Rav Shlomo Miller and the Dodelson divorce

   Rav Shlomo Miller, and the Dodelson Divorce 

Gratitude for being a talmid chachom and not yoshvei karnos

The recent video from the Atzeres which used the song of the text from Berachos (28b) to contrast the Torah scholar and the yoshvei karnos (as protrayed by the secular politicians and soldiers) has raised a great deal of protest. The real issue is whether it accurately portrayed the meaning of the gemora. I have gathered together a number of sources that clairfy the meaning of the yoshvei karnos that are being denigrated and described as going to Hell.

אנו משכימים הקליפ הרשמי של עצרת המיליון by Daas-Torah

A review of the material seems to indicate that there are two meanings of the word yoshvei karnos (literally those who sit in the corners). 1) They are pleasure seeking idlers who focus on having a good time and speaking lashon harah. Thus they are not only not productively involved but are constantly involved in sin. 2) They are all those people who are not full time Torah scholars sitting in the beis medrash. 

Thus Berachos (28b) can be understood either to contrast the extremes of Torah scholars versus idlers or to contrast Torah Scholars and all others including those who are constructively involved in the well-being of society. I don't think there is any objection to the former understanding but there clearly is to the latter. [In fact Rav Kook said that the text was mistaken and said it originally said those who go to theaters and circuses. Rav Ephraim Blitzer convincingly refuted Rav Kook's arguments.] 

The problem then is how to meaningfully explain it as a contrast between Talmidei Chachom and all others. My understanding is that this is a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to be a Talmid Chachom. Thus the focus is on the uniqueness of the talmid chachom and that relatively speaking any other option is a waste. The Rambam has a similar comment in his Commentary to the Mishna where he says that purpose for the creation of the world is the Talmid Chachom and anyone else has no significance except to the degree that he supports the Talmid Chachom. Thus relatively speaking the gap between a talmid chachom and everyone else is so great that they are worthless and wasted relative to him. Such a view is difficult for a secular person to accept. 

Rav Moshe Feinstein notes in the Igros Moshe [Y.D. III #82; Y.D. IV 36.15;E.H. IV 116] that a doctor is not a ben Torah. Someone objected to this comment which denigrates a doctor whose every spare moment is spent studying Torah. Rav Moshe replied that a ben Torah is someone whose entire focus is on Torah. Someone who is working at a job which requires complete devotion to something other than Torah – cannot be a ben Torah.

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Berachos (28b): Our Rabbis taught: On entering what does a man say? ‘May it be Thy will, O Lord my God, that no offence may occur through me, and that I may not err in a matter of halachah and that my colleagues may rejoice in me and that I may not call unclean clean or clean unclean, and that my colleagues may not err in a matter of halachah and that I may rejoice in them’. On his leaving what does he say? ‘I give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, that Thou hast set my portion with those who sit in the Beth ha-Midrash and Thou hast not set my portion with those who sit in [street] corners, for I rise early and they rise early, but I rise early for words of Torah and they rise early for frivolous talk; I labour and they labour, but I labour and receive a reward and they labour and do not receive a reward; I run and they run, but I run to the life of the future world and they run to the pit of destruction 

Rashi (Berachos 28b): those who sit in street corners (yoshvei karnos): - shopkeepers or ignorant people

Rambam(Hilchos Berachos 10:24):וביציאתו מבית המדרש אומר מודה אני לפניך יי' אלהי ששמת חלקי מיושבי בית המדרש ולא שמת חלקי מיושבי קרנות שאני משכים והם משכימים אני משכים לדברי תורה והם משכימים לדברים בטלים אני עמל והם עמלין אני עמל לדברי תורה ומקבל שכר והם עמלין ואין מקבלין שכר אני רץ והם רצים אני רץ לחיי העולם הבא והם רצים לבאר שחת.

Shulchan Aruch (O.C. 100:8): One who enters into a beis medrash should pray, "May it be Thy will O L-rd and the G-d of our fathers that I should not error in matters of halacha..." And when he leaves he should say, "I give thanks before you O L-rd my G-d, that You have place my portion with those who sit in the Beis Medrash.."

בבא קמא (פב. ): שיהו קוראין במנחה בשבת - משום יושבי קרנות

רש"י (בבא קמא פב.): משום יושבי קרנות - יושבי חניות כל ימות החול עוסקין בסחורה ואין קורין בשני ובחמישי תקון בגינייהו קריאה יתירה.

סנהדרין )ג.): רב אחא בריה דרב איקא אמר: מדאורייתא חד נמי כשר, שנאמר בצדק תשפט עמיתך, אלא משום יושבי קרנות. אטו בתלתא מי לא הוו יושבי קרנות? - אי אפשר דלית בהו חד דגמיר. - אלא מעתה טעו לא ישלמו! - כל שכן דנפישי יושבי קרנות.

רש"י (סנהדרין ג.): גזירה משום יושבי קרנות - תגרין, שאין בקיאין בטיב דינין, ויזכה את החייב ויחייב את הזכאי.

מלבי"ם )תהלים א:א): ומוסיף ובמושב לצים לא ישב, הלצים הם יושבי קרנות אינם פועלים רע אבל גם לא יעשו טוב רק רודפים רוח והבל ולצנות ואינם עוסקים בתורה

יד רמ"ה (סנהדרין ג.): יושבי קרנות לשון קרן זוית והן בטלנין שאין עוסקין במלאכה אלא יושבין בקרנות העיר ופעמים שבני אדם באין מאיליהן ונידונין בפניהם בזמן שבתי דינין טרודין בדין אחר ובאין לפני אלו שהן יושבין בטלין אחמירו רבנן לאצרוכי שלשה

מאירי (נדרים כ.): וכן יזהר אדם שלא להתחבר עם הנבלים והטפשים ויושבי קרנות שלא ימשכוהו בחבלי שוא ובעבותות של פריצות וכן בכל חברה מקולקלת כל אחד לפי ענינו

מאירי (בבא קמא פב.): עשר תקנות תקן עזרא לישראל הראשונה שיהו קורין בשבת במנחה בספר תורה מפני יושבי קרנות שהשבת אחר אכילה ושינה זמן ישיבת קרנות הוא לפחותים ולהמון מצד שאין מלאכה בשבת ותקן שבאותה שעה יתקבצו כלם וישמעו דבר תורה:

הערוך (בערך קרן ג':) יושבי קרנות פירוש אנשי דלא מעלי לבי מדרשא אלא רגילין שיושבין בקרנות העיר ועוסקין בדברי שיחה,

מנורת המאור (פרק טז - החנופה והליצנות עמוד 290 ): החלק הד'. הקובע עצמו תמיד לשיחה בטלה כדרך יושבי קרנות. ושתי רעות יש בדבר הרע הזה. האחד, שכל המרבה דברים מביא חטא, ר"ל דברים בטלים, כ"ש מי שהוא קובע את עצמו תמיד לדברים בטלים. והשני, שהוא בטל מדברי תורה. ויש בדבר הזה דרכי מות, הואיל והוא בטל מדברי תורה, שהיא עץ חיים. ודרשו רז"ל מי שאפשר לו לעסוק בתורה ועוסק, עליו הכתוב אומר ובמושב לצים לא ישב, וכתי' בתריה כי אם בתורת ה' חפצו. הא למדת, שמושב לצים מביא לידי ביטול תורה.

אורחות צדיקים (שער הגאוה): הגאוה במעלת החכמה היא משובחת, שנאמר (ירמיה ט כג): "כי אם בזאת יתהלל המתהלל השכל וידוע אותי", ויוסיף הודאה לבורא, ברוך הוא, וגם דעה והשכל ומידות טובות בתפילת החכמה: "מודה אני לפניך שנתת חלקי מיושבי בית המדרש ולא מיושבי קרנות", וכמו: "אשרנו מה טוב חלקנו ומה נעים גורלנו". ועל זה נאמר (דברי הימים ב יז ו): "ויגבה לבו בדרכי ה'", כי יהיה אדם יקר רוח וגבה לב בעניני העולם הבא, שלא יספיק לו במה שיזדמן לו, ולא יאמר די במה שתמצא ידו מהם, אלא ימעט בעיניו כל מעשהו, ותגבה נפשו למעלה תמיד, ויתרעם בנפשו כמו שמקצר מעבודת הבורא, ברוך הוא. וזאת הגאוה אינה מזקת לענוה, אך מסייעתו וגורמת לו לשמוח במעלות הטובות, ולשמוח בכבוד חביריו, ולחוס על כבודם. 

Judge Dismisses Charges Against Whistle-Blower in Sexual Abuse Case

NY Times   In a case that riveted the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, a judge on Friday dismissed all charges against Samuel Kellner, a whistle-blower who had been charged with trying to extort money from the family of an accused molester and bribing a grand jury witness to testify falsely.

The dismissal came at the request of prosecutors, who told Justice Guy J. Mangano in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn that the case against Mr. Kellner had fallen apart. The two key witnesses against him “lack credibility to such a degree that their testimony cannot be trusted,” an assistant district attorney, Kevin O’Donnell, told the court, adding, “The people do not have a credible case.” [...]

But there was still a cloud of uncertainty over Mr. Kellner’s freedom. Two lawyers for Mr. Lebovits, Arthur L. Aidala and Alan M. Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer and author, conferred with prosecutors and the judge for about an hour before the case’s dismissal. Mr. Dershowitz later told reporters that he believed an audiotape turned over by the district attorney on Thursday contained evidence against Mr. Kellner that would cause his case to be reopened. “This case is not over,” Mr. Dershowitz said, prompting a shouting match with Kellner supporters. [...]

"Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney" - Finding your voice

While this is an amazing article about autism - the processes he describes sound very similar to Torah learning - constant review of material already learned, medrash and agadata with its language of metaphor and parable. Learning to communicate with bits of the debates of chazal, rishonim and achronim.

NY Times     In our first year in Washington, our son disappeared.

Just shy of his 3rd birthday, an engaged, chatty child, full of typical speech — “I love you,” “Where are my Ninja Turtles?” “Let’s get ice cream!” — fell silent. He cried, inconsolably. Didn’t sleep. Wouldn’t make eye contact. His only word was “juice.”

I had just started a job as The Wall Street Journal’s national affairs reporter. My wife, Cornelia, a former journalist, was home with him — a new story every day, a new horror. He could barely use a sippy cup, though he’d long ago graduated to a big-boy cup. He wove about like someone walking with his eyes shut. “It doesn’t make sense,” I’d say at night. “You don’t grow backward.” Had he been injured somehow when he was out of our sight, banged his head, swallowed something poisonous? It was like searching for clues to a kidnapping.

After visits to several doctors, we first heard the word “autism.” Later, it would be fine-tuned to “regressive autism,” now affecting roughly a third of children with the disorder. Unlike the kids born with it, this group seems typical until somewhere between 18 and 36 months — then they vanish. Some never get their speech back. Families stop watching those early videos, their child waving to the camera. Too painful. That child’s gone.

In the year since his diagnosis, Owen’s only activity with his brother, Walt, is something they did before the autism struck: watching Disney movies. “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin” — it was a boom time for Disney — and also the old classics: “Dumbo,” “Fantasia,” “Pinocchio,” “Bambi.” They watch on a television bracketed to the wall in a high corner of our smallish bedroom in Georgetown. It is hard to know all the things going through the mind of our 6-year-old, Walt, about how his little brother, now nearly 4, is changing. They pile up pillows on our bed and sit close, Walt often with his arm around Owen’s shoulders, trying to hold him — and the shifting world — in place. [...]

So we join him upstairs, all of us, on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon in November 1994. Owen is already on the bed, oblivious to our arrival, murmuring gibberish. . . . “Juicervose, juicervose.” It is something we’ve been hearing for the past few weeks. Cornelia thinks maybe he wants more juice; but no, he refuses the sippy cup. “The Little Mermaid” is playing as we settle in, propping up pillows. We’ve all seen it at least a dozen times, but it’s at one of the best parts: where Ursula the sea witch, an acerbic diva, sings her song of villainy, “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” to the selfish mermaid, Ariel, setting up the part in which Ursula will turn Ariel into a human, allowing her to seek out the handsome prince, in exchange for her voice.

When the song is over, Owen lifts the remote. Hits rewind.

“Come on, Owen, just let it play!” Walt moans. But Owen goes back just 20 seconds or so, to the song’s next-to-last stanza, with Ursula shouting:

Go ahead — make your choice!

I’m a very busy woman, and I haven’t got all day.

It won’t cost much, just your voice!

He does it again. Stop. Rewind. Play. And one more time. On the fourth pass, Cornelia whispers, “It’s not ‘juice.’ ” I barely hear her. “What?” “It’s not ‘juice.’ It’s ‘just’ . . . ‘just your voice’!”

I grab Owen by the shoulders. “Just your voice! Is that what you’re saying?!”

He looks right at me, our first real eye contact in a year. “Juicervose! Juicervose! Juicervose!”

Walt starts to shout, “Owen’s talking again!” A mermaid lost her voice in a moment of transformation. So did this silent boy. “Juicervose! Juicervose! Juicervose!” Owen keeps saying it, watching us shout and cheer. And then we’re up, all of us, bouncing on the bed. Owen, too, singing it over and over — “Juicervose!” — as Cornelia, tears beginning to fall, whispers softly, “Thank God, he’s in there.” [...]

A Lakewood Simcha - Mazel Tov to the Sorcher family!

American Gedolim provide guidance for Beit Shemesh elections

Huge Charedi Anti-Draft Rally paralyzes Jerusalem

This is a picture I took in front of the Convention Center. While it was a huge crowd - the real crowd was on Malchei Yisroel street which was primarily chassidic. When the crowd started to move there it was like battling a tidal wave to avoid being trampled.

אנו משכימים הקליפ הרשמי של עצרת המיליון by Daas-Torah

Is Muslim immigration bringing culture of violence to the West?

Arutz 7     The MacDonald-Laurier Institute and the Globe and Mail held a public conference recently on the phenomenon of Muslim immigration to the West, which debated whether or not the influx is bringing a culture of violence to Canada and other Western countries. The debate was conducted between Doug Saunders, journalist for Foreign Affairs for the Globe and Mail, and Salim Mansur, a Political Science professor at the University of Western Ontario, reports Shalom Toronto. [...]

Professor Salim Mansur begged to differ. 

"Canadians’ mistaken notion that all cultures are equal has disarmed this nation in the confrontation with the illiberal demands of radical Islam," he fired, noting he was "drawing upon – as an immigrant, as a person of color and as a Muslim – inside knowledge of and lived experience in the cultures of both liberal democracy and Islam." 

"A liberal-democratic society based on individual rights, freedom, and the rule of law cannot indefinitely accommodate non-liberal or illiberal demands from immigrant groups without subverting its own culture," Mansur noted. He then identified three risk factors: the rise in birthrates among the Muslim community, the nature of Muslim culture and its relationship to non-Muslim cultures, and the West's multiculturalism. 

Statistics cited by the professor include proof that the foreign-born population in Canada has become predominantly non-Western since 1967, especially in major city centers, and that the Muslim immigrant population is growing four times faster than other immigrant populations. 

As a culture, Mansur stressed, Islam became a "rigid, closed system" during the 14th century, as a result of a heavy Bedouin influence. Mansur maintains that early Islam found Bedouin culture "savage" - but it nonetheless prevailed.

"The full face of this Bedouin-ized Islamic culture that has wrecked the diversity of the Muslim world from within is to be seen in the bigotry, violence, vulgarity and misogyny of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Khomeini followers," Mansur noted. "It is the nature of mainstream contemporary Muslim politics – or Islamism – to conform to the Bedouin disposition." 

This disposition, Mansur claimed, characterizes contemporary Islamic values - even in immigrant communities. The things heard in Canadian mosques are "intractably opposed to liberal democracy," and aim to "ruin from within" Canadian and Western values, according to the Professor. 

Multiculturalism, meanwhile, threatens to allow this attitude to rear its ugly head in the political sphere, according to Mansur. 

"In having swallowed the toxin of official multiculturalism, Canada has disarmed itself of the ability to discriminate between immigrant groups which are importing cultural baggage that is harmless, and those that are toxic to the values of liberal democracy," Mansur concludes. 

Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn's Shalom Bayis lecture in Lakewood on March 6

Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn recently gave a lecture in Lakewood about Shalom Bayis. He discussed invalid Gittin, mamzeruth. In particular he focused on the clash between the Shulchan Aruch and those who feel that the Torah has no right to deprive an unhappily married woman of her freedom and cause her such misery.

The lecture can be heard by clicking here Shalom Bayis lecture

Rabbi Eidensohn was encouraged by the turnout and the interest shown in the program by those attended. The lecture was followed by several hours of serious discussion regarding these issues and the practical steps needed to further a Shalom Bayis Beth Din.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Arrest Of Brooklyn Rabbi For Distributing Child Pornography

This article describes accusations however the accusations could also have resulted from having an unsecured wifi and someone else using it to download pornography. There is no mention that pornography was actually found on his computer. Furthermore the charge of distribution could also be the result of the use peer to peer sharing networks where the mere fact that something is downloaded means that computer also is sharing and distributing to others. In other words, even if his IP address was involved it doesn't mean that he was guilty as charged and he in fact denies the charges

Justice    Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and James T. Hayes, Jr., the Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE”) Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), announced today the arrest of SAMUEL WALDMAN for distributing child pornography. WALDMAN, 52, a rabbi and a teacher at a girl’s seminary, was arrested by HSI agents this morning at his residence in Brooklyn, New York. He was presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge James L. Cott in Manhattan federal court.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Samuel Waldman’s position of trust in the community, as both a rabbi and a teacher, makes his alleged distribution of child pornography all the more disturbing. As we have said repeatedly, we have zero tolerance for the exploitation of children and we will prosecute and punish those who engage in this conduct.”

ICE HSI Special Agent-in-Charge James T. Hayes, Jr. said: “Distributing child pornography is a serious crime made all the more disturbing when committed by an individual who has been implicitly entrusted as an educator. Through Operation Caireen, HSI New York and our partners will target individuals who abuse their positions of trust in our communities by committing crimes of sexual exploitation against children.”

According to the allegations in the criminal Complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court, in or about November 2013, WALDMAN distributed child pornography over the Internet by making available for downloading through file-sharing software multiple videos depicting minors engaged in sexual acts [...]

Legal system has failed Sam Kellner - who helped convict Lebovits

Jewish Week     While it would seem a good bet that Sam Kellner’s dizzying, three-year legal odyssey may finally come to an end this week with a dismissal of his criminal case, the chasidic abuse whistleblower is not holding his breath. It’s easy to understand why. The way things have been going, there probably isn’t a bookie in Vegas who would take any action on that wager.

“The former trial prosecutors twice wanted to dismiss my case and were overruled. And now we have a new [Brooklyn] district attorney in office [Kenneth Thompson], and he is taking almost six weeks to review it. And so I am still an indicted person. How do you like it?,” Kellner, 52, asks matter of factly, before tallying up how many judges, prosecutors and district attorneys have presided over his case — four, five and two respectively, with a new judge expected this week. (At a hearing scheduled for Friday, prosecutors are expected to let the judge know whether they are moving to dismiss the case or will take it to trial.)

“I must be a very dangerous guy,” he adds, his sense of the absurd fully in tact.

Dangerous indeed. In 2011, a year after helping the district attorney convict a serial chasidic child molester named Baruch Lebovits, whose alleged victims include Kellner’s own son, Kellner found himself under arrest. He was charged with having several years earlier paid one young man to falsely testify in a grand jury that he was abused by Lebovits, and with sending emissaries to attempt to extort the Lebovits family for hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a promise he could persuade the witnesses against him to drop their charges.

The state’s convoluted case against Kellner, originally brought by then District Attorney Charles Hynes, was shaky from the start; it was based solely on “evidence” brought directly to the DA’s Rackets Division by members of the well-connected Lebovits family, their supporters and paid agents, all seemingly in the service of getting Lebovits’ conviction overturned.

The case took a blow last summer, when the man who accused Kellner of paying him to fabricate his charges contradicted his initial story in interviews with prosecutors — admitting, among other things, that Lebovits “could have molested” him and that he never received money from Kellner. The flip-flop destroyed his credibility and led the trial prosecutors to make their first recommendation that the case be dismissed.

Kellner’s prosecutors could have been spared this embarrassment had they consulted with their colleagues in the Sex Crimes Unit before seeking his indictment. Those prosecutors had strong evidence to suggest this young man was most probably a genuine Lebovits victim who was intimidated out of testifying against him at trial, and later manipulated into accusing Kellner; for reasons that remain mysterious, they failed to do so.

But by the time this witness imploded, Kellner’s case had become tangled up in a hotly contested DA’s race among longtime incumbent Hynes and two challengers, Abe George and Thompson, and its adjudication took a back seat to politics. And so his prosecution continued, surviving a second attempt at dismissal after Hynes lost the election to Thompson; at that time, Hynes’ controversial deputy, Michael Vecchione, himself awash in misconduct allegations, demoted the trial prosecutors rather than accept their recommendation that the case be dropped. (It is worth noting that Lebovits’ trial attorney, Arthur Aidala, has close ties to both Vecchione and Hynes).

The saga of Kellner’s case, and all that preceded his arrest, encompasses both a narrative of positive change within the chasidic community and a cautionary tale.

Unlike so many chasidic parents who discover their children have been sexually abused but remain too fearful to act, Kellner wasted no time in seeking protection and redress for his son. And he did so according to the rules of his community by first consulting with rabbis. When they deemed the situation beyond their ability to address, he received a rare dispensation to go to the police. [...]

Internalization of Values :The bigger the extrinsic sacrifice the smaller the emotional commitment

Allan Katz  [...]  The Telze Rabbi – Rav Elya Meier Bloch has a deeper explanation. He says there are 2 elements involved in bringing the sacrifice and offering – the monetary expense involved in bringing the offering and the emotional and spiritual effort involved in offering and dedicating one's soul to becoming one with God. The wealthy person feels emotionally   uplifted   because he has spent a lot of money on spirituality and that leaves little space for real work of dedicating one's soul. The poor man feels that his meal offering of flour does not count for much so all he has to give is his soul. It seems that the ' external ' elements of the offering  get in the way or make it more difficult for a person to focus on what God really wants – for man to dedicate his soul to Him , and in so doing reconnect with God and atone for his sins.  Rav Elya Meier Bloch is saying that the bigger the extrinsic / monetary sacrifice, the smaller the emotional commitment and investment.  Instead of reinforcing the spiritual and internal part of a person, the external and physical element undermines the internal and spiritual.

S.D.T – Self  Determination theory of human motivation shows how extrinsic motivation can often get in the way of intrinsic motivation, internalization and commitment to values. We know that one should not reprimand a kid using anger in order to show how serious the offence was, as the only message the kid comes away is you are angry - you have an anger problem – and that gets in the way of a kid reflecting on what he did. The focus is on the parent or teacher.  The same goes for punishment – instead of it reinforcing the severity of the offence and encouraging the kid to feel sorry for what he did and empathize with a kid he hurt, he now feels sorry for himself. The focus is no longer on what he did, but on the punishment, how unfair the adult is and his mistake of getting caught. 

 

Bribes and threats can be very effective at getting ' behaviors ' but not at helping kids internalize and make a commitment to values. An experiment tested this with kindergarten kids. 2 groups were told by their teacher not to play with toys while she was out of the room. One group's compliance was   reinforced   with   a   threat of punishment.  Both groups did not play with the toys when the teacher was not in the room.  However, the kids who did not get the threat of punishment internalized much better the teacher's disapproval of them playing with the toys than the kids who received a threat of punishment. Interventions may be effective, but we need to ask – effective at what ?[...]

A prenup undermines a marriage before it has even begun

Spectator by Melanie McDonagh

A friend of mine, quite a distinguished lawyer, takes the view that marriage ceased to make sense after no-fault divorces came in. What, he says sternly, is the point of a contract when there’s no sanction if you break it? Well, quite.

But if no-fault divorce pretty well invalidates marriage after the event, prenups do quite a good job of undermining it beforehand. The point of marriage is that it’s meant to be a lifetime affair – the hint being in the ‘til death do us part’ bit – and the point of prenups is that they make provision for the thing ending before it even gets underway. You’re putting your assets out of the reach of the spouse before you’ve got round to endowing her with all your worldly goods, if the Anglican service is your bag. [...]

So far as the case against it goes, I can’t myself improve on the remarks of the Bishop of Shrewsbury last week,[...]

‘Our society would be proposing to couples seeking marriage that they prepare their own divorce settlement before making the life-long promises of marriage. 
‘It is a legal provision which would surely empty the words of the marriage promise “for better for worse… to love and to cherish till death do we part” of all meaning.

‘Pre-nuptial agreements would render these promises provisional by the legal preparations which anticipate divorce.

‘We must ask ourselves, what message does this send to couples considering marriage? What message does this send to the young at a moment when the institution of marriage stands at such a historically, low ebb.’

Mass Hareidi Rally ‘Like a Purim Play’

Arutz 7   Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party is pushing for hareidi men to be required to enlist in the IDF, “is the best thing that has ever happened to the hareidi community,” MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) declared Sunday in a post to his Facebook page.

Feiglin has previously criticized Lapid over his insistence that hareidi men join the army. He clarified that he still believes Lapid is wrong.

“As I wrote here before, [hareidi MK] Yisrael Eichler did more for Israel’s security than Yair Lapid… Some other time, I’ll prove that Yisrael Eichler is better for Israel’s economy than Yair Lapid, too,” he wrote.

“But still, Yair Lapid is the best thing that has happened to the hareidi community,” he wrote.

“Because even though the whole story of ‘equal burden of service’ is the spin of the century, Lapid is right about one very important thing. The hareidi way of life in Israel must change,” he declared.

Specifically, he continued, the lifestyle which sees many hareidi men study Torah full-time for many years. “There’s no such thing as everyone being able to learn Torah all day, just because you put them in black clothes,” he argued. “80-90% of people cannot sit and learn all day.”

“That means that if you force them to sit there, their potential is wasted, and they rot,” he warned. [...]

Hareidi protest a ‘Purim shpiel’
Feiglin also spoke about the major hareidi protest planned for Sunday. The protest just emphasizes how “everyone involved is saying and doing the opposite of what they really think,” he said.

“The last thing that Lapid wants is for hareidi men to flood the army. But the system of ‘screw them over’ and win votes is working wonderfully for him,” he charged.

“The last thing the army wants is the hareidi community – the military is already carrying the weight of the roughly 50% of soldiers who aren’t needed,” he argued. “More enlisted soldiers, with special needs regarding kosher food and gender segregation – who needs it? But the Chief of Staff will never say that publicly.”[...]

“Just like a real Purim ball,” he wrote. “Each person arrives with a mask that is the inverse of reality.”