything posted and, perhaps more telling, from reading the tributes to Arrigoni on the ISM site and elsewhere, one would think he died of natural causes and not at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. In many ways, this is emblematic of all the deaths that seem to come more cheaply when a Jew is not to blame.

Mahane Yehuda Market & modesty squads

YNet  One of them approaches a woman who shops at the market once a week. The woman, wearing a tank top and jeans, has her full attention on the tomato box. The haredi woman touches one of her bare arms. The woman turns around and the haredi woman immediately snaps at her, pointing at her bare arms: "Next time don't come to the market like this. Next time you'll come with sleeves."

The woman in the tank top tries not to appear insulted and looks at the other haredi women. One of them approaches a young woman in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. "Next time cover yourself," she orders her. The haredim have been targeting Mahane Yehuda Market for quite a while. The patrol unit, which began touring the market alleys in recent weeks, is the result of growing haredi involvement in the area in the past 18 months.

The reason for their growing interest is the fact that the market is gradually becoming a multi-cultural center, a pilgrimage site for youngsters, visitors and tourists and a nightlife hot spot for many in the city.

The ultra-Orthodox battle was launched a year ago, when they declared war on the market area and the street parties held in the city center throughout the summer, claiming that the revival of the city center was creating lawlessness and harming their children's education.

Obesity:Fitness more important then fat

NYTimes   In study after study, overweight and moderately obese patients with certain chronic diseases often live longer and fare better than normal-weight patients with the same ailments. The accumulation of evidence is inspiring some experts to re-examine long-held assumptions about the association between body fat and disease. 

Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, was one of the first researchers to document the obesity paradox, among patients with heart failure in 2002. He spent more than a year trying to get a journal to publish his findings. [...]

But there were hints everywhere. One study found that heavier dialysis patients had a lower chance of dying than those whose were of normal weight or underweight. Overweight patients with coronary disease fared better than those who were thinner in another study; mild to severe obesity posed no additional mortality risks.

In 2007, a study of 11,000 Canadians over more than a decade found that those who were overweight had the lowest chance of dying from any cause.

To date, scientists have documented these findings in patients with heart failure, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, high blood pressure — and now diabetes. 

Ad Calling Jihad ‘Savage’ Is Set to Appear in Subway

NYTimes  As violent and sometimes deadly protests consume much of the Muslim world in response to an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad, New Yorkers will soon encounter another potentially inflammatory rendering of Islam: an advertisement in the transit system that reads, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” 

It concludes with the words, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,” wedged between two Stars of David.

After rejecting the ads initially, then losing a federal court ruling on First Amendment grounds, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on Tuesday that the ads were expected to appear next week at 10 subway stations.

Why wasn't Malbim's commentary banned?

The Malbim is considered one of the standard commentaries to the Bible. He was also one of the strongest opponents of the Reform movement. And yet there are comments where he clearly rejects views expressed by Chazal and the Rishonim as not being compatible with the latest scientific facts.

This despite the fact that there was concern about heresy - the reaction against Mendelsohn is a good example. In fact there were some Chasidim who viewed the Malbim as a maskil. While the Reform viewed him as a fanatic reactionary. The Malbim apparently was trying to produce a frum Biblical criticism much as Rav Yisroel Salanter was trying to produce a frum haskala

Dr. Noah Rosenbloom in his biography of the Malbim notes that there were several books in Hebrew  - concerning with science -  which were published at this time for the frum world. The Malbim apparently took his information from one of them - Sefer HaBris. The author of Sefer haBris clearly was aware of the dangers of publishing discussions of science and he took the precaution of announcing that the work was merely an introduction to Rav Chaim Vital's Shaar HaKedushah - to explain the scientific basis. Of interest he makes no attempt to actually explain any particular verse. As Dr. Rosenbloom points out - if he really was concerned with clarify and explaining Shaar HaKedusha - he would have written it as a commentary rather than as a introduction. In addition he was careful to obtain many haskomas from important rabbis.

My point being that it is not so much the content but the perceived context that influences whether something is perceived as dangerous literature that needs to be banned.

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Malbim (Bereishis 1:1) ... This interpretation [which I just quoted] makes sense according to the view of the ancients who says that there exist Spheres  on which are fixed all the stars of the Heavens and therefore when it says that G-d created the Heavens it is referring to the Spheres which were created on the first day. And then the sun and the moon and the stars were created on the fourth day and attached to the Spheres that are referred to as the rakia of the Heavens. However it has recently been established that there are no such things as Spheres. Rather [the scientists] have stated that all the heavenly bodies  move in their orbits in an atmosphere which is called Ether which fills the entire universe. Therefore if the stars weren't created then nothing of the heavens was created because there is nothing to the Heavens except the heavenly bodies. Furthermore the scientists have recently established  that the stars in the Heavens are not composed of a fifth type of matter which is unique to the Heavens as the ancients claimed. The fact is that the  heavenly bodies which only reflect light such as the moon are composed of the exact same materials as we find here on our earth....

'Lizzie Beautiful': ‘Stop staring and start learning’

Lizzie Velazquez was born with a medical condition so rare that there are only three known cases in the world.

The “Lizzie Beautiful” author says she's used to standing out, but dealing with bullies, like people on the internet who dubbed her “World's Ugliest Woman”, is hard. Yet, in our beauty-obsessed culture, Velazquez always finds a way to thrive and inspire.

“I'm human … of course these things are going to hurt ... [but] I'm not going to let those things define me," she told HLN’s Dr. Drew Tuesday night.

She added, “The stares are kind of what I'm really dealing with in public right now … I'm starting to want to go up to these people and introduce myself or give them my card and say, ‘Hi, I'm Lizzie -- Maybe you should stop staring and start learning’.”

Chief Rabbi Sacks: Religion & Science