Chaim Rotter, head of the Shomrim patrol, is the ultra-Orthodox figure who was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of sexually assaulting minors.
Friday, July 11, 2025
How Sexual Abuse Is Covered Up in Ultra-Orthodox Communities
https://www.shomrim.news/eng/how-sexual-abuse-is-covered-up-in-ultra-orthodox-communities
One could be forgiven for thinking that the exposure of such heinous crimes, involving two prominent and respected figures, would lead to some kind of soul-searching and recalibration of the mechanisms of oversight in ultra-Orthodox society – especially given the shockwaves that these cases sent through the community itself. This, however, is far from being the situation today. Testimony collected by Shomrim indicates that the culture of silencing around “sensitive issues” and the practice of urging male and female victims of sexual assault not to turn to the police but, rather, to “deal with the issue” more discreetly, continue unabated.
Israel warns: Iran’s uranium potentially retrievable after US strikes
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/411498
Israeli official says that the deeply buried enriched uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility may be retrievable, complicating assessments of US strike damage.
Trump Finds Retreating From World Stage Is Easier Said Than Done
https://www.newsweek.com/america-first-trump-foreign-policy-russia-ukraine-iran-2097302
When Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016, 2020 and 2024, he made one overarching promise to voters: no more costly overseas entanglements.
"I think Trump's policy is very much, I don't want to call it pragmatic, but it depends on the situation," said Henri J. Barkey, an adjunct senior fellow at CFR who previously worked at the State Department during the Clinton administration.
"If he decides, 'this is good for me,' he'll do it. I think that's the most important criteria. The most important criteria is how does this affect his prospects, his own vision of himself, but also how will it play with the public at home?"
Graham contrasted Trump's leadership style with past presidents who focused on building alliances and spreading values, saying his strategy is "much more transactional."
"He thinks of global affairs as bilateral competitions and he wants to win every competition."
E. Jean Carroll Reacts to Trump Losing $5 Million Defamation Appeal
https://www.newsweek.com/e-jean-carroll-reacts-trump-defamation-sexual-abuse-appeal-2097580
E.Jean Carroll took a victory lap on Thursday in response to an appeals court order affirming its ruling to uphold a civil verdict that found President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
"Thursday, July 10th, 2025," she wrote. "So long, Old Man! The United States Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, bids thee farewell."
The appeals court handed down its initial ruling in June but issued a mandate affirming that ruling and triggering the window for the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to step in and overturn the verdict.
The New York federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed its earlier ruling, which said Trump did not demonstrate that the judge who presided over his 2023 trial had "erred in any of the challenged rulings."
"Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial," the three-judge panel for the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals wrote in its June ruling.
Rav Yisroel Salanter: Why doesn't knowledge stop sin?
Prof Mark Stein ( Torah u-Madda Journal 9 (2000) page 46 ) In the talmudic tradition, action takes precedence over theory (at least in theory!), and the idea of disinterested philosophical reflection is discouraged." In the European-Christian tradition, contemplation is encouraged. In fact, among the philosophers, I can think of only one thinker, Benjamin Franklin, who gives serious consideration to the question of inculcating virtue in the individual, as distinct from the question of exploring the essence of virtue.
R. Israel was concerned with bridging the gap between religious ideals and religious practice, which is a question of therapy, not philosophy. But to construct his form of therapy, R. Israel had to analyze the illness: why do people who espouse values act counter to these values in everyday life? Debate over this question is one of the earliest in recorded philosophy, between Socrates and Aristotle. Socrates (in the Protagoras held that virtue is knowledge. Or to put it as a yeshivah student would: hissaron in practice reflects a hissaron in knowledge. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics VII, 3) rejected this view as simplistic; his own suggestion as to how "weakness of the will" (akrasia) is possible-despite knowledge-will not concern us here."
R. Israel's solution is given, if only by implication, in the first words Iggeret ha-Musar. R. Israel suggests not only a solution to the problem of akrasta, but a deeper one than that of either Plato or Aristotle:
But the problem is not just the "remoteness" of the future state. R. Israel's disciples, for example R. Isaac Blaser, reported that their teacher explained that the problem is (or is aggravated by) the great difference between our bodily existence and our eternal one, a difference so great that we find it difficult to identify ourselves altogether in the unimaginable bodiless state. So we cannot act on our belief in divine punishment after death." R. Israel's view, as attributed to him by disciples, bears a striking resemblance to that of the famous atheist, Hume, who expresses mock horror at...
R. Israel was concerned with bridging the gap between religious ideals and religious practice, which is a question of therapy, not philosophy. But to construct his form of therapy, R. Israel had to analyze the illness: why do people who espouse values act counter to these values in everyday life? Debate over this question is one of the earliest in recorded philosophy, between Socrates and Aristotle. Socrates (in the Protagoras held that virtue is knowledge. Or to put it as a yeshivah student would: hissaron in practice reflects a hissaron in knowledge. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics VII, 3) rejected this view as simplistic; his own suggestion as to how "weakness of the will" (akrasia) is possible-despite knowledge-will not concern us here."
R. Israel's solution is given, if only by implication, in the first words Iggeret ha-Musar. R. Israel suggests not only a solution to the problem of akrasta, but a deeper one than that of either Plato or Aristotle:
The imagination of Man is free; his reason is bound. His imagination leads him astray ... so that he fears not the certain future ... when he will suffer harsh judgments. No one else will be caught in his stead - he alone will bear the fruit of his sin; he is one, the sinner and the punished ....R. Israel's explanation for the failure of the good man to live up to his beliefs goes far beyond the mere invocation of the "evil inclination." The question is what the evil inclination is, and how it functions. R. Israel's answer is that the believing sinner becomes alienated from his future self, so that he becomes as indifferent to his own future suffering as most of us are to suffering in a faraway land. It is therefore the task of musar to bring the future to the present, so that the sinner feels the punishment already in his imagination. The philosophical analysis suggests a program of therapy, and this therapy R. Israel calls "learning musar"
But the problem is not just the "remoteness" of the future state. R. Israel's disciples, for example R. Isaac Blaser, reported that their teacher explained that the problem is (or is aggravated by) the great difference between our bodily existence and our eternal one, a difference so great that we find it difficult to identify ourselves altogether in the unimaginable bodiless state. So we cannot act on our belief in divine punishment after death." R. Israel's view, as attributed to him by disciples, bears a striking resemblance to that of the famous atheist, Hume, who expresses mock horror at...
the universal carelessness and stupidity of men with regard to a future state .... There is not indeed a more ample matter of wonder to the studious, and of regret to the pious man, than to observe the negligence of the bulk of mankind concerning their approaching condition .... A future state is so far removed from our comprehension, and we have so obscure an idea of the manner, in which we shall exist after the dissolution of the body, that we are never able with slow imaginations to surmount the difficulty .... And indeed the want of resemblance in this case so entirely destroys belief, that except those few, who upon cool reflection on the importance of the subject, have taken care by repeated meditation to imprint on their minds the arguments for a future state, there scarce are any, who believe the immortality of the soul with a true and established judgment ....Though the resemblance to R. Israel's analysis is obvious, R. Israel's is still the deeper. Hume presumes that sinners simply do not believe what they profess, on account of the weakness of the idea humans can have of a future state. Thus, in the end, Hume's diagnosis is a variant of Socrates': a defect in action presupposes a defect in belief. But Hume's diagnosis is based on a superficial account of the nature of belief itself, as constituted by a vivid idea-an account refuted by Thomas Reid in Hume's own lifetime, with the simple objection that we can have the most vivid hallucination without believing in its veracity." R. Israel, on the other hand, locates the problem not in believing in a future state, but in locating ourselves in the future state and relating to our future state as ourselves.
Kristi Noem Faces Investigation Over FEMA's Response to Texas Floods
https://www.newsweek.com/kristi-noem-faces-investigation-fema-response-texas-floods-2097623
Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz has called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be investigated over the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to catastrophic flooding in Texas.
"As a former Emergency Management Director of Florida, I am alarmed by reports that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) response to the Texas floods was delayed and hampered by a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 'cost-control' policy imposed by Secretary Kristi Noem," Moskowitz wrote in a letter to the top lawmakers on the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Thursday.
"If accurate, this represents a major deviation from long-standing FEMA protocol that may have slowed down lifesaving efforts and contributed to the tragedy's severity."
Deployment of critical FEMA resources were delayed due to a recently enacted rule that requires every purchase, contract and grant over $100,000 to be personally approved by Noem, according to reporting by CNN and the the Washington Post, which cited unnamed current and former FEMA officials.
Toras Moshe
G-d willing I will soon be completing Toras Moshe which is primarily a selective translation/synopsis of a number of the teshuvos of Rav Moshe that I have been most often asked about. I have attempted to arrange them according to the parshas of the Torah. I have also added sources on the parsha that I thought would be interesting to the average reader.
Dershowitz says he knows Epstein client list names: ‘But I’m bound by confidentiality’
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz on Thursday said he knows the list of names in the Jeffrey Epstein files regarding alleged clients in his international sex trafficking ring.
“I know the names of the individuals. I know why they’re being suppressed. I know who’s suppressing them,” Dershowitz said during an appearance on “The Sean Spicer Show.”
“But I’m bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can’t disclose what I know,” he added, noting at one point he was falsely named as a client.
'We've Been Played': MAGA Faces Its Own Disappointment With Trump
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-conspiracy-theories-2097180
The disappointment has been particularly acute around the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files and the long-anticipated "deep state" disclosures, which have instead reinforced official narratives MAGA supporters once rejected.
"MAGA really wouldn't exist without conspiracy theories," said Eric Alterman, a journalism professor at Brooklyn College. "These theories don't require evidence. They're about stories people tell themselves to explain why things feel like they're going wrong in their lives."
That expectation of dramatic revelations has become a defining feature of MAGA-era politics. From alleged UFO cover-ups to Epstein's supposed "client list," Trump loyalists — and sometimes Trump himself — stoked the belief that sinister truths would soon be exposed and that the Deep State was partly to blame.
Yet the much-anticipated Epstein review recently released by his own Justice Department concluded there was no client list and no evidence of foul play in Epstein's suicide — a finding that infuriated his supporters and alternative media figures who had built careers around pursuing that narrative.
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