How Iran Uses Terror Threats To Successfully Deter U.S. Military Action

Tablet Magazine   President Barack Obama thinks that the deal with Russia over Syria’s chemical weapons was possible only because of his credible threat of force. The way he sees it, Iran’s gotten the message, too. As the president told George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria], to think we won’t strike Iran.”

However, the essential feature of a credible threat of force is to have previously employed actual force against the adversary you’re threatening. Shortly before Obama announced he would seek congressional authorization for the use of military force against Syria, the White House briefed House and Senate staffers on the possible ramifications of U.S. action. Perhaps unintentionally, the briefings seemed only to have dampened congressional appetite for attacking Iran’s man in Damascus. “They showed them Iran retaliation scenarios,” a senior official at a Washington, D.C.-based pro-Israel organization told me. “They highlighted the fact that Hezbollah has a global reach. The staffers left those briefings with the blood drained from their faces.”

Iran and its allies have proven their willingness to use force against America—as witnessed by the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut; the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut; the 1998 bombing of Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia; and Iran’s war against American troops in Iraq, which lasted until Obama’s 2011 withdrawal.[...]


It is easy to frame some of Iran’s recent terror plots as evidence that they are the gang who couldn’t shoot straight. For every operation that, say, kills five Israeli tourists in a Bulgarian resort town, there are a dozen botched plots, like the operation in Thailand where an Iranian agent blew off his own legs with a hand grenade.

But from another perspective, it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of Iranian projects come up empty, like the plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, which might also have killed hundreds of Americans in the nation’s capital if it had succeeded. Taken together, what these operations show is an obvious, and alarming, inclination to employ violence against America—even in the absence of any direct American military action against Iran. Carried out by second-string operatives, yet backed by arms of the Iranian government and the global terror infrastructure it has put in place, these attempts are generally interpreted by policymakers as warning shots—a reminder of what will happen if America really gets the Iranians mad.[...]

The Jacksonville Florida Tragedy and Halacha by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Five Towns Jewish Times   The recent incident this past Yom Kippur involving a woman in Jacksonville, Florida who was killed while crossing an intersection with dangerously fast cars was very tragic indeed.  It not only left the sixteen year old daughter who was with her with life-threatening injuries, it left her orphaned r”l. This young lady had lost her father many years earlier.

The tragedy, however, brings up a halachic question.  In an area where the traffic light poses a danger in crossing because it is timed for too short a time to cross safely, would it be permitted to ask a gentile to press the button? [...]

When this author presented the case to permit asking a gentile to press the crosswalk button to some leading Poskim, the Poskim agreed to the underlying rationale.  They also agreed that the leniency can be promulgated in their name.  The Poskim were Rav Moshe Heinemann Shlita from Baltimore and Rav Shmuel Fuerst Shlita from Chicago. [...]

California and it's unions protect pedophile teachers

National Review    [California decided] to exempt government agencies, including public schools, from a new measure intended to enable civil measures against organizations that harbor pedophiles.

In 2014, California will open a litigation “window” allowing victims of sex abuse to file lawsuits against the employers of those who abused them, on the theory that those employers are in some instances partly culpable for the abuse, which is indeed the case. The “window” is needed because, in many sex-abuse cases, the statute of limitations for civil actions runs out before victims come forward. Perversely, the law exposes only the employers; the abusers themselves remain immune to litigation. [...]

And it does not stop with litigation windows. In 2012, the Assembly considered a bill making it easier to fire teachers who sexually abuse students. Consider for a second that word “easier” — should anything be easier than simply firing somebody who molests children? The bill was written in response to the case of a Los Angeles elementary-school teacher who was fired after being accused of sexually abusing his students, and who challenged his firing. Rather than act in accord with the horrifying details of the case, the school district paid the teacher $40,000 to drop his appeal. That’s small change compared with the $30 million settlement the district is paying to the teacher’s alleged victims as a result of the case, or, for that matter, compared with the $23 million bail requirement that is keeping teacher Mark Berndt behind bars as he awaits trial on 23 felony counts of gruesome sexual abuse.

Against that background, making it easier to fire teachers facing credible accusations of sexual abuse seems like a pretty straightforward proposition. But the California Teachers Association and other unions presented a united front against a bill passed by the state senate, and it died in the Assembly. [...] But if it comes down to the interests of a unionized government employee vs. those of a nonunionized sex-crime victim, look for the union label.

Whistle blower reveals head of Met Council has been skimming money

NY Times  A few months ago, an anonymous letter was sent to the board of directors of one of the city’s most venerable nonprofit institutions, the Metropolitan New York Council on Jewish Poverty. 

The writer, who claimed to be a former employee of the charity’s insurance broker, said money was being skimmed from payments that the charity made for health insurance. The allegation was strikingly similar to one made in a letter sent two years earlier. Nothing amiss was found then, but this time a new chief financial officer made a startling discovery. 

The charity’s chief executive, William E. Rapfogel, had been conspiring with someone at the insurance brokerage, Century Coverage Corporation, to pad the charity’s insurance payments by several hundred thousand dollars a year, according to a person briefed on the investigation.[...]

The account of the letter is the first time it has been clear that the scandal came to light from an anonymous whistle-blower, not through any audit or government oversight. It is the latest example of the remarkable lack of oversight, both of nonprofit groups that receive grants of taxpayer money and the politicians who award those grants without competitive bidding. That process has been at the center of successful criminal prosecutions of several city politicians in recent years.  [...]

At last! A kosher smartphone with rabbinic approval

 

When teachers openly support a child molesting colleague

Fox News   Enrollment appears to be nosediving in a Michigan school district where several teachers publicly supported a former colleague who admitted having sex with a middle school student.

The student body count in the West Branch-Rose City district, in northeast Michigan is down unofficially some 87 students following a tumultuous summer in which angry parents blasted seven teachers for writing letters in support of former teacher Neal Erickson. The letters urged a judge to be lenient in sentencing Erickson, who admitted to sexual misconduct with an underage, male student from 2006 to 2009. When the school board declined to take action against the teachers, many parents vowed to pull their kids out of the public schools, which have a total enrollment of just over 2,000. [...]

Erickson, 38, was originally investigated last October once allegations that he sexually molested the then 14-year-old boy surfaced and was eventually arrested in December 2012. Erickson pleaded guilty May 8, and asked for a lenient sentence, citing "stress" and financial hardship for his family.[...]

But on July 10, the judge brushed the letters aside and handed down a sentence of 15 to 30 years in prison. And he had strong words for Erickson's colleagues.

“I’m appalled and ashamed that the community could rally around, in this case, you,” Circuit Court Judge Michael Baumgartner said towards Erickson during his sentencing. “What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher.”

Reporting on mayoral primaries distorts Jewish tradition

NY Times   While the Democratic field remained unsettled, Mr. Lhota was moving on Thursday to reach out to potential supporters. In the morning, he visited the Queens burial site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was the revered leader of Lubavitch Hasidim. 

Flanked by rabbis, one of whom addressed him as “Mr. Mayor,” Mr. Lhota asked for, and received, a gift of honey cake, following a Jewish tradition associated with the Lubavitcher rebbe, as Rabbi Schneerson was known. 

Mr. Lhota, wearing a black skullcap, brought a note to the rebbe’s grave site, tore it and cast it onto a pile of other torn notes, in accordance with another Jewish custom. 

Asked whether his note was about the election, he said only, “It’s all about the future of New York City.” 

Simon Sinek : "It is not what you do but why you do it"

A critical contribution to social understanding. He presents the thesis that behavior is best driven by focus on why we doing things rather than what we do. Related to child abuse - it is not enough to create laws to punish abuse and provide rules to avoid situations where abuse can occur. It is not enough to get people to report abuse. It is important that everyone understand that abusing others causes pain - and we need to value not hurting others.

Is Emotional Intelligence critical for academic success as well as success in life?

NY Times [...] Wade’s approach — used schoolwide at Garfield Elementary, in Oakland, Calif. — is part of a strategy known as social-emotional learning, which is based on the idea that emotional skills are crucial to academic performance. 

“Something we now know, from doing dozens of studies, is that emotions can either enhance or hinder your ability to learn,” Marc Brackett, a senior research scientist in psychology at Yale University, told a crowd of educators at a conference last June. “They affect our attention and our memory. If you’re very anxious about something, or agitated, how well can you focus on what’s being taught?” 

Once a small corner of education theory, S.E.L. has gained traction in recent years, driven in part by concerns over school violence, bullying and teen suicide. But while prevention programs tend to focus on a single problem, the goal of social-emotional learning is grander: to instill a deep psychological intelligence that will help children regulate their emotions. 

For children, Brackett notes, school is an emotional caldron: a constant stream of academic and social challenges that can generate feelings ranging from loneliness to euphoria. Educators and parents have long assumed that a child’s ability to cope with such stresses is either innate — a matter of temperament — or else acquired “along the way,” in the rough and tumble of ordinary interaction. But in practice, Brackett says, many children never develop those crucial skills. “It’s like saying that a child doesn’t need to study English because she talks with her parents at home,” Brackett told me last spring. “Emotional skills are the same. A teacher might say, ‘Calm down!’ — but how exactly do you calm down when you’re feeling anxious? Where do you learn the skills to manage those feelings?” 

A growing number of educators and psychologists now believe that the answer to that question is in school. George Lucas’s Edutopia foundation has lobbied for the teaching of social and emotional skills for the past decade; the State of Illinois passed a bill in 2003 making “social and emotional learning” a part of school curriculums. Thousands of schools now use one of the several dozen programs, including Brackett’s own, that have been approved as “evidence-based” by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit. All told, there are now tens of thousands of emotional-literacy programs running in cities nationwide. 

The theory that kids need to learn to manage their emotions in order to reach their potential grew out of the research of a pair of psychology professors — John Mayer, at the University of New Hampshire, and Peter Salovey, at Yale. In the 1980s, Mayer and Salovey became curious about the ways in which emotions communicate information, and why some people seem more able to take advantage of those messages than others. While outlining the set of skills that defined this “emotional intelligence,” Salovey realized that it might be even more influential than he had originally suspected, affecting everything from problem solving to job satisfaction: “It was like, this is predictive!” 

In the years since, a number of studies have supported this view. So-called noncognitive skills — attributes like self-restraint, persistence and self-awareness — might actually be better predictors of a person’s life trajectory than standard academic measures. A 2011 study using data collected on 17,000 British infants followed over 50 years found that a child’s level of mental well-being correlated strongly with future success. Similar studies have found that kids who develop these skills are not only more likely to do well at work but also to have longer marriages and to suffer less from depression and anxiety. Some evidence even shows that they will be physically healthier.

Yom Kippur, Tel Aviv style

Times of Israel   Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – begins this Friday evening. Many people know Jews don’t eat or drink for 25 hours (sundown to sundown) but few know what actually happens on Yom Kippur in modern, non-religious, Israel.

When I arrived, just over four years ago, Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv took me by complete surprise.

Practically all cars and motor transport will stop. Just not go anywhere. Almost no planes, trains or automobiles will move until Saturday night. [...]

From sundown to sundown the streets are full of people strolling or cycling; on suburban streets or along 10 lane highways, the only thing you have to watch out for are kids on speeding bicycles. Non observant people figure out how, for just one day a year, not to drive except for dire emergencies.

I will allow my 4 year old child to pedal furiously down a 6 lane divided highway in whichever direction he prefers. [...]

So why is being Jewish so different when you’re in Israel? There has never, in my recollection, been a Jew outside of Israel who’s publicly got upset by anyone eating, even in front of him, on Yom Kippur. 

Jews have never, and will never, ask you to stop driving for a day in your country. It just won’t happen. Even in our own country this isn’t a law, it’s just something the vast majority of Jews want to do because, over here, in Jewish Israel, it feels right.

That is the difference between living as a Jew outside Israel and as a Jew in Israel: here we can just BE Jewish and the calendar and the customs and the norms of behavior push us into being culturally Jewish even if we don’t want to study Torah for nine hours a day.[...]

Visiting the Lubavitcher Rebbe's grave

NY Times    [...] In the nearly 20 years since the death of the rebbe, as Rabbi Schneerson was known, what began as a spontaneous pilgrimage has evolved into a spiritual touchstone of the religious movement he spawned, complete with its own rituals, controversies and supplicants from all corners of the globe. 

And, perhaps in a nod to the famously sleepless city where the rebbe lived, preached and died, his grave site is open night and day.[...]

The pilgrimage to Cambria Heights, a largely black, middle-class neighborhood, has faced some challenges. Large celebratory crowds have frustrated neighbors, and efforts at expansion — most recently, a proposal for a more permanent structure than the tentlike ohel — have been met with opposition by the local community board. The center has made efforts to streamline parking, and in June, delivered bottles of wine to neighbors on surrounding streets, Rabbi Refson said. The number of visitors commemorating the rebbe’s death now tops 30,000. 

Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies

NY Times    The clues were buried in her bedroom. Before leaving for school on Monday morning, Rebecca Ann Sedwick had hidden her schoolbooks under a pile of clothes and left her cellphone behind, a rare lapse for a 12-year-old girl. 

Inside her phone’s virtual world, she had changed her user name on Kik Messenger, a cellphone application, to “That Dead Girl” and delivered a message to two friends, saying goodbye forever. Then she climbed a platform at an abandoned cement plant near her home in the Central Florida city of Lakeland and leaped to the ground, the Polk County sheriff said.

In jumping, Rebecca became one of the youngest members of a growing list of children and teenagers apparently driven to suicide, at least in part, after being maligned, threatened and taunted online, mostly through a new collection of texting and photo-sharing cellphone applications. Her suicide raises new questions about the proliferation and popularity of these applications and Web sites among children and the ability of parents to keep up with their children’s online relationships. 

For more than a year, Rebecca, pretty and smart, was cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children who urged her to kill herself, her mother said. The Polk County sheriff’s office is investigating the role of cyberbullying in the suicide and considering filing charges against the middle-school students who apparently barraged Rebecca with hostile text messages. Florida passed a law this year making it easier to bring felony charges in online bullying cases.[...] 

Atonement, Forgiveness, And Our Most Fundamental Error

Scientific American   Today is the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Although it is often called the “holiest day of the Jewish year,” what is notable about Yom Kippur is not the fact that it is particularly holy, nor is it the fact that many Jews you know might be particularly hungry today. Yom Kippur is notable because it is really all about the unequivocal importance of one thing — atonement. We sit in our religious services all day, reflecting on the need to atone for our sins. However, it is stressed that we cannot just do this by showing up to services and praying. We must also directly ask for forgiveness from those that we have wronged in the past year; and, in turn, we must be willing to grant forgiveness to those whom we believe have wronged us.

This past week has been a particularly challenging one for me, a fact that is only made more salient by my recent reflection on Yom Kippur. This was a week filled with a lot of stress – a major disagreement with friends (an unpleasantry that doesn’t happen all too often, thankfully, though this relative infrequency makes it especially painful when it does occur), dissertation work, transitioning back into a new semester of teaching, losing a flash drive for a period of about 24 hours (always enough to give me a few panic attacks). I had to face the unavoidable fact that I’ve once again found myself over-scheduled and under-rested this semester, and brace myself for the uncomfortable reality of having to let go of a few commitments and inevitably let people down. And of course there were more things — smaller stresses here and there that are not worth mentioning, and larger ones that are less appropriate for a public blog. But in a way, it’s almost perfect that Yom Kippur has arrived for me after such a truly stressful, overwhelming week. If nothing else, this week has served as a critical reminder to me of one of the most consistent and foundational facts in all of social psychology. The environment that surrounds us — those stressors, obligations, demands, fights, and other situational pushes that we constantly experience — have a strong, disconcerting influence on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If we’re going to reflect on atonement, it must serve us well to acknowledge just how important our surrounding environments can be when it comes to events that require repentance — and just how often we might fail to acknowledge the situation’s strong role in our lives. If someone were to judge me for anything that I said or did this week, I know that I would hope they would have accounted for the numerous stressors and other dramatic ongoings that could be influencing my words and actions. Unfortunately, given what I know of social psychology, I’m also well aware that they probably would not have done so — and to be fair, I likely wouldn’t be immediately prone to doing so either, if the tables were turned. [...]

I bring this up today, on Yom Kippur, because if we are going to focus on atonement, it is worth considering how our ability to forgive and forget might be at the whim of our cognitive biases. All too often, we are quick to form dispositional attributions for behaviors that might actually have situational causes — and all too often, those attributions are negative. Perhaps that driver did not cut you off because he is a jerk, but because another car was about to swerve into his lane, or because he had two children in the backseat who had just distracted his attention, or because his wife was in labor and he was rushing to get to the hospital. Maybe that girl had to stop on her way to class because of an emergency, or she just added the class the minute before she walked in, or she was actually accidentally showing up 30 minutes early for the next class. It becomes so much easier to engage in this atonement process and understand where others are coming from once we realize that all too often, we are actually doing ourselves a disservice if our ultimate goal truly is forgiveness. We can often over-perceive the presence of bad intentions arising from other people’s inner traits and personalities, when those bad intentions really might not be there…at all.

Op-Ed: Should Teachers Be Saying ‘Yechi’ with Students?

Crown Heights Info   At a recent Chaddishe auspicious day, celebrated with a children’s rally at 770 with several schools participating, there was a teacher from one of the schools that delivered a captivating story to the assembled children. It was a tale from the days of the Baal Shem Tov.

The teacher described this poor Jew thrown into prison by the poretz for lacking the funds to cover rent. He relayed to the spellbound children; “The yid was in such great despair and so sad, he felt that nobody can help him, so he screamed to Hashem from the depths of his heart, “Yechi Adoneinu… leolam Voed!”

Today, dropping my three year old child off at school, I entered the classroom with my kid, and the children were in the midst of davening. Yechi was a very central part as it was sung with great vigor. I was astounded. He isn’t enrolled in a fringe school, rather one of the mainstream ones that has been around for decades.[...]

Is it the role of a school that serve a diverse parent body, to be an indoctrination ground for children from the moment they begin to develop?