Rate of global warming slows significantly

Scientific American  Extreme global warming is less likely in coming decades after a slowdown in the pace of temperature rises so far this century, an international team of scientists said on Sunday.

Warming is still on track, however, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions.

"The most extreme rates of warming simulated by the current generation of climate models over 50- to 100-year timescales are looking less likely," the University of Oxford wrote about the findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The rate of global warming has slowed after strong rises in the 1980s and 1990s, even though all the 10 warmest years since reliable records began in the 1850s have been since 1998. [...[]

Kolko case: Learning to believe the unbelievable

When we read about a horrible crime, we look for a rational explanation by seeking out the words regarding the accused, "he was a loner", "he was strange". We typically do find this to be true for those who fire automatic weapons in school massacres or cases such as the kidnapping, abuse and murder of women and children. However in the case of sexual abuse by pedophiles - we are stuck with the fact that often the perpetrator is amongst the most beloved of the community. Typically the pedophile picks a lonely child and grooms him for abuse by being his "special friend".  Consequently many can't believe that this distinguished family man, this charismatic teacher, this deeply spiritual clergyman would do such a thing. Many can't accept that the pervasive belief  that a man who abuses and rapes children is  mentally ill, a loner, a stranger - is typically wrong.

Because of the deeply seated belief as to the inherent evilness of pedophiles, we have a hard time accepting that the beloved uncle or neighbor is a child rapist. Consequently even when a pedophile confesses - it is often not accepted as being true. And surely when the accused is convicted despite his protests of innocence. The belief that nice people don't do horrible things conflicts with the fact that this person was convicted or confessed. 

This is the problem of cognitive dissonance - resolving strongly conflicting facts. However this dissonance is difficult to live with and thus we have a need to resolve it. One resolution is that we decide he wasn't so nice after all. That his good deeds were fake and that we really didn't know him. While in fact his accomplishments are often genuine - but viewing him as a phony allows us to accept his guilt.  

The other way of resolving the dissonance is to say that the conviction or even confession is not true. How does one ignore the fact of confession by the accused. One rationalization is that he was being railroaded by lying, vindictive kids who were trying to cover up their own misdeeds. Furthermore the accused could not handle the expenses of years of legal help. Therefore when faced with the likelihood of a life sentence or a plea bargain of 5 to 10 years - the plea bargain is the rational option. Because this does happen - it is possible for a rational human being to discount clear evidence of guilt. However the fact that it is unlikely - should cause the true and faithful believers in innocence to at least have doubts.

The Seridei  Aish notes that for a person to be a believer, the fact must move from being an outside assertion - to being accepted internally. This is true of all beliefs. Therefore there are those who keep externally the facts of confession or conviction. They acknowledge that a conviction or confession has occurred - but it is not internalized. The question then becomes, "What helps us internalize these unpleasant facts?"

The most helpful aid to accepting unpleasant facts is education. As we become more educated about the niceness of pedophiles, the dissonance becomes reduced.  As we learn that genuinely loving and spiritual people can do these horrible crimes - the more readily we will deal realistically with these crimes - both in terms of prevention and conviction. As the dissonance is reduced, the easier is it to accept reality.  It is time to accept reality.

Enlightenment & the Jews: What part should G-d play in secular culture?

This is the first of a series of posts on the relationship of Judaism to secular society and secular knowledge. I had previously mentioned the Seridei Aish's view that the Mussar Movement was a frum enlightenment which I understood literally. Dr. Marc Shapiro corrected me and said that I can not take this literally. Apparently the Seridei Aish simply meant it was enlightenment - but only in the spiritual sense and was never meant to include the issue of secular knowledge or tikun olam. However no one else seems to have characterized the Mussar Movement as frum haskala.  Dr. Shapiro said he would send me a letter from the Seridei Aish that discusses the issue more fully.

However once on the topic - since it is the issue today with Rabbi Lipman and his attempt to bring the chareidi society into the modern secular world with compulsory secular studies in high school, compulsory draft and in general a compulsory interaction with the secular world - I thought it would be of value to explore the historic lessons of the traditional Orthodox world dealing with the secular world. The issues facing Israeli Chareidim now were faced by the Jewish community beginning with the end of the 17th century when the secular enlightenment occurred together with emancipation from the ghetto - and continued to the present day.

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Paul Johnson (A History of the Jews page 298-299): Although the haskalah was a specific episode in Jewish history, and the maskil or enlightened Jew is a special type peculiar to Judaism, the Jewish enlightenment is nevertheless part of the general European enlightenment. But it is, more particularly, linked to the enlightenment in Germany, and this for a very good reason. The movement in both France and Germany was concerned to examine and readjust man's attitude to God. But whereas in France its tendency was to repudiate or downgrade God, and tame religion, in Germany it sought genuinely to reach a new understanding of and accommodation with the religious spirit in man. The French enlightenment was brilliant but fundamentally frivolous; the German was serious, sincere and creative. Hence it was to the German version that enlightened Jews felt attracted, which influenced them most, and to which they in turn made a substantial contribution. For perhaps the first time Jews in Germany began to feel a distinct affinity with German culture, and thus sowed in their hearts the seeds of a monstrous delusion.

To intellectuals in Christian society, the question posed by the enlightenment was really: how large a part, if any, should God play in an increasingly secular culture? To Jews, the question was rather what part, if any, should secular knowledge play in the culture of God. They were still enfolded in the medieval vision of a total religious society. It is true that Maimonides had argued strongly in favour of admitting secular science and had demonstrated how completely it could be reconciled to the Torah. But his argument had failed to convince most Jews. Even a relatively moderate man like the Maharal of Prague had attacked Rossi precisely for bringing secular criteria to bear on religious matters. A few Jews, for instance attended medical school in Padua. But they turned their back on the world outside the Torah the moment they re-entered the ghetto in the evening, as indeed did Jewish men of business. Of course many went out into the world never to return; but that had always happened. What the awesome example of Spinoza had shown, to the satisfaction of most Jews, was that a man could not drink at the well of gentile knowledge without deadly risk of poisoning his Judaic life. The ghetto remained not merely a social but an intellectual universe on its own. By the mid-eighteenth century the results were pitifully apparent to all. As long ago as the Tortosa dispute, early in the fifteenth century the Jewish intelligentsia had been made to seem backward and obscurantist. Now, more than 300 years later, the Jews appeared to educated Christians - or even uneducated ones - figures of contempt and derision dressed in funny clothes, imprisoned in ludicrous superstition, as remote and isolated from modern society as one of their lost tribes. The gentiles knew nothing, and cared less about Jewish scholarship. Like the ancient Greeks before them, they were not even aware it existed. For Christian Europe there had always been a 'Jewish problem'. In the Middle Ages it had been: how to prevent this subversive minority from contaminating religious truth, and social order? No fear of that now. For gentile intellectuals, at least the problem was now rather: how, in common humanity, to rescue this pathetic people from their ignorance and darkness

Eli Weinstein charged again - for $6 million scam

Asbury Park Press   A Lakewood man will spend at least the next few days in jail on charges that he and two others swindled a New Zealander out of more than $6 million in a stock scam.

Eliyahu Weinstein, 37, was awaiting sentencing on wire fraud and money-laundering charges when he was arrested at his home Tuesday morning.

Also arrested Tuesday were Alex Schleider, 47, also of Lakewood and Aaron Muschel, 63, of Brooklyn. The trio are charged with swindling the unnamed victim by misrepresenting that the man’s investment would be used to buy shares in last year’s Facebook IPO and real estate.[...]

Weinstein in January plead guilty to a count of wire fraud and a count of money laundering in connection with a real estate ponzi scheme that cost investors about $200 million. He was released on bail with a number of stipulations, including not engaging in any financial transaction worth more than $1,000 without the permission of a court-appointed special counsel.But in a “blatant violation” of that stipulation, according to FBI Special Agent Karl Ubellacker, who signed the complaint, Weinstein and his two co-conspirators convinced the victim to send them nearly $7.2 million in wire transfers in February and March 2012 for a purported investment in upcoming Facebook stock.[...]

Calling another Jew a rasha (evil): Punishment and Repentance

Kiddushin (28a): It was taught: If someone called a person a slave then he is banned (nidoi). If he called him a mamzer then he is given 40 lashes. If he called the other person a rasha (wicked) the victim can damage the perpetrator’s livelihood.(יורד עמו לחייו

Rashi (Kiddushin 28a): Beis din does not get involved but the victim is allowed to hate the perpetrator and damage his livelihood and to ruin his business.

Ritva (Kiddushin 28a): This is mida keneged mida (measure for measure). Since the perpetrator caused him a loss in his well being because society does not have mercy on one called a rasha. Therefore beis din does not get involved but it is permitted for him to damage the perpetrator's livelihood and to cause him a loss in his well being.
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If someome discovers that they are wrong about another person that they have publicly condemned - what should be the response?

Berachos(31a-b): [Soncino Translation]   R. Hamnuna said: How many most important laws can be learnt from these verses relating to Hannah!33 Now Hannah, she spoke in her heart: from this we learn that one who prays must direct his heart. Only her lips moved: from this we learn that he who prays must frame the words distinctly with his lips. But her voice could not be heard: from this, it is forbidden to raise one's voice in the Tefillah. Therefore Eli thought she had been drunken: from this, that a drunken person is forbidden to say the Tefillah. And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken, etc.34 R. Eleazar said: From this we learn that one who sees in his neighbour something unseemly must reprove him. And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord. ‘Ulla, or as some say R. Jose b. Hanina, said: She said to him: Thou art no lord in this matter, nor does the holy spirit rest on thee, that thou suspectest me of this thing. Some say, She said to him: Thou art no lord, [meaning] the Shechinah and the holy spirit is not with you in that you take the harsher and not the more lenient view of my conduct. Dost thou not know that I am a woman of sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink. R. Eleazar said: From this we learn that one who is suspected wrongfully must clear himself. Count not thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial; a man who says the Tefillah when drunk is like one who serves idols. It is written here, Count not thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial, and it is written elsewhere, Certain sons of Belial have gone forth from the midst of thee. Just as there the term is used in connection with idolatry, so here. Then Eli answered and said, Go in Peace. R. Eleazar said: From this we learn that one who suspects his neighbour of a fault which he has not committed must beg his pardon;6 nay more, he must bless him, as it says, And the God of Israel grant thy petition.

Why did the Lakewood establishment and Rav Belsky get it wrong?

Now that Kolko has confessed  to being a molester, the big question  is why didn't his supporters realize this? The supporters who insisted that rabbis can properly investigated and deal with judging the guilt or innocence. The big resistance to going to the police has been the insistence that these matters should be handled within the community. There is no question that the Kolko case was not handled properly within the community. It was because of the establishment rabbis that Kolko was allowed to stay in the community and have access to others.

How is Lakewood going to justify not only facilitating a child molester to continue to go free but also persecuting his victims. How is Rabbi Belsky going to explain his "investigation" and public declaration  not only of Kolko's innocence but that it was prohibited to go to the police. If the victim had not gone to the police, there is no doubt that Kolko would have destroyed many other innocent lives from our community. In fact it was only because other victims suddenly came forward that  he confessed. How many more victims are there? Even  now in England the community is intimidating victims from testifying in the Halpern case.

Hopefully G-d will give these rabbinic leaders the understanding to make major changes in the way they deal with such cases in the future. Hopefully they will no longer try to destroy those who feel that the police and secular  justice system are the only way to properly deal with these cases.  Hopefully they will wake up before their own children and grandchildren suffer from this illness.

Perhaps they will even publicly acknowledge the serious errors that they have made in the past and promise not to do repeat them in the future.

Yosef Kolko pleads guilty to charges today after learning 2 more victims came forward

Asbury Park Press   A former Lakewood Yeshiva teacher today admitted sexually abusing a boy, after authorities said two more victims of his came forward to them as his trial was underway.Sheriff's officers placed Yosef Kolko in handcuffs and led him to the Ocean County Jail after he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and child endangerment, and state Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson revoked his $125,000 bail. [...]

 Kolko’s trial on the charges involving that one boy got underway last week, but Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Laura Pierro told the judge that the defendant decided to plead guilty after learning that two more victims had come forward to authorities.

Pierro said she was contacted late Friday afternoon by a young woman who claimed she was victimized by Kolko, and the attorney for a young man who also claimed to be a victim.


Pierro said she met with the additional victims this morning and would have sought to admit their testimony, had the trial proceeded.


In exchange for Kolko’s guilty plea, the state would not proceed with additional charges related to the additional victims, but no other promises were made to him, Pierro said.

Binyamin Satz of Nahlaot sentenced to 15 years

YNET   The Jerusalem District Court sentenced Binyamin Satz, a 46-year-old resident of Jerusalem, to 15 years in prison after he was found guilty of sodomy and indecent acts against a number of haredi children, some as young as seven 

Haaretz  (January 2013) The Jerusalem District Court last week convicted the first man to be tried among several defendants accused of sexually abusing children in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood, an affair police initially called the biggest pedophile case in the state's history.

The court convicted Binyamin Satz, who was the first of 18 men to be arrested in the case that came to light in August, 2011. Two more men are now on trial, and 15 others were released and have not yet been charged in the affair that sent shock waves through the neighborhood that is home to many ultra-Orthodox Jews.

The judges found Satz guilty, but struck down his confession, which they determined police had obtained through “unfair psychological pressure.” Satz was acquitted of one of the counts in the indictment.

From the moment the case hit the headlines, neighborhood residents and defense attorneys claimed that it was the result of a witch hunt and mass hysteria, and that few if any children had been harmed.

According to these sources, the case grew to such dimensions (at one point more than 200 youngsters were said to have been abused) because of the dynamics in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, in which stories were magnified or even invented.

Those who maintain the stories were exaggerated say false accusations were leveled at the weakest people in the neighborhood ­– men living alone, some of whom are psychologically impaired. In one case, a resident is believed to have committed suicide because of the rumors that he was involved in abusing the children. Others were forced to leave the neighborhood and even the country.

Aspaklaria Jewish Source Book - Currently Free Online

I just noticed reports 1  2 that the very valuable research tool Aspaklari by Rabbi Dr. Shmuel Adler is currently available free online click here Aspaklaria Online

Shavuot Is Tough Sell in Digital Age

Forward by Rabbi Mendel Horowitz   When I began teaching in 1998, dormitory floors were littered with magazines and books. Back when notebooks came with pens, students could be encouraged to read and write, could be challenged to communicate. Those students, like students always, were hardly mindful of their studies. But unlike the case of today’s 4Gers, it was possible to engage with the minds of those digital neophytes.

That was then. Today’s dormitory is cluttered with wires and suffused with wireless, its occupants sharing files more than ideas. My current students communicate, relate — think — in bizarre combinations of lethargy and haste, clicking from friend to virtual friend and from page to virtual page without pausing to consider the people or books in sight of them. A text-based curriculum that relies heavily on commitment hardly stands a chance. [...]

Preferences for shortcuts and concision are not traits of a successful divinity student. The law of the Talmud is tricky, and students are expected to join in a boisterous dialectic to unravel its intent. Achieving transcendence through debate — conversing with God through the medium of His word — is as central to Orthodox Judaism as its precepts. Participation demands qualities not readily found online. [...]

Talmudic tradition maintains that the great voice of God on Sinai has never ceased — that it resonates, forever to be noticed. I would like to believe that in every generation, all can hear that sound, can identify its source, can appreciate its relevance. In truth, only some are moved by its echo; others strain for a chord, others may be not listening. For some there is only quiet.

Shavuot is about participation, not commemoration. About joining a community of listeners. About experiencing the resonance of His expression.

There can be no shortcuts to informed religious conduct. To pretend as much would be misleading. There can also be no substitute for earnest dialogue — with teachers, confidants and texts. Still, the challenge of amplifying that awesome sound to those who do not yet hear it depends on the sensitivity, creativity and patience of those who do. The same digitally distracted child can focus when the subject is of interest. The same digitally isolated soul can join a community when it matters to him most. [...]

Lapid's financial program is sabotaging his promises for universal draft

Times of Israel   One of the central campaign promises of the governing coalition parties was to institute a universal draft to the IDF or civil service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and Arab populations, but that promise is in jeopardy due to austerity measures sought by those same parties. At a Sunday meeting of the Peri Committee, tasked by the government with formulating a solution to the problem of the universal draft, a Finance Ministry representative told the committee members that under the current 2013-2014 budget draft there won’t be enough funding to implement wide-scale recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox and Arab populations into the IDF or civil service, Israeli media reported on Monday. [...]

The implementation of a true universal draft would require a wide budget outlay in several areas, including training and preparation for each recruit, regular payments for new IDF soldiers or civil service workers, and employment, educational programs and economic incentives aimed to entice the ultra-Orthodox community to enlist.

“The Finance Ministry doesn’t have the funding for this,” the representative said, according to Maariv. “We expect very heavy cuts… I doubt if there will be an additional budget so that we can give incentives and rewards.” [...]

Kolko Trial: Victim's father testifies

Asbury Park Press    The father of a former Lakewood boy who accused his camp counselor of sexual abuse wanted to handle the matter discreetly, within the Orthodox Jewish religious community, he testified in court on Thursday.

The man, formerly a prominent rabbi in Lakewood’s Orthodox community, said he just wanted to be sure the counselor, Yosef Kolko, quit working with children, sought therapy and stayed away from his son, the man told a jury.

But when months had already passed after he had brought the matter to the attention of a respected rabbi who promised to handle it discreetly, and learning that Kolko was still working at the summer camp where his son was molested, the father said he broke with Jewish tradition and sought justice with secular authorities. [...]

Father Gordon MacRae: Hope in a case of apparent grave injustice

Wall Street Journal    [...] That a great many of the accusations against the priests were amply documented, that they involved the crimes of true predators all too often hidden or ignored, no one can doubt.

Neither should anyone doubt the ripe opportunities there were for fraudulent abuse claims filed in the hope of a large payoff. Busy civil attorneys—working on behalf of clients suddenly alive to the possibilities of a molestation claim, or open to suggestions that they remembered having been molested—could and did reap handsome rewards for themselves and their clients. The Diocese of Manchester, where Father MacRae had served, had by 2004 paid out $22,210,400 in settlements to those who had accused its priests of abuse. 

The paydays did not come without effort. Thomas Grover—a man with a long record of violence, theft and drug offenses on whose claims the state built its case against Father MacRae—would receive direction for his testimony at the criminal trial. A conviction at the priest's criminal trial would be a crucial determinant of success—that is, of the potential for reward—in Mr. Grover's planned civil suit. [....]

A New Hampshire superior court will shortly deliver its decision on a habeas corpus petition seeking Father MacRae's immediate release on grounds of newly discovered evidence. The petition was submitted by Robert Rosenthal, an appellate attorney with long experience in cases of this kind. In the event that the petition is rejected, Father MacRae's attorneys say they will appeal.

Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents. Some who had been witnesses or otherwise involved still maintain vivid memories of the process. 

Debra Collett, the former clinical director at Derby Lodge, a rehabilitation center that Mr. Grover had attended in 1987, said in a signed statement for Father MacRae's current legal team that she had been subject to "coercion and intimidation, veiled and more forward threats" during the police investigation because "they could not get me to say what they wanted to hear." Namely, that Mr. Grover had complained to her of molestation by Father MacRae. He had not—though he had accused many others, as she would point out. Thomas Grover, she said, had claimed to have been molested by so many people that the staff wondered whether "he was going for some sexual abuse victim world record." [...]

Cleveland kidnappings: Emotional Recovery Seen Possible for Victims of Prolonged Abuse

NYTimes   Day after day, it was his voice they heard, his face they saw.

He was their tormentor and their deliverer, the one who — at his whim — could violate their minds and bodies, the keeper of the keys and the source of food and water. His dominion was a ramshackle house with boarded up windows. His control was absolute. 

For the women he is accused of kidnapping and holding prisoner for a decade in a home on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, their captor was for all intents and purposes their world. 

David A. Wolfe, a senior scientist and psychologist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, said that in situations of long-term sexual abuse and threat to life, victims inevitably develop complicated and ambivalent emotions toward their abuser in order to survive. 

“You turn the devil into something you can handle,” he said, adding that the first thing he would want to know from someone who survived such an ordeal would be “What was your feeling about this person during the captivity?” 

Dr. Wolfe and other therapists noted that all traumatic experiences are different and that many details of the women’s ordeal have not been made public; some experts argued that for the women’s sake, they should not be. 

But they said many people can and do rebound from even the most extreme abuse, aided by the support of family and friends, the use of specifically tailored therapies and the privacy, safety and time to digest and come to terms with their experience. It is important, some therapists said, that the women not be turned into a spectacle, their identities as individuals diminished to “kidnap victims.”

“We know that resilience exists and that recovery is possible,” said Dr. Judith A. Cohen, medical director of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. “For people who believe that it’s inevitable that a horrific experience like this would leave lasting scars, the evidence does not necessarily support that.”