http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Bryks_Ephraim.html
Rabbi Resigns Amid Sex Abuse Allegations
Queens Courier - May 28, 2003
http://www.queenscourier.com/archives/2003/lead060503b.htm#Rabbi
A rabbi from Kew Gardens Hills has resigned from the rabbinical organization that was reportedly on the brink of casting him out because of long-standing sexual abuse allegations.
Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, who was first accused of abusing a Canadian boy in the 1980's, resigned last week as a member of the Rabbinical Council of America. He also agreed to leave Jewish teaching. Bryks co-founded the Yeshiva Berachel David in Kew Gardens Hills where he is presently an administrator.
"He wanted to make it very clear that his resignation should not be seen as an admission of guilt," Rabbi Hershel Billet, council president, told Newsday.
Bryks, 49, still denies allegations regarding Daniel Levin, a 16-year-old Canadian boy whom he is accused of abusing as a small child. Daniel was a congregant at the Winnipeg, Manitoba, synagogue where Bryks was rabbi and ran a Jewish day school beginning in 1978. The boy, who had been struggling with depression, committed suicide on Yom Kippur in 1993. Months earlier he had told his parents about being sexually molested by the rabbi.
Accusations by the Levin family are only some of several involving other children that have haunted Bryks since he left Winnipeg for the Torah Academy, a Kew Gardens yeshiva. The academy–a high school where he was administrator–fired him in 1994 after hearing a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news report that quoted a former student and two families who said their children had also been abused. Bryks would later sue CBC for the report, as well as Cable News Network, which ran the CBC report, but the cases were dismissed on technicalities.
After an extensive investigation, Manitoba authorities announced in 1995 that they would not prosecute Bryks. The child welfare authorities in Winnipeg did their own investigation at that time and found that there was no significant evidence.
No criminal charges have ever been filed against Bryks, who plans to continue life as a private citizen. But accusations made his career an arduous one, preventing his hiring by one congregation and drawing concern from colleagues. The Queens Va'ad Harabonim, an important council of Queens rabbis, has talked of removing him.
"A person shouldn't have something like this hanging over his head," Manny Behar, executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council, told Newsday."If it's true, it should be verified true and then he probably shouldn't be teaching in a school. If it's not true, he deserves to have his good name restored."
Bryks was not reachable for comment by press time.
CBC Alleges Rabbi is Child Molester
By Gil Kezwer
Jewish Life (March 1994), Cover page (continued page 14)
A shame and a disgrace. An embarrassment for the Jewish people. A desecration of God's holy name. Those were among the reactions in the Toronto Jewish community to the broadcast February 28 and March 1 on CBC Prime Time News of shocking allegations that Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, 39, formerly the principal of Winnipeg's Torah Academy, molested students in his charge.
Equally appalling was the report that Daniel Levin of Glengrove Avenue, one of the four children who have accused Rabbi Bryks of sexual abuse, committed suicide this past Yom Kippur after Metro Police asked the Oakwood Collegiete Grade 12 student to re-record a statement he had made in June 1993. The police tape machine had been faulty at the first recording. With the complainant dead and his testimony erroneously not recorded, Toronto Police were forced to drop the case.
Levin, 17 at the time of his tragic death, studied at the Orthodox Jewish school in the Manitoba capital from kindergarten through Grade Two, when his family moved to Montreal and later Toronto. For seven years the boy was in denial about the traumatic abuse he had suffered , CBC alleges, but then his life began to unravel. After his parents, Sara and Mortin Levin, separated, the tormented youth, then 14, became unable to concentrate at school. Prone to explosive fits of rage, he started treatment with psychotherapist Kristen Balmer.
In May 1993, after three years of counselling, Levin was able to recall long-suppressed memories. His mother told CBC: "He [Rabbi Bryks] was fondling his [Levin's] genitals first over his clothes, and then he opened his pants." The boy told his mother that afterwards the rabbi gave him an Elite peppermint and warned him God would punish him if he spoke about the sex abuse.
His mother added: "And then he [her son] had a memory and started coughing and spitting out mucous...and crying.
And he said that he was in the office, and Rabbi Bryks put his penis in Daniel's mouth.
Psychotherapist Balmer said "I watched him cry, and there's no question he was telling the truth." Levin had told her, "I don't want this to continue any more. I don't want any other person to have to go through what I went through."
One former student, who did not wish to be interviewed on camera told CBC that Rabbi Bryks fondled her breasts. Another girl, today 14 told her parents that when she was in Grade Two the rabbi would frequently remove her from her classroom and take her to his office where he would take off her underwear and fondle her genitalia. She also said that he cautioned her God would punish her if she told anyone.
The unidentified parent said: "The most painful recent event since her disclosure for me was going up to see how she was in her bedroom. It was just quiet, and I just wanted to see how she was. Going into her bedroom, she was sitting in her closet curled up in a fetal ball listening to Barney tapes with a little Barney book in her hand. I couldn't deal with that."
The girl is now in counselling, and her parents say she isn't ready to go to the police.
Rabbi Bryks is a native of Denver, Colorado. His father, Lejzor, also an Orthodox rabbi, hanged himself in 1971 amid rumours of financial scandal. That same year Ephraim began yeshiva studies leading to rabbinic smicha. Graduating in 1978, he came to Winnipeg where he transformed the small Herzlia Adas Yeshurun Synagogue into a major congregation.
A highly ambitious and charismatic personality, within two years he had set up a day school as well as his own kosher hasgacha (supervision) and beit din (rabbinical court). His critics accused him of megalomania and said he was obsessed with power. But his supporters said he was an idealist and a visionary unwilling to compromise on issues of halacha (Jewish law).
Questions about Rabbi Bryks began surfacing. CBC's Danielle Keefler stated that he boasted in a Winnipeg journal of a law degree from the State of Israel, and that he was a dayan (religious judge). In fact he was a mere Yeshiva student, and Israel doesn't give out law degrees.
CBC alleged Rabbi Bryks plagiarized his column in The Jewish Post and News from another rabbi's book. In November 1987, Winnipeg's Va'ad Rabbanim (Rabbinic Council wrote a scathing letter to the editor accusing Rabbi Bryks of "plagiarism" and "theft". But libel chill set in after Bryks' lawyer threatened a lawsuit. The letter was never published.
In December 1987 the synagogue board heard allegations of sexual improprieties from a 14-year- old student. Her story, as well as accounts of unwanted sexual advances by two women congregants, simply were not believed. Nine members of the congregation quit in protest. They were ridiculed and humiliated by Rabbi Bryks' supporters.
Though the synagogue board backed the rabbi, they asked Winnipeg Child and Family Services to investigate. For two months, social workers interviewed 45 students, teachers and parents. The CFS issued a report in March 1988 noting that while Rabbi Bryks hadn't broken any criminal law, his incessant tickling and touching of students was "neither appropriate nor professional".
The Jewish community tried to hush up the controversy, fearing it would either lead to anti- semitism or personal repercussions within the community. Specifically Rabbi Bryks.
The troubling questions of whether Rabbi Bryks was a child molester wouldn't go away. He finally left Winnipeg in 1990, and the Torah Academy closed down. The rabbi was offered a position as principal of an Orthodox Jewish day school in Montreal. But a group of irate parents informed the academy of the investigations of Bryks by Winnipeg Police and Family and Child Services. The job was withdrawn. He then was hired as principal of the Torah Academy in Queens, N.Y., a new school for immigrant youth from the former Soviet Union that was desperate to attract a qualified administrator.
CBC's Danielle Keefler went tp New York to interview the rabbi there. Stopped on the street, he would only say "no comment" and that "Winnipeg is a part of my life that is behind me" when asked about the allegations against him.
"People that are ill should not be put into positions where they can hurt others with illness," observed a psychologist and prominent member of the Lubavitch community here, his voice tinged with sorrow.
"There is sexual abuse within the community," said Gordon Wolfe, executive director of Toronto's Jewish Family and Child Service. In 1993, the JF&CS investigated 70 cases of alleged sexual abuse involving minors, of which 34 were intra-familial. Ten of the cases led to criminal charges. Wolfe was unaware of the number of convictions.
As well, Wolfe reported 120 incidents of physical abuse involving children, of which eight led to charges. "What you saw there [in the allegations against Bryks] is part of the pattern that often exists in this kind of behaviour. It doesn't surprise me that the children didn't say anything for a long time before coming forth. It doesn't surprise me that many people did not believe them. And it doesn't surprise me that enormous pressure was brought on the Winnipeg Child and Family Service to not pursue their investigation, particularly because he was a rabbi."
In an interview with Jewish Life after the broadcast, Sara Levin said that she remains optimistic that at least one of the students Rabbi Bryks is alleged to have abused — some of whom are in counselling and drug treatment today -- will one day be able to be strong enough to come forward and testify.
"I would like to see him brought to justice, to stand trial for the things he's done."
And with terrible sadness in her eyes, she added, "So many people knew little things but we never put them together. We never suspected."
WARNING: Rabbi Ephraim Bryks and Marriage Counseling
Ephrayim Bryks has become a rabbinic marriage counselor. The term marriage counselor or life coach can be used by anyone. He is not the only "rabbi" suspected of sexual abuse using one of these titles to access vulnerable individuals or couples both here and in Israel. Consulting actual professionals is expensive and unless the community publicly warns against going to these charlatans (often worse) many innocents will continue to be hurt.
Rabbi Yosef Blau
CALL TO ACTION: Contact Rabbi Paysach Krohn and Demand he stop promoting alleged child molester, Rabbi Ephraim Bryks. Remind him if another child is harmed that he could be held liable in a civil suit.
Rabbi Paysach Krohn, Certified Mohel
E-mail: pkrohn@brisquest.com
Toll Free: 866-846-6900
NY: 718-846-6900
CALL TO ACTION: Asking Herzlia-Adas Yeshurun Synagogue to have the plaque removed honoring Rabbi Ephraim Bryks .
Contact Information:
Rabbi Tzvi Muller at Herzlia - Adas Yeshurun Synagogue
620 Brock St., Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3N 0Z4
Phone: (204) 489-6262 Fax: (204) 489-5899
email: herzlia2000@yahoo.ca
This past Yom Kippur marked the 13th anniversary of the suicide of Daniel Levin an alleged victim of Rabbi Ephraim Boruch Bryks (http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/bryks_ephraim.html). It is a difficult time in particular for his family and friends as Daniel's alleged abuser has never been brought to real justice (if such a thing is even possible at this point) and continues to thrive and work with women and children, not in some small Jewish community but in the New York Orthodox Jewish community.
The Winnipeg Jewish community and Bryks' former Orthodox Union affiliated synagogue, Herzlia Adas Yeshurun (the site of Daniel's abuse), continue to refuse any acknowledgment or responsibility. No apology, no compassion. A plaque honoring Rabbi Ephraim Boruch Bryks remains on the synagogue's "Tree of Life." All Daniel has is a tombstone in a cemetery.
The Awareness Center Has A Call to Action asking everyone to contact Herzlia Adas Yeshurun and ask them to remove the plaque, and perhaps replace it with a plaque honoring the memory of Daniel Levin (see contact information above). For more information regarding the Bryks case, go to: http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Bryks_Ephraim.html
Sincerely,
Vicki Polin, MA, ATR, LCPC
Executive Director - The Awareness Center
=================================================================http://www.torahanytime.com/upcoming_lectures.html
Monday Night
-
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Location : Lefrak Jewish Center Map
98-15 Horace Harding Expwy, Corona 11368
===========================================================
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9th Annual Weekend Retreat!!
This wonderful weekend will be filled with inspiration,Torah education, rejuvenation, wonderful speakers, excellent food, and many fun & great activities for everyone!!
Guest Speaker at the Shabbaton, Rabbi Ephraim Bryks!
Guest Speaker at the Shabbaton, Rabbi Paysach Krohn!
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Case of Rabbi Lewis Brenner
(AKA: Louis Brenner, Lipa Brenner, Lippa Brenner)
Brooklyn, NY
Convicted of child molestation. The original charges included 14 counts of sodomy, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. He agreed to plead guilty to one count of sodomy in the third degree, a Class E felony, in exchange for a sentence of five years' probation.
Prosecutors said Brenner had sexual contact with a youth he met in the bathroom of the temple they both attended. The molestations allegedly took place over a three-year period that ended in 1995 when the victim was 15 years old.
Note: Rabbi Lewis Brenner's daughter Yochevad, is married to Rabbi Ephraim Bryks.
If anyone has a photograph of Rabbi Lipa Brenner, please forward it to The Awareness Center
===================================================================
http://www.kolyakov.org/rabbi_bryks.html
Video and audio lectures by Rabbi Ephraim Byrks
===================================================================
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119 comments:
Evil has a face. In this case it's a low-life scum bucket by the name of "Rabbi" Ephraim Byrks. This guy should not be officiating anything, except for his own funeral!
http://www.thejewishstar.com/JewishStar.pdf
“Zabla works because even
if there is one unethical rabbi,
he would only be one out of
three, and you need a majority,”
Rabbi Bryks explained. “Even if
his [Hacohen’s] dayan is Rabbi
Blumenkrantz, she [Rosenfeld]
will accept it. She would also be
willing to go back to Rabbi
Herbst. But the batei din he
wants are unacceptable, and he
feels that zabla is not the right
process.”
The Hacohen family also
feels that the public pressure
being exerted is counter-productive,
and that it is a form of
harassment that needs to stop.
“As long as the harassment
continues, we will not continue
to negotiate,” Rabbi Bryks said
he was told by the Hacohen
family. “We will not negotiate
with a gun held to our heads.”
“Rabbi Blumenkrantz
echoes the position of the family,”
reported Rabbi Bryks, who
has met with him in the past.
“He says that the harassment
must stop and that the names
must be removed from the
papers.”
However, earlier in the
year, Hacohen said that if his
name was taken out of the
newspaper, and Rosenfeld did
not speak publicly, as planned,
at an Agunah awareness event
at YU, he would agree to meet
and discuss a settlement. Rosenfeld
complied with these
requests, but Hacohen never
met with her.
“After that, his name went
right back into the paper,” said
Rosenfeld. “He is not to be trusted
or believed.”
For the complete article go to:
http://www.thejewishstar.com/JewishStar.pdf
"Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes."
"He who will not economize will have to agonize."
What Confucius means - is that those who don't have brains will end up suffering.
This campaign is far from over. I will fight to the death.
---------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/politics/13assess.html?em&ex=1203051600&en=a18c4dd2cfacbe7a&ei=5087%0A
The New York Times
February 13, 2008
News Analysis
With a Surge in Momentum, Obama Makes His Case
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON — The lopsided nature of Senator Barack Obama’s parade of victories on Tuesday gives him an opening to make the case that Democratic voters have broken in his favor and that the party should coalesce around his candidacy.
Mr. Obama’s triumphs capped a week in which he went undefeated in states across the country, in many cases by big margins, over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
And his strength on Tuesday sliced across nearly every major demographic line, with one element standing out: in Virginia and Maryland, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls, he beat Mrs. Clinton among women.
The sheer consistency of Mr. Obama’s victories over the last few days certainly suggests that many Democratic voters have gotten past whatever reservations they might have had about his electability or his qualifications to be president.
Mr. Obama, in his victory speech in Madison, Wis., acted almost as the primaries were behind him, offering a case against the probable Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, as he spoke disparagingly of “Bush-McCain Republicans.” It amounted to a preview of what an Obama-McCain race might be like, and it reduced Mrs. Clinton, at least for one night, to the role of bystander.
“John McCain is an American hero,” Mr. Obama said before a huge, cheering crowd. “We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past.”
Mr. McCain picked up the challenge. While not mentioning Mr. Obama by name, he offered an unmistakable put-down of the theme that has become so closely identified with Mr. Obama.
“To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope,” he said. “It is a platitude.”
To make sure no one had missed the message, Mr. McCain appropriated Mr. Obama’s signature line with a sly farewell to his own audience in Alexandria, Va. “My friends,” he said. “I promise you, I am fired up and ready to go.”
Even before his latest victories, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had whittled away at the advantages amassed last year by Mrs. Clinton.
He now enjoys a big financial advantage. Her big lead in national polls is gone. By most counts, Mr. Obama can now claim more delegates pledged to him. He has won far more states than Mrs. Clinton, although she won some of the big prizes, like California and New Jersey.
For weeks, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had approached this race the same way: as state-by-state trench warfare, in the belief that the nomination would go to whoever got the most delegates.
But the latest results suggest that the race might be tilting back to a more normal form, where the goal is achieving a series of splashing victories and thus momentum. That has provided Mr. Obama with the opportunity, which he plans to seize in a more full-throated way starting on Wednesday, to argue that voters across a wide cross-section of the country have embraced his candidacy, and that the time has come for the group that could hold the balance of power, those 796 unpledged superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials who have an automatic seat at the national convention — to follow suit.
“We are in a momentum phase of the process now,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers dispute that, noting that his victories have come in relatively small states and that she has invested most of her attention in two big contests coming up on March 4: Ohio and Texas. Her aides have long argued that by the end of the voting, the difference between the two candidates in delegate count would be minimal, leaving the final decision to superdelegates, who in their view would favor Mrs. Clinton.
But if party leaders begin to think this is no longer simply a mathematical race to the 2,025-delegate line, that could have big consequences for Mrs. Clinton.
For one thing, if this is an election where a candidate wins by virtue of being seen as winning — a definition of momentum — that would mean that voters in coming states would be influenced by the outcome of earlier races. And Mr. Obama might then be in a position to encroach on Mrs. Clinton’s firewall of Texas and Ohio.
Perhaps most problematically, the delegate selection process — in which delegates are allocated to the candidates in proportion to how many votes they win — could now begin to work against Mrs. Clinton. Both candidates get a share of the delegates, even if one wins by a margin of 20 points. That is a reason Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had stayed so close on delegate numbers, and why it becomes harder for her to reclaim a lead.
But whatever challenges Mrs. Clinton faces, she has repeatedly proved to be a resourceful candidate with a sharp campaign organization and a passionate base of supporters. Should she win in Ohio and Texas, she could halt Mr. Obama’s claim to momentum and keep the race for pledged delegates from breaking against her. And there has been a history in this campaign of Mr. Obama winning, only to have Mrs. Clinton return and win.
“You can’t make a judgment until Ohio and Texas,” said Jonathan Prince, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards of North Carolina, who quit the race two weeks ago. “In this campaign, every time he has surged ahead, voters take a pause. If momentum keeps slamming into a wall, than you do have to come down to the numbers.”
Still, in the end, those two things are not unrelated. The next contest is Tuesday in Wisconsin, where some polls suggest that Mrs. Clinton is trailing, meaning it may be two weeks after that before she has a potential to put herself in a favorable light again.
At a time when Mr. Obama will be announcing that his train is leaving the station — and pointing to the relatively clear field that Mr. McCain has on the Republican side in urging Democrats to unite behind him — that could prove to be an awfully long two weeks for the Clinton campaign.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/106976.html
Published: 02/13/2008
Hillary Clinton won 60 percent of the Jewish vote in Maryland's Democratic primary, but Barack Obama won overall.
Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) was the choice of virtually every other religious group polled, and he easily won the state in Tuesday's vote. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won on the Republican side of the so-called Chesapeake primary., which included contests in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
In Maryland, with the exception of Catholics, where Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) enjoyed a slight advantage, 48 percent to 45 percent, Obama won among Protestants and voters describing themselves as "Other Christian" -- the largest single religious voting bloc in the state. Nonreligious voters also favored Obama.
Overall, Obama won 59 percent to Clinton's 37 percent. With easy victories Tuesday in Virginia and the District of Columbia, Obama for the first time has taken a lead in the delegates count.
In advance of the primary, both campaigns aggressively courted Maryland Jews. An e-mail supporting Obama and signed by several state officials, including the attorney general, was dispatched to the Jewish community.
U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), a popular figure in the Jewish community, met with area rabbis last week to urge them to support Clinton.
Exit polling data was reported by MSNBC. No data was available for Virginia or the District of Columbia.
Jewish vote in Maryland: Why was Clinton on top?
1.
I have a couple of friends here in Maryland. Jewish friends. And most of them voted yesterday for Hillary Clinton. As you might know by now, most Maryland Jews voted for Clinton. 60% for her, 40% for him.
2.
What happened in Maryland (There is no data from Virginia as the percentage of Jewish voters was too low, 3%, compared to 4% in Maryland) makes life more complicated for those of us who are trying to understand what is it that makes the Jews tick.
In Super Tuesday, we saw three types of Jewish-voter states: those who vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, like in New York; those who go to Obama, like Connecticut; and others that are more competitive, like Massachusetts (Obama), California (Obama), or Arizona (Clinton). Our explanation was this: "Clinton won the Jewish vote handily in her backyard (New York and New Jersey), but did not have such luck in other places. She won some, and lost some, but the margin in all places but those two backyard states was not significant".
3.
Maryland made this argument, well, not exactly valid. It is not a backyard state for Clinton, but it was also not very competitive. The Jews of Maryland acted more like those of Nevada or Florida. Obama is no longer with the very low 25% of those states. But Clinton is winning handily.
Why?
4.
Here's one possibility (the data is from a 1999 study of the Jewish community in Baltimore, MD): "Baltimore, compared to other American Jewish communities, has the highest proportion of Orthodox Jews. In 1999, 17% of respondents in Baltimore Jewish households identify as Orthodox. Comparable percentages are 10% in Cleveland, 8% in Detroit, and 4% in Philadelphia".
On the other hand: Orthodox Jews tend to belong to the Republican Party in greater numbers, thus losing some of their possible influence in Democratic primaries.
5.
The study of Greater Washington Jews (This includes Jews in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland) tells us that "52% (57,530 households) of respondents generally consider themselves as liberal; 37% (40,150 households), moderate; and 11% (12,320 households), conservative".
This is less liberal Democrats than the national Jewish average (57%) and many more moderates than the national Jewish average (20%). If you assume that the more moderate the community the greater the chances it will vote for Clinton - maybe that's another answer.
On the other hand: this data is merely anecdotal, and can't provide the real explanation. It also contains many contradictions. For example - even with the higher number of so-called moderates, Greater Washington still has more liberal Democrats (Jews) than moderates. 44% of respondents consider themselves as liberal Democrat and 22% as moderate Democrat.
The report, published Tuesday on the English Web site of Ha'aretz, quoted Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as saying he was worried about the emphasis on change in Obama's campaign.
"All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be, is an opening for all kind of mischief," Hoenlein was quoted as saying at a news conference in Jerusalem.
According to Ha'aretz, Hoenlein noted that Obama "has plenty of Jewish supporters and there are many Jews around him," but said that "there is a legitimate concern over the zeitgeist around the campaign."
Shas won't quit coalition,
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday that he did not believe Shas would quit the coalition over reports that Jerusalem was already on the table in talks with the Palestinians.
"I see no danger to the integrity of the coalition," Olmert told political reporters in the Knesset. "It is clear to all of the sides that the issue of Jerusalem will be the last issue on the agenda with the Palestinians."
What exactly does this Rabbi want with us? I am suspicious of his activities!
---
Rabbi addresses young Muslim leaders
Published: 02/13/2008
An American rabbi addressed young Muslim leaders from Europe.
Marc Schneier, the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, spoke to the overseas guests visiting the United States as part of the State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program. The young leaders in the program visit with their American counterparts.
Schneier stressed the importance of standing together and forging alliances of tolerance and understanding across ethnic communities, according to a statement released by the foundation.
For a minute there I thought they were coming to arrest me for being negligent and abusive towards children. Then I realized it wasn't me they were looking for and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
----------------------------------
Police arrest Jewish Agency envoy
Published: 02/13/2008
A Jewish Agency envoy who allowed 200 Venuzuelans with false conversions to make aliyah was arrested.
The agency's envoy to South America told the Immigration Police who arrested him at Ben Gurion Airport upon his arrival Tuesday night that he was aware that the rabbi who converted the Venezuelans was not authorized to do so.
Police, who completed a long and complex investigation of the envoy, suspect that the employee, who once ran the absorption center in Ra'anana, was trying to impress the Jewish Agency with his performance, though the Jewish Agency denies that its emissaries are evaluated by the number of immigrants they send to Israel.
Most of the Venezuelans were convinced to make aliyah with promises of benefits from the state, Ha'aretz reported. Some have left Israel in recent years.
Molester kills two women, boy
14 Feb 2008
SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
KOLAR: Mulbagal police cracked a triple murder case in three days, that of two women and a seven-year-old boy, who were done to death at Kumbarapalya in Mulbagal town on February 9.
The accused, Chalapathi, was a maternal uncle of the deceased Lalithamma. He had an eye on Lalithamma and made several advances, but was rebuffed.
On February 9, Chalapathi came to Lalithamma’s house and said he would stay back for the night, as he had missed the bus to his village.
At night, Chalapathi allegedly tried to molest Lalithmma at which time Lalithamma’s mother Munivenkatamma tried to intervene.
Chalapathi reportedly killed Munivenkatamma by slitting her neck using a screw driver. Later, he smothered her using a cable wire.
When Chalapathi once again tried to molest Lalitha, she resisted, prompting him to kill her as well.
Seven-year-old Anil, son of Lalitha’s brother who was watching all this in horror, became Chalapathi’s last victim. He smothered Anil using a pillow.
During this long and difficult process of trying to be a victims advocate and a voice for the needy, I have come across a lot of horrible personal horror stories.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of molesters roaming society picking out their next child prey as if they were choosing a Rubashkins dish at La Marais.
The Awareness Center does a superb job keeping a database of some of the worst Jewish sexual predators of all time. The sad part is that there are so many child sex abuse cases that don't make it to the media or the authorities. Of course we know to a large extent why there are so many victims who have yet to have a day in court and confront their tormentor. Scare tactics by the employers of the sexual offender. Pressure by Rabbis not to go to the police. Excommunicating one under the false pretense of being a moser. Children fear and don't tell, or tell only when they reach adulthood or later. Legal hurdles. Community pressure. On on on... It goes...
The point is it STINKS! Too often i'm hearing victims speaking out to me recalling the days as a kid when they were molested by so and so. And Raboisai - I want to tell you. There are prestigious Rabbis on this list of offenders. So Sad!
I will continue to fight tooth and nail for the rights and dignity of Jewish souls and True Torah Judisaim! Yeshiva Of Brooklyn, Yeshiva Torah Temima, Agudas Israel, Torah Umesora, Ohel, Be'er Hagolah, Belsky, Byrks, Tendler, Brenner, various Rabbis, Orthodox Union, Kashrut.. These are all major unrepairable dents in what the value of the Jewish people should all be about. It's sick and it's getting sicker!
IMPORTANT
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW WENT TO CAMP ADAS YEREYIM AND WAS ABUSED BY SOMEBODY WORKING THERE, THEN PLEASE CONTACT ME WITH YOUR STORY AT:
Matzil_Nefoshos@yahoo.com
Your confidentiality will be totally secured.
EM
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Open For Pesach: Yes
Without sounding too over the top, Le Marais is simply one of the best kosher steakhouses in the country. Celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, Le Marais, which is named for a Jewish neighborhood in Paris, has been attracting dates, business people, tourists and theatre goers alike. Ask them what they think about this brasserie and their responses will almost always include words like “outstanding” and “amazing.”
"Chefs Special"
Salade de Poulet Grillé de oysters
Grilled chicken salad (beetles and catfish included)
Salade de Boeuf Grillé, Saveurs Asiatiques
Grilled steak , ginger, dressing
pork chop de salat
JA envoy to Venezuela charged over fake conversions
By Ruth Sinai and Anshel Pfeffer
A Jewish Agency Aliyah envoy to South America has been arrested on suspicion of providing immigration papers to 200 Venezuelan citizens whom he knew had undergone fraudulent conversions to Judaism.
The Ramle Magistrate's Court extended the remand yesterday of Ilan Architecter, 66, a veteran Jewish Agency employee who had run the absorption center in Ra'anana for many years.
The Immigration Police said the suspect - who was arrested in Israel on Tuesday - had confessed to
Add me to the Rabbis who find this offensive!
--------------------------------
Rabbis Criticize Good Friday Prayer
By Anthony Weiss
Wed. Feb 13, 2008
Washington - In a last-minute scramble at their annual convention this week, the union of Conservative rabbis brought to the floor and passed a resolution warning that a newly revised Catholic prayer could damage four decades of progress in Catholic-Jewish relations.
The draft resolution, which was being rushed into attendees’ hands moments before they assembled to debate it, said that the Rabbinical Assembly was “dismayed and deeply disturbed” that the newly revised Latin Mass for Good Friday calls for Jews to convert to Christianity. It also stated that the assembly asked the Vatican for clarification.
“It’s a real bump on the road,” said Rabbi Alvin Berkun, the outgoing president of the R.A. “I don’t see it as a reason to stop dialogue. But it’s important for them to hear the pain in the Jewish world.”
The resolution passed unanimously after a little more than an hour of debate over two days.
Yisroel belsky is not a putz. Stop speaking bad about my friend
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Widespread Slaughter Method Under Scrutiny for Cruelty
Forward, NY - Feb 13, 2008
“It’s not the kind of system that we want to have, that we would be proud of,” Rabbi Menachem Genack, the CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Kosher Division, ...
How dare they not allow an inmate to wear Tzitzit. When we go to jail we expect to have that right or we will sue.
----------------------------------
News (February 14, 2008)
Jewish prisoner refused permission to wear tzitzit
Joshua Levi
WEARING tzitzit is not permitted because it provokes other inmates, a prison official allegedly told an Israeli prisoner who is being held in protective custody inside Silverwater Correctional Centre (SCC) in NSW.
Dror Salah, who is facing murder charges next month, contacted The AJN and claimed he was being discriminated against because he was Jewish in a largely Muslim-populated jail.
He said Muslim prisoners were permitted to use prayer mats, but he had been refused permission to have tzitzit and tefillin.
Salah says he was told that wearing tzitzit provoked other prisoners because they were visible outside his clothes.
Salah added that he had been told he could wear a kippah after an application to the prison chaplain, but alleged he was also informed he could only wear it while inside his cell.
Prison chaplain Rabbi Yoram Ulman said he was working towards getting tzitzit and tefillin added to the NSW Department of Corrective Services’ (DCS) approved list of religious items.
“At the moment, tzitzit have not been listed. It is dependent on the discretion of a jail,” Rabbi Ulman said.
The rabbi said he had previously given tzitzit and tefillin to prisoners at SCC. He added that tzitzit are usually not a problem, but tefillin could be if officials believed a prisoner was trying to harm himself.
Rabbi Menachem Dadon, Rabbi Ulman’s associate, confirmed that Salah had asked for tzitzit and tefillin, but said he was not permitted to take them into the jail.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff said, as a matter of principle, there should be freedom of religious observance for all prison inmates.
“However, we will raise this case with the senior warden authorities to determine what the reasons are for the difficulties which have arisen.”
The NSW DCS accepted tzitzit and tefillin were currently not approved religious items, but said no application had been made to the DCS’ chaplaincy service.
“When an application for additional items to be placed on the list of approved religious items has been received, it is considered by the DCS administration for approval. Approval is usually given unless there are serious security concerns about a particular item,” the statement said.
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/feb/14/fridays-best-bet-jackie-mason-returns/
“I was never religious enough to be a rabbi,” he said. “I just did it to please my father. So I felt like a hypocrite.
“My conscience was bothering me when I was preaching to people not to fool around with girls. Meanwhile, every time a blonde walked by I’d lose my place. I told them sex is not for them, but for me, it’s perfect.”
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/c-8346/anti-semitic-assualts-at-record-high/
Violent anti-semitic assaults rose to the highest level on record, according to new statistics released today.
Although figures from the Community Security Trust’s annual Anti-semitic Incidents Report showed a slight drop in anti-Jewish incidents overall from 594 to 547 during 2007, it also revealed there had been a record 114 assaults, a slight increase on the previous high of last year.
Uncle gets 15 years for sexual abuse
Wednesday, 13 February 2008 22:44
A Belfast man convicted of the systematic sexual abuse of his three young neices has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The trial judge said the offences represented 'a prolonged chapter of appalling behavior'.
The court heard that for two-and-a-half-years, from January 2004, the 47-year-old accused had sexually abused his three young neices and repeatedly raped one of them.
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The offences occurred when the man and his wife were looking after the girls at weekends. The trial judge said it was hard to imagine a greater betrayal of the trust placed in the man.
Initially the accused had denied doing anything wrong, saying he had only been bathing the girls, but later admitted 19 sex offences.
Story from RTÉ News:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0213/abuse.html
Bus driver accused of sex abuse before
SARATOGA SPRINGS - Police are taking another look at 2002 sex abuse case following the arrest of a Saratoga Springs school bus driver.
Thirty-five-year-old Douglas Conrad has been a bus driver for the Saratoga Springs School District since 2004. Now he's behind bars after being accused of sexually abusing two boys.
This isn't the first time Conrad has been accused of abusing children. In light of Conrad's arrest, police in Mechanicville are re-opening a six-year-old case accusing him of sexually abusing children there.
Conrad is accused of forcibly touching two 14-year-old boys.
The school has placed Conrad on paid administrative leave as police continue to investigate.
Conrad has been a school bus driver since 2004, but police say the alleged abuse took place at his Saratoga Springs apartment and not on a bus or on school grounds.
Police in Mechanicville say Conrad has a history of alleged abuse there. In 2002 he was living with his aunt, Julia Wiley, at her home-based day care. She watched 10 to 12 kids and she says Conrad was accused of molesting three of them.
Wiley says the abuse allegations were to blame, at least in part, for her being shut down.
"What got me mad is they let him be a bus driver for kids and I lost everything. Everything. I can't do day care at all," she said.
Police say they couldn't charge Conrad in 2002, because the alleged victims were as young as 3 or 4 years old -- too young to accurately tell what happened.
"We were following allegations in 2002. And there's a big gap between 2002 and 2008. So, if anybody's been harmed by him in any way, please come forward, whether it's Mechanicville or Saratoga Springs, come forward and communicate with us," Mechanicville Police Chief Joseph Waldron said.
Posted at: 02/13/2008 01:19:50 PM
Chili teen accused of sex abuse pleads not guilty
A Chili teenager accused of sexually abusing four young boys pleaded not guilty today in State Supreme Court. Sean Humby faces 17 charges including sodomy and sex abuse. Police say the abuse happened at a Riga daycare over the past five years.
The daycare, called Love and Laughter has since been shutdown by the state. The victims are now between the ages of 8 and 12 and prosecutors say all of them are willing to testify.
Asstistant district attorney Matthew Rich said, “They're all very courageous young men. I admire all four of them greatly for coming forward and I’m certain that when the time comes when they're called upon, they'll be able to come into court and gather the strength to tell about what happened to them.”
Defense attorney Barbara Farrell said, “We're dealing with a teenager here. We're not dealing with an adult, we're not dealing with a predator, we're dealing with children.”
If convicted of all charges Humby faces up to 50 years in state prison. He is due back in court April 4, 2008.
Abused women still suffering in silence
Study finds the majority of abused women in Grey-Bruce don’t talk to friends, family about their plight
Local women who are physically abused by their partners are almost three times as likely to face either a weapon or the threat of a weapon than the national average, according to a new two-year study.
“It’s something I think is a very important finding that we as a community really need to look into more deeply, what this is about, because the use or the threat of a weapon is also linked to a much higher level of fear,” said research co-ordinator May Tettero. “It just ups the ante quite a bit.”
Feelings of shame, concerns about losing control over their life if the social and legal systems get involved and a lack of anonymity in small communities may also prevent some women from seeking help or even talking about such abuse, she said.
The study group, made up of 95 women whose partners were registered with The Men’s Program, were divided into one group of 30 women who live in Owen Sound; the rest were included in a group considered rural for the purposes of the study
“We found that the use or threat with a weapon was significantly higher in the rural area,” Tettero said. “That doesn’t prove anything, but it makes us think that perhaps there is a relationship between that form of abuse within a relationship and abuse in rural areas.”
The rural rate for weapons was 28 per cent, while the city rate was 10 per cent.
Tettero has presented her report to The Men’s Program, which is intended to help abusive men change their behaviour, and will take her findings to the Grey Bruce Domestic Violence Co-ordinating Committee, which has representatives from many organizations that deal with domestic violence, and local women’s shelters. She will also make a presentation at a provincial conference in Kitchener later this month.
The Women’s House serving Bruce and Grey and The Men’s Program sponsored the study and the Ministry of the Attorney General funded it.
Tettero sent out about 300 surveys and received 100 back. Of those, 95 were used in the study because the women in the other five said they had not been abused. Forty-nine of the 95 men were sent to the program through the courts, the rest signed themselves up.
“I think that these folks are fairly representative of folks who are dealing with abuse in this area,” Tettero said, noting data in many parts of the study is similar to what Statistics Canada has found in its random sampling.
Using women whose partners were registered with the Men’s Program gave them access to people who wouldn’t have been heard from in studies done through victim’s services or women who have used shelters, she noted.
Collins took own life on eve of child-sex hearing
February 15, 2008
THE former federal Labor minister Bob Collins killed himself just days before he was due to face court on child sex abuse charges, a coroner has found.
The 61-year-old father of three used a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol to take his own life at his home in Darwin last September, the Northern Territory Coroner, Greg Cavanagh, said.
He had been due to face a committal hearing in Darwin three days later on 21 charges of child sexual abuse against five alleged victims, dating back 30 years. The charges included indecent assault, carnal knowledge and sexual intercourse without consent.
Delayed for months, the committal hearing had finally been set to go ahead despite Mr Collins being in "significant" pain following surgery for bowel cancer. The former minister in the Hawke and Keating governments was facing child pornography charges in the Northern Territory, and a separate hearing had been set for October last year.
Mr Collins was also facing three child sex offences in Canberra, dating back to 1989.
Mr Cavanagh said that despite the intense pain it would cause Mr Collins's family, who maintained he died of natural causes, he was making his findings public because of "intense media speculation". A public inquest would not be held.
AAP
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/02/14/1202760494460.html
We were busy slaughtering cows and causing them pain. There is no way we could have been behind this attack.
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Central Iowa man faces sex abuse charges
Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 8:51 AM
By Pat Curtis
A central Iowa man is facing sex abuse charges for contact he had with two 14 year old girls he allegedly met on-line. Story County Sheriff's Lieutenant Dru Toresdahl says 23 year old Anthony McGrew of Melbourne was arrested after an investigation involving a meeting he had with a young girl from Nevada.
Toresdahl says McGrew met the 14 year old girl through MySpace. He arranged to meet the girl in Nevada and the lieutenant says "sex acts occurred" during that meeting. "Then there was a second meeting where there were two young girls and again sex acts occurred during that (meeting)," Toresdahl said. "So, from that investigation, Mr. McGrew was charged with five counts of sexual abuse in the third degree."
Toresdahl says it's important for parents to closely monitor their kids' on-line activity. "And if they have a MySpace page, it's important to see what content is on there so they're not putting out information that's personal and private," Toresdahl said. "That's one of the things about this (case)...the individual had information that led (McGrew) right to the person who became the victim." McGrew was booked in the Story County Jail on a $500,000 bond.
On Monday, a judge reduced his bond to $65,000. If McGrew is able to post 10 percent of the bond, and promises the court he will not have contact with anyone under 18, he could be released from jail.
Undercover Video Reveals Flagrant Abuse of Animals at South American Slaughterhouse
For Immediate Release:
February 13, 2008
Contact:
Lindsay Rajt 757-622-7382
Norfolk, Va. - Following a recent undercover investigation of a slaughterhouse in Uruguay, which is a leading exporter of kosher beef to the U.S., PETA and the Rabbinical Assembly (RA) are calling on kosher meat companies and the Orthodox Union (OU) to end a cruel slaughter method known as shackling and hoisting.
At a slaughterhouse outside Montevideo, undercover investigators documented that workers were tripping cows by tying a rope around one of the animals' legs and pulling on it, causing the cows to fall to the ground violently. Once the animals were down, one of the shackled back legs would be partially hoisted in the air. A worker would stand on one of the animals' legs while other workers--including one holding the animals' heads in place with a sharp metal pole--attempted to restrain the thrashing animals so that they could slit their throats. Some animals were forced to endure this trauma for several minutes. After the cows' throats were slit, the animals were immediately hoisted into the air by one leg to be bled out, but some cows were obviously still conscious and struggled for many minutes. Workers were caught on tape cutting into the animals' heads, necks, and joints while the animals were still conscious and able to feel pain.
After reviewing the video, Dr. Temple Grandin, the world's leading expert on farmed-animal welfare, said, "The methods used to restrain cattle in this plant were atrocious. Shackling, hoisting, and holding the fully conscious animal down with four people is a barbaric way to handle cattle in a modern slaughter plant. This is total animal cruelty."
Shackling and hoisting has also been condemned by the RA and Heksher Tzedek, a new ethical certification for kosher food. In a written statement, the RA reaffirmed and quoted from a previous statement by its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), saying, "[W]e find shackling and hoisting to be a violation of Jewish law forbidding cruelty to animals and requiring that we avoid unnecessary dangers to human life. As the CJLS, we rule that shackling and hoisting should be stopped."
The OU, which supervises the certification of kosher products at 3,000 businesses, has stated that it prefers a kosher slaughter method in which steers are killed standing up with their weight supported as opposed to being shackled by one leg and hung upside-down. However, the OU continues to certify meat from animals that have been killed by shackling and hoisting. PETA has written to Alle Processing, a major kosher beef company, urging it to stop selling meat that comes from plants that use shackling and hoisting and to buy only from plants that use the OU's preferred method.
"PETA has been inside many slaughterhouses, but this is among the worst abuse we've seen," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. "Kosher certifiers need to prohibit this cruel slaughter method both in the U.S. and in other countries that produce kosher meat for the U.S."
Broadcast-quality video footage showing the slaughter of animals in Montevideo is available. For more information and to view the video footage, please visit HumaneKosher.com.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1202742150482&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
ADAM J. FRANK , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 13, 2008
A recent undercover investigation into slaughterhouse practices in South America has revealed the heinous use of the animal restraint method known as "shackling and hoisting" during the kosher slaughter process.
We in Israel have no reason to feel immune from responsibility for these barbaric practices as South America is the largest source of kosher beef imports into Israel. Additionally, South America is the largest offshore supplier of kosher meat to the United States. Both the Israeli rabbinate and the Orthodox Union (OU) in the US explicitly endorse these methods by providing their kosher authorizations to the resulting meat.
Shackling and hoisting is the brutal and outdated technique of chaining and suspending in mid-air a fully conscious adult cow by its rear leg. The problems associated with this method include the animal's scientifically measured hyper-stress levels, tearing of muscle tissue, tendons and skin, the compression of internal organs by the immense weight of the cow's mass on the organs and more. According to the halacha of kashrut, none of these injuries cause the animal to become tref , or unkosher.
Due to the high incidence of worker and animal injury, this method of restraint is no longer practiced in the United States. The advent of safer and more humane animal handling systems encouraged kosher slaughter in North America to abandon the practice years ago.
In a Sept. 25, 1998 article in Haaretz magazine Yossi Bar-Moha gave this eye-witness account of the process: "One of the local workers grabs a back leg of the bull and lashes it to an iron chain. The door is raised again and the bull is yanked violently upward by the chain attached to his back leg. The animal is now dangling in the air - its immense weight held by one foot, its head down.
A second worker locks the head into a crescent-shaped device that has been grafted onto a long iron rod. The slaughterers advance…The [cut] is dazzlingly swift, a second or two, one cut forward and another backward across the bull's neck. It is done.
Immediately the two animals, their bodies jerking convulsively, are lifted upward with the iron chain, unleashing a torrent or blood. Wasting no time, the slaughterers and the workers turn to the ... Box, where the next two steers are already waiting. ... Their bellowing intensifies.
The slaughtered animals, by now dangling from large hooks, are pulled up to the second floor, where workers attach them to a gigantic machine. A quick cut loosens a flap of skin, which is inserted into the machine and pulled by two rollers until the animal is completely skinless.
It is all done with astonishing speed…By this method, more than 100 steers are slaughtered within an hour, 50 per Box, 27 seconds on average for each. ....
Tubol, who is my guide in the meat factory, assures me that "this is an advanced plant, compared with others where kosher slaughter is done."
ANIMAL SCIENCE data reports that a cow killed by means of a valid kosher slaughter cut loses consciousness between 8 and 60 seconds after the cut is made. According to the above testimony, after the cut is made the animal is immediately moved to the stage of flaying (removing the skin), and a cow is processed every 27 seconds. Many of these animals are being skinned while still conscious - a fact that does not violate the laws of kosher slaughter, but tramples upon the laws of ethical behavior toward a living creature.
The leading authority in livestock animal handling systems, Dr. Temple Grandin, is on record as saying that, when implemented responsibly, kosher slaughter is the surest pain-minimizing way to industrially slaughter animals. This opinion is due to the meticulous precision of the shochet to make a proper cut at the time of death - an imprecise cut means the animal becomes treif. However, Grandin holds that by employing these crude handling systems which show no regard for animal welfare, kosher slaughter is now a leading perpetrator in the vile abuse of animals in the food production industry.
What does Jewish law have to say about animal welfare? An emphatic opinion is that of Shulhan Arukh commentator the Yad Ephraim, Rav Ephraim Zalman Margalit: "It is necessary to warn slaughterers on this matter… [the slaughter of a chicken in front of other chickens waiting to be slaughtered] is not [acceptable] as it entails tsa'ar ba'alei haim…[animal suffering] and there is no greater form of tsa'ar ba'alei haim. (Yoreh Deah 36:14)
That is, the law against unnecessary infliction of pain to animals applies not only to the animals' physical well being, but also to the animals' emotional well being. In his gloss on the Shulhan Arukh, Rabbi Moshe Isserles (Rema) says: "anything (treatment of an animal) necessary for medical or other purposes is not a matter of tsa'ar ba'alei haim. Therefore, it is permitted to pluck the feathers from live geese; nevertheless the world abstains from such for it is cruelty. (Even HaEzer 5:14)
Here, even the Rema who defines the proscription against animal mistreatment as solely a law against human sadism and upon whose opinion on the matter most modern arbiters of Jewish law hold says that cruelty - even if technically permitted - is to be avoided.
IF BETTER systems exist for protecting the welfare of workers and animals, why do the Israeli and US kashrut authorities condone their continued systematic abuse in South America? Does the one-time cost of the refined equipment - costs that every Western abattoir incurs - compare to saving the limbs, eyes and teeth of South American workers?
Does the one-time cost of the refined equipment - costs that every Western kosher abattoir incurs - justify inflicting excruciating, yet avoidable, pain on an animal? The kosher meat industry is a for-profit business. As such, the approach to production is to manufacture an item as cost efficiently as possible. Compared to South America, the US Departments of Agriculture and Labor and the intermediary meat-sanctioning bodies have much stricter standards for worker and animal welfare and facility sanitation. Additionally, in developed countries employers have the obligation to pay worker accident insurance. The high rate of employee injury in the slaughter business (meatpacking is the most dangerous factory job in America) makes meat production costly and factors into the decision to produce kosher meat in countries with few to no regulations for worker and animal welfare. Thus, kosher meat authorities exploit and benefit from the lack of worker protection and animal welfare laws in South America.
Judaism is prideful of the fact that Jewish law protects the rights of workers and protects against the unnecessary infliction of pain to an animal. It is for these reasons that the exploitation of worker and animal welfare by current rabbinic leadership is so disappointing, and enraging. The Jewish laity places its trust in rabbinic authority. Not only is a halachic cut assumed, but a kosher leadership is expected. For its part, the Conservative movement in America is in the process of creating the Hehhsher Tzedek - a seal of approval of worker rights and animal welfare that will accompany kosher supervision stamps for qualifying kosher meat producers. Still, the ability and responsibility to implement caring changes in kosher meat production is in the hands of the Israeli rabbinate and the OU - the two authorities who support the import of South American kosher meat for sale in their respective countries.
Without question, a diet consisting of minimal animal products reduces the instances of cruelty toward animals. In the case of Israel's kosher meat, the consumer can be certain that refraining from meat consumption sends a message of condemnation to both the governing authorities and businesses that prosper from the industry. This refrain will also ensure the individual's lack of participation in the chain of abuse, and the closer fulfillment of mitzvat tsa'ar ba'alei haim.
The writer is rabbi of Congregation Moreshet Yisrael in Jerusalem, Israel's flagship Masorti synagogue. www.chai-online.org
God Squad: Don't let child rapist off the hook
02/14/2008, 10:48 am
Q: We have the following problem in our family: My husband and I have four grown children and nine grandchildren. Our oldest daughter was divorced three or four years ago and has remarried a man about 10 years younger. They've been married less than two years. This daughter has a beautiful 17-year-old daughter, whom we recently found out had been molested by her stepfather. The daughter told several people and one of her aunts. The police were notified, but the daughter refuses to testify because she doesn't want to hurt her mother and cause her to face another divorce.
We're all devastated about this and want nothing to do with the perpetrator. We wish our daughter would "kick him to the curb." We've been told the parents have resolved the problem, blaming the daughter for "leading him on" (impossible). We're all supposed to "just move forward." Well, we can't do this.
The holidays were difficult, as no one wanted to see the stepfather. In fact, all family events have been minimal. We had a family cruise semi-planned to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Now, those plans are on hold, as no one in the family wants to celebrate with this couple. I don't think our son-in-law would show his face, but we're afraid to take a chance.
How should the aunts and grandparents handle all of this? The Christian thing would be to forgive. However, I believe when you cross a certain line, there's no room for forgiveness. I don't wish this man ill but would like him out of my daughter's and granddaughter's lives. Our daughter won't discuss any of this with us and hangs up if we try. We live in different states, which makes things both easier and more difficult. I don't want to lose my daughter or granddaughter.
What's your advice for a family such as ours? We visit family for several weeks in the summer. How can we have family get-togethers and not cause more pain? -- R., via godsquadquestion@aol.com
A: So your question comes down to: "My son-in-law has raped my granddaughter. Is it OK to invite him on a cruise?" Hello?
You must do everything you can to get your granddaughter to testify against this man, and get your daughter to leave him immediately. Nothing else matters. Family gatherings don't matter. Cruises don't matter. What matters is what this man did to your granddaughter and what he's likely to do to other girls.
Your daughter should seek an order of protection against her husband. She also needs counseling and family support. Most of all, she needs to understand what broken part of her best self would allow her to blame her daughter for being raped by her stepfather because she "led him on." I suspect your daughter has also suffered abuse from this predator.
I do understand that what your family must do looks clearer from my perspective. I'm deeply sorry for the suffering of your granddaughter, the moral confusion of your daughter, and the deep fissures this event has opened in your family. However, if what you've written is true, and while I realize every story has two sides, you seem to be confronting a child rapist in the family who must be stopped. It's not morally or legally proper for your family to be the ones who decide what happens to him; that's for the courts to determine.
As to the Christian and Jewish impulse to forgive this man, let me remind you that he is unrepentant. You can forgive a sinner without helping him avoid punishment for his crime. The paired obligations of forgiveness and justice are made perfectly clear in Leviticus 19:17: "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him." (Leviticus 19:17).
E-mail questions to godsquadquestion@aol.com.
Did you see the Hamodiah and Yated this week? It's unbelievable! They have that dirt bag rasha merusha Lipa Margulis, Yisroel Belsky, and others. There's also a long thing about Be'er Hagolah with the 'gedolim' putting in their two sense.
What kind of world is this when our 'leaders' are so evil and corrupt and they still remain at their positions and receive all kinds of kovod? It's sick!
Yated Ne'eman (United States)
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Not to be confused with Yated Ne'eman (Israel).
Yated Ne'eman is a weekly Haredi newspaper that is based in Monsey, New York and published in English and distributed mostly in the New York City metropolitan area where large communities of Haredi Jews reside. It was established in 1987.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Editorial policies and views
* 2 History
* 3 Significance
* 4 Link to Israeli politics
* 5 The name
* 6 See also
* 7 External links
[edit] Editorial policies and views
Its editorial views, opinions, and policies strictly reflect the positions and policies of Agudath Israel of America and Agudath Israel's leadership body the American Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah ("Council of Torah Sages.") Its views on Orthodox Jewish education are based upon the activities and educational policies of the rabbis that guide Torah Umesorah - National Society for Hebrew Day Schools.
Due to the fact that the Haredi rabbis who guide Agudath Israel oppose the casual use of the Internet (allowing it only for business or Email purposes), even to read news, publications such as the Yated Ne'eman do not publish articles on the Internet directly. It's one page web domain states:
"Our website is currently under construction. If you would like to subscribe to our print edition, please call us... To subscribe to the email edition of our sister publication "The Jewish Paper" click here..." [1]
[edit] History
The origins of the American Yated are to be found in the history behind the establishment of its direct Israeli counterpart, Yated Ne'eman (Israel) (which was itself established over differences of editorial opinion with Hamodia) . In addition, the American Haredi rabbis were searching for an alternate mouthpiece for their views since the widest read Orthodox Jewish weekly in the New York area, The Jewish Press was privately owned, too independent, and expressed more of a pro-Israel Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox point of view, and the widely read UJA supported The Jewish Week was open to non-Orthodox articles and editors, who were often opposed to the views of Haredi Judaism. In the 1990s the United States edition of Yated severed its relationship with the Israeli edition over perceived conservative religious-leanings at the Israeli paper.
[edit] Significance
The publication and survival of the Yated reflects the rise and strength of a unique English-speaking Haredi community in the United States that sees itself as independent from the non-Orthodox instititions of previous Jewish generations. Its articles, editorials, photos and advertisemnts are all strictly controlled to reflect and promote the growth of the American yeshiva world, through institutions such as Beth Medrash Govoha (Lakewood yeshiva) in New Jersey, and other institutions in Brooklyn such as Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and many other Haredi educational, charitable, communal, and political organizations that advertise and ensure that their leadership, activities and accomplishments are conveyed in print.
[edit] Link to Israeli politics
The American Yated reports Israeli news extensively, keeping track of social trends, political developments, and military affairs that concerna the State of Israel. In its political stance it tends to follow the party line of the Degel HaTorah party as is evidenced by the frequent publication of photos extolling the activities of Degel HaTorah's three main present-day leaders, Rabbis Aharon Leib Shteinman, Yosef Sholom Eliashiv and Chaim Kanievsky.
[edit] The name
Directly based on its Israeli counterpart, the name of the Yated is based on the Hebrew phrase "yated ne'eman" which literally refers to a peg strongly anchored in the ground, and is used figuratively to describe a secure connection or something which can be relied upon. The name was supposedly given by Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (1899 - 1985) and comes from Isaiah 22 verse 23, "ותקעתיו יתד, במקום נאמן", translated as "And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place", or as "I will drive him like a peg in a firm place".
[edit] See also
* Hamodia
Hamodia
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Type Daily newspaper
Format Tabloid
Owner
Founded 1950
Political allegiance Haredi
Headquarters 5 Yehudah Hamacabi Street, Jerusalem
Website: www.hamodia.com
Hamodia (Hebrew: המודיע, meaning "the announcer") is a Hebrew language daily newspaper, published in Israel. A daily English language edition is also published in the United States and Israel, and a weekly edition is published in England. A weekly edition is now available to French readers. The U.S. version is the first Haredi Jewish daily newspaper ever published in English in the U.S. It is also the only Orthodox Jewish newspaper published daily in two different country editions. The paper was founded in 1950 by Rabbi Y. L. Levin, son of the Agudat Israel leader Rabbi I.M. Levin of Warsaw and Jerusalem.
Editorial policy reflects the Haredi point of view. Although not Zionist on ideoligical grounds it is right of center in its Israeli coverage. It is very voiceferous on the thorny issue of Jerusalem and opposes even minimal concessions. Torah and community related topics are more often written by the reporters at the paper, while most of the national and international news is taken from other news sources, such as Reuters and the Associated Press. Pictures of women are not displayed in the newspaper. A weekly edition, in English, is published simultaneously in Jerusalem, London and New York. As hareidi culture shuns television, internet usage and the reading of secular newspapers, Hamodia is one of the few news sources available to many of its readers. There are no internet editions of Hamodia.
More than just a newspaper, they promote a way of life that is based on family values and spiritual growth. they are the sole access point to a community that shies away from mainstream culture, avoiding the dangers of immodest images and innuendo found on the internet and opting for a life based on powerful tradition. Parents trust Hamodia as a ‘filter’ because it is seen as the only ‘safe’ option.
The English editions of Hamodia enjoy a wide circulation. It was first printed on February 27, 1998 as a weekly paper and on December 15, 2003 it expanded to include a daily publication as well. The daily edition is published from Monday to Friday, with no edition appearing on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) and Jewish religious holidays. The weekly edition is printed on Wednesdays, and includes expanded sections and a glossy magazine.
Recently a French weekly version has been introduced and enjoys a wide circulation both in the French speaking community in Israel and in France itself.
The English-language Hamodia is published in three editions—Israel, United States of America (daily) and England (weekly only)
Hamodia's slogan is "The Newspaper of Torah Jewry".
http://www.hamodia.com/
There are no internet editions of Hamodia.
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What's this?
http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2008/02/washington-afp-us-grocery-chain-trader.html
Yaakov Hopfer and David Pelcovitz said...
The institute for advanced professional training at Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
(Also sponsored byRabbi Dovid Gottlieb, the Sidran Foundation and the Shofar Coalition of Baltimore)
WE WILL NOT ALLOW QUESTIONS OR ANSWERS DURING THIS EVENT
Presents
How To Keep Our Children Safe
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
8:00 PM
Congregation Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion
6600 Park Heights Ave.
Welcome: Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb
(Congregation Shomrei Emunah)
Introduction: David Mandel
Chief Executive Officer
Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
Presenters:
Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer
Congregation Shearith Israel
Dr. David Pelcovitz
Self Appointed - - -
watch this video of what sex abuse does to victims.
Are you a Zionist?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6g_lXpz80uM
I find this unbearably and difficult to watch. These fakes are not Jews. I think it is extremely offensive and I view it as a personal attack against my religion.
Impact of Child Sexual Abuse
It is estimated that there are 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse in America today.
Source: Forward, 1993.
Approximately 31% of women in prison state that they had been abused as children.
Source: United States Department of Justice, 1991.
Approximately 95% of teenage prostitutes have been sexually abused.
Source: CCPCA, 1992.
It is estimated that children with disabilities are 4 to 10 times more vulnerable to sexual abuse than their non-disabled peers.
Source: National Resource Center on Child Sexual Abuse, 1992.
Long term effects of child abuse include fear, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, inappropriate sexual behavior, poor self esteem, tendency toward substance abuse and difficulty with close relationships.
Source: Browne & Finkelhor, 1986.
Clinical findings of adult victims of sexual abuse include problems in interpersonal relationships associated with an underlying mistrust. Generally, adult victims of incest have a severely strained relationship with their parents that is marked by feelings of mistrust, fear, ambivalence, hatred, and betrayal. These feelings may extend to all family members.
Source: Tsai and Wagner, 1978.
Guilt is universally experienced by almost all victims. Courtois and Watts described the "sexual guilt" as "guilt derived from sexual pleasure"
Source: Tsai and Wagner, l978.
Sexuality is regarded not simply as a part of the self limited to genitals, discrete behaviors, or biological aspects of reproduction, but is more properly understood as one component of the total personality that affects one's concept of personal identity and self-esteem.
Source: Whitlock & Gillman, 1989.
Sexual victimization may profoundly interfere with and alter the development of attitudes toward self, sexuality, and trusting relationships during the critical early years of development.
Source: Tsai & Wagner, 1984.
If the child victim does not resolve the trauma, sexuality may become an area of adult conflict.
Source: Courtois & Watts, 1982; Tsai & Wagner, 1984.
There is the clinical assumption that children who feel compelled to keep sexual abuse a secret suffer greater psychic distress than victims who disclose the secret and receive assistance and support.
Source: Finkelhor & Browne, 1986.
Early identification of sexual abuse victims appears to be crucial to the reduction of suffering of abused youth and to the establishment of support systems for assistance in pursuing appropriate psychological development and healthier adult functioning . As long as disclosure continues to be a problem for young victims, then fear, suffering, and psychological distress will, like the secret, remain with the victim.
Sources: Bagley, 1992; Bagley, 1991; Finkelhor et al. 1990; Whitlock & Gillman, 1989.
Adolescents with a history of sexual abuse are significantly more likely than their counterparts to engage in sexual behavior that puts them at risk for HIV infection, according to Dr. Larry K. Brown and associates, from Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence.
See Medscape
Adolescents with a history of sexual abuse are significantly more likely than their counterparts to engage in sexual behavior that puts them at risk for HIV infection, according to Dr. Larry K. Brown and associates, from Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence. Inconsistent condom use was three times more likely among youths who had been sexually abused than among the 55 who had not. A history of sexual abuse was also significantly associated with less impulse control and higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases. According to Dr. Brown, "These results suggest two things. Abused kids need adequate counseling around abuse issues. A lot of these kids keep re-experiencing the anxiety and trauma for years." The second issue, he said, is that "most therapy does not address current sexual behavior" and the anxieties that sexually abused adolescents experience.
Source: Larry K. Brown, M.D., et al, American Journal of Psychiatry 2000;157:1413-1415.
Young girls who are forced to have sex are three times more likely to develop psychiatric disorders or abuse alcohol and drugs in adulthood, than girls who are not sexually abused. Sexual abuse was also more strongly linked with substance abuse than with psychiatric disorders. It was also suggested that sexual abuse may lead some girls to become sexually active at an earlier age and seek out older boyfriends who might, in turn, introduce them to drugs. Psychiatric disorders were from 2.6 to 3.3 times more common among women whose CSA included intercourse, and the risk of substance abuse was increased more than fourfold, according to the results. Family factors -- parental education, parenting behavior, family financial status, church attendance -- had little impact on the prevalence of psychiatric or substance abuse disorders among these women, the investigators observe. Similarly, parental psychopathology did not predict the association between CSA and later psychopathology.
Source: Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., et al, Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University, Archives of General Psychiatry 2000;57:953-959.
Also see review at Medscape
Among both adolescent girls and boys, a history of sexual or physical abuse appears to increase the risk of disordered eating behaviors, such as self-induced vomiting or use of laxatives to avoid gaining weight. Among those at increased risk for disordered eating were respondents who had experienced sexual or physical abuse and those who gave low ratings to family communication, parental caring and parental expectations. In light of these findings, the researchers conclude that "strong familial relationships may decrease the risk for disordered eating among youth reporting abuse experiences."
Source: Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, et al, University of Minneapolis, International Journal of Eating Disorders 2000;28:249-258.
Young girls who are sexually abused are more likely to develop eating disorders as adolescents. The findings also add to a growing body of research suggesting that trauma in childhood increases the risk of developing an eating disorder. Abused girls were more dissatisfied with their weight and more likely to diet and purge their food by vomiting or using laxatives and diuretics. Abused girls were also more likely to restrict their eating when they were bored or emotionally upset. Wonderlich suggests that abused girls might experience higher levels of emotional distress, possibly linked to their abuse, and have trouble coping. Food restriction and perhaps other eating disorder behaviors may (reflect) efforts to cope with such experiences. The report also indicates that while girls who were abused were less likely to exhibit perfectionist tendencies (such as making extreme efforts to avoid disappointing others and a need to be 'the best'), they tended to want thinner bodies than girls who had not been abused.
Source: Stephen A. Wonderlich, M.D., et al, University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Fargo, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 2000;391277-1283.
US Healthcare system missing most mentally ill children and adolescents. More than 7 out of 10 American adolescents with mental health problems are getting no care, according to data released today at the Surgeon General's Conference on Children's Mental Health. See Medscape
View this writing at;
http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/stats.htm#Impact
VERY IMPORTANT:
We are fighting a war on those who are ruining and sabotaging the Jewish souls on this earth. This insanity must stop already. People are as ignorant and idiotic today as they were before the Kolko and Mondrowitz story broke. Even if the proof stares them in the face it wouldn't be enough. So what do some people do that see this happen? They watch and snap pictures of the mental dwarfs breaking bread on some fresser event to raise money. They pretend all his good.
If someone is undeniably devoted to helping save the lives of Jews - and preserving the dignity and respectability of all humanity - then I urge you to do something about it. The biggest help that one can achieve is by making your voices heard and giving the survivors of sexual assault a voice to their plight.
Kindly contact your state senators and urge them to vote yes for a bill that would extend or get rid of the Stature of Limitations on sexual abuse altogether. Some states have already instituted this change. It's only fair that victims of abuse should have justice done for them. Congress will listen to us if we put forth the effort and show them we are serious. Please, do this for the sake of klal yisrael. You have the power to save yidden, use it.
This is what happens when you send your kids to college.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
By John Gress
DEKALB, Illinois (Reuters) - A black-clad man fired into a lecture hall packed with students at an Illinois university on Thursday, killing five people and wounding 18 before shooting himself dead, police and college officials said.
The gunman, who police said had a shotgun and two handguns, stepped onto the lecturer's stage near the end of a mid-afternoon geology class at Northern Illinois University and began shooting down the room, sending terrified and bleeding students fleeing, witnesses said. He then shot himself on the same stage.
Police on the 25,000-student college 65 miles west of Chicago said the gunman was a former student but they did not publicly identify him and said they did not know the motive in the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. colleges and high schools.
University President John Peters said there had been a "very brief rapid fire assault that ended with the gunman taking his own life." He said those killed by the gunman were all students -- four women and one man -- and that 4 were in critical condition in hospitals. The instructor teaching the class survived, he said.
"I ducked behind the seats and ran out the door," student Zach Seward told the local Daily Chronicle newspaper.
"As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hit me in the back. I didn't know where to run, tried to decide where it's safe to be, and there isn't anywhere safe."
FORMER STUDENT
Peters said the gunman was a sociology major who last attended classes as a graduate student in the spring of 2007 and who may have since enrolled at a different college. He said he had no police record or previous contact with police.
One student told local radio that roughly 140 students were in the classroom when the man opened fire. Ambulances swarmed onto the snow-covered campus and classes were canceled for the rest of the day and Thursday..
Hezbollah Chief Warns Israel of Wide War
Fiery Speech Broadcast at Commander's Funeral; Elsewhere in Beirut, Slain Ex-Premier Is Remembered
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 15, 2008; A12
BEIRUT, Feb. 14 -- Hezbollah's leader threatened Thursday to strike Israel anywhere in the world in retaliation for what he said was its role in assassinating Imad Mughniyah, a Hezbollah commander blamed by the United States and Israel for killing hundreds in bombings, kidnappings and hijackings over a quarter-century.
In a video speech broadcast to thousands of mourners in a spare but sprawling tent in southern Beirut, Hasan Nasrallah said that because Israel had struck beyond what he called the "traditional battlefield" of Lebanon and Israel, it risked a borderless war with the Shiite Muslim group. Israel has denied involvement in the car bombing Tuesday that killed the 45-year-old Mughniyah in a tony neighborhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital.
"You have crossed the borders," he said in the speech, which was vehement even by Nasrallah's fiery standards. "Zionists, if you want this type of open war, then let it be, and let the whole world hear: We, like all other people, have a sacred right to defend ourselves, and everything we can do to defend ourselves, we will do."
"At your service, Nasrallah!" the crowd shouted to the cadence of fists in the air.
Israel put its embassies and other interests abroad on alert Thursday, reinforced its troops on the Lebanese border and warned its citizens of the prospect of kidnapping. Hezbollah was last accused of attacking Israeli interests abroad in the 1990s, when Argentina implicated the group and its Iranian backers in fatal bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Many Lebanese believe the attacks were in retaliation for Israel's 1992 assassination of Abbas Musawi, Nasrallah's predecessor.
Mughniyah's funeral took place on a day that displayed the stark contrasts in a country still reeling from Hezbollah's war with Israel in 2006 and a deepening standoff that pits the Shiite movement and its Christian allies against a coalition of Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians gathered around the government. That 15-month confrontation has left Lebanon without a president since November and paralyzed the work of its cabinet and parliament, marking the worst crisis since its 15-year civil war ended in 1990.
Hours before Mughniyah's funeral, tens of thousands of government supporters gathered at Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut to mark the third anniversary of the killing of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. His followers blame his assassination on Syria, which denies the allegation.
Unlike in past demonstrations downtown, the crowds appeared more dutiful than inspired, soaked as they were by a driving rain. But everywhere, there were signs of crisis. Followers of Hariri donned paramilitary outfits similar to those worn by Hezbollah's men, and supporters casually discussed the prospect of a renewal of the country's civil war.
"If they want war, we want war. If they want peace, we want peace," said Moussa Khader, a 55-year-old pro-government demonstrator. "We're just waiting for an order." He then quoted a proverb: "Things have to get bigger if they're going to get smaller."
The men venerated at the different events encapsulated the contest between the two cultures that has often defined the crisis. Hariri envisioned Lebanon returning to its place as a commercial hub of the Levant, albeit one infused with often spectacular corruption in the service of deal-making. Mughniyah sought to fulfill Hezbollah's vision of a country engaged in an ongoing confrontation with Israel that, as Nasrallah put it, made Lebanon "a land of resistance."
The two cultures spoke to each other at a distance.
"Our hand is extended and will remain extended, no matter what the difficulties," Hariri's son, Saad, told the crowd, in which many held banners that celebrated "Our Lebanon."
"When we see that the extended hand is sincere, it will only be met by an extended hand," Nasrallah answered hours later in a stentorian voice at Mughniyah's funeral.
A coffin said to hold Mughniyah's body was draped in the yellow banner of Hezbollah, beneath a portrait that declared him "a great leader and martyr." The mournful iconography of Shiite Islam's holiest day, Ashura, was still hanging around it. Men in black uniforms and berets stood at attention on the stage, joined by an honor guard bearing flags and a military band that played Hezbollah's anthem, then Lebanon's.
Every one of the thousands of seats was filled, and the crowd spilled into nearby, hardscrabble streets. Some mourners cried. Others photographed the coffin with their cellphones or held aloft pictures of the bearded, stocky Mughniyah.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was in attendance, read a message of condolence from Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a mark of the group's ties to Iran, which helped found Hezbollah in the wake of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Mottaki was seated between Hezbollah's deputy leader and Mughniyah's father.
"Let the Israelis hear me well. In any war, you wouldn't face one Imad Mughniyah, but tens of thousands of Imad Mughniyahs," said Nasrallah, whose remarks were broadcast live onto a theater-size screen.
The portrait of Mughniyah was the first time that many at the funeral had seen the face of a man whose elusiveness over the years had made him a ghostlike figure. His supporters, who knew him as Hajj Radwan, his nom de guerre, revered him for helping to drive U.S. forces out of Lebanon in the early 1980s. To his foes, he was the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on Israeli and American targets in a generation.
The Americans blamed him for the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984, and the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks there that killed 241 service members. Nasrallah said Mughniyah had played a key role in organizing Hezbollah's defenses during its 33-day war with Israel in 2006, which the group considers a victory.
But in a 2006 interview with the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, published Thursday, Mughniyah played down the scope of exploits attributed to him.
The Americans "make it sound as if I hold the keys to the universe," he was quoted as saying. "It was difficult for them to be convinced that I am part of an organization that plans its steps with calm, an organization that patiently thinks and plans to achieve what needs to be achieved, and that doesn't do it as a reaction or with anger."
At the earlier rally, both Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, another pro-government leader, suggested that Syria, not Israel, was behind Mughniyah's killing. Some have suggested that Syria's cooperation would have been necessary to kill a man who evaded U.S. and Israeli agencies for 25 years and adhered to a caution that earned the grudging respect of even his enemies. He was said to have undergone plastic surgery to change his identity, and his whereabouts -- in Lebanon, Iran or elsewhere -- were always a matter of speculation.
"Look what happened yesterday," Jumblatt told the crowd. Syria and its allies "are tearing each other apart. They are eating each other. This is a regime of treason."
In Damascus, there were no signs of an investigation at the scene of the attack, and onlookers were not barred from the site. A patch of black that designated the blast had been washed away by rain, and on Thursday, a car was parked over it. Residents said the Mitsubishi Pajero in which Mughniyah was killed had been parked for at least three days.
"The police came and asked a few questions," said a woman whose apartment was near the attack site. "But had even I been an inspector, I would have asked more questions. They came for a couple of minutes and left. That was all."
Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem and special correspondents Lynn Maalouf in Damascus and Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.
http://www.senate.gov/
Clinton, Hillary Rodham- (D - NY) Class I
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President & Congress Governor & State Legislators
President
• George Bush (R)
Senators
• Charles Schumer (D)
• Hillary Clinton (D)
Representatives*
• Edolphus Towns (D-10)
• Yvette Clarke (D-11)
• Jerrold Nadler (D-8)
• Anthony Weiner (D-9)
Governor
• Eliot Spitzer (D)
Senate*
• John Sampson (D-19)
• Kevin Parker (D-21)
• Martin Golden (R-22)
• Carl Kruger (D-27)
Assembly*
• Helene Weinstein (D-41)
• Rhoda Jacobs (D-42)
• James Brennan (D-44)
• Steven Cymbrowitz (D-45)
• William Colton (D-47)
• Dov Hikind (D-48)
Obesity Raises Cancer Risk
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Friday, February 15, 2008; 12:00 AM
FRIDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- The more weight you carry on your body, the greater your odds of developing cancer, British researchers report.
This is true not only of fairly common cancers such as colon and breast, but also of lesser known varieties, including gallbladder. Moreover, the degree of risk differs between men and women and among different ethnic groups, report the authors of a comprehensive new paper appearing in this week's issue ofThe Lancet.
"This is a profoundly important issue. Obviously, the obesity epidemic is a huge problem itself, and the relationship to cancer is only one of the many adverse health effects of being overweight and obese," said Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society. "The evidence has been accumulating now for over 10 years. . . This study tries to provide a quantitative measure of how much the relative risk goes up with each increment, basically jumping from one BMI [body-mass index] category to another."
Although extra fat has already been identified by research as a risk factor for several different types of cancer, Thun said, "the problem of obesity is so large and so difficult to solve that there's a very sound reason for ongoing studies of things that have become increasingly well-known, just because it helps the momentum in stimulating approaches that will actually help people maintain a healthy weight."
Last year, a report issued by the American Institute of Cancer Research and the U.K.-based World Cancer Research Fund concluded that body fat is associated with an increased risk for several different types of cancer including esophageal adenocarcinoma, as well as cancers of the pancreas, colon and rectum, breast (postmenopausal), endometrium and kidney.
Although that report was one of the most comprehensive to date, it did leave some questions unanswered. For instance, are there associations between less common cancers and body weight, and do the associations differ between the sexes and people of different ethnic backgrounds?
http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/drug/612626.html
WEDNESDAY, Feb. 13 (HealthDay News) -- A drug originally designed to combat cancer that is now being used to treat autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus might also work against a common form of multiple sclerosis.
In new research published in the Feb. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported that one treatment with rituximab significantly reduced the number of inflammatory lesions in the brains of people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), and almost halved the incidence of relapse for up to 48 weeks.
"The immediate results of this study should give great hope to all of us in the field and to our patients," said study author Dr. Stephen Hauser, chairman of the department of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. "An easily-administered, relatively safe IV therapy might have a very important, profound effect on the relapsing-remitting phase of MS."
However, Hauser was quick to caution, "these results are preliminary and should not be translated into a belief that a new proven therapy has been identified." He said that larger, longer studies need to be done to fully assess the drug's safety and efficacy in people with MS.
"We are cautiously optimistic," Dr. John Richert, executive vice president of research and clinical programs for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said of the findings. "It's hard to imagine results any better than this, but right now, we don't have any long-term data on safety or efficacy."
The prisoner zicher makes a valid oychochah. We as yidden have to help make sure he davens in a cell without a bathroom.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/us/16prison.html?ref=us
February 16, 2008
Imprisoned, Rabbi Sues Over Space for Prayer
By NEELA BANERJEE
A Hasidic rabbi serving time at a federal penitentiary is suing the Bureau of Prisons to change its policy on where inmates can pray.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York, Rabbi Mordechai Samet, who was convicted of fraudulently obtaining more than $4 million, asserts that his ability to pray according to his beliefs has been violated by the Bureau of Prisons’ insistence that he pray in his cell. The cell contains a toilet, making it an unclean place to pray for Jews, his suit says, as well as for Muslims and Buddhists.
Prisoners in federal facilities cannot pray in common spaces, and prison chapels are usually not open enough hours to accommodate those who pray several times a day, the suit contends.
“Our goal is for the Bureau of Prisons to change its national policy on prayer,” said Shima Baradaran, a lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis in Manhattan, who is representing Rabbi Samet pro bono. “We would like for it to allow prisoners to pray anywhere outside their cells, within reason, and that would include silent, demonstrative and ritualized prayers, as long as they were not disturbing other prisoners.”
Rabbi Samet, 47, has moved for summary judgment, asking the judge to rule in his favor based on the evidence gathered, without the case going to trial. The Bureau of Prisons has said it will file for summary judgment, too, but asked the court for an extension.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, Traci L Billingsley, declined to comment because the matter was in litigation. Rabbi Samet was ordained in 1979. In 2003, he began serving a 27-year sentence in the Otisville Correctional Facility in Otisville, N.Y., after a jury convicted him of financial fraud, which included soliciting money for a fake lottery, submitting false death claims to insurance companies, and defrauding banks with counterfeit checks. Rabbi Samet is appealing his conviction.
According to his lawsuit, Rabbi Samet prays three times a day. He also frequently reads religious texts.
The brief says that Rabbi Samet’s faith forbids him from praying in his cell, where there is a toilet. But when he has prayed elsewhere in the prison, he has been disciplined, the suit says. He has also been punished for covering his toilet while praying in his cell, the suit says. He contends that the Bureau of Prisons has denied his requests to pray in the chapel or in common areas, like libraries, the television room and the housing unit’s hallways and open courtyards.
In a deposition in the plaintiff’s brief, the supervisory chaplain of Otisville and the Bureau of Prisons’ expert on Jewish law, Rabbi Nochum Laskin, confirms that observant Jews cannot pray in a bathroom.
The bureau offered several explanations for its limits on where inmates can pray. According to a deposition by Sister Susan Van Baalen, chaplaincy services administrator at the bureau, ritualized prayers like those that Rabbi Samet performs are “not something that is part of our national culture.” Sister Van Baalen said they could be “threatening” to other inmates or might make them feel “uncomfortable.”
Depositions of other prison officials described similar concerns about offending other inmates and disruption of security. But Rabbi Laskin said in his deposition that conflicts over prayer had never occurred at Otisville, even when inmates had violated prison policy and prayed in common areas.
In the discovery process, Rabbi Samet’s lawyers came across 10 requests similar to his made by prisoners elsewhere in the country in 2005-6. The Bureau of Prisons rejected all of them.
Olmert: Shas won't quit coalition
gil hoffman and jpost.com staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 13, 2008
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday that he did not believe Shas would quit the coalition over reports that Jerusalem was already on the table in talks with the Palestinians.
"I see no danger to the integrity of the coalition," Olmert told political reporters in the Knesset. "It is clear to all of the sides that the issue of Jerusalem will be the last issue on the agenda with the Palestinians."
Meanwhile, Army Radio reported that the prime minister promised Shas Chairman Eli Yishai that construction would continue in Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem.
Olmert reportedly said that he would contact the authorities charged with planning and construction in the Housing Ministry and inform them of the decision in the upcoming days.
Earlier Wednesday, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the eldest son of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, said that the party should quit the government forthwith and if it fails to do so, it bears responsibility for putting Israel in grave danger.
In the statement, which was revealed on Army Radio and will be run in the Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (Israel is Ours) Shabbat leaflet over the weekend, Yosef also warns of missiles on Jerusalem.
Shas, Yosef implies, cannot use the excuse that the negotiations are still far from fruition. "We [also] didn't believe it would happen so fast that Judea and Samaria would be on the negotiating table," he writes. "We can't let it happen. We have to struggle. We cannot give up."
"I hope they wake up and leave as the Council of Torah Sages promised," Yosef says. "By remaining in the government, Shas is betraying the decision of the Council and putting the entire Jewish people in danger."
In quitting the coalition, Yosef claims, Shas would also reap electoral benefit by garnering support from groups that traditionally vote for other, more staunchly right-wing parties. "If Shas leaves now it will help politically by winning support from traditional voters who are struggling against concessions on Jerusalem."
"I say unequivocally: Shas will never forgive itself if it doesn't leave the government now. Every moment in this government is dangerous," Yosef says.
Sources within Shas were quoted as saying that the statement by Yosef, who has already confronted his father in various political matters - as well as halachic issues - in the past, did not reflect in any way the views of the party or of its spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Meanwhile, Yishai was surprised to hear about the frequency of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's negotiations with former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, Shas sources said Tuesday.
Yishai had been promised that he would be kept up to date on the talks with the Palestinians by Olmert and Livni, but he learned from Ma'ariv that Livni had met with Qurei on both Monday and Tuesday.
Hearing about the meetings from the press reinforced for Shas officials that The Jerusalem Post's reports about secret negotiations on Jerusalem were correct. Yishai said on Monday that if the story were true, his party would leave the government.
Shas officials said Yishai would meet with Olmert after the latter returned from his trip to Germany. Olmert told reporters in Berlin that Jerusalem and other sensitive subjects would be left until the end of talks, after agreements had been reached on other matters.
Also Tuesday, Hatem Abdel Qader, the Jerusalem affairs adviser to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, confirmed that Jerusalem is one of the issues currently being discussed by Israeli and PA negotiators.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Abdel Qader said Jerusalem "is not only on the table, it's also under the table."
Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.
Not every pickle is a kosher pickle. If there is a chashash that the pickle was used for purposes other than a pickle then it would render the pickle inedible theyby making it non-kosher.
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http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIHAoZnmBDg2zT6NX3PFi_efggdg
Travelling rabbis teach the art of making a perfect kosher pickle
1 day ago
MINEOLA, N.Y. - Rabbi Mendy Margolin wants to put the kosher back in kosher pickles - one congregation at a time.
Sporting a long beard and a black apron that declared "Real Men Don't Use Recipes" on a recent morning, Margolin announced the start of "the kosher pickle experience."
Part carnival barker, part Borscht Belt comedian, Margolin was bringing his road show to the basement of Congregation Beth Sholom Chabad to teach these more than two dozen mostly elderly students the proper way to make a crispy, spicy pickle.
"Prepare your mouths," shouted the 25-year-old Margolin. "Prepare your souls. Get ready for kosher pickle-palooza!"
Despite the lighthearted presentation, Margolin noted that real kosher pickles must be made in strict accordance with Hebrew tradition and law: no preservatives and only the best ingredients, including kosher salt.
"The Pickle Show," as it is formally known, was started about three years ago by Margolin's cousin, Rabbi Shmuel Marcus, director of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad organization of Cypress, Calif.
Margolin and his assistant, Rabbi Mendel Sossonko, want to take the presentation to a national audience. After Long Island, the pickle proceedings are scheduled to make stops in Florida before returning to Southern California. Margolin estimates that 3,000 people have taken the seminar so far.
Roberta Popper of North Hills said she came because of her love for the little green delicacy, but also to support her culture. "I think that tradition has a lot to do with this," she said.
Samuel Frank of Searingtown, who came with his wife, Shani, agreed.
"I think there are people who want to connect with their Judaism, but they don't feel comfortable going into a synagogue in a regular formal setting," he said. "So instead they come to cultural programs like this."
Margolin, who previously led seminars on how to make matzohs and shofars, said the primary motivation is to "teach people the meaning of kosher, and do it in a fun way. We're trying to bring the ethnic, kosherness back."
As Margolin's students bantered about the weather, and the wonderful renovation job on the synagogue basement - destroyed by a flood last summer - he walked them through the pickle-making process:
-First, a little less than 30 ml (2 tbsp) of kosher salt goes into a plastic litre container. Then comes 425 ml (1 3/4 cups) of water to make a brine.
-Next comes a scoop or two of pickling spices. Then, depending on their size, four or five kirby cucumbers are wedged into the container, followed by between one and five cloves of garlic.
-Then, the whole concoction is topped off by some pieces of dill, before the container is closed for the trip home.
-When the pickles arrive home, take off the lid and let the cucumbers rest in the brine on a kitchen counter.
"Make sure it's uncovered!" Margolin said. "Otherwise the pressure inside the container will get to be too much and you'll have an explosion of pickle juice all over your house."
Really good sour pickles take about seven days until they're ready to eat; half-sour, not surprisingly, take half the time.
The midday seminar ended with Rabbi Anchelle Perl, the leader of the Mineola congregation, donning a green pickle suit and dancing in celebration with his fellow rabbis.
He said he was pleased with event.
"Who can't like a class where you learn a little something and get to take home a jar of fresh kosher pickles?"
I encourage you to watch this video clip of ISRAEL IN DANGER!!!
Rabbi Wolpo is 100% correct. And may he be blessed for speaking up. I couldn't help equate a lot of what he's saying about Israel to the child abuse epidemic and cover-up. I'm reckoning that you see the analogies.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Qx3QWI38Pg
Olmert and Barak do nothing "except for a targeted killing here and there every two months and then they go on to other things - and you [Shas] remain silent?!"
If Avi L. Shafran thinks he's a such a tough guy against the reform movement he should think again. He's nothing more than a gnat in somebody's rear end.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954968.html
U.S. Reform leader says supports concessions on Jerusalem
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
The president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, promised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week that his movement would support the government if a peace treaty with the Palestinians is reached, including concessions in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yoffie told Haaretz that if the Israeli right wing mobilizes its supporters in the United States against such an agreement, the Reform Movement would respond in kind.
The issue of the involvement of Jews from outside Israel in the debate over the diplomatic process, especially over the question of the future of Jerusalem, was raised following the Annapolis summit three months ago. The American Orthodox Union angered Prime Minister Olmert by calling upon him not to consider concessions in Jerusalem, and the coalition of right-wing groups that formed to fight Olmert's plans expressed its intention to enlist the support of world Jewry in its campaign.
http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2008/02/washington-afp-us-grocery-chain-trader.html
Sholom Rubashkin said...
http://israel613.com/books/Agri_Weissmandl_PDF.pdf
Oh brother! The only thing worse than Yudel Shain posting all this shmutz about me is if UOJ were to mail it to gantz Brooklyn. Belsky warned me theres a good chance because Yudel even excerpts from the "I accuse" drosho from R' Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz!
Call me. I will issue a heter for celebrating Valentine’s Day!
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Ask The Rabbi: Is celebrating Valentines Day permitted or does it go against Judaism
Filed under Other Religions, Opinion Editorials on 2/15/2008 By: .
From: Shira in Chicago
Dear Rabbi,
I was wondering if it’s OK to do Valentine’s Day or if there’s anything about the day that is against Judaism?
Dear Shira,
First of all, formally the day is called Saint Valentine’s Day, which clearly shows the Christian, non-Jewish character of the day. Furthermore, like other Christian holidays, the day may have roots in pagan rituals observed by pre-Christian Europeans. Finally, the themes of the day, namely public expression of “love” with erotic under/overtones, centered around indulgent consumption, are antithetical to Judaism.
Allow me to elaborate.
Christianity, in what’s known as The Calendar of Saints, commemorates the martyrdom of its holy ones by declaring a feast on the day the saint was killed. First decreed in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, the feast of Saint Valentine was celebrated on February 14 by the Roman Catholic Church in commemoration of one (or all) of three men named Valentinus, who lived in the late third century and were martyred during the reign of Emperor Claudius II.
Accordingly, the day is named and celebrated after either a priest in Rome, a bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) or a martyr in the Roman province of Africa who were all named Valentine, a popular name in those times derived from “valens” (meaning worthy) in approximately 270 C.E. However, in addition to the day being a Christian holiday, it may have pagan origins.
In Ancient Rome, February 14 marked the festival of Lupercalia (lupa meaning wolf) in honor of the she-wolf who legendarily suckled the infant orphans, Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Priests of the Roman god Faunus sacrificed two male goats and a dog whose blood was wiped off the knife and smeared on the foreheads of two young men. After a feast, the skins of the sacrificed goats were cut into straps to be used in a ceremony that was an omen for marriage and fertility.
The nominally Christian Roman populace still observed Lupercalia as late as the end of the fifth century when, after a long contest, it was finally abolished by Pope Gelasius. Interestingly, this is the same Gelasius who first proclaimed February 14 as Valentine’s Day.
How did the day come to be associated with love and romance? If viewed as an originally Christian holiday, legend says that when Claudius II purportedly outlawed marriage for young men hoping to groom better soldiers, Valentine continued to perform marriages in secret. When he was discovered, he was put to death. A feast was proclaimed to commemorate his death. If viewed as an originally pagan holiday, the source of the feast is the meal after the goat sacrifice, while the ceremony that served as an omen for marriage and fertility is the origin of the day’s sentimental nature.
Accordingly, these themes may have been “Christainized” by the church to wean the early Europeans away from paganism by supplanting Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day. Others posit that the day’s romantic character was introduced much later in the Middle Ages’ lore and literature of “courtly love”.
Either way, the public demonstration connecting indulgence and romance is antithetical to Jewish values. In fact, the icon of Valentine’s Day, Cupid, in Roman mythology is the god of love and intimate relations, which in turn is based on the Greek god Eros. This means that the cupid-love of Valentine’s Day is essentially a modern form of ancient eros. In Judaism, true love and its expression not only on a physical level, but also on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level as well, is very important and central.
However, it is something that is shared privately and intimately between two people in the nurturing and elevating context of marriage. To cheapen it through public, commercialized and hollow expressions of infatuation is indeed against Judaism’s notion of true love and its proper demonstration.
So whether Valentine’s Day is Christian, pagan or immoral, one thing it’s not is Jewish.
The opinions and views articulated by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Israel e News.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_morning_star_abuse.html
Last updated February 15, 2008 7:42 p.m. PT
More sex abuse allegations against Spokane Diocese boys' ranch
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SPOKANE, Wash. -- Three former residents of a boys' ranch operated by the Spokane Catholic Diocese have filed suit, alleging they were physically and sexually abused by priests and a volunteer.
In the lawsuit filed Friday in Spokane County Superior Court, the men accuse Morning Star Boys Ranch of negligent supervision and knowingly allowing employees to sexually abuse residents.
A former Morning Star director, the Rev. Joseph Weitensteiner, is among three defendants named in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages. Weitensteiner resigned in 2006. He has denied abusing ranch residents.
The plaintiffs are 39, 48 and 55. They allege the abuse happened in the 1960s, '70s and '80s at the hands of Weitensteiner, the Rev. Patrick O'Donnell and an unidentified volunteer employee.
Morning Star spokeswoman Jenn Kantz said the ranch had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on specific allegations. She said the ranch is a safe and therapeutic place today. The ranch south of Spokane has served more than 1,300 boys with behavioral problems over the past 50 years.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal filings that began in August 2005, alleging abuse at the ranch by Weitensteiner, O'Donnell and other staff members. Thirteen former residents previously sued the ranch over claims of abuse.
In depositions, O'Donnell has acknowledged sexually molesting dozens of boys over three decades. He was named in 66 of the 176 bankruptcy court claims alleging sexual abuse by priests in the Spokane Diocese, more than any other single priest. Last year, the diocese agreed to pay $48 million to settle claims of clergy sexual abuse.
A civil lawsuit against O'Donnell by more than two dozen of his accusers was stayed during the three-year bankruptcy proceeding. The trial could be scheduled later this year.
Sex abuse truths
Sir -- The Rape Crisis Network has received a number of contacts regarding responses to the Fairytale of Kathmandu film coverage, including responses in your publication.
In some instances callers to us find it very difficult to understand how individuals, and representatives, have come to the defence of sexual exploitation and abuse of position.
In working in the area of sexual violence, rape crisis centres are very aware that at first it is shocking and even heartbreaking for any family or community to realise that one of the family may be a sex offender.
Any family that has had to come to terms with this knows the devastation, the lack of support, the crisis of the possibility that one of the family has perpetrated sexual abuse.
The family feels under attack, and tries to defend and protect its own. It is unbelievable how someone who is so wonderful, so capable, so giving, who has faced struggles in their own life, who has such humanity, who has been a source of support and joy for others, can be a sex offender. How can my loving father, sports-mad brother, fantastic friend or workmate be a sex offender? How can this be true?
Sex offenders are normal human beings. They frequently have great humanity in other parts of their lives. This can be very disorientating. It would be so much easier if sex offenders were somehow not human, were not like the rest of us, were simply monsters. But they are not.
They are one of us. And they are our responsibility.
Fiona Neary,
Executive Director,
Rape Crisis Network Ireland
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So what that Nussbaum was molesting boys right under my nose! Yeshiva of Brooklyn is making a dinner in march. No questions will be allowed about alleged abuse at our Yeshiva. Last time I bedavka canceled my trip to Florida, where I was supposed to speak divrei chizuk. However, I was warned by someone that they were going to ask me some questions about sexual and physical abuse at YOB. That's when I decided I better just stay in Brooklyn. I'm not moycehl anyone who tries to spoil our 100th year dinner celebration of providing bad chinuch.
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Schools let sex abuse cases slide
Predatory teachers - Records show a pattern of missed red flags and ignored complaints from students
Sunday, February 17, 2008
AMY HSUAN, MELISSA NAVAS and BILL GRAVES
The Oregonian
The charismatic band teacher charmed students and parents alike. He won music competitions and teaching honors. He worked late, coached volleyball and mentored kids.
No one realized Joseph Billera, then 30, was having sex with children.
Yet there were warning signs for years that the popular Salem-Keizer teacher preyed on his Houck Middle School students.
School officials verbally reprimanded Billera after spotting him at a band contest in 2000 with a girl sitting on his lap, a blanket wrapped around them. In 2001, parent Robert Ogan complained to administrators after seeing Billera alone with a female student at a community softball game. Later, Ogan alerted the school's principal after knocking on the door of Billera's dark, locked band room one evening to be greeted by a middle school girl.
Three years passed before Billera was arrested and convicted for raping two students and molesting two others. Three of his victims were younger than 14. He assaulted one of them after the 2001 complaints.
Billera is one of 129 Oregon educators disciplined for molesting or having sexual relations with more than 215 public school children over the past 10 years.
An examination of those cases by The Oregonian, combined with hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of documents obtained under state public records law, shows that state and local officials repeatedly missed opportunities to protect students. The Oregonian tracked a 10-year period -- 1997 to 2007 -- because such cases take years to wind through the state's teacher discipline system.
Records show that school leaders missed red flags or ignored complaints from parents, students and staff, allowing some educators to engage in years of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.
The documents reveal that many school administrators concealed alleged sexual misconduct from hiring districts, allowing educators to resign and move on to jobs elsewhere working with children.
The Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, Oregon's teacher licensing board, faces a growing backlog of nearly 300 complaints against teachers, ranging from stealing school property to showing up to class drunk. The agency now requires an average of nearly 16 months, and as long as three years, to discipline teachers.
Between 1997 and 2007, 767 cases of misconduct involving Oregon educators ranged from minor infractions to criminal behavior. Although those who sexually exploit students are a tiny fraction of the 35,000 educators who teach, mentor and coach in Oregon public schools, sexual misconduct with a child ranked as the most common reason the state disciplined an educator.
The commission has an additional mission to rehabilitate problem teachers, and it gives second chances to those who have admitted to sex-related offenses, such as propositioning students for sex, videotaping students' underwear or watching pornography at school.
Billera -- who pleaded guilty to 10 counts of rape, sodomy and sex abuse in 2004 -- will be locked away in the Umatilla state prison until at least 2016. But the girls he abused will wrestle with mistrust and guilt for the rest of their lives, said one victim's mother. The Oregonian typically does not identify sexual abuse victims.
"That shame gets in them," the mother said. "My daughter said she is going to take it to the grave with her."
After Billera's arrest, Salem-Keizer Public Schools leaders pledged to confront sexual misconduct in the classroom, launching new policies and training programs to spot and remove harmful educators, creating what one expert calls one of the best sex abuse prevention programs in the nation.
Without such training, parents and school staff did not recognize Billera's behaviors as warning signs of a child molester, said Kay Baker, then superintendent.
"This was a call to action," she said.
Slow to detect and act
In at least a dozen cases in five years, teachers later convicted of sexual misconduct with a student were left unchecked by local school officials, who failed to investigate early complaints, do adequate reference checks or were lax about stopping problem behavior, The Oregonian found.
In some instances, principals or teachers did not believe student reports. In others, administrators reprimanded teachers for sexual misconduct but allowed them to keep teaching.
In Forest Grove, students and staff started complaining about Thomas Ray Iverson as early as 1996, two years after he was hired to teach music at several of the district's schools.
Eventually, three students said Iverson molested them at Joseph Gale Elementary. One girl said he touched her breasts more than 10 times during private voice lessons when she was 12. Another said he rubbed her chest when she was 8.
The third student, who said Iverson grabbed her buttocks and rubbed her back under her shirt when she was 9, said she told two teachers about the abuse.
During Iverson's trial in 2000, both teachers said they told their school principals about the allegations, but written complaints were not filed. In interviews with The Oregonian, Principal Al Rogers at Tom McCall Upper Elementary School said he did not consider the teacher statements to be a report of child abuse. Rebecca White, former principal at Joseph Gale, also said she never received formal complaints about Iverson's conduct.
Police were not called until November 1999, when one of the victims reported Iverson to a Neil Armstrong Middle School counselor. Iverson was convicted in 2001 on nine counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He died of cancer last year while serving a 121/2-year prison sentence.
The Iverson case illustrates other problems.
School officials in the Centennial School District told The Oregonian they knew he was dating students in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But this predated the adoption of state law and administrative rules that require educators, doctors and other professionals to report suspected abuse or neglect of a child to police and state agencies.
One of the girls Iverson became involved with, Angela Whitten, says she still has nightmares after her two-year involvement, which started when she was 15.
"I still blame myself," said Whitten, who agreed to be identified. "He should never have been working with children. But everyone turned a blind eye."
After Whitten, Iverson dated another Centennial student, Trisha Pavan, and married her after she dropped out of school during her sophomore year. After the wedding, Iverson taught for three more years before leaving Centennial to pursue a doctorate in Arizona.
Interviewed for this story, Pavan said she never believed Iverson did anything wrong. The couple had two children and divorced in 1993. "I don't feel as though there was anything inappropriate," she said.
Minnie Richards, Centennial's principal at the time, said Iverson was not confronted because parents never complained, including Pavan's. But she also said that Forest Grove never called her for a reference check.
"I was never contacted about him when he went there," Richards said. "If Forest Grove called, I would not distort the past."
Jack Musser, Forest Grove superintendent since 1999, said he wasn't working in the district when Iverson was hired and couldn't find any written evidence of a reference check. The case prompted the district to adopt a policy requiring potential employees to have a record of a reference check kept in their personnel files. In addition, all complaints of abuse must now be in writing.
"One of the lessons we learned is that if you hear a complaint but you aren't sure if you should report it, you report it anyhow," Musser said.
Robert Shoop, author of the book "Sexual Exploitation in Schools," said school officials frequently fail to recognize signs of teachers abusing their students.
"If a person has been caught only once," Shoop said, it probably "means there's a whole path of (victims) behind them. And that there were probably red flags along the way."
The Billera case in Salem spurred a 2007 Oregon law requiring all districts to educate their staffs about child abuse and to make training available to parents and students. The law, however, doesn't specify how much training or require districts to tackle issues of educator sexual abuse.
"It is too general," said Cory Jewell Jensen, co-director of a Beaverton sex offender therapy center. "There isn't a curriculum."
On a recent January evening, Detective Tyler Chapman told a class of 17 Salem-area parents that people who molest children can be pillars of the community -- political leaders, pastors, teachers.
"Nobody is above suspicion," the Marion County sheriff's detective said.
He spoke at Houck Middle School, where Billera molested students for six years. Chapman is part of the coalition of agencies that has helped Salem schools provide sex abuse training to parents, reaching more than 1,000 residents.
Also in the classroom was Debbie Joa, a full-time child protection coordinator who handles ongoing background checks and mandatory annual training of all staff in Salem schools. The district also has given teachers guidelines on private interaction with students and has adopted a clearer protocol for documenting and responding to complaints.
"If every district in the state would do what Salem did," Jensen said, "I think we would cut child sex abuse in half."
Gray areas persist
Even vigilant districts sometimes are unable to remove educators suspected of abusing children because they lack proof.
"The difficulty of most of these cases is they happen in secret," said John Minnis, who worked as a detective for 11 years with the Portland Police Bureau and now heads the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, which certifies and disciplines police.
Many investigations boil down to weighing the word of an educator against that of the victim. Some victims refuse to talk. And administrators know a false accusation can invite a lawsuit and ruin a teacher's career.
McMinnville school officials immediately took action in October 2001 on a complaint that Kevin Michael Kayfes, a math teacher at Duniway Middle School, may have had sexual contact with a girl when she was 14 years old.
According to school records, administrators placed Kayfes on leave, called police and notified the state teachers commission. But both police and a commission investigator concluded there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the claim.
Kayfes, 30 at the time, returned to teaching at the school. But his relationship with the girl, a former student in his eighth-grade class, continued. She frequently visited his house, telling her mother she was being tutored or was baby-sitting.
In February 2002, administrators again reprimanded Kayfes for "continued association with this student." By that time, Kayfes and the student had been having sexual contact for nearly a year, according to court documents.
The girl's mother, at first grateful for the teacher's attentions toward her troubled daughter, later gave authorities the needed evidence.
On Jan. 1, 2003, the mother attached a recorder to her phone and documented her daughter telling Kayfes, "Do you realize that there is not a piece of furniture in your house that I haven't had sex with you on?"
Two weeks later, when Kayfes learned authorities were closing in, he attempted suicide by swallowing 200 aspirin, according to court documents. The girl followed, ingesting a bottle of ibuprofen. Both ended up in the same emergency room.
During Kayfes' August 2004 trial, his victim recanted everything she had told police, refused to testify and was jailed as a juvenile for contempt of court. Kayfes was convicted on three counts each of third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and third-degree sexual abuse.
The case illuminates the importance of educating parents, said Maryalice Russell, McMinnville's superintendent.
"Parents need to understand grooming behaviors," Russell said. "If an adult is spending too much time with their child, they need to recognize that's a problem."
Most cases of educator sexual misconduct don't end in a criminal conviction, The Oregonian's investigation found. Between 1997 and 2007, 58 teachers were convicted of a crime related to sexual misconduct with a child. An additional 71 who admitted to sexual misconduct were either not charged or never convicted.
In many of those cases, the victims were at or near 18, the legal age of consent. Then, the relationship no longer constitutes a crime. But a teacher having an intimate relationship with a student, regardless of age, violates state rules enforced by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.
In a case involving a developmentally disabled Forest Grove High School student, her special education teacher started having sex with her after she turned 18. The state revoked his license, but he was not charged with a crime because of her age.
She attempted suicide after the two-year relationship ended and has struggled since with forming intimate relationships.
"He would say I was his favorite," the woman, now 27, said. "I was always his favorite. Every time I think about it, I feel like a victim all over again. Can there ever be justice?"
Monday: Secret deals
Amy Hsuan: 503-294-5137; amyhsuan@news.oregonian.com Melissa Navas: 503-294-5959; melissanavas@news.oregonian.com Bill Graves: 503-221-8549; billgraves@news.oregonian.com
Don't just be a bystander. Do something!
EM
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NEWS/802170319
News
Child abusers usually known to the victim
95 percent committed by family or friend
By Heather Yakin
Times Herald-Record
February 17, 2008 6:00 AM
MIDDLETOWN — There's much ado about registered sex offenders, and people's fears that their children could be victimized. That kind of awareness can be a good thing. But statistics show, and experts say, that a child is much more likely to be sexually abused by someone he or she knows.
That's been the case locally. Our region has seen cases in which children and teenagers were molested by relatives, family friends, teachers, school officials and police officers.
In December, Trent Young, a New York City police officer and martial arts instructor who lives in Middletown, was charged with sexually abusing students at his home and at his New Jersey school. He faces federal charges of taking two teenage girls across state lines for the purposes of illegal sexual activity.
"It's not the stereotyped stranger-rapist hiding around the corner or in the bush," said Dr. Michael Fogel, chairman of the forensic psychology department at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Ninety-five percent of child sexual abuse is committed by a family member or acquaintance, according to a 2006 Office of Justice Programs report on juvenile crime and victimization.
Somewhere between 88,000 and 300,000 kids younger than 18 are sexually abused each year, according to a University of New Hampshire study published in 2005 in the Juvenile Justice Bulletin. The number is hard to quantify because child sex abuse, like other sexual assaults, is vastly under-reported. And at least part of that is because of the way sexual predators operate.
Grooming victims
Abusers can be very good at hiding their intentions. Predators look for children who are vulnerable: shy, socially awkward, teased, lonely. If the predator is in a position of trust, it's that much easier.
"They might be seen as a support for the child, and as a result they take advantage of that," Fogel said.
They cultivate a relationship with the child, maybe through talking, offering sympathy and friendship. This is the way offenders in some high-profile local cases worked. In 1993, families came forward to say that Father Ed Pipala, a Catholic priest in Monroe, had formed a kind of social club for teenage boys, which really functioned as his own personal sex club.
In 2002, the world learned that then-Middletown school Superintendent Robert Sigler had befriended a troubled teenage boy, signing him out of school for meals, buying him gifts and ultimately sexually abusing him.
"One of the things that's notable about them (sexual predators) is they groom the victims," said Laura Wells, senior counselor at the Ulster County Crime Victim Assistance program. "There's an ongoing relationship of sorts."
The abuser uses that relationship to push things further and further.
"It can occur through a slow, graduated process of taking liberties with a child," Fogel said. "It could be a tickle game, it could be comforting the child, holding the child."
By the time that evolves to overt sexual acts, the child may feel responsible and fear no one will believe him or her.
"The child is then sort of trapped in that, and unable to get out," Fogel said.
Why they don't tell
Once overt sexual abuse starts, Wells says, the offender often already has given the child attention, praise and gifts. The abuse confuses love, hurt and fear, shame and guilt in the child's mind.
"They feel trapped by the culture that blames them. They feel trapped by the idea that they'll be in terrible trouble with their parents or the law," Wells said. "A lot of kids feel if they didn't tell the first time, it's too late to tell now."
Offenders may also resort to more direct coercion or outright threats such as: "'If you tell someone, then I'll kill your parents, I'll kill you,'" Fogel says.
If the abuser is an authority figure, such as a teacher or a priest, who does the child tell? And if the abuser is a police officer — the ultimate authority — the child may think other police officers won't believe that the abuse happened.
Wells says kids also fear getting someone else into trouble, and the effect that telling will have on their lives — at home or in school.
"I'm sometimes amazed that the kids tell at all," Wells said.
When kids do tell, the abusers often stick to their tactics, says Jim Farrell, senior assistant district attorney in Sullivan County. Whether at trial or during a guilty plea, offenders still try to blame the victim.
They'll say the victim came on to them, that the victim started it. They'll try to discredit the child.
"They want the child to think it's their fault," Farrell said.
Still, Farrell says, he doesn't know of a case in which the child regretted telling someone about the abuse, or going through the criminal justice process.
"There's a sense of closure for the victim," he said.
What parents can do
Vigilance and communication are a parent's best allies in the war against predators.
"It's important to be cognizant of who is interacting with the child," and whether the times and places are appropriate, Fogel said. That includes knowing who your child talks to online, and which Web sites and chat rooms he or she visits.
If something seems off, or if you see unusual behavior from your child, he says, don't just let it go. Open the lines of communication — but be careful in questioning the child, "and be careful not to introduce information into the situation," Fogel said.
Wells's advice: Teach your kids that it's OK to say no to anything that makes them feel bad or weird. It's not the kid's fault, because adults know better than to abuse children. It's never too late to tell someone.
"If the first person you tell doesn't listen," Wells said, "tell someone else."
hyakin@th-record.com
To get help
If you believe a child is being sexually abused, call police.
For more information, call these rape/sexual abuse hot lines:
Orange County Rape Crisis Services: 1-800-832-1200 (or 294-9355)
Sullivan County RISE: 791-9595 or toll-free 1-877-791-9595
Ulster County Crime Victim Assistance Program: 340-3442
Pike County, Pa. Safe Haven: toll-free 1-877-296-7878
Thanks for speaking the emes for all of us. We admire your courageous work. Hazlacah Raba!
ATTENTION:
CHASIDIM AND EX-CHASIDIM
I want to hear your stories for a future post. I know that many of you have suffered violent damage as a result of being abused by "Rebbeim" - "Rabonim" - "Gedlim" - and who I like to refer to as "Behaima Ruaha's" and "slop suckers."
DO NOT SUFFER IN SILENCE ANYMORE!
I want to hear both about the physical and/or sexual abuse that took place. Don't hide anymore. You need not suffer in silence. Let your story be an inspiration for others to come forward. You have the power to save other human beings by putting the impurities out in the light. Come be healed. Come feel better. There IS hope.
First and foremost, your abusers need to be held accountable. Those who protected the perpetrators should be investigated and brought up on criminal charges. Then hit the animals in the pockets where it really hurts.
One victim was told that it is better to eat pork than to report sexual abuse. You just can't make this kind of stuff up. It's ludicrous. This is sick!
The victims are given warnings and threats and made to feel like they did something improper and wrong. This happens all the time - especially in the Jewish "Frum" communities.
Zombie Jew and robot Jew in action: where can be found: Shnororor Park. Flatbush. Villiamsburg. Other "frum" places of the world.
This is a stupid persons typical response and "defensive mechanism" when finding out about the sexual assault. The victims are reminded of horrible consequences should they dare tell others about the abuse.
Shanda, Chilul Hashem, Moser,Loshon Hara, Motzi Shem Ra, You'll burn in gehonim forever...
1) THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT!
2) THESE ARE ALL LIES
3) The people who say this to the abused are very wicked
individuals. They are the ones who horrible events will be a part of them.
Kindly send email to:
Matzil_Nefoshos@yahoo.com
EM
"Rabbi" Shlomo Mandel. You are a sick egotistical pile of drek and chara. You yourself an animal in your own right - deserve shackles on your hands and legs and a one way trip to Rikers Island (or ALCATRAZ if it was still running).
I am repulsed by you. A fake and a phoney that you are - you and the rest of the raunchy menuvel "Rabbi's. You have no chylek in olam abah.
You don't fool me lowlifes! You are scum of the earth. How can you allow a child's life to be ruined forever?
When I say YOU, YOU know who i'm talking about "Rabbi!" "Jew!" - All of you stinking asher yutzar numb nuts, checking to see if the shel rosh is bein ainecha, dipping in the mikva daily, knowing how to psak halacha, attending agudah fresser events to benefit the needy,(G-D only knows to whose pockets your donations are going to), wearing 13 million pair of tzitit, a yarmulka the size of Japan - going to agudah convention and hearing "live" the earth shattering proclamation by Rabbi Matty Salamonon that maybe "one Jewish soul slips through the cracks." or whatever else mentally uplifts your vile and disgraceful soul.
If you have any common sense - DO NOT be like cattle led to the slaughter. The Rabbi's are not always the answer to everything.
Rabbis are Certainly not qualified or trained to deal with sexual abuse victims. They should have contacted the police as soon as they heard about it. They didn't because they're losers. They protect the molester over a kids life.
"Rabbi" Shlomo Mandel is having the YOB 100th year of "chinuch" (the special kind) dinner in March. Wonder if Shloime will field any questions from the audience about abuse that has occurred at Yeshiva Of Brooklyn over these long one hundred years of discipline (very unique method for each student). Wonder if Mandel would like to describe the "House of Horrors" aka yob before they moved it to 1200 ocean pkwy.
Shlomy - you, your brother Jack, and your tatte Manis, made a decision to keep a child molesting pervert - sadistic - and cruel Yudel Nussbaum - over believing the child victims and their families. Those threatening phone call to the parents to keep silent or else... All part of the scare tactics. It's absolutely sickening that they don't even value a kids life.
SHLOMO MANDEL:
STOP SENDING AND REFERRING KIDS OVER TO NUSSBAUM. REMOVE NUSSBAUM FROM THE YOB PREMISES AND AWAY FROM CHILDREN IMMEDIATELY. DO IT NOW! I'M NOT PLAYING BUT IF YOU WANT TO PLAY...
Thanks for speaking the emes for all of us.
====================================
Emes: I wish I could say the pleasure is all mine. You're welcome. Let me add that I admire the work of the great Unorthodx Jew (UOJ). If it wasn't for UOJ I don't think there would be two Kolko Arrests and at least three civil lawsuits brought against Margo and his gang. Sure, it takes a team to win, and UOJ was the consummate team player who did his due process of alerting Brooklyn Jews about kolko and his enablers.
Can you spell BALLS? UOJ took the bull by the horns. That's gutsy. That's Heroism. That's a Jew! And he is not even close to finished yet I'm sure.
Any Homicide detective will tell you that they have unfinished business until they solve the murder and the perpetrators are put behind bars. I believe the same can be said here. There is a plumbing overload problem and the Roto Rooter guy's phone is ringing off the hook!
To all bloggers and Jews who care,and speak out, instead of sealing their lips shut and looking the other way -Kol Hakavod! You should be blessed with all that is good.
To UOJ I say - Hashem yaazor lecha bechul hadvarim amen!
People ran for cover as the eerily emotionless voice announced "Color Red" - the coded warning of the imminent impact of Kassam rockets - over the loudspeaker in Sderot, but the Breslav Hassidim kept dancing.
The men cheerfully bobbed and skipped to the disco beat of a song about their deceased spiritual leader that pounded from the beefed-up sound system of their huge GMC van - nearly drowning out the Color Red warning - as if they were under the influence of some reality-distorting drug.
They danced on the roof of the van and in the street, beards, sidelocks and long hair wild and unruly. It was impossible to ignore the absurdity and the hallucinatory effect created by the contrast between these smiling, hippie men and the fearful Sderot residents huddling inside one of the tiny prefab bomb shelters scattered throughout the town.
Was it faith that kept the hassidim dancing in the face of the rockets in Sderot?
"We couldn't hear the 'Color Red' because of the music," said Alon, one of the leaders of the group. "But of course if we would have heard we would have made an effort to take cover. You are not allowed to rely on miracles." Alon said he and his friends came to Sderot on a regular basis to "cheer people up."
The Jerusalem Post visited Sderot and the neighboring area last week to find out if residents had been drawn closer to religious faith or been driven away from God by the constant barrages of Kassam rockets.
Does the feeling of helplessness during those tense seconds after Color Red is announced until the shrapnel-packed Kassam rocket hits its target encourage the Jews of Sderot to turn to God? Or does it make them feel forsaken and abandoned? For the residents of Sderot, is the Color Red warning a call to prayer, like a muezzin reverting to threats, or is it a testament to God's abandonment?
No clear-cut answers were found, partly because faith is such an amorphous concept. In Judaism faith is proved by act, and in Sderot there has not been a tangible rise in the number of people who wear kippot, wrap their arm in phylacteries or refrain from driving on Shabbat, according to the residents who spoke with the Post.
If anything, fewer people are attending one of Sderot's 35 to 40 synagogues, few of which are either reinforced against rocket fire or located near bomb shelters, out of fear they might be hit by a Kassam while walking to or from the house of prayer or during services.
This is offensive!
Web Offers Community for Israel's Orthodox Gays
The underground forum provides a resource for those seeking to reconcile their status and religious law.
Ari Rabinovitch, Reuters
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142572-c,sites/article.html
http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/639337/jewish/Soldiers-With-a-Mission.htm
north america
Weekend for Army Personnel an Inspiration for Wider Community
north america
Weekend for Army Personnel an Inspiration for Wider Community
Col. Jacob Goldstein gives a lecture at the Aleph Institute’s first-ever military chaplaincy conference.
Col. Jacob Goldstein gives a lecture at the Aleph Institute’s first-ever military chaplaincy conference.
Chabad.org Staff
Feb 18, 2008
Some 50 Jewish soldiers and chaplains from all branches of the U.S. military, and their family members, turned out for the Feb. 8-9 military Shabbaton hosted by the Aleph Institute at The Shul of Bal Harbour in suburban Miami.
The Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch program that provides Jewish soldiers with educational opportunities, on-base Shabbat and holiday programming and kosher food packages, organized the Shabbaton in order to allow soldiers stationed close to home and at far away bases to join their families for a spiritually uplifting weekend. According to organizers, though, the gathering was just as inspiring for The Shul's congregation.
The traditional Friday-night dinner took place in an ornately decorated outdoor tent, where military leaders and chaplains spoke about the importance of religious connections to America's Jewish service personnel.
I know Shlomo Mandel. He is a faker like no other. I hate him for what he did to my family. He should rot in hell. Anyone who send their kid to yob should have their head examined.
News (February 18, 2008)
SA court to hear shul’s claim
PETER KOHN
THE District Court of South Australia will hear a civil action by the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation (AHC) next month to recover goods it claims are being held illegally by its former rabbi, Yossi Engel.
AHC board member Allen Bolaffi said the items included a car, furniture, computers and Pesach dishes.
The goods came into Rabbi Engel’s possession as part of his contract of employment, which the AHC terminated in 2006.
Court proceedings under Judge Andrea Simpson will commence on March 13.
Meanwhile, an investigation by South Australian Police into fake report cards allegedly signed by Rabbi Engel is continuing. Claims that Adelaide’s Spirit of David school received government funding for non-existent Hebrew lessons is also being investigated, with children who attended the school being interviewed.
The investigation, which had taken 25 witness statements by late December, and has interviewed Rabbi Engel, is likely to be wound up later this month or next month, with the possibility that police could lay charges.
Bolaffi said Melbourne’s Rabbi Avraham Gutnick, son of the late Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, has been leading services for the Adelaide shul for the past few weeks. “He may be invited to apply for a rabbinic position with us.”
Bolaffi said he does not believe that hiring a permanent rabbi could result in the Sydney Beth Din, which has jurisdiction over South Australia, re-issuing a siruv (contempt order) against the AHC.
Last year, the AHC was threatened with a siruv if it hired a new rabbi while the dispute with Rabbi Engel over his employment contract remained unresolved by a beth din.
“No-one could convene a beth din, so as far as we’re concerned there’s nothing to be concerned about,” Bolaffi said this week.
The full bench of South Australia’s Supreme Court ruled last year that the Sydney Beth Din had no role in hearing the contract dispute.
Parents may be given access to the details of people who have contact with their children to check for child abuse convictions, if trials of a "Sarah's Law" scheme prove successful.
The scheme, which was given the go-ahead on Sunday, was named in honour of the murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne. But it stops short of the full warning system campaigned for by the eight-year-old's mother Sara.
Parents will not be automatically alerted when a paedophile moves into their area, but they will be able to check whether friends and relatives with regular unsupervised access to their children have convictions.
My kind of kid. Only 15 years old and already touching 3 year old girls. I love this guy!
Teen Accused Of Sex Abuse On 3-Year-Old
15-Year-Old Being Held At Polk County Jail
February 18, 2008
POLK COUNTY, Fla. -- A 15-year-old boy was arrested on sex charges after being accused by a 3-year-old girl of inappropriately touching her, according to Polk County authorities.
Russell Rioux was charged with four counts of sexual battery and two counts of lewd or lascivious molestation.
Rioux denied the allegations but later said he might have touched the girl while throwing her in the air, according to authorities.
Rioux is being held without bond at the Polk County Jail.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
I'm a child molester and I'm still around children.
-
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5546424.html
ARLINGTON, Texas — Some registered sex offenders living at an unlicensed assisted-living facility may have abused at least one mentally impaired patient, state officials said Friday.
A judge on Friday issued a restraining order allowing the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services to move Loving Care's seven residents.
The Texas Attorney General's Office said it sought the emergency court order after reports by DADS investigators, who found that three sex offenders lived at the Arlington facility.
One sex offender told an agency investigator that he tried to have sex with a mentally impaired patient, and another resident said he saw another man having sex with the same mentally impaired resident, according to court documents.
Staffers also told agency investigators that they gave medications to patients, which is illegal in an unlicensed facility, according to court documents.
The owner faces penalties of $1,000 and $10,000 for each violation that threatens residents' health and safety, according to Attorney General Greg Abbott.
A phone listing for Loving Care's owner Pamela Carroll, also listed as a defendant in the attorney general's lawsuit, could not immediately be found.
May I suggest that you write a book about YOB. This would be in addition to your blog. I'm sure a lot of people would buy it and it would really spill the beans on everything that happened in that hellhole. I'm in awe of you. You know me!
Based on these revelations, I declare that this priest is Pasul Adus!
----------------------------------
Priest in Abuse Case is HIV Positive
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Catholic church officials in Texas say a priest accused of sexually abusing children is HIV positive.
The Fort Worth diocese says the Rev. Philip Magaldi recently told another priest that he has the disease that causes AIDS. Church officials say they believe he has been HIV positive since 2003.
The diocese says it started alerting people who claim Magaldi assaulted them. Church officials also say they also notified parishes where Magaldi served.
Magaldi was removed as a priest in 1999 after sexual misconduct allegations arose in Rhode Island and Fort Worth, Texas.
Appointments Announced at the European Aguda Convention
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
19 Iyar 5759 - May 5, 1999
The announcement at last week's European Aguda convention held in Bournemouth that two of Britain's leading gedolei HaTorah had joined the presidium of the British Aguda was greeted with great enthusiasm by the large gathering attending the public session on Sunday afternoon.
The conference chairman, Mr. Yitzchok Meir Cymerman announced that HaRav Bezalel Rakov, the rav of Gateshead, and HaRav Shammai Zahn, the rav of Sunderland, had acceded to the request of the British Aguda's officers and joined HaRav J. H. Dunner, the rav of Adass Yisroel and HaRav Y. M. Rosenbaum, the Gerrer rosh yeshiva, to head the British Aguda.
The convention, which was attended by a large number of rabbonim and ba'alei batim, opened on Friday evening with greetings from Mr. Cymerman who warned the chareidi community against the inroads of Reform Judaism.
"Make no mistake and think that the problem does not affect the chareidim. The growth of Reform and Masorati (Conservative) is a threat to the entire structure of Klal Yisroel," he said.
The convention's Guest of Honor was the Bostoner Rebbe whose presence pervaded the atmosphere of the entire proceedings. Speaking at the public session he made a fervent appeal for the preservation of the family unit.
He was critical of sons not davening with their fathers in the same shul. Such behavior, he said, was the beginning of the end of Torah tradition which has guaranteed Jewish continuity throughout Jewry's troubled history.
HaRav Rosenbaum, the Gerrer rosh yeshiva, who presided over the public session, made a fervent plea for chareidim to identify themselves with Agudas Yisroel, "as we are the yorshim of the gedolim and tzaddikim who created the organization, because they saw in it the bulwark against the growing tide of Zionism and Reform."
HaRav Rosenbaum eulogized HaRav Yitzchok Flakser zt'l member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in Eretz Yisroel whose shiva concluded on that day, as well as HaRav Benzion Blau, a former Aguda Presidium member who was niftar during the Aguda Convention four years ago.
HaRav Elchonon Halpern, the Hon. President of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations and member of its beis din conveyed the kehilla's greetings and best wishes to the convention.
The rav of the Union, HaRav H.B. Padwa who, due to ill health, was unable to attend, also conveyed his brochos.
In a far reaching programmatic speech the Gateshead Rav spelled out the objectives of Agudas Yisroel which are entirely based on da'as Torah and should also be strengthened and supported by all chareidim ledvar Hashem. He also highlighted the zechus of the Lubliner Rav for having introduced the daf hayomi.
Mr. N. Roosen, Chairman of the Aguda in Holland, made a presentation on behalf of the European Aguda to Rabbi Azriel Schechter in recognition of his widespread activities in the sphere of Hatzolah, Chinuch Atzmai, and other worthy causes.
Rav Chaim Kaufman of Yeshiva Tiferes Yaakov-Gateshead also addressed the public session.
A particularly lively session took place under the chairmanship of Mr. Refoel Bergman LLB. on the subject of "The wider interests of Klal Yisroel -- The way forward."
Councillor Joe Lobenstein MBE said that the Torah concept of the way forward differed entirely from that of society around us. To the uninitiated it may sound simplistic but it is the basis of our hashkofo.
"Our way forward is the way backward" based on the Torah concept of she'al ovicho veyageidecho." He reiterated that Agudas Yisroel was created by gedolei haTorah to be the shofar of authentic Judaism and related the achievements of prominent Agudas leaders who served in the prewar parliaments of Poland, Rumania and Latvia.
It is from this, he said, that we have to take our cue for representatives in public establishments and he gave some details of what had been achieved by orthodox representation in local government.
Mr. Pinchos Kornfeld, member of the World Aguda Executive, bemoaned what he called the unnecessary multiplicity of Torah institutions.
"Why can a child of a Gerrer Chossid not learn in the same cheder as a child of a Vishnitzer Chossid?" he asked. "The self-imposed ghettoization of the chareidi circles is not conducive towards creating achdus in our midst," he said.
Rabbi Avrohom Yosef Lazerson painted a bleak picture of what he regarded as the future of Yahadus hachareidis in Eretz Yisroel and noted the orchestrated hatred of all secular parties against Torah Jewry. He made special reference to the misuse of power by the secular courts which was an insult to all standards of democracy.
A session on kashrus problems was presided over by Mr. Yaakov Schonberg and addressed by Dayan Osher Westheim of the Manchester Beis Din and Rabbi A. Adler, author of Kashrus and Medicine, of Gateshead.
A session on shidduchim was chaired by Mr. Alexander Strom and addressed by Rabbi J. Marmorstein, principal of the Sarah Schenirer Seminary, Rabbi N. Mantel, rav of Lucerne, Switzerland, and Rabbi Sh. Weingarten of Golders Green.
Rabbi M. Miller, principal of the Gateshead Seminary, addressed the Sunday morning session on "The Brilliant Child Versus the Child with `Special Needs'." The session was chaired by Rabbi C.Y. Davis, executive director of the British Aguda.
A highlight of the convention was the two outstanding speeches by the renowned speaker Rabbi Pesach Krohn of America who specially traveled to Bournemouth to grace the convention with his outstanding addresses.
Droshos on Shabbos were given by Rav Ch. Horowitz, rosh hakollel of Antwerp, Rav A. Schlesinger, av beis din of Strasberg, Rav A. Schechter, Rav Bezalel Rakov and Rabbi Dovid Cymerman of Bnei Brak.
The Seuda Shelishis session which was introduced by Mr. Joshua Bloch of Zurich, chairman of the Swiss Aguda, and heard brilliant discourses by Rav Shimon Hirschler and by HaRav Shammai Zahn, rav of Sunderland.
The daily daf hayomi shiurim were given by Rabbi Simcha Bamberger of Manchester.
The final session dealing with problems encountered by people who have to travel was presided over by Rabbi Yehuda Bondi
http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5761/toldos/addition.htm
When an almost last-minute opportunity to participate in this year's Aguda convention arose, I was thrilled. After all, who wouldn't be? The prospect of joining with literally thousands of Torah Yidden for a holiday 'retreat', addressed by leading roshei yeshivos and rabbonim of the Torah world, can be nothing but thrilling. All the same, I was nagged by the fear of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the event, with its multiple locations, diverse program, and dazzling array of guests. Would I, as a first timer, be able to get something from the convention -- or would it be merely a relaxing vacation with Torah balebattim in an opulent setting?
My four days at the Garden State Exhibit and Convention Center at Somerset, New Jersey, answered all my fears. True, the event was vast and somewhat spread out, the large numbers making necessary the use of three local hotels, with the program often divided between the three. True, also, that the guest list read like a glittering 'Who's Who' of American Torah Jewry, replete with famous educators, professionals and askonim.
But it was anything but true that, at any time, I felt lost, confused or uninspired. From the impeccable organization and precise planning of Agudas Yisroel, to the riveting speeches of our Torah giants, the Convention was all that it's made out to be -- and more! Who could not be shaken by the imploring pleas for integrity made by both HaRav Pam and the Novominsker Rebbe? Who could not be moved by Rav Yaakov Horowitz's request for more mentors to help rehabilitate our many disgruntled youth through Project Y.E.S.? Whose heart could not be warmed by the unmistakable Hashgocho protis that led Rav Yaakov Asher Sinclair, once a successful entertainer, on the path from Hollywood to the Holy Land?
With the title of this year's convention, `Making a Difference, the role of Reb Yisroel in Klal Yisroel,' one came out not only with the clear conviction that Reb Yisroel can make a difference, but with the determination to act upon it.
And then there was the achdus, the renowned achdus I'd read about in so many previous convention reports. If I'd been inclined to feel it was overrated, I was wrong. Whether at davening at the Convention Center or relaxing in the dining rooms, there was a palpable feeling of warmth, holiness and, yes, achdus. Nearly five thousand Torah Yidden -- some famous, many unknown. Some prominent and successful, many unsung. But all of us bound by a shared purpose -- the urge to come together for a few days to hear what our Torah leaders have to say, and to bask a little in their light. Mi ke'amcho Yisroel!
Mr. H.B. is a resident of Lakewood, New Jersey.
From Hollywood to the Holy Land
by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair, Senior lecturer at Ohr Somayach (Yerushalayim), originally from Manchester
Five years ago I was in Lod Airport in Israel. When I showed the Customs Officer my passport, she looked at me with sympathy, as my name was listed as John Sinclair -- not a very Jewish name -- and my picture showed a Hollywood star looking very self-satisfied.
"What happened?" she asked, aghast.
'Pintele Yid".
How does a high-flying singer and actor from Hollywood turn up as a frum Yid in the Holy Land?
It was a sense of feeling empty. I tried vacations, adventure, but the emptiness remained. One day I was reading a book about a baal teshuvah from prewar Europe who became totally assimilated during the Holocaust and made his way to America after the war. Many years later, he was in the Lower East Side and he passed a shtiebel where they needed a tenth man. Before he knew it he found himself inside and for the first time in 23 years he heard Kaddish. He cried and cried!
A few days later he bought a ticket to Eretz Yisroel, where he met Rabbi Meir Shuster at the Kosel and accepted his invitation for Shabbos. Together they made their way down the streets of Yerushalayim, and he knew his life was forever changed.
This story made an enormous impression on me, eventually leading me to a Jewish book store where I bought a Mesilas Yeshorim with an English translation. A short while later I was in Copenhagen filming a movie, and I met another Jewish fellow from my home town of Manchester. We decided to go to the local shul that Shabbos morning -- and the gabbai gave me an aliyah. That was the first aliyah I'd had since my bar mitzvah 23 years earlier.
One thing led to another. A few days later I got a call from my agent back in Hollywood who informed me that I had to go to New York City for a theater performance. The studio apartment I rented was only two blocks from the one Orthodox shul in the area. I went that Shabbos and the rabbi convinced me to come during the week as well. Until then I never even knew there was such a thing as services on the weekdays. There were many surprises awaiting me.
Not long after that I went to Baltimore, Maryland, where I came across an old, rundown shul. I heard a conversation between two elderly congregants that went something like this:
"One day I want to go to Israel" said one.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked another.
"Till its too late!" replied the first.
It set me thinking. What was I waiting for? So I packed up and went to Ohr Somayach and I've been there ever since!
"Bederech she'odom rotze leilech, molichin oso."
Excerpts from Remarks of Eddie Betesh, Convention Chairman
It was three months before the end of the school year and I was in the principal's office again -- for misbehavior. My mother was summoned to the school to be told that I was going to be expelled.
Now this was only three months before graduation and my mother was quite desperate. For three hours she begged and cajoled, the principal to allow me to finish -- to no avail. As we left, the principal said to my mother with a sneer: "That Eddie of yours will never amount to anything!"
And for the next 10 years, true to the principal's words, I didn't. All too soon I was out of school, out of work, and hanging out with bad friends. I fell far from the childhood standards I was raised with.
One day I had to return to my old neighborhood and as I was walking down Kings Highway in Brooklyn, I encountered my family's rabbi. He greeted me warmly. That was just the beginning. He kindly opened his home and heart and slowly brought me back to Yiddishkeit.
Boruch Hashem my former principal turned out to be a novi sheker and today I am able to help some of our youth who are similar straits. Our yeshivas and schools are the heart of Klal Yisroel. If our heart is healthy -- our nation will be healthy!
Today Eddie Betesh is a leading askan and benefactor of Torah causes.
The Success Story of Dallas, Texas
The National Convention discussed the topic, "The role of Reb Yisroel in Klal Yisroel." The spiritual revolution which has taken place in Dallas, Texas as a result of the establishment of a kollel there was cited as an example of a few individuals, "one Reb Yid," affecting the whole surrounding community.
The story started when several graduates of Ner Yisroel Yeshiva, Baltimore decided to found a kollel in this distant, spiritual desert, hoping to affect the surrounding Jewish population in the same way that Baltimore Jewry had been affected by Ner Yisroel. A young talmid chochom, Rav Yerachmiel Dov Fried, was chosen for the mission. He is known for the important books he has put out, especially Yom Tov Sheni Behalocho. When he was offered the position, he asked his rov, HaRav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt"l, for advice, and was told, "In practice, not everybody is suited for such a job, but whoever is suited, is obliged to undertake it."
He opened the kollel with another three avreichim. Within just a few years of their arrival, there was a noticeable change in the city. Dozens of families started becoming religious. The number of shomrei Shabbos in the town doubled and more. The newly observant opened their own shul, appointing one of the avreichim rov of the community. Another avreich serves as rov of the Vaad Hayeshivos, and the third one as the leader of the outreach activities. The baal teshuvah shul has an active daf yomi shiur, as well as other regular shiurim given by the avreichim and chavrusas on a daily basis. The kollel maintains regular contact with more than a thousand members of the community, all of whom have started an observant lifestyle or are somewhere on the way.
It should be pointed out that the kollel is unique in that all its activities do not come at the expense of the kollel's curriculum. There are two complete sedorim, chaburos and a seder mussar: a kollel for all intents and purposes, whose main aim is the clarification of sugyos haShas. It is in this kollel that Rav Fried is editing the third edition of his book on the laws of ribbis. The well-known more horo'oh, HaRav Hillel Davis has tested some of the kollel yungerman and granted them semichah. The outreach activities only take place in between sedorim and at night.
A member of the community received the avodas hakodesh award given out every year at the Convention. This man was married to a non-Jew until he drew closer to Judaism through the influence of the local kollel. He underwent a process of introspection, and today he is a full-fledged chareidi Jew, running a kosher catering business.
A few months ago he was one of the organizers of a chizuk Shabbos which took place in Dallas at the initiative of Agudas Yisroel in America. The participants were honored by the presence of HaRav Shmuel Kamenetsky. In his sholosh seudos speech at the Convention, Rav Fried related how, a day before, he had travelled to Monsey to participate at the bris of a son of a former kollel student. Amongst the guests there were two former members of the Dallas community who had been married to non-Jews and had now set up families al taharas hakodesh. No one could tell their background, since they looked like bnei Torah from birth. Their faces shone with happiness and purity as they talked about their children who had begun studying in chadorim in Flatbush and Monsey.
The story of the Dallas kollel has become a symbol and serves as a prototype for other kollelim with the same aims. It shows how a kollel can have a major impact on the whole environment without compromising on its main goals.
Ultra-Orthodox Officials Go To Bat for Anti-Gentile Book
By Steven I. Weiss
Fri. Jan 16, 2004
A leading ultra-Orthodox organization has launched a campaign to shift attention from a controversial book on Jewish superiority, choosing instead to attack the Forward’s reporting on it.
Agudath Israel of America has refused to condemn the book by Rabbi Saadya Grama, published in Hebrew under the title “Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut,” which can be translated in several ways, including “The Grandeur [or Superiority] of Israel and the Question of Exile.” Instead, several Aguda officials have sought to discredit the Forward’s account of the work.
The Aguda’s response contrasted sharply with that of the nation’s most prominent ultra-Orthodox yeshiva, Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., whose religious leaders had given the self-published book a pre-publication endorsement. Questioned by the Forward last month, the yeshiva’s religious leader, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, issued a statement saying he had not read the book carefully before endorsing it, but was repudiating its “alleged” contents. Grama, the author, is a graduate of the yeshiva, and such perfunctory pre-publication endorsements of graduates’ works are common, Kotler said.
“In looking at the specific points allegedly contained in the sefer [book], I can certainly tell you that they are not reflective of normative Jewish thought and are certainly not the philosophy of our yeshivah,” Kotler said in his statement.
In its December 19 article, the Forward reported that “Romemut Yisrael” describes gentiles as “completely evil,” constituting an inferior “species.”
One member of the Aguda’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Avraham Chaim Levin, publicly described the Forward article on the book as an antisemitic “blood libel,” while acknowledging never having read “Romemut Yisrael.”
Speaking January 3 at an Aguda convention near Chicago, Levin approvingly cited a critical letter sent to the Forward by David Zwiebel, the organization’s director of government and public affairs. In an interview Tuesday with the Forward, Zwiebel acknowledged sending many Orthodox leaders copies of private letters that he had written to Forward editor J.J. Goldberg attacking the initial coverage of the book..
http://www.forward.com/articles/9032/
By Nacha Cattan
Fri. Jan 03, 2003
STAMFORD, Conn. — Breaking a longstanding taboo, a leading Orthodox Jewish advocacy group held an open discussion at its national convention here last week that touched on the question of whether Orthodox communities might themselves be partly to blame when civic conflicts arise with their non-Jewish or non-Orthodox neighbors
Two fakaroos:
Rabbi Matisyohu Salomon
פה לייקוואד יצ"ו- אור ליום ד' פרשת נח תשס"ד לפ"ק
אין דבר יותר חביב לפני ה' מלהיות דומה לו, להחיות רוח שפלים ולהחיות לב נדכאים. וכאשר ידוע כי בתקופתנו שלנו, בתוך הגלות המר, הוא אשר מסיבות שונות הרבה מצעירי הצאן נשברים ונדכאים באין רואה ובאין למצוא להם מי מנוחות, וזה גורם להתדרדרות בכל שטחי החיים בין בגשמיות בין ברוחניות.
על כן הבה ונחזיק טיבותא להאי גברא רבה ר' ישראל אשר בנדיקט שליט"א אשר מקיימים מצות הקים תקים עמו ואינם מתעלמים מאבידת נשמת אחיך. וממש הצליחו להיות דומים לשכינה במדה גדולה, להיות עזר לבחורים הצריכים חיזוק ועידוד, וזכו להעמיד מהם כמה תלמידי חכמים ובתים נאמנים בישראל.
על כן מצוה גדולה היא להיות מהעוזרים והתומכים ביד רחבה וברוח נדיבה.
ממני החותם בהערצה על עבודתם הברוכה,
מתתי' חיים סלומון
Rabbi Efraim Wachsman
מתיבתא מאור יצחק – מאנסי
מעלת כבוד אחב"י רודפי צדקה ואוהבי חסד רחמנים בני רחמנים, הנני בזה לחלות פניכם להשתתף בדבר מצוה גדולה עד למאוד, הנוגע למוסד חשוב ונכבד בעירנו, הנקרא בשמו כן הוא "עזר בחורים" אשר מפורסם שמו לתהלה, שמקרב ומחזק ומעודד ומחנך הבחורים באופן נפלא עד מאוד, וכל אחד ואחד לפי מדרגתו ומעלתו מדריכים להם דרך בטוב טעם ודעת, לאט ובמתינות, והעמל והיגיעה נרגש וניכר במשך הזמן. ויש להם מגידי שיעורים יקרים, שעושים מלאכתם בשלימות ובשימת לב, שיצליחו בכל הענינים, הן בגשמיות והן ברוחניות. אבל מאידך גיסא ישנם הוצאות רבות וקשה כח הסבל ורובץ עלינו משא כבד.
לכן הנני פונה אליכם בבקשה, אנא הושיטו יד לעזרה לחזק המוסד הנ"ל "עזר בחורים" וזכות התורה הק' וזכות המצוה ודאי יעמוד לכל התומכים להתברך בכל משאלות לבם לטובה, מתוך נחת והרחבת הדעת וכט"ס כה"י אכי"ר
אפרים שלמה וואקסמאן
What a joke. These clowns know how to deliver speeches. When it comes down to tachlis they are nowhere to be found.
Thursday Night at the Agudah Convention
Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, mashgiach, Bais Medrash Govoha; Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman, rosh hayeshiva, Maor Yitzchok, Monsey; and Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Agudath Israel of America executive vice president for government and public affairs, will be the featured speakers at the Thursday night plenary session of Agudath Israel of America's upcoming convention.
The Thursday night session is entitled "Torah Wisdom/Torah Authority: Are We Losing the Connection?"
"Klal Yisroel has always understood that its true leaders are the gedolei Yisroel, the einei ho'eidoh whose uniquely refined vision enables them to guide the Jewish people through the darkest of situations," says Rabbi Zwiebel.
"In recent years, though," the Agudah leader observes, "due to a variety of factors, the authority of daas Torah has been significantly undermined, even within our own chareidi circles. Most troubling has been the proliferation of Internet 'blogs' where misguided individuals feel free to spread every bit of rechilus and loshon hora about rabbonim and roshei yeshiva, all with the intended effect of undermining any semblance of Torah authority in our community. It is most appropriate for an organization like Agudath Israel, whose very essence was built on the recognition of the authority of Torah leaders, to address this issue head on, and formulate concrete plans to reinvigorate public awareness of this essential element of the Torah way of life."
Rabbi Mattisyahu Solomon in Queens
Israel: UN official's remarks encourage terrorism
Tovah Lazaroff and Mark Weiss , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 18, 2008
Israel accused UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes on Monday of encouraging terrorism when he used the phrase "a vicious cycle of violence" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along the Gaza border.
"Such comments create an analogy between terrorists and those who are defending themselves from terror," said Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovitch in the aftermath of a contentious meeting with Holmes.
It was a charge that the UN official flatly denied as he wrapped up a five-day visit to the area that included trips to Gaza and to Sderot. It was his first trip here since taking office in January 2007.
Holmes, who in the last days had urged Hamas to stop launching rockets against Israel and listened to the anguish of the wounded victims, said he was puzzled by the Foreign Ministry's statement.
"I think it is hard to construe anything from what I said to encourage terrorism," Holmes told reporters at a Jerusalem press conference.
But Abramovitch warned that the language of equity could unwittingly encourage terrorist elements to believe that the international community would exert pressure on Israel instead of dealing with the roots of the violence.
Abramovitch said Jerusalem expected the UN and democratic states to support Israel in its struggle against terror and the organizations that deny its right to exist.
Holmes said that in spite of the Foreign Ministry's statement, he had productive meetings with people in that office as well as the Defense Ministry. He said scheduling problems had kept the foreign minister and the defense minister from meeting with him in person.
Holmes, who tried to walk a balanced line between the two sides, said he supported Israel.
But that did not stop him from harshly condemning the goods embargo Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip since Hamas's violent overthrow of Fatah in June 2006. He also took issue with the security fence and the West Bank roadblocks.
Israel reassured him that the bare minimum of humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza, Holmes admitted, but he said this was not enough.
"There is a crisis [in Gaza] that has increasingly severe humanitarian consequences," Holmes said.
The harm caused the people in Gaza is not justified by the rocket attacks. "It collectively penalizes an entire population," he said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday blamed Hamas for the fact that economic conditions in Gaza were so bad that some 80 percent of the 1.4 million citizens exist on food subsidies provided by United Nations agencies.
But Holmes leveled the blame at Israel, which he said was "largely in control of what happens in Gaza. Israel continues to have the obligation of an occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel must fulfill those obligations."
Overall, he said, "I am deeply concerned that what is happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank is not a good basis on which to build a successful peace settlement," Holmes said.
There is a disconnect between the reality on the ground and the political negotiations which needs to be urgently bridged, he said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955583.html
Last update - 02:18 19/02/2008
Lebanon braces itself for possible Hezbollah attack on Israel
By Yoav Stern, Yuval Azoulay and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies
Tags: mughniyah, lebanon, israel
Tensions are growing in Lebanon over the possibility of renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Bracing itself for the likelihood of Hezbollah retaliation for the assassination of terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyah in Damascus last week, Israel on Monday deployed Patriot air defense missiles near Haifa.
Rhetoric between rival factions in Lebanon has reached a new peak with Druze leader Walid Jumblat accusing Hezbollah in an editorial to be published Tuesday in his party's journal, Al Anba, of serving Syrian interests at Lebanon's expense in its war against Israel. "Lebanon continues to be the arena where wars break out according to their [Hezbollah's] calculations, interests and circumstances, as if the occupied Syrian territory [Golan Heights] is not suitable for such campaign."
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Iran predicts Hizbullah will soon destroy Israel
Jewish state deploys patriot air defense missiles near haifa as part of precautions
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Israel said on Monday it had "no illusions" about Iran's intentions after the head of the Revolutionary Guards said the Jewish state would be destroyed by Hizbullah. Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said he would not comment directly on the remarks by Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari, but added: "We are not harboring any illusions about the Tehran regime's true intentions nor its extremist agenda."
The remark by the head of Iran's elite force came in a condolence message to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah after the murder in Damascus last week of a top commander of the group, Imad Mughniyeh.
"In the near future, we will witness the destruction of Israel, the aggressor, this cancerous microbe Israel, at the able hands of the soldiers of the community of Hizbullah," Jafari said.
Hizbullah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has accused Israel of responsibility for Mughniyeh's death, something Israel has denied.
Israel blamed Mughniyeh for the 1992 bombing of its embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 29 people. Argentina linked him to the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people.
He was also linked to bombings that killed hundreds of US military personnel in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
In other developments, Israel has deployed a battery of US-made Patriot air defense missiles near the northern port city of Haifa as part of precautions against a possible attack by Hizbullah in response to the Mughniyeh assassination.
The officials said the battery was put on standby Sunday for the first time since the Jewish state's month-long war on Lebanon in 2006, when Hizbullah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Patriot batteries were first deployed in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, but they failed to stop most of the 39 Scud missiles launched by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They were originally designed to intercept aircraft, and Israeli media reported their role in the current situation would be to shoot down bomb-laden pilotless planes as well as rockets.
The Israeli military said it was not its policy to comment on what a spokesman called "operational readiness."
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel is "prepared on all fronts" for an attack.
Meanwhile, Britain's Times reported in its Sunday edition that the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, carried out the assassination of Mughniyeh in Damascus through an explosive planted in the headrest of the driver's seat.
The British newspaper said that Mughniyeh was attending a reception to mark the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution the night he was killed.
"He had grown accustomed to living dangerously and there was no reason he should have feared for his safety last Tuesday as he sipped fruit juice at the party at the Iranian cultural center. Mughniyeh was on fairly good terms with everybody present - almost all the leaders of the Damascus-based militant groups were represented" the newspaper said.
It added "at 10:35 p.m. he [Mughniyeh] decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.
"Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly."
"According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver's seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge" it said. - Agencies
Olmert denies plan to declare abducted soldiers dead
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert on Sunday denied reports he planned to declare that two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah in 2006 were dead.
The German weekly Der Spiegel reported on its Web site Olmert was considering declaring Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev as dead, stirring a storm of criticism in Israel.
"I will continue to act on the basis they are alive as long as we don't get any other information," Olmert said in a speech before the Jewish Conference of Presidents.
The two Israeli servicemen were seized by Hizbullah fighters in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006. Israel responded to the border incident by launching a devastating 34-day war on Lebanon.
Since the war's end, the two sides have been holding secret negotiations on a prisoner exchange.
But there has been no sign of life from the two reservist soldiers, while an Israeli military report has said that they were likely to be dead or in serious condition after the Hizbullah raid on their patrol jeep. - AFP
Kuwaiti government calls for restraint after 'provocative' mughniyeh rally
KUWAIT CITY: The Kuwaiti government called on rival Muslim factions to show restraint on Monday after a rally by minority Shiites to mourn a slain commander of Lebanon's Hizbullah took a sectarian turn.
"I call on the media and citizens to leave this issue to the government," said government spokesman Faisal al-Hajji, adding that the Cabinet had taken legal measures to ensure "the security and stability of Kuwaiti society" but without giving details.
His comments follow a Shiite rally at which Imad Mughniyeh was lauded as a "martyr hero" by Shiite MP Adnan Abdel-Samad.
The rally was condemned by Sunni MPs and organizations, who in turn branded Mughniyeh a "terrorist" and a "criminal."
They described Saturday's rally as a "provocation" to the Kuwaiti people.
The Cabinet, following its weekly meeting, condemned organizers of the rally for glorifying a "terrorist whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent martyrs and who was behind many terrorist and criminal attacks."
The Cabinet also accused Mughniyeh of hijacking a Kuwaiti passenger plane in 1988 that led to the killing of two Kuwaiti men whose bodies were dumped on the tarmac of Larnaca airport in Cyprus.
This is the first time that Kuwait has officially alleged that Mughniyeh was the perpetrator in the hijacking which lasted 16 days.
Mughniyeh, killed in a car bombing in Damascus last Tuesday, was also suspected of plotting a series of bombings against the French and US embassies and Kuwaiti targets in the 1980s at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
"Our country is in a region in turmoil and we should thus be aware of the dangers and must spare our society the sufferings faced by neighbouring countries," Hajji said in comments reported by the official KUNA news agency.
The majority of Kuwait's one million citizen population is Sunni but around one-third are Shiites. They are represented by four MPs in the 50-member Parliament.
Since the Shiite majority rose to power in neighboring Iraq following the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein by a US-led coalition in 2003, some sectarian rifts surfaced in oil-rich Kuwait only to be swiftly resolved. - AFP
I think that the "einei ho'eidoh" dumb ass award belongs to me!
"Klal Yisroel has always understood that its true leaders are the gedolei Yisroel, the einei ho'eidoh whose uniquely refined vision enables them to guide the Jewish people through the darkest of situations," says Rabbi Zwiebel.
There were a lot of honorable putzes at the 2007 Adudah fresser convention!
Aaron Twerski
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Professor Aaron Twerski (b. 1940) is a former Dean and professor of tort law at Hofstra University School of Law. He is a prolific scholar who served as co-reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Torts Third: Products Liability, receiving the prestigious designation of "R. Ammi Cutter Reporter" for his outstanding performance. He is the author of five books and more than 70 articles in scholarly journals about torts, products liability and conflict of laws. He served as a professor at Hofstra University School of Law from 1972 to 1986 and at Brooklyn Law School from 1986 to 2005, when he became dean of Hofstra Law School. He has been appointed by Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein as one of two Special Masters to handle cases filed by workers who suffered respiratory illnesses as a result of cleaning up the World Trade Center site after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Professor Twerski has been a visiting professor at Cornell Law School, Boston University and the University of Michigan. A teaching fellow at Harvard Law School from 1966-67, he was a trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division - Honors Program, 1965-66. He holds a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Marquette University, where he was the student editor of the Marquette Law Review. In addition, Professor Twerski has an A.B. in Talmudic Law from Beth Medrash Elyon Talmudic Research Institute and attended Ner Israel Rabbinical College. He received his Bachelor of Science in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was a member of the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor fraternity.
He is a scion of the Chernobyl, Chabad, Sanz and Bobov Hasidic dynasties.
Retirement from deanship at Hofstra
On February 5, 2007, he announced that he intended to resign as Dean of Hofstra Law School by July 31. He attributed the resignation to his recent quadruple-bypass surgery.
He is now a professor at Brooklyn Law School where he teaches conflict of laws, product liability, and torts.
May I suggest that you write a book about YOB.
===================================
Yes. Great idea!
Let me say the following pertaining to the nitwits of the "frum" atmosphere who are in position of authority.
I don't know how anybody can possibly put their trust in places like YTT, YOB, NIRC, GER, ORTHODOX UNION, OHEL, VAAD HAGANOVOM, AGUDAH, TORAH UMESORA, AGRIPRCESSORS, ETC.
I know though, that there are thousands of fools like you walking the streets in the Orthodox Jewish Community - who are so fafrumt that they wouldn't want to touch the female cashier's hand accidentally when receiving change. However, if that same jew sees another Jew molest a child, you tell the victim that they may never ever call the police on that Jew. If you do you will cause a tremendous CHILUL HASHEM - CHAS VECHALILA - CHAS VESHOLOM. DESECRATING GODS NAME MUST BE OF MOST IMPORTANCE. THEREFORE DON'T BE A MOSER! JUST MAKE BELIEVE THE CHILD DIDN'T GET MOLESTED AND THAT YOU NEVER SAW IT HAPPEN AND YOU WILL BE KNOWN AS A GADOL HADOR. BLOT IT OUT OF YOUR MEMORY AND YOU WILL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
So Aaron Shechter is breaking history with earth shattering events. The gedolim of chelm continue to steer a fast sinking ship. Sooner or later putting all their eggs in one basket is going to be their demise. When one day YTT is turned into a church - that would be the day with a lot of smiles on peoples faces. That would be poetic justice.
How much longer can these camaplogage tazadikim get away with their crimes? The answer is hopefully not too much longer. Slowly they are starting to feel the squeeze and pressure we are applying on them. I can assure you this. When Mondrowitz comes back to the United States to face justice for his crimes - surely there will be MANY PEOPLE PISSING IN THEIR PANTS! You think David Mandel - CEO Ohel - will be sleeping soundly?
Rabbi Dovid Cohen. Do you have anything interesting to add about what you knew about Mondrowitz back in 1984 and what your advice was to him?
I'm sure Margo/Torah Temima sent kids to Mondrowitz for "counseling", that should be investigated.
Agudas Israel of America should be subpoenaed. What role did they play in referring kids over to Mondrowitz. What did they know?
There will be a lot of squirming people. And if these low-lives perjure themselves under oath (which we all know they will), then they may end up facing perjury charges just like Barry Bonds and possibly Roger Clemens - in their respective cases.
Any Jew with a brain knows by now that you can't trust Agudas Israel with anything. If you still put your blind faith into the Noviminsker then you're an idiot.
What was it in that ugly cover story on Yaakov Perlow - giving over some parenting advice? Mishapacha ran the article. It was gross. Disgusting!
All parents line up. Noviminsker is giving over some techniques for modern times. You sure wouldn't want to miss being there. Ha!
This just in: (press release)
Avi Shafran has decided to buy a new Borsalino Hat. His old one got sucked into the vacuum cleaner accidentally and as a result was completely dusty. Halachically, one may not wear a dusty hat.
http://www.agriprocessor.com/agriprocessors_history/postville_slaughterhouse_story.php
In the mid-1980s, the future of local kosher butcher shops looked bleak. The growing cost of bringing livestock to the butcher for preparation was making it more difficult for independent kosher and non-kosher butchers alike to stay in business.
Aaron Rubashkin already has innovated the kosher beef and poultry industry by introducing the self serve beef and poultry case that the future of quality meat production lay in bringing the butcher to the livestock instead of bringing the...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021802236_pf.html
Clinton Steps Up Attacks on Obama
Plagiarism, Financing Accusations Come on Eve of Wisconsin Primary
By Matthew Mosk and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; A01
Aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) accused Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) yesterday of plagiarizing portions of a recent speech and continued to question his vows to reform the campaign finance system as Clinton sought to drive home the idea that her Democratic rival's presidential bid is built on style more than substance.
The two-pronged attack came as Clinton attempts to slow Obama's momentum in today's contests in Wisconsin, which neighbors his home state of Illinois, and in Hawaii, where he was born.
The race in Wisconsin, where Clinton dug in over the weekend in an effort to break a string of eight straight primary and caucus defeats, has turned increasingly negative. Just days ago, Clinton aides accused Obama of breaking his pledge to accept public financing in place of private donations during the general election. Obama's aides say he did not make a firm commitment to accept public financing if he won the nomination.
Yesterday, key Clinton supporters accused Obama of "lifting" a passage of the rousing speech he delivered to a party gathering in Milwaukee on Saturday night from Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick, a longtime friend and supporter. Side-by-side YouTube videos distributed to reporters by the Clinton campaign show Obama repeating, almost verbatim, lines from a speech Patrick gave two years earlier.
"The point we're making overall is that Senator Obama's record as a senator and as a public official is thin," said Howard Wolfson, a senior Clinton adviser. "If you're asking an electorate to judge you on your promises and you break them, and on your rhetoric and you lift it, there are fundamental problems with your campaign."
Answering a reporter's question in Niles, Ohio, Obama said he does not think using Patrick's words was "too big a deal."
"Well, look, I was on the stump. He had suggested we use these lines. I thought they were good lines," Obama said when asked why he did not credit Patrick. "I'm sure I should have. Didn't this time."
Obama returned to Wolfson's assertion while speaking with reporters on his campaign plane: "The notion that using a line from one of my national campaign co-chairs . . . is somehow objectionable, somehow doesn't make sense."
Obama's aides also called Clinton's criticism of his public financing plans "curious." They noted that she was the first candidate in the 2008 field to announce plans to reject the public financing system, saying more than a year ago that she would attempt to use private contributions to finance a general election bid were she to become the party's nominee.
"We're just not going to be lectured on this," said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
Obama first raised the notion of accepting public funds in the general election a year ago, when he sought a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that would preserve that option for him. He said at the time that if the eventual Republican nominee entered the system -- in which the candidate accepts $85 million to fund a general election campaign and agrees to raise no additional money -- he would enter it as well.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who is moving ever closer to accumulating the delegates he need for the GOP nomination, reaffirmed last week that he would be willing to accept that deal and urged Obama to "keep his word" on the issue.
Longtime advocates of campaign finance reform sent Obama a letter last week expressing "deep concern" that he would back away from the financing system. At the same time, several left-wing blogs urged Obama to "break the pledge," arguing that he should do nothing to cede the fundraising advantage that Democrats appear to have gained heading into the general election.
The candidate's advisers said yesterday that his pledge came before anyone realized how explosive his fundraising effort would become. Reports due to the FEC this week will show that Obama raised $32 million in January, almost triple what Clinton raised. Nearly all of Obama's total came via the Internet.
"The outpouring from small donors has been unprecedented and perhaps unexpected, and I would not want to do anything to deny those donors the chance to participate [in the general election], regardless of who the Democratic nominee is," said Alan D. Solomont, a longtime Democratic fundraiser who is a member of Obama's national finance team. "To be blunt, the ability of Democrats to raise money from both small donors and others is a significant competitive advantage."
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said yesterday that he considers the entire discussion premature, given the tough, unresolved battle for the party's nomination.
To both campaigns, the race in Wisconsin has emerged as a critical steppingstone to the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas, as well as a fight for the state's 74 pledged delegates.
As Clinton crisscrossed Wisconsin yesterday, she returned to what has become a central theme of her retooled, sharper-edged campaign. She told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 1,000 at the Wausau Labor Temple in central Wisconsin yesterday afternoon: "There's a difference between speeches and solutions, between talk and action. I was raised to believe that actions speak louder than words."
It was that very notion that Obama had tried to address when borrowing Patrick's turn of phrase during the Saturday night speech in Milwaukee. "Don't tell me words don't matter," he said. " 'I have a dream.' Just words? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words? 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words? Just speeches?"
Patrick used a nearly identical formulation during his 2006 campaign for governor, when he was drawing fire from his Republican opponent, who said his stylish speechmaking disguised a lack of substance.
At a titanium plant in Niles, Obama also noted that Clinton seemed to borrow lines from him, including his signature rallying cry "Fired up! Ready to go!"
That does not mean her seriousness should be questioned, Obama said.
"When Senator Clinton says, 'it's time to turn the page' in one of her stump speeches or says she's 'fired up and ready to go,' " Obama said, "I don't think that suggests that she's not focused on the issues she's focused on."
Obama beat Clinton to Wisconsin, arriving last Tuesday to celebrate his victories in the Potomac Primary in front of more than 16,000 cheering supporters in Madison. He devoted more staff members to Wisconsin -- opening 11 offices in the state, to Clinton's four -- and had television ads in circulation six days before she did. But Clinton made a late play for a state that offers her some advantages.
Although repeatedly detoured by winter weather, Clinton paid attention to rural and working-class voters in areas far from Madison and Milwaukee, which are considered Obama's prime territory. She ran television ads in markets including Green Bay, Eau Claire and La Crosse, challenging Obama's proposals on health care and energy policy and accusing him of refusing to debate her.
Before departing for an election-eve rally in Beloit, Wis., Obama rallied thousands of cheering supporters in Youngstown, Ohio, where he defended the power of words.
He did not, however, use any of Patrick's lines.
"So, just to be clear, speeches don't put food on the table," Obama said, referring to one of Clinton's recent criticisms. "But the only way that we're going to bring about change is if all of you get excited about change.
"So I make no apologies," he said with a laugh, "for being able to talk good."
Slevin is traveling with the Obama campaign. Staff writers Jose Antonio Vargas and Alec MacGillis contributed to this report.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/955515.html
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
18/02/2008
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi to retain position despite AG opposition
By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger will end his suspension and return next month to his position as a member of the Supreme Rabbinical Court and as a member of the committee that appoints religious court judges, the Justice Ministry's appointments committee approved on Monday.
The committee decided to ignore Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's advice and unanimously endorsed Metzger's decision to end his voluntary suspension.
Metzger is expected to succeed Sepharadic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar as president of the Supreme Rabbinical Court in six weeks' time.
Several organizations of the religious Zionism's progressive wing called on Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann to call off the meeting, citing conflict of interests. They said they deem unacceptable the fact that two members of the religious court judges appointments committee are required to rule who will be their superior at the Supreme Rabbinical Court.
Ne'emanei Torah VaAvodah movement said they intend to petition the High Court of Justice since Friedmann failed to provide sufficient explanations.
"We regret that the Justice Ministry failed to comply with our demand to disqualify the committee, and appoint a Supreme Rabbinical Court president without appropriate credentials, while ignoring the Attorney General's recommendation."
Rabbi Metzger declined to comment on the matter.
In April 2006, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz published a report in which he called for Metzger's resignation as chief rabbi, following a criminal investigation into the rabbi's stays in Jerusalem hotels, free of charge. But at the same time, Mazuz said he would not be issuing an indictment against Metzger, even though he accused him of lying during the investigation.
In reaction to this report, Metzger filed a petition against Mazuz at the High Court, and the court last year criticized the attorney general for calling for Metzger's resignation, saying he did not have the authority to do so, and recommended that he rewrite that section of his report.
But based on the rest of the report, Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann asked the rabbinical judicial appointments committee to meet to discuss Metzger's removal from this committee, and that of the Supreme Rabbinical Court.
About a month ago, the committee decided to allow Mazuz to air additional claims before it, and postponed further deliberations until the end of January; but no decision has been made concerning Metzger since.
"We feel there is no cause for continuing the rabbi's voluntary suspension," wrote David Libai, Metzger's attorney. "The criminal file has been closed for almost two years, there is no disciplinary procedure against the rabbi, and the attorney general also has changed his mind about calling for the rabbi's resignation. "To the best of our understanding there is no obstacle for Rabbi Metzger to return to his position as religious court judge and member of the appointments committee for religious court judges," Libai said.
Nevertheless, Libai announced in Metzger's name that he did not intend in participating in the committee's meeting which would discuss his removal.
In response to Libai's announcement, attorney Boaz Arad of the Ometz non-profit organization asked Friedman to prevent meetings of the committee if Metzger returns to serve on the committee - except for meetings to discuss his removal.
"The committee on appointments of religious judges has been unable to reach a decision for a long time, and the circumstances created a feeling for Metzger that the causes that led him to suspend himself at the time from his judicial position and participation in the committee have ended and no longer exist," Arad wrote to Friedmann.
"But the return of a figure with morals such as those of Rabbi Metzger to a judicial role, and even more to a judgeship on the Supreme Rabbinical Court, is unbearable from any public perspective," he said.
Metzger's commitment to suspend himself came as a result of a petition to the High Court by Ometz to force the justice minister to take steps to remove Metzger, as recommended by Mazuz in his 2006 report.
The committee is not empowered to remove Metzger from his post as chief rabbi, but it is unlikely that he will continue to serve in this role if he is removed from his positions as a Supreme Rabbinical Court judge and judicial appointments committee member.
More Jewish World news and features
Related articles:
# The rabbi lights the fuse
# Report: Chief Rabbi says move Gazans to a Palestine in Sinai
# Fraud charges could topple Ashkenazi chief rabbi at January 3 meeting
I look forward to making another journey to my friends in the Ukraine.
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former soviet union
Ukraine Native to Assist in Synagogue's Facelift Following Rebirth of His Community.
By Dovid Zaklikowski
Feb 18, 2008
After many years, the Jewish community of Kherson, Ukraine, is receiving a spiritual home befitting of its modern revival. Taking part in the project is Pavel Miripolsky, a native-born designer who moved to Israel in 1991.
"When I left Kherson," says Miripolsky, who received a degree in design from Kherson's university, "there was almost nothing as far as Judaism is concerned. I had heard that they got back the synagogue around the time that I left, but I remember Judaism there was very primitive.
Speaking for the Black Sea port's Jewish residents, Rabbi Avraham Wolff, who served as a longtime rabbi of the community before becoming the chief rabbi of nearby Odessa, says the renovation to the city's central synagogue is about time.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Zelig Sharfstein rabbi to Hasidics
Authority on Jewish law widely consulted
BY REBECCA GOODMAN | RGOODMAN@ENQUIRER.COM
ROSELAWN - Rabbi Zelig Sharfstein, chief rabbi of the Vaad Hoier of Cincinnati and an international authority on Jewish law, died Feb. 11 of a heart ailment at Regency Hospital in University Heights. The Roselawn resident was 79.
Rabbi Sharfstein was a member of the executive committee of the Chabad- Lubavitch Rabbis, one of the largest Hasidic movements in Orthodox Judaism. Renowned for his knowledge and wisdom, he was sought out by Chabad emissaries from around the world for his expertise in Jewish law. He spent hours each day responding to questions.
"Everyone that has called from all over the world and former students have reiterated one main aspect of his personality that they cherished and that was his ability to explain to them whatever questions they had with expertise but at the same time with an unbelievable humbleness," said his wife, Reba Sharfstein. "They remember his soft voice (and) the kindness that he showed by taking time to answer or discuss even what they considered to be minute questions."
Rabbi Sharfstein was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1928 to Avrahom Zev Sharfstein, a Latvian immigrant who served as the unofficial rabbi for New York City's first Lubavitch synagogue, and Esther Rutman Sharfstein, a Polish immigrant.
Rabbi Sharfstein received his rabbinic ordination in 1952 and taught in the Lubavitch schools in Bridgeport, Conn., and Pittsburgh. In 1954 he was selected by Eliezer Silver, chief rabbi of Cincinnati at the time, to teach Judaic studies at Cincinnati Hebrew Day School. "Those who were fortunate enough to have him as a teacher still remember classes with him 50 years later," said his wife. He later was promoted to principal of the school. He became chief rabbi of the Vaad Hoier - the agency responsible for kosher dietary laws in the city - upon Silver's death in 1968.
Rabbi Sharfstein was close to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his wife said. "They would speak to him really about everything. From the very young to the marrieds - and even the great-grandchildren who were old enough - enjoyed him also."
In addition to his wife, survivors include two sons, Rabbi Avram Zev Sharfstein and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Sharfstein, both of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two daughters, Shifra Landa of St. Louis and Esther Gudnick of Sydney, Australia; a brother, Rabbi Mottel Sharfstein of Brooklyn; and more than 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Services have been held. Burial was at Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, N.Y.
Memorial gifts are suggested to Cincinnati Hebrew Day School, 2222 Losantiville Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45237.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125309
"Madam Foreign Minister, you come from a family of lovers of Israel that grew up on the importance of the integrity of the land,” Rabbi Metzger said. “Jerusalem is above and beyond this conflict. Our right to Jerusalem is a proven, historic right. When the Muslims pray in the mosques on the Temple Mount, they pray with their backs to the site of the Temple; they pray toward Mecca with their backs to Jerusalem. Talking about Jerusalem harms us. If we unite for the sake of our capital, that its division cannot be discussed, we shall win it.”
I am totally against this. I affirm the Agudas Israel's position on this once again. We do not chalila condone or aprrove of the conduct of the reconstructionist-meister movement. Personally, I find it to be very offensive!
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Rabbis lobby Ottawa on Israel issues
By ANDY LEVY-AJZENKOPF, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 21 February 2008
A group of 13 rabbis from across Canada were on Parliament Hill last week to urge the Conservative government and the opposition parties not to forsake the Holy Land.
The Canadian Rabbinic Caucus – a coalition of rabbis representing the interests of the main Jewish religious streams, from Orthodox to Reconstructionist – met with officials and parliamentarians to convey three messages from their communities and congregations.
The first was a proclamation of support for Canada’s withdrawal from “Durban II,” the 2009 followup to the 2001 UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which was widely criticized as a forum for anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing.
The second message was to re-assert the Jewish community’s firm position that Arab nations must formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition to any Mideast peace talks.
Lastly, the caucus raised the issue of the threat that Iran poses to Israel, as well as to the world at large.
The day-long visit, brokered by the Canada-Israel Committee – which also shepherded the rabbis to their meetings around town – saw the rabbis meet with multiple senators, MPs and with Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker, among others.
Caucus co-chair Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz told...
http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14076&Itemid=86
Likud Faction Chairman MK Gideon Sa'ar on Monday morning met with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai to discuss peace talks with the Palestinians.
During the meeting, Sa'ar called on the two to pull Shas out of the coalition, and said that the party could "counter the dangers arising from the negotiations."
France's Chief Rabbi, Joseph Sitruk: “The idea is simply to realize that the Shoah, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people, is not the problem of the Jews, it is a problem of society.”
France’s chief rabbi agrees with Sarkozy’s Holocaust children plan
Original article: www.ejpress.org/article/24365
18/Feb/2008
PARIS (EJP)---France’s Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk said he "perfectly agreed" with the idea of President Nicolas Sarkozy that each pupil in the last year of French primary school "adopts" the memory of one of the 11,000 French Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, learning about the child's background and fate.
"I perfectly agree with the idea of Nicolas Sarkozy,” the rabbi told Monday private French tv station I-télé, calling Sarkozy’s idea "nice" and "generous."
He said the idea will allow the children of France to better understand a phenomenon which affects them and which is a considerable stake.”
It is the first time the chief rabbi gives his opinion since the presidential announcement last Wednesday at the annual dinner of CRIF, the representative body of Jewish organizations in France.
He said that “it is not a topical problem, so there is no emergency to take a position.”
He added: “The idea is simply to realize that the Shoah, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people, is not the problem of the Jews, it is a problem of society.”
"There is a drama which does not cease lasting, that of all massacres which were since perpetrated", he said.
“Nothing is comparable with anything, but there were so many misfortunes in the world, danger is still there, and the humanity did not understand what Shoah could mean as a considerable teaching,” Sitruk said.
For the rabbi, "the president wanted to make understand to our country that the memory transmission was almost a ‘state affair’, the affair of all.”
He suggested to the government to launch a commission of specialists, teachers, former deportees and resistance fighters.”
"Education will save our country, nothing else ", Sitruk said.
One out of two ignores what is Shoah
Meanwhile, Education Minister Xavier Darcos announced that he would bring together next Wednesday the representatives of the world of memory and teachers “to discuss this topic.”
“One out of two secondary school student ignores what is the Shoah”, Xavier Darcos, said.
"What worries me is that today, at the secondary school, one out of two pupil does not know what is Shoah. It is for me criminal that teenagers ignore what is Shoah.”
He said he would consult Simone Veil on how to make what we offered “receivable, pedagogical and not traumatizing.”
Chairwoman of honour of the Foundation for the Memory of Shoah and an Auschwitz survivor, Simone Veil has called Sarkozy’s plan "unimaginable, unbearable, tragic, and above all, unfair.”
Chief Russian Rabbi fears Kosovo independence will lead to instability worldwide
Moscow, February 18, Interfax - Kosovo's secession from Serbia could set an example and prompt other countries to start a process of internal division, Russia's chief rabbi Berel Lazar said.
"Today it is Kosovo, tomorrow it will be someone else or Kosovo itself will be divided in two, and there will be no end to this process," Lazar told a press conference in Moscow on Monday.
Abiding by the principle of nation's integrity must be one of the fundamental norms of international relations, he said.
"When everyone starts saying "we want sovereignty," what is going to happen then?" the chief rabbi said.
"A totally wrong approach" was chosen in deciding on the status of Kosovo, Lazar said. At the same time he stressed that the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia itself does not comment on political issues.
Jews, Hindus face similar problems, say speakers
By PAUL LUNGEN, Staff Reporter
TORONTO — It took until nearly the end of the program for someone to finally mention “the elephant in the room.” But in a question-and-answer period, the two speakers, one a Jew, the other a Hindu, were asked to comment on the dangers both groups faced from radical Islam.
Until then, Ramesh Rao, a spokesman for the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum of Beth Tzedec Congregation, left, had largely – though not entirely – skirted the topic, focusing instead on community continuity strategies, discrimination (in particular on university campuses) and media distortions of their communities.
Rabbi Tanenbaum and Rao were the featured speakers at a business lunch lecture at the law offices of Minden Gross. The night before the two addressed another group at the York Woods Library Theatre. They were sponsored by the Speakers Action Group, an organization pledged to promoting tolerance and knowledge of issues that span communities.
Speaking on “Hinduphobia and Anti-Semitism: common issues,” Rao said Israel and India are criticized when they defend themselves from radical Islamic aggression. Hindus ought to support Israel when it defends itself and Jews should support India when it fights back, he said.
Rao, a professor of communication studies at Longwood University in Virginia, referred to India’s longstanding “effort to make Muslims and Islam part of its composite culture.”
Despite that, he continued, India had fought three wars with Muslim Pakistan, and Pakistan-trained terrorists have attacked India on repeated occasions.
“India is seeking to be a progressive, democratic nation that is struggling to deal with this without demonizing a very large group,” he said.
Muslim extremism is a threat not only to India and Israel, but “around the world,” he added.
Rabbi Tanenbaum agreed with that latter contention, saying “radical Islam poses threats to the world and to Israel and India in particular.”
That goes some way to explaining Israel’s and India’s recent co-operation in launching an Israeli surveillance satellite atop an Indian rocket to gather intelligence over Pakistan and China, he said.
PETER KOHN BLOG (FEBRUARY 20, 2008)
THE KOHN JOB
Reflections from Jewish Berlin
DURING a visit to Germany in January, where I attended a business seminar in Duesseldorf, I decided to make a private trip to Berlin.
I had been to Germany a number of times, but had never visited the country’s new-old capital.
It occurred to me during the visit that January 30, 2008, would be the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power, so it was a significant time to look reflectively at Berlin.
I wanted to see what so many have called the revival of the Jewish community there, much of it stoked by immigration from the former Soviet Union.
In Berlin, there are now around 12,000 Jews, a far cry from the 172,000 who lived there before the Holocaust, but double the city’s Jewish population of the 1960s.
Berlin has now fully embraced its past, with monuments and museums all around the city, from a pitch-black Shoah room at the Jewish Museum, to empty shelves at a library near the Bebelplatz, where a Nazi book-burning took place only weeks after the Nazis took power.
On Saturday morning, a taxi took me to the Pestalozzistrasse Synagogue at Charlottenburg in the city’s affluent formerly Anglo-American west.
As at the Neue Synagoge on erev Shabbat, I went through metal detectors. Then I was ushered through a courtyard to the actual shul building, a neo-Romanesque, which is concealed from the street.
The nusach was Lewandowski, very old-school, as Rabbi John Levi had told me I would find it much like what we had in the Australian Progressive movement maybe 30-40 years ago.
When the Shema was sung, something inside me broke and I stopped singing to catch my breath. To be with these people, here in this synagogue, which had been built in 1912, then torched by the Nazis in the November 1938 pogrom (the flames were only extinguished when it was feared surrounding buildings would be damaged), a congregation that reassembled here in the summer of 1945, only weeks after the downfall of the Nazis, that inaugurated its new shul in 1947 to join in their service was something special for me.
During the Sefer Torah hakafah, Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski wished me “Shabbat Shalom”. During a kiddush, Rabbi Rozwaski acknowledged the guests, from Israel, the US, Moscow and Australia.
Later that afternoon, I walked around the corner into Tucholskystrasse and into Johannisstrasse, where the old Jewish Reform Congregation in Berlin had stood.
As a member of Temple Beth Israel (TBI) in Melbourne, it has a significance for me because it was here that Rabbi Herman Sanger, who gave TBI its early grounding and became on of its most enduring and beloved rabbis, preached in his early years.
Its story resonates for me too because of an article I once wrote about a project it undertook. In the late 1920s, the congregation recorded its synagogal music on gramophone records, so that smaller congregations around Germany could use it. The performances were conducted by the synagogue’s musical director Dr Herman Schildberger.
In 1939, Rabbi Sanger helped Dr Schildberger to migrate to Australia. He took some of the recordings with him, but several were smashed by Nazis as he made his way out of the country.
The surviving recordings remained in Dr Schildberger’s possession over the decades he was musical director at TBI. After his death some years ago, Rabbi Levi had them digitally remastered and re-issued as a CD set.
But the synagogue itself did not survive. It was pillaged on Kristallnacht, then repaired in 1940 to become a provisional main synagogue after the Nazis closed the nearby Neue Synagoge.
It was destroyed by Allied bombing and torn down after the war. Today a car park and a plaque are the only reminders of what once was a proud and dignified Berliner synagogue, in some ways, the ‘mother’ synagogue of my own congregation.
Berlin is not all quiet prayer and grim memory. There is a thriving Jewish community.
The Haeckische Hoftheater echoes with klezmer music, there are two outlets of Salomon’s Bagels, there’s Levy’s Tabularium music and bookstore.
And the Chabadniks are still recovering from their Chanukah ice skating party. But Germany’s capital remains a city of reflection.
MUST READ!
http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/022108/sxExpertsLamentAbuses.html
Experts lament abuses in Jewish divorce cases
Rabbi and lawyer say remedies are needed to ‘unchain’ women
Rabbi Elazar Teitz, left, dean of the Rav Teitz Mesivta Academy and rabbi of Elizabeth’s Orthodox community, recommended a prenuptial agreement. Esther Macner, right, a New York divorce and family lawyer, recommended that women bring an attorney to rabbinic divorce court. Photos by Debra Rubin
by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex
February 19, 2008
Speaking in Highland Park, two experts in Jewish divorce called for remedies to fix a “broken” system that allows recalcitrant husbands to exploit their estranged wives.
Rabbi Elazar Teitz, head of Elizabeth’s Orthodox community, and Esther Macner, a New York divorce and family lawyer, spoke Feb. 9 at the Orthodox Forum of Edison and Highland Park at Congregation Ahavas Achim.
The two described how a significant number of women remain agunot, or “chained” wives, unable to remarry because their husbands have refused to grant them a get, a decree of Jewish divorce. In Jewish law, only a husband can grant a get.
According to Teitz, in most instances the husband is simply holding out for revenge or to force a better deal in the distribution of property and assets.
The problem, he said, is compounded by differing practices of rabbinic courts, or batei din. Other batei din are simply unscrupulous, he added.
“Just because the rabbonim have long beards equal to the length of a women’s skirt doesn’t mean they’re ethical,” said Teitz.
Teitz voiced sympathy for women who have sacrificed their financial independence to take care of their home and children and then are backed into a corner by greedy husbands and the courts.
“Many rabbonim are old school and have trouble with the fact there are two genders in the human race and one of them is female,” said Teitz, dean of the Jewish Educational Center’s Rav Teitz Mesivta Academy. “This is the way they were brought up and the way in which they see the world.”
Teitz said he “insists” every couple he marries have a prenuptial agreement, which spells out the financial and legal obligations should the marriage be dissolved. He also recommended that women bring a lawyer to the bet din, and said he advocates that social pressure be placed on those refusing to give gittin.
Still, Teitz was pessimistic the problem could be solved soon.
Macner also described how some men use the bet din system to secure inequitable financial settlements they could never get in a secular court.
This has given rise to “a perverted use of the batei din,” she said.
Macner, who is creating a program to train Orthodox attorneys to practice in New York rabbinic courts, said that while a prenuptial agreement can be enforced in court as much as any legal contract, it only covers a husband’s refusal to appear before a beit din to give a get.
“There are many humane rabbis I know who are suffering over this,” said Macner.
In Israel, with its lack of distinction between religious and civil divorce, reluctant husbands can be jailed for refusing to give a get. However, Macner said the law is applied unevenly there, resulting in many agunot.
“The system outside Israel is terribly broken,” added Teitz. “People do whatever they please.”
Macner also recommended that women obtain a lawyer.
The rabbinical courts “know that if there is a lawyer who will take them to court it will force them to be more professional,” said Macner. “They will have to improve the system and the beis din has no choice but to let us in.”
Deborah Teitz, Rabbi Teitz’s daughter-in-law, served as the program’s chair.
‘Where are the rabbis?’
While guest speakers at the Feb. 9 Orthodox forum offered their professional outlooks on agunot, Jewish women unable to obtain a divorce, Susie Rosenfeld of Oceanside, NY, offered a very personal perspective.
Rosenfeld said she has been an aguna for almost three years and that her ex-husband has refused to appear before a beit din. She begged the gathering for help.
Rosenfeld said her husband would not relent and grant her a divorce despite the support of some rabbis, a community letter-writing campaign, and pickets outside the home where he lives with his parents. And while he has been barred from all synagogue rites and is shunned by the community, he will not change his mind. (In numerous media reports about Rosenfeld’s case, her husband, Ariel Hacohen, has declined to be interviewed.)
Now, approaching her late 30s and with no children, Rosenfeld worries she may never be able to remarry and have a family.
“Please help me,” she sobbed. “Where are the rabbis? I’ve spoken to hundreds of them. Isn’t there anything that can be done?”
Replied Rabbi Elazar Teitz: “As I said before, unfortunately not every problem has a halachic [Jewish legal] solution.”
— DEBRA RUBIN
* Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com
Alighting from the Staten Island ferry at Manhattan's southern tip on my way to work February 5, I was greeted by a phalanx of stern-looking police, padded with Kevlar and armed with assault rifles. Then, suddenly, from behind me, came a loud, hoarse shout, echoed by the roar of hundreds of voices. Before me, a small army fell into formation, front guard carrying large flags, troops marching dutifully behind, determinedly heading north on Broadway. It was post-Super Bowl Tuesday, and Agudath Israel's national offices lie a few minutes‚ walk up the celebrated boulevard, along the parade route they call the Canyon of Heroes.
After making my way through the gathering crowd (the parade's start was still two hours away) and the peddlers of timely trinkets, past the rows of police scooters and motorcycles, the early inebriated and the cordons meant to keep celebrants from celebrated, I arrived at our offices. The front entrance to the building was blocked; I entered though the back, on another street.
(that is is just some of my wisdom thus far. Copy & Paste for the rest..).
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1202742150510&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
My daughter said what about me?
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US man gets 16 years for sex abuse of girls
The Criminal Court yesterday sentenced an American man to 16 years in prison for sexually abusing underage girls.
Glenn Richard Allen, 61, was convicted of paying girls aged 14 to perform oral sex on him at a beachside rresidence in Pattaya in February last year.
He was arrested along with two Britons, a Finn, and two Thai women accused of procuring the girls during a police sweep last March. Their cases are being tried separately.
The court was also told the men had video-taped the sex acts.
Allen, who has lived in Pattaya for more than 10 years, had pleaded not guilty. He was released on 1.6 million baht bail pending an appeal.
So sad. And yes even when it happens to a gentile (for the morons who needed that clarification). The Kings County DA's in the Mondrowitz case, let us not forget, was able to land an indictment in 1984 - thanks to and based on the testimony of some Italian Victims who were abused by and lived on the same block as Mondrowitz.
Where were all the Jewish Victims? Why did they not have a voice in the 1984 indictment? Why was Mondrowitz allowed to abuse for such a long time without anybody noticing? You mean there were no complaints, accusations, or allegations ever made against Avrohm Mondrowits that he is a child molester? Who are they (Rabbis, Ohel) kidding? Where were the parents of these victims in all of this? Were they busy preaching Chilul Hashem, or were they being bullied into submission by the "Rabbis"? Which one is it?
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BBC NEWS
Man tells of priest's 'sex abuse'
An alleged child abuse victim broke down as he gave evidence against a priest accused of a series of abuse charges against schoolboys.
John McCollough, 63, of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, is charged with eight counts of indecent assault and four of gross indecency with children.
The incidents allegedly took place during his time as minister at the Holy Trinity Church in Bury, Gtr Manchester.
The 29-year-old man was giving evidence at Bolton Crown Court.
You don't know what you've done to me and how much I've lost
Alleged victim
He broke down in tears as he took the oath before the jury and turned to the priest and said: "Why, why, that's all I want to know, why?
"You don't know what you've done to me and how much I've lost, you don't, and you can just stand there and look at me like that."
The man, who cannot be named, has alleged he was abused by the priest on numerous occasions in the vicarage from the age of about 11 until he was 14.
He spoke of how Mr McCollough asked him to sit on the defendant's knee for a cuddle and he then touched him.
He said: "People like you should not even be in a church... You're a man of the cloth, God help you in the afterlife."
The trial continues.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/7253596.stm
Published: 2008/02/19
Ladies belong at home to tend to the laundry and the cooking.
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Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi Ya'acov Ariel said Tuesday that it is prohibited according to Jewish law to take part in an "egalitarian" or "partnership" minyan that permits women to read from the Torah or lead the congregation in prayer.
Ariel was reacting to the publication of The Guide for the Halachic Minyan by Michal and Elitzur Bar-Asher. The guide is a compilation of halachic sources on how to integrate women into prayer while at the same time purportedly adhering to all Orthodox strictures.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3509205,00.html
Rabbinate: Import meat only if ‘morally slaughtered’
At Orthodox Union and Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s insistence, only meat slaughtered in more humane fashion not causing animal undue distress to be given kosher certification. Importers take note
Neta Sela
Published: 02.20.08Israel Jewish Scene
PETA and the Torah? Following the lead of The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to animals, which has long protested against cruel “lift and bind” slaughter techniques practiced in many United States and South American slaughterhouses, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate has also decided to work to eliminate such techniques.
She is a woman Rabbi, but at least she's not black!
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Poland’s first woman rabbi embarks on mission to build modern Jewish life
LUBLIN, Poland (AP)- Rabbi Tanya Segal wraps a fringed prayer shawl around her shoulders, holds a guitar on crossed legs and leads Poles in songs celebrating the Jewish Sabbath.
In this city once known as Poland’s Jerusalem, where the rabbis of prewar Poland were men wearing black coats and hats, long beards and sidelocks, Segal is no throwback.
A Russian-born Israeli with long fiery red hair, she is Poland’s first full-time female rabbi. Her arrival in December in a land where Jewish life was all but wiped out in the Holocaust is a testament to the revival of that life now - and a new diversity taking root amid the growth of the community.
Segal, a youthful and energetic 50-year-old, is from the Progressive, or Reform, stream of Judaism. She lives in Warsaw but travels frequently around Poland, guitar in tow, on a mission to bring Jewish traditions to corners of the country of 38 million where large Yiddish-speaking communities thrived for centuries until World War II.
``It’s really a challenge,’’ Segal said after leading a Shabbat service on a recent Friday night in a room nestled above Grodzka Gate, an arched passageway that separated Lublin’s Christian and Jewish quarters. ``But I hope to satisfy their interest, to bring them this opportunity ... to experience Jewish life.’’
The Hesder Yeshiva students will get Gan Eden. Good thing they are so careful about hearing a woman lecturing them. Women are inadequate compared to men!
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The arrest last week of four hesder yeshiva soldiers who refused to participate in a lecture given by female IDF instructors has sparked a sharp reaction by a group of leading religious Zionist rabbis.
On Sunday, a petition authored by former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and signed by Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hebron Dov Lior, Beit El Rabbi Zalman Malmad, Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu, Rabbi Abraham Zukerman and Rabbi Israel Rosen, called on the IDF to stop coercing religious soldiers to take part in coed settings.
A spokesman for the soldiers' Har Bracha Yeshiva warned that should the military insist on ignoring the religious public's halachic needs, "many may decide to take more radical action and follow their haredi brethren in not joining the army at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203343699244&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
I totally lost respect for Agudah a long time ago. When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee already?
Please daven for a refuah shleima for R' Elya Svei. Even if you disagree with him. He needs your teffilas.
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WORDS OF THE RABBIS
Rabbi Elya Svei of Rosh Yeshiva of Philadelphia
Translated Speech of Rabbi Elya Svei:
It is evident today that it is not enough to have been born in Eretz Yisroel. Being born in Eretz Yisroel -- and even in Jerusalem -- does not automatically endow one with holiness. One doesn't have the compulsion 'not to bow and not to kneel'. There are so many who do bend and kneel…
Something happened about which we cannot be silent. The students in the Talmud Torahs of Jerusalem, these holy children, were exposed to the major of Jerusalem, who name, I feel, may not even be mentioned in front of the Holy Ark. This is whom was put close to the holy children in Jerusalem, so that he might speak to them. This means bowing down, and that means that they have knelt.
There has been no ruling regarding participating in the Jerusalem Municipal Government. No rabbinical organization has commented on it. It was left to individual consideration, and so we are permitted to discuss it and debate it. It is my opinion that participation in any way in the Jerusalem Municipality is questionable.
With what are we dealing here?
We are dealing with the honor of the Holy Sabbath. The Sabbath is the partner of Klal Yisroel. The Sabbath had petitioned G-d to provide her with a partner. So HaShem said, He would give her a partner, and this was Klal Yisroel. What does 'partner' mean? It means that if you work together, the partnership will bear fruit. What are the fruits that have to come out? The fruits are the witness that HaShem created the world, and that for the honor of the Sabbath, one has to refuse to participate in certain things.
What kind of tragedy would it have been if the Agudah had not become involved in the Jerusalem Municipal Government? The whole world would say that the Agudah is religious and that she has some principles which she is not ready to forfeit -- even for holy profits. Heaven's honor is at stake.
With what are we dealing here concerning the Sabbath? I was in Eretz Yisroel and I was fated to spend some time in Kiryas Sanz. In Kiryas Sanz there live very fine young men, our best young men, our bnei Torah, and they want to bring up their children in purity and holiness. Children should see a Sabbath. Why isn't it the right of these fine young men that in Jerusalem, to be able to bring up their children without their seeing desecration of the Sabbath? The authorities have built a highway which passes through their area, so that the children should see that one could desecrate the Shabbos. This tears the heart.
I have to tell you that there are in Eretz Yisroel, those who are not bowing down and not kneeling. There is a whole army of individuals in Eretz Yisroel who are not bowing down. There are bnei Torah -- and when you start to speak about bnei Torah, you start to say that they are boys (children), who run around. But we are speaking about bnei Torah -- not children who run around, but only bnei Torah who are the best young men. One is from the finest young men in Kollel Chazan Ish. Another young man is the Rosh Yeshiva in Be'er Yaakob.
The fate of the children of Teheran has become a modern tragedy. We are speaking only to our own people, so we can speak frankly. The story of the children of Teheran is a complicated one. I spoke to the Ponevitzer Rosh Yeshiva, who told me that they had made a beginning. They had hired a man of integrity, but he told me that that was only a beginning. We still have to keep vigilant.
530 children arrive in Eretz Yisroel from Iran. Of these children, only 190 are in religious institutions at this time. "Religious institutions" means, Mizrachi institutions, with the remaining 340 children in secular, free thinking institutions. Of the 340 children, 100 once learned in "Ozar HaTorah", but are now in secular institutions. The 190 children who are now in Mizrachi institutions are in a coeducational atmosphere (because boys and girls are learning together. In Iran, modesty was very important, but here boys and girls are mixed together, and that leads to complete licentiousness. Therefore, you have to know that there are in Eretz Yisroel, a group of young men to typify the finest ideals of Yiddishkeit. They do not bow before atheists. So we, the bnei Torah here in America, have to help the bnei Torah in Eretz Yisroel remain vigilant.
It says in Targum Yonosen Ben Uziel that one should not be a murderer, neither should one be friends or partners with murderers, and there should not be seen in Klal Yisroel murder. Why? Because your children should not be murderers. What does murder mean? The Even Ezra says that there is murder by one's hand there is murder by speech -- one can kill a person with a word. It is possible to be a fine Jew and still be a murderer. The Targum Yonoson says it is not enough that one alone, is not a murderer; he is also not allowed to be a friend of a murderer. Each Jew has a responsibility to Klal Yisroel in that he must insure that no Jew is a murderer. Why?
If you are only an ideological murderer, and if you won't be able to keep away from this kind of murder, your children will be real murderers.
It says, "you are not permitted to be lewd". You should not be licentious. How does lewdness come to Klal Yisroel? There are a few kinds of lewdness. There is lewdness by word or mouth and there is lewdness with the eyes. Fine Jewish homes, often contain lewd reading material. And there are fine homes wherein is put a box (television) from which enters all lewdness into the house. And this is put in a place of honor in the home! What will happen to these children? What will become of them? No Jewish home may have a television!!
It says further, in Targum Yonoson, that one should not be a false witness. I want to stop here. In public life here in Brooklyn, there is false testimony. We have merited, through blood and sweat and with the Almighty's help, to establish large Yeshivos for the boys and Bais Yaakova for the girls. And these schools produced students of whom all can be proud. But then someone comes and says that they are still incomplete. When the boys go out of the Yeshiva, they are still not finished -- they still need more studies: they still have to go to "Touro College" to be well-rounded. That is the biggest false testimony against the Torah. The boys do not need such "completeness".
One is not allowed to be friends with them! One is not allowed to be partners with them! What will be with our children? From where will our great Torah leaders come? From Touro College they will not come! And mothers of Gedolei Torah will also not come from Touro College, because the Gemorrah says that to merit children who will become Gedolei Yisroel, one has to have modesty. And modesty cannot be acquired in Touro College!
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Jewish Hollywood conflicted by presidential race
TOM TUGEND / JTA , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 20, 2008
Steven Spielberg, arguably Hollywood's most influential citizen, co-hosted a fundraiser early last year, which netted $2.1 million for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
A few weeks later, he joined DreamWorks partners Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen in throwing a fundraiser for Barack Obama, which yielded $2.2 million.
Spielberg has since formally endorsed Clinton, but he also contributed an individual maximum of $2,300 to the unsuccessful primary campaigns of John Edwards and Bill Richardson, as well as to Clinton and Obama.
The director of Schindler's List may have been hedging his bets, but a more charitable explanation is that Spielberg, like most of Jewish Hollywood, has been genuinely conflicted in his choice of candidates.
Barbra Streisand, Rob Reiner, Michael Douglas, Bette Midler, former Paramount chief Sherry Lansing and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner are backing Clinton, but they also contributed to Obama, Richardson and other Democratic candidates.
Katzenberg and actor Paul Newman are in the Obama camp, but they have also signed checks for Clinton and other candidates.
"At this point, I still don't know what Democrat I'll vote for, I am still learning," said Deborah Oppenheimer, an Oscar winner for her documentary on Jewish refugee children.
Similarly, director Paul Mazursky noted, "I am leaning toward Hillary, but I wouldn't be upset if Obama won. The first priority is to find the best person who can undo the damage of the last eight years."
Andy Spahn, veteran political advisor to Spielberg and other top Hollywood Democrats, said, "There is tremendous excitement this year, but also indecision, because our frontrunners are so attractive."
Hollywood loves a new face and talent, which partially helps account for the Obama strength in what has been considered solid Clinton territory for the last 15 years.
In addition to those already named, Obama supporters and contributors in the movie, television (and literary) world include actors Larry David, Leonard Nimoy, Gene Wilder, Rosanna Arquette, producer Norman Lear, ex-Disney chief Michael Eisner, and authors Michael Chabon and the late Norman Mailer, who sent a $200 check shortly before his death.
The Illinois senator's most glamorous fan is actress Scarlett Johansson, who has a Jewish mother and lists her religion as Jewish.
Lined up behind Clinton are actors Billy Crystal and Fran Drescher, fashion designer Calvin Klein, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, studio head Harvey Weinstein, talk show host Jerry Springer and media mogul Haim Saban.
Republicans, particularly Jewish Republicans, have always been a modest minority in Hollywood, and most of those were leaning toward Rudy Giuliani, according to writer-producer Lionel Chetwynd, dean of Tinseltown's Jewish conservatives.
Comedian Adam Sandler attended a Giuliani fundraiser and contributed $2,100 toward his campaign. Other supporters were actress Melissa Gilbert, director David Zucker, and Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson (who has also given to the John McCain campaign).
Chetwynd also listed actor Jon Voight, who, though not Jewish, has appeared on so many Chabad telethons that he is considered an honorary member of the tribe.
In a class by himself is singer Barry Manilow, who contributed equal sums to such disparate candidates as Republican Ron Paul and Democrats Clinton, Obama and Joe Biden.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1203343710683&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Sholom Tendler and Aron Tendler have told us they denounce this barbaric hate-attack against innocent Jews.
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Attack on California Jewish Center
1 day ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Someone threw a fiery object at a Jewish community center in the San Fernando Valley, and police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles says someone threw a Molotov cocktail at its community center in West Hills early Monday. No injuries or damages were reported.
Police spokesman Mike Lopez couldn't confirm whether the object was a Molotov cocktail. He says it was a flammable object which caught fire.
The city's police and fire departments are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
21/02/2008
Kosovo is already here
By Israel Harel
Kosovo's declaration of independence has sparked concern in certain circles in Israel. The day may not be far off when the Arabs of Galilee start clamoring for political independence, too. In recent years, many of them have been cutting themselves off, psychologically and physically, from the Jewish-democratic State of Israel.
The Muslims of Kosovo constitute an absolute majority of the population, and the same is true for the Galilee Arabs. Quite a few Jews have been leaving the Galilee, especially since October 2000, and not many are joining the sparse Jewish population there, despite an array of financial incentives. The events in Kosovo have triggered memories of the thousands who took part in the violence in Wadi Ara in 2000, blocking major traffic arteries and cutting off access to Jewish communal settlements in an outbreak of rioting that coincided with Yasser Arafat's war of terror.
Memories come rushing back on the use of live ammunition in some cases, and the operation of an underground and terror cells alongside the suicide bombers dispatched from Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
Demonstrations where the Palestinian flag is raised in protest - on the anniversary of Arafat's death, for example - have become commonplace on campuses in Israel, especially at the University of Haifa. In the Galilee and Haifa, Arab intellectuals and public figures have compiled documents known as "The Vision," in which they reject Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people.
Before the Annapolis summit, delegates of all the Israeli Arab organizations convened in Nazareth and reached a unanimous decision to call upon Mahmoud Abbas not to cooperate with Ehud Olmert and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. A delegation of Arab Knesset members was sent to meet with the Palestinian negotiators to ensure that the message had sunk in. If the Arab citizens of Israel vehemently oppose recognizing Israel as the Jewish homeland, said MK Ahmed Tibi to Abu Ala (Ahmed Qurei), how can you, the representatives of the Palestinian people, even consider such a thing?
Israeli governments have resigned themselves to the blatant, unconcealed separatist actions of the Galilee Arabs, and this only perpetuates the phenomenon. Shimon Peres, who was appointed by several governments to oversee measures ultimately aimed at increasing the Jewish presence in the Galilee, talked a lot but did little. Political correctness, such as halting the campaign to "Judaize Galilee," was his guideline.
All the authorities, including those in charge of law enforcement, have resigned themselves to criminal acts ("juvenile delinquency," the police chief of the Northern District calls the phenomenon of stones thrown at Jewish vehicles, especially near Hamovil Junction), such as encroaching on state land and illegal construction that has reached the scope of tens of thousands of buildings.
Kosovo is already here, even without a formal declaration of independence. Looking at the government's mode of conduct in the periphery, and even its response to the Qassam rockets in the south, one realizes the futility of expecting it to wake up and fight against those who are challenging Israeli sovereignty in the Galilee.
The leaders of this separatist policy in the Israeli Arab community know very well that apathy and lack of self-confidence also characterize the approach of the agencies of the state - the police, the courts, the Israel Lands Administration, the tax authorities and the Ministry of the Interior - in their dealings with the Arab public. This only increases the motivation to gnaw further at Israeli authority and sovereignty.
Unlike the Kosovars in the Balkans, who are satisfied with their separatist province and do not claim ownership over all Serbian territory, the Arabs of the Galilee, and certainly the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, claim ownership - political and territorial - over all of Israel. The "salami method" pays off.
In the Negev, the Bedouins are taking over large stretches of land almost without hindrance, while Israel's do-nothing government responds by establishing committees to "sort out" the land issues. The most recent of them is the committee chaired by Judge Eliezer Goldberg, which is now convening.
This inertia will probably continue, with the Zionist state financing, via education, health, national insurance and other state monies transferred to citizens, a population that is de facto establishing a Palestinian state within the sovereign State of Israel - separate, of course, from the Palestinian state that the Arabs are pushing for in Judea and Samaria.
Chaim Berlin Rosh Yeshiva. Has he lost his marbles?
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=22120
Rav Aron Schecter Writes Letter Against Flatbush Shaitel Store.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=20515
See. I'm not the only one protecting child molesters!
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The Associated Press
DE PERE, Wis. — The director of a support group for people abused by priests called on St. Norbert Abbey officials on Wednesday to explain the apparent transfer of a known child molester to their ministry in the mid-1980s.
Officials with the De Pere ministry had to know the background of Rev. Edward Smith, said Peter Isely, the Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“Father Smith was known and confirmed to be a child sex molester,” Isely said. “They deliberately and knowingly transferred him to Green Bay in 1986.”
He said it was “simply not credible” to believe the officials didn’t know about Smith, who last year was held civilly liable of sexually assaulting now-39-year-old Ken Whitwell 240 times over a three-year period in the 1980s.
St. Norbert Abbot Gary Neville last month said Smith was a Norbertine priest who worked in Delaware but has never been a member of the St. Norbert Abbey.
Judy Turba, spokeswoman for the Norbertine Order, backed Neville’s statement but confirmed the Norbertines have recently been in contact with local law enforcement.
Isely referred to a number of documents made public in last year’s civil lawsuit in Delaware, which resulted in a U.S. District Court jury awarding Whitwell $41 million in damages.
The documents include an October 1995 letter written by Abbot John Neitzel of Daylesford, Pa. His note to Abbot Benjamin Mackin at St. Norbert approved the reverend’s move to De Pere as executive director of the Tri-Catholic High School Foundation.
“The bottom line in that it is not desirable at this time for Ed to remain in a ministry in the neighborhood areas and states served by Daylesford Abbey,” Neitzel wrote. “He needs a new area and a new ministry to get a fresh start.”
De Pere police have initiated an investigation, according to Brown County district attorney John Zakowski. He said he expects to review the case after detectives complete their work.
Wisconsin could still prosecute a case like this decades after the alleged incidents because the statute of limitations gets put on hold if the defendant flees the state.
Shaitels is one thing. But, this Madison Square Garden concert has me all riled up. Take a look, I signed a ban against this evil. I'm such a smart frum dumb ass
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http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2008/02/ban-and-banners-concerts-are-forbidden.html
I am at a loss for words. What else can you say that hasn't already been said about the forgery of Judiasim by the so called "gedolim."
This is the biggest gyp off. "Rabbi's" adding more inconsequential cumrahs. These donkeys are hijackers of moral law. Molesting kids and those who protect them - That you hear zero about from these clowns.
But wigs, concerts, bugs,internet, music etc. You'll go to gehinom for. These Rabbis are Fuc*ked up!
I am such a phony!
http://torahmedia.com/search/fileinfo.php?sid=m6407lw0il20fks&cid=&directlink=27811&frompage=
How to Keep Our Children Safe I New!
Speaker: Hopfer, Rabbi Yaakov
Series: How to Keep Our Children Safe
Lecture Details: Rabbi Congregation Shearith Israel and President of Vaad HaRabanim in Baltimore
Library: Project Genesis View All Lectures
Level: Intermediate
Age: All Ages
Gender: both
Length: 26 min.
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Don't forget to give me credit. Mondrowitz once worked for me. I'll give you some pointers.
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How to Keep Our Children Safe - Introduction New!
Speaker: Mandel, David
Series: How to Keep Our Children Safe
Lecture Details: Chief Executive Officer of Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
Library: Project Genesis View All Lectures
Level: Intermediate
Age: All Ages
Gender: both
Length: 6 min.
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is there valid proof to what's written above?
i think that going back to the Torah basics is the only way to restore the truth. see Judaism Facts and Torah Basics page
Where is the story of Adam Melzer on this blog?
http://www.zimbio.com/Adam+Melzer/articles/2/Adam+Melzer+Executed+Sketchiest+Scam+EVER
Influence can be defined as the power exerted over the minds and behavior of others. A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. In order to influence people, you first need to discover what is already influencing them. What makes them tick? What do they care about? We need some leverage to work with when we’re trying to change how people think and behave.
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After last post on marketing without search engines, I decided to follow up with a strategy you can use to get quality free traffic. One of the easiest ways to get visitors to your web site is to spend money. Nothing is more effortless then paying for traffic. But if you can’t afford it or don’t want to pay, there’s an equally simple but free way to get traffic: ad swaps.
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