Michael Freund helping descendants of Anusim

Converts: Racism & Judaism

Jewish Journal Aliza Hausman

Did you hear the one about the black Harvard professor who got arrested breaking into his own home? No, this is not a joke. It was the beginning of a Shabbos lunch that left me traumatized.

It's always the same. I feel safe, comfortable and carefree, and suddenly, punched in the gut, violated, uncomfortable, and all the cares of the world weigh on me. When I feel safe, I feel part of the Jewish community, but when I do not, I feel like an outsider on the outskirts, not fitting in.

My husband and I started speaking out about racism in the Jewish community when a friend asked us to speak at a synagogue in Washington Heights, in my hometown of New York City. As an interracial Jewish couple (my husband is white, I am Dominican), our friend was sure we'd have plenty to say. I wasn't. But as I started to write about my experiences in Washington Heights (from both white Jews, who thought I was dark and foreign, to Dominicans, who thought I was too light and American), I filled four single-spaced typed pages. I knew from the stories of other Jews of color that this meant I was lucky. I learned still others had been even luckier.[...]

Fatah conference - boosting its radical credentials

Time

President Obama's Middle East peace plan faces a key hurdle on Tuesday, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas convenes the first conference in two decades of his Fatah movement. The conference, to be held in the West Bank city of Bethlehem under heavy Palestinian Authority security, is seen as critical to the prospects of restoring Abbas' waning political legitimacy and authority. But early signs suggest that the conference will, if anything, weaken the Palestinian leader's ability to follow Washington's script.

Since the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, U.S. peace efforts have relied on the moderate and relatively pliable Abbas to negotiate a two-state agreement with Israel. But the prevailing view within Fatah is that Abbas has achieved precious little for his negotiation efforts, and that this has been a prime factor in weakening Fatah in the face of the challenge by its more militant rival, Hamas. The Islamists trounced Fatah in the last democratic elections for the Palestinian parliament in 2006, and many fear that a candidate backed by Hamas would likely beat Abbas in presidential elections currently scheduled for early next year. Much of the Fatah rank-and-file, and even many in the leadership, believe that the only way the movement can be saved is to break with American tutelage, and seek to reclaim the mantle of "resistance" from Hamas. The result is that the political statement adopted by the conference is unlikely to please the U.S. and Israel.

Indications from within Fatah suggest that the conference political document will reaffirm the Palestinians right to "resistance," specifying non-violent challenges to the occupation, but remaining silent on the question of armed resistance and the future of the Fatah-affiliated militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. It will flatly reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," on the grounds that this undermines the rights of Palestinian refugees and of those with Israeli citizenship. It will also insist on a complete freeze on Jewish settlements in occupied territory as a precondition for any talks with Israel, which it will stress must be based on U.N. resolutions — which will include recognition of the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees expelled from Israel in 1948, a demand that Israel deems a deal-breaker.[...]

Woman accused of starving child - indicted

JPost

An indictment was served Tuesday in the Jerusalem District Court against a haredi woman suspected of starving her three-year-old child over a period of two years. The woman's internment sparked riots in Jerusalem which lasted nearly a week.

The mother is being accused of abusing a helpless infant. The ultra-Orthodox Toldot Aharon sect to which the woman belongs threatened to renew riots if she is remanded again or if the conditions of her house arrest are worsened.

The woman underwent a psychiatric evaluation last week and was found to be fit for trial.

Since her arrest, the mother has consistently refused to cooperate with investigators, and has been erratic in appearing for both court hearings and psychiatric evaluations.

Her son, who weighed just seven kilograms when he was admitted to Hadassha Ein Kerem Hospital at the end of June, was discharged last Friday to the care of relatives. He gained at least three kilograms while he was hospitalized.

At the end of June, Toldot Aharon members rioted throughout religious neighborhoods in the capital in protest of the arrest of the mother. Only after police released the woman to house arrest did the violence subside.

Throughout the saga, the mother has maintained her innocence, and has insisted that her child suffers from multiple illnesses which have caused him to eat improperly. [...]

Israel - Tom Friedman's advise to Obama

NYTimes

Israel and America are having one of those periodic marital spats they have had over the years, replete with "I-am-not-taking-any-more-of-your-guff" outbursts by Obama officials at American Jewish leaders, and, yes — it wouldn't be a real Israel-U.S. dust-up without it — Israeli accusations that Jewish Obama aides are "self-hating Jews," working out their identity crises by working over Israel. Having been to this play before, and knowing both families, I'd like to offer some free marriage counseling.

Here's what Israelis need to understand: President Obama is not some outlier when it comes to Israel. His call for a settlements freeze reflects attitudes that have been building in America for a long time. For the last 40 years, a succession of Israeli governments has misled, manipulated or persuaded naïve U.S. presidents that since Israel was negotiating to give up significant territory, there was no need to fight over "insignificant" settlements on some territory. Behind this charade, Israeli settlers bit off more and more of the West Bank, creating a huge moral, security and economic burden for Israel and its friends.

As Bradley Burston, a columnist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, put it last week: "The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion. ... The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property. ... Settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress."

For years, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the pro-Israel lobby, rather than urging Israel to halt this corrosive process, used their influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure on this issue and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements. Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people — people who care about Israel — are sick of it.

The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, captured the we-are-untouchable arrogance of the settlers last week when he quoted Rabbi Yigael Shandorfi, leader of a religious academy at the settlement of Nahliel, calling Mr. Obama in a speech "that Arab they call a president."[...]

8 dead from false rumor of Koran desecration

Times on line

Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.

The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. "They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses," Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. "We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action," Mr Masih said.

Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians. [...]

Blaming marriage problems as excuse for failure

NYTimes

LET'S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You're still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other's eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.

Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You're the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You've done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: "I don't love you anymore. I'm not sure I ever did. I'm moving out. The kids will understand. They'll want me to be happy."

But wait. This isn't the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It's a story about hearing your husband say "I don't love you anymore" and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.[...]

Tax fraud schemes steal millions

Haaretz JPost YNet NYTimes

The police arrested a number of Israelis and Americans who allegedly defrauded U.S. tax authorities, Army Radio reported on Monday.

The suspects are alleged to have masterminded a scheme whereby they fraudulently obtained tax refunds totaling tens of millions of dollars which were then transferred to various bank accounts in Israel.

A hearing is scheduled for Monday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court, where the suspects will be arraigned.

The affair follows a similar case last month in which 11 Israelis were arrested for allegedly swindling elderly Americans out of more than $25 million in a telemarketing sting.

Prosecutors sought court approval to extradite the 11 people who are wanted in the United States.

Criminal indictments unsealed in a district court in Manhattan last month accuse 12 people of phoning victims in the United States and falsely telling them they had won an international lottery.[...]

Burial Societies - consequences of their demise

NYTimes

Someone was buried in Florence Marmor's grave, and it was not Florence Marmor.

When Mrs. Marmor visited her deceased husband's cemetery plot in Flushing, Queens, one afternoon, she found that someone had been freshly buried in the spot next to his, where she had planned to rest someday. No one could tell her why.

Strange and wrenching discoveries like that have sprung up repeatedly in Jewish communities over the past few decades as families have discovered that the cemetery properties where they expected to be buried among spouses, children and parents are caught in a legal knot that no one can untangle.

The reason: the Jewish burial societies that sold the gravesites no longer have administrators. Founded by the immigrant ancestors of the people caught in this bind, the societies, in effect, have died. [...]

Bipolar disorder:Surviving mental illness

Aish.com

[....]My strong desire to be "just another high-school girl" and not considered "crazy" was intensified by my mortification toward the end of the previous year, when I had my first encounter with a psychiatric ward. Mental disorders manifest themselves through the particular characteristics of the culture in which the person has developed. Having grown up in a religious neighborhood, my obsession took on a seemingly harmless, and perhaps even admirable, desire to become more religious. So my general, all-encompassing anxiety and sense of helplessness, and my compulsive desire to regain control, were directed onto the one area of my life where I felt control was possible. I wanted to do every mitzvah and keep every detail of Jewish law in the most exacting way. I wanted God to be pleased with me and thought the way to accomplish this was to make my observance of each mitzvah increasingly more complicated and difficult.I didn't simply kiss each mezuzah I saw; I kissed it many times, each time reciting an additional prayer.[....]

OCD and Orthodox ritual

Jerusalem Post

Ritual complements ethics in Jewish law, but Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy seem in recent years to have put greater stress on ritual and on praising those who observe it pedantically. Thus it may be difficult to distinguish a simply devout person who is meticulous in his observances from one who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

While experts say OCD is not more common among observant Jews than in any other group, when the observant do suffer from OCD, the symptoms usually relate to ritual observance, causing them to carry out practices compulsively in prayer, ritual hand washing, milk/meat separation, family purity or personal hygiene.

In 2001, psychiatrists Prof. David Greenberg and Prof. Eliezer Witztum of Jerusalem's Herzog Hospital wrote their pathfinding volume Sanity & Sanctity: Mental Health Work Among the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, published by Yale University Press, that devoted a few chapters to OCD in this community. But it was an academic volume and not a guide to the treatment of OCD.

Now Dr. Avigdor (Victor) Bonchek (drbonchek@013.net), a long-time Jerusalem psychologist and ordained Orthodox rabbi, has written a $30 book called Religious Compulsions and Fears: A Guide to Treatment. Released by Feldheim Publishers (www.feldheim.com) in Jerusalem, it is prefaced with a note of approval by Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a hassidic scholar and well-known psychiatrist living in New Jersey who specializes in treating substance abuse. His name on the cover alone is enough to encourage many observant Jews to read it. Twersky writes that in his 45 yeas as a psychiatrist, he has noted a "marked increase" in the prevalence of OCD. "It is unclear whether this is due to a greater awareness of the condition or an actual increase in its incidence."

Twersky notes that OCD is known among professionals as "the doubting disease" because its sufferers "cannot be sure of anything. [Someone] may have washed his hands many times or spent hours in the shower, but still doesn't feel clean. He may have repeated a word in davening [praying] many times, but may feel it has not been pronounced correctly... An OCD sufferer may take on absurd and totally unnecessary precautions to avoid mixing milk and meat... In short, he is tortured by persistent doubt."[...]

Gays blame Chareidim for attacks

YNet

Shas condemns attack on gay center Haredi faction issues statement saying 'murder contradicts the way of Torah.' Shas MK says gay community's accusations against party following incident are 'a blood libel' [...]

Supporters of conversion of descendants of anusim - are guided by emotion not halacha

The following is an example of the "rational arguments" that I have received from a number of people who don't understand elementary halacha and feel that anyone who feels they have Jewish anscestors - male or female - or has suffered because they think they are Jewish should be treated as a Jew. These people are obviously sincere - but Judaism is not Christianty - and you can't ignore halacha.

Shimon Ortiz has left a new comment on your post "RaP: Proselytization in Latin America":

Rabbi you are a racist and you should not be a Rabbi. Actually you need to take conversion classes yourself and learn what is like to suffer discrimination because of your love for the Torah. Rabbi did you forget that the Jewish soul never dies! Did you forget the spanish inquisition or are you just jealous that the Sphardim are rising up in large numbers again. Well Rabbi everything does come from above and if that is Hashem's desire to bring back all of the lost (but not lost in the eyes of Hashem) Jews than it will happen no matter how much hate you try to spread. Rabbi did you forget what ahavas Yisroel means?. Like i said earlier i think that you need to take conversion classes.

$100 million bonus - should it be paid?

NYTimes

In a few weeks, the Treasury Department's czar of executive pay will have to answer this $100 million question: Should Andrew J. Hall get his bonus?

Mr. Hall, the 58-year-old head of Phibro, a small commodities trading firm in Westport, Conn., is due for a nine-figure payday, his cut of profits from a characteristically aggressive year of bets in the oil market.

There is little doubt that Mr. Hall is owed the money under his contract. The problem is that his contract is with Citigroup, which was saved with roughly $45 billion in taxpayer aid.

Corporate pay has become a live grenade in the aftermath of the largest series of corporate bailouts in American history. In March, when the American International Group, rescued at vast taxpayer expense, was to give out $165 million in bonuses, Congress moved to constrain the payouts, and protesters showed up at the homes of several executives.

As it happens, one can see some of those homes from Mr. Hall's front lawn in Southport, not far from his office. But his case is more complex. Mr. Hall, raised in Britain and known for titanium nerves and a collection of pricey art, is the standout performer at an operation that has netted Citigroup about $2 billion over the last five years. If Citigroup will not pay him the huge sums he has long made, someone else probably will.

The added wrinkle is that Mr. Hall works in a corner of the trading world that appears headed for its own infamy. Regulators are pushing to curb the role of traders like Mr. Hall, whose speculation in the energy markets may have played a major role in the recent gyrations of oil prices.

That suggests that last summer, drivers paid more at the pump, at least in part, because of people like Andrew J. Hall. How do you hand $100 million to a guy who may have profited because gas hit $4 a gallon? [....]