Sponge Bob and the Jewish Question

The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths

NY Times

Nearly half a century ago, in what passed as outrage in pre-Internet times, people across the country became incensed by the latest edition of Time magazine. In place of the familiar portrait of a world leader — Indira Gandhi, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ho Chi Minh — the cover of the April 8, 1966, issue was emblazoned with three red words against a stark black background: “Is God Dead?”

Thousands of people sent letters of protest to Time and to their local newspapers. Ministers denounced the magazine in their sermons.

The subject of the fury — a sprawling, 6,000-word essay of the kind Time was known for — was not, as many assumed, a denunciation of religion. Drawing on a panoply of philosophers and theologians, Time’s religion editor calmly considered how society was adapting to the diminishing role of religion in an age of secularization, urbanism and, especially, stunning advances in science.

With astronauts walking in space, and polio and other infectious diseases seemingly on the way to oblivion, it was natural to assume that people would increasingly stop believing things just because they had always believed them. Faith would steadily give way to the scientific method as humanity converged on an ever better understanding of what was real.

Almost 50 years later, that dream seems to be coming apart. Some of the opposition is on familiar grounds: The creationist battle against evolution remains fierce, and more sophisticated than ever. But it’s not just organized religions that are insisting on their own alternate truths. On one front after another, the hard-won consensus of science is also expected to accommodate personal beliefs, religious or otherwise, about the safety of vaccines, G.M.O. crops, fluoridation or cellphone radio waves, along with the validity of global climate change.

Like creationists with their “intelligent design,” the followers of these causes come armed with their own personal science, assembled through Internet searches that inevitably turn up the contortions of special interest groups. In an attempt to dilute the wisdom of the crowd, Google recently tweaked its algorithm so that searching for “vaccination” or “fluoridation,” for example, brings vetted medical information to the top of the results.

But presenting people with the best available science doesn’t seem to change many minds. In a kind of psychological immune response, they reject ideas they consider harmful. A study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that it is more effective to appeal to anti-vaxxers through their emotions, with stories and pictures of children sick with measles, the mumps or rubella — a reminder that subjective feelings are still trusted over scientific expertise.[...]

Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed - 50% of published studies are possibly junk

NYTimes

The past several years have been bruising ones for the credibility of the social sciences. A star social psychologist was caught fabricating data, leading to more than 50 retracted papers. A top journal published a study supporting the existence of ESP. The journal Science pulled a political science paper on the effect of gay canvassers on voters’ behavior – also because of concerns about fake data.

 A University of Virginia psychologist decided in 2011 to find out whether such suspect science was a widespread problem. He and his team recruited more than 250 researchers, identified 100 studies that had each been published in one of three leading journals in 2008, and rigorously redid the experiments in close collaboration with the original authors.

The results are now in: More than 60 of the studies did not hold up. They include findings that were circulated at the time — that a strong skepticism of free will increases the likelihood of cheating; that physical distances could subconsciously influence people’s sense of personal closeness; that attached women are more attracted to single men when highly fertile than when less so.

The new analysis, called the Reproducibility Project and posted Thursday by Science, found no evidence of fraud or that any original study was definitively false. Rather, it concluded that the evidence for most published findings was not nearly as strong as originally claimed.

“Less than half — even lower than I thought,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a director of Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, who once estimated that about half of published results across medicine were inflated or wrong. Dr. Ioannidis said the problem was hardly confined to psychology and could be worse in other fields, including cell biology, economics, neuroscience, clinical medicine, and animal research

Canadian Man Dubbed 'Jewish Schindler' for Saving Yazidi Sex Slaves From ISIS

Haaretz

A Canadian businessman is being dubbed the “Jewish Schindler” after paying for the release of Yazidi and Christian slaves held by Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Steve Maman has rescued 128  girls and women through the organisation he founded, Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI).

CYCI uses intermediaries to negotiate with Islamic State captors and pays between $1000 - $3000 for the release of each slave. According to the organization’s website, girls and women are then returned to their families or sent to a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Syria.

Islamic State is estimated to have taken 2,700 women and girls captive, torturing them and using them as sex slaves. Amnesty International claims Yazidi and Christian girls as young as 12 are being held.

Montreal-based Maman says his Jewish tradition motivated him to take action and establish CYCI in January this year.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.673270

Rav Dovid Eidensohn Tel Conf #17 - Your Kesubo – Is it Kosher? August 26 Wed 9:30 PM

Call 605-562-3130 enter code 411161#

Your Kesubo – is it kosher? Why not? Probably, some reliable person supervised the Kesubo writing at your wedding. Torah scholars were present. So, what is the problem? We list below three problems. One is Reb Moshe Feinstein’s ruling that in large cities some kesubose may be invalid. And today most people are probably in such cities, certainly those in New York City. Another problem is that our Kesubose don’t really assure a woman that she will be paid. And the Talmud considers this an invalid Kesubo, and the marriage is considered Zenuse. This is even if the Kesubo is a proper legal document but the wife is not sure of that. Surely if there are real problems in making her sure of herself with the Kesubo. The third problem is that the Kesubo is read publicly, and some information in it may be hugely humiliating. Rabbeinu Yona considers such a humiliation to be worse than murder.

Rav Mendel Shafran: Explaining the Givat Yerushalayim project in Beit Shemesh

Ultra-Orthodox In Israel: Keeping Cool While Keeping Customs

NPR

In the hot sun of a Jerusalem afternoon, kids wait for a fountain to turn on.

When water spouts into the air, 9-year-old Tzipora Baranas jumps right in. She's wearing black tights, a black, below-the-knee skirt and a long-sleeved black shirt.

"It's fun when the water spritzes up in my face," she says.

She is Orthodox Jewish and her outfit is in deference to religious modesty. She says she's not hot at all, despite the temperature hitting the 90s and the dark clothes covering all but her face and hands.

Of course, she is dripping wet at the moment.

Nearby, in the shade, an Orthodox mother, Rinat Kuperman, says it's good that the city has a place where kids can get wet without having to wear a swimsuit in public.

"They understand that people like us want to be happy in the summer and still keep ourselves like we want," she says. "Covered and refreshed."

Her family swims only in pools with times separated by gender, in keeping with their religious custom of covering their bodies when away from home and in the presence of members of the opposite sex. Kuperman isn't dressed all in black, but her skirt brushes her ankles. She wears a long-sleeved blouse over a T-shirt and has wrapped a colorful scarf over her hair.

Most Israelis are secular, and this record-breaking summer heat means plenty of shorts and skimpy tops on the beaches and streets. Choices for modest dress — including those that keep people covered up even in the summer heat — draw on religious rules, community norms and personal beliefs.[...]

Lakewood Beis Din publishes halachic issues against using secular court

Jared Fogle has no easy road to recovery, sex addiction experts say

Indystar    Identifying those with pedophilic or sex addiction, as well as victims of sexual abuse, can be challenging

Bill Cosby. Josh Duggar. Dennis Hastert. And now Jared Fogle.

In the past few months, allegations surrounding these men and sexual activity with minors, male and female, have surfaced in headline after headline. In the latest, Indiana’s own Fogle just agreed to plead guilty to charges that include having sex with teenagers and distributing pornography involving children as young as 6 years old.[...]

Researchers delving into the personality characteristics of those who engage in online deviate behavior, of which child pornography is one type, know that you can rarely predict offenders.

There is no one type of person that engages in child pornography, no one profile,” said Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, an assistant professor in the department of computer and information technology at Purdue University who studies this area. “It’s because the behavior itself is very dynamic and complex.”

Some people will download child pornography but never try to contact a minor for a sexual encounter, she said. Others might network, share information and reach out to children. Now researchers have noted another category — those who contact minors online but have no intention of ever meeting them in person.[...]

Although people who do jail time for viewing child pornography have low recidivism rates, the same is not true for those who contact their victims, Seigfried-Spellar said. [...]

“You cannot be cured of this,” she said. “It is like any other addiction. You can learn how to manage it ... but you have to work on this every day of your life when you have this compulsion.”

Protest against incompetence of International Beit Din for Agunos

Update: Psakim of the Beis Din has been added as well as the link to their webpage where these psakim came from -   International Beit Din - psakim

   International Beis Din Psak 1

 International Beis Din Psak 2 

Rav Dovid Eidensohn Tel Conf #16 – Prenups Force a Husband to Divorce His Wife Wed 9:30 PM Aug 19

Call 605-562-3130  code 411161#

Prenups are documents a husband signs at his wedding, empowering the wife to leave the house at any time and force the husband to give her a GET. The husband, from the time that the wife leaves the house, must pay his wife a large sum of money regularly, a sum designed to overwhelm his ability to pay and to force him to give her a GET. The Modern Orthodox world is working hard to force every husband to sign a prenup. When that happens, may truly Orthodox people marry children born from Modern Orthodox women who got divorces because of prenups, or not? And what happens if Orthodox husbands sign a prenup and there is a GET? That is our discussion here.