50 year feud betwen Belz & Satmar finally ends

Haaretz

On February 21, the Supreme Court struck down the so-called Tal Law, under which ultra-Orthodox men studying at yeshivas were granted a draft exemption. Concurrently, an equally auspicious event, from the viewpoint of the Haredi community, was held. This one was a surprise meeting between the two leaders of the ultra-Orthodox courts from Belz and Machnovka. 

The meeting was the result of conciliatory efforts between the Belzer Rebbe and the Satmar Rebbe - the latest episode in a soap opera that has riveted hundreds of thousands of Haredim around the world since last January. The protagonists are the Belzer Rebbe, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokach, and his brother-in-law, the head of the Satmar sect, Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum. They lead two of the largest Hasidic courts in the world, they are both 64, and they are both married to daughters of Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the head of the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty and a wholesale producer of daughters for Hasidic courts (a third daughter is also married to a rebbe ). The two sisters, Sarah Rokach and Sasha Teitelbaum, played a key bridging role.

Baby allegedly dies from metzitza - major discussion & sources

Gothamist

A two-week old infant died last fall in a Brooklyn hospital from herpes contracted from a religious circumcision. According to the Daily News, the unidentified infant died last September at Maimonides Hospital—the cause of death was listed as “disseminated herpes simplex virus Type 1, complicating ritual circumcision with oral suction.” The case sounds eerily similar to that of Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, a Rockland County mohel who was found to have given three babies herpes through the ritual. Fisher specialized in the ultra-Orthodox ritual known as metzizah b’ peh, in which a rabbi or mohel removes blood from the wound with his mouth. One of those three babies infected with herpes by Fisher died, and the city Health Department filed a restraining order stopping Fisher from performing the procedure. But the city ultimately caved and handed the matter over onto a Jewish religious court

Metzitzah B’peh Controversy: The View from Israel By By Mordechai Halperin, Translated from the Hebrew by Yocheve - Jewish Action - OU.ORG

Metzitzah B’peh Controversy: Rabbinic Polemics and Applying the Lessons of History By N. Daniel Korobkin - Jewish Action - OU.ORG

http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/765633/Rabbi_Aryeh_Lebowitz/Ten_Minute_Halacha_-_Metzitzah_B%27Peh#

Shlomo Pappenheim silenced after being beaten

kikarhashabat

לפני שבועיים ימים, בליל שבת, נזרק שמואל חיים פפנהיים מבית המדרש של חסידות 'תולדות אהרון' בבית שמש, הבוקר, הוא מפרסם מכתב התנצלות ושב לזרועות החסידות.

הזעם בחסידות 'תולדות אהרון' כלפי פפנהיים הגיע לשיא בשל ראיון שהעניק לאחד מכלי התקשורת הכלליים, בו ייחסו לו התבטאויות שונות, שלטענתו כלל לא נאמרו על-ידו.

בעקבות התקרית האלימה, פעלו רבות בני משפחת פפנהיים בקרב קהילת 'תולדות אהרון', בכדי לאפשר את שובו של שמואל חיים לחיק הקהילה.

Before Games, Religious Questions

NYTimes

 The private-schools association, known by the acronym Tapps, was established in the 1970s to coordinate sports among Christian schools. The organization drew national attention this week when it refused to reschedule a state semifinal boys basketball game for an Orthodox Jewish day school, which could not play at the scheduled time because its players observe the Sabbath. [...]

With 500 students, increasing academic prestige and an established soccer team, Iman Academy SW, an Islamic school in Houston, was seeking membership in 2010 to the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, a group that organizes competition among more than 200 schools in the state.[....]

Daas Torah 2nd edition - Hebrew Sources available

I just published a separate volume for the Hebrew sources found in the 2nd edition of Daas Torah

It is available now from my Amazon estore or directly from Amazon. It consists of 460 pages of the Hebrew texts which were published in translation in the recently published 2nd edition of Daas Torah. Each of the texts in volume I has a reference number which identifies where to find the Hebrew text in volume II. Font size is a more readable size 10 rather than 8 used in the first edition of Daas Torah.

Click link for description of Daas Torah 2nd edition

Israeli court issues unprecedented enslavement conviction

YNet

The Jerusalem District Court issued an unprecedented ruling this week, convicting a couple for the Shufat neighborhood of the enslavement of their Filipina maid.

Wednesday's ruling was the first time a court in Israel defined such wrongful imprisonment as enslavement.

The court found that Ibrahim and Basma Julani held Mary Ann Paoig in their home for over 18 months and denied her the right to leave the premises or contact anyone by phone. 

Jews take issue with posthumous baptisms by Mormons

NYTimes

Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promised in 1995 to stop including Holocaust victims in its ritual, the church admitted last week that Anne Frank had been “baptized” in a Mormon church in the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, The Boston Globe reported that Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002, was baptized last June in Twin Falls, Idaho; Mr. Pearl was Jewish. 

Also on Wednesday, the church released a letter reiterating its policy that “without exception, church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims.”

Haredi divorcées form unique support group

ynet

A unique support group intended to assist recently divorced Haredi women has begun operating in Jerusalem. The support group is designed to help women deal with the negative stigma that follows a divorce in the Haredi community.

"The community is very helpful when it comes to death, but it's important to understand that separation is a particular form of death," said Gila, a participant in "Em Habanim" (the Center for families without a father).[...]

Reality of increasing divorce rate for Chareidim

YNET

Seven years ago I stood in front of a local bakery's counter in Bnei Brak, and requested the following be written on a cake: "Congratulations Miri, on your divorce". The woman behind the counter was shocked.

Until recently, divorce  in the ultra-orthodox sector was deemed provocation, a spit in the face of a conservative society. A divorcee was regarded as a local myth, a neighborhood attraction in a community of couples. Today, separated couples are becoming more common, even trivial, and no longer situated at the heart of every scandal or gossip.

As the rates of divorce go up, the stigma of the tragic nature of divorce is crumbling. A growing number of divorce stories help strengthen an alternative narrative. Instead of "they married and lived happily ever after", ultra-orthodox society now accepts the possibility of: "They married, lived, divorced and than lived happily ever after". 

Texas Athletic Ass. forced to accomodate Shabbos observant players

NYTimes

A Texas high school athletics association said Thursday that, under legal pressure, it would change the time of a boys basketball state semifinal game Friday to accommodate an Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston whose players observe the Sabbath. 

The school, the Robert M. Beren Academy, was expected to forfeit its game against the Covenant School of Dallas, scheduled for 9 p.m. Friday. It appealed to the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, the group that organizes the event, but the association said it was unwilling to change the time of the game, citing its bylaws. 

But on Thursday, the association, known as Tapps, said on its Web site that it had “been served a temporary restraining order which requires the Beran Academy be allowed to participate

Teacher Sex Abuse: Why Repeat Offenders Are So Common

Time Magazine

Parents don’t want to further traumatize young victims, but handling things "discreetly" merely displaces the problem to another school or community

 

When Bud Spillane was a school superintendent in New Rochelle, N.Y., he had to deal with removing an elementary school teacher suspected of sex abuse. “It was pretty evident he had done something,” Spillane recalls. The biggest obstacle to removing him from the classroom? “Parents came out of the woodwork…against me,” he says. They loved the teacher, the afterschool time he put in, and the weekend trips he liked to take students on, so they fought to keep him in school. Later in Spillane’s career, while he was leading the Fairfax County Public Schools outside of Washington, he had a teacher’s attorney demand a public hearing in a dismissal action involving multiple instances of alleged sexual misconduct with students. It was a shrewd move; instead of letting the school board handle the action in a private executive session, the lawyer wanted to force children to testify in court. Several parents understandably refused to put their kids through that spectacle. Welcome to the complicated and ugly world of sexual abuse in schools.

The unraveling of Deborah Feldman's fable "Unorthodox"

NY Daily News

The problem is that much of her memoir may not be true, according to ardent critics. These include family members, neighbors and even New York State authorities.


In the book, Feldman charges her mother – who was apparently burdened by the pressures of Satmar life – with a “mysterious disappearance” when Feldman was a toddler.

In fact, it takes about 30 seconds to find Shoshana Berkovic on both Twitter and Facebook. She is a science teacher at New Utrecht High School and does not appear to have ever left Brooklyn. She did divorce her husband, as court records indicate. But that was in 2010, more than a decade after Feldman accuses her mother with leaving her behind. (Shoshana Berkovic / Facebook)

Rav Yaakov Emden: Sexual Relations - Siddur

Rav Yaakov Emden

Yeshiva student pleads guilty to molesting 2 fourth-graders

 New York Post

Hillel Selznick, 25 of Flushing, admitted to Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter that he inappropriately touched a set of eight-year-old girls -- over a year-long period -- during private tutoring lessons inside the victim's homes.

Selznick, who was a student at Rabbinical Seminary of America, pleaded to two counts of course sexual misconduct against a child and will be sentenced on April 17 to six months in jail, 10 years probation, complete a sex offender program and register as sex offender.