EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!

EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
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EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters

EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Stand By Your Man - Featuring The Jews Brothers

Avi Shafran (left) Gavriel Bodenheimer (right) - The Jews Brothers



A prominent Monsey rabbi who runs a boys school pleaded not guilty Tuesday morning to charges of having sex with an underage boy.
Gavriel Bodenheimer, 71, principal of Yeshiva Bais Mikroh, was arrested by Ramapo police Monday on a warrant involving a sealed grand indictment.
The rabbi's arrest resulted from an investigation by the police and the Rockland District Attorney's Office Special Victim's Unit. The unit deals with are sex crimes against children.
He was charged with three counts of criminal sex act and one count of first-degree sex abuse, all felonies, at his arraignment before Rockland County Judge William Nelson. The indictment said the abuse occurred over a period of time.
Bodenheimer's attorney, Deborah Wolikow-Loewenberg, asked the judge to release the rabbi without bail. She said he had been a fixture in the community his whole life.
"He's not a flight risk. There is no reason to suspect he will not return to court. His roots are here," she said.
Prosecutor John McGowan recommended $100,000 bail and, after having the two sides confer, Nelson set the bail at $25,000 cash or bond.
Loewenberg said the family would raise the bail and expected the rabbi to be out of jail on Tuesday.
"We will fight these charges because they are not true," she said.
The judge also issued a stay-away order, directing the rabbi to not contact the victim, known in court records as "Y.E."
"There is no gray area," he said. "You have to stay away from Y.E. Clear?"
The rabbi responded: "Clear."
He is due back in court Aug. 26.
The rabbi was silent in court, except when he confirmed his identity to the judge and when he answered the judge's stay-away question. He wore an orange jumpsuit and was shackled.
Attorney Kenneth Gribetz, a former county district attorney, said he and his partner, Wolikow-Loewenberg, met with the rabbi's family on Monday to discuss the case.
The rabbi had been held without bail on the arrest warrant in the Rockland County jail in New City.
"I am convinced of his innocence," Gribetz told The Journal News/lohud.com Tuesday morning. "His reputation is impeccable, without exaggeration. He's a very prominent rabbi."
Bodenheimer has for decades led the Bais Mikroh on Viola Road where thousands of Orthodox Jewish boys have been educated.
Bodenheimer has been active recently in the push to change the state education aid formula to bring more aid to East Ramapo School District, whose board is controlled by Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish residetns, and to the private schools. He has spoken at a spring news conference on the matter and gone to Albany with other advocates to lobby state officials.
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/12/rabbi-gavriel-bodenheimer-monsey-sexual-abuse-charges-guilty-rockland-court-attorney-kenneth-gribetz/13942307/

Why I Can’t Forgive The Jews…


I make no apology for this title. The Jews have much to answer for, especially the Jews of Israel – and there’s no letting up.
I write from England, this precious stone set in the silver sea, where our forefathers were nourished on the blessed freedoms of a robust paganism.
We relished our ever-inventive superstitions and gloried in unbridled passion. We made our choice between 14 gods, worshipped devils, and were in lifelong bondage to an inexorable fate known sinisterly as Wyrd. Standards there were, agreeably low.
Sure, hopeless ruffians were we, shackled to a changeless decree of the gods; but we felt mostly good about our brute lives and ourselves. We were all in the same boat, no better and no worse than the next bloke.
However, like the distant rumblings of an approaching rainstorm, the Jewish Messiah’s teachings had reached our shores in the 1st century; and their voice was growing louder. The Jewish Messiah and the Jewish Bible would become our nemesis and break open our little world.
What followed is well documented, and one may Google for the relevant facts; but, for us, it meant that we could no longer enjoy the life of unbridled paganism. The bar of morality had been raised. It was a rude awakening; our stone of shelter was overturned.
Now I am reminded of a friend back in the 70′s, who was employed for a few days in a factory that manufactured long, electro-plated metal rods. Turning out nearly 300 of these things every day, he was approached by the Foreman.
“Look ‘ere, son you’re working too ‘ard. The rest never do more’n 250 and you’re makin’ ‘em look bad. Before we know it, everybody will be expected to do 300. Now, toe the line; there’s a good lad.” He was in no forgiving mood.
Similarly, are we seriously expected to forgive the Jews for turning out more ethics and ever-higher standards of morality than the rest of us? Things like ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, in place of the good old traditional ethic of ‘do it to him before he does it to you.’ It takes only one do-gooder to make the rest of us look bad. We might be living under a stone, but it’s our stone.
Twenty centuries have passed; and we’ve managed, with varying degrees of success, to not merely get used to this higher morality, but also to convince ourselves that we thought of it in the first place–and that it had nothing to do with the Jews, their Messiah, and their Bible. But prior to this Jewish education, we were like Caliban in the unwholesome fen, satisfied with his water with berries in’t. Ah, the savage at liberty.
We know who’s to blame for this. The Jews. What were they trying to do, for Pete’s sake, bring heaven to Earth? Behold this dreamer cometh. If not for the Jews, God would most likely have remained in heaven, His Place, and never come to Earth to make us uncomfortable, by awakening in us a desire for more than berries in water.
Heaven is God’s; and the Earth would be ours, if not for the Jews. Unforgivable.
Now, back in 1948, between 400,000 and 700,000 Arabs vacated their homes on the advice of their warring brethren from neighbouring lands. But between 1948-72, 820,000 Jews were forcibly driven from their homes in the Arab countries, 200,000 finding refuge in Europe and North America, and most of the others in the State of Israel. The Muslims have sucked at the breast of the UN for 66 years, whilst the Jews, from Day One, were fed and sheltered at the expense of their fellow Jews. And where are they now? Look for them and their children in the halls of academia, on the stage, in the hospitals, in the hi-tech milieu, and in the Apollo Space Shuttle.
Those vexatious Jews have pride and dignity! They make the rest of us feel bad whilst the Arabs are enough to make any of us feel good about ourselves.
There was a glimmer of light when I heard the State of Israel excoriated for being apartheid. Ah, a serious flaw, I thought, but was disappointed; for the Arabs of Israel have full citizenship and enjoy equal rights with their Jewish neighbours. In fact, the Arabs of neighbouring countries receive free medical care in Jewish hospitals.
And as if this were not enough, in response to thousands of rockets lobbed from Gaza to Israel, Jews are putting their own young people at risk in a ground offensive in order to spare the lives of possibly innocent Palestinians. What’s more, they actually drop thousands of leaflets to warn the Gazan citizenry to flee the area of an impending attack. Then, they fire a rubber warning missile to knock on the roof five minutes before the real one. Finally, if the women and children have not departed, the Israelis call off the strike.
Furthermore, Israel has opened an emergency clinic near the battle zone to treat injured……Palestinians! This includes a gynecology unit. Isn’t that childbirth?!
Am I dreaming? Somebody pinch me.
During the bombing of Dresden in 1945, it took a mere 3 days to drop 3,900 tons of high explosives and incendiary (none of them rubber), destroying two-and-a-half square miles of the city centre and killing between 22,700 and 25,000 people, mainly civilians. Compare this with the 11 days which the Israelis have taken to kill 274 people, despite their having far more powerful weaponry than we had in the 40s. The Israeli restraint is downright perplexing and irritating to the hypocrites in the UN.
Did we warn Dresden? No, of course not! Was a dummy hydrogen bomb dropped in advance of the real one? No! Did we burn people, blow them to smithereens, and starve them? Yes. And we didn’t issue an apology to Germany or Japan for disproportionate warfare! War was war, and we insisted on ending it sooner rather than later.
How do you respond to an enemy that vows to destroy you and your way of life, rape your wife, and enslave your children? You kill ‘em, that’s what you do! And because we were all doing it, nobody felt bad about it.

But these irksome Jews, with their raising the bar ever higher, are attempting to civilize war itself, resisting the temptation to carpet bomb and visit hell on the enemy once and for all, relinquishing the crucial element of surprise by leafleteering and calling Palestinians on their cell phones first.
And the torn metal from the missiles which land in Israel? Transformed into works of art to adorn your mantlepiece. They seek to bring order and civilization right up to the gates of Gehenna. If it were possible, hell itself would be abolished by these sons of David. Col. Kemp, a British officer who served in all the major conflicts between 1977-2006, said of the Israelis,“Based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: during operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare.”
The Jews are again leading the way to higher ground, making us uncomfortable with our double standards and our odious hypocrisy.
God bless ‘em.
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/cant-forgive-jews/#cBbubWR1Z1p05MQT.99

Monday, August 11, 2014

Have Beard, Will Pounce!

Brooklyn DA exposes hidden Orthodox sex cases

David Seff, a math professor at Brooklyn College, asked a female student to meet him in a classroom one late afternoon in August 2011 to help with a “listening experiment.” Alone with the young woman, Seff pounced on her, authorities charged.
Seff, now 68, allegedly grabbed her breasts and crotch. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment last September and was ordered to stay away from her for a year.
But his case never made the news — his name was kept under wraps by then-Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
That secrecy is over, says DA Kenneth Thompson, who succeeded Hynes in January.
At The Post’s request, Thompson’s staff last week released 20 names of defendants in cases Hynes had refused to divulge because they involved Orthodox Jewish suspects and/or victims.
Modal Trigger
David Zimmer
Hynes, who would issue press releases on non-Orthodox sex offenders, insisted he was shielding Orthodox victims or their families from Mafia-like intimidation in their insular community.
“We will treat all defendants and victims equally,” said Thompson’s chief-of-staff, Leroy Frazer. “We don’t have a policy for this particular group.”
Seff, an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College from 2003 to 2011, is now a part-time professor at Lehman College in The Bronx. CUNY officials had no comment. Seff did not return a call.
Other previously unpublicized suspects include:
  •  Israel Moshe, 47, accused in 2010 of raping a 22-year-old woman with cerebral palsy who answered a Craigslist ad. He’s a fugitive with a warrant for arrest.
  •  Alexander Rogalsky, 30, a camp counselor accused in 2011 of first-degree sodomy with a 13-year-old boy in 2003. Under a plea deal with Thompson in February, he copped to second-degree sodomy and got 10 years’ probation.
  •  David Zimmer, 43, a locksmith convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in 1999 and arrested again in 2012 for taking photos of a 9-year-old girl in Borough Park. He pleaded guilty to failure to register in June and faces sentencing Sept. 13.
  •  Naftolis Schwartz, 57, a Hebrew teacher accused in 2012 of sexually abusing a 13-year-old student. He pleaded guilty in February to endangering the welfare of a child and received no jail time.
  • Yosef Ederi, 42, a repeat pedophile accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy at their synagogue in 2011. He pleaded guilty to child endangerment in July 2013, was set free, and struck again. In May, he was convicted of molesting an 8-year-old boy and sentenced to a year in Rikers. He’s already out.
Modal Trigger
Yosef Ederi
Criticized for going easy on rampant sex crimes in the Orthodox Jewish community, Hynes had launched an initiative in 2009 called Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for “voice of justice,” to encourage victims to come forward.
Kol Tzedek “no longer exists,” Frazer said.
Thompson has replaced Hynes’ Jewish-community liaison, Henna White, with Wolf Sender, a close ally of Democratic state Assemblyman Dov Hikind.
Chana Widawski, a social worker, is still on staff as a general victim advocate. An Orthodox hot line set up by Hynes remains, although calls are infrequent.
http://nypost.com/2014/08/10/brooklyn-da-exposes-hidden-orthodox-sex-cases-kept-secret/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow

Monsey principal arrested, charges remain sealed


READ ARTICLE:
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/11/rockland-rabbi-principal-arrested/13906653/


Police: Gavriel Bodenheimer, rabbi and principal, arrested for sexual abuse

MONSEY - A Monsey rabbi, who is also a principal at a local yeshiva, was arrested Monday for alleged sexual abuse.
Gavriel Bodenheimer, 71, was arrested for alleged criminal sex acts and sex abuse, but prosecutors have been tight-lipped about who the rabbi allegedly abused and when. He is principal of Yeshiva Bais Mikroh, a boys' yeshiva.
Bodenheimer's lawyers say they have not seen the charges yet and won't see them until the indictment is unsealed in court. They say Bodenheimer has been active in many charities in his community for decades.
Bodenheimer has been principal of the Monsey yeshiva for more than 25 years. He is a father of 14 and grandfather of 100.
WATCH VIDEO:

Demilitarize Gaza, by force



This week, 69 years ago, U.S. leaders decided they had no other choice but to end the war against Japan in one fell swoop: the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.


Three days later, the U.S. confirmed the kill, destroying Nagasaki with another atomic bomb. No, the U.S. did not call the residents of these cities beforehand to warn them. There were no "knocks on the roof" to tell them to leave their cities, which were about to be wiped off the face of the earth. This is how a superpower acts when it has lost tens of thousands of its soldiers far from its shores.

Hamas is not the Imperial Japanese Army and Israel is not the U.S. Yet still, something can be learned from the processes the U.S. and Japan went through during World War II. Japan then, like Hamas now, knew its fate was sealed. Japan deployed a secret weapon -- kamikaze pilots, who took thousands of American lives. But in the end, Japan paid a terrible price and was defeated.

Hamas has dragged Gazans into the same abyss that millions of Japanese were dragged into. Unlike the U.S., which fought far away from home, the Israel Defense Forces' fight against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists can be viewed from the windows of homes in Netiv Haasara, Nahal Oz and Nirim. Our soldiers are fighting for their homes as their families watch on. There is no war more just than the one we are currently fighting against Hamas in Gaza.

Thus, in addition to quiet, a cease-fire must lead to the demilitarization of Gaza, which was included in past agreements signed by the Palestinians in Washington and Cairo.

It would be delusional to think Hamas would voluntarily disarm itself. Hamas must be demilitarized by force!

Egypt, the country which currently has the most effective leverage on Hamas in Gaza, has a key to play in promoting Israel's demand that the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza be dismantled. Israel must insist that future diplomatic negotiations be conducted with a single Palestinian authoritative body, which governs both in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. No more peace talks with only with the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria.

Listening to the U.N. drumbeat, it appears Richard Goldstone will soon be summoned for reserve duty. If, God forbid, this does happen, we must avoid the mistakes we made during the investigation that followed Operation Cast Lead. This time, we must take an active and aggressive role in providing data and facts to the investigators. Let's remove the masks from the faces of U.N. Relief and Works Agency employees, who today are mostly Hamas members. On top of every sack of flour in UNRWA warehouses in Gaza, there are now sacks of explosives and rockets.

Let's show the mosques, hospitals and health clinics that have been turned into terrorist command centers and weapons storage sites. Let's expose the chemistry labs at higher education institutions that have been used to produce propellant for rockets and mortar shells. Let's reveal the cement that was supposed to be used to build homes for refugees, but was instead poured to reinforce the terror tunnels. Let's help investigators see Gaza through a catheter and understand that Hamas has become a monstrous cancerous tumor. Israel has tried to reduce the size of this tumor with three radiation treatments (Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Defense and Operation Protective Edge). But the malignant tumor now must be removed -- either by an Egyptian diplomatic surgeon or an Israeli military one.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

"Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities is a call to all charged with protecting children from abuse to refuse to appease powerful rabbis who try to prevent child sexual abuse cases from being reported and investigated."


"Michael Lesher is a radical, a rebel, a hero. He has stood up against an unjust system by speaking terrible truths, and with these truths he might just manage to shatter one of the modern-day religious fundamentalist forms of oppression in our midst." --Christopher Ketcham, contributing editor, Harper's, whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, GQ, The Nation, Mother Jones, and many other magazines.

This book--the first of its kind--analyzes how and why cases of child sexual abuse have been systematically concealed in Orthodox Jewish communities. The book examines many such cover-ups in detail, showing how denial, backlash against victims, and the manipulation of the secular justice system have placed Orthodox Jewish community leaders in the position of defending or even enabling child abusers.

The book also examines the generally disappointing treatment of this issue in popular media, while dissecting the institutions that contribute to the cover-ups, including two--rabbinic courts and local Orthodox "patrols"--that are more or less unique to Orthodox Jewish communities.

Finally, the book explores the cultural factors that have contributed to this tragedy, and concludes with hopes and proposals for future reform.

"Michael Lesher has written an exhaustively researched analysis of why the Orthodox Jewish community, as a whole, goes to great and damaging lengths to cover up sexual abuse of its children. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Lesher's book is his cogent analysis of the interplay of a complex set of Orthodox norms and values. He maps out their historical and psychological underpinnings, sketching a clear picture of how the community's growing obsession with women's modesty and children's purity is deeply tied to its emphasis on authority and the suppression of sexuality. With deep appreciation for the nuances of Orthodox culture, he explains why anyone who threatens this carefully constructed fortress of fear is expelled, with the result, all too often, of re-victimizing the people who were abused in the first place." --Debra Nussbaum Cohen, contributing editor for The Forward, and New York correspondent for Ha'aretz.

"Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities is a call to the media, politicians, and governmental agencies charged with protecting children from abuse to refuse to appease powerful rabbis who try to prevent child sexual abuse cases from being reported and investigated. The book serves as a wakeup call to mainstream Jewish leaders and congregants to demand that more conservative and authoritarian branches do more to protect the youngest and most vulnerable members." --Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment and founder of the Child-Friendly Faith Project.
"I'm proud to include Michael Lesher in my circle of friends. He has consistently been an outstanding voice of reason in a cruel society that puts child-rapists interests ahead of the interests of victimized children. Long before it became "fashionable" to be a victims' advocate, his law practice represented victims of abuse at little or no cost. His trailblazing investigation of the Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz case, tracked his footsteps to Israel, the D.A.'s alleged involvement with the New York rabbis, intentionally waiting until Mondrowitz escaped the U.S. in the middle of the night to Israel to commence an investigation, and attempting in every legal venue available to him to get Mondrowitz extradited back to the U.S. for prosecution. His tenacity in pursuing sexual predators in the Jewish community, served as a model to me in my dogged pursuit of Jewish and gentile child-rapists, and the Jewish establishment and rabbis that maliciously covered up their crimes, destroying an untold number of young lives. If you buy one book this year, whether you are a member of the Jewish faith or not, this compelling book will force you to finish it in one sitting." 
Paul Mendlowitz.

About the Author

Michael Lesher, a writer and a lawyer, has published a number of articles about child abuse and is co-author of a book on the American family court system's poor record of protecting children. An Orthodox Jew, he has also published short fiction and poetry and lives in Passaic, New Jersey.
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Friday, August 08, 2014

The Minority Jewish Cockroach Factor - 11th Biblical Plague Found in Egypt Dig

Haredi daily calls for 'walls to sealed' against haredim recruitment




'Yated Neeman' editorial speaks out fiercely against sense of closeness, solidarity felt by large sections of haredi society toward IDF during Gaza operation.





During the four weeks of Operation Protective Edge, the haredi community’s attitude toward the IDF softened considerably, with many expressing their support for the soldiers in Gaza. But on Thursday, an editorial in the largest-selling haredi daily newspaper, Yated Ne’eman, spoke out fiercely against that sense of closeness and solidarity with the army.
There were numerous supportive initiatives from the haredi world during the conflict: Yeshiva students would “adopt” soldiers to pray for by name, the haredi leadership called to recite prayers in synagogues for the well-being of the Jewish people, and several initiatives provided food and provisions for soldiers.

Some married yeshiva students even (anonymously) declared the war a Torah-mandated conflict and said they were seeking to enlist in the IDF, calling on others to do so as well.

However, the Thursday editorial said that while the solidarity during the war was fitting and appropriate, this should not have any impact on how the haredi community related to the IDF and secular society in the long term.

“This must ring a spiritual ‘red-alert’ warning,” the paper warned.

Yated Ne’eman is the mouthpiece of the mainstream non-hassidic haredi political movement Degel Hatorah.

“This confusion must not penetrate inward,” it continued, and spoke out against what it described as attempts to recruit haredi boys into the army during the operation.

“The unceasing efforts to change us became even greater during the war. The attempt to cynically exploit the emergency situation by digging spiritual terror tunnels must be rejected and expelled,” the editorial stated. It cited the haredi conscription law that passed in March as evidence of attempts to change haredi society.

At this time when they are trying to coerce us, we must seal every crack and strengthen the weak who are more likely to be tempted,” the article read. “We must raise the walls.... Contact and connection between the haredi camp and the secular is treif [non-kosher], especially at a time like this.”

Shahar Ilan, the deputy director of the Hiddush religious freedom lobby group, said that the article was a reaction by the haredi leadership to sentiment within the community that it felt had gotten out of hand.

He said there was a clear change in the way the haredi community had reacted to Operation Protective Edge compared to previous conflicts, and he ascribed these changes largely to the increasingly pervasive presence of the Internet in the community and ready access to it via smartphones and other devices that, despite great opposition, many haredim use.

“The haredim built huge fences to prevent the population from knowing what happens outside of it, and now the Internet allows every haredi person to know exactly what is happening,” Ilan said. “You cannot now prevent an 18- or 19-yearold haredi boy from knowing that secular or national-religious boys of his age are risking their lives for the country.”

Ilan also expressed optimism that the haredi experience during the war would lead to an increase in haredi enlistment.

Yisroel Cohen, a journalist with the Kikar Hashabbat haredi news website, said there was no doubt that the community had reacted differently to Operation Protective Edge than to previous conflicts. He cited the publication of pictures and biographies of fallen soldiers in the haredi online news media, and the unprecedented decision to delay the end of the yeshiva semester so that the students could continue praying and studying as a merit for the soldiers.

“It’s possible now that the leadership feels that a balance must be brought about, though,” Cohen said regarding the Yated editorial. “The rabbis perhaps feel that too much of a connection has been made, and that needs to be rebalanced out with this kind of message.”

Cohen also noted the impact of a series of articles in a rival haredi daily, Hapeles, which warned that the real enemy are those who wish to harm the spiritual well-being of the Jewish people, meaning secular Israeli society and those who seek to draft haredi yeshiva students into the army.

Hapeles is the mouthpiece of the hardline Bnei Torah political movement which has in recent years competed with Degel for influence and control over the non-hassidic haredi world. Cohen said that the uncompromising attitude of the newspaper and the Bnei Torah movement even during the war could have dragged the mainstream leadership into a more hardline position resulting in Thursday’s editorial. 

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Parents Call Rabbi a Sexual Predator

Parents Call Rabbi a Sexual Predator
     CHICAGO (CN) - A rabbi in charge of four Orthodox seminaries in Israel sexually assaulted girls in his charge, and threatened to ruin their marriage prospects if they reported him, the girls' parents claim in a federal class action.
     Gary Miller and six other named plaintiffs sued Elimelech Meisels, Rachel Slanger, Peninim of America, Yaakov Yarmish, Tzvi Gartner and four subsidiary Jewish seminaries in Jerusalem, on Monday in Federal Court.
     "From approximately 2004 until the present date, defendant Elimelech Meisels engaged in a fraudulent and unlawful scheme to induce Orthodox Jewish parents from across the United States to send their daughters to various seminaries in Israel that he controlled under the guise of educational and spiritual development," the complaint states. "In truth, defendant Meisels' true aim was to fraudulently and unlawfully take thousands of dollars from each of these parents and to induce these girls, by telephone, mail, wire and other means, to travel thousands of miles outside the United States and away from their parents for the purpose of sexually assaulting these vulnerable young girls."
     Orthodox Jewish children are traditionally sent to study the Torah for one year after high school in Israel. For girls, their attendance at a seminary "profoundly shapes and influences their marriage prospects within a quasi arranged marriage system known as the Shidduch (translated literally as Introduction) system," the complaint states.
     "This influence is so important that it causes Orthodox Jewish parents to save money for years in hopes of being able to afford the annual tuition that regularly exceeds twenty thousand dollars ($20,000)."
     The defendant seminaries, part of the Bais Yaakov class of seminaries, are classified as Ultra-Orthodox, and girls are expected not even to physically touch a man outside of marriage.
     But the parents say Meisel was not the devout rabbi he held himself out to be.
     "Defendant Meisels, like many other sexual predators, preyed on the vulnerable. He did this by developing mentor-mentee relationships with girls and exploiting these relationships to lure the girls into late night coffee meetings and other private settings and then sexually assaulted them," the lawsuit states.
     "Once the sexual assaults were complete, upon information and belief, defendant Meisels would intimidate his victims by telling them that no one would believe that a rabbi and author with his reputation would have done such a thing.
     "Moreover, upon information and belief, defendant Meisels would threaten his victims that if they shared their story with anyone, he would draw on his vast contacts within the Shidduch system to ruin their reputations and ensure that no viable candidate would want to take their hand in marriage.
     "It was widely known within the administrative staff of the seminaries that defendant Meisels was regularly taking students to late night private meetings - a fact itself that is forbidden and known as 'yichud' according to the Orthodox Jewish law and tradition. However, certain still unknown co-conspirators within the seminaries were also aware that defendant Meisels was sexually assaulting the girls and assisted defendant Meisels by actively and passively concealing the assaults."
     In July this year, a Jewish religious court, the Chicago Bais Din, heard testimony from several of Meisels' alleged victims, and issued a ruling stating that it believed students at the defendant seminaries were "at risk of harm," according to the complaint.
     "News of this decision sent shockwaves to the prospective parent bodies of the Seminaries," the complaint states.
     It continues: "Defendant Meisels agreed with defendant Yarmish that they would conduct a sham 'sale' of The Seminaries where defendant Yarmish would claim that he now owned the Seminaries and would claim to the class plaintiffs that these institutions were safe for their daughters. The conspirators hoped that this scheme would force class plaintiffs into leaving their daughters in The Seminaries even though that they were not safe because the conspirators would withhold their tuition deposits."
     For the last two weeks in July, according to the complaint, Yarnish, Slanger, Gartner "and other still unidentified coconspirators then engaged in a flurry of written correspondence and telephone calls with the class plaintiffs to try to convince them that the Seminaries were under new ownership and were now safe. The sought to draw on defendant Gartner's status as a rabbi in Israel and the status of two other unnamed co-conspirators to perpetuate their fraud and assure the class plaintiffs that the Seminaries are safe. ...
     "On July 24, 25, and 29, 2014, upon information and belief, defendant Gartner and unnamed co-conspirators had meetings in Israel about how to best cover up the fraudulent and unlawful scheme alleged herein and continue to deprive the class plaintiffs of their money by perpetuating the illusion that defendant Meisels is no longer affiliated with the seminaries," the parents say.
     They seek class certification and punitive damages for racketeering, fraud, breach of contract, emotional distress, conspiracy and conversion.
     They are represented by Shneur Nathan with Hale Law in Chicago. 

2 Mohels (Mohelim) Banned After Infants Contract Herpes in Circumcision Rite

Just One Consent Form Collected by City in Two Years




By Paul Berger

Published August 05, 2014, issue of August 08, 2014.

New York City has banned two mohels from performing a controversial circumcision rite after they were suspected of infecting babies with herpes.

But the city’s health department will not reveal their names.

Five infants have contracted herpes since September 2012, when the health department passed a regulation requiring mohels to get written consent from parents before using their mouth to suction blood from a circumcision wound — a religious rite known as metzitzah b’peh, or MBP.

MBP can transmit a strain of herpes from the mouth of a mohel to the infant and is potentially fatal to newborns, whose immune systems are underdeveloped. Infants who contract the disease can also suffer brain damage. The MBP rite is common in the ultra-Orthodox community.

In the past, some parents whose babies contracted herpes have refused to identify their mohel to city health officials. Of the five cases since the autumn of 2012, the health department has been able to identify just two mohels.

Only one of those mohels obtained written consent before performing the circumcision.

“In all of the cases, we have asked whether there were forms and, in the two cases where we were able to identify the mohel, we have requested them from him,” a health department spokeswoman told the Forward on July 24. Of these two cases, one had a form, which he provided, the spokeswoman said. The other one did not. “The department issued orders banning both mohelim” from practicing MBP, she said.

The spokeswoman would not name the mohels, citing privacy concerns. She also did not respond to several emails asking how the ban would be enforced and how the public could know the mohels in question were banned if their names were not made public.

More liberal Orthodox Jewish leaders do not support the MBP practice and deplored the latest news about its consequences. “I would hope that any mohel who unfortunately has transmitted a disease via metzitzah b’peh would stop practicing metzitzah b’peh because of the safety of our children,” said Rabbi Leonard Matanky, president of the Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America.

But Matanky stopped short of calling for the health department to release the names of the banned mohels. The rabbinic leader said it would be presumptuous of him to comment, because he did not have enough information about the cases or the legal reasoning behind the city’s decision.

New York’s consent form regulation was created in the wake of the death of a 2-week-old boy following ritual circumcision with MBP in Brooklyn in 2011.

MBP is a holdover from centuries ago, when saliva was the best way
to clot a wound.

Today, more liberal Orthodox groups advocate that mohels who want to continue the practice should use a sterile pipette to simulate direct oral suction. Alternatively, some mohels use gauze. But some ultra-Orthodox groups, such as the Satmar Hasidim, consider MBP by direct oral suction to be commanded by Torah.

Oral herpes is a common infection that manifests itself as a cold sore but often has no visible symptoms. It is passed to the infant via the mohel’s saliva.

Babies whose mothers already carry herpes are immune to the virus. But babies who are not immune are at a high risk of illness.

Mohels in New York City perform MBP on an estimated 3,600 ultra-Orthodox boys each year.

Ultra-Orthodox mohels also perform MBP on the children of secular or religiously liberal Jewish couples, and these couples are often ignorant of the practice and its risks.

Since 2000, according to the city health department, 16 babies in New York City have been infected with herpes following MBP. Two of those babies died, and another two suffered brain damage.

The consent form tells parents that the health department believes MBP “should not be performed because it exposes an infant to the risk of transmission of [herpes] infection, which may result in brain damage or death.”

Several ultra-Orthodox groups filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in October 2012, asking for an injunction against the regulation.

The groups claim that medical evidence showing that MBP causes herpes infection in infants is weak. They say that the regulation violates their communities’ freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald postponed implementation of the regulation while she considered the case.

In December of that year another infant was infected with herpes. Although the regulation was not in force, a lawyer for the city confirmed for the Forward that the December case was the only occasion in which a consent form had been collected.

Since then, four other infants have been infected. The two most recent cases were in July of this year.

Many ultra-Orthodox mohels refuse to comply with the regulation.

For 18 months the Forward has fought to learn the identity of the mohel involved in the December 2012 infection.

The Forward filed a request under New York State’s Freedom of Information Law, seeking the identity of the mohel. The city denied the request, and a state judge upheld it in December 2013.

Supreme Court Justice Timothy Dufficy said that revealing the mohel’s identity would seriously undermine the city’s regulations that encourage individuals to report neonatal infections.

Dufficy wrote, “Individuals would be dissuaded from complying with the reporting requirements if their anonymity was compromised.”

The Forward has appealed his decision.
Contact Paul Berger at berger@forward.com or on Twitter, @pdberger


Read more: http://forward.com/articles/203243/-mohels-banned-after-infants-contract-herpes-in-c/?p=all#ixzz39YYHKcLD