Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump greets his wife, Melania, his son
Eric and his daughter Ivanka after the third and final 2016 presidential
debate at UNLV in Las Vegas on Wednesday night - October 19, 2016. (Photo: Joe
Raedle/Pool/Reuters)
Top rabbinical court nixes conversions by Ivanka Trump’s rabbi
Calling
credentials of Haskel Lookstein into question, leading Israeli panel
forces US immigrant to undergo additional ritual to get married...Israel’s Supreme Rabbinical Court on Wednesday night ruled it does not
recognize conversions by US Orthodox rabbi Haskel Lookstein, forcing a
woman seeking to get married to reconvert and calling into question
other people converted by Lookstein, including the daughter of
Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Recent Incidents Put a New Focus on Sexual Assault on Airplanes
A middle-aged priest. A 26-year-old woman. A registered sex offender.
Three
seemingly very different people with one thing in common: All three
were accused of sexually assaulting fellow passengers on airplanes.
Even before Jessica Leeds alleged last week
that Donald Trump touched her inappropriately during a flight in 1979,
many frequent fliers had concluded that increasingly cramped planes with
fewer flight attendants walking the aisle seem to embolden gropers.
“Sexual
harassment and assault is happening on aircraft, and we believe it’s
happening more often because of the conditions on board,” said Sara
Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight
Attendants-CWA union. She cited cramped, confined spaces; alcohol and
drugs; fewer flight attendants; and dark cabins on night flights as
factors that likely embolden offenders.
Prosecutors said that the Rev. Marcelo De Jesumaria testified that he considered his touching his sleeping victim
on a US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 2014
“consensual because she did not reject his touches and he interpreted
her silence, because she was asleep, as ‘coyness.’ ”
The
woman said she awoke on the flight to feel Mr. De Jesumaria’s hand on
the top of her leg, and then on her breast, according to the United
States attorney’s office, Central District of California.
When Mr. De Jesumaria relaxed his grip, the victim went to the bathroom and used the call button to summon a flight attendant.
The flight crew reseated him between two male passengers, and law enforcement was waiting when the plane landed in Los Angeles.
Mr.
De Jesumaria, 47, who previously served in the Roman Catholic Diocese
of San Bernardino, Calif., was sentenced to six months in prison and six
months of home confinement after being convicted of abusive sexual
contact.
Mr.
De Jesumaria had not been seated next to his victim initially, but
switched seats by asking a flight attendant if he could “sit next to his
wife.”
Heidi Anne McKinney, 26, was charged
with touching another woman on the thigh and groin during an Alaska
Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Portland on May 8 this year.
Airplane - Left - Yoel Oberlander - Right
In another case, according to a criminal complaint filed in United States District Court in New Jersey, a woman allegedly assaulted
by Yoel Oberlander on an overnight El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Newark
on May 29 was seated between him and her mother when he began to grope
her. She kept repositioning herself to shake his hand off her hand,
thigh and breast. It wasn’t until her mother awoke that she asked her to
switch seats, and eventually reported to the crew what had taken place.
Mr.
Oberlander, 35, was charged with one count of abusive sexual contact on
an airplane. He is a registered sex offender convicted in 2002 of
sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in New York.
Just
how frequent sexual assault is during air travel is difficult to
determine, but F.B.I. investigations into in-flight sexual assaults have
increased 45 percent so far this year. The bureau said that it had
opened 58 investigations into sexual assault on aircraft from January
through September 2016, compared with 40 for all of 2015. That increase
doesn’t include incidents reported to local and airport police. It also
doesn’t account for the 75 percent of sexual assaults that generally go
unreported, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of
the Department of Justice.
Among the airborne sexual assaults reported to the F.B.I. this year was that of a 13-year-old unaccompanied minor
who may have been touched inappropriately by a man who had been
drinking at the Dallas airport before boarding an American Airlines
flight to Portland, Ore., and a woman who said she awoke
on a Virgin America redeye flight from Los Angeles to Newark to find
the man next to her massaging her genitals and rubbing his bare feet
against her.
There
is no centralized system for collecting sexual assault reports from
airlines, and no special training for flight attendants in handling
sexual assault.
“This
is a unique crime,” said Ms. Nelson, who in addition to her union
position is a United Airlines flight attendant with 20 years of
experience. “It’s really not the same as asking, ‘How much did that
person hurt you when they hit you on the head?’ ”
Unless
police are called to meet the flight, it is up to the crew to decide
whether to report disruptive behavior to the Federal Aviation
Administration. When disturbances are reported, there is no separate
category for sexual assault.
Jessica Leeds, 74, who said that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately on an airplane in the early 1980s.Credit
George Etheredge for The New York Times
“It’s
one thing to talk about the alertness to security concerns, but this is
a crime that has not even been specifically identified” by the
airlines, Ms. Nelson said.
An
American Airlines spokesman, Ross Feinstein, said that it is not up to
the crew to assess whether a crime, or what type of crime, occurred.
“We’re
reporting misconduct that occurred on the aircraft. It’s up to law
enforcement to determine if any criminal misconduct occurred,” he said.
Regardless of the situation, all conflicts on aircraft are handled the
same way by separating those involved, deciding if a diversion of the
plane is necessary, and calling ahead for law enforcement to meet it.
But the lack of data on airplane sexual assault makes it difficult to study.
“It’s
hard to assess what’s going on if we don’t know the extent of what’s
happening,” said Elizabeth L. Jeglic, an associate professor
specializing in sex offender policy and treatment at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York City. She said she did not know of any
studies on airplane sexual assaults.
Still,
with about 712 million passengers on United States flights in the last
year, the number of passengers who are sexually assaulted is a tiny
percentage of overall air travelers.
Unruly
passenger behavior has been increasing worldwide, jumping 17 percent
from 2014 to 2015, according to numbers reported to the International
Air Transport Association by its 265 member airlines.
Alcohol
or drugs were identified as a factor in 23 percent of the 10,854
disruptive incidents last year, the trade association said.
Those
who commit sexual violence use alcohol to exploit their victims’
vulnerability and to lower their own inhibitions, said Laura Palumbo,
communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
“The third thing that people count on when alcohol is involved is that it will excuse their own actions,” she said.
Crew members already receive training on serving alcohol responsibly. The Air Transport Association is now calling on airport bars and duty-free shops to voluntarily follow suit so that passengers aren’t drunk when they board the plane.
Ms. Palumbo said that there were other factors involved in sexual assaults as well.
“You
don’t necessarily get to choose what your physical boundaries are from
the people around you because of the nature of transportation,” she
said.
Today’s
smaller seats — some only 16.5 inches wide — put airplane passengers
even closer together. (An effort by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of
New York, to regulate seat size failed in the spring.)
“You have the close proximity, and with the proximity there is forced intimacy,” Dr. Jeglic said.
There
also are fewer flight attendants on planes to keep an eye on what’s
happening between the rows. Although the Federal Aviation Administration
specifies minimum crew staffing for each type of aircraft based on
evacuation times, airline cutbacks in the travel downturn following
Sept. 11 eliminated some flight attendants, according to a study by Diane L. Damos published in the International Journal of Aviation Psychology in 2013.
“If
there were more flight attendants who were able to monitor the cabin
and trained in what signs to look for, and we were actually able to
identify this as a potential threat on board the aircraft, we might be
able to better address this problem,” Ms. Nelson said.
The
flight attendants’ union has been working with members of Congress and
victim advocacy groups on legislation that would expand crew training to
include dealing with victims of sexual assault on a flight, as well as
to create new industry reporting standards. She said it was too soon to
provide specifics.
An F.A.A. spokeswoman said the agency wouldnott comment on pending legislation.
An
earlier effort by Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democrat from the
District of Columbia, failed in 2014. Her bill, “The Protecting Airline
Passengers From Sexual Assaults Act,” would have required the F.A.A. to
collect and publish data on sexual assault. Her office did not return a
phone call seeking comment.
The
National Sexual Violence Resource Center, which was involved in helping
the Transportation Safety Administration change its passenger screening
guidelines, has not been involved with the legislative efforts, but its
spokeswoman said that, based on other research, more can be done to
address airline sexual assault.
“There
is a strong body of research that lets us know when people are given
the tools to understand what sexual violence is, how best to intervene
in instances of sexual violence, and have training and policies as well
as those steps, it can lower rates of sexual violence and can be in the
best interest of passenger safety,” Ms. Palumbo said.
For too long, believers have ignored warnings signs that their rights
were under siege.
‘That should not happen in America,” exclaimed a left-leaning friend of
mine upon hearing that a federal judge had prohibited some Jewish
Californians from engaging in a ritual that Jews have performed for
thousands of years. Unfortunately, it did happen in America, and it is
not an isolated event. It is part of what Supreme Court justice Samuel
Alito has described as an “ominous” trend that should cause “great
concern” to “those who value religious freedom.”
In United Poultry Concerns v. Chabad of Irvine, a group of
chickens’-rights activists petitioned a federal judge to prohibit a
California Jewish organization, Chabad of Irvine, from engaging in
Kapparot, a Jewish ritual.
This tradition is associated with Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement, and involves symbolically casting off one’s sins.
Some Jews, including the defendants in this case, symbolically
“transfer” their sins to live chickens. The chickens are then killed
and, typically, donated to needy families.
The judge initially granted the plaintiffs’ request and prohibited the
Chabad rabbi, Alter Tenenbaum, from engaging in the ritual use of live
chickens. Eventually the judge lifted the ban, but only after it was
already too late for Chabad to perform the ritual this year.
The damage
had been done and can never be entirely remedied. That a federal judge
granted such a ban highlights a disturbing trend currently playing out
in America’s public and legal understandings of religious liberty. I
have written about how foes of religious liberty seek to re-categorize
that liberty as an indulgence, doled out at the discretion and
convenience of the majority, rather than a fundamental right that may be
denied only in rare and exceptional cases. That desire is manifest in
this case.
In their briefing, the United Poultry plaintiffs lay out a vision in
which private morality and individual conscience are replaced by a
one-size-fits-all, government-mandated morality. Religious liberty
stands in the way of their dystopian dream, and therefore they and their
allies seek to diminish and ultimately eliminate it. For the same
reason, every American who values living in a religiously tolerant
country that respects individual conscience ought to oppose the
plaintiffs’ project.
The plaintiffs (“chicken people”) are not subtle about their hostility
toward religion and its role in American life. In their complaint, the
chicken people caricature religious liberty as a matter of religious
people asserting that “they are above the law and can conduct themselves
as they wish because of their religious beliefs.”
The plaintiffs’ objections are not limited to the realm of law. They
object to Chabad’s desire to “determine for themselves what is . . .
moral conduct.” They argue that only the legislature can determine
“legal and moral behavior in the State of California.” The plaintiffs do
not want to control only Chabad’s conduct.
They want to control its
conscience.
The chicken people describe the Jewish tradition as a “societal evil”
and mock Kapparot as “taking out vengeance on an innocent animal for
one’s own shortcomings.” These are not quotes cherry-picked from the
comments section of an anti-Semitic blog; they are quotes taken from a
legal document that won a favorable ruling from a federal judge.
The plaintiffs are no more subtle about the scope of their ambitions.
They acknowledge that their lawsuit is merely “the first step” toward
their “ultimate goal” of banning the religious ceremony nationwide. The
legal arguments advanced by the chicken people make it clear that they
want American courts to view the exercise of religion as an ordinary
activity enjoying no special legal, moral, or constitutional status.
The chicken people sued Chabad under California’s Business and
Professionals Code, citing a provision aimed at prohibiting unfair
competition. The plaintiffs admit that the statute applies only to
activities that “can properly be called a business practice.”
They cite
cases indicating that courts have previously held that religious
organizations can sometimes engage in “business practices” within the
meaning of the statute, but they do cite not a single case indicating
that a religious ceremony has ever been considered a business practice.
It is one thing to argue that a religious institution engages in a
business practice if it runs a restaurant or a shoe store. It is an
entirely different matter to argue as the plaintiffs do here: that core
religious functions are business practices. Jewish synagogues typically
sell holiday seats as a fundraiser. Some synagogues even auction off the
honor of leading particular prayers. Under the plaintiffs’ preferred
interpretation, this would make Jewish holiday services into business
practices open to government regulation.
The plaintiffs asked the court to take the extraordinary step of
granting a temporary restraining order to stop Chabad from exercising
its faith while the lawsuit progressed.
The plaintiffs were not content merely to sue Chabad. They also asked
the court to take the extraordinary step of granting a temporary
restraining order to stop Chabad from exercising its faith while the
lawsuit progressed. The chicken people expressly asked the court to rule
on matters of Jewish doctrine and to determine that Chabad and Rabbi
Tenenbaum would suffer “no harm” if they were prevented from exercising
their religion in the manner that they desired.
In order to grant a temporary restraining order, a court must determine
that the harm caused to the plaintiff absent the entry of the
restraining order outweighs the harm that the order would cause to the
defendant. In other words, the chicken people had to show they would
suffer more harm if Chabad were allowed to exercise their religion than
Chabad would suffer if it were prohibited from doing so.
One might assume that, in a country that considers the free exercise of
religion a fundamental constitutional right, a prohibition to practice
one’s religion would be seen as the infliction of a grave injury.
Astonishingly, the plaintiffs did not see it that way. Even more
amazingly, the judge, at least initially, agreed.
The plaintiffs openly dismissed the importance of Chabad’s fulfillment
of its religious obligation as understood by Rabbi Tenenbaum. They
argued that “the relative harm to Defendants” in preventing them from
exercising their religion was “minimal.” The chicken people argued that
not all Jews use live chickens for the ritual and that therefore doing
so must be “completely optional” and a “mere preference.” They implied
that Rabbi Tenenbaum preferred to use live chickens because doing so was
“more lucrative.”
Whether the chicken people’s explanation of Jewish law is the only valid
interpretation of Judaism — it is not — is beyond the point. Even if
such a “single correct” form of Judaism existed, American courts would
be neither qualified nor constitutionally empowered to settle such
doctrinal disputes.
And yet, on October 10, the District Court for the Central District of
California granted the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining
order, without explanation. In order to grant the request, the court
necessarily accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that the rabbi’s religious
practice was less important than he believed. Such a holding is
ominous.
The court did lift the restraining order moments before the start of the
holiday, but the plaintiffs had already been irreparably harmed — it
was too late for the rabbi and his coreligionists to exercise their
religion. Giving the judge the benefit of the doubt, we might say that
he did not understand the cruelty that he was inflicting on Rabbi
Tenenbaum and his congregation. But the judge’s inability to understand
the importance of a religious obligation demonstrates precisely why the
American notion of religious liberty has traditionally prohibited — and
must continue to prohibit — judges from making such determinations in
all but the most extreme of cases.
Despite the dire facts of this case, there are hopeful signs. Some of
the largest and most prominent religious organizations in American Jewry
quickly condemned the judge’s anti-Kapparot order and defended Rabbi
Tenenbaum’s religious liberty. In perhaps the swiftest and most forceful
demonstration of this awaking, the executive vice president of the
Rabbinical Council of America, America’s largest association of Orthodox
Rabbis, properly recognized that the judge’s initial decision
represented part of a “worrisome trend” whereby “government actions . . .
aim to limit religious expression when it clashes with values embraced
by parts of society.”
One practical step that religious organizations can take is to
support the passage of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in all 50
states.
For far too long, religious Americans in general, and Jews in
particular, have ignored warnings signs that their fundamental rights
were under siege. However, recent events, including the Obama
administration’s attempt to coerce nuns into providing their employees
with abortion-inducing drugs, have started to alert religious Americans
to the mounting danger.
One practical step that religious organizations can take is to support
the passage of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act in all 50 states.
Opponents of such laws have successfully misrepresented them as being
“anti-gay” and providing a “license to discriminate.” Such critiques are
nonsense. Those laws merely state that the government cannot
substantially punish a religious believer for exercising his religion
unless it can prove that it has a compelling reason to do so and that it
would not be possible to further that interest while preserving the
adherent’s religious liberty.
Defenders of religious liberty — and, in fact, of individual liberty —
should stand united and refute the chicken people’s argument that only
the government can determine morality and that an individual’s
understanding of his own consciences has “minimal” value.
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