By Joe Palazzolo
The Vatican is promising legal action to stop the distribution of a photo of Pope Benedict kissing an imam on the mouth. The photo is fake, by the way, and is part of a shock-factor advertising campaign by Italian fashion company Benetton that features world leaders getting fresh.
Benedict’s inamorata in the photo is Ahmed Tayeb, leader of Al Azhar in Cairo, Sunni Islam’s most influential institution. Another ad shows President Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The new campaign, as well as the UNHATE Foundation, a new Benetton think tank aimed at, um, communicating love, are part of the company’s social responsibility strategy. Click here for the foundation website and here for slideshow of the ads. WSJ’s Heard on the Runway has more here, and the Journal has a story on the ad campaign here.
The Vatican, however, isn’t feeling the unhate. It said in a statement Thursday its lawyers in Italy and around the world had been instructed to “take the proper legal measures” to stop the use of the photo, even in the media, Reuters reported. And Here‘s a link to the statement in Italian, for what it’s worth. (Prego.)
The statement said the ad was “damaging to not only to dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers.” It wasn’t clear whether the Vatican intended to sue Benetton directly.
Benetton had said on Wednesday night it was withdrawing the advertisement. But apparently not quickly enough.
Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/11/17/vatican-calls-in-the-lawyers-to-snuff-out-kiss-campaign/?mod=djemlawblog_t
[Note: In 2005 Martin Elly Kleinman CEO of "Americare" -- a misnomer if ever there was one -- now a big supporter of many Aguda and Torah causes, was prosecuted for illegally cutting out the prostates of mentally retarded men. The following continues the case.]
ReplyDeleteLEAGLE.com:
"BACKGROUND
Unless otherwise indicated, the following facts are undisputed.
Plaintiffs are mentally disabled individuals who resided at the Leben Home Adult Care Center in December 1997 and January 1998.1 While they resided there, each plaintiff received prostate surgery, which was performed by Dr. Peress at Parkway Hospital after an initial consultation at the Leben Home. It is undisputed that these surgeries, described by defendants at oral argument as "heinous acts," were not medically necessary and that they were performed without plaintiffs' informed consent. Plaintiffs further contend that they were targeted to receive these unnecessary surgeries because of their mental disability.
In January 1996, the Americare [Kleinman's company] Defendants entered into an agreement with Jacob Rubin, the owner and operator of the Leben Home, to provide nursing and home health care services to Leben Home residents. Americare provided home health aide services, such as assistance with bathing, dressing, and other activities of daily life, and ACSS provided nursing care services. Defendant Kleinman negotiated the agreement with Rubin. The Americare Defendants were reimbursed for the cost of the services they provided to the Leben Home residents by Medicare and Medicaid directly.
Under the terms of the agreement between the Americare Defendants and the Leben Home, as of October 1997, the Americare Defendants paid Leben Home rent of $2,237.50 per month for 895 square feet of office space inside the Leben Home out of which Americare's activities in the Home were operated. Beginning in October 1997, the Americare Defendants paid an additional management services fee of $984.41 per month for utilities, supplies, maintenance of the leased space, and administrative support, including answering phones, photocopying, faxing, and file maintenance. When asked about the management services agreement between Leben Home and Americare at his deposition, Jacob Rubin asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination."
Warren Buffett's recent buy-in of IBM shares has left many puzzled, but for those who remember the Holocaust, the name IBM does not evoke warm memories.
ReplyDeleteIBM has now entered the mortgage foreclosure business under the name of LBPS and now "Seterus, Inc" whereby it works as the "servicer" for the bankrupt and corrupt Fannie Mae to make life miserable for tens of millions in the USA who are facing financial hardship.
IBM has been severely criticized for its new role as "landlord" OF America, and warren Buffet should be put on notice too:
"Origination News “The Big Silence at Big Blue's Servicing Unit" (September 16, 2011). By Paul Muolo [Author of ‘Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis’ John Wiley & Sons, 2008]
I often wonder if the Treasury Department—which owns Fannie Mae—has actually tried to call (on the telephone) Seterus, the servicing division of IBM that the GSE is apparently using to handle its lousy loans.
As reported by the National Mortgage News website on Friday, it appears that Seterus was awarded a chunk of the $73 billion MSR package that Fannie bought from B of A...” and at “More Complaints for IBM's Servicing Unit (September 19, 2011) By Paul Muolo
This past weekend we published a blog about how hard it was for customers and members of the media to contact Seterus, the residential servicing division of IBM.
Over the weekend, one veteran mortgage banking executive who we've known for years weighed in on the matter. He did not want to be identified by name, but said that Seterus was recently given his loan to service. This is what he had to say: “My loan was sold to them and we didn't receive any notice from the old lender.
I tried to reach them and forget it!” A few months back, a family member of mine, who had a loan with Chase, suddenly found Seterus as his servicer. The first thing Seterus did was to hike his escrows…” "
FM blog:
ReplyDelete"December 16, 2009
Exclusive: The Story Behind The Tropper Scandal
A woman in the process of converting to Judaism told FailedMessiah.com a well known and powerful ultra-Orthodox rabbi who supervises conversions worldwide asked her for sexual favors in return for completing her conversion.
A woman in the process of converting to Judaism told FailedMessiah.com that a well known and powerful ultra-Orthodox rabbi who supervises conversions worldwide asked her for sexual favors in return for completing her conversion. The woman alleges the rabbi, Leib Tropper, founder of Eternal Jewish Family, arranged sexual encounters between her and and his wife – encounters Tropper watched. She also alleges Tropper asked her to engage in sexual encounters and have phone sex with other men.
Unauthenticated video and audio tapes were anonymously sent to Jewish bloggers over the past few days. These tapes appear to support her claims.
Tropper abruptly resigned over the weekend from Eternal Jewish Family, the conversion organization he founded, citing a desire to pursue “a variety of other interests.”
“I have decided to resign my position at the Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) effective December 12, 2009…. As a founder of EJF, I am proud of my role of being an architect of a very dynamic and important movement in our community. I will in the coming months do my utmost to be of service to the Jewish community in any way I can.”
The resignation, made in an official EJF press release late Monday, two days after Tropper’s resignation took effect, made no mention of the allegations.
Calls to Tropper’s home were answered by a voicemail system announcing his voicemail box is full. Eternal Jewish Family refused comment, and calls to Yeshvas Kol Yaakov, a yeshiva for returnees to Orthodox Judaism Tropper still heads in Monsey, NY, were not returned. Rabbi Elya Ber Wachtfogel, named yesterday as the new head of EJF’s rabbinic committee, did not return a call left for comment.
FailedMessiah.com obtained an exclusive interview with the woman making the allegations, whose name is being withheld due to fear of reprisal. She claims to have made the tapes after Tropper allegedly pressured her to have sex with other men.
The woman says she intended for the tapes she made to be played only for leading rabbis involved with EJF. Instead, the tapes were leaked through email and on the Internet.
Although not the first person to do so, Guma Aguiar, a billionaire former backer of EJF who has been in a long running dispute with Tropper, sent some of those tapes to FailedMessiah.com. Aguiar has long contended that Tropper has embezzled money from EJF, and launched a court case against Tropper in Israel over the summer in an attempt to recoup money he says he personally gave Tropper to distribute to various Israeli charities. It is unclear how Aguiar got the tapes.
The woman told FailedMessiah.com Tropper was “holding things over me.” Tropper can be heard on one of the tapes asking the woman to have sex or phone sex with other men, and explaining to the woman that some of the money he sent her is for lawyers, while the rest is for her. He used to tell me, she said, “If you fulfill my needs, I’ll fulfill yours – and you need a conversion.” "
"Exclusive: The Story Behind The Tropper Scandal
ReplyDeleteAccording to the woman, the motivation for Tropper’s actions was sexual. She says Tropper asked her to role play certain sexual scenarios with these men, either capturing the encounter on tape or describing the encounter in detail to him afterward, which she says she refused/. “He likes to see women raped,” she said. While sometimes Tropper suggested men for her to have encounters with, he encouraged her to find men on her own and then report back to him. “He wanted someone who would be very rough.”
She says other women were also recruited by Tropper to fulfill these fantasies. One of those other women, she claims, is Tropper’s own wife Leba, who the woman says engaged in a sexual relationship with her as Tropper watched. In one of the audio tapes made available to FailedMessiah.com, the woman refuses sex with other men. As Tropper persists, she tells him that she “just wants everything to stay the same,” and says she “likes what she did with Leba.”
Tropper can also be heard on the tapes saying, “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to…you own your body, I don’t own your body.”
At one point in the relationship, the woman claims she cried and told Tropper, “This feels like prostitution,” and tried to put an end to Tropper’s sexual demands. She says Tropper defended his actions and continued unabated.
Repeated calls for comment to Rabbi Tropper’s home and his yeshiva were not returned.
Vicki Polin, the head of The Awareness Center, The International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault, noted that adult women are more likely to be victims of clergy sexual abuse than are children. “This is just one of many cases in which a member of the clergy uses their authority to lure in…unsuspecting adult women for their own personal pleasure.”
Tropper and Wachtfogel, the new head of Eternal Jewish Family’s rabbinic committee, were both instrumental in arranging the 2005 ban issued by leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis against Rabbi Natan Slifkin. Slifkin, who writes on the interface of Torah and modern science, was labelled a heretic, and his books were banned, in part for suggesting the universe is older than 5770 years.
In 2006, after Israel’s chief rabbis issued demands tightening the conversion process and regulating which Orthodox rabbis would be allowed to supervise conversions, Tropper was able to position EJF as the leading moderator of Orthodox conversions outside of Israel.
In what may be the first documented case of its kind in America, in 2006 Tropper revoked a woman’s conversion months after supervising it because Tropper was told the woman sometimes wore pants. Tropper told the woman she and her child born post-conversion are no longer Jewish and said he had the woman’s file at the Israeli chief rabbinate amended to reflect that, effectively barring her from living in Israel as Jew if she so chose, and effectively revoking her conversion worldwide. Tropper’s actions contributed to the woman’s divorce. She and her child now live as non-Jews.
When asked if she still wanted to convert to Judaism, the woman making the current allegations against Tropper said she does. “Yes, I do. Very much so…somehow I will do it.”
* Parts of this post may appear to be similar to the New York Jewish Week's story posted last night. That resemblance exists because I wrote the Jewish Week story. The Jewish Week removed my byline at last minute, because editors said they needed to quote me about Tropper's significance for Orthodox conversions to Judaism."
OUjobs.org:
ReplyDelete"Instability is the new stability- Get used to it
Nov 7, 2011
By Lavie Margolin
Having met with thousands of job seekers since 2003, a certain percentage will express that they would like nothing more than to obtain a stable job; it seemingly does not matter what it is. Frustrated with the instability of prior experiences, these job seekers have put their career dreams aside and are solely interested in pursuing opportunities that will allow for the longest tenure.
Our current job market seems to dictate that a ‘stable job’ is a thing of the past. What do we normally think of when considering stable work? Traditionally, we would think of areas such as civil service, police, government administration, work in a hospital or medical facility or something in the field of education. Can these areas be considered stable any longer? School districts are increasing class sizes to cut back on the number of teachers necessary. Governments are instituting salary increase moratoriums. One of New York City’s largest hospitals closed in the recent past.
Your career cannot, and should not, be based on finding stability. To find true success, you have to find what you are good at, what you are passionate about, stay current in your field and work just as hard (if not harder) than everyone else to remain successful. Try not to fear change. A career will take many turns: some for the worse, some for the better. Each will be a learning experience that you can leverage for success at a later time.
About the Author: Lavie Margolin is a New York-based Career Coach and the author of Practical Job Search Assistance for Practical Job Seekers."
Why is Mrs. Demi acting so "surprised" when it's obvious Ashton ain't no "tzadik" as he hunts girls like Leib Tropper all over the place?
ReplyDeleteUK Daily Mail:
"'A heavy heart': Demi Moore files for divorce from Ashton Kutcher after six years of marriage
Demi Moore has announced she is ending her six year marriage to Ashton Kutcher. [Will she get a get or will he keep her an aguna?]
The 49-year-old actress said in a statement today that she is filing for divorce with 'great sadness and a heavy heart'.
Hinting at Kutcher's infidelity [what else?], Demi said: 'As a woman, a mother and a wife, there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life'. [Such a 'tzadekes'!]...
Despite their dignified statements, Demi is now gearing up to battle it out over their $290m fortune after enduring public humiliated because of his alleged infidelity. [It's always about the money in the end!]
Moore and Kutcher wed in September 2005. The couple's relationship hit the headlines in recent months as rumours swirled about Kutcher's alleged infidelity.
The Two And A Half Men star allegedly shared a night of passion with party girl Sara Leal, 22, at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego.
Texas-born Leal sold her story on Kutcher weeks after the fling, which took place on Ashton and Demi's sixth wedding anniversary, September 24...
In the weeks after the story broke, Kutcher and Moore made apparent attempts to heal their relationship with Kabbalah retreats, including a camping trip to Cachuma Lake near Santa Barbara, California, last month.
The couple were accompanied by some close friends along with their Kabbalah instructor Yehuda Berg and photos emerged of the pair sat around an outdoor fire [What a joke when the Kabbalah Centre is notorious for breaking up marriages!]...
The Leal affair was not the first time Kutcher has been accused of being unfaithful to Demi.
Kutcher was first accused of infidelity in September last year, when Brittney Jones, 21, said she had sex with the actor at the Beverly Hills home he once shared with his wife while she was away.
She also later claimed that Kutcher told her he had an open relationship with Demi and they would 'often engage in threesomes'. [Just like Leib Tropper]...
[Photo caption: Campfire summit: Demi and Ashton met with Kabbalah counsellors last month in an apparent bid to heal their relationship. [Like calling the arsonists to put out a fire!]]...
For Ashton - who is 16 years Demi's junior - Moore was his first wife.
He previously had relationships with the late Brittany Murphy and Mad Men's January Jones.
Today's news tops off a bad run for Ashton, who last week was at the centre of a Twitter fallout after posting messages of support for Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno [shows how much sechel he does NOT have].
Paterno, Penn State head coach for 46 years, had been fired for allegedly covering up sexual abuse by the school's former football defence coordinator Jerry Sandusky.
Kutcher responded to the news by tweeting: 'How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye [the University of Iowa football team] fan I find it in poor taste.'
But his remarks cause a furious backlash - forcing Kutcher to admit he didn't have the full facts when he posted the message.
He then handed the control of his Twitter feed over to his management team at Katalyst Media to 'ensure the quality of its content'. [Kutscher may be a stud but he ain't no chuchem].
UK Guardian:
ReplyDelete"The Occupy movements are the realists, not Europe's ruling elites
The protesters realise our post-cold-war settlement is at stake – unlike a political class in thrall to a defunct market utopia
John Gray
14 November 2011
[Photo caption: The Occupy London camp outide St Paul's. 'The protesters are recalling us to the actualities of human experience.']
The Occupy movements have been attacked for being impractical visionaries. In fact it is the established political classes of the west that are wedded to utopian thinking, while the protesters are recalling us to the actualities of human experience. Based on economic theories that left out human beings, the global free market was supposed to be self-regulating. Now a process of disintegration is under way, in which the structures set up in the post-cold-war period are visibly breaking up.
Anyone with a smattering of history could see that the hubristic capitalism of the past 20 years was programmed to self-destruct. The notion that the world's disparate societies could be corralled into a worldwide free market was always a dangerous fantasy. Opening up economies throughout the world meant ordinary people were more directly exposed to the gyrations of market forces than they had been for generations. As it overthrew existing patterns of life and robbed large numbers of people of any security they might have achieved, global capitalism was bound to trigger a powerful blowback.
For as long as it was able to engineer an illusion of increasing prosperity, free-market globalisation was politically invulnerable. When the bubble burst, the actual condition of the majority was laid bare. In the US a plantation-style economy has come into being, with debt-servitude for the many coexisting with extremes of volatile wealth for the few. In Europe the muddled dream of a single currency has resulted in social devastation in Greece, mass unemployment in Spain and other countries, and even, for some, reversion to a life based on barter: sucking society into a vortex of debt deflation, austerity policies are driving a kind of reverse economic development. In many countries a settled bourgeois existence – supposedly the basis of popular capitalism – has become an impossible aspiration. Large numbers are edging closer to poverty and a life without hope.
History tells us how perilous this process can be. It has been taken for granted that a sudden collapse of the kind that occurred in the former Soviet Union and more recently Egypt cannot happen in advanced market economies. That assumption may be tested severely in coming years. While totalitarian mass movements of the sort seen in the 30s are not going to return, Europe's demons have not gone away. Blaming minorities and immigrants is a perennially popular response to economic dislocation, and ethnic nationalism can be hideously destructive. In the US the continuing demise of the middle class could engender a style of politics even more rancorous and unhinged than that prevailing today. A figure such as Father Coughlin, the Depression-era radio demagogue, shows what can be expected as the economy continues its slide. With the rise of trigger-happy politicians like Mitt Romney and the need for Obama to act tough, it would be unwise to rule out the prospect of another major war.
"The Occupy movements are the realists, not Europe's ruling elites
ReplyDeleteJohn Gray
Despite the claims of some protesters, what is required is not a full-scale retreat from globalisation – though that may happen as countries seek shelter – but a more restrained version of globalisation in which worldwide linkages grow organically, and different countries are not penalised for having different economic systems. A more fragmented world could also be a more stable world. A body of common rules would still be necessary, but there would be no attempt to force convergence on a single type of capitalism. Governments could act as brakes on market forces, rather than – as at present, when they have taken on the debt of reckless banks – being in the position of overleveraged or insolvent hedge funds.
The trouble is that there is no global institution with the authority to frame the necessary reforms. In our multipolar, or non-polar, world, the deciding forces are geopolitical. The prospect in Europe is not only of deepening recession: Germany faces a choice between allowing the European Central Bank to refloat the eurozone through massive quantitative easing or else withdrawing from the eurozone along with Austria, Holland, Finland and maybe some Baltic states. Either way, the European framework put in place after the fall of communism and German reunification will be altered fundamentally. Moving from attacking the peripheral countries to an assault on Italy, Spain and soon France, global markets are unravelling the post-cold-war European settlement.
The emergence of a two-tier eurozone, with Germany leading a Hanseatic-style northern league and France the Mediterranean countries, would sever the Franco-German axis that has for more than 60 years served as the continent's linchpin. Refloating the eurozone by large-scale money-creation could stave off imminent disaster at the price of generating a great inflation a few years down the line; but the divergences between countries, which are the root of the problem, would not be ended. Forcing societies with different wage costs and levels of growth along with different histories and political systems into a single framework, the eurozone would still be a fragile construction.
The departure of Papandreou and Berlusconi has been welcomed, but their replacements – heading technocratic administrations rather than democratically accountable governments – are committed to the same self-defeating policies of austerity. European leaders are turning to China, which is deeply concerned by the crisis. But it is fanciful to imagine that China will bail out a continent that lacks the capacity to govern itself. The risk is that Europe will drift until markets finally lose confidence and trigger a disorderly breakup of the eurozone's unworkable structures. European elites have yet to face the fact that radical change is unavoidable.
The demands of the Occupy movement may be inchoate, or else conflicting. But it is not the protesters who threaten the world economy. The danger comes from denying the fact of systemic crisis. By trying to prop up a system that is chronically dysfunctional, our rulers are making a cataclysmic collapse more likely. So far in Britain only Ed Miliband has acknowledged the importance of the Occupy movement. It should be a warning to the entire political class. The people camped outside St Paul's may have no clear solutions. But it is they – not ruling elites in thrall to a defunct market utopia – who are engaging with reality."
Dvar Torah from HaGaon Harav Nachum Rosenberg, Shlita, about child sexual abuse.
ReplyDeleteIn last weeks Parsha (Torah portion) we find the story of Lot, the nephew of Avraham Avinu (Abraham) being saved by the angels who came to destroy Sodom, the city in which Lot lived. The residents were so "evil in the eyes of G-d" that after negotiating with Abraham, G-d decided to wipe out the entire city, but to save Lot who was Abraham's nephew and had learned much about morality and ethics from his uncle. Sodom is perhaps most famous for its sexual immorality, which is how in English we get the term "Sodomy" for deviant sexual acts.
However, the Medrash (Ancient Talmudic Rabbinical tradition) teaches that it was the cruel interpersonal behavior of the culture that sealed its fate. The Biblical verse states that G-d "came down" to evaluate the cries of the oppressed that had "come to Him." Chazal (the rabbis) teach that Sodom had a legislated social system in which giving charity was forbidden. Furthermore, they would execute people for being kind and hospitable to the needy. If a visitor would visit, they had a one-size-fits-all bed that had to be used (symbolic of the way totalitarian systems and even many hierarchical religious cultures treat their individual members). If the visitor was too short, they would use a torturous "rack" to stretch out their body until the person would die. If the person was too tall they would cut off his or her limbs until they would die. The particular cry that pierced the heavens was of a young girl who had been caught giving food to a beggar. She was taken to the roof, stripped naked, covered with honey and left to be killed by the attack of a swarm of bees. This is how they treated innocent children.
When the people of Sodom heard that Lot was giving shelter to the visitors (angels disguised as men), they gathered in protest outside his house. The Bible is explicit in describing that it was not only one group, but a cross section of rich and poor, old and young who gathered in the angry lynch mob. They demanded that Lot give over the strangers so that "We can know them". They wanted to rape and sodomize them. (In the end, the angels made a miracle and blinded all members of the mob and ran away with Lot and his family).
But first, Lot made a "valiant" attempt to protect the visitors. He said:
"I have virginal daughters who I will give you instead to do as you like with, but please allow these men to stay in peace."
Apparently, Lot's religious values were that homosexual rape was somehow more of a crime than the rape of young innocent women, and his religious beliefs lead him to sacrifice his own children!
The Torah seems to gloss over this part of the story, neither praising nor condemning Lot's cruel misguided behavior. Rabbi Rosenberg says that Lot was indeed severely punished for his abuse and sacrifice of his own daughters. Later in the same Torah portion we learn that after the total destruction of Sodom and death of Lot's wife, Lot's daughters were convinced that the entire world had been destroyed just like in the time of Noah and the flood. They felt they were responsible for the continuation of the human race, so they devised a plan to get their father drunk on two successive nights and seduce him. They conceived bastard sons who grew up and sired nations named Amon and Moav.
Part Two
ReplyDeleteRabbi Rosenberg's interpretation is not without precedent. He was "mechaven" to a Medrash Tanchuma, that is cited by Ramban (Nachmanides). The Ramban says that Lot's offering his daughters' virginity as a bargaining chip, was "nothing but the wickedness of his heart" The Medrash says "Normal men will kill and be killed to protect their wives and children, and this one (Lot) gave over ("Mesirah") his daughters to be sexually abused? Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He to Lot: 'You will save them for yourself"" (i.e. you will end up being the one to defile your own daughters.)
Rabbi Rosenberg adds more: The nations of Amon and Moav developed into such cruel people that the Bible condemned them that even if an individual from those peoples converts to Judaism, they and there descendants are prohibited from ever marrying into the Jewish people for all eternity. They are considered much worse than even the ancient Egyptians who after ten generations would be allowed to marry Jews if they convert. That is how wicked and cruel was the genetic nature of the Amonis and Moabites of old, born from the cursed punishment G-d brought on Lot for his using his children's sexual abuse as a way to protect innocent others.
Rabbi Rosenberg, utilizing the ancient rabbinic maxim that these Biblical stories are eternal lessons for posterity (Maase Avos Siman L'banim) explains that in our generation many people are acting like Lot when it comes to their children. They are allowing them to be raped, sodomized and sexually molested in order to protect others. They are concerned more with protecting the social fabric (which has become more and more like Sodom). They want to protect adults from "false allegations". They want to protect the innocent family members of the molesters from having their breadwinner incarcerated. They want to protect the financial integrity of the Torah institutions that harbor molesters from being sued. They want to protect the reputations of big rabbis who have been guilty of covering up child sexual abuse for years. They want to protect the image of Orthodox Judaism by pretending that we are better than everyone else and don't have any child molesters in our midst. They want to protect their own families from the social stigma of a complete perversion of the "mesirah" laws against handing another Jew over to secular law enforcement (which were written at a time when the Jews lived under antisemitic rule). They want to protect the victims from being "outed" and seen as "damaged goods" unworthy of shidduchim (marriage opportunities). They want to protect their friends, neighbors and relatives who ARE the molesters, from being punished for their crimes.
And they sacrifice the innocence and the physical emotional and spiritual safety and security of their own children. This is the legacy of Lot, not of Abraham. This is the legacy that leads to inter-generational incest and abuse, and eventually to the development of a cruel and wicked people.
Let us change. Let us return to the kind ways of the Jewish people and of the Torah. Let us champion the safety of our children, and hold those who harm them to account and bring them to justice. Our future as a people is totally dependent on it. Parents, by standing up and demanding better from your rabbis, and by protecting your children from these communal forces, you are creating a legacy of justice, a legacy of morality, a legacy of safety and security, a legacy of love for your children and all the children of the Jewish people, from now until the coming of Mashiach, speedily in our days.
Rabbi Dovid Weinberger "Guest of Honor at Ponovitch Dinner".
ReplyDeleteThe "raid in gass" is that a big reason was that the women all felt that he deserves the highest honours for the time he has given up for their sholom bayis issues without any monetary gain, etc
The women should show their appreciation by attending the dinner.
Women can discuss with him all of their private issues, he'll recipricate in kind in discussing his.