My father, locked in his body but soaring free

In 2011 Ronnie Cahana suffered a severe stroke that left him with locked-in syndrome: completely paralyzed except for his eyes. While this might shatter a normal person’s mental state, Cahana found peace in “dimming down the external chatter,” and “fell in love with life and body anew.” In a somber, emotional talk, his daughter Kitra shares how she documented her father's spiritual experience, as he helped guide others even in a state of seeming helplessness. 

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What's it like to live with-locked in Syndrome?

Three years ago, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana suffered a rare brain stem stroke that left him fully conscious, yet his entire body paralyzed. It’s a condition known as “locked-in syndrome.”

Last month, TED Fellow Kitra Cahana spoke of her father’s experience at TEDMED (watch her talk, “My father, locked in his body but soaring free”), revealing how her family cocooned Rabbi Cahana in love, and how a system of blinking, in response to the alphabet, patiently allowed him to dictate poems, sermons and letters to his loved ones and to his congregation.

Kitra began documenting her father’s recovery in photographs and video, creating layered images that — in contrast to her photojournalistic work — are more abstract and emotional. “I wanted to try to find a way to take photographs that reflected the mystical things that were happening in the hospital room,” she says. “How do I explain, in a photograph, the power that another human being has to either add or detract from the healing of another person? I started a process of trying to tell a story in images.”

As Rabbi Cahana began to regain his ability to speak, Kitra started recording his voice. She is now in the process of developing this body of work for an exhibition to help raise support for his ongoing care and rehabilitation.

Below, see Kitra’s stunning images — accompanied by her father’s poems — and hear more about the thoughts behind them. But first, a Q&A with Rabbi Cahana himself, in which he describes his own experience.[...]

The Beggars of Lakewood - New York Times

NY Times    Once a year, Elimelech Ehrlich travels from Jerusalem to Lakewood, N.J., with a cash box and a wireless credit-card machine. During the three weeks he typically spends in town, Ehrlich — a white-bearded, black-suited, black-skullcapped, wisecracking 51-year-old — haunts the many local yeshivas, schools where Jewish men, mostly in their 20s, study the Talmud and other texts. Sometimes he loiters around the condominium complexes where students live with their young wives and growing families. Some days he hires a driver to take him to the houses of local ashirim, rich men. Throughout town, he greets old friends, asking after marriages made since his last visit and new babies. And at every stop along the way, he asks for money.[...]

The yeshiva students may not give much, but nearly all of them give — and there are so many of them. Between 1990 and 2010, Lakewood’s population doubled to about 92,000 residents, largely because of the growth of its ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Conveniently located equidistant from New York City and Philadelphia, Lakewood is home to Beth Medrash Govoha, the nation’s largest yeshiva. The school, founded in 1943 by the refugee Rabbi Aharon Kotler, has seen its student body swell to about 6,500, making it just smaller than Harvard College. The growing Orthodox movement encourages young men to forgo or postpone higher education for religious study, and the yeshiva has benefited from that. Other schools have followed suit, setting up shop in Lakewood. Most students are married, and families with five or 10 children are common.[...]

Lakewood is becoming a medium-size city, but in many ways, it’s a pre-World War II European village, right down to the Yiddish and, to an extent, the clothes. The spiritual ecology of the town revolves around the Torah, which obliges that all Jews, even those who are in need themselves, give to charity. And so Lakewood — full of broke students, most likely at the peak of their adherence to Jewish law — has given full expression to the generous tendency of small, diasporic communities, which can be amplified when they find a little piece of the world to call their own.

It’s not that Lakewood residents enjoy having their doorbells rung two, three or four times a day to hear a hard-luck story. But while other towns may criminalize beggars or tell them to move along, Lakewood has an obligation to fulfill — Jews are literally family, according to the Torah. So the town came up with a modern solution to an ancient problem: paperwork. Beggars are registered and licensed in Lakewood, as a means of preserving trust in this community that aspires to be a village but is outgrowing that label.[...]

Aaron Kotler, who hosted me one night this summer in Lakewood, is the president of Beth Medrash Govoha and the grandson of its founder. He dresses in banker’s pinstripes, is an avid cyclist and, seemingly alone among the middle-aged men of Lakewood, speaks without a trace of Yiddish singsong. He has been instrumental in bringing real estate investors to town to feed the growing need for housing. I asked Kotler what he thought of the culture of begging. “I think that people of quality want to live in a place that has a flavor of doing chesed,” or kindness, he said. He questioned whether the door-to-door begging was “the most effective way to raise money,” but ultimately he looked on it favorably. [...]

Sleep deprivation prevents removal of toxic waste from brain

Conservative rabbi is supported by congregation after announcing he is gay and divorcing his wife of 20 years

Washington Post   The leader of one of the Washington region’s most prominent synagogues on Monday came out as gay, telling his thousands of congregants in a brutally personal e-mail that a lifelong effort to deny his sexuality was over and that he and his wife of 20 years would be divorcing. [...]

In his letter to the congregation of 1,420 households, and then in an interview, Steinlauf described an in­cred­ibly close relationship with his wife, whom he met in rabbinical school. The pair, he told The Washington Post, spent the past three years “desperately looking at one another, thinking, how can we hold onto this marriage, because we love one another so much?” And concluding that a reality he’d walled off since he was a boy wasn’t going away. [...]

Washington Post  The full text of an e-mail from Rabbi Gil Steinlauf to the Adas Israel congregation:

Dear Friends,

I am writing to share with you that after twenty years of marriage, my wife Batya and I have decided to divorce. We have arrived at this heartbreaking decision because I have come to understand that I am gay. These are great upheavals in my personal life, as in Batya’s and that of our children. But it is plain to all of us that because of my position as Rabbi of Adas Israel, this private matter may also have a public aspect. We recognize that you may well need a period of reflection to absorb this sudden news. I am most grateful for the support Adas’ lay leaders and clergy have provided my family and me in the short time since I brought this matter to their attention. That support makes it possible for us to prepare for this new chapter in our lives, and for me in my ongoing service as Rabbi of Adas Israel Congregation. [...]

A text I’ve sat with for years is from the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 72b) and states, “Rabbah said, any scholar whose inside does not match his outside is no scholar. Abaye, and some say Ravah bar Ulah, said [one whose inside does not match his outside] is called an abomination.” Ultimately, the dissonance between my inside and my outside became undeniable, then unwise, and finally intolerable. With much pain and tears, together with my beloved wife, I have come to understand that I could walk my path with the greatest strength, with the greatest peace in my heart, with the greatest healing and wholeness, when I finally acknowledged that I am a gay man. Sadly, for us this means that Batya and I can no longer remain married, despite our fidelity throughout our marriage and our abiding friendship and love. As our divorce is not born of rancor, we pray that together with our children we will remain bound by a brit mishpachah, a covenant of family. [...]

Philosophers Debating G-d from NY Times blog

NY Times    by Gary Gutting

This is a concluding reflection on my series of 12 interviews with philosophers on religion. I’m grateful to all of them for the intelligence, clarity and honesty with which they responded to my questions, and to the readers, who posted hundred of comments on each interview. It seemed natural to keep to the interview format, even though I (G.G.) had no one to interview except myself (g.g.). Taking some of the recurring views and concerns expressed by the readers into account (there were too many to cite individually), I’ve tried to submit myself to what I hope was the polite but challenging voice questioning my interviewees.

G.G.: What was the point of talking to a bunch of philosophers about religious belief?

g.g.: The immediate impetus came from the poll I cited at the beginning of the first interview: 73 percent of philosophers said they accepted or were inclined to atheism, while 15 percent accepted or inclined to theism. Only around 6 percent identified themselves as agnostics. I would have expected a good majority to identify as agnostics.

G.G.: Why did you expect that?

g.g.: The question of whether God exists is a controversial one: there have been, and still are, lots of smart, informed and sincere people on both sides. So it would seem that philosophers, committed to rational reflection on the big questions, wouldn’t be atheists (or theists) without good reasons. But it is also obvious that the standard arguments for and against God’s existence — first-cause arguments, the problem of evil, etc. — have stimulated an enormous amount of debate, leading to many complications but to no consensus. (To get a sense of contemporary discussions on theism see the Stanford Encyclopedia’s articles on the cosmological argument and on the problem of evil.) Given this, it seemed to me that at least a good proportion of philosophers would be agnostics, undecided about God’s existence.

G.G.: So you wanted to talk to philosophers to see why they accepted or denied the existence of God. What did you find out?

g.g.: Well, the theists were pretty much as I expected. None claimed to have a decisive argument for God’s existence; that is, an argument they thought should convince any reasonable person. Alvin Plantinga claimed that there are lots of “pretty good” arguments, but allowed that they aren’t conclusive, even though they may be “as good as philosophical arguments get”— which I take to mean that they can make it rational to assert God’s existence, but don’t make it irrational to deny it.

Sajjad Rizvi suggests something similar when he says that theistic proofs “allow believers to fit their faith in God into a rationally coherent framework,” even though atheists may not find them rationally compelling. But the two other theists, John Caputo (a Catholic) and Howard Wettstein (a Jew) think that arguing for God’s existence misunderstands what religion is all about.

In my experience, all this is typical of philosophers who believe in God. As Daniel Garber noted, once upon a time believing philosophers thought they had arguments showing that atheism was irrational. Nowadays, the most they do is argue that it can be rational to be a theist.[...]

Rav Triebitz:Chol HaMoed Sukkos - What is Beis Din?

 Update - It will be  Monday night at the home of Dr. Shulem in Har Nof at 8:30.

Rav Triebitz will be speaking this chol haMoed Succos regarding the nature of beis din. What is the authority of beis din  in the absence of semicha and community authority? What is the relationship of beis din to secular courts and what should it be?

The Jewish community is faced with many challenges and problems which require a source of authority - is that the beis din and if not what are the alternatives?

Those who are interested in joining this discussion Jerusalem - please contact me at yadmoshe@gmail.com

Problem with the Theory of Evolution or "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" (Wizard of Oz)

My recent posting about Evolution elicited many heated comments. To set the record straight - I am not a champion of a particular biological explanation. I simply wanted to note that the **IDEA** of creation through evolution and change - is not inherently heresy. (There is a parallel issue - which also elicits heated comments - of whether Torah was given in its entirety at Sinai or whether the Five Books of Moshe were given together with the 13 Midos at Sinai - and the halacha was generated over time - but that is for a different post). What is heresy is to deny that G-d is the ultimate source of everything.

 On the other hand, Evolution is clearly more than simply a scientific theory. As Prof Abraham Luchins once pointed out to me - The Theory of Evolution elicits incredible emotional defensive and offensive responses from scientists when it is challenged on rational grounds. When I was studying biology at R.P.I., my professor introduced Evolution by saying first there was matter, this sloshed around for millions of years until organic molecules developed. Several million years later single cells were developed and then evenutally multi- celled creatures. I raised my hand and politely asked him how he got from step 1 to step 2 to step 3 to step 4. What was the mechanism? He looked at me in astonishment. "But if you don't believe this is what happened -  that means you are a fundamentalist!" Obviously the most obscene and degenerate state possible. The following Ted presentation illustrates my point.

The following is a recent book which attempts to explain how random selection produce complex traits. At least it acknowledges that there are fundamental problems with the Theory of Evolution. Again the fact that Evolution has problems doesn't mean that the world was literally created in 6 24hour days.

Scientific American Book Review: Arrival of the Fittest

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution transformed our understanding of life's diversity, but it could not fully answer a basic question that still vexes scientists: How does nature introduce complex traits? As evolutionary biologist Wagner puts it, natural selection “does not innovate, but merely selects what is already there.” The latest evolutionary science, however, is beginning to reveal how new traits arise in the first place. “What we have found so far,” Wagner writes, “already tells us that there is much more to evolution than meets the eye.” Drawing on his own and other researchers' work, he explains how large numbers of random mutations within species can combine to form the intricate and innovative traits seen in our planet's vast diversity.

Beis Din - Authority comes from being agents of Israeli beis din which had semicha - how does that work?

Tur (Choshen Mishpat 1): Today, when there is no ordination, all the judges are unqualified according to the Torah, as it is written, “before them,” [Exodus 21:1] meaning before ’elohim, as written in the pericope, which is to say ordained [judges], and we interpret that to mean “before them and not before laymen,” and we ourselves are laymen [in that sense]. Therefore there are no judges with authority from the Torah except if they act as the agents [of the ordained judges of Palestine].

Prof Radzyner has a very interesting article on the authority of the contemporary beis din [click link]

Abstract: A sugya just a few lines long in the Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 88b, had enormous influence on the development of Jewish law in the area of the authority to pass judgment given to rabbinical courts in our day. According to the simple, commonly accepted understanding of this sugya, the Tannaim ruled that the Torah forbade men who had not received ordination to act as judges, and as a result, the judges in Babylonia were permitted to adjudicate, of necessity, only as agents of the judges of Palestine we act as their agents). The article reexamines these positions. The first part suggests two new ways to understand the essence of the agency of which R. Joseph spoke in the sugya. The second part of the article reexamines the source of the prohibition, to the extent that it exists, against adjudication by laymen

Succoth , She'mimi A'tzeret 74 - Futuristic Happiness

Allan Katz - Parenting by the book    We come out of the Rosh Hashanah – Yom Kippur Te'shuvah = repentance and atonement experience, with a joy in our new perspectives about life and closeness with God. These feelings of joy and closeness to God can be given expression through the  'mitzvah' of the ' sukkah' and the other commandments of the holiday Sukkoth. We leave our permanent homes and dwell in God's shadow – the sukkah. We no longer need the protection of a permanent   dwelling.  Being closer to nature, without the barrier of physical structures, we feel God's closeness and protection in a temporary booth. Our new trust and closeness with God makes us feel less threatened by others and more accepting of other people. Sukkoth is called the festival of happiness and we are happy with life itself and our relationship with God.

The other pilgrim festivals - Pe'sach and Shavuot have good reasons for experiencing joy and simchah. Pe'sach comes when it is spring - when the barley begins to ripen. It is also the spring of the nation who gained their freedom from the Egyptian   slavery.  The fruits of this freedom are not harvested until Shavuot, when the Torah was given on Mount Sinai. Shavuot is called Chag Ha'katzir when the actual crops are harvested. Sukkot is called Chag Ha'asif – the festival of the ingathering of the crops at the close of the year. On a spiritual level we ' gather in'  the  lessons of life which God and his creation have taught us over the past year. We then spend a week being very close to God and happy with our relationship and his creation.

Although we received the Torah on Shavuot, we will not be able to totally appreciate the Torah and the world until the messianic period. Chag Ha'asif hints to this period where the ' ingathering of crops ' on a spiritual level refers to our new understanding of God and his creation.

Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch, a Rosh Yeshivah from Telse, explains that Sukkot is essentially a glimpse into the messianic period. When we hear of bad news, we bless God as the ultimate and true judge. When we hear good news we bless God as being the ultimate of Good and He does  good.  In the messianic period we will have the perspective to see God's goodness behind both good and bad tidings.

On sukkot , this new perspective allows us to find joy in leaving our homes  in order to be in a temporary 'sukkah' a  symbol of being in ' ga'lut'  = exile. In the sukkah we also  have the positive experience of being in the shadow of God , similar to the  clouds of glory that protected the Israelites in the desert.  Ga'lut = exile is now only a positive experience. 

The 4 plant species=' 4 minim'   are pointed and waved during prayers in different directions in order to invoke God's blessing of rain on the world.  They also symbolize the unity of the Jewish people. The ' etrog' = citron which has both taste and a pleasant aroma symbolizes the scholar who possesses scholarship and good deeds, the lulav= the palm tree branch has fruit – the date which has taste= scholarship but has no aroma= good deeds. It symbolizes the scholar who   lacks  good deeds, the myrtle=hadas has aroma but no taste, symbolizes a person who has good deeds but is deficient  in Torah learning. The willow lacks both taste and aroma. On sukkot we are happy with everyone, and bless God who is good and does good even to those people who don't have taste or aroma.

The sacrifices are often accompanied by song = shi'ra and the wine libations – nisuch ha'ya'yin. The principle is  ' ein shi'ra e'la ul  ha'ya'yin. There is ' song' only with wine, because only wine has the ability to elicit joy and song. On sukkot we don't have any special reasons to be happy except life itself. And it is for this reason we are happy even with ' plain water '. We celebrate the gift of water with the ' simchat beit ha'sho'evah ' and accompanying the daily sacrifice with water libations in the hope and prayer for the blessing of rain.

During the year we suffer from the nations of the world who pursue Israel like 70 wolves. But on Sukkot, we wear different lenses and see only the good in the nations, and thus we bring 70 sacrifices for well-being of the seventy nations.

We need to leave our permanent dwellings for the temporary structures of Succoth in order to enjoy the heavenly, spiritual and 'futuristic ' happiness of the messianic period. But our spiritual demands and aspirations are to leave the sukkah and take with us its eternal messages and combine ' heaven and earth '. On she'mini a'tzeret, the 8^th day of our celebration, we leave our Succoth and return to our homes. For 7 days we were God's guests in His sukkah. Now, we invite God as a permanent guest back into our homes and try to live 'eternal lives ' and enjoy ' a futuristic happiness ' where we can see God's positive hand in all the creation. May we see only good in our kids and family and see problems as opportunities for growth and becoming closer to God.

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz's asks parents to speak to their kids about child safety

 

     

Reb Daniel

Hope all is well. Could you please post this with a note asking parents to speak to their kids about child safety before/over Yom Tov?

It is SUCH a dangerous time for kids to be abused.

You cannot imagine.

http://www.rabbihorowitz.com/PYes/ArticleDetails.cfm?Book_ID=1869&ThisGroup_ID=238&Type=Article&SID=2

Thanks and Best wishes for a piska tova and a gutten Yom Tov. 

Yankie

Visit www.bbchumash.com to learn more about our popular chumash workbooks designed to give your children the Hebrew language skills to succeed in school. 

Teach your kids how to protect themselves from predators. Watch our 3 short videos to learn how. 

#1  http://youtu.be/O3i9Gdlbw1g  

#2. http://youtu.be/zS7WBs_osNE

#3  http://youtu.be/lp0vjJolygQ

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz

Dean, Yeshiva Darchei Noam

Director, Center for Jewish Family Life/Project YES

www.kosherjewishparenting.com
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2nd Letter

Yesterday evening after dark, a pre-bar-mitzvah-age boy came to our front door collecting for a school-based charity drive. No reflector. No adult accompanying him. He does not live on my block and subsequently no one - including his parents - really knew exactly where he was or whose door he was knocking on. And I stopped counting after ten such children came knocking on our door since Rosh Hashana.  

Really???

L'ma'an Hashem; haven't we learned anything from all the tragedies and ruined lives of kids who have been abused? At least in previous years, many or most of us thought our community was somehow immune from problems of this nature. What is the excuse now?

My dear friends, this lack of supervision is simply unconscionable knowing what we now know about the scope and magnitude of child abuse nowadays.

In fact, over the years, we have noticed a significant spike in abuse-related calls to Project YES around the joyous Pesach and Succos Yomim Tovim.

 

Those of us who work in the arena of child safety attribute the greater number of abuse cases during these times of year to:

1) The less structured environment at home, in Shul and at play.

2) The fact that children are exposed to a far greater number of pre-teens, teenagers and adults during Yom Tov than they are during the average school week.  

We are all busy before Yom Tov, but we at Project YES strongly encourage you to speak to your children about child safety before Succos, and give them a refresher talk if you already have.  

We plead with you to take this matter seriously and do everything in your power to keep your kids safe. There are two steps you ought to take in order to accomplish this:  

1) Have safety talks with your children - using effective, research-based techniques that will educate and empower your children without frightening them.  

2) See to it that they are properly supervised over Yom Tov.

There are four basic messages that children need to internalize in order for any abuse prevention program to be truly effective:

1. Your body belongs to you

2. No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable

3. No secrets from parents

4. Good touching/bad touching

Please educate yourself before speaking to your children so that your discussions generate light and not heat. Additionally, it is important for you to know - and to share with your children - that although "stranger danger" is a genuine concern, the vast majority of molesters are family members or people well-known to the children.  

As Tenafly Police Chief Michael Bruno brilliantly said during a magnificent talk he gave on child safety, "We need to train our children to consider the "it"

(the inappropriate action being done to them) not the "whom" (regardless of the relationship or stature of the individual who is doing it).  

There are free resources available in the Karasick Child Safety Initiative section of our website www.kosherjewishparenting.com, and we encourage (read: plead with) you to take advantage of them, including a comprehensive list of Links to Safety Resources for Parents  

and our three free Child Safety videos; #1 , #2, #3.

    

  

Thanks for reading these lines, and kindly take a minute to forward this to others - for the only way our children and grandchildren will be safe, is when each and every one of us is well educated about child safety.

 

Best wishes for a Chag Samayach and much Nachas from your family.  

Yakov Horowitz

D.A. Kenneth Thompson failed to keep his promise to crack down on Orthodox child abusers

Daily Beast   Brooklyn DA Kenneth Thompson ran on the promise that he’d clean up the office’s problems with prosecuting ultra-Orthodox sex offenders who preyed on children—but so far he appears just as lax as his predecessor.

 

After initially facing up to 32 years in prison for eight counts of child sexual abuse, Baruch Lebovits walked out of Riker's Island last week a free man. He had served just under 16 months of total prison time.

That Lebovits, a cantor from the ultra-Orthodox Borough Park section of Brooklyn, was even convicted is seen as a victory considering the difficulty of prosecuting abuse in that community. However, his release is disappointing, if not surprising, for those who hoped Brooklyn district attorney Kenneth Thompson would be the man to end decades of ultra-Orthodox sex abuse cover-ups.

Thompson beat out Charles Hynes for Brooklyn DA, ending a reign that last more than 23 years. Towards the end of his time as DA, Hynes was scrutinized for his perceived unwillingness to prosecute crimes against the ultra-Orthodox, especially in regards to sexual abuse. At best, his administration appeared exceptionally lax, and at worst, it willfully obstructed justice. He was famously reluctant to release the names of convicted sex abusers in the Orthodox community. His office let Rabbi Yehuda Kolko get away without jail time or registering as a sex offender. Instead, Kolko received a plea deal that allowed him to plea guilty to child endangerment. The DA claimed the alleged victims—first graders in Kolko’s class—were unwilling to testify, but chief of the Kings County sex crimes division, Rhonnie Jaus, publicly said that their parents had been willing to put the kids on the stand. It was one of many cases that raised questions about Hynes' willingness to prosecute ultra-Orthodox sex abuse.

Many critics of abuse and corruption in the ultra-Orthodox community hoped and believed Thompson would bring justice to Brooklyn. For his part, Thompson openly criticized Hynes’ record on crimes committed by the ultra-Orthodox. “Every community in Brooklyn has to be treated the same,” he said during a 2013 interview. “When I become Brooklyn DA, I’ll make sure there’s equal justice for everyone, under the law.” [...]

Thompson may be no worse than Hynes, but his first year has been frustrating for advocates who once had high hopes for his tenure. “I don't think Thompson is an inherently bad guy,” says Rosenberg. “But he's an extreme disappointment.”