Phil Jacobs & Scott Rosenfelt expose sexual abuse in Baltimore

BaltimoreCityPaper

Sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has been a topic of public debate for at least a decade, but word of molestation in the Orthodox Jewish community has been slower to emerge, often because its members have had a tendency to keep such scandal under wraps. But, increasingly, publications such as New York City’s Jewish Week have begun to explore the topic, while victims have started going to the police. In the last several years, at least four books have been published on sexual molestation in the Orthodox world, and several prominent rabbis have publicly addressed the need for the community to face the problem. In Baltimore, the dubious privilege of shining a light on the subject has fallen to Jacobs.

Bush Terminal: Trouble for Abraham Fruchthandler i.e., Yeshiva Chaim Berlin

Hat tip to RaP

Real Estate

A $300 million loan on the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, NY has been transferred to a special servicer due to monetary default, according to Fitch.

According to the documents related to the loan, it is secured by a first mortgage encumbering Bush Terminal, which is located on various blocks between 32nd and 41st Streets and 1st through 3rd Avenues in Brooklyn. The Bush Terminal Property consists of 16 multi-story office, loft and industrial buildings containing a total of 6.15 million sf of gross building area. The buildings were constructed at various times starting in 1904 on approximately 35 acres of land. The Bush Terminal Property was 85 percent occupied by tenants such as the NYC DCAS HRA (2.9% of NRSF), Virginia Dare Extract Co. Inc. (2.6%) and NYC Department of Finance (2.5%) when the loan was secured.

The borrowers are 1-10 Industry Associates LLC and 19-20 Industry City Associates, LLC, each a single-purpose, single-asset entity. The sponsors of the borrowers are Rubin Schron and Abraham Fruchthandler. At the time the loan was distributed, Rubin Schron had approximately $1.5 billion of equity in more than 40 residential, retail, commercial and healthcare assets primarily located throughout the New York metropolitan area, including over 15 million sf of industrial space.

Wall Street Journal

The Schron group is hopeful it will be able to restructure the debt and hold onto the property, according to people familiar with the property.

Mr. Schron's group, which today includes Abraham Fruchthandler, anticipated when the initial loan was made that the property could generate an annual net operating income of about $37.9 million as they released space at higher rents, according to Realpoint. Instead the property's net operating income for the six months ended in June 2010 was about $5.8 million. During that same time period, debt service was about $9.6 million, according to Realpoint.

The property's history can be traced back to the early 1900s when industrialist Irving T. Bush began building on the land his family owned. It was billed by some accounts as a city within a city with a railroad, trolleys and as many as 35,000 workers.

Mr. Schron's group is in default on the $300 million in debt, according to Realpoint, a credit-rating firm and a unit of Morningstar. The debt was reported 30 days delinquent earlier this month by the special servicer charged with managing the loan, according to Realpoint.

Foster care:Mother wants Orthodox & judge rules for non-Jewish supported by rabbi & her partner

Jewish World

A battle over two Jewish children is brewing in the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services (RCDSS), the county’s family court and pitting the Troy Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities at odds over how Jewish children should be raised.

The battle centers on a foster care case where an infant girl only a few months old and a two-year-old boy have been placed in foster care, which means providing a temporary home for children in need, with the hope is that the child will eventually return to their birth family.

The Mother’s Profile
The biological mother is said to be in her 20s, grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, identifies with the Orthodox Jewish community in Troy, is a known drug addict and had her children out of wedlock. While the baby boy was not born addicted to drugs, the girl was born with a chemical dependency to heroin, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

At the urging of the Manhattan-based Agudath Israel of America (AIA) and Leible Morrison, the spiritual leader of the Beth Tephilah Orthodox congregation in Troy, the mother is requesting that her children be placed in a Jewish household and raised in an Orthodox lifestyle. AIA is a Jewish communal organization representing sectors of Chasidic Judaism. [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Shailos UTeshuvos 2

Wallposter:Avoiding Trouble

Rav Sternbuch: Heavenly Hierarchies

Israeli rabbis launch initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women

Haaretz

Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women - with some surprising successes.

So far, 11 marriages have been performed. Haaretz conducted an email interview with one such couple, Etti and Roni (not their real names ).

Etti and Roni, both religious, were married five years ago. Though they were honest with each other about their sexual orientations from their first meeting, to the outside world, they portray themselves as a normal heterosexual couple. Today, they have two children, and are thrilled with the results.

Ohr HaChaim: Moshe got everything - yet Rabbi Akiva said chidushim he didn't know!?

from Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Ohr HaChaim  (Vayikra 13:37): I would like to reconcile the apparent contradiction between two opposing views found in the Medrashim. In Vayikra Rabbah (22:1) it states that everything was given to Moshe at Sinai – even that which a student would innovate in the future. However Bamibar Rabbah (19:7) says that Rabbi Akiva gave interpretations that Moshe didn’t know. There are many other sources regarding these two views. It would appear that the reconciliation of these views is that in truth that all the Torah was told to Moshe. And therefore no scholar can possibly know more than Moshe did. And that is true across the generations from the day the Torah was given until the Messianic days – there were no new Halachos that weren’t known to Moshe. The explanation is that G d in fact gave Moshe the Written and Oral Torah. G d in His wisdom also encoded in the Written Torah the entire Oral Torah that he had taught Moshe. However He did not tell Moshe how the Oral Torah was encoded in the Written Torah. Ascertaining this encoding is in fact the work for all those engaged in Torah study. They are to determine where the halacha which was given to Moshe and the secrets and interpretations are alluded to in the Written Torah. Thus we find that the Tanaim came and composed works such as Torah Cohanim and the Sifre. Thus all their analyses of the verses are to determine where the known halacha is encoded in the Written Torah. This work which continues until the present is the holy work of Torah scholars to investigate the verses of the Bible and reconcile them with the Oral Torah. This effort is call Eretz HaChaim. This knowledge of exactly how the Oral Law was encoded in the Written Law was not given by G d to Moshe. It is in reference to this encoding that our Sages state that Rabbi Akiva made interpretations that Moshe didn’t know. This doesn’t mean that Moshe didn’t know the basis of the interpretations since after all everything was transmitted by him even that which a student would say in the future. However he didn’t know how the Oral Law was hinted at in the Written Law. This is the key to understanding the present issue where Hillel expounded the halacha from the verse that which was said to Moshe orally and G d did not reveal this halacha to Moshe from the verse. It was left for Hillel to find how this halacha was encoded in the verse.

One in four Jewish women suffer abuse in the home

Jewish Chronicle

One in four Jewish women are victims of domestic abuse, according to the largest survey of its kind.

The Jewish Women's Aid study, You know a Jewish woman suffering from domestic abuse: Domestic abuse and the British Jewish community, found that 26 per cent of the 842 people surveyed had personally experienced domestic abuse.

Despite a third admitting they thought abuse in the Jewish community would not be the same as the rest of society, the number of Jewish woman abused is two per cent higher than the national average.

Jewish leaders have criticised communal organisations for "sweeping this problem under the carpet" and said the report must act as a "wake-up call" to the community. [...]

Police in Los Angeles Step Up Efforts to Gain Muslims’ Trust

NYTimes

The question of whether American Muslims do, or do not, cooperate with law enforcement agents in preventing potential terrorist attacks is at the heart of Congressional hearings that begin Thursday in Washington. The hearings have been called by Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island, N.Y., and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He says that American Muslims do not cooperate, and that he will call witnesses who will prove it.

But in Los Angeles, home to one of the largest and most diverse Muslim populations in the country, the picture is far more encouraging, though there are still challenges. And it has one of the most assertive multidepartmental efforts in the country, along with New York, to overcome mistrust and engage Muslims as allies in preventing terrorism, according to law enforcement experts.

"We're not going to win the war against terrorism without Muslims," said Leroy D. Baca, the Los Angeles County sheriff, in an interview in his office. Mr. Baca will be called as a witness at the hearings on Thursday. [...]

David Schick: The Man With Two Faces; a Fraud Case Shocks

NYTimes 1996

Then came David Schick. A lawyer and father of 10 at age 36, his reputation as a doer of good deeds brought people to his home on Avenue I late at night seeking counsel on immigration law or trouble with a child. And Mr. Schick took the family's name far beyond Flatbush.

He was recently the honorary chairman of the annual meeting of the nation's largest Orthodox organization. He helped arrange for President Clinton to meet in March with donors to a large rabbinical college he supports. When Mr. Schick had early success as a real estate investor, word spread so fast through the Orthodox Jewish world that wealthy Jews around the globe were soon entrusting him with millions. To reassure the religious, his deals included a letter from a rabbinical court waiving the prohibition in Jewish law on Jews earning interest from each other.

"They were knocking his door down," said Robert Goldman, a lawyer representing investors in New York, California and Belgium.

Then on April 6, an investor called Mr. Schick to ask about his $1.7 million that was supposed to be parked securely in an escrow account. According to a complaint filed in Federal Court in Manhattan, Mr. Schick responded simply, "I took it." [...]

Chief Rabbi Amar's committee recommends ending Army conversion course

JPost

The rabbinic committee appointed by Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar recommended that he terminate the Nativ course held for potential IDF converts, since Reform and Conservative teachers are part of its staff, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.

“In this [Nativ] course about 10 of the staff of 170 teachers are Reform or Conservative. We perceive this as a severe problem, that casts a heavy shadow on all of the military conversions, and every effort should be made to cancel this course and/or to not have it as a precondition to the IDF process,” the report quoted from a letter the three-man advisory committee wrote.[...]

Establishing Paternity by Means of Blood Type Testing

MedEthics by Prof.Dov Frimer

A. Introduction

Significant developments have occurred in the field of hemato- logy during the past generation, and research in the area continues to advance. Scientists are firmly of the opinion that proper use of ABO blood type testing enables one to establish in most cases the negative determination of a paternity, namely that X is not the father of Y.[1] At the same time, the medical community acknow- ledges that a satisfactory method for positive, definite determin- ation that X is the father of Y, on the basis of ABO blood types, has yet to be developed.[2] Despite all this, judges in Anglo-Saxon countries are quite reluctant fully to accept paternity blood testing with all its ramifications. It is their opinion that the law should proceed cautiously when dealing with the adoption of new tests and examinations in an area which is under going rapid change and development.[3]

In this article I shall analyze and compare the attitudes of Jewish law and of Israeli law towards the use of blood testing in determining questions of paternity. To achieve this aim, three questions must be investigated: [...]

Philadelphia Archdiocese Suspends 21 Priests

NYTimes

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that it had placed 21 priests on administrative leave from active ministry in connection with credible charges that they had sexually abused minors.

The mass suspension was one of the single most sweeping in the history of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. It follows a damning grand jury report issued Feb. 10 that accused the archdiocese of a widespread cover-up of predatory priests stretching over decades and that said as many as 37 priests remained active in the ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse against them. [...]