Unorthodox-Jew A Critical View of Orthodox Judaism

The thought of a sex offender next door is bad enough. But the sex offender I never see coming is the one I’m really worried about.

2012-01-30T12:33:00.003-05:00

Parental Quandary Considered: The Sex Offender Next Door Is Not the Problem

By KJ DELL’ANTONIA

C.’s quandary was simple, and read something like a nightmare (or the opening sequence of an episode of “Law and Order”). She’d received notice from the local sheriff that a registered sex offender was moving into the house next door to hers. This was no “Romeo and Juliet” misunderstood teen, but someone with a genuine history of preying on young men and boys, although not as young as C.’s toddler son.

A few days after C. wrote me, a friend e-mailed from Newton, Mass. A popular second-grade teacher at her local elementary school had just been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a girl and filming it, and of posting to an international Web site that trafficked in child pornography. Rather than a sullen, mug-shot figure from an offender registry, this was a teacher described as “beloved,” one who took kids rock climbing and whom many parents adored. Which suggested to me that perhaps the biggest danger of having a sex offender next door might not be the sex offender himself, but that it might blind one to the dangers that could lie elsewhere.

The most respected commenters picked up on just that. Chris Martin put it simply: “Next door is pretty bad but we must remember that most perps live in the same house. Mine did.”

This doesn’t mean commenters weren’t sympathetic to the need to warn a child about the known danger. Maggie wrote:

In this situation I would certainly tell my kids they were not allowed in his house, no matter what he said. I would also tell them that, at one time in his life, he did something bad to children and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them. I would also point out that sometimes people can change and grow, so I’m not going to be unfriendly to him. But I would tell my children point blank that they are never to be alone with him, no matter what. I would point out other adults they might turn to instead, should the need arise — perhaps a neighbor, a teacher, a police officer.

The “sex offender next door” raises a gut reaction. As M.D. said, a home should be the safest of all environments. In C.’s situation, “I would lose that feeling of security and more importantly, it would forever change the way I parented my children.” M.D. would move without hesitation, but as many of us noted, C.’s ability to sell her home is probably compromised. It’s one thing to find a way to deal with the sex offender next door, and another to buy into the problem.

Readers had excellent suggestions for how C. can cope. “Convene a meeting of neighbors,” suggested eleanor. “I would also use the occasion as good reason to really connect with friends in the neighborhood, with special attention to communicating with each other about the whereabouts of our kids,” boo agreed. “I would not act paranoid, but matter-of-fact about the dangers that apparently exist all around us. At least this sex offender is known, and hopefully easily avoided.” SM suggested a good fence and a security system, and many, many commenters had good words with which to address the situation with a child. If all of us practice what we preach in that respect, our children should be prepared to handle the gravest of situations.

But do we? It’s easy to say we talk to our children about the risks, and harder to do, and especially to do well.

No one wants a sex offender to move in next door, but it’s that Newton second-grade teacher who should heighten our fears, and our awareness.

“Mr. E,” as he was called, underwent a check of his state criminal history before he was hired by the school district, and posted a more extensive background check when he registered to offer baby-sitting services on Care.com (a popular child-care Web site). “No red flags were raised,” reports the Boston Globe, because there were no flags to raise. The teacher in question, David Ettlinger, had never been convicted of a crime — and still hasn’t been.

So while my sympathies are still with C., I’m not finding myself inclined to go look at our state’s sex offender registry tonight.

Instead, I’m wondering if I’ve really had all these talks I mean to have, and think I’ve had, with all of my children.

Do they really understand what’s O.K., and what’s not, and what they need to tell me about? Do they know that I’ll believe and protect them no matter who or what?

The thought of a sex offender next door is bad enough. But the sex offender I never see coming is the one I’m really worried about.

READ MORE:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/parental-quandary-considered-the-sex-offender-next-door-is-not-the-problem/

Stop Drugging Your Kids!

2012-01-29T03:01:00.000-05:00

Ritalin Gone Wrong

By L. ALAN SROUFE - THE NEW YORK TIMES

THREE million children in this country take drugs for problems in focusing. Toward the end of last year, many of their parents were deeply alarmed because there was a shortage of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that they considered absolutely essential to their children’s functioning.

But are these drugs really helping children? Should we really keep expanding the number of prescriptions filled?

In 30 years there has been a twentyfold increase in the consumption of drugs for attention-deficit disorder.

As a psychologist who has been studying the development of troubled children for more than 40 years, I believe we should be asking why we rely so heavily on these drugs.

Attention-deficit drugs increase concentration in the short term, which is why they work so well for college students cramming for exams. But when given to children over long periods of time, they neither improve school achievement nor reduce behavior problems. The drugs can also have serious side effects, including stunting growth.

Sadly, few physicians and parents seem to be aware of what we have been learning about the lack of effectiveness of these drugs.

What gets publicized are short-term results and studies on brain differences among children. Indeed, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that seem at first glance to support medication. It is because of this partial foundation in reality that the problem with the current approach to treating children has been so difficult to see.

Back in the 1960s I, like most psychologists, believed that children with difficulty concentrating were suffering from a brain problem of genetic or otherwise inborn origin. Just as Type I diabetics need insulin to correct problems with their inborn biochemistry, these children were believed to require attention-deficit drugs to correct theirs. It turns out, however, that there is little to no evidence to support this theory.

In 1973, I reviewed the literature on drug treatment of children for The New England Journal of Medicine. Dozens of well-controlled studies showed that these drugs immediately improved children’s performance on repetitive tasks requiring concentration and diligence. I had conducted one of these studies myself. Teachers and parents also reported improved behavior in almost every short-term study. This spurred an increase in drug treatment and led many to conclude that the “brain deficit” hypothesis had been confirmed.

But questions continued to be raised, especially concerning the drugs’ mechanism of action and the durability of effects. Ritalin and Adderall, a combination of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, are stimulants. So why do they appear to calm children down? Some experts argued that because the brains of children with attention problems were different, the drugs had a mysterious paradoxical effect on them.

However, there really was no paradox. Versions of these drugs had been given to World War II radar operators to help them stay awake and focus on boring, repetitive tasks. And when we reviewed the literature on attention-deficit drugs again in 1990 we found that all children, whether they had attention problems or not, responded to stimulant drugs the same way. Moreover, while the drugs helped children settle down in class, they actually increased activity in the playground. Stimulants generally have the same effects for all children and adults. They enhance the ability to concentrate, especially on tasks that are not inherently interesting or when one is fatigued or bored, but they don’t improve broader learning abilities.

And just as in the many dieters who have used and abandoned similar drugs to lose weight, the effects of stimulants on children with attention problems fade after prolonged use. Some experts have argued that children with A.D.D. wouldn’t develop such tolerance because their brains were somehow different. But in fact, the loss of appetite and sleeplessness in children first prescribed attention-deficit drugs do fade, and, as we now know, so do the effects on behavior. They apparently develop a tolerance to the drug, and thus its efficacy disappears. Many parents who take their children off the drugs find that behavior worsens, which most likely confirms their belief that the drugs work. But the behavior worsens because the children’s bodies have become adapted to the drug. Adults may have similar reactions if they suddenly cut back on coffee, or stop smoking.

TO date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve. Until recently, most studies of these drugs had not been properly randomized, and some of them had other methodological flaws.

But in 2009, findings were published from a well-controlled study that had been going on for more than a decade, and the results were very clear. The study randomly assigned almost 600 children with attention problems to four treatment conditions. Some received medication alone, some cognitive-behavior therapy alone, some medication plus therapy, and some were in a community-care control group that received no systematic treatment. At first this study suggested that medication, or medication plus therapy, produced the best results. However, after three years, these effects had faded, and by eight years there was no evidence that medication produced any academic or behavioral benefits.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/childrens-add-drugs-dont-work-long-term.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua212

Some experts believe that one in six men have experienced unwanted sexual contact of some kind as minors.

2012-01-26T00:00:00.004-05:00

Keith Smith was 14 when he was raped by a driver who picked him up after a hockey team meeting. He had hitchhiked home, which is why, for decades, he continued to blame himself for the assault.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

NIGHTMARES --- Keith Smith “was waking up screaming” for years after his rape, he said.

When the driver barreled past Hartley’s Pork Pies on the outskirts of Providence, R.I., where Mr. Smith had asked to be dropped off, and then past a firehouse, he knew something was wrong.

“I tried to open the car door, but he had rigged the lock,” said Mr. Smith, of East Windsor, N.J., now 52. Still, he said, “I had no idea it was going to be a sexual assault.”

Even today, years after the disclosure of the still-unfolding child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the arrest of a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach accused of sexually abusing boys, rape is widely thought of as a crime against women.

Until just a few weeks ago, when the federal government expanded its definition of rape to include a wider range of sexual assaults, national crime statistics on rape included only assaults against women and girls committed by men under a narrow set of circumstances.

Now they will also include male victims.

While most experts agree women are raped far more often than men, 1.4 percent of men in a recent national survey said they had been raped at some point. The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that when rape was defined as oral or anal penetration, one in 71 men said they had been raped or had been the target of attempted rape, usually by a man they knew. (The study did not include men in prison.)

And one in 21 said they had been forced to penetrate an acquaintance or a partner, usually a woman; had been the victim of an attempt to force penetration; or had been made to receive oral sex.

Other estimates have run even higher. A Department of Justice report found that 3 percent of men, or one in 33, had been raped. Some experts believe that one in six men have experienced unwanted sexual contact of some kind as minors.

But for many men, the subject is so discomfiting that it is rarely discussed — virtually taboo, experts say, because of societal notions about masculinity and the idea that men are invulnerable and can take care of themselves.

“We have a cultural blind spot about this,” said David Lisak, a clinical psychologist who has done research on interpersonal violence and sexual abuse and is a founding board member of 1in6, an organization that offers information and services to men who had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences as children.

“We recognize that male children are being abused,” Dr. Lisak said, “but then when boys cross some kind of threshold somewhere in adolescence and become what we perceive to be men, we no longer want to think about it in this way.”

Even when high-profile cases dominate the news, said Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime advocacy organization in Washington, “attention goes to the things we feel more comfortable talking about — such as whether Penn State had done enough, and what will happen to their football program — and not to the question, ‘What do we do to prevent boys from being sexually assaulted?’ ”

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach who was fired after the abuse scandal erupted and who died of lung cancer on Sunday, said that when an assistant had told him about witnessing an inappropriate encounter between a young boy and Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach who is facing charges of sexual abuse, he had been confused and unsure how to proceed. Mr. Paterno said the assistant “didn’t want to get specific. And to be frank with you, I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of rape and a man.”

Much of the research on the sexual assault of men has focused on prisons. But men are also raped outside of prison, usually by people they know, including acquaintances and intimate partners, but occasionally by complete strangers....

READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/health/as-victims-men-struggle-for-rape-awareness.html?ref=science

The UOJ State of the Jewish Union Address - in Portugese! --- O Estado UOJ do Endereço da União Judaica!

2012-01-25T00:01:00.012-05:00

Shalom Kavod HaRav:

My Name is Alberto Bentzion Rodrigues Dasilva, married, 32 years old. Father of 2 wonderful kids - Baruch Hashem - in a 9 years old happy marriage. I'm a converted Jew living in Brazil, Sao Paulo, congregant of the Synagogue Adat Ieschurun.

I have a blog on which I comment in Brazilian Portuguese about Judaism, with a focus on Rationalism and Intellectual Honesty (http://religiaoracional.wordpress.com/)./

I recently took time to read a lot of publications on your web site - http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com//

- but one specially knocked me out - The UOJ State of the Jewish Union Address - where I found not only a wise answer that corroborate totally with my line of thought, but also inspired me to talk about it with others.

I run a Noahide Class too where I teach about Noahism!

It is Noahism with a"Rationalistic"perspective" (http://setemandamentos.wordpress.com/),
having a blog to share about it and a Virtual Class through Adobe Connect.

But your content about Judaism would be very rich in my Blog about Judaism. So I request you for permitting me to translate into Brazilian Portuguese that referred text. I do not represent though any institution, any "line of thinking" in Judaism, and for "Orthodox" Jews (unfortunately) I'm not even Jewish. Nonetheless I request your permission and hope to get some answer from you.

Sincerely,

Bentzion

*

http://religiaoracional.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/a-uniao-judaica-e-o-problema-do-fundamentalismo/

Dear Kavod HaRav - Shalom. Your texts is now translated into Brazilian Portuguese and published in my web blog at above address.

My wrote a brief introduction explaining myself to my readers - based on prevoius post - as follows:

Shalom everyone.

As we are speaking about the conflict between 'reality' and 'fantasy' of the fundamentalism system of seeing Judaism - and even worse - declaring itself the 'authentic' view of it, I present one more 'touch of reality' done by an Rabbi who has Orthodox ordination but - like me - got free from the tentacles of this octopus called 'Jewish religious Fundamentalism' (mostly know as Ultra- Orthodox Judaism), and he presents to us some of his considerations about the nowadays crisis the Judaism is being expoused - not because the scientific revolution - as mistakenly thinks those less or none informed but because of this reawaken of the Age of Darkness of Humanity through the fundamentalist way of thinking and its manifestations inside the People of Israel.

I bring you an translation (for which I received permission to do so from the Author) of the English article, called - The UOJ (Un-Orthodox Jew) Estate of the Jewish Union Address - This is one of the Classics of this Blog .

Thank You once more Kavod HaRav.

May Hashem rise up thousands like yourself and redeem the world from those who falsify His Name among the Nations!

Sincerely,
Bentzion

Shalom a todos.

Como estamos falando sobre o choque entre a “realidade” e a “fantasia” do sistema fundamentalista de enxergar o Judaísmo – e pior ainda – declarando-se a ‘autêntica’ visão do mesmo; apresento mais um ‘toque de realidade’ feito por um Rabino de formação ‘Ortodoxa’, mas que – como eu – libertou-se dos tentáculos deste polvo chamado “fundamentalismo religioso Judaico” (popularmente chamado de “Judaísmo Ortodoxo”); e nos propõe algumas considerações suas sobre a atual crise que o Judaísmo enfrenta – não por causa da revolução científica – como erroneamente pensam os pouco ou nada informados; mas, especificamente, por causa do renascimento da Idade das Trevas da Humanidade, através do pensamento Fundamentalista em suas manifestações dentro do seio do povo de Israel.

Vos trago a tradução (para a qual recebi permissão do autor) do artigo em Inglês, intitulado ‘The UOJ (Un-Orthodox Jew) Estate of the Jewish Union Address. Este é um dos “clássicos” deste blog.

It’s not about the system crushing individual expression, but about the power of an individual in the face of forces greater than himself...

2012-01-24T00:00:00.002-05:00

One thing is clear — Ai Weiwei’s story could not be possible without the Internet.

Ai Weiwei: Evolution of a Dissident: The filmmaker Alison Klayman presents an exclusive look at Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and his struggle for the freedom of expression.

By ALISON KLAYMAN

Published: January 22, 2012

I have always believed that the story of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei is not about how censorship stifles creativity, but rather how one artist is able to work around such obstacles. It’s not about the system crushing individual expression, but about the power of an individual in the face of forces greater than himself. One thing is clear — Ai Weiwei’s story could not be possible without the Internet. We cannot imagine an Ai Weiwei without the megaphone of blogs and Twitter, without the ability to communicate instantaneously and connect to like-minded netizens around China and the globe.

Ai Weiwei told me recently that he thinks the government’s decision to detain him for 81 days last year and keep him under strict bail conditions ever since is completely related to his effective use of the Internet to communicate his views and exchange ideas with others.

He told me: “If not for my use of the Internet, I would just be an artist trying to put up a canvas in a gallery or a museum, which has almost no influence for the majority of society. It’s only because I acted on the Internet that the pressure comes. It made a lot of people feel scared, because they can never really stop my influence on the netizens.”

That’s why I made my first feature documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” — to record what happens when someone makes the choice to speak openly and provocatively and face down the consequences, as Ai Weiwei and so many other human rights lawyers, writers, activists and young netizens do every day in China. I hope to inspire new discussions about the role of art, social media, underground documentary and creative forms of resistance in our interconnected world.

Alison Klayman directed and produced the feature documentary, “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” which premieres at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Ms. Klayman lived in China from 2006 to 2010, working as a freelance journalist. She speaks Mandarin and Hebrew and is a graduate of Brown University.

This video was produced by independent filmmakers supported in part by the nonprofit Sundance Institute.

READ MORE -- WATCH IMPORTANT SHORT VIDEO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/opinion/ai-weiwei-the-evolution-of-a-dissident.html?_r=1&ref=afternoonupdate&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=auab1

A girl who is sexually abused from age 8 can respond to very traumatic events, including even her daughter’s death...

2012-01-22T00:01:00.003-05:00

What Casey Anthony's psychiatry records tell us -- Did Casey really kill Caylee?

By Dr. Keith Ablow

This column was going to be a simple “I told you so” piece. Having read the coverage of the recently-released depositions of psychiatrist Jeffrey Danziger, M.D. and psychologist William Weitz, Ph.D. regarding their official psychiatric evaluations of Casey Anthony, I was planning to remind everyone that in my book “Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony,” I had arrived at the same theory that Dr. Danziger alludes to: A girl who is sexually abused from age 8 can respond to very traumatic events, including even her daughter’s death, by burying her pain, getting a tattoo and going out to dance. Danziger put it this way, “Her demeanor, the best way to say it, is she was calm, cooperative and pleasant as if we were discussing someone who had a parking ticket . . . . It was very puzzling. I’ve never seen anything to this degree...”

“This is someone who is sitting in jail,” Danziger said. “Her child is missing, presumed dead. She’s . . . being accused by the whole world in the disappearance of her child. You would expect that that would provoke some measure of distress, whether someone genuinely did it, whether someone was falsely accused, I mean , it doesn’t matter.”

Yet, in Casey Anthony’s case, she not only was able to remain calm and collected, she also showed no attempt to deceive Danziger on the sophisticated psychological tests he administered—the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

She also did not qualify for any psychiatric diagnosis.

She did not qualify for antisocial (sociopathic) personality disorder.

She did not qualify for narcissistic personality disorder.

She did not qualify for borderline personality disorder.

She didn’t even come close.

“Certainly,” Danziger told prosecutor Jeff Ashton, “there was no exaggeration or malingering (faking) or amplification of symptoms.”

So let me get this over with, then move on: I told you so. I told you that the real story of Casey Anthony is that of a girl who buries her inner self so deeply (including unspeakably, unthinkably intense feelings of pain and humiliation and rage) that she is, for all intents and purposes, absent from her own existence. Gone. A ghost. A stranger to us, and even to herself. I called her condition “Identity Suppression Syndrome”—a term I coined. And I stand by that assessment, 100 percent.

But there is much more to say. Because the material in Danziger and Weitz’s depositions rings so true for a victim of horrific sexual abuse that it is stunning. It gave me the shivers. I won’t state here whether George Anthony is a pedophile and child rapist, but I challenge any other mental health professional with any experience treating victims of trauma to review the depositions Danziger and Weitz rendered and come away asserting that Casey Anthony’s words ring untrue or seem fabricated.

Danziger stated that the scenes of sexual abuse Casey Anthony related to him as occurring at the hands of her father George Anthony were “disgusting, demeaning, intercourse, and everything.” Casey Anthony told him the abuse started when she was 8 and tapered off when she turned 11. After that, it was an occasional rape, with the last one occurring when she was 18. “I tried to fight back when I older,” Casey Anthony told him. “I’m not a big person.”

“I’m not a big person.” She sounds almost apologetic. She sounds powerless. And that’s the way victims of sexual abuse sound.

But there’s more. “My first real sex was at age 16,” she said. Asked by Jeffrey Ashton what she meant by that, Danziger stated, “Well, as opposed to anything that was intrafamilial.” Meaning, with her father.

I have listened to victims of sexual abuse by family members for over 15 years. And that is the language of a victim. Pure, and simple, and heartbreaking. Word-for- word. “My first real sex.” Where on earth would Casey Anthony have learned to flawlessly mimic the lexicon of a victim of child rape?

“What would you do the next day [after being raped by your father]?” Danziger asked her.

“Well, I’d go to school. I made . . . “A”s. I had friends. I won awards. I was a popular girl.”

Still think Casey Anthony sounds like a sociopath? She doesn’t test anything like one. And I am here to tell you, she doesn’t come across as one in the Danziger or Weitz depositions, whatsoever.

“How do you handle the unspeakable,” she told Danziger. “By putting it in a little box, hiding it deep, pretending all is well. Doing that since age 8, since elementary school, I became exceedingly perfect.”

If Casey Anthony was having sex with her father at age 8, then going to school to play four square and take arithmetic tests and do it with a smile, then you have your answer as to how her daughter could have gone missing and she could have gone dancing.

Mystery solved.

Does she hate her father? On this, too, Casey Anthony sounds like she is delivering the raw, honest truth from her gut:

“I hate the fact that I don’t hate him for everything that’s done, everything that happened. I hate the fact that I still love him, little girl wishing my dad could be my dad. I can’t figure out why I don’t hate him.”

Is she full of crap? Really? Or is she describing precisely what I told you she was suffering with: Identity Suppression Syndrome—an inability to summon any true feelings from behind the dark, desperate walls of her trauma, lest they fracture her psychologically into a million tiny pieces?

The rest is almost unreadable, so stark is Casey’s telling of the story, so seemingly unadorned. Decide for yourself if she is Meryl Streep and Charles Manson rolled into one, or if she is a garden variety victim of child rape lost in terrifying shadows of her former self.

She told Danziger that she slept with Caylee to keep the little girl away from her father, George Anthony. She locked the door “to protect her the way she hadn’t been protected.” She told him—again, in credible language—that being exposed to repeated rape without being protected by her mother is why she doesn’t tend to ally with other women.

Then one early morning, when she forgot to lock the door, she says, as quoted in the deposition, George Anthony woke her up. He had Caylee Anthony soaked and dead in his arms.

“I took her from him and collapsed on the porch. He was yelling at me . . . your fault, couldn’t believe you did this . . . . He left the house...saying, ‘Daddy is going to take care of it.’”

Daddy. This is the same daddy, by the way, who watched his daughter give birth, from the foot of the bed, staring at her naked. This is the same daddy who found his daughter’s abandoned car, thought it smelled like a corpse, then headed off to work at a movie theater to make about twenty bucks an hour as a security guard.

This is the same daddy who threw his own father through a plate glass window when the old man wouldn’t turn over control of his car dealership. This is the same daddy who boldly told law enforcement officials that his most treasured memory of his daughter’s ultrasound was when the obstetrician pointed out his granddaughter’s vagina and called it a hamburger.

This is the same daddy whom sources told me stole a girl’s panties from her house during high school and needed to finish up in another school system.

This is the same daddy who neglected to ask his daughter who the father of her unborn child might be—when his daughter finally realized she was pregnant at seven months.

This is the same daddy whose ex-wife says he was mostly interested in being a cop because he got to hide behind a uniform.

This is the same daddy who reportedly wanted to be a character at Disneyworld, hugging kids.

Then Casey Anthony told Dr. Danziger this: “I think he held her underwater, maybe he was doing something to her and tried to cover it up . . . . I don’t think it’s an accident and I didn’t do it.”

She implied George Anthony’s suicide attempt after Caylee’s body was found was his way out of the grief or guilt.

Do you feel nothing but hatred now for Casey Anthony? Do you think she is lying? Do you think that she is as gifted as Sir Lawrence Olivier and as smart as Bernie Madoff, this high school dropout, club-hopping, unemployed girl from Orlando?

Prosecutor Jeffrey Ashton listened to all this and like a back-of-the-class law student, went right off the cliff prosecuting a ghost. Any jury that could have read these depositions and convicted Casey Anthony would have been a travesty of justice.

Actually, you know what? Forget that whole I told you so thing. I really don’t care. I’m sick to my stomach writing this.

I’m sick at heart about the way this whole case proceeded under Jeffrey Ashton, who is now running for State Attorney in Florida, trying to parlay his ill-gotten fame into holding public office.

Casey Anthony is in hiding now because it is a concrete metaphor for her having hidden from the truth her whole life. And her videos are just pathetic evidence of how completely detached from reality she remains, after being cleaved from it in her family of origin.

She’s no Al Capone. She’s a lost soul. She grew up on Hopespring Drive in Orlando, where there was no hope.

If Casey Anthony was telling the truth, she should sue George Anthony civily for killing her daughter. But, then, again, she still loves him. And even if she were to sue him, and even if she were to win that case, he’d only be able to give her the money he got from selling pictures of his dead granddaughter.

Or maybe he’d surrender the intellectual property he secured from trade-marking the name Caylee Anthony after the little girl was found in a trash bag. But maybe all those assets are gone, if he’s had a recurrence of his gambling problem [which some sources say was really a porn problem] or if he turned any of the money over to River Cruz, the woman who accused him of shacking up with her when he was supposed to be out searching for his missing, beloved granddaughter.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. He is the author of "Inside the Mind of Casey Anthony" (St. Martin's Press 2011). Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com. His team of Life Coaches can be reached at lifecoach@keithablow.com.

READ MORE:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/19/what-casey-anthonys-psychiatry-records-tell-us-did-casey-really-kill-caylee/?cmpid=NL_BestofOpinion_20120120

I thought readers might find the full depositions of Drs. Danziger and Weitz interesting. The depositions are at [all PDFs]:

http://cnninsession.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/danziger-jeffery-april-7-2011.pdf
http://cnninsession.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/danziger-jeffery-april-13-2011.pdf
http://cnninsession.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/weitz-william-april-7-2011.pdf
http://cnninsession.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/weitz-william-april-13-2011.pdf

All of these are linked from:

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/01/11/depositions-detail-casey-anthonys-claims-about-caylees-death-sex-abuse-0

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law!

2012-01-20T00:46:00.001-05:00

Op-Ed Contributor - THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lechery, Immodesty and the Talmud - By DOV LINZER

Published: January 19, 2012

Last month, an innocent, modestly dressed 8-year-old girl, Naama Margolese, living in Beit Shemesh, described being spat on and vilified by religious extremists — all men — who believed that she did not dress modestly enough while walking past them to the religious school she attends. And more and more, public buses in Israel are enforcing gender segregation imposed by ultra-Orthodox riders in and near their neighborhoods. Woe to the girl or woman who refuses to move to the back of the bus.

This is part of a larger battle being waged in Israel between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society over women’s place in society, over their very right to have a visible presence and to participate in the public sphere.

What is behind these deeply disturbing events? We are told that they arise from a religious concern about modesty, that women must be covered and sequestered so that men do not have improper sexual thoughts. It seems, then, that a religious tenet that begins with men’s sexual thoughts ends with men controlling women’s bodies.

This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men’s licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men.

Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It’s your problem, sir; not hers.

The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered.

In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man’s sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin.

Of course, once you judge a female human being only through a man’s sexualized imagination, you can turn even a modest 8-year-old girl into a seductress and a prostitute.

At heart, we are talking about a blame-the-victim mentality. It shifts the responsibility of managing a man’s sexual urges from himself to every woman he may or may not encounter. It is a cousin to the mentality behind the claim, “She was asking for it.”

So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality.

All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law.

But it’s actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men’s sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men.

It is forbidden for a man to gaze sexually at a woman, whether beautiful or ugly, married or unmarried, says the Talmud. Later Talmudic rabbis extended this ban even to “her smallest finger” and “her brightly colored clothing — even if they are drying on the wall.”

To make these the woman’s responsibility is to demand that Jewish women cover their hands, and that they not dry their clothes in public. No one has ever said this. At least not yet.

The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze — the way men look at women — that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don’t see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men’s — and only men’s — control.

Jewish tradition teaches men and women alike that they should be modest in their dress. But modesty is not defined by, or even primarily about, how much of one’s body is covered. It is about comportment and behavior. It is about recognizing that one need not be the center of attention. It is about embodying the prophet Micah’s call for modesty: learning “to walk humbly with your God.”

Eight-year-old Naama could teach her attackers a thing or two about modesty.

Dov Linzer, an Orthodox rabbi, is the dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

READ MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/ultra-orthodox-jews-and-the-modesty-fight.html?_r=1&ref=global-europe&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleuab1

The Israeli Philharmonic -- Music to my Ears -- Tzitzis & Yarmulkes No Extra Charge!

2012-01-18T22:57:00.003-05:00

THE UOJ STATE OF THE JEWISH UNION ADDRESS!

2012-01-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

THE UOJ CLASSICS

Do any of you really stop and think what this gedolim thing is all about? Does anybody ever stop and think; when did our Mesorah stop? Are the proclamations now rendered by the group of stand-up comics known as the Moetzes Gedolei Torah (they all agree that they are gedolim), part of our Mesorah? Will our great grandchildren consider Pinchos Scheinberg's penetrating psak, Mesorah? Is it part of our Mesorah for hassidic rebbes to permit their followers, nay, encourage and urge their followers to destroy each other in the name of who is the rightful heir to the dynasty, actually a milchemet mitzvah or holy war? Can any human fathom the sanctioned destruction of their souls in the name of Judaism?

Can you believe that THOUSANDS of people are actually waiting for the Lubavitcher Rebbe to dust himself off and get on a white donkey for his announcement that he's Moshiach? Thousands of faxes to his tomb weekly are believed to be read and answered by him? ARE YOU NUTS?

There are NO gedolim, only people. Some people are very wise, some are not so wise, and some are downright evil and ignorant.

Somebody dies and a son takes over the family business, have we hatched a gadol?

Somebody else is a charismatic speaker with some Torah knowledge, have we a gadol?

Is not a gadol suppose to be a giant, a legend, a titan, an icon, a tzaddik, an extremely wise man, a baal machshava, so embedded with truth and Torah, that it becomes inseparable from their being? Torah and truth must be intertwined, inseparable, or there is no Torah! The Torah is truth; if it becomes distorted it is not Torah! These imposters that we have today are just that, phony fraudulent imposters and rabbi-impersonators. Gedolim? How many of you saw a real live gadol? Spent time with a gadol? Learned at the feet of a gadol? How many of you ever saw a human being so developed with their tziddkus that they would rather die than utter a sheker or intentionally hurt another human in any manner, by action or inaction?

How many of you ever saw a human that would actually bawl after hearing the pain of a fellow Jew that was a complete stranger to them? How many? Who among you can actually, really feel pain, unable to eat, lose weight, cry, when you find out another Jewish child was molested by a rebbe who was suppose to teach him Torah? How many? Look at yourselves! You go around with your daily business just wondering where you're going for Pesach and if the tea room will be open 24 hours!

Do you care? DO YOU CARE? Does anyone care?

I have met, learned by, spent considerable time with, and spoken to different generations of giants, I know what a gadol is; there are no more gedolim. What we have today are a pathetic group of ignorant, uneducated, unsophisticated, boorish, selfish, money driven, losers! From the U.S.A. to the "Holy Land" each person that is considered a gadol by the masses, falls into one of these categories, some fall into every category. I despise them; every single one of them for destroying "emunas chachomim", a little bit at a time. When you know the real thing, how can you live with these pitiful morons? When you experienced the awe of great Jews, when you are blessed with the ability to comprehend greatness, you can't accept in any way, what are posing today as rabbis. These people are giants/gedolim of utter destruction!

I am amused with the example that the Agudah sets as "achakolo b'chol yom sheyavo", "we await daily the arrival of Moshiach", while they book Madison Square Garden seven and one half years in advance for their version of "American Idol", called siyum hashas. Some emunah! Of course, they will tell you, that's in the event He does not come. I say BULL-CHOLENT! They have an agenda that does not include your welfare. Remember, Lipa Margulies led the gathering in saying tehillim, can you imagine that? Frankly, I would have rather have had Jimmy Carter lead the crowd with tehillim and the reading of his Jew-hate-filled book. With Carter, at least, there's no ambiguity as to who the enemy is.

Rabosai; we are in a generational war. We will win, no doubt. But it will take energy, participation, and fortitude. The Taliban-like rabbis and their supporters must be defeated. There is no room in our civilized society for "halacha" sanctioned evil. The Internet is as evil as a gun. You can use the Internet to protect yourself and your family with it, by learning, studying, researching, increasing your income, providing parnassah, and you can kill yourself with it, spiritually. Did you ever see a gun on trial? There is a person behind the gun/computer that must be educated and taught responsibile behavior with this great "weapon". You can fend off robbers in the middle of the night with a gun, or you can kill family members, Rachmana l'tzlan. Money can be used for good and evil, do you think these cavemen would consider meeting over a fire on the issue of banning money? Let's ban women while we're banning, women have caused men so much grief, pain, suffering and sin since Adam lost his tail bone:-). Especially now, they're wearing denim, now is the time!

THEY want to make these decisions for you, HA! They're in the Stone-Age. Who are they, the Nickelsburger Rebbe, the Dollarsburger Rebbe, the Drekburger Rebbe,the Carlos-bomber Rebbe, and the gang of terrorists that met on asareh b'Teves? What are their qualifications that they have rights to issue you 60 pages of fatwa manifesto directives on banning the use of the Internet? How do they earn a living? Off public assistance, that's how. This Internet issue is merely symbolic of the fear that they have. Too much information will ruin their business. Their ignorance and their inability to reconcile Torah and science makes them scared silly. You have the ability to access information that frightens them; they DO NOT want you to know anything other than what they tell you. This is not about porn sites, this is about their inability to control your thought process. Their death knell!

If you are convinced that rabbis and rebbes are no more closer to God than you are, they're out of business. If their brachas are worthless, why stand in line until the wee hours of the morning begging them to take your money? The more they take, the better they make you feel. JUST LIKE DRUGS! Do they care about you? Or are you only as good as your last check, or cash under the table to the gabbai-doorkeeper-zookeeper? What a freak show! What circus did they perform at before moving to Boro Park?

To paraphrase the verbiage of the great thinker, scientist/philosopher Carl Sagan; "their posturing, their imagined self-importance, their belief that they are somehow in a position of privilege in the universe, is unfathomable."

And these eternal words of wisdom of Sagan on the psychology of humans;(paraphrase) " the thought that you may have dedicated your life to a lie, that you may have accepted a conventional wisdom that no longer, if ever, corresponds to an external reality, is a very painful realization. A person will go to any lengths to prevent themselves from seeing that inadequate worldview that they dedicated their lives to."

My views and opinions may be the minority view for now in Orthodox Judaism, but since when does the majority view make it the correct view? Did not the majority of Jews in the time of Rabbi Akiva accept Bar-Kochba as the Messiah? Did not the vast majority of Jews in the time of Shabbtai Tzvi accept him as the Saviour of the Jews? Are not the followers of Jesus and Mohammed the majority religions of the world?

Very recently there was a psak from a world renown posek that would have adversely affected all commerce of Orthodox Jews. If not for one concerned Jew, the entire Orthodox world risked losing revenues perhaps in the hundreds of millions of dollars, because of the reckless conduct of this known posek.

Did Moshe Heinemann from Baltimore take the time and effort required to render a psak of this magnitude, that would have shut down all e-commerce sites of Orthodox Jews on Shabbos? Did he do the required verification by industry experts exactly how "virtual" transactions are transacted on weekends? Or did Moshe Heinemann stop off at his local bank and ask the bank teller about Saturday transactions, on his way to China to sign up a toy manufacturer with the Star K, in case an Orthodox child licked a Chinese produced toy? And when he did find out that he was dead wrong, how long did it take him to retract that idiot psak, as Yiddishe gelt was torched on fire?

It took him six very long months; he had to figure out how he was going to look politically and to ascertain that his business does not go up in smoke.

Did he care about your welfare?

Rabosai, have faith in yourselves. Grab yourself by the collar, pull yourself out of the doldrums you find yourself in. You've been duped, but it's not too late. Trust yourself to make appropriate decisions for yourself and your family, the Hats can not, will not, care not, and most certainly, should not!

Did one word of that 60 page fatwa include what to do with sexual predators posing as rebbes in our yeshivas? Is there one word about what to do with guys like Margulies, Belsky, Perlow, Fishman and the rest of these molester-enablers?

The state of our union is better than it was one year ago. We now know what all of these guys are about. Knowledge is extremely important and is power. We don't have the lame excuse anymore that we didn't know. We now know definitely that these are criminals in bed with each other. Are they going to make decisions for our welfare, or theirs?

The state of our union is now up to each and every individual that considers themselves a member of klal Yisroel. There's a huge hole in our "boat", if you don't fix it quickly, you and your children will drown. Fix the hole, or replace the boat for Heaven's sake, or perish!!

UOJ - "Don't be taken in. Never explain. Never retract. Get it done and let them howl!"

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

One of my all-time favorites from a good friend - The UOJ Classics!

Dear UOJ:

"......With reference to your recent correspondent: beware the well-meaning critic who "only " wants you to curb your language. Language is the key to humanity itself, so show me a censor and I'll show you a prison guard -- however well-intentioned. I do not advocate -- I do not practice -- indiscriminate brutality in language any more than in deed. In fact, I see plenty of writing on blogs that makes me worry for the future of civilized discourse. But NOT because of the language involved, nor because it attacks a sacred cow here, an overrated human icon there. Talk radio is infinitely worse than blogs; have the rabbis banned THAT? Au contraire: brutality aimed at "liberals" is still groovy.

Avigdor Miller could be as coarse in scorning his opponents as anything I've read on Jewish newsgroups -- has anyone lately pointed this out? There's the Jewish Observer, which indulged personal attacks against the author of Holy Days (who deserved better) and lately ran an obscene rant that condemned as sinners all people who write unpleasant truths about powerful rabbis, a piece so destructive of logic and decency that the author apparently never noticed the irony of condemning slander while committing it himself -- wholesale. Has this been condemned?

We are all fallible, and in controversy we inevitably irritate or disappoint at least some of our readers. Sometimes with reason. But it is a great mistake to be guided by a wish not to offend. Let the "gentle" critic who "only" wants you to tone down your rhetoric, or your graphic allusions, or your offensive imagery, or your subject matter, or your this or your that, assert in no uncertain terms -- if he dares -- that something he objects to in your work is, in fact, wrong, bad, untrue. If he can make that claim, and convince you of its correctness, well and good.

Otherwise: he is a temptation to be politely but firmly set aside. The man who wants to tell the truth but not offend the respectable is like someone who wants to scale a wall without using his hands. You can't do it. You want to do serious work -- well, some people aren't going to like it. They tell you they like your buildings but find the shadows they cast a little excessive? "Sorry, lady, but the shadow comes with the building. I'm sure you can find a spot without either one, if that's your choice." You can't write anything without tripping over somebody's sensitivities. So why worry about it?

Once you're offending -- OFFEND.

I don't mean blowharding. But OFFEND. If you're not offending someone, you're saying nothing... which of course is why so many rabbis, idolized by the "civil" crowd, are rising through the ranks by repeating the same sermons again and again, telling us nothing -- but giving no offense.

As for the claim -- the civilians are never without it -- that the same goals can be accomplished with different language -- well, if that's really so, why haven't they done it? I say the objection to the tools used is only valid true when the tools are truly the wrong ones... in which case, you won't be getting any results. Otherwise the methods are inseparable from the goals. Which is why Mozart had to use so many notes (in spite of fashion), Beethoven had to use bold dissonances, Ibsen had to refer to adultery and venereal disease. Even Lenny Bruce was told once that he could be a great comic without the "filth" (whatever that meant)... have you ever tried paraphrasing one of his great routines on sexual frailties -- minus the four-letter words? Having tried it once, would you ever want to again?

I do not believe the straitjacketing of language in Orthodox communities is a coincidence. I think it is a matter of deliberate strategy.

As Orwell pointed out, curbing language curbs thought: if there is no vocabulary to explain why Big Brother is evil, then the idea itself becomes impossible to hold. In our communities things are much the same. "Elchanan Wasserman was a religious tyrant who sacrificed thousands of people to his rigid piety" is no easier for the average Orthodox Jew to articulate than "Big Brother is ungood" would have been in Oceania. Breaking this barrier is not incidental to the kind of cause you're engaged in -- on the contrary, it is a fundamental part of it.

The Agudah crowd instinctively knows that the moment people can say "Reb Moshe sometimes misrepresented Talmudic sources to advance a personal ideology" or "Avigdor Miller emotionally manipulated ba'alei t'shuvah," etc., etc., they will begin to think for themselves and will never again be under Agudah's control. So, of course, they condemn such "language" as coarseness, as gossip, as slander, as slights to sages, whatever... rather than addressing themselves to the ONLY thing that matters, the truth or falsity of the statements in question.

Isn't it a commonplace that we can never learn from anyone's greatness until we can separate it from his frailties? Is Abraham Lincoln less inspiring a figure when we know about the messes in his personal life and his rough-and-tumble political background? Human beings emulate other human beings -- if you want to know what happens when people, instead of learning from fallible models, become the apes of God, look at R. Elchanan. I think he would have been a greater man if he had seen HIS heroes as human. He didn't: and just look at the results.

I may misquote him here, but Thomas Hardy, frequently under attack for his subject matter in his lifetime -- now accepted without question as one of the great novelists and poets of the early modern period -- had the right idea when he wrote in his journal: "Never explain. Never retract. Get it done and let them howl." It's taken me, a shy, diffident type, a long time to learn this, but no approach but Hardy's EVER works.

The moment you start trying to appease one critic, another pipes up; take something back, everything starts to collapse; cast around for consensus -- none will appear. If you want to be loved, don't write, or at least don't write honestly; there were vastly more popular writers than Hardy back in the 1890s. They wrote what the public liked and turned out bestsellers. Not one of them is ever mentioned today.

Don't be fooled by the number of hits on your blog -- most are curiosity seekers; the really popular speakers are the Frands, the Krohns, the Salomons, the Kotlers, etc., who never tell their audiences a word they don't want to hear. Our community will embalm them, and 75 years from now they will be exactly what they are now -- just as they are already the inarticulate corpses they will be then.

If a few words from your blogs survive, you at least will have a chance to live forever... not because of your "language," nor in spite of it, but because you wrote a few words that were true, right, clear, pure and necessary . . . and good Lord, what else can any of us hope for? It's a rare enough accomplishment as it is, while using every sensibility God gave us and every word he lent us for the purpose. Start censoring yourself, even for "good" reasons, and you don't have a chance.

Don't be taken in. Never explain. Never retract. Get it done and let them howl."

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Sorting Through The Rubble - The Message Is Clear!

2012-01-03T17:00:00.000-05:00

The #2 Most Widely Read Post in 2011

The UOJ Archives - June 2009

Don't take my word for it!

Don't believe a word I say - unless I can logically and factually back it up. And the same goes for anyone with a message, any message from any messenger. It's either true and can be established, or it's hyperbole and rabble-rousing by clown-type imbeciles, costume and all, with nothing else to say but "trust me", I know what's best for you, your children and everyone that I/we deem a Torah-true Jew.

This has been the mindset for at least two decades, certainly since the passing of Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky z"tvkl. And Rav Yaakov saw this era coming, the era of Yiddishkeit being distorted and shredded by people with absolutely no sense of reality, and the lack of understanding and caring that what was good for the individual, the yachid - was good for the klal - the masses --- and not the other way around.

So, if thousands of kids were herded through a flawed yeshiva system, a system that did NOT care for the individual child, but rather thrived on numbers, and raised funds based upon being the "biggest" yeshiva, with great numbers of kids in their system, the individual - mostly regular great kids, very normal kids that needed unconditional love and attention, would get lost in the shuffle.

Rav Yaakov understood that, Rav Elya Svei did not. The Lakewood gang did not and we are now paying the price; thousands of families that were emotionally forced to engage in this fraud called kollel, are now poverty stricken, and a great deal of them, their parents, and their children paid with their souls. This community induced poverty was a desperate attempt by the Establishment to reel in the masses under the control of a few. If you need organizations and yeshivas to sustain you and your family, who would bite the hand that feeds you?

Entire families are disenchanted with Judaism, not just children. I guess the Agudath Israel can now develop a new government sponsored program -- call it Project NO - and have it headed by one of their own, someone who talks the talk, walks the walk, but when it comes down to the underlying failures of the program, for the inability to comprehend and address the real issues, old and new, he will toe the line of the establishment, rather than standing up for the brutal reality, and those victimized and re-victimized.

It was not that long ago when an acquaintance of mine, a true ben Torah with a large family living in Lakewood, took a chainsaw, and decapitated himself. Other contemporaries of mine have confided in me that they despise what has become of them, and hate waking up in the morning. They have been totally neutered, by them having to rely on their wives supporting them, and regularly signing documents to enable them to receive Welfare in one form or another.

A bright high school buddy of mine died oh so young, by intentionally destroying his body with food and alcohol and God knows what else he consumed to put himself out of his misery. He was not a flunky kindergarten rebbe, he founded and headed a large school.

Another former yeshiva friend, was instructed by his rosh yeshiva to go on a taanit dibbur, stop speaking entirely, until he purged himself from his inclination to gossip and speak loshon hara. He cracked up and spent years in a mental institution. He lives in Lakewood, the last I heard was that he is permanently emotionally disabled.

These are not isolated cases, there are countless horror stories similar to the above that I am aware of.

My educated and informed guess is that Shua Finkelstein in Lakewood put himself out of his misery, because the Lakewood Mafia protected his molester. His molester is part of a family that donates large sums of money to Lakewood - Beth Medrash Govoha. The Lakewood philosophy of dealing with child-abusers in a "respectful and dignified" fashion, in my opinion, played no small role in Shua's death.

It is no coincidence in my mind, that David "Fifi" Zahler, who over the last years developed a close relationship with Moshe Eisemann on the Ner Israel campus in Baltimore, intentionally jumped to his death. Nobody dares to say this publicly, that's why I will.

The System is broken, it collapsed under its own fraudulent weight; the evidence surrounds and envelops you, but you refuse, or are too petrified to deal with this reality!

"Once we could say we didn’t know. Now we know." Borrowing from David Zwiebel's "confession" -- David, we now know as well, you and your organization, Agudath Israel, are pitifully corrupt and morally inept, nobody should be trusting any important life and death issue to you and your cohorts! And that's believing for a brief moment that in fact you now know because you really know or because you were "forced" to know, rather than choose to know. In either case, evidence of sexual child-abuse in Orthodox Jewish schools and camps has been festering out there for some fifty years, including in your own summer camp and in hundreds of your directly affiliated schools, and yet you did nothing to protect these violated children, and did everything to protect the vile child sex-abusers and the criminal, despicable rabbis that protected them.

You all have lost any moral authority on this issue -- and worse, you all deserve to be held criminally negligent and responsible for the thousands of troubled lives and God only knows how many related, self-destroyed lives by children who could no longer bear the pain.

So, I'll have none of your continued lies; when I chose to dig deep into the authenticity of what else you and the likes of you were selling; I became aware of the extent of your involvement in covering up these unspeakable crimes, and I, to my horror, discovered that except for a handful, the rest of you are petty, conniving, mind-thieves without a scintilla of a moral conscience.

The message is so apparent -- none of these rabbis should be able to dictate to you what's in your best interest -- because they are destroying our Jewish heritage to cover up their own crimes, where "d'racheha darchei noam" should be first and foremost; instead they are damning our children and ultimately us, all of us, to an unsustainable and self-destructive life that is causing misery and desperation to the vast majority of Orthodox Jews. We must set up a bulwark that will prevent the espousing of misery as a way of life, foolproof systems of protecting our children, in and out of yeshivas, from those that would destroy them by enfeebling their minds with their self-manufactured religious rubbish, and not protecting their physical and emotional well-being that were entrusted to their care; that not only is the antithesis of everything Jewish, but it is anti-Jewish!

Rabbis and their underlings, that would protect pedophiles and their enablers at the expense of our children and our families -- whether the crime occurred yesterday or forty years ago, must be treated as amongst the greatest enemies that ever faced the Jewish nation.

These rabbis stand stark naked before us -- and it is ugly! They must be taken down!

A Time to Cry - A Time to Learn What is Genuine and What is Lies!

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

The # 1 Most Widely Read Post of all 2011 (l'misparam)

Inspired by my reading of "Beyond Belief"

The events of the past week, very obviously demonstrate the way we understand our cultural history. But for the few of us that truly understand our history, as I do, untangling some of its complex strands has practical and intellectual consequences.

In my own case, the hardest - and the most challenging - is my never-ending research of Judaism's core values. I had to unlearn what I thought I knew, and was forced to shed presuppositions I had grown up with and taken for granted internally and intellectually.

This type of introspection, difficult to the extreme, has given me the depth of understanding of the Jewish doctrines to which is part of my very being, embedded in my DNA, and has assisted me in determining, at least for myself, what is divine and what is human.

For those who will never experience my struggle, there is no contradiction at all to the divine and human perception, the challenge is integrating the two. They are not diametrically opposed to one another as your ignorant rabbis would have you believe. They rule out that learned and spiritually inclined Jews, have always sought to discern spiritual truth via their intuition, reflection, senses, and creative imagination.

The rabbis that will deny you your God-given intellect, to experience on your own what humankind was destined to evolve into, a mirror-image of the beauty of what could and should be the Divine will of chochmat ha'briah; the understanding of the evolution of the intellect to adapt to today's realities of truth and practicality. What they would want you to forget, that only with the shedding of the "Church" as the arbiter of truth and morality in the U.S. Constitution, a mere couple of hundred of years ago, was then civilization, at least the United States, able to remove its intellectual shackles burdened and encumbered by nonsense, cruelty, ignorance and hell.

We've developed more in the last few hundred years, than we have in the last untold thousands. That does not come without a price, however. But that is not the thrust of this post.

Rabbis who will deny such experiences, can teach us anything they choose to about God,and have always identified themselves as our "guardians" of the ancient traditions, or Mesorah. They will preach with fire in their eyes and bimah-banging that it is only they that can determine your faithfulness - by your ability to abide by their interpretation of what was handed down from ancient witnesses -- never adding or subtracting anything unless you consult with them first. And these "guardians", who refer to themselves as the "eini ha'edah" or the eyes of the community, that this view of their role expresses appropriate humility; and it vests them and them alone of the Divine Truth, with God's own authority.

These so-called leaders, of course could not ban the imagination entirely, but they effectively channeled your religious imagination to support their opinions, no matter how cruel and ignorant they may be. Everything you are, they teach, is because you are merely an extension of them, not individuals who have the ability to know right from wrong. And if you stray; like Heaven forbid, do not consult with them if an ongoing series of heinous crimes and cover ups are transpiring under your noses, by the very rabbis that will have you consult with them only, than it is you that is the heretic, the maskil, the sheigetz, the oisvorf and the menuvel.

But in fact, these "heretics" having left the intellectual ghettos of Brooklyn, have impoverished the very system that they outgrew. These "heretics" often walk alone - despite the fact that the spiritual inquiry that they undertook, forcing them to leave their ghettos of origin behind, have become primary sources of inspiration to tens of thousands, and eventually their ideas to the vast majority of Jews, because ultimately I pray "right makes might"!

What such people seek, however, is NOT a different set of rules and obligations to their faith, but rather insights or intimations of the Divine, that would validate themselves in experience. Some who have engaged on this path pursue it in voluntary solitude; others participate in various forms of worship, prayer and action, or a combination of the above.

Engaging in such a practice requires the highest form of faith, or belief, but it also involves so much more; the trust that enables us to commit ourselves to what we hope and love. We have the knowledge and experience to declare boldly; "THIS IS NOT SO, I DO NOT ACCEPT THAT!"

The sociologist Peter Berger points out that everyone who participates in tradition today chooses among elements of that tradition. We survived thousands of years BECAUSE we were able to relive, reinvent, and transform what we received.

This act of choice - which the term heresy originally meant - leads us back to the problem that Orthodoxy meant to resolve; how can we tell truth from lies? What is genuine and thus connects us with one another and with reality, and what is shallow, self-serving, or evil? Anyone who has seen foolishness, sentimentality, delusion, and murderous rage disguised as God's truth, knows that there is no easy answer to this dichotomy. Orthodox Judaism distrusts our capacity to make such discrimination and insists on making them for us. Given the often notorious human capacity for self-deception, we can thank our so-called rabbis for this. And the many of you that wish to be spared hard work, gladly accept what these rabbis tell you.

But the fact that we do not have a simple answer, does not mean we should evade the question. We have also seen the hazards - even terrible harm - that sometimes result from unquestioning of religious authority. Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman's tyrannical, unforgivable conduct during the Holocaust comes immediately to mind. Thousands went to their death upon instruction from him. How many hundreds of thousands of "modeh ani l'fanechahs" will forever remain unsaid every morning from the mouths of children?, perhaps only God knows, but I suspect that He does not know either.

Many of us, however, sooner or later, at critical points in our lives, will have to make our own path where none exists. And that, done correctly, is a good thing. As for me, I am resolute, passionate in my beliefs, non-yielding to any ideological foe that crosses my path. I live in my head and in my contemplative soul. Any setback I view as temporary and a challenge to outhink my opponent. I never concede to evil, never...and I never will. My children and grandchildren are counting on me, whether they know it or not.

And so are you....

As the posuk in יְשַׁעְיָהוּ Isaiah - 10:13 says, "The light of Israel will be fire and its Holy One - flame, it will burn and consume its thorns..."

70,000 People Signed This Petition To Protect Your Child - Why Not You?

2011-12-29T00:00:00.004-05:00

http://www.nychildvictimsact.org/

CLICK ON ABOVE LINK TO SIGN!

Trump Family Christmas - December 25, 2011

2011-12-25T15:30:00.002-05:00

Ivanka Trump Kushner's conversion to Orthodox Judaism was sponsored and granted by Rabbi Hershel Schechter ( pictured below) of Yeshiva University and Kollel Elyon under the auspices of the Rabbinical Council of America -- "L'hagdil Torah Ul'hadira!

http://www.celebritytweet.com/IvankaTrump/link/150945948179234816/

Chanukah Thoughts

2011-12-25T14:18:00.000-05:00

A student of Rav Pam z"tl came to his home for a bracha with his new kallah. Obviously, this was the first time he was at his rebbe's house; he was taken aback by the old and sparse furnishings. After receiving a bracha ("a birchat hedyot I'm certain my rebbe interjected"), he asked our rebbe if there was anything he can purchase for the house. With the rebbe and the rebbetzin standing at the door; "everything we need and want we have, anything we don't have, we don't need or want."

For the first time in my life, I desired to experience first-hand a Black Friday shopping day. Not because I wanted to purchase some junk for a $20 savings, I wanted to experience what the rest of the world does with their time and money. So on Friday I braved the 75 degrees weather, donned my short sleeve shirt, and went to take a look.

I waited some 35 minutes to find a parking space, and entered the Best Buy store. There must have been a thousand or so people in this mega store...2 scuffels by customers that security had to breakup, peoples' faces were ugly with determination to buy something, anything, but they were not going to leave the store empty handed, whether they needed it or not.

I had enough; I could only imagine (besides what I saw on the news) what transpired at midnight prior, where some people got into brawls, and I read one woman actually maced a competitor for a cheap TV.

I can tell my readers, among the happiest moments in my life, by far, were the times my family danced around the Chanukah menorah...singing Yevanim, Yevanim nikbatzu alei... and on Shabbos mornings walking with my kinderlach to shul....when their tiny hentelach grasped mine...and I firmly, by securely grasping theirs, let them know I'll always be there for them.

As we celebrate Chanukah, let's not lose sight that Consumerism is fleeting happiness...only leading one to want more; your children and their children are forever....Please let's keep them safe.

A Freilechen and Lichtegen Chanukah.

B'ahavat Yisroel,

UOJ

Chanukah Thoughts for President Obama

The UOJ e-Mail ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED & STOLEN - DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK IF YOU ARE SENT AN e-MAIL!

2011-12-23T13:34:00.001-05:00

A Rabbi and a Priest Walk Into a Bar at The Agudah Convention......

2011-12-21T23:45:00.004-05:00

A Rabbi and a Priest.....Were sitting next to each other on an airplane...

After a while, the priest turned to the rabbi and asked,
“Is it still a requirement of your faith that you not eat pork?’
The rabbi responded, “Yes, that is still one of our laws.”
The priest then asked, “Have you ever eaten pork?”
To which the rabbi replied,
“Yes, on one occasion I did succumb to temptation and tasted a ham sandwich.”
The priest nodded in understanding and went on with his reading..
A while later, the rabbi spoke up and asked the priest,
“Father, is it still a requirement of your church that you remain celibate?”
The priest replied, “Yes, that is still very much a part of our faith.”
The rabbi then asked him, “Father, have you ever fallen to the temptations of the flesh?”
The priest replied, “Yes, rabbi, on one occasion I was weak and broke my Faith.”
The rabbi nodded understandingly and remained silent, thinking, for about five Minutes.
Finally, the rabbi said, “Beats the s@#$ out of a ham sandwich, doesn’t it.

A.D.A.: Archdiocese memo stifles priests -- Memo may have chilling effect -- Prosecutor: Archdiocese lawyers stifling witnesses

At least four priests, described by lawyers as "whistle-blowers," have come forward hoping to aid in the prosecution of current and former clergy members accused in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex-abuse scandal.

However, an archdiocesan policy requiring them to notify church lawyers before talking to law enforcement could stifle the testimony they are willing to give, city prosecutors told a judge Wednesday.

"They're muffling us," said Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington, paraphrasing the response he said he had heard from at least one priest. "Priests have told us that this is the same thing the [archdiocese] has done all along."

Those allegations came as Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina continued to hear arguments on the issue raised by prosecutors last week.

After an hour-long hearing, it remained unclear whether Sarmina would order the archdiocese to rescind its policy and inform all employees, as prosecutors had requested. She made no ruling from the bench, and as of Wednesday evening, the case file remained unavailable in the court clerk's office.

The judge has issued a gag order in the case barring attorneys from discussing it with reporters.

Last month, Msgr. Daniel J. Sullivan, the archdiocese's vicar for clergy, issued a memo to lay and clerical employees directing them to notify two attorneys hired by the church before talking to prosecutors - a movchurch lawyer Robert Welsh described Wednesday as a standard control measure by large institutions.

The archdiocese, Welsh noted, has been inundated with requests from criminal and civil attorneys, the media, and other groups since the release of a Philadelphia grand jury report this year that alleged church officials failed to adequately respond to sex-abuse allegations against at least 37 priests.

But that doesn't mean, he said, that church leaders crafted the policy in an attempt to intimidate anyone with information to share.

"We want these people to cooperate because it's in the archdiocese's benefit," he said. "We stand here today eager to bring them in to talk to the D.A. They are going to provide compelling testimony. As evidence of the church's willingness to be transparent, he pointed to the hiring of several former prosecutors to run internal investigations into the sex-abuse scandal. Most prominent among them is Gina Maisto-Smith, who is reviewing allegations against 27 priests suspended this year.

"At this point, the archdiocese has become an alumni association for former assistant district attorneys," he said.

But Welsh's representation of at least four employees whose testimony could hurt the church and its leaders poses a clear conflict of interest, as the archdiocese is paying his legal bills, Blessington maintained.

Whatever Sarmina decides, it could significantly affect the ongoing prosecution of two current priests, a defrocked priest, and a former schoolteacher on charges that they sexually abused young boys in the 1990s.

A fifth defendant, Msgr. William J. Lynn, is accused of child endangerment and conspiracy for allegedly placing two of the priests in positions where they could abuse children despite previous accusations of inappropriate behavior.

As secretary for clergy until 2004, Lynn was tasked with investigating sex-abuse allegations against priests and recommending treatment or new assignments for them.

The archdiocese is paying Lynn's legal bills and stands to gain if he is acquitted, Blessington noted.

Wednesday's hearing came a day after Common Pleas Court Judge Lillian Harris Ransom ruled that Bernard Shero, the former schoolteacher charged in the case, could be tried separately from the other four defendants. Shero is accused of sexually assaulting the same Northeast Philadelphia altar boy that two other defendants, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Edward Avery, allegedly abused in the late 1990s.

His attorney argued, though, that the former teacher deserved a separate trial because he is not charged with participating in a broader conspiracy to cover up abuse.

Shero's trial is now set to begin after the prosecution of the four others. Their trial is scheduled for February.

Contact staff writer Jeremy Roebuck at 267-564-5218, jroebuck@phillynews.com, or @inqmontco on Twitter.

READ MORE:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20111221_Whistle-blower_priests_say_policy_thwarts_them.html?mid=55

"I hope they rampage through the streets of Borough Park, Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Monsey, Kiryas Joel, New Square, Spring Valley, Lakewood..."

2011-12-20T00:00:00.004-05:00

I remember the first time I boarded an airplane; the amazement and awe of taking off I can only describe as life-changing. That humans were able to create an aluminum capsule that flies people around the world, led me to believe that humans are capable of doing anything they put their minds to. I'm in awe of every take-off and landing today as if it were the first time I experienced it.

I'm also forever in awe of the negligible amount of people that are able to look at a difficult situation and "get it"! Not because they were forced to; but because their intelligence demanded of them to put themselves out there and shine light on issues that most dare not say. One such person is Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah.com.

He has been a strong and leading voice in exposing the vilest creatures on this planet -- child-rapists -- and those that enable and harbor them. I asked and received his permission to post the essay below that he recently had on his blog. The link to this essay and his blog is at the end of the essay.

UOJ

A Note To Haredi Leaders (And Their Proxies) About Child Sex Abuse
Will you ever stop preening? Will you ever allow yourselves to understand and to care?

by Shmarya Rosenberg - Failedmessiah.com

Earlier today I spoke with a young adult survivor of child sex abuse.

This person was raped as a toddler and again a decade later, and was physically, emotionally and sexually abused both in between and afterward. This person has been homeless, was discarded by family, and never had the benefit of a healthy or loving family life.

Today this person was extremely depressed and suicidal.

In the hundreds of other calls between us over the past years, there have been other such calls – many of them.

This is what sexual abuse often is, what it does to a person, how it impacts their lives for years after the abuse stops.

The "good news" for haredi leadership is that this one isn't 100% yours.

This person wasn't raped by a rabbi.

This person was not born haredi – or Modern Orthodox or Conservative or Reform.

This person was born to a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father and most of the abuse I mentioned above has nothing directly to do with the Jewish community in any form because the family did not identify as Jews – except that the victim of it is Jewish.

As a teenager, this person joined a haredi community. But as community leaders found out about the abuse – and about the therapy that would be necessary to heal from it – and as they found out about some of the behaviors – cutting, promiscuity, susceptibility to the promiscuity of others – this victim had and that are common to victims, they cut the victim off.

They did so because, as one of their rabbis told me then, they had an obligation to protect their kids from the bad influences and possible danger the victim could pose. And, after all, the damage done to this person hadn't been done by them. It wasn't their problem.

That some of their own members a few years older than the victim tried to use the victim for sex, that one of their own rabbis may have been inappropriate in his dealings with the teenage victim (or, perhaps, reached the border of that behavior, dallied there a bit but did not cross it), that the victim was now a part of their haredi community – none of that mattered.

It was in their eyes, more or less, all the victim's fault.

And so the victim was booted out.

I write this because I hope, perhaps against all hope, that you will allow yourselves to understand.

According to government statistics, the average pedophile has more than 100 victims in his molestation career.

One pedophile in Borough Park alone will damage more than 100 haredi kids. Ten pedophiles will damage more than 1100. The 89 pedophiles Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes claims to have dealt with in the past three years alone will damage more than 10,000.

While you run around beating your chests and screaming that "we're better than goyyim," those "less-than-the-goyyim" pedophiles are destroying your kids' lives – thousands of lives.

You tend to view all this through the scope of protecting your "holy" community from "anti-Semites" like me, from the "self-hating Jews," the little "Hitlers," who want to bring you down.

Instead of viewing hundreds of damaged kids who are in pain and who need professional help, you fret about what the goyyim think about you and what other Jews think about you.

To the small extent that you do deal with these victims, you almost always do so through the scope of kiruv.

In many cases, these victims are not behaving like you think a frum Jew should. They may no longer keep Shabbos or kosher. They could have tattoos or piercings. They could be abusing drugs. They could be having sex or even prostituting themselves.

So you try to find ways to bring these kids back to "frumkeit," instead of trying to get them the professional therapy and non-judgemental support they need to heal.

As much as this may shock you, the world does not revolve around you. This isn't about you. It isn't about making you feel better because you convinced one or two of these kids to keep Shabbos or kosher again.

It's about the real psychological needs of these victims and getting them the best professional therapy available so that they can heal, and doing so in a way the recognizes that years of your misbehavior and years of trying shove these kids under the rug have done damage that cannot be healthfully undone by a little kiruv.

If some victims decide as they heal to become haredi again, fine. The free and un-pressured choice should always be theirs. If others do not, that also has to be fine.

But what you're doing now is "saving" a small number of victims while you fail the much larger number of victims who cannot or who will not return to your version of Orthodoxy.

You're helping victims for your own reasons and on your own terms to benefit yourselves, rather than helping all the victims in the ways they really need help, and to benefit them – not to benefit you.

You have been profoundly selfish for many years and you're being profoundly selfish now.

And that has to stop.

I've spent dozens of sleepless nights helping kids who you failed.

And I know activists you vilify who have done the same and even more.

You might have noticed that things are now getting worse.

State budgets that fund therapy for victims, always inadequate, have been or are about to be cut even more than they have previously been cut. It can take a month or more for a victim to get a therapy appointment – if that victim can find a therapist who takes Medicaid or other government insurance programs which are at best woefully underfunded.

The strain on common resources – shelter, food, clothing – is strained even more because the economy has been so bad for so long.

So your refusal to do the right thing is even worse now than it was two or three years ago.

You fear many things.

You fear a change in the law that would make it easier for victims to file civil suits against your yeshivas and rabbis for the enabling of child sex abuse and for covering it up.

You fear the shame that could come when what you did and the number of lives your selfishness has cost becomes public.

And you fear what for you may be the most important thing – that when your childish, selfish behavior and your misdeeds are made public, when there are court cases and real publicity and real transparency, your followers will abandon you.

Make no mistake – I hope they do.

In fact, I hope they rampage through the streets of Borough Park, Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Monsey, Kiryas Joel, New Square, Spring Valley, Lakewood and other haredi enclaves and run you all out of town on a rail.

You all deserve it.

You're the sorriest excuses for leadership that I've ever seen.

If you had any guts, if you really were the ethical and moral people you claim to be instead of the preening poseurs you really are, you'd resign immediately and go live in a life of seclusion in a forest somewhere. Or, at least, you'd resign, stop calling yourselves rabbis, and get real jobs painting houses or shoveling snow.

But you're probably not at the guts and truth stage of your development yet, and chances are, you never will be.

Despite your claims to the contrary, my disgust for you is not comparable or equal to antisemitism, Nazism, or some type of self-hating pathology.

My disgust for you is comes from your own actions, from the Kol Koreh's banning "wrong" color women's stockings and finding heresy at every turn, while at the same time you let thousands of kids suffer rape and abuse, and then refused to help them unless their victimhood fit your narrow view – and you often would not help them even then.

You could simply announce that you were wrong, that your policies and your actions and inaction cost lives. You could apologize to all the victims and their families publicly and in person, and to your community, and to those of us you have repeatedly tried to smear to protect your Wizard of Oz-like leadership.

You could give a nonprofit non-haredi social service agency that you do not control a large grant to fund therapy for the haredi child sex abuse victims you helped make, and you could allow those victims to heal in peace.

You'd have to grow up to do this. You'd have to become the men you have never been.

You could do it.

But it would take courage that you certainly lack and it would cost money hat you don't want to spend on "non-Torah" things like this.

After all, in your minds a Satmar rebbe driving around in a new $80,000 SUV, to cite a very recent example, is far more important for kavod haTorah, honoring the Torah, than helping some kid with tattoos and body piercings who "isn't from such a good family anyway" and who never really was a "Torah scholar" or a "hasid" or whatever labels you use to exclude people you can't be bothered with.

Keeping your family businesses – the supposedly nonprofit yeshivas you all run – profitable and their rosh yeshivas – you and your sons and brothers-in-law – comfortable and employed is the most important thing, you think, because you "own" them and because they make you a lot of money and because the Torah they profess to teach is "more important than anything else" – including telling the truth about your years of covering up for pedophiles and spending real money to help the victims you created by doing that.

Except the Torah you claim to teach disagrees.

It views saving human life as more important than Torah study – especially when those lives are in danger in significant part because of your personal failings as leaders.

How many victims must there be before you stop posturing and start helping?

You have made yourselves and the Torah you claim to represent hated by many, including me, and you did so out of your own selfishness and greed.

Will you ever grow up?

Will you?

Or do we have to bury more kids from "not so good families" and watch more victims lead shattered lives while you cluck knowingly and murmur that these victims "aren't frum anyway" and they "brought it on themselves" or their parents "brought it on" by wearing the wrong colored socks or a too stylish pair of glasses?

You all deserve every type of shaming and embarrassment that can be heaped on you.

Yet all any of us want is for you to stop your coverups and your lies, stop your infantile behavior and start helping the victims you helped create.

It isn't too much to ask.

It really isn't.

But if history is any guide, and it almost always is, this request will be too much for you to understand and too much for you to act on.

You could, of course, prove history wrong.

Or you could wait for the day when you find yourselves facing charges that include obstruction of justice and some other things I'm sure you've thought of.

A wise attorney knowing what I believe to be your current situation would tell you to make amends as quickly as possible, to do the right thing and not the selfish thing, and to hope that doing so stands in good stead when your day in court comes. It's the same advice Sholom Rubashkin was given. He ignored it until it was too late.

Time, I believe, is finally running out on you and on those politicians who have done your bidding.

Penn State, Syracuse, and a DA's bizarre refusal to account for the 89 haredi pedophiles he claims to have dealt with these past three years and the bizarre and probably illegal deal he made with you regarding them have, I think, seen to that.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do turn and they are turning now, faster than before.

As you are so fond of saying when what you want to say can't be said, hamayvin yavin.

Take that as you wish.

And of course, consider its source very, very carefully.

READ MORE:
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/12/a-note-to-haredi-leaders-about-child-sex-abuse-123.html

[Agudath Israel Mouthpiece] Rabbi Avi Shafran, smears as virtual anti-Semites those who criticize how the Orthodox handle sex-abuse cases!

2011-12-12T19:47:00.005-05:00

Fight against intimidation must rage on

By MICHAEL LESHER

Last Updated: 12:54 PM, December 11, 2011

In 1985, Avrohom Mondrowitz — a Hasidic “therapist” working in Brooklyn — was indicted for abusing five young boys. Police suspected he abused well over 100 more.

Mondrowitz fled to Israel, where he remains a free man to this day.

Although nearly all of his alleged victims were children from ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, not one of them joined his few non-Jewish alleged victims in testifying before the grand jury that indicted him. Efforts to extradite Mondrowitz to face his accusers in a Brooklyn court have been unsuccessful.

Today, thank heaven, things seem to be changing.

According to Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, child sex-abuse cases now being pressed in the Orthodox Jewish community reflect over 100 victims, and many of these families have been encouraged by local rabbis to work with police and prosecutors.

Heartening as this is, it’s clear we still have obstacles to tackle.

Parents of abused Jewish children shun the police not because they’re indifferent to their children’s needs. When they hesitate to report a sex crime, it’s generally because they’re afraid of retaliation from community leaders. The DA must address that fear — and the very real problems of rabbinic and institutional intimidation that lie behind it.

Just take a look at the current Ami Magazine, a popular Orthodox Jewish publication. In this week’s issue, its editor at large, Rabbi Avi Shafran, smears as virtual anti-Semites those who criticize how the Orthodox handle sex-abuse cases.

So, yes, reports of Orthodox victims cooperating with the DA make for encouraging news. But we’ll know we’re on the right track when victims who come forward — and their advocates — don’t face friction from rabbis or from powerful institutions in Orthodox Brooklyn.

The Talmud says the divine light of truth brings healing to the innocent but is painful to evildoers. The only people who will be hurt by shining a light on child-sex crimes in the Orthodox community will be those trying to conceal them. Victims can only gain.

Michael Lesher is a writer and lawyer, and a contributor to “Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals” (Brandeis University Press).

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/fight_against_intimidation_must_5NILTrpPtVjMJ42bUmD0DJ

117 kid victims and 85 arrests in Orthodox Jewish enclave!

2011-12-11T10:55:00.007-05:00

ABOVE: Goodman is caught on webcam ushering children into his home in Brooklyn!

Orthodox sex abuse scandal

117 kid victims and 85 arrests in Jewish enclave
By SUSAN EDELMAN

Last Updated: 9:31 AM, December 11, 2011

Andrew Goodman, 27, who worked for Jewish social-service agencies, is charged with sexually abusing two Orthodox boys for years in Flatbush — one from age 11 to 15, the other from age 13 to 16.

Goodman filmed sex acts with the youngsters on a Web cam, according to the 144-count indictment, which alleges numerous violations since 2006. He has pleaded not guilty.

The handsome Goodman, who held parties in his home with liquor and child porn, also “threatened the life” of a boy who reported him to authorities, court papers and sources say.

Andrew Goodman is one of 85 sex-abuse suspects arrested over the last three years by Project Kol Tzedek, has been accused of preying on the boys of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community and — even after his arrest on sex-assault charges — was caught on video ushering teens into his Flatbush home. He is being held on Rikers Island in lieu of a $1 million cash bail.

He’s one of an astounding 85 accused Orthodox child molesters that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office says it has busted in the past three years in an initiative called Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for “voice of justice.”

The cases involve 117 victims — a number that has the community reeling from the extent of the horrors of pedophilia.

Launched amid complaints that Hynes was soft on Orthodox child predators, Kol Tzedek aims to coax victims to come forward, despite strong pressure in the insular religious community to cover up such crimes.

All but two of the suspects are men, and more than half the victims are male, said Assistant DA Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the sex abuse and crimes against children division.

Of the 38 cases closed so far, 14 perps got jail time, ranging from a month to 10-to-20 years for crimes that included sex abuse, attempted kidnapping, and sodomy, Jaus said.

The other 24 have walked free. They got probation, pleaded to minor charges, or saw their cases dismissed — often because victims or their parents backed out under community pressure.

Agudath Israel of America, a body of Torah sages, requires anyone alleging sex abuse by a fellow observant Jew to first report to its rabbis, who decide whether the case should go to secular authorities.

Goodman’s case, which Hynes’ office hasn’t publicized, shows how the community’s response has started to change. Rather than keeping it among the Orthodox, some alleged victims turned to sympathetic religious leaders and outside authorities to help lock up a menace.

“Andrew Goodman is known in our community as a lifelong molester who preys on young boys and ruins their lives,” a Talmudic scholar at Congregation Bais Torah wrote to Brooklyn Judge Martin Murphy, who is hearing the case.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/orthodox_sex_abuse_scandal_Vzaqd3TbKtikUv0h6b3clI#ixzz1gF45LZ16

“Believe in me.” And therein lies a lesson about leadership with a resonance beyond football!

2011-12-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

"...He reminds us that strength comes in many forms and some people have what can be described only as a gift for winning, which isn’t synonymous with any spreadsheet inventory of what it supposedly takes to win.

This gift usually involves hope, confidence and a special composure, all of which keep a person in the game long enough, with enough energy and stability, so that a fickle entity known as luck might break his or her way. For Tebow that state of mind comes from his particular relationship with his chosen God and is a matter of religion. For someone else it might be understood and experienced as the power of positive thinking, and is a matter of psychology. Either way it boils down to stubborn optimism and bequeaths a spark. A swagger. An edge.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about optimism. When peddled generically by unctuous politicians, it can seem the ultimate opiate, a cop-out and fallback when there’s nothing more substantive to sustain you. But optimism can have an impact. It’s what radiates from Tebow and fires up the Broncos. And therein lies a lesson about leadership with a resonance beyond football.

After Tebow took over, the Broncos didn’t add a whole, half or even quarter roster of better players. But he told his teammates, “Believe in me.” And he must have done so with a persuasive charisma. They clearly have a renewed belief in themselves — and are performing better than before.

The Broncos are the talk of the league. More and more people are watching. And you could indeed say they’re tuning in to find out how far God can take a team. Because that’s just another way of saying how far grit can."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/bruni-tim-tebows-gospel-of-optimism.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua212

In Lakewood Abuse Cases, A ‘Parallel Justice System’

2011-12-07T10:09:00.011-05:00

Lakewood, in Ocean County, N.J., is home to some 40,000 Orthodox Jews. Court testimony offers rare public glimpse into religious tribunals’ handling of child sex abuse allegations; no reporting to police.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Hella Winston - Special To The Jewish Week

Last spring in a New Jersey courtroom, a prosecutor and defense attorney battled it out in a series of seemingly routine pre-trial hearings. At issue was a narrow point of law: whether or not a social worker who had evaluated an alleged child molester would be allowed to testify at his trial.

Amid the legal wrangling, however, facts emerged that were anything but ordinary — ones perhaps amplified by the recent revelations about alleged sexual abuse scandals at Penn State and Syracuse universities.

The social worker’s evaluation had not been conducted on behalf of the courts or police. Instead, it was commissioned by a Lakewood, N.J., beit din, a Jewish religious tribunal operating as a kind of shadow justice system, adjudicating sexual abuse cases without the involvement of law enforcement.

Witnesses spoke of a world in which abuse allegations are typically “investigated” not by the secular authorities, but by rabbis lacking supervision by the criminal justice system. It is a world where victims and perpetrators alike are subjected to threats of social ostracism and, in some cases, physical harm for non-compliance with the “system.”

To anyone following the unfolding story of child sexual abuse in the haredi world, that these communities have a history of handling abuse allegations internally is hardly news. The longstanding and harshly enforced communal taboo against “informing” on another Jew to the secular authorities plays a key role in blocking victims from reporting abuse allegations to police and pressing charges.

In the past few years, aided by the Internet and blogs, a number of advocacy organizations founded by members, or former members, of these communities has emerged. Much of their work, centered mostly in Brooklyn, has focused on combating this taboo and providing support to abuse victims.

In addition, advocates have worked to shine a spotlight on many of the major social and political institutions in those communities, including yeshivas, social service agencies and even Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. (Hynes’ office launched a hotline to report haredi abuse cases in 2009, seemingly in response to criticism that his office has a history of “going easy” on haredi child molesters.)

The climate is different in Lakewood, acknowledged as the seat of non-chasidic haredi Judaism in the United States. Home to one of the largest and most prominent yeshivas in the world, Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG), and a community of close to 40,000 Orthodox Jews, Lakewood has not been spared the problem of child sexual abuse — an ill that plagues all communities, religious and secular alike.

However, there are no public advocacy groups in Lakewood helping victims and agitating for change. Further, unlike Brooklyn, which is home to myriad haredi groups with no centralized “governing” body, the Lakewood community, dominated by BMG — which boasts over 6,000 students and an annual operating budget approaching $25 million — is something of a company town, residents and observers say. Indeed, the brothers who run BMG, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler and Rabbi Aaron Kotler, exert considerable control over daily life within the community, with the bylaws of the Lakewood Jewish Community Council stating that the “community is centered around [BMG] … and [the council] functions at the pleasure of [the yeshiva heads] as represented by R. Malkiel Kotler.”

This control — bolstered by the geographically bounded and insular nature of the community — means that it can be even harder for Lakewood residents to overcome the communal taboo and report abuse to the authorities than it is for their counterparts in Brooklyn.

“Most victims of abuse and parents in Lakewood are afraid to speak up because [they fear being threatened by rabbis],” Debbie Rudin, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who now lives in Lakewood, told The Jewish Week.

“There are many Jewish communities that are controlled by the rabbonim [rabbis] of their towns that set certain standards, whether in regards to businesses, giving kosher supervision or allowing schools to open,” said Harold (Hershel) Hershkowitz, a Lakewood businessman who ran (and lost) for the Lakewood Township Committee on an anti-cronyism platform against the BMG-backed candidate. “But all of these are controlled in an open manner well understood by all that live there,” he said. “Lakewood, on the other hand, has a cabal that controls most Jewish publications, websites and of course the political arena, in order to exert full influence whenever it is necessary in order to keep their position of influence.”

Rubin and Hershkowitz are two of numerous Lakewood residents, therapists, educators, social workers and community activists, as well as seven abuse victims interviewed by The Jewish Week in the course of a months-long investigation into the abuse situation there and how it is being handled. An interest in maintaining communal control, they say, is a major factor in the rabbinic and lay leadership’s desire to deal with abuse in ways that do not involve law enforcement.

Indeed, the court testimony described above affords a rare public glimpse into what New Jersey Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson characterized as Lakewood’s “parallel justice system.”

The testimony itself comes from the only sexual abuse case in memory from the Lakewood haredi community to be prosecuted — something that came about because a family flouted, at great personal cost, communal norms and pressed charges against an alleged child molester, Yosef Kolko, in 2009.

The testimony raises many questions, especially in light of the Penn State and Syracuse situations, which have advocates across the country calling for tougher mandatory reporting laws. Prominent among them is whether the rabbis and others in the Lakewood community who participate in this parallel justice system are violating New Jersey’s mandated reporting law — not to mention alleged victims’ civil rights — and, if so, what is being done about it. The law requires “all persons” (including clergy) who have “reasonable cause to believe” that a child has been abused to make a report “immediately” to the Division of Youth and Family Services. (A knowing violation of this law could result in a fine and/or jail time.)

According to Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil chair in public law at Cardozo and a leading church-state scholar, “The prosecutors in [situations] like this are doing the religious community no favors. Without enforcing the mandatory reporting laws, the poisonous abuse stays within the community, the perpetrator gets more opportunities to abuse and the victims continue to suffer.”

♦

According to court papers and interviews with people close to the family of the boy allegedly abused by Kolko, a 34-year-old former teacher at Yeshiva Orchos Chaim in Lakewood who also worked as a camp counselor, the family decided to go to the authorities only after they had exhausted the options within the community and found no relief. Before doing so, they sought assistance from a community activist, Doniel Bernstein, and several prominent Lakewood rabbis, including Rabbi Mattisyahu Salomon, the “mashgiach,” or spiritual adviser, at BMG, and the “go-to” rabbi for all manner of communal issues in Lakewood, sources say.

Rabbi Salomon, along with Rabbi Shmuel Blech, served for a time on a formal beit din, created by Salomon several years ago specifically to hear sexual abuse allegations.

After hearing the allegations about Kolko, Bernstein, on behalf of the rabbis, commissioned a paid psychological evaluation of Kolko by a social worker, Gavriel Fagin. Fagin, who at one time worked in the sex offender treatment program at OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services in Brooklyn, now maintains a private practice in which he specializes, among other areas, “in the evaluation and treatment of sexual deviance.”

Fagin testified in New Jersey Superior Court that he was contacted by “The [Beis] Din … in charge of following up on allegations of inappropriate sexual contact between individuals in the community” and asked to “evaluate an individual for their purposes to be able to determine how to proceed further.” Fagin stated in court that he saw Kolko five times to administer computer-based tests and that he did not “have much knowledge of the situation” that brought Kolko to the beit din in the first place. Fagin did not interview the alleged victim.

The mere act of commissioning an evaluation — which was apparently damning enough for the prosecution to argue (successfully) for Fagin’s ability to testify at trial — would seem to indicate at least a reasonable cause to suspect abuse. Even so, none of those made privy to these allegations reported them to the authorities.

After Kolko was arrested, the victim’s family was threatened and the alleged victim was denied admission to schools.

After the arrest, a widely distributed proclamation signed by nine Lakewood rabbis, including Chaim Ginsberg and Shmuel Katz, both employed by BMG, warned that “no one … may … bring any accusations to the secular authorities” and that “it is prohibited [for anyone] to assist and participate with the secular authorities in their efforts to persecute a Jewish person.”

Rabbis outside Lakewood sought to apply pressure as well. Yisroel Belsky, a prominent Brooklyn-based rabbi and yeshiva head who has also served in a senior position with the Orthodox Union for over 20 years, sent a letter to Lakewood residents. In it, he wrote of the “horrific news that one of your fellow residents in town informed upon a fellow Jew to the secular authorities.” He added that “all who have the ability to influence the informers to retract their terrible deeds should do so.”

Shortly after the Rabbi Belsky letter was sent, a 31-year-old Lakewood resident named Shaul Luban allegedly sent out text messages urging residents of Lakewood to try to pressure the victim’s father into not testifying.

The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office has charged Luban with witness tampering. The nine Lakewood rabbis and Rabbi Belsky have not been charged with any crime.

The victim’s family has since left Lakewood, but has not backed down and the prosecution is moving forward.

♦

In addition to information directly relevant to the Kolko case, testimony from the hearings indicates that there have been other abuse allegations apparently deemed credible by rabbis, but that nonetheless went unreported to the police.

In testimony in New Jersey Superior Court given in May of this year, Lakewood rabbi and activist Micky Rottenberg alludes to such a case, which The Jewish Week has learned involved allegations against the husband of a woman who ran a local children’s playgroup. The beit din found the allegations to be credible and publicized them, effectively shutting down the playgroup. However, the authorities were never notified and the accused remains in the community today.

In his testimony, Rabbi Rottenberg also sheds light on the beit din’s inner workings.

According to him, “[The Secretary] of the beis din [would contact] the victims … [and the] alleged perpetrator, discuss with them … beg them to do certain things. And if they don’t do it, [the secretary would say] ‘I’m going to report [to the beit din] that you don’t listen to us, and then we are going to … Take away your job. Send away your kids from schools.’ Whatever measures they would feel they have power to be able for the person to submit and accept the verdict of the beis din.”

Rabbi Rottenberg also testified that he felt the beit din favored the accusers and was in fact involved in disbanding it at the behest of Rabbi Malkiel Kotler for this reason. Rabbi Kotler, through his brother, denied making any such request.

In arguments at a court hearing, Kolko’s attorney, Michael Wilbert, refers to a Rabbi Shmuel Vogel who, he claims, was “charged with a violation” by Bernstein and “required to go to a social worker in New York ... Mr. Sternstein.” Sternstein is Hillel Sternstein, coordinator of trauma services at OHEL, and a social worker with a private practice in Long Island.

Even those who do not attempt to report to police, but seek to publicize allegations within the Lakewood community, are often intimidated. A 2009 article in the Asbury Park Press described how the home of Rivka Finkelstein, the mother of a sexual abuse survivor who died of a drug overdose, was burned down after a letter written by her son excoriating the Orthodox community for its failure to deal with the problem of sexual abuse was made public online after his death. (According to the story, which cited several other examples of such intimidation, police believed arson was the likely cause of the fire.)

Of the 32 people on the New Jersey Sex Offender Registry living in Lakewood, there appears to be only one member of the Orthodox community, convicted of endangering the welfare of a child. According to a therapist in Lakewood with knowledge of the situation, “he was arrested in another township [for exposing himself to non-Jewish children], which is why [he was prosecuted and] made it onto the list.”

Calls Doniel Bernstein were not returned. Attempts to reach Rabbi Blech and Rabbi Salomon were unsuccessful.

A source close to Rabbi Salomon’s beit din who consulted with its members on behalf of this reporter told The Jewish Week that they would not speak to the paper out of concern that “the ‘forces’ that led to the disbanding [of the beit din] are still ever present. They expressed fear that speaking about these forces will lead to personal reprisal.” The source acknowledged Rottenberg as one of these so-called “forces.” A call to Rottenberg was not returned.

An e-mail to Rabbi Aaron Kotler seeking comment on Rabbi Salomon’s beit din resulted in a reply from Rabbi Moshe Zev Weisberg, president of the Lakewood Community Service Corp.

While Rabbi Salomon is employed by BMG, Rabbi Weisberg said he was responding because “[these questions relate] to Orthodox community issues and not [BMG].” He told The Jewish Week that “The Lakewood community leadership has zero tolerance for any sexual abuse and is actively committed to following the law. Our community policy, which is in full compliance with applicable law and our [halachic] guidelines, is to report any reasonable suspicion of abuse to the proper law enforcement authorities.”

When asked whether the community has a process for determining what constitutes “reasonable suspicion,” Rabbi Weisberg replied, “I guess a common sense evaluation of the evidence determines reasonableness.” To the question of whether or not those who have a reasonable suspicion of abuse must first take their concerns to a rabbi, Rabbi Weisberg told The Jewish Week that “individuals are encouraged to follow the law.”

♦n

To be sure, the idea of using rabbis or a formal beit din to vet sexual abuse allegations has its defenders, among them Agudath Israel, which takes the position that all allegations of sexual abuse must first be reported to a rabbi. The president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Moshe Kletenick, has noted that religious courts can be used to investigate allegations, screening out false ones and referring those with “substance” to the secular authorities.....

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE - CLICK ON LINK BELOW:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/lakewood_abuse_cases_parallel_justice_system

....And in related news today: Blago gets 14 years in the slammer - Sandusky re-arrested for child-abuse as two new victims come forward:

The Role of Institutions in Reporting Child Sex Abuse

Published: December 8, 2011 - The New York Times

As “Reporting Abuse” (editorial, Nov. 29) underscores, it is far too easy for powerful institutions to cover up incidents of child and adolescent sexual abuse at the hands of people in positions of trust. There is a marked contrast, however, between the respective states’ response to the Pennsylvania State University and Syracuse University scandals.

The State of Pennsylvania has powerful tools to investigate aggressively and criminally charge those responsible for covering up abuses. New York does not. Since 2003, I have introduced legislation that makes it a felony for mandated reporters to systematically fail to report abuse.

It is also clear that the list of those mandated to report abuse needs to be significantly expanded. Sadly, recent incidents once again raise the question: How many abuse scandals will be tolerated before the New York State Legislature gets serious about the issue and passes meaningful legislation?

THOMAS K. DUANE
State Senator, 29th District
New York, Nov. 29, 2011

To the Editor:

Your editorial sends a critical message about institutions and their response to child sexual abuse: it must be treated as a crime and reported immediately to outside authorities, including the police. Delay is risky for the well-being of the child and allows the perpetrator continuing opportunities to victimize others.

If protecting children — and not reputations — is the highest priority, administrators and boards will have no doubt where their duty and interest lie.

Child rape is a hideous crime. Reporting the crime is the single most effective and proactive first step that institutions can take in the aftermath of child sexual abuse. The very best step institutions can take is to create a culture where abuse and crimes against children and youth cannot occur.

MARYLOU SUDDERS
President and Chief Executive
Massachusetts Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Boston, Nov. 29, 2011

Elly Kleinman: Megalomania grabs the reigns of Torah Inc…again!

2011-12-06T00:07:00.011-05:00

Guest Post by “Martin Elly Kleinman wants your prostate”

Image 1: Elly Kleinman, super-salesman of the day

Image 2: “Thank You” letter published by Agudath Israel after the recent “89th Dinner” notice that Elly Kleinman is just above the “89” as if he were the “center” of this world (which he is trying to be and they are falling for it). One over to Kleinman on the right is his son Yossi and one over is Aron Kotler Jr. CEO of Lakewood yeshiva Inc.

(First in a series)

It seems that nowadays wherever one turns in the Torah world of Agudath Israel of America and way beyond, such as in Chabad and even in Religious Zionist circles the name of Elly Kleinman, CEO of the “Americare” companies seems to have become like a ubiquitous octopus with untold tentacles!

Elly Kleinman’s name, often in conjunction with his wife Bruchie’s, is all over the place if one lives in the “Oilem HaTorah Sesame Street .” The Kleinmans sponsor endless reams of this and that and the other tomes of the ArtScroll publishing company. They are constantly spreading their largesse over a wide spectrum of Torah institutions and causes that are often at loggerheads with each other. They will give to Chabad and Jerusalem reclamation projects as easily as they will donate to high powered Washington DC politicians of various ilks and beliefs.

Litvish Roshei Yeshiva, Chasidic Rebbes, Executive Directors of myriads of causes count the Kleinmans as their friends. This has taken on a life of its own to the point that the name “Kleinman” is virtually expected to be attached to causes like some sort of “seal of approval” when it’s nothing of the sort.

Funny, but we have been here before quite a few times in recent living memory.

Not so long ago, another overly-zealous billionaire (Tom Kaplan) aided and abetted by his nephew (Guma Aguiar) came along and hit the Orthodox-news headlines with a hidden agenda of taking remote control over the world of Torah in the name of “raising the standards of conversion” by buying off almost every Bais Din and Posek in the world with freely-distributed tens of millions of dollars. It resulted in one of the greatest catastrophes to befall the Torah world when the one (Leib Tropper) who was supposedly running this operation for years was unmasked as an immoral conniving fraud who was trading sexual favors for himself and his buddies in exchange for conversions as well as pocketing millions as he went along.

Tom Kaplan and Guma Aguiar were praised and hailed by the Moetzes rabbis in America and Israel when with Tropper they were pumping tens of millions into those rabbis’ worlds. They also supported many causes outside of Aguda-type rabbis and institutions, such as Chabad, Holocaust remembrance and Israeli causes to the tune of tens of millions of dollars through their private family foundations just as Elly Kleinman is doing now. But after the Tropper sex-scandal fiasco the fakery and fraudulence and EGO-mania of Tropper-Kaplan-Aguiar was revealed in all its nakedness and they have slinked off into the dark.

Before those guys, there was the notorious case of David Schick who was praised by the American Agudists as their “savior” for pumping in tens of millions into their coffers and pet causes. Only problem was that David Schick was revealed to be a huge financial fraudster who had ripped off anyone he had came into contact with. It was reported to be more than $350 million that he denuded trusting banks and “bakante” (close friends) alike. After all, Schick was an attorney, “sworn” to uphold the law, right? Wrong! He was sued, tried and went to jail for his still-unsolved mega-crimes, and the Agudists were revealed to be the suckers and dumb-bells whom Schick had taken along for the ride of their lives. To this day his name is anathema among the frum world where he lived. But it seems that people have chosen to forget this too. Kleinman is counting and working with this selective amnesia and “sha-shtil” mentality among the frum oilem goilem!

Then before this there were the vaunted Reichmann brothers who through their vast real estate property-holdings’ profits and wealth, bankrolled Torah causes to the tune of tens of millions. They supplied Agudist institutions in America and Israel with tens of millions. It is said that they gave Rav Elazar Shach in Israel a no-strings-attached “spending account” with carte blanche to allocate the millions of dollars as he saw fit. This all came crashing down when the Reichmanns lost the bulk of their world-wide real-estate empire in a crash so big that at the time books were written that the Reichmanns were “Too Big To Fall” and they thereby consequently extorted unheard of concessions from the banks they were beholden to because the banks had too much to lose with the collapse of the Reichmanns’ real-estate wealth. People have long forgotten those vanished “false messiahs” that turned out to be a king size flash-in-the-pans! So Kleinman can take heart that not only do his type of people “see no evil” but they will “talk no evil” and “do no evil” to him, as he has already amply shown as he wiggles out of case after case that’s comes at him!

Then there was the rise of Abraham Fruchthandler who had allied himself with the Reichmanns but had made lots of his own vast wealth. Fruchthandler was whispered and expected to be the great “power-that-be” behind the scenes of Agudath Israel and related causes. But then came Fruchthandler’s machinations with his friend Aron Schechter in the way the humiliated, disgraced and “fired” their own yeshiva’s mashgiach ruchani. For these halachic offenses they were summoned by no less than Aguda head Rav Moshe Feinstein for a din Torah to explain and defend their unjust actions which they have refused to do that it turned them into virtual silent pariahs in the eyes of the very Aguda world they purportedly led and supported. Even though people fear to talk openly to them about this, but no one who knows respects them because of that. They keep a low profile and it seems that many have chosen to forget that as well. Similarly, the Kleinman family acts with utter disregard for what the world may say about the younger Yossi Kleinman having committed a grave great sin when he had an affair with a married woman and then dumped his unsuspecting wife and married his mistress even though halacha forbids it since this is case of a Sotah (“another’s wife accused of adultery”) but the Kleinmans act as if this never happened, the world be damned.

So now comes Mr. Elly Kleinman (there are a few others with him, but he is a “star” in his own right) as a kind of “Tom Kaplan-Leib Tropper-David Schick-Reichmann-Fruchthandler” rolled into one!

He has exhibited the symptoms and attributes of all of them at one time or another. Like Tom Kaplan he likes to see his name in the headlines and headlights. Like Leib Tropper he and his son Yossi have been accused of sexual misconduct and have had to settle law suits for that. Like David Schick he’s had to face serious accusations of legal wrong-doing, from having his company paying out legal settlements for the cutting out of the prostates of dozens of mentally ill men who did not need it, to being fined and settling for various cases of financial fraud with Medicaid and Medicare cases in the many millions.

Obviously Kleinman got off the hook from going to jail because he hired better and smarter lawyers than David Schick who is a lawyer himself. And like the Reichmanns and the Fruchthandlers, the Kleinmans function “above the law” in a world of their own making out as if they were “absolutist royals” since they want to and are viewed as the financial “messiahs” of the Aguda and Torah world and beyond by strategically spreading their name and wealth.

But above and beyond all this, from the Kleinmans’ point of view it’s also all part of a very shrewd “business model” that the obviously very business savvy Elly Kleinman has drawn up. That is, that he always lets it be known that he offers all sorts of “services” for sick and aged through his “Americare” companies throughout the New York state area where most of America’s religious and other Jews still live with large aging populations.

By wrapping himself in false outward “robes of righteousness” Elly Kleinman projects an “aura” of “benefactor” of the Torah and Jewish causes he decides to support. He obviously directs and micro-manages the PR and advertising campaigns of the New York medical health market he thinks he knows so well. But inwardly, this charade, megalomania and near false messianism cannot go on for much longer before it too crashes down like the Tropper, Kaplan, Schick, Reichmann, Fruchthandler and other false prophets who were revealed to be crooks and perverters of both legal justice and simple human decency. For now Kleinman can go on “acting” and “huffing and puffing” on his stages at the various venues in Lakewood, Flatbush, Boro Park, Crown Heights, The Five Towns, Jerusalem, On You Tube, Google, the Internet and wherever else he may choose to “touch down” with his self-promoting egotistical show. The only one he is really fooling is himself, as time is bound to tell!

Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police'

2011-12-04T13:28:00.006-05:00

'Doesn't Matter Who, Doesn't Matter Where,' Children Say - Unless Your Families are Under the Influence of Agudath Israel Rabbis and the Rapist is Circumcized and Wears Tzitzis and a Black Hat.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA — In the wake of the sex abuse scandal that rocked Penn State earlier this month, a coalition of 10-year-old boys from across the nation held a press conference Saturday outside Beaver Stadium, home of college football's Nittany Lions, to remind Americans that if they see someone raping a prepubescent boy, they should contact the police immediately.

"Considering that the monstrous acts perpetrated by Jerry Sandusky went unreported for years, even after a fellow coach saw him raping a 10-year-old boy inside the facility behind me, we feel perhaps not everyone is totally clear on what to do if one witnesses such a thing," said spokesperson Joshua Pearson, who was flanked by several of his fifth-grade colleagues. "Many of you will no doubt be relieved to know the proper course of action is really quite simple: Just contact the police. Call 911, go to your local precinct, stop an officer on the street—the bottom line is, if you see one of us getting raped, notify the police, and do so as quickly as possible."

"It doesn't matter who the boy being raped is, and it doesn't matter who is doing the raping, just please, please alert law enforcement," Pearson added as the 10-year-old boys surrounding him nodded soberly. "And by the way, under no circumstances is it ever okay for an adult to rape a 10-year-old boy, so you really can't go wrong by calling the police when something like that happens."

This man was spotted raping a 10-year-old boy on Mar. 1, 2002. So the police should have been called on Mar. 1, 2002. Understand?

Pearson fielded several questions from reporters, such as whether it is okay, when one sees a boy being raped, to wait until after lunch before contacting police, or if it is acceptable to simply inform the rapist in a firm tone that what he is doing is wrong and then leave it at that. The 10-year-old confirmed neither course of action was adequate.

Additionally, Pearson attempted to clear up any confusion as to whether an individual should contact the police even if he or she has been personally acquainted with the rapist for many years.

"We understand the delicacy of the situation when the person committing the rape is a coworker or otherwise someone you know quite well, but as 10-year-old boys with very few ways of protecting ourselves, we still have to insist that you go to the police," Pearson said. "While we appreciate your reporting such acts to a supervisor at work or a trusted clergy member, unfortunately that may not be enough, and it is not the most responsible course of action. As the sad events at Penn State have taught us, there is no way to guarantee the highly important boy-raping information will reach the proper authorities unless you deliver it yourself."

"So, to reiterate: If you ever see a 10-year-old boy being raped—by anyone, at any time, even if it's a Sunday afternoon—it is very, very important that you go directly to the police and clearly explain what you saw, remembering to identify the person who was doing the raping," Pearson continued.

According to Pearson, even if one merely suspects he or she has seen a 10-year-old boy being raped, but is not absolutely certain, it is still a good idea to play it safe and allow police investigators to sort out the situation.

"Wouldn't you be left with egg on your face if that little boy was actually being raped and you didn't tell the police!" said Pearson, drawing a big laugh from the gathered crowd.

The nation's 10-year-olds unanimously echoed Pearson's sentiments, imploring people to contact police not only when they see prepubescent boys being raped, but, in fact, when they see anyone at all being raped, in any context.

"Certainly, if you were to see me being raped, I would want you to call the police—I'm a 10-year-old boy who couldn't possibly give my consent, or even fully grasp the horror of what was happening to me," Sioux Falls, SD resident Nick Kealey, 10, said between games of Mario Kart DS. "What's really at issue here is the act of rape itself. So, yes, if you see a 10-year-old boy like me being raped, by all means, call the police. But don't just walk on by if you see, say, a teenage girl being raped in a locker room, or even a full-grown man being raped in an alleyway. These are also situations in which you should definitely call the police, and right away."

"Seeing any person get raped at any time, even just once, is more than enough reason to contact the police," Kealey added. "I can't stress that enough."

Following Saturday's announcement, police stations around the country reported a flood of incoming phone calls.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-10yearold-boys-if-you-see-someone-raping-u,26724/#

Victims Advocate Dennis Brown from Adkan - Enough is Enough!

2011-12-01T23:19:00.009-05:00

DENNIS BROWN, MA, NCACII, RAS, CSAT
Executive Director, SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROFESSIONAL (SAP)
The Ness Counseling Center, INC.8512 Whitworth Dr.Los Angeles, CA 90035 --- Organizationdbrown@thenesscenter.org

I have been working in the field of addictions Addictive Behavior for over thirty-five years, twenty of which I worked in The Chabad Residential Treatment Center. I am now Director of an Outpatient Center, The Ness Counseling Center, Inc. in West Los Angeles. A note to our readers, addictions are real and these addictions do not discriminate between, race, religion, rich or poor, male or female, they are pathologies of human behavior which none of us can claim immunity from in our subconscious or conscious state and none of us are invincible when it comes to inner workings of our daily life.

As an Addictive Specialist/Counselor with over 35 years of experience I can tell you that there are many addictions: we have substance abuse addictions, consumer addictions, physical addictions, sexual addictions and emotional addictions. They are all self reward addictions directly linked to the Reward Systems in the brain, they all in one way or another lead us to a synthetic feeling of well being.

While working in the field, I remember one mom in particular; when upon being told that her son was an alcoholic she said “thank G-D, he could have been a drug addict”. This unfortunately, is a common misconception in the Frum/secular community; the idea that one addiction is better than the other, or that one is more ‘socially’ acceptable. This thinking opens the doors for vast ill “social norms” amongst the masses, When applied to the frum community the bar is raised even higher, leading to ‘optimal denial’.

The religious community creates a vacuum of privacy and unspoken social shames that are hidden, at all cost, under the illusion that ‘addictions’ and their pathologies are problem of the secular, non-Jewish world and just don’t occur in the frum world. This denial perpetuates the cycle of abuse, forcing the victims to remain silent all in the name of avoiding an idea that when you remove all the veils of our individual scared religious communities, you are left with the belief that frum Jews walk on water? In the end, you have human beings susceptible to human behavior.

In short, suffice it to say that our community suffers from the worst symptom of any addiction, DENIAL. It is the myth that someone who gives Tzedakah and wears Tzitzit is somehow a holy individual in the community that could never do wrong, never abuse his wife or children and never sexually abuse one in the community! It is as if to say that the religious community does not ‘suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: that somehow, we as religious Jews do not suffer from the same addictions, diseases as the secular world, that G-d made us different.

It is a hypocritical and cynical attempt to maintain a facade of perfection, when in fact that when the day is done and we close our doors we are human beings susceptible to the same thoughts and desires as the rest of the population. One of the things we seem to overlook and forget is that our religious leaders are not perfect, do not ‘walk on water’ and are prey to the same human desires as the “outside world.”

I remember when a Rebbe was caught here in California for molesting students in school, at the school meeting there was a mother who had the audacity to say that the children should be punished for ruining this Rebbe’s career. even when he clearly admitted the crime! He spent a year in jail and was supposed to register as a Sexual Offender, however he did not as there several people in the community who raised money and helped him to flee the country.

What do we say to those children, victims of these abusers, whose innocence and lives have been scared forever, to what end do we continue this synthetic cycle, if it does not put to shame those in the religious community who live a life of faith and goodness, it in fact separates the religion from the man.

Several years ago I worked with a Chabad Shaliach who was one of this same Rebbe’s victims when he had been a young student in a yeshivah in Brooklyn, New York. There were questions about him (the Rebbe) then, however all we managed to do was move him around, there was never a healthy resolution for this victim or others. So do we continue to count one life more valuable than that of another? I say not, in the world that we live inside and outside of the borders of our religious communities we have an obligation to walk the walk and talk the talk.

Even in the Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach the 4th commandment Prohibition of Sexual Immorality, do we not shame our very own breath of life to not see the truth of behaviors. The times are changing, the world becomes more integrated as each day passes, it is our duty to our very own belief of T’shuvah that we get out of Denial. We must embrace the sincerity of addiction so as we may find the path to recovery.

Around twenty years ago I remember a woman who had reached out to all of the agencies within reach in the Los Angeles area with he plea for help as she proclaimed that her husband was abusing her, she was told “go back home and we will investigate”. Failing to listen or protect her, her husband beat her to death. We failed her and her children.

I see the denial happening time and time again as an Addiction Specialist. As we continue to fail to meet our social responsibilities, and our human responsibilities . We neglect our most precious possessions, our children. We must stop looking at the uniforms and costumes/masks that we go through life with, we must stop looking/worrying about how we will be seen by others and must start looking at how our shameful secrets affect our children, (their neshamah’s and Yiddishkiet)

Mitzvah, you shall not worship an idol…

Mitzvah you shall pay money for any loss you cause anyone to suffer…

Mitzvah you shall have to appear before a Judge to determine your innocence…

Mitzvah you shall not lie to protect a wicked man or woman…

Mitzvah you shall not join a majority, multitude or mob to do evil…

Mitzvah you shall not corrupt justice…

Mitzvah you shall treat a stranger humanely…

We must come out of the dark, we must take our religious teaching and bring them to life…all of them…we must come to the reality that we are all human beings.

When do we say enough is enough?

Caring For Survivors of Boyhood Sexual Abuse Is The Next Step In The Penn State Case

2011-11-29T23:33:00.002-05:00

“Penn State: A Familiar Dark Cloud, a Silver Lining”
By Richard B. Gartner, PhD

Childhood sexual abuse has a long history, going back long before Penn State, even before the Catholic Church scandals which forced the sexual betrayal of children by adults into our national conversation. Many, especially those who treat survivors of abuse, know that sexual abuse was widespread well before it was talked about. What seems to be new today, and might prove the silver lining in the dark Penn State cloud, is the possibility that due to some new found openness we will finally value children more highly than the needs of institutions, however difficult that may be; only then will we truly be addressing the nightmares of childhood sexual trauma.

The statistics are horrifying: In the United States by the age of sixteen one in six boys and one in three girls have had unwanted sexual contact with an adult or more powerful minor involving touch or penetration. That means when you watch a local little league game the chances are that someone on the field has been, or is being, sexually abused by an adult. Like Mickey Mantle, it might even be the preternaturally gifted athlete gracing the game.

Let’s look more closely at the horrendous scandals of the last decade: the Catholic Church. The Boy Scouts. Boarding schools, yeshivas, public schools.

In virtually every case the situation unfolded similarly: The shocking news leaked out. The institution denied knowledge and culpability. The abuser, a beloved member of the community, had his or her supporters and detractors. Demonstrations, sometimes leading to violence, took place supporting the alleged abuser and attacking the victims, or speaking up for victims’ rights and attacking the alleged abusers. Many pooh-poohed the significance of the abuse. Victims’ suffering, especially the suffering of male victims, was nearly always ignored, or at best dealt with as an afterthought.

An important step towards recognizing the prevalence of male sexual victimization took place when the Catholic Church scandals forced our public discourse to include the sexual abuse of boys. Until then, I met with disbelieving comments and rolling of eyes, even from mental health professionals, when I spoke out about boyhood sexual abuse. I do not get those looks any more. Mental health professionals, the public, and the media have finally caught on to the reality that male children can be sexually victimized.

The events at Penn State initially sounded familiar. Children were known to have been assaulted; reports were made to authorities (but not the police); authorities did not do their moral duty. Time went by. There was a media leak and then a rush of media coverage. Attention concentrated on the possible fall of a sports idol and its effects on a great institution. As usual, male children’s suffering initially got little notice.

But then something different happened. The current scandal took another step towards recognizing the sexual betrayal of boys by adults. It occurred when, within a week of the disclosure of sexual assault and cover-up in its athletic program, Penn State did the right thing. The Board stepped in and fired the idol: Joe Paterno was out. Plus, they fired the University President. No more cover-up. It was as though the Church fired the Pope.

While the story itself is horrifying, with events unfolding in one sickening detail after another — and we do not yet know what full disclosure will reveal — we know we will learn about it because the Penn State Board did the right thing.

Penn State did not react perfectly, but its Trustees acknowledged the problem and swiftly handled it in a creditable way. This is in marked contrast to how the Catholic Church, several Orthodox Jewish yeshivas, the Boy Scouts, and numerous boarding schools, public schools, orphanages, and other institutions have reacted when it became clear that male children were abused under their care. Their stonewalling continued for years and in some cases even for decades.

These two forward-moving steps — the public disclosure of male sexual victimization and an institution adopting a stance of openness rather than stonewalling — result from incremental changes in our perception of childhood sexual abuse, especially the abuse of boys. As with other social changes involving race, gender, sexual orientation, the status of women, and abortion, change happens slowly, then all of a sudden we realize we are living in a different social world than before. It is no longer a given that races should be segregated, or women underpaid or unable to determine what happens to their bodies, or gays be closeted. Similarly, it is no longer a given that victims of sexual abuse are liars, or that they are female, or that sexually abused boys are whining sissies who just need to get over it.

But more change is still needed. Even though it is not anywhere near as sensational and it requires us all to appreciate the darkness of the human heart, the media needs to pay full attention to abused children’s trauma rather than focusing on the motives of predators, on the people who cover for them, and on the institutions that try so desperately to protect their reputations. These children’s needs are great, as are the needs of the men they become. But one thing is clear: they deserve to be believed, understood, and helped.

It is difficult for any of us to think clearly about a young child being anally raped in a public shower by an adult he trusted, maybe even revered. I know it is difficult for me to do so and such thoughts are thoughts I encounter daily in my work. It is equally difficult to focus on such aftereffects of betrayals as flashbacks, depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, addiction and compulsion, and painful interpersonal relationships.

And so, as in recent days, the media and the public often look away from these boys’ pain. We’re human, how could we do otherwise than want to look away?

But even though it requires us to encounter difficult-to-think-about pain and trauma, the needs of children need to be valued more highly than either the needs of institutions or the demands of social comfort. Only then, when the children come first, will we truly have started to address the nightmare of childhood sexual trauma.

Guest Blogger Bio:
Richard Gartner is Training and Supervising Analyst and Founding Director of the Sexual Abuse Service at the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute; the author of Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse and Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men. He is Past-President of MaleSurvivor.org, the National Organization against Male Sexual Victimization and has been quoted widely in print, broadcast, and online media.

"A leader was told he was abusing kids and did not report it"

2011-11-28T19:25:00.011-05:00

Lawsuit claims church knew of sex abuse
Full Word leader didn't report crime, lawyer says

Leaders of a North Charleston church knew its pastor, convicted child molester Tyrone Moore, was sexually abusing children but failed to report it to authorities, a new lawsuit against the church alleges.

The lawsuit is the third filed in Charleston County against Full Word Ministries.

Moore was a charismatic preacher who built a loyal following in his church, even though he pleaded guilty in 1989 and 1991 to sexually abusing young girls at his grandfather's church.

In 2006, Moore was accused of molesting or assaulting eight young males at the church or in his home between 2002 and 2006. In 2009, a judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

The latest lawsuit alleges that church officials knew Moore was molesting the child.

"A leader was told he was abusing kids and did not report it," said Scott Beard, an attorney for the child, identified in the lawsuit as Joshua Doe.

The lawsuit cited state laws that require people in positions of authority, including teachers and members of the clergy, to report cases of abuse.

A woman who answered the phone at the church declined to comment on the lawsuit. A lawyer handling the church's other lawsuits did not immediately return a phone call.

The lawsuit alleges that Moore sexually abused the child numerous times at Moore's home and the church at 2730 Gordon St.

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/nov/23/lawsuit-church-knew-of-abuse/

......And now the Chosen Folk --- the Jews:

Go Down Moses Lyrics

Verse 1
When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go

(Chorus)
Go down (go down)
Moses (do down Moses)
Way down in Egypt's land
Tell old, Pharoh
Let my people go!

Verse 2
Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said
Let my people go
If not, I'll smite your first born dead
Let my people go

(repeat chorus)

Verse 3
No more shall they in bondage toil
Let my people go
Let them come out with Egypt's spoil
Let my people go

Breaking the silence!

2011-11-27T17:21:00.006-05:00

The Brooklyn DA arrested an astounding 89 Orthodox men on charges of child sex abuse — forcing open a community that sometimes covers up such crimes.

By MICHAEL LESHER

Last Updated: November 27, 2011

The numbers are startling — in the past two years, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office says it has arrested and charged 89 Orthodox Jewish men with child sex abuse.

It’s horrific and shocking, though in terms of effective law enforcement and honest dealings with the public, finally a good thing.

Some background: The Brooklyn DA has been accused for years by child advocates of handling the insular, image-conscious Orthodox Jewish community with kid gloves over sex-abuse scandals. Those familiar with abuse survivors from within that community — myself included — have complained that Hynes is too fearful of retaliation from a politically powerful religious bloc to hold its sex abuse perpetrators to the same standard applied elsewhere in Brooklyn.

Hynes, who denies this, claimed in 2009 to have arrested 26 Orthodox Jewish men for sex abuse over a two-year period — a claim that drew some praise at the time, but also some skepticism for being just too good to be true. But now the DA is double-daring (or triple-daring) his doubters, claiming that since October 2009, the rate of sex-abuse arrests within that community has more than tripled, all the way up to 89.

Still, from the quiet way Hynes broke the news, one senses some reticence behind the bravado. There was no fanfare, no typical press release; Hynes’ spokesperson Jerry Schmetterer offered the numbers in an unheralded exchange with the Jewish newspaper Forward over two weeks ago, and left it at that.

But the unprecedented claim can’t possibly remain a whisper. With the child-abuse cover-up at Penn State on everyone’s lips, any report of such a whopping crackdown in a community notorious for resisting public reports of the crime is bound to have significant results.

True, the lack of detail about the arrests — the Brooklyn DA has declined to give names, charging information or current case status for any of the suspects, or even how far back these cases date — is cause for legitimate concern. I’m not surprised that child advocates within Orthodox Brooklyn have publicly cast doubt on the DA’s numbers. No one knows better than I how hard it can be to pry the facts about such cases out of Hynes’ office. To name just one instance: my four-year effort to obtain records of the abortive attempt to extradite Avrohom Mondrowitz, indicted on 13 child sex-abuse counts in 1985 and still at large in Israel, has led all the way to New York’s highest court, where I will be arguing the Freedom of Information Law case against the DA’s Office this winter.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/breaking_the_si_ence_fowlLEBaFdRumDAfT2gc0J?mid=53

What I Would Say At This Year's - 89th Agudath Israel Convention!

2011-11-20T14:20:00.004-05:00

I need no introduction Chaim Dovid, but thank you anyway.

I believe in Jewish Exceptionalism, not necessarily in the orthodox sense of the term (of course!). We were destined to be a great people only if we act as a great people. The same applies to us as Americans. We are a great nation because of the vision of the Founding Fathers' wisdom in setting up the rules and regulations called the Constitution, with the ability to add Amendments if deemed necessary, only after great scrutiny and consideration....And act with dignity in implementing the very basics of human needs with the understanding that societies can only exist if what is good for the individual members, is good, or should be good for society as a whole.

Perhaps the greatest of their visionary thinking, after vicious religious persecution that forced the Pilgrims to flee their country, was establishing a State with freedom of religion, or no religion; under these parameters did America become the greatest country to ever inhabit the planet, and scientific inquiry was able to flourish without the scrutiny of the ignorant and vile Church, creating and leading up to advances in medicine, for example, unthinkable a mere fifty years ago.

But as Jews we have the added privilege to have the Torah.

And as Chazal tell us, we didn't really want any rules. We were content initially, (before the Torah was forced on us), to worship false idols, many gods, Golden Cows, any cow, and Edward G. Robinson --- [born Emanuel Goldenberg; עמנואל גאָלדנבערג (Erev Rav - Cecile B. DeMille's version)] --- style leaders.

Leaders that lied to us, wreaked havoc on our value system, caused dissension among the desert nomads we once were, and guilty of every human weakness and acting out on that failing. Hashem, after offering His Torah to the rest of the nations, and being turned down, forced us slaves and nomads to accept the Torah, the literal and the implied, or he was going to lift up Har Sinai, and crush us to death. We were ingrates. Nothing He did earned our trust or respect. We acted like sub-humans regardless of all the chesed that He bestowed upon us.

And we are NO better today; you will be FORCED to accept the rule of law and protect our children first under all circumstances!

Our Erev Rav, want to tell us that the societal freaks that plague gentile children, don't plague Jewish children. A mere five years ago, a man who is the spiritual advisor to a whole city in New Jersey, told you publicly, that perhaps "one of those (freaks) slipped through his fingers, but that he/they had the matter under control according to his Torah".

Scroll down to the weekend program!

Rabbi Yisroel Belsky is a featured speaker on Shabbos. Chaim Neuhoff is a co-chair of a session that will discuss safety for your children. Rabbi Kaminetzky is another featured speaker, the man that moved Moshe Eisemann in middle of the night from his Philadelphia Yeshiva to Ner Israel in Baltimore once he confirmed the allegations of Eisemann's raping of boys in his yeshiva. And the bozo that is giving the keynote address Motzei Shabbos has in his kollel sitting today, a man who rapes baby girls in his family, and Shmuel Kaminetzky knows about it. Chaim Neuhoff, under the instruction and psak din of Sruli Belsky, participated viciously and with malice, in the cover-up for Yudi Kolko and Lipa Margulies & Co. (See hazmana below that was intended to stifle Eli Greenwald from speaking to the parent body of Torah Temima about Kolko)

Parents trusted their kids to these types that used their kids as "objects" - either making money off of them in their schools, summer camps, seminaries etc., and as we now know, that in every yeshiva and girls school, many kids were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by staff members, principals, teachers --- and these crimes were covered up by criminal circus midgets with long beards, like the ones sitting at your dais here tonight.

I look around this room and I know many of you; I find it incredible to believe that you are here showing support for this criminal enterprise. In effect, you have created "a race to the bottom" of what was once a beautiful heritage and tradition. Have you no shame? What will your legacy be, if not leaving the world a much worse place than how you found it? Your kids are ashamed of you --- and are voting with their souls, hearts and feet " out of here!"

Who do you think you're kidding? They see through you! They know that there's not a darn thing about your lifestyle that they want to have anything to do with!

Hashem had sent His messenger to America in September 1913 to set up shop with a model that would work for American Jewry. And a model that was mostly foolproof until the end of time. Children were to be cared for and loved by how you educated them and protected them from evil forces, within and outside our community. They were to be first and foremost bnei Torah in all its glory. Being a mensch was not optional! They needed to spend most of their school day with model rebbes/humans... not some garbage can with a lid that the sanitation department would refuse to pick up!

They needed to be educated as proud Americans, with full knowledge of most every subject taught in American secular schools (at the time). They needed to understand that they would one day need to go out in the world and either be a proud supporter of Torah institutions, or become a member or founder of a Torah institution. There was no gray area;... in order to support Torah, you had to appreciate what you learned as a child. And you had to love it, not loathe or fear it! In order to "stay in chinuch" you had to excel in your abilities, in your emunah, in your middos, and wisdom of the printed Torah and its spirit. And that required that you had to give up the so-called good-life, "without ever having to say you're sorry!" There had to be mesiras nefesh, knowing that your ben Torah neighbor that has gone to work, may have a nicer car than you.

Look at you! Look at what you have become! Either felons, or felons that have not been caught yet!

You trusted your kids to lowlifes, degenerates and perverts! They'd sell you down the river in a second, the second you stopped giving them money, or not as much as they wanted from you! And then your kid would be out on the street too, because he "did not measure up"! Which guy at the dais here has to be concerned about mundane issues like paying their mortgage, or tuition? Do they even have a mortgage? Or was it paid off with your money combined with whatever they could steal from Uncle Sam?

So why are you here?

There was a reason that Dr. Joseph Kaminetzky was appointed the head of Torah Umesorah. He graduated from Columbia University and had the wisdom needed in every area of education, and was rightfully in charge of the curriculum in each and every Torah Umesorah affiliated school.

It was no coincidence that Dr. David Stern was selected as menahel/principal of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He too was a graduate of Columbia University and a rabbi at one of the early Young Israel synagogues.

And when Rabbi Alexander Linchner z"l left his position at Mesifta Torah Vodaath to focus full time on the building of Boys Town Jerusalem, he hired Rabbi Moshe Lonner PhD, to be the high school secular studies principal; with the same intent, gusto and spirit that his father in-law had in appointing Drs. Kaminetzky and Stern to their respective positions.

So how did we get here? What group of ignoramuses led us down this path of "the more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more dumb" -- the better? "Where are the lomdim?" an ultra-orthodox rabbi recently bellowed! Where are the Torah scholars?

What have you done to your kids and their kids?

Go back to the original model set up by Hakodesh Baruch Hu Himself; pick the few select students to toil in Torah, to stay in chinuch, and to be a model for your grandchildren. Get rid of the gangsters running the American yeshiva system and its affiliated organizations -- they have already destroyed two complete generations.

You will hear from the likes of psycho misfit Avremel Schorr, who will tell you the "dangers of the new technologies". "GET RID OF THEM" - he will hyperventilate! And I say...it's here to stay and only in the developmental stages --- you must educate your children with love and patience about the appropriate uses for these devices....BANS DO NOT WORK and are the products of sick and ignorant minds!

Supporting Agudath Israel in any way, will only encourage them to continue to run a parallel justice system to shield themselves and their institutions from illegal and nefarious conduct --- with total disregard and abandonment of societal protections that we must have in place for the safety of our kids, ourselves and our Jewish families. You saw what transpires under the bais din system run by these very criminals.

And finally...

My advocacy for the causes that are close to my heart are who I am, proudly. I have no other motive other than to see the betterment of all of humankind. I am a product of an illustrious family and upbringing, and would have preferred to do my work anonymously - as a true chesed shel emes, in the realm of a mes mitzvah. Those that I work with, know I spurn the spotlight, have distributed my own funds to the necessary professionals and costs associated with protecting kids, under a pseudonym, and postmarked from cities that I hoped could not be traced back to me. My father and grandfather sat in the back of the shul as I do. That was not meant to be - but the only "being" that I will explain it to when the time comes, is THE "Yodea Machshavot" - but of course, He already would have known that.

Chazak
UOJ

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE:

HOW SOME "GOYIM" DEAL WITH CHILD SEX-ABUSE COVERUPS:CLICK ON LINK BELOW
http://news.yahoo.com/scandal-leaves-paternos-reputation-tatters-163331841.html

On the Eve of the Annual Agudath Israel Convention

2011-11-19T20:55:00.006-05:00

"Please believe me when I say that this is not a story about Penn State or some other corrupt organization. Characterizing what happened in State College, particularly the failures of so many adults to report the abuse, as the product of some morally bankrupt institution is a way of convincing ourselves that we are outsiders to these sinister forces. It is no different from calling Sandusky a “monster.” That is soothing, I realize. But it also lets us off the hook too easily, allowing us to avoid asking hard questions about what happens, or can happen, in our own backyards. The Penn State cover-up could have, and undoubtedly has, happened at many other institutions, including those you most care about. Don’t content yourself with demanding something of Penn State, or big-time college sports. While that might make you feel better, it won’t prevent the next tragedy."

The Cruel Lesson of Penn State

How what happened in State College forced me to confront my own abuse.
By Professor Mark P. McKenna
November 18, 2011

A student raised his hand in my torts class last week and asked whether Joe Paterno might be exposed to liability for failing to tell the police about Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sexual assault of a young boy in the Penn State locker room. It was a perfectly legitimate question—we had been studying tort law’s general reluctance to impose liability for omitting to act. And it didn’t come as a surprise—I have always encouraged students to bring current events to class, and the Penn State situation was nearly impossible to avoid last week. Still, I had prayed no one would ask about it because I was not sure I could make it through any sort of answer. As I’d feared, the question stopped me cold.

I have spent the better part of my life working to cover wounds from my own childhood abuse, about which I have never spoken publicly. In fact, I’ve hardly talked about it at all; I can count on two hands the number of people who know anything about it. Some of my siblings will learn of it from this article.

The cascade of emotions that washed over me as I stood before my torts class and tried to muster a coherent response would be impossible to describe here. After many years of hard work, and with a lot of help, I no longer think every single day about that terrible winter night. There are still plenty of reminders, to be sure, and there are some things that will never be normal for me. But most days, the wound is insulated by lots of scar tissue. Not this week, though. The story hit me at a bad time, during a year that was already very difficult. And the similarities were too hard to ignore.

The perpetrator at Penn State was a coach, as was mine. The abuse happened on the periphery of a major college football program, and I was a walk-on college football player when the weight of my childhood abuse became too much for me and I finally sought help. Most significantly, I have a son who is about as old as the boys Sandusky allegedly assaulted, and nearly the same age I was when I was victimized. He is so young.

I cried uncontrollably at least three separate times last week. This is part of what makes abuse so wretched—it strips you of control, not only of your body in those moments of abuse, but of your mind long after. Sometimes emotions just sneak up on you. And even when you know difficult conversations are going to arise and you try to steel yourself, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. The emotions come, and you can’t make them go away. Then you hate yourself for feeling so weak and exposed. You are sure everyone is looking at you, and you know that no one would look at you the same way if they knew your story. They’d see you as damaged goods. Or they’d pity you. It’s hard to know which is worse.

All this rushed through me when the student asked his question. I can never recall my classroom having been so quiet. Mercifully, no one followed up on my answer; perhaps they could sense my discomfort. So I moved on, knowing I had probably shortchanged the class with my half-answer.

But as the story has remained in the headlines and the uncomfortable conversations have continued, I haven’t been able to shake an overwhelming feeling that I failed Sandusky’s victims and, by extension, far too many other boys. Abuse thrives on silence. In some cases, as the Penn State situation makes clear, the silence of third parties gives perpetrators license. But victims’ silence also plays a huge role. This is true in the immediate aftermath of the abuse, where victims’ inability to speak out puts them (and others) at further risk. It’s also true much more generally. Several of my friends, for example, were shocked when Rick Reilly reported that, according to a 1998 study on child sexual abuse by Boston University Medical School, one in six boys in America will be abused by age 16. For girls, it's one in four by the age of 14. They were shocked, no doubt, because concrete examples of abuse are not as available to them as the statistics suggest. Most people don’t think they know any abuse victims.

But they do know victims. They just don’t realize it, because so many of us have been unable to reveal ourselves. This breeds a false sense of security, with too many adults believing abuse is someone else’s problem.

This reality that the silence of victims creates opportunities for evil is a particularly cruel one, especially when you know it to be true and still haven’t been able to reveal your own abuse. It is another reason abuse is so insidious. Perpetrators procure their victims’ silence by causing such deep shame that private torment seems tolerable by comparison. But it is precisely this silence that helps create the conditions for abuse. This is what has been on continuous replay in my head in the days since my torts class. I can’t shake the feeling that I failed those boys. I failed them by hiding. You cannot imagine how devastating that feeling has been.

When I told this to my friend, the psychologist to whom I disclosed my abuse in college and whose counsel I have relied on for the last 16 years, he told me all the reasons I couldn’t have expected more of myself. Intellectually, I know he is right. But this isn’t primarily about what I didn’t do long ago—it’s about what I wasn’t doing last week. So here it is: I am a victim of sexual abuse.

I say this now, at age 36, in the hopes it can make a small difference to those currently suffering in silence. You know them, I promise. They are your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, and, painfully, your children. Be a safe place for these people. If you are one of them, I am sorry. Know you are not alone. You did nothing wrong, and you are lovable. It can get better.

I am also moved to say this publicly to counter two aspects of the public reaction to the Penn State situation, both of which reflect our collective attempt to distance ourselves from the reality of abuse. First, it is a mistake to characterize Jerry Sandusky as some kind of subhuman monster. The inclination to do so is entirely understandable, for his behavior was unequivocally monstrous. But to describe him as a monster shields us from the reality that human beings have the capacity for tremendous evil. This recognition is critically important. Predators do not look like monsters; they look like your neighborhood basketball coach or the guy running a children’s charity. They look like people you know, because they are. This is so important for parents to realize: If you allow yourself to think of these predators as “monsters,” you will convince yourself that they are rare, and you will not be as vigilant as you need to be. This recognition is also important for your kids, because if you teach them that they should be on the lookout for monsters, they will be confused by the inappropriate behavior of adults who don’t fit that profile.

This is particularly true with respect to adults who have parents’ implicit trust: friends, family members, and coaches. Sadly, the statistics tell us that most perpetrators are in this group. Focus on behavior—teach your kids that adults are never entitled to touch their bodies, and that no one is entitled to touch their bodies without their permission.

Second, many have painted this story as one fundamentally about Penn State or college athletics. At the Sports Law Blog, for example, Alan Milstein asked whether, were the perpetrator an assistant professor of biology and the witness a graduate student, there was “any doubt the perpetrator, if aware he had been seen, would immediately stop, the witness would intervene, the cops would be called, the professor would be put away, and the university and its president would not be implicated in the least?” In Milstein’s mind, there was no doubt: The big money in college football is the reason Jerry Sandusky’s abuse was not reported.

This is wrong. There is absolutely a doubt about what a graduate student would do in these circumstances. Graduate students are as highly dependent on faculty advisers for their futures as graduate assistant coaches (like Mike McQueary) are on their superiors. For the same reason, I have significant doubts about what an associate at a law firm (or a junior person at Goldman Sachs, or an intern in Congress) would do if he witnessed a sexual assault. Because this is not about a problem at some other institution; it’s a reflection of a universal human tendency to look out for oneself, and to preserve hierarchical institutions about which one cares and upon which one is dependent. It’s also a reflection of the nearly boundless capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and to make excuses for those within our own circle. Think about the Catholic Church. Predators flourished in parishes for years, not simply (and probably not even primarily) because higher-ups worried about financial exposure. They flourished because many otherwise good people could not bring themselves to believe or to act upon information that their priest was a rapist.

Please believe me when I say that this is not a story about Penn State or some other corrupt organization. Characterizing what happened in State College, particularly the failures of so many adults to report the abuse, as the product of some morally bankrupt institution is a way of convincing ourselves that we are outsiders to these sinister forces. It is no different from calling Sandusky a “monster.” That is soothing, I realize. But it also lets us off the hook too easily, allowing us to avoid asking hard questions about what happens, or can happen, in our own backyards. The Penn State cover-up could have, and undoubtedly has, happened at many other institutions, including those you most care about. Don’t content yourself with demanding something of Penn State, or big-time college sports. While that might make you feel better, it won’t prevent the next tragedy.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/11/penn_state_scandal_how_what_happened_in_state_college_forced_me_to_confront_my_own_abuse_.single.html

The Vatican said "The ad was damaging to not only to dignity of the pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers.”

2011-11-17T18:36:00.005-05:00

What about the lives and dignity of the untold thousands of kids you destroyed?

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

Dovid Cohen, Israel Belsky, David Mandel RESIGN!

2011-11-15T17:18:00.008-05:00

Penn State, Second Mile Not the First to be Embroiled in a Sex Abuse Scandal
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published November 15, 2011

Allegations that former Penn State defensive football coach Jerry Sandusky sexually molested young boys and that university administrators did not adequately report the accusations against him have tarnished the once-shiny image of both Sandusky’s Second Mile charity and the university’s stellar Nittany Lions athletics program.

But it’s hardly the first time a charity group or sports organization has dealt with charges of sexual molestation.

“As much as the Penn State situation has shocked the nation, the more shocking fact is that the veil of secrecy is more commonplace than we probably realize,” said Justin Leto, a Miami-based civil trial attorney who has handled numerous sex abuse cases.

This month, Lon Harvey Kennard Sr., co-founder of the Utah-based nonprofit group Village of Hope, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to 43 counts of sex abuse and exploitation.

Kennard, who started Village of Hope to help women and children in Third World villages, had been charged with molesting six Ethiopian children he had adopted. He was arrested last year after one of the children told police that she and one of her sisters had been abused between 1995 and 2002.

Another sexual predator is Douglas Perlitz, a Colorado man who founded a school for homeless children in Haiti. He was sent to prison last year when he was found guilty of abusing eight students.

Perlitz admitted to investigators that he committed illicit sexual conduct with students who attended his Project Pierre Toussaint School for Homeless Children in Cap-Haitien.

During Perlitz's trial, prosecutors said, he gave the children money, food, clothing and electronics equipment in an attempt to buy their silence, and that he threatened to take it all away and have them expelled if they told anyone what happened. Six of his victims were flown to Connecticut to testify at his trial in federal court.

The scandal led to the collapse of the school, forcing many of the students back into homelessness and despair on the streets of Haiti. Perlitz is serving a 20-year sentence.

Like the charities, Penn State’s football team is not the first sports program to be accused of covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

The Boston Red Sox faced a similar scandal in the early '70s and successfully kept the allegations from going public until 1991.

The team had a clubhouse manager, Donald Fitzpatrick, who during his 30 years with the team solicited sex from young boys he would hire to work during spring training.

Fitzpatrick’s accusers said it was common knowledge among the Red Sox that it was dangerous to have children around him, and one of his victims said players Jim Rice and Sammy Stewart warned the kids to steer clear of him.

In 1971, one of Fitzpatrick’s victims went to Red Sox management and blew the whistle on him, accusing him of being sexually inappropriate with many of the children in the clubhouse and at a hotel where the team stayed during spring training in Florida.

The Sox did not report the claims to authorities, and they fired the victims who came forward. Fitzpatrick suffered no penalties and was allowed to keep his job.

The claims did not resurface until 1991, when one of his accusers – sitting in the crowd at a nationally televised game between the Red Sox and Angels -- held up a sign that said, “Don Fitzgerald sexually abused me.” The Sox eventually paid the man a $100,000 settlement. In 2002, Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual battery on a child. In 2003, the team settled a $3.15 million lawsuit with seven victims in Florida.

“The thing these organizations all neglect to recognize is that eventually the truth will come out,” Leto said. “And when it does, the years they have spent protecting the predators and themselves will end in far greater consequences than if they would have done what is right from the start.

“The interest of the employer should never supersede the moral, ethical and legal obligation to ensure that no child is subject to this type of unthinkable abuse.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/15/penn-state-second-mile-not-first-to-be-embroiled-in-sex-abuse-scandal/?cmpid=NL_FNTopHeadlines_20111115#ixzz1dobWoXqb

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN! - Part Three

2011-11-14T18:41:00.009-05:00

"All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?"

Penn State's Cowardly Lions
By Michael Goodwin
Published November 14, 2011

It is a cliché to say that football is like life. At Penn State, it is also insufficient. For under Joe Paterno, football was life.

And now a glorious era is finished, demolished beyond redemption. The scandalous end of Paterno’s career has wiped out the university’s sterling reputation and shattered the trust of an entire sport. Riots by crackpot students and death threats punctuate the madness.

To Pennsylvanians and millions of football fans everywhere, the fall of the House of Paterno is like the collapse of an empire. It crashed without warning or mercy.

In truth, the core values rotted away over the years, the work done secretly in the dark, like that of termites and cancer. The end only seemed sudden.

It could be a long time before we know the full extent of the pedophilia horror allegedly perpetrated by a former coach and the outrageous silence of many, perhaps dozens, of people. But already the most important lesson is clear.

Civilizations, from single universities to national cultures, must be defended with relentless vigilance and courage, or they will not survive. Only the details of their demise will differ.

A sage, perhaps Edmund Burke, once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

That describes the fate of Penn State. The brilliant days of sunshine, victory and integrity in Happy Valley were not a mirage. They were real for generations of players, parents, students, alums and fans who, over the 46-year tenure of Paterno, believed in the “grand experiment” -- of winning the right way, with honor.

But evil triumphed because of a fundamental failure by Paterno and others to uphold the principles the experiment represented. And so the whole enterprise lies in shambles, everyone associated with it tarnished and generations of adherents suffering an angry loss of faith.

I share that loss because I grew up in the shadow of Penn State, just 30 miles from the shining oasis he created. In my youth, Paterno and Penn State football were synonymous with the working-class values of the hardscrabble mountains of central Pennsylvania.

He was the pope of a secular religion that forged friendships and family bonds. Under his benevolent dictatorship, “old school” became a term of rectitude and integrity.

Uniforms were simple, the players were legitimate students and the code of sportsmanship meant something.

Paterno and his wife contributed $4 million to the university, some of it to enhance the teaching of classics.

The righteousness of the path was confirmed by the fact that Paterno won more games than any major-college coach in history.

Yet the rot was quietly hollowing out the foundation. The first report that respected coach Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile was quietly investigated, and dropped without explanation in 1998.

Other reports followed, with the most important one coming in 2002, when a young assistant said he spotted Sandusky, then retired, raping a child in a locker-room shower. The assistant told Paterno, who told his supervisors -- but nobody told the police.

So Sandusky, according to the shocking indictment against him, was allowed to continue his predations for nine more years.

The price for that shameful silence must be measured in tens of millions of dollars, reputations lost and lives ruined.

All of which gives rise to these questions: Those men and women who remained silent in the face of this evil -- are they truly good? Or are they cowards who were simply not willing to take a modest personal risk for the preservation of the one thing they supposedly valued most?

I believe they are cowards. Their goodness was found wanting when it was needed most, and so was shallow if it existed at all. They are sunshine patriots who could not be counted on when the stakes were highest.

In life, even more than in football, courage is required.

Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and a New York Post columnist.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/11/14/lesson-penn-state-life-requires-courage/?cmpid=NL_BestofOpinion_20111114#ixzz1dj5l08EH

TORAH TRUE JUDAISM FROM BILL O'REILLY:

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN! - Part Two - KOLKO IS YOUR LEGACY!

2011-11-13T00:28:00.004-05:00

Don't Be an Enabler -- When a Child Is Abused, Here's What to Do
By Michael Reagan

Allegations of child sexual abuse by a former assistant football coach at Penn State University have dominated the news this week. On Wednesday legendary football coach Joe Paterno released a statement in which he said, "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." How lame is that, coach?

Would you have accepted that excuse from one of your players? "With the benefit of hindsight, coach, I wish I had run the route we rehearsed a thousand times in practice." See how stupid that sounds? It doesn't take "hindsight" to know that when some monster is raping children in your locker room, you call the police.

Coach, you knew back in 2002 that Jerry Sandusky had anally raped a ten-year-old boy in the Lasch Football Building. You handled the matter quietly with your athletic director, Tim Curley. You took away the rapist's keys and barred him from the facility—but you didn't call the police. You didn't lift a finger to help the victim. No hindsight needed, coach. You screwed up.

Yes, we all know about your 61-year career at Penn State. But when you allow children to be victimized right under your nose, you wipe out 61 years of achievement. The Jerry Sandusky scandal is your legacy now.

This scandal has also indelibly stained the reputation of The Second Mile, the charity Jerry Sandusky founded in 1977 as a foster-care program for at-risk kids. Turns out the kids were most at-risk from Sandusky himself.

The Second Mile was one of George Bush Sr.'s Thousand Points of Light and probably did some good work. But the grand jury says Sandusky met his victims through The Second Mile. So even if the program survives this scandal, it will always be remembered as Jerry Sandusky's private sandbox for recruiting rape victims.

As for the alleged child-rapist himself, you have to stand amazed at his gall. He actually had the brass to title his autobiography "Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story." What is that, the punch line of a sick joke?

I don't want to hear any more "benefit of hindsight" excuses. So let's be clear about what you should do if you learn that a child is being sexually abused. Print this out, post it on your bulletin board, and make sure everyone in your family, company, or organization knows how to respond to child sexual abuse.

1. If you see an act of child abuse in progress, step in and STOP IT. I have to wonder why the grad assistant who witnessed the rape felt he only had to report it to someone. Why didn't he jump in, knock Sandusky on his butt, and protect the child? If you see a child being raped by an adult, please have the guts and good sense to intervene.

2. If a child tells you he or she is being abused, don't panic, don't act shocked. Make sure the child feels supported and protected. Say, "You did the right thing in telling me."

3. Believe the child. Even if the offender is "good old Uncle Charlie," tell the child, "I believe you." It takes a courage for kids to speak up because they fear they won't be believed. Kids need to know you're on their side, and they almost never imagine sex acts unless they've experienced them.

4. Tell the child that he or she is not bad. Say, "He knew better; you didn't know. We'll make sure he can't touch you again."

5. Focus on the child's needs. Don't think about the reputation of any individual or organization. The moment you shift your focus off of what's best for the child, you're on the wrong side of the issue.

6. Don't confront the offender in front of the child. Keep adult discussions away from the child. Kids need to feel protected. They don't need to be upset, disturbed, and frightened.

7. Report the crime to the police. Law enforcement agencies in your area have trained investigators who will talk with you and the child, and who know exactly how best to handle the situation.

And don't you dare tell me that you don't have the heart to have "good old Uncle Charlie" arrested. If Uncle Charlie is molesting a child, protect that child!

I've heard too many horror stories of people who protected "good old Uncle Charlie" or "good old Coach Sandusky" instead of protecting children. You must have absolute moral clarity: Child molesters belong in jail where they can't hurt children. If you don't call the police, then you are an accomplice and no better than a molester yourself.

8. If the molester is a member of the clergy, DO NOT report the abuse to church officials. If the molester is a coach or teacher, DO NOT report the abuse to the school authorities. Some churches and organizations worry more about lawsuits and bad publicity than about kids. Just call the police.

9. Don't call Child Protective Services—investigating crimes is not the function of CPS. If the police determine that CPS should be involved, they will make that decision. Don't let the predator talk you out calling the police. Most predators are amazingly persuasive—that's how they entice their victims, and that's how they get people to cover for them instead of reporting them. Don't be taken in by a charming predator.

10. After you call the police, call the ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4ACHILD (1-800-422-4453). The ChildHelp counselor will listen to your concerns, answer your questions, and direct you to local support services for the child.

Finally, don't you ever use the "benefit of hindsight" excuse! I've armed you with the foresight to do the right thing to protect a child—and that child is counting on you.

The reason I tell you all this? Because, I was once that boy.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan. He is a political consultant, the founder and chairman of The Reagan Group, and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his website at www.reagan.com, and visit the Michael Reagan Center at Arrow Child & Family ministries. Portions of this column are adapted from his book "Twice Adopted."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/11/10/dont-be-enabler-when-child-is-abused-heres-what-to-do/#ixzz1dYnGPRXU

Moetzes Agudath Israel RESIGN!

2011-11-11T10:41:00.008-05:00

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL - NOVEMBER 10, 2011

The Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees made the only rational choice on Wednesday when it dismissed the football coach Joe Paterno for failing to pursue a horrific allegation of sexual assault of a child that was brought to his attention by a subordinate in 2002. Mr. Paterno, who failed to call the police, now concedes that he did not do enough to curb what prosecutors describe as a 15-year cycle of child rape and sexual assaults, perpetrated partly on university property, by Jerry Sandusky, Mr. Paterno’s former assistant coach.

Mr. Paterno seems to understand that his failure to act had tragic consequences for the child victims. He was not fired because he participated in or condoned the sickening acts described in a 23-page grand jury report. He was fired because he did not take steps that probably would have ended them. The university must now explain this truth to angry, misinformed students who rioted in the streets when they learned of Mr. Paterno’s dismissal.

The obvious place for the students to begin is with the grand jury report, a harrowing document that depicts Mr. Sandusky as luring young children with gifts and outings before going on to rape and assault. The Penn State student newspaper, The Daily Collegian, has put the report on its Web site for anyone who wants to read the testimony.

The person identified in the report as Victim 1 told the grand jury that he was 11 or 12 years old when he met Mr. Sandusky in 2005 or 2006 through a charity for underprivileged children. The child was taken on trips and given a computer, clothing and cash. He says he eventually began sleeping over at the Sandusky home, where the former coach would creep into his bed at night and perform oral sex on him.

After many sexual encounters, the victim says he managed to terminate contact with Mr. Sandusky in the spring of 2008. According to the report, Mr. Sandusky was barred from assisting as a coach in the child’s school district after his mother called the school to report the child’s allegation of sexual assault. That was in 2009, seven years after Mr. Paterno’s graduate assistant coach, Mike McQueary, claims he first witnessed Mr. Sandusky raping a young child in the Penn State football building.

No one connected to the university should feel anything but shame that the institutional leaders did so little to protect the children involved. The trustees seemed to acknowledge that on Wednesday. The sooner misinformed students understand the basic facts, the better.

CLICK ON LINK FOR GRAND JURY INDICTMENT:
http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4181508116.PDF

Parents Must Always Call The Police And Speak Out!

2011-11-10T23:27:00.008-05:00

http://www.thepostgame.com/features/201111/mothers-alleged-sandusky-victims-speak-out

On Tuesday morning, the tide of momentum against the Penn State football program and head coach Joe Paterno became even more overwhelming. A ninth alleged sexual assault victim of former coach Jerry Sandusky has reportedly come forward. A press conference scheduled for 12:20 ET was canceled as a report surfaced in the New York Times about plans for Paterno's exit. And most importantly, an exclusive story in the Patriot-News gave voice to two mothers of alleged victims.

Their stories are specific, extensive, and chilling. And both mothers accuse Penn State officials of doing too little to prevent tragedy.

"I'm so upset," the mother of a 24-year-old, who authorities are calling Victim Six, told The Patriot-News exclusively. "My son is extremely distraught, and now to see how we were betrayed, words cannot tell you. To see that Graham Spanier is putting his unconditional support behind [former Penn State athletic director Tim] Curley and [resigned Vice President of Business and Finance Gary] Shultz when he should be putting his support behind the victims, it just makes them victims all over again."

***

For the mother of another former child, who is now being called Victim One, trouble started when Sandusky, a volunteer coach at the boy's Pennsylvania high school, wanted to help discipline him for bad behavior. The two had met through Sandusky's charity for needy children, Second Mile.

"I said, 'No way, he's my kid,'" the mother told the Patriot-News.

Soon after, her son, then 15, started asking about a database for "sex weirdos."

She called the high school principal and was told to come in "right away."

The principal was in tears. The boy, upon telling his mom what happened, also broke down.

Central Mountain High School officials contacted the authorities immediately.

The boy was "very afraid" of Sandusky, according to the mother. When told to say no to the coach, he told his mother he couldn't.

When asked why not, he said, "You just don't do that.

***

The story told by the mother of "Victim Six" is every bit as haunting, if not more so. After Sandusky gave her son a tour of the Penn State football locker room in 1998, the boy came home and told her, "If you're wondering why my hair is wet, we took a shower together."

He then ran to his room.

The boy later told his mom there was another child in the shower with him and the coach. That boy was 11.

The mother called police. An investigation started. The mother confronted Sandusky in his home, with the police listening in another room.

According to grand jury evidence, Sandusky told the mother of Victim One: "I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead."

But Sandusky was cleared.

"And you're going to tell me that Spanier and Paterno weren't informed of something that was that huge that [the district attorney] was in on it but Spanier was kept in the dark?" the mother told the Patriot-News. "I’m just not that stupid. I’m so upset I just can’t believe it."

Sandusky's attorney, contacted by the Patriot-News, denies all charges. Scott Paterno, Joe's son, said Penn State lawyers assured him his father was never told about the 1998 report.

According to the grand jury presentment, Sandusky had eight alleged victims. Six shared showers in Lasch Building at Penn State, which houses the football program.

Both mothers suffered for several years, only to learn over the weekend that Penn State officials did not report the incidents to police.

"I'm infuriated that people would not report something like that," the mother of Victim One told the Patriot-News. "I still can’t believe it. I'm appalled. I'm shocked. I'm stunned. There's so many words. I'm very mad. They could have prevented this from happening."

“We felt we need to restore trust in the university” - So Simple - Shame on the Jews World Over!

2011-11-09T22:57:00.007-05:00

The Wall Street Journal

In its fifth day, the metastasizing scandal at Pennsylvania State University ended the career of Joe Paterno—the longest-tenured coach in major-college football—and resulted in the ouster of the university’s president.

After an emergency meeting Wednesday evening, the school’s Board of Trustees announced at a news conference at 10 p.m. that they had dismissed Mr. Paterno and Graham Spanier, the school’s president for the past 16 years.

“We felt we need to restore trust in the university,” said John Surma, the board’s vice president.

An Old Gentile Knows When His Time Is Up!

2011-11-09T12:23:00.003-05:00

The Washington Star, David Israel says, is “an insular world that protects its own, and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.” Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program. This is what Israel calls “the delusion that the ability to win football games indicates anything at all about your character or intelligence other than that you can win football games.”

...I’ve got to wonder how the 84-year-old coach feels when he thinks about all the children who look up to him; innocent, football-crazy boys like the one he was told about in March 2002, a child then Anthony’s age who was sexually assaulted in a shower in the football building by Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s former defensive guru, according to charges leveled by the Pennsylvania attorney general.

Paterno was told about it the day after it happened by Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant coach who testified that he went into the locker room one Friday night and heard rhythmic slapping noises. He looked into the showers and saw a naked boy about 10 years old “with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky,” according to the grand jury report.

It would appear to be the rare case of a pedophile caught in the act, and you’d think a graduate student would know enough to stop the rape and call the police. But McQueary, who was 28 years old at the time, was a serf in the powerfully paternal Paternoland. According to the report, he called his dad, went home and then the next day went to the coach’s house to tell him.

“I don’t even have words to talk about the betrayal that I feel,” the mother of one of Sandusky’s alleged victims told The Harrisburg Patriot-News, adding about McQueary: “He ran and called his daddy?”

Paterno, who has cast himself for 46 years as a moral compass teaching his “kids” values, testified that he did not call the police at the time either.

The family man who had faced difficult moments at Brown University as a poor Italian with a Brooklyn accent must have decided that his reputation was more important than justice.

The iconic coach waited another day, according to the report, and summoned Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director who had been a quarterback for Paterno in the ’70s.

Curley did not call the university police, who had investigated an episode in 1998 in which Sandusky admitted he was wrong to shower with an 11-year-old boy and promised not to do it again. (Two years later, according to the grand jury report, a janitor saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy in the showers and told his supervisor, who did not report it.)

Curley waited another week and a half to see McQueary, who told the grand jury that he repeated his sodomy story for Curley and Gary Schultz, a university vice president who oversaw campus police.

Two more weeks passed before Curley contacted McQueary to let him know that Sandusky’s keys to the locker room had been taken away and the incident had been reported to The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky started in 1977.

Prosecutors suggest that the former coach, whose memoir is ironically titled “Touched,” founded the charity as a way to ensnare boys. They have charged Sandusky, now 67, with sexually assaulting eight boys he met there.

Despite knowing of the two similar rapes, The Second Mile did not do anything to keep Sandusky away from vulnerable children until 2008.

Curley said he told Sandusky he could no longer bring children onto the Penn State campus. In other words, Jer, if you want to violate kids who live in cow town where everything revolves around the idolatry of Penn State and Paterno, kindly take them off campus. The predator was still welcome on his own, though; he was spotted at the football team’s weight room working out last week.

Curley told the university president, Graham Spanier, about the matter, and it got buried. Paterno, Curley and Schultz disingenuously claim they were left with the impression that the contact might have been mere “horsing around,” as Curley put it. That’s grotesque.

Like the Roman Catholic Church, Penn State is an arrogant institution hiding behind its mystique. And sports, as my former fellow sports columnist at The Washington Star, David Israel says, is “an insular world that protects its own, and operates outside of societal norms as long as victories and cash continue to flow bountifully.” Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from its football program.

Paterno was still practicing for the game against Nebraska on Saturday, and supportive students were rallying at his house. This is what Israel calls “the delusion that the ability to win football games indicates anything at all about your character or intelligence other than that you can win football games.”

I can only hope that by the time Anthony’s parents work up their nerve to have what they call “the conversation” with him about his fallen idol, St. Joe and the other Penn scoundrels will have been ignominiously cast out of what turns out to be a not-so-Happy Valley.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/opinion/dowd-personal-foul-at-penn.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Molester Next Door!

2011-11-07T23:31:00.001-05:00

By FRANK BRUNI
Published: November 7, 2011

The longest, most exhaustively researched article I ever wrote for a newspaper or magazine was about a child molester who had sexually abused a little boy living down the street. The abuse went on for more than two years, beginning when the boy was 10.

This molester had a job. A house. A wife. Two kids of his own. And he gained access to his victim not through brute force but through patience, play and gifts: help with his homework, computer games, a new bike. To neighborhood observers, including the victim’s parents, the molester’s attentiveness passed for kindness, at least for a while. A molester’s behavior very often does.

The arrest on Saturday of a former Penn State University assistant football coach — who is accused of sexually abusing eight pre-adolescent, adolescent and teenage boys — brought this all back to me. I wonder if people who know the coach and saw him working with kids will comment on how genuinely nurturing he seemed and how this surely prevented or discouraged suspicions about him.

This is something that has come up repeatedly over decades — I wrote that article back in 1991, for The Detroit Free Press — but that remains tough to accept: the predator to watch out for is less likely to don a trench coat and lurk behind a bush than to wear a clerical collar and stand near the altar or to hold a stopwatch and walk the sidelines. And he (or, for that matter, she) works with children as a function of being drawn to them for reasons beyond their welfare.

The former Penn State assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, 67, founded and ran a charity program for disadvantaged boys. That’s one of the ways he got to know and interact so extensively with kids, some of whom received special favors related to his college-football connections. His alleged abuse of them is said to have occurred over a 15-year period ending in 2009.

He maintains his innocence of the charges against him. That’s important to note, because sexual abuse of children is a crime so rightly enraging that the specter of it has prompted unfair rushes to judgment in the past.

But true or not, the accusations against Sandusky, spelled out in great detail in a 23-page grand jury report, bring to mind many proven cases in which a molester occupied a position of trust, identified and gravitated to children who were especially vulnerable, made them feel special and was by all outward appearances their champion, which many molesters indeed believe themselves to be.

In their own minds these molesters aren’t predators. They’re people whose affinity for children just happens to have a sexual element, the satisfaction of which they’ve convinced themselves isn’t such a big, harmful deal.

Parents face a tricky challenge. They need to be watchful but not paranoid, because most clergy members, scout leaders, camp counselors and coaches aren’t abusers in waiting and are improving children’s lives. They deserve the opportunity to.

But parents should also remain conscious of an additional lesson suggested by the Penn State story. Institutions do an awful job of policing themselves.

That has been true of the Boy Scouts, which has paid out tens of million of dollars in response to lawsuits by former scouts molested by adults who continued to work in the organization despite complaints or questions about their behavior.

That has been true of the Roman Catholic Church, whose diocesan heads and bishops repeatedly transferred abusive priests from one parish to another rather than report them to law enforcement authorities. This cover-up spanned decades and went all the way up the hierarchy of the church.

Many factors explain it, including a fear of scandal and desire to protect the church’s image. The Boy Scouts, too, didn’t want messiness exposed.

Was that a dynamic at Penn State as well? Two university officials have been indicted for not contacting the police after being alerted many years ago to the possibility that Sandusky was abusing boys from his charity on university premises.

And there are lingering questions about whether the university’s renowned head football coach, Joe Paterno, was irresponsible.

According to an account in the indictment that he hasn’t disputed, a graduate assistant in 2002 told him of inappropriate activity in a university shower between a boy and Sandusky, who had already retired from his longtime job as the coordinator of the football team’s defense. Coach Paterno relayed that to a university official, then apparently moved on. And Sandusky continued to interact with troubled boys.

Paterno absolutely should have followed up. Maybe he just couldn’t envision someone like Sandusky — a distinguished professional, a seeming do-gooder — as a molester. But it’s important that we all do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/the-molester-next-door.html

Sandusky, 67, was arrested Saturday and charged with 40 counts of sexually abusing children over 15 years...

2011-11-06T23:15:00.004-05:00

Two top university officials — Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, and Tim Curley, the athletic director — were charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations, as required by state law. The Penn State board of trustees held an emergency meeting Sunday night, after which the university president, Graham B. Spanier, announced that Curley had asked to be placed on administrative leave while he fought the charges and that Schultz had resigned.

By MARK VIERA
Published: November 6, 2011

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — On Saturday, March 2, 2002, according to Pennsylvania prosecutors, a Penn State University graduate student went to visit Joe Paterno, the university’s football coach. He had a horrific story to tell: the night before, the graduate student had witnessed one of Paterno’s former coaches sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in the football facility’s showers.

Paterno, according to the prosecutors, did not call the police. Instead, the next day, he had the university’s athletic director visit him at his home, a modest ranch house just off campus in State College. According to prosecutors, Paterno told the athletic director of the report regarding the former coach, Jerry Sandusky.

The authorities then say nothing about what, if anything, Paterno did in the subsequent days or weeks. They do not say whether he followed up on the allegation or whether he ever confronted Sandusky, a man who had worked for him for 32 years and who, even after retiring, had wide access to the university’s athletic facilities and students.

What prosecutors do contend in detail is that Sandusky went on to abuse at least one and perhaps any number of other young boys after Paterno and other senior officials at Penn State were told of an assault in 2002.

Sandusky, 67, was arrested Saturday and charged with 40 counts of sexually abusing children over 15 years, including his time as an assistant at Penn State. He was specifically accused of having assaulted the young boy in 2002. All the accusers were boys Sandusky had come to know through a charity he founded, the Second Mile, for disadvantaged children from troubled families.

On Sunday, Paterno issued a statement insisting that the graduate assistant had not told him of the extent of the sexual assault that he said he witnessed, only that he had seen something inappropriate involving Sandusky and the child.

“As Coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at the time, I referred the matter to university administrators,” Paterno said in the statement.

“I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold,” Paterno said.

Paterno’s son Scott said in an interview Sunday that Paterno never spoke to Sandusky about the allegation, and that he never seriously pursued the question of whether any action had been taken by the university or any other authorities against Sandusky.

“From my imperfect recollection, once he referred it off, I do not believe he had a second conversation about it,” Scott Paterno said of his father and how he handled any follow-up on the allegation. He added: “The appropriate people were contacted by Joe. That was the chain of command. It was a retired employee and it falls under the university’s auspices, not the football auspices.”

The university’s athletic director, Tim Curley, and another senior administration official have been charged with lying to a grand jury about what they had been told about Sandusky’s conduct, and they are expected to surrender to the authorities Monday morning. Their lawyers have maintained they will be exonerated. Sandusky, through his lawyer, has maintained his innocence.

It appears prosecutors believe that Paterno, whatever his personal sense of obligation to inquire or act further, met his legal requirement in reporting the graduate student’s allegation to his direct superior, Curley.

Under state law, if a staff member at a school makes a report of possible sexual abuse of a child, it is the responsibility of “the person in charge of the school or institution” to make a report to the state’s Department of Public Welfare. According to prosecutors, neither Curley nor the president of Penn State, Graham B. Spanier, who had been told by Curley of the complaint against Sandusky, made such a report to child welfare authorities.

Of course, there was nothing preventing Paterno from doing more, and some sexual abuse experts and those who have represented young sex victims over the years have begun questioning why he did not take more immediate, aggressive action....

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/sports/ncaafootball/in-penn-states-sex-abuse-case-a-focus-on-how-paterno-reacted.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua28

The Greek Gedolim - Leading From Behind!

2011-11-06T01:27:00.005-04:00

THE DENIALS THAT TRAPPED GREECE

THE warning was clear: Greece was spiraling out of control.

But the alarm, sounded in mid-2009, in a draft report from the International Monetary Fund, never reached the outside world.

Greek officials saw the draft and complained to the I.M.F. So the final report, while critical, played down the risks that Athens might one day default, with disastrous consequences for all of Europe.

What is so remarkable about this episode is that it wasn’t so remarkable at all. The reversal at the I.M.F. was just one small piece of a broad pattern of denial that helped push Greece to the brink and now threatens to pull apart the euro. Politicians, policy makers, bankers — all underestimated dangers that seem clear enough in hindsight. Time and again over the last two years, many of those in charge offered solutions that, rather than fix the problems in Greece, simply let them fester.

Indeed, five months after the I.M.F. made that initial prognosis, Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece disclosed that, under the previous government, his nation had essentially lied about the size of its deficit. The gap, it turned out, amounted to an unsustainable 12 percent of the country’s annual economic output, not 6 percent, as the government had maintained.

Almost all of the endeavors to defuse this crisis have denied the overarching conclusion of that I.M.F. draft: that Greece could no longer pay its bills and needed to drastically cut its debt.

Until October, when European leaders conceded that point, the champion of the resistance was Jean-Claude Trichet, who stepped down this month as president of the European Central Bank. It was he who insisted that no European country could ever be allowed to go bankrupt.

“There is simply no excuse for Trichet and Europe getting this so wrong,” said Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup. “It is fine to make default a moral issue, but you also have to accept that outside of Western Europe, defaults have been a dime a dozen, even in the past few decades.”

If leaders had agreed earlier to ease Greece’s debt burden and moved faster to protect the likes of Italy and Spain — as United States officials had been urging since early 2010 — the worst might be behind Europe today, experts say.

The turning point came at a late-night meeting last month when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, pushed private creditors to accept a 50 percent loss on their Greek bonds. Mr. Trichet had long opposed such a move, fearing that it could undermine European banks. Instead, at his urging, European leaders initially promoted painful austerity for Greece, prompting a public backlash that pushed Mr. Papendreou’s government to the brink of collapse and could force Athens to abandon the euro.

Many view the latest rescue plan as too little, too late.

“Because of all this denial and delay, Greece will need to write down as much as 85 percent of its debt — 50 percent is not enough,” Mr. Buiter said.

It was never going to be easy to turn things around in Greece, particularly given European politics. In countries like Germany and the Netherlands, many people oppose bailing out their southern neighbors. Policy makers and, indeed, many financiers believed that they could buy enough time for Greece to solve its problems on its own.

“It was quite obvious, by the spring of 2010, that Greek debt could not be paid off,” said Richard Portes, a European economics expert at the London Business School. “But in good faith, policy makers felt that Greece could grow out of its debt problem. They were wrong.”

BOB M. TRAA is no one’s idea of a radical. A Dutchman, he labors at the I.M.F., among the arcana of global debt statistics. He wrote the 2009 report.

Immediately after that bulletin, he produced another, more damning analysis, which concluded that if Greece were a company, it would be bankrupt. The country’s net worth, he concluded, was a negative 51 billion euros ($71 billion).

But because Greece had a high-enough credit rating at that time, it could keep borrowing money and skate by. Once again, the Greek government objected to the I.M.F. analysis, although this time, the report was not amended.

Attention has only recently been drawn to these early I.M.F. studies. The Brussels research group Bruegel, which conducted an analysis at the I.M.F.’s behest, concluded the fund should have done more to draw attention to Greece’s troubles.

By early 2010, banks and bond investors were growing reluctant to lend Greece money. The country’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, delivered a blistering message to his European partners....

CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/business/global/europes-two-years-of-denials-trapped-greece.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua24

Turning the Myth Called "Da'as Torah" on its Head Once and For All!

2011-11-02T17:30:00.012-04:00

"...In fact not a single Agudah attendee could forsee that their families and communities would be reduced in the near future to freakish exhibits of mountains of hair, gold teeth, eyeglasses, and shoes..."

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE:

A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY - CLICK ON LINK BELOW

http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%209%20Bobker.pdf

Camp Agudah Failed To Report Abuser - Yudi Kolko was 18 when he learned that Camping offered a unique opportunity to meet boys.

2011-10-29T22:51:00.004-04:00

DIFFERENT TITLE - SAME STORY!

Boy Scouts failed to report abuser

By Jason Felch and Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times
Sat Oct 29 2011

Rick Turley was 18 when he learned that Scouting offered a unique opportunity to meet boys.

He would show up in a uniform with a sash full of merit badges, charm parents with claims of being a "top" leader and offer to take their preteen boys out for a swim or drive. Then, often after plying them with alcohol, he would fondle or rape them — once going so far as to kidnap a boy in a stolen plane.

Over nearly two decades, Turley molested at least 15 children in Southern California and British Columbia, most of whom he met through American and Canadian Scouting, a Los Angeles Times and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigation has found.

Scouting officials on both sides of the border not only failed to stop him, but sometimes helped cover his tracks, according to confidential Scouting records, court files and interviews with victims, families and Scout leaders.

At one point in 1979, Boy Scouts of America officials decided not to call police after Turley admitted molesting three Orange County boys, the organization's records show.

"We were following exactly the national recommendations of the Boy Scouts of America and its board who set up the rules," said A. Buford Hill Jr., a former Orange County Scouting executive, in a recent interview. "You do not want to broadcast to the entire population that these things happen. You take care of it quietly and make sure it never happens again."

But it did.

Turley returned to British Columbia, signed on with Scouts Canada, which is separate from its U.S. counterpart, and continued his abuses for at least a decade.

Turley, now 58, is still surprised at how often he got away with it.

"It was easy," he said in an interview this month at the Alberta truck-stop motel where he now works.

Turley is one of more than 5,000 suspected child molesters named in confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts of America. The documents — called the "perversion files" by the organization — include unsubstantiated tips as well as admissions of guilt.

Those records have surfaced in recent years in lawsuits by former Scouts, accusing the group of failing to exclude known pedophiles, detect abuses or turn in offenders to the police.

The Oregon Supreme Court is now weighing a request by newspapers, a wire service and broadcasters to open about 1,200 more files in the wake of a nearly $20-million judgment in a Portland sex abuse case last year.

The Scouts' handling of sex-abuse allegations echoes that of the Catholic Church in the face of accusations against its priests, some attorneys say.

"It's the same institutional reaction: scandal prevention," said Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has filed seven suits in the last year by former Scouts but was not involved in the Oregon case.

Current Boy Scouts of America officials declined to be interviewed and would not say how many files exist or what is in them. Their lawyers have said the records are confidential, in part to protect victims and because some of the files are based on unproven allegations.

"The BSA has continued to enhance its youth protection efforts as society has increased its understanding of the dangers children face," the Scouts said in a statement.

In the 1980s, the Boy Scouts began requiring that at least two adults be present for troop activities. The following decade, it mandated criminal background checks for staffers, a requirement that was expanded to the organization's nearly 1 million volunteers in 2008. Last year, it required child abuse prevention training as well. All suspicions of sexual misconduct must now be reported to police.

Those measures would likely have stopped Turley had they been in place decades ago. Instead, the Scouts' national policy had long recommended keeping abuse and other misconduct a secret.

Turley said one call to police by Scouting officials in 1979 "probably would have put a stop to me years and years and years ago." Instead, he "went back to the Scouts again and again as a leader and offended against the boys," said Turley, who said he has learned to control his impulses.

CHILD-ABUSE IN ULTRA-ORTHODOX YESHIVAS COMES IN ALL FORMS!

2011-10-26T13:04:00.006-04:00

THESE WERE ALL WRITTEN BY FORMER STUDENTS OF R. MOSHE LAZER BLUM & R. SHIMON GOLDBRENER OF MONSEY --- NONE OF THE WRITERS ARE FRUM TODAY!

One day the boys were assigned chavruses (studying partners). R. Goldbrener and R. Blum paired me up with this kid, I didn't want to study with, so I told them that I would like to learn with someone else. The response was NO you have to learn with him. I argued back, of course, and R. Goldbrener took me into a nearby room and slapped me once, then he asked me "are you gonna partner up with that kid, yes or no?" so my answer was "no", so he slapped me again, this went on for a while (maybe 15-20 minutes) as he kept on asking "yes or no?" and my answer constant "no". (Wasn't he giving me a choice by asking me yes or no? I answered his question!) The beating got harder and more violent, (the entire time I was thinking, if only R. Blum would find out what R. Goldbrener is doing to me, he would get in trouble from R. Blum) so after about 15-20 minutes R. Blum came into the room and asked R. Goldbrener if I already answered and he responded that "no he didn't" so then came the worst; two adults started beating on me. After another ten minutes of two adults beating on me, I of course answered yes and they stopped. Later on, R. Goldbrener told me that I was a stubborn child & he would knock it out of me, but little did he know that he ruined me for life and I'm now more stubborn than ever.

Shortly after I turned thirteen, my parents sent me to a "sleep-away" yeshiva located in Monsey, where we lived. By the afternoon of the first day, I was calling home in tears, begging my mother to come get me. In trying to describe the physical and emotional abuse that went on there, I'm doing the place a disservice. Beatings were so normal a sight, they were ignored by other students. Rebbeim bragged about how much they intimidated us, and kids walked around with bruises, welts and all sorts of marks.

Besides the physical abuse, there was the mental pressure put on us, every second of every day was controlled, starting with waking up at the crack of dawn, to the fifteen minutes we had to run to the mikvah, haul ourselves back and be seated at our spot, (Heaven help you if you were seconds late) to laying down on the left side and waking up on the right. Not tolerated were: laughing, talking about anything aside from what we were studying, contact with the outside world, no food or snacks outside of the three meals served to us (fifteen minutes per meal, no talking), no personal books, tape players, etc.

When I say beating, I'm not referring to a little slap or even a backhand to the head. I'm talking about all out, go for broke: fists, elbow, sticks, anything handy were all fair game. I've seen coffee jars used as weapons, heads slammed through drywall, chairs and trash cans thrown - all in one session!

I could fill a book with all the stories that happened to me and other bochurim. It got to the point where we were immune to the beatings and we bragged about how badly we got hit that day. I even remember thinking to myself one day that today was the first time an entire day had gone by without begin hit once. That day was one and a half years into my time there.

My parents, being naive, as so many parents are, believed that anyone with the title Rebbe, Rosh Yeshiva or Menahel could do no wrong. No matter what I said to them, the answer was the same, "He's a Rosh Yeshiva, he must know what he's doing".

I eventually gave up trying to convince my parents to remove me. After I left the yeshiva, I made a conscious effort to forget and get over my experiences there and to a large extent, I was successful. I moved on, for the most part blocking the whole thing out of my head, but certain things wouldn't go away. to this day, I never sit with my back to the room. I get jumpy and easily startled and I flinch when people "high five or back slap" me. I avoid talking about the whole experience because when I do, I get physically ill (as I am typing this, my heart is pounding and my hands are shaking).

I don't know how many of you know the difference between a 6 slice yarmulke (kippa) and a 4 slice, but that R. Blum sure does know the difference. One fine afternoon it all seemed to be going well, I went into town and bought a new yarmulke. I went from a 6 slice to a 4 slice (one difference is that the 6 slice was soft & the 4 was more stiff) I threw out the 6 slice and I rolled into yeshiva with my new 4 slice yarmulke. I didn't pay much attention to my new yarmulke, just that it was more comfortable on my head. All of a sudden R. Blum comes up to me and tells me to get rid of the 4 slice yarmulke and wear the 6 slice. I explained to him that I like this one and that I threw away the other, then R. Blum took my yarmulke off my head and left me with nothing on my head, so I was like if the so called rabbi can remove my kippa and if I'm doing a sin, it's on his responsibility. Then the he started pounding my head with his fingers and he kept on saying "put on a yarmulke put on a yarmulke" and I was like, "so give me back mine", but he refused. Then while his hand is knocking on my head, I put my head down on the table (like taking a nap) and the pounding got stronger and harder. Then he asked one of the boys for a blade, and he cut my yarmulke in to 4 pieces and there was my yarmulke all cut up and I'm not wearing any, that made him even more angry because I kept on asking and I was upset that my yarmulke was cut, so the pounding continued until it got real ugly.

He threw me on the floor and started kicking my head (it looked like he was playing soccer with my head as the ball). I can tell you one thing, I was beaten..... I don't even remember the end of the story. I just know that I'm still alive to tell the story and nowadays I proudly wear only 4 slice yarmulkes. It did leave a trauma because I wouldn't change that style for anything. It goes so far that my daughter once came home and said that her friends were making fun of her that her dad is wearing a 4 slice yarmulke. My wife gave me that look like she would appreciate if I would change it, & I explained to her that I suffered so much for that yarmulke, even nearly lost my life over it, and I hope she understands, she did understand. And that's where this story ends. May they never have a peaceful day.

This weekend I saw an invitation for a Tea Party for a yeshiva in Monsey. After reading it thru, I noticed something that all of a sudden started heating my blood and I felt my pressure rising. The trigger was a name on there: "Shimon Goldbrener". After reading that, I started having flashbacks from back in the day when I went to the yeshiva of Moshe Lazer Blum & Shimon Goldbrener. At the same time, the left side of my neck was killing me and that got my blood pumping even more. I started remembering what had happened in that school, I don't think about it every day and can even go by years that I don't think of it, but at that moment it hit. The story with the hurting shoulder/neck/back was as follows: (when I do think about that man, I will never forget the details on the story and nor will the kids that watched it either) On May of 1994 there was a ceremony in Brooklyn and I wanted to attend, so being that the yeshiva was in Rockland County, I asked the administration (Rabbis Blum and Goldbrener) if I could go tomorrow to Brooklyn and they said yes. Next morning came and I woke up a bit late, I rushed to mikvah and then rushed into shul. They were already in middle of davening (basically, I was late) so after davening, one of those two came up to me and said to me that I cannot go to Brooklyn because I arrived late to prayers. I tried arguing that we didn't make any kind of deal like that and that he can't stop me from going but it still didn't help and he said no you can't go. Later after breakfast and just about walking into class, R. Goldbrener told me that he would allow me to go but on one condition; he will give me 50 punches on my shoulder and back and after that I can go (mind you this guy was about 250 lb and I was a little 13 year old, maybe 125 lbs tops). And me wanting to be a hero said no problem it's a deal.

Having all students sitting around one big table (a few tables put together, about 15-20 kids) he started punching one after another. I was sitting next to him on his right side & my left shoulder was his punching bag, as he kept going one after the other, and the students counted with him, 21, 22, 23 and so on. When it came to 33, the students counted that # twice. I was like "that's not fair" but my screams were disregarded. When it came to 49 the guy stopped and said that I cannot go because he didn't give me FIFTY punches. We argued and argued, he even at one point threatened me that if I don't stop arguing he would beat me up. At the end, the students stuck up for me and they said that when counting they counted one of the #s twice so that means that really it was 50 not 49, so I was granted permission to go. In Brooklyn, at the ceremony there were so many people and there was lots of pushing going on, and when people were pushing on me it hurt so bad that while the trip almost wasn't worth it, it was still worth it since I had gotten through that. This is only one of the many, many stories I myself had there, G-d is my witness that I'm not making this up.

One day during a Shiur, MLB. ‘hinted’ to us that the building we were in wasn't suited for such a Chushiveh Mukom Torah like ours, and if only we could make this one burn down, we could collect on the insurance policy…

We immediately started making plans to burn the building down. It started out as an open secret, that only our class knew about, but eventually everybody was in on it. MLB helped with planning the job, and made sure we didn't make it look like an arson. The plan was to disconnect the oven from the gas line, and leave the pipe open over the Channukah vacation, meanwhile we lit a yartzeit candle in a far corner of the room… The Sifrei Torah ‘should be’ secure because they were in a safe at the opposite end of the building, but the rest of the seforim would have to be collateral damage if we wanted to get away with it.

Before I go on, I have to point out that the building we inhabited had been a shul for many years, and MLB had only bought it a few years before. Part of the deal was that the congregation - which mostly used it on Shabbos and Yom Tov - let us use their siddurim, seforim, and sifrei torah, all week, but it still belonged to them…
L’Kavod Channukah we got released on thursday afternoon - instead of the usual friday afternoon, and we sprang into action. We filled several trash bags with “the important stuff” we didn't want to lose, and hid it behind the Viznitz girls school (why specifically there - I’ll never know). We set up our sophisticated Jewish lightening rig, and ran home.

Sunday morning came, and the building was still there! Our master plan hadn't worked. The candle had gone out, and all we were left with was a building that smelled so bad, we had to stay out of the top floor for days.

We had to rethink our methods,so we decided to go with the old faithful boiler. A little while later, the Yeshivah put on a Melaveh Malkah as a fund raiser in Yeshiva Spring Valley which is just a few hundred yards down the street from our building.
This time we came prepared, we had two-way radios, spotters, and scouts. We laid out a haphazard-looking row of towels from the boiler to a wooden table, and then dropped some paper towels into the pilot. We waited till we saw flames, and then left the building.

We went across the street to the Bais Dovid parking lot, and watched. This time it worked. It didn't take long for flames to start shooting out of the windows. Eventually the sirens started, and the fire department showed up. The fire wasn't that big, and it didn't take them too long to put it out, but we weren't satisfied. We waited for hours till everyone was gone, and snuck back into the building, and lit it on fire again! We again waited till we saw substantial flames, and then went home. Early the next morning I ran as fast as I could to the Yeshiva building, and sure enough, it was destroyed. Part of the roof had caved in, and the inside was completely burnt out.

Long story short, MLB and company got away with it. We went on Galus for a while, roaming from shul to shul, but when the money finally came in he bought a house, and (illegally) converted it into a Yeshiva building. We had all the amenities, indoor mikvah, beis hamedrash, dorm rooms, big kitchen, and dining room. Once in a while we had to hide the fact that we had converted a residence to a school, if the ‘suits’ showed up we’d rearrange rooms, and hide half the kids. But we obviously did a good job, because he was never caught.

R. Shimon Goldbrener is currently a Maagid Shiur in a Yeshivah, and R. Moshe Lazer Blum is currently opening a new Yeshivah. Would you send your kids to study under them? If you care for your children, pass this along.

"For Months a 14 Year Old Boy Was Repeatedly Raped and Sodomized..."

2011-10-25T17:02:00.018-04:00

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/northern_suburbs&id=8403362
CLICK ON ABOVE LINK TO WATCH THE EYEWITNESS VIDEO:

Eyewitness News

SPRING VALLEY (WABC) -- A self-proclaimed rabbi in Spring Valley was arrested last week on charges of molesting a teenage boy from Monsey.

Police say they received a report that a 14-year-old boy had been sexually abused.

Moishe Turner, 58, was taken into custody and charged with seven counts of felony second-degree criminal sex act and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

People at the synagogue in Monsey say Turner used to attend services there but was asked to leave because of similar allegations some years ago, allegations that did not result in criminal charges.

In the case that resulted in charges, the parents of the victim went to the police. There are conflicting reports about whether Turner is a rabbi. He apparently refers to himself that way professionally, but the community is divided on the issue.

This investigation is ongoing and more charges are expected. Police believe that more victims are out there. Anyone who may have any information is asked to contact the Ramapo Police Investigations Division.

Turner was remanded to the Rockland County Jail in lieu of $75,000.

The name of the victim is being withheld to protect his identity.

Monsey, Spring Valley Rabbi Accused of Sodomizing Boys!

2011-10-24T00:01:00.003-04:00

Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, hear my words: Many (victims of abuse) have chosen baptism and conversion. Others have committed suicide..

2011-10-17T00:29:00.006-04:00

From: Benjamin Aryeh Uchytil
1100 Howe Ave Apt 551
Sacramento, CA 95825

To: Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky
Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia
6063 Drexel Rd.
Philadelphia, PA 19131-1296

August 2, 2011

Dear Rabbi Kamenetsky,

As an adult survivor of severe and unrelenting childhood sexual abuse, I have followed your halachic decisions and media pronouncements regarding this issue with great concern.

I am a Litvak, yeshiva-trained, from Monsey, New York. For many years I taught at Monsey yeshivos, mostly at the mesivta level. Rabbi, from my long-term perspective within the yeshiva velt I confirm:

1. Orthodox Jewish pedophilia is alive and ‘well’ in our communities,

2. The rabbonim actively protect our perpetrators from prosecution, ensuring that even more children will be sexually abused,

3. The rabbonim censure and threaten victims and their families in order to force them to keep quiet about what has occurred,

4. Orthodox Jews are often provoked to violence against victims who report to the police due to the Torah proscription against ‘mesirah’.

Due to your misguided attempts to ‘save the nedon’, to prevent the prosecution of our perpetrators, these recalcitrant individuals are doomed to a high rate of recidivism: they offend repeatedly over the course of their lives. Indeed, a pedophile molests, on average, approximately 140 different children prior to his first arrest.

Rabbi, can you not see what is occurring under your very nose? Orthodox pedophiles are not only defiling but destroying our ‘pirkei kehuna’, our precious children. I cannot believe you consider your current course of action wise and profitable for our community. Saving perpetrators from prosecution: Is it good for the Jews? Most definitely not!

Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, hear my words: Your halachic interpretations, intended to moderate and mediate between Orthodox pedophiles and their victims, are failing as I write this very letter. While you are busily engaged protecting our perpetrators, Orthodox Jewish victims are fleeing Torah, fleeing Yiddishkeit. We are fleeing left and right. Many, such as myself, have gone frei. Many have chosen baptism and conversion. Others have committed suicide.

You are losing us. Thousands have left the fold. Truly: you seem to care so much about our perpetrators, do you not care for victims? It would seem not. Given this, we are on the move. We are writing, writing to the goyishe papers, the Yiddishe papers, and on the Internet - to whomever will hear us. Every time I meet a Jew - Orthodox or frei - I tell him or her the truth about Orthodox pedophilia and about your frightful course regarding this issue. I tell Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Muslims....

Rabbi, here is the truth: Although many survivors write you politely, groveling at your feet in the hope that you will change tack, you need to know that we despise you. You have hurt Orthodox survivors so badly, many to most of us will never forgive you for your destructive stance. Personally, I sincerely pray every day that HaShem will convict your heart and serve you a resounding kick in the tukkis.

Very truly,

Benjamin Aryeh Uchytil

“This is about protecting children”

2011-10-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Pennsylvania is seeking to join California and Delaware as states that have created a window year or two for survivors of sexual abuse to come forward and sue their abusers. In the two states that have done so over 350 child predators have been identified through the outcome of the window. Similar legislation is being attempted in New York State but is being fought by the Catholic Church, the Satmar Chasidim and the Agudath Israel of America. They are natural allies in attempting to thwart the exposure of child molesters both because they do not want their schools and institutions to have to pay money even if they have knowingly covered up and protected abusers. They also continue to want to sweep the problem under the carpet, preferring to protect pedophiles rather than children.

Fortunately, while there are many, many Jewish children in Pennsylvania who are at risk for being abused, Agudah and Satmar are not very powerful there, so the molesters are not as powerful either. But, of course, as the Pope is being investigated by the Hague on charges of crimes against humanity for protecting molesters, the Catholic Church continues to brazenly fight the survivors every step of the way.

The benefit to the Jewish community if this will be passed is great. For example, serious allegations have emerged that Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Philadelphia Yeshivah covered up that Moshe Eiseman molested boys in his yeshiva years ago. He instead of publicizing the danger, helped Eiseman to get a job at Ner Yisroel in Baltimore where he went on to abuse many boys over many years. Rabbi Kaminetsky also covered up for a child molester named Rabbis Zusha or Stanley Levitt who is only now being prosecuted in Massachusetts for molesting children in Boston.

While prosecutors are beginning to find ways to criminalize the cover up of child molestation, see the NY TIMES below -- about a Bishop in Kansas City being indicted for what appears to be less of an irresponsible action than Reb Shmuel's, it is already an actionable tort for survivors to sue both their molesters and those who have enabled and protected them putting children in harm's way. I believe that the only way for the rabbis and powerful people in our community to stop protecting molesters and start protecting children is to give the survivors the most options to hold the enablers accountable.

While Agudah has claimed that by allowing such a law and holding the yeshivas accountable for past negligence and tragic damages it will destroy the "financial integrity of the yeshivas", virtually all of the survivors of rabbinic/clergy and school-based abuse I know who want to sue their yeshivas, including those who are suing Torah Temima, are not out for money. Rather they have tried every other way to appeal to Rosh Yeshivas and have been stonewalled and dismissed without any changes in the way our community does business. There is still no acknowledgment of the cover ups, there has been no apology to the victims, no attempt to help them financially to get therapy or other treatments, and perhaps most importantly to the survivors the rabbis have still not begun to report molesters to the authorities, are fighting making rabbis mandated reporters, and do not teach the children in school about appropriate safety protocols.

While financial remuneration for damages suffered can be helpful, what most survivors find most healing in my experience is the validation that the community lead by its rabbis and gedolim understand the damage that was done, take responsibility for it, and take steps to prevent it from happening again. Unfortunately, until enough yeshivas are sued, it seems that it is unlikely for real change to occur.

In fact, it took the possibility of such legislative statute of limitations reform passing in New York to get the Gedolim to even admit that Jewish children were being molested despite the fact that they had been discussing the problem for years (according to an article in the Yated Ne'man and many other sources).

The two goals of helping survivors heal and protecting future vulnerable children go hand in hand. Let's help support this law and any others that create a safer community in which adults take responsibility for children's safety.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/us/kansas-city-bishop-indicted-in-reporting-of-abuse-by-priest.html?_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=aua2

Bishop Indicted; Charge Is Failing to Report Abuse
By A. G. SULZBERGER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: October 14, 2011

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A bishop in the Roman Catholic Church has been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse, the first time in the 25-year history of the church’s sex abuse scandals that the leader of an American diocese has been held criminally liable for the behavior of a priest he supervised.

The indictment of the bishop, Robert W. Finn, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph by a county grand jury was announced on Friday. Each was charged with one misdemeanor count involving a priest accused of taking pornographic photographs of girls as recently as this year. They pleaded not guilty.

The case caused an uproar among Catholics in Kansas City this year when Bishop Finn acknowledged that he knew of the photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May. During that time, the priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, is said to have continued to attend church events with children, and took lewd photographs of another young girl.

A decade ago the American bishops pledged to report suspected abusers to law enforcement authorities — a policy also recommended last year by the Vatican. Bishop Finn himself had made such a promise three years ago as part of a $10 million legal settlement with abuse victims in Kansas City.

Though the charge is only a misdemeanor, victims’ advocates immediately hailed the indictment as a breakthrough, saying that until now American bishops have avoided prosecution despite documents showing that in some cases they were aware of abuse.

“This is huge for us,” said Michael Hunter, director of the Kansas City chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and a victim of sexual abuse by a priest. “It’s something that I personally have been waiting for years to see, some real accountability. We’re very pleased with the prosecuting attorney here to have the guts to do it.” The bishop signaled he would fight the charges with all his strength. He said in a statement: “We will meet these announcements with a steady resolve and a vigorous defense.”

The indictment announced on Friday by the Jackson County prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, had been under seal since Oct. 6 because the bishop was out of the country. He returned on Thursday night.

In a news conference, Ms. Baker said the case was not religiously motivated, but was about the obligation under state law to report child abuse.

“This is about protecting children,” she said.

If convicted Bishop Finn would face a possible fine of up to $1,000 and a jail sentence of up to a year. The diocese faces a possible fine of up to $5,000.

Ms. Baker said that secrecy rules for grand jury proceedings prohibited her from discussing whether other charges were considered, such as child endangerment, a felony. But she said the fact that the bishop faces a single misdemeanor count should not diminish the seriousness.

“To my knowledge a charge like this has not been leveled before,” she said.

It also may not mark the end of the legal troubles facing the diocese in the case, which includes civil and criminal cases in federal court. Last month Bishop Finn and Msgr. Robert Murphy testified before another grand jury in neighboring Clay County. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office there declined to comment.

The priest accused of taking the lewd photos, Father Ratigan, was a frequent presence in a Catholic elementary school next to his parish. The principal there sent a letter to the diocese in May 2010 complaining about Father Ratigan’s behavior with children. Then, last December, a computer technician discovered the photos on the priest’s laptop and turned the computer in to the diocese. A day later Father Ratigan tried to kill himself. The diocese said that Monsignor Murphy described — but did not share — a single photo of a young girl, nude from the waist down, to a police officer who served on an independent sexual abuse review board for the diocese. The officer said that based on the description it might meet the definition of child pornography, but he did not think it would, the diocese said.

Bishop Finn sent Father Ratigan to live in a convent and told him to avoid contact with minors. But until May the priest attended children’s parties, spent weekends in the homes of parish families, hosted an Easter egg hunt and presided, with the bishop’s permission, at a girl’s First Communion, according to interviews with parishioners and a civil lawsuit filed by a victim’s family.

Parents in the school and parishioners — told only that Father Ratigan had fallen sick from carbon monoxide poisoning — were stunned when he was arrested in May after the diocese called the police. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of taking indecent photographs of young girls.

The new indictment released on Friday said that Bishop Finn and the diocese had reason to suspect that Father Ratigan might subject a child to abuse.

It cited “previous knowledge of concerns regarding Father Ratigan and children; the discovery of hundreds of photographs of children on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including a child’s naked vagina, upskirt images and images focused on the crotch; and violations of restrictions placed on Father Ratigan.”

Bishop Finn said in his statement on Friday that he and the diocese had given “complete cooperation” to law enforcement. He also pointed to steps he had taken since the scandal first became public, including commissioning a report to look into the case, and reinforcing procedures for handling allegations of abuse.

That report found that the diocese did not follow its own procedures. It also found that Bishop Finn was “too willing to trust” Father Ratigan.

The case has generated fury at the bishop, a staunch theological conservative who was already a polarizing figure in his diocese. Since the Ratigan case came to light, there have been widespread calls for him to resign.

Contributing to the sense of betrayal is the fact that only three years ago, Bishop Finn settled lawsuits with 47 plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases for $10 million and agreed to a list of 19 preventive measures, among them to immediately report anyone suspected of being a pedophile to the law enforcement authorities.

France may be the only country where a bishop has been convicted for his failure to supervise a priest accused of abuse, said Terrence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a victims’ advocacy group that tracks abuse cases.

A grand jury in Philadelphia indicted a top official in the archdiocese there, Msgr. William Lynn, for mishandling cases of abuse. The former archbishop, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, was not indicted, but he has been called to testify.

The Jews and Their Catholic Priest Problem!

2011-10-03T13:25:00.011-04:00

Stop Supporting Orthodox Jewish Clergy Child Molesters

Greetings,

I just signed the following petition to: Agudath Israel of America.

Stop Supporting Orthodox Jewish Clergy Child Molesters

Goal: To protect ALL children in the Jewish communities worldwide.

Sincerely,

UOJ

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BELOW - ASERET Y'MEI TESHUVA IS THE APPROPRIATE TIME TO BEG HASHEM FOR FORGIVENESS FOR THE JEWISH COMMUNITY TO HAVE LET THIS TRAVESTY GO UNADDRESSED FOR SO LONG!

https://www.change.org/petitions/the-jews-and-their-catholic-priest-problem

S'licha U'mechila - Am Yisroel Chai!

2011-09-23T00:00:00.003-04:00

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

CHAZAK - KLAL YISROEL - CHAZAK!

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

UOJ

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

2011-09-18T11:15:00.004-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

A MUST READ IN ITS ENTIRETY: CLICK ON LINK

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

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

2011-09-15T13:30:00.006-04:00

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

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

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

Clergy Abuse Victims File International Complaint Against Vatican!

2011-09-13T18:37:00.006-04:00

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

September 13, 2011
By Nathan Koppel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GETTING TO KNOW MOETZES/AGUDATH ISRAEL MEMBER AARON SCHECHTER!

2011-09-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE DOCUMENTS FROM THE UOJ ARCHIVES:

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

The Shomrim - Gotham's Crusaders!

2011-09-07T18:03:00.003-04:00

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

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

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

He had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK ON LINK FOR THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:

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

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

2011-09-06T00:00:00.003-04:00

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

UOJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judges Without Laws

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

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

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

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

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

'They Trust Me'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Problem of Integration

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz zt"l - In Memoriam - His Yahrzeit - The Third Day Of Elul

2011-08-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz was born in the town of Willig in Hungary in 1886 into a family of G-d-fearing Sanzer chassidim. At a young age -- when he was already studying Shulchan Oruch Yore De'ah with Shach, Taz and the Pri Megadim -- he had acquired a name as a scholar who brimmed with deep religious passion. He studied under the Arugas Habosem, the B'eer Shmuel, and the Shevet Sofer, Rav Simcha Bunim Sofer --the three leading gedolim of Hungary at the time, and received semichah from them.

A person of deep complexity and contemplation, he pursued Jewish philosophy and mussar privately, and at a young age had completed the entire works of the Maharal, Kuzari, Mesilas Yeshorim, and works of chassidus. He avidly studied the works of Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch in the original German. He saw Rav Hirsch as his ideal because Hirsch had successfully devised a religious Jewish weltanschauung that could stand up to the challenges of modernity. (Nothing showed his diverse interests more than the fact that he spent his entire wedding dowry on buying a set of Zev Yaavetz's history books.)

Although Rav Shraga Feivel appeared an unassuming young man, he had a rare strain of boundless idealism running through his fabric. When he came across the statement in the gemora that, "Were Israel to keep two Shabbosim in a row, the Redemption would immediately come" he promised himself then and there that he would work to draw the hearts of Jews back to their Father in Heaven.

In the early years of the twentieth century, when Jews all over the world were blindly rushing to embrace enlightenment, communism, socialism and every other "ism" besides their ancestral heritage, his dream appeared as unpractical, wishful thinking.

At age 22 he married, and settled near his father's home in the town of Humina. In 1913, he decided to leave for the U.S. for reasons never clearly defined by him. Before he left, he received a brocho from Rav Yeshaya of Krestira, who foretold that he would accomplish great things in America.

The first few years in the U.S. Rav Shraga Feivel spent trying his hand at different professions. Although an expert at the laws of shechita, he saw after a day that this profession did not suit him. He taught in talmud Torahs in New York, Bridgeport and Scranton, before he returned to New York and opened an ice cream business.

Although he still dreamed of opening a yeshiva, he had discovered that in the U.S., all the power was concentrated in the hands of a talmud Torah's president and board of directors, and the principal and teachers were viewed as merely low level servants. He dreamed of succeeding in his business and with the funds, opening his own yeshiva. However, his business was not succeeding as planned, possibly because his head was more in his Torah studies than in ice cream.

Kashruth and educating the public

Rav Shraga Feivel was a lover of Jewish liturgical music; he and chazzan Yossele Rosenblatt became friends and together created The Jewish Light (Dos Yiddishe Licht) newspaper. The intent was to inform the Jewish public about the awareness of their heritage, shmiras hamitzvas, the importance of keeping the kashruth laws; and they wanted to give their secular brothers an alternative to The Forward (and The Workmen's Circle/Bund). He was way ahead of his times; the public was not interested for the most part in their message, and the paper folded leaving them deep in debt.

Rav Shraga Feivel, realizing that his business enterprises were failing, in the summer of 1921, after being pursued by various members of the board, he finally agreed to take a teaching job at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, which at the time was a "talmud Torah" rather than a yeshiva. Many of the teachers were not shomrei Torah and mitzvos, a very sore spot in the side of Rav Shraga Feivel, and added to his hesitancy of joining the school. He was certain that the Torah could only be learned, if taught by frum teachers. A series of illnesses that struck him didn't allow him to take the job until Elul 1923, when he was appointed to teach the eighth grade class.

Rav Nesanel Quinn, a student who had arrived the year before and later became principal of Jewish studies in the yeshiva, recounts, "In the first days after he came to the yeshiva, even the worst students began to feel more positive about their Jewish studies. He tried -- and succeeded -- in making Torah study beloved to them, and in giving them the feeling of closeness to Hashem. They began to keep mitzvos not out of habit but out of deep feeling. He imbued one with pride to study Torah, and that nothing in this world could compare to Torah study."

The Yeshiva Leaps Spiritually

The board hired Reb Shraga Feivel for just six months on a trial basis instead of a year, as they had done with all the previous principals, and if they weren't satisfied, they could fire him. To their surprise, Reb Shraga Feivel told them that he wasn't even interested in a six-month contract. He offered that they could hire him on the basis that if at any point they were dissatisfied, they could fire him on the spot. All the previous principals had insisted on a detailed contract for an entire year.

Rav Shraga Feivel began the next day. He found a group of cool, impassive teachers whose resentment of him bristled under the surface. The teachers too were all of Polish or Russian extraction, and they could not respect the Hungarian man who "lacked up-to-date scholastic and educational training" and proudly sported a beard and payos.

But as the following weeks unfolded, and each teacher had the occasion to meet and discuss topics with him, they soon stood open-mouthed before Rav Shraga Feivel's vast knowledge. The teacher who was expert in Hebrew grammar soon discovered that Rav Shraga Feivel was a giant in dikduk. The teacher whose specialty was Jewish history soon discovered that Rav Shraga Feivel knew far more than he.

Within a few weeks, the entire staff was united in their reverence and respect for the new principal who each admitted towered far above him. Rav Shraga Feivel began his innovative program right away.

On his first day as principal, Rav Shraga Feivel dictated a letter to the members of the board. He wrote them that a person cannot be balabos (board member) over a yeshiva unless he appreciates Torah. He demanded that every one of them attend a Torah shiur at least twice a week. The board members were astonished -- but they complied.

Rav Shraga Feivel gave a shiur in the home of Reb Benzion Weberman where he impressed the committee members with his deep religious, educational and personal ideals. They began to understand that it wasn't sufficient for a child to have a Jewish education only until his bar mitzva years, which was the standard in America until then.

In addition to winning over the rebbes and the parents, Rav Shraga Feivel soon was idolized by the students. They had never seen a principal who taught with such heart and neshomoh. On holidays he made assemblies and parties, and would dance with the students. He would sing soulful songs "Kadsheinu" and "Vetaheir libeinu" with such ecstasy that all the students were swept up with the same emotion.

"It isn't the slightest exaggeration to say that Rav Shraga Feivel blew a new soul into us, of a natural Jewish approach to our Torah. We could clearly sense how the Shechina was present in every class. A new spirit blew in the life of the yeshiva -- and all this he did quietly, without noise, without giving orders."

Torah Vodaas's name began to spread far and wide in New York. There was no longer any need to recruit bochurim for the yeshiva and the problem now became how to find enough room for all the boys. The crowding forced the committee to open classes in rented apartments around the district. Classes were held in the Keap Street beis hamedrash, the Lincoln business school, and the Beis Aaron shtiebel on Division Avenue. At the same time, the spiritual growth fostered by Rav Shraga Feivel kept pace with the physical growth of the yeshiva.

The Mesivta is Founded

The idea of a Jewish high school was still far-fetched. When the end of the year drew near, Rav Shraga Feivel persuaded the parents of the eighth-grade boys to keep their sons in the yeshiva for "just one more year." Rav Shraga Feivel arranged for the youths to study in a local high school at night where courses were offered for adults who had not completed their high school diploma. He knew such a school would have less of an influence on his students than learning in a public school with youth their age. Besides the hours at night devoted to secular studies, the boys studied Jewish studies from early in the morning and even late at night after they finished their secular studies.

When the end of the year came around again, Rav Shraga Feivel convinced the parents to agree to just one more year. And when that year finished, the parents were willing to agree to another year. At that point, he found himself with a group of high school youths whose dedication to Torah study remained strong and unswerving.

Says Rav Nesanel Quinn, one of the students of this group, "Our study day was long and exhausting, but Rav Shraga Feivel pushed us to study Torah additional hours, on our own initiative, as it were, until late at night. I remember that he sat and studied Torah with us every Thursday night until almost midnight, and we felt that Torah study was so sweet that we almost didn't feel tired. Our load of studies was not easy, particularly if you compared it to the study program in a public school. But none of us ever complained. The frequent recesses of course helped to release the tension, but mainly what helped was that in our society, everyone was working hard and no one had it easy. So the heavy load on us wasn't viewed as anything extraordinary. We were so busy with our studies that we virtually had no time to spend on small talk."

When Rav Shraga Feivel was ready to implement his next educational endeavor -- the Mesivta -- he already had a group of older boys who had spent 12 years in intense Jewish education and the idea of continuing Jewish studies after elementary school was becoming more palatable.

When Rav Shraga Feivel asked to open a full high school division, with structured Jewish and secular studies offered within the format of the school in 1927, his request met with resistance from the board. The board, truth to tell, had nobly maintained the elementary school through unflagging and exhaustive efforts, but to undertake the support of a high school on top of that was a burden that the members saw as overwhelmingly difficult and perhaps unjustified.

Mr. Avrohom Lewin, a board member backed Rav Shraga Feivel. Despite the failure of Mr. Lewin's business during the growing Depression that hit America in those years, he staunchly agreed to buy a building at 505 Bedford Avenue for the Mesivta (as Rav Shraga Feivel called the high school to differentiate it from the elementary school, which was called "the yeshiva").

Shortly after Mr. Lewin purchased it, taking out large loans in his name, a real estate agent offered to buy it back from him at a much higher price -- that would have landed him a profit equal to three years of livelihood. But Mr. Lewin passed the difficult trial, and made the building available to the yeshiva. Eventually, the committee board agreed to take the Mesivta under its wing and pay for its cost. However, the burden of running and maintaining it fell upon Rav Shraga Feivel.

It must be emphasized what an immense achievement this was. Not only had Yeshiva Torah Vodaas acquired a sterling name as a yeshiva with undiluted Torah values, but it was the only yeshiva at the time with an excellent high school program. The other yeshiva schools, such as Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef, Rav Shlomo Kluger and Tiferes Yerushalayim, were only elementary schools with at best afternoon programs for public high school students.

Rav Shraga Feivel's concept of the Mesivta program had no parallel in any yeshiva in the world -- and not just because he incorporated secular studies and a high school degree into the yeshiva. This in itself was an act of genius. He understood that for American Jewry to flourish, yeshiva boys must have a secular education. He insisted that his talmidim excel in the secular program as well. When he asked the European gedolim about the issue of secular studies in the yeshiva, the only shaila was could it be housed in the same building as used for limudei kodesh.(There were fanatics on the board, that insisted the yeshiva change its name from Torah Vodaath to a name that did not imply that there was daas outside of Torah. He strongly disagreed with that premise, as did Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch)

Besides gemora being taught on a high level, he insisted that the curriculum include Chumash and Novi with their commentaries, the meanings of the prayers, knowledge of the 613 mitzvos, Jewish law, and sifrei yirah and mussar such as Sha'arei Teshuvah, Mesilas Yeshorim, and for select students, even Doros Harishonim, the detailed Jewish history book written by Rav Y. Halevi. Many of the latter courses he personally taught. He saw the utter importance of giving his students a solid foundation in Jewish faith and hashkofo that was taken for granted in the European yeshivos.

The atmosphere of the yeshiva was an unusual mix of Litvish learning taught by great Litvish scholars some of whom he brought over from Europe, with chassidic enthusiasm and soul which he himself injected. He integrated different approaches from various groups in Klal Yisroel and knew how to create a harmonious synthesis that appealed to his American students.

Although his influence permeated the yeshiva and every student in it, he humbly kept himself to the sidelines and refused to accept the title of "Rosh Mesivta" or even the more routine title of "Rabbi." He could not be found at the Mizrach of the beis hamedrash during prayers. He was the hinge on which the entire yeshiva turned, but to the unknowing eye, he seemed just an unassuming person filling a nondescript role. Who had ever heard of a man who built an entire yeshiva with mesiras nefesh -- only to refuse to take the mantle of honor it would bequeath to him?

In the shiurim Rav Shraga Feivel gave to the classes of the Mesivta he spoke constantly of Eretz Yisroel and the negative effect of college (he later altered his opinion, and asked Rabbi Hutner to apply for a college charter from New York State, under changing circumstances and an evolving necessity for many talmidim).

In one shiur, to the astonished eyes of his students who didn't know if he was hallucinating or really meant it, he said that the day would come when he would found a kollel avreichim for them to continue their studies in Eretz Yisroel after their weddings. No one in their wildest dreams at the time even considered continuing their Torah studies after their weddings. Each student felt that his hands were full with just remaining in yeshiva for high school despite the disapproval of his parents, the mockery of his neighbors, the haughty looks of his more Americanized friends, and the spirit of materialism and heresy that blew in powerful gusts all around him.

The Mesivta grew, and Rav Shraga Feivel realized his dream of creating knowledgeable, deeply religious and committed Jews. Years later, he created Beis Midrash Elyon in an "unknown" town called Monsey near Spring Valley, where hand-picked married students engaged in high-level Jewish studies and where Torah students went in the summer for a combined program of summer relaxation and Torah study. This was the first kollel of its kind in the United States.

Wellsprings of the Mesivta

Rav Shraga Feivel created soldiers who went forth to Jewish communities outside of New York and founded yeshivas and saved the remnant of religious Jews from going lost. He sent students to found new yeshivos: Lakewood, Telz, and the Nitra Yeshiva, and he gave up his own sorely-needed supporters instructing them to help support new yeshivos that were opening up elsewhere. He founded Beis Midrash Elyon, for advanced Torah study at a kollel level. One of his greatest dreams came to fruition when Torah Umesorah, whose goal was to create day schools and yeshivos all over the world, was founded.

By the time Rav Shraga Feivel passed away in 1948, American religious Jewry was still small and tender, but had deep and strong roots. Yeshivas Torah Vodaas had sprouted numerous rabbis and activists that helped create the prominent religious Jewish communities that we see today spread out throughout the U.S. and Canada.

With the mighty personality of Rav Shlomo Heiman, the rosh yeshiva who taught the older bochurim of the Mesivta from the years 1933-1943, Rav Shraga Feivel produced the first team of Torah scholars of stature on American soil, all of whom had incubated in the classrooms of Torah Vodaas. They continued to reinvigorate Jewish religious life around the globe throughout the twentieth century.

The fabric of the American Jewish community began to change in the 1950s. The flood of survivors and the local religious community opened new yeshivos, the religious community burgeoned, a new religious-American weltanschauung developed which enabled a religious Jew to face American society with confidence and independence.

His love for his fellow Jew was expressed best by Rabbi Weissmandel in his book "The Unheeded Cry." "(Paraphrased) There was no rabbi in the U.S.A. that cared for the plight of European Jewry more than the saintly Rav Shraga Feivel, and helped greatly in the fundraising and hatzoloh efforts to save every Jew possible."

Rav Shraga Feivel took seriously ill in 1948. He was an ardent zionist; he urged his son in-law, Rabbi Alexander Linchner, to go to Israel and save the Sephardi children from secularism. Boys Town Jerusalem was established in 1949, the largest yeshiva/trade school of its kind anywhere in the world.

He asked that he be buried in a non-monumented grave in the Arugas Habosem cemetery on Long Island until the situation in Israel would enable his burial there. He was laid to rest in his final resting place in Bnei Brak. Rav Eliyahu Dessler zt"l, in his will, requested that he be buried next to Rav Shraga Feivel. Until this day, the Kehillas Arugas Habosem has left his original grave empty.

It is not an exaggeration to say that there was no man that impacted the American Jewish landscape with such purpose, clarity of thought, and vision, as the saintly Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zecher tzaddik v'kadosh levracha.

(Much of the material was taken from Shlucha DeRachmana (written in Hebrew) by R' Aaron Suraski who interviewed many family members. Mr. M. Samsonowitz gathered and had written much of the material. Although this piece had other important figures mentioned in the establishment of the American yeshiva movement, upon extensive research, I had discovered that they were greatly exaggerated to the point of being fabricated, and could not at all discern the true from the false, so I eliminated that material entirely. The above edited piece, is accurate, although not the entire story.)

The Truth About Ohel Children's Home and Family Services

2011-08-30T19:05:00.005-04:00

Breaking the Silence about “Breaking the Silence”

by Dr. Asher Lipner

In the recent sequel to the hit movie Wall Street, the protagonist, Gordon Gekko, gets released from jail after completing an eight-year sentence for committing insider trading and stock fraud. The “reformed” con-artist makes an “only in America” comeback by writing and marketing a book warning people of financial trouble in the real estate bubble that has been created by the very philosophy Gekko promoted in the 80’s: greed is good.

In their new book, David Mandel, CEO of Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services and his colleague, Dr. David Pelcovitz, Ph.D. similarly endeavor to lock the barn door after they have stolen the horses. The title, “Breaking the Silence: Sexual Abuse in the Jewish Community,” attempts to convey a courageous heroism, as if the editors are exposing an unknown crisis to the public. But in fact, our community has had scandalous headlines about sexual abuse and cover-up for over ten years. Like Gekko, the editors are engaging in a public relations campaign to cover their backsides and to maintain the silence about the fact that as leaders in the mental health community, they have helped create the system that got us into this mess.

Mandel attempts to establish his credentials as an expert in the field by repeatedly referring to “our experience at Ohel”, so the book really needs to be read in the context of Ohel’s notorious record. Since the 1980’s when Ohel failed to warn the community about its “consultant”, infamous child molester Avraham Mondrowitz, thereby enabling him to escape justice, until this day Ohel has repeatedly been involved in protecting molesters, not children.

Even on the book cover in the short list of safety goals, “reporting” to the authorities is glaringly missing. While Rabbi Dovid Cohen commits to writing for the first time that one is “allowed” to report sex crimes to the police, he hedges his bet by equivocating that the issues of “mesirah, lashon harah and chillul Hashem” are complex, and one should consult “a competent halachic authority” when in question.

Unfortunately, consulting rabbis is exactly what parents and survivors of abuse have been doing until now with catastrophic results, as almost all rabbis, out of ignorance or cowardice have breached halacha and advised protecting the abusers. Ohel’s own internal policy for staff is that no therapist is allowed to report child abuse without clearing it with Rabbi Cohen, a policy that is in breach of mandated reporting laws.

Ohel’s misguided philosophy on dealing with abusers is due to the book’s stated belief in a “diversity of values and ends” that can create conflict among “reasonably rational, well intentioned persons…involved with sex offenders.” The “relevant stakeholders” that in Ohel’s opinion can “reasonably disagree on the ordering of priorities”, seem to include (based on Ohel’s history) the molester whose concern and legal right to confidentiality is constantly trumpeted by Ohel, the molester’s family, the community whose image is tarnished by revelations of criminality and deviancy, and the institutions that harbor molesters who want to protect their reputations and finances from lawsuits. This ideology of complex, relative moral values completely flies in the face of both Jewish and secular law that give simple, straightforward and unequivocal directives that protection of the past and future victims must be the primary value and consideration.

In their chapter on “treating” sexual predators, the authors ignore the experts who advocate that courts and probation departments play a particularly important role both as a motivating force, and an integral part of therapy. The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers treatment guidelines also insist that “supervision agencies work closely with victim advocacy organizations to ensure that their policies do not re-traumatize victims of sexual assault,” an idea that is neither recommended in this book, nor practiced by Ohel.

One example of a policy that certainly re-traumatized victims of abuse is that instead of joining virtually all child advocates groups in supporting the Child Victim’s Act, (aka the “Markey Bill”) Ohel advocated for a “compromise” bill giving legal amnesty to abusers.[1] Furthermore, not a single of the recent pedophiles arrested in Brooklyn were brought to the attention of the authorities by Ohel, nor has Ohel given any support to the victims of abuse who courageously came forward to warn the public.

The book also continues to support the “Ohelian” idea that a rabbinic Beit Din should be utilized to address cases of child molestation. Refusing to learn from the fiasco of the Catholic Church’s shameful system of sheltering pedophile priests, or the doomed-to-failure attempts of the Batei Din of Yeshiva University, Lakewood, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Chicago to play “Law and Order” without the police, the editors and some of the authors are proud to help set up yet another rabbinical group to “deal with” (read: cover up for) sex crimes in Rockland County.[2]

In the chapter on “Prevention and Intervention Programs,” highly trained professionals give dangerously bad advice to parents. They state that although there is no halachic problem of reporting abuse to the authorities, it is “understandable” that orthodox professionals who are mandated reporters nevertheless feel hindered by cultural taboo from doing so. Even more shocking is that parents are admonished not to tell other parents in their child’s school if molestation occurs, because it is a “private matter.”

Silence is not always golden

Psychologists and crime prevention professionals have long known that in communication, one can often learn more about the speaker’s thoughts from that which is not said than from that which is. While claiming to “break the silence,” Ohel’s book continues to censor important information that the community needs to know. The most glaring omission is the voice of a survivor of abuse. While the disclosures that were taken from therapy sessions and edited letters are educational, sorely missing is a first-hand account of an adult survivor about the real life experience of surviving abuse in our community. Survivors of abuse will certainly feel that yet another opportunity was missed to finally give them a voice, and they have once again been shut out of the discussion. By comparison, in the recently published scholarly book, “Daas Torah: Child and Domestic Abuse,” edited by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn and Baruch Shulem, Ph.D. (to which this writer also contributed) two powerful autobiographical chapters are included, allowing the reader to hear what survivors really think and feel, unedited and uncensored.

Furthermore, “Breaking the Silence” can break one’s eardrums with its silence about the history of scandalous communal cover-ups. It is utterly ludicrous to discuss abuse in the community without addressing the real betrayal experienced by survivors whose victimhood has been denied, minimized, and silenced by our establishment leaders for so long with threats and intimidation. Most survivors of abuse agree that the community response to child sexual abuse is often a worse trauma than the abuse. The parents who have had their children thrown out of yeshivas for the “crime” of disclosing abuse, the families that were literally run out of town, the children who were slapped in the face for daring to name their molester, will all read this book and think “Here we go again.” The reasons for this betrayal are not unknown, as Dr. Michael Salamon explains in his new book, “Abuse: How Extremist Views Undermine the Apprehension of Offenders and the Treatment of Victims.”

On a bright note, David Mandel’s own chapter does provide some comic relief. Although he admits that the rabbis, adult survivors and child advocates who brought this issue to the awareness of the community deserve recognition, he declines to name them with the excuse that he does not want to get them into trouble. As if survivors like Mark Weiss, David Framowitz, and Joel Engleman, Esther Malka Reich, Sara Rosenberg, advocates like Vicki Polin, Ben Hirsh, Michael Salamon, Mark Appel, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, rabbis like Nochem Rosenberg, Yosef Blau, Daniel Eidenshohn, and Yitzchak Eisenman or bloggers like Paul Mendlowitz of UOJ, or Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah fear backlash in standing up for child safety. Dr. Freud would surely interpret this notion as Mr. Mandel “projecting” his own fear of bringing attention to these individuals who have, almost to a person, been harshly critical of his record (in UOJ’s words) of “letting no cover-up go uncovered.”

[1] Mandel, D. (April 29, 2009) Sexual Abuse Legislation: A Proposed Strategy for Reform. Five Towns Jewish Times

[2] Orbach, M. (April 23, 2010) New Square appoints Vaad to deal with sexual abuse. The Jewish Star

Who's In Charge?

2011-08-24T00:00:00.006-04:00

Who's In Charge?

by Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz - The Yiddishe Licht - June 8, 1923

לא תתגודדו לא תעשו אגודות אגודות - Tractate Yibamos - folio 14

In regard to the question – “Who's in charge?”, we have paid dearly more than once.

In the very early history of the Jewish nation, when our people were in their developmental period, this question of: “Who is in charge” was the one that hindered our further development, and led to our development as a Jewish people. This was after King Solomon died and his son, Rehoboam, was supposed to become king. Then Jeroboam ben Joash went and tore away ten tribes and founded the Kingdom of Ephraim. And according to the Midrash's explanation, it was not a matter of something different, but about the question of “Who Is In Charge.”

The Midrash intends to say with this, that there was no question of principle, or that he wanted to establish a more democratic government, or that he wanted to convince the people, and also not because he wanted to have a different government. No! All of this was no more than to fling sand in the eyes of the people, and in truth, it was only about “Who Is In Charge”. And the chasing after kavod or power of one person, or at most, from a small group of people.

This cost us dearly.

Here, in the breaking-up; when the Kingdom of Ephraim separated from the Kingdom of Yehuda, the fate of the Jewish people was sealed, to what in reality, hundreds of years later occurred –- to being chased out of our land.

The same question of “Who Is In Charge” has already cost us much here in this land, and if it will not reach a conclusion as quickly as possible, it will, God forbid, cost us dearly here as well. I mean this in regard to the four organizations of rabbis with whom, in this land, we have been smitten. There were times when we did not have even one, and now, blessed be He, we have four. But since we have a rule that the Jews cannot welcome both "Good Rabbis" and "Dangerous Ones", the four organizations perhaps can be accepted as the Good Rabbis,[or] perhaps the four "agudas" are possibly worse for us than nothing, considered like the "Dangerous Rabbis".

And if we want to be entirely honest and without any bias, and examine the reason that led to this, that we should now have four organizations of rabbis instead of one, we absolutely cannot find any serious reason that could have led to this. For American Jewry’s tragic division, when there are no principle oppositions, when there is no real difference of opinions among the four organizations, the question is "Yesodei Hadaas"... the foundation of common sense and knowledge. Is not one of the requirements of our religion, "Yesodei Hadaas" the foundations of common sense, not now found nebach even in the smallest tradition of Klal Yisroel?

It is not a question of Orthodoxy, Conservatism and Reform, which must be divided into more camps. It is no more nor less, regrettably, and regrettably once again, about the question” “Who Is In Charge?”

It is sad that one of our own people should find it necessary to accuse rabbis, and among them four elder sages and greats, and I, with such a humble motive in many ways, would generally consider it a chutzpah.

But I think that such a chutzpah is in the correct place, and it is, in general, not from the category of "az panim l'gehinom" but rather separate from the rule, or as chasidim call it "az l'kedusha", brazenness for the sake of holiness, and according to this chasidic lore, is not only not a sin --- it is a good thing, the brazenness of evil, [displayed by the various rabbis], from which, regrettably, we have so much in this land, and thereby gives me the freedom to criticize the behavior of the rabbis for making four agudas or separate divided organizations.

And I openly accuse the rabbis for their handling of this matter this way, dominated by their own small personal interests. [See the Markevet Hamishna in the foreword of the Rambam]

It is like making two Torahs from one Torah. One builds and one destroys...

And I ask the rabbis: can you take upon yourselves the great responsibility that your small interests might, God forbid, cause the entire Judaism to collapse?

And when sometimes you sit by yourself and think about the destruction of Jewry in this land, does not your conscience plague you, that you alone are mostly guilty of this destruction, at the very least in a large part of it? When all the rabbis would be united, it would be easy to unite the entire Orthodox population and miracles could take place.

Dear friends in New York have a completed plan which would be very simple to implement, and it would result in enough money to give decent subsidies for the rabbis, so they would not find it necessary to work with those things that are against the honor of rabbis, and there would be enough money for ritual slaughterers, so they should not be forced to become lowly creations, and there would still be enough money to support a Talmud Torah and Yeshivas on a grand scale.

But this uniting cannot occur as long as the rabbis are torn into parts, and regrettably, the four organizations are the "Arba Avos Nezikin" and not only destroyers who do damage to all of Yiddishkeit in this land, they are also destroyers who do damage to themselves from a spiritual and territorial standpoint. [See Tosefes Yom Tov Bava Kama Mishna Aleph]

And I give myself permission to ask the rabbis of all sides, will this dire situation remain like this forever? Has not the time arrived for you to put your own personal selfish reckonings to a side, and think about all of Klal Yisroel?

Rabbis! The Jewish people appeal to you! Have pity on the honor of the Torah and the honor of Judaism, most especially on your own honor, the honor of rabbis. Remember how much holiness and respect the title of Rabbi once contained!

Remember that the seat of the Rabbinate is also an inheritance from our holy sages and from the highest heights from the Ribbono Shel Olam Himself with Moshe Rabeinu a"h. Moshe Rabeinu wanted to sacrifice himself for all of Yisroel, and you cannot sacrifice for a foolish fleeting second of kavod, for the respect of the Torah and the entire Judaism?

No, I cannot believe that the spiritual leaders of Judaism have sunk so far! No! And therefore, I appeal to you once more. Do not forget! Do not forget Jewish responsibilities! Do not forget that the present and the future of the Jewish people is in your hands. Do not forget that the eyes of all Klal Yisroel are upon you, and which of you will dare to take on his conscience such a great responsibility?

Rabbis, remember your holy mission, that talmidei chachomim are suppose to bring peace to the world , and see to make peace -- "Hashem oz l'amo yiten, Hashem yivorech es amo b'shalom".

Failed Leadership!

2011-08-21T21:29:00.005-04:00

CLICK ON LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/19/failed-leadership-caused-the-financial-crisis?PageNr=1

"1. They should be authentic leaders, focused on serving their [clients] and all the institution's constituents, rather than [charismatic] leaders seeking money, fame, and power for themselves.

2. They should place the interests of their institutions and society as a whole above their own interests.

3. They should have the integrity to tell the whole truth, admit their mistakes, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Authentic leadership is not about being perfect. It is having the courage to admit when you're wrong and to get on with solving problems, rather than covering them up.

4. They need to adapt quickly to new realities, changing themselves as well as their institutions, rather than going into denial when things don't go as intended.

5. They need the resilience to bounce back after devastating losses. Resilience enables leaders to restore trust by empowering people to create new solutions that build great institutions for the future."

Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 5 - The State Of Our Disunion!

2011-08-18T01:17:00.002-04:00

THE UOJ ARCHIVES JANUARY 2008:

Background - Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., Case No.04cv268 - was tried in a bench trial from September 26, 2005 to November 4, 2005 before Judge John E. Jones III. On December 20, 2005 Judge Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision, ruling that the Dover mandate was unconstitutional, and barring intelligent design from being taught in Pennsylvania's Middle District public school science classrooms. He used the phrase " breathtaking inanity" to describe the position of the board of Dover - getting the school involved in this "legal maelstrom".

Judge John E. Jones was appointed to the federal bench by President George Bush in 2002. He is a devout Christian and a Conservative, politically. He was nobody's fool, he knew the damage "religion" can cause - taught by the wrong people, in the wrong setting, for the wrong reasons.

His ruling in summary: Religion has no place in a science classroom!

As an opinionated Orthodox Jew (in case you did not know that), I must believe his decision was a prudent one. Which deity were we going to teach the children about? Inevitably, not the God we believe in. With 90% of the country claiming to be of a Christian denomination, and 80% claiming to believe in the Christian deity, what chance did the Jewish children have in learning about the God of the Jews...the God that led us out of Egypt, with the intent of us becoming the light on to the nations?

"Breathtaking inanity" indeed! ID is not a science, it is a belief system, that the Muslims, for example, want to capitalize on - to kill every man, woman and child that refuses to believe in Allah!

Oh - what damage "religion" - used as a tool of exploitation - can do!

So when "religious" groups or organizations, infiltrate the political arena, we must be very suspicious of their agenda!

ALL RELIGIOUS GROUPS!

We must clinically and critically examine, what exactly are they trying to accomplish? What's good for the goose, is not necessarily good for the gander.

The epic battle that we are experiencing today in the Orthodox Jewish world, is NOT an ideological or theoretical battle. They - would have you believe that. It is clearly about - the falsehoods and damage that rabbis are able to wreak on the masses - if they go unchecked. Not all rabbis, no sirree, but many...even most!

This is not about us believing in the authority of the Torah or the Chazal.

We do or we must!!!

This is about our value system placed in the hands of charlatans, fraudsters, and perverters of the Torah! We can not - should not - must not - believe that because there is no explicit Halacha banning penetration of a child's anus by an adult, therefore it is somehow acceptable in our society!

Certainly - not worrisome enough - to ban that " non-penetrator" from our yeshivas!? And certainly not troubling enough - to keep that "non-penetrator" away from our children!?

My God - the breathtaking inanity - the unmitigated gall - that every single Orthodox Jewish organization did not take out full page ads in the Sunday New York Times - disassociating themselves from the lunatic rabbi, Pinchos Scheinberg, that ruled.....

"PENETRATION OF A CHILD'S ANUS IS THE ONLY CRITERIA IN DEEMING A PERSON A CHILD MOLESTER"!

And what about the fact that Yeshiva Torah Temimah, Lipa Margulies & Yehuda Kolko - under the advisement of the charlatan of our generation - Yisroel Belsky - were instructed not to go to bais din? Does that count for anything? Does it?

What possibly could the motives be - to lobby the state legislature against background checks of every individual in private schools? What on earth can the motives be when rabbis instruct victims of child-rape not to go to the police? What kind of human being could that person or group be? Can they be spokespeople for our religion? Are these hucksters deserving to represent us...speak for us...lobby for our benefit...represent Orthodox Jews and the Torah to the world? They make Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart look like saints!

This battle is for the sanity and minds of Orthodox Jews! This is a battle against the scheming evildoers that have somehow claimed our Judaism as their private dynasty. To enrich themselves, to grasp whatever power that they can get their grubby hands on, whatever money they can squeeze out of Washington, or local government, for their personal agenda!

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" are the immortal words of Carl Sagan. Is there any evidence that these rabbis care about our children enough - to seriously tackle the sex-abuse issue in our communities? Of course not! It's a charade! Was there any statement at all that the "penetration" psak was an error? Anything? Of course not!

What then are their claims to represent me, you, my children, your children and my community? Because they claim Torah knowledge? So what? Therefore what? Have they demonstrated the capacity to understand simple right and wrong? If our children's safety is up for sale, what else is there for us to trust their judgment on?

Look at the "legal maelstrom" they brought on us across continents!

Can there be anything more perverted than their stand now - against bloggers? What's next? Your freedom? Are you ready to throw that away? Freedom to know what's going on in your childrens' schools - about the people you pay blood-money to - to educate your child? Freedom to know that you are a victim of a fraud called gedolim? So what if it's ugly to see in print!?

IT IS UGLY!!!

It's horrifying to think that anyone can trust these very people - where only a few months ago, Shmuel Kaminetzky urged the victims' parents of Stefan Colmer - NOT TO GO TO THE POLICE!

My God...how insane have we become...that we can't protect our children in any legal way we deem fit without their permission. In other Brooklyn communities, these guys would be "swimming with the fishes".

Don't let anyone ever tell you that you need to stop thinking! Don't dare let anyone dictate to you what you may or may not do to protect your families. If a thief breaks in to the sanctity of your home, and threatens your children and family, do away with them in any fashion you deem appropriate! No rabbinical dispensation needed! If blood is splattered all over the place - so be it! Who says it has to be pretty?

Religion in the hands of hustlers and frauds is dangerous! When lashon hara or mesira takes a front seat over your child's welfare...WATCH OUT! The blogosphere is the new media; raw, unfiltered, and not for the faint of heart. You want cute stories, don't come here. You want the down & dirty, the way I feel in my heart, the pain I experience - about what happened to my Judaism...read my blog. If not...get lost. Nobody forces you to read UOJ.

The blogosphere was able to break the backs of the criminals that endangered every single Jewish child in a yeshiva! That's good enough reason to thank God for the Internet! I do not need any other reason, nor permission from self-professed "scholars". Lives saved! People's lives given a new hope and sense of justice; good enough for me!

Watch out for the people that want to foist their perverted belief system on you.

Religion in the hands of very evil people, can destroy skyscrapers with airplanes!

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 4 - Taking Judaism Back From The Con-Artists!

2011-08-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

THE UOJ ARCHIVES - MARCH 2008

We all have been there; the defining moment. If we are honest with ourselves, which is difficult and painful, we feel intuitively, in our soul, when that moment arrives. Some act, most don't! It can be in our personal lives, in our community roles, in our business or profession; it's there for us to seize - if we are daring! It comes perhaps once or twice in a lifetime, in each area of our lives.

The moment should have come to you - in your lives as Jews - right after Yehuda Kolko got arrested - and right after the Agudath Israel Convention - where they boldly pounced on the opportunity - to declare - there is NO child-rape problem in the Orthodox Jewish Community! "One - perhaps slipped through our fingers - but we are dealing with the - NON-PROBLEM - according to the Torah!"

But --- you went back to work and about your lives - believing that if you wish it away - it will not be there in the morning! You missed the point - fellow Jewish travelers. The problem - besides the illness of child-rape that has permeated our ghettos - was at that moment - that very period in time - it should have been crystal clear that we are doomed as a viable community.

Mattisyahu Salomon is a liar - but more than that - he's a Fascist - part of the Fascist organization known as Agudath Israel. Besides the fact that Salomon lied to you - he went along with the scheme of the very dastardly evildoers - Perlow and Kaminetzky - that "we're going to continue covering it up at all costs - and ride out the storm!"

These are the same guys who spit fire about every thing secular - including a reasonable secular education - that would enable your children to have a shot at feeding their children --- without welfare programs. Since then - Eisemann, Leizerowitz- Colmer - and the big one (like the others are not) Avrohom Mondrowitz! Which should confirm to any sane human - that this has been going on for 40 plus years in all segments of the Orthodox Jewish community. But it meant nothing to you - WHY? Because you thought you would not be affected.

But you missed the other point! The big other point! YOUR LEADERS ARE GANGSTERS, LIARS, THIEVES AND ROTTEN SEWAGE! They will say ANYTHING and DO ANYTHING to keep you from realizing what low-lives they truly are!

So now you're out - $100 - $500 - on Lipa Shmeltzer tickets and you're outraged!--- BIG-TIME!--- We had it!!--- Right - sure you did! You idiots woke up because you lost a few dollars! Now - your Pesach entertainment may be affected - this is out of control! Now - this is crazy - we need to do something about this!

I laugh sadly! How crazy are you? Where was the outrage after Kolko got arrested? Why nothing other than --- well nothing! Where is the outrage today? Where is the rage at the shysters at the Agudah for lying to you for FOUR LONG DECADES!

What gedolim?

Implement these changes over the next two years and you may survive:

1-Stop supporting the Agudath Israel - call for a disbanding of that fraudulent - pitiful group of bozos! Put these idiots out of their misery!

2-Limit the Lakewood yeshiva to 1000 students including kollel - or stop their donations!

Install a lay board of heimeshe accountants to monitor every dollar in every yeshiva! You're more than entitled to know where the millions upon millions of dollars a year are going.--- Don't trust them - they're thieving.

3-Require yeshivas to give your children a first-rate secular education - or send your children to Rabbi Yitzchok Elchonon!

4- Keep your children - male and female at home - eliminate all Israeli seminaries! Not seeing what they're doing - is a cowardly act as parents. Most kids are not able to deal responsibly with their freedom. The rabbis and the morahs - do not consider your kids a priority - please believe me!

5-Limit wedding attendance to 200 people - PERIOD! In a year - it would be totally accepted.

6-Stop purchasing and eating all meat and poultry products - for one week - starting Sunday - the week of March 30 - until they drop their prices by 25% - and Yisroel Belsky is removed from the OU! You can survive on fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables for a week! Pigs! That's just before Pesach when the Jewish Cow Mafia jack up their prices by 25%! Tell them you will now take control of the "kosher" meat industry, by regulating prices and hashgochos!

7-The only children that would be exempt from college/trade schools must past a rigorous examination (farher) by a board of honest and intelligent rabbis. The ones that would pass the the UOJ smell (literally and figuratively) test!

8-Do not build new schools and shuls - expand and renovate the existing ones. Building funds - is when millions of dollars are siphoned off in kickbacks to the builders and yeshiva owners!

9-(from Steve) Insist that all yeshivos adopt the RCA resolutions regarding child sexual abuse. DO NOT PAY ONE CENT OF TUITION UNTIL YOUR YESHIVA AGREES TO THIS! Also, continue to lobby the NY State Assembly to pass these laws that protect our children from molesters: mandatory background checks, fingerprinting, sex offender registry and mandatory reporting.

Only you can save yourselves - from yourselves - do it!

This is the "defining moment" for the Orthodox Jewish community. If you leave things in place - the ugliness will keep compounding and feeding on itself. More children hurt physically and emotionally. More welfare - basket cases -- in our communities. More singles crisis, and more kashruth scandals, more of all kinds of scandals. More money stolen from you - as the "rabbis" build financial kingdoms for themselves and their families....

And you will have nobody to blame but yourselves!

Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 3 - Yeshiva Torah Vodaath Versus Lipa Margulies - Part Two

2011-08-16T00:00:00.001-04:00

THE UOJ ARCHIVES:
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE:

Ten years after Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky zt"l forced Lipa Margulies to surrender his property at 150 Ocean Parkway to Bais Din, to be held in Trust pending a full accounting of the sources of the millions of dollars raised under the name Yeshiva Torah Vodaath of Flatbush, Rabbi Gedalya Schorr (a good friend of Margulies), released the property back to Margulies WITHOUT any accounting of the millions of dollars raised, with a "promise" from Margulies to never use the name of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath again or lose 150 Ocean Parkway (which was sold subsequently by Margulies). That would make it a full 21 years that Margulies was raising large sums of money from the unwitting masses, under the guise of being Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. By that time, Margulies had already built the new building at 555 Ocean Parkway, and Rabbi Gedalya Schorr had attended the groundbreaking years before, during his tenure as principal or menahel of YTV.

It is interesting to note, and no coincidence, that Frank Klein, the deceased nursing home magnate, who in 1966 was on the original deed transferring the property to YTV, and a board member of Margulies' school, in 1977 was a board member of YTV, a very close ally of Margulies and Schorr, and a very "prominent" Ger chasid, as was Rabbi Schorr (for different reasons of course).

This could only have been done if R' Yaakov Kaminetzky or his designated rosh yeshiva of YTV, R' Zelig Epstein, was out of the hanhala of YTV....

With these facts now disclosed, we will shortly revisit the years of YTV after R' Reuvain Grozofsky z"tl passed away, the subsequent din Torah with Rabbi Aaron Kotler z"tl, his ruling regarding Rabbi Schorr's duties at YTV, the fierce battle for the Rosh Yeshiva position waged by Rabbi Schorr once Rabbi Kaminetzky announced his intentions to retire in 1966, and the events that ultimately destroyed Beth Medrash Elyon in Monsey, and brought YTV to the brink of disaster, causing YTV to become a third-rate Banana yeshiva!

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE & PRINT!

Can You Hear Me Now? - Part 2 - What I Would Say at The Agudah Convention!

2011-08-15T00:00:00.003-04:00

THE UOJ ARCHIVES NOVEMBER 2010:

The first, last and only time I attended a convention sponsored by the Agudath Israel, is when it took place at the Pioneer Country Club in upstate New York; the brilliant accountants that are here tonight I'm certain can tell you how long ago that was without taking off their socks.

I was a bochur, just turning eighteen at the time, I looked forward to spending Shabbos in the presence of my rosh yeshiva, and a few classmates from yeshiva that were also Pirchei leaders. I did not know what to expect, and indeed it was a disappointing display by the "esteemed" baalei batim of their new cars, their wives' jewelry and designer clothes. Single girls of marriageable age were being hawked off to the would be shadchanim and parents of eligible boys. For the most part, bochurim of marriageable age were not invited. Food was being gulped down by the pound and by the cow, and the waiters were sweating bullets keeping up with the crowd. At breakfast on Friday, one behaimishe baal habayis tells his waiter, " I vant an omelette mit ah dozen - 12 eggs, fried on baider zeiten, and if it's 11 eggs, I'll know -- hahaha". Putz! We kids were sitting at the entrance to the kitchen as the waiter rushes in to tell his story. Ugly I tell you, stuff that stays with you for a lifetime.

I swore I'd never go back, and never did.

Rabbi Joshua Silbermintz a"h (aka Josh - a name that I would never call him by), asked me at the third Shabbos meal (shalosh seudas)...if I would please speak to the assembly about the importance of Pirchei; the second scheduled speaker took ill. He gave me 10 minutes to Shir Ha'maalot.

As Moshe Sherer taught, never begin your speech with " I'm not really prepared", so I stood up and blurted out what came to my mind, that's been on my mind since my very brief stint as a Pirchei leader.

".... Parents - what we must all learn from the Avos and Imahos - our patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov and their rebbetzins --- is the sacrifices and love showed to their children. Avraham Avinu was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice with Yitzchak -- and the Torah goes out of its way to describe the love Yitzchak and Yaakov, Rivkah, Leah and Rachel had for their children. I quoted the relevant psukim and Rashi to a now attentive crowd. I continued... Many or most of you here tonight are survivors, you know the meaning of heartache. I went on now... raising the pitch of my voice (I was a quick learner); you have an obligation to teach your children that sleeping Shabbos afternoon is not more important than the walking of your children to Pirchei and Bnos...leaving them hefker in the streets (in what was then a very safe Crown Heights). [Many kids wandered off to Lefferts Av. Park and to other unsupervised places,]... your childrens' safety is paramount. I beseech you to please pay heed to your childrens' physical and emotional safety. Thank you".

Nothing changed; I resigned my high-paying job.

And in all these years, parents trusted their kids to people that used their kids as "objects" - either making money off of them in their schools, summer camps, seminaries etc., and as we now know, that in every yeshiva and girls school, many kids were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by staff members, principals, teachers --- and these crimes were covered up by criminal circus midgets with long beards, like the ones sitting at your dais here tonight.

I look around this room and I know many of you; I find it incredible to believe that you are here showing support for this criminal enterprise. In effect, you have created "a race to the bottom" of what was once a beautiful heritage and tradition. Have you no shame? What will your legacy be, if not leaving the world a much worse place than how you found it? Your kids are ashamed of you --- and are voting with their souls, hearts and feet " out of here!"

Don't take my word for it! Did you read Mishpacha magazine? Who do you think you're kidding? They see through you! They know that there's not a darn thing about your lifestyle that they want to have anything to do with!

Hashem had sent His messenger to America in September 1913 to set up shop with a model that would work for American Jewry. And a model that was mostly foolproof until the end of time. Children were to be cared for and loved by how you educated them. They were to be first and foremost bnei Torah in all its glory. Being a mensch was not optional! They needed to spend most of their school day with model rebbes/humans... not some garbage can with a lid that the sanitation department would refuse to pick up!

They needed to be educated as proud Americans, with full knowledge of most every subject taught in American secular schools (at the time). They needed to understand that they would one day need to go out in the world and either be a proud supporter of Torah institutions, or become a member or founder of a Torah institution. There was no gray area;... in order to support Torah, you had to appreciate what you learned as a child. And you had to love it, not loathe or fear it! In order to "stay in chinuch" you had to excel in your abilities, in your emunah, in your middos, and wisdom of the printed Torah and its spirit. And that required that you had to give up the so-called good-life, "without ever having to say you're sorry!" There had to be mesiras nefesh, knowing that your ben Torah neighbor that has gone to work, may have a nicer car than you.

Look at you! Look at what you have become! Either felons, or felons that have not been caught yet!

You trusted your kids to lowlifes, degenerates and perverts! They'd sell you down the river in a second, the second you stopped giving them money, or not as much as they wanted from you! And then your kid would be out on the street too, because he "did not measure up"! Which guy at the dais here has to be concerned about mundane issues like paying their mortgage, or tuition? Do they even have a mortgage? Or was it paid off with your money combined with whatever they could steal from Uncle Sam?

So why are you here?

There was a reason that Dr. Joseph Kaminetzky was appointed the head of Torah Umesorah. He graduated from Columbia University and had the wisdom needed in every area of education, and was rightfully in charge of the curriculum in each and every Torah Umesorah affiliated school.

It was no coincidence that Dr. David Stern was selected as menahel/principal of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He too was a graduate of Columbia University and a rabbi at one of the early Young Israel synagogues.

And when Rabbi Alexander Linchner z"l left his position at Mesifta Torah Vodaath to focus full time on the building of Boys Town Jerusalem, he hired Rabbi Moshe Lonner PhD, to be the high school secular studies principal; with the same intent, gusto and spirit that his father in-law had in appointing Drs. Kaminetzky and Stern to their respective positions.

So how did we get here? What group of ignoramuses led us down this path of "the more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more dumb" -- the better? "Where are the lomdim?" an ultra-orthodox rabbi recently bellowed! Where are the Torah scholars?

What have you done to your kids and their kids?

Go back to the original model set up by Hakodesh Baruch Hu Himself; pick the few select students to toil in Torah, to stay in chinuch, and to be a model for your grandchildren. Get rid of the gangsters running the American yeshiva system and its affiliated organizations -- they have already destroyed two complete generations.

Genug!