Thursday, October 22, 2015

Israeli suspects in court for Eritrean beating


Israeli police say four men will appear in court in connection with the beating of an Eritrean man during an attack by an Arab citizen at a bus station that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded several people.

A private security guard shot the Eritrean, thinking he was an attacker. As the Eritrean lay on the ground, a mob of people cursed him, kicked him and hit him with objects. The Eritrean later died.

Rosenfeld says it is not clear if the men will be charged.
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Some 2,000 people, mainly asylum seekers from Eritrea, gathered in Tel Aviv’s Levinsky park on Wednesday for a memorial service for Habtom Zarhum, the Eritrean asylum seeker who died after being shot and assaulted by a mob at the Be’er Sheva bus terminal on Sunday night. [...]

Some of the mourners wept and told Haaretz they did not believe Zarhum was killed accidentally. “I’ve never seen such a thing, only in the Sinai or in the Islamic State,” said Eden, an asylum seeker from Eritrea, referring to the video clips of Zarhum’s killing. “If they had shot him once it might have been a mistake, but shooting him again and again is not a mistake. People trampled on him and threw things at him. The police were there. Why didn’t they stop it?” she said. [...]
 

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Mamzerim: When a woman remarries without a Get from the first husband - Rav Sternbuch

 Rabbi Dovid Katz wrote an important article dealing with attempts to deal with the problem of mamzer by using a shifcha. It is available here www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/mamzerShifcha.pdf.     This is page 13 and 30 of the article

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 Minchat Yitzchak: V 47: In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many displaced persons were unaware of the fate of their spouses and loved ones. Families had become separated, and in the period immediately following the end of World War II, there were cases where survivors believed that their families had perished when in reality they had survived. It thus happened a number of times that a woman, believing herself to be a widow, married another man after the war, had children by him, and subsequently discovered to her horror that her first husband had never died! The chaotic conditions prevailing in those years, especially in the DP camps and Eastern Europe, led many people to marry without consulting a rav or Bet Din, so many people were not even aware of the ramifications of their status.

R. Yitzchak Weiss, author of Minchat Yirzchak, was consulted about such a case. R. Tzvi Elimelech Kalish, Rabbi in Munkatch and subsequently in Bnei Brak, was faced with the situation of an entire group of young men who were the children of mothers who had remarried after the war, only to find out later that their first husbands were still alive. As the offspring of second "marriages" which in the eyes of Jewish law were adulterous, these young men were mamzerim. Two decades after the war, these young men, who had grown up in Hungary, wished to marry. R. Kalish therefore asked whether it was actually possible to convert gentile woman as shefachot kna'aniyot in the twentieth century.
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In Teshuvot Vehanhagot I  764, R. Moshe Sternbuch describes how he was faced with a situation in South Africa of a woman who had had an Orthodox marriage, but had remarried without benefit of a get, a halachic divorce. Her husband had been relucant to give her a get, so she remarried in a Reform ceremony. Obviously, the children from her "second marriage" were mamzerim because in the eyes of Jewish law she was still married to her first husband at the time she had children by another man. Some years later, the woman became a ba'alat teshuva (repentant), sought and obtained a get from her first husband, and even sent her children to Orthodox day schools. She was nevertheless faced with the consequences of her second marriage: her children were mamzerim .

In seeking a solution to this tragedy, R. Sternbuch likewise reasoned that it ought to be possible for a gentile woman to become a shifcho even in modern-day South Africa inasmuch as the entire process would be a legal fiction to which the state would not take exception. In the end, however, R. Sternbuch concluded that if such great authorities as the Minchat Yitzchak and Chelkat Yaakov were unable to sanction such a procedure, in the one case on account of halachic objections and in the other on account of a reluctance to rule absent support from other poskim, then such an option was not practicable nowadays. R. Sternbuch had no choice but to advise the mamzerim to marry converts, knowing, however, that their children would also be mamzerim down to the end of time. As he put it: 


ועל כל פנים אין לנו לפרוץ גדרים בייחוס שלא שמענו מאביתינו כן מעולם אף שהיה יכול להציל פסול זרעו לעולם


In any event, we ought not to "break fences" [i.e. make radical innovations] in matters involving family relations. We have never heard of our ancestors [resorting to such a procedure] even though [the mamzer] would be able to save his progeny [from the taint of mamzerut] forever.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Talk Therapy Found to Ease Schizophrenia

NY Times  More than two million people in the United States have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the treatment for most of them mainly involves strong doses of antipsychotic drugs that blunt hallucinations and delusions but can come with unbearable side effects, like severe weight gain or debilitating tremors.

Now, results of a landmark government-funded study call that approach into question. The findings, from by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States, concluded that schizophrenia patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic medication and a bigger emphasis on one-on-one talk therapy and family support made greater strides in recovery over the first two years of treatment than patients who got the usual drug-focused care.

The report, to be published on Tuesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, comes as Congress debates mental health reform and as interest in the effectiveness of treatments grows amid a debate over the possible role of mental illness in mass shootings.

Its findings have already trickled out to government agencies: On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published in its influential guidelines a strong endorsement of the combined-therapy approach. Mental health reform bills now being circulated in Congress “mention the study by name,” said Dr. Robert K. Heinssen, the director of services and intervention research at the centers, who oversaw the research.[...]

Experts said the findings could help set a new standard of care in an area of medicine that many consider woefully inadequate: the management of so-called first episode psychosis, that first break with reality in which patients (usually people in their late teens or early 20s) become afraid and deeply suspicious. The sooner people started the combined treatment after that first episode, the better they did, the study found. The average time between the first episode and receiving medical care — for those who do get it — is currently about a year and half.[...]

The more holistic approach that the study tested is based in part on programs in Australia, Scandinavia and elsewhere that have improved patients’ lives in those countries for decades. This study is the first test of the approach in this country — in the “real world” as researchers described it, meaning delivered through the existing infrastructure, by community mental health centers.[...]

In the new study, doctors used the medications as part of a package of treatments and worked to keep the doses as low as possible — in some cases 50 percent lower — minimizing their bad effects. The sprawling research team, led by Dr. John M. Kane, chairman of the psychiatry department at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, randomly assigned 34 community care clinics in 21 states to provide either treatment as usual, or the combined package.

The team trained staff members at the selected clinics to deliver that package, and it included three elements in addition to the medication. First, help with work or school such as assistance in deciding which classes or opportunities are most appropriate, given a person’s symptoms. Second, education for family members to increase their understanding of the disorder. And finally, one-on-one talk therapy in which the person with the diagnosis learns tools to build social relationships, reduce substance use and help manage the symptoms, which include mood problems as well as hallucinations and delusions.

For example, some patients can learn to defuse the voices in their head — depending on the severity of the episode — by ignoring them or talking back. The team recruited 404 people with first-episode psychosis, mostly diagnosed in their late teens or 20s. About half got the combined approach and half received treatment as usual. Clinicians monitored both groups using standardized checklists that rate symptom severity and quality of life, like whether a person is working, and how well he or she is getting along with family members.

The group that started on the combined treatment scored, on average, more poorly on both measures at the beginning of the trial. Over two years, both groups showed steady improvement. But by the end, those who had been in the combined program had more symptom relief, and were functioning better as well. They had also been on drug doses that were 20 percent to 50 percent lower, Dr. Kane said.[...]

Public Notice from Ami Magazine regarding a forged letter


Monday, October 19, 2015

Mother of three battling MS takes own life at Dignitas assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland


A mother of three from Bury who battled a debilitating illness for nearly two decades has ended her life at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.

Rachelle Linz, 50, known as Shelley, fought with multiple sclerosis for nearly 20 years. She died after taking a fatal dose of barbiturate at a Dignitas clinic in Zurich two weeks ago.

She leaves behind husband Jonathan and three children - Joshua, 24, Hannah, 22, and Jason, 20. All four were by her side when she passed away.

Mr Linz, 51, from Whitefield, who was by his wife’s bedside said the family had always hoped a miracle cure for MS could be found, but his wife had feared she would ultimately die from the condition and made the decision after her health badly deteriorated.[...]

Poll: Should Tamar Epstein's heter and poskim be revealed or kept secret?

I put a poll in the sidebar concerning the issue of the secrecy of the nature of Tamar Epstein's heter and the identify of the poskim behind it.

It is important to take part to convey a message as to how the public - as opposed to bloggers - view the matter.

So far there is considerably less then 100 votes. There are thousands of people who view this blog. Please make the effort to vote. It is totally anonymous - and if you change your mind you can change your vote.

The results so far clearly indicate - as Rav Nota Greenblatt himself has paskoned - secret heterim and secret poskim make a joke out of halacha.

A Rapist’s Nightmare

  NY Times   FOR as long as anyone can remember, upper-caste men in a village here in northern India preyed on young girls. The rapes continued because there was no risk: The girls were destroyed, but the men faced no repercussions.

Now that may be changing in the area, partly because of the courage of one teenage girl who is fighting back. Indian law doesn’t permit naming rape victims, so she said to call her Bitiya — and she is a rapist’s nightmare. This isn’t one more tragedy of sexual victimization but rather a portrait of an indomitable teenager whose willingness to take on the system inspires us and helps protect other local girls. [...]

Bitiya, who is from the bottom of the caste system, is fuzzy about her age but thinks she was 13 in 2012 when four upper-caste village men grabbed her as she worked in a field, stripped her and raped her. They filmed the assault and warned her that if she told anyone they would release the video and also kill her brother.

So Bitiya initially kept quiet.

Six weeks later Bitiya’s father saw a 15-year-old boy watching a pornographic video — and was aghast to see his daughter in it. The men were selling the video in a local store for a dollar a copy.

Bitiya is crying in the video and is held down by the men, so her family accepted that she was blameless. Her father went to the police to file a report.

The police weren’t interested in following up, but the village elders were. They decided that Bitiya, an excellent student, should be barred from the local public school.

“They said I was the wrong kind of girl, and it would affect other girls,” Bitiya said. “I felt very bad about that.”

Eventually, public pressure forced the school to take her back, but the village elders continue to block the family from receiving government food rations, apparently as punishment for speaking out. [...]

Bitiya says she does not feel disgraced, because the dishonor lies in raping rather than in being raped. And the resolve that she and her family display is having an impact. The rape suspects had to sell land to pay bail, and everybody in the area now understands that raping girls may actually carry consequences. So while there were many rapes in the village before Bitiya’s, none are believed to have occurred since. [...]

In one village, I asked a large group of men about rape. They insisted that they honor women and deplore rape — and then added that the best solution after a rape is for the girl to be married to the rapist, to smooth over upset feelings.

“If he raped her, he probably likes her,” explained Shiv Govind, an 18-year-old.[...]

Friday, October 16, 2015

L.A. Teacher of Year fired for child abuse by new special committee


When a colleague complained that Rafe Esquith, the most celebrated teacher in Los Angeles, had made a joke about nudity to his fifth-grade students, the district called into action a newly formed squad of investigators to get to the bottom of it.

Internally dubbed the "tiger team," the unit was created last year in the wake of repeated sex abuse scandals that had long plagued the nation's second-largest school district. These investigators were supposed to cut through the bureaucracy's red tape and investigative backlog and quickly ferret out wrongdoing.

In Esquith, they had their highest-profile subject and their biggest test.

This week, based on the unit's investigative efforts, the school board behind closed doors voted unanimously to fire Esquith.

On Thursday, Esquith attorney Mark Geragos criticized the inquiry into his client and slammed the unit as "an investigative hit squad" that was determined to find wrongdoing by probing, if necessary, into every aspect of an employee's life.

District officials defended the work of its investigators, saying they've brought professionalism and a faster resolution to complex cases, which is better for teachers and for students. They said that nearly half of the employees investigated by the unit returned to their jobs.

The team includes seven full-time investigators, a supervisor and two forensic specialists. Among them are former L.A. Police Department detectives and a former investigator with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. Three former administrators review their work, and the unit is headed by Jose Cantu, who's been with the district for more than 30 years, including 14 as a principal.

Also participating in the Esquith investigation is an outside law firm, a practice the district has reserved for especially sensitive cases.

Esquith qualified for special handling because he is one of the most famous and honored teachers in America, the subject of articles, a documentary and White House accolades. He's renowned for coaxing stirring performances of Shakespeare from Latino and Asian students who live in the working-class neighborhood around Hobart Avenue Elementary School. [...]

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Noach; The dimensions of the GIGANTIC "Re'em" creature



Chazal discuss a creature, called the Re'em, that was the size of a mountain....

Was it a very tall animal? or was it actually short, and very wide?

The Gemarah Zevachim 113b, in discussing if the Mabul reached Eretz Yisroel, debates how the "Rimah" (which is the Re"em in Aramaic) survived the flood...

Could it be that the Gemarah itself had no specific tradition on this exotic creatures' physique, and is actually debating it's height?...

For questions or comments, please email salmahshleima@gmail.com 

Rabbi Shlomo Pollack

The Tower of Babel, A lesson for educators by Allan Katz


The parasha of the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dispersion brings to mind the totalitarian dictatorships and communistic states , whose leadership in the name of some ideology or defense against possible threats 'made a name for themselves' and called for absolute uniformity and obedience to the state. The rights of individuals must be sacrificed for the success of the state and its goals. The leadership under Nimrod managed to persuade and convince people to put their trust in a leadership whose advanced technological skills - made bricks and mortar instead of using stone and clay – would take care of any environmental and any other threats. All the people shared this common purpose with the state and there was no dissension or opposing opinions or perspectives. Nimrod even used religion to further his goals and introduced the sacrifice to God of predators like lions in order to glorify the ideals of 'power, government and kingship' that would have absolute power and control over the people. God realized that powerful and controlling governments with the help of technology would try to make ' a name for themselves '. This would be at the expense of (1) looking to God for spiritual solutions to man's problems and (2) seeing the state and society as being there to serve the individuals rather than individuals being there to serve the state. In fact the Midrash describes people mourning the destruction and loss of bricks, while the death of builders went unnoticed.

It would seem that a controlling society, one that demands uniformity and everyone sharing the same opinions is not conducive to spiritual growth and the creation of a caring society. In the fact, it seems the opposite is true. In a comment about his years spent at Shor Yoshuv under the dynamic leadership of Reb Shlomo Freifeld, Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn said it was also the fact that the boys were both brilliant and non-conformists that created a dynamic and spiritually empowering and uplifting environment. - Yet control, compliance and conforming seem to be what drives parents, educators and teachers, today.

In a classroom setting, it is quite understandable that a teacher should have classroom management skills and be able to ' control' a classroom so to create an environment conducive to learning. But in many schools and classrooms the ultimate goal has become order and conformity where rather than treating discipline as 'instrumental to mastering academic content' teachers reverse those ends and means. They maintain discipline by the way they present course content. If the goal is order and conformity one would choose a traditional approach to education – teacher lecturing and doing most of the talking, text books, work sheets, tests and quizzes and extrinsic motivators like grades , honor rolls, competition and praise to get the kids to learn. One certainly would not choose a classroom where kids are encouraged to construct meaning and share their unique opinions, understand ideas from the inside out so the approach would be collaborative, kids also learn in pairs or groups, open-ended, project-based and driven by students' interests and a love for learning. When it comes to discipline and behavior – both positive and negative, teachers who have a need to control, will keep the locus of control with them, using rewards, praise, punishments and consequences to get compliance and in this way promote the most primitive form of moral behavior – helping a kid to ask – what will be done to me or what will I get if I do XYZ.? Instead teachers can give up control and let kids participate in deciding what goes on in the classroom, reflect on values, motives – not simply behaviors - and goals so kids learn to ask – what type of classroom do we want, what type of person do I want to be, what are the consequences of my behavior on others, how can I make a contribution and if I have ' screwed up ' how can I do Teshuva and engage in an autonomous way in the moral act of restitution.

In the classroom and home the evidence is overwhelming in favor of supporting the autonomy of the child , so that he feels self-directed and connected to his inner –being ( neshama) as opposed to a controlling environment where compliance and not independent and creative thinking is encouraged. As educators we can learn from the teaching of R' Eliezer who said that he had never said anything that he had not heard from his Rabbi and then we see in the Avot De' Rabi'Natan where he is reported to have given a sermon and said over novel thoughts and chidushim that no one had ever heard before. R' Chaim Shmulevitz resolves this apparent contradiction by explaining what R' Eliezer meant when he said that he never ever said anything that he had not heard from his Rabbi. This cannot be taken literally because ' being a tape recorder' and only repeating what one has learned is certainly nothing to be proud of. R' Eliezer explained that whatever he said was something that he was sure his Rabbi would say or agree with. So R' Eliezer was being very creative in his learning and at the same time very authentic. There are 70 faces-facets to the Torah and this is intended to encourage us and our kids to construct and find personal meaning in what we learn and do so we become more connected to Hashem and His Torah. The lesson of the Tower of Babel is to warn us of the dangers of being controlling and not encouraging personal and creative thinking for our kids' spiritual growth and development. Instead of being ' controlling' and trying to motivate kids , we can inspire them and help them connect to their learning, create the conditions to help them motivate themselves and become caring long life learners.

Tamar Epstein and the Scarlet Letter: The Kaminetskys and Rabbinic sanctioned adultery

Jewish society is faced with a major crisis - how to deal with a case of rabbinic sanctioned adultery. On the one hand we have adultery - which is one of the worst sins and one which is based on betrayal of the most important human - that of husband and wife. This betrayal aspect is why it is used as a metaphor for betrayal in the relationship of G-d and the Jewish people. There is a primal revulsion towards the betrayal of  a wife who has an affair with another man. It also is one of the most defiling of sins - because of its violation of the sanctity of marriage.

At the same time we are faced with another theme - loyalty to rabbinic authority and gedolim. There is no higher praise than to say one has emunas chachomim i.e., obeys the decisions and views of G-d representatives - the rabbis. In this case Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky and Rav Nota Greenblatt are American gedolim who have the stature of being of the select group of transmitters of G-d's Torah and Mesorah.

The halacha is very clear - Tamar Epstein is a married woman who is married to a man not her husband - the definition of adultery. But she did it with the guidance and encouragement of two major rabbinic figures. However the rabbis who sanctioned this adulterous relations refuse to justify their actions. By their silence they are demanding acceptance of their activities simply because of their status and authority as gedolim - not because they are experts in the halacha - or are correct.

From the point of view of the Kaminetskys and Greenblatts they are saying they have no need to justify anything they do - no matter how horrific in appearance - because they are gedolim. They are hoping that the perceived obscenity of what they are doing will eventually be forgotten and they will succeed in getting away with distorting the Torah. Thus they are not only giving the appearance of violating the Torah by facilitating apparent adultery but they are violating a specific requirement of halacha - that decisions which appear wrong - need to explained in detail to the public.

What about the other rabbis who know that R Greenblatt and the Kamenetskys are wrong? Why haven't there been loud cries of outrage from our rabbinic leaders? The answer is that the rabbis are very uncomfortable with being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thus they are dodging the question with a technicality. They acknowledge that it is highly unlikely that there is a valid justification for the marriage without a get. However they say that they can not judge whether this is truly a case of adultery - unless they see a written justification for the act to which they can agree or disagree. Without this written justification - they feel they need to assume that what great rabbis have done - must be correct. The fact that the failure to provide a written justification is a violation of halacha - while puzzling - is also something which they say must be given the benefit of doubt.

So the crisis continues - a blatant act of adultery, a brazen concealing of justification,  demands of "trust me I am a gadol", timidity and fear of rabbinic leaders in addressing the issue - and the accelerated loss of emunas chachomim and growth of cynicism by the masses.