Thursday, August 4, 2016

Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Update - The deliberate silence of our gedolim means they are liable for the sin of adultery

Guest post by Joe Orlow

Rabbi Dovid Feinstein had a private Bais Din that gave a ruling to Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky. The Bais Din ruled that Tamar Epstein is married to Aharon Friedman.

Despite this ruling, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky had not publicly stated that Tamar should separate from the man that she married in a ceremony performed by Rabbi Nota Greenblatt.

I learned that a prominent Rav had asked Rabbi Dovid Feinstein to issue a letter stating Tamar should separate from her second husband. Rabbi Feinstein agreed to write the letter.

I called a Rav who is close to Rabbi Feinstein to find out the status of the letter from Rabbi Feinstein. In the course of the conversation, this Rav told me that Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky had told Tamar to separate from her second husband.

I called Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and asked him to confirm that he had told Tamar to separate from her second husband. He told me, "I never told anyone to separate." That is an exact quote.

I called up a Rav who had sat on the Bais Din with Rabbi Feinstein that issued the ruling to Rabbi Kamenetsky. I told him that Rabbi Kamenetsky told me that he did not tell anyone to separate. The Rav indicated to me that he felt that if Rabbi Kamenetsky did tell Tamar to separate, that she would listen to Rabbi Kamenetsky. I furthermore told the Rav that Rabbi Feinstein had been asked to write a letter telling Tamar to separate.

I asked that the Bais Din should tell Rabbi Kamenetsky to tell Tamar to separate. I went on. I asked that the Bais Din make a direct statement telling Tamar to separate from her second husband.

This Rav, who sat on this Bais Din, in the nicest way made it clear that none of this would be happening.

I said that that I had been told that the great scholars of the generation are responsible for the generation. Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn had taught me that just hours before I had this discussion with the Rav.

I spelled it out, leaving nothing to the imagination. I said that every time the couple has relations that the Aveira is on the great scholars of the generation (who fail to act and tell the couple to separate on the outside possibility that the couple will listen and separate.)

There seemed to be nothing more to add. The Rav thanked me. I returned the thanks. And hung up.

Addendum

The Gemora in Shabbos 54b says that one who has the influence to prevent somebody from sinning and does not stop the sinning is punished as if he had committed those sins. That is, there are people who can prevent their families from sinning but not the general public. There are people who have some influence in the general public. There are those who can influence the entire world. A person who can stop the sin of a few people but no more and does not do that is punished as a sinner with the sins of a few people. But one who can influence many people to stop sinning and does not, is punished with the sins of many people.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Why ‘Useless’ Surgery Is Still Popular


Before a drug can be marketed, it has to go through rigorous testing to show it is safe and effective. Surgery, though, is different. The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate surgical procedures. So what happens when an operation is subjected to and fails the ultimate test — a clinical trial in which patients are randomly assigned to have it or not?

The expectation is that medical practice will change if an operation turns out not to help.

If only.

It looks as if the onus is on patients to ask what evidence, if any, shows that surgery is better than other options.

Take what happened with spinal fusion, an operation that welds together adjacent vertebrae to relieve back pain from worn-out discs. Unlike most operations, it actually was tested in four clinical trials. The conclusion: Surgery was no better than alternative nonsurgical treatments, like supervised exercise and therapy to help patients deal with their fear of back pain. In both groups, the pain usually diminished or went away.

The studies were completed by the early 2000s and should have been enough to greatly limit or stop the surgery, says Dr. Richard Deyo, professor of evidence-based medicine at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. But that did not happen, according to a recent report. Instead, spinal fusion rates increased — the clinical trials had little effect.

Spinal fusion rates continued to soar in the United States until 2012, shortly after Blue Cross of North Carolina said it would no longer pay, and some insurers followed suit.

“It may be that financial disincentives accomplished something that scientific evidence alone didn’t,” Dr. Deyo said.[...]

In 2009, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published results of separate clinical trials on a popular back operation, vertebroplasty, comparing it to a sham procedure. They found that there was no benefit — pain relief was the same in both groups. Yet it and a similar operation, Kyphoplasty, in which doctors inject a sort of cement into the spine to shore it up, continue to be performed. [...]

The latest controversy — and the operation that arguably has been studied the most in randomized clinical trials — is surgery for a torn meniscus, a sliver of cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in the knee. It’s a condition that often afflicts middle-aged and older people, simply as a consequence of degeneration that can occur with age and often accompanying osteoarthritis. The result can be a painful, swollen knee. Sometimes the knee can feel as if it catches or locks. So why not do an operation to trim or repair the torn tissue?

About 400,000 middle-aged and older Americans a year have meniscus surgery. And here is where it gets interesting. Orthopedists wondered if the operation made sense because they realized there was not even a clear relationship between knee pain and meniscus tears. When they did M.R.I. scans on knees of middle-aged people, they often saw meniscus tears in people who had no pain. And those who said their knee hurt tended to have osteoarthritis, which could be the real reason for their pain.

Added to that complication, said Dr. Jeffrey N. Katz, a professor of medicine and orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School, is the fact that not everyone improves after the surgery. “It is not regarded as a slam-dunk,” he said. As a result, he said, many doctors have been genuinely uncertain about which is better — exercise and physical therapy or surgery. That, in fact, was what led Dr. Katz and his colleagues to conduct a clinical trial comparing surgery with physical therapy in middle-aged people with a torn meniscus and knee pain.

The result: The surgery offered little to most who had it. Other studies came to the same conclusion, and so did a meta-analysis published last year of nine clinical trials testing the surgery. Patients tended to report less pain — but patients reported less pain no matter what the treatment, even fake surgery.[...]

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz: How he convinced the judge not to issue an injunction against speaking in Haf Nof

I attended Rabbi Yakov Horowitz' presentation in Har Nof tonight. He spoke to a very interested and concerned audience for two hours. He speaks very well and has a lot of solid practical information to present. After the presentation I spoke to him briefly about what happened in court today. He noted that there were reporters present who would report the story. (Below are links to two of the reports.)

It is clear that the judge did not buy the claims that Rabbi Horowitz was a danger to the level 3 pedophile and his family by coming to his neighborhood of Har Nof to incite his neighbors against him. It is also clear that whatever negative attention this convicted pedophile is getting is coming primarily from his legal actions against Rabbi Horowitz.  Given the dismissal of the request for an injunction today - the pedophile seems to have little chance of winning the civil judgment in November and clearly stands to destroy whatever normal existence is left to them. Does it really make any sense to arouse the interest of the media when commonsense would tell you to make yourself as inconspicuous as possible? Ironically this convicted pedophile in his attempt to silence Rabbi Horowitz is actually building his stature and convincing people of the need for more publicity!


Kikar haShabbat

And in English

                      Arutz 7


Rabbi Yakov Horowitz speaking Thursday in Beit Shemesh about Technology and Child Safety


Please come hear Renowned ​Mechanech and Parenting Mentor, Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz, address these two vital topics.  

Free of charge, this Thursday night, 7 pm at

​Ulam Shabsai

.  See flyer below for details.  Really recommended for anyone who has children 4th grade and up!



Tuesday, August 2, 2016

6 teachers indicted for child abuse at haredi school



An indictment was filed this morning (Tuesday) against 6 teachers at a Tel Aviv haredi boys school associated with the Belz hassidic sect, on charges of child abuse against 22 of their students.

According to the indictment, the six were educators at the institution, and taught minors aged 3 to 10.

From 2000 to 2011, beginning when the students were 3-4 years old, until they were 10, the 6 men took advantage of their positions of power to enact daily systematic physical and mental abuse against the boys.

In addition, one of the educators was charged with sodomy and indecent acts against the boys during the period that the boys were aged 7 until age 10.

The same man was charged with blackmail, realized threats, and abuse of minors in his custody, in light of the fact that he physically abused his own son for years until his son left the house, and instilled an atmosphere of deep fear among members of his household.

RABBI YAKOV HOROWITZ will SPEAK TONIGHT AT 8 P.M as SCHEDULED. Judge rejected the convicted pedophile legal arguments

The judge today heard the convicted pedophile's legal arguments for an injunction against Rabbi Horowitz speaking about child abuse - and she rejected them. 

She refused to issue an injunction against Rabbi Horowitz' presentation. It take place as scheduled - TONIGHT 8 PM in Har Nof

Monday, August 1, 2016

Trump's foot in mouth problem - Donald Trump Criticizes Muslim Family of Slain U.S. Soldier, Drawing Ire

update NY Times  John McCain Denounces Donald Trump’s Comments on Family of Muslim Soldier

In a remarkable and lengthy rebuke of his party’s nominee, Senator John McCain sharply criticized Donald J. Trump’s comments about the family of the fallen Muslim Army captain, saying, “While our party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”

Mr. McCain, a war hero whose service and capture in Vietnam Mr. Trump also once derided, had stayed largely silent over the weekend as Mr. Trump’s feud with the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan brewed, waiting until Monday morning to release a prepared statement.

“In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents,” he wrote. “He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States — to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.” [...]
=====================================
NY Times   Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak.

Mr. Trump’s comments, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that will air on Sunday, drew quick and widespread condemnation and amplified calls for Republican leaders to distance themselves from their presidential nominee. With his implication that the soldier’s mother had not spoken because of female subservience expected in some traditional strains of Islam, his comments also inflamed his hostilities with American Muslims.

Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, lashed out at Mr. Trump in an interview on Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it was too painful for her to talk about her son’s death.

Mr. Trump, he said, “is devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son.”

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a rival of Mr. Trump’s in the Republican primaries who has refused to endorse him, castigated him on Twitter. “There’s only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honor and respect,” he wrote, using the term for surviving family members of those who died in war.[...]

Mr. Khan’s speech at the convention in Philadelphia was one of the most powerful given there. It was effectively the Democratic response to comments Mr. Trump has made implying many American Muslims have terrorist sympathies or stay silent when they know ones who do. Mr. Trump has called to ban Muslim immigration as a way to combat terrorism.

At the convention, Mr. Khan spoke about how his 27-year-old son, Humayun Khan, an Army captain, died in a car bombing in 2004 in Iraq as he tried to save other troops.

He criticized Mr. Trump, saying he “consistently smears the character of Muslims,” and pointedly challenged what sacrifices Mr. Trump had made. Holding a pocket-size copy of the Constitution, he asked if Mr. Trump had read it. Mr. Khan’s wife stood silently by his side.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Stephanopoulos that Mr. Khan seemed like a “nice guy” and that he wished him “the best of luck.” But, he added, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.”

Mr. Trump also told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times on Friday night, “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”

In a statement late Saturday, Mr. Trump called Captain Khan a “hero,” and reiterated his belief that the United States should bar Muslims from entering the country.

“While I feel deeply for the loss of his son,” he added, “Mr. Khan, who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things.”

Even given Mr. Trump’s reputation for retaliating when attacked, his remarks about the Khans were startling. They called to mind one of his earliest counterpunches of the campaign, when he responded to criticism from Senator John McCain of Arizona, once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, by saying at a forum in Iowa, “I like people that weren’t captured.”

But Mr. McCain has a long history in the public eye. The Khans, before their convention appearance, had none.

“Trump is totally void of any decency because he is unaware of how to talk to a Gold Star family and how to speak to a Gold Star mother,” Mr. Khan said on Saturday.

Ms. Khan did speak on Friday to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, saying she “cannot even come in the room where his pictures are.”

When she saw her son’s photograph on the screen behind her on the stage in Philadelphia, she said, “I couldn’t take it.”

“I controlled myself at that time,” she said, while choking back tears. “It is very hard.”[...]

Rav Yakov Horowitz just had a restraining order filed against him to stop Tuesday's presentation


Can't make this up.

Convicted sex offender YW went to Israeli court and filed a restraining order against me. I need to (take a lawyer) and appear before a judge at 12 noon tomorrow.

I was told that Weinberg told a staff member in the Har Nof Community Center where the speech will held that he filed for restraining order to stop me from giving the child safety class Tuesday evening.

I'm here in Israel working on the launch of the da'ati Le'umi version of our safety book.

I can't comment on this because of the hearing, but I strongly feel that this entire matter desperately needs the disinfectant of sunlight. Please like and share this......


I can't comment on this because of the hearing, but I strongly feel that this entire matter desperately needs the disinfectant of sunlight. Please like and share this......

**** some random thoughts as I'm walking the streets of beautiful Jerusalem on way to my lawyer:

1) I really, really appreciate the well over 100 emails, calls and all the other tech-apps. I read all; sorry can't respond. 

2) answer to, "How are you doin' Yankie?" Is great bh. Really great. And very, very determined. 

3) most important note; (I'm being circumspect due to legal proceedings) you are all witnessing a very unusual event -- you are watching how a sex offender's mind really works. This never happens because their crimes are done in darkness and they all clam up after they are charged. (Think; did you ever hear a word from Weberman or observe anything he did??)

Now you are watching weinberg's "new math," how he calculates risk and reward, on and on (I can't write more). 

Remember this for the rest of your life; and think of it when a community leader or friend tells you that a sex offender isn't a danger any more.


Friday, July 29, 2016

Eliezar Berland indicted on sexual assault charges

Arutz 7   Rabbi Eliezer Berland is formally indicted on numerous counts of sex crimes against members of his community.

The Jerusalem District Attorney's office today (Friday) filed an indictment in the city's Magistrate Court against Rabbi Eliezer Berland on charges of indecent acts without consent, indecent acts towards a minor by exploiting a disciplinary and educational relationship, and aggravated sexual assault.

In the indictment, Rabbi Berland is named as having served as the Rabbi and leader of the "Shuvu Banim" community and Yeshiva in Jerusalem, many of whose members were concentrated near his residences in Jerusalem and Beitar Ilit.

As part of the obligations associated with his position, he held meetings for purposes of religious and spiritual guidance and instruction with male and female members of his community, and others, in his house and other places.

The indictment states that Rabbi Berland took advantage of these meetings and his status on numerous occasions to commit sexual acts - without consent and while exploiting a disciplinary and educational relationship - with women and female minors.

Following the exposure of some of his deeds by a man who had discovered them, the indictment says, Rabbi Berland ordered two of his followers to assault the man. [...]

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Father of 11 arrested on charges of sexually abusing daughters

nrg


החקירה החלה לאחר קבלת דיווח על חשד ששתי צעירות, בנות 15 וחצי ו-23 כיום, שנפגעו מינית על ידי 
אביהן מאז היו בנות פגיעה מתמשכת וארוכת שנים שמהלכה ביצע האב בבנותיו מעשי אינוס, מעשה סדום ומעשים מגונים. 

מהחקירה עולה כי אבי המשפחה, פגע מינית בבתו הגדולה מאז הייתה בת 7 ועד שעזבה את בית המשפחה בגיל 17.מאז שעזבה את בית המשפחה החל האב לפגוע מינית באחותה הקטנה שהייתה אז כבת 11, ועד לחשיפת הפרשה לפני כחודש. המקרה נחשף כשהבת הגדולה גילתה שהאב ממשיך בפגיעותיו גם כלפי אחותה הקטנה, וסיפרה זאת בפני קרובי המשפחה. 
[...]
מהמשטרה נמסר כי מדובר בחקירה רגישה ומורכבת, שהצליחה בין היתר הודות לשיתוף הפעולה עם בני המשפחה ואנשי הקהילה, נפתחה חקירה מקצועית ורגישה שבסיומה גובשה תשתית ראייתית שהובילה להגשת כתב אישום חמור. 


[...]

Torah Under Wraps: Charedi scholars who are unafraid to deal with subjects deemed taboo in the yeshiva world


“One needs to strengthen oneself with faith; one should not entertain philosophical questions nor even glance at the books of philosophers,” said Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav already at the end of the eighteenth century. This motto is particularly popular today, in the post-modern era of “religious strengthening,” in which religiosity is perceived as synonymous with simplicity and unsophistication. Yet that very approach also runs counter to the Jewish mind, which is by its nature anything but naive. The legacy of Jewish erudition constitutes part of the DNA not only of the academy, but of even the most Haredi sectors of the yeshiva world, and it finds expression in the spirited Jewish Studies scholarship flourishing under the radar in circles that are presumed to recoil from it.

Israelis distant from the world of Jewish Studies were offered a glimpse of it in the amusing film “Footnote,” but it portrayed only the nerve center of the field’s academic milieu, when in reality a great deal more is out there. In the reading rooms of the National Library, and in many houses in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, many scholars sit and study the same topics as academics but without academic degree, without traveling to conferences, without aspirations toward an academic appointment. The history of medieval and modern rabbinic authorities, the stories of their compositions, the manuscripts and their provenances, variant customs, disputes both ancient and alive—all of these preoccupy a non-negligible group of yeshiva graduates, Haredi in dress and behavior, who publish articles in “non-academic” journals of Torah scholarship and produce corrected editions of sacred texts, some of which can even be considered quasi-critical editions.

They number Hasidim and Mitnaggedim, the truly God-fearing and those trapped in the Haredi lifestyle who cut corners, those lacking any academic title and others who have earned one—sharp and knowledgeable one and all, still faithful to, and actively participating in, the intra-Haredi discourse. Some of them evidence a dual non-conformism in their lives: on the one hand, they have opted to put distance between themselves and the safe space of the yeshiva, pasturing in the treacherous fields of scholarship; on the other hand, they are Haredim who hail from circles thoroughly suspicious of academia and would not dream of lending credence to its guiding assumptions. Nearly every remarkable personality in the field originates in the circles of Ashkenazi religious zealots, yet the scholarly discussion—which takes place not only on journal pages but in the lively Internet forums of Be-Hadrei Haredim and Otzar HaHochma—is not private, and sometimes a handful of others participate. Rabbi Yoel Catane of Yeshivat Sha‘alvim, editor of the journal HaMa’yan, is one of those others, as his home is in the Religious Zionist world, and his publication represents the enlightened German Zionist Orthodoxy of bygone years. The late Eitam Henkin also was one of them—a Torah scholar and brilliantly wide-ranging scholar who took prominent part in the back and forth of these torani scholars.[...]

“It’s ‘spontaneous academia,’” says Rabbi J., who would prefer to avoid equating it with academia. “It develops independently, without institutional bodies to dictate rules and regulations. It is anarchic, autodidactic, and exhilarating. It is a breathtaking demonstration of unfettered intellectual ability.”

Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem, Director of the Gershom Scholem Library at the National Library of Israel, has occasionally bumped into scholars from the very heart of the Haredi world. “They are not the typical kollel fellow because the scholarly approach is not that of yeshiva students,” he says. He continues:

“Look, when I began working here I met a senior rosh yeshiva from a respected hesder yeshiva, and I told him about those who come from the yeshiva world to do research here. He was at a loss. “What sort of thing do they research?” he asked me, and I responded in turn with the example of Hemdat Yamim.[2] “Why would they research Hemdat Yamim,” the Torah scholar asked me, “when they can buy it in any seforim store?” That is the mainstream approach. Those who embark on scholarship are atypical.”

They may be exceptional and individualist, but one unmistakable quality binds them all together: they are autodidacts. This is evident in how they handle material in a foreign language. Some of these scholars have never studied English or German systematically yet refer to non-Hebrew sources in their articles. Each apparently bridged the gap in his own way.[...]

Anyone interested in this phenomenon is invited to open, for example, a volume of Yerushaseinu, an annual tome published by the Institute for German Jewish Heritage (Machon Moreshet Ashkenaz). Some of the articles published therein would be perfectly suitable for any standard academic journal; among the numerous footnotes adorning the pages one finds references to scholarly literature in Hebrew and other languages. Other publications include Yeshurun, Moriah (published by Machon Yerushalayim, which for decades already has been involved in the professional editing of medieval and modern rabbinic literature), the Chabad journal Heikhal Ha-Besht, and others. Torani scholars fondly remember the journal Tzfunot, which met its demise over a decade ago, and in the meantime they publish in Torah supplements to Haredi newspapers, primarily in Kulmos of the newspaper Mishpacha. Likewise, the new scholarly journal Chitzei Gibborim - Pleitas Soferim, published in Lakewood, NJ, is at the moment taking its first steps.

Prominent names in the field include Mordechai Honig, a Hasid from Monsey who is extremely knowledgeable in medieval rabbinic literature; Yaakov Yisrael Stahl, a scholar of Franco-German Jewry forced to lower his profile in connection with academia; Moshe Dovid Chechik, a historian who until recently co-edited Yerushaseinu and currently co-edits Chitzei Gibborim; Yehudah Zeivald, a Boyaner Hasid who is quite busy with philosophy and Hasidism; Yitzchak Rosenblum, who had to move from Kiryat Sefer to Bet Shemesh on account of the library he opened, and currently teaches at the Haredi yeshiva high school Nehora; Yaakov Laufer, a scholar who focuses on linguistics and on the conceptual mode of Torah study; Betzalel Deblitsky, a prodigious zealot from Bnei Brak who runs the forum associated with Otzar HaHochma (the monumental digitization project of the Jewish library); Nachum Grunwald of Lakewood, NJ, a Chabadnik who grew up a Satmar-Pupa Hasid and serves as editor of Heikhal Ha-Besht; Aharon Gabbai, a rising star from Bnei Brak who graduated from a Lithuanian yeshiva, of course; Yechiel Goldhaber, slightly older than the rest, a historian and bibliographer whose scholarship is famous, and for whom the National Library is a second home; and Avraham Shmuel Taflinsky, who has toiled for the past few years in uncovering the sources of the aforementioned Hemdat Yamim.

Once we are mentioning the denizens of the National Library, mention must be made of the all-important tool in their scholarly work—the Internet. The global web of knowledge enables Haredi men from conservative yeshivas, whose library holdings are what you would expect, to come in contact with Jewish Studies scholarship and its historical-critical mindset. Most Haredi scholars have a home Internet connection, but not all. Zvi Leshem relates that some come to the library not to peruse ancient manuscripts or converse with the university’s scholars who use it as their place of study, but simply to work at a place that provides Internet access.

“In the digital age, Jewish Studies scholarship has successfully managed to wiggle its way, however constrainedly, into Haredi and yeshiva circles via databases such as Otzar HaHochma,” Mordechai Honig relates. “Until recently, it was the books. The birth of a Haredi scholar was generally triggered by incidental exposure to academic scholarship that invitingly charmed him. For me, it was Ephraim Urbach’s The Tosaphists, which I purchased at age fifteen.”[...]

Along with Internet databases and online journals, forums also have an important place in the discourse of these scholars. After many long years in which the forum Soferim u-Sefarim on the site Be-Hadrei Haredim served as the water cooler for torani scholars, the baton was passed to the forums of Otzar HaHochma. A lengthy, fascinating thread recently began there, for example, whose purpose is to generate a list of “dissenting opinions [made by lone rabbinic scholars],” that is, halakhic positions taken by well-known decisors over the generations when their colleagues were of a different mind. The thread reveals the foundational analytic-halakhic erudition of the discussants, expert not only in bibliography and history but also in a wide range of positions expressed by medieval and modern rabbinic authorities on scores of issues.[...]

The administrator of the Otzar HaHochma forums is, as was said above, Betzalel Deblitsky (under the username “Ish Sefer”). What had been permissible on Be-Hadrei Haredim the fearless zealot Deblitsky bans, censoring discussions and silencing voices he deems unworthy of being heard. But even those who miss the great openness that marked the forum of yore understand that the change is permanent—discussions of relevance within the scholarly community take place principally on the new forum.

Zeal, parenthetically, is a relative matter: the strict filter Netiv, which runs according to the guidance of a confidential rabbinic board, blocks the Otzar HaHochma forum on account of its content being deemed subversive and problematic. To take but one example, the forum has an intense, politically-charged discussion surrounding one of the veteran decisors of the Edah Haredit in Jerusalem—R. Yitzhak Isaac Kahana. A broadside that circulated in Jerusalem against R. Kahana’s book Orhot Tohorah and his lenient rulings on questions regarding menstruation inflamed not only the physical Haredi street but the virtual one as well, engendering scathing posts on the forum in support of each side. A symptom of one of the forum’s pathologies is partially manifest in this case: the deletion of threads by the moderator, who perceived them as deviating from the Haredi party line. Over three pages of posts inexplicably disappeared from the site, only to return the next day, redacted. [...]

50% drop out rate of Chareidim enrolled in academic programs for B.A. degree

The issue of the Liba core curriculum requirement for haredi schools returned to the public agenda recently, with the repeal of the Core Curriculum law currently under way.

Under the previous government, legislation requiring schools within the haredi educational system to teach the core curriculum was passed. Yair Lapid, who initiated the law, claimed, and continues to claim that its purpose was to give haredi children basic secular knowledge which will enable them to pursue respectable careers later in life.

Opponents of the law, including the haredi MKs, have vilified it on various grounds, democratic and technical, but one of the most persistent claims against the law in haredi circles is that secular studies in elementary school are unnecessary for haredim, as their Torah studies develop their minds in such a way as to make catching up later in life easy for them. To back this up they cite the apparent success of "Mechina", pre-academic programs, where haredim go to catch up on basic secular knowledge for a year or so before applying to University. Haredi MKs point to the many success stories emerging from these programs. But is that the whole story?

New data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics divide haredim and the general population into four groups based on aptitude in math and reading, from lowest aptitude to highest. The data show that while there is virtually no difference between haredim and the general population in the lowest group, meaning that among those with low aptitude, haredim are not worse-off than the general population, when taking the highest aptitude group there is a significant difference.[...]

More worrying for haredim however, are the statistics coming out of the academic institutions and the pre-academic "Mechinot".

A study published by the Taub institute found that 50% of haredi men who enroll in academic institutions seeking a bachelor's degree drop out, and this is among those who have made it into Universities and Colleges. Among haredi women, who do study secular subject in high-school, the situation is better, with a 30% dropout rate.

According to a report in The Marker, the dropout rate in the Mechinot is most likely worse. Professor Danny Zilberstein, who runs all pre-academic programs in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, only 35% of haredim who enroll in their Mechina program make it through, and this even though the Technion has standards of admission to the program, turning away some who are less qualified.

All this seems to mean that the 50% rate is in fact much higher than the real success rate of haredim looking to get a higher education, taken as a whole, because it is only 50% of those successful enough to make it through the previous hurdles who graduate with a degree, not 50% of all haredim trying to obtain academic qualifications. The data also indicates that while there is an intellectual elite in haredi society whose Torah education prepares them for catching up on secular knowledge, there is no such mechanism among the masses.

Eliezer Berland caught on video admitting rape, plotting murder with students


A rabbi extradited from South Africa for sex offenses and arrested upon his arrival in Israel last week, after being on the run for three years, has been caught on camera admitting to raping one of his female followers. [...]

According to Channel 2, the incriminating recordings were made four years ago by two of Berland’s followers. They were told to burn all the tapes and other potentially incriminating material “in case the police do not cooperate.”

But some of the tapes survived, and were handed over to police Monday. In another tape, Berland can be heard instructing one of his followers to place a bomb under the bed of an unnamed person — to send them to heaven. [...]

In one video (in Hebrew) aired Tuesday, Berland appears to be discussing an issue of Jewish law whereby if a wife has an affair she becomes forbidden to remain married to her husband. However, if she is raped, however, this does not apply. [...]

In another video, Berland is seen speaking to a group of his followers in Hebrew. A student whispers something to him, to which Berland replies: “They placed the bomb for him? Who tried to do this?” He then entrusts one of his followers, Shlomi, to “go to Rishon Lezion and deal with those who placed the bomb.” [...]