Tuesday, September 13, 2022

What message is DeSantis sending with religious ‘full armor of God’ rhetoric?

 https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/09/12/what-message-is-desantis-sending-with-religious-full-armor-of-god-rhetoric/

“We have the responsibility to make sure that the students that come out of our school system understand what it means to be an American,” DeSantis said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. “They need to understand that our rights come from God, not from the government.”

Rubio added that ultimately it is a decision about “what is good” and said America has been on the right path for more than two centuries for one reason:

“And that is the belief that every single human being has rights that come not from government, not from leaders, not from the Constitution, not from the laws,” Rubio said. “They have rights, natural rights, that come to them from their Creator, from God.”

Outrage at New York proposal to force yeshivas to teach public curriculum

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/359708

Orthodox leaders in the state of New York are protesting a new measure that would force yeshivas to teach a curriculum equivalent to that of public schools.

A vote on the regulation by the New York State Board of Regents, which overseas education in the state, is taking place on Tuesday.

The proposal is widely opposed by the Orthodox community. On Monday morning, some stood outside the State Department of Education in Albany to voice their concern, News Channel 13 reported.

Monday, September 12, 2022

Filmmaker Boruch Perlowitz Fights Back: “I’m a Victim of Hasidic Yeshiva Education”

Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules

 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-62797777

Researchers say they have cracked how air pollution leads to cancer, in a discovery that completely transforms our understanding of how tumours arise.

The team at the Francis Crick Institute in London showed that rather than causing damage, air pollution was waking up old damaged cells.

One of the world's leading experts, Prof Charles Swanton, said the breakthrough marked a "new era".

And it may now be possible to develop drugs that stop cancers forming.

Trump fights back against DOJ in dispute over classified records

 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/12/trump-fights-back-against-doj-in-dispute-over-classified-records-00056129

“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in a 21-page filing.

Among the more aggressive arguments in Trump’s brief is a suggestion that he could deem records personal under the Presidential Records Act, even if they were classified.

Beats Me - guest post Joe Orlow

The New York Times recently had an article about some Jewish schools in New York.

This blog posted an article from HAMODIA in reference to the New York Times article. The HAMODIA article included this:

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“Antisemitism is on the rise in New York and the number of hate crimes targeted at the Hasidic community have increased in recent years,” Connolly writes. “[Tzedek] believes that your article will contribute to the negative perception of the Hasidic community and in turn fan the flames of antisemitism.”

Similarly, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel of Agudath Israel recently wrote to Shapiro and Rosenthal, “The timing of this article is terrible. Hate crime statistics, specifically crimes targeting Jews, are spiking dramatically — and most of these crimes are being directed against Hasidic Jews...."

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The New York Times article included this:

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Still, virtually all of the dozens of parents of current students interviewed by The Times said their sons had been hit at least once. Several said they had sought to protect their children by “tipping” their teachers, usually about $100 a year.

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 don't know if this is true. But let's assume it is, and explore the implications.

Parents generally are charged tuition to send their children to private schools. In one or more of these schools under discussion, one or more teachers hit some of the kids some of the time.

The purpose for hitting the kids is presumably to advance the education of the kids. So here we have a case where parents are paying tuition to have their kids educated and on top of that they are paying extra money to not have their kids educated? That is, a teacher might argue that the hitting has educational value. But the parents are paying the teacher not to to hit their kids -- not to advance their kids' education?

This situation reminds me of how gangsters operate.

"Be a shame if anything happened to your kids while they're in my classroom, wouldn't it? You tip, we make sure your kids are safe while they are with us."

Now let's examine the statements that mention "antisemitism" and "hate crimes."

Well, I think a teacher hitting kids to the point where parents feel compelled to bribe the teacher to not hit their kids is not in line with the Torah and is violence against Jews.

And that violence may be on a larger scale than anything some bad stuff non-Jews may be doing to Jews in America at the moment. Jewish kids aren't being beaten on the streets in America on a daily basis -- but they do seem to be getting whopped regularly in one or more classrooms.

All I've written, of course, is on the assumption that the New York Times article got it right in the quote from the article above.

What can be done to help these children getting hit who don't have parents paying protection money?

We can tell the children to swarm an attacking teacher. That is, a four year old alone defending himself from a beating may not discourage an adult teacher to cease beating his students. But thirty kids defending one of their own might give a beating teacher pause.

We can also create a "Beat the Beatings" fund. The purpose of the fund would be to end the classroom beatings. Children being beaten could apply for grants from the fund that would be paid directly to the beating teachers.

Again, I have no idea what goes on within the schools under discussion. But it beats me how some Jews that are up in arms when a non-Jew hits a Jew can suddenly clam up when the violent attacker is a Jewish teacher hitting a student to the point where parents are led to pay off the attacker.

The 3 Laws of Medicine—Law #1: A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test (Qualy #65)

Soon We'll Cure Diseases With a Cell, Not a Pill | Siddhartha Mukherjee | TED Talks

Why Barr is breaking from Trump — and the GOP — over Mar-a-Lago search

 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3636565-why-barr-is-breaking-from-trump-and-the-gop-over-mar-a-lago-search/

In an appearance on Fox on Thursday, Barr said he believes the Justice Department is “getting very close” to the point where they could indict someone in the case, including potentially Trump.

The comments were notable coming from a man who Democrats and some legal experts criticized throughout his latest tenure as attorney general, accusing him of viewing himself as the president’s lawyer rather than the country’s.

Agudath Israel Statement on New York Times’ Attack on Hasidic Community

 https://agudah.org/agudath-israel-statement-on-new-york-times-attack-on-hasidic-community/

Agudath Israel of America decries today’s one-sided New York Times hit piece on New York State’s Hasidic community and its educational institutions.

The article is riddled with bias, ignoring the vast majority of Hasidic parents – those who cherish their yeshivas – instead citing a minority of people who have rejected the community’s values, and passing them off as representative of the whole. The true viewpoint of the tens of thousands of parents who send their children to Hasidic schools is represented, in part, by the recent historic 350,000 letters during the state’s public comment period, the vast majority of which pleading for no interference with the yeshiva educational system for which they pay and value. Could the New York Times not speak to one of those parents?

In precedent, rabbis send woman to jail for refusing divorce from her husband

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-precedent-rabbis-send-woman-to-jail-for-refusing-divorce-from-her-husband/

Police officers, acting on the orders of a rabbinic court, on Sunday detained and imprisoned an Israeli woman for refusing to accept a divorce from her husband, in the first use of this punishment against a woman.

“It is rare. It is the first time that there’s incarceration. But the rabbinic court reached the decision that there was no other option,” Rabbi Eliyahu Maimon, the head of the department in the rabbinical courts that deals with divorce refusal, told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

According to Israel’s rabbinic court system, the woman has been refusing to accept a ritual divorce, known in Hebrew as a get, from her husband for four years, after he gained full custody of their two daughters following a prolonged battle in a civil family court.

Sunday, September 11, 2022

In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money

https://www.userwalls.news/n/hasidic-enclaves-failing-yeshivas-flush-public-money-3800755/

To examine the Hasidic schools, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of public records, translated dozens of Yiddish-language documents and interviewed more than 275 people, including current and former students, teachers, administrators and regulators.

לראשונה: סרבנית גט נשלחה למאסר

 https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/bjro3qxsls

בפעם הראשונה בתולדות בתי הדין הרבניים בישראל, אישה שמסרבת להתגרש מבעלה נשלחה לכלא. נשיא בית הדין הרבני הגדול הוציא נגדה פקודת מאסר, לאחר שבמשך ארבע שנים לא התייצבה לדיונים בעניינה ולא צייתה להחלטות בתיק. גם כשפרצו השוטרים לביתה, סירבה לקבל את הגט


Analyzing the New York Times Hatchet Job Against Yeshivos

 https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/2123212/analyzing-the-new-york-times-hatchet-job-against-yeshivos.html

The New York Times has written a one-sided attack against the Yeshiva and Torah community that is so filled with inaccuracies and half-stories that it is reminiscent of Tsarist-era attack on the great institutions of Volozhin and other Yeshivos, started by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin – student of the Vilna Gaon.