Response to Rabbi Wallerstein's Agudah convention speech

Jewish Press By: Bezalel Perlman  [Rabbi Wallerstein's speech Video]

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/does-it-bother-you-when-your-kid-comes-home-feeling-like-junk/2013/11/20/0/?print

 

The talk of the town is how direct Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein was when talking at the Agudah convention about the effect our educational system is having on our children. For a long time now, I’ve been having an issue with trying to recognize where the Torah/Truth is in the way we live as frum Yidden. 

If an outsider first learned the Torah and then did a study on how observant Jews live their lives, he/she would have many questions. There are numerous things that we do that not only don’t fit with Torah values but they are anti Torah values. We have systems set in place that make most of us live beyond our means. We are fiercely protecting an educational system that goes against everything we actually believe in. We put a huge amount of unneeded pressure on ourselves that literally dictates how we live our lives. 

What is sad is that we all know it, we all think about it and it bothers us all. What is sadder is that it is a BIG deal when a Rabbi gets up and actually expresses what we are all thinking. What a strange thing, a phenomenon, that there exists a society that puts so much value on being truthful and emesdik, but at the same time has this vested interest in not only not expressing or talking about an entire educational system that is flawed at its roots, but even protecting it and making our own children suffer through it. It becomes this huge deal when Rabbi Wallerstein actually says something about it. We have to question our sanity and values around this. 

What are we protecting? What are we so scared of? Who are we nervous about not impressing?

 Let me ask you a question. You don’t need to raise your hand, but raise your hand if you really deep down knew what Rabbi Wallerstein was talking about. Raise your hand if these issues have been bothering you all along. Raise your hand if you are worried about your own children’s love for Torah and Yiddishkeit. Raise your hand if you think that our educational system is not giving you any fuzzy comfortable feeling that they will help your children stay on the derech. Raise your hand if you feel like you make your children do things that are absolutely ridiculous in the name of being part of our educational system. Raise your hand if this is not the system you would come up with if you were asked to develop a system from scratch. Raise your hand if you feel bad sending your children off to school. Raise your hand if you hate seeing how much homework your kids come home with and how many tests they have. [...]

Lev Tahor allegedly fled Canada fearing loss of children to welfare authorites

Times of Israel  [Update  BHOL they were stopped and arrested]
 
 Long dogged by accusations of severe child abuse and neglect, the 40 families of insular hassidic group Lev Tahor fled their homes Tuesday in Ste. Agathe, Quebec, fearing imminent removal of the children by Canadian welfare authorities.

According to Oded Twik, an Israeli whose sister and eight children have lived with Lev Tahor for the last eight years, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and police worked through the night Tuesday to get information about the safety of the children. 

About 200 people traveled in three hired buses to Ontario, where they rented a small number of hotel rooms. “The Canadian police have confirmed that the group planned to go to Iran,” said Twik.

Lev Tahor is led by charismatic convicted kidnapper Shlomo Helbrans. The group, mainly native Israelis and their Canadian-born children, lived in the resort town of Ste. Agathe-du-Mont, Quebec. Only five members have legal status in Canada and the children do not hold passports. [...]

Oded Twik has urged the Canadian authorities to remove all 137 children from the community. Dozens of family members and supporters attended a demonstration outside the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv on October 14. Many family members have not communicated with their relatives for eight years.

Adina Bar Shalom and the Aguda Poverty Video

Cross-Currents    by Rav Yitzchok Adlerstein

[...] Twenty-five years ago, a philanthropist handed Rav Ovadiah a blank check to create a modality for haredi women to receive the secular education they needed to earn enough to take their families out of poverty. Her father said, “Not yet,” which she says means that there were not yet enough people to teach the classes in a manner that would not conflict with the Torah concepts with which the young women had been nurtured. Bar-Shalom kept asking about the idea, and thirteen years ago got the green light from her father to create such an institution. At the time, she could identify only about 60 haredim in the entire country who held degrees. 

Today, there are about one thousand students in the Haredi College in Yerushalayim. About two-thirds of them are women, many married with children. (Day care is available on campus.) The men have their own, separate program. Both have access to a variety of specialties, all of them geared to finding jobs in areas that are more lucrative than what is available within haredi society. Programs in more purely academic areas are not unthinkable, said Bar Shalom, as long as they will win the approval of the rabbonim who guide the college. But these are things of the future. At the moment, the thrust of the college is empowering people to become fully employable, and help bring haredim into the general work force, and hopefully easing the friction between the haredi and secular worlds. [...]

Committed as she is to providing real options for haredim to enter the workforce, I was curious to hear about her reaction to the video shown motza’ei Shabbos at the Agudah Convention. Produced by Hamodia, the video showed the effects of poverty in the haredi community upon its children. It is emotionally charged, and appeals for funding to help alleviate the crushing poverty that is taking a toll on the health of young, innocent victims.

The video sparked controversy and backlash in some circles. Some argued that applying band-aids to the situation is ultimately cruel, because it allows the system to limp along, without confronting the real cause of the poverty. People ought not to give in to maudlin sentiment, but to apply pressure severe enough that the community will make the necessary changes.[...]

I asked Adina Bar Shalom what she thought about those calling for tough love. If Americans cover the shortfall caused by the recent draconian cuts in support for families, won’t this impede or slow the very process of change she has worked so hard for? She shook her head. “It won’t. There is no greater happiness than being able to support one’s family. There is a process to make this happen. But we must support families during this process.”

New Reports: 60% of sexual assault victims are minors

YNet   New reports reveal horrendous image of sexual abuse, domestic violence in Israel. Some 200,000 domestically abused women live in terror; only fifth of sexual assaults lead to police report

More than 60% of those who turn to sexual assault assistance centers are minors; some 200,000 women suffer domestic abuse to which some 600,000 children are witnesses, new reports published Wednesday claim.

The two reports, the first penned by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers as part of UN Universal Children's Day, and the second aWIZO report, published in anticipation of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women revealed unnerving data regarding sexual assaults and domestic violence in Israel.

According to both of the reports, only a fifth of those who request assistance from sexual assault centers file a police report. More disturbingly, a solid majority of those complaints fail to crystallize as a police investigation, and those that do are usually shut for lack of evidence.

Regarding sexual harassment, out of 216 cases led by State prosecutors last year, no less than 135 were closed. [...]

Judges Declare Accused Nachalot Pedophile Innocent

Arutz 7     One of the three people tried in the Nachlaot pedophile case has been acquitted of all charges and declared innocent by a three-judge panel, according to Yedioth Achronoth news. On November 7th, Jerusalem District Court deputy president Judge Jacob Zaban, as well as Jerusalem District Court Judges Miriam Mizrahi and Rafi Carmel declared the unnamed 53-year-old man innocent of all charges. The suspect was imprisoned for two years and four months while awaiting the outcome of the trial.

The judges wrote that the feeling surrounding the arrest was "a general atmosphere of fear and panic," noting the lack of any evidence. Following the acquittal, the accused man stated, "I have suffered a great injustice. I am innocent and I was in jail through no fault of my own. I thank the courts."

One of the three accused, a man in his 40s described as developmentally disabled, was sentenced in May to 15 years in prison. A third man has been accused as well. The acquittal is the latest development in the saga that originally alleged that over 100 children had been abused over several years in a close-knit, historic section of the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem.

 ======================
 YNet

אחרי שנתיים וארבעה חודשים בכלא, שוחרר בסוף השבוע שעבר בן ציון פרי־משלנו (54), אחד הנאשמים בפרשת הפדופיליה בנחלאות, לאחר שזוכה מחמת הספק. הרכב של שלושה שופטים בבית המשפט המחוזי בעיר החליטו פה אחד לבטל את עבירות המין המיוחסות לו. "אני לא יודע מה יהיה איתי עכשיו", אמר לאחר הזיכוי. "התקופה הזו פגעה במצבי הנפשי בצורה קשה. אני כבר לא ישן בלילות ועדיין בהלם".

פרשת הפדופיליה בנחלאות התפוצצה ברעש גדול באוגוסט 2011, אז הגישה המשטרה כתב אישום נגד שלושה תושבי העיר על אונס וביצוע מעשים סדיסטיים בעשרות ילדים. בכתב האישום שהוגש נגד פרי־משלנו יוחסו לו עבירות אינוס, מעשי סדום, תקיפה והדחה. לאורך כל הדרך טען לחפותו, עד שזוכה בחמישי שעבר.

Prof. Lawrence Kaplan's review of Eliyahu Stern, The Genius

Seforim Blog      Yet, as the book’s subtitle, Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism, indicates, Stern has an even bolder agenda. For in addition to limning the Gaon’s life, thought, and personality, Stern in his book’s Introduction and Conclusion advances a novel thesis regarding the nature of modern Judaism and the role of the Gaon in its making, seeking to unsettle the binary opposition generally drawn between tradition and modernity.

            For Stern, modernity is not “just a movement based on… liberal philosophical principles,” but “a condition characterized [among other things] by democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion… that restructured all aspects of European thought and life in diverse and often contradictory ways,” (8) and that in the case of Judaism “gave rise to [both] the Haskalah and institutions such as the Yeshiva” (8).  It is in this light Stern maintains that we should understand the historical significance of Gaon’s great work on Jewish law, his Bi’ur or commentary on Joseph Karo’s sixteenth century code of law, the Shulhan Arukh. Here, to sharpen Stern’s analysis, we may point to an instructive paradox. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, thanks to the primacy of the Shulhan Arukh, the study of the Talmud was neglected and scholars focused their attention on codes of law. The Bi’ur might seem to fit into that pattern, but in actuality it served to subvert the Shulhan Arukh’s authority. For by tracing in great and unprecedented detail the source of the Shulhan Arukh’s rulings back the Talmud and its classic commentaries and then by often challenging those rulings in light of those sources the Bi’ur spurred a return to Talmudic study. [...]

More problematic, Stern’s thesis that the Gaon’s activity and image contributed  to the privatization of Judaism and the democratization of rabbinic knowledge leads him to skew his portrait  of the Gaon, exaggerating both his radicalism and modernity. Thus, for example, the reader never gets a full sense from Stern of the depth of the Gaon’s involvement in Kabbalah nor learns, except in passing, of the sheer number of major commentaries he authored on Kabbalistic literature. Perhaps Stern deemed such a discussion too technical for the general reader,[14] but one inevitably gets the feeling that this minimizing of the Gaon’s Kabbalistic side fits into the modern picture Stern is drawing.   [...]

Chapter 3, “Elijah and the Enlightenment,” advances the book’s most startling and revisionist claim. Generally, Stern notes, the Gaon’s contemporary, Moses Mendelssohn is portrayed as the founder of modern Judaism, while the Gaon is depicted as the defender of rabbinic or traditional Judaism. Stern, however, as part of his effort to unsettle the binary opposition between tradition and modernity, argues that in certain respects the Gaon was a more radical figure than Mendelssohn. Thus, while Mendelssohn maintained that rabbinic interpretations of the legal passages in Scripture were to be identified with the plain-sense meaning of the text, the Gaon interpreted the plain-sense meaning of the text independently of rabbinic interpretations, which were seen as belonging to another level of Scripture. Stern argues that this difference reflects a greater level of self-confidence on the Gaon’s part, as “the intellectual leader of a majority Jewish culture” (71) than on Mendelssohn’s, living as he did in “Berlin, a cosmopolitan city with a tiny Jewish minority” (64), where rabbinic Judaism and particularly rabbinic law were under attack in Christian academic quarters. Stern, I believe, accords too much weight here to matters to matters of demography. Rather, contra Stern, I support the regnant view that this hermeneutical difference reflects, in large measure, the Gaon’s insularity from as opposed to Mendelssohn’s greater openness and sensitivity to their respective surrounding cultures, deriving, in turn, from the presence of a “beckoning bourgeoisie,” to use Gershon Hundert’s phrase, in Berlin and the absence of one in Vilna. [...].

Face of Poverty in Israel

Former chief rabbi Metzger arrested for taking bribe, fraud

JPost   Former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger was arrested by authorities early Monday morning on charges of taking a bribe, fraud, breach of trust, and conspiracy to interfere with an investigation.

Anti-corruption detectives from the LAHAV 433 unit who have been investigating the rabbi for months said that the sums of money which exchanged hands in this case is “in the millions of shekels.”

Weiss-Dodelson: AZ asks why I don't agree with Kol Koreh to subject Avraham Meir to severe social and financial pressures?

AZ has requested that I publish his guest post asking why I don't follow the lead of the gedlim who signed the Kol Koreh advocating serious social and financial pressure to force Avraham Meir to give Gital a get.Guest Post from AZ:
Kol Koreh Hebrew

Kol Koreh English translation
=====================================
Daas Torah, 

It is possible that I am wrong and it is possible that you are wrong.

We are all human, and we must have the humility to recognize that no matter how much evidence we have and how smart we are the very nature of being human means that we are fallible. After all there are plenty of smart people – and even Talmidei Chachomim – on both sides of the aisle. By definition, in this case and in millions of other disagreements very bright people are wrong all the time.

Therefore, I call on you to be pragmatic. If you are wrong in your halachic positions on divorce, then you are guilty (by promoting these wrong views) of causing enormous suffering to hundreds of women whose husbands are not giving them a Get.

The path is open to you to follow R’ Shmuel Kamentzky and others whose opinions whether in this case or in many other cases are much more favorable to the woman and would make it easier to obtain a Get.

The spiritual danger of your opinion is clear. By going “all in” – by adopting opinions which make it more difficult for a woman to receive a Get - you risk destroying your humanity, decency, and compassion in the event that you are wrong about the Halacha, and you are acting with great cruelty by causing hundreds of women to be stuck without a Get. 

The Neturei Karta also think they are right – and we recognize that the Neturai Karta are wrong – and look how they destroyed themselves spiritually by hugging Arafat and the President of Iran. Look how religious Muslim fanatics have destroyed themselves spiritually (by murdering men women, and children) – and they are convinced they are doing a good deed – instead they could have adopted the path of a peaceful brand of Islam.

As you have repeatedly said when responding to me and others, that we are only saying these opinions because we don’t know the halacha and we are influenced by Western values. In other words, you agree that if not for your sources, the natural ethics and morals would lead us to believe that the husband should just give the Get (as the rest of the world believes).

My advice is, don’t adopt opinions which do terrible harm to people when there is another halachic path available (R’ Shmuel Kamentetzky and others) whose ways are peaceful. Remember, I want a win-win situation where both sides can be happy – and I believe the Weiss’s have received a very fair custody deal from the courts (2 nights a week plus every other weekend), and the couple has no money or house to fight over. If Weiss gives the Get today, I think that he received a good deal – a fair deal. Weiss's situation would be no different than the hundreds of other frum husbands who give a Get each year.

==============================
Daas Torah replies: Update November 18, 2013

AZ as you have said you are just a simple and sincere Jew - but you have inserted yourself in a major halachic dispute as if you knew what you were talking about. Please tell me what the above rabbis hold concerning get me'usa in a case of ma'os alei? It is nice you claim they disagree with me - please tell me what exactly do they say?

One of the reasons I didn't immediately answer your challenge in your post is your mistaken assertion that that are two distinct camps - those who have halachic reasoning for peace and make it easy for woman and those whose halachic reasoning leads them to cause problems. People like Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky have not written teshuvos on the subject - so it is difficult to know what exactly they believe. He has never justified his actions in these case by halachic reasoning. By and large these rabbonim who signed the kol koreh did not do it for halachic reasons but for political reasons. My brother called up a number of them. One declared that even though he signed it didn't mean that he was saying that kefiya is permissible?! If you can wrap your head around that one then you can understand that your premise is not correct. The declaration of the kol koreh are halachic nonsense. Speak to a neutral posek and ask him for a source for nidoi for the supporters of someone who doesn't want to go to a particular beis din or to destroy a supporter's yeshiva and his parnossa or to go to a trashy newspaper and speak lashon harah about your husband and Judaism - THERE IS NONE!

As regards to your question why not go to the posek who brings peace, we see that for you it is not whether the halacha is poskened accurately and correctly - but the consequences. This is known as posek shopping. Your pragmatic approach to halacha is to first find out what the different views are and then to pick the posek if he agrees with what makes you happy?!

This is amazing "scholarship" - you don't really care whether what I am asserting is the normative view of most poskim through ages and it is recognized as the most accurate fit with the texts - i.e., mostly like to be true according to G-d's Will. You totally skip that and you say since there is a rabbi who says something that I want to hear I will chose his views. Of course on another issue if he doesn't say what I want to hear I will shop around to find another posek! Thus you care nothing about Torah and rabbinic authority - i.e., doing what G-d wants from you - but rather making your life as easy as possible

Why don't you ask those poskim such as Rabbi Kaminetsky and Rabbi Schachter if that is what you should be doing? Or do you first need to ascertain whether they agree with you before you consider their views authoritative.

AZ - I don't deny your sincerity in wanting peace and tranquility. But there is another issues which this current firestorm has made obvious. Halacha and Torah values are not viewed as valid - unless they are according to the current secular values in our society. Secular society now values individual happiness over family and community responsibility - therefore there has to be Get on demand. Even in secular society such a value is only about 20 years old. Before that it was impossible to get a divorce unless you could demonstrate a serious problem with your spouse such as adultery. 

Please read the 19th letter of Rav S. R. Hirsch (especially the 18th) where he laments the fact that people require Torah to be consistent with secular values and not the reverse. People have been screaming - it is a chilul hashem not to give a get on demand. Chilul hashem is not determined by whether Torah is subordinated to secular Western values. The same cry is made in regards to homosexuality or same-sex marriages. Are you also advocating finding rabbis who support such views? Bris Mila and schecitah is also claimed to be a chilul hashem by the "enlightened" Western nations. Should we do away with that also? Are you also advocating geirus on demand to any non-Jew who want to have a Jewish identity? Are you advocating accepting mixed marriages to avoid "chilul hashem"? AZ the bottom line as Rav Moshe Feinstein writes in the Igros Moshe - we have to try as hard as we can to find what the Torah wants through studying the sacred texts and the Mesorah. One does not reject a Torah view simply because my non-Orthodox neighbor or co worker might not like it.

Weiss-Dodelson: Gital "the face of Agunot" discuss her views

Times of Israel  Update see below [...] Dodelson’s public fight for a religious divorce has changed her, especially in terms of how she might approach future relationships.

“It’s kind of too depressing for me to even think ahead to this, given my current situation, but I do now understand why people live together before marriage,” she says. “I’ve even told my mother that next time I like a guy, I’m going to live with him for five years first. Of course I was joking. I know what I would and wouldn’t do — and I would never do that.”

This is because one major thing she is not allowing her struggle to do is convince her to leave Orthodox Judaism.

“I’ve never blamed my religion for this situation. I blame Avrohom Meir for it.”

As she sees it, Judaism is not bad, but there are Jewish people who do bad things.

“I don’t want Avrohom Meir to ruin my religion for me,” she asserts.

Other than finding herself an agunah, Dodelson claims that she has always felt empowered as an Orthodox woman. However, she is uncomfortable with the “feminist” label.

“Being a feminist is beyond what I am putting my energy into right now,” she states.[...]

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Guest post by Outraged rebuttal to Gital's apparent belief that living together before marriage helps prevent divorce

Gital is mistaken: Couples cohabiting before marriage are MORE likely to divorce, not less

Marriages are successful only when each of the spouses believes that marriage is a commitment, not just an easily reversible choice, and works hard to make the marriage successful.

But Gital apparently believes that the true problem is that she and Avraham Meir didn't move in together before marriage, in which case she presumably would have known that he was not for her and would not have married him.

NY Times Marry
NY Times: Downside of cohabiting before marriage

"...About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.

But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.

Weiss-Dodelson:The $1,000,000 Question why are the gedolim silent about Gital's tactics?

Guest Post: By Kat Shel Beryonim

My question is not who is right but how can the Gedolim agree for her to go to the New York Post and if they don't then how come there is no kol kore about that?

The stakes are now much higher then just Dodelson vs Weiss. It is a question as to whether the Chareidi world will bow to pressure from folks who clearly do not have our best interests in mind. I honestly believe that even if Avraham Meir was wrong it is assur for him to give a get. Doing so would create a tremendous chillul hashem and further erode faith in our gedolim and the beis din system. Now every yid who has a complaint about his neighbor will now go to the press which will eagerly lap up the story of those archaic Orthodox Jews, and they will say if she can do it why can't I. Why is she any better then other people whom were wronged and were told to hush up for the sake of the community, and that it would cause to big of a chilul hashem? Does it perhaps have anything to do with her last name, for those of you who do not know yet DODELSON = KOTLER = BMG. If it does then we as a community have a lot of soul searching to do.

Weiss-Dodelson: Gital's campaign against Rav Reuven Feinstein's Yeshiva begins

SI Live  A social media and phone campaign to bar an estranged husband from the Yeshiva of Staten Island is the latest gambit in an increasingly aggressive and professionally-orchestrated effort to extract a "get" from the son of a prominent Island Jewish family. [...]

"We turn to the administration of the Yeshiva of Staten Island, where he studies, to protest against him and to remove him from the Kollel" says a notice posted on Ms. Dodelson's web site. "Tell them in no uncertain terms that withholding a get is NOT acceptable." 

Supporters are urged to call the yeshiva and the phone number and address are listed on the web site. Calls to the yeshiva for comment weren't immediately returned.

Shira Dicker, who described herself in an email to the Advance as "part of Team Gital," acknowledged that "Gital is one of my clients" and became defensive when asked whether she was paid for her services.   

"I have seen some people jump on the fact that the Dodelsons hired a publicist as if this is some kind of crime or sinister strategy," Ms. Dicker said. "That really confuses me. What is problematic about a victim taking her story public? I hope that is NOT what your question implied. Other women in Gital's position hired hit men."[...]

Bnei Brak has alarming increase in child molesting cases

Kikar Hashabbat

תושבי בני ברק בחרדה בעקבות ריבוי המקרים הקשים של תקיפה אכזרית של ילדים. בהוראת הרבנים, ארגון "השומרים" מפרסם אזהרה חד-משמעית לתושבים: "מסתובבים אנשים רעים וחטאים, חוטאים ומחטאים, שמציקים לילדנו באופן הגרוע ביותר". הסיבה לאזהרה: מעל עשר תלונות רק בשבוע האחרון

 

Police drop Rabbi Chaim Halpern investigation

Jewish Chronicle   A police investigation into alleged sex abuse of women by prominent Golders Green rabbi, Chaim Halpern, has been dropped.

The Metropolitan Police said today that a file passed to the Crown Prosecution Service "regarding allegations of sexual assault has resulted in no charges being brought against a 54-year-old man".

It said that officers from Barnet's sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command, who investigated the allegations, "confirm that all allegations have been fully investigated".