Czech railways rolls Out female only compartments

Time

According to the New York Times, the new compartments installed on about 30 trains were instantly met with some disapproval. Opponents argued the cabins discriminate against men, but rail spokesman Petr Stahlavsky told the Times the changes are based on “Western European and Christian traditions.” He added, “This is not any discrimination but social and cultural tradition.”

As it turns out, these types of cabins are not so uncommon. The company said it was modeling its new compartments after the Austrian system, but women-only cabins have already taken off in at least a half-dozen countries including Japan, Egypt, Iran, Brazil and India.[...]

Though men aren’t banned from sitting in the new the six-seater Ladies Compartments on Prague’s trains, women will have priority seating and can ask men to leave if they don’t want to share the space with a Y chromosome. If successful, Czech Railways hopes to continue with plans to roll out 80 more similar compartments by the summer.

Fraud discovered in rabbinic ordination tests

YNet

Five men are suspected for fraud and impersonation after attempting to take a rabbinic qualification exam instead of their classmates on Wednesday. They admitted they were paid thousands of shekels by Yeshiva students to take the exam in their place, since they were not properly prepared. Following the complaint, the police suspects a larger network of fraudulent Yeshiva students is behind the scenes.

The fraud was discovered during a concentrated Halacha exam to 2,500 students. Test supervisors noticed suspected identification cards and after questioning the students they confessed to the fraud and signed affidavits declaring they were paid between 3,000-6,000 NIS for their service. One of the students said this is the second exam he is taking in place of the same Yeshiva student.[...]

Dutch Church castrated victims who reported child abuse & homosexuals

Time Magazine

It not only sounds ludicrous as a medical procedure, but in moral terms it's downright barbarous: castrating young men to "cure" them of their homosexuality. Yet this was how the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands treated gays in the 1950s, according to a Dutch newspaper, which claims at least 10 men were forced to go under the knife at the church's behest. The extraordinary allegations, which were published last weekend in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper, have prompted Dutch parliamentarians to demand an inquiry into the issue, raising questions about whether the church received political cover to take such extreme measures.

The newspaper said the castrations were regarded both as a treatment for homosexuality, as well as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse. The newspaper said 20-year-old Henk Hethuis had been surgically castrated on the instructions of Catholic priests in 1956 after he told police he was being abused at the Harreveld boarding school in Gelderland. Although the monks were convicted of the abuse, Heithuis was nonetheless sent to a Catholic psychiatric hospital and then castrated. He died two years later in a car crash. The newspaper adds there are strong indications that at least nine other young men were castrated around the same time, either for whistle-blowing or for supposed homosexuality.

Sexual harassment case against MK Kara dropped

YNet

The sexual harassment complaint filed against MK Ayoob Kara (Likud) in September was dismissed by the police Wednesday.

The police found that the complaint – alleging that MK Kara harassed a female subordinate in his office – was without merit. The recommendation to close the case was referred to the State Prosecutor's office.

Beis din must now track men who won't grant gets

Haaretz

The new law, which was sponsored by MKs Otniel Schneller (Kadima ) and Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi ), states that every divorce decree issued by a rabbinical court must include a date by which the get is to be arranged. If either spouse fails to provide the get by the specified date, the rabbinical court will now be required to reconvene and consider imposing sanctions. 

The law also requires the court to reconvene on a regular basis to track the status of the get, whether or not sanctions are imposed. 

Previous law also allowed rabbinical courts to impose sanctions on spouses who refused to provide a get, including attaching their bank accounts, denying them a driver's license or even sending them to jail. But the courts rarely made use of this power. 

The new law is aimed at encouraging them to do so by forcing them to revisit the case at regular intervals, which imposes a burden on both the courts and the recalcitrant party. It also facilitates the imposition of sanctions by allowing them to be imposed even if the recalcitrant spouse skips the hearing, and states that sanctions won't be suspended if the recalcitrant spouse appeals them.

Fake kollel scam:Police arrest 4 ultra-Orthodox men

Haaretz

Jerusalem police have arrested three ultra-Orthodox men for allegedly defrauding the Education Ministry of millions of shekels through a fictitious Torah study center. 

Following the arrests on Sunday a fourth man, from Jerusalem, was arrested yesterday in connection with the nonexistent center. Jerusalem police expect further arrests in the case.

Dutch Church Is Accused of Castrating Young Men

NY Times

BRUSSELS — A young man in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was surgically castrated decades ago after complaining about sexual abuse, according to new evidence that only adds to the scandal engulfing the church there. 

The case, which dates from the 1950s, has increased pressure for a government-led inquiry into sexual abuse in the Dutch church, amid suspicions that as many as 10 young men may have suffered the same fate.

Political correctness & teaching halachic positions

Cross Currents 
Rav Yitzchok Adlerstein wrote:

There are people who believe that shaking hands with those of the opposite gender is not only assur, but yehareg v’al ya’avor. Teachers should not be muzzled into not relating this. At the same time, with what we know of what is going on in the minds of so many of our teens (and their parents!), a good teacher ought to be able to relate the difference between committing adultery and abizrayu of ervah. He/she ought to also explain that such a position is hardly unanimous: that frum, pious German Jews shook hands for hundreds of years; that some major figures in the previous generation held that it was mutar, at least in trying circumstances; that R. Chaim Berlin wrote a teshuvah explaining why it is mutar. The teacher ought to be able to adequately explain the position that he/she does not practice, even while promoting the other.

I wrote the following comment which has not been published yet over 12 hours ago even though 8 later comments have been approved.[update after 24 hours it was finally approved]

  

Daniel Eidensohn

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

 March 20, 2012 at 5:27 am

This is the view of the Chazon Ish. I don’t understand why you think a teacher needs to confuse young minds with the fact that many halachos are matters of dispute. Are you suggesting that a teacher leave it up to a student to decide? A teacher should be chosen to reflect the desired values and halachic positions of the community. Either they need a different teacher or they are in the wrong school.

Don't play house: Rav Moshe's advice for shidduchim

 Copyrighted for Daas Torah

Igros Moshe(Y.D. 1:90): A boy and a girl want to get to know each other for the purpose of marriage to determine whether they will like each other. They want to know whether it is permitted to rent two separate bedrooms in one house where the owner and his wife also live. It is clear that if it is known to the owner and his wife that they are not husband and wife – there is reason to be lenient. However if they are not informed then it is possible that they might mistakenly assumed that they are married and therefore it won’t help that the owner lives there. If the owner doesn’t know that they are not married it would thus be prohibited to rent the separate rooms because the owner is no longer a protection against sin because they are not embarrassed to be alone together and other similar problems. Regarding the issue of whether it is permitted for her to prepare meals for him, it seems that there is no concern that this is prohibited according to all authorities. That is because this is not included in the prohibition of utilizing a woman’s services. This type of service is permitted as is serving as a maid – even if she does it for free. All of this is permitted according to the strict letter of the law – however in actuality it is not worth doing. A person shouldn’t try to be too “smart” in these matters. It is sufficient if she finds favor in his eyes - regarding her appearance, her family and her reputation concerning her religious observance - that he can rely on that to get married with the hope that she was the one designated for him from Heaven. It is not necessary to examine her first. Furthermore this “test” is worthless to determine if she will be a good wife. Rather the Torah tells us to be “tamim” (to have simple trust) with G‑d.

Sexual Abuse in Baltimore: A documentary

Washington Post

What emerges most clearly from “Standing Silent” are the costs of failing to report abuse, told largely through the experience of the man who organized the original Pikesville meeting that Jacobs attended, Yacov Margolese.

You only need to hear Margolese’s story, Jacobs explains, to understand how corrosive keeping quiet can be. These days, though, Margolese tells it more openly.

The oldest of nine children, Margolese moved to the Baltimore suburb in 1987 from Far Rockaway in Queens. He remembers as a 13-year-old wanting to increase his level of religious observance, to learn the skills required to sing the Torah like so many of his new neighbors had. So, Margolese says, his parents hired Israel Shapiro, a burly, jovial man known for having a way with children, as a Torah tutor. Margolese alleges that Shapiro soon began fondling him during the lessons. Margolese says he told a rabbi about the abuse and that the rabbi advised him to tell Shapiro he wanted to focus on his studies. He did so, but the abuse continued, he said, and after a few months, he told his parents he had learned enough.

For years afterward, Margolese says, he suffered from suicidal depression. He felt like he needed to cleanse himself, become more religious. “But as I grew up, I couldn’t reconcile the hypocrisy,” Margolese says.\

“To me, it wasn’t just sexual abuse,” Margolese says in “Standing Silent.” “It was spiritual abuse.”

Why Aharon Friedman hasn't given a get to Tamar Epstein

[The wife's view has been widely published - most recently published in Tablet Magazine]

Guest Post: You asked on your blog why Tamar Epstein doesn't have a get.  But that is the wrong question to be asking.

The question which people should be outraged about in the controversy between Tamar Epstein and Aharon Friedman is how Tamar abducted their child to another State. Tamar's abduction of the child and her continued attempts since then to prevent the child from having a relationship with Aharon constitute horrific abuse.  That is why Tamar doesn't have a get. Just ask yourself what parent would agree to give or accept a get given such behavior.

Anyone interested in Tamar receiving a get should explain to her the importance of letting their daughter have a father involved in her day-to-day life. And since abducting the child,  Tamar has also continuously done what she can to prevent the child from having a relationship with Aharon, including violating agreements with Aharon, abusing Aharon's adherence to halacha, refusing to let the child spend scheduled time with Aharon, threatening their child's paternal relatives and organizing demonstrations against them in front of their child. And Tamar's associates openly boast of trying to prevent their child from spending scheduled time with Aharon.

Aharon has repeatedly tried to resolve their differences in a conciliatory fashion, only for Tamar to continuously use this to her strategic advantage in trying to prevent their child from having a relationship with Aharon. Several people have recently reached out to Aharon to mediate, including Rabbi Menachem Rosenfeld. Aharon has agreed to mediate, but Tamar has refused to do so.

Other important questions raised by this case are Tamar's making a mockery of the beis din system in order to delay adjudication in civil court so that her abduction of the child would be treated as a fait accompli, and the abhorrent tactics used by Ora, including attacking innocent third parties, and creating an enormous chillul hashem by turning what could and should have been a private matter to be resolved quietly into an international news story.

Anyone interested in reading a detailed description of the case can go to:
www.stuffandnonsensesaidalice.blogspot.com

Haredi seminaries’ final exams to have same status as Bagrut exams

YNET

For the first time the Education Ministry is set to recognize haredi seminary final exams as Bagrut matriculation exams in every way. This means that any young woman who graduates from the independent education system’s haredi seminaries to become integrated in higher education institutions.

The decision is set to come into effect retroactively for any woman who has taken the exams in the last decade.

Can a NASA worker proselytize Intelligent Design?

Time Magazine

Coppedge is — or was — a computer analyst and team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, working on the Cassini Saturn project. He is also a believer in intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have emerged and advanced without the hand of a creator behind it. Coppedge both runs a "creative-evolution" website and serves on the board of a company that produces intelligent design videos. Every bit of this is Constitutionally protected and none of it need have interfered with his work on the Cassini project — even if his beliefs do make something of an awkward fit with a mission that is intended, in part, to look for the chemical and evolutionary origins of life, with no role for anything other than the strictly empirical. Still, in 2009 Coppedge was demoted and in 2011 he was fired; both moves, he claims, were a result of religious discrimination.


Not so, says JPL. Coppedge, they argue, was harassing his co-workers by pushing his intelligent design video on them and engaging in unwelcome arguments about the origins of life. He is also alleged to have made coworkers uncomfortable with his overbearing conversations about his support for Proposition 8 — California's anti-same sex marriage amendment — and his belief that the JPL holiday party ought to be renamed a Christmas party. He was, according to his former superiors, reprimanded and told to confine such discussions to the lunch hour or other free time. Coppedge, according to those same superiors, responded by alleging a "hostile work environment."

Bnei Brak nursing home staff abandoned elderly in fire

JPost

Staff members at a nursing home in Bnei Brak did not call the fire department to report a blaze that broke out at the facility on Saturday night and were not present when firefighters arrived on the scene, a spokesman for the Bnei Brak Fire Department told Army Radio on Sunday.

Seventeen people were injured in the fire. Bnei Brak Fire Department Spokesman Hezi Tzafania said that "when the first teams arrived on the scene, they did not see any of the staff present. Nobody was there to direct them and give them an indication of how many elderly people were present. The staff must have escaped."