Haredi rabbi: 5-year-old girls 'shouldn't ride bicycles'

Arutz 7    A step too far? Recent years have seen some haredi rabbis competing over who can levy the most stringencies on their followers.

But the rabbi of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nahlaot has raised eyebrows among much of the haredi public after issuing a ban on girls aged 5 and up riding bicycles - because it's "immodest."

The rabbi stated, according to Ynet, that young girls riding bikes "cause serious damage to their modesty."

In his ruling, which was distributed in synagogues throughout the neighborhood, he claimed that bicycle seats caused young girls to sit in a way which could be "provocative" to men.

We inform parents that they are obligated to forbid their daughters from age five and up from acting in this illegitimate way," it read. [...]

Web sites are teaching chareidi Israelis about sex crimes in their midst

Haaretz Radio and newspapers are remaining silent, but news sites are reporting about rabbis and other senior figures suspected of crimes against women and girls.

A 15-page indictment filed last month against a well-known ultra-Orthodox rabbi included detailed descriptions of sex crimes he allegedly committed against female relatives over many years. The indictment, filed in the Jerusalem District Court, caused an earthquake in ultra-Orthodox society.

The affair has been covered with unprecedented intensity on news sites for the Haredi community, but most of the ultra-Orthodox media – newspapers and radio stations – haven’t even hinted that such an affair exists.

The indictment has been shared on Haredi Facebook pages and in internet forums. It has been sent out via email and WhatsApp, and has penetrated the layer that has thickened in the ultra-Orthodox community over decades, if not generations.

The dissemination of the indictment hasn’t just broken down conspiracies of silence, it has ended the automatic lack of trust against the complainants and the accuser – the Israeli government.

Everyone is talking about it on the street and in synagogues. Teachers and parents are talking about it at schools. No one can ignore it, and many people are terrified.

The Bais Yaakov girls school in Elad sent parents a note with instructions on how to be cautious against any threats. “In case of any doubt, refuse and say no categorically,” is rule number seven out of 10.

Rule nine advises girls: “Be careful of people you know or don’t know, and don’t be tempted to go with them. Even if they approach you in a friendly way, break off contact, keep away from them and tell your parents.”[...]

Slowly, and many years too late, the community’s leaders are beginning to respond.

Two months ago, the police held a conference of senior rabbis from Haredi towns on “modesty and holiness in the community” in order to combat sex offenders. Programs for students have been launched in a number of schools on the matter.

These are just the first signs of people speaking out openly, but over the past three weeks the best-known Haredi websites such as Kikar Hashabbat and Behadrei Haredim have followed the “supervisor” affair closely with both news stories and opinion pieces. They have also followed three other cases of sexual assault in the Haredi community, with some of the alleged attackers coming from the school system. [...]

Haredi society is opening up to the existence of sex crimes, which Karlinsky partly attributes to the programs that have been introduced in the schools. In the “supervisor” case, no rabbi has come out in defense of the accused or claimed that the charges were a fabrication, which Karlinsky says is probably due to the accessibility of the indictment. [...]

Controversial psak of a Chabad rabbi to divorce wife who won't wear a sheitel

update:Eliyahu G; wrote:

This is a classical case of taking things out of context.

Let's explain the whole story:

1) The Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l felt that it is better for woman to wear a shietel the wear a tichel, because those who wear a tichel are often not careful about covering all their hair.

2) The Rebbe was speaking to his Kehila which he knew well, and was obviously not talking to communities like Satmar etc. where women a) often shave their hair and b) the tznius is already on a higher level and women have less of an issue keeping to higher standards, therefore this is less of a chashash that a womean with a tichel will leave hair uncovered. [Here is not the place to discuss the historical/sociological differences of communities that come from Hungery vs. those that come from Russia and also have many BT's etc. and the effect that this has on the Tznius standards].

3) Indeed, in Chabad, those women who leave their houses with tichels and not sheitels, are almost always not "super frum" and are leaving much hair uncovered, thus not covering their hair properly according to Halocho.

4) The new Rav of Kfar Chabad (Rav Meir Ashkenzy), who happens to be an exceptionally honest and fine person, has taken it upon himself to fix the Tzniuts standers of Kfar Chabad. One of his campaigns are to stop the trend of women leaving their house with a tichel only half covering their hair, and instead enforcing the Rebbe's shito, that in Chabad women should leave their house with a sheitel, so that their hair will be fully covered.

5) In order to explain how important it is to cover one's hair fully, Rav Ashknazy quoted to some women the Halocho the a man must divorce his wife is she does not cover her hair. in other words - he was telling the women, don't look at this sheitel vs. half covered hair with a tichel as a light issue, it is a very serious one, as not covering hair is a reason for divorce.

6) the Rav NEVER told any man or women, that they should get divorced because the woman left her house with a tichel. that is a complete lie.

7) some of the more modern women of Kfar CHabad, who are not so happy with the fact that the Rav is enforcing Tznius standards in the Kfar (as a Rav should do), went to the press, and quoted him completly out of context - as saying that a man should divorce his wife if she wears a Tichel.

kikar haShabbat

סערת איסור המטפחות בכפר חב"ד: רבני חב"ד נגד פסק הרב אשכנזי: "לא צריך לגרש את האישה"

חובה על הבעל לגרש את אשתו אם היא חובשת מטפחת ולא פאה? רבנים בכירים בחב"ד מתייחסים לסערת הרב אשכנזי וקובעים: "אפשר לשכנע, לא צריך להגיע עד לגירושין בגלל וויכוח כזה" (חרדים)

California's right to die law goes into effect today

Santa Cruz Sentinel     Helen Handelsman has been waiting for this day.

Diagnosed in 2013 with late-stage breast cancer, her second bout with the disease, the San Francisco resident has a few wishes: to make it to her 85th birthday in January, and to ask her doctor for a lethal drug prescription under California’s new right-to-die law.

“I want to tell him that this is what I want,” said the grandmother, who now can feel the tumors developing under her collarbone.

“I’ve watched my sister and my father and my son-in-law die from cancer,” she said. “It was morally wrong to keep these people alive when there was no hope they would survive. And the pain can be so horrible.”

Eight months after it was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, California’s controversial End of Life Option Act goes into effect Thursday.

The law allows mentally capable adults, diagnosed with six months or less to live, to ask doctors for prescriptions to end their lives when they choose.

For Handelsman and many other terminally ill Bay Area residents, the physician aid-in-dying law comes as a relief. Patients may decide against using the medication, but just knowing it is there, they say, gives them solace.

Yet, to opponents who continue to rail against its implementation, the law remains a dangerous overreach by the state. Foes argue that it places patients — especially the elderly — at risk for coercion, with little support for other options, and no requirement of witnesses to their self-administered deaths.[...]

This law does not apply to everyone equally,” said Tim Rosales, a spokesman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide.

He pointed to annual state reports from Oregon and Washington — where right-to-die laws have been in place for years — that say one of the biggest reasons people choose aid-in-dying is their fear of being a burden to their family, friends and caregivers.

“That is very telling, certainly when you are looking at the economic diversity across the board,” Rosales said, referring to the pressure some low-income residents may feel about leaving their families with mountains of medical bills.

But the data from those states also reveal that relatively few people each year use the law, and about one-third of those who receive prescriptions never take the medication.

Of 218 prescriptions written in Oregon in 2015, 132 people had died from taking the medication as of mid-January.

Similarly, of 176 prescriptions written in Washington in 2014, 126 patients died after ingesting their medication.

Given California’s larger population, state officials estimate that 1,500 residents annually will seek lethal prescriptions.[...]

If that’s her choice, Hammer said, she should have that right. But with palliative and hospice care, he said, doctors can help terminally ill patients control their pain, allowing them to die “fairly peacefully and fairly comfortably.” [...]

Study Questions Use of Antidepressants for Children, Teens

Tucson   Treating children and teens suffering from depression with antidepressants may be both ineffective and potentially dangerous, a new analysis suggests.

Of the 14 antidepressants studied, only fluoxetine (Prozac) was more effective in treating depression than an inactive placebo in children and teens, the review found.

And Effexor (venlafaxine) was linked to a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts compared to a placebo and five other antidepressants, the researchers reported.

"In the clinical care of young people with major depressive disorder, clinical guidelines recommend psychotherapy -- especially cognitive behavioral therapy or interpersonal therapy -- as the first-line treatment," said study author Dr. Andrea Cipriani. He is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, in England.[...]

This study shows what has been known -- that these "medicines look less effective and riskier in children and adolescents than they do in adults," said Dr. Peter Kramer. He is a clinical professor emeritus of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, in Providence, R.I.

"Among them, Prozac has always stood out as relatively more effective," Kramer said.[...]

For the study, Cipriani and his colleagues reviewed 34 studies that included more than 5,200 children and teens. This kind of study, called a meta-analysis, tries to find common ground among numerous trials. Its limitations are that the conclusions rely on how well the studies that are included were done.

Moreover, most of the trials (65 percent) were financed by drug companies. And 90 percent had a risk of being biased in favor of the medication, Cipriani said.

The investigators found that only with Prozac did the benefits outweigh the risks in terms of relieving symptoms with few side effects.[...]

The review was published online June 8 in The Lancet.

"This study gives us real concern about the usefulness of antidepressants," said the author of an accompanying journal editorial, Dr. Jon Jureidini.

With a meta-analysis, the benefits of antidepressants may be overstated and the harms understated, said Jureidini. He is a research leader at the Robinson Research Institute of the University of Adelaide in Australia. [...]

‘Repugnant’ — or ‘fair’? Debate erupts over judge’s decision in Stanford sexual assault case

Washington Post    The six-month sentence handed down to a former Stanford University student in a high-profile sexual assault case has been met with outrage — much of it aimed at the judge.

Prosecutors argued that Brock Turner’s three felony convictions should have landed him in state prison for six years. Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sent Turner instead to the county jail, as probation officials recommended.

“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him,” Persky said, citing Turner’s age, 20, and his lack of criminal history — comments and reasoning that have landed the judge in the middle of a national firestorm and made him the subject of searing criticism.

State legislators have called Persky’s decision “baffling and repugnant.” And a recall effort has garnered thousands of signatures to an online petition and thousands in donations to the campaign, said Michele Dauber, a Stanford Law School professor who was outraged by the sentencing.[...]

To those who have worked with Persky in the legal community, the attacks on his judgment are shocking in their own right. They describe the judge as an intelligent jurist who knows the law and carefully applies it.

Before his time on the bench, Persky worked as a prosecutor for the district attorney’s office. A public defender who often argued cases against him said Perksy would aggressively and effectively argue to have sexually violent predators stay in prison, asking for their terms to be extended because he believed they continued to pose a threat.

The lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity because the Stanford case has been so divisive in their community, said Persky would find victims from even decades-old cases to prevent defense attorneys from gaining the convicted offenders’ release from prison.

Persky argued those types of cases before Robert Foley, a veteran judge who said he was “absolutely one of the best lawyers who ever appeared in my court.” Persky often appeared in Foley’s courtroom, where, the judge said, he was “credible, ethical and honest.” [...]

Andy Gutierrez, a deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, said many colleagues would not hesitate to take a difficult case to the judge, because they know he will treat each one on its merits and not be swayed by public sentiment. He said that while he sometimes hears reports of certain judges treating their clients, especially minority clients, unfairly, he has never heard that complaint about Persky.

“To the contrary, he has gone out of his way to improve our criminal justice system and, where possible, soften the harsher edges of the criminal justice system in regards to its treatment of indigent persons,” he wrote in an email.[...]

The case file includes a report from a probation officer, which notes a conversation between the officer and the victim.

“I want him to be punished, but as a human, I just want him to get better,” the victim said, according to the probation officer’s report. “I don’t want him to feel like his life is over and I don’t want him to rot away in jail; he doesn’t need to be behind bars.”

In her statement to the court, however, the victim said her words were misinterpreted.

“When I read the probation officer’s report, I was in disbelief, consumed by anger which eventually quieted down to profound sadness,” she wrote in her statement. “My statements have been slimmed down to distortion and taken out of context.”

In the statement, she disputed part of the account, and called the probation officer’s recommendation “a soft time­out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults, an insult to me and all women.” [...]

Persky has received threats in the wake of his decision, according to Gary Goodman, deputy public defender in Santa Clara County and the supervising attorney in the Palo Alto office. Goodman said he was was alarmed that someone he described as level-headed, smart and respectful would be targeted in such a vindictive way.

“While I strongly disagree with the sentence that Judge Persky issued in the Brock Turner case I do not believe he should be removed from his judgeship,” Jeffrey Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, said in a written statement. “I am so pleased that the victim’s powerful and true statements about the devastation of campus sexual assault are being heard across our nation. She has given voice to thousands of sexual assault survivors.” [...]

Milions missing: Report on corruption of Vaad HaRabbonim tzedaka

מיליונים שנעלמו וחשבונות בחו"ל; ההסתבכות של ועד הרבנים

ספרים שחורים, שכר בשחור, חשבונות זרים ללא פיקוח מינימלי, מיליונים שנעלמו, חלוקות שלא היו וחשדות כבדים להלבנת הון. הדו"ח החריף נגד "ועד הרבנים לענייני צדקה" 

http://www.kikar.co.il/200873.html

http://www.kikar.co.il/201025.html

http://www.kikar.co.il/200875.html

הדו"ח החמור על אחת מוועדות הצדקה החשובות במגזר החרדי נחשף: בחודשים האחרונים, לאחר בדיקה מקיפה של רשם העמותות במשרד המשפטים, הוחלט לשלול מעמותת הצדקה "ועד הרבנים לענייני צדקה" - אחת מהעמותות הגדולות ביותר במגזר החרדי - את אישור הניהול התקין ולבטל את הטבות המס שניתנות לעמותות ללא מטרת רווח (סעיף 46). כעת חושף לראשונה "כיכר השבת" את הדו"ח החמור שהוגש לרשם העמותות נגד ועד הרבנים וגרם להחלטה.

• לקריאה: עשרות עמודי הדו"ח נגד ועד הרבנים לענייני צדקה

על פי הדו"ח, שהוכן על ידי רואה החשבון רמי אלחנתי, עולים חששות כבדים לשורת עבירות מס חמורות, חשש למעילות ענק ולניהול בלתי תקין בעליל. בין היתר נכתב בדו"ח כי במקביל לספרי החשבונות שהוגשו לרשם העמותות, נוהלו ספרי חשבונות "שחורים" משם יצאו מיליוני שקלים ללא פיקוח. יודגש כי בכתבה מובא חלק מזערי בלבד ממאות המקרים הבעייתיים שחשף הדו"ח.

Haredi rabbis come out against prenups

Arutz 7 Rabbi Avraham Sherman, a former member of the Great Rabbinical Court and a student of former haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv, on Sunday joined those voicing opposition to prenuptial agreements.

The rabbi signed off on a joint letter recently published by a group of haredi rabbis strongly opposing prenuptial agreements, which in recent years have become common among modern Orthodox circles in the US such as the Rabbinical Council of America.

According to the haredi rabbis who signed on to the public letter, a get (divorce) given after a prenuptial agreement has been enacted is considered to be a get meuseh (a divorce granted against the husband's wishes), and is invalid.

The implications of the letter are that a prenuptial agreement before the wedding is liable to be highly problematic if the couple should later decide to divorce.

In the legal ruling, the rabbis wrote that "all obligation of child support or anything else intentionally done with a goal of coercing the get disqualifies the get, and it doesn't matter if they refer to the get openly." [...]

Signatories to the letter included Rabbi Moishe Sternbuch, Ra'avad of the Edah Haharedit, as well as Rabbi Avraham Dov Auerbach who previously was head of the Rabbinical Court in Tiberias, the Chief Rabbi of the Gilo neighborhood in southern Jerusalem Rabbi Eliyahu Shlezinger, and Derekh Emunah chairperson Rabbi Baruch Efrati.

1,000 deaths is too good for you’: Serial British pedophile receives 22 life sentences

Washington Post When it came to sexually abusing children, Richard Huckle proudly fashioned himself an expert.

The Christian schoolteacher from England was so adept at taking advantage of impoverished children in Malaysia and Cambodia, he bragged online that he had authored a how-to guide for others to follow in his footsteps, according to the BBC.

"Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids," Huckle wrote in an online post cited by the BBC. "I still plan on publishing a guide on this subject sometime.”

"I'd hit the jackpot," he commented on another occasion, "a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care."

When it came to preying on vulnerable children, investigators say, few have done it with more ruthless planning than Huckle.

When he was finally arrested in 2014 after eight years of terror, prosecutors accused him of raping and abusing nearly two-dozen children ranging in age from 6 months to 12 years, the BBC reported.[...]

Stanford U student given 6 month jail sentence for raping an unconscious woman

NY Times  A sexual-assault case at Stanford University has ignited public outrage after the defendant was sentenced to six months in a jail and starkly different statements were published online by his victim and his father, who complained that his son’s life had been ruined for “20 minutes of action” fueled by alcohol and promiscuity.

The case has made headlines since the trial began earlier this year but seized the public’s attention over the weekend after the accused, Brock Allen Turner, 20, a champion swimmer, was sentenced to what many critics denounced as a lenient stint in jail and three years’ probation for three felony counts of sexual assault, and BuzzFeed published the full courtroom statement by the woman who was attacked.

The statement, a 7,244-word cri de coeur against the role of privilege in the trial and the way the legal system deals with sexual assault, has gone viral. By Monday, it had been viewed more than five million times on the BuzzFeed site.

One of those readings happened live on CNN on Monday, when the anchor Ashleigh Banfield spent part of an hour looking into the camera and reading the entire statement live on the air.

The unidentified 23-year-old victim was not a Stanford student but was visiting the campus, where she attended a fraternity party. In her statement, she described her experience before and after the attack and argued that the trial, the sentencing and the legal system’s approach to sexual assault — from the defense lawyer’s questions about what she wore the night she was attacked to the light sentence handed down to her attacker — were irrevocably marred by male and class privilege.

The trial privileged Mr. Turner’s well-being over her own, she said, and in the end declined to punish him severely because the authorities considered the disruption to his studies and athletic career at a prestigious university when determining his sentence. She wrote:

The probation officer weighed the fact that he has surrendered a hard-earned swimming scholarship. How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me, and should not lessen the severity of his punishment. If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be? The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.[...]

In the statement, Mr. Turner’s father said that his son should not do jail time for the sexual assault, which he referred to as “the events” and “20 minutes of action” that were not violent. He said that his son suffered from depression and anxiety in the wake of the trial and argued that having to register as a sex offender — and the loss of his appetite for food he once enjoyed — was punishment enough.
Brock Turner also lost a swimming scholarship to Stanford and has given up on his goal of competing at the Olympics.

“I was always excited to buy him a big rib-eye steak to grill or to get his favorite snack for him,” Dan Turner wrote. “Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist. These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways.”

Growing fear inside GOP about Trump

CNN   Top Republican officials and donors are increasingly worried about the threat Donald Trump's attack on a judge's Mexican heritage could pose to their party's chances in November -- and about the GOP's ability to win Latino votes for many elections to come.

Trump is under fire for repeatedly accusing U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing a lawsuit involving Trump University, of bias because of his Mexican heritage. Those concerns intensified Sunday after Trump said he would have the same concerns about the impartiality of a Muslim judge.

House and Senate GOP leaders have condemned Trump's remarks about Curiel, while donors have openly worried that losing Latino voters could doom them in key down-ballot races. Other important party figures, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, are urging Trump to change his combative, confrontational style before it's too late.

Veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned this weekend that GOP leaders who have endorsed Trump "own his politics."

"You own his politics," Wilson wrote in a column for Heatstreet, adding later, "You own the racial animus that started out as a bug, became a feature and is now the defining characteristic of his campaign. You own every crazy, vile chunk of word vomit that spews from his mouth."

The GOP's deepest fear: A Barry Goldwater effect that could last far longer than Trump's political aspirations.

Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was the 1964 GOP nominee and a leader of the conservative movement, alienated a generation of African-American voters by opposing the Civil Rights Act -- opening the door for Democrats to lock in their support for decades. Republicans fret that Trump could similarly leave a stain with Latino voters.

"I am concerned about that," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Sunday.

"America is changing. When Ronald Reagan was elected, 84% of the electorate was white," McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "This November, 70% will be. It's a big mistake for our party to write off Latino Americans. And they're an important part of the country and soon to be the largest minority group in the country."

"I hope he'll change his direction on that," said McConnell, who first made the Goldwater comparison last week in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.[...]

House Speaker Paul Ryan, just a day after announcing his endorsement of Trump, bashed him on a Wisconsin radio station.

"Look, the comment about the judge, just was out of left field for my mind," Ryan said Friday on WISN in Milwaukee. "It's reasoning I don't relate to, I completely disagree with the thinking behind that."

The criticism from McConnell and Ryan was predictable: Both preside over GOP majorities that are threatened thanks to competitive races in Latino-heavy states like Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

More surprising was the condemnation from Gingrich, who has transparently jockeyed for a spot on Trump's ticket.

"I don't know what Trump's reasoning was, and I don't care," Gingrich told The Washington Post. "His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable."

Gingrich was even sharper on "Fox News Sunday," calling Trump's remarks "inexcusable."

Trump responded to Gingrich's critique on Monday, telling "Fox and Friends" that the former

 House Speaker's comments were "inappropriate."

This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made," Gingrich said.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman who has provided key Republican support for Trump's foreign policy stances and is also often named as a prospective vice presidential candidate, rebuked Trump's comments about the judge on ABC's "This Week."

"I think that he's going to have to change," Corker said of Trump's overall behavior and campaign tactics.[...]

Menachem Bitton - Jerusalem serial child molester - sentenced to 19 years

Times of Israel

The Jerusalem District Court on Sunday sentenced a man to 19 years in prison for carrying out hundreds of sex crimes against young teen and preteen boys in the capital.

Menahem Bitton, 30, was convicted in February in a plea bargain after admitting to committing the assaults over a period of several years.

Testimony from Bitton’s victims revealed how he would entice them and then molest them, including in some cases sodomizing them. He bought silence from the victims with bribes of gadgets or cash payments of between NIS 50 and NIS 100 ($13-$26).

Bitton, who worked in an apartment rental business in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem, used empty apartments to carry out the attacks.[...]