S'licha U'mechila - Am Yisroel Chai!

M'mamakim kiratichah Hashem - Hashem shema b'koli!




CHAZAK - KLAL YISROEL - CHAZAK!

B'AHAVAT YISROEL B'LEV SHALEM, K'SIVA V'CHATIMA TOVA!

UOJ

...But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance...

after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.

While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.

His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.

“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.

Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”

He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”

A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY: CLICK ON LINK

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/world/europe/ireland-recalibrates-ties-to-roman-catholic-church.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

...."Missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”

"For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE AMAZING ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?em&exprod=myyahoo

Clergy Abuse Victims File International Complaint Against Vatican!

In a related story: UOJ will request prosecution of the Agudah this Rosh HaShanah from the Bais Din shel Maala
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/world/europe/14vatican.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
CLICK ABOVE AND BELOW:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/09/13/clergy-abuse-victims-file-international-complaint-against-vatican/?mod=djemlawblog_t#

September 13, 2011
By Nathan Koppel

A group of victims of clergy sexual abuse has asked the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate the Vatican for alleged crimes against humanity.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a complaint today with the international court alleging that Vatican officials have tolerated and enabled the concealing of “child sex crimes,” according to this statement by SNAP’s attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“SNAP wants to prevent even one more child from being raped or sexually assaulted by a priest,” the group’s president Barbara Blaine said in a statement.

“We hope that victims around the world will know today that they are not alone and that it is safe to speak up and report their abuse.”

Counsel for the Vatican have said that there has never been a Holy See policy requiring concealment of child sexual abuse.

The Vatican did not respond to an immediate request for comment from WSJ about today’s filing with the International Criminal Court.

The ICC filing marks the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests, according to this report in the New York Times.

Experts in international law, the Times reports, consider it unlikely the court will agree to prosecute the case, but it might investigate whether the matter is within its jurisdiction, which could elevate the issue internationally.

GETTING TO KNOW MOETZES/AGUDATH ISRAEL MEMBER AARON SCHECHTER!

MEL KAMINSKY AKA MEL BROOKS: "ITS GOOD TO BE A GADOL"
By Tropper is Troubled:
Documents from the UOJ Archives:

The signed letter from Monsey that was kvetched out by Tropper on February 15th, in point 3, names Rabbi Aaron Schechter of yeshiva Chaim Berlin as one of three recommended names that Tropper would like to see -- NOT to rebuke Tropper -- but to "help" appoint a new rosh yeshiva for his totally ruined (by him) Kol Yaakov outfit. The other two names are Wachtfogel and Wolpin who carry no power in Agudath Israel of America's vaunted Moetzes, simply because it is Aaron Schechter who wields all the power at Agudah with the help of real estate manipulator/loan shark Abe Fruchthandler, who is also Chaim Berlin's chief honcho money man.

Now, why would Tropper want to bring in Aaron Schechter? The answer is actually very simple, as has been explained a few times in depth to those who have been reading the Tropper is Troubled chronicles for the past number of months: Aaron Schechter is the one big shot rabbi who IRRATIONALLY LOVES TROPPER and put Tropper on his feet, helped him build his hole in the wall yeshiva and stood by him when Tropper was divorcing his first wife while cavorting with his future second wife, and all the while Schechter also knew all about Tropper's fatal attractions and weakness for womanizing, and much worse yet, Schechter -- did NOT stop Tropper -- he rather emboldened him and built him up, and now look what's happened.

But all that Tropper did wrong was always forgiven and overlooked by Schechter because Tropper was able to furnish Schechter with something he prized more than gold, a nucleus of submissive disciples trained by Tropper who came to Chaim Berlin and served as "role models" for the more lively Brooklyn talmidim after Schechter had purged them and threw many of them out together with his own yeshiva's mashgiach ruchani, Rav Shlomo Carlebach (The singer's cousin by the same name). SCHECHTER LOVES THE KOL YAAKOV MODEL OF ZOMBIE TALMIDIM and now he is going to try to do life support for the yeshiva (Kol Yaakov) he loves so much in his own twisted and demented way!

Without rehashing all the details again,(see the UOJ documents below), Rav Carlebach went to multiple batei din, including that of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Satmar to present his claims but Schechter and Fruchthandler REFUSED to appear, and in turn they have since then been in contempt of several batei din, making them into mesarvim ledin and lo tzayis dino, that puts them into automatic cherem. It was also a huge Chillul Hashem and in many ways it was probably the incubator for Tropper's Chillul Hashem, as Rav Carlebach warned the Agudath's Zwiebel in writing then that a Chillul Hashem does not go away, it incubates like a cancer and comes back to haunt its perpetrators.

And indeed now, finally, it is no surprise that the chief perpetrator of the Chillul Hashem 30 years ago (who now has cancer), who threw his own yeshivas glorious mashgiach into the gutter and traded him in for the likes of servile (to Schechter) Tropper and his zombie lobotomized talmidim, instead, now rears his head like a primal python and agrees to have his name put on paper as the "big Agudath Israel puff daddy" -- NOT to denounce Tropper and his misdeeds -- but save the guttersnipe Tropper who Tropper invokes as the one to appoint a future "rosh yeshiva" for Kol Yaakov (it won't last much longer, they will be closing very soon, no one wants to go to a place run by a publicly unmasked and now certified menuval shebemenuvalim).

Note that Aaron Schechter, the 85 year old mechutzaf and menuvel in his own right, -- and still active bully, throws in his gauntlet -- NOT to reprimand Tropper -- but allowing his name to appear on paper for "rabbi" Leib Tropper (it's typed that way), as Schechter the original lo tzayis dino the scorner of batei din and creator of Chillul Hashem comes -- NOT to punish Tropper -- but to give his moral support and public name to Tropper the shiksa [now Tropper's Jewess] gang-banger with his own WIFE, the menuval shebemenuvalim and creator of a global Chillul Hashem, that grows not just like a festering cancer but like a mushroom cloud destroying all in its wake.

Beware, Schechter (and Fruchthandler) of Chaim Berlin cometh, tell them to go home to Brooklyn, where they can keep an eye on sheitel stores and enjoy Michael Hersh, the unapologetic crazed BT disciple of Schechter and kidnapper of Isaac Hersh - sitting next to him. Schechter must be told to stay away and keep out of the global mess he helped to create by inflating and keeping alive the Tropper monster.

THE LOW-LIVES AGUDATH ISRAEL DELEGATES ARE COMING TO MONSEY --- NO GOOD CAN COME FROM THESE ACHZORIM!

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE DOCUMENTS FROM THE UOJ ARCHIVES:

RABBI MOSHE FEINSTEIN'S LETTER SUMMONING AARON SCHECHTER & ABE FRUCHTHANDLER TO BAIS DIN:

The Shomrim - Gotham's Crusaders!

Luzer Twersky still remembers the day he came back from shul to his Borough Park home to find his father waiting for him with an important question.

Twersky's father, a Hasidic rabbi, had just received a disturbing report. One of his employees had walked in on another rabbi, Duvid Greenfeld, molesting a young boy in the mikveh, the ritual bath.

Twersky's father knew that his young son had also studied with Greenfeld until the year before, when he moved to a different shul. He wanted to know if Luzer had seen anything similar from Greenfeld.

He had.

"Greenfeld abused me from age nine to age 12," Twersky says, smirking bitterly. "My father asked me about it about a year after we ended our 'relationship,' if you want to call it that."

The man who caught Greenfeld red-handed in the mikveh was connected to the Shomrim, the community patrol that functions as a sort of auxiliary police force for the Hasidic and conservative Orthodox community in Borough Park.

But although the Shomrim are pledged to protect the innocent and work closely with police to catch criminals, that isn't what happened this time. Greenfeld was the son of a close adviser to Rabbi Mordechai David Unger, seen by many as the head of the Bobov Hasidic dynasty and one of the most influential men in Borough Park.

So when the Shomrim associate discovered the abuse, he told his rabbi and left the matter at that. The police never learned of the incident, and Greenfeld continued to teach in yeshivas, working with young children for a decade until he was finally arrested for molesting a 15-year-old boy in 2009.

Nine years after he watched the neighborhood protector turn a blind eye to Greenfeld's abuse, Twersky decided he had to leave the Hasidic community altogether. He left Borough Park, divorced his wife, and cut ties with his parents and friends.

Talking about the incident now, he says he doesn't hold any ill will against the man, still a member of the Shomrim today, who learned of Greenfeld's abuse and didn't tell the police.

"He's a good guy, in his way," Twersky says. "He's a baby who likes playing cops—that's a lot of what the Shomrim is. I've got nothing against patrolling a neighborhood, and they do a good job at it mostly: Borough Park is a very safe neighborhood for adults. It's just not very safe for kids."

The question of children's safety in Borough Park came under renewed scrutiny this summer in the aftermath of the grizzly murder of Leiby Kletzky, the eight-year-old boy who vanished in Borough Park on his way home from camp.

Kletzky's parents called the Shomrim when he didn't make it home, and the organization flooded the neighborhood with a hundred volunteers searching for the boy. But Kletzky was never found alive, and when his dismembered body was ultimately discovered in the home of a Borough Park resident, the Shomrim found themselves in the center of a contentious debate.

Community leaders and politicians praised the way the Shomrim flooded the streets in search of the young boy, calling the response a source of community pride even in the face of terrible tragedy.

But critics noted that the Shomrim's efforts hadn't saved Kletzky or indeed even caught his killer. It was an unaffiliated concerned citizen, not the Shomrim, who thought to check the surveillance videos from local businesses that showed the boy being lured into the Honda of Levi Aron, a supply clerk who lived nearby.

More pressing was the question of why the Shomrim had waited three hours to notify the police of the missing boy. It wasn't until after Kletzky's parents had called 911 themselves that the Shomrim made contact with the NYPD.

Speaking to the press after Aron had been arrested and made a confession, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the Shomrim's delayed notification of police was a long-standing issue.

"We have no problem with the Shomrim being notified," Kelly said, "but we'd like to be notified as well."

But Kelly was careful not to antagonize the Shomrim, adding that the delay probably wouldn't have made a difference in the Kletzky case.

Jacob Daskal, the founder of the Borough Park Shomrim, agreed, but less diplomatically.

"It wouldn't have mattered," Daskal told The Wall Street Journal. "And the police wouldn't have come right away."

The first Shomrim group in Brooklyn started in Williamsburg in the late 1970s, as the fast-growing community of Hasidic and Eastern-European Orthodox Jews—collectively known as the Haredi community—sought to protect themselves from the petty crime then common in Williamsburg.

Shomrim means "watchers" or "guards" in Hebrew, and as the Williamsburg Jews carved out their own self-contained domain in the middle of Koch-era Brooklyn, guards were a good thing to have.

Soon the model was replicated in other Haredi outposts throughout Brooklyn. Today, there are independent, unaffiliated Shomrim groups in Williamsburg, Flatbush, and Borough Park. In Crown Heights, an acrimonious split among the Lubavitcher Hasids has led to the creation of two competing Shomrim groups.

Shomrim groups also patrol Haredi neighborhoods in Monsey, Baltimore, Miami, London, and elsewhere..........

CLICK ON LINK FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-07/news/gotham-s-crusaders-shomrim-jewish-neighborhood-patrol/

"Muslims in Germany" - Could Have Been Titled Orthodox Jews In America!

This article hits home; the overwhelming majority of our "arbitrators" or Bais Din representatives (batei din in the plural), are every bit as dangerous to our community as Hassan Allouche is to his!

UOJ

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,783361,00.html

Muslims in Europe
09/01/2011
Parallel Justice
Islamic 'Arbitrators' Shadow German Law
By Maximilian Popp
DER SPIEGEL

Hassan Allouche, originally from Lebanon, says he mediates 200 cases a year.

In mosques or tearooms, Muslim elders dispense verdicts that keep their communities in line. They mediate between aggrieved immigrants, sometimes at the expense of German justice. Some say the arbitrations ease caseloads in court, but others see the creeping advance of Sharia law.

The men ambushed Fuat S. on the street, then locked him in a basement and tortured him. Fuat was later admitted to the hospital in Berlin's Neukölln district with gaping wounds, contusions and broken bones.

Police took his statement concerning the attack the same night. Fuat S., a gambler and a recipient of "Hartz IV" -- Germany's social welfare benefits for the long-term unemployed -- gave a detailed statement. He'd conned an acquaintance, Mustafa O., out of €150,000 ($217,000) and the man was taking his revenge, Fuat said, together with his three brothers. They hit his hands, arms and knees with a hammer and threatened to shoot him.

The public prosecutor's office in Berlin initiated proceedings against Mustafa O., a Palestinian man who had come to their attention repeatedly for violent acts. Police had investigated him in a number of cases, and now prosecutors saw an opportunity to convict a dangerous repeat offender. But when the case began, Fuat S., the principle witness, unexpectedly withdrew his testimony. It was not Mustafa who had tortured him, he said, but an Albanian man he didn't know. Mustafa, he said, wasn't even in the basement at the time. This was clearly a lie, as police analysis of telephone data showed, but the judge was forced to acquit the defendant due to lack of evidence.

The decision, in fact, was reached by a different judge. According to police, the victim's and the perpetrator's families had met at a restaurant in the presence of an Islamic "justice of the peace," an arbitrator who mediates conflicts between Muslims. The two families had reached a compromise: Fuat would drop the charges, and in exchange be relieved of part of his debt.

According to Bernhard Mix, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Fuat's false testimony was part of a deal between the families. "It's difficult to establish the truth using legal means, when the perpetrator and the victim reach an agreement," he says.

Judges Without Laws

Politicians and social workers tend to focus on forced marriages and honor killings, but the baleful influence of these Islamic arbitrators has gone largely unnoticed by the public. Joachim Wagner, an author and television journalist of many years, has taken a closer look at the phenomenon in his book "Richter ohne Gesetz" ("Judges without Laws"). Reconstructing Mustafa O.'s case, he reaches the conclusion that "the Islamic parallel justice system is becoming a threat to the constitutional legal system."

These justices of the peace don't wear robes. Their courtrooms are mosques or teahouses. They draw their authority not from the law, but from their standing within the community. Most of them are senior members of their families, or imams, and some even fly in from Turkey or Lebanon to resolve disputes. Muslims seek them out when families argue, when daughters take up with nonbelievers or when clans clash. They often trust these arbitrators more than they trust the state.

The late juvenile court judge Kirsten Heisig drew attention to this problem a year ago: "The law is slipping out of our hands. It's moving to the streets, or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done."

In Wagner's book, judges and prosecutors tell of threats toward public officials and systematic interference with witnesses. "We know we're being given a performance, but the courts are powerless," says Stephan Kuperion, a juvenile court judge in Berlin. Federal public prosecutor Jörn Hauschild warns, "It would be a terrible development if serious criminal offences in these circles could no longer be resolved. The legal system would be reduced to collecting victims."

So who are these men who make the decisions about justice and love, lives and monetary compensation?

'They Trust Me'

Hassan Allouche sits behind the wheel of his station wagon, steering the vehicle through Berlin's rush hour traffic with one hand, talking on his cell phone. Two Arabs have called on him for help in a rent dispute. He lights a cigarette and says, "People are afraid of the authorities. They trust me."

Allouche came to Germany from Lebanon 37 years ago. He acts as a religious arbitrator, just as his great-grandfather did before him. People greet him on the streets of Berlin, shaking his hand or bowing. "He's kept us from a great deal of harm," one Turkish businessman says.

Allouche's brother was shot while trying to resolve a conflict, and since then he always wears a bulletproof vest when doing his work. He says he mediates 200 cases a year, often offers his own services and doesn't ask any payment, although he accepts gifts. "I do this for Germany and for Allah," he says.

Wagner, the journalist, believes that getting rich plays only a minor role for most of these arbitrators. Far more important, he says, are power and prestige, as they increase their influence within the community with each successful mediation.

Although the mediators generally work in secret, "it's common practice," Wagner says, repeating what Ralf Menkhorst, detective superintendent for the city of Essen, has told him. "Any beginner realizes after three cases that this phenomenon exists." Police in Bremen, for example, know of four or five arbitrators by name.

They operate in a gray area between conflict resolution and obstruction of justice. Allouche, for example, claims to work closely with authorities, but investigators suspect him of preventing witnesses from giving statements to the police. So far they've never been able to prove an obstruction of justice.

This culture of arbitration predates Islam, since earlier Arab tribes also solved conflicts with verdicts passed by senior family members. In countries such as Lebanon or in southeastern Turkey, these lay judges still take the place of governmental institutions. In Germany, they find followers wherever the local population includes many Muslims who haven't integrated into German culture.

Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies professor in Marburg, believes this distance between immigrants and the German state explains the success of religious arbitration. Many immigrants, she says, mistrust police and the legal system. Criminal prosecutors are concerned about extended Muslim families and strict religious groups. "They disdain the rule of law. They haven't integrated, and don't intend to. The family is above the law," Bremen's police write in a working paper.

Munich-based imam and arbitrator Sheik Abu Adam says he considers it a religious duty to mediate among the faithful. He invites both parties to visit him at the mosque, listens to both sides, and ultimately has them sign a peace treaty. The important thing, he says, is not who's right and wrong, and evidence is no particular help -- the important thing is to find a compromise. In nine out of 10 cases, the people respect his decision, he says. "My judgment is fairer than the government's," he says.

A Problem of Integration

Abu Adam teaches a reactionary kind of Islam. He lives with three women, doesn't believe in separating religion from the state, and rejects moderate branches of his religion. "I tell my people, don't go to the police," the sheikh says unabashedly. "We'll take care of this conflict among ourselves." He dismisses accusations of running a shadow justice system, saying, "I'm making less work for the police."

Investigators do cooperate with Islamic arbitrators in a few exceptional cases. In Essen, for example, police and an imam work together to mediate disputes within Muslim families.

If these arbitrators would limit themselves to containing conflicts, there would be no reason to object, says legal and Islamic studies expert Mathias Rohe in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. German law, after all, allows for arbitration. What Rohe finds unacceptable is the exertion of influence over criminal proceedings. "Criminal prosecution is a privilege of the state," he says.

The state justice system, though, is having a hard time shaking off the shadow system. Klaus-Dieter Schromek, a judge in Bremen, criticizes his colleagues for not taking the phenomenon seriously enough. "If conflict mediators manage to force the justice system out of homicides and other serious violent crimes," he told Wagner for the book, "it will mean more conflicts settled using these methods."

Legal steps alone can't prevent a parallel Islamic justice system, not with so many immigrants from Muslim countries who insist on following values retained for centuries -- such as the primacy of men and the unconditional struggle for one's own honor and that of the family. One problem is that they pass on these clichés to their children, so even third-generation members of immigrant families mistrust the German legal system.

"We need to promote our constitutional legal state starting in school," says Rohe, the Islamic studies expert. If German integration were in better shape, he believes, Islamic arbitrators would have been out of work long ago.