Rabbi Moshe Heinemann - Tzniyus from Kollel Beth HaTalmud on Vimeo.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Trump’s criticism of intelligence on Russia is dividing Hill GOP
President-elect Donald Trump’s broadside against the intelligence community is dividing Capitol Hill Republicans, with some ready to pounce on Trump’s skepticism that Russia interfered with the U.S. elections and others urging a more cautious approach.
The resulting schism could widen as Congress begins probing the CIA’s charges that Russia intervened in the November elections in an attempt to help Trump, potentially becoming one of the first significant intraparty breaches of the Trump presidency.
U.S. critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, such as Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), want to go full-bore on holding Russia to account for its suspected election interference. But they may be slowed by GOP senators who prefer to wait to hear the intelligence community’s evidence and for Trump to be installed in the White House.
When asked whether he would be influenced by Trump’s Tuesday tweet about a supposedly delayed “Intelligence” briefing on “so-called” Russian hacking, McCain said flatly, “No.”
McCain will hold a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday on “foreign cyber threats” that is expected to center on Russia. Intelligence officials — including Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcel J. Lettre II and U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers — will testify, and some Republicans are hoping they will present evidence that Russia meddled in the elections.
“The point of this hearing is to have the intelligence community reinforce, from their point of view, that the Russians did this,” Graham said. “You seem to have two choices now — some guy living in an embassy, on the run from the law for rape, who has a history of undermining American democracy and releasing classified information to put our troops at risk, or the 17 intelligence agencies sworn to defend us. I’m going with them.”
Graham was referring to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder accused of helping Russia leak emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee. He has few fans in Congress — on Wednesday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Assange a “sycophant for Russia.”
Assange has denied he received leaked emails from the Russians. Trump echoed Assange in a tweet Tuesday in which he said “a 14-year-old could have hacked Podesta,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, John Podesta. Trump also tweeted support for Assange’s comment that the media is “dishonest.”
Assange’s first claim may be narrowly accurate — Russia’s intelligence services used middlemen to deliver the purloined files, said senior U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. But U.S. spy agencies are in full agreement that Russia directed the hacking and orchestrated email dumps to WikiLeaks to help Trump win — a finding at the heart of a classified assessment completed this week.
Trump’s online endorsement of Assange is his latest insult to the U.S. intelligence community and is likely to intensify the antagonism between the president-elect and U.S. spy agencies. He has repeatedly disparaged their work and skipped most of the daily briefings prepared for a future White House occupant.
CIA veterans said the level of open hostility is extraordinary. “I can’t think of any transition during my career as seemingly fraught as this one,” said John Rizzo, the CIA’s former acting general counsel.[...]
The bipartisan heads of the Senate’s Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Intelligence committees met Wednesday to coordinate how to conduct the Russian-hacking investigation over the next weeks and months. After the meeting, Democrats expressed hope that Trump’s attacks on the intelligence community would not complicate their efforts.
“The most important role of the intelligence community is to speak truth to power,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), lead Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, noting that Trump’s “rather dismissive attitude of the intelligence community” concerns him. “There is broad-based bipartisan concern that we’ve got to do this investigation in an appropriate manner as quickly as possible,” Warner added.
Joseph Goldman arrested for child sexual abuse, charged with rape, perverted practice, assault
Baltimore Man Facing Federal Charges for Illegal Possession of Guns and Silencer
Joseph Goldman, age 35, of Baltimore has been charged by federal criminal complaint for possessing unregistered firearms and for making a firearm. Goldman had an initial appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. DiGirolamo in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, and was ordered to be detained pending a detention hearing scheduled for January 3, 2017, at 10:30 a.m.[...]
According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, on December 19, 2016, Baltimore City Police Department, Criminal Investigation Division Child Abuse Unit executed a search warrant at Goldman’s home as part of an investigation into possible sexual abuse of a minor. Goldman is facing state charges in connection with that investigation. During the search law enforcement discovered a cache of suspected illegal firearms and contacted ATF for assistance.
The following firearms were recovered from Goldman’s residence and seized by law enforcement: from behind the couch in the first floor living room, a 556 short barrel AR-15 long gun with a silver 6.5 inch silencer attached; from Goldman’s bedroom, a 12 gauge short barrel shotgun and two semi-automatic pistols; and 20 rounds of ammunition, a machine vice, miscellaneous gun parts and tools. Law enforcement determined that the AR-15, short barrel shotgun and silencer are firearms that are required to be registered under the law, but were not.
If convicted, Goldman faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for possession of unregistered firearms, and for illegally making a firearm. [...]
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Fox Baltimore
Baltimore City Police arrested a 35-year-old suspect for child sexual abuse, rape, perverted practice and more on Monday morning at his Northwest Baltimore home.
Around 8:15 a.m. detectives arrested Joseph Goldman at his house on Taney Rd. by Wallis Ave. Officers recovered suspected marijuana, two handguns, one shotgun with an altered barrel, one rifle and a homemade silencer.
Goldman was taken to Central Booking and was charged with first and second-degree rape, second, third and fourth-degree sex offense, first and second-degree assault, perverted practice and related charges. An investigation into the guns will continue.[...]
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Tznius - Halacha versus Values and pseudo-Halacha
update see here http://woland.ph.biu.ac.il/?
I am working on a future post showing that the area of sexual morality is governed by values which are presented as if they are clear cut halacha. Part of the nature of viewing values as halacha is describing the observance and transgression of these values in extreme and hyperbolic ways. A consequence of this is the obsession over small details and the inability to differentiate small and large transgressions of these values. Also there is the implicit mistaken assumption that there is one right way to do things - as expressed by Rabbi Falk's magnum opus. [see Dr. Benny Brown's article on the subject http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2011/04/halachasizing-of-lashon-harah-mussar.html] and the issue of to'eles http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2014/01/chofetz-chaim-speaking-lashon-harah.html]
The following article captures the phenomenon well. I am not saying that there are no requirements to be modest clearly there should be and there are requirements. Nor am I saying that the standards of modesty are wrong. However I want to focus on the dynamics of observing modesty and eventually compare that to the dynamics of such clearly halachic issues as stealing or keeping Shabbos. Modesty is a value just as avoiding lashon harah.
In both cases we have a contemporary reality of a similar dynamic of focusing on the terrible consequences of violating these values because they are mistakenly viewed as cut and dry halacha - and therefore losing the nuanced sensitive perception that is inherent with a value. A skirt that is a little short is viewed as adultery. A concern for sexual pleasure with one's wife is regarded as adultery.
Perhaps the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt fiasco promoting adultery is being tolerated because of this distortion of realty. Revealing the truth and thus embarrassing the gedolim responsible has been described as worse than adultery. As the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisroel Rav Weinberg told me - with this type of description - words lose all meaning. Or put another ways - words can mean anything you are told they are supposed to mean.
Welcome to a culture that no one outside will ever understand—that of the yeshiva girl. It’s an insular, narrow space, where the outside world is demonized en masse; where religion becomes a competition in which everything is tallied up, right against wrong, and every additional stringency that is taken on instantly earns communal admiration. (One of my few relatively modern teachers in high school dubbed this “Orthodox Compulsive Disorder.”)
When choosing to be Orthodox, I sought authenticity and reason, passionate spirituality, closeness with God and with history. I love my religion, traditions, law, community, the small politics, the debates over the Shabbat table about the heights of the mechitzah in shul. But the widespread neuroticism, the vehement zeal: This is something new. This isn’t the brand of Orthodoxy that I embraced and emulated growing up, and it’s not the religion for which my parents defied our Russian family’s avowed secularism.
I don’t want to be that girl: the aspiring writer who has broken free of the tightly knit Orthodox community or school system and then proceeds to write about her love-hate relationship with said background. Because the truth is, I’m not that girl who’s broken away. I pray daily, recite benedictions before and after food, study Torah (but not Talmud). I still feel uncomfortable reading Aramaic texts traditionally limited to men. Friday afternoons find me running around the house, covering bathroom lights with special Shabbat covers, choosing tablecloths, filling the hot-water urn. And if it matters, which I suppose it does these days, I dress the part, too, despite being taught otherwise by secular grandparents: I wear modest skirts that reach my knees, sleeves that cover my elbows, and I refrain from any physical contact with males.
But I also wear stilettos. I also study Tennyson, Nabokov, and Joyce; I read the New York Times avidly, attend film screenings and art galleries. In the past few years, after leaving the comforts of my high school, where everything had been carefully dictated and prescribed, I’ve been trying to balance Torah u-Madda, religious studies with science or secular studies.
So much so have I entered the world of Torah u-Madda that I’d almost completely forgotten about the world I left behind. It took a conversation about hosiery to remind me why I am where I am today.
My friend’s query about that prospective bride’s tights floods my mind, for a half-second, with memories of the all-girls Orthodox high school we attended together. Kind teachers encouraging us to understand that our long sleeves might be a bit too tight. Running past teachers down the stairwell before they noticed that I wasn’t wearing tights in my ballerina flats. While my friend had gone on to seminary in Israel and chosen to be more stringent, I had chosen to go to Yeshiva University, bastion of modern Orthodoxy. To the outsider, the two seem indiscernibly similar, but to the insider in the Orthodox Jewish community, the two worlds couldn’t be more different.
My younger sisters, who still attend that all-girls high school, have been alluding to problems with particular teachers in vague text messages and sighing phone calls. When I came home one weekend, we went to a local coffee shop to discuss their issues in depth. One sister began to cry as told me how her rabbi had told the class that one who transgresses the boundaries of forbidden physical contact, even in the most casual and unaffectionate of manners, a mere handshake, is considered adulterous and thus is deserving of death, according to biblical law. “That just makes me want to go to the Gap and buy a pair of skinny jeans,” she told me, pulling her denim skirt to cover her knees as she sat down.
Another teacher announced proudly that the walls of her house have never seen her hair, just like the righteous mothers of the Talmud. “I sleep with my head covered, girls. Always.”
Yet another teacher brought in an article from the ultra-Orthodox magazine Mishpacha. The story followed a Jew in 1950s Soviet Russia who expressed an interest in studying Judaism but never did so because of the danger involved. The teacher explained: “Girls, what do we learn from this? That this man clearly sinned! One should always follow through with one’s intentions!”
My sister tried to argue; as the daughter of Soviet immigrants, she grew up with an understanding of what it meant to be Jewish in the USSR. “He was risking his life—” my sister began. The teacher dismissed her: “Yes, but one must risk one’s life for the sake of Torah.” [...]
Looking back, I wondered at the hold this education and lifestyle had over me, the fearful guilt with which everything had been infused. The second I had secretly questioned a stringency or attitude, I would rush to hush my doubts. This is your evil inclination speaking. They are clearly right, they are clearly holier, you know nothing because your family isn’t religious.
It disturbs me that a shred of this irrational guilt still remains, no matter how modern and progressive I claim to be.
It plagued me last summer in Israel. My first day in Jerusalem, I stepped out of the Western Wall plaza, half-dizzy from elation, and was immediately approached by an old, pious-looking woman. She was shaking her finger, screeching, “Erva!” and pointing to my hair, which was partially covered with a scarf. “Nakedness! How dare you not dress as a daughter of Israel, in the holiest of places? Where is the respect? How dare you not respect your husband, and the holiness of this place?” I was at such a loss for words that I didn’t know how to explain that I’m not even married, I’m not required to cover my hair—and I wondered why I’ve grown defensive. Why did I feel a need to explain myself to this woman? Where was the respect from her end?
There were other moments. Like being shoved into the back of a bus leaving from the Kotel on Saturday night. Women to the back! Young men (boys! children!) hooted and sneered into megaphones by the bus stop that there ought to be a separation of seating. And at first, I accepted it, without thought—of course, this is where a woman belongs.
Even during a Shabbat spent in a Jerusalem suburb with a Chardal (Zionist ultra-Orthodox) family. In front of her guests, my hostess scolded her 16-year-old daughter, “I see your collarbone, Leah. If you wear that shirt one more time, I swear I’ll take it away from you.” The hostess then turned to me, glanced at my coincidentally floor-length skirt, and commented, “You see Avital’s skirt? Girls, you should wear something like that. It’s so tznius.”
I wish I could have shown her the shorter and tighter pencil skirts that I left behind in my closet. Instead I quipped, “Yes, have you seen the Ramat Bet Shemesh women? They’ve taken to wearing burqas. Now, those are really tznius.”
My sarcasm went undetected. “Yes, indeed,” the hostess said, taking her glasses off with a sigh. “Those women are so modest. We can’t judge them, they’re on a much higher level than we are.”
It was just like the world of my high-school days, a world where so much is fueled by guilt—but also by exhibitionism, where it’s fashionable to publicize one’s piety, determined by the denier count of one’s stockings and the looseness of one’s sweater. Mention a restaurant you ate at yesterday, and the girl sitting next to you might raise her eyebrows and say, “Really? You eat there? Because I’m not sure about that kashrus certification. It’s not so reliable.” Your classmate might come into school one day, holding a tube of sewing glue, and whisper in your ear, “It’s for the slit in the back of your skirt. I can see the back of your knee.”
So much, it seemed, depended on covering ourselves—and in some circles, it still does. One young woman recently apologized to me that her husband doesn’t know any modern Orthodox young men to introduce me to, and that perhaps if I wore tights it would be a different situation. Soon afterward, I found out that she’s having an extramarital affair with a yeshiva student and is pregnant with his child. “Well,” I thought, “at least she wears tights.”
Back in high school, when we girls would ask our teachers for the source of the laws of modesty, the classic answer was to turn to Micah 6:8. Yet now it dawns on me that the same text has been misread, poorly taught. When Micah enjoins Israel to “do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk modestly with thy God,” his final verb is to walk with God. Modestly is simply the adverb.
He essentially is asking that our piety, our walks with God, be done modestly—he’s not asking us to hide our women. Nor to confine them to specific streets, nor to the back of the bus.
Perhaps, rather, he is asking us to keep our piety modest. No one needs to know how many pages of Talmud you’ve learned today, what kosher certification you don’t trust, how intensely you sway during prayer—or how thick your tights are.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Monday, January 2, 2017
Trump’s never-ending quest for adoration
President-elect Donald Trump is so obsessed with reaffirming his own victory that he seems bent on ignoring a real national security threat and making common cause with a foe of the United States against our own intelligence community and the consensus of the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. His dutiful mouthpiece Sean Spicer demonstrated on Sunday just how irrational the Trump team will become when Trump’s frail ego is involved:
KARL: But what’s the bottom line. Just a yes or no answer. Does President Trump, President-elect Trump, now accept the fact that Russia was behind the DNC hack?
SPICER: Well I think that there’s a report that came out the other day, that got issued on the 29th, that the intelligence community has put out, and while the media played it up as this report about the hacking, what it actually is, if you look through it, and its available online, is a series of recommendations that should be taken, like changing passwords, changing administrative rights.
What it shows is that by all measures the Democratic National Committee had a very lax IT support. Now hacking is wrong by any standards. No one supports anyone hacking into any other entity, legal, domestically, or foreign, or anyone interfering with anything, but the fact of the matter is, what this report really does show is that there’s a need for them to go back in and look at their, what they’re doing IT wise to protect their system.
KARL: Absolutely, but you do see, I have the report too, you do see the headline, Russian malicious cyber activity. It makes it clear, and it names Russia, gives the IP addresses…
SPICER: And then it says, actions take, back up the system. Staff training…
(CROSSTALK)
KARL: Absolutely. But does he accept that Russia was behind this?
SPICER: Well I think, like I said, he has to have the briefing first from the intelligence community next week.
KARL: So he’s still not there yet?
SPICER: It’s not a question of not there yet, Jonathan, it’s a question of getting the information. Everyone in the media wants to jump forward and make a conclusion based off other sourced information, you know anonymous sources that are coming out of the intelligence community, he’s going to do this right.
KARL: This is no longer anonymous, this is
SPICER: It is…
KARL: This is a public statement.
SPICER: What this says is that the DNC had a problem with their IT security and people tried to hack it and they need to do a better job of protecting it…
KARL: The Russians succeeding in hacking… SPICER: But the fact of the matter is, but we’re having part of a conversation. Why aren’t we talking about the influence, other influences on the election? Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time? That’s a pretty valid attempt to influence an election. Somebody giving her the debate questions and the answers of an election. No, no, no. It’s not hey. We haven’t, no one’s asking those questions. And the fact is is that everyone wants to talk, make Donald Trump admit to certain things. When are we going to start talking about the other side of this. Which is what did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished in any way? What are we doing to make sure that people don’t get the debate questions ahead of time, because I can tell you this, if my boss at the time, Reince Priebus, had gotten the debate questions, and handed them off, he would have been driven out of this town on a stake, and Donald Trump would have been vilified. No one wants to ask those questions now.
This is about national security and Spicer is talking about Clinton’s campaign. For Trump the two are linked, and anyone pursuing Russian cyberattacks on the United States is attacking him, his victory. This is disturbing to say the least.
There is something more than a little pathetic in reverting to false talking points about Trump “saving” Sprint jobs (that were “saved” before the election) when asked about Trump’s peculiar relationship with Putin:
KARL: Okay. So I want to ask you something, Donald Trump has had a lot to say about Russia over the past couple of weeks.
SPICER: Right.
KARL: In particular about Vladimir Putin. First he praised Putin for sending him a quote very nice letter saying he thought Putin’s thoughts were quote so correct. Then he agreed with Putin’s mocking of Hillary Clinton, saying it was, so true. And now we saw, most recently, praising Putin’s muted response to these new sanctions saying I always knew he was very smart. Sean, you’re a longtime Republican, party of Reagan, is there something a little strange to you to hear the incoming president offering so many words of praise to the Russian…
SPICER: Well let’s look at what happened, right? The United States says were going to impose these sanctions. Expel people, close down sites, et cetera, call out people by name. The Russian government says were going to retaliate in the equal sense. And then Vladimir Putin says, you know what, I’m actually going to wait until Donald Trump goes. That’s actually good for our country.
So the idea is everyone wants to talk about the tweets he sent. But I would actually focus on the action he’s getting. Donald Trump is not president yet and he’s getting action, successes and wins, both abroad and here at home.
Everything he does right now, he gets — he speaks for the head of Sprint, gets 5,000 jobs moved from abroad. And everyone starts to mock him. Oh, those jobs were already announced. They weren’t. The sales jobs have been a previous announce. These jobs were coming from abroad to America.
And instead of trying to mock him or undermine him, it’s time that people started to give him credit for actually getting things done.
Again, for Trump’s team the concern is about Trump being “mocked,” not about threats to the country. Spicer went on to give a convoluted explanation of Trump’s approach to Russia: The reset failed so Trump will do something new. That something new is being even more deferential to Russia? This is akin to President Obama’s mindset with Iran — predecessors failed to get along, so he would have a new relationship. Unfortunately, that new relationship meant never directly confronting Iran and deluding oneself that Iran wanted normal relations with the United States. Put in Trump terms, instead of “losing” to Russia, Trump would concede the match, for the sake of preserving his gigantic and frail ego.[...]
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Seridei Aish: Prohibition of Women Wearing Provocative Modern Fashions
Seridei Aish(Vol II 49:2): Concerning the clothing modern women wear -; as you have described it is definitely prohibited to stare at a women wearing this type of clothing. And even though Avoda Zara (20b) states that it is only prohibited to stare at the colored clothing of a woman if you know who owns them – however that is applicable only to clothing which is hanging on a wall. However if you stare at the woman herself who is wearing these clothes then it is definitely prohibited even if you don’t know her. And Avoda Zara (20a) already stated that one should not stare at a beautiful women even if she is unmarried. Despite the fact that Shulchan Aruch (E.H. 21) only states that it is prohibited for a man to stare at a woman [and says nothing about prohibiting a woman to dress a certain way]. [However the gemora describes the punishment of women who behave in a sexually provocative manner]
Shabbos (62b) states, Raba son of R. Ilai lectured: What is meant by, Moreover the Lord said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty? That means that they walked with haughty bearing. And walk with outstretched necks — they walked heel by toe. And wanton [mesakrothh] eyes: they filled their eyes with stibium and beckoned. Walking and mincing: they walked, a tall woman by the side of a short one. And making a tinkling [te'akasnah] with their feet: R. Isaac of the School of R. Ammi said: This teaches that they placed myrrh and balsam in their shoes and walked through the market-places of Jerusalem , and on coming near to the young men of Israel, they kicked their feet and spurted it on them, thus instilling them with passionate desire like with serpent's poison. And what is their punishment? — As Rabbah b. ‘Ulla lectured: And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices [bosem] there shall be rottenness: the place where they perfumed themselves [mithbasmoth] shall be decaying sores. And instead of a girdle a rope [nikpeh]: the place where they were girded with a girdle shall become full of bruises [nekafim]. And instead of well-set hair baldness: the place where they adorned themselves shall be filled with bald patches. And instead of a stomacher [pethigil] a girding of sackcloth: the openings that lead to [sensual] joy shall be for a girding of sackcloth. Branding [ki] instead of beauty: Said Raba, Thus men say, Ulcers instead of beauty. Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab [wesipah] the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion. R. Jose son of R. Hanina said: This teaches that leprosy broke out in them: here is written wesipah; whilst elsewhere it is written, [This is the law for all manner of plagues of leprosy ...] and for a rising and for a scab [sapahath]. And the Lord will lay bare [ye'areh] their secret parts: Rab and Samuel — one maintained: This means that they were poured out like a cruse; while the other said: Their openings became like a forest. Rab Judah said in Rab's name: The men of Jerusalem were vulgar. One would say to his neighbour, On what did you dine to-day: on well-kneaded bread or on bread that is not well kneaded; on white wine or on dark [i.e., mustard-coloured] wine; on a broad couch or on a narrow couch; with a good companion or with a poor companion? R. Hisda observed: And all these are in reference to immorality.
And the daughter of Rabbi Chaninya ben Tradyon was punished because she walked in a provactive manner.
Avoda Zara (18a): His daughter was consigned to a brothel, for R. Johanan related that once that daughter of his was walking in front of some great men of Rome who remarked, ‘How beautiful are the steps of this maiden!’ Whereupon she took particular care of her step. Which confirms the following words of R. Simeon b. Lakish: What is the meaning of the verse, The iniquity of my heel compasseth me about?5 — Sins which one treads under heel6 in this world compass him about on the Day of Judgment.)
So concerning the prohibition [of wearing such clothing] there is absolutely no question. And all religious and moral people are greatly bothered by this. And concerning the battle against offensive fashions amongst Jewish women – this is a major issue. In practice it is important to produce the best moral results while at the same time not to arouse conflict and to distance women from shuls.
Former Chief Rabbi Metzger going to jail in NIS 10m. fraud case
Former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger has reportedly reached a plea agreement with state prosecutors over a slew of corruption and bribery charges involving some NIS 10 million ($2.5 million).
Metzger will plead guilty to fraud, theft, conspiracy, breach of trust, money laundering, tax offenses and accepting bribes, in exchange for a reduced jail sentence, Channel 2 reported Wednesday.
The plea deal was offered after months of negotiations between Metzger’s attorneys and senior officials in the State Attorney’s Office, the report said.
The report did not provide details on the length of the prison sentence the former chief rabbi would receive under the agreement.
Last year, the Jerusalem District Court charged Metzger with accepting some NIS 10 million ($2.58 million) in bribes. He is accused of keeping NIS 7 million ($1.8 million) for himself. [...]
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Obama's shameful farewell message to Israel
Secretary of State John Kerry’s rebuke of the Israeli government on Wednesday set off a wave of criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Republicans denounced what they said was the Obama administration’s harsh treatment of a steadfast ally and Democrats signaled that they were uneasy with Mr. Kerry’s pressure on Israel, even as they praised the effort to promote Middle East peace.
In Europe, however, Mr. Kerry’s speech was greeted warmly, with officials calling it a courageous and thoughtful effort to salvage the idea of a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. Still, across the Arab world, his harsh words for Israel were met with a collective shrug, coming at the end of eight years of Obama administration policies that left many in the Middle East frustrated.
On Capitol Hill, hours after Mr. Kerry used what may be his last major address to bluntly inform the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that “friends need to tell each other the hard truths,” he received a reminder of the deep support Israel enjoys in an otherwise sharply divided Congress.
“While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the U.N., has emboldened extremists on both sides,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate Democratic leader.
A bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, upset with President Obama’s decision last week to allow the passage of a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s construction of settlements in disputed territory, made clear that they were looking past the departing administration.
Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he shared Mr. Kerry’s concerns “with the lack of forward progress on a two-state solution.” But Mr. Cardin also said he was unhappy that Mr. Obama had not vetoed the United Nations resolution, instead abstaining from the vote. He pledged to “explore congressional action that can mitigate the negative implications” of it.
The most ardent supporters of Israel in Congress seemed just as liberated as Mr. Kerry was to let loose.
“Secretary Kerry’s speech today was at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “At worst, it was another dangerous outburst that will further Israel’s diplomatic isolation and embolden its enemies.”
Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Mr. Kerry’s speech “gratuitous” and “wrong.” “There doesn’t seem any purpose to this other than to embarrass Israel,” Mr. Engel said. “It just pained me to watch it.”
Democratic members of Congress who are closer to Mr. Kerry, a former senator, and the Obama administration were more measured. Many had been angered by Mr. Netanyahu’s decision last year to accept an invitation from the Republican-led House to deliver a speech in the Capitol, where he confronted the president over the Iran nuclear accord.
Yet even these Democrats — eyeing the arrival of a Republican administration-in-waiting that has vowed strong support for Israel — left little doubt that they were parting ways with Mr. Obama on the substance of the United Nations resolution. [...]
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
For Fact-Checking Website Snopes, a Bigger Role in dealing with Fake News
The last line of defense against the torrent of half-truths, untruths and outright fakery that make up so much of the modern internet is in a downscale strip mall near the beach.
Snopes, the fact-checking website, does not have an office designed to impress, or even be noticed. A big sign outside still bears the name of the previous tenant, a maker of underwater headphones. Inside there’s nothing much — a bunch of improvised desks, a table tennis table, cartons of Popchips and cases of Dr Pepper. It looks like a dot-com on the way to nowhere.
Appearances deceive. This is where the muddled masses come by the virtual millions to establish just what the heck is really going on in a world turned upside down.
Did Donald J. Trump say on Twitter that he planned to arrest the “Saturday Night Live” star Alec Baldwin for sedition? Has Hillary Clinton quietly filed for divorce? Was Mr. Trump giving Kanye West a cabinet position? And was Alan Thicke, the star of “Growing Pains,” really dead?
“Rationality seems to have fallen out of vogue,” said Brooke Binkowski, Snopes’s managing editor. “People don’t know what to believe anymore. Everything is really strange right now.”
That is certainly true at Snopes itself. For 20 years, the site was dedicated to urban legends, like the purported existence of alligators in New York City sewers, and other benign misinformation. But its range and readership increased significantly during a prolonged presidential election campaign in which the facts became a partisan issue and reality itself seemed up for grabs.
One way to chart Snopes’s increasing prominence is by measuring the rise in fake news about the site itself. If you believe the internet, the founder of Snopes, David Mikkelson, has a longer rap sheet than Al Capone. He was supposedly arrested for committing fraud and corruption and running a pit bull ring. In the wake of a deal that Snopes and others made this month to start fact-checking for Facebook, new slurs and allegations poured forth.
The underlying message of these spurious attacks is that the movement to fact-check the internet is a left-wing conspiracy whose real goal is to censor the right, and therefore must be resisted at all costs.
“Smearing people just because you don’t like what they’re saying often works to shut them up,” Ms. Binkowski, 39, said. “But at Snopes you learn to grow a thick skin. I will always push back. At least until someone shows up at my workplace and kills me.”[...]
Just about everyone at Snopes thought things would calm down after the votes were in. “The fake news wasn’t from Trump so much. It was from people who hated Hillary Clinton,” Ms. Binkowski said. “Once the election was over we figured it would go away.”[...]
But the role of fake news and misinformation in Mr. Trump’s surprise win quickly reached a fever pitch, prompting questions about the extent to which Facebook, where many of these bogus stories were shared, had influenced the election. Reluctantly, the social media giant was forced to act.
The plan is for Facebook to send questionable links to a coalition of fact-checking sites, including Snopes. If the links are found to be dubious, Facebook will alert users by marking stories with a “disputed” designation.[...]
“It used to be that if you got too far from the mainstream, you were shunned for being a little nutty,” she said. “Now there is so much nutty going around that it’s socially acceptable to embrace wild accusations. No one is embarrassed by anything anymore.”
The remedy, she and Ms. Binkowski feel, is more traditional journalism.
“People aren’t necessarily getting the media literacy they need, so they’re just kind of panicking,” Ms. LaCapria said.[...]
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Fainy Sukenik - A formerly abused ultra-Orthodox woman has started a support network to women seeking divorce
“Every culture has its own fairy tales,” she says. “Haredim have their own, too.”[...]
“Our fairy tales promised me a life that would be simple, beautiful,” she continues, flicking the bangs of her well-coiffed wig away from her face. “One marries young, the wife works while the husband learns Torah, children are born right away, and together they build a ‘Torah home’ with not a single want or flaw.” She pauses.
“So I trusted them. I married at 22, had three children right away, but things were not working out for us ... I heard there were other women whose husbands beat them, but who stayed anyway. But I decided I’m not going to be that woman ... I picked up the phone and called the police. That was the beginning of the end.”
Sukenik was then working at a religious seminary for women in Haifa, a fresh-eyed teacher and mentor for young women, many of whom were engaged to marry. With the news of her separation from her husband spreading, voices began to murmur: How could a woman who calls the police on her husband teach the young girls, serve as an example for the next generation of wives and mothers? How can we let her stay here?
“They wanted to fire me,” Sukenik tells me. “They forgot that Sarah Schenirer, the founder of Bais Yaakov [a network of schools for young religious women, founded a century ago], was divorced, too. Later, when I had more courage, I said to one of the teachers that Sarah Schenirer would be rolling in her grave if she heard them. You’re telling me that a divorced woman cannot teach in Bais Yaakov? How does that make sense?”
Letters were sent to the principal by parents concerned about her questionable influence on their daughters, but Sukenik was able to keep her job. “I told them, ‘I am exactly the kind of woman you need as an example for the girls.’ And I stayed. I would cry all night, but wake up in the morning, force myself to smile, to dress well.”
The change began in the quiet of solitary evenings at home, during the two years of separation and another year of the divorce process. With three small children asleep, Sukenik would spend hours reading divorce advice and online forums, looking for people going through similar experiences. She soon became active on the Facebook page “Haredim Naim L’hakir” (Ultra-Orthodox, Pleased to Meet You) and started blogging for the women’s online magazine Saloona under the name “Separated Haredia.”
“One should never have to deal with this alone, and in our community, no one speaks of divorce,” Sukenik explains. “No one knows how to deal with it. Tragedy, yes, death, yes, but not this. No one speaks with you about important things, no one asks if you need help, people don’t want to even get close to you, as if it’s a contagious disease. You become a pariah, people stop acknowledging you, they stop saying hello in the street. No one asked me, ‘Where are you on Shabbat?’ Now, I understand them, I forgive them. People are afraid.”[...]
Several times she repeats the same familiar mantra: “I was naive, naive, I was so naive.” Sukenik smiles sadly. “I was a young girl, and I truly believed in a perfect Torah world: Torah, justice, straightforwardness, judges! I didn’t realize what I was dealing with ... until all this evil came upon me. I began to understand the real corrupt workings of the beit din [religious court], and all I could think was: Where is the religion? It was a crisis for me: I believe in God, I believe in Torah, but when one sees people acting in an opposite manner, one loses faith.”
The waitress brings out coffee and tiramisu, and places it timidly on our table; Sukenik continues, impassioned: “And I couldn’t speak to anyone, to friends, to my parents – what would I tell them about? About the judges, the courthouse, the rabbis, the humiliations I’m enduring? Why make them suffer more? ” Her voice grows suddenly soft: “What would I tell them: ‘Abba, Ima, this world is corrupt’?”[...]
Based on polls and meetings with other divorcees, Sukenik began to build a network that would offer everything a religious woman needs when going through a divorce: assistance from lawyers, psychologists, family counselors, rabbinic advisors and lobbyists, social workers, as well as a growing, supportive community of other Orthodox divorcees and recently separated women. [...]
With the assistance of the Orthodox-oriented B'Asher Telchi organization, supported by some leading figures in that community and run by religious women, Sukenik hopes a woman will worry less about the stigma that comes with seeking help. She has been working tirelessly to secure rabbinic support for her project. [...]
=========================================
Monday, December 26, 2016
Ruchie Freier - First Hasidic woman judge sworn in
On Thursday, Rachel “Ruchie” Freier took the oath of office as she became a Civil Court judge in Kings County’s 5th judicial district. Freier was elected last September and her purview encompasses Borough Park and other sections of Brooklyn including Bensonhurst and Coney Island. Her official term begins in January and extends through 2027.
While some may be have been surprised to see a Hasidic woman ascend the bench, those familiar with the 51-year-old Freier’s record of trailblazing achievements were not. The mother of six (and grandmother) earned a law degree from Brooklyn Law School while raising her family. She practiced law in Brooklyn and Monroe, New York and also served on the community board in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
Freier also founded two organizations that have made an impact on her local Hasidic community. The first is B’Derech, a secular academic program that helps ultra-Orthodox men educated previously only in yeshivas gain a high school equivalency diplomacy so they can go on to higher learning or seek gainful employment.
The second in Ezras Nashim, an emergency medical technician program exclusively for women that meets the needs of religious women in the community. Freier herself reportedly still remains on call for Ezras Nashim.
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Trump is doing that which he condemned HIllary Clinton for doing
Donald Trump spent the past two years attacking rival Hillary Clinton as crooked, corrupt, and weak.
But some of those attacks seem to have already slipped into the history books.
From installing Wall Street executives in his Cabinet to avoiding news conferences, the president-elect is adopting some of the same behavior for which he criticized Clinton during their fiery presidential campaign.
Here’s a look at what Trump said then — and what he’s doing now:
GOLDMAN SACHS
Then: “I know the guys at Goldman Sachs,” Trump said at a South Carolina rally in February, when he was locked in a fierce primary battle with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.”
Now: A number of former employees of the Wall Street bank will pay a key role in crafting Trump’s economic policy. He’s tapped Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn to lead the White House National Economic Council. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary nominee, spent 17 years working at Goldman Sachs and Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, started his career as an investment banker at the firm.
Trump is following in a long political tradition, though one he derided on the campaign trail: If Cohn accepts the nomination, he’ll be the third Goldman executive to run the NEC.
BIG DONORS
Then: “Crooked Hillary. Look, can you imagine another four years of the Clintons? Seriously. It’s time to move on. And she’s totally controlled by Wall Street and all these people that gave her millions,” Trump said at a May rally in Lynden, Washington.
Now: Trump has stocked his Cabinet with six top donors — far more than any recent White House. “I want people that made a fortune. Because now they’re negotiating with you, OK?” Trump said, in a December 9 speech in Des Moines.
The biggest giver? Incoming small business administrator Linda McMahon gave $7.5 million to a super PAC backing Trump, more than a third of the money collected by the political action committee.
NEWS CONFERENCES
Then: “She doesn’t do news conferences, because she can’t,” Trump said at an August rally in Ashburn, Virginia. “She’s so dishonest she doesn’t want people peppering her with questions.”
Now: Trump opened his last news conference on July 27, saying: “You know, I put myself through your news conferences often, not that it’s fun.”
He hasn’t held once since.[...]
FAMILY TIES:
Then: “It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office. They sold access and specific actions by and really for I guess the making of large amounts of money,” Trump said at an August rally in Austin.
Now: While Trump has promised to separate himself from his businesses, there is plenty of overlap between his enterprises and his immediate family. His companies will be run by his sons, Donald Jr and Eric. And his daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have joined Trump at a number of meetings with world leaders of countries where the family has financial interests.
In a financial disclosure he was required to file during the campaign, Trump listed stakes in about 500 companies in at least 25 countries.
Ivanka, in particular, has been caught making early efforts to leverage her father’s new position into profits. After an interview with the family appeared on “60 Minutes,” her jewelry company, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, blasted out an email promoting the $10,800 gold bangle bracelet that she had worn during the appearance. The company later said they were “proactively discussing new policies and procedures.”
Ivanka is also auctioning off a private coffee meeting with her to benefit her brother’s foundation. The meeting is valued at $50,000, with the current top bid coming in at $25,000.[...]
CLINTON INVESTIGATIONS
Then: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor,” Trump said in the October presidential debate.
Now: Since winning office, Trump has said he has no intention of pushing for an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of State or the workings of her family foundation. “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about,” he told the New York Times.
“She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways,” he said. “I’m not looking to hurt them.”
Netanyahu Accuses Obama of Orchestrating U.N. Resolution
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel further escalated his criticism of the departing Obama administration on Sunday, publicly accusing it of having orchestrated the United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement construction.
It was the second consecutive day of rising invective from Mr. Netanyahu over the Friday vote on the resolution, which passed, 14-0, in a strong diplomatic slap at Israel against the background of the long-stalled negotiations for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The resolution asserted that Israel’s settlement construction on territory that the Palestinians claim for their future state was a major obstacle to the peace process and a “flagrant violation under international law.”
The United States refrained from using its veto power, as it has done many times before to shield Israel from such condemnation at the United Nations.
Israeli officials had been saying that the United States helped in the planning of the vote, an accusation that Obama administration officials have denied. But on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu, whose relations with President Obama have never been warm, made that accusation publicly, and in detail.
“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
Referring to the American secretary of state, Mr. Netanyahu added, “As I told John Kerry on Thursday, friends don’t take friends to the Security Council,” and he said he was looking forward to working with the new administration of Donald J. Trump when it takes office next month.
Mr. Trump, who has said he would be far more supportive of Israel, had urged the Obama administration to veto the Security Council resolution and he joined in the Israeli anger over the American abstention.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned ambassadors of countries that voted in favor of the resolution for personal meetings with ministry officials in Jerusalem, despite the Christmas Day holiday that those countries celebrate.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Two Muslim Americans Were Removed From Delta Flight for Speaking Arabic
Two Muslim American YouTube stars who were returning home to New York after a world tour said they were removed from a Delta Air Lines flight in London on Wednesday after other passengers expressed discomfort with their presence on the plane.
Adam Saleh, 23, a filmmaker from Manhattan, and his friend Slim Albaher, 22, from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, said they had been asked by the captain to leave their flight at Heathrow Airport after Mr. Saleh spoke in Arabic to his mother by phone, and he and Mr. Albaher followed up by speaking to each other in Arabic, causing alarm among British passengers on the flight.
The news was met on social media with anger at the airline industry, but also skepticism, though passengers who were on the plane when it landed in New York corroborated the men’s story. Mr. Saleh, who has more than two million subscribers on YouTube, has a history of perpetuating video hoaxes and pranks, some of them aimed at exposing stereotypes about Muslims. In his latest YouTube video, posted this month, he pretended to smuggle himself onto a plane in a suitcase. [...]
Delta said in a statement on Wednesday evening that, based on information collected so far, the two customers removed from the flight “sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behavior, including shouting.”
“What is paramount to Delta is the safety and comfort of our passengers and employees,” the airline said. “It is clear these individuals sought to violate that priority.”
Earlier in the day, Delta said that it was taking allegations of discrimination “very seriously.”
Camilla Goodman, a spokeswoman for London’s Metropolitan Police, confirmed that two passengers had been removed from the flight and that they “didn’t do anything lawfully wrong.” They were not arrested, she said. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher later boarded a Virgin flight to New York.[...]
Mr. Saleh said he had just spoken to his mother on the phone, in Arabic, to tell her when his flight would land. After the call, he and Mr. Albaher continued to speak briefly in Arabic until they were interrupted by a woman in front of them, who asked them to speak English because they were making her uncomfortable.
They did not respond aggressively, Mr. Saleh said, but told her that they were speaking Arabic and asked whether she had ever heard another language. Then, Mr. Saleh said, a man with a British accent who appeared to be traveling with the woman swore at them and said they should be “chucked” off the plane.
“At this point, me and Slim looked at each other,” Mr. Saleh said in the interview. “We didn’t know what to do. We felt like we were terrorists.”
The situation escalated, Mr. Saleh said, and other passengers joined in asking that Mr. Saleh and Mr. Albaher be kicked off the plane. Some of them mentioned Monday’s terrorist attack in Berlin, he said.
After the disturbance continued for what Mr. Saleh said was about seven minutes, the captain was summoned, and he asked that the two men leave the plane with their baggage.
At that point, Mr. Saleh started filming with his phone. He later shared the video, and others from the airport, on Twitter, where he has more than 250,000 followers.
Chris Ashford, 47, who was aboard the plane after a layover in London, said he believed that the woman had “overreacted.”
“She heard somebody speaking in Arabic and assumed the worst,” he said.
He added that while he thought Delta had acted in the interest of some of its passengers, “I do think it was heavy-handed, kicking the guy off the plane and then removing his bags.”[...]
In April, a college student was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California when he was heard speaking Arabic, a week after a Muslim woman was asked to leave another Southwest flight when she sought to switch seats. In May, an Italian professor was removed from an American Airlines flight because another passenger was alarmed by his handwritten notes, which were in fact math equations.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Jerusalem - Top Israeli Rabbinical Court Allows Man To Marry Second Wife
A decision by the Supreme Rabbinical Court to allow a man to marry a second wife because his first wife refused to accept a divorce has evoked consternation from women’s rights groups due to what they describe as the unequal status of men and women facing divorce refusal.
A case published this week by the Rabbinical Courts Administration involved a married couple whose relationship broke down for a number of reasons, including possible infidelity on behalf of the wife.
In 2005, the husband moved out of their marital home, and in 2008 the regional rabbinical court in Haifa issued a ruling of “obligatory divorce,” essentially instructing a partner, in this case the woman, to agree to the divorce.
The court also permitted the husband to give the money owed to the woman under the terms of their marriage contract to a third party, which would then release him of financial obligations to the woman such as child sustenance and living payments.
The woman appealed to the Supreme Rabbinical Court against the ruling regarding the husband’s monetary obligations, but the court rejected the appeal. She then filed a suit for reconciliation with her husband to the regional court, which she also lost, as well as a subsequent appeal of that decision to the Supreme Rabbinical Court.
Due to the lengthy and ongoing legal proceedings over the termination of the marriage, the husband filed a suit with the Haifa Rabbinical Court for what is known as the Dispensation of 100 Rabbis.
Under Jewish law, men may have more than one wife, although the practice was banned for Ashkenazi Jews by a decree of Rabbi Gershom Ben Judah in the 11th century. However, a man may be given dispensation from this decree in certain circumstances if he cannot obtain consent from his wife for a divorce, a measure which is known as the Dispensation of 100 Rabbis.
In 2014, the Haifa Rabbinical Court granted the husband’s request, after which his wife appealed to the Supreme Rabbinical Court.
In June of this year, the court rejected her appeal and permitted the husband to marry another woman if he so wished. The ruling was published earlier this week.[...]
Sunday, December 18, 2016
David Harrison - Jerusalem rabbi indicted on dozens of rape counts
David Harrison - a Jerusalem rabbi was indicted by the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office Sunday on dozens of counts of rape, sodomy, molestation, assault and intimidation, all allegedly committed while he served as a rabbi in an all girls seminary.
The rabbi was arrested after the victim, now 20, said that he had raped her while she was a 9th grade student at the school where the rabbi worked.
According to the indictment, two-to-four times a week, the defendant would call the girl into a faculty lounge or the seminary bomb shelter. Sometimes, the rabbi told the girl a certain time to meet him in the lounge or shelter, and she would comply out of fear of retribution. Once alone and with the room locked, the rabbi is accused of “indecent acts, sodomy and rape.”
The rabbi reportedly told the girl that what was happening was a “secret between them,” and that it was okay because he was a rabbi, the indictment said.
After the first alleged rape, the rabbi told the girl if she told anyone what happened, he would hurt her and tell everyone she was a prostitute.
[...]
In reality - how to deal with the consensus view of women as subordinate?
I have presented a number of posts regarding the Torah attitude towards women - in particular in marriage - where they are clearly described as being subordinate to their husbands. As a consequence I have attacked by some for being a nut or intellectual dishonesty - though no one has presented the "true" Torah view that contradicts what I have presented and no one has explained why an objective scholarly approach is a sign of being a nut. Clearly some people want their Judaism sanitized and subordinate to their own views i.e, they want to create G-d in their own image.
I have been criticized by those who claim that it is inappropriate or even a chilul haShem for daring to mention what the consensus of our traditional mainstream sources about women. Meaning that while they agree that my posts are accurately presenting the Torah view - it is best if people are ignorant of how our rabbis tell us how the Torah views women and marriage. That is a rather bizarre claim. On the one hand we are to dedicate our lives to learning about and living according to what rabbis tell us is G-d's will - but at the same time we are not supposed to learn what the Torah says about certain topics because that is a chilul HaShem?! How can G-d's will be a chilul HaShem?
On the other hand it is also accurately claimed that women and society are different today and that therefore they need to be treated differently the classic sources say. This is explained either that the Torah is outdate - chas v'shalom or that there are kabbalistic ideas which indicate as we come into Messianic times i.e., after 1740 - that women's role will come to be equal and perhaps superior to that of men. The only problem is that these kabbalistic views are minority opinions which are not very clear and have no basis in traditional sources and seemed to be used as a fig leave to cover the embarrassing consensus views.
I would like to start a serious discussion about how to reconcile the traditional views - which clearly are not acceptable to many if not most frum women and men - but which at the same time clearly represent the traditional consensus views of our greatest rabbis throughout history. Does this mean that the only solution is for people to submit themselves to the traditional view? Or as Rav Solveitchik put it, "we sacrificed out intellects on Mt. Sinai?" I think that there are alternatives.
I would appreciate if some people can contain their hysteric comments. I am concerned with reality - the reality of Torah and the reality of modern men and women. Any reconciliation has to be within the framework of traditional halachic reasoning and principles. This is a discussion for mature adults who are committed to the Torah and halacha. I am not interested in a solution which in essence says to abandon Yiddishkeit. And it really doesn't help in arriving at an answer by shooting at me - I am simply the messenger[to be continued]
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