I Will Resume Writing after Rosh Hashanah...Wishing All People of Good Will...Shana Tova u'Metuka.....

Writer's block

Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Throughout history, writer's block has been a documented problem.^[1]
 

Professionals who have struggled with the affliction include authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald^[2] and Joseph Mitchell,^[3] comic strip cartoonist Charles M. Schulz,^[4] composer Sergei Rachmaninoff,^[5] and songwriter Adele.^[6] Research concerning this topic was done in the late 1970s and 1980s. During this time, researchers were influenced by the Process and Post-Process movements, and therefore focused specifically on the writer's processes. The condition was first described in 1947 by psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler.^[7] However, some great writers may have already suffered from writer’s block years before Bergler described it, such as Herman Melville, who quit writing novels a few years after writing Moby-Dick.<sup>[8]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer%27s_block</sup>

Achas Shoalti - One Request....

Music Written By Paul (Feivel) Mendlowitz

"Now more than ever, how desperately we crave Reb Shraga Feivel’s purity, righteousness, and encouragement, to lift the stone that covers our hearts, weighing us down and blocking out the light."

In Love with Everything Holy --- In meeting Reb Shraga Feivel, a stone had been lifted

 

by Rabbi Judah Mischel

Maybe it was ordained On High that I should have to take a circuitous route to meet my rebbi — that I should first be required to survey the vast landscape of Yiddishkeit.

I grew up on Grove Street in old Monsey, our family the only Modern Orthodox baalei teshuvah — perennial outsiders in a predominantly yeshivish neighborhood. We were raised to be open, accepting, and respectful of all. My parents chose their Jewish destiny; we were always made very aware of our responsibility to think for ourselves and “do our own thing” in avodas Hashem. Our background allowed us the opportunity to explore the Torah’s many different pathways.

After a year in Eretz Yisrael, when I was trying to learn Torah seriously for the first time as a student at Yeshiva University, the challenge of “finding my place” in avodas Hashem was real. I was drawn to chassidus, engaged intellectually with Modern Orthodoxy, enamored of “the yeshivah world,” and ideologically at home in religious Zionism. There was so much beauty and opportunity in the diversity of Jewish communities. Yet so much seemed scripted, and the search for self, more like deciding which box to fit into, which set of cultural norms to adapt. As aspiring bnei Torah, did we really have to choose one way to the exclusion of all others?

While perusing old copies of the Jewish Observer between classes on the fifth floor of the YU library, I got my answer. I finally met the tzaddik who would become a formative influence and inspirational force in my life: Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz ztz”l. A tribute marking Reb Shraga Feivel’s 35th yahrtzeit penned by Rav Yitzchak Chinn, a close talmid, took my breath away.

The piece described an episode that took place in 1943, just a couple of blocks from where I’d eventually grow up in Monsey. Reb Shraga Feivel was sitting outdoors with a group of yungeleit, and asked one to turn over a large stone embedded in the ground. As he did, swarms of insects scurried about in every direction.

Said Reb Shraga Feivel: “Do you see those creatures? For their entire existence under that rock, they believed the world to be a dark, dreary place. By overturning that stone, you have revealed a whole new world, filled with light and beauty. In exposing them to the sun and sky, you’ve introduced a new dimension of reality into their lives.

“That is our mission in this world — to roll the heavy stones off souls and reveal the Yiddishe neshamah, to allow the ohr haShechinah to shine. When we have moved the boulders, we can lift our eyes to the Heavens, behold our Creator, and know our Yiddishkeit.”

In meeting Reb Shraga Feivel, I felt as though a stone had been lifted — and a new ray of light was shining in.

Reb Shraga Feivel defied definition and categorization; not tethered to any specific one of the shivim panim laTorah, he embodied the infinite expansiveness of Yiddishkeit. Reb Shraga Feivel’s way of learning Torah revealed its awesome unity: plumbing the commentary of Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch to explain challenging passages in Tanya — and vice versa. Chassidus, mussar, nigleh and nistar — for Reb Shraga Feivel, it was all One.

Even while quoting freely from the writings of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohein Kook, Rav Shraga Feivel maintained a close friendship with and deepest respect for Reb Yoelish, the Satmar Rebbe. At Torah Vodaath and Beis Medrash Elyon, classic yeshivah learning was complemented with shiurim on Tanach and tefillah, the teachings of Reb Tzaddok HaKohein of Lublin with insights on the intricacies of biblical grammar. Rambam’s Shemonah Perakim and Rebbe Nachman’s Sippurei Maasios, Chovos Halevavos, Ramchal and the Tzemach Tzedek.

Fusion implies bringing together of separate, individual parts to form a complete whole. Reb Shraga Feivel didn’t “fuse” discrete parts; he was drawing from a higher source.

“The Tree of Life was in the center of the Garden” (Bereishis 2:9). Reb Shraga Feivel taught: No matter how disparate the various ideas and approaches in Torah that we learn may seem to be, they are all different approaches to the Eitz Chayim. As long as the Tree of Life is “b’soch haGan” — and Torah is at the center — it can be approached from all directions.

Reb Shraga Feivel carried the dialectic within himself: charisma and humility, passionate activism and hisbonenus, intellect and emotion. A gadol who saw himself as a regular person, “Mr. Mendlowitz” shunned all honorifics and trappings of kavod. A public figure, constantly surrounded by talmidim, who relished privacy and quiet. An idealist with two feet firmly on the ground, Reb Shraga Feivel upheld unwavering fidelity to his Hungarian upbringing, while attuning his incredible sensitivity to the needs and realities of the postwar American Jewish community.

Uncompromising in his dedication to truth — at a time when ideology mattered — Reb Shraga Feivel was unabashed in voicing staunch opposition to innovations he felt threatened tradition, but still managed to maintain respectful working relationships with those he vehemently disagreed with.

“Hashem sefasai tiftach” — in asking the Ribbono shel Olam to open our mouths and sing His praise, we aim to emulate His infinite nature, to be big, expand our boundaries, open our borders. As Reb Shraga Feivel would say: “Der seichel iz elastish” — the mind is elastic. If we are intellectually honest, it can be stretched from one extreme to another. Hotziah mimasger nafshi.

Reb Shraga Feivel’s natural expansiveness validated drawing from approaches in Yiddishkeit that seemed to conflict: “Some souls drink from Tanya. Others from the Ramchal. Still others from Rav Hirsch. I drink from all of them, though at any given time, I might drink from one in particular.”

From Reb Shraga Feivel came “insider” confirmation that the search for truth and the fulfillment of ratzon Hashem is more about “a Torah perspective,” as opposed to “the Torah perspective.” “Taamu u’reu ki tov Hashem,” for a searching Jew, Reb Shraga Feivel catered a fresh, bountiful, and spiritually healthy smorgasbord of theological opportunity.

Reb Shraga Feivel’s open heart felt the joys and pain of Klal Yisrael, burned for Torah, and was deeply connected to Eretz Yisrael — in love with everything holy. Sensing the Divine vitality that pulsates through all of creation, he was a baal avodah who heard all of nature singing Hashem’s praise. Reb Shraga Feivel enjoyed spending time in nature, and often looked toward the sky, davening from what he called “the siddur of David Hamelech.” When a talmid inquired of his rebbi’s preference of davening next to a window: “He thinks I’m looking out, but actually, I’m looking in.”

Reb Shraga Feivel’s singular focus on “looking in” — on living a life of penimiyus, nurturing the inner worlds of others, and encouraging in-depth limud HaTorah — inoculated against superficiality.

Every Jew can be an “insider.” With Torah at the center, we are all equally close.

Reb Shraga Feivel suffered a heart attack when he heard that the Old City had fallen into Jordanian hands during Israel’s War for Independence. Doctors warned him against learning Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah — Reb Shraga Feivel’s excitement when learning the heiliger Baal Shem made his sensitive Jewish heart race dangerously.

“V’hasirosi lev ha’even v’nasati lachem lev basar.” In the end of days the Navi Yechezkel promises that Hashem will remove our hearts of stone and restore our natural hearts of flesh — a fleishige heart that senses that every moment in this world is revelation of Hashgachah pratis and an opportunity to draw close to Hashem. Or as Reb Shraga Feivel would say, “Der grester glick fun leben iz leben alein — the greatest fortune in life is life itself.”

Again and again I have returned to Yonoson Rosenblum’s masterful biography of Reb Shraga Feivel; it is a book that changes my life at each new stage I reread it, each time feeling a deeper yearning for Reb Shraga Feivel’s guidance, his expansive heart filled with ahavas Hashem and ahavas Yisrael, nuance and complexity.

Working in the Jewish community, I am privileged to see the absolute best of Klal Yisrael. But even when everyone has only the best of intentions, things can often get personal, and worthy mosdos of different stripes step on each other’s toes. Dedicated professionals and volunteers, even rebbeim and menahalim, passionate for their specific cause, can get territorial over donors, programs — even social services. It’s hard not to get caught up in all of it. Business is business, people are people.

Asking myself, “What would Reb Shraga Feivel do?” invariably leads to clarity and magnanimity, ayin tovah and expansiveness. Reb Shraga Feivel was never confined or defined by where he worked — even by the yeshivos he founded, nurtured, and led. When the fledgling Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin was struggling with recruitment, Reb Shraga Feivel transferred some of his most prized talmidim there, sending his best guys to join “the competition.”

It wasn’t that Reb Shraga Feivel was so confident in his yeshivah that he was unafraid of competition; he simply saw that in the world of truth and penimiyus, there is no competition. Ovdei Hashem are all working for the same Boss, at different points in the Garden, facing the same Center.

Reb Shraga Feivel would remind his talmidim — in and out of yeshivah — that regardless of our professional identity, we are all “sheluchei d’Rachmana,” messengers on a mission from G-d.

As Reb Shraga Feivel’s 70th yahrtzeit approaches on Gimmel Elul, I am thinking about the tzaddikim hatehorim described by Rav Kook — the purely righteous who do not complain about darkness, but instead increase light. Now more than ever, how desperately we crave Reb Shraga Feivel’s purity, righteousness, and encouragement, to lift the stone that covers our hearts, weighing us down and blocking out the light.

I’d grown up literally around the corner from that tree under which Reb Shraga Feivel sat with his talmidim decades earlier, feeling like a perennial outsider. Maybe my not being born to a particular derech with set minhagim and clear mesorah was Hashem’s way of setting the stage for the unlikely kesher I feel with Reb Shraga Feivel. If in our search for meaning we are motivated l’Sheim Shamayim, then we are all insiders.

When we aspire to live each moment with penimiyus, we will find our place in the Torah world, cleaving to the Eitz Hachayim, the Tree of Life at the center of our lives.

Enough complaining about our generation and all that is lacking! “L’oro neilech” — the time for us has come in our search for dveikus to do the heavy lifting, for the ohr haShechinah, for Soul-Glow.

Tzaddikim b’mitasam nikra’im chayim — Reb Shraga Feivel zy”a, chai v’kayam!

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 722. Rabbi Judah Mischel, executive director of Camp HASC and former rebbi at Yeshivas Reishis, is a popular teacher of chassidus and founder of Tzama Nafshi, an organization dedicated to fostering Jewish education and inspiration. He lives with his family in Ramat Beit Shemesh, where he is a talmid muvhak of mashpia Rav Avraham Tzvi Kluger and translator of his works.

http://www.mishpacha.com/Browse/Article/10876/In-Love-with-Everything-Holy

"Only a few months earlier, Reb Shraga Feivel, the great architect of Torah education in America, had placed a full-page ad in the Morgen Journal, the most widely read Yiddish newspaper of its day. The anonymous ad excoriated American Jews for their inaction during the Holocaust and called upon them to rebuild the Torah institutions and the vibrant Torah world that had been lost."

Rabbi Binyomin (Bernard) Goldenberg

In the Land of No, He Said YES

Several years ago, Rabbi Binyomin (Bernard) Goldenberg passed away in Yerushalayim, having lived the last three decades of his life in Eretz Yisrael. But over his long career with Torah Umesorah, he played a vital role in radically reshaping the spiritual landscape of Judaism in America. In an exclusive interview with Mishpacha only months before his passing, Rabbi Goldenberg shared some of his recollections, opening a rare window into the history of American Jewry in the early twentieth century.

 Sitting down with Mishpacha to reminisce, Rabbi Goldenberg began with a dramatic episode that was a pivotal moment in his life.

The year was 1946. While Europe’s rich world of yeshivos, with its centuries-long legacy of limud haTorah, lay in ruins, America’s yeshivah system was in its infancy. From a spiritual standpoint, North America was a parched wasteland. Only a relative handful of American boys were studying in the few yeshivos that existed; the rest were attending public schools. New York boasted a total of 7,000 students learning in twenty-seven yeshivos, and only three Jewish schools existed outside of New York — in Baltimore, Chicago, and Jersey City.

While Jews lived in many cities and towns across the United States, the level of Torah observance and knowledge was abysmally low. Many Jews had come to view the Torah and its precepts as antiquated and irrelevant, an obstacle to their pursuit of the security and prosperity that America had to offer.

This was the gloomy backdrop for a momentous encounter between the young Binyomin (Bernard) Goldenberg, then a student in Torah Vodaath, and his mentor, the legendary Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, one wintry afternoon in 1946. It is likely that Binyomin had no idea of the fateful nature of the conversation that was about to take place, of the startling new direction his life was about to take, and of the impact it would have on the entire future of American chinuch.

Only a few months earlier, Reb Shraga Feivel, the great architect of Torah education in America, had placed a full-page ad in the Morgen Journal, the most widely read Yiddish newspaper of its day. The anonymous ad excoriated American Jews for their inaction during the Holocaust and called upon them to rebuild the Torah institutions and the vibrant Torah world that had been lost. The ad was Reb Shraga Feivel’s plea to the slumbering Jewish public, his effort to awaken them to the aching need for a revival of Torah study and observance. He signed the advertisement, “Speaking to you is a Jew whose heart is pained by the destruction of our people, and who hopes that Torah in America will yet be rebuilt in the spirit of Torah and mesorah.” That last phrase was an allusion to Torah Umesorah (the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools), which Reb Shraga Feivel had founded in 1944.

Reb Shraga Feivel’s advertisement had elicited at least one response. A Mr. Leventhal, who lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, had written to the newspaper seeking to contact the anonymous advertiser, and the newspaper had forwarded his letter to Reb Shraga Feivel. Leventhal was a junk peddler who spent every Sunday collecting money in order to pay a melamed to teach the community’s children, and he was most interested in founding a school where the children could receive a formal Jewish education.

On that windswept Brooklyn street, as he headed toward the bus that would take him home to Williamsburg, Reb Shraga Feivel withdrew Leventhal’s letter from his pocket and handed it to Binyomin Goldenberg. Along with the letter, Reb Shraga Feivel handed the young man a directive he would never forget: “Binyomin, you must pack your bags and go to St. Paul, Minnesota. You must help this man build a day school there.”

Binyomin was stunned. A flurry of objections arose from his confused thoughts. “But it’s cold in Minnesota! And I don’t know how to get there!”

“You’ll find out,” was Reb Shraga Feivel’s even response.

“And I don’t know what to do when I get there!” Goldenberg continued to object. “How do I open a day school? At least give me the phone number of someone I can talk to, someone who can explain how to do this. Besides,” he added, “you just gave me a different job here. How can I leave that position?” Only two months earlier, Reb Shraga Feivel had informed Binyomin, in a similarly unceremonious fashion, that he was to be the founding editor of Olomeinu, a magazine in the spirit of the Torah for young Jewish readers.

Reb Shraga Feivel was unmoved by Binyomin’s protests. To his mind, someone else could take over the helm of Olomeinu. He had already selected Binyomin Goldenberg as the emissary of Torah Vodaath to plant the seeds for an oasis of Torah in the spiritual desert of Minnesota.

Mentor and student continued their intense exchange as one bus after another pulled into the bus stop and left without Reb Shraga Feivel. Finally, when the seventh bus arrived, Reb Shraga Feivel decided to board.

“I’m not going!” Binyomin told him emphatically.

“There will yet come a day,” Reb Shraga Feivel called out to him through the bus’s still-open doors, “when they will invoke the words of Yirmiyahu HaNavi about you.”

Binyomin stared. “What words?”

“Don’t you know what he says?” the gadol replied. “Yirmiyahu says: Zacharti lach chesed ne’urayich, ahavas kelulosayich, lechtaich acharai ba’midbar, b’eretz lo zeruah. We read the words b’eretz lo zeruah as ‘a land that has not been sown’ — but that phrase can also be taken to mean a land that has been sown with lo, with ‘no,’ a land where negativity is embedded everywhere.

Minnesota is such a land, a place of negativity, where no one believes that a Jewish day school can thrive and that Jewish children can learn Torah and remain faithful to it. You will go to that land, and you will overcome the lo that is sown in every corner of it!”

http://www.mishpacha.com/browse/article/853/in-the-land-of-no-he-said-yes

Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz ztvk"l *** A Student Reminisces *** Approaching The Yahrzeit the 3rd Day Of Elul ---- "He came to class prepared to teach with a wealth of Torah at his finger tips. The vast resources of Chazal were integrated into his personality, yet with his genius, he concealed it."

RAV SHRAGA FEIVEL MENDLOWITZ ZTVK"L

 READ :http://agudathisrael.org/wp-content/uploads/1984/11/JO1983-V17-N02.pdf

7 Orthodox Sex Abuse Survivors Break their Silence!

In our sample of 372 Jewish adult men and women from the United States and Canada, we found a three-fold incidence of rape (involuntary penetration) among individuals who were raised Orthodox but no longer affiliate as such....

Sexual abuse and religion: A call for compassion 

 

A recent scientific study that I authored suggests that aside from sexual abuse being a horrific crime that can have disastrous psychological consequences, it may also thwart religious development.

My patient – a 17-year old female from a local religious community – was crying profusely. “My teacher was aghast when I asked a religious question in class, and everyone was whispering about me the rest of the day. I just don’t fit in.” She was right to be distraught. Aside from feeling ostracized and ashamed, she felt bitterly and utterly alone since no one around her understood that her spiritual questioning stemmed from an incident of sexual abuse that had occurred many years earlier.

A recent scientific study that I authored suggests that aside from sexual abuse being a horrific crime that can have disastrous psychological consequences, it may also thwart religious development.

In our sample of 372 Jewish adult men and women from the United States and Canada, we found a three-fold incidence of rape (involuntary penetration) among individuals who were raised Orthodox but no longer affiliate as such. We also found that across our entire sample, a history of childhood sexual abuse was correlated with less belief in God, lower religious observance, and diminished religious identity.

These findings are consistent with countless anecdotal accounts of individuals leaving religious communities in the wake of abuse. Such a phenomenon makes intuitive sense: Suffering abuse at the hands of ostensibly religious individuals can engender sentiments of disillusionment, betrayal, and mistrust in religion. More broadly, abuse can raise profound spiritual questions (e.g., why would a good God let bad things happen?) and spawn anxious or even avoidant attachment to God. When these changes are not handled delicately with compassion, validation, and an eye towards inclusion, victims feel socially marginalized and are likely to leave the fold.

To make matters worse, psychological science has found religious beliefs and practices to be of help to many people in healing from abuse. A substantial body of literature suggests that spirituality can provide solace, calm and hope, and that using spirituality to cope with adverse life events is associated with better outcomes. Indeed, in my study, stronger religious identity and greater adherence to religious life were associated with lower levels of mental distress and even decreased odds of having a psychiatric diagnosis. This suggests that sexual abuse victims who remain engaged in spirituality fare better than those who do not. As such, religious decline in the context of abuse is particularly tragic, since victims become distanced from the very resource that can help them move towards recovery.

The vast majority of writing on sexual abuse and religion has called upon religious communities to publicly condemn the immorality of abuse and mandate reporting of perpetrators to child welfare agencies. This backlash against the prevailing norm of cover-ups, nepotism, and scandals has created significant legal pressure on religious communities to take matters of abuse seriously. As a result, in my clinical experience, it is now fairly common for religious schools to conduct wrap-around inquiries and take measures to protect students when allegations are raised, and file reports when evidence of abuse is apparent.

It goes without saying that all cases of child sexual abuse and even suspected abuse should be reported to local authorities. This is not only a legal requirement for teachers, rabbis and other community leaders, but a moral one in order to physically protect children.

However, legal intervention is insufficient to help child abuse victims heal. For that to happen, religious communities must recognize that the consequences of abuse are not only psychological or social in nature. My research suggests that spiritual struggles and religious decline may be natural processes for some victims of abuse. These are not an intentional affront to religion, rather they are a normative psychological process that must be expected. Shunning and socially isolating individuals who present with religious questions only engenders greater disconnection, and in the case of abuse victims this can leave them bereft of the interpersonal and spiritual resources needed to heal. For all of these reasons, I call upon religious communities to respond to religious questioning and decline – irrespective of its origins – with validation and compassion.

The author is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and director of the McLean Hospital Spirituality and Mental Health Program.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Sexual-abuse-and-religion-A-call-for-compassion-564064

Rabbi Moshe Felg/Peleg is a respected personality in the Haredi street in Jerusalem. He’s the head of “Shirat Yerushalayim”, a Midrasha for Baalot Teshuva; many of his shiurim are available on YouTube, and the Midrasha’s website says he founds and runs projects around the country and the world: workshops, study days and seminars for strengthening Jewish identity for youths. He also runs non-profits like the “Roots centre” in Jerusalem...

Moshe Felg/Peleg

Natanel (not his real name), 24, from Jerusalem, decided one day that he wouldn’t put up with it anymore. In one impulsive moment, he picked up the telephone and confronted his greatest fear – the Rabbi who he claims sexually assaulted him in his youth. “My dear, you essentially touched me, it all started from you, my dear, not me” claimed Rabbi Felg, in the first sentence of the charged conversation between them. He went on to apologize and even offered Netanel financial compensation to pay for psychological counselling.

Rabbi Moshe Felg is a respected personality in the Haredi street in Jerusalem. He’s the head of “Shirat Yerushalayim”, a Midrasha for Baalot Teshuva; many of his shiurim are available on YouTube, and the Midrasha’s website says he founds and runs projects around the country and the world: workshops, study days and seminars for strengthening Jewish identity for youths. He also runs non-profits like the “Roots centre” in Jerusalem.

Netanel was 13 years old when he started to immerse in a mikveh before shabbat, as is common in the Haredi community. This is Netanel’s story as he told Yediot Aharonot.

“I always went to my local mikveh before shabbat, and Rabbi Moshe Felg who lived near my parents would sit in the warm water,” he explained. “At first he’d stretch out his feet and stroke my legs with them. That happened a lot. Once we were alone, he put his feet on me and I froze. When another bather came in, Felg left and told me to follow him. I followed him without knowing where we were going. He took me into the bathroom of a local synagogue and sexually abused me. I remember at least three times in the bathroom. I would follow him without understanding. He’d smile and wink at me, and I felt like he cared about me and that he chose me when he could have chosen any other kid. On the other hand, I felt paralyzed.”

“Every time he took me to the bathroom I told myself I wouldn’t go in, but I still went in, and after it happened I felt broken. I wasn’t in control, it was a mess in my head. Felg would ask me to touch him, convince me that I’d enjoy it, but I felt frozen. One time it happened he suggested using shampoo, because ‘it will help’. He would rub our parts together and I’d stare into a corner of the bathroom, frozen. I don’t know how long it lasted. As a child, I blamed only myself for what happened, and for ‘failing’ the Rabbi”

Netanel, a good boy with strong grades, left the Yeshiva to hang out on the streets.

“I just got up and left”, he says. “Nobody managed to help me. They didn’t know what was happening and I was so caught up in guilt, especially because he was a neighbour I saw all the time. It affected me for all of my adolescence. I remember when I received my IDF beret I felt like such a man. I came home proud of myself for what I achieved, but then he passed me and waved hello, and I was paralyzed again… only after I got married did I understand that a child couldn’t consent, and that I wasn’t guilty.”

Netanel decided to call Rabbi Felg after reading an article about a pedophile. The whole conversation was recorded in which Rabbi Felg seems to accept Netanel’s story and apologizes to him, while also insisting that he thought he was older than 13.

Rabbi Felg/Peleg denies the story and attempted to get a court order banning its publication. 

Netanel was forced to appear in court, and the Jerusalem court accepted that his story should be heard.

http://www.jewishcommunitywatch.org/i-was-thirteen-you-used-me-i-have-to-live-with-it-every-day/

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen faces two felony counts of engaging in electronic communication relating to or describing conduct with a child, the Pioneer Press reported.

 

 Aryeh Cohen, 44, of St. Louis Park, was among those arrested along with several others in the undercover operation, which was carried out in the lead-up to the Super Bowl at various locations around the metro, including North St. Paul, criminal charges say.

 

He was charged in Ramsey County District Court Tuesday with one count of soliciting a child or someone believed to be a child through electronic communication to engage in sexual conduct, as well as an additional count of engaging in electronic communication relating or describing sexual conduct with a child.

A spokeswoman for the Minneapolis Community Kollel, where Cohen served as a rabbi and director of youth outreach, said the community just learned of the “disturbing” allegations facing Cohen Tuesday and was stunned.

“We have never received a complaint about Rabbi Cohen from anybody on any thing, and so the Kollel is shocked,” Amy Rotenberg said.

 READ MORE: https://www.twincities.com/2018/08/02/minneapolis-rabbi-aryeh-cohen-among-those-charged-in-twin-cities-underage-sex-stings/

Minnesota rabbi charged in child sex sting operation

 

Aryeh Cohen, who worked in student outreach, allegedly communicated with federal agent posing as 15-year-old boy

 A Minnesota rabbi who works in student outreach was charged in a child sex sting conducted earlier this year.

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen faces two felony counts of engaging in electronic communication relating to or describing conduct with a child, the Pioneer Press reported. 

Some 17 people have been charged in recent days in the undercover operation.

In most of the cases, the men responded to ads posted on Craigslist by undercover agents posing as young women or men seeking a hook-up.

Cohen, 44, who has no prior record, was arrested in February outside an apartment in North St. Paul, where the federal agent posing as a 15-year-old boy suggested they meet after a week of communicating through a hook-up site, the Forward reported.

Cohen was the director of outreach for the Minneapolis Community Kollel, an Orthodox community center that offers seminars and classes on Jewish texts and religious life. He ran the Kollel’s JWAY program for college students and recent graduates. He and his wife, Adina, also led private text studies with male and female students at the Hillel on the University of Minnesota campus, according to the Forward, though he was not employed by Hillel.

Cohen’s name was removed from the Kollel’s website.

The rabbi will appear in court in September. If convicted, he faces up to six years in prison.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/minnesota-rabbi-charged-in-child-sex-sting-operation/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=984e4c4be5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_03_11_53&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-984e4c4be5-55186525

“Ten percent were criminals!” McHugh said. “Imagine if 10 percent of the graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton at a given point were criminals!”

How the Church Hoodwinked Its Anti-Abuse Experts

 

“They haven’t done enough penance." In Hebrew this means Teshuva... Just like the Rabbis' cure!

 

In 2003, an American Catholic prelate shared his diagnosis of the roots of the Church’s abuse crisis with a group of lay experts. The problem, he said, traced back to the “psychological immaturity” of many young seminarians, which meant that they couldn’t cope with the rigors of priestly life and acted out sexually as a result. The solution, per this powerful churchman, was to institute better “psychological testing” to sift the wheat from the chaff among would-be priests.

The expert group was known as the National Review Board, established by the U.S. bishops conference in 2002 when the crisis first came to light to the dismay of American Catholics. Its members included then-Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, media executive William Burleigh, New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Petra Maes, California congressman (and future CIA director) Leon Panetta, and the Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Paul McHugh, among others.

The prelate in question—the one who blamed the mental immaturity of seminarians—was Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick aka “Uncle Ted,” the frocked predator who last week resigned from the College of Cardinals as the abuse accusations against him multiplied. Now, in the wake of McCarrick debacle, at least one charter member of the National Review Board is furious with what he sees as the Church’s failure to come clean in the last decade.

“Why didn’t they tell us—trusted laity asked to lend our expertise—why didn’t they tell us about the supervisory nature of the abuse and especially the McCarrick situation?” McHugh, often described as the preeminent psychiatrist of his generation, told me in an interview on Monday. “It’s got to be more than McCarrick” who is held accountable but “all of them, since it’s been revealed that all was not revealed.” He added: “We, the charter members, were kept in the dark.”

The bishops tasked the National Review Board to uncover, first, the scope of the abuse problem and, second, its causes and context. At the time, McHugh felt that the board did a fine job with uncovering the scope of predatory behavior in the Church.

The findings were not pretty. “There were many priests involved and many children impacted,” he recalled, “and this was mainly homosexual abuse of boys and young men.” As many as 10 percent of seminarians in the first half of the 1970s may have been implicated, according to one influential study.

“Ten percent were criminals!” McHugh said. “Imagine if 10 percent of the graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton at a given point were criminals!”

As alarming as the statistics were, there was a silver lining. It was clear to McHugh that “children hadn’t been abused forever,” across 2,000 years of Church history. Rather, Catholics were dealing with a specific “epidemiological surge” that had risen in the 1960s, crested in the ‘70s, and receded by 1980. That meant that it was possible to root out the scourge and protect future generations of children and young people, provided the Church understood its real origins.

Enter McCarrick and his “psychological immaturity” diagnosis. Set aside the eye-watering hypocrisy of a serial abuser besmirching the character of thousands of priests and seminarians, even as he himself wounded their souls and bodies. The bigger issue, to McHugh’s mind, is that such psychologizing conveniently obscures the responsibility of prelates who rose through the ranks in those years and helped create the culture of abuse, either directly (by fondling the faithful and younger priests) or indirectly (by averting their gazes and keeping mum).

Abusers can sexualize the culture and physical space of an institution, McHugh explained. “So to have a cardinal or bishop [with such proclivities] running the seminaries, no wonder we’re seeing this! And this is not just one we’re talking about [McCarrick]. This is something that was systematic.” When the board finished its work, there were those who warned McHugh that he and his colleagues hadn’t gone far enough. Today he thinks that the pessimists were right.

Even now, the veteran psychiatrist warns, there is a risk that the Church will lose sight of the moral dimension by viewing the crisis through a primarily medical or legal or financial lens. “The Catholic Church in relation to this problem, whatever the causes, was not dealing with this in a Catholic way.” The Church, in other words, has lost sight of sin and how to expiate it. Priests who sit in the confessional know the process: admission of fault, an earnest commitment not to fall again, then penance.

“They haven’t done enough penance—moral penance,” McHugh said. “We should have a day a year when everyone from the Pope down shows penance for this. If we have a yearly march for pro-life and whatnot, we also have to have a day of ‘God have mercy’” over the abuse crisis. And the Church, which knows something about sin and its expiation, must remain vigilant. If it happened at one point, and there was insufficient disclosure and penance, the abuse might return.

For McHugh, a devout Catholic, all this is deeply personal. “This is the Church that nourished me as a child and guided me as an adult,” he said, which means it “pains me” to chastise its leaders. “But I am not so religiously orthodox as to not be offended when I’m misled.”

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/culture-civilization/religion/how-catholic-church-hoodwinked-its-anti-abuse-experts/

All the children who were exposed to the measles received a vaccine and none of them currently have the disease, Levy said, because there is a vaccine that works over 99% of the time. “We call on all children to get vaccinated,” he said.

80 child cancer patients exposed to measles at Petah Tikva hospital 

 

Tel Hashomer Infectious Diseases Prevention Unit immunology researcher Aylana Reiss-Mandel said that it is precisely because of vaccines’ success that some people don’t recognize their importance.

1 minute read.

• >
  Are enough Israelis vaccinated against the measles?
• >
  Measles cases spike suddenly
•  

A three-year-old boy with measles exposed an estimated 80 children from all over Israel to the disease at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva.

Infectious Diseases Unit director Yitzhak Levy said they ask parents if their children had received regular vaccines and the father of this child had said that he did.

“You have to ask his dad, I don’t know why [he didn’t get vaccinated] but the fact is, he didn’t,” Levy said. “Dad says it’s for technical reasons – ask him.”

Had the hospital staff known the child had not been vaccinated, they would have quarantined him and not have let him walk around, he said.

The child was treated in the hemato-oncology ward, due to a blood disease, where cancer patients – whose immune systems are already compromised – are also treated.

“He got the regular treatment, and went through various stations in the hospital,” the hospital’s assistant to the spokesperson Linor Nevo-Albo said. “Some days afterward, we got a report that the same child was indeed sick with measles, and therefore we checked all the children who were perhaps with him, in the same environment.”

All the children who were exposed to the measles received a vaccine and none of them currently have the disease, Levy said, because there is a vaccine that works over 99% of the time.

“We call on all children to get vaccinated,” he said.

Tel Hashomer Infectious Diseases Prevention Unit immunology researcher Aylana Reiss-Mandel said that it is precisely because of vaccines’ success that some people don’t recognize their importance.

“Today we really don’t see the diseases that we’re talking about vaccinating, and thank God that we don’t, so it’s hard to understand the importance and how far we’ve come because of vaccines,” she said.

“Even with herd immunity, there’s always a very, very small risk of contracting something... with somebody who hasn’t been immunized.”

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/80-child-cancer-patients-exposed-to-measles-at-Petah-Tikva-hospital-563803?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=1-8-2018&utm_content=80-child-cancer-patients-exposed-to-measles-at-petah-tikva-hospital-563803

The outbreak mostly affected young children; the median age of the people affected was three. All of the cases were Orthodox Jewish persons in the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park..Send the bill to the rabbis and toss them in jail!

Vaccine-refusing community drove outbreak that cost $395K, sickened babies

 

Curbing an outbreak is expensive. Should vaccine refusers help foot the bill? 

 

331

 

A 2013 measles outbreak rooted in a vaccine-refusing community in Brooklyn, New York cost the city’s health department an estimated $394,448, requiring 87 employees to collectively spend more than 10,000 hours on outbreak response and control, according to an analysis published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

During the outbreak, which spanned March through July, health workers quickly mobilized to track down more than 3,300 people exposed to the highly contagious, potentially life-threatening virus. Workers then determined the vaccination status of those exposed and doled out prophylactic treatments or vaccines to those who would take them. To get the word out about the health threat, workers contacted local doctors’ offices, schools, and daycares. They also placed announcements in local newspapers, set up a telephone hotline, and held community briefings on the situation. 

Almost a third of the employees involved in the response were working outside of their job descriptions, diverting resources from other critical public health activities. The cost estimate combined a conservative assessment of employee compensation ($332,000) and supply costs, such as lab testing and advertising ($62,000).

The authors of the analysis, led by Jennifer Rosen of New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, summed up the situation succinctly: “The response and containment of measles outbreaks are resource intensive.”

That preventable burden on the health department’s operations and budget is in addition to the disease’s toll on public health. Healthcare workers confirmed 58 cases of measles in the outbreak, which was kicked off when a teenager in the community brought back a case of measles after a visit to London. The outbreak mostly affected young children; the median age of the people affected was three. All of the cases were Orthodox Jewish persons in the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park.

Forty-five of the cases (78 percent) were in patients older than one who were unvaccinated due to vaccine refusal. Twelve cases (21 percent) were in infants aged less than one who were too young to vaccinate. And the remaining case was in an adult who had an ambiguous vaccination history.

Serious complications in the outbreak included one person developing pneumonia and a pregnant woman suffering a miscarriage. Health workers also found that a newborn had been exposed to the virus in utero and had detectable measles virus in their urine and respiratory tract directly after birth. The baby’s parents declined treatment with a prophylactic immunoglobulin.

In an accompanying editorial, Jason Schwartz of Yale’s department of health policy and management notes that such insular communities of vaccine refusers can hide in nationwide statistics showing otherwise strong vaccination coverage—and most of the time they reap the benefits of “herd immunity” or community-scale immunity due to sufficient rates of vaccination.

“Those who voluntarily choose to forego vaccination are thus free-riders, benefiting from this public good without contributing to it,” Schwartz concludes. One possible solution, he writes: vaccination refusal fees that would go to cover outbreak response costs, among other vaccination-related expenses.

 

 “Such a fee would reflect the shared benefits among a community that result from a well-functioning vaccination system and the corresponding shared responsibility for contributing to and sustaining those benefits,” he writes.

Of course, such a fee would likely be highly controversial and researchers are still trying to work out if other strategies, such as stricter exemption rules and better doctor-patient communication, that could cut down on vaccine refusal without fees. In the meantime, Schwartz notes, the new analysis provides “additional evidence that decisions to delay or decline vaccination result in potentially serious health risks to those individuals and their communities as well as significant burdens and costs to health departments and the health care system.”

JAMA PEdiatrics, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.1024  (About DOIs).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/vaccine-refusing-community-drove-outbreak-that-cost-395k-sickened-babies/

When Was The Last Time Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky Got Something Right?

“What about the people who clean and sweep in the school?” argued Kamenetzky. “They are mostly Mexican and are unvaccinated. If there was a problem, the children would already have gotten sick.” “I see vaccinations as the problem. It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”

 READ MORE: https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2015/05/when-was-last-time-rabbi-shmuel.html