Sunday, March 15, 2015

Jury considering verdict in Grynhaus sex abuse case

JC.Com    The jury in the trial of a Jewish teacher accused of sexual assaults on two schoolgirls have retired to consider their verdict.

Father-of-10 Todros Grynhaus, 50, is alleged to have molested the girls when they were between the ages of 13 and 15 then relied on the Orthodox Jewish community’s "resentment" of reporting matters to the police to keep the allegations secret.

The son of a rabbi, Mr Grynhaus breached his bail conditions and flew to Israel when the allegations first surfaced – only returning when he was re-arrested and deported after almost two years, Manchester Crown Court has heard. [...]

The judge told the jury that Mr Grynhaus had said the allegations were made against him out of "revenge" and to obtain money from him.

Mr Grynhaus had tried to explain to the jury why he fled to Israel. Summing up his evidence, Mr Justice Turner added: “He wanted to avoid shame and disgrace being brought on his family.

Satanic child abuse is believed by anti-Semites to be a world wide Jewish plot

One of the disturbing issues - in the wild conjecture over Satanic abuse rings which requires believing incredible claims and the  paranoia required to digest all of this - is the fact that two can play the same game. If you take Rabbi Berkowitz words about the widespread Satanic (or Christian missionary plot) in Jerusalem - and do some brief searching with Google or Youtube for similar reports - you find a very disturbing thing. It is not hard to find such reports - but there is a twist.

The exact same "facts" and "logic" are used to prove that there is a Jewish pedophile plot involving horrible abuse of children,  mind control, government figures blocking investigation, destroying the present world order and wanting to take over the world. If that sounds ridiculous - then why not when Rav Berkowitz says it is a Satanic plot or a Christian plot - with possible police involvement to coverup the facts? And if you acknowledge that it is in truth just as reasonable that it is a Jewish or Satanic plot as a Christian plot or even a Muslem plot or Russian plot or  [fill in the blank] - then you need to ask - on what basis do you decide? If standing at the edge of an incredible deep chasm - makes you dizzy when you realize that you are falling into a world of paranoid psychosis  - you need to consider the obvious alternative.

The alternative is to climb down from the tree - and to step back from the precipice - before it is too late .
==================================
Let me give a few examples of allegations that Jews are involved in major Satanic abuse rings. (The term "illumanti" found in many of these sites is referring to Jews or  people who pretend to be Jews Smololko - who are concerned with dominating the world This is Zionism)

Vicki Pollin- founder of the Awareness Center that focuses on Jewish sexual abuse

Proof that Jews are involved in rituatistic torture of babies comes from Vicki Polins confession on the Oprah show.. See Henry Makow Blog discussing what this says about Jews .  



Nachlaot
The Realistic Report uses Tablet Magazine's   debunking of the allegations of Satanic child abuse ring at Nachlaot to prove that Jew are in fact involved in Satanic abuse and the Jewish publications help cover it up.

Former FBI agent Gunderson reveals Illuminati (Jews), Satanism, pedophile rings. 

If you want to become paranoid - please listen to this recording by the former head of the L.A. FBI office describing a conspiracy of coverup of widespread child abuse, satanism, corruption of the government including the FBI in dealing with these cases - and he includes the White House. For good measure he was allegedly killed by arsenic poisoning because he exposed the "truth".



Jews killed investigators who expose their crimes
The Blog the Common Sense Show   says that it is a Zionist plot to killing pedophile investigators

Jews are prominent pedophiles
The blog Jewish Paedophili   argues that Jimmy Savile was a Jew and Jews are prominent pedophiles
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PLEASE MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE!

Epstein Torture Trial: Testimony of David Wax (Another perspective by an Epstein sympathizer)

 Guest Post by Epstein sympathizer  - who is attending the trial - and has agreed to make comments for this blog. It cogently presents information not contained in the newspaper account.

================================================
Dear Rabbi Eidensohn,

How fortuitous, as my second day in court was that same Wednesday of which you write!
Let me preface what I will say here with this:
You know that I hope, and now believe, that R. Epstein is found innocent of the charges that were brought. I hope that we can agree to disagree that in some RARE and non-typical cases the use of force could be expected... but here, below, my comments are strictly about the case that is in court.

And we both know that the smart people involved 'know' that he will end up doing time. So if you can read what I write with that in mind, I hope that you will understand my take.
Here is the quote from your article that I would like to comment on:

Wax, the founder of a charitable organization that funneled millions of dollars to Israel, directly linked Epstein and two of the three other men on trial with him to the 2010 attack on Yisrael Bryskman, an Israeli national who was living in Brooklyn to avoid giving his wife a divorce according to Orthodox Jewish custom.
What actually happened Wednesday was the prosecutor's attempt at doing such, but he did no such thing.
And let me again segue, and I will agree that Wax was probably using Epstein as a guide as to how to DO this thing... (grabbing the guy, doing a 'get'),

And even he testified that R. Epstein refused to get personally involved once he understood that Wax was planning on doing this whole thing in his own bedroom.
(another important point is that at some point last week the FBI admitted to the knowledge of many different Batei Dinim who would resort to violence in cases of intractable husbands...) Like R. Epstein, at worst, was one of many.

But, back to the facts that were brought out on Wednesday:
First, records of phone calls. Wax testified that he called Ari close to Shabbos in order to have him come over to collect $15,000. (of the $50K that he claims that R. Epstein wanted for his guidance...) But the phone records that were put up showed that Ari never answered those calls. There was no communication between the two on that afternoon! (when that became clear, the prosecution took the phone records down very quickly, and then the judge called for a break, it was loony!)
 
And again, last week sometime, during the testimony of Bryskman he already testified that the only person who he remembers kicking and punching him was Wax, because Wax kept taking off the blindfold to tease and taunt him. (Wax agrees that he did this, after claiming in his plea agreement that he did not do this....because Bryskman testified to these facts!)

And Rabbi Eidensohn, there are so many examples that even the PROSECUTION highlighted of clear lies that Wax told in his plea agreement, and then again, in his agreement to 'substantially aid' the prosecution of other individuals (the crux of the Epstein sting...), and even in his testimony on DIRECT EXAMINATION! There was a point where I had to ask Epstein family members what was going on, because Wax was clearly contradicting the line of questioning of the PROSECUTOR, and I couldn't figure out what was going on.... like who is on what side, lol?
And the other really shocking piece of evidence that the FBI brought were the bank records of Wax during the time of his negotiation with the Agunah's family (as I remember 'Schachter', could be wrong.) And R. Eidensohn, these were the bank records that the FBI admitted as evidence. There were donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the 'Taryag Foundation' (which seems to have been R. Wax's family's personal piggy bank.... even the prosecution admitted as such when the jury was not present,) that were then taken out at the bank teller, deposited into the Wax family account, and then sent as a wire transfer to a money changer in B'nei Brak.
ON THE STAND Wax claimed that he had no idea of the provenance of $325,000.00, who took it out, that it was transferred to Israel, that his WIFE TRAVELED with him. It was like pulling teeth:
'No, he traveled alone.'
Oh, here are your flight records for you and your wife.
'Oh perhaps she was with me.'
On and on and on. He was so evasive, unbelievable evasive, there was no way to understand whose side he was on!
OK, bottom line, it seems clear to me (not a professional in these matters), that the jury and the judge are becoming aware of the fact that this Wax guy is not only a sadistic pervert (how he tortured Bryskman, and then, taking him in a taxi, tried to have him take out cash to pay for the bloodied carpet that HE had done by kicking him while sadistically torturing him with words, while wearing a white cowboy hat....and then threatening to bury him alive if HIS father didn't pay ransom... all admitted to on Wednesday...), but besides that, is constantly contradicting himself.... and just if all this insanity is not already making your head spin.... to make things really clear:
The FBI was sold a 'bill of goods' by this Wax fellow, thought that they were onto some insider secret info, and launched this million dollar 'sting' all orchestrated by a man who can NOT keep his story straight, can't follow a line of logic, and was laundering millions of dollars through his institute, and that the FBI, even with the bank records as THEIR evidence, seem to never have really examined.
Insane.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Epstein Torture Trial: David Wax(2nd day) admits threatening to kill to Bryskman for $100k

Asbury Park Press     Wax testified for a second day in the trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein, his son and two other rabbis, who are accused of kidnapping men so they would grant their wives “gets” — divorces that would be recognized by Orthodox courts.

Wax – who is serving as the government’s primary witness – gave a gory detailing of what he said he and Epstein conspired to do in order to convince the husbands to comply, all while charging the wives tens of thousands of dollars for the service.

As Bryskman lay on the carpet, Wax said he dropped a large bag next to him and threatened to stuff him inside and bury him alive in the Poconos, unless he gave up his bank account information. [...]

“You decided to put on this hat,” Mazrek said to Wax, waving in his hand a white cowboy hat with a dark lace. Wax told investigators that he donned the hat as he beat Bryskman. [...]

When the taxi driver questioned what had happened to the bruised and bloody Bryskman, Wax made a drinking motion with his hand and said that Bryskman had tried to hit on his wife, so he’d had to “knock him the ---- out,” according to previous testimony that Mazrek read in court.

As they rode through the streets of Lakewood, Bryskman had already agreed to grant the get, Wax said. But rather than let him go, Wax tried to get $100,000 out of him, he testified.

Before dropping off Bryskman at a home in Brooklyn, the two men stopped at a bagel shop, Wax said.

“We wanted to buy him breakfast,” Wax said. “We offered him a muffin.”

Thursday, March 12, 2015

When will the Rabbis learn that exiling a pedophile to another neighborhood doesn't help?

Kikar HaShabbat

פרשיה איומה חדשה שהולכת ומתפרשת לעינינו לאחרונה מעידה שוב, בפעם המי יודע כמה, את תוצאותיה האיומות של ההשתקה וההסתרה. בקריית ספר התרבו תלונות על אדם מסויים, תושב העיר, אשר תקף ילדות קטנות, שוב ושוב. במקום לערב את המשטרה, החליטו הרבנים "להגלות" את אותו אדם לבני ברק. הוא הוחתם על חוזה שבו התחייב לקחת כדורים שימנעו ממנו לתקוף ילדים, ולא לחזור לקריית ספר


אף אחד לא הודיע לתושבי השכונה בבני ברק על הסכנה האיומה שעומדת לפתחם. וכמובן, כמו בכרוניקה ידועה מראש, אותו תוקף ידוע המשיך בתקיפות גם בעיר בני ברק, עד שלאחרונה, אחרי מקרים רבים של תקיפות, סוף סוף התלונן אחד מהאבות של הילדות המותקפות למשטרה, והתוקף נעצר
.
כל הורה שקורא את הדברים הללו מתחלחל ומזדעזע. זהו אחד הפחדים האיומים ביותר. הילדים הקטנים והטהורים שלנו. איך נוכל לשמור עליהם שלא יפגעו בהם?

ובכל זאת, למרות הזעזוע, ולמרות התיעוב והפחד, אנחנו עדיין לא מסגירים את התוקפים הללו למשטרה. שוב ושוב אנחנו כקהילה נופלים בפח הזה של - "הוא ישתנה" ו"מה יהיה עם המשפחה שלו?", "איך אפשר לשתף פעולה עם המשטרה" ו"זה מוסר".
 [...]
אל תגידו "הוא ישתנה", אל תאמינו להבטחות, אל תאמינו לסיפורי "נפלתי, וזה לא יקרה שוב". מדובר באנשים בעלי הפרעה נפשית ובעיות קשות מאד של שליטה עצמית בנושא. האם הייתם מאמינים לאלכוהוליסט שמבטיח וחותם לכם שהוא "לא ישתה אלכוהול יותר"?

לכו למשטרה. לכו להתלונן. כל תוקף שנעצר הוא פחות ילדים שנתקפים. זוהי משוואה פשוטה.

הפיצו את הדברים הללו לכל מכריכם. שידע כל אדם שמכיר תוקף כזה ומתלבט אם ללכת למשטרה, התקיפה הבאה תהיה על המצפון שלך. אל תגיד "ידינו לא שפכו את הדם הזה".


Epstein Torture Trial - David Wax links Epstein to the torture of Bryskman to give a Get

NJ.Com    In the ongoing federal conspiracy trial of Rabbi Mendel Epstein, David Wax detailed the roles of three of the four men accused of resorting to violence in exchange for large sums of cash to extract divorces from unwilling husbands.

Wax, the founder of a charitable organization that funneled millions of dollars to Israel, directly linked Epstein and two of the three other men on trial with him to the 2010 attack on Yisrael Bryskman, an Israeli national who was living in Brooklyn to avoid giving his wife a divorce according to Orthodox Jewish custom.

On the witness stand for the entire day on Wednesday, Wax said he and Epstein had phone discussions about forcing Bryskman to agree to the divorce -known as a get - at Wax's Lakewood home.

He said Epstein wanted $50,000 from the family of Bryskman's wife "to pay the people who were going to come." [...]

Bryskman testified on Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton that his attackers blindfolded him, cuffed his hands behind his back and bound his legs before repeatedly beating and kicking him. The attack occurred late Oct. 16, 2010, and continued into the early morning hours of the following day.

Bryskman couldn't identify anyone other than Wax as his attackers, but Wax on Wednesday said Ari Epstein and his unknown friend threw the first punches before he joined in.

At one point, Wax donned a white cowboy hat and pulled Bryskman's head up by his hair to ask him how he liked the hat, Wax admitted.

He said Goldstein was present to write the official get document before everyone left.

Wax also testified that after the attack was over, he got into a cab with Bryskman and took him to an automated teller machine to withdraw the money. The cash - which Bryskman eventually did not retrieve - was to pay for the rug in Wax's bedroom that Bryskman had bloodied during the attack, Wax said.

Wax said he attempted to have Bryskman's father pay $100,000 in ransom but insisted the money was intended as child support for Bryskman's wife.

In the four weeks that federal prosecutors have been calling witnesses, Wax, who has admitted to the kidnaping and brutal beating of one of those husbands, has provided the most potentially damaging testimony so far. [...]


The Bedatz strongly protest against the insults made against Rav Sternbuch and others

רבותינו הבד"צ בראשות מרן הגאב"ד שליט"א יוצאים במחאה נמרצת על כבוד התורה, כאשר בזמן האחרון התרבו המקרים בהם נערים ידועים מאתרא קדישא שמו להם למטרה לבזות את רבינו מרן שר התורה הגר"מ שטרנבוך שליט"א ראב"ד ירושלים וגדולי התורה מנהיגי העדה, ובעזות פנים וחוצפה נוראה העיזו לבזות בחוצפה נוראה את רבינו מרן שר התורה הגר"מ שטרנבוך שליט"א, וכמו כן ההינו אותם נערים מאתרא קדישא לשלוח יד ולפגוע בגדולי התורה ומאורי החסידות, ופגיעתם רעה לתקוף את הגאון הגדול רבי נתן הכהן קופשיץ שליט"א גאב"ד בית שמש וחבר הבד"ץ, ואת מנהיגי קהילות הקודש כ"ק מרן אדמו"ר מתולדות אהרן שליט"א כ"ק מרן אדמו"ר מדושינסקיא שליט"א וכ"ק מרן אדמו"ר מרחמסטריווקא שליט"א.
כעת יוצאים רבותינו הבד"ץ בראשות כ"ק מרן הגאב"ד שליט"א במחאה גדולה על כבוד התורה, וכה הם כותבים בדברים חוצבים: "כאשר בזמן האחרון מתרבים המקרים שיחידים ידועים מבזים את כבוד התורה, וביותר את כבסוד הגאון האדיר שר התורה רבי משה שטרנבוך שליט"א הראב"ד דפעה"ק, וכן מבזים שאר ת"ח שליט"א, אנו מוחים על כך בכל חומר".
בכך מקוים כולם שתוסר החרפה הנוראה ממחנינו והשלום יחזור לשכון בקרבינו, אמן.



Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Now the pendulum has swung the other way: It is now the female accuser who is automatically believed.

Slate  The Hunting Ground opens like a horror movie: We meet a suite of innocents who have no idea they’re heading off to hell. This documentary about sexual assault on college campuses begins with YouTube videos of high school girls reacting with tearful joy to their acceptance letters. Lambs to the slaughter, we’re supposed to think. The film that follows portrays college as so dangerous for young women that the viewer is left with the sense that these students would have been better off posting college rejection videos and staying home.

The Hunting Ground arrives at an interesting moment in the national conversation on campus sexual assault. Press coverage and statements from government and university officials portray a problem of vast scope. The Obama administration has taken action: Schools are now under pressure from the federal government to show they take sexual assault charges seriously and mete out appropriate punishment. At the same time, a number of critics (and I’m one of them) suggest that a moral panic is clouding our ability to rationally assess the problem. A range of voices—among them journalists and law professors—has raised concerns that the systems being put in place at schools to adjudicate these cases are grossly unfair to the accused. What a perfect time for a film that addresses all this, and illuminates a way forward.

Unfortunately, The Hunting Ground is not that movie. It is a polemic that—as its title suggests—portrays young women as prey, frequently assaulted and frequently ignored by their universities and law enforcement when they try to bring charges. The movie, from director Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering, features numerous interviews with women who describe horrific experiences, and their testimony has raw, emotional power. But good policy about the lives of young people—female and male—needs to be based on prudent assessment. The film traffics in alarmist statistics and terrifying assertions, but fails to acknowledge both the recent changes in the way the government and universities approach sexual assault charges and the critiques that those changes go too far. By refusing to engage the current conversation about this issue, the film does its subjects—and us all—a disservice.

The Hunting Ground relentlessly makes the point, for example, that about 20 percent of female college students will be sexually assaulted by classmates. Diane Rosenfeld of Harvard Law School analogizes that if the parents of male students were told their sons had a “1 in 4 or 5 chance” of being a victim of a drive-by shooting at college, Mom and Dad would think twice about sending them. In a Slate piece in December on campus sexual assault, I examined some of the studies underlying this claim, which has long been cited by advocates on this issue. It turns out many of the studies rest on narrow samples or wildly extrapolated numbers. (Even New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a co-sponsor of proposed legislation on campus sexual assault who appears briefly in the film, quietly took the “1 in 5” statistic off her website in December.) Callie Marie Rennison, co-director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Research Initiative at the University of Colorado Denver, writing in the New York Times, deplored the idea that students and parents are being bombarded with assertions of “an epidemic where one does not exist.”

Not only is sexual assault an expected part of the college experience, the filmmakers assert, once it happens victims generally discover that no officials at their schools will take action or even care. These callous, indifferent administrators coddle perpetrators and systematically cover up heinous crimes in an effort to maintain their school’s good—if false—reputation. Occidental College assistant professor of sociology and activist Danielle Dirks says, “Schools are actively and aggressively not wanting to tell the truth about what is going on on their campuses. Because the first campuses to do so will be known as the rape campuses.” (In my article I mention Dirks’ involvement in getting a male freshman expelled from Occidental after he hooked up with a female freshman while both were drunk.)

The Hunting Ground asserts that even when a victim pushes past the roadblocks and makes a formal report to administrators, it will do no good. Lawyer and activist Colby Bruno says, “The message is clear: It’s don’t proceed through these disciplinary hearings. No matter what you do, you’re not going to win.” The film follows this quote with a graphic showing a paltry number of expulsions of male students at six top schools. But let’s examine this assertion that colleges would rather leave perpetrators unpunished than acknowledge there are any. The higher education insurance group, United Educators, just released a study of 305 sexual assault claims they received from 104 member schools for the three years ending in 2013. I spoke to the organization’s director of risk research, Alyssa Keehan, who said, “The most common narrative you hear is that institutions don’t care about sexual assault. Our data suggests otherwise.” UE’s findings show that when a formal complaint is brought against a student, in 45 percent of the cases he is found responsible. When that happens, more than 80 percent of the time he is given the most severe penalty available—either expulsion or suspension. The study found in 25 percent of the cases the accused is found not responsible. In 23 percent of the cases the school did not adjudicate, not because of a cover-up, but because in the majority of these instances the accuser either asked the school not to investigate, became uncooperative, or could not identify the accused. In the remainder of cases, the accused withdrew from school. [...]

The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse Hysteria: Why rational people believe ridiculous claims

Slate   Among the atrocities that Frances and Dan Keller were supposed to have committed while running a day care center out of their Texas home: drowning and dismembering babies in front of the children; killing dogs and cats in front of the children; transporting the children to Mexico to be sexually abused by soldiers in the Mexican army; dressing as pumpkins and shooting children in the arms and legs; putting the children into a pool with sharks that ate babies; putting blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; cutting the arm or a finger off a gorilla at a local park; and exhuming bodies at a cemetery, forcing children to carry the bones.

It was frankly unbelievable—except that people, most importantly, a Texas jury, did believe the Kellers had committed at least some of these acts. In 1992, the Kellers were convicted of aggravated sexual assault on a child and each sentenced to 48 years in prison. The investigation into their supposed crimes took slightly more than a year, the trial only six days.

And now, even the Travis County district attorney agrees that the trial was unfair.

After multiple appeal efforts and 21 years in prison, the Kellers are finally free. Fran Keller, 63, was released from prison on Nov. 26 on a personal bond, just in time for Thanksgiving. Her daughter was waiting for her with a bag full of the first clothes that weren’t prison-issued that Keller had seen in years. Dan, who turned 72 in prison and now walks with a cane, was released on Dec. 5; this time, Fran was there to greet him. (The Kellers divorced while in prison yet remain close, as close as two people locked up in separate prisons for crimes they say they didn’t commit can be.) [...]

Their release may also finally mark the end to one of the strangest, widest-reaching, and most damaging moral panics in America’s history: the satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s and 1990s.

“That was literally a witch hunt,” said Keith Hampton, pro-bono lawyer for the Kellers. “We say ‘witch hunt’ in this figurative way, but that was a modern-day literal witch hunt. They really were after people who they thought were worshipping at the feet of the Dark Lord.”

So what the hell happened?

The Keller case is typical of the satanic ritual abuse panic and the dozens of cases that popped up in breathless media reports. The trouble started when Christy Chaviers, a 3-year-old girl who was an infrequent visitor to the day care during the summer of 1991, told her mother that Dan had spanked her. With coaxing from her mother and her therapist, Donna David-Campbell, whom Christy had been seeing to deal with acting-out issues, an incident of spanking turned into something much worse—Dan Keller, the little girl said, had defecated on her head and raped her with a pen. From there, the stories Christy told David-Campbell became wilder: The Kellers “had everyone take off their clothes and had a parrot that pecked them in the pee-pee,” they made her smoke a cigarette, they “came to her house with a chainsaw and cut her dog Buffy in the vagina until it bled.” David-Campbell concluded not that Christy was an imaginative child having trouble with her parents’ divorce, but that she was the victim of ritual abuse.

The case was turned over to the police. Parents of children who’d attended the preschool, however, continued to talk to one another and their children. In October, another child, also a therapy client of David-Campbell, told his parents that he’d been abused; a third child, whose mother was in contact with the parents of the other two, came forward in February 1992. By the time of the trial in November 1992, the stories included the killing of a baby tiger in a graveyard, a person being shot by people in sheriff’s uniforms and then dismembered with a chainsaw, videotaped sex with adults and other children, and the Kellers wearing white robes and lighting candles to assault them. No other children, including those children who were supposedly the targets of abuse, or their parents confirmed the accounts. When put on the witness stand, Christy, by then 5, was at first unwilling to say anything had happened at all, then did, then recanted. Friends and acquaintances of the Kellers, including their landlord, who frequently dropped by unannounced, testified that they’d never seen anything out of the ordinary at the Kellers’ day care.

Why did psychotherapists and investigators conclude that these fantastic allegations were true? Because at the time, pretty much everyone else in America did.

The panic began in earnest with the McMartin Preschool trial, an investigation that began 30 years ago. The owners of a California preschool and several teachers were accused of molesting a 2½-year-old boy; before it was over, hundreds of children, usually after lengthy sessions with coercive therapists, came forward to say that they, too, had been taken to a church to watch the beheading of a baby, then forced to drink its blood or flown by plane to random cities for sexual abuse, or countless other bizarre stories.

While that investigation and trial unfolded, other cases surfaced. Media poured attention on the claims, which made great fodder for a newly created 24-hour news cycle (CNN Headline News launched in 1982). As televangelists prayed for deliverance from Satan’s scourge, talk show “experts” claimed that every imaginable form of abuse was happening on a massive scale in America and that networks of Satanists had infiltrated schools, the police, and local government. Geraldo Rivera claimed in a televised 1987 special report that more than a million Satanists were plying their evil trade in America right at the very moment. (He has since apologized.) In 1989, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Michelle Smith and another woman who claimed to have recovered memories of being abused by a satanic cult; Sally Jesse Raphael, not to be outdone, ran two shows on the subject. In 1990, Don’t Make Me Go Back, Mommy: A Child’s Book About Satanic Ritual Abuse, a children’s picture book featuring colored-pencil drawings of children being abused in satanic rituals, appeared in libraries and therapists’ offices. In 1992, folk singer Joan Baez released “Play Me Backwards,” a song in the voice of a victim of satanic ritual abuse who was forced to witness the sacrifice of a baby and is now recollecting her repressed memories.

“It sounds laughable,” says Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter who co-wrote Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt about the panic and is now a director for the National Center for Reason and Justice, which took up the Kellers’ cause. But there is certainly historical precedent, going back even further than the Salem witch trials: Ancient Romans, for example, claimed that Christians ate babies; Christians later claimed that Jews used Christian babies’ blood in religious rituals.

“Children symbolize the good things about culture, the innocence and purity, the future of the culture,” says Nathan. When a culture feels under threat in some way, fear and anxiety focus on the safety of children. America was experiencing upheavals in gender roles, child-rearing practices, and social expectations, and more and more people were embracing fundamentalist religion and belief in the devil. The fear of satanic ritual abuse was perpetuated by both ends of the political spectrum. “In the right wing, you had that kind of preoccupation with Satan, and on the left, you had a lot of concern with the well-being of children, and women going back to work, and I think it was a perfect storm of fear and anxiety,” says Nathan. Most if not all of those involved believed they were acting in the best interests of the children—which meant that any healthy skepticism was interpreted as anti-child.

But extensive investigations revealed little to no truth to the satanic ritual abuse panic. The McMartin Preschool trial ended in 1990 with no convictions, even after the government threw more than $15 million at prosecuting it. In 1992, FBI agent Kenneth Lanning, in his report on satanic ritual abuse, declared that satanic ritual abuse wasn’t credible: “Hundreds of communities all over America are run by mayors, police departments, and community leaders who are practicing Satanists and who regularly murder and eat people? Not likely.” Two years later, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, under the federal Department of Health and Human Services, released a report claiming that there was no evidence of truth in satanic ritual abuse claims. Even so, people still believed: A Redbook magazine survey conducted in 1994 found that fully 70 percent of Americans believed that satanic ritual abuse was real.

As with previous panics, the dangers may have been imaginary, but the consequences were not. The real toll of the satanic ritual abuse panic was on the children dragged into it and accused people like the Kellers, who numbered in the hundreds by the end of the decade. (In 1993, a survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law found that 26 percent of prosecutors reported handling at least one case with elements of alleged ritual abuse.) [...]

Monday, March 9, 2015

Shul President Livshin and Rabbis Simmonds and Cohen write letter of support for Beth and her children




Epstein Torture Trial Does this court document mean that the U.S. Attorney is offering Rabbi Aryeh Ralbag immunity for testimony?


According to this document filed by the US Attorney, it appears that the US Attorney is going to give Rabbi Ralbag immunity in order to testify.  Otherwise, Rabbi Ralbag would, according to the document, invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Rav Dovid Eidensohn's rebuttal of Rav Breitowitz claim that forcing a get is a mitzva


This is the reponse of by brother Rav Dovid Eidensohn to the claims made by Rav Yitzchok Breitowitz regarding the endorsement of violence in forcing a husband to give a get. It is part of a larger 17 page response

Rabbi Breitowitz arguments as well as my response are found in previous posts

Epstein-defense-of-torture/kidnapping

Statement of Rabbi Breitowitz regarding use of force


Sunday, March 8, 2015

U.C.L.A. Debate Over Jewish Student: The shocking rise of anti-Jewish sentiment on college campuses

NY Times LOS ANGELES — It seemed like routine business for the student council at the University of California, Los Angeles: confirming the nomination of Rachel Beyda, a second-year economics major who wants to be a lawyer someday, to the council’s Judicial Board.

Until it came time for questions.

“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, began, looking at Ms. Beyda at the other end of the room, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
For the next 40 minutes, after Ms. Beyda was dispatched from the room, the council tangled in a debate about whether her faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations, including her sorority and Hillel, a popular student group, meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions that come before the board, which is the campus equivalent of the Supreme Court.

The discussion, recorded in written minutes and captured on video, seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes — particularly about divided loyalties — that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries, students and Jewish leaders said.

The council, in a meeting that took place on Feb. 10, voted first to reject Ms. Beyda’s nomination, with four members against her. Then, at the prodding of a faculty adviser there who pointed out that belonging to Jewish organizations was not a conflict of interest, the students revisited the question and unanimously put her on the board. [...]

Reports of anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish sentiment have been on the rise across the country in recent years, especially directed at younger Jews, researchers said. Barry A. Kosmin, a Trinity College researcher and a co-author of a study issued last month that found extensive examples of anti-Semitism directed at college students, said he had not come across anything as striking as what happened at U.C.L.A.

“It’s egregious and startling,” Mr. Kosmin said. “If they had used this with any other group — sexual, racial, any kind of identity group — they would have realized it was illegal.” [...]

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Rare Footage Of The Chofetz Chaim At First Knessia Gedolah

 Update - background information - Tablet Magazine


 update Names added to the film the new version is not as sharp as the original so I have kept both versions.

Published on Feb 22, 2015
The First World Congress (Knessia Gedolah) of the World Agudath Israel the first major gathering of all the different sects of Klal Yisroel which took place in Vienna starting from Elul 3, 5683 / August 15, 1923 and which lasted for ten days.

With Names

Without Names